WHY PAY TAXES WHEN YOU CAN BUY INFLUENCE? Dem Super PAC Donor Owes IRS $11.1 Million.

I’VE ALWAYS SUSPECTED THIS: Was the Polish President’s Plane Bombed?  … of course, I’m paranoid.

I’VE ALWAYS SAID WE GOT THE COOL CORNERED: The press and liberal Hollywood can’t stop telling us that President Barack Obama is eternally cool.

MAKING IRAN PAY: “An Ontario judge has issued a restraining order against Iran’s property in Canada — including its embassy in Ottawa and a former cultural centre in Toronto — as the family of an American woman killed in a terrorist attack tries to collect a $13-million judgment by a U.S. court from a wrongful death claim against Iran’s security agency.” (Emphasis added.)

SAFETY LESSONS FROM THE MORGUE. But here’s a key bit: “When Baker started her career in the 1960s, public health was still mostly about preventing disease, not injury.”

I’m not saying that safety research is bad, but I think public health’s shift away from disease is (1) a mistake, since there are a lot of disease issues out there; and (2) driven more by internal and external politics than anything else.

VOTE LIKE INDIVIDUALISTS HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO GO: Two Visions Clash in This Election.  (Because we don’t.)

US SUPPORT AND $3.60 WILL BET YOU A CUP OF COFFEE: US withdraws its support for Syrian opposition. [Video]

SO LET’S BE CLEAR: While Starving New Yorkers Dumpster-Dive For Food, while commuter delays rage, and while Staten Islanders beg for food, gas and clothing, Mayor Bloomberg has time to talk about “climate change.”

DONALD RUMSFELD TALKS #BENGHAZI with Hugh Hewitt:

HH: You’ve done a lot of Sunday shows in your life, and when Ambassador Rice did five Sunday shows and said the same thing five times about the video precipitating this event, had she been briefed by the White House, in your experience? Did that have to have happened?

DR: Absolutely. I don’t know the woman, but I really, I almost feel sorry for her, because the way it works is that the White House communications people work with the chief of staff and the national security advisor and the President, and they decide what talk shows they want to put people on, and what the message ought to be. And she was told, without question she was told by the White House, we want you to go on these shows, and here’s what we want you to say. There can be no doubt about that.

HH: Is there a cover up, in your opinion, underway, Mr. Secretary?

DR: Oh, I don’t see how you could, anyone who understands the English language, could come up with any other characterization. It is, without question, a case of people being uncomfortable with the truth, grabbing arguments of convenience that seem to fit the narrative they’d like the American people to believe, and then finding that people don’t like that out there, that there’s someone in the CIA said well, wait a minute, we didn’t tell anyone to stand down. And all of a sudden, that contradicts what the White House is putting out. And then the intelligence agency looks at it and says well, no, it wasn’t spontaneous. We had warnings that al Qaeda affiliates were active in the area. And piece by piece, it comes out. You know the old story in Washington. It’s not what you do, it’s the cover up that counts.

Read the whole thing.

REFORM FEMA? IF YOU WANT ANY CHANGE AT ALL, YOU JUST WANT PEOPLE TO DIE!!!! How A Smart Conservative Would Reform FEMA.

CBS: KEY TASK FORCE NOT CONVENED DURING #BENGHAZI CONSULATE ATTACK: CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG):

“The CSG is the one group that’s supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies,” a high-ranking government official told CBS News. “They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon.”

Much more on Benghazi from Allahpundit at Hot Air.

UPDATE: “It was decided from the first moments that this wasn’t terrorism, because it would be politically harmful if it were terrorism.”

WAR ON WOMEN UPDATE: Obama canvasser charged with groping Colorado woman’s breasts.

If the Denver Post’s report is true, where on earth would he get that idea? Oh wait:

FROM THIS MORNING, INSTAVISION: The Future of Space Flight Under the Next President. With Rand Simberg.

READER MIKE SIERRA WRITES: “Never thought I’d live to read these words: ‘Moody’s economist Mark Zandi did not return a request for comment.’ From a report on the downgrade to September job figures. Here’s Andrew Ferguson’s hilarious piece on Zandi from a year ago.”

MIKE BLOOMBERG: I’m supporting the presidential bid of the man who vowed to bankrupt the coal industry.

Perhaps that’s why Romney is headed to Pennsylvania on Sunday.

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE — OF KASHYYYK: Last year, after getting hit over the head with heavy metal muzak in a New Jersey supermarket, I wrote:

Attention, ShopRite management: The Scorpions are a fine heavy metal group. They are not a fine example of supermarket muzak. The same can be said for AC/DC, the Georgia Satellites, and Elvis Costello, all of whom I heard while making a quick expedition to one of your stores today. Regarding Mr. Costello, “Pump It Up”  is one of the finest songs about masturbation ever written; for that same reason, it is also not a fine example of supermarket muzak.

Plus it’s insulting to the musicians. How must it feel to walk out of a recording studio knowing that your group just nailed the dirtiest, nastiest, rudest heavy metal song ever recorded in the history of man, and then 20 years later hear it on the speakers of a suburban supermarket walking down the frozen food aisle?

Or worse, hearing it played at Disney World:

[youtube hRLjxjS72Gg]

Allan Bloom, call your office.

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL EXCORIATES OBAMA AS “UNWORTHY”:  WOW.  I’ve never seen anything quite like this.  An editorial in today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal–the largest daily circulation paper in Nevada–absolutely slams Obama as an incompetent leader, starting with the Benghazi non-response:

The Obama administration sat by doing nothing for seven hours that night, ignoring calls to dispatch help from our bases in Italy, less than two hours away. It has spent the past seven weeks stretching the story out, engaging in misdirection and deception involving supposed indigenous outrage over an obscure anti-Muslim video, confident that with the aid of a docile press corps this infamous climax to four years of misguided foreign policy can be swept under the rug, at least until after Tuesday’s election.

. . . .

Not only did the White House do nothing, there are now reports that a counterterrorism team ready to launch a rescue mission was ordered to stand down.

The official explanation for the inadequate security? This administration didn’t want to “offend the sensibilities” of the new radical Islamic regime which American and British arms had so recently helped install in Libya.

The official explanation for why Obama administration officials watched the attack unfold for seven hours, refusing repeated requests to send the air support and relief forces that sat less than two hours away in Italy? Silence.

. . . .

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy – though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. Back in January 2008, Barack Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” He added, “Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” It was also in 2008 that Mr. Obama’s future Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, famously said it would be necessary to “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe” – $9 a gallon.

Yet the president now claims he’s in favor of oil development and pipelines, taking credit for increased oil production on private lands where he’s powerless to block it, after he halted the Keystone XL Pipeline and oversaw a 50 percent reduction in oil leases on public lands.

These behaviors go far beyond “spin.” They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation’s economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” would be disastrous.

Candidate Obama said if he couldn’t fix the economy in four years, his would be a one-term presidency.

Mitt Romney is moral, capable and responsible man. Just this once, it’s time to hold Barack Obama to his word. Maybe we can all do something about that, come Tuesday.

Major Mittmentum.

RELATED (From Ed): Steve Green charts The Silver State Ground Game.

GEORGE LUCAS’S JEDI ESTATE PLANNING, from The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch Website:

That Lucas struck a deal in 2012 may be no accident either, advisers say. Long-term capital gains tax from the sale of assets held more than one year are taxed at a rate of 15% for investors in the 25% income tax bracket or above (Lucas’s level), and zero for investors in the 10% or 15% bracket. Those rates are set to jump to 20% and 10%, respectively in January. “He probably wanted to take advantage of the lower rate on long-term capital gain while it’s certain,” says Bill Smith, managing director at CBIZ MHM, a national accounting and professional services provider.

Just a reminder that Conquest’s First Law of Politics — “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best” — is applicable even to a filmmaker who believed that the Communist North were the good guys in the Vietnam War.

DIVERSITY FOR THEE BUT NOT FOR ME, or, two Public Broadcasting Systems in one:

“Celebrating Diversity — A Capitol Fourth: America’s Independence Day Celebration,”  is but one of countless PBS Webpages devoted to the joys of multiculturalism and diversity. But when diversity threatens PBS’s ability to influence viewers, the network quickly circles the wagon, as this recent McClatchy article titled, “PBS newsman sees danger in fragmented nation” highlights:

A generation ago, before cable news channels and internet news sources, most people got their news from the same small collection of sources: three major TV networks and a hometown newspaper or two, Brown said. People gathered around their televisions for the assassination of a president, a walk on the moon, and other major events.

(more…)

FROM THE SHORES OF LAKE NABOO: The latest Jonah Goldberg, Rob Long, and John Podhoretz podcast at Ricochet takes the pulse of the election — the joys of having a verified Twitter Account, and (as the title implies), the ramifications of Disney buying Lucasfilm, Ltd.

THE STAKES ON TUESDAY: 3 of 9 Justices Will Turn 80 by 2016 Election.

RELATED: Barney Frank hints: Beat Romney to get single-payer health care.

ROME SPONSORS AN AFFORDABLE ART FAIR. That’s a nice start, but we need rules with more teeth. Perhaps legislation setting maximum prices for all art works, to assure that everyone can own art. In the name of fairness!

UNEXPECTEDLY: Military Ballots Are Still a Problem.

AMITY SHLAES: Disasters Create Bigger, Not Better, Government.

OOPS: “Gosh, do you think Democrats have Pennsylvania on their minds for some reason?”