CORRECTING Gloria Steinem’s revisionist history.

ANDREW STUTTAFORD ON EARMARKS: “That anyone can still be defending earmarks, at least on the right side of the aisle, is astounding. It’s not only the small ‘c’ corruption that earmarks can imply, and it’s not only the not so small ‘e’ extravagance that they represent, it’s also the political tone deafness of those who–even now–look to defend them.”

AMERICAN NARCISSUS: “Politicians as a class are particularly susceptible to mirror-gazing. But Obama’s vanity is overwhelming. It defines him, his politics, and his presidency.”

Related: Ask me about the compliments I received.

UPDATE: South Park unimpressed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More prescience.

OUCH: ABC: So that Obama trip to Asia turned out to be a huge bust, huh?

UPDATE: “He came back with bupkis.”

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Why Wall Street Should Fear Sarah Palin. “Palinomics, embryonic as it is, seems to be rooted in ‘free-market populism,’ a version of conservative thinking that is pro-market rather than pro-business. It says the role of government is to help markets function more fairly and efficiently for everyone, encouraging competition and ‘creative destruction’ (which Palin specifically mentioned in her book). Pro-business policies, by contrast, can end up subsidizing favored companies, raising barriers to entry and otherwise entrenching the status quo. . . . It’s easy to imagine her campaigning against corporate tax breaks, say, or in favor of limiting the size of banks under the belief that as long as they are ginormous, government will find a way to bail them out. That agenda might not attract much campaign cash from Manhattan bankers or Washington lobbyists, but it could be a compelling formula in the new Tea Party-infused Republican party.”

UPDATE: Reader Billy Harvey writes: “I’d vote for this in a heartbeat.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A hedge-fund reader emails:

“Wall Street” isn’t afraid of Sarah Palin. The “too big to fail” bastards who’ve gamed the system may fear a more level playing field, but the hundreds of smaller players who’ve been elbowed aside by the crony capitalists would LOVE to see a new broom sweep through DC.

Well then, they should put some support behind the new broom of their choice.

IT KEEPS MY MIND FROM WANDERING, where it will go . . .

FASTER, PLEASE: Retina Implant Restores Vision, Lets Cyborgs See IR Spectrum! “Scientists in Germany have developed a retina implant to restore vision to the blind that hints at the augmentation cyborgs may receive in the future. The device, developed by Retina Implant AG, is an array of 1500+ photodiodes (roughly 38×40 pixels) that is surgically placed under the retina. Light that enters the eye stimulates the photodiodes which send electric currents through the underlying neurons. In a recent article in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers describe how blind patients (mostly suffering from retinitis pigmentosa) were able to see light and dark areas and discern basic shapes only a week after their surgeries. One man was even able to see the difference between objects, and read large letters! That would be remarkable enough, but implanted patients also reported a sensitivity to infrared light. That’s right, the retina implant could only provide very basic vision, but it did so in an extended spectrum. Cybernetic implants like these may not only be able to restore sight to the blind, they could let them see things that no normal person has ever seen before with their own eyes.”

RACIST NOSTALGIA from Roy Edroso? Or something like that.

Plus, from the comments: “Humility is a good thing, but it’s not good for a government official in a democracy to be urging it on voters. It might be good for government officials to be reminded that there are systems where people get rid of the officials they don’t like by hanging them from lamp posts. Perhaps they would find it useful to contemplate their privileges.”

STILL A FEW HOURS LEFT on that 48-hour HDTV and Video Sale.

REASON TV: Peter Thiel on Facebook, Technology, and the Higher Education Bubble. “Politics becomes libertarian as an absolute last resort.”

WHICH IS ACTUALLY ADAPTIVE IF YOU’RE A BLOGGER: Aging Brains Notice More Irrelevant Information.

IT LOOKS LIKE A MERCEDES S-CLASS: Hyundai’s 429-horsepower 5.0 liter V8 Sedan.

GOOGLE STREET VIEW: “A systematic invasion of privacy?” “Arguing that people somehow ‘deserved it’ or have no right to complain because the data wasn’t encrypted is fatuous. We don’t encrypt our mail or our telephone calls, but they come with a legitimate expectation of privacy; our internet usage and e-mail is just the same. Many people use public networks, sharing their access with friends or colleagues — sometimes because it’s convenient; sometimes because they’re at a café which provides such access for free; sometimes because they don’t know how to protect their wi-fi. Certainly, they should encrypt their systems — but it hardly relieves the wrongdoer of culpability if the victim is more culpable than others. That logic says that your grandmother shouldn’t leave the house because she’s so easy to rob.” Also, Google is perceived as lefty, so they get more of a pass.

CHINA BOOSTS ITS TARGET for nuclear power capacity.

Meanwhile, Tennessee Valley Authority plans to build 6 modular mini-reactors.

IN THE MAIL: From Bill Peschel, Writers Gone Wild: The Feuds, Frolics, and Follies of Literature’s Great Adventurers, Drunkards, Lovers, Iconoclasts, and Misanthropes.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Obama’s India Trip Was Worth All The Money.

UPDATE: A reader disagrees:

Sorry Charlie.

No amount of imperial barge travel to impress the sub-continent will ever replace a sound fiscal policy, a strong dollar and an environment that nurtures entrepreneurship and business.

Let me know when your highly advertised “smarts” get back from their extended lunch.

I don’t buy it. Not one rupee.

Hmm. Not sure where I come down on this, though the part about fiscal policy and business environment is clearly true.

IOWAHAWK: CrisisGate!

IMPORTANT ELIOT SPITZER QUESTION: Is it OK to wear socks during sex? I’m guessing that Spitzer’s partners wouldn’t object to him wearing as much clothing as possible.

THE CARNIVAL OF NUCLEAR ENERGY IS UP!

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS: Memorable movies on the rails.

CHANGE: Growing backlash against TSA body scanners, pat-downs.

MICKEY KAUS: Psst! Rand Paul Was Right About Federal Pay. “So you have apples in that pay basket! When I heard that Rand Paul had claimed that average federal employee’s compensation (including benefits) was more than $120,000, I thought that can’t be true. Then I read Media Matters’ lengthy response to the claim.”

Plus this:

P.S.: When people are outraged at the $120,000 figure, I think, they aren’t making an implicit apples to oranges comparison. They’re making an apples to themselves comparison. They know what they do and what they’re making. They have a pretty good, rough idea of what federal employees do (some are highly skilled doctors, some are equal opportunity compliance facilitators). They know that they themselves have had to take pay freezes and cuts and endure waves of corporate downsizing while the federal government hasn’t been through anything like that. In fact, pay for individual federal workers has kept growing each year thanks to both cost-of living raises and “step” increases. The federal pay escalator kept on running right through the recesssion. Meanwhile, federal workers enjoy job security they can only dream of.

They know, in short, that as a result of this Great Divergence (sorry Tim!) they don’t make anything like $120,000, but they pay taxes to support the government workers who do—and they’re outraged. Oranges have nothing to do with it.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Reader Dan Hollenbaugh writes:

Glenn, it’s distressing to see you climb on the bandwagon for federal pay cuts. I have 29 years of civil service. I’m an aerospace engineer at Redstone Arsenal. There are a few things I’d like to point out to help explain the numbers you’re quoting:

1. The federal government has no low-paying jobs. We don’t hire janitors or ditchdiggers or record clerks – all of that work is contracted out. With the rise of office automation, the GS-4 secretary positions have gone away too – we all do our own typing now. The clerical jobs have completely disappeared. Everybody on the payroll now is a professional of some type.

2. We’re paycapped. Nobody here can make more than a congressman’s official salary. A young professional in a large corporation has the chance to eventually make big bucks – those multimillion dollar salaries with bonuses and stock options that top executives make. That’s not possible for us. That’s what we gave up to get the security that civil service offers. The best we can hope for is a decent salary, never a high one. Would you take that from us too?

3. We went through long hiring freezes in the ’80s and ’90s. The result is that most of the engineers I work with are senior people in higher pay grades. There are very few engineers in the 30-45 age range. Senior people in any organization make larger salaries. The downside of that is that over 50% of the workforce is eligible for retirement within the next 10 years. You’ll see the average salary go way down then, but so will the experience level.

My annual pay is $150K, plus a decent benefits package. The guys with my skills and experience in aerospace firms make $200K and more, with comparable benefits packages. Once again, I went for the security, plus I’m serving the Army, the service I started in and love.

4. Finally, where the hell were all of you people in the ’80s, when I was making $22K a year as a young engineer, and federal salaries were well behind the civilian secto? I didn’t hear a lot of complaining about lack of fairness then.

Good points, but once you start class-envy politics, which the Dems have done, this kind of thing is inevitable. If a 250K income makes you one of the hated-rich, then a two-civil-servant household is pretty much there. And this blowback is perhaps fair, since federal employees tend to vote heavily Democratic. If people still believed in a neutral civil service, perhaps sentiment would be different. Meanwhile, the low-pay-for-security trade isn’t really there anymore, as federal employees now often make more, not less, than people in comparable private sector jobs where there’s also no security.

Meanwhile, reader Troy Hinrichs writes:

Regarding federal pay… not only do we make an “apples to self” comparison… we look at our men and women in the military — federal employees all — and realize they don’t make squat compared to bean counters living in Virginia. They really are public servants in myriad ways… I would support paying an E-7 120,000 a year over ANY EEOC compliance officer. Would that they could switch pay scales.

I think a lot of people feel that way.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Miller writes:

I’d agree, in part, with Mr Hollenbaugh’s comment. There are people in Federal government doing useful work that deserve to be compensated for it.

But…if we take him at his point that there are no low-level staff in Federal employment, how in Hell could government have gotten so large?

Perhaps it’s true that in his area a substantial percentage of the staff will retire in a decade, but when so much of the government has grown so explosively over the past decade that can’t be true everywhere. Which means that in a decade the engineers will be gone and the recently-fattened bureaucracies will be even more ascendant.

It’s part of Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. And Katie Kring emails:

Here’s an apples-to-apples comparison: I was, in a former life, a box office manager working in live theatre. I was working at a non-profit, and making $30k a year, which was a little on the low side, but in range. I had the opportunity to interview for a similar job, working at a city-run performing arts center, getting 3 weeks paid vacation plus something like 12 paid holidays, for $72k/year. Now, the cost of living in that other city was a bit higher, but nowhere near enough to justify the discrepancy. That’s not a federal job, but it pretty neatly illustrates the difference between rigidly scaled governmental pay and what-the-market-will-bear private pay. After all, I would have happily taken that job for, say, $55-60k!

Indeed.

BAD NEWS FOR OBAMA IN THE WASHINGTON POST: To be a great president, Obama should not seek reelection in 2012. “We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed.” (Reader Jeff Dobbs emails: “They told me that if I voted for John McCain there would be calls for the president to only serve one term. And they were right!“)

Related: The WaPo shivs The One. And the NYT isn’t exactly positive, either.

GET READY FOR THE GREAT MERS WHITEWASH BILL: “When Congress comes back into session next week, it may consider measures intended to bolster the legal status of a controversial bank owned electronic mortgage registration system that contains three out of every five mortgages in the country.”

FROM SARAH PALIN: An Open Letter to Republican Freshmen Members of Congress. “Republicans campaigned on a promise to rein in out-of-control government spending and to repeal and replace the massive, burdensome, and unwanted health care law President Obama and the Democrat Congress passed earlier this year in defiance of the will of the majority of the American people. These are promises that you must keep.”