"Not knowing exactly what was taking place, the two SEALs set up a defensive perimeter."

"Unfortunately Ambassador Stevens was already gravely injured, and Foreign Service officer, Sean Smith, was dead. However, due to their quick action and suppressive fire, twenty administrative personnel in the embassy were able to escape to safety. Eventually, these two courageous men were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers brought against them, an enemy force numbering between 100 to 200 attackers which came in two waves. But 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."

ScottOnCapeCod, via Instapundit.

The pre-Freakfest scene downtown.

We're snug at home this evening, while the revelry goes on here in Madison, but earlier this evening, we took a walk downtown, and we encountered this religious demonstration. Note the signs. Note the effort to get passers-by to look into the casket.



Where there was a mirror. They just wanted to remind you. In case you forgot: You're going to die.



As the younger folk scamper off, the older man is hoping they'll come to Jesus before it's too late.

(Click here for a large enough version to read the signs: "Every one of us shall give account of himself to God" and "Jesus said: I am the door: By ME if any man enter in, he shall be saved.")

The Des Moines Register endorses Romney.

"Our discussion repeatedly circled back to the nation’s single most important challenge:"

pulling the economy out of the doldrums, getting more Americans back in the workforce in meaningful jobs with promising futures, and getting the federal government on a track to balance the budget in a bipartisan manner that the country demands.

Which candidate could forge the compromises in Congress to achieve these goals? When the question is framed in those terms, Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate.

"We're the children of the future/American through and through/But something happened to our country/And we're kinda blaming you."

I find the enunciation a bit difficult here. Who are they blaming?



I had to read the lyrics — here — to figure out that they were blaming conservatives. As I listened to the song — a reader referred me to it — I thought they were complaining about how liberals like Barack Obama had sold out their future. Why didn't I immediately recognize the creepy use of musical children from the last election? I mean this:



I don't know! I guess I thought the other side might do some parody.

David Weigel debunks a video that has never been bunked in the first place.

Is there anyone who has ever thought that this was anything but a joke?

Crooks and Liars is laughing at the "morons" who believe they're looking at "actual footage of Barack Obama's birth taking place in a hospital in Kenya." But as far as I can tell, they are morons for believing they are looking at actual morons who believe they are looking at actual footage....

He who laughs at morons should look to it that he himself does not become a moron. And when you gaze long into the idiocracy the idiocracy also gazes into you.

At the Rhymes-With-Cranium Café...

... think of something to say.

Evidence that Romney is winning.

Paul Krugman has gone desperately juvenile.

"Embrace and celebrate" "Hetero-een."

An interesting Dan Savage rant about Halloween. Sorry there's no transcript, but click to listen and begin at 0:59. He takes on those who complain about the sexy costume for females (and females only) and argues that heterosexuals need a day to bust loose from all their usual inhibitions.

"I'm free and I love to be free/To live my life the way I want/To say and do whatever I please..."

Consider the use of the old Lesley Gore song — "You Don't Own Me" — for political, pro-Obama purposes:



Now, I love old Lesley and her classic song. And it's fine with me if the Democratic Party is her party — and she'll cry if Obama loses, cry if Obama loses, you would cry too if it happened to you. "You Don't Own Me" dates back to 1963 — pre-Women's Liberation, pre-Beatles. But let's consider the lyrics and the extent to which they express the values of the present-day Democratic Party.

By the way, Ms. Gore did not write "You Don't Own Me." It was written by 2 men, John Madara (who also wrote "At the Hop") and David White (who co-wrote "At the Hop" and was a member of the doo-wop group Danny & the Juniors who recorded "At the Hop"). Madera and White also co-wrote "The Fly," which was a dance that you could do at the hop, and here's Chubby Checker showing you how:



That was 1961, 2 years before Lesley sang Madera and White's declaration to female autonomy, which is no kind of dance song at all, though Diane Keaton, Bette Midler, and Goldie Hawn manage to turn it into a dance for the purpose of bringing a close to the execrable 1996 movie "First Wives Club":



That movie is best described by David Rakoff in "Half Empty": "A gynocentric comedy predicated on the scenario where men are cheating bastards and middle-aged women the goddesses who best them while cementing their sisterhood with Motown-scored makeover montages, vengeful shopping sprees, warmed-over Lucy-and-Ethel hijinks, and random humiliations visited upon women who are younger and therefore by definition stupid whores."

Anyway, look at the lyrics to "You Don't Own Me," words which a couple youngish guys put in the female singer's mouth, as repurposed for the 2012 election "war on women" theme:

I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please

Sounds libertarian to me. But it's the Obama side using this, so presumably we're supposed to hear something like:

I'm free and I want my birth control to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please and have the government pay for it

The AP reports an increase in racial prejudice since 2008 (based on research that is at least somewhat scientific).

"Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly."

The explicit racism measures asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about black and Hispanic people. In addition, the surveys asked how well respondents thought certain words, such as "friendly," ''hardworking," ''violent" and "lazy," described blacks, whites and Hispanics. 

The same respondents were also administered a survey designed to measure implicit racism, in which a photo of a black, Hispanic or white male flashed on the screen before a neutral image of a Chinese character. The respondents were then asked to rate their feelings toward the Chinese character. Previous research has shown that people transfer their feelings about the photo onto the character, allowing researchers to measure racist feelings even if a respondent does not acknowledge them. 

I'm guessing that AP thinks this material is helpful to Obama, perhaps guilt-tripping Americans into voting for Obama as a way to say I'm not racist. But it can cut the other way, because Obama came into office at least in part because people believed in his seeming promise to take us to a higher ground racially, as if he had a special gift to cure racial ills.

Obama didn't give us that gift. We didn't get what we wanted for Christmas. But we're not children. Let's say we were deluded/misled into thinking this nice young man could solve old problems in some miraculous new way. It turned out that he was a normal politician, operating in a political mode, playing us on the issues he found playable. Fine! Okay. We're smarter now. We have more information. We don't want to be racist, but what's the non-racist response?

Judge him up or down on his actual performance. He is only a man, only a politician. Treat him accordingly. 

MORE: Detail on how the research was done here and here (PDF).

"Ronald Reagan's 'First Time' Vote [Joke] Was Dirtier Than Lena Dunham's."

Does that mean we can't criticize the Obama campaign for that Lena Dunham ad anymore?

Possible arguments:

1. Reagan was talking to guys in a working-class bar, not putting the smutty material in a carefully crafted, glitzy ad aimed at everyone.

2. If Obama got caught on an open mike saying something like "I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever; we begin bombing in five minutes," there would be nothing to complain about because Reagan did that.

3. We remember Ronald Reagan. We knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of ours. Lena Dunham, you're no Ronald Reagan.

ADDED:

4. For Ronald Reagan's remark to be taken as sexual, we would need to believe that he wanted us to visualize him on the receiving end of sexual penetration, and he couldn't have meant that.

5. The comparison to Reagan's joke assumes that the criticism of Dunham's ad was based on prissiness about sexuality, but it was really about trivializing the election and treating women as if they vote based on their sexual attraction toward the President.

Swing state tracking poll: Romney 51%, Obama 45%

Romney's up 6 in today's Rasmussen swing-state poll. The last time anyone was up 6 in this poll, it was October 4 and Obama. That means Romney has gained 12 points in 3 weeks.

Romney is up 4 in the regular tracking poll. You might think that because Romney is further ahead in swing states that he does not have a problem with the Electoral College, but he does:

The Rasmussen Reports Electoral College projections now show the president with 237 Electoral Votes and Romney 206. The magic number needed to win the White House is 270. Eight states with 95 Electoral College votes remain Toss-ups. In addition to Florida, the battleground states are Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

There are 8 state's Rasmussen is calling toss-ups, but the swing state poll covers 11 states. The additional states are Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina.

I hope we don't get another misalignment between the popular vote and the Electoral College, and I hope the election produces a clear winner, so we don't need to feel that the outcome might have been affected by fraud or vote suppression of any kind. Or do you think that it's better for the winner to know he barely made it and needs to be more appeasing/compromising/reaching-across-the-aisle with the other side? Or is your answer to that last question yes only if your guy loses?

I really wonder why Obama has been able to keep it as close as it is. With the economy so bad, the unpopularity of Obamacare, and what happened in Libya, he should have fallen far behind by now. If the American people don't see fit to reject him soundly, we will either have 4 more years of Obama or a Romney administration with a paltry mandate.

Woman found guilty of giving cannibis to her baby... via breast milk.

In New Zealand, where the senior court official said: "Child abuse is family violence in these circumstances, and it is clear this baby and its mother needed help."

"Big Bird. Binders. Bayonets."

The GOP goes after Obama, using Obama's own line, from 2008: "If you don't have a record to run on, you make a big election about small things."



(Via Instapundit, who says "ouch.")

"For Tammy Baldwin to attack [Tommy Thompson] on anything related to Sept. 11 is so hypocritical, she should be ashamed of herself..."

Said Rudy Giuliani yesterday.

Baldwin ran an ad this week... saying Thompson personally profited from the attacks by making $3 million from a health care firm he led that scored a government contract to treat first responders.

Here's Baldwin's ad:



Now, that ad was provoked by a Thompson an ad that assailed Baldwin for voting against a resolution to honor the 9/11 victims. Baldwin did vote for other bills honoring the victims when they also included health care spending provisions related to first responders. Here's Tommy's ad:



At last night's debate, Baldwin said "I am outraged that Tommy Thompson would question my patriotism." Thompson said he was not questioning her patriotism. He was questioning her "judgment."

I don't have a transcript or video of the debate, but Tommy had a long segment in which he talked about all that he did (as Health Secretary) on 9/11.

More here:

The Thompson campaign hosted a conference call Wednesday afternoon with George Pataki, who was governor of New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Pataki praised Thompson as a "force of nature" in responding to the tragedy.

"He was the first member of the Cabinet to come to Ground Zero, where I had the privilege of talking with him," said Pataki. "And from the early moments, he activated -- in a way that I will always be grateful for -- the nation's medical response efforts to help us."

When a reporter pointed out that Baldwin voted many times for other bills honoring and helping 9/11 first responders -- and clearly stated why she opposed the one bill being highlighted by Thompson -- Pataki nevertheless defended the criticisms.

"It's not misleading at all," he said of Thompson's ad. "She was one of a handful who voted against a strong bipartisan resolution. I don't understand the logic of her explanation."

Tommy Thompson and Tammy Baldwin.

The last debate, streaming here.

UPDATE: Debate over. Site delinked.