Forget the Jobs Numbers, Americans Impoverished by Soaring Gas Prices

Friday's contested unemployment numbers have been dominating the cable news shows and the headlines at Memeorandum, but more startling news on the West Coast is the surge in gasoline prices, now reaching record levels.

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Gas prices suddenly skyrocket in California":

Skyrocketing gasoline prices caused some local service stations to shut off their pumps Thursday while others shocked customers with overnight price increases of 30 cents or more.

California's fuel industry isn't running out of gasoline — supplies are only 2.5% lower than this time last year — but recent refinery and pipeline mishaps sent wholesale prices to all-time highs this week. As a result, some station owners weren't buying fuel for fear they couldn't sell it. Those who did buy simply kicked prices higher and bet customers would understand.

"If this keeps up, I'll be looking at $5-a-gallon gas by next Thursday," said Ali Mazarei, who owns an Arco station in Riverside County. On Thursday, Mazarei was charging $4.52 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up from $4.27 on Wednesday and $4.21 on Tuesday.

"I really don't have any choice here, and I won't be making money at $4.52 a gallon," he said.

Some fuel stops had already crossed the $5 threshold.

More at the link.

And see Power Line, "CALIFORNIA GAS" (at Memeorandum):

Want to give the Obama campaign even more heartburn than it has now?  How about putting California in play?

Seems farfetched, but then people outside of California might not have noticed that gasoline pump prices jumped as much as 30 cents a gallon yesterday.  That’s how much pump prices jumped between lunch and late afternoon here on the central coast; the figure is lower in the major metropolitan areas apparently.  It is not inconceivable that there could be old-fashioned shortages and gas lines by the end of the month.  Some stations are shutting down or limiting sales already.  Paging Jimmy Carter!

The sharp price spike is attributed to tight refinery capacity problems in the state (as a couple of refineries are offline), which is true, but not exhaustive, as Churchill once explained in a different context.  As I explained in “Bureaucratic Gas” in The Weekly Standard a few months ago, California has its own special blend of gasoline for environmental reasons that are now largely obsolete.  This means that California can’t use the gasoline blends sold in Oregon, Nevada, or Arizona, which means that a refinery shortage here can’t be remedied by the usual means of bringing in more supply from somewhere else.

But President Obama could order the EPA to waive the gasoline regulations, and allow out-of-state gasoline to be transported and sold in California, delivering at least 10 to 20 cents a gallon of price relief, and perhaps much more.  Oh, that’s right: Obama wants higher gasoline prices, so don’t hold your breath.

And at Instapundit as well.

Regulations have kept gas prices at astronomical levels for years. And the problem's not just regulations, there are indeed some tightening in supplies. See iOWNTHEWORLD, "California Gas Stations Shut as Oil Refiners Ration Supplies":

Bloomberg

Gasoline station owners in the Los Angeles area including Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST) are beginning to shut pumps as the state’s oil refiners started rationing supplies and spot prices surged to a record.

Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) stopped selling gasoline on the spot, or wholesale, market in Southern California and is allocating deliveries to customers. Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) is also rationing fuel to U.S. West Coast terminal customers. Costco’s outlet in Simi Valley, 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, ran out of regular gasoline yesterday and was selling premium fuel at the price of regular.

The gasoline shortage “feels like a hurricane to me, but it’s the West Coast,” Jeff Cole, Costco’s vice president of gasoline, said by telephone yesterday. “We’re obviously extremely disheartened that we are unable to do this, and we’re pulling fuel from all corners of California to fix this.”

I usually try to fill up my Odyssey van in Long Beach. Gas is less expensive there. I topped off the tank Monday with ARCO regular at $4.00 a gallon. That was about $60.00 to fill up, which usually holds me over for a week. But my wife went to fill up at Costco last night and the filling station was closed. She got gas this morning at the local Chevron in Irvine for $4.70 a gallon. When I drove today to Mission Viejo to meet my wife for lunch, I noticed gas prices at $4.80 a gallon at the local Shell station, pictured above.

Check that Instapundit link for a map of gas prices nationwide. The Pacific Northwest is in the mid-four dollar range, and prices in upper-New York state are pushing $5 a gallon as well.

The unemployment situation hasn't changed much. The indicators folks are citing today are volatile and economists suggest that jobless numbers could head back up over 8 percent in the months ahead. Most of the employment gains were for part-time workers returning to the market. It's not a robust recovery by any means.

On top of that then is surging inflationary pressures for drivers in high-cost gasoline markets (which hits small business especially hard, causing an inflation spiral locally). With gas at near $5 levels in California, voters can again see the implications of the blue state model of crushing environmental regulations, and that combines with the Obama administration's disastrous energy policies to impoverish more and more of this nation's citizens. Mitt Romney mentioned energy policies in his opening remarks in Wednesday night's debate. He'll be smart to reference the skyrocketing gas prices in California as elsewhere in the next debate. It's getting prohibitively expensive to drive a car. Nothing will put a bigger crimp on future economic growth than a stagnating energy sector. The current administration doesn't get it. It's up to Romney to bring that point home to the American people.

In Debate, Empty Chair Draws a Blank on Second Term Agenda

From Ronald Brownstein, at National Journal, "Where's Obama's Second-Term Agenda?":

DENVER—President Obama didn’t have many good moments in this week’s first presidential debate. But it was telling that the few came when he was raising objections to Mitt Romney’s tax, spending, and Medicare plans. The president had much less to say about his own ideas for the next four years.

In that way, the debate spotlighted the biggest hole in Obama’s reelection effort: the paucity of specifics he has offered about his second-term agenda. To a remarkable extent for an incumbent, Obama and his team have redirected this campaign into a referendum on the challenger—a reversal of roles that Romney has facilitated with a monthlong series of gaffes and missteps. (Until Wednesday night, pretty much nothing good had happened for Romney since the minute Clint Eastwood inexplicably lugged that chair onstage on the final evening of the Republican convention.)

But the 90-minute expanse of Wednesday night’s debate proved too long a stretch for Obama to keep the focus on Romney. And when the spotlight shifted back to the president—either his record or his plans—he often seemed diffuse, if not listless. As one undecided woman in a Las Vegas focus group of “Walmart moms” put it, the president seemed “defeated, a little bit.”

The debate is unlikely to solve all of Romney’s problems. He still faces a strong perception, especially in battleground states bombarded by Obama’s advertising, that he favors the rich over the middle class; that perception particularly appears to have taken root in Ohio, a state that Romney almost certainly needs to win. And although this debate didn’t highlight any of the issues that have caused the problems, Romney’s weakness among Hispanics and socially liberal upscale white women still requires him to win a dauntingly (though not impossibly) large percentage of all other white voters to overtake the president.

But the debate did two very important things for the challenger. First, it arrested the rush to judgment in much of the political community that Obama had effectively sealed the race. “This is exactly what Romney needed to stop everybody from declaring this race, and they were on the verge of it,” noted Floyd Ciruli, an independent Colorado pollster.

Second, the evening delivered a powerful reminder of Obama’s inherent vulnerabilities. All of Romney’s difficulties in recent weeks have provided ample testimony to his own challenges. But they have obscured the parallel reality that Obama is seeking reelection with elevated unemployment rates, low levels of growth, a massive federal deficit, and an approval rating that, while getting better, rarely peeks above 50 percent. This debate ensures that the campaign discussion, after weeks of being focused on Romney’s troubles, will now also highlight Obama’s weaknesses, and that itself is an important victory for Romney.

One of those vulnerabilities is Obama’s inability so far to enlighten voters about his second-term agenda. To the extent the president outlined goals during the debate, they were largely defensive. He wants to restore the tax rates for upper-income earners established under President Clinton, protect Medicare and Medicaid in their current form—and, above all, implement his health care plan. He didn’t talk nearly as much about what he might do in a second term to accelerate job growth. “You didn’t hear anything about how he is going to get the economy going,” jibed Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist, after the debate. Other than blocking the GOP’s initiatives, Obama didn’t seem to be burning to accomplish much of anything over the next four years.

He's a vapid empty-chair presidential imposter. And a losing loser who deserves to lose on November 6.

What an asshole Democrat faux-presidential hack.

IMAGE CREDIT: The People's Cube, "Chair to Pinch Hit for President in Second Debate."

RELATED: The Looking Spoon, "Clint Eastwood Empty Chair Meme Not So Goofy After All...Eh Liberals?"

Radical Cleric Abu Hamza to Be Extradited to U.S.

At BCF, "Hamza Gets The Hook!"

And Telegraph UK, "Abu Hamza: civil engineer who turned hate preacher against West":

Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza has finally lost his eight-year battle against extradition and will face a series of terror charges in the United States.

Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza has finally lost his eight-year battle against extradition and will face a series of terror charges in the United States.

Hamza, 54, who is missing his right hand and an eye, has celebrated the September 11 terror attacks, preached jihad to a young congregation, and landed the British taxpayer with a bill running into millions of pounds for detention and legal costs.

But Hamza will now be handed over to US authorities to face 11 counts of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Oregon, between June 2000 and December 2001.

The Muslim cleric once appeared to embrace Western society.

He worked as a bouncer in a Soho nightclub and had a reputation for socialising and heavy drinking when he first came to Britain from Egypt 30 years ago.

Rutting Stag Stalks Man in London Park

This is amazing.

At London's Daily Mail, "Stuck in a rut! Man is caught on camera as an angry stag chases him up a tree in a London park."

Mitt Romney Hammers 'Unexpected' September Jobs Report

You gotta love the puffery and spin at the New York Times, "Jobs Report Brings Unexpected Good News for Obama." Unexpected!

But listen to Romney campaigning today in Virginia:

And check Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit: "THE WAGES OF OBAMACARE: Why part time unemployment is surging but not full time employment."

NewsBusters: 'Elizabeth Warren Practiced Law Without a License...'

Via Theo Spark:

Trickle Down Government

Not even the cooked employment numbers, nor the Big Bird political diversions, can shake off the dogged truth of the Obama administration's failed policies:

Via Legal Insurrection.

The Sickly Stagnant September Jobs Report

From James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute (via Memeorandum).

This is what I thought when I first heard the numbers:

4. The shrunken workforce remains shrunken. If the labor force participation rate was the same as when President Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.7%. If the participation rate had just stayed steady since the start of the year, the unemployment rate would be 8.4% vs. 8.3%. Where’s the progress? Here is RDQ Economics:

Such a rapid decline in the unemployment rate would be consistent with 4%–5% real economic growth historically but much of the decline is accounted for by people dropping out of the labor force (over the last year the employment-population ratio has risen to only 58.7% from 58.4%). We believe part of the drop in the unemployment rate over the last two months is a statistical quirk (the household data show an increase in employment of 873,000 in September, which is completely implausible and likely a result of sampling volatility). Moreover, declining labor force participation over the last year (resulting in 1.1 million people disappearing from the labor force) accounts for much of the rest of the decline.

Read it all at the link. (A lot of the new jobs are part-time.)

And at Protein Wisdom, "Serendipity! Unemployment rate falls to 7.8% right before the election."

Yeah, I thought about that too.

PREVIOUSLY: "'Widespread Mistrust' — Who Goosed the Jobs Numbers?"

'Widespread Mistrust' — Who Goosed the Jobs Numbers?

Stuart Varney slams this morning's political jobs numbers:

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Jack Welch charges White House manipulated unemployment numbers."

And see Rep. Allen West on Facebook, "In regards to today's Jobs report---I agree with former GE CEO Jack Welch, Chicago style politics is at work here..." (via Memeorandum).

An Unhelpful Debate — For the Obama Cult!

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Obama Matrix":

Liberals and the media are attempting to explain President Obama's anemic debate performance by claiming that he was merely "rusty" and out of practice, or he doesn't watch enough MSNBC, or he was consumed by the burdens of the office. Maybe it was all those security briefings he's not attending between the fundraisers and political rallies.

This may be comforting to his supporters, but our reading is that something far different was on display Wednesday night. For the first time, the carefully crafted campaign illusions that the President has constructed were exposed. Mitt Romney had the audacity to describe Mr. Obama's record and his own agenda in ways that the American public has rarely heard. The Obama Matrix collapsed into bits on the Denver stage.

The most instructive exchange came early, after Mr. Obama had already denounced Mr. Romney's "central economic plan" for the third time. He repeated his lines from the stump about Mr. Romney's $5 trillion tax cut for millionaires and billionaires that "dumps those costs on middle-class Americans" and raises their taxes by $2,000.

Mr. Romney has no such plan. Mr. Obama simply made it up, with an assist from one of his former economists and others at a liberal Washington think tank. Mr. Romney said as much categorically. He then added that Mr. Obama would continue to make the accusation, on the theory that incantation could make it true, "but that is not the case, all right?" and "I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families."

Mr. Obama was nonplused, perhaps because he had come to believe what he was saying in the bubble of his campaign rallies and unquestioned by the media. The best reply he could offer was that, "Well, for 18 months he's been running on this tax plan. And now, five weeks before the election, he's saying that his big, bold idea is 'never mind.'" But for 18 months it has been Mr. Obama who has campaigned against a mirage of his own imagining. No wonder he was stumped.

Then there was health care, when Mr. Obama claimed the Romney-Ryan Medicare reforms would force seniors to pay $6,000 a year and leave "folks like my grandmother at the mercy of the private insurance system."

But Mr. Romney didn't sound like a wild-eyed radical as he patiently described his own "premium support" ideas, which would simply require traditional Medicare to compete with the private market and let seniors "make their own choice." If government is better, he added, that's fine, but "my experience is the private sector typically is able to provide a better product at a lower cost."

The former Governor sounded reasonable and pragmatic, and some pundits are now claiming that he changed his platform or that he is trying to dump GOP "extremist" ballast. He didn't and he doesn't have any. He described his center-right reforms truthfully. The Obama cheerleaders were shocked that Mr. Romney's remarks didn't repeat the Obama-created caricature that they've spent months broadcasting as if it were gospel.

The other illusion that exploded Wednesday is the one Mr. Obama tells about his own Presidency. He always mentions the recession he inherited and the many great feats he will perform in his second term. What he rarely mentions are the last four years...

He can't mention the last four years, because he's kept none of his campaign promises on fixing the economy and he hasn't improved the lives of the American people.

But read the whole thing.

And then check this sad and truly disturbed editorial at the New York Times, "An Unhelpful Debate" (via Memeorandum). The editors are nearly as deluded as the Democrat campaign staffers attempting to spin a "strong" Obama debate performance Wednesday in Denver. The left has been hit hard. You don't recover from something like that very quickly, but it's excruciatingly painful to even watch these people groping their way back to reality. This whole thing has been like prying open the cult of this presidency to reveal a diseased rotting rump of a political movement attempting to wring reelection from the collapsing facade of those heady times of four years ago.

Photo Credit: The People's Cube.

Confessions of a Centerfold

Jenny McCarthy interviewed at ABC News:

'Mitt Romney will create 12 million new jobs, when President Obama couldn't...'

Via Althouse:

Barack Obama Has Attacked Religion 'Since Virtually the Moment He Took Office'

Via Blazing Cat Fur:

Oh, And One More Thing About the Democrats' $5 Trillion Tax Cut Lies...

At Ace of Spades HQ, "Remember That "$5 Trillion Tax Cut" Obama Was Blathering On About Last Night? Yeah, He Was Lying."

Hey, getting Stephanie Cutter to admit the boss is lying? Priceless.

PREVIOUSLY: "Stunned Leftists Look to 'Fact Checkers' to Rescue President Clusterf-k From Epic Debate Debacle."

'Debacle in Denver': Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin Shred Democrats After Debate Disaster

Here's my earlier entry: "Stunned Leftists Look to 'Fact Checkers' to Rescue President Clusterf-k From Epic Debate Debacle."

And that seemed to be the consensus on Hannity's last night:

A second theme there is that the left will now look to exact revenge. The knives are out, as Chris Matthews famously revealed in his post-debate meltdown.

Stunned Leftists Look to 'Fact Checkers' to Rescue President Clusterf-k From Epic Debate Debacle

Some folks argued today that Mitt Romney's performance last night was perhaps the best ever in American political history. The left was utterly crushed at Dear Leader's unprecedented defeat at the hands of the Republican challenger. It's hard to be more demoralized, but then again, we've still got a foreign policy debate to come.

Meanwhile, to the rescue come the left's fact-checking brigades, which have gone on attack with completely lame reports on Mitt Romney as a "liar" and a "flip-flopper." Anne Sorock has the key entry on this, at Legal Insurrection, "A new cloak for media bias: the fact-check segment":

The media have fully deployed their defenses to protect President Obama after his dismal debate performance last night. So far two tactics have been employed, the first is the thinly veiled “fact check” attacks, while the other is calling Romney a bully for his take-charge performance.

The left's stupidity here is so heavy it almost hurts. See Big Government, "Fact Check: Top 5 Liberal Excuses for Obama Losing the First Presidential Debate to Romney." And Robert Samuelson, "The Democrats' $5 Trillion Tax Cut Myth."

And of course, the left's not fact-checking's Obama's lies. See the Weekly Standard, "ABC: Obama Falsely Claims He Has a Plan to Cut $4 Trillion from the Deficit."

Frankly, the stench of desperation has overtaken the radical left's fever swamps of Obama worship. President Clusterf-k was outed as a rank presidential imposter. The only argument worth credibility is that in the end the debate won't matter much at all. That may be true. But it's no consolation to those who are investing in a presidential incumbent who's clearly been spending way too much time reading from teleprompters in between making "eye candy" visits to his gal pals on "The View."

The vultures are circling over President Clusterf-k's campaign. He'll be lucky to make it out of October alive.

Markos Moulitsas Lamely Tries to Spin Barack Obama's Embarrassing Debate Debacle

I tweeted Markos Moulitsas during last night's debate:

@markos Romney's winning. Suck it up, brother. #DenverDebates
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 4, 2012

He didn't reply, although he later posted some sorry-assed post-mortem at Daily Kos, "A loss, but not a game-changing one."

Actually, it was a "game changer." It's going to take a few days for that to sink in on the left, but if early polls are any indication, it's going to be a rough month for President Obama.

See Twitchy, "Game change? Even liberals admitting Obama against the ropes in first debate," and Jamie Weinstein at the Daily Caller, "Liberals throw hissy fit over Obama debate performance."

More later...

A Bad Night for Obama

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review (via RealClearPolitics):

Two themes predominated this debate and will be addressed in the next two sessions: For so long Barack Obama has assumed that he will not face cross-examination from the media that he simply has little grasp of policy details, and in exasperation seems to look around for the accustomed helpful media crutch. But there is no such subsidy in a one-on-one debate, and only now it becomes clear just how the media for the last six years have enfeebled their favorite. And unlike 2008, there is now an Obama record to defend, rather than just repeating hope-and-change platitudes and vague generalities that have worked in the past. Romney is an effective debater and had a wealth of detail at his grasp that seemed to stun Obama, as if such a skilled opponent was not supposed to be part of the script. In essence, Obama looked tired, in the Nixonian mode, and he sounded like a petulant 1980 Jimmy Carter. After this debate is over, I expect the Obama team will go into full reset mode to re-prep the president for the next round. Tonight he either coasted or was not up to the task, and it showed, and he knew it — and if the same sub-par performance continues in the next two debates Obama will lose the election outright.

Continue reading.

IMAGE CREDIT: iOWNTHEWORLD.

Oh My! Sarah Palin Lays Into Barack Obama: 'He Didn't Have His Buddy the Teleprompter in Front of Him...'

At Gateway Pundit, "Sarah Palin Rips Obama for Not Having TelePrompter at Debate (Video)."

Chris Matthews Goes Ballistic on Obama in Post-Debate Meltdown

I linked Matthews' meltdown at my debate analysis last night, but it's worth posting on its own.

Via Anne Sorock, at Legal Insurrection, "MSNBC’s Matthews gives epic smackdown of Obama."

Check Memeorandum and RealClearPolitics for all the day's analysis and spin. And boy, the Dems will be spinning enough to make a Whirling Dervish dizzy.

Perilous Times

Via Theo Spark.

Pat Caddell on O'Reilly Factor: 'There's a Purposeful Conscious Effort to Suppress News That Might Hurt Obama'

Pat Caddell's been making argument frequently of late.

PREVIOUSLY: "The Audacity of Corruption."

San Francisco's Tolerance Toward Tolerance is Wearing Thin

Tolerance. Isn't that an amazingly Orwellian word these days. Those least tolerant are the most prominent advocates for increasing tolerance. And the homo-radical freaks are the least tolerant of  all.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Proposed Ban on Public Nudity Offends Some in San Francisco":

SAN FRANCISCO—San Francisco's tolerance toward tolerance is wearing thin.

A city supervisor here proposed a law Tuesday that would ban nudity in most public places across the city. For years, the city has held an "equilibrium" with nudity at public events and occasionally in neighborhoods, said the supervisor, Scott Wiener, but the nudity recently "has just gotten extreme."

At issue is a public plaza that regularly attracts nudists in the historically gay Castro neighborhood, prompting a debate about the limits of civil liberties in this famously tolerant city. After complaints about the naked people by some businesses and residents, Mr. Wiener proposed the bareness-busting bill.

The proposed ban doesn't sit well with some urban nudists.

"This is, in my opinion, an attack on freedom," said George Davis, 66 years old, who was soaking up the sun Tuesday wearing nothing more than sunglasses and a hat, reading a book about Twitter, the microblogging service. As one of the Castro's famous nudists, "I meet people from all over the world," he said, including South Korea, France and Liechtenstein.

Some argued a ban would mark a slippery slope for the city. "Today it is naked people, and next week it will be drag queens, and then the week after that it will be people who wear leather," said Mitch Hightower, 51, who organizes an annual "nude-in" body freedom demonstration in the city and runs an exhibitionist website.

And then after that it'll be about people who like to wear butt-plugs up their ass in public. End the intolerance!!

RELATED: At Zombie, "San Francisco’s naked protest and the ethics of public nudity."

Why Are We So Nasty to Each Other Online?

This is interesting, at the Wall Street Journal, "Why We Are So Rude Online: Online Browsing Lowers Self-Control and Is Linked to Higher Debt, Weight":

Jennifer Bristol recently lost one of her oldest friends—thanks to a Facebook fight about pit bulls.

The trouble started when she posted a newspaper article asserting that pit bulls were the most dangerous type of dog in New York City last year. "Please share thoughts… 833 incidents with pitties," wrote Ms. Bristol, a 40-year-old publicist and animal-welfare advocate in Manhattan.

Her friends, many of whom also work in the animal-welfare world, quickly weighed in. One noted that "pit bull" isn't a single official breed; another said "irresponsible ownership" is often involved when dogs turn violent. Black Labs may actually bite more, someone else offered.

Then a childhood pal of Ms. Bristol piped up with this: "Take it from an ER doctor… In 15 years of doing this I have yet to see a golden retriever bite that had to go to the operating room or killed its target."

That unleashed a torrent. One person demanded to see the doctor's "scientific research." Another accused him of not bothering to confirm whether his patients were actually bitten by pit bulls. Someone else suggested he should "venture out of the ER" to see what was really going on.

"It was ridiculous," says Ms. Bristol, who stayed out of the fight. Her old buddy, the ER doctor, unfriended her the next morning. That was eight months ago. She hasn't heard from him since.

Continue reading.

My theory is that online you're always right. People don't care about others' opinions. They seek out people who agree with them. So even if you're a friend in the "real world," online you become an enemy if you're on the wrong side of an issue.

Romney Advertisement Exploits Biden's 'Buried' Gaffe

Via Althouse.

WKBT-TV's Jennifer Livingston Responds to Email From Man Bullying Her About Her Weight

This has gone viral the last few days.

And from ABC's Good Morning America yesterday, "Jennifer Livingston Fights Weight Criticism; Wisconsin News Anchor Blast Viewer's Email On-air."

FULL VIDEO: First Presidential Debate 2012

Oh boy, was this one for the history books.

There's going to be a bunch of fact-checking and spin all through the week and into the Sunday news shows, but the unshakable fact is that Mitt Romney destroyed Obama on Wednesday night. It was a crushing performance and the left is completely demoralized. Jonah Goldberg captures things well at National Review, "There Went the Boom" (via Memeorandum):

I’ve been getting more and more cautiously optimistic about Romney in the last few days and, going in, I had a pretty good feeling about tonight’s debate. But I had no expectation that Romney would simply control the night the way he did. I don’t think Obama did terribly on the merits, even though he clearly lost by a wide margin on points. But you don’t really score a debate like this on points. Romney simply dominated and deflated Obama. This was the first time millions of people ever heard Mitt Romney make a case for himself at any length. Most Americans didn’t watch the GOP debates. The ratings for Romney’s convention speech were sub-par and he never really talked about policy anyway at the convention. But tonight Romney brilliantly dismantled the straw man Obama has been running against for months. I think it was David Freddoso who said on Twitter that if all you knew about Romney was what you saw in Obama’s TV ads, you’d get the sense that Obama’s been lying to you all this time. Romney helped himself tonight — possibly a lot.

Actually, more than a lot. Romney helped himself enormously. More at the link.

Lying Liar Stephanie Cutter Lamely Defends Obama's Debate Performance, Attacks Moderator Jim Lehrer

I don't think I can ever recall a more accomplished liar. And we know from earlier this year that Stephanie Cutter is bald-faced liar. She's a remorseless bitch if there ever was one. And she's spins President Obama's historic debate debacle in true Stephanie Cutter contempt-for-the-truth style. Via Politico, "Obama's Stephanie Cutter knocks Lehrer" (at Memeorandum):

DENVER, Colo. -- Obama spokesperson Stephanie Cutter took a swipe at moderator Jim Lehrer's largely passive debate performance tonight, saying the PBS anchor had allowed Mitt Romney to act as the moderator.

"I sometimes wondered if we even needed a moderator because we had Mitt Romney," Cutter told CNN shortly after the debate, though she told POLITICO that Lehrer did his job as moderator and that her comments were strictly about Romney.

(See also: Complete coverage of the Colorado presidential debate)

Cutter's decision to knock Lehrer may signal an acknowledgment by the Obama campaign that the president did not perform as well as his challenger, Mitt Romney -- which was the general consensus of the media, including the usually pro-Obama MSNBC. (MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Ed Schultz slammed Obama's performance.)

Many on the left criticized Lehrer for being too silent. He rarely interrupted the candidates when they went over their allotted time, and when he did it was almost always a losting battle. His attempts to control the conversation were so notably nonconfrontational that they became memorialized in a Twitter handle named @SilentJimLehrer.

But Lehrer's passivity also allowed the two candidates to engage one another, and if Obama did not engage Romney or land any singificant blows, he may have no one to blame but himself. Though it is the moderator's responsibility to keep time and keep the candidates on topic, it was up to the president -- not the moderator -- to take on his challenger.

More at the link.

BONUS: Check the great post-debate roundup at The Lonely Conservative, "Presidential Debate 1 Wrap Up – Romney Won."

Did the White House Order a Libya Cover-Up?

From Con Coughlin, at Telegraph UK, "Did the White House order a cover-up over the murder of Libya's US Ambassador?":

Immediately after the murder of Chris Stevens, America's Ambassador to Libya, I suggested that the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11 could have profound consequences for President Barack Obama, particulary if he failed to take appropriate action against the murderers – the most likely candidates being members of al-Qaeda's new terror franchise in Mali.

But with the US presidential contest entering its critical final phase, the Obama administration deftly avoided getting into any controversy over the murder of Mr Stevens and three other members of the consulate staff by leading everyone to believe the murders were not part of an al-Qaeda plot, but the result of an outbreak of violence caused by a blaphemous film clip. This was certainly the line advanced by Dr Susan Rice, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, and a close confidante of Mr Obama.

Dr Rice, in common with other senior officials in the Obama administration, insisted that the assault on the US consulate had been "spontaneous", rather than a carefully planned attack by terrorists. By making this claim, the White House effectively silenced any criticism that the Obama administration was culpable for not taking more effective measures to protect the consulate.

But now it appears that Rice's version of events – endorsed by the White House – was wrong. Within 24 hours of the attack taking place, Washington was informed by a variety of intelligence sources that the attack had indeed been pre-planned and was undoubtedly the work of al-Qaeda which, apart from attacking the consulate, had also attacked the CIA's safe house in Benghazi.

As a result, rather than absolving itself of any blame for this tragic incident, the White House – and Mr Obama – now find themselves at the centre of a mounting storm over what precisely they knew about the attack on the consulate, and when.

Now that Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has confirmed there was an explicit link between al-Qaeda and the attack, questions are being asked about the role Dr Rice played in trying to play down the significance of the attack. The Republicans have already called for her to resign from her post for misleading the American people.

But the real smoking gun is whether the Obama administration was warned in advance that al-Qaeda was planning an attack...

Continue reading.

It's a cover-up alright. Indeed, the Libya debacle is perhaps the biggest diplomatic clusterf-ks in American history.

See also Eli Lake, "U.S. Consulate in Benghazi Bombed Twice in Run-Up to 9/11 Anniversary."

Mitt Romney Kicks Ass in First Debate

I thought my perspective was biased, that Romney just destroyed Obama in the debate. But the results are coming in, and it's a bloodbath for the Democrats.

See BuzzFeed for the big headline, "How Mitt Romney Won The First Debate." (At Memeorandum.) Also at Washington Free Beacon, "Liberal Media Calls It for Romney."

I'll be updating, but if you're checking my blog as this post goes live, click your remote over to MSNBC. This is a devastating night for the left. It's a collective meltdown over there. Ed Schultz just said that Mitt Romney was "in his wheelhouse on the economy." And Chris Matthews was literally going ballistic. I'll be looking for the video and will update.

Check back from more reporting and analysis.

8:10pm Pacific: At the Los Angeles Times, "In position to surprise, Romney has sharp answers in first debate." And the Wall Street Journal, "Candidates Spar Over Taxes: Obama, Romney Lay Out Differing Views of Government, Regulation, Deficit Cuts."

And The Other McCain, "MITT ROMNEY WINS FIRST DEBATE."

8:16pm Pacific: Here's some raw video from CNN. I'll link the full clip as well, when I find it.

8:27pm Pacific: Glenn Reynolds has video from MSNBC, "CHRIS MATTHEWS IN POST-DEBATE MELTDOWN..."

8:45pm Pacific: At CNN, "CNN Poll: Romney wins debate by big margin."

JetBlue Will Fly Upset Voters Out of the Country

Great, if Romney wins we can ship loads of depraved progressives overseas.

But I'll tell you, JetBlue's going to have to expand operations if President Clusterf-k wins a second term.

At Politico:

JetBlue Airlines is offering Americans upset about their candidate's defeat in the upcoming November election a chance to leave the country for free — if only temporarily.

"If your candidate doesn't win, don't worry. Election protection could be your ticket out of the country," the company writes on a new website.

The site allows voters to declare their support for a candidate — and if that candidate loses, they'll be entered into a contest to win one of 1,000 trips to a tropical destination.

More.

40th Birthday! Smokin' Cameron Diaz Cover Shoot for British Esquire

Some pre-debate Rule 5.

At London's Daily Mail, "'I feel better at 40 than I did at 25': Cameron Diaz defies her age as she shows off cleavage in new sultry men's magazine shoot."

What Voters Want in Tonight's Debate

I know what I want: Romney needs to go for the jugular (metaphorically, of course).

From Susan Page, at USA Today, "What voters want in Wednesday's debate":

WASHINGTON — If Mitt Romney is going to change the trajectory of a close race that is bending in President Obama's direction, his best opportunity will be during 90 minutes on a Denver stage Wednesday night.

Obama has opened a modest advantage over Romney since the political conventions ended last month, especially in the battleground states. But as the presidential rivals prepare to face off in the first of three debates, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows Obama with vulnerabilities and Romney with assets — even on the question of whether Americans have become too dependent on the government.

The question: Can the Republican challenger seize on those openings? If he fails — and he admittedly has struggled since clinching the GOP nomination in the spring — his path to victory over the final four weeks of the campaign becomes much steeper.

"The vast majority of viewers tune in to these debates to cheer their candidate on; they've made their decision and want that decision confirmed," says Mitchell McKinney, an associate professor at the University of Missouri who studies presidential debates and political communication. But there also will be viewers who are only "weakly committed" to a candidate "and still need some persuading."

Almost eight in 10 Americans in the USA TODAY poll say there's nothing either candidate could say or do in the debates that would change their minds about their vote. Still, one of five say the debates could sway them — including 24% of Obama supporters and 18% of Romney supporters.

Continue reading.

And see ABC News, "Analysis: Presidential Debate Day Arrives" (via Memeorandum).

MSNBC Hack Rachel Maddow Responds to Obama's Hateful New Orleans Race Speech

That's racist!

She's the biggest flaming asshole on the network, and it's a deep bench, so that's saying a lot:

And check Elizabeth Foley at Instapundit, "WELCOME TO POST-RACIAL AMERICA (PSYCH!)." (Via Memeorandum.)

PREVIOUSLY: "Devastating Side-by-Side Comparison of Barack Obama's Race Speeches."

More at Memeorandum.

BONUS LULZ: At the Hill, "Gibbs: Obama believes Katrina response failures were ‘colorblind’."

Dozens Killed as Bombs Hit Center of Aleppo in Syria

The other Obama debacle.

At Telegraph UK, "Syria: Aleppo hit by four car bombs":

Four blasts ripped through a government-controlled district close to a military officers' club in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, killing at least 40 people and wounding more than 90 on Wednesday, opposition activists said.

The attacks within minutes of each other struck the main Saadallah al-Jabiri Square and a fifth bomb exploded a few hundred metres away, state television said, on the fringes of the Old City where rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have been fighting.

"Five minutes after the first explosion a second bomb exploded. A third exploded ten minutes after that," a state television reporter said. "There was a fourth car bomb which exploded before engineering units could defuse it."

The station also broadcast footage of three dead men disguised as soldiers in army fatigues who it said were shot by security forces before they could detonate explosive-packed belts they were wearing. One appeared to be holding a trigger device in his hand.

Rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad announced last week a new offensive in Aleppo, Syria's largest city and commercial hub of 2.5 million people, but neither side has appeared to make significant gains so far.

The explosions also came a week after rebels bombed military command buildings in the heart of Damascus and clashed with security forces for several hours.

Continue reading.

In Debate, Romney Must Make Forceful Case That America's Survival as Properous and Respected Nation at Stake

I'm glad somebody's making this argument. Mitt "Mr. Nice Guy" Romney's just about killing me here.

From Fred Barnes, at WSJ, "Romney's Dangerous Game of Playing It Safe":

For his Wednesday-night debate with President Obama, Mitt Romney has been advised to be tough but affable. He should put his warm and caring side on display, while picking apart the president's record and rebutting dubious statements by Mr. Obama. "I'd be tempted to go back to that wonderful line by Ronald Reagan, 'There you go again,'" Mr. Romney said last week.

The advice is good, but even if Mr. Romney follows it scrupulously, he is not likely to dominate the debate. His performance won't be commanding enough to give his campaign the momentum it needs. His chances of defeating Mr. Obama on Nov. 6 will suffer.

Mr. Romney should do in the debate what he hasn't done in his speeches, media appearances or TV ads—in other words, in his entire campaign. He must make a forceful case that America's survival as a prosperous and respected nation is at stake. In that context, the election becomes an urgent choice between a national turnaround and further decline. The Romney advertising has been especially sorry at drawing that distinction. The generally bland commercials feel like they could have run at any time in the past 40 years.

Voters understand that America is in trouble. For years, they've told pollsters the country is headed in the wrong direction. Today they're even more gloomy. At every focus group I've heard about recently, they agree with the notion that their children will be worse off than they are. A Fox News poll in August found that by nearly a 2-1 ratio voters think American civilization is in decline. In short, faith in the American Dream has tanked.

According to a Rasmussen poll last week, 15% of likely voters are uncommitted or willing to change their vote. "One of the distinguishing features of those potentially persuadable voters is that they don't see the choice between Romney and Obama as particularly significant," Mr. Rasmussen said. "Just 28% say it will be very important which man wins."

Like a wide receiver in football, Mr. Romney needs to create separation between himself and his opponent. If they're quibbling over the legitimacy of Mr. Obama's $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan or whether Mr. Romney's tax proposal is revenue neutral, the advantage will go to the incumbent. Mr. Romney can prevail in those arguments without coming any closer to winning the presidency.

The Republican challenger needs to go where Mr. Obama cannot go. What's required are ideas, initiatives and policies commensurate with America's moment of peril. This means, first of all, embracing the conservative reform agenda: entitlement reform, overhaul of the tax code, curbs on spending, an unhampered economy, regulatory relief, consumer-driven health care, a welfare state that doesn't promote dependency, a revitalized civil society.

Continue reading.

Devastating Side-by-Side Comparison of Barack Obama's Race Speeches

This one's worth running in its own right:

PREVIOUSLY: "Barack Obama Unedited Video at Hampton University, 2007."

EXTRA: At The Blaze, "See How the Left Is Reacting to 'Obama's Other Race Speech."

And check this roundup at Instapundit as well.

Obama and Romney Deadlocked Among Likely Voters

Actually, if the survey over-sampled Dems, then Romney could in fact be ahead.

At National Journal, "Obama, Romney Tied Among Likely Voters."

Obama Still Wants to Fundamentally Transform America

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine:

An American compound in Libya is invaded by al Qaeda terrorists and an American ambassador is purportedly tortured before being killed. Muslim mobs attack American embassies in 27 countries chanting,”Death to America.” The White House response? A statement blaming the outrages on a filmmaker in the United States, along with apologies to the Muslim world.

The American economy languishes with millions unemployed in the worst times since the Great Depression. Yet the president spends his first years in the White House focusing on a plan to create a trillion-dollar socialized health care system opposed by a majority of Americans. Then he campaigns for re-election on a platform blaming rich Americans for the economic woes.

What’s going on here?

The answer lies in a famous statement the president made on the eve of his election, when he told a crowd of cheering supporters: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” These are not the words of a traditional, pragmatic-minded American politician. A practical politician attempts to address problems and fix them, not to fundamentally transform an entire nation. Transforming nations is what radicals aspire to do. But Mr. Obama’s actions in the past four years — beginning with putting Obamacare in front of the economic crisis — are nothing if not radical.

Radicals are sometimes referred to as “liberals in a hurry.” They share goals but not means. Both Mr. Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, expressed early sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street movement, whose rage at the American social order quickly turned violent and destructive.

But while Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi may pursue their agendas through the traditional process of democratic government, ends still determine means. The radical nature of the goals they pursue does have consequences, the first of which is to divide the nation in an hour when they should have been uniting it.

In a national crisis such as America faced in 2009 when 800,000 of us were losing our jobs every month, traditional leaders would have regarded their first task as one of rallying the country on a common agenda and bringing Americans together. Instead, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi put their radical agenda first — passing a massive health care bill, the most transformative legislation in American history, and passing it over the opposition not only of Republicans but even of Democratic voters in Massachusetts, who elected Republican Scott Brown to cast a vote against it.

Far from pursuing national unity to solve the crisis, Mr. Obama put his goal of transformation in front of everything. In order to achieve the change he wanted, he shut out the congressional Republicans in drafting his revolutionary legislation, and then disregarded the majority of Americans when they rejected his plan, defeating Democrats in special elections in New Jersey and Virginia — states that he had won. His radical goals caused Mr. Obama to squander his political capital on a divisive campaign in the first two years of his administration that has changed and embittered the political landscape, and that has persisted for four years and could continue.

Of the Obama election effort dominated by themes of class envy and conflict, a longtime liberal and Democrat, Mortimer Zuckerman, the publisher of U.S. News & World Report, has said: “It is a dishonest, divisive campaign. It’s discouraging of enterprise. It does the opposite of uniting the country to deal with the current economic crisis.”

More at the link.

Fabulous Kate Upton is Cosmopolitan's November Cover Girl

She lovely.

See: "Kate Upton is Our November Cover Girl!"

Adam Greenberg Gets Second Chance to Bat in Major League Baseball

At the New York Times, "An At-Bat Worth Waiting For, Despite the Out."

The dude got beaned in his first trip to the plate in 2005, on the first pitch, while playing for the Chicago Cubs.

World Premiere Atlas Shrugged Part II

In Washington, D.C., via Reason.tv:

Barack Obama Unedited Video at Hampton University, 2007

Here's the last 9 minutes of the speech, including some of the key parts Hannity and Greta were playing tonight over and over again.

Marooned in Marin has the entire video, "(VIDEO) OBAMA'S RACE SPEECH - Seen On Hannity & Daily Caller."

The content is not particularly explosive. Word has it that some of this was broadcast at the time. Indeed, here's a YouTube clip that's time-stamped March 17, 2008, "Barack Obama Praising His Pastor Jeremiah Wright..."

But check Eliana Johnson at National Review, "The Most Controversial Quotes from Obama’s Hampton University Speech." (At Memeorandum.) I think his craven attacks on the Iraq war are worse. But then, Obama was the most antiwar Democrat in the Senate in 2007, and he's previewing his attacks on the Bush administration at that Hampton speech. That's really some disgusting shit, anti-American even.

ADDED: Bryan Preston has the segment from tonight's Hannity broadcast: "On Obama’s Other Race Speech."

Smokin' Christina Hendricks Boasts Beautiful Figure in Plunging Pink Dress for November Issue of Britain's Glamour Magazine

This lady does it again.

At London's Daily Mail, "Mad about the woman! Christina Hendricks shows off her hourglass curves in a plunging pink dress for sexy new shoot."

Previous Christina Hendricks blogging here.

American Crossroads: It's About Leadership

American Crossroads hammers President Clusterf-k:

Barack Obama, the Luckiest Candidate

From Edward Luce at the Financial Times, "Obama will need more than luck":

It must be hard being Barack Obama. Midway through his opponent’s latest calamity, the president last week sat down for a grilling by the five friendly ladies on The View, the daytime television chat show. At the start of what can be described as a gentle conversation, Mr Obama joked that he was mere “eye candy” for his hosts. The news media complained that Mr Obama only very rarely makes himself available for their more probing questions. But of course, smart politicians go to where the voters are. Whether he’s slow jammin’ with Jimmy Fallon or conceding a kiss to the First Lady at a sports game, the president knows what most people respond to. Mitt Romney, on the other hand. But I digress.

There can be little doubt that Mr Obama is a lucky candidate. This time four years ago, John McCain reminded everyone of his advancing age and dubious health by selecting a running mate who thought Africa was a country. After the financial meltdown, Mr McCain then made the rash error of calling for a suspension of the campaign. Mr Romney is on the verge of a similar fate.

Given the latest polls, which show Mr Obama with six- to 10-point leads in the key swing states, Republican donors are debating whether to divert cash to the congressional election, where they could at least hold up the firewall against Mr Obama. Paul Ryan, meanwhile, is looking for ways to salvage his credibility as a future White House contender. Such are the rumours that disorient failing campaigns.

So far, Mr Obama has played along mostly as a bystander. Staff at the president’s Facebook-style headquarters in Chicago may dispute that description (their targeting techniques are light years ahead of their rivals in Boston). But Mr Romney has inflicted most of the damage on himself. Last week he had the decency to admit it. “That’s not the campaign,” Mr Romney said in response to the fallout from of his infamous “47 per cent” remark at a private fundraiser. “That was me, right?”

Yet there are reasons to pause before agreeing with the comedian Jon Stewart’s declaration that Mr Obama is “the luckiest dude on the planet”. For one, debating is not Mr Obama’s strong point...

Continue reading.

Luce is a bit hard on Romney, and he doesn't factor in the corrupt Obama-Media, but it's true that O's riding on his lucky charms. Again, the debates could be the Romney game-changer, so we'll have to hold on to our seats. If we can trust the polls, there's a tightening in the race. A poor Obama showing tomorrow could make it tighter still.

CARTOON CREDIT: Nate Beeler.

Call a Terrorist a 'Savage'? How Uncivilized

From William McGurn, at the Wall Street Journal:

"In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."

So reads an advertisement that went up a week ago in New York City subway stations. Sponsored by Pamela Geller's American Freedom Defense Initiative, the ads were meant to provoke, and they did. Denunciations poured in, activists plastered "racist" and "hate speech" stickers over the ads, and an Egyptian-American activist even got herself arrested after spray-painting one poster pink.

Establishment opinion quickly rallied to a consensus. As the Washington Post put it, while the words could be read as "hateful," "an offensive ad" nonetheless has the "right to offend." A rabbi summed up the media orthodoxy in the headline over her column for CNN: "A right to hate speech, a duty to condemn."

Certainly that's one way to read this ad. Then again, most Americans probably read it the way it is written: Israel is a civilized nation under attack from people who do savage things in the name of jihad. Whatever the agenda of those behind this ad might be, the question remains: What part of that statement is not true?

Ah, but the use of the word "jihad" inherently indicts all Muslims, say the critics. There are millions of peaceful Muslims for whom jihad means only a spiritual quest. So why do so many people associate jihad with murder and brutality?

Might it be because violence is so often the jihadist's calling card? Might it be that some of these killers even incorporate the word jihad into the name of their terror organizations, e.g., Palestinian Islamic Jihad? That may not be the exclusive meaning of jihad, but surely it is one meaning—and the one that New York subway riders are most likely to bring to the word.

The same goes for "savage." Exhibit A is Oxford's online dictionary, which defines a savage as "a brutal or vicious person." There are innumerable Exhibit Bs, but let me invoke one of the most powerful.

This is a Reuters photo that ran on the New York Times front page for Sept. 1, 2004. It shows an Israeli bus after it had been blown up by a suicide bomber. Neither bloody nor gory, the photo is nonetheless deeply disturbing, because it shows the lifeless body of a young woman hanging out a window.

The Times news story added this detail about the reaction to that attack. "In Gaza," ran the report, "thousands of supporters of Hamas celebrated in the streets, and the Associated Press reported that one of the bombers' widows hailed the attack as 'heroic' and said her husband's soul was 'happy in heaven.' " What part of any of this is not savage?

Might it be because violence is so often the jihadist's calling card? Might it be that some of these killers even incorporate the word jihad into the name of their terror organizations, e.g., Palestinian Islamic Jihad? That may not be the exclusive meaning of jihad, but surely it is one meaning—and the one that New York subway riders are most likely to bring to the word.

The same goes for "savage." Exhibit A is Oxford's online dictionary, which defines a savage as "a brutal or vicious person." There are innumerable Exhibit Bs, but let me invoke one of the most powerful.

This is a Reuters photo that ran on the New York Times front page for Sept. 1, 2004. It shows an Israeli bus after it had been blown up by a suicide bomber. Neither bloody nor gory, the photo is nonetheless deeply disturbing, because it shows the lifeless body of a young woman hanging out a window.

The Times news story added this detail about the reaction to that attack. "In Gaza," ran the report, "thousands of supporters of Hamas celebrated in the streets, and the Associated Press reported that one of the bombers' widows hailed the attack as 'heroic' and said her husband's soul was 'happy in heaven.' " What part of any of this is not savage? ....

What a curiosity our new political correctness has made of our public spaces. Let your sex tape loose on the Internet and be rewarded with your own TV show; photograph a crucifix in a jar of urine and our museums will vie to exhibit it; occupy someone else's property and you will be hailed by the president for your keen social conscience.

But call people who blow up, behead and mutilate "savage"—and polite society will find you offensive.

Well, that's the progressive left for you.

These people are nothing short of evil traitorous vermin — they're a threat to American civilization.

Also at Atlas Shrugs, "WALL STREET JOURNAL IN SUPPORT OF ANTI-JIHAD ADS - CALL A TERRORIST A 'SAVAGE'? HOW UNCIVILIZED."

Lovely Blogging at Pirate's Cove

William works hard on those classic weekend roundups.

But really you gotta love those regular "If All You See..." updates, like this one.

Folks deserve a shout-out once in awhile. There's some excellent blogging at Pirate's Cove, and not just the babes.

Battle Over Unions Moves to California

At the New York Times, "California Is Latest Stage for Election Battle Over Unions":

LOS ANGELES — The battle to curb labor’s political clout has moved from Wisconsin to California, where wealthy conservatives are championing a ballot measure that would bar unions from donating to candidates. Labor leaders describe it as the starkest threat they have faced in a year of nationwide challenges to diminish their once-formidable power.

The measure, Proposition 32 on the November ballot, would prohibit both unions and corporations from making contributions, but the corporate provision is far less stringent than the one aimed at unions, analysts said. If passed, it would also bar unions from using automatic payroll deductions to raise money for political campaigns, a major source of labor’s political funding.

“This would be a big deal for unions if it passes since it would largely cut off their participation in state and local California politics,” said Daniel J. B. Mitchell, a professor emeritus at the U.C.L.A. Anderson School of Management.

The prospect that Proposition 32 could become law in an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has a rich history of union activism has alarmed labor leaders. A victory here, they argued, would pave the way for similar efforts across the nation.

“This is intended not to hobble us, this is intended to eviscerate us,” said Art Pulaski, the head of the California Labor Federation. “If they can do it in California, they can do it everywhere and anywhere.”

Well, it's good to see the thug union idiots quaking in their boots, although it's a poorly designed initiative, as I noted previously.

And see the Sacramento Bee as well, "More voters oppose Proposition 32 than support it, poll says."

An Explosion in News Gathering via Mobile Devices

At the Pew organizatinon's Project for Excellence in Journalism, "FUTURE OF MOBILE NEWS: THE EXPLOSION IN MOBILE AUDIENCES AND A CLOSE LOOK AT WHAT IT MEANS FOR NEWS."

The era of mobile digital technology has crossed a new threshold.

Half of all U.S. adults now have a mobile connection to the web through either a smartphone or tablet, significantly more than a year ago, and this has major implications for how news will be consumed and paid for, according to a detailed new survey of news use on mobile devices by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) in collaboration with The Economist Group.

At the center of the recent growth in mobile is the rapid embrace by Americans of the tablet computer. Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults, 22%, now own a tablet device-double the number from a year earlier. Another 3% of adults regularly use a tablet owned by someone else in their home. And nearly a quarter of those who don't have a tablet, 23%, plan to get one in the next six months. Even more U.S. adults (44%) have smartphones, according to the survey, up from 35% in May 2011.

News remains an important part of what people do on their mobile devices-64% of tablet owners and 62% of smartphone owners say they use the devices for news at least weekly, tying news statistically with other popular activities such email and playing games on tablets and behind only email on smartphones (not including talking on the phone). This means fully a third of all U.S. adults now get news on a mobile device at least once a week.

Mobile users, moreover, are not just checking headlines on their devices, although nearly all use the devices for the latest new[s] updates. Many also are reading longer news stories - 73% of adults who consume news on their tablet read in-depth articles at least sometimes, including 19% who do so daily. Fully 61% of smartphone news consumers at least sometimes read longer stories, 11% regularly.

And for many people, mobile devices are adding how much news they consume. More than four in ten mobile news consumers say they are getting more news now and nearly a third say they are adding new sources.

These findings and others in this report build upon a comprehensive study conducted by PEJ and The Economist Group a year ago that provided an in-depth look at news consumption on tablets among early adopters. The new report, which is based on a survey of 9,513 U.S. adults conducted from June-August 2012 (including 4,638 mobile device owners), probes mobile news habits more deeply across the wider population of users, looks at smart phone use as well, and examines the financial implications of those habits for news.

Continue reading.

Here's my blog's mobile URL: http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/?m=1.

I'll be adding some kind of sidebar announcement for mobile users, perhaps like the one at Pundette's.

I'm not a mobile user myself, although I'm in the market for a new cell phone, which will probably be an iPhone 5. I'll update with more information on that later.

Meanwhile, there's more at Poynter, "Mobile news habit grows, creating new business opportunity with old challenges." (Via Mediagazer.)

Did President Obama Exploit Mentally-Impaired Woman, Brittany: “A face of one of the 47%”?

Actually, I don't think so.

If Brittany wrote the letter to the Obama campaign herself, and it's a nice letter, then she should be treated just as any other Obama supporter. And the president's campaign shouldn't feel that there's anything wrong with using her letter in a campaign pitch. To do otherwise would be to treat Brittany unequally, which is clearly not what she wants, as evidence by her comments at the letter. (Or, at least she doesn't want to be treated as a welfare dependency freeloader.)

But see Charles C.W. Cooke at National Reviews, "Brittany vs. Julia":

There is so much that is heinous about Brittany being used for political gain in this way, but let’s start with the obvious thing, which is that neither Mitt Romney nor anybody running for office under the Republican banner is suggesting doing anything that would hurt her.

Continue reading.

Well, the really obvious thing, really, is that if Mitt Romney would have posted a comparable letter from a Down syndrome supporter he would have been raked over the coals of an inquisition the likes to make Tomás de Torquemada proud. But these are Democrats doing this, so even the outward inclination toward impropriety is suppressed, because progressives are oh so f-king tolerant.

That said, Ann Althouse wrote a passively acceptant post on this, just a tad ambiguous, suggesting that because she's a woman she found the story "affecting." She gets ripped in the comments, for example:

This is absurd. Obama's use of a retarded girl to counter Romney's 47-percent argument is a complete non sequitur. Althouse acknowledges as much, but goes on to say, in effect, that she doesn't care. Why? Because she's a woman. Which is even more of a non sequitur.

Just vote for Obama already. Waving the bloody shirt of an exploited retarded girl makes you look, um, retarded.

Lots more comments at the link.

High-Speed Skater Hits Deer

Or, "High-Speed Deer Hits Skater."

Either way, that had to hurt.

Watch it at the link.

The DC Metro Rail System 'Is Kowtowing to the Threat of Jihad Terrorism...'

Another essential entry, at Atlas Shrugs, "WASHINGTON TRANSIT AUTHORITY 'APPARENTLY CONSIDERS ADHERENTS TO ISLAM TO BE VIOLENT AND INCAPABLE OF RESPONDING TO CRITICAL, POLITICAL SPEECH IN OUR COUNTRY IN A CIVILIZED MANNER'."

Sara Underwood: Esquire's Hottest Woman of the Year

Lovely:

PREVIOUSLY: "Sara Jean Underwood on Twitter."

'Hold On Loosely'

Some overnight music, from .38 Special:

Latest Polling Shows Presidential Race Tightening

John Hinderaker offer a short and sweet analysis of the presidential horse race polling, "The Parade of Bad Polling, Continued." He's hammering CNN's polling, which I haven't looked at closely. But if CNN's at all like the New York Times, the survey's badly oversampling Democrats. And if so, the fact that new polls show the race tightening is doubly good for Mitt Romney. On election day Republican enthusiasm --- which has been much  more significant than the Democrats' --- should really put to rest all the conspiracies about skewed and unskewed polls. More at the Washington Post, "Obama, Romney in tight race nationally as first debate looms." (Via Memeorandum.)

IMAGE CREDIT: iOWNTHEWORLD.

Taliban Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 20 in Afghanistan, Including Nato Troops

The Drudge screen capture's from Instapundit, "The main headline reports the 2,000 military deaths in Afghanistan, but below the fold there’s this: MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: OBAMA PLANS $450 MILLION CASH FOR EGYPT…":

We can’t afford this administration’s foreign policies anymore than we can afford its economic policies.

No, we can't.

Here's the report on the Afghanistan suicide attack, at Australia's Herald Sun, "Taliban claims responsibility for Afghan suicide bomber that killed 20":

A SUICIDE bomber has torn through an Afghan-NATO foot patrol in a crowded city, killing at least 20 people, including three foreign troops and their interpreter, officials said.

Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack near a market in the eastern city of Khost. Six Afghan police and 10 civilians were also killed, and 62 were wounded, provincial governor's spokesman Baryalai Rawan, told AFP.

Authorities had earlier given a death toll of four Afghan police and six civilians.

"Today at around 8:30 am (local time) a suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted a joint patrol in Khost city in a crowded area," the governor's office said.

NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed that three NATO service members and an ISAF-contracted interpreter had been killed in the attack.

The Taliban Islamists said on their website that the suicide attack was carried out by "a hero mujahid, Shohaib, from Kunduz", claiming that eight foreigners and six Afghan soldiers were killed.

And ICYMI, see Victor Davis Hanson's piece, at National Review, "President Ethelred":

Like old King Ethelred the Unready, who either had no counsel or had no sense, or both, and often paid the Danegeld rather than attempt to deter the Norsemen, so Barack Obama and his lieutenants still believe that they can both appease radical Islam and convince others that is not what they are doing....

The murder of Ambassador Stevens may well have been the most horrific killing in our nation’s diplomatic history. The administration’s original narrative — that the ambassador got separated from his security detail, suffocated amid the smoke, and was found unconscious by well-meaning Libyans who, in concern, rushed him to the hospital — cannot be true. Some disturbing rumors and evidence later emerged to the effect that Stevens may have had no real security detail to speak of, but was helped only by the brave ad hoc service of some private security contractors, who gave their lives to save an American diplomat without military support. More disturbing even than the absence of adequate military security was the likelihood that Stevens was attacked viciously by the mob, perhaps sexually brutalized by it, and then taunted by his killers, before being dumped in the street. In the long history of attacks on our embassies, I cannot think of a comparable instance where an ambassador was caught alone, mobbed, tortured, and photographed in extremis — or where an administration was so averse to disclosing any details of his demise.

Obama genuinely seems to believe that he, his administration, our present foreign policy, and America 2012 are somehow not the real objects of hate of the Arab Street mobs. That disconnect was also the theme of his mythmaking in Cairo, of his al-Arabiya interview, and of his apologetic commentary to the French and the Turks: A pre-Obama America was hubristic, insensitive, and culpable for damaged bilateral relations and would be acknowledged as such by an Obama America.

When Daniel Ortega enumerated the crimes of the United States in the presence of the president, Barack Obama did not defend his country, but simply shrugged, “I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.” In other words, Obama felt that while his country may not have been innocent, he, a mere toddler at the time, most certainly was — and that he is innocent now as well.

In the context of the Middle East, Obama is thus naturally confused by the violence. He had assumed the Islamic mobs realize that America changed after 2008. So while Muslim complaints against the United States certainly had some validity at one time, such writs can no longer be valid after Obama assumed the presidency. The Arab Street could not possibly be angry at Barack Obama, the Nobel laureate and sympathetic supporter of Arab Muslims. The murdering must be an artifact, a fluke brought on by some right-wing, provocative American zealot, whose constitutionally protected rights to obnoxious free expression are overshadowed by the damage he has done in giving millions the impression that a reset America of 2012 still bears some resemblance to the America of 1776 to 2008.

We can see this disconnect in both the serious and the trivial: from Obama’s use of the adjective “natural” to describe unhinged mobs attacking U.S. properties over a video trailer, to his new personalized campaign version of the American flag. In that sense, one cannot entirely damn Mr. Morsi as he lectures America on its shortcomings — given that much of his complaint merely follows up on Obama’s own. Thus he may feel that he is ingratiating himself with the administration by channeling the Cairo speech.

If Obama were a conservative Republican, a George W. Bush for example, the media narrative of Libyagate would be one of an asleep, incompetent president, lieutenants who were brazenly mendacious, an incompetent secretary of state, and an administration conspiracy of silence — juxtaposed with a wider story of a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, an abandonment of any influence in Iraq, a refusal to recognize the situation in Syria and Egypt — and impotence as a war looms between Iran and Israel.

Will we ever know the circumstances that led to the murder of Ambassador Stevens? Only when government auditors and inquirers feel free to find and disclose the truth, which probably means sometime after the Obama administration is well out of office.

I'll have more later from the President Clusterf-k Chronicles.

Sunday Cartoons

On Monday, because Wordsmith at Flopping Aces was running late yesterday.

See, "Sunday (Evening) Funnies."

And see Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Round Up..."

CARTOON CREDIT: Net Right Daily.

Muslims Burn Buddhist Temples in Bangladesh

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Muslims in Bangladesh torch Buddhist temples over Facebook image." (There's video here.)

And at Atlas Shrugs, "Bangladesh: Muslims Torch Buddhist Temples, Homes":

As the West continues to abridge its freedoms, sanction the most violent and extreme ideology on the face of the earth, and destroy those who dare speak against the sharia, the global jihad rages on ........ burning, slaughtering and making life hell on earth for non-Muslims in Muslim countries.

Savages.

Read it all at the link.

Team Romney Sees Debates as Chance For Campaign Reset

At the Los Angeles Times, "Mitt Romney, struggling, makes a new effort to connect"

As Mitt Romney prepares for his pivotal first debate against President Obama, his campaign is struggling to regain its footing. By recalibrating his message and increasing his interactions with reporters, Romney is trying to reignite his presidential bid at a critical time, with just over a month until election day and early voting underway in many key swing states.

He is still struggling to connect with voters, a challenge that has confronted him since the primaries. And he has often spent more time fundraising than campaigning in battleground states, where recent polling shows Obama gaining ground.

A campaign that once gloated about expanding the electoral map for Republicans is now fiercely fighting to hang on to states that were once considered favorable territory for the GOP nominee, such as North Carolina.

Romney continues to be dogged by the release of a secretly taped video that shows him denigrating nearly half the population, forcing him to play up his empathy. And despite repeated pledges by his campaign to offer specifics, even some supporters say he is too vague about his plans. All this is why political experts say Wednesday's debate is so crucial.

"Mitt Romney has been defined by the Obama campaign over the course of the summer, and over the last couple weeks, by a series of mistakes. In the debates there's an opportunity to reset that because there's a massive audience share and Mitt Romney needs to go in there and needs to win," said Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who worked for Sen. John McCain's 2008 campaign.

Despite unhappiness with Obama among some voters, Romney has struggled to convince the nation that he would be a better president. His advisors have tried in recent weeks to blend his economic message with a sharper critique of the president's foreign policy.

Russ Schriefer, a top Romney strategist, said the candidate was striving to strike a balance between responding to current events and driving a broader message about what four more years of an Obama presidency would mean for taxes, healthcare and the federal debt, an issue that has particular resonance for independents.

"What we'll be doing over the next five weeks is contrasting [Romney's and Obama's] views very specifically," he said.

It's been a rough few weeks. The debates will be crucial for Romney.