MARK TAPSCOTT: If demographics are destiny, 2012 could be big. Plus: “With Texas Gov. Rick Perry now the front-runner in several national polls for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, others in the mainstream media are just now beginning to report on and assess the facts about how Texas compares with other states, including California.”

WALTER OLSON: Devil’s Bargain: Wall St. And The Martin Act.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Perils Of Price Controls.

REPORT: Rick Perry at the VFW. “Perry and his advisers are drinking from the proverbial fire hose right now. They have to find advance men, fund-raisers, organizers and attend to a million details. But if he is going to dispel the idea that he is light in the policy department he’ll have to, well, show he’s not light in the policy department. That means setting out at least some general foreign policy views, for example, on Iran, the Russian reset, Hugo Chavez, China, Cuba and human rights.”

SUPERVILLAIN TO THE RESCUE: Steve Postrel emails:

Step 1 of my supervillain plan to save the US space program is now complete. Step 2 is to sabotage the follow-on Russian tests. Step 3 is to get NASA to evacuate the ISS. Step 4 is to blow the orbiting cash sump out of the sky with my “laser.” Step 5 is to bribe the Congress to divert all the funds that used to go into the space RV into a prize fund for private operators to go to the moon, asteroids, and Mars.

Bwa-ha-ha!

So far, so good.

CHANGE: Presidential Candidate Gov. Gary Johnson: Cut Federal Spending by 43% – and Cut Social Issues From GOP Agenda. Works for me.

HURRICANES AND post-traumatic stress.

LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT: Tim Cavanaugh on the rise of the “Unemployees.”

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: What If Obama Were Governor Of Texas?

For anyone having trouble imagining Rick Perry replacing Barack Obama as America’s president, imagine if Barack Obama had replaced Rick Perry as governor of Texas.

Both Obama and Perry inherited an economy from George W. Bush, but here’s what happened in each case:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), under Obama, 2.4-million jobs have been lost in America.

In the first decade of Perry’s tenure, from June 2000 to June 2010, the BLS says that Texas had a net gain of 907,000 jobs—the best record in the country. . . . Since Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, unemployment nationwide has gone from 7.6 percent to 9.1 percent. The current unemployment rate in Texas with Perry as governor is 8.2 percent.

During the past seven years, CEOs polled by Chief Executive magazine have rated Texas first in the nation in business development and job growth. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that in 2010, Texas’ economy grew 5.3 percent versus 3.8 percent for the overall U.S. economy.

You can be sure that if Obama were Governor of Texas, Texas would get better press, regardless.

ANDREW BREITBART: How Obama Lost His Presidency In August, 2009.

POLL: 57% of Americans Think Spending Cuts Will Help The Economy. Plus this: “Nearly 69 percent of taxpayers expect their taxes to go up in the next five years and 62 percent think Congress will spend tax increases on new programs instead of paying down debt.” Well, that’s certainly been the pattern.

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Gibson Guitar Saga Gets Steadily Curiouser.

POLL: One In Four Democrats Wants To Dump Obama.

DISCUSSION: Politics And The University. Note the defensive crouch.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Germany Dims Nuclear Plants, But Hopes To Keep Lights On.

WHITE HOUSE: Obama Still Hasn’t Finished His Jobs Plan. “He is still having conversations and meetings and looks to finalize his plan, so the answer is no, he’s not complete with that process.”

THE NEW GENERATION of Microbe Hunters.

CHANGE: House GOP announces jobs plan focused on cutting regs and taxes.

THE I.R.S. LOSES TO A DEAD MAN: Enron’s Ken Lay Wins Posthumous $3.9 Million Tax Court Victory. To be fair, a dead man who was really good with accounting . . . .

IS IT PARENTAL NEGLECT to let your kid bike to school?

JACKBOOTS IN WISCONSIN: “Despite (or perhaps because of) their failed effort to retake the Wisconsin state senate through recall elections, pro-union activists continue to prove that there is no level they won’t stoop to in their campaign of agitation against Gov. Scott Walker. . . . As it turns out, those very reforms are already paying dividends. But that is entirely beside the point as far as Walker’s opponents are concerned. Already this year, union activists have led jeering, zombie-themed protests at a Special Olympics rally and vandalized a Catholic elementary school as Walker read Dr. Suess to children inside. Most recently, the anti-Walker folk seem to have fallen back on a popular, albeit less creative tack, an old favorite among liberal activists: calling your opponents Nazis.”

WHEN DID IRENE stop being a hurricane? “On Sunday morning Anderson Cooper of CNN was asking about the strong winds that were being forecast and this brings up something that has really bothered me about the storm: there is really no reliable evidence of hurricane-force winds at any time the storm was approaching North Carolina or moving up the East Coast.”

BRENDAN LOY GOES DORMANT AS “WEATHER NERD” until the next big storm.

MORE THOUGHTS ON affirmative action for ugly people.

STACY MCCAIN: My video was ripped off! “Some vicious monster ripped off my video and edited it, so that when Bachmann begins by jokingly asking the crowd, ‘Who likes wet people?’ — because everybody was soaked to the bone, including me — instead there is a caption, ‘Who likes white people?’ . . . Now, who do I sue for copyright infringement, piracy and fraud?” Everybody in sight, Stacy. Everybody in sight.

More here: No, Bachmann did not ask a crowd, ‘Who likes white people?’

This is a sign of desperation, though.