Friday Freakout

Because it’s Friday and we need a wind-down from the knockout witnessed on Wednesday.

I mean, it was like…

The media was the biggest loser that night (though it’s hard to beat that dreadful hemming and hawing performance by the man the popular press has been propping up as some sort of demi-god for the past four years). It gets even more pathetic when one hears the excuses for the ever-campaigning Obama:

5. We won’t know for 2-3 days whether Mitt Romney actually won. The idea here seems to be that the polls will tell us who won, although even CNN’s instant polling of those who had watched the debate had it at 67%-25% in Romney’s favor. This excuse has a purpose: to buy time for so-called “fact-checkers” to attack Romney’s arguments and change the narrative from “Romney won” to “Romney lied.” Speaking of which...

4. Romney lied with a straight face for ninety minutes. This excuse betrays the fact that so many on the left never leave their own media bubble. They believe what they tell each other about Romney and his policies, rather than listening or learning the truth. A good example was Rachel Maddow’s battle with Rudy Giuliani afterwards, in which she insisted Romney lied about a $5 trillion tax cut that he has never, in fact, proposed. Sad.

3. The free-flowing format was bad and let Romney dominate. On the contrary, the format allowed Obama to deploy his favorite defense, the filibuster. It just so happened that Romney didn’t let him get away with it, insisting on the right to reply to repeated distortions of his position. It is Obama’s fault, not the format’s, that he didn’t know when to stop talking, letting himself lose focus while the words kept coming out.

2. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, let Romney win. This is the Obama campaign’s official excuse, judging by the post-debate comments of Stephanie “Felon” Cutter, who argued that Lehrer allowed Romney to dominate. Actually, Lehrer was his usual liberal self, and was tougher on Romney than on Obama, interjecting more often with follow-up questions and letting the president use a full four minutes more than his challenger.

The snivelling gets better. Campaign staff member David Axelrod pleads for reporters to make the points Obama failed to make on Wednesday. No. The grown man has had four years to make those points. The only point Obama really made on Wednesday was that he was lost without his precious teleprompter and adoring crowds.

Anyway, Obama is still clinging onto the “$5 trillion” lie even though it has been debunked:

Looking to rebound from his uninspired performance in Wednesday night's debate, President Obama today mocked his opponent for shape-shifting into a "spirited fellow" who "couldn't have been Mitt Romney." 

"The real Mitt Romney has been running around the county for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts to favor the wealthy," the president told supporters in Denver. "The fellow on the stage last night said he didn't know about that." 

**

Leaving aside that no one’s heard anything from Romney about “5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy,” the Republican candidate’s disavowal of a huge net tax cut is completely consistent. It’s what he’s been saying since he was forced during a harrowing primary run to come up with the tax plan in the first place. He isn’t proposing to cut Americans’ taxes by $5 trillion dollars (or a smaller number, as I explain below) — he’s going to cut some taxes substantially, but overall, he’s not proposing a massive tax cut, since most would agree that the federal government’s current fiscal situation is such that we can’t afford less revenue. His plan is, in the main, a cut in tax rates that will reduce revenues by a number that’s actually a lot lower than $5 trillion (see below), made up for by eliminating tax deductions — so you’re not looking at a cut in trillions of dollars in taxes paid at all. That element wasn’t a key talking point during the GOP primaries (duh), but it happens to be pretty widely acknowledged good tax policy, since it improves incentives and reduces distortions in the tax code, without blowing a hole in the federal balance sheet. This seems relatively doable, since Romney’s proposed rate cuts amount to about $360 billion a year in 2015 (about $300 billion when dynamically scored), and in that year, tax deductions/expenditures will amount to $1.3 trillion. It seems, then, that even some major deductions can be preserved while still paying for the plan.

Some things are easy to say when Romney is not there to refute them.

THAT’S the Chicago way:

David Lowery says he believes he was threatened during a phone conversation with Louis Raymond, the Illinois political director for Obama for America.

Lowery says he doesn’t personally support the president because he’s not addressing issues important to the black community. He said he was explaining that to Raymond when the Obama campaign official told him, “You know what? I know everything about you.”

Lowery says Raymond added, “We’ve been watching you, and since you don’t support Obama, we’ll deal with you,” before hanging up.

So sound economic policies and trust aren’t effective means by which one can gain support? Right….

It only gets “better” for the administration:

Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.

According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.

The Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million.

At the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, the Obama-Biden effort was hit with a similar scandal. At the time, the Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign let donors use "largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity."

Why all the uproar about Romney’s tax returns?

I think this sums up Obama’s idleness, divisiveness and charades:

And Barack Obama is a phony baloney of the first order. It’s not just the Tropic Thunder accent he puts on in the Hampton address — it’s the race-baiting message. Remember, this speech was given three years after Obama’s “no red states, no blue states, but the United States of America” effusion at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that launched his career.

But that was always and obviously rhubarb, to those who cared to see. Now, all Americans are a click away from viewing the other Obama, the race-hustling hack who referred to his own grandmother as “a typical white person,” urged Latino voters to “punish their enemies” and caricatured rural Pennsylvanians as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

Moving on….

There was a time when things like this were considered treason:

According to a PostMedia News article, the five-time chief of the Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation in Manitoba was once quoted as saying: "There's only two ways to deal with the white man. Either you pick up a gun or you stand between him and his money."

Nelson traveled to Iraq in April 1998 at the invitation of the Saddam Hussein Government and was also a candidate for national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 2012.

What makes Nelson's trip to Iran even more interesting is that it comes on the heels of the Canadian government shuttering its embassy in Tehran.

Perhaps Mr. Nelson would like to live in Iran? I heard the rial is doing fantastically.

MP Rob Anders angers some dress-wearers who want to violate everyone's right to privacy.

Related:  the Toronto District School Board's very, very questionable lesson plans uncovered.  As long as they're not teaching children how to read, I guess there is no harm.

The "tough issue" here, Mr. Prime Minister, is handing over a lion's share of a resource to a communist country.

This is the religion the American government wants to give $450 million to:

Two bearded ultra-conservative men in Egypt attacked four elementary schoolgirls walking down a street eating ice popsicles. The men knocked the popsicles from the girls hands and began yelling at them.

They told them to stop eating the popsicles and go home, Bikyamasr.com witnessed. The girls, shocked at what was happening, stood frozen in their movement.

The two men continued their yelling, telling them to be “modest.” The girls began to cry.

Popsicles? What the hell!

Related: Egypt’s meltdown

Time for some North Korean news…

Starving people in North Korea do not benefit from trade with China:

 

Saenuri Party lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun, a member of the National Assembly`s foreign affairs, trade and unification committee, released Wednesday an analysis of closed trade data between North Korea and China, saying the North`s imports of luxury goods via Chinese customs reached 446.17 million U.S. dollars in 2010 and 584.82 million dollars last year. The figure was 272.14 million dollars in 2008 and 322.53 million dollars in 2009.

Kim Jong Un debuted in the Stalinist country`s political scene in September 2010, when he was appointed general of the North Korean People`s Army.

Imports were especially pronounced for high-end cars, TVs, computers, liquor and watches. Inbound shipments of luxury cars and associated components almost doubled to 231.93 million dollars last year from 115.05 million dollars in 2009. Ship exports increased more than 20 times from 17.48 million dollars from 840,000 dollars over the same period.

Artworks and antique imports reached 580,000 dollars last year, more than 10 times the figure of 50,000 dollars in 2009. Perfume, cosmetics and fur saw their inbound shipments double. Among items that saw sharp drops in imports were leather products and musical instruments.

I think this is actually a North Korean version of the Octagon Cage.

As Monday is Thanksgiving Day, take time to be grateful for all the things you have for there are others that go without.

(With much gratitude to all)