THE DOWNSIDE OF ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS:  Interesting op-ed by internist Dr. Anne Marie Valinoti in the Wall Street Journal today, in which she asserts:

At first I thought EMR sounded like a good idea. Then our practice started using one.

Tasks that once took seconds to perform on paper now require multistepped points and clicks through a maze of menus. Checking patients into the office is an odyssey involving scanners and the collection of demographic data—their race, their preferred language, and so much more—required by Medicare to prove that we are achieving “meaningful use” of our EMR. What “meaningful use” means no one knows for sure, but our manual on how to achieve it is 150 pages long.

REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST. Most of us have a place like this at some point in our lives, if we’re lucky.

HOW WORRIED IS OBAMA ABOUT THE JEWISH VOTE? Very Worried.

But then, haven’t the actions of Obama and Biden in recent weeks been all about trying to lock down a crumbling base? That’s one of the topics that Mark Steyn discusses with Boston talker Michael Graham.

OUTSOURCING SELF-DISCIPLINE: Facebooker hires woman to slap him. “A US computer programmer is paying a woman £5 an hour to slap him if he uses Facebook at work. Maneesh Sethi reckons employing Kara has helped quadruple his daily output.”

A PERFECTLY PLAUSIBLE PRESIDENT:  Bret Stephens concludes, “Score-keepers will say the debate went for Mr. Obama. Maybe it did. But Mitt Romney emerges looking like a perfectly plausible president—which was no doubt all he wanted from tonight.”

OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN STRATEGY:  In a single picture:

KRAUTHAMMER:  “Romney went large; Obama went very, very small–shockingly small.”

THE TWO PANEL TAKE: Foreign Embassy.

AMERICANS SKEPTICAL OF OBAMA DOCTRINE:  In the wake of tonight’s 3d presidential debate, it’s worth noting that a recent study by the Pew Research Center shows Americans are highly critical of the Obama Doctrine (apology; appeasement), particularly in the Middle East and China.

Of particular interest:  52% of respondents say “stable government” in the Middle East is more important than “democratic government” (37%).  Smart.

REAGAN, EISENHOWER, AND COOLIDGE: Sounds like good company to be in:

So we’d like to think that Mr. Obama has stumbled onto something here. If voters get the idea that Mr. Romney can deliver the foreign policy of the 1980s, when we defeated a vast, hostile conspiracy in Soviet Communism, then Mr. Romney is moving in the right direction. No one wants the social faults of the 1950s, but if Mr. Romney stands for the virtues of family and faith, of decorum and respect that flourished then, he’d be a refreshing change. If he stands for higher birthrates, like we had in the 1950s, he’s a winner. Our guess is that if people really believe Mr. Romney will replicate the 1920s, they’ll elect him in a landslide. The fact is that the 1920s, the 1950s, and the 1980s are a winning combination — for the GOP and for America.

Pour yourself a Martini, or a Don Draper-esque Old Fashioned and read the whole thing.

MORE SNARKY, CONDESCENDING, PEEVISH & SMALL:  Obama’s arrogant, small ball behavior continues.  As I stated in an earlier post, this ain’t a law firm name, it’s the theme of Obama’s entire campaign.  If you can’t go big, go small and distract, I suppose.  Here are examples from tonight’s 3d presidential debate:

Snarky:

OBAMA:  “Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia, in the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Romney’s full remark was, as he pointed out:  “Well, I’m saying in terms of a geopolitical opponent, the nation [Russia] that lines up with the world’s worst actors. Of course, the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran.”

Condescending:

ROMNEY:  “Our Navy is old — excuse me, our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now at under 285. We’re headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That’s unacceptable to me.”

OBAMA:  “You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we’re counting ships. ”

Translated:  Mitt, you’re an idiot for counting ships. You apparently don’t realize that technology doesn’t require ships anymore (even though the Navy says they require 313, apparently Obama knows better).

Peevish:

ROMNEY:  “And I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is a combination of the budget cuts the president has, as well as the sequestration cuts. That, in my view, is making — is making our future less certain and less secure.”

OBAMA:  “First of all, the sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen.”  Obama replied, “First of all, the sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen.”

This impending reality clearly angered Obama.  His remarks suggested,  “I am in charge here and I won’t allow sequestration to happen.”  It’s as though he thinks he gets to decide this question, which he doesn’t.  Sequestration will happen unless a miracle occurs and Congress passes a budget– which, by the way, it hasn’t been able to during the entire Obama presidency.

ROMNEY:  “And I say that because from the very beginning, the president in his campaign four years ago, said he would meet with all the world’s worst actors in his first year, he’d sit down with Chavez and Kim Jong-il, with Castro and President Ahmadinejad of Iran.  And I think they looked and thought, well, that’s an unusual honor to receive from the President of the United States. And then the president began what I have called an apology tour, of going to various nations in the Middle East and criticizing America. I think they looked at that and saw weakness.”

OBAMA:  “Nothing Governor Romney just said is true, starting with this notion of me apologizing. This has been probably the biggest whopper that’s been told during the course of this campaign. And every fact checker and every reporter who’s looked at it, Governor, has said this is not true.”

Wrong again, Mr. President.  Your apologies are well documented.

And Small:  OBAMA:  “Well, Governor Romney’s right, you are familiar with jobs being shipped overseas because you invested in companies that were shipping jobs overseas.”   Huh?

OBAMA:  “Both at home and abroad, he has proposed wrong and reckless policies. He’s praised George Bush as a good economic steward and Dick Cheney as somebody who’s — who shows great wisdom and judgment. And taking us back to those kinds of strategies that got us into this mess are not the way that we are going to maintain leadership in the 21st century.”    Blah, blah, blah.

ROMNEY:  “Number two, Mr. President, the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and Iraq. And by the way, you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region, but you went to the other nations.”

OBAMA: ” If we’re going to talk about trips that we’ve taken — when I was a candidate for office, first trip I took was to visit our troops. And when I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn’t take donors. I didn’t attend fundraisers. I went to Yad Beshef (ph), the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable.”

Uh, was Romney talking about “trips”?  Of course he wasn’t.  He was talking about the fact that, shortly after being elected in 2009, Obama visited many Muslim countries to apologize and appease.  He skipped Israel.  Obama’s lame response to this was “let me talk about a trip I took to Israel in 2008, before I was even elected President.”  Asinine.

THINGS THAT WORK:  For our sins we have four indoor cats.  We’ve tried a variety of litterboxes.  This works. We have two of them.  As long as you clean the waste drawer twice a week, it doesn’t smell at all.  They’re more expensive than competitors but they last three times as long and smell ten times less.  Of course, do not do what I did tonight and drop the full waste receptacle down the attic stairs.  On the good side, it kept me from watching the debate.  Also gave me a ton of empathy for Mitt.

OOPS: White House Already Backpedaling On Obama Sequestration Comments.

A READER EMAILS:

Long time reader here. I was in Special Forces (Green Berets) for a few years and when POTUS mentioned the horses/bayonets I immediately thought of this. We also used bayonets. I think the picture of the SF guys on horses would be perfect to highlight the POTUS’s complete ignorance on everything military.

Well, here you go:

BRUCE KESLER: Romney Wins Zombie Foreign Policy Debate As Obama Fails To Change Game.

IRA STOLL: THOUGHTS ON THE FINAL PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE.

CALM DOWN, IT’S A JOKE:  Obama Takes Out Romney With Mid-Debate Drone Attack.

DAVID GERGEN: Romney Passed The Commander-in-Chief Test.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Storage & Organization Outlet Sale.

UPDATE: Sorry, that link was wrong. Here’s the right one.

Also, today only: Save up to 70% on Select SanDisk Memory and More. (Bumped).

WHO WON THE THIRD PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE? It depends on how you score it, Bryan Preston writes:

Score this debate a win on energy for Obama, but a win on the facts and the long game for Romney. Moderator Bob Schieffer was probably the best of the three presidential moderators. Both candidates got roughly the same amount of talk time, neither got the patented false Candy Crowley fact check.

Mitt Romney accomplished what he set out to do tonight. He went toe-to-toe with the sitting, snarking president three times and acquitted himself well enough to have the majority of Americans see him as the next President of the United States.

Definitive Voice of Conventional Wisdom™ David Gergen concurs.

Michael Graham adds, “Turning this debate into an opportunity to stop Mitt’s momentum was always going to be tricky. Clearly Axelrod and Co. never figured out the trick.”

Further thoughts and links from Allahpundit at Hot Air.

RELATED: There’s that laser-like focus: Obama ‘death stare’ is the new Biden smirk.

Al Gore, call your office.

MORE: “Romney was thinking about America, and Obama was thinking about losing the election.”

DRUNKBLOG RECAP, from Steve Green:

7:25PM It’s not too early for some final thoughts.

It’s saddening to have been right, when I wrote that Obama would bring the snark. He did. Not very often, but when he did he came across as small and mean. That was the Obama we saw in Denver. At his best, he came across as the commander-in-damn-chief, which is exactly what he is. But most of those flashes came in the first 30 minutes.

Romney needed to come across as a potential commander-in-chief. You know, the same guy we saw in the last two debate. And we saw that guy again tonight — at least in the last two-thirds of the show.

As I write these words, Obama is trying to school Romney on job creation, and all I can think is, “Who does he think he’s trying to [REDACTED] fool?”

That, I think, is as fine a coda for this debate, for this series of debates, as I can muster. Obama has run far and fast from his own record. Romney, I’m sorry to say, hasn’t always hit him for that as much or as strongly as I think he should have.

But is Romney credible?

Yes. Romney is credible. Perfect? No. Credible, yes.

And that’s a win tonight.

Obama came in with an impossible task, to act as a spoiler and to appear presidential.

And that is why he fails.

As John O’Sullivan writes at the Corner, “Romney is winning. Why? He is making his case on foreign policy to the American people, while Obama is trying to establish his own sense of superiority. As a result Romney, looks presidential and Obama looks quarrelsome and touchy — even when, as sometimes, Obama has the better case.”

9:15 PM EASTERN: IS THIS DEBATE ALREADY OVER? “Will there be a single line that resonates as much as Mitt’s ‘attacking me is not an agenda’?”

UPDATE: Video of that soundbite online already.

A NEW TREND: Globe-Trotting Retirement?

DRUNK THE VOTE:  Stephen Green is drunkblogging the last debate.  This time I hope the internet hamsters can take the traffic like men rodents.

THEY’LL BE LIVEBLOGGING TONIGHT’S DEBATE at the Boston Herald.

Plus, Last Call for Alcohol: Debate Drinking Games Round 3.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse will be liveblogging. And so, I’m told, will the folks at Ace of Spades HQ.