With his poll numbers sinking, Mitt Romney took desperation action earlier this week by falsely claiming that the U.S. Embassy in Cairo had issued a statement expressing sympathy for protesters who were agitated by a YouTube video allegedly produced by right-wing anti-Islamic activists in the suburbs of Los Angeles that besmirched the Prophet Mohammed.

The embassy issued the statement at 6 a.m., East Coast time, before the protests in Cairo had turned violent. After 10 p.m. in the East Coast, fully 16 hours after the Cairo embassy’s initial statement — during which Team Romney had plenty of time to deliberate and discuss what to do — they issued a statement condemning the embassy for expressing sympathy with “those who waged the attacks,” even though they knew the attacks had not begun when the embassy released its statement.

In a subsequent press availability, Romney deliberately used the word “apology” or variations of it five times to describe the embassy’s statement — which did not include the word “apology” or any variation or sentiment thereof. During the news conference, Romney also made it clear that he held Pres. Obama accountable, not only for the embassy’s “apology,” but for anything and everything anyone who worked for administration said:

The Telegraph:

Chris Stevens, who was killed in an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, is seen here introducing himself to Libyans in a video published in May after he was appointed as the United States’ ambassador to the country.

Several new polls show Pres. Obama’s support remaining steady at around 50 percent, while support for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan has dropped a little.

Andrew Sullivan:

The obvious responsible thing to do when American citizens and public officials are under physical threat abroad and when the details are unknown, and events spiraling, is to stay silent. If the event happens on the day of September 11 and you are a candidate for president and have observed a political truce, all the more reason to wait to allow the facts to emerge. After all, country before party, right? American lives are at stake, yes? An easy call, no?

But that’s not what the Romney camp did. What they did was seize on a tweet issued by someone in the US Embassy before the attacks in order to indict the president for “sympathizing” with those who murdered a US ambassador after the attacks. Unfuckingbelievable.

Here is the the series of events concerning the attacks on Americans in the Middle East, in chronological order.

For the tea partiers out there, “chronological” is a big word that means in the order in which things happened, starting with the first thing and moving through time to the most recent thing.

For Republicans, it means that your version is a lie.

• Moronic publicity whore Pastor Terry Jones, not content to have caused the death of 12 people by threatening to hold a public Koran burning, promotes a new YouTube video further baiting Muslims. The film, made by Sam Bacile, a 52-year-old Israeli-American real-estate developer who lives in California, depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a pedophile and womanizer, and shows him having sex. It was posted online in July but was dubbed in Arabic on Sept. 4. Since then, a trailer for the film was heavily reported in Egypt.
More after the jump »

North Carolina and Virginia are both large swing states — the tenth and twelfth most populous states, respectively — where the political polarity between left and right could not be more extreme. Both states are home to millions of multiethnic white-collar liberals and moderates, most of whom live in the urban enclaves, as well as roughly the same numbers of rural, white evangelical voters who hold extreme, often fantastical right-wing views.

Pres. Obama won both states in 2008, but in the current campaign, it has become conventional wisdom that he will likely lose North Carolina and win Virginia — although these predictions are not supported in the most recent polls. A PPP survey released on Monday found the president up by 1 point — 49 percent to 48 percent — in North Carolina, while a local poll in Virgina found that Romney was up by 4 points there, 49 percent to 45 percent.

In most states where polling is close, the race will be decided by moderate swing voters, and while that is true for the most part in North Carolina and Virginia, the Romney campaign has an additional worry: an evangelical base with a generations-deep suspicion of outsiders, especially those of different faiths, including Jews and Muslims, of course, but also Catholics and Mormons.

Reuters has been in the field in Virginia talking with white Bible Belt voters and found that many of the say they are concerned about Mitt Romney’s wealth and his religion:

The Associated Press is reporting that Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan is launching ads in his Wisconsin district in support of his campaign to retain his House seat if he and Mitt Romney lose in the fall.

The ad buy comes after the campaigns of both Ryan and his Democratic challenger Rob Zerban, a business owner and elected county official, released information on separate, private polls that produced widely different results:

[The Ryan campaign's] survey of 400 likely voters showed a gap of 58 to 33 percent between the two candidates, with a 4.9 percent margin of error both ways. Libertarian challenger Keith Deschler trailed at 3 percent…

A 400-person poll conducted by the Zerban campaign found the race jumped to an 8-point difference when likely voters were informed about both candidates. The additional information told to those polled and the percentage difference without that information was not available Tuesday.

It is strange that Ryan’s congressional campaign rushed to produce ads after its own internal poll found that Ryan had a 25-point lead over Zerban.

This does not add up.

Ben Polak and Peter K. Schott make a compelling argument in the New York Times that this recession differs from the preceding two downturns because of under-employment by state and local governments:

Without this hidden austerity program, the economy would look very different. If state and local governments had followed the pattern of the previous two recessions, they would have added 1.4 million to 1.9 million jobs and overall unemployment would be 7.0 to 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent.

Why is this happening? One possibility is that we are witnessing a secular change in state and local politics, with voters no longer willing to pay for an ever-larger work force. An alternative explanation is that even though many state and local governments are constrained not to run deficits, they can muddle through a standard recession without cutting jobs. But when hit by a huge recession like that of 1981 or the latest one, the usual mix of creative accounting and shifting in capital expenditures cannot absorb the shock, and jobs have to go.

At the Republican National Convention in Tampa last month, Jeb Bush diverged from the prepared remarks on his teleprompter and attempted to rewrite the history of his brother’s disastrous years as president:

JEB BUSH: I’ve been so blessed to be part of a family that has committed its life to public service. My grandfather and father have been incredible role models for me and served our country honorably. And my brother, well, I love my brother. He is a man of integrity, courage and honor. During incredibly challenging times, he kept us safe. So Mr. president, it is time to stop blaming your predecessor for your failed economic policies. You were dealt a tough hand, but your policies have not worked.

With the exception of his assertion that he loves his brother, nearly everything in Jeb’s statement is a lie — and the biggest lie is his assertion that George W. Bush kept the nation safe. A few weeks before the attacks on 9/11, for starters, George Bush dismissed and then ignored a warning from the CIA that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike inside U.S. borders. When the attacks came, 11 years ago today, the president allowed himself to be ferried from one secure spot to another, leaving command and control of the United States in the hands of his recklessly incompetent vice president, Dick Cheney.

Apparently we have a better chance of seeing Mitt Romney’s tax returns than we do of knowing his plans for balancing the budget through changes in the tax code, which is how he says he would do it. You know that when even FOX News (although I don’t think Gregg Jarrett is one of the most egregious Republican tools who anchor shows on the network) is trying to pin down Romney and his policy wonks, there is some serious evasion going on.

Romney’s platform up to now has been for us to trust him, but he keeps too many secrets to allow it. For example, along with those tax returns, there are the records he sealed as he left the office of governor of Massachusetts. Good luck glimpsing those.