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Thingish Things

Sarah Palin, The Tease

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 19•11

http://youtu.be/gqaE4sXZWRQ

I learned a long time ago not to call a girl “a tease.”  But this sharp new web video from Sarah Palin’s PAC is just that.  The question is whether that’s all it is, or if it is a striptease campaign roll out, with layer after layer of opaqueness discarded with deliberate and aching slowness.  My gut says it’s the former.  No one is that disciplined.  

I am told by friends in national politics this cycle that Palin is definitely a go.  If that’s the case, though, Palin’s sporadic tweets, bus tours, and web videos may be more gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight than political mastery.  An organized campaign would have suffered more news leaks. 

One thing I’ve learned in politics is that no campaign has its act together as much as it looks like it does (except the ones I work on of course.)  Even when a campaign is totally lost — when the operation has come off its wheels — the news media and the public typically lend it form.  Observers understandably believe there a strategy behind everything, when the real reason for something happening or not happening may come down to a head cold, a missed airplane connection, or a fist-fight among staff. C’est la vie. 

That said, this is an awfully nice web ad. Whoever did it, at least, definitely had his act together. As far as Sarah Palin goes, we observers will just have to wait and see. 

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Ed Koch Gives ’em Hell

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 19•11

Is there anyone tougher or more New-York authentic than former Mayor Ed Koch?  Here Koch lambastes fellow Democrat Assemblyman David Weprin in a recorded telephone call for engineering a scare campaign targeting Queens and Brooklyn senior citizens.  Weprin, a creer politician, is running  in a special election for congress next month. Koch crossed party lines to support Republican businessman Bob Turner in the race.  (Disclosure: I’m working with Turner in this race.) 

I wrote admiringly about Koch on these pages recently — about his continued relevance in US politics. Judging from his vigor in this call, I’d say he is going to stay relevant for a long, long time.  I wouldn’t want to cross him. 

 

 

 

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The $50,000-a-Week Vacation

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 19•11

President Obama has every right to a vacation, and he hasn’t been shy about taking them. So Nile Gardiner in The London Telegraph today poses the better question than “should he or shouldn’t he?”  Gardiner asks, “Is this an act of presidential Hara Kiri?”  And, indeed, it looks like it is.

President Obama, who once showed remarkable political instincts, could not be more tone deaf these days. After taking a disastrous multi-million-dollar — and taxpayer-paid — bus trip to the vote-rich Midwest, Obama is off to a $50,000-per-week resort on Martha’s Vineyard.  With his current PR problems? It is cringing to watch.  There are thousands of better places he could have gone. 

No chance his political handlers stayed mute on this one.  A “D” student in campaign school would have warned against it. It must be that Mr. and Mrs. Obama simply insisted. And that spells Hara Kiri to me. 

 

 

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Nǐ hǎo, Hoyas

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 19•11

from newsone.com

I never thought I’d one day be rooting for Georgetown in a basketball game, but count me as a fan today.  

A Chinese professional team attacked the college players in what was supposed to be a “friendship” exhibition game in Beijing. They’re lucky Patrick Hewing is retired. 

I am surprised and delighted that the Chinese would be so undisciplined. A Soviet team never would have lost its cool like this — it would have been right to the gulag if they had.  This gives China a big fat black-eye in world opinion today. That’s worth a black-eye or two on the court.

Hoya saxa! 

Here is video of that brawl.  Check out the crowd tossing things at the Georgetown players at the end. 

http://youtu.be/3UOGIaMmeUM

 

 

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Jobs We Can Do Without

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 18•11

I remember scribbling in the early days of this site that its exercise would include chronicling “inanities of the day.” With this story, I’m sorry to say, we have stayed on mission.

NASA scientists, it was reported today, along with Penn State University scientists, have spent time and money developing the following scenario as an admonition against the continued belching of greenhouse gases into the universe: 

Alien creatures — I’m not making this up — come close to earth. They spot said foul emissions emanating from earth; interpret them/us as a threat to their peculiar species, and launch a blistering, preemptive attack on mankind. In an instant, we are all incinerated.

The message, naturally, is build a campfire, get incinerated by insecure nomadic aliens.

A few thoughts:

1.  What the #@*!;

2. At least aliens understand the Bush Doctrine, and

3.  What the #@*!

It’s amazing what some people get paid to do. 

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Not Boarding the FolksWagon

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 18•11

Is anyone bothered by the word “folks” as much as I am?

I feel a sting every time I hear it spoken, whether by my namesake Bill O’Reilly on Fox News or by President Obama who uses it ten or eleven times in every sentence: “I know folks are frustrated out there, but listen folks, it’s gonna be tough on folks for a while and folks need to understand that.”

People everywhere are using it now, and it seems to be getting worse by the day. 

I’m no linguist, but I’m pretty sure the word derives from the German “Volks” for people. Do we really need another German import? Aren’t “kindergarten”, “sauerkraut”, and “hamburger” enough? “Folks” strikes me as an invasive assault on the American vernacular that needs to be eradicated like the Chinese Snake Fish or South American Killer Bee.

I write this because I almost used the word this morning, volks. Almost.

 

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Anderson’s Pooper

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 18•11

http://youtu.be/W6YRu2RQOa4

I’ll give anyone who does not laugh, or at least smile, watching this video a dollar.  Any English-speaking person that is. I made it to the 3:00-minute mark. 

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Politico v. The White House

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 17•11

The White House is continuing to deny that Vice President Joe Biden used the word “terrorist” to describe American Tea Party members. The story was broken by Politico, as professional a political news outfit as one can find anywhere, which had it from three separate sources who had been in the room with Biden that, in fact, the Vice President had said it.

Biden’s initial response suggested that, indeed, he had used the word.  His spokesman issued the following response: “The word was used by several members of Congress. The vice president does not believe it’s an appropriate term in political discourse.” In other words, “Okay, he said it after others introduced the word; it was a dumb-ass thing to repeat, and he should not have.”  If he really hadn’t used the word “terrorists,” a far different statement would have come from his office.  They would have issued a sharp denial.

Then, the White House went to the wall with it.  Biden did not say it became the official party line.  So much so that The Washington Post took a gratuitous shot at Politico today in its “Fact Checker” column.  In response, Politico defended itself, laying out step-by-step how it got its story.  Pretty convincing stuff. 

For the ten-thousandth time, it’s the cover up that gets you. People in The White House, of all places, should remember that. 

 

 

 

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Where’s the Beef?

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 17•11

 

The perpetually campaigning President Obama. 

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Ron Paul Goes for It

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Aug• 16•11

http://youtu.be/pChzOaIeyxY

Ron Paul’s new ad just has to make you smile.  I laughed out loud at its…audacity. 

Taking a page out of the Obama Book, Paul and his team half-facetiously declare him “The One.” 

Paul may never become President of the United States, but he is representing his libertarian principals nobly.  Paul may get — and deserve —  his own small chapter in the history books.  

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