The Commentariat -- Oct. 18, 2012

Presidential Race

Nate Silver: "President Obama's chances of winning the Electoral College were 64.8 percent as of Tuesday's FiveThirtyEight forecast, down slightly from 66.0 percent on Monday.... Tuesday featured an interesting set of surveys, however. While Mr. Obama's numbers were middling on the whole, one set of them implied that the polls may be inclined to overstate the effect of events like the party conventions and the debates."

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Mitt Romney has taken a six-point lead over President Obama in the latest Gallup national tracking poll -- his biggest lead to date and the first time he has led outside the margin of error. The latest seven-day tracking poll of likely voters shows Romney at 51 percent and Obama at 45 percent, up from 50-46 on Tuesday and 49-47 on Monday." ...

... Markos Moulitsas: "Romney's entire advantage in this poll comes from a massive lead in the South. Now sure, some of that may be Florida, but the state-level polling certainly doesn't show that. So Romney is driving up big margins in Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi and other such presidentially irrelevant states? Good for him! I'm sure that'll be cold comfort as he loses the states that actually matter in the Midwest and West." Thanks to Dave S. for the link.

Nielsen: "An estimated 65.6 million people tuned in to watch the second debate between incumbent President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney on Tuesday, October 16."

Steve Benen: "For voters who are still paying attention and who consider the economy an important election issue, the Romney/Ryan argument that the economy's getting worse is now literally unbelievable.... With every new report showing better and better economic news, the president will be missing a major opportunity if he fails to take advantage of the news: after inheriting the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the president took the lead in saving the nation. Nearly four years after taking office, by literally every relevant metric, the nation's economy is stronger and more secure than it was when he started." ...

... Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider: "This is really the big story of the moment.... New housing starts are shooting straight up. Retail sales growth: re-accelerating. The Unemployment Rate: Collapsing. And car sales are surging. Revolving consumer credit: back to growth. Gallup Economic Confidence is the best since May. Consumer discretionary stocks surging towards all-time highs. Homebuilder stocks highest since 2007. Wal-Mart has finally busted out, and surged past its 2000 high." With charts to prove it all. Via Greg Sargent.

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama and Mitt Romney took to the road on Wednesday to capitalize on their fiery second debate, with Mr. Obama's muscular performance recharging supporters in the state that propelled him to the presidency in 2008." ...

... Landler again: "For all the relief among President Obama's aides over his energetic performance during the presidential debate on Tuesday night, there was less exuberance. After his listless showing in the first debate, Mr. Obama's aides believe the second debate essentially reset the race to where they long expected it to be: the president holding a narrow lead in enough battleground states that they hope he will eke out victory over Mitt Romney."

Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "The battle for women's votes helped shape Tuesday night's debate between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, pushing issues such as equal pay for women and access to contraception to the forefront of the closely fought race."

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "As the debate on Tuesday made clear, neither campaign is taking the support of women for granted. Mr. Obama, in particular, seemed eager to make the case for his policies -- and to criticize Mr. Romney's -- after having been criticized by many high-profile women for not doing so in the debate two weeks ago in Denver."

Tom Toles of the Washington Post.Kevin Robillard of Politico: "Mitt Romney’s eldest son [Tagg] joked in a radio interview that he wanted to 'take a swing' at President Barack Obama after Obama called his father a liar. 'Jump out of your seat and you want to rush down to the stage and take a swing at him,' Tagg said, laughing. 'But you know you can't do that because, well, first because there's a lot of Secret Service between you and him, but also because that's the nature of the process.'" ...

     ... CW: oh, wait, I thought of another reason: Barack Obama is POTUS. You can't "respect the office" if you "take a swing at" the man. Or even say you'd like to take a swing at the man. Let's be clear here. Tagg Romney is not a child. He is 42 years old -- old enough to be POTUS, as a matter of fact. He is not Billy Carter. He is a Harvard MBA (I can't tell you how Dubya, Willard & Tagg have lowered the prestige of a Harvard MBA), a businessman. He has worked on three of his father's campaign & is an official campaign advisor. Now ask yourself if there would be an uproar on the right if David Plouffe (roughly Tagg's age) went on the radio & made a public statement that the only thing keeping him from decking Romney was his Secret Service detail. P.S. Obama did not use the word "liar," even though it would have been appropriate to do so. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... AND, speaking of that photogenic Romney clan, here's son Josh at Wednesday's debate. A friend heartily recommends that you turn to Rebecca Schoenkopf of Wonkette to learn more about Josh:

(Thanks to Tastefully Offensive for the pic & caption.)

I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years. -- Mitt Romney, during the town-hall debate

Liar, liar, liar, liar. (Or something like that.) -- Dana Milbank

New York Times Editors: "On Tuesday night, [Mitt Romney] bumbled his way through a cringe-inducing attempt to graft what he thinks should be 2012 talking points onto his 1952 sensibility.... [Romney said] 'Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.' Perhaps Mr. Romney forgot that he vetoed a bill as Massachusetts governor in 2005 that would have given women who were raped access to emergency contraception, or that he supported an amendment this year that would have allowed any business to opt out of the contraceptive mandate, or that he has said he would support a state constitutional amendment that would declare that life begins at conception -- potentially making some kinds of contraceptives illegal." ...

... Digby: "Romney made a great case for affirmative action, something his party adamantly opposes. But it's so common sense that he could say it in the debate and nobody even noticed. Not even Fox."

... Dancing the Shuffle with Lilly Ledbetter. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Had Mitt Romney been president in 2009, he would not have signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, [Ed Gillespie,] a top adviser to the Republican nominee, told The Huffington Post Tuesday night. Now that the law has been passed, Romney has no plans to get rid of it..., Gillespie added. But Romney didn't support it while it made its way through Congress.... Hours after this story was published, the Romney campaign sent a statement from Gillespie walking back the comments he had made the night before. 'I was wrong when I said last night Governor Romney opposed the Lily Ledbetter act,' the statement read. 'He never weighed in on it. As President, he would not seek to repeal it.'"

E. J. Dionne: "Under pressure this time..., [Mitt Romney] displayed his least attractive sides. He engaged in pointless on-stage litigation of the debate rules. He repeatedly demonstrated his disrespect for both the president and Candy Crowley, the moderator. And Romney was just plain querulous when anyone dared question him about the gaping holes in his tax and budget plans.... The most instructive contrast between Debate I and Debate II was the extent to which Romney's ideas crumbled at the slightest contact with challenge. Romney and Paul Ryan are erecting a Potemkin village designed to survive only until the polls close on Nov. 6."

Jon Stewart has three good segments on the debate, all of which you can view here. (He also interviews Nate Silver.) This is my favorite of the three; it reminds me of the Washington Post story of young Mittster's leading a severely nearsighted high school teacher into a closed door -- because he thought that was really funny. Sometimes, o lord, there is poetic justice, even if ye taketh decades to exact it:

     ... Stephen Colbert is truly excellent, too.

Dana Milbank: "Key to the success of Romney's Etch a Sketch movement has been the cooperation of conservatives, who have been unusually docile in the face of the candidate's heresies: pledging not to enact a tax cut that adds to the deficit, promising not to decrease the share of taxes paid by the wealthy, vowing not to slash education funding, praising financial regulations, insisting that he would make health insurers cover preexisting conditions and disavowing his earlier claim that 47 percent of Americans are parasites living off of the government.... It has been a rare outbreak of common sense in the conservative movement. Romney should enjoy it while it lasts."

"Binders, Keepers." David Brooks & Gail Collins have a conversation about the conversation Tuesday night. Collins ends it with, "Anybody who's wondering whether a second term could be better than the first can look at Obama's performance in the second debate and take heart." ...

... Collins again: "When it comes to the ever-evolving identity of Mitt Romney, we tend to think of Massachusetts Mitt as the progressive, empathetic version. But there were actually several different Bay State incarnations. The one who got elected governor wanted to ban assault rifles, close down polluting power plants and had emotional memories of a relative who died from an illegal abortion. About halfway through the term, that guy began to evaporate. He was replaced by a Presidential Prospect Mitt who opposed stem cell research, refused to cooperate with other governors on clean air initiatives and lost interest in the binder."

"Why Romney Screwed up the Libya Question." Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "The facts surrounding the Benghazi attack are damning enough on their own. But thanks to their penchant for cherry-picking information, the GOP left their presidential nominee on stage with his mouth agape, struggling to understand how something he knew for a fact wasn't a fact at all." ...

... Candy Crowley defends her remarks re: Libya/"acts of terror":

... Scott Shane of the New York Times provides a time line on who said what when about the terror attack in Benghazi.

Nicholas Kristof's college roommate Scott Androes was uninsured and died of treatable illness. "Let's pray that this presidential election will be a milestone in bringing to an end this squandering of American lives, including [Scott's] your own."

** Tim Noah of The New Republic writes an absolutely fascinating history of the term "trickle-down government," a term Romney has employed in both presidential debates.

Jason Zengerle interviews David Axelrod for GQ -- with annotations.

AND Jim Naureckas of FAIR is totally energized by Tom Friedman's helpful column on the debate. Naureckas's colum is titled "Judging Candidates on Their Resemblance to Thomas Friedman. ...

... PLUS Dean Baker likes to play "The How Many Wrong Statements Can You Find In Thomas Friedman's Column Game."

Local News

John Wagner, et al., of the Washington Post: "Maryland voters are leaning toward legalizing same-sex marriage next month, something that has never happened at the ballot box anywhere in the nation, a new Washington Post poll finds."

Other Stuff

Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "President Obama is prepared to veto legislation to block year-end tax hikes and spending cuts, collectively known as the 'fiscal cliff,' unless Republicans bow to his demand to raise tax rates for the wealthy, administration officials said. Freed from the political and economic constraints that have tied his hands in the past, Obama is ready to play hardball with Republicans, who have so far successfully resisted a deal to tame the debt that includes higher taxes, Obama's allies say."

Linda Greenhouse: in an affirmative action case, the conservatives on the Supreme Court embarrass themselves by asking trivial, taunting, stupid questions.

Jim Fallows takes photos inside the FoxConn campus in Southern China.

CW: Matt Harding is my hero. Thanks to contributor Dan for the link:

News Ledes

New York Times: "The Bangladeshi man who was arrested Wednesday on charges that he plotted to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had an accomplice [named Howard Willie Carter II] in San Diego, who was arrested later on unrelated child-pornography charges, a law enforcement official said on Thursday."

Reuters: "Google's ... quarterly results were released by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hours ahead of schedule. Earnings were far less than analysts expected and Google shares immediately plunged as much as 10.5 percent, knocking $26 billion off its market capitalization...."

Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald: "Libyan authorities have named Ahmed Abu Khattala, a leader of the Benghazi-based Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, as a commander in the attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens last month." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Witnesses and the authorities have called Ahmed Abu Khattala one of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission here. But just days after President Obama reasserted his vow to bring those responsible to justice, Mr. Abu Khattala spent two leisurely hours on Thursday evening at a crowded luxury hotel.... No authority has even questioned him about the attack, he said, and he has no plans to go into hiding...."

AP: "Weekly applications for U.S. unemployment benefits jumped 46,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 388,000, the highest in four months. The increase represents a rebound from the previous week's sharp drop. Both swings were largely due to technical factors."

AP: "One of the two Taliban militants suspected of attacking a teenage girl activist was detained by the Pakistani military in 2009 but subsequently released, intelligence officials said Thursday. Malala Yousufzai, 14, was shot and critically wounded on Oct. 9 as she headed home from school in the northwest Swat Valley. The Taliban said they targeted Malala, a fierce advocate for girls' education, because she promoted 'Western thinking' and was critical of the militant group."

AP: "Confidential files kept by the Boy Scouts of America on men they suspected of child sex abuse are set to be released after a two-year-long court battle. The anticipated release of the files on Thursday by Portland attorney Kelly Clark will reveal 20,000 pages of documents the Scouts kept on men inside -- and in some cases outside -- the organization believed to have committed acts of abuse." ...

     ... Update: "An array of local authorities -- police chiefs, prosecutors, pastors and town Boy Scout leaders among them -- quietly shielded scoutmasters and others who allegedly molested children, according to a newly opened trove of confidential files compiled from 1959 to1985.... As detailed in 14,500 pages of secret 'perversion files' released Thursday by order of the Oregon Supreme Court, their maneuvers protected suspected sexual predators while victims suffered in silence."

Binders Full of Women

“Binders full of women” is the latest and best example of Mitt Romney's using odd or convoluted language when he is talking about a topic with which he is uncomfortable and when he is lying. Romney wasn't telling the truth last night when he claimed he and his gubernatorial staff had made “a concerted effort” to “recruit” qualified women candidates for top jobs in his new administration.

Last week he told the Des Moines Register, “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.” His own vice-presidential pick Paul Ryan pushed legislation to redefine rape, and there is no reason to think a Republican Congress wouldn't do the same again. He has said he favors strong prohibitions against abortion and, implicitly, against some forms of contraception. In a primary debate, he said it would be great if abortion were outlawed, period. He thinks Roe v. Wade should be overturned and has said he would appoint conservative judges and justices – the fact that he appointed Robert Bork to head his committee on the judiciary is ample evidence of that. He said he would “get rid of Planned Parenthood,” an abortion provider. The construction “no legislation … that I'm familiar with” is just a rhetorical means of lying. Romney's binder full of agenda items may not include an “Outlaw Abortion” tab, but that is his plan.

Appearing before the righty-right-wing CPAC convention in February 2012, he said, “I was a severely conservative Republican governor.” When Romney introduced the term “severely conservative” at CPAC, it was such a novel – and false – descriptor that media attention moved it into the American lexicon.

When he gets into areas where he is more comfortable, Romney is able to answer with short, declarative statements: “Corporations are people, my friend.” “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” “Let Detroit go bankrupt.”

“Binders full of women” is not the only remark Romney made during the town-hall debate that gives us a window into his attitudes about women. Too little has been written – so far – about this part of his extended reply:

I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school. She said, I can't be here until 7 or 8 o'clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o'clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said fine. Let's have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.

What we can do to help young women and women of all ages is to have a strong economy, so strong that employers that are looking to find good employees and bringing them into their workforce and adapting to a flexible work schedule that gives women opportunities that they would otherwise not be able to afford.

From bindersfullofwomen.comSo here is newly-minted Gov. Romney, realizing that working women are sort of special-needs aliens who require extraordinary accommodations. This is something he wouldn't know much about, because in the nearly two decades he was head of Bain Capital, the company never invited any women to become partners.

Romney, of course, never suggests that family flex-time should be enacted into law. Whether or not to provide this extraordinary benefit is entirely up to the employer. As an employer, Governor Mitt allowed the little lady he chose as his chief-of-staff to go home and do womanly things like helping the kids with their homework and whipping up vittles. It never occurred to him – then or now – that his male staff might have kids who need supper and help with the homework. The men have wives to do those homely chores, for Pete's sake.

Evidently only in a strong economy, “so strong” employers are desperate for workers, will employers scrape the bottom of the barrel and hire these special-needs gals. This is typical Republican pre-1970s thinking. Let the market economy decide if women's peculiar needs will be met. And never even consider that men and women share family responsibilities. That, after all, is not how the division of labor works in Republican/Romney family circles. Caring for children, for elderly or disabled relatives and loved ones – that, my friends, is women's work.

And, in an ideal world, women should be staying home and doing it. Stay-at-home parent Ann Romney said that Mitt always reminded her that what she was doing as a mother was more important than what he was doing. In his convention speech, Mitt Romney said, “I knew that her job as a mom was harder than mine. And I knew without question, that her job as a mom was a lot more important than mine.”

Matt Yglesias of Slate spoke to that issue in late August when Mitt was complaining – completely untruthfully – that President Obama wanted to “gut” the welfare-to-work program, a program that helps people – primarily mothers – get back into the workforce:

[Mitt Romney] doesn't say women should go back to the kitchen, stop working, and instead do the much harder and more important job of raising kids full time. But he doesn't want to spend any money or burden any business with any kind of rules or programs that would push us to a new more egalitarian equilibrium. Nor does his lip service to the values of full-time childrearing seem to have any content. He thinks the idea of paying poor women to stay at home and raise kids is outrageous and certainly doesn't encourage fathers to engage in the much harder and more important job of full-time homemaking. He's a guy who … doesn't want to do anything to address the challenges that parents face in an economic environment shaped around the obsolete expectation that behind every working man there's a full-time homemaker. But he's not a guy who in any way acts as if there's any content to his belief that full-time parenting is harder and more important that entrepreneurship or market labor.

At a campaign event in August 2012, Romney said,

If I am president, I will put work back in welfare. There is nothing better than a good job to help lift a family, to allow people to provide for themselves and end the spread of a culture of dependency. We must include more work in welfare. We will end a culture of dependency and restore a culture of good hard work.

“Good job”? Really? Isn't a good job usually one that requires some educational background and perhaps some special skills? Romney's campaign boasted that “as governor he vetoed a provision in a Massachusetts bill that would have allowed education and training to substitute for work while he pushed for able-bodied parents of young children to meet the work requirement.” So if you're a poor woman, trying to get off welfare and into the workplace, forget about getting a good job. You'll have to take what you can get at whatever skill level you may have. Flex-time? Ha ha ha.

If you're a middle-class woman who has been able to obtain special skills on your own, then maybe you'll find an employer who needs your particular talents so much he (and I do mean “he”) will let you go home early enough to fix dinner for the kids before bedtime. (No such luck if you're a middle-class man.)

If you're a rich woman, you can stay home and do the “hard,” “important” job of mother.

The question town-hall participant Katherine Fenton asked was this: “In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?”

Romney's answer, parsed: “None.”

Update: Somebody I know submitted the following Amazon.com customer review of the TOPS Cardinal XtraValue D-Ring Binder, 3 Inch. It seems it takes 48 hours for a review to be processed, & I have a feeling the Amazonians -- unless they are Amazon women -- may not approve the review.

"I love this binder. I used to have several. I chose red ones. They were the perfect size for my hobby, which was keeping binders full of women. The binders are very sturdy so the women didn't fall out or get wrinkled. The mechanism on the D-ring opens and closes easily, though, so when I wanted to add or discard a woman, I didn't have to exert much effort. When I left my job in Massachusetts, my staff purged all of my records, and unfortunately they discarded my binders full of women. I wish I still had them. If I get a new job that's anything like my old job, you can be sure I'll get some more of these binders and fill them full of women. And gay people. Possibly I'll purchase a 1-inch binder and fill it full of darker-complexioned people. Or any sort of people I'm not familiar with."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 17, 2012

Presidential Race

New York Times Editors: President Obama "regained full command of his vision and his legacy, leaving Mitt Romney sputtering with half-answers, deceptions and one memorable error." ...

... Some of the Times' regular op-ed contributors give their early reactions to the debate. ...

... Ross Douthat writes a fair & balanced (and here I mean that) right-wing perspective on the debate. ...

... By contrast, Stephen Stromberg, a reliable liberal, was disappointed by what Obama didn't say. ...

... CW: generally speaking, they are outraged over there in Right Wing World, outrage being their natural state of being. So, today, you get headlines like this: "Candy Crowley disgraces herself with outrageous tagteam hit on Romney over Libya" and "Michelle Obama broke agreed upon rules, clapped at debate."

You'll get your chance in a moment. I'm still speaking. -- Willard Romney to the President of the United States during last night's town-hall

Charles Pierce: "I thought that, given the roll he's been on, Romney would be able to keep both Snippy Willard and Dickhead Willard in check.... But not even I expected Romney to let his entitled, Lord-of-the-Manor freak flag fly as proudly as he did on Tuesday night. He got in the president's face. He got in Crowley's face."

Michael Grunwald of Time: "Finally, Obama makes his case for four more years."

Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly: "Moderate Mitt took a beating last night, and that Obama did as much as he's ever going to do in laying out a second-term agenda."

Greg Sargent: "This race will still be the dead heat tomorrow that it was yesterday, but Obama made big strides towards turning things around tonight."

** "Binders Full of Women." David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix: during the debate, Romney claimed, "I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women." Bernstein writes: "Not a true story. What actually happened was that in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government.... They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.... Romney's claim tonight, that he asked for such a study, is false.... Romney did appoint 14 women out of his first 33 senior-level appointments, which is a reasonably impressive 42 percent.... None of the senior positions Romney cared about -- budget, business development, etc. -- went to women." ...

     .. Via Amy Davidson of the New Yorker, who writes, "One got the sense of Mitt Romney coming from a place where women were generally in the other room, waiting to be invited in only when the moment -- or the visibility of the job -- called for it." CW: we will be hearing more about binders full of women. ...

... Beth Healy of the Boston Globe: "Romney, however, did not have a history of appointing women to high-level positions in the private sector. Romney did not have any women partners as CEO of Bain Capital during the 1980s and 1990s.... Today, 4 of out of 49 of the firm's managing directors in the buyout area are women."

... Ha! John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "By the end of the debate, there was already a Facebook page and a Tumblr with the name 'bindersfullofwomen.'" ...

From the tumblr page.

... AND here's the Twitter account Romney's Binder. ReTweets include, "When Romney flies, he flies TransVaginal." ReTweets include other women's issues too: "Nothing should stand between a woman and her doctor except an HMO, picketers and the state legislature."

Zeke Miller & Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: "Barack Obama turned his administration's worst foreign policy disaster into a dramatic victory in Tuesday's debate when Mitt Romney sought to stretch the criticism of the Obama Administration's handling of the incident":

     ... Jonathan Bernstein says of this exchange: "This was the night in which the conservative closed information feedback loop and its close cousin, lazy mendacity, caught up with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney -- in a big way.... The closed information loop leaves conservatives vulnerable, and it makes it very difficult for them to govern effectively when they are in office." CW: I wouldn't call it lazy mendacity; I think it's more akin to audacious mendacity. Romney, Ryan, et al. may not always know when they're lying, but oftentimes they know, & they're proud of the stuff they make up. ...

... Everything Is the President's Fault. Marcy Wheeler on "The Libya Question." CW: looks like the Dick in John Dickerson (of Slate & CBS News & PBS & wherever) is well deserved. Or is it John Bickerson? Turns out it's President Obama's fault that reporters didn't more actively & prominently report his various remarks on the Benghazi attack. See, we don't have a better press corps because, um, the President failed to something, something. ...

... Paul Krugman calls the moment "Chicken Hawk Down."

Andy Borowitz: "Romney sets new personal best for faking empathy.... Tonight's display of bogus sensitivity made a big impression on a post-debate focus group, as a majority of participants agreed with the statement, 'Mitt Romney has the facial expressions of someone who cares about me.' ... 'It was an awesome display of stamina,' said ... Paul Ryan, who watched Mr. Romney pretending to be empathic from a shelter in Virginia, where Mr. Ryan was pretending to feed a homeless orphan."

Nate Silver: "Scientific polls conducted after Tuesday night’s presidential debate in New York give a modest edge to President Obama."

Scott Wilson of the Washington Post has a lengthy rundown of the debate. ...

... Here's the New York Times story by Jim Rutenberg & Jeff Zeleny. ...

... CNN has the full transcript.

Rachel Maddow called this evening President Obama's best debate ever. I think she's right. ...

... Maddow says the CNN insta-poll said President Obama won the debate 46-39 among debate watchers. ...

... Even this stuffed shirt agrees:

New York magazine puts together a video of "The Debate in Under Three Minutes":

Kevin Cirilli of Politico: "Police arrested Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, on Tuesday after a failed attempt at attending the second presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y."

The New York Times is liveblogging & fact-checking the debate. They have done quite good work in the two previous debates.

Greg Sargent: The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal "to overturn an appeals court decision to reinstate early voting [in Ohio] on the weekend and Monday before the election. This is a big, big victory for the Obama campaign, and it could arguably make a difference to the outcome in the critical state of Ohio."

Ann Romney, Low-Information Voter. Colby Itkowitz of the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call: "Ann Romney called it a 'myth' that her husband has veered to the right over the years, insisting there is little difference between the moderate figure who was governor of Massachusetts and the conservative who is running for president."

Ha Ha. Creepy Guy Caught with Pants Down. Joe Coscarelli of New York: "Dinesh D'Souza, the president of the Evangelical New York City school King's College and the right-wing author and director behind the fear-mongering 2016 Obama's America, has some explaining to do. The Christian magazine World reports today that D'Souza showed up for a speech at a Baptist church last month with someone who was not his wife of twenty years, but a much younger woman.... D'Souza reportedly introduced [her] as his fiancée, and although they shared a hotel room, he assured his conservative colleagues that 'nothing happened.'" D'Souza told a reporter he & his wife were divorced, but he didn't even file for divorce until the day the reporter contacted him. "After facing questions about the rushed arrangement, D'Souza told the magazine, 'I have decided to suspend the engagement.'"

Local News

Norimitsu Onishi of the New York Times: Four of the 11 California ballot propositions "are initiatives of single rich individuals, while others are being challenged by equally wealthy critics pouring in millions of dollars to defeat them -- a sign, in this era of 'super PACs' and Citizens United, of the increasingly sophisticated use of the populist tool by the wealthy to influence politics in the nation's most populous state."

Ian Lovett of the New York Times: "Los Angeles could soon become the largest city in the country to offer municipal identification cards to illegal immigrants, with the goal of allowing them to open bank accounts and gain access to other services. A City Council committee on Tuesday unanimously approved a plan to solicit proposals from private companies to develop and operate a city ID card system. The plan will now go to the full Council for a vote."

News Ledes

Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald: "Libyan authorities have named Ahmed Abu Khattala, a leader of the Benghazi-based Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, as a commander in the attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens last month."

AP: "U.S. home construction is making a comeback that could invigorate the economy's still-weak recovery. Builders last month started construction on single-family houses and apartments at the fastest rate in more than four years.... And they laid plans to build homes at an even faster pace in coming months -- a signal of their confidence that the housing rebound will last. The pace of construction has grown steadily in the past year, and analysts expect it to keep rising. The increase has been fueled by record-low mortgage rates, more stable home prices and a shortage of previously occupied homes for sale."

AP: "The family of ex-U.S. Sen. George McGovern says the 90-year-old is 'no longer responsive' in hospice care. McGovern's family issued a statement Wednesday afternoon through Avera McKennan Hospital. His daughter, Ann McGovern, earlier told The Associated Press that her father is 'nearing the end' and appears restful and peaceful."

Washington Post: "Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan is facing questions about whether he gave misleading information to Congress about security risks posed by a prostitution scandal embroiling agents in Cartagena, Colombia, according to three government sources familiar with an internal investigation."

AP: "A former used-car salesman accused of conspiring with Iranians in an audacious murder-for-hire plot pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping plan the assassination of a Saudi diplomat at a posh Georgetown restaurant. Manssor Arbabsiar, 58, a Texan with dual Iranian and U.S. citizenship, entered the plea in a New York courtroom just over year after his arrest in a case that shocked the world and drove U.S.-Iranian relations to a new low."

New York Times: "Federal authorities on Wednesday charged a 21-year-old Bangladeshi man with conspiring to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in Lower Manhattan,after he tried to detonate a van filled with what he believed to be explosives. The entire plot was in fact an elaborate F.B.I. sting. The man, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, came to the United States in January...."

AP: "A judge set a tentative trial date next year for a neighborhood watch volunteer charged with fatally shooting Trayvon Martin. In her first hearing since taking over the case, Judge Debra S. Nelson said June 10 would be the start of George Zimmerman's trial, though the date could change as both sides get prepared for what is expected to be a three-week trial."

AP: "Prosecutors have won a key legal ruling in their case against a former CIA officer accused of leaking the names of covert operatives to journalists. Prosecutors will not have to prove that John Kiriakou actually intended to harm the United States by allegedly leaking the covert officers' identities. Instead, they will only have to show that Kiriakou had 'reason to believe' that the information could be used to injure the U.S."

New York Times: "A week after the United States Anti-Doping Agency made public its evidence in a doping case against Lance Armstrong..., Armstrong on Wednesday stepped down as chairman of Livestrong, his cancer foundation, the organization that inspired millions fighting the disease. The fallout from the antidoping agency's report also prompted Nike, the company that stood by Armstrong through more than a decade's worth of doping allegations, to terminate his contract on Wednesday."