Received an email from Selectman Thomas Creamer which read in part.

In light of the challenges many have faced with respect to Hurricane Sandy, I thought it worthwhile to provide an advance notification I have received from the National Weather Service. Clearly this notification is preliminary as weather patterns can rapidly change, but considering this past week, it may be useful to residents to consider the potential for a Nor’easter next week. The actual notification from the National Weather Service is as follows, with the most relevant text in bold print and underlined for quick review:

Looking at Google News, I noticed that the only news source that they mentioned reporting this information was Fox News, Round 2? Forecasters predict nor’easter may hit East Coast election day

I looked up  the Weather Channel forecast for Sturbridge.

The Weather Channel was forecasting sunny and 44^o on Tuesday with a 0% chance of rain.

For Wednesday, it did predict 44^o and a 60% chance of rain.  Winds of 12 mph.  Doesn’t sound like a Nor’easter to me.

I wrote back to Selectman Creamer:

If I didn’t know you as a person of very high integrity, it might even sound like an attempt to manipulate the election.

Thomas Creamer responded that the link to the forecast that he sent was directly to the National Weather Service. He is absolutely right.

Also, note that the Weather Channel was predicting overnight lows that could result in snow if the “rain” they were predicting fell at night.

Reuters has the story CIA officials in Libya made key decisions during Benghazi attacks. In case you haven’t got the time to follow the link to the story, I’ll provide a sizable quote from the article.

About 25 minutes after the initial report came into the CIA base, a team of about six agency security officers left their base for the public diplomatic mission compound.

Over the succeeding 25 minutes, the CIA team approached the compound, and tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to get local Libyan allies to bring them a supply of heavier weapons, and eventually moved into the burning diplomatic compound, the intelligence official said.

At around 11:10 p.m., a Defense Department drone, which had been on an unrelated mission some distance away, arrived in Benghazi to help officials on the ground gather information. By 11:30, U.S. personnel who had been working or staying at the mission had been rounded up except for Ambassador Stevens, who was missing, the intelligence official said.

When they tried to drive out of the diplomatic compound to return to the CIA base, however, the convoy carrying U.S. evacuees came under fire.

Once they got back to the CIA base, that installation itself came under fire from what the intelligence official described as small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. These patchy attacks went on for roughly 90 minutes, the intelligence official said.

CIA SENT TEAM FROM TRIPOLI

Around the same time, a CIA security team based in Tripoli, which included two U.S. military officers, landed at Benghazi airport. Upon its arrival, however, the team spent some time trying both to arrange local transport and to locate the missing Ambassador Stevens.

After some time trying to solve these problems, the security team that had flown in from Tripoli eventually arranged for an armed local escort and extra transportation, but decided not to go the hospital where they believed Stevens had been taken. In part this was because they had reason to believe Stevens was likely dead, and because security at the hospital was believed, at best, to be “uncertain,” the intelligence official said.

Not long before dawn, the reinforcements from Tripoli managed to take themselves and a convoy of vehicles to the CIA base to prepare for an anticipated evacuation.

However, just after they arrived at the CIA base, the official said, a new round of attacks on that facility was launched, this time with mortars. Although the mortar attacks lasted only 11 minutes, two U.S. security officers were killed by a direct hit from one of the shells, the intelligence official said.

Finally, a bit less than an hour later, a heavily armed Libyan military unit arrived at the CIA base to help evacuate the compound of U.S. personnel to the Benghazi airport, the official added.

Over the next few hours, roughly 30 Americans, as well as the bodies of Stevens and the other three Americans killed during the attacks, were loaded on planes and flown out of the city, several U.S. officials said.

This is only one report from the CIA.  I am not saying anyone should believe any report as conveying the complete truth.  However, it does indicate that there may be another side to this story than the one Mitt Romney has been shooting his mouth off about.

The Nation Of Change has the article UAW Files Charges Against Romney on His Auto Bail-out Profiteering by Greg Palast.

For Mitt Romney, it’s one scary Halloween. The Presidential candidate has just learned that tomorrow afternoon he will charged with violating the federal Ethics in Government law by improperly concealing his multi-million dollar windfall from the auto industry bail-out.

When I posted Romney Made Multi-Millions in Detroit Bailout, I heard the comment that if it were true, why isn’t there a bigger deal being made of it.  Perhaps this post provides the answer to that question.

Of course, now the claim will be that this is dirty politics because the suit will never be adjudicated before the election.  If this were true, the investigative journalists who tracked this down should have done it longer ago, before the election.

For some people there are just not enough red flags that indicate that Mitt Romney may not be the honest truth teller that some people would like to believe that he is.  I’ve certainly posted enough red flags on this blog to satisfy me.

Can we list all of the taxes and fees Mitt Romney increased on small businesses and the middle class while Governor of Massachusetts?
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For the full list go to barackobama.com/romney-fees

I cannot attest to these personally as we were living in Oregon during the Romney years in Massachusetts.

Read President Obama’s plan: http://OFA.BO/g4aFzA

A Very Quick Look At President Obama’s First Term

What has Barack Obama accomplished since taking office? A lot. Here’s a quick look.

Learn more: https://OFA.BO/ZaCuUs

Mitt Romney ran for Governor of Massachusetts promising more jobs, decreased debt, and smaller government.

Here’s what Massachusetts got instead:

Jobs: 47th out of 50 states in job creation
Taxes and fees: Increased more than $750 million per year
Long-term debt: Increased more than $2.6 billion

Fact is, Romney economics didn’t work then, and won’t work now.

The New York Times has the editorial Romney Versus the Automakers.  The editorial finishes with the following words:

 What Mr. Romney cannot admit is that all this is a direct result of the government investment he would have rejected. It’s bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it.

By doing that in a flailing, last-minute grab for Ohio, Mr. Romney is providing a grim preview of what kind of president he would be.

I wonder what The New York Times would say if they weren’t trying to be so diplomatic.

This is it.  All hands on deck time. It’s now or never. Add whatever cliche will drive you.

I know that the recovery from the hurricane may be high priority to you. But the decision on whether or not to help a little on GOTV is a decision that you will have to live with for the next 6 years.

The Nation Of Change has the devastating piece Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law.  The sub-heading is “Has integration really ever been attempted? ”

The article starts out describing efforts by George Romney, then head of HUD.

Romney ordered HUD officials to reject applications for water, sewer and highway projects from cities and states where local policies fostered segregated housing.

Romney would eventually resign from HUD because his efforts angered President Richard Nixon who tried every thing he could think of to block him.

The story ends with:

At a private fundraising event in Florida in April, Mitt Romney said he would consider closing down HUD if he wins the election.

“I’m going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them,” he said. “Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later.”

What happened in between these two points will stun you.

I remember that as a Bolton, MA resident, a state mandate to locate affordable housing in every Massachusetts town was a very hot topic.  I’ll have to do some research to find out why this effort in Massachusetts was not mentioned in the article.  I cannot even remember who was governor at the time.

I have begun the above promised research with a Google search of “affordable housing act ma”.

This has led me to the WikiPedia article Massachusetts Comprehensive Permit Act: Chapter 40B. The article starts with the following:

The Comprehensive Permit Act is a Massachusetts law which allows developers of affordable housing to override certain aspects of municipal zoning bylaws and other requirements. It consists of Massachusetts General Laws (M.G.L.) Chapter 40B, Sections 20 through 23, along with associated regulations issued and administered by the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development. Chapter 40B was enacted in 1969 to address the shortage of affordable housing statewide by reducing barriers created by local municipal building permit approval processes, local zoning, and other restrictions. Its goal is to encourage the production of affordable housing in all communities throughout the Commonwealth.

This just barely scratches the surface of the issue.

The American Prospect article Fix the Debt, Destroy the Recovery by Robert Kuttner is another cry for economic sanity.

The Fix the Debt campaign, much like the Bowles-Simpson Commission and the propaganda of the Peterson Foundation generally, contends that the projected national debt is depressing business willingness to invest now. Presumably, businesses are worried about inflation and uncertainty. But the government can fund ten-year bonds at less than 2 percent interest and thirty-year bonds at less than 3 percent. So investors don’t seem worried about inflation. It’s not lack of confidence in deficit reduction that’s depressing business investment but lack of confidence in consumer purchasing power. [ssg note: no freaking customers]

If anything, the economy needs more public spending to get us out of a deep slump brought to you by the very people behind this campaign. Cutting the deficit prematurely will only depress purchasing power and deepen the slump. That’s the real lesson of Greece, Spain, Portugal, et al.
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According to a very helpful analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness, 13 of the corporations whose CEOs are behind this lobby paid zero taxes in recent years. Here is their chart drawn from an analysis of IRS data by Citizens for Tax Justice:

Corporation Federal Income Taxes 2008-2011 Profit? 2008-2011?$ Billions Tax Subsidies 2008-2011?$ Billions Boeing $0 $14.8 $6.0 Corning $0 $2.9 $1.0 General Electric $0 $19.6 $10.6 Honeywell International *$0 *$4.9 $1.7 Verizon Communications $0 $19.8 $7.7 TOTAL $0 $62 billion $27 billion

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This stuff would be comical if it weren’t so influential. And if President Obama is re-elected, the corporate CEOs add up to one more pressure group pushing him to agree to a budget-cutting deal that will be suicidal for the economy and for his legacy in a second term.

Deficit reduction in a deep slump is not a path to recovery but to a deeper slump.

The fact that corporate CEOs are behind this latest push should not give the campaign greater credibility, but rather should signal “buyer beware.”

Despite the bipartisan camouflage, this campaign was always deeply conservative—hostile to social outlay, activist government, and a decent income distribution. Shame on any Democrat who doesn’t see through it.

How is lowering the tax rate on corporations who pay zero taxes anyway going to do anything for the economy?