• Obama Attended The Wedding Of The VP Debate Moderator And Picked Her Husband To Head The FCC
  
• AP Still Pushing Fiction That Youtube Video Was Behind Libya Terror Attack
  
• Stacy Dash: I Support Romney Based On The Content Of His Character
  
• Rolling Stone Reporter: It Should Be Illegal To Publish Poll Numbers
  
• Jack Welch Responds To Critics
  
• Obama Myth: Fast and Furious Started Under Bush
  
• Obama Wants To Debate Romney on Civil Liberties?
  
• Ann Romney: Say, That Obama Is A Sore Loser. Huh?
  
• Chart: Debt To GDP Ratio Is Worse Than Projected
  
• Split Verdict For Russian Punk Band
  
• Why The China-Burma Break-up Matters
  
• Iraq: The New King Of OPEC?
  
• Nationalism On The Rise In Japan?
  
• Chain Cuts Workers' Hours Because Of Obamacare

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:53 AM | Comments (268)
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Happy Wednesday. Just a few items from me.

Romney choked up yesterday talking about a Navy SEAL who died in Benghazi on September 11.

Toyota has recalled 7.43 million cars that pose a fire risk if a sticky door switch is improperly repaired. U.S. owners will be notified by mail if their car needs to be fixed.

Wal-Mart, in a challenge to Amazon, is testing same-day delivery. Same day. What a world.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (249)
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And...I'm back my pretties.

The new Casa Maetenloch now haz internet. There's only one cobra trench so far but the safe room is set up and an attack crow is now circling so it is defensible for the moment.

Oh and I hope you enjoyed the little what-have-you with the Humpstress' pathetic seahorses and cake shit. Just remember that if anything happens to me or you bitch too much to the ewok, this will be your future.

Why Big Bird Sucks

Mark Steyn explains:

Unlike Mitt, I loathe Sesame Street. It bears primary responsibility for what the Canadian blogger Binky calls the de-monsterization of childhood - the idea that there are no evil monsters out there at the edges of the map, just shaggy creatures who look a little funny and can sometimes be a bit grouchy about it because people prejudge them until they learn to celebrate diversity and help Cranky the Friendly Monster go recycling. That is not unrelated to the infantilization of our society. Marinate three generations of Americans in that pabulum and it's no surprise you wind up with unprotected diplomats dragged to their deaths from their "safe house" in Benghazi. Or as J. Scott Gration, the president's special envoy to Sudan, said in 2009, in the most explicit Sesamization of American foreign policy: "We've got to think about giving out cookies. Kids, countries - they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes . . . " The butchers of Darfur aren't blood-drenched machete-wielding genocidal killers but just Cookie Monsters whom we haven't given enough cookies. I'm not saying there's a direct line between Bert & Ernie and Barack & Hillary . . . well, actually I am.

...On the latter point, whether or not everybody loves Sesame Street, everybody has seen it, and every American under 50 has been weaned on it. So far this century it's sold nigh on a billion bucks' worth of merchandising sales (that's popular toys such as the Subsidize-Me-Elmo doll). If Sesame Street is not commercially viable, then nothing is, and we should just cut to the chase and bail out everything.

Even as a kid I always found Big Bird kinda tedious and boring so yeah no tears here if he gets sent off to Libya on a good-will mission handing out cookies to the local jihadis. If Sesame Street the Marketing Machine can't make it on its own, then capitalism is dead.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:16 PM | Comments (726)
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There's no cheerleaders in baseball. THERE'S NO CHEERLEADERS.

But here's a baseball thread if'n you're so inclined. I can't tell you how much it hurts me that the Giants are down 2-0 in the series, the bastards. SF and Cincy tied 1-1 in the top of the 7th, Oakland (grrrr) and Detroit later. St. Louis (grrrr again) and Washington tied 1-1 from last night, as are the Yankees and the Orioles.

I suppose I will have to console myself again with two AL pennants. more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:32 PM | Comments (197)
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Always the last to know ...

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, two senior State Department officials gave a detailed accounting of the events that lead to the death of Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The officials said that prior to the massive attack on the Benghazi compound by dozens of militants carrying heavy weaponry, there was no unrest outside the walls of the compound and no protest that anyone inside the compound was aware of.

In fact, Stevens hosted a series of meetings on the compound throughout the day, ending with a meeting with a Turkish diplomat that began at 7:30 in the evening, and all was quiet in the area.

"The ambassador walked guests out at 8:30 or so; there was nobody on the street. Then at 9:40 they saw on the security cameras that there were armed men invading the compound," a senior State Department official said. "Everything is calm at 8:30 pm, there is nothing unusual. There had been nothing unusual during the day outside."

Meanwhile, the State Department denies they tried to link the Innocence of Muslims video to the attack.

You don't say. Well that makes Ben Howe's excellent video timeline even more interesting, doesn't it?

I hope Susan Rice is comfortable under large, yellow, diesel-powered vehicles. more...

Posted by: andy at 04:01 PM | Comments (353)
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Must credit Jack M./AoSHQ Decision Desk.

CAC and Ace may be slacking off, but I have my own sources, and I've got some incredible leaked info on some serious internal polling. It's a detailed breakdown, so I'm putting it after the jump. You'll never look at the race the same way after seeing this. more...

Posted by: Jack M. at 03:42 PM | Comments (135)
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Obama can't get a break anywhere, not even Reuters, which has been more stubborn in showing movement.

Romney now leads on the economic question, and, as a 7-day tracker, could see even more improvement.

In New Hampshire? Obama's commanding 15 point lead has collapsed there to, to just 6 points.

That should be it for polls today, the ewok has been drugged, so... more...

Posted by: CAC at 01:40 PM | Comments (426)
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Now before you faggitz complain, I just want it noted that I worked through the weekend, including yesterday, which was my favorite holiday, whatever it was.

And not only that put I'm putting in a half-day on Friday.

And that's the way it is. I gotta be me.

Open Thread, bitchez. Sorry I didn't get to some of the stories today (like Tami's story about Mitt Romney knowing the slain SEAL in Benghazi).

And I bet ya ***-damn now we won't hear a peep out of the Meatball CAC.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (116)
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I don't want to link Buzzfeed, an amateur partisan blog masquerading as an online newsite, but I'll make an exception, because these gifs are funny.

Taranto has some fun with Sullivan's badly frayed nerves.

Let me suggest something that many conservatives realized after the debate: Obama did not do that badly. For Obama. He was the same listless, droning, exhausted-of-ideas scold we have seen for at least two years now (and maybe three).

He was Obama. This is what he is. He is not quick-witted. He is not, as I think I saw Mickey Kaus note, a wonk. He has never been a wonk, a detailed-policy guy.

He is a guy who speaks vacuously of hopes and dreams and change and fairness.

He always has been.

The problem, for the liberals, is not Obama. This is what you bought. This is your guy. It wasn't his A game, but it was something close to his B+ game.

The problem was Romney, who was commanding, fluent, reasonable, articulate, sharp-witted, warm, occasionally funny, full of ideas, full of facts, full of thoughtful, detailed criticisms of Obama policy (who the hell expected him to bring up, as an afterthought, Dodd-Frank's failure to specify what a "reasonably qualified" mortgage applicant was, and how that chilled lending? Obama sure didn't!), and, therefore, ultimately, full of qualification for the job and yes, full of gravitas.

That's the problem.

Not Obama. I repeat: This is who Obama is. He has never been this brilliant intellect and keen policy analysts liberals have, in their BubbleWorld, dreamed him as.

The problem is not that Obama is or was awful. The problem is that he is what he always is -- adequate and hardly ever more -- and Romney is actually on top of things, an accomplished executive with a winner's thirst for victory an an A-student's understanding of what victory requires.

So part of the extreme emotional deflation of people like Sullivan -- who only a few years ago called me a "frothing Caesarist" (I take that to mean a lickspittle for a Man on a White Horse) -- is due to their having invented in their minds a conquering hero, an Eternal Champion, a Mussolini-like figure of incredible prowess in all matters including sexual ("Mussolini breaks a new horse every day, and a new woman every night," an old Fascist saying went).

And he's never been that. He's been a very average politician, whose only above-average skill is giving a scripted, TelePrompTed address to people who already support him.

So for people like Sullivan, this is a bit of a bitchslap to their entire fantasy worldview, the day they saw Obama As What He Is rather than What They Fantasized Him To Be.

And they're shocked by this. They feel their psychical mooring-lines stretching to the break.

This is partly Obama's fault, of course. He encouraged this.

But it is much, much more the fault of people who pride themselves on being skeptical realists who permitted their minds to run to the magical and to the (frankly, blasphemously) religious.

I hate to defend Obama at all, but I have to say to his Religious Zealot supporters: This is your shit. This is your deeply weird, Great Man on a White Horse worshipping psychological hangup.

One of the most wonderful things which will come with a Romney presidency is that Romney will finally, once again, separate Church and State. The president, finally, will just be a man. Not a perfect man. Not a prefigurement of Jesus. Not a prophet and not a savoir.

Just a man. A good man, and a smart man. But ultimately just a man.

The fusion of religion and politics has in fact been every bit as deleterious as the liberals always warned us.

It's just that they were the ones who actually fused God and President.

I long for the days when elections were not about Salvation, and the Press Corps were not Acolytes, each vying to prove their devotion unto their Prophet.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (301)
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It contributes to the decline in Obama's Ohio "advantage."

Was
+5.5 five days ago (pre-debate numbers)
+3.0 two days ago.

Now: more...

Posted by: CAC at 12:27 PM | Comments (113)
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