A NEW BLOG DEVOTED TO HISTORIC ADVENTURE FICTION. (Via Divas For Geeks).

SWEDEN DEVELOPS “a child-oriented masculinity.”

A DREAM THAT IS UNLIKELY TO COME TRUE: Speaker Of The House Heath Shuler?

A BUNCH OF $9.99 VIDEOGAMES for PSP.

REASON TV: Free the ‘Shine! Why It’s Finally Time to Legalize Liquor. Hey, look what the homebrewing explosion did for beer.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: The Hill: New details emerge in ethics probe of fundraising, vote on Wall Street bill.

CHRISTINE ROMER: STIMULUS FAILED. “Dr. Christina Romer’s economic speech today, marking her last speech as an administration official, is an admission that the fiscal stimulus package that she helped craft has failed.” The obvious solution: More of the same!

UPDATE: Recovery Summer: The Movie!

ILLINOIS POLITICS: Rep. Phil Hare Files FEC Complaint Against Veterans’ Group.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: GOP Needs To Offer A Plan For Governing. “Republican leadership has yet to come forward with a definitive plan for governing if voters return them to the majority in either the House or Senate, or both. The Examiner is told such a plan is coming in late September. The sooner, the better: The party’s future depends on it. So far there are only tiny green shoots here and there now, like pledges to put cameras in House Rules Committee meetings and provide a 72-hour period for the public to read the final version of a bill before the House votes on it.”

UPDATE: The Joe Miller Lesson Applied to the GOP Congressional Leadership. “The lesson of Joe Miller’s victory over Lisa Murkowski should be a wake-up call to establishment Republicans that the political plates beneath the crust of partisan politics have shifted. Conservatives are done voting for candidates just because they have an ‘R’ beside their names — even if they’re entrenched incumbents.”

FRUITS OF THE MAN-CESSION: Evidence of a New “Reverse Gender Wage Gap.”

DAVE KOPEL: Obama Is Too A Christian. “Coulter is accurate in calling Jeremiah Wright ‘a racist nut.’ However, that does not prove that Wright (and by extension Obama, to whatever extent Obama believes in Wright’s theology) is not a Christian. Some practitioners of ‘liberation theology’ (including the black liberation theology variant) may simply be Marxists looking for some broadly-appealing rhetoric to add to their political program. Other practitioners, however, may be sincerely and otherwise-orthodox Christians who truly believe in both Christianity and Marxism, and in the liberation theology fusion of the two. . . . Similarly, I would suggest that many of the pastors in slave states in antebellum America who taught that slavery was legitimate because of the slaves’ inherent racial inferiority were also sincere Christians, albeit grossly mistaken in their teachings on this matter.”

And — to take things beyond the Obama question — on a similar moral plane. In fact, if you look at a Marxist Utopia — say, Cuba — what you’ll see is basically a plantation. At the top, you’ve got the Massa and his family — Fidel, Raul, et al. — followed by various layers of overseers — the Communist Party apparat, the secret police — and House Negroes — e.g., the state-controlled media — all living off the surplus labor of the Field Negroes, whose produce is disposed of not according to their own desires (that would be capitalism!) but according to their betters’. This, we’re told, is for the best, since they aren’t smart enough to make their own decisions anyway, and the Massa looks after them with food, housing, and health care. Slaveholders even defended their system as more humane and less exploitative than atomistic capitalism, conveniently ignoring the role of the lash, just as apologists for Marxism conveniently ignore the role of the gulag.

MARK HEMINGWAY: Will the media call the Silver Spring/Discovery Channel gunman an environmental terrorist? “The question is, to what extent will the media note that this violence was spurred by a radical left-wing environmental agenda, or that eco-terrorism is not a new phenomenon and is arguably the America’s biggest domestic terrorist threat?”

DAVE KOPEL: Obama import ban on rifles confirmed.

SURROGACY AND REPRODUCTIVE TOURISM IN INDIA. “You can outsource just about any work to India these days, including making babies.”

POST-SANDRA BULLOCK, JESSE JAMES HOOKS UP WITH KAT VON D.

“Kat is totally into him,” a friend of Kat’s told PopEater’s Naughty But Nice Rob in August.

“Jesse just has this way with women that makes you melt. Plus, Kat feels bad for him. He’s the most hated man in America, after what he did to Sandra, which she finds kind of sexy.”

Kind of . . . sexy. Okay. . . .

YOUR POLITICAL CLASS AT WORK: Deval Patrick on Beck rally: “It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t.” (Via Divas For Geeks).

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Gun-wielding ecoterrorist calls for reduction in human population, gets wish.

WHEN STALKING GOES WRONG: Calif. Doctor Gets Stuck in Boyfriend’s Chimney, Dies. “A doctor involved in an ‘on-again, off-again’ relationship apparently tried to force her way into her boyfriend’s home by sliding down the chimney, police said Tuesday. Her decomposing body was found there three days later.”

DECONSTRUCTING JAMES LEE’S ENVIRONMENTALIST CLAPTRAP: “Of course, the Squirrels. That’s such a childish list of animals, and not just because of ‘Froggies.’ These are the animals in a children’s picture book or Noah’s Ark toy. . . . He hates everything that human beings have produced. It’s all filth. Even the ideas. He gets his ideas from a gorilla.”

Well, and Al Gore.

JACK SHAFER: The L.A. Times was right to publish its expose on teachers. “The Times has done its readers a great service by exposing Duffy, Weingarten, and Nunez as enemies of open inquiry, vigorous debate, critical thinking, and holding authority accountable—essentially the cognitive arts that students are supposed to be taught in schools. That Duffy, Weingarten, and Nunez don’t bother to mount a serious defense of Los Angeles teachers indicates they have no case. Their only job—and they know it—is to protect the jobs of the members of their unions. . . . If you can’t grade the graders, whom can you grade?”

DON’T OVERDO the WD-40.

MARKDOWNS ON cellphones and accessories.

TAX CUTS: An Obama September Surprise? But after all the anti-tax-cut talk, wouldn’t it just look desperate?

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I think your concise comment on the electoral impact of an October tax surprise is about right. Perhaps it helps to do a thought experiment – What if Republicans, in September 2006, sensing electoral disaster because of the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, had, led by President Bush, suddenly about-faced and begun to withdraw troops? Would they have avoided colossal defeat? I suspect the results would have been worse, actually, since moderates would have been largely unimpressed and conservatives outraged by the treasonous behavior.

As strange as it may sound, I think this election is ultimately about the integrity of the Democratic Party, though it may seem unfair to use that term when discussing politicians collectively. The Democrats misled the Americans, posing as moderates in 2008 but governing like radicals once they won. The use of reconciliation to pass health care reform, clearly against the will of their constituents, only dug the hole deeper. For a party that has proven itself as untrustworthy as the Democrats have a cynical embracing of the opposition’s agenda at the last moment might turn a looming disaster into a super-duper disaster squared. After all, mightn’t voters decide that if they are going to get the Republican agenda, they might as well have the Republicans implementing it?

Indeed.

FRED HOYLE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Red Rain, Comets, And Extraterrestrials.

ANALYST: OIL SHOULD BE $10/BARREL.

STUDY: More Than 1 Million Electric Vehicle Chargers Coming to US By 2015.

ALL IT TAKES IS A DEPRESSION: Number of illegal immigrants in US now declining.

WHAT IT TAKES to shut down a botnet.

ECO-TERRORISM? Gunman who took hostages at Discovery Channel inspired by Al Gore. “Lee appears to have posted environmental and population-control demands online, saying humans are ruining the planet and that Discovery should develop programs to sound the alarm. . . . Lee said he experienced an ‘awakening’ when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’”

Won’t Al Gore please stop it with his extremist, eliminationist rhetoric before he inspires still more violence?

UPDATE: Reader Lois Brenner sends this:

A manifesto posted on a Web site registered to a person named James Lee, who gave a post office box in Canada as his address, lists several demands to the Discovery Channel, saying the station “MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet.” It lists 11 demands about airing shows that would promote curbing the plant’s population growth, finding solutions for global warming and dismantling “the dangerous US world economy.” . ..

“All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions,” it reads. “In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.”

The manifesto was published on http://SavethePlanetProtest.com. Law enforcement sources said they believe the site was operated by the same person who is inside the building. Lee has lived in Hawaii, California and the D.C. area.

“Parasitic human infants” — well, that’s the logical conclusion of the “deep ecology” view. Eliminationist rhetoric indeed. Brenner also comments: “If this is more zeitgeist tie-in publicity, Franzen has a genius working for him. By the way, the book stinks.” Oh, well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hot Air has a roundup and notes a double standard. Plus this:

Speaking of lefty bloggers, Think Progress blames Lee’s madness partly on rhetoric from … groups opposed to illegal immigration. Even liberal Adam Serwer of the American Prospect is embarrassed by their post.

Nice try, guys . . . .

MORE: Another roundup here, including this: “On his Yuku forum Lee lamented the fact that Al Gore wasn’t involved in his ’08 protest of Discovery.”

And reader Hastings Walton writes: “If humans are so bad, why hasn’t he killed himself already? Hypocrite.” Yeah, they never seem to follow their humans-should-be-extinct logic to its obvious conclusion.

STILL MORE: Suspect James Lee Rails in Manifesto Against ‘Filthy Human Babies.’

FINALLY: Police Shoot Discovery Channel Gunman, Hostages Safe.

BEDBUGS — AN ECO-PROBLEM? Reader Tom Brosz writes: “I’ll tell you where at least some of the bedbug problem comes from. Used to be years ago hotels washed their linen in steaming hot water, and everybody got fresh crisp sheets every day when they stayed there. Nowadays, it’s all ‘green,’ and cold water washing at hotels is the rule of the day, along with places that don’t change your sheets unless you ask. I hope to God they still change them between customers, but sometimes I wonder.” Those old laundry customs were designed to limit the spread of bedbugs (and other gross things) but people have gotten complacent, I guess. . . .

A ONE-DAY SALE on radar detectors. After my bleg a while back, I never did get around to buying one. This one’s a lot cheaper than a ticket, though.

MICHAEL BARONE: Down with Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor. “Big Unit policies are not a good fit for a country that has grown out of the wreckage the Big Units made of things in the 1970s. They freeze poorly performing incumbents in place and they don’t provide the breathing room for small units to start up and grow.”

GALLUP: Voters trust GOP more on, well, everything. “Well, okay, not everything. Democrats still get more trust from voters on the environment by 23 points in this latest Gallup survey, and health care comes in at a virtual tie. Since those are near the bottom of the electorate’s priority list in the midterms, it hardly matters. Republicans have taken the lead on every other issue on the radars of voters, including a stunning eleven point lead on the economy, a traditional Democratic strength.”

Plus this: “It took Republicans twelve years to dissipate their trust and credibility with voters after taking control of Congress, and six years of one-party governance in Washington. It has taken Democrats less than a third of both time frames to utterly destroy their standing with voters on nearly every issue. That’s quite an achievement, and impressive in its own way.”

FRANKENMASCOT: All The Cereal Mascots In One.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Speech: Why Didn’t They Call Rewrite?

AMERICA: Heading Toward Greece?

BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO WHEN THERE ARE YALE MEN OUT THERE? How to date Harvard men.

UPDATE: Reader William Tanner writes: “I went to Yale from 1988 to 1992 — we had t-shirts that said 20 years of women at Yale. What’s next, men at Harvard? I always thought that was funny, and now I realize it was true.”

HOW GM WILL USE FEAR to sell you a Chevy Volt.

FASTER, PLEASE: A toothpaste-like gel that can heal wounds six times faster than normal.

BEDBUG UPDATE: Itchy bites: the least of the bedbug epidemic’s threats.

Plus, Toronto Film Festival Threatened By Bedbugs.

DUELING RALLIES: Labor and liberal groups to hold Oct. 2 rally on Mall to counter Beck, Tea Party.

THOUGHTS ON REFORMING LEGAL EDUCATION.

UNEXPECTEDLY! Private Jobs Tumble. “The U.S. manufacturing sector grew faster than expected in August but private employers unexpectedly cut jobs, showing the economic recovery still faces major headwinds.”

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Novel nanotechnology collaboration leads to breakthrough in cancer research. Faster, please.

IN THE MAIL: From Brendan Brazier, Thrive Fitness: The Vegan-Based Training Program for Maximum Strength, Health, and Fitness.

JACOB SULLUM: ALAN SIMPSON AND THE SACRED COW. “The reaction to the former senator’s comments on Social Security shows he’s right. . . . Just three entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—account for two-fifths of federal spending, representing 10 percent of GDP. Without reform, they are expected to consume half of the budget and about 20 percent of GDP by 2050. . . . Social Security is neither a pension fund nor a means-tested assistance program for the needy. It is a pay-as-you-go system of transfer payments that takes money from relatively poor workers and gives it to relatively affluent retirees.”

THE HILL: Business groups plan Labor Day blitz against Senate Dems, candidates.

ARNE DUNCAN’S INVITATION JUST THE START OF THE PROBLEM:

So U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan invited every Education Department employee to attend Rev. Al Sharpton’s Glenn Beck counter-rally. As David Boaz explained in the Examiner, it was a ”highly inappropriate” thing to do, pushing people who are supposed to serve all Americans to support one side of a “political debate.” But that’s just the most obvious problem with Duncan’s weekend doings.

Perhaps just as troubling as his rally-prodding is that Duncan declared education “the civil rights issue of our generation” at Sharpton’s event. This only about a year after helping to kill an education program widely supported by many of the people he and Sharpton insist they want to empower. I’m talking, of course, about Washington, DC’s, Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher program that was proven effective. But the heck with success — Duncan and President Obama let the union-hated program die.

The cause for concern, though, doesn’t end there. According to the Examiner, an Education Department spokeswoman tried to gloss over the boss’s out-of-bounds play by suggesting that Sharpton’s rally was but a mere “back-to-school event.” Sound familiar?

Is there a bigger embarrassment for the Administration than Duncan? Well, probably . . . .

POLLING: Bad news for Democrats: Ohio voters long for Bush. Yeah, with every passing day the Bush Era is looking more and more like a golden age . . . .

Related: Why is it even close in West Virginia? Two words: ‘Barack Obama.’

“Miss Me Yet?”

UPDATE: A reader sends this “Don’t Get Cocky” advice. It’s worth reading.

A Plea From A Moderate Republican

The chest-thumping that is prevalent today among conservative pundits is justified by polling data that seems to spell doom for the Democrats in November. Still, I can’t help but feel like I’m having déjà vu. And you know what they say about those who don’t learn from history.

In the last few years of the Bush administration, the President’s poll numbers crept ever downward. Democrats in politics and the press rejoiced that Americans were finally “waking up” to the fact that they had been right about Bushitler all along. They boasted loud and often that Republicans were losing the country because of their unpopular decisions to go to war in Iraq, establish new national security protocols, lobby for Social Security reform, stress border security, etc. Liberals started at the ideological position that those policies were immoral (if not illegal), and when Bush’s poll numbers dropped, they inferred causality. It never occurred to them that Bush’s poll numbers were dropping because many on the right didn’t think his policies went far enough. Conservatives wanted him to put more emphasis on border security, not less; they wanted to see a more aggressive approach to entitlement reform, not a Medicare prescription boondoggle; they wanted a comprehensive immigration solution that started with border security first, not blanket amnesty. The list could go on. The left, especially liberal journalists, just assumed that their criticisms of the right were being validated by the greater populace with each and every poll. It was wrong at the time, and it’s the main reason that so many of them today can’t understand what happened to their “mandate.”

Conservatives are making the same mistakes right now.

Obama’s poll numbers are dropping and more people than ever are self-identifying as Republicans. Naturally, conservatives believe this means that the public has finally “woken up” and decided that Obama and the Democrats are closet socialists hell-bent on “eroding the bedrock of American prosperity.” They started at the ideological position that the stimulus was a mistake, that health care reform was an overreach, , that the auto industry bailouts were a disaster, that we have to win in Afghanistan at all costs, etc. Every time Obama’s approval rating drops another point, they infer validation that more and more people are seeing the light. It doesn’t occur to them that his poll number are (among other reasons) dropping because liberals are angry that Obama/Reid/Pelosi haven’t worked harder to advance the progressive agenda. Liberals disapprove of the fact that that Obama settled for Obamacare instead of embracing a true, single-payer system; because they watered down financial oversight instead of going for the corporate jugular; because they escalated the war in Afghanistan instead of forcing the new government to sink or swim on its own. The list could go on.

You’re probably asking, “What about independents identifying as Republican? That’s true validation, right?” My answer would be, where else are Independents supposed to go? Their affiliation shift is a protest, and a fickle one at that. Right now, people are unhappy with the present course, specifically when it comes to national fiscal policy. If Republicans make great gains in the November elections, which it seems like they will, they need to govern with perspective and humility. If they mistake their electoral success for a “mandate” to challenge social norms, they’ll be swept out of office again soon. Ironically, the loss of independents from the Republican coalition over the next couple of years would probably provide the boost Obama needs to win reelection in 2012.

If in two years, conservatives are scratching their heads and saying, “What happened to our movement,” they’ll have only themselves to blame.

Humility and perspective are the most underrated commodities in modern politics. Just because people are trending Republican at the moment, it doesn’t mean that they’re particularly conservative. Every time I read a story about how the conservative death knell was greatly exaggerated in 2006 and 2008, or how independents are finally coming back into the conservative fold, I feel like there’s no doubt the right will screw this up again. Conservatism isn’t really back in vogue. Anti-incumbency is. And it will be again when the Republicans are back in charge. You know, déjà vu and all that.

Yes, the polls are proof that the public doesn’t like what Obama and the Congressional Democrats are doing. It would be a grave mistake to interpret it as love for the Republicans. That love must be earned, if it is to exist at all.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jeff Techentin writes:

I don’t disagree with the empirical points your reader makes. However, the danger for Republicans is the same as it always has been: that in office, they begin to act indistinguishably from Democrats. Thus I think this election cycle presents a unique opportunity, one where Republicans could elect a number of representatives who pay more than lipservice to limited government, who believe that the notion of restoring power to the people who have ceded it to the government is a meaningful one, and who are unwilling to “give to get” with other people’s money. There isn’t just a groundswell against what Obama and the congressional Democrats have done, there’s a growing sense that we have to change the way things are done from the bottom up.

Electing folks who’ve been baptized in the tea party movement is the only way for the GOP to sustain itself as a political party. If the “job” our Congress is to perform is to dole out goodies to the public, you might as well hire Democrats to do it, since they’ll do with with élan and panache. Why bother having a GOP at all, when its only role is to be the one to complain petulantly about the particularities of the largesse? Democrats can do that just fine, too.

Better to have a real alternative, a group that would be devoted to allowing people to pursue their own happiness rather than living on the indulgences of their neighbors, and to enjoy that happiness once they’ve achieved it. Will it sustain a majority beyond this election cycle? I can’t begin to predict. But I’d like to see it try.

And reader David Gulliver comments:

The primary difference between 2006 and 2010 is that more Americans self identify as “conservative” than “liberal” and have for many years. It is not about party. It is about philosophy. I believe 2006 was correctly the result of conservatives giving up on the Republican Party. However, I do not think for a moment that 2010 will be about liberals giving up on the Democratic Party.

Go back to 1994: the Clintons and the Democratic Congress were moving full steam with a liberal agenda. Conservatives, not Republicans, revolted. Clinton triangulated and spent his final 6 years as a moderate. There was no mass defection of the liberal base from the Democratic Party. The most absolutely disenfranchised liberals who voted for Nader were a small percentage of the vote – granted, it was enough to make Bush v Gore happen, but that 5% of fringe voters exists almost every election year and was more a reflection of Bush and Gore themselves than of the conservative vs liberal split.

The reality is that America wants conservatives – and Republicans will win or lose based on how well they fill that role.

Stay tuned. And reader George Bednekoff emails:

I believe that the federal system allows Americans across the political spectrum to get along in a politically diverse country, but only if the size and role of government is relatively small at the national level. With more government functions at the state and local level, voters in different regions can agree to disagree. As an example, Massachusetts chose to have lots of government intervention in their medical insurance market and their choice has very little impact on my life in Texas. However, expand similar government intervention in health insurance to the national level, Obamacare, and political debate is elevated to 1850s level of divisiveness. A Republican congressional majority could help turn down the heat of American politics if they resist the urge to make a federal case of everything. They need to learn from their mistakes in the Terri Schiavo case, No Child Left Behind, TSA stupidity, the TARP bailout slush fund, and reckless earmarking.

Indeed.

MORE: Reader Michael Kennedy writes:

Glenn, one short comment. A lot of us over the years thought that, if the country ever actually got a taste of what leftist rule was like, it would scare the wits out of them. The trouble was that nobody would run such a risk in spite of the grumbling about RINOs and all. Then, it happened !

We were right. Now, maybe we can keep the GOP honest with tea party people on the local committees.

Let’s hope.

RADLEY BALKO: Another Drug Raid Gone Bad.

RETURN OF THE REAGAN DEMOCRATS:

Of all the groups in the Democratic orbit, it is labor that has assumed the most demanding role in this year’s midterm elections: keeping the white working class from flooding into the Republican column.

“When our canvassers call on our members on their doorsteps, they hear Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly in the background,” says Dan Heck, who heads a massive union-sponsored program in Ohio devoted to persuading its members to vote this November for candidates who would mightily displease Beck and O’Reilly.

Despite Harold Meyerson’s spin in the Post, I don’t think the Democrats’ policies have been exactly attuned to the needs of the white working class, so it’s going to be a pretty stiff game of catch-up between now and November . . . .

HOW TO DISCOURAGE BURGLARS.

THE JEDI PATH: A Report From Comic-Con. Sith cheerleaders?

REASON TV NAMES THE NANNY OF THE MONTH: Quincy, Illinois Police Chief Rob Copley!

CHICAGOBOYZ: I Think I See What Glenn Beck Is Doing. “He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence.”

CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER: Jennifer Rubin and Maureen Dowd agree on Obama. It’s the end times!

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: House Travel Stipends Probed. “Congressional investigators are questioning a half-dozen lawmakers for possibly misspending government funds meant to pay for overseas travel, according to people familiar with the matter.”

HURRICANE KATRINA and the myth of “superlative reporting.” “Five years on, it’s instructive to recall how extreme and over the top the reporting was from New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath; it’s revealing to revisit what journalists said and wrote.”

What the press found superlative about its Katrina reporting was the realization — very comforting post-RatherGate — that if they all agreed on a storyline and pushed it, they could still move the polls despite the alternative media. That the reporting was crap didn’t matter at all.

CHANGE: Home Values Fell 16% in 2008, But Property Taxes Rose 4.2%.

BRAD SCHAEFFER: Glenn Beck Is Bad For Al Sharpton’s Business.

CHANGE: Federal spending rises a record 16% in 2009, Census Bureau says. “The rise in spending was the largest since the Census Bureau began compiling the data in 1983. The Washington region was among the biggest beneficiaries of the government’s spending.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Iraq Through The Looking Glass. “Perhaps Obama’s ennui arises from the impossibility of squaring his circle. How could an erstwhile fierce critic of Iraq — as well as his diplomatic team (e.g., Biden with his loud wish to trisect Iraq, and Hillary Clinton with her ’suspension of disbelief’)—convince us that Iraq was a ‘remarkable chapter’?”

Plus this: “The truth about Iraq is that, for all the tragedy and the loss, the U.S. military performed a miracle. After nearly seven years, a constitutional government endures in that country. It is too often forgotten that all 23 of the writs for war passed by the Congress in 2002 — from enforcing the Gulf I resolutions and stopping the destruction of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, to preventing the Iraqi state promotion of terrorism, ending suicide bounties on the West Bank, and stopping Iraq from invading or attacking neighbors or trying to acquire WMD — were met and satisfied by the U.S. military. It is also too often forgotten that, as a result, Libya gave up its WMD program; Dr. Khan’s nuclear franchise was shut down; Syria left Lebanon; and American troops in Saudi Arabia, put there as protection against Saddam, were withdrawn.”

ZOMBIE: What’s The Matter With Texas?

ADVICE TO DEMOCRATS, FROM JAMES TARANTO: “Don’t call it ‘extending the Bush tax cuts.’ Call it ‘repealing the Bush tax increase.’ This would be entirely accurate: Taxes are going up pursuant to legislation enacted by a Republican Congress and signed by Bush.”

CHANGE: As drug violence escalates, entire length of US-Mexico border to be patrolled by unmanned drones.

ED DRISCOLL: Frank Rich and Katie Couric illustrate The Five Stages of MSM Grief.

TOM BLUMER: It’s The Spending, Stupid. “Federal spending is out of control. Even the nominal spending and deficit reductions claimed by the Congressional Budget Office aren’t real.”

L.A. TIMES: Obama speech: Official end to U.S. combat in Iraq, but so many But’s.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Is ‘adaptive reuse’ the secret to responding creatively to extended old age?

In 1955, a 50-year-old American could expect, on average, to live to be about 75. By 2005, that number had jumped to 81, with a significant improvement in health and vitality. (Unlike statistics for life expectancy at birth, these numbers do not reflect changes in infant mortality or other deaths before age 50.) Even more striking, the chances that a 50 year old would live past 80 rose from a mere 37 percent to 58 percent—a new norm.

So why aren’t we celebrating?

Well, I am. But read the whole thing. And I have some related thoughts here.

SOMETIMES THE PAST really is a foreign country.

NICK SCHULZ: Is Obama a Chicago-style pol? If only.

ROB PORT: Joe Miller’s primary victory illustrates problem with GOP. “During an election cycle in which its clear that the American electorate wants change, you would think that the Republicans would embrace change within their own party. At a time when Americans are sick and tired of the status quo in Washington DC, Miller’s victory in Alaska represents voters demanding that change with their votes. What business do national Republicans have being hostile toward the candidate Republican voters in Alaska voted to represent them in the election? That there is apparent hostility speaks to the fact that Republicans still aren’t getting it.”

Hey, Murkowski was an insider, and part of a dynasty. National GOP folks like that. And this is why I like seeing Tea Party activists take over the party from the ground up. All those precinct-chair and state-committee things really matter, and theyll matter more over coming years.

UPDATE: Tea Party Wins One In Alaska.

THE RULING CLASS: The Hill: Wealthy lawmakers increased their riches as U.S. economy sputtered in 2009.

JERRY POURNELLE: “I do not think it impossible that a year from now Obama will appear to be the moderate if the Republicans win big in November. I don’t think it likely because I don’t believe that Obama can do as Clinton did when he lost his Congressional majority. Clinton began triangulation, became the moderate, and took advantage of Mr. Gingrich’s mistake when Newt over-reacted to a personal slight and took that as an attack on the office of Speaker. Clinton skillfully played the Moderate and made the Republicans responsible for the Train Wreck, and won re-election. I don’t think Obama can do that. He is surrounded by ideological advisors and unlike Clinton, Obama has an ideology. It is not clear that he can play this game with Clintonian charms and skill. . . . [But] Obama retains a number of the advantages that got him elected. He is one of the best orators of his generation. He has lost the ability to disguise himself as the honest broker who will bring fundamental change, but he is doing is best to throw all the blame for his failures to bring about the hoped for changes on the Republicans and his predecessor. Bob Dole and his Country Club Republican cohorts were able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It could happen again.”

ALASKA: Murkowski concedes.

A FRIEND EMAILS FROM MEXICO: “Shit’s about to collapse in MX and points south. It is frightening. I am seeing first hand, am traveling. Total anarchy and terror unfolding.” Well, that’s encouraging. All those counter-insurgency and nation-building skills we’ve honed in Iraq might come in handy closer to home.

Or, you know, we could just legalize drugs and pull the rug out from under the cartels.

UPDATE: A followup email:

It’s so complex. The USA unilaterally legalizing weed, as many have proposed, wouldn’t stop the violence — there are any number of possible outcomes to that. The causes are complex and brewed over time… all I know is that all signs are pointing to a far worsening situation down there, and increasing impact here.

Militarizing the border isn’t a solution, but having seen what I’ve seen, I’d be terrified if we weren’t hardening that border right now.

Time to come back to the States, I think.

MORE: Reader Michael Ubaldi emails:

Speaking of Iraq: I’m sure academics could explain how Mexican drug gangs are totally unlike insurgents in Iraq, but I tell you, the groups’ modus operandi sound awfully similar. One marked difference, of course, is that few try to justify the gangs’ actions.

The world will take a big step forward when it understands that violent people are simply violent people.

Indeed.

CHANGE: Dow Logs Worst August in 9 Years.

ED DRISCOLL: All This and Weimar, Too: The Million Reichsmark March.

ALL ABOUT THE BEER INDUSTRY.

ABSOLUT VICTORY: STEPHEN GREEN IS Drunkblogging Obama’s Iraq Speech.

Bush got a mention, the troops got two mentions — but I haven’t hear thanks to either one. . . .

What the hell is this? Seriously. We were promised an update on Iraq. Instead we’re getting a defense of Obamanomics, which unlike the Surge (anyone?), has been a total failure.

Read the whole thing. And weep, or laugh, or something. Drink!

UPDATE: More from Prof. Jacobson.

And here’s the full text of Obama’s speech.

Plus, what Obama said about the surge when it mattered.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More then-and-now comparison.

MORE: Obama In The Oval Office: “First, a visual observation: he looked scrawny and ill-at-ease at the large, empty desk. There were no funny hand gestures this time, as there was for the Oil Spill address. This speech did have some good moments, which I will start with.”

MORE STILL: Celebrating V-I Day back in 2008.

STILL MORE: Bill Kristol: “It wasn’t a bad speech.”

MARKDOWNS ON DVD and Blu-Ray.

BACK TO SCHOOL: Walter Russell Mead on the Higher Education Bubble.

The upper middle class benefited over the last generation from a rising difference between the living standards of professional and blue collar American workers. This is likely to change; from civil service jobs in government to university professors, lawyers, health care personnel, middle and upper middle management in the private sector, the upper-middle class is going to face a much harsher environment going forward. Automation, outsourcing and unremitting pressures to control costs are going to squeeze upper middle class incomes. What blue collar workers faced in the last thirty years is coming to the white collar workforce now.

Yet as their financial prospects darken, students’ educational costs are exploding. Like the health care system, the educational system is being overwhelmed by rising costs and rising demand. And as misguided government policies contributed to the real estate bubble by artificially inflating demand, government programs are burdening students with unpayable loans and contributing to relentless and unsustainable inflation in school costs.

And so, dear students, welcome back! Your generation is going to have dig its own way out of the hole my generation has dug for you (thanks for the Medicare, kids, and sorry about the deficit!), but here are a few tips that may help you get the best out of your college years.

Read the whole thing.

STILL MORE on the spreading bedbug problem. “The bugs are winning this war.”

WHOLE FOODS’ JOHN MACKEY:

Q: What’s the result of the Wild Oats merger?

A: The end result is that it’s been great. Our Wild Oats same-store sales were up like 16% in the second quarter.

Q: Would you do that merger again?

A: No. We’ll never do another merger that requires FTC approval. It was the worst experience of Whole Foods’ corporate life. All my e-mails were examined by the FTC. The $30 million in legal fees. … For what? To prove we weren’t a monopoly? Everyone knows we’re not….

Yay, regulators.

ERIC SCHEIE: If Ann Coulter is now a RINO, can I take my checkers and go home?

LESSONS IN relative deprivation.

WHAT IT’S LIKE Going 307.7 MPH in an Electric Vehicle.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

QUESTION: Is There Gold In Fort Knox? Do We Care? If we don’t care, can I keep some of it in my basement?

DEMAND FOR ANESTHESIOLOGISTS to outrun supply. Well, there’s a lot of pain out there, these days.

ONE IN FOUR LAP DANCERS has a college degree.

IF ONLY: Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium.

More on thorium reactors here.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste says there’s a downside. Yeah, that does chill my enthusiasm a bit . . . .

THE CONGLOMERATE’S FORUM ON PROXY ACCESS is now in the can.

MORE ON THE BEDBUGS’ RETURN. “Early remedies were risky: igniting gunpowder on mattresses or soaking them with gasoline, fumigating buildings with burning sulfur or cyanide gas. (The best-known brand was Zyklon B, which later became infamous at Auschwitz.) Success finally arrived in the 1950s as the bugs were hit first with DDT and then with malathion, diazinon, lindane, chlordane and dichlorovos, as resistance to each developed. In those days, mattresses were sprayed, DDT dust was sprinkled into the sheets, nurseries were lined with DDT-impregnated wallpaper. . . . The reasonable course, Dr. Goddard said, is to recognize that we are, in effect, back in the 1920s ‘Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite’ era. People should be aware, but not panicky.”

They told me if I voted for John McCain, America would be taken back to the 1920s. And they were right!

UPDATE: Reader Jay Brinker writes:

What a horribly defeatist article. The “future is grim” and we are “back in the ’20’s ” with no proffered solutions? Parsing the lines, apparently there are some pesticides that work, but we are not told what they are. I guess we are supposed to not ask questions and suffer through this plague. This is a perfect metaphor for the Obama age.

And another reader emails:

Our dear daughter just moved into another apartment after she and her roommates lived with bedbugs for eight months, keeping their clothes in plastic bags, getting rid of mattresses and getting others (didn’t work), having the landlord fumigate several times. She guessed the bugs lived in the walls and would be there forever in that old building in Chicago. She is relieved to be out of there.

I would be, too.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: When I was a kid, we didn’t get any stinking $150 cab rides. Well, when I was a summer associate, I spent a month at Dewey, Ballantine’s DC office, and they put me up in a suite at the River Inn. It was nice. They even picked up the dry-cleaning and room-service tabs, which I didn’t expect. And yes, I did wind up working there, so I guess it works. . . . .

IN THE MAIL: Poorer Richard’s America: What Would Ben Say?

FELLOWSHIPS for aspiring law professors.

MONEY-SAVING TIPS FROM ROGER KIMBALL: Things the U.S. government could do without.

THE BECK RALLY: A muddle?

MEGAN MCARDLE: “I’m in the middle of Sex at Dawn, the book that’s caught the attention of a number of commentators, including Dan Savage and our own Andrew Sullivan. I’m about halfway through the book, and so far, I’m disappointed to say that it reads like horsefeathers.”

Plus, a damning line from the comments: “Oh well, it’s only social science.” Ouch.