BLACKFIVE: A direct challenge to you.

THOUGHTS ON Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.

A BUNCH OF interesting food links. Including set-it-and-forget-it kitchen appliances.

THOUGHTS ON military media relations.

LIVING JOE TRIPPI’S DREAM? Andrew Breitbart.

ANOTHER INSTA-POLL: This time give me your top two choices.

SOME TYPHOON-BLOGGING IN THE PHILIPPINES.

SAN DIEGO ACORN OFFICE is on the receiving end of a protest.

SARKOZY TO OBAMA: Get real, dude.

UPDATE: Heh.

WELL, WITH IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM IN THE HANDS OF THE U.N., I guess we’re back to this.

UPDATE: Or this.

RED-LIGHT CAMERA UPDATE: On-duty OR cops not ‘immune’ to red-light camera, speeding tickets.

“SMART DIPLOMACY.” I don’t think it’s a good sign that British papers are calling him President Pantywaist. “Obama has done more to restore Russia’s hegemonial potential in Eastern and Central Europe than even Vladimir Putin. . . . If the word is out that America is in retreat, it will soon find it has no friends.”

RETIRED MARINE starts coffee company to benefit military. The decaf is called “Sniper’s Brew.”

IN THE MAIL: Faithful Warriors: A Combat Marine Remembers the Pacific War.

OH, GOODY: Neil Barofsky, TARP Inspector: Financial System May Now Be In A “Far More Dangerous Place.”

REASON TV: An interview with Libertarian Party Chairman William Redpath.

IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM AND THAT NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE: Something fishy. “I hope the prior outrage over faulty intelligence and WMD and Iraq will extend to the latest incompetence — that intelligence agencies that swore in 2007 that Iran stopped working on the bomb in 2003 now, in 2009, have assured the president that their intelligence has disclosed a new Iranian facility that is not used for peaceful purposes.”

MEGAN MCARDLE ON THE NEW PROFIT PICTURE: “Profits are good when they result from providing a service people want. When they are the result of capturing the government by cutting special deals, they’re immoral and inefficient. And this is just the beginning . . .”

Hope and change!

OUCH: Study: Regulation Costs California Economy Almost $500 Billion.

HURRICANE KATRINA: It wasn’t a disaster, it was health care reform! “New research published in the September issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons offers important insights into the long-term impact of a major disaster on routine surgical services in a hospital. In the study, researchers at Ochsner Health System, New Orleans, LA, showed that although Hurricane Katrina resulted in a significant loss of surgical staff and an increase in the number of uninsured patients undergoing operations, greater cost efficiencies were achieved.”

WOMAN GETS PREGNANT, while pregnant.

DANA LOESCH: Left Employing Sexist Tactics to Discredit Giles, O’Keefe? “Word on the street is that the Left, the ‘equal pay, pro-women’ left, is desperately searching for lewd photos of Hannah Giles.”

Of course they are. And if they found them that would totally discredit her . . . prostitute impersonation.

THE POSITRONIC BRAIN NEEDS A randomization function. Excessive consistency is a giveaway.

Barack Obama’s amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

To be fair, I was autographing some photos from a speaking gig not long ago and noticed the same effect. But if Obama can’t beat my standard of lifelike vigor, well . . . .

WOULD YOU FIGHT IN THE AISLE over a ten dollar hamster?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “Look, my model U.N. in high school was more realistic than this Security Council.”