UGH: Wrecked Myanmar leaves India aid pilot speechless.

DANIEL DREZNER: Hillary Clinton’s Inexcusable Bigotry — toward the college-educated.

IF MCCAIN DID THIS: Marc Ambinder comments, “But if John McCain did this — if he mistakenly said he’d visited 57 states — the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment. Just saying….”

UPDATE: L.A. Times: “Barack Obama wants to be president of these 57 United States.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Elia: “Personally, I don’t think it was a ‘tired mistake’ as much as this is just how Chicago Democrats are used to counting during elections and election campaigns…”

MORE: “I love the way he pauses and really thinks before adding the ‘-seven.'”

MORE STILL: Can he spell potato? “This is much worse than anything Dan Quayle ever did.” But there’s no Obama-is-stupid narrative for it to reinforce.

STILL MORE: Dreaming of empire? “Grand Strategist (and likely Obama supporter) Thomas P.M. Barnett in his seminal work ‘The Pentagon’s New Map’ urged America to add several states to the nation, perhaps as many as a dozen. . . . I’m shocked that Obama apparently believes in a hyper-muscular 21st century version of Manifest Destiny. Truly, I didn’t see that one coming.”

FINALLY: Reader Jeff Cauthen emails: “Somebody should ask him to name all 114 US Senators.”

MOWING IN PEACE AND QUIET: I’ve had one of these push-reel mowers since 2004, and it rocks. For anything up to an acre or so I think it’s as good as gas, and if you have a bigger lot you might as well go to a riding mower. The only downside is you can’t let the grass get too tall, and it doesn’t do well with weeds. Although the muscular effort is higher than a gas mower, you’re less tired at the end because it’s not as noisy. Plus, it doesn’t burn any gas. Not as cool as a robot lawn mower, maybe, but a lot cheaper.

NOAH POLLAK: The Lesson of Lebanon. “Islamic supremacist groups, despite their claims to the contrary, cannot be integrated into states or democratic political systems.”

DAVID FONTANA:

When Bush v. Gore was decided in December of 2000, everyone thought it was a hugely significant case. But was Bush v. Gore a significant case after all?

When the votes were actually counted, after the fact, they showed that Bush would have won anyway. Nearly eight years later, it is safe to say that the case has not generated a jurisprudential revolution, even though a panel of Ninth Circuit judges tried to stop the California recall election by relying on Bush v. Gore, only to be overturned by an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit. The Supreme Court has not cited the case at all, as far as I know, since Bush v. Gore was decided. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a constitutional law case decided in the past eight years that has been referenced less than Bush v. Gore has been referenced.

So was all the hoopla a waste?

STEM-CELL PROGRESS: Faster, please.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, members of the press would find themselves taxed and corralled at the whim of Kenneth Starr. And they were right!

HILLARY CLINTON AS Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? That’s kind of harsh.

UPDATE: Armando says it’s not just harsh, it’s sexism.

HMM: In big concession, militia agrees to let Iraqi troops into Sadr City. “Followers of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed late Friday to allow Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad’s Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons in a surprising capitulation that seemed likely to be hailed as a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.” It’s looking as if Maliki had a better idea of what he was doing than various press-and-pundit types in the United States.

UPDATE: More commentary here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A cynical take from Jules Crittenden. Which doesn’t mean he’s wrong, God knows . . . .

BARACK OBAMA: Too Thin-Skinned to Be President?

For all the hype about Barack Obama being some new kind of politician, in one respect he is very similar to recent Democratic presidential nominees: He takes criticism very badly, responding to it by getting both defensive and nasty. It is a most unattractive quality.

And it involves passing up more constructive responses, as Michael Totten noted.

BEIRUT CLASHES TRAP CITIZENS: A firsthand report.

AT THE MODERATE VOICE, Dennis Sanders on John McCain.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: The recession that wasn’t.

TESLA VS. VOLT: Balancing the weight of expectations:

Cars like the Tesla Roadster and Chevy Volt are one reason I think the auto industry is entering one of the most fascinating decades in its history. For the first time in almost a century, the internal-combustion engine is no longer the default powertrain choice for automakers; true innovation and experimentation, not just continuous refinement and clever marketing, will be the cost of entry into the business.

Thing is, while it’s okay for a company like Tesla to innovate and experiment, a lot of folks seem mighty uncomfortable when GM tries it.

Read the whole thing. I agree about the excitement, and that’s a big, big difference between now and the oil-shock era of the 1970s.

AN OPEN LETTER TO Gil Grissom, Lead Detective of CSI.

NASA IS LOOKING AT A manned asteroid landing.

DANIEL DREZNER IS NOW A FULL PROFESSOR: What’s the big deal? “Unless you’re actually a full professor, you would never know.” Now he’s got nothing to look forward to but the endowed chair. What’s the big deal about that? Well . . . .

OUCH: “It’s a fair bet that no high-powered American law firm will lend a caring hand to the relatives of the seven Iraqis murdered last month by a suicide bomber named Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi and two accomplices. That’s too bad, seeing as how Ajmi was himself a beneficiary of some of that high-powered legal help.”

IF HE WERE A REPUBLICAN, THIS WOULD BE A BIGGER STORY: “Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years. Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted ‘God Talk,’ a Sunday morning program on religion, and was a prolific fundraiser for the station’s charity drives.”

Plus, chin-pulling pieces about how the sexual repression of the right naturally leads to such things.

PROFITING FROM CLIMATE CHANGE: “Al Gore blames the Burma tragedy on global warming despite growing evidence to the contrary. Could the hype be related to his financial interests?” It’s no crazier than the Cheney-Halliburton connections!

UPDATE: ThinkProgress claims the Gore quote is bogus. Which still leaves it no crazier than the Cheney Halliburton connections!

MORE ON MEASLES: “The Centers for Disease Control reports a surge in measles outbreaks; almost all the cases are in children who never received the routine shots for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). Vanquished diseases are rebounding thanks to growing–but groundless–fears over the safety of traditional vaccines. Driven by those fears, ever more parents are finding a way to forgo shots for their children–even though shots are required in most of the nation. And some politicians are encouraging them. A proposed New York law, sponsored by Suffolk County Assemblyman Marc Alessi, would establish a ‘philosophical’ exemption to mandatory childhood vaccinations.”

I’ll buy it, if I they’ll indulge my “philosophical” objections to taxes and speed limits.

NEW IDEA IN MORTUARY SCIENCE: Dissolving bodies with lye. “The process is called alkaline hydrolysis and was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses.” They’re going to need a better sales pitch for this to catch on . . . .

TOM WOLFE: Journalist, author, patriot.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Stimulus check direct-deposits meet “complications.”