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Ann Coulter on the Second Debate

Town Hall Daily

The best question at the second presidential debate came from Michael Jones, an African-American who said: "Mr. President, I voted for you in 2008. What have you done or accomplished to earn my vote in 2012? I'm not that optimistic, as I was in 2008. Most things I need for everyday living are very expensive."

To which Obama said: "Are you my half-brother?"

Actually, all Obama could say was that he had ended the war in Iraq (while pointlessly escalating the war in Afghanistan) and that Osama bin Laden is dead (and so is our ambassador). Both of which must be a great comfort to Mr. Jones as he tries to pay his bills every month.

Jones was right: Since Obama has been president, everything you own -- your home, pension, savings accounts, weekly paychecks -- are all worth less.

Meanwhile, everything you need -- gas, food, and anything else that requires fuel to be transported to you -- costs more.

Obama can't talk his way out of his record. As Romney said in response to the president's allegation that he is gung-ho about drilling for oil to lower fuel prices: "But that's not what you've done in the last four years. That's the problem."

Obama also suddenly announced: "I'm all for pipelines. I'm all for oil production." But he vetoed the Keystone pipeline.

He explained that the price of gasoline was $1.80 when he took office because the economy was in the toilet. Apparently, prices have spiked to more than $4 a gallon because all Americans are back at work now and making big bucks!

Obama said the "most important thing we can do is to make sure that we are creating jobs in this country."

So now he's going to create jobs? Because, nearly four years into his presidency, 23 million Americans are out of work and more than half of recent college graduates can't find a job.

He claimed to believe that we should reward "self-reliance," "individual initiative" and "risk-takers." And yet, a few months ago, he ridiculed these self-reliant risk-takers for thinking they were "just so smart," sneering "if you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Obama said we have to be "serious about reducing the deficit," calling it "a moral obligation to the next generation." But he's increased the deficit by $5 trillion -- more in four years than President Bush did in eight.

He also said he supported cutting corporate taxes. But only in odd-numbered years that don't start with "2."

The media will lie and say Obama won the debate -- he has stopped the bleeding, he's drawing huge crowds, the momentum is back! But as Romney said in response to many of Obama's promises Tuesday night, "I don't think the American people believe that."

The trend is set and Obama's voters are moving away from him in droves. People can see that Obama has to go to college campuses, the David Letterman show and "The Daily Show" to get a friendly audience these days. Even Lindsay Lohan is for Romney.

The media's campaigning for Obama isn't fooling Americans; it's just making Obama's obtuseness worse. If you're behind at halftime, you don't go to the cheerleading squad to ask what you're doing wrong.

Absolutely nothing! You're perfect! Don't change anything!

But we're behind by 7 points ...

You're great! You're the best team ever!

With Obama unable to compete in a fair fight, debate moderator Candy Crowley had to become Obama's wingman, injecting herself into the debate by declaring Obama the winner on the question of whether he had called the Benghazi attack an act of terror the day after the attack. Only after the debate, when everyone had gone home, did Crowley admit that Romney was right on Libya.

(If Obama called the Benghazi attack an "act of terror" in his Rose Garden speech, then he also said the victims of that attack were buried in the "hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery" and that he had visited them at Walter Reed -- other comments in that speech not specifically referring to the Benghazi attack.)

Crowley stopped Romney from talking about Fast and Furious on the grounds that it had nothing to do with guns. She didn't take a single question on Obamacare -- the universally loathed monstrosity that fueled the 2010 Republican landslide and continues to be a thorn in America's side.

In the media room, journalists cheered Obama's cheap shot about Romney being rich, according to The Washington Times. Say, who did the Democrats run for president right before Obama? That would be the richest man in the U.S. Senate, John Kerry. But liberals believe Kerry acquired his fortune more honestly than by building businesses and creating jobs. He married a rich woman.

For all the media cheerleading, millions of Americans still know they're out of work. They know, as Michael Jones noted, that everything is more expensive, including even-handed moderators.

GUNS: The Constitutional Right You Can Carry in Your Purse

Ann Coulter, “If Democrats had any Brains, They’d Be Republicans”, 2007

Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up “gun-free zones.” With no armed citizen to stop them – because law-abiding citizens are obeying the “Gun-Free Zone” signs – murderers are able to kill unabated, even pausing to reload their weapons, until they get bored and commit suicide or try to escape. Some only stop pulling the trigger when they develop carpal tunnel syndrome.

Contrary to current faddish ideas, we can’t identify, much less imprison, “potential” mass murderers. For most such killers, mass murder is their first serious crime. It’s not against the law to be crazy – in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office. The best we can do is enact policies that will reduce the death toll when these acts of carnage occur, as they will in a free and open society of 300 million people, most of whom have cable TV.

Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the estimable economists John Lott Jr. and William Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect on saving lives. And the effect was not insignificant. States that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.

Among the mass murders at “gun-free zones” in the past decade are these:

  • In 2007, a deranged student killed thirty-two people at Virginia Tech – thirty of them in a very short period of time in a single building – before killing himself.
  • At the Amish school shooting in 2006, the killer murdered five little girls and then committed suicide.
  • At Columbine High School in 1999, two students killed twelve people before ending the carnage themselves by committing suicide.
  • In 1998, two students in Craighead County, Arkansas, killed five people, including four little girls, before deciding to attempt an escape.
  • In 1996 in Dunblane, Scotland, an adult shooter killed seventeen, then committed suicide. There was no one to stop him.

There was no one to stop any of them.

Contrast these with the school shootings where, by sheer happenstance, a law-abiding citizen at the scene had a gun. The classic case is the shooting at a high school in Santee, California, in 2001. When a student began shooting his classmates, the school promptly activated its “safe-school plan,” as the principal later told CNN. Unfortunately, the “safe-school plan” did not involve anyone at the school having a gun. Instead, the school sent in an unarmed “trained campus supervisor” to stop the killer. Stop it right now or I’ll call a “trained campus supervisor”! The killer promptly shot the “trained campus supervisor.” Fortunately, an armed San Diego policeman happened to be bringing his daughter to school that day. He stopped the killer – with a gun – and held him at bay until more police could arrive.

Two dead.

In 2002, an immigrant student in Virginia started shooting his classmates at the Appalachian School of Law. Two of his classmates in another part of the building retrieved guns from their cars, approached the killer, and forced him to drop his weapon, allowing a third classmate to tackle him.

Three dead.

In 1997, a student at Pearl High School in Mississippi had already shot several people at his high school and was headed for the junior high school when assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieved a .45 pistol from his car and pointed it at the gunman’s head, ending the slaughter.

Two dead.

A few days later, a student attending a junior high school dance at a restaurant in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, started shooting, whereupon the restaurant owner pulled out his shotgun, chased the gunman from the restaurant, and captured him for the police.

One dead.

When you need a gun, nothing else will do.