Marc Faber on what needs to be done:

“I think the timeframe would be within five to ten years you have a colossal mess … everywhere in the Western world,” Faber said. “I think the deficit here (in the U.S.) — irrespective of who is in the White House — will stay above a trillion dollars per annum for at least as far as the eye can see.”

Bureaucracies in the U.S., as well as Europe, are far too big, he said, and are a burden on the economy.

“My medicine for the U.S. is: Reduce government by minimum 50 percent,” he said. “The impact would be immediately an improvement in the economy.”

Well, here’s the thing. We can’t keep borrowing a trillion dollars a year. There’s no market for that much debt, especially with $16,000,000,000,000 already outstanding and with some sizable fraction of that needing to be re-fied each and every year, as it matures.

So here’s what’s going to happen.

Borrowers dry up and government spending is instantly slashed by about 40%, the remainder being what DC actually manages to raise each year from the economy its squeezed all the life out of. The gravy train derails and angry voters throw more bums out.

Or the Fed will do more of what it’s been doing — printing up money to buy the bonds to finance the spending orgy. Even in an economy as moribund as ours, that’s going to lead to serious inflation, screwing you and me and letting DC off the hook.

Can you guess which way I think things will go?

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Hot off the campaign trail, with the mostly-invisible Joe Biden:

Vice President Joe Biden got an earful from a voter during an unscripted moment at Schmucker’s Restaurant here in Ohio.

Making an unexpected stop after a campaign rally, Biden stopped in the diner — known for Grandma’s Swiss steak and chicken over biscuits — to chat with patrons.

One voter — who called Biden “a good guy” — confessed to reporters that he still wasn’t a fan of the Obama administration or the vice president .

“Before that, I told him to enjoy his last couple of months,” the man, who declined to give his name, said. “Just because you’re a good guy doesn’t mean you’re a good vice president.”

Let’s forget this notion that Joe Biden is a good guy. He’s not. He’s a cretin.

Biden is a plagiarist, as we know from the 1988 campaign. His modus operandi is to appear folksy enough to get away with telling outrageous fictions. He’s ridiculously and hysterically vain. He’s a notorious cheapskate. And we’re discovering now that he’s crony capitalist of the first degree.

But let me tell you what bugs me most about him. I remember from one of his many campaigns for president, that he was boasting how his net worth was only a couple-hundred thousand dollars, because he hadn’t saved much for retirement. The man was boasting about his bad planning, about being a spendthrift.

What really got to me though was when I realized of course he hadn’t saved for retirement — he’s a US Senator. He has a pension, paid for by us. He won’t even have to rely on Social Security or Medicaid, and this was before he became Veep with all the extra goodies (and lucrative ghost-written book deals, etc.) that entails.

Joe Biden was bragging about the fact that he gets to spend all of his considerable salary on hair plugs and spray-on tans and big fake teeth, all without a care for tomorrow, because he’s a Senator and you’re not and ain’t that tough for you.

What a cretin.

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John Cook, writing for Gawker:

One of the many little thrills of being a part of the Obama campaign four years ago was a deep and abiding sense that, finally, a political leader had come along who could live up to our highest aspirations. Yes, Obama was cool and played basketball and was conversant in ironical youth culture, but when it came down to it, he was overwhelmingly serious. The other guys were hauling unlicensed plumbers onstage and suspending their campaign at the drop of a hat, but Obama kept his eyes on the prize and played the grown-up. Now he’s talking about “Romnesia.”

Meh. The signs were all there, for anyone who wanted to see them. Cook chose not to.

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We were expecting Apple to announce the iPad Mini today, and they did. The specs are what I predicted, although the price is higher. At $249, buying the Mini becomes a no-brainer for a lot of parents. At $329, it’s a stop-and-think decision. Some folks will stop and think, “A Kindle would be just fine.”

What I wasn’t expecting was for Apple to announce the fourth generation iPad, just six months after the third gen debuted. Fast wifi, more global LTE options, better FaceTime camera, graphics performance on par with the new iPhone 5 — and that’s pushing 3 million pixels on the Retina Display. It’s a gutsy call, and it must have caused some lost weekends and sleepless night for Apple engineers. But there might be a method to this madness.

Apple’s iOS line was out of sync. New iPhones dropped in the fall, sporting the fastest CPUs and newest version of iOS and all the other goodies. About six months later in the spring, the new iPad would come out, sporting what felt like last year’s tech. Assuming Apple doesn’t spring the 5th Gen iPad on us in April, it looks like they’ve gotten their iOS lineup all more or less in sync.

What does the Mini do to the tablet market? Well, really there are two tablet markets. There’s the massive market for the 10″ iPad. Apple announced today that as of two weeks ago, they’d sold their 100 millionth iPad. Not bad for a product (an entire product category) not even three years old. Then there’s the 7″ tablet space, which is tiny and co-owned by the Kindle Fire and various Androids, most especially the Nexus 7.

If consuming Amazon content is what you want, you’ll buy a Kindle. Fandroids will stick with Android. But Apple is about to explode the size of the 7″ tablet market. I don’t expect Kindle or Samsung or whomever to lose many — any? — to Apple. What I expect will happen is that Apple will sell to a whole lot of people who weren’t previously in the market for tablets.

In a sense, it is a replay os the Windows/Mac Wars of the 1990s. Windows didn’t dominate because Apple couldn’t sell Mac. On the contrary, Mac sales held steady or even increased the whole time. What the Wintel alliance was able to do was to sell to millions of people who had never been in the market for a computer before. Wintel exploded the size of the PC market, which was a tremendous feat and something Apple was never able to do. But now Apple looks set to do something similar for tablets.

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Debate drunkblogging is live and on the air.

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Ars Technica isn’t impressed with Apple’s new iPod Nano — which is probably exactly how it should be.

When was the last time you bought a new iPod? I’ve been using the same sixth-generation iPod Classic for five years now. And it’s been that long since Apple last updated the Classic. The screen is gorgeous. The UI is as good as it can get. The clickwheel still works. And it stores a metric crapload of music. When it dies, I’ll replace it with an identical model. If Apple has cancelled it by then, I’ll send it out for repairs.

Same goes for my wife’s iPod Nano, which dates back to 2008. If you aren’t a music packrat who needs to bring along Everything, All the Time, 16GB is more than enough storage space. Apple seems to know this. They also seem to understand that — unlike the Classic — the Nano is still something of a fashion accessory, and cheap enough to be an impulse purchase. So every fall they tweak the UI and the form factor and a couple other features, and bring out new colors. But Melissa’s still works fine for the gym, which is about the only place she still uses it. Upgrade? Why?

Truth is, Apple’s iPod lineup has had shrinking sales since iPhone use exploded. They cannibalized their own best seller when they created the world’s first truly smart phone.

So the new iPod doesn’t excite? Outside of some bitter MP3 clingers, there aren’t many buyers left to excite.

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Dan Rather is at it again — trying to steal an election. Well, sort of. He’s trying to delegitimize, in advance, the results of the upcoming one. Here’s a bit from his latest Facebook rant, courtesy of Charlie Spiering:

From Dan: The Presidential race is still tight, volatile. Modest edge for Obama, mostly because he still has a thin advantage in Ohio. Hard to make the case on the basis of current polls and other indications that Romney wins unless he carries Ohio. But mark well: Romney can win. Not to say that he will, just that he remains very much in the game. (1) Current polls and other indicators are subject to shifts (and may even be wrong in present estimates). (2) A few upsets in states here and there and Romney may not absolutely, positively have to win Ohio. (3) Ohio seems still close enough that Romney could upset and win there (keep in mind: the whole upper tier of Ohio state government is in the hands of the GOP now; in very close voting they have the power to influence what votes are counted and how.

In other words, if it all comes down to Ohio, the GOP will cheat. You know, like they did in Florida in 2000 by trying to count all those military ballots Al Gore so wisely tried to get tossed out in court.

Just laying the groundwork. Just in case.

The good news is, Facebook is all Rather has left. It’s a long way down from CBS News, ain’t it, Danny boy?

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Michelle Malkin: Bob Schieffer’s seven top moments of total bias.

This is going to be painful tonight. Romney had better be prepared with exact Obama quotes — and plenty of them.

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Or maybe I should have headlined this one “Last Call.” Anyway — this is it. The final Debate Drunkblog of the 2012 election cycle. I only missed one or maybe two of the GOP primary debates, so if you add them all up… in the tens place… carry the the two… I should probably be on a liver transplant list somewhere.

As always, check in on the PJMedia home page at about 8:45PM Eastern for all the fun.

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The Maestro never fails.

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Trifecta: Women dig Mitt.

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Two weeks to go, and the DNC is deep in debt, while the RNC has $82 million cash on hand?

Somebody pinch me.

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Burning Sensations was a great punk band that never made it much further than the Repo Man soundtrack — which isn’t a bad place to end up on any given Friday night. There’s some language on this one, but nothing too terrible.

Anyway, “Repo Man” the movie is something of an October tradition for me, so I’m going to switch off the computer and switch on the TV.

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Tom Dougherty took a look at yesterday’s Wargaming and writes:

If we give Obama the state of Nevada, which I’m not inclined to do easily but will for this argument’s sake, we’re left with a 267-261 map and Wisconsin becomes the prize that determines the winner. Contrary to several recent polls, and an RCP Average, that says Obama has a 2.8% lead in Wisconsin, my numbers are much tighter with Obama up by only 1.2% as of this morning.

Wisconsin also has a demographic breakdown that is more favorable to Romney with notably more Catholics than the national average (29.5% to 18.3%) and fewer Latinos than the national average (5.9% to 16.3%). Additionally the gender and race demographics are favorable to Romney, and it is after all Paul Ryan’s home state. None of these guarantees a Romney win there but it is not difficult to see Romney making a late charge in Wisconsin and grabbing their EC votes to win on November 6 with a 271 to 267 margin.

And here is Tom’s starting position:

That’s a tight race, and we’ve seen a lot of maps like this one — including from yours truly.

To me, expanding the battlegrounds into Blue Country isn’t just about increasing Romney’s odds of winning, however. It’s also about increasing his margin of victory. I don’t want a win; I want a mandate. I don’t want the Democrats to keep control of the Senate; I want Romney to bring along some also-rans on his coattails, like Tom Smith in PA. There are some marginal House races where a Romney presence might just make a difference, too.

It also sends a powerful message from Romney to the new Congress: Follow me, because I lead.

And that’s a helluva lot better than: Help me along, because I barely hobbled into the White House.

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I just don’t have any anger left for antics like these:

Marty Morgenstern, the secretary of the California agency that substantially under-reported unemployment claims last week, contributed to President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election campaign, The Daily Caller has learned.

That’s right. California’s Obama-donating Secretary of Whatevs made initial jobless claims look suddenly (and temporarily) better, right around the time the BLS just happened to discover enough part-time jobs nobody else had noticed, to goose the official jobless rate down under 8% in time for the election.

The most difficult and important task Romney will face if he wins is rooting out the vile progs from important levers of power and information in DC. I wonder if he knows that.

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Minnesota, that bastion of progressive progress and the scourge of conservative knuckledraggers has outlawed free online education. No, really:

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the state has decided to crack down on free education, notifying California-based startup Coursera that it is not allowed to offer its online courses to the state’s residents. Coursera, founded by Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, partners with top-tier universities around the world to offer certain classes online for free to anyone who wants to take them. You know, unless they happen to be from Minnesota.

A policy analyst for the state’s Office of Higher Education told The Chronicle that Minnesota is simply enforcing a longstanding state law requiring colleges to get the government’s permission to offer instruction within its borders. She couldn’t say whether other online education startups like edX and Udacity were also told to stay out.

Remember, “Progressive” now means “stasis” which is a polite way of saying “feudal.”

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BREAKING: “Campaign Moves into Final Phase, Driven by Electoral Math”

It’s a good thing we have Time magazine around to tell us this stuff.

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Micky Kantor:

Late in September, the Department of Commerce issued a preliminary decision to scrap a 16-year-old trade agreement governing the import of Mexican-grown tomatoes into the United States. That might seem like an obscure and prosaic federal government action to most people, but to those of us who have watched the evolution of the tomato market over the last few decades, it is really a startling departure whose impact could be devastating.

I say startling because the agreement, which the U.S. and Mexican governments adopted when I was Secretary of Commerce, has been one of the models of successful trade policy. Startling also because, if the U.S. government ultimately adopts the preliminary decision, it will reward a segment of the U.S. tomato growing industry that has simply not kept up with the innovation and quality of its counterparts in Mexico, likely set off a spiral of retaliation that will hurt American exporters of other commodities, and most certainly drive up the price of tomatoes here. What’s more, it will pick a fight with Mexico, one of our biggest trading partners, that we don’t need and can easily avoid.

I can answer Kantor’s question with one word: Obamanomics.

Mexico is a friend, and must be bullied. American tomato growers might hire union labor in California, and must be coddled. And if they need subsidies, no problemo.

Poor Kantor. He is, and worked for, a centrist Chamber-of-Commerce-style Democrat. These vile prog thugs have taken over his party, leaving very little place for him.

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Trifecta: Are Bill and Hillary undermining Obama on Benghazi?

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Lots of chatter at American Thinker and elsewhere over that IDB poll showing Jews breaking for Romney. Well, cut it out. It just ain’t so. Or if it is so, you can’t tell from this poll.

Here’s IBD’s own breakdown:

Want to know what the fine print says after the asterisks? “*Small sample size. Interpret with caution.”

Interpret with caution? “Don’t read anything into this at all,” would be more like it. IBD talked to 909 likely voters. Assuming their samples are representative of the nation as a whole, that means they spoke with about 13 Jews. What conclusions can you draw about Jewish sentiment across the nation by doing phone interviews with 13 random members of the Tribe?

None. No conclusions. Your sample size is so vanishingly small as to be meaningless. And that’s before we even get to the 3.5% margin of error for the entire sample of 909 people. You know how high that shoots up when you whittle it down to 13?

Well, I don’t know, either. But it’s very, very high. And Jewish sample is very, very meaningless.

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Bill is doing is very level best to help. Honest.

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Word is, and nobody at Camp Obama has done a fully-assed job of denying it, that the campaign is building a “firewall” around four states: IA, NH, NV and OH. Now “firewall” might be the correct word, but I’ve been using “triage.” They’re hoping — praying? — for an election night return that looks like so.

Obama can lose any one state, except OH, and still win. He can even lose two states, provided one of them is NH and the other one isn’t WI (or OH, of course).

If the Obama camp’s triage looks a little optimistic — desperate? — it’s for two reasons. The first is, they’re playing defense deep in their own territory. All the historic gains of 2008 have proven as ephemeral as closing Gitmo or getting us down to 5.6% unemployment. The second is, the opening given here to Romney. With CO, FL, NC, and VA all seemingly safe in his pocket, there is every reason for Romney and Ryan to start hitting MI, MN, PA, and WI every bit as hard as they’re hitting OH.

Obama wants to defend four states? Screw that, Mitt — make him cover twice that many.

If we go back to Tuesday’s map, it could very well be that IA, NH and NV are already gone, since Obama has never done better than 47% in any reputable poll in any of those three states. Romney could then become the first Republican to lose OH and win the election. In other words, if Romney takes my advice and pushes into MI, MN, PA, and WI, then Obama has to sweep everything behind his firewall or he’s probably toast.

Or to borrow Peter Ingemi’s marvelous way of putting it, “Ride right through them, they’re demoralized as hell!”

Also read: Hey Obama, Your Firewall Is on Fire

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It’s the new Firewall from Bill Whittle.

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Just got a fundraising email from Karen Harrington, running against BoF* down in Florida. Read that second graph.

Can that be right? Is Karen really out-raising The Beast? If you’re so inclined, click over to her fundraising site and rub a little salt in that wound.

BTW, I’ve met Karen at a couple events, and she’s an impressive lady. DWS’s last challenger went down 70-30, but Karen was last polled within striking distance at -5. If anyone can unseat DWS in a D+13 district (not a typo), it’s Karen Harrington.
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