IT’S A DIVERSITY PROBLEM: Evangelicals are in the news, but not in newsrooms.

COLIN POWELL: About to endorse Obama? Not much political courage on display here if so — waiting until Obama has a clear lead, and the value of his endorsement is about to dissipate, to climb on the Obama train. Now if Powell were to endorse McCain at this point . . . .

SO I POSTED THIS POLL in response to Obama’s “spread the wealth” remarks and now it has this comment: “funny that instahack posted this poll suggesting that plumbers are ‘royalists’ before ‘Joe the Plumber’ became the right-wing darling.”

Yeah, that was exactly my point. The combination of cluelessness about the present — the “spread the wealth” remarks were made to Joe the Plumber, and linked in that very post — and sheer historical illiteracy is priceless, even by the standards of blog-commenters generally. It’s almost worth opening up comments regularly just to see if this can be bettered, but, really, you’d have to go to Kos’s place or Blue Texan’s to find this level of commentary on any sort of regular basis.

JOE THE PLUMBER WOULD PROBABLY BE IMPRESSED! “San Francisco’s Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant may soon become the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.”

And anyone should be disdainful of those who look down on sewage treatment. Let them try living without it for a while . . . .

JOHN MCCAIN talks to Joe the Plumber.

SO WHO’S MORE POPULAR? McCain gives Letterman his biggest audience in years.

RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OF EARTH: Barack Obama vows to ‘change the world’.

ER, “PROBABLY?” Cooking with a Corpse? Probably Not a Good Idea in a Restaurant.

THE CAPTAIN’S JOURNAL doesn’t like our new rules of engagement in Iraq.

SECRET SERVICE EXPLODES ANOTHER POPULAR MYTH: Secret Service Denies Blocking Reporters at Palin Rallies. Really, the reporting this election seems even worse than last time around. Or maybe I’m forgetting just how bad it was last time . . . .

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “They aren’t myths. They are blatant, intentional lies.”

Faith in the press seems low these days.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, maybe standards are slipping: ABC News Used Obama Contributor as ‘Expert’ in Defense of ACORN.

A $10,000 SCHOLARSHIP for college bloggers.

RON PAUL GETS Strange New Respect.

REGULATORY RULE NUMBER ONE: Don’t Panic! “It may make sense for a concerned regulator to determine beforehand whether there are flaws in the inputs to the system that create undesirable instability, but this is very different than coming in after the fact to reestablish ‘true’ values.”

Plus this: “Are fear and greed a result, rather than a cause, of gyrations in the stock market?”

SIMS CREATOR WILL WRIGHT: Five Prophecies About Artificial Intelligence.

APPARENTLY, OBAMA THINKS YOU SHOULD BE prosecuted for even making claims of voter fraud.

PROGRESS TOWARD superconductors that work at over 200 degrees absolute. That’s not room-temperature superconductivity, but it’s a big deal. Faster, please.

ABC NEWS: Congressman Mahoney Admits to Multiple Affairs. Really, I want someone to call Mark Foley for a reaction.

ABC NEWS: Congressman Mahoney Admits to Multiple Affairs. Really, I want someone to call Mark Foley for a reaction.

BEATING UP REPUBLICANS in New York. “A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney confirms the authenticity of a story circulating on conservative blogs: That during a (rare, and small) McCain rally on Lexington Avenue and 51st Street in Manhattan last month, a hostile local grabbed a woman’s sign, broke it, and hit her in the face.”

ANGRY PLUMBERS wave plungers at Obama.

UPDATE: McCain defends the plumber:

Last weekend, Senator Obama showed up in Joe’s driveway to ask for his vote, and Joe asked Senator Obama a tough question. I’m glad he did; I think Senator Obama could use a few more tough questions.

The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe. People are digging through his personal life and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn’t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn’t recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.

What would it be like with a President Obama?

MORE: Mess with Obama, and you’ll never plumb in this town again.

There are a few other problems with the attempts to smear Wurzelbacher. He did not claim he now makes more than $250,000; he said he plans to acquire a small company that would put him in that bracket. And it’s curious that Politico states that Wurzelbacher “would receive a tax cut if Obama were elected president”–as if Obama’s campaign promises have already achieved the status of established fact.

As for his unpaid taxes, blogger “Patterico” reports that Obama’s campaign treasurer has liens for unpaid taxes. That isn’t exactly an earth-shattering scandal either, but it is hard to see how it is less relevant than Wurzelbacher’s liens.

It’s okay unless Obama’s treasurer asks Obama a tough question. And how likely is that?

STILL MORE: Working in Jimi Hendrix. Why didn’t I think of that?

ULTRA-THIN-AND-LIGHT notebook computers from Samsung. “The X360 is lighter than the MacBook Air, weighing in at only 2.8 pounds, and can achieve up to 10 hours of continuous usage, according to Samsung.” Now that I think about it, it’s kind of odd that they weren’t already in this market, given their other products.

MORE FROM REASON TV on saving Social Security.

GREENHOUSE AGREEMENT MELTING DOWN? ” Fears of a sharp worldwide economic slowdown are threatening a hard-won European plan on climate change that European leaders hoped would set an example for the rest of the world. At a rancorous summit meeting this week of the European Union’s heads of state, several Eastern European countries and Italy said they might no longer be able to afford to slash greenhouse gas emissions as envisioned.”

A LOOK inside the Chevy Volt’s battery. It’s a far cry from your run-of-the-mill Die Hard.

WELL, THIS IS COOL: Volkswagen will build diesel version of Passat replacement in Tennessee. I liked my Passat wagon a lot, and a diesel version would provide superb mileage in a vehicle that can hold nearly as much as most SUVs. On the other hand, although I didn’t have too many problems with my Passat, a couple of my friends had miserable experiences, so VW had better work on the reliability, as well as the fuel economy.