"President Obama, plowing into the final week of what he calls his last campaign, cannot realistically gauge how Hurricane Sandy might change his fortunes in a election so close it could shift in a breeze, let alone a gale. 
 
"What meteorologists dubbed 'Frankenstorm' is expected to be gone by Nov. 6, but its effects on voters’ thinking may linger -- and could affect the president’s chances for a second term. Research has shown that public distress after disasters and grim economic events can make voters select their leaders based on how they feel about life in the moment, more than what they know over time. 

"With a presidential election eight days away, Sandy’s unsettling impact -- including any U.S. fatalities -- could make a difference in some voters’ thinking during this final week, particularly because up to 50 million people could experience the storm’s effects."

"Romney’s fortunes appear inextricably linked to Ohio. GOP strategist Mike Murphy says that the key metric there is the white vote. Romney remains in the low 50 percent range and needs to move higher. 'If Ohio keeps moving up to a more "normal" range of the white vote, say within the 55 percent to 57 percent range, I think Mitt can win,' Murphy said. To prevent that, Obama is pressing the issues of his tariffs against Chinese tire imports and expansion of the GM and Chrysler bailouts. Both play specifically to white voters in northern Ohio. In 2000, GOP voters outperformed Democrats 50 percent to 46.5 percent in turnout. In 2004, the GOP prevailed 50.8 percent to 48.7 percent. In 2008, Democrats triumphed 51.4 percent to 46.8 percent. Where Romney and Obama fall in this turnout continuum will, in all likelihood, determine the winner in Ohio and nationally." 

"As an artifact of the diminishment of President Barack Obama, it is hard to top his newly released pamphlet, 'A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security.' 

"The plan purports, first, to be a plan, and second, to outline a second-term agenda distinct from his first-term agenda. It fails on both counts. It cobbles together his current policies with some ill-defined new bullet points to barely cover 20 pages largely devoted to nice pictures of the president. 

"Make no mistake: What the Obama agenda lacks in substance, it makes up in graphic design. The pamphlet has as much gloss and as many soft-focus photos as a copy of Playboy. The seriously besotted Obama fan might have to assure friends, 'No, really — I only read the Obama second-term plan for the policy details.'"

"(Reuters) - Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show. 

"The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks. ... 

"Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film."

"[A] mom of two Marines just put it to me very well: 'Amb. Stevens would have loved a horse or a bayonet or a Marine with either one.'  

"Quite."

"The argument about Obamacare is often framed as a moral issue. It's the caring and compassionate against the cruel and heartless. That's the rhetoric; the reality is different. Many of us who oppose Obamacare don't do so because we enjoy seeing people suffer. We believe that, in an ideal world, everyone would have insurance. But we also think that Obamacare has huge drawbacks that outweigh its plausible benefits. 

"It creates powerful pressures against companies hiring full-time workers -- precisely the wrong approach after the worst economic slump since the Depression. There will be more bewildering regulations, more regulatory uncertainties, more unintended side effects and more disappointments. A costly and opaque system will become more so."

"President Obama has declined to outline a second-term agenda. He doesn’t say what he would do about the fiscal cliff that looms in just a couple of months. He hasn’t addressed the glaring challenge of an aging population and entitlement spending that is careening toward insolvency. (On the contrary, he has significantly hastened the emergency by piling on new entitlement spending.) He hasn’t proposed policies to improve the economy. He promises nothing more on Iran than to maintain ineffective sanctions. 
 
"We can glean this much: He’d like to hire 100,000 new teachers and he wants to raise taxes on 'millionaires and billionaires.' That’s a flimsy agenda for a great nation. ..."

"Within the first few minutes of the second presidential debate, Obama said 'not true' more times than Lance Armstrong, Mark McGwire and Baghdad Bob -- combined.
 
"Sure beats talking about the economy. ... 

"The dictionary describes a 'liar' as someone who intends to deceive. But to paraphrase economist Thomas Sowell, today the word 'liar' means a conservative who is winning an argument with a liberal."

"At Tuesday’s Hofstra University presidential debate, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney duked it out over pay equity for women, just as they have fought over female votes in the national polls.
 
"While Obama made the empathetic case for his single mother and his belief in equal pay ... he did not address reports this year that demonstrated that his own White House pays women less than men. ... 

"According to a report published by the Free Beacon in April, the 2011 annual report on White House staff revealed that the median annual salary for female White House employees was 18 percent less than male employees — $60,000 compared to $71,000. 

"And in 2008, Scripps Howard syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock noted that as in Obama’s U.S. Senate office, women were paid less than men: While the average male staffer brought home $54,397, female staffers averaged $45,152."

"How it must gall President Barack Obama’s reelection team to try to talk down Mitt Romney by talking up his talent. 'He is a great salesman,' top Obama strategist David Axelrod said on Fox News Sunday. 'That is what he did as a professional; he is very good at it.' ...   

"There is a delicious irony in Obama’s aides complaining of someone else’s superior salesmanship. Do they have no self-awareness? They might want to reacquaint themselves with how Barack Obama became president. It wasn’t his long record of legislative achievement. It wasn’t his executive experience. It wasn’t his fine-grained agenda. It was a winning smile, a great narrative, and a slogan that fit the temper of the moment: 'Hope and change.' Not to mention a determined effort to obscure and sand away the rough edges of his leftism. It was, in short, a great sales job.
 
"For the Obama campaign to turn around and complain that Mitt Romney is just too persuasive is like the late, great TV pitchman Billy Mays warning that the other guy is better at peddling OxiClean."