WELL, YEAH, IT’S BEEN ABOUT THAT LONG SINCE THE CARTER ERA: Ex-chief Emanuel calls Obama ‘once-in-a-generation’ president.

PAUL RAHE: Suicide: The Democratic Party’s Self-Inflicted Wounds. “None of this had to happen. It was a consequence of the Obama administration’s decision to treat the economic crisis as an opportunity to transform America by shoving through measures like Obamacare and Dodd-Frank. It was a consequence of their treating the so-called stimulus bill as an opportunity to enrich the constituencies supporting the party. It was a consequence of their insisting on raising taxes on the investor class in the middle of a recession. And, of course, it was a consequence of Obama’s decision to say that, if he failed to bring unemployment down dramatically, he would be (and should be) a one-term President. Even the mainstream press is beginning to realize that Barack Obama and those who put him in the office where he is right now conspired unwittingly to bring down the Democratic Party.”

Unwittingly? Hmm.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Eurozone Begins To Fracture.

RAND SIMBERG ON THE DEMS’ WORSHIP OF CASTRO: “Imagine how the press would react to a Republican mayor named ‘Hitler.'”

THE CONVENTION OF LOST VAGINAS: Caption this: Code Pink-er abandons vagina costume at DNC Planned Parenthood rally.

RICH KARLGAARD: New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct — Obama Is Lousy CEO.

Kantor’s portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.

Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.

With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?

What do you do? You fire that CEO. Clint Eastwood was right. You let the guy go.

Clint’s been around the block a few times.

AT AMAZON, the Big Blu-Ray Sale.

THE INEVITABLE: Democrats Celebrate Ted Kennedy, Mary Jo Kopechne Unavailable For Comment.

BILL DYER spanks Matt Miller.

I THINK DRUDGE IS TRYING TO SUGGEST THAT THE DEMS MAY BE OUT OF TOUCH WITH MIDDLE AMERICA:

What do you think? Am I reading between the lines correctly?

UPDATE: Donald Sensing answers my question.

WHILE THE DEMOCRATS (AND MOST MEDIA FOLKS) PARTY ON OBLIVIOUSLY: Power’s Still Out For Many After Isaac, And They’re Boiling.

CHANGE: WaPo/ABC poll: Obama’s favorable rating now underwater — including with women.

RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE outdated electronics.

ANN ALTHOUSE is liveblogging the DNC.

MAKING STRETCHABLE ELECTRONICS.

AS THE NATIONAL DEBT HITS $16 TRILLION TODAY, A VIDEO FLASHBACK: Campaign 2008: Obama Says Adding $4 Trillion to The Debt Is Unpatriotic.

UPDATE: Another flashback: 36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes.

ROGER BERKOWITZ: The President’s Failure. And His Challenge.

More so than at any time I know of, there is a sense of total hopelessness—a feeling that neither party and no potential president can change our course for the better.

To understand this ennui, one must take President Obama’s failure seriously. That failure is simple. He became President amidst the perceived failure of the presidency of George W. Bush. The country desperately wanted a change. At the same time, the financial crisis threatened to overwhelm the nation. The President offered hope. He embodied all of our dreams of a way forward, out of the excesses of the Bush era and towards a re-enlivening of basic American values of freedom and fairness. There was, in the President’s own words, a demand for a “new era of responsibility.”

The force of Mitt Romney’s speech was his expression of disappointment in the President. This strikes me as a non-partisan statement and that is its strength. It is hard to find even the most stalwart of President Obama’s supporters who will disagree with this assessment. Where does it come from? Why has Obama disappointed us?

Given the hype that accompanied his election, and his own modest store of talents and experience, how could it have been otherwise?

I WONDER IF WE’LL HEAR A LOT ABOUT ELECTRIC CARS AT THE DNC? Chevy Volt production to be suspended for a month.

UPDATE: Pushback from Volt-owning reader Matt Hennessy:

Volt sales hit a record of 2831 in August, beating out the following GM products:

Buick Lucerne – 10
Buick Regal – 2072
Cadillac DTS – 11
Cadillac Escalade – 1264
Cadillac Escalade ESV – 742
Cadillac Escalade EXT – 183
Cadillac STS – 7
Cadillac XTS – 2158
Chevrolet Avalanche – 2294
Chevrolet Aveo – 1
Chevrolet Caprice – 731
Chevrolet Captiva sport – 2464
Chevrolet Corvette – 1210
Chevrolet Spark – 2630
GMC Canyon – 702
GMC Savana – 1545
GMC Yukon – 2211
GMC Yukon XL – 1594

Plus, the lease deal in August was pretty attractive.

Also, the NADA used guide price for a 2011 Volt is only 10% below the post-subsidy price. I’m pretty glad I got mine, as well as having been able to claw back some of my 2011 taxable income (and I was able to get all $7500, since I currently get no benefit from mortgage interest, child tax credit, or state tax deductions/subsidies). The fact that it cost GM (and taxpayers) more than they sold it to me for just makes it a better deal for me.

Enjoy $4 gas!

Well, I drive a hybrid so it’s not so bad.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Ron Binns emails:

The Buick Lucerne, Cadillac DTS, Cadillac STS, and Chevrolet Aveo were all discontinued in 2011; one would hope their sales would be low, since GM has been holding on to them for over a year. The GMC Canyon was discontinued as well.

The Chevrolet Caprice is only available to law-enforcement agencies (it’s not sold to the public), and the Chevrolet Captiva Sport is sold only to fleet buyers, so it’s unsurprising that they haven’t been selling as well as a massively-hyped car sold to the general public. The Chevy Spark is only available in 18 markets, and was on sale for 18 days.

And further, when you consider that the GMC models are nothing more than spiffed-up Chevrolet offerings (the Avalanche and the Yukon are identical, and together easily outpace the Volt), and the Volt is only offered by one marque, the list becomes even weaker, because the remaining GMC models are selling quite well under their Chevy badges. The Cadillac Escalades (all three versions) are lightly reworked versions of Chevy and GMC models.

Eliminating them, we’re down to only the Buick Regal and the Chevrolet Corvette. Somehow, I don’t think that GM ever conceived the Corvette as a volume vehicle. Hyping the Volt as “selling more than the Buick Regal” doesn’t sound nearly as impressive as the list your correspondent compiled, does it?

And reader Tony Goodhew writes:

Hey Glenn,

You’ve probably had a ton of mail on this but I thought I’d share the August truck top 3 with you:

1. Ford F-Series – 58,201
2. Chevy Silverado – 38,295
3. Ram (all) – 25,215

I think it’ll take a while for the Volt to charge up to those numbers.

37 MPG isn’t at all bad (What PopMech measured with the engine running) but given the 30-odd mile range that they got off battery and the fact that I can drive my truck over another 100K miles before we’ve spent equal money I think I’ll stick with my 2003 F-150 (which I bought surplus from WA State for $6k).

Now there’s a deal. And reader Chris Jonkman emails: “Matt’s email is not proof of the success of the Volt; it is simply a better illustration of the failure of GM. The 20th bestselling car in August according to http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html still sold almost 16,000 units. The fact that GM has that many models at sales levels that pathetic is not a reason to celebrate the use of our tax payer money.”

ROBERT BALDWIN: Why I’m Cutting the Cord, and How Cable Can Get Me Back. I see a lot of people ditching cable for political reasons. I’m not sure it can get them back at all.

HOW EMPATHETIC should a president be?

I GUESS THAT’S BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE STILL HAVE JOBS: Obama: I give myself an “incomplete” on the economy.

BUT IT’S SO TRENDY: Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce. There’s no nutritional advantage. However, since the primary value of organic food is to allow the purchaser to feel special, and different from those lame ordinary Americans who consume ordinary food, the oikophobic value remains undiminished.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals in Lawn & Garden.

MICKEY KAUS: Yo, Fact-Checkers: “It’s all about the fact checking in 2012, according to the Obama aides (Cutter, Messina, LaBolt) interviewed at the ABC News/Yahoo!Newsmakers Live event this morning in Charlotte. … One of the aides–Cutter, if I remember right–then cited Obama’s claim that, after the government-engineered bailout, ‘GM is Number One’ again. … The only problem with this is that the claim is … how to put it … not true. Toyota has now re-passed GM to become the No.1 auto maker in the world. You could look it up.”

Looking things up is too much trouble, unless they’re said by Republicans.

SOME PRE-CONVENTION CHEER FROM POLITICO: Media: Obama is egotistical, selfish, dull. “The convergence of skeptical pieces, all of which suggest Obama has failed to live up to the mythic expectations he set for himself in 2008, signal that Obama may be facing unprecedented media headwinds just as the nation’s voters are really tuning in to the 2012 campaign.” To be fair, at this point pretty much any media headwind would be unprecedented.