THE PROBLEM WITH ELECTRIC CARS: “Electricity Is Not Sexy.”

RECOVERY SUMMER! U.S. Housing Starts Drop to Lowest Level Since October. “Construction of single-family houses fell 0.7 percent to a 454,000 rate, a 13-month low, after the prior month’s 19 percent slump. Work on multifamily homes, such as townhouses and apartment buildings, decreased 22 percent to an annual rate of 95,000.”

ROGER SIMON: Journolist, Jeremiah Wright and Groucho Marx. “Well, we have had the generation gap and tons of other gaps. Now Journolist reveals we have an ‘elitism gap.’ Gone are the days of the Algonquin Round Table, to be replaced by a cabal of humdrum mediocrities on a listserv plotting how to justify the racist ravings of a reactionary theocrat.”

It’s easier to be an elitist than it is to be elite.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, DEATH IS LIFE.

REPUBLICAN ELECTION OFFICIAL found dead in trunk of burning car. No doubt the JournoListers will call it an obvious suicide. . . . (Via Rightsidenews). Much more from the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

KATHA POLLITT’S SECRET FEMINIST PAIN: “Ah! How Katha suffered for Bill Clinton! She would prefer to have a more pleasurable life, full of the fun of being true to the principles of the feminist movement, but there were more important things to be done at the time. Caring about rape, sexual harassment, male privilege, and female subordination — that was a self-indulgence brave Katha rose above.”

IAIN MURRAY: Climategate inquiry glosses over the facts.

JULES CRITTENDEN ON SPENCER ACKERMAN, JOURNOLIST, and “Race-Baitism.”

WITH A NEW PUBLISHER, H+ Magazine reboots!

THE AUTOMOBILE’S forgotten secret.

ED DRISCOLL: How The Wright-Free Zone Was Built. This JournoList thing is just a gold mine. Thanks, Ezra!

MAURICE STUCKEY: When A Monopolist Deceives.

IN THE MAIL: From Stephen Kinzer, Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future.

NICK GILLESPIE, VIRGINIA POSTREL, AND JOHN STOSSEL, on the growing libertarian influence.

MAIMON SCHWARZSCHILD: The One-Party Media.

The usual disillusioned phrase is “mainstream media” or MSM. The problem, of course, is not mainstream-hood. Angrily talking about the “state-run media” is even more misguided: the media were anything but state-run, or state-sympathetic, when Bush was president; and Republican or conservative officials or judges can expect relentless hostility now as much as ever.

What we have is One-Party Media: newspapers, broadcast networks, newsmagazines which represent the views and preoccupations of the Democratic Party and the political left, and consistently denigrate or ignore the views and preoccupations of the political right or centre-right; and which very often systematically ignore any news or information which might reflect badly on the one party, or reflect well on the policies, proposals, or values of the other. . . . It is extraordinary, and I think unprecedented, that a free press has voluntarily transformed itself into something not very different from the controlled press in an undemocratic country. But that is what has happened.

Read the whole thing.

ANDREW BREITBART: PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: The truth hurts.

JOURNALISM: CNN’s Rick Sanchez: Nixon/Kennedy Debate Took Place in 1962?

“THERE IS NO LAW HERE.” Americans traditionally excel at “self-help justice,” but the political classes will rue the day if that re-establishes itself.

SHOCKER: Free markets produce fairer wages.

RICHARD COHEN ON OBAMA’S GROWING UNPOPULARITY: “What has come to be called the Obama Paradox is not a paradox at all. Voters lack faith in him making the right economic decisions because, as far as they’re concerned, he hasn’t. He went for health-care reform, not jobs. He supported the public option, then he didn’t. He’s been cold to Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu and then all over him like a cheap suit. Americans know Obama is smart. But we still don’t know him. Before Americans can give him credit for what he’s done, they have to know who he is. We’re waiting.”

Well, maybe if the press hadn’t been colluding to keep us from finding out, we’d know. . . .

MICKEY KAUS: Unions ‘Own the Democratic Party’.

INDEED: One thing about the NAACP video of Shirley Sherrod: “Look at the crowd reaction when she says this. Is there shock? Is there disgust? Is there anger? Nope, they are with her all the way. That says more about the NAACP than anything Sherrod did.” Hey, it’s not called the “National Association for the Advancement of Racial Equality,” you know.

DOES GOVERNMENT SPENDING STIMULATE THE ECONOMY? Not so much.

HERITAGE: Reclaiming America: Why We Honor the Tea Party Movement.

“THE PACIFIC:” An Iwo Jima Featurette.