If we are really going to have this storm…

… having a few donuts around the house would be a really good idea, right? So I bought a box of donuts this morning. Just to be on the safe side. No point in taking any chances here.

The thing a lot of people seem to be buying, though, is bottled water. I don't get it. Don't these people have indoor plumbing? And even if they don't, how can you run out of water in the middle of a rainstorm? Water just comes out of the sky, free. Okay it's a little dirty, but at least it's wet.

Anyway, I'm not going to march down the street hauling a big crate of water. That would be pretty dumb. I might go back for another box of donuts though.

R in a hurry

iPhone photo: Phil Compton

Having spent most of the day contemplating…

…yet another so-called storm of the century bearing down on us from all directions, I almost didn't realize that in less than two weeks we could have a President that can just barely squeak past Mitt Romney at the polls.

Now that's really depressing.

Wait… We had a storm of the century last year

Crap… mumble mumble… something… CUT IT OUT.

Meteorologists are predicting that Hurricane Sandy, now a category 1 storm, is turning into an "extra-tropical cyclone" that will hit a broad region with 50 mph winds and rain and storm surges as it barrels up the East Coast toward New York, in what some are calling the "storm of the century."

ABC

Right. Now I find this out?

From Kellie via our Seattle bureau

Asleep at the switch

WASHINGTON — The United States is facing a year or more without crucial satellites that provide invaluable data for predicting storm tracks, a result of years of mismanagement and underfunding, according to several recent official reviews.

NYTimes

But satellites don't vote. 

Picky, picky

WASHINGTON — For all their disputes, President Obama and Mitt Romney agree that the world is warming and that humans are at least partly to blame. It remains wholly unclear what either of them plans to do about it.

NYTimes

A hurricane is just a perfect excuse to buy a whole bunch of junk food

I figure I could live for a week on potato chips alone. Throw in some canned corned beef hash and, of course, some chili, and let 'er blow.

No way am I going to buy more candles, though. I still have two left over from last time.

Yeah, they're predicting another big Halloween storm this year, this one fueled by some hurricane or other blowing up the coast. Rain, not snow, but very high winds. Seems like, in fairness, if we're going to have hurricanes every year we ought to at least get to live somewhere warm. But no, dude, this is New England. WTF?

Chop down that metaphor

Commentary: Congressman John Olver – public servant, visionary, ski master | masslive.com

Once, a decade ago, I was trying in vain to navigate an intermediate cross-country ski slope at Northfield Mountain. As I was lying on my back in the snow, I looked up to the sight of John Olver shussing past me like a pine tree nailed to two slats.

 

Stuff we hadn't started worrying about yet

Gigantic invisible cocoons of dark matter may suck up rogue stars

Wait. We have machines that vote now? Really?

Why should we believe that the national campaign to rig an election is purely legal, and not technological? The only reason is that we don't want to believe it.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/american-exceptionalism-14056595#ixzz2AEhxbOt7

Physics on the fly

Cats may skulk, and cats may fall – but no matter what they do, cats must obey the laws of physics. Scientists have tried repeatedly to figure out how they manage to do it.…

Improbable Research

Come on, now you're just freaking me out

We have a kill list with an Orwellian name: "Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the 'disposition matrix.'…

… And a lot more from Reason Magazine (and the Washington Post)

Regression

Dude, I had such a horrifying, soul crunching, comfort food shortage here last night I had to run out today and buy a box of mac & cheese just to feel safe again. Do not let this happen to you.

Also, keeping a bag of dried peas handy is a wise precaution, because pea soup is easy and always good.

"Professor" is a dirty word

At least it is here in Massachusetts (who woulda thunk?). Our accidental senator, Scott Brown, loses no opportunity to call Elizabeth Warren "professor"— and in today's serving of junk mail he upped the ante to "Harvard professor." Scary stuff.

But it gets better. I also got in today's junk delivery a fancy four-color mailing from the US Chamber of Commerce ("not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee") that calls Elizabeth Warren "a threat to free enterprise" and "catastrophically antibusiness." Seriously, Chamber of Commerce, you need to take a deep breath.

Meanwell, I can't think of a better reason to vote for her.

Noted

Obama’s Betrayals: First the Base, Then the Party » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

There are some Democrats still caught up in the fantasy, imagining that if the president is re-elected, and doesn’t have another term to worry about, he will finally show his “real colors” and become the progressive they imagined him to be in 2008.

The evidence that this is not the case, though, is clear in the way he is campaigning.…

From one of those frozen states (Wisconsin)…

…Charlie writes:


"Don't know if you remember Madison politics in the '60's and '70's, but Paul Soglin was the radical, leftest mayor who made national news.  He had led anti-war protests, sanctioned Mifflin Street pot parties, etc., etc.

"Well, he decided to get back into politics and is currently the mayor of MadTown, again.

"Not exactly the same, however…"

Citizen Dave: Soglin to the homeless... get out of Madison - Isthmus | The Daily Page

Citizen Dave: Soglin to the homeless... get out of Madison 

I've encountered some pretty cynical things in politics, but Mayor Paul Soglin's "Helping Hands Homeward" budget proposal is just about the worst I've seen. I could respect Soglin more if he at least would call it what it is: the "Hey, Homeless, Get Out of Town!" program…

 And he's the one who didn't grow up to be an investment banker.

I am supremely uninterested…

…in this presidential election and do not plan to vote for either one of the chumps we saw on the TV last night. I will vote, of course, in our own Senate race for Elizabeth Warren and most likely I'll also vote for Jill Stein for President, not that she has a prayer of winning anything. I am staying with the prediction I made more than four years ago: Obama will be a one-term president. If you find that depressing I am also willing to bet that if Obama does win another term you will not see a liberal party again in your lifetime, whoever you are. Just saying.

Of all the bridges in all the cites in all the world: Brooklyn

The ultimate steampunk fantasy, built by steam engines and muscle—guys working with shovels and picks and freaking dynamite in giant submerged boxes, the water of the river (which, in point of fact, is not a river at all) held at bay by compressed air and careful planning, fighting the bends. Built in an age when engineering was not about writing software or etching silicon but boring holes through mountains, laying rail, and slinging roadways from massive cables that ran from here to way, way over there. David McCullough's The Great Bridge will change the way you look at pictures of New York City forever.

It's so, so nice to live in a state that doesn't matter

I heard the ad for the first time shortly after I landed in Wisconsin on Thursday, and I decided to count. I heard it 22 more times from Thursday through Saturday across a wide variety of platforms on both AM and FM radio, though I did a fair amount of driving on each of the three days I was in the Badger State.  

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-47-percent-commercial-romney-comments-ad-wisconsin-radio-2012-10#ixzz29xJi9RyF

Except Scott ("Look! I drive a truck!") Brown, our accidental senator, is going for the National Wastepaper Award in my state, filling my mailbox every day with expensive, glossy, anti-Elizabeth Warren junk. 

A pox upon them all.

Take a deep breath, Bunky

There is not a single state that Obama took in 2008 in which he is doing better this time around according to our moving average of latest polls.

Undernews