DEMOCRAT CAMPAIGN AD

From MoveOn.org.  Find it here.

CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION AROUND THE WORLD

From the London Telegraph. Don't see this issue covered much in the secular media.

Imagine the unspeakable fury that would erupt across the Islamic world if a Christian-led government in Khartoum had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese Muslims over the past 30 years. Or if Christian gunmen were firebombing mosques in Iraq during Friday prayers. Or if Muslim girls in Indonesia had been abducted and beheaded on their way to school, because of their faith. 

Such horrors are barely thinkable, of course. But they have all occurred in reverse, with Christians falling victim to Islamist aggression. Only two days ago, a suicide bomber crashed a jeep laden with explosives into a packed Catholic church in Kaduna, northern Nigeria, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 100. The tragedy bore the imprint of numerous similar attacks by Boko Haram (which roughly translates as “Western education is sinful”), an exceptionally bloodthirsty militant group. 

Abu Hamza, the 7/7 ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan and other totemic figures were allowed to practise their religion openly in Britain, yet there is scarcely a single country from Morocco to Pakistan in which Christians are fully free to worship without restriction. Muslims who convert to Christianity or other faiths in most of these societies face harsh penalties. There is now a high risk that the Churches will all but vanish from their biblical heartlands in the Middle East.

OLIVER STONE'S DISENCHANTED VIEW OF OBAMA

Oliver Stone, a liberal, tears into Obama in his new book.  Stone attacks Obama on his lack of Wall Street reform; health care; Afghanistan; civil liberties; imperialism; and defense spending.

DRONE STRIKES

Slate has an interactive map showing the drone strikes in Pakistan from the Bush years into the Obama presidency.  It shows how Obama stepped up the attacks significantly.

THE OLD AMERICAN CHARACTER HAS DISAPPEARED

George Will's recent column "Mugging Our Descendants" is quite sobering.  What are the consequences of piling up the public debt?  His column is baased on the work of Nicholoas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute.  Some of the statistics he gives are:
 
1.  Between 1960 and 2010, entitlements exploded from 28 percent to 66 percent of federal spending. By 2010, more than 34 percent of households were receiving means-tested benefits.
 
2.  “he growth of entitlement spending over the past half-century has been distinctly greater under Republican administrations than Democratic ones.
 
3.  Today, 27 percent of adult men do not consider themselves part of the workforce: “A large part of the jobs problem for American men today is not wanting one.” Which is why “labor force participation ratios for men in the prime of life are lower in America than in Europe.”
 
4.  In 1960, an average of 455,000 workers were receiving disability payments; in 2011, 8.6 million. Nearly half of the 8.6 million were “disabled” because of “mood disorders” or ailments of the “musculoskeletal system and the connective tissue.” It is, says Eberstadt, essentially impossible to disprove a person’s claim to be suffering from sad feelings or back pain.
 
5.  “In 1960,” Eberstadt says, “roughly 134 Americans were engaged in gainful employment for every officially disabled worker; by December 2010 there were just over 16.”
 
6.  For every 100 industrial workers in December 2010, there were 73 “workers” receiving disability payments.

CONTRACEPTION CONTROVERSY

From National Review.  “The Obama administration has mandated that religious employers must pay for abortion-inducing drugs,” is the simple and direct message that Conscience Cause is trying to get across in Senate races across the country, via voter guides released this week. In the below interview with National Review Online, Christen Varley, executive director of the effort explains what they’re up to.

OBAMA SUPPORTERS INTERVIEWED

The drone issue is a serious one.  Here is Andrew McCarthy at National Review analyzing the issue of "Drones and Liberals."

CIA NEWS RELEASE ON BENGHAZI SANDBAGGING WHITE HOUSE?

"Petraeus Throws Obama Uncer the Bus."   No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.  Who else is Obama going to blame for this?

Is there a paper trail on any Obama order to help them?  A former defense official says there should be so all Obama or someone needs to do is produce it.

Headline: "US Security Forces Would Not Have Been Painting Targets on Ground Unless There Was Air Support Overhead – But White House Called It Off."  Don't know if this is right-wing sensationalism or not.  If this is true, it is very serious. Someone in the White House may have prevented US fonces from returning

ADMINISTRATIVE BLOAT IN EDUCATION

My problem with politicians on the education issue is that they are always saying we need more money for teachers.  However, money never seems to improve public education.  A big reason is that it is not spent on teachers, but on administration.

Between 1950 and 2009, the number of K-12 public school students increased by 96 percent. During that same period, the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school employees grew by 386 percent. Of those personnel, the number of teachers increased by 252 percent, while the ranks of administrators and other staff grew by 702 percent—more than 7 times the increase in students.  From the Thomas Fordham Institute study.

PAGLIA ATTACKS OBAMA

Camilla Paglia, a noted feminist and liberal, explains why she won't be voting for Obama a second time.  She calls Obamacare a "Stalinist intrusion"  and Obama "one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it's going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races." And she goes on to attack the role of the IRS and the "culture of surveillance."

SCIENCE PLAYING GOD

What are the implications of geoengineering?  And should scientists be held responsible for their failures?

How serious is the threat of global warming? One way to figure out is to take your cues from some leading climate scientists: They have moved on. That doesn't mean they've abandoned the issue, but they are looking beyond what all agree is the most obvious solution -- decreasing the amount of carbon we spew into the atmosphere in the first place.

These scientists are beginning to look for a Plan B. There are two distinct approaches under consideration -- sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, or creating an artificial sun shield for the planet. The former, which involves reversing some of the very processes that are leading to the climate problem, is expensive. The latter just sounds scary. David Keith, a leading thinker on geoengineering, calls it "chemotherapy" for the planet. "You are repulsed?" he says. "Good. No one should like it. It's a terrible option." 

SENATOR MCGOVERN'S DEATH

What caught my eye in this column was the following:  When he learned as a Connecticut innkeeper how government regulators conspire to thwart a businessman’s thrift and industry, he ruefully conceded in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that if he had known first-hand about the difficulties the government imposes, “that knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender.”

BOEING CREATES NEW MISSILE

An EMP Missile.  This missile will change warfare.  Scientists at U.S. military giant Boeing have successfully developed a missile that takes out the electrical workings of multiple targets, without causing any collateral damage.

GREECE DISINTEGRATES

Fascists may be taking over in Greece--blog post by Alan Johnson.

Quotes Paul Mason at the BBC:  Last month, the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, warned Europe that his country was on the edge of a Weimar Germany-style social collapse. What I have seen on the streets of Athens convinces me this is not rhetoric. There is a violent far-right party, its MPs committing and inciting violence with impunity; a police force that cannot or will not prevent Golden Dawn from projecting uniformed force on the streets. And a middle class that feels increasingly powerless to turn the situation round.

In addition:  The neo-fascist party Golden Dawn won 6 to 7 percent of the vote in the Greek elections of May and June 2012 and is polling at twice that today, as anger rises against the economic austerity measures of the coalition government of Conservatives, Socialists and the Democratic Left.

Increasing lawlessness may be on the horizon.

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN

A disgruntled aide has written a "tell-all" book.  "Egomaniacal autocrat" -- wow!  Obama and Biden "financially illiterate."

FETHULLAH GULEN

Controversial Muslim preacher, feared Turkish intriguer—and “inspirer” of the largest charter school network in America.  Is Islamic proselytizing subtely taking place?  And they are flying politicians to Turkey.  And reporters are raising other questions about what exactly is going on with this group.

OBAMA & PUTIN ADS

Losing your virginity is like voting for Obama.  Maybe there is a reason Putin has endorsed Obama!  Obama has copied a Putin campaign ad!

A Romney take-off on this Obama ad has come out.  But evidently it was first used in an Australian political campaign.

WAR ON WOMEN

Condi Rice criticizes the Obama campaign slogan accusing Romney of a "war on women."

CAMPAIGN CONTRASTS

Pictures don't appear on front pages by chance.  I don't know if this heralds a change in media coverage of how the candidates are presented, but it is not flattering to Obama.

CNN RETRACTS STORY ON WOMEN

Interesting.  The story was about how hormones influence women voters.  Maybe it made them sound too much like Todd Akin???  Or it didn't fit the Democrat spin on why women in polls seem to have favored Obama????

THE MEDIA AND BENGHAZI

A critique of media coverage in the The Telegraph.  Delingpole calls the media an "amen corner" for the Obama administration to describe how they evaluated and reported the events that took place.

DID OBAMA LISTEN TO THE BAD ADVICE OF ECONOMISTS?

From RealClearMarkets.  Does fault lie with the economists who gave Obama advice or with Obama for listening to them? And Paul Krugman faulted Obama for not spending even more to bring the economy back.

If President Obama loses the election in November, economists may well end up taking a share of the blame - for good reason. Their models misled him into applying ambitious stimulus therapies to jump start the economy and boost employment that haven't worked, vastly undermining his re-election prospects.

Back in January 2009, a now infamous study coauthored by Christina Romer, the future chair of the President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, and Jared Bernstein, the future chief economist for the Vice President, predicted that an $800 billion economic stimulus targeted toward boosting consumer demand would stave off a severe recession and hold unemployment below 8 percent by the end of 2009.

What was so compelling about their study was the illusion of precision. The Obama administration used their statistical analysis to aggressively promote specific policy proposals, including the package of tax cuts and discretionary federal spending embodied in the so-called stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

But little of what they predicted has panned out.

Read the whole article.

HIGHER EDUCATION MOVES FURTHER TO THE LEFT

Academics have always leaned to the left, but now the tilt is even more that way according to a UCLA survey.

Among full-time faculty members at four-year colleges and universities, the percentage identifying as "far left" or liberal has increased notably in the last three years, while the percentage identifying in three other political categories has declined.

In looking at the new data, there is notable variation by sector. Private research universities are the most left-leaning, with 16.2 percent of faculty members identifying as far left, and 0.1 percent as far right. (If one combines far left and liberal, however, private, four-year, non-religious colleges top private universities, 68.6 percent to 67.7 percent.) The largest conservative contingent can be found at religious, non-Roman Catholic four-year colleges, where 23.0 percent identify as conservative and another 0.6 percent say that they are far right.

MALI: THE NEW SYRIA?

France is sending in drones to battle radical Islamists. 

Mali was first destabilized thanks to NATO’s intervention in Libya, which sent weapons and fighters streaming into the northern deserts, where they found little opposition from the government. Other Islamist fighters from the Middle East soon came flocking in to this sandy patch of ungoverned territory. Their ranks are reportedly bolstered by thousands of local child soldiers.

So NATO's intervention in Libya may have led to this terrible situation for Mali. And in addition, the Obama administration has waived sanctions on the international agreement intended to stop the use of child soldiers.  But for the third year in a row, Obama has waived almost all U.S. sanctions that would punish certain countries that use child soldiers, upsetting many in the human rights community

BENGAZHI ATTACK

From Reuters.  It looks like the information was available within two hours that the attack was a terrorist attack. . .so why was the White House and State Department blaming a film maker for making a video uncomplimentary to Islam for almost two weeks?

The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

And it would also appear that this information was not passed on to Congress in the briefings that followed.

More.  "5 Lessons of Benghazi" 

Were, and are, American arms being used to support radical Islamists? The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East. Starting in March 2011, when American diplomat J. Christopher Stevens was designated the liaison to the “opposition” in Libya, the Obama administration has been arming them, including jihadists like Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the al Qaeda franchise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

THE OBAMA PLAN FOR HIS SECOND TERM

Links to Obama's platform for the next 4 years.  It is published 2 weeks before the election.

2012 PRESIDENTIAL FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE

Jennifer Rubin's 10 point analysis.  Neither candidate shone, but Obama seems to have made more mistatements.

Point 10:  After all the talk in the primaries of Romney gaffes and misstatements (which continued into this August), Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) went through four debates, six hours total, with no noteworthy gaffe or mistake. (The closest was the missed opportunity on Libya in the second debate.) After each of the debates, the Obama team had more “cleanup” to do than the Romney camp.

CHRIS CHRISTIE

Chris Christie may be accused of ranting, but he is a great speaker and knows how to reach an audience.

EUTHANASIA IN THE NETHERLANDS

A story of a woman who took her life because she was suffering from an incurable disease.

Joel Kotkin:  Interesting thesis.  Obama and Democrats are appealing to singles, including single mothers.  Eventually this Democrat power base will collapse because they are not having children. 

And even as the president has slipped in the polls, the fast-growing Single Nation has stayed behind him. Unmarried women prefer Obama by nearly 20 points (56 to 39 percent), according to Gallup, while those who are married prefer Romney by a similarly large margin.
 

Unmarried women (along with ethnic minorities, the poor and the workers in the public bureaucracy) are rapidly becoming a core constituency of the Democratic party, in a sense replacing the ethnic white working class.

But the Single Nation’s grip on power may not be sustainable for more than a generation. After all they, by definition, will have no heirs. This, notes author Eric Kauffman, hands the long-term advantage to generally more conservative family-oriented households, who often have two or more offspring. Birth rates among such conservative populations such as Mormons and evangelical Christians tend to be twice as high than those of the nonreligious.
 

As a result, Kauffman predicts that inevitably “the religious will inherit the earth” and ensure that conservative, more familial-oriented values inevitably prevail. Even among generally liberal groups like Jews, the orthodox and affiliated are vastly out-birthing their secular counterparts; by some estimates roughly two in five New York Jews is orthodox, including three quarters of the city’s Jewish children. If these trends continue, politics even in the progressive nirvana of Gotham may be pulled somewhat to the right.

EGYPT WANTS NUKES

An Egyptian poll show people want government to turn to Iran to get a nuclear weapons. Obviously this puts Israel into an increasingly dangerous situation. 

A poll of Egyptians conducted last month shows that they have increasingly positive views of Iran, believe that both Iran and Egypt should obtain nuclear weapons, and still trust their own military more than any other institution in Egypt.

Iran's deputy defense minister said recently that the Iranian regime is seeking more military cooperation with Egypt. "We are ready to help Egypt to build nuclear reactors and satellites," he said on the occasion or Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy's meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month. Morsy's office has said the two didn't discuss military cooperation.

NAZI PERSECUTION OF DISABLED IN AUSTRIA

Graves have been exhumed showing evidence of the physical and mentally disabled being tormented in final days or months of their lives.

Historians, anthropologists, physicians and archaeologists say the Hall project represents the first time that investigators can match hospital records with remains, allowing them to identify, for example, cases in which patients had broken ribs, noses and collarbones that were not listed in their medical histories, suggesting that the patients had been beaten by those responsible for their care.

MIDEAST POLICY A MESS

Rosa Brooks, who served in both the Departments of State and defense during the Obama administration, is quite critical of Obama administration policies and uses the word "dysfunctional" to describe it.

Despite some successes large and small, Obama's foreign policy has disappointed many who initially supported him. The Middle East initiatives heralded in his 2009 Cairo speech fizzled or never got started at all, and the Middle East today is more volatile than ever. The administration's response to the escalating violence in Syria has consisted mostly of anxious thumb-twiddling. The Israelis and the Palestinians are both furious at us. In Afghanistan, Obama lost faith in his own strategy: he never fought to fully resource it, and now we're searching for a way to leave without condemning the Afghans to endless civil war. In Pakistan, years of throwing money in the military's direction have bought little cooperation and less love.

Here is what she suggests:

1. Get a strategy.
2. Get some decent managers.
3. Get people who actually know something.
4. Get out of the bubble.
5. Get a backbone

OBAMA'S SECOND TERM AGENDA

After watching 2 debates I have been wondering what would Obama do?  Romney, for better or worse, has some specific proposals out there.  Maybe Obama was burned by his failed promises of 2008.  Time's Mark Halperin also weighed on this issue.

After doing an internet search, I have found a number of other commentators and writers who are also wondering what he would do.  For example:

Kimberley A. Strassel 

The National Journal 

Politico has some speculation on what he might do.


Megan Mcardle.  I suspect that Obama's advisors knew all this months ago, and just figured it was too difficult to come up with a second term agenda that was both plausible and novel.  Of course, it'll be even harder now.  So Obama had better nail it in tonight's town hall

OBAMACARE'S IMPACT ON MEDICARE

The Heritage Foundation documents how Obamacare raids Medicare to pay for other new programs.  There is a problem waiting to happen.  Stay healthy if you are over 65.

The money is cut from hospital services, Medicare Advantage, skilled nursing services, hospice services, and other Medicare services. To be clear, the cuts do not target individual institutions or medical organizations suspected of waste, fraud, or abuse.

Further, seniors will face greater barriers when attempting to access care. The Medicare actuary projects that over the next 10 years, Medicare Part A providers (i.e., hospitals and nursing homes) may stop accepting Medicare patients or 15 percent of them will become unprofitable due to the severe Obamacare cuts. If Obamacare remains on the books, the number of providers becoming unprofitable will reach 40 percent by 2050. A doubling of Medicare patients with a major reduction in the number of providers will guarantee access problems for senior citizens.

SOURCES USED BY THE MEDIA

The Hill discusses the issue of how the media selects professors who are Obama supporters to get quotes and information for their election news coverage.

At least a half-dozen professors who gave political donations to President Obama have been quoted in news articles opining about his administration and the 2012 race for the White House.

The findings of The Hill’s months-long investigation come as Republicans have been crying foul, alleging a media bias for Obama and against Mitt Romney.

SYRIA: OBAMA DEBACLE

Jackson Diehl feels Obama's decisions on Syria are far worse than what happened in Libya.

The result is not a painful but isolated setback, but an emerging strategic disaster: a war in the heart of the Middle East that is steadily spilling over to vital U.S. allies, such as Turkey and Jordan, and to volatile neighbors, such as Iraq and Lebanon. Al-Qaeda is far more active in Syria than it is in Libya — while more liberal and secular forces are turning against the United States because of its failure to help them. More than 30,000 people — most of them civilians — have been killed, and the toll mounts by the hundreds every day.

Of course, Obama is not solely responsible for this mess. But his serial miscalculations have had the consistent if unintended effect of enabling Syria’s Bashar al-Assad — first to avoid international isolation, then to go on slaughtering his own population with impunity.

Obama’s Syria policy began in 2009 with the misguided idea of reaching out to the dictator. Within a month of his inauguration, Obama reversed the Bush administration’s approach of isolating Assad. He later reopened the U.S. Embassy and dispatched senior envoys, such as George Mitchell.

The problem with this policy was not just the distasteful courting of a rogue regime but the willful disregard of the lessons absorbed by George W. Bush, who also tried reaching out to Assad, only to learn the hard way that he was an irredeemable thug. Yet Obama insisted on reversing Bush’s policy of distancing the United States from strongmen like Assad and Hosni Mubarak — a monumental miscalculation.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT SCAM?

A column questioning AP courses for high school students.

Interestingly, the evidence providing the clearest positive argument for AP participation is that high performance in AP courses correlates with better college grades and higher graduation rates, especially in science courses. But that's faint praise. It's the same as saying that students who do best in high school will do better in college and are more likely to graduate. 

My beef with AP courses isn't novel. The program has a bountiful supply of critics, many of them in the popular press (see here and here), and many increasingly coming from academia as well (see here). The criticisms comport, in every particular, with my own experience of having taught an AP American Government and Politics course for ten years.

RUSSIA'S GROWING INTEREST IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The news that Iraq was planning to buy Czech planes for its air force caught my eye.  Iraq will spend $1  billion helping the Czech economy.  But what caught my eye was the  note that Iraq is now looking to forge military ties with other allies and nations, including Russia.

Iraq is also interested in purchasing Russian military equipment.  Now Iraq, in addition to Syria and Iran, is interested in dealing with the Russians. 

REDISTRIBUTION RECESSION

A recent book by Casey B. Mulligan (University of Chicago, Department of Economics)  which argues that in helping people incentives to work have been undermined.  There are no longer the same incentives to work.

The social safety net became more generous under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and as a result massively altered employment patterns in the labor market.

The New York Times has a bio of the author.

OBAMA'S WEDDING RING

Not sure anything is settled on what is inscribed on Obama's wedding ring, but the different views are intriguing.

NUKES & THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Some recent documents on how near Cuba came to getting nuclear weapons has surfaced.

Cuba would have become the first nuclear power in Latin America 50 years ago, if not for the dynamics captured in this remarkable verbatim transcript -- published here for the first time -- of Fidel Castro's excruciating meeting with Soviet deputy prime minister Anastas Mikoyan, on November 22, 1962. The document comes from the personal archive of his son, the late Sergo Mikoyan, which was donated to the National Security Archive and which appears for the first time in English this month in the new book, The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis.

OBAMA'S CHILDHOOD

A summary of a Frontline story which interviewed a high school of President Obama.

This week, PBS’s “Frontline” published the transcript from a June 27, 2012 interview with Kristen Caldwell, a woman who grew up with President Barack Obama and attended the Punahou School with him in Honolulu, Hawaii. Among other claims, she told PBS that, as a young child, Obama told his classmates that he was Kenyan royalty or an Indonesian prince — fascinating claims that she discussed in great detail.

WHY REID HATES ROMNEY?

Interesting article on the reasons for Reid's attack on Romney, even to the point of calling a fellow Mormon a tax-dodger among other things.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's scathing attacks on everything from Mitt Romney’s personal integrity to his devotion to his faith won't be going away for one simple reason, people close to the Democrat say: Reid personally, deeply loathes Mitt Romney.

CIVIL LIBERTIES UNDER OBAMA

Reason.com gives some of the "atrocious decisions" the Obama administration has made on this issue. There are over a dozen  issues libertarians would like to debate him on.

DEBT OUTLOOK

CAN UNEMPLOYMENT STATISTICS BE MANIPULATED?

Jack Welch comments on the brouhaha he made when he questioned last month's 7.8% unemployment statistic. There is a certain subjectivity to these statistics.

The possibility of subjectivity creeping into the process is so pervasive that the BLS's own "Handbook of Methods" has a full page explaining the limitations of its data, including how non-sampling errors get made, from "misinterpretation of the questions" to "errors made in the estimations of missing data."

These three statistics—the labor-force participation rate, the growth in government workers, and overall job growth, all multidecade records achieved over the past two months—have to raise some eyebrows. There were no economists, liberal or conservative, predicting that unemployment in September would drop below 8%.

I know I'm not the only person hearing these numbers and saying, "Really? If all that's true, why are so many people I know still having such a hard time finding work? Why do I keep hearing about local, state and federal cutbacks?"

IS THERE REALLY A TEACHER SHORTAGE?

Jay Greene, "The Imaginary Teacher Shortage."  For decades we have tried to boost academic outcomes by hiring more teachers, and we have essentially nothing to show for it. In 1970, public schools employed 2.06 million teachers, or one for every 22.3 students, according to the U.S. Department of Education's Digest of Education Statistics. In 2012, we have 3.27 million teachers, one for every 15.2 students.

REPORTING UNEMPLOYMENT: 2004 vs. 2012

Comparing how the media reported the job figures in 2004 and how they are reporting it in 2012! Morissey compares some of the major news outlets like PBS and the New York Times. It appears that it makes a difference if you are a Democrat or Republican. It is a lengthy article, but the quotes are there.

In 2004, a jobless rate of 5.4% “cast doubt” on the economy, and suddenly 7.8% is a sign of “a steadier recovery.” In 2012, the NYT never even mentions the need to grow jobs by 150,000 each month to keep up with expansion in the labor force. Not even once.

THE MEDIA & THE OBAMA REELECTION

Fred Barnes, "Obama's Boys on the Bus."  He argues that the media is trying to get Obama reeelected and are not just reporting the news.  It is interesting that Time has evidently discussed the implications of Romney's Mormonism, but it never evaluated Jeremiah Wright's impact on Obama's thinking.  But he quotes from a number of individuals, including Democrats which seem to support his argument.

And on media fact-checkers:  Media “fact checkers,” too, have been notoriously one-sided, to the detriment of Republicans. Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican convention was flyspecked in a novel way: He was faulted not for what he said but for what he didn’t say. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s constant stream of misstatements, goofy comments, and gaffes are routinely tolerated. “From insensitively telling a wheelchair-bound state senator to ‘stand up’ to not recognizing how many letters there are in the word ‘jobs,’ the media have let Biden get away with gaffes that would have gotten GOP VP picks pilloried,” says Geoffrey Dickens of the Media Research Center.

FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

There are a lot of different reactions out there, but I felt the Patheos blog were some of the better ones.

It was a substantive policy discussion, a debate worthy of this country.  While it is the case, inevitably, that questions go unanswered and lots of faux facts are thrown out, the candidates did not focus on soundbites or scoring points against misstatements.  They spoke in serious ways to serious issues.

JOE BIDEN IS RIGHT

The middle class has been "buried" by the last four years--look at the charts.

UNDERMINING US HISTORY

Analyzes the 2013 American  Historical Association conference agenda in New Orleans and argues:  If you doubt that leftist activists now dominate the study and teaching of U.S. history, take a look at the program for the 2013 American Historical Association conference in New Orleans. The pattern  is similar to the University of Michigan’s history department, discussed here yesterday—a heavy emphasis on race, class, and gender, with more “traditional” topics frequently reconfigured to conform to the dominant paradigm.

CHILD SOLDIERS

"Obama Waives Sanctions on Countries That Use Child Soldiers."  I totally oppose this decision even for reasons of Realpolitik.

DEATH PANELS

From the New York Times. 

Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget. 

But when you get to the end of the article it is clear that some kind of rationing will be taking place. But how do you know when a medical treatment might allow someone 10 more years of life or if would just cause someone to end up on a machine for a year?

A POLLSTER UNDER OATH

From Politico:  John Edward's pollster is put under oath and reveals how polls can be used for political leverage even for a candidate low in the polls.

When a pollster or strategist for a struggling political campaign presents what seems like a sugar-coated view of his candidate's chances, do you ever think: I wish I could give that adviser some truth serum, or maybe put him under oath?

Well, truth serum may be pushing it, but the put-him-under-oath part has actually happened. And when a pollster is required to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, under penalty of perjury, what emerges is quite a bit different than what you hear in the waning days of a presidential campaign.

STABILITY OF SAME-SEX COHABITATION

This British study indicates that the stability of same-sex cohabitation is  worse than oppposite-sex cohabitation and much worse when compared to opposite-sex married couples.

OBAMA'S ECONOMIC FATALISM

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post.

It takes a supreme ego to assert that because Obama failed at the central task of his presidency, economic revival, no one else could have done better. He made a series of policy choices that had real ramifications, both economic and political. He made poor choices and now doesn’t want to accept the consequences of those choices.

It is up to Romney to point out what choices Obama made and the consequences of those choices (e.g. a credit rating downgrade, enormous debt, anemic growth). Romney is saying he will “fact check” Obama in the debate. Bad idea. He needs to give the country a reality check. He can start by debunking the idea that we are on the road to prosperity and Obama did the best that any president ever could have.

MARKETING THE "OBAMA" PHONE

The interview of the lady who is going to vote for Obama because she received a free "Obama" phone is all over the internet.  Patheos gives a bit of the history of this program and looks at the issue of why some are calling it a free phone from Obama.

When you click the link at ObamaPhone.net to apply for a free cell phone, you’re redirected to…wait for it…FreeGovernmentCellPhones.net. That’s right. The same website that decried the “false rumor” and “incorrect term” of The Obama Phone Program has another website, surely desired to attract search engine traffic, that advertises The Obama Phone Program. Nice.

UPDATE: The website has already been changed! Visit Obamaphone.net now, and you’ll get something like a blog with no pictures of Obama, as though they’re in the process of dismantling the site. But surely there’s nothing to see here, folks! Let’s talk about Mitt Romney’s tax forms!

Here is the Left's analysis of the Obama phone controversy.

BENGHAZI = WATERGATE?

I am not so sure the Benghazi terrorist attack on the US embassy equals Watergate, but for Obama to say for 9 days Benghazi was not a terrorist act when it occurred on the anniversary of 9/11 and Libya's own leader was calling it a terrorist act indicates some kind of foreign policy ineptness or agenda behind the cover-up.  Even some Democrats are questioning the administration on their position.

A FOX report of the cover-up.  But even Andrea Mitchell at NBC is raising questions.

JORDAN IS NEXT

The Muslim Brotherhood are poised to create problems in Jordan.

LOSS OF CIVIL LIBERTIES

"ACLU: Bush administration quadrupled warrantless wiretaps. Just kidding. It was Obama and Holder."  Justice Department documents released today by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.  (http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2012/09/aclu-bush-administration-quadrupled.html)

You can check out the ACLU web site and see the graphs on this trend.  The media is not talking about this, but it does raise issues of big-brother looking in on people who may dissent. I thought liberals hated wiretaps and were big defenders of civil liberty?????

A LIBERAL CASE AGAINST OBAMA

This is very unusual. . .a liberal who will not vote for Obama.

Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can't bring yourself to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn't believe in Darwinian evolution, and they'll nod along. Say that you'd never vote for a politician caught using the 'n'-word, even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand. But these same people cannot conceive of how anyone can discern Mitt Romney's flaws, which I've chronicled in the course of the campaign, and still not vote for Obama.

Don't they see that Obama's transgressions are worse than any I've mentioned?

I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers. 

He details his reasons in the column in the Atlantic Monthly. 

BENGHAZI LIBYA ATTACK

An analysis of why the Obama administration  didn't want to refer to the attack as a "terrorist attack."

This sort of official dissembling is as appalling as it is standard-operating procedure for U.S. governments. Why would it take several weeks for Obama and his administration - the one that was going to be so transparent about everything, right? - to come even vaguely clean about the attack? And even in yesterday's U.N. talk, Obama seemed to be suggesting that recent and rampant anti-American actions in the Middle East had more to do with "The Innocence of Muslims" than with larger issues of U.S. policy in the area.

ELECTRIC CARS: THE FUTURE?

The Congressional Budget Office weighs in and calls electric cars a waste of money, at least how Washington has funded and directed the program.  The government subsidizes inefficiency.

From the CBO:  Assuming that everything else is equal, the larger an electric vehicle’s battery capacity, the greater its cost disadvantage relative to conventional vehicles—and thus the larger the tax credit needed to make it cost-competitive.

CHINA BUILDING CANAL IN NICARAGUA

China has signed an agreement to build a canal in Nicaragua.  Where is US investment?  This will be a signifant entry of Chinese economic power into the Westerm Hemisphere.

According to spokespeople, the canal will take an approximate 10 years to be built, and will cost $30 billion US dollars. According to the agreement, the Nicaraguan canal will be partially built by 2019, by which time it will have the capacity to transport 416 million metric tons, which would represent 3.9% of the world’s maritime load.

US FOREIGN POLICY: LESS RAMBO, MORE KISSINGER

From the Boston Globe.   The column challenges both candidates to act less like Rambo and more like Kissinger.  It is interesting that the columnist would want to go back to Kissinger who was not well-liked by many Democrats, particularly for his Vietnam policy (I assume the columnist is a Harvard liberal since the overwhelming number of university professors are liberals).  But time and history add perspective.

He is right to recognize the realistic and nuanced conduct of policy under Nixon and Kissinger.  The column also caught my eye because I talked to a person who worked in the State Department in more recent years and felt it was a mess.  He actually mentioned that probably the best years of US foreign policy were in the Nixon-Kissinger years because Kissinger managed to head-off many of the disastrous decisions of the State Department bureaucrats.  Except maybe for Reagan, presidents after Nixon (whether Democrat or Republican) have had a hard time countermanding the ineptness of the State Department bureaucracy.

FAILED BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS, SUMMER 2011

There is a lot of debate about who caused the collapse of budget negotiations:  Obama or Boehner. 

From the liberal New York Times (Matt Bai, author):   If you shake hands with a guy on the price of a car, and you agree to talk again after the car has been inspected and the loan has been approved, you don’t really expect to show up and find out that car now costs $5,000 more. This is essentially what happened to Boehner. What both Tuesday’s panicky calls from the White House and the subsequent counteroffer make clear is that Obama knew he was changing the terms and felt he had no choice.

ABC News interviewing Bob Woodward about his new book, The Price of Politics:  But at one critical juncture, with an agreement tantalizingly close, Obama pressed Boehner for additional taxes as part of a final deal -- a miscalculation, in retrospect, given how far the House speaker felt he'd already gone.

James Pethokoukis, Reuters:  Blame Obama.

THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

This review paints a pretty bleak picture.

This pre-emptive attempt to define the epitaph of the Afghanistan war (made by a U.S. official at NATO) could almost be the one-line summary of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Little America. The author himself spreads the blame even wider. "Our government was incapable of meeting the challenge. Our generals and diplomats were too ambitious and arrogant. Our uniformed and civilian bureaucracies were rife with internal rivalries... Our development experts were inept. Our leaders were distracted."

We need not stop at Nawa and Garmser. The whole operation in Afghanistan departed far from its original objectives, which were to deal a blow to al-Qaeda and reduce its chances of attacking America again. The United States could surely have dealt al-Qaeda a greater blow with the half a trillion dollars that it has spent in Afghanistan, if it had spent a large part of that money elsewhere (Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Mali...). As this book implies, it would have done a better job in Afghanistan, too, if it had spent less money and been more focused on its original goal.

Here is the transcript of interview Hugh Hewitt had with the author of Little America, Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

From WAPO:  Obama's troop increase was misdirected (excerpts from the book).   

DECLINE OF CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA

A review of a new book by Ross Douhat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.

Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times and a film critic for National Review, argues that our problem isn’t the disappearance of religion, as religious conservatives argue, or an excess of religious fervor threatening our freedom, as the secularists and religious liberals counter. Rather, our problem is “bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place.”

MISQUOTING ROMNEY

I post this more for how the media can misinform the public by leaving out words or phrases that a candidate might use.  It deals with a report in the Huffington Post (which if you subscribe to AOL is the news summary that pops up everytime you check email) about Romney's remarks regarding the middle class.  Both Romney and Obama essentially agreed, but by changing the wording it made Romney's position differ from Obama's.

(Someone else has reported that the Huffington Post was just using an AP story so it may not be its fault).

OBAMA'S NEW WELFARE RULES

FactCheck at WAPO gives Bill Clinton's defense of the new welfare rules two pinocchios.

In his high-profile speech at the Democratic convention, Clinton himself came to Obama’s defense, claiming that the change in rules actually would require “more work, not less.”

It is a complicated read, but Obama has changed the welfare reforms of the Clinton era.

2008 DEMOCRAT PLATFORM -- WHAT WAS ACCOMPLISHED?

Interesting article on looking back at what the 2008 Democrat platform accomplished in the area of science and technology.  Some of  the highlights:

1. The platform promised more spending on research and development, but spending on these key areas have gone down.  For what it’s worth, in constant dollars total federal R&D spending peaked under the George W. Bush administration in 2007 at $154.4 billion. 
2. Sex education.  The number of abortions has remained stable for the last decade.
3. Embryonic stem cells can be used in research but support for cloning is not supported.
4. Abortion is protected.
5. The 2008 platform said America "could not drill its way to energy independence.  President Obama proudly pointed out in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention last week that the use of renewable energy has doubled under his administration and that thousands of Americans have jobs building wind turbines and long-lasting batteries. In addition, the U.S. has cut its imports of oil by 1 million barrels per day while opening up “millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration in the last three years, and we'll open more.”  With gas at $4 a gallon there would be a decline in imports, but it appears drilling is okay now with all of these acres being opened up to oil exploration.
6.  What about drilling? President Obama correctly claims to have opened millions of acres to drilling for hydrocarbons. But how does that compare with previous administrations? In its first three years, according to the Bureau of Land Management, the Bush administration leased 8.8 million acres for oil exploration and production, compared to 5.3 million for the Obama administration. The Clinton administration leased 11.4 million acres in its first three years.
7. New wells drilled on federal land.  The first three years of the Bush administration saw 9,276 new wells drilled, whereas under the Obama administration 9,693 wells were.
8.  The 2008 platform called for 5 million green energy jobs.This goal is not being met -- look at the unemployment statistics and firms like Solyndra which have gone belly up.And then there are t he wind turbines being built in China!
9. The 2012 Democratic Platform declares, “We are expediting the approval process to build out critical oil and gas lines essential to transporting our energy for consumers.” Really? It is true that the Obama Administration has approved the southern leg of the Keystone pipeline?
10.  No support for space exploration.
11. They are still working on climate change policies and green house gases in the 2012 platform. . .but As it happens, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are back down to their level in 1992. This is largely not due to Obama administration green energy policies, but because fracking has produced an abundant supply of cheap natural gas.

OBAMA'S MIDDLE EAST POLICY

From Der Spiegel.  The Germans see it as in "ruins."

Here are some interesting maps showing where Muslim protests are taking place.

COMPARISON OF OBAMA & ROMNEY TAX PLANS

From Taxprof:  Given all the Democrat rhetoric this was a bit of a surprise. (There is a table to compare numbers).

Among the tax reform plans of the major presidential candidates, Mitt Romney’s proposal to lower rates and eliminate credits and deductions comes far closer than that of President Obama to the widely-praised and bipartisan framework of the Simpson-Bowles tax reform commission.

President Obama’s tax plan, however, is largely at odds with any commonly held notion of tax reform, including Simpson-Bowles.

FACT-CHECKING OBAMA/BIDEN AT THE DEMOCRAT CONVENTION

The fact checkers at Annenberg analyzed Obama and Biden's speeches at the Democrat Convention--go there to see the complete analysis.  I guess I expected more of the President and was most disappointed on his total misquotes of Romney on Iraq and bin Laden.

President Obama boasted that his plan would cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, citing “independent experts.” But one such analyst called a key element of the plan a “gimmick.”

Vice President Biden quoted GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney as saying “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth” to catch Osama bin Laden. Actually, Romney said he’d target more than just “one person.”

The president said U.S. automakers are “back on top of the world.” Nope. GM has slipped back to No. 2 and is headed for third place in global sales this year, behind Toyota and Volkswagen.

Biden said “the experts” concluded Romney’s corporate tax plan would create 800,000 jobs in other countries. One expert said that. She also said the number depends on the details, and foreign jobs could grow without costing U.S. jobs.

Obama quoted Romney as saying it was “tragic” to “end the war in Iraq.” What Romney was criticizing was the pace of Obama’s troop withdrawal, not ending a war.

Biden claimed Romney “believes it’s OK to raise taxes on middle classes by $2,000.” Romney actually promises to lower middle-class taxes.

Biden said Romney and running mate Paul Ryan “are not for preserving Medicare at all.” Actually, the plan they endorse would offer traditional Medicare as one option among many.

Obama said his tax plan would restore “the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president” for upper-income taxpayers. Not quite. New taxes to finance the health care law also kick in next year, further burdening those same taxpayers.

It is interesting that Annenberg had trouble fact-checking Bill Clinton's speech, because he gave so many statistics to run down!

By the way here is the critique of Romney's convention speech. One difference I saw is that he did not purposely misquote Obama (as Obama does him).  Romney is taken to task for "exaggeration and puffery."

DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION

For Democrat views on tolerance start viewing at 12:00.  Daily Show, September 5, 2012.

DEMOCRATS BOO GOD

From CNN.  I think the "no's" have it!  This was not well-handled.  First you take "God" out and then you try to put "God" back in to all of these boos.

Here is a Republican campaign ad!   "Three Times They Boo God."

COLLAPSE OF DEBT DEAL

Bob Woodward has written about Obama's "fury" when the debt deal collapsed.  One can make an argument for fault being laid at the feet of Boehner and the Republicans, but it looks to me that Obama pressed too hard to get more.  One needs to know when to push further and when to realize that you cannot get more out of the person you are negotiating with.

But at a critical juncture, with an agreement tantalizingly close, Obama pressed Boehner for additional taxes as part of a final deal -- a miscalculation, in retrospect, given how far the House speaker felt he'd already gone. 

But it also looks like Pelosi ignored Obama.  Democrats sure didn't help him.
 
Obama phoned in to deliver a "high-minded message," he writes. Obama went on so long that Pelosi "reached over and pressed the mute button on her phone," so they could continue to work without the president hearing that they weren't paying attention. 

HOUSE BUDGET PROPOSAL

From U.S. News & World Report:  The Republican controlled House has a plan to cut $2.5 trillion from the budget over the next 10 years.  The list is quite extensive.  The Democrats will fight for a number of these programs.

OBAMA'S SECOND TERM

The Wall Street Journal asked several leading Democrats to give advice to Obama on what he should do in his second term.  There is no way to know for sure what would happen, but these writers do give a bit of a vision into the future.

OBAMA, THE CEO

Forbes has an column on an article published in the New York Times.  The title of the Forbes column is:  "New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct--Obama Is a Lousy CEO."  Evidently the NYT article is critical of Obama's leadership style--normally nothing critical of Obama is ever published in the NYT so this is a bit of a surprise.  Two flaws are noted:  1) Obama "vastly overrates" his capabilities and 2) he "spends a lot of time and energy competing in trivialities"

THE REAGAN QUOTE

Running from the Reagan question? --  "Are you better off today than you were four years ago."  It has been interesting to see how Democrats have jumped around this question.

Investor's Business Daily gives the economic statistics on whether we are better off.  Here is the Democrat response and another one here.

US DROPS AGAIN ON WORLD COMPETITIVENESS INDEX

The drop began in the Bush administration but it has escalated under Obama.  The US dropped 2 points in the last year to 7th.  But some of the other statistics are alarming.  These statistics are compiled by the World Economic Forum -- it is not a branch of the Republican Party or the vast right-wing conspiracy.

• The U.S. scores 42nd in property rights, behind Namibia and Uruguay.
• The U.S. ranks 59th in government favoritism, behind Guinea and Bolivia.
• The U.S. scores 76th in wastefulness in government spending, behind Mali and Nicaragua.
• The U.S. also is 76th in the burden of government regulation, behind Kenya and Thailand.
• The U.S. scores 69th in extent of taxation, behind Gambia and Ethiopia.
• The U.S. ranks 103rd for total tax rate, behind Greece (!) and Philippines.

BILL CLINTON'S 8 DIGS AT OBAMA

From Politico.  Most are from 2008, but one is from 2011.

THE TERRIFYING NEW NORMAL

A sobering column by Victor Davis Hanson.  I am waiting to see if any of these issues will be addressed in the election campaign. . .but I have my doubts.   Young and old face some serious challenges as a result of decisions in Washington.

In other words, we are seeing the proverbial chickens coming home to roost in an economy that has run up $16 trillion in debt, regulated its way into paralysis, hounded the private sector, and demonized profit-making. The strange thing about the 2008 disaster was not just that hand-in-glove with Wall Street banks Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae created a huge real estate bubble and then watched it pop (one inflated through private speculation and government-backed sub-prime loans), but that the blame went not to the intrusive, incompetent federal government or even to a Goldman-Sachs-like bundler (a firm from whom Obama got more campaign money than did any other prior presidential candidate), but to the vague “private sector” — as if the well-driller or timber man had somehow collapsed the economy. The result was that Obama’s medicine from 2009 onward was worse than the original disease.

WHO INVESTS IN BAIN CAPITAL?

Well, this is interesting!  A number of Democrat-oriented retirement systems and even the University of California are invested in Bain Capital.  How do you demonize Romney for Bain Capital when you are making money from it?????

AN EVALUATION OF THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY

From WAPO.  The article begins with Obama's promises that he would bring Democrat and Republican together when he won the presidency in 2008 and what happened to lead to so much "gridlock" today.  It deals with the question:  Why has President Obama fallen so far short of what he so passionately described as a candidate four years ago?

Basically there are two sides to the issue:

That Obama ran into a wall of opposition from the Republicans on many of those initiatives is indisputable. What is at odds in these varying interpretations is whether anything might have changed that. Republicans say it could have been different. But there is little evidence that, once their leadership decided to oppose Obama, there was much he could have done to win them over — and there are plenty of examples showing how dug in they were.

There are also questions about how hard Obama tried. His advisers cannot point to a clear strategy for trying to create a climate of cooperation — other than their belief that the support he won in the election and the economic crisis would create those conditions. They argue that he incorporated Republican ideas into the stimulus and spent months waiting to see if a bipartisan health-care plan would emerge from the Senate Finance Committee.

Both parties and Obama dropped the ball at various times resulting in the confrontations that exist today.  Obama and Republicans no longer represent the kind of leaders that go back to the "partnership" of Senator Dirksen (Rep., IL) and President Johnson (Dem.) who were willing to cooperate on a number of important issues.