IRAN ON THE VERGE OF HYPERINFLATION. “Hyperinflation is destabilizing in all sorts of other ways–it quickly becomes impossible to buy foreign exchange, and therefore, to buy imports; contracts become hellish to write; investment is practically impossible; and the sheer administrative difficulty of acquiring and handling enough cash becomes ever-more problematic. In Germany, it’s really true that people used wheelbarrows to car their pocket change around, and housewives really used to run to the factory gates at lunch so they could get their husband’s paycheck and spend it immediately–waiting until evening would have meant losing an appreciable amount of purchasing power. In effect, effort that used to be put into productive labor instead becomes focused on getting and spending money as quickly as possible.”

Bernanke, take note.

COMPETENCE: Report: Napolitano misled Congress on terrorism ‘fusion’ centers.

WHEN THEY RAN OUT OF IDEAS AND ENTERED A BAROQUE PHASE. Emily Smith: When did television become so unbearably macabre?

PRESIDENT OBAM-UH:

Remember when he was the World’s Greatest Orator? Me neither.

UPDATE: Neither does Rand Simberg.

CHANGE: More bikes sold than cars in Italy for first time since WW2. Not sure this is good news.

HMM: Was Obama Rattled By Developing Donor Scandal Story?

FROM MY GREAT WRITING TEACHER Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Why Writers Disappear.

I’m not going anywhere.

OBAMA LIED: the economy died.

OBAMA LIED: Pensions Died

OBAMA: THAT WASN’T THE REAL MITT ROMNEY YOU SAW LAST NIGHT.

I think he’d be better off trying to persuade people that it wasn’t the real Barack Obama we saw last night. . . .

KNOW YOUR MEDIA: Obama twitter feed effectively takes over  WaPo’s website

A CRYONICS PHOTO GALLERY. “Cryonics is the preservation of deceased humans in liquid nitrogen at temperatures just shy of its boiling point of −196°C/77 Kelvin. Cryopreservation of humans is not reversible with current science, but cryonicists hypothesize that people who are considered dead by current medical definitions may someday be recovered by using advanced future technologies.”

ON PJTV’S ELECTION ROUNDTABLE, I join Alexis Garcia and Stephen Kruiser to talk about the elections, the debate, and some downticket races including Mia Love’s.

TWO CNNs IN ONE: Network that created the Wright-Free Zone and baked cakes for Obama suddenly concerned with media/political coordination.

(Background on CNN’s apparent — very apparent — coordination with Team Obama, here.)

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): California Gas Stations Shut as Oil Refiners Ration Supplies.

WOMEN GETTING more involved in gaming.

ZOMBIETIME: Anarcho-Laziness: Scenes from Occupy LA’s one-year anniversary rally. Upside-down flags? Check! Che T-shirts? Check! Karl Marx quotations? Check-a-roonie! It’s all so nostalgic and bourgeois. (Some images may be NSFW.)

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama’s Re-Election Case Rests On 5 Phony Claims.

Plus, a colorful chart.

OLD SPIN: MCJOBS. New Spin: Restaurant/bar sector looking hopeful!

OBAMA’S VERY VERY BAD NO-GOOD DAY, PART TWO: Taiwan, animation, need I say more? (They got Big Bird!)

NOW YOU KNOW YOUR PLACE:  there was this guy in the village where I grew up, who was routinely beat up by his wife.  When he couldn’t take any more, he salved his pride by jumping out into the middle of the street and screaming so the whole village could hear “Now you know your place.  Now you know I’m a real man.”  For some reason, this made me think of him.

HONEY, I SHRUNK THE PRESIDENT: James Taranto, in today’s Best of the Web column writes, “Journalists and pundits turn on Obama for failing to make their fairy tales come true,” and notes that one reason why last night’s debate “came as such a shock to Obama” — and by extension, Obama’s Palace Guard MSM — “is that it was the first time in his career that he shared a debate stage with a serious opponent:”

Think about it: John McCain was feeble. Alan Keyes, whom Obama beat in his 2004 Senate campaign, was crazy. All the Democrats who ran in 2008 were preposterous except Hillary Clinton, and she, as a beneficiary of nepotism, was highly overrated as a politician. He used Chicago-style dirty tricks to dispatch his original opponent in 2004, as well as the state senator he replaced back in the 1990s. The test he failed last night is one to which he had never been put.

But the journalists who are pointing the finger at Obama have three fingers pointed back at themselves. Instead of challenging the president, the press corps–with a few honorable exceptions, like ABC’s Jake Tapper and the guys from Univision–have spent the past four-plus years puffing him up and making excuses for him. The American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord explains:

The great James Taranto . . . long ago posited what is called the “Taranto Principle.” In short, it means that the liberal media so coddles liberal politicians that they have no idea how to cope outside that liberal media bubble. . . .

Barack Obama has been so totally coddled by the liberal media that he looked absolutely shell-shocked in this debate. Stunned, unhappy, angry, sour–and at some points genuinely incoherent.

Romney has had nowhere near that kind of treatment. He had serious opponents in the primaries–all of whom in their own way forced him to confront his ideas in a serious fashion. Conservatives were on his heels. The Obama media never let up. The man went through the political equivalent of boot camp.

Tonight, the Taranto Principle kicked in. Big time.

Outside the liberal bubble–forced to be alone on a stage with a very serious, very prepared candidate–Barack Obama was in trouble. Big Trouble.

One quibble, on a point of personal privilege: “Great” is not the right adjective. Isn’t “inimitable” in the Spectator stylebook?

Otherwise, though, Lord is right. What we saw last night was the real Obama–a bright but incurious and inexperienced man who four years ago was promoted well beyond his level of competency. The Obama that guys like Matthews and Sullivan expected instead was a character in a fairy tale–a fairy tale written by guys like Matthews and Sullivan.

Oh well, at least there are more debates. The last one, on Oct. 22, is on foreign policy, which is Obama’s strong suit. Then the handsome prince killed Osama bin Laden, and the ambassador lived happily ever after.

Ouch.

MEAT. IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER. Scientists find oldest evidence of regular meat consumption by early humans. “The discovery, made by a global team of researchers led by Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo from Complutense University, Madrid, suggests that early human ancestors began eating meat much earlier in history than previously believed. . . . Both cases imply that ‘early humans were hunters, and had a physiology adapted to regular meat consumption at least 1.5 million years ago,’ say the authors.”

DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT:  We all know the media is going to come back with renewed fury because they were made to look bad.  Conservatives must not under any circumstances cede the moral high ground to the media that buried terror against our embassies and on 9/11 at that and which refuses to show any curiosity about Fast and Furious.  Always assume they have no moral high ground to stand on.  Unless a pile of corpses is high ground.  (Video.) Don’t surrender.  Put THEM on the defensive.  (For some reason this blog starts halfway down the page, at least on my browser.)

WALTER MONDALE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “‘Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars. Guess what? Yes, we do,’ said Biden.”

RELATED: Good Thing We’re Not in a Recession.

UPDATE: Two Bidens In One!