AT AMAZON, markdowns on battery chargers and portable jumpstarters.

VIDEO: KEYNES VS. HAYEK, ROUND TWO.

UNEXPECTEDLY! Economic Growth Slows As Inflation Measure Spikes Up. “U.S. economic growth slowed more than expected in the first quarter as higher food and gasoline prices dampened consumer spending, and sent a broad measure of inflation rising at its fastest pace in 2-1/2 years. . . . The Federal Reserve on Wednesday acknowledged the slowdown in first-quarter growth, describing the recovery as proceeding at a ‘moderate pace’—a slight step back from a statement in March when it said the economy was on a ‘firmer footing.'”

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT SCANDAL CONTINUES: Education Dept. inspector general investigating influence of Wall Street short sellers on regulations. “The Education Department’s inspector general is investigating Wall Street short sellers’ role in strict new regulations of the for-profit college sector, sources confirm to The Daily Caller. The investigation could reveal the extent to which the investors, who are hoping to profit when the for-profit firms’ stock goes down, influenced the process or received advance knowledge about regulatory actions by the department.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Why Obama Is In Trouble. “The President looks like a man who is ridden by events; at just the moment when the nation craves a strong leader, the President looks weak, dodgy, uncertain. The contrast with the inflated hopes that an untested and inexperienced Senator Obama did so much to build up is crippling. Obama has fallen so far precisely because he and his supporters so hugely oversold him.”

WHY DO AMERICAN SOLDIERS SUFFER FROM HIGHER RATES OF PTSD? “American writer Ethan Watters’s recent book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the Western Psyche, offers a highly subversive answer. It is that American society has been permeated by psychoanalytical beliefs about the fragility of the human mind. This creates an expectation, he argues, that people who have been through horrible experiences will be traumatized. The veterans are simply falling in with that expectation, and exhibiting the symptoms that the theory says they should be showing. . . . Is PTSD really caused by what happened to veterans while they served in the military, or by the expectations of the civilian society they returned to afterwards? Suddenly, there is a case to answer.” Hmm.

UPDATE: Ethan Watters emails that this doesn’t quite capture his original piece, which is here.

LOOKING FORWARD TO L.A.’s next mayor. Already?

THE SUN WILL COME OUT TOMORROW: Our “Annie” Energy Policy.

SO IF THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE HAS REACHED CRACKED.COM, DOES THAT MEAN IT’S GONE MAINSTREAM? The Question You’re Not Asking: Should You Go To College? “I’ve bolded the relevant text. Everybody in that survey has a job, which, incidentally, is a thing that your college degree absolutely does not guarantee you. All the unemployed people, their college degrees doing nothing for them? They don’t factor in. But hey, maybe the situation will be better when you’re out of college. Things might pick up. You just need to get more loans for now, to get you through, is all. And that’s exactly what’s happening.”

MICKEY KAUS: Why not debate affirmative action? “Were Obama a magnificent president in all respects, Trump’s charge would have little resonance. Who cares how Obama got into Harvard Law? In 2008, it was obvious enough to voters that he might have benefitted from preferences. He won a national majority anyway. But it turns out there are some ropes Obama doesn’t seem to have learned in his turbo-boosted ascent up the political hierarchy.” Plus, as Kaus notes, Obama himself says he benefited from affirmative action. So why is it suddenly racist to talk about it?

Also, an Andrew Sullivan Bell Curve dig.

PAUL RAHE: The Road Ahead: Victory In Sight. “For reasons that I spelled out in some detail yesterday, it once made sense for conservatives to be disheartened and even defeatist. They have been fighting a rearguard action for nearly one hundred years. But, as I argued, circumstances have changed dramatically. Barack Obama has brought us to the edge of a precipice, and a majority of Americans now recognize that things cannot go on as they have in the past. The welfare state is bankrupt. The Social Security trust fund is paying out more than it is taking in. The Medicare entitlement is unsustainable, and Obamacare threatens to hurl us into the abyss.”

So, cheer up!

CHANGE: Oil Imports Spike As Obama Ban Decreases Domestic Production.

GAS-PUMP STICKY NOTE CAMPAIGN makes its way to grocery stores.

JIM TREACHER ON FACEBOOK: “So now the MSM will spend a whole week scolding everybody ELSE for not having better things to talk about than Birtherism.”

UTAH TEA PARTY PROTESTS CRONY CAPITALISM AT G.E. SHAREHOLDERS MEETING. David Kirkham emails: “Today GE held their annual shareholders’ meeting in Salt Lake City. We let James Taggart (AKA Jeff Immelt) know how we felt about his crony capitalism. The media was very surprised we were protesting GE along with the left. I told them the Utah Tea Party stands on principle, not party. They said we had 20–we had over 50. (Not bad for a 9:00 am work day). Keep blogging–we’ll keep organizing.”

Here’s a pic:

THE HILL: Panetta Nomination May Signal Deeper Spending Cuts For The Pentagon.

HMM: PJM EXCLUSIVE: Holder’s DOJ Scuttled More Terror-Related Prosecutions.

YAWN: Superman to renounce American citizenship. Big deal. Who says he’s a citizen anyway? Who’s seen his birth certificate? Ah, well, at least he’s clearly siding against the Iranian mullahs and with the pro-democracy protesters. That’s more than our President — also a comic-book figure — can say.

UPDATE: Jim Treacher emails: “I can’t believe they’re making Superman a racist! It would be one thing if he renounced his U.S. citizenship under The Evil George Bush. But he waits until a black man is in charge? Way to join the Kryptonian Klux Klan, Kal-El.”

MESSAGE TO THE PRESIDENT: Respect political privacy.

PROF. JACOBSON: Going After Judge James Ware. “Word to Teddy. Deciding motions is what Judges do. The fact that a Judge allows a hearing on a motion, and expedites consideration, does not reflect agreement with the motion.” But really, isn’t “completely misinformed” and “at Firedoglake” pretty much redundant?

DEPRESSING TAKE: The Housing Bubble Broke The Middle Class.

ANGLETON ON the new Defense team. “Obviously, the most interesting aspect for me is the CIA billet to Petraeus. I suspect he’s known this was coming, and so his recent complaints about the quality of our intelligence become significant.”

MICKEY KAUS: Didn’t Obama just elevate Donald Trump? “Even if Obama was attempting the ‘genius’ Trump-pumping triple-bank-shot , that doesn’t mean it will work out as planned and help the president. It also looks–to the non-geniuses–like Obama waited two years to spring a trap on the birthers and then pissed it away trying to damage a marginal candidate, in a press appearance that made the president seem as much a righteous, lecturing whiner (‘I’ve got better stuff to do’) as a policy-driven grown up. Is Obama saying he wouldn’t be losing an unnecessary war in Libya if only he’d had more quiet time to think it through?”

Plus, from the comments: “Trump has shown the rest of the field how to annoy a narcissist into compliance.”

UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes: “Elevate Trump? Is that even possible? Trump is Trump and will always be exactly what he is ….Trump™. Kaus is usually perceptive: he doesn’t see this. No. Trump just conscripted Obama into his latest reality show. The only thing missing is the boardroom scene with the Donald summarily firing him.”

WOW: Sarah Palin is a lot better looking than Julianne Moore. I wouldn’t have guessed that. What’s with those protruding teeth?

RALPH NADER: What Obama needs is a primary challenger.