Here's the flooding of the Battery Tunnel earlier today. Lower New York is flooded. There are three feet of water on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. [Added: Reports now say that is false.] There was an explosion at a Con Ed plant in lower Manhattan.

What's happening at MCC New York, on Foley Square, and MDC Brooklyn, New York's federal detention centers? [More...]

Update: 13 dead, 5 million without power.

The National Hurricane Center has downgraded Sandy from a hurricane to a post-tropical storm. The eye has just made landfall in Southern New Jersey.

Con Ed has cut power to all of lower Manhattan. More than 600,00 are without power in NYC, Westchester, Long Island and CT and will be for days. CNN says 2.2 million are without power in all of the affected states. The flooding is extensive and is expected to get worse.

How big is the storm surge?

"We are looking at the highest storm surges ever recorded" in the Northeast, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director for Weather Underground..... "The energy of the storm surge is off the charts, basically."

(Jackson Browne and Joan Baez.) Hurricane Sandy is expected to hit landfall today. Let us know how your are doing.

At least you don't have to deal with this group in charge:

Please send good thoughts to the inmates at Rikers Island and MCC Manhattan and MDC Brooklyn, and the thousands more in local county jails in the affected regions..

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Sending good thoughts to all of you in the path of Hurricane Sandy. Let us know how you are doing, especially if you were asked to evacuate but decided to stay put.

Although I'm safe and dry here in Colorado, TalkLeft's servers are near LaGuardia airport. If they go down, here is TalkLeft's backup site -- you may want to bookmark it now because otherwise it will be hard to find.

Some links: National Hurricane Center Sandy Advisories; The weather channel's Hurricane Sandy page; the Wall St Journal live updating page. On Twitter: The Weather Channel's Hurricane Central; @FEMA @CraigatFEMA @Readydotgov @RedCross @NHC_Atlantic

Mayor Bloomberg's response to a question about the protecting the inmates on Riker's Island: "Don't worry about anybody getting out." Is he term-limited yet? [More on the Rikers prisoners][More...]

Here's the same performance with better video but not as clear audio. Here's a Dylan/Rolling Thunder version from Norway, 2011. And an audio only version from the Live at Budokan album. [More...]

Hurricane Sandy could be the biggest storm to ever hit the United States. It could cover 800 miles and 50 to 60 million people.

A Tsunami has hit Hawaii. Evacuations are underway.

[Update 4:50 a.m.] Gerard Fryer, senior geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to reporters:

– "The tsunami is arriving right now. I can't say how big it is because it's coming in as we speak."
"Typically the first wave is not the largest. Having inconvenienced everybody by making them evacuate in the middle of the night, I was hoping it would be bigger. The following waves I am sure will be bigger."

To all our friends on the east coast, and those in in Hawaii please be safe, and let us know how you are doing.

The New York Times has endorsed President Obama. It leads with the dangers of a Romney win:

• The economy is slowly recovering from the 2008 meltdown, and the country could suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold.

• The United States is embroiled in unstable regions that could easily explode into full-blown disaster.

• An ideological assault from the right has started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those forces are eroding women’s access to health care, and their right to control their lives.

• Nearly 50 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, all Americans’ rights are cheapened by the right wing’s determination to deny marriage benefits to a selected group of us. Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged.

As to Mitt:

President Obama laid out his second-term agenda in an off the record conversation with the Des Moines Register, which his campaign provided to the paper today with permission to publish. He says he will get immigration reform done in 2013. The full transcript is here.

"The second thing I'm confident we'll get done next year is immigration reform," Mr. Obama told the newspaper. "And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon.

[More...]

This week's picks (2 units unless otherwise indicated, BEST BETS in BOLD):

Michigan +1½ over Nebraska (4 units), Oklahoma -13 over Notre Dame (5 units), Baylor +3 1/2 over Iowa State, Alabama -23 over Mississippi State, Oregon State -3½ over Washington (6 units), Texas A&M -14½ over Auburn (5 units), South Carolina -14 over Tennessee (4 units), Penn State +1 over Ohio State (3 units), Georgia Tech -3 over BYU, Missouri -14 over Kentucky, Arizona State -7 over UCLA (8 units), Maryland +3 over Boston College, Arkansas -6 over Mississippi, Wisconsin -6 over Michigan State (3 units), Arizona TO WIN +210 over USC, Georgia +7 over Florida, TCU +7 over Oklahoma State, Kansas State -7½ over Texas Tech.

Go Gators! Open thread.

Meatloaf skewers "America the Beautiful" at Mitt's campaign rally. As TMZ says, it was a "musical train wreck." Check out Mitt's reaction.

I'll be in court today, this is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The State's Attorney's Office has filed this Memorandum in support of its second motion for a gag order on attorneys in the George Zimmerman case. The pleading is not on the court's website yet, but Jeff Wiener of the Orlando Sentinel has posted it. He describes it here. The hearing on the motion is today at 1:30 p.m. Fox 35 Orlando will be live-streaming it.

It's not the defense that needs gagging. While I don't think Judge Nelson will issue a gag order, as opposed to just reminding all the lawyers they are subject to disciplinary rules for improper prejudicial extra-judicial comments, it's important to note that that the State asks in its Memorandum, as it did in its Second Motion for Gag Order (and its first motion in April) that the court restrict not just prosecutors, O'Mara and defense lawyers, but all lawyers "involved" with the prosecution or defense. [More...]

No rest for the weary.

Here's another open thread, all topics welcome.