A CULTURE OF UNDERACHIEVEMENT IN BRITAIN: “The study, published in the Sociological Review, shows how difficult it is for children, particularly boys, to be clever and popular. Boys risk being assaulted in some schools for being high-achievers. To conform and escape alienation, clever boys told researchers they may ‘try to fall behind’ or ‘dumb down’.”

JAMES LILEKS: Maybe I’m old-school, but “President fires CEO” looks as wrong as “Pope fires Missile.”

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus: Wagoner: Obama’s Diem? “After visibly defenestrating GM CEO RIck Wagoner, and moving to replace the board of directors, won’t Obama now ‘own’ the GM problem? If the company shuts down in the near future, costing tens of thousands of blue collar jobs, it will be under executives implicitly or explicitly chosen by Obama. It will be Obama’s failure, not simply GM’s failure, no? A public sector failure, not just a business failure. Doesn’t that make it harder, not easier, for the administration to walk away and force the company into bankruptcy?” Which is too bad, as bankruptcy is probably what ought to happen.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “Will Obama be getting rid of the head of the UAW also?” Gettelfinger should go, but won’t. Responsibility is kinda selective here . . . .

MORE: “I guess it’s our failing auto company now.” Plus a roundup of other reactions.

STILL MORE: World Stocks Tumble Amid Pessimism.

WHEN IS A PLOT “INSIGNIFICANT?” When it was foiled by the Bush Administration, perhaps? Plus, Again, the MSM Beclowns Itself. Floppy shoes all around.

RULES FOR CONSERVATIVE RADICALS.

OUCH: Keith Olbermann blasted Twitter for allowing a phony account in his name to be run by FOX News… except it was actually MSNBC who is running it to help his show.

And now there are some new developments. “Unbelievably, this still gets better! . . . You know, it’s not for nothing that journolist trashed Olbermann, but I’m starting to think he wouldn’t have understood the list in the first place. Any day now we might see Olbermann’s Worst Person be: ‘… the gentleman from Nigeria. You, sir, have failed to return my emails. Indeed, not only have you and the Prime Minister you so recently worked for refused to deposit my 100,000 euros, you have withdrawn a great deal of my own money!’”

ANOTHER “TEA PARTY” PROTEST, IN “DEEP BLUE” NEWBURYPORT:

What would Ronald Reagan do if he were president at this precarious point in our nation’s history, asked local Republican Tea Party organizer Paul Breau as he stood outside City Hall Saturday with 100 fellow conservatives from Newburyport and beyond.

Breau and an upstart group of Republican activists sought to isolate that question and uphold the values of conservatism in a Democratic stronghold by raising handmade signs and taking part in their own local version of a nationally organized Republican event this weekend — their Grand Ole Tea Party.

By organizing across the street from where Congressman John Tierney was holding a public meeting with constituents of his 6th District, the group drew plenty of attention, and that’s just what they wanted.

Read the whole thing. Sounds like a good tactic. In general, though the Tea Party protests are by no means exclusively Republican, though Republican leaders are starting to jump on the bandwagon.

UPDATE: A blog report, with photos.

SMART DIPLOMACY: “I’ll say that I didn’t know this story myself, but I do think that if I was representing our country and visiting any cultural site, I’d have somebody telling me what I needed to know not to look stupid from the perspective of those whose respect I wanted.” But could you trust them?

PSYCHOLOGY AND CRISIS: A warning from Robert Shiller.

JOHN MURTHA UPDATE: Critics claim John Murtha is capitalizing on a corrupt system, but he’s not apologizing. “‘If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district,’ Mr. Murtha said.” And the beneficiaries of pork in his district take care of him.

NEWT GINGRICH ON TEA PARTY PROTESTS:

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, the tea parties that they’re having around the nation — April 15, a number of states are going to have tea parties — that just sort of a passing fancy, or is that a grass-roots movement?

GINGRICH: No, I think the tax day tea party movement, which is actually Americansolutions.com, is helping with a great deal. Over 300 cities have people signed up already. And I think these tea parties — remember, the House and the Senate will pass the first round of a really bad budget next week. They will then go home for two weeks. These tea parties come right in the middle of that congressional recess.

And my challenge is, to every member of the House and Senate, have the courage to go to a tea party in your state or your district and listen to your citizens. My prediction is there’ll be over 300,000 Americans at the tea parties, and I think it’s the beginning of a huge movement of fundamental reform not just for Washington but for places like Albany, New York, Sacramento, California, Trenton, New Jersey, all the places where the lobbyists, the politicians and the bureaucrats have been running over their citizens.

Some readers are unhappy about this — but I think that’s a glitch in the transcript, and that Gingrich is not actually trying to claim that the tea party movement is actually his Americansolutions outfit. Others think that he shouldn’t be the face of the movement. I think it’s fine if he wants to encourage it, but he’s climbing on the bandwagon — the movement was viral, grassroots, and self-organized before he even noticed it.

UPDATE: Dan Kotman of American solutions writes:

I saw your post about Newt and the Tea Parties.

You are correct that the transcript does not accurately portray what Newt was saying. If you watch the video, it’s pretty clear that he’s saying American Solutions is helping with the Tea Party movement and not the actual movement itself.

We recognize it is a viral grassroots effort, and we are not trying to be the face of the movement or take credit for starting it. Our involvement as a sponsor has been to help promote them and encourage our members to attend.

I hope this clears things up.

I think that’s exactly the right way to look at it.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: U.S. Not Prepared to Respond to North Korea Missile Launch.

POLITICO: A vast left-wing conspiracy.

UH OH: On eve of G20 summit, new blow to Gordon Brown: Senior cabinet members dampen expectations of global spending deal. Okay, it’s more like a “whew!” than an “uh oh,” really . . . .

BANKERS: Take Your TARP Money Back. “There’s a growing sense among some bankers that Troubled Asset Relief Program known as ‘TARP’ has become toxic. As a result, they want to bail out of the bank bailout program.” The country’s in the very best of hands.

THINGS YOU HATE TO MISS: An email from Carl Cox (well, his PR people) about a “secret” party in Miami tonight that I, of course, couldn’t make. If only I had a private jet . . .

TOXIC ASSETS: Who can do the math?

TAX THAT FELLOW behind the tree.

ROGER SIMON: Lay off Biden’s Daughter.

On the other hand, at Gay Patriot, talk of holding Joe Biden’s family to the Barney Frank standard. Hell, I’d be happy with holding Barney Frank to the Barney Frank standard.

THANKS TO SOME HELP FROM FREEDOMWORKS, the Cape Coral, FL tea party is back on. Scheduled for this Wednesday.

SO I’VE HAD MY KINDLE 2 for about a month now, and I’ve read quite a few books, both fiction and nonfiction on it, as well as the Financial Times, which I subscribed to, and InstaPundit. What do I think?

Reading a book on the Kindle is every bit as engrossing as reading a book on paper. I’ve enjoyed the stuff I’ve read just as much, and it’s just as easy. In dim light it’s better — you can boost the text size to read in light that would be too dim for a small-print paperback. Reading the FT is fine. Reading InstaPundit . . . well, it’s okay. I don’t think the blog translates as well to the Kindle. You can follow links, but you often wind up on a website that doesn’t display very well on the Kindle.

Using it in public places — cafes, restaurants, even once at the car wash — I’ve been surprised that most of the people who approach me to ask about it are women. (I’ve noticed this with the little netbook computers, too.) Women aren’t generally that interested in gadgets, but the Kindle is one they like. “It fits in my purse,” is a common remark. It’s perhaps a coincidence, but every one of these women has had an iPhone already — was that some sort of “gateway gadget?” The Kindle 2 does seem sort of Apple-like in design.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: If you wonder where that reference comes from, watch this clip. Note how the lyrics fit just as well today . . . . “Don’t worry ’bout the principle and interest that accrues . . . they’re shippin’ all that stuff to foreign lands.”

IT’S NOT JUST TEA PARTIES: Protesting state and local taxes, too.

EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON:

President Obama and the Democrats should wave the white flag in their strawman war on Rush Limbaugh. The Media Research Center delivered the grim casualty figures for the Democrats. Since January, the top talk show gabber’s ratings have soared off the charts. Radio affiliates that carry Limbaugh’s syndicated show call the ratings boost he’s gotten from the Democrat’s orchestrated attack on him a “dramatic surge.” This writer predicted as much when President Obama cracked to Congressional Republicans in late January that they should knock off listening to Limbaugh if they expected to get anything done in Congress and with his administration.

The gabber instantly snatched at the quip and turned it into a multi show bonanza. No matter what topic Limbaugh gassed on, he managed to slide in a reference to Obama’s prop up of him as the Democrat’s prize punching bag. This did three things. It gave him an even bigger pile of fodder to puff himself up as the emperor of talk radio, claim to be the real kingmaker in the GOP, and in a perverse way paint himself as a credible and thoughtful political critic. It snapped many shell shocked Congressional Republicans out of their post election funk. Now suddenly feisty and combative, they draw a deep line in the sand against any and everything that Obama proposed.

As I said, if you strike him down he shall only become more powerful than you can imagine . . . .

Plus, Andrew Klavan in the L.A. Times: Take the Limbaugh Challenge! “If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration’s recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That’s the likelihood; here’s the certainty: You’ve never listened to Rush Limbaugh.” Excerpts peddled by Media Matters and the JournoList crowd don’t count . . . .

OBAMA’S INDUSTRIALISTS. Perhaps a bit overwrought, but this does look like Progressive Corporatism running amok.

UPDATE: GM’s CEO Resigns At Obama’s Behest. What do you call it when the private companies are nominally independent, but do whatever the government wants? Not capitalism, anyway. And doesn’t this make Obama responsible for what happens to GM now?

A NEWS REPORT on yesterday’s Stamford Tea Party protest.