Romney Roasts President Obama, Himself At The Al Smith Dinner

Hot Air sent us this post from Mediaite:
"Romney said he spends the debates finding straw men to mercilessly attack. “Big Bird didn’t even see it coming,” Romney said. “In the spirit of sesame Street, the president’s remarks tonight are brought to you by the letter O and the number $16 trillion.”

"Romney turned to mocking the media for their occasionally favorable coverage of the president.
" “I never suggest the press is biased. They have a job to do and I have a job to do,” said Romney. “My job is to lay out a positive vision for the country, and their job is to make sure nobody finds out about it.” "

Hot Air quotes this tweet from Jake Tapper of ABC: 

 Al Smith IV: President Obama, it's never good when your opponent has produced more sons than you have jobs.

We unleashed Al-Qaeda in Libya when we intervened

Hot Air: McClatchy: Obama admin changed story on Benghazi to blame video 3 days after attack  "Barack Obama insisted in the presidential debate on Tuesday night that he had called the Benghazi attack an “act of terror” in his Rose Garden address the next day. Fact-checkers called shenanigans on that claim, but McClatchy notes that Obama did call it an “act of terror” the next day at campaign stops in Colorado and Nevada on September 13th. On the same day, the State Department refused to link the Benghazi attack to the YouTube video that media outlets like the New York Times and AFP had. Hillary Clinton called it a terrorist attack that evening.

"However, the next day, things began to change, as McClatchy’s Hannah Allam and Jonathan S. Landay report in their in-depth look at how the narrative shifted toward the YouTube video instead of an al-Qaeda attack:"

The McClatchy Article; An excerpt here:

....Yet the statement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence failed to clear up how the administration came up with its assertion that the attack was launched during a protest against the video. Issued by a spokesman and not Director of National Intelligence James Clapper himself, the statement made no reference to a protest or the video.

McClatchy news says that the regime's concoction of the video story to explain the attack in Benghazi was a purposeful cover created by the regime to cover up the disaster that our operation involving the removing of Moammar Khadafy proved to be.

"Getting rid of Khadafy basically turned the Benghazi area into an Al-Qaeda stronghold." Rush Limbaugh.

Back to Hot Air, which goes on to say: "The cover story was designed to mislead the American public so that they would not connect those dots. That intervention in Libya, coming with no effort at all to control the outcome on the ground, has made us much less safe, especially in that part of the world.

"By the way, as a measure of how little control Tripoli now has over AQ’s new stomping grounds in the east, the New York Times reports that the prime “suspect” in the Benghazi terrorist attack doesn’t even plan to go into hiding. In fact, he’s doing media sessions:"...

Report: EPA Delaying Job-Killing Regulations to Aid Obama Re-Election

The Foundry 

Barack Obama and Lisa Jackson,
head of the Environmental
 Protection Agency

 "Environmental regulators in the Obama administration “don’t want this economic pain to hit American families just before the election because it would cost President Obama votes,” states the report, released by Environment and Public Works ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-OK) on Thursday, “so they have simply decided to punt, intending to move full speed ahead if they gain a second term.”


The report lists a number of major environmental regulations that are either in their nascent stages or have yet to be implemented. Collectively, those regulations “will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more,” Inhofe said in a news release accompanying the report.

 Every day, I brace myself for what I fear this regime is going to do to us next.

Why We Aren’t Producing Enough Domestic Energy; several links on the subject

Heritage  "President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney had a heated exchange about energy in the most recent debate. The President repeated his refrain that oil and gas production is the highest it has been in eight years, but Romney was right to point out that this was driven by production on private and state lands.
"The vast majority of America’s new oil and gas production is happening on private lands in states like North Dakota, Alaska and Texas. The environmental review and permitting process on federal lands, however, is burdensome and keeps resources untapped."

http://obamacartoon.blogspot.com/2012/10/middle-east-turmoil-domestic.html

...."How did North Dakota pass Alaska and California to become the second-largest producer of domestic crude oil? Answer: sensible state regulations, advancements in technology, and the ability to drill on private lands.

"In addition to the much-heralded energy security that domestic energy could bring, these efforts produce jobs. North Dakota’s boom has put people to work. The state has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, at just 3 percent."

How Barack Obama's Fed Policy Fuels the Oil Shock

"While the president's assertion that "there are no quick fixes to this problem" is correct, three years have passed without a policy response. To date, American producers are limited by several restrictions: the moratorium on several areas of offshore drilling (Alaska, east and west coasts), uncertainty in taxation policies, and energy infrastructure shortfalls."

Federal laws governing energy production  "Most BLM regulations that govern the BLM's oil and gas leasing program may be found in Title 43 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 3100. Under these laws, the BLM has the authority to approve or deny oil and gas leases or to impose environmental restrictions on leases when appropriate. Forest Service oil and gas regulations are found in Title 36 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 228, Section E."

Forbes on the last debate: Did Obama Really Take Away Those Oil Leases?
"Obama let loose with this statement that had me scratching my head."...

....“It’s like you rent an apartment for $20 million and the landlord refuses to give you the keys to it,” said Erik Milito, director of exploration and production at the American Petroleum Institute. “Then he turns around and complains about it.”

BinderGate? Is this all the Obama people have?

PJ Media; ‘Binder Derangement Syndrome’: How the Democratic Party Exploits Women 

..."Hence constant appeals are made to the lowest common female denominator in an attempt to terrify single women and soccer moms, etc., that their “reproductive rights” are being violated or someone is about to deprive them of birth control pills or force-feed ultrasounds in their private parts.  

"It’s absurd, if you think about it — but the Democrats don’t want you to. They just want women to feel deprived or manipulated."

Right: Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau at left fondling cardboard Hillary Clinton cutout

CNN's Yellin: Romney's 'Binder' Comments Sounded 'Almost Like' Women Are 'Mail-Order Product' Out of 'Binders'   "Not 24 hours after Tuesday's presidential debate, CNN's Jessica Yellin was working the Obama spin on Mitt Romney's "binders full of women" comment."

Rush Limbaugh holds school on how the liberal media promulgate the Democrat line;

about.com

"Today's tip sheet, talking points that have gone out, focused totally on this binder with the suggestion that women be told they'll be taken back to the Stone Age if Romney and Ryan are elected. 

"If what I saw is correct and applicable, it's already happening, actually.  We see the bloggers start talking about this obscene, ridiculous binder business and what it means, Romney and Ryan, women, barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen, Stone Age, then the media picks it up and they start doing man-on-the-street interviews about it, they start talking about it.  That's how the process starts.  The whole thing is a giant insult to every woman, except maybe for Gloria Allred.  It's a giant insult." 

Charles Krauthammer; Obama’s bluster and non-response on the Libya question will come back to haunt him.

National Review Online   "The rub for Obama comes, ironically enough, out of Romney’s biggest flub in the debate, the Libya question. That flub kept Romney from winning the evening outright. But Obama’s answer has left him a hostage to fortune. Missed by Romney, missed by the audience, missed by most of the commentariat, it was the biggest gaffe of the entire debate cycle: Substituting unctuousness for argument, Obama declared himself offended by the suggestion that anyone in his administration, including the U.N. ambassador, would “mislead” the country on Libya.

"This bluster — unchallenged by Romney — helped Obama slither out of the Libya question unscathed. Unfortunately for Obama, there is one more debate — next week — entirely on foreign policy. The burning issue will be Libya and the scandalous parade of fictions told by this administration to explain away the debacle."

(Emphasis added)

'If four Americans get killed, it's not OPTIMAL': Obama's extraordinary response to Comedy Central question about fiasco after Benghazi attack

UK Mail   "President Barack Obama, during an interview to be shown on Comedy Central, has responded to a question about his administration's confused communication after the Benghazi attack, by saying: 'If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal.'

"Obama was speaking to Jon Stewart of The Daily Show for a programme to be broadcast tonight. 

"Stewart, a liberal whose young audience is full of potential voters prized by the Obama campaign, asked the president about his handling of the aftermath of the Benghazi attack."

Pension Envy: Who Has More—Obama or Romney?

THE INFIDEL BLOGGERS ALLIANCE  When life beats fiction... Obama's pension out of Cayman's and BIGGER THAN ROMNEY'S

Romney says Obama also has investments in Chinese companies and through a Cayman Islands trust

"UPDATE: PolitiFact, the fact-checking arm of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has confirmed that Obama does participate in the Illinois pension fund, which was organized in the Cayman Islands and has interests in China."

"From the standpoint of a public pension, Obama is well-heeled.

As president, he will receive $191,300 annually for life — win or lose in next month's election — and receives a travel allotment as well as mailing privileges. Should Obama lose, his presidential pension kicks in immediately after leaving office.

"Given that the president enjoys a normal life span, the pension allotment would be worth upwards of $6 million.

"The federal budget spends about $3 million annually for the four living ex-presidents. Obama also will get Secret Service protection.In addition, Obama may be due a nice pension for the eight years he served in the Illinois Legislature as a state senator.

"Illinois is infamous for its lavish pension planfor former lawmakers. A Freedom of Information Act request for Obama's pension amount submitted Wednesday to the General Assembly Retirement System of Illinois was not immediately answered, nor was a call to the Obama campaign." "

The Libyan Deception

Rich Terrell strikes again

Jennifer Rubin; More evidence of deception "The more we learn the more we see how both dishonest and incompetent has been the handling of this entire incident. The Obama White House may be out spinning the press to buy into the Obama-Crowley line, but no one is buying it. As the rest of the information comes to light, the president retains less and less credibility. Like a fish on a line he flops this way and that, trying to break free of his self-created trap."

A Bright and Shining Libyan Lie

Victor Davis Hanson   "The new administration narrative faulted not one video, but the intelligence community for misleading them about the threat of an al-Qaeda hit on an American consulate -- and the Romney campaign for demanding answers about a slain ambassador and his associates. Meanwhile, the State Department, the Obama re-election team and the intelligence community were all pointing fingers at each other.

"What the Obama administration could not concede was the truth: The lead-from-behind intervention in Libya had proved a blueprint for nothing. Libya has descended into chaos. Radical Islam had either subverted or hijacked the Arab Spring. Al-Qaeda was not dismantled by the death of bin Laden or by the stepped-up drone assassination missions in Pakistan. Egypt was becoming Islamist; Syria was a bloody mess. Iran was on the way to becoming nuclear. Obama had won America no more good will in the Middle East than had prior presidents."

Nate Beeler

Oba-spin on the debate aftermath

WSJ; Henninger: The Un-President; Barack Obama shows an unerring instinct for policy deniability.  "One of the most familiar Obama positions—repeated at every campaign stop—is that he "inherited" a bad economy from George W. Bush. Set aside that whatever the cause, everyone concedes he took over a tough situation. More to the point is Mr. Obama's compulsive insistence that anything awry in the economy during his first term is "not my fault." "

Obama Dropping Al Qaeda Brag From Speech?   "Who has been politicizing the far greater tragedy of 9/11 more than Barack Obama?
"Lest we forget, George Bush was not even allowed to mention 9/11 when he was running for re-election. But Obama has made the killing of Bin Laden and the ‘defeat’ of Al Qaeda the centerpiece of his campaign."

First lady: President 'didn't point fingers, didn't place blame'   Wait...what?  "First lady Michelle Obama said Wednesday that President Obama did not look to blame others for the challenges he faced as president, an apparent rebuke to Republican accusations that the White House continues to point the finger at President George W. Bush for the lagging economy."  Incidentally, this link was provided by left-leaning memeorandum. 

Sununu battles O'Brien on Crowley comment    Catch the smug look on Soledad's face, one of contempt for anyone who might be against Obama's re-election. 

Is Atlas Shrugging? Job Creators Are Giving Up on the U.S. Economy

PJTV  (Video) "It's a special Ayn Rand edition of Instavision. Harmon Kaslow, the producer of the film Atlas Shrugged, Part II, discusses the relevance of the Ayn Rand classic to the policies of President Obama. This novel is selling better now than when it was first released. Are job creators going to give up on the U.S. economy? Find out."  

Via Instapundit