The Presidential campaign might be “functionally over” (as MSNBC’s Laurence O’Donnell just said an hour ago) as of right now, due to Frankenstorm. The storm will rule between now and Wednesday or Thursday. So there’ll basically be some campaigning Friday through Monday — four days. Before that Obama gets to be the nation’s leader overseeing the vast recovery efforts and Shallow Mitt can’t afford to appear to care more about his election chances than the welfare and safety of hurricane victims.

FiveThirtyEight‘s Nate Silver is saying the numbers are more or less where they were in June, and Romney is on record as being in favor of shutting down FEMA. I think the election is over as of today with the odds clearly favoring Obama squeaking through to a win.

There are no facts if you’re determined to reject them by hook or crook. There are no persuasive arguments or narratives. There is only what people want to believe.

Some meteorologists believe there is a clear relationship between Frankenstorm and reduced Arctic sea ice caused by human-driven climate change. In plainer reductionist language, the proponents of climate-change denial, which are largely collected under the Republican umbrella, are not wholly responsible but are almost certainly partly responsible for the Hurricane Sandy catastrophe now unfolding.

Here is an opinion from Jennifer Francis of Rutgers, as passed along in a 10.28 N.Y. Times piece by Dot Earth‘s Andrew Revkin:

“It could very well be that general warming along with high sea-surface temperatures have lengthened the tropical storm season, making it more likely that a Sandy could form, travel so far north, and have an opportunity to interact with a deep jet-stream trough associated with the strong block, which is steering it westward into the mid-Atlantic,” Francis writes.

“While it’s impossible to say how this scenario might have unfolded if sea-ice had been as extensive as it was in the 1980s, the situation at hand is completely consistent with what I’d expect to see happen more often as a result of unabated warming and especially the amplification of that warming in the Arctic. Losing ice, reducing the poleward temperature gradient, and warming the entire climate system should contribute to increasing the likelihood of anomalous storms.”

A 2011 Mitt Romney statement in which he took a dim view of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and stated the disaster relief should be handled by the states and the private sector will almost certainly circulate around over the next two or three days. With Frankenstorm looming, will Joe and Jane Dumbass take note and draw lines between the dots?

“The Romney campaign said early Monday morning that Romney stood behind a statement first made during a 2011 Republican debate, in which Romney said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be disbanded, and its powers either privatized or given to the states,” says a 10.29 report.

“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,” Romney said during a 2011 Republician debate. “And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”

“Asked by debate moderator John King if that included cutting disaster relief, Romney said, ‘We cannot…we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids.'”

One minor correction: It’s Ayn Rand, not Ann Rand. (Ayn rhymes with fine.) Otherwise, terrific. There are two Joss Whedons in my head. The guy who put this up today and made a little Shakespeare film that I haven’t bothered to see. (Sorry.) And the guy who directed The Avengers and produced and co-wrote Cabin In The Woods.

This morning I asked the friendly 20something blonde behind the Union Hotel desk who she’s voting for. “Who am I voting for?,” she said. “I’m kind of undecided. I’m taking a political science class right now, but I’m undecided. My father wants me to vote for Romney.” What’s he got to do with it?, I said. It’s your vote, your call. She smiled and said, “It’s just that he’s told me over and over that I’d better vote for Romney or else. So as far as he’s concerned I’m voting for Romney.” So in other words millions of rural women (wives, daughters, employees) who just want to get along are being browbeaten into voting for the bad guys by domineering alpha males.

Linking to Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet, who linked to a May 2012 Rich Mullinax upload who got it from Stephen Frears, Nick Hornby, Jack Black, John Cusack, etc.

Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg has posted an interview with The Gatekeepers director Dror Moreh. “A riveting documentary about Israel’s anti-terrorism organization, Shin Bet, told by former directors of the program over the last 40-odd years,” Jett Wells wrote on 9.3 from Telluride. “It’s amazing the kind of access Moreh got [as doc] really sheds light on how even the biggest war hawks in Israel’s government feel how assassinations are ultimately pointless and/or self-defeating.”

Death to all Brightcove embed codes.

Last night HE reader Warren Acose alerted me to Taschen’s The James Bond Archives. “The Ingmar Bergman Archives were apparently a financial failure (according to Taschen losing $100,000), and the Almodovar Archives may not have done much better,” he wrote, “so they’re going with a purely commercial entry. I’m still excited about it and it can be pre-ordered from Amazon for $115.00.”

I wish I was in New York right now so I could experience Hurricane Sandy. Which won’t even arrive until Tuesday, by the way, so why is Cuomo shutting down the subways at 7 pm this evening? People always go “oh no, here it comes!” when bad weather approaches; I always go “yes…here it comes!” Howling, wind-whipped rainstorms are a thrill. They get the juices flowing. On top of which weather experts and news orgs always overhype the threat. Remember Irene?

As long as you’re dressed for Sandy and you’ve got your plywood up and your windows taped down and extra cans of soup in the cupboard, what’s the problem? People on the Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey coasts have cause for concern, of course, but any Brooklynite or Manhattanite who’s genuinely worried is a bit of a candy-ass.

“This is not being overhyped,” Accuweather’s Bernie Rayno told abcnews.com. “I would use the terms ‘devastating’ and ‘historic — a once-in-30 year storm, or even in the fact the way this storm is going to be tracking east toward the coastline in New Jersey, it could be a once-in-a-lifetime storm.”

With the 1952 opening of This Is Cinerama!, the first film in history to be presented in the three-strip Cinerama process, ads boasted that audiences would see something bold and revolutionary. When The Robe opened in 1953, 20th Century Fox announced it was the first film shot in CinemaScope. And when a film today is presented in IMAX or IMAX 3D, ads always explain that. So why is Warner Bros. hiding the fact that Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit is the first pic in history to be shot and shown in the historic 48 frame-per-second process?

The Hobbit billboard sitting on Sunset above Book Soup — Saturday, 10.27, 11:45 am.