That this comes from the Onion makes it all the better.  ..bruce w..

Dana Loesch over at Big Government has a great roundup of the most underreported stories of 2009. Anyone reading this blog is probably familiar with most of the ten (10) stories she lists. Those who rely upon traditional network news (i.e., anything other than Fox) or newspapers are unlikely to be aware of any of them, except in the most passing and dismissive sense. Go read the whole thing — but first, try to guess what they are. ..bruce w..

OK, not “back” as in “all new strips”. “Back” as in the complete collection of strips in a series of hardbound volumes (just like “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side“). I always liked “Bloom County” better than “Doonesbury”; both strips had liberal sensibilities, but Breathed never took himself or his strip as seriously as Trudeau did (and does).

Here’s one more, in honor of the elections on Tuesday:

I’m looking forward to the remaining volumes. ..bruce w..

From Ace of Spades comes this clip (above) of MS-NBC making a real-time “correction” based on an e-mail from the White House.

Upon watching it, my immediate thought was of the scene in “Broadcast News” where Albert Brooks (the brainy but uncharismatic journalist) is feeding background information for a breaking crisis to William Hurt (the handsome but less-than-brilliant anchor) via Holly Hunter (the brilliant if neurotic producer).  Brooks is giving information to Hunter on the phone, who in turns feeds it to Hurt via his earpiece, who is then giving it live on TV (which Brooks is watching). When the piece is done, Brooks shakes his head and says, looking at the screen, “I say it here and it comes out there.”

Except in this case, the feed isn’t from a jounalist. It’s from the White House, the very institution that MS-NBC and the rest of the media are supposed to be covering.  “Independence“, indeed.  ..bruce..

Headline: Obama’s War on Fox News Becomes a Quagmire

THE WHITE HOUSE – Despite the President’s promise of a swift and decisive victory, Obama’s War on Fox News has developed all signs of an unwinnable quagmire, making the White House even more isolated in its unilateral attempts to crush the growing media insurgency. As the war continues to grind on for a second month, public opinion is shifting towards a quick and complete withdrawal. While many observers still agree that the “War on Limbaugh” is a “just and necessary war,” even the former supporters of the war effort are now labeling the War on Fox an “unnecessary war of choice” and claim that the cable channel had nothing to do with Obama’s falling approval numbers.

Some say that the general in charge, Anita Dunn, greatly underestimated the power of fiery critic Glenn “Muqtada” Beck and his band of radical followers, who have inflicted heavy casualties on White House forces.

Read the whole thing.

IMPORTANT UPDATE from Stoaty Weasel, whose blog you should be reading:

That about sums it up.

MEANWHILE, here the obligatory link to Boing Boing in their ‘good war’ against the offensive idiocies of Ralph Lauren:

However, Ralph Lauren’s marketing arm and its law firm don’t see it that way. According to them, this is an “infringing image,” and they thoughtfully took the time to send a DMCA takedown notice to our awesome ISP, Canada’s Priority Colo. One of the things that makes Priority Colo so awesome is that they don’t automatically act on DMCA takedowns. Instead, they pass them on to us and we talk about whether they pass the giggle-test.

This one doesn’t.

So, instead of responding to their legal threat by suppressing our criticism of their marketing images, we’re gonna mock them. Hence this post.

Click through to see the image in question.  ..bruce w..

Hat tip on the video to Matt Yuen, a long-time friend and fellow PMS Commando (that writeup in from world-famous author (and budding politician) Dan Gookin, another one of the Commandos). You jump out of the same plane together, and you definitely are friends for life . . . however brief that may end up being.

ITEM: Obama is losing the ACLU, which (along with the press) is unhappy with the limits on access to detainees at Gitmo:

American Civil Liberties Union Director Anthony Romero said the access problems grate against the administration’s pledges.

“It’s frustrating,” Romero told FOX News during an interview at the Navy base.

He said his organization has never been allowed inside the detention camps — not under the Bush or Obama administrations — but suggested that he was expecting more access since Jan. 20.

“Especially now in light of the Obama administration saying they wish to have greater transparency, it’s more than a bit ironic that members of the press are now being denied access to the camps when they had it before under President Bush,” he said.

The beat reporters who routinely cover the military commissions at the base used to be invited on military-planned side trips to the detention camps when court was not in session. The trips allowed journalists to film, photograph and write about conditions inside.

That is no longer the case. Several sources told FOX News the decision to discontinue the trips came from Washington and the Pentagon.

Where’s that hope, change and transparency now? Welcome to the Chicago Way.

ITEM: Joshua Zumbrum over at Forbes gives eight reasons to remain wary about the housing market, including the end of the housing tax credit, tightened credit standards among mortgage vendors, and the flood of foreclosures still to come. Read the whole thing.

On the other hand, Megan McArdle (my favorite tall female libertarian economist) sees positive signs:

Amid everything the government is doing in the economy, it’s easy to forget that they’ve been putting quite a lot of effort into supporting house prices.  (Supporting, a relative term, in this case meaning keeping them from falling farther).  The FHA has stepped in as the lender of last resort, while the first time homebuyer tax credits have encouraged at least a few people to jump into the market.  Meanwhile, the mortgage modification efforts have kept some foreclosures from happening–but since optimistic estimates place the projected redefaults at 35%, and more conservative estimates look for half or more of the modifications to fail, many of those foreclosures have simply been delayed, and will end up back on the market in winter and early spring.

We’ll see what happens.

[UPDATED 09/30/09 -- 0625 MDT]

ITEM: Warmist Countdown Watch: Successive earthquakes have hit near Samoa (causing 99 deaths due to tsunamis) and now in Indonesia. These are tragedies in a geologically active part of the world. The question is: how long until some Warmists start claiming that these quakes are tied into climate change? (Don’t laugh — it’s an actual set of Warmist beliefs.)

ITEM: “The State doesn’t own my body!” Pro-choice protest? Well, of a sort:

New York is the first state in the country to mandate flu vaccinations for its health care workers. The first doses of swine flu vaccine will be available beginning next week. Much of it is reserved for state health care workers, but there is growing opposition to required innoculations.

Health care workers in Hauppauge screamed “No forced shots!” as they rallied Tuesday against the state regulation requiring them to roll up their sleeves.

I’m pro-vaccination, but it must be a bit disquieting to have health care workers protest and risk losing their jobs over receiving mandatory vaccinations.

ITEM: Andrew Malcolm, over at the LA Times’ “Top of the Ticket” political blog, is always worth reading. Wherever his political sympathies may lie, he’s willing to poke — and poke hard — at failings and foibles all across the political spectrum. His latest analysis of Obama’s growing struggle with Afghanistan is worth reading in full:

Signs are growing that Obama will seek to change the war goals, to redefine what is success and divert the discussion away from the more-troops measure. It’s not defeat in Afghanistan; it’s victory of a different kind. The president used a similar strategic argument recently when abandoning the Bush administration’s missile defense shield in Europe: it’s not less defense, it’s defense done smarter and cheaper.

Biden reportedly opposes additional forces. He was a senator when Obama was a sixth grader, and recalls too vividly the last Democratic administration to pour U.S. soldiers into a distant guerrilla war — and lose. That savagely split his party — and nation — and lead to 20 years of Republican presidents in the next 24.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this week, Sen. John Kerry, who succeeded Biden as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, began the Afghan redefinition.

Kerry, who was in the Vietnam war before he was against it, said that 1) things have changed in Afghanistan since last spring, 2) perhaps what we need is not more troops but a “well-honed counter-terrorism strategy,” 3) the recent Afghan election was deeply flawed and maybe it’s the fault of a weak, untrusted Afghan government if we can’t win militarily and 4) we need to plan how to get out.

As I said, read the whole thing.  Then go over to the Washington Examiner to check out the “ducks-in-a-row” approach the Obama Administration is taking (with a helpful assist from the mainstream media).

ITEM: As noted here a few days ago, much of Leftist thinking can be summed up as if you fervently hope for something good to come true, then it will. This is especially true in the “green/alternative energy” domain, where hopes for magical breakthroughs in solar and wind power ignore serious issues of energy density and production. As it turns out, there’s another big problem with many of these “new energy” ideas: they often require a lot of old-fashioned H2O:

Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year.

“When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy,” said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin who studies the relationship between energy and water.

Read the whole thing.  ..bruce w..

ITEM: The media, after its years-long fight to be able to photograph the coffins of American servicemen and -women coming home, has now suddenly lost interest:

In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.

But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. “It’s really fallen off,” says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. “The flurry of interest has subsided.”

Not as much outrage because it’s now President Obama’s war? Or just a discovery that most Americans wish privacy for our fallen, honored dead?

ITEM: On the other hand, President Obama is losing WaPo liberal columnist Richard Cohen:

The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” — and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health-care plan — and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees — and then again maybe he would.

Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health-care legislation — “Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town . . . ” — and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence — meet it or else.

Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran. He has gotten into a demeaning dialogue with Ahmadinejad, an accomplished liar. (The next day, the Iranian used a news conference to counter Obama and, days later, Iran tested some intermediate-range missiles.) Obama is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama’s the president. Time he understood that.

Ouuuch.

ITEM: Remember the item yesterday about dairy farmers in Colorado (and elsewhere) selling off their herds due to the low price of milk? Well, it turns out that part of the problem is that dairy cow breeders can now guarantee a higher percentage of female (vs. male) calves when performing artificial insemination:

HANFORD, Calif. — Three years ago, a technological breakthrough gave dairy farmers the chance to bend a basic rule of nature: no longer would their cows have to give birth to equal numbers of female and male offspring. Instead, using a high-technology method to sort the sperm of dairy bulls, they could produce mostly female calves to be raised into profitable milk producers.

Now the first cows bred with that technology, tens of thousands of them, are entering milking herds across the country — and the timing could hardly be worse.

The dairy industry is in crisis, with prices so low that farmers are selling their milk below production cost. The industry is struggling to cut output. And yet the wave of excess cows is about to start dumping milk into a market that does not need it.

Again, it strikes me that someone’s trying to ignore basic economic principles here. If dairy farmers have too many dairy cows, then they’ll stop buying them, and those who are breeding dairy cows will stop producing them. On top of that, the actual impact here appears to be low at present:

Desperate to drive up prices by stemming the gusher of unwanted milk, a dairy industry group, the National Milk Producers Federation, has been paying farmers to send herds to slaughter. Since January the program has culled about 230,000 cows nationwide.

But the sorting technique, known as sexed semen, is expected to put 63,000 extra heifers into milk production this year, compared with the number that would be available if only conventional semen had been used, researchers estimate.

That number will jump to 161,000 next year, and farmers fear it could double again in 2011. While that is a fraction of the 9.2 million milk cows nationwide, the extra cows this year and next could roughly equal those removed from production by the industry’s culling program.

Again, I have to ask: if dairy farmers are currently slaughtering cows to reduce milk production, who’s buying these extra heifers?

ITEM: I’ve never bought the liberal trope of the elderly poor eating dog food because they can’t afford regular food. Nevertheless, I’m sure this article will likely be pointed to as somehow supporting this concept:

Despite rising unemployment, credit-card debt and thinning discretionary spending, American pet owners remain loyal customers of an industry that is enjoying consistent growth.

The pet-food industry is fueled by consumers who won’t back away from spending on food and necessities for their animals, though they’re likely to pare down the family vacation.

The strong spending comes amid price increases in nearly every pet-food category, the result of rising costs of fuel, ingredients and transportation for manufacturers.

Dogs and cats, though, still feel the pinch in other ways, owners said. Fewer treats, new toys or accessories such as collars and leashes, even fewer trips to the groomer are all part of the cost.

Those who think that the poor buy dog food have clearly never priced (nor tasted) dog food. There are plenty of human foods that are cheaper and tastier than dog food. And almost anything’s better than cat food.

ITEM: Idiotic headline of the day: “Consumer confidence unexpectedly falls in September“. Unexpectedly? Unexpectedly? Let’s see: we’re facing high unemployment, record deficits for years to come, certain tax increases, a feckless Congress and a clueless Administration who are trying to pass health care “reform” that a majority of Americans don’t want, and a string of disastrous economic “bailouts” and gimmicks. The only reason why there’s any confidence at all is because Americans are by nature optimistic.  It remains to be seen if that optimism can survive the current Democratic onslaught.

[UPDATED 1145 MDT] Here’s a diagram from Gay Patriot that shows just why consumer confidence might be falling:

I’m just glad that I’ve got active clients and invoices in the pipeline.  ..bruce w..

Remember that old saying about never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel? It applies even more with someone with as solid a ‘net reputation as Michael Yon. The British Media Ops over in Helmand Province (where my nephew, USMC CPL Darren Green, is serving) ended Yon’s embed with the British Army in an effort to shut him up.  Wrong move:

The Major said again that Lt. Col. Nick Richardson demanded that I leave RC-South, and that Media Ops would forward my satellite and night vision gear that was in transit.  Before the Major had stomped out, I said that I was not leaving Camp Bastion until those packages were in my hands.  I told him to call Lt. Col. Nick Richardson at Lashkar Gah—a nearby base—and say that if Richardson wants me gone, he’d need to call the Royal Military Police (RMP).  The satellite gear is crucial to the operation and the night vision gear is expensive.  I was not going to leave without the gear unless under arrest.  I had heard the Major arrogantly tell a correspondent how a soldier had punched another correspondent and “knocked him on his ass.”  Bullying apparently had been working for him; he was still doing it.

“Go ahead,” I said, “Call the RMPs right now.  Have them come down and flex cuff me and put me on an airplane out of here.”  I waited for the RMP’s to arrive and arrest me.  At least they would be professionals.

There is the maxim that a customer can judge the cleanliness of a restaurant’s kitchen by the restroom.  After much experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have discovered another: Soldiers always treat correspondents they way they treat the local people.  When soldiers treat correspondents badly, they treat local people even worse and are creating enemies.  Those troops who brag about how they mistreat or detest correspondents are abusing and resentful of the local population, and they cannot win this sort of war.  The people will kill them and the media will bash them and they will blame the people and the media.  When a soldier alienates sympathetic correspondents, he has no real chance against mortal enemies such as the Taliban and al Qaeda, and they will defeat him.  Yet there is subtlety: for “the people,” in the case of Media Ops, is you.

Be sure to take the time to read the whole thing. If there were any sense and/or justice in the world of journalism, Michael Yon would have received the Pulitzer Prize several times over.

And while you’re at it, go support Yon. He’s entirely self-funded. I don’t subscribe to any news magazines or newspapers. But I pay $10/month via my PayPal account to keep Yon out in the field.

Worth every penny.  ..bruce w..

The Left responds to growing public discontent.

ITEM: Lacking actual support for health care reform, Congress and the Obama Administration looks to manufacture it in order to give the mainstream media cover for how poorly they’ve covered the whole issue:

The plan for a series of grass-roots demonstrations Tuesday to promote President Obama’s health care agenda calls for tightly scripted events and an “escalation” of efforts against “enemies” of reform.

Organizers insist there is no comparison to rowdy summer town hall meetings and recent “tea party” protests that have challenged White House policies.

But Health Care for America Now (HCAN), which is backed by a coalition of labor unions and liberal groups including ACORN and MoveOn.org, organized the protests to target insurance companies and drafted the plan, which describes the demonstrations as part of its “insurance enemies project.”

“Grass roots”, eh? The same way that SEIU is grass roots? And, of course, we now have the DNC promising a “rain of hellfire”. Can you just imagine if someone at the RNC had made a statement like that?

ITEM: Interesting article in this morning’s Washington Post about SecState Hillary Clinton and her struggles within the Obama Administration:

But after eight months in office, Clinton, 61, sometimes seems torn between her inclination to lead and her need to function effectively within the administration, creating a certain tension between her aspirations and her status. . . .

Clinton arrived at the department with a large and loyal staff collectively known as Hillaryland. At times, it fits uncomfortably within the State Department establishment, which views the influx as a jobs program for her campaign acolytes. Some close aides still privately harbor hopes she will run again for president. . . .

Clinton said her years in the White House, where she watched conflicts among President Bill Clinton’s advisers spill out into the open, have influenced how she operates. “You can disagree with the president, you can argue for different policies, but at the end of the day you have to be part of a team that is there to serve the country and the president who the country elected,” she said. “It may sound very old-fashioned, but that is sort of how I view it.”

She is so lining herself up to leave the State Department so as to be free in 2012 if Obama looks as though his re-election is in trouble.

ITEM: And speaking of Clinton distancing herself from the Obama Administration, Con Coughlin at the Telegraph notes the curious absence of Clinton from the whole missile defense abandonment decision:

Excuse me, but when Washington announces a revolutionary change in the way it conducts its relations with the outside world it is normal for the American Secretary of State to be involved in some way.

So where’s Hillary Clinton? We’ve heard a lot from President Barack Obama and Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, about their lamentable decision to abandon the missile defence system in Europe, which has been a key pillar of the transatlantic alliance for a decade or more. But we’ve heard not a squeak from Mrs Clinton.

Could this be that, unlike Mr Obama and Mr Gates, she sees this decision for what it is, an abject surrender of American influence in Europe, and a shocking betrayal of all those former vassal states of the Soviet Union that are desperately seeking the support and protection of the West?

Compared with Mr Obama and Mr Gates, whose first instinct when faced with an international crisis is to make concessions, Mrs Clinton is a more hard-headed and hawkish operator. She might want to “reset” Washington’s relations with Moscow, but not at the expense of capitulating to Iran’s attempts to terrorise the world with its nuclear programme.

She, for one, will not be at all surprised that, within 24 hours of Mr Obama’s decision to abandon the missile defence system, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears on American television declaring that Tehran will never abandon its nuclear programme.

The more I look at the situation, the more certain I am that Clinton is lining up a 2012 run for the Presidency, possibly using a 2010 run for New York Governor as a graceful exit from the State Department.

ITEM: Speaking of abandoning missile defense, we now learn from the Obama Administration that it was all a matter of cost:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s scrapping of long-range missile interceptors in Europe wasn’t just about security and diplomacy, according to people close to the process: It also came down to money.

“A ground-based interceptor is generally about a $70 million-per-missile asset going after a $10-$15 million [Iranian] missile,” a senior administration official told arms-control analysts Thursday at a briefing explaining the rationale, according to a recording heard by The Wall Street Journal. “The trade is not a good one economically. It’s not a good one from a military strategy position.”

This statement makes absolutely no sense. The tradeoff isn’t between a $70 million interceptor and a $15 million Iranian missile; it’s between a $70 million interceptor and a given European city.

ITEM/Creeping socialism alert: Big surprise — the Obama Administration wants to regulate salaries in the banking industry, though from the tone of the article, the proposed regulation isn’t enough for the mainstream media:

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve and the Treasury are preparing broad new rules that would force banks to rein in practices that made multimillionaires out of many financial executives during the housing bubble, officials said.

The rules depart from the hands-off approach that dominated bank regulation for the last three decades, but are not as strict as proposals from some European leaders and suggestions from some members of Congress angered by the financial troubles of the last year.

Fed officials would give banks wide leeway in how they structure their rewards. They would not prohibit million-dollar pay packages or address issues of fairness. Rather, the rules are intended to restrict pay plans that encourage reckless behavior by rewarding only short-term gains.

And because the rules would be applied through the confidential bank examination process, it would be hard for consumers and investors to judge how strictly the rules were being applied.

The authors of this piece (Edmund L. Andrews and Louise Story) sound downright disappointed that the rules aren’t more intrusive and controlling.

ITEM: Funny, I didn’t see this news item in any of the major US newspaper websites that I browsed this morning:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who was charged last month with defrauding Citigroup Inc is being sued by HSBC for deceiving it into lending him $100 million.

The lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court in early September accused private equity firm head Hassan Nemazee, 59, of engaging in an elaborate scheme to make HSBC Bank USA believe that its loan was secured by collateral in the form of U.S. Treasury Notes when it was not.

Nemazee, who sits on the board of the Iranian American Political Action Committee, typically donates more than $100,000 annually to Democratic political candidates.

He is listed as one of the top “bundlers” of contributions to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, according to OpenSecrets,org, a website run by the Center for Responsive Politics research group.

Now, if Nemazee had been giving “more than $100,000 annually” to Republican political candidates and was a top bundler for the McCain/Palin 2008 presidential campaign, I’m willing to be this would be front page news at the New York Times and the Washington Post. But I could be wrong.

Naaah.

Finally, the DNC’s “rain of hellfire” threat immediately calls this to mind:

“Our three weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to Obama! Our four…! No — amongst our weapons . . .” Now the DNC just needs the nice red uniforms.

Have a happy Saturday. Go Cougars! ..bruce w..

Crocodile tears

ITEM: See the guy weeping above? This is the ACORN community organizer (the paper’s phrase, not mine) in San Diego who offered to help smuggle underage girl into the United States for prostitution. Turns out that ACORN actually fired him.

NATIONAL CITY – Local ACORN officials reversed an earlier decision Thursday afternoon and fired a community organizer who was caught on video providing advice about human smuggling to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute.

In an afternoon press conference, Lagstein said he believed his employee, Juan Carlos Vera, did his best to deal with a challenging situation, and would not be disciplined.

But two hours later, Lagstein stated he had reevaluated the videos posted online in which Vera was secretly filmed answering questions about smuggling people across the Tijuana border. Lagstein said in his earlier evaluation, he had only found a short, 52-second video, and not a longer seven-minute video. After consulting with supervisors and state ACORN officials, he decided Vera had contradicted his earlier statements and his conduct was “unacceptable.”

The recording showed Vera appearing to suggest he could help get people across the border and asking the woman posing as a prostitute how much her services cost.

At the news conference, Lagstein said the organization is “furious” that hidden cameras filmed employees of the community-organizing group, and he called such actions “immoral if not illegal.”

Unlike, say, all the ACORN workers giving advice on child prostitution? But wait — it gets better:

[Lagstein] also added that “we accept the imperfections that it exposed.”

Vera was at the news conference and he gave an emotional recounting of what happened. He broke into tears at least twice.

He said that English isn’t his first language and that he was confused about what was going on. He said he was just trying to help.

ITEM: Speaking of ACORN, JammieWearingFool posts this Jay Leno clip:

ITEM: Charlie Cook over at the National Journal wonders if the Democratic leadership is really aware of their potential problems in 2010:

. . . Democrats ought to keep in mind that 84 of their current House members represent districts won by President Bush in 2004 or John McCain in 2008.

A whopping 48 of those Democrats — eight more than the size of their party’s majority — are from districts that voted for both Bush and McCain. That America is very different from the Democratic base in blue America, and it sees many major issues very differently. . . .

The 17-point advantage that Democrats enjoyed in the January Gallup Poll (when “leaners” were included) shrank to 5 points in August. Their edge on the generic congressional ballot test has vanished, according to most national polls. For three years, Democrats enjoyed high single-digit or low double-digit leads on this question — a very good indicator of which direction (and how hard) the political winds are blowing as a congressional election nears.

Read the whole thing.

ITEM: Dana Milbank — who, to his everlasting credit, seems just as willing to aim his snark at the Obama White House as he did at the Bush White House — rolls his journalistic eyes at Michelle Obama’s visit to a nearby “farmer’s market” in DC:

The first lady had encouraged Freshfarm Markets, the group that runs popular farmers markets in Dupont Circle and elsewhere, to set up near the White House, and she helped get the approvals to shut down Vermont Avenue during rush hour on Thursdays. But the result was quite the opposite of a quaint farmers market. Considering all the logistics, each tomato she purchased had a carbon footprint of several tons.

The promotion of organic and locally grown food, though an admirable cause, is a risky one for the Obamas, because there’s a fine line between promoting healthful eating and sounding like a snob. The president, when he was a candidate in 2007, got in trouble in Iowa when he asked a crowd, “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” Iowans didn’t have a Whole Foods.

For that reason, it’s probably just as well that the first lady didn’t stop by the Endless Summer Harvest tent yesterday. The Virginia farm had a sign offering “tender baby arugula” — hydroponically grown, pesticide free — and $5 for four ounces, which is $20 a pound.

Obama, in her brief speech to the vendors and patrons, handled the affordability issue by pointing out that people who pay with food stamps would get double the coupon value at the market. Even then, though, it’s hard to imagine somebody using food stamps to buy what the market offered: $19 bison steak from Gunpowder Bison, organic dandelion greens for $12 per pound from Blueberry Hill Vegetables, the Piedmont Reserve cheese from Everson Dairy at $29 a pound. Rounding out the potential shopping cart: $4 for a piece of “walnut dacquoise” from the Praline Bakery, $9 for a jumbo crab cake at Chris’s Marketplace, $8 for a loaf of cranberry-walnut bread and $32 for a bolt of yarn.

The first lady said the market would particularly appeal to federal employees in nearby buildings to “pick up some good stuff for dinner.” Yet even they might think twice about spending $3 for a pint of potatoes when potatoes are on sale for 40 cents a pound at Giant. They could get nearly five dozen eggs at Giant for the $5 Obama spent for her dozen.

Again, be sure to read the whole thing.

ITEM: Speaking of snark, this item over at the Politico tries to dish some up in reviewing the Right’s adoption of Saul Alinsky, but ends up making some grudging admissions:

Still, enough of the co-opting is intentional that the Democrats might be wise to stop snarking, sit up, and take notice. And some of it is already working, notes Lakoff: In the health care debate, he says, the right has taken “all the progressive arguments and made them conservative arguments.”

Says Zelizer: “The tactics can be powerful. Direct confrontation, community organizing, in-your-face politics, as we’ve seen in August, can get a lot of media attention and can scare politicians away from taking certain positions.”

They can also be their own reward. At FreedomWorks, says Brandon, “We’re having fun. I have been pissing people off left and right calling myself a progressive, because I’m fighting myself against the establishment.”

And, according to Alinsky, that’s one of the keys to a good uprising: As he put it in “Rules for Radicals,” “A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

Heh. Not only did we have a lot of fun in DC last Saturday, we left it clean — unlike some gatherings.

ITEM: Lots of coverage on Obama’s abandonment of Eastern Europe, reconsigning it to be Russia’s “near abroad”, and doing so on the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s invasion of Poland, so I won’t repeat it here. However, Darleen at Protein Wisdom did put up this great cartoon by Ramirez:

ITEM: Oops!

SPOKANE, Wash. — A killer committed to Eastern State Hospital in 1987 escaped Thursday during a supervised field trip to the Spokane County Interstate Fair, resulting in a manhunt and a freeze on further field trips from the mental institution.

Phillip Arnold Paul, 57, was last seen Thursday morning in the northeast part of the fairgrounds, Spokane County sheriff’s Sgt. Dave Reagan said. A store clerk told authorities she saw someone matching Paul’s description later in the morning, and authorities believe he managed to get outside the fairgrounds.

ITEM: And we’ll wrap up with ACORN again, the gift that promises to keep giving for some time to come:

..bruce w..