TheDC Morning

TheDC Weekend: Is Minnesota now in play?

Jamie Weinstein Senior Writer
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1.) Poll of the Day: Is Minnesota now in play? — A recent Star Tribune/Mason-Dixon poll of likely Minnesota voters shows President Obama narrowly beating Mitt Romney 47 to 44 percent with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage point.

The previous month, Obama held an eight percentage point lead in the poll. The RealClearPolitics average has President Obama up 5.3 percent.

Both Team Romney and Team Obama recently bought ads in the state, which was once thought to be very safe for President Obama. As an added benefit, if not the intended purpose, ad buys in Minneapolis also reach western Wisconsin.

2.) Obama (finally?) pressed by the press — In an interview with a local Denver news outlet, President Obama was put in the hot seat, reports TheDC’s Gregg Re:

“In an unusually direct and at times tense interview with Denver local news station KUSA, President Barack Obama on Friday admitted on two occasions that he doesn’t know whether the administration denied requests for military assistance by the U.S. Embassy in Libya when it was besieged on Sept. 11. […]The uncomfortable interview was unusual, given that the president rarely allows the press the opportunity to ask him tough questions. According to ABC, a university professor found that Obama has been less accessible to the media — both at informal press pool events and press conferences — than his predecessors.”

Besides being questioned on the Benghazi attack, the president was also questioned about the appearance of crony capitalism in his administration and about his recent comment to Rolling Stone magazine calling Mitt Romney a “bullshitter.” Check out the article to see how Obama responded.

3.)October Iowa Surprise — Mitt Romney picked up an endorsement last night from an unlikely source, reports TheDC’s Neil Munro:

“Iowa’s Des Moines Register newspaper endorsed Mitt Romney on Saturday, marking the first time the paper has endorsed a Republican for president in 40 years. ‘Both President Barack Obama and Governor Romney are superbly qualified … [but] Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate,’ the paper announced. … ‘Our discussion repeatedly circled back to the nation’s single most important challenge: pulling the economy out of the doldrums,’ said the editorial endorsement. ‘Romney has made rebuilding the economy his No. 1 campaign priority — and rightly so.'”

Think about this for a moment: Romney got the endorsement of a paper that had endorsed Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan.

4.) Delphi deception? — It looks like officials in Obama’s Treasury Department were more involved with the decision over Delphi’s pension plans than they had previously suggested. TheDC’s Matthew Boyle reports:

“Internal Treasury Department emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that in June 2009 a high-ranking Treasury official planned a backroom meeting to discuss the pension plans for 20,000 nonunion Delphi salaried retirees. Those retirees lost between 30 and 70 percent of their pensions, as well as their healthcare, life insurance and other benefits. Unionized employees working alongside them, however, saw their pensions and benefits made whole. The Obama administration has blamed this decision on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), a federal government agency that handles private-sector pension benefits issues. But these internal emails indicate the Treasury Department was involved to a greater degree than the administration has conceded publicly.”

5.) Shifting for Sandy — President Obama and Mitt Romney are changing their campaign plans due to Hurricane Sandy, reports TheDC’s Monique Hamm:

 “The two major presidential campaigns are making some last-minute adjustments to avoid the path of Hurricane Sandy, which began rolling up the Eastern Seaboard this weekend. President Barack Obama canceled two of his events on Tuesday — one in Northern Virginia and another in Colorado Springs. However, his campaign event in Wisconsin, as well as Vice President Joe Biden’s rally in Ohio, are still on the schedule for Tuesday. […]Meanwhile, Mitt Romney’s campaign canceled three stops scheduled for Sunday in Virginia. The GOP presidential nominee will instead join his running mate in Ohio.”

6.) WSJ on “The Lizard King”: “political satire at its best” — “The Lizard King: The Shocking Inside Account of Obama’s True Intergalactic Ambitions By An Anonymous White House Staffer,” edited and introduced by Daily Caller writers Jamie Weinstein and Will Rahn, was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal Saturday. They seemed to like it:

“[The Lizard King culminates] in a revelation that is so fantastically, ludicrously over-the-top that you wonder if the authors haven’t crossed a line. But you can’t help thinking it would explain a lot about the administration. … Funny, scurrilous and completely forgettable: This is political satire at its best. Or worst. I’m not sure which.

See what everyone is talking about:  BUY … IT … NOW.

 VIDEO: Ann Coulter calls Piers Morgan a “sexist misogynist pig”

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