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Sunday morning we’ll spend more time on the debate, but a little bit now will be fun. Last night we got to see what happens to lazy presidents. Barry outsourced his job while prancing around the country and the world. Now he can’t come up with a logical defense of the actions of his administration. Here’s John Hinderaker from Power Line;
I’ve been watching presidential debates for quite a few years, but I have never seen one like this. It wasn’t a TKO, it was a knockout. Mitt Romney was in control from the beginning. He was the alpha male, while Barack Obama was weak, hesitant, stuttering, often apologetic. The visuals were great for Romney and awful for Obama. Obama looked small, tired, defeated after four years of failure, out of ammo. One small point among many: Obama doesn’t even know how to stand at a podium, as he continually lifted up one leg. He would be below average as a high school debater. …
And here’s my favorite tweet. This is from Bob Owens.
Some people eat when they get depressed. I hope Michelle put Bo outside for the night.
Craig Pirrong posts on the debacle in Libya.
It’s hard to know what is more appalling: the administration’s handling of Benghazi before the assault on the consulate and the killing of Ambassador Stevens and 3 other Americans, or its handling of the aftermath.
The ranking doesn’t matter really, because both are off the charts bad.
It is now abundantly clear that the security situation in Benghazi was atrocious before September 11, and that there were myriad warnings that Al Qaeda was active in the city. The Brits withdrew their personnel from the city in July. American State Department personnel asked for more security-and were turned down.
It is now acknowledged that the judgment of the intelligence community within 24 hours of the attack was that it was a planned terrorist attack by Al Qaeda.
Well, duh.
Even a cursory review of what happened made the administration’s “spontaneous flash mob in response to a movie nobody saw” narrative obvious bullshit.
But in some respects the planned vs. unplanned debate is a red herring. Would it actually be better for the administration and the State Department if the consulate and the ambassador were so vulnerable to an extemporaneous, unplanned attack that such an assault could overwhelm security in minutes and kill 4 Americans? It’s a defense that American security was so bad that an ad hoc attack could kill the ambassador?
The only thing that really matters is that there were armed, hostile elements in the vicinity and that American security was completely insufficient to handle it. …
Andrew Malcolm says America’s savings rate has soared, suggesting how they might vote.
… “People have lost their appetite for risk,” the Brookings Institution’s Karen Dynan told the Washington Post the other day.
Think about that. It’s true. Just about everybody knows somebody who’s lost a job, a home, a marriage in recent times. Or all three.
That kind of pervasive uncertainty, even fear, is confining, feeds caution and creates a high hurdle for any incumbent to overcome. A challenger need only present himself as a conceivably presidential alternative.
That’s Romney’s challenge — and opportunity — tomorrow evening before a nationwide audience on the same stage with the Big Guy. To look like the former governor could become a president. He’ll have three chances to create a collective impression of that this month.
Polls show the race strangely close now. Which reminds us of that contentious statewide recall vote in Wisconsin back in early June, the most recent broad political measure we have. Unions and Democrats had successfully petitioned to force a vote on recalling Republican Gov. Scott Walker over his fiscal restraints and budget cuts.
Remember how slow broadcasters were to call the race that evening? Know why?
Results from waves of exit polls throughout the day told them it was going to be a real squeaker either way. So, they were very careful with their words until the trend could not be ignored.
In the end, of course, it wasn’t close at all. Walker kept his job by a larger margin than he’d won with just 24 months previously against the same opponent. So, how to explain the skewed survey?
Concerned about how they’d be perceived voting against a Democrat and the unions in favor of a Republican, many voters lied to pollsters.
Imagine that.
Michael Barone says Obama has declared war on the young who elected him.
… Government has grown bigger. But big business doesn’t generate jobs; most are created by small businesses and startups. Unions have shrunk, and most union members are public employees.
Meanwhile, public policies have remained in place. Every year, government transfers increasing amounts from working-age taxpayers to the elderly through Social Security and Medicare. Obamacare amplifies this by requiring young workers to buy expensive insurance far beyond their needs.
In the meantime, the collective impact of Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and the fiscal cliff we are headed toward — all Obama policies — has cut job growth below the rate of population increase. Why?
“If you are a small business,” Dallas Fed head Richard Fisher says, “… you are stymied by not knowing what your tax rate will be in future years, or how you should cost out the social overhead of your employees, or how you should budget from the proliferation of regulations flowing from Washington.”
At the same time, Obama vows to resist any changes in Medicare, which is on a trajectory to welsh on its obligations well before the first Millennial turns 65.
For the young, Obama promises to expand college loans. But just as housing policies created a housing bubble, college loan policies have created a higher education bubble. The flood of money has been captured by colleges and universities through above-inflation tuition increases and administrative bloat.
But the Obama administration does not crack down on them, but on graduates or dropouts with thousands in college loan debt, which they can’t escape through bankruptcy. …
Whoever is elected, Bill Gross says he will have to deal with our $16 trillion debt, and the country’s $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Bill Wilson of NetRight Daily has the story.
Woe unto the next president, whoever he may be.
Managing director and co-founder of the world’s largest bond trader Pimco, Bill Gross, has released a shocking warning to the U.S. that promised entitlements to citizens may not be worth the paper they’re printed on.
He called the U.S. “an addict whose habit extends beyond weed or cocaine and who frequently pleasures itself with budgetary crystal meth.”
Gross counts some $60 trillion of unfunded liabilities that will ultimately be added to the now $16 trillion national debt to pay for future benefits.
“It just so happens that the $60 trillion comes not in the form of promises to pay bonds or bills at maturity, but the present value of future Social Security benefits, Medicaid expenses and expected costs for Medicare,” Gross wrote in his “Investment Outlook” newsletter.
Gross warned that unless we begin to address our fiscal crisis, disaster will eventually follow. “If we continue to close our eyes to existing 8 percent of [Gross Domestic Product] GDP deficits, which when including Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare liabilities compose an average estimated 11 percent annual ‘fiscal gap,’ then we will begin to resemble Greece before the turn of the next decade.”
Gross is correct. This is a ticking time bomb. In the past fiscal year alone, the national debt has grown by more than $1.2 trillion and under current projections will grow by about $1 trillion every year for the next decade.
The $16 trillion total liability is already larger than the entire economy. By 2022, it is expected by the Office of Management and Budget to swell to $26 trillion. Nobody except for the insane asylum on Capitol Hill expects economic growth will be able to keep pace with that level of debt accumulation. …
Great background piece in the Weekly Standard about the race in MA.
… “I don’t kid myself. I know it’s going to be a fight,” Warren says. Her voice is flat, her rhythm slow and deliberate. “I know it’s going to be tough. I know they’re going to throw everything they possibly can at me. I know this. I know this. But here’s what I want to tell you. I am not afraid.” Warren’s voice gets louder. “I am not afraid.” And more piercing. “I am not afraid!”
And why should she be? Warren is running for senator as a liberal Democrat in Massachusetts, in a year when the liberal Democratic president is up for reelection, and in a state where he’s never been more popular. Her opponent is the 53-year-old incumbent, Scott Brown, the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, and the only Republican statewide elected official. Brown won a low-turnout special election in 2010 by driving around the state in his pickup truck, wearing a brown Carhartt jacket. His image as a moderate Republican with blue-collar roots appealed to Democratic-leaning middle-class independents. In Massachusetts, though, Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than three to one. Warren ought to be running away with this race.
But Warren’s not running away with this race. The Real Clear Politics poll average shows Warren fewer than 2 points ahead of Brown, and a Rasmussen poll released last week shows the candidates tied. Most observers consider the race a toss-up. At the candidates’ first debate on September 20, a whole cadre of national reporters traveled to Boston to watch. It turns out the year’s most interesting Senate race isn’t in a swing state like Virginia or Ohio but in deep-blue Massachusetts.
The fact is, Scott Brown is one of the most gifted natural politicians in the country, and Elizabeth Warren simply isn’t.
Warren’s campaign has had its fair share of stumbles. When the media first began asking questions about her claim of Cherokee heritage, especially whether she had used that claim to advance her career, Warren was unclear and contradictory in her answers. Her television advertisements, most of which feature a serious Warren speaking directly to the camera, have fallen flat. Her best ad is a testimonial from a well-known boxing trainer, Art Ramalho of Lowell, who praises the Harvard lawyer from Oklahoma in his thick New England accent. Warren herself doesn’t appear in the ad until halfway through.
But it’s on the trail that Warren really looks out of her league. …
According to Our Amazing Planet, Nadine is becoming one of the hero hurricanes.
Nadine was born, declared to be over, came back from the dead and just keeps sticking around.
And now, the cyclone’s longevity will earn it a spot in the record books: By tonight, it will become the Atlantic Ocean’s 10th longest-lasting tropical cyclone, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). A tropical cyclone is an organized storm with winds greater than 32 mph (52 kph), and includes tropical depressions, tropical storms and hurricanes.
Nadine is expected to retain tropical cyclone strength for another three to four days, in which case it could become one of the top five longest-lasting cyclones, said Dennis Feltgen, an NHC spokesman.
The longest-lasting Atlantic cyclone ever was the San Ciriaco Hurricane of 1899, which hung on for 28 days. Nadine, which has been a cyclone for 19 days, is not expected to challenge that record, Feltgen told OurAmazingPlanet. [50 Amazing Hurricane Facts]
Nadine has had an interesting life.