 | Romney goes off-road with the truth Oct 30th 2012, 23:20 Mitt Romney spoke to supporters in the Ohio town of Defiance last week, but his words came from the twin cities of Duplicity and Deception. "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China," the Republican presidential nominee proclaimed, referring to the automaker President Obama saved from dissolution with taxpayer funds. "I will fight for every good job in America." Read full article >>   | | A vote for the future or for the past? Oct 30th 2012, 23:19 The 2012 presidential election is fundamentally a contest between our future and our past. Barack Obama's America is the America that will be; Mitt Romney's is the America that was. And the distance between the two is greater, perhaps, than in any election we've had since the Civil War. Read full article >>   | | Sorry, dealer's all out of race cards Oct 30th 2012, 23:18 Predictable as rain, the race card has surfaced just in time to stir up electoral passions, justify outcomes and explain away inconvenient truths. Just days from Election Day, the zeitgeist belched up one of its least attractive — and least defensible — memes. (Was it the weather?) Read full article >>   | | Lingering questions about Benghazi Oct 30th 2012, 23:17 The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi has become a political football in the presidential campaign, with all the grandstanding and misinformation that entails. But Fox News has raised some questions about the attack that deserve a clearer answer from the Obama administration. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: Scottish independence vote is part of worrying trend Oct 30th 2012, 23:09 DOES IT make sense for Scotland to become an independent nation, ending 300 years of union with England and Wales? And would it make any difference to Americans? The answer to the second question is an unfortunate yes: An independent Scotland would significantly weaken the foremost military and diplomatic ally of the United States, while creating another European mini-state unable to contribute meaningfully to global security. Scottish leader Alex Salmond, who on Oct. 15 sealed an agreement with British Prime Minister David Cameron to hold a referendum on Scottish independence by the end of 2014, says his would-be country would withdraw from NATO, expel British nuclear submarines from its waters and keep an army of 8,000-10,000 soldiers. Though the population of Scotland, at 5.2 million, is less than 10 percent of that of the United Kingdom, some speculate that what remained of Britain could lose its seat on the U.N. Security Council. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: Vote for Question 6, affirming same-sex marriage in Md. Oct 30th 2012, 23:08 IT WAS NOT very long ago that Americans could cite tradition as justification for opposing interracial marriage or for limiting the number of Jews admitted to some universities or for barring women from practically any position of power and influence. But tradition's grip, while powerful, is not immutable, particularly in a country whose pride, founding principles and prestige rest so heavily on the promise of equal treatment under the law. Read full article >>   | | Alexandra Petri: Mitt Romney's zombie apocalypse Oct 30th 2012, 23:02 For any decided voters who would like to be confirmed in their original perceptions, Joss Whedon has made a video about Mitt Romney — and the inevitable zombie apocalypse his presidency will unleash. After "Buffy," "Firefly" and "The Avengers," I would pretty much watch Joss Whedon very slowly and boringly brushing his teeth, insist it was amazing, and link to it on this blog, but this is good for a few partisan chuckles. Read full article >>   | | Oct 30th 2012, 21:52 Military power is not the exclusive way to demonstrate leadership in the world. The United States already spends more on armaments then the rest of the major world powers combined. What has it wrought us in the last two decades? A smart military force is one that is both cost effective and strategically designed with both the proper equipment and trained forces to be effective in the new types of combat. Witness how many young Americans were killed and horribly maimed by simple roadside bombs because we did not have the proper armor on our vehicles. Read full article >> | | The United States should take a hard look at our foreign policy Oct 30th 2012, 21:52 The Oct. 28 editorial "Superpower lite" took to task both President Obama and Mitt Romney for "a commitment to retrenchment" and "lowering U.S. aims in the world after a decade of exhausting wars." As we learned in Vietnam and Iraq, and we and the former Soviet Union learned in Afghanistan, costly military responses to isolated threats bring only a reduction in global influence and benefit to our adversaries. Read full article >> | | Showing leadership in a crisis Oct 30th 2012, 21:51 Eugene Robinson noted ["Passing the buck for Sandy," op-ed, Oct. 30] that Mitt Romney has advocated stripping the federal government of its disaster-relief responsibilities. As acknowledged by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), President Obama is doing a terrific job overseeing Hurricane Sandy-related relief efforts through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The president's effectiveness in the coming days will go a long way toward demonstrating his outstanding leadership skills as a manager of national crises. Read full article >> | | 'Neither snow, nor rain . . .' Oct 30th 2012, 21:50 When people think of the U.S. Postal Service these days, they may tend to think of huge deficits, plans to eliminate Saturday delivery and junk mail. However on Tuesday, as wind from Hurricane Sandy roared around my house, I experienced a vestige of the old glory days of the Postal Service. About 6 p.m. I opened the front door to look at the weather and was neither surprised nor disappointed to see that the mail had not been delivered. A few hours later, I opened the door to look at the weather again. I couldn't believe that in my mailbox was a large handful of mail. Read full article >> | | Jennifer Rubin: All those attacks did Obama no good Oct 30th 2012, 20:46 President Obama and Mitt Romney are balancing storm damage empathy with campaigning. As the New York Times reported, "even as the candidates altered their campaigning, their dueling television commercials were roaring along on Tuesday. The campaigns and their third-party allies are making a final push on already saturated airwaves with millions of dollars worth of new commercials." Living in the swing state of Virginia we've seen (or rather muted or changed channels on) hundreds of TV ads from the campaigns, parties and third-party groups. It's hard to imagine yet another round of ads changing any minds, but that hasn't kept the campaigns from bombarding battleground states. Read full article >>   | | Jonathan Bernstein: How likely is it that the polls are wrong? Oct 30th 2012, 20:34 Could the polls be wrong? Yup. But they probably aren't. Remember, the state of play, at least until Sandy shut down a lot of polling, is that the national vote is basically tied (with Mitt Romney possibly having a very narrow edge) while Barack Obama appears to have a 2-3 percentage point electoral college advantage. What that means is that in a tied race nationally, Romney would have to win basically every close swing state to win. If the polls are correct and nothing changes between now and Tuesday, the chances for an Obama victory are good. Read full article >>   | | Signs of despair and hope for Obama Oct 30th 2012, 20:24 Reality is now impossible to see through the electoral and meteorological storm of the campaign's final week. The truth, always subject to interpretation in politics, is now a completely partisan commodity. The campaign's operatives and supporters can no longer distinguish it from spin. Nowhere is the fog thicker than on the question of who is going to win. Read full article >>   | | Bad is getting worse for Obama Oct 30th 2012, 19:33 To follow up on this morning's post, where I present the case that there's no good news for President Obama, I can now add a couple more discouraging anecdotes for the Obama team to consider. First, I'd like to draw readers' attention to the Richard Cohen piece from The Post. Cohen writes poetically, and more in sorrow than in anger, about the failure of the Obama presidency. To add to the list I started this morning, another symptom of a losing campaign is when the core of your support base begins to acknowledge their disappointment, even before the election results are in, and to sadly recount what might have been. Cohen says, "I will vote for Obama with regret. I wish he was the man I once mistook him for." Read full article >>   | |
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