A VIDEOGAME VIOLENCE FILTER for Gears of War 2. So is this customization, or Bowdlerization?

BOINGBOING TV: Aboard the SS Jeremiah O’Brien. “It’s not SteamPunk, it’s just steam!”

SOME QUESTIONS ANSWER THEMSELVES: Could Hillary Be Plotting Something?

UH OH: McCain’s Latest Racially Subliminal Negative Attack Ad.

No, I don’t know how it’s racially subliminal, but no doubt Bob Herbert will show up to explain things soon.

ALWAYS LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE: “With Election Day still three months away, 48 percent said they’re hearing too much about the Democratic candidate, according to a poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Just 26 percent said the same about his Republican rival, John McCain. . . . At the same time, nearly four in 10 said they’ve been hearing too little about McCain — about four times the number who said so about Obama.” All the pro-Obama hype in the press may have had the effect of making him seem over-familiar rather than revolutionary. Under the Feiler Faster Principle, this makes sense.

AND SMALLER BUGS TO BITE ‘EM: “The debate about what counts as a living thing is fuelled today by the discovery of the first virus that is able to fall ‘ill’ by being infected with another virus.”

THIS ISN’T REALLY NEWS: More profanity on left-leaning blogs.

GOOD FOR HIM: Barack Obama rebukes Nikki Tinker.

HMM: “America is no longer what it once was.” And that’s bad, apparently.

Does that mean he’s coming out as the anti-change candidate now? Can you flipflop on change itself? . . . .

UPDATE: Reader George Pepper emails:

“The Republic is no longer what it once was.” – Palpatine/Darth Sidious in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Do you think anyone will notice?

I think they just did.

MORE: “It’s not a gaffe, it’s a theme.”

STILL MORE: Emperor Palpatine — or Bob Dole:

Let me be the bridge to a time of tranquility, faith and confidence in action.

And to those who say it was never so, that America’s not been better, I say you’re wrong. And I know because I was there. And I have seen it. And I remember.

Read the whole thing.

MORE STILL: “Darth Tedious?”

JAMES JOYNER ON THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE HAMDAN TRIAL: “I’ve not been a fan of Guantánamo, the lack of minimal due process for those accused of being illegal combatants generally, or the treatment of Hamdan in particular. Further, I agree with the editorial’s larger point that the way in which Hamdan was convicted taints the process. That said, the accusation, without the slightest hint of proof or argument, that the jurors violated their oath to judge Hamdan according to the evidence and their conscience, without regard to the wishes of the command, is libelous. Indeed, the fact that the jury acquitted Hamdan of the most significant charge against him serves as prima facie rebuttal of that charge.”

PACK THE PURELL: Is outer space teeming with microbes?

A DUAL-FUEL HYDROGEN-GASOLINE Mazda RX-9.

IN THE MAIL: David Freddoso’s The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate. I haven’t heard much about this book, but it’s doing awfully well on Amazon.

WELL, THIS MAKES ME REALLY WANT ONE: “Apple apparently can disable App Store software remotely on your iPhone 3G. The iPhone calls home and poof the application is nuked.”

THE STORY OF John McCain’s divorce.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: “I must have missed the memo in which it was announced that every socioeconomic problem that comes down the pike awaits only a regressive tax scheme to solve it.”

ANOTHER CHANCE TO PLAY name that party! It’s racist and antisemitic attacks on Democrat Steve Cohen from black Democrat Nikki Tinker, but the Times leaves out the affiliation.

Meanwhile, A.C. Kleinheider observes:

While putting a progressive Congressman’s beside an image of Klansman with a burning cross would appear to be all in good fun, suggesting that same Congressman, a Jew, is an interloper in the Black community is not.

As of this posting, Democratic insurgent Congressional candidate Nikki Tinker’s infamous Nathan Bedford Forrest ad remains featured on her YouTube channel. An ad suggesting that Congressman Steve Cohen was preventing black children from practicing their faith, however, has been removed.

Charming.

UPDATE: TalkingPointsMemo is more honest than the NYT:

This brutal new attack ad from House candidate Nikki Tinker, who is challenging liberal Tennessee Rep. Steven Cohen in tomorrow’s Democratic primary, just might be the nastiest, most race-baiting (and Jew-baiting) ad of the entire cycle.

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Tinker from Sharon Cobb, who doesn’t like her much.

AUSTIN BAY interviews General Petraeus.

CANADIAN MP: HRCs are “kangaroo courts that selectively oppress Canadians.” Well, yes.

SHOW TRIALS OF BUSH OFFICIALS IN A DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION? “They are serious.”

ERIC S. RAYMOND ON ENJOYING A FIGHT: I think it’s genetic, and I don’t think it’s limited to males. The Insta-Daughter — the least violent of people, generally — loves a fight once one gets started. Her eyes light up in a way that they do for nothing else. She’s done various martial arts stuff, but it’s that factor more than any real training that makes me feel good about her future out in the world. I credit her Scots-Irish side, as my mother is the same way . . . .

ROGER SIMON: Random House in Disgrace.

OUCH: “In her first week at market, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sold just 2,737 copies of her book KNOW YOUR POWER, according to NIELSEN BOOKSCAN.” Hey, she’s no Jonah Goldberg.

UPDATE: Ron Coleman:

The sad part for Pelosi is that the practice by which publishers bestow massive donations on their favored politicians via utterly unrecoverable publishing “advances” was barred by the House of Representatives. Therefore she could not get even a fraction of the phenomenal sweetheart advance paid to then Senator-elect Hillary Clinton for her various scribblings — which, while they were bought by many, still did not come close to earning out the advance paid by a publishing industry supposedly beset by economic crisis.

That means Pelosi must have really thought people would want to buy her book.

Chilling. That’s what enough time in Congress does to people.

Indeed.

ANN ALTHOUSE: What does Barack Obama really think about affirmative action?

SOME CRYONICS history.