EVERYBODY’S PILING ON ADAM KIRSCH: Now it’s Jonathan Adler: “It would seem Mr. Kirsch does not understand Rand’s capitalist ideal and is not all that familiar with Rand’s work.”

HELP CLAYTON CRAMER GET A JOB.

ON MATT DRUDGE, IT’S Andrew Sullivan vs. Andrew Sullivan.

CHARTING Obama in the polls.

NY-23 REPORT: Scozzafava doing robo-calls for Owens. “Sounds like she’s determined to pay the GOP back, but not for the wasted million-plus.” Nope, that’s gone like the CIT stimulus money . . .

LINE OF THE WEEK, in response to the White House’s criticism of Edmunds.com on Cash For Clunkers: “If Obama’s skin was any thinner, he’d have a reservoir tip on the top of his head.”

Or, a bit less pithily, here: “Yeah, it’s one thing for the administration to take office with very little administrative experience. It’s something else that the administration apparently hasn’t aquired any yet, one year later, and are still throwing prissy little snits over events and reporting that are about five levels below anything the administration should be concerning itself with right now.”

STIMULUS! CIT Files Bankruptcy; U.S. Unlikely to Recoup Money. “CIT Group Inc., a 101-year-old commercial lender, filed for bankruptcy to cut $10 billion in debt after the credit crunch dried up its funding and a U.S. bailout and debt exchange offer failed. CIT listed $71 billion in assets and $64.9 billion in debt in a Chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. The U.S. Treasury Department said the government probably won’t recover much, if any, of the $2.3 billion in taxpayer money that went to CIT.”

HMM: PPP poll: Hoffman up big in two-man race. Local polling’s iffy, but we’ll know soon enough.

AN INTERVIEW WITH Rob Zombie.

WILLIAM VOEGELI: California’s Model Doesn’t Work. “Our high-benefit/high-tax model no longer works, especially compared with low-tax states like Texas.”

Plus this: “Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California. Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California’s government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class.” There might be a lesson there, on the national level . . . .

JAMES LILEKS, STEPHEN GREEN, AND MORE: If you missed it on XM or Sirius, the latest PJM Political is now online.

COL. DOUGLAS MORTIMER WRITES on the new Levi’s “Go Forth” campaign:

Have you your weapons? Your pistols? Your sharp edged axes?

This is from Levi’s? Left wing, San Francisco, “We hate the Boy Scouts” Levi’s?

I can see them quoting old Walt, but it surprises the f*ck out of me that they quoted the part about the pistols. Unless, of course, they are advocating some kind of Obamabot led Peoples’ Guard that will herd the rest of us into big fenced in pens somewhere out in Western Kansas or something.

Well, it mostly has more of a junior Burning-Man vibe, but there is this bit:

But I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about.

BUT WHEN THE TAXMAN COMES TO THE DOOR, LORD THE HOUSE LOOKS LIKE A RUMMAGE SALE: TaxProf: Chicago Property Taxes Increase 9.6%; Obama’s Property Tax Increases 1.0%

JONAH GOLDBERG: “The Frank Rich hissy fit is a perfect example of the real story of the election. The story is not that the GOP is self-destructing, it is that the conventional wisdom is being shown to be ludicrous.”

AMBER GUNN: Boeing Heads South For Better Business Climate: Washington State Politicians Are Surprised?

They’re always surprised. They pile on taxes and regulations, and then — who’d’athunkit — businesses go somewhere else. This is known as “bad luck.”

SALENA ZITO: Mood Sours Toward Both Parties. “A sour mood exists among people, with close-to-10-percent unemployment, decreasing health-care benefits and rising taxes – and a view that the well-heeled get bailed-out but John and Joan Q. Citizen do not. . . . Has the anti-establishment ‘tea party’ movement had an impact on these races? Absolutely.”

KISSING: It’s all about building immunity. Well, not all about . . . .

PROVING HER CRITICS RIGHT: Scozzafava Endorses Democrat.

UPDATE: Reader Erik Fortune writes: “Scozzafava hasn’t just proven her critics right, she’s also made fools of the GOP establishment that backed her. The establishment argument for supporting Scozzafava boiled down to an appeal to party loyalty, and Scozzafava just demonstrated that she has none. Gingrich et al asked voters to compromise their values on behalf of a candidate who turned on them the first chance she got. The voters won’t forget that.” Ouch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A question: “Now that she’s withdrawn and endorsed the Democratic candidate, can the Republican Party ask for their $900,000 back? Can individuals who contributed to her under the impression that she was a Republican ask for their money back?” They can ask, but unlike with businesses there’s no implied warranty of good faith in politics . . . .

MORE: Scozzafava on Friday: “I have been a Republican my entire life, I will be a Republican until I die. I believe in the Republican party that stands for less government interference in the lives of individuals. I believe in self-sufficiency versus government dependence. I believe in lower taxes, less government regulation, I believe in less government spending.” Like I say, you can’t sue politicians for breach of warranty the way you can sue businesses. If you could, politicians would have to be more trustworthy.

APPLE TV: Less Than It Could Be?

JONAH GOLDBERG: “A lot of conservatives today are too quick to think that because liberals have some affinity for Marxist sentiments that they are actual Marxists. Liberals often make the same mistakes as Marxists, but they’re not Marxists. In the 1960s, the distinction between Marxists and liberals was much more apparent and it’s worth remembering that the radicals often hated the liberals more than they hated the conservatives.”

MICHAEL S. MALONE ON THE ECONOMY:

I’m constantly amazed, and appalled, by what little actual wisdom I’ve actually gained in my more than half-century in this world. But if there are three things I have learned, they are:

1. Never trust luck to get you through.
2. Don’t assume the best-case scenario.
3. The laws of economics, like the laws of chance, always triumph.

Indeed.

CRACKS APPEARING in the law firm associate model.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on the next three years. “I think very soon the triangulating Republicans of 2008 will fold up and quietly distance themselves from Obama as his poll numbers stay around 50%. On almost every issue that they contrasted Obama favorably with Bush, Obama has bitten them.”

ACORN takes the Fifth. “The moral here? Well, aside from the obvious one of ‘ACORN taints everything that it touches,’ it’s this: one-party rule makes people stupid. And stupid people make mistakes. Keep that in mind the next time you’re trying to decide whether or not to fight City Hall.”

IN THE MAIL: Eclipse 3: New Science Fiction and Fantasy.