Whatever the Outcome, Election Will Leave Half the Nation Alienated

Yes, but if Romney wins progressives have again vowed riots in the streets.

Be that as it may, here's Ronald Brownstein, at National Journal:

CANTON, Ohio–The first words from Republican state Rep. Christina Hagan when she addressed the huge crowd braving a damp chill for a Mitt Romney rally here last Friday night might have sounded more natural coming from a pulpit than from a campaign podium.

“God is pretty good, isn’t he?” Hagan called out to encouraging applause from the virtually all-white audience of nearly 10,000 sprawled across a high school baseball field. A few moments later, she added, “I am not looking for applause. Nor am I looking for a handout.” With those two pointed remarks, Hagan briskly encouraged her audience to see itself as a community whose shared values are under siege from others—unnamed, but not difficult to picture—who supposedly don’t share them. Earlier that afternoon, about 100 people gathered for an early-vote rally at the Friendly Inn Settlement House, a community center that provides family services to residents of the surrounding Carver Park public-housing project in Cleveland. In this room, almost everyone was African-American—and the sense of siege was powerful here, too.

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, actor Jesse Williams, and local elected officials portrayed the election between Romney and President Obama as a critical turning point, particularly for the black community. Speakers denounced Romney’s secretly recorded comments about the “47 percent” as a signal of contempt for the people in the room. “How do you say you want to be president ... when you have disdain for 47 percent of the population?” asked fiery Democratic state Sen. Nina Turner. Anyone touring Ohio, the epicenter of Campaign 2012, is confronted not only with the visceral passion, but the cavernous divisions that this election has provoked. Here, and in all likelihood nationally, Obama and Romney are assembling coalitions that are inimical in their demography and priorities yet almost equal in size. Uniting Americans behind any common purpose after an election that appears certain to divide them that deeply and closely looms as a daunting, perhaps insurmountable, challenge for whichever man wins next week.

More at the link.

And recall that Brownstein's knows whereof he speaks. He's the author of The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America, a very perceptive --- and prescient --- analysis of America's political polarization.

Wildlife Populations in the U.S. Have Experienced an Astonishing Resurgence

At WSJ, "America Gone Wild":

This year, Princeton, N.J., has hired sharpshooters to cull 250 deer from the town's herd of 550 over the winter. The cost: $58,700. Columbia, S.C., is spending $1 million to rid its drainage systems of beavers and their dams. The 2009 "miracle on the Hudson," when US Airways flight 1549 had to make an emergency landing after its engines ingested Canada geese, saved 155 passengers and crew, but the $60 million A320 Airbus was a complete loss. In the U.S., the total cost of wildlife damage to crops, landscaping and infrastructure now exceeds $28 billion a year ($1.5 billion from deer-vehicle crashes alone), according to Michael Conover of Utah State University, who monitors conflicts between people and wildlife.

Those conflicts often pit neighbor against neighbor. After a small dog in Wheaton, Ill., was mauled by a coyote and had to be euthanized, officials hired a nuisance wildlife mitigation company. Its operator killed four coyotes and got voice-mail death threats. A brick was tossed through a city official's window, city-council members were peppered with threatening emails and letters, and the FBI was called in. After Princeton began culling deer 12 years ago, someone splattered the mayor's car with deer innards.

Welcome to the nature wars, in which Americans fight each other over too much of a good thing—expanding wildlife populations produced by our conservation and environmental successes. We now routinely encounter wild birds and animals that our parents and grandparents rarely saw. As their numbers have grown, wild creatures have spread far beyond their historic ranges into new habitats, including ours. It is very likely that in the eastern United States today more people live in closer proximity to more wildlife than anywhere on Earth at any time in history.

In a world full of eco-woes like species extinctions, this should be wonderful news—unless, perhaps, you are one of more than 4,000 drivers who will hit a deer today, or your child's soccer field is carpeted with goose droppings, or feral cats have turned your bird feeder into a fast-food outlet, or wild turkeys have eaten your newly planted seed corn, or beavers have flooded your driveway, or bears are looting your trash cans. And that's just the beginning.

More at the link.

There was a coyote outside on the sidewalk next to our parking lot as I was loading my kid up for school last week. We see them running through our neighborhood all time. I guess they scrounge around for food, but they're absolutely fearless of humans. They might run away when approached, but they know that people are not going to come after them with a shotgun. They're all around, the nasty little suckers. I'd hate for a child to be attacked by one of them, and some mothers over at my kid's school are frightened. Nature's right up in your face sometimes. Weird. I'm just glad it's not bears!

Kate Upton Vogue Italia

Via Theo Spark.

Forty-Eight Fit and Fabulous Women

In shape and smokin'!

See The Chive, "These gorgeous girls didn’t get this fit by accident (48 Photos)."

HAT TIP: Linkiest.

Las Vegas Review-Journal's Blistering Attack on Barack Obama

I don't read the Review Journal, and I don't link it --- this is the paper that sponsored Righthaven's copyright trolling. But since the president's probably got Nevada wrapped up, it's a particular interesting commentary when the state's largest paper just hammers this clusterf-k administration.

Twitchy has it, with links, "Brutal: Las Vegas Review-Journal slams Obama over ‘Benghazi blunder’."

Oh My! #RomneyRyan at Red Rocks

Here's the amazing new clip from Team Romney, "Red Rocks":

There's just no comparable energy like this on the left. Our bankrupt president is exhorting his last bitter redistributionist followers to take out their "revenge" against Republicans. But just look at the conservative side, so happy and upbeat. People love the GOP ticket as they love this country. It's a genuine patriotic outpouring. And this has been happening all over the country, as we've seen with recent coverage from Florida and Ohio. It's simply a transcendent phenomenon, and I mean "transcendent" only in the sense of transcending what most people have been hearing from the mainstream press. Unless you're reading blogs or following the campaign closely online, you won't get this overwhelming evidence of surging support for #RomneyRyan. The mainstream press is dishonestly downplaying it.

More from John Hinderaker at Power Line, "THE ENTHUSIASM IS ALL GOP, RED ROCKS EDITION." 

VIDEO c/o ReallyIvy on Twitter.

Romney Momentum in Pennsylvania

Elizabeth Price Foley has this, at Instapundit, "BIG TIME MITTMENTUM: SUSQUEHANNA POLL SHOWS ROMNEY UP BY 4 IN PENNSYLVANIA: Whoa."

One small problem is that the survey's two weeks old. Susquehanna's expected to have a new poll out in the morning, and boy, the anticipation couldn't be higher. The New York Times had this yesterday: "In Shift, Romney Campaign Approaches Pennsylvania With A New Urgency." And Dick Morris discussed the Pennsylvania polls on Sean Hannity's last week. And here's this, just in from the Allentown Morning Call, "Thousands greet Paul Ryan near Harrisburg":

MIDDLETOWN, Dauphin County —— When Mitt Romney suggested several weeks ago that he would win Pennsylvania, the challenge seemed almost insurmountable.

But when Paul Ryan asked a raucous Pennsylvania crowd of GOP faithful Saturday afternoon if they were ready to help the Republican ticket win the state, he was serious about the prospects.

"It feels really good to be standing in here with Pennsylvania today," the Republican vice presidential candidate said.

Throughout Ryan's 30-minute remarks inside a Harrisburg International Airport hangar, the crowd was deafening, at times chanting, "Three more days, Three more days."

A month ago, with President Barack Obama holding a 7- to 10-point lead over Romney in several Pennsylvania polls, the GOP likely did not expect to be having huge political rallies here with less than 72 hours until Election Day.

For most of the year, Pennsylvania was widely considered a sure thing for the Democrats. But in recent days, the Republicans have launched a concerted effort to win its 20 electoral votes. Democrats say the Republicans are looking to make up for shortcomings in other key states, but Republicans insist they see an opening in Pennsylvania.

Ryan's campaign stop touched off a whirlwind three days of political activity in Pennsylvania. Romney will headline a rally in Bucks County on Sunday. And former President Bill Clinton will hold three events across Pennsylvania on Monday to make the closing pitch for Obama.

When Romney was last in the state in September for a Philadelphia fundraiser and a rally in the suburbs, he said he'd win Pennsylvania. At that time, neither campaign and no super PAC was airing ads on Pennsylvania television. And Obama had a comfortable lead in the polls.

In the last week, both campaigns bought air time, as did a handful of GOP super PACs. And the most recent public poll showed Obama's lead in the state had narrowed to 4 points.

Well, the GOP ticket's taking it to Obama in the Keystone State. It frankly doesn't look nearly as close as Ohio, but Team Romney's got information that I don't --- internal polling, especially --- so I'll just hang onto my seat like everyone else. Twenty electors is a huge prize, and a win in Pennsylvania would basically throw the map wide open for the GOP ticket. Penn and Ohio for Romney and I'd have to agree with Price Foley: kiss it goodbye for the Democrats. I'll have more on this later...

MORE: I have to add this quotation from the Times' piece, since it's so out of place for a political report at the newspaper:

Pennsylvania has voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election for the last 20 years. Independent pollsters have called it the Republicans’ white whale. Indeed, polls show Mr. Obama ahead, albeit by a shrinking margin. And his senior political strategist, David Axelrod, even joked this week that he would shave off his mustache of 40 years if they lose here.

But there is a tangible sense — seen in Romney yard signs on the expansive lawns of homes in the well-heeled suburbs, and heard in the excited voices of Republican mothers who make phone calls to voters in their spare time — that the race is tilting toward Mr. Romney.

That's the enthusiasm gap, and it could be decisive in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

American Crossroads: 'We Can't Afford Another Four Years'

This clip's been running on CNN throughout the day. Very effective ad. Serious and to the point, with a regular lady who just doesn't think the president's policies are working.

Obama Campaign Comes to This: 'Voting's the best revenge...'

I wish this ad could run on every television, in every living room, in every household in the nation.

Voting isn't "revenge." Voting is popular participation in the decision-making process in America. If you're not happy with the current political leadership you have a chance to change it. It's not taking "revenge." It's exercising the franchise to sustain and improve democratic governance. This president sees voting as a way to punish those who oppose him. He's truly lost the moral fitness to serve. He's an embarrassment to the office of POTUS.

Thank goodness change is coming, at last.

Video c/o Linkmaster Smith:

And at Twitchy, "The choice is clear: Revenge or love of country?," and, "Campaign meltdown: Creepy Jim Messina slams Romney for message of ‘revenge’."

BONUS: From Byron York, "Obama campaign struggles to explain ‘revenge’ remark." (At Memeorandum.)

Kelly Brook Debuts in 'Raunchy' London Burlesque Show 'Forever Crazy'

Hey, she's still got it, so what the heck?

Might as well make the most of it while still looking gorgeous.

At London's Daily Mail, "Crazy, sexy, rude! Kelly Brook makes her very raunchy debut in burlesque show Forever Crazy."

West Chester, Ohio: Mitt Romney 'All Star' Rally

At The Other Mccain, "SCENES FROM OHIO ‘ALL-STAR’ RALLY."

PREVIOUSLY: "'All the cars with Romney bumper stickers have been keyed...'", and "Giuliani Calls on Obama to Resign (VIDEO)."

Giuliani Calls on Obama to Resign (VIDEO)

Via Buzzfeed (at Memeorandum).

And remember Robert Stacy McCain's comments, from last night: "Rudy Giuliani’s speech was off the hook — the best takedown of the Obama administration I’ve heard this entire cycle, bar none..." 

Watch it:

'All the cars with Romney bumper stickers have been keyed...'

The 2008 presidential candidate who promised to unite the nation if elected has instead, upon governing, driven the nation to a second civil war. The frontline state in that conflict is Ohio. Folks there are more divided than they can ever remember, and Ohio boasts the reputation of being the national decider in presidential elections.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Ohioans talk politics at their own risk":

CINCINNATI — Johanson Perez, a 29-year-old night baker at Panera Bread who is not a fan of President Obama, had a "70-comment fight" on Facebook with a friend over Donald Trump's $5-million offer for the president's school and passport records.

"I'm sure we won't be as close after the election as we were before," said Perez, who'd stopped for lunch at Price Hill Chili, a neighborhood institution on the city's west side. "It's almost like he's in a cult."

At a nearby table, political independent Greg Littel, 20, a University of Cincinnati student who favors Obama, said he was dismayed by vandalism in his liberal neighborhood.

"The political conversations have been more hostile and people have been taking that physically out on each other," Littel said. "All the cars with Romney bumper stickers have been keyed."

Over a sandwich at the bar, Ed Miller, 79, a Republican real estate agent and former minor league shortstop, said one of his oldest friends, an Obama supporter, stopped speaking to him recently. Miller had just given the man's grandson an expensive basketball signed by University of Kentucky coach John Calipari.

"I played ball with this guy!" Miller said. "How can you be so uniformed, so ignorant, about what's going on? If Obama gets in here for four more years, our country is gone. I mean flat-out gone."

Continue reading.

And see Christi Parsons and Maeve Reston, "Rhetoric soars as Obama, Romney start closing arguments."

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

No Hurricane Bounce for 'Bronco Bamma'

Folks are getting tired of that mofo.

At Lonely Conservative, "Looks Like #Sandy Won’t Help Obama After All."

And at Instapundit, "MICHAEL RAMIREZ: Oceans of Red Ink."

PREVIOUSLY: "Staten Island Angry Over Delayed Storm Response."

Staten Island Angry Over Delayed Storm Response

At Time, "The Island That New York City Forgot:

The headline of Thursday’s Staten Island Advance screamed in bold “14 DEAD SO FAR — HOMES RAVAGED, LIVES RUINED.” But many people here feel no one is listening to their pleas for help or coming for support. Only after one horrific tale emerged did the rest of the city and country pay attention to Staten Island. That event took place in one of the most devastated areas on the island, along Father Capodanno Boulevard. There, a young mother named Glenda Moore tried to reach a shelter and lost her two sons, Brandon, 2, and Connor, 4, after their car stalled in the suddenly rising floodwaters and they tried to escape.

No FEMA response. President "I" Candy had to fly out to Las Vegas for more important business.

But RTWT.

And at the New York Post, "Flood of tears: Bodies of SI boys found after being swept away by Sandy."

ADDED: At the New York Times, "Staten Island Was Tragic Epicenter of Storm’s Casualties" (via Memeorandum).

Michael Barone: 'Just about every indicator suggests that Republicans are more enthusiastic about voting -- and about their candidate -- than they were in 2008...'

Michael Barone predicts a Mitt Romney win on Tuesday, "Campaign 2012 Barone: Going out on a limb: Romney beats Obama, handily." He comments on some key states in the Electoral College (via Memeorandum):

Ohio (18). The anti-Romney auto bailout ads have Obama running well enough among blue-collar voters for him to lead most polls. But many polls anticipate a more Democratic electorate than in 2008. Early voting tells another story, and so does the registration decline in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County. In 2004, intensity among rural, small -town and evangelical voters, undetected by political reporters who don't mix in such circles, produced a narrow Bush victory. I see that happening again. Romney.

PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Stacy McCain, "WEST CHESTER, OHIO: MASSIVE CROWD FOR ROMNEY-RYAN RALLY":

I’ll have more photos later, but right now I just want to tell you how awesome tonight’s rally was. Rudy Giuliani’s speech was off the hook — the best takedown of the Obama administration I’ve heard this entire cycle, bar none. What Rudy said about Benghazi was particularly brutal.

Read it all at the link.

Robert has some harsh words --- three harsh words --- for AP reporter Steve Peoples.

Progressives Give Aid and Comfort to Obama's Benghazi Cover Up

I'm not sure who this guy Hayes Brown thinks he's fooling, but it's Think Progress, so clearly he doesn't have the interests of decent Americans in mind. Folks can read it all at the link, a stupid and corrupt cherry-picking of yesterday's news on the CIA in Benghazi, "New Details Discredit Fox News Reports On Benghazi Attacks." (At Memeorandum.)

Frankly, yesterday's reports only raise more questions about the administration's actions on September 11. Jennifer Griffin has a new report out this morning, "Sources, emails point to communication breakdown in Obama administration during Libya attack." And there's video of Griffin's comments this morning here.

Progressives are using the latest news to discredit allegations that the White House didn't respond to requests for assistance. We still don't have enough information to know for sure exactly what requests were honored and by who. The president himself claimed he immediately issued orders that all U.S. personnel be protected, but the White House refuses to answer direct questions about what the orders entailed. Moreover, the latest reports again raise questions of why the White House insisted for weeks that the consulate came under attack "spontaneously." This was not an errant comment but a weeks-long campaign by the administration to deflect attention away from the Oval Office. Ed Morrissey has more on that, "Fox News: Benghazi consulate warned 3 hours before attack of militia gathering arms." And see especially Guy Benson, "Report: Benghazi Consulate Warned of Imminent Terrorist Attack Three Hours Before Raid":

So not only did the administration know within 24 hours that this had been an act of terrorism, they knew within four hours which specific Islamist group was responsible for the raid. (Remember, those August cables mentioned at least ten active jihadist militias in the city). The US staff in Benghazi sent explicit warnings about a lack of security at the consulate in August, as requests for reinforcements were being routinely denied. They also fired off urgent cables mere hours before the assault began, informing Washington that a terrorist attack had been set into motion. Why do these details matter? Because the White House -- the president, the Secretary of State, the UN Ambassador -- continued to insist for days that this 9/11 terrorist attack was connected to (non-existent) spontaneous protests over an obscure online video. Clinton even denounced the video while standing next to the caskets of the fallen upon their return. This was a completely false storyline, pushed for reasons that remain unclear -- although I think the motives are becoming more readily apparent by the day. The president has said that his administration has been fully transparent, updating the public on critical information as it's come in -- even feigning great offense that anyone would suggest otherwise. The flat truth is that his White House has done nothing of the sort.

There's more at the link.

Now it's not just the clowns at Think Progress who're covering for the White House. With few exceptions, the mainstream press has played a low-profile in covering breaking developments on Benghazi. Again, there are a few important updates here and there ---- CBS News yesterday posted a key item at their website yesterday, and Jake Tapper has been doing critical reporting at ABC ---- but for the most part the press has not been keen to keep the story front and center, because it hurts the political chances of their favored candidate.

I'll have more on this. Meanwhile, check NewsBusters, "Bozell Statement: Liberal Media Are Accessories to Benghazi Cover-up":

The liberal "news" media’s refusal to cover this story exposes how corrupt they have become. Four Americans died in Libya in a coordinated terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11. The Obama Administration has been caught in a maze of falsehoods. This reeks of a cover-up. This scandal could and would derail the Obama re-election efforts. ABC, CBS, NBC, The Washington Post, and the New York Times are so vested in the re-election of Barack Obama that they are deliberately spiking this huge story. It’s sickening.

How big is this story? Bigger than Watergate. No one was killed in that burglary, and no one covered up the truth about the deaths of four brave Americans.

Now there are rumblings that one or more of these so-called news networks have emails from the National Security Advisor’s office telling a counter-terrorism unit to stand down. If that’s true, they must tell the American people what they know, and how long they’ve known it. And if it isn’t true, then the networks need to say so. Their silence is deafening.

RTWT.

October's Unemployment Rate Higher Than When Obama Took Office

Folks will spin this morning's jobs report every which way but truth.

At the end of the day the main statistic is 7.9 percent, the BLS measure of those remaining in the labor market but unable to find jobs. The number was 7.6 percent when Obama took office in January 2009. Here's the New York Times' spin, "Modest Job Growth in Final Report Before Election" (via Memeorandum), but see Fox News, "Last jobs report before election shows economy in 'virtual standstill'":

The final monthly jobs report before Election Day offered a mixed bag of economic evidence that quickly became political putty for the presidential candidates, with the unemployment rate ticking up to 7.9 percent but the economy adding a better-than-expected 171,000 jobs.

At the same time, the number of unemployed grew by 170,000, roughly the same amount -- to 12.3 million.

The October numbers allow President Obama to argue the economy is technically growing under his watch. But they also allow Mitt Romney to argue that the new jobs are not making much of a dent in the unemployment problem. Both campaigns quickly set to work putting their spin on data that, if nothing else, underscores the slow pace of the recovery.

"That's 9 million jobs short of what (Obama) promised," Romney said at a rally in Wisconsin shortly before noon. "Unemployment is higher today than when Barack Obama took office."

The rate was 7.8 percent the month Obama took office. "Today's increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill," Romney said in a separate written statement. "When I'm president, I'm going to make real changes that lead to a real recovery, so that the next four years are better than the last."

James Pethokoukis has an analysis, "Is this as good as it gets? | October’s dismal ‘New Normal’ jobs report":

1. If we suddenly had a string of months where job growth was the same as in October, it would take 7 more years — until 2019 ! — to get back to the Bush unemployment low of 4.4%. Even if we averaged 210,000 jobs a month, we wouldn’t close jobs gap until 2021.

2. We are now 41 months into the recovery, and we have recovered just 55% of the 8.9 million lost private sector jobs from the Great Recession. During the Reagan recovery, it took just 10 months.

3. Back in early 2009, White House economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein predicted the unemployment rate would be 5.2% in October 2012 if Congress passed the $800 billion stimulus. As the above chart shows, they weren’t even close.

More at the link. And see Gateway Pundit, "October Unemployment Jumps to 7.9% – Making Obama Worst Jobs President Since Great Depression."

We're stuck in the middle of the Obama Depression. The administration's economic recovery programs have failed to revive the economy. Frankly, economic growth would have returned just as fast --- perhaps even faster --- without Obama's economic stimulus and the drag of the ObamaCare monstrosity. What growth and recovery we're seeing reflects the resilience of the economy despite the heavy hand of Democrat Party regulation. If Mitt Romney's elected we'll have a much better chance of jump-starting more robust economic growth and employment activity.

We'll know for sure in four more days, barring Democrat Party elector rat-f-king.

More at Memeorandum.

Cartoon Credit. William Warren.

Don't Be Surprised When Obama Loses

Oh my goodness!

Dan McLaughlin just clobbers Nate Silver and his hopelessly idiotic enablers on the left, at RealClearPolitics. This is a fairly involved essay, with a beefy methodological section that opens the essay. (Pay attention to the section titled, "Where Polls Come From.")

And this passage is especially crucial:

Nate Silver's much-celebrated model is, like other poll averages, based simply on analyzing the toplines of public polls. This, more than any other factor, is where he and I part company.

If you read only the toplines of polls - the single number that says something like "Romney 48, Obama 47" - you would get the impression from a great many polls that this is a very tight race nationally, in which Obama has a steady lead in key swing states. In an ordinary year, the toplines of the polls eventually converge around the final result - but this year, there seems to be some stubborn splits among the poll toplines that reflect the pollsters' struggles to come to agreement on who is going to vote.

Poll toplines are simply the sum of their internals: that is, different subgroups within the sample. The one poll-watchers track most closely is the partisan breakdowns: how each candidate is doing with Republican voters, Democratic voters and independent voters, two of whom (the Rs & Ds) have relatively predictable voting patterns. Bridging the gap from those internals to the topline is the percentage of each group included in the poll, which of course derives from the likely-voter modeling and other sampling issues described above. And therein lies the controversy.

My thesis, and that of a good many conservative skeptics of the 538 model, is that these internals are telling an entirely different story than some of the toplines: that Obama is getting clobbered with independent voters, traditionally the largest variable in any election and especially in a presidential election, where both sides will usually have sophisticated, well-funded turnout operations in the field. He's on track to lose independents by double digits nationally, and the last three candidates to do that were Dukakis, Mondale and Carter in 1980. And he's not balancing that with any particular crossover advantage (i.e., drawing more crossover Republican voters than Romney is drawing crossover Democratic voters). Similar trends are apparent throughout the state-by-state polls, not in every single poll but in enough of them to show a clear trend all over the battleground states.

If you averaged Obama's standing in all the internals, you'd capture a profile of a candidate that looks an awful lot like a whole lot of people who have gone down to defeat in the past, and nearly nobody who has won. Under such circumstances, Obama can only win if the electorate features a historically decisive turnout advantage for Democrats - an advantage that none of the historically predictive turnout metrics are seeing, with the sole exception of the poll samples used by some (but not all) pollsters. Thus, Obama's position in the toplines depends entirely on whether those pollsters are correctly sampling the partisan turnout.

That's where the importance of knowing and understanding electoral history comes in. Because if your model is relying entirely on toplines that don't make any sense when you look at the internals with a knowledge of the past history of what winning campaigns look like, you need to start playing Socrates.

RTWT at the link.

Plus, check out Sean Davis, at the Daily Caller, "Is Nate Silver's value at risk?" (via Memeorandum). Well, of course it's "at risk." I've been slamming Silver's "value" for weeks now. I just don't want anything bad to happen to him, but it may be too late. The dude's starting to lose it and the editors are giving him the backhand like a whiny bitch getting slapped. Hard. (Background here, "Nate Silver Bets Joe Scarborough $2,000 That Obama Wins.")

See also Mark Blumenthal, "Could Presidential Polls Be Wrong About Obama's Battleground Edge?" (Blumenthal gives significant odds that models like Silver's will fail miserably on election day, mostly on a theory of the fundamental freakishness and unpredictability of the human experience (see the part about the "black swan").

PREVIOUSLY:

* "Nate Silver Bets $2,000 on Obama's Reelection, Provokes Public Editor's Ire."

* "Nate Silver Fast on His Way to One-Term Celebrity."

* "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...

'The U.S. effort in Benghazi was at its heart a CIA operation...'

An amazing piece, at the Wall Street Journal, "CIA Takes Heat for Role in Libya":

When the bodies of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya, arrived at Andrews Air Force Base after the Sept. 11 attack, they were greeted by the president, the vice president and the secretaries of state and defense. Conspicuously absent was CIA Director David Petraeus.

Officials close to Mr. Petraeus say he stayed away in an effort to conceal the agency's role in collecting intelligence and providing security in Benghazi. Two of the four men who died that day, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were former Navy SEAL commandos who were publicly identified as State Department contract security officers, but who actually worked as Central Intelligence Agency contractors, U.S. officials say.

The U.S. effort in Benghazi was at its heart a CIA operation, according to officials briefed on the intelligence. Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State Department. Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said.

The coordinated attacks stirred up a political hornet's nest over whether the administration provided adequate security and whether it was forthcoming with its assessment of what happened. In the election season, that cast a shadow over the Obama administration's foreign policy record.

Nearly eight weeks after the attacks, a complete accounting hasn't emerged in public view. The brunt of the public criticism for security lapses has so far been directed at the State Department, rather than the CIA, which, by design, operates largely in the shadows. Critics in Congress say the CIA has used secrecy in part to shield itself from blame—a charge officials close to the agency deny.

This account of the CIA presence in Benghazi sheds new light on the events, and how the essentially covert nature of the U.S. operations there created confusion. Congressional investigators say it appears that the CIA and State Department weren't on the same page about their respective roles on security, underlining the rift between agencies over taking responsibility and raising questions about whether the security arrangement in Benghazi was flawed.

The CIA's secret role helps explain why security appeared inadequate at the U.S. diplomatic facility. State Department officials believed that responsibility was set to be shouldered in part by CIA personnel in the city through a series of secret agreements that even some officials in Washington didn't know about.

It also explains why the consulate was abandoned to looters for weeks afterward while U.S. efforts focused on securing the more important CIA quarters. Officials say it is unclear whether the militants knew about the CIA presence or stumbled upon the facility by following Americans there after the attack on the consulate...

More:

In the months leading up to the attack, Mr. Stevens and others sent a series of diplomatic messages to the administration warning that security in Benghazi was deteriorating. Nevertheless, security at the consulate wasn't beefed up and Mr. Stevens's movements weren't restricted, according to congressional investigators.

On the night of the attack, the consulate, on a 13-acre property, was protected by five American diplomatic security officers inside the walls, supported by a small group of armed Libyans outside. The CIA's security force at the annex sometimes provided backup security for the ambassador when he traveled outside the consulate.

Outside of Tripoli and Benghazi, the nature of the security relationship between the consulate and the annex wasn't widely known, and details about that arrangement are still the subject of dispute. The night of the attack, many top officials at the State Department in Washington weren't initially aware that the annex had a security force that answered to the CIA and provided backup security for the consulate.

Soon after the shooting started, a diplomatic security officer at the consulate hit an alarm. By 9:40 p.m. local time—3:40 p.m. on the East Coast—the officer called the annex's security team, the U.S. embassy in Tripoli and the diplomatic-security headquarters in Washington.

It took a seven-man team from the CIA security roughly 50 minutes to get to the consulate after it was alerted, according to administration officials.

Within 25 minutes, the team headed out of the annex to the consulate compound, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. It took another 25 minutes to reach the compound, in part because the team stopped to get heavy weapons and came under fire as they moved in, the official said.

The CIA team left the consulate around 11:30 p.m. with all American officials from the compound, except for the missing U.S. ambassador, the senior U.S. intelligence official said. They came under fire as they left.

Shortly after they arrived back at the annex, the annex began receiving small-arms fire and RPG rounds, the official said. The CIA security team returned fire and the attackers dispersed around 1 a.m.

The congressional investigator said the delay showed that the secret CIA-State security arrangement was inadequate...

William Kristol has commentary on this, at the Weekly Standard, "Clinton vs. Petraeus — But Where's Obama?"

Yeah, where is that guy?

More at CBS News, "Sources: Key task force not convened during Benghazi consulate attack." The report indicates that "top officials" couldn't make up their minds on what to do. Response teams were repeatedly readied for deployment then made to "stand down." It was total confusion.

And see Eli Lake, at the Daily Beast, "New Details on Benghazi."

And Foreign Policy, "'Troubling' Surveillance Before Benghazi Attack." Also, "State Department to review its own Benghazi review," and "Congress wants answers on newly found Benghazi documents."