MEGAN MCARDLE: Solyndra Was Just a Bad Bet From the Beginning. Do tell.

Related: ‘Solar Decathlon’ Sign Powered by Gas Generator. Heh.

HOPE AND CHANGE! The Amazing Decline in Deaths from Extreme Weather in an Era of Global Warming, 1900–2010.

SOLARGATE UPDATE: L.A. Times: Obama advisors raised warning flags before Solyndra bankruptcy. “Long before the politically connected California solar firm Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama was warned by his top economic advisors about the financial and political risks of the Energy Department loan guarantee program that boosted the company’s rapid ascent.”

BRITAIN: UK Labour Party wants journalism licenses, will prohibit “journalism” by people who are “struck off” the register of licensed journalists. “The UK Labour party’s conference is underway in Liverpool, and party bigwigs are presenting their proposals for reinvigorating Labour after its crushing defeat in the last election. The stupidest of these proposals to date will be presented today, when Ivan Lewis, the shadow culture secretary, will propose a licensing scheme for journalists through a professional body that will have the power to forbid people who breach its code of conduct from doing journalism in the future.”

I’d suggest that they read the Areopagitica, but they are undoubtedly both ignorant of, and contemptuous of, the English-speaking world’s long opposition to press licensing. But the fact that press censorship is part of their strategy after being defeated crushingly tells you a lot about both their connection to reality, and their core instincts.

UPDATE: Reader Patrick Lasswell emails that there’s a free Kindle edition of the Areopagitica. You can also get it from Project Gutenberg.

MAXINE WATERS: Obama Got “Carried Away” In Comments About Black Community.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) on Monday tried to downplay friction between the black community and President Obama but warned the president might have gotten “carried away” in remarks made over the weekend. Waters, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), appeared in a number of media interviews on Monday following Obama’s speech to the CBC Gala on Saturday, where the president told the audience to “stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying.”

Waters said that there was room for improvement in the relationship between the CBC and Obama. . . . She then noted that black lawmakers didn’t go on vacation during the August recess. “We were actually working during our break,” she said. Obama spent a week over the August recess in Martha’s Vineyard with his family.

Ouch.

TODAY ONLY: 16 GB Memory Card for $18.99.

CHUCK SIMMINS LOOKS AT POVERTY AND HEALTH INSURANCE:

Is a lack of health insurance in America a problem? According to Washington, it is. The Census Bureau has released the 2010 report on poverty in America. Table 8 on page 26 covers some of the data on those without health insurance. Here’s what caught my eye. . . .

792,000 people over age 65 have no insurance. Why not? Medicare is designed for that age group.

16.2 million people earning less than $25,000 per year have no health insurance. Why not? Medicaid is designed for low income folks. 28.5 percent of those uninsured did not work at least one week in 2010, again the people Medicaid was designed for.

2.6 million calling themselves “disabled” have no insurance. Why not? Both Medicare and Medicaid are available to those folks.

Table 10 on page 29 shows the breakdown by type of plan. 14.5% of Americans were on Medicare and 15.9% on Medicaid.

9.5 million people earn $75,000 a year or more and have no health insurance. It’s just an assumption, but shouldn’t many of those people be able to afford coverage IF THEY WANT IT?

49,904,000
less non-citizens 9,667,000
less half of those eligible for Medis 8,479,000
less top earners 9,473,000
= 22,285,000

Over half of those that the Census Bureau reports as without health insurance coverage are eligible for coverage and don’t have it or don’t want it, or are non-citizens. Do we have a health insurance coverage problem in America?

If we do, it’s a lot smaller than advertised.

A KITCHEN BLOG: Cooking In Clarendon.

THE ANSWER IS YES: James Pethokoukis: Did Obama Make It Worse? “Republicans have a competing argument. Instead of saving us from a Greater Depression, the Obama stimulus (together with his health-care plan and financial reforms) was a two-year waste of precious time and money that may actually have impeded economic growth. The evidence for their proposition comes in part from the White House itself; its own economists predicted the stimulus would prevent the unemployment rate from hitting 8 percent. But the rate actually rose as high as 10.1 percent, has settled in above 9 percent now, and even Obama’s own team currently hopes for a rate of, at best, 8.25 percent by the end of 2012—if nothing else goes wrong.”

ROGER SIMON STANDS UP TO RACISM: Disband the Congressional Black Caucus.

LIBEL PROBLEMS for Random House?

NOTHING CREEPY HERE: Morgan Freeman Free To Marry Step-Granddaughter.

MAXED-OUT OBAMA DONOR is sick of Obama’s class-warfare rhetoric. “This is a bad move all designed by some pollster who said this is the way to get votes during the re-election. It should be stopped. We should be healing and creating teams NOT dividing and pitting people against one another.”

LOTS MORE STUFF ADDED to Amazon Prime’s free instant video.

TEN WAYS TO MAKE YOUR OLD CAR FEEL NEW. When I took the Toyota in for its 100,000 mile service I had ’em detail the interior. It cost $97 and made it feel like a new car. Money well spent.

VIDEO: Hitler Learns That Attackwatch.com is a joke. “We had the power to define the narrative and feed it to the masses, but everyone is laughing at us! . . . You probably secretly support Israel, too!”

WELL, I CAN’T REALLY DEFEND POLITICO HERE — Omitting Herman Cain from report on GOP field was “racist.”

DEAL STRUCK to avert government shutdown.

MORE ON THAT EXPANDING ATF GUN-SMUGGLING SCANDAL: Gunwalker: ATF Walked Guns Directly to Cartel Using Taxpayer Dollars. “The allegation that the purpose of Operation Fast and Furious was a plot to inject weapons of American dealer origin into the near civil war between the Mexican government and drug cartels is utterly consistent with previously revelations about the conspiracy. The stated cover story for Operation Fast and Furious and alleged parallel Gunwalker plots in Houston, Dallas, and Tampa never made sense and would have been shot down by risk-averse bureaucrats before it even became a formal proposal.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Hallmark Rolls Out New Line of “Layoff” Cards. “With unemployment the way it is, there’s a new way to reach out to someone who may have lost their job. There are now sad but timely messages written on Hallmarks’ layoff and recession greeting cards. . . . Hallmark recently rolled out a new line of layoff greeting cards – a specific section for job loss and recession humor – offering words of support and encouragement. With the unemployment rate at 9 percent, the company says customers called-in the need.”

UNDERWATER NEWS: Divers Set Sights On Silver-Laden WWII Ship. “In 1941, a Nazi torpedo tore a hole in a British merchant ship carrying a fortune in silver to England from India. The ship was part of a convoy headed for Liverpool, but it went down about 300 miles southwest of Ireland, disappearing in icy waters nearly three miles deep, deeper than the resting place of the Titanic. Now, divers say they have found the wreck intact and they estimate its cargo at up to 240 tons of silver — a trove worth more than $200 million. They plan to recover it this spring. The recovery, if successful, would be history’s deepest and largest retrieval of a precious cargo lost at sea and highlight the growing power of ocean technology.” Read the whole thing.

SCIENCE, ARMY-OF-DAVIDS STYLE: From the Comfort of Home, Web Users May Have Found New Planets.

WHAT WERE THE CHANCES that you would be born?

THE COLLEGES’ lost love of film.

SHOCK SCIENCE: Study Shows Men & Women View Infidelity Differently.