We got Michael Barone on this week’s PJM Political. Plus Lileks, John Fund, Brian Anderson, Ed Driscoll, Bill Whittle, myself, and more. It’s a big show — the penultimate episode before election day — so don’t miss it.

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Japan, Anglosphere member-in-waiting since the Meiji Restoration explicitly copied the British Empire, is forging stronger ties with the old Raj:

Japan on Wednesday offered a record 4.5 billion dollars in loans to India to build a major railway as the Asian powers agreed to step up both economic and military ties.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso hastened to deny that the cooperation was aimed at countering China, where both leaders head Thursday for a summit of Asian and European leaders.

Under the agreement signed in Tokyo, Japan will provide an initial 450 billion yen (4.5 billion dollars) in low-interest loans to build the freight railway between New Delhi and Mumbai.

With China’s new Tibet railway giving them the ability to move and supply ever-larger numbers of soldiers on the Indian border, don’t believe for a second that Japan and India don’t have any aim of eventually countering Beijing.

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You have got to be kidding me:

A cheeseburger and democracy to go? Not quite, but politically active Californians have been able to cast election ballots from the comfort of their cars at a one-off drive-thru voting booth.

The innovative drive-thru voting system was opened late Monday in Santa Ana, southeast of Los Angeles, as part of a push to encourage eligible voters to register and vote ahead of the November 4 presidential polls.

If this kind of ripe-for-fraud voting becomes the norm, no one will ever trust elections again. Which, I’m afraid, is exactly the point.

Can’t we just go back to paper ballots already?

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John Dvorak has some good news about lighting:

The current holy grail in the tech scene is the making of an LED that is cheaper, brighter, and better as a general lighting source than a fluorescent bulb. Well, researchers are now approaching this break-even point with not just LEDs but also the cheaper OLEDs. New technologies will achieve 120 lumens per watt. Fluorescents get 90 lumens per watt and incandescents get a mere 15. Many of these designs will produce light for decades.

We’ve spent a bunch of money the last couple years, converting over to CFL bulbs. The only places now that don’t have them are the super-ugly (but dimming) ceiling fan lights upstairs, and certain halogen bathroom fixtures. The fixtures are too expensive to replace, but those ceiling fans will get replaced by Energy Star models with efficient blades and fluorescent bulbs. Our energy savings each month has been noticeable, and has already (almost!) paid for all those CFLs.

If LED or OLED lights come down in price anywhere near CFLs, then we’ll happily start the process all over again.

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Barack Obama has decided that in order to get an income tax break, maybe you ought to have an income.

With that kind of requirement, maybe instead of only 95% of Americans paying less taxes he can get that number up in the 102-103% range.

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Michael Barone: Reading the polls this year is more art than science.

And, man, is he right.

When doing the electoral college math, I rely mostly on Rasmussen, with a healthy dose of Real Clear Politics and its invaluable poll average page. They’ve proven their worth over the last few election cycles. But this year? Ugh.

You’ve got to take all the numbers, fudge an unknown Bradley Effect, recast for new-voter enthusiasm, remember that new-voter enthusiasm never lives up to the hype, then keep in mind that this year it might… then throw up your hands, shout “I just don’t know!” and pick winners as best you’re able.

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Did you know that “socialist” means “black?”

You didn’t? Well, then just ask all those noted black socialists as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, V.I. Lenin, William Jennings Bryan, Pierre Leroux, Marie Roch Louis Reybaud, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ferdinand Lassalle, Mikhail Bakunin, Leon Trotsky, Samuel Gompers, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg… need I go on?

“Socialist,” if anything, is code for “Probably European and possibly Jewish.”

Meanwhile, quit calling me a racist, you race-card dealing socialist weasel.

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“Before you ask, Bill, yes, I am still beating my wife!”

All that and more, on today’s PJTV.

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Technical issues (we’re still in beta!) kept me off of yesterday’s PJTV Blogger Whip. But I’ll be on today’s Whip at 6PM Eastern, followed by a full segment devoted to McCain’s exit strategy. And I don’t mean from Iraq.

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More evidence that GM wants — and just might get — your tax dollars to gobble up Chrysler.

And what would GM do with Chrysler? Shut down everything but Jeep, most likely.

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Wait… I thought everybody was going to love us again once President-Apparent Obama was sworn in.

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Get ready for the coming Ice Age Global Warming Climate Change Ice Age, damnit:

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures — they’re going down, not up.

Read the whole thing.

Anecdotally, our last hot summer in Colorado was in ’06. The past two summers were cool, wet, and this year the lawns stayed green until… well, many of them still are. That’s unheard of. Now I don’t know what’s happening these days on top of Mt Kilimanjaro, but I can tell you that Pike’s Peak still had traces of snow on it in August (almost unheard of), and has a nice little snowpack developing already this fall (not heard of since before the draught).

All in all, we’re hoping for a Halloween with more candy than frostbite.

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I thought these 1970s ideas had all died with the Carter Administration.

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McCain is back even in Florida, says Rasmussen. Interesting, because Obama had been up there by as much as five points in recent weeks. And it’s not like he’s done any surge type campaigning to turn things around. Buyer’s remorse? Is the Powell Endorsement backfiring with Miami’s Jewish population? Who knows.

Same story in Ohio — not known for its large number of Jewish retirees — where McCain went from a five-point deficit to a two-point lead today.

The polls are still breaking Obama’s way in Colorado, North Carolina, and Missouri, however. And Virginia? Fuggidabodit.

McCain is more competitive than he was last week — but only enough to turn a blow-out into a drubbing.

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Right across the highway from here, something strange is going on:

Palmer Lake, a rural community north of Colorado Springs, has the highest percentage of foreclosures per household in El Paso County. With 240 homes in Palmer Lake, the area holds a 6.25% foreclosure rate – with one out of every 16 homes foreclosed, according to the public trustee.

There’s some serious money in Palmer Lake these days, so I wonder if some people are using foreclosure to escape upside down loans on overpriced homes.

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It’s one of those big stories that won’t get much press, because it’s about a remote region and would take to long to explain — but India and Pakistan have opened their first-ever trade route through disputed Kashmir.

Let’s hope something other than terrorists and weapons go through.

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Why is it that when Republicans are involved, it’s a sign that we “must get the money out of politics,” but when a Democrat raises record funds, it’s “a stunning and unprecedented eruption of political giving?”

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Does GM want to use your tax dollars to buy out — and all but shut down — Chrysler?

Using government money to get rid of competitors… We used to call that “rent seeking.” These days, it’s just Business As Usual.

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Prediction: Come January 20, 2009, dissent will no longer be the highest form of patriotism, so you right-wingers had better learn to stuff it.

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Sinus infections are not necessarily relieved by increasing your elevation above sea level to nearly 10,000 feet.

Maybe your doctor doesn’t need to tell you that, but maybe there ought to at least be a printed warning on the antibiotics label.

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Screedy goodness, and just in time for the election!

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It made me laugh. It made me cry. It changed my life. It was better than “Cats.” I’ll see it again and again.

Anyway, I can safely vouch for the fourth claim.

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Bill Maher’s new movie Religulous is being held back because of worries it might offend Christians.

Or… uh… not.

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Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama made me think of two things.

1. The worst thing that could happen to the Bush Administration — and it did — is if his Secretary of State became captive to the State Department. (In fact, it happened twice.)

2. Possibly the best thing that might happen to an Obama Administration is if his Secretary of State becomes captive to the State Department.

I’ll leave the difference as a matter for the reader to figure out.

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The Republic has survived eight years of having, to hear some people tell it, Darth Vader as Veep. And before that, we got through eight years of of having a space alien inhabit the Vice Presidential Residence.

But this? I shudder for the fate of our young country.

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Blogger and Army Specialist Stephen Fortunato was killed in Afghanistan last week. His final blogpost is excerpted at Milblogging.com.

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[Bumped, because I forgot the link originally.] Invade Pakistan, President-Apparent Obama? I dunno — the Pakistanis seem to be doing OK:

Largely out of the media spotlight, at least in the West, the Pakistani army has taken on the most numerous and aggressive part of the Taliban organization, and is tearing it to pieces. For the last two months, the Pakistani Army has been moving through the Bajaur Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), killing Taliban and al Qaeda fighters who have largely controlled the rural parts of the 1,300 square kilometer district for years. There were only a few thousand armed men working for the Taliban, and several thousand more who have come in since the fighting began. Over a third of these Taliban have been killed or wounded, and they have been driven from one compound (the fortress like groups of houses that are favored in this part of the world) after another. The army has used air power (mostly armed helicopters) and artillery to do most of the killing, using infantry to guard the roads and urban areas. The Taliban have had a hard time moving around, and have not been able to inflict many casualties on the army.

They’re redistributing the death.

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