Romney Moves Into Leads in Florida, Virginia; Tied in Ohio

Check the findings for Friday, October 5th, at RealClearPolitics.

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)."