Hurricane Sandy Carves Path of Destruction Across U.S. East Coast

At the Wall Street Journal, "Millions Are Without Power and Thousands Are Stranded; Atlantic City Is Submerged; Death Toll Is Expected to Rise":

Superstorm Sandy carved a harrowing path of destruction through the East Coast on Monday, inundating Atlantic City and sending cars floating through the streets of lower Manhattan.

Accelerating Monday evening as it made landfall on the New Jersey coast, the storm promised a legacy as one of the most damaging ever to menace the Northeast, from North Carolina to New England.

Some 3.1 million people were left without electricity across the region Monday evening—the most since the 2003 blackout. In New York, more than 250,000 Con Ed customers from 39th Street south were left without power. One of the city's major hospitals was forced to evacuate patients late Monday when its backup power system failed.

"It's sure shaping up to be a storm that will be historic in nature," said Louis Uccellini, director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, a federal government agency.

The storm left a trail of death, and the toll is expected to mount. Two people perished in Mendham, N.J., when a tree struck their car, officials said. In New York state, at least six were killed, including a 30-year-old man who died when a tree fell on his home.

Continue reading.

And at CNN, "Sandy ravages N.Y., N.J."

Nate Silver Fast on His Way to One-Term Celebrity

Robert Stacy McCain's in Ohio hoping to get in a decent bit of reporting, despite the political disruptions caused by Hurricane Sandy. See, "FROM OHIO: Schedule Scrambled; Obama, Romney Cancel Campaign Events," and "SCENES FROM ROMNEY-RYAN RALLY."

But we're in luck. Jonathan Tobin is pulling suicide watch at Commentary, "Infallible Election Prognosticators Tend to Have Brief Careers":

Back in May 2011, the leading liberal poll analyst of this election cycle returned to his roots in an op-ed published in the New York Times. Nate Silver, who had parlayed a brilliant record as an independent numbers cruncher in the 2008 presidential election into a gig as the paper’s political blogger in the age of Obama, first made his name as a writer as a baseball guy and one of the leading exponents of new and advanced ways of looking at baseball statistics. On May 9, 2011, Silver penned a piece for the Times explaining why New York Yankees captain Derek Jeter was finished as a baseball star. Given that that the Yankees shortstop had an uncharacteristically mediocre 2010 season and was off to a slow start in 2011, it was hard to argue with Silver’s conclusion.

Except the very same day that Silver was planting Jeter’s tombstone in the Times, the future Hall-of-Famer got four hits, including two home runs in a game. I noted this embarrassing development in a blog post here titled, “The Perils of Punditry: That’s Why They Play the Games.” For my pains, I was subjected to a chorus of abuse via e-mail and Twitter from Silver’s fans, most of which knew nothing about Sabermetrics. Indeed, another Times blogger noted my criticism (which was laced with respect for Silver’s work on both baseball and politics) and ironically noted, “the jury was out” on whether the results of “one game” could disprove the great Nate.

The jury was out in May, but within a few months, Silver’s fans would be dropping that prediction of his down the proverbial memory hole as Jeter put together a stellar second half of 2011 and followed it up with a brilliant 2012 in which he led the Major Leagues in base hits. That didn’t mean Silver didn’t know what he was talking about, but it was proof that a proper understanding of what has already happened didn’t necessarily give even the smartest of researchers the ability to predict the future. Fast forward to the last days of the 2012 presidential election campaign, and it looks like that day in May wasn’t the only time Silver’s crystal ball has clouded up.

Continue reading.

PREVIOUSLY:

* "Akron Beacon Poll Finds Ohio Dead Heat at 49-49 — Presidential Race Tighter Than Obama's A**hole in a Prison Shower."

* "Nate Silver: Voice of the New Castrati."

* "If Bias Doesn't Matter Why Would Bill Maher Host Nate Silver on 'Real Time'?"

* "Oh My! Romney Back Up to 51 Percent in Gallup's Daily Tracking — Nate Silver Hardest Hit!"

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

* "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...

ADDED: There's more at Memeorandum, for example, from Elspeth Reeve "People Who Can't Do Math Are So Mad At Nate Silver." And Tim Stanley, at Telegraph UK, "Nate Silver is partisan and wrong. The voters will decide Romney v Obama, not The New York Times":

In the history of presidential elections, has there ever been such an effort by one side to poll their way to victory? While the Republicans have spoken this season about jobs and debt – willing themselves to a moral victory – the Democrats have talked constantly about how well their guy is polling in one or two states. The goal is to create a sense of inevitability, to convince the public to vote for Obama because he’s a winner and who wouldn’t want to vote for the winner? We’ve witnessed the evolution of polling from an objective gauge of the public mood to a propaganda tool: partisan and inaccurate.

Step forward Nate Silver of the New York Times. Nate has been an open supporter of the President and his newspaper just endorsed Obama (although it also went for Dukakis, so it ain’t that good at picking winners). But context doesn’t matter because maths is maths and maths can’t lie – and Nate says that, according to his model, Obama has a 74.6 per cent chance of winning. You might find that figure a little odd given that on the same page you’ll see that Obama is ahead by less than 3 per cent nationally and his advantage lies in one state, Ohio. It’s even odder when you consider how it conflicts with other polls that emerged this weekend giving a virtual tie in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It’s damn near-surreal when you discover that Gallup puts Romney ahead by four points among (and this distinction is critical) likely voters. Meanwhile, Obama’s job approval rating is heading downwards. Does Nate know something that the rest of the world doesn’t?

Actually, no. Nate Silver's an idiot, plain an simple, the mouthpiece for the "New Castrati."

Continue reading about the polling clown wonder boy.

STILL MORE: At Legal Insurrection, "If Nate Silver cannot be wrong, how can he be right?":

I find the whole focus on Silver and his presidential election “model” to be particularly annoying...

Well, Silver's obvious bias is annoying, but RTWT.

Support Crashes for California's Proposition 30

The Los Angeles Times released a number of poll findings over the last week, but I've been focused on national politics. The raw survey is here. And here's the write-up on the tanking support for this ridiculous tax-hike initiative, "Support plunges for Prop. 30, Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative":

SACRAMENTO — Support has plunged for Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to raise billions of dollars in taxes, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll shows, with less than half of voters planning to cast ballots in favor of the measure.

Only 46% of registered voters now support Brown's initiative, a 9-point drop over the last month, and 42% oppose it. The findings follow a lackluster month of campaigning by the governor, who had spent little time on the stump and found himself fighting off attacks from backers of a separate ballot measure that would raise taxes for schools.

Although Brown recently launched a frantic push for votes, both proposals could fail. Tax measures rarely gain support in the closing days of a campaign.

Proposition 30 would temporarily raise taxes on individuals earning more than $250,000 a year and impose a quarter-cent hike in the state sales tax. Enthusiasm for the governor's plan has fallen across the political spectrum.

The steepest decline is among voters who register without a party preference — a crucial voting bloc for Brown. Support from those Californians dropped from 63% a month ago to 48%.

"Proposition 30 has been under attack from the left and the right," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. "It has taken a toll."

The USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/Los Angeles Times poll surveyed 1,504 registered voters by telephone from Oct. 15 to Oct. 21. It was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic firm, in conjunction with American Viewpoint, a Republican company. The margin of error is 2.9 percentage points.

The Los Angeles Times editorial page endorsed the measure, mainly because the initiative's funding doesn't have to be spent on education! But see the Stockton Record, "Proposition 30 is voter manipulation at its finest":

Gov. Brown and proponents of Prop. 30 make it seem like Prop. 30 requires education cuts by saying that the initiative prevents them. But, there is nothing in Prop. 30 that mandates funding cuts to education if it doesn't pass. The governor and the Legislature can change the budget at any time. They have made a choice to cut education. This is voter manipulation at its finest. The message the governor is sending is essentially this: "Give us more money or we're taking it out on schools."

Sacramento politicians are notorious for poor budgeting. Voting yes on Prop. 30 sends a message that we are OK with the tax-and-spend system that is crippling California. We all want good schools, but Prop. 30 doesn't help them. Prop 30 is another ploy from Sacramento politicians to get us to hand over more of our tax dollars. This November, Californians must say enough is enough. Vote no on Prop. 30.

Young Voters Burned Out on Barack

Well, the Millenials are fried, but hey, Team O's plugging away for the next generation of Obamabots!

See the Los Angeles Times, "Young voters' lack of fervor hurting Obama":

BOULDER, Colo. — They turned out in huge numbers and overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Barack Obama, voting not just for a politician but the leader of a cause that seemed both epic and transformational.

But four years later, many young voters — facing high unemployment and diminished dreams — regard the presidential race as a less-than-inspiring choice between two thoroughly conventional candidates.

There is little doubt Obama will again win a majority of the youth vote against Republican Mitt Romney, as Democrats have in all but three presidential elections since 18-year-olds started voting in 1972.

The more important question is whether the turnout matches that of 2008, a factor that could decide the outcome in several battleground states — North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado among them — and ultimately determine who wins the White House on Nov. 6.

Luke DeGregori, a University of Colorado physics student, is typical. The lanky 19-year-old couldn't vote four years ago, but remembers the enthusiasm surrounding Obama's historic candidacy. His parents had a yard sign outside their Denver home and Obama bumper stickers on both their cars. Today, DeGregori, a Democrat, drives one of those cars and keeps the bumper sticker "because I still kind of support Obama."

He is disappointed, though, that the president turned out to be "just another conformist politician."

"Most friends I know are kind of like me," DeGregori said, pausing between decorating classrooms for a campus Halloween party. "They're going to vote for Obama, but it's not an enthusiastic vote. It's just we prefer Obama over Romney.

Pat Caddell on Jeanine Pirro Fox News Weekend

At Astute Bloggers, "COULTER AND CADDELL DEMOLISH OBAMA AND THE LEGACY MEDIA."

BONUS: "Media Blackout: Aside from FOX, Sunday News Hosts Fail to Raise Benghazi."

Obama's Cult of Progressive 'Hope and Change' Comes Crashing Down

From Glenn Reynolds, at the New York Post, "Broken promises: O has dashed lefties’ hopes":

As the 2012 presidential campaign winds to a close — it’s mostly about Big Bird and binders, apparently — it’s hard to recall the heady days of 2008. But thinking back, things have really gone downhill.

Four years ago, remember, we were told that electing Barack Obama as president would bring about an unprecedented degree of racial healing, and usher in a postracial society to match our new postracial president.

Foreigners would love us — Arabs and Third-Worlders because he was black with an Arabic name; Europeans because he wasn’t George W. Bush.
Bush’s ginned up “War On Terror” would fade away, extrajudicial killings would stop, Guantanamo would close and there would be no more undeclared wars in foreign lands. Our diplomats would be respected, and the world would be our oyster.

At home, the hypercompetent Obama would review budgets line-by-line for waste, fight pork and cut the deficit in half by his first term. We’d have unprecedented government transparency, and a new, post-partisan political style in which rational argument would replace division and name-calling. The drug war would ease, and those nasty Bush-era warrantless wiretaps would cease.

Also, under the enlightened economic stewardship of the Obama administration, the economy would recover, unemployment would be held down and housing would recover.

Well, not so much....

Continue.

I think the expectations were a little high to begin with, but O's been pretty much fail all around.

Monster Storm Targets East

At the Wall Street Journal, "Coastal Residents Evacuated, Flights Canceled as Hurricane Sandy Approaches":

Hurricane Sandy loomed Sunday over the northeastern U.S., triggering evacuation orders for hundreds of thousands of residents, the cancellation of nearly 8,000 airline flights and the mass closure of schools and public transit systems, as authorities warned of heavy rains, high winds and flooding when the storm reaches land late Monday or early Tuesday.

The Category 1 hurricane was forecast to drop 8 inches of rain on northeastern North Carolina and up to a foot in parts of the mid-Atlantic states over the next few days. Forecasters described a storm footprint expected to stretch from Washington, D.C., north to Philadelphia, New York City and Boston. The National Weather Service said two cold fronts, one west of Hurricane Sandy and another north, were drawing the warm-air hurricane toward the populous coast and expected to fortify Sandy's reach and intensity.

The unusual weather confluence will turn Sandy into a post-tropical cyclone, or nor'easter, unleashing record low-pressure readings and wind gusts to 70 miles an hour as far inland as western Pennsylvania and western New York, the National Weather Service said.

More at that top link.

And at CNN, "Sandy disrupts campaigns; impact on race too early to tell."

Also at Instapundit, "FOR SANDY UPDATES, follow Brendan Loy on Twitter." And Memeorandum.

Obama's Independent Problem

From Chris Cillizza, at the Washington Post:

President Obama has a problem with independents. And it’s not a small problem.

In the last three releases of the tracking poll conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News, Obama has trailed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney among independent voters by between 16 and 20 percentage points.

That’s a striking reversal from 2008, when Obama won independent voters, who made up 29 percent of the electorate, by eight points over Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

And if Romney’s large margin among independents holds, it will be a break not just from 2008 but also from 2000 and 2004. In 2000, Texas Gov. George W. Bush won independents by 47 percent to 45 percent over Vice President Al Gore. Four years later, Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts essentially split unaffiliated voters, according to exit polls — 48 percent for Bush to 49 percent for Kerry. (Independents made up 27 percent of the vote in 2000 and 26 percent in 2004.)

Okay, but don't get cocky, as Glenn Reynolds always says.

'I Pledge'

From Reason.tv.

The creepy original is here.

Giants Win World Series After Sweeping Tigers

Some of the most dominating baseball I've ever seen.

The New York Times reports:

On 1-1, Cabrera goes fishing for a breaking ball away and misses, 1-2. Takes a pitch, 2-2, fouls off the next. Then Romo freezes him with a fastball for strike three, striking out the side, and the jumping, rolling, hat-throwing celebration begins in the middle of the infield.

Giants win, 4-3, in 10 innings, for their second world championship in three years.

Also at USA Today, "Giants sweep Tigers for World Series title":

12:02AM EDT October 29. 2012 - DETROIT – They took the hard, winding road to the World Series, then discovered the direct path.

The San Francisco Giants, who survived six elimination games in the playoffs, closed out a four-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers with a 4-3 victory in 10 innings Sunday night to win their second World Series in three years.

Marco Scutaro drove in Ryan Theriot with a two-out RBI single in the 10th for the winning score. Theriot had opened the inning with a single off Detroit closer Phil Coke, pitching his second inning, and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt.

Sergio Romo got the save for the Giants, who defeated the Texas Rangers in five games in 2010 for their first World Series crown since moving to San Francisco in 1958.

Pablo Sandoval, who hit three home runs in Game 1, was named MVP of the World Series.

"We're just happy right now," Buster Posey said. "This tonight was a fitting way for us to end it. Those guys played hard; they didn't stop."

Continue reading.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

And see Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Roundup..."

Also at Jill Stanek's, "Stanek Sunday funnies..."

CREDIT: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Remember In November."

World Series Rule 5

Well, the Giants could wrap up a sweep tonight, and I'm sure folks will be enjoying a few cold ones during the game, so here you go.

Proof Positive starts things off with "Friday Night Babe - Alyson Hannigan!" And also, "Saturday Linkaround."

More over at Pirate's Coves, "If All You See…", and "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup."

And forget the hopeless left-wing idiocy, she's looking good, at WyBlog, "Obamabot Eva Longoria dumped Jets QB Mark Sanchez hours before Sunday's loss to the Patriots."

More sports at Randy's Roundtable, "Cowboys Host Giants Today." Yeah, and the Giants are up 23-7 as I write this. Bonus: Angie Harmon is live tweeting.

That's all for now. Add your Rule 5 links at the comments and I'll update!

Barack Obama's Never-Ending Lies

Dorothy Rabinowitz said it a week or so ago, "All administrations conceal, falsify and tell lies—this is understood..." But the scale of deceit in the Obama White House is literally unprecedented in modern American politics.

Matt Welch has a devastating essay on this at the New York Post:

Do you vote for presidents who repeatedly lie to you? I don’t.

President Obama lied in his 2010 State of the Union Address when he said his administration had “excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs” (in fact, he had 40 ex-lobbyists then, and 54 now, according to the Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carney). He lied that year when he said “We are on the path to cutting our deficits in half,” and he’s lying this year when he says his new plan would cut the deficit by $4.3 trillion (more like $2 trillion). Obama lied when he said his signature health-care plan represented a triumph of the little man over special interests (it was precisely the opposite). He lied when he said the Congressional Budget Office concluded that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit by $1 trillion (it’s complicated, but no), and he, uh, forecasted incorrectly when he insisted that the typical family’s insurance premiums would go down $2,500 a year (they have instead gone up).

The administration’s reaction to the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi — lie, lie, lie and lie....

And for that, he will never get my vote.

BONUS: Check out the phenomenal roundup on the lies, at Nice Deb, "Video: Senator Portman Calls Obama Out: We Need to Find Out if POTUS Issued a Directive or Not."

PREVIOUSLY: "'We Watched Our People Die and Did Nothing...'"

'We Watched Our People Die and Did Nothing...'

At the video, Glenn Beck gets down to the nitty-gritty of the Benghazi debacle, via an American Power reader who sent me the clip. And also Karin McQuillan, at American Thinker, "Did Obama Watch While They Fought for their Lives?":

They fought for their lives for seven hours. 9/11/ 2012. Benghazi. The White House watched. No help was sent and they died.

Four Americans died in the jihadi attack on our consulate in Benghazi. Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, two retired SEALS who were working as civilian security specialists in Benghazi, learned that Ambassador Stevens and nine other people at the consulate were under attack and rushed to their defense. The fourth man was Sean Smith, father of three, an Air Force veteran, working for the State Department in Libya.

The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and our military monitored the battle in real time starting with the first phone calls directly from Benghazi. A small military force from Tripoli was dispatched and was able to rescue some personnel hiding in other buildings. Ambassador Stevens remained missing, as did these three men. The fire-fight raged on.

The shocking news of October 22 was that a drone ordered in from Tripoli sent back images of the attack in real time. The battle was sent on streaming video direct to the Situation Room in the White House. Within two hours, emails from Benghazi reported that Al Qaeda in Libya was claiming responsibility.

President Obama, our Commander-in-Chief, had military options available to try and save our men. He could have had the drone armed with Hellfire missiles. He could have scrambled fighter jets from Sicily to drive off the attackers. He could have dropped in Special Forces. He had seven hours to take action.

He did nothing.

Continue reading.

Andrew Sullivan: 'You put a map of the Civil War over this electoral map, you’ve got the Civil War...'

Andrew Sullivan's ahistoricism is simply breathtaking. Just watch his stunningly ridiculous comments on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," at Mediate, "Andrew Sullivan to ABC: If Romney Wins Florida and VA, It’s the ‘Confederacy’" (via Memeorandum):

PBS reporter Gwen Ifill said that “we can’t ignore” the possible factor racial animus may play in deciding the election, noting that the poll indicates that, on some level, people are still willing to admit “racial bias.”

Sullivan then added: “If Virginia and Florida go back to the Republicans, it’s the Confederacy. Entirely. You put a map of the Civil War over this electoral map, you’ve got the Civil War.”

Conservative panelist George Will rolled his eyes. “I don’t know,” said a skeptical Ifill.

Will then posited two possible explanations for Obama’s slippage in the white vote since 2008: “A lot of white people who voted for Obama in 2008 watched him govern for four years and said, ‘Not so good. Let’s try someone else.’ The alternative, the ‘Confederacy’ hypothesis is that those people somehow, for some reason in the last four years became racist.”

“That’s not my argument at all,” replied Sullivan. “It’s the southernization of the Republican Party. [Virginia and Florida] were the only two states in 2008 that violated the Confederacy rule.”

Sullivan's comments are perfectly representative of the left's hopelessly desperate and utterly despicable politics of racial fear-mongering. Progressives have been attacking conservative presidential politics as racist since at least 1968, when Republicans deployed the so-called "Southern strategy" in the election of Richard Nixon to the White House. The South has been in the GOP column for decades. It's just the way it is, not shocking and not a racist conspiracy. That's the 2004 map above, where George W. Bush was reelected with 286 votes in the Electoral College, winning all the states of the Old Confederacy, and some of the Border States as well. Mitt Romney could put together a similar coalition of states on election day. I mean, if the left is intent on attacking Mitt Romney's campaign as racist, it will only be in line with long-standing leftist research stressing inbred racist DNA in Southern voting constituencies, which I personally don't endorse. These kinds of attacks on Republicans aren't new. If race indeed plays a role in a Barack Obama's defeat on November 6th, it certainly won't be something that Republicans pulled out of a hat at the last minute.

But remember, it's decidedly not the current strategy of the Republican Party to run a racially divisive platform. No, that honorarium goes to the current White House, the bankrupt Obama for America campaign, and the left's pathetic race-baiting enablers in the press. We've been accosted with allegations of racist "dog whistles" for almost four years now. The progressive left is positively obsessed with race, as the nearly criminal initial reporting on the Trayvon Martin incident showed. And any reader of William Jacobson's Legal Insurrection blog is more than aware of the embarrassingly comic minstrel show the left puts on every week with race-baiting attacks on conservatives. It's utterly shameless, for example, "Saturday Night Card Game (If You Can Hear the Dog Whistle, You Might Be a Racist)."

If Obama loses it will be because Americans have had it with his administration's failures and incompetence. The progressives will cry racism until the cows come home. But the rest of us have long tuned out the race-baiting. People who're genuinely concerned about the country will simply get to work rebuilding the economy and repairing the damage of four years of atonement in foreign policy. It's not a matter of if but when. And as recent polling increasingly indicates, 2013 is looking like a big restoration year for American conservatism.

BONUS: More at NewsBusters, "Andrew Sullivan Makes a Fool of Himself on ABC's 'This Week' With George Will and Gwen Ifill's Help."

UPDATE: Michael Zak on Twitter reminds us that the Democrats were and remain the party of racial segregation, as he pointed out in his book, "Back to Basics for the Republican Party."

And Ed Driscoll links at Instapundit (thanks!), and Glenn Reynolds updates at the post:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Andrew knows even less about American history than he knows about American culture and politics, something he’s demonstrated repeatedly. He should stick to his core area of expertise, forensic obstetrics.

Akron Beacon Poll Finds Ohio Dead Heat at 49-49 — Presidential Race Tighter Than Obama's A**hole in a Prison Shower

Well, Nate Silver's still whistling past the graveyard with his latest entry showing Obama with a 2.3 percent lead in the Ohio polling average, so the new numbers from the Buckeye State newspaper consortium will no doubt amp up the pressure on the New York Times wonder boy. To borrow from Bill Maher's vulger monologue the other night, the race is tighter than Barack Obama's a**hole in a prison shower.

See: "Presidential race tied in Ohio newspaper poll" (via Memeorandum). There's no way for Obama cultists to spin these numbers. Mitt Romney has the momentum, big time, with a little over a week to go until election day. Guy Benson provides a brief summary:

Dead heat, with independents split — but Romney ahead by six on the economy. And then there’s this: “Republicans as a group were more likely to say they were very enthusiastic about the election than Democrats were.” These results represent a five point swing to the GOP ticket since the last Ohio Newspaper Association survey, taken last month. Team Romney scrapped three rallies in Virginia tomorrow due to the impending severe weather, and that might be just as well: Mitt will join Paul Ryan on the trail in the Buckeye State instead.

If things don't change the New York Times wonder boy's poll predictions are going to take it in the rear, to say nothing of the nation's first gay president.

See also Ed Driscoll, "Michael Barone Predicts That Romney Will Win 2012 Presidential Race."

Benghazi Reveals Obama Is a Coward and Disgrace

From Daniel Gardner, at the Jackson Clarion Ledger:

It's painfully & outrageously clear that BHO watched our heroes & diplomatic staff die & did nothing. Voting for him'd be disloyal #tcot #p2
— Markham Robinson (@BraveLad) October 28, 2012

President Obama continues to campaign acting as if he personally killed Osama bin Laden. “Osama bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is on the run!” Obama has no scruples, conscience, empathy, or humility.

Obama was meeting with national security leaders when the attack in Benghazi went down. Unclassified documents reveal he received emails directly from Benghazi within minutes of the beginning of the attack, staff in Benghazi were in real-time contact with the State Department, and two drones overhead in Benghazi showed Washington exactly what was happening on the ground there.

Unclassified emails reveal three requests were made from Benghazi for help, and all three requests were rejected with orders to “stand down.” Special Forces troops were available and within two or three hours could have saved at least two of the four who died at the end of the seven-hour attack.

Obama literally watched the seven-hour battle refusing to send troops to save Americans…or, he didn’t care to watch or to intervene. Regardless, he didn’t care enough to save American lives when he had the opportunity.

The mainstream media is not even covering this story, but is parroting Obama’s talking points deceiving the American public.

Continue reading.

And see Nice Deb, "Video: Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer’s Sources Say Obama was in the Situation Room Watching Benghazi Attack – He Could Have Ordered an Intervention."

Plus, lots of coverage at Instapundit:

* "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Benghazi attack: Urgent call for military help ‘was denied by chain of command’."

* "#BENGHAZI: “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.” Just think how much could have been accomplished if they’d had the support of their Commander-in-Chief."

* "#STANDDOWN: U.S. Had Two Drones, AC-130 Gunship, and Targets Painted in #Benghazi."

Ten Questions on Benghazi

From William Kristol, at the Weekly Standard, "Ten Questions for the White House":

The loathsome, tiresome, mendacious imbecile in the W.H. better lawyer up. #Benghazi #Standdown
— Mike Rauseo (@Doobydoobydo) October 28, 2012

Friday, in response to questions regarding the events of September 11 in Benghazi, President Obama said this: "Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do. But we want to make sure we get it right, particularly because I have made a commitment to the families impacted as well as to the American people, we're going to bring those folks to justice. So, we're going to gather all the facts, find out exactly what happened, and make sure that it doesn't happen again but we're also going to make sure that we bring to justice those who carried out these attacks."

The interviewer followed up: "Were they denied requests for help during the attack?” The president responded: "Well, we are finding out exactly what happened. I can tell you, as I've said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we're going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn't happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we're going to find out exactly what happened, but what we're also going to do it make sure that we are identifying those who carried out these terrible attacks."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD understands that it will take some time to "gather all the facts" about what happened on the ground in Benghazi. But presumably the White House already has all the facts about what happened that afternoon and evening in Washington—or, at least, in the White House. The president was, it appears, in the White House from the time the attack on the consulate in Benghazi began, at around 2:40 pm ET, until the end of combat at the annex, sometime after 9 p.m. ET. So it should be possible to answer these simple questions as to what the president did that afternoon and evening, and when he did it, simply by consulting White House meeting and phone records, and asking the president for his recollections...

Continue reading.

The Incredible Shrinking Obama

At the Weekly Standard:

With our embassies around the world besieged, and some 47 million Americans on food stamps, the pettiness of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has been something to behold. The leader of the free world has spent the last few weeks before Election Day talking about Big Bird and “binders full of women.” His latest gambit—accusing his challenger of having “stage three Romnesia”—manages the adolescent twofer of simultaneously mocking his opponent’s name and making light of cancer.

We were convinced the Obama campaign had hit bottom, but if the president has one thing going for him it’s his ability to surprise. And so last week the Obama campaign unveiled a new campaign ad featuring Lena Dunham—the young actor, writer, and director behind HBO’s critically lauded TV series Girls.

Dunham’s argument for voting for Obama is, uh, curious: “Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy. It should be with a guy with beautiful—someone who really cares about and understands women.” The comparison of surrendering one’s virginity to voting for Barack Obama is obviously beyond tasteless, and the reaction to the video has mostly been derision and mockery. (For what it’s worth, as The Scrapbook writes, the video has 5,396 likes and 7,242 dislikes on YouTube.) It also does no credit to the Obama campaign that parallels were quickly discovered between the Dunham spot and an election ad for Vladimir Putin, whose attitudes towards gender equality are not usually held up as a model by American feminists.

Interestingly, The Weekly Standard’s movie critic John Podhoretz recently praised Dunham and her show in these pages for “bitter honesty” in portraying the misadventures of four young women in Manhattan, in contrast to the “profoundly false we-are-women-hear-us-roar gender-solidarity fantasy that was Sex and the City.” However, the Washington Examiner’s Joel Gehrke notes that Dunham’s ad turns all that on its head:

As Dunham puts it, “It’s super uncool to be out and about and someone says ‘did you vote?’ and [you reply] ‘no, I didn’t feel—I wasn’t ready.’ ”

If a girl’s not ready, she’s not ready. The president, who has two daughters, surely understands that and probably wouldn’t have released this ad if he weren’t having a hard time while asking voters for four more years in the White House.

Considering that Democrats have spent the last few months making the vile argument that Republicans who don’t support abortion on demand are encouraging rape, the president of the United States running a campaign ad implying that young women who don’t let themselves get pressured into sex are “super uncool” is more than enough to make any normal person’s head explode.

Obviously stupid people are coming up with these ideas, stupid and desperate people.

More at the link.

RELATED: At Instapundit, "ANOTHER LENA DUNHAM PARODY AD."

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