LIZ CHENEY ON LIBYA: This is just the “logical outcome of three-and-a-half years of Obama foreign policy.”

QE3: A MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION FROM THE FED?

GAFFE: Obama Shoots First, Aims Later: White House clarifies Obama’s statement that Egypt is not an ‘ally.’ “President Barack Obama didn’t intend to signal any change in the U.S.-Egypt relationship last night when he said Egypt is not an ‘ally,’ the White House told The Cable today. . . . That comment had Egypt watchers scratching their heads, especially since technically, Egypt was designated as a Major Non-NATO Ally in 1989 when Congress first passed the law creating that status, which gives them special privileges in cooperating with the United States, especially in the security and technology areas.”

They’re scratching their heads, Obama’s in over his head. This must be more of that “smart diplomacy” we were promised.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Adopt-A-Guy: Parisian Pop-Up Shop Sells Men.

THE DIPLOMAT: More Money, More Problems in South Korea.

IN THE EXCELLENT GARDEN & GUN MAGAZINE, a “city portrait” of Knoxville, Tennessee.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Living In The 19th Century.

JOHN PODHORETZ: Shut Up, They Explained: Romney’s Day. “Romney can be criticized for attacking it. Romney can be criticized for what he said, for his wording, for his ideas. He can be faulted for his timing—although such criticism is really only about style and political smarts, not substance. But the onslaught yesterday wasn’t about that. What Mark Halperin calls ‘the gang of 500’—-the world of conventional opinion-—was saying one thing and one thing only to Mitt Romney, and that was: You are not to speak.”

They defend Obama like crazed Muslims defend the Koran. No criticism can be seen as legitimate, because they have invested everything.

Related: The Media Lash Out.

Meanwhile, Romney’s back in the lead in the Rasmussen tracking poll. He’s also ahead by 3 in Florida.

UPDATE: Obama Echoes Carter With ‘Shoot First’ Criticism of Romney. As I’ve been saying, at this point a Carter rerun is a best-case scenario.

MORE: Media Does What Romney Couldn’t, Solidifies Republican Support.

MORE STILL: Reader Arthur Barie writes:

Glenn, you know what you’re not seeing in all these stories criticizing Romney’s statement?

Romney’s statement.

Can’t let a clear defense of the 1st Amendment, and of American interests leak out into the public eye.

It’s all about the narrative.

IS THE PENSION CRISIS ABOUT TO SNOWBALL?

Reuters brings us the latest in a string of bad news on the pension front. A study by Loop Capital Markets found that nearly two-thirds of state pension plans are funded below the minimum healthy level of 80 percent.

Yet more troubling than this finding is the fact that investors are commissioning such studies in the first place. It tells us that municipal bond investors’ concerns about the pension situation have hit a new threshold. Cities and states who don’t get their pension obligations (including health insurance) under control are going to start facing higher interest rates on their debt as the bond markets start pricing this risk.

This is going to drive even more confrontations between state and local governments and their workers. If underfunded pension liabilities start impacting debt obligations, politicians will be much less willing to play the old “let’s pretend” game with the unions.

Less pretending is good.

THE GOOD NEWS FOR OBAMA IS THAT THE EMBASSY ATTACKS WILL DISTRACT PEOPLE FROM THIS BAD ECONOMIC NEWS: Jobless Claims in U.S. Rose More Than Forecast Last Week. “The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits rose more than projected last week, showing scant improvement on the outlook for jobs. Jobless claims increased 15,000 in the week ended Sept. 8, the biggest gain in almost two months, to 382,000, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 370,000 claims. . . . The jobless rate has been stuck above 8 percent since February 2009, the longest stretch in monthly records going back to 1948.” Unexpectedly!

UPDATE: Wholesale Gas Prices Up Most In 3 Years.

How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

WASHINGTON POST: GM’s Vaunted Volt Is On The Road To Nowhere, Fast. If GM and Obama have lost the Post . . . .

MORE MILITARY DETAILS on what happened in Libya. Sounds like a professional, coordinated attack, not just some angry protesters.

UPDATE: Feckless: U.S. Marines At Cairo Embassy Not Allowed To Carry Live Ammunition.

In a Reynolds Administration, they’ll carry live ammo — and flamethrowers! #Reynolds2016.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Census: Middle Class Incomes Fall Again.

President Obama employs some of the best political stone soup makers in memory, but even they’re having trouble with this one. On Wednesday’s terrible Census Bureau findings on income and poverty, the White House put out a statement saying the report shows “we have made progress digging our way out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” even if “too many families are still struggling.”

Oh? Such progress includes median household income falling by $777 to $50,054 in 2011, a decline of 1.5% in real terms and the second in two years. This measure of middle-class incomes is 8.1% lower than in 2007. . . . Meanwhile, 46.2 million Americans live in poverty, a near-record high at 15% and also unchanged since last year. They’ll be happy to know the White House considers this progress.

How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

Related: Downward Mobility: One-Third Of Americans In ‘Lower Classes’ Since Obama Took Office. “According to the Pew Research Center, Americans who say they are in the lower-middle or lower-class has risen from 25 percent to 32 percent in the past four years, in the national survey of 2,508 adults. Not only has the lower class grown, but its demographic profile also has shifted. People younger than 30 are disproportionately swelling the ranks of the self-defined lower classes. The shares of Hispanics and whites who place themselves in the lower class also are growing. . . . Many in the lower class see their prospects dimming. About three-quarters (77%) say it’s harder now to get ahead than it was 10 years ago.”

YA THINK? New attack on Americans; Obama foreign policy in disarray.

REMEMBER WHEN PEOPLE THOUGHT ELECTING OBAMA WOULD MAKE THE ARABS LOVE US? Protesters storm US Embassy in Yemen. Imagine what the punditocracy would have said about the quality of our diplomacy if this had been happening in September 2004.

UPDATE: Tweet of the day:

RAND SIMBERG: Romney Was Right About That Cairo Press Release. “Funny how some people who claim to be Republicans were so quick to attack him for it, though.” Plus, thoughts on hurt feelings and religious hypocrisy. “These aren’t the words of a serious person. They’re the words of a bi-polar kindergarten teacher. And sadly, that seems to be representative of much of the federal government, including those at the Justice Department and in the military who still refuse to admit that the guy who shot up all the soldiers at Fort Hood did it in the name of Allah. We all know that there’s only one religion that can’t be criticized, and we all know why. It is because we are cowards, unwilling to stand up for the principles on which this nation was founded. And because that is a religion which is almost uniquely anti-western, and that also explains a lot about why the Left is in sympathy toward it, and its ‘feelings.'”

UPDATE: Jim Treacher: Listen as our MSM gatekeepers turn the murder of a U.S. ambassador into an opportunity to ask Romney why he’s so mean.

SEAN HIGGINS: Who Will Fact-Check The “Fact-Checkers?” More importantly, who will pay any attention to them?

FLASHBACK: Major-Party Nominee Uses War Deaths To Score Political Points. Yeah, but he was a Democrat, and black, and hence above media criticism.

AT AMAZON, IT’S THE Blu-Ray Deals of the Week.

Also, TV Deals of the Week: 52% off Mystery Science Theater 3000.

And, today only: Rockwell SoniCrafter 100-Piece Professional Kit, $131.99.

ROGER SIMON: Death of Ambassador Stevens Is America’s Shame, Hillary’s and Obama’s. “While the mainstream media was occupying itself Wednesday decrying Mitt Romney’s forthright reaction to the carnage in Cairo and Benghazi, their putative bellwether, the New York Times, ironically was busy exposing the real story. It’s clear now that if there is a disgrace in what happened at the Benghazi consulate, it has nothing at all to do with Romney and everything to do with our State Department, its chief Hilary Clinton, and her boss Barack Obama.”

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Romney Offends The Pundits: Doesn’t he know he’s not supposed to debate foreign policy? “Tuesday’s assaults on the U.S. Embassies in Benghazi and Cairo have injected foreign policy into the Presidential campaign, but suddenly the parsons of the press corps are offended by the debate. They’re upset that Mitt Romney had the gall to criticize the State Department for a statement that the White House itself disavowed.”

Democrats running for President can attack whatever they like: That’s just “robust debate.” Republican candidates are supposed to politely lose.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse:

Yesterday was a key day — perhaps the day — in the campaign. Convention bounce and the Chicago teachers strike were instantly overshadowed. There was an opportunity to go for the win, and Romney took it. The media noticed, of course, and sprang into such intense, concerted action that it was obvious that they knew it was a day to be won and if the other side was going to go for the win, they had to act quickly and ensure that their guy won the day. Shock and awe, baby. Awesomely awful, indeed.

Yes, the major media are quite clearly just another advertising arm of the Democratic Party, and if you had any doubt before, this should have removed it. Treat them, and their employees, with the appropriate degree of respect and deference.

Related: Journalists Collaborate On Attacking Romney.

JournoList may be gone, but Journolism lives on.

Also: Open mic catches press coordinating questions to ask Romney so that “no matter who he calls on we’re covered.”

WASHINGTON POST: Teacher Strike A Problem For Rahm Emanuel, President Obama. “Teachers are now on strike in Chicago— loudly and enthusiastically — and Emanuel (D) finds himself in a far more pointed and public battle than he had bargained for. Under a national spotlight, his famous dealmaking skills are being severely tested by an increasingly familiar set of schoolhouse issues seen in communities across the country as contentious and often personal. If the strike persists, its tone and outcome could ripple well beyond Chicago, given Emanuel’s close association with President Obama.”

ED MORRISSEY: Chicago Teachers’ Strike: Last Straw for Voters?

THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER EDITORIALIZES: The second 9/11 illustrates futility of groveling for peace.

Forgive President Obama if he seemed a bit shell-shocked during his brief statement Wednesday on the murderous attack against an American consulate in Libya. In June 2009, he had grand plans for harmony between East and West. In a celebrated speech delivered in Cairo, Obama spoke earnestly about the need for the West and the Muslim world to look past old hostilities and suspicions.

And then on Tuesday night, his grand vision came crashing down.

Before the deadly attack in Benghazi, in which the American ambassador and three others were killed, there was another attack in Cairo. That one could well serve as a microcosm of Obama’s broader dealings in the Middle East. Just before a mob attacked the U.S. Embassy there, the diplomats took to Twitter to “condemn” a group of private American citizens who had created an offensive online film about the prophet Muhammad. (The film was the pretext for the rioting). “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims,” they tweeted. And so, after a painful and futile decade of spreading “democracy” and “freedom” by force in the Islamic world, American civil servants sacrificed the First Amendment in an attempt to appease an angry mob.

Naturally, these apologies (which the administration later disowned) did nothing to prevent the attack that followed or to make the embassy’s occupants safer. Rioters desecrated the American flag, replaced it with a black Islamic flag used by al Qaeda, and, according to Cairo’s daily Al-Ahram, chanted: “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.”

The lesson from that small (and unlike in Libya, bloodless) incident applies to Obama’s entire foreign policy vision: Whatever foreign policy you want to adopt, groveling is no way to bring it about. And that explains why Obama has accomplished so little.

Indeed.