IT’S NOT PHOTO-PLAGIARISM, it’s homage.

MAKING MISCHIEF with Col. Sanders.

AT HOT AIR: Video: Steve King grills NFL commissioner on hypocrisy over Limbaugh.

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE slides on worsening jobs picture. “The Consumer Confidence Index, released by The Conference Board, sank unexpectedly to 47.7 in October — its second-lowest reading since May.” The slide, like that in housing, was “unexpected.”

FORTUNATE SON.

SOME VERY NICE ANNIVERSARY THOUGHTS from Dana Loesch.

OOPS: “The government has failed dramatically in its effort to make the swine flu vaccine widely available.”

Related: ABC News: White House Refuses to Say President Obama is Pleased with Smoothness of H1N1 Vaccination Efforts.

UPDATE: Why you can’t get the Swine Flu vaccine. “U.S. regulations are too cautious. Europe has adopted a more sensible approach.”

THE NATIONALIZATION OF YOUR CHILDREN. In Britain, anyway. My advice: Buy a gun. Oops! Too late for that . . . .

Not too late to stock up on tar and feathers, though. They’d never dare to do this sort of thing to subcultures they’re afraid of . . . .

HMM: F.B.I. Raid Kills Islamic Group Leader in Michigan. “Federal agents on Wednesday fatally shot a man they described as the leader of a violent Sunni Muslim separatist group in Detroit. The 53-year-old leader, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was killed in one of three raids conducted in and around the city, in which six followers of his were taken into custody. . . . Mr. Abdullah, the authorities said, led a faction of a group called the Ummah, meaning the Brotherhood, which advocates the establishment of a separate nation within the United States governed by Islamic laws. He was one of 11 men from Detroit and Ontario whom the authorities had charged with conspiracy to commit federal crimes.” Is it just me, or are there an awful lot of domestic counterterror operations going on these days?

REASON TV: Radicals for Capitalism: Celebrating the Enduring Legacy of Ayn Rand.

VERONIQUE DE RUGY: We Are Living In An Ayn Rand Novel.

DELUSIONS OF POWERLESSNESS:

Even more risible, though, is the claim that the administration “is going to speak truth to power.” Hello, Valerie? Your boss is the president of the United States! No one is more powerful. As we suggested Friday, it really seems as if Obama and his men do not understand what it means to be president. Because their power is constrained–thank you, Founding Fathers!–they labor under the delusion that they are powerless.

Yet while this is all hilarious, it is also scary when you think it through. Great power entails great responsibility. There is little to suggest that Obama and his aides appreciate their responsibility, and much, including their incessant complaining that the previous president did a lousy job, to suggest an attitude of total irresponsibility.

The job of those in power is not to “speak truth to power,” though it would be nice if they spoke the truth once in a while.

Ouch.

UPDATE: Reader Allen S. Thorpe writes:

The link to Taranto’s taunt of Valerie Jarrett was timed well with Barbara Curtis’ latest post at PJM. These people are so steeped in Saul Alinsky that they fail to realize that they were written for people trying to topple the system and mau-mau the flakcatchers. But now THEY ARE the flack-catchers and they obviously never really understood the problems of governing. There’s a story in Newsweek about how Obama wasn’t going to be like Redford in The Candidate wondering, “What now?” (Maybe I found it on Instapundit.) But he’s finding out that governing by fiat doesn’t work for long in this country. The tags for his presidency so far seem to be Radical, Naive, FDR, Jimmy Carter, Socialism and Screw Up.

Heh. And ouch. Yeah, Alinsky’s a set of rules for annoying The Man. Not much help once you are The Man.

ANOTHER UPDATE: History.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Armored Yeast. No, really.

MORE CARTER-ERA NOSTALGIA FROM NICK GILLESPIE: Tomorrow Is Another 1,000 Day Reign For Daniel Ortega.

MARKDOWNS ON guitars.

WELL, THE ONLY WATER CRISIS HERE IS THAT IT WON’T STOP RAINING: How California’s New Water Laws Inform the Coming National Crisis.

NEW STRATEGY: Every Road A Toll Road. “Despite the privacy issues, DC officials insist that tolling is necessary for making up for the shortfall in gasoline tax revenues. The proposed mileage tax would solve this problem by increasing motorist taxation levels by a factor of ten. The additional revenue would be diverted to spending on buses and rail service. . . . ‘Vehicles would be fitted with a GPS transponder device similar to an E-ZPass, perhaps as part of the registration process,’ Orr and Rivlin explained. ‘This device would record the type of vehicle, the distance traveled, and the time and location of travel.'”

So they tell you to drive less. You comply. Then it’s a “revenue crisis” because they’re bringing in less in gas taxes. So they respond by raising taxes, and making you install a device that lets them track wherever you drive. Yeah, that’ll fly. How about, I don’t know, tar and feathers instead?

UPDATE: A reader emails: “The more incompetent they become, the more power they demand.” Indeed.

KEITH HENNESSEY: Five Important Upcoming Senate Health Care Votes.

MARKETS IN EVERYTHING: MEGAN MCARDLE: “I’m a big fan of the Institute for Justice, which fights the good fight on issues like economic liberty and eminent domain. Today they’re launching what may be their biggest case ever: a fight to allow compensation for bone marrow donors. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act forbids people to sell their bone marrow, as well as their kidneys, lungs, and so forth. By which I don’t mean that the ban is merely stupid; I mean there’s apparently some reason to believe that Congress simply did this as a mistake, adding bone marrow into the bill at the last moment without really thinking things through.”

Shocking, that. Related: An interview with Virginia Postrel.

SHOCKING NEWS FROM SCIENCE: The Key to a Happy Marriage? A Younger, Smarter Wife (and Sex).

LARRY KUDLOW responds to Barney Frank.

I STILL PREFER PAPER BALLOTS: In Industry First, Voting Machine Company to Publish Source Code.

A MUSCLE-BOUND computer interface. “A band of electrodes attach to a person’s forearm and read electrical activity from different arm muscles. These signals are then correlated to specific hand gestures, such as touching a finger and thumb together, or gripping an object tighter than normal. The researchers envision using the technology to change songs in an MP3 player while running or to play a game like Guitar Hero without the usual plastic controller.”

JUICY ACORN NUGGETS.

GOOD ADVICE FROM FRED SMITH: GOP Should Grow the Party, Grow the Economy, Shrink the State.