WELL, GLENN, MAYBE YOU CAN’T GET WITH THE PORSCHE PLUG-IN, BUT YOU COULD GET WITH THIS:  You might be right about the tip jar falling short of the tasty Porsche Panamera hybrid.  But I bet the ol’ tip jar might buy you this sleek, aerodynamic beauty, with speakers that light up when the bass pumps.  And a bonus: You get to dress up like a gansta hamster.

A SEXY PLUG-IN?:  It’s a gorgeous 4-door Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo Hybrid, premiered as a concept car at the Paris Motor Show.  It has 416 horses and goes 0-60 in under 6 seconds.  Oh yeah, and it gets about 67 mpg.

YOU’RE SO COLD — YOU MUST BE A LIBERTARIAN:  Recent research has unearthed some fascinating associations between psychological traits and ideological/political inclination.  A personality survey study of over 12,000 self-identified libertarians revealed the following:

[W]hen libertarians reacted to moral dilemmas and in other tests, they displayed less emotion, less empathy and less disgust than either conservatives or liberals. They appeared to use “cold” calculation to reach utilitarian conclusions about whether (for instance) to save lives by sacrificing fewer lives. They reached correct, rather than intuitive, answers to math and logic problems, and they enjoyed “effortful and thoughtful cognitive tasks” more than others do.

The researchers found that libertarians had the most “masculine” psychological profile, while liberals had the most feminine, and these results held up even when they examined each gender separately, which “may explain why libertarianism appeals to men more than women.”

All Americans value liberty, but libertarians seem to value it more.

Guess we knew that last part.  But now you libertarian guys have official bragging rights to being more “masculine” than your conservative or liberal counterparts.  As for us female libertarians, I don’t know about you, but I suddenly feel a need to freshen up my lipstick!  :)

IF YOU HAVE TO ASK HOW MUCH IT COSTS:   You can’t afford it.  Mercedes Benz announced its plans to sell a 46 foot Granturismo yacht beginning in 2013.  No price has yet been announced (not that it matters).  Check it out yourself, but it looks kind of boring and not particularly well laid out– for a 46 footer– to me.

DRAMATICALLY DECLINING DEMOCRATIC VOTER REGISTRATION:  Of course you won’t find this widely reported in the mainstream media.  Fox News reports that a recent study by a left-leaning think tank, Third Way, shows a precipitous decline in voters registering as Democrat in key swing states.  In Ohio, for example, there are 490,000 fewer registered voters than in 2008, 44 percent of whom reside in Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2:1.

Ohio is not alone. . . . Democratic voter registration decline in eight key swing states outnumbered the Republican decline by a 10-to-one ratio. In Florida, Democratic registration is down 4.9 percent, in Iowa down 9.5 percent. And in New Hampshire, it’s down down 19.7 percent.

Another reason why many recent polls–which oversample Democrats and “weight” results based on 2008 presidential election turnout rates–may indeed be highly misleading.

A HIGHER DOSE OF LIBERTARIANISM, PLEASE:  Damon Root over at Reason takes on the New York Times’ David Brooks’ assertion that the increasing influence of libertarians in the GOP has been bad because Brooks doesn’t think libertarians “speak in the language of social order.”  Root correctly points out that Brooks seems to have no clue about libertarianism:

Libertarians favor limiting the size and scope of government precisely because they believe that approach will offer the greatest opportunity for people to seek their own happiness, whether as individuals, parents, church-goers, or, yes, even as business owners.

Does that make libertarianism anti-social? Hardly. Libertarians simply maintain that there is a crucial distinction between state and society and they hope to maintain a wall of separation when appropriate so that the latter may flourish.

My guess is that Brooks isn’t really so ignorant.  Instead, Brooks and other liberals/progressives feel intensely threatened by the growing GOP embrace of libertarians for one simple reason:  Libertarians are agnostic or supportive of “social” issues such as gay marriage and abortion–issues that the Democrats believe “belong” to their party alone, and that they use to paint (inaccurately) a sharp contrast between themselves and the GOP.

TIME TO EUTHANIZE OBAMACARE:  Jeffrey Anderson at the Weekly Standard applauds Mitt Romney’s recent stump speech emphasizing that ObamaCare is the single largest attack on individual liberty since, well . . .  EVER.  For the first time in history (thanks to Chief Justice Roberts and the 4-vote liberal bloc of the Supreme Court), the federal government has the incredible power to “tax” us when we fail to buy a private product that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, thinks we should buy.   Observes Anderson:

James Madison argued in Federalist 51 that our Constitution provides a “double security” to “the rights of the people.” One half of that security is the separation of powers among the three branches of government. The other half is federalism, the separation of powers between the federal government and the states. Madison argued that both of these checks on the concentration of power were essential to securing our rights.

Obama-care lays waste to half of this “double security” by funneling almost unimaginable levels of power and money to Washington. What’s more, in its startling delegation of de facto lawmaking power to the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other unelected figures in the executive branch, it also severely undermines the separation of powers among the branches. For example, Obama-care is making it illegal for anyone in America (with the narrow exception of houses of worship) to freely sell or buy an insurance plan that fails to offer free birth control and sterilization. But this ban is nowhere to be found in the 2,700 pages of the law itself. Rather, it came as a decree from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, exercising her newfound power. If Obama-care isn’t repealed, examples of such rule by fiat will proliferate.

This brings us back to Romney, the only man who stands in the way of Obama-care’s taking root from coast to coast.

HOW TO IMPROVE HOME PRICES:   Mitt Romney had the audacity to argue (to virtually no attention by the mainstream media) that the housing market can best be improved by . . . . [drumroll, please] an improved economy.  Contrast the progressive vision:  federal government subsidies– what a shocker.

Mr. Romney understands that more government intervention has been an obstacle to a housing recovery. His housing white paper, released the same day as his speech, lists the “alphabet soup of federal housing assistance programs” that the Obama Administration launched over the past four years, with acronyms like “HAMP, HARP, 2MP, H2H and EHLP.” None have rescued the housing market because they aim to keep troubled borrowers in their homes, rather than allow lenders to foreclose and the market to clear.

Amen.

ADORBS!:  Sweet little two-legged chihuahuas Moose and Maverick live happily with their disability, inspiring their human counterparts.

PANDERING TO RADICAL ISLAMISTS:  The arrest of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (aka “Sam Bacile”), the producer of the Mohammed video, is an affront to the First Amendment.  The feds nabbed him for an alleged parole violation.  Even if true, it seems improbable that Nakoula would have been apprehended in the absence of his association with the video.  If this is correct, it suggests that the Obama Administration is willing to use its vast power to jail people for publishing “offensive” material — particularly material offensive to the radical Islamists.

Would it be alright for a President to instruct federal prosecutors to create a “black list” of, say, communists/Republicans/tea partiers — pick your own least favorite group– and target them for investigation and arrest for any matter disinterred?  Surely this would be viewed as an abuse of power, and an affront to the First Amendment.  Talk about a “chilling effect” on free speech!

This is getting scary, folks.

IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S OVER:  Pete Dupont points out in the WSJ something the mainstream media and many inside-the-beltway old school Republicans will not:

In spite of what some of the pundits are saying, this election is not over, and it is very difficult now to be sure who will win the race on Nov. 6. To begin with, the polls seem to show a good bit of volatility. According to Rasmussen Reports, which unlike many other analysts has tracked likely voters instead of registered ones, has gone from Mr. Obama up by two in August, to up by five in early September to a tie in late September. Gallup was plus-one for Mr. Romney in mid-August, plus-seven for Mr. Obama in early September, and plus-three for Mr. Obama in mid-September. In short, each candidate is holding 45% to 47% of the votes with roughly 6% to 10% undecided.

It ain’t over’til it’s over, folks.  Turnout is the key.

HOW MANY DO YOU HAVE?:  Check out these 9 “must have ” status symbols that say, “I’m rich!”  If you have at least 5, watch out:  Progressives may call you a capitalist pig.

LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR DIET:  . . . but only if you have a license as a dietician.  This great video from the Stossel show discusses a lawsuit filed in NC by the Institute for Justice, challenging the State’s crackdown on a gentleman who runs a blog advocating a “Paleo”/caveman diet  (meat and fruit/veggies; no processed carbs)  for diabetics like himself.   The State takes the odd position that, while one can write a book about diets (free speech), one cannot run a blog about diets, without a dietician’s license.   Does this comport with the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause?

SECOND AMENDMENT IGNORANCE:  Theresa Brown, a nurse, writes in this online op-ed at the New York Times about the “Human Cost of the Second Amendment.”  Among her pearls of wisdom:

Gun advocates say that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The truth, though, is that people with guns kill people, often very efficiently, as we saw so clearly and so often this summer. And while there can be no argument that the right to bear arms is written into the Constitution, we cannot keep pretending that this right is somehow without limit, even as we place reasonable limits on arguably more valuable rights like the freedom of speech and due process.

No one argues that it should be legal to shout “fire” in a crowded theater; we accept this limit on our right to speak freely because of its obvious real-world consequences. Likewise, we need to stop talking about gun rights in America as if they have no wrenching real-world effects when every day 80 Americans, their friends, families and loved ones, learn they obviously and tragically do.

Duh.  My question is:  What liberal Kool-Aid is this lady drinking?  The Supreme Court, in both Heller v. D.C. (2008) and McDonald v. City of Chicago  (2010), made it abundantly clear that recognizing that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” under the Second Amendment was, like all other constitutional rights, not absolute.  Indeed, the majority in those decisions went so far as to assure Americans, in dicta, that laws restricting guns in “sensitive places” or possession by the mentally ill and felons would be perfectly constitutional.

Would someone please educate the citizenry about the Constitution????  SOON!!!

KRAUTHAMMER TELLS ROMNEY, “GO BIG”:  Charles Krauthammer’s latest column rightly advises Mitt Romney to stop the small ball, take the bull by the horns and go all in (how’s that for mixing metaphors?).  He missed the perfect opportunity, post-Libya, to attack the Obama appeasement doctrine head-on.  But it’s not just this one, isolated lost golden opportunity.  In Krauthammer’s words:

It makes you think how far ahead Romney would be if he were actually running a campaign. His unwillingness to go big, to go for the larger argument, is simply astonishing.

For six months, he’s been matching Obama small ball for small ball. A hit-and-run critique here, a slogan-of-the-week there. His only momentum came when he chose Paul Ryan and seemed ready to engage on the big stuff: Medicare, entitlements, tax reform, national solvency, a restructured welfare state. Yet he has since retreated to the small and safe.

Calling Romney aides:  Are you listening?

A GOP CIVIL WAR?:  Clarence Page at the Chicago Tribune argues that there is a “civil war” among the GOP “moderates” and their more conservative Tea Party cohorts.  Page is right that there are two factions in the GOP, but it’s not between “moderate” and “conservatives.”  It’s between the old-school GOP elites and the newer generation of Republicans — many of whom are Tea Partiers, but certainly not all — who are more adamant than their predecessors about sticking to conservative principles and eschewing political compromises that abandon those principles.

This newer generation — exemplified by Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz — is more libertarian in persuasion and hence, more concerned about preserving the Constitution, balancing budgets and reducing the size of government than they are about social issues such as gay marriage, abortion, etc.

DON’T BE MEAN TO THE KITTY  A Houston woman shot her husband in the stomach after he threatened to harm their kitten. The husband recovered, but I suspect he won’t see his wife’s kitty for the rest of his life.  The wife has been charged with aggravated assault.

REVENGE, OBAMA STYLE:  Casino magnate and Romney-backer Sheldon Adelson’s wife has an op-ed in the Daily Caller today in which she goes on the offense against the Obama Administration (whose DOJ is investigating her husband for bribery and money laundering) and mainstream media:

Those who currently chase after my family, who demonize us for our political positions, are acting on motives contrary to American values. And those in the media who are collaborating with these people are also acting from the same wrong political motives. Indeed, they are feeding it with a media double standard — allowing for Democrats what is forbidden to Republicans.

Adelson has a legitimate point about media bias in favor of team Obama.  Just consider the nasty hit job of the Huffington Post on Adelson yesterday, the headline of which was “Sheldon Adelson: Investigation Into His Casinos by Justice Department is Top Reason for Backing Romney,” and then went on to conclude, “Beyond the potential for a friendlier hearing from federal prosecutors, Adelson stands to be on the fun end of a $2 billion tax cut if Romney wins as well.”

Yeah, Huff Post– I’m sure that’s it:  Adelson couldn’t possibly support Romney for other reasons, like the state of the economy or maybe the fact that Romney doesn’t have a history of bullying opponents who exercise their First Amendment rights.

WOMEN TAKE NOTICE: GUN RIGHTS AT RISK IN NOVEMBER ELECTION:  In all the talk about the starkness of the choice voters face between Obama and Romney on issues of foreign policy and the economy, another critically important right is being almost forgotten:  The Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.

In this sober op-ed in the Daily Caller by lawyer Gail Trotter, she reminds us that the right to own guns for self defense is important to everyone, but particularly women, who generally are unable to fend off an attack without a weapon.  The election of President Obama will mean four more years of the power to appoint Supreme Court Justices, and the Court’s conclusion in 2008 that the Second Amendments right to “keep and bear arms” included, well, an actual right to keep and bear arms (including handguns), was a shockingly close 5-4 decision.  One more liberal/progressive Justice on the Supreme Court would likely alter this result, reinterpreting the Second Amendment to protect only the right of the “militia” to keep and bear arms.

THE COMEBACK KID:  U.S. Senate hopeful Republican Todd Akin is mounting an impressive comeback campaign since his “legitimate rape” comment a couple weeks ago that caused some Republican leaders to plead him to drop out of the race.  Yesterday, Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) endorsed Akin, saying “If Republicans are to win back the Senate and stop President Obama’s liberal agenda, we must defeat Senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri.”

THIS AIN’T THE QUEEN’S BENTLEY:  The luxury automaker returns to racing with a 616 hp beauty.

WHAT DO RADICAL ISLAMISTS AND PROGRESSIVES HAVE IN COMMON?  Answer:  Hatred of America, capitalism, and the US Constitution.  Donald Thornton, writing in ThyBlackMan.com, makes the connection so many seem to have missed, particularly in light of the recent attacks on US installations around the globe:

The eerie similarities between radical Islamist all over the world and radical Leftist that reside right here in America. Because their ultimate goals are synonymic. A nation; dare I say a world, under submission to their will.

I believe these two ideologies are clear and present dangers to America and the world at large. Because both; at their core seek to suppress any speech or expression that is contrary to their worldview. Free speech has to be the first and most protected foundational pillar of any new nation.  And it must be re-enforced perpetually in any existing nation that has adopted it.

The progressive ideal is utopian– a “new world order” based on a rejection of capitalist ideals and individualism. So, too, the radical Islamists, who reject capitalist (western) ideals and individualism.  Granted, the radical Islamists’ goal is the institution of global sharia law, which is inherently religious, whereas the progressive goal is the institution of global communitarianism and inherently secular.  Yet these two growing groups have a frightening common goal.  David Horowitz recognized this “unholy alliance” back in 2004, with the publication of a book by the same name.

Now ask yourself this:  Do President Obama’s recent actions/statements regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and Israel, combined with his unabashed progressivism, suggest there is any potentially dangerous problem here?

AHMADINEJAD CALLS FOR “NEW WORLD ORDER” AT UN:   The mainstream media is commenting that the Iranian President’s UN remarks today were “tame” compared to previous years.  Really?????  He overtly called for a New World Order, criticizing capitalism and its sins.  Seems to me his ambitious have grown, not subsided.  His principal aim is no longer just Israel but western society as a whole.

MORE INJUSTICE AT JUSTICE:   Is it appropriate for high level officials at the US Department of Justice to drop a lawsuit against a city in exchange for the City’s agreement to drop a lawsuit against the feds?  This is the question now being raised against DOJ civil rights chief Thomas Perez, who pressured the City of St. Paul, MN, to drop a high stakes lawsuit Magner v. Gallagher,  pending before the Supreme Court, in exchange for DOJ dropping a high-dollar False Claims Act lawsuit against St. Paul.

The Magner v. Gallagher lawsuit was potentially explosive because, for the first time, it would have forced the Supreme Court to decide whether the 1968 Fair Housing Act (FHA) could be violated by a mere showing of “disparate impact.”  In Magner, rental property owners argued that the City of Saint Paul’s “aggressive enforcement” of its housing codes affected minorities disproportionately because renters are disproportionately black, so requiring landlords to meet the housing code will increase their costs and decrease the number of units available to rent to minority tenants.

The question for the Supreme Court was whether such a disparate impact claim–where there is statistical evidence of impact on a certain race, but zero evidence of intent to discriminate— are recognized under the FHA.  Most Court watchers predicted a ruling in favor of the City that disparate impact claims were impermissible under the FHA.  This result was scary to the current DOJ, because it would put an end to its recent strategy of  bringing FHA claims against mortgage companies based on mere statistical evidence that the lenders’ policies statistically affect minorities more than whites.

Bottom line?  We won’t know the answer to this important question about the reach of the Fair Housing Act because Magner was so threatening to the current DOJ that it was willing to do anything– including dropping a very promising, big-dollar False Claims Act– in exchange for St. Paul’s dropping the Magner case.

Is this the way we want our DOJ to behave– to do anything to avoid getting answers on critically important legal questions in order to further the President’s policy goals of helping minorities?

IT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR NOSE:  A must-read editorial by the Wall Street Journal today about Iranian ambitions to “eliminate” Israel.  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at the UN today, on Yom Kippur.  The startling truth, as the WSJ editors realize, is this:

“The tragic lesson of history is that sometimes barbarians mean what they say. Sometimes regimes do want to eliminate entire nations or races, and they will do so if they have the means and opportunity and face a timorous or disbelieving world.”