Monthly Archives: October 2012

Will Obama’s Benghazi Cover-Up Succeed?

Featured image Barack Obama’s prospects for re-election have been fading for some time now. As Mitt Romney surges, Obama flails, embarrassing himself with silly trivialities that are often summed up as Big Bird, binders and bayonets. That’s what happens when your record is so bad that you can’t talk about it; not truthfully, anyway. So it has been clear for a while that Obama’s re-election hopes can’t absorb another blow. Which the »

The Weekly Winston: War on Coal Edition

Featured image With President Obama doing his best to obscure or deny his hostility to coal in the closing weeks of this campaign, herewith Sir Winston in 1928 on the importance of utilizing coal as an alternative to importing oil from you-know-where: We used to be a source of fuel; we are increasingly becoming a sink.  These supplies of foreign liquid fuel are no doubt vital to our industry, but our ever »

When his lips are moving…

Featured image …he’s prevaricating. Obama to the contrary notwithstanding, he was talking about missile defense when he asked Dmitri to pass a message to his close personal friend Vladimir. In addition to prevaricating — stick with this KRNV Reno interview clip to the end — Obama throws in several dollops of bs for good measure. Yes, I believe! I’m stupid! UPDATE: See also Erick Erickson’s post “Did Obama intentionally mislead KUSA’s Kyle »

Benghazigate: The state of the story

Featured image Even for one who follows the news obsessively — one such as I — it has been extremely difficult to keep up with the developments in the Benghazigate story this week. In his weekly column, Mark Steyn incorporates Thursday’s and Friday’s breaking news and brings the story up to date with his characteristic flair: “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video,” said Hillary Clinton. »

Team Obama channels Vladimir Putin, not Ronald Reagan

Featured image Lena Dunham’s embarrassing “First Time” ad on behalf of President Obama has drawn quite a bit of criticism because in it Dunham uses sexual innuendo to compare the first vote experience to a girl losing her virginity. The left, though, claims that Dunham’s “first time” joke about voting “goes way back to another presidential candidate: Ronald Reagan, less than a week before he ushered in the Republican landslide of 1980.” »

Can Obama win if he doesn’t move the popular vote needle?

Featured image In my last post, I noted that the third presidential debate did not move the needle in terms of the popular vote. Before the debate, Romney led Obama by 5 points in the Gallup poll and 2 points in the Rasmussen poll. In the aftermath of the debate he leads by 5 in Gallup and 3 in Rasmussen. Of course the needle might move yet. There could be a surprise »

Saudis and Muslim Brotherhood Prefer Obama?

Featured image That’s what Walid Phares says this article in a Saudi-funded, Brotherhood-influenced Arabic newspaper says. From Walid’s Facebook page: In an article published by the Saudi funded (but Brotherhood influenced) daily al Sharq al Awsat, Imad el Dine Adeeb writes that Obama “is not successful as much as we want, but he is less dangerous than Mitt Romney.” “Interesting how radicals in the Arab world measure the difference between American Presidential »

Dumbed Down Dunham

Featured image I knew it wouldn’t be long before the parodies of the Dunham Obama ad started popping up.  (If I had time, I’d do my own “Hitler learns about. . .” parody myself.)  Here’s the first one I’ve seen, from Steven Crowder.  Nice work, dude. Be sure to check back here.  I’ll add more as they come along. UPDATE: Yup, here’s another good one:   »

Third presidential debate leaves candidates where they were

Featured image The third and final debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney occurred on Monday, October 22. Today, Rasmussen released the results of its latest three-day poll of the race. It was taken during the three days following the debate. According to the poll, Romney leads Obama by 3 points, 50-47. This result reflects essentially no change from the poll Rasmussen reported on the day of the debate. Romney led that »

A Few Minutes with Daniel Botkin

Featured image Daniel Botkin, who describes himself as a “renegade naturalist,” is professor emeritus of ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the author of one of my all-time favorite environmental books, Discordant Harmonies.  Dan is just out with a new and updated edition entitled The Moon in the Nautilus Shell. I caught up with Dan earlier this month, and in the latest interview series for Power Line, here’s »

Will felons tip the presidential race to Obama?

Featured image Bill Otis points out that, contrary to widespread belief, the great majority of felons either never lose their voting rights or automatically get them restored upon completion of their sentence. And because felons overwhelmingly favor Democrats, their vote represents a potential gold mine for President Obama. Generally, it’s not considered good politics to pitch for the felon vote. According to Reuters, however, the Obama campaign has reached out to felons »

Gallup Finds Republicans Outnumber Democrats

Featured image Gallup quietly published some stunning data this morning. Based on surveys conducted from October 1 through 24, Gallup finds that 36% of likely voters call themselves Republicans, compared with 35% who are Democrats. If leaners are included, the GOP advantage is 49%/46%. How important is that? In 2008 the Democrats had a ten-point party ID advantage, 12 with leaners. If the data released today correctly reflect the voting population this »

The Emperor’s Second Set of New Clothes

Featured image President Obama’s new plan looks suspiciously like his old plan. Michael Ramirez doesn’t think much of either: »

CIA Repeatedly Denied Requests for Benghazi Relief

Featured image More details are emerging about what happened in Benghazi, and the story is infuriating: the CIA repeatedly denied pleas for help from the handful of men who fought off terrorists for seven hours before help finally arrived, too late: Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that three urgent requests from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. Consulate »

Another quarter of weak economic growth

Featured image The U.S. economy grew at a rate of only 2.0 percent during the third quarter of this year, according to an estimate by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. As James Pethokoukos notes, this means that “at the current pace, the economy will grow just 1.8% this year, the same miserable pace as last year.” The Romney campaign promptly pointed out that 2.0 growth amounts to “less than half »

The Genius of Colin Powell

Featured image For a while there yesterday I was gnashing my teeth about Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama, and spent a lot of time trying to come up with a revised definition of the Powell Doctrine (force as a last resort, and then used in overwhelming quantity–yawn. . .), since the new Powell-Obama Doctrine would seem to be something like all drone and no predator.  Really, what to make of Powell’s comment »

Big choice, big changes

Featured image In case you missed it, the big political news yesterday was Meat Loaf’s endorsement of Mitt Romney in Defiance, Ohio. Wasn’t it? Alluding to a highlight of this past Monday’s presidential debate, Mr. Loaf cited Romney’s “backbone.” Video of Mr. Loaf in action is accessible here. The Washington Post’s Phil Rucker covers the story here. I love that dateline: Defiance. Thanks to RealClearPoltics, I found the NBC video of Mitt »