Good morning — Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day to our friends in Seattle, and Happy Columbus Day to everyone else! The holiday was established in 1906, 54 years before the discovery of archeological evidence proving that he was only the second (or third) European explorer to “discover” the Americas. It’s a wonder we still celebrate his accomplishment: he lost two of the three ships he set sail with in 1492, was later arrested for gross mismanagement of the Spanish settlement on Hispaniola, and insisted until his death that he’d actually landed in East Asia.

Long haul –> TPM’s Josh Marshall notes there’s an increasing likelihood we won’t know which party will control the Senate next year until December — or even January —  due to close races that could lead to runoffs in two states and a couple of possible independent winners who could caucus with either party. ALSO: While it looked like Republican Joni Ernst was pulling away from Democrat Bruce Braley in Iowa, according to the latest Des Moines Register poll, that race has now become a toss-up.

Deadly budget cuts –> Sam Stein reports for HuffPo that Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, says we would have a vaccine for Ebola by now if not for a series of cuts to the agency’s research budget. AND: The CDC confirmed a second case of Ebola: a health care worker who treated patient zero at a Dallas hospital. Reportedly, the nurse was wearing protective gear, but a so-far-unexplained “breach of protocol” occurred. Via: MoJo. AND: Laurie Garrett, author of a seminal book on public health systems, Betrayal of Trust, dissects “five myths” about Ebola in WaPo. ALSO: Michael Specter writes about Ebola’s “fear factor” in The New Yorker, noting that just “a few irrational decisions and some irresponsible statements” can have a major impact on a society.

Follow the money –> NYT reporter James Risen reports on the years-long effort to trace billions of dollars of missing cash sent from the US to Iraq in the early stages of the American occupation, a trail that led ultimately to a mysterious bunker in Lebanon.

“Deadly force, in black and white” –> An analysis by ProPublica‘s Ryan Gabrielson, Ryann Grochowski Jones and Eric Sagara finds that “young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater.”

How’s that supposed to work? –> Texas Attorney General (and leading gubernatorial candidate) Greg Abbott filed a brief claiming that his state’s ban on same-sex marriage reduces out-of-wedlock births, according to Lauren McGaughy of The Houston Chronicle. AND: Alaska will put that… theory to the test after becoming the latest state to see its marriage discrimination law declared unconstitutional. Steve Quinn reports for Reuters.

You get what you pay for –> CNET reports that a comedy club in Barcelona, Spain, is experimenting with the use of facial recognition software to charge patrons on a per-laugh basis.