Unexpectedly! Gas Prices Rise Overnight to New Record

At the Los Angeles Times, "Gas prices in California rise to another new record."

And Bob Owens gets apocalyptic:

The polimedia seems to be vastly underestimating (or at least, under reporting) that at least some of the conditions for widespread civic unrest are coming to a head in California. When people miss just a few meals, society quickly falls apart. How much more stress can the overburdened system handle before falling apart? I’d say that I hope we don’t have to find out, but with California’s unavoidable bankruptcy and insurmountable bureaucracy, it is more likely that we’re really just facing a matter of “when.”

The New York Times is even on this story, "Gas Prices Rise Again Overnight in California" (via Memeorandum).

BONUS: At American Thinker, "Obama's gasoline prices; a highly regressive tax."

IMAGE CREDIT: Director Blue, "Yes, you can get $1.84 gallon gas in Cincinnati! Just ask!"

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

Also at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Round Up..."

More at Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – A Chainsaw We Can Believe In."

CARTOON CREDIT: William Warren.

BONUS: At LAT, "Awakened in Venezuela capital by reveille, voters head for polls."

BWAHAHA! Progressives Freak Out After Mary Matalin Calls Out 'NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING' Economist Paul Krugman

Check the links at Memeorandum, especially the stooge Heather Parton at Digby's. These people can't stand a GOP woman --- a strong woman, who progs are supposed to embrace --- slapping down the idiot NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING economist Paul Krugman as a dirty liar. And Krugman's facial expressions completely give up the game: he's been found out as the dishonest New York Times hack that he is. Watch it:

MATALIN: You have mischaracterized and you have lied about every position and every particular of the Ryan plan on Medicare, from the efficiency of Medicare administration, to calling it a voucher plan, so you’re hardly credible on calling somebody else a liar.

The full video is here: "Vice Presidential Debate 2012, Paul Ryan Vs Joe Biden; 'This Week' Roundtable." Matalin's dropping her head in disbelief listening to Krugman's bullshit bloviating.

Robert Gibbs Doubles Down on Obama's '$5 Trillion' Lies

At The Hill, "Gibbs: Mitt Romney delivered ‘dishonest’ debate performance."

At the caption at the video:

On ABC's "This Week" on October 7, Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs doubles down on false $5 trillion tax attack even after being confronted with his own campaign's admission the attack was false.

The Democrats are the biggest lying assholes. Like children, gawd. Just awful people.

New Romney Ad Hammers Obama's '$5 Trillion' Lies

At The Hill (via Memeorandum).

I love the supreme irony of lying liar Stephanie Cutter debunking President Obama's lying lies. They're both lying freakin' assholes.

Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram is 'Very Sad' That Communist Historian Eric Hobsbawm Has Died

Chris Bertram is professor of philosophy at University of Bristol, in Southwest England. He's an expert on Rousseau, apparently, and, from what I gather, a fan of Karl Marx as well, or some variation of Marxism. Most interestingly, he's a defender of Joseph Stalin, or at least the Stalinist model of Soviet Communism, from what appears in the comments at his post at Crooked Timber, "Eric Hobsbawm is dead."

Perhaps he's just being playful, but Bertram's sense of humor is rather Stalinist as well:

Jonathan, ajay …

Annoying as our commenters often are, I’m not persuaded that it would less bad to murder them if there were more people around.

But especially interesting is Bertram's response to A.N. Wilson indictment of Hobsbawm at London's Daily Mail, "He hated Britain and excused Stalin's genocide. But was hero of the BBC and the Guardian, Eric Hobsbawm a TRAITOR too?"

Read that, and then Bertram's comment here:

That Daily Mail piece is truly marvellous. One of the upsides of the death of someone like Hobsbawm is that all the real arseholes are given an opportunity to remind us all what arseholes they are, and A.N. Wilson is no exception. The DM, of course, was rather partial to the Third Reich.

He doesn't dispute the facts in evidence regarding the Communist Hobsbawm. He simply, rather childishly, calls Wilson an asshole and the Daily Mail a Nazi organ.

Of course, this is Crooked Timber, an extreme left-wing academic blog, with contributors such as the socialist crank political scientist Henry Farrell, who I've blogged about many times. (Farrell got all butt-hurt when Glenn Beck singled out violent socialist Frances Fox Piven in his broadcasts a couple of years back.)

In any case, recall the comments from Bret Stephens' essay previously, "Eric Hobsbawm and the Details of History."

Contemporary leftists embrace their extremists and totalitarians, from the Occupy Movement to dictators like Fidel Castro. And for some, even Joseph Stalin wasn't too extreme. You simply cannot find comparable affinity to far-right extremism among today's conservatives in American politics. And it says something that it's the right that the mainstream press has attacked remorselessly this last few years as essentially white supremacists and Klansmen, while we have a president who was trained by Communist Party members and who palled around with Weather Underground terrorists in the radical leftist marination of Chicago's community organizing thug politics. All of these points are facts. The left has no problem with socialism and Communist Party politics --- for progressives and Democrat Party hacks, there are no enemies on the left, as I've long argued at this blog. Indeed, one of the lasting implications of the Obama interregnum will be the degree to which the extreme left ideological fringe has been mainstreamed in current political life.

Ambassador Susan Rice Denies Lying About Libya Attacks

At the Washington Post, "UN Ambassador Susan Rice denies she was trying to mislead Congress about attack in Libya."

But see the Wall Street Journal, "Discord Skewed Benghazi Response: Divergent Views, Agency Infighting Slow White House Efforts to Address the Cause of Deadly Strike on Consulate in Libya":

WASHINGTON—New details are emerging of discord among federal agencies that has complicated the Obama administration's response to last month's deadly attack on the American consulate in Libya, creating intense political pressure for the White House just weeks ahead of the presidential election.

More than three weeks after the attack on Sept. 11, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents finally reached the scene in Benghazi on Thursday—amid an emerging picture of confusion and competing narratives within the administration and intelligence community about what happened there.

Shifting views within the intelligence community have further complicated the administration's ability to firm up its conclusions about the attack. White House officials were initially aware of intelligence reports that suggested a possible connection to al Qaeda, administration officials said.

But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence discounted those reports in its initial statements about the attack, and the White House stuck to those conclusions, making it appear, at least to the public, like it was behind the curve.

Critics of that response paint a picture of a White House preoccupied with the president's re-election campaign and determined to take the most cautious approach possible. White House officials strongly reject suggestions that politics were at play in its response to the crisis.

On Friday, the administration continued to face criticism that those initial statements were misleading, including comments on Sept. 16 by Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, that the attack was a spontaneous uprising prompted by an inflammatory video.

"Elements of the intelligence community apparently told the administration within hours of the attack that militants connected with al Qaeda were involved, yet Ambassador Rice claims her comments five days later reflected the 'best' and 'current' assessment of the intelligence community," Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz) said Friday. "Either the Obama administration is misleading Congress and the American people, or it is blaming the entire failure on the intelligence community."

Two weeks after the incident, which led to the first killing of a U.S. ambassador in a generation, the administration called it an organized attack by terrorists with links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. overhauled the way it collects and analyzes intelligence to ensure contrary views are considered and assessments from across the government properly aired.

Among the post-2001 changes was the creation of the DNI to oversee the 16 U.S. spy agencies. The office is responsible for collating agencies' intelligence and reaching a consensus view to present to the president.

The DNI contended with dueling positions after the Benghazi attack. Within 48 hours, some military and intelligence analysts started briefing lawmakers about what they saw as evidence suggesting al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, was involved in the assault.

These analysts pointed to intercepted conversations between militants involved in the attackon the U.S. Consulate and a nearby annex that was used for intelligence programs. The Central Intelligence Agency produced a similar document citing AQIM links.

Other officials, including those at the DNI and FBI, were more cautious about AQIM's involvement, calling the early information inconclusive. At least some of the communications were members of AQIM bragging about their roles after the attack, officials said. One official said such boastfulness is commonplace and isn't proof of involvement.

The DNI presented to the White House its view that the assault grew out of a spontaneous protest over the anti-Islamic video produced by a provocateur in California. DNI analysts then thought that "at best, al Qaeda sympathizers" were involved, playing down communications pointing to AQIM, according to a senior intelligence official.

White House officials were aware of the reports of AQIM communications from the start, according to administration officials, but they relied on the DNI's assessment. Officials said the White House treated those communications as classified.

Based on those early DNI assessments, intelligence agencies developed unclassified talking points, and provided them to members of Congress of both parties, among others. The White House said the information was developed at the request of lawmakers.

On Sept. 14, White House spokesman Jay Carney described the unrest that unfolded across the Middle East, including most notably at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, as a "response to a video that is offensive."

Amb. Rice used CIA talking points, which were updated on Sept. 15, when she was dispatched to appear on a round of news programs on Sunday, Sept. 16, officials said. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers had been hearing the more aggressive interpretation from intelligence officials—and weighed in with their own assessments, charging the administration had failed to provide sufficient security and missed signs of the impending terrorist attack.

Intelligence that suggested possible al Qaeda involvement also surfaced in comments by other public officials and in news reports, but the administration didn't change its line.

"It's not a matter of the intelligence they were given," Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), House intelligence committee chairman, said of the administration. "It is a matter of how they interpreted the intelligence."

That's called plausible deniability. And that's always the White House line when information shows it's deceived the public. The Obama people are amateurs and clowns. They need to go and fast.

Obama's a Radical and Enemy of Israel

David Horowitz comments at Fox News:

Polls Show Big Gains for Romney in Swing States

At The Hill, "Polls show Romney making headway in swing states."

Part of the reason Romney's surging is because he's honest, unlike the president:

PREVIOUSLY: "Mitt Romney Debate Bounce."

Wenzel Strategies Poll Has Romney Up 48-47 in Ohio

Now this is interesting, at Politico, "Citizens United poll claims tight race in Ohio" (via Memeorandum). And at Weasel Zippers, "Poll: Romney Making Big Gains In Ohio After Debate, Now In Statistical Tie With Obama…"

And here's the summary:

In the race for President, the public opinion bounce from his strong debate performance last week in Denver has washed over Ohio – Romney has moved ahead of Obama by a singlepoint, 48% to 47%, with 5% yet undecided. This survey includes a partisan sample of 38% Democrat, 37% Republican, and 25% independent voters.

Romney leads Obama among Ohio men, 50% to 44%. Among women, Obama leads by a 51% to 47% margin over Romney. Unlike Democrat Brown in the Senate race, Obama is winning northeastern Ohio, leading Romney there by a 52% to 44% margin. In central Ohio, including the state capital of Columbus – the largest city in the state – Romney leads by a 51% to 48% margin. Romney’s strongest part of the state is the reliably conservative southwest corner, including Cincinnati, where he leads Obama by a 54% to 39% margin.

I especially like that partisan breakdown.

Romney has to win Ohio or it's pretty much over.

Israel Shoots Down Drone That Entered Airspace (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Fighter jets shoot down drone over Israel":

JERUSALEM — Israel scrambled fighter jets to intercept a drone Saturday that crossed deep into Israeli airspace from the Mediterranean Sea, shooting the aircraft down over the country's southern desert, the military said.

The incident marked the first time in at least six years that a hostile aircraft has penetrated Israel's airspace, and Israeli officials said they were taking the incident seriously, raising the possibility of retaliatory action.

It was not immediately clear who launched the drone, but suspicion quickly fell on the Lebanese Islamic militant group Hezbollah. The Iranian-backed group is known to have sent drones into Israeli airspace on several previous occasions.

Tensions are running high between Iran and Israel over Tehran's nuclear program, which the West believes is cover for the development of atomic weapons. The Islamic Republic denies the allegations, and says its program is for peaceful purposes only. Israel has threatened to carry out a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities to prevent Iran from acquiring such weapons.

Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich said Israeli ground systems detected the drone, which flew over the Gaza Strip but did not originate there, Saturday morning. They alerted the air force, which scrambled the jets to intercept the aircraft. She said Israel was still trying to determine where the drone took off from. Nobody was hurt in the incident.

California Gas Prices May Hit Record

I checked over at my local Chevron station, and gas is still $4.70 a gallon, as I mentioned previously.

But today's front-page at the Los Angeles Times has another report on the skyrocketing prices. See, "State gas prices near record":

California drivers are reeling from days of sharp gasoline price increases that left the state within reach of its record high. Economists warn that a prolonged period of elevated gas costs could harm consumers as the holiday shopping season kicks in.

Analysts attributed the price surge to fuel traders' emotional reaction after a series of refinery outages and other problems, including a Northern California refinery fire, a Southern California refinery blackout, pipeline contamination and other events. Some service stations were charging more than $5 a gallon and others stopped buying new supplies out of fear that if the market turned they'd lose money.

"I haven't seen a series of incidents like this, and it has led to the worst panic-driven rise in gasoline prices that I have seen in 35 years," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.

Prices are likely to set records over the weekend, analysts said, but they held out hope that the pain could end soon as fuel production problems subside.

Unhappy motorists said they were caught off guard.

"I went to the Costco station in Pacoima to buy gas on Thursday and was shocked to find it closed," said Max Lang, 45, an engineer who lives in Stevenson Ranch. "I just don't get why it's happening."

Gwen Grace, a 37-year-old homemaker, searched Friday for a price cheaper than the $4.39 a gallon that the USA gas station in Santa Monica was charging. Other nearby stations wanted as much as $5.39, so she bought $20 worth for her Prius and hoped it would last until prices begin to drop.

"It's just depressing," Grace said.

Costco was set to reopen this afternoon, "Closed Costco gas stations to reopen by noon Saturday."

You can't really afford to go anywhere with prices this high. Demand might decline some over the next week,  so perhaps prices will ease. And California's reliably Democrat, so there's not likely to be much political fallout. But things can't keep going like this for too long, or you never know.

If Only He'd Had His Teleprompter!

The left's psychiatric breakdown has been off the charts this last few days (the Mile High altitude got to Obama, don't you know?). And you had to get a kick out of the deranged University of Wisconsin students arguing that O should have been able to use a teleprompter. See, "Obama Supporters Call for Moonbat Messiah to Be Allowed to Use Teleprompter During Debates."

I'm sure we'll have much more epic lulz over the next few weeks, but meanwhile, R.S. McCain's got a great post, "Epistemic Closure Redux: The Campaign, the Debate and the Jobs Report":

The Left’s reaction to Wednesday’s debate and Friday’s job report illustrates why the political conversation in America has become so hopelessly discordant. We are not arguing about two candidates or two parties, but two worldviews. Bad news for President Obama challenges the belief system of the Left; it is not enough for them merely to dispute facts, they must destroy the bearers of bad news — accuse them of deceit and ridicule them as fools.

RTWT.

IMAGE CREDIT: Stoaty Weasel.

Amit Freidman!

That last post on Sam Champion recalled some of my previous Amit Freidman blogging, for example, "Blogger Angry White Dude Announces That He Believes in the Sanctity of Marriage Between One Man and One Hot, Sexy Woman."

And besides, Amit's a lot better looking than Rubem Robierb. So there, you homofascist freaks!

GMA's Sam Champion Comes Out, Announces Engagement to Longtime Brazilian Fine-Arts Photographer Rubem Robierb

How gay.

Shoot, I had no idea Sam Champion was flaming. And that really spoils it! I have a hard enough time watching Good Morning America as it is!

See ABC News, "Sam Champion Engaged to Be Married."

Well, congratulations to the happy couple. And check out that link to ABC News. Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos can't contain themselves, they're so overcome with glee.

Actually, I'm reminded of the big gay marriage debate over the summer, and AWD's post, "HOMOSEXUAL RIGHTS ADVOCATES ARE RUDE, CRUDE, IN-YOUR-FACE BRUTES!":

Homosexuals do not face discrimination. They just don’t get everything they want. They have become offensive bullies who have little decency or concern for how offensive their actions are. In this way, they are little different from the terrorists in the Occupy movement. If homosexuals don’t get their way (34 states have rejected gay marriage), they throw little angry, decadent tantrums designed to shock and nauseate decent people.

Homofascists are their own worst enemy. The buycott of Chick fil A by millions of decent Americans was a huge success. The homosexual kiss-in protest was a total failure. The American people are rising up against the bullying tactics of this small, loud groups of perverts. Why? No, it’s not hate and it’s not fear. IT’S BECAUSE NORMAL PEOPLE DON’T ACT LIKE THAT!

Gwen Stefani Steps Out in Sleek Black Jumpsuit as She Celebrates 43rd Birthday

Man, all these women in their 40s looking absolutely gorgeous.

See London's Daily Mail, "Fabulous at 43! Gwen Stefani looks youthful in a black jumpsuit as she celebrates her birthday with family dinner."

2012 Victoria Secret Fashion Show Airs December 4th

It's become a huge cultural event.

The Victoria's Secret homepage is here.

Reality Crashing Down on Obama and the Obama-Cult Media

From Andrew Klavin, at City Journal, "A Fantasy Election, an Imaginary Man":

Even before his inauguration, Barack Obama was an imaginary man, the creation of his admirers. Think back to the 2008 Time magazine cover depicting him as FDR, the Newsweek cover of the same year on which he was shown casting Lincoln’s shadow, or the $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”—this in 2009, less than a year after he had taken office. It was not that Obama had done nothing to deserve these outsized comparisons and honors—it was not just that he had done nothing—it was that he seemed for all the world to be a blank screen on which such hysterical fantasies could too easily be projected, a two-dimensional paper doll just waiting to be dressed in leftist dreams.

This weird quality of emptiness incited the imaginations of his opponents as well. Among the more paranoid on the right, he’s been called several kinds of Manchurian Candidate: a radical disguised as a moderate, a Muslim disguised as a Christian, a foreigner disguised as an American, and so on. The idea was that his hollow identity was his own insidious creation, the result of sealed college records, votes of “present” in the Illinois state senate, and a supra-partisan persona carefully crafted after a scuttled lifetime of revolutionary ferocity.

To be sure, Obama has disowned the depth of his past associations with such fire-breathing America-haters as William Ayers (“A guy who lives in my neighborhood”) and Jeremiah Wright (“He was never my spiritual mentor”) with startling insouciance. And such previous Obamas as the race-baiting, black-talking demagogue of a 2007 video recently covered in full for the first time by The Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson are not at all apparent in the Obama of the Oval Office or the campaign trail—whom he himself describes as a “non-threatening” statesman. But I think the real Obama has been more or less plain to see. Norman Podhoretz described him best in a 2011 Wall Street Journal op-ed: a typical product of the anti-American academic left, committed to transforming U.S. capitalism into a social-democratic system like Sweden’s.

The mystery Obama—the hollow receptacle of out-sized fantasies left and right—is not a creation of his own making, political chameleon though he may well be. It emanates instead from a journalistic community that no longer in any way fulfills its designated function, that no longer even attempts the fair presentation of facts and current events aimed at helping the American electorate make up its mind according to its own lights. Rather, left-wing outlets like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and the like have now devoted themselves to fashioning an image of the world they think their audiences ought to believe in—that they may guide us toward voting as they think we should. They have fallen prey to that ideological corruption that sees lies as a kind of virtue, as a noble deception in service to a greater good.

Theirs are largely passive lies and lies of omission. The active frauds—NBC’s dishonest editing of videos to reflect a leftist worldview, ABC’s allowing Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos to masquerade as a newsman, the Los Angeles Times’ suppressing even the transcript of the video in their possession that shows candidate Barack Obama at a meeting with a PLO-supporting sheik—these are only egregious salients of the more consistent, underlying dishonesty. The real steady-state corruption is revealed in the way Obama scandals like Fast and Furious, Benghazi-gate, and the repeated breaking of federal campaign laws have been wildly underplayed, while George W. Bush’s non-scandals, like the naming of Valerie Plame and the firings of several U.S. attorneys at the start of his second term, were blown out of all proportion.

And it is revealed in Obama’s blankness, his make-believe greatness, and the suppression, ridicule, and dismissal of any evidence that he is not the man this powerful media faction once wanted so badly for him to be...

VIDEO CREDIT: iOWNTHEWORLD.

Romney Gets a Post-Debate Jolt

Well, Romney seems to be upsetting the Obama-Media's narrative.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Online Donations, Bigger Crowds Gives Campaign Hope; Team Obama Looks to Mute Any Gains":

ABINGDON, Va. — Mitt Romney's strong debate performance Wednesday night has generated $12 million in online contributions, his campaign said, as well as a surge in volunteers and bigger crowds at his events.

The challenge for Mr. Romney in the weeks ahead will be translating this jolt of energy into votes in a race that saw the Republican nominee enter the first debate trailing President Barack Obama in most of the states that will decide the election.

Republicans and Democrats say Mr. Romney's performance before a television audience of some 67 million people bought the GOP nominee a second look from swing voters and may help him improve an image battered by negative ads and his own missteps. The debate also gave Mr. Romney a chance to do something he couldn't in the primary: trumpet his record of working with Democrats and present himself as a practical deal maker who favors results over ideology.

One former Obama White House official said the debate "has caused people to take a second look at Romney."

It is too early to tell how much Mr. Romney moved the needle Wednesday night, and the early evidence is more anecdotal than empirical: Volunteers in Nevada lined up before campaign staff could open the doors on Thursday morning, the campaign said, and larger-than-usual groups showed up to work at field offices across the country. The campaign said it added more than 300,000 new Facebook friends.

The $12 million the campaign reports raising in less than 48 hours after the debate tops the amount Mr. Romney raised in the days after announcing Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) as his running mate and the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a major plank of the president's health-care law. Sixty percent of the money came from first-time donors, the campaign said.

Mr. Romney's debate performance triggered additional volunteers for the GOP's next national turnout drive on Saturday. The number of people who signed up to volunteer to make calls, knock on doors and sign up supporters for Mr. Romney has shot up by nearly 63% since Wednesday night, campaign officials said. The Republican National Committee, working in conjunction with the Romney campaign and its various state parties, expects to contact nearly two million voters on Saturday and roughly five million for the week.

Mr. Obama and his campaign have moved to diminish any bounce Mr. Romney may have gained from the debate, which produced wide agreement among people in both parties that Mr. Romney had bested a lackluster president. At a rally in Fairfax, Va., on Friday, the president mocked Mr. Romney for threatening in the debate to give a pink slip to Big Bird.

More at the link.

And isn't that amazing, how the left turned the campaign into a referendum on Big Bird. That, and the across-the-board attacks on Romney as a "liar," when the biggest lie at the debate was the Democrats' bogus "5 trillion tax cut"whopper. See, "Oops! Stephanie Cutter admits she and Obama are lying liars with ‘$5 trillion’ attack on Romney."

PREVIOUSLY: "Mitt Romney Debate Bounce."

Smokin' Jennie Garth in People Magazine Cover Shoot

I'm looking at my wife's People Magazine and Jenna Garth looks fabulous. And what do you know? A video from the photo shoot: