THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D GET A VICE PRESIDENT WHO’D BE AN INTERNATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Vice President Joe Biden apologizes to Turkey; UAE mad, too.

WAR ON WOMEN: Cops search penthouse of Sharpton associate accused of rape.

SURELY NOT: Is the CDC Playing Immigation Politics with Ebola?

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN FOR TOMORROW: CDC, You Had One Job!

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Female teacher accused of using grade threat for sex.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Is Another Obama Administration Scandal About to Explode? “There are three possibilities here: either Goolsbee just made up the claim that Koch Industries doesn’t pay corporate income taxes; or he learned Koch’s tax status from some proper, legal source; or else he illegally accessed Koch’s tax returns and used the information he learned for political purposes in a call with reporters. Koch immediately objected to Goolsbee’s statement and requested an explanation. In response, Goolsbee has never come up with a coherent account of where he got the information that he passed on to the press. . . . The wheels of justice, as they say, grind slowly. As with other Obama administration scandals, Barack’s effort is to run out the clock. It may be that by the time we learn the full extent of the Obama administration’s lawlessness, the administration will be over. But the remaining options are not good: either Austan Goolsbee, a senior adviser to Obama, made up a smear of Koch Industries out of whole cloth, or else Obama’s IRS allowed the White House illegal access to confidential taxpayer data for political purposes. That’s a crime for which at least two people should go to jail.”

NOW THAT THEY NEED PEOPLE TO TRUST WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT EBOLA, even Chuck Todd says they’ve lied so much people don’t believe them.

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HONG KONG: Protesters Remain On Streets As “Deadline Day” Arrives.

Related: Hong Kong Crisis Turns on Whether Police Learned Lesson of Tahrir, Ukraine.

THEY SAW SOMETHING AND SAID SOMETHING, BUT WERE IGNORED: “At least three eyewitnesses spotted al Qaeda hijackers casing the security checkpoints at Boston’s Logan Airport months before the 9/11 attacks. They saw something and said something — but were ignored, newly unveiled court papers reveal.”

IDEA GAP: Obama hasn’t come up with one original idea yet. “With almost six years of the Obama administration under our collective belts, the time has come to acknowledge a painful truth: This is an astoundingly idea-free presidency. . . . The hard truth is that the Harvard Law Review editor and University of Chicago professor with two bestselling books to his name can’t formulate a policy to save his life, can’t oversee the implementation of the policies his administration has put in place and can’t adapt or rejigger them in a convincing way to take account of changing conditions. This has become startlingly evident even to his friends in recent days, but it actually dates back to the beginning of his tenure.”

OBAMA’S PRESIDENCY: A TEACHABLE MOMENT.

The decomposition of the Obama presidency has created what Obama might call a teachable moment. This is, needless to say, a loathsome phrase, reeking as it does of liberal sanctimoniousness and professorial condescension. Still, who can resist appropriating it, if only for this one occasion? Because it is, really, a moment. It’s a moment when minds can be opened to conservative truths, ears can be induced to hear conservative insights, eyes can be fitted with contact lenses so as better to see conservative arguments.

Are the young struck by the dashed hopes of Obamacare? Give them a copy of Friedrich Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit. They can’t believe the Secret Service farce? Introduce them to James Q. Wilson on bureaucracy. They’re befuddled by the exploitation of an unfortunate incident in Ferguson? Have them read Edward C. Banfield’s The Unheavenly City (especially the chapter he titled “Rioting Mainly for Fun and Profit”). Liberalism’s domestic policies aren’t working quite the way they were supposed to? Acquaint them with Irving Kristol: “I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.”

Are they horrified by the results of Obama’s foreign policy? Let them study Churchill: “For five years I have talked to the House on these matters—not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet.” Do they wonder what happened to the virtue of courage? They can ponder Solzhenitsyn: “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.”

Does it sometimes seem no one is saying what is obviously true? Read Orwell: “We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” Does it sometimes seem no one is doing what is obviously right? Consider C. S. Lewis: “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise.”

So seize the day. Grasp the moment. Don’t let the collapse of the Obama presidency go to waste.

Indeed. Of course, some of us were noting this stuff in advance. And even trying to address fundamentals.

EUGENE VOLOKH: From The CDC On How Ebola Can Be Transmitted: “As has often been reported, Ebola apparently can’t be spread through the air by coughing or sneezing. But if infected sweat, mucus or saliva gets on doorknobs or countertops, the Ebola virus can be spread ‘for several hours’ by someone touching the surface and then touching their eyes, nose, mouth or an open cut. Presumably it can be spread by handshaking as well, if the infected person had gotten his saliva or mucus on his hands. Not terribly reassuring, sad to say.”

UPDATE: CDC Director: Fight Ebola Over There So We Don’t Have To Fight It Here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hear me talk about Ebola fears on Rex Murphy’s Cross-Country Checkup on the CBC here. I’m at about 1:26.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU RELY ON GOVERNMENT DATA: Baylen Linnekin looks inside a Washington, DC food desert—which features a Starbucks and a campus dining hall. And pomegranates. “A sign just off campus also noted the presence of a local weekend farmers market. Other nearby grocery options include a Walmart grocery store, located two miles from campus. Meanwhile, grocery delivery services like Peapod are available to bring food to those who prefer to order online—and who can’t or won’t go to the grocery store. If those options don’t suffice, the fact the area is also located next to two subway stops and at least one bus line means people in the area are mobile. One set of Catholic students, in fact, told my students that they often travel by subway to the Whole Foods at George Washington University to buy their groceries.”

Knoxville has a “food desert” with a Trader Joe’s.

CBC LISTENERS, I’ll be on Rex Murphy’s Cross Country Checkup in a few minutes, talking about Ebola and the U.S. mood.

VIRUSES EVERYWHERE THIS MONTH: The Unpatchable Malware That Infects USBs Is Now on the Loose.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: In light of new contagious disease threats, maybe we should get rid of handshakes.

Plus, a legacy opportunity for Obama!

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Don’t Fear The End Of Moore’s Law.

I REALLY DON’T FEEL THAT WE HAVE THE BEST PEOPLE IN CHARGE: Judge Drives Ebola Exposed Family To New Home, Attends Press Conference Wearing Same Shirt. “On Friday, while hazmat experts were working inside the apartment wearing Tyvek bio-hazard suits, Jenkins again was seen going in and out of the apartment while not even wearing a mask or gloves.”

HMM: Failing Sense of Smell May Predict Sooner Death. My sense of smell has actually improved somewhat over the past few years; I suppose it’s too much to hope that means I’m getting less likely to die.

MARRIOTT BUSTED FOR jamming customers’ portable hotspots to force them onto expensive hotel wifi.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Biggest threats to academic freedom, free speech coming from inside academia.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 514.