TOM BROKAW SEES THE WRITING ON THE WALL: Tom Brokaw Pans Biden Debate Demeanor: Shouldn’t Be ‘Laughing’ During Discussion Of Iran.

He shouldn’t have been lying about his Iraq and Afghan war votes, either. And the claim about our current financial problems stemming from Bush’s putting those wars that Biden voted for “on the credit card” is an occasion to repost this graphic comparing spending under Bush and Obama once again. Yeah, that part’s basically a lie, too. Joe Biden’s sounding kinda like Joe Isuzu, only less smooth.

LIBERTY IS NEVER MORE THAN ONE GENERATION FROM EXTINCTION: Voices Without A Vote.  (Those who read me know why this resonated with me.  The scene with the flag brought tears to my eyes.  But then I always cry at the end of the national anthem, too.)

UNEXPECTEDLY! Wholesale Prices in U.S. Rise More Than Forecast.

Dave Voda, call your office!

DE-SPINNING Politico’s Roger Simon and Salon’s Joan Walsh.

UPDATE: Related: “Paul Ryan was a son who was a little embarrassed for his father… trying to tell his dad that the world has passed him by” without subjecting him to public humiliation.

IT’S BAD NEWS AFTER BAD NEWS: Jurassic Park ‘extremely unlikely’, scientists conclude.

MISGUIDED: The Nobel Peace Bribe and Bureaucratic Self-Congratulation

RICK WILSON AT RICOCHET: The Edge Of Panic

Biden aimed to throw the Obama base a lifeline. He fed the Kos Kidz desperate need for to see some fight, but at the cost of his remaining (and mostly notional) dignity. If you want a gibbering, snorting, mumbling clown with a rictus-grin locked on his mug a heartbeat away from controlling America’s nuclear arsenal, Joe Biden’s your guy.

IS IT REALLY CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IF THE ODDS ARE REMOTE THAT YOU WILL BE ARRESTED? Oct. 7 was Pulpit Freedom Sunday and more than 1,500 Protestant preachers across the country purposely broke the law, hoping that at least one of them would be prosecuted. Their purpose is to get an IRS reg into court where they expect it will be struck down as an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment. Usually it’s the Left doing this kind of thing, but here we have folks on the Right intentionally breaking the law.

FORD HELPED MOST BY GM, CHRYSLER BAILOUTS? Bet you didn’t see this coming! A new Rasmussen survey of consumer sentiment finds that a clear majority of those interviewed are more favorably disposed to buying a Ford product because the famous automaker did NOT go hat-in-hand to Washington for a bailout in 2008, as did General Motors and Chrysler. Since it’s about my two favorite issues, cars and politics, I, of course, have an opinion on these developments!

WHY DOES OBAMA WANT TO KEEP BEING PRESIDENT? Quoting George Orwell’s beautiful 1940 essay on the joys of England — an England that Orwell wanted to fundamentally transform, and ultimately, his postwar successors in the British Left did just that — David Foster of the Chicago Boyz blog writes:

Orwell was a socialist. He wanted to see radical transformation in his society. But in the above passage, he displays real affection for the English people and their culture.

Can anyone imagine Barack Obama writing something parallel to the above about America and the American people? To ask the question is to answer it. Clearly, Obama does not identify with America in the same sort of way that Orwell identified with England.

Why, then, did Obama wish to become our President?

Two analogies come to mind…

Read the whole thing.

ANOTHER MEDIA NARRATIVE BITES THE DUST: “Tack to Center” Not Key to Romney’s Post-Debate Surge.

Following Romney’s strong debate performance last week, political analysts have been working overtime trying to explain his boost in the polls. What did Romney say or do to pull voters away from the President? The popular theory is that Romney successfully tacked to the center, winning over moderate voters leery of his more conservative positions.

But one chart from The Monkey Cage (h/t Matt Yglesias) suggests a simpler explanation. According to a number of recent YouGov surveys, voters have consistently rated themselves as ideologically closer to Romney than Obama—even in the months when Obama was leading the polls. . . . Romney didn’t shift ideologically; he passed a threshold test.

I think that’s right.

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Tamera Mowry-Housley tweets about debate interruptions; racists mock her interracial marriage to Fox journo.

BLESSED ARE THE CHEESEMAKERS: “Buffalo mozzarella is the Great White Whale of American cheesemaking: a dream so exotic and powerful that it drives otherwise sensible people into ruinous monomaniacal quests. Despite all the recent triumphs of our country’s foodie movement (heirloom-turkey-sausage saffron Popsicles; cardamom paprika mayonnaise foam), no one in the United States has, as of yet, figured out how to recreate precisely this relatively simple Old World delicacy — a food with essentially one ingredient (buffalo milk) that is made every day in Italy. Over the last 15 years, in fact, the attempt to make authentic buffalo mozzarella — to nail both its taste and texture — has destroyed businesses from Vermont to Los Angeles.”

AT AMAZON, top books in Cooking, Food & Wine.

Also, today only: Save up to 60% on Select PC Components and Accessories.

THUNDERDOME: Calif. House race with veteran Dems turns physical:

An increasingly bitter California congressional race between two House members of the same party turned physical when one aggressively seized the shoulder of his opponent during a debate, yanked him toward his chest and shouted, “You want to get into this?”

The confrontation Thursday between Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman came amid a nasty campaign for a Los Angeles-area seat.

Hey, Victor Davis Hanson warned you back in July that California was rapidly becoming a Mad Max movie.

(Video of the incident at Buzzfeed.)

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Will the Benghazi Debacle Cost Obama the Election?

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES: James Taranto in his Best of the Web column on the Left and the L-Word:

What one probably cannot do, however, is be sure that such techniques damage one’s opponents and only them. It’s not as if Obama, for example, never bends the truth, distorts the facts, fudges the numbers, deceives, deludes, hoodwinks, equivocates or misrepresents. Why do lefties imagine that he has the credibility to throw the L-word at Romney?

Further, why do they imagine that it is in the long-term interest of liberalism to engage in such demagogy? As we’ve seen, and as Henninger notes, it’s illiberal in the classic sense:

It dates to the sleazy world of fascist and totalitarian propaganda in the 1930s. It was part of the milieu of stooges, show trials and dupes. These were people willing to say anything to defeat their opposition. Denouncing people as liars was at the center of it. The idea was never to elevate political debate but to debauch it.

Reader Michael Segal traces a thread from a later decade’s America:

My wife remembers an interview with William F. Buckley back in the 1970s, when he predicted that our whole generation that left college after Watergate would shun politics as dirty, and the nation would suffer as a result. Instead, my classmates who were interested in public affairs went into journalism and made it dirty.

Indeed, to coin a phrase. You can see video of James Taranto on the podium at the First Annual Duranty Awards, goofing on Reuters’ coverage of Yoko Ono and Lady Gaga’s “peace” efforts, at the PJ Tatler.

JAMES TARANTO: Truth or Consequences: Shouting “LIAR!!!!” is bad for liberalism, in both senses of the word. “If politicians are a bunch of liars, why should anyone trust the government?”

LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: School Choice Marches Forward.

A STAR IS BORN: Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, Coming To A Movie Theater Near You.

LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Schools Create Their Own FOIA Interpretation.

If the principal at your child’s school was rated “ineffective” by the district, would you have the right to know? According to one school district and a state department, the answer is “no.”

Danny Shaw, a reporter for Heritage Newspapers, made a simple FOIA request for the one principal rated “ineffective” by Willow Run Community Schools. The state denied the request because the information was “of a personal nature” and disclosing it would constitute an “unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.”

Shaw appealed the request but John Nixon, director of the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget, under which the Center for Educational Performance and Information falls, agreed saying that releasing the evaluations would “compromise the integrity” of the “open communication” between school officials.

Public entities prefer secrecy. That’s why school districts try to circumvent transparency laws and public unions consistently try to block releasing information to the public. It is why Michigan State University blacked out whole pages of innocuous information when responding to a request —including an email that was a copy and paste of a story written by the news source that sent the FOIA.

Indeed.

RIDE RIGHT THROUGH THEM, THEY’RE DEMORALIZED AS HELL: In the middle of September, when Glenn linked to one of Peter Ingemi’s patented “Ride right through them, they’re demoralized as hell!” posts at his Da Tech Guy blog, my first thought, especially after the media’s attempt to create a “September Surprise” for Romney by playing, en masse, Mother Jones’ “47 Percent” clip as some sort of death blow smoking gun was…well, I want to believe.

Then came Romney demoralizing the hell out of MSNBC during the first debate, the New Yorker cover, the surging polls, and now Joe Biden’s weird performance last night, a cross between The Joker, Dennis Hopper’s nitrous-fueled Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, and if you’ll pardon the insult to the two aforementioned men, Al Gore.

Regarding Biden’s performance, Peggy Noonan, who praised Obama in 2008, and would normally love Biden when he’s in Goofy Ol’ Uncle Joe Mode, writes, “National Democrats keep confusing strength with aggression and command with sarcasm. Even the latter didn’t work for Mr. Biden. The things he said had the rhythm and smirk of sarcasm without the cutting substance.”

Along similar lines as Noonan’s observation, Richard Fernandez, my fellow PJM colleague, described Biden’s style as a reincarnated “Berserker” last night, noting that Biden played on that weird exaggerated macho angry pose that so many of the left seem to affect:

The Democratic debate strategy was apparently to put on a show in which Biden would visually dominate Ryan. This will have two effects. The first is it will convince the Democrats that they “won” the debate. But it will probably not convince anyone else. On the contrary, Biden seems to have infuriated all the conservatives who were watching the proceedings. The basic effect of the Biden-Ryan debate on the Democrats is to reassure themselves that they are not sissies.

Biden is doing a war chant for the benefit of the base. They are making the poor old man dance. From some of the tweets, you get the sense that Biden is taking the act a little too far, past eccentric and into gibbering.

Chris Rock ‏@chrisrockoz
Joe Biden should just reach over and slap Ryan in the face and say ‘Don’t forget, Osama Bin Laden is Dead, General Motors is alive’ #debate

VANITY FAIR ‏@VanityFair
Biden now calls Romney his “friend.” What do you think Biden thinks the definition of “friend” is?

Markos Moulitsas ‏@markos
Funny seeing manly-men conservatives whining that Biden is being too rough and aggressive.

How will this net out? Biden will have not have succeeded in showing Ryan to be unworthy, a bully, unstatesmanlike, or arrogant — that was the principal pitfall that Ryan sought to avoid. But Biden might have convinced enough conservatives that he is a buffoon. The Democrats must be thoroughly demoralized if they found that spectacle bracing. My guess is that Biden has brought the president no net gain.

Concurrent to Richard’s post, at Ricochet, Clarke Judge watched the debate and asked, “Will the Bottom Drop Out for the Democratic Ticket?”  Judge writes, “Biden channeled the now defunct Air America, the leftist talk radio that was full of rage, a tone that put them out of business.”

Before the debate, Mike Flynn of Big Government posited that Biden challenge was to “Keep Down-Ballot Dems From Jumping Ship:”

Biden needs to go beyond his tendency to misspeak and make gaffes and nail a coherent vision for Obama’s second term. If he doesn’t, down-ballot Dems running for the Senate or the House will start to aggressively move away from the national ticket. Obama may do a better job in the debate next week, but without a powerful assist from Biden on Thursday, many Dems won’t be able to wait that long.

Polling margins in many high-profile races are narrowing in the wake of Romney’s epic debate performance. There is clearly nothing coming from the Obama campaign until next week, when he tries to undo his disastrous debate. So, it all settles on Biden. If he doesn’t clearly beat Ryan, Democrat candidates will likely try to strike out on their own path for November. At the end of the day, a political career trumps political parties.

There’s one theme that ties all of these posts together: if you’re posturing because you’re worried about locking down your base and propping up down ballot races in the middle of October – you’ve got big trouble. Add to that Stephanie Cutter’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day yesterday, along with the Most Powerful Man in the Free World clutching onto Big Bird like he’s Radar O’Reilly’s teddy bear — to the point where even Jon Stewart is worrying — and you’re seeing a collective bunker-time flight into fantasy. And no wonder Stewart is raising an eyebrow, as the administration’s embrace of a surreal TV icon seems eerily reminiscent of Congressional Democrats in 2010 asking Stewart’s colleague Stephen Colbert to pop in for a Congressional visit – a month before they lost their Congressional majority, at a time when they had to have had plenty of internal polling data to all know the thumpin’ was on its way. (The administration once again underbussing inconvenient segments of their base is also highly reminiscent of 2010, as I mentioned yesterday.)

Does that mean that Romney-Ryan has it in the bag? Absolutely. Not. (The cockiness – do not acquire it, to paraphrase our Insta-host’s frequent refrain.) But it does indicate all the signs of a base on the left that’s demoralized as hell. Ride right through ‘em, as Da Tech Guy would say.

HEH: Vice President Beavis.

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