A THOUGHTFUL AND SIGNIFICANT CRITIQUE OF MODERN LIBERALISM: The Washington Post is not normally where you expect statements like this: “Green energy is not cost-competitive with traditional energy and won’t be for years. So it can’t work without either taxpayer subsidies, much of which accrue to ‘entrepreneurs’ such as Gore, or higher prices for fossil energy — the brunt of which is borne by people of modest means.” Editorial writer Charles Lane is the author. Liberals would do well to follow his example.

READ’EM AND WEEP! SEN. TOM COBURN’S 2012 WASTEBOOK IS OUT: Nobody knows the lunacy of federal spending better than this Oklahoma senator. Here’s the 100 worst examples he and his investigators have found this year, like Martian pizza!

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A reader emails: “I don’t know your policy of commenting on your helpers’ posts, but in my opinion, the Mars Pizza (Mark Tapscott at 7:09 today) thing is a misplaced criticism in Senator Coburn’s report. I’m only now (in light of some recent emergency preparation work) coming to realize some of the food challenges related to Mars travel, or any travel beyond Low Earth Orbit. The military has only been interested in storing food for on the order of a couple years. The Meals Ready-to-Eat packs have about a three year shelf life, and are only meant as short-term rations for on the order of a week. In a Mars Direct scenario, it’s possible that the crew would need to eat food on the return to Earth which was sent to Mars over four years before departure (2 launch windows previously, or 52 months) which has its own set of challenges. I’m not sure that there’s a good response to this, though the pithiest would be ‘If Tom Coburn is worried about spending $947,000 a year on space food research, he must be really concerned about spending $3,000,000,000 or more a year on the Space Launch System, which NASA’s own research shows that the SLS makes exploration more expensive.'”

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): If you read this, it’s clear that Coburn’s complaint is largely based on the research being premature, since no human missions are in the offing any time soon.

DID OBAMA BAILOUT GM OR GM-CHINA? Autobailouttruth.org has a troubling new spot up that focuses on the fact GM’s own chairman says seven out of every 10 cars his company builds these days comes off a foreign assembly line. And GM plans to move more of its operations to China. The spot dovetails closely with the Truth About Cars report linked earlier today by Ed Driscoll.

THIS IS WHAT KEEPS ROMNEY UP NIGHTS – VICE PRESIDENT JOEY GIGGLES WINS OBAMA’S SECOND TERM: Only in an alternative universe, you say? I learned long ago to listen closely when Philip Klein talks.

POLITICAL APPOINTEES DO WHAT POLITICAL APPOINTEES DO: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich explains in no uncertain terms to CBS’s Nora O’Donnell, Charlie Rose and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm the facts of life about why a politically appointed spy chief like James Clapper would bob and weave to protect his boss in the Oval Office. I’m no Newt acolyte but the man can be devastating, as is seen in this clip from Right Scoop.

IS IT REALLY CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IF THE ODDS ARE REMOTE THAT YOU WILL BE ARRESTED? Oct. 7 was Pulpit Freedom Sunday and more than 1,500 Protestant preachers across the country purposely broke the law, hoping that at least one of them would be prosecuted. Their purpose is to get an IRS reg into court where they expect it will be struck down as an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment. Usually it’s the Left doing this kind of thing, but here we have folks on the Right intentionally breaking the law.

FORD HELPED MOST BY GM, CHRYSLER BAILOUTS? Bet you didn’t see this coming! A new Rasmussen survey of consumer sentiment finds that a clear majority of those interviewed are more favorably disposed to buying a Ford product because the famous automaker did NOT go hat-in-hand to Washington for a bailout in 2008, as did General Motors and Chrysler. Since it’s about my two favorite issues, cars and politics, I, of course, have an opinion on these developments!

VEEP DEBATE THOUGHTS: Vice-President Joey Giggles did himself no favors with constant laughing at Ryan, and may have done his boss some damage with his condescending finger-pointing and shouting at moderator. And Rep. Paul Ryan displayed an admirable level of composure, equanimity and grace under pressure.

PRIVATIZING THE SPACE PROGRAM IS A GREAT IDEA, BUT USING IT FOR CRONY CAPITALISM? NOT SO MUCH: The Washington Examiner finds problems, questions in NASA’s insider deal for a hefty Obama contributor.

MAYBE REWARDING SENIOR EXECS FOR SPENDING MORE TELLS US SOMETHING ABOUT WHY WASHINGTON SPENDING IS OUT OF CONTROL? More revelations from The Washington Examiner about the Department of Veterans Affairs, a federal bureaucracy with a management culture structured to spend as many tax dollars as possible. Meanwhile, nearly a million vets’ health and disability claims go unfinished for more than four months!

DOES REPORTING ON GOVERNMENT WASTE MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE? Well, The Washington Examiner Watchdog Team has in recent weeks put the spotlight on outrageous spending by USDA and VA on employee conferences. And people on the Hill are beginning to demand scalps. And, oh by the way, the newspaper is just getting started in reporting, for example, how federal bureaucrats throughout the government routinely use tax-funded conferences as vacation planning tools.

THIS GUY PROBABLY DOESN’T HAVE A “CO-EXIST” BUMPER STICKER ON HIS CAR: Oklahoma authorities have arrested an Illinois man found with materials and instructions for making molotov cocktails, and a list of 48 Oklahoma churches he planned to bomb. The New York Times, et. al. have already dispatched investigative teams to Oklahoma to assess this latest threat to freedom of religion, thought and expression in the Bible Belt, right?

OBAMA HAS ONLY HIMSELF TO BLAME FOR BEING OUT OF SPARRING PRACTICE: Dana Milbank of The Washington Post nails it: “For the past four years, he has worked assiduously to avoid being questioned, maintaining a regal detachment from the media and other sources of dissent and skeptical inquiry.” More here.

AND IN THIS CORNER IS WASHINGTON POST BLOGGER ERIK WEMPLE: Who I challenged this morning to explain exactly what he thinks The Washington Examiner “over-promised and under-delivered” with its recent special report – The Obama You Don’t Know.

UPDATED WITH IRS RESPONSE! SOMETIMES WHAT THEY DON’T SAY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT THEY DO SAY: Cause of Action, an independent non-profit legal activist group based in Washington, D.C., filed a Freedom of Information Act request in March asking for documents on presidential requests for tax returns of individuals or businesses. COA says that what the IRS did not say in its denial of that FOIA suggests President Obama has indeed sought copies of tax returns for somebody. Find out what happened next here.

WHY WOULDN’T EPA TALK ABOUT OFFICIALS USING SECRET EMAILS TO DO PUBLIC BUSINESS? A Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) lawsuit in federal court demands documents on what appears to be a long-standing practice at the highest levels of the agency. An agency spokesman declines to comment. This could be the most important FOIA litigation in decades.

AND YOU THOUGHT THE GUY IN THE TUB WAS A WASTREL: Veterans Department Inspector-General pretty much ran the table in scathing report pointing out ways VA officials wasted tax dollars at the two “Patton parody” conferences: $16,500 for “Happy Face” videos of bureaucrats doing karaoke, $184,000 for breakfast sandwiches for bureaucrats being reimbursed for meals, $20,000 for bottles of water, and on and on and on and ….

HERE’S HOW THE MSM WILL COVER WEDNESDAY’S OBAMA/ROMNEY DEBATE: Peter Roff, a U.S. News & World Report contributing editor who also happens to be among the best columnists around these days, has the details, including how Obama seemed to be floating a foot or so off the ground as he first took to the stage.

IF WALL STREET BANKERS HATE OBAMA SO MUCH, HOW COME THEY’RE SHOWERING HIM WITH CAMPAIGN CASH? Check out the top five organization employees giving to Obama, as compiled by CNS.com and OpenSecrets.org.

WELL, THAT’S EMBARRASSING! Seems I mis-read the CNS graph regarding Wall Street contributions. Had I read it correctly, the headline here would have said WALL STREET BANKERS LOVE ROMNEY SO MUCH, THEY’RE SHOWERING HIM WITH CAMPAIGN CASH. For the record, Obama’s top five include: University of California, Microsoft, Google, Harvard and the U.S. government. My apologies to Obama, Romney, CNS.com, OpenSecrets.org, Glenn Reynolds and, most importantly, Instapundit’s readers. And my thanks to my good friend at the Sunlight Foundation, Bill Allison, for so diplomatically pointing out that I royally, totally, and I do mean completely, screwed this one up.

IF 2,100 PEOPLE HAVE TO BE TRAINED TO IMPLEMENT IT, maybe, just maybe, a collective bargaining agreement is too complicated? Not only did the Veterans Department have to train that many of its employees on the agency’s latest deal with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), more than two dozen training conferences were convened across the country, at a cost in excess of $5 million. The Washington Examiner’s Mark Flatten has yet another government conferences expose.

WATCHDOGS SAY WATERS PUSHED ETHICS LIMITS: The California Democrat hired her grandson, paid him well as her chief of staff. So House Ethics Committee reproves the grandson?

AND THEN THEY WONDER WHY NOBODY BELIEVES THEM! Two major stories this week that the elite media either ignored or buried – the coming death of Electric Vehicles and how liberals, including Obama, corrupted the noble cause of affordable housing for the poor.

REMEMBER WHEN JIMMY CARTER WAS BLOWING REAGAN OUT OF THE WATER? Powerline’s John Hinderaker offers a timely reminder that something very similar to what is happening now with the Gallup Poll and President Obama occurred at a similar point in the 1980 campaign. “Americans are by no means infallible, but are they really dumb enough, or self-destructive enough, to want another four years of Barack Obama’s failures,” Hinderaker asks. Me, neither.

CALL OFF THE ELECTION, OBAMA HAS ALREADY WON: University of Virginia’s Center for Politics declares the presidential race all but over, with President Obama sure to win at least 290 electoral votes, leaving Republican Mitt Romney gasping for air with six weeks left before election day. We’re not sure but it appears Professor Larry Sabato and colleagues aren’t breathing a sign of relief in noting Democrats will likely keep the Senate and “claw closer” but not quite retake the House majority.

YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN ME! That’s what candidate Obama told an ACORN assembly while campaigning for president in 2007. The Washington Examiner’s Charlie Spiering has the previously unreleased video. Among the many gems is this one: “Once I was elected there wasn’t a campaign that ACORN worked on down in Springfield that I wasn’t right there with you and since I’ve been in the United States Senate, I’ve always been a partner with ACORN as well.”