GHOSTS OF FIREFLY: Capt. Mal Reynolds makes a surprise appearance.

VIDEO: 1988 Yugo sales video is hilarity of the unintentional variety.

SARAH PALIN as Eleanor Roosevelt.

TALENT GOES WHERE IT’S REWARDED: Beware The Reverse Brain Drain To India And China. “We surveyed 1,224 foreign students from dozens of nations who are currently studying at U.S. universities or who graduated in 2008. The majority told us that they didn’t think that the U.S. was the best place for their professional careers and they planned to return home. Only 6 percent of Indian, 10 percent of Chinese, and 15 percent of European students planned to settle in the U.S.”

MORE ON THE PUBLIC PENSION CRISIS: “The basic problem is that pension funds created to finance retirement benefits for thousands of public employees — teachers, police officers, firefighters, and state, city and county workers of every description — lack sufficient funds to meet their obligations. The result could be sharp reductions in future benefits, significant tax increases, or both.”

FROM THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT, eliminationist rhetoric. “Oh, great. Thanks for the warning about cutting back ‘population’ the hard way. Germany.”

POLL: Hoffman Leading in New York. “New CFG Poll shows Hoffman 31.3%, Owens 27.0%, Scozzafava 19.7%” Hmm. Make of this what you will, but it’s obviously a boost for Hoffman.

FRANK MUNGER: When War Was Cold And Trees Were Hot.

PHOTOGRAPHY: The Incredible Macro Bug Portraiture of Thomas Shahan.

Plus, a Thomas Shahan interview. Thanks to reader Mont McNeil for the tip.

IN THE MAIL: From Rafe Esquith, Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World. Why does the title have me thinking of Lola?

WANT TO HELP WOUNDED WARRIORS? Support Project Valour-IT.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Decline Is A Choice. But Is It America’s Choice?

JENNIFER RUBIN: A country at odds with its leaders.

ADVICE TO ELIOT SPITZER: “Put a sock in it.”

AT BLACKFIVE, an open letter to the President on Afghanistan.

A CESSNA CARAVAN armed with Hellfire missiles.

STIMULUS! Stimulus Contracts Go to Companies Under Criminal Investigation.

CHARLES RANGEL UPDATE: “Embattled Rep. Charles Rangel’s flagging fund-raising efforts are being kept afloat by lobbyists who round up and deliver donors for the powerful committee chairman, new campaign-finance filings reveal. . . . He needs the help. By this point in the last congressional cycle, he had raised more than twice the $1.1 million he’s reaped this year.”

LOOTING: “If the parking meter deal put a bad taste in your mouth, try swallowing this: Chicago is considering leasing its water system to help fix the budget.” Privatization for efficiencies might be a good thing, but that’s not what this is about. Mayor Daley can’t stop paying off his cronies, so he’s selling off the city bit by bit rather than cut spending. Will we see similar deals at the Federal level soon?

OBAMA’S “WAR ON COAL” is upsetting some Democrats. Hey, he couldn’t have been plainer about what he was going to do here.

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama, Berlin, Rhetoric & Reality.

PRESIDENT Obama, who found time to go on a 24-hour jaunt to Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to seek the 2016 Olympic Games for Chicago, apparently can’t find the time for a 24-hour trip to Berlin on Nov. 9 for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well, we all have our priorities, and the president can’t be everywhere at once, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will surely represent America ably in Berlin.

Still, it seemed an odd decision to me — until I went back and got the speech that candidate Obama delivered on July 24, 2008, to a crowd of 200,000 in the Tiergarten in Berlin. As I reread the text, it struck me that there would be an embarrassing contrast between what Obama said in Berlin 15 months ago and many policies he has been pursuing as president. . . . Last year, Obama told Berliners that we and they are “heirs to a struggle for freedom.” This year, his administration has been busy trying to appease dictatorial and authoritarian regimes. So maybe he was wise to skip a return appearance in Berlin. Let Clinton gloss over the embarrassing contrast between his rhetoric then and his policies now.

Well, that’s not the only embarrassing contrast.

SHANNON LOVE ON the collapse of the British liberal order.

TUNKU VARADARAJAN: A Personal Tale of Virus and Vice.

ANTISEMITISM ON THE CREEP: Guardian Wipes Israel Off The Nobel Prize Map.