DO THE SWISS KNOW SOMETHING THE REST OF US DON’T? “Swiss military exercises in September, called STABILO DUE, were based on EU instability getting out of hand. The Swiss have stayed out of the EU – one more thing the very prosperous Swiss are gloating about these days – and they certainly don’t want EU problems spilling over into their peaceful little country. That the Swiss military is adding four new military police battalions to the army, to be spread around the country, indicates that the threat they have in mind is more disorder and chaos than actual invasion.” Winter is coming.
HAS AXELROD LOST HIS MIND? Excusing Obama’s debate performance, he said, “I think he went thinking that this was going to be a discussion about the country’s future and he was confronted with this kind of Gantry-esque performance on the other side.” Not only is it weird/elitist to think normal listeners get the reference to Elmer Gantry, but if you look it up, you’ll find descriptions of Elmer Gantry don’t sound like Mitt Romney at all:
Gantry has no redeeming features but is seen by the gullible public as a man who speaks the truth about God. Of course he could just as easily have been a lawyer or a politician and the heart of Lewis’s satire is how easily people believe what they want to believe.
SCIENCE: Updated election forecasting model still points to Romney win, University of Colorado study says. “According to their updated analysis, Romney is projected to receive 330 of the total 538 Electoral College votes. President Barack Obama is expected to receive 208 votes — down five votes from their initial prediction — and short of the 270 needed to win. The new forecast by political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver is based on more recent economic data than their original Aug. 22 prediction. The model itself did not change.”
SHELL-SHOCKED: “Ah, the true mark of a campaign in a disarray,” Betsy Newmark writes. “Now it’s the Obama campaign that has aides giving anonymous quotes to the media that makes their campaign look bad.”
Recall in 2008, when the John McCain camp went into October in meltdown mode.
WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT: The Varianzas polling agency says Hugo Chavez lost the election in Venezuela today. And Chavez says he’ll respect the result once the ballots are counted. But don’t pop any champagne corks just yet. The ballots haven’t been counted. We don’t know for sure if they’ll even be counted at all.
UPDATE: Chavez reportedly “won.” I don’t want to come across as excessively skeptical with the quotation marks, but the man does want to be the next Fidel Castro.
THERE ARE NO ATHEISTS IN OLD MEDIA: Clapped-out sclerotic old magazine with one foot in death’s door increasingly believes in salvation in the afterlife, if this latest Newsweek cover is any indication.
And on a more serious note, your scary-ass charts of the day from Ed Morrissey. As Ed notes, the deficit chart you saw earlier today via Glenn, but don’t miss Heritage’s chart on federal spending per household. About which, Ed writes:
So, we don’t really have a revenue problem here, or at least not primarily a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. Most of that is almost certainly in Medicare and other health-care spending, and it’s certainly going to be the biggest problem in the next few decades. Sequestration isn’t going to solve that. We need to find a way to revamp our safety-net programs to truly reduce spending in order to rebalance the relationship between federal spending and household income. We simply can’t get enough income to support that rate of growth — most of which has been funded by exploding deficits and national debt, the service of which will cost households in future generations even more in federal-spending growth.
Or to borrow a line from Mark Steyn’s recent interview with Hugh Hewitt, “We need to find $16 trillion dollars in America to get back to being broke.”
DOG, THE BOUNTY-HUNTER: “How embarrassing. The police chief of the small eastern New Mexico town of Vaughn resigned this past Wednesday, leaving the town with just one certified member on its police force – a drug-sniffing dog named Nikka.”
I, FOR ONE, WELCOME OUR NEW ROBOT HONEY-MAKERS: Coming in 2015: Electronic Bee Brains Uploaded into Robot Insects Interestingly, my sons immediately remembered a Disney comic where Gyro Gearloose creates robot bees. I feel more confident in my pre-k educational strategy which for years consisted of buying them comics so I had a couple of hours a day to work in peace.
In a rational world, Paul Ryan should have a fairly easy time in the upcoming debate against Vice President Joe Biden. Ryan is a man who has mastered the intricacies of legislation and the federal budget while Biden has shown scant interest in anything in his senatorial career other than the AMTRAK schedule from Washington, DC to Delaware.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a rational world. We live in one where Barack Obama is president AND Joe Biden is vice president. To win a debate against Joe Biden one must be prepared to engage with a man who has hardly more than a nodding acquaintance with the truth.
Read the whole thing, to get a sense of Biden’s remarkably tenuous relationship with reality as the rest of us understand it.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT REPORTER ARRESTED, RELEASED: “Okay… we get that you can’t find and deport 20 million people. But it seems like you could have found this guy without a lot of extra resources, eh?”
‘LEEROY JENKINS COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT:’ “A Democratic state senate candidate in Maine has come under fire for her online alter ego, a level 85 orc named Santiaga who stalks the ashen lands of Azeroth,” in the online game World of Warcraft.
Green jobs, green energy, green cars: the record of green public policy is far more problematic than most environmentalists are willing to acknowledge. Like the “peace activists” of the 1930s whose foolish policies helped Hitler stage a bid for global mastery by disarming the democracies, green activists today are often doing more harm than good.
The world needs better environmental policies; unfortunately, environmentalists are often some of the biggest obstacles to clear thinking and smart policy. The movement isn’t ready for prime time.
And yet, between MasterCard, American Express and GE-NBC, it’s certainly remarkably well sponsored.
On the first Earth Day, in 1970, a cartoon poster appeared at rallies in all 50 states. It showed a rueful opossum picking up papers, bottles, cans, wrappers—the detritus of modern life. Superimposed on the image were the words WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US.
“What are they doing to us?” said Marilyn Tucker, a FedEx employee, as she stopped pumping at a central Los Angeles gas station at $37, well before the tank of her sedan was full. “It’s just ridiculous.”
As Lance of Canada’s Small Dead Animals blog asks, “Who is the ‘they’?”
SHOCKER: Gas Prices Rise Again Overnight In California. I had dinner last night with Rand Simberg, who thought that Romney should do a press conference in front of one of these gas stations, saying that this is how the whole country will go if Obama’s re-elected.
EXQUISITELY BORED IN THE WHITE HOUSE: “Liberals fret: Is Obama bored? Does he want a second term? Maybe not,” Byron York writes, noting that “A look at the president’s career shows he has never stayed in a job four years without looking to move on to something better:”
Now Obama has been president for nearly four years. Aided by a huge Democratic majority from 2009 to 2011, he achieved some big things — massive stimulus, Obamacare, Dodd-Frank. He even won the Nobel Peace Prize, essentially for showing up. But he hasn’t achieved, and won’t achieve in four more years, the “fundamental transformation” of American society that he envisioned. And his entire career suggests that by now he should be angling for a bigger, better job. The problem is, there isn’t such a position — and a second term in the same old job doesn’t count. The chief benefit of winning re-election to a second term might simply be to avoid being labeled a loser, to avoid joining Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush as presidents who couldn’t win a second time.
So if his liberal supporters sense signs of boredom and frustration in the president, they might be right. I wrote about this in a January 2010 column that began, “This is about the time Barack Obama becomes bored with his job.” Back then, he had just passed a year in office — about the time, in the past, that his restlessness and ambition began to kick in. Now, years later, the problem is only worse.
UPDATE: More, from the Guardian: “Has a disillusioned Barack Obama lost the will to win?”
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Reader Dennis Roach emails: “He’s just not that into us!”
HOPEY-CHANGEY: Global Food Prices Set To Soar–Again. “The last food price bubble triggered riots around the world. Now prices are set to rise again, say complexity theorists.” Weather is blamed, but this is also a consequence of central-bank money-printing, driven by unsustainable spending and borrowing.
SCIENCE: Omega-3 Supplements May Actually Affect Aging. “Getting enough omega-3 fatty acid to change the balance of oils in your system may help preserve the length of your telomeres, with the potential to reduce the risk of age-related diseases.”
Voters saw a different Obama in the presidential campaign debate in Denver on Wednesday. And they worry that the tired, unfocused, and defensive fellow who lost the debate actually is the real one.
Only we don’t worry. We know he is. And we’ve known it since ’08.
UPDATE: Ohio Senate Race Is Now A Tie. “Ohio now shifts back from Safe Democrat to a Toss-up in the Rasmussen Reports Senate Balance of Power rankings. With the addition of Ohio, seven Senate races nationwide are Toss-Ups, but at this point it still appears likely that Democrats will retain control of the Senate.”
UPDATE: It’s not just Libya: State Dept Mum on Missing Priest in Greece. “Father Christiaan Kappes, a priest for the Indianapolis Archdiocese, went missing in Greece last Monday after telling his family he feared for his life. His father, Virgil Kappes, encouraged his son to go to the US Embassy for help. While at the embassy, Father Kappes called his father, who over heard the conversation. The State Department confirmed Father Kappes did visit the embassy, but he did not request safe haven. His father said his son left the embassy because he was denied safe haven. Mr. Kappes thinks the State Department is trying to cover up a mistake.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Our Crisis Of Bad Jobs. “Median household income—the midpoint income of all American households—was reported by the Census Bureau (whose data is a year or so behind) to be down in 2011 compared to 2010, despite an economic recovery that began in mid-2009. More disturbing, that figure is now down to around $50,000, which is 7 percent or so below what it was in 2000 and its lowest level since 1996, adjusted for inflation. Incomes are falling still more sharply for black households. . . . The reason that the economic recovery is coinciding with middle class decline is increasingly clear. America is creating jobs, but they are bad jobs: retailing, food preparation, and table waiting, for example—in other words, jobs that don’t pay much.”
SALENA ZITO: Real America Still Believes. “It is a very different America that exists beyond the astonishing narrowness of social media, beyond the group-think that forms in the press pools covering political campaigns, in political parties’ convention halls or in the bubble of Washington, D.C. . . . From a distance, pundits and reporters hail President Barack Obama’s accomplishments and the ideology of his first term. Yet many voters who supported him in 2008 now face strikingly different realities.”
MICKEY KAUS: Press Already Writing the Obama “Comeback” Story. “What appeared to be a neutral press yearning for a good horse race is looking more like the screenwriter’s need to throw some minimal obstacles in the hero’s path in order to make his ultimate triumph all the more satisfying.”
There’s no such thing as a neutral press. They’re Democratic operatives with bylines.
SARAH, THERE’S ONLY ONE PERSON WHO CAN DO IT: Bill Clinton. But even if he would do it, Obama shouldn’t trust him. If somehow he could, I don’t think Obama would like sharing even the practice stage with the man who out-shone him at the convention and who would easily best him at debate. And yet, with 2 more public humiliations in the offing, he’s got to do something. If he’s really desperate, there could be a world crisis of some sort that forces him to cancel the remaining debates.
#GREENFAIL: How Electric Cars Hurt The Environment. “Making batteries for electric cars is a dirty process, and if the electric cars are run off a grid which is primarily powered by coal, as it is in China, the environmental benefits completely disappear. Green jobs, green energy, green cars: the record of green public policy is far more problematic than most environmentalists are willing to acknowledge.”
If the power came from nice, clean pebble-bed nuclear plants things would be different. But environmentalists mostly oppose those.
DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Coyotes, bears, and lions: the new urban pioneers? “New research suggests mountain lions and bears may be following the urban pioneering of raccoons, foxes and, most notably, coyotes as they slowly encroach on major US metro areas. . . . The news comes as a growing number of young, non-truck-driving Americans have turned to hunting and fishing to augment their diet.”
I still highly recommend David Baron’s The Beast In The Garden, which is a nonfiction book that reads like a thriller.
COURTESY OF READER ROBERT MCCLURE, here’s an updated version of that deficit chart, showing how absurd it is to blame today’s huge national debt on George W. Bush’s spending on Iraq and Afghanistan.
UPDATE: Here’s another, more precise one, from a reader who asks to remain anonymous.
One word is polarization. That word appeared in the minutes of the most recent meeting of the Federal Reserve‘s monetary policy setting Federal Open Market Committee. The meeting, where the Fed decided it had to ease policy more to help the stubborn unemployment problem, took place Sept. 12-13. The minutes were released Thursday.
“It was also suggested that there was an ongoing process of polarization in the labor market, with the share of job opportunities in middle-skill occupations continuing to decline while the shares of low and high skill occupations increased.”
That’s the quote from the Fed minutes, in the context of the policymakers’ discussion and debate of slack in the jobs arena. Ultimately, of course, the Fed decided to aggressively ease, though some observers have questioned the central bank’s ability to significantly influence hiring through a bond-buying regime.
Presumably, monetary policy isn’t designed to affect polarization. Long-term issues about public education, access to higher education, tax policy, start-up incentives, trade issues and more help determine what sorts of jobs are created and who is qualified to fill them.
The other phrase of interest Friday is part time. Analysts and others poring over the September jobs data, which showed a rise in total employment by 873,000, according to the Labor Department’s survey of households, have noted a big increase in part-time positions among those who would prefer full-time employment.
Based on Labor data, there were some 582,000 new part-time jobs created that are included in the Labor category of “part time for economic reasons.”
How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?
IT REALLY IS LIKE THE HUNGER GAMES IN OUR CAPITAL CITY: Capitol Assets: Congress’s wealthiest mostly shielded from effects of deep recession. “Most members weathered the financial crisis better than the average American, who saw median household net worth drop 39 percent from 2007 to 2010. The median estimated wealth of members of the current Congress rose 5 percent during the same period, according to their reported assets and liabilities. The wealthiest one-third of Congress gained 14 percent.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): 2012′s Sure Losers—Young People: “Hi, I’m Marty and I’ll be your waiter for the next 40 years.” “What these numbers show is a process of political disconnection among under-30s. And why not? This is the bitter fruit of a reality familiar across low-growth Western Europe: Youth unemployment is breeding youth disengagement. Over the past four years, the unemployment rate for Americans age 16 to 24 has been twice the rate for the general population. Currently it’s about 17%. For young blacks it’s 28%. . . . Western Europe is about a decade ahead of the U.S. in showing the path downward once a low economic-growth rate gets locked in, as may be happening here. Where we could be headed politically was suggested by a small but telling story this week from France, where chronically high youth unemployment sits at about 22%.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Private College Tuition Up by 3.9%, Smallest Rise in 40 Years. “The data come at a time of heightened pressure from politicians and the public for colleges to keep their charges within reach of students and families.”
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