READING ENTRAILS: Mittmentum: New Ohio Polls Better Than They Appear.

GOOD: Obama Gets Poll Axed on the Day of the Final Presidential Debate

#WARONWOMEN: Revenge Of The Soccer Moms: Why Are Women Abandoning Obama? “I just haven’t been satisfied with Obama the last four years. . . . we’re not better off financially. He hasn’t gotten the job done.”

MAKE IT SO: A Prediction for Tonight’s Debate.

MY COLLEAGUE BEN BARTON, the Richard Feynman of law professors.

Well, when he’s not the Justin Timberlake of law professors.

DO WE BELIEVE ANYMORE? “We live in an age of disbelief, in which citizens increasingly do not believe what their government says or, for that matter, what is accepted as true by popular culture,” Victor Davis Hanson writes in his weekly PJM column.

In the 1960s, the left insisted that we “Question Authority.” Now that the reactionary left is authority – ancient, sclerotic, calcified though it may be, they seem to be having second thoughts about that notion.

Unexpectedly, of course.

THREE TERMS: Twelve years left: Clock runs down on saving Medicare.

MORE THAN 5,000 ATTEND RALLY FOR COAL IN GRUNDY, VIRGINIA: Compare size of the crowd in the photo atop Stacy McCain’s post with Sandra Fluke’s rather more “selective” audience in Reno this weekend.

THE GROWTH OF “SMARTPHONE MUGGING.” I predict that people will start suing manufacturers and carriers for not creating safeguards against this foreseeable risk.

AT AMAZON, 50-75% off on Men’s Clothing.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK:

DONATE-GATE:  Several reports over the weekend show that the Obama campaign is doing a horrible job at screening out/preventing illegal foreign donations. Donate-gate is growing.

A small scale test by the New York Post revealed the Obama campaign accepted an illegal online donation from a man from London.  The same man was unable to make a contribution to Romney, whose online site rejected the mismatched credit card and fake US zip code.

A Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report revealed that by the end of September, the Obama campaign raked in $2,199,204.38 from donations from non-existent zip codes.

Will tonight’s debate moderator, Bob Schieffer, ask Obama about these disturbing facts?

STANDING ATHWART THE ECONOMY, YELLING STOP: Matthew Continetti in the Weekly Standard on “The Minigolfer:”

Viewers of the 2012 debates have witnessed an extraordinary turnaround. John Stuart Mill famously spoke of “a party of order and stability, and a party of progress or reform.” Once upon a time, Barack Obama and Joe Biden could claim the mantle of change and progress. But the televised exchanges between Mitt Romney and Obama and Paul Ryan and Biden have revealed that this is no longer the case.

The Republicans are now the ones offering ideas of progress or reform, while the Democrats fiercely fight to protect the established order of entitlements, tax hikes, and obeisance to unions, greens, and feminists. Even when Obama and Biden have been highly caffeinated, they have not stated their plans and goals for a second term. They are too busy painting a socialist-realist mural of Romney and Ryan as maniacal reactionaries. They are too preoccupied with protecting subsidies for Big Bird, Planned Parenthood, and windmills.

But then, self-described “Progressives” have been anti-progress, and pro-status quo for many years now.

AND YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST POSING FOR THE DMV! As more and more states use facial recognition/biometrics-driven photography for drivers’ licensing, the threat to individual privacy is growing exponentially, according to the National Motorists Association. And NMA just happens to offer the following helpful links for those who wish to know more about this: here, here, here and especially here.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student loan debt hits record high, study shows.

Related: Hoosier students have difficult time paying back student loans.

IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BUS: Obama campaign denies Willie Brown’s claim of Obama-Wright outreach conference call.

IS IT STILL AN OCTOBER SURPRISE IF WE ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT’S GONNA BE? Well, yes, because October surprises, by their nature, are designed to impact low information/undecided voters. Although as in 2004, it’s entirely possible the number the left might be cooking up could cancel themselves out, simply by overwhelming those said low information and undecided voters.

(Via Director Blue, which has plenty more links for your perusal, here.)

I AGREE THAT THIS MIGHT BE A BAD IDEA, BUT WHO DECIDES WHAT’S A “ROGUE” EXPERIMENT? ARE WE GOING TO START LICENSING SCIENTISTS? A Rogue Climate Experiment Outrages Scientists.

A California businessman chartered a fishing boat in July, loaded it with 100 tons of iron dust and cruised through Pacific waters off western Canada, spewing his cargo into the sea in an ecological experiment that has outraged scientists and government officials. . . .

The entrepreneur, Russ George, calling it a “state-of-the-art study,” said his team scattered iron dust several hundred miles west of the islands of Haida Gwaii, in northern British Columbia, in exchange for $2.5 million from a native Canadian group.

The iron spawned the growth of enormous amounts of plankton, which Mr. George, a former fisheries and forestry worker, said might allow the project to meet one of its goals: aiding the recovery of the local salmon fishery for the native Haida.

Plankton absorbs carbon dioxide, the predominant greenhouse gas, and settles deep in the ocean when it dies, sequestering carbon. The Haida had hoped that by burying carbon, they could also sell so-called carbon offset credits to companies and make money.

Iron fertilization is contentious because it is associated with geoengineering, a set of proposed strategies for counteracting global warming through the deliberate manipulation of the environment. Many experts have argued that scientists should be researching such geoengineering techniques — like spewing compounds into the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight or using sophisticated machines to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

But tampering with the environment is risky, they say, so any experiments must be carried out responsibly and transparently, with the involvement of the scientific community and proper governance.

I’m inclined to agree, but I’d be more inclined if climate scientists had demonstrated more professional responsiblity themselves.

Meanwhile, we’ve learned at least that iron fertilization does in fact stimulate plankton growth on a large scale, haven’t we?

IT’S NOT JUST THE ILLEGAL FOREIGN DONATIONS, THERE’S ALSO THIS: Obama campaign collecting more donations from non-existent ZIP codes as campaign season goes on.

EMPTY CHAIR v. OBAMA:  You decide.

ANNALS OF GOVERNMENT EXTORTION: Iowa Civil Rights Commission Shakes Down Landlords for ‘Voluntary Contributions.’ “The Des Moines Register reports that for five years ending in February 2011, the Iowa Civil Rights Commission shook down landlords for ‘voluntary contributions’ in exchange for dropping discrimination complaints. The Register obtained copies of 27 settlement agreements involving about $20,000 in contributions. Unlike money from fines, which end up in the state’s general fund, the donations went directly to the commission, creating ‘the impression that justice is for sale,’ as state court administrator David Boyd puts it. The commission ended the practice after Winterset attorney Mark Smith questioned its propriety.”

I think that all revenue collected by all agencies should go to the general fund. Otherwise, it doesn’t just give the impression of corruption, it’s corrupting.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Not Just Gas! Check Out the Drastic Price Increases on These 21 Everyday Items.

FIXING TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIES with fish oil?

SHOULD BARACK OBAMA RESIGN TONIGHT? A modest proposal asked by Roger L. Simon.