UBIQUITOUS VIDEO: Kodak mini video camera for $29.99.

SHIKHA DALMIA ON the defense cuts in the debt deal.

MAN WHO JUMPED WHITE HOUSE FENCE SPEAKS OUT: “James Dirk Crudup told 9NEWS the move was a cry for help because he can’t find a job in this economy.”

UPDATE: Labor Force Participation Rate Drops To 63.9%, Lowest Since January 1984.

MICKEY KAUS: “Am I the only one who thinks John Boehner may still want a tax-reform-centered ‘grand bargain’ to come out of the new 12-member ‘Supercommittee,’ even if it means finessing the revenue question? He was awfully interested in it before, when negotiating with Obama. Plus Obama needs a win. He’ll make a generous offer!”

BUT WATCH FOR THE REVISION NEXT WEEK: Unemployment Rate Dips To 9.1 Percent. And note this: “Still, the economy needs twice as many net jobs per month to rapidly reduce unemployment. The rate has topped 9 percent in every month except two since the recession officially ended in June 2009. The unemployment rate fell partly because some unemployed workers stopped looking for work. That means they are no longer counted as unemployed.”

Remember, we were promised that the stimulus would keep unemployment from exceeding 8 percent.

A SWAT TEAM RAID on raw-milk producers? What were they afraid of, being pelted with Listeria-ridden cheese balls?

Looking for budgets to cut? Well. . . .

UPDATE: From Reason TV:

DONATION: Mitt Romney’s Mysterious Million.

THE AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION: The EPA’s Chief Lobbyist?

ROBERT MARTIN: The Post-Partisan University:

Public criticism of higher education continues to gather momentum; the primary issues are cost, quality and political bias. The objective evidence regarding high and rising cost is compelling and the body of evidence suggesting a secular decline in quality is also growing.

The political bias issue is more controversial, although it is nonetheless important. Bias is an existential threat to higher education’s central mission (scholarship and instruction). If society cannot trust the academy to produce nonpartisan scholarship and instruction, why should it support higher education? Financial support is always dependent on the public’s perception with respect to our value added. There is no escaping that rude fact. In an era of compromised economic prospects and rising global competition, these are not issues that can be ignored without consequence.

But, as he notes, the higher-ed world is trying hard to ignore them.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Obama Glamour Can’t Fix His Charisma Deficit. “One thing is clear in the aftermath of the debt-limit debate: U.S. President Barack Obama has lost his glamour. The alluring icon of hope and change has become just another pol, derided by his supporters as well as his opponents. . . . Most striking was how irrelevant the president seemed to the entire debate. Obama didn’t present his own alternative to the various congressional plans or make a case for a particular policy. When he tried to address the public, he came off as condescending, self-interested and detached. His pulpit proved anything but bully. . . . A well-established sales tool, glamour is a tremendous asset if you’re running for office. But once you have to govern, it’s a problem. Although charisma can continue to inspire, glamour is guaranteed to disillusion. The only thing surprising about Obama’s predicament is how few people expected it.”

GUNRUNNING SCANDAL UPDATE: ATF Death Watch 50: “The cover-up is probably worse than the crime.”

Notice the word “probably.” Then note the source of this quote: UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler [above]. And here’s the coupe de grace: Winkler’s qualified pronouncement appears in The Huffington Post. That would be the left-leaning website that spent the early part of the ATF’s Gunwalker scandal ignoring it. And then prevaricated on behalf of the ATF, claiming the Agency was guilty of nothing more than over-exuberance caused by a lack of funding (despite the extra funding that funded the anti-gun running gun running operation). And now the HuffPo’s legal eagle is raising the red flag in an article entitled Obama’s Growing Gun Problem.

Growing, indeed. What did the President know, and when did he know it? And when will we get a special prosecutor?

BIG RARE-EARTH DEPOSIT found in Nebraska. “Elk Creek, Neb. (population 112), may not be so tiny much longer. Reports suggest that the southeastern Nebraska hamlet may be sitting on the world’s largest untapped deposit of ‘rare earth’ minerals, which have proved to be indispensable to a slew of high-tech and military applications such as laser pointers, stadium lighting, electric car batteries and sophisticated missile-guidance systems. . . . The potential mining operation, the first in the U.S. in a decade, could have an international impact as well. U.S. officials and lawmakers in Congress have been eager to break the near monopoly on global production of the 17 rare-earth elements in China, which has shown its willingness to use its power in the market for political ends. . . . The U.S. used to produce rare earths through the Mountain Pass Mine in California, but it was shut down in 2002, primarily because of environmental concerns, including the spillage of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water carrying radioactive waste into a nearby lake.”

WHEN A BIG STORY ISN’T A BIG STORY: “It’d be a bombshell if it had to do with Romney’s or Bachmann’s campaign. Because it’s Huntsman, it’s more like a really, really bright sparkler.”

HUFFINGTON POST: Obama’s Pivot To Jobs — The Deja Vu Reel.

Now that the debate over raising the nation’s debt ceiling has been temporarily resolved, the White House has pledged, once again, to “pivot” to jobs.

If the promise is giving you a sense of déjà vu, you’re not alone.

In his very first address to Congress in February of 2009, President Barack Obama promised an agenda focused on job creation. Following every major subsequent event of his presidency — be it a concerted campaign like health care reform or, much more frequently, an unwelcome crisis — he has been forced to reiterate that he will now focus on jobs. Just how many times has he made the jobs promise? Here’s a look back.

Video at the link.

HENRY BLODGET ON THE MARKET CRASH: “The only thing that will fix our economy is debt-reduction, discipline, and time.” Plus: “You also need only note that, when the 2000 crash began, the US federal budget was running a surplus, and when the 2007 crash began, the deficit was only $200 billion. Now, the deficit’s about $1.4 trillion.”

DECEPTION: Teachers union disavows internal memo endorsing deception of parents. “American Federation of Teachers officials have disavowed an internal report after it was posted on the union’s website following its annual conference, embedded on each of its 19 pages with the union’s logo and signed by a union official.” Who are you going to believe — me, or your own lying eyes?

CHANGE: Food Stamp Use Rises To Record High.

THEY CERTAINLY ARE: James Taranto: The Elite Is Revolting. “Gore is calling for a revolt of the asses, not the masses. He wants the elites to take to the streets.”

LET THERE BE LIGHT on the budget Super Committee.

THE HILL: Democrats brace for jobs report after stocks plunge on Wall Street. “Democrats are bracing for the jobs report due Friday morning from the Labor Department, knowing their political futures rest on the economy over which they have little control. A disappointing jobs report for July could be a painful second blow coming a day after the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted by 512 points. Democrats thought they would avert economic devastation by passing legislation to raise the debt limit by at least $2.1 trillion. Two days after the bill became law, destruction visited Wall Street, nevertheless.”

UPDATE: Reader Fredrik Nyman writes: “I think The Hill deserves criticism for this piece of propaganda: ‘Democrats are bracing for the jobs report due Friday morning from the Labor Department, knowing their political futures rest on the economy over which they have little control.'”

A THREAT TO CHICAGO POLITICS: “Allesina has created a computer model that can determine the frequency of nepotism in hiring.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: John Edwards donor to plead guilty to illegal donations. “A prominent Los Angeles trial lawyer has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanors for giving employees and a relative a total of $20,000 to donate to former Sen. John Edwards’s presidential campaign in 2003, court documents show. The L.A. attorney, Pierce O’Donnell, has agreed to serve six months in jail and to pay a fine of $20,000, according to a plea agreement filed Thursday afternoon in federal court.”

At this point, you’ve got to figure that pretty much anything else he did with the money would have been better.

Plus this: “The case does not appear to be related to the election-law indictment pending against Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat accused of participating in an illegal scheme to transfer more than $900,000 in cash and gifts to cover up an affair and out-of-wedlock child he fathered during his unsuccessful 2008 bid for the presidency.”

PETER WEHNER: The “Fierce Urgency of Now” Seems Less Fierce These Days.

YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND IS BLOWING: Arianna Huffington: Nobody Believes Obama’s Top Priority Is Jobs – It’s Getting Reelected.

ROGER KIMBALL: Isn’t It Time We Grew Up? “That’s where we are now: you can tell it’s an emergency by the panic you smell in the air. It will get worse. And as it does more and more people will recognize an important fact: that Barack Obama is presiding over a Potemkin Village. He hasn’t a clue about what to do to salvage the U.S economy. How could he?”

UPDATE: “I didn’t do so good on the midterm, but there’s always the final and class participation.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Chicago Tribune: Obama Supporters Already On The Attack.