The Obama administration is trying to guilt-trip you into buying a hybrid. According to Heritage's The Foundry, the EPA is going to start giving your car a report card--"A" for electric cars and hybrids, "C" for pick-up trucks, and probably "F minus" for Humvees.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The government proposed labeling each new passenger vehicle with a letter grade from A to D based on its fuel efficiency and emissions, part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to promote electric cars and other advanced-technology vehicles....

Currently, the labels must show how many miles per gallon a car gets and its estimated annual fuel cost. Under the proposed changes, a new label design would carry a large letter grade assigned by regulators.

Under the system, the only cars that would receive an A-plus, A or A-minus would be electrics and plug-in hybrids, the government said. Many compact and midsize vehicles would get Bs, while bigger and more powerful models such as sport-utility vehicles and pickup trucks would get Cs or C-minuses because they burn more petroleum and pump out more carbon dioxide, officials said.

What grade would your car get?

Or, a more fun question to ask: how would you grade the EPA?

What I like most about Larry Sabato, the keen observer of the political map from the University of Virginia, is that he often infuriates me with his political analysis. Not because he's wrong, but because he's right. He tells me things I don't want to hear.

So it makes it sweeter -- a lot sweeter -- when he tells me something I do want to hear. From his Crystal Ball post this morning:

Given what we can see at this moment, Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net. This is a “net” number since the GOP will probably lose several of its own congressional districts in Delaware, Hawaii, and Louisiana. This estimate, which may be raised or lowered by Election Day, is based on a careful district-by-district analysis, plus electoral modeling based on trends in President Obama’s Gallup job approval rating and the Democratic-versus-Republican congressional generic ballot (discussed later in this essay). If anything, we have been conservative in estimating the probable GOP House gains, if the election were being held today.

In the Senate, we now believe the GOP will do a bit better than our long-time prediction of +7 seats. Republicans have an outside shot at winning full control (+10), but are more likely to end up with +8 (or maybe +9, at which point it will be interesting to see how senators such as Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and others react). GOP leaders themselves did not believe such a result was truly possible just a few months ago. If the Republican wave on November 2 is as large as some polls are suggesting it may be, then the surprise on election night could be a full GOP takeover. Since World War II, the House of Representatives has flipped parties on six occasions (1946, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1994, and 2006). Every time, the Senate flipped too, even when it had not been predicted to do so. These few examples do not create an iron law of politics, but they do suggest an electoral tendency.

I'm a political junkie. As much as I'd like a GOP takeover in the Senate, I'd also like to see Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson suddenly get popular with both sides. Suddenly start getting little gifts in the mail.

There are a lot of smart people here; some probably even have a bit of the political junkie in their veins. So maybe someone can explain this to me: How is it that Mr. Obama, after a year and a half of almost uniformly unpopular policies, with unemployment still at levels barely seen in a generation, with economic growth essentially non-existent, and having made a mockery of his “post-partisan” promise in record time, still manages to hold a 46-47% (Real Clear Politics average) job approval rating? I find this utterly baffling.

My bafflement has two sources. The first is simply arithmetic. In round numbers, polls consistently show the American public to be about 25% “liberal,” 40% “moderate,” and 35% “conservative.” (The most recent polls actually tend to show about 40% “conservative,” but never mind.) For Obama to have a 46-47% approval rating and a 48-49% disapproval rating implies (since all the remaining “Obama conservatives” could fit inside a very small phone booth) that “moderates” are saying they approve of Obama’s job performance by something like a 3:2 margin. And this, in the face of countless polls showing large majorities of “independents” disapproving of virtually every initiative Obama has taken in his presidency, simply makes no sense.

The second is historical. The spectrum of public opinion tends to be continuous, without sharp breaks – kind of like a rope. When one end of a taut rope gets raised or lowered a significant amount, the parts of the rope closer to the middle rise or fall as well, though by lesser amounts; the right or left end of the rope doesn’t just break off. Thus, historically, whenever the Left or the Right has turned highly negative toward a president (think, e.g., Carter or Bush II), that president’s overall approval numbers have slipped into the 30s – not because of the intensity of one side’s dislike (approval ratings do not capture intensity), but because the same things that caused intensity of disapproval on one side or the other have, with less intensity, caused more widespread disapproval in the middle.

But this does not seem to be happening yet with Obama, or at least not fully. The only things I can think of by way of possible explanation are:

1. People’s self-characterizations are not really very accurate – i.e., a lot of self-described “moderates” are really fairly liberal. This may or may not be true, but doesn’t explain the fact that most of the polling on individual Obama initiatives (health care, bailouts, Porkulus, etc.) tends to be consistent with the conservative-leaning 25-40-35 split.
2. Some respondents implicitly bring a “comparison with the alternative” into their response, reasoning, in effect, “well, I disapprove of a lot of the things Obama’s done, but Bush was worse, so I guess, in comparison with Bush, I sort of approve of Obama.” This could be, but if you look at the Gallup historical data, this effect appears to have worn off by about the middle of the first year for other presidents who’ve followed highly unpopular incumbents.
3. Personal magnetism – people just like Obama personally, far more than they approve of his policies. Well, maybe, but I really, really don’t get it. I got why a lot of people liked Reagan; I even got why a lot of people liked Clinton. But Obama? The guy is cold, aloof, arrogant, condescending, and hyper-partisan. What is there in that personality to like?
4. In a variant of the above, it’s not Obama’s personality that some moderates like, as much as the idea of Obama – someone well-educated, who speaks in complete sentences, who seems sophisticated and cosmopolitan, and to top it all off is actually African-American. They feel, in some vague sort of way, that to disapprove of Obama is to side with hoi polloi instead of with the “right sort” who ought to be running things.

With absolutely no data to back this up, my gut tells me that the last of these is the most credible, that there is probably a block of around 4 or 5% of the electorate who feel perfectly free to disagree with many or most of Obama’s policies, but can’t bring themselves to disapprove of Obama himself – and that without these people, Obama’s approval numbers would be in the low rather than the high 40s – more consistent with where other presidents who have pursued unpopular policies in poor economies have been. But I’m curious as to whether anyone can offer a better or more convincing rationale for why Obama’s approval numbers appear measurably more buoyant than those for his actual policies and initiatives.

In the Wall Street Journal today, Stanford economist Michael Boskin examines the Obama recovery--and finds it nearly nonexistent. Then he examines what the left intends to do about it--and finds they want to make matters even worse.

[T]he left is frantically calling for a second "stimulus" and demanding tax hikes for the "rich"—a.k.a. our most productive citizens and small businesses. The rehashed ideas include such nonsense as massive infrastructure spending financed by a national infrastructure bank, an old Carter idea; yet more aid to the states; and even that worst of ideas, "general revenue sharing," which would force citizens to pay future federal taxes to fund the debt used just to send revenue back to their states.

These ideas would do a lot more harm than good. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, we have the best economic system among the advanced economies, "if we can keep it." That will require fundamental policy changes, not doubling down on the failed big government experiment of recent years.

In fewer than a thousand words, pretty much everything you need to know about our parlous economy.

Breaking:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been sued by the U.S. Justice Department in civil-rights probe for refusing to cooperate with a civil-rights probe into police practices and jail operations.

Last week, an attorney for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said he wanted to cooperate with federal investigators, but would not automatically grant access to materials it considers beyond the scope of civil-rights laws.

Justice officials decided to sue instead of waiting for Arpaio to cooperate. The suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, also names the Sheriff's Office and Maricopa County.

In the face of all this crazy talk about Obamacare being beyond the scope of Congress's Constitutional powers, the Administration's response is:

The individual mandate is a tax (I know, we used to say it wasn't, but we were just kidding), because it imposes a penalty on those who fail to obtain health insurance.

Now it's true that the Constitution gives Congress discretion to impose taxes to achieve a variety of ends, but the tax has to fit into the limited categories of federal taxation. Over at NRO, law student Joel Alicea correctly shows that the Administration's attempt to label the Obamacare penalty as an "excise tax" is a perversion of the term, which the Founders used to describe taxes on commodities and licenses. They'd spin in their graves at the notion of an "excise tax" on economic non-activity.

If the Supreme Court buys the "excise" argument, then originalism is out the window and Congress's power to tax -- which, as John Marshall said, is also the power to destroy -- is unlimited.

Virtually every morning I get on my elliptical machine and pedal away for 45 minutes. I do this with a nearly religious fervor. Almost nothing can stop me--until this morning. As I was about to begin, a commercial popped up on my television that excited me so much I had to get off and run to my office to type this post.

The commercial was for something called American Blue Tip. It's a reusable device that looks and acts and supposedly feels like a cigarette. When you take a drag on it, the tip lights up and you inhale a bit of water vapor which you then exhale. I've never been a smoker, so I'm not sure just how satisfying this might be for those who still use tobacco, but I'm giddy with anticipation to see how America's "behavior police" will find a way to ban this thing.

I assume they'll start with health issues. Perhaps they'll come up with some second-hand water vapor argument. I suppose they'll also float the idea that inhaling water vapor will lead to an increased desire to smoke the real thing. And what about smoking opponents who will feel mocked by this invention and its users? Will people be banned from inhaling in public areas merely because it looks as if they're smoking?

Don't get me wrong; I'm personally opposed to smoking. I've lost loved ones to the habit, and I've seen the terrible struggles of them and others as they tried to quit. But I also believe some anti-smokers have used their campaign as a springboard to attempt to regulate all sorts of personal behavior, so I'm anxious to see how products like American Blue Tip will be treated. If it helps smokers quit, I see that as a positive. And if it makes others feel sophisticated, so what? However, I have a feeling this will really stick in the craw of people who know how we should all live. Now we'll get a chance to see whether they're more interested in public health or in regulating behavior they don't care for.

I'm too excited to pedal.

Robert Costa has a fascinating interview on NRO this morning with Pat Caddell, former pollster and advisor to George McGovern, Gary Hart, and, of course, Jimmy Carter. Caddell doesn't waste time blaming "the economy" or "an anti-incumbent mood" for the Democrats' current condition. He points his finger straight at the Chief Executive, whom he paints as excessively partisan and out of touch with the "common man," and specifically at the health care debacle, about which he says:

“The Democrats had a chance to do this right — most people supported aspects of reform — but because of the way it was passed, as a crime against democracy, the country has simply not accepted it. The lies, the browbeating, the ‘deem and pass’ — all of it was a suicide mission.”

"Crime against democracy"? "Lies" and "browbeating"? How exactly does this differ from anything said over the past year and a half by Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, or other bogeymen of the Left? I seem to recall Jimmy Carter, a while back, opining that opposition to Obamacare was chiefly motivated by racism. Do you think Carter now considers his former pollster a racist?

OK, I pinched that title from Lucianne.com, simply because it was too much to resist. The link was to a Daily Caller story about the newly redecorated Oval Office. By now most of us have seen the photos. Am curious what the Ricochet community makes of the re-do.

Jim Geraghty's fabled mentor, "an individual who had been involved in the highest levels of GOP politics for longer than I have been alive," has resurfaced from his secret whereabouts with some oracular warnings and wisdom for November. This bit of advice jumped out:

Republicans ought to be using the words ‘October Surprise’ endlessly. Hold a contest to see who comes up with the most creative suggestion for what the Dems might do.

Well?

Camille Paglia unloads:

Having taught in art schools for most of my four decades in the classroom, I am used to having students who work with their hands—ceramicists, weavers, woodworkers, metal smiths, jazz drummers. There is a calm, centered, Zen-like engagement with the physical world in their lives. In contrast, I see glib, cynical, neurotic elite-school graduates roiling everywhere in journalism and the media. They have been ill-served by their trendy, word-centered educations.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: We need a sweeping revalorization of the trades. The pressuring of middle-class young people into officebound, paper-pushing jobs is cruelly shortsighted. Concrete manual skills, once gained through the master-apprentice alliance in guilds, build a secure identity. Our present educational system defers credentialing and maturity for too long. When middle-class graduates in their mid-20s are just stepping on the bottom rung of the professional career ladder, many of their working-class peers are already self-supporting and married with young children.

The elite schools, predicated on molding students into mirror images of their professors, seem divorced from any rational consideration of human happiness. In a period of global economic turmoil, with manufacturing jobs migrating overseas and service-sector jobs diminishing in availability and prestige, educators whose salaries are paid by hopeful parents have an obligation to think in practical terms about the destinies of their charges. That may mean a radical stripping down of course offerings, with all teachers responsible for a core curriculum. But every four-year college or university should forge a reciprocal relationship with regional trade schools.

I'm rushing out the door to catch the plane to come to see you, Ricochet members of California, at the special Rico-Suave members-only Ricochet gathering tonight. But I just wanted to call your attention to something very odd.

Do you remember my secret intelligence informant, "Timothy Thompson?" He's still in his undisclosed location, but a few hours ago, he sent me a message about this article by Selig Harrison, published last week in The New York Times:

While the world focuses on the flood-ravaged Indus River valley, a quiet geopolitical crisis is unfolding in the Himalayan borderlands of northern Pakistan, where Islamabad is handing over de facto control of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the northwest corner of disputed Kashmir to China.

The entire Pakistan-occupied western portion of Kashmir stretching from Gilgit in the north to Azad (Free) Kashmir in the south is closed to the world, in contrast to the media access that India permits in the eastern part, where it is combating a Pakistan-backed insurgency. But reports from a variety of foreign intelligence sources, Pakistani journalists and Pakistani human rights workers reveal two important new developments in Gilgit-Baltistan: a simmering rebellion against Pakistani rule and the influx of an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army.

China wants a grip on the region to assure unfettered road and rail access to the Gulf through Pakistan. It takes 16 to 25 days for Chinese oil tankers to reach the Gulf. When high-speed rail and road links through Gilgit and Baltistan are completed, China will be able to transport cargo from Eastern China to the new Chinese-built Pakistani naval bases at Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara, just east of the Gulf, within 48 hours.

That's interesting enough, but here's the part that shook me out of my worries about whether I'd have time to do laundry before we meet tonight. "Timothy Thompson" says he's hearing persistent and credible rumors of nuclear-capable Chinese IRBM missiles entering the Gilgit region. His sources in India, he says, are calling this a South Asian Cuban missile crisis.

True? Who knows? I'm running it up the flagpole to see what salutes. If it turns out to be true, well, you heard it first from "Timothy Thompson"--on Ricochet.

See you all tonight at the West Coast command-and-control center. Bring your maps of Pakistan and your pushpins.

I'm back from a family holiday in Holland, a beautiful country where the people are Very Very Tall and the land is Very Very Green and everyone is Very Very Polite. We had a wonderful time -- idyllic, really, even with the rain. I knew I was on my way home when the Israeli steward on the charter told me, when I asked for orange juice mixed with soda water, that he wouldn't give it to me because it sounded nasty. "Here, have apple juice with soda instead," he said, handing it to me and waiting for my opinion. (He was right -- it was better.)

I landed in Israel to the news that Hamas men had murdered four Israeli civilians in an attack staged deliberately from within Palestinian Authority territory in order to demonstrate the PA's lack of control. Abbas responded forcefully, giving the go-ahead to a broad police crackdown on Hamas inside the West Bank. Hamas, naturally, calls the attempt to limit their ability to conduct multiple homicides from within PA territory "treason" and has already struck again.

There is, alas, little new to observe here: whenever rapprochement between Israel and the Palestinians becomes a genuine possibility, maximalist Palestinians start killing people. I'll just note the general lack of international outrage over the specifics of the first assault, in which the attackers strafed a car containing four civilians -- one of them a pregnant mother of six -- with bullet fire and then approached the car to finish them off at close range. Presumably the lack of indignation results from the victims' having been settlers. And as we all know, it's the settlers' fault that peace talks are so difficult.

Because the Wall Street Journal puts each day's newspaper online at midnight Eastern time, which is a couple of hours before bedtime Pacific time, I get to look at tomorrow's newspaper today. The lead story, just up: "Outlook Dims for Democrats."

The Cook Political Report, a newsletter that tracks congressional races, now lists 68 Democratic House seats as being at "substantial risk," up from 62 in July and 58 in June, and the group plans to raise the figure to more than 70 this week. Other pollsters and analysts have also increased their list of Democrats they now consider imperiled. By comparison, less than 10 Republican-held seats are thought to be in jeopardy.

Sweet dreams.

A reminder: members in or near Nancy Pelosi's district are invited to join us for a drink or two on Thursday, Sept. 2 -- that's tomorrow! -- at a local establishment. Details are here.

Peter, George, Rob (we hope), Diane, and possibly some other local contributors should be there. Claire will drop in as well, unless Madame Speaker detains her for questioning.

At St. Mary's College, in the leafy East Bay environs of Moraga, California, Barbara Boxer debated Carly Fiorina for the first time. Demeanor and poise are not everything (recall George W. Bush's whiny and put-upon debate performance that gave the world "Bein' President is hard"), but tonight, the contrast spoke volumes. Boxer, the pampered incumbent, came off as worn out, catty, and flustered. Fiorina, the underdog who beat breast cancer last year, was poised, razor sharp, and focused. The types here fit the prevailing political stereotype: on the one hand, government elites, habituated to comfort, who respond to serious challenges with annoyance and condescension; on the other, enterprising individuals, from the unforgiving real world, who step up to the plate when the times demand high performance.

Thematically, Boxer circled Fiorina's record at HP -- specifically, how she shipped jobs overseas. Fiorina returned again and again to Boxer's lackluster record -- drawing a portrait of a polarizing, ineffective, almost fatuous Senator who gets nothing done. The Fiorina campaign was quick tonight with some debate fact checks. Two key items: (1) Senate Democrats wrested control of Boxer's own climate bill away from her, putting the relatively less partisan John Kerry at point. (2) Among only 14 Senators, Boxer voted against the war funding bill that inspired Joe Biden to speak these words:

• “So what did some of my colleagues say about why they voted against the money? They said they voted against the money to make a political point. There’s no political point worth my son’s life. There’s no political point worth anybody’s life out there.” (Remarks At The Iowa State Fair, Des Moines, IA, 8/15/07)

• “I want to ask any of my other colleagues, would they, in fact, vote to cut off the money for those troops to protect them? That’s the right question. This isn’t cutting off the war. This is cutting off support that will save the lives of thousands of American troops.” (NBC, “Meet The Press,” 9/9/07)

Burn. The facts speak for themselves, but the visual and attitudinal contrast between Fiorina and Boxer made for a picture that speaks to the whole momentous national question confronting us in November.

Looks like the Obama administration is patting itself on the back for a decline in illegal immigration numbers. From Politico:

The Obama administration is touting an independent report released Wednesday that shows that the number of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. fell by nearly 65 percent in recent years.

 About 300,000 immigrants illegally entered the country each year from March 2007 to March 2009, nearly two-thirds fewer than the 850,000 who annually crossed the border from 2000 to 2005, according to the report by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center.

An estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants were living in the U.S. in 2009, an 8 percent decline from the peak of 12 million in 2007. That represented the first significant decrease in two decades, the report said.

When the depression in immigration numbers happens to perfectly coincide with the biggest economic downturn in a quarter century, that isn't a freak coincidence. If President Obama wants to take credit for fewer immigrants, he's obliged to accept the blame for higher unemployment.

Direct Israel-Palestine peace talks begin today, hosted by President Barack Obama at the White House. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas both join Obama to commence what will be the ninth round of U.S.-led Israel-Palestine peace talks over 31 years. Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak will also be present. The process begins inauspiciously, with Palestinian group Hamas claiming the murders of four Israeli civilians, one of whom was pregnant, and Israeli settlers continuing the construction of West Bank settlements despite a U.S.-backed settlement freeze. -- The Atlantic Wire

the murders of the four Jewish settlers near Hebron have unleashed a wave of anger and calls for revenge, with Mr Netanyahu vowing to hunt down the killers. [...] "The message should go out to Hamas and everybody else who is taking credit for these heinous crimes, that this is not going to stop us from not only ensuring a secure Israel but also securing a longer lasting peace," Mr Obama said. -- ABC

Mideast peace talks have become a Sisyphean ritual. Talking about Mideast peace talks? But here we are again, and sure enough -- something must be said, because the interminable situation (large numbers of people want Israel destroyed) is new all over again, in some characteristically ugly way, every time. So here. How can Mideast talks even go on as if Iran does not exist? I suppose there's something tremendously powerful to the idea that they could -- reaching some kind of durable settlement that excluded Iran could lay the groundwork for what could be a tacit agreement among the world's greater powers that Iran will eventually be bombed one way or the other.

But is there any indication at all that Team Obama can make this happen? Even the wire reports convey the problem:

The summit marks Obama's riskiest plunge into Middle East diplomacy, not least because he wants the two sides to forge a deal within 12 months, a target many analysts call a long shot. He is staking precious political capital on the peace drive in a U.S. congressional election year.

There is also the danger that failure on this front could set back Obama's faltering attempts at winning over the Muslim world as he seeks solidarity against Iran.

Reaching an understanding among great powers is important to dealing with Iran, but lining up the Arab world is of huge importance. I understand the desire to accomplish this by hammering out a peace deal -- if that's the horse that's pulling this particular cart. But am I confident? Sadly, no!

Phone numbers are on the way out. From a Techcrunch post by Nikhyl Singhal:

Is it conceivable that one of our greatest inventions, the phone number, is about to face extinction?

Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier this year, when asked if Facebook would be around in 100 years, as long as Ma Bell has been around, Zuckerberg responded, “I don’t know. But I don’t know how long telephones will be around for.” Will they be around for ten more years? I’ll go even further. It may not even take 5 years for the phone service, as we know it, to meet its demise.

Which makes sense. When you think about a phone number -- a seven-digit piece of code that refers to a location-specific device -- it really does seem outdated and clunky, a relic from a time without more robust and customizable networks, like Facebook. (Or Ricochet, for that matter...) As Singhal puts it:

Compare this to your social networks. You have control over who accesses your information; you have one username and profile that you use at all times; and applications fill in the holes and extend the network’s capabilities to communicate, play games and meet people on your own terms.

On any Facebook page, I can “send a message”, even if we aren’t friends. And I can choose to receive messages from non-friends. The key thing is the network sets up a policy, and I as a user can change this. We don’t have this choice on the phone network today. Anyone can dial my number, and I can’t control it—but I do control my interaction on a social network.

Even now, though, I haven't bothered to memorize a phone number in years. And my home phone rings only a couple of times a week -- and it's never someone I want to talk to, always someone who wants to sell me something. When I call someone, I don't dial a number. I go to the address book on my iPhone and I press a photo.

From California, no less:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California lawmakers have rejected a bill seeking to ban plastic shopping bags after a contentious debate over whether the state was going too far in trying to regulate personal choice.

When was the last time "personal choice" (other than sexual or reproductive, of course) won an argument anywhere in Blue America? What's really sad is that such a small victory for sanity should be so surprising. I fear the road ahead will be littered with attempted lunacies like this, and that we won't evade them all quite so neatly.

Nathan Glazer, in the current American Interest Magazine, laments a paradox: that Barack Obama's rise to the presidency has "coincided with the almost complete disappearance from American public life of discussion of the black condition and what public policy might do to improve it." He then mentions a litany of "black" problems: the high incarceration rate, the near total collapse of public education in the inner city, the abandonment of integration as a worhty ideal, the staggeringly high black unemployment rate, and so on. I suppose he means to cast a barb at white America: you elect a black president and think you are off the hook for the legacy of nearly four centuries of slavery, segregation, and dehumanization. In other words, Mr. Glazer is lamenting the waning of white guilt in the Obama era. This was the guilt that so often animated his academic career, that was central to his public identitiy. Without windy discussions on how "public policy" might improve black America, he feels a little obsolete--as if Obama had stolen his relavance in the world.

I thank Nathan Glazer for this piece. It is rare to find so many of the corruptions of Great Society liberalism represented so succinctly in a single article--and without the slightest irony. My own "race fatigue" stops me from marching through them all. But the elephant in the living room that Mr. Glazer (and post-60s liberalism generally) misses is this: no people in the entire history of the world have been lifted up by a public policy debate over their problems. Public policy has shown itself to be utterly impotent in overcoming the legacy of oppression. Black students did worse on the SAT in 2000 than in 1990. By almost every measure there is decline in black America after 40 years of public policy interventions. White guilt always involves white blindness. What Mr. Glazer can't allow himself to see is the futility of government interventions in the uplift of black Americans. Wherever blacks decide to compete and move ahead, they do. When they don't decide, no interventions matter.

Here is what is now starkly clear: black Americans are responsible for their own fate. They always were--even in slavery--and they always will be. Nothing will ever mitigate this--neither white racism nor white guilt. We as blacks have to find our will to compete with all others in the modern world. Public policy cannot give us this or, once we have it, take it away.

DCist has the story with updates. There's a bomb, a manifesto, and an evacuated day care center. Heaven help me, I miss the '90s, but this is a Clinton-era flashback we could all do without. J.P. Freire:

The manifesto of this lunatic in Silver Spring demands that Discovery air shows based on a novel where a gorilla promotes population control.

Here's the real question: Is the press going to call this guy an environmental terrorist?

Three guesses, first two don't count.

Sarah Palin’s scheduled political trip to Iowa this month marks a shift from near silence in the leadoff presidential nominating state to the kind of outreach common among White House prospects. Palin’s plan to headline the Iowa Republican Party’s annual fall fundraiser on Sept. 17 is solely to help raise money for the state party’s candidates, the former Alaska governor’s aides said. And one trip to Iowa is a long way from a successful campaign for the state’s 2012 presidential caucuses, still 18 months away, Iowa party insiders said.

But Palin’s recent overtures to Iowa reveal a change in posture that puts her in a position — like other 2012 presidential prospects already laying campaign groundwork in Iowa — to build goodwill and relationships with influential activists, state Republican officials said. -- Des Moines Register

Idea. Palin doesn't campaign for President. She doesn't run for President. She simply appears. Everywhere. Backing winners. Amassing cash. Drawing crowds. Putting Mitt, Newt, Huck, and everyone else with a quirky nickname in deep shade. People start wondering aloud. Aren't these guys yesterday's news? Weren't these guys flawed candidates last time (or times) around? A wave of resignation sweeps over the low, dull buzz of sneaking desperation: Why not Sarah? She's already -- yes -- the de facto nominee. Nominated by acclamation. None of the other guys are this popular. This ubiquitous. This famous. Sarah is Destiny...who are we to dare to defy it?

Well, that's one attitude. But the bigger and badder Palin gets, the sharper and better a contrast is drawn by the would-be candidates who are new to the game -- you know, names like Barbour, or Daniels...

PS. At the largest venue in Anchorage, on September 11th, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are doing...something.

You can call it what you like -- blue collar vs. white collar; trade vs. profession; making things vs. selling things -- but to me, the clearest way to divide occupations is this:

Do you do stuff with your hands -- like build things or fix things or smash things or screw things onto other things -- or do you do stuff with your mouth -- like sell things or say things on paper or argue things or say things on the telephone?

People who work in the skilled trades mostly do stuff with their hands. People who work in journalism or banking or other "white collar" jobs mostly do stuff with their mouths.

(Yeah, I know: writing is done by hand. But really, journalism and the like are talking professions.)

There are an awful lot of Americans, these days, who do stuff with their mouths. Not so many who do stuff with their hands. And that's a big problem. From the Wall Street Journal:

Even as the economy slumps and unemployment rises, strong demand for power plants, oil refineries and export goods has many manufacturers and construction contractors scrambling to find enough skilled workers to plug current and future holes.
With the shortage of welders, pipe fitters and other high-demand workers likely to get worse as more of them reach retirement age, unions, construction contractors and other businesses are trying to figure out how to attract more young people to those fields.

By 2012, demand in fields like welding is expected to exceed supply.Their challenge: overcoming the perception that blue-collar trades offer less status, money and chance for advancement than white-collar jobs, and that college is the best investment for everyone.

And the always bracing Camille Paglia rings in here, in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Having taught in art schools for most of my four decades in the classroom, I am used to having students who work with their hands—ceramicists, weavers, woodworkers, metal smiths, jazz drummers. There is a calm, centered, Zen-like engagement with the physical world in their lives. In contrast, I see glib, cynical, neurotic elite-school graduates roiling everywhere in journalism and the media. They have been ill-served by their trendy, word-centered educations.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: We need a sweeping revalorization of the trades. The pressuring of middle-class young people into officebound, paper-pushing jobs is cruelly shortsighted. Concrete manual skills, once gained through the master-apprentice alliance in guilds, build a secure identity. Our present educational system defers credentialing and maturity for too long. When middle-class graduates in their mid-20s are just stepping on the bottom rung of the professional career ladder, many of their working-class peers are already self-supporting and married with young children.

And she winds up this way:

In a period of global economic turmoil, with manufacturing jobs migrating overseas and service-sector jobs diminishing in availability and prestige, educators whose salaries are paid by hopeful parents have an obligation to think in practical terms about the destinies of their charges...every four-year college or university should forge a reciprocal relationship with regional trade schools.

I'd love to see that! The Yale University School of Art & Architecture & Plumbing. The Harvard School of Business and Finish Carpentry. The College of Welding and Sociology at Princeton.

During my interview on Uncommon Knowledge, Peter asked me to compare the political climate for Republicans today with that of 1994, when Republicans picked up 54 seats in the House of Representatives to recapture the House for the first time in four decades.

For over a year, I’ve observed that the political climate is better for Republicans today than it was in 1994, when I was chairman of the Republican National Committee.  In the summer of 2009, the American people were concerned about jobs and the economy, but all they ever heard Congress and the Obama Administration talk about was healthcare.  Understandably, the American people started getting mad.  And the intensity of this anger and fear is greater and started much earlier than it did in 1994.  People are scared for their country’s future, they’re scared for their children and grandchildren, and they’re scared for their businesses. 

I’ve worried that the anti-Obama sentiment would crescendo too early, but it appears that hasn’t happened.  In fact, you could make the case based on polling numbers, that the political environment has gotten even better for Republicans.  But we cannot assume that means we’re home free.  While I believe that it’s more likely than not that Republicans will recapture a majority in the House of Representatives and win a significant number of Senate and gubernatorial races, we’ve got to keep our foot on the accelerator and take nothing for granted. 

I did my usual snorting and scoffing when I heard about the ACLU's latest lawsuit to enjoin the killing of terror suspects abroad. But is it possible that they're on to something?

According to the complaint, the CIA and JSOC (Joint Special Operations Committee) maintain a "kill list" of individuals whom the US can kill anywhere, anytime. The list includes US citizens. The ACLU appears to concede that the US can kill its enemies in war zones, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. But what authorizes the government to summarily kill US citizens on suspicion that they're plotting terror activity? Even if the targets are guilty of treason, the Constitution requires the testimony of two witnesses or a confession in open court.

The ACLU also objects to killing foreign nationals outside of war zones; however, that argument is much weaker. But US citizens? Like my fellow Ricocheterians over here, I have my qualms about the ease with which the government can now send a drone to do its dirty work.

[Ed.: link fixed at 7:47 am]

Related Conversations

LONG > UAVs Can Pick Things Up, Too

YOO > What to Do About Pirates

POULOS > How to Feel About Killer Robots?

Well, no, but John Podhoretz observed "a dramatic shift in tone and spirit for Obama" in last night's Oval Office address that he's inclined to take seriously: "for the first time, [Obama] endorsed the notion of an activist American role abroad and said such a role was good both for the United States and the world."

The fact that Obama was willing to use this nation’s involvement in Iraq — which he had opposed so completely and whose extension in the form of the surge in 2007 he argued against flatly — as an example of what America can do when it puts its mind to it is stunning. “This milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment,” he said.

I grant you that the speech descended into liberal boilerplate in the second half, but that is to be expected; what’s interesting in presidential speeches is what’s new in them. And this was new. And surprising. Bill Kristol agrees.

Dave Weigel sees a pattern emerging. Up in Wisconsin, Democrats are saying that "U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson, a multimillionaire businessman who got into politics via the Tea Party [...] built his business with government industrial revenue bonds; Johnson says it wasn't government money." Meanwhile,

Democrats are doing the same thing in Tennessee, going after another Tea Party-powered candidate, Stephen Fincher, over his farm subsidies.

"The question," Dave asks, "is whether voters see these candidates as hypocrites, as Democrats would like, or whether they throw up their hands and buy the rhetoric" that Tea Party candidates are selling. With 'recovery summer' a costly dud, it's not a very hard sell. Contrast the message at the heart of the Dem's own rhetoric: We're all on the dole now, even our opponents! Anyone who says we can reverse course is really just lying. Bye bye, hope and change, hello petulant inertia!

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles -- UAVs, if you want to sound cool -- are in heavy use in Afghanistan, and not without controversy. Mostly, though, they're about flying around and dropping stuff.

Now, thanks to some researchers at Yale, they can pick things up, too.

This video is awfully cool -- if you ever fooled around with model rocketry or radio-controlled stuff as a kid, you'll love it. And if you're a gadget freak, you'll really love it. I'm both, and I went to Yale, so the whole package has me atingle.

But I also like what this says about warfare, and warfare research: that we're trying to come up with ways for machines to do things that would otherwise cost human lives; that we're developing ways to get to places that are hard to get to; that we're widening the gap between our superior technology and our enemy's; and that our enemies can't hide much longer.

The Global War on Terror can't be won on the battlefield alone. It's going to have to be won in engineering labs, too.

My 100-year-old grandmother has blocked me on Facebook. My brother broke the news to me. "I'm sorry, Claire, but you just post too much," he explained.

On to more important news, the Wall Street Journal is running a fascinating symposium called "What is Moderate Islam" with contributions from Anwar Ibrahim, Bernard Lewis, Ed Husain, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Tawfik Hamid and Akbar Ahmed. All make worthwhile points.