L.A. TIMES: Forget Those Republicans: Obama’s Real 2012 Opponent Is The Economy.

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Obama to Unveil New Credentialing System During Visit to Community College. “Students will earn the credential through a new manufacturing-skills certification system endorsed by the National Association of Manufacturers. The credential is applicable to all sectors in the manufacturing industry and can be stacked with other training to help students toward an associate degree. The new credentialing system is expected to alleviate frustration that both employers and students experience, administration officials said. In the past, students often spent time and money on training that had little value to potential employers, while employers had difficulty identifying which credentials were of value in hiring and promotion.”

Hmm. In my higher education bubble pieces, I’ve talked about skills certification as an alternative to formal degrees. Could this be the camel’s nose?

TRYING TO PARSE the Clinton/Weiner distinctions.

Plus, a great title on this Weiner roundup: Requiem For A Lightweight.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D SEE VIETNAM-STYLE GOALPOST MOVING ON THE WAR. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! White House redefines ‘winning’ in Afghanistan ahead of review. Add your own Charlie Sheen joke. . . .

BUT WILL THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION LET THEM DRILL? NOT LIKELY, BASED ON EXPERIENCE: Exxon makes major oil discovery in Gulf. “Exxon Mobil said Wednesday it has discovered an estimated 700 million barrels of oil equivalent at a deepwater well off the Louisiana coast, a major find that a top House Republican argued should push the administration to speed up offshore permitting.”

MEGAN MCARDLE ISN’T BUYING the Weiner-defenders’ privacy excuse. Oh, wait, I said Weiner-defenders’ when I should have said Weiner-defender’s. Guess who it is! Anyway, nobody in the media — and certainly not the Weiner-defender — would be making that excuse on behalf of a similarly situated Republican, so it’s obviously partisan twaddle.

AL FRANKEN ON OBAMA: “In Two Years He May Not Be the President.”

BUMMER: I missed Sonja Schmidt’s new show last night.

AT AMAZON, it’s the summer camera sale.

Also, a one-day-only sale on DeWalt hammer drills.

INSTAVISION: Double Dip Recession: Will Obama’s Policies Doom Our Economy and His Chances in 2012? I talk with Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute.

SHOCKER: New Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise. Unexpectedly! Again!

UPDATE: Commentary: “There is nothing to excuse last week’s once again disappointing jobless claims number which came at 427K, even as the lemming horde was expecting an improvement to 419K. The previous number of 422K was revised as is always the case higher to 426K, in an attempt to make the W/W deterioration seem less than expected.”

JOHN CARNEY: Why Are Conservatives Fighting for Tax-Eating Colleges? I’m guessing that a lot of people see Obama’s attack on for-profit colleges as primarily an effort to defend a traditional Democratic constituency. And also, of course, they’re noting that it’s not as if people who attend traditional non-profit colleges are necessarily getting jobs as a result of their education.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: If U.S. bails out Greece now, who will bail us out later?

UPDATE: Bill Dyer: Apocalyptic Financial Numbers.

CHANGE: Time: Don’t Hold Your Breath. “Double dip is not a term that a government keen to extricate itself from the economic-crisis-management business likes to hear. A couple of weeks ago, the Obama Administration was poised to switch to growth mode. Then the ugly data started pouring in like the overflowing Mississippi.” Unexpectedly!

But the author doesn’t seem to have read Steve Carter’s essay yet.

UPDATE: Dick Durbin: This Is Obama’s Economy Now. Is it just me, or are we starting to see some distancing going on where the economy is concerned? . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Unpacking Time’s political theory.

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE: ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ may not be real.

RAND SIMBERG: Space Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows.

Staffers for California’s Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein were no doubt nonplussed to discover that their bosses had been praised by the Tea Party on Monday. It’s all of a piece of the political bizarro world in which space policy has been immersed for the last year and a half, ever since the Obama administration canceled the disastrous Constellation program in favor of a more commercial approach, and the response of many supposed conservatives in Congress was to demand a “public option.” . . . Which all goes to show (as we’ve seen for the last year and a half) that space policy is truly non-partisan, and non-ideological, and it is driven primarily by rent seeking, not a desire to open up space to humanity. As long as space policy remains unimportant, it will continue to be subject to the petty politics of those whose states and districts benefit from the jobs created, even as wealth is destroyed. But the good news is that this may delay things sufficiently long that an expensive, unnecessary rocket never gets built at all.

Read the whole thing.

DAVE HARDY: More SWAT-type raids on nonviolent charges.

ANDREW MORTON: Shooting The Messenger – How Britain’s Chilling Laws Put Freedom of Speech In The Deep Freeze.

ROGER KIMBALL: “A nation of paupers with a community of goods.” “Demography may not be destiny, but, like the prospect of hanging in a fortnight, it does concentrate the mind. Just take a look America’s aging population and ask yourself: who is going to be paying for grandma’s MRI?”

EVEN IN A CBS POLL: Obama approval rating falls below 50 percent.

DANIEL GROSS: Obama’s Failure to Fill Economic Posts Is an Unforced Error.

SYRIA UPDATE: Syrian reports suggest divisions in security forces.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: This interview with Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get The College Education You Pay For, is moderately interesting, but the angry response in the comments is more educational.

SUSANNAH BRESLIN: Anthony Weiner and the Rise of the 21st Century Slutrepreneur.

AT AMAZON, bestselling cellphones with service plans.