HOW TO CREATE SHORTAGES in an abundant world. Yes we can!

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Every Picture Tells A Story. Don’t it?

POLITICO: Solyndra Questions Remain.

AT AMAZON, bestselling mysteries and thrillers.

SAME: Unemployment still at 9.1%.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Home Ownership Drops To Depression Levels.

CITY AUTHORITIES PLAYING FAVORITES ON PROTESTS: “The Hub’s hands-off approach to unpermitted Occupy Boston protests has Tea Partiers up in arms and has even rankled a top civil libertarian who said all groups should be subject to the same rules — regardless of the cause. . . . Organizers of the Occupy Boston tent city in Dewey Square have never sought nor received any permits from the state, the city or the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, which controls the property.”

That’s because the officials are Democratic hacks, and the “protesters” are Democratic tools. Duh.

KINDA LIKE EVERYONE ELSE DOES: In Iowa and Florida, ‘Wal-Mart moms’ take a dim view of Washington. “The economy is tanking and can take a whole world with it. But what’s interesting—and new—is that the fear is not finding its expression (again, among those loosely described as the establishment) in rage, or in deeper partisan antagonism. Democrats could be feeling bitter and snarky: President Obama didn’t work, and they’re not in love with him anyway, so why not bash Republicans just for fun? Republicans could be feeling mindlessly triumphant: We’re on the verge of a major victory, make way for your new rulers. But that’s not what I’m seeing. What I’m seeing is a new convergence of thought among Democrats and Republicans who are not in Washington and not part of the political matrix. . . . They all agree—no one really argues about this anymore—the government is going bankrupt. They all agree the entitlement system has to be reformed. Heck, they all respect Paul Ryan, for his seriousness. They all want grown-ups to come forward with ideas that maybe each party wouldn’t love but that might do the country some good. That is what I see in every business and professional meeting, in conversations with Democrats and Republicans: a new convergence of thought among the thoughtful.”

OPTIMISM: “In the long run the dollar may be worthless, but more important is whether or not it’s in better shape than the Euro right now.”

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Sen. Boxer Accuses ABA of Not Adequately Policing Law School Data Reporting. “In the letter, Senator Boxer noted that the ABA’s Section of Legal Education recently started to address deficiencies in current post-graduation employment and salary reporting requirements, but she expressed disappointment that the group decided not to require law schools to report the percentage of their graduates working in the legal profession or the percentage of graduates working in part-time legal jobs in its upcoming questionnaire. This information is critical to ensuring that prospective law school students know what their real jobs prospects are before they commit to a costly legal education.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): From Megan McArdle, this scary chart:

SPENGLER: Wall Street Protestors Have Met the Enemy and It Is They.

That is why the Wall Street protesters are foolish and petulant. American households levered a $6 trillion net inflow of foreign savings during the decade 1998 through 2007 into a bubble that benefited them far more than it did Wall Street. The impact of the bubble on the household balance sheet exceeds the growth in real-estate assets, moreover, because most small business expansion followed the housing bubble.

For fifteen years we rode a tsunami of foreign capital pouring into American markets. We didn’t save a penny. Why should we? Our home equity was our retirement account. Our smartest kids got MBAs and went to Wall Street derivatives desks. Engineering was for dummies. Home prices rose so fast that local governments swam with tax revenues and hired with abandon. Everybody went to the party. Now everybody has a hangover, especially the bankers. We thought we were geniuses because we won the lottery. Now we actually have to produce and export things, and we have to play catch-up. Our kids are competing with Asian kids who go to cram school and practice the violin in the afternoon. This isn’t going to be easy, and the sooner we decide to roll up our sleeves and get back to work instead of looking for bankers to blame, the better our chances of coming back.

Read the whole thing.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): ‘Time to kill the wealthy,’ says fan of Occupy Wall Street. “And now, the same people who insisted that a U.S. map with crosshairs symbols on it somehow caused an act of horrible violence — by someone who never even saw that map — will insist that the Occupy Wall Street geniuses bear no responsibility for the actions of this lunatic. That the inflammatory ‘eat the rich’ rhetoric we hear day and night from our moral, ethical, and intellectual superiors on the left has absolutely no influence on anything bad their followers do. Either political speech causes violence or it doesn’t, lefties.”

Personally, I blame the extremist eliminationist rhetoric emanating from the White House.

BREITBART: L.A. Protests Astroturfed: “The marchers also included scores of people bused in by various labor unions, which led observer Andrew Breitbart to smell conspiracy. The conservative blogger was videotaping the march and argued that the union involvement meant the demonstration had been ‘astroturfed’ — that is, manufactured to give the false appearance that it was a public groundswell.” Well, when even sympathetic media accounts can only report “hundreds” of protesters it’s not a very successful false appearance.

GEORGE WILL: Elizabeth Warren and liberalism, twisting the ‘social contract.’

Their version of the “social contract” is like a subprime mortgage — full of one-sided fine print, and ultimately unsustainable.

JIM BENNETT: Hitting The Sweet Spot: The True Genius Of Steve Jobs.

There are, fundamentally, two subspecies of entrepreneur. One starts from the present, and visualizes the next logical step from where things are now. This type figures out how to make something better, cheaper, or more widely available, and manages to clear the financial, regulatory, and market barriers to getting it into the marketplace. The other visualizes a different world, one in which things are different and better from the way they are now, and then figures out what path of evolution brings us to that world, and, as the last step, what is the least ambitious step possible that will move things toward that goal.

Steve Jobs was one of the latter group, and one of the most successful of his time.

Indeed.

POLITICO: Dems change rules; Senate in chaos. They’re getting desperate, aren’t they?

ASTROTURF: Organizer admits to paying ‘Occupy DC’ protesters [VIDEO].

A liberal organizer told the Daily Caller on Thursday afternoon that he paid some Hispanics to attend “Occupy DC” protests happening in the nation’s capital. . . . One group of about ten Hispanic protesters marched behind a Caucasian individual from the DC Tenants Advocacy Coalition, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting rent control in Washington, D.C.

Asked why they were there, some Hispanic protesters holding up English protest signs could not articulate what their signs said.

Interviewed in Spanish, the protesters told conflicting stories about how their group was organized. Some said it was organized at their church, and that they were there as volunteers. Others, however, referred to the man from the DC Tenants Advocacy Coalition — the only Caucasian in the group — as their “boss.”

TheDC asked that organizer whether he was paying the group to attend the protest, and he conceded that some protesters “aren’t” volunteers.

“Some of them are volunteers. Some of them aren’t,” he explained. “I can’t identify them. I’m not going to get into an identification game.”

If it were a Tea Party it doing this it would make national news.

And speaking of Tea Parties, the Tucson Tea Party is having fun with iconography:

Plus this: “Occupy” Tucson? We Are Tucson!

UPDATE: Amy Alkon: Occupy Wall Street: Racist Like The Tea Party.

I’m neither a member of The Tea Party (though I think not buying what we can’t pay for is a pretty clever idea) nor am I part of Occupy Wall Street, but I’ve observed that these days that you’re “racist” if you have a protest and there aren’t a bunch of black faces amongst the protesters.

So, along with all those “racists” in the Tea Party movement, it seems we can add the Occupy Wall Street Folks…a sea of white, for the most part.

Hell, they’re so racist they have to pay minorities to show up. That never happened with the Tea Party.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Josh Strodtbeck writes: “Were they illegal immigrants? Is this another egregious example of foreigners stealing American jobs? Why couldn’t he have hired a unionized American work force? Questions abound.” Indeed they do.

JAMES TARANTO: Occupy Wall Street, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “One common characteristic of the four unions the Times cites is that they all include members who work for the government or, in the case of the UAW, for corporate welfare cases. . . . In the interest of truth in advertising, the unions ought to print up signs that read ‘Project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.’ And now of course President Obama is demanding yet another stimulus, which would subsidize these protests further.”

PETER WEHNER: Obama’s Empty Threats.

When demanding approval of so-called jobs bill, Obama essentially threatened Republicans: If they vote against the legislation, the president said, then they’ll have to “explain to me” why they voted against it. On several occasions the president returned to this theme: voting against Stimulus II will require Republicans to answer not only to their constituents but to The Great and Mighty Obama. Every senator who even dares to entertain the thought of voting against what the president wants had better think “long and hard” about doing so. If not, after all, Obama may use their vote against them in 2012.

To which Republicans might respond: Is that a promise? Because the best route for a Republican sweep in 2012 is to have the president attack you for opposing him.

Indeed. As even Andy Stern has noted, nobody is afraid of him now.

WHEN REPUBLICANS WERE IN THE MAJORITY, THIS WAS VIEWED AS DANGEROUS AND UNAMERICAN: Reid’s ‘nuclear option’ changes rules, ends repeat filibusters.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS fact-checks Obama. Upside for the White House: Hey, at least somebody was listening.

SO AN INSTA-READER WHO WORKS FOR HITACHI sent me one of their G-Drive Slim external hard drives to try out. I’ve used it for Time Machine backup on my Mac and it’s worked flawlessly. But what really sets it apart is the design — it’s sleek and cool, much like a Macbook Air. I’m sure that’s not by accident.

He also sent me a G-Raid array, but I didn’t have anything to do with one of those at the moment, so I passed it on to Doug Weinstein, who put it to work in his recording studio. Doug reports that it took some fiddling to set up — it was configured for Apple and he runs a PC-based studio — but that once reconfigured it’s worked very well.

NEWS FROM AMERICA’S WHITEST CABLE NETWORK: Lawrence O’Donnell lectures Herman Cain on how to be black in the segregated South.

UPDATE: Why do all the “experts” keep saying Herman Cain can’t possibly win?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Eric Anderson writes: “So the Left’s tactic to discredit Herman Cain is to call him an ‘Uncle Tom’ while they attempt to discredit Rick Perry by calling him a racist? Pathetic.”

READER BRANDON BIGELOW WRITES: “Classic liberal media double standard in today’s Boston Globe — Elizabeth Warren takes a cheap shot at Scott Brown for posing for a Cosmo centerfold 25 years ago by saying ‘and I didn’t take my clothes off to pay for school,’ and that’s cool — Scott Brown slams her with two words, ‘Thank God,’ and he’s a sexist pig.”

Similar partisan hackery from Slate and The Frisky.

UPDATE: More damaging to Brown than the above sexism is this: As Scott Brown fights for re-election, tea party groups vow to sit this one out.