"Long before the politically connected California solar firm Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama was warned by his top economic advisors about the financial and political risks of the Energy Department loan guarantee program that boosted the company's rapid ascent. 

"At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn't rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn't need the help."

"The presidential debates are looking more and more like symptoms of the problems we’ve got than part of the process of solving them. 

"Maximum style, minimum substance. Focus on sizzle, forget about the steak. 

"These events are supposed to be about quality information, raising the bar, and producing a thoughtful, informed electorate. But they are being produced to provide entertainment, and we are barely getting that. 

"Technology doesn’t take the place of substance. Youtube and real time polling are not substitutes for thoughtful, provocative questioning."

"The authentic Obama is a leveler, a committed social democrat, a staunch believer in the redistributionist state, a tribune, above all, of 'fairness' — understood as government-imposed and government-enforced equality. 

"That’s why 'soak the rich' is not just a campaign slogan to rally the base. It’s a mission, a vocation. It’s why for all its gratuitous cynicism and demagoguery, Obama’s populist Rose Garden lecture on Monday was delivered with such obvious — and unusual — conviction. ... 

"Good. There’s something to be said for authenticity. A choice, not an echo, said Barry Goldwater. The country will soon choose, although not soon enough."

"All Florida voters disapprove 57 - 39 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, his worst score in any Quinnipiac University poll in any state. 

"In possible 2012 presidential matchups, Romney tops the president 47 - 40 percent while Perry gets 42 percent to Obama's 44 percent, a dead heat. In the August 4 Florida poll, Romney and Obama were deadlocked 44 - 44 percent while the president led Perry 44 - 39 percent. 

"Obama does not deserve a second term, Florida voters say 53 - 41 percent."

"If you thought the half-billion-dollar, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bust was a taxpayer nightmare, just wait. If you thought the botched Fast and Furious border gun-smuggling surveillance operation was a national security nightmare, hold on. Right on the heels of those two blood-boilers comes yet another alleged pay-for-play racket from the most ethical administration ever. 

"Welcome to LightSquared. It's a toxic mix of venture socialism (to borrow GOP Sen. Jim DeMint's apt phrase), campaign finance influence-peddling and perilous corner-cutting all rolled into one."

"'Damn the economy -- I need to be reelected!' That, basically, was President Obama’s message to the nation in yesterday’s Rose Garden speech ostensibly addressing DC’s runaway deficits. 

"Obama knew full well that the GOP-run House won’t back tax hikes while the nation flirts with double-dip recession. (Somebody has to be the adult.) Yet he insisted on them anyway (some $1.5 trillion, in fact), claiming they merely ask 'the most fortunate among us' -- that is, the most productive -- 'to pay their fair share.' 

"In other words, Obama told Americans bluntly he’s itching for another standoff."

"President Obama’s $787 billion Stimulus left America sputtering, like a Chevy Volt without its extension cord. Having learned nothing from this failure, Obama recently unveiled Stimulus Jr. — the American Jobs Act. Costing $447 billion, Stimulus Jr. boasts roughly half of its predecessor’s audacity. 

"Speaking Thursday night at a Democratic National Committee event at a private residence in Washington, D.C., Obama told supporters that Stimulus Jr. would 'add as many as 1.9 million jobs.' That equals $235,263 each — quadruple the $57,491 cost of an average private-sector position. Even worse, major tax hikes fuel Stimulus Jr. Too bad Obama ignores House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s loophole-closing, tax-rate-slashing vision."

"Barack Obama now faces perhaps his most politically crippling deficit of all: a credibility deficit. 

"That observation is reflected in the latest Bloomberg poll, which finds that on the heels of his big jobs speech last Thursday night, more than half of Americans (51%) do not believe the president's claim that this latest $447 billion spend-and-tax-or-borrow scheme will create new jobs. ... 

"American voters can't conceive of how $447 billion of more debt and spending will create jobs when the last three years have already given us $4 trillion of new debt with no jobs. What is even harder to believe is the president's assurance that the new American Jobs Act 'will not add to the deficit. It will be paid for.' How can this plan be paid for when the first, $830 billion, plan has never been paid for?"

"[L]et’s assume for the time being that there was no criminal conduct here, no violation of government procedures, no fraud. Let’s assume everyone in the administration acted in good faith. There’s still a scandal — the scandal of the government handing out hundreds of millions of dollars to unproven and speculative businesses. Even the shrewdest venture capitalists lose money on most of their investments. But when they lose, it’s their money, not ours.

"The scandal is still going on. The Energy Department has been busy handing out more loan guarantees in the past few weeks — $150 million to 1366 Technologies of Lexington, Mass. (73 percent for Obama in 2008), 80 percent of $344 million to Solar City of San Mateo, Calif. (72 percent for Obama in 2008). Will one of them be the next Solyndra?

"The real scandal is the 'green jobs' loan-guarantee program itself. And the ones getting scammed are American taxpayers."

"Word just came that Bob Turner has won the special election in New York’s ninth Congressional district—perhaps by as much as 10 points—while it was a foregone conclusion earlier tonight that in Nevada’s second, Mark Amodei had won the special election there with at least 60 percent of the vote. ... 

"These may prove to be among the most suggestive special-election results in modern American history. The Democratic candidate Harris Wofford ’s win in the 1991 special for Senate in Pennsylvania proved a harbinger of Bill Clinton ’s victory in 1992, and Republican Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts in January 2010 presaged the shellacking in the midterms last year. If Obama loses next November, the writing on the wall will have appeared tonight."