HOW NOT TO unload a car from a trailer.

CHRYSLER’S HYBRID SPORT-UTES: Dead On Arrival. Actually, wouldn’t that be dead before arrival?

THIS IS DISAPPOINTING: No Surface Ice Found in Moon Crater.

I’VE GOT SOME THOUGHTS ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION in Forbes today.

IN AUSTRALIA: Wind-powered electric vehicle charging stations.

IN THE MAIL: Tobias Buckell’s Sly Mongoose. Great retro cover-art (again) and so far he’s never disappointed.

GAS DROPS BELOW $2 A GALLON in Tennessee. I haven’t seen it that cheap yet myself, but every time I fill up it’s a lot cheaper than the time before.

MORE BIG MEDIA BAD NEWS: “The Audit Bureau of Circulations released the latest figures for the six- month period ending September 2008 and the report shows major drops in circulation at the big metros. According to ABC for the 507 newspapers reporting in this period, daily circulation slipped 4.6% to 38,165,848 copies. For the 571 papers, Sunday dropped 4.8% to 43,631,646 copies. For comparison purposes, in September 2007 reporting period, daily circ fell 2.6% and Sunday was down 4.6%.” Related item here.

MICKEY KAUS: “Is the presidency an adult education class? The whole concept of seeing voters as needing ‘teaching’–as opposed to persuading, or even selling– seems more than a bit condescending.” There’s more condescension where that came from, or I miss my guess . . . .

PRESS FREEDOM: IS THE GLASS HALF EMPTY? Or half full? “Yeah, but if you measure it in terms of the media’s’ freedom to make stuff up and shape election outcomes, we’re number one!”

DON’T TRUST YOUR MEMORY WHEN YOU ARE TIRED: Unless you drink coffee. Coffee. Is there anything it can’t do?

BRINGING DIVERSITY TO THE NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED PAGE: I’m there with a piece on the Vice Presidency and the Constitution.

The length constraints at the NYT were rather strict, but the longer version is here.

UPDATE: A reader forwards this Senate history of the Vice Presidency. Click “read more” for an excerpt.

A NUCLEAR ARSENAL IN DECLINE? “Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants the next president to think about what nuclear middle-age and decline means for national security. Gates joins a growing debate about the reliability and future credibility of the American arsenal.”

UPDATE: What Obama thinks.

A REVERSE-JOHN-GALT? Tom Spaulding writes: “So, if Obama actually wins this election and delivers on even half of his promises, I’m vacillating on whether to pull a reverse John Galt and plug IN to the system. . . . So I mean to look into every government assistance program Obama/Pelosi/Reid provides or funds. Even if I don’t sign up, at least I’ll have an idea where my money is going to. But if I do take an occasional sip from the public teat, consider it my own way of ‘spreading the wealth’ back around to me.”

DRUG WAR VIOLENCE EXPANDS in Mexico.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Lawyers who supervise voting rights are Obama donors.

WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH IS GONE, I’ll miss our first Hispanic President.

OBAMA ON REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH: (Via Drudge).

UPDATE: More here. Maybe it’s just because I’m a law professor who’s followed Obama, but this is no surprise to me. Or to Jennifer Rubin. In fact, this is pretty standard stuff in large parts of legal academia.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON SILENCING THE CRITICS: “Wondering if we can’t prosecute the person who exposed the campaign’s error smacks of police state tactics. Yes, I still support Obama, and I have no reason to think that the error was deliberate. But that doesn’t mean that I think the Obama team has a right to have its errors protected from public exposure. . . . If it had been a corporation rather than a campaign whose shoddy protections were thus exposed, would Kleiman really be urging us to pursue a fraud claim?” This unfortunate instinct to prosecute critics is one of the things that has most troubled me about the Obama movement.

A LANDSLIDE VICTORY FOR MCCAIN, in a poll of the military.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME: Just ran across this post from the 2004 election.

BATTLE FOR CONTROL of the Tennessee State Senate.

ILYA SOMIN ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY: “My point, however, is not to criticize Ayers for his hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a minor offense compared to his real crimes. Rather, I want to emphasize that this is a small example of how property rights play an important role in protecting unpopular people. Private property gives minorities with unpopular views, lifestyles, or identities, a secure space in which they are protected from the hostility of the majority. Tom Palmer’s excellent post on the way in which the rise of private property rights has increased freedom for gays in China is an interesting recent example. In that respect, property rights play a role similar to that of freedom speech. But while the importance of freedom of speech in protecting unpopular minorities is widely understood, many people still believe that property rights mostly benefit only the wealthy, powerful, and popular. As the very different examples of Ayers and the Chinese gays demonstrate, that is not so.”

If private property rights only benefited the powerful, there wouldn’t be so many powerful people putting them down.

PLAYING both sides of abortion politics. Well, that’s politics, I guess.