GOOD NEWS? History Offers Hope Swine Flu Won’t Gain Strength in Fall.

ASTROTURF: Bus–ted… Obama Bussed In Supporters For New Hampshire Town Hall (Video).

SURPRISING FINDINGS: “A a new survey from Indiana University and the University of Utah finds that a huge majority of Americans think that women should change their last names when they marry. And they’re not sure we should stop at moral suasion. . . . I can’t help but wonder if they got some sort of a screwed up sample. Government naming rules? When did I move to Germany?”

Hey, government health-care, government name-care — it’s all of a piece, really. It’s for your own good!

HEALTH CARE: We need the courage to do nothing.

Plus this: “I finally understand why the Congressmen who are pushing HR3200 have not read it, and have come up with something unreadable. It’s quite deliberate. If people could actually read it, they might learn too much. If they learned that a new cancer drug would not be available, or that their father’s heart surgery would not be covered, millions and millions of ordinary people would be outraged and up in arms, and it would be very bitterly personal, like Mike Sola, the guy whose son has cerebral palsy and who learned he wouldn’t be covered.”

Transparency!

DOUG MATACONIS: “Despite all of the protesters, despite all of the talk on talk radio and cable news, and, yes, even despite all the polls showing the public’s skepticism on ObamaCare, the Republicans one chance of success here is to convince the Blue Dog Democrats in the House and the Senate that they would pay a severe political price for working with the Administration on health care reform. With the Blue Dogs, the bill passes. Without them, it fails. It’s really that simple.” Worth remembering, for those involved. In part, of course, the best approach depends on whether you think Congressmembers are motivated more effectively by persuasion, or fear. This is the debate between Andy McCarthy and Charles Krauthammer. More on that here.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Obama’s healthcare horror: Heads should roll — beginning with Nancy Pelosi’s!

Having said that, I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, and hope it’s a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.

Case in point: the administration’s grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. . . . Who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises — or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama’s aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Ouch. Plus this: “You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you’re happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing. I just don’t get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way?” Why, indeed?

Plus, from Mickey Kaus:

I still don’t quite understand why Obama can’t bring hmself to say some variation of a) “There won’t be rationing” or b) there won’t be rationing under the Kinsley definition–“Any treatment that I, the President, would get you will get,” or c) “Medicare doesn’t ration now and won’t ration in the future, period. There will be no change in how Medicare decides what treatments to pay for. The goal is to get it to pay for more, not less.” Read My Lipitor!** No New Rationing. . . .

**–Obama’s answer to a questioner who had to “go through two different trials of other kinds of drugs” before being allowed by Medicaid to go back on brand name Lipitor (which he’d been taking for years) was basically that the outcome was good because “once it was determined that, in fact, you needed the brand name, you were able to get the brand name.” Spoken like a lawyer! (So you had to fight for a few months or years? You won didn’t you? Process costs don’t count.)

Read the whole thing.

PRICES IN JAPAN ARE IN A NOSEDIVE: “Japanese wholesale prices were down by a record 8.5% in July compared with a year earlier, highlighting the growing deflationary pressure in the economy.” But the Bank of Japan says it’s not deflation, so don’t worry. (Via Americablog).

ROBOTS TO GET their own operating system.

A WHILE BACK, I lamented the unavailability of Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco. Now Glenn Kenny emails that it’s about to come out in a Criterion edition DVD, and that it’s getting good reviews. I’ve ordered my copy.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Sailing to Byzantium. “NATO ships and American leadership. Take that away and we’d be back to 1941, 1915, 1571, and 404 B.C. in a few years.We should remember that as we go into $2 trillion debt this year, since very soon this administration will by needs either raise taxes on the middle class or slash the military budget in late 1940s style.” The military budget is not a priority, I’d guess.

PAM SPAULDING on race, sexuality, and having your “black card” revoked.

JOHN FUND: First the Gulfstream scandal, now Congress pocketing undeserved per-diems?

MICKEY KAUS:

If, as Harold Pollack argues, “rationing of life-saving or life-extending care” would not really be a priority for the “effectiveness” panels–such as the Obama-endorsed IMAC–then it was all the more stupid to bring the topic up, no? Here’s the first graf from a Bloomberg account of an early Obama health care foray back in April:

April 29 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care.

Gee, where could the misinformed town hall crazies have gotten the idea that Obama was thinking about saving money by denying expensive procedures toward the end of life?

Oops.

EEK! A GUN! James Taranto notes that charges of “firearms incidents” at Town Hall protests say more about lefty ignorance than about Town Hall violence.

Funny how TPM et al. are pushing this stuff while ignoring the Ken Gladney beating. Of course, they’re not the only ones.

UPDATE: On the other hand, “leave the guns at home” is good advice, regardless of substance, given that folks in the press are desperately looking for anything they can use to discredit the protests.

HEH: “What if opponents of ObamaCare threw shoes at congressional backers of same? The left seemed to think that was an OK form of protest earlier this year!”

Yeah, but that was back when protest was patriotic! Amusing as this idea sounds, though, it’s probably a bad one.

UPDATE: On the other hand, this thing seems to be going viral: Post Office Vandalized With Obama ‘Joker’ Posters. But anything with Alex Jones behind it deserves some skepticism, to put it mildly. However, I don’t think that calling Congressmen Nazis is racist. At least, it wasn’t racist when federal judges did it to Bush.

But the graffiti may have been another false-flag operation. Expect to see more of those.

GALLUP: Public Support for Health Care Drops 21 Points In Four Weeks.

Chicago Tribune:

In his news conference, Obama was asked if Americans would “have to give up anything in order for this [reform] to happen?” His answer: Basically, not much: “They’re going to have to give up paying for things that don’t make them healthier.”

That answer is about as convincing as the prospects for cold fusion.

Hey, don’t give up on cold fusion . . . .

CHANGE: Strip Mall Vacancy Rate Hits 10%, Highest Since 1992.

HEH: Dem Rep Who Opposes Photo ID To Vote Requiring Photo ID For Town Halls. Isn’t he worried that a photo ID requirement will discourage minorities — and immigrants — from attending? . . . .

CHARGE: A packed “town hall” in San Diego. So I can see the appeal of a friendly crowd, but what does this really accomplish? Maybe a bit of positive local media, but just as likely some negative stuff as people complain. Is it just about protecting politicians’ fragile egos?

TOM MAGUIRE: Who is this guy? The clothes have no emperor.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” US official gropes to explain Clinton’s outburst. “The State Department struggled Tuesday to explain Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s face-off with a Congolese student and suggested that the questioner’s nervousness sparked the outburst with the mention of her husband’s name.”

OR MAYBE IT’S JUST THE MEDIA HYPE THAT’S BUSTING: Obama baby boom: Predicted surge in births goes bust. “On Nov. 4, the hope and happiness seemed boundless for supporters of President-elect Barack Obama, leading some to speculate, with a wink and a nod, that in nine months there would be a virtual Obama baby boom — a celebratory uptick in the national birthrate. But now, 40 weeks later — the average human gestation period — MSNBC is reporting the prediction has largely been nothing more than, well, false hope.” And not the last such, I suspect.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Cap And Trade: Measuring The Disaster.

VIDEO: The original “town hall” mob.

BILL WHITTLE, SCOTT OTT, STEPHEN GREEN: Healthcare Town Hall Protesters: Grass Roots or Astroturf Dissent?

NEWS: Forbes Ranks West Point As Nation’s Top College.

IT’S HARDER THAN STARTING A FIRE BY RUBBING STICKS TOGETHER: Teen Oversees Windows 7 Deployment for Eagle Scout Project.

LES JONES IS tracking California’s meltdown. IOUs for thee, but not for me?

READER RICHARD HALFERTY WRITES: “Why are all the questions at the Obama town hall meetings softballs? Where is the dissent shown at ALL the other town hall meetings? Maybe its just me, but I think many people are afraid to speak out at an Obama Town Hall meeting. Whether its Chicago style, Union goon reprisals, or a tax audit, people are just leery of what action this administration is capable of doing.”

I suspect it’s just the usual hand-picked questioners. But there’s this. And it’s true, the audit stuff is no laughing matter.

UPDATE: Related.

Plus, a question from Professor Bainbridge.

MORE: Claire McCaskill: “You don’t trust me?”

Plus, Jon Stewart: “You know a sales pitch is in trouble when it starts with Look, you gotta trust me, we’re not going to kill your grandparents!“ Love the graphic.

STILL MORE: Sen. Johnny Isakson pushes back on Obama: “This is what happens when the President and members of Congress don’t read the bills.”

FINALLY: Did I say “hand-picked questioners?” Little girl at Obama town hall has not-so-random political connections. More here.

POLITICO: Cruising On Private Jets. I’ve gotten emails from people in the private-jet biz asking why I hate them. I don’t. I just don’t want to be lectured on global warming — or conspicuous consumption — by folks who don’t fly commercial themselves. I’d be happy if everyone had a private jet. But I’m tired of carbon-footprint hypocrisy.

THE “WRONG SORT” OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING. I like the tattoo.

MORE ON the Mancession. “For the first time in American history women are coming close to representing the majority of the national work force. It would of course be a bittersweet milestone, given that it comes primarily as a result of men’s layoffs.”

MICHAEL SILENCE: CNN decides to further alienate a large segment of America. But they’ll bring us incisive views from Kathie Griffin.

LESSONS FROM fighting swine flu.

ROGER KIMBALL: “You can’t make it up” or “Haven’t we been here before?”

DUELING VIDEOS: Barack Obama Was For Single Payer Health Care Before He Was Against It.

Plus, ABC News: President Obama’s “Senior” Moment? The floundering has hit a new level.

Also, “UPS and Fedex Are Doing Just Fine: It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”

C-SPAN VIDEO: Arlen Specter’s town hall, in its entirety.

TOM VANDERBILT: Whatever Happened To The Playpen? How the kiddie enclosures fell out of favor. “Is the fear of playpens all hype? Just a hysterical outcropping of our anxious style of modern parenting?”

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

ROGER SIMON: The Plot Against The Doctors. History turned inside-out. Or something.

RASMUSSEN: 32% Favor Single-Payer Health Care, 57% Oppose.

And most are smart enough to realize that ObamaCare is designed to lead to that.

JOHN TIERNEY: The Earth Is Warming? Adjust The Thermostat.

President Obama and the rest of the Group of 8 leaders decreed last month that the planet’s average temperature shall not rise more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above today’s level. But what if Mother Earth didn’t get the memo? How do we stay cool in the future? Two options:

Plan A. Keep talking about the weather. This has been the preferred approach for the past two decades in Western Europe, where leaders like to promise one another that they will keep the globe cool by drastically reducing carbon emissions. Then, when their countries’ emissions keep rising anyway, they convene to make new promises and swear that they really, really mean it this time.

Plan B. Do something about the weather. Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective; removing vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere.

Today this approach goes by the slightly less grandiose name of climate engineering, and it is looking more practical. Several recent reviews of these ideas conclude that cooling the planet would be technically feasible and economically affordable.

Also, make members of Congress fly commercial instead of in taxpayer-funded private jets. While the impact on global warming will be minor, it’s still worth doing. Just because. More on climate-engineering here.

UPDATE: A reader emails that it’s two degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit.

WASHINGTON POST: U.S. Web-Tracking Plan Stirs Privacy Fears. “The Obama administration is proposing to scale back a long-standing ban on tracking how people use government Internet sites with ‘cookies’ and other technologies, raising alarms among privacy groups.”

MARKETWATCH: Kindle in danger of becoming e-books’ Betamax: Competitors adopting shared format to challenge Amazon’s leader.

I used my Kindle a fair amount last week. Some thoughts: (1) Battery life isn’t bad, but the battery runs down even when it’s turned “off.” (2) When you’re going to the beach or the pool, a $7.99 paperback is something you don’t worry about like you do a $300 gadget. (Yes, you can put it in a Ziploc bag. But it can still be stolen or stepped on.) (3) It’s nice to be able to order another book on the fly when you’ve finished the last one and don’t feel like reading something else you’ve got. (4) I can use it to check my blog and make sure I haven’t left open tags or something without needing a computer. Okay, this last isn’t of general utility. . . .

Related: A reader asks for a final review of Steve Carter’s Jericho’s Fall. I’d give it three-and-a-half stars out of five. It started out well, and held my interest to the end, but I found the conclusion unsatisfying. And there seemed to be a lot of muskets over the mantle that never got fired, to use Chekhov’s phrase. Not bad, but it seemed as if it was building to something better than it actually delivered.

WHAT THIS COUNTRY NEEDS: Singing Porn Stars. “A theater group is interviewing adult film stars in The Valley and collecting their stories to be turned into songs for a singing stage production of a not-yet-titled porn musical.”

A METAL COATING that repairs itself.

AUTOBLOG: How did GM arrive at 230 mpg for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt? I hope that turns out to be true.

MICHAEL BARONE: Democrats Flummoxed By Health Care Protests. In the diner where we had breakfast, CNN was showing Arlen Specter at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania. The best part was Specter’s body language — defensive, jaw set, clearly unhappy at having to listen to criticism from the Great Unwashed. Criticism that, as best I could tell from the CNN captions, was citing health bill page numbers and CBO estimates. Hey, it’s not fair to expect him to have actually read the bill — he’s just a Senator.

Here’s some Specter video where he cops an attitude. It’s not the bit I was watching, but it captures the flavor.

Hey, better send some more goons to the houses of people who speak out!

AN OFFER HE COULDN’T REFUSE: Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and the Fed. “Some observers say Lewis’s failure to disclose to his shareholders the extent of the problems at Merrill before the shareholder vote may have constituted securities fraud: a violation of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule 10b-5, which prohibits any act or omission resulting in fraud or deceit in connection with the purchase or sale of any security. . . . Although the government’s threat was unprecedented—and would have been almost inconceivable before the collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008—Lewis argued against challenging Paulson and Bernanke. He also chose not to inform his shareholders or the public about his conversations with Paulson and Bernanke. . . . The most important questions arising from the Bank of America–Merrill Lynch merger do not involve Ken Lewis. They involve Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and the U.S. government. . . . How should businesses and investors think about bond purchases, mergers, compensation, and a range of other activities that are essential to a smoothly functioning economy, but now carry the uncertainty of potential government intervention? Creeping uncertainty of this sort would inevitably slow and distort the economy. It would also lead to charges of crony capitalism and favoritism—indeed, it already has.”

ECONOMIC GOOD NEWS: Consumer Confidence hits 2009 high.

MOE LANE TALKS WITH CHARLES LOLLAR, who may run against Steny Hoyer.

ARE THE TALIBAN WINNING IN AFGHANISTAN? Milbloggers say the WSJ got it wrong.

DAVID HYMAN: “Only Two Things Scare Me: And one of them is antibiotic resistance.” “Antibiotic resistance is a major public health problem. Every year, two million Americans acquire bacterial infections in the hospital, and 70% of those infections are resistant to at least one antibiotic. MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staph aureus) has attracted the most media attention: the CDC estimated that MRSA caused 94,000 life-threatening infections, and 18,650 deaths in 2005.”

BEN CARDIN JEERED AND BOOED AT TOWN HALL. “Cardin said how to pay for the bill has not yet been worked out, a comment that prompted even more derision from the audience.”

C-SPAN video is here.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Was Hillary jetlagged? That’s a hell of an excuse for the lady who purveyed the 3 a.m. ad! It’s always 3 a.m. somewhere.

C-SPAN IS SOLICITING CITIZEN VIDEO from the health care town halls. So is PJTV. No reason you can’t send your stuff to both.

IN THE MAIL: From Lynn Sandra Kahn, Performance Networks: Transforming Governance for the 21st Century.

BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: Beyond the Angry Mobs. “Run for office. Yes, you. Go to Washington. Fly economy and talk to people.” What, no Gulfstreams?

PETER SUDERMAN: If Health-Care Reform Passes, Will Protests Increase? The French example says yes. . . .

MEGAN MCARDLE: RATIONING BY ANY OTHER NAME:

Robert Wright notes that “we already ration health care; we just let the market do the rationing.” This is a true point made by the proponents of health care reform. But I’m not sure why it’s supposed to be so interesting. You could make this statement about any good:

“We already ration food; we just let the market do the rationing.”
“We already ration gasoline; we just let the market do the rationing.”
“We already ration cigarettes; we just let the market do the rationing.”

And indeed, this was an argument that was made in favor of socialism. (No, okay, I’m not calling you socialists!) And yet, most of us realize that there are huge differences between price rationing and government rationing, and that the latter is usually much worse for everyone. This is one of the things that most puzzles me about the health care debate: statements that would strike almost anyone as stupid in the context of any other good suddenly become dazzling insights when they’re applied to hip replacements and otitis media.

And note her point on diffusion of responsibility via rules.

UPDATE: Also, the market doesn’t deny you a hip replacement or a pacemaker because someone in government thinks your political views are “un-American.” Given the cronyism and thuggery we’ve seen with the bailouts, etc., I’m not confident this would hold true under a government health program. And I’m absolutely certain there would be a special track for insiders and favorites.

I WONDER IF HE’LL SAY THAT THE SEIU ACTED “STUPIDLY” in sending thugs who beat up Ken Gladney? Obama to enter town hall fray. I predict more nuance. It’s not like this was Skip Gates. Funny how the story leaves that beating out while playing up some non-issue “incidents with firearms.” Not up to The Hill’s usual standard — seems like a lot of the stuff comes straight from a ThinkProgress press release. Which is a dangerous source of information.

UPDATE: I dropped an email to The HIll’s online editor, Bridget Johnson, and got this reply: “Your point is very valid, Glenn. I’ve just had a talk with staff on the need to carefully balance coverage on this issue. Thanks for sharing your concerns.”

Thanks for listening to them!

CONGRESSMAN STEVE ROTHMAN: Listening To New Jersey. “We’re broke!”

KEITH HENNESSEY ROUNDS UP some “fishy” statements about health care reform.

TOWN HALLS AND ANGRY CONSTITUENTS: Some history. I had forgotten the story of Dan Rostenkowski fleeing an angry mob.

BROOKS & DUNN ARE SPLITTING UP. The historic tale of my only meeting with the famed pair is told here.

ED KOCH: Falling Out of Love With Barack Obama. Koch, who just got a quadruple bypass at 84, wonders if his medical care would be regarded as not worth it under ObamaCare.

NEW POSTER reveals the ugly face of racism.

PSYCHOLOGY TODAY: Cognitive deficits putting the APA’s nonprofit status at risk? It’s by Barbara Oakley, author of Evil Genes.

WE MAY BE ABOUT TO SEE Tropical Storm Ana. “This would be the latest formation date for the Atlantic basin’s ‘A’ storm since… well, since 1992, when Andrew formed on August 17, not far from where proto-Ana is now. Not to suggest that Ana is likely to be another Andrew, but it just goes to show that a slow-starting or below-average hurricane season is no guarantee we won’t see devastating storms.” I’d rather we didn’t.

WELL, HE WOULDN’T NEED HEALTH INSURANCE if SEIU thugs hadn’t beaten him up. It takes chutzpah to try to turn him into a poster child for ObamaCare. This is close to killing your parents and asking for mercy as an orphan . . . .

UPDATE: By the way, Gateway Pundit is Gladney Central these days.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Never mind!” Reader Joe O’Rourke writes:

At the bottom of the thinkprogress article, it mentions an update that, in fact, Gladney is insured.

Of course, they left this update at the very bottom instead of mentioning it at the top. It sorta negates the article’s premise….

An army of Emily Litellas. Really, you couldn’t make this kind of thing up. Well, you could, but thanks to ThinkProgress and the Obamacare gang that can’t shoot straight, you don’t have to.

RON BAILEY ON climate-change geoengineering.

MICHAEL LIND: Are liberals seceding from sanity? The left is crazy to insult white Southerners as a group. He’s right, of course. But isn’t insulting white Southerners one of the main pleasures of liberalism? I mean, if you have to give that up, what’s the point? “Reform is difficult and expensive. And it is much less fun than caricaturing entire ethnic or regional groups, particularly those whose members tend to have less money, less education and less power than those who lampoon them.”

POLITICO: Congressional Jets May Be Scrapped. “The new congressional jets may be getting scrapped. After an uproar over a proposed purchase of new executive jets for use by senior government official, including members of Congress, the top Defense appropriator in the House has offered to eliminate funding for the planes – but only if the Pentagon, which operates the jets, agrees. . . . The controversy is not going unnoticed in the Senate Democratic leadership circles either. Senate insiders said the Senate Appropriations Committee is unlikely to approve the additional plane funding, although Sen. Dan Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the panel, was unavailable for comment on Monday. Yet when the Pentagon-spending bill was taken up by the House, first in the Defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, then the full committee, and finally on the chamber floor, the executive-plane provision attracted no notice and no opposition emerged from either side of the aisle.”

Whatever. I don’t want to hear any more sanctimony about carbon footprints. I’ve got nothing against private jets, but when it comes to global warming, carbon emissions, and the like, those who fly on ’em instead of going commercial, should — what’s the President’s phrase? — oh, right: “Don’t do a lot of talking.”

MICKEY KAUS: Get Your Latest John Edwards Love Child Rumor Right Here! I’m more interested in financial fraud, but we may hear about that, too.

BLUE ON BLUE: ABC News: White House Disputes Pelosi Contention That Town Hall Protests are “Un-American.”

“I think there’s actually a pretty long tradition of people shouting at politicians in America,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told reporters on Air Force One when asked about the comments.

True enough. He’s obviously reading the right papers.

BRIAN DOHERTY: Reality continues to vex our Salary Czar.

REMEMBER THE BUSH-IS-HITLER RHETORIC? I’d say that Obama hasn’t faced anything like that yet, particularly from sitting federal judges. But his presidency is still young!

UPDATE: Seen all over Missouri.

MATT WELCH: Who’s Ready for a New, Race-Based Government Entity Called the “Native Hawaiian Council”!

What could go wrong?

RADLEY BALKO: Cross-Examining Forensics.

MYTHS OR FACTS IN FEMINIST SCHOLARSHIP: Christina Hoff Sommers and Nancy Lemon on Domestic Violence.

TEA PARTY PROTESTS ON OBAMACARE: Over 60 videos from over 25 states, compiled at the Club For Growth site.

UPDATE: Heh: “Maybe the media would be more sympathetic if the protesters were chanting, ‘No justice, no peace!'”

DEBUNKING all those conspiracy theories.

STEPHEN GREEN’S Hair of the Dog: Obama Unites GOP, Town “Hells” and Dean Scream Redux.

TASTES LIKE THE SINGULARITY, but less filling.

MEMORIES OF MEETING JULIA CHILD. I met her, in passing, as a kid — when we lived in Cambridge my mother used to shop at the same grocery store (Savenor’s) and we saw her from time to time. This excited my mother more than it did me at the time. Perhaps if I’d known of her espionage career. . . .

STEVE CROWDER MEETS VIOLENT, HATE-FILLED MOBS.

HAVE THE DEMOCRATS WON IN HONDURAS? I hope so.

PAUL KRUGMAN WANTS TO save galactic civilization. Interestingly, Newt Gingrich was similarly influenced by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books.

HOW TO BUILD ANONYMITY INTO THE INTERNET.

BRIAN WANG: What if Nuclear Fusion Power Became Cheap And Abundant?

ASTROTURFING: SEIU Recruits Obamacare Supporters to ‘Drown Out Voices’ in Conn. (Pelosi Will Be Appalled at the ‘Un-Americanness’).

ECONOMIC GOOD NEWS: Tesla Motors turns a profit.

MARKDOWNS on new and used textbooks.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Where the Middle East Fights Its Wars.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Fear of bomb, proximity to Oak Ridge led families to build fallout shelters.

THE PORN-RELATED IMPLICATIONS ALONE ARE STAGGERING: Touchable Hologram Becomes Reality.

GOVERNMENT BY BASE-CLOSING COMMISSION: Outsourcing ethical issues.

NOBODY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO THERE, IT’S TOO POPULAR: Closing Abbey Road?

A DORM-ROOM NUCLEAR OPTION? “Panasonic even makes the dubious assertion that its oven won’t rob your meals of essential nutrients while pounding them with magical microwave energy. Admittedly, this is hard to test. But we will say we could practically taste the riboflavin in Jimmy Dean’s Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick.”

HOW TO reduce solar power costs.