ROGER SIMON: The (condescending) media is the message.

And a related post from Prof. Kenneth Anderson on Judith Warner: “Judging by how she writes, I would say she’s compensated on a sort of condescension-meter approach.” It’s hard to believe that the demand for media condescension is sufficient to clear the supply . . . .

Meanwhile, Tom Maguire is happy to condescend to Bob Herbert.

JIM WOOTEN: Panic sets in for Obama, Democrats. “Barack Obama knows it. The election he had in the bag is slipping away.” He could still win it, but the fact that he’s acting panicky, with wild swings, isn’t helping him. Plus, it suggests that he can’t handle pressure, which has been a rap on him from the beginning.

Those molestation claims from Randi Rhodes aren’t helping, either. Jeez. Plus this report: “Barack Obama and his senior advisers are under fire for ignoring the advice of Democratic senators and governors who are concerned that they do not know how to beat John McCain. . . . A senior Democratic strategist, who has played a prominent role in two presidential campaigns, told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘These guys are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They’re the most arrogant bunch Ive ever seen. They won’t accept that they are losing and they won’t listen.'” Yes, as I said earlier, hubris coupled with poor execution is not a recipe for success. Nice to see that the Democratic leadership agrees with my analysis.

UPDATE: Barry Dauphin thinks it’s psychological: “One thing I have noticed. No matter who McCain is up against (be it Republicans or Democrats), he has an uncanny ability to get under the skin of his opponents. Most of his opponents become virtually apoplectic at some point. They make mistakes. And he simply smiles.”

GLOVES, LIES, and videotape.

REMEMBER, THEY MAY BE ON SALE NOW, BUT WHEN HALLOWEEN COSTUMES get cheaper on November 1st, it’ll be a sign that they were price gouging in October!

JESSE WALKER: “There’s a popular stereotype, fed by films and other media, that says that natural disasters are almost invariably followed by looting. But in the real U.S., theft and violence are extremely rare in such situations. In Texas right now, as Hurricane Ike moves northwards, you’ll find reports of people fretting about looters as they refuse to leave their homes. Yet when you look at how neighbors in the storm’s path are actually behaving, you see cooperation instead.”

Yes, and as I’ve written before, that kind of response is common. More here.

RASMUSSEN: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows John McCain with 49% of the vote while Barack Obama attracts support from 46%. That is unchanged from yesterday and a complete reversal over the past week.”

UPDATE: Florida, Pennsylvania breaking for McCain?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Panic.

ADVICE TO THE TENNESSEE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: “You are blowing it, in my opinion, when it comes to rural voters and in many ways, you are disenfranchising younger voters here.”

TECH BLEG: I’d like to hook my Canon GL2 up to my Macbook Pro to use as a camera for iChat. But when I connect the USB to the Macbook the computer doesn’t see the Canon. I never have this problem hooking the Canon up to a PC. Is there a setting in OS/X or iChat that I’m not seeing?

UPDATE: That was fast. Needs a DV cable instead of USB. That fixed things right up.

BOMBS IN NEW DELHI.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: Timing the Entitlements Crash. “The fundamental problem is that income-transfer programs (and the interest service on the debt purchased to keep them running) are spending wealth in higher volumes than the economy can actually generate, and demand for that spending is rising faster than the economy is growing. Thus, raising tax rates is no longer a way out, if it ever was.” Remember, if something can’t go on forever, then it won’t.

CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE. Or not.

RAND SIMBERG ON ECONOMIC ILLITERACY AND TALK OF “PRICE GOUGING:” “Every time we have a natural disaster like this, this idiotic topic comes up, and we once again have to explain Econ 101 to the products of our public school system, probably in futility. This time, it’s Rich Hailey’s turn.” Yeah, if only big TV networks with high-paid staffs could do the kind of reporting and analysis that we see from lone amateur bloggers.

Rand also notes:

Jeez, I thought that David Asman was smarter than that. Now he’s telling Fox viewers to take pictures of stations with high gas prices so that they can be reported to authorities. It’s hard for me to believe that Neal Cavuto would do that. . . .

You know, I think that this is an explanation for socialism and collectivism’s continuing grip on the public mind, despite its long history of unending failure. There’s just something in human psychology to which it naturally appeals, and rationality just can’t break through. It just “feels” unfair for prices to go up in an emergency, regardless of the demonstrably bad consequences of attempting to legislate them.

Yeah. But I do know that in order to “gouge” you have to have something to sell. So here’s my gas station photo. I passed four gas stations on Kingston Pike earlier today. Two were out of gas, one was out of premium, and one had nothing but regular left. Nobody’s making money selling gas they don’t have.

I’d encourage people to send me pictures of clueless TV news anchors but, really, I don’t have that much space here . . . .

UPDATE: More thoughts from Shannon Love: “I’ll say it one more time for those who can’t be bothered to actually ask someone who owns a gas station. Gas stations set prices for the gas they sell today based on the wholesale price of the gas they will have to buy to replace it. Get it? The price you pay for a gallon today is the cost of the gallon the station will have buy to replace the one you just bought. Gas stations sell gas at or near cost, so if they did not use replacement pricing any sudden spike in gas prices would shut them down and you couldn’t get any gas. I simply do not know why our public and private talking heads cannot understand and communicate this simple fact.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here:

As for fuel availability, Pilot hasn’t run out at any of its stores, but is struggling to make sure supplies remain constant. A fuel shipment from Colonial Pipeline’s main trunk into Knoxville that was originally slated to arrive Saturday, then was postponed until Tuesday, has now been pushed back to Thursday, Wright said.

The problem now is not just less fuel coming from the refineries, but a run on the pumps by drivers, he said.

“The fuel situation for Pilot really hasn’t changed a whole lot since yesterday. We have fuel right now and we continue to deliver fuel to our stores; the problem we have is we are selling about twice as much fuel as we normally would,” he said. . . .

Pilot isn’t the only local gasoline retailer watching the fuel situation deteriorate.

“I’ve been in this business 50 years and this has never happened before,” said Bill Weigel, head of the Weigel’s chain of convenience stores in Knox, Blount, Sevier, Loudon, Anderson and Monroe counties.

Weigel, who said Thursday that about a half-dozen Weigel’s stores had run out of gas, declined to say how many more stores had run dry Friday.

“It’s worse today than yesterday, and it will probably be worse tomorrow,” he said Friday.

Weigel and other retailers have been scouring the country for fuel supplies since Gustav left refinery outages along the Gulf Coast, creating severe shortages. With Ike reaching landfall at Galveston and Houston, the heart of the country’s petroleum manufacturing industry, some fear a worst-case scenario for retailers and consumers.

Weigel said Friday afternoon he had found a supply of gasoline in Birmingham, Ala., and was afraid to find out what it was going to cost him. He had to pay $4.49 a gallon for the last batch he bought.

Spot-market prices are much higher in places. One problem is that — as with electrical production — there’s not a lot of slack left in the system. More refineries would help . . . .

Of course, some are blaming the media: “Why is it that local news (both print and television) feels the need to try and scare the crap out of everyone on a regular basis. The paper runs a story about fuel shortages, and then runs another story about a “run on the pumps”. Brilliant. I wonder how much gas prices would have increased if there hadn’t been a media blitz with constant radio updates of how bad it was getting?”

THE TUNNEL OF TWINKIE LOVE: That sounds kinda . . . dirty.

THE BEST CONGRESS MONEY CAN BUY: “The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008, which was blasted by consumer groups and library associations this week as an “enormous gift” to the content industry, won the approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon by a 14-4 vote.”

Okay, I’m not sure it’s really the best, but it’s definitely one that money can buy . . .

UPDATE: Reader Dean Macinskas emails:

Reminds me of that famous quote by P. J. O’Rourke:

“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. “

Which is how the legislators like it.

REVIEWING THE 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan.

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS IS UP!

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Tiny ‘Ships’ Sail Bloodstream to Destroy Cancer.

Faster, please.

A REWRITE WITHOUT A CORRECTION at The Washington Post. It hasn’t been a good week for the Post.

BOOSTING HOPES FOR SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER:

A former NASA scientist has used radio waves to transmit solar power a distance of 92 miles (148 km) between two Hawaiian islands, an achievement that he says proves the technology exists to beam solar power from satellites back to Earth.

John C. Mankins demonstrated the solar power transmission for the Discovery Channel, which paid for the four month experiment and will broadcast the results Friday at 9 p.m. EDT. His vision is to transmit solar power collected by orbiting satellites as large as 1,102 pounds (500 kg) to lake-sized receiver stations on Earth.

This is cool, but I believe someone already demonstrated this by beaming power at JPL Goldstone back in the 1970s.

A GEEK’S GUIDE TO COLLEGES.

IN THE MAIL: The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s Guide to Success in Business and Life. By Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff. Looks quite interesting.

BRENDAN LOY is continuing to round up reports on Hurricane Ike and its aftermath.

INSTA-POLL: In response to my post from last night, reader JohnO writes: “I guarantee that the surefire way to get people talking about stuff other than Sarah Palin–Cookware. Of course, I wonder if Sarah is a Cuisinart or Calphalon user?” Okay, that obviously didn’t work, but it gave me an idea for a poll. Only I think it’s Cuisinart nonstick vs. All-Clad. Hey, it’s no dumber than some of Charlie Gibson’s questioning . . .

ROGER KIMBALL: Who is the mole in the Obama Campaign?

RICH HAILEY on why gas prices are spiking. An explanation so clear and sensible you’ll probably never see it on the news . . . .

UPDATE: Just saw the morning crew on Fox discussing gas prices and, well, they’re not up to Rich Hailey standards, to put it mildly.