ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Who Made That Tube Top?

ED DRISCOLL: Soledad O’Brien’s Progressive Nostalgia and the Collapse of CNN. “O’Brien has been on the air for over 20 years now, at first NBC, then the nascent MSNBC, and then CNN. How do you cover politics professionally and yet pretend that you’re so naive you haven’t formed opinions, both pro and con about the people and ideologies you cover? It’s a sham — we know it, she knows it, and her bosses know it. But the network heads at Fox and MSNBC are at least smart enough to know that it’s an outdated sham. Which is why they’ve outflanked CNN and left it in the dust.”

SHOCKER: Law Firms To Experience Tepid Growth in 2012.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON: How long before they go after Paul Ryan’s mom? “You know it’s going to happen.”

IT DIDN’T SEEM TO CUT INTO THE FUN, THOUGH: Occupy the Truth rally trolled by Occupy Cleveland member and convicted sex offender.

In fact, it seems to have added to the fun. “Occupy the Truth was organized in response to an attempted bombing of an Ohio bridge by Occupy Cleveland members, an act which has gone largely underreported. Speakers today brought a light to shine on the truth. What did the opposition bring? Race baiting? Check. Gay baiting? Check. Misogyny? A criminal past? Check and check. Stay classy, Occupy. Or as Nancy Pelosi would say, ‘God bless them.’”

As far as I know, though, there’s no Harry Reid pederasty connection. But who knows? Harry refuses to divulge any details.

HISTORY: “Hey, remember when Nancy Pelosi and a gaggle of Democratic women vowed to eradicate Washington’s culture of corruption? Tee-hee.”

AN ELOQUENT COMMENTER AT ACE OF SPADES sums up sentiment in the small business community.

SEEMS LIKE SO LONG AGO NOW: The Best Of Olympic Beach Volleyball.

21ST CENTURY RACISM: Atlanta Symphony Rejects Two High School Choruses Because They‘re Not ’Racially Diverse Enough.’

UPDATE: A bright spot: Atlanta Symphony Musicians Offer to Perform for Free with Choral Groups.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Players’ Association has sat by in dismay for the past several days observing the ASO management’s disintegrating relations with Lassiter, Walton, and Grady High Schools, and the whole community.

As musicians who love to play with the talented choruses at these schools, we want to help resolve these ongoing issues.

To that end, the Musicians are making the following offer to Lassiter High School, Grady High School, and Walton High School: We, the ATL Symphony Musicians, will perform for free with the Lassiter, Walton, and Grady choral groups at their schools. Each school can use these performances as fundraisers and keep all of the proceeds for their benefit.

These good people are our children, our students, and our future colleagues and audiences. In short, the ATL Symphony Musicians are one community with them.

That’s a very nice gesture.

WHEN NAT HENTOFF LEFT, AND ROY EDROSO CAME IN, THE WRITING WAS ON THE WALL: How Management Killed The Village Voice.

Related thoughts from Prof. Jacobson on Hentoff and from Rick Moran on what else was lost.

WITH LOTS OF PHOTOS, Gateway Pundit reports on today’s “Occupy The Truth” Rally in Cleveland.

Here’s one, of Dana Loesch, Michelle Malkin, and Sonnie Johnson.

Jim Hoft emails that a good time was had by all. Sure looks like it.

UPDATE: Reader Pat Dooley writes:

This is one of my favorite pictures from today:

Great T-shirt message plus Breitbart images everywhere. Math: gets them every time.

IowaHawk really started something with that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Getcher PAUL RYAN “MATH” STICKER here.

MIAMI HERALD: Obamacare’s unpopularity blunts Obama’s attacks on Romney-Ryan Medicare plans.

DO TELL: Mark Halperin: ‘The Media Is Very Susceptible to Doing What the Obama Campaign Wants.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE: People Prefer Playful Partners, Says New Study.

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AM I WRONG TO TAKE THE SIDE OF “PUSSY RIOT” OVER VLADIMIR PUTIN? This post by Eugene Volokh makes the argument that I am, sort of.

BOSTON GLOBE: Biden should apologize for “back in chains” remark. Plus, noting the double-standard on racist remarks by Democrats vs. Republicans. This campaign certainly is doing a lot of consciousness-raising . . . .

NEWS YOU CAN USE: You Should Back Up Your Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter Accounts: Here’s How.

#WARONWOMEN: A special breeding program for Party members? “You want to get ahead in the Democratic Party power structure? Submit to the matchmaking… and make some babies. I’d like to know more about how this picking of “good people” is carried out. Are good looking women chosen to provide wives for the men? . . . I’d like 10 years of data.”

I have obtained secret video of the meeting where this plan was developed.

UPDATE: Moe Lane suggests a name for Schumer’s program: “How about ‘Spring of Life?’”

And reader Patrick Anders writes: “It’s worth remembering that Anthony Weiner was Schumer’s chief of staff. Weiner later went on to become the perfect model of a happy marriage!”

STORAGE: Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram. “Scientists have been eyeing up DNA as a potential storage medium for a long time, for three very good reasons: It’s incredibly dense (you can store one bit per base, and a base is only a few atoms large); it’s volumetric (beaker) rather than planar (hard disk); and it’s incredibly stable — where other bleeding-edge storage mediums need to be kept in sub-zero vacuums, DNA can survive for hundreds of thousands of years in a box in your garage.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Unemployment has never been this high for this long post-recession. Are we really “post-recession?”

SURE. THEY’LL HAVE GOTTEN USED TO THEM AS SEXBOTS BY MIDDLE AGE. Will Old People Ever Accept Care From Robots?

PAUL MIRENGOFF: Dishonorable Disclosures And Seared Memories.

SHOCKINGLY, THIS PIECE IS NOT ABOUT VLADIMIR PUTIN’S GYNOPHOBIA: Feisty Feline Infatuates the Lord of the Manor.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “My Boyfriend Got His Ex Pregnant with a Turkey Baster.” Wendy comments: “Today’s crop of letters makes me sad for our society.”

HE CHOSE POORLY: Heavily armed Alabama mom invites intruder to lie down for a bit. “When momma’s got a gun and her two daughters can quickly lay their hands on a butcher knife and an axe, you’ve become the very definition of ‘failure in the victim selection process.’”

Honestly, when you decide to stage a home invasion in Alabama, you’ve already made a big mistake.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Fitness Tracker Calorie Counts Are All Over the Map.

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PAUL RYAN AT THE VILLAGES: Blogged here, here, and here. Nice, firsthand blog-reporting with photos at all 3 sites.

HEH: “They told me if I voted for McCain we would have a stupid lightweight as Vice President….. and they were right.”

OUCH: Brazil worker survives bar through skull. “This tomography scan released Thursday, Aug. 16, 2012 by the Miguel Couto hospital, shows the skull of 24-year-old construction worker Eduardo Leite pierced by a metal bar in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Doctors say Leite survived after a 6-foot metal bar fell from above him and pierced his head. Luiz Essinger of Rio de Janeiro’s Miguel Couto Hospital Friday told the Globo TV network that doctors successfully withdrew the iron bar during a five-hour-long surgery.”

JOHN ELLIS: The Collapse of CNN. “In a little over twenty years, CNN devolved from the most important television news organization in the world to another channel to skim through or skip over. But don’t take my word for it. Look at the numbers. In the second quarter of this year, CNN’s primetime ratings basically collapsed. The overall numbers were down horribly and the key demos were down horribly. It was so bad that in primetime, CNN was losing to CNN Headline News, which is a little bit like the Yankees losing to their farm team in Columbus Scranton, every night.”

VLADIMIR PUTIN IS SCARED OF GIRLS: Steve Chapman: Putin’s Fear of Pussy Riot. “To Putin, Western leaders may seem weak because they routinely tolerate the most outrageous insults and vicious attacks. But they are really demonstrating the strength that lies in democratic processes. American presidents are strong enough not to be fearful of protests and dissent.”

THE HAZARDS OF NO-SUN ADVICE: Low Vitamin D Levels. “The researchers recommend that more should be done to improve the uptake of current advice on vitamin D supplements, but they also suggest that promoting safe sun exposure and access to green spaces in summer could be a useful additional strategy, even in the north of Scotland.”

I’d say that in Scotland, you should take advantage of whatever sun you can get . . . .

CYNTHIA YOCKEY: YES, deconditioning IS a medical condition.

THE SCIENCE OF THE WET-DOG SHAKE:

There’s a certain expression a wet dog wears as it trots up to you, a kind of gleam in the eye that says, “I’m about to shake so vigorously that in a mere 4 seconds, 70 percent of the water in my fur will fly off of my coat and on to you.”

But the wet-dog shake, though it’s an annoyance to us, may be a survival technique to dogs. The water that sticks to a mammal’s fur can lower its body temperature, causing hypothermia, so it behooves wild animals to get rid of all that water as quickly and efficiently as possible.

To find out just how efficient the wet-dog method is, researchers from the Hu lab at Georgia Tech filmed 33 different wet zoo mammals from rats to kangaroos to lions and tigers and bears (oh yes) with high-speed cameras and analyzed the motion of their bodies, skin, and fur. Their research was first published back in 2010, but their latest study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, improves their mathematical model of the wet-dog shake and reveals how much force the furballs can generate. (The paper is not yet online; we will provide a link when it becomes available.)

Dogs shake with a characteristic oscillation, twisting their bodies from side to side at a set frequency to generate so much centripetal force that water droplets go flying. The shaking animals observed in this study generated forces 10 to 70 times greater than gravity, a feat that was easier for the larger mammals.

Just stay clear.

HAVING A BAD DAY: Driver swerves to avoid moose, hits bear instead.

IN THE MAIL: From Kameron Hurley, God’s War.

TO BE FAIR, HE’S ONLY COMPETING AGAINST JOE BIDEN: Rex Murphy: In the battle of the vice-presidents, Ryan wins by a knockout. “It was almost funny to hear some Democrats try to portray Ryan as a ‘dangerous,’ too ‘bold’ choice for Romney, exactly at the same time Biden was out on the campaign trail playing to the script of some movie only he could see. In less than two days he gave the world to understand he thinks it is still the 20th century, misnamed the state he was speaking in and most viciously, gave one of the crudest, most demeaning racist shoutouts ever.”

Remember, putting Slow Joe a heartbeat away from the nuclear button was Obama’s first executive decision.

VLADIMIR PUTIN IS SCARED OF GIRLS: The New York Post on the Pussy Riot Persecution.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “For more than a decade Emory University intentionally misreported data about its students to groups that rank colleges.”

The higher education bubble is looking more like the subprime bubble all the time.

PROF. JACOBSON: So when does the media put Biden’s qualification to be President on trial?

WELL, IT WORKED: The Marilyn Monroe Diet: Eggs, Meat…And Ice Cream? And yet — though people still think of her as zaftig — she was “teeny tiny.” In fact, “She was sort of like Kate Moss but fleshier on top.”

Gary Taubes is no doubt nodding. And while her weight-training regimen didn’t reach Mark Rippetoe levels, it was ahead of its time.

TRACY QUAN: Helen Gurley Brown and the sexual freedom wars. “Sometimes the most vicious, unsympathetic disagreements are those which occur between liberals and radicals.”

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HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Gallup: August Unemployment Not Looking Good.

Hey, let’s run that graphic again:

UPDATE: A Big Version Of The Biggest Chart In American Politics.

READER STUART GITTELMAN WRITES: “They told me if I voted Republican we’d see failing, unprofitable companies with crappy products lay off thousands of workers while their corporate executives got huge payouts and there wouldn’t be a whiff of criticism about it from the president. AND THEY WERE RIGHT!” NY Times boss Thompson eyes $8m payday.

PJTV: Klavan’s Economic Smackdown: Paul Ryan vs. Barack Obama.

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Video: Bodega Clerk Slashed Across Face For Not Accepting Food Stamps For Beer.

IN RESPONSE TO MY REVIEW of the FitDesk laptop exercise bicycle, reader Wilfrid Nixon writes:

I wanted to write and thank you for your review of the Fitdesk X Compact Pedal Desk. Based on your review, I ordered it and it has exceeded my expectations. As you indicated, it was easy to set up. But for me it may have finally cracked my exercise problem. I have never enjoyed exercise and have always viewed it as an intrusion on other things, but now, it intrudes no longer! I have been able since getting the Fitdesk to do about an hour a day of gentle pedaling while also checking e-mails and the like. Whether I will still be doing this in a year’s time remains to be seen, but I have made a much better start than with any other exercise I have begun. Of course, the exercise itself is not very vigorous, but that does not matter right now.

So, thank you. Your recommendation has been just great for me so far. I will write and let you know this time next year whether it is still functioning as intended for me!

We still like it.

XKCD ON “Clinically Studied Ingredients.”

ROMNEY PUNCHES BACK TWICE AS HARD:

In the Medicare debate, schoolyard rules apply: Punch the bully in the mouth twice as hard.

It’s impossible to have a reasonable discussion with people who insist you are going to “kill people” (Paul Krugman’s words). If Vice President Biden hasn’t yet said that the Romney-Ryan Medicare premium support plan will lead to the reinstitution of chattel slavery, just wait until the next time he gets worked up before a largely African-American audience.

Never before, though, have Democrats passed the largest Medicare cuts in history immediately prior to launching their tried-and-true assault. This time, it is a case of the pot calling the kettle a danger to America’s seniors.

Confronted with Obama’s Medicare cuts, Democrats and their friends in the media resort to denial.

On “Meet the Press” the other day, I asked Rachel Maddow if she supported the $700 billion in cuts, and she simply wouldn’t say. Here was the Oxford-educated pride of liberal punditry professing to have no opinion on a primary means of funding what she considers a glorious legislative achievement.

Read the whole thing.

RICH PEOPLE WITH CLOSE TIES TO POLITICIANS: The New York Times doesn’t mind, unless they’re Republicans.

DAVID HARSANYI: What Gives With Henry Blodget? “If Blodget wants to pretend that paying taxes is a patriotic and moral enterprise, rather than simply a necessity, that’s his choice as a liberal. But his consistent mischaracterization and simplification of the his opponent’s opinions is irksome.”

Perhaps he’d care to release ten years of his tax returns.

UPDATE: Senator Blutarsky writes:

Here’s the thing about Henry Blodget and Mitt Romney: Both guys made millions of dollars in the financial sector. Only one of them did it in ways that got him banned from the securities industry. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t Mitt.

And Graeme Hein emails: “Since Henry has a lifetime ban from the securities industry, he’s in an interesting position to try to claim to be holier than thou. Much like Client #9, his colleague on the Slate attempted leftist redemption team.”

Here’s some Blodget-Spitzer background.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Will Allen writes:

I can’t tell you how sickening it is for me to hear the guy who has responsibility for law enforcement in this country talk about his opponent’s tax returns, after he enlisted, as a major bundler, a former Senator and Governor, who then oversaw a company in which hundreds of millions, in what were supposed to be SEGREGATED ACCOUNTS, simply disappeared! Who then testified in front of Congress that he simply had no idea where the money went! With the DoJ now saying no prosecutions are likely! With the Senator/Governor/bundler/money vanisher now reported to be mulling over whether he should start up a hedge fund!

I thought I had seen it all. I was wrong.

These are the Crazy Years.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Higher Education Invests in Marketing: “The Wall Street Journal reports that a number of universities, wary of the public perception that the degrees they offer may not be worth the student loan burden, have taken to hiring highly-paid “CMOs” (Chief Marketing Officers) to build their brands and coordinate their admissions offices’ sales pitch. Although many in academia disdain corporate marketing methods, the practice is becoming increasingly common.”

They’d be smarter to lower tuition and increase value, but that would require sacrifice by internal constituencies. I agree with Peter Thiel here: “If you need large marketing budgets, it suggests that something has gone wrong with the substance of the product.”

PUBLIC HEALTH: Memo to greens: Maybe grocery bags should be disposable for a reason.

THESE ARE THE CRAZY YEARS: Lunch lady faces fine for feeding poor kids in Pennsylvania.

STANDING UP TO HATRED: Lady Gaga Strikes Back at ‘Abusive, Childish’ PETA.

APPARATCHIK DEFENDS THE APPARAT: Tea Party Attacked By Democrats For Education Reform.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): MISERY:

The unemployment rate for Rhode Island fell by one tenth of a percent to 10.8%, but total employment dropped by 80 people. That’s not even a “mixed picture,” though. The only reason the unemployment rate moved in a seemingly positive direction is that 471 more Rhode Islanders just gave up looking for work.

So if the unemployment rate is a positive sign, then the state’s motto might as well be “We hope people leave faster than they lose their jobs.”

About the best that can be said for the Ocean State is that every other state in the union lost more employment than it did, except Utah, which saw a slight gain. That context is illustrated very well in an update to my chart showing labor force (employed plus looking for work) and employment for Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut as a percentage of each state’s January 2007 labor force.

It’s not pretty.

JOURNALISM: NYTimes ignores senior former AP journalists seeking correction on ‘napalm girl’ context.

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YESTERDAY, I MENTIONED THE DUSTUP AT U. GA’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER. Now the Board has backed down.

THEORY: Biden’s gaffes aren’t really gaffes — he wants Obama to lose in November.

“THIS IS NOT A PARODY.” Jim Treacher comments: “This guy is a clown. Morning zoo radio? Entertainment Tonight? Really? What, was SpongeBob busy?”

Also, Vladimir Putin is scared of girls.

You know, the Cold War wasn’t so great, but it does seem that the leadership was better on both sides back then. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Raphael Daly writes:

Yesterday, you said in your blog “Cold War wasn’t so great, but it does seem that the leadership was better on both sides.” With all due respect, I think you seriously misspoke. The church in which the band “Pussy Riot” staged their protest video did not exist during the Cold War, because Soviet leadership had it torn down. The clergy which served that church were imprisoned and sometimes murdered. The difference between Russian leaders before and after the fall of communism is the difference between leaders who have difficulty with free speech (Putin) and those who had no difficulty with it whatsoever (because it didn’t exist).

Fair point. By “better” I really meant “less pathetic,” not “less evil.”

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Huma Abedin’s “Muslim Minority Affairs” — It’s Not Just a Journal.

FOLLOW ME on Twitter.

RICHARD KAHLENBERG: Obama’s Affirmative-Action Brief. “Given Barack Obama’s mixed messages on affirmative action in the past—he has said his own daughters do not deserve a leg up in admissions and that he understands the resentment toward preferences by whites who do not feel particularly privileged—there was a modest hope that he would break with longstanding Democratic Party orthodoxy to promote a better kind of affirmative action that looks at gaping economic inequalities in our country rather than just counting skin color. He blinked, however, and filed a brief that is unlikely to do anything to change the minds of Supreme Court justices and may do real damage to the president’s own re-election chances.”

VIDEO BY SPEC OPS VETS UNHAPPY WITH LEAKS has over one million views on YouTube already.

#JUNKSCIENCE: Major Cracks In Study Saying Egg Yolk Consumption As Bad As Smoking. “This is very poor quality research that should not influence patients’ dietary choices.”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, WE’D WIND UP WITH CRAZED RELIGIOUS FANATICS LITERALLY CRUCIFYING THOSE WHO OFFENDED THEIR BELIEFS. And they were right! “As the Muslim Brotherhood continues to solidify its ever-expanding power in Egypt, several Arabic news agencies — including Arab News, Al Khabar News, Dostor Watany and Egypt Now — are reporting that opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood were ‘crucified’ in Egypt last week.”

OLDEST COMMISSIONED WARSHIP: USS Constitution to sail under own power for second time in over a century.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, BRITISH EDITION: A-level students must be told the whole truth about the value of a degree: Mis-selling of higher education is one of the least remarked upon scandals of our time.

Least remarked upon? Some of us have been trying! And this sounds familiar:

From the moment that John Major started to abolish student grants, the British government has been in the business of selling (rather than simply providing) higher education. Yes, studying costs, runs the argument, but it is an investment: what students pay is a small fraction of what they will get back.

Then came the proliferation of courses and institutions, from BA (Hons) in Golf Management at the University of the Highlands and Islands to Trade Union Studies at Blackpool College. The definition of a degree has changed massively, but the financial argument used for getting one has not changed at all.

Costs have gone up, value has gone down. Plus this:

Of recent graduates, almost a third are in jobs that don’t require anything more than GCSEs. One in 10 recent graduates is now on the dole. All youth unemployment is tragic, but there is something especially scandalous about young people who have been sold a vision of graduate life, only to find it was a piece of spin to sweeten the bitter pill of student loans. The mis-selling of higher education is one of the least remarked-upon scandals of our time.

Indeed.

THE FOLKS AT LUCKYGUNNER.COM are hiring a Community Organizer.

UPDATE: Beretta is hiring, too. Guns and ammo: Growth sectors in the hopey-changey economy!

ROGER KIMBALL ON BARACK OBAMA’S FAMILY VALUES: “I’ve long known that abstract benevolence, a specialty of liberals, was eerily compatible with practical indifference or even cruelty. (I go into some of the reasons for this in ‘What’s Wrong with Benevolence’ in my new book The Fortunes of Permanence.) But this spectacle of callous familial neglect by, as Dinesh rightly describes him, the most powerful man in the world is something special. Forget politics. This is about simple humanity.”

HEH: Virginia Baker Swamped With Business Since Telling Biden “No!”

RUSSELL KOROBKIN: We Need A More Nuanced Standard for Determining What Constitutes Plagiarism. “That is, the question should be, to what extent was the expression specific and unique, but people are much more apt to employ a bright line rule based on the number of identical words. My high school English teacher taught me that copying more than three consecutive words from a source without attribution constituted plagiarism. This strikes me as privileging form over function.”

This is absolutely right. Peter Morgan and I argued for just such a standard in The Appearance of Impropriety. You can read that chapter online for free here. There’s even a defense of Joe Biden.

MR. PRESIDENT, CALL OFF YOUR ANIMALS: Video: Protester Disrupts Wisconsin Event, Spits on Romney Supporter.

MORE BRETT KIMBERLIN NEWS. If you support blogging freedom, consider a donation to the Bloggers Defense Team. I’ve donated.

STEPHEN KRUISER: Eat More Papaya! Plus, MSNBC Accuses Paul Ryan of Being a Family Man, and an Intellectual. Plus, Matt Lauer reporting from Obama’s lap.

IT’S NOT JUST RYAN RALLIES: Ben Cunningham sends this picture from the Nashville Tea Party meeting last night. “Glenn, we had to bring in extra chairs and turn down the air-conditioning.”

Is it me, or is there a 2010 vibe out there?

IF SO, THEN THEY CHOSE POORLY: Study: Men Paying For Sex From Prostitutes Looking For True Love. Or maybe I’m wrong:

Many of the female sex workers interviewed said they catered to the men’s emotional needs and described many of them as, “highly respectful” and sometimes “more caring than the other men in their ‘true’ personal lives.”

I would have tagged this “21st Century Relationships,” but I’m not sure there’s anything particularly new going on here. . . .

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Mark Perry on “The Academic Conference Racket.” Hey, don’t be too harsh — it’s not like we’re talking the GSA here.

PETRO-POLITICS: “News out this afternoon is that Obama is looking into opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a means to relieve pressure at the gas pump. Someone at the White House woke up and realized that the welcome springtime fall in gasoline prices has reversed course and retraced its steps, as shown in the first chart below of gasoline futures prices. I can tell you that out here on the Left Coast, the price of premium gasoline has reached $4.99 a gallon at my nearest station, but then California deserves it.”

“FORGET CHRIS MATTHEWS — HE’LL TAKE NANCY O’DELL.” Politico: Barack Obama’s Soft-Media Strategy. When you’re on the run from Tingles, you’re really afraid of taking tough questions.

MARK JUDGE: Russia’s Rock N Roll Riot. Will Pussy Riot’s role in Russia match The Plastic People of the Universe’s role in Czechoslovakia?

Well, Vladimir Putin seems to be afraid of girls . . . .

UPDATE: A report from the Pussy Riot protest in Washington.

AFTER THE LIGHTS GO OUT: Is your commmunity prepared?

Related: U.S. Woefully Unprepared for a Blackout Like India’s: Analysis.

If this interests you, you might check out Bill Quick’s disaster-preparedness forum.

Related: Pre-Post-Apocalyptic Survival Gear. More here.

UPDATE: GAO: EPA rules to cause energy price increases in Midwest, ‘compromise’ electric grid.

CHINA’S “UNLIVABLE” MEGALOPOLISES.

STACY MCCAIN: @PaulRyanVP and Math Continue to Represent Obama’s Worst Nightmare.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Unemployment Rate Rises In 44 States.

UPDATE: Red vs. Blue: “It turns out that the population-weighted average unemployment rate in states with Republican governors is 7.6 percent. The number for states with Democratic governors in 8.8. In other words, blue America (defined in terms of governors) has a higher unemployment rate than red America. Make of that what you will.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Justin Katz writes:

Hey, Prof. Reynolds.

Being in the failing state of Rhode Island and having to deal with the monthly announcements that “unemployment fell,” I had a bit of a negative reaction to your report, earlier, that only 44 states saw unemployment increases. As Rhode Island shows, falling unemployment can mean that more people are giving up than are losing their jobs. Hardly a positive development. I collected the numbers earlier today, and as it happens *employment* fell in every single state except Utah, which saw a very, very small increase.

I follow these numbers every month, because in relative terms Rhode Island presents a morbid fascination, but this month was really pretty astonishing. *Every single state* except a slight increase in Utah!

I wonder if the result would be different if the media weren’t suppressing the impression that Romney could actually win.

Oh, a lot of things would be different.

VLADIMIR PUTIN IS SCARED OF GIRLS: Pussy Riot Supporters Stage Protests Around The World.

TOMORROW IN CLEVELAND: “Occupy the Truth” Tea Party Organizers Announce Speakers: Michelle Malkin, Dana Loesch, Tony Katz, Sonnie Johnson and Jenny Beth Martin.

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RACISM: ‘Your skin is your sin’: Chicago cops sue Rahm Emanuel After Demotions.

VIDEO: Kira Davis’ open letter to MSNBC’s Toure.

STILL ASKING: How Did Harry Reid Get Rich?

MICHAEL GERSON: Obama’s Betrayal.

In the innocent, bygone days of February, President Obama told NBC News that the campaign would get negative against him, but provided this assurance: “I think that you will be able to see how we conduct ourselves in the campaign. I think it will be consistent with how I conducted myself in 2008 and hopefully how I have conducted myself as president of the United States.”

Not since Gary Hart urged reporters to follow him around because “they’d be very bored” has an assurance been more of an indictment. The Obama campaign has targeted and intimidated Republican donors on an Internet enemies list. It has engaged in the juvenile mockery of Mitt Romney’s singing. It has suggested, without evidence, that Romney may have committed the felony of falsifying Federal Election Commission documents. It has speculated, without proof, that Romney has avoided paying taxes. When Joe Biden engages in racially charged hyperbole, he is awkwardly but accurately reflecting the spirit of the 2012 Obama campaign. . . . The Obama campaign is veering toward antinomianism. Since it regards its own motives as pure, it feels it can dispense with the normal rules of accuracy, civility and decency. So we get the political methods of Spiro Agnew combined with the moral self-regard of Woodrow Wilson. It is not an attractive mixture.

Nasty, but incompetent. That’s been their hallmark all along.

SEPARATE, BUT EQUALIZED: Colorado U. to segregate dorms for students with gun permits. “The Daily Camera, a Boulder newspaper, reports that new rules are troubling to James Manley, the attorney from the Mountain States Legal Foundation, who represented the student gun-rights group that brought the original lawsuit against CU’s gun ban.” He’s just one o’ them outside agitators.

THE DARK-HORSE CANDIDATE TO REPLACE JOE BIDEN: Elizabeth Warren? Is “Dark Horse” her Indian name?

IN JAPAN, WORKING TOO HARD AND NOT HAVING ENOUGH SEX. “In 2007, Japans population reached a tipping point. It was the first year in its history (excluding 1945) where the number of deaths exceeded the number of births. In 2007 there were 2,000 more deaths than births. In 2011 that figure rose to approximately 204,000, and it’s a figure that is accelerating. Indeed, at 23.1%, Japan has the highest proportion of over-65s in the world, and at 13.2%, the world’s lowest proportion of under 14s. Japan’s population peaked at 127.7 million in 2007, and is forecast to shrink to a mere 47 million by 2100. What are the economic and social forces behind this?”