WILL PRESSURE ON SMALL BUSINESS produce a recession relapse?

DILBERT:

Related item here.

CBS HITS BLOGS, blogger hits back.

UPDATE: “Normally, McCullagh does better work than this, but this is just embarrassing.” Plus, “And let’s remember the context of these posts. Barack Obama has told a string of tall tales himself in public to push health-care reform. What does CBS do in response? Go after Obama’s critics. Yeah, that’s telling truth to power, all right.”

THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS SCANDAL hasn’t gone away.

YOU CAN’T SAY THAT: At the UN, Obama Administration backs limits on free speech.

A BI-PARTISAN SENATE BILL to defund ACORN.

Related: ACORN and absentee ballot fraud in New York.

JEFF JARVIS: THE FTC REGULATES OUR SPEECH.

The Federal Trade Commission just released rules to regulate product endorsements not just in advertisements but also on blogs. (PDF here; the regs don’t start until page 55.)

It is a monument to unintended consequence, hidden dangers, and dangerous assumptions. . . . There are so many bad assumptions inherent in the FTC’s rules.

First, Pay Per Post et al, as I realized late to the game, are not aimed at fooling consumers. Who would read the boring, sycophantic drivel its people write? No, they are aimed at fooling Google and its algorithms. It’s human spam. And it’s Google’s job to regulate that.

Second, the FTC assumes – as media people do – that the internet is a medium. It’s not. It’s a place where people talk. Most people who blog, as Pew found in a survey a few years ago, don’t think they are doing anything remotely connected to journalism. I imagine that virtually no one on Facebook thinks they’re making media. They’re connecting. They’re talking. So for the FTC to go after bloggers and social media – as they explicitly do – is the same as sending a government goon into Denny’s to listen to the conversations in the corner booth and demand that you disclose that your Uncle Vinnie owns the pizzeria whose product you just endorsed.

Insanity and inanity. And danger.

Read the whole thing.

SAYING GOODBYE to Gourmet magazine.

TEA PARTIERS infiltrate Pelosi-Carnahan fundraiser.

THE CRIMINALIZATION OF EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING: With the proliferation of criminal law, everyone is a criminal of some sort, whether they know it or not. That means that the most important decision is the decision whether to prosecute. But while we’ve larded criminal procedure with due process, the decision to prosecute — or not — is almost entirely discretionary on the part of prosecutors. We either need to cut back on the criminalization (my first choice) or start cabining prosecutorial discretion.

HANDING OUT WHITE COATS to the doctors at Obama’s photo op.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse: “Come on, people! Obama’s in trouble. You need to help.“

MARK MOYAR: Afghanistan and Leadership: “Gen. McChrystal needs more troops now precisely so Afghans can take over the war effort later.”

Moyar’s the author of A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq.

TIM CAVANAUGH: Dare to Deflate!

CHANGE: ACORN scrubs its website to eliminate SEIU links.

Plus this: “Not only were four SEIU Local 100 units listed on ACORN’s main Louisiana page, but the official email addresses for all four SEIU units end ‘@acorn.org.'”

BILL WHITTLE: Did Obama Learn From the Olympic Debacle?

ONE OF WASHINGTON’S ALL-TIME DUMB IDEAS: Cash For Clunkers Hurts Poor, Fails to Help Automakers.

TIBET: Now Obama Loses the Richard Gere Vote.

Plus, from the comments: “Obama will be remembered as the most disastrous head of state in the Americas since Montezuma.”

DANA LOESCH: FTC Meddles In Blogger Content, Free Speech.

And here’s something Ron Coleman wrote on this a couple of years ago.

CHANGE: The Demise Of The Dollar: “In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.”

UPDATE: Jim Lindgren: “One aspect of having a multicultural president who doesn’t embrace American exceptionalism is that this administration seems to be ‘quite open’ to international proposals to replace — and thus undermine — the dollar.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Arab states deny.

MARKDOWNS on kitchen appliances.

SAFE-ZONE violations. The only answer to this is to be just as obnoxious in response, so that this sort of behavior becomes unpleasant, instead of rewarding. To coin a phrase: Get in their face. Punch back twice as hard. . . .

VIDEO: Death On Chipman Street: The Channon Christian / Chris Newsom torture-murders.

STEPHEN GREEN: Hair of the Dog: More Nukes for Iran, Fewer Jobs for Americans & Zero Afghan Strategy. Yikes.

ROMAN POLANSKI on To Catch A Predator.

CORRUPTION: LA Attorney General: Rathke Embezzled $5 Million From ACORN. But ACORN covered it up, apparently. Good grief.