So why did Obama lose the debate?

There are numerous theories out there.  Al Gore thinks that it was the altitude and that Obama only had 5 hours to acclimate himself to the thin air (Obama arrived at 2 PM MDT and the debate started at 7 PM MDT), though he doesn't explain why being in a jet traveling there didn't count towards acclimating him.  

The Daily Kos has a theory that Romney use a cheat sheet, though they don't explain why he didn't seem the need during the debate to look down at notes.  You have to love the detail that they go into on this.

Yes it could be a hanky.  But it falls kind of heavy, and stays uniform in it's fold.  Plus it is flat.  I have never seen a man's hanky be so uniform and flat coming from a front pant's pocket.  Back pocket, yes, breast pocket in a jacket, yes.. but not the front pant pocket. . . . 

Obama himself seems to have a different explanation.  Here is part of what Andrew Malcolm wrote up at Investors' Business Day:

Obama offered a manufactured explanation for his poor showing in front of about 50 million people: 

He was completely thrown off-stride for the entire 90 minutes and 17,000 words by the appearance on-stage of a different Mitt Romney than the one Obama has caricatured for so many months. Good thing Russia's Vladimir Putin didn't show up. 

Obama's debate appearance was so unanimously panned that Jay Leno said the only people who thought it was good were the NFL's replacement refs. 

The morning after here's how the U.S. president explained his unpolished performance:
"When I got onto the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy.  

The fellow on stage last night said he didn’t know anything about that. 

"In fact, what the real Mitt Romney actually said about that in the debate was:"Let me repeat what I said. I’m not in favor of a $5 trillion tax cut. That's not my plan. My plan is not to put in place any tax cut that will add to the deficit. That's point one. 

So you may keep referring to the $5 trillion tax cut, but that's not my plan." . . .  

Another Review of Freedomnomics

That is why I salute John Lott's Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't (Regnery, 2007), a voice of reason in a swamp of interventionist megalomania that threatens to push the land of the free down the road of the late Roman Empire.

Freedomnomics, translating economics into regular English, shows that bureaucratic and judicial attempts to correct the market restore feudalism and hurt the poor. Corporate scandals that lower a firm's reputation create disincentives to cheat and thus become part of a self-correcting market mechanism. Lott also discerns the true link between legalized abortion and crime: In opposition to the best-selling book Freakonomics, he shows that easy access to abortion leads to change in attitudes to premarital sex, more out-of-wedlock children, family breakdown, and thus to more crime. . . . .

So the Federal Government requires that you have to have one of three types of photo IDs to use PayPal, but you don't need an ID to vote

PayPal is requiring this photo ID because of federal regulations.  Even the states that have photo voter ID regulations aren't this restrictive in limiting you to so few types of IDs.  Yet, the Federal government has no problem requiring this to use PayPal.  Presumably the government is worried about people trying to cheat the government out of tax revenue.  So why isn't the government equally worried about vote fraud?

House Democrats Health Care Talking Points Cheat Sheet

Note just the first point about increases in health care costs. 1) The Democratic controlled CBO says that their proposed changes will increase costs even more than they are already likely to increase. 2) The government regulations are already responsible for much of the increase in insurance costs. 3) The way that the Dems bill will be paid by reducing reimbursements to doctors and hospitals for Medicaid and Medicare will only increase private insurance costs even more.
Second point: Look at the surveys that show Americans are overwhelmingly happy with their insurance programs.
Third point: Does anyone think that the government can do things at a lower cost than private companies? Instead of people paying premiums they will pay taxes. The costs won't go away.

Obtained from Talkingpointsmemo.com.

Politico: Obama's campaign far more negative than Romney's

One would think that this should be obvious.  Has the Romney campaign ever called Obama a felon?  Implied that Obama was responsible for a woman's death?  Or have Republican Senators called Obama a tax cheat?  From Politico:

. . . Obama and his top campaign aides have engaged far more frequently in character attacks and personal insults than the Romney campaign. 

With a few exceptions, Romney has maintained that Obama is a bad president who has turned to desperate tactics to try to save himself. But Romney has not made the case that Obama is a bad person, nor made a sustained critique of his morality a central feature of his campaign. 

Obama, who first sprang to national attention with an appeal to civility, has made these kind of attacks central to his strategy. The argument, by implication from Obama and directly from his surrogates, is not merely that Romney is the wrong choice for president but that there is something fundamentally wrong with him. 

To make the case, Obama and his aides have used an arsenal of techniques — personal ridicule, suggestions of ethical misdeeds and aspersions against Romney’s patriotism — that many voters and commentators claim to abhor, even as the tactics have regularly proved effective. . . . .

New Op-ed at Fox News: Why Political Flip-Flopping Matters

My newest op-ed at Fox News can be read in full here:

What restrains politicians and businesses from acting dishonestly? A lot of people would answer: nothing.

Periodic political and corporate scandals have created a popular image of politicians and businessmen as little more than a collection of cheats, liars and crooks. However, while there will always be some dishonest people in any profession, the vast majority of American politicians and businessmen do not end up being frog marched out of their offices in handcuffs with their heads held low in shame before a gaggle of news cameras.

What helps keep companies honest is the threat that if they cheat customers, people won’t buy from them again. But that won’t work for politicians. Politicians don’t always have the incentive of re-election because eventually they all face a last term in office. Politicians retire at some point. They can’t live forever.

So, if it isn't the threat of facing the voters, what could ensure that politicians keep their promises?

There has been a lot academic work studying this question, and the way to solve the problem is to elect politicians who inherently value the policy positions that they take. . . . .

Daschle Owed Even More Money than Previously Reported

ABC has this.

On January 2 of this year, Daschle filed amended tax returns to pay the $140,167 in unpaid taxes.

The Finance Committee staff still is reviewing whether travel and entertainment services provided Tom and Linda Daschle by EduCap, Inc., Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation, Academy Achievement, and Loan to Learn should be reported as income. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Daschle made use of the jet belonging to EduCap, a non-profit student loan organization. . . . .

$140,000 in overdue taxes that are only now paid in January? This amount of owed taxes is greater than most people make in income. At what point does it matter how much money is owed? If Obama only views $140,000 as "some tax issues," what amount of owed taxes would represent real tax issues? If these Democrats cheat on their taxes and only have to come clean when they are being appointed to important positions, when will the Democrats admit that the tax system is broken?

Put this in the obvious file, politicians cheat more because they have more opportunities

So women are attracted to power. This is news?

The upcoming Psychological Science study did not find evidence that people who travelled more cheated more, but politicians do have more opportunities to stray than the average person.
"They do meet a lot of people," said Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who studies sexuality and relationships. "Women are impressed with their position, and they are attractive to women who might have never noticed them if they were an accountant."
Indeed, Coontz said, gender role socialization plays right into the hands of potential political adulterers.
"There's a tremendous identification of power and privilege with sexual excitement, so it's easy for the guys to translate the ego trip they are on constantly into sexuality," Coontz said. Meanwhile, women who believe that rubbing elbows (or more) with the rich and powerful will benefit them are more likely to accept the position of mistress.
Politicians "have a lot more willing takers than your ordinary guy," Coontz said. . . .

Chinese Film Director could face fine of up to $26 million for fathering seven children, some thoughts

Assume for a second that the Chinese policy on the number of children makes sense, if you have seven children with seven different women, shouldn't that be treated differently than seven children with the same woman?  Also, why should higher income individuals pay such a much much higher fine for having kids?  Why discourage the smartest, most successful people from having kids?  Presumably, if higher income individuals tried to cheat, it would make enforcement against lower income people more difficult.  But I wonder if that is true.  In the US (where speeding fines are based on the crime) or Finland (where they are also based on income), do you have more people breaking speed limits?  I don't know the answer, but it would be interesting to check.  The simplest way would be to see if these relative rates changed when Finland changed the way it fined speeding.  From the Vancouver Sun:

Zhang, 61, reportedly could face a fine of up to 160 million yuan ($26 million), said the People's Daily newspaper, the Communist Party mouthpiece. People caught breaking China's family planning policy must pay a "social compensation fee" based on their annual income. . . . 

What enforcement of Global Warming Rules can mean: The lesson from Australia

One of the important lessons here is that the effective taxes are so large that there is a big incentive for people to cheat on following the rules.

The Herald Sun can reveal Australian Federal Police agents will have to prosecute a new range of climate offences.

But they are yet to be offered extra resources, stretching the thin blue line to breaking point.

"The Government is effectively saying to us, 'Ignore other crime types'," Australian Federal Police Association chief Jim Torr said.

The group had been trying for months, without success, to discuss the issue with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, he said.

Interpol has warned the carbon market will be irresistible to criminal gangs because of the vast amounts of cash to be made. Possible rorts include under-reporting of carbon emissions by firms and bogus carbon offset schemes.

"If someone is rorting it by even 1 per cent a year, we're talking about many, many millions of dollars," Mr Torr said. . . . .