NOT JUST AN AMERICAN PROBLEM (CONT’D): Dollar Reaches 13-Month High as Credit Crisis Spreads to Europe.

SARAH PALIN, MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, and Starbucks.

Plus, is Sarah Palin talking like a blogger?

GOOD NEWS: “Nuclear engineering programs at universities nationwide are brimming with students eager to break into what they see as a growth industry. This rebirth of learning comes after a decades-long slump that prompted many schools to scale back nuclear engineering programs and some to close altogether. Some experts worry whether enough new workers can be trained in time to support the potential growth.” We need more nice, clean nuclear plants as fast as we can get them online.

FUMING OVER gas questions.

MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED PUBLIC PENSIONS:

The state contributed 6 percent for the last 10 years and the TRS has not seen an increase in contributions by the state.

“The state underfunded the TRS pension plan for the last 10 years,” Caruso said.

Six percent is the lowest amount the state can contribute. On a scale of 6 to 10 percent, with 10 percent being the highest contributable amount, the “state has chosen the low end for the last 10 years,” Caruso said, adding that the choice has resulted in underfunding the pension trust fund whereas strong investments have been able to keep it funded.

“Seventy percent of funding from investments means that you have to have very sound practices and procedures in place to turn a profit that large,” Caruso said, adding that investments are hinged on the economy and since the economy is not in the best state right now, that makes it really hard for anyone to figure out how to make the most money from your investments.

In turn, a pension increase has not been granted to retirees since 2001.

Look for more of this kind of thing, and worse.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, people with politically unacceptable bumperstickers would be harassed by jackbooted thugs. And they were right! “Kilpatrick was driving her blue van in Pensacola on April 19, 2004, with the slogans ‘Remember the Children of Waco’ and ‘Boo ATF’ written on some of the windows when she was pulled over by police for questioning by the ATF.” Fortunately, the ACLU is on the case.

HMM: Obama won’t trade off Eastern Europe for Russia’s backing on Iran. Well, good for him. We shouldn’t.

A POST-APOCALYPTIC NOVEL about America after a banking collapse.

THE REGISTER: “Naked shorts” and wikipedia shenanigans?

THOUGHTS ON WHAT THE OBAMA/BILL AYERS TIE MEANS:

It’s not that surprising that he wouldn’t find Ayers and Wright objectionable company–in the very liberal, Hyde Park/Ivy League circles that he’s traveled in since attending Columbia, people with such views are more mainstream than, say, the average conservative evangelical Christian. That itself makes Obama far more liberal than the image his campaign attempts to portray. But what is interesting to me is that not only did Obama not personally find anything especially obnoxious about Wright’s radicalism, anti-Americanism, ties to Farrakahn, and so on, or Ayers’ lack of regret for his terrorist past, he apparently didn’t expect that much of anyone else would care, either. How else do you explain why he didn’t jettison these individuals from his life before they could damage his presidential ambitions? How else do you explain how his campaign seemed to be caught flatfooted when Obama’s ties to Wright and then Ayers became campaign issues? . . .

In short, Obama’s ties to Ayers and Wright suggest to me NOT that Obama agrees with their views, but that he is the product of a particular intellectual culture that finds the likes of Wright and Ayers to be no more objectionable, and likely less so, than the likes of Tom Coburn, or, perhaps, a Rush Limbaugh. Not only that, but he has been in his particular intellectual bubble so long that he was unable to recognize just how offensive the views of a Wright are to mainstream America, or how his ties to Ayers would play with the public, especially post-9/11.

But read the whole thing for an Obama/Reagan comparison.

THOUGHTS ON WHAT THE OBAMA/BILL AYERS TIE MEANS:

It’s not that surprising that he wouldn’t find Ayers and Wright objectionable company–in the very liberal, Hyde Park/Ivy League circles that he’s traveled in since attending Columbia, people with such views are more mainstream than, say, the average conservative evangelical Christian. That itself makes Obama far more liberal than the image his campaign attempts to portray. But what is interesting to me is that not only did Obama not personally find anything especially obnoxious about Wright’s radicalism, anti-Americanism, ties to Farrakahn, and so on, or Ayers’ lack of regret for his terrorist past, he apparently didn’t expect that much of anyone else would care, either. How else do you explain why he didn’t jettison these individuals from his life before they could damage his presidential ambitions? How else do you explain how his campaign seemed to be caught flatfooted when Obama’s ties to Wright and then Ayers became campaign issues? . . .

In short, Obama’s ties to Ayers and Wright suggest to me NOT that Obama agrees with their views, but that he is the product of a particular intellectual culture that finds the likes of Wright and Ayers to be no more objectionable, and likely less so, than the likes of Tom Coburn, or, perhaps, a Rush Limbaugh. Not only that, but he has been in his particular intellectual bubble so long that he was unable to recognize just how offensive the views of a Wright are to mainstream America, or how his ties to Ayers would play with the public, especially post-9/11.

But read the whole thing for an Obama/Reagan comparison.

INVESTMENT ADVICE FROM BRITAIN:

If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95, with HBOS, earlier this week your £1000 would have been worth £16.50, £1000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5, but if you bought £1000 worth of Tennents Lager one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant, you would get £214. So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and re-cycle.

Heh. That beer belly will come in handy if times get lean, too! Think of it as a kind of savings that neither the government, nor inflation, can touch. . . .

SO WHY NOT JUST LEGALIZE IT? Craigslist a hotbed of online prostitution. The comments to the story seem surprisingly pro-legalization. And I like this one: “If prostitution is illegal, why is congress still operating?…we, the taxpayers, put up the money and they screw us.”

SING FOR CHANGE: The Pyongyang Remix.

TAILGATING WITH wind turbines.

Nobody tell Ted Kennedy!

TO CLIMB MT. LECONTE, losing 140 pounds.

LOS ANGELES N.O.W. PRESIDENT endorses Sarah Palin.

WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT? A free Obama-Biden centric application for iPhones.

FRANK MUNGER: “If the United States defaults on its role in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (being built in France), many scientists believe it will deeply damage the U.S. reputation as a science collaborator on the world stage. The budget freeze associated with the 2009 continuing resolution didn’t make things easier.”

OUCH: Bailout Saga Proves that Elites Don’t Care What We Think.

INSTAPUNDIT IRAQ CORRESPONDENT MAJOR JOHN TAMMES EMAILS:

I realize I have not reported on anything to you for quite a while. While I am quite busy, it isn’t anything that grabs the imagination. While this past Spring I was telling you and your readers of the fight for Basrah and what I observed, now things are much less…dramatic. I suppose that is a story in and of itself. No battles to tell of, no close calls with enemy fire, nada.

While flying back from an outlying location, I spoke with one of our colonels. He related to me how he had shown hundreds of his photos of his time in the Middle East to his wife – and she pointed out he was in none of them. It struck me that I, too, was always behind the camera. So when we stopped to refuel, I asked him if he would tak a snapshot of me, just to show I was actually still here, ha.

As I have but a month left, I hope I continue to have a dearth of news for you, begging your pardon. However, as I approach my time to redeploy back home, I will pass along some final observations.

Glad to hear about nothing. While good news on Iraq is no news for the legacy media, I’m happy to hear that things are dull.

RASMUSSEN: 59% Would Vote to Replace Entire Congress.

Count me among them. And if I were McCain, I’d be running against Congress as much as possible. Heck, I’d do the same thing if I were Obama.

IF YOU CRITICIZE BARACK OBAMA OVER BILL AYERS, it’s because you’re a racist!

Well, of course. If you criticize Barack Obama over anything, it’s because you’re a racist. No doubt that’ll hold true if he’s elected President, too, which will call for strict anti-racism laws to keep such things under control . . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Douglass Daniel accuses Sarah Palin of racism for tying Barack Obama to two white guys. Who’s playing a race card, Palin or Daniel? Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, AP byline, what should I expect? Or am I a racist for asking?”

Well, if by asking you intend to criticize Barack Obama, then yes, of course you’re a racist. See above.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Clark writes:

I think that McCain’s campaign should not let these racism charges hold them back in the least. I would even suggest that they welcome them. Implicit and explicit charges of racism in response to any fair criticism of Obama’s positions and of his past, in particular as it might relate to policy, positions and worldview have been leveled too often now without cause. The power of any future charge is now so attenuated, brittle, and trivialized, that it can be mocked with impunity; just as you and others are doing. Has it even occurred to some of these folks with such quick trigger fingers that in response, some voters, far from being cowed, might respond in quiet defiance?

Do they not remember Pennsylvania and West Virginia? Oh, how silly of me to forget: course they remember them as the purest evidence of racism. . . . It’s a target rich environment.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Reputation-laundering.

JOHN SCALZI: “I’m opposed to calling bribes to recalcitrant legislators ‘sweeteners.’ High fructose corn syrup is a ‘sweetener.’ The Senate lardering up a novel’s worth of incentives to get the House to change its mind on a bill it bounced just days before is a goddamn bribe.”

I JUST GOT THIS EMAIL: “Republican National Committee (RNC) Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross will announce today a complaint that the RNC is filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the Obama campaign. The complaint will address foreign national and excessive contributions accepted by the Obama campaign that demonstrate it is operating outside of federal campaign finance law.”

That’s all the detail there is, and I can’t do the 1 pm conference call they’re announcing, but I assume it’s about this kind of thing. And this?