WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Urban Warming And Racial Climate Change. “The old liberal position — that it was racist to raise this possibility — seems to be morphing into a new conventional wisdom that the existence of this possibility shows how racist America really is. The conceptual leap that turned the unspeakable into the inevitable appears to be the connection of violence with austerity: once responsibility for any inner city riots can be laid at the Tea Party’s door, the subject can safely be discussed. Indeed, it must be discussed.”

401(K) WITHDRAWAL MISTAKES TO AVOID. Assuming, of course, that there’s anything left to withdraw. . . .

STEVE HAYWARD not so excited about a Constitutional Convention.

ROBERT SHIBLEY: A warning to college parents and grandparents. “Whether your own college experience was more like The Paper Chase or Animal House, you can be sure that today’s campuses are neither. Instead, your tuition and tax dollars are funding an ever-growing army of bureaucrats that police everything from free speech to dating. Administrators now outnumber faculty on our nation’s campuses, and even students’ innermost thoughts are subject to their oversight. Each year, the college experience gets closer to that of a TSA line at the airport — but one that you have to live in for four years.” But it costs more.

WELL, THERE’S A CREDENTIAL: Lobbyists Tout Becerra’s Appointment to Deficit Panel.

Related: Mickey Kaus: Xavier Becerra’s got this thing and it’s f–king golden! Plus, is Jon Kyl the “ringer” on the committee?

Well, if they’re going to talk tax increases, I have a suggestion or two.

I KNOW IT MOSTLY FROM FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS: Jay Leno’s Vincent Black Shadow.

HOW TO TRIM back-to-school costs.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale!

WHY DOES NEWSWEEK hate women?

AUSTERITY: Postal Service proposes cutting 120,000 jobs, pulling out of health-care plan. “The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is proposing to cut its workforce by 20 percent and to withdraw from the federal health and retirement plans because it believes it could provide benefits at a lower cost. The layoffs would be achieved in part by breaking labor agreements, a proposal that drew swift fire from postal unions. The plan would require congressional approval but, if successful, could be precedent-setting, with possible ripple effects throughout government. It would also deliver a major blow to the nation’s labor movement.” Running out of other people’s money again, I guess.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Can’t Afford To Be Too Choosy In Filling Graduate Programs.

A head of school at a leading British university e-mailed academics urging them to be “VERY generous” when assessing graduate applications, warning them that they “simply cannot afford to be very choosy.”

The e-mail, seen by Times Higher Education, was sent to staff at the University of Birmingham’s School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion by Helen Beebee. She writes that she “CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH” how important it is that all academics “try as hard as we possibly can” to recruit graduate students for the coming year.

Look for more news like this, and not just from Britain.

STEVE CROWDER: American Hardship.

AT PJTV, a Rick Perry flashback.

“SUPER COMMITTEE” MEMBERS already milking it for fundraising?

LIONEL CHETWYND: The Curious Case of the Osama-Obama Movie: Hollywood — But Not Politics — As Usual.

LOOKING EVERYWHERE BUT THE OBVIOUS PLACES? FBI adds ‘preppers’ to potential terrorists list.

THE RECEIPTS ARE TOO DAMN LONG: “I’m not sure when I first noticed them. I don’t remember them as a child or a teenager. Then, one day, walking out of a CVS, I looked down at my hand and there it was … a two-foot long receipt decorated with coupons and miscellany like the back of an old magazine. What was this so-called receipt? And why was it so long?! This creeping sign of postmodern malaise, in which the length of one’s receipt bears no relationship to the number of items purchased, has been swirling out of printers and control for too long. We are beyond paper, the anguished people cry. But the pharmacy does not hear us.”

IT’S NOT MY FAULT! (CONT’D) Obama: ‘Last thing we need’ is for Congress to return to DC.

President Obama blasted Congress from the road on Thursday, saying things would be worse if lawmakers returned to Washington.

“There is nothing wrong with our country,” Obama said in a speech at a Holland, Mich. plant. “There is something wrong with our politics.”

Really? Because I thought somebody or other was supposed to transform all that if he was elected.

JAMES TARANTO: John Roberts Is No Fool: The White House tries to put one over on the Supreme Court. “The White House website’s photo captions may not prove decisive to the outcome of Zivotofsky v. Clinton. But if Obama’s men thought that pulling a stunt like this on the Web-savvy Roberts court would strengthen their case, they really are a bunch of amateurs.”

BELDAR: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.

FAKED IN CHINA: “Once, we knew what a knockoff was. A real pair of designer shoes was made in Italy out of leather and steel tacks. The knockoffs were slapped together in Vietnam or Korea using glue and pleather to barely approximate the look of the Italian originals. Nothing else about them​—​the weight, the feel, the durability​—​was at all similar. Today, the ‘real’ Super Hero Squad figures are tiny hunks of colored plastic spit out by slave-wage laborers in Chinese factories. And so are the fakes.”

SHOCKER: EPA Ignores small business concerns about job loss.

Much more at the Daily Caller.

HOLLYWOOD CREATIVITY: Confirmed: Every Network aiming to have a Mad Men Clone This Fall.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH ON Andrew Sullivan’s Neuroses.

IRA STOLL ON The Republican Presidential Debate.