PrairiePundit

Daily Mail: Drugs for high blood pressure and diabetes could also be used to treat DEMENTIA  Actually I have been taken medication for both for about three years.  Since I take them at regular times I have not had any difficulty remembering.   I think I had high blood pressure most of my life until the doctor who diagnosed my diabetes started a treatment for high blood pressure too.  I also think that this blog keeps me mentally sharp.

BBC: 'Wealth inequality' hits children It is why you have to study and work hard to make yourself more productive.  This is one of those studies by the inequality police.  It is one of the ways former communist and socialist try to make their bad economic arguments more palatable by appeals to empathy rather than the thinking part of your brain. Of course, one reasons children are so much poorer now is that Obama and other big spenders are increasing their share of the national debt.

Washington Times: Two-thirds of jobs go to immigrants ... ... Since the first quarter of 2009, the number of immigrants of working age (16 to 65) who are employed has risen 2 million, from 21.2 million to 23.2 million. During the same time, native-born employment has risen just 1 million, to reach 119.9 million. ... The data come from the Center for Immigration Studies.  It is surprising that this has not been a more potent issue.  Obama thinks his immigration policy gives him an advantage, but unemployed Americans probably have a different idea.

Karl Rove: It comes down to numbers. And in the final days of this presidential race, from polling data to early voting, they favor Mitt Romney. He maintains a small but persistent polling edge. As of yesterday afternoon, there had been 31 national surveys in the previous seven days. Mr. Romney led in 19, President Obama in seven, and five were tied. Mr. Romney averaged 48.4%; Mr. Obama, 47.2%. The GOP challenger was at or above 50% in 10 polls, Mr. Obama in none. The number that may matter the most is Mr. Obama's 47.2% share. As the incumbent, he's likely to find that number going into Election Day is a percentage point or so below what he gets. ... Adrian Gray, who oversaw the Bush 2004 voter-contact operation and is now a policy analyst for a New York investment firm, makes the point that as of Tuesday, 530,813 Ohio Democrats had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot. That's down 181,275 from four years ago. But 448,357 Ohio Republicans had vo...

George Will: “It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man.” — Calvin Coolidge Energetic in body but indolent in mind, Barack Obama in his frenetic campaigning for a second term is promising to replicate his first term, although simply apologizing would be appropriate. His long campaign’s bilious tone — scurrilities about Mitt Romney as a monster of, at best, callous indifference; adolescent japes about “ Romnesia ” — is discordant coming from someone who has favorably compared his achievements to those of “any president” since Lincoln, with the “possible” exceptions of Lincoln, LBJ and FDR. Obama’s oceanic self-esteem — no deficit there — may explain why he seems to smolder with resentment that he must actually ask for a second term. Speaking of apologies, Syracuse University’s law school should issue one for having graduated Joe Biden. In the 2008 vice presidential debate , he condescendingly lectured ...

The Delphi salaried employees were not the only ones screwed by Obama's auto bailout.  Several dealerships were force out of business and bond holders had their rights under the bankruptcy laws ignored so that Obama could protect unsecured creditors like the UAW.  In addition to those directly involved who got screwed by the auto bailouts the taxpayers took it on the shin too for several billion dollars.

The Hill: The Afghan National Security Forces do not have the numbers, experience or the money to support its network of military bases in the country once American forces leave in two years, U.S. officials say. Afghan troops will simply be "incapable" of building and maintaining enough military installations to defend against the Taliban or other outside threats, according to a new report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). In the report released Wednesday, U.S. officials cite numerous shortfalls in the Afghan-led effort, from the lack of qualified personnel to support the bases to not having enough equipment and supplies to do the job. The network of military bases and outposts across Afghanistan will be the hubs for security, stability and counterrrorism operations run by the ANSF. These Afghan bases will also house U.S. and NATO military advisers and special operations forces who will be left in Afghanistan once the main Americ...

BBC: Experimental concrete that patches up cracks by itself is to undergo outdoor testing. The concrete contains limestone-producing bacteria, which are activated by corrosive rainwater working its way into the structure. The new material could potentially increase the service life of the concrete - with considerable cost savings as a result. The work is taking place at Delft Technical University, the Netherlands. It is the brainchild of microbiologist Henk Jonkers and concrete technologist Eric Schlangen. If all goes well, Dr Jonkers says they could start the process of commercialising the system in 2-3 years. Concrete is the world's most widely used building material. But it is prone to cracks, which means that structures need to be substantially reinforced with steel. "Micro-cracks" are an expected part of the hardening process and do not directly cause strength loss. Fractures with a width of about 0.2mm are allowed under norms used by the concrete industry. But ove...

Fox News: The U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a “coordinated attack,” according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News. Summarizing an Aug. 15 emergency meeting convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Aug. 16 cable marked “SECRET” said that the State Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, did not believe the consulate could be protected. “RSO (Regional Security Officer) expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound,” the cable said. According to a review of the cable addressed to the Office of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Emergency Action Committee was als...

Washington Examiner: Previously undisclosed emails made public today by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee describe multiple instances of White House pressure on career Department of Energy officials to speed up approval of government loans to clean energy firms like Solyndra and Abound Solar. President Obama is described in one of the emails as having personally approved "moving it ahead," thus reversing a prior decision by DOE career officials not to extend $2 billion in tax-funded help to AREVA, a French nuclear power company, on an Idaho project. Vice-President Joe Biden is described in other emails as exerting heavy pressure to gain approval of a $1.3 billion wind farm project at Shepherd's Flat, Oregon. The new emails contradict claims by Obama and others in his administration that all decisions on the $20 billion DOE clean energy loans were made by career executives in the department. Most recently, Obama told a Denver television news interviewer...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: The wonders of US shale gas continue to amaze. We receive fresh evidence by the day that swathes of America's industry have acquired a massive and lasting advantage in energy costs over global rivals, demolishing assumptions about US economic decline. Shell is planning an ethane plant in a near-derelict steel valley near Pittsburgh. Dow Chemical is shutting operations in Belgium, Holland, Spain, the UK, and Japan, but pouring money into a propylene venture in Texas where natural gas prices are a fraction of world levels and likely to remain so for the life-cycle of Dow's investments. Some 50 new projects have been unveiled in US petrochemicals. A $US30bn ($A29.4 billionn) blitz is under way in ethylene and fertiliser plants alone. A study by the American Chemistry Council said shale gas has reversed the fortunes of the chemical, plastics, aluminium, iron and steel, rubber, coated metals, and glass industries. "This was virtually unthinkable fiv...

Jay Leno summarizes the Obama approach to Libya.

Ron Meyer and Celia Bigelow: ... Obama beat John McCain by 34 points in this group, but Mitt Romney has chopped that deficit in half and is in striking distance of closing the gap entirely. ... America has shed 397,000 net youth jobs since Obama took office. The 4.7 million Americans under 30 now looking for work represent 40 percent of the unemployed population.  This president has the worst youth-unemployment record in postwar history. Youth unemployment has averaged 17.5 percent the last four years; no other presidency has come close to matching it.  On his watch, youth incomes have fallen 6 percent while costs for young people have skyrocketed.  In 2008, Obama said, “When I’m president, I will make college affordable for every American.” Instead, college tuition has risen 25 percent in the last four years and continues to climb.  Students have been forced to take out massive loans to pay for tuition increases. Under Obama, national student-loan debt ha...

Science Online: A report out today from the National Research Council (NRC) of the U.S. National Academies says that large-scale production of biofuels from algae is untenable with existing technology , as it would require the use of too much water, energy, and fertilizer. To improve matters, the report's authors suggest that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which supports much of the research in the field, should conduct assessments of proposed technologies that examine sustainability at all stages of fuel production, including growing or collecting algae and harvesting their oil and converting it into transportation fuels. ... But there are many different approaches to growing algae, such as growing the microscopic plants in shallow outdoor ponds, or in enclosed plastic tubes called bioreactors. And the industry is far from settled on a single approach. No matter what the strategy, however, the NRC committee concluded that current technology scaled up to produce 39 bill...

Resurgent Republic: In this last Resurgent Republic survey before the election, taken October 23-25, Mitt Romney has caught up with President Obama, and now leads the national ballot by 48 to 47 percent. The Romney advance has been driven by Independent voters who have moved toward Romney in the wake of the three Presidential debates.  President Obama defeated Senator John McCain among Independent voters in 2008 by eight percentage points (52 to 44 percent), one of the main reasons Obama won the presidential election. But this survey shows Obama's support collapsing among Independents. Governor Mitt Romney leads Obama among Independents by 51 to 39 percent. If those numbers hold, that would mark a net 20-point turnaround for Obama among Independent voters in four years. ...  I suspect they over sampled Democrats to make the race look this close.  A 20 point swing in independents suggest a much larger margin for Romney.

Milton Freidman not only explains how investments by the rich benefit the people looking for jobs, but government policy is responsible for reducing jobs.

CBS News latest poll finds only 38 percent of likely voters approve of Obama's handling of Libya attacks and 51 percent disapprove.  This likely voters poll is still skewed with a D+5 weighting, when most surveys have shown the actual partisan divide in the country is R+1 or 2.  With the independents breaking for Romney, they need the skew to make Obama look competitive.  Even with it, he only gets 48 percent of the vote.

Paul Wolfowitz: ...   The administration has only itself to blame for its credibility problem. It is the result of a general lack of transparency and particularly of the fact that senior officials, including the president and the secretary of state, persisted for so long in offering the American people misleading suggestions that the attacks in Benghazi were a response to an obscure anti-Islamic video. But it would be prudent to wait until the facts are clearer before challenging the president’s claim that his first priority was to do “whatever we need to do” to protect Americans in danger. In any case, there are many other things about administration policy, behavior, and conduct that deserve to be challenged, including: - The persistent misleading comments about the motives of the attackers. - The failure to do more in advance to respond to the evidence – including pleas by Ambassador Stevens himself – to provide better security for US facilities in Benghazi or for t...

Washington Post: The Issue Engine HEALTH CARE OBAMA 49% ROMNEY 43% Who do you trust more to handle health care policy?* I just don't find this spread credible.  Ever since Obamacare was rammed through Congress every poll has shown it as a loser and it has gotten even less popular over time.  That 54 percent still does not trust Obama on healthcare and they are likely to vote for Romney.  This must have been one of those skewed polls with a majority of Democrats.

NY Times: Utah Mayor Hopes Star Turn Can Lift Her to Congress Mia Love, who would be the first black Republican woman in the House, is drawing on enthusiasm for Mitt Romney. I think Mia Love would be a winner without Romney as the GOP nominee.  She has a conservative message that Republicans are eager to embrace.  She also demonstrates that blacks can win elections as Republicans in white districts easier than they can in predominantly black districts.  In both cases it is about ideology.  That is what makes the trope about racism so misplaced.  Conservatives love candidates like Mia Love, Allen West and Tim Scott.  Liberals tend to see them as apostates.

Michael Barone: As the East Coast recoils from Hurricane Sandy, the political news is of new states suddenly inundated with presidential campaign ads. First Wisconsin, then Pennsylvania, more recently Minnesota. Ann Romney is campaigning in Michigan, Bill Clinton in Minnesota. All these are states Barack Obama carried by 10 points or more in 2008. Why is the electoral map scrambled this year? One reason, which I wrote about last week, is that Mitt Romney seems to be running better in affluent suburbs than other recent Republican nominees. That's one reason he made big gains after the first debate in Florida and Virginia, target states where most votes are cast in relatively affluent suburban counties. The tightening race in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which Obama carried by 16 and 10 points in 2008, seems to reflect a move toward Romney in the affluent suburbs surrounding Detroit and Philadelphia. In contrast, Romney has been struggling in Ohio, where the Rasmussen poll released ...

John Hawkins: ... The chances of Mitt Romney winning the early vote, independent voters by 8-10 points or more, having a higher favorability rating than Obama and winning the swing states by four or more points and losing the election has to be very close to zero. In fact, going by those numbers, Mitt Romney should win just as handily as Barack Obama won in 2008 — and make no mistake about it, people were very aware that Barack Obama was going to beat McCain in 2008. ... He attempts to explain the apparent closeness of the race by suggesting a polling market bubble on the party identification issue.  When you look at the generic congressional ballot, they show the Republicans even or with a slight advantage.  If that is the case and with independents breaking strongly for Romney it should forecast a strong win and not a close election.  In fact that is what happened in 2010 when the party ID were dead even.

Noemie Emery: If President Obama loses next Tuesday, we will be tempted to point to two days that did it: Sept. 11, 2012, (riots in Cairo and elsewhere); and Oct. 3, (the first debate). But the real cause may lie in two paths not taken, in which unwise decisions led to bad outcomes. The first came in January 2010, when Scott Brown, running as the 41st vote to finish Obamacare, won a special election to fill the seat of Ted Kennedy by an unexpected large margin in blue Massachusetts, which had gone overwhelmingly for the Democrats in 2008. This came after the off-year elections in Virginia and in New Jersey. These states, which also had gone for Obama, made large swings to install Republican governors, who campaigned against his ideas. Protests had dogged Democrats at town meetings, polls showed the public despised his proposals, and his approval ratings had fallen dramatically. He had two choices. One was to scale down his health care bill to a few proposals which could have won broa...

Erick Erickson: ... The 5th Circuit sensibly said that Texas could shut out Planned Parenthood under the current program without violating the Constitution. In response, Governor Perry said, “[t]oday’s ruling affirms yet again that in Texas the Women’s Health Program has no obligation to fund Planned Parenthood and other organizations that perform or promote abortion. In Texas we choose life, and we will immediately begin defunding all abortion affiliates to honor and uphold that choice.”  Planned Parenthood then sought sympathy from a local state judge in that bastion of common sense – Austin, Texas. I mean they may have great barbecue and great live music – but they also have a lot of crazy people, including judges.  The state judge – Amy Clark Meachum – took a whole 5 minutes to deliberate and then issued a Temporary Restraining Order with a $100 bond at the request of Planned Parenthood. Then it gets interesting. Who do you think is a Planned Parenthood supporte...

Houston Chronicle: Burglary suspect arrested with 3-year-old son Some believe in starting them early on their career path.

Experience suggest it would not.

Forbes: In Ohio, Obamacare to Increase Individual Insurance Premiums by 55-85% - Forbes Washington Free Beacon: Obamacare Sends Premiums Skyrocketing in Wisconsin These stories look like the basis for ads in those states.

Gallup: Romney currently leads Obama 52% to 45% among voters who say they have already cast their ballots. However, that is comparable to Romney's 51% to 46% lead among all likely voters in Gallup's Oct. 22-28 tracking polling. At the same time, the race is tied at 49% among those who have not yet voted but still intend to vote early, suggesting these voters could cause the race to tighten. However, Romney leads 51% to 45% among the much larger group of voters who plan to vote on Election Day, Nov. 6. This contradicts the narrative being spun by the Obama campaign that they were leading early voting.  I plan to join the early voters tomorrow.  I recommend that people vote a straight Republican ticket.  It is the only way to turn this mess around.

IBD: Financial Crisis Caused By Bad Policies, Not Tax Cuts The authors do say Bush contributed to the problem with an easy money policy, but that was really a decision of the Fed.   The primary driver was the Democrat policy of forcing financial institutions to make loans to people who could not afford them.  The reduced standards were the primary driver of the problems that led to defaults that had a cascading effect on others including the banks.  It shows financial and economic ignorants or rank dishonesty to suggest that the tax cuts were responsible for the problem.  

Daily Mail: Woman returning from karate competition finds intruder in her bathroom... and chops him out the window The intoxicated young man had literally entered the wrong apartment.   He did live in the complex, but I find his story suspicious.  The Woman kicked down her bathroom door and becan attack the intruder with karate kicks.  He was subsequently arrested.

Telegraph: 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. Other notable trouble spots include Egypt, where 600,000 Copts – more t...

Matthew Kaminski: Pennsylvanians have no problem voting Republican. Out of 67 counties, 52 are in GOP hands. So are 12 of 19 congressional districts, both houses of the state legislature and the governor's mansion. Republican Pat Toomey won a Senate seat in 2010. As party hacks know, the trouble for the GOP here is at the top of the ticket. The state last turned red in a presidential race 24 years ago for George H.W. Bush. His son made it a priority in 2004 and lost by 2.5%. Barack Obama's 10-point win in 2008 was supposed to take it out of the swing column this year. Yet one of the surprises of the past month is a quietly competitive race for Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes. Since the Denver debate on Oct. 3, Mr. Obama's lead has narrowed to 4.7%, according to the RealClearPolitics average of state polls. On Tuesday, the Romney campaign leaked plans to air television ads in Pennsylvania, starting as early as today. The effort joins two pro-Republican Super PACs th...

David Ignatius: ... The Fox “stand down” story prompted a strong rebuttal from the CIA: “We can say with confidence that the agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi. Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”  So what did happen in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, when Woods, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and two others Americans were killed? The best way to establish the facts would be a detailed, unclassified timeline of events; officials say they are preparing one, and that it may be released later this week. That’s a must, even in the volatile final week of the campaign. In the meantime, here’s a summary of some of the basic issues that need to be clarified.  First, on the question of whether Woods and others were made to wait when they asked permission to move out immediately to try to rescue those at the consulate. The answer see...

NY Times: Did Climate Change Contribute to the Storm? When weather repeats a pattern from 60 or so years ago, it is hard to describe that as climate change.  The proponents of global warming seem desperate to find evidence to support their theory  and seize on any bad weather as a precursor whether it is hot or cold.   But recent data has shown that the earth has not warmed in the last 16 years.

This is a very well done report that just lays out the facts including the lead up to the attacks and what happened on the night of the attacks.  They make up the first half of the program.  I will post the rest when it becomes available.  The rest of the media could learn something about this story they have so far failed to cover in sufficient detail.

Jonah Goldberg: If you want to understand why conservatives have lost faith in the so-called mainstream media, you need to ponder the question: Where is the Benghazi feeding frenzy? Unlike some of my colleagues on the right, I don't think there's a conspiracy at work. Rather, I think journalists tend to act on their instincts (some even brag about this; you could look it up). And, collectively, the mainstream media's instincts run liberal, making groupthink inevitable. ... Last week, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that sources on the ground in Libya say they pleaded for support during the attack on the Benghazi consulate that led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens . They were allegedly told twice to "stand down." Worse, there are suggestions that there were significant military resources available to counterattack, but requests for help were denied.  If true, the White House's concerted ...

Ralph Peters: When an American president evidently dislikes our national heritage, distrusts capitalism and despises Israel, we might expect a troubled foreign policy. But the consistently naïve, occasionally vicious and thoroughly incompetent set of confused initiatives masquerading as a foreign policy under this administration amount to a catastrophe. It takes a sort of genius to get the entire world completely wrong. The simplest way to critique the Obama administration’s inept overseas efforts is just to list the failures. Set aside the tawdry efforts of this timid president to portray himself as the bold commander-in-chief who all but dispatched bin Laden with his bare hands (were the SEALs even there?). There’s enough of a mess without that stolen valor: Iran : We’ve spent four years talking. Tehran’s spent four years pursuing nuclear weapons. When brave Iranians challenged their oppressors in the street, begging for “hope and change,” our president cowered in silence, prot...

The poll has the race tied at 47-47.  Some of the data just does not compute. It shows Obama with a strong lead in being willing to work with members of the other party.  Are voters really this uninformed?  Obama could not attract any Republican votes to his hated health care bill and got only a handful for the stimulus. He botched negotiations over the debt crisis.  It is hard to imagine a worse track record in working with the other party. The poll also shows Romney significantly over performing  McCain with women and young people.  When you combine that with the enthusiasm gap favoring Republicans I think it is highly like that 47 is a ceiling for Obama. Other polling is showing Romney doing much better with independents. ... Resurgent Republic released its latest survey in conjunction with Democracy Corps.for National Public Radio. The top line number sho...

Ed Rogers: It's one week before election day, and the Obama campaign is having to use heavy artillery to defend what should be safe and secure territory. Former President Bill Clinton, who is more appealing on the stump than is President Obama, is in Minnesota . Minnesota should be deep blue, and the state shouldn't even be mentioned one week before the election. The campaign schedules are unclear due to the storm, but Vice President Joe Biden was originally scheduled to be in his home state — even in his hometown of Scranton, Pa., — today. Biden is still a net plus on the stump, and you would think the Obama campaign wouldn’t send him to his home turf unless they had to.  In other news, a look at early voting numbers shows that 30,000 more Republicans in Ohio have cast an early vote in this election so far than did in 2008. But the big news from Ohio is that this year, 220,000 fewer Democrats have voted early so far in the state compared to 2008. And by the way, the Gall...

NY Times: Pro-Romney Group Makes Big Ad Buy in Pennsylvania; Obama Campaign Follows Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney "super-PAC," has put down about $2 million for a slate of television commercials in Pennsylvania, especially in the Philadelphia area, through next Monday. Karl Rove last night indicated that his group would also be making a big ad purchase in Pennsylvania.  The race has tightened considerably and this is just one of the states where the Republicans have expanded the map.  They are also buying ads in Minnesota and Wisconsin and I expect they will also being doing buys in Michigan.

This is a CBS story, so it plugs a few government programs.  But I really like the pluke of the pickle lady who started her company after being laid off and is now exporting to China.  That is also happening with a furniture manufacturing company. It is really too bad they did not come to South Texas where the Eagle Ford oil boom is creating thousands of new jobs as well as leading to a boom in manufacturing because of the shale gas revolution.  The fact is that the jobs are there if the government will get out of the way, but Obama is still be biggest impediment to energy jobs.  His and other Democrats' carbon phobia blocks progress in traditional energy while investing our money in inefficient alternative energy projects that are failing.

Blackfive got this email from a former Delta Force operative: The Secretary of Defense, in his most determined way, continues to try to protect the President from the fiasco in Benghazi. So desperate to shield the President he announced what will be forever remembered as the Panetta Doctrine:   “(The) basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta told Pentagon reporters. “And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.” Of course, in the circles that I ran with, it will be forever labeled “The Dumbest Shit I Ever Heard Doctrine”. To be fair to Leon, however, his audience for this ridiculous statement was not members of the military and especially not for those in the Special Operatio...

Byron York: Jason Gloeckner, of Galena, Ohio, never told his wife, Jean, that he voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Never, that is, until a few days ago, when I asked as we waited for Mitt Romney to appear at a rally outside a Columbus-area steel-processing company. "Last time I voted for Obama," Gloeckner told me. "You did?" said Jean, standing nearby, a look of astonishment on her face. "Whoa!" said their friend J.P. Valiulis, who had joined them in waiting for Romney. "The truth comes out." "He was a good talker!" said Jason, trying to justify his vote for Obama. I asked Jean whether she knew her husband had voted for the Democrat. "No!" she said. "We're a house divided now." Jason admits he didn't pay much attention to politics four years ago. Since then, though, he's been repeatedly disappointed by Obama. He was leaning toward Romney but still undecided until the first debate in early October. That di...

Max Boot: Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, must have felt like he was hit by a political hurricane last week when the New York Times published a front-page story claiming that he and his family control a fortune of at least $2.7 billion.  While it has been generally known that the Communist Party elite were acquiring considerable wealth, that is still an eye-popping amount. All the more so because it is hardly an aberration. As my Council on Foreign Relations colleague Elizabeth Economy notes in a trenchant blog post on the Wen scandal, “the annual 2011 Hurun report on the wealthiest Chinese reveals that the top seventy members of the National People’s Congress are worth a combined total of $89.8 billion; in contrast, the net worth of the top 660 U.S. officials is only $7.5 billion.” ...  It is ironic that the NY Times  columnist routinely tell us we should emulate China.  For people who still claim to be communist the Chinese leadership appear to be rea...

Tim Carney: The single biggest theme of President Obama’s reelection campaign has been a misleading attack-and-brag regarding the auto bailouts. Obama and his partymates have attacked Romney a hundred times on the grounds that Romney wrote an op-ed with the headline “ Let Detroit Go Bankrupt .” The implication of this attack is very clear: (1) Obama didn’t let Detroit go bankrupt. and (2) Romney wanted to liquidate the failed automakers. Both claims are false. And I’m not inferring too much here — Obama has made both of these false claims explicitly. “We didn’t let Detroit go bankrupt,” Obama said in a June fundraiser in Baltimore. “We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt,” Obama said in his radio address two weeks ago. Here are Chrysler’s bankruptcy filings from April 2009. Here’s an MSNBC article from a month later, reading “General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday as part of the Obama administration’s plan to shrink the automaker….” So, Obama actually took...

Houston Chronicle: If he is elected to the U.S. Senate as expected, Ted Cruz will be Texas' first Hispanic to snag that lofty post and one of the few in that chamber's history, but the state is not exactly abuzz about that ground-breaking aspect of his likely move. Instead, there have been questions from some about his Hispanic credentials, and political scientists say his background and positions may put him at odds with many Texas Hispanics whose heritage is Mexican and who are more likely to be Democratic. Cruz, a Republican, and the son of a Cuban immigrant, is aligned with the tea party and opposes the DREAM Act. "Even the fact that he made it to the general election - that, in and of itself, is ... a history maker for the community," said Jessica Lavariega Monforti , associate professor of political science and assistant dean of the University of Texas-Pan American College of Social and Behavioral Sciences . "Whether the community likes that or not is ...