MICHAEL BARONE: the decline and fall of a great religion.

OBAMACARE: ready for liftoff.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES. Here's my favorite:

Want to rethink that statement, Joe?

LIBERAL SCIENCE: First we write the policy summary; then we adjust the data to match the policy; then we write the report.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

GEORGE WILL: Let ObamaCare burn. I have no objection -- none! -- to letting the Democrats go to hell in their own handbasket. I do, however, strongly object to them taking me with them.

HOW TO WIN CUSTOMERS and influence people (negatively).

TWEETING THE ADORABLE CARE ACT. And pretty soon the only doctor you'll be able to afford is your veterinarian.

I find the whole ad campaign insulting, but on the bright side it does illustrate the liberals' contempt for the little people it wants to control.

This is what you can expect.

CUCCINELLI: If McAullife wins, we’ll have to change the state motto from “sic semper tyrannis” to “quid pro quo”.

I watched the 'debate'. At his best, McAuliffe came across as unctuous. If he wins, I'm outta here.

Also, check out the Goldberg post over at National Review Online.

SUE THE BASTARDS: Virginia Beach School Board Chairman Publicly Posts Suspended Student’s Private Information.

OBAMACARE for the young and clueless. Instapundit comments: "Luckily, they might be too dumb to notice. Hey, they voted for Obama!"

D.C. HEALTH CARE EXCHANGE not ready for prime time. Neither is Colorado's.

But both D.C. and Colorado have plenty of time to rail about gun control while health care has far more impact on their citizens....

THE REAL QUESTION is "How many of those fake followers vote?"

LIVING IN the liberal's reality world. Click back through the calendar to learn more.

NEWT & CALLISTA GINGRICH to supply Sen. Cruz with reading material for his next 'filibuster'.

Senator Ted Cruz read from the Dr. Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham to his children during his filibuster last night. Callista is sending him her new book about the American Revolution for four to eight year olds, Yankee Doodle Dandy featuring Ellis the Elephant, and her two earlier American history books, Sweet Land of Liberty and Land of the Pilgrims’ Pride. Next time he filibusters he can teach his children American history in the process.

In other news, Obama had a very bad week. Read it all

DEMOCRATS: We don't have a spending problem (but we may have a payment problem).

FRANK J. FLEMING: Nature is our enemy.

[J]ust because it [nature] isn’t very good at killing us now doesn’t mean it won’t get better. When the global warming doesn’t kill us off, nature will probably later try to freeze us out. And I’ll bet nature is hard at work in its underground evolution labs trying to come up with a new animal to take us on — like maybe some sort of gorilla with a bear head that has shark mouths for fists and is bulletproof, i.e., an armored, shark-fisted borilla.

The armored, shark-fisted borilla is named 'Obama'.

WHY EDUCATION as we know it today is nearly over.

Home schooling and massive open online course [MOOC] education are the wave of the future.

THE MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION EVER: White House Celebrates Bisexual Visibility Day with an Official Closed-Door Event.

Transparent, that is, only when it suits them....

MICHELLE MALKIN: Obama Lied, My Health Plan Died. She had health insurance; now she has health care. Insurance is better.

GO AHEAD, SHUT THE GOVERNMENT DOWN: No one will ever notice.

Best comment:

Oh please shut down, PLEASE!!! FOX can play old reruns of I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, Andy Griffith, The Jetsons. Anything. Shark week. Even a sewing show, How Not to Murder your Houseplants, baking, how to organize anything so you can find it again, lobster cooking for beginners, how to get a frog out of a dog's mouth, HOW NOT TO LOOK GUILTY WHEN PRE-BOARDING A PLANE!!! (I need that one).

More TownHall cartoons here.

IT'S COME TO THIS: Iran nixes Obama, Rowhani meeting. Earned disrespect on the part of President Asterisk.

BUT OTHER THAN THAT, everything's hunky-dory: "[T]he federal government can’t account for its assets or debts, doesn’t know what it owns, is unable to track accurately what it buys, has no idea if most of its programs work and can’t provide taxpayers with creditable data about its financial condition."

OBAMACARE will increase health spending by $7,450 for a typical family of four.

Remember that even if the insurance company or government writes the check, that money has to come from someone's pocket - probably yours.

Defund. Delay. Repeal.

MARYLAND VOTES FOR RESTRICTIVE NEW GUN LAWS, sales double from 2011.

THE WASHINGTON POST'S Richard Cohen has another nightmare. Ambien might help....

ONE FAMILY'S ObamaCare nightmare. More nightmares here.

OH, SWELL: In retirement, my income will drop and my tax rate will increase.

One thing not mentioned: Congress, in its infinite (snicker) wisdom can remove the tax exempt status from Roth retirement accounts just as easily as it can increase tax rates. Expect both to happen.

Here's an example.

CONN CARROLL: The end of the 47 percenters. Sorry, but I still believe every non-dependent, voting-age american owes something, even if only a dollar.

MEN CAN USE their 'private parts' to unlock iPhone 5S. Doesn't that mean Apple discriminates against women?

NANCY PELOSI SAYS Hillary Clinton better prepared for presidency than Barack Obama was in 2008. Hell, in 2011 Diamond was more prepared than Barack Obama, even given that he already had 3-1/2 years in office.

LOWER HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUMS to come at cost of fewer choices. And when health care premiums reach zero (as with single-payer, also called government-funded), so will the choices.

CYGNUS SPACE CAPSULE navigation software delays rendevous with the International Space Station.

Linked from the Washington Post.

GLENN REYNOLDS: Will Obama's Ego Cause Him To Force A Government Shutdown?

WHO IS that guy next to Jane Fonda?

At an anti-war protest rally back in the 70's. From my email.

ANOTHER TAX LOOPHOLE that needs to be closed opened.

HOW TO CUT $100 MILLION from a trillion dollar budget. This is an old one, but every so often it's useful to be reminded how big big numbers really are.

IT'S ALL ABOUT ME -- STILL: Obama: GOP focused on 'messing with me,' not on boosting economy. Our incompetent, narcissistic President.

POWERLINE'S week in pictures: leading with his behind edition. My favorite:

STUPID IN SEATTLE: You know, if you're going to be this incredibly stupid, you would be wise not to write about it in the New York Times. [But then, it is the New York Times.]

CONTRACTOR THAT SCREENED SNOWDEN also vetted alleged Navy Yard shooter. What's mentioned (barely) but not emphasized is that USIS does not grant clearances. Only the government agency responsible for the contract under which the clearance is granted can grant a clearance.

CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES (CMS) PROJECTIONS show ObamaCare will grow the government, boost health care spending.

So having more government functionaries will improve my health care? Yeah, right.

SARAH PALIN to establishment Republicans and Democrats: "Moose season ends soon, allowing more time on one’s hands. So, we’ll be watching your votes very carefully this week."

MEDIAN INCOME IN DC vs the rest of us.

The 'ruling class' must be compensated for its trouble....

PowerLine has much more, including this quote:

Washington doesn’t invent smartphones or build cars or record music — instead they invent rules and build bureaucracies and record regulations. The federal government’s key industry is siphoning money from 50 far-flung states and reallocating it to preferred interest groups (after taking an ample service charge, of course).

It's the service charge, stupid. Think of that 23% increase as a tip for 'services' rendered.

THE ONLY PROBLEM is that they're all yellow.

THE MEANING OF 'BIG':

GUESS WHO'S looking for a new 'communications' director? Offhank, I's say he 'communicates' pretty well -- just not a very appealing message.

Pajamas Media has more; much, much more.

And they call Republicans and conservatives hateful....

NANCY PELOSI SAYS House GOP is 'taking food out of the mouths of babies' with farm bill. Actually it's taking frappuccinos out of the mouths of working-age adults.

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING: Bees on strike; UAVs to replace them.

MORNING EXAMINER: Is Obama planning an ObamaCare favor for Big Labor? Do bears shit in the woods?

FUND GOVERNMENT, NOT OBAMACARE. And minimally fund government.

PRUDENT? OR ALARMIST? NASA warns Federal employees of potential furloughs. I'd say prudent, because frankly, I'm hoping for a government shutdown.

THE WEEK THAT WAS:

From the Shadow's World staff....

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: IPCC authors confident their global warming predictions were wrong.

OBAMA URGES new gun law push at CBC Foundation dinner. He must be taking stupid pills; there's no way anyone -- even a liberal progressive -- could naturally be this dumb.

THE (UN)AFFORDABLE CARE ACT STRIKES AGAIN: Home Depot sends 20,000 employees into ObamaCare. I shop at Home Depot frequently; the employees I've talked to aren't happy. Tough luck, guys & gals....

IEEE SPECTRUM: Is There a Shortage of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Students and STEM professionals?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: "The college experience morphed into a costly sort of prolonged adolescence, a political arena and a social laboratory — something quite different from a serious place to acquire both practical and humanistic knowledge."

AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY: Tesla working towards 90 percent autonomous car within three years. That would be a good match for the drivers in my neighborhood who, in my jaundiced eye, are 90% clueless.

HMM: Compressed Air Energy Storage Makes a Comeback.

CARTOON OF THE YEAR:

It says it all.

BYRON YORK: GOP lawmakers disappointed by Ted Cruz should have listened to him more carefully before -- and encouraged their constituients to contact their Senatecritters. I did, and both of mine are Democrats.

Let's create that tsunami Cruz is looking for....

IEEE SPECTRUM: This week in cybercrime.

NEWT GINGRICH: Obama's bluff.

I'M NOT ALONE: 51% Favor Government Shutdown Until Congress Cuts Health Care Funding.

SECOND PRIVATE COMPANY rockets toward space station. First, Space-X; now Orbital Sciences.

Cygnus (the spacecraft) will dock with the ISS on Sunday.

SEN. Mike Lee (R-UT) pushes $40,000-per-child tax cut. Well, not in one year, of course, but it's nice to see that someone recognizes that our childres are going to have to pay down that $16 trillion in debt our liberals have rung up.

TECH TALK: The Race To Get Your Hands Off The Wheel.

SNAP (SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM) lifted 4 million people out of poverty in 2012 and reduced hardship for millions more.

It also bought a large frappuccino, Mountain Dew, and sausage biscuit which, I suspect, was hardly its intended purpose.

MORE AGENDA JOURNALISM: Kansas professor placed on leave after tweet about Navy Yard killings.

WORK OR WELFARE: What Pays More? It should be 'what costs more?' and 'Who pays?" Your welfare comes out of my salary; your work does also, but I get something in return.

AGENDA JOURNALISM at its best. Piers Morgan comes to mind.

SURPRISE: Poverty is bad for the environment. Market forces do work.

RIGOR, PLEASE: Eliminate all academic majors and minors ending with the word “studies.”

BECAUSE THEY'RE MEDIOCRITIES: Why Can’t Liberals Help It?

THE JETPACK IS COMING — from New Zealand. A mere $150K will get you one.

UPDATE: more from Aviation Week.

SOME SERIOUS POSTS ON THE OBAMACARE WE'RE ALL LOOKING FORWARD TO:

Your Future Under ObamaCare: Big Medicine Getting Bigger.

ObamaCare and the Consolidation Wave.

How Big Medicine Will Affect Patient Care.

Is America Ready for ObamaCare?

Alan Grayson's 'die quickly' comment is proving correct; only the the name of the party was wrong.

SOME CARTOONS FROM MY EMAIL:

On closing the border:

Support your PC police:

I had a dream:

Work is tough:

Please don't give them ideas:

And my favorite:

MILLENNIALS: Here's your ObamaCare. Enjoy....

GAIA STRIKES BACK: Global warming report could will backfire on environmentalists.

EARTH EXPIRATION DATE: Earth's life span set. Fortunately, it's a little longer than I expect to be around.

YES, PEOPLE WERE DYING in a gunfight across town, but Obama had a speech to give.

OBAMACARE: Only the end of the beginning.

JUST A REMINDER: 9 Potential Mass Shootings That Were Stopped By Someone With A Personally Owned Firearm.

JOURNALISM'S GUIDE to firearms identification:

Taken from this PJM Tatler post.

THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION is in Texas. At least that's where its phone number shows it to be....

NIGHTMARES FOR SURE: The Oregon Obamacare Ads that May Give You Nightmares or Send You to Rehab.

FROM A TRAGEDY TO A FARCE: Mainstream media coverage of the Navy Yard murders. This would be laughable if it weren't for the ugly fact that 12 innocent people died.

WHERE IS that time machine when you need it?

From my email.

ARE THERE snakes on Mars? Maybe someday.

PARTISANSHIP, not leadership. Thankfully, no one is listening.

KARL MARX: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. We've skipped the first part and gone directly to farce.

THERE'S NO 'I' IN TEAM -- until now.

DR. MCCOY'S TRICORDER: Machines Use Odor to Diagnose Disease. Well, almost.

PIERS MORGAN, hypocrite. Do tell.

WILDFIRES are Nature's way of cleaning house. Finally, some common sense is seeping into the collective liberal mind.

Click through to the comments. Frankly, for the Washington Post, I'm surprised to see such a high percentage of readers with sensible comments.

ASTRONAUT gave 'Gravity' advice to Sandra Bullock from space.

EARTH OBSERVATION from a shoebox.

PHOTO: When the media tries to talk about guns. Well, the term 'AR-15' refers to a specification, not a particular weapon, so I suppose it is conceivable that someone could manufacture a shotgun to that specification, but somehow I doubt it's been done....

VIDEOS: Costa Concordia righted 20 months after shipwreck. The time-lapse video is spectacular.

REWRITING HISTORY: textbook guts the Second Amendment. The First Amendment is summarized correctly, if incompletely. The Second Amendment summary is wrong.

(MAL)EDUCATION: Native American tribe calls protesters who destroyed 9/11 memorial on the pretext of defending the Abenaki tribe’s rights ‘disgusting’.

BIZARRE: Deceased victims of the Washington Navy Yard shooting won’t be receiving medical care.

This is what passes for news at MSNBC.

FEMA threatens to arrest volunteer drone operators during Colo. flood relief.

This is the Falcon UAV. It has a length of about 4 feet; a wingspan of 8 feet, weighs less than 10 pounds, and flies between 300' and 1500' AGL. Certainly not a threat to anything beyond FEMA's ego.

Here is Falcon UAV's response to FEMA:

Falcon UAV would like to thank the Boulder County EOC and specifically Allen Bishop and Michael Chard (while they were running operations) for their common sense approach to drone operations, working to coordinate the airspace, as well as embracing this technology to help support the recovery effort. In contrast we are very disappointed in FEMAs response to actively prevent the use of UAVs and drone technology when these services were offered for free and at a time when manned helicopters could be used for more critical missions such as evacuations and high mountain search and rescues in inaccessible communities.

Classy. And FEMA deserves the sound of one hand clapping.

IS THERE a Nobel prize for excellence in photoshoppery?

If so, this is the winner.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama's myths.

Benghazi, the AP, the NSA and the IRS debacles are put on the back burner by Obama’s Syria follies. They in turn will be forgotten once we brace for a new war to follow the ones waged against the evil redneck assault gun owners; the minority bashers who committed Trayvon Martin-like travesties daily; the sinister homophobes who denied marriage equity; the nativists who hated people of color and so insisted on onerous legal technicalities against undocumented workers; the voter suppressionists who demand ID at the polls; the misogynists who denied powerful professional women a little help to ensure their reproductive rights; the polluters who fouled our air and water and fried our planet; the cruel older generation that ignored embattled students struggling with oppressive loans; and union busters who hated collective bargaining.

All those wars will revive and be bolstered by even more in the next 40 months to come. “You did not build that” and “no time for profit” have demagogic children not yet born. We will hear thousands more of the tired emphatics like “make no mistake about it” and “let me be perfectly clear.” There will be hundreds more straw men: “Some do these bad things; others do those bad things, but I alone do the good things.” We have in store lots more of the teleprompted first-person I, me, my, and mine narcissism. “Bush did it” has three more years of ad nauseam utility. “Iraq” will still begin and almost end every sentence until 2017. “Working for the middle class” will follow each dismal jobs report.

Do not underestimate the rhetorical skills and political demagoguery of Barack Obama. He is as incompetent and delusional as Jimmy Carter, but he has far better sophistic skills, far better advisers, and is far more ruthless. Almost half of America does not pay federal income taxes; almost half receive some sort of government assistance. They are as loyal as the captive media to what Obama represents and delivers.

Yet Hanson is still optimistic.

OBAMACARE: We Must Have Different Definitions of “Pro-Jobs”.

IN GOD WE TRUST; government, not so much.

MAYBE THEY COULD BECOME A COUNTY IN TEXAS: Maryland counties join movement to secede from largely Democrat-run state. Rick Perry has, after all, been advertising for Maryland businesses to move to Texas; why not have Texas move to Maryland?

Then I'd only have to move 50 miles or so to move home....

I WOULD ASK if progressives can get any dumber than this, but unfortunately the answer is obvious.

SURPRISED? Climate models wildly overestimated global warming. Look, when you can't get an accurate local forecast much beyond the 'look out the window to see what's coming over the horizon' time frame, predicting climate 20-50 years in the future ranks between silly and stupid.

And yes, I do understand the difference between weather and climate....

Linked from PowerLine.

NOW THE GOVERNMENT wants to regulate ... dinner parties?

CALL THE CDC. There's been a Rocky Mountain outbreak of Acute Sore Loser Fever.

It's highly contagious among progressives.

AN ATHEIST IN THE WOODS.

An atheist was walking through the woods.

"What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!" He said to himself.

As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him.

He turned to look. He saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charge towards him.

He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the bear was closing in on him. He looked over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer.

He tripped & fell on the ground.

He rolled over to pick himself up but saw that the bear was right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw and raising his right paw to strike him.

At that instant moment, the Atheist cried out: "Oh my God!"

Time stopped. The bear froze. The forest was silent.

As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky. "You deny my existence for all these years, teach others I don't exist and even credit creation to cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament?"

"Am I to count you as a believer?"

The atheist looked directly into the light, and said: "It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps you could make the BEAR a Christian?"

"Very well", said the voice.

The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed. And the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed his head & spoke: "Lord bless this food, which I am about to receive from Thy bounty through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen."

From my email.

IN THE WHITE HOUSE: A cockroach “the size of a small drone.” Does it speak Russian?

IT SHOULD HAVE been canceled after season 4.

AFTERBURNER: We have our Chamberlain; where is our Churchill?

UNDERBUSSED:

Now we know why the Obama administration bought that Canadian superbus. They'll need it for the unions.

ED DRISCOLL: Hitting the Ejector Seat on the Clown Car Presidency. Unfortunately the ejector button has been disabled until 2016. Can America hold out that long?

I CAUGHT a 172-pound flounderer.

HEH: What 5 years of drinking Obama's Kool-Aid will do.

WASHINGTON POST: The chickens come home to roost. Well, they advocated for an expanded definition of discrimination.

JUST CHANGE the name to Obama and you've got ... ObamaCare.

RICK PERRY: “When you grow tired of Maryland taxes squeezing every dime out of your business, think Texas.” I've been hearing the radio ad here on WTOP radio, our local news, traffic, and weather radio station.

The ad buy is drawing blood.

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN:

[T]he man known as President Obama left the building after his Syria speech. What’s left in the White House is Barry Soetoro or whatever he goes by now: a shrunken, confused husk surrounded by court jesters, second-rate ideologues, and sycophants.

America is worse off because of him.

OBAMA PROMISED he’d bring change, and he delivered: Public’s trust in federal government to handle problems reaches 40-year low.

WHITE HOUSE: Decisiveness is overrated. "It’s always good to see an American administration take a tough stand for indecision."

RULES FOR RADICALS: when a strong 'community organizer' takes on a weak one.

A SELF-ANSWERING QUESTION: Why is the Department of Education Indoctrination peddling ObamaCare?

FINALLY: Voyager 1 has left the solar system. We think.

WE LOST; it's your fault.

WHAT HAPPENS when teachers don't have to join a union? They won't.

TAG TEAM MATCH: Putin-Assad versus Obama-Kerry. If I had money to place a wager, it wouldn't be on the Obama team.

NOW THAT THEIR VOTES HAVE BEEN CAST, unions find out they're just 'little people' too.

PIERS MORGAN: "I'd like to suggest a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines the right NOT to be shot/killed by a gun." It exists already. The Second Amendment enforces my individual right 'NOT to be shot/killed by a gun'.

Piers Morgan is embarrassingly stupid.

NO WONDER I PUT ON WEIGHT: New measure of gravitational constant higher than expected.

MORNING EXAMINER: The House Republican plan to delay Obamacare.

HACKTIVIA: the week in cybercrime.

BRITISH CLASSIFIED ADS:

JOINING NUDIST COLONY!
Must sell washer and dryer.

WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE.
Worn once by mistake.
Call Stephanie.

FOR SALE BY OWNER.
Complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 45 volumes.
Excellent condition. No longer needed, got married, wife knows everything.

From my email.

YOU ASKED FOR IT; you got it, so put on your big-boy pants and suck it up: AFL-CIO resolution criticizes Obamacare, seeks major changes.

COMMENTARY MAGAZINE: The gun control moment passes.

HARRY REID: The anarchists have taken over Congress! "Does Reid ever ask himself why people who don’t believe in government would bother to get themselves elected to Congress and show up to meetings on time? If they’re anarchists they’re really bad at it."

IF YOU LIKE UGLY, this is the car for you.

WHEN YOU'VE LOST CHRIS MATTHEWS, what's left to lose?

PITY: We won't have Anthony Weiner to kick around any more.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Social liberalism is the foremost impulse for zealous regulation in America.

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT GIVETH, the government can taketh away: Consumers could be surprised at tax time due to ObamaCare law.

MORNING EXAMINER: Obama votes 'present' on Syria.

A VICTORY GIRLS 9/11 COLLECTIVE: We Remember, We Are Not Afraid.

COL. ALLEN WEST: Remembering 9/11.

HEH: "The window where you were racist if you didn’t want to bomb brown people has slammed shut."

HEH: THOUSANDS OF MOTORCYCLES show up for 9/11 Rally (for which no National Park Service permit was issued); Million Muslim March (for which a permit was issued) attracts a few hundred participants.

More on the motorcycle rally here.

SEEN ON A CHURCH NEAR CALVERTON, VA: Jesus! Don't leave Earth without him.

THE NEXT SPACE SHUTTLE: Hybrid Engines Make Runway-To-Orbit Missions A Reality.

To borrow a phrase from Instapundit: faster, please.

DR. BEN CARSON: On risk and Syria.

JAPANESE HTV-4 CARGO SHIP http://www.nasa.gov/content/japanese-cargo-ship-enters-atmosphere/burns up on reentering atmosphere.

The spacecraft destruction was intentional.

OBAMACARE: Join Our Premiere Catheter Club! There's us, and then there's you little people.

DAVID IGNATIUS: The Syrian deus ex machina. You know, I'm really beginning to wonder if Vladimir Putin doesn't feel sorry for that poor dumb fu cluck we installed as President of the United States....

WASHINGTON D.C.: The 'good taste police' come to town.

NO JOKE: astronauts poorly toilet-trained.

DESPERATE MAN tries to convince the world he has the faintest idea of what he's doing.

If 'faintest idea' is the criterion, President Obama succeeded.

My thoughts on last night's speech: I, me, and my still dominate his speeches (one would think that TOTUS would delete those words before he could speak them) and one must know that any time a politician (any politician) utters the words 'for the children' it's a sign that they have no coherent argument to make.

Another random thought: the phrase 'for the children' and anyone claiming to be an an expert should be banned from television forever.

ETHANOL FUELS a crime against humanity. Yes, well, it's for Gaia's good, not humanity's.

INSTAPUNDIT on the 12th anniversary of 9/11.

DAILY CALLER editorial board endorses Anthony Weiner for NYC mayor: "Cocksure and bulging with ideas, one candidate stands erect.

He also says 'goodbye' after losing badly.

PASS GUN CONTROL, get booted out of office.

NEVER FORGET:

SEPTEMBER 11,2013: "Remembrance is worthless without resolve. Resolve is useless without action."

THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH:

The president interrupted NCIS to say: “I am not doing anything for awhile.” He didn’t even say he would be back in touch. I wish he had given the speech last night, interrupting the Skins-Eagles game and enabling the Skins to catch their breath.

Well said.

HARSHING OBAMA'S MELLOW: Obama's foreign policy same or worse than Bush's. And unfair to President Bush.

WASHINGTON POST: Obama administration’s message on Syria is muddled.

'Muddled' is being kind, but in a half-hour, I'm sure everything will become 'perfectly clear'.

NEWTOWN unanimously adopts new firearms ordinance. And this new ordinance is supposed to do ... what?

'MILITARISTIC' NAPOLITANO hit with laundry list of demands from liberal UCal groups:

“As people of color, queer, undocumented, womyn (sic), and allies within the UC system, our work is to ensure that the UC is inclusive to our communities and that the UC system lives up to its mission ‘to serve as a center of higher learning.”

Power to the 'pee-pul'.

IF THE GLOBE ISN'T WARMING, does that undercut EPA regulation of carbon dioxide? Good question.

STUDY SUGGESTS southern slavery turns white people into Republicans 150 years later.

President Obama polled significantly worse with white voters in the South than he did with whites in swing states.... [A] new study by political scientists Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell and Maya Sen suggests that ... the legacy of slavery continues to drive voters in areas that once housed large numbers of slaves to vote Republican.

It doesn't seem to occur to the Left that they're called 'swing states' for a reason....

OOPS! Russia Backing Away from Fake Syria Weapons Deal. "Playing the part of Lucy, Vlad Putin. Playing the part of Charlie Brown trying to kick a football, Barack Obama."

And like Charlie Brown, Obama will keep falling for it over and over again.

MORNING EXAMINER: From Russia with love. There goes the narrative....

I wonder if we could engineer a trade: Putin for Obama. Somehow I suspect both countries would be better off.

PRESIDENT OBAMA wants to keep his when he leaves office: DoD begins search for Air Force One replacement.

A UNION MOVEMENT without union members. 'Labor' unions filled with progressive non-laborers. Makes all kinds of sense....

JEANINE PIRRO: Another amateur hour in Washington D.C.

DO IT FOR OBAMA: Help kickstart World War III.

LAUGHINGSTOCK CONT'D: Kerry Strikes Fear in Syria with ‘Unbelievably Small’ Strike.

GLENN REYNOLDS: "Our diplomacy is a joke, our president is a laughing stock, our enemies are emboldened, and we've still got over three years of this to go." Just as I wrote last Saturday.

NANCY PELOSI WAS WRONG. Congress passed ObamaCare, but we still don’t know what’s in it—because the Obama Administration keeps changing rules and ignoring the law.

YEAH, RIGHT: Global warming helped spark Syria's civil war. So all we need to do to stop Assad from using chemical weapons is to enact a carbon tax....

THE CREDIBILITY CRISIS can’t be solved with Tomahawk missiles. It can, but impeachment is a much better option.

MALLARD FILLMORE: Why you should not homeschool your children.

GLOBAL WARMING cleverly hides itself with 1 million square miles more arctic ice.

TEAM OF NITWITS: What Does the Military Think? Not too difficult to imagine....

CALIFORNIA RAISIN GROWER battles federal order taking almost half his crop. I understand crop insurance, but explain to me the need for a raisin reserve.

JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO: Another false narrative from the White House?

Warning: an annoying ad, but Pirro's introductory comments are always worth watching.

BAN STADIUMS; stadiums kill people.

CARBON TAX drags Australian economy down under -- for real.

But the Aussies had the good sense to vote the bastards out.

D.C. COPS under orders to arrest tourists with empty bullet casings. Why not just put up a tall chain link fence around the District to keep those hick rubes out in?

UNEMPLOYMENT NEWS:

No wonder fast-food workers are demonstrating for higher wages; jobs designed as supplementary income for kids, or housewives, are now being taken by breadwinners who can’t find anything else....

Read the rest.

YAWN: Obama to address nation about Syria on Tuesday. The comments are not kind.

GIVE HIM HIS SEX-CHANGE OPERATION; then pardon Bradley.

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES; the guns are loose!

BITMONET: Pay-per-view for the Internet. Here's a thought: reverse the process and let me (the advertiser) pay you (the advertisee) a few cents to read my ad. Why pay a large amount to a middleman to reach a large audience, most of whom are uninterested.

SUCKERS! Hey, you voted for him; now take your medicine like good little boys and girls.

IS THERE MORE than madness to Obama's methods? Well, yeah. Add a dash of dementia; a pinch of pusillanimity; a spoonful of stupidity; a nugget of narcissm; ... you get the idea.

WASHINGTON D.C. proposes a 24-hour waiting period for tattoos. Personally, I think a tattoo is the human equivalent of an "I'm Stupid" bumper sticker on one's car, but I don't see the point in having the government protect people from the consequences of being stupid.

MILLENNIALS have nothing to celebrate when it comes to employment. If only it was just millennials ... unfortunately it's worse, much worse, for those at or nearing retirement age.

OBAMA'S GENDER GAP:

Via PowerLine.

CONSERVATIVES sweep to Australia election victory. Tim Blair reports.

Perhaps a 'leading indicator' for our 2014 elections?

INEVITABLE: IBM to move retirees off health plan. Look for other big corporations -- especially those in the defense sector -- to do the same.

GUN GRABBING, the right way.

OBAMA RETURNS FROM G-20; immediately starts working on a fairway to settle the Syria dilemma. Then on Sunday and Monday, there's the NFL. Syria can wait till Tuesday; after all, how many Syrians can be killed in only three days?

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. When Obama said he was going to fundamentally transform America, I didn't realize he meant into a laughingstock.

OBAMA EXPANDING SYRIA TARGET LIST, telegraphing every punch he plans to (not) throw. He'll back down as soon as Congress votes against him.

WELL, FOR THE AVERAGE LIBERAL the most useless body part is the head.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES: Syrian Adventure Edition. My favorite doesn't mention Syria though.

UPDATED to add link. Also, the correct mpg is 40.9; still not bad.

CONTEST WINNERS: A Commanding Pose for the Commander-in-Chief?

At least one of the contest winners noted, as did my brother, that had the Commander-in-Chief been in any kindergarten or elementary school in the U.S., he would have been suspended indefinitely for making a gun with his finger.

JUST ASKING: Why are lesbians so fat? Our government is funding a study to find out....

FRIDAY'S JOBS REPORT: Even the Washington Post's Ezra Klein http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/06/the-five-worst-things-about-this-crummy-jobs-report/can't find anything good to say. Best comment: "Reading the comments, the crowd seems hostile to the current administration. Where are all the left wingers? Bars haven't closed yet?"

CRIME DOESN'T PAY -- especially when the victim is armed.

NEW JERSEY MAN makes mailbox in form of giant revolver. Post Office approves.

THE DECISIVE BATTLES OF BARACK OBAMA:

We shall fight on the beaches—mostly on Martha’s Vineyard, where everybody was over Labor Day weekend—we shall fight at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, we shall fight at the U.N. Security Council, we shall fight in the House of Representatives and the Senate when Congress is finally back in session; we shall never surrender unless we don’t get enough votes or our poll ratings are low.

I came, I saw, I ... skedaddled. Read the rest.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT.

FLIGHT TESTING the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

BILL CLINTON: Remembering history as he wants it remembered.

EVERYTHING YOU DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE FEDERAL BUDGET: It's bad; really, really bad.

IT'S ALL ABOUT SELF-ESTEEM.

IT'S MAGIC: Why you can't use cell phones on airplance (language warning).

IF IT'S POSSIBLE to separate the jihadists from the 'democratic' muslims, I could support quietly arming the 'moderates' and letting them fight it out.

Unfortunately that's easier said than done.

NEWT GINGRICH: Ronald Reagan would say no. I agree.

DRONE MAIL: robot 'courier pigeons' now delivering small packages in China city.

VIRGIN GALACTIC'S SpaceShip Two cruises to supersonic speeds in second flight test. To date, SpaceShip Two is touted as a 'tourist service' for wannabe astronauts, but it seems to me that it could be commercially viable for intercontinental travel -- much like the Concorde used do.

COUNTERINTUITIVELY RISKY: "[A]fter 99,000 Syrian dead, red-lines, and orders for Assad to abdicate, finally shooting off some missiles at who knows what for the benefit of no one quite knows over the principle of what we are not quite sure may make the mess even worse."

MORE THAN HOT AIR: a massive cargo-carrying zeppelin that can take off and land with the precision of a helicopter.

SYRIA AND OBAMA: Wrong time, wrong place, wrong plan, wrong man.

ON CLIMATE CHANGE: Left gives reality a failing grade.

NASA AIMING FOR MOON AGAIN, this time from Virginia (a first). With a little luck, we might be able to see it from our house tonight.

MORNING EXAMINER: Majority of House now leaning against bombing Syria. I agree; like many in the GOP, I simply can't trust the Obama administration not to muck it up.

The American public seems to agree.

OCCASIONALLY, justice is done. Not often enough.

OBAMA TO ADDRESS NATION ON SYRIA NEXT TUESDAY. Can't do it on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday; it would interfere with the football games.

THE PRESCIENCE of the Duranty Prize for mendacity in journalism.

ANTHONY WEINER gives hot dogs a bad name.

WHO'S THE TERRORIST?



Your government at work....

PRINT TO ORDER: How 3-D Printing Might Revolutionize Amazon's Same-Day Delivery.

WEAKNESS: Vladimir Putin taunts Obama over Syria.

DEER TRAIL (CO) SPONSOR of ordinance requiring the town to issue to issue drone-hunting licenses has already sold more than 60 of his own licenses online.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: We're going to start a war that's not a war after a delay that will make the strikes more ineffective in order to define a strategic goal that we're unaware of.

If you understand that statement, you belong in the Obama administration.

OBAMA: Now that I've painted myself into a corner, it's not my red line.

BIG WINNERS OF OBAMACARE: investors, lawyers, consultants, tech experts.

Losers: the little people who will be saddled with lousy healthcare and the taxpayers who will be forced to pay for it.

ONE MORE REASON to watch what you post on the internet.

But what the hell, I'm already unemployed retired.

DAVID IGNATIUS: The Syrian deus ex machina. You know, I'm really beginning to wonder if Vladimir Putin doesn't feel sorry for that poor dumb f cluck we installed as President of the United States....

FROM MY EMAIL: a thought on guns.

Today I swung my front door wide open and placed my Stevens 320 (a shotgun) right in the doorway.

I gave it 5 shells and left it alone and went about my business.

While I was gone, the mailman delivered my mail, the trash man picked up the trash, a girl walked her dog down the street, and quite a few of my neighbors drove past the house.

After about an hour, I checked on the gun. It was still sitting there, right where I had left it. It hadn't killed anyone, even with the numerous opportunities it had been presented with to do so.

In fact, it hadn't even loaded itself!

You can imagine my surprise, with all the media hype about how dangerous guns are and how they kill people.

Either the media is wrong, and it is the misuse of guns by PEOPLE that kills people, or I'm in possession of the laziest gun in the world.

I'm off to check on my spoons. I hear they're making people fat....

THE LATEST HOLLOWOOD* HIT:

*Not a misspelling.

Note the finger on the trigger, six-gun pointed directly at the head of his transportation to the presidency.

NOT YET A TOURIST ATTRACTION: Greenland has its own Grand Canyon deep under ice.

BARACK OBAMA: A Truly Great Phony. I don't know about 'great', but 'phony' is well-established, and even beginning to be recognized by the Left who elected him.

SCANDAL? WHAT SCANDAL?

Bob: “Did you hear about the Obama administration scandal?”

Jim: "You mean about the setting up of Seal Team 6?"

Bob: "No, the other one.

Jim: “You mean the Mexican gun running?”

Bob: “No, the other one.”

Jim: “The State Dept. lying about Benghazi?”

Bob: “No, the other one.”

Jim: “The IRS targeting conservatives?”

Bob: “No, the other one.”

Jim: “The DOJ spying on the press?”

Bob: “No, the other one.”

Jim: “Sebelius shaking down health insurance executives?”

Bob: “No, the other one.”

Jim: “The NSA monitoring our phone calls, e-mails and everything else?”

Bob: “No, the other one”

Jim: “The State Dept. interfering with an IG investigation on dept. sexual misconduct?”

Bob: “No, the other one.”

Jim: “HHS employees being given insider information on Medicare Advantage?”

Bob: “No, the other one.”

Jim: “Clinton, the IRS, Clapper & Holder all lying to Congress?”

Bob: “No, the other one.”

Jim: “I give up! …Oh wait, I think I got it! You mean that 65 million uninformed ignorant voters stuck us again with the most corrupt administration in American history?!?”

Bob: “THAT’S THE ONE!!!

From my email.

INTRODUCING the new Presidential limousine. I wonder if Jack in the Box knows their car has been stolen....

IN THE OBAMA ERA, the future isn't what it used to be.

EXCELLENT: Eric Holder's Suit Against Texas Gives the Supreme Court a Chance to Gut Even More of the Voting Rights Act. The sooner we can be rid of it, the better.

YOU KNOW your diplomacy is a failure when

Our friends are avoiding us, our foes aren't afraid of us, and it's looking more and more like nobody in charge knows what they're doing. It's enough to make you look back fondly on the smooth, capable diplomacy of the Jimmy Carter era. Alas, we have over three years of this left. One can only hope that we, and the world, will not pay too high a price for the ineptitude at the top.

Read it all.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "If the things that the Left wants to control — institutions and government policy — are not the most important factors in the world’s problems, then what role is there for the Left?"

DID HARRY REID'S NIMBY PLOY FAIL? "[T]he U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has revived ... the prospects of storing the nation’s spent nuclear waste at a site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas despite what was thought to be a successful effort by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid ... to kill it."

OBAMACARE: You’ll Laugh. You’ll Cry. You’ll Pay.

DOES TOO MUCH SUGAR increase the risk of dementia? Sure, but you'll be shocked by how little and the amount of money and effort that was wasted to discover it.

Sturgeon's Law is as relevant in medical research as it is in every other field of endeavor.

BRIT HUME: Obama's plans for Syria are 'all about him'. [Annoying commercial warning]

TRICYCLES DON'T HAVE STEERING WHEELS; THEY HAVE HANDLEBARS: Syria raises questions about ‘how firm a grip Obama has on the wheel as commander in chief’.

WHEN IT COMES TO THE SECOND AMENDMENT, the Left doesn’t even understand what it’s getting wrong.

YES. NEXT QUESTION?

ADDED: PowerLine calls the picture Obama's Team of Nitwits.

HEH. Obama Furious After Vladimir Putin Unfriends Him on Facebook.

BERWICK, PA: real life in flyover country.

THOMAS SOWELL: "The fundamental problem of the political Left seems to be that the real world does not fit their preconceptions." And they cannot seem to learn that the real world doesn't give a damn about their preconceived notions about how it should work.

Read it all.

HEH. THE SUBHEAD TELLS IT ALL: Obama offers some words on Syria after President Kerry’s address.

ARROGANCE, IGNORANCE, AND ABJECT STUPIDITY: "Why Are Liberals So Rude to the Right?"

Arrogance and ignorance are curable; stupidity is not.

PARDON MY LANGUAGE, but our President is a compleat SCoaMF.

THOMAS SOWELL: Who are the racists? [Hint: look at the picture.]

THE REPUBLICANS HAVE NO HEALTH PLAN? Seriously?

COULD IT BE that those 'tattooed hipster chicks' don't bathe?

CRAIG ZUCKER: What Happens When a Man Takes on the Feds. He loses.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane on the arrogance of expertise. These days every time I listen to the radio, watch television, read the newspaper, or browse the web, I come across something that can be succinctly characterized as follows:

"Hey! HEY! Stop that! We're the experts and it's our job to take care of you."

Whenever the word expert is bandied about, it's always wise to remember the origin of the word: 'ex', as in has-been, and 'spurt', as in a drip under pressure.

Be warned.

LABOR DAY OOPS! Obamacare fallout continues as 40,000 longshoremen quit AFL-CIO.

POWERLINE'S quote of the day.

In Vietnam, still run by the Communist Party, the very selective national university is offering free tuition to anyone who signs up for the university’s curriculum in Marxism. They’ve had to offer free tuition because no students have been signing up for these courses, as in zero. I can’t help but be amused that the market-clearing price for courses in radical philosophy is lower in a Communist university than in American universities.

Only in a wealthy nation does radical philosophy put food on the table....

IS BARACK OBAMA the worst and most incompetent President ever? Do bears shit in the woods?

Poor Jimmy Carter. He's left being only the worst President in the 20th century.

And on the bright side, at least the next ten Presidents will not have to worry about being the worst President of the 21st century....

ANN ALTHOUSE ON A CLASS ACT: "I know you're trying to subtly rope me in to the issues of the day. I refuse to be roped in," said George W. Bush.

I HEARD a daily glass of red wine is good for your health....

HEH: Global warming expedition foiled by ice.

NO COAL, no pollution, no electricity. Good luck with that....