Debate one part two

Noonan’s take on the Debate

The impact of the first debate is going to be bigger than we know. It's going to affect thinking more than we know, and it's going to start showing up in the polls, including in the battlegrounds, more dramatically than we guess. 

It wasn't just Mitt Romney's strong performance. It was President Obama's amazingly weak one. He's never been punctured before. But by debate's end Wednesday night, if you opened the window this is what you could hear: Ssssssss. The soft hiss of air departing from a balloon.

And—amazingly again—he did it to himself. He didn't fight, he didn't show, he wasn't awake and hungry. He just said the same-old-same-old and let it go. He couldn't even meet Mr. Romney's gaze, never mind his arguments.

Debate Prediction that really missed the mark

Sidney Barthwell, a district court magistrate in Michigan who attended Cranbrook with Romney and Harvard Law School with Obama predicted Obama would smoke Romney.  

When they debate, Barack will smoke Romney,” Barthwell, 64, told the Daily Mail.  “Mitt Romney is smart,” he said at the time. “Having said all that, I still think he’s going to get smoked. The best he can do is hopefully come out not looking like a fool. Mitt will find out the hard way as soon as they have their first debate: You don’t debate Obama.”

Afterwards Barthwell explained what happened by saying Romney must have prepared for the debate.  Ya think?   But Barthwell’s comment reminds me of a prediction a sportswriter admitted to many years ago.  Covering the high school football team he predicted a game involving Orrville High School.  He said, “How many points will Orrville score?  Maybe 50, maybe more.”  Orrville lost 6-0. 

What did the Debate tell us?

BarackObama was revealed to be the empty suit with a great gift of gab and a talent only for appealing to the nation’s guilty conscience. Some of us recognized the empty suit four years ago. Like all great salesmen, he can charm prospective customers when he tries, but without a teleprompter he’s hopelessly lost at sea. On Wednesday night, he forgot whether he was selling rubbing alcohol or ladies’ corsets, and it showed.

Like all presidents, he’s accustomed to watching everybody swoon when he steps into the room, and the only tune on his iPod is “Hail to the Chief,” which he plays often. When Mitt Romney confronted him with something less than a genuflection, the president was rattled for the rest of the evening. Life outside a bubble is tough, particularly for a president.

Romney is America’s hope

This is who Romney is, a man who is not mean-spirited, a man who, like Reagan, has core values that are so deeply ingrained a light shines inside him like Lady Liberty's torch.

This is his time. This is America's hope!

I was recently with a very prominent Democrat who spoke of his working with Romney during the Olympics. He spoke of Romney's humility and grace while they were working together. Another friend of mine who was head of security of the Olympics also spoke to me years ago of how terrific a person Romney is.

I met Romney on several occasions, and he is a gracious, genuine person. I also met President Barack Obama who is also gracious and genuine. But while both men have nobility, Romney has the path we need as a nation and a people.

It is no secret what the progressive agenda is - it was no secret four years ago, and it is more evident today. Last night we saw someone who instilled confidence back to a nation in crisis! A nation which has incrementally been mismanaged by both political parties!

Romney communicated to the American people a clear, definitive difference. I think back when I was

a young man as I watched the Reagan/Carter debates with tremendous anxiety. There was the moment when I felt we would be OK.

Last night, that happened again.

Obama identifies who’s to blame for his performance

Surprise!  It isn’t Obama.  It’s Romney.  Obama reinforced what Dr. Goebbels said.  “If you tell a lie often enough pretty soon you start believing it yourself.”

Campaign finance scandal for the Obama campaign?

President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.

Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.

According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.

A disengaged President

Bob Woodward’s new book The Price of Power shows it as do stories from the NY Times.  And on Wednesday night we all got to see.  Obama is disengaged and living in a comfortable cocoon. 

The president is more comfortable, it seems, campaigning and schmoozing.  Neither requires real engagement, and speaking to worshipful audiences roaring their approval is a great salve to the ego.

How disengaged was Obama?

In the debate on Wednesday, President Obama spoke for 4 more minutes than Romney did, but Romney said 541 more words than Obama did.  It appears Obama kept taking a knee and was trying to run out the clock.  The problem was he was way behind at the time.  

Best line I’ve seen about the Debate

“Never bring a community organizer to a CEOfight.”

The 10 top quotes by Mitt Romney in the Debate

I especially liked this one explaining the difference between Romneycare and Obamacare.

We didn’t raise taxes (in Massachusetts). You’ve raised them by a trillion dollars under “Obamacare.” We didn’t cut Medicare. Of course, we don’t have Medicare, but we didn’t cut Medicare by $716 billion. We didn’t put in place a board that can tell people ultimately what treatments they’re going to receive…

5 disingenuous, pathetic, weak, and desperate excuses for Obama’s performance

These aren’t just bad; they are so bad they are funny.

Factcheck:  Will Romney raise taxes on the middle class?

It’s almost an article of faith by the left.  But is it true?

The “nonpartisan” report Obama refers to came out in August from the left-wing Tax Policy Center, or TPC, purporting to show that Romney would have to eliminate $86 billion in middle-class tax breaks to pay for his 20 percent across-the-board rate reduction.

Its authors — one of whom is a recent Obama employee — have subsequently admitted that in the absence of details about Romney’s tax plan, they simply made them up. They also admitted their numbers came out wrong because they guessed which tax breaks Romney would eliminate and which ones were “off the table.” 

Fact checkers who have to make SWAGs aren’t really fact checks.  They are spinmeisters.  

Employment:  Perhaps Obama is the Messiah

Back in 2008 Obama supporters talked about him as if he were the messiah.  It appears now he is doing miracles like Christ did with loaves and fishes.  As Christ feed the multitude with 5loaves and 2 fishes, according to the BLS the President Obama has gotten 873,000 people work when only 114,000 jobs were created in September.  It’s a miracle!

If you don’t buy the miracle explanation, my guess is that it has something to do with November 6^th.

Security at Libyan Embassy

ABC News has obtained an internal State Department email from May 3, 2012, indicating that the State Department denied a request from the security team at the Embassy of Libya to retain a DC-3 airplane in the country to better conduct their duties.

Copied on the email was U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in a terrorist attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, Sept. 11, 2012, along with three other Americans. That attack has prompted questions about whether the diplomatic personnel in that country were provided with adequate security support.

No one has yet to argue that the DC-3 would have definitively  made a difference for the four Americans killed that night. The security team in question, after all, left Libya in August.

Those last four words do not bode well for the Obama Administration. 

Polling Obama

AAA balls

If you don’t answer, it means you support Obama

This may show you why the polls are varying so much.

Associated Press-GfK poll shows race tight at 47-46

An interesting write up showing the differences in demographic groups.  The problem is that the big demographic number they don’t mention is that this poll had 31% Democrats and 22% Republicans (go to page 35 of 44).  So Obama has a one point lead in a poll with a plus 9% Democratic population.  That means independents are going heavily to Romney.

Obama is fiddling while America burns

"The president will welcome the WNBA Champion Minnesota Lynx at a White House reception. He will then head to New York, where he will do an appearance on Letterman and attend fundraisers at the Waldorf Astoria and Club 40/40, hosted by Jay-Z and Beyonce. He will return to Washington late in the evening."

According to the article, President Obama has spent more time golfing than in economic meetings of any kind.  No wonder he wants a second term.

In the meantime, Obama shows he is a man of the people?

Nix the flags and the podium. Cue the opulent 18-foot tower of gold-bottled French champagne.

When President Obama addresses an elite roster of hipsters and multimillionaires, including hosts Beyoncé and Jay-Z, in New York tonight, he will do so next to a custom-designed tower of $800-per-bottle champagne that dominates the main room at Jay-Z’s 40/40 nightclub.

The 350-bottle champagne tower — designed by Jeffrey Beers — is a monument to Jay-Z’s favorite bubbly, Armand de Brignac, which is known colloquially by rappers, clubgoers and connoisseurs as Ace of Spades because of its gold-spade label.

America’s Commodus

If you are a student of history you will enjoy this.

Whereas the reign of Marcus Aurelius George W. Bush had been marked by almost continuous warfare, that of Commodus Obama was comparatively peaceful in the military sense but was marked by political strife and the increasingly arbitrary and capricious behaviour of the emperor president himself. In the view of Dio Cassius Mark Steyn, a contemporary observer, his accession marked the descent “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron”—a famous comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon anyone familiar with the Constitution, to take Commodus’ reign Obama’s presidency as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire American republic….

Use the link and keep reading as it is worth your while.

Romney tells it like it is

Mitt Romney talked directly about the middle class today at a fundraiser, saying “The question of this campaign is not who cares about the poor and the middle class. I do. He does.”

“The question,” Romney continued, “is who can help the poor and the middle class? I can! He can’t!”

I think this sums up what Romney needs to say every day up until November 6^th. 

It’s not really a mystery

When there is a political scandal and you can’t find the party of the person who committed the scandal, s/he is a democrat.  There’s a simple rule of thumb here.  If it’s a Republican you will find the party mentioned either in the headline or the first paragraph.  If it’s a Democrat you will have to send out a search party for that information.  

Michelle Obama:  Out of touch with school kids

The changes are hard to swallow for students like Blohm. On Monday, 70% of the 830 Mukwonago High students who normally buy lunch boycotted cafeteria food to protest what they see as an unfair "one size fits all thing." Middle schoolers in the district also boycotted their school lunches, with counts down nearly half Monday. They're not alone in their frustration; schools across the country are reporting students who are unhappy with the lunch offerings.

The lunch menu was changed because of changes in federal guidelines pushed by Mrs. Obama.  Here’s another example where choice isn’t in the Democratic playbook.

Obama Administration argues it can violate religious rights

Some private companies are claiming the HHS contraception mandate is a denial of their First Amendment rights. In response to dozens of lawsuits brought against the Obama administration the mandate, the Department of Justice has argued two points that have stunned constitutional experts.

A case was brought earlier this month by the Thomas More Law Center on behalf of Legatus, the nation’s largest organization of Catholic business leaders, and by Weingartz Supply , an outdoor power equipment company. Attorneys for the Obama administration have argued, first, that the government can make a requirement that violates religious beliefs, and, second, that a private company cannot reflect the religious faith of its owners.

Liberals don’t really believe in liberty any more. 

The Price of Politics:  Five New Revelations

It is quite possible Obama bungled his way into the crisis as well as bungling his way through it.

The Left’s War on Science:  One instance

Specifically, Regnerus was charged with "scientific misconduct" for his study in the July issue of Social Science Research, titled: "How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study."

Its politically incorrect conclusions, based on data from nearly 15,000 adults, contended that children reared over the years by gay and lesbian parents were, as adults, far less well-adjusted than adults reared as children in households of married biological and heterosexual parents.  "The results reveal numerous, consistent differences, especially between the children of women who have had a lesbian relationship and those with still-married (heterosexual) biological parents," the study observed.

The left is for science as long as it doesn’t violate their political doctrine. 

One of the reason the Stimulus didn’t work as advertised

Government officials blame unfair competition from China for the collapse of solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, but such concerns didn’t stop the federal government from breaking stimulus program rules to use Chinese solar panels atop a federalbuilding housing the offices of a senator, congressman and several agencies.

So maybe the stimulus did work in China.

Romney’s 47 percent versus Obama’s Julia

So what’s the difference?  Oh, yes, Romney was concerned about it and Obama was pushing it.

Romney Tape Edited?

Mother Jones, the left-wing magazine that released a controversial video of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's remarks to a fundraiser in May, now admits that it has no full tape of what Romney said, and that its video is missing "one to two minutes" at the most important moment.

The Legal Insurrection blog's William Jacobson and The Blaze both raised questions on Tuesday about whether Mother Jones had, as promised, revealed the full video, given an apparent jump cut in the critical section of Romney's remarks. 

"Something is missing.  Romney’s 47% answer was cut off before completed, and is not picked up on the Part 2 audio video," Jacobson noted.

 Perhaps Andrea Mitchell got hold of the tape first?

legalinsurrection.com/2012/09/if-the-tape-doesnt-knock-romney-out-the-media-narrative-is-toast/

If you want what Mitt said done elegantly, here it is

Tocqueville wrote:

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Obamanomics:  Second downgrade in his term and in our history

In this story this is rated as the most underreported story last week. 

It’s only hypocrisy when a Republican does it

"The Democrats criticized Bush for suspension of civil liberties and guaranteed them in their 2008 platform. In their 2012 platform, those guarantees have all been erased."