Happy "Spreading the Candy Around"Halloween.

Sandy proves it. Or so big government liberals would like to think.

We know liberals are worried that President Obama might lose next week, but are they so panicky that they want to suggest even before the storm has passed that Mitt Romney and Republicans are against disaster relief? Apparently so. It's an especially low-rent tactic, akin to blaming the tea party for Jared Lee Loughner's shooting of Gabby Giffords. But it's equally absurd to argue that a once-in-a-century storm means you can't block-grant Medicaid.

My print column is up.

UPDATE: WaPo's David Ignatius joins the questioners. More here.

When did the president learn of the attack? The White House is refusing to answer. Why?

This was too offensive for Facebook

This wasn't...



Brought to you by Michael Moore and Moveon.org (Warning very foul language.)

Headline:

Obama dominates Romney in Russian opinion poll

Of course, they like "flexible" American presidents in the old Soviet Union

Bret Stephens on crony socialism, crony capitalism and our "has been" president.

When the history of this administration is written, maybe someone will note the dissonance between the president's hip persona and his retro ideology. Here was a man who promised a "transformative" presidency. Yet when transformation came, it amounted to a two-pronged attempt to impose, from one side, a version of European social democracy by way of ObamaCare, and from the other side a version of Chinese state-directed "capitalism" by way of the stimulus.

Read it all.

Planned Parenthood and its White House shill continue to misinform the American people. Meanwhile, in Libya... My print column is up.

From the comments, "terafied" takes great offense:

You know what? Stop. Just stop. Uninformed rants like this are destructive and idiotic. Planned Parenthood is a PRIMARY CARE PROVIDER offering baseline medical care for women who can't afford to get it elsewhere. They never claimed to be anything other than that. They do, however, administer reproductive health exams, including breast checks. They are trained to spot abnormalities, and if they do, they will send patients to imaging centers JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER PHYSICIAN DOES. And they also will pre-qualify low-income patients for the cost of mammography, by connecting them with programs such as Medicaid, or using their own Title X funding, to pay that patient's bill - UNLIKE EVERY OTHER PHYSICIAN.

Your campaign of terror against a longstanding, respected healthcare organization will not be tolerated any longer. We who admire the work Planned Parenthood has done over many decades are going to call you on your lies and misinformation. In the future, before regurgitating the rightwing memes, please do some research. The attempt to malign this lifeline for low-income women is appalling.

My "campaign of terror," heh! But "lies" and "misinformation"? It is Planned Parenthood and the President who have misinformed people, according to the liberal-leaning FactCheck.org.

These same liberal "fact checkers" had Planned Parenthood's back when it accepted its ridiculous claim of only 3 percent of it's operation being devoted to abortion services. This is complete baloney. Abortion is by far PP's largest income producer, bringing in more than $165 million a year, and still the organization demands hundreds of millions more in taxpayer funds. And it gets it.

This despite Planned Parenthood personnel being repeatedly caught on tape breaking state laws and helping minors to hide abortions from their parents, protecting statutory rapists, and defending sex selection abortions.

Undercover pro-life activists have caught PP doing all these things on videotape. How dare they "terrorize" Planned Parenthood in this way.

Fans of this abortion giant, like "terafied" won't "tolerate" it. But they are happily tolerating the president's stonewalling on what happened in Libya on 9/11.

At least they have their priorities straight.

Liberals are making the parodies too easy these days.

... concerning the attack on our embassy in Libya.

In light of his recent claim to have issued directives to secure embassy personnel, Bill Kristol would like to know:

1.) To whom did the president give the first of his "three very clear directives"—that is, "make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to?"
2.) How did he transmit this directive to the military and other agencies?
3.) During the time when Americans were under attack, did the president convene a formal or informal meeting of his national security council? Did the president go to the situation room?
4.) During this time, with which members of the national security team did the president speak directly?
5.) Did Obama speak by phone or teleconference with the combatant commanders who would have sent assistance to the men under attack?
6.) Did he speak with CIA director David Petraeus?
7.) Was the president made aware of the repeated requests for assistance from the men under attack? When and by whom?
8.) Did he issue any directives in response to these requests?
9.) Did the president refuse to authorize an armed drone strike on the attackers?
10.) Did the president refuse to authorize a AC-130 or MC-130 to enter Libyan airspace during the attack?

I'm guessing before all those questions are answered, the president will assert "Executive Privilege."

Here's what the CIA says...

"No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”

UPDATE: From The Blaze:

Francis “Bing” West, who served as an assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that the president’s explanation about his actions when the U.S. mission in Benghazi was attacked should be easily verifiable.

“President Obama today said that he gave an order to everyone while the attack was going on to do everything they could to secure the personnel,” West said. “Now that’s really big because that means that those who were turning down [former Navy SEAL] Ty Woods when he was asking for the help were going against the orders of the president of the United States.”

Woods was one of four Americans killed in the Libya assault. Obama on Friday wouldn’t answer directly whether pleas for help on the ground were denied during the attack, telling KUSA-TV, “the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.”
 

“A chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn’t take an order from the president when he says ‘do everything’ and not put that in writing and send it out to the chain of command,” West said. “If that actually happened the way President Obama today said it happened, there’s a paper trail and I think people reasonably enough can say, ‘well can we see the order?’ because hundreds of others supposedly saw this order.”

 “But if there is no order then people have to ask some very basic questions, ‘what the heck happened?’” he said.

Well, an investigation is underway. But it won't be done until after the election, don't you know.

All you have to do to see where liberal social and government policies lead is look at our most liberal states, New York, California and Illinois. They are fiscal and social basket cases, as Yale's Walter Russell Mead and a few others have noticed:

Illinois politicians, including the present President of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies — and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.

 Read it all here.

The president diagnoses his opponent of having Stage 3 Romnesia for his alleged flip-flops on issues.

But what does he call his own flip flops?

Bamnesia will do.

Voter Fraud? There's no such thing as voter fraud? This is all a GOP attempt to suppress the voting rights of...  uh... Oh crap!

The Donald promised a big, big story earlier this week, one that could change the outcome of the presidential election. Instead we got this...

And I thought he'd gotten Obama to agree to appear on Celebrity Apprentice.

Rats!

Hey, look what's playing at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute.



It scared the crap out of me when I was 7.

Clint Eastwood for Romney...



Morgan Freeman for Obama...

... actor, Peace Corps volunteer, African pig farmer and Obama volunteer. My print column is up.

NRO interviews Sabrina Schaeffer who isn't buying the Democrats claims that the GOP is waging a War on Women:

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: You contend that there is no “war on women” in the United States. If that’s the case, why does the Left seem to think it’s an accusation with traction?

SABRINA SCHAEFFER: There is absolutely no war on women. And the claim that one political party is openly hostile to more than 50 percent of the electorate should strike any reasonable person as absurd. You don’t have to be a political scientist to know that women – single or married, rural or urban, young or old, mothers or childless — are not a homogenous voting bloc. The reality is the “war on women” rhetoric is a despicable use of gender politics and fearmongering by Democrats to try to shore up a critical constituency — single women — whom the president won by a 45-point margin in 2008. These single female voters are a critical part of the Democratic base, and they are the basis for Sandra Fluke’s fame, the “Life of Julia” infographic, and the “war on women” narrative.

Read it all.

Obama didn't lie about sequestration? He was just "mistaken."

“What the president said is not correct,” Woodward told POLITICO Tuesday. “He’s mistaken. And it’s refuted by the people who work for him."

Doh!

It's the cost, stupid.

The problem for Planned Parenthood—which thinks and acts much more like a business than most people realize—is that mammograms are much less profitable than the relatively lucrative procedure of abortion. 

Read it all.

The tragedy and fiasco in Libya came up and then went away in last night's final presidential debate. But Bing West still has some pertinent and angry questions about it. Like why there was no military response to the attack while it was going on.

Fighter jets could have been at Benghazi in an hour; the commandos inside three hours. If the attackers were a mob, as intelligence reported, then an F18 in afterburner, roaring like a lion, would unnerve them. This procedure was applied often in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Conversely, if the attackers were terrorists, then the U.S. commandos would eliminate them. But no forces were dispatched from Sigonella.

Read it all.

 

The WSJ remembers George McGovern:

McGovern was an honest, good-humored man, and one of our memories involves an op-ed he wrote for the Journal in 1992 on the perils of running a small business. After retiring from the Senate, he fulfilled a lifetime ambition to buy and operate the Stratford Inn in Connecticut. The inn failed, in part due to a recession that was more severe in New England than elsewhere, but also because of the burdens imposed by government.

"My business associates and I also lived with federal, state and local rules that were all passed with the objective of helping employees, protecting the environment, raising tax dollars for schools, protecting our customers from fire hazards, etc.," he wrote.

"While I never have doubted the worthiness of any of these goals, the concept that most often eludes legislators is: 'Can we make consumers pay the higher prices for the increased operating costs that accompany public regulation and government reporting requirements with reams of red tape.'" The entire op-ed is available on OpinionJournal.com.

Makes you wonder what he would have thought of Obamacare as a business owner. 

The New Yorker endorses (yawn) Obama. Go figure, given how its staff has always thought of the rest of the country. They'll be shocked, shocked! if Mitt Romney wins, given they won't know anyone who voted for him.

Robert Samuelson on the unintended consequences of Obamacare: confusion, evasion, and fewer jobs. Just what America needs during the worst economic recovery in the nation's history.

[Posted By Jake]

Once you get past the Libya lie and CNN Candy's complicity in legitimizing that lie, it was quite remarkable that the main talking point after the second Presidential debate was Governor Romney's use of a "binder" in his recruitment of women to serve in Massachusetts state government. Why did all those deep thinkers in the media focus on the trivial and miss the instructive connection between the Libya and women's pay debate questions?

Even esteemed Daily Times Editor, Phil Heron, felt compelled to regurgitate the disingenuous Democratic spin while failing to mention that men in the Obama administration are compensated 18% more than women in the same position, and that Massachusetts under Romney was recognized for employing more woman in more senior positions than any other state.

Left unsaid in the binder meme was crazy Joe Biden's assertion one week earlier in the Vice-Presidential debate, between his snorts, guffaws and other rude noises, that State Department intelligence failed to advise the White House that this was an act of terror. This followed weeks of Obama excuses, apologizing for a 13-minute YouTube video that no one saw, and ignoring the late Ambassador Stevens' pleas for more security at the Benghazi consulate.

The net effect of Biden's and Obama's misrepresentations is to throw Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, under the bus. How can any responsible analysis of the debates ignore this public humiliation of Hillary? Hasn't this poor woman suffered enough? Why do these politically ambitious liars keep dumping on her? No matter how much you disagree with her politics, you have to admire her fortitude.

It's apparent today's journalists haved turned into partisan cheerleaders when Governor Romney's commitment to equality is nitpicked over a "binder", while Obama and Biden impugn the reputation of their highest-ranking female Cabinet officer without question or consequence. America is much better served with Romney walking the walk rather than Obama talking the talk.

The Union Leader endorses Romney:

Barack Obama was in Manchester on Thursday. When he came to Veterans Park in 2008, he sold “hope and change.” He was uplifting, inspiring. Last week, that was gone. In its place was the negativity, the deception, the nastiness that Obama once said he wanted to remove from politics.

Obama offered New Hampshire nothing but bitterness and envy. He attacked Romney with a litany of mischaracterizations and deliberate falsehoods.

It was far from the uplifting message Obama delivered four years ago. But four years ago Obama did not have an indefensible record.

Read it all.

My print column is up.

Have been off the grid since last Saturday. The world continued to spin without our scintillating observations. Imagine that!

Stay tuned.

Sesame Street asks Obama campaign to take down attack ad featuring Big Bird.

Reached for comment, Mr. Bird said, "The Obama people are making me look like a jerk in need of a government handout. I'm good. I'm rich. I'm worth a couple hundred mil. That's a lot of bird seed, bro."

You know Joe Biden reminded me of last night in his debate with Paul Ryan? Crocker Jarman, the elder, bring-home-the-bacon Republican senator from California in the movie, "The Candidate." Angry, condescending, over-talking, a throw-back to a different time.

It was Paul Ryan, the conservative, who kept his cool and made his points. He ably defended the proposed policies of the Romney/Ryan ticket. He pointed out the failures of the Obama administration without sounding shrill or nasty. He didn't mug for the camera, sigh, roll his eyes, or otherwise try to distract viewers from what his opponent was saying. He was a perfect gentleman.

He was the anti-Joe Biden.

A certain type of Democrat will take solace from Biden's performance. He was aggressive and on offense most of the night, accusing Romney of insulting his own mother and father with his 47 percent remark, and trying to scare seniors and middle-class workers into believing that the GOP ticket is only interested in tax cuts for the rich.

His blustery performance was an attempt to distract voters from the record of the Obama administration and the fact that neither he nor the president have a credible plan to improve the economy over the next four years.

He did what partisan Democrats were so disappointed that President Obama didn't do during his debate. He attacked the "enemy." The problem with that is that Independents and swing voters don't see Republicans as the enemy. They see an economy that is limping along, 23 million under or unemployed, failing wages and all the rest. They see a President who hasn't lived up to his promises or billing.

It is old liberal lions like Joe Biden who want to hold on to an unsustainable status quo when it comes to medicare, social security and other entitlements. He is the Crocker Jarman of this administration. And win or lose this election, his unaffordable, big union, welfare-state liberalism is on the way out.



UPDATE: Mike Barone agrees with Spencerblog.

Joe Biden appealed to Democratic partisans, firing them up by attacking and, even more often, smirking at Paul Ryan’s arguments. But smirks only work when your audience starts off agreeing with you. That would be the case with strong Democratic partisans, but it’s not at all that clear that it appeals to Independents, or to those who are undecided or moveable. He was trying to dismiss Ryan’s arguments as ridiculous, in line with Democratic talking points that no rational person could possibly agree with him, but I think that only works with people who are already convinced. He may have increased Democratic voters’ enthusiasm—down in the dumps after Barack Obama’s performance eight days ago—but he didn’t do much in the way of converting those who are not already converted.

Sounds right.

UPDATE II: Come to think about it, Crocker Jarman wasn't this ridiculous.

UPDATE III: CNN poll: Ryan beats Biden, 48 to 44. Sounds about where the overall race is, which is bad, bad news for Democrats.

Robbie Lowrey is 57. He has Down syndrome and he has lived at the Don Guanella home for the mentally disabled since he was 6. His sister, Patti, is worried about what will happen to him if and when the CK Center is closed down.

My print column is up.

... but get a tissue handy.

Prez debate moderator Jim Lehrer is taking a lot of guff for allowing Romney and Obama to actually debate each other, mostly (but not exclusively) from Obama supporters. Spencerblog believes Lehrer did a bang-up job, getting out of the way and letting the two go at it. Unfortunately for Team Obama, their fighter didn't want to. That's his fault, not Lehrer's.

Lehrer defends himself here.

"The first few times I said 'let's move on' and they wanted to keep talking, the inclination of course is to stop them so I could cover all the subjects I wanted to cover," he said. "But I'm sitting there thinking, 'Wait a minute, they're talking to each other, leave 'em alone.' So I backed off."

He'd get much harsher criticism if he prematurely stopped discussions, he said.

"Not only that, but I would have deserved it," he said.

Spencerblog completely agrees. Now, let's see what the "moderators" in the upcoming debates do. Will they try to make themselves the story. Or will they let the candidates have at each other? We're rooting for the latter.

Andrew Sullivan is looking at the Pew presidential poll and wetting himself. This is the worst thing to happen since Trig Palin turned out to actually be his mother's son.

Hugo Chavez wins re-election and he didn't even have to blatantly steal it. All he had to do was dependent-ize a majority of his country's population and rig the electoral system to his advantage.

Could it happen here? Sure. Bret Stephens reports.

[Posted by Jake]

We've all heard the prevailing wisdom that no President has ever been re-elected with an unemployment rate above 8%. So is anyone surprised that, right on cue, the government jobs report squeaks just under that symbolic 8% threshold, conveniently one month before the election?

Fresh off Obama's embarrassing performance in the debate last Wednesday, otherwise known as the "debacle in Denver", these supposedly neutral government reports couldn't have come at a better time for the President. His campaign could switch gears from making excuses for Obama's 90-minute broadcast meltdown to reiterating the fantasy that their economic plans were finally beginning to work. It's too bad actually, because the post-debate excuses were almost as entertaining as the actual event.

Unfortunately, there is no entertainment value in the human misery these labor statistics convey. Even if you accept the new 7.8% unemployment numbers, they are based upon assumptions that reflect an America in profound distress. The total unemployment and underemployment rate (the U6 computation) remains the same, a debilitating 14.7%.

Likewise, the labor force participation rate has not changed and is stuck at a 30-year low. If this labor force participation rate was the same size as when Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.7%. It should be no cause for celebration that millions of Americans have given up looking for work.

So the politicking and spinning will go on, obscuring the high cost of this Administration's economic and leadership failures. What is especially troubling is that in Mitt Romney we have perhaps the most qualified person ever to run for President and fix these problems. As long as the voters permit these "Wag The Dog" or "Wag The Economist" campaigns to dumb down our public discourse, then we will continue to suffer with a partisan, incompetent government diminishing the American dream.

From Drudge:

Raccoons Slowly Taking Over NYC, Hissing At People...

Isn't that how the Democrats did it?

Listen to the song. See to the movie.



My print column is up.

This is what happens when you go with replacement umps. Oh wait...

Vote Like Your Lady Parts Depend on It? Never mind, sez the Obama campaign. Too bad. It has such a nice ring to it.

WaPo columnist David Ignatius is in Syria with the anti-Assad revolutionaries. Good stuff.

In today's column, I mention the exchange between President Obama and Mitt Romney during their debate involving the supposed "tax break" that American companies get for moving jobs overseas.

When Obama mentioned this talking point, Romney replied, "I've been in business 25 years and I have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe I should get a new accountant."

Obama offered no defense of his statement.

But today, John Nichols over at The Nation - a far left political magazine - does.

Obama was talking about strategies for getting new revenues without raising taxes on struggling businesses: “(Part) of the way to do it is to not give tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas,” said the president. “Right now, you can actually take a deduction for moving a plant overseas. I think most Americans would say that doesn't make sense. And all that raises revenue.”

That’s not actually a debatable point. The U.S. tax code has, since the 1980s, provided multinational corporations with tax breaks for moving jobs overseas.

No, it doesn't and no it hasn't. What the tax code reasonably allows is U.S. companies not to pay taxes on profits not earned in this country. Businesses pay the taxes to the country where they are earned (at the rates those governments charge). Corporate profits are only taxed when it is brought back to this country. Because of our high corporate tax rates, businesses are discouraged from repatriating that cash. Lower tax rates would not only encourage businesses to repatriate that cash, it would encourage the companies to stay here in the first place.

Imagine, you owned a business in New Jersey and you moved it to Pennsylvania because you found the workers and the tax rates in the Keystone state to be better. But you continued to live in New Jersey. Would the Garden State be giving you "a tax break" if it didn't put lien on your house for moving your business to a more hospitable environment? Of course not.

Writes Nichols:

Democrats and Republicans have talked for years about changing the code. The issue was debated in the Senate as recently as July, when Republicans blocked action on the “Bring Jobs Home Act,” which would have provided a 20 percent tax break for the costs of moving jobs back to the U.S. 

See the difference? An actual "tax break" is being proposed for business to moving jobs to the U.S. There isn't a "tax break" for leaving.

Add Nichols:

That measure, would, as well, have rescinded business expense deductions that CNN notes are now “available to companies that are associated with the cost of moving operations overseas."

No wonder the GOP didn't support it.

The reason some businessmen, like Steve Jobs for instance, open a plant oversees is to escape the oppressively hostile business environment they find in states like California. They don't get U.S. tax breaks for doing so. They just aren't punished as severely as liberals would like them.

The Obama/Nichols position is like saying the federal government gives you a tax break for dying. Only, it doesn't. It charges you to leave this veil of tears as well.

UPDATE: Just saw this exchange in the comments section of today's column on this very point.

From Stephen Chapman:

Wow Gil - guess you don't know how to do any research do you? Companies DO receive tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas - just like they receive a tax break for moving to Iowa from Philadelphia. any normal business expense related to relocating operations is tax deductible - whether moving overseas or domestically. You could argue that Obama is being disingenuous when he says that companies receive a tax break for moving jobs overseas. But you didn't. You said he was wrong. Well Gil, guess you never heard of google or don't know any accountants or CPA's huh? Epic Fail Gil. Epic Fail.

DelcoBrian responds:

Stephen:
There is NO tax deduction for moving jobs overseas as the President says. I am a CPA, and there is no section in the Internal Revenue Code that says this. A US company having a business that has employees in the US or a foreign county has the same tax deduction for the cost of those employees no mater where they are working. Even if a US company has all of their production overseas (Apple comes to mind), they still have to pay US taxes on their worldwide income. So based on these facts, the President is lying. I know that is tough for liberals to absorb, but it's the truth.

Obviously, I agree with Brian. There is a substantial difference between a standard business deduction and tax break. 

The editor of the Washington Examiner defends his paper's revisiting of Obama's rise in Chicago politics against a Washington Post blogger who claims there's nothing to see here.

Stuff we learned...

• Contrary to the mythology of Obama as idealistic defender of the poor, attorney Obama helped a famous Chicago slumlord get off with a $50 fine after the guy failed to turn the lights and water back on in the affordable-housing complex from which he had also thrown out the residents in the dead of winter.• Contrary to the mythology of Obama as the principled speaker of truth to corrupt power, Obama's 1997 Valentine's Day speech pointed the way to uniting Chicago's infamous Daley political machine with its longtime nemesis, the city's liberal activists. Key to the deal: using tax dollars and credits to build affordable housing. Developers got rich, liberal activists got jobs and influence, politicians got campaign money, and poor people got the shaft.• Contrary to the mythology about Obama as "rock-star" law professor, his students at the University of Chicago Law School often ranked him in the bottom half of the faculty. During Obama's final years teaching, only a minority of his students said they would recommend his course.

Interesting. But of course his class was obviously chock full of racists. 

Robert Samuelson demolishes the Obama claim on Romney's alleged $5 trillion tax cut for the rich.

WASHINGTON -- After 47 percent, the campaign's most incendiary number is $5 trillion. That's the tax cut planned by Mitt Romney with most benefits going to the wealthy, according to President Obama and his campaign. The president has used the figure repeatedly, as have his surrogates and ads. In Wednesday's debate, Romney vehemently denied that there ever was a $5 trillion tax cut for the rich. He's right. The figure is a partisan construct that, somehow, has been given a pass by most of the media as one plausible version of the truth. It isn't.

Read it all.

My print column is up.


George Will, a relentless critic of the Romney campaign, also gives him props for showing Obama to be the callow young executive that he is.

The presidential campaign, hitherto a plod through a torrent of words tedious beyond words, began to dance in Denver. There a masterfully prepared Mitt Romney completed a trifecta of tasks and unveiled an issue that, because it illustrates contemporary liberalism’s repellant essence, can constitute his campaign’s closing argument.

Barack Obama, knight of the peevish countenance, illustrated William F. Buckley’s axiom that liberals who celebrate tolerance of other views always seem amazed that there are other views. Obama, who is not known as a martyr to the work ethic and who might use a teleprompter when ordering lunch, seemed uncomfortable with a format that allowed fluidity of discourse.

Also...

Late in the debate, when Romney for a third time referred to Obamacare's creation of "an unelected board, appointed board, who are going to decide what kind of [medical] treatment you ought to have," Obama said, "No, it isn't." Oh?

The Independent Payment Advisory Board perfectly illustrates liberalism's itch to remove choices from individuals, and from their elected representatives, and to repose the power to choose in supposed experts liberated from democratic accountability. Beginning in 2014, IPAB would consist of 15 unelected technocrats whose recommendations for reducing Medicare costs must be enacted by Congress by Aug. 15 of each year. If Congress does not enact them, or other measures achieving the same level of cost containment, IPAB's proposals automatically are transformed from recommendations into law. Without being approved by Congress. Without being signed by the president. 

These facts refute Obama's Denver assurance that IPAB "can't make decisions about what treatments are given." It can and will by controlling payments to doctors and hospitals. Hence the emptiness of Obamacare's language that IPAB's proposals "shall not include any recommendation to ration health care."

Ouch!

This is in Japanese but you'll get the drift. It ain't very subtle.

Liberal and conservative pundits agree: Romney wins... BIG!

Best Tweet goes to Mark Hemingway...

That wasn't a debate so much as Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car.

Somebody get a hose.

The nut jobs at MSNBC are having conniptions from Chris Matthews on down. Romney lied. Romney. Romney lied.

There's your headline, Rachel: Romney lied! Obama died!

UDATE: From Andrew Sullivan - one of the president's biggest fans...

Look: you know how much I love the guy, and you know how much of a high information viewer I am, and I can see the logic of some of Obama's meandering, weak, professorial arguments. But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look.
Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn't there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.
The person with authority on that stage was Romney - offered it by one of the lamest moderators ever, and seized with relish. This was Romney the salesman. And my gut tells me he sold a few voters on a change tonight. It's beyond depressing. But it's true.

From the wit and wisdom of Craig Karpel, a recovering Obamaholic:

In 2008 it became common for legacy media personnel covering the presidential campaign to try to convey the dazzling podium-presence that they attributed to Obama by calling him a rock star. Leaving aside the problem that real rock stars—I’ve known a few—tend to be insecure, vain, fickle, capricious, and, except when on stage, shy, the reality is that they earn their living by driving audiences into transports of ecstasy. It is not a good thing that American politics has degenerated to the point that calling a candidate for the most critical job on earth a rock star is considered a compliment.

More here. Time to sober up, America

Yesterday Judge Robert Simpson issued an injunction against the state's new Voter ID law. To the extent that he found - based on the evidence - that a substantial number of voters wouldn't have their votes counted because they failed to get the proper ID, this is not an unreasonable ruling.

His ruling leaves the law in place, finds that there is nothing unconstitutional or unlawful about it, only that some affected voters haven't been provided enough time to comply with it and that the state hadn't been able to do enough reach out to get these would-be voters suitable IDs.

Spencerblog remains skeptical of the use anecdotal stories pushing the meme that getting an photo ID was just too great a burden for thousands of people. But, it's not a bad thing that Judge Simpson decided to err on the side of voter inclusiveness, rather than exclusiveness.

There will be no good excuse in the future for voters not to be able to prove who there are when they are casting a ballot. Despite what Democrats have been saying for months, voter fraud does and has occurred for years. There are numerous examples of it, including (but not limited to) the apparent theft of the 1960 presidential election. Tightening up the process, making it less susceptible to fraud and out-right theft, is in everybody's best interest.

If I ran this debate thingy. My print column is up.

UPDATE: From the comments, 1uofpitt1 writes:

I think it's obvious Mitt Romney includes Brittany with Down Syndrome in his 47%. After all, she's receiving government assistance. She's the half he's not concerned with. Also, I fail to see how it's President Obama's fault when mothers decide to abort their babies-to-be with Down Syndrome. If the mother of the special needs child won't love, protect, or provide for her special needs child - who will? And who will pay the exorbitant amount of money to care for these unwanted special needs children? Not to mention, the horror of a special needs child being brought up in a cold institution. I never understood the favor pro-lifers thought they were doing children when there is a much worse fate in store for them than being forced into the world by a selfish, unwilling, unloving mother. And sadly, not many others will care for someone else's special needs child. It's a tragic reality.

No, that is not the tragic reality. The waiting list to adopt babies with Down syndrome is long. If only their mother's wouldn't abort them. The cost of raising such a child is no more exorbitant than the cost of raising any other child. Compare the fate pro-lifers have in mind for Down syndrome kids to the fate pro-abortionists have in mind - being sliced and diced and trashed as medical waste - I'll go with the pro-lifers every time.

At least two Democratic senators are expressing regret that they voted for Obamacare; a stupid, unwieldy and costly law that - for just one thing - is sending the manufacture of medical devices overseas.

Shocker! Pedophiles attracted to Boy Scouts. Instead of going after the Pedos, lawyers go after the organizations that fail to catch and prosecute every single one of them. A new witch hunt is born.

First the Catholic Church, then Penn State. Now the Boy Scouts.

You're next.