Hempstead, N.Y.: All across the country, millions of unemployed Americans expressed relief and gratitude that Obama finally addressed their most important issue at last night’s Presidential debate: assault weapons.
“I’m glad Obama is finally tackling assault weapons,” said Barbara Rheems, taking a brief pause from brushing her teeth in the 1998 Honda Civic that has been her home for the last three years. “I think that’s the greatest concern facing our country.”
“Thank God Nina Gonzales had the courage to ask about assault weapons,” said Richard Smith, an unemployed construction worker, speaking from the cot in his mother’s basement. “I can’t think of a single more pressing issue.”
“Assault weapons terrify me,” said mother Gladys Castle, who was busy preparing an “Obama soup” made from pilfered ketchup packets for her three hungry children. “I’m afraid that at any moment they might burst out of closets and gun safes and start shooting people.”
“Well it’s about time someone dealt with America’s biggest challenge, which is reinstating the Clinton-era assault weapons ban,” said Tom Feller, who spoke to us from behind his homemade cardboard WILL WORK ANY JOB/HAVE CHILDREN TO FEED/GOD BLESS sign. “The fact is that Americans just don’t need a weapon that has any two of a folding stock, a pistol grip, a bayonet mount, or a flash suppressor, and it’s high time we moved to disarm ordinary Americans citizens who purchased such weapons in a completely lawful manner.”
A CNN poll of America’s unemployed showed that assault weapons were far and away the most pressing issue this election, with 78% citing them as their biggest concern, while those who said that their top issue was forcing Catholics to pay for contraception were a distant second at 19%.
I didn’t even know Twitter had a daily limit for sending tweets, but evidently I exceeded it livetweeting the Presidential debate. Fortunately that didn’t kick in until the very end.
Anyway, if you follow me on Twitter, you might send out a note to that effect, just in case people wonder where I went…
Journalist shocked that all his fellow journalists are suddenly spewing vitriol at him and calling him a traitor because he’s decided to vote for Romney. Also confirms the overwhelming liberal bias in the newsroom.
Police arrest members of the Mexican Mafia prison gang across the state, including one police officer in Houston who was providing them guns.
Mark Steyn’s comprehensive takedown of all the Obama Administration lies and incompetence in the Benghazi terrorist assault and the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens is so righteous it deserves a link of its own.
“The entire reason that this has become the political topic it is is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.”
Thus, Stephanie Cutter, President Obama’s deputy campaign manager, speaking on CNN about an armed attack on the 9/11 anniversary that left a U.S. consulate a smoking ruin and killed four diplomatic staff, including the first American ambassador to be murdered in a third of a century. To discuss this event is apparently to “politicize” it and to distract from the real issues the American people are concerned about. For example, Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki, speaking on board Air Force One on Thursday: “There’s only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane.”
She’s right! The United States is the first nation in history whose democracy has evolved to the point where its leader is provided with a wide-body transatlantic jet in order to campaign on the vital issue of public funding for sock puppets.
Snip.
Obviously, Miss Cutter is right: A healthy mature democracy should spend its quadrennial election on critical issues like the Republican party’s war on puppets rather than attempting to “politicize” the debate by dragging in stuff like foreign policy, national security, the economy, and other obscure peripheral subjects.
Snip.
For most of those four weeks, the president of the United States, the secretary of state, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and others have persistently attributed the Benghazi debacle to an obscure YouTube video — even though they knew that the two events had nothing to do with each other by no later than the crack of dawn Eastern time on September 12.
Snip.
Secretary Clinton linked the YouTube video to the murder of her colleagues even as the four caskets lay alongside her at Andrews Air Force Base — even though she had known for days that it had nothing to do with it. It’s weird enough that politicians now give campaign speeches to returning coffins. But to conscript your “friend”’s corpse as a straight man for some third-rate electoral opportunism is surely as shriveled and worthless as “politicization” gets.
Snip.
Liberals are always going on about the evils of “outsourcing” and “offshoring” — selfish vulture capitalists like Mitt shipping jobs to cheap labor overseas just to save a few bucks. How unpatriotic can you get! So now the United States government is outsourcing embassy security to cheap Welshmen who in turn outsource it to cheaper Libyans. Diplomatic facilities are U.S. sovereign territory — no different de jure from Fifth Avenue or Mount Rushmore. So defending them is one of the core responsibilities of the state. But that’s the funny thing about Big Government: The bigger it gets, the more of life it swallows up, the worse it gets at those very few things it’s supposed to be doing. So, on the first anniversary of 9/11 in a post-revolutionary city in which Western diplomats had been steadily targeted over the previous six months, the government of the supposedly most powerful nation on earth entrusted its security to Abdulaziz Majbari, 29, and his pal, who report to some bloke back in Carmarthen, Wales.
Lots of commentators said that Joe Biden did better debating against Paul Ryan than Obama did against Mitt Romney. I found Biden the far more irritating of the two, his his constant grinning and interrupting. He was like some weird, glad-handing political coelecanth that had somehow survived into the 21st century, and didn’t realize how fake his antics look on high def television. (And that’s to say nothing of Biden’s outright lies. No evidence of green pork cronyism? Right. Pull the other one.)
This unsigned Houston Chronicle liveblog tries to be evenhanded, but dings Biden for his jackassery. “Biden’s contempt for his rival is palpable. Biden’s constant interruptions and grinning and head shaking could turn off some viewers.”
The Weekly Standardnotes that “You don’t win a nationally televised debate by being rude and obnoxious. You don’t win by interrupting your opponent time after time after time or by being a blowhard. You don’t win with facial expressions, especially smirks or fake laughs, or by pretending to be utterly exasperated with what your opponent is saying.”
NRO’s Yuval Levin thinks that “Biden’s hyper-aggressive and at times buffoonish performance (and perhaps especially his Joker grin, which seemed to me as much a product of nervousness as of intent) hurt the ticket some with independent voters and especially with women,” but also thinks he did what he needed to do (stop the liberal bleeding).
By contrast, NRO compatriot John O’Sullivan thinks Biden won on points, but as engendered a “hostile reaction from women to his amazingly blatant mugging and grinning at the camera during Ryan’s arguments.”
Forbes also wasn’t impressed with Biden: “Television provided split screens, so while viewers saw Ryan calmly responding to the questions that came his way, on the other half of the screen they saw a batty older man laughing obnoxiously at someone who, even if voters disagree with him, comes off as very reasonable. The contrast can’t have worked in Biden’s favor.”
The Daily Gator says that Biden was “rude, condescending, and acted like a bully. Biden did not make any glaring gaffes, but, how he conducted himself might have been more damaging. His over the top smiles, really creepy smiles to be honest, his constant interruptions, which the moderator did nothing to stop, and his other facial gymnastics made him look like a man with nothing to say.”
Best tweet of the night (from Dave Itzkoff): “I’m told Joe Biden was just a small-time hood before Batman dropped him in the vat of chemicals that left him with a permanent grin.”
This RNC ad spliced together from last night’s debate already has over a quarter-million hits:
And finally, complete video of the debate in case you missed it:
Texas has benefited greatly from having a better economy than the nation as a whole, and Rick Perry made the low-tax, small government model Texas uses the centerpiece of his abortive run for President.
However, the Libertarian Cato Institute seems considerably less impressed with Perry’s job as Governor, as they gave him a C on their Fiscal Policy Report Card. Indeed, his numerical score of 51 is only two points above California’s spendthrift Jerry Brown (!!!) with a D at 49, and lower than the Republican average of 57.
Here’s their knock on Perry:
Governor Perry has a conservative reputation, but he hasn’t cut state taxes substantially or reduced the size of Texas government. Indeed, Perry has presided over steady increases in spending. Between the 2000–2001 biennium when Perry assumed office and the 2012–2013 biennium, state general fund spending rose at an annual average rate of 3.2 percent, and total state spending rose at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent.
His record on taxes is mixed. In 2003 he signed into law a package of tax and fee increases.In 2006 he approved a business tax overhaul that replaced the corporate franchise tax with a modified gross receipts tax called the “Texas Margin Tax.” The new tax hit 180,000 additional businesses and increased state-level taxes by more than $1 billion annually.
The added state revenues were used to reduce local property taxes, but the overall effect of the package has been to centralize government power in the state and reduce beneficial tax competition between local jurisdictions. Nonetheless, Perry has supported increases in small business exemptions for the Margin Tax. And in 2011 he vetoed a bill to tax online purchases. In 2012 he proposed a five-point Texas Budget Compact, which includes transparency in budgeting, a constitutional limit on spending growth, opposition to new taxes, a strong rainy day fund, and the cutting unnecessary government programs.
One reason Perry may not rank better is the report is based on data covering January 2010 to August 2012, so presumably Perry’s work as Governor in the preceding decade isn’t covered (despite it’s prominent mention in the section quoted above). Another is that several higher ranked governors scored well for things like cutting individual income tax rates, while Texas has no state income tax. I also wonder how well they factor in population growth.
While I don’t want to reject Cato’s ranking out of hand, the opaqueness of their rating system (which must necessarily involve a substantial subjective component) makes me very wary of taking it at face value. You would think that Brown would rank much lower, especially with his state’s municipal bankruptcies, tax hikes and the train to nowhere. Though I do think Perry still has considerable room for improvement, I have to take Cato’s ranking of him with several grains of salt.
And if you’re looking for a more readable version of the report, click here.
The Libyan embassy had repeatedly asked for additional security and were refused In fact, their security was reduced. “We couldn’t even keep what we had.”
Watching and listening to Romney now, who do you agree with more: Mitt Romney, or reporters sounding outraged at his criticisms of the Obama Administration?
Both the Obama Administration and their lapdog media surrogates seem far more interested in defeating Obama’s political opponent than America’s Jihadest enemies, or telling the American people the truth.
