THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN — in the pocket of big air! “Tire-Gauge Industry Pumps Up Obama Campaign Coffers.” I’m, er, blown away by this revelation.

PRICING SIGNALS WORK (CONT’D): U.S. oil consumption down 800K barrels a day in first half of 2008. “The decline in U.S. consumption in the first half of 2008, reflecting slower economic growth and the impact of high prices, was the largest half-year consumption decline in volume terms in the last 26 years.”

MAIL SENT TO THE PUNDIT/INSTAPUNDIT.COM ADDRESS isn’t working at the moment. You can send directly to me at mail4instapundit —at— gmail.com. Seems to be fixed, now.

MCCLATCHY: U.S. knew Georgia trouble was coming, but couldn’t stop it: “Bush administration officials, worried by what they saw as a series of provocative Russian actions, repeatedly warned Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin an excuse to intervene in his country militarily, U.S. officials said Monday.” It would be better if those “sources” were named, but then that’s gone out of style in general, apparently.

Meanwhile, an intelligence embarrassment? “The question is, how the hell did US intelligence assets miss the Russian Black Sea fleet movements? How did they miss the massive transport job of the troops and their logistical tail? They did not just materialize in position.”

NOT EXACTLY TENNESSEE LAW ENFORCEMENT’S finest hour.

FORGETTING THE FIRST RULE OF HOLES: “At first, Rick Husong was stunned by the overwhelming wave of negative and sometimes crude reactions to his bid revealed in Whispers last week to build a pro-Sen. Barack Obama movement around a hand salute dubbed the Big-O. . . . He also E-mailed me last night to say that the hits on the artwork have inspired him to push even harder to build a movement around the hand signal.”

RUNNING and your health.

THE MILLI VANILLI OLYMPICS: Olympics: Child singer revealed as fake. “The recording to which Lin mouthed along on Friday was by the even younger Yang Peiyi. It seems that Yang’s uneven teeth, while unremarkable in a seven-year-old, were considered potentially damaging to China’s international image.”

ILYA SOMIN ON THE RUSSIA/GEORGIA CEASEFIRE AGREEEMENT: “If this agreement holds (a big if), it’s a better outcome than I would have expected. Georgia’s democratic government will remain in place, despite Russia’s previous determination to overthrow it. The Russians will not have destroyed Georgia’s oil pipeline to Europe (the most important pipeline in the region that doesn’t pass through Russian or Iranian territory). And Russia will renounce future use of force against Georgia and reduce its forces in the secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to their prewar levels. I am skeptical that the Russians will fully respect the last two commitments. Nonetheless, the outcome could have been far worse. Why did Russia accept an arrangement that falls so far short of their maximum objectives?”

Austin Bay, on the other hand, calls the diplomatic aftermath “dire.”

UPDATE: Much more here. Plus this:

President Mikheil Saakashvili told a rally that Georgia would quit the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of former Soviet states, and urged Ukraine to follow suit.

Georgia has received strong support from other former communist states with the leaders of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states travelling to Tbilisi where they addressed a mass rally.

“You have the right to freedom and independence. We are here to demonstrate our solidarity … freedom is worth fighting for,” shouted Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in live pictures carried by Georgian television.

Georgia took Russia before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “alleged acts of ethnic cleansing” between 1993 and 2008, starting with the period when Russian peacekeepers entered Georgia’s breakaway regions.

Hmm.

WHY THE PRO-GUN SIDE is winning the debate.

MORE ON THE Russia-Georgia Cyberwar. This should be a(nother) wakeup call for folks here at home.

MICHAEL MALONE: From The Chisholm Trail on My Blackberry.

AL QAEDA defeated by cucumbers.

BING WEST: The War in Iraq Is Over. What Next? “The problem is not American force levels in Iraq. It is divisiveness at home.” But there’s bad news: “The competition among Iraqi politicians has shifted from violence to politics, albeit yielding a track record as poor as that of our own Congress.” That bad?

PUTIN’S INVASION OF GEORGIA: James Pethokoukis looks at the bright side. “Now we all have clarity about the nasty nature of Putin’s Russia (though I hope experts like Secretary Rice aren’t surprised), just as 9/11 gave us the full matrix about the true reality of the world we live in. It will be democratic Georgia, however, paying the price this time.”

GRAPES THAT SELL for $26 each? No thanks. I like grapes, but I also like dollars.

OBAMA’S DRAFT REGISTRATION: A Pajamas Media investigation puts to rest another rumor claiming Obama is ineligible for the presidency.

UPDATE: Doing the job the Legacy Media won’t do. I think they don’t want to investigate this stuff for fear of what they might find . . . (Bumped).

SILICON GRAFFITI: The Song Remains the Same.

WHEW! THAT WAS CLOSE! Barack Obama saves civilization.

SOME SUGGESTIONS ON IMPROVING FORENSIC SCIENCE, which badly needs improving. Heck, I was covering FBI lab scandals when InstaPundit was new, and that was 7 years ago. Here’s what I wrote then: “A criminal lawyer I knew many years ago said he always had ‘scientific’ evidence tests repeated by an independent lab. He said that about half the time, they got a different result than the police or FBI labs. To him, that proved either that the tests were no good, or the labs were stocked with liars. That was twenty years ago, but it’s looking pretty prescient.”

A TIMELY FLIPFLOP: Pelosi indicates openness to offshore drilling vote. It’s hard to argue with the polls.

A FITZMAS FOR THE REST OF US: Plame lawsuit dismissed.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Low vitamin D levels pose large threat to health.

THOUGHTS ON SOVEREIGNTY, STANDING, AND MORAL EQUIVALENCE: From Peter Wehner.

IT’S NOT JUST GEORGIA: A look at U.S. cyberwar preparations.