JENNIFER RUBIN: Not so fast on trying to narrow the 2012 Presidential field. Read the whole thing, which is full of good advice. Let the primaries do the winnowing.

Meanwhile, I’d note too that it’s a mistake to get too distracted by Presidential politics. Here in Tennessee, for example, our new governor, Bill Haslam, is a competent country-club Republican, but no Tea Party type. Nonetheless, the big news is that the legislature has gone Republican. That was a much bigger deal than the gubernatorial election, even though it was harder to see while it was happening. For what it’s worth, my advice to Tea Party activists would be to focus on Congressional elections now, and worry about Presidential politics later.

PENETRATION: The Obama hair-dye story has reached the women’s / style websites like The Frisky and StyleList. And I think it all started with an observation by Ann Althouse.

JACK LALANNE dies at age 96.

FORBES: DO WE NEED A DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY OR A TSA? No. Next question?

BEWARE OF BUREAUCRATS BEARING GIFTS: When a bureaucrat calls for accountability, it means he has found a way to game the system.

AT AMAZON, markdowns in kitchen and dining.

OLBERMANN’S SNIT:

I don’t begrudge Olbermann wanting more money, even though I thought he was wildly overpaid. If you think you can fetch a better price from a giant corporation for your low-rated show, why not go for it? Of course, putting your “greed” ahead of the cause you consider yourself vital to is a nice bit of hypocrisy for a prog like Olbermann.

But letting your staff sit in the dark until they hear the news on air, strikes me as precisely the sort of thing you’d expect from a self-involved jerk.

Indeed.

SO, HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” GOING? “Chinese Pianist Plays Propaganda Tune at White House: US humiliated in eyes of Chinese by song used to inspire anti-Americanism.” This seems like quite an expression of contempt toward one’s hosts. It’s certainly quite a slap in the face to Obama, and a demonstration that our State Department remains not ready for primetime. On the other hand, it should remove any shreds of guilt I might otherwise feel when China dissolves into civil war after we default on our bonds. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Aaron Krol counsels caution: “I did a little digging on the story about the Chinese pianist
allegedly playing an anti-American propaganda piece at the White House. It looks like the original source of this story is the Epoch Times, which according to Wikipedia is a Falun Gong outfit. The story may or may not be true, I don’t know, but the source does have an agenda given their persecution by the Chinese government.”

Well, the only pushback I’ve seen is the claim in the NYT that it was unintentional. I’m skeptical about that.

WHO’S HURT BY FEDERAL BUDGET CUTS?

The federal employee unions gave nearly $5 million to Democratic House and Senate candidates between 2001 and the 2010 campaign, according to data cited by MAPLight from the Center for Responsive Politics compared to just over $1 million to Republicans.

In other words, Democrats got 82 percent of the campaign cash contributed by federal employee unions.

MAPLight points to another interesting aspect of this question, noting that contributions from defense industry firms are almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, though with a slight tilt in favor of the latter.

Since 2001, defense firms contributed more than $23.5 million to Republican incumbents, compared to just over $21.2 million to Democrats, a 52-47 percent division between the two parties.

Defense industry contributions are not infrequently assumed to be tilted very much in favor of Republicans who consistently more solidly in favor of bigger defense budgets than do Democrats.

We need these cuts to avoid bankruptcy. Somebody needs to remind the cuttees of all that “shared sacrifice” talk from before the election.

NORM AUGUSTINE: America Is Losing Its Edge In Innovation.

In fact, scientists and engineers are celebrities in most countries. They’re not seen as geeks or misfits, as they too often are in the U.S., but rather as society’s leaders and innovators. In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers. In the U.S., almost no engineers or scientists are engaged in high-level politics, and there is a virtual absence of engineers in our public policy debates.

Why does this matter? Because if American students have a negative impression – or no impression at all – of science and engineering, then they’re hardly likely to choose them as professions. Already, 70% of engineers with PhD’s who graduate from U.S. universities are foreign-born. Increasingly, these talented individuals are not staying in the U.S – instead, they’re returning home, where they find greater opportunities. . . .

Global leadership is not a birthright. Despite what many Americans believe, our nation does not possess an innate knack for greatness. Greatness must be worked for and won by each new generation. Right now that is not happening. But we still have time.

Read the whole thing.

THE MAINE VERSION OF A PRANK: “Instead of vandalizing his house when he wasn’t home, we shoveled his driveway.”

AT AMAZON, up to 60% off on men’s and women’s boots.

“SIMPLY INDEFENSIBLE:” Dave Hardy on the District Court’s denial of attorney’s fees in the McDonald case. Hey, can’t encourage those damn gun nuts with civil rights attorney’s fees. They might bring more lawsuits for those damn “civil rights” of theirs. Judge Milton Shadur is looking a bit petty here.

COMING THIS WEEK FROM TYLER COWEN: The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better. “In a figurative sense, the American economy has enjoyed lots of low-hanging fruit since at least the seventeenth century: free land; immigrant labor; and powerful new technologies. Yet during the last forty years, that low-hanging fruit started disappearing and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau and the trees are barer than we would like to think. That’s it. That is what has gone wrong.The problem won’t be solved overnight, but there are reasons to be optimistic. We simply have to recognize the underlying causes of our past prosperity—low hanging fruit—and how we will come upon more of it.”

WHEN FOUL becomes fair.

AT OAK RIDGE, double dismantlement milestones. Since I’m pretty sure I’m less than nine megatons away from Oak Ridge National Lab, I’m happy to hear of this.

HMM: Twitter and Facebook don’t connect people – they isolate them from reality, say a rising number of academics. That hasn’t been my experience. I had some related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Reader Bob Hicks writes: “Aren’t academics more in danger of being isolated from reality?” Yes.

MAURICE STUCKE: Lessons From The Financial Crisis.

IN THE MAIL: Drowning in Oil: BP & the Reckless Pursuit of Profit.

SHOULD YOU GET a Verizon iPhone 4? Here’s something I didn’t know: “The Verizon iPhone will act as a five device mobile hotspot.” That’s handy.

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: “It seems Glenn Back, by accurately quoting Francis Fox Piven, has gored the Ruling Class ox again. Professor Piven wrote, and The Nation published, an article calling for violent, angry protest. . . . Beck and The Blaze have publicized the piece . . . The reaction in the Times? Why obviously, to accuse Beck of fomenting threats against Piven.” If you don’t want your inflammatory statements publicized, perhaps you should think before making them? But Piven’s stuck in the old world, where selective media attention would have ensured that inflammatory statements made in The Nation wouldn’t have received national exposure. It doesn’t work that way any more.

UPDATE: Here’s a flashback on Piven’s call for violent riots.

And, just so people are clear, here’s what those Greek riots she was calling for Americans to emulate looked like:

At the same time, tens of thousands of protesters marched through Athens in the largest and most violent protests since the country’s budget crisis began last fall. Angry youths rampaged through the center of Athens, torching several businesses and vehicles and smashing shop windows. Protesters and police clashed in front of parliament and fought running street battles around the city.

Witnesses said hooded protesters smashed the front window of Marfin Bank in central Athens and hurled a Molotov cocktail inside. The three victims died from asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, the Athens coroner’s office said. Four others were seriously injured there, fire department officials said.

Praising riots involving Molotov cocktails and people burning to death? Fine. Criticizing a lefty on a cable TV network? Why that’s “hatemongering” and incitement.

REMINDER: A quote from Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

Related: Post-tax-increase, the exodus from Illinois begins.

Also: America’s Dying Cities: “In several dozen cities nationwide, the population actually declined significantly as residents presumably began to flee the region’s toxic financial atmosphere, or perhaps in some cases, even held off on having kids due to a lack of resources.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: IGNORE OBAMA’S SPEECH:

We all know what is coming in 2012 — the most well-financed, Wall Street-subsidized, vitriolic camping in modern memory, in which Obama’s rivals will be metaphorically reduced to caricatures of racist, selfish, and cruel nativists. The 2011 Tucson speech will have about as much resonance with Obama’s impending campaign style as the 2004 oration affected his 2004-9 political behavior. . . .

And finally, why not an iota of presidential follow-up when in nanoseconds Obama’s own progressive supporters returned to form and took up the old successful hate tropes? Rep. Cohen (D-TN) was soon comparing conservative opponents to Nazis in their Goebbels-like propaganda that likewise would, we were to believe, result in a Holocaust-like denial of basic human compassion. Columnists in Slate were back to the old Jonathan Chait-style (“I hate George Bush. There, I said it”) of declaring their unabashed loathing for political opponents (“Why I Loathe my Connecticut Senator”). All that was left was the reemergence from his Atlanta peace center of a smiling Jimmy Carter, quoting scripture as he might yet again remind us that the elder Bush was “effeminate,” Vice President Cheney was a “militant,” the younger Bush was the “worst” president, and Israel is an “apartheid” state.

Running dogs, I think they used to call them.

TODAY ONLY: An exercise bike sale.

THE GREAT 2010 CASHOUT: Evan Bayh becomes a hedge-fund lobbyist. Sometimes I get the feeling that our political class sees things unraveling and is trying to grab what it can, while it can. Of course, it’s pretty hard to tell that from simple unrestrained greed. . . .