The Hollywood Liberal

Obama Campaign: We’re Winning in the Field
Byron Tau, Politico
The Obama campaign is touting the state of their field operation amid concerns by supporters and party rank-and-file that Mitt Romney is moving into the lead in many national polls.On a conference call Thursday just hours before the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, campaign manager Jim Messina and field director Jeremy Bird said that the campaign's grassroots operation was unmatched — no matter what the polls are saying.

Dodd-Frank’s Big Kiss to Too Big to Fail Wall Street
Mona Charen, NRO
If Mitt Romney is elected and secures Republican control of both houses of Congress, the U.S. could be poised for a vertiginous economic snapback.To understand how, consider that the Democratic explanation for our current malaise is utterly fallacious. Mr. Obama and his allies identify the “Bush tax cuts,” “two wars that weren't paid for,” and “deregulation” as the causes of America's present economic doldrums. But federal outlays as a percentage of GDP under George W. Bush averaged 19.6 percent. Under Obama, spending has ballooned to 24.1 percent of…

Romney Opens Up a Decisive Florida Lead
Adam Smith, Tampa Bay Times
Barack Obama's lackluster debate performance last week has dramatically altered the presidential race in Florida, with Mitt Romney opening up a decisive 7 percentage point lead, according to a new Tampa Bay Times/Bay News 9/Miami Herald poll.The survey conducted this week found 51 percent of likely Florida voters supporting Romney, 44 percent backing Obama and 4 percent undecided. That's a major shift from a month ago when the same poll showed Obama leading 48 percent to 47 percent — and a direct result of what Obama himself called a “bad night” at the first…

Mitt Romney’s Continuous Mendacity
Joe Conason, Truthdig
“It's not easy to debate a liar,” complained an email from one observer of the first presidential debate — and there was no question about which candidate he meant. Prevarication, falsification, fabrication are all familiar tactics that have been employed by Mitt Romney without much consequence to him ever since he entered public life, thanks to the inviolable taboo in the mainstream media against calling out a liar (unless, of course, he lies about sex).Yes, President Obama ought to have been better prepared for Romney's barrage of blather and bull. The Republican's…

Pew: Romney Surges to Lead After Debate
Steven Shepard, National Jrnl
Question? Call us at 800-207-8001 | Sign In | Learn About MembershipBy Steven ShepardFormer Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has surged following his strong debate performance last week, and he now holds a slight lead over President Obama among likely voters, according to a new poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center.Romney is more highly regarded on most personal traits and issues than he was prior to the debate, and his supporters are now more enthusiastic and engaged in the campaign than they were last month. The poll also shows significant increases in the number of voters who…

Can Obama Hang On in Ohio?
Alex Altman, Time
Barack Obama’s soggy supporters looked grim as they waited for the President in a cold sideways rain. Many had been huddled for hours without umbrellas, droplets beading on their skimpy ponchos and drenching the astroturf at Cleveland State University’s soccer field. “I know everybody is a little wet,” Obama acknowledged when he took the makeshift stage. “I want to thank everybody who’s up there in the stands. We appreciate you.” The applause was muted. If the crowd arrived fired up and ready to go, the rain had doused some…

Fiscal Nightmare of Government’s Creation
Ralph Reiland, Pittsburgh TR
The way the federal government runs things already is bad enough, but it’ll just get worse in the years ahead, according to the government’s own top-level number crunchers.In fiscal year 2011 — Oct. 1, 2010, to Sept. 30, 2011 — the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the federal government spent $3.6 trillion, or 24 percent of the gross domestic product ­— 24 percent of the monetary value of all the goods and services produced in the United States in that year, the highest federal-spending-to-GDP ratio since World War II.

Romney Opens Cracks in Obama Firewall
Michael Barone, DC Examiner
Wednesday night's presidential debate in which Mitt Romney shellacked Barack Obama attracted the biggest audience since the debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan seven days before the 1980 election.About 70 million Americans watched, a little more than half the 131 million voter turnout in 2008. That's an estimate, because the ratings companies don't count those watching on C-SPAN, PBS or the Internet.

Arctic Ice Melt ‘Decades Ahead of Schedule’
James Gerken, Huffington Post
Low-lying island nations threatened by rising sea levels this century could see the disastrous consequences of climate change far sooner than expected, according to one of the world's leading climate scientists.In the wake of last month's discovery that the extent of Arctic sea ice coverage hit a record low this year, climate scientist Michael Mann told the Guardian that “Island nations that have considered the possibility of evacuation at some point, like Tuvalu, may have to be contending those sort of decisions within the matter of a decade or so.”

Debate Is Not Going to Change Anything
Donny Deutsch, MSNBC
Number one, 5 percent of undecideds, if we become a student of history, one quarter of those are maybe swayed. We're talking about a 1 percent shift. Number two, every poll before the first debate usually ends up being the stand-up poll at the end. Number three, more importantly, actually the leader, that front-runner, now gets to be the underdog in the next one. I mean, he got his ass kicked in the debate, there's no doubt about that, but what is it going to change? It's not going to change anything.

Which Romney Will Voters Get?
Ezra Klein, Washington Post
Early in the campaign, Team Obama made a crucial decision: They weren’t going to run against “multiple-choice Mitt.” Rather, of the various Romneys on offer to them — the Massachusetts moderate, the tea party conservative — they were simply going to choose one and stick with it.

Premature Burial of Divided Government
Lou Cannon, RealClearPolitics
Divided government is more out of fashion than the original Apple iPhone. According to the Gallup Poll's annual Governance Survey, a record-high 38 percent of Americans prefer having one party control both Congress and the White House while a record-low 23 percent prefer control divided between the parties. (The others said it made no difference.)This finding, a turnaround from a year ago, cheered political partisans. As North Carolina blogger and former Democratic politician D.G. Martin said of partisan reaction to the Gallup survey: "The myth that a divided and deadlocked…

Jobless Rate Declines Unexpectedly to 7.8%
Alex Kowalski, Bloomberg
The unemployment rate in the U.S. unexpectedly fell to 7.8 percent in September, the lowest since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, as employers took on more part-time workers.The economy added 114,000 workers last month after a revised 142,000 gain in August that was more than initially estimated, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The jobless rate dropped from 8.1 percent, and hourly earnings climbed more than forecast.

Real Obama Revealed In Bumbling Debate Performance

Inside the Campaign: Reinventing Romney
Allen & VandeHei, Politico
Mitt Romney, for 90 short minutes Wednesday, transformed himself into a confident, clear-thinking champion of the average Joe. His ability to turn one winning performance into a winning campaign comes down to this: Sustain and complete the Romney Reinvention Project.In the afterglow of the Denver duel, top campaign advisers said Thursday that the reinvention efforts will include forthcoming ads featuring clips from Romney’s much-praised debate performance, and the increased behind-the-scenes role of two close confidants — Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who played President…

114,000 New Jobs a Month is Not Adequate
Peter Morici, The Street.com
Consequently, the U.S. economy is expanding at 2% a year instead of the 5% pace that is possible after emerging from a deep recession and with such high unemployment.Prompt efforts to produce more domestic oil, redress the trade imbalance with China, relax burdensome business regulations, and curb health care mandates and costs, would create 5 million to 10 million new jobs, and lower unemployment to about 5%.

Middle Class: Get Us Jobs, Leave Us Alone
Chuck Murphy, Denver Post
   AURORA — Bryce Murphy hopped off his skateboard for a moment to ponder the question.A solidly middle-class hair stylist in Denver, Murphy supported Barack Obama four years ago, but considers himself a potential Mitt Romney vote this year.So what does he want to hear from the candidates in their first debate?”Just let us hustle at our own pace,” said Murphy, 32, skating in Aurora's City Park. “I just don't want it to get any tougher.”

Mitt Romney’s Zinger Candidacy
Dana Milbank, Washington Post
The Zinger is an unwholesome confection. One serving of this Hostess snack, which is basically a Devil Dog or a Twinkie with icing, has 35 percent of your daily allowance of saturated fat — and some trans fat thrown in for good measure. The first ingredient listed is sugar, followed later by corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavor, glucose and polypropylene glycol.

Dem Surge in House Races? Not So Fast
Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call
Conservative thinker William Kristol and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee usually don't see things the same way, but they seem to agree that the House of Representatives is “in play.”The Weekly Standard's Kristol raised that possibility, albeit with a few caveats, more than a week ago in a blog entry, and the DCCC and its chairman, Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.), have been insisting for months that the party has a chance to win control of the House this year.

Temporary Voter Relief in Pennsylvania

Nevada Offers Stark Backdrop for Obama
Mark Landler, New York Times
HENDERSON, Nev. "” Las Vegas might seem the last place a presidential candidate would choose to spend three days of sober, nose-to-the-grindstone debate preparation. But since Sunday, President Obama has been encamped 17 miles from the neon excess of the Strip, in a palm-fringed, financially battered lakeside resort that serves as a vivid reminder of the economic distress that still threatens his hopes for re-election. Known as Lake Las Vegas, the 3,600-acre gated complex "” which includes three golf courses, a man-made lake, a casino and two hotels, plus…