BOSTON GLOBE: Congress Slaps ACORN Again. “The House voted today to avert a possible government shutdown next week by temporarily extending the current federal budget. But Democrats inserted a provision saying that ACORN could not receive funding under the stopgap measure or any prior legislation.”

PETER SUDERMAN: Democrats Have Become Their Own Worst Enemies On Health-Care.

UH OH:

In the decade or so that I’ve been keeping an eye on Gen. David Petraeus, I’ve noticed that the more worried he gets, the more boring his public pronouncements become.

If I’m right, his mind-numbing appearance yesterday at a Marine Corps conference on counterinsurgency is a leading indicator that he is profoundly worried. One reporter told me after the event that she fell asleep during it. I am guessing Petraeus is fretting primarily about President Obama’s public dithering on Afghanistan strategy, but perhaps also about some weird vibes inside the U.S. official establishment in Baghdad.

Read the whole thing.

CHINA: PRETTY WOMEN ON PARADE.

China has hired professional female models to march in a parade. This was seen as very important for the survival of the communist government. The October 2nd parade in China, to celebrate 60 years of communist rule, wants to make China, and its government, look good. To that end, the parade organizers are having contingents, from all the military organizations in China, march past the high def TV cameras. Being a communist police state, there are lots of uniformed groups. Many have female components. The parade organizers particularly wanted to insure that the women in uniform looked good. Not just military good, but good. When they discovered that the female contingent from the People’s Militia did not measure up, they proceeded to hire models, from as far away as Singapore, to pretty-up the women’s contingent of the People’s Militia.

HDTV just sets the bar too high. . . .

SARKOZY MOCKS OBAMA at U.N. Security Council.

SOME PROMISING NEWS for space colonization.

FRIDAY NIGHT THOUGHTS: “An earthquake is coming.”

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

THE END OF ACORN?

Atlantic correspondent Wendy Kaminer has a fairly scathing piece noting that ACORN has had problems for a long time–and that its defenders have always responded by dismissing any problems as “minor” and complaining that partisan interests are harming all the fine work it does.

What fine work is that, exactly?

FINANCIAL TIMES: On Wall St: Sentiment remains fragile. “One chart that makes for particularly sober reading comes from JPMorgan’s Eye on the Markets dated September 23, which shows bank lending growth has collapsed to a fifty-year low. It makes sense on an individual basis for banks to rebuild their capital. But their (belated) search for more stability and safety comes with certain costs. Until the banks begin lending again, the sense of fragility is bound to increase.” The story kind of makes it sound like it’s a Potemkin recovery led by government spending.

BILL CLINTON WAFFLES ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE.

JAMES TARANTO: Yosi Sergant Gets Hypovehiculated. That’s a great spin on “thrown under the bus,” isn’t it?

HARRY REID blocks ACORN probe. It might be “distracting.”

AN UPDATE ON HOW THE V.A. IS HANDLING the veterans’-check screwup.

STEALTH EDITS at The Washington Post. I think that minor fixes are okay, but this is a bit more than that. We’ve seen this before in the context of the BBC.

IOWAHAWK: Art Will Not Be Silenced!

THE SEVEN BEST FIRST AID KITS for any situation.

GOOD GRIEF: “NBC to Anti-ACORN Group: ‘Bite Me, Jew-Boy.'”

UPDATE: NBC calls email fake.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A response to the response. Could someone have hacked the email account? If so, that should turn up on examination. Stay tuned.

MORE: And NBC News fires back. Dueling statements are all good fun, but it should be easy enough to get to the bottom of this. Some facts, please?

But leave it to Stephen Green to find the funny part.

DON SURBER: Lefty protest vs. righty protest.

UPDATE: Reader Robert Bresca is reminded of Ayn Rand’s comparison of the crowd at Apollo launches and the crowd at Woodstock.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Richard Noiret writes:

A connection that kind of ties in to this. While living in NYC years ago, the mess left in Central Park after the “Earth Day” celebration would cost the city millions in clean up costs, the Park was left like a garbage dump. During this same period I would go to the Oshkosh Airshow with my father along with almost a million others, many of whom parked their personal airplanes and pitched tents alongside. One year we stayed for the final night performance and in the morning after most had left you couldn’t tell anyone had been there. There wasn’t any trace of litter in the large fields around the airstrip. This always struck me as a vivid example of the producers vs. the freeloaders in action.

Indeed.

OUCH: “I was just thinking that Obama would have been so much better if he had made foreign policy the centerpiece of his presidency instead of perversely investing his reputation in complicated health care puzzles. Now, I’m thinking perhaps we’re better off that he’s gotten hopelessly distracted by insoluable insurance problems.”

JOHN ZIEGLER: I can see insanity from my newsroom. So can we all.

YET ANOTHER PRESIDENTIAL INSTA-POLL, with more choices based on reader suggestions (including a clearly coordinated, and increasingly annoying, email campaign for Gary Johnson — guys, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar; the email campaign shows you’re organized, but like the Ron Paul email, it can hurt as well as help if you’re obnoxious about it).

TRAILER PARK: The trailer for Surrogates.

WHERE GASOLINE really comes from.

UPDATE: Jim Bennett writes:

Yes, Canada is our biggest gasoline supplier. Saudi Arabia is a minor one. That’s why Obama feels justified in bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia and giving cheap, tacky gifts to the head of state of Canada.

Of course, maybe nobody in the White House knows that’s she’s Canada’s head of state, too. Or that Canada is our most important energy supplier.

Hmm. Sarah Palin knows that. But of course she can see Canada from her window.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

WELL, I’VE LOST ALL CONFIDENCE IN HIM THEN: Glenn Beck says he’s never heard of Kausfiles. Get a clue, Glenn!