IMMIGRATION AND BIG BUSINESS ATTACKS ON THE TEA PARTY: Why are the Chamber of Commerce and the GOP establishment going after the Tea Party all of a sudden? It’s battlespace preparation for the immigration reform/amnesty fight. In case you were wondering. Response? Punch back twice as hard.

NEAR-SPACE TOURISM: Get an Incredible View of Earth From 19 Miles Up — For a Cool $75K. “Like the Spain-based zero2infinity, World View is planning rides in a relatively spacious gondola, suspended beneath a balloon, that will carry passengers to around 100,000 feet. The view is a long ways from Virgin Galactic’s plans for sub-orbital rocket rides at 360,000 feet, but the view from a gondola will last for a few hours (or more). It’s also a lot cheaper at $75,000, compared to the current ticket price of $250,000 for a ride on Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo which will only spend a few minutes at the peak of its flight before descending back to earth.”

LOVE LETTERS FROM A GROUPIE: A Conversation with Pamela Des Barres. “All men want to be revered and admired for what they do. Women do too, but men even moreso, OK? So with men, if you love and admire what they’re doing, if you understand what they’re doing and you comment on it, ask questions about it…if you’re beholden to them for what they create, then they want you around. They want to share it with you, they want you as part of their world, and that always made me feel good, because I could bring some joy into the lives of these people that brought me so much joy.”

Plus: “People didn’t carry cameras around in those days. I certainly didn’t but if I did, I’d be rich right now. But you didn’t think of it back then, because you were so busy living that you didn’t want to stop to capture the moment. Now, people at gigs have their phones up and everything. It makes me sick! You’re missing the moment! Yeah, you may be capturing it to look at it later, but I don’t get it.”

Her memoir, I’m With The Band, is pretty good, and will bring back memories for those who were in the music business in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.

OBAMACARE: Ted Cruz Won.

SPACE: Interesting article on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, but I think Richard Branson would be disappointed to hear SpaceX called “the other big-time commercial space venture.”

THAT’S RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: CNBC Host Steve Liesman: ‘Let’s Get Some Mexican Music’ While I Bash Ted Cruz.

I PITY THE FOOL WHO DESIGNED THIS WEBSITE: Kathleen Sebelius Brings In the A-Team. Literally.

ANOTHER KINDLE DEAL: Today only, $1.99 for Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies A Day: How The Feds Target The Innocent.

And, at a temporary low price of $3.99, James Robbins’ Native Americans: Patriotism, Exceptionalism, and the New American Identity. It’s not about Indians.

WELL, ELECTRIC STOVES ARE FOR HICKS WHO LIVE IN TRAILERS: New York Liberals Fight Gas In Politics, Burn It At Home.

AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Office & School Supplies.

Also, this week’s top deals in TVs & Videos.

Plus, prices sure have fallen on 3D Printers.

THIS SEEMS RIGHT TO ME: Third Circuit Requires Warrant for GPS Monitoring and Limits Good-Faith Exception in United States v. Katzin. Also, I think that to the extent that law enforcement gets a “good faith” exception for breaking the law, so should the rest of us.

L.A. TIMES: Is It Time To End The War On Saturated Fat?

The British Medical Journal has issued a clarion call to all who want to ward off heart disease: Forget the statins and bring back the bacon (or at least the full-fat yogurt). Saturated fat is not the widow-maker it’s been made out to be, writes British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra in a stinging “Observations” column in the BMJ: The more likely culprits are empty carbs and added sugar.

Virtually all the truths about preventing heart attacks that physicians and patients have held dear for more than a generation are wrong and need to be abandoned, Malhotra writes. He musters a passel of recent research that suggests that the “obsession” with lowering a patients’ total cholesterol with statins, and a public health message that has made all sources of saturated fat verboten to the health-conscious, have failed to reduce heart disease.

Indeed, he writes, they have set off market forces that have put people at greater risk.

This will all be familiar to readers of Gary Taubes, of course.

FRANK PASQUALE ON glass houses, the New York Times, and legal scholarship.

POLLS AND MEDIA INTEREST: 2016 Utah vs. 2014 Arkansas. “Results from the 15th annual Arkansas Poll, conducted by the University of Arkansas, found respondants blaming President Barack Obama and the Democrats for the partial government shutdown. The poll, conducted from Oct. 10-17, also showed declining approval ratings for Arkansas’ two Senators, Republican John Boozman and Democrat Mark Pryor, who faces a tough re-election challenge by U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. . . . Only 34 percent of likely voters approved of Mark Pryor’s performance, down from 53 percent last year. His disapproval ratings were also dramatically higher, with 44 percent of likely voters disapproving of his performance, up from 21 percent last year.” And yet what we’re hearing about is Utah, where the election will be two years later. It’s like there’s an anti-Tea Party bias in the media, with help from the GOP establishment, or something. . . .

TRANSCRIPT OF A CHAT with an ObamaCare Navigator. “What you sent seems like a canned response.” “It was.”

LAMAR ALEXANDER’S plan to replace ObamaCare.

TEXTING IN CLASS is an epidemic. That’s okay. Class is where I talk about what will be on the exam. If they overestimate their ability to multitask, well . . .

READER BOOK PLUG: Brand Advertising: How to Create Work that Connects with Customers Every Time. Maybe someone should send a copy to the GOP?

WHO WOULD JESUS SHOOT? Captain’s Journal essays an answer.

PETER WOOD TO MITCH DANIELS: Buck up, man! “The main issue at hand is whether a college president should be speaking at a think tank that possesses a political agenda. Let’s start with the obvious: College presidents do this sort of thing routinely and without raising the faintest breeze of criticism.” Well, sure, but those are lefty think tanks. Totally different, since that’s within the tribe.

And this is undoubtedly true: “Daniels is not an especially partisan politician, which may be what makes him so ready to accommodate his critics. But that’s a mistake. His critics will only be heartened by having beaten him down once and will look for the next opening.”

WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: Zombie Outbreak More Like Food Source Than Threat. “That’s because zombies are essentially walking carrion, and Mother Nature doesn’t let anything go to waste. Carrion is on the menu for a vast number of species, from tiny micro-organisms to the largest carnivores.”

As long as we don’t wind up with zombie crows.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT? Saudi Arabia severs diplomatic ties with US over response to conflict in Syria. “The shift away from the U.S. is a major one,’ the source close to Saudi policy said. ‘Saudi doesn’t want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent.'”

ANOTHER POSITIVE REVIEW for Jim Bennett & Michael Lotus’s America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity In The 21st Century. Republican — and Democratic — aspirants for 2016 should read this book.

WHEN THE WEBSITE WORKS, IT’S WORSE THAN WHEN IT DOESN’T: (BREAKING) Identity Theft Russian Roulette: Healthcare.gov Refers Users to Uncertified Navigators and Assisters.

OBAMACARE AND THE Absentee Presidency. “He and his close-knit advisers insist on a bad-news-ban around the Oval Office. Obama operates in a world without critical information — and that is his defense to two debacles. Critics understate the reluctance and inability of this president to lead and to govern. . . . This is a president who set up a system in which he imagines he is relieved of responsibility.”

Related: “He often appeared impatient or disengaged while listening to the debate, sometimes scrolling through messages on his BlackBerry or slouching and chewing gum.” Plus: “If the story were about a conservative GOP President, one suspects the Times editors would have used stronger language and done much more to bang readers over the head with the clear inference that the man in the Oval Office engineered what the story calls a worst case scenario in Syria (maximum bloodbath, maximum danger of al-Qaeda gains, maximum chance of ugly Assad survival, maximum chance of Iranian victory, maximum danger for Jordan, maximum damage to prestige, interests and alliances of the United States) through a mix of empty and unrestrained rhetoric, awkward flip flops and half measures.”

UPDATE: Obama Disassociates From Reality. “The president spoke about ObamaCare as if it were a work of art, one or two brushstrokes away from being a masterpiece. Which created the impression that the president is living in a make believe world. . . . Mr. Obama, who at this point in his presidency has developed certain stale and unhealthy rhetorical habits, mocked Republicans and said it’s time for them to ‘stop rooting for [ObamaCare’s] failures.’ But the problem the president faces isn’t Republicans rooting for its failures; it’s that the program is collapsing on its own. The GOP had nothing to do with its development. The president desperately wishes he could share the blame for what has gone wrong. Except that every Republican in Congress opposed the Affordable Care Act. This is Barack Obama’s signature achievement; he and his party are joined at the hip to it. They are as inseparable as salt and water in the ocean.”