JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Kansas: The Press Is Campaigning For Greg Orman.

UNEXPECTEDLY! World Health Organization: Ebola spread ‘bigger than expected.’

Related: First African Ebola vaccine trial starts as Spanish nurse worsens.

SUPERCAR: This Is the Tesla D: a 691 HP, All-Wheel-Drive Model S. “There’s autopilot too, a spookily sophisticated semi-autonomous drive system. The car senses road signs with optical cameras, and a 360 degree sonar keeps an eye on barricades and traffic. When traffic slows, so does the Tesla, even to a dead stop. Lanes can be changed with a flick of the turn-signal indicator stalk. When the car isn’t doing the driving, the Model S will provide feedback through the steering wheel if your merge isn’t up to snuff. Musk says there’s an expectation of a driver in the loop with the new autopilot tech, but we can expect a fully autonomous car in the next five or six years.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 519.

AMERICA’S BIGGEST HYPOCRITE: Vote For The Video.

MEGAN MCARDLE:

I’ve already said my piece about affirmative-consent laws, to which I will just add this: I am disturbed as hell by the number of feminists I’ve seen defending these laws on the grounds that of course they will rarely be enforced. Why pass laws you don’t intend to enforce? Unenforceable laws weaken our whole legal framework by conceding that really, the whole thing is just an arbitrary exercise of power by authorities — a theory of justice that has not, I must point out, generally redounded to the benefit of women and minorities. It is, in the words of P.J. O’Rourke, “Pinning a ‘kick me!’ sign on the backside of the majesty of the law.”

Plus, the increased use of “sex shaming” by feminists. Just remember, the reason why they act unprincipled is that they are unprincipled.

JUST LIKE OBAMA’S DID: De Blasio’s Transparency Is Turning Opaque Under Fire.

PLUNGING CRUDE PRICES: When Should U.S. Shale Producers Worry?

Related: Saudis Do Nothing While Crude Prices Plunge. Hmm.

AT AMAZON, 15% off on select Greenies products at checkout.

Plus, Trick Or Treat Favorites in Grocery.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Jimmy Carter: Say, the Obama admin dropped the ball on Ebola, huh? “Carter told CBS Atlanta on Wednesday that the White House blew an opportunity to get ahead of Ebola when it had the chance, although he thinks we’ve caught up to it now. Or, more exactly, he thinks it’s under control in the US now, when just a few weeks ago the Obama administration had scoffed at the odds of Ebola appearing here at all.”

GEORGE WILL: Why Chris Christie Matters. “Americans often elect presidents who conspicuously lack the perceived defect of the preceding president (e.g., Jack Kennedy’s youth contrasting with Dwight Eisenhower’s age, Ronald Reagan’s strength correcting for Jimmy Carter’s weakness). Christie, who exudes executive authority, is the antithesis of today’s bewildered incumbent floundering from the disappearing red line regarding Syria, to the HealthCare.gov debacle, to the Veterans Affairs scandals, to the no-one-tells-me-anything surprise about the Islamic State, to the Secret Service that cannot lock the White House’s front door.”

Even visually — and this is a theory first proposed by the Insta-Daughter, I believe — Obama and Christie are opposites: A fat white guy from New Jersey vs. a skinny black guy from Hawaii.

PETER SUDERMAN: Obama Brags About His Deficit Reduction, But As a Senator, He Would Have Been a Critic.

“When I took office,” President Obama bragged last week, “the deficit was nearly 10 percent of our economy. Today, it’s approaching 3 percent.”

All true. And yet it’s worth putting the declining deficit in context, and remembering that, as a Senator, Obama probably would have been appalled by his current deficits.

The year’s deficit total, just shy of half a trillion dollars, represents a big drop from the $1.4 trillion peak it hit in Obama’s first term. (More than 40 percent of that reduction came as a result of tax hikes.) But the reduction only came following a massive 800 percent increase in annual deficits.

Notably, it’s still much higher than the typical deficits during the Bush years, which, you may recall, were worrisomely large—indeed, they were large enough that Obama, as a Senator in 2005, declared that “you don’t have to be a deficit hawk to be disturbed by the growing gap between revenues and expenses.” Between the 2006 and 2007 fiscal years, the deficit dropped from $248 billion to $160 billion.

The Bush-era deficit totals, far lower than his own second-term deficits, were “a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies.” Obama even opposed an increase in the nation’s debt limit.

But look where we are now: Not only are this year’s lowered deficits still much higher than the deficits he was worried about during his predecessor’s presidency, they are on track to skyrocket again.

That Senator Obama seemed like a sensible fellow. I wish he were President now.

WAPO: The Ominous Math Of The Ebola Epidemic. “Right now, the math still favors the virus.”

ROGER SIMON: What Happens If Republicans Win? “It’s time for Republicans to give serious thought to what happens if they win the Senate and House this November, as it looks increasingly that they will. . . . Barack Obama is a man unaccustomed to losing. Life has been exceptionally kind to him, sailing, as he did, through balmy Oahu sunsets, college, law school and career on into the presidency with scarcely a bump. He has been a protected man beyond any in recent memory, feted and praised virtually everywhere he went until the last couple of years. Even now, despite catastrophe after catastrophe, there are acolytes who continue to celebrate him, paying tens of thousands merely to have their photographs taken with him. When such cosseted people are forced to confront failure, they typically do not do so with grace.”

THE ECONOMIST: A plea for change: American prosecutors have too much power. Hand some of it to judges.

More than 95% of convictions in America are reached through plea bargains, in which the defendant agrees to plead guilty in return for leniency. Many convictions also depend on the testimony of a “co-operating witness”, who snitches for the same reason. Defenders of the system argue that it is efficient. By avoiding long, costly trials, America can lock up lots of villains. Without plea deals, the courts would be swamped.

I think that without plea deals, prosecutors would have to be much choosier about who they charged, which is not a bug, but a feature.

Related: Department of Injustice:

Every week there are new revelations of the decrepit and often barbarous state of the U.S. criminal-justice and prison systems. The most egregious aspects of its dysfunction are not the absurdly severe sentences and world-record incarceration levels, or the North Korean conviction rates, or the frequent murders of prisoners by correctional officers in some of the state prisons, but the politically motivated antics of the prosecutors. . . .

In the assault on Governor Scott Walker, Democratic district attorney John Chisholm’s long-running criminal investigation of the governor and his entourage ended in 2013, and has been followed by a criminal investigation into the most prominent individuals and organizations that support the governor, expressing concern about improper collusion in support of the governor’s political, if not statutory, offense, which was to curb rapacious and irresponsible public-sector unions. This is a John Doe investigation (so called because it is a blind search into whether a crime was committed at all, and if so by whom — a procedure certain to lead to abuse).

Nothing is said in public, except that evidence of the existence of the investigation is conveniently leaked, and the subjects cannot speak about it. Unfortunately for Chisholm, a longtime friend of his and his wife’s (she is a militant shop steward for the teachers’ union) brought forward extensive allegations of the political and spousally generated motives behind the investigations.

Prosecutors need more accountability.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Where Rape Victims Are Forced to Pay for Their Own Forensic Exams.

MICHAEL BARONE: Democrats’ plight in Senate races revealed.

1. Obama job approval is well below 50 percent in all 14 of these states. In only one state, Michigan, is it above the 42 percent job approval Obama was registering Oct. 1 in the RealClearPolitics average, and it is only slightly higher. This is true even though Obama carried three of these states — Colorado, Iowa and Michigan — in 2008 and 2012, and another, North Carolina, in 2008.

2. None of the Democratic candidates, including the six incumbents, in these 14 states is polling at 50 percent or above. Only one, Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, is polling above 45 percent, and only two, Kay Hagan in North Carolina and nominal independent Greg Orman in Kansas, are polling at 45 percent. All others are below. Looking back over the past six Senate cycles going back to 2002, using data compiled by Dan McLaughlin at redstate.com, I found that only two incumbent senators who were polling below 45 percent at about this stage in the electoral cycle went on to win — Michael Bennet (chairman of the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee this year) in Colorado in 2010 and Jon Tester in Montana in 2012. Bennet was an appointed senator then, not yet elected to a statewide office; both Bennet and Tester got under 50 percent of the vote and won with pluralities.

Read the whole thing.

KENTUCKY: Did Allison Lundergan Grimes Vote For Obama? She Won’t Say. Upside for her: Nowadays, she’s got a lot of company.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Addressing the Critics of This Purportedly No Good, Very Bad Chart.

WAIT, DOESN’T THIS MAKE THEM RACIST OR SOMETHING? Dems Call For Obama To Ban Flights From Ebola Countries.

The lawmakers accused Obama of attempting to “pass the buck” onto organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), which have advised against travel bans. Obama has said he would not ban travel unless the WHO reversed its position.

“[The WHO] has no duty to protect the lives and well-being of Americans, as you do. Furthermore, it has utterly failed to stem the epidemic through its own action. The responsibility for this decision is yours, not theirs,” they wrote.

The three Democrats — Reps. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa) – are among the growing handful in their party who have publicly criticized the Obama administration’s response to Ebola.

Stay tuned.

#WARONMEN: New Calif. sex consent law helps ‘find evidence where there is none,’ backer says.

GOOD QUESTION: “Why does Harry Reid have muscle with him when he walks the halls of Congress? And more importantly, per Mattera’s question, how does a humble, longtime public servant like him pay for it?”

A PROBLEM OF TRUST: Despite Assurances and No New Ebola Cases, a Fear It Will Spread.

THEY’RE LIKE LAWRENCE WELK FANS IN 1970: College Democrats Don’t Know That Obama Is No Longer Popular. Well, they’re learning.