AT AMAZON, The Halloween Shop: Markdowns on Costumes, Candy & More.

Also, today only: Up to 60% Off Men’s Sweaters and Pants. Good chance it’ll be a cold winter.

REPUBLICANS DOMINATE EARLY VOTING IN NORTH CAROLINA:  Some 25,000 North Carolinians have already cast early ballots in their swing state.  Of those voting, the state reports that 13,459 were Republicans, 7,130 were Democrats and 4,630 were unaffiliated.  The pace of early voting is substantially higher than in 2008.

THE FORTUNES OF PERMANENCE: Victor Davis Hanson reviews Roger Kimball’s newest book:

In “Institutionalizing Our Demise,” Kimball dissects the contradictions of affirmative action and multiculturalism. There are of course many, but Kimball’s incisive indictment might be best summed up with the irony that those critics who have succeeded through the Western liberal tradition, and the magnanimity of Anglo-Protestant ethical values, are often the most likely to turn around and tear them down — often in worry that they are losing street cred as the supposedly permanently oppressed. America, which alone seeks to establish a meritocracy and a multiracial society united by shared values, is so often damned because its embrace of the good is not quite perfect.

I often see Kimball’s paradox first-hand in California’s Central Valley, the ground zero of illegal immigration over the last three decades. From the first-generation Mexican national refugee, who after reaching the sanctuary of the United States feels magically delivered from the poverty, racism, and class oppression of Oaxaca, to an angry, far more affluent and secure second-generation — nursed on Chicano Studies, La Raza pop history, and a deep resentment of the supposed unfairness of the United States — is only about twenty years.

The fault is not entirely the immigrant’s, but the elite hosts who established an educational system more designed to alleviating their own sense of guilt than to facilitating integration and assimilation into American life — the time-honored ways for immigrants to achieve economic and social security. Kimball, in brilliant fashion, notes those hypocrisies.

After all, the ability for hyphenated and affluent minority careerists to find an edge from their loud “otherness” in some ways is predicated on the inability of forgotten others of the underclass to achieve basic education and employment parity. In other words, without the entry of millions of fresh impoverished and non-English-speaking illegal aliens, the pool of self-identified third-generation Mexican-Americans would, in the fashion of 20th century Italian-Americans, shrink, as ethnicity became incidental through intermarriage and integration rather than essential to their careerist personas.

Read the whole thing. (First VDH, then Kimball’s book.)

For my 23-minute podcast interview with Roger K. on his new book, click here.

THE REAL DEBATE: Roger L. Simon writes that the dynamics of the presidential debates boil down to The Good Father vs. The Abandoned Son.

“Forget the styrofoam columns of 2008,” Roger writes. “The face-to-face clash of Obama and Romney is the real stuff of Greek drama.”

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: CBO makes it offficial — Obama broke deficit pledge. “The Congressional Budget Office on Friday reported that the federal government ran a $1.1 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2012, making it official that President Obama broke his promise to cut the deficit in half within his first term in office. . . . Obama’s defenders might argue that at the time he made that statement, he didn’t grasp the full extent of the economic crisis. The problem with that argument is that he continued to restate that pledge even after the economic picture deteriorated further.”

HIGHER, AND LOWER, EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Salman Khan’s audacious mission to offer online education to anyone, anywhere for free.

When you hear Salman Khan’s story, it sounds like an Internet-age fairy tale, one that goes something like this. Once upon a time, a brainy MIT graduate working as a hedge-fund analyst started tutoring his cousin in math and science online. He decided to make YouTube videos of his tutorials. The videos racked up millions of views and reached audiences around the world, and appreciative students offered stirring testimonials. After three years, the hedge-fund analyst quit his day job to set up an educational nonprofit called The Khan Academy. The mission: provide a world-class education to anyone, anywhere for free.

Khan knows that his mission statement is a bit grandiose, but he believes the Khan Academy’s online teaching materials, including its archive of more than 3,000 videos, have the power to reach students in ways that classroom settings sometimes can’t. The Khan Academy combines video tutorials with exercises and problems tailored to an individual student’s performance level.

But does it work? Khan sat down recently with Slate’s Jacob Weisberg to talk about his new book and the results his nonprofit is producing.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Reader Kenneth Greenlee writes:

Khan is to K12+ as Craigslist is to MSM classifieds. Any questions?

One statement: if ever there was an arena which should have “enjoyed” price deflation due to productivity gains, it is is the education arena, especially the high school, college, and grad school subarenas. I suspect that the usual suspects will start screaming about Khan “taking” revenue away from traditional education much as traditional media screamed about craigslist. We may need some regulatory capture after all.

PS: Bonus statement: The other major arena which should be enjoying price deflation is government. After all, how much of it is really only list and database maintenance? I know, it’s best not to switch horses midstream, just keep using index cards and pencils.

Heh. Indeed.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Even If Obama Did Cook The Jobs Numbers, They Still Stink. “The fact is that even with these inexplicable results, this jobs report shows an economy that continues to struggle. After all, an economy that’s creating just 114,000 jobs is barely producing enough new jobs to keep up with population growth, much less drive down the real unemployment rate. What’s more, the drop in the official unemployment rate, if those numbers are to be believed, was driven largely by a big upturn in part-time jobs. Workers who can’t find full-time work, or forced to take huge pay cuts to land work, are not signs of forward momentum. And that’s why the BLS’ broader, but little noticed,measure of the unemployed — which includes discouraged workers and those working part time because they can’t find full-time jobs — remained unchanged in September at a gut-wrenching 14.7%.”

THE ANCHORESS: A cynical president has earned a cynical doubt.

If he’s lost the New Yorker, he may finally be receiving some.

DATING GOING TO THE DOGS:  Apparently your pooch sends not-so-subtle signals about your potential as a mate.  Poodle? High maintenance.  Labrador? Happy and easy going.  Chihuahua?  Nervous and neurotic.  Ladies should get big dogs to attract men; men should get little biddy dogs to attract women.  Go figure.

LAWYER-CLIENT COMMUNICATION: Life Is Not A Coin Flip.

ANDREW KLAVAN: A Fantasy Election, an Imaginary Man: Barack Obama has always been less real than dream—a media dream. “The mystery Obama — the hollow receptacle of out-sized fantasies left and right — is not a creation of his own making, political chameleon though he may well be. It emanates instead from a journalistic community that no longer in any way fulfills its designated function, that no longer even attempts the fair presentation of facts and current events aimed at helping the American electorate make up its mind according to its own lights.”

I SECOND: Michael Totten’s recommendation of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King.  Also from Dwight Swain (you know I REALLY don’t get kickbacks from the estate!) my husband found Creating Characters: How to Build Story People very useful.  I never needed it because characters are the one story element I “got” for free without having to struggle with it.

As a note, everyone knows I’m a big supporter of indie publishing and  self-publishing.  Everyone knows you can’t tell what will hit in the indie market.  But I can tell you a rudimentary knowledge of the craft will help.  Trust me.  I’m looking over the shoulders of several beginners doing this.  There is no shame in learning.

IF WE’RE DISCUSSING WRITERS’ BOOKS, I found an earlier edition of Gordon Burgett’s book Sell & Resell Your Magazine Articles invaluable for learning the mechanics of pitching magazine articles. That, a copy of the Writer’s Market, a laser printer, a stack of paper and envelopes, and a roll of stamps were all I needed to get started.

How that process translates into the age of email and e-media, I leave for the budding freelancer to discover for him or herself.

DISSIDENT BLOGGER Yoani Sánchez has been arrested in Cuba. “If you run a blog please mention her arrest. The Cuban government must not be allowed to operate in darkness. If enough of us protest perhaps the pressure will do Yoani and the other dissidents some good.”

The good news is that she’s been released. But keep the attention on what’s happening in Cuba.

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Sarah Hoyt recommends Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain for those of you who write fiction. She’s right. That book is a classic. It’s old, but not at all dated.

I also recommend Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King. I’m almost finished with a novel myself and have found it quite useful.

THE WASHINGTON POST’S David Ignatius is in Aleppo.

I SWEAR I DON’T GET ANY KICKBACKS: But if you’re trying to be a fiction writer, you could do worse than if you start by reading Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer.  It’s that rarest thing among writers’ manuals: useful.

UPDATE: The reason for the kickback disclaimer is that I recommend this book so much that for a while my books were associated with the author’s on Amazon.  I don’t even know the family (the writer is no longer alive) but I know this book took first me, then years later my husband, then more years later my older son from unpublished to pro.

HOPE & CHANGE, ROMNEY STYLE:  The takeaway from the first presidential debate was–somewhat ironically–a message of hope and change.  But the messenger wasn’t President Obama; it was Mitt Romney.  From his beginning line about the economy (“Yes, we can help, but it’s going to take a different path. . . .  Trickle-down government will not work”), to his final promises and examples of bipartisan leadership, Romney offered a stark contrast between the “hope and change” of President Obama (higher taxes; bigger government; more bailouts, handouts and class warfare) and his own (lower taxes; smaller government; equal treatment of all).  Now that’s hope and change we can believe in.

A QUOTE TO TAKE INTO THE WEEKEND:

Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

Robert A. Heinlein

Another great empty chair cartoon:

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? “Egypt’s new Islamist president on Friday pledged to ease up on the crackdown in the country’s restive Sinai Peninsula and not pursue hundreds of fugitives from the lawless region that has seen a surge in militancy and cross-border attacks on Israel.”

IS ILLINOIS TURNING PURPLE?:  An interesting editorial over at Investors’ Business Daily suggests that the presidential race could be tightening enough in Illinois to give Romney a shot at beating Obama in his home state.

PAULINE KAEL, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “This image seemed like a proper response to the first Presidential debate,” Barry Blitt, who illustrated the above New Yorker cover says, in the Huffington Post. “But I’m not sure I realized how hard it is to caricature furniture.”

(Via Ricochet.)

RELATED: “The Shield Cracks” — or to put it another way, the Preference Cascade continues to breach containment.

ANDREW KLAVAN: A Fantasy Election, An Imaginary Man comes as close as anything to capturing the disturbing sense of unreality that’s making me feel as though nothing in the news were quite what it seems.  What I’ve taken to calling being gaslighted.

BACKWARD RAN THE CULTURES UNTIL REELED THE MIND: Afghanistan wasn’t the only place that looked better 50 years ago. Having watched the 50^th anniversary edition of Lawrence of Arabia last night on the big screen at Santana Row, I’d love to take a time machine back to the Columbia Pictures executive suite in 1962. I’d tell them, enjoy it now boys — and how sophisticated postwar middlebrow culture in general is — because in just seven years, your biggest hit is going to look like this.