IN THE MAIL: From Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.

9,500 “PRIORITY CUSTOMERS” have already reserved a Nissan Leaf.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Palin In The Mainstream. “As I listened to the speech, I was struck by how Palin’s positions are widely shared. She opposes the health care law — so does the public. She’s concerned about the federal deficit — so is the public (see question 10b). She supports the Arizona illegal immigration law — so does the public. She supports the right to life — and the public is moving toward her. She supports the Afghanistan surge and the current course in Iraq — both Obama administration policies.”

ROGER SIMON: “Goin’ to Chicago”… for the Climate Conference.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON CLIMATEGATE: Global Green Meltdown Gains Momentum. “We trust the experts less and less, but they keep coming to us for money. . . . Experts armed with computer models are just guessing: that is the corrosive message coming out of the economic and political turmoil that has engulfed the world economy in the last three years. Look for the populist backlash to grow, and look for the global climate treaty to be one of its victims.”

THE BATTLE for the Internet.

JUSTIN HIGGINS: A Need to Connect With Those Society Forgets. Sometimes, they don’t want to be connected with, though.

MICHAEL YON IS COVERING THE TURMOIL IN THAILAND and posting frequent updates on Facebook. He emails: “Possible civil war breaking out. Kind of surreal. (Much of the fighting is happening right outside my hotel.) About 16 were killed yesterday with about another 140 wounded. It’s a no-kidding fight.”

UPDATE: More blogging on Thailand here.

IT MOVED LEFT, HEMORRHAGED VIEWERS, and now Law & Order has been cancelled. Along with a bunch of other shows.

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Looming Obama Debt Disaster. “Under the Obama administration’s current fiscal plans, the national debt in the US (on a gross basis) will climb to above 100pc of GDP by 2015 – a far steeper increase than almost any other country.”

MICHAEL BARONE ON UTAH: Bob Bennett’s defeat in last Saturday’s Republican primary might be the beginning of a national trend:

What riled Utah Republicans against Bob Bennett? One complaint was that he sponsored a health-care bill with Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden to eliminate the tax preference for employer-provided health insurance and subsidize premiums. The party activists and tea partiers who thronged to the state party convention evidently have little appetite for bipartisan initiatives—even those that might have saved the republic from what they regard as the ravages of ObamaCare. More important, apparently, was Mr. Bennett’s vote for the Troubled Asset Relief Program in September 2008. This was the kind of emergency legislation politicians expect to be unpopular but most regard as essential. Such bills tend to pass with the votes of members of both parties with safe seats. But sometimes those seats prove not to be so safe. Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss was nearly beaten in 2008 after voting for TARP. And now TARP seems to have ended the Senate career of Bob Bennett. . . .

If you move across the country, from the desert-like landscape where the Wasatch Mountains look out on the Great Salt Lake to the green trees in the hills and hollows of northern West Virginia, you find another defeated incumbent. Democrat Alan Mollohan was first elected to represent the 1st congressional district of West Virginia in 1982. His father was elected to represent the district nine times—in 1952 and 1954, and again from 1968 to 1980.

But 46 years of representation by the Mollohan family were rewarded with only 44% of the votes in last Tuesday’s Democratic primary. State Senator Mike Oliverio, who opposed the Democrats’ health-care bill, won 56%, carrying 14 of the district’s 20 counties.

Mr. Mollohan has been accused of using his senior position on the Appropriations Committee to earmark spending in ways that benefited him and his family—obviously a political liability. But he was also attacked for not strongly opposing the Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill—unpopular in coal-dependent West Virginia—and for voting for the health-care bill after stating that he would not do so if it funded abortions.

I think that there are no longer any truly safe seats, and that the old-style political games aimed at fooling, or at least pacifying, the voters back home don’t work as well as they used to.

Barone concludes: “How many overdogs are in trouble? Probably more than those who currently think so.”

KAGAN UPDATE: Miguel Estrada Writes in Support of Elena Kagan’s Confirmation.

STEPHEN GREEN:

Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed $12.4 billon in cuts to California’s budget would reduce state spending to levels unseen since… 2008!

Surely, Californians were suffering a from a dearth of government all those years ago.

Heh.

JOHN FUND: A Republican Revival In Massachusetts?

NOTED FINGER-POINTER tired of all the finger-pointing. Tough. There’ll be much, much more of it to come, and the fingers will be pointing at you.

CHANGE: Ron Kind (D-WI-3) Wants The Government To Track How Much Your Daughter Weighs.

Plus, shocking obesity photos.

OUCH.

POLANSKI never stopped.

FEARS GROW over weaker Euro.

UH OH: Euro Breakup Talk Increases as Germany Loses Proxy.

OH, GOODY: Outlook for Global Economy Is “Bleak,” Former IMF Chief Economist Says.

PHOTOS FROM THE CINCINNATI TEA PARTY’S ONGOING Read The Bill Marathon, in which the ObamaCare bill is being read out loud by volunteers, over a period of days.

WHAT ARIZONA’S ETHNIC STUDIES STUDENTS are reading.

TEA PARTY TV: Dana Loesch: This Week In Tea.

HOW TO MAKE VISA fulfill your every desire.