The Commentariat -- Oct. 31, 2012

CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE. Art by Brian McFadden of the New York Times.Jerry Markon & Bill Turque of the Washington Post: "Officials in a variety of affected state said that while early voting had been delayed in some areas, most of the time was likely to be made up in the days before the Nov. 6 election. They also vowed that Election Day itself would be relatively unaffected, even as they scrambled in the hardest-hit states to make sure all voting machines would have power."

Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: "The number of ... weather-related disasters, has quintupled over the last three decades.... It is, at this point, impossible to say what it will take for American politics to catch up to the reality of North American climate change. More super-storms, more heat waves, more multi-billion-dollar 'weather-related loss events'? The one thing that can be said is that, whether or not our elected officials choose to acknowledge the obvious, we can expect, 'with a high degree of confidence,' that all of these are coming." ...

... Michael Gormley of the AP: "New Yorkers on Tuesday cheered the extraordinary rescues that saved hundreds of lives in and around New York City in the midst of Superstorm Sandy, but New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it's time to brace for more of the same havoc which he blames on climate change." ...

... We have a 100-year flood every two years now. -- Andrew Cuomo:

Presidential Race

Nate Silver: "Just about every method for evaluating the election based on state polls seems to hint at a very slight lead in the popular vote, as well as an Electoral College victory, for President Obama."

Donovan Slack of Politico: "President Obama is hitting the trail on Thursday after taking three days off from campaigning to oversee storm response. He will attend rallies in Green Bay, Wis.; Boulder, Colo.; and Las Vegas, Nevada...."

David Nakamura & Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "In a campaign notable mostly for its negativity, the historic storm provided Obama with a commander-in-chief moment a week before Election Day. The president gained a rare moment of bipartisan praise, with Democratic and Republican governors alike commending the performance of the federal government.... On Wednesday, Obama will travel to New Jersey to tour damaged areas with Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a regular critic of the president who heaped praise on him in the aftermath of the storm...."

Maureen Dowd: "Gov. Chris Christie ... was all over TV Tuesday, effusively praising the president for his luminous leadership on Hurricane Sandy, the same president he mocked last week at a Romney rally in Virginia as a naif groping to find 'the light switch of leadership.' ... Christie also extolled FEMA, even though Romney has said it is 'immoral' to spend money on federal disaster relief when the deficit is so big.... Just about the only criticism the president got on his storm stewardship was, amazingly enough, from 'Heck of a Job, Brownie' Michael Brown, the FEMA chief during Katrina, who naturally thought Obama acted too quickly and efficiently." ...

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "Romney has a Christie problem and a FEMA problem."

Feliciz Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Mitt Romney repeatedly ignored questions about his position on federal funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at an event for storm victims Tuesday.... 'Governor, you've been asked 14 times. Why are you refusing to answer the question?' one [reporter] asked. Romney ignored the reporters' queries and continued loading up the truck. Earlier, during the event, he ignored similar queries." ...

... Charles Pierce: Both Romney & Ryan "are on record ... as recommending that the federal government's responsibility for things like disaster relief be either handed back to the states, or privatized entirely. They have made this argument in public. They have made this argument as part of the reason why you should vote for them. They also have similar plans for the National Weather Service, and for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they have made those arguments as part of the reason why you should vote for them. If those ideas had prevailed..., more people would have died because of this storm, and more people would still be dying from this storm two or three weeks from now.... This election has come down to a battle between two visions of the the functions of the national government and, through that, a battle over whether the political commonwealth exists at all." ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "So far, Romney and his allies haven't suffered politically because of their boasts to shrink or abolish federal agencies. Government, in the abstract, doesn't get a lot of love from the voters. Maybe Sandy will remind people that it should." ...

... David Firestone of the New York Times: "On a day when millions of Americans face serious hardship as they recover from Hurricane Sandy's damage, Mitt Romney ... turned a scheduled rally in Kettering, Ohio, this morning into a 'storm relief event,' and posed before piles of donated canned goods.... He described such donations as 'the American way.' ... Mr. Romney's rash promise to put a hard ceiling on discretionary spending -- which includes emergency response -- would mean far less money for [FEMA]. The House budgets developed by ... Paul Ryan would cut this kind of spending even further, an idea that Mr. Romney considers 'excellent.' Mr. Romney ignored all questions this morning about his plans for federal emergency management. It's probably embarrassing to admit those plans consist largely of collecting soup cans."

Nathan Bomey & Brent Snavely of the Detroit Free Press: in a radio ad, "... Mitt Romney has broadened his attack on President Barack Obama's auto industry restructuring, implying that General Motors used the aid to hire more workers in China than in the U.S.... GM quickly defended its performance. 'We've clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days,' GM spokesman Greg Martin said. 'No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.' Separately, Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne used an e-mail to employees today to refute the implication in a Romney TV ad that Chrysler may move all Jeep production from the U.S. to China." ...

... Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Mitt Romney's round of highly dubious television and radio ads suggesting that Chrysler and GM are shipping American jobs to China has managed to offend both car companies."

Liars-in-Training. Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters.... One blatant falsehood ... informed poll watchers that any 'person [who] has been convicted of treason, a felony, or bribery' isn't eligible to vote. This is not true. Once a Wisconsin voter who has been convicted of a felony completes his or her sentence, that person is once again eligible to vote.... The training also encouraged volunteers to deceive election workers and the public about who they were associated with."

Surrogate Liar. Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: on Monday, former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), a "top Romney surrogate, told a group of Jewish voters in [Ohio] that ... [Roe v. Wade] is in no danger of being overturned should Romney become president.... For his part, Romney has said overturning Roe is a personal goal."

Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation, in the Washington Post: "Republicans ... settled on a true Plutarch ... as their banner carrier. Romney has waged a campaign of upper-class disdain for the electorate.... He called for tax cuts for all -- particularly the wealthy -- without revealing how he would pay for them. He called for deep cuts in domestic spending without revealing what he would cut, other than Big Bird. He called for repealing Obamacare without revealing what he would replace it with. He called for turning Medicare into a voucher system that would put more costs on seniors without revealing how he thought they would pay for it. He championed a 'territorial' corporate tax system that would make any profit earned abroad tax-free -- giving multinationals multimillion-dollar incentives to move jobs or report profits abroad. This part of his agenda was inviolate; everything else -- from his position on abortion to his catering to the anti-immigrant crowd to his muscular posturing on foreign policy -- seemed to be situational, depending on the audience he sought to sell."

Michael Tomasky on "Mitt Romney's Closing Con Game." Republicans obstruct, obstruct, obstruct; then blame Obama for not being "a uniter"; then Romney promises to be a uniter, unlike the "divisive" Obama. CW: this is the insanely stupid argument, BTW, that the editors of the Des Moines Register adopted as their main rationale for endorsing Romney.

Local News

CW: My husband and I are going to vote this afternoon. As Michael Grunwald of Time reports, we should expect long waiting lines, thanks to Republican's cutting early voting days nearly in half.

News Ledes

President Obama tours a New Jersey neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Sandy & makes remarks:

New York Times: "President Obama stood shoulder to shoulder with Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, Wednesday afternoon, offering reassurance in the wake of devastating storm damage -- and a politically powerful picture of bipartisanship just days before the election."

Washington Post: "Sandy, the hybrid hurricane/nor'easter, began to lose steam Tuesday as it drifted across Pennsylvania and veered toward Canada. But the damage was done, and it will go down as a historic storm, not least because of what it did to New York City, where a surge of seawater inundated some of the most valuable real estate in America."

AP: "The floodwaters that poured into New York's deepest subway tunnels may pose the biggest obstacle to the city's recovery from the worst natural disaster in the transit system's 108-year history."

AP: "Criminal investigators from France will exhume Yasser Arafat's remains next month to try to find out how the Palestinian leader died, a French official said Tuesday."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 30, 2012

"The Only Light in New York." Instagram by "gerasolis" on the Washington Post liveblog of the storm.New York Times live update at 8:03 pm ET: while Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) was berating the mayor of Atlantic City, he took time out to "heap praise on President Barack Obama. Mr. Christie said Mr. Obama had called to make sure he had everything needed from the federal government and left a number to call him directly at the White House if any unmet needs arise. 'I appreciate that call from the president,' Mr. Christie said. 'It was very proactive. I appreciate that kind of leadership.'" CW: I guess Christie isn't totally into the Privatize FEMA Plan. ...

... Three Leaders, Three Styles. Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times: "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg played the stern parent, chiding the kids not to surf and offering sensible suggestions like staying home to eat a sandwich. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, tieless with a shirt button undone, was a confident but unhurried everyguy: the hunky local fire chief. And Gov. Chris Christie was his usual blunt self, deriding those who resisted evacuation orders as 'selfish and stupid.'"

Presidential Race

** Joshua Holland of AlterNet: "This post is addressed to disgruntled progressives who are urging like-minded people to vote 'strategically' by casting their vote for Obama if they live in a contested state, and voting for a third-party candidate if they live in a solidly blue or red state.... The reason this is a terrible idea in 2012 is simple: there is now a non-trivial chance that Mitt Romney could win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College ... [in which case Republicans would ] precipitate a crisis.... A concerted effort would be made to persuade members of the Electoral College to become 'faithless electors.' Efforts would be made to split the electoral vote proportionally in any states Obama wins that are controlled by Republicans. We'd see more 'Brooks Brothers riots' unfold. It'd be a huge mess, and I don't think the outcome would be certain.... Democrats can work to avoid this scenario by turning out more voters, regardless of where they live -- in Oregon or Alabama."

** Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "The storm could also provide a moment of sharp contrast between President Obama and Mitt Romney and how their different ideas of governing apply to the federal response to large-scale disasters. Obama has been aggressive about bolstering the federal government's capability to respond to disasters, while his Republican challenger believes that states should be the primary responders in such situations and has suggested that disaster response could be privatized." CW: I hope a lot of people read this, though those most affected over the next few days will have other things on their minds & no access to the Internets. O'Keefe, BTW, is a straight reporter. ...

... New York Times Editors: "Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of 'big government,' which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it.... Republicans ... don't like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast. Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness." ...

... Desert Beacon: "Remember the Romney-Ryan budget proposal calls for 20% cuts across the board in non-defense discretionary spending. Their previously issued statements also call for transforming emergency funds into Block Grants for states. So, whatever disaster strikes the 'resources and assistance' would come from the state -- not federal resources. The state of Louisiana would have had to pick up the bill for Hurricane Katrina from its 'block grant.'" Via Karoli of Crooks & Liars. ...

... Kevin Drum makes an excellent point re: Romney's idea of defunding FEMA (see clip in yesterday's Commentariat): "Republican orthodoxy that demanded spending cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling [in the summer of 2011] had infested everything, even emergency spending. Sure, Joplin, [Missouri,] might be suffering [from a devastating tornado], but by God, America was out of money and there was nothing left for them. Romney, who was still in his severely conservative phase back then, went along because he didn't dare cross Eric Cantor. This is the real problem here. There's no telling if Romney really believed what he was saying or not, but as president he probably wouldn't dare cross Cantor either." ...

... AND Drum points to this piece Tim Murphy of Mother Jones wrote in August: "... under a Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan administration, FEMA's ability to respond quickly and effectively to natural disasters could be severely inhibited. In a 2012 report on Rep. Paul Ryan's 'Path to Prosperity' roadmap (which Romney has said is similar to his own), the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that, due to the severe cuts to nonentitlement, nondefense spending, the costs for things like emergency management would have to be passed on to the states -- which, with just a few exceptions, are currently in an even tighter financial bind than Washington." ...

Ed Kilgore: "So now, predictably, the Romney campaign is backtracking on his primary campaign suggestion that emergency management needs to be taken over by the states (implying in turn that FEMA should be abolished). Oh no! Mitt wouldn't do that! We're witnessing a pattern.... [the Romney-Ryan budget calls for] some big cuts. But whenever Mitt is challenged on any particular budget item, we hear: Oh, no! Mitt wouldn't cut that! But every time something's taken off the table, the level of cuts needed for programs not taken off the table goes straight up. And greater specificity, of course, is always ruled out...."

... Alec MacGillis of The New Republic chalks up Romney's antipathy to FEMA as part of his new-found embrace of "federalism," which he used as an excuse to distance himself from the toxicity of ObamaCare -- health care is a function that should be left to the states. So RomneyCare good, ObamaCare bad. ...

... CW: BUT I think it's even more basic (and base) than that. Romney doesn't care about the 47 percent, & they mostly don't live in Massachusetts, where he pays taxes. Massachusetts is a "giver" state: it gives more to the federal government than it receives. If most functions were left to the states, even though Massachusetts is a high-tax state, Romney's taxes would be lower because Massachusetts would no longer be covering for Alabama, Mississippi, etc. If you think FEMA's response to Katrina was piss-poor, think how good it would have been if local authorities were in charge. One of the hold-ups in the response to New Orleans victims of Katrina, as I recall, was that the Democratic governor went practically catatonic & couldn't decide what to do. As for the mayor of New Orleans, he left town for the worst two days of the crisis. But that would be okay with Romney; he wants to wash his hands of "those people." ...

... FEMA Is Immoral. CW: something about Romney's rejection of FEMA neither I nor the pundits have mentioned is how virulently he opposed it. After he said it should be given to the states or privatized, moderator John King asked, "Including disaster relief, though?" Romney answered, "We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral ... to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids." This is nonsense. Eighty-five percent of the national debt is owed to Americans. So if all of "our kids" have to pay, some of "our kids" also will profit. The money stays in the American economy. In fact, often the borrower & the lender are effectively the same person -- your taxes may rise to pay off a debt to your pension plan. The "taxpayer you" loses, but the "pensioner you" gains. ...

     ... CW Update. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos goes there. She concludes, rightly I think, that ultimately Mitt thinks disaster relief should be "privatized." Here's my Newsflash for Mitt: much of disaster relief is already privatized: it's called homeowners insurance, healthcare insurance or pay-it-yourself. Homeowners insurance for hurricanes & similar major disasters is fabulous in Florida: as Janice Lloyd of USA Today reports, "Along coastal areas from Florida to Maine, the owner pays a percentage of the replacement value of the property rather than a traditional deductible in the event of hurricane damage." In the last hurricane to hit hard here, we had some minor roof damage that was covered by our homeowners policy. The deductible? -- because it was hurricane-related, about $30,000. Needless to say, we paid for the repairs out-of-pocket.

... Aviva Shen of Think Progress: appearing on CNN Monday, GOP strategist Ron Bonjean endorsed Romney's plan to dismantle FEMA. Because, if, um, your power is on, you don't care about FEMA. CW: this is the GOP every-person-for-himself worldview in a nutshell: we are not a country; we are each individuals & we don't care about each other. Not unrelated to the I've Got Mine School of Political Philosophy.

Jim Rutenberg & Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The ad from Mitt Romney showed up on televisions here early Saturday morning without the usual public announcement that both campaigns typically use to herald their latest commercials: Chrysler, a bailout recipient, is going to begin producing Jeeps in China, an announcer says, leaving the misleading impression that the move would come at the expense of jobs here.... [Romney's] effort ... stretch or ignore the facts.... Mr. Romney incorrectly told a rally in Defiance, Ohio, late last week outright that Jeep was considering moving its production to China.... Jeep's corporate parent, Chrysler, had already released a scathing statement calling suggestions that Jeep was moving American jobs to China 'fantasies' and 'extravagant'...." CW: Chrysler also said Romney's assertion was "a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats." Here's the Obama campaign's response -- "Wrong then, dishonest now":

... AND here's Bill Clinton's response:

... James O'Toole of the Toledo Blade: "Pinch-hitting for President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton assailed Mitt Romney on Monday, charging that a new Republican ad being aired here is deceptive in suggesting that Chrysler planned to move its Jeep production to China. Mr. Clinton told a crowd at Youngstown State University that the claim was 'the biggest load of bull in the world,' pointing to a Chrysler Group LLC statement that said the firm was considering ramping up production in China, but not at the expense of its North American operations." ...

..."Flailing in Ohio, Romney Rolls out Jeep Ploy." Cleveland Plain Dealer Editors: "Mitt Romney is desperate to convince Ohio voters that he's the candidate most committed to the U.S. auto industry -- no matter how much confusion he must sow to do it.... It won't work. Ohio voters know who stepped up when the auto industry was at the abyss -- and it wasn't Romney." ...

... Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "The series of statements in the ad individually may be technically correct, but the overall message of the ad is clearly misleading -- especially since it appears to have been designed to piggyback off of Romney's gross misstatement that Chrysler was moving Ohio factory jobs to China. It is also especially strange that the ad touts Romney's endorsement by the Detroit News, when the editorial actually backs up Obama's criticism of Romney's response to the auto industry crisis."

The pro-Obama SuperPAC American Bridge Plays Romnopoly:

Sam Wang of Princeton U. follows up on Paul Krugman's blogpost (linked in yesterday's Commentariat) calling out the National Review for attacking Nate Silver. Since then, more wingers have piled on. "None of this storm of criticism would be happening if 'Ro-mentum' were real. In fact, Mitt Romney's fortunes peaked around October 4-9. Since then, the race has moved back toward Obama by about 2.5 points." ...

Nate Cohn of The New Republic on why Florida is still in play -- "Florida's growing black and non-Cuban Hispanic populations."

Congressional Races

Katharine Seelye of the New York Times: "Senator Scott P. Brown’s campaign announced Monday afternoon that he would not participate in his fourth and final debate with Elizabeth Warren, his Democratic challenger, on Tuesday night, citing Hurricane Sandy.... The Warren campaign subsequently issued a statement saying that Ms. Warren agreed that safety was paramount and that the debate should not be held. A poll in The Boston Globe on Monday showed Mr. Brown, above, in a dead heat with Ms. Warren, a positive turn of events for the Republican, who had been trailing in most recent polls."

David Rogers of Politico: "Former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson endorsed the uphill Senate campaign of Democrat Bob Kerrey in Nebraska Monday, describing his former colleague as a friend and someone willing to "place the national interest ahead of the howling special interests" in addressing the federal debt and entitlement reforms. Recent polls show Kerrey closing in on Republican Deb Fischer...."

Jamelle Bouie of American Prospect has an overview of the Senate races, where -- if today's polling numbers hold -- Democrats are likely to hold onto the majority. ...

... Jonathan Bernstein, who writes in the Washington Post & elsewhere, but who has a little side job as a poly sci professor, blames the Tea Party, and not just in cases where the Tea Party candidates who won primary slots, like Dick Moredick of Indiana. Bernstein suspects "what's happening here are strong Republican potential candidates driven away by tea party primary upsets. They can't trust that the nomination field will be cleared for them; they can't trust that the usual recipe -- raising plenty of money and securing the backing of party-aligned leaders and groups -- will be enough. And ambitious professional politicians, who also generally are the best candidates, aren't willing to take that sort of risk."

Other Stuff

Prof. Justin Levitt in a New York Times op-ed: "Local election officials must continue to safeguard the election process from mass challenges in the name of 'voter integrity.' These zealous sweeps are so error-ridden that they undermine the integrity they ostensibly seek.... Citizens walking around with long lists of ostensibly illegal voters are most likely walking around with long lists of mistakes."

Joe Nocera on incoming New York Times CEO Mark Thompson: "Thompson winds up appearing willfully ignorant, and it makes you wonder what kind of an organization the BBC was when Thompson was running it -- and what kind of leader he was. It also makes you wonder what kind of chief executive he'd be at The Times." CW: Joe Nocera has a penchant for being pretty chummy with some of his subjects & with some business leaders. Apparently this chumminess does not extend to his own boss. This is a gutsy column.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "A challenge to a federal law that authorized intercepting international communications involving Americans appeared to face an uphill climb at the Supreme Court on Monday.... The question in the case was whether journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates could show they had been harmed and so had standing to sue, and several justices seemed open to the idea. If the case is dismissed for lack of standing, there is a fair prospect that the Supreme Court will never rule on the constitutionality of the law, a 2008 measure that broadened the government's power to eavesdrop on international communications."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The Walt Disney Company, in a move that gives it a commanding position in the world of fantasy movies, said Tuesday it had agreed to acquire Lucasfilm from its founder, George Lucas, for $4.05 billion in stock and cash."

AP: "As Superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the East Coast awoke Tuesday without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation's largest city unusually vacant and dark. New York was among the hardest hit, with its financial heart in Lower Manhattan shuttered for a second day and seawater cascading into the still-gaping construction pit at the World Trade Center. President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in the city and Long Island. The storm that made landfall in New Jersey on Monday evening with 80 mph sustained winds killed at least 16 people in seven states, cut power to more than 7.4 million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Ohio, caused scares at two nuclear power plants and stopped the presidential campaign cold." ...

... The New York Times' main story is here. The Washington Post's story is here.

... The New York Times live updates for the New York area are here. The Washington Post has a liveblog here. Daily Kos has a list of links to sites livestreaming Sandy coverage. The Weather Channel has lots of info. ...

... NEW. The New York Times has a live feature titled "Tracking the Storm" with reports on areas as the storm moves inland.

... AP: "A huge fire destroyed at least 50 homes in a flooded neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. More than 190 firefighters were trying to contain the blaze in the Breezy Point section and two people suffered minor injuries...." ...

... Reuters: "A possible levee breach in northern New Jersey on Tuesday, flooded three towns with 4 to 5 feet of water in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, prompting the evacuation of hundreds from their homes. The towns of Moonachie, Little Ferry and Carlstadt were underwater after the swollen Hackensack River broke its banks, affecting around 2,000 residents...." ...

... Reuters: "Exelon Corp declared an 'alert' at its New Jersey Oyster Creek nuclear power plant due to a record storm surge, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said, warning that a further water rise could force the country's oldest working plant to use emergency water supplies to cool spent uranium fuel rods. The alert -- the second lowest of four NRC action levels -- came after water levels at the plant rose by more than 6.5 feet, potentially affecting the pumps that circulate water through the plant...." ...

... AP: "A backup generator failed at a New York City hospital Monday night, forcing it to move out more than 200 patients, including 20 babies from the neonatal intensive care unit. Dozens of ambulances lined up around the block outside New York University Tisch Hospital as doctors and nurses began the slow process of evacuation. They started with the sickest and youngest. Some were on respirators operating on battery power."

Reuters: "The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 14 of the 16 crew members who abandoned the replica tall ship HMS Bounty off North Carolina in rough seas caused by Hurricane Sandy, using helicopters on Monday to pluck them from life rafts. A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk rescue helicopter later recovered crew member Claudene Christian, 42, who was described as unresponsive, while continuing to search for the 63-year-old captain of the ship, which sank in 18-foot seas. Christian [was] taken to Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where a hospital spokesman said she was in 'critical condition.'"

AP: "A major airport in northern Japan was closed Tuesday after construction workers found an unexploded bomb believed to be from World War II. All 92 flights in and out of Sendai airport were cancelled after the 250-kilogram (550-pound) bomb was uncovered during construction near a runway...."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 29, 2012

CW: For those of you in or near the path of the storms, heed the warnings & stay safe. On the West Coast of Florida, I'm nowhere near the epicenter of Sandy, yet the wind has been blowing strongly & non-stop for at least four days.

... Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: "In coping with Hurricane Sandy, New York metropolitan area utilities will be mindful that many in the region were left without electricity for a week or more after Tropical Storm Irene." CW: that would include Dave S. (not sure if he lives in New York) and me. I was without water & power for 5+ days at my Upstate New York cottage. ...

... Alan Boyle, the science editor of NBC News, explains the factors that made Sandy a superstorm.

Presidential Race

My column for the New York Times eXaminer is on the lead op-ed in Sunday's New York Times, a piece by Frederick Harris claiming that "the Obama presidency has already marked the decline ... of a political vision centered on challenging racial inequality." I guess picking on professors is my new thing.

Michael Shear & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama on Monday morning abandoned political campaigning in the face of the huge storm barreling down on the East Coast, canceling an event in Florida and quickly heading back to Washington to coordinate emergency response from the White House."

Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "The federal government's ability to respond to natural disasters, like Hurricane Sandy currently bearing down on the East Coast, would be significantly hindered under a Romney-Ryan administration. At least three times, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have publicly demanded that the federal government only disburse disaster relief funding if Congress agreed to offsetting budget cuts elsewhere. This would hold desperately-needed disaster relief funding hostage unless Congress agreed to cuts elsewhere in the budget, an extraordinarily difficult prospect even in normal circumstances." ...

... Ryan Grim of Huffington Post: "During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response. 'Absolutely,' he said. 'Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better.'" With video. CW: so next hurricane or tornado, we can all write checks to Disasters R Us & Survival Suppliers, Inc. & hope they save us. Say your neighbor's tree fell across the road & he won't pay up, so you can't get to your house. Too bad. At some point, "the market" will work things out. Ain't capitalism grand? ...

"The War on Objectivity." Paul Krugman: "... the right -- and ... we're talking about mainstream commentators and publications -- has been screaming 'bias'! They know, just know, that Nate [Silver] must be cooking the books. How do they know this? Well, his results look good for Obama, so it must be a cheat. Never mind the fact that Nate tells us all exactly how he does it, and that he hasn't changed the formula at all.... This is really scary. It means that if these people triumph, science -- or any kind of scholarship -- will become impossible. Everything must pass a political test; if it isn't what the right wants to hear, the messenger is subjected to a smear campaign." ...

... NEW. The latest from unreliable weasel Nate Silver: "The conventional wisdom about this year's presidential race is that it has broken out of stasis to become wildly unpredictable. And yet, after a period of polling turmoil following President Obama's convention in Charlotte, N.C., and Mitt Romney's sharp rebound after the first presidential debate in Denver, the polling in most swing states now looks very similar to the way it did for much of the late spring and summer." CW: thanks, Nate! ...

... NEW. ALSO from Silver: "Hurricane Sandy is just too large a storm to make reliable guesses about where the vote might be depressed. And academic studies on the effects of natural disasters upon elections produce somewhat ambiguous results." ...

... NEW. BUT Adam Serwer has some intelligent thoughts and data on weather effects on elections.

In his column, Krugman writes, "If [Romney] wins, Medicaid -- which now covers more than 50 million Americans, and which President Obama would expand further as part of his health reform -- will face savage cuts. Estimates suggest that a Romney victory would deny health insurance to about 45 million people who would have coverage if he lost, with two-thirds of that difference due to the assault on Medicaid."

Best Romney ad ever. Stephen Webster of Raw Story has the raw story:

Jeremy Peters, et al., of the New York Times: "Despite repeated warnings from President Obama and his party that a flood of unrestricted donations from conservatives to outside groups would swamp them, the White House and its allies are at least holding their own. Over the last month, the pro-Obama forces have run more ads and, more critically, have reached audiences in roughly the same numbers as Mitt Romney and the group of well-financed conservative super PACs working to elect him."

NEW. Matt Viser of the Boston Globe highlights some of the dramatic shifts in Romney's stated policy preferences.

** Penn Bullock of The New Republic on on Stuart Stevens, the unscrupulous thug who runs Romney's campaign. Romney boasts about Stevens' resume'.

Jesse Drucker of Bloomberg News discovers another tax dodge Romney uses which allows him "to take advantage of the exempt status of charities without actually giving away much money.... In 1997, Congress cracked down on" this popular tax shelter, but those who had already established them -- like Romney -- are allowed by the 1997 law to retain them. And he does.

Where's Willard? Bill Carter of the New York Times: President Obama has appeared on a number of late night and other talk shows, but Mitt Romney's campaign has refused to book the GOP candidate. Romney said Dave Letterman "hates me." "Since then Mr. Letterman has waged an on-camera campaign to get Mr. Romney onto his visitors' couch, at one point even telling his viewers not to vote for the Republican unless he turned up. He hasn't."

Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: "President Obama is far and away the best president for corporate profits since 1900." In addition, "... real GDP growth per capita is far higher under Obama than it was under either Bush administration."

Episode 1,397,426 of "Our Deplorable Mainstream Media." With extras Rachel Maddow & E. J. Dionne. In this fingernails-on-blackboard segment, David Gregory invites Carly Fiorina to appear on his gag-inducing show "Press the Meat" so he and his buddy David Brooks can look downright reasonable:

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic on Romney's "Desperate, Deceptive Gambit" in Ohio. ...

... Sam Stein of the Huffington Post analyzes Romney's totally misleading auto bailout ad.

Charles Pierce does just an excellent job of taking down the Des Moines Register's devil-may-care endorsement of the bullshitter guy, then goes on to eviscerate the Sunday morning talkshow crowd -- even tho this is not really necessary to do because this is a gang that is exceptionally adept at self-parody.

Our Well-Informed Electorate. Andrew Kirell of Mediaite: "According to a new Associated Press survey, more Americans believe President Barack Obama is Jewish than believe that the president is a Muslim; while a plurality of the surveyed individuals believe he has 'no religion.'"

You'll notice [President Obama] has canceling his trips over the hurricane. He did not cancel his trips over Benghazi. -- Newt Gingrich

Dear Newt: Shut the hell up. On September 20, 1984, there was a truck-bomb explosion at the U.S. embassy annex in Aukar, Lebanon, just outside Beirut. Twenty-four people were killed.... On September 21, 1984 [Ronald Reagan] made three campaign appearances in Iowa -- at an airport rally, a farm, and a church picnic -- despite the fact that a Des Moines Register poll showed him leading Walter Mondale in the state by 23 points.-- Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog

Expect an Election as Disastrous as the Storms. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Early voting, which Mr. Obama has counted on to bolster his chances of a second term, will most likely grind to a halt in some places along the Eastern Seaboard, while power failures could last much of the week.... Virginia, among the most tightly contested states, may be among the most affected.... On Election Day, the winner may not be known right away; results in one or more states may be close enough to merit recounts. In Ohio, which could decide the election, so many provisional ballots may be cast -- and by law are not counted right away -- that it may be mid-November before a winner is declared." ...

... Susan Saulny of the New York Times: "Across Florida, black churches have responded with ferocity to changes that Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, and the Legislature made to eliminate six days of early voting this year -- including the Sunday before Election Day, which had been the traditional day to mobilize black congregations. In 2008, black voters cast early ballots at twice the rate of white voters, and turned out in significant strength on the Sunday before Election Day to help propel Mr. Obama to victory here.... Obama supporters are counting on a newly energized black base to put them over the edge despite the tighter window for early voting."

Other Stuff

Thomas Edsall has an interesting piece in the New York Times which highlights how the once-authoritarian, hierarchical Republican party is losing control to a few extremist billionaires.

Geraldo tells "Fox & Friends" to STFU on Libya conspiracy theories. Of course then he gets it wrong about Ambassador Susan Rice. That's Geraldo. What a bunch of losers. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link:

New York Times Editors: "In 2010, a group now called American Tradition Partnership brought a lawsuit against Montana, seeking to throw out the state's anticorruption law.... In June, the Supreme Court's conservative majority obliged and handed the group a big victory by blocking the state law. Now a report by ProPublica shows that this group, which supports development of natural resources, apparently misled the Internal Revenue Service when it applied for and received tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(4) 'social welfare' group. It said it would not try to influence elections for public office, yet it has done so repeatedly."

News Ledes

NBC News: "A search was under way Monday for two crew members of the stricken ship HMS Bounty, which sank off the coast of North Carolina, the U.S. Coast Guard said. Earlier Monday, two Coast Guard helicopters rescued 14 people from life rafts after they were forced to abandon ship.... It is unclear why the boat set out to sea with Sandy bearing down." The ship was built in 1962 for the film "Mutiny on the Bounty" & has been used in several films since.

President Obama spoke from the White House's Brady Press Room re: storm preparation:

New York Times: "Hurricane Sandy grew stronger before dawn on Monday as it churned northward through the Atlantic Ocean en route to what forecasters agreed would be a devastating landfall, possibly within 100 miles of New York City. At 5 am, the huge storm was producing sustained winds of 85 miles an hour after turning due north, according to the National Hurricane Center. It was expected to veer again to the northwest later Monday morning and take dead aim at the coastline of New Jersey." ...

... The New York Times has live updates for the New York area here. The Weather Channel has links to city-by-city impact forecasts here. Sandy is predicted to hit land at Southern New Jersey, but the effects will be greatest north of there. ...

... Not surprisingly, the Weather Channel seems to be overloaded this morning, & I got a lot of linkage errors. The New York Times has state-by-state updates here. The Times has more live updates here. ...

... New York Times: "All United States stock and options markets will close on Monday as Hurricane Sandy approaches, as Wall Street braces for the storm to barrel through the heart of the country's financial center." ...

... Update: the Washington Post now has a liveblog of the storms. ...

... Update: Daily Kos publishes this list of links to sites livestreaming Sandy coverage.