HUH? “Ten days before Russian tanks and infantry invaded the democratic and pro-Western Republic of Georgia, the federal government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) terminated all Voice of America (VoA) radio broadcasts to Russia, The Washington Examiner has learned. This means that throughout the still unfolding international crisis, a key communications tool that helped win the Cold War for the United States has been mute.”

JONATHAN ADLER: McCain on Water: Bad Politics and Bad Policy. “Someone should have reminded McCain that in Colorado whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.”

REMEMBER, if you don’t support Obama it’s because you’re a racist. “Lurking just below the surface of any white person’s criticism of Barack Obama is racial bias.”

DISCOVERING THAT THE SUN RISES IN THE EAST. (See correction.) Hey, everything is news to somebody. On the other hand, David Levy emails: “And these are the folks whose superior education makes them fit judges for how we live ….”

Less attitude, more factual accuracy. Well, that would be nice, anyway.

BUT WITHOUT THE STUBBORN INTEGRITY: Andrea Mitchell as Iggy Pop.

Plus this: “It’s a good thing Obama is intent on running such a noble campaign and not resorting to those nasty tricks we know only Republicans play.”

MCCLATCHY: Tour of Tskhinvali undercuts Russian version of fighting. “As Russian troops pounded through Georgia last week, the Kremlin and its allies repeatedly pointed to one justification above all others: The Georgian military had destroyed the city of Tskhinvali. . . . But a trip to the city on Sunday, without official escorts, revealed a very different picture.”

I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC, or a trifle too — no, better not go there. We love to play the blues!

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll beat me to this. Oh, well.

PROTECTING GIRLS FROM sports injuries.

FAY COVERAGE CONTINUES, at Weather Nerd.

HEADLINE: “Florida Approaching Land.”

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, PROTESTERS WOULD BE HERDED INTO SECRET JAILS. And they were right! City defends ‘secret jail’ built for DNC. “The makeshift holding center, dubbed ‘Gitmo on the Platte’ by activists, is located on city-owned property near Steele Street and 38th Avenue. Newly-installed security cameras guard the exterior, chain-link fences and barbed wire form cells inside.”

HERE’S MORE ON OBAMA AND ABORTION: An interesting question that could be asked of Obama is this — since black women get abortions at triple the rate of white women (according to this CDC study), is that troubling? Or just an example of freedom producing different results for different people?

I actually pretty much agreed with Obama’s view on abortion — to the extent that he articulated anything in particular — but this seems like it would be an interesting question to have answered.

A BLOG ON GLUTEN-FREE COOKING, from Jill Elise.

MICHAEL SILENCE on Tennessee’s antiquated primary system.

AT REDSTATE, debunking another Obama-is-a-Muslim story.

UPDATE: Is it just me, or have the right-leaning blogs been spending a surprising amount of time debunking bogus Obama stories like this?

SARAH PULLMAN on the joys (and proper pronunciation) of badminton. Loved it when I was a kid.

TOM VANDERBILT on traffic. “When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots.” I’ve started reading his book by the same name, but haven’t gotten too far yet.

UPDATE: Reader P.D. Schran emails:

The article you link echoes my own experience, and not just with traffic. When my husband and I moved to Massachusetts a couple of years ago, we were amazed by the culture of poor driving as well as the uber-nanny-state government. We quickly decided that the motto of the Massachusetts driver must be “Damn the traffic laws, ME FIRST!” But whereas you link suggests that the modified driver behavior is driven by a lowered feeling of security, I don’t think that’s the whole explanation. (Yes, I do think it plays a role, but it’s not all the reason.)

I don’t think the nanny-statism and selfish driving behavior are unrelated. In MA we quickly noted that the locals regularly ignored laws they didn’t feel they wanted to obey – no big deal. We concluded that over-legislation was part of the problem. Make too many laws and you can’t possibly obey them all. So respect for the law declines in general.

That was borne out (yes, anecdotally) by our recent move to South Dakota. Here there is a much greater culture of personal responsibility, and the drivers are so much better! People regularly drive the speed limit – unheard of back in MA. Also, a number of street intersections here in the city don’t even have stop signs – you are expected to recognize this, and proceed accordingly. And drivers are careful and observant and reasonable. Hence my theory: – When you treat people like children, they behave like children. Treat them like adults, and they behave like adults. Pretty close to your post…

Interesting.

STRATEGYPAGE: Aegis Triumphant. “The U.S. Navy, capitalizing on the success of its SM3 anti-missile missile, wants to equip more ships with it. So far, the seagoing Aegis radar system has used SM-3s to knock down nearly 90 percent of the test missiles fired towards it. This includes shooting down a low flying space satellite.”

HOW HARD IS THE PRESS LEANING TOWARD OBAMA? The WaPo Ombud explains. “The disparity is so wide that it doesn’t look good.”

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS IS UP! Including a report from Mark Tapscott on test-driving an Audi R8.

TEST-DRIVING THE Silverado Hybrid Pickup. “And we tried something you can’t do with a Prius: We tooled around town with three people onboard — and a 20′ SeaRay boat out back.” Conclusion: “One wonders why trucks weren’t the first target for hybrid technology.”

LIVING the Car Lust lifestyle.

THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN RELEASES its new space policy, and Rand Simberg weighs in with some comments. “In any event, it’s a big improvement over his previous space policy, which was not a policy at all, but rather an adjunct to his education policy. Now it’s time for the McCain campaign to come up with one.”

WHAT HATH PUTIN WROUGHT? Germany Offers Support for Georgia’s NATO Bid:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is offering strong support for Georgia, saying the country is on track to become a member of NATO. Merkel flew to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Sunday, two days after she met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Plus this: Ukraine to join in US-led missile shield in Europe:

Ukraine has agreed to take part in a missile defence system designed by the United States to protect Western countries. The government in Kiev defended its decision for military co-operation with the West, saying Russia cancelled a bilateral treaty with Ukraine earlier this year.

A few days ago, Poland and the United States reached agreement on the siting of missiles on Polish territory. These, together with radar installations in the Czech republic, make up the missile shield. Russia is fiercely opposed to the defence system and has threatened retaliatory measures.

It seems that Putin’s bullying is having precisely the opposite effect he intended.

UPDATE: Making Putin Pay. “In the past 48 hours, the West has begun to push back. If its leaders stay the course, they may yet turn Mr. Putin’s meager military success into a significant political defeat.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Randall Parker offers an innovative suggestion: “17% of the people in Ukraine are Russians. So that’s about 7.8 million people who could be offered financial incentives to move over the border into Russia. A lot of people. But NATO could offer money as a much cheaper way than weapons to make Ukraine a more secure place. . . . The Baltic states ought to consider buying out their Russian citizens. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania could avoid future trouble by paying Russians hefty sums of money to leave. Russia has massive open spaces. The influx would not create a strain since Russia is shrinking by 400,000 people per year.” I don’t think this’ll do the trick — and would you take that deal? I wouldn’t. Of course, that would make a point of sorts, too.

MORE: Kevin Drum thinks that Putin blew it:

My take, roughly, is that Putin screwed up. The West was never going to actively approve of the Russian invasion, but if Putin had limited himself to a short, sharp clash in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it would have been an almost unalloyed victory. The murky status of the provinces combined with the fact that Saakashvili sent in troops first would have kept Western reaction to a minimum, and Russia’s message would still have been sent loud and clear: don’t mess with us in our sphere of influence.

But then Putin got greedy — or just made a mistake — and sent Russian troops into Georgia proper. This was almost certainly militarily unnecessary, and it succeeded mainly in uniting virtually everyone in outrage against Russian aggression. Putin can pretend all he wants that he doesn’t care about Western opinion, but he obviously does — and what’s more, Western unity makes a difference in concrete terms too. Poland’s quick turnaround on missile defense is probably just the first example of this. The U.S. has gotten lots of bad reviews for its handling of the situation, but in the end, the countries on Russia’s border are more firmly in our camp now than they were even before the war.

Even militarily, Putin’s overreach might have been a mistake. Sure, the Russian Army is in better condition than it was ten years ago, but it’s clear now that its performance in Georgia was still only so-so, despite the fact that Georgia is a minuscule country and the Russians have had this operation planned and ready to go at a moments notice for weeks (maybe months). In the end, Russia is still basically Mexico with nukes, and their ability to project power even along their own borders is limited.

I certainly hope he’s right.

HEH: They Went to J-School, Not B-School.