American Commitment Action Fund, a conservative super PAC, is launching a web video that brutally contrasts the campaign boasts of Newark mayor Cory Booker with the ugly realities of life in the city and the way he governs. In short, all glitzy image, few actual results:

The video features quite a bit of Booker criticism from Ras Baraka, a Newark city councilman . . . who is also the son of Amiri Baraka.

If that name sounds familiar, you’re probably remembering Baraka’s post-9/11 controversy:

In September 2002, at the Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, N.J., Amiri Baraka stood up on stage and read his recently published poem on the 9/11 attacks, “Somebody Blew Up America.”

The crowd reacted with stunned silence, and several people booed. A few days later, Gov. Jim McGreevey asked Baraka to resign his post as Poet Laureate of New Jersey. This year, Baraka returned to the festival, and read the poem again.

About half the audience stood to cheer when he was finished, while the other half was either clapping quietly, or sitting with arms crossed, scowling. Baraka hadn’t changed the poem, and the line that outraged so many people in 2002 was still there: “Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed / Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / To stay home that day / Why did Sharon stay away?”

Who could imagine that 11 years later, his son would be featured in a conservative super PAC’s ad?

Over in New Jersey:

Hours after Chris Christie set the special election clock in motion, New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) started making a round of calls telling people [he] plans to run for the Senate, sources confirmed to POLITICO.

Pallone, who had acted as next-in-line for Lautenberg’s seat for years, had been on the fence about whether to challenge Newark mayor Cory Booker in a primary in 2014 for the seat.

Booker is a strong fundraiser and is the odds-on favorite. But the special election this year allows Pallone to keep his congressional seat if he loses, making this something of a free shot for him.

The coverage seems to suggest Booker is running. So Booker’s big pledge from last December is now moot, huh? “Let there be no doubt, I will complete my full second term as mayor. As for my political future, I will explore the possibility of running for the United States Senate in 2014.”

Notice the lack of conditions or wiggle room in that statement.

But I guess he meant, “unless our 89-year-old senator dies in office or something.”

Today, President Obama boards Air Force One and flies to Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Lemont, Illinois, to deliver a speech on weaning the nation from oil and gas.

If the flight to Chicago takes about one hour, and another hour to return, the operation of Air Force One will cost taxpayers $359,500 today. That’s enough to restore about 20 weeks of public tours of the White House.

The Chicago Sun-Times notes, “Obama was last in Chicago on Feb. 15 for a speech at the Hyde Park Academy.”

“On the road again . . . Just can’t wait to get on the road again . . .”

UPDATE: Also note that the president will be flying about 620 miles between Washington and Chicago. While the precise rate of fuel consumption of Air Force One is not revealed to the public, a 747 burns about five gallons of fuel per mile. So President Obama will burn about 6,200 gallons of jet fuel in his round trip, to deliver a speech urging “new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.”

The U.S. State Department spent $85,000 on a “Global Townterview” with Hillary Clinton — that’s the actual term used by the department — at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on January 29. The event occurred one week before Secretary Clinton departed her position.

It lasted one hour and ten minutes and can be seen here.

Your pre-sequestration tax dollars at work.

Over on his Facebook page, Geraldo Rivera clarifies his level of interest in running for U.S. Senate in the state of New Jersey in 2014:

The deadline for the relevant filings for the November 2014 New Jersey election to fill the seat currently held by five-term incumbent Senator Frank Lautenberg is still many months away. Despite my constitutionally protected musings on whether to seek that high office, I am taking no formal steps to initiate the electoral process, making no declarations, forming no committees, raising no money and hiring no campaign aides. Therefore, there is no FCC complication regarding equal time.

Moreover, supporters of Newark mayor Corey Booker can hardly complain about my bully pulpit since the media-savvy mayor appears on television more frequently than I do. Further, I extend to Mayor Booker an open invitation to appear on my radio program as often as he would like; and that invitation is also extended to Senator Lautenberg. 

Perhaps we could discuss and debate how best to deal with issues affecting New Jersey and the nation, like the continuing plague of gun violence in cities like Newark, which refuse to implement policies I advocate like “stop, question and frisk.”

If he does decide to collect campaign donations, I’m sure he knows some good secure storage sites, such as a large, empty vault.

From the last Morning Jolt of the week, breaking and sad news:

Awful News Out of Ankara

Back when I lived in Ankara, I went into this building plenty of times — I begin today in shock.

Turkish police say a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at an entrance to the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara on Friday, killing two people, according to the Associated Press.

A U.S. State Department official confirmed to CBS News that at least one guard had been killed at the embassy, but the victim’s nationality was not given. U.S. Embassies are usually guarded by a combination of local security personnel and American diplomatic security forces.

An AP journalist reported seeing a body in the street in front of an embassy side entrance. It was not clear whether the victims of the blast were U.S. nationals, but they were identified as embassy security guards by the French news agency AFP.

The bomb appeared to have exploded inside a security checkpoint at an entrance to the embassy.

CNN’s Turkish service said witnesses had seen the bomber approach the building and enter a gate to the fortified compound. It wasn’t clear whether the bomber entered the building before detonating their explosives.

I lived in Ankara from 2005 to 2007. People used to ask me if it was dangerous, and I answered it was probably the safest city in the region — the national, political, and military capital of a NATO ally, with cops and special national police and troops of every kind all around. There was a modest U.S. military presence as well, although most of it was working at the embassy, with Turkish troops at nearby bases, or working with moving non-combat supplies through Incirlik Air Base (pronounced In-jer-lick) to Iraq.

The only attempted terror attack that I recall in the city during my time there was a suicide bomber who tried to get into the Justice Ministry. But when you saw a terror attack in Turkey, chances are it was the PKK (the Kurdistan Worker’s Party), which was fighting for a separate Kurdish state. The PKK liked to put bombs in trash cans, etc., but they mostly targeted Istanbul and the coastal beach resorts, trying to scare away the tourists. The PKK certainly wasn’t pro-American, but Americans weren’t generally the targets of their wrath — the Turks and their government were.

There was an al-Qaeda presence in the country while I was there, and periodically folks who worked at the embassy would tell me they suspected the bad guys were “probing” their defenses and attempting to conduct surveillance, looking for weaknesses, etc. But Turks made up a very small portion of al-Qaeda’s ranks; at the time, out of the several hundred al-Qaeda sitting in Guantanamo Bay, six were Turkish citizens.

Of course, al-Qaeda hit the British consulate in Istanbul with a truck bomb back in 2003, along with the HSBC bank. In 2008, there was an attack with guns on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul; three gunmen were killed and three Turkish police were killed.

(It’s worth noting that Istanbul is the cultural and economic capital of the country while Ankara is the political capital, somewhat analogous to New York and Washington. I suspect maintaining security in the sprawling, crowded, narrow-streeted megalopolis of Istanbul is considerably tougher than in Ankara, a government town that was a relatively sleepy town until Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, made it the new capital.)

Every interaction I had with embassy security guards, Turkish police, and related folks during my time reassured me with their dedication and expertise. I’ve commented that I would completely trust Turkish airport security with the see-through-clothes x-ray scanners more than I would trust TSA; they consistently demonstrated a culture of absolute professionalism — at least to Western outsiders.

The sense I got back then was that the U.S. and Turkey were proving to be thoroughly effective partners in counter-terrorism efforts; two fairly big fish in Al-Qaeda were caught in Turkey during those years, Louai Sakra and Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.

The U.S. consulate in Turkey had moved far from the city center and built like a fortress with extensive security, a development that Tom Friedman lamented back in 2003. The U.S. embassy in Ankara is located downtown, not far from several other embassies and just down the road from the Turkish national assembly (the legislature). I know there had been talk about moving the embassy outside the city center — partially out of security concerns, partially because the embassy itself was a very dated structure (we used to joke about it as a classic example of Early American Cinder Block Architecture). Diplomats had very mixed feelings about a potential move, feeling that their job of interacting with the Turkish government would be more difficult if they were working in some outer suburb.

Keep in mind, I haven’t followed Turkish news or politics nearly as closely since I returned in 2007, and my observations about life in Ankara may be outdated.

Steven Cook: “Most obvious suspects in Ankara embassy bombing are PKK, Syria, and some al Qaida wannabes. Could even be Turkish nationalists.”

UPDATE: A Turkish journalist, Mahir Zeynalov, says that Turkish police have identified the suicide bomber as a member of DHKP-C, a Marxist-Leninist party in Turkey.

The midweek edition of the Morning Jolt features more reactions to Obama’s inaugural address, the election results in Israel, and then this sudden Democrat-vs.-Democrat spat in New Jersey:

Lautenberg: Respect Your Elders, and Get Off My Lawn!

From one of the first articles I wrote for National Review Online, back on October 22, 2002:

The annual town fair in Metuchen, N.J., isn’t really known for bare-knuckle politicking. It’s usually marked by parents eating funnel cakes drowned in powdered sugar and children trying to win goldfish by tossing beanbags into baskets. In election years, the political action is mostly candidates showing up for a little handshaking and baby-kissing.

But fairgoers got some dramatic theatrics this year. Democratic Senate candidate Frank Lautenberg’s scheduled grip-and-grin was interrupted by the approach of his GOP opponent, Doug Forrester, dragging two podiums. Forrester challenged Lautenberg to make good on his earlier “any place, any time” debate pledge on the spot.

For about 15 minutes, Forrester asked the 78-year-old former senator to justify past votes against the 1991 Persian Gulf War and for military spending cuts, while Lautenberg, wagging his finger in Forrester’s face, brought up his opponent’s views on abortion and gun control. The exchange devolved into a shouting match by both men’s supporters, with Forrester’s backer’s chanting, “DE-BATE, DE-BATE!” and Lautenberg’s crowd countering, “WE WANT FRANK!” The scene ended when Metuchen’s mayor asked them to move, and the former senator walked away.

Hey, I just realized I passed my 10-year anniversary as an NRO contributor last year. Well, we were all a little busy last October . . .

Anyway, few would have expected that Lautenberg would still be on the political scene in 2013, much less acting indignant that any other Democrats in New Jersey might have an inclination to run against him in 2014.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who might face a 2014 primary challenge from Newark Mayor Cory Booker, said his fellow Democrat is “entitled” to run if he chooses to but suggested that he had to give a “spanking” to his potential rival for so openly coveting his seat.

Booker has already formed a 2014 campaign committee, prompting anonymous Lautenberg aides to rip the mayor to Politico, accusing him of being “disrespectful.” I asked Lautenberg about that characterization this afternoon.

“I have four children, I love each one of them. I can’t tell you that one of them wasn’t occasionally disrespectful, so I gave them a spanking and everything was OK,” Lautenberg said with a smile in his first public comments since Booker announced he was considering a run for Senate.

Lautenberg, who turns 89 on Wednesday, would not say if he intends to run for another six-year term in 2014.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do yet, serious things and we pride ourselves (in) my office and my team (on) getting things done. That’s the focus. I’m not thinking about the politics right now,” Lautenberg said.

Ah, an elderly white senator threatening to spank a younger black male politician for being too ambitious and not knowing his place. Ahem. I guess we should be glad he didn’t call Booker “boy” or threaten that a primary fight would result in a “whuppin’.” Say, mainstream media, you might want to take note of this, if you want to have even a shred of credibility the next time some no-name state lawmaker makes some racially insensitive comment and you demand every Republican in the country ritually denounce the unknown yokel in order to prove no racial maliciousness lurks in their hearts.

Strom Thurmond served until he was 100; perhaps Lautenberg is aiming to top that record.

Also kind of embarrassing for Lautenberg? Democrats are starting to talk about the 2014 race like he’s not even there anymore:

New Jersey’s Assembly speaker has a warning for Cory Booker as the Newark mayor begins exploring a race for the U.S. Senate: Focus on New Jersey.

Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange) told The Huffington Post that she is seriously considering entering the 2014 primary race for U.S. Senate against Booker. Oliver said she sees a need to send a woman to Congress from New Jersey and added that Booker’s potential ascendancy to the Senate is not a “fait accompli.”

Today’s Morning Jolt discusses two books – Jonah’s The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas and Phil Klein’s new e-book, Conservative Survival in the Romney Era. There’s also an update in the Cory Booker saga:

Shocking News: Some Democrats Seem to Like Wall Street Donors, Aim to Avoid Demonizing Them!

Booker, Harold Ford Jr., Steven Rattner…at this rate, we may never see Republicans criticizing Obama in Romney’s ads.

Booker is not the only Democrat to question the aggressive, negative portrayal of Romney’s work in private equity.  Former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. said today he agreed with “the substance” of Booker’s comments and “would not have backed out.”

“I agree with him, private equity is not a bad thing. Matter of fact, private equity is a good thing in many, many instances,” the Democrat said in a separate appearance on MSNBC earlier in the day.

Former Obama administration economic adviser Steven Rattner made similar comments last week, calling a new Obama campaign TV ad attacking Romney’s role in the bankruptcy of a Bain-owned steel company “unfair.

But hey – the Obama campaign has their best folks on this!

One criticism of the Bain attack has been the notion that it’s hypocritical for the President to attack Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital, yet raise money from private equity donors like Blackstone Group president Tony James, and top Obama bundler Jonathan Lavine, currently a managing director at Bain. It’s an obvious line of attack that’s been kicking around for a week now, and was the subject of Anderson Cooper‘s first question to Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt on tonight’s AC360.

“How can President Obama attack Mitt Romney on his time at Bain, highlighting only times when Bain cost companies jobs, and at the same time hold high priced fund raisers with the head of another private equity firm that’s done work with Bain, the Blackstone Group, there are people who have worked at other private equity firms in his own administration?”

LaBolt started off right, explaining the pertinent point that Mitt Romney himself has bragged about job creation as a “corporate takeover specialist” at Bain Capital, when job creation is about as central to private equity as fertilizer creation is to dairy farming.

But even as Cooper tried to get him to answer the hypocrisy question, LaBolt plowed right through him with more talking points. Five or six times, Cooper tried to get LaBolt to answer that one question, only to be met with uninterrupted talking points, or naked subject changes.

 

Step back! This man’s a professional!

On Morning Joe, Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s subsequent video explaining that he has no real quarrel with the tactics and methods of the Obama campaign is compared to a “hostage tape.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On Twitter this morning, I’ve been… extending the metaphor.

“One image says it all: The flag of the seal of Newark, being burned by angry crowd of Obama staffers outside Booker’s embassy gates…  Ever since Shah Daley left the Obama camp, there has been fear that the radical young students had taken over the movement… Analysts note that in his hostage tape, Booker blinks in Morse code, ‘MY CITY STILL NEEDS A THRIVING FINANCIAL SECTOR.’ … A figure with ties to both the Obama camp and high finance, like Jon Corzine, may be permitted to visit Booker’s conscience in captivity…. The angry mob of Obama staffers is now chanting, “DOWN WITH THE GREAT LIEBERMAN,” an ancient figure associated with betrayal in their faith… In an ominous development for the fate of Booker’s conscience, Ayatollah Axelrod has declared it guilty of “apostasy against our deity.” When Booker’s conscience called the Bain attacks “crap” and “nauseating”, he committed blasphemy under the strict orthodoxy of Obamism… All across the country, candlelight vigils are beginning, with millions praying for the safe release of Cory Booker’s conscience.”

It’s best enjoyed while listening to the classic Nightline themes, found here.

In the first Morning Jolt of the week:

Suddenly David Axelrod Is Fuming a Christie-Esque ‘Booker!’

Newark Mayor Cory Booker… not only does he save people from burning buildings, not only does he shovel sidewalks, not only does he do hilarious videos with Chris Christie… he even calls them as he sees them, even if it really, really complicates life for the president of his party:

Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, a prominent Democrat enlisted as a surrogate for President Obama’s campaign, sharply criticized it on Sunday for attacking Mitt Romney’s work at the private equity firm Bain Capital.

Mr. Booker, speaking on the NBC program “Meet the Press,” made his comments in response to a television advertisement the president’s campaign unveiled last week. It portrays Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, as someone who eliminated jobs for the sake of profits during his years running Bain Capital.

“I have to just say, from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity,” Mr. Booker said. “To me, it’s just we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.”

“The last point I’ll make is this kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides,” Mr. Booker continued. “It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright.”

Did you see what he just did there? He just put attacks on Romney’s years at Bain Capital up there with what the MSM deems the gold standard of unfair attacks, Jeremiah Wright. (Never-mind that a presidential candidate’s mentor being coo coo for cocoa puffs might be relevant to some voters. For that matter, Romney’s management style and judgment at Bain probably ought to be worth a look. But to blame him for every job lost from an investment that failed without crediting him for every job created from an investment that worked is an inane standard, and the vast majority of voters know this.)

And the angry lefties know that Booker just blew up one of their main attacks on Romney for the rest of the year. Whenever anyone in Obama-world mentions Bain between now and November, expect to hear a lot of, “Oh, this is a silly smear and everyone knows it, even Cory Booker wants the Obama campaign to drop these tired, baseless attacks…”

Brett LoGiurato tours the Left’s outrage and betrayal to Booker Sunday:

Cory Booker seemed to shock the left this morning on “Meet the Press.” Calling himself an “Obama surrogate,” he said this when asked about the Obama campaign’s attack ads this week on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital:

“I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America.

“Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people invest in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this, to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.”

Heads started to roll. Keith Olbermann tweeted that Booker “may have done progressive things, but he believes in nothing but Cory Booker.“ The left-heavy Think Progress went with an unflattering “Booker attacks Obama” headline for the “popular, progressive mayor” from Newark. 

Truth is, though, that Booker has always been thought of as something of a “moderate” or “centrist” Democrat, despite being perhaps their favorite rising star. (He’s going to either run to be New Jersey’s governor in 2013 or for one of its Senate seats in 2014.)

Here’s Cory Booker talking about the labels of Republican and Democrat, and how he wants neither to fully apply to him. 

Over at Salon, Steve Kornacki writes why this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. 

Financial support from Wall Street and, more broadly speaking, the investor class has been key to Booker’s rise, and remains key to his future dreams.

That’s because Cory Booker was originally elected to the Newark mayor’s office on the strength of the private-equity types. In 2002, when he narrowly lost his first bid, nearly a quarter of donations to his campaign came from Wall Street. Pretty much all of it, Kornacki writes, was from outside Newark. 

Dylan Byers of Politico notices the Obama campaign is distributing an edited version of Booker’s subsequent remarks:

In an almost four-minute follow up video for his social media followers, Booker explained that Romney’s business record was fair game, and that he was simply frustrated by negative campaigning.

The Obama campaign, however, sent out a different video on Sunday night. On Twitter, Obama campaign press secretary Ben La Bolt tweeted out a 35-second version of the video, which was very likely cut by the Obama campaign (because, when I clicked on La Bolt’s link, it had just 8 views).

What gets lost in the edit is the nuance of Booker’s argument. Watching the 35-second video, you would believe that Booker was flip-flopping from his comments on Meet The Press and going on an all-out assault on Romney. In the four-minute video, Booker stands by his comments — including “nauseating” — and explains that while he does think Romney’s record is fair game, he remains “frustrated” by the Obama campaign’s negative attacks.

In other words, the 35-second video is a reverse of position. The four-minute video is an extenstion of the original argument.

Asked for his response to the ad, RNC spokesman Tim Miller, who has been attacking the ad on Twitter, emailed:

It’s clear this video was orchestrated by the Obama campaign, and as long as he is President any defense of the free market/private sector by members of his party must be silenced and apologized for.

The Obama camp’s Michael-Bay-style editing with a blender set for “puree” screams confidence, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: I’m told that this morning, Joe Scarborough joked that Booker’s follow-up message “clarifying” his remarks “looked like a hostage video.”