"At their convention, Democrats swore that GM is 'thriving,' but the market doesn’t think so: GM shares have lost half their value since January 2011. And while the passing of the Great Recession has meant growing sales for all automakers, GM is seriously lagging behind its competitors: Its sales are up 10 percent, a fraction of the increases at Kia, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Porsche. With its sales weak, its share price crashing, and its business model still a mess, some analysts already are predicting that GM will return to bankruptcy — but not until after the election. ...

"We have bankruptcy laws and bankruptcy courts for a reason. It may make sense to expedite the proceedings for very large firms such as GM in order to prevent disruptions in the supply chain that would, as Ford’s executives argued, harm other, healthier firms. But bankrupt is what GM was, and bankrupt is what GM is, a fact that will become blisteringly apparent should the government ever attempt to sell off the shares it owns in the company. 

"The GM bailout was a bad deal for GM’s creditors, for U.S. taxpayers, and, in the long run, for the U.S. automobile industry and our overall national competitiveness. No wonder the Democrats are campaigning on a fictionalized account of it."

"Barack Obama is deeply overexposed and often boring. He never seems to be saying what he's thinking. His speech Thursday was weirdly anticlimactic. There's too much buildup, the crowd was tired, it all felt flat. He was somber, and his message was essentially banal: We've done better than you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? 

"There were many straw men. There were phrases like 'the shadow of a shuttered steel mill,' which he considers writerly. But they sound empty and practiced now, like something you've heard in a commercial or an advertising campaign. 

"It was stale and empty. He's out of juice."

"Clinton rallied the faithful splendidly; but Michelle Obama had done that already on Tuesday, maybe more effectively.
 
"And its length and blizzard of detail suggest this tasty Chick-fil-A of a speech won’t change the mind of anyone who has drawn his own conclusions about how the Obama years have gone for him.
 
"But Clinton did change the subject a bit from the catcalls at the inclusion of God and Jerusalem in the Democratic platform, and for that, he did his president and his party a considerable service.
 
"Still, those lunatic boos are more likely to stick in the memory, and to pop up in ads, than will Clinton’s speech."

"When President Obama took office, unemployment was at 7.8%. After three and a half years, it stands at 8.3%. Median income when the President took over was about $55,000. Now, $51,000. Gasoline prices in January 2009 were $1.84 per gallon. Now, $3.82 per gallon. That’s painful to working folks and it’s largely ignored by the President. National debt of $10.6 Trillion when President Obama took the oath of office. It is now more than $16 Trillion - an astronomical and dangerous rise. Finally, the budget deficit in President Bush’s last year was $458 Billion. In 2011, under President Obama, it had risen to nearly $1.3 Trillion - again, a dangerous amount of money to have to borrow. 

"There’s no way the Democrats can spin those facts; they’re in stone."

"The one sure way Obama can win is to convince a nation ready for change -- to fear, loathe and recoil from the proposed agents of change. 
 
Obama aides and media auxiliary have already painted the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., as permeated with lies and dog whistles to racists. 
 
Yet, one wonders: After such a campaign, how does Obama unite and lead the country should he win."

"America has been patient.  Americans have supported this president in good faith, but today the time has come the time to turn the page.  Today the time has come for us to put the disappointments of the last four years behind us, to put aside the divisiveness and the recriminations, to forget about what might have been, and to look ahead to what can be.  Now is the time to restore the promise of America. 

"Many Americans have given up on this president, but they haven't ever thought of giving up, not on themselves, not on each other, and not on America.  What is needed in our country is not complicated or profound.  It doesn't take a special government commission to tell us what America needs.  What America needs is jobs, lots of jobs."

"Right now, 23 million men and women are struggling to find work. Twenty-three million people, unemployed or underemployed. Nearly one in six Americans is living in poverty. Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for, or any work at all.

"So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?"

"... [T]hese last few years have been harder than they needed to be. It's all the little things -- that price at the pump you just can't believe, the grocery bills that just get bigger; all those things that used to be free, like school sports, are now one more bill to pay. It's all the little things that pile up to become big things. And the big things -- the good jobs, the chance at college, that home you want to buy, just get harder. Everything has become harder. 

"We're too smart to know there aren't easy answers. But we're not dumb enough to accept that there aren't better answers."

"[T]he real objection to requiring voter ID isn’t based in civil rights, but in civil wrongs. With elections often decided by narrow margins, the ability to produce a few thousand more ballots can often swing the results. (In Minnesota’s 2008 disputed US Senate election, won by Al Franken — who proceeded to cast the deciding vote in favor of ObamaCare — the margin of victory was 312, but it turned out that 1,099 votes were cast by felons who were ineligible to vote. Many of them have gone to jail, but Franken has remained in the Senate).  ... 

"Many of America’s largest and worst-governed cities suffer from entrenched and corrupt political machines that maintain their position in no small part via voter fraud. Corrupt machines (like that of Detroit’s disgraced ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick) siphon off money that should go to essential services and instead divert it to political fatcats and their supporters. Efforts at reform are often defeated with fraudulent votes."

"WASHINGTON -- Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much, but they do agree on this: the middle class. At their conventions, the two parties will compete fiercely for its support. Republicans will accuse Barack Obama of destroying the middle class through policies perpetuating high joblessness and feeble economic growth. Democrats will portray Mitt Romney as a tool of the rich who doesn't understand the middle class. To the victor may go the election, because 'saving the middle class' has arguably become the campaign's defining issue. 

"This is mostly political symbolism. The idea that anyone can 'save' the middle class assumes that it's in danger of disappearing, which it isn't, and that presidents possess sufficient powers to resurrect it, which they don't. Still, the symbolism is potent because most Americans equate the middle class with the kind of society we are and ought to be. It is a society where hard work and personal responsibility are rewarded -- where 'getting ahead' is expected; where economic security and social stability are enjoyed; and where privilege is minimized. 

"The appeal of these beliefs -- across many economic, regional, religious and ethnic boundaries -- is a great unifying force."