ILYA SHAPIRO: Next Move: Suing The Sun for Unseasonably Cool Weather. “The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit, the federal court of appeals where I once clerked, has allowed a class action lawsuit by Hurricane Katrina victims to proceed against a motley crew of energy, oil, and chemical companies. Their claim: that the defendants’ greenhouse gas emissions raised air and water temperatures on the Gulf Coast, contributing to Katrina’s strength and causing property damage.” But I thought that weather and climate were different. . . .

JULES CRITTENDEN: Quagmire! “The complex picture those numbers paint reminds me a little of the Iraq War debate, when polls indicated Americans wanted to win, they just thought it was a quagmire. Going a little deeper into the article, it looks like, a majority of Americans wish everyone could have health insurance, they just think it’s a quagmire.”

THE 2009 REAPER AWARDS.

HIDDEN TAXES AND BIG GOVERNMENT: Dan Mitchell on the Value Added Tax.

ME AND RON BLOOM, ON THE SAME PAGE: “We kind of agree with Mao that power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.”

VATICAN: Come on over, Anglicans!

BAILING OUT the world?

HEH: “There’s only one thing dumber than picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel — picking a fight with people who don’t even have to buy ink.”

Plus this: “It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian — Agnewesque? — aroma at worst. It is a self-defeating trifecta: it distracts attention from the Obama administration’s substantive message; it serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings; and it deprives the White House, to the extent it refuses to provide administration officials to appear on the cable network, of access to an audience that is, in fact, broader than hard-core Obama haters.”

UPDATE: “Are We Dunn Yet?” “Because when you are running on ‘transparency’ and more to the point, ‘accountability’ it’s just a pesky time-waster having to actually talk to reporters, about policy and positions and whatnot. Better to just issue a video press release and refuse their quarrelsome little entreaties! They should be grateful for that much!”

THE INTERNET MAKES YOU SMARTER. “First-time Internet users find boost in brain function after just 1 week.”

CLAUDIA ROSETT: First, they came for Fox News . . . . “This would be a very good moment for all those other news organizations — CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, the newspapers and the news web sites – to offer President Obama the perspective that it is utterly inappropriate for White House personnel to be opining publicly on the overall fitness of specific news outlets.” Some of ’em have — but I think others are still angling for a government bailout . . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails:

The criticism of Fox is not aimed at Fox. It is aimed at liberal editors, and is intended to quarantine the dramatic news being uncovered by right-of-center media. If the liberal editors accept the criticism, they’ll feel good about hiding right-of-center news stories from busy, non-political, swing-voting Americans. See this passage from last Friday’s NJ;

Here’s Gibbs, at the daily briefing on October 1, referring to the conservatives’ attacks against Jones and Sergant: “I think it’s a shame to watch what they do — I think it’s a shame. I hope that as people watch, they’ll match up some of the actual truth to what is being said on some of these occasions and start to provide a little reality check to some of what’s going on.” Was he addressing that comment to the millions of Americans going about their lives, or to the mainstream reporters sitting in front of him? Both, probably, with perhaps an emphasis on the latter.

“The only way to protect against this is to have a narrative about what the attacks are about,” says Jennifer Palmieri, senior vice president of communications at the liberal Center for American Progress. The audience for that narrative is the press. “If you dissected where all these attacks are coming from and demonstrate that they’re not credible and are politically motivated, you’re going to get the benefit of the doubt.”

This kind of tactic can work, providing the established media plays along.

They’ve been pretty supine so far. The question is whether Palmieri, in search of her “echo chamber,” will find it as easy to eunuchize the New York Times, the Washington Post, et al. as she did Matthew Yglesias. . . .

INGRATITUDE: Wall Street Not Donating to Dems. Or maybe they’ve just figured out that this crowd isn’t made up of “honest politicians,” because they don’t stay bought. . . .

SWINE FLU UPDATE: Why CDC says this year’s flu season is “very sobering”.

HMM: “Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party. The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their ‘candidates of choice’ – identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.” If this is an accurate report, it will only strengthen claims that the Department of Justice has been politicized under Eric Holder, particularly as the decision was “made by the same Justice official who ordered the dismissal of a voting rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia.”

AFGHANISTAN: The Wicked Game.

JOE BIDEN: It’s A Depression.

HEH: “There are plenty of problems with Weisberg’s argument, but, as many others have pointed out, there is something peculiarly disconcerting about liberals, who frequently reminded us that dissent is the ‘highest form of patriotism,’ getting in to the un-American, unpatriotic game. I took a quick (and by no means comprehensive) look in Nexis and found the following recent examples of lefty jingoism.”

MARY KATHARINE HAM: Losing: Helen Thomas, NYT, and The Nation Object to White House Fight With Fox News. “When you’ve got Helen Thomas, the NYT, and The Nation lining up against you, it’s time to admit defeat, boys. But alas, Axelrod and Emanuel can’t help themselves.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

The trouble is that Obama’s (and his staff’s) actions here aren’t part of some arcane political strategy to make themselves look good. Instead, it’s all about controlling the message, which they did during the campaign and are still trying to do now.

The only real difference is that during the primaries, the right and Fox really didn’t pay very close attention to candidate Obama and his control of the media’s reporting of his message. And the Obama campaign really didn’t have to care what Fox and the right might be saying about them, since who on the left was listening to those sources? It was all about them winning the primaries.

So Obama and his merry band and Fox were on two different wavelengths.

However, once Obama got the demo nod, then suddenly it did matter how Fox reported on candidate Obama. And, unfortunately for the man who’s all about control, Fox is proving to be the one thing he can’t control…

Obama doesn’t care if picking a fight with Fox makes him look weak… I think he’s incapable of seeing that truth, frankly. And, I hope he continues to be so headstrong and oblivious to the damage he’s doing to himself. But allow me to reiterate: this isn’t about perception; it’s about controlling any and all communication. Once you shut down any voices of dissent, you can go about your business, unconcerned that anyone will thwart your intentions. They don’t care how this makes them look; they’re playing this game for keeps, not to win the “good sport” award…

It’s the Chicago Way.

ANOTHER UPDATE: But reader Chris Martin thinks it’s not about control, but competence:

Obama’s lack of control of the Congress, sitting on the sidelines while they worked up the Stimulus bill, and the health care legislation, proves to me he isn’t about control No, this is about two things: conceit and competence. Obama is shocked that Fox won’t take a knee like the other media has done up to now, and hiring a buffoon like Anita Dunn confirms again that whomever his hiring these people around him is incompetent. Biden, Geitner, Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, the NEA idiot, Bunny what’s-her-name, the safe schools czar, and Dunn..(the Dunn hiring looks a lot of like her husband pulling strings) it’s definitely not about competence.

This is the chickens coming home to roost….

Well, we’ll see.

FIREDOGLAKE: “An excise tax on high-end health insurance benefits is an extremely regressive tax on the middle class.”

Ann Althouse: “Well, obviously.”

But I thought a middle-class tax increase was off the table. The President has spoken!

LIKE TAXES, NATIONAL HEALTH CARE IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Obamacare Is For the Peons… Congress to Keep Their Gold-Plated Health Care Plans.

Related, from Britain: 3,000 NHS staff get private care. “THE National Health Service has spent £1.5m paying for hundreds of its staff to have private health treatment so they can leapfrog their own waiting lists. More than 3,000 staff, including doctors and nurses, have gone private at the taxpayers’ expense in the past three years because the queues at the clinics and hospitals where they work are too long.”

When they said everyone would be treated equally, they didn’t mean equally-equally.

GORDON CROVITZ ON THE FTC: “There’s a saying that a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. We’ve now learned that bloggers mugged by regulators become economic libertarians.”

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Iran Double-Crosses Obama. Boy, you couldn’t see that one coming . . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Now we know why Obama turned his back on Iranian protesters. Note that the secret negotiations began in June. What else went on in June in Iran? Oh yeah… those pesky election results protests.

Basically, he turned his back on the Iranian people because that whole free election fight of theirs wasn’t nearly as important as the nuclear deal he was working out with Iran’s regime. Too bad the regime couldn’t be trusted to actually live up to its end of the bargain. Big surprise there, that you can’t trust political leaders who believe in silencing their own people…

Maybe that should serve as an object lesson to us about Obama…

Ouch.

“GLOBAL WARMING” AT YANKEE STADIUM. Punch back twice as hard.

DUMPDEDE.COM?

UPDATE: Scozzafava Calls the Cops. Not bright. Not bright at all.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In thug politics, this is what they call “delivering a little message.” You’re not in trouble, this time.

MY SISTER POSTS ON FACEBOOK: “A 2008 vehicle should not have corrosion on the engine, and 130,000 miles shouldn’t warrant a $3,000 repair on a Superduty diesel engine. No more Fords for us.”

IT’S THOSE LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS AGAIN: CNBC, Reuters fall for climate hoax.