I QUOTE IOWAHAWK in my USA Today column on the Ryan choice. “Paul Ryan represents Obama’s most horrifying nightmare: Math.” (Bumped).

AIRBRUSHING: Scrubbed: Photo of President Obama Removed Just Days After Book Exposes Anti-Suburb Agenda.

A photo of President Obama was suddenly pulled from the website of the group Building One America, whose goals were documented extensively in Stanley Kurtz’s book Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. The book, which was released ten days ago, reveals what Kurtz refers to as Obama’s plan to undercut the political and economic independence of America’s suburbs. Kurtz connects current Obama administration policy with his personal history, and with groups like Building One America in particular.

This website shows a cached view of how the BuildingOneAmerica.org site looked on July 19th, 2012 — with a photo of President Obama talking to Building One America’s President Mike Kruglik, which was taken during a 2011 meeting held at the White House.

The Internet is hard to fool. “The photo of Obama and his mentor appears to be completely gone from the BuildingOneAmerica website. The site has gone from having a photo of President Obama — one of the best known, most instantly recognizable people in the world — talking with a leader of Building One America to its current state, with dozens of photos of unidentified people either talking or listening. The photo of Pres. Obama and Mr. Kruglik gave the site and organization an instant, visceral credibility as a politically well-connected group. Removing that instant recognition seems like a bizarre choice for the organization to suddenly make.”

JOE BIDEN, SOUNDING DESPERATE. I don’t remember him whinging about money in politics back in 2008, when Obama broke his public-funding promise and raked in the dough to outspend McCain.

NOTE TO PROFESSORS: You must hate Paul Ryan.

KATIE ROIPHE DEFENDS SINGLE MOTHERHOOD. She writes “I am not a huge believer in studies,” but then advances . . . a study in support of her argument.

Being raised by a single mom isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a kid. But it’s not the best, either, and some random guy who happens to be around isn’t a substitute for an actual father. If men wrote about mothers that way, there would be shrieks of outrage.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Romney responds to heckler in Wisconsin, then tells Obama to get his campaign out of the gutter.

UPDATE: Via TwitPic, a photo from the Wisconsin rally.

More here.

JOURNALISM: “It’s so hard to say what you want to say! Oh, well, my husband’s really cute! Hey, imagine if Sarah Palin had written a post as flighty and disconnected as Bazelon’s.”

THE BOND MARKET’S CHINA SYNDROME. “The US fiscal situation is no different than Europe, and you can bet that if our yields start rising, our credit condition will rapidly deteriorate. This will feed on itself. Suddenly sentiment will shift and our reliance on foreign financing will be at risk as the reserve currency status is called into question. We are blaming Europe for our current economic problems, but in reality they are doing us a favor by providing a blueprint for how a bond market meltdown can unfold. For the US it potentially is more severe because once it gets started the only way to stop it is to print more currency, which will exacerbate the problem.”

CAYMAN: Still more new taxes on the agenda?

RESPONDING TO THE USUAL SMEARS: “How the Romney/Ryan ticket is richer, whiter, or more establishment than Kerry/Edwards was 8 years ago is beyond me, but then again that’s the nature of politics.” Remember, in 2004 it was crucially important to have a decorated military veteran at the top of the ticket. In 2008, it didn’t matter at all. Just like it didn’t in 1992 or 1996.

ROLL CALL: Issa To Sue Eric Holder Monday.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My Son Is Not My Late Husband’s Biological Child — Should I Tell His Parents?

ED DRISCOLL:

Watching the hysterical reaction from the left yesterday over Romney choosing Paul Ryan as his veep makes you wonder how much was pre-written boilerplate, with the Republican candidate’s name simply dropped in at the last minute, once Romney formally made his announcement. It’s sort of the Bizarro World version of the riff brainwashed into the skulls of Frank Sinatra and the rest of Laurence Harvey’s troops by the Soviets and Communist China in The Manchurian Candidate: “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.” Instead this weekend, we’re getting “INSERT NAME OF REPUBLICAN TO BE DEMONIZED HERE is the worst, vilest, sexist, homophobic, God-worshipping, Second Amendment-supporting, budget cutting, evilest human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

Heh.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Does Student Loan Debt Put a Damper on Your Relationship? “About 37 million Americans are weighed down by college debt, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Twenty-seven percent of those students and ex-students also have past-due balances. The loans, whether they are his, hers or collectively his-and-hers, can be toxic for budding romances or new marriages.”

SCIENCE: Neuroscientists find brain stem cells that may be responsible for higher functions, bigger brains.

AT AMAZON, back-to-school markdowns in Computers, Software, and Office Supplies.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Welcome home Mr. President! Chalk graffiti outside Obama event: “Stop killing brown people with your drones.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Peak Oil? How About Peak China? “It may be hard to believe, but it’s been a full four years since China hosted the Olympics. At the time, Beijing 2008 appeared to herald China’s return, after a 500 year hiatus, to great power status. Commentators were falling over themselves to pronounce the inevitability of China’s rise and its implications for American influence in Asia. But is it possible we will look back on those Olympic Games as the peak of Chinese power, rather than the beginning of its rise?”

GEORGE WILL: Ryan Pick Underscores How Obama Has Become “Silly and Small.”

Romney embraced Ryan after the sociopathic — indifferent to the truth — ad for Barack Obama that is meretricious about every important particular of the death from cancer of the wife of steelworker Joe Soptic. Obama’s desperate flailing about to justify four more years has sunk into such unhinged smarminess that Romney may have concluded: There is nothing Obama won’t say about me, because he has nothing to say for himself, so I will chose a running mate whose seriousness about large problems and ideas underscores what the president has become — silly and small. . . . Romney’s selection of a running mate was, in method and outcome, presidential. It underscores how little in the last four years merits that adjective.

Indeed. Related: Robert Samuelson: “The selection of Paul Ryan — chairman of the House Budget Committee — as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential candidate has the potential to turn this dreary presidential campaign into a meaningful debate over the size and role of the federal government.”

STACY MCCAIN ON Romney and Ryan Heading To Ohio.

WEALTHY DRIVERS don’t necessarily buy expensive cars. It reminds me of that old commercial: “How do you think a man like me got to be a man like me?”

DON’T BE RIDICULOUS, WE’RE NATURE’S NOBLEMEN: Are Law Professors Greedy? “We certainly have the legal right to take advantage of these market distortions; the government itself created the programs. But when we take those steps, we have to recognize what we are doing to students, their families, the taxpayers, and the future legal profession. We certainly have to acknowledge that we are being greedy — and not in the good way that feeds a free market.”

BOOSTING BACTERIA IN DRINKING WATER could boost health.

DIY: Build your own Onager catapult.

CONTRAST WITH THOSE LONG LINES FOR ROMNEY-RYAN: “At Obama fundraiser in Chicago. Admission only $51, but room is half full.”