WASHINGTON POST: Obama Did Not Change Washington. Ya think?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Rich People Think Differently.

DIRTY TRICKS? Kimberlin-Rauhauser Axis Targets Romney Campaign Staffer Bill Murphy.

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MY SUNDAY WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMN: Politics And The Importance of Showing Up.

YOU KNOW THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT COMEDY? TIMING. Party Crasher!… US Debt Expected to Top $16 Trillion During DNC Convention.

DAN RIEHL: Unpopularity contest: How Obama campaigned on your tax dollars this weekend. “The threshold to release Obama’s beer recipe was 25,000 signatures … and they couldn’t even meet that. But they wanted the casual image of a beer drinking Obama out there for the Labor Day weekend … while New Orleans remains underwater, by the way. Heckuva job, Barry. Heckuva job. Now, about those college transcripts ….heh.”

I LIKE THAT: “The intellectual DJ of the blogosphere.”

Link-style blogging is like DJing. Somebody else once compared me to the Judge Jules of the blogosphere, and I think that’s right. You’ve got your hipper, edgier bloggers, like Treacher or Goldstein, but my role is to introduce them to the masses. But don’t expect me to quit blogging to practice law.

A LARGELY UNADDRESSED QUESTION: What would Obama do with another four years?

HEY, LOOK WHO PARKS THEIR CASH AT BAIN!

Democrats convened in Charlotte, NC, will double down on their claim that Bain Capital is really the Bain crime family. They will accuse Republican nominee Mitt Romney and Bain’s other “greedy” co-founders of stealing their winnings, evading taxes and lighting cigars with $100 bills on their yachts.

But Bain’s private-equity executives have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base — including some who scream most loudly for President Obama’s re-election.

Government-worker pension funds are the chief beneficiaries of Bain’s economic stewardship. New York-based Preqin uses public documents, news accounts and Freedom of Information requests to track private-equity holdings. Since 2000, Preqin reports, the following funds have entrusted some $1.56 billion to Bain:

* Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund ($2.2 million)

* Indiana Public Retirement System ($39.3 million)

* Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System ($177.1 million)

* The Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension System ($19.5 million)

* Maryland State Retirement and Pension System ($117.5 million)

* Public Employees’ Retirement System of Nevada ($20.3 million)

* State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio ($767.3 million)

* Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System ($231.5 million)

* Employees’ Retirement System of Rhode Island ($25 million)

* San Diego County Employees Retirement Association ($23.5 million)

* Teacher Retirement System of Texas ($122.5 million)

* Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System ($15 million)

But wait, there’s more!

According to BuyOuts magazine and S&P Capital IQ, Bain’s other college clients have included Cornell, Emory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Notre Dame and the University of Pittsburgh. Preqin reports that the following schools have placed at least $424.6 million with Bain Capital between 1998 and 2008:

* Purdue University ($15.9 million)

* University of California ($225.7 million)

* University of Michigan ($130 million)

* University of Virginia ($20 million)

* University of Washington ($33 million)

Major, center-left foundations and cultural establishments also have seen their prospects brighten, thanks to Bain Capital. According to the aforementioned sources, such Bain clients have included the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ford Foundation, the Heinz Endowments and the Oprah Winfrey Foundation.

Republicans should challenge these lefty groups to divest, or shut up.

ANN ALTHOUSE: David Brooks Really Blew It On This One. “It’s embarrassing.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: California Higher Education’s Hollow Core.

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JEFF GOLDSTEIN: GOP convention viewership down more than 40%. Mark Levin asks, why? What does it augur? Goldstein answers. Conclusion: “Well, I don’t think the power structure has any idea what’s coming.”

UPDATE: Reader Lin Wicklund writes: “As far as I can tell, nobody bothered to measure C-SPAN’s viewership. I don’t like to miss part of the coverage while heads blather at me to tell what I should think about the parts that they decide I should watch. C-Span suits me to a T!”

Good point. That’s what I watched.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Allen Covert writes: “I dvr’d cspan then watched what I wanted without the pundits. That’s why I got to see Mia Love speak. If I was watching a network I would have not seen her.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD GETS RID OF COMMENTS ON HIS BLOG: “To make the comments section work in its present form we would have to edit and curate much more aggressively than we do now and in our current judgment the effort needed to do that is better spent improving other features of the blog.”

I toy with the idea of opening comments now and then, but the above has always been my feeling, too.

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PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: Barack Obama, 2012: “Please Give Me A Mulligan!”

METAPHOR ALERT: Rains wash away Mount Obama in Charlotte, N.C. “A torrential downpour that struck Charlotte Saturday afternoon damaged the Mount Rushmore-style sand sculpture bust of President Obama — an ominous beginning to what many fear is a plagued convention.”

A house built on sand. . . .

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OH, GOODY: Obama Plans to Keep Campaigning Even After He Wins.

PROF. JACOBSON: They’re Still Just JournoLists. “To borrow their favorite metaphor, it was as if someone blew a dog whistle that only the liberal media could hear.” Dog whistle, emailed marching orders, whatever.

POINTS AND FIGURES: Why QE3? Because Bernanke Says 25 Million Unemployed is a Tragedy. Ben Bernanke channeling Clint Eastwood? Why not? But there’s only one problem: “There is no benefit to quantitative ease except you feel richer than you really are. When looking at the costs, the Fed also needs to total up all the damage that it has wreaked on retirees that are living on a fixed income. Most of them have investments tied to an interest rate instrument and have been devastated by Fed action over the past several years. The other people that are hurt are savers. People sitting on cash in checking and savings accounts. Their cash suddenly got worth less than it was yesterday.”

Yeah, somebody was talking about that the other day.

Bottom line: “The Fed is out of bullets. The only thing that can stimulate this economy is a change in fiscal policy.” But where are we going to get that?

CAVEAT, ER, WELL . . . Vaginal rejuvenation claims misleading patients.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Moore’s Law vs. The Law of More.

ANOTHER REASON TO BE HARDENING INFRASTRUCTURE: Solar storms can destabilize power grids at midlatitudes. “The Sun is capable of disrupting electrical systems on Earth in a variety of ways, from solar flares and coronal mass ejections to proton storms. Typically, it is only objects far above the Earth’s surface, or systems at high altitudes at polar latitudes, that are considered at risk except during the most powerful storms. Notable recent examples include solar activity during March 1989 and October 2003 (the ‘Halloween Storms’), which knocked out power in Quebec, Canada, and Sweden, respectively. Research by Marshall et al., however, finds that even a moderate event can have destructive effects far from the typical regions of concern.”