Four years ago, when Barack Obama was elected president, it supposedly meant that we Americans had suddenly become a more enlightened, intelligent, good-hearted group of people, and that we showed just how enlightened, intelligent, and good-hearted we were and had become by electing the candidate we elected.

Now, Mitt Romney is posing a serious challenge to the president’s re-election bid. And what is the verdict on the American people? Are they still enlightened, intelligent, and good-hearted?

Nope. They’ve “priced in the crazy.”

There you have it. According to Obama partisans, voting against Barack Obama–0r thinking of voting against him–can’t be a rational decision. Mitt Romney is nuts, and if you vote for him, you have to have given nuttiness a pass. Sure, the economy “is kind of sucky” too, but that explanation gets buried at the bottom of Kevin Drum’s post, doesn’t it?

I recognize that it is tempting to search for explanations to pin a potential defeat upon that have nothing whatsoever to do with the port side’s utter inability to govern, but this explanation for Romney’s ability to hang tough takes self-delusion to a new level.

Encapsulated here.

Encapsulated here.

Here it is: Barack Obama, can apparently shoehorn himself into a discussion of the successes of past presidents.

There is a corollary, of course: George W. Bush must be shoehorned into a discussion of any failures of the Obama administration.

Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama among women.

I guess it’s time for another round of “Romney is a meanie!” stories. Expect to hear about how he shorted some guy’s sheets this one time at band camp.

A new New York Times/CBS poll indicates that Mitt Romney holds a three point lead over Barack Obama. That’s within the margin of error, but after a week of attempts to portray Romney as the worst bully in the history of bullydom, I’d have to think that the Romney campaign is pretty pleased with how things stand. Of course, it is likely safe to say that the president holds an edge in the Electoral College, but as the poll indicates, the economy remains the defining issue for Americans, which means that Romney has plenty of opportunities to make inroads.

Recognizing this, Team Obama has launched a negative campaign, seeking to distort Romney’s successful business experience. Even Steve Rattner–the Obama administration’s onetime “car czar”–thinks this is way out of bounds. I guess that’s why Rattner is a former Obama associate; the current ones are not allowed to be as honest as he is in appraising Team Obama’s attack ad.

It is worth noting that thus far, Team Obama is the only one engaging in negative ads. And this from the president who admonished us that we need to adopt a “new tone” in our political discussions. Usually, hypocrisy comes better disguised.

UPDATE: An indication from Byron York regarding how Team Romney will respond to the latest Obama attack ad:

. . . First, the campaign has carefully scrutinized Romney’s entire record at Bain and believes it is a strongly positive one overall.  But that is the big picture — there are individual instances in which Bain investments failed.  Given that, look for the Romney campaign and its surrogates to counterattack by focusing on an instance in which Barack Obama, in essence, took over a company and laid people off in an effort to save the larger enterprise.

That was, of course, the auto bailouts, and while Obama often cites his success in “saving” the car industry, few remember today how many (non-union) workers lost their jobs in the Obama administration’s handling of the matter.  During the economic crisis, General Motors and Chrysler shut down more than 700 dealerships, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.  And the companies did it under pressure from Obama.

“President Obama’s auto task force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships without adequately considering the jobs that would be lost or having a firm idea of the cost savings that would be achieved, an audit of the process has concluded,” the New York Times reported in July 2010.  “The report…estimated that tens of thousands of jobs were lost as a result.”

The Obama administration argued that the loss of jobs was necessary to save far more (union) jobs at GM and Chrysler.  Now, the Obama campaign will likely say the same thing.  But in the auto bailouts, whatever else one thinks of them, Barack Obama pushed for downsizing and laying people off in a failing business he had taken over.

Sauce for the goose, etc.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Stephen Bainbridge takes on the president’s smear machine. Read the whole thing, but the following deserves special emphasis:

Meanwhile, the Obama hypocrisy parade continues. (1) The takeover for which the Obama people are bashing Romney occured after Romney had left Bain Capital. But you know who was working at Bain Capital when the contested deal took place? “Jonathan Lavine … a major bundler for Barack Obama, raising between $100-200k for the his reelection.” (Source)

(2) “On the same day his campaign launched an attack on Mitt Romney‘s record in private equity, President Obama is attending a big-dollar fundraiser at the Manhattan home of one of the industry’s top figures.” (Source)

Yes, I know that it has been a while since I have done this feature. What can I say? Life has been hectic. At any rate . . .

1. Celebrating John Montagu. Don’t know him? You should.

2. A Mother’s Day poem from Kipling. And apt commentary from Joyce.

3. Carl Sagan on science. See also the great Richard Feynman.

4. I’m not lazy. I’m just a late chronotype.

5. Mark Twain on originality, or the lack thereof.

I’m very surprised that people are treating Obama’s public statement as a watershed moment. Obama has publicly supported gay marriage since 1996, and only in recent years has cravenly pretended that he hasn’t. Even now, Obama couches his support in terms of “states’ rights,” a concept the administration has repeatedly rejected, most recently in suits against states attempting to protect against voter fraud. As a policy matter, Obama’s “evolution” has no effect: the Department of Justice was already breaking with its obligation to enforce federal law and litigating against DOMA on grounds that would guarantee a constitutional place for gay marriage.

–Ted Frank.

Read and weep:

A German-based Iranian is in hiding after his single was deemed an insult to a Shi’a imam. In an interview, the artist says Tehran is instigating outrage—and he fears a fatwa.

Just days after the release of a song that led to heated reactions in Iran and a bounty on his head, German-based Iranian rapper Shahin Najafi told The Daily Beast that he is not going to apologize for his provocative work, as he does not see it as an insult. He accused Tehran’s “ruling system” of stirring up religious outrage.

Just epic:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has apparently become the latest victim of Iran’s Internet censorship regime — to which he himself has given his blessing and approval.

The website Tabnak reports that Khamenei’s “fatwa” on the illegality of using antifiltering tools in Iran was itself blocked in the country, some 30 hours after it was published on Iranian websites. The ruling was seemingly filtered because it contained the word “antifiltering,” which triggered the country’s censorship system to automatically block it. The misfire prompted the conservative website to write, “The filtering of a [religious] order is so ugly for the executive [branch] that it can bring into question the whole philosophy of filtering.”

Cosmic justice.