MICKEY KAUS: “It’s always been hard for me to understand what the ‘branding’ discussion adds to a carmaker like GM except to provide grist for ridicule by automotive journalists. Build good cars and the ‘branding’ will come, no? . . . Often ‘branding’ meant something like willfully pretending that a negative association (e.g. the Pontiac Aztek’s styling) was really a positive association.” I think that applies to politics, too. . . .

THEY TOLD ME IF I SUPPORTED THE TEA PARTY WE’D SEE DEADLY MEAT SOLD TO CONSUMERS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT!

Federal officials said they turned up a dangerous form of salmonella at a Cargill Inc. turkey plant last year, and then four times this year at stores selling the Cargill turkey, but didn’t move for a recall until an outbreak killed one person and sickened 77 others. . . .

Meat plants are expected to pass a performance standard that allows up to 49.9 percent of tests to come back positive for salmonella. A Cargill spokesman said the Arkansas plant had passed all USDA performance standards despite what he called “routine” findings of salmonella Heidelberg.

So when they’re telling you that if you don’t want tax increases you must want people to sell contaminated meat while the government does nothing, tell them no, that’s how things work now.

RON BAILEY: “Conflict Oil” vs. Canadian Oil. “Why would the U.S. want to depend on ‘conflict oil’ imported from countries run by unsavory regimes like those of Venezuela, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia? And whose oil is really dirtier?” It’s not whether it’s cleaner or dirtier, it’s whether or not it’s under the eyes of Western environmentalists.

UPDATE: Saudis Don’t Like Oil Sands Either. Follow the money. . . .

FAVORS: Sony Hosted Obama Fundraiser, Releasing Bin Laden Movie Before Election.

This should make my revenue enhancement proposals that much more appealing . . . .

WHY CALIFORNIA IS BROKE: The Most Astonishing List Of State Agencies Ever Assembled.

From the Declaration of Independence: “He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” But California has done it to itself.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Debt Forgiveness: Who Does The Forgiving? “First, who will be forgiven and who will do the forgiving? Presumably it will be banks that have to forgive those who have taken on a larger mortgage than they could afford. Yet if banks have to take a loss on those mortgages, they may try to make it up with higher interest rates on other mortgages, higher interest rates on credit cards, or more fees on checking accounts. That means that many people who have acted responsibly with their money will also be doing the forgiving.”

RON RADOSH: They’re rioting in Britain, but why?

DANIEL HANNAN: Let’s review what brought us to the present economic catastrophe. “The countries which decreed the biggest bailouts have generally suffered the worst downturns. Far from averting recession, their governments have burdened generations yet unborn and unbegot with debt. . . . Three years after the collapse, it is surely time to change course. We need to stop printing money and start raising interest rates, to cut taxes and scrap regulations, to rebalance the economy toward the private sector. Are these ideas really so radical?” Well, they don’t offer much in the way of opportunities for graft.

BAD OPTICS: Striking Verizon Workers Picket Elderly Woman’s House. Idiots.

BUDGET CUTS: GOP Lawmaker Wants To Dismantle Department Of Transportation.

DAVID HARSANYI: The Crumbling Cult of Obama: Sorry guys, there are no more kings. “The Founding Fathers rightly feared that the purer the democracy the more susceptible voters would be to the emotion of the moment and the demagogues who take advantage of it. Needless to say, we are democratic enough to get the politicians we deserve. But debate is not dysfunction. Feel free to bemoan the fact that the American people are not automatons, but ‘getting stuff done’ is not the charge of the Constitution. Neither is having a king, though sometimes you get the feeling that a lot of folks who believe in power as the wellspring of morality are really annoyed by that fact.”

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: The Higher Education Bubble Has Popped. “Like all booms, higher education has been fueled by credit. In June of last year, total student-loan debt exceeded total credit-card debt outstanding for the first time, totaling more than $900 billion. All of this credit has pushed the average cost of tuition up 440 percent in the last 25 years, more than four times the rate of inflation. But while the factors of production on campus have been bid up, just as they are in any other asset boom, the return on investment is a bust. In 1992, there were 5.1 million mal-employed college graduates. By 2008, the number was 17 million.”

SO AT LEAST WE’VE GOT THAT GOING FOR US: Good news: Despite economic apocalypse, Obama’s vacation still a go. “But you know what? If O is dead set on a little Vineyard frolicking while the global economy shudders, let him go. He knows the political risk of getting caught by a photographer playing hacky sack on a day when the market drops another 500 points. (It was down 519 today; two of the top 10 biggest Dow drops in market history have occurred within the past three days.) His approval rating’s already perilously close to breaking through the 40th-percentile floor; 73 percent say the country’s on the wrong track; and just one in four Americans still has confidence in the federal government to solve economic problems. The country’s given up on him and on Congress, so what would be accomplished by having him hang around the White House to watch Europe and the NYSE implode? If he wants to give a speech mumbling about ‘recommendations’ for the economy that he plans to get around to issuing one of these days, he can do it from the beach. Have a blast, champ.”

HOLD TIGHT LONDON: Revealed: Face of woman who leapt from the flames to escape the Croydon inferno.

DOES MEREDITH WHITNEY READ? Not widely it appears.

MICKEY KAUS: “Unions Lose Again in Wisconsin: It looks as if the organized labor movement has failed to recall enough Wisconsin Republicans to regain control of the state senate. That’s a) in an off-year election where union turnout usually makes the difference b) in famously progressive Wisconsin c) after spending many millions d) with a nationwide media and organizing push e) when labor had a galvanizing issue in Gov. Scott Walker’s direct assault on the institutional collective bargaining power of public employees, which led to a dramatic walkout by Democrats.”

I, FOR ONE, WELCOME our new robot teachers. Well, unless they start teaching law. That would be totally wrong, and probably a violation of international human rights or something.

PHILADELPHIA TEEN MOB ATTACK came from Oprah Winfrey school? “Fox 29 has obtained video of an attack on a bystander in Philadelphia’s Old City by teens from a charter school group that received a $1 million donation from Oprah Winfrey.”

AT AMAZON, IT’S THE DVD & Blu-Ray Outlet Sale.

CAN WE MAKE IT LITERAL? Assad’s Noose Tightens.

NO COUNTRY for old men?

PERRY DEHAVILLAND: Defend Yourself And Be A Vigilante.

A community of few people with rifles and something worth protecting are not such a soft target to thugs, even armed thugs, than a disarmed general population looking vainly for the Plod to save them. But for all sorts of reasons, the British state has so effectively propagandised this country that to even suggest armed self-defence puts you on the lunatic fringe… so crowbars and cricket bats it is then.

If these last few days shows anything it is that when push comes to shove, only you and your neighbours can defend against what can only be called barbarian scum. Contrary to what the state would have you believe, you have the right to defend yourself and your property that morally supersedes any law that would deny that right. The rioters ‘took the law into their own hands’ so I applaud those Turks and Kurds (and many others whom the Guardian would not be so keen to report on) who did the same… they took the law back from the barbarians and put it where it belongs: in their own hands.

The state is not your friend, so do what you have to do and if you drive off some thugs, do not call the police after it is all over as nothing good will come of that.

I’m very happy to live in a place with a more civilized approach to violence.

FACING THE TRUTH: Why I’m Unemployable.

VIDEO: Dallas Commissioner John Wiley Price, Democrat, Shoves TV Reporter on Camera.

AT AMAZON, a jumpstarter/tire-inflator on sale. I have the earlier model and it’s worked fine, though I use the inflator more than the jumpstarter.