TAKE A CHILL PILL, says Orrin Judd: “Why are folks all whacked out about the job numbers today?  It’s too late for them to help the [Unicorn Rider].  Remember the numbers GHWB’s economy was posting in ’92? Didn’t do a lick of good.”

JOE BIDEN DEBATE PREPARATION:

WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE IT WAS STILL SUFFERING FROM COLONIALISM BACK THEN: Afghanistan Looked Better 50 Years Ago. You see the same thing with Egypt. Look at graduation photos from the University of Cairo as late as the 1970s and there are lots of women in modern dress. Then, gradually, downhill from there.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): On This Day In History, Gas Prices Have Never Been Higher (Again).

HOW WRITERS HAVE FUN: The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Yes, we do sit around every once in a while admiring these.  Okay, it’s not the ONLY way we have fun.  Sometimes we drink.  Sometimes we drink while reading these.  (It helps.)

UN-REALITY BASED: Democrats fund-raise on Obama’s poor debate performance.  No, really.  Because money will fix everything.  Or something.

NFIB V. SEBELIUS: FIVE TAKES, which I coauthored with Brannon Denning, is still #1 on SSRN.

I SUSPECT IT’S RIFER THAN YOU KNOW IN THE ONES THAT HAVEN’T BEEN RETRACTED, TOO: Misconduct Widespread in Retracted Science Papers, Study Finds. “Last year the journal Nature reported an alarming increase in the number of retractions of scientific papers — a tenfold rise in the previous decade, to more than 300 a year across the scientific literature. Other studies have suggested that most of these retractions resulted from honest errors. But a deeper analysis of retractions, being published this week, challenges that comforting assumption.”

SHE DOESN’T MENTION UFOS: Kris Rusch explains why writers disappear.  (This is something that baffles fans — why a writer stops writing a series that seems to be going well.  The first point answers most my instances of doing so.)

REPORT: Jobs Numbers Not Cooked, Obama’s Recovery Is Just Crap.

GOOD NEWS! Unemployment Rate Plummets to 4.3%! Bad news: That’s the unemployment rate for government employees:

The best news anywhere in the U.S. economy over the past three months has been in the government sector, where unemployment has dropped dramatically from 5.7 percent in July to 5.1 percent in August to 4.3 percent in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Both the federal and state governments increased their employees in July, August and September.

Or to put it another way, “Take me down to the parasite city.”

BETTING ON QUANTUM COMPUTING.

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Home Improvement.

OUCH: Man Tells Obama His Business Has Been Going ‘Terrible Since You Got Here.’

ROMNEY HITS THE AIRWAVES. “These are good ads that focus on Obama’s central weakness, his terrible economic record. Let’s hope every swing state voter sees them. Over and over.”

PAUL RAHE: Appeasement And The Suppression Of Liberty.

On Wednesday, when everyone was obsessing about the upcoming debate and no one but Joel Gehrke was paying any attention. Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared on Morning Joe to tout his recent book Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power and to discuss recent developments. In the course of the ensuing conversation, which focused in part on the events that took place on 11 September 2012 in Libya and elsewhere within the Islamic world, Brzezinski acknowledged, “We’re dealing here with a messy region which is increasingly slipping into increased instability — a region in which American domination is rapidly, rapidly coming to an end.”

In this situation, the former advisor to Jimmy Carter might have said a word or two about the failure of Barack Obama’s new-look foreign policy in the Middle East. He might have mentioned the President’s famous and highly apologetic Cairo speech. He might have noted the manner in which Obama had repeatedly and pathetically tried to suck up to the Iranian government. He might have discussed our betrayal of the Green Movement in Iran. He might have drawn attention to his administration’s embarrassing and futile attempt to flatter Bashar al-Assad of Syria and enlist him as a go-between in his attempt to foster a dialogue with the Islamic Republic. He might have emphasized the President’s marked reluctance to align the United States with those attempting to overthrow the tyrants dominant in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Iran, and he might have ended by commenting on the fact that displays of weakness and attempts at appeasing tyrants are apt to backfire.

But, of course, he did not do that. Instead, as Gehrke was quick to note, he endorsed the preposterous story that the Obama administration has intermittently peddled — that our troubles are somehow due to a fourteen-minute video posted on YouTube more than a month before the attacks in Benghazi by a Coptic Christian film-maker, and he suggested that a “crack-down” on the film-maker and those working with him might be appropriate on the off-chance that the video was designed “to provoke [Muslim] violence” against Americans.

Zbig was manifestly unfit to hold the offices he held, and he hasn’t gotten any fitter in the intervening years. Like Britain, I fear that America is afflicted with a ruling class that fundamentally doesn’t believe in the country it rules. That is unlikely to end well, if it is allowed to persist.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN:

● “Does Barack Obama really want to be president?”

— Headline in today’s Washington Post.

● “Does George Bush really want to be president for another four years?”

— Opening line of a May 1992 Economist article titled, “Will George Bush unravel?”

UPDATE: More on the topic, and more links to similarly themed-articles from Ace, who notes, “Liberals Begin Noticing Something Conservatives Noticed Two Years Ago: Obama Doesn’t Really Want To Be President.”

“HELICOPTER PARENTS” VS. “FREE RANGE KIDS.”

OBAMACARE FUN FACT #2:  TRAINING HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS FOR “DIVERSITY”:  There is BIG money in Obamacare for all things relating to “diversity,” which is crudely defined as “individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds.”  For example, section 5402–titled “Health Care Professionals Training for Diversity”– appropriates hundreds of millions of dollars to provide and expand scholarships and pay back student loans. Specifically, 5402 provides:

(1) An additional $25 million for paying back the student loans of “disadvantaged background” students– up to $30,000 per year– if they become faculty at a health profession school (nursing; medical schools; PA schools, etc.). The Secretary of HHS may also make grants/enter into contracts with such health profession schools to help subsidize the salaries of hiring such “disadvantaged background” students as faculty.

(2) About $250 million for scholarships to “disadvantaged background” students attending health profession schools ($51 million for fiscal year 2010 and “such sums as may be necessary” for the next 4 years).

(3) About $300 million for scholarships to “disadvantaged background” students who attend health profession schools and then agree to provide service in an “unserved or underserved population” area after graduation  ($60 million for fiscal year 2010 and “such sums as may be necessary” for the next 4 years).

The grand total for these 3 items alone = $ 575 million over a 5 year period.  Breathtaking boondoggle.

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VODKAPUNDIT’S WEEK IN BLOGS.

WHY POLAROID was the Apple of its time.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: “One station in Calabasas is charging the highest rate in L.A. County — nearly $6 for a gallon.”

Steven Chu, Obama’s Energy Secretary, who said in September of 2008, “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” must be particularly proud today, no?

SECRET ROMNEY CHEAT SHEET REVEALED.

TECHNOLOGY: 3 Reasons Why I’d Choose the Kindle Paperwhite Over an iPad.

Plus another: The Paperwhite is cheaper.

CIVILITY IS STILL DEAD: Nice catch by James Taranto in his latest Best of the Web column:

• “[Sarah] Palin’s map is of a similar vein, though it is more personal. The markers on the map, showing the location of the congressional districts, look like the crosshairs of a rifle sight, and it was accompanied by a list of names. . . . It’s silly for her aides to claim she did not intend these to be gunsights.”–“fact check,” Washington Post website, Jan. 11, 2011
• “Paul Ryan in the Crosshairs”–headline, Washington Post website, Oct. 3, 2012

Why is the Washington Post being so racist?