The BBC lost no time in pimping the foiling of the Yemeni Underwear bomber plot.

The US has foiled a plot by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to detonate an upgraded version of the failed 2009 “underwear bomb”, US officials say.

Quotes followed from Sec of Defence Leon Panetta and Sec of State Hilarry Clinton

“These terrorists keep trying. They keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people,”

Full marks to all those involved in the uncovering of this AQAP (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) terrorist attempt to blow up a plane. The US media really went to town on the story with wall to wall coverage in what became a clearly orchestrated valediction of President Obama’s record in the war on terror – and remember, it’s Presidential election year.

First the celebration of the anniversary of OBL’s termination, now this….”tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism”
As the UK arm of Obama’s re-election campaign naturally the BBC went deepthroat on the story. Except, as the days went by, it became clearer that this was much more of a Saudi/UK operation than a CIA coup.

The Guardian has learned from Saudi sources that the agent was not a Saudi national as was widely reported, but a Yemeni. He was born in Saudi Arabia, in the port city of Jeddah, and then studied and worked in the UK, where he acquired a British passport

The Saudi’s recruited him for their own security service and almost certainly kept the UK’s MI6 in the loop. However the Obama administration’s boastful publicity has probably made AQAP more aware of the threat from double agents. Experienced US intelligence operatives were certainly not impressed

Mike Scheur, the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, said the leaking about the nuts and bolts of British involvement was despicable and would make a repeat of the operation difficult. “MI6 should be as angry as hell………………………..this is really tragic,” Scheur said.
He added: “Any information disclosed is too much information. This does seem to be a tawdry political thing.”

Sorry, Mr Scheur, you obviously haven’t grasped the fact that the item at the top of the agenda was not the need to protect an existing network – it was to create a useful 2/3 day “shining moment” to maintain Obama’s re-election campaign. Kudos to the the left wing UK Guardian for posting this – to date nothing on these lines has appeared in the BBC website; indeed I wonder how much of it has been picked up by the msm in America. One thing is certain, however, if this had happened under President Bush the Beeb would have been in full Bush derangement mode.

Meanwhile, as Obama, Clinton and Panetta bask before the adulation of the media elite, British, American and Saudi agents must be bashing their heads against office walls in frustration…

….and doubtless, somewhere in Yemen, men and women are screaming in agony as they are tortured by AQAP “specialists” tracking down moles. But, as they and their families die, bleeding and broken, they must find comfort that they died for a higher cause – a nice spread of Obama boosting coverage in the New York Times and, naturally, the BBC…

Mark Mardell is so excited about Obama giving his support for gay marriage. A “courageous act” on this “hot button issue” chirps the Beeb’s man in Washington as he religiously obeys the BBC handbook on brown-nosing Barack Obama at very possible opportunity.

But many Democrats would rather their man led, than followed.
Just because the timing of this announcement was unplanned and unwanted doesn’t mean it was undebated within the White House.
They may have seen little alternative, but also recognise that President Obama gets some kudos for being the first president to support gay marriage.

You see the strategy – yet another OBL type “tough call” for the President with a spine of titanium channelled via Mardell who is clearly consolidating the BBC as the unofficial UK arm of the White House re-election campaign.

Mardell is obviously flagging this up as a gift to Obama’s base. What he conveniently forgets to mention is that the reason why it came out at all was because his “base” appears to be withering away leaving him vulnerable on his left flank. Moreover Mardell’s identification of this as a “hot button issue” is open to question. He quotes poll data but can it be really true that across America this is the number one question in factory, office or store rather than gas prices, Obamacare costs or entitlements?

Perhaps the waspish John Nolte from Breitbart.com hit the nail on the head when he tweeted

John Nolte ‏@NolteNC
Did Obama’s cynical same-sex marriage move energize his base more than our’s? Doubt it. And by “his base” I of course mean the media.

The slavish adulation of the American media elite and their refusal to ask any questions about his background, experience or questionable Chicago acquaintances was a major factor in allowing this man to rise without trace to the highest office in the land. They remain a major bastion of his support – and, to these people in New York, Washington and Hollywood, gay issues are at the top of the agenda.

But to the rest of America, maybe not so much….with the exception, naturally, of Mark Mardell and the folk at the BBC….

cross posted at Biased BBC

Nigel Farage mocked the Eurocrats with his usual panache by this tongue in cheek encomium to Europe Day (May 9th). Good knockabout fun, as usual, but, towards the end he makes reference to a spectre of civil war and revolution in the wake of the EU’s self serving attempt to defy gravity by forcing savage austerity policies on counties like Ireland, Italy and Greece in order to shore up the Euruzone and, more importantly, protect German banks from the consequences of their drunken sailor lending policies over the last two decades.

The established Greek political elite unwillingly submitted to the austerity package demanded by EU. But a few days ago the people of Greece were able to voice their opinion via parliamentary elections.

The result? A total collapse of support for the mainstream parties and a large swing to the extremes of left and right – exactly the same thing as happened in the German election of 1932…and we all know what came out of that….

In a withering polemic against the political class Brendan O’Neill points out that 68% of voters did not exercise their franchise on a day when seats across the country were up for grabs in this year’s elections for local councils. As he points out 68% could easily be described as a “vast majority” if applied to a particular candidate – ergo one could say that the vast majority of UK electors decided to go NOTA and vote for None Of The Above.

What the political class (politicians, journalists and academics) might describe as “apathy” O’Neill perceives as a quite justifiable indifference

There’s nothing peculiar about the majority’s refusal to vote. It’s perfectly logical. At a time when the political class is fantastically disconnected from everyday people, when mainstream political debate has been almost wholly colonised by suits and PR people and media darlings, it makes sense for people to deduce: “This has nothing to do with me.”

But it is not only at the ballot box that ordinary folk are manifesting a distaste and disregard for political activity. The political parties, for many years the main engines of popular political engagement, have become professionalized and reconfigured beyond all recognition. Once thriving hubs of local grassroots activity swamping the streets during elections and raising cash between them, and always jealously guarding their own manor against the central party they have withered away into glorified branch offices of the London machine. The big money comes no longer from subscriptions, coffee mornings and jumble sales but from corporate or union donors meeting with party professionals in swish London offices.

The established parties have now become corporations whoring themselves out to special interests and dominated almost entirely by a tiny Oxbridge educated metropolitan elite who segue effortlessly from university to media/academia/political consultancy with little if any experience of real work in office, factory, shop or in any area where they actually have to make business decisions.

The result?

Britain is morphing into an oligarchy, with a gaping chasm emerging between the spin-doctored politicians and Twitterati who “do politics” and the man and woman in the street who do not.

But this disconnect cannot survive the dark hours that will certainly overwhelm us when we realise that the vapid word games and pretentious promises with which the political class seek to appease us will stand for nothing as the frightening truth about their financial ineptitude is finally confronted. As usual Mark Steyn points the way.

There’s a famous exchange in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Someone asks Mike Campbell, “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.” We’ve been going through the gradual phase so long, we’re kinda used to it. But it’s coming to an end, and what happens next will be the second way: sudden, and very bad

Hey – we don’t need no small town redneck hicks embarrassing our convention with their backwoods old fashioned attitudes. We need to go rainbow….

Several insiders interviewed for this story said former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will present a unique challenge to Romney’s team: Will they give her a prime spot to satisfy her fans, or reduce her role because of her polarizing nature?
“You want people to generate interest and passion,” said one Republican who has organized conventions before and who, like others, didn’t want to be named. “Sarah Palin goes to a very small segment, relatively speaking, of the Republican Party. And you’re trying to put together a rainbow coalition.”

Ah those Republican insiders – the ones that did so well in 2008…..they really know how to generate interest and passion….

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Barker insisted that the Conservatives should not be tempted to adopt a more Eurosceptic stance to win an outright majority at the next election…….we don’t need to follow UKIP into swivel-eyed rhetoric. People expect grown up statesman-like leadership on Europe, and with David Cameron, that is what they get.”

A very smooth (and rich) chap the Energy Minister is said to be a close chum of David Cameron and George Osborne and one of the key figures planning the Tory strategy for the next election. His view is that the Conservatives need to capture the “fertile ground” where 21st century elections will be won.

Mr Barker said the Tories had to attract more voters from ethnic minorities as well as homosexual and lesbians. He said: “Absolutely – it is policy for the whole country.”

Ah yes – that’s “Greg” Barker, who in the past has faced questions about his links to Russian oligarchs and who also had his own starring role in the MP’s expenses scandal.

In December 2006, Mr Barker briefly moved the second home allowance back to Cheyne Row, where he claimed a further £3,492 for his mortgage interest. He also claimed £4,400 in food allowances – 11 months-worth in one go.
He moved house after leaving his wife Celeste in October 2006 following an affair with William Banks-Blaney, an interior designer, but he still claims the house he shares with her and their three children in Peasmarsh, East Sussex, as his main home.

Nice to know that Barker and his friends are still addicted to the myth of the centre ground and pimping the electoral genius of team Cameron/Osborne. Problem is that team Cameron/Osborne were unable to deliver a crushing victory over what was possibly one of the most unpopular and discredited governments of all time even though they were aiming for Barker’s “fertile ground”

As for “Greg” I suspect his “swivel eyed” rhetoric jibe had a slightly personal edge to it for it must be so irritating to see a man he and his pals in the Tory establishment had believed to be consigned to the “dustbin of history” in East Sussex in 2001 leading what was once seen as a “fringe”party (UKIP) which is now gaining considerable momentum in current opinion polls.

Keep on digging that hole you are already in, Greg, just don’t blame anyone else when you find you are stuck in it…..

A belated and timely reassessment of John Major’s premiership from Peter Oborne at the Daily Telegraph.

His administration has enjoyed a terrible reputation and remains associated with sleaze, incompetence, drift and weakness. But as time has passed this verdict has started to look unfair. History may yet be much kinder to John Major than many would have thought.

Yet a closer look at the facts (those oh so inconvenient nuggets of truth that undermine the seductive charm of wishful thinking) Major’s government had a good record of solid achievement in Northern Ireland, public service reform, education and pensions. The benefits of the Maastricht monetary union opt out, though widely derided at the time by the great and the good from the left have kept us out of the current Euro quicksand. Above all, after the (admittedly self inflicted) trauma of Black Wednesday in 1992, within five years the economy had been turned around.

By 1997 employment was rising, growth stable, and the deficit was well under control, meaning that Gordon Brown as chancellor inherited the most benign economic scenario for any British government of the last century. The situation was so fundamentally strong that it took three successive Labour administrations to wreck it.

But at the time, as Oborne guiltily admits, he and his fellow journalists waged an unrelenting campaign of contemptuous denigration against Major.

Yet during the later stages of his premiership, Major was treated with almost universal, vicious derision. Calumny after calumny was heaped upon him, and though this campaign of laceration was led in Parliament by Blair’s brilliant New Labour opposition, the newspapers were all too happy to join in.

His humble origins were viciously mocked. His ordinary, untheatrical bank manager demeanour was constantly compared unfavourably with the flashy showmanship of Tony Blair’s car salesman – and the charge was orchestrated, not so much from the natural enemies of the right at the BBC and Guardian but from that so called bastion of conservatism at the Daily Telegraph. Day in, day out vicious barbs were penned by the likes of Simon Heffer and Boris Johnson (yes, that Boris) deliberately aimed at undermining Major and preparing the way for their chosen messiah….Michael Portillo….

Don’t laugh – the saviour of the Tories was going to be a shallow, etch-a-sketch glamour boy, a trimmer who played to whichever gallery was making the most noise. Somehow (only the gods know why) the Telegraph fell madly in love with Portillo and so successfully tarnished Major’s reputation that in 1997 Labour swept back to power with a massive majority of parliamentary seats. Hundreds of Tories failed to win their constituencies – including (to the laughter of the gods) Portillo, the Telegraph’s “man of destiny”

By the way, this month, twenty years ago, saw the last Tory victory in a General Election. Against the prophesies of the pundits and the prognostications of the pollsters John Major was returned to Downing Street.

Right up to the BBC exit polls, it was assumed that Neil Kinnock’s Labour would win. But John Major, always underestimated by a sneering metropolitan media class, triumphed against the odds.
He won more votes – 14 million – than any other British prime minister has ever done. In popular terms, the margin of victory was immense. No less than 42 per cent of the voters came out for Major, 34 per cent for Kinnock. But the bias of the British electoral system hit the Conservatives hard.
Had Labour enjoyed that 8 per cent lead in the popular vote, it would have secured a parliamentary majority of more than 100. Unlucky Major ended up with a majority of just 21, which was whittled away over the coming years until his government ended in ignominy and defeat

That’s right – the disdained John Major managed to achieve something that has eluded David Cameron (AKA Michael Portillo Mk II)….a decisive Tory victory in terms of popular voter support…

…and, partially thanks to the Daily Telegraph it might possibly be the last…..

Mark Mardell, the BBC’s man in the USA, lets the mask slip in a rather unpleasant piece on Governor Palin’s decision not to enter the 2012 Presidential race.

Shriekily filled with venom against a president she branded a socialist and suggested was un-American, in love with guns, God and the unborn, apparently ignorant of the outside world, indeed not fully clued up on the lower 48 (the USA outside Alaska)

What a perfect example of well informed, deeply researched political analysis – paid for, I might add, by a poll tax on everyone who owns a TV set in Britain.

Holding true to the definitive snake oil salesman’s code of practice that the best way to present an untruth is to baldly state it as a fact, Mardell goes for broke.

Sarah Palin’s decision will have disappointed some.
Not the American people who clearly didn’t like her as John McCain’s running mate in 2008.

Excuse me? If that was the case why was it that the only time that the McCain ticket led Obama in the polls was in the first half of September after Palin joined it? After September 15th, of course, the ticket was dead in the water – not because of Palin but due to McCain’s deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the Lehman Brothers collapse.

Naturally Mardell ignores policy positions and goes for the personal…

As a result we have Michelle Bachmann in the race. Herman Cain in the race. Rick Perry in the race.
They are all more authentic, more intelligent, more acceptable than Palin

Hmmmm….Mr Mardell – are you saying Camille Paglia is is just some dumb broad?

No evidence to back this up, of course. Indeed what is fascinating is how Mardell is trying desperately to portray Palin as some sort of X Factor “celebrity” without any connection to the world of serious politics. No reference to her years of executive experience in Alaska as a successful city mayor or popular governor. No reference to her fight against corruption in her own party or her triumphant battles against the big oil companies.

But then why in the world would any rational person be at all surprised at this bucketful of poisonous bile?

It’s Mark Mardell..

For years he was paid by the BBC to pimp the EU as their man in Brussels. Then, when the they began to believe their own hope&change crapola about a totally unvetted Chicago Daley machine hack with zero executive experience, Mardell’s bosses decided to send him to Washington as a kind of court correspondent to wax lyrical about the new Camelot. He must have been delirious with joy, foreseeing an eight year stint pimping for Obama.

But it has all gone horribly wrong. The Obamacare shambles, the ever swelling deficit, the lobbyist rewarding stimulus that has failed to dent unemployment, the ATF guns scandal, the Democrats losing control of the house in 2010, the emergence of the tea party (which, characteristically, Mardell ignored for well over a year )…..

Mardell could even be characterised as the Comical Ali of the Obama regime

a cult figure thanks to his wild claims and colourful language

Obama is crumbling and there is precious little reward in pimping a failure. Hence the vitriolic attack on Palin. When the Brooks/Douthat/Frum axis of appeasement was advocating accomodation with Obama and Huntsman seemed the future Palin was the only leading light of the GOP who was calling him out. Her predictions have been vindicated. She was right about Obama – Mardell and his ilk were wrong – and how it must hurt to be outsmarted by someone “apparently ignorant of the outside world, indeed not fully clued up on the lower 48”

Here’s a suggestion for the BBC, supposedly in cost cutting mode. Why not save money by getting rid of Mardell and just giving White House spokesman Jay Carney a few dollars extra to blah blah blah about the Potemkin villages of Obamaland.

The song will be the same as Mardell’s but the price will be much lower…

BTW…he predicts it will almost certainly be Romney v Perry, ignoring the latest polls about Cain. Time for the Race Card, methinks…

But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot, what exactly is our opponents plan?

Remember someone saying that in 2008? Who was it…just remind me…

Well Rex Murphy at Canada’s National Post remembers – and he also recalls the scorn heaped on that person because she dared to wonder if indeed there really were any clothes on a certain emperor.

Three years later those columns are safely back in the studio lot – and the man with the plan?

Under Obama, America’s foreign policies are a mixture of confusion and costly impotence. It is increasingly bypassed or derided; the great approach to the Muslim world, symbolized by the Cairo speech, is in tatters. Its debt and deficits are a weight on the entire global economy. And the office of presidency is less and less a symbol of strength.

Murphy believes that a reckoning is due – with the media

American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama’s rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn’t reclaimed them since.

But if the media went easy on Obama, transforming an inexperienced Daley machine hack from Chicago into a demigod no punches were pulled for anyone else

The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency.
Palin, in particular, stands out as Obama’s opposite in the media’s eyes. As much as they genuflected to the one, they felt the need to turn rotweiler toward the other. If Obama was sacred , classy, intellectual and cosmopolitan, why then Palin must be malevolent, trashy, dumb and pure backwoods-ignorant.

Read the rest here. You and I know the truth of it and it’s a message that is beginning to seep into the ivory towers of the panjandrums of punditocracy themselves. But it bears repeating and it needs to be broadcast loud and clear into all the newsrooms, not just in the US but also across the globe because hacks everywhere took their cue from America’s network and newspaper bosses who clearly turned a blind eye to the airbrushing of Obama’s past.

Don’t ever let them avoid responsibility for the way they abused their power – so here, courtesy of one of the comments on Murphy’s piece, is a list of some of the guilty parties, exposed to sunlight after the “Journolist” debacle. It doesn’t include all the weasels – but it’s a start….

1. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect

2. Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO

3. Mike Allen – POLITICO

4. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America

5. Marc Ambinder – The Atlantic

6. Greg Anrig – The Century Foundation

7. Ryan Avent – Economist

8. Dean Baker – The American Prospect

9. Nick Baumann – Mother Jones

10. Josh Bearman – LA Weekly

11. Steven Benen – The Carpetbagger Report

12. Jared Bernstein – Economic Policy Institute

13. Michael Berube – Crooked Timber (blog), Pennsylvania State University

14. Lindsay Beyerstein – (blogger)

15. Joel Bleifuss – In These Times

16. John Blevins – South Texas College of Law

17. Sam Boyd – The American Prospect

18. Rich Byrne – Playwright and freelancer

19. Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic

20. Jonathan Chait – The New Republic

21. Lakshmi Chaudry – In These Times

22. Isaac Chotiner – The New Republic

23. Michael Cohen – New America Foundation

24. Jonathan Cohn – The New Republic

25. Joe Conason – The New York Observer

26. David Corn – Mother Jones

27. Daniel Davies – The Guardian

28. David Dayen – FireDogLake

29. Brad DeLong – The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkley

30. Ryan Donmoyer – Bloomberg

31. Kevin Drum – Washington Monthly

32. Matt Duss – Center for American Progress

33. Eve Fairbanks – The New Republic

34. Henry Farrell – George Washington University

35. Tim Fernholz – American Prospect

36. James Galbraith – University of Texas at Austin (professor)

37. Todd Gitlin – Columbia University

38. Ilan Goldenberg – National Security Network

39. Dana Goldstein – The Daily Beast

40. Merrill Goozner – Chicago Tribune

41. David Greenberg – Slate

42. Robert Greenwald – Brave New Films

43. Chris Hayes – The Nation

44. Don Hazen – Alternet

45. Michael Hirsh – Newsweek

46. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect

47. Michael Kazin – Georgetown University (law professor)

48. Ed Kilgore – Democratic Stategist

49. Richard Kim – The Nation

50. Mark Kleiman – The Reality Based Community

51. Ezra Klein – Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect

52. Joe Klein – TIME

53. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University

54. Lisa Lerer – POLITICO

55. Daniel Levy – Century Foundation

56. Alec McGillis – Washington Post

57. Scott McLemee – Inside Higher Ed

58. Ari Melber – The Nation

59. Seth Michaels – MyDD.com

60. Luke Mitchell – Harper’s Magazine

61. Gautham Nagesh – The Hill, Daily Caller

62. Suzanne Nossel – Human Rights Watch

63. Michael O’Hare – University of California, Berkeley

64. Rick Perlstein – Author, Campaign for America’s Future

65. Harold Pollack – University of Chicago

66. Foster Kamer – The Village Voice

67. Katha Pollitt – The Nation

68. Ari Rabin-Havt – Media Matters

69. David Roberts – Grist

70. Alyssa Rosenberg – Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive

71. Alex Rossmiller – National Security Network

72. Laura Rozen – Politico, Mother Jones

73. Greg Sargent – Washington Post

74. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun

75. Noam Scheiber – The New Republic

76. Michael Scherer – TIME

77. Mark Schmitt – American Prospect

78. Adam Serwer – American Prospect

79. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun (columnist), University of
Maryland, Baltimore County (professor), FiveThirtyEight.com
(contributing writer)

80. Julie Bergman Sender – Balcony Films

81. Walter Shapiro – PoliticsDaily.com

82. Nate Silver – FiveThirtyEight.com

83. Jesse Singal – The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly

84. Ben Smith – POLITICO

85. Sarah Spitz – NPR

86. Adele Stan – The Media Consortium

87. Kate Steadman – Kaiser Health News

88. Jonathan Stein – Mother Jones

89. Sam Stein – The Huffington Post

90. Jesse Taylor – Pandagon.net

91. Steven Teles – Yale University

92. Thoma – The Economist’s View (blog), University of Oregon (professor)

93. Michael Tomasky – The Guardian

94. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker

95. Rebecca Traister – Salon (columnist)

96. Cenk Uygur – The Young Turks

97. Tracy Van Slyke – The Media Consortium

98. Dave Weigel – Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent

99. Moira Whelan – National Security Network

100. Scott Winship – Pew Economic Mobility Project

101. Kai Wright – The Root

102. Holly Yeager – Columbia Journalism Review

103. Rich Yeselson – Change to Win

104. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly

105. Jonathan Zasloff – UCLA

106. Julian Zelizer – Princeton professor and CNN contributor

107. Avi Zenilman – POLITICO

Six weeks.

That’s the length of an election campaign here on the other side of the pond – and even that’s too long for some people.

Furthermore we do not have zillions of professional “consultants” and “strategists” pimping themselves for campaign employment. Because there are quite strict UK laws governing electoral expenditure almost all our campaigning is done by amateur volunteer activists often working out of their own homes (a bit like O4P, perhaps….)

So the reports coming to us out of Hot Air and other political media (“Perrypalooza”) fifteen months before the actual election give us the impression of a nation in a state of stretched out permanent political hyperventilation. Ed and Allahpundit, bless their little hearts, descend in a frenzy upon every opinion poll and analyse each cross tab with the zeal of an augur in Ancient Rome examining a bunch of chicken livers.

They then present the findings as if they are tablets of stone from Mount Sinai itself.

But a few days ago Pollinsider provided a refreshing dash of ice cold water to dissipate the heat generated by the Bachmann/Perry feeding frenzy and the speculation about Governor Palin.

Believe it or not, in their quests (or probable quest in Palin’s case) for the GOP nomination both Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney are working under the same premise: No one is paying attention right now. Sure, some people are paying attention. But that “some” is probably you and me and maybe 5% of the rest of the voting population.

See his point? Only political junkies are paying attention at this moment in time. However much the media play it up (and after all they have columns and screens to fill) he hazards a guess that Ames/Iowa had very little impact on the consciousness of most Americans.

As Palin has said, most people are not interested in the primary process right now, most people are worried about their families, their jobs, their kids, and what to make for dinner tonight. She is right. Being the most politically interested of my family and friends, I nevertheless have many friends and family who fall into the 96% group. These are people who know and follow politics to a degree, but are not uber-involved in the process and what is going on.

The media especially gets all wound up over who is where and what he/she said. They are constantly searching for new angles….

All of these candidates announced at different times. All of them had a short time frame when they were the “it” candidate. The Media Flavor of the Month. Right now, Perry is the flavor of the month. Why? Because 96% of the population is not paying attention. Everything they know comes from passing, a brief blip on the tv or radio, or by word of mouth. And these are the people who are polled, and this is why the race changes so dramatically so often, with so many new and frequent “frontrunners” challenging Romney.

Read the rest here then just unclench those muscles and relax for a few moments. The circus is in town but it could be that most people are probably not paying too much attention.

Am I wrong or am I wrong?

BTW…maybe Sarah Palin has been reading these words from one of the greatest poems ever written

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting….

After all there might well be a definite need for adult supervision later……