Obama surrogates can’t quite spin a win after Denver presidential debate

DENVER — Mitt Romney emerged as the decisive winner of the first presidential debate with President Barack Obama on Wednesday night, a reality even the president’s surrogates were unable to spin.

No defining moments emerged from the debate, which lasted 90 minutes. The zingers from both sides were underwhelming. During the evening, the two candidates mainly wonked out and discussed their differences on everything from Medicare to taxes to deficit reduction.

But style, more than substance, led to Romney’s clear advantage. The former Massachusetts governor was aggressive, and he made his arguments without any sign of hesitation. He repeatedly asserted himself and even interrupted moderator Jim Lehrer occasionally to ensure that he could respond to the president’s remarks.

Obama, by contrast, seemed tentative. Where Romney launched straight to his answers, the president often stuttered and rambled, as though struggling to figure out what point he ought to make. Romney regularly directed his comments against the president, but Obama repeatedly turned to the American people to ask, “Does anybody out there think …?”

The president failed to land punches on health care, and he did not even mention Romney’s “47 percent” comments about the number of Americans who do not pay income tax, which were used to damning effect in a recent campaign ad.

After the debate, the spin room buzzed with reporters asking variations on the question, “Was Obama off his game?” (RELATED: Watch the debate here)

Surrogates for Romney were ebullient, while Obama campaign officials declared victory by retroactively lowered expectations for the debate, saying repeatedly often that Obama had done “what he needed to do” in the debate.

Via: Daily Caller

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U.S DEBT ADDED MONDAY GREATER THAN TOTAL DEBT ACCUMULATED IN COUNTRY'S FIRST 166 YEARS

On the first day of fiscal year 2013, the federal government added more debt than was accumulated between the nation’s founding and sometime in October 1942, about ten months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, a span of about 166 years. 

CNS News noted the $93,245,605,914.16 added to the debt on Monday “equaled about $816 for every American household.” And “since median household earns about $138.36 per day over a 365-day year,” the median household would need to give up all of the money it earns for nearly six days to pay off its share of the debt accumulated on the first day of fiscal year 2013.

According to CNS News, on September 30, 1944, “the total debt of the U.S. government was $91,057,523,886.72,” and by Oct. 31, 1942, it was $97,168,867,541.93.

The $93,245,605,914.16 in debt the country incurred on Monday also was "the second-largest increase on the first day of a fiscal year in the history of the country. The record ($99,500,170,215.20) was set on the first day of fiscal year 2009 when the country was mired in a banking crisis that resulted in massive government bailouts. 

Below is how Monday's debt increase compares with how much the debt increased on the first day of the last eight fiscal years:

FY 2013:$93,245,605,914.16

FY 2012: $46,758,942,639.56

FY 2011: $49,224,554,918.30

FY 2010: $10,690,160,807.67

FY 2009: $99,500,170,215.20

FY 2008: $54,899,028,094.15

FY 2007: $41,410,211,399.05

FY 2006: $37,814,341,549.00

Via: Breitbart

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Watch the Denver presidential debate [VIDEO]

President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney faced off for the first time Wednesday night.

Moderated by veteran broadcast journalist Jim Lehrer, the debate aired live from the University of Denver’s Magness Arena.

Watch every moment here as the two nominees trade verbal jabs and try to convince voters that they are best equipped to head the executive branch of the U.S. government.

Watch:

Via:The Daily Caller

HURT: Obama the debater: Making Jimmy Carter look awesome

Bewildered and lost without his teleprompter, President Obama flailed all around the debate stage last night. He was stuttering, nervous and petulant. It was like he had been called in front of the principal after goofing around for four years and blowing off all his homework.

Not since Jimmy Carter faced Ronald Reagan has the U.S. presidency been so embarrassingly represented in public. Actually, that’s an insult to Jimmy Carter.

The split screen was most devastating. Mitt Romney spoke forthrightly, with carefully studied facts and details at the ready. He looked right at the president and accused him of being miles out of his depth.

Mr. Obama? His eyes were glued to his lectern, looking guilty and angry and impatient with all the vagaries of Democracy. This debate was seriously chaffing him.

What exactly was Mr. Obama’s strategy here? Did he figure with so many people unemployed in this abomination of an economy he should go for the sympathy vote? Like voters could relate to a guy who is just scared pantsless that he is about to lose his job?

In the middle of the blood-letting segment about jobs, Mr. Romney said good-naturedly: “This is fun.”

Almost pleading, Mr. Obama reached out to the moderator for a lifeline: “You may want to move onto another topic.”

When an unexpected noise went off behind him, Mr. Obama wheeled around to look as if to ask, “Time to go?”

Hopefully.

Turns out, it was the first honest thing we have heard from Mr. Obama’s campaign: The president really was absolutely terrible on the debate stage.

Via: Washington Times

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Obama's Stephanie Cutter knocks Lehrer

DENVER, Colo. -- Obama spokesperson Stephanie Cutter took a swipe at moderator Jim Lehrer's largely passive debate performance tonight, saying the PBS anchor had allowed Mitt Romney to act as the moderator.

"I sometimes wondered if we even needed a moderator because we had Mitt Romney," Cutter told CNN shortly after the debate, though she told POLITICO that Lehrer did his job as moderator and that her comments were strictly about Romney.

(See also: Complete coverage of the Colorado presidential debate)

Cutter's decision to knock Lehrer may signal an acknowledgment by the Obama campaign that the president did not perform as well as his challenger, Mitt Romney -- which was the general consensus of the media, including the usually pro-Obama MSNBC. (MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Ed Schultz slammed Obama's performance.)

Many on the left criticized Lehrer for being too silent. He rarely interrupted the candidates when they went over their allotted time, and when he did it was almost always a losting battle. His attempts to control the conversation were so notably nonconfrontational that they became memorialized in a Twitter handle named @SilentJimLehrer.

But Lehrer's passivity also allowed the two candidates to engage one another, and if Obama did not engage Romney or land any singificant blows, he may have no one to blame but himself. Though it is the moderator's responsibility to keep time and keep the candidates on topic, it was up to the president -- not the moderator -- to take on his challenger. 

(Also on POLITICO: Lehrer: The master of moderation)

Nevertheless, reaction to Lehrer's passivity on Twitter was largely negative, ranging from the constructive to the cruel. "Moderator Jim Lehrer perhaps too laid back tonite," Lynn Sweet, the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote. "Jim Lehrer may be the worst moderator in the history of moderation," conservative columnist John Podhoretz wrote.

UPDATE (9:47 p.m.): Cutter emails:

"Jim Lehrer absolutely did his job as a moderator, as only Jim Lehrer can do. But Mitt Romney wanted to play by his own rules, and that came across loud and clear."

UPDATE (10:21 p.m.): Romney spokesperson: 'You've lost debate when you start blaming the moderator'

Via: Politico

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Obama Trolling for the Knucklehead Vote

Pundits have ridiculed the string of fluff television, radio, and magazine appearances that Barack Obama has been making the last few months.  They are wrong.  He has a strategy and is executing it well.  He is seeking and winning the votes of those Michelle Obama calls knuckleheads.

Inside-the-Beltway journalists have decried Barack Obama's refusal to hold many press conferences.  His canned speeches and reliance on the teleprompter have provided them with precious few chances to score points among their colleagues for gotcha questions.

Ah...just kidding.

Most journalists would rather attack Mitt Romney like a pack of hyenas than ask the president any questions that may discomfort him.  Instead, Barack Obama sends out his hapless Press Secretary Jay Carney to field questions -- or people like Susan Rice to evade truthful answers regarding the murders of Americans in Libya, the march of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab Spring going up in flames (along with American flags and embassies).  That is what they are paid to do: make excuses, fabricate answers or curse those seeking answers, fall on the sword if need be.  They will still keep their lives and their jobs.

Barack Obama would rather nurture his bromance with David Letterman, who has had the president and the first lady on his show numerous times.  Letterman gets a big ratings boost; the Obama campaign gets free airtime in front of an audience in millions.  That is certainly worth millions of dollars -- or at least a Kennedy Center honor.

Or perhaps, Barack Obama prefers chatting about his pepper preferences and favorite superpowers with a New Mexico talk show host to explaining how his administration screwed up security in Libya so that those bumps in the road (otherwise known as the murders of Americans) happened.  Contemplating fantasy abilities must be far more enjoyable than revealing the true history of the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal -- a topic that might be of interest to citizens of a border state.

Via: American Thinker

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Explosive findings about DHS operations in congressional report

An explosive 141-page investigative report was quietly released just after midnight by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is an indictment of the practices and procedures of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

While this report provides details of the investigation of “fusion centers,” or intelligence centers across the country under the control of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, it provides critical insight into the workings of the DHS itself.

The report, available here in PDF format, notes that a review by subcommittee investigators of 13 months of reports issued between April 1, 2009 and April 30, 2010identified no reports that “...uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could [subcommittee investigators] identify a contribution…to disrupt an active terrorist plot.”

The report details a governmental agency led by upper management who are out of touch and out of control. Some explosive findings include:

• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-assigned “detailees” or agents to fusion centers often issued shoddy and untimely reports that sometimes endangered citizens civil liberties and protections under the Privacy Act:

Of the 386 unclassified reports reviewed during this investigation, only 94 were found to relate “in some way” to potential terrorist activity, or the activities of a known or suspected terrorist. Of those 94 reports, the usefulness of those reports were deemed as “questionable.”

• DHS intelligence reporters overstepped legal boundaries, including reporting on First Amendment-protected activities lacking a nexus to violence or criminality, andreporting on or improperly characterizing political, religious or ideological speech that is not explicitly violent or criminal.

The subcommittee investigation noted three specific reports that were based on inaccurate, false or misleading information, including the 2011 alleged Russian cyber-attack against an Illinois water plant, which never happened in the manner portrayed by the DHS.

Via Canada Free Press

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POLITICO: ROMNEY UP 4 IN 'TOSS UP' STATES

This week, Politico released its latest Battleground poll of the presidential race. Despite coming from the left-wing news site, the poll is one of my favorites. Its put together by respected pollsters from both parties, makes available its full cross-tabs and uses a very modest and reasonable turnout model for its sample. Including leaners, the sample in the poll is D+2. Nationally, Obama leads by 2-3 points, but, in the critical swing states, Romney now has the edge.

Each candidate leads in states considered "safe" for their party. In safe GOP states, Romney leads by 8. In safe Democrat states, Obama leads by a massive 22 points. But, in the more numerous and more important "toss up" states, Romney leads by 4, hitting the critical 50% threshold. 

In the slightly different category of "battleground" states identified by Politico, Romney leads by 2, 49-47. Romney's lead over Obama is powered primarily by his edge with independents. Romney leads Obama by 4 among the important swing voters. By 11 points, these voters think Romney would do better on the economy than Obama, 51-40. 

Romney also has a big edge with middle class families, who prefer him over Obama by 15 points, 56-41. 

The media has anxiously portrayed tonight's debate as a critical moment for Romney to propel his campaign into the final stretch. They have built their analysis around the false narrative that Romney is losing ground against Obama. The Politico poll, however, shows that it is Obama who is losing ground in the campaign. The President needs a knock-out punch tonight.

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TOP TEN REASONS THE 2007 OBAMA VIDEO MATTERS IN 2012

Even before the Daily Caller released the video last night of President Obama's 2007 speech before a majority black audience in Virginia, our corrupt media was already declaring it "old news."Time's Mark Halperin had a full-blown meltdown and BuzzFeed Politics' Ben Smith declared the story over and dead hours before anyone had read it. What's especially pathetic about Smith is that one of his site's signatures is scouring the Internet for old videos and publishing them as … news!

Once the Daily Caller story did hit, and it became clear that Tucker Carlson had found never-before-seen video of Obama in a way voters have never seen him, none of that mattered. The desperate narrative to protect Obama had already been set and, as though the rest of us were insane, the corrupt media doubled down in its efforts to tell those of us who had never seen this video that we had.

Of course, it's all lies – blatant lies meant to control the explosion of an explosive story, meant to justify why the very same media still obsessed over Romney's "47 percent" moment will now downplay and ignore as a nothingburger Obama caught on video spewing racialist division and the kind of wild conspiracy theories a sitting U.S. Senator had to know weren't true.  

But New Media is The Media, and this video will get disseminated and voters will see it. And like Romney's "47 percent" moment, this new Obama video is a legitimate news story worth covering.

Here are ten reasons why…

1. The video released by the Daily Caller last night does include footage the media never broadcast or reported on.

Furthermore, we're supposed to believe it's just a coincidence that the footage the media ignored just happens to be the most controversial part, where Barack Obama (who at the time was running to be the Democratic nominee for president) goes off-script and tells a majority black audience that the federal government doesn't care about Hurricane Katrina victims because they're black.

Even Politico's mainstream media water-carrier Dylan Byers had to admit this is the case:

But the full footage of the speech included previously unreported remarks in which Sen. Obama suggested that the federal government helped victims of 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew (in Florida), but did not help the victims of Hurricane Katrina because it didn't care about them as much.

By any measure, new video of a sitting president sewing seeds of racial division is not only news, but big news.

If this were Allen West giving the exact same speech, you better believe it would be everywhere. And he's only a congressman.

Via Breitbart

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Exclusive: President Obama Considered Putting Osama bin Laden on Trial if Taken Alive

Report: Biden The Only Obama Adviser To Oppose Bin Laden Raid…

In an adaptation from his new book, The Finish—first reported for Vanity Fair—magazine contributing editor Mark Bowden reveals that President Obama intended to put Osama bin Laden on trial in the federal court system if he had been captured, rather than killed, during the Abbottabad raid. Bowden had access to key players including top national-security officials and the president himself.

According to Bowden in the story—in November’s Vanity Fair—in the unlikely event that bin Laden surrendered, Obama saw an opportunity to resurrect the idea of a criminal trial, which Attorney General Eric Holder had planned for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This time, the president tells Bowden, he was prepared to bring bin Laden back and put him on trial in a federal court. “We worked through the legal and political issues that would have been involved, and Congress and the desire to send him to Guantánamo, and to not try him, and Article III.” Obama continues: “I mean, we had worked through a whole bunch of those scenarios. But, frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al-Qaeda, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr.”

President Obama tells Bowden that he was aware of the possibility that “The Pacer”—as the team called the figure captured on surveillance video regularly walking around the Abbottabad compound’s vegetable garden—“was some warlord from Afghanistan who had set up shop, the possibility that this was a drug dealer from the Gulf who valued his privacy or had a mistress or a second family.” He also understood that The Pacer might be exactly who they thought he was. Obama had never bought the line that bin Laden “was living an ascetic life somewhere, in some mountain somewhere.”

Bowden describes Situation Room meetings where the team presented the president with wildly varying odds. “People don’t have differences because they have different intel,” Morell, who had been personally involved in the flawed analysis of Saddam’s weapons capability, explains. “We are all looking at the same things. I think it depends more on your past experience.” He continues: “If we had a human source who had told us directly that bin Laden was living in that compound, I still wouldn’t be above 60 percent. And I’m telling you, the case for W.M.D. wasn’t just stronger—it was much stronger.” As Bowden reports, Obama’s conclusion was that the odds were 50-50. “This is a flip of the coin. You guys, I can’t base this decision on the notion that we have any greater certainty than that,” the president said.

Via: Vanity Fair

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JetBlue Offers To Help Disgruntled Voters Flee The U.S. After 2012 Elections

Airline to help upset voters leave the U.S.

An airline says it will help voters distraught over backing the losing candidate in next month's presidential contest flee the country — for free.

JetBlue Airways' new "Election Protection" promotion allows voters the chance to win a free round-trip ticket to one of the airline's 21 international destinations if the election doesn't go their way. Contestants first must preregister at jetblue.com/electionprotection. After the Nov. 6 results are in, the airline will give away 1,006 roundtrip certificates — that's 2012 seats — to participants whose candidate lost.

"We've all heard it said before: if my candidate does not win, I'm leaving the country," said Marty St. George, senior vice president of marketing and commercial strategy for JetBlue. "Fun is one of our five founding values, and in this spirit, we decided to give people a chance to recover from the political noise and follow through on their claim to skip town if their candidate comes up short."

Via: Washington Times

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CLAIM: OBAMA CAMPAIGN STAFF IMPERSONATING ELECTION OFFICIALS IN FLORIDA

This morning, I wrote about the Obama campaign spreading misinformation about early voting in Pasco County, Florida. The effort is an obvious attempt to confuse voters and potentially reduce the number of GOP voters turning up at the polls. However, a more serious allegation against the Obama campaign has surfaced. Its staffers were able to speak before high school classes by posing as officials from Pasco County's election office. This is likely illegal. 

Obama campaign's deception came to light after a local GOP official was first asked and then uninvited to speak before high school students. 

District spokeswoman Summer Robertson explained that the Democrat who spoke to the classes got into the school by claiming to represent the county elections office as part of an annual voter registration drive. Once before students, this person gave a distinctly partisan message that the teacher, Jennifer Dixon, sought to offset by calling Bunting.

Every election year, county election officials conduct voter registration drives in area high schools. Obama campaign staff allegedly posed as election officials at at least three area high schools. At at least one of these schools, the campaign staff gave a highly partisan speech to the students. 

Breitbart news as obtained an email sent by the county's top election officials to the regional director for the Obama campaign [David Pearl]. 

Via: Breitbart

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WaPo Reporter Beats FBI to Benghazi, Finds Sensitive US Documents Scattered Around

BENGHAZI, Libya — More than three weeks after attacks in this city killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, sensitive documents remained only loosely secured in the remains of the U.S. mission here on Wednesday, offering visitors easy access to delicate details about American operations in Libya.

Documents detailing weapons collection efforts, emergency evacuation protocols, the full internal itinerary of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’s trip and the personnel records of Libyans who were contracted to secure the mission were among the items scattered across the floors of the looted compound when a Washington Post reporter and a translator visited Wednesday.

Although the gates to the compound were locked several days after the attacks, looters and curiosity-seekers were free to roam in the initial chaotic aftermath, and many documents may already have disappeared.

No government-provided security forces are guarding the compound, and Libyan investigators have visited just once, according to a member of the family who owns the compound and who allowed the journalists to enter Wednesday.

Two private security guards paid for by the compound’s Libyan owner are the only people watching over the sprawling site, which is composed of two adjoining villa complexes and protected in some places by a wall only eight feet high.

“Securing the site has obviously been a challenge,” said Mark Toner, deputy spokesman at the State Department, in response to questions about conditions at the Benghazi compound. “We had to evacuate all U.S. government personnel the night of the attack.  After the attack, we requested help securing the site, and we continue to work with the Libyan government on this front.”

State Department officials were provided with copies of some of the documents found at the site. They did not request that the documents be withheld from publication.

None of the documents were marked classified, but this is not the first time that sensitive documents have been found by journalists in the charred wreckage of the compound. CNN discovered a copy of the ambassador’s journal last month and broadcast details from it, drawing an angry response from the State Department. Unlike the journal, all of the documents seen by The Post were official.

Via: Washington Post

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How Public Unions Exploit the Ruse of 'Official Time'

Imagine thousands of government employees reporting to work each morning at their government offices and then doing no government work. They use government workspace, government telephones and government computers, all while working on projects unknown and unidentified to their government employers. They receive hefty taxpayer-funded salaries, promotions, bonuses and benefits, plus generous government pensions when they retire—all without doing any work on behalf of the taxpayer. Instead, they work as paid political operatives for powerful government unions.

Welcome to the common practice of "official time." Sometimes called "release time," it's a mechanism by which the government pays union officials to work on union matters during their government workdays. This mechanism—enshrined in law and contracts—is an enormous subsidy to public-employee unions, who defend it fiercely.

The Office of Personnel Management reports that federal employees spent over three million hours on official time in 2010, costing the taxpayers about $137 million in salary and benefits costs.

At the federal level, about 77% of official time (as reported to the OPM) is spent on "general labor-management," a broad catchall for union activity other than contract negotiations or dispute resolution, which are the activities most directly related to employee representation. But when more than three-quarters of all official time is used for unspecified activities, red flags should be raised.

Via: Wall Street Union

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CNN Caught Juicing Headline

CNN story shows economists favor Romney -- but headline stresses they do so 'reluctantly'

Even the good news for Mitt Romney come wrapped in a bad news ribbon. 

A recent CNNMoney story reported that the Republican presidential nominee, despite trailing in a number of swing state polls, is the overwhelming choice among economists surveyed. They picked him, according to CNNMoney, by a 3-to-1 margin. However, CNNMoney made sure to stress in the headline that they did so "reluctantly." 

The article was part of a CNNMoney survey in which nine of 17 economists picked the Republican presidential nominee when asked whose election would help the economy grow more.

Only three picked President Obama, and the remaining five made no pick, “with several suggesting neither (candidate) would provide much of a lift to the sagging economy." 

The headline, though, sounded like it was a downer for the GOP nominee: "Economists reluctantly pick Romney." 

“Would CNNMoney have reported that economists ‘reluctantly’ picked President Obama by a 3-to-1 margin?” the website NewsBusters asked in a story Tuesday pointing out the headline. 

CNN was contacted about the headline early Tuesday afternoon but has yet to respond.

The first two economists quoted in the story were less than flattering for Romney, saying “he doesn’t understand how to govern” but that his policies compared against Obama’s would be “less bad for the economy.”

The most supportive economist comment for Romney is the final quote in the story.

Allen Sinai of Decision Economics said Romney's calls for “cutting growth of government outlays, lowering tax rates and closing loopholes, less regulatory uncertainty ... smaller government and entitlement reform all must be tackled."

Via: Fox News

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Obama Moving Gitmo Terrorists into Illinois?

AP File

Lawmakers claim administration opening door to Gitmo transfer with Illinois prison buy

The Obama administration plans to buy an Illinois prison that at one point was considered for housing Guantanamo prisoners, in a move Republican lawmakers claimed would open the door for ultimately carrying out that plan.

Administration officials, though, denied that they were looking for a new home for Guantanamo inmates. They insisted the decision to buy Thomson Correctional Center, an under-used state prison 150 miles west of Chicago, was a move to alleviate overcrowding and create jobs in the process.

"This is about public safety and 50 percent overcrowding in high-security prisons," one Justice Department official said.
Officials insisted Guantanamo detainees would not be coming to Illinois.

But Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, among the lawmakers who opposed the federal purchase of the prison, claimed Tuesday that the Obama administration could still carry out its plan -- perhaps by moving prisoners from another federal prison to Thomson, and then using that prison to house Guantanamo detainees.

"The president says his goal is to shut down Guantanamo Bay and move the prisoners here," Wolf told Fox News, accusing the administration of circumventing Congress. "This gives him a great opportunity to do it, particularly right after the election."

Wolf chairs a key House subcommittee overseeing the sale. He was referring to Obama's pledge immediately after taking office that he would shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp -- a pledge that stands as one of the president's most glaring unfulfilled promises to his base.

The move to transfer prisoners stateside, though, was met with a fierce backlash among some lawmakers who worried it would pose a security risk.

The Obama administration and Federal Bureau of Prisons is now going ahead with the $165 million purchase of the Illinois prison, though strictly as a move to ease overcrowding, they say. The move was first announced by Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn.

Via: Fox News

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NFL Political Donations Favor GOP

Political donors connected to the National Football League have donated more money to Republicans than Democrats according to a recent tally from the Sunlight Foundation.

According to the report, team employees, including players, owners and staff, have donated over $1.5 million for this election cycle. But Republicans received nearly three times as much from donors associated with football teams as did Democrats.

Eleven of the NFL team owners favor Romney, according to FEC campaign records – compiled by Business Insider’s Walter Hickey in September. These donors have donated directly to Romney’s campaign or through the Republican National Committee.

Chief among the Romney supporters is Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross who has donated $100,000 to the pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, $20,800 to the Republican National Committee, $5,000 to Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC and $2,500 to Mitt Romney.

New York Jets owner Woody Johnson has donated $58,200 to the Republican National Committee this year, $2,500 to Mitt Romney and $5,000 to Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC. Johnson is one of the Romney campaign’s finance co-chairs.

Members of the Bidwell family, owners of the Arizona Cardinals, have donated over $154,000 to the Republican National Committee and $4,500 to Romney.

Via: The Examiner

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Poll: 86 percent of Americans say government spending has not helped them

President Obama’s solutions to economic problems invariably involve more spending, but 86 percent of likely  say that government spending has not helped them, according to a new poll.

“On the question of whether federal government spending has improved the overall economy, 74 percent say it has not helped, with 52 percent responding that it has actually hurt the economy,” The Public Notice announced yesterday after questioning 1,005 likely voters.  “When asked how federal government spending has impacted personal financial situations, 86 percent of those surveyed say it has not helped, with 35 percent responding that it hurt.”

The Tarrance Group, the Republican-leaning firm that conducted the poll, added in its memo that “this pessimism over the impact of government spending is consistent throughout many key demographic groups that are frequently mentioned as ‘target’ voters in the upcoming Presidential election.”

Federal debt hit $16 trillion this year. Obama blames George W. Bush for the deficit, but The Washington Examiner’s Phil Klein argued last week that this reflects a “responsibility deficit” on the part of the president.

“[When Obama was inaugurated], the CBO projected deficits of $1.2 trillion in 2009 and $703 billion in 2010, for a total two-year deficit of about $1.9 trillion,” Klein explained. “The Obama administration went on to run deficits of $1.55 trillion in 2009 and $1.37 trillion in 2010, for a total of more than $2.9 trillion. In other words, in just his first two years, when Obama had a Democratic Congress that gave him virtually everything he wanted, deficits were $1 trillion higher than what the CBO was projecting when he was inaugurated.”

Via: Washington Examniner

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Chicago Sun-Times: Emperor Obama Has No Clothes

The conventional wisdom is that Wednesday night’s presidential debate is a huge opportunity for Republican nominee Mitt Romney. The emperor-has-no-clothes reality is that the political forum would be meaningless if President Barack Obama could stand on the stage and boast his administration had ushered in an era of low unemployment, surging economic growth, reasonable gas prices and rising prosperity for the American family.

None of that is remotely plausible. The jobless rate has been north of 8 percent for 43 months. Median family income fell more during the Obama recovery than during the recession. Economic growth is slowing: The economy grew at only a 1.3 percent rate in the second quarter, raising fears the nation may be drifting back toward recession.

In addition, Obama’s big foreign-policy accomplishment, the killing of Osama bin Laden, lost some luster in the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya and the assaults on U.S. embassies across the Muslim world. A scandal is brewing over revelations suggesting lax security for Stevens and over the administration’s initial, repeated denials that Stevens was killed in a terrorist attack in what increasingly looks like an effort to protect Obama’s campaign theme that he has degraded al-Qaida. Al-Qaida links to the Benghazi murders are no longer deniable; the terrorist group is a growing menace in the Middle East and North Africa, and al-Qaida in Iraq, all but wiped out by President George W. Bush’s surge, has made a deadly comeback.

Such developments may explain a new Rasmussen Reports poll finding that only 29 percent of likely voters believe the United States is stronger than it was four years ago and 49 percent say it’s weaker.

Still, the overriding issue remains the economy generally — and specifically, jobs — unrestrained government spending, the deficit, energy prices and development and the miserable state of family pocketbooks.

Obama’s defense, as proclaimed by Bill Clinton in his Democratic convention speech, is that the economic collapse was just too big for Obama or any president to handle in one term. Obama has seized this theme, claiming Washington can’t be changed from the inside.

Via: Chicago Sun-Times

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