Obama's Cult of Progressive 'Hope and Change' Comes Crashing Down

From Glenn Reynolds, at the New York Post, "Broken promises: O has dashed lefties’ hopes":

As the 2012 presidential campaign winds to a close — it’s mostly about Big Bird and binders, apparently — it’s hard to recall the heady days of 2008. But thinking back, things have really gone downhill.

Four years ago, remember, we were told that electing Barack Obama as president would bring about an unprecedented degree of racial healing, and usher in a postracial society to match our new postracial president.

Foreigners would love us — Arabs and Third-Worlders because he was black with an Arabic name; Europeans because he wasn’t George W. Bush.
Bush’s ginned up “War On Terror” would fade away, extrajudicial killings would stop, Guantanamo would close and there would be no more undeclared wars in foreign lands. Our diplomats would be respected, and the world would be our oyster.

At home, the hypercompetent Obama would review budgets line-by-line for waste, fight pork and cut the deficit in half by his first term. We’d have unprecedented government transparency, and a new, post-partisan political style in which rational argument would replace division and name-calling. The drug war would ease, and those nasty Bush-era warrantless wiretaps would cease.

Also, under the enlightened economic stewardship of the Obama administration, the economy would recover, unemployment would be held down and housing would recover.

Well, not so much....

Continue.

I think the expectations were a little high to begin with, but O's been pretty much fail all around.

Monster Storm Targets East

At the Wall Street Journal, "Coastal Residents Evacuated, Flights Canceled as Hurricane Sandy Approaches":

Hurricane Sandy loomed Sunday over the northeastern U.S., triggering evacuation orders for hundreds of thousands of residents, the cancellation of nearly 8,000 airline flights and the mass closure of schools and public transit systems, as authorities warned of heavy rains, high winds and flooding when the storm reaches land late Monday or early Tuesday.

The Category 1 hurricane was forecast to drop 8 inches of rain on northeastern North Carolina and up to a foot in parts of the mid-Atlantic states over the next few days. Forecasters described a storm footprint expected to stretch from Washington, D.C., north to Philadelphia, New York City and Boston. The National Weather Service said two cold fronts, one west of Hurricane Sandy and another north, were drawing the warm-air hurricane toward the populous coast and expected to fortify Sandy's reach and intensity.

The unusual weather confluence will turn Sandy into a post-tropical cyclone, or nor'easter, unleashing record low-pressure readings and wind gusts to 70 miles an hour as far inland as western Pennsylvania and western New York, the National Weather Service said.

More at that top link.

And at CNN, "Sandy disrupts campaigns; impact on race too early to tell."

Also at Instapundit, "FOR SANDY UPDATES, follow Brendan Loy on Twitter." And Memeorandum.

Obama's Independent Problem

From Chris Cillizza, at the Washington Post:

President Obama has a problem with independents. And it’s not a small problem.

In the last three releases of the tracking poll conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News, Obama has trailed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney among independent voters by between 16 and 20 percentage points.

That’s a striking reversal from 2008, when Obama won independent voters, who made up 29 percent of the electorate, by eight points over Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

And if Romney’s large margin among independents holds, it will be a break not just from 2008 but also from 2000 and 2004. In 2000, Texas Gov. George W. Bush won independents by 47 percent to 45 percent over Vice President Al Gore. Four years later, Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts essentially split unaffiliated voters, according to exit polls — 48 percent for Bush to 49 percent for Kerry. (Independents made up 27 percent of the vote in 2000 and 26 percent in 2004.)

Okay, but don't get cocky, as Glenn Reynolds always says.

'I Pledge'

From Reason.tv.

The creepy original is here.

Giants Win World Series After Sweeping Tigers

Some of the most dominating baseball I've ever seen.

The New York Times reports:

On 1-1, Cabrera goes fishing for a breaking ball away and misses, 1-2. Takes a pitch, 2-2, fouls off the next. Then Romo freezes him with a fastball for strike three, striking out the side, and the jumping, rolling, hat-throwing celebration begins in the middle of the infield.

Giants win, 4-3, in 10 innings, for their second world championship in three years.

Also at USA Today, "Giants sweep Tigers for World Series title":

12:02AM EDT October 29. 2012 - DETROIT – They took the hard, winding road to the World Series, then discovered the direct path.

The San Francisco Giants, who survived six elimination games in the playoffs, closed out a four-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers with a 4-3 victory in 10 innings Sunday night to win their second World Series in three years.

Marco Scutaro drove in Ryan Theriot with a two-out RBI single in the 10th for the winning score. Theriot had opened the inning with a single off Detroit closer Phil Coke, pitching his second inning, and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt.

Sergio Romo got the save for the Giants, who defeated the Texas Rangers in five games in 2010 for their first World Series crown since moving to San Francisco in 1958.

Pablo Sandoval, who hit three home runs in Game 1, was named MVP of the World Series.

"We're just happy right now," Buster Posey said. "This tonight was a fitting way for us to end it. Those guys played hard; they didn't stop."

Continue reading.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

And see Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Roundup..."

Also at Jill Stanek's, "Stanek Sunday funnies..."

CREDIT: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Remember In November."

World Series Rule 5

Well, the Giants could wrap up a sweep tonight, and I'm sure folks will be enjoying a few cold ones during the game, so here you go.

Proof Positive starts things off with "Friday Night Babe - Alyson Hannigan!" And also, "Saturday Linkaround."

More over at Pirate's Coves, "If All You See…", and "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup."

And forget the hopeless left-wing idiocy, she's looking good, at WyBlog, "Obamabot Eva Longoria dumped Jets QB Mark Sanchez hours before Sunday's loss to the Patriots."

More sports at Randy's Roundtable, "Cowboys Host Giants Today." Yeah, and the Giants are up 23-7 as I write this. Bonus: Angie Harmon is live tweeting.

That's all for now. Add your Rule 5 links at the comments and I'll update!