UM, ISN’T THIS A CASE OF CALLING YOUR OWN BLUFF? The Hill: Obama warns Cantor: ‘Don’t call my bluff’ in debt talks. I mean, I’m not a big poker player, but I thought the point of a bluff is not to admit it’s a bluff . . . .

UPDATE: “I’d love to play poker with him. Does he know that it’s played with cards?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Kevin Greene emails: “The problem with playing poker with Barack Obama is that he’s not bluffing with his own chips. He’s using OUR money.”

AT ROISSY, A DISTINCT LACK OF SYMPATHY for atheist elevator-proposition complaints. “Richard Dawkins was right.” But also this: “Asking a woman out for coffee before you’ve won her interest is bad game. Asking her out in an elevator at 4AM when she has nowhere to escape is bad game.”

WISCONSIN: “Not surprisingly, none of the rally organizers seemed to be bothered by the symbolism of a large balloon representing Justice Prosser hanging in effigy with its neck tied to a lamppost.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns in Automotive and Motorcycle.

IS FALLING SKIES going to go all PC on us? “It wouldn’t be the first time that a first class series TV show ruined its run by immersing itself in politically correct dogma. Even Jack Bauer was not immune to the siren call of PC nonsense. So it wouldn’t be surprising if Fallen Skies fell into an open pit of left wing lunacy and multicultural — dare I say — universal platitudes and plot lines.”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D HAVE A PRESIDENT WHOM ARABS DESPISED MORE THAN BUSH. And they were right! “Of course, world leadership is not a popularity contest, nor should it be. But it should be deeply worrying for the White House when a genocidal tyrant like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now viewed more favorably across many parts of the Middle East than the leader of the free world.”

ON DAVID CAY JOHNSTON’S FIRST DAY ON THE JOB, he had to retract a false attack on Rupert Murdoch. Is it just me, or are a lot of journalists seeming awfully eager to see Murdoch brought down?

NOT IN GREAT NUMBERS: Are Americans Buying The Nissan Leaf And Chevy Volt? They’re buying them as fast as Nissan and Chevy can make them, but that’s not very fast.

Interestingly, when I was thinking about buying a Leaf I got a lot of pushback from my family members — including the more liberal/progressive ones — who thought that it was too small to be safe.

KABOOM: Debt Talks Blow Up.

Related: Moody’s puts U.S. bond rating on review for possible downgrade. So much for “no drama Obama.” This presidency is like The Perils Of Pauline.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll: Was It Good For You? Summer of Obama Officially Concluded. I thought it would last . . . longer.

Plus, from the comments: “They told me if I voted for John McCain, the president’s moody obstinance would cheapen the office: And they were right!” There’s just endless fun to be had with that tagline, isn’t there? Well, as I said right after the election in 2008, you have to take your fun where you can find it. I just didn’t realize it would be so easy to find . . . .

STARBUCKS, ET AL.: A Fresh, Hot Cup . . . Of Poverty?

NO OFFENSE, FUTURE MAN, but is everyone in your time retarded?

MUSIC BLOGGERS HACK RECORD INDUSTRY by launching Indie labels.

The new model seems to be working, at least for the artists. Love Letters Ink’s first release came in the form of an EP made with Mississippi rapper Big K.R.I.T. For the record, Abramson and his team recorded an unplugged-style set, rearranging songs from the rapper’s mix tape K.R.I.T. Wuz Here with neo-soul band Grillade handling instrumentation. Released as the Wuz Here Sessions, the label sold 250 vinyl copies of the album, all carefully assembled by the Love Letters Ink crew following the label’s South by Southwest showcase featuring K.R.I.T. last spring. Last month, K.R.I.T. released an EP on Def Jam.

Well, I’m not ready to revive WonderDog Records just yet, but you can order my brother’s new single here.

UPDATE: Tom Spaulding emails: “An Army of David Geffens?” That’s a book I’ll never write.

HOW MUCH OF FEDERAL SPENDING is borrowed money?

NOT AGAIN: The End Of Blogging. This time it’s ending because of Google+.

FASTER, PLEASE: Stem Cells Grow Fully Functional New Teeth.

DRUG USERS: A vast, “untapped pool of potential clients” for the nanny state. So Glenn Greenwald just made the most convincing argument against drug legalization yet. I’m not fully convinced, but . . . .

“SHARED SACRIFICE” RESOLUTION FAILS IN SENATE: The Republicans should respond with my version of “shared sacrifice.”

PREDICTING WOMEN’S ORGASMS based on lip shape?

A LIBERTARIAN DREAM COME TRUE? What If They Had A Government Shutdown And Nobody Cared? “Mark Dayton’s shutdown of Minnesota’s state government is now in its third week, and so far I’ve seen no sign of it. I mean that literally: if I hadn’t read about the shutdown in the newspapers, I would have no reason to be aware of it.”

But there’s this objection: “If renewing liquor licenses isn’t a core function of government, what is?”

NO. BUT I’D TRADE A LIFETIME PASS ON PUBLIC TRANSIT FOR A CAR. Would you trade your car for a lifetime pass on public transit?

Public transit has its place, but so does this observation from P.J. O’Rourke:

Cars didn’t shape our existence; cars let us escape with our lives. We’re way the heck out here in Valley Bottom Heights and Trout Antler Estates because we were at war with the cities. We fought rotten public schools, idiot municipal bureaucracies, corrupt political machines, rampant criminality and the pointy-headed busybodies. Cars gave us our dragoons and hussars, lent us speed and mobility, let us scout the terrain and probe the enemy’s lines. And thanks to our cars, when we lost the cities we weren’t forced to surrender, we were able to retreat.

That’s why the nanny-staters hate ’em. They want you under their thumb.

SHOULD WE TRY GENETIC-ENGINEERING HIGHER IQS so we have the smarts to defend against existential threats? [What if the higher-IQs produce existential threats instead? — ed. Like that could ever happen.]

STUDY: $22 Billion Housing Tax Credit Program Utterly Failed as Economic Policy. “This paper finds that (1) the home buyer tax credits had an insignificant effect on the number of homes sold, (2) sellers in markets with low and stable prices captured most of the credit, and (3) The effects of the credits sharply reversed after expiration. … Rather than igniting ‘animal spirits’ or pulling housing demand forward from the distant future, the tax incentives were a simple redistribution of wealth.”

JERRY POURNELLE IS BACK AT BYTE.

BIONICS UPDATE: Actuated Ankles Make Fake Feet Fitter.