DUMB IDEA OF THE WEEK: Swine Flu parties.

RALPH PETERS: Bye Bye Babylon: Exiting Iraq’s Cities Victorious.

THE CHEVY VOLT: Intended to be a sportier alternative to the Prius and Insight?

Plus, inflatable-car skepticism.

IN RESPONSE TO THE EARLIER RON PAUL POST (with cool photo!) Jason Whitworth writes: “Would you please point out that if Ron Paul succeeds in disbanding the Fed, that Nancy Pelosi would be in charge of monetary policy. Putting monetary policy back into the hands of the politicians at this time would be economic Armageddon. I sympathize with Libertarians. They are right about out-of-control spending. But like most economic populists, they are misguided and chasing after the wrong target. Please warn them. Or have Megan McArdle or some authoritative economists point out their folly.”

Well, that was the argument for making the Fed unaccountable — and one criticism of Bernanke is that he’s too responsive to the politicians. But I think (Paulites help me out here) that Ron Paul would address this by putting us on the gold standard, so that the money supply wouldn’t be under the control of politicians at all.

UPDATE: A hedge-fund reader (not, I believe, a Paulite) writes: “The stated Paulian goal is to end the current de facto political control of money, which uses the Fed as a beard, and return us to a gold standard. The illusion of Fed independence is hopelessly compromised now, an ironic outcome that has to rank among Ben Bernanke’s worst fears.”

Various readers protest the unworkability of a gold standard, a view with which I tend to agree. But the question is, is the Fed in its current state any more workable? Its success has depended on trust in the independence of institutions and people in the face of political pressurs, a trust that now seems hard to muster.

DAN RIEHL: Re-visiting The Tea Party Movement. “I noted yesterday how any real change in politics must come from the ground up; the Tea Party movement is exactly that type of effort. And America hasn’t seen one that wasn’t primarily candidate driven in decades.”

HIGH TECH INFANTRY: Testing “Land Warrior” in Afghanistan.

WHO’S HOT AND WHO’S NOT: Men agree with men more than women agree with women.

AMY ALKON: Type Dirty To Me.

BROWN SHOOTS: Gloomy U.S. consumers clip housing recovery hopes. “U.S. consumer confidence took an unexpectedly steep slide in June, figures released on Tuesday showed, suggesting the 18-month-long recession had yet to loosen its grip on the economy.” Plus, Stocks Slump As Quarter Ends.

THE LATEST CARNIVAL OF SPACE is up!

AND NOW FOR SOME REALLY IMPORTANT NEWS: Cell-Phone Makers Settle on One-Size-Fits-All Charger. Thanks to reader Hastings Walton for the tip. And about time!

THE TOP FIVE Billy Mays informercial products.

IN THE MAIL: From Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindeth, Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America’s Public Schools. Blurbed by Jeb Bush.

RASMUSSEN: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 31% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That matches the lowest level yet recorded.”

Plus, “Just 26% of Massachusetts voters rate that state’s health care reform a success while 37% say it’s been a failure. Only 10% say it’s improved the quality of health care.”

JAMES JOYNER: Stacy McCain = Ken Layne = Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE: Stacy celebrates another successful round. “James Joyner is an extraordinarily insightful writer, and when he calls me ‘perhaps the most skilled attention whore in all the blogosphere,’ my instinctive reaction is, ‘Perhaps?’“

A CRACKDOWN ON FREE SPEECH at Bucknell University.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Sonja Schmidt on Senator Barbara Boxer.

A MADOFF QUESTION: “Why is it that someone who set up a Ponzi scheme gets more jail time than the majority of murderers?”

I think it’s because he made powerful people look stupid.

STONEWALL ANNIVERSARY: Texas officials want investigation of gay bar raid. Could be a lot of hoohah over nothing. Could be official harassment. I’m suspicious, though. “Gibson was so drunk he was vomiting and struck his head when he fell, the chief said.” Well, possibly. Stay tuned.

STUART TAYLOR: “The Supreme Court’s predictable 5-4 vote to reverse the decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and two federal appeals court colleagues against 17 white (and one Hispanic) plaintiffs in the now-famous New Haven, Conn., firefighters decision does not by itself prove that the Sotomayor position was unreasonable. . . . What’s more striking is that the court was unanimous in rejecting the Sotomayor panel’s specific holding. Her holding was that New Haven’s decision to spurn the test results must be upheld based solely on the fact that highly disproportionate numbers of blacks had done badly on the exam and might file a “disparate-impact” lawsuit — regardless of whether the exam was valid or the lawsuit could succeed.”

POLITICO: Vulnerable House Democrats in GOP sights after energy vote.

TAXPROF: Tax Oppression Index: U.S. Is #12.

IF YOU JUST SMILE, the recession will be gone! So give me something to smile about.

WALTER OLSON ON RICCI: Supreme Court: Discriminate — With Discrimination.

DUDE, where’s my renewable job?