HOW TO IMPROVE HOME PRICES:   Mitt Romney had the audacity to argue (to virtually no attention by the mainstream media) that the housing market can best be improved by . . . . [drumroll, please] an improved economy.  Contrast the progressive vision:  federal government subsidies– what a shocker.

Mr. Romney understands that more government intervention has been an obstacle to a housing recovery. His housing white paper, released the same day as his speech, lists the “alphabet soup of federal housing assistance programs” that the Obama Administration launched over the past four years, with acronyms like “HAMP, HARP, 2MP, H2H and EHLP.” None have rescued the housing market because they aim to keep troubled borrowers in their homes, rather than allow lenders to foreclose and the market to clear.

Amen.

News you can use: Looking at cute animal pictures at work may boost performance.

SHOCKINGLY, THEY DO EXIST: List: Republican Celebrities.

ADORBS!:  Sweet little two-legged chihuahuas Moose and Maverick live happily with their disability, inspiring their human counterparts.

HILLARY CALLS FOR REGULATIONS TO BE LOOSENED, BECAUSE “TOO MANY PEOPLE STILL CAN’T FIND JOBS.”

But only in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, alas.

RELATED: Question asked on Twitter: When will Barack Obama call for the Middle East to stop clinging to their guns and religion?

SCAPEGOATING NAKOULA: “He’s going to be confined in a special unit where he’d be in a solitary cell, locked up alone and in maddening isolation.”

Remember all the people who were upset when this happened to actual terrorists? They’re nowhere to be heard now, when it’s being done to someone whose role is scapegoat for the White House’s national-security ineptitude.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Don’t Sit Up Straight: Why A Natural Posture May Be Better.

PANDERING TO RADICAL ISLAMISTS:  The arrest of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (aka “Sam Bacile”), the producer of the Mohammed video, is an affront to the First Amendment.  The feds nabbed him for an alleged parole violation.  Even if true, it seems improbable that Nakoula would have been apprehended in the absence of his association with the video.  If this is correct, it suggests that the Obama Administration is willing to use its vast power to jail people for publishing “offensive” material — particularly material offensive to the radical Islamists.

Would it be alright for a President to instruct federal prosecutors to create a “black list” of, say, communists/Republicans/tea partiers — pick your own least favorite group– and target them for investigation and arrest for any matter disinterred?  Surely this would be viewed as an abuse of power, and an affront to the First Amendment.  Talk about a “chilling effect” on free speech!

This is getting scary, folks.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO TURN MOTHER JONES ANTI-IMMIGRANT? Mia Love.

Sorry, that’s just stone-cold racism. It’s all about not wanting to see a black Republican woman in office.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Univision: The untold story of what ‘Fast and Furious’ wrought in Mexico. “When a journalist for Univision asked President Obama last week why he hasn’t fired Attorney General Eric Holder over the ‘Fast and Furious’ gun walking fiasco, the reporter, it turns out, had an inside scoop that added urgency to the question. At 7 p.m. on Sunday, Univision says it’ll air a blockbuster investigation detailing the impact of the deeply flawed gunrunning investigation, which operated between Oct. 2009 and January 2011.”

I don’t think this operation was “botched” or “deeply flawed.” I think it worked as planned, except for the part about being caught. Still, even if you aren’t troubled by the too-close nexus with the Administration’s preferred gun-control narrative, there’s this: “In order to reach the target of the operation, which was identifying the drug traffickers who were using the guns, [ATF agents] were waiting for the guns to be used. And how are guns used in Mexico? Killing people. I talked to an ATF agent who said there was no other way to explain it.”

IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S OVER:  Pete Dupont points out in the WSJ something the mainstream media and many inside-the-beltway old school Republicans will not:

In spite of what some of the pundits are saying, this election is not over, and it is very difficult now to be sure who will win the race on Nov. 6. To begin with, the polls seem to show a good bit of volatility. According to Rasmussen Reports, which unlike many other analysts has tracked likely voters instead of registered ones, has gone from Mr. Obama up by two in August, to up by five in early September to a tie in late September. Gallup was plus-one for Mr. Romney in mid-August, plus-seven for Mr. Obama in early September, and plus-three for Mr. Obama in mid-September. In short, each candidate is holding 45% to 47% of the votes with roughly 6% to 10% undecided.

It ain’t over’til it’s over, folks.  Turnout is the key.

INCONVENIENT TRUTHS: Brent Bozell describes Dinesh D’Souza’s 2016: Obama’s America as “the Little Engine That Could – the film that could surpass Gore at the box office.” But if a documentary breaks records but remains unreported within the MSM’s cocoon…?

Two weeks ago, Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “2016: Obama’s America” passed Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” for second place on the all-time box-office money list for political documentaries. It now has a box office gross of more than $32 million. But if you’re an independent or a liberal who’s unplugged from conservative websites and talk radio, you’d never know.

You didn’t see D’Souza on CBS or NBC (although he showed up on ABC’s “Nightline” in late night). There were no cover stories in Time or Newsweek. The film opened on just one screen in Houston when it premiered on July 13, and then spread to 10, and eventually to 1,000 theaters in August and 2,000 theaters in September. A cultural sensation, yes – but somehow not newsworthy.

RELATED: What if newspapers hadn’t bothered to report the attack on Pearl Harbor?

HOW MANY DO YOU HAVE?:  Check out these 9 “must have ” status symbols that say, “I’m rich!”  If you have at least 5, watch out:  Progressives may call you a capitalist pig.

SO DOES THE DUMB-BUT-HAPPY STEREOTYPE FALL ALONG WITH THE FAT-BUT-JOLLY ONE? People With Higher IQs Tend To Be Happier. “People with lower intelligence are more likely to be unhappy than their brighter colleagues, according to UK researchers. Their study of 6,870 people showed low intelligence was often linked with lower income and poor mental health, which contributed to unhappiness.”

BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY: At Protein Wisdom:

So, the government is going to provide the funds to pay the fines they impose on the contractors for non-compliance with regulations written by the government.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Muggeridge’s Law, which posits that there’s no way that any satirist can improve upon real life for its pure absurdity, has become absolutely ironclad over the last four years.

(Via Small Dead Animals.)

DIDN’T WE LEARN ANYTHING FROM THE DARK KNIGHT RISES? “Eat the Rich Now, Starve Later,” Theodore Dalrymple writes.

WELL, GOOD: 5-Cent Diabetes Pill From 1958 May Be New Cancer Drug. “Metformin, the most commonly used medicine to lower blood- sugar, is the subject of about 50 cancer studies globally, according to U.S. government clinical trial information compiled by Bloomberg. The research began after scientists found metformin prevented tumors in mice and that diabetics were less likely to develop a malignancy if they were taking the 5 cents- a-day pill than other diabetes medications.”

UNIVISION UNCOVERS MORE FAST AND FURIOUS DEATHS.

TALES OF THE ONE PERCENT: “Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion dollars on everything from staffing, housing, flying and entertaining President Obama and his family last year, according to the author of a new book on taxpayer-funded presidential perks,” Alex Pappas writes at the Daily Caller.

“In comparison, British taxpayers spent just $57.8 million on the royal family.”

EXPERIENCE TRUMPS BRILLIANCE: The 5 Unique Ways Intelligent People Screw Up Their Lives.

How is an e-reader like an octopus?  No, that’s not a joke.  Apparently we’re studying how octopuses use ink to improve e-readers.

CAN GREEKS BECOME GERMANS? “Greek police send crime victims to neo-Nazi ‘protectors,'” according to the Guardian.

Well, that’s one answer to Thomas Friedman’s query last year.

UPDATE: Link fixed.

Libya Timeline shows an administration that can’t shoot straight and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence falls on its sword to preserve the administration.

HUGH HEWITT: Introducing The New Polling Firm of Madoff, Marist, Quinnipiac and Ponzi:

The data on absentees and registration point to a fall off in enthusiasm for the president from the highs of 2008, a result both of his epic failures as president and of the fact that the second time around isn’t nearly as exciting as casting a vote for the first ever African-American president.

The conversations with the experts are the most revealing, however, and the Manhattan-Beltway media elite has really failed to do even minimal homework here, choosing instead to go with the conclusions of the people they have paid to give them data, thus outsourcing their work.

In this respect big media resembles nothing so much as investors in Bernie Madoff’s funds. Madoff never got asked tough questions by his investors or the SEC, and thus he rampaged through his clients’ cash.

Big news organizations that turn off their skepticism and write checks to polling firms are doing the same thing and for the same reason: They lack the skills to do their own analyses, and they don’t want to be thought stupid for asking obvious questions.

I don’t mind admitting I don’t know why a sample should include 10% more Democrats than Republicans, so I ask –and ask and ask. This is what journalists do. Unless, apparently, they have paid for the product or want badly to believe it is true.

But don’t believe me. Read the interviews.

Follow the above link to do just that.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S ENABLERS: Benghazi Worse than Watergate, Roger L. Simon writes.