THE HUNTSMAN BETRAYAL: No, not a Robert Ludlum title, but Huntsman’s endorsement of Dem. Matheson over Mia Love. “Jon Huntsman Sr. — an industrialist, philanthropist and lifelong Republican — is endorsing Rep. Jim Matheson, calling him a conservative Democrat who ‘represents our state very well.'”
That’s just racism straight up — fear of a Black Republican woman in Congress.
DAN MITCHELL: Obamanomics: The Dismal Record.
RASMUSSEN: ROMNEY NOW LEADS IN 11 SWING STATES: By 49 to 47 percent. The 11 states were won by Obama in 2008 and include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Student Auctions Off Virginity For Charity. “A Brazilian student is auctioning off her virginity to raise cash to build homes for poverty-stricken families. Catarina Migliorini, 20, is set to plough the money into a fund to build modern houses for the needy in her home state of Santa Catarina. The student will be followed every step of the way by an Australian film crew for a documentary film called Virgins Wanted.”
WHAT WOULD A SECOND OBAMA TERM LOOK LIKE? Dysfunctional California points the way, Victor Davis Hanson writes at NRO today:
Shortly before taking office, Secretary Chu, remember, quipped that he would like to see American gas prices rise to European levels — presumably $9 or $10 a gallon — to discourage driving and thereby lower our carbon footprint. If $50 for half a fill-up is any indication, California is over halfway toward achieving Chu’s dream. If green bicycles are the ultimate aim of our central-planning regulators, then they are making headway. I’ve never seen so many new rural bike riders, though most of them out here in the San Joaquin Valley have a bad habit of riding on the wrong side of the road.
A refinery fire, a power outage, a uniquely Californian gasoline formula, years of regulating refineries into stasis — all that has finally caught up with the state, as prices soar at the pump. Yet what perplexes about California in extremis is the liberal ability for our state government simply to ignore its own regulations, which it has been using to paralyze businesses for years. For example, a panicked Governor Brown just asked the state air-resources board to suspend the law that requires gas stations to sell our special summer fuel formula through the month of October. The state asserted that a one-time suspension would increase supplies and yet not materially affect our air quality — which begs the question: Why, if that is true, would such a regulation have been passed in the first place?
California has the nation’s highest gas taxes and fuel prices, and the tightest supplies — and reputedly one of the worst-maintained infrastructures, with out-of-date, overcrowded, and poorly maintained freeways. When I head home each week from Palo Alto, I feel like an Odysseus fighting modern-day Lotus Eaters, Cyclopes, and Laestrygonians to reach Ithaka, wondering what obstacle will sidetrack me this trip — huge potholes, entire sections of the freeway reduced to one lane, or various poorly marked detours? If the nation’s highest gas taxes give us all that, what might the lowest bring?
California at least has its climate going for it; it’s the only thing saving it from this apocalyptic vision of a potential Obama second term.
RELATED: Adam Carolla on skyrocketing gas prices, remembers the 1970s (video).
GOD IS IN THE DETAILS:
● “Obama: I’m Only Going To Win If ‘Everybody Is Almost Obsessive.’”
— CBS-DC Today.
● “Confirmed: Obama Sent Same Form Letter to Parents of All Fallen Soldiers, Marines, SEALs.”
— Gateway Pundit today.
TRYING TO SAVE OBAMA FROM HIMSELF: To follow-up on Elizabeth’s post below, PBS flips president the Big Bird, Ed Morrissey writes:
More than a dozen American diplomatic missions have been put to the torch over the last month, one of which resulted in the first US Ambassador killed in the line of duty in 33 years. The labor force is near its lowest level in more than 30 years. Gas prices have skyrocketed, and we’re at war in Afghanistan. We are exactly four weeks from the national election. Today, however, Barack Obama will release a new 30-second spot focusing on the true issue that faces our nation …. Big Bird?
As Ed writes, Sesame Workshop may be doing Obama a big favor by strongly advising him to table Big Bird as an issue:
Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.
This is a perfect opportunity to push this one into the memory hole … but really, how sad is it that Team Obama thought this spoke to voter concerns? And as long as we’re listing the Devils of Wall Street, it’s interesting to note who’s missing from that list.
And here’s one more thought from Jeff Emanuel:
“nothing says “I’ve completely lost control of this narrative” like embracing…a seven-foot-tall yellow-feathered multi-millionaire.”
Ouch.
Heh, indeed.™
Also, man with albatross Big Bird around his neck makes it much harder for him to overcome the forces of gravity.
UPDATE: Speaking of trying to save Obama from himself, “Politico, NBC, ABC, MSNBC Criticize Team Obama’s ‘Absurd’ Big Bird Ad.”
SESAME STREET TELLS OBAMA: STOP USING BIG BIRD: In one of the dumbest political ads ever, the Obama campaign mocks Mitt Romney for his remarks about ending PBS subsidies. The ad’s incredible lack of substance (a recurrent theme with Obama’s election bid) seems insulting to the intelligence of the average voter. Sesame Street apparently doesn’t like being used:
Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.
Ouch– take down by the Street!
SHAKEN NOT STIRRED: How One Billion Women Will Shake The Business World.
YOU AND I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH SCARCITY: 10 Dates to Remember from Barack Obama’s Amazing First Term.
(Headline from a video I shot in February of 2009, whose message has, I think, held up reasonably well, unfortunately.)
OHIO LOOKING GOOD FOR ROMNEY: Ned Ryun over at the Daily Caller claims that despite polls still showing Obama with a small lead in Ohio, absentee ballots and voter rolls purged of the potential fraud suggest a victory for Mitt Romney:
What has changed are the voter rolls in Ohio. Husted has removed 490,000 deceased voters and duplicate registrations from the rolls. The vast majority of these voters were registered Democrats, and considering Obama won the state by 263,000 votes, Ohio’s cleaner rolls could make a big impact.
These factors, and especially the Republicans’ clear advantage in absentee voting, have been ignored by the media in order to continue their narrative that conservatives can’t win this November. Republicans can win in Ohio if these trends continue and the Republicans mount a strong get-out-the-vote effort
ON THE OFFENSIVE: Rand Paul launches ad offensive against Democratic senators over foreign aid. “Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul is running ads against Democratic senators who voted to continue foreign aid to Egypt, Pakistan and Libya. The first two targets are Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Bill Nelson in Florida. Ads in other battleground states may be forthcoming.”
Here’s the ad.
IT’S ALL ABOUT ATTITUDE: 7 Habits of Highly Frugal People.
IOWAHAWK: White House Scientists Struggle to Contain Outbreak of Scrutonium:
WASHINGTON DC – Engaged a relentless battle against time and fatigue, a select group of message scientists assembled by the White House’s Center for Narrative Control say they will take “all steps necessary” to contain a recent outbreak of scrutonium, a deadly poll-eating supervirus that attacks the immuno-hope system, leaving victims vulnerable to material facts.
“Failure is simply not an option,” said an exhausted Mission Chief David Axelrod. “If left unchecked, this virus may actually force us to move back to Chicago.”
The recent re-infection of scrutonium into the body politic has been a harrowing turn of fortune for Axlerod and his scientific team. In November 2008, they had declared scrutonium “all but extinct,” although they kept small amounts of the strain for use in laboratory experiments with Republican tax returns. It was thought to be in containment as recently as five weeks ago, with scientists citing poll results showing resistance to doses of unemployment previously considered fatal.
All that changed on September 12 after an unexpected outbreak in Benghazi, Libya. Although it caught Axlerod and his team by surprise, they were temporarily able to keep it under control with a regimen of YouTube blame therapy and gaffe-meme injections. But the new Benghazi strain proved stubbornly resistant, and has continued to slowly spread.
But when will legendary conservative’s conservative T Coddington Van Voorhees VII finally see the light of the day and endorse Romney?
AN EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Embarrassment at Buzzfeed over bogus, oversold story designed to help Democrats. “Ryan could have been a bit nicer, but I liked this display of dominance in managing the reporters who are looking to get their sound bites out of him. I’m sure this reporter would have loved to show Ryan stymied by contradictory aspirations about fixing the inner cities and cutting taxes. The reporter tried to get on top and got schooled. I’m okay with that.”
ON FOREIGN POLICY, IS ROMNEY THE NEW JFK? At PJM today, Roger L. Simon writes:
While reading the text of Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute on Monday, I was suddenly plunged back to my Dartmouth College undergraduate days when JFK was president and we were in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I remember sitting in a Hanover Inn lounge (no TVs in the dorms in those days) with many fellow (all male) students, watching Kennedy make the speech in which he announced the blockade of Soviet ships heading for Cuba.
There wasn’t a peep in the room while we listened. Republicans, Democrats, even wannabe sixties radicals, we were all American citizens that night, listening to an admired president who was clearly standing tall against totalitarianism.
Afterwards I remember considerable discussion among the students about what we would all do. Nuclear war seemed imminent. Some, given the college’s Northern New England location, were plotting their escapes to Canada in the event of attack. I was not sure if they were serious. Probably they weren’t sure themselves. But again, no one — repeat: no one – questioned that we had a leader up to the task of defending our country against an enemy who sought to destroy our way of life.
Thanks in part to JFK’s resolve, and to the resolve of later presidents like Reagan, not to mention the resolve above all of the American people themselves, that enemy backed down and later dissolved. (Well, to some extent.)
It is very different now. We have a very different Democratic Party and a very different president. The man currently in the White House would prefer to blame amateurishly made video trailers for a world conflagration that clearly stems from an ideology as evil and bent on world domination as Soviet communism. And with arguably more adherents.
Read the whole thing.
At a minimum, Romney’s worldview is certainly much closer to the real JFK, as opposed to the cognitive dissonant wish-fulfillment Play-doh Fun Factory version the Left created for political expediency’s sake upon his assassination.
THE GREAT COMMUNICATOR: Obama makes an O.J. Simpson joke and he can’t get the name of the SUV right.
IF MY EFFORT TO MAKE HOLLYWOOD PAY ITS FAIR SHARE BEARS FRUIT, I PREDICT WE’LL SEE THE SAME THING: French Elite Who Called for Higher Taxes on Themselves Oppose Proposed 75% Rate.
EUGENE VOLOKH: 99% Chance That This Florida Attorney General’s Brief Was Filed by Someone Not Licensed to Practice Law. Wait, was it signed by Elizabeth Warren? . . .
Regardless, whoever authored that brief is too statistically illiterate, or too dishonest, to practice law.
THE FUTURE CONTAINS INAPPROPRIATE TOUCHING: Why like someone on Facebook when you can hug them. All together now:ewwwwww!
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” America Cannot “Lead From Behind” in Asia.
RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Affirmative Action Quagmire.
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: A new ad from Mia Love.
Here’s her website.
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