FAILURE: Lawyers And Landmines.

LOOKING FOR WAR ON TERROR NEWS? Check out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg.

JEFFREY CROWLEY, Obama’s Part-Time AIDS Czar.

LINDSEY GRAHAM reaches out to Tea Party.

POLITICS AND PARENTING: “Obama was never seriously criticized for running—hard—for public office, often while holding down yet another public office, while his girls were little. People assume this is what male politicians do. . . . So there is clearly a double standard if Sarah Palin is to be called out for outsourcing some parenting responsibility even as she assembles her kids on stage. I don’t think there is any question that female politicians are judged more harshly for letting their careers create ‘distance’ between them and their children. Conversely, that Todd Palin’s hands-on caregiving could be seen as negative would be like criticizing Michelle Obama for picking up the parenting slack.”

FIREARMS NEWS at the Camo Underground.

7 WAYS TO PREPARE FOR AN EARTHQUAKE.

KRUISER CONTROL: The Delusional Dynamic Duo: Olbermann’s Revisionist Histrionics & Matthews’ Pluperfect Love of Obama.

Also check out the PJTV Report for a roundup of programming.

ILYA SOMIN: Errors In Jane Mayer’s New Yorker Article Attacking the Kochs.

The thing to understand is, this article isn’t about the Kochs at all. It’s about preparing a narrative for the New Yorker’s readers about why Obama has failed. It’s not because they were rubes who voted for an underprepared, under-skilled candidate who then proceeded to alienate the electorate. It’s because Obama was beaten by a right-wing billionaires’ conspiracy so vast as to defy understanding. That’s all. Relax, New Yorker readers. No need to feel bad about yourself for being overwhelmed with hope-and-change fever and voting stupidly. It’s not your fault. It never is!

KITCARS OF YESTERYEAR: The King Midget.

KIDS PROVE THEY’RE MoonBot Masters.

A COOL NEW MARS IMAGE GALLERY.

MICHAEL CANNON: “National Journal still describes ObamaCare as ‘reform,’ which I submit compromises objectivity. But this is progress. Kudos to them.”

APPLE TV: Greatly Improved, Still Unfinished. “Netflix, Fox, ABC, $0.99 shows, and streaming from iOS devices: Yes, Apple TV just got desirable. But even with the upgrade, there is much room for improvement. Here is how it could get even better.”

PETER WEHNER: DEFINING RECOVERY DOWN. And down, and down . . . . “For one thing, the so-called underemployment rate, which includes workers who are working part-time but who want full-time work, increased from 16.5 percent to 16.7 percent. During our supposed ‘Recovery Summer,’ we have lost 283,000 jobs (54,000 in June, 171,000 in July, and 54,000 in August). And for August, the employment-population ratio — the percentage of Americans with jobs — was 58.5 percent. We haven’t seen figures this low in nearly three decades.”

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

REVOLT OF THE BOURGEOIS:

The much-analyzed speeches at the Glenn Beck Lincoln Memorial rally weren’t as notable as what the estimated 300,000 attendees did: follow instructions, listen quietly to hours of speeches, and throw out their trash.

Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them. This was the revolt of the bourgeois, of the responsible, of the orderly, of people profoundly at peace with the traditional mores of American society. The spark that lit the tea-party movement was the rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who inveighed in early 2009 against an Obama-administration program to subsidize “the losers’ mortgages.” He was speaking for people who hadn’t borrowed beyond their means or tried to get rich quick by flipping houses, for the people who, in their thrift and enterprise, “carry the water instead of drink the water.”

The tea party’s detractors want to paint it as radical, when at bottom it represents the self-reliant, industrious heart of American life.

That’s what some people find so scary.

AIRPLANES AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS shrink optimum city size.

MAD MEN DISCOVER the laptop computer.

STUDY: Diesels Cleaner Than Electrics Over Lifetime.

UNEMPLOYMENT: “The jobs lost in the 2000-2001 recession don’t seem to have ever come back. The percentage of people in the workforce stabilized, but never recovered. This time, it looks like the re-employment picture will be even worse. . . . The Boomers are not retiring. Their workforce participation rate is well above forecast. Have you looked at your 401(k)?” Understandable, but of course that means fewer new jobs will open up.

Plus, from the comments: “The USA is increasingly not a good place to do business. We need a stiff broom. I worry that the GOP won’t do what it takes.” So do I. I was on Hugh Hewitt’s show last night, and he said that when he talks to Beltway GOP insiders he’s amazed at how out of touch they are. They’re not even sure about passing a ban on earmarks if they take the majority, much less more significant change. If they get the majority back, and blow it, they’ll be looking at a third-party challenge in 2012, and not just at the Presidential level.

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST on the “personal activity monitor,” reader Robert Cheatham writes with a good suggestion: “Why isn’t this a smartphone app? $5 or $10 instead of $100 and one less thing to carry around. Glenn, get your readers on it!” Yeah, pretty much all the smartphones have accelerometers you can access via apps, so that should work.

HEY, KNOXVILLIANS: If you’re attending the Tennessee Valley Fair, stop by Doug Weinstein’s booth. You’ll be able to meet a legendary Knoxville lawyer, diver, and blogger. He might even be persuaded to autograph something.

FOR LAW STUDENTS: Cut Your Losses, or Finish Law School? An ATL Debate.

IN THE FUTURE, everyone will be George Costanza for 15 minutes.