POWERLINE: Why renewable energy is hopeless.

It's only hopless if you insist on not living in the Dark Ages....

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL: Former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell should be held accountable, like others are.

So excuse me, but what's the significant difference between Bob and Maureen McDonnell and Barack and Michelle Obama?

AMMO GRRLL: "Life can be a marathon through a minefield."

TWO EXAMPLES of the proper use of gun control.

THE POWER OF CRAZY: I could live with them if they just wouldn't vote.

An example.

WHY AM I SUSPICIOUS? One million dollar federal grant funds plan to detect “misinformation,” “hate speech” on social media. Remember Obama's Organizing for America 'truth team'? This strikes me as pretty much the same, only under the aegis of the feds.

Hot Air also finds it Orwellian.

JEFF JACOBY on voting for the lesser evil.

WASHINGTON POST: The "can't do" administration.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES: Strategery Edition. My favorite:

Enjoy the rest as well.

IRS NOW CLAIMS Lois Lerner’s emails not really missing, just really hard to find. So put the back-up tapes online and let us crowdsource them.

Shouldn't take over 24 hours....

OBAMA'S INVERSION: relocating the White House to the U.N.

LIBERALS: Obama's incompetence is not his fault. (It's those damn Republicans.)

REASON: A Third of Obamacare’s Federal Exchange Contracts Are Already Over Budget. The other 2/3 will be soon enough.

CENSUS: more than one-third of Americans receiving welfare benefits. Remember Mitt Romney's "47%" remark? Well, take a gander at this:

If the approximately 1/3 receiving welfare benefits can be fairly described as Obama's base, Romney wasn't far off....

WE CAN'T SHOOT unarmed civilians if they're wearing body armor. Remember, "if guns [body armor] are [is] outlawed only outlaws will have guns [body armor]".

SENATOR: Contractors with unpaid taxes and security clearances pose risk. Frankly, that's a minor risk compared to the number of administration appointees who are vetted for political correctness and nothing else....

iFAIL: L.A. Unified School District has abruptly halted the district's billion-dollar technology program to put an iPad into the hands of every student and teacher. It didn't work. Root cause: greed, corruption, and (of course) political correctness.

Local Manassas schools apparently haven't gotten the message. Two local high schools, Osbourn and Manassas Park, are planning to implement a 'tablet for every student' program this year (no link available).

Linked from Instapundit.

NEXT CITY: Should police wear body cameras?

SOMEONE HASN'T VISITED HIS LOCAL TEA PARTY: The Tea Party’s surprisingly hawkish foreign policy.

But he's a 'journalist', so no surprise.

OBAMA. CLIMATE CHANGE. INCOMPETENCE. Can we roll the presidency back to 2008? At least George W. Bush could walk and chew gum at the same time; Obama can't.

GOV. RICK PERRY trolls Democrats. Will they take the bait?

If they're Travis County Democrats, sure.

GLOBAL WARMING CLIMATE CHANGE DISRUPTION SWERVE: The name keeps changing, but the propaganda continues.

BILL WHITTLE: The world gets crazier and Obama goes golfing.

POWERLINE: Barney Fife for President.

U.S. AIR FORCE mulls Air Force One replacement options. Why? Is Obama planning to take it with him?

FERGUSON, UNVISITED:

Does anyone remember Detective Melvin Santiago? He was a Jersey City police officer who was shot to death just a month ago, on July 13th. Santiago was white. His killer, Lawrence Campbell, was black. Does anyone recall Obama appearing before national television and calling for justice for Officer Santiagos family? Does anyone recall Eric Holder rushing to Jersey City to see that justice was done?

How about Officer Jeffrey Westerfield. He was a Gary, Indiana police officer who was shot to death last month on July 6th. Westerfield was white. His killer, Carl LeEllis Blount, Jr. was black. Where was Obama? Where was Holder?

Or Officer Perry Renn? He was an Indianapolis, Indiana police officer who was shot to death just last month on July 5th, the day before Officer Westerfield was killed. Officer Renn was white. His killer, Major Davis, was black. I don't recall any mention by Obama about the untimely death of Officer Renn. And, I doubt that Eric Holder rushed to Indianapolis to make sure justice was done. Or, maybe I just missed it.

Vermillion Parish Deputy Sheriff Allen Bares was gunned down by two men just last June 23rd in Louisiana. Deputy Bares was white. His two killers, Quintlan Richard and Baylon Taylor, were black. Was Obama outraged? Did Eric Holder rush to Louisiana to make sure that the family of Deputy Bares found justice?

Right here in our own state, Detective Charles Dinwiddie of the Killeen (Texas) Police Department was murdered by Marvin Lewis Guy, a black male. Officer Dinwiddie was white. This happened on May 11th, just over two months ago. I don't even recall seeing anything about that on the news. Certainly, the white citizens in Killeen didn't take to the streets to loot and burn businesses. Again, I don't recall any mention by Obama or Holder.

Then, there is Officer Kevin Jordan of the Griffin, Georgia Police Department. He was gunned down just two months ago on May 31st. Officer Jordan was black. His killer, Michael Bowman, was white. This was a white man murdering a black police officer. Where was Jesse Jackson? Where was "The Reverend" Al Sharpton? Was there looting and burning on the streets of Griffin, Georgia? No. In fact, I don't recall hearing about this one in the news, as well. Why? You can draw your own conclusions.

Over the past 60 days, there have been five reported deaths of police officers by gunshot in the US. Of those, four were white officers who were murdered by black men. Blacks complain that white officers threat black men more aggressively on the street. You can draw your own conclusions on that one, as well.

This came from my email. I haven't tried to verify the incidents, but assuming all are true, it's a scathing indictment of government (and media) pandering.

SO WHO NEEDS A WELFARE STATE? It’s amazing what people can do together.

OBAMA: I don't have a strategy (or a clue).

IT'S COME TO THIS: Washington D.C. resident represents Louisana in Senate.

I'm sure Louisana isn't the only state....

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane: Closing arguments are about to begin in the McDonnell corruption trial, and it occurred to me that (paraphrasing Robert Heinlein) while not all politicians are crooks, that's the way to bet.

OBAMA TRIES, but he cannot avoid evil.

Ever since Ronald Reagan the warmonger landed in Washington (or since George McGovern said "Come home, America") liberals longed for a foreign policy president who was up to their standards, was as "thoughtful" as they were, and understood all their dreams.

Someone who knew that talk of evil and good was always sophomoric, that the resort to force always was counterproductive, and that the crazy idea that this country was special — promoted by yahoos like Abraham Lincoln — was better described by their own Michael Kinsley as just another excuse to break rules.

Came the dawn and they got him, and we went in six years from a stable Iraq with al Qaeda contained to a Middle East both in flames and in pieces, with civil wars raging in three or more countries and an Islamist movement too bloody for even al Qaeda to stomach, and Russia, having swallowed the Crimea, hovering over Ukraine. Key to all this is a smaller American footprint, a refusal to use force or the threat thereof when it would have been useful, and a failure to rally the world against evil. In short, all the things the liberals called for. We hope they like the results.

Burying one's head in the sand leaves one wide open for an ass-kicking.

"THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS when you run out of other people’s money: thieves fall out among themselves on how to divide up the dwindling spoils."

FUNDING DEMOCRATS: the role of public employee unions.

Surprised?

THE SOLUTION TO LIBERALISM.

MASTEN SPACE SYSTEMS developing VTVL [vertical takeoff-vertical landing] vehicle for DARPA XS-1 program. But if it's VTVL, why does it have wings?

JEFF JACOBY: Your strategy was wrong, Mr. President. Obama may be forced by events to reverse course, but admit he was wrong? Never.

WHO NEEDS A REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY when you've got Obama?

A TALE OF TWO KINGS.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Paradigms Lost.

His [Obama's] foreign policy isn’t in need a tweak or a tuneup; in fact the question now is whether any parts of it can still be salvaged. He can’t drive it to the used car lot and sell it to someone else. The best he can do is tow it to the junkyard.

Perhaps he can sell it to some failed state as sort of a foreign policy 'cash for clunkers' program....

BILL & MELINDA GATES take a side in the gun control debate. You can guess which side -- they have bodyguards.

THE SKUNK: The Israelis should consider spraying it for, say, 1/4 mile inside the entire perimeter of Gaza....

NEW YORK TIMES: The growing blue-state diaspora. That's the problem, isn't it? They bring the very culture they're fleeing from with them.

IS ENVIRONMENTALISM an obsessive-compulsive disorder?

NO. NEXT QUESTION. Is there no end to the Obama administration's duplicity in the IRS scandal?

CHICAGOLAND: crime drops dramatically after concealed carry permits surge.

CAN WE GET the White House on Alabama's 2014 football schedule? Here's a quick recap of last year....

Alabama beat Arkansas and Arkansas fired their coach.

Alabama beat Tennessee and Tennessee fired their coach.

Alabama beat Auburn and Auburn fired their coach.

Then Alabama beat Notre Dame, and the Pope resigned.

From my email (obviously).

REJECTING THE RULE OF LAW means inviting the rule of guns. We're closer than you think....

WELL, AMERICA, you got what you voted for. Happy now?

WE MAY NOT, but ISIS remembers.

NOTHING. NEXT QUESTION. What will U.S. do if ISIS attacks again?

WITH THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION? Where Governmental Incompetence Ends and Malice Begins.

DEMOCRATS' DREAMLAND: urban America.

ALREADY DID: Stick a fork in your newspaper. The bias, propagandizing, and political correctness finally took its toll. The commenters seem to agree.

JOHN BOLTON: Destroy the 'Islamic State'.

Don't forget the salt....

ALREADY DID: Stick a fork in your newspaper. The bias, propagandizing, and political correctness finally took its toll. The commenters seem to agree.

IT'S NOBODY’S FAULT: Liberals make excuses for Obama.

Barack Obama is in charge .  .  . at a time when the world seems to be cracking up more than usual. .  .  . There are no simple fixes to these nuance-drenched problems. .  .  . None of these matters are easily resolved.

Ri-i-ight. Just add enough 'nuance' and all Obama's problems become someone else's fault.

Funny how all that 'nuance' disappeared during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II admininstations....

TECH HISTORY: U.S. Presidents Have Secretly Recorded Conversations Since 1940.

ARE EVEN THE RACE-BAITERS beginning to see the light? But it's an onrushing train at the end of a lo-o-ong tunnel....

Linked from PowerLine.

IS IT TIME to rethink U.S. policy toward hostage negotiations? Yes. Yes, it is. And that policy should be to find them, kill them, pound them into rubble, and then salt the earth where they once stood.

NO. NEXT QUESTION. Is the Obama crew smart enough to defeat ISIS?

MICHAEL BARONE: A decent lawyer should tell Liberals they're damned fools and ought to stop. Except that for Liberals, being a damned fool isn't a bug, it's a feature....

WISING UP to the Democrats’ war on women.

FAT CHANCE IN OBAMA'S AMERICA: Renewing the American Idea.

THE MEASURE of the man: found wanting.

Sometimes a round of golf is just a round of golf. And sometimes it reveals the ­essence of a man.

President Obama’s decision to hit the links and yuk it up with pals immediately after speaking about the beheading of James Foley was no ordinary mistake. Nor was it a simple gaffe.The decision continues to cause an uproar because, like an X-ray, there is no escaping the image. It shows there is no there there.

With even his media praetorian guard appalled, the golf outing is sparking a wider understanding that Obama is hollow, empty of the routine qualities Americans expect from their president.

Simple decency and respect for Foley’s horrified parents should have been enough to sober him. If that didn’t do it, the realization that the Islamic State had declared war on America in the most gruesome fashion imaginable should have sounded a call of duty in his head.

Instead, Obama continued with his vacation and was photographed looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Suddenly, that megawatt smile that often charmed voters wasn’t so charming. It was vacuous.

He looked like an empty-headed frat boy, numb to the world.

Click through the PowerLine link to the original article and read it all.

INSTAPUNDIT: "Widening the gap between the upper-middle classes and beyond, and the hoi polloi, is one of the main functions of environmental and land-use rules."

TEXAS POLICE CHIEF fatally shot during traffic stop. So why isn't there rioting in the streets?

Oh, right.... The shooter was a minority, and the victim was both a white and a police officer.

ROCKETS ARE TRICKY ... SpaceX Reusable Rocket Prototype Explodes Over Texas.

MAUREEN DOWD: It's okay to mock Obama.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The lessons of Sherman and Gaza:

We tend to hate most deeply in war those who despoil us of our romance, especially when they humiliate rather than kill us — and teach us the lesson that the louder and more bellicose often prove the more craven and weak.

And that's a lesson that needs to be taught to America's whiners of the Left. Mock them. Humiliate them.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER: "The more people talk about equality, the more they’re involved in a system that promotes special deals for insiders. The more people talk about money in politics, the more they’re involved in crooked insider deals."

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. The majority of executives with big corporations are older; doesn't that constitute age discrimination against younger workers?

And along those same lines: Social Security is limited to those 62 or older. Discriminatory? The Affordable Care Act [aka ObamaCare] requires the 'young & healthy' to pay more for insurance. Discriminatory?

And going a bit further: Isn't abortion discrimination against the younger & healthier?

Answer: It's only discrimination when it goes against the predilection of the Left....

REAL JUSTICE IS BLIND; 'SOCIAL JUSTICE' IS NOT: Eric Holder shows he isn’t interested in real justice.

THE INSIDERS: Is Obama acting like a former president? No. To do that you have to have acted like a President first.

On the bright side, the Washington Post finally let their blinders slip....

BELMONT CLUB: On Obama's 'separable' doctrine:

Can Obama still control all the forces he’s ‘separably’ unleashed? Maybe the reason he stays in the Vineyard is that he’s guessed the answer. It’s his psychological bunker, where he waits, hoping for a last minute reprieve from Steiner. He doesn’t know what comes next anymore and frankly, is afraid to look.

Read it all.

WELL, IF YOU'RE A LIBERAL, THE ANSWER IS YES: Has Man Reached His Intellectual Peak?

We've gone BANANAs. Read it all; you'll get the meaning.

Related: a comment by Dr. Helen Smith.

JONAH GOLDBERG: None Dare Call It Evil? Goldberg does America a great service by identifying two of liberalism's greatest weaknesses: believing that a nuanced examination of all the facts is the same as doing something, and having minds so open their brains fall out.

Read it all.

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL BOARD to cease using ‘Redskins’. My response:

Now that your Editorial Board has decreed that the Washington Redskins are no longer the Washington Redskins, I have decided that the Washington Post is no longer worthy of my reading.

I have long been unhappy with the Post's political correctness, and this latest is the straw that finally broke the camel's back.

Please cancel my subscription at the end of its current service.

Maybe this'll be the straw that breaks their camel's back.

Related: Ann Althouse has a suggestion for a new name for the Redskins if it comes to that. It would be an insult to the Redskins, though.

JOHN C. GOODMAN: Let’s Privatize Medicare. As someone about to join the ranks of Medicare recipients, I can almost support Ryan on this one. My problem with his proposal is that I'd prefer health insurance, not health control care.

DAN MITCHELL: The Federal Bagpipe Police?!?

Bonus: at the bottom of the post, you can learn how ISIS/ISIL can finally get Obama's attention.

ANOTHER FRIDAY NIGHT DOCUMENT DUMP: Yet another “accommodation” on HHS contraception mandate.

Yes, let's go back to the Supreme Court, shall we?

Added thought: You realize, don't you, that the Obama administration could dump the entire contraception mandate and it would hardly make any difference. This isn't about contraception; it's about control.

ELIZABETH WARREN officially rejects the 'Ready for Warren' 2016 activist group. I can understand; why would she want to be the second Democrat presidential candidate to lose 49 states?

STATE DEPARTMENT rejects ISIL’s claim that it [ISIL] is at war with America.

The arrogance of idiots -- does the State Department really believe that ISIS/ISIL needs permission to declare war on the U.S.?

Well, it is part of the Obama administration....

HO-HUM: Another 2,000 ObamaCare policies cancelled in Colorado.

THIS CHART SHOWS the stunning disappearance of middle-class jobs — everywhere.

I suspect you'd get exactly the same chart if you replaced the categores with ones labeled Government, Salaried, and Hourly....

FINALLY: the Republicans are punching back.

IT WASN'T GLOBAL WARMING? The Latest Obamacare Victim: the Chicago Cubs.

HYPOCRISY FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE: Laborers union headquarters (in Washington D.C.) renovation given to builder not employing union workers.

More here.

'GLOBAL WARMING' UPDATE: The Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts ‘super cold’ winter.

So do I.

That's only one of three firewood piles for the wood stove -- and there's more yet to be split.

OBAMA TOLD US he wanted to fundamentally transform America. Well, he did.

BREAKING NEWS: The Three Stooges were actually 4; here's proof.

RESPECT. And the lack thereof:

U.S. Army Major General Harold Greene was buried today [Thursday] at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors , including a caisson, two escort platoons, casket team, firing party, colors team, and a caparisoned horse. The U.S. Army band, “Perishing’s Own,” played softly as the funeral procession made its way down the long hill past the rows of simple white gravestones to bring General Greene to his final resting place.

The graveside service began with a few words, followed by a 13-gun salute. The major general’s widow, Dr. Susan Myers, was seated in the front row. To her right was their son 1st Lt. Matthew Greene, his daughter Amelia Greene, followed by Major General Greene’s father, also Harold Greene.

After three rifle volleys and the playing of “Taps,” the American flag, once placed on the major general’s casket, was carefully folded as the band played “America the Beautiful.” U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno presented the flag to his widow, and additional flags to his children and father.

General Greene, 55, became the highest-ranking fatality in the war in Afghanistan after an Afghan military police officer opened fire on Aug. 5th, 2014.

Some people were missing: no President; no Vice President; no Secretary of State; no Secretary of Defense. It was confirmed, however, that President Obama was playing golf at the time of the funeral.

Clueless is the most polite word I can think of.

WASHINGTON D.C. for the uninitiated:

The skies above are only polluted with hot air and other noxious gases emanating from the massive loads of bull hockey.

GIVE OBAMA A BREAK about vacations: Presidenting is Hard.

NEXT DEFUND AND CLOSE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: Feds ban school’s beloved "pink cookie".

IS IT TIME to abolish teachers colleges yet?

My children, thankfully, graduated before this bull hockey became fashionable, but I do worry about my grandchildren.

FROM THE SCOREKEEPER (#2 & in the comments):

Washington Post reporter: "Material goods by definition are typically replaceable. Of course the violence associated with the act of vandalism and then theft is not desirable but think of it this way. In this case, saying that looting is never acceptable is implicitly saying that personal property is worth more than life itself."

Anonymous commenter: "Not all material goods are replaceable. Looting is never acceptable. Thou shalt not steal is not just for the religious. People who respect other's material property generally also respect people, and do not commit acts of violence. What the reporter forgot to mention is that reporters are replaceable. Just reading this makes me think he should be."

Second the motion, especially given he's a Washington Post reporter.

AMMO GRRLL'S EXCELLENT VACATION: Texas and Las Cruces, NM (my former home) are mentioned.

With respect to Mexican food, La Posta is good, but El Patio (next door, if it's still there) was better. We also ate at My Brother's Place (yes, that's a real name). In Las Cruces, you can't find bad Mexican food, just good, better, and best.

COMMENTARY MAGAZINE: The nasty, brutish world of Richard Dawkins.

I would be hard-pressed to assign this, er, 'thing' to the category homo sapiens.

NO DATING, NO MARRIAGES. Isn't that what feminists want?

ANDREW KLAVAN: Democrats at War.

NY CITY COUNCILMAN wants to ban toys in Happy Meals.

I'd ban NYC except that I already won't go there.

MORE CLIMATE CHANGE AWESOMENESS: It's responsible for the Ebola outbreak. Is there anything it can't do?

MILLENNIAL PICNIC:

THE CHALLENGE OF OUR TIME

I plan to take a few days off and relax, but before I do I want to share with you my thoughts about what is going on in the Middle East. Some of you may know that as a military officer, when I wasn't blowing stuff up in the artillery, I was a Foreign Area Officer. The Army sent me to UVa, where I earned my MA in Comparative Governments of the Middle East and Soviet Foreign Policy. I then had utilization tours with UN Peace Keepers (UNTSO) in Syria, Israel, Jordan, and Southern Lebanon. I've seen a lot. That was followed by a tour in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the Pentagon doing current intelligence during the Iran-Iraq War. I learned a lot.

As I observe the President's actions in the Middle East, I am stunned with what I see as breathless ignorance of the threat the turmoil throughout the region poses to America. President Obama speaks tough, but where is the resolve in terms of proactive steps to deal with the threats?

Conflict in the Middle East is not new. It has been present since the nascent years of the 20th Century; reaching back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 when Great Britain announced its support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. Much has happened since then: several world wars have been fought, the European partition of Arab states as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, numerous regional wars have occurred; the list of dysfunction is long. After the First Gulf War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you can understand why the American people are inclined to stay away from all of it.

But as I said the other day, the challenge of our time is to summon the courage to deal with the challenges of our times. Terror of the sort we see from the Middle East is that challenge. It is a formidable challenge because it brings with it unspeakable violence, the potential for nuclear proliferation, and a destructive 7th Century mentality that threatens the very roots of democracy, peace, religious tolerance, free trade, and, indeed, the core of western civilization.

While Americans are justly war weary, we must meet the challenge of ISIS. They pose an existential threat to us and the Free World. If we treat them, as Eric Holder and the President seem intent to do, as a "criminal problem", we will not defeat them.

In the Army, we use[d] to say that our mission was to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy. If you think you can do that with unmanned aerial vehicles, manned airstrikes, and faux resolve in the form of empty golf-course rhetoric, you would be tragically wrong.

The President must act. He must. He must move immediately and rapidly to build an international coalition to locate, close with, and destroy ISIS, wherever they stand, walk, or run and even when they rest under the slimy rocks where they plan their terror. They one thing they understand is death. Nothing on earth will appease their lust for violence, and certainly not the passivity and reluctance of a great power. Indeed, our inaction fuels their action.

It bears repeating. The challenge of our time is to summon the courage to deal with the challenges of our times. I fear this President is simply not up to it.

This is from Scott Ligamfelter, my representative to the Virginia House of Delegates.

THE FIRST RULE OF HOLES (as interpreted by the White House): "When you find yourself in a deep hole, keep digging."

AMERICAN THINKER: Why Everybody Is A Social Issues Voter.

Related story here.

TECHNOLOGY: Mimicking the Super Hearing of a Cricket-Hunting Fly.

I BLAME RACISM: Republicans support President Obama on Iraq more than Democrats.

OBAMA’S MADE-FOR-TV WORLDVIEW: In real life, Mr. President, the good guys don’t automatically win.

DEALING WITH the mad dogs in Iraq:

So what do you do when a pack of mad dogs invades your town — or your world?

The short answer is easy: You kill ‘em, with no apologies to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But it’s not easy for the civilized to deal with rabid men among us.

Read the rest.

GOLF COURSE OR NEW COURSE: Has ISIS transformed the vacationer in the Oval Office? It has not. Now back to the golf course....

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES: Junior Varsity Blues Edition. I have two favorites this week, one amusing, one not:

There are many more - go and see.

THE ALS AWARENESS CAMPAIGN has a new remotely controlled ally.

NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY: We can't have students, er, thinking.

DEMOCRATS in a stew over inversions.

Progressives say corporations using inversions are unpatriotic, which is amusing. When the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision stipulated that Americans do not forfeit their First Amendment right to political advocacy when they act together through corporations (including, and especially, incorporated nonprofit advocacy groups), progressives ridiculed the idea that corporations should be treated as people. Now, progressives charge that corporations resorting to inversion are not behaving like patriotic people.

Rational thought is not a Democrat strength.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Bigotry ‘Deeply Embedded’ in ‘Too Many’ House Republicans. She should try looking in the mirror occasionally.

Even though I know it shouldn't, it still startles me when Democrats cry "racist!" whenever someone disagrees with them on a policy issue. Oh, hell, they cry "racist!" at anyone or anything that contradicts their worldview in any way whatsoever.

WHY IS RICK PERRY SMILING? He's got the smoking gun and (I'll bet) a civil lawsuit ready to file when the charges are thrown out.

MAYBE SO: Should your small business welcome legally-carried guns?

I have to say it would be a very interesting court case to see a concealed-carry permit holder, denied the right to carry inside a business and thus unable to defend himself and subsequently injured by an armed robber, sue the store owner for his injuries.

And it will happen. Which is why the time to think about possible consequences is now.

WELL, THERE GO MY AARP DISCOUNTS: Pizza parlor church discount gives atheists indigestion.

It's time for the law to slap these idiots down. And if the courts won't do it, well, the time has come for the Right to employ reverse lawfare....

OBAMA'S ENDLESS SECOND-TERM VACATION. Hell, he was on vacation his entire first term as well. We Americans just chose to ignore it.

TECHNOLOGY: turning used car batteries into solar cells. Interesting. Especially if the researchers are correct that the process will scale up economically.

WASHINGTON FREE BEACON: The Democrats are getting scared.

Desperation.

A SMALL MAN GETS SMALLER: Global warming 'science' according to left-wing billionaire Tom Steyer. With that much money, all he can come up with is this silly sh*t?

THOMAS SOWELL: Media and the mob in Ferguson:

Race is the wild card in all this. The idea that you can tell who is innocent and who is guilty by the color of their skin is a notion that was tried out for generations, back in the days of the Jim Crow South. I thought we had finally rejected that kind of legalized lynch law. Apparently, it has only been put under new management.

Meet the new management.

GOOD RIDDANCE: Israel takes out three top Hamas commanders after cease-fire violation.

PART-TIME POTUS: Presidentin’ — Just Something that Barack Obama Does Between Rounds of Golf.

NOT YET:

But we should be worried....

WILL OBAMA COMPROMISE? Of course not.

EMILY BAZELON IN SLATE: Why I Don’t Call the Police.

It's interesting reading -- and there are a few good points -- but Bazelon misses the obvious point: that the guilt is hers -- and her fellow progressives -- for creating and maintaining a culture of aggressively belligerent victims, self-entitled to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and with no regard for anyone beyond themselves.

She made the bed, and we're all sleeping in it.

Oh, and read the comments, which are filled with self-centered whiners certain of their status as the center of the universe.

IS IT ANY WONDER that higher education is losing respect? Not to me.

RELATED: Terrorist-Supporting Kent State Professor’s Incendiary, Anti-Semitic Facebook Posts.

EXCELLENT SHEEP: A mind is a terrible thing to waste at Yale. Recommended for amusement, not content. After reading it twice, I still can't tell whether the reviewer or author, or both, is for elitism, against elitism, or both.

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY: the operating room of the future. To quote InstaPundit, "Faster, please."

AM I LUCKY OR WHAT?

I won a Nigerian lottery according to an email from a Nigerian prince.
He holds the sum of ONE MILLION DOLLARS in my name and he wants to send it to me FREE!

All I have to do is give him my bank account numbers and send him $500.00 US dollars cash, to show my good faith so he can transfer the money!

And then I got ANOTHER email.

It's from a KENYAN prince who wants to give me FREE healthcare for life!

All I have to do is give him:

* my BANK ACCOUNT NUMBERS,
* my SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER
* my CONFIDENTIAL HEALTH INFORMATION
* and pay $700 per month for a policy with only a $10,000. deductible

Then he can make it happen!

Am I lucky or what?

From my email, naturally....

IF THE CLIMATE MODELS AGREE, then the temperature records must be wrong....

Charlie Martin explains the misconception in the comments.

CNN'S DON LEMON, automatic weapons, and the 'integrity' of the Left.

AT WHAT POINT do you so-called progressives start feeling like suckers? Because, you know, you are.

MITT ROMNEY'S AN OPTIMIST: Obama even worse than he expected.

THE SCOREKEEPER (#10): Nancy Pelosi takes the ice bucket challenge.

THEY'VE RUN OUT of other people's money, so now they're stealing other people's water.

FROM FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: See, I am prescient. Unfortunately, the image has succumbed somewhat to link rot (the blue line is barely visible), but since 2009, the Obama Approval Index has steadily declined from -10 to -20 today and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed from 9500 in August 2009 to 17000 today.

So roughly speaking, in 5 years Obama's popularity has halved and the DJIA has doubled.

Heh.

FINALLY: George W. Bush takes the ALS Ice Bucket challenge. And Laura Bush takes the cake....

NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. If Voters Need To Be Bribed To Turn Out, Do We Really Want Them Voting? If anything, I would establish some kind of individual initiative (in-person registration; in-person voting) requirement as part of the process.

OUCH! Maureen Dowd disses The Won.

ROGER L. SIMON: The real villain in the Ferguson fiasco. I think he's right; it goes back 50 years.

CAL THOMAS: When fighting the Islamic State, fight to win. No, fight to obliterate it, then salt the earth where it once stood.

IT'S TIME FOR US TO CHANGE:



Bravo! Jason L. Riley would approve.

DAMN, those Chicago teachers make big bucks. That, or teachers union president Karen Lewis lied....

VIRGINIA SPECIAL SESSION to discuss Medicaid expansion could be a challenge for Virginia's Barbara Comstock. This is a 'nothing special' article of interest only to Virginia voters, except for this:

Comstock pointed out that the ob-gyn practice of her Democratic opponent, Fairfax County supervisor John Foust, doesn’t take Medicaid.

Since Foust can be expected to be fully supportive of Medicaid expansion, this is just another example of the Democrats' "for thee, but not me" approach to Government intervention.

AN EXAMPLE of the definition of the word 'contempt'.

PROBABLY? ONLY PROBABLY? Attorney General Holder has a chance to do some good in Ferguson. But he’ll probably make everything worse.

HOW TO MAKE MY DAY:

No further comment needed....

OR THEY COULD JUST PAY YOU MORE: Why your employer should clean your house and do your laundry.

MIKE DITKA: "I'm not very tolerant when it comes to liberals who complain about everything."



Linked via this Hot Air post.

A TRULY ACCURATE HEADLINE: Obama heading back to DC in rare vacation break.

POWERLINE: "Obama thinks in progressive clichés that fail to contemplate the predictable consequences of action or inaction, let alone the predictable consequences of his own words."

He thinks?

PROMISES, PROMISES.

MORE PREPARATION for the zombie apocalypse:

I see a lot of these in my daily tours through the internet, but lately they seem to be showing up more often than usual. I blame the progressives.

FOX BREAKING NEWS: Missouri governor orders National Guard to begin withdrawing from Ferguson. Everything is fine now ... Attorney General Holder is there to start a 'national conversation' about race.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. I'm thinking of leaving the garbage can at the end of the driveway so I won't have so far to walk after the mail is delivered.

THE MELTDOWN: It would be at best a B-grade movie if only it weren't for real.

INSTAPUNDIT: "Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together. Like protect well-funded cronies at the expense of the public interest."

AMEN! "The response to Foley’s beheading should have been a MOAB [Mother Of All Bombs] dropped on an ISIS-held town." From the comments:

One of the problems with the "war on terror" is that "terror" is a tactic, not an enemy.

ISIS has declared itself to be the Islamic State. Now we have an entity against whom to wage war. It might be prudent to recognize the Islamic State and then, in the same breath, formally declare war on them. We will, of course, obey all of the laws of warfare including the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of POWs. (GWB was a fool not to have granted Al Qaeda POW status....) Of course, the Geneva Conventions require that combatants wear uniforms, and provides that combatants OUT of uniform may be summarily executed as spies or saboteurs. I'm not aware that any AQ fighters ever wore anything remotely resembling a uniform, so if we had recognized AQ as a Geneva Convention entity, we'd be absolutely within our rights to empty Gitmo with hangings. Which would have eliminated the declared "caliph", who would have danced the Danny Deever.

Having formally declared war against IS, we could seize their commerce and funds, and then declare them as being guilty of war crimes, and exercised other powers that cannot really be used against an amorphous "terrorist" enemy.

Of course, this all assumes a leader who might have some intestinal fortitude, which our current "leader" does not.

A recommendation for our next President....

HEH: Demography Pizza is destiny.

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY STUDY: Bigger government makes for more satisfied people. This is for me one of those "shall I believe you or my lying eyes" posts. I've been on Planet Earth for pushing 70 years now, and the study results simply don't correlate with that 69+ years of experience.

Further, there is nothing in the summary that suggests to me that there is any causal relationship between subjective 'happiness' and the 4 metrics used.

The 'study' is bogus.

NASA'S FLYING SAUCER takes a supersonic flight. It would help, though, if the parachute hadn't shredded on deployment.

FROM MY EMAIL: Racism defined.

Confronting a liberal with facts.

JUST A THOUGHT: Even angry, it's not a wise idea to return immediately to a place you just robbed.

IF YOU LIKE TAILGATING, you'll love robocars.

ABORTION: the awesome lifestyle option.

I wrote about Janet Harris's OpEd here.

UH, GREENPEACE? Your hypocrisy is showing (again).

Greenpeace, based in the Netherlands, is objecting to expanding oil exports from British Columbia in Canada, while saying no such thing about oil traffic in and out of its back yard. The map below shows how much oil shipping activity there was on a recent day in both regions.

Greenpeace's motto: "We only protest in your back yard."

PRIVACY? You thought you had privacy?

POLICE SOURCE: Missouri police officer was badly beaten before shooting Michael Brown.

Wilson suffered a fractured eye socket in the fracas, and was left dazed by the initial confrontation, the source said. He is now "traumatized, scared for his life and his family, injured and terrified" that a grand jury, which began hearing evidence on Wednesday, will "make some kind of example out of him," the source said.

He should be terrified, now that Attorney General Eric Holder is on the case.

UPDATE: with the assistance of Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon.

THE HILL wants to know why Obama returned to the White House over the weekend. Michael Ramirez has the answer.

THE FINAL FRONTIER: universal space travel. The comments are particularly interesting; the conservative-liberal divide is wide, deep, and easy to spot.

RASMUSSEN'S Obama approval index has been showing a small, but steady decline over the last 12 months, with the trend seeming to accelerate since June.

Even his base, which has been consistently in the 25% range since late 2009, is showing signs of leaving the plantation. Usually when the 'strong approvals' line declines, the 'mixed reaction' line increases, leaving the 'strong disapprovals' line flat. It's not happening this time; the 'mixed reaction' line is also beginning to decrease.

Not a good omen, I should think....

CAN A LIBERAL learn to shoot? Well, yes, but ... do you want them to learn? Watch the video to see how many times the instructor has to correct for gun safety violations.

MEDIEVAL CRUELTY IN MODERN TIMES: ISIS Thugs Behead American Journalist. If this isn't enough to cause America to pound these jihadist terrorists into the rubble and then bounce the rubble, then God help us all.

Take note: Genghis Khan's Mongol horde is in our midst.

IS THE TEA PARTY DEAD? Not quite. It's alive, well, and maturing.

CALIFORNIA 'PROFESSOR': slavery and pregnancy drove me to accost a teen pro-life activist. To put it politely, bulls**t.

And the court agrees, though far too kindly. Tar & feathers would have been more appropriate.

SCIENCE NEWS: NASA bets on asteroid mission as best path to Mars. Personally I'd prefer orbital manufacturing and a moon colony, but I'll take what I can get.

WHICH STATES give you more for your money? No surprises. Washington, D.C., though not a state, is the worst.

PREPARING FOR the zombie apocalypse. It's been a while since I've been to the range, so I was pleasantly pleased with my latest effort last week.

I'm still not nearly as good as the other range regulars, but my trigger control is improving, and I've finally learned how to compensate for my cataract surgery.

IGNORANT LEFTIST: Southern culture killed NASCAR driver Kevin Ward.

And a beautiful takedown: Mike Huckabee observes that the ignorant leftist suffers from a recto-cranial impaction and should get 'out' more.

DOES IT TAKE MORE WATER to frack an oil well or keep Obama playing golf?

THE FUTURE OF OBAMACARE.

ENJOY: You voted for big government.

WE'LL ALL STARVE TOGETHER: President Obama's zero-sum worldview.

OVERWORKED AMERICA: 12 Charts That Will Make Your Blood Boil. But only if you're a progressive committed to feeding on other people's money; otherwise it's a scathing indictment of Obamanomics.

CBS NEWS: Shocking number of Americans have no retirement savings. This is old non-news; it's been public knowledge for at least the last 40 years. The only reason it's 'shocking' now is that the progressive Left is finally realizing that they're running out of other people's money.

HOLDER TAKES ON FERGUSON, MISSOURI: Attorney General ‘flooding the zone’ with investigators.

There goes any hope of a peaceful resolution. If I were the police officer, I'd seriously consider a long vacation -- in, say, lower Timbuktu or any country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S. -- until 2017.

BUT IT'S THE WRONG QUESTION: Are Republicans smart enough to become the party of the millennials?

The right question is this: "Are millenials smart enough to become Republicans?" I'm not optimistic.

HEH: All that clean, renewable solar energy is frying birds. And that clean, renewable wind energy is slicing and dicing them.

Even my cats aren't that efficient....

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Think. It's not illegal. Yet.

From my email.

A POSTER CHILD for the pro-choice movement. Only in her case it should have been one generation sooner....

BIGELOW AEROSPACE unveils inflatable space station design.

THOMAS SOWELL QUOTES:

I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep the money you have earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.

What is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?

From my email.

SPACE-X releases video of Falcon 9 first stage water “landing”. An enhanced video of the landing is here.

DEMOCRATS TO DONORS: "Get off your butt and give us some money."

I'm tempted to give 'em a buck in the hope that they'll waste 100 times that amount begging me for more....

WINGSUITS are hazardous to your health.

ANOTHER SUCCESS STORY: Woman's surgery delayed by ObamaCare.

FROM MY EMAIL:

Ruger is coming out with a new pistol in honor of Obama. It will be
named the "Union Worker".

Should have been named the "Government Employee".

FROM FIVE YEARS AGO:

Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it, signed by a president who smokes, funded by a treasury chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that is nearly broke.

What possibly could go wrong?

Now we know.

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures is up. My favorite:

Follow the link; there are others equally good.

MICHELLE OBAMA: "No one really cares what you had for lunch." Except her. Best comment:

[S]he is telling her kids to stop posting pics on instagram of all the foods she let's them eat while telling the rest of the kids in America that they better not even think of eating the same thing.

Her lack of self-awareness would be stunning if it weren't a fundamental characteristic of the progressive Left.

FROM THE SCOREKEEPER (#11): [Y]ou need bandwidth when you defend the free world with #Hashtags."

DAILY CALLER: Now You Can Bring The Stifling Joylessness Of Modern Political Life To The Grocery Store.

I have to wonder if the Leftists are sufficiently self-aware to understand that this 'tool' can be used against them as it can for them. Then again, I suppose that they could realize that the Right won't use the app because they're too busy having a life.

HUFFINGTON POST: I'd like a Couple of Entrees and an Order of Wings With My Spacecraft. Autry starts off well until he goes off the rails railing (pun intended) about Republicans. It's not about Republicans vs. Democrats; it's about big government vs. little government. If, for example, Sen. Shelby was a Democrat, the result would be the same. It's what politicians do; bring home bacon and protect their constituents.

MILWAUKEE SHERIFF WINS: "Bloomberg made a huge miscalculation." The way to solve the Bloomberg problem is to make it illegal for anyone to hire armed bodyguards ... carry your own or go without. The anti-gun financiers would disappear pretty rapidly when they found it was their neck in the noose.

PROGRESS? Many Muslim leaders have denounced the Islamic State. It's a start, but it will take more than words to stop ISIS; the Islamic world must now take action.

IEEE SPECTRUM: How We Gave Sight to the Mercedes Robotic Car.

WELL, Obama insisted on driving....

LABOR POLICY: A conservative alternative to the minimum wage.

NEARLY EVERYTHING WRONG with modern journalism in one tweet. At least he recognized his stupidity. Still got to work on the narcissism, though.

NO WONDER the Left hates math....

OHIO AIRPORT turns to prairie grass to combat bird strikes. But they have to get FAA permission to grow the grass....

THERE GOES YOUR PRIVACY: Your candy wrappers are listening.

SOME EXAMPLES of the idiot Left in academia.

VICTIMS KNOW THEIR PLACE: "[W]hy do markedly more minority campaign workers choose to work for a party that pays them so much lesser [sic] than it does whites?"

GENTLEMEN: A vanishing (vanished?) breed. And with gentlemen, civilization.

RELATED. [A] group facing higher risk of suicide: Older white men with depression.

PETARD, MEET HOIST: John Kerry said that if you didn’t study or were stupid, you would get stuck in Iraq. Today, John Kerry is stuck in Iraq.

TAX INVERSION explained.

IT'S GOTTA BE FROM GLOBAL WARMING: At Martha’s Vineyard, Obama Complains About Cold Ocean.

JOHN KERRY TO AFRICA: Prevent global warming; starve your people.

TED CRUZ ON OBAMA: "[There's] a new diet that’s really quite popular in Washington these days. It’s called the Obama diet. You just let Putin eat your lunch every day."

From the Scorekeeper (#8) with another reminder (#10): "An amateur built Noah's Ark. Experts built the Titanic."

BACK TO SCHOOL: Reading, writing, and ... 'social justice' arithmetic.

THE SCOREKEEPER on Barack Obama (#1): No clothes, no clue, no brains.

DEMOCRATS: Women earn less than men; blacks earn less than whites; and Hispanics earn least of all.

And it's all the Republicans' fault.

DICK DURBIN TO WALGREENS: You didn't build that. On the plus side, Durbin's argument is more substantive than that of Elizabeth Warren but the negative side is it's a scathing indictment of crony capitalism involving a government that's too damn big.

HEH: Help me stay rich, Colorado. The sad part is that Coloradans probably will.

OBAMA REPEATEDLY TAKES CREDIT for pulling all troops out of iraq ... and yet now he says it “wasn’t his decision.” To be perfectly honest, I suspect that it's the truth -- I doubt the man has ever made a decision in his entire life.

Hot Air, though, suggests he's a liar.

Take your choice. Neither is very appealing.

NO. JUST THE OPPOSITE. Are Mobile Devices Causing More Good Than Harm?

IS DIVERSITY necessary for a successful workplace? An astute observation from the comments:

Diversity is only necessary in one branch of engineering: social engineering.

My answer: No. And I'll bet that undue emphasis on diversity is sufficient -- and possibly necessary -- for the unsuccessful workplace.

CARS MAY THINK, but will they achieve artifical stupidity? Judging from my recent road trip to Georgia and back, I suspect artifically-stupid self-driving vehicles will have a hard time achieving the levels of real stupidity I saw on the road.

I used to be very skeptical of autonomous vehicles; this last trip is slowly changing my mind.

THEY WANTED A BULLET TRAIN: And got one.

THOMAS SOWELL: Attacking Achievement. Because achievers aren't victims.

"THE AMERICAN PEOPLE don't want me just standing around twiddling my thumbs. "Actually, yes ... yes, we do. You are far less dangerous to the Constitution on the golf course than you are in the Oval Office.

TEAMWORK. Democrat tries to 'cozy up' to Republican counterpart. It fails.

HEH: App 1, traditional media 0. Related post is here.

OBAMA: "Is there anything he said in [the 2008] campaign that wasn't a lie?" Or since then, for that matter.

I HAVE FOUR CATS SPIES: How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi.

INSTAPUNDIT: "[I]f Gaza turned out like Hamas wants, it would look a lot like the Islamic State in Iraq. If it turned out like Israel wants, it would look a lot like Santa Monica." I prefer Santa Monica.

IT WOULD BE HO-HUM: What If Watergate Happened Today?

HOW SHOULD college campuses handle sexual assault cases? In two words, they shouldn't.

CHILDREN, NO LESS: Hamas executed tunnel diggers. For fear they might divulge tunnel locations.

IF THERE IS NO 'WAR ON WHITES,' what is the 'White Privilege Conference' about? Mostly it's about idiots and educators (but I repeat myself).

BECAUSE THEY'RE LOSING. Why are liberals turning against freedom of speech?

'CASH FOR CLUNKERS' hurt the economy. So tell me something I didn't already know.

That it would be a lemon was understood by anyone who had a brain bigger than one.

YOU WANT NAZIS? Steyn's got Nazis.

ROSETTA SPACE PROBE finds its comet. Now it will begin to 'orbit' the comet. Here's how:



More (including better pictures) from CNN.

COUP UNDERWAY IN IRAQ? Iraqi troops and tanks surge into Baghdad amid political turmoil.

Not to worry -- Obama's on it.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES is up. My favorite is easy this week:

The fact that Michelle Obama disapproves is icing on the cake.

ELIZABETH WARREN: Yes, you do negotiate with terrorists.

WHY DO WE NEED a National Security Agency when we have Facebook?

NO NEED for reading glasses with vision-correcting display.

What's really nifty is the ability to correct for other vision distortions -- that's a 'make my day' capability since I have keratoconus in one eye as well as presbyopia (needing reading glasses).

"COOKIE-LESS" MONSTERS: Browser fingerprinting and the online-tracking arms race.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMING AMERICA ... for the worse. But the good side is that we'll be more like the rest of the world.

IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM: Washington Democrats are all noise and gridlock.

MERCEDES COUPE leans into curves—so you don’t have to. I always wondered if 'leaning' a car into a turn like a motorcycle was feasible. Apparently it is.

GREENS TO SUE EPA over aircraft emissions. But don't ask them to stop flying....

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW about 'open borders'. Keep clicking on the calendar's right arrow to see the logical conclusion.

BACKLASH? "Democrats’ crude racial appeals to minorities may even encourage whites to vote with more race-consciousness than in the recent past."

THE BIG GREEN MACHINE: Europeans struggle to pay their electric bills. Coming soon to a USA near you.

A GLIMPSE at progressivism gone wrong. Not gone wrong, this is a glimpse into progressivism's natural end point.

QUESTION: Is preventing genocide in America's core interest? Only if the White House doesn't have to make a decision....

HEH: "The difference between feminism and insanity is simply a matter of perspective."

COLD WAR? What cold war?

OH, SWELL: My medical insurance 'company' is going bankrupt and I can't switch to another insurer.

KNEEL BEFORE ZOD: On celebrating The Won's birthday. Creepy. Just plain creepy. This Obama cult-worship is more reminiscent of North Korea than England's investiture in the monarchy.

REP. TOM MARINO (R-PA) has a close encounter of the harridan kind.

IS THE PRESIDENT incompetent -- or lawless? Personally, I'm mindful of the aphorism to never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere incompetence, but ... Obama truly makes me wonder. Here's why.