DEAL NO DEAL: Iran: White House Lying About Details of Nuke Deal. “This may prove to be yet another worrisome sign that the Obama Administration was played by the Iranians.” Ridiculous. We have Smart Diplomacy^TM.

LARA LOGAN AND PRODUCER PUNISHED FOR ERRORS IN BENGHAZI STORY: “I’m not saying ’60 Minutes’ did a good job, but I’m skeptical of CBS’s motives here. What will it take to get the full story on Benghazi? Less suppression. More information. Why aren’t other reporters delving into this?” Because the message has been sent, and received.

This is about making sure people think twice — heck, ten times — before running an expose that makes Hillary look bad. Examples must be made, and if Lara Logan was in the wrong place at the wrong time, well, too bad. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and the pro-woman omelet that is a Hillary presidency demands a few sacrifices. Most of whom, as has been the pattern all along, will be women . . . .

Plus, from the comments: “Do we know yet where Obama was on the night of 9/11/12?” Nope.

SPENGLER: The Dead’s Envy For The Living.

Many commentators, most eloquently Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal, draw a parallel between the appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938 and the appeasement of Iran at Geneva. There is another, more chilling parallel: Iran’s motive for proposing to annihilate the Jewish State is the same as Hitler’s, and the world’s indifference to the prospect of another Holocaust is no different today than it was in 1938. It is the dead’s envy for the living.

Dying civilizations are the most dangerous, and Iran is dying. Its total fertility rate probably stands at just 1.6 children per female, the same level as Western Europe, a catastrophic decline from 7 children per female in the early 1980s. Iran’s present youth bulge will turn into an elderly dependent problem worse than Europe’s in the next generation and the country will collapse. That is why war is likely, if not entirely inevitable.

Read the whole thing. Including this: “Obama’s commitment to rapprochement with Iran arises from deep personal identification with the supposed victims of imperialism. That is incongruous, to be sure. Persia spent most of his history as one of the nastier imperial powers, and its present rulers are no less ambitious in their pursuit of a pocket empire in the Shi’ite world. The roots of his policy transcend rationality. Israel can present all the evidence in the world of Iran’s plans to build nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and the Iranians can cut the Geneva accord into confetti. Obama will remain unmoved. His heart, like his late mother’s, beats for the putatively oppressed peoples of the so-called Third World.”

AT AMAZON, Kindle Countdown Deals. Get ’em before they’re gone!

Plus, Black Friday Deals in Movies.

Also: Lightning Deals on Music.

And take up to 60% off on Shoes & Handbags.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: This Craigslist Post Expresses The Rage Of A Lost Generation Of Lawyers Through Genius and F-Bombs. “This is no longer about the future. Lawyers in this position — posting on Craigslist — have shifted to subsistence living.”

WE AIM TO PLEASE: Reader Jim Duffy writes: “I just wanted to sent a shout out your way for leading me to ‘The Frackers.’ I’m about halfway through and it’s really a wonderful and enlightening read, especially for someone like me who really didn’t know squat about the oil and gas industries going in. Never would have picked it up without your recommendation–thanks!”

It’s a great book. I think it’s odd that such an American success story seems to have gotten more coverage at places like NPR than in, say, talk radio or Fox.

A 3-POINT PRIMER in modern female privilege.

WAIT, I THOUGHT MORE DIVERSITY WAS ALWAYS GOOD: “The more integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, and vice versa.”

AT AMAZON, Save 20% on Digital SLR Cameras.

Also, deals on Best-Selling Compact System Cameras.

Plus, coupons galore in Kitchen & Dining.

SIX MYTHS about drone warfare.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: “Life Partner” Is Not Synonymous with “Romantic Partner.” Actually, I don’t think the two can be effectively separated. As my sister once commented, sex was invented to allow unrelated adults to live together.

DAVID BOAZ: Why We Shouldn’t Expand A Government That’s Grown Beyond Its Competence.

THANKS IN PART TO THE HABITAT WHICH IS MY YARD: Wild Turkey Populations Make Remarkable Comeback.

IN RESPONSE TO THE OBAMA HEALTHCARE TALKING POINTS FOR THANKSGIVING, Ace Of Spades offers an alternative set. Sample: “Hey remember when you said that Obamacare was going to work great, and then, when people asked you how it actually worked, you sort of implied they were stupid for not knowing, and yet you never provided any evidence that you had any idea of how it was supposed to work yourself? Yeah, you were wrong to do that.”

Still, it makes sense people would talk about ObamaCare at Thanksgiving — it’s the biggest legislative turkey of the century!

ANALOGIES: Academe As A Drug Gang.

POLICE MILITARIZATION STILL A PROBLEM: Spoils of war: Police getting leftover Iraq trucks. “It’s armored. It’s heavy. It’s intimidating. And it’s free.” Also: “Sheriff Apple rejected the idea that the nation’s police forces are becoming too militaristic. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth,’ he said.”

RON BAILEY: Watched Cops Are Polite Cops: Requiring law enforcement to wear video cameras will protect your constitutional rights and improve policing.

THIS SUBSTANTIALLY LIMITS ITS MARKET: Drug company warns morning-after pill does not work for women over 176 pounds.

MAYBE CRAB LICE WON’T GO EXTINCT AFTER ALL: Full Bush Is Back In Style (Out Of Sheer Laziness).

FUN TOY: So I got a home-pistol-training setup from Laserlyte. The way it works is that there’s a Laser target that lights up where it’s hit by the beam from the LaserLyte pistol trainer, which can fit in the barrel of either a real pistol, or a bright blue training gun. The laser beam is controlled by a sound switch that responds to the sound of dry-firing. I bought the training gun because (1) I don’t like dry-firing my guns; and (2) I treat all guns as loaded all the time, and there’s nowhere in my house I’d be prepared to fire live ammo.

It works quite well. The training gun feels and points very much like the real thing, the target lights up satisfactorily when hit, and you can set it up pretty much anywhere. Helen — who I have to pester to practice shooting enough — also liked it and thought she’d practice more with it, which is nice. Not as good as having a 25-yard range in your basement, but not bad.

Alas, I also tried the Laserlyte plinking cans, which I had to order from their website because they’re not on Amazon yet. These, unfortunately, were a bust. The idea is that when the laser beam its the target, a plunger pops out from the bottom, making the can go flying. It seems like a great idea, and I suppose it is, but mine just don’t work. When I installed the batteries, each can emitted a steady clicking and the plunger kept popping out. The manual, such as it is, said that a low battery condition might cause this, so installed new batteries. That problem went away, all right, but the cans were completely non-responsive to the laser. I can’t figure out what else could be causing that, so I guess I’ll return these. Maybe I’ll try again in a few months.

Here’s what the setup looks like:

DAVID STEINBERG: Rigging The Future: Obamacare Creates 50 New State Databases With No Function Beyond Gathering Potential Voter Information, Real or Fraudulent. “These new databases mail out voter registration forms automatically. You cannot refuse them. No worthwhile verification occurs before the forms are mailed. Apply for Medicaid and the form will be mailed to you, be you a verifiable citizen or Ayman al-Zawahiri on a computer in Pakistan. Further, these new databases are accessible by groups like Organizing For America, the reconstituted ACORN, and malevolent figures like Chris Tarango. And no reasonable purpose exists for creating the databases besides making them available to the aforementioned Democratic activists.”

WAIT, PEOPLE HAVE TO BE TOLD THIS NOW? Please Do Not Hug the Sharks. “So what is driving this new surge involving ordinary folks riding sharks? My best guess is either alcohol or an unfounded sense that sharks are one step away from being pets.”

Think of it as evolution in action. I see sharks regularly when I dive, and they’re generally a lot less interested in people than vice versa. (Maybe it’s the wetsuits: Don’t eat this fish, it tastes like rubber.) But grabbing onto them is stupid. Also kinda rude. They’ve got their own sharky business to attend to.

BUT OF COURSE: California Law Makers Seek To Ban Imitation Firearms.

ER, “NOW?” Polls: Obama’s Incompetence Now Twinned to Mendacity.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Janet Yellen’s Challenge.

IN THE MAIL: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

ANOTHER BRILLIANT PRODUCTION BY REMY: If You Like Your Plan You Can Keep It: The Rap (w/ Remy). “Sellin’ hope’s like sellin’ soap, son I’ll tell you why — you can’t make either one without a little bit of lye.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 201.

GLASS HOUSE, STONES, yada yada.

I THINK THIS IS PROBABLY RIGHT: Filibuster change damages courts, federal appeals judge says in op-ed. The additional degree of vetting/legitimacy provided by the possibility of a filibuster is important in an era where the judiciary is already seen by most as politicized.

WAPO: Are Democrats in denial about Obamacare’s midterm consequences?

IT’S NOT EVEN THE SPACE GARBAGE SCOW FROM QUARK: Obamacare Is No Starship Enterprise.

In the last week of September, the disastrous results of the project’s inept management and execution were becoming fully apparent. The agency pressed CGI to explain why a performance test showed that the site could not handle more than 500 simultaneous users. The response once again exhibited the blame-shifting that had plagued the project for months.

“We have not identified any inefficient and defective code,” a CGI executive responded in an email to federal project managers, pointing again to database technology that the Medicare agency had ordered it to use as the culprit, at least in part.

The technocratic idea is that you put a bunch of smart, competent people in government — folks who really want the thing to work — and they’ll make it happen. But “smart, competent people” are not a generic quantity; they’re incredibly domain-specific. Most academics couldn’t run a lemonade stand. Most successful entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to muster the monomaniacal devotion needed to get a Ph.D. Neither group produces many folks who can consistently generate readable, engaging writing on a deadline. And none of us would be able to win a campaign for Congress.

Yet in my experience, the majority of people in these domains think that they could do everyone else’s job better, if they weren’t so busy with whatever it is they’re doing so well. It’s the illusion of omnicompetence, and in the case of HealthCare.gov, it seems to have been nearly fatal.

Yes, only Obama is a better speechwriter than his speechwriters, a better political adviser than his political advisers, a better pastry chef than the White House pastry chef . . . Ordinary mortals have limitations, and often aren’t aware of them.

IN AMERICA, IF YOU LIKE YOUR HOMOPHOBIC INCIDENT, YOU HAVE TO FABRICATE YOUR HOMOPHOBIC INCIDENT: Family Says They Did Tip Gay Server, Didn’t Leave Note. Funny, that’s like the racial-slur check hoax. Sounds fishy.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Cincinnati Enquirer: Evidence of post-scandal fixes at IRS remains scant: Tax-exempt status of tea party was targeted.

FISCAL TIMES: Why Your Tax Returns Aren’t Safe with the IRS.

AT AMAZON, Laptop Computers Under $400.

Also, Tablets under $300.

And, today only: Dremel Ultimate 3-Tool Combo Kit, $149.99 (62% off).

Also today only: Over 33% Off Select Kitchen Appliances. Get ’em while they last.

JAMES TARANTO: California Dreamin’: ObamaCare’s bogus success story.

A representative sample of young people will be healthy and likely to stay that way for some time. But there is no reason to expect that the self-selected sample of young people who’ve undertaken the effort and expense of signing up for ObamaCare is representative. Sick people of any age have the greatest incentive to sign up. And the smaller the sample, the likelier it is to be skewed by selection bias.

Note that the total October enrollment of 30,830 comes to fewer than 1,000 a day, an order of magnitude smaller than the current pace of 10,000 a day claimed by Krugman. That, however, turns out not to be an apples-to-apples comparison. The 10,000-a-day figure, Covered California explains, is for “completed applications,” not actual enrollments, which totaled just 79,891 between Oct. 1 and Nov. 19. (A partial explanation for the disparity: Covered California estimates that 39% of applicants will be enrolled in Medi-Cal, so that their coverage will be completely at taxpayer expense.)

It remains to be seen whether even October’s less-impressive-than-advertised age distribution will hold up into November and beyond.

Read the whole thing. Say, did you know that Paul Krugman used to work as an Enron Adviser?

ENCOURAGING OBAMABOTS TO SPREAD OFA TALKING POINTS AT THE DINNER TABLE: ObamaCare Hijacks Thanksgiving.

ROLL CALL: Questions Over Iran Jam Leaders, Defense Bill Negotiators. “An interim deal with Iran on its nuclear program is complicating the future for the annual defense authorization bill, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., must manage three clashing factions: senators intent on passing a new round of sanctions, a White House that opposes them and armed services negotiators who simply want to see their bill passed. Republicans hellbent on attaching Iran sanctions to the pending defense authorization bill froze Senate action before Thanksgiving, and the Senate is scheduled for only one more week of work before Christmas. The Iran agreement has only brought more voices into the fold, with Democrats such as Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez of New Jersey, calling for new sanctions legislation.”

“CRONY CAPITALISM AT ITS WORST:” The Hill: GOP blasts union ‘bailout’ under O-Care.

WAR ON SCIENCE: FDA Wants 23andme’s DNA Test Off The Market.

PUSHING BACK AGAINST THE MACHINE: USA Today Memo: No More White House Press Office Photos.

MACHINE POLITICS IN WISCONSIN: “1 judge with tie to John Doe probe signed Scott Walker recall petition.”

From the comments:

Odd that there are only investigations into conservative groups breaking campaign finance laws.

Sort of like the IRS only vetting conservative groups tax-exempt status.

It would be very bad if day-to-day government workers are conducting partisan investigations.

The bureaucracy is a one-party state.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University President’s Plan: Just Say No to Tenure:

Kean University’s president will ask the institution’s board next month to reject two-thirds of the professors up for tenure this year, further antagonizing a faculty that has been at odds with the administration for years.

I wonder how he feels about my plan to replace most administrators with low-paid, contract-worker “adjunct Administrators.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Among American workers, poll finds unprecedented anxiety about jobs, economy.

More than six in 10 workers in a recent Washington Post-Miller Center poll worry that they will lose their jobs to the economy, surpassing concerns in more than a dozen surveys dating to the 1970s. Nearly one in three, 32 percent, say they worry “a lot” about losing their jobs, also a record high, according to the joint survey, which explores Americans’ changing definition of success and their confidence in the country’s future. The Miller Center is a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Virginia specializing in public policy, presidential scholarship and political history.

Job insecurities have always been higher among low-income Americans, but they typically rose and fell across all levels of the income ladder. Today, workers at the bottom have drifted away, occupying their own island of insecurity.

Fifty-four percent of workers making $35,000 or less now worry “a lot” about losing their jobs, compared with 37 percent of lower-income workers in 1992 and an identical number in 1975, according to surveys by Time magazine, CNN and Yankelovich. . . . Lower-paid workers also worry far more about making ends meet. Fully 85 percent of them fear that their families’ income will not be enough to meet expenses, up 25 points from a 1971 survey asking an identical question. Thirty-two percent say they worry all the time about meeting expenses, a number that has almost tripled since the 1970s.

Americans’ economic perceptions often divide along political lines; supporters of the incumbent president are usually more optimistic about the job market and the health of the economy. But that’s not the case with this new anxiety. Once you control for economic and demographic factors, there is no partisan divide. There’s no racial divide, either, and no gender gap. It also doesn’t matter where you live.

And these were the people Obama was supposed to help.

FRANKLIN FOER: ObamaCare’s Falure: A Threat To Liberalism.

There’s a term of art that the Obama White House uses to describe its neurotic supporters who instantly race to the worst-case scenario: They are known as “bed-wetters.” Two months into the dysfunctional life of healthcare.gov, however, that seems a perfectly appropriate physiological reaction.

Ouch.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: ObamaCare Is Losing Altitude.

AT AMAZON, deals galore in Cashmere. Also, women’s winter accessories. Scarfs, gloves, hats, and more. Winter is coming.

Plus, deals on tools from Porter-Cable and Black and Decker.

STEPHEN GREEN: “Now I have nothing against Middle Eastern countries tending to their own affairs. And the fact that Wiggleroom has — at long last! — brought together Arab and Jew is a testament to a level of incompetence rarely seen even in Washington DC. But the fact is, the Wiggleroom-Kerry deal has made a general war in the Middle East more likely, not less. And the US is now so despised and resented there, that we will have very limited ability to influence or halt it diplomatically — which increases the chance that we will have to intervene militarily.”

POLITICO: As deadline nears, ticking clock on Democratic patience. “Some Capitol Hill Democrats are preparing to launch broadsides against President Barack Obama if the Affordable Care Act website isn’t fixed by the end of the month. That will come in the form of more aggressive scrutiny in Republican-led oversight hearings, open advocacy for further delay in the enrollment deadline and individual coverage mandate, and more calls for a staff shake-up in the White House.”

Related: Another ObamaCare security breach reported in Vermont.

IF SO, THEN A LOT OF MEN QUALIFY, TOO: Does Liking Lesbian Porn Make Me A Lesbian?

AUDIO: Solving the play deficit with Peter Gray. He’s the author of Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Ladies Who Shave Probably Are Getting More Action in Bed.

ORLY LOBEL: Set Workers Free To Gain Competitive Edge. The book is Talent Wants to Be Free: Why We Should Learn to Love Leaks, Raids, and Free Riding.

USA TODAY: OPRAH AS OUT-OF-IT GEEZER:

Shortly before receiving the medal of freedom from President Obama, Oprah Winfrey gave an interview to the BBC in which she seemed to chalk up much of the opposition to the president to racism: “I think there’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs … because he’s African American,” she said.

Her claim reminded me of the times when, as a child of the ’70s, my father would ask an odd question about my friends, “What is he?”

“Huh?” I’d ask.

“You know, what is he — Italian? German? Lebanese? What is he?” my father replied.

I had no idea what my friends’ ethnic origins were. It was only when I traveled with my father to the north side of Chicago where he grew up, and he pointed out which ethnic groups had lived in various parts of town, that I understood.

Well once all the out-of-it geezers die off, that kind of silliness dies with them.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Welcome To Cuba. “None of the Cubans I quote are high profile dissidents except when I cite what they’ve written for public consumption. Those who aren’t in prison live under total surveillance. The regime posts guards outside their houses and points cameras at their windows and doors. I’ve been told by reliable sources that state security agents will sometimes commandeer next-door apartments and houses to tighten the screws even more. If I were to walk into that kind of surveillance umbrella, there’s virtually no chance I’d get in and out without being questioned and tailed, and there was a strong chance I’d be arrested.”

If you like his first report, hit his tipjar. I did.

THE WAR ON single-family homes. Too much autonomy! It is bad for the collective!

#WARONWOMEN: New Hampshire Dems attack State Rep. Marilinda Garcia with sexist language, imagery.

AND YET, WE CAN’T BUY IT IN THE GROCERY STORES IN TENNESSEE: Ancient Wine Bar? Giant Jugs Of Vino Unearthed In 3,700-Year-Old Cellar.

AT AMAZON, Deals Galore in Holiday Entertaining.

Plus, 50% or more off on Holiday Sweaters for Women. Winter is coming.

Also, Hot New Toy Releases.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: The Real And The Fake of ObamaCare: Politicians can’t talk their way out of a technological mess.

THAT’S NOT WHAT WE WERE PROMISED IN THE PORKY’S FILMS: Study: Casual Sex Might Be Making Teenagers Sad.

TL;DR: The Kind Of Boredom You Experience Most Often May Be Linked To Your Personality, Say Researchers.

SO I PROMISED A REPORT on the Trebuchet kit I bought for my nephew’s 9th birthday. He took a while getting around to building it because he was absorbed in learning how to program Java animations via the Khan Academy (and then in helping other Khan Kids to do the same), but he put it together — all by himself — over the weekend and it worked perfectly. The photos my brother sent show him looking quite gleeful.

FORTUNE TELLING: Which States Will Legalize Pot Next?

WEIRD HISTORY: In 1983, Steve Jobs Hosted “The Dating Game” With Bill Gates.

SUFFERERS BEWARE: 30 Infuriating Images That Will Trigger Your OCD.

THUGOCRACY: Dem. Operative Involved in 2004 Tire Slashing Shows Up in Virginia Gov. McAuliffe’s Cabinet. “In 2004, Levar Stoney was involved in covering up and lying for five Democratic campaign operatives who slashed the tires of 25 vans rented by the Republican Party for get out the vote efforts.” This must have been some of that “voter suppression” we’re always hearing about.

TODAY’S ACADEMIA, HAVEN OF GENOCIDAL RACIAL HATE SPEECH: Lib Professor Tells Class: “If You’re A White Male, You Don’t Deserve To Live. You’re A Cancer, You’re A Disease. White Males Only Murder And Oppress Non-Whites”… I’m actually pretty sure this is a parody, but these days, who can tell?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Ways to Shine at The Office Holiday Party.

IN THE MAIL: From Eric Flint & David Carrico, 1636: The Devil’s Opera (Ring of Fire).

GRIM MILESTONE: TaxProf: The IRS Scandal, Day 200.

MICHAEL BARONE: Why opposition to gun control has increased over the last half-century.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Peace For Our Time.

The Iranian agreement comes not in isolation, unfortunately. The Syrian debacle instructed the Iranians that the Obama administration was more interested in announcing a peaceful breakthrough than actually achieving it. The timing is convenient for both sides: The Obama administration needed an offset abroad to the Obamacare disaster, and the Iranians want a breathing space to rebuild their finances and ensure that Assad can salvage the Iranian-Hezbollah-Assad axis. The agreement is a de facto acknowledgement that containing, not ending, Iran’s nuclear program is now U.S. policy. . . .

Aside from the details of this new Sword of Damocles pact, one wonders about the following: In the case of violations, will it be easier for Iran to return to weaponization or for the U.S. to reassemble allies to reestablish the sanctions? Will Israel now be more or less likely to consider preemption? Will the Sunni states feel some relief or more likely pursue avenues to achieve nuclear deterrence? Will allies like Japan or South Korea feel that the U.S. has reasserted its old global clout, or further worry that their patron might engage in secret talks with, say, China rather than reemphasize their security under the traditional U.S. umbrella?

The president’s dismal polls are only a multiplier of that general perception abroad that foreign policy is an auxiliary to fundamental transformation at home, useful not so much to create international stability per se, as to enhance Obama influence in pursuing his domestic agenda. Collate reset, lead from behind, “redlines,” “game-changers,” ”deadlines,” the Arab Spring confusion, the skedaddle from Iraq, Benghazi, the Eastern European missile pullback, and the atmosphere is comparable to the 1979–80 Carter landscape, in which after three years of observation, the opportunists at last decided to act while the acting was good, from Afghanistan to Central America to Tehran.

There is not a good record, from Philip of Macedon to Hitler to Stalin in the 1940s to Carter and the Soviets in the 1970s to radical Islamists in the 1990s, of expecting authoritarians and thugs to listen to reason, cool their aggression, and appreciate democracies’ sober and judicious appeal to logic — once they sense in the West greater eagerness to announce new, rather than to enforce old, agreements.

Nope. But Obama et al. care only about accumulating their own power, not about what others do. Just as they are happy to see the economic pie shrink, so long as they control a larger slice of what’s left.

THE AMERICA THAT DOESN’T WORK: It Costs $200B to Manage $500B In Federal Grants.

AMY ALKON: Fighting Sexism With Cross-Stitched Man-Hating: Welcome to openly toxic feminism. Quoth a feminist author: “To me, there’s nothing ironic about misandry. I really do hate men. A lot.” We’d kinda figured that out, lady.

BIG SAVINGS, NO WAITING: At Amazon, It’s Black Friday Deals Week.

Also, Deals Galore in GPS and Navigation.

Plus, today only: 20% or More Off Featured Windows 8 Laptops.

Also today only: Samsung Galaxy SIII – No-Contract Phones, $259.95 (35% off).

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: The Real And The Fake of ObamaCare: Politicians can’t talk their way out of a technological mess.

All appearances to the contrary, the managers involved in this debacle aren’t dumb. But they come from a background — law and politics — where arguments often take the place of reality, and plausibility can be as good as, or better than, truth.

What engineers know that lawyers and politicians often don’t is that in the world of things, as opposed to people, there’s no escaping the sharp teeth of reality. But in law, and especially politics, inconvenient facts are merely inconvenient, something to be rationalized away.

When our country has accomplished great things in the past, there has usually been a great engineer running the program: Hyman Rickover with the nuclear submarine program, or Wernher von Braun with the Apollo space program, for example. Rickover and von Braun were famously stern taskmasters, but they did not substitute wishes for reality.

Which may be why they were able to launch submarines, and rockets that astounded the world. While today, we can’t even launch a website.

Read the whole thing!

UPDATE: Reader G.L. Carlson writes:

For years, I told MBA’s working on new product programs that there are two kinds of laws. Man-made law is a mutable matter of opinion, persuasion, and convenience. Mother Nature has no pity, brooks no argument, and enforces HER laws absolutely with massive indifference to the consequences. Breaking the speed limit may get you fined; ignoring gravity will get you killed.

This understanding is a fundamental difference between those trained in science and those in liberal arts. The latter may get it; the former always do (or win Darwin awards, thus leaving the field).

Indeed. Though to be fair, this is precisely the sort of thing that a rigorous liberal arts education — as opposed to the sloppier modern alternatives — did in fact teach.

OOPS: No Grounds for Claim that Obamacare Lowers Healthcare Costs.

GENERATIONAL WEALTH TRANSFERS: Government books $41.3 billion in student loan profits: Figures come as concerns mount about growing loan debt for students, graduates. And, of course, the program is also mostly a subsidy allowing universities to charge higher tuitions.

OBAMA NOT LOOKING SO HOT IN NEW CNN POLL: “Obama’s woes are not limited to honesty and his managerial skills. Fifty-six percent say he is not a person they admire, and an equal number say he does not agree with them on important issues. Fifty-six percent also say he does not inspire confidence, and 53% don’t view him as a strong and decisive leader.”

He’s only strong and decisive when attacking his domestic political opponents.

ONE OF OBAMA’S FEW SUCCESSFUL POLICIES: Joel Achenbach on the Spaceflight Boom.

To hear the dreamers tell it, this is the next Silicon Valley. The Mojave Air and Space Port is the spiritual heart of the industry that people call “New Space.”

Old Space (and this is still the dreamers talking) is slow, bureaucratic, government-directed, completely top-down. Old Space is NASA, cautious and halting, supervising every project down to the last thousand-dollar widget. Old Space is Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman. Old Space coasts on the glory of the Apollo era and isn’t entirely sure what to do next.

New Space is the opposite of all that. It’s wild. It’s commercial, bootstrapping, imaginative, right up to the point of being (and this is no longer the dreamers talking) delusional.

Many of the New Space enterprises are still in the PowerPoint stage, with business models built around spaceships that haven’t yet gone to space. A bold attitude and good marketing aren’t enough to put a vehicle into orbit. The skeptics among the Old Space people will say to the upstarts: Where’s your rocket? How many times have you launched? Can you deliver reliably? Repeatedly? Safely? We put a man on the moon — what have you done?

If there’s one thing that New Space has going for it, it’s that Old Space is in trouble. Old Space and New Space turn out to be symbiotic. New Space companies need NASA contracts, and NASA needs New Space companies to pick up the agency’s slack.

The true believers imagine that, someday soon, robotic vehicles will mine asteroids for precious metals, including gold and platinum. Moon dirt will be transformed into rocket fuel for missions to Mars. Closer to home, FedEx will send a package from New York to Tokyo, via space, in half an hour.

Read the whole thing.

THIS SEEMS WORTHWHILE: Stewart Baker: Can We Crowd-Audit HealthCare.gov?

You don’t have to be very cynical to think that we’ll only hear about enrollment statistics on November 30 if the 80% goal is met, or can be spun.

Which leads me to the point of this post: We don’t actually have to wait for the administration to release the numbers. Because the government has chosen a target that can be measured by the public.

All we need is for a large enough group of consumers to go through the enrollment process on November 30 and report whether they succeeded or failed in choosing a plan and getting it into their shopping cart.

Read the whole thing.

MICHAEL BARONE: Will Republicans propose tax cuts to strengthen two-parent families?

As Utah Sen. Mike Lee has noted in speeches at the Heritage Foundation, “The problem of poverty is linked to family breakdown and the erosion of marriage among low-income families and communities.”

Lee is careful not to cast opprobrium on single or divorced parents. But he insists on pointing to the uncomfortable but undeniable fact that economic outcomes for their children have been far worse than those of children raised in two-parent families.

That produces many personal tragedies. And in cold economic terms, it means that society is losing gross domestic product because of less than optimal development of human capital.

Government policy can’t force people to get or stay married. But it may be able to encourage them to do so.

That happened in the years after World War II. A steeply progressive income tax combined with generous dependent deductions ($500 originally, later raised to $600) played some unquantifiable part in stimulating the Baby Boom and family stability for a generation after the war.

Lee proposes a $2,500 child tax credit — less in real dollars than the postwar deduction — applied to both payroll and income taxes.

He also proposes allowing employees to claim flex time when they have worked overtime, as federal employees can do. He wants Congress to hack away at the marriage penalties embedded in various benefits programs and Obamacare.

Lee also talks about devolving gas taxes and transportation policies to the states (to reduce commute times) and allowing states to accredit alternative forms of higher and vocational education (to help upward mobility).

Unmarrieds tend to vote Democrat. Marrieds tend to vote Republican. Dems have been pushing policies to boost the number of the former for years. The GOP needs to boost the number of marrieds, or it’s in trouble.

LANGUAGE UPDATE: Sunday Night Football snickers! Out: “Fumbled.” In: “Obamacared;” Obama inspires new fail term.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: A Culture In Ruins.

JIM EPSTEIN: Amtrak Is a Tax-Sucking Behemoth That Deserves to Die. I do enjoy the Acela Club Car, though. Of course, it’s so pleasant because it’s heavily subsidized.

VALERIE JARRETT now dating Ahmad Rashad. Is “Quranist” a word?

TODAY’S SPACEX LAUNCH: A Potential Game-Changer. Well, just remember that successful tech programs proceed by trial and error.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG: For beleaguered IRS, a crucial test still awaits after troubled rollout of health-care law.

Related: USA Today: Scant Evidence of Fixes at IRS After Scandal.

LET’S YOU AND HIM FIGHT: Former Rep. Pete Stark Out For Revenge On Successor Who Ousted Him In Primary.

INDEED: Salena Zito: For Obama, Everything Is About Politics.

As a president, his governing style always has required a bad guy, someone who is “against” him.

It is a way of operating that his staff has adopted. That is why, when senior staffers such as Pfeiffer are questioned by reporters, their default answers aren’t thoughtful or mindful of the office they represent.

Instead, the answers are laced with bitterness toward the questioners and with disdain for the people who might care about an inconvenient issue.

They’re not very nice people. They’re not especially bright or competent, either.

JOHN FUND REVISITS THE REPEAL OF THE DISASTROUS 1989 CATASTROPHIC HEALTH CARE ACT:

“These people don’t understand what the government is trying to do for them,” said then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Dan Rostenkowski in August 1989, after senior citizens angry over a federal health-care law booed him and chased him down a Chicago street. That law was repealed a few months later by a Democratic Congress and a Republican president who had supported it jus the year before.

Everything old is new again. We are starting to hear in D.C. that today’s unpopular health-care law might be in real trouble, spelled with a capital T, as The Music Man would put it. . . .

Even then, in 2010, some survivors of the Catastrophic Coverage Act debacle were unsure of Obamacare’s staying power. “When I saw this massive thing, I said, ‘Boy, if this is anything like catastrophic, they are going to be in trouble,’” former representative Brian Donnelly, a Massachusetts Democrat, told the New York Times. “It is a very good analogy.”

Let’s hope.

IOWAHAWK: On the upside, a nuclear war would help the White House change the news cycle away from Obamacare.

It will also serve as a stimulus to some parts of the economy.

LEAD BALLOON: The Hill: Top Dems, Republicans blast Obama’s nuke deal with Iran.

Senior members in both chambers said that, at first glance, Iran got the better end of the deal with western powers, China and Russia – effectively exchanging looser sanctions for very little progress in impeding Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. Some powerful lawmakers have said they’re willing to seek new sanctions now, but delay their implementation until after the six months covered by the current deal. But others weren’t even willing to go that far.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), the No. 3 Democrat in the chamber, called the deal disproportionately good for Iran, and that it was only strong sanctions that gave the U.S. and its allies any leverage over Tehran.

“This disproportionality of this agreement makes it more likely that Democrats and Republicans will join together and pass additional sanctions when we return in December,” Schumer said in a Sunday statement.

In fact, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s office pointed out Sunday that the Virginia Republican and Schumer – rarely allies on any issue – had sounded similar concerns about the deal, and the impact sanctions have had on Iran.

Obama, bringing together Democrats and Republicans, Saudis and Israelis in opposition to his policies. He’s a uniter, not a divider!

THIS IS WHY THEY’RE SO ANXIOUS TO PACK THE D.C. CIRCUIT: Here Come Multiple Lawsuits Challenging Implementation Of Obamacare.

ROGER KIMBALL ON Crystal Mangum’s murder conviction and the aftermath of the Duke Lacrosse false-rape case.

Travel back to 2006. Syracuse University early on got into the act when it decided not to accept as transfers any students from the Duke lacrosse team—not just the three accused chaps, mind you, but anyone contaminated by having played lacrosse for Duke. “I think it would be inappropriate,” sniffed Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross. (Where is he now? Llama farming in Peru? Nope. Still athletic director at Syracuse.)

But there are at least two other aspects of the case that deserve comment. One is the role of the media, which pounced on the story with unseemly delight. Oh, how The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and countless other bastions of liberal self-satisfaction loved it! Race. Class. Sex. Victimhood. It was the perfect morality tale. Those white jocks at “the Harvard of the South” just had to be guilty. And what a good time we were all going to have lacerating the malefactors while at the same time preening ourselves on our own superior virtue!

The editorials, the op-eds, the comments, the analyses poured forth non-stop, demonstrating that one of the deepest human passions is the urge to self-righteous pontification. The novelist Allan Gurganus epitomized the tone in an op-ed for the Times in April 2006: “The children of privilege,” he thundered, “feel vividly alive only while victimizing, even torturing.” You don’t say? Even sports writers got into the act. Selena Roberts located Duke University “at the intersection of entitlement and enablement, . . . virtuous on the outside, debauched on the inside.” By August 2006, as District Attorney Michael Nifong’s case was betraying worrisome fissures, the Times published a 6,000-word article arguing—“praying” might be a more apposite term—that, whatever weaknesses there might be in the prosecution’s case, “there is also a body of evidence to support [taking] the matter to a jury.” As the Times columnist David Brooks ruefully noted after the tide had begun to turn, the campaign against the athletes had the lineaments of a “witch hunt.”

Indeed. Richard Brodhead, Duke’s president, got out his broomstick and suspended the accused students, fired the lacrosse coach, cancelled the rest of the team’s season, and pandered to every possible PC interest, but especially to those baying for the heads of the accused. (One commentator estimated that only 3 percent of Brodhead’s statements could be construed as supporting the accused students.)

And then there was the Duke faculty. As Vincent Carroll, writing in the Rocky Mountain News, noted, “the most astonishing fact, hands down, was and remains the squalid behavior of the community of scholars at Duke itself. For months nearly the entire faculty fell into one of two camps: those who demanded the verdict first and the trial later, and those whose silence enabled their vigilante colleagues to set the tone.”

Particularly egregious was the behavior of the “Group of 88,” a congeries of faculty activists and fellow-travelers who signed “What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?,” a full-page manifesto published in April 2006 in the Duke student newspaper. The statement, which purported to be “listening” to students on campus, mingled anonymous student comments with racialist agitprop. “Regardless of the results of the police investigation,” ran part of the introductory comment, “what is apparent every day now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism.” There followed a mosaic of histrionic proclamations: “We want the absence of terror,” one student is supposed to have said. “But we don’t really know what that means.” “This is not a different experience for us here at Duke University. We go to class with racist classmates, we go to gym with people who are racists . . .”

Some of the Group of 88 were common or garden-variety academic liberals—timid souls whose long tenure in the protected purlieus of the university surrounded by adolescents has nurtured their risible sense of self-importance and political enlightenment. But a good percentage were radicals more devoted to political activism than scholarship. Indeed, one scandal that still has not received sufficient publicity is the preposterous pseudo-scholarship purveyed by many trendy academics. A look at the CVs of many members of the Group of 88 provides a case in point, partly shocking, partly embarrassing.

Mostly pathetic.

NARRATIVE CONTROL: “While fifty years later, much of the MSM still refuses to acknowledge that JFK’s assassin was a Communist loser, somehow it’s also apparently not cricket to point out that his brother RFK was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist.”