LOTS OF Halloween deals at Amazon.

UPDATE: So is Halloween kind of like the elections? You know, present yourself as something you’re not and go around collecting goodies. . . .

VOTER FRAUD UPDATE: ACORN Nevada Office Raided. “Nevada state officials on Tuesday morning raided the Las Vegas office of ACORN as part of an investigation into alleged voter fraud by the organization which conducts voter registration drives nationally in its work with low-income communities.” Yeah, dog bites man, I know . . . . (Via E!!)

YOUR PRE-DEBATE WARMUP: Roger Simon interviews Obama’s teleprompter.

ANNOUNCING THIS YEAR’S Ig Nobel prizes.

INCREASING GAS MILEAGE with better fuel injectors? I’d like to see more real-world testing.

REMIXING A-Ha’s Take On Me video.

TWO MINUTE WARNING: A new episode of Silicon Graffiti. “The question this presidential election year isn’t whether or not there will be an October surprise–but how many of them we should expect:”

POLITICIANS ARE overselling preventive care in an effort to make their health plans look less expensive. “It boils down to encouraging the well to have themselves tested to make sure they are not sick. And that approach doesn’t save money; it costs money.”

ADVICE TO CONSUMERS ON THE BAILOUT, from Dave Ramsey.

BRENDAN LOY ON TONIGHT’S DEBATE: “This is presidential politics in America — fundamentally unserious, at a time of grave peril for the nation.” And it’s hard to argue with this: “It isn’t just that McCain and Obama are flawed candidates; it’s that there aren’t really any better alternatives. Who would you rather see up there? Hillary Clinton? Mitt Romney? John Edwards? Mike Huckabee? Joe Biden? Sarah Palin? Nancy Pelosi? John Boehner? Harry Reid? Mitch McConnell? George W. Bush? John Kerry? Dick Cheney? Al Gore? Please. Our political class is totally failing us, almost as much as we’re failing ourselves.”

Yes, the political class isn’t attracting the best talent in the nation. It’s not even attracting the second-best.

IN PARIS, electric cars steal the show.

ON PAJAMAS TV, Roger Simon and Joe Hicks talk about Bill Ayers and Obama. This low-rez Flash version should work for nonsubscribers. Meanwhile, the Obama Campaign is responding with a Keating video, which leads Megan McArdle to comment:

The problem Obama’s critics have is not that he once spent some time talking to Bill Ayers; it’s that he refuses to apologize for it now. That refusal to apologize is why the charge has proven hard to counter. You can argue that it isn’t a big deal, but you can’t argue it isn’t true, and unfortunately for Obama, some voters think it is a really big deal.

If I were the McCain campaign, I would be throwing a hell of a lot of resources into making my own video. They have an actual factually accurate and coherent narrative about how McCain has spent the last 20 years atoning for the Keating 5; I would tell that story. I would ask why Obama is choosing to bring up this 20 year old scandal without mentioning that McCain has repeatedly regretted it. And then I would throw in Ayers and Rezko and ask when Obama’s going to apologize for his lapses in judgement.

But will they? Meanwhile, some people can’t tell the players without a scorecard. (Via Lawhawk).

BOB ZUBRIN: Obama’s Energy Plan a Mix of Bad and Good. “Moreover, there is one part of the Obama plan which is absolutely splendid, and that is his explicit promise to require flex fuel capability on all new cars sold in the USA by the end of his first term. This is indeed a potential real game changer, especially if the flex fuel standard is written to include not only automobile compatibility with gasoline and ethanol, but methanol as well.” You can make methanol from kudzu. ‘Nuff said.

AS ELECTRIC CARS BECOME MORE COMMON, will we see a silent NASCAR?

ENERGY LESSONS from the 1970s. “As a rule, it’s not a good idea to revive anything from the 1970s. But this debate is the exception.” Plus this:

Today about 20 percent of electricity in America is generated by nuclear power, which is about 20 times the contribution from solar and wind power. Nuclear power also costs less, according to Gilbert Metcalf, an economist at Tufts University. After estimating the costs and factoring out the hefty tax breaks for different forms of low-carbon energy, he estimates that new nuclear plants could produce electricity more cheaply than windmills, solar power or “clean coal” plants.

More nukes, please. They’re greenhouse-friendly! Instead, we’ve gotten the opposite: “By scaring people about the tiny levels of radiation emitted during the normal operation of a nuclear plant, Mr. Tucker says, greens have effectively encouraged the construction of coal plants that actually release more radiation because of the traces of uranium in coal dust.”

AT ADVERTISING AGE, more on that pulled SNL skit on the financial meltdown.

PROGRESS WITH thin, rollable photovoltaic cells.

AT THE CONGLOMERATE, a look at the Fed’s new commercial-paper operation.

IN THE MAIL: From Yale University Press, The Unitary Executive: Presidential Power from Washington to Bush, by Stephen Calabresi and Christopher Yoo.

INSTA-POLL:

A NEW BLOG-HOME for Dr. Weevil.

ANOTHER QUESTIONABLE OBAMA ASSOCIATE: What can I say — even the most in-the-tank MSNBC correspondent will be taken aback by this revelation. And photos don’t lie!

FINANCIAL BREAKDOWNS. I mentioned Megan McArdle’s post last night, and I also recommend this piece by Andy Kessler, on going back to basics.

The response of most in the political class to the financial crisis is to call for more regulation. Markets are prone to irrational exuberance, and that exuberance can result in crashes that harm lots of people besides the traders in the markets. The problem is, regulators are prone to their own varieties of irrationality. We saw a gradual move to ease — and even require — loans that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. Now, in response to the financial crisis, we’ll likely see a “speculative bubble” in regulation. As with post-disaster building codes, some of these regulations will be good and some won’t, and all will be gradually relaxed over time as the memory of crisis fades. That’s not rational, but it’s human, and we’re human.

My own preference would be for a more fault-tolerant system to begin with. Telecommunications switches are designed to be highly reliable; they generally use software modules that communicate only in limited and specified ways with other modules, and they often run on parallel-sync mode (or at least warm-spare mode) so that when things break down it’s not normally catastrophic. Could financial markets be structured the same way? Probably not, alas, but I like the idea. A system in which — as happened in France this year with Societe Generale — one bad trader could run up billions in losses and nearly break the bank is a system that isn’t fault-tolerant enough.

Of course, one rap on fault-tolerant systems is that problems don’t get noticed as fast, because things don’t grind to a halt when failures occur. There is an argument, instead, for crunchy systems where problems are immediately obvious, instead of “soggy” ones where they are not. Regulation, etc., tends to make systems more soggy — which is good for you when FDIC insurance protects your savings, but bad for the system when FDIC insurance makes you not care about your bank’s balance sheet or loan portfolio. Both approaches have their place, of course, but it pays to be clear about which you’re choosing, and why, and what the consequences are.

BETTER ALL THE TIME: A roundup of good news you probably missed, at The Speculist. Read it, because you probably can use some about now. And remember — despite whatever happens in the financial markets, the long term trend for humanity is likely a positive one.

CNN ON OBAMA ON BILL AYERS: Anderson Cooper says Obama is lying? Well, pretty much — watch the video and see for yourself.

(Via John Stephenson, who writes: “Yes, it actually is CNN. I’m just as amazed as you are.”) Plus, CNN’s Drew Griffin: “I haven’t been able to ask him directly” about his relationship with Ayers.

Some background here.

UPDATE: How to respond to bogus charges of racism, illustrated. I agree that she handled this well.