TRAFFIC CAMERA TICKETS IN OAK RIDGE. Expect these ticket numbers to go up everywhere as cities scramble for revenue. Traffic-enforcement is basically just a kind of taxation without representation. (Via Michael Silence, who comments: “I guess having one of the highest property tax rates in the state isn’t enough.”)

AND THAT’S THE WAY IT WASN’T: Ed Driscoll on Walter Cronkite nostalgia. The nostalgia isn’t for lost integrity. It’s for lost power.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball calls Cronkite the world’s most overrated reader of the news. “Like Michael Jackson, he was so successful because he perfectly incarnated certain popular clichés. His success was not a matter of substance. . . . He didn’t research or write the news. He read it. He emitted the same platitudes every other news reader mouthed. He did so, however, with a sort of cardigan authenticity that used car salesmen would climb naked over broken bottles to emulate. . . . Michael Jackson was famous for inventing a dance step called the moonwalk in which the dancer seems to float backwards while walking in place. Walter Cronkite did something similar. He seemed to float above the yapping clamor of common opinion. At bottom, though, he merely reflected it.”

WHO’S GETTING hit hardest by layoffs.

WELL, BUT WHO DOESN’T, REALLY? Navy Wants High-Powered Laser for Fending Off Small Boats.

WILLIAM FORSTCHEN, author of One Second After, on preparing for an EMP attack.

MATT WELCH AND NICK GILLESPIE, IN THE WASHINGTON POST: Obama’s Domestic Agenda Teeters. “From a lousy cap-and-trade bill awaiting death in the Senate to a health-care reform agenda already weak in the knees to the failure of the stimulus to deliver promised jobs and economic activity, what once looked like a hope-tastic juggernaut is showing all the horsepower of a Chevy Cobalt. . . . So far, he seems to be skipping the chapter on Bill Clinton and his generally free-market economic policies and instead flipping back to the themes and comportment of Jimmy Carter. Like the 39th president, Obama has inherited an awful economy, dizzying budget deficits and a geopolitical situation as promising as Kim Jong Il’s health. Like Carter, Obama is smart, moralistic and enamored of alternative energy schemes that were nonstarters back when America’s best-known peanut farmer was installing solar panels at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Like Carter, Obama faces as much effective opposition from his own party’s left wing as he does from an ardent but diminished GOP. And perhaps most important, as with Carter, his specific policies are genuinely unpopular.”

KINDLE UPDATE: Ouch:

I was set to splurge on the DX for my mom’s birthday; now I’m leaning towards Broadway tickets. If there’s a more sensational example in recent years of a company with an up-and-coming product shooting itself in the foot, I’d like to know what it is.

Yeah, this will kill them on the “cool factor,” replacing it with the “creep factor.” Not good, not good at all.

IRANIAN REVOLUTION, DAY 36: A roundup at The Berman Post.

HMM: Anti-Obamacare Protesters Take the Streets, Democrats Panic.

AND YET EVERYTHING THEY WERE SAYING IN PUBLIC WAS REASSURING: Administration feared breakdown in law and order because of financial crisis.

IMAGINING THE Mary Jo Kopechne commemorative Google logo.

You’ll never beat this, though.

HMM: Politico: Obama no longer stressing August deadline for passing health reform bill. I suspect that means he doesn’t think he’s got the votes.

OKAY, I STEPPED OUTSIDE A LITTLE WHILE AGO, and it was actually a bit chilly. In Knoxville, in mid-July. My dad says it hasn’t broken 90 all summer, which may be right. I’m saving real money on A/C bills this year. Could be worse — could be Michigan.

Meanwhile, Nate Silver says it’s all in your mind. Two thoughts: (1) I hope so — better that than living in a John Ringo novel. (2) Just remember Nate’s stuff when the press is yammering on about a hot day, or a hurricane, being “caused by global warming.”

UPDATE: Reader Bobby Clarke writes: “Here in Austin, we’re having one of the worst summers ever. We’re on the tail end of a 2 year drought, and we’ve had record highs for most of July (well over 100). I don’t want to think about the utility bills. Those 70 degree days sound pretty good to us right now. So it’s cold in most of the country, and hot in the other parts. Its almost like weather is some amazingly complex and hard to understand system!” Nah — hot or cold, it’s always because of global warming. I think that’s in the AP stylebook or something.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Schroeder of Mantorville, Minnesota writes:

In regards to the post about Minnesota Temps Nate Silver is just picking out high temps for a weird period of time – 6/21/09 to 7/17/09. What really matters in Southern Minnesota is Growing Degree Days – how is the Corn growing? Here is a link showing that we are behind by 131 growing degree days for the entire 2009 growing season. I have lived in Southern Minnesota for over 45 years and can say that the field corn is behind in its’ development and we are also behind by about a week or two eating the great sweet corn that grows here in Minnesota. In the real world these are the statistics that matter because it is a major economic driver for our local economy.

My tomatoes aren’t doing well, either. I don’t know that that says much about the global temperature, but you can bet if it were unseasonably hot we’d be hearing that it’s a vindication of Al Gore.

MAKE CONGRESS PAY THE SURTAX: “Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., said he will propose that a 1% surtax be applied to the salaries of members of Congress, regardless of how much they earn. Davis said that would help lawmakers share in the tax that the House bill — which this week cleared two of three House Committees — would impose on families and businesses earning more than $350,000 annually.” It’s their fair share.

Hey, how about a constitutional amendment requiring that members of Congress always pay the highest marginal rate. . . .

MARK STEYN notes that demographic worries are getting Strange New Respect.

HONDURAS: Certified results for an election that never took place?

A BIG gourmet food sale.

RAND SIMBERG AND CLARK LINDSEY are blogging from the Newspace 2009 commercial space conference. (Bumped).

POLITICO: White House’s $50B foreclosure plan a bust so far. “The Obama administration’s $50 billion program to curb foreclosures isn’t working, and the White House knows it. Administration officials blame the mortgage servicers charged with carrying out the mortgage modifications and refinancing under the federal program. Many of their Democratic allies on Capitol Hill back them up, but others are criticizing the White House for fumbling the execution. Whatever the reason, the program hasn’t stopped the rising tide of foreclosures: Experts predict that at least another 2 million homes will be lost this year, and the administration’s plan has so far reached only about 160,000 of the 3 million to 4 million homes it was supposed to protect over the next three years.”

STACY MCCAIN has no regrets.

IN THE MAIL: Michelle Malkin’s new book, Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies. Buy it in hardcopy, so it’ll still be around when Eric Holder has all the Kindle versions deleted as “hate speech!” (Bumped).

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Obama Losing Support Among Nervous Dems.

PENN JILLETTE TALKS ABOUT HEALTH CARE:

THE MOST OVERLOOKED bar essential.

HEALTH RATIONS AND YOU: An informative video for citizens.

(Via American Digest).