I GUESS OBAMA HAS GONE RACIST: DHS requires West Africa travelers to arrive at five airports.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 530.

SHIKHA DALMIA: The Left’s Creeping Totalitarianism on Affirmative Consent; Depriving men of their due process rights won’t help women. I’d say it’s more galloping than “creeping.”

OBAMA’S HOME TOWN: Chicagoland voting machine casts candidate’s vote for his Dem opponent.

Admitting his confidence in Cook County ballot integrity is shaken, State Representative Candidate Jim Moynihan (R-56), was shocked today when he tried to cast a vote for himself and the voting machine cast it for his opponent instead.

“While early voting at the Schaumburg Public Library today, I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” said Moynihan. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”

While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race. It is unknown if the machine in question (#008958) has been removed from service or is still in operation.

Hmm. Well, that’s why I’ve been pushing paper ballots since 2002. Not that the Chicago crowd couldn’t cheat with them, too. . . .

UPDATE: Illinois poll workers break law, tell Obama to “vote Democrat.”

EBOLA: WORSE THAN REPORTED?

[Sorious] Samura, a television journalist originally from Sierra Leone, said the Liberian authorities appeared to be deliberately downplaying the true number of cases, for fear of increasing alarm in the west African country.

“People are dying in greater numbers than we know, according to MSF [Médecins sans Frontières] and WHO officials. Certain departments are refusing to give them the figures – because the lower it is, the more peace of mind they can give people. The truth is that it is still not under control.” […]

Samura believes sexual promiscuity among westerners could play a role in the virus’s spread abroad. Almost immediately after the outbreak was reported in March, Liberia’s health minister warned people to stop having sex because the virus was spread via bodily fluids as well as kissing.“I saw westerners in nightclubs, on beaches, guys picking up prostitutes,” he said. “Westerners who ought to know better are going to nightclubs and partying and dancing. It beggars belief. It’s scary.”

Plus: “If true, Ebola may not come to the West via Liberian or other West African citizens, but from returning aid workers, tourists, business people and others. . . . It’s much too soon to tell what the course of the Ebola epidemic will be, but so far it has to be said that Ebola has been easier to catch and harder to contain than officials everywhere have anticipated.”

AIRBRUSHING: White House Deletes Obama’s ‘Unpaid Bills’ Admission from Transcript.

GOOD NEWS: Hero Carries Man Out Of Burning Building In Fresno, Calif., Then Vanishes. “The video shows the man walk into the smoke and flames. At one point, a crash or explosion sends other would-be rescuers fleeing, but not the hero, who emerges from the blaze with the 73-year-old man draped over his shoulder.”

AT AMAZON, Fall Deals in Patio, Lawn & Garden.

Plus, the Men’s Denim Store.

Also, 60% or more off on Hunting & Tactical Knives.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: “God protects fools, drunks, and the United States of America. Of course we were a much more devout nation when (Otto von) Bismarck made that observation.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Massachusetts “Ratepayer Advocate” Martha Coakley Took Utility Donations. “Attorney General Martha Coakley, charged with protecting ratepayers against utility company price gouging, held two gubernatorial campaign fundraisers hosted by National Grid’s lobbyist this year and accepted donations from the utility’s top executives right before they socked it to ratepayers with big hikes in electric bills.”

JOEL KOTKIN: Democrats Move Left.

Much has been written about the right-ward shift of the Republican Party, but far less about a mounting left-wing movement among Democrats. While the media tends to dismiss the right-wingers of the GOP as “wingnuts,” it typically refrains from categorizing even the extreme left of the Democratic Party in a similar manner.

President Barack Obama has accelerated this leftward trend in two ways. First, his administration, particularly in contrast to that of former President Bill Clinton, has laid the rhetorical basis for a move to the left by shifting the party agenda on social, environmental and economic policies. Clinton may have declared that “the era of big government is over,” but under Obama an ever-expanding federal government has become the essential raison d’être for the party.

Yet if Obama’s soaring rhetoric set the stage, his weak record of achievement has sparked mounting concern among left-leaning activists. Obama’s success has hinged in part on the far-left portions of the party controlling their more-fevered passions, particularly about ever-increasing income inequality and bans on fossil fuel use.

But now many on the political left are openly critical of the president, notably for his close ties to the moguls of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. These moguls have been the predominant beneficiaries of his economic policies while middle-class incomes have continued to languish – and even fall.

Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

NO TARGET IS TOO SMALL for Wisconsin’s Deep State. The only reason the election is close is because of abuses of power targeting Walker donors and supporters.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Kay Hagan Put Judge Up for Federal Appointment As Judge Ruled on Husband’s Million-Dollar Lawsuit.

TRANSPARENCY: Obama’s New Ebola Czar Refuses To Testify.

The White House’s new Ebola czar will not testify before lawmakers Friday on the U.S. response to the epidemic.

Ron Klain, a Democratic operative, was named as the Obama administration’s point man on Ebola last Friday and will assume the job Wednesday.

Two days after that, the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on the government’s Ebola response, with Klain among those invited to testify.

The White House declined the invitation on Monday, according to a source close to the back-and-forth.

To be fair, he’ll have only been on the job 48 hours, though that itself raises questions about the White House’s seriousness.

UPDATE: Hey, we’ve gone five whole days without a new Ebola case! Success already!

A “SMART DIPLOMACY” RETROSPECTIVE: Gaddafi died 3 years ago. Would Libya be better off if he hadn’t?

TAMMY BRUCE: It’s the Ebola incompetence, stupid. There’s no Ebola panic, but the public’s measured judgment of Obama’s bungling.

SURE LOOKS LIKE IT: Michael Barone: Does the end of history result in political decay? “The bottom line is that good things (stable government, lack of defeat in war or major economic collapse) tend to produce bad things (decay of bureaucratic institutions, capture of regulators by the regulated, protracted litigation over needed projects and changes). And conservatives’ lament that a government that tries to do too many things ends up doing none of them well rings true.” More and more, lately.

PROF. MARK PERRY DOES THE MATH: If only 12% of campus sexual assaults get reported, then only 1 in 32 women at Ohio State are sexually assaulted, not 1 in 5.

And bear in mind, “sexual assault” is a far more diluted term than rape.

REPUBLICANS SHOULD PUSH THIS ISSUE: 70% of Americans Favor Making Birth Control Pills and Patches Over-the-Counter.

UPDATE: In the comments, people point out the hazards of hormonal birth control as a reason for regulation. Yeah, but doctors pass these out like candy now, with no oversight that you wouldn’t get with a blister-pack at Walgreen’s.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Public university offers ‘breakup training.’

HISTORY DOESN’T REPEAT BUT IT RHYMES: Biden Cocaine Scandal Mirrors Joe McCarthy Scandal:

Evidently there was an effort, successful for eight months, to conceal this curious episode. But while the attempted cover-up is, perhaps, understandable from Vice President Biden’s perspective, the real scandal here is not Hunter Biden’s cocaine use, or his father’s protection of an errant son, but the fact that Hunter Biden was commissioned in the naval reserve in the first place.

A year-and-a-half ago, Biden was selected for a direct commission in the Navy under a program that allows certain civilians, with no prior military service, to receive a “limited-duty” reserve commission after attending a brief course in military etiquette, drill, and history instead of boot camp. Such commissions are usually offered to non-combatant candidates with special qualifications or particular skills: In 1980, for example, Sen. Gary Hart became a lieutenant commander in the naval reserve at the age of 44. . . .

A more instructive parallel, however, might be to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, of all people. When one of McCarthy’s Senate aides, G. David Schine, was drafted into the Army and sent to basic training at Ft. Monmouth, N.J., Roy Cohn, another McCarthy aide and reputedly Schine’s lover, intervened persistently to obtain an officer’s commission for Schine. When the Army protested about repeated threats and interference from the senator’s office, McCarthy charged that the Army was attempting to retaliate against his investigations into communist subversion in the armed forces. The televised hearings that were held during April-June 1954 to investigate the matter — the famous Army-McCarthy hearings — not only revealed that McCarthy and his staff had repeatedly wielded their influence on behalf of Schine, but had done so despite Schine’s complete lack of qualifications for an officer’s commission.

The differences between Joseph McCarthy and Joseph Biden are self-evident, of course. But just as the effort to make G. David Schine an Army officer taught the country something about Senator McCarthy, so the brief, inglorious naval career of Hunter Biden tells us something about Vice President Biden — and the culture of entitlement in political Washington that has tarnished the Navy.

Indeed.

TRANSPARENCY: Ebola Czar Vanishes from Democracy Alliance Website; Ron Klain no longer listed as a trustee for Third Way.

Third Way, a progressive think tank with ties to the Democracy Alliance, has removed newly appointed Ebola czar Ron Klain from its website, following a Washington Free Beacon report.

The Free Beacon reported Friday on Klain’s status as a trustee for Third Way, and his past experience lobbying on behalf of a drug company that was accused of denying life-saving drugs to dying cancer patients.

Good practice for the Ebola Death Panels, I guess.

EBOLA: Why The Guard And Reserve? Why Now?

I THINK TED CRUZ IS SECRETLY RUNNING HER CAMPAIGN: Wendy Davis Wants To Know If Greg Abbott, Whose Wife Is Mexican-American, Supports A Ban On Interracial Marriage. “Her last-ditch ad with the empty wheelchair didn’t turn out very well among sane people, so now she’s falling back to the last-last-ditch: racism.” Democrats used to use racial fearmongering to get white voters to turn out. Now they use racial fearmongering to get black voters to turn out. Not much else has changed. . . .