RASMUSSEN: Most Americans Say Tax Cuts Trump Increased Government Spending.

FREEDOM: Sheila Jackson Lee wants DOJ to monitor tea partiers at polls. “The King Street Patriots have also gone after Jackson Lee, saying Jackson Lee is asking for votes right outside polling places. They’re now inviting the Justice Department to come to its poll watching training meetings, saying they have nothing to hide.”

DOUBLING DOWN: Political-Class Republicans who backed Obama say they may vote for him again. “The Hill contacted 17 prominent Republicans and members of ‘Republicans for Obama’ groups that launched across the country two years ago. Most of them defended the president and indicated they might vote for him again in two years.” But is “Obamican” Robert Monk’s comparison of Obama to a chimpanzee playing a piano the kind of support Obama wants?

Then there’s Colin Powell, whose continued support is no surprise:

Colin Powell, who served as Bush’s secretary of State, recently said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I think he is a transformational figure. Some people don’t like what he’s done in transformation, and it’s caused him some difficulty.”

Yep. “Transformation” can come in all sorts of forms. Meanwhile, some people are just hunkering down:

Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of former President Dwight Eisenhower who spoke at the Democratic convention in 2008, declined to comment. Others who didn’t respond to The Hill’s request for comment included former Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), former Rep. Claudine Schneider (R-R.I.), White House intelligence adviser Rita Hauser and economist David Friedman.

How’s that hopey-changey stuff working for you guys?

IN ECUADOR, A WITCH HUNT? More like a purge.

ILLINOIS: Bobby Schilling Stops To Energize Supporters.

IRA STOLL: Vanguard Blogger Is Democratic Donor. “The Vanguard mutual fund official responsible for the pre-election Vanguard blog post crediting the Obama stimulus bill passed by Congressional Democrats with averting a second Great Depression has given $11,600 in campaign contributions over the past seven years — every last cent of it to Democrats.”

ANYBODY SEEN BILL AYERS LATELY? The FBI said on Thursday that it has linked a shooting at a Marine Corps recruiting station in a Virginia suburb outside the U.S. capital to two other shootings at the Pentagon and a Marine Corps museum.

THEY’RE ALREADY SAYING IT’LL BE A COLD WINTER: Russia’s Kamchatka volcanoes spew giant ash clouds.

JIM TREACHER: Keith Olbermann wants to save the world from rich white guys who can’t handle dissenting opinions.

“DUDE.”

GAWKER FAIL: Lefty gossip site somehow unites entire blogosphere behind Christine O’Donnell. “It’s not quite the entire blogosphere that’s cringing, but … it’s pretty close, including former Gawker editors, Media Matters fellows, and feminist bloggers. Even Donna Brazile has the dry heaves over it.”

ANN ALTHOUSE: L.A. Times on the Jon Stewart rally: “Nearly 225,000 people had RSVP’d on the event’s Facebook page as of Thursday morning.” “Why do journalists keep writing the RSVP number like that? Look at the Facebook page. The number who say they are attending is (currently) 10,019. 239,164 RSVP’d to say they are not attending. 112,812 say — are they just being polite? — they are “Maybe Attending.” Hey, me too. I’m maybe attending!“

CHANGE: FTC Drops Investigation of Google Less Than a Week After Company Exec Hosts Obama Fundraiser.

KEITH RICHARDS KNOCKED OFF by “online flash mob.”

DAVE KOPEL: Ronald Reagan, Extremist Collaborator.

THE STEWART/COLBERT RALLY: “‘Here we are now, entertain us’ was a great lyric for a song. As a political slogan, it is decidedly wanting.”

Related: “Once upon a time jesters courted kings. Now enfeebled kings court jesters.”

FLORIDA: Clinton pushed the black guy to get out. (Via Drudge).

UPDATE: L.A. Times: Once again, Bill Clinton tries unsuccessfully to nudge an inconvenient Democrat out of a Senate race.

Politico need not reveal its source to reveal its source. Given the names, times and details provided, it clearly was the Clinton-Obama camp playing hardball the Chicago Way.

Yes, sure, Meek was a loyal, useful African American trooper all over the country in Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful fight against Obama for the Democrats’ presidential nomination in 2007-08.

But — nothing personal just business — if Meek won’t step aside voluntarily, get rid of him involuntarily. Leak word to the hungry press and hope enough of their readers give up on Meek and jump to Crist. Meek’s doomed either way.

Indeed.

WOW: Charlie Cook moves Barney Frank’s seat from “likely Democratic” to “lean Democratic.” Plus this: “Remember, as of just a few weeks ago, this seat wasn’t even on the board.” Frank’s opponent, Sean Bielat. seems to be surging.

ADVICE ON HOW BUSINESSES SHOULD respond to customer criticisms online. Seems sound to me.

TV CRITIC DISAPPOINTED IN JON STEWART:

What was so revealing, however, about this portion of the show for me was not Obama’s predictable “we-inherited-all-the-trouble” rhetoric as he tried to defend his failures, but what a dogmatic leftist critique of Obama’s presidency Stewart clearly embraces.

Maybe I was deluding myself because I like the intelligence of Stewart’s humor, but I really believed he had a more balanced and centrist take on American life. If the White House was looking for the court jester and mouthpiece of the folks senior White House officials described as the “professional left,” they found him. He was sitting across from the president Wednesday night prodding him with all the White House had not done. . . . But he never once seemed to be able to even conceive of a question that would come at the president from right of center — or even center-center. Think how enriched this interview would have been by even one question from right of center asking about unintended consequences or huge federal spending programs that came nowhere doing what Obama had promised they would. . . .

I wish Stewart had not given the president 15 minutes of a free ride on the eve of such a hotly contested and potentially monumental election.

But that’s what you get in a culture with a broken down journalistic structure where citizens turn to comedians rather than the press for information and guidance in deciding their votes.

And worse yet, much of the press blindly turns to comedians like Stewart and Stephen Colbert for guidance, too.

Indeed.

“TEDIOUSLY GRIM:” Ann Althouse takes a close look at Obama’s “evolving” views on gay rights.

Are you trying to say you’d have joined Justice Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas? Here’s Scalia: “What Texas has chosen to do is well within the range of traditional democratic action, and its hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand-new ‘constitutional right’ by a Court that is impatient of democratic change. It is indeed true that ‘later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress,’; and when that happens, later generations can repeal those laws. But it is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people, and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best.” Hello? That’s what Obama is saying about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Read the whole thing, which is an exercise in patient deconstruction. But somehow it reminded me of this: “The move is classic Don Draper. He announces abruptly that he has evolved — instead of actually evolving.”

Related: Devolution. (Bumped).

WHAT TO DO, if you’ve been egged.

SCIENCE: Women are more attracted to men with stubble (and they prefer hairy chests and backs too).

DRUDGE HAS EXCERPTS and highlights from George W. Bush’s new book.

People thought Bush would be so toxic that publicity for his book would hurt Republicans, but with Bush outpolling Obama 48-43 now, it doesn’t look that way.

DAN MITCHELL: “Yes, TARP was economically misguided. But the bailout also was fundamentally corrupt, featuring special favors for the well-heeled. . . . Now, to add insult to injury, we’re being fed an unsavory gruel of deception as the political class tries to cover its tracks.”