ANN ALTHOUSE: Elaborate NYT graphic makes me think something quite different from what they want me to think.

That said, what I really want to talk about is that pile of Monopoly houses, far, far outnumbering the hotels. There are 120 million households, and 158 spend half of what is spent, and amount that’s only $176 million. If all of the households gave just $5, that would be $600 million, vastly overwhelming those supposedly fearsome, overspending, rich, white men. That money could be given directly to that candidate (since it comes, obviously, nowhere near the limit).

Instead of complaining about 158 families spending $176 million (which strikes me as a fairly paltry amount, especially since only $2,700 can be given to a candidate), the clamor should be about the need for everyone to give just a little money to someone. Skip one cup of coffee, one cheeseburger, one movie, and give the money to the candidate you like best. It could be so easy.

And yet bitching about those terrible rich people — those terrible male white people — serves other political interests… interests that the rich white males who own The New York Times have a constitutional right to push with all the powerful rhetoric and lovely graphics they can muster.

It’s Potemkin villages all the way down.

SNL’S MICHAEL CHE ON BEN CARSON: ‘PLEASE, AMERICA, PICK ANYBODY BUT THE BLACK GUY.’

As a wise former member of Saturday Night Live would say,  “This is about hating [another] black man in the White House. This is racism straight up,” from SNL’s producer and writers.

But then, as Salon warned last year, “It’s not easy being black on ‘Saturday Night Live’” particularly when the show’s writers and producer forces one of its historically few black cast members to perform such racially denigrating material.

KURT SCHLICHTER: How Marco Rubio Might Win Back Us Conservatives.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: The Exploitabilty of the Slackoisie. “But I digress. There is no question but that the happiness of the newest, youngest, least competent, least experienced, person in a law firm dictates how a firm should function. Every firm should reinvent itself for this new lawyer’s happiness, lest others in the office be affected.”

BEN CARSON SHUTS DOWN HOSTILE INTERVIEWER ON FACE THE NATION: AN ARMED CITIZENRY KEEPS GOVERNMENT CONSTRAINED.

That hostile interviewer is of course host and Democratic operative with a byline John Dickerson, who advised Obama ‘Destroy the GOP’ in a 2013 column at the Huffington Post.

ROGER SIMON WANTS TO HELP CNN PREPARE FOR TUESDAY’S DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE DEBATE:

Tuesday’s debate will be moderated by Anderson Cooper with his colleague Dana Bash and CNN Español’s Juan Carlos Lopez chiming in. Don Lemon will handle questions from Facebook, allegedly selected to represent a clued-in online public (sort of the liberal-left equivalent of a Drudge Poll, I suppose).

What does this add up to? How do you spell “softball?”

I think we should help out CNN and come up with a few questions of our own for the candidates, since they’re probably not going to attack each other in any meaningful way.  (I’ll take Chris Cillizza’s word for it). With Donald Trump not in attendance, this could be a monumental snore. (No wonder they cut an hour.)  Someone has to come to the aid of  the network with some interesting questions.

What questions would you like CNN to ask to avoid the appearance of a complete softball debate?

HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY: Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year. For those of a different bent, I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:

At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .

Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”

Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.

Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today — which, as Jim Bennett has noted, has roots that might surprise its proponents:

This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a minuscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.

Indeed. Nonetheless, Bennett thinks that a different Italian deserves the real credit. (Reposted from 2005, but it still fits.) [Doesn’t this leave you vulnerable to charges of recycling too? –ed. I prefer to think of it as “They came at us in the same old way, and, you know, we beat them in the same old way.”]

I post this every year, as it’s evergreen. The original link to Bennett’s column seems to have succumbed to link-rot, but I believe this is it.

YEAH, BUT HUMANS HAVE ALWAYS PRESENTED THE BEST FACE TO THE WORLD: This is no different than those Christmas newsletters people send. Our double lives: Dark realities behind ‘perfect’ online profiles.

THIS WILL END IN TEARS: De Blasio’s plan to socially engineer cultural groups.

A SMALL INSTANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: EPA dinged for another wastewater spill in Colorado.

YOU SEE THEM AROUND HERE A LOT:  Last week I was trying to point them out to friends from out of state, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the word “Glider.” How Gliders Fly, And How They’re Different Than Powered Aircraft.

WHEN GUN CONTROL MEANS HITTING WHAT YOU AIM AT: On October 11, a concealed carry permit holder shot and killed an alleged armed robber inside Cafe Azzurri in Waterbury, Connecticut.

SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK: Hopefully Cornell president’s free speech stance sets a trend.

CONTROL YOUR OWN D*MN GUN: Leave our guns alone.  On October 10 President Obama talked about gun control and the Oregon shooting at “$33,400-a-ticket” Hollywood fundraiser for the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee.

I THOUGHT SO TOO: We should have rebuilt the Twin Towers.

SHORT LIVED: The NY Times is having one of its rare intermittent lapses into (relatively mild) sanity. Don’t worry; it’s unlikely to last long.

THE BETTER TO HACK YOU WITH: How scientists are upgrading the brain with machines.

A REPUBLIC IF YOU CAN KEEP IT: Ben Carson on protecting the Constitution.

IF THIS WAS ALL CINDY SHEEHAN DID: Military mom selling letter from Barack Obama.