CHANGE: Christians in Pakistan Hiding in Forest.

ROLL CALL: GOP Pols, Advisers Plot Mitt Romney’s First 100 Days.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: Gov. Brown’s Pension Reform Plan Won’t Defuse the Bomb. “These are not bad ideas, but a lot of what it does is prevent future abuses of the system and reduces the growth of the pension commitment moving forward. It doesn’t do anything to deal with the crisis as it stands now. Employees will not be pushed into a 401(k)-type system to reduce the state’s liability.”

THE HILL: GOP platform adopts Internet freedom plank.

YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS: Hillary Clinton to Flee the Country During DNC.

AT AMAZON, Top Deals In Electronics.

Also, today only: Up to 60% Off Select Diesel Denim and Shoes.

DAN RIEHL BUSTS THE L.A. TIMES FOR RACISM. “Reaching back for old stereotypes in some twisted attempt to maintain the political status quo in America doesn’t take talent, originality, or even creativity. It only takes a small mind and a form of bigotry we have already grown too accustomed to in a seemingly unrepentant and non-rehab-able old media.”

Well, to be fair, the L.A. Times folks probably got their impressions from watching MSNBC.

Related: Why is Harold Meyerson so racist? “So let me get this straight; Meyerson believes that talking about work-to-welfare is a racist dog whistle because, in his own mind, he links welfare to the African-American community. This says a lot more about his own stereotypes than it does about the Republican Party, and certainly the Republicans that I know. When I think of welfare, and food stamps for that matter, an entirely different image comes to mind. I think of my time working at Kroger, where I watched a group of people, almost entirely white and southern themselves, misuse the EBT (food stamp) program to buy unnecessary and expensive products while ignoring the essentials.”

Yes, if you think “welfare abuse” automatically means “black people,” then you’ve made clear who the racist is.

WHERE “SORT-OF” EQUALS “HALF-ASSED:” Prof. Joseph Campbell: A sort-of correction from the NYTimes. “It has taken more than three months, but the New York Times today published a sort-of correction of its erroneous description about the napalm attack in Vietnam in June 1972 that preceded the famous photograph of children terrified and wounded by the bombing.” Plus this: “[T]he phrasing — ‘while the planes that carried out the attack were “American planes” in the sense that they were made in the United States, they were flown by the South Vietnamese Air Force, not American forces’ — makes it sound like a bunch of teenagers borrowing daddy’s car.”

The narrative — Americans evil baby-killers! — must be preserved. The self-esteem of an entire generation of Boomer journalists requires it.

JOHN GALT WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: More big U.S. companies are reincorporating abroad despite a 2004 federal law that sought to curb the practice. One big reason: Taxes. “Lawmakers of both parties have said the U.S. corporate tax code needs a rewrite and they are aiming to try next year. One shared source of concern is the top corporate tax rate of 35%—the highest among developed economies. By comparison, Ireland’s rate is 12.5%. The Obama administration has proposed lowering the rate to 28%, while Republican rival Mitt Romney has proposed 25%. Critics of the tax code also say it puts U.S. companies at a disadvantage because it taxes their profits earned abroad. Most developed countries tax only domestic earnings.”

NEW YORK SUN: ‘Second American Century’ Hoves Into View As Ann Romney Steals the Show at Tampa.

WELL, THAT SEEMS LIKE A SMART MOVE: Michael Barone: Romney pins hopes on being different from Obama. ” Voters are most concerned about the related issues of the economy and the size of government. They are discontented with the status quo. . . . This year people want something different. Romney offers that. Obama offers more of the same. Emphasizing that contrast, the Romney people believe, is a winner.”

POINTS AND FIGURES: The Myth Of The “Corporate Wife.” “Juan’s characterization is rooted in myth. Even the corporate wives that you see in Mad Men didn’t have it easy.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Higher Education Bubble Spawns Demographic Decline Among Educated Americans.

As college costs and student loan debt soar (partly due to opulent university spending) and unemployment rises, young college graduates, crushed by student loan debt, are deciding not to have kids, resulting in demographic decline among the educated in America. In recent years, student loan debt has skyrocketed from $100 billion to nearly $1 trillion, creating a potential debt bomb for the American economy.

France and England now have higher birth rates than America. College-educated people in their 20s are definitely more likely to have kids there. “American fertility is now lower than that of France” and the United Kingdom, notes The Economist, even though American fertility was higher than France or England in 2007.

Why the recent change? Could it be because college graduates in England and France have less student loan debt? Tuition is lower there. Per capita expenditures are lower at their elite schools. France and England spend much less on physical plant for colleges and universities. Faculty salaries don’t get as high there.

Note that this is one area where the usual suspects aren’t calling for us to be “more like Europe.”

UPDATE: Stereotyping all men as sexual predators in need of re-education probably doesn’t help, either.

YES, BUT FROM THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S PERSPECTIVE, THERE’S NO GREATER EMERGENCY THAN AN ELECTION THEY MIGHT LOSE: Bloomberg Editors: Strategic Oil Reserve Is for Emergencies, Not Elections. And this explains why it’s such an emergency for them: “Gasoline prices are a tempting target for presidential intervention because so many other economic indicators are stalled or going in the wrong direction. Unemployment remains stuck at more than 8 percent, economic growth this year will probably be a dispiriting 2 percent and housing continues to be the patient that won’t get well. More discouraging news arrived Tuesday: Consumer confidence in August had the biggest decline in 10 months.”

FROM JOE THE PLUMBER TO “Barack The Plumber.”

MORE ON ELIZABETH WARREN: Taxi Driver 2: Fauxcahontas Boogaloo. “Reitzas was photographed with his arms around Warren and her husband Bruce Mann in July 2012, more than a month before the incident. Reitzas’ relationship with Warren and Mann remains unclear.”

HOPEY-CHANGEY: Unicorn Flatulence Is The Ultimate Flex Fuel. ” You can think of the Volt as the ultimate in flex-fuel. It runs 30% on coal, 40% on natural gas, 9% each for nuclear and hydropower. Of course, the overhead losses in generation, distribution, conversion, and storage are immense. It is also worth noting that the current Administration is against coal, natural gas, nuclear power and dams.”

BYRON YORK: The big speeches: Why Ann Romney succeeded and Chris Christie didn’t. I actually thought Chris Christie’s speech was pretty good, though not as good as Ann Romney’s. I’d never heard her speak, and frankly had no real impression of her at all before. I can now see why a lot of people were calling her Mitt’s secret weapon.

LIZ PEEK: If I were Romney, this is what I would say.

IRA STOLL’S THOUGHTS ON RNC NIGHT ONE: The Party Of The Children Of Immigrants.

ENERGY: Alaska Explores Shale Oil Development.

LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Impact of Charter Schools on Public and Private School Enrollments.

MICKEY KAUS:

“Our most effective ad is our welfare ad”–Romney ad strategist:

1) Told you so;

2) It was clear at an Atlantic/National Journal forum in Tampa this morning that the MSM is very proud of itself for abandoning traditional “false balance” and declaring in its own voice that Romney’s ads are wrong. A front page news (not opinion) article in the New York Times simply asserts:

The Romney campaign is airing an advertisement falsely charging that Mr. Obama has “quietly announced” plans to eliminate work and job training requirements for welfare beneficiaries …

The only trouble with this inspiring reclamation of journalistic manhood is that … Mr. Obama did quietly announce what certainly seemed like plans to eliminate work and job training requirements for many welfare beneficiaries. Bring back false balance.

Plus this: “I didn’t think Obama supporters would resort to crudely arguing that talking about welfare is really talking about race–a historic loser complaint for them. I was wrong. Maybe voters suddenly love being told that their concern for a work ethic makes them racist, and that legitimate misgivings about the dole–voiced, in the past, by Bill Moyers and Piven and Cloward, not to mention Bill Clinton–are really a ‘dog whistle’ to bigots.”

JENNIFER RUBIN ON ANN ROMNEY’S SPEECH.