STANDING UP AGAINST SEXISM IN THE NEW YORK TIMES.

PROF. JACOBSON: Mitt Romney selling mugs with his birth certificate on them … oh, wait.

MICKEY KAUS: The mainstream media comes in to Tampa with one mission, Brian, and that’s to subtly give the impression that Romney is floundering.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: More lies: Obama for America coordinator continues anti-Mormon bigotry; Lies about being Republican, deletes tweet.

Related: Anti-Mormon Obama Supporter Threatens Yours Truly. “Threatening legal action against bloggers is par for the course for folks who feel they’ve been exposed.” Yep.

READER PATRICK CARROLL EMAILS ON FOOD PRICES:

I’m the cook for my family, always have been. My wife refused to learn how to cook, while I was taught by a Cypriot Greek when I came to the US to work on my summer vacations while going to university in Ireland.

While working for Sophocles (yes, that was his name), I learned how to cook for large groups of people. Working for Sophocles, the typical recipe started with “Render two sheep into one inch cubes……” This serves me well today, as I make meals for a family. Typically, I cook “by the vat.” I cook a load of food of a single type, and we live off it for the week. Then I do something else. This weekend I was getting ready to cook my vat, so I went to Publix looking for deals. There were great deals on pasta and pasta sauces, so pasta it is for this week. Normally I take the shop pasta sauces and augment them with garlic, mushrooms, onions, other herbs, and ground beef. Weekends are a good time to buy ground beef because you can get the ground beef that’s about to go out of date for a decent price. I’m cooking for a group. Price is a consideration.

This weekend, I found the on-sale (i.e., about to go out of date) ground beef at over $5.00 per pound. This is about 60% over the normal price. I’m buying about half the normal amount of beef and adding more veg (ok, onion) to compensate.

The press may not talk about inflation in food prices, but it’s happening.

Yes, I do our grocery shopping and I’m frequently appalled. The other thing that appalls me is how surreally low the interest rates banks are touting have gotten — 0.5% on a CD! Woohoo! If we had a Republican president, the press would be full of tear-jerking reports about senior citizens being squeezed between rising food prices and rock-bottom interest rates as a result of his horrible economic policies. But since we have a Democrat in the White House, it’s just one of those things that happen, waddyagonnado?

UPDATE: Reader Chris Fox writes: “If you think food prices are high now, wait until you see meat prices next year. We actually expect beef prices to drop as ranchers liquidate their herds this summer after running out of pasture. Corn prices are just too high to profitably feed the cattle and sell them at current beef prices. You’ll get a drop in prices this year, and a spike next year, as the beef glut turns into a shortage. We in the financial industry have been talking about this for months. I’m starting to see articles in the regular papers discussing same.”

Fill your freezer when prices drop. And I guess this is a good time to post that Strategic Shopping link again.

MORE ON ISAAC from Brendan Loy.

WHO? Oh, right, I saw his face on some billboards for a personal-injury law firm in Florida when I was there a few weeks ago. They’re all over the Florida Turnpike. Charlie Crist endorses Obama.

Funny, not long ago Crist was predicting a Carteresque loss for Obama this year.

CHANGE: Linda McMahon Makes Gains In Connecticut.

ROMNEY: Obama Not Even Trying Any More.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused President Obama on Saturday of giving up on trying to fix the economy, saying he had “admitted defeat.”

In his weekly podcast, Romney pounced on a recent government report, which found that the unemployment rate rose in 44 states last month.

He accused Obama of blaming the “stalemate in Washington” instead of working to boost job creation.

“With millions of Americans hurting like never before, the President has admitted defeat. With five months to go before his term his up, he’s saying he won’t even try anymore,” Romney claimed.

I think that’s a base calumny. Obama is trying just as hard now as he ever has.

ROGER SIMON: Fear and Shame on the Campaign Trial #5 – Waiting for Isaac.

JOHN LUCAS IS walking across Switzerland.

MARK STEYN: The War On Women Is A Joke; The War On Children Is Real.

PICADOR STRATEGY UPDATE: Tell It To The Ear. “There is a possibility that Barack Obama, know affectionately in some circles as the JEF, or Jug-Eared, uhh, Flop, is a bit sensitive about his cranial protuberances. Since Obama is laughably thin-skinned, commenter bgates has suggested the following speech for Romney.”

ED DRISCOLL WANTS TO BELIEVE, but warns don’t get cocky.

ANDREA TANTAROS: Obama’s relentless negativity: President, unable to run on his own record, keeps attacking Romney.

SHOCKER: Democrat Men For Romney.

PROPOSED GOP PLATFORM includes Internet freedom language.

N.Y. TIMES OMBUDSMAN: Say, we’re just a bunch of lefty shills, aren’t we?

JIM TREACHER MOCKS MOVEON AND THEIR “AMERICA IS BETTER THEN BIRTHERISM” BANNER.

Hey, don’t knock it. I hear it was a big hit in Oiho.

RAND SIMBERG on Neil Armstrong.

BRENDAN LOY: New Orleans In Peril, Again? “Nagin’s not the mayor anymore, right?”

Related: RNC Delayed By Isaac.

ILYA SOMIN: Would the North be better off without the South? “Whether Thompson’s argument is correct depends in part on your political ideology. If your overriding objective is to have a more left-wing federal government, it’s hard to deny that southern secession would accomplish that goal for the remainder of the United States. The nonsouthern electorate is significantly to the left of the present total US voting population (which of course includes the South). Otherwise, Thompson’s position is dubious at best. In recent decades, the southern states have had higher economic growth and income growth than the North, and many northerners – including even many African-Americans – have voted with their feet for the South because of its greater economic opportunities, lower taxes and regulations, and much cheaper home prices (caused in large part by looser zoning restrictions in southern cities). Without the South, the US would lose a great deal of its economic dynamism.”

AT AMAZON, 35-50% off polo shirts for men.

Also, 25-50% off on Men’s Activewear.

IS ANYTHING THESE PEOPLE ARE FLOATING TRUE? NY Times – Romney Has Been Paying Federal Taxes For Last Decade. But here’s the key bit: “Meanwhile, Harry Reid’s office maintains its devastating silence on his alleged pedophilia.”

FIRST FAKE TWITTER FOLLOWERS, NOW THIS. YOU KNOW, I’M BEGINNING TO THINK IT’S FAKERY ALL THE WAY DOWN: Fake Republican Women For Obama.

It happens all the time in talk radio: a caller will say that he is a lifelong Republican, and will recall fondly how he voted for Ronald Reagan. Then he says that today’s Republicans have gone too far, and for the first time ever he is voting for a Democrat! These callers are nearly always lying. If you look them up, you likely will find that they are Democratic Party precinct chairmen.

The Obama campaign is trying to perpetrate the same deception. It has just released a video called Republican Women For Obama, which features four or five women who claim to be Republicans, or to have been Republicans until recently. But, of course, they are appalled by Mitt Romney–it is hard to say why, apart from a couple of discreet references to abortion, but did they really just now figure out that the Republican Party is pro-life? The ad is surprisingly ineffective, but it is also dishonest.

That makes sense. If 2008 was “Hope and change,” then the hallmark of 2012 is “Surprisingly ineffective, but dishonest.”

More here.