ALI ETERAZ’S Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan gets a review in the Washington Post.

MARK STEYN: Obama Makes Bush His Blame Czar.

WANT MORE TERROR-WAR NEWS? Visit Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg.com.

MAKING FRANK RICH nervous.

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS of smartphones.

FROM PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY, the top 10 books of 2009.

STUFF WHITE PEOPLE don’t like.

SHOCKER: British nuclear expert’s 17th floor UN death plunge ‘was not suicide’.

SOME CHEESY Halloween pickup lines sorted by costume. Emphasis on the cheesy . . .

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Kirsch, like so many others — most of us Baby Boomers? — is, I think, deeply invested in the notion that businessmen are boring and uncreative.”

UPDATE: Tom Maguire: Now, If Book Reviewers Read The Books… “The review would be even more interesting if the reviewer, Adam Kirsch of The New Republic, showed a token familiarity with Ms. Rand’s work, or even with life here in reality.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: Bush-Era Leaks Were Dangerous After All. “Many commentators have noted that this is one more instance where the Obama administration, now that it is in possession of the facts and charged with responsibility for the nation’s security, has acted in full concert with much-reviled policies of the Bush administration. That’s a valid point, and Holder’s press release on the subject, which you can read here, is almost humorous in its labored attempt to create the impression that use of the state secrets privilege by the Obama administration is somehow different from the identical use of the identical privilege by the previous administration. . . . But the administration’s decision merits a closer look because of the nature of the Shubert case.”

GREEN JOBS! Huge Texas Wind Farm’s Turbines Will Be Made in China.

“COME FOR THE CULTURE WAR, stay for the chicks.” “The primary reason our womenfolk are at war with the looming spectre of the nanny state is because you can’t buy Jimmy Choos in a socialist paradise.” This should provoke a reaction.

PETER SUDERMAN: $900 Billion House Health-Care Reform Bill Likely to Cost More than $900 Billion. Well, if by “likely” you mean “pretty damn certain.”

A BUNCH OF interesting food links.

STEVE CROWDER Trick Or Treat At The White House.

A really scary trick would have been one of these out front . . . .

OKAY SO THE SCOZZAFAVA WITHDRAWAL came too late to update my Sunday Washington Examiner column. But since the point of my column is that what happens after the election is more important than the election itself, that’s okay . . .

THOMAS SOWELL: Dismantling America, Part II. “This issue is too serious for squeamish silence.”

PROF. JACOBSON: “Expect a full-out media blitz by the Democrats in the last three days of the campaign to portray Hoffman as the re-incarnation of Timothy McVeigh.”

DON SURBER: “It took Republicans 6 years and 2 wars to lose their enthusiasm for President Bush. It took Democrats one year. Change. Hope. Ohmigodwhatdidwedo?”

CORZINE CAMPAIGN AIDE BUSTED ON DRUG CHARGES? But if it’s true, why are New Jersey media scrubbing the story from their sites?

UPDATE: The Star-Ledger has this: Paramus man claiming to work for Corzine arrested on drug charges. Corzine’s campaign: “No one has ever heard of this guy.”

WHY MOMMY loves the state! (Bumped).

SO WILL THE UNITED STATES’ AGREEMENT ON “HATE SPEECH” be used to end-run the First Amendment?

Only if they think they can get away with it. But if so, yeah. Of course.

THE NOBLEST ROMAN OF THEM ALL objects to the Obama comparison.

IN THE MAIL: From Bo Hoefinger, Bad to the Bone: Memoir of a Rebel Doggie Blogger.

NY-23 SIENA POLL: Hoffman 35, Owens 36, Scozzafava 20.

UPDATE: Scozzafava Drops Out.

I credit Bill Quick.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more at DumpDede.com.

MORE: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

MEMO: It’s now officially safe to criticize Barack Obama. “Numbers like that mean Obama’s intimidation factor has disappeared.”

REVIEWING THE WHITE HOUSE VISITOR LOGS: “As far as I can tell, THE Andrew Stern was the top outside visitor to the White House with approximately 20 visits, or about three visits per month, including four relatively small meetings with the president and a dozen with other White House staffers. Stern has openly bragged about the SEIU’s $61 million investment in Barack Obama. It certainly bought him a lot of access.”

TUCSON COUNCILWOMAN apologizes for “teabagger” slur.

PLUMMETING FERTILITY. “When people got richer, families got smaller; and as families got smaller, people got richer. Now, something similar is happening in developing countries. Fertility is falling and families are shrinking in places— such as Brazil, Indonesia, and even parts of India—that people think of as teeming with children. As our briefing shows, the fertility rate of half the world is now 2.1 or less—the magic number that is consistent with a stable population and is usually called ‘the replacement rate of fertility’. Sometime between 2020 and 2050 the world’s fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate.”

BRUCE BARTLETT: Why the Great Recession is More Like the Great Depression Than You Think.

ANDREW BREITBART IN THE WASHINGTON POST: ACORN video creates new conservative star.

MORE DEVELOPMENTS in the N.E.A. scandal. “Former actor and present White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi was directly involved in planning the controversial conference call hosted by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) flack to encourage tax-supported artists to create propaganda for President Obama, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: Seriously, stop worrying about hyperinflation.

TIM CAVANAUGH: Why was Hollywood unwilling or unable to make compelling narratives about the horrors of the Soviet system?

I’d just like to see somebody make Total Eclipse.

TOO SMALL TO LEAD. “There are many reasons why Obama, according to Gallup, has suffered the largest decline in approval, at this portion in his term, of any elected president since 1953 — and why more Americans believe in UFOs than approve of the job done by Congress. But one reason is surely the bitter, brittle tone of the new Democratic establishment — highlighted by the promise they have raised and disappointed. How did the tonal candidate become so tone-deaf?”

ABC NEWS: Obama Administration Invokes State Secrets Privilege…Again. Hope and change!

NY-23: Dems Bringing in Big Money Against Hoffman.

BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED: Obamlet. By Neo-Neocon.

MODIFIED LIMITED HANGOUT: White House releases only a few visitor logs.

Despite the accompanying White House claim of “transparency like you’ve never seen before,” the Obama White House continues to take the same legal position as the Bush White House, arguing that the records are not public records subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Only limited “voluntary releases” are being made to settle a lawsuit filed by an advocacy group, though a federal judge has twice ruled that all the visitor logs are public.

Here’s what they’ve bothered to release, in PDF and Excel formats.

UPDATE: More here.

THE ELECTION’S A FORMALITY NOW: Doug Hoffman gets the coveted IowaHawk endorsement.

A SENTENCE THAT WAS in The New York Times before it was not.

MARKDOWNS ON digital cameras and video.

21 HALLOWEEN COSTUMES that will not get you laid.

SHOULD HOTELS PROVIDE MOUSEPADS?

You can always just take along your own.

MAINSTREAMING INFIDELITY at The New York Times.

FORGET THE DITTOCAM, IT’S THE DANACAM: Dana Loesch goes live on webcam.

POLIWOOD: All Hail Obama: The Best Writer Since Julius Caesar?

MICKEY KAUS discovers that he doesn’t really like Obama. Oh, Obama’s likable enough.

IN THE NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR’S RACE, it’s neck-and-neck.

NEW YORK 23: When a nation calls.

YOU DON’T SAY: Newly disclosed emails link White House directly to NEA politicalization scandal.

HEH: Biden Concedes Stimulus Numbers Not 100% Accurate.

WRAPPING SOLAR CELLS around an optical fiber.

DOPAMINE: The molecule of motivation.

CHRISTIAN / NEWSOM UPDATE: Lemaricus Davidson gets death for his role in the torture-rape-murder.

HALLOWEEN Horror Movies.

BILL QUICK: Why Dede Scozzafava should drop out today. “It has become obvious that in a straight head’s up race between Conservative Doug Hoffman and Democrat Bill Owens, Hoffman would win in a walk. It is equally obvious that there is no set of circumstances under which the GOP candidate, Dede Scozzofava, can win this election. However, if she stays in, the race for victory remains close between Hoffman and Owens. Therefore, Scozzofava should drop out today. The bottom line is that if Scozzofava stays in, it is only to act as a spoiler to defeat Hoffman, at the behest of the national and state establishment GOP that is sponsoring her.”

PARANORMAL LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY? A spooky video with Mary Katharine Ham.

PEGGY NOONAN: We’re Governed by Callous Children: Americans feel increasingly disheartened, and our leaders don’t even notice. But John Galt is present, in spirit at least:

The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business. . . .

I talked with an executive this week with what we still call “the insurance companies” and will no doubt soon be calling Big Insura. (Take it away, Democratic National Committee.) He was thoughtful, reflective about the big picture. He talked about all the new proposed regulations on the industry. Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress “are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area.” The executive said of Washington: “They don’t understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who’ve said to me ‘I’m done.’ ” He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, “They don’t understand that if they start to tax me so that I’m paying 60%, 55%, I’ll stop.”

He felt government doesn’t understand that business in America is run by people, by human beings. Mr. Frank must believe America is populated by high-achieving robots who will obey whatever command he and his friends issue. But of course they’re human, and they can become disheartened. They can pack it in, go elsewhere, quit what used to be called the rat race and might as well be called that again since the government seems to think they’re all rats. (That would be you, Chamber of Commerce.)
***

And here is the second part of the story. While Americans feel increasingly disheartened, their leaders evince a mindless . . . one almost calls it optimism, but it is not that. . . . We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Clark writes:

So . . . Peggy Noonan apparently has had her fill.

I must say, I hope that she’s ready to take some measure of responsibility. Some folks, outside of the hermetically sealed world of Washington and the greater east coast corridor, noticed all this long, long ago. And, as I recall, it was the same Ms. Noonan that waxed almost rhapsodic over the prospects of our current President.

It’s very good of her now to take note. Better late than never, I suppose.

Yeah. Too rhapsodic about Obama, too hard on the actual adults.

INSPECTOR GENERAL: IRS Is Not Properly Monitoring $34b of Contracts.

JACQUES CHIRAC ORDERED TO STAND TRIAL FOR CORRUPTION. “Already, the mere fact of 76-year-old Chirac’s being investigated has been a humiliating coda to his four-decade political career. On top of that, one of Chirac’s former prime ministers is on trial in a separate case. Dominique de Villepin is accused of orchestrating a smear campaign against Chirac’s successor, Nicolas Sarkozy. Villepin denies the charges.”

And reason enough to recycle this stirring photo from the protests outside the French Embassy in Washington back in 2003. Plus, this.

I SURE HOPE SO: Do Professors Matter?

MAYBE THIS IS WHY OLD PEOPLE ARE DOING BETTER: Statins cut H1N1 death risk in half.

ARE DATE-RAPE DRUGS an urban myth?

JUNK IN THE TRUNK: What weight does to vehicle efficiency.

BLOOMBERG: ‘Jobs Created or Saved’ Is White House Fantasy: Caroline Baum.

TESTING cheap wind power.

HELPING YOU GET AROUND with an Intelligent Driving Agent.

CHARLIE STROSS: How habitable is the Earth?

HEH: CBO Health-Care Score Assumes Congress Sticks to Its Promises, Which Probably Won’t Happen, Says CBO. Well, there’s a confidence-builder.

OOPS: Hey, Ma’am, where are the jobs? Twice as many Californians lost jobs in one week in October than put to work in nine months by the “stimulus”.

TALKING ABOUT John Murtha and Afghanistan, over at The Hill. I recycle an old, but fitting, Las Vegas joke.

UH OH: The Doom that Fell Upon Medical Progress in the US. “The damage done to the rate of progress in applied biotechnology is enormous – we look at what is going on in the labs under present circumstances and are impressed by progress. What we don’t see is what might have been in the absence of overwhelming regulation and FDA roadblocks. If there is little or no prospect for profit at the end of the day, vast swathes of privately funded research simply don’t take place.”

IN THE MAIL: Jim Cramer’s Getting Back to Even.

PJTV: Stem Cell Myths And Facts.

Quincy, Illinois.

POLITICAL INTERFERENCE? Senior House Democrat questions role of White House in EPA chemical testing. “A senior House Democrat has voiced concerns that the White House is interfering in tests of potentially harmful commercial chemicals. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has flagged an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) decision urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use test data from companies and other existing data in judging whether chemicals found in pesticides and plastics could disrupt the human endocrine system, which releases hormones. Markey argued that the EPA should be allowed to conduct its own tests to determine the safe exposure levels of chemicals, such as pesticides and contaminants in the environment.”

RICH GALEN: Turn Your Head And Cough. Or bend over, whatever.

GAY PATRIOT endorses Doug Hoffman.

NICHOLAS JOHNSON: Supply Restrictions at the Margins of Heller and the Abortion Analogue: Stenberg Principles, Assault Weapons, and the Attitudinalist Critique.

DEMOCRAT DEFENDS FOX NEWS: “They actually put more women on as experts during the day than MSNBC or CNN.”

DOUG MATACONIS: Virginia GOP Poised For Big Comeback.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: “The mystery of just what JStreet is, or intends to be, is growing deeper.”

MICHAEL MCCONNELL: The Pay Czar Is Unconstitutional. You know, if a Republican President were doing this many bizarre things, public-interest lawyers would be suing right and left to stop them. Where are the lawsuits now?

AN OBAMA ADMINISTRATION “TRIUMPH:” Honduran Government Caves to U.S. Pressure.

HOW’S THE ECONOMY? The “Distress Index” says not so great.

NOBODY TELL STEPHEN GREEN: An Electric Martini Shaker. (Via the skeptical Megan McArdle).

PATRICK RUFFINI: NY-23 Across America? “The key fact that sticks out in my mind about Doug Hoffman’s incredible momentum in NY-23 is that his election would not have been possible had he been the Republican nominee.”

WANT AN ACADEMIC JOB? Surrender your DNA. “Many colleges now require criminal background checks of all new employees. But the University of Akron — in what some experts believe is a first — is not only requiring a criminal background check, but is stating that new employees must be willing to submit a DNA sample.”

HEH: “Reason 2 is reasonable but boring; but reason 1 is why I blogged about this.”

MYCONGRESSMANISNUTS.COM.

SEA CHANGE: Pataki Endorses Hoffman.

OH, GOOD GRIEF: “The House health care bill unveiled Thursday clocks in at 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words. With an estimated 10-year cost of $894 billion, that comes out to about $2.24 million per word.”

Here’s the really scary part, though: “And for some members, that may not be enough.”

UH OH: Actually, Case-Shiller Shows That The Housing Crash Has Already Resumed. I hope not.

KILL THOSE INCONVENIENT IDEAS: George Soros launches a $50 million effort to purge economics of its free-market zeal.

If I had money, I’d endow a chair in currency-market manipulation.

IF FRAUD UNDER MEDICARE IS $60 BILLION, how much would it be under a totally-government-controlled health care system?

WHITE HOUSE STIMULUS CLAIMS EVEN COMING UNDER FIRE FROM CBS NEWS.

BUSINESS INSIDER: The White House Stupidly Goes To War With Car Website Edmunds.com. “Seriously, what’s the point of this? Clunkers is over. It just makes The White House look thin-skinned, though it’s great publicity for Edmunds.” More here.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Death Cometh For The Greenback. Let’s hope he’s wrong.