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BY MICHAEL COHEN

So, Mitt Romney is having a bad September. Actually let me rephrase that: Mitt Romney is having a terrible, god-awful September that has likely doomed his already slim chances of being President.

There; that makes more sense.

Things are so bad that a day where the Romney campaign doesn’t self-immolate is now officially considered a good day. And on the bright side, perhaps his most invalidating moment of the campaign — when he accused President Obama,Jordan Pas Cher, based on false information, of sympathizing with anti-American demonstrators — has been largely forgotten under a wave of additional missteps including maybe the worst presidential campaign gaffe since some guy named George Romney said he’d been brainwashed.

Indeed, the best possible analogy that I can find for the current state of the Romney campaign is this clip from “The Simpsons” of Sideshow Bob repeatedly stepping on rakes:

Did I mention Romney is having a tough couple of weeks?

In fact, as bad as this week has been, perhaps the worst thing to happen to Romney received precious little coverage — namely,Doudounes Moncler, the release of Pew,air jordan, one of the more respected pollsters in the field, gives Obama an 8-point lead, which in our current polarized political environment is significant,Moncler Pas Cher. These numbers are broadly consistent with a that have come out in the past few days showing President Obama widening his lead,chaussures air jordan.

The Pew poll goes further then simply offering a snapshot of the race. It indicates that on nearly every metric,jordan pas cher, from personal favorability and connecting with voters to dealing with health care, taxes and foreign policy, Obama has a clear advantage. The only issue on which Romney leads is in reducing the deficit; it’s a 3-point edge that should really be closer to 30, when one considers how much time the candidate and his party have spent harping on the issue.

In short, with seven weeks to go until Election Day, it is a devastating result and one that suggests Romney has failed to craft a positive public image or dent Obama’s.

So all this bad news begs the question: How does Romney recover?

Over at The Atlantic, the always top-notch political reporter Ron Fournier : bad news on the economy, a foreign policy crisis, a bad debate, a gaffe, and my favorite, a Romney turnaround,air jordan femme.

But these have at best fairly slim chances of occurring, or necessarily benefiting Romney’s campaign. A foreign policy crisis is as likely to help Obama as it to hurt him, and considering Romney’s reaction to the last crisis, it&rsquo,doudoune moncler soldes;s hard to see how the guy who doubled down on politicizing attacks against Americans overseas would capitalize from a future one. Bad news on the economy can always provide a ray of hope, but unless Lehman Brothers magically is re-created and then implodes again, it’s unlikely to really take Obama down a peg.

Obama could certainly have a bad debate moment or a gaffe, but if you’re counting on no-drama Obama to dramatically drop the ball and say or do something so stupid that it causes his poll numbers to plummet, you might as well, hope for a lightning strike.

What about a turnaround? Funny you should ask, because as it turns out, according to , the Romney campaign has a “plan.”

Mitt Romney and his campaign are settling on a rescue plan to show more of him — in ads, speeches and campaign appearances. A big focus, according to campaign officials, will be on Romney talking a lot more about how his ideas will help regular Americans who remain deeply suspicious of him . . . .
. . . Romney plans to dial back on fundraisers and vastly increase his personal appearances — on the stump and in ads — to convince what’s left of the undecided voters that Obama has been a disappointment and that he has a specific plan that is less risky than the status quo.
Rather than talk about the broader economy, Romney will increasingly talk about his plans in terms of the effect on families, the aides said. This started before the Republican convention, when he boiled his 59-point plan for the national economy down to a five-point “Plan for a Stronger Middle Class.”

Let’s put aside for a second the general rule that unveiling new campaign ideas is something you try to do in a larger setting where you can speak to many Americans at one time with a singular voice. (These are called conventions.)

Even if this idea could work, what makes anyone think that he could actually do this?

The two overarching terms that have come to describe the Romney campaign to date are inept and incompetent. They have a candidate who is breaking records for campaign gaffes and misstatements and who also appears to lack the basic discipline needed to adhere to one consistent political message. These aren’t problems you can fix overnight.

This isn&rsquo,Doudoune Moncler Femme;t to say there is no chance that Romney could win. Obviously anything is possible. It’s just that as each day goes on it is becoming harder and harder to imagine any scenario in which he does.

Of course, he could perhaps adopt the foolproof method adopted by another Simpson character, Homer, when he returned to college and failed to study for his . But like Romney, Homer had a plan: “During the exam,doudoune moncler, I'll hide under some coats, and hope that somehow everything will work out.”

At this point, this might be as good a strategy as any.

Yes,moncler pas cher, it's true,moncler doudoune, even David Foster Wallace once used a word incorrectly. But it wasn't something common like "nonplussed,doudoune moncler homme," but rather the very obscure "nomological." Yeah,doudoune moncler homme, we didn't know what it meant either. the history of his singular,doudounes moncler, curious error. (Image: Merriam Webster)

Gunther Grass should probably stick to writing novels. His poem against Israel has not been met with critical praise. Quite the opposite,jordan pas cher, in fact. ()

Why can't men and women just be friends? Well,moncler pas cher, for lots of reasons. WilliamDeresiewicz explains .

For some reason,chaussures air jordan, the Brits just won't watch "Mad Men." .

Why Philip Larkin still matters. ()

BY FRANK SANTO

Jessie is like a lot of little girls. She teaches her dog tricks,Doudoune Moncler Femme, loves the outdoors and has big dreams.

And,moncler pas cher, oh, by the way, she has two mommies — a fact that comes almost as an aside in the recently published Jessie series of children’s books, written by Phyliss DelGreco, Jaclyn Roth and Kathryn Silverio.

The trio takes a matter-of-fact tone for books like “Monday With Maxim, the Amazing Maltese,moncler doudoune,” “Tuesday With Mommy ... and Pterodactyls” and five other books, a full week’s worth of titles following Jessie’s experiences.

“I don’t know any children’s stories that focus on the heterosexual relationship between mother and father,” says co-author DelGreco, a lawyer.

So she’s happy to be behind books where there’s no special emphasis on the same-sex parents, who can sometimes seem like an afterthought as Jessie takes center stage.

This is not, after all, 1989, when Lesléa Newman’s “Heather Has Two Mommies” arrived in bookstores and caused a stir.

The new books detail the life of Jessie, a 6-year-old girl whose life is rendered in bright color, thanks to inviting illustrations by Rory Smith.

Each of the seven books in the series follows a different day of Jessie’s week, and a different aspect of her everyday life.

On Monday, she takes her dog for a walk. Tuesday, she fantasizes about dinosaurs with one of her mothers at the museum. Wednesday, she has an adventure in the park with Grandpa.

The new books are available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And earlier this year the Jessie team held their first book reading at Frolic, a playspace in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Co-author Jaclyn Roth, a professional writer,moncler pas cher, says parenting with her partner to raise a 6-year-old daughter served as inspiration for the series.

“My daughter is about to turn 6,doudoune moncler femme,” Roth says. “In her life, she hasn’t had any issues. She’s in public school. She does tae kwon do,moncler pas cher, ballet. She’s been asked a couple times and kids are like,air jordan pas cher, ‘Oh.’ It’s a very innocent age.”

In addition to simply entertaining readers, the authors’ goal in writing the series is to present a world in which gay parenting is not an issue.

Still,jordan pas cher, DelGreco knows there are still challenges and controversies.

“In these books,Moncler,” she explains, “we are sitting in an advanced society where it doesn’t matter. In many places today it still does matter.”

Indeed, Utah recently restricted access to a children’s book in an elementary school because it portrayed a gay couple raising a child.

Gay parents are unlikely to cease being a hot-button issue in the near future. But the little girl in the Jessie series doesn’t have to care about what anyone else thinks about her upbringing.

“LGBT families are not some different species,” DelGreco says. “Jessie’s family is just a family. We are all aligned in the human experience.”

Editor's note: A version of this review appeared in the Sunday edition of the Daily News

All aboard,jordan! In 1880, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle found himself aboard the whaling ship the Hope,moncler pas cher, sketching fauna of the polar regions and discovering his talent for storytelling.

The Sherlock Holmes author,doudoune moncler, then a 20-year-old medical student,jordan, was the ship’s surgeon during its voyage to the Arctic. His never-before-seen diary from the trip is now being published by the .

“Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure” contains full-color pictures of the diary,air jordan pas cher, Conan Doyle’s pen-and-ink sketches of Arctic life and a few fiction pieces that were based on the trip.

It was here where Conan Doyle “came of age at 80 degrees latitude,doudoune moncler homme,” as he writes in the diary. He describes in great detail the “murderous harvest” of seals and whales, revealing an intimate look at the heydays of the British whaling industry.

Of the millions of seals he saw,Moncler, Conan Doyle wrote: “They look a sort of cross between a lamb and a gigantic slug. On the 3^rd, the bloody work began and has gone on ever since. The mothers are shot and the little ones have their brains knocked out with spiked clubs.”

He was often covered in frozen animal blood and had to thaw himself in front of the ship’s stove. It was Conan Doyle’s first trip out to sea,jordan pas cher, but he occasionally participated in the clubbing of seals and even fell into the icy waters a few times, almost freezing to death.

He wrote about his wonder upon seeing humpback whales, which weren’t killed because they had significantly less oil than other animals. His adventures eventually led to the Holmes story “The Adventure of Black Peter,” a ghost story set in the Arctic.

Robert Downey, Jr.,moncler, we’ve found your next movie deal.

(Photo: Conan Doyle Estate Ltd)