THE UNITED NATIONS of Ulysses.

MASHUP: Mike Stopa vs. Obama. Boy, don’t those old Obama-kids videos look impossibly dated already . . . .

ANATOMY of a post. Oh, there’s some anatomy involved, all right.

JAMES PETHOKOUIS: Did Goldman Sachs Just Throw Cold Water On Dems’ 2010 Election Hopes?

HOW TO GET EMPLOYMENT IN TOUGH TIMES: The best way to land a job during President Obama’s tough economic recession is to declare your intention to run against incumbent Democratic Senators in 2010 or 2012.

WHEN GOVERNMENTS ARE DESPERATE, THEY TURN TO CAPITALISM: North Korea Turns To Private Markets In Effort To Avert Second Famine. That’s because it works.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

FROM THE CRACK EMCEE, more advice to Millennials.

SEEING IMPOSTORS: When loved ones suddenly aren’t. “Capgras delusion can be brought about by a variety of conditions — changes in brain chemistry associated with different mental illnesses, or physical trauma to the brain — but the delusion always involves the distinct feeling that the people around you have been replaced by impostors. While they may look and act just like the real person, some essence of the person is missing, almost as though ‘the soul of the person isn’t in there,’ Berman says.”

ALEX LIGHTMAN ON FACEBOOK: ” Just got off the phone with someone who has video footage of the ‘cleanup ops’. He says there is not much actual clean up happening, just enough for a show. Let me say it first: Potemkin cleanup.”

Judging by the polls, it’s not fooling anyone.

UPDATE: More bad-news polling here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more: “Gallup is out with a new poll finding that by a 51 percent to 46 percent margin, Americans don’t believe President Obama deserves to be re-elected.”

SCOTT ROSENBERG: Why Can’t Journalists Handle Public Criticism? “Surely they, of all professionals, ought to be able to take what they readily dish out. . . . Unfortunately, this means that the typical blogger has more experience dealing with criticism — measuring a reasonable response, managing trolls and restraining the urge to flame — than the typical newsroom journalist.”

KEITH HENNESSEY: How To Waive The Jones Act. If you work in the White House, you may want to read this . . . .

DAVID BRIN: Graduating? Things Every College Freshman Should Know.

THE ECONOMIST GOES AFTER “VLADIMIR OBAMA:”

For several reasons. The vitriol has a xenophobic edge: witness the venomous references to “British Petroleum”, a name BP dropped in 1998 (just as well that it dispensed with the name Anglo-Iranian Oil Company even longer ago). Vilifying BP also gets in the way of identifying other culprits, one of which is the government. BP operates in one of the most regulated industries on earth with some of the most perverse rules, subsidies and incentives. Shoddy oversight clearly contributed to the spill, and an energy policy which reduced the demand for oil would do more to avert future environmental horrors than fierce retribution.

Mr Obama is not the socialist the right claims he is (see article). He went out of his way, meeting BP executives on June 16th, to insist that he has no interest in undermining the company’s financial stability. But his reaction is cementing business leaders’ impression that he is indifferent to their concerns. If he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about, upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he has not said so. The collapse in BP’s share price suggests that he has convinced the markets that he is an American version of Vladimir Putin, willing to harry firms into doing his bidding.

Nobody should underestimate the scale of BP’s mistake, nor the damage that it has caused. But if the president does not stand up for due process, he will frighten investors across the board. The damage to America’s environment is bad enough. The president risks damaging its economy too.

Ouch. The Brits are not happy. Read the whole thing.

TAKING THE FALL: BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward was relieved from duties today.

TEXAS VS. CALIFORNIA: Who’s Moving Where?

ASTRONOMY REBOOTED: “Crowd Science” Reaches New Heights. “Today, data sharing in astronomy isn’t just among professors. Amateurs are invited into the data sets through friendly Web interfaces, and a schoolteacher in Holland recently made a major discovery, of an unusual gas cloud that might help explain the life cycle of quasars—bright centers of distant galaxies—after spending part of her summer vacation gazing at the objects on her computer screen.” Gosh, somebody should write a book on this phenomenon or something.

FEED THE “WATCHDOGS” WELL and they’ll go to sleep. “There are strict rules for White House and administration staffers about the acceptance of gifts, particularly from foreigners. There are rules in Congress, too, that apply to Schock. As far as the journalists are concerned, there is in some media circles a growing concern about the appearance of coziness between Obama administration figures and some in the press. The al Otaiba dinner will not do anything to diminish that.”

BARB AND HELEN take a romp in the Batcave.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Gwyneth Paltrow no-sun rule backfires.

SOLAR ROADWAYS: Paving roads with solar panels you can drive on.

WHAT’S THE BEST BLOGGING PLATFORM? I’ve used Blogger, Movable Type, and WordPress. They’re all more similar than different, though I found Movable Type more esthetically pleasing for some reason.

COMMERCIAL SPACE UPDATE: SpaceX Signs Biggest Commercial Launch Deal Ever. Not sure this is true if you count Delta or Titan as “commercial,” but . . . .

NRO: Did Elena Kagan Compare the NRA to the KKK? That would be most injudicious.

COMING IN 2012, a VW Jetta hybrid. But will it get better mileage than a Jetta TDI?