TheDC Morning: Where’s Waldo? Hopefully not in France

Jamie Weinstein Senior Writer
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1.) Where’s Waldo? — Can’t be entirely sure, but if Waldo is a businessman or an investor, he most likely is not in France anymore. Nile Gardiner provides some details about Francois Hollande, the man France just elected to be their next president, in the Telegraph:

“Above all Hollande is a supporter of the kind of deeply entrenched socialist policies that continue to wreck Europe’s economies. His election will advance not only France’s decline but the EU’s as well. Hollande has declared ‘the world of finance‘ to be his ‘real enemy’, and will implement a top rate tax of 75 percent, increase public spending by €20 billion and significantly expand the size of the public sector. For a country which hasn’t balanced its budget since 1974, that is a recipe for economic disaster.”

It was like France needed heart surgery, but instead of hiring a surgeon to perform it, it hired a mass murderer. Then again, the French are just so more sophisticated than us that we probably just don’t comprehend yet precisely how nuanced and ingenious their decision to elect Hollande really was.

2.) Obama campaign violating  civil rights laws? — Some civil rights legal experts have concerns about the make up of the president’s campaign staff, reports TheDC’s Neil Munro:
“Civil rights lawyers told The Daily Caller that President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign managers may have violated employment law by hiring an overwhelmingly white office staff for his campaign headquarters in Chicago. That skewed workforce is starkly visible in an April photo released by Obama’s Chicago office, which shows roughly 100 of the office’s staff. Only two of the people in the photo, far in the back, are clearly African-American, far below their 13 percent of the national population, and their 33-percent representation in Chicago. ‘Were I the general counsel of an employer in Chicago with the workforce in the picture … I would be concerned,’ said Charles Shanor, a law professor at Emory University and the former general counsel at the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.”

3.) The cliché kings — Jonah Goldberg tells TheDC’s Jamie Weinstein (ME!) that  it is absurd for President Obama to pose as a pragmatist. Yes, we understand it’s shocking:

“Though he can’t exactly pinpoint who the cliché king of our modern politics is, conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg suggests President Barack Obama and his sometimes golfing buddy, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, are certainly among the top contenders. ‘I don’t know who is king, but the most important one is probably Obama given that he exemplifies the core argument of my book,” Goldberg, author of the recently released book “Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas,’ told The Daily Caller. ‘He insists that he’s a pragmatist who only cares about ‘what works.’ I think that’s absurd. He’s the most ideologically-committed president of our lifetimes. I’d have a lot more respect for him if he’d admit it.’ As for Friedman, Goldberg said he is remarkably talented at ‘coin[ing] brand new phrases that quick-dry into desiccated clichés right before your eyes.'”

Wasn’t it great how the president pragmatically didn’t approve of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have created thousands of jobs without any real downside? By the way, for those studying for the SAT, here’s an analogy for you: clichés are to Tom Friedman what hamburgers are to The Hamburglar.

4.) Things are just different in Alabama — TheDC’s Alex Pappas reports on the strange happenings in his native land:
“A former Alabama gubernatorial candidate has left his family in the United States because he is ‘obsessed’ with being a sperm donor in New Zealand, his wife says … ‘He is obsessed with this,’ his wife, Kathy Hale Johnson, told the New Zealand Herald. ‘He doesn’t want to stop.'”

5.) Poll of the Day: Lugar in trouble — Howey/Depauw poll of GOP U.S. Senate primary in Indiana: Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock 48%, incumbent U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar 38%. The primary takes place Tuesday.

6.) Tweet of Yesterday — Michael C Moynihan: Just wondering: how much do they pay you to pretend you play video games? MT @ParisHilton: In bed…playing Modern Warfare on Playstation

VIDEO: Joe Biden clings to VP candidacy like his boss thinks conservatives cling to guns and religion 

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Jamie Weinstein