FAKE, but accurate. Er, except for the “accurate” part . . . .

VIDEO: Rudy on taxes.

UPDATE: An unlikely supply-sider.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Giuliani reaction here.

IF THE DEFICIT FALLS AND NO ONE REPORTS IT, does it make a sound?

Not much of one, except in the blogosphere. “The U.S. budget deficit fell to the lowest level in five years last week, but three of America’s leading newspapers — the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times — couldn’t find the space to mention the dramatic drop. . . . Does anyone seriously believe that the news would have been almost completely ignored if the deficit had instead gone up?”

Follow the link for more.

PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ASKING for more campus photos, but I’ve basically been too busy. But today when I went into the office, as I often do on Sundays, it was such beautiful weather that I had to take time to stroll around campus, and I did manage to take a few pictures.

There was no problem finding a parking space in the faculty garage.

It was a fine day for shade-tree motorcycle maintenance.

Reports that researchers in Oak Ridge have created fluorescent Black Bear/Honeybee hybrids are, alas, true.

And at the University of Tennessee, we care about student success. We have a center to prove it!

UPDATE: Turns out I’ve done the faculty-garage photo before. I had completely forgotten. But the Internet remembers all!

HOWARD KURTZ INTERVIEWED HOWARD KURTZ on Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources today. The subject? Howard Kurtz’s new book! Click “read more” for the transcript. This seems to reflect a profound moment in modern journalism, somehow.

UPDATE: Ian Schwartz has the video.

FADING MEMORY.

ALL THOSE EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS AT WORK: “There are six pictures in all on the page and five of the six captions are wrong; only that of Robert Kasten is correct. Aggregating so many errors at once takes real talent.”

MORE ON the Knights Templar and other monastic military orders, from Dave Kopel.

HAIR APPARENT: An exercise in journalistic groupthink.

WASHINGTON POST: The evidence of a drop in violence in Iraq is becoming hard to dispute.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit rounds up more Iraq news, with many charts. And here are further thoughts from John Wixted.

MORE: “Ignore this post!”

THE NEW YORK TIMES is now reporting that Israel’s strike in Syria hit a nuclear facility. Old news in the blogosphere, but now it’s in the Paper of Record.

YET ANOTHER REASON FOR DRINKING:

A recent report (seen on Science Daily–yes, we’re interested in science as well as food) from researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia points to a discovery made that shows that red wine, beyond the numerous current known health benefits, probably can work to protect humans from a number of common food-borne diseases. The researchers have found that, “red wines–Cabernet, Zinfandel and Merlot in particular–have anti-microbial properties that defend against food-borne pathogens and don’t harm naturally useful bacteria like probiotic bacteria.”

You can’t be too careful.

SPACE SOLAR POWER UPDATE: A very positive report on space-based solar power from the National Security Space Office. Much more on the subject here, from the National Space Society.

And here’s an NPR story on the subject, from All Things Considered. This represents quite a boost for space solar power, which I think is definitely worth further investigation.

SEEMS LIKE THIS SLOGAN SHOULD GET SOME VOTES: “If you like oral sex, vote Caragol for council.”

FORGET IT, JAKE, it’s Atlantic City.

MICKEY KAUS: “Why it will be hard to blog for the L.A. Times: You post something juicy on Thursday and then a middle-management twit will come in and censor it on Friday. … Remember, at the L.A.T. it’s all about not telling you what they think you shouldn’t want to know about.” This seems like an unsustainable strategy to me. Alas, however, it’s not just at the L.A. Times.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, a look at the politics of the Nobel Peace Prize: “Awarding a peace prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act.”

Meanwhile, some nominees for next year.

IN THE MAIL: Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity. With a positive blurb by Stanley Fish! No, really.

Plus, The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Bible. No Stanley Fish blurb here.

DOG BITES MAN In Iraq.

POLITICS 24/7: No one can hear you scream!

UPDATE: Okay, readers think I was way too easy on this piece. All right. Key points: (1) Old media dissing New Media. Yawn. (2) Listening to the XM POTUS Channel for 24 hours is no doubt boring, but it can’t be any more excruciating than 24 hours of CNN — as always when I’m trapped in airports and subjected to hours of the ubiquitous CNN there, I wonder how anyone can stand it; (3) While the XM POTUS Channel may not have any reporters on its payroll, it has lots of original reporting — on the Pajamas Media show, for example, the Insta-Wife and I have contributed original interviews with candidates and newsmakers each week, and there’s lots more of that kind of thing on that show and others. Compared with listening to the radio and writing an article about it, I’d say that counts as reporting.

Happy now? Really, at this point I figure readers can do this for themselves . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: So, driving into the office this afternoon I turned on XM POTUS and heard a complete, unexpurgated Barack Obama speech. Technically, I guess that doesn’t count as “reporting” — real reporting is where you take the full speech and then report only the parts that reflect well on your predetermined storyline — but it seems useful nonetheless.

MORE: Reader reaction seems kind of negative so far.

STILL MORE: On CNN and airports, reader Dart Montgomery emails: “Do you know why it’s always CNN? I don’t and have often wondered about that. Perhaps if you ask, one of your other readers might know? I think it would be interesting to find out.”

I assume they just got in early and locked things in before Fox, et al., were on the scene. But maybe I’m wrong.

THE ANBAR FORMULA spreads to the Shiites.

FORBES CALLS JOURNALISTS an endangered species. It doesn’t have to be that way, though journalists seem to be doing their best to undermine their own profession.

I MENTIONED THE DARING BOOK FOR GIRLS the other day, and then a copy showed up in the mail. The Insta-Wife has read it, and posted a review. She liked it.

IS SLEEPING ON A MATTRESS ON THE FLOOR cruel and unusual punishment?

SOME FREQUENT FLYERS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS:

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) found bipartisan agreement on maintaining one special privilege. Together they put language into a defense appropriations bill that would keep legal the practice of some senators of booking several flights on days they return home, keeping the most convenient reservation and dumping the rest without paying cancellation fees — a practice some airlines say could violate the new law.

Senators also have granted themselves a grace period on requirements that they pay pricey charter rates for private jet travel. . . . The Senate ethics committee decided not to enforce that rule for at least 60 days after it took effect Sept. 14, citing “the lack of experience in many offices in determining ‘charter rates.’ ”

The decision surprised some Senate staffers, Mitchell said, one of whom e-mailed her to say, “Welcome to the world of skirting around the rules we pass.”

Bah. For the rest of us, life isn’t so sweet: “Gotbaum wasn’t late for boarding. She didn’t forfeit her place by ignoring the airline’s procedures. Her only mistake was showing up at the US Airways gate and believing that her paid-in-full, reserved-seat airline ticket meant that she would actually have a seat on the plane.” If she’d been a member of Congress, it would have!