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.

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.”

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.

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.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TEA PARTY:  Finally, somebody in the lamestream media gets it right.  Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman and now host of an MSNBC morning show, tells the truth that no one else in the MSM wants to hear:  The tea party is alive and well, and has had–and continues to have–incredible momentum and success.

DONATE GATE GROWS:  GRAB THE RAID, THERE’S A ROCHE IN THE WHITE HOUSE:   Scandal is growing over the influence of American expatriate Robert Roche, the executive of a Chinese company who seems to mysteriously get VERY close access to the President in key meetings with the Chinese.  Oh– and he is also the owner of Obama.com, a website that redirects visitors to a site where they can make donations to the Obama campaign without providing a credit card verification security code.

Hmmmmm, let’s see:  No credit card verification. Documented examples of foreigners contributing to Obama. Close ties to the Chinese…..   Wonder what could be going on? [insert incredulous look here].

UPDATE:  Oh, and an astonishing 68% of traffic to Obama.com is foreign.

DONATE-GATE:  Several reports over the weekend show that the Obama campaign is doing a horrible job at screening out/preventing illegal foreign donations. Donate-gate is growing.

A small scale test by the New York Post revealed the Obama campaign accepted an illegal online donation from a man from London.  The same man was unable to make a contribution to Romney, whose online site rejected the mismatched credit card and fake US zip code.

A Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report revealed that by the end of September, the Obama campaign raked in $2,199,204.38 from donations from non-existent zip codes.

Will tonight’s debate moderator, Bob Schieffer, ask Obama about these disturbing facts?

EMPTY CHAIR v. OBAMA:  You decide.

NEGOTIATING WITH TERRORISTS:  The White House publicly touts its decision to hold talks with Iran after the election.  Interesting timing, to say the least.  As the Wall Street Journal editorial board observes:

At last week’s debate, Mr. Obama got huffy and said he resented any implication by Mitt Romney that his Administration had played politics with national security with its misleading accounts of what happened in Benghazi. The real question is when has this Administration not tried to exploit national security for political advantage?

Shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone familiar with progressive/critical legal thinking, which holds law = politics.  In fact, everything is politics, under this ideology, so there’s nothing unusual about their belief that national security = politics, too.

NUCLEAR BOMBSHELL: SECRET MESSAGE TO TEHRAN?  Rumors are swirling that President Obama has sent a message to Iran through the Swiss embassy, in which he recognized Iran’s “nuclear rights.”

FINALLY, A FAMILY FERRARI!:  How’s that for alliteration? But seriously, the 4-seater, 4-wheel drive Ferrari FF is a sweet ride– and room for the kiddies!

GASLIGHTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:  Dorothy Rabinowitz documents the Obama Administration’s history of gaslighting the American people, adopting “deny, deny, deny” tactics in the face of obvious facts to the contrary.  Time to file for divorce.

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF HEALTH CARE RATIONING:  An eerie story at RedState about the “Pathway” end-of-life rationing program of the National Health Service.  As the story shows, once rationing is accepted, there is tremendous pressure to use it in a variety of contexts to control costs.

Obamacare, for example, will add an estimated 37 million people to the health care system– a massive increase in demand– without a concomitant increase in the supply of providers.  The result, inevitably, will be queues and other subtle, non-explicit rationing mechanisms such as significant reductions in provider reimbursement.

WHICH BIRD IS WORTH SAVING?

MAMMOGRAM, PLEASE!:  In response to President Obama’s false claim that a reduction in government funding for Planned Parenthood would result in millions of women foregoing mammograms, a pro-life group, Live Action, decided to have 2,000 members call local Planned Parenthood offices to schedule the test.  Small problem: Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer mammograms (never has– it refers them out).

But I’m sure that government funding for Planned Parenthood is still necessary for some reason.  I mean, it’s not like private funders could keep it going or anything. It’s totally unpopular, especially with wealthy liberal types.

U.N. OFFICIAL ENDORSES OBAMA:  What a shocker!  LOL.  A U.N. Special Rapporteur, Ben Emmerson, says a Romney victory would be tantamount  to a “democratic mandate for torture.”  Of course, the word “torture” itself is inherently amorphous and subjective– one man’s “torture” is another man’s “enhanced interrogation.”  The bottom line is that sovereigns have an inherent right to protect their citizens, and interrogation–yes, even “enhanced” interrogation techniques– are one way to help achieve this goal, in the right set of circumstances.

TEA PARTY RALLY IN FLORIDA DRAWS THOUSANDS:  Just the tip of the iceberg, folks.  Tea partiers in the Indian River part of central Florida show up in droves to wear oven “Mitts” and tea bags– with the central message being:  We must vote.  And vote they undoubtedly will.  A lot of people (who get their news only from the lamestream media) are going to be shocked when the tea party turns out in full force on Nov. 6.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Compare and contrast: “Sandra Fluke, the woman at the center of a media firestorm earlier this year after Rush Limbaugh called her a ‘slut,’ spoke Saturday in front of about 10 people at the Sak ‘N Save in north Reno.” (Bumped). (And bumped again, because this is just too sweet).

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The entire crowd fit into a single parking space! With elbow-room to spare. (Bumped one more time. I just can’t resist.)

MORE (FROM GLENN): “Why should more than 10 people show up at a Sak ‘n Save at in Reno to see Sandra Fluke? . . . What a splash of cold reality to find yourself deposited — by your promoters — at a grocery store in Reno where nobody cares.”

RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL ENDORSES ROMNEY:  Another large paper abandons Obama in favor of Romney.  The Reno Gazette- Journal, which endorsed Obama in 2008, switches to Romney, telling its readers:

A vote to re-elect Obama promises four more years of the same. In the two debates between the two candidates so far (a third, on foreign affairs, is scheduled for Monday), the president has shown little understanding of how his failures are affecting the nation, and he hasn’t offered any tangible proposals to change course.

Precisely.

A SEXY HALLOWEEN COSTUME:  A binder full of women . . . well, woman, anyway.    I like it!   LOL.

BILL CLINTON BLAMES “IMPATIENT” AMERICANS:   Daddy Clinton, in a typical elitist, progressive fashion, blames Obama’s plunge in the polls on the stupid ordinary folk for being “impatient” and “not understanding why the economy isn’t hunky dory now.”   Too bad we can’t all be as smart and patient as Bill.

SNARKY, CONDESCENDING, PEEVISH AND SMALL:  The essence of the Obama campaign . . . as described by liberal mainstream media.  Yes, you heard it right, folks:  Even the mainstream media is beginning to smell the desperation of Obama’s petty, pandering, distraction campaign.

ORLANDO SENTINEL ENDORSES ROMNEY:  Another left-leaning editorial board jumps ship to formally endorse Mitt Romney.  The paper– located in a key “swing” area of Florida–had endorsed Obama in 2008.

We have little confidence that Obama would be more successful managing the economy and the budget in the next four years. For that reason, though we endorsed him in 2008, we are recommending Romney in this race.

TAX DEDUCTION REFORM, CAFETERIA STYLE:  Romney’s plan to lower tax rates while simultaneously capping deductions is truly brilliant, though little understood.  It would operate essentially as a cafeteria plan, where taxpayers get a certain maximum dollar amount of deductions– say, $17,000– and then are allowed to select from a variety of deductions up to the maximum amount.

This is brilliant because it allows each taxpayer to take those deductions he needs/wants the most.  For those who own expensive homes or multiple homes, they could use the mortgage interest deduction (up to the maximum limit). For others– perhaps those who rent–other deductions would be prioritized, such as those for student loans, medical expenses, or business expenses.

Not only is this cafeteria-style plan individually customizable and flexible, it avoids the nasty politics typically associated with any attempt to reform deductions.  In all other reform efforts, special interests/lobbyists have screamed about the consequences of reducing or eliminating their own deductions.  Romney’s cafeteria approach avoids these screaming fests, for the simple reason that no existing deduction would be targeted for reduction or elimination.

It is a win, win approach for everyone.  Brilliant.