1. The Washington Post Puts a Romney Blogger on the Payroll to Attack Romney’s Opponents

2. Rick Perry’s Birtherism

3. “An Incredible Moment in Politics.” Mitt Romney Won’t Go There.

4. A Conservative Look at Perry’s Economic Plan

5. Elizabeth Warren on Occupy Wall Street: ‘I Created the Intellectual Foundation for What They Do. I Support What They Do.’

6. Joe Biden wants the scary, scary Human Events reporter to go away.

7. BLS September Mass Layoff Report: It’s unpleasant and inconvenient

8. Indiana GOP goes after election fraud; 65 indictments in southern Indiana

1. The Washington Post Puts a Romney Blogger on the Payroll to Attack Romney’s Opponents

The Washington Post has been subsidizing the left’s bloggers for a while now. Greg Sargent is a veritable mouthpiece of the Democratic National Committee. Ezra Klein repackages left-wing talking points as an “economics” blogger or some such despite the fact that his only credential as an economist is a college degree in political science.

Now the Washington Post has put a Mitt Romney blogger on the payroll and everybody is pretty open about that connection.

Jenn Rubin, when not pushing out Romney talking points is in favor of freeing traitors, claims to be a conservative covering the conservative movement, though she has nothing in common with conservatives other than hating terrorists. A conservative friend says she’s best understood as ‘Likud’ rather than Republican or conservative. There’s nothing wrong with being Likud, but one ought to be honest about it.

In any event, in a profile in the Politico, we get two rather stunning admissions for a supposedly objective blogger covering the conservative side of the aisle for the Washington Post.

Couple these two together and one must objectively wonder how the Washington Post can keep her on the payroll without fundamentally changing the description of who she is and what she does.

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2. Rick Perry’s Birtherism

On a day when he should be focused on his 20/20 plan, the press wants Rick Perry to focus on Barack Obama’s ‘birth certificate.” Why? Because a Parade interviewer asked Perry about it and Perry did not flat out say “Obama is an American citizen.”

So now the press is after him. John Harwood of the New York Times asked Perry three times about the subject in one interview.

It is clear from the interviews that (A) Perry does not much care; (B) Perry thinks it is fun to tease Barack Obama about it and (C) the press wants a definitive answer.

Because Perry admits it is a distraction and it is clear the press will not let go of it, Rick Perry just needs to get it over with and say the man is an American. But I suspect he won’t do that even though he should, though in South Carolina late yesterday he pretty adamantly moved on telling a local reporter the question was “a distraction” and he was talking about jobs.

Rick Perry likes picking on Barack Obama. Watching the video below, it seems to me that Perry is not a birther, but sure isn’t afraid to use the issue to needle the President, whether I or anyone else likes it or not.

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3. “An Incredible Moment in Politics.” Mitt Romney Won’t Go There.

Hey Rick Perry, if you weren’t trying to have fun with birtherism, this would probably be a much bigger media story today. Peter Hamby over at CNN referred to it as “an incredible moment in politics.”

Mitt Romney refused to endorse John Kasich’s reforms in Ohio. This is a huge freaking deal.

Playing it too safe is finally biting Romney in the rear end. He’s refused to call social security a ponzi scheme. He’s refused to offer bold economic reform plans. He’s refused to address significant changes in entitlement reforms. His whole campaign has centered around tapioca.

And yesterday, while at a call center where volunteers were calling people to support Governor Kasich’s reforms, Mitt Romney . . . well . . . he wouldn’t commit.

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4. A Conservative Look at Perry’s Economic Plan

When Herman Cain proposed his 9-9-9 plan, many conservatives became energized, despite their misgivings with the fine print of the plan. It wasn’t so much the details of the proposal that excited the base, as most conservatives intuitively recoiled from a consumption tax; it was the boldness of the plan that resonated with them. Cain’s 9-9-9 brought some excitement to a race that was defined by a frontrunner who offered 160 pages of banal fluff. Nevertheless, his plan was too flawed to be utilized as a viable rallying cry in the general election. Perry appears to have proposed both a viable and bold economic plan, albeit with some inevitable flaws.

Here is a synopsis of all of the major components.

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5. Elizabeth Warren on Occupy Wall Street: ‘I Created the Intellectual Foundation for What They Do. I Support What They Do.’

“I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do. I support what they do.” This quote, from Massachusetts Democratic senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren, can be found in this otherwise unremarkable (and poorly written) article by Daily Beast writer Samuel Jacobs. It’s nice, in a way, that the true creator of the Occupy Wall Street movement has stepped forward to announce herself; after all, now we know who to credit for their motivation, goals, and actions.

Speaking of what the participants in Liz Warren’s brainchild are doing, let’s take a quick look at Occupy Wall Streeters around the country.

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6. Joe Biden wants the scary, scary Human Events reporter to go away.

First, let’s refresh people’s memory of what happened.

For those without video: basically, what happened was that after Joe Biden Opened His Mouth and announced that voting against the President’s job bill would result in more rapes in Flint, Michigan, Jason Mattera of Human Events confronted the Vice President on Biden’s statement. If you watch the video, you’ll see that Mattera ‘ambushed’ VP Biden by cruelly saying the magic word ‘picture:’ this of course caused Biden to go into full Pavlovian politician mode… thus freezing him for just long enough for Mattera to ask Biden on the record whether that language was appropriate for a sitting Vice President. Biden then attempted to push out a cloud of link by standing by his statement that rapes were up three times in Flint – which, by the way, Factcheck.org calls a ‘whopper;’ i.e., a lie – and then made a hasty retreat.

So. Point to Human Events. But now it gets better.

You see, now there has to be an investigation.

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7. BLS September Mass Layoff Report: It’s unpleasant and inconvenient

It’s become something of a legend among unions and the nation’s labor relations community but, for those old enough to remember the mid-90s, when Whole Foods was under constant attack by the United Food & Commercial Workers, John Mackey, Whole Foods’ CEO once shared his opinion of unions with a reporter, as follows:

“The union is like having herpes. It doesn’t kill you, but it’s unpleasant and inconvenient, and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover.”

Of course, the UFCW and other unions went ballistic. They protested and picketed and boycotted. [I mean, really, who wants to be told they’re like a case of herpes?] But, that was more than 15 years ago and times have changed for unions—although, with more than 93% of the private-sector now union-free, not for the better. Yet, unions are still having their unpleasant and inconvenient consequences.

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8. Indiana GOP goes after election fraud; 65 indictments in southern Indiana

Two weeks ago, we noted a Chicago Tribune story about fraud by either the Indiana Democratic Party or the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns in the 2008 Democratic Primary in Indiana. Now Indiana Republican Party Chairman Eric Holcomb is doing what I urge GOP chairman to do: document all the fraud that actually happens on the ground and the convictions that occur. I always like to point to the 32 convictions from the 2003 East Chicago Democratic Mayoral primary because the election was overturned, and we have testimony under oath of how the various sides try to cheat each other. One example was sort of boring. In 2010, a Muncie city councilman who had been on the city council since 1987 was convicted of mishandling absentee ballots. But the tastiest was a new one.

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