GRAPHIC: Watch cyberattacks spread across the globe in real time.

VOTING ANARCHY IN PENNSYLVANIA:  A Pennsylvania state trial judge, Robert Simpson, has blocked the implementation of a law requiring voters to show I.D. Earlier in the month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered Judge Simpson to block the law unless he determined there would be no voter disenfranchisement and that new state voter IDs are easy to obtain.  Simpson said that he could not say that there would be “no” voter disenfranchisement.  An appeal back to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is expected.

Tea party groups in Pennsylvania have expressed their intent to campaign against the retention election of two Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices, Ron Castille (a Republican) and Max Baer (a Democrat), if the voter I.D. law is not implemented.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, has ruled that requiring voter I.D. is perfectly constitutional.  It prevents voter fraud.  Without such measures, our elections are a third-world sham.  Any politician that tells you otherwise– that voter I.D. laws are about “disenfranchisement,” for example–is willing to sacrifice the integrity of our republic for political gain.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Under Obama, Poor, Middle Class Incomes Fall Sharply.

OOH, THAT SMELL: Government Union’s Pro-Obama ‘Garbage’ Attack Ad Backfires, Bob Owens writes:

Don’t claim Mitt Romney doesn’t know or care about garbage men when he devotes a specific mention about them in his book, right down to the line about being invisible:

“During my campaign for governor, I decided to spend a day every few weeks doing the jobs of other people in Massachusetts.  Among other jobs, I cooked sausages at Fenway Park, worked on asphalt paving crew, stacked bales of hay on a farm, volunteered in an emergency room, served food at a nursing home, and worked as a child-care assistant.  I’m often asked which was the hardest job – it’s child care, by a mile.”

“One day I gathered trash as a garbage collector.  I stood on that little platform at the back of the truck, holding on as the driver navigated his way through the narrow streets of Boston.  As we pulled up to traffic lights, I noticed that the shoppers and businesspeople who were standing only a few feet from me didn’t even see me.  It was as if I was invisible.  Perhaps it was because a lot of us don’t think garbage men are worthy of notice; I disagree – anyone who works that hard deserves our respect. –  I wasn’t a particularly good garbage collector: at one point, after filling the trough at the back of the truck, I pulled the wrong hydraulic lever.  Instead of pushing the load into the truck, I dumped it onto the street. Maybe the suits didn’t notice me, but the guys at the construction site sure did…” (251)

The AFSCME claim isn’t just poor agi-prop, it was directly refuted before it was ever written.

Read the whole thing.

THE SYRIAN WAR HAS ALREADY BEEN REGIONALIZED: Top Hezbollah operative Ali Hussein Nassif has reportedly been killed, along with several other Hezbollah members, in clashes near Homs.

MARS AIN’T THE KIND OF PLACE TO RAISE YOUR KIDS: Mars rover finds surprisingly pleasant weather during day, deadly cold at night.

ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS OF THE Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards.

COMPETENCE: U.S. Embassy in Libya repeatedly asked for extra security for Benghazi consulate, requests denied.

BACK IN FEBRUARY, I WAS MOCKING THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN’S THEME THUSLY: ZOMG! Republicans Are Stealing Your Ladyparts!!!

But, as usual, they’re beyond parody. This is from the official Obama Tumblr blog:

Is liberalism rooted in sexual insecurity, and the female equivalent of castration anxiety? Because it kind of looks that way. . . .

A SHOCKING FORMULA FOR SUCCESS: “One of the reasons Grover Norquist has been so effective over the years in Washington is because he actually reads bills and other documents and then distills that information into a usable form.”

MILESTONES IN COMBATING CHOLERA.

THE “CHEAP CROSS-BORDER CHEESE” RACKET: Canadians Bust Cheese-Smuggling Cops. “First the great maple syrup heist, now this: Police in Canada have sniffed out a large-scale cheese-smuggling ring involving a serving police officer, an officer who resigned this summer, and an American accomplice. Cheese is a lot cheaper in the US than it is in Canada, and officials believe the trio bought at least $200,000 worth of the American stuff and sold it to Canadian pizzerias and other restaurants for a profit of $165,000.”

RICH HAILEY: Citizens or Subjects: What Role Will Your Children Play?

POOR MOST HURT: by Obama’s “necessarily skyrocketing” energy prices.  Though I’m here to tell you the middle class is also taking it on the chin.

TWO TIME MAGAZINES IN ONE: This week, Time asks, “Are We Already in A Recession?”

But in late 2008, the print division of Time-Warner-CNN-HBO was trumpeting, for no other reason — other than his party designation, or perhaps because Newsweek had already run with the Lincoln comparison on their cover, a tyro Chicago machine politician as The Next FDR:

Four years on, why are they expecting results that are any different from the old FDR?

BRYAN PRESTON: A Guide To The Obama Administration’s Five Major Scandals For Behind-The-Curve Media Types.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Cartel boss captured with Fast & Furious weapons.

THE QUIET CALIFORNIANS: Victor Davis Hanson recommends a sense of stoicism for those us behind the lines as California continues its seemingly endless slow-motion slide into oblivion:

So quietist Californians expect about every six months a new fee, dreamed up a government employee who is paranoid that the state retirement system is broke, and with it his pension. The state employee is now entrepreneurial: without x-traffic tickets written, without y-new fees dreamed up, salaries and benefits dry up. I touch my rural mailbox as if I do metal after skidding on a new carpet — a sort of static feeling of anxiety about what new state directive is inside.

I pick up the local paper: it has become a litany of rapes, murders, gang shootings and molestations, peppered with drunk driving fatalities, and the uninsured and unlicensed who maim and kill routinely. The lurid tales of crime seem almost as they come from a Sao Paulo suburb, or the outskirts of Johannesburg. Yet the more violence, the more worry about insensitivity. So there is a general rule: the name of the driver, the killer, the robber, or the rapist arrested is rarely initially disclosed, much less his biography or photo — as if these are just random stats that can offer no higher wisdom. No worry, there is an answer to our world of Mad Max. Governor Brown will borrow $200 million for high-speed rail.

I note that an exception in California is the marquee universities.

A Stanford, for example, is home to elites and therefore it must be crime-free, so they often send out life-saving “alerts” that pop up on your email when a male has groped, attacked, or threatened a co-ed on campus. Oddly, the descriptions are graphically explicit: even though we are dealing with suspects — not the arrested. And so the appearance, size, and ethnic profile of the supposed attacker are provided in great politically-incorrect detail. One thing about liberalism: it takes care of its own.

Quietists of the State, Unite!

The quietist assumes that his vote for president does not matter and won’t in the state for the next century. He assumes whom he votes against for governor will win, and his legislator will either be opposed to everything he believes, or if he is not, will be equally as irrelevant — and yet in homage to the state, he keeps voting religiously and laughing about it with other quietists.

Quietists have become bystanders, now marginalized to be sure, but also convinced that the relevant ones are, in history’s cruel calculus, quite unhinged. I have a confession: I like the quietists of California. I see them every day. They keep chugging away — and their spirits keep me going.

But will the last person out of California remember to quietly turn off the fluorescent Al Gore twisty bulb before he leaves?

FROM EDUCATION to “Inducation.” “But it’s not just the curriculum that has gone rancid. The texture of social life as a whole betrays a curious blend of intolerance, cynicism, and lubriciousness.”

JENNIFER RUBIN: Ten October Surprises.

TURKEY: WHO NEEDS EUROPE? “Gone are the days when European leaders would wring their hands over whether or not to let Turkey into their club. No longer are the Turks peering over Europe’s fences hopefully and longingly. With wave after wave of crisis battering the EU, Turkey has to be wondering why it should even bother pretending they want to join. Today’s Turkey is an economic success story and is increasingly flexing its muscles in its own back yard. Who needs Europe? This is a historic shift—and one that Europeans will very likely soon come to rue.”

Europe used to say that they didn’t need America’s military might because they had economic power. Now they have neither, as they run out of other people’s money.

IT’S HOWARD BEALE’S WORLD, WE’RE JUST LIVING IN IT: We Live Under a Media Coup d’État, Roger L Simon writes.

And it’s full of Fraudulent ‘Fact Checks’ and Preemptive Narratives, Tom Blumer adds.

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN REQUIRES STUDENTS TO GIVE THEIR PHONE NUMBERS TO THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN in order to get access to the central campus zone where Obama will be giving a speech this Thursday. Here‘s the University’s website — attempting to frame the event as a historical presidential visit — which links to a page on the Obama campaign website. You need tickets to go to the event, and the ticket-application form demands information of obvious use to the campaign. So not only is the University contributing a fabulous photo op to the campaign, it is connecting students to the campaign website and almost tricking them into giving the campaign their personal contact information.

UPDATE: The University now openly calls the event a “campaign rally”!