NICK GILLESPIE: U.S. Foreign Policy Not to Blame for Anything!, Plus: Alleged Innocence of Muslims Filmmaker Nakoula Voluntarily Accepts Ride from Police. “Which is to say, the focus on the film and the larger notion of free expression as the real problem is pretty goddman godawful. . . . At least since the end of the Cold War, the United States has drifted along without anything resembling a coherent or sustained conversation about foreign policy, much less working to hash out a consensus position that reflects our body politic. In the 1990s, we witnessed Bill Clinton lurching from action to action. He ordered 25 major troop deployments over eight years, twice as many as Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush entered office promising a “humble” foreign policy that repudiated “nation building” and then embraced a disastrous “region building” approach from which we have yet to extricate ourselves. Barack Obama tripled troops in Afghanistan without bothering to clarify our mission there and unilaterally decided to drop bombs in Libya.”

YA THINK? Near-zero interest rates, which are expected to last through mid-2015, make a mockery of thrift.

They also create all sorts of economic distortions.

UPDATE: Alec Rawls emails:

Don’t think that zero is as low as interest rates can go: money as a store of value is also threatened.

Primitive man often faced an interest rate of -%50 per hour, if he caught some meat for instance, and was trying to get it into the bellies of his family it spoiled or was snatched by competitors. Now you can store your income and wealth in financial instruments and only buy meat when you want to eat it, or keep it in the fridge or freezer for even greater convenience. We take all this for granted, but as near-zero nominal interest rates come to be paired with rising inflation–an outcome that is pretty much guaranteed under QE3–even coin and currency will no longer keep stored value from wasting away. We are heading into difficulties that should be a thing of the past, and its not just bedbugs and resistant disease. Government is squandering EVERYTHING.

I think this is why guns and ammo are selling so well.

ROGER KIMBALL: Newton’s first Law of Motion Applied to Political Strategy (with a brief excursus on Gaffes).

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Three Things Colleges Don’t Want Us To Know.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON TURKEY:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan (pronounced ‘rejep erdowan’ more or less) looked like Woodrow Wilson a year ago. Everywhere he went in the Middle East, crowds hailed him. Like Wilson, he brought a political movement out of the wilderness into power at home. Like Wilson, for his followers he embodied a mix of conservative religious and progressive social ideas. Like Wilson, events propelled him to a position of huge international prominence when he appeared to have the power and the ideas that could reshape world politics in the places he cared most about. (And like Wilson, he ruthlessly suppressed dissent in the press, sending opponents and critics to jail.)

Today, Erdogan still looks a bit like Woodrow Wilson, but it is the sharply diminished, post-Versailles Wilson he most remembers. His magic moment has passed; the world did not transform. The voice of God that sounded so clearly now seems to have faded, become indistinct. His dream of leading the march of Islamist democracy through the Middle East looks tattered and worn. Libya, Syria, Egypt: none of them look like successes for Turkish diplomacy or leadership, and Syria is a fully fledged disaster that threatens instability inside Turkey itself.

All hope of reconciling the Kurds is now gone; Erdogan is increasingly reduced to retracing the faltering steps of past Kemalist wars against this restive (and demographically booming) minority.

But without the boost of Kemalist ideology.

SO IF THINGS ARE SO GREAT FOR OBAMA, why are Republicans doing so well in party identification?

Related: Jay Cost: How the Media Misrepresents the Race.

My own question: If Romney has so much money, why am I seeing nothing but Obama commercials on TV. Where’s it going?

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey: Media having a little narrative problem today? “It’s not often that I laugh out loud while reading my e-mail (and that’s not an invitation to forward the jokes from 1996 still circulating, either), but today’s entries left me no choice. No less than three media outlets have scoops about the Mitt Romney campaign this morning that describe changes in strategy and direction. The only problem is that all three contradict each other despite having come from sources inside the campaign.” It’s like they’re just making shit up.

ANOTHER TRAGEDY OF THE OBAMA ECONOMY: “Disconnected Youth.” That is, “young people aged 16 to 24 who are not working nor enrolled in school.” There are a lot of them now. Poor and minorities hardest hit.

AT AMAZON, Digital Deals.

Also, today only: Jamo S 5-Piece Home Theater System, $179.99.

I’VE JOINED THE NEWLY-REDESIGNED USA TODAY AS A WEEKLY COLUMNIST, AND HERE’S MY FIRST SUCH: Oh, to be young and unemployed.

I wrote a while back about the Obama “Senior Squeeze.” This column is about the accompanying “Junior Squeeze” on people 18-30. But don’t worry: If you’re in between these two groups you’re not left out — odds are you’re one of the “stretched,” as middle aged people are often hit up for help by both juniors and seniors.

Related: Alex Schriver: Obama Keeps Us In Our Parents’ Homes.

CONN CARROLL: Obama’s Alternative Middle East Reality.

President Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, hit the Sunday talk show circuit yesterday to defend the administration’s Middle East policy in light of a week’s worth of spreading violence and the first murder of a U.S. ambassador since Jimmy Carter was president. In the course of defending Obama, Rice claimed: 1) that the security at the Benghazi consulate was adequate; 2) the attacks on the Benghazi consulate were not pre-planned; and 3) all of this violence is due solely to one 11-minute video on YouTube. All three of these positions are preposterous.

First, as the BBC reported this weekend, the Obama administration purposefully chose to provide substandard security at the Benghazi consulate. “US embassies and consulates in areas of the world where they are deemed liable to attack are usually offered a formal security contract called a Worldwide Protective Services Agreement … But sources have told the BBC that on the advice of a US diplomatic regional security officer, the mission in Benghazi was not given the full contract … Instead, the US consulate was guarded externally by a force of local Libyan militia, many of whom reportedly put down their weapons and fled once the mission came under concerted attack.”

Second, Libya President Mohamed Yousef El-Magariaf directly contradicted Rice on CBS’s , Face the Nation, telling Bob Schieffer, “It was planned, definitely. It was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago. And they were planning this criminal act since their arrival.”

Finally, no one outside the White House believes a single video caused the violence. Liberal commentator and Tufts University international politics professor Dan Drezner has called Obama’s decision to blame the YouTube clip a “radically incomplete and dishonest answer.” As The New York Times Ross Douthat points out, the riots have far more to do with internal power politics.

The reality is that Obama has failed internationally for the same reason he has failed at home: arrogance.

Read the whole thing.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Fellowships For Aspiring Law Professors.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): EMPIRE FED PLUNGES TO -10.41 (-2.00 EXPECTED). “The Empire Fed manufacturing index fell to -10.41 versus expectations of a -2.00 reading and a prior reading last month of -5.85. New orders tumbled to -14.0 from -5.0 last month. . . .The employment index fell to 4.3. . . . Economists polled by Bloomberg forecast the key business activity index will rebound to -2.00 from its August reading of -5.85. A reading above zero indicates expansion.”

Unexpectedly!

AMERICANS: LESS WOBBLY THAN OUR “LEADERS.” 72% Put Freedom of Speech Ahead of Not Offending Other Cultures.

GOOD QUESTION: Why Is Obama So Quiet about the Chicago Teachers’ Strike?

VIRGINIA POSTREL: The Case Against More Job Security? It’s Academic.

ON CAMPUS, NOT FEELING THAT 2008 HOPE:

“I totally drank the Obama Kool-Aid” in 2008, Nick Carey, 24, said over a beer at a dive bar downtown. “It’s not that I think he’s a bad guy. He’s just another politician. Things haven’t really changed at all.”

Oh, they’ve changed. . . .

IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE: MICHAEL TOTTEN:

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice official Edward Perez, who is the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, refuses to say that his department won’t attempt to criminalize blasphemy in the future.

I can’t imagine that the Department of Justice would ever actually try such a thing, and the Supreme Court would break it in half if it did, but that doesn’t make the spineless weaseliness from Perez any less appalling.

You can watch the video of the sordid incident here.

The President takes an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. This President is doing the opposite.

NO SURPRISE, BUT NICE TO HAVE THIS ON THE RECORD AS AN ADMISSION: Liberal super PAC: Calling Republicans racist more effective than criticizing policy.

A top official at a liberal super PAC with the goal of eradicating tea partiers from Congress is telling activists that it’s more effective to label Republicans as racists than criticize their policies.

According to an audio recording obtained by The Daily Caller, Matthew “Mudcat” Arnold, the national campaign manager of the liberal CREDO super PAC, told a gathering of supporters in Aurora, Colo., on Sept. 8 that they’ve realized “policy did not move voters.”

He used Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King as an example.

“When we said that Steve King … is pro-life and believes in cutting Social Security and voted for the Ryan budget, no one cared,” Arnold said. “When we said Steve King’s a racist, Steve King believes that immigrants ought to be put in electric fences, people moved.”

Shameless.

YA THINK? The Hill: President Obama’s ‘proud’ statements on improving US image might boomerang. “President Obama has said that elevating the image of the United States around the world was one of his proudest foreign policy accomplishments, but those remarks could boomerang and hamper his reelection bid. The violence and anti-American protests throughout the Middle East are bringing fresh attacks on the president’s foreign policies as Muslim rage is intensifying in the region.”

Hey, remember this? Obama: The Day I’m Inaugurated, Muslim Hostility Will Ease.

ZOMBIE: Nakoula Arrest Photoshops: Best Of The Best.

I like this one. Er, if “like” is the right term.

And, of course, the perennial joke:

That one never fails. Lots more at the link.

Oh, okay. One more: