LAWSUIT AGAINST GOD DISMISSED for failure to obtain personal service. But Ilya Somin objects: “I’m not entirely convinced that the ruling is correct. After all, if God exists, he must be omnipresent and omnipotent. Therefore, it logically follows that he can be served with court papers anywhere; after all he is present everywhere in the universe at all times. Indeed, service of process is a pointless formality when it comes to God. Since the Lord is omniscient as well as omnipotent, he surely knew about Senator Chambers’ lawsuit even before any process servers were sent out. Indeed, he must have foreseen that Chambers would file the suit long before Chambers himself knew that he would do it.”

Yeah, wasn’t there something like that in Jeremiah? “Before you were formed in the womb, I knew you would sue me. . . .”

IF ONLY THE SUN COULD GET THROUGH THAT BEIJING SMOG: Chinese Company Unveils Solar-Powered Car for $5,560. I’m skeptical about this, though. You’d have to sit in the sun for a long time to get enough charge to go anywhere.

BEST CAMPAIGN PHOTOSHOP YET.

DELIVERING SUICIDE GENES TO CANCER CELLS, with nanotechnology.

PLANS TO ABOLISH 401(K) ACCOUNTS in favor of a government-run fund? Sounds like a loser to me.

I DON’T KNOW IF HE CAN TIME THE STOCK MARKET, but he’s certainly timed the publishing market: In the mail, Peter Schiff’s The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down.

AN ARMY OF JOES? “Turns out there’s a lot of them out there. They’re Joes, they’re plumbers, they speak their minds.”

Plus, Obama’s Macaca Moment?

UPDATE: Rand Simberg: “I’m listening to Fox, on which an Obama spokeshole is claiming that the McCain campaign ‘didn’t vet Joe the Plumber.’ They must be terrified.”

I’m still waiting for people to vet Obama. But why should McCain vet someone who asks Obama a rope-line question? This suggests that the Obama folks assume that all such moments are actually scripted by professionals, which is disturbing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Correction: Not a rope-liner. A reader emails: “Joe was minding his own business, in his house, in his own yard when Obama came up TO HIM! Obama was doing a house-to-house.”

MORE: Here’s the story from Joe, via reader Bill Jones: “Obama came to my neighborhood and my son and I were outside tossing the football, and all of a sudden he showed up, and there went our football tossing for a while. And, you know, neighbors were outside asking him questions, and I didn’t think they were asking him tough enough questions, so I thought, you know, I’ll go over there. You know, I’ve always wanted to ask one of these guys a question and really corner them and get them to answer a question of–for once instead of tap dancing around it. And unfortunately I asked the question but I still got a tap dance.”

INSTA-POLL: OKAY, MY PLAN HAS BEEN to vote for McCain if Tennessee was in play, and to vote for Libertarian candidate Bob Barr if Tennessee looked safe. But it’s occurred to me that my vote doesn’t matter anyway, since if Tennessee is in play McCain’s probably doomed. (Barr’s not much of a libertarian candidate in my opinion, but a strong showing by the LP would probably help drag the GOP in a good direction.) So what do you think I should do?

UPDATE: Bob Barr’s campaign is sending people over. Welcome, Barr-ites!

VIDEO: McCain and Obama go white tie.

UPDATE: Funny is money. “My guess is, in these grim times, that if the Arizonan keeps telling jokes, he may have a shot.”

OIL PRICES ARE AT a 14-month low.

MICKEY KAUS: “If even John McCain’s lifelong (and only temporarily suspended) campaign for legalization doesn’t get him much support among Hispanics–who currently seem to prefer Obama 2-to-1–will Republicans in general finally give up on the cynical Rovian dream of using immigration liberalization to win over that growing ethnic group?”

JERRY POURNELLE ON THE ELECTION: “Now I suppose the United States can survive as a federalized unitary socialist state built on class warfare lines, with the very wealthy who don’t pay much in the way of taxes, those on the dole, and the unionized public service employees, teachers, and lawyers entirely dominating the political systems. It won’t be the same country I grew up in, but then we don’t now live in the country I grew up in. Alas, I suspect that’s what’s at stake here.”

WE’VE HAD THE FIRST CONVICTION in the Channon Christian / Christopher Newsom carjacking/torture/murder case, which got a fair amount of blogospheric attention at one point.

FROM JOE THE PLUMBER to Bob the Builder. Bob Barr, that is. “Can we privatize it? Yes we can!”

H+ Magazine is a new transhumanist magazine (link from R.U. Sirius). First issue looks pretty interesting.

WHAT THE CANDIDATES WON’T TALK ABOUT on energy.

TURNS OUT THERE ARE A LOT OF PLUMBERS NAMED JOE OUT THERE:

“I didn’t watch it, but I’ve been hearing a lot about this plumber,” said a chuckling Joe Brown of Joe B. Sullivan & Sons in Nashville. Brown said he stopped paying attention to the politics because his mind is made up — although he wouldn’t say who he’ll vote for.

Joe Schwark, owner of JMS Plumbing in Spring Hill, said he has a general distrust of politicians, but appreciated the recognition of his craft.

“Personally, I don’t think either of them is what the country needs,” he said. “But it is what it is.”

Schwark said he agrees with the original Joe the plumber’s problem with raising taxes for people who earn more than $250,000 a year. Taxes are the plight of the small-business owner, he said.

“I work for every penny,” he said. “Taxes are what kills me, and if either of them raise taxes, it hurts people like me. You know, we jump though hoops as business owners. There is liability and vehicle insurance, and there are gas prices. For every dollar that comes in, it’s going out.”

I wonder if stories like this are running in a lot of papers?

THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF “spread the wealth” politics.

AN IRAQ DEADLINE? Madeleine Albright says no: “Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said Thursday the Iraq war has created damaging consequences for U.S. diplomacy, but Washington should not agree to a specific deadline for withdrawing troops in the midst of conflict – something proposed last year by the candidate she now supports, Sen. Barack Obama.”

THE NEWS-SENTINEL IS running a poll on whether it should issue an endorsement.

GET YOUR “Senator Government” t-shirts.

UPDATE: Plus, “Joe the Plumber” gear.

YEAH, BABY: Deep discounts on power tools. As my friend John Ragosta said years ago, the more power tools you have, the more powerful you feel! Even if you hardly ever actually use them . . .

FORGET JOE THE PLUMBER: Patterico reports that Obama’s campaign treasurer has tax liens.

MORE TROUBLE FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: “Tribune Company has given a two-year notice to the Associated Press that its daily newspapers plan to drop the news service, becoming the first major newspaper chain to do so since the recent controversy over new rates began.” Well, as bloggers have noticed, the quality of their product has been declining in recent years. So raising their prices was probably a bad move.

GOOGLE CONQUERS ALL: “Advertisers are shifting budgets away from TV and print media toward ads that run alongside search listings, targeting online shoppers.”