2012 Presidential Election

It's bad enough when items which should so obviously be leading the news aren't. It's worse when you realize that one of the reasons for the deliberate avoidance is that the press is allowing itself to be coopted into treating insignificant orchestrated political stunts to chew up scarce time and resources. Readers who are wondering why outfits like CNN (covered yesterday by Matt Hadro at NewsBusters), the New York Times (as noted by NB's Clay Waters ) and the Associated Press (caught Tuesday by yours truly ) would bother to prepare reports on a dozen-person anti-Mitt Romney demonstration at the Westminster Dog Show can stop wondering. At Polititicker , Hunter Walker and Colin Campbell report that Americans United for Change ( home page ; Facebook page ), a Democratic Party-connected group, is driving it (bolds are mine): … while much of the coverage of Dogs Against Romney characterized the group as a purely grassroots movement, its recent notoriety got a substantial boost from the behind-the-scenes support of Americans United for Change, a super PAC-like group with extensive ties to the Democratic establishment. Dogs Against Romney spokeswoman Kitty Hendrix admitted the group’s much talked about protest outside the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in Manhattan last Tuesday was planned and executed with a discreet push from AUC. “They basically wanted more grassroots people with dogs to talk about this issue, because it just made sense. It’s always suspect when someone is a professional political operative getting in front of the camera trying to pull emotional content out of anyone,” Ms. Hendrix said. “People are always a little more suspect of that.” Dogs Against Romney does indeed have grassroots origins. … … AUC, on the other hand, is hardly a grassroots operation. Its Executive Director Tom McMahon was previously the Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, and its Deputy Executive Director Caren Benjamin was an aide to Nancy Pelosi during her time as Speaker of the House. FactCheck.org describes AUC as a “liberal group whose message closely mirrors that of the Obama White House.” According to its website, AUC aims to use “aggressive earned and paid media outreach, grassroots and online organizing” to “build broad public and congressional support for policies that move America in a new, better direction.” … Members of Dogs Against Romney said AUC encouraged them to hold the Westminster protest and aided with media outreach. Kitty Hendrix, a spokeswoman for Dogs Against Romney, said AUC “was definitely interested in us having a little demonstration.” “They knew this organization existed and it could be a powerful organization,” Ms. Hendrix said. “They got the ball rolling and, certainly, the press probably paid a little more attention, but this is very much an organic organization that was created by dog lovers who felt it was important for people to understand what kind of man Mitt Romney is.” AUC’s media efforts on behalf of the protest were an unqualified success as more reporters attended the event than protesters. Indeed. An 11:30 p.m. Google News search on “Romney Westminster dog” (not in quotes, sorted by date with duplicates) returned 456 results . When AUC, with likely Obama campaign coordination, throws the establishment press a bone, its reporters can be counted to salivate at the opportunity to take a shot at a conservative or Republican with greater likelihood than Pavlov's canines before their food arrived. What a pathetic, irresponsible pack of lapdogs. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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Anti-Romney Dog Show News Boomlet Dem Activist-Driven

New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny reported Saturday from Mitt Romney’s speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C., “Romney’s Record as Governor Resumes Central Role in Nomination Fight ,” and noted that Mitt Romney used the “conservative” label “at least 25 times during a 25-minute speech.” Funny Zeleny should mention that, considering a Friday Times report from CPAC contains 23 instances of the word “conservative” in a 28-paragraph story, making it as popular a word choice as the conjunction “and.” Zeleny's Saturday dispatch was only slightly less label-happy, using the word 12 times, not counting quoted material or the name of the conference itself. (Is the name Conservative Political Action Conference not a sufficient giveaway?) Mitt Romney sought on Friday to expunge the lingering skepticism and unease that conservative activists have raised about his presidential candidacy, pledging in a speech that he would not betray their trust or abandon their principles if he challenged President Obama as the Republican nominee. As the Republican presidential race intensifies, Mr. Romney’s record as Massachusetts governor has resumed a central role. He introduced himself at a speech here as a “severely conservative governor,” but one of his leading rivals, Rick Santorum, warned voters not to settle for “a hollow victory” by nominating an impure conservative. …. The spotlight was squarely on Mr. Romney, who is working to regain the upper hand in the Republican nominating contest. He went to great lengths to showcase his conservative core, using a variation of the word “conservative” at least 25 times during a 25-minute speech. But he did not dramatically change his tone or signal that he was poised to make urgent adjustments to his message. While commentators had built up his appearance at the conservative forum as a make-or-break moment for his candidacy, he seemed to confront it with the same methodical approach he has taken to his campaign. At the conference here four years ago, in the same ballroom of the Marriott Wardman Park hotel, Mr. Romney announced that he was ending his presidential bid. The crowd roared in disapproval, a sign of the well-known dislike among conservatives for Senator John McCain.

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NYT Goes to "Great Lengths" to Call People at Conservative Political Action Conference "Conservative"

On February 2, Blake Ellis at CNN Money (HT to a NewsBusters tipster), in an item which treated minor regulatory changes relating to annuities as some kind of “rescue plan” for retirees, gave President Obama credit for “measures … (he) has put in place to help Americans save for retirement, including automatic enrollment in 401(k)s.” There's no word on whether Ms. Ellis also believes that Obama hung the moon , but it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. Somebody needs to tell Ms. Ellis that a “History of 401(k) Plans” published by the Employee Benefits Research Institute seven years ago tells us that the critical dates relating to employers' ability to automatically enroll new and eventually existing employees in their 401(k) plans (subject to the employee's ability to proactively decline if he or she chooses) go back to 1998 and 2000, many years before Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator (bolds are mine): 1998⎯IRS issued Rev. Rul. 98−30, which gave a stamp of approval for employers to make “negative elections” (i.e., automatic enrollment) into 401(k) plans for newly eligible employees (“negative election” allows workers to be automatically enrolled in their employer's retirement savings plan if they take no action). … 2000⎯IRS Rev. Rul. 2000−8 provided additional guidance on “negative elections” by allowing automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans for already-eligible employees who are deferring at a rate that is less than the automatic enrollment rate. Here are excerpts from the rest of Ms. Ellis's report : Obama's latest retirement rescue plan: Annuities The Obama administration proposed new rules Thursday to help retirees make their savings last throughout their lifetime — by investing in annuities. By taking out some of the regulatory roadblocks that have made annuities less attractive for employees and employers to add them to their retirement plans, the government is hoping to give more Americans ways to keep income flowing later in life. Annuities are investments that pay out fixed amounts of income at a future date. Depending on the type of annuity, you can receive payments on a monthly, annual or lump-sum basis. The retirement rescue plan, which was announced in a joint press release by the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department, comes at a time when an increasing number of Americans are being forced to wait longer to retire and find themselves without enough money to live comfortably once they do reach their golden years. … Partial annuities: The first proposal would offer employees more options when it comes to how they cash out their pension plans at retirement. Upon retirement, employees typically face the option of either cashing out their pension or getting a lifetime income stream through an annuity. For many retirees, it's often much more appealing to just take the lump sum. Yet, this option often leads them to come up short on funds later on in retirement. … Longevity annuities: The government also wants to make it easier for employees to invest in longevity annuities through their 401(k)s and IRAs. To do so, it wants to provide relief from minimum distribution requirements that could cause them to run out of money in retirement. Two points: Even if it's not available from the employer's plan, retiring employees have always had the ability to partially annuitize their retirement fund by first directly transferring their money to an IRA and then deciding how much to annuitize. Given that fact, one could argue that telling employer plans that they must allow for partial annuitization might needlessly increase the costs of plan sponsorship. The only reason the minimum distribution rules exist is that the government wants to start taxing money which has legally avoided tax until the age at which a retiree has to start taking such distributions (usually 70-1/2). It would be interesting to know just how much accelerated tax is collected because of these rules, because they are cumbersome, confusing, and often inadvertently violated. If the amount of tax involved is as negligible as I believe it is, why not just scrap the rules entirely (especially because the tax becomes due once the person retiree dies, and normal estate tax-related exemptions usually don't apply)? A final note to Ms. Blake: Characterizing the proposed annuitization regs as some kind of “rescue plan” is a grandiose exaggeration of what they are and what they accomplish, and giving Obama credit for conceiving them is ludicrous (as doing so would be for any president). This is relatively mundane stuff presidents leave to the bureaucracy to conceive and implement. It's likely that Obama didn't even know the regs were coming until just before they were issued. So please stop it already with the knee-jerk glorification of Dear Leader. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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CNN Money Reporter Says Obama ‘Put in Place’ Automatic 401(k) Enrollment Provision Originating in 1998

In his The Plum Line op-ed on page A19 today , the Washington Post's Greg Sargent saw the presence of “relatively conservative Democrats Mark Begich (Alaska) and Jon Tester (Mont.)” on a letter by Senate Democrats blasting the Komen Foundation for withdrawing grants to Planned Parenthood as “testament to how broad the opposition to this decision has become.” But a few keystrokes on a search engine reveal Sargent's journalistic and intellectual laziness. Both Begich and Tester drew 100% approval ratings for 2011 from NARAL Pro-Choice America. Both senators drew 100% approval ratings in the 2012 Planned Parenthood action guide. Tester has received endorsements from both NARAL and Planned Parenthood and, in a photo I've attached below the page break, is shown smiling widely in a photo taken at the 39th annual NARAL Dinner (via TheHill.com )

New York Times reporters Gardiner Harris and Pam Belluck passed on the outrage of pro-choice groups to news that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, which fights breast cancer, is cutting financial support to Planned Parenthood in the wake of bad publicity and a congressional investigation. The Times reporters seemed pretty outraged about it themselves in Thursday's “ Uproar as Breast Cancer Group Ends Partnership With Planned Parenthood .” The Times helped push the story with two pro-Planned Parenthood images; a ridiculous-looking posed shot of three pro-abortion activists in Richmond, Va., trying a Twitter campaign to boycott Komen, and an anti-Komen satirical liberal greeting already making the rounds on the left side of the web. While the reporters found “conservative women” that supported Komen's move, there was no liberal label for Planned Parenthood acolytes, who were merely “prominent women’s groups, politicians and public health advocates.” Pink ribbons have for decades been a symbol of resolve and compassion in the face of the deadly disease of breast cancer. Now, that nearly ubiquitous icon has many women seeing red. When the nation’s largest breast cancer advocacy organization considered in October cutting off most of its financial support to the nation’s largest abortion provider, the breast cancer group was hoping for a quiet end to an increasingly controversial partnership. Instead, the organization, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, is now engulfed in a controversy that threatens to undermine one of the most successful advocacy campaigns. The foundation’s decision to eliminate most of its grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening caused a cascade of criticism from prominent women’s groups, politicians and public health advocates and a similarly strong outpouring of support from conservative women and religious groups that oppose abortion. Now, leaders of both the Komen foundation and Planned Parenthood are accusing each other of bad faith and actions that undermine women. And two organizations dedicated to detecting and curing breast cancer have found themselves on opposite sides of the nation’s divisive debate over abortion. After an explanation that Planned Parenthood is the subject of a congressional investigation by Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns, the group morphed from an “abortion provider” to a “health services provider” within one paragraph, as Times reporters accused congress of conducting a “partisan investigation,” while taking the group's word that “Only a small percentage of Planned Parenthood’s expenditures go toward abortion services.” So the Komen board voted that all of its vendors and grantees must certify that they are not under investigation by federal, state or local authorities. But for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, being the target of partisan investigations is part of doing business. So Komen’s new rule effectively ended their long partnership and seemed to the health services provider an unacceptable betrayal of their common mission to save women’s lives. Dawn Laguens, an executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said that Komen’s money had over the years underwritten breast cancer screenings for 170,000 women, some of whose lives were saved as a result. She said she had no sympathy for Komen’s attempt to mollify donors by ending its relationship with a controversial provider of women’s health services. Only a small percentage of Planned Parenthood’s expenditures go toward abortion services. Wait. The Times just identified Planned Parenthood as “the nation’s largest abortion provider.” Doesn’t that render the “percentage of expenditures” talking point irrelevant? Not until paragraph 18 of the 21-paragraph story does the Times locate a source happy with Komen’s decision, and that’s quickly balanced out with more liberal outrage. Foes of abortion and Web sites critical of it have criticized the Komen foundation’s financing of Planned Parenthood for years. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis and several bishops in Ohio issued statements last year raising concerns about donating to the Komen foundation. In December, LifeWay Christian Resources, which is owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, said it was recalling a pink Bible it was selling because a dollar per copy was going to the Komen foundation. “We are very grateful Susan G. Komen for the Cure will no longer fund Planned Parenthood affiliates,” said Thom S. Rainer, president of LifeWay. Pleas to boycott or defend Susan G. Komen for the Cure over its decision to pull money from Planned Parenthood poured onto Web sites like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr on Wednesday, as activists both amateur and professional urged action. “Susan Komen would not give in to bullies or to fear,” Judy Blume, the children’s book author, said in a Twitter post. “Too bad the foundation bearing her name did.”

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NYT Sides With ‘Health Provider’ Planned Parenthood in ‘Partisan’ Komen Funding Cut-Off

Even when someone who helped prepare a new guide for gardeners on the coldest temperatures seen annually in different parts of the country says that their output doesn't fit the global warming template, an AP reporter decides that it really does. In preparing his write-up last week on the release of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's revised the official guide for gardeners, the Associated Press's Seth Borenstein, the infamous writer of reports claiming that the Climategate scandals were no big deal, buried the following quote from a USDA official at Paragraph 17 of 24: USDA spokeswoman Kim Kaplan, who was part of the map team, repeatedly tried to distance the new zones on the map from global warming. She said that while much of the country is in warmer zones, the map “is simply not a good instrument” to demonstrate climate change because it is based on just the coldest days of the year. Seems pretty clear to me. Something which only addresses “the coldest (few) days” in a year doesn't have much relevance to what temperatures are like during the rest of the year. But not to good old Seth, whose under-the-breath response to Ms. Kaplan must have been along the lines of “What the heck do you know?” Borenstein almost waxed poetic about the impact of global warming on the gardening guide: New map for what to plant reflects global warming Global warming is hitting not just home, but garden. The color-coded map of planting zones often seen on the back of seed packets is being updated by the government, illustrating a hotter 21st century. It's the first time since 1990 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has revised the official guide for the nation's 80 million gardeners, and much has changed. Nearly entire states, such as Ohio, Nebraska and Texas, are in warmer zones. The new guide, unveiled Wednesday at the National Arboretum, arrives just as many home gardeners are receiving their seed catalogs and dreaming of lush flower beds in the spring. It reflects a new reality: The coldest day of the year isn't as cold as it used to be, so some plants and trees can now survive farther north. “People who grow plants are well aware of the fact that temperatures have gotten more mild throughout the year, particularly in the wintertime,” said Boston University biology professor Richard Primack. “There's a lot of things you can grow now that you couldn't grow before.” … The 1990 map was based on temperatures from 1974 to 1986, the new map from 1976 to 2005. The nation's average temperature from 1976 to 2005 was two-thirds of a degree higher than it was during the old time period, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Wow. A whole two-thirds of a degree. Would somebody break it to poor Seth that there hasn't been any global warming since 1997 ? Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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AP’s Borenstein Insists on Citing Guide to Year’s Coldest Days as Proof of Global Warming

Oh joy. Today at the Associated Press , aka the Administration's Press, in response to the Congressional Budget Office's release today of an awful 10-year baseline outlook, Andrew Taylor made sure that his first paragraph was only about the projected “dip” in the fiscal 2012 deficit, and dedicated his second paragraph to the bad things that will happen if “the Bush tax cuts” are extended and Congress fails to live within “tight” spending “caps” (when did those happen?). Towards the end he spoke of the deficit-cutting wonders ending “the Bush tax cuts” might bring about. What follows are the first two paragraphs of Taylor's report, followed by the “Bush tax cut” passage: Federal budget deficit to dip to $1.1T, CBO says The government will run a $1.1 trillion deficit in the fiscal year that ends in September, a slight dip from last year but still very high by any measure, according to a budget report released Tuesday. The Congressional Budget Office report also says that annual deficits will remain in the $1 trillion range for the next several years if Bush-era tax cuts slated to expire in December are extended, as commonly assumed – and if Congress is unable to live within the tight “caps” the lawmakers themselves placed on agency budgets last year. … The CBO report shows that the deficit dilemma would largely be solved if the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 – and renewed in 2010 through the end of this year – were allowed to lapse. Under that scenario, the deficit would drop to $585 billion in 2013 and to $220 billion in 2017. But expiration of those tax cuts would slam the economy, CBO said, bringing growth down to a paltry 1.1 percent next year. However, the economy would quickly rebound in 2014 and beyond. Really? Taylor does not explain exactly why that would happen, especially given the track record of how tax increases (which is what ending “the Bush tax cuts” really amounts to) fail to bring in the anticipated extra tax collections static analysis (which is primarily what CBO does, assuming no behavior change as a result of higher rates) would predict. The reason they don't is that growth (i.e., the “rebound”) ends up being less than what was expected. Taylor conveys far more certainty about the outcome than is warranted in the circumstances. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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AP Headline For CBO’s Awful 10-Year Projections: ‘Deficit to Dip to $1.1T’

Today's report by Derek Kravitz at the Associated Press (also known to yours truly as the Administration's Press) covering the Census Bureau's December and full-year 2011 new-home sales release put a smiley-face on the “worst ever” year (the AP headline's term) in the category. I like the adjective used at Sweetness & Light's related blog post to describe Kravitz's crud: “unfazed.” The AP reporter follows four paragraphs of facts with three more paragraphs of sunshiny “analysis” which are so wholly unsupported by reality that you would fall off of your chair laughing if you didn't also realize that most readers, listeners and viewers who saw and heard this garbage today didn't know any better than to believe it: New-home purchases fall, 2011 worst ever for sales Fewer people bought new homes in December. The decline made 2011 the worst year for new -homes sales on records dating back nearly half a century. The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy. About 302,000 new homes were sold last year. That's less than the 323,000 sold in 2010, making last year's sales the worst on records dating back to 1963. And it coincides with a report last week that said 2011 was the weakest year for single-family home construction on record. The median sales prices for new homes dropped in December to $210,300. Builders continued to slash price to stay competitive in the depressed market. Still, sales of new homes rose in the final quarter of 2011, supporting other signs of a slow turnaround that began at the end of the year. [1] Sales of previously occupied homes rose in December for a third straight month. Mortgage rates have never been lower. Homebuilders are slightly more hopeful because more people are saying they might consider buying this year. And home construction picked up in the final quarter of last year. [2] “Although this decline was unexpected, it does not change the story that housing has likely bottomed,” said Jennifer H. Lee, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. [3] Notes: [1] — As seen here , actual sales of new homes rose from 66,000 during the fourth quarter last year to 68,000 during the most recent three months. We're supposed to be impressed? This would be like expecting a Major League Baseball team's fans to be happy because its players raised their total per-game run production from from 2.0 to 2.06 (the MLB average is about 4.5). But wait, there's more. October 2011 sales were “better” than October 2010 (25,000 vs. 23,000). November 2011 was “better” than November 2010 (22,000 vs. 20,000). But December 2011 was 9% worse than December 2010 (21,000 vs. 23,000). In other words, even the paper-thin illusion of recovery went away in December, and the downward spiral resumed. Pending revisions, which could send the number even lower, December 2011 tied January 2011 for the second-worst single month on record — the equivalent of an MLB team scoring less than 2 runs per game and seeing its slump deepen. “Turnaround,” schmurnaround. [2] — Existing-home sales are nice, but with the exception of home improvements, they don't represent much additional new economic output. The fact that people won't buy new homes even with rates at record lows demonstrates how awful the new-home market is. Homebuilder optimism is barely off the floor. And I'm sorry, Derek, construction did not pick up in the final quarter of the year by anywhere resembling enough to matter. The two most convincing pieces of evidence which pretty much prove that things really got worse are the following: In its construction release last week , the Census Bureau told us that “An estimated 583,900 housing units were completed in 2011. This is 10.4 percent below the 2010 figure of 651,700.” The number of single-family homes under construction at the end of the year, at 221,300 , is the lowest level seen since such records began being kept in 1970, plummeting below December 2010, which at the time was the lowest on record, by over 10%. “Pick up,” schmick up. [3] — Ms. Lee's opinion is far from universally shared. On a local market-oriented radio program last night, Chris Farrell of MarketWatch.com opined that he believed we may be near the bottom but aren't necessarily there yet, and that the new-home market may stay at or near the bottom for several years. “Bottomed,” schmottomed. Derek Kravitz shoved serious smoke up Americans' posteriors today. It's going to be a long year for those of us who monitor these things. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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As New-Home Sales Wraps ‘Worst Ever’ Year, AP’s Kravitz Is ‘Unfazed’

After Rick Perry ended his presidential bid on Thursday, the Associated Press's Chris Tomlinson opened his dispatch about the announcement thusly: “Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race on Thursday, endorsed his old friend Newt Gingrich and returned home to Texas, where the failed White House candidate has three years left to serve as the chief executive.” Based on much of his prior reportage, Tomlinson appears have a particular animus towards the Texas Governor. But tagging GOP presidential candidates or their candidacies as “failed” is not an aberration at the AP, while the wire service's omission of such tags on wildly unsuccessful Democratic candidates pointedly betrays the presence of obvious bias. In May 2008, three months after Mitt Romney ended that cycle's presidential bid, an AP report noting his purchase of a California home told readers the following: The AP even made sure in 2007 that John McCain, who was running for the presidency a second time, was tagged as a failure when he announced his bid: “Trailing in national polls and fundraising, the failed candidate of 2000 hopes GOP voters will view him as a principled leader for his unflinching war stance in the face of political pressure and, ultimately, will reward him with the 2008 Republican nomination.” This negativity might be palatable if the self-described Essential Global News Network tagged Democratic primary drop-outs similarly. But the only example I found was one item where the term “failed” apparently disappeared in subsequent revisions. Otherwise, though I saw observations that certain Democratic candidates “failed” to win primaries or caucuses in AP reports, I couldn't find any others where actual candidacies were labeled as failures, as Perry's was, or who were personally labeled as failures, as Romney was. This was the case even among candidates who could not say that they ever came close to winning a primary or caucus (as Romney did in 2008) or who ever led in any pre-primary polls (as Perry did for a time after he declared his candidacy). Democrats not tagged as failures in AP reports include the following poor performers: Joe Lieberman, 2004

In the final three paragraphs of a report that was primarily about Mitt Romney trying to lower expectations concerning the results of tomorrow's South Carolina Primary voting, Steve Holland of Reuters told readers that Newt Gingrich canceled an appearance. Holland then used that appearance as an opportunity to build on a meme the press has been working on for some time about the former speaker: Gingrich missed a chance on Friday to follow up on his strong debate performance when he canceled an appearance at a Republican Party conference in Charleston because of a small crowd. Although only a minor blip in a long campaign, the cancellation again raised questions about whether Gingrich is disciplined enough to win the nomination and then go on to beat Obama in November. “He gave his word that he was coming here and at the last second, something better came along,” said Ann Sullivan, a Republican from North Carolina attending the conference. At the PJ Tatler , Bryan Preston, who was there, ripped into Holland's horrid take (paragraph breaks added by me): Gingrich was the first speaker on the slate for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference at TD Arena this morning, followed by … J. Christian Adams and then Ron Paul. The SRLC has been eclipsed by the primary all week, and it is struggling badly to hold audiences for any speaker. Media cameras were on hand, but little audience, when it was time for Gingrich to speak, through no fault of his own. His choice: Go ahead and speak, and hand the media footage of him addressing a large and mostly empty arena on a crucial campaign day; or cancel and annoy the ten people who happened to be there. He and his campaign made the rational call, and canceled. Seems pretty smart to me. As Bryan noted, photos of a relatively empty room would have been used by media types thirsting for revenge at Gingrich's standing up to John King of CNN at Thursday night's debate. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Yes, Holland ripped Gingrich anyway, but the impact of his words is nothing compared to the damage negative photos could have done. Rather than demonstrate lack of discipline, it would seem that Gingrich's decision demonstrates its presence, and the ability to adapt to circumstances when enemies chomping at the bit to take you down are present. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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Reuters: Gingrich ‘Canceled Appearance,’ Showing He May Not Be ‘Disciplined’