INSIDE HIS OODA LOOP: Obama bounced into announcing visit to storm-ravaged Louisiana after Romney shows him up with surprise visit.

JIM TREACHER: If Talking To Empty Chairs Is Bad, Obama Needs To Start Holding Rallies In Broom Closets. Hey, when you’ve been reduced to passing out free tickets in bars. . . .

Related: Justin Katz: The Brilliance of Clint’s Empty Chair. “Viewers who found the speech peculiar (mainly those in academia, entertainment, and media, I’d wager) may have done so because Eastwood used a theatrical device in the service of the wrong script… from their point of view and according to their expectations. As a thought experiment, they should imagine some other actor’s using the exact same gimmick at the Democrat National Convention, with a non-present Mitt Romney.”

Also related: The Sad and Tawdry Line-up for the Democrat Convention in Charlotte. Hey, Hillary had urgent business in the Cook Islands that week!

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Rosacea may be caused by mite faeces in your pores. “The disease affects all races but is known as the “curse of the Celts” as it is thought to especially affect people with very fair skin, although it may simply be more visible on their skin. Rosacea is commonly blamed on another alleged Celtic curse – excessive drinking. But while alcohol can trigger a flare-up, so can many other kinds of stress. Teetotallers are just as susceptible, according to the US National Rosacea Society. . . . Kavanagh notes that one kind of bacteria in the mites’ guts, Bacillus oleronius, is killed by the antibiotics that work against rosacea, and not by other types of antibiotics. His lab reported in June that 80 per cent of people with the most common kind of rosacea have immune cells in their blood that react strongly to two proteins from B. Oleronius, releasing triggers of inflammation. Only 40 per cent of people without rosacea have this reaction. Kavanagh is now trying to get funding to develop antibodies to the bacterial proteins, to track their location and link them more firmly to the disease. Ultimately, treatments aimed at the trigger proteins may prevent rosacea.”

BIOFUEL’S GROWING THIRST: Corn Exports Shrivel as U.S. Ethanol Demand Grows.

TECHNOLOGY: Stanford Cooling Glove More Dope than Steroids (video). This sounds very promising.

TAXPAYER-FUNDED ELECTIONEERING: House panel probing stimulus cash for MSNBC ads.

PICADOR STRATEGY UPDATE: This Is Not The Tweet Of A Confident Man. I disagree. I think Barack has to be pretty confident to use a photo that accentuates his ears that way.

UPDATE: The sudden popularity of “Eastwooding.”

And Jim Treacher emails: “If Clint Eastwood is such a babbling old fool, why did he make the most powerful man in the world bare his claws?” The reaction here has been most edifying, and certainly won’t help Obama’s already-shriveling likeability.

Plus, from reader Brian Hancock:

None of the “fact checkers” have claimed this was a lie: “We all know that Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party.” Must be true. =)

You can use my name, because I live in America, by jingo!

Heh.

IT’S LIKE ALL THOSE WAR-CRIMES COMPLAINTS AND “HAVE YOU NO DECENCY” TROLLS DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WERE JUST POLITICAL BULLSHIT: The Reckoning: CIA Interrogation Investigation Closed Without Further Charges. “In the meantime, the Obama administration that once savaged President Bush for surveilling American citizens who abet the enemy tells us that there is no problem killing American citizens — with a straight face and without the slightest hint that some apology might be in order.” Including from some Obama-loving bloggers who have changed their tune since the White House became theirs.

BLUE-MODEL FAILURE UPDATE: Illinois Bonds Downgraded over Pension Crisis. “Illinois taxpayers are facing huge liabilities for their state’s bloated, poorly managed, and underfunded pension system, and public sector workers face an uncertain future, as taxpayers are unlikely to cough up the huge sums required to make good on the debt. Now everything is getting worse: S&P has downgraded Illinois bonds, meaning that the interest rate on the state’s huge debt is likely to rise, squeezing the state treasury even further. . . . With public-sector unions fighting tooth and nail to preserve their cushy benefits and expensive pension plans, old style Dems like FDR, Harry Truman and Fiorello LaGuardia—all of whom thought that public sector unionism was a terrible idea—are looking smarter and smarter all the time. The combination of collective bargaining and the power of a focused voting lobby and campaign finance machine has unbalanced the budgets of too many cities and states to retain much appeal to the general public.”

ANDREW FERGUSON ON LEARNING TO LIKE MITT:

Now that he’s officially the Republican nominee for president and has an excellent chance of becoming the most powerful man in the world, I feel free to admit, in the full knowledge that nobody cares, that I never liked Mitt Romney. My distaste for him isn’t merely personal or political but also petty and superficial. There’s the breathless, Eddie Attaboy delivery, that half-smile of pitying condescension in debates or interviews when someone disagrees with him, the Ken doll mannerisms, his wanton use of the word “gosh”—the whole Romney package has been nails on a blackboard to me.

But his examination of Romney’s character also sheds light on why the lefties can’t stand him:

The Romneys present a picture of an American family that popular culture has been trying to undo since—well, since An American Family, the 1973 PBS documentary that exposed the typical household as a cauldron of resentment and infidelity.

And now, here, 40 years later, it’s as though it all never happened: a happy American family, led by a baby boomer with no sense of irony! Romney is the sophisticate’s nightmare.

Almost every personal detail about Romney I found endearing. But my slowly softening opinion went instantly to goo when The Real Romney unfolded an account of his endless kindnesses—unbidden, unsung, and utterly gratuitous. “It seems that everyone who has known him has a tale of his altruism,” the authors write. I was struck by the story of a Mormon family called (unfortunately) Nixon. In the 1990s a car wreck rendered two of their boys quadriplegics. Drained financially from extraordinary expenses, Mr. Nixon got a call from Romney, whom he barely knew, asking if he could stop by on Christmas Eve. When the day came, all the Romneys arrived bearing presents, including a VCR and a new sound system the Romney boys set up. Later Romney told Nixon that he could take care of the children’s college tuition, which in the end proved unnecessary. “I knew how busy he was,” Nixon told the authors. “He was actually teaching his boys, saying, ‘This is what we do. We do this as a family.’ ”

Romney’s oldest son Tagg once made the same point to the radio host Hugh Hewitt. “He was constantly doing things like that and never telling anyone about them,” Tagg said. “He doesn’t want to tell people about them, but he wanted us to see him. He would let the kids see it because he wanted it to rub off on us.”

Intolerable. A person like that might make you feel like you aren’t good enough. The comparison might make you uncomfortable. This cannot be allowed. A “sophisticate’s nightmare,” indeed.

UPDATE: Reader Zach Barbera writes:

I’ve lived in MA for 30 years and until last night did not love or feel passionate about Mitt. But, what really won me over is the realization that it’s not that he’s a cold fish, seeing his family and hearing the stories about him makes that plenty clear, it’s just that he’s so d@mned competent and quietly self-assured. He doesn’t feel the need to put on the displays or make biting partisan points. He means it he wishes Obama didn’t fail, he wants our system to work and be led by competent men and women. That’s why he feels that one of Obama’s worst sins (enough that he mocked it) is his hubris, with the grand claims that his presidency marks the waters receding and the earth healing. Mitt doesn’t need to make those promises, he’s not applying to be our personal savior he’s treating this as if he’s walking into a shareholder meeting and asking us to make him our CEO. Once that’s done he’ll get to work on the job and not be dragged int the personal lives of the board. After all these years, I finally get him. And find that I am starting to think that he has what it takes to become a great president.

Well, it’s about time.

PREPARING FOR THE DNC: Dems Giving Away Free Tickets To Obama’s Speech in Bars. “If less than 50 people arrive, everyone will get a pair! If more than 50 folks arrive, we will do a random drawing to determine our winners. There is no cost involved. We’re not selling the tickets, we’re giving them away.”

Someone needs to fill them in on the difference between “less than” and “fewer than.” Whoever wrote this must have had unionized teachers. . . .

UPDATE: Reader David Henderson writes: “Did you also notice that the note trolling for Obama attendees starts with ‘Here’s the rules’? Yikes. Even more evidence for your claim that the writer was taught by a unionized teacher.” Sounds like it was one from Chicago. . . .

ARE WE FACING a phony farm labor crisis?

FROM BRYAN PRESTON: Video: Protesters Threaten Tatler Editor on Last Night of GOP Convention. “Now, the clips don’t say much more than what I’ve said above, but here’s a real kicker: The Obama Department of Justice was caught on tape earlier, helping the occupiers right here in Tampa. I find that both very interesting and deeply disturbing. If we had a Congress that wasn’t in the grip of the Reid faction in the Senate, there might be an investigation of why the government appeared to be playing both sides of the convention protest, keeping the peace on the one hand while also disturbing the peace on the other.”

More on the lame protest effort here: “The showing was pathetic; my friend and I counted 200 at the most for any given rally or march. Fifteen thousand reportedly were expected. Most news outlets reported a vague ‘hundreds’ actually showing up. The showing was a combination of professional activists, the homeless, the schizophrenic, the addicted, and the disenfranchised young. A Voice of America article that claimed “hundreds” of young people took to the streets of Tampa this week is true only if one holds a very loose definition of ‘young.'”

MICHAEL WALSH: The Campaign Is A Battle For America’s Heartland. “To see why the choice of Clint Eastwood as the surprise guest speaker at last night’s close of the Republican Convention was so brilliant, look at the electoral map.”

I GUESS THAT WHOLE “BELLICOSE WOMEN” THING IS STILL GOING ON: Video: Sheldon Adelson’s Daughter Manhandles Male ‘Democracy Now’ Producer, He Promptly Soils His Shorts.

PAUL BEDARD: Columbus, Des Moines, Hampton Roads will determine election.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: The Media’s ‘Fact Check’ Smokescreen.

If media “fact checkers” are just impartial guardians of the truth, how come they got their own facts wrong about Paul Ryan’s speech, and did so in a way that helped President Obama’s re-election effort?

Case in point was the rush of “fact check” stories claiming Ryan misled when he talked about a shuttered auto plant in his home state.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler posted a piece — “Ryan misleads on GM plant closing in hometown” — saying Ryan “appeared to suggest” that Obama was responsible for the closure of a GM plant in Janesville, Wis.

“That’s not true,” Kessler said. “The plant was closed in December 2008, before Obama was sworn in.”

What’s not true are Kessler’s “facts.” Ryan didn’t suggest Obama was responsible for shuttering the plant. Instead, he correctly noted that Obama promised during the campaign that the troubled plant “will be here for another hundred years” if his policies were enacted.

Also, the plant didn’t close in December 2008. It was still producing cars until April 2009.

An AP “fact check” also claimed that “the plant halted production in December 2008” even though the AP itself reported in April 2009 that the plant was only then “closing for good.”

CNN’s John King made the same claim about that plant closure. But when CNN looked more carefully at the evidence, it — to its credit — concluded that what Ryan said was “true.”

And they wonder why their audiences, and credibility, continue to shrink.

A CONTRARIAN TAKE ON THE CHINA CONTRARIANS’ TAKE: China’s Long History of Defying the Doomsayers. I dunno. From 1949 to 1999 was a pretty grim period. If something like that happened here, we’d call it “doom.” See also Tai-Ping Rebellion.

ED DRISCOLL ON how the press is spinning bad economic news to help Obama.

ROLL CALL FALLS FOR A FAKE RNC PHOTO. More on the photo fakery, which is all over Facebook, here.

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Cincinnati Law Faculty Create Scholarship Fund for Students. That’s a nice thing to do.

ALL THE SOUND AND FURY, ENDS WITH A WHIMPER: Justice Department ends criminal probe of detainee deaths. “The Justice Department will not file criminal charges against CIA officials after an investigation into the deaths of two detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday. . . . The end of the criminal investigation concludes the Justice Department’s inquiry into interrogation practices that occurred under the George W. Bush administration after 9/11.”

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE: Caesareans and pain relief for mothers giving birth ‘should be cut to save the NHS money.’ “Family doctors are being told to try to talk women out of having Caesareans and very strong painkillers during birth to save the NHS money. New guidelines drawn up for GPs urge them to encourage women to have natural labours with as little medical help as possible. They also remind doctors to tell women to consider having their babies outside hospital in midwife-run units or in their own homes.”

I don’t remember this from the dancing NHS tribute at the Olympics.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON the Eastwood Speech.

It was an old man’s delivery, but overstatedly so for effect. It was a cutting delivery and for that reason delivered in low key. But for all of Clint Eastwood’s rhetorical cleverness at the Republican convention it derived its effectiveness precisely because it wasn’t one of those “I take this platform tonight with pen in hand, bearing in mind the immortal words of Clancy M. Duckworth” type orations. It wasn’t the speech of someone who was running for office.

Rather it might have come from Mr. Weller down at the corner office musing on simple things to not very important people. How it wasn’t good form to mess things up continuously. How one might lose faith in a man who made one broken promise too many. How at the end of the day everyone either did the job or quit out of decency. Even Presidents.

There was no malice in it. Just a tone of regret. But it was redolent of memory too. Of simple things a world away from the Mountaintop; of sentiments a light-year from dramatic arcs, and of ordinary happiness in a universe apart from grand bargains and high-flown rhetorical visions. They were truths that everyone who has ever worked knows but has somehow forgotten because it was so ordinary.

But they were never known to those who had never worked a real job in their lives. And that is the wonder. That they never knew them. Thus the speech was at once us versus them; it was the check in the mail against the certainties of the heart. Every true challenge is built on the bricks of memory. And there were as many challenges in the Eastwood speech as the stones we stand on.

Read the whole thing.