“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Russia Withdrawal From Arms Deal Shows Failure Of Obama Reset.

Russia announces it will withdraw from a post-Cold War deal to dismantle nuclear and chemical weapons when it expires next year. Is this what President Obama meant by a “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations?

The so-called Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which had been renewed twice by the U.S. and Russia, was a major post-Cold War success.

It led to the deactivation of more than 7,650 strategic warheads from the old Soviet Union, and seemed to put the former USSR onto a far more peaceful path. It helped seal President Reagan’s hard-won U.S. victory in the Cold War against its former foe.

But after four years of Obama’s weak stewardship of our nation’s national security, the Russians are saying “nyet” to renewing the deal in 2013. It’s easy to see why.

Everywhere they look, they see U.S. weakness and a failure to respond to overt provocations by others.

They see world affairs as the U.S. retreats from previous strong alliances, such as those with Britain and Israel, and ignores or downplays others, including our ties with Japan.

Why continue to disarm after losing a cold war if your enemy is already busy disarming itself?

Why, indeed?

IT AIN’T THE KIND OF PLACE TO RAISE YOUR KIDS — OH, WAIT, THAT’S MARS: A Visitor’s Guide To The Moon.

DIDN’T THEY LEARN ANYTHING FROM ATTACK WATCH? $5.8 Mil “Text Against Terror” Fails To Provide Any Tips.

(Sorry, I meant to say, Atttttaaaaaaaaaaaaaack Waaaaaaaaaatch….)

ROGER L. SIMON: Beyond the Bradley Effect: What’s Really Happening in Election 2012:

A lot of talk has been bandied about over the so-called Bradley Effect, the theory that a number of California voters said they were going to vote for Tom Bradley — the longtime Los Angeles mayor — for governor of that state in a 1982 election because he was African-American, but really voted for his opponent who won.

This theory has been debunked and, frankly, I have no idea of its veracity. More importantly, however, I believe it is passé. Fewer than ever are interested in the color of Obama’s skin (well, maybe Al Sharpton and his claque) or — for that matter — in Mitt Romney’s religion. We have far, far more pressing issues in front of us at this moment.

For that reason, I think the number who vote for Romney/Ryan and then tell no one (at least in the short run) will be significant, so significant that this election may explode and be closer to a blowout than anyone, save a few, had expected.

Read the whole thing.™

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Can you sue your dominatrix for hurting you?

NOPE: No Laughing Matter.

Related: The Biden laugh, a lot like the Joker’s death chuckle?

WELL, I’LL HAVE TO GO SEE IT: The critics hate Atlas Shrugged II. Meanwhile the audience rates it at 78.  Sounds like a winner to me!

A DIFFERENT STAR CLUSTER, NOT IN DC: Two Black Holes Inhabit Same Star Cluster  because DC is only ONE black hole…  (By which I mean a(n) time/space entity of a governmental nature that sucks anything of value from the surrounding areas.)

SETTING BIDEN STRAIGHT: Catholic Bishops to Biden: What You Called a Fact Is Not, In Fact, a Fact

PICKING A FIGHT WITH THE WRONG WOMAN: Democrats launch sexist attack against Warthog driver Martha McSally (R CAND, AZ-02).

ASSOCIATED PRESS: As Election Day nears, Romney crowds are surging.

HMM. Unexpected jump in consumer sentiment coincides with polls showing Obama could lose.

RIGHT AGAIN:  Neo-Neocon asks “Is Clint  Eastwood Clairvoyant?”

BILL QUICK: Watching A Preference Cascade Unfold In Real Time.

STUDY: Wendy’s Is The Fastest Fast-Food Joint, Burger King The Slowest. I’ve noticed that “fast food” in general doesn’t seem to be as fast as it used to be. Bigger menus, I guess.

UPDATE: Reader Sherry Zachery writes:

I own a fast food restaurant and the biggest reason service has slowed (other than the growing incompetence of the workforce) is that we are all running our businesses with way fewer employees. We used to have 23 total employees, we now have 9. We used to run a lunch rush with anywhere from 6 to 8 people we now do it with 4.

While business has certainly decreased the biggest reason is probably labor cost. 7.25 dollars an hour for the current functionally illiterate, no work ethic, yet strangely full of so much self esteem they can’t take instruction teenage product of the public schools is also why staffing is low. We hire adults when we can but of course we pay them more thus high labor costs=fewer workers and slower service.

Welcome to employment in the era of hope and change.

CHICAGO ETHICS COULD BE A PROBLEM: FBI Now Probing Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s Finances

LUNAR X-PRIZE UPDATE: Favorites Emerge in the New Moon Race.

UNEXPECTEDLY! “Attacks in Libya become unexpected weak spot for Obama campaign,” bleats this L.A. Times headline.

Amazing how much bad news has unexpectedly become “unexpected” to the MSM since January of 2009, isn’t it?

DOG BITES MAN: Human Rights Watch says the current draft of Egypt’s new constitution is not consistent with international human rights law.

GOOD FOR TUNISIA: Tunisia’s Islamist party has been hoping to ban blasphemy in the new constitution, but they have to drop it because there’s too much resistance. They lost the argument over turning the country into an Islamic state, too, though they pretend they’ve been for a civil state all along to save face.

THE MILLION METAPHOR MARCH: “Million Muppet March” planned to defend U.S. backing for PBS on the Saturday before the election, according to Reuters:

Plans to save Big Bird, the fuzzy yellow character on U.S. public television’s “Sesame Street,” from possible extinction are taking shape in the form of a puppet-based protest next month dubbed the “Million Muppet March.”

The demonstration is planned for November 3 at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., three days before the general election.

Before the presidential debate between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney had concluded on October 3, two men who had never met each floated the Million Muppet March idea on social media. They immediately united to defend public broadcasting.

The stories write themselves, don’t they? To build on something I mentioned earlier today, no wonder Jon Stewart is nervous about Obama desperately clutching to a security blanket Muppet at a time of crisis, and how deeply unserious it makes him look. This march, built around a surreal television character on the weekend before the election, sounds very much like Stewart and Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” — the weekend before Congress changed parties.

But it gets better: Obama himself was at Louis Farrakhan’s original Million Man March in 1995. Whatever happens the following Tuesday, if the “Million Muppet March” actually does take place, it will be quite a bookend to the activist career of the World’s Biggest Media Myth.

UPDATE: Heh, indeed:™

Forget the shark. Obama campaign just “jumped the Muppet.” pjmedia.com/instapundit/15… via @instapundit #tcot

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) October 13, 2012

STILL NO MENTION OF UFOs:  Kristine Kathryn Rusch continues her series on why writers disappear.

DID INTELLIGENCE really tell the White House there were protests in Benghazi? Doesn’t look like it.

I DON’T KNOW IF SHE TALKS ABOUT HOW SHE’S GOING TO VOTE FOR THE GREEN PARTY CANDIDATE HERE: Camille Paglia on the Acculturated Podcast.

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