EXQUISITELY BORED IN THE WHITE HOUSE: “Liberals fret: Is Obama bored? Does he want a second term? Maybe not,” Byron York writes, noting that “A look at the president’s career shows he has never stayed in a job four years without looking to move on to something better:”

Now Obama has been president for nearly four years.  Aided by a huge Democratic majority from 2009 to 2011, he achieved some big things — massive stimulus, Obamacare, Dodd-Frank.  He even won the Nobel Peace Prize, essentially for showing up.  But he hasn’t achieved, and won’t achieve in four more years, the “fundamental transformation” of American society that he envisioned.  And his entire career suggests that by now he should be angling for a bigger, better job. The problem is, there isn’t such a position — and a second term in the same old job doesn’t count. The chief benefit of winning re-election to a second term might simply be to avoid being labeled a loser, to avoid joining Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush as presidents who couldn’t win a second time.

So if his liberal supporters sense signs of boredom and frustration in the president, they might be right.  I wrote about this in a January 2010 column that began, “This is about the time Barack Obama becomes bored with his job.”  Back then, he had just passed a year in office — about the time, in the past, that his restlessness and ambition began to kick in. Now, years later, the problem is only worse.

UPDATE: More, from the Guardian: “Has a disillusioned Barack Obama lost the will to win?”

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Reader Dennis Roach emails: “He’s just not that into us!”

UPDATE (FROM ED): On Facebook, reader Ric Manhard spotted the Pete Townshend callback in the headline.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: Global Food Prices Set To Soar–Again. “The last food price bubble triggered riots around the world. Now prices are set to rise again, say complexity theorists.” Weather is blamed, but this is also a consequence of central-bank money-printing, driven by unsustainable spending and borrowing.

‘WE’RE TRYING TO TOUGHEN YOU UP:’ Why it never happened with Obama and the news media.

How do you toughen up an inexperienced politician by comparing him to JFK, FDR and Lincoln – before he takes office?

RELATED: Maureen Dowd Fantasy: ‘President’ Jed Bartlet Advises Obama to Call Romney a Liar in Next Debate.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Anatomy of a Disastrous Debate Performance.

THIS IS REALLY GETTING RIDICULOUS: Greece says it will run out of money next month if it doesn’t get yet another bailout.

SCIENCE: Omega-3 Supplements May Actually Affect Aging. “Getting enough omega-3 fatty acid to change the balance of oils in your system may help preserve the length of your telomeres, with the potential to reduce the risk of age-related diseases.”

CARMAKERS FIND WAYS to make cheaper hybrids.

AFTER ENDORSING OBAMA IN 2008: Las Vegas Review-Journal Endorses Romney.

UPDATE: Oops: Battleground Watch has corrected — they didn’t endorse Obama in the 2008 general, just the Democratic Primary.

IT’S THE WEEKLY WINSTON: At Powerline.  This one is the Obama debate edition.  (Maybe I should run a weekly Heinlein feature over at home blog.)

THE MADE UP WAR ON WOMEN, NOW WITH URBAN LEGENDS: Romney Rumor: GOP Wants to Ban Tampons.  (Rolls eyes.)

THE TELEGRAPH CATCHES UP WITH THE REST OF US: US election 2012: Will the real Obama please stand up.

Voters saw a different Obama in the presidential campaign debate in Denver on Wednesday. And they worry that the tired, unfocused, and defensive fellow who lost the debate actually is the real one.

Only we don’t worry.  We know he is.  And we’ve known it since ’08.

RASMUSSEN TRACKING POLL: Romney 49, Obama 47.

Related: Crowd shot at Romney’s Apopka, Florida rally.

UPDATE: Ohio Senate Race Is Now A Tie. “Ohio now shifts back from Safe Democrat to a Toss-up in the Rasmussen Reports Senate Balance of Power rankings. With the addition of Ohio, seven Senate races nationwide are Toss-Ups, but at this point it still appears likely that Democrats will retain control of the Senate.”

MORE: Romney ahead in Electoral College count?

COMPETENCE: Obama Administration Withdrew 16 Member Special Forces Team From Libya One Month Before Attack.

UPDATE: It’s not just Libya: State Dept Mum on Missing Priest in Greece. “Father Christiaan Kappes, a priest for the Indianapolis Archdiocese, went missing in Greece last Monday after telling his family he feared for his life. His father, Virgil Kappes, encouraged his son to go to the US Embassy for help. While at the embassy, Father Kappes called his father, who over heard the conversation. The State Department confirmed Father Kappes did visit the embassy, but he did not request safe haven. His father said his son left the embassy because he was denied safe haven. Mr. Kappes thinks the State Department is trying to cover up a mistake.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Our Crisis Of Bad Jobs. “Median household income—the midpoint income of all American households—was reported by the Census Bureau (whose data is a year or so behind) to be down in 2011 compared to 2010, despite an economic recovery that began in mid-2009. More disturbing, that figure is now down to around $50,000, which is 7 percent or so below what it was in 2000 and its lowest level since 1996, adjusted for inflation. Incomes are falling still more sharply for black households. . . . The reason that the economic recovery is coinciding with middle class decline is increasingly clear. America is creating jobs, but they are bad jobs: retailing, food preparation, and table waiting, for example—in other words, jobs that don’t pay much.”

SALENA ZITO: Real America Still Believes. “It is a very different America that exists beyond the astonishing narrowness of social media, beyond the group-think that forms in the press pools covering political campaigns, in political parties’ convention halls or in the bubble of Washington, D.C. . . . From a distance, pundits and reporters hail President Barack Obama’s accomplishments and the ideology of his first term. Yet many voters who supported him in 2008 now face strikingly different realities.”

MICKEY KAUS: Press Already Writing the Obama “Comeback” Story. “What appeared to be a neutral press yearning for a good horse race is looking more like the screenwriter’s need to throw some minimal obstacles in the hero’s path in order to make his ultimate triumph all the more satisfying.”

There’s no such thing as a neutral press. They’re Democratic operatives with bylines.

UH HUH: National Geographic denies politics influenced release of pro-Obama film before election.

THE FRUITS OF TOP-DOWN “FAIRNESS”: Lunch Lady In Sweden told to stop making fresh bread and varied vegetables.  It’s not fair to kids in other schools.  (Remember how they always tell us Sweden is socialism that works?  It’s sort of like saying it’s insanity few complain about.)

SARAH, THERE’S ONLY ONE PERSON WHO CAN DO IT: Bill Clinton. But even if he would do it, Obama shouldn’t trust him. If somehow he could, I don’t think Obama would like sharing even the practice stage with the man who out-shone him at the convention and who would easily best him at debate. And yet, with 2 more public humiliations in the offing, he’s got to do something. If he’s really desperate, there could be a world crisis of some sort that forces him to cancel the remaining debates.

#GREENFAIL: How Electric Cars Hurt The Environment. “Making batteries for electric cars is a dirty process, and if the electric cars are run off a grid which is primarily powered by coal, as it is in China, the environmental benefits completely disappear. Green jobs, green energy, green cars: the record of green public policy is far more problematic than most environmentalists are willing to acknowledge.”

If the power came from nice, clean pebble-bed nuclear plants things would be different. But environmentalists mostly oppose those.

DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Coyotes, bears, and lions: the new urban pioneers? “New research suggests mountain lions and bears may be following the urban pioneering of raccoons, foxes and, most notably, coyotes as they slowly encroach on major US metro areas. . . . The news comes as a growing number of young, non-truck-driving Americans have turned to hunting and fishing to augment their diet.”

I still highly recommend David Baron’s The Beast In The Garden, which is a nonfiction book that reads like a thriller.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Quiz: Which Liberal Ex-Reporter Is Acting Like a Bigger Jerk?

AT AMAZON, COLLECTIBLES AND MEMORABILIA.

COURTESY OF READER ROBERT MCCLURE, here’s an updated version of that deficit chart, showing how absurd it is to blame today’s huge national debt on George W. Bush’s spending on Iraq and Afghanistan.

UPDATE: Here’s another, more precise one, from a reader who asks to remain anonymous.