SO IS THIS PATRONIZING CONDESCENSION, OR IS IT BETA SUCKUPITUDE? 2 male philosophers propose that scholars stay away from conferences that don’t have female keynoters.

WAIT, I THOUGHT YOU COULD ALWAYS DISCREDIT A STUDY BY POINTING OUT RIGHT-LEANING FUNDERS: Koch-funded study finds global warming is real.

Yeah, but doing a study with right-wing funding is practically scientific misconduct all by itself, right?

More serious commentary from Ron Bailey. Clearly this means we need to build more fracking-supported natural gas infrastructure right away, since that’s been lowering our carbon footprint over the last several years. Then, over the longer term, nice, greenhouse-friendly nuclear plants!

More reactions here. And Charlie Martin explains the charges of “systematic error.” Well, what do you expect in a study funded by evil right-wingers?

UPDATE: Charlie Martin emails:

It’s really more than just a reaction to Mueller’s Op Ed — Anthony is announcing new and significant scientific findings that conflict with Mueller. Also, see my update: there are a lot of people calling Mueller’s findings wrong, or overstrong, or even “rubbish”. Even Andy Revkin at Dot Earth says he doesn’t find Mueller’s stuff cnvincing.

I’ll have quotes from Anthony and Judy Curry (at least) tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

ROSS DOUTHAT:

It may seem strange that anyone could look around the pornography-saturated, fertility-challenged, family-breakdown-plagued West and see a society menaced by a repressive puritanism. But it’s clear that this perspective is widely and sincerely held.

It would be refreshing, though, if it were expressed honestly, without the “of course we respect religious freedom” facade.

If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching, or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons, or ban Chick-fil-A in Boston, then don’t tell religious people that you respect our freedoms. Say what you really think: that the exercise of our religion threatens all that’s good and decent, and that you’re going to use the levers of power to bend us to your will.

There, didn’t that feel better? Now we can get on with the fight.

Interesting to see this in the New York Times.

SANDWICHED IN: “Among pretty much everyone with a civil libertarian, or just plain libertarian, background, the verdict on the Chick-Fil-A furor is the same: while private persons and groups are within their rights to boycott a business, it’s outrageous and dangerous for government officials to threaten to use regulation to keep the fast-food chain out of their cities because they disapprove of its president’s anti-gay-marriage views.” Yep. Putting me on the same page with Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald, among others.

WAR ON WOMEN UPDATE: North Dakota Democrats Mock Female Republican’s Breasts.

WE’LL KNOW SOON ENOUGH: Upset brewing in Texas runoff? PPP says Cruz up big.

DAVID GELERNTER: What Keeps This Failed President Above Water? “Obama perfectly fits the personal profile of the Culture Machine that runs so much of the American elite nowadays. . . . If conservatives were serious, they would think much harder about the Culture Machine (aka the Establishment) and the ways in which Obama is typical instead of exceptional—typical of a new type of Establishment leader, the new Machine Man. We’re used to old-fashioned political (usually Democratic) machines. But those political machines compare to the modern Culture Machine like a stick of dynamite to an H-bomb. While conservatives worry about debt and taxes and huge problems abroad, the left is busy pulling the whole country out from under them. While conservatives fiddle around on the roof, robbers are rifling the house and stealing the children. Conservatives might consider climbing down and having a look. Obama is only the first of a new breed.”

The Machine, however, is quickly running out of the other-people’s-money that sustains it, both inside and outside of government. Conservatives, and libertarians, would be well advised to do what they can to speed the process.

KEYSTONE FALLOUT: Democrats Backpedal as China Readies $15.1 Billion Canadian Oil Deal. “When President Barack Obama blocked the Keystone Pipeline, Republicans said the move would encourage Canada to pursue oil deals with China instead of the United States and cede a massive chunk of North American oil assets to the communist nation.” And they were right!

AMERICA IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Mall says U.S. flags on kiddie train must go.

ANNALS OF THE ONE PERCENT: Michelle Obama’s $6800 jacket. “The White House declined to comment.”

This could have fed 40,000 hungry children. “Using Forgo.it, compassionate people can give up luxuries like lattes, dessert, and even a new boat to feed poor children instead. Users can turn any mundane purchase into a philanthropic venture. . . . Through the middle of August, forgoers are raising funds to help Children’s Hunger Fund (CHF) ship a sea-container filled with aid to Zimbabwe. At over 6 meals per dollar donated, users can change the world for a starving child. For example, when someone forgoes a $10 movie, 62 meals will be shipped.”

Sorry kids. But the jacket did look nice. And hey, Glenn Beck has the feeding-the-poor thing covered.

IT’S TRUE. THE GOP WOULD HAVE HAD A BETTER CHANCE IF SHE HAD BEEN ON TOP OF THE TICKET. Cheney: Picking Palin for VP was a ‘mistake.’

She probably wouldn’t have panicked like McCain did: “Before TARP failed as policy, it first failed as politics, with John McCain’s panicky announcement — Sept. 24, 2008 — that he would fly back to Washington to push for passage of the bailout. As I explained two weeks later, this was the decision that ensured Obama’s election.” McCain was in the lead from Palin’s selection until then. Then he tanked, and never recovered.

OKAY, I’M NOT FOLLOWING THE OLYMPICS, BUT: Kim Rhode on Sunday became the first American athlete to win five medals in an individual event in five consecutive Olympic Games. “She earned a gold medal in women’s skeet, setting an Olympic record and tying the world record by hitting 99 of 100 targets. She also became the first woman to win three gold medals in Olympic shooting.”

UPDATE: Reader Ian Jeffries writes: “If you’re not going to follow the Olympics, then don’t follow the Olympics!” I’m not. But I do follow Dan Riehl. . . .

MERCURY AND SOLACE: GLENN BECK CAN STILL DRAW A CROWD. And donate a million meals to the poor, reportedly.

UPDATE: Compare and contrast.

DAMAGING HIS BRAND: O’Reilly Is O’Really in Left Field on the Guns and Ammo Issue. Then again, as someone pointed out earlier, you can only expect so much from a guy who has “public school teacher” and “professional journalist” on his resume.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Degree of debt: Students mortgage future for higher education.

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WELL, THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CANDIDATES: Romney: “I tend to tell people what I actually believe.”

JUST A REMINDER THAT WHEN YOU BUY THROUGH THE AMAZON LINKS ON THIS PAGE, or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you help support this blog at no cost to yourself. It’s much appreciated.

MITT ROMNEY CAPTURES JERUSALEM. “Speaking to an often-cheering group of about 400 people in Jerusalem, Governor Mitt Romney gave a speech less notable for what he said that for the fact that the audience believed he was sincere in saying it.”

NEWSWEEK? THAT’S SOME WEBSITE THAT SOLD FOR A DOLLAR, RIGHT? Anyway, apparently they’re trying to call Romney a wimp. Given our skinny big-eared President’s resemblance to Steve Urkel, not to mention his throwing skills, is that really a discussion the Democrats want to start?

Related: Newsweek Pretty Much Just Phoning It In Now.

HEY, IN THIS ECONOMY THREE-HOTS-AND-A-COT IS NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT: North Carolina man thrown back in jail after refusing to leave.

WHAT’S AMAZING IS THAT ANY HAVE STAYED: Exclusive: Key Pro-Israel Obama Ally Splits. “As Republican donors are financing multimillion-dollar campaigns to bring Jewish voters over to Mitt Romney, one of President Obama’s most important liaisons to the pro-Israel community has opted to sit out the 2012 election cycle. Dennis Ross, a longtime diplomat and a key architect of the Oslo peace process under President Clinton—a man who worked for the Obama campaign during the 2008 Democratic primaries despite his previous loyalty to the Clintons—won’t be campaigning for Obama this time, Ross confirmed to The Daily Beast.”

SORE LOSERS AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: US Gov’t Says They Can Still Freeze Megaupload Assets If the Case Is Dismissed. My advice: The hole’s deep enough. Stop digging.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Automotive Summer Clearance.

CHARLES HILL: The Empire Strikes Back. “One of American’s foremost strategists says the era of liberal democracy is in jeopardy, and the historical norm of dominance by great powers will return if the U.S. fails to lead.” Don’t worry. We’re employing “smart power” via “smart diplomacy!”

PROF. STEPHEN CLARK WRITES:

After following up on comments from your site on “Why We Get Fat…” and “Anni Ultimi”, I bought and am now reading both, and finding both to be excellent.

Taubes’ book should be viewed as particularly subversive. If you find his argument convincing, and in particular if in practice you find his recommendations effective, then your eyes should be opened to the ways in which science is a very human enterprise subject to all the failings that humans possess. It should not be a surprise, though it seems always to be, that scientists are not immune to self-deception and the worldly temptations that plague us all. The appropriate response to all scientific claims of truth, in particular as reported, is a healthy skepticism. And my, oh my. How subversive it would be if that attitude were to spread widely and more generally to bare assertions of truth of all kinds. The tale Taubes tells, the history he recounts, is as important as the advice he gives.

Indeed.

HOW SPEEDO CREATED a record-breaking swimsuit.

OF RAPE, AND REDDIT. Just following in Eldridge Cleaver’s footsteps. Just be sure to call it an “insurrectionary act.”

3D PRINTING and the end of gun control.

So, can you print a gun? Yep, you can and that’s exactly what somebody with the alias “HaveBlue” did.

To be accurate, HaveBlue didn’t print an entire gun, he printed a “receiver” for an AR-15 (better known as the military’s M16) at a cost of about $30 worth of materials.

The receiver is, in effect, the framework of a gun and holds the barrel and all of the other parts in place. It’s also the part of the gun that is technically, according to US law, the actual gun and carries the serial number.

When the weapon was assembled with the printed receiver HaveBlue reported he fired 200 rounds and it operated perfectly.

Read the whole thing.

MITT ROMNEY: You bet Jerusalem is the capital!

A PONTIAC GTO STATION WAGON.

JOURNALISM: CNN plays ‘Stupid Girls’ as intro to Sarah Palin at Chick-fil-A story.

PLUG-IN HYBRIDS trouncing electric cars in the marketplace.

IN THE MAIL: The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking.

ANOTHER WRONG-HOUSE NO-KNOCK RAID: Beauty Queen Dragged Out of Bed Naked by Deputies. “A former beauty queen is suing the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department after she says deputies kicked down the wrong apartment door, pointed guns at her and her fiancee and watched as she got out of bed, naked. . . . Manos and her fiancee, Eric Otto Ryder, say deputies had a search warrant for apartment ‘C’ but entered their unit — clearly marked as apartment ‘A.’”

There should be strict liability for no-knock raids.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON THE NEW OIL REVOLUTION: Has Gaia Betrayed The Greens?

Gaia, that treacherous slut, has made so much oil and gas that her faithful acolytes today cannot protect her from the consequences of her own folly. . . .

Again, for people who base their claim to world leadership on their superior understanding of the dynamics of complex systems, greens prove over and over again that they are surprisingly naive and crude in their ability to model and to shape the behavior of the political and economic systems they seek to control. If their understanding of the future of the earth’s climate is anything like as wish-driven, fact-averse and intellectually crude as their approach to international affairs, democratic politics and the energy market, the greens are in trouble indeed. And as I’ve written in the past, the contrast between green claims to understand climate and to be able to manage the largest and most complex set of policy changes ever undertaken, and the evident incompetence of greens at managing small (Solyndra) and large (Kyoto, EU cap and trade, global climate treaty) political projects today has more to do with climate skepticism than greens have yet understood. Many people aren’t rejecting science; they are rejecting green claims of policy competence. In doing so, they are entirely justified by the record.

Nevertheless, the future of the environment is not nearly as dim as greens think. Despairing environmentalists like McKibben and Monbiot are as wrong about what the new era of abundance means as green energy analysts were about how much oil the planet had. . . . The newly bright oil and gas future means that we aren’t entering a new Age of Coal. For this, every green on the planet should give thanks.

Read the whole thing.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE FUN: Salt blasting shotgun eradicates insects with extreme prejudice.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Going Away to College This Fall? You’re Now the Exception. “For American students, heading off to college has traditionally also meant physically going away to college. But now, at a time when college costs are soaring, and when news of young people being saddled with burdensome student loan debt is unavoidable, today’s students are trying to trim college expenses in every way possible. More than half of students, in fact, will be living at home when the fall semester begins—up significantly from the 43% of students who commuted a couple of years ago. . . . The argument that a so-called ‘higher education bubble’ really does exist —- and may be in the process of popping —- gets a boost especially because it looks like students in wealthier American families, who should be able to pay for pricey colleges, are choosing to stay home in increasingly higher numbers.”

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

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EMPTY SEATS: Olympic Ticketing A “Shambles.”

ECONOMICS AND THE NEW LEGAL PROFESSION: An Infographic.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Record number of coal-fired generators to be shut down in 2012. Maybe nothing, if we build new gas-fired plants to take advantage of all the new supplies fracking is producing. Gas plants are much cleaner.

REPORTING FROM THE CAPITOL HILL ANTI-FRACKING PROTEST. “What do you get when you bring hundreds of fervent environmentalists and NIMBYs together on the west lawn of the Capitol to denounce fracking, every single fuel that originates from the ground, and, for old time’s sake, Dick Cheney? You get enviro banjo tunes, the ‘Ecological Our Father’ at the interfaith prayer service (‘Our Father, who art in the forest…’), and more punny protest signs built off the F-bomb than even Joe Biden could dream up.”

THE GOLDEN AGE OF JERRY BROWN: Will Fresno Be California’s Next Bankrupt City? “As Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach told Bloomberg News, the bankruptcy dominoes are starting to fall. One California city after another—following a decade-long spree of ramping up public-employee pay and pension benefits, as well as redevelopment debt—are becoming insolvent.”

CLAIRE MCCASKILL not doing so well.

JOHN KASS: City Hall turns chicken sandwich into thought crime. “So if a business owner makes public his personal views, it won’t be the public that decides whether to patronize the establishment. Instead, politicians will decide for us and swing the government hammer to knock the business down. The message from Chicago’s City Hall is simple: Speak out of turn and we’ll crush you.”

See, I support gay marriage — though I think it should be arrived at legislatively, not through judicial fiat — but the thuggish behavior of gay-marriage supporters is a real turnoff. There’s a good chance it will inspire a backlash.

UPDATE: Reader Nick Osborn writes: “New Chicago civic motto: Clinging bitterly to gun control and religious bigotry.”

ADVICE ON SAVING CNN: “Here’s an idea: hire Mark Steyn and/or Hugh Hewitt to do a daily one-hour show, and watch your ratings soar. A network that had the wit to do some serious conservative news would peel off a lot of viewers from the unserious O’Reilly Factor.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Bill O’Reilly is, in his own self and program, proof of the very point.

He is very much a progressive who turned to the right, as it were, championed (somewhat) traditional values, and became a star. Unfortunately, his internal base was still progressive in the very style so evident in the Bammster, and thus, O’Reilly is running out of gas. He is neither conservative nor libertarian. His limitations are obvious.

Were CNN to put Steyn opposite O’Reilly, I would not only watch CNN, I would turn on the lobotomy box for something besides the Red Sox, sad as their fortunes are this year. I suspect CNN, were they to wean themselves off the Bammster’s nipple, knows that.

Were that to happen, I can only imagine how far “out there” Chris Matthews would feel. Tingle, anyone?

I doubt it will happen, which suggests that they support ideology over shareholder value.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Top 5 Dog Breeds that Can Land You a Date.

KINDA LIKE THE GUANTANAMO-CLOSING FANS, THE REPEAL-DOMA FANS, THE . . . Dem gun control fans giving Obama a pass, of course.

WHAT THE CHICK-FIL-A BROUHAHA says about the future of religious freedom.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Arms-trade treaty talks collapse, supporters rip Obama. “Obama will end up taking the blame for this “failure,” which might seem unfair — but Obama chose to participate in this folly in 2009 after the US had previously refused, so he only has himself to blame for the impossible position in which he now finds himself.” Well, I’m quite happy with the result. Thanks, Barack!

PROTESTERS INVADE Y-12 NUCLEAR PLANT. “Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration at Y-12, declined to discuss details of the early-morning events at the Oak Ridge, but he acknowledged that the unapproved entry into the plant’s inner sanctum — a high-security zone known simply as the Protected Area — was unprecedented. . . . If unarmed protesters dressed in dark clothing could reach the plant’s core during the cover of dark, it raised questions about the plant’s security against more menacing intruders.”

VIDEO: “It worked.”

NEVER MIND THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: “I suppose all those unemployed journalists from the legacy media can go to work teaching journalism at universities. Oh, wait. . .”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Obama’s New Federal Office for Black Students.

ELIZABETH WARREN begs for video views.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “It’s Been Nine Months, and I Still Haven’t Met His Kids.”

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CHICAGO VALUES: Chicago Is Deadliest Global City. “Chicago likes to compare itself to other world cities, so Ward Room thought it would find out how we rank in violence. It turns out no one can top us. Among what are considered Alpha world cities, Chicago has the highest murder rate — higher even than the Third World metropolises of Mexico City and Sao Paolo.”

How’s that super-strict gun-control workin’ out for ya, Rahm?

AN EGYPTIAN ISLAMIST’S indecent exposure.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student loan debt threatens graduates’ financial future.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: This Is How Leopard Slugs Have Sex. “Those blue things are their penises, which emerge from their heads. So they always do it upside down. Oh, and why do they both have penises, you ask? Because slugs are hermaphrodites.”

QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING: Can Avoiding Orgasms Improve Your Sex Life?

YA THINK? Housing recovery could be hampered by rising student-loan debt.

BAD NEWS FROM the Garbage Indicator?

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Barron writes:

That waste car load chart also hints there may have been some creative accounting regarding GDP numbers during “Recovery Summer”, after pretty decent correlation in previous years.

Perish the thought.

Related: The Channel-Stuffed GDP Report: “Just like last year, marginal economic growth overall seems to be backfilled with a tide of inventory.”

HIDDEN INFLATION: Paying The Same Amount For Smaller Products.

RESEARCH: U.S. Soldiers To Be Equipped With Blast Sensors.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Kitchen & Dining Outlet Sale.

BUT OF COURSE: Disgraced ex-Penn State Prez Has Federal Job.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK, an amusing commentary on the Chick-Fil-A brouhaha.

Also:

And:

WHY PEOPLE ARE FASCINATED by supervillains.

YOU KNOW IT’S BAD WHEN MIKE BLOOMBERG CALLS YOU HEAVY-HANDED: Michael Bloomberg fillets Tom Menino over Chick-Fil-A stance. “The billionaire businessman-turned-New York mayor said Menino, along with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee, are wrong ‘to look at somebody’s political views and decide whether or not they can live in the city, or operate a business in the city.’”

OBJECTIFYING WOMEN IS JUST HUMAN NATURE. “Women are more likely to be picked apart by the brain and seen as parts rather than a whole, according to research published online June 29 in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Men, on the other hand, are processed as a whole rather than the sum of their parts.” By both sexes. “‘It’s both men and women doing this to women,’ Gervais said. ‘So don’t blame the men here.’”

Nonsense. It’s always a good time to blame the men.

TOM MAGUIRE: Defending Joe Paterno.

IN THE MAIL: Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama.

ILYA SOMIN: Munich And The Politics of the International Olympic Committee. I don’t care about the Olympics. They’re a sham and a scam, a mixture of corruptocrats and worse.

Related: “No, my husband’s hands were tied, not yours.”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? GM Ramps Up Risky Subprime Auto Loans To Drive Sales. “President Obama has touted General Motors (GM) as a successful example of his administration’s policies. Yet GM’s recovery is built, at least in part, on the increasing use of subprime loans. . . . Potential borrowers of car loans are rated on FICO scores that range from 300 to 850. Anything under 660 is generally deemed subprime. GM Financial auto loans to customers with FICO scores below 660 rose from 87% of total loans in Q4 2010 to 93% in Q1 2012. The worse the FICO score, the bigger the increase. From Q4 2010 to Q1 2012, GM Financial loans to customers with the worst FICO scores — below 540 — shot up 79% to more than $2.3 billion. The second worst category, 540-599, rose 28% from about $3.4 billion to $4.3 billion.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): White House projects $1.2T deficit, lower economic growth in 2012. Do you think Obama would have won in 2008 if he’d promised these sorts of economic numbers?

UPDATE: Reader Bryan Farris writes:

Remember the first of many economic graphs that scared the bejesus out of everyone and created the Tea Party? It was Obama’s projected deficits vs. Bush’s actual deficits.

Turns out that (unexpectedly!), the news was worse than forecast. With today’s news that the 2012 deficit will measure $1.2 Trillion, we can see it’s 50% larger than was originally projected. … Oh, and if you extrapolate that out, that means that should we be so fortunate as to re-lect the Nobel Prize winner, we can expect a deficit of approximately $2 trillion in 2016.

Unexpectedly, of course.

ED DRISCOLL: How Much Are Movies Themselves To Blame For The Aurora Massacre? After all, look at what slim evidence it took to produce blood libels against Sarah Palin. “Hasn’t the left boxed themselves into a corner a bit with their rhetoric in early 2011? If they truly believe that clip art can lead someone to kill — despite using the same imagery themselves, and even if the perpetrator very likely had never seen said clip art — and we must stop using gun and violence-related rhetoric in our language, then surely a nearly three hour visual treatise on ultraviolence can do so as well. If a university truly believes in its collective soul…”

I say, repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts! More on that here.

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MICKEY KAUS: Rattner Goes Off-Message. “Getting mighty crowded in that woodshed: Obama’s ex-semi-auto czar, Steve Rattner, goes off message and says he doesn’t ‘believe we can reverse’ the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. Apparently it is not Mitt Romney’s fault. Rather, the wage gap is just too great. Using GM as an example, Rattner says the company’s Michigan workers make $55/hour, its Mexican workers make a little more than $7/hour — while in China it’s $4.50 an hour and in India $1/hour.”

Plus: “Rattner himself could have done a lot to make the U.S. more competitive if he’d pushed Detroit’s unsustainable UAW wages in VW’s direction when he was coordinating Obama’s auto bailout. Too bad he didn’t. UAW autoworkers didn’t lose a penny in hourly wages, even as their employers were driven into bankruptcy — something Rattner himself has noted. You have to wonder if his comments are tainted by guilt over his failure.”

CHANGE: Team Obama Hitting Panic Button Over Shrinking Gender Gap.

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: California Court Allows Fraud Cases Against Golden Gate, USF Law Schools to Proceed.

CONN CARROLL: All Your Business Are Belong To Obama.

SOMEBODY TELL THIS GUY IT’S NOT 2004 ANYMORE: Ranting about “Sitting in one’s basement in pajamas, spewing out venom on a keyboard.”

Also, the name-calling and invidious comparisons in the piece don’t sit well with its call for civility.

LORD NORTH: “Look, if you colonists have been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.”

PEGGY NOONAN: Hollywood And Our Poisonous Culture:

Did “The Dark Knight Rises” cause the Aurora shootings? No, of course not. One movie doesn’t have that kind of power, and we don’t even know if the shooter had seen it. But a million violent movies have the cumulative power to desensitize and destabilize, to make things worse, and that’s what we’ve been seeing the past quarter century or so, the million movies. Each ups the ante in terms of carnage. Remember Jack Nicholson’s Joker, from 1989? He was a garish, comic figure and he made people laugh. He was a little like Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook in the old TV version of “Peter Pan.” You knew he wasn’t “real.” He was meant to amuse. . . .

Some of the sadness and frustration following Aurora has to do with the fact that no one thinks anyone can, or will, do anything to make our culture better. The film industry isn’t going to change, the genie is long out of the bottle. The genie has a cabana at the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The movie market is increasingly international, and a major component is teenage boys and young men who want to see things explode, who want to see violence and sex. Political pressure has never worked. Politicians have been burned, and people who’ve started organizations have been spoofed and spurned as Puritans. When Tipper Gore came forward in 1985, as a responsible citizen protesting obscene rap lyrics, her senator husband felt he had to apologize to Democratic fund-raisers. If some dumb Republican congressman had a hearing to grill some filmmakers, it would look like the McCarthy hearings. There would be speeches about artistic freedom, and someone would have clever words about how Shakespeare, too, used violence. “Have you ever seen ‘Coriolanus?’”

The president won’t say anything—he too is Hollywood funded—and maybe that’s just as well, since he never seems sincere about anything anymore.

Well, how about saying this: Repeal The Hollywood Tax Cuts!

Especially in light of the other Joker-inspired copycats.

LEVIATHAN: George Will on an abusive Federal prosecution. This is why I think prosecutors need skin in the game.

ROGER KIMBALL: Obama’s War On The Suburbs. “Kurtz’s argument is depressing. It is also infuriating. No one who reads this passionate and well-argued book would even dream of voting for Barack Obama. Which is one reason why everyone who has the franchise should read it.”

SMALL BUSINESSES — AN ENDANGERED SPECIES? More than 200,000 small businesses lost, 2008-2010. Oh, well. You didn’t really build that business you lost anyway.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The 15 Hottest Female Olympians.

I HAVE TO AGREE WITH THE COMMENTER WHO SAYS THAT THIS PRO PUBLICA LISTING OF, PURPORTEDLY, “THE BEST REPORTING ON GUNS IN AMERICA,” looks like it was provided by the Brady Campaign.

The folks at Pro Publica insist that they don’t lean left.

WHICH MAKES IT A SUCCESS: Arms Trade Treaty conference ends without agreement. “The weeks-long conference at the United Nations to produce an Arms Trade Treaty is ending without the creation of a treaty. None of the draft treaties which have circulated in the past several days came remotely close to finding consensus support. The impossibility of achieving consensus involved a wide variety of issues and nations, far beyond the Second Amendment concerns that have been raised by many American citizens.”

OLYMPIC RACISM: Lebanese Olympic Team Demands Barrier Separation From Israel Squad. It’s a carnival of bigotry. Enjoy it.

PRIORITIES: CBS News: DNC Homepage Shows More Romney Attack Ads Than Obama Accomplishments. Well, it’s not like there are a lot of accomplishments to boast of.

A REVIEW of Brian Tamanaha’s Failing Law Schools.

QUELLE HORREUR! WaPo columnist fears voters will think it’s okay to vote against Obama “and not be thought of as a racist.”

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WEBMENTUM: Scott Brown’s New Video Set To Pass Liz Warren’s Best After Just 4 Days.

CHURCHILL BUSTS: I had two when I walked in here. “How did I figure out what was really going on? I never gave in. Never, never, never never. In nothing great or small, large or petty.”