Are you ready for another debate?

Here's a reminder of what happened at the last debate:

"The Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, where a gunman killed six people and injured four others..."

"... before killing himself Aug. 5, will hold a candlelight vigil at 8 p.m. Sunday in memory and support of the victims of today's Brookfield spa shooting."

"He works overnight at the post office, comes home, paints a little bit, takes a nap and then does it all over again."

"He survives on two to three hours of sleep. Eats a sandwich on his break at the post office. He gets a 30-minute break, and then he goes back to sorting mail."

"I do not understand you Austrians. If every woman wore a dirndl, there would not be any more ugliness."

Said the British designer Vivienne Westwood back in 2001, and the remark has had a big effect.

At the Yellow Tree Café...

... I think it's bright enough to read.

"The United States had an unmanned Predator drone over its consulate in Benghazi during the attack..."

"...  which should have led to a quicker military response, it was revealed yesterday."

“They stood, and they watched, and our people died,” former CIA commander Gary Berntsen told CBS News.

The attack went on for hours. Why didn't/couldn't our military go in? Was it for the same reason that no military was there to protect them in the first place, that the Obama administration did not want the appearance of a military presence? Were they watching, thinking the attack should quickly succeed, allowing them to say it all happened so fast... and then it wasn't fast?

Even as the administration continues to vow that the perpetrators will be brought to justice, the man identified by witnesses as a ringleader in the attack continues to walk the streets of Libya without fear of arrest. Ahmad Abu Khattala has admitted being at the consulate during the horrific attack but has yet to be questioned by any Libyan authorities.

Abu Khattala spoke to a New York Times reporter Thursday from a hotel patio as he sipped a strawberry frappe and mocked the US and Libyan governments. “These reports say that no one knows where I am and that I am hiding,” he boasted. “But here I am in the open, sitting in a hotel with you. I’m even going to pick up my sister’s kids from school soon.”

Up in Door County (Wisconsin), the Romney signs outnumber Obama signs 2 to 1.

Says commenter Strelnikov:

We noticed the same thing during the Walker recall. This has always been a sold Dem stronghold and we were inundated with the "Hope" poster four years ago. The times they are a changing.

I'm noticing very few yard signs in my extremely Democratic neighborhood here in Madison. I don't think there are any Romney signs, but there's an eerie visual silence this time around.

Why should more than 10 people show up at a Sak 'n Save at in Reno to see Sandra Fluke?

Who is this woman? Why is she a celebrity? She's read a couple of speeches prominently, in Washington D.C., where she was selected for that role by — which Democratic bigwigs? Why?! And Rush Limbaugh made fun of her elevation into the spotlight. He did it in a crude way that boosted her name recognition. That seems to be the closest thing to something that she did to achieve prominence, and I imagine that in her own mind, surrounded by those who chose her and elevated her, she may think she is an eminent person capable of drawing crowds. What a splash of cold reality to find yourself deposited — by your promoters — at a grocery store in Reno where nobody cares.

Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks...

... the first Native American saint.

"Judge Will Issue Subpoenas for Trayvon Martin's School Records and Social Media Accounts."

Jeralyn Merritt says this is "the correct ruling":

A defendant raising self-defense may introduce evidence regarding a victim's reputation for a particular character trait like violence to show that the defendant was not the initial aggressor, even if the defendant did not previously know about the victim's reputation. Here's the Munoz case the Judge cites from, which quotes the Dwyer case....

The judge is not saying the records are relevant or admissible at trial. Her ruling is in response to a discovery request, and the issue is whether the records could lead to relevant and admissible evidence.

From the Christian Science Monitor article on the ruling:

On Friday, Martin’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, called Judge Nelson’s decision to allow the school and social media subpoenas a travesty, suggesting that by opening up Martin’s records it would allow defense attorneys to “make a dead child seem as if they’re the perpetrator.”

In other words, the defendant is allowed to defend himself. Obviously, his only defense is that the "dead child" was the perpetrator. But the parents aren't legal experts (as Merritt is) and what do you expect them to say?

"Everyone focuses on voter ID, but I don't think they realize that loss of corroboration is the bigger issue..."

Corroboration?

... the practice of allowing new or recently relocated voters to establish residency in a ward and register to vote by having someone vouch for them if they lack an acceptable document that shows their address....

Sen. Mary Lazich, the law's chief sponsor, said the corroboration ban would stop only those attempting voter fraud... Lazich said election clerks told her several years before the law passed that they worried that "chain corroboration" — large groups of people vouching for each other — was "out of hand."...

"Mr. Romney has pulled abreast of the president for the first time all year in the [Wall Street] Journal poll..."

"... erasing a three-point lead among likely voters that Mr. Obama had in late September and a five-point lead earlier that month."

"It seemed logical that diet and exercise would help"... but it obviously didn't.

"The study randomly assigned 5,145 overweight or obese people with Type 2 diabetes to either a rigorous diet and exercise regimen or to sessions in which they got general health information."

The diet involved 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day for those weighing less than 250 pounds and 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day for those weighing more. The exercise program was at least 175 minutes a week of moderate exercise.

But 11 years after the study began, researchers concluded it was futile to continue — the two groups had nearly identical rates of heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths.

"Tragically, it seems the president feels boxed in by his blackness."

"It has, at times, been painful to watch this particular president’s calibrated, cautious and sometimes callous treatment of his most loyal constituency... African-Americans will have lost ground in the Obama era."

Email from Tavis Smiley to NYT reporter Jodi Kantor, quoted in "For President, a Complex Calculus of Race and Politics."

What to make of this leak from "a senior administration official" to the NYT about a U.S.-Iran agreement to negotiate over nuclear power?

Quite aside from whether there really is such an agreement, why would the administration want to leak the news? There is also an official denial of the agreement, but that just means the administration wants it both ways, and the question remains: Why do they want this?

News of the agreement — a result of intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term — comes at a critical moment in the presidential contest, just two weeks before Election Day and the weekend before the final debate, which is to focus on national security and foreign policy.

It has the potential to help Mr. Obama make the case that he is nearing a diplomatic breakthrough in the decade-long effort by the world’s major powers to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but it could pose a risk if Iran is seen as using the prospect of the direct talks to buy time.

Is it a feint? How is Romney supposed to respond? The Obama team may have figured out the set of possible Romney responses and have Obama prepared to deliver a devastating response to whatever Romney chooses to do.

What has happened to the beautiful people?

Did some disease just strike Hollywood? Seriously, they look ill or corrupt or desolate. Scroll down. And go here and scroll. Are they all somehow dying? Is this the return of "heroin chic"? Did the picture-of-health go out of style? What's happening?

Why does Hollywood suddenly look so awful?
	More evidence that Obama is going to lose the election.
	Maybe some new drug abuse problem.
	They don't look worse now, you just notice it now because their work product is so rotten.
	Show business is terrible, and without a sufficient flow of $ they look as crappy as anyone else.
pollcode.com free polls

Email from the Obama campaign: "Ann -- Have you seen the 'Gangnam Style' music video? (So great.)"

"Well, here's another video you can't miss."

Last night, President Obama went on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He talked about the debates, his plans for a second term, and Joe Biden's swimwear.

... Seriously.

Seriously? Why do you people want to seem like such lightweights? Like it's all a big joke? Because you think that's what young people respond to? 1. I'm not young, and you sent this to me, and 2. It's actually possible that young people are struggling and suffering and worried about the future, and they are looking to the government to solve some real problems, and they're disgusted by concept of government as silly entertainment.

"I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical..."

"... and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name."

Herman Melville, "Moby Dick: or, the White Whale," Kindle Locations 1181-1189.

ADDED: From the next paragraph: "... Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike— for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."

George McGovern has died.

The first presidential candidate I voted for, in 1972, the year I turned 21. He was 90 years old.

A slender, soft-spoken minister’s son newly elected to Congress — his father was a Republican — Mr. McGovern went to Washington as a 34-year-old former college history teacher and decorated bomber pilot in World War II. He thought of himself as a son of the prairie as well, with a fittingly flat, somewhat nasal voice and a brand of politics traceable to the Midwestern progressivism of the late 19th century.

ADDED: More, from the linked NYT obituary:

The Republicans portrayed Mr. McGovern as a cowardly left-winger, a threat to the military and the free-market economy and outside the mainstream of American thought. Fair or not, he never lived down the image of a liberal loser, and many Democrats long accused him of leading the party astray.

Mr. McGovern resented that characterization mightily. “I always thought of myself as a good old South Dakota boy who grew up here on the prairie,” he said in an interview for this obituary in 2005 in his home in Mitchell. “My dad was a Methodist minister. I went off to war. I have been married to the same woman forever. I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.

“But we probably didn’t work enough on cultivating that image,” he added, referring to his campaign organization. “We were more interested in ending the war in Vietnam and getting people out of poverty and being fair to women and minorities and saving the environment. It was an issue-oriented campaign, and we should have paid more attention to image.”

At the October Café...

... what are you doing indoors?