HEH: Joe Biden Forces Media To Cover State of Middle Class. “On the Biden remark, the media sure seemed miffed to have to respond to the Romney campaign (hey, who’s running this race anyway!), and more importantly to be dragged against their will into a policy discussion. Now that was the reason, of course, the Romney-Ryan ticket pounced on Biden. They’ve been talking about their five-point plan to restore the middle class for months, but the media yawns. Two conservative studies were released Tuesday showing that the middle class will shoulder some of the tax burden associated with debt repayment. Again, the media yawned. So when opportunity presented itself, who could blame the Romney-Ryan team for ramping up the volume? At least they got the media to report that the middle class has lost ground under Obama.”

Related: James Pethokoukis: 3 charts that show Biden is right, the middle class ‘has been buried the last four years.’

A GOOD SIGN: I’m tempted to make one.   It’s a risk, in this college neighborhood, but maybe I can bring the feral cat inside for a couple of weeks.  The cars are old, anyway.

MARK STEYN: Behead All Those Who Insult Free Speech. Well, people need to be more afraid of the good guys for a change, anyway, and not the savages.

TALKING ABOUT THE OTHER ROGER SIMON, FROM POLITICO, JAMES TARANTO COMMENTS: “So the only person Roger Simon intended to deceive was Roger Simon, into believing that Roger Simon is a clever satirist. In this he succeeded, but then he had an easy mark. Yet high comedy emerged as an unintended consequence of Simon’s botched satire, as the denizens of Krugmanistan showed that their desire for Republican humiliation overrides any ordinary skepticism.”

BOTOX, PLEASE! I’M FEELING A BIT DEPRESSED:  Apparently, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study has revealed that botox–a popular, muscle-paralyzing wrinkle smoother– reduced depression symptoms by an impressive 47%, compared to 9% for the placebo group.

I have a feeling a whole lot of middle aged folks are now going to start finding themselves “depressed” and demanding Botox treatment.

FUNNY WHAT THEY DON’T FOCUS ON: Not From the Onion: Army Says ‘Social Network’ Use Is a Sign of Radicalism. “That was the assessment of a terrorism advisory organization inside the U.S. Army called the Asymmetric Warfare Group in 2011, acquired by Danger Room. Its concern about the warning signs of internal radicalization reflects how urgent the Army considers that threat after Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 people at Ford Hood in 2009. But its ‘indicators’ of radicalization are vague enough to include both benign behaviors that lots of people safely exhibit and, on the other end of the spectrum, signs that someone is so obviously a terrorist they shouldn’t need to be pointed out. It’s hard to tell if the group is being politically correct or euphemistic.”

Plus this: “The FBI didn’t act on Hasan, even when he e-mailed the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki seeking advice on the legitimacy of murdering Americans.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns on bestselling Halloween costumes.

AD: Hey, remember how Obama spent $1 trillion on stimulus that didn’t work?

ANIMAL FARM:  A farmer in Oregon was found dead inside his hog pen, and his body had been substantially eaten by the swine. Investigators don’t yet know if he died of natural causes and was then eaten by the large hungry beasts, or if the hungry beasts harbored malicious intent, a la George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Makes you kind of rethink eating bacon, doesn’t it?  Nah– eat or be eaten!

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: Quoting Obama Accurately, With Video, Is A “Desperate Attack.”

You know they’re hurting by how loudly they’re squealing.

WORRIED: Obama running ads in . . . Oregon?

CHASING OUT THE LAST REMNANTS OF JIM CROW: “Of the 11 states that made up the Confederacy, only Arkansas still has a Democratic chamber.” But Americans For Prosperity is trying to change that.

HIGHER EDUCATION: AS THE PRICE GOES UP, THE QUALITY GOES DOWN. Look What They’ve Done To U.S. History.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER on the Obama Administration’s Benghazi coverup. Which isn’t going so well. . . .

WELCOME TO POST-RACIAL AMERICA (PSYCH!):  Ah yes, remember those heady days back in 2008, when Americans of all races voted for a young Senator named Barack Hussein Obama in the sincere hope that he would heal this country’s racial divisions, ushering in a new, post-racial era?  Fuggedaboutit. It was merely a carefully crafted illusion, intentionally designed to tug on the heart strings of well-meaning, ordinary folks hoping for a color blind society.

But Obama showed his real face–the Billy Joel “Stranger”-type freaky face (“Well we all have a face that we hide away forever. And we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.”)– in this Daily Caller video, in a 2008 speech to an audience of black ministers.  Copping an insincere, absurd, stereotypical black “accent,” then-candidate Obama repeatedly suggests that the federal government behaves in a purposefully racist manner.  In its response to Hurricane Katrina, for example, Obama says the following:

Now here’s the thing, when 9-11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you gotta put in. Well, here’s ten dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not gonna wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American family.

What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense! Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!

Sound familiar? Rapper Kayne West’s made an eerily similar, racist claim that, because of the Katrina response, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

We might expect this attitude from an uneducated, uncouth rapper, but someone who wants to be President of the United States– all of us– black, white, and purple with pink polka dots?  I dare say that if this video had been played by the mainstream media and candidate Obama had been vigorously questioned about it, many Americans’ idealism about the post-racialism he purported to represent would have been irreparably shattered

MALWARE: New software uses smartphone camera for spying.

Researchers from the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center have developed malicious software that can remotely seize control of the camera on an infected smartphone and employ it to spy on the phone’s user.

The malware, dubbed “PlaceRaider,” “allows remote hackers to reconstruct rich, three-dimensional models of the smartphone owner’s personal indoor spaces through completely opportunistic use of the camera,” the researchers said in a study published last week.

The program uses images from the camera and positional information from the smartphone’s gyroscopic and other sensors to map spaces the phone’s user spends a lot of time in, such as a home or office.

I suppose putting scotch tape over the lens isn’t enough.

BARACK OBAMA, SEGREGATIONIST: “Integration was a nice idea once upon a time, but to Barack Obama in 2007 it was a seriously outdated concept,” Roger L. Simon writes.

BUSTED: Obama’s incredibly weak response to newly released audio. “Evidently all they can do is be non-responsive and go on the attack. It would seem they realize there is no way Obama can explain away his divisive rhetoric that went unreported in 2008.”

INCONVENIENT STOCK FOOTAGE: Al Gore: Can I buy the rights to your firestorm footage to use in my global warming presentations? Filmmaker: Nah, it’d be deliberately deceptive.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Pejman Yousefzadeh asks a good one.

RED ON RED: Syria Berates Hamas Chief, an Old Ally, on State TV.

STANLEY KURTZ: “So here’s Obama proudly advertising his relationship with Reverend Wright, and even imitating Wright’s divisive rhetoric on Katrina. Is anyone surprised? Essentially, every excuse Obama used to explain away his relationship with Reverend Wright during campaign 2008 was a lie. But we already knew that.”

We did, but video proof is still something.

YOUR WEDNESDAY EARLY MORNING DOSE OF DOOM AND GLOOM:  North and South Korea on the Verge of Nuclear War.

INEFFICIENCY, WASTE, ABUSE OF POWER:  But apart from that, how is the Department of Homeland Security Doing?

SHOCKER: Infographic about how bad plastic bags are originates with Chinese reusable-bag factory.