HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

The tuition itself is a larger problem than you think. Student loans have interest, and that interest compounds. A $40,000 loan can easily cost $60,000 or more to repay when interest is taken into consideration. A liberal arts degree will no longer deliver the kind of comfortable middle-class existence your parents enjoyed. The truth is, our economy is going through a difficult transition. Companies are downsizing, and technology is taking over roles normally reserved for those college graduates who didn’t like math. If you’re not already a high-value employee — and trust me, you’re not — then your best hopes are going to be getting an entry-level position in a large company and staying there. Just ask the millions of people with degrees who are unemployed or working jobs that don’t require a degree. The old numbers showing a college education increased your earning potential are obsolete. The world has changed.

Read the whole thing. Sadly, the liberal arts skills are in short supply, but liberal arts programs aren’t reliably producing people with those skills any more.

YA THINK? Ann Romney: Say, That Obama’s Really a Sore Loser, Huh?

JENNIFER RUBIN STEALS MY JOB, WRITES ALTERNATE HISTORY: Forget the debate, focus on what came before it

NASSIM TALEB: WHAT THE FRAGILE E.U. CAN LEARN FROM SWITZERLAND: “The most stable country in the history of mankind, and probably the most boring, by the way, is Switzerland. It’s not even a city-state environment; it’s a municipal state. Most decisions are made at the local level, which allows for distributed errors that don’t adversely affect the wider system. Meanwhile, people want a united Europe, more alignment, and look at the problems. The solution is right in the middle of Europe — Switzerland. It’s not united! It doesn’t have a Brussels! It doesn’t need one.”

But then the political class wouldn’t have all the phoney-baloney jobs whose creation was actually the prime purpose of the EU. . . .

Plus this observation: “The U.S. government should have no deficit. There’s way too much debt. It is inexcusable when you have the highest standards of living in the nation’s history! When you get rich, you should have less debt. There’s a vicious element to borrowing when you’re very rich, and having a deficit is an extremely dangerous game.” I agree.

IS THIS A GREAT COUNTRY OR WHAT? For $1000, Padma Lakshmi Let A Strange Man Eat Ham Off Her Body.

AND I THOUGHT I DIDN’T TRAVEL LIGHT:  Man Wearing Bulletproof Vest Arrested at LAX With Smoke Grenade, Billy Clubs, Hatchet, Knives, Biohazard Suit, Body Bags & More.

I’m sure the biohazard suit was for his peanut allergy.

PLAYING OFFENSE: Romney Targets Obama Voters. There ought to be plenty of buyer’s remorse out there . . ..

EXPECT TO SEE MORE OF THIS: The Obama Cultists Crack Up, Jennifer Rubin writes. Note this:

The left’s freak-out is instructive of their view that Obama the candidate flopped but that liberalism as a cause was unblemished. In fact, Obama’s record and rhetoric on everything from hostility to business to regret for America’s international “triumphalism” to pro-abortion extremism (abortion up to the moment of birth, paid for by the government) to the expansion of the liberal welfare state is as close as a president has ever come to the left’s undistilled worldview. His failure to revive the economy after gorging on Keynesianism, like his one-man-wrecking crew in the “peace process” (evidencing the hard left’s antipathy toward the Jewish state), is, in essence, not only a personal failure. His ideas, the left’s hymnal, collapsed on contact with reality.

The left, as I suggested, may soon (if not before the election, than certainly after if he loses) reach the point in which Obama is trashed to save liberalism. It is not, the left tells us, the Keynesian record of failure that was to blame for the debate wipeout; rather it was Obama’s cruddy performance. It’s not that liberalism lacks a reform agenda that is both feasible and politically popular, you see. No, the problem was that Obama didn’t shout “Liar!” loudly enough.

Given a choice between casting off their false idol and giving up the cult of liberalism, there is no competition. Liberals will have no compunction about dumping Obama.

Faster, please.

RELATED: From Peter Suderman at Reason: “Obama’s Failed Narrative: Did the presidency ruin a good storyteller, or vice versa?”

HARVARD STUDENTS celebrate “Incest-Fest.” Bah. It’s just “dorm-incest.”

SIGNS AND PORTENTS: When You’ve Lost Jeff Greenfield…

FINALLY, OCCUPY WALL STREET HAS A CANDIDATE THEY CAN BELIEVE IN:

● “New book shows U.S. top earners pay larger share of taxes than any other industrialized nation”

— Kerry Picket of the Washington Times today.

● Mitt Romney to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on taxes, “I want high income people to continue to pay the same share they do today.” 

— Headline on CNN Website today.

Forget President Goldman Sachs. If OWS really wants to stick it to the man, there’s only once choice for them in this election.

STARTING THE FOURTH QUARTER, THEN AND NOW:

● “The word McCain fans are looking for is ‘daunting.'”

— Steve Green of Vodkapundit, “Wargaming the Electoral College,” October 3rd, 2008.

● “On Tuesday, New York Magazine reporter and co-author of Game Change, John Heilemann, slammed President Barack Obama’s response to his lackluster debate performance last week on MSNBC. Heilemann said the president has made a bad situation worse, and his campaign’s response has been ‘horrible’ and ‘flailing.’ He stressed that things like the Big Bird ad are symptomatic of a campaign that appears externally to be virtually rudderless.”

— “John Heilemann: ‘Flailing’ Obama Campaign ‘Has Been Horrible Since The Debates,’” Mediaite today.

Oh, and speaking of the D-word, Mark Hemingway of the Weekly Standard explains how everyone’s favorite Killer Rabbit Muppet “Just Made the Debate Even More Daunting for Biden.”

CHRIS MATTHEWS LOOKS ON THE VERGE OF CRYING: Chris Matthews Doesn’t Get Leg Tingles from Obama’s ‘Big Bird’ Ad

HMM: Fmr. Bush Aides: “Mitt Romney Will Not Be George W. Bush” on Foreign Policy. So long as he’s not Barack Obama.

GEE, I WONDER: Hey, how come Jay Carney’s not holding televised press briefings anymore? Somebody might ask about Libya or Fast And Furious or the debate or something.

TWO CLOONEYS IN ONE: Here’s George Clooney happily tooling about this week in a sharp looking vintage Corvette convertible.

In contrast, here’s Google Clooney promoting his political film The Ides of March last year:

George Clooney has begun a publicity tour for his new political thriller The Ides of March (which debuts in theaters October 7). John Horn of the Los Angeles Times says the Clooney character has a platform “so uncompromisingly left-leaning it might make Fox News commentators burst into flames.”

Not only that, Clooney’s character proposes the U.S. government ban the internal combustion engine. Clooney says “make it happen.” He actually believes that “these are the kind of leadership things I would love to see.”  Horn explained:

Clooney’s Gov. Mike Morris is poised to take the Democratic nomination with a platform so uncompromisingly left-leaning it might make Fox News commentators burst into flames. He opposes the death penalty, foreign military intervention and even internal combustion engines and supports gay marriage, mandatory national volunteer service and higher taxes for the richest Americans.

….If real-life Democrats end up taking inspiration from the Mike Morris character and his stump speeches, Clooney will hardly be upset. On climate change and oil, for instance, the governor proposes that the United States do away with the internal combustion engine.

“If we’re cut off from oil, we will find a way to power our cars. So say it and make it happen,” Clooney said. “It’s not ridiculous. It is possible. And these are the kind of leadership things I would love to see and could be argued about. People will say, ‘It’s just actors.’ But I truly believe it.”

As our Insta-host likes to say, I’ll believe there’s a crisis, when the people who tell me there’s a crisis begin to act like there’s a crisis themselves.

RELATED: Arnold Schwarzenegger, then and now.

THE PROBLEM IS, the record lows are in Flyover Country, so they don’t count.

OBAMA LIED, OUR AMBASSADOR DIED: ABC: No Protest Outside Libya Consulate Before Attack.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Camera & Photo Outlet.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON calls out a racist.

LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Imaginary Teacher Shortage. “For decades we have tried to boost academic outcomes by hiring more teachers, and we have essentially nothing to show for it. In 1970, public schools employed 2.06 million teachers, or one for every 22.3 students, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Digest of Education Statistics. In 2012, we have 3.27 million teachers, one for every 15.2 students. Yet math and reading scores for 17-year-olds have remained virtually unchanged since 1970, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress. The federal estimate of high-school graduation rates also shows no progress (with about 75% of students completing high school then and now). Unless the next teacher-hiring binge produces something that the last several couldn’t, there is no reason to expect it to contribute to student outcomes. . . . Parents like the idea of smaller class sizes in the same way that people like the idea of having a personal chef. Parents imagine that their kids will have one of the Iron Chefs. But when you have to hire almost 3.3 million chefs, you’re liable to end up with something closer to the fry-guy from the local burger joint.”

HEADS UP: NATO says it’s prepared to defend Turkey from Syrian fire. Since the two Middle Eastern countries have been shelling each other for a week now, this conflict clearly has the potential to widen.

STRATEGY: As Libya Burned, U.S. Terror-Fighters Asked How to ‘Counter Extremism.’

JEFF GOLDSTEIN: Don’t stray off the plantation, beautiful Nubian princess.

COMPETENCE: Goodbye To The Army And Marines: Political Correctness Has Taken Over.