HOW ARE YOUR ECONOMIC THEORIES affected by how you grew up?

HEY, AREN’T THEY JUST BLAMING THE VICTIM HERE? Top 25 Reasons Paula Deen Has Diabetes.

TENURED LAW PROFESSOR sues Dean, police.

INTRODUCING THE GENETIC MUSIC PROJECT.

THE PAPER BRANNON DENNING AND I WROTE ON MCDONALD V. CHICAGO is still #1 on SSRN! Thanks, downloaders! Glad people are interested.

IN THE MAIL: Full Engagement!: Inspire, Motivate, and Bring Out the Best in Your People.

THE CARNIVAL OF SPACE IS UP!

SUCKER: Obama takes bait, embiggens Donald Trump. You don’t punish Donald Trump by giving him attention. A more experienced politician would know that. Nor is building Trump up good for Obama — Trump has actually hurt him more than all the others combined. Because, you know, Trump has actually been willing to criticize him without being afraid of the Big Media retribution. The various traditional GOP candidates still have the old cringe-reflex where Big Media criticism is concerned.

UPDATE: More here. On the way home from the gym I heard a radio news account with sound bites. Trump had to be smirking at the attention, but it’s a pathetic commentary that the allegedly independent White House Press Corps served as a vehicle for an incumbent President to bash his most vocal challenger. I mean, I know that they’re a bunch of partisan sycophants, but do they have to be so obvious about it?

JACK KELLY: Gas Prices Keep Rising. Plus, a note on how the Associated Press covered for Obama.

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Lawyer Left. “The legal profession was once one of the pillars of the Republican Party, but that began to change when people figured out that endless government regulation is good for the law business. Now, while there are plenty of conservative lawyers, like us, the profession as a whole definitely tilts to the left.”

POPULAR MECHANICS: How To Turn Your Living Room Into A Fallout Shelter. “In the event of a nuclear attack, the best thing to do is to take shelter underground. But if you’re stuck aboveground, the next-best thing to do is to build a DIY ‘expedient shelter.’ We show you how.”

It’s the next step beyond duck and cover!

Meanwhile, if this interests you, you may want to check out Bill Quick’s disaster-prep discussion forum.

And here’s a list of disaster-survival gear.

SYRIA: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY: “A Syrian military source says President Bashar Assad’s security forces have been ordered to quell the uprising in Dara ‘even if this means that the city is to be burned down.’ Tanks destroy a mosque, witnesses say, and at least four people are killed.” Where are all the human-rights activists calling for war-crimes trials?

UPDATE: Related: Castro regime launches May Day wave of repression against opposition.

THE COMMENT DEADLINE IS TOMORROW: Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome. Keep your grubby laws off my DNA!

MARKDOWNS ON bestselling digital point-and-shoot cameras.

MY SUNDAY WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMN: When Jimmy Carter Is Your Best-Case Scenario, You’re In Trouble. “Up to now, comparisons with Carter were a tool of Obama’s critics. From now on, they’re likely to be a tool of his defenders. Because as bad as Carter was, Obama is shaping up to be worse. Much worse.”

UPDATE: From the comments, a haiku:

Obama has failed
The worst President ever
Jimmy Carter smiles!

Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More haiku from the comments:

Carter competence
with Nixonian ethics
makes worst prez ever

Indeed.

MORE: How bad has it gotten for the lefties? After an extensive — though not exhaustive — list of Obama failures in my column, leftie blogger TBogg weighs in in the comments and all he can come up with is this bit of “racer” nonsense:

Shorter Glenn Reynolds:

I don’t like the black guy.

He’s pretty much eaten alive by the other commenters, but I’ll break out this one:

Yeah, people ain’t ticked because they’re payin’ $5 a gallon for gas, they’re ticked ’cause a black guy is president!

Folks ain’t ticked because they been unemployed for 2 years, they’re ticked ’cause a black guy is president!

And nobody’s ticked because they had a sh*tty health care “reform” plan stuffed down their throats last year (for which exemptions are being handed out right and left to the main advocate’s pals and cronies) they’re all ticked ’cause a black guy is president!

Hey, I’ll bet you if by next year we’re all living in lean-to’s and searching for discarded pizza in dumpsters, we’ll all be ticked; not because of that, but because a black guy is presdient!

Because heaven knows, nobody would be bothered by any of this kind of stuff if a white guy was president, right?

When even the miserable partisan hacks can’t come up with anything better than a naked race-card play, you know that . . . well, that Jimmy Carter is the best-case scenario.

MORE: Terry Hinshaw emails: “Not surprisingly, Andrew Sullivan doesn’t much care for your critique of Obama. Note, however, his concluding paragraph which I suspect is his initial, tentative step toward accusing you of being a racist.”

Between now and 2012, everyone will be a racist for 15 minutes. It’s all they’ve got, as they try to defend this miserable failure of a President, and those charges are just an admission that they have nothing else. See the response from the commenter above, which disposes of them entirely. And isn’t it just a bit sad for Andrew to be following, however tentatively, in the footsteps of a TBogg blog comment? Come on, Andrew — raise your game!

But wait, wasn’t Andrew critiquing Obama harshly just a little while ago? “A congressional vote is also important to rein in the imperial presidency that Obama has now taken to a greater height then even Bush.” Was that racist? Never mind. He was praising Bush more effusively than I ever did, right up until he started calling me a Nazi for not joining him in Bush-hatred and Iraq war cut-and-run policies. He’s excitable, you know.

Meanwhile, speaking of “derangement,” how’s that whole Sarah-Palin’s-uterus thing going for you, Andrew?

And yeah, now I’ll get the usual 500 “ignore Andrew Sullivan” emails. But every once in a while, you have to note things for the record.

Plus, a great PhotoShop.

MORE STILL: Reader James Merriner writes:

I believe I am the only writer in the country who has covered both Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama in their hometowns during their time in state government–as well as their presidential campaigns. They were probably the most intelligent politicians, in terms of raw IQ, I have covered, so their failures in office should tell us something about what constitutes intelligence in democratic leadership. My conclusions: (1) Neither trusted the voters enough to tell them the truth. (2) They were right to do so because the voters initially bought their myths.

Ouch.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: When Isms Go To War.

HITTING THE REAL DEBT CEILING:

Even as the Treasury issues more and more debt, there are fewer and fewer people willing to buy it. I forgot to mention the really startling number. Pimco (which has now dumped US Treasuries) estimated last month that, under QE2, 70 per cent of the US Government’s debt is being bought by the Federal Reserve.

In other words, under the 2011 budget, every hour of every day, the federal government spends $188 million it doesn’t have, $130 million of which is “borrowed” from itself.

Ouch.

HOW PAUL RYAN won the recess. “Despite efforts by labor unions and a variety of liberal activist organizations—One Wisconsin Now, MoveOn.org, Citizens Action of Wisconsin, Community for Change, etc.—to pack Ryan’s events with detractors and hecklers, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered by his supporters.” Yes, the same people who falsely claimed that the Tea Party was astroturf tried — and failed — to astroturf Ryan.

TORNADO THOUGHTS FROM REX HAMMOCK: Send money!

He recommends donating to the Salvation Army. That’s a good idea. I just sent ’em a hundred bucks.

UPDATE: Chuck Simmins writes: “One of the best things about the region stricken by the tornado outbreak is that it is full, to the brim, with non-governmental, faith based disaster agencies. The Southern Baptists have a well established disaster kitchen set up. The Mormons, of course, have loads of assets. Self help in the area is going to be very impressive if it gets reported by anyone at all.”