THOMAS FRIEDMAN, the New York Times columnist, doubles down on magical thinking.

Magical thinking is a Democrat specialty. It's also easy in the fantasy world in which they live....

AUTUMN LEAVES, INSTALLMENT VI: Today was a mostly rainy day, and the photos show it. Let's begin with the usual view from the deck:

The haze and high humidity from the earlier rains make this one a little less appealing that last week's photo, but the striking part is that the leaves are far fewer this week. Autumn struck with a vengeance mid-week.

Again, the chief difference is far fewer leaves than last week. It seemed like leaves were falling off green and hitting the ground brown.

The house view from down the pond path is the only one that doesn't seem dramatically different from last week, yet the house is clearly becoming more visible.

The tree line above the pond is clearly thinner, and the color changes are evident. Our neighbor's house is almost coming visible. By next week I expect it will, at least in part.

Here's the 'normal view' of the pond. Note the stair is clearly visible running up the hill (the cats use the stair rail as their highway to and from the pond) and the house roof is beginning to show behind the trees.

Last week's pictures are here.

AMERICA'S GHOST LEGIONS: idle men.

[T]his is a serious moral issue.... It is bizarre that the hardest-working country in the world should harbor a huge pool of able men whose lives are slowly being destroyed through idleness.

Here's the nut graf:

The death of work has ushered in additional costs at the personal and social levels that may be difficult to quantify but are easy to describe. These include the corrosive effects of prolonged idleness on personality and behavior, the loss of self-esteem and the respect of others that may attend a man’s voluntary loss of economic independence, and the loss of meaning and fulfillment that work demonstrably brings to so many (though admittedly not all) people. Thus, the great male flight from work may well have increased our nation’s burden of misery in an incalculable but nonetheless immediate manner. Should this come as a surprise? Hardly. The surprise would be if a social emasculation on this scale had increased the happiness of those concerned.

And that, my friends, is the Democrats' plan: government cheese.

It's not too late: VOTE!

ANOTHER INSANE DEMOCRAT IDIOT SELF-IDENTIFIES: Jared Kushner put Jamal Khashoggi on a hit list for the Saudis.

And I used to be proud to be a (now former) Texan....

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures 0.098% (1/1024) Victim Edition has published. My favorite is the photo gallery ...

... but there are so many others to choose from. Go see them all.

OH, MY: Two convicted Democrats seek political office while behind bars.

Did I just note that the Democrats have morphed from the Insane party to the Criminally Insane party? Why, yes. Yes I did.

IT'S THAT DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD THINGY: Video shows angry protesters hurl expletives at Nancy Pelosi during campaign stop.

Democrats were warned: "You're not going to like your new rules when they're applied to you."

THIS PHOTO of  'God watching' made the rounds of the internet the other day.

He looks horrified....

YOU EXPECTED SOMETHING DIFFERENT? Poverty in the U.S. was plummeting — until Lyndon Johnson declared war on it.

Link courtesy of Instapundit.

AMMO GRRRLL ON SOCIAL MEDIA: There is nothing social about it.

A GREAT IDEA: declare San Francisco a critical habitat for grizzly bears.

Except that no self-respecting bear would take a shit in the streets of San Francisco....

MORE ON Elizabeth Warren's DNA 'vindication'. It looks to me like the 'one drop rule' Democrats formerly used to exclude blacks is now used by Democrats to include Native Americans.

That said, does President Trump owe money to Warren’s favorite charity? I agree with Ben Shapiro: donate 1/1024th of $1 million — a little less than $1,000 — and call it a day.

JOBS, NOT MOBS: Once again President Trump has encapsulated the different aspirations of the two political parties.

RANDOM THOUGHT: The Democrat party has morphed from the Insane party to the Criminally Insane party.

A BIT LATE, PERHAPS, but here is the executive summary of the FBI's supplemental investigation into the Kavanaugh allegations.

What I found interesting were the comments, this one referencing the accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, in particular:

No one said to her: you signed a letter attacking President Trump’s border policies and were able to get the anti-Trump ACLU to publish it; you contacted an anti-Trump paper, the Washington Post, to make your charges; you turned first to Democrats who are sworn to “resist” – actually sabotage –the Trump presidency and his judicial nominees; and you accepted attorneys recommended by Democrats, who are activist Democrat, anti-Trump lawyers. Can we conclude, therefore, that there might be a political motive behind your decision to bring up these character-ruining accusations about a rough-housing you allegedly received 37 years ago when you and Kavanaugh were too young to even vote?

I've always believed she was no victim and was working with the Democrats to stop Kavanaugh from being the fifth conservative judge seated on the Supreme Court. And they all didn't care if they destroyed Kavanaugh's reputation in the process.

It was all about power and control for the Democrats.

I agree, and it would be very interesting for some enterprising journalist to dig much more deeply into her background.

But they won't; they're Democrat operatives as well....

DON'T GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE, and absolutely don't give a Democrat a chairmanship.

We've got to win this one, folks.

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE EFFIN' KIDDING: Woman arrested for taking in animals abandoned during Hurricane Florence without permit.

But they're not. Somewhere there must be a law that Nanny-State bureaucrats must be utterly bereft of common sense in order to be hired....

ELIZABETH WARREN has proved that she is approximately as Native American as the average cigar store Indian.

Elizabeth Warren is like the mother cat: the gift that keeps on giving. More here, here, here, and here.

TRULY SCARY: Conservative street artist places Maxine Waters’ head on ‘Halloween’ billboard.

Horror movie killer Michael Myers cannot compete with 'Mad Maxine'.

VOTER GUIDE from a red lady in a blue state. She's a Californian, but her advice applies in any state: vote Republican, and vote 'no'.