ON TWITTER, DONNA BRAZILE IS BRAGGING ABOUT THE GORE CAMPAIGN VS. ROMNEY’S. Well, brag away, but remember that through a mixture of arrogance and incompetence you threw away Tennessee, and lost the election. Just sayin’. Here’s how the Gore Campaign treated Ned Ray McWherter, former Governor and House Speaker, when he came to tell them they were in trouble and to offer advice:

A tale from Ned Ray McWherter’s 2000 experience, told to a reporter last week, will illustrate.

He had made a 10-day trip through the state, mostly in East Tennessee, as a Gore surrogate campaigner and returned, as instructed, to give a report to the campaign’s national headquarters in Nashville.

His travels, McWherter says, left him with a sense that things were going badly for Gore in his home state.

He had a plan, involving some personal campaigning by Gore, for turning things around.

“I sat there for about an hour in the headquarters, wanting to make a report to the people running the campaign. They sent somebody out and said they were busy.

“They put me off another hour or two and, well, my old butt got tired, and I got up and left. They were so busy they wouldn’t even talk to me and I was going to tell them they were about to get the hell beat out of them in East Tennessee,” he said.

“I left word with Johnny Hayes. He said he couldn’t get in to see them, either,” McWherter said. “They had other places to worry about, I guess.”

If Gore had carried his home state, he’d have been President. And anyone with any sense would have listened to Ned Ray about Tennessee politics. Ned Ray didn’t look cool but he was the smartest Tennessee politician of the last 50 years. But some idiot staffer just saw an old man who didn’t look very cool, had no idea who he really was, and lost the election. So, heckuva job, Donna! And a reminder that this peculiar combination of arrogance and ineptitude didn’t start with Obama. It’s just been perfected.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama’s Creepy Cult of Personality. “Last week, the Obama campaign started selling a refashioned American flag with its logo replacing the stars, and then urged Americans to pledge allegiance to Barack. Did we just wake up in Mao’s China?”

ROBERT SAMUELSON: Romney’s Chance To Challenge The Welfare State:

The fact that roughly half of Americans receive some government payment to which they feel morally entitled is a big part of our budget paralysis. It’s an inconvenient fact, but it’s still a fact.

Dealing with it ought to define the next president’s mission. Somehow, he must question the status quo without insulting the roughly 150 million Americans who receive federal benefits. Who deserves support and why? How much and under what conditions? Unless we ask these questions and find grounds for trimming some benefits, the budget impasse will continue and risk dangerous outcomes: a future financial crisis; crushing tax increases; or draconian cuts in programs (defense, research, highways) that aren’t payments to individuals.

This is arithmetic, as Bill Clinton might say. In 2011, payments to individuals were 65 percent of federal spending, up from 26 percent in 1960. America has created a welfare state, whether Americans admit it or not.

Actually, the share of people who receive federal benefits exceeds Romney’s 47 percent. Based on its Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Census Bureau estimates that in mid-2011 — the latest available figures — the number of people with benefits came to 149.8 million, or 49 percent of the population. But this figure is too low, because SIPP doesn’t include several major programs (farm subsidies and college loans and grants). With these, the total probably exceeds 50 percent.

This will end when the federal government’s finances break down beyond the ability of the current Fed/Treasury jiggery-pokery to conceal it. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. It’s important not only to try to bring things under control before a collapse, but also to explain what’s going on so that if the collapse happens anyway — say because Obama gets reelected — people understand what’s happening and why. Romney/Ryan can lay down markers there, too.

MEGAN MCARDLE LOOKS AT ROMNEY’S TAX RETURNS: “The result is surprisingly unsurprising. . . . Romney still has a low effective tax rate, because he has a lot of capital income, and donates a lot of money to charity. You can argue over whether we should tax capital gains more highly (I favor eliminating the corporate income tax and then taxing capital income at ordinary income tax rates, but Matt Yglesias makes the ‘No’ case here). You can rail at the existence of charitable deductions, a question on which I can see both sides. But this is the source of his low income tax rate. There’s no ultra-sophisticated nefarious scheme, or at least, not one that’s readily visible on his tax returns. Early in his life, Romney deferred a lot of consumption by saving, in part undoubtedly because his large income made doing so rather painless. Fair or not, that’s tax advantaged behavior in every modern economy that I’m aware of.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: You Broke The Mideast, Mr. President. Now You Own It.

LET’S CALL THIS “PULLING A BERNANKE:” LA Bank Robbery Turns High Speed Pursuit With Money Thrown From Speeding Vehicle. “Residents rushed out into the streets as local TV reported on the car speeding through neighborhoods dumping stolen cash.”

PROF. BILL HENDERSON: “I would be extremely bullish on innovations that produce productivity gains in the Eds and Meds sectors.”

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Drop in the Big Law Median Salary is only Half the Story. “NALP just announced that the median salary for first year associates in Big Law has dropped from $160K to $145K. I think that is very significant. We are now back to to the entry level price point of 2007. But to my mind, there is much bigger story here. In 2011, firms of 500+ attorneys hired 2,856 entry level lawyers. In 2007, that figure was 4,745. So, after five years, Big Law is paying the same wage but hiring 40% fewer lawyers.”

I’M PRETTY SURE OBAMA OWES NAKOULA AN APOLOGY:

Related: “Reprehensible and disgusting.”

WELL, IT’S NOT LIKE IT’S DISSING MUHAMMAD: White House Silent Over Demands to Denounce ‘Piss Christ’ Artwork. And it’s not like the people who don’t like it have killed anyone. May our leaders have joy of the incentive system they’re creating.

TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY: Israel Demands Restitution of Jewish Land Confiscated by Arabs.

DOING JOBS THE REGULAR MEDIA WON’T DO: Investor’s Business Daily: Univision Shows Up Mainstream Media In Obama Interview.

But give ABC News credit for busting Obama’s Fast and Furious lie from that appearance.

DEBACLE: State Dept, GSA Stonewall Investigation of Benghazi Security Contract.

EVERY SUCCESSFUL SYSTEM ACCUMULATES PARASITES: Corruption in Wikiland? Paid PR scandal erupts at Wikipedia.

FROM DRUDGE. HEH.

Though given the rumors about Harry, we should be sure there are no children nearby. But we still haven’t found out how Harry Reid got to be so rich despite a career as a public, er, servant.

ACE NOT SO IMPRESSED with David Frum.

PRAGER UNIVERSITY: Proving Media Bias.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Libyan Civilians Overrun Islamist Militia Headquarters. “Hundreds of Libyan protesters have stormed the Benghazi headquarters of Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia in a backlash against last week’s attack on the US consulate. . . . Earlier, some 30,000 protesters had marched through the eastern Libyan city calling for an end to the armed groups that have sprung up in the country since last year’s ousting of Col Gaddafi. Several thousand supporters of Ansar al-Sharia lined up outside its headquarters, in front of the crowd, waving black and white banners, AP news agency reported. They fired into the air to try to disperse the protesters, but fled with their weapons after the base was surrounded by waves of people shouting ‘no to militias’, the report added.”

Now, see, this is how it’s done.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO chooses decline.

READER GAVIN KIRK WRITES: “Now that we have cleared up whether Mitt Romney has paid taxes in 20 years, when will Harry Reid step forward to clear up these troubling pederasty rumors we keep hearing about him from various ‘sources’? It seems like it’s high time for him to come clean!” We have no definitive evidence that they aren’t true. And he does give off a sort of creepy-great-uncle vibe. . . .

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Erik Sofge: How To Build A Better Starship.

AT AMAZON, bestselling videos in Exercise & Fitness.

LEADERSHIP: Obama Knew About Benghazi Terror Attacks 90 Minutes After They Began… Wen