'Fear versus hope, anger versus optimism, Obama versus Romney...'

At Legal Insurrection, "The Anger Versus Optimism Election."

'Grand Swami' Nate Silver Boosts O's Chances to 71.0% in Electoral College!

Or he re-boosts O's chances. It's déjà vu with the wonder boy of the New York Times.

At The Other McCain, "Polls Continue to Show Trend Toward Romney — Nate Silver Notwithstanding":

Excuse me for my continued attention to Nate’s graveyard-whistling, but no matter how clear the evidence of a pro-Romney trend, the Grand Swami at the New York Times won’t stop. He’s now raised the likelihood of Obama’s re-election to 71.0%. (The one-tenth of a percentage point being necessary to the pretense of scientific exactitude.)

Is Nate Silver hustling an insider-trading scam with InTrade? Or is he merely acting as an Obama pompom girl? Either way, the poll-watcher at the nation’s most influential newspaper cannot be unaware of how his coverage functions to shape elite opinion, which is in turn reflected in other media coverage that then influences mass opinion, and believing that Nate Silver is acting as an honest neutral broker in this transaction requires a faith in human goodness that I lack.

You can say that again. More at the link.

Plus, linked at The Other McCain, Ted Frank at Point of Law, "2012 election: why Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight.com might be wrong and Romney might be doing better than Silver thinks."

And Erin Burnett gives Silver the "Grand Swami" treatment at CNN, "'Romney no longer gaining ground in polls," says Nate Silver'."

PREVIOUSLY:

* "Obama Crashing in Ohio; or, For the Love of Mercy, Leave Nate Silver Alone!"

* "Nate Silver Calls It: Advantage Obama!"

* "Nate Silver's Flawed Model."

* "Boom! Romney Back Up 52-45 in Gallup's Daily Tracking of Likely Voters."

* "ABC News Touts Nate Silver's Prediction That Obama's Handicapped at 68 Percent Chance to Win!"

* "'It's becoming increasingly obvious that Silver can't be taken seriously...'"

* "Nate Silver Blows Gasket as Gallup Shows Romney Pulling Away in the Presidential Horse Race."

More later...

Hypocrisy and Lies in Obama's (Permanent) War on Terror

ICYMI, here's my Tuesday essay at PJ Media, "Does Obama Really Want to Bring the Benghazi Killers to Justice?":

Running for office on a platform of humanitarian idealism is one thing. Carrying out an effective counter-terrorism policy amid an enormous range of domestic and international constraints is another. What’s most likely is that the invocation of “bringing the terrorists to justice” is just a horribly dishonest ruse that this administration keeps alive for convenient but coldly calculated political utility. And as such, it’s clear that Republican attacks of deceit and dishonesty against Obama — with growing claims of a cover up on the entire Libya debacle — are in fact embedded in a history of national security duplicity that this president has foisted on the American people since taking office. The election on November 6 will ultimately reveal whether the country has had enough of it.

Yeah, Obama's all about political expediency. It's a really disgusting and decrepit reputation, and the full record will become more clear in the fullness of time. It's going to take a long time before the full history of this administration's duplicity is revealed. That said, the picture comes into focus a bit more day by day. See the Washington Post for another data point of deceit, "Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding names to kill lists":

Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.”

The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.

Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight.

“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us,” a senior administration official said. “It’s a necessary part of what we do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’”

Endless wars? Where is all the leftist outrage to those endless wars we used to hear about? Oh yeah, that stuff only counts when a Republican's in office. There is at least one key exception, which I've noted before, and that's Glenn Greenwald. See, "Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent." Discussing WaPo's article, Greenwald writes:

This was all motivated by Obama's refusal to arrest or detain terrorist suspects, and his resulting commitment simply to killing them at will (his will).

Right.

This was all motivated by Obama's craven political expedience and epic moral bankruptcy. Personally, I'm not nearly as exercised about the U.S. drone warfare program as is Greenwald. I like killing terrorists. What I don't like is a president who as a candidate campaigned up and down against the Bush administration's national security policies. And then once taking office, knowing that the wheels of national security keep turning no matter who occupies the Oval Office, Obama took the path of least resistance and adopted the "gutsy call" persona designed exclusively to keep himself in power. Obama doesn't like drones and kill lists because they fit his preexisting views on war and peace. He likes them because they're f-king easy. The military gets pet war-fighting projects, the Pentagon keeps its orders for high-tech weaponry chugging along, and the White House can repeatedly announce how "we've got al Qaeda on the run," when all it's really done is fight a long-distance war of attrition, while simultaneously making things worse with a complete FUBAR foreign policy that assists Islamic extremism. It's almost too much to comprehend, like a Rube Goldberg contraption in foreign affairs, but that's what's been happening. Benghazi is blowback for the president's spineless "leading from behind" approach to toppling the Gaddafi regime. And what's especially priceless is the administration's cheerleaders in the press, who won't actually vet this administration's policies. Greenwald has more on that, and it's very good, "Joe Klein's sociopathic defense of drone killings of children."

I'll have more later...

Hat Tip: Glenn Reynolds, linking that piece at WaPo, slams Obama as "President Dronekiller." I love it!

Hillary's Tumultuous Closing Chapter

At the Wall Street Journal, "For Clinton as Top Diplomat, Tumultuous Closing Chapter":

Just weeks ago, Hillary Clinton was poised to glide out of office as secretary of state with job-approval ratings near 70% and a political buzz suggesting she is already the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate to beat.

Then, disaster struck at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Mrs. Clinton calls the "terrible events"—involving the death of a U.S. ambassador—"one of the most challenging" periods of her four-year tenure. At that moment, U.S. foreign policy, largely overshadowed by economic concerns in the presidential election, roared to the forefront.

Mrs. Clinton long has said she would leave the job after one term. Now, however, in a sign of how much the tragedy has shaken her final days, she indicated in an interview that she may be willing to stay a bit longer.

"A lot of people have talked to me about staying," Mrs. Clinton said, declining to be more specific. When asked if current events will force her departure date to slip, she said it was "unlikely," but for the first time left open that possibility for the short term.

With presidential voting just days away, the suggestion she might stay could offer a sense of stability for Barack Obama as he makes his closing arguments. Mrs. Clinton has strong appeal among women voters as well, a possible swing constituency on Election Day.

Traveling with Mrs. Clinton in recent weeks, through New York, Asia and Washington, provides a close view of her role executing foreign policy for Mr. Obama, her onetime nemesis. In the Benghazi crisis, she made a previously undisclosed call to Libyan President Mohammed Magarief seeking immediate help in finding the missing U.S. ambassador, and later held a one-hour private meeting with him at the United Nations to urge him to disarm the militias and turn the tragedy into a "positive moment to propel Libya forward."

At the same time, she has faced rising violence in the Islamic world, a complex U.S. relationship with China and testy exchanges with Israel's prime minister over Iran's nuclear threat. These issues and others have gained prominence in the closing days of the U.S. presidential race. They also stand to shape Mrs. Clinton's legacy as secretary of state and her future political prospects.

As she rode to Andrews Air Force Base last month to meet President Obama for the arrival of the American bodies from Libya, Mrs. Clinton pressed the leader of one country where protests were still erupting outside the U.S. embassy. "Get your people there now," she said to him on the phone. "No excuses." Minutes later, she was out of the car, comforting the victims' families.

With President Obama occupied with re-election, Mrs. Clinton is doing much of the foreign-policy heavy lifting. And in the aftermath of the Libya attack that took the life of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Mrs. Clinton put her own imprint on the debate by accepting blame. "I take responsibility," Mrs. Clinton said in an interview in her office.

Well, sounds like just more Democrat CYA to me. All of these people are all messed up by political calculations. Hillary's been found wanting in the 3:00am moment she said she'd be prepared to meet. It's almost Greek tragedy territory. She's getting old. And now she's willing to stay at State longer to try to patch up the damage of President Clusterf-k in Libya, and perhaps the entire Middle East? Alas, too late for that Madame Secretary. Hit the exits as soon as you get the chance. Distance yourself of the presidential imposter in the Oval Office. Perhaps the public will be as forgiving of you as they have your husband.

'We Are Going to Win'

At the Wall Street Journal, "Romney Tells Iowans ‘We Are Going to Win’."

And here's the fantastic new ad from Team Romney:

Harvey Weinstein's 'SEAL Team Six' Boosts Obama Footage in Shameless 'Gutsy Call' Promotion

Well, it's not like it's a surprise or anything.

At London's Daily Mail, "GOP's outrage after Harvey Weinstein's SEAL Team Six film on bin Laden take down was 're-cut to add MORE Obama footage'."

And see Vanity Fair, "Why Mitt Romney Was Cut from a Harvey Weinstein Movie":

Disappointing news for anyone hoping that Mitt Romney would abandon his political career, pack his worldly belongings into a beat-up VW, and move to Hollywood: a scene featuring the presidential candidate was cut from a forthcoming action film produced by heavyweight Hollywood Harvey Weinstein. The film—which could have been his big breakthrough—was slated to premiere merely two days before the election.

The movie is SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden, a 90-minute drama that will premiere on November 4 on the National Geographic Channel. Directed by John Stockwell (Crazy/Beautiful and Blue Crush), the film will include President Obama at a White House Correspondents’ Dinner and taking a lonesome stroll “thanks to the magic of editing,” as The New York Times puts it. The Romney scene was removed at the behest of the National Geographic Channel, on the grounds that it gave the impression that the former governor had opposed the plan to apprehend Osama bin Laden. According to the channel’s chief executive, Howard T. Owens, “We wouldn’t air this if it were propaganda.”

Shoot, probably better Romney was edited out.

It's airing November 4th? No political favoritism there, no sir. And hey, Weinstein's in the tank. He's been hosting Hollywood fundraisers for the president. I doubt Weinstein will be making a film on the Libya debacle, however. That wouldn't fit the "gutsy call" narrative so well.

The Posionous Fruit of a Pro-Jihad President

At Atlas Shrugs:

On September 11, when the White House was receiving emails pleading for help in the face of an Al Qaeda attack on our consulate in Libya, Ambassador Stevens, and his staff, Obama issued this statement regarding the attack on our embassy in Cairo, happening at the same time:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy.

Reading Obama's statement in light of what we know and what we know he knew takes Obama's treason to a whole other level. Blaming free speech and supporting sharia in light of mayhem, madness and murder of Islamic supremcism is the act of an enemy. It's an act of war from inside the Oval Office. But it is consistent with Obama's pro-jihad leanings...

More at the link.

And don't forget, Pamela's written the book on this.

Why Did Obama Run Left?

From Stanley Kurtz, at National Review:

Let the pre-criminations begin! Clive Crook asks why on earth Obama ceded the center to Mitt Romney by running a class-warfare-based campaign. Crook sees Obama as a centrist mysteriously cowed by his party’s leftist base. I think we can clear this mystery up. Obama ran a leftist class-warfare campaign because…well, he’s a leftist class-warrior.

QED.

But read the whole thing.

Sears Yanks Sexy Burka Halloween Costume

From the you can't make this stuff up department.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Sears Goes Sharia! Sexy Burka Halloween Costume Pulled From Website."

Shark Shooter

Check out this utterly fascinating profile of nature photographer Michael Muller, at Red Bull's "Red Bulletin."

And check the photos at Muller's home page. Just outstanding work.

Netroots Bloggers Mark 10th Birthday in Decline and Struggling for Survival

An interesting report at The Daily Beast.

The netroots is just different rather than declining. The political web has changed dramatically over the years. Bloggers come and go, but progressive online political activism is here to stay. If Romney wins four years from now Daily Beast could simply recycle this piece with the key actors being the right wing blogs and the tea party leaders that helped propel the GOP to power in Congress in 2010, and who've been driving online discussion and debate throughout the 2012 campaign.

That's said, it's hilarious to read the whiny response from people like Susie Madrak and the idiots at Firedoglake (no link). Screw 'em. If they can't generate enough ad revenue to keep afloat the world will be better off without 'em, the f-ks.

'Romney Well Positioned to Put This Race Away'

According to John Hawkins, at Right Wing News, "A State of the Race Report for 10/24/2012."

And notice that RCP Electoral College distribution. I doubt they're consulting Nate Silver on that.

See: "BATTLE FOR WHITE HOUSE."

Montana's 'Castle Doctrine' Law

At the New York Times, "'Castle' Law at Issue After Fatal Montana Shooting":

Heather Fredenberg, 22, said she and Dan [Fredenberg] were passionate about each other, but also bickered about child care, bills, fixing the car and other stresses amplified by having two infants and not enough time or money. The county attorney’s report said they were “mutually abusive with each other, both verbally and physically.” More than once they considered divorcing.

About three months before the shooting, Ms. Fredenberg started seeing Mr. [Brice] Harper. She has called it a flirtation and an “emotional affair” that was intimate but never sexual. She told her husband about the relationship, and the two men once clashed at Fatt Boys Bar & Grille in Kalispell.

Although Ms. Fredenberg said she and her husband were committed to each other despite everything, Mr. Fredenberg’s father said his son believed the marriage was breaking apart. The day before he died, he told his father, “I’m giving up on it. I just can’t put up with it anymore,” his father said.

On Sept. 22, Mr. Harper called Ms. Fredenberg and asked a favor: He was moving out of town the next day, and could she come over and help him clean the house? She took her 18-month-old twin boys and spent the afternoon at his home, a five-minute drive from hers. She swapped tense text messages with Mr. Fredenberg and talked on the phone around 8:30 p.m. He asked whether she was with Mr. Harper. She said she did not answer. He cursed and hung up.

As she was strapping her sons into their car seats and getting ready to leave, she said, she asked Mr. Harper to circle the block with her to diagnose a clunking sound in her car. As they drove, she saw headlights in her rearview mirror. Her husband had come looking for her, and he was behind them.

Ms. Fredenberg said she dropped Mr. Harper off at his house and told him to go inside and lock the doors. She said he told her that he had a gun and was not afraid of her husband. Mr. Fredenberg, close behind, parked his car and followed Mr. Harper into his garage, its light spilling onto the driveway.

Read it all at the link.

And at Althouse, "The NYT attempts an anecdotal argument against the law that lets you defend yourself in your home."

Rope and Change

Via Legal Insurrection:

BONUS: At the O.C. Register, "From 'Hope and Change' to 'Smirk and Disdain'."

And at Wikipedia, "Rope-a-dope."

Bumps in the Road Timeline

Via Theo Spark:

Patrick Moran, Son of Democrat Rep. Jim Moran, Resigns in Voter Fraud Scandal

The O'Keefe video is here.

And see The Hill, "Rep. Moran's son resigns from father's campaign amid voter fraud scandal" (via Memeorandum).

That's definitely a feather in the hat for O'Keefe. He keeps plugging away after the Mary Landrieu conviction.

Corporate Optimism Fades

Actually, while consumers might be a little more optimistic, this stuff tends to accumulate. When you see earnings on your mutual funds and 401Ks collapsing, that can be pretty harsh. Folks turn bearish and they take it out on their political leaders. I think there's a lot of amorphous economic disenfranchisement out there, and that could be a November surprise on election day.

Either way, check the New York Times, "Companies Aren't as Optimistic as Consumers":

Consumers may finally be feeling more optimistic about the economy, but corporate America is not sharing the sentiment.

A host of market bellwethers reported disappointing results Tuesday and cut their outlook for future growth, sending stocks into a tailspin and highlighting the divide between companies and consumers.

It was Wall Street’s second big drop in the last three trading days, with household names like Xerox, 3M and DuPont leading the way down as the Dow Jones industrial average dropped more than 240 points. The Dow is now down 3.7 percent from its high for the year reached earlier this month.

The concerns among business leaders extend well beyond earnings — a Federal Reserve regional survey released Tuesday showed new signs of weakness in the domestic manufacturing sector, even as global growth slows.

Corporate executives also reiterated the danger posed to the economy if Washington cannot avert sharp tax increases and spending cuts in early January, the fiscal cliff that many economists say heightens the risk of recession. This uncertainty is compounded by the prospect of a new Fed chairman by early 2014.

The pessimism is all the more notable because after years of wariness, consumers are feeling more buoyant. Consumer confidence is at its highest point since before the financial crisis. The housing market is showing signs of life. And retail sales actually sped up in the third quarter, fueling the hopes of retailers for a robust holiday season.

“Normally, you think of consumer confidence as more important,” said Ethan Harris, chief United States economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “But the business sector is a quarter or two ahead this time.”

One reason for the disparity is that businesses are much more focused on conditions abroad than consumers in the United States. With growth in China slowing and parts of Europe in recession, cooling international sales are weighing on corporate earnings. The prospect of slowing global demand for oil generated a sell-off Tuesday, as crude fell 2.2 percent, to $86.67, its lowest level since July.

Indeed, the sectors that rely more on international sales have been among those hit the hardest. Xerox, 3M and United Technologies each lowered their outlook.

While the fiscal cliff looms large in boardrooms, consumers are less concerned about whether Congress will extend Bush-era tax cuts set to expire in January and whether it will come up with a deal to cut the deficit and avert automatic spending cuts.

“Clearly, there is something going on, with consumers going one way and businesses going the other,” said Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist at Capital Economics.

Looking ahead, optimists say the new willingness of consumers to spend will ultimately bolster corporate results, but there is a lingering fear that the struggles of American companies may be pointing the way.

“The heads of the large corporations have their fingers on a lot of information,” said Bernard F. McGinn, president of McGinn Investment Management. “The decisions they make are of a scale many times what the consumer does.”

Marxist Professoriate Gets More Marxist, Survey Finds

I'm not kidding, either. When we had a S.F State urban hip-hop professor give a lecture a couple of years ago at my college, I asked him point blank during the Q & A if he really believed in the revolutionary agenda that he was spouting and teaching to his students. I asked him straight up, "Do you want to see the overthrow of capitalism in the U.S.?" He didn't even blink. Absolutely he said. And then I asked for a show of hands among my faculty colleagues for how many agreed. Every single hand went up. When you're constantly marinated in the hard left-wing curriculum of the social sciences and humanities, after a while you start to identify with the most radical theories and epistemologies. The promise of America's founding is jettisoned for a bastardized and simplistic Howard Zinn outlook on the world. We routinely have far-left speakers at the college and they're welcomed with open arms, drawing huge contingents of student Che wannabe mass-murderers. It's pretty pathetic, but it is what it is.

In any case, check this report at Inside Higher Ed, "Survey finds that professors, already liberal, have moved further to the left":

In the 1998-9 survey, more than 35 percent of faculty members identified themselves as middle of the road, and less than half (47.5 percent) identified as liberal or far left. In the new data, 62.7 percent identify as liberal or far left.

More:

Neil Gross, a professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, has written extensively on faculty political issues. He is the co-author of the 2007 report that found that while professors may lean left, they do so less than is imagined and less uniformly across institution type than is imagined, and that many are in the political middle.

He said that he couldn't be sure why more professors were identifying as far left, but that "during periods of significant economic downturn, and significant rise of inequality, it's not surprising" that such a shift would take place, especially given that in academe, "radicalism is still a live possibility."

Gross said that the "optics" of the data could lead to criticism of higher education. "From the vantage point of some folks, that will make academe look bad. For others, it will make academe look like a place concerned with the country."

I don't know why folks like this guy Gross try to sugarcoat it. It's bad. It doesn't just "look bad." It's just bad. We are dumbing down students by denying them critical thinking skills. We're turning them into far left-wing robots ready to rubber stamp the latest far left-progressive rage, whether it's supporting stupid shit like "Israeli Apartheid Week" or the reelection of our hopelessly dishonest, Communist-trained President Eye-Candy Clusterf-k.

.

Dems Begin the Post-Obama Blame Game

Well, Romney could still lose, but still.

See Jonathan Tobin at Commentary (via Instapundit):

Some Democrats are apparently not waiting for Barack Obama to lose the presidential election before starting the inevitable recriminations about whose fault it was. Whether writing strictly on his own hook or as a result of conversations with campaign officials, New York Times political writer Matt Bai has fired the first shot in what may turn out to be a very nasty battle over who deserves the lion’s share of the blame for what may turn out to be a November disaster for the Democrats. That the Times would publish a piece on October 24 that takes as its starting point the very real possibility that the president will lose, and that blame for that loss needs to be allocated, is astonishing enough. But that their nominee for scapegoat is the man who is almost certainly the most popular living Democrat is the sort of thing that is not only shocking, but might be regarded as a foretaste of the coming battle to control the party in 2016.

More at the link.

New Pamela Anderson Pics!

At London's Daily Mail, "Busting out! Pamela Anderson struggles to contain her famous curves in a VERY low cut cream dress."