WHAT BUSH UNDERSTOOD ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST, that Obama just doesn’t get.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: The seductive allure of reverting to national European currencies.

RUSH LIMBAUGH’S CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE. Plus this, from the comments: “I think the thing that made Rush so popular was his sense of cheerful optimism. Unlike the O’Reillys and Savages of the world, Rush has always been optimistic about the future. I think that the Obama presidency has been such a disaster of Biblical proportions that Rush is no longer optimistic about the future.” I’m still optimistic. But, yeah, I can see that.

DO NOT TRUST CONTENT from the Star Tribune? “If you relied on the article for your knowledge about the case, as I stupidly did, you were poorly served.”

RASMUSSEN: Generic Congressional Ballot: Republicans 43%, Democrats 40%.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Toys & Games.

PROF. JACOBSON ON THE POLITICO CAIN HIT:

The story was a legitimate issue for a presidential candidate; we only wish the mainstream media would investigate Obama’s past with half as much enthusiasm.

But there’s a bigger point here, visible only from 35,000 feet.

This is a taste of the medicine the mainstream media, which includes Politico as I have pointed out before, has in store for the eventual Republican nominee.

Whatever the source of the tip, the presentation was rolled out by Politico in a fashion to do maximum damage to Cain. The Sunday release was timed to be all over the media on Monday morning. Jonathan Martin, the lead reporter on the story for Politico, even conducted an ambush interview with Cain shortly after the story broke, receiving a muddled response from Cain.

Yeah, it’s pretty clear what was going on here. It’s true it was pretty much a failure — see Pro Publica’s takedown, even — but let me repeat my question: Would Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel have put their names on a similar piece, with no named sources, aimed at Barack Obama? Would Politico have run it? I think we know the answer.

Meanwhile, Roxeanne De Luca has a question for feminists.

Plus, a look back at Politico’s involvement with the Journolist story-coordination scandal.

P.J. CULTURE: PJ Media unveils a new team of seven weekly columnists.

FIGHTING VIOLENT GANG CRIME with math.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: “Some Tennessee legislators are eying a reduction in prize payouts for Tennessee lottery players while letting them buy tickets with debit or credit cards.”

AT AMAZON, a coupon sale.

JOEL KOTKIN: Overpopulation Isn’t The Problem: It’s Too Few Babies. “For the next generation of Chinese leaders, Deng Xiaoping’s rightful concern about overpopulation at the end of the Mao era will shift into a future of eldercare costs, shrinking domestic markets and labor shortages. This scenario is already a reality in Japan and much of the European continent, including Greece, Spain, Portugal, much of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and Germany. Adults over the age of 65 make up more than 20% of these countries’ populations — compared with 15% in the U.S. — and their numbers could double by 2030, according to researchers Emma Chen and Wendell Cox. In many of these countries, rising debt burdens and shrinking labor markets have already slowed economic growth and suppressed any hope for a major long-term turnaround. The same will happen to even the best-run European economies, just as it has in Japan, whose decades-long growth spurt ended as its workforce began to shrink.”

LOOKING AT Herman Cain as a turnaround artist. He was good at taking once-valuable properties that had been devalued by inept management and making them work again.

WHAT TO DO WITH THE HALLOWEEN CANDY? Eat it.

NAMING NAMES: The 99%: Official list of Occupy Wall Street’s supporters, sponsors and sympathizers.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: Woman Burns Husband With Cooking Oil: “A woman in Franklin County is charged with domestic violence and aggravated assault after investigators say she threw a pot of cooking oil on her husband. . . . Her husband, Jason Martin, was admitted to Vanderbilt Medical Center Sunday with third degree burns.” But you’ll have to follow the link to see why this was in the Sports section.

HERMAN CAIN’S LEAD IS OPENING UP: That is, his lead over me on the SSRN Top Recent Downloads chart.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Public universities expand recruitment efforts in quest for out-of-state money.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Viruses guide nano-assembly of biomaterials.

JIM TREACHER: ‘I have in my hand a list of Herman Cain accusers…’ “So we don’t know specifically what Herman Cain stands accused of doing wrong, who’s accusing him, or how to verify any of it. Other than that, this is some solid reporting from Politico.”

I repeat my earlier question: Would Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel have put their names on a similar piece, with no named sources, aimed at Barack Obama? Would Politico have run it?

UPDATE: Occupy Politico?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Even the folks at Pro Publica — who are certainly not on the right — aren’t buying this: “Politico’s story on possible sexual harassment by Herman Cain may be the biggest investigative scoop of the campaign season. But it would be hard to deduce that from the facts as published. . . . It is clear from the story Politico posted Sunday evening that reporters made extensive efforts to figure out what happened. But much of what appeared came from anonymous sources whose knowledge appeared to be second-hand or unspecific.”

Like I said: Would Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel have put their names on a similar piece, with no named sources, aimed at Barack Obama? Would Politico have run it?

(Revised to reflect that the Pro Publica folks say that they’re not lefties.)

And reader Frank Glamser emails: “You will note that the attack on Cain came after he assumed the lead in polls just as was the case with Perry.” Are you suggesting that we should question the timing?

RASMUSSEN: Wisconsin: Perry 46%, Obama 42%.

WHAT STARTUP LIFE is really like.

KENNETH ANDERSON: The Fragmenting of the New Class Elites, or, Downward Mobility. “In social theory, OWS is best understood not as a populist movement against the bankers, but instead as the breakdown of the New Class into its two increasingly disconnected parts. The upper tier, the bankers-government bankers-super credentialed elites. But also the lower tier, those who saw themselves entitled to a white collar job in the Virtue Industries of government and non-profits — the helping professions, the culture industry, the virtueocracies, the industries of therapeutic social control, as Christopher Lasch pointed out in his final book, The Revolt of the Elites. The two tiers of the New Class have always had different sources of rents, however. . . . The OWS protestors are a revolt — a shrill, cri-de-coeur wail at the betrayal of class solidarity — of the lower tier New Class against the upper tier New Class. It was, after all, the upper tier New Class, the private-public finance consortium, that created the student loan business and inflated the bubble in which these lower tier would-be professionals borrowed the money. It’s a securitization machine, not so very different from the subprime mortgage machine. The asset bubble pops, but the upper tier New Class, having insulated itself and, as with subprime, having taken its cut upfront and passed the risk along, is still doing pretty well. It’s not populism versus the bankers so much as internecine warfare between two tiers of elites. The downward mobility is real, however, in both income and status. The Cal graduate started out wanting to do ‘sustainable conservation.’ She is now engaged in something closer to subsistence farming.”

Read the whole thing.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Strawberries protect stomach from alcohol.

POPULAR MECHANICS: What DARPA’s Scavenger Hunt Taught Us About Mobilizing People Fast.