A neighborly dispute about a light "shining through our bedroom window like a small but intense sun."

"In my country, terawatt globes are reserved for police helicopter chases and warning sailors of hazardous shoals. This is despite the fact that practically every living creature there can kill you in under three minutes."

Why are you crying?

Oh, it will be over soon.

Owlsing in the browls.

An image from the Rijksmuseum, which has a fine website, where I was browsing in the owls... owlsing in the browls...



I really don't know what's up with these ice-skating owls. I just like them.

Arab tweets: gloating over Sandy and criticizing the gloating.

A headline at Al Arabiya News reports on the ugly:

Commenting on the super-storm disaster, one person who identifies himself as a professor of religion tweeted: “We ask God to destroy them all, and not keep one of them,” because the United States “supports war and abuse towards Muslims.”

And the beneficent:

Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti also criticized gloaters over Sandy. He tweeted: “Who told you that children, students, women and men in America wish you [Muslims] death? Politicians like Mubarak and Bush are one thing, and humanity is something else.”

In the same vein, Engy Hamdi, political activist and member of Egypt’s April 6 Movement, wrote on her Twitter account, “Did Islam teach us to gloat amid the misfortunes of people?"

It's interesting to focus on gloating. 

At the Black Dog Café...

... take off that dog costume right now!

UPDATE: A bunch of kids came to the door just now, and I was all "Is he a lamb? Are you a ram?" and I was informed that they were all "Star Wars" characters.

Sorry about the slow-loadingness of the blog today.

I'm told Blogads is going through some maintenance, and it's not Blogger's fault, so refrain from your usual accusations. The Blogger people — Google — have been great.

UPDATE: I removed the Blogads code and it's loading super-fast now. It makes me think that having Blogads really isn't worth it even on good days.

The Real Clear Politics average is now a dead tie.

Look out!

"When you're nice to someone else... that someone else is nice back to you, and suddenly two people feel good about themselves and each other, and spread their feelings."

Wrote Letitia Baldrige, in her "New Manners for New Times."

She died on Monday, at the age of 86.

"Local TV news is a sad thing. They ask sad questions and get sad answers."

"It's easier to laugh about it than to think about how State House coverage is dying," said Daniel Moraff, a Brown student and "aspiring comedy writer," whom some fools denounced as an idiot for saying things like "I don't really believe there's a hurricane... I know the government wants us to think that...."

Biden: "As they say in my business, I'm going to give you the whole load today..."

Top Comments at YouTube:

Now he's plagiarizing from porno scripts??

And:

He learned that saying hanging around with Bill Clinton

Based on Urban Dictionary, the porn meaning is inescapeable. The only alternative that I can think of is load of crap, which might be a more apt metaphor, but could not have been intended.

"We're so used to seeing people act under a system of government rules that it's easy to assume that without the rules..."

"... everything would descend into chaos. But perhaps free people are generally capable of acting decently on their own. Of course, that's never going to be universal; but then, people break the law too. In fact, a dense set of rules tempts people to see how close to (or how far across) the borderline of legality they can go without being penalized. In the absence of governmental laws, people might focus more on other kinds of laws: social norms and ethics."

Writes my son John, one of the many people who live south of 25th Street in Manhattan.

"If someone decided that potential repercussions in the Arab world outweighed the need to do 'whatever we need to do' to 'secure our personnel,' who made that decision?"

"Did the Secretary of Defense countermand the President’s directive? Did the President rescind his own directive? Or — and I hate to ask such a distrustful question regarding the man who is our Commander in Chief — was such a directive ever actually given?"

The 10-year old boy "is no different than any other murderer" and "would have shot his father if he was a member of the Peace and Freedom Party."

Said the prosecutor in his opening statement of the trial of a boy who shot his neo-Nazi father.

But Public Defender Matthew Hardy said the boy, who had learning disabilities, pulled the trigger after being manipulated to kill Hall by his stepmother, Krista F. McCary. Hardy portrayed her as angry over the possibility her husband was about to leave her for another woman.

"We are not going to suggest she killed him," Hardy told the judge. "She used this young man to kill him."...

The boy thought he would become a "hero"....

"NYU loses years of scientific research and thousands of mice to Hurricane Sandy."

"Many precious reagents -- special enzymes, antibodies, DNA strands -- generated by scientists and stored at -80 degrees and -20 degrees were likely destroyed...."

Scientists are in a desperate frenzy to save what they can and transfer what can be moved to other areas of the hospital....

Even more alarming, thousands of mice that are used by scientists for cancer research and other experiments, drowned during a flood....

Another Dane Country judge smacks down Gov. Walker.

"Gov. Scott Walker's power to oversee the rule-making authority of the state superintendent of public instruction, which he signed into law last year, was overturned Tuesday by a judge because the law violates the state constitution."

Who will superintend the superintendents? If it's the superintendent of public instruction, apparently, nobody, because "the superintendent of public instruction... is unique among state department heads in having his duties spelled out in the state constitution."

"I do not know Nate Silver. I have never spoken to Nate Silver."

"I do not know how old Nate Silver is or anything about Nate Silver’s existence. I am not even sure Nate Silver is his real name. That sounds like a stage name, one that a numbers geek would pick because he secretly dreams of being a cowboy...."

"A presidential candidate who gives millions of dollars a year to charity does a storm relief event in Ohio..."

"... and an MSNBC anchor is disgusted by it because the Red Cross would prefer people donating cash"... even with the large video monitors displaying the message "Sandy: Support the Relief Effort. Text ’REDCROSS’ to 90999 to make a $10 donation."

Another dog in our Rainbow Coalition of borrowed Labrador Retrievers.

You've seen Bingo and Joey.

Here's Zeus:

"Wind farms have been 'peppered' across Britain without enough consideration for the countryside and people’s homes..."

"... a senior Conservative energy minister admitted last night as he warned 'enough is enough.'"

John Hayes said that we can “no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities” and added that it “seems extraordinary” they have allowed to spread so much throughout the country.

The energy minister said he had ordered a new analysis of the case for onshore wind power which would form the basis of future government policy, rather than “a bourgeois Left article of faith based on some academic perspective.”...

“We can no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities. I can’t single-handedly build a new Jerusalem but I can protect our green and pleasant land.”

That last sentence is a reference to the poem by William Blake.

The poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during Jesus' lost years. The legend is linked to an idea in the Book of Revelation.... describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a new Jerusalem. The Christian Church in general, and the English Church in particular, used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace.

Are there wind turbines in Heaven?

"[A]t least two networks have emails from the National Security Adviser’s office telling a counterterrorism group to stand down."

Says Newt Gingrich, reporting what he emphasizes is "a rumor."

"But they were a group in real-time trying to mobilize marines and C-130s and the fighter aircraft, and they were told explicitly by the White House stand down and do nothing. This is not a terrorist action. If that is true, and I’ve been told this by a fairly reliable U.S. senator, if that is true and comes out, I think it raises enormous questions about the president’s role, and Tom Donilon, the National Security Adviser’s role, the Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who has taken it on his own shoulders, that he said don’t go. And that is, I think, very dubious, given that the president said he had instructions they are supposed to do everything they could to secure American personnel."

Errol Morris applies his documentarian style to the problem of people who don't vote.

Video.

Reading Morris's explanation below the video at the link, I see that — spoiler alert! — everyone in the video is actually going to vote and they were prompted to think about how people who don't vote must think. I'm seeing that after watching the video. So to the extent that these people seem dumb... ish... it's at least partly that they are attempting to embody the persona of other people, who they probably think are dumb. So we're seeing a subtle blend of opinion about the nonvoters.

At the end we see that the video was produced with Our Time, and I assume the intent is to improve the turnout for Barack Obama, but in style and substance, it's nicely neutral and quite amusing and charming.

"I just biked down from Hell’s Kitchen, and it is like a Friday night up there."

"And then you get down here and it is like entering a zombie movie."

The dividing line in Manhattan is 25th Street.

What is the main thing people miss when the power is out? I think it's the capacity to recharge the cell phone. People waited in line for an hour to get to a power strip running from a CNN truck that was parked outside that building that lost its facade in the storm.

By mutual agreement, the people there had somehow decided that when someone filled up to 50 percent, it was time to unplug and let the next person go.

It's heartening the way people pull together in a tragedy and interesting to see it happening over the new core necessity, the cell phone.

Massive support for Romney among lawprofs.

"Law Profs back President Obama over Mitt Romney 72% to 19%..."

19%! That's huge! I'm stunned!

Actually, it's not a very scientific poll, just a blog poll put up by lawprof Brian Leiter. Why would only lawprofs vote? I'm sure Leiter has non-lawprof readers. But what's most important is that Leiter's readers — lawprof or non-lawprof — probably skew left, even more than the usual group of lawprofs.

In which case: 19%! Wow! Huge!

We'll see what kind of "lawprof" result is achieved through a poll at lawprof Althouse's blog site:

Who's your choice for President?
	Gary Johnson
	Barack Obama
	Mitt Romney
	Jill Stein
pollcode.com free polls

Mickey Kaus is "assuming the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the October employment statistics on schedule."

"The paranoia that would accompany a delay (this close to the election) would be too destructive, even if the delay was justifiable. But if the Obama administration were really playing politics with the numbers in the way the paranoids fear, do you think it would merely delay the release of the numbers? Not cunning enough!"

"If Obama wins, we’ll probably get small-bore stasis; if Romney wins, we’re more likely to get bipartisan reform."

"Romney is more of a flexible flip-flopper than Obama. He has more influence over the most intransigent element in the Washington equation House Republicans. He’s more likely to get big stuff done."

Concrete with limestone-producing bacteria...

... self-healing.

"The freak winter storm that crashed into the tropical storm from the Atlantic brought as much of two feet of snow to Appalachian states..."

"... spreading blizzard or near-blizzard conditions over parts of Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina," including "what may well be a record amount of heavy, wet snow in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park."

Get ready for the first annual "Diversity Week" at the University of Wisconsin.

We're told the idea is "to engage students who are not specifically interested in diversity issues to think about the issue on a broader level." So you want to interest people who are not currently interested by having some sort of events... over the course of a week?

Tentatively, the week will feature a sexuality day, multicultural day,  religious diversity day, women’s day and a disability day.

The group also debated how to address “intersectionality” between the different types of diversity.

The student chair of the Diversity Committee "said she hopes the event would probe students’ minds and make them think about how their own identities are 'compiled.'"

"We are trying to say to people that you don’t have to be a minority, you don’t have to be an underrepresented group to be able to feel like you’re diverse or that you have a unique identity... This is really for all students."

I don't think the word "diverse" should apply to an individual. I think you have to say: This set of individuals is diverse. Not: This individual is diverse. Sorry to be pedantic about words. Now, it's interesting that the Diversity Committee has arrived at the idea that it wants specifically to get the attention of the students who do not belong to "underrepresented groups." The students who were not pursued by the University in its effort to increase "diversity" might, it is thought, respond to the idea that they are part of the diversity too. I'm trying to picture Diversity Week events that would convey that message!

***

Here's some campus graffiti I photographed the other day:

"A new National Public Radio poll, which had President Obama leading Mitt Romney 51% to 44% four weeks ago..."

"... now has Mitt Romney on top, 48% to 47%, with the Republican benefiting from his debate performances."

"It would be weird to keep a man around to fetch things!"

Something I said in the comments to an October 2008 post titled "So, I've been thinking of getting a dog...." Note that I met Meade in January 2009 and married him later that year. Here's the context of the highlighted quote. I'd said I was thinking of getting a poodle and somebody said "Ann, women with poodles are like men in shorts." My response was:

Eh, if I was just trying to get men to like me, I would have kept my mouth shut about not liking them in shorts. But it's an interesting issue: What dog should a woman get if what she wants is to make herself as attractive as possible to men?

Somebody else, recommending boxers, said "they sleep a lot, and especially love to sleep with you," and I said:

Is that considered a plus? There is no way on earth I want to sleep with a dog (unless it's some sort of emergency freezing survival situation).

Meade spoke up, responding to "What dog should a woman get if what she wants is to make herself as attractive as possible to men?"

That would be no dog. Men are not attracted to women with dogs. We want to BE your dog, not be WITH your dog.

And to "There is no way on earth I want to sleep with a dog":

At least you don't want to share your bed with a dog. So there is hope.

And then:

Here's what you'll have if you get a Lab:

A shadow. He will follow you from room to room. It will drive you out of your beautiful mind. When you get up, he stands up. When you sit down, he will lie at your feet. Probably ON your feet. When you go to the kitchen for something to nibble on, he is right there with hangdog eyes saying, "Come ta thinkuvit, I'm hungry again too. May I have what you're having."

He will bring you anything and everything to pathetically try to please you - your slippers, your bra, your panties, your laptop. Sure, you say, wouldn't that be convenient? And it would be. IF you are the sort of ill-natured bad sport drag to have around mean and unfriendly person who likes her slippers, bra, panties, and laptop soaked in drool.

Believe me - a man can do all the things a Lab can do without bankrupting you with vet bills.

Which made me say:

It would be weird to keep a man around to fetch things!

And Meade said:

Exactly. That's my point. A fetch-crazy Lab, you will be stuck with for a good ten or twelve years. An obsessed-to-please will-do-anything-just-to-hear-the-music-of-your-laughter man, you just show to the door when you can't take any more.

And that's exactly what happened (except the part about not letting the "dog" sleep with me).

"A challenge to a federal law that authorized intercepting international communications involving Americans appeared to face an uphill climb at the Supreme Court..."

"... on Monday, but not one quite as steep as many had anticipated," observes Adam Liptak at the NYT.

The question in the case was whether journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates could show they had been harmed and so had standing to sue, and several justices seemed open to the idea....

The possibility that the courts may never rule on the constitutionality of the law seemed to rankle some of the justices. “Is there anybody who has standing?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked....

Justice Antonin Scalia [said] “We’ve had cases in the past where it is clear that nobody would have standing to challenge what is brought before this court... That just proves that under our system of separated powers, it is none of our business.”

Here's the transcript.

Thanks...

... to everyone who made purchases through my Amazon portal in the month of October. Believe me, I notice the gesture of support for this blog made by your taking the trouble to go in through my link. And it's really almost no trouble at all, yet it makes a big difference to me. It's encouraging! And I thank you.

(The link is always there in the subtitle line of the banner at the top of the page.)

Christina Hoff Sommers: "The Affordable Care Act mentions 'breast' 44 times, 'prostate' not once."

"It also establishes an elaborate and expensive network of special programs to promote women’s health. Programs for men are nowhere to be found. What explains the imbalance?"

Possible answers:

1. Focusing on breasts works for everybody: Men love breasts and women feel cared for.

2. Treating women's bodies as a special problem, requiring special attention, works for the most retrograde traditionalists and for progressive feminists.

3. Women tend to monitor their health and consume more health care services, especially these preventive programs. There are no programs for men, because men wouldn't respond to programs. The main use of men is getting them into the insurance pool to contribute to the cost of caring for women and children.

4. Women actually need and deserve more care. Men are expendable. There is a shared social interest in preserving the women for reproductive purposes, for the maintenance of stable households, for the nurturing of children, and for looking after the elderly.

5. Gender politics work, but only on women.

"For neuroscientific findings of fetal pain to serve as a basis for permitting states to prohibit abortion prior to viability..."

".... they must tell us something about the nature of a fetus that makes the state’s interest in protecting it more compelling than its interest in protecting a woman’s right to make basic decisions about her own body. As pain sentience does not serve as a basis for legal prohibitions in general (or else mousetraps and deer hunting would be prohibited), the statutes’ real purpose is to use potential evidence of pain sentience in fetuses to indicate the presence of something far more compelling — namely, personhood."

From a NYT philosophy blog item written by William Egginton, a Humanities Professor the Johns Hopkins University.

The states are already allowed to prohibit abortion after viability (with exceptions for the life and health of the mother), but not because viability establishes that the fetus has turned into a person. In fact, the Supreme Court has never made much sense over why viability is the line. (I've taught the abortion cases many times, and the best I can say is that viability was chosen for the line because the Court wanted a place to draw a line and viability was a concept that existed within medicine.) The question of when the unborn is considered a "person" is reserved for the woman to answer for herself. That's the heart of the right that the Court has articulated. It was clearly stated in terms of autonomy to define life in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, when the Court revised Roe in the process of deciding not to overrule it:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

It's interesting for Egginton to offer some philosophical analysis (and for neuroscientists to provide the information they have), but under Roe/Casey, it's for the individual pregnant woman to use that material as she sees fit in arriving at her own answer to the mystery of the value of the unborn entity. Pre-viability, anyway.

"Power remained out for roughly six million people, including a large swath of Manhattan."

"Early risers stepped out into debris-littered streets that remained mostly deserted as residents awaited dawn to shed light on the extent of the damage. Bridges remained closed, and seven subway tunnels under the East River remained flooded."

How did Sandy treat you?

New Pew poll: Obama 47%, Romney 47%

"When the sample is narrowed to likely voters, the balance of opinion shifts slightly in Romney’s direction, as it did in early October."

This reflects Romney’s turnout advantage over Obama, which could loom larger as Election Day approaches....

[S]urveys over the past month have found Republicans becoming much more upbeat about the race and about Mitt Romney himself....

ADDED: There will be fewer polls done and less accuracy in the polling while the hurricane is going on. 

"Give it a little touch, a little push/Make love to the canvas."

"There are no limits here... this is your world... you're the Creator..."

It's the 70th birthday of the late Bob Ross... which I noticed because Google has a doodle about it.

"Over the weekend, the newest, and by far the most disturbing, revelations surrounding the Benghazi attack were revealed."

An item at FrontPageMag.com:

Several sources have pointed to the possibility that a major CIA gun-running operation aimed at arming anti-Assad Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces was in danger of being exposed. If true, the information casts an even more devastating pall over the Benghazi terrorist attack and the administration’s botched handling of the region.

The decision to stand down as the Benghazi terrorist attack was underway was met with extreme opposition from the inside. The Washington Times's James Robbins, citing a source inside the military, reveals that General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, who got the same emails requesting help received by the White House, put a rapid response team together and notified the Pentagon it was ready to go. He was ordered to stay put. “His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow,” writes Robbins. “Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.”

If true, Ham has apparently decided he wants no part of the responsibility for the decision not to help those in harm’s way. He is not alone. As the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol revealed late Friday, a spokesperson, “presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus,” released the following statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”

Lunch at Meadhouse: the best bacon ever.

We've been getting great results using the cooking-with-water method — doubt it, but try it! — and the Wellshire dry-rub center-cut bacon (from Whole Foods). But today, Meade — needing to take a borrowed dog swimming and to interact with some housepainters — left it slow-cooking for 3 hours.

Best bacon ever!

"A series of shocking text messages purportedly show Philip Frank, the partner of Democratic State Representative and Madison-area Congressional candidate Mark Pocan..."

"... threatened a volunteer for Pocan’s Republican opponent days before the volunteer was found beaten. Last Wednesday, Kyle Wood, a full-time volunteer with Republican Chad Lee’s Congressional campaign, was beaten inside his home in Madison by a yet-unidentified attacker who claimed that as a gay man Wood should be supporting the gay candidate for Congress."

This is an extremely disturbing story that appears at Media Trackers, which describes itself as "a conservative non-profit, non-partisan investigative watchdog." This elaborates on the report which we discussed here, 3 days ago. At the time, I said: "Real or hoax? I don't know, but I remember Ashley Todd from the '08 election season."

ADDED: If these really are texts from Pocan's partner, we ought to know more about the whole context. Maybe these 2 men have been exchanging playful texts that would make this material feel more like joking. Releasing this texting conversation makes it fair for the other side to release other conversations, and yet it's not in Pocan's interest to draw attention to any of this.

UPDATE: Media Trackers has taken down the long text conversation it previously posted.

UPDATE 2: "Kyle Wood, a campaign worker for the Republican congressional candidate Chad Lee, today recanted his statements about being assaulted and choked at his home on Oct. 24, according to Madison police." Recanted?! That's not enough. Either it was a false report or it wasn't. If it was false, Wood has committed a crime.

Sandy could bring waves as high as 33 feet to the Great Lakes.

"The National Weather Service... says waves on Lake Michigan could be 10 to 18 feet by Monday afternoon, then build to 20 to 33 feet on Tuesday before subsiding. Waves on parts of Lake Superior and Lake Huron could top 20 feet."

ALSO: "Crew of HMS Bounty forced to abandon ship as Hurricane Sandy bears down on East Coast."

AND: My "coastal cities" theory could apply to Milwaukee (and tip Wisconsin to Romney). In the most extreme, it could tip Illinois (because of Chicago).

MORE: Nate Silver says:

[I]t is probably unwise to anticipate what affects [sic] the storm might have within particular states, such as whether it might affect the Democratic parts of Pennsylvania more than the Republican ones. Hurricane Sandy is just too large a storm, and has such unpredictable destructive potential, to make reliable guesses about this.

Why would it be unwise to anticipate something? It's just speculation based on the available evidence. I suspect Silver is saying that because his methodology involves processing polling, but I don't see what's unwise about thinking about other things unless you impute more weight to the evidence than it deserves. And even if you do... so what? We're just guessing about what will happen in the future. No one is relying on any of this. We're just talking about the future event as we pass the time waiting for Election Day.

Who do you really think is going to win?

Staring at the polls too long. What's going to happen in Wisconsin? Who'll take the Electoral College? My guess is: Obama will squeak by or Romney will win a lot. Bob Wright anticipates bad unemployment numbers coming out before the election. I wonder about the effect of the Benghazi scandal, Bob tries to wave it off into oblivion, saying he's "kind of tuned it out." I keep going... for quite a while. In the end, Bob asks why I agitate him so and concludes it's because I say "crazy things." I tell him to "check the transcript."

The real reason Obama has campaigned on small things — like Big Bird and "Romnesia."

According to Stanley Kurtz, it's a plot to realign the electorate, "creating a long-term Democratic majority that would allow him and his successors to stop catering to the center and finally govern decisively from the left."

Somehow, within the lulling smallness, there's a scary bigness.

Obama’s frantic efforts to gin up the women’s vote and the youth vote aren’t only desperate attempts to secure his base. They flow from a deliberate decision not to fight for the center, but to build an independent majority on what is supposedly the “demographically ascendent” left.

Over at The Nation, Richard Kim gets it. Writing about the Lena Dunham “first time” ad controversy, he speaks of it as part of an effort “to realign the electorate towards the Democratic Party for a generation.” But the best place to read about Obama’s larger strategy is “Hope: The Sequel,” the New York magazine piece by John Heilemann that got attention last May.... describ[ing] an Obama campaign willing to risk turning off socially conservative Democrats and independent voters by hyping leftist social issues....

That reminds me of the way Republicans turn off the socially liberal folks (like me) who would be receptive to the rest of what they have to offer. The 2 parties have corresponding strategies, including trying to scare people about how extreme the other party really intends to be. I don't trust any of them.

4 theories — you haven't heard them all before! — about what happened in the first debate.

One of my theories is that Obama was preoccupied by what had happened in Benghazi 3 weeks ago, perhaps scrambling to keep it from turning into a scandal that would sink his campaign. Bob Wright's response is — absurdly — to bring up the ridiculous old theory that the high altitude in Denver played havoc with Obama's big brain.

If Romney wins, will it lead to the the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade?

I explain why the answer is probably no, and that if it were yes, it would hurt the GOP:



This clip begins with an explanation of what Chief Justice Roberts did in the Obamacare case. Also, I speculate about what kind of Justices a President Romney might appoint. I don't expect them to be such staunch conservatives.

How will Sandy affect the election?

Bob Wright and I talk about that (recorded yesterday):



I explain my coastal cities theory.

Will rising sea levels affect the election?

Sandy's coming, and the waters may flow up into the low-lying East Coast cities. If coastal cities flood and the people there — who are disproportionately Democratic — get distracted by their personal difficulties or find it hard to get to the polls, then the upstate folks — who may be more Republican — will have greater power to tip the state's electoral votes to Romney.

I'm thinking in particular of Pennsylvania, a swing state with 20 electoral votes, where Obama's been polling ahead. Sandy may hit Philadelphia hard. Look at the county-by-county results from the 2008 election. You can see that upstate, Republicans had the majority. Sandy's waters could suppress the coastal vote and leverage upstate power.

It was 4 years ago that Obama gave that grandiose "this was the moment" speech where he said "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow...." What irony if the rise of the oceans thwarts his reelection!

***

Going with the flow, Venice-style.

"New Orleans fans boo Madonna after she demands they vote for Obama."

Always one to pick up and run with a trend, she changed to: "Seriously, I don't care who you vote for.... Do not take this privilege for granted. Go vote."

Privilege? Hey, lady, this is America. It's not a privilege. It's a right.

"A man who was the prime suspect in the 1979 disappearance of Etan Patz is about to go free..."

"... after more than two decades in prison for molesting other children. Jose Ramos was declared responsible for Etan’s death in a civil court, but the Manhattan district attorney’s office said there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him criminally."

"If You Succumb to Cynicism, the Regressives Win It All."

Robert Reich hyperventilates. There's a lot of that going on lately from the Obama side, and it's hard not to read that as a sign that Romney will win.

AND: Speaking of desperate... look! Obama goes to church with his lovely daughters. No Michelle though.  Otherwise, I got a vibe like this.

Senator Ron Johnson said it 3 times today: "The American people have the right to know."

On Fox News Sunday today, the Wisconsin Senator made it all about Benghazi. The moderator gave him the last word after a long colloquy, including him and Senators Warner, Udall, and Portman, and he said:

Chris, the American people have the right to know. And that is what they are demanding here in Wisconsin.

Let's face it. What was the president doing, during those seven hours? Did he give that directive? Or didn't he? Did Leon Panetta directly defy him? I mean, what happened?

Who sent out? Who sent Ambassador Rice out five days later when they knew it was a terrorist attack that was preplanned, sent her on Sunday talk shows to say in fact it was a spontaneous reaction to, of course, the video. This administration purposefully misled the American people for weeks. This president misled the American people for weeks.

And, I think the American people have the right to know.

It was either misleading or is incompetent. I think we are finding out it was probably both, misleading and incompetence on the part of this administration. The American people have the right to know.

"That directive" refers to what Rob Portman was talking about earlier:

Chris, I got to tell you, I am member of the Armed Services Committee and I appreciate what my friend Mark Udall just said about not politicizing this.

This is not about politics. This is about a huge national security issue that affects all of us and there was a shocking break down, operationally, not to have the security there in the first place and not to respond to these guys, in their pleas for help for seven hours, during a firefight. It's unbelievable.

And now, we are hearing that the president of the United States, based on his own words, issued a directive immediately after he found out about the firefight, saying, he wanted to be sure those people on the ground were safe and they were getting what they needed. It didn't happen.

This means either that the president's order was not followed, which would be a break down in terms of the White House procedure, or, it means the order wasn't issued. We need to find out about this, it's not about politics. It's is a very serious situation.

After the fact, of course, there has been a lot of confusion about what happened and why it happened. I think the bottom line for us, it shows a lack of leadership. And it shows the policy in disarray and I think it's perfectly appropriate to ask these questions.

As you know, John McCain and I sent a letter more than two weeks ago to Secretary Panetta asking for some of these answers. We haven't heard anything. We sent another letter yesterday, with the additional information. We're now hearing directly from the president about this order that he issued.

Why wasn't it followed? This makes no sense.

Echidna Puggle.

Does Gov. Hickenlooper to refer to Obama's "pregnancy"?

Listen closely. I know Democrats are always thinking about pregnancy, but this is hilarious:



The Colorado governor obviously intended to refer to the "first few month's of [Obama's] presidency," but it sure sounds as though he says "the first few month's of his pregnancy."

I recorded (very roughly) from today's gripping episode of "Meet the Press."

"We strapped the President into an airplane that was heading to the ground at Mach speed..."

Colorado Senator Mark Udall indulged in a bit of hyperbole (and metaphor) — Fox News Sunday this morning — to describe where Obama found himself at the point of inauguration.

Are the media protecting Obama, pre-election, from the full impact of the Benghazi story?

"What we already know about Benghazi is a scandal of the highest order..."

... the ambassador asked for more security after a series of terrorist threats and attacks, but didn’t get it, even on the anniversary of September 11. The administration knew that four Americans had been killed in a successful terrorist attack by an al Qaeda affiliate, but lied about the event for weeks in hopes of minimizing political fallout. Extraordinarily courageous Americans fought a seven-hour gun battle against well-armed and well-organized terrorists who vastly outnumbered them before finally succumbing, during which time the Obama administration did nothing. And when the bodies of the dead Americans were returned to the United States, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton misappropriated the occasion to deliver politically-motivated lies, both to the victims’ survivors and to the American people. All of that we now know for sure. If, in addition, there is credible evidence that American soldiers, fighting desperately for their lives against our country’s most bitter enemies, called for help but were cynically left to perish in order to protect Barack Obama’s petty re-election campaign, Obama will not only lose the election but will be turned out of office in disgust by a clear majority of voters. Reporters and editors know this. It will be interesting to see how they respond during the coming days: will they do their jobs, or will they assist their candidate with his cover-up?

I presume they would say — if they deigned to answer Power Line's question — that the Benghazi story is too complicated and inflammatory to resolve in the narrow time before the election and that it's unfair to dump this hugely burdensome issue on the President now. It would have an undue effect on the minds of the voters, who must be protected from an emotional flare-up which will keep them from weighing all the issues in the proper proportion. This is especially true — they would not say out loud — when the skewing goes against their preferred candidate. Of course, an equivalent issue affecting the incumbent in 2004 would have been splattered everywhere.

A Romney victory would give us the benefit of leaving the Benghazi scandal in the past. It will still be important to investigate, but it won't — like the Watergate scandal, after the Nixon re-election — cripple a sitting President.

"Why must I love you so much? Sandy, I long for your touch..."

The NYT illustrates its endorsement of Obama with a photo of Abe Lincoln.

There's something so tragically lame about this:



To be fair, it clicks through to a gallery of past endorsements that makes it glaringly clear that the Times always endorses the Democratic candidate. You have to scroll back over a half century to get a different result.

But keep scrolling. Once you get down past mid-20th century, there are plenty of Republicans mixed in, and if you'll scroll down to the bottom, you'll get to that famous face they selected to illustrate today's editorial, Abraham Lincoln. A Republican.

The Times endorsed Lincoln in 1860 and again, when he ran for reelection, in 1864. The photo used in today's Obama endorsement is the 1864 Lincoln. How much the man aged in 4 years! Here is the 1860 Lincoln:



The 1860 endorsement — PDF — is a fascinating read:

It will not be easy... for Mr. Lincoln to do much mischief, even if he should be disposed. We have great confidence in his pacific and conciliatory disposition. He seems to us much more like to be too good-natured and tolerant towards his opponents, than not enough so. Rail-splitting is not an exciting occupation. It does not tend to cultivate the angry passions of the heart...

The rail-splitting metaphor is then worked into the opinion that Lincoln will govern as a moderate pragmatist.

The 2 photos of Barack Obama, 2008 and 2012, differ much less from each other than the 2 pics of Lincoln. And the old 2008 endorsement doesn't contain any vivid writing telling us what sort of mind is produced by the the work of community organizing and how Obama will govern in the manner of a community organizer.

"Not knowing exactly what was taking place, the two SEALs set up a defensive perimeter."

"Unfortunately Ambassador Stevens was already gravely injured, and Foreign Service officer, Sean Smith, was dead. However, due to their quick action and suppressive fire, twenty administrative personnel in the embassy were able to escape to safety. Eventually, these two courageous men were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers brought against them, an enemy force numbering between 100 to 200 attackers which came in two waves. But the stunning part of the story is that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty killed 60 of the attacking force. Once the compound was overrun, the attackers were incensed to discover that just two men had inflicted so much death and destruction."

ScottOnCapeCod, via Instapundit.

The pre-Freakfest scene downtown.

We're snug at home this evening, while the revelry goes on here in Madison, but earlier this evening, we took a walk downtown, and we encountered this religious demonstration. Note the signs. Note the effort to get passers-by to look into the casket.



Where there was a mirror. They just wanted to remind you. In case you forgot: You're going to die.



As the younger folk scamper off, the older man is hoping they'll come to Jesus before it's too late.

(Click here for a large enough version to read the signs: "Every one of us shall give account of himself to God" and "Jesus said: I am the door: By ME if any man enter in, he shall be saved.")

The Des Moines Register endorses Romney.

"Our discussion repeatedly circled back to the nation’s single most important challenge:"

pulling the economy out of the doldrums, getting more Americans back in the workforce in meaningful jobs with promising futures, and getting the federal government on a track to balance the budget in a bipartisan manner that the country demands.

Which candidate could forge the compromises in Congress to achieve these goals? When the question is framed in those terms, Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate.

"We're the children of the future/American through and through/But something happened to our country/And we're kinda blaming you."

I find the enunciation a bit difficult here. Who are they blaming?



I had to read the lyrics — here — to figure out that they were blaming conservatives. As I listened to the song — a reader referred me to it — I thought they were complaining about how liberals like Barack Obama had sold out their future. Why didn't I immediately recognize the creepy use of musical children from the last election? I mean this:



I don't know! I guess I thought the other side might do some parody.

David Weigel debunks a video that has never been bunked in the first place.

Is there anyone who has ever thought that this was anything but a joke?

Crooks and Liars is laughing at the "morons" who believe they're looking at "actual footage of Barack Obama's birth taking place in a hospital in Kenya." But as far as I can tell, they are morons for believing they are looking at actual morons who believe they are looking at actual footage....

He who laughs at morons should look to it that he himself does not become a moron. And when you gaze long into the idiocracy the idiocracy also gazes into you.

At the Rhymes-With-Cranium Café...

... think of something to say.

Evidence that Romney is winning.

Paul Krugman has gone desperately juvenile.

"Embrace and celebrate" "Hetero-een."

An interesting Dan Savage rant about Halloween. Sorry there's no transcript, but click to listen and begin at 0:59. He takes on those who complain about the sexy costume for females (and females only) and argues that heterosexuals need a day to bust loose from all their usual inhibitions.

"I'm free and I love to be free/To live my life the way I want/To say and do whatever I please..."

Consider the use of the old Lesley Gore song — "You Don't Own Me" — for political, pro-Obama purposes:



Now, I love old Lesley and her classic song. And it's fine with me if the Democratic Party is her party — and she'll cry if Obama loses, cry if Obama loses, you would cry too if it happened to you. "You Don't Own Me" dates back to 1963 — pre-Women's Liberation, pre-Beatles. But let's consider the lyrics and the extent to which they express the values of the present-day Democratic Party.

By the way, Ms. Gore did not write "You Don't Own Me." It was written by 2 men, John Madara (who also wrote "At the Hop") and David White (who co-wrote "At the Hop" and was a member of the doo-wop group Danny & the Juniors who recorded "At the Hop"). Madera and White also co-wrote "The Fly," which was a dance that you could do at the hop, and here's Chubby Checker showing you how:



That was 1961, 2 years before Lesley sang Madera and White's declaration to female autonomy, which is no kind of dance song at all, though Diane Keaton, Bette Midler, and Goldie Hawn manage to turn it into a dance for the purpose of bringing a close to the execrable 1996 movie "First Wives Club":



That movie is best described by David Rakoff in "Half Empty": "A gynocentric comedy predicated on the scenario where men are cheating bastards and middle-aged women the goddesses who best them while cementing their sisterhood with Motown-scored makeover montages, vengeful shopping sprees, warmed-over Lucy-and-Ethel hijinks, and random humiliations visited upon women who are younger and therefore by definition stupid whores."

Anyway, look at the lyrics to "You Don't Own Me," words which a couple youngish guys put in the female singer's mouth, as repurposed for the 2012 election "war on women" theme:

I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please

Sounds libertarian to me. But it's the Obama side using this, so presumably we're supposed to hear something like:

I'm free and I want my birth control to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please and have the government pay for it

The AP reports an increase in racial prejudice since 2008 (based on research that is at least somewhat scientific).

"Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly."

The explicit racism measures asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about black and Hispanic people. In addition, the surveys asked how well respondents thought certain words, such as "friendly," ''hardworking," ''violent" and "lazy," described blacks, whites and Hispanics. 

The same respondents were also administered a survey designed to measure implicit racism, in which a photo of a black, Hispanic or white male flashed on the screen before a neutral image of a Chinese character. The respondents were then asked to rate their feelings toward the Chinese character. Previous research has shown that people transfer their feelings about the photo onto the character, allowing researchers to measure racist feelings even if a respondent does not acknowledge them. 

I'm guessing that AP thinks this material is helpful to Obama, perhaps guilt-tripping Americans into voting for Obama as a way to say I'm not racist. But it can cut the other way, because Obama came into office at least in part because people believed in his seeming promise to take us to a higher ground racially, as if he had a special gift to cure racial ills.

Obama didn't give us that gift. We didn't get what we wanted for Christmas. But we're not children. Let's say we were deluded/misled into thinking this nice young man could solve old problems in some miraculous new way. It turned out that he was a normal politician, operating in a political mode, playing us on the issues he found playable. Fine! Okay. We're smarter now. We have more information. We don't want to be racist, but what's the non-racist response?

Judge him up or down on his actual performance. He is only a man, only a politician. Treat him accordingly. 

MORE: Detail on how the research was done here and here (PDF).

"Ronald Reagan's 'First Time' Vote [Joke] Was Dirtier Than Lena Dunham's."

Does that mean we can't criticize the Obama campaign for that Lena Dunham ad anymore?

Possible arguments:

1. Reagan was talking to guys in a working-class bar, not putting the smutty material in a carefully crafted, glitzy ad aimed at everyone.

2. If Obama got caught on an open mike saying something like "I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever; we begin bombing in five minutes," there would be nothing to complain about because Reagan did that.

3. We remember Ronald Reagan. We knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of ours. Lena Dunham, you're no Ronald Reagan.

ADDED:

4. For Ronald Reagan's remark to be taken as sexual, we would need to believe that he wanted us to visualize him on the receiving end of sexual penetration, and he couldn't have meant that.

5. The comparison to Reagan's joke assumes that the criticism of Dunham's ad was based on prissiness about sexuality, but it was really about trivializing the election and treating women as if they vote based on their sexual attraction toward the President.

Swing state tracking poll: Romney 51%, Obama 45%

Romney's up 6 in today's Rasmussen swing-state poll. The last time anyone was up 6 in this poll, it was October 4 and Obama. That means Romney has gained 12 points in 3 weeks.

Romney is up 4 in the regular tracking poll. You might think that because Romney is further ahead in swing states that he does not have a problem with the Electoral College, but he does:

The Rasmussen Reports Electoral College projections now show the president with 237 Electoral Votes and Romney 206. The magic number needed to win the White House is 270. Eight states with 95 Electoral College votes remain Toss-ups. In addition to Florida, the battleground states are Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

There are 8 state's Rasmussen is calling toss-ups, but the swing state poll covers 11 states. The additional states are Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina.

I hope we don't get another misalignment between the popular vote and the Electoral College, and I hope the election produces a clear winner, so we don't need to feel that the outcome might have been affected by fraud or vote suppression of any kind. Or do you think that it's better for the winner to know he barely made it and needs to be more appeasing/compromising/reaching-across-the-aisle with the other side? Or is your answer to that last question yes only if your guy loses?

I really wonder why Obama has been able to keep it as close as it is. With the economy so bad, the unpopularity of Obamacare, and what happened in Libya, he should have fallen far behind by now. If the American people don't see fit to reject him soundly, we will either have 4 more years of Obama or a Romney administration with a paltry mandate.

Woman found guilty of giving cannibis to her baby... via breast milk.

In New Zealand, where the senior court official said: "Child abuse is family violence in these circumstances, and it is clear this baby and its mother needed help."

"Big Bird. Binders. Bayonets."

The GOP goes after Obama, using Obama's own line, from 2008: "If you don't have a record to run on, you make a big election about small things."



(Via Instapundit, who says "ouch.")

"For Tammy Baldwin to attack [Tommy Thompson] on anything related to Sept. 11 is so hypocritical, she should be ashamed of herself..."

Said Rudy Giuliani yesterday.

Baldwin ran an ad this week... saying Thompson personally profited from the attacks by making $3 million from a health care firm he led that scored a government contract to treat first responders.

Here's Baldwin's ad:



Now, that ad was provoked by a Thompson an ad that assailed Baldwin for voting against a resolution to honor the 9/11 victims. Baldwin did vote for other bills honoring the victims when they also included health care spending provisions related to first responders. Here's Tommy's ad:



At last night's debate, Baldwin said "I am outraged that Tommy Thompson would question my patriotism." Thompson said he was not questioning her patriotism. He was questioning her "judgment."

I don't have a transcript or video of the debate, but Tommy had a long segment in which he talked about all that he did (as Health Secretary) on 9/11.

More here:

The Thompson campaign hosted a conference call Wednesday afternoon with George Pataki, who was governor of New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Pataki praised Thompson as a "force of nature" in responding to the tragedy.

"He was the first member of the Cabinet to come to Ground Zero, where I had the privilege of talking with him," said Pataki. "And from the early moments, he activated -- in a way that I will always be grateful for -- the nation's medical response efforts to help us."

When a reporter pointed out that Baldwin voted many times for other bills honoring and helping 9/11 first responders -- and clearly stated why she opposed the one bill being highlighted by Thompson -- Pataki nevertheless defended the criticisms.

"It's not misleading at all," he said of Thompson's ad. "She was one of a handful who voted against a strong bipartisan resolution. I don't understand the logic of her explanation."

Tommy Thompson and Tammy Baldwin.

The last debate, streaming here.

UPDATE: Debate over. Site delinked.

"Obama's Ground Game Advantage May Not Be As Big As It Looks."

Says Kevin Drum (at Mother Jones), displaying a chart that's been "making the rounds."

Democrats tend to rely on paid, professional operations, while Republicans rely more on volunteer efforts, largely from evangelical churches. This is something that actually works in the Republicans' favor, since volunteer efforts from friends and neighbors tend to be more effective at switching votes than professional phone banks....

Petraeus: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate."

William Kristol: "So who in the government did tell 'anybody' not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No. It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?"

Draw the necessary inferences. This is important.

"At worst, this is someone who has sexual fantasies...There is no actual crossing the line from fantasy to reality."

Says the lawyer for Gilberto Valle, the NY police officer arrested for kidnapping conspiracy. He "created a document on his computer, calling it a blueprint for 'Abducting and Cooking.'"

“I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind of apparatus,” he wrote to a co-conspirator in one electronic communication recovered by law enforcement authorities. “Cook her over a low heat, keep her alive as long as possible.”

When the co-conspirator asked how big the officer’s oven was, Officer Valle replied, “Big enough to fit one of these girls if I folded their legs.”

"Wisconsin: Obama 49%, Romney 49%"

New Rasmussen poll.

If Romney wins Wisconsin and New Hampshire, he'll win the Electoral College even without Ohio. Right?

"CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack."

"There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here," said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. "But the basic principle here ... is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on."

Biden said "Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?”

... to the father of one of the former Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi.

Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods... recounted his interactions with the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Biden at the ceremony for the Libya victims at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland...

“When [President Obama] finally came over to where we were, I could tell that he was rather conflicted, a person who was not at peace with himself,” Woods said. “Shaking hands with him, quite frankly, was like shaking hands with a dead fish. His face was pointed towards me but he would not look me in the eye, his eyes were over my shoulder.”

“I could tell that he was not sorry,” he added. “He had no remorse.”

Beck said he wanted to give the president “the benefit of the doubt,” and asked Woods how he could be sure that Obama wasn’t just uncomfortable or nervous during their conversation. Woods said it was Obama’s “demeanor.”

Hillary Clinton’s comments to Woods raise even more questions about the White House’s official story on the Benghazi attack, which has already been extremely inconsistent.

After apologizing for his loss, Woods said Clinton told him that the U.S. would “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Charles Woods also read this statement:

“I want to honor my son, Ty Woods, who responded to the cries for help and voluntarily sacrificed his life to protect the lives of other Americans. In the last few days it has become public knowledge that within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied. Apparently, C-130s were ready to respond immediately. In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision. This has nothing to do with politics, this has to do with integrity and honor. My son was a true American hero. We need more heroes today. My son showed moral courage. This is an opportunity for the person or persons who made the decision to sacrifice my son’s life to stand up.”

Berlusconi, sentenced to prison for 4 years and barred from public office for 3 years.

A strange combination of terms of years, as if one could serve in public office while yet in prison. Hard to believe the man will actually end up in prison.

Angelino Alfano, the head of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, said the conviction was "unexpected and incomprehensible" and "the umpteenth" attack by a biased judiciary on Berlusconi.

To control you're overflowing sympathy for Silvio, here's a slideshow of beautiful women he has had. Also: "'Bunga bunga' parties were dignified soirées."

Camille Paglia, who voted for Obama in '08, delivers a fine rant about why she's not voting for him this time.

She's interviewed on video here, by Glenn Reynolds. Most of the interview is about art in America and her new book "Glittering Images" (which I just bought, in Kindle). But in the end, she's asked why she's not voting for Obama — she's voting for Jill Stein — and out flow the words, which I started transcribing without knowing how long she'd go on. I kept transcribing, because it was all such great material, so here it is (with a few screen grabs, taken from the art section of the interview):

I was very excited about him. I thought he was a moderate. I thought that his election would promote racial healing in the country. 

This is the point at which I started transcribing, thinking: This is how I felt, when I voted for Obama in 2008. Except I wouldn't say I was "very excited." I wasn't caught up in the ecstasy. I thought it was the better bet, compared to the GOP alternative, and I hoped for the moderation and advancement in attitudes about race.

It would be a tremendous transformation of attitudes. And instead: one thing after another. Not least: I consider him, now, one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it's going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races. 

Yes, this hope for racial transformation got squandered early, over that awful Henry Louis Gates incident. Back to Paglia:

But beyond that, I am just sick and tired of endless war. I was in favor of bombing the hell out of the Afghanistan mountains after 9/11, but I would have never agreed to this land war in Afghanistan, this endless land war, as well as things like this Libyan incursion that Obama appears to have been pushed into by these women, like Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, the chaos in foreign policy, the bowing to foreign leaders.

Also the Obamacare: of course, we need health care reform in this country. What a mess! Everyone agrees about that. But the Obamacare is, to me, a Stalinist intrusion — okay? — into American culture.

The creation of this culture of surveillance, from these bureaucracies, which is also carried over into Obama's endorsement of drones on the military level as well as for police control of the population. I mean, I don't understand how any... veteran of the 1960s who's a Democrat could not see the dangers here, that Obama is a statist. It's exactly what Bob Dylan was warning about in "Subterranean Homesick Blues," okay?

I paused the video at "It's exactly what Bob Dylan was warning about" and asked Meade what song she's about to name, and he said "Masters of War," and I said "That's what I thought." But it's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and as soon as she says it, we know why. (Look out kid/They keep it all hid/Better jump down a manhole/Light yourself a candle...)

You don't want government agencies being empowered to intrude into people's lives like this. The controlling force in Obamacare is the IRS! Okay? This flies in the face of what the Free Speech Movement was about at Berkeley or about any of the values, I feel, of my generation.

Yes. Exactly. This is how the Democratic Party lost me — by trading freedom for statism.

So I feel the Democratic Party needs to be shattered and remade to recover its true progressive roots. I don't see progressives. All I see is white upper-middle-class liberals who speak in this unctuous way about the needs of the poor.

Unctuous. Yes. White upper-middle-class liberals lubricating themselves.

They have no connection whatever with the working class. Okay? It's the professional class gone amok. And that's why they don't notice what a bureaucratic nightmare Obamacare is.

"Wisconsin May Be the New Ohio."

Says Scott Rasmussen.

ADDED: Speaking of Rasmussen, the Rasmussen tracking poll today is the same as yesterday — Romney 50%, Obama 47% — which is interesting since today's poll includes — in its average of 3 days — 2 days of post-debate polling and yesterday's included only 1. That is, that last debate seems to have had little or no effect.

"Mr. Obama's was a White House that had—and showed—no respect for Republicans trying to negotiate with Republicans."

"Through it all he was confident—'Eric, don't call my bluff'—because he believed, as did his staff, that his talents would save the day. They saved nothing. Washington became immobilized."

Peggy Noonan, drawing on Bob Woodward's "The Price of Politics."

Also at the link: Noonan's analysis of the first debate and her basis for believing that the Obama we saw there was the "real Obama."

"I will not be bullied into voting for a gay man simply because I am gay."

Said Kyle Wood, a volunteer for Chad Lee (R), who is running against Mark Pocan (D), for the House seat in my district here in Wisconsin. It's the seat being vacated by Tammy Baldwin (D), who is running against Tommy Thompson (R), for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Herb Kohl (D).

Pocan (like Baldwin) is openly gay. Wood says a man — "white, 6 foot 2, with curly brown hair, a broad nose and a muscular build" — entered his home at 8 in the morning and beat him up, saying “You should have kept your (f------) mouth shut” and that he had been “warned.” Wood says the "warning" was graffiti on his car that said “house trained republican faggot,” “traitor,” and “ur like a jew 4 hitler.”

The police say they believe the injuries were "minor," but The Daily Caller report says Wood's "eyes were swollen shut by the beating, and he suffered a concussion along with neck and head lacerations." A photo at the Caller shows marks on Wood's neck made by what Wood terms "a ligature."

There you have it. Real or hoax? I don't know, but I remember Ashley Todd from the '08 election season.

UPDATE: Wood has recanted. More here.

Jacques Barzun has died... at the age of 104.

Here's the NYT obit for the grand historian/culture critic. Maybe you read his marvelous "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present," which he published when he was 92. Imagine writing something that ambitious when you're in your 90s and still having more than a decade of life left.

Barzun was born in Paris, in 1907. His father, a diplomat and writer, was — according to the obit — an avant-garde salon, frequented by Jean Cocteau.

Mr. Barzun studied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly, only to find himself, he said, teaching there at the age of 9. After World War I broke out in 1914, many teachers were drafted into the military, and older students were inducted to teach the younger ones.

He contemplated suicide at the age of 11, and, at 13, in a classic alternative to despair, he traveled to the United States. How many individuals still live whose young lives were shaped by World War I? They have been leaving us in smaller and smaller droves over the years, and it's hard to say goodbye to the last few names that we recognize in the newspaper.

My son John has a tribute to Barzun's book about writing, "Simple and Direct," which he read when he was in high school and rereads "now and then."

I still try to follow his guidelines on how to use the words "the" and "a," which turns out to be a surprisingly difficult matter.

Should I have written the classic alternative to despair?

John's post has some quotes he's pulled from his copy of "A Jacques Barzun Reader." Here's one:

In a high civilization the things that satisfy our innumerable desires look as if they were supplied automatically, mechanically, so that nothing is owed to particular persons; goods belong by congenital right to anybody who takes the trouble to be born. This is the infant's normal greed prolonged into adult life and headed for retribution. When sufficiently general, the habit of grabbing, cheating, and evading reciprocity is the best way to degrade a civilization, and perhaps bring about its collapse.

Something is owed to particular persons.

"Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up."

"Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a 'you're on your own' society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party."

Said Barack Obama.

Voting is like having sex... says the Obama campaign.

With this ad, featuring Lena Dunham (of the HBO show "Girls"):



So, really, who do you want to have sex with, ladies? That is the question. Oddly, that was a big topic on the Rush Limbaugh show today.

CNN had to pull a story that they had on their website after reader backlash. "Following a firestorm of negative feedback, CNN hastily deleted from its website late Wednesday virtually all mention of a study about the effect hormones have on women’s political preferences. 'A post previously published in this space regarding a study about how hormones may influence voting choices has been removed,' a message posted on the website at 8:15 p.m. read. 'After further review it was determined that some elements of the story did not meet the editorial standards of CNN...'..."

"Mitt Romney’s transition team... 'The Readiness Project..."

"... plans a series of modest but quick accomplishments if he were inaugurated, and is preparing for the likelihood that he will butt heads with the conservative wing of the House Republicans as he seeks a fiscal 'grand bargain.'"

Romney’s transition has grown to more than 100 officials, preparing dossiers on potential nominees and gaming out legislative strategy. Only a few weeks ago, the exercise had an air of make-believe, even to some of the participants. “Now, we’re shooting with real bullets,” a Romney adviser said. One Republican official said Romney doesn’t plan “an ideological crusade — he wants to come across as a problem solver, primarily on the economic side”: “Everything Romney does is going to be focused on bringing down barriers to economic growth and providing certainty to businesses.”

What the White House has to say about the email the State Department sent the Executive Office of the President during the Benghazi attack.

Nothing.

"You have to be a terrible monster to write."

"Someone might have told you something they shouldn’t have told you, and you have to be prepared to use it because it will make a great story. You have to use it even though the person is identifiable. If you can’t do it then writing isn’t for you. You’ve no right to be here. If there is any way I can help you get into law school then I will. Your morality will be more useful in a courtroom."

Nate Silver says the polls say "Romney's Momentum Has Stopped."

Because, you must understand, "a body in motion tends to stay in motion. That is, it ought to imply that a candidate is gaining ground in the race — and, furthermore, that he is likely to continue to gain ground."

Romney peaked last Friday, and the "slightly favorable trend" is Obama's. Obama's chance of winning is, as of yesterday, 71%, up from 68.1% Tuesday.

By the way, there is a 10.5% chance that Wisconsin's electoral votes will be decisive, making us the third most-likely-to-be-decisive state (after Ohio and Virginia).

And The Washington Post just endorsed Obama:

[E]conomic head winds and an uncompromising opposition explain some of [Obama's] failures — and render that much more impressive the substantial accomplishments of Mr. Obama’s first term....

What kind of case has Mr. Romney made for himself?... The sad answer is there is no way to know what Mr. Romney really believes.

ADDED: There's no way to know what Obama really believes either. It's mentally unbalanced to allow such pedestrian realities to make you sad.

"How to eat a Triceratops."

"Step one: get a good grip on the neck frill."

"The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens."

"There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows."

"See No Evil, Say No Evil, Hear No Evil."

Embryonic bat version.

What's the point?

Drudge has everyone pointing:


(Click to enlarge.)

"'HE'S A BULLSHITTER'" goes to a Weekly Standard item, quoting Obama:

As we left the Oval Office, executive editor Eric Bates told Obama that he had asked his six-year-old if there was anything she wanted him to say to the president. … [S]he said, ‘Tell him: You can do it.’ Obama grinned. … ‘You know, kids have good instincts,’ Obama offered. ‘They look at the other guy and say, “Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell.”’

Nothing wrong with the word "bullshitter" in casual speech, and nothing special about a politician characterizing another politician as a bullshitter. It takes one to know one, and these politicians are all bullshitters. How could they be otherwise? What major-party candidate has ever not been a bullshitter?

But it is odd to imagine a 6-year-old child thinking "Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell." He was paraphrasing. Come on.

There's nothing here!

Now, quit pointing.

Quit pointing at nothing.

"Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!"

Frederick Douglass, quoted by Clarence Thomas.

"I have to suspend my brain and mingle the subtle essence of my mind with this air..."

"... which is of the like nature, in order clearly to penetrate the things of heaven. I should have discovered nothing, had I remained on the ground to consider from below the things that are above; for the earth by its force attracts the sap of the mind to itself. It's just the same with the watercress."

Socrates, in "The Clouds," by Aristophanes.

"A strange sort of Nothing is destroying everything!"

"Maybe our whole land is in danger. What can we do?"

"The Emptiest Candidate in Presidential Election History: Mitt Romney truly believes in nothing."

They've got nothing on him, so they call him nothing. Ah, well, Obama's opponents call him Zero. that makes it Nothing vs. Zero.

***

Too much of nothing
Can turn a man into a liar
It can cause one man to sleep on nails
And another man to eat fire
Ev’rybody’s doin’ somethin’
I heard it in a dream
But when there’s too much of nothing
It just makes a fella mean

***

"I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?"

"All you can do while you puzzle over it like a board game is try to figure out which member of the hammy all-star ensemble, unrecognizable in lurid makeup..."

"... wigs, period costumes and rubber prostheses, is playing which man—or woman—while the viewer-unfriendly screenplay squirts and splatters all over the place.... I mean, Hugh Grant as a bloodthirsty cannibal?"

Did you know Rex Reed was still writing movie reviews? 

Here are some trailers for "Cloud Atlas."

Are you still following the Wachowskis, who are no longer the Wachowski brothers?

On Saturday, Lana Wachowski (co-director of the "Matrix" franchise and "Cloud Atlas") received a "Visibility Award" from the Human Rights Campaign for her recent decision to publicly come out as transgender. In a powerful 25-minute acceptance speech, Lana spoke about the pain she went through growing up and how she developed self-acceptance. Video. Transcript. Q&A with the Hollywood Reporter.

From the transcript:

Andy and I have not done press or made a public appearance including premieres in over 12 years. People have mistakenly assumed that this has something to do with my gender. It does not. After The Matrix was released in ‘99 we both experienced this alarming contraction of our world and thus our lives. We became acutely aware of the preciousness of anonymity -- understanding it as a form of virginity, something you only lose once. Anonymity allows you access to civic space, to a form of participation in public life, to an egalitarian invisibility that neither of us wanted to give up.