WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A trio of Republican senators today blasted U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for misleading the American public, which, in the words of Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC..), “has traditionally been our job.” 

Cartoon by Christpher Weyant. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/RTtJpC

“In the beginning the LORD created the Heavens and the Earth, featuring a handful of small but helpful lands offshore.  On the sixth day He built Adam by Himself, requiring not any government assistance….” Continue reading.

According to the betting markets, Romney still has about a one-in-four chance of winning, which suggests that the task facing him is equivalent to tossing a coin twice and getting two heads in a row. That’s not easy, obviously, but it isn’t entirely out of the question, and it’s an interesting exercise to think about how it could be achieved. Here, just for the sake of argument, is a Romney victory scenario…

Click-through to see how John Cassidy reasons Mitt Romney could still win: http://nyr.kr/UE2wee

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.

Mitt Romney’s been through some rough times in this election. Though he was considered the almost-inevitable Republican Presidential nominee, he still had to suffer through the rise— and eventual fall— of a number of pretenders to the title, and the apathy of a G.O.P. primary electorate that seemed only to be holding its nose when it voted for him, rather than rushing to do so. But this week may have been the roughest yet. Now, “absent some real shocker in the debates or some real disastrous event overseas,” John Cassidy has a hard time seeing how Romney could win. “Romney, at this point, is down to looking for an October surprise, ” he says on this week’s Political Scene podcast, on which he, Amy Davidson, and Ryan Lizza joined host Curtis Fox to discuss the signs that are pointing to a Romney loss in November…

Listen Now.

(Source: newyorker.com)

Obama’s subsequent jibe that Romney “shoots first and aims later” hit home. But perhaps the most disturbing thing about this whole incident is that it wasn’t simply a spontaneous gaffe on the part of the G.O.P. candidate. It was debated and thought through. According to the same report in today’s Washington Post, Romney acted on the “unanimous recommendation of his foreign policy and political advisers.”

Think about that for a moment….

- John Cassidy, Continue Reading: http://nyr.kr/O260Wj

John Cassidy outlines three tasks that “Popeye” Mitt faces at the G.O.P. Convention: http://nyr.kr/U7UmYD 

…as the New York Times put it in a banner front-page headline today, by putting Ryan on the ticket, Romney is “pushing fiscal issues to the forefront.” But if that kind of clarifying, substantive debate is in fact to materialize, Ryan (and Romney) will need to be a lot more explicit, and a lot more honest, about what their budget proposals would actually do to the U.S. government.

That may sound a bit strange, since so many stories about Ryan emphasize how serious and wonky he is, and insist that, unlike most politicians, he’s actually willing to talk in detail about the policies he’s advocating. Yet the reality of Ryan’s approach is actually very different…

Click-through to continue reading James Surowiecki on Paul Ryan’s budget games: http://nyr.kr/MQ2SMG

TEL AVIV (The Borowitz Report)—The Mitt Romney Gaffe Express pulled into a new station today, leaving its conductor’s hopes of proving himself to be a nimble statesman in tatters.  Click-through to continue reading: http://nyr.kr/LVeVGU

Depending on what happens in November, the nomination of Mitt Romney will be widely regarded as a safe and therefore wise choice, or else as a historic blunder. Either way, his nomination is bound to be seen as a fluke: after a years-long conservative insurgency, Republicans somehow selected a candidate who can’t plausibly present himself as one of the insurgents—most days, Romney campaigns as if the Tea Party doesn’t exist.

But away from the Presidential campaign, the insurgency has continued; plenty of conservatives, returning the favor, are campaigning as if Mitt Romney doesn’t exist. …right now, in Texas, David Dewhurst, the Republican Lieutenant Governor, who once seemed like a prohibitive favorite, seems to be trailing his insurgent opponent, Ted Cruz, in the Republican primary for the state’s open Senate seat.