DON’T WORRY RON, THOSE ARE OUR PLANES NOW: Sure, Democrats Are Hawkish, But Only if They Call the Shots.

REGULAR READERS WILL NOT BE SURPRISED TO LEARN I HAVE A VIEW:  Is it okay to use a blog to

• [relentlessly flog]
• [gently make readers aware of]

one’s own scholarship, which

• [will explain everything in greater depth]
• [entice reputational rents from readers via SSRN downloads under misleading descriptions]
• [commodify and cheapen one’s scholarly output, rather than turning it into Veblenesque prestige goods]?

You decide!  Well, you could if we allowed comments which, for the record, I’m very glad Glenn doesn’t. (And do check out the link to see the cute little graphic that I decided not to include here.)

YOUTUBE U: Using Internet video, such as the recent rapping Keynes vs. Hayek clips, both to teach, and to subvert the Palace Guards of the Ancien Régime.

And speaking of video, Videomaker magazine, where I’ve contributed more than a few times, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. If you want to get started, or hone your craft, perusing their archives and how-to videos is a great place to start.

THREE WAYS OUR BRAINS BETRAY US.

SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE: Does not do pantomime, as it website notes in graf one.  It recently made a splash when Republicans singled its NEA grant out as something that could be cut from the Federal budget, along with an accordion festival; the head of the NEA gallantly defended it. I couldn’t tell whether, for strategic reasons or simply lack of knowledge, either the Congressional Republicans or the head of the NEA were aware that the SFMT is, and always has been, a proudly left-wing, radical agit-prop company – not for nothing the red star in its logo.

I don’t know whether it is still the hard-left, Leninist troupe I remember from the early 1970s, or whether it has morphed into public-teat-sucking-multiculturalist-diversity-twaddle-grant-getting-purveyor of left-wing political kitsch, but it wasn’t clear that anyone at the hearing knew, either.  I do recall seeing, as a high schooler in the 1970s, a quite outstanding, really excellent, production of Brecht’s Mother Courage by the SFMT – and a rousing audience-participation rendition of the Internationale in the intermission.

In which I enthusiastically joined, being a sixteen year old leftist in those days. When I moved right, it was not because I knew, or know, very much about conservative thought (I’ve never read Russell Kirk, or many other of the classic American conservatives, for example, and I am indifferent to Ayn Rand, seeing her less as a libertarian than a Romantic). It’s because one day I woke up and asked the truly vital question of political identity … “What Would Gramsci Do?”

VIDEO: KLAVAN AND WHITTLE ON THE LIMITS OF COMEDY.

DEJA MELTDOWN ALL OVER AGAIN? “In the wake of the subprime implosion, the Obama Administration has stepped up its scrutiny of disadvantaged neighborhoods’ credit access,” Bloomberg News reports:

The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requires banks to make loans in all the areas they serve, not just the wealthy ones. A Bloomberg analysis found the percentage of banks earning negative ratings from regulators on CRA exams has risen from 1.45 percent in 2007 to more than 6 percent in the first quarter of this year.

The CRA — say, that rings a bell:

RELATED: At TaxProf, “How the $8,000 Tax Credit Cost First-Time Homebuyers $15,000.”

THE PHOTOTOPIC SKY SURVEY is a gigantic zoomable photograph of the entire night sky. Nick Risinger quit his job in Seattle and spent an entire year on this project, and the results are extraordinary.

PHOTOS YOU WON’T SEE ON THE EVENING NEWS: Border residents protest Obama, open borders chaos.

WHAT’S YOUR COST OF GOV’T? FIND OUT NOW! Via Reason.TV:

‘WELCOME TO WISCONSIN, JIM CROW!” — what a protester shouted when the Assembly passed the voter ID bill.

“IT DOES NOT SERVE THE UNION’S INTERESTS when the union loses some of its power and things don’t seem to get worse for teachers as a result.”

SPACE, THE ENTREPRENEURIAL FRONTIER: “The Space Frontier Foundation and Heinlein Prize Trust Announce $5000 NewSpace Business Plan Prize.”

THE ONE HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLAR NOTE: From John Taylor’s blog, Economics One. (Link fixed.)

WHY THE NEW YORK TIMES CAN’T ABIDE NEWT: Jonathan Tobin is spot-on:

Not content with noting their anger at some of his statements, the paper crowed about the fact that Gingrich’s moral failings were probably a greater obstacle to his election than his other shortcomings. They may be right about that, but it ill behooves a newspaper that once counseled Americans to get over Bill Clinton’s similar misdeeds (which were compounded by perjury) now to say that we should never forget those committed by Gingrich. He isn’t the only hypocrite in our public life, but he is the only politician who overturned 40 years of one-party rule in the House of Representatives, transforming American politics in the process. One suspects that victory, and not his presidential run or his many goofy pronouncements, will be what Gingrich will be remembered for. It’s also the one thing for which liberals will never forgive him.

Hopefully Gingrich is more aware of the Times’ punitive anger than the hapless Senator McCain was in 2008. McCain, in a remarkable display of naivete, seemed genuinely surprised when the Gray Lady quickly began to devour him in 2008 after spending the previous decade or so using his “Maverick” contrarianisms as a cudgel against other Republicans.

“MAKE AMERICA WEAK, using Latinos and African Americans, people who are oppressed in the United States” — that was bin Laden’s focus, but the recruiting was “extremely passive.”

OBAMA: No job like a government job.

IN PRAISE OF SHORTER ATTENTION SPANS. “Even if ‘The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide’ were 15% better than ‘Lear,’ Mr. Kushner’s play would still have profited from being stripped of its lengthy digressions and superfluous subplots, most of which serve only to obscure the play’s good parts.”

OBAMA ON EGYPT: “What I want is for the kids on the street to win and for the Google guy to become president.”

Unfortunately, the Islamists in Egypt had very different plans.

RELATED: “Obama Refuses to Get Libya Right,” say Max Boot at Commentary.

MORE: “Why are all these Muslims in repressive regimes suddenly rising up for freedom and the right to vote? Why now, all of a sudden?”

RACE AND GUN CONTROL — Instavision at the NRA Convention, “From Jim Crow to McDonald v. Chicago: Professor Robert Cottrol on Race and Gun Control:”

Glenn Reynolds speaks with GWU Law Professor and author Robert J. Cottrol about the McDonald v. Chicago Supreme Court decision and how gun control laws have evolved since the Civil War era.

“The gun control movement for the last 40 years has premised it’s efforts on the notion that the only legitimate purpose for having guns might be for sporting purposes, and that self-defense is an illegitimate purpose. And a lot of people in urban areas have no interest in hunting, but they want to be able to defend themselves.” — Robert J. Cottrol

Approximately six minutes; click here or on the screencap below to watch:

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS: “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Wednesday tapped Sendhil Mullainathan, a leading behavioral economist, to help aid its work in crafting consumer-protection rules.”

YEAH, RIGHT: Syria’s Bashar al-Assad vows to stop firing on rallies.

DOG BITES MAN: Video: “Sen. Schumer Says that Democrats Aren’t Working on Lowering Gas Prices.”

Truly shocking, I know.

UPDATE: Link to video fixed.

HERE’S YOUR HOPE AND CHANGE: Survey: 85% of New College Grads Move Back in with Mom and Dad (via Newsalert).

SHOULD THE WHITE HOUSE RELEASE THE PHOTOS OF OSAMA’S DEMISE? Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) describes them as remarkably graphic, but that shouldn’t be all that surprising — war’s been hell for a very long time. But as the Anchoress writes (and click over for more links on this topic than just this excerpt):

Should the White House show the pictures of the dead bin Laden? I’m of two minds. Mussolini was shown in death, so why not bin Laden? I am not feeling especially worried about terrorists “hating us more” for showing the pictures. They’ve been hating us pretty steadily since the 1970’s, so it seems a vague and cowardly argument, to me.

By the same measure, though I did agree with President Obama that there was no need to “spike the football.” So I take a dim view of the fact that this utterance seems to have come with the usual expiration date, as he seems to be spiking it for fun and profit with some regularity, lately, and with his usual and long-standing lack of generosity.

Recall that when Sarah Palin stepped into the GOP ticket in ‘08, Obama and his crew could not even be generous enough to call her the Governor of Alaska, instead deriding her as a “small-town” mayor. He has not grown any more gracious in office, as this demonstrates, so color me unimpressed.

Moreover, I am getting the sense that President Obama has discovered that there is value — when all of your domestic policies are tanking or proving unpopular, ineffective or just not real — to being a wartime president, and he seems to see no irony at all in the fact that nabbing bin Laden would not have been possible if he had succeeded in blocking the Bush policies he so ardently fought while in the senate.

I keep wondering what the ego-gratifying “new cowboy/wartime president” suit may escalate down the road.

Veteran liberal columnist and MSNBC contributor Howard Fineman seems a bit worried about what will happen to the president further down the road as well.