AT AMAZON, end-of-season markdowns on patio furniture and accessories.

DAN MITCHELL: Warren Buffett’s Fiscal Innumeracy. “Buffett goes beyond guilt-ridden rants in favor of higher taxes. He makes specific assertions that are inaccurate.” I think he’s more disingenuous than innumerate. . . .

UPDATE: The Real Reason Warren Buffett’s Taxes Are Low.

Related: A Modest Economic Proposal: Eat Hollywood. Shared sacrifice, baby! Maybe we need a special excise tax on fractional-ownership schemes involving jets, too . . . .

Also: Why Warren Buffett Likes The Estate Tax. It’s like he’s shilling for his own narrow interests to a gullible press.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Arnold Kling weighs in: “His prescription is to raise taxes on capital income, otherwise known as savings. He is totally wrong about this. Editorial pages should stop coddling him by running his op-eds. The statistic I would like to see is the amount of tax paid relative to consumption. By that measure, it is possible that Buffett’s tax rate was more than 100 percent.”

A. BARTON HINKLE: Riot Act: The media demonizes the Tea Party while making excuses for the British rioters. “So far, none of those who called peaceful Tea Party activists terrorists have flung the same accusation at the British rioters who have inflicted genuine terror. Interesting.”

Well, that sort of blatant dishonesty about rioting is nothing new: “I am on the streets getting attacked. Someone next to me just got hit. I am writing memos and what comes out in the paper? ‘Hasidim and blacks clashed’? That’s not what is happening here. Jews are being attacked! You’ve got this story all wrong. All wrong.” Remember, it’s all about the narrative.

DANIEL INDIVIGLIO: The Catch-22 Recovery: We Need to Keep Gas Prices Low. “Since May, the U.S. economy has struggled. From May through July, just 72,000 new jobs per month were created on average. Yet February through April averaged 215,000 per month. What killed the promising progress we were seeing earlier this year? A couple of factors are often blamed, but the biggest problem was rising gas prices.”

Gee, then maybe the Administration might try encouraging more production or something? Instead of pursuing policies designed to make fuel prices skyrocket.

ASTRONAUT PHOTOGRAPHS PERSEID METEOR, from space. Very cool pic, giving me minor flashbacks to Lucifer’s Hammer. Only minor ones, happily. . . .

PAUL KRUGMAN: For a real stimulus, what we need is an invasion by space aliens. Somebody send him a copy of one of John Ringo’s Posleen novels. Though my real question regarding the Posleen is a variation on “what do they eat when they can’t get hobbit?”

I’VE UPLOADED A NEW, AND MERCIFULLY BRIEF, PAPER ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Second Amendment Penumbras: Some Preliminary Observations. This is just a draft, but you may find it interesting. And since it is just a draft, if you’ve got any comments, feel free to email ’em.

FRIENDSHIP: The importance of showing up.

JAMES LILEKS ON SMART VS. STUPID: “Remember: it’s not wise to buy jeans that cost $285. It’s stupid. And they’re admitting as much. For that, I’ll give them credit. Pretty smart.”

SUSANNAH BRESLIN: How Feminism Became A Joke. “Feminism was always based on the idea that women have it harder than men. These days, people just aren’t buying it. The stock market has gone haywire, unemployment is endemic, and some women are beginning to see that feminism’s segregationist, mollycoddling politics have done more harm than good.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Democrat donor gets federal health policy slot despite conflicts of interest. “A federal committee that includes a major donor to President Obama and whose company stands to profit from the panel’s recommendations holds in its hands the future of health information technology policy. Judith Faulkner, founder and CEO of Epic Systems Corp., secured a seat on a panel charged with recommending how $19 billion in stimulus money dedicated to health IT be spent.”

SPACE ELEVATOR UPDATE: Space Elevator Enthusiasts Face Unanswered Questions.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “How are we to make sense of flash mobbing, the London rioting, more hatred expressed for the Tea Party, more calls for ever more debt and spending, and Barack Obama’s dive below 40% approval in the polls? Let me backtrack a bit. . . . As we saw last week in Britain and in some American cities, liberal redistributionism makes far worse the innate problems it was hailed to solve. But it remains a powerful narcotic to an aberrant elite, one who feels guilty over its apartheid circumstances and is desperately seeking spiritual redemption on the cheap.”

OBAMACARE: 11th Circuit Distinguishes Wickard. From the comments: “I’ll probably get griefed for this, but… To me, all this individual mandate stuff does is show that the current Commerce Clause case law as regarding the substantial effects and aggregation doctrines is unworkable and that SCOTUS’s post-1937 decisions are wrong.” Wouldn’t be the first time the Court got things wrong and stuck with its wrongful course for decades. . . .

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON “GREEN” SCIENCE FICTION: To Boldly Go Where Lots Have Gone Before. “The weak link in McKibben’s strategy is that like many greens he still seems to be trying to scare the public so badly that it will overlook the many obvious and frequently fatal flaws in the hodgepodge of dubious policy ideas the green movement floats. It’s all been done before, better, and it failed.”

TODAY ONLY AT AMAZON: The Epson Workforce 630 printer for $69.99. The Epson Workforce machines got good reviews from InstaPundit readers in yesterday’s big printer discussion.

MORE ON THAT ATF GUNRUNNING SCANDAL: Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) tells PJMedia: “I want to know the day when U.S. law enforcement knew, or should have known, that this had gotten out of control.”

PAUL RAHE: Rick Perry: First Impressions. “You will respond that Bill Clinton came from Hope, Arkansas, and you will be correct. But Bill Clinton went to Georgetown University and Yale Law School, and he did a stint at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He was vetted. Perry is an outsider. Even in some circles in Texas, Aggies are regarded as hicks. It is easy to see what sort of campaign David Axelrod and his associates will gin up against Perry. It will draw on the instinctive bigotry that made it so easy to demonize Lyndon Baines Johnson and the younger Bush. Obama cannot run on his record. To win, he must demonize the alternative. It is going to be ugly.” On the other hand, after the Obama era, Ivy League credentials may not have quite the cachet they had in the 1990s. But Rahe has some advice for Perry on how to counter this.

THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED OVER THE WEEKEND, if you were off, you know, having a life or something:

Gun Crime Drops At Virginia Bars And Restaurants After Liberalized Carry Rules. No surprise that once again the predictions of a “bloodbath” have turned out to be bogus.

Gallup: Obama Job Approval Falls to Record Low. And disapproval is at 54%.

Reader advice on which printer to buy.

Michael Totten: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Discontents.

How’s That Hopey-Changey Stuff Workin’ Out For Ya? Consumers Lose Confidence, as Do Once-Hopeful Economists.

Feds: Please prepare for disasters, but if you do you’re a terrorist or something.

Colbert King: Say, it’s kinda tone deaf for Obama to be partying in Martha’s Vineyard while the economy tanks.

10 Reasons To Skip The Expensive Colleges.

My review of the new 13″ MacBook Air.

“In Britain, everything is policed except crime.”

More “smart diplomacy” at work: US apologises for diplomat’s ‘dirty’ Indians comment.

Washington Post: Hey, maybe it would be better to import oil from Canada than from sleazy dictatorships.

DAN MITCHELL: The Futile Stupidity of Laws Against “Short Selling.”

AUSTERITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: “New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo used state aircraft for 16 flights to or from his home following statewide tours in which he called for belt-tightening and budget cuts for schools and other services, records show.” Kinda like criticizing corporate jets and then tooling around in Air Force One.

RISK-AVOIDANCE: Once Bit, Rich Americans Shy Away From Stocks. “Recoveries are often led by the investing and risk-taking of the wealthy, and the rich have traditionally been more optimistic about the economy than everyday investors. Yet current surveys show the rich are among the most pessimistic about the economy.” With good reason, especially given the Obama Administration’s class-warfare rhetoric.

IF HE CAN’T MAKE IT THERE: Obama’s Polls Plunge In New York.

UPDATE: A potential primary challenge that I certainly didn’t see coming.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Who knew Mitt Romney had such a sense of humor? Mitt Romney Dubs Obama’s Trip the ‘Magical Misery Bus Tour.’

ADAM THIERER: Kids, Privacy, Free Speech, And The Internet.