REINING IN the insane clown posse. As a former MSNBC guy, I’m glad to see sanity reassert itself.

LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE EMAILING ME THAT BARACK OBAMA NEVER REGISTERED FOR THE DRAFT: Yes, he did.

UPDATE: Why do I care? (1) It’s bogus; (2) It irritates me to see the kind of stuff that I slapped down during the Dem primary resurface now. Hint: If you get a multiply-forwarded email about a candidate, do a little research before passing it on.

TALKLEFT: “It is disingenuous to now pretend Oprah is not a big story this campaign season. Oprah has a perfect right to act in a partisan way, but please stop with the whining when that is pointed out. Oprah injected herself into the political campaign. And now she has to take her lumps for it, as would any other media figure who did what Oprah has done.” Yes, Oprah has a right to use her show as a political platform, and her viewers have a right to applaud her, or to be unhappy and take their eyeballs elsewhere. That’s how things are supposed to work.

NEAL STEPHENSON’S ANATHEM COMES OUT ON TUESDAY, and I’ve got a review in the New York Post. A reader emailed me to ask if Anathem is more like Cryptonomicon or more like The Baroque Cycle. I’d say more like the latter — my review of those books is here — but it’s really a thing unto itself. (Bumped).

BARACK OBAMA: I’m not going to take your guns away. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress.”

YOU CAN’T TELL THE PLAYERS WITHOUT A SCORECARD: Biden Says Life Begins at Conception.

SHIFTING RESOURCES TO FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY: Mainstream Media Diverting Terrorism Reporters Into Political Investigations. “At least three such reporters at three major papers are now chasing Sarah Palin stories.”

HER FIRST INTERVIEW SHOULD HAVE BEEN WITH THE GLENN AND HELEN SHOW: ABC News’ Gibson lands first Palin interview. But hey, we’re still available. Also to you, Barack! And Joe Biden, too! We’ve already done McCain.

BOUNCE: “In the new poll, taken Friday through Sunday, McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote. The survey of 1,022 adults, including 959 registered voters, has a margin of error of +/— 3 points for both samples.”

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson: “On matters like abortion, capital punishment, gun control and FISA, Obama again moves closer to McCain rather than vice versa.”

HEH: “In Oliver Stoneland, we question authority.”

SARAH PALIN, INTERVIEWS, and dumb things Obama and McCain have said.

JIM TREACHER: Media Entitlement for Dummies.

Plus, from the Wall Street Journal: “Rasmussen has a new poll out that suggests that piling on Mrs. Palin may do more to harm the media’s own image than hers.”

According to Rasmussen, fully 68% of voters believe that “most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win.” And — no surprise — 49% of those surveyed believe reporters are backing Barack Obama, while just 14% think the media is in the tank for Sen. McCain.

Meanwhile, 51% of those surveyed thought the press was “trying to hurt” Mrs. Palin with its coverage.

Perhaps most troubling for the press corps, though, was this finding: “55% said media bias is a bigger problem for the electoral process than large campaign donations.”

It’s getting hard to tell the coverage from campaign donations, anyway.

PROBLEMS WITH MISSISSIPPI’S MEDICAL EXAMINER: Radley Balko remains on the story.

KATIE GRANJU’S FATHER HAS DIED UNEXPECTEDLY: Please send her your prayers and condolences.

POLITICO: Obama considered joining military, regrets abortion answer.

(Via Ann Althouse, who’s running a poll.)

UPDATE: Tom Maguire comments. Personally, I seem to remember registering for the draft when I graduated from high school, which was in 1978. Am I remembering wrong? I remember taking the forms to the Maryville, Tennessee post office, and I didn’t live there after that. Or is my memory playing tricks?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Various readers tell me that my memory must be playing tricks on the draft-registration bit. Perhaps Obama’s is, too. As for the bit about considering a hitch in the military, well, I don’t know what to say about Obama’s memories here.

GREYHAWK responds to Mickey Kaus on McCain and the Surge.

DAMON ROOT looks at Charles Rangel’s various scandals.

WILLIE BROWN ON SARAH PALIN: “The Democrats are in trouble. Sarah Palin has totally changed the dynamics of this campaign.”

This puts him squarely in agreement with most InstaPundit readers, which is evidence of his shrewd political judgment!

Some related thoughts from Joe Gandleman.

SARAH PALIN: Too progressive for the G.O.P.?

The Republican vice presidential candidate says students should be taught about condoms. Her running mate — and the party platform — disagree.

Read the whole thing. (Via Jim Lindgren).

A LOOK AT JOE BIDEN and judicial nominees.

IN THE WAKE OF MIDWEST FLOODS AND GULF STORMS, beware of used cars that may have been soaked.

A DREAD PHRASE: More bakeware I didn’t know I needed.

ROGER KIMBALL on media scrutiny and double standards about privacy.

UPDATE: Demonizing “the other.” “In an age when politics is choreographed, voters watch out for the moments when the public-relations facade breaks down and venom pours through the cracks. Their judgment is rarely favourable when it does.”

RESTAURANT-BLOGGING from Asheville, North Carolina.

RANK CONFUSION from Major John Tammes.

BRINGING BACK THE VW Microbus? For people who want SUV room without the mileage penalty, but want something cooler than the average minivan, it might be a big seller.

DAN RIEHL is defending Andrew Sullivan.

MOVING NEW SOLAR TECHNOLOGY TO MARKET in three years? Bring it on.

IKE DEVASTATES TURKS AND CAICOS, STILL CATEGORY 4: More from Brendan Loy.

DAVID FRUM ON THE VANISHING REPUBLICAN VOTER: Well, Frum looks at economics, but I think it’s a mistake to underestimate the role of broken promises: they ran as a small-government party of reform, and they — at least the GOP delegation in Congress — then acted as if they were trying to stuff their pockets as fast as they could, basically because they were trying to stuff their pockets as fast as they could. Dissatisfaction is a natural result. (That said, I eagerly await Mickey Kaus’s comments on what Frum says about immigration and middle-class wages.)

And it puts the country in a bad place. My ideal — at least in terms of potentially attainable scenarios –would probably be a centrist Democrat as President and a small-government Republican majority in Congress. The GOP delegation’s miserable behavior over the past decade or so has made that impossible, at least in the foreseeable future. A centrist Republican President and a center-leftish Democratic Congress looks like the closest we can come, and I suspect it will be considerably less useful in a small-government sense.

IN THE MAIL: A new Harry Turtledove book, After the Downfall.

JUST TALKED TO MICHAEL YON on the satphone from Afghanistan. He reports that the big picture remains poor, but reports some big tactical successes, including a successful turbine delivery of to the Kajaki Dam hydroelectric facility. He’s posted a big report on the operation, which was the biggest of the war.

He’s with British troops now, and his comment is: “These guys are studs. All they do is work out and fight.” He says troop morale generally in Afghanistan is really good, partly because there’s more public support for that war, but that the overall situation is “not great” and “clearly deteriorating.” He adds that “we’re not losing,” but that we’re not making progress either. “I’ll tell you Glenn, we really need more troops here.” With what he describes as a “meltdown” going on in Pakistan, he says that Afghanistan needs a lot more troops — like 50,000 or more. Part of the problem, he adds, is that many of the Coalition troops, like the Germans, aren’t really allowed to fight, making the effective number of available troops lower than it seems.

Meanwhile, remember that Michael is supported by reader donations. With people focused on the election it’s worth remembering that he’s still out there covering this stuff. I’ve donated.

DAVID KAYE:

Until last Friday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other groups had posted large amounts of aggregate human DNA data for easy access to researchers around the world. On Aug. 25, however, NIH removed the aggregate files of individual Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS). The files, which include the Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP), run by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, and the Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility database, run by the National Cancer Institute, remain available for use by researchers who apply for access and who agree to protect confidentiality using the same approach they do for individual-level study data.) The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard also withdrew aggregate data.

The reason? The data keepers fear that police or other curious organizations or individuals might deduce whose DNA is reflected in the aggregated data, and hence, who participated in a research study.

Read the whole thing.

MICKEY KAUS: “McCain would like everyone to think his campaign imploded last summer because of his courageous support for the surge in Iraq.” But, says Mickey, McCain’s real problems came from his immigration stance. “Supporting the surge was no more a huge courageous risk in a GOP primary than opposing the war was a huge courageous risk for Obama in a Dem primary.”

MICHAEL BARONE on the election. Note Barone’s explicit denial that he is old enough to have covered William Jennings Bryan. . . .

DAVE KOPEL WRITES that the media’s fixation on Palin has been a boon for McCain. What’s the Tolkien phrase? “Oft evil will shall evil mar.”

IT’S THE Google Navy?

BETANEWS: Where does Sarah Palin stand on technology issues?

A PHONY BOOKBANNING LIST from the Obama campaign?

UPDATE: From Jim Lindgren’s update to the above post:

The list has now been determined to be a complete hoax. The list has nothing to do with Palin; it is one that has been circulating for years, with exactly the same books and in exactly the same order. It is a list of important or great books that have been banned from libraries somewhere at some time.

After being up for most of the day, the Obama campaign page spreading the phony list has now been deleted. The reason I listed the background of the official Obama website blogger was because, if I had not listed his position, it would have looked like it was probably coming from the Obama campaign leadership, rather than just a low-level local Obama campaign worker who was nonetheless given a national Obama blog.

Well, good.

IS THERE A THERE THERE? CNN on Troopergate, or Tasergate, or whatever.

UPDATE: TalkLeft: “Making a victim of Wooten is impossible. He clearly is unfit to be a law enforcement officer. Josh Marshall and Co. won’t be able to make a scandal of trying to get him off the Alaska state trooper force.”

HURRICANE IKE IS BACK TO A CATEGORY 4: More news from Brendan Loy.

ROGER SIMON on Oprah, politics, and the culture of narcissism.

AT THE TRUTH ABOUT CARS, A REVIEW of the 2009 Honda Accord NX. About 15 years ago, Bill Stuntz told me that what was amazing wasn’t how good the $50,000 cars were, but how good the $20,000 cars were. Adjust for inflation and he’s even more right today.

UNVEILED: The movie poster for Oliver Stone’s W. That’s probably as much of the move as I’ll wind up seeing.

THIS IS WHY I WANT MORE MEDICAL RESEARCH NOW:

Nearly one in five U.S. adults (46 million people) has arthritis and an estimated 67 million people will be affected by 2030. Osteoarthritis, the most common type of arthritis, currently affects more than 27 million people in the U.S. . . . Add in rheumatoid arthritis, decaying spinal disks, and other joint problems and your odds of eventually living in pain from skeletal pains become quite high. If you aren’t living in pain now you probably will eventually – barring big advances in biomedical science and biotechnology.

Ugh. Aging is a disease, and romanticizing it in terms of the great wheel of life or something is just a species of denial.

MORE ON CHRYSLER’S PLUG-IN HYBRID PLANS: “Press didn’t elaborate on a timeline for releasing the plug-ins — which further makes us wonder how real they are — but Reuters says Envi should have its first product in showrooms within three to five years. According to Chrysler spokesman Nick Cappa, the first vehicles out of Envi will have an electric-only range of 40 miles. Considering the Chevrolet Volt is on track to hit dealerships by the end of 2010 and just about everyone else is working on plug-ins and EVs, Chrysler may once again be so late to the party that the hosts already have passed out. Of course, that might be when the party’s just getting good.”

OPRAH’S DECISION TO BAN SARAH PALIN is getting her roasted in the comments on her website: Just keep scrolling. (Via Jessica’s Well). Click “read more” for a few representative examples, or follow the link to read ‘em all.

OBAMA REACHES TO HILLARY TO COMBAT PALIN, but Jules Crittenden comments: “Obama may want to do the math on that ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ thing and make sure he’s figured it right.”

MORE ON Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I guess I’m glad to see the franchise do well, but honestly I haven’t had much interest after the first three films.

MOVING TOWARD OFFSHORE WIND POWER: “The Interior Department, the agency that handles oil-and-gas leases in U.S. waters, is preparing to lease swaths of the outer continental shelf to companies that want to erect massive wind turbines. With the public-comment period for the proposal scheduled to end Monday, competition is heating up to develop wind projects on the shelf, the same underwater formation largely covered by an oil-drilling ban that has become a contentious issue in the presidential race. The federal program signals the start of a broad push to develop offshore wind energy in the U.S. The country often is dubbed by renewable-energy experts as ‘the Saudi Arabia of wind’ because of its vast, windy expanses, particularly in the Western plains. Now, rising interest in renewable energy is spurring exploration of the ocean.”

Two thoughts. First, nobody tell Ted Kennedy! Second, this is probably also a stealth way to advance oil drilling — once there are lots of offshore wind turbines, who’ll complain about a few oil rigs mixed in among them? Seems like a good idea, though.

UPDATE: Reader James Egan emails: “Why not put the wind turbines ON TOP of the off shore oil rigs : )” Good idea!

PROGRESS IN UNDERSTANDING MEMORY: “Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.”

My question is, why is there so much room? I was listening to Santana’s Moonflower in the car a while ago, which I’ve barely listened to since college, and not only did I realize that all the licks were stored in my brain, I actually found myself noticing when skips that were present on my original vinyl version didn’t appear in the new one. What a waste of brain cells! And yet, I often have trouble remembering more mundane things, and always have. Seems like the storage part is easier than the retrieval part. (In high-school, we used to joke about Write-Only Memory). This might prove a major handicap if people live longer, requiring some sort of memory training. Or we could do what the Google generation does, and not try to remember anything, since you can just look it up . . . .

JAMES JOYNER: “New” Europe Outworks “Old.”

TOM MAGUIRE: The Smell of Fear.

All you need, in Dan Rather’s words, is courage.

LAWRENCE SOLOMON ON OIL SANDS: “Russia’s energy supplies enabled their aggression, Canada’s supply could be the placating alternative.”

USING FACEBOOK TO CREATE A zombie army.

IN THE MAIL: Somaly Mam’s The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “The artistic qualities of this McCain ad completely distracted me from whatever words were spoken or shown.” That’s not a problem that Republican candidates usually face.

A FIRST LOOK at the new Dell Mini 9 tiny laptop.

POLITICO: Crowds Turn Out for Palin. More on that here, with photos.

STILL MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED PUBLIC PENSIONS:

The American Academy of Actuaries is considering new standards that would require local governments to provide two estimates of returns on investments made on behalf of public employee pension funds, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Most municipalities estimate returns on investments at 8 percent, about twice the amount federal regulations permit for private firms, the Post reported.

But, the estimate may be too high. The number of public pension budgets considered underfunded jumped fivefold to 40 percent in 2006, compared with 2000, the Government Accountability Office reported.

Pension fund managers are reportedly unhappy, but this seems like a good move to me. Much more on the story here. The goal of politicians, of course, is to promise as much as possible to government workers so as to get their support, while putting as little as possible away to fulfill those promises, so as to have as much money available to do other things they want to do. Seems like they’ve been getting their way too much. And the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac examples should illustrate what happens when future risk involving public money isn’t properly accounted for.

MORE PROBLEMS for Charles Rangel. Perfectly timed for an anti-Congress campaign by the G.O.P., too, unless I miss my guess.

REMEMBER IRAQ? Here’s some news.

SOMEBODY HAS SET UP A SARAH PALIN SEXISM WATCH BLOG. It’s already got quite a few posts.

Plus, a fake Sarah Palin bikini photo. Nice photoshop work, though. And I have to say that the photoshopped Sarah Palin looks better than the original model . . . .

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey notes another Palin smear that’s exploded and comments: “Just spitballing here, but what stereotypes of naughty women have the media and the lunatics missed? So far, they’ve made her out to be a slut, a b***h, a beauty-queen airhead, and an unfit mother. She’s obviously not frigid, so that smear won’t work. How many other demeaning gender-based slurs can they throw her way?”

They’ll be analyzing her walk by Monday.

ANN AND NANCY WILSON OF HEART are unhappy with the RNC’s use of their Barracuda. But despite the obvious tie-in with Sarah Palin’s basketball nickname of “Sarah Barracuda,” it’s a bad campaign song anyway since, if you listen to the lyrics, it’s about a manipulative phony who’ll say whatever people want to hear: “Smiles like the sun, kisses for everyone, and tales, it never fails . . . . And if the real thing don’t do the trick, you better make up something quick.” At least, it’s a bad campaign song if it’s supposed to be about Sarah Palin.

And congrats to Howard Mortman for remembering that Crazy on You is the best Cold-War inspired oral-sex song ever.

UPDATE: Reader Gerry Daly says I’m wrong: “The song was in response to ugly, unfounded sexual rumors being spread about the Wilson sisters. In that regard, it is extremely fitting for Palin. Honestly, can you think of a more fitting rejoinder to her foes in politics and the media than ‘And if the real thing don’t do the trick, you better make up something quick’?” Good point.

VIDEO: Sally Quinn’s apology.

(Via Michael Silence, who originally blogged it live.). She’s showing her age with that “George Romney” slip, though.

Semi-related item here.

“COUNTRY FIRST:” A fascist idea? Wasn’t that a line from Mussolini? “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” (Translated from the original Italian . . . . “Non chiedere cosa il tuo paese può fare per voi, chiedete cosa potete fare per il tuo paese.”)

UPDATE: Les Jones says it was a different Italian.

FOR OBAMA, an existential crisis?

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Technology Killed Socrates.

BRIAN WANG: U.S. and Canadian Natural Gas Production Will Increase. Good.

BOB OWENS is blogging Hanna.

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of Apple computer, iPhone, etc. news from all over.

Plus, a spy photo of the new iPod nano? Possibly.

ARE MEN AFRAID TO SUPPORT A “STRONG WOMAN?” Some thoughts.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IOWAHAWK is standing up for community organizers everywhere.

UPDATE: Related item here.

DOES CAPITALISM CAUSE HOMOPHOBIA? Seems rather like most tolerant societies are capitalist, to me.

ED MORRISSEY: Data points of desperation.

MICHAEL PETRELIS has the full text of the National Enquirer’s Sarah Palin article. Not exactly John Edwards level stuff, but you can read it for yourself. Deceiver notes another difference. Stay tuned.

THOUGHTS ON THE G.O.P. FROM BILL WHITTLE.

As for the notion that the G.O.P. is Wile E. Coyote running in midair — I don’t think that’s now, I think that was in 2005. Or maybe 2006.

ABC NEWS: Obama Campaign National Finance Committee Member Criticizes Palin’s Parenting.

BARACK OBAMA: The new Ronald Reagan? “Obama’s path to high office bears an uncanny resemblance to Reagan’s in at least this regard: like Reagan, Obama understands that inexperience can be an asset, not a liability.” Though Reagan did have that background as Governor. I wish people would get things settled on whether inexperience is good or bad, though. Seems to depend on which candidate they’re talking about.

SO IS THIS GOOD NEWS, OR BAD NEWS? Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to be Put Under Federal Control, Sources Say.

UPDATE: More on Fannie and Freddie here.

A BIGGER TV AUDIENCE FOR JOHN MCCAIN than for Barack Obama? “That means McCain’s speech is now the most-watched in convention history — 41% higher than President Bush’s acceptance speech four years ago, and 1% higher than Obama’s address last week.” Go figure.

SALLY QUINN apologizes.

DANIEL DREZNER on blowback for Russia over Georgia. But, of course, you need to know that Drezner is a stooge of “the elite NATO foreign policy criminals like Albright, Kissinger, and Soros.”

MORE STORM NEWS FROM BRENDAN LOY: Hanna to pack a punch; Ike a threat to Keys, Gulf.

TALKING TO DAVID LAT about ex-Hillaryites for Palin.

THOUGHTS ON RADICAL EGALITARIANISM and engineered longevity.

WHO WORKS MORE? Rich people, or the working class?

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

WHO’S YOUR FAVORITE Movie President?

ANOTHER UNDERFUNDED PUBLIC PENSION FUND, this time in Cobb County, Georgia.

More on that problem here, and here. I suspect that we’re only beginning to guess at the extent of this situation nationally.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Ivers emails:

I teach Public Budgeting (aimed mostly at sub-state level budgeting) and have for the past 9 years in a Masters of Public Administration. You wouldn’t believe (well, maybe you specifically would) how many current or would-be local government employees have no idea how much money from the current budget it takes to fund future retirement benefits. It’s going to eat entire local budgets alive. I’ve been preaching this for the past nine years. Even a couple of my colleagues who should know better don’t usually address the problem much.

Roughly speaking, it’s not unusual for 2/3 or so of local operating budgets to be devoted to employee compensation, current and future. It’s also not uncommon to fund future benefits as meagerly as possible, counting on the growth of future revenues to bail the system out. At least 3 Michigan cities in the past decade have gone bankrupt and bailed out on their pension ‘promises’. It’s probably going to happen to more.

Getting local politicians *and* local unions to think more than a year or two is all but impossible. Do you realize that practically no local jurisdictions even have a Liabilities Budget?

Sheesh. It’s like banging your head against the wall.

Yeah. I think I may be glad that my retirement is all in 403(b) and related funds, not a state retirement system.

JAMES TARANTO: “The most striking thing about this convention is that the vice presidential nominee stole the show.”

HEH: “I’m from Alaska, or as Senator Obama calls it the 57th State.”

NANOTECHNOLOGY: STUDYING THE IMPACT OF NANOMATERIALS on the environment.

Better actual studies than bogus reports. Some related thoughts on nanotechnology and nanomaterials here.

FARMING IN THE SKY: Reinventing agriculture.

OBAMA: Disillusioned with community organizing.

GREYHAWK: Defending Obama, Debunking Lindsey Graham.

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF on Georgia and the dangers of Putinism.

MICHAEL MALONE ON what Google wants.

COMPARING MCCAIN-PALIN WITH OBAMA-BIDEN on aviation policy.

MARC AMBINDER: Obama Surrogates Urged to Mention Eagleton. If this is really their strategy, they may want to rethink. I’m just taking a guess here, but I’ll bet that if Eagleton had polled as the most popular national-ticket politician in 1972, McGovern would have kept him.

Of course, McGovern later said he should have kept him anyway. And Ann Althouse comments:

I remember the McGovern campaign. I was a big supporter of McGovern’s, and I hated Nixon, as did all of my friends. And the scenario then was completely different from what you are seeing now. We were never excited about Eagleton in the first place. We just wanted McGovern to win. Eagleton didn’t infuse new energy into the McGovern campaign or jazz up am important subset of voters. He was just some boring Senator that got slotted in. . . .

The Palin candidacy has virtually nothing in common with the Eagleton scenario, and the people who are saying it does are displaying their desperation. Obviously — I’m not the first to say this — if you want McCain to lose and you think she’s so terrible, you should be happy to see Palin as the VP nominee. It will help defeat McCain.

Yes.

ANN ALTHOUSE VS. JANE HAMSHER on Bloggingheads TV.