Conservative circles are buzzing at the release of a new home video that was taken by Barack Obama’s father during his actual birth. Although old and grainy, the video clearly shows a white woman giving birth to a baby, with Obama’s mother’s name (Ann Dunham) on her chart, her photo, a calendar open to the month of August 1961, and a flag of Kenya. This proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Obama was born in Kenya. [Read more…]

I am not generally a fan of insult humor of the kind made famous by Don Rickles, which consists of rude put downs of the other person. I tend to prefer the more subtle forms. [Read more…]

For reasons that are not at all clear to me, Fox News seems to think that the story of the attack on the US consulate in Banghazi that resulted in the deaths of four diplomats is a huge story in this election and is pushing it relentlessly, though there is no evidence that people care that much about it. [Read more…]

You have to hand it to Barack Obama, despite all the reports of him being aloof and professorial, he does come across as a person who is comfortable and relaxed in public, quite unlike Mitt Romney who seems to be always on the edge of saying something that will be awkward. [Read more…]

After the vice-presidential debate, I posed the question whether some media commentators were right when they claimed that that women dislike it when candidates mix it up in debates and vigorously challenge each other. [Read more…]

As could be expected, Jon Stewart had a lot to say about Tuesday’s debate. In this segment, Jon Stewart discusses some of the disagreements between Obama and Romney, and has fun with the “binders full of women” meme. [Read more…]

Monday was the earliest opportunity they got to comment on last Thursday’s debate and they did a good job of combining humor with political analysis. [Read more…]

Jimmy Kimmel’s team took to the streets of Los Angeles four hours before yesterday’s debate to ask people what their impressions of it were. The responses were quite remarkable in how they could have been fitted to any news coverage taken after the debate. [Read more…]

The media consensus seems to be that Barack Obama had a good night and Mitt Romney not so much, roughly in line with my own impressions.

But as often happens, things that I gave only a passing attention to in the debate turn out to grab a lot of attention in the media world. In this case it was Mitt Romney’s claim, in making the case that he was sensitive to women’s issues, that when he was elected governor of Massachusetts, he was given “binders full of women” that he could use to select women for high posts. [Read more…]