NEW YORK 23: When a nation calls.

YOU DON’T SAY: Newly disclosed emails link White House directly to NEA politicalization scandal.

HEH: Biden Concedes Stimulus Numbers Not 100% Accurate.

WRAPPING SOLAR CELLS around an optical fiber.

DOPAMINE: The molecule of motivation.

CHRISTIAN / NEWSOM UPDATE: Lemaricus Davidson gets death for his role in the torture-rape-murder.

HALLOWEEN Horror Movies.

BILL QUICK: Why Dede Scozzafava should drop out today. “It has become obvious that in a straight head’s up race between Conservative Doug Hoffman and Democrat Bill Owens, Hoffman would win in a walk. It is equally obvious that there is no set of circumstances under which the GOP candidate, Dede Scozzofava, can win this election. However, if she stays in, the race for victory remains close between Hoffman and Owens. Therefore, Scozzofava should drop out today. The bottom line is that if Scozzofava stays in, it is only to act as a spoiler to defeat Hoffman, at the behest of the national and state establishment GOP that is sponsoring her.”

PARANORMAL LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY? A spooky video with Mary Katharine Ham.

PEGGY NOONAN: We’re Governed by Callous Children: Americans feel increasingly disheartened, and our leaders don’t even notice. But John Galt is present, in spirit at least:

The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business. . . .

I talked with an executive this week with what we still call “the insurance companies” and will no doubt soon be calling Big Insura. (Take it away, Democratic National Committee.) He was thoughtful, reflective about the big picture. He talked about all the new proposed regulations on the industry. Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress “are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area.” The executive said of Washington: “They don’t understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who’ve said to me ‘I’m done.’ ” He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, “They don’t understand that if they start to tax me so that I’m paying 60%, 55%, I’ll stop.”

He felt government doesn’t understand that business in America is run by people, by human beings. Mr. Frank must believe America is populated by high-achieving robots who will obey whatever command he and his friends issue. But of course they’re human, and they can become disheartened. They can pack it in, go elsewhere, quit what used to be called the rat race and might as well be called that again since the government seems to think they’re all rats. (That would be you, Chamber of Commerce.)
***

And here is the second part of the story. While Americans feel increasingly disheartened, their leaders evince a mindless . . . one almost calls it optimism, but it is not that. . . . We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Clark writes:

So . . . Peggy Noonan apparently has had her fill.

I must say, I hope that she’s ready to take some measure of responsibility. Some folks, outside of the hermetically sealed world of Washington and the greater east coast corridor, noticed all this long, long ago. And, as I recall, it was the same Ms. Noonan that waxed almost rhapsodic over the prospects of our current President.

It’s very good of her now to take note. Better late than never, I suppose.

Yeah. Too rhapsodic about Obama, too hard on the actual adults.

INSPECTOR GENERAL: IRS Is Not Properly Monitoring $34b of Contracts.

JACQUES CHIRAC ORDERED TO STAND TRIAL FOR CORRUPTION. “Already, the mere fact of 76-year-old Chirac’s being investigated has been a humiliating coda to his four-decade political career. On top of that, one of Chirac’s former prime ministers is on trial in a separate case. Dominique de Villepin is accused of orchestrating a smear campaign against Chirac’s successor, Nicolas Sarkozy. Villepin denies the charges.”

And reason enough to recycle this stirring photo from the protests outside the French Embassy in Washington back in 2003. Plus, this.

I SURE HOPE SO: Do Professors Matter?

MAYBE THIS IS WHY OLD PEOPLE ARE DOING BETTER: Statins cut H1N1 death risk in half.

ARE DATE-RAPE DRUGS an urban myth?

JUNK IN THE TRUNK: What weight does to vehicle efficiency.

BLOOMBERG: ‘Jobs Created or Saved’ Is White House Fantasy: Caroline Baum.

TESTING cheap wind power.

HELPING YOU GET AROUND with an Intelligent Driving Agent.

CHARLIE STROSS: How habitable is the Earth?

HEH: CBO Health-Care Score Assumes Congress Sticks to Its Promises, Which Probably Won’t Happen, Says CBO. Well, there’s a confidence-builder.

OOPS: Hey, Ma’am, where are the jobs? Twice as many Californians lost jobs in one week in October than put to work in nine months by the “stimulus”.

TALKING ABOUT John Murtha and Afghanistan, over at The Hill. I recycle an old, but fitting, Las Vegas joke.

UH OH: The Doom that Fell Upon Medical Progress in the US. “The damage done to the rate of progress in applied biotechnology is enormous – we look at what is going on in the labs under present circumstances and are impressed by progress. What we don’t see is what might have been in the absence of overwhelming regulation and FDA roadblocks. If there is little or no prospect for profit at the end of the day, vast swathes of privately funded research simply don’t take place.”

IN THE MAIL: Jim Cramer’s Getting Back to Even.