Maggie's Farm

At great expense to you, the federal government has sold you a lemon. No surprise there: Forgotten by FEMA: Volunteers step up in storm-ravaged NYC borough.

When American people can get beyond any infantile expectations of government, it can be wonderful to see what they will do for eachother. Believe it or not, when last night's snowstorm was predicted, the tiny number of inept and seemingly useless FEMA people fled the flooded boroughs of NYC in their SUVs. (See BAD SIGN: FEMA office on Staten Island closes 'due to weather')

Also, via Mead: In New York we get a mayor who makes war on Big Gulp sodas while proving himself inept at basic government functions such as clearing snow

Meanwhile, volunteers and church groups have been constantly busy there since last Weds.

Remarkable that an ordinary storm could have such impact on the greatest city in the world.

My car was flooded in an underground parking garage, and we had 9' of water in my building's basement. All from flooding. There was very little rain. We still have no power downtown, and the subways down here have not resumed. It's called "urban hiking," and it is enjoyable.

I am back to buying newspapers. The NY Post, The NY Times, the NY Daily News. It's a pleasant, familiar old feeling to read a paper newspaper in a pub or coffee shop.

Instead of irritated, people seem quite cheerful and helpful. Maybe people welcome an excuse to take off their tough NYC game faces.

Crew of tall ship HMS Bounty abandons ship 90 miles off of Hatteras

What the heck were they doing there?

McCain: Libya worst cover-up I've ever seen

Obama Wants to Create a “Secretary of Business” in Second Term

Insane on so many levels

Justice Department Gives Hiring Priority to the Clinically Insane and Intellectually Disabled

Romney pulls ahead in Ohio

This was inevitable

Minnesota Is In Play:

Another sign that Minnesota is in play? Bill Clinton will be an active surrogate this week, campaigning in Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Colorado, and — you guessed it — Minnesota. The state has ten electoral votes, which would be a helpful boost for Mitt Romney, who has no easy path (although there are ways) to the White House without winning Ohio’s 18 electoral votes.

Desperation driving Obama

Is the Obama Machine Running Out of Steam?

Article is an analysis of the machine

Dem Pat Caddell disgusted with Obama and media collusion to re-elect Obama at all costs (h/t Nice Deb):

As the Benghazi scandal heats up, evidence that Obama himself denied extra security.

Something like that might explain the frenzied confusion of stories.

After hearing about 9-11 Jihadist attack on embassy.

Needed his sleep before fund-raiser in Las Vegas in the morning. Staff and press covered for him. This goes beyond "scandal" into other more serious categories like abrogation of duty.

Via Nigel Farage On The Total Subjugation Of Europe. Everybody knows that the EU is an empire.

 h/t Insty

I think the Romney people are looking at their inside numbers, and believe that they are winning, or close to it, with momentum on their side. I think the Obama people are watching their lead of the summertime slip through their fingers with little they can do about it other than to sling one more $100 million worth of slime at Romney. Going all-negative and throwing hopey-changey under the bus.

Hence the nature of the "debate" last night, with Romney rising amiably above the fray while Obama irritably yipped and yapped and snapped at him like a sharp-toothed puppy trying to get a rise out of a big dog.

Re Mitt Romney’s toughest debate, he probably can't "win" on details of foreign policy. However, the election is not about details of foreign policy. There are no votes in the Benghazi mess up and coverup, and nobody cares too much about the entire crack-up in the ME, or whether Obama hearts Putin.

I think Romney can make his mark on two themes. First, the importance that America remain the leader of the free world, and the most generous and helpful nation on the planet. Second, that America's beneficial influence is founded on two things: our ideas of freedom and the wealth born of (relatively) free markets. The Reagan approach, minus the Cold War. That leads back to talking about prosperity at home.

(If he has the nerve to talk about respect, and bowing to foreign leaders, that would be fun but would not win any votes. This is fun too: Chavez, Castro, Putin endorse Obama... )

That's his message, or should be.

Current affairs afficionados like me - and like many of our readers - are probably on the thin end of the bell curve of voter information. Since we usually talk to roughly equally informed and interested people, we need to remember that many people are minimally-informed or not very interested in public affairs or policy.

Fox news interviewed some "WalMart Moms" this morning, and the Moms agreed with this statement: "We don't really know enough about the candidates yet."

I suppose this is why image, identity, and emotion are so important, especially in national elections. I suspect that this was true even before TV. I wonder what percentage of voters occupy the "low information" category.

The Pirate found these great examples of low-information voters, not at WalMart but at university:

Obama is 1/2 black (half-cool), of seemingly ambiguous sexual orientation (cool), wants to be friends with Jihadists (double-cool), and wants to make the grown-ups give us youths free stuff (triple-cool). It is literally a "no brainer."

I was that unwise in my callow youth, but I knew more than these morons who probably could not locate Libya on a map. How did these bozos get into college?

From Steyn's Let Them Go Hungry:

Statists well understand that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life. Sometimes your team has to take a time-out for a couple of years, but, even when they do, all the departments and agencies and bureaus are still in place, hyper-regulating away. I mean, how often does the party of small government actually abolish anything?

Their good ammo is used up, and they only have BB guns now. Hewitt: Newsweek, Like The President, Is Finished At The End Of The Year. As Jennifer Rubin says:

After the debate it is painfully obvious that Obama has no big (or medium-sized) ideas for a second term. The Bain and tax-return gambits have gone nowhere. Big Bird is now a punch line. So why not throw it all up in the air and see what will fly? That is what Obama and his spinners are doing. The antics are far from coherent, and the message is become more and more fractured. This is what a campaign in decline looks like.

Seems like it, given how embarassingly - insanely - they are behaving. Pure negativity. However, four or five weeks ago Romney was felt to be hopeless. Momentum is going the wrong way for the Dems, and it looks like Bill and Hillary got the memo. (May I ask what Bill Clinton is doing immersed in politics? Isn't it considered infra dig for ex-presidents? Or is he above all rules of decorum, boldly expanding the limits of appropriateness? Hey, Bill - it's a good season for golf and skirt-chasing right now.)

Poll shows Romney leading in blue Pennsylvania. It is breaking really bad for the Dems right now.

Brilliant move: Obama: ‘When four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal’

Maybe America is done with the reckless experiment with ObamaLand.

Can Romney Execute a Pincer Strategy Against Obama?

It's a very interesting summary of the 2012 campaign up to the present moment.

Just had to link this: Poll: Nearly Fifth Surveyed in Ohio Have Already Voted.

That is, jury makes decision before completion of the argument. Whoever came up with this idea?  Why not make voting year-round?  In my opinion, no early voting. Election Day is Election Day. Show up, or don't vote. Absentee voting only for those overseas. Very simple.

If you're at your vacation place, too bad. If you're a lazy jerk, too bad. Show up on election day with your ID and vote as we have always done. It's an American ritual.

Obama cramming for three days on how to be President.

From Mead's New York’s Blue Suicide:

New York City has been governed by liberals for generations. Surely if blue policies could produce an egalitarian utopia with a strong middle class, we would see it in New York before we would see it anywhere else. If liberals were good at running cities, people from all over the world would be coming to study New York’s public schools, marveling at the extraordinary success with which unionized teachers were transforming the lives of low income kids. Our transit system would be the envy of the world as well; awestruck visitors from benighted places like Shanghai and Tokyo would come to gaze in amazement at the speed, cleanliness and economy of the New York subways. Small business formation would be booming as the bustling economy of manufacturing start ups created opportunities in the inner cities.

Yet, somehow, this isn’t happening. It’s great mystery.

NYC thrives and is vibrant despite its government, not because it it. It's just lucky enough to be a people-magnet. A magnet for talented and/or ambitious young people from all over the world.

"Joe, are Iranian nukes really such a hilarious topic?"

"Joe, I am a fellow American citizen trying to talk with you and, as such, I expect as much respectful behavior as I offer you. In fact, as a fellow citizen, I'd expect you to at least listen to my opinion before giggling like a girl."

This is amusing:  A giggling, mugging, eye-rolling, head-shaking lunatic, who was clearly under instruction from his political masters to go out there and show the country that the Left is not just a bunch of kumbaya kommie pansies but real red-blooded all-Americans, the kind of guys you’d want to be in a bar fight with.

The weenies always try to act tough.

Ya gotta laugh about this PBS/Big Bird thing.

FYI, the actor who plays Big Bird is paid $315,000/year. The boss of Sesame Street is paid $990,000/year. And who’s funding this? Well, in part, taxpayers: the federal government gave the CPB a grant of $444.1 million in 2012.

Sesame Street, a non-profit arm of PBS, makes over $200 million in profit each year. I think the show is retarded but, regardless, why does it need my money? Furthermore, I think the idea of government support of media is profoundly un-American. The nation and the world are going to hell, and Obama is advertising about Big Bird. Romney only brought it up as an example of something we ought not to be borrowing money from China to support.

Even Chris Matthews calls the Big Bird focus "Mickey Mouse" politics.

Back in 2008, Obama said that, “if you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.”

Big Bird is the epitome of Small Things.

Photo from People's Cube

Romney erases eight-point deficit, now leads by four among likely voters.

Is that a temporary bounce? Or is it that people just hadn't seen unfiltered Romney and were happy to see a credible, appealing alternative to the Obama administration? At the least, it tells me that many people are openminded about considering Romney.

Contrary to many or most news reports, I don't think that Obama "lost" the debate. To emphasize that is to minimize Romney's positive accomplishment. I think Romney "won," won by being a more impressive, knowledgeable, and serious figure.

By the way, where are all the Obama bumper stickers this year?

From Bidinotto (h/t Insty): Election 2012 and the Clash of Narratives - "Why Let the Rich Hoard All the Toys?"

Besides going after the infantile zero-sum narrative on economics, he extols the miracle of growth and productivity - the growing pie.  One quote:

It was not until the Agricultural Revolution that men began to break free of the zero-sum existence of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. For the first time, production allowed men to increase the food supply—to expand the size of the "pie." No longer did one person's gain entail another person's deprivation. With the gradual increase of production under a division of labor, and with free trade among those producing specialized goods, the "pie" of wealth began to grow rapidly. With the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, living standards, which had remained at subsistence levels since the dawn of man's presence on Earth, suddenly began to soar, and so did life expectancy.

But while the zero-sum social world was disappearing, the zero-sum Narrative did not vanish from the minds of men.

It begins:

We here at the (insert name of paper here) are a fair, open-minded, tolerant bunch, as you would expect given our elevated social status. So, when an unknown, inexperienced politician named Willard Mitt Romney had the audacity to run for president, we decided to give him a chance and hear what he had to say about his "qualifications."

Here's one heck of an ad. Real, heartbreaking, and far better than LBJ's daisy girl ad. Mom is beautiful, worried. She wants to say something, decides not to. He's depressed, she feels sorry for him and wants to reassure him. He doesn't want pity, wants to be a proud male, can't handle her compassion and concern. And the kids...

If I were on Mitt's team, I'd ask to have this 30-second drama run nationwide.

This is happening out there, all over. Best political ad I've ever seen.

Sununu:

What people saw last night was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are, and how he has failed to even begin to address them. And I think even the liberal press reacted with shock at this revelation, and I find it fascinating, now this morning, after they’ve slept, to watch them all scrambling around to clean up the mess the president left on the floor last night.

On the other hand, Mitt Romney came in with a lot of specifics, a lot of very sharp knowledge of issues, not only with the Obama-version of bumper-sticker numbers, but the governor showed that he understand policies and he understand how to make policy into law talking about what he did in Massachusetts.

Here's "Smirk". I approve this message:

George Orwell, via Sultan:

"The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact."

Sultan was writing about Islam, but it applies to politics in the US in general right now. See A Guide to the Obama Administration’s Five Major Scandals for Mainstream Media Dummies.

Any one of these would have had a Repub crucified on the front pages for months, leaving them battered and bloodied.