WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US, CONT: Saco, Maine Taxpayers Outraged They Have To Pay For All The Crap They Voted For Last Year.

Which is the flip-side of this unintentionally revealing quote I linked to yesterday regarding California’s insane gas prices:

“What are they doing to us?” said Marilyn Tucker, a FedEx employee, as she stopped pumping at a central Los Angeles gas station at $37, well before the tank of her sedan was full. “It’s just ridiculous.”

As Lance of Canada’s Small Dead Animals blog asked, “Who is the ‘they’?”

(We know who one “they” is – and he got 61 percent of the vote in California 2008.)

RELATED: Chuck Todd, Ben Smith Lament Lack of Trust In Institutions They Helped Destroy.

JAMIE GLAZOV interviews me about my new book, Where the West Ends: Stories from the Middle East, the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus.

MAYBE IT WOULD HELP IF THEY DRESSED AS GIANT VAGINAS? Taliban Threatens to Bomb Code Pink Demonstration in Pakistan Against U.S. Drone Strikes

HOW TO DRESS LIKE JAMES BOND? There’s a blog for that.

THE PROPER RESPONSE TO SUCH RESTRICTIONS INVOLVES TAR AND FEATHERS. Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril. “Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4. At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture, as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products.”

IF YOU THINK THE PIE IS FINITE, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Dave Freer on the Finity Of Pie (mostly in publishing, though it applies to other fields.  And btw, I’m ALMOST sure he is joking about recycling toilet paper.  He lives in Tasmania and is not exposed to our crazier greenies.) Oh, and if you enjoy Dave’s writing, go ahead and throw some cash at his Bolg PI series.

WELL, THAT SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT: Poll: Voters believe Obama wants tax hikes to increase spending, not cut deficit.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Dress Like James Bond.

MICKEY KAUS: Someone from the EU is lecturing us about the need to get our “act together”? Hello?

OBAMA SUPPORTED RESTRICTING “HATE” SPEECH:  In this Daily Caller piece, Charles C. Johnson reveals that as a law student, Obama was a typical Crit (Critical Legal Studies/Critical Race Theory) at Harvard Law, seeing no constitutional problem with laws that prevent “hate” speech:

The 1991 Harvard Law School yearbook quoted the future President of the United States virtually shrugging his shoulders at the thought that non-liberal white students might take offense at restrictions on speech that minority students found objectionable. “I don’t see a lot of conservatives getting upset if minorities feel silenced,” Obama said, flipping the argument around.

JOHN HAWKINS interviews Thomas Sowell on his new essay Trickle Down Theory and Tax Cuts for the Rich. The Insta-Wife read the essay and enjoyed it.

COWARD: Madonna backs down from wearing Muslim bridal dress. It’s not easy and safe like mocking Catholics, is it?

AS FRANK BURNS SAID ON M*A*S*H, individuality is fine, as long as we all do it together.

I wonder how long this sentence will last on Stacey Dash’s Wikipedia page?

UPDATE (1:46 PM eastern): Gone, of course. But then, that tends to happen quite a bit at the Faith-Based Encyclopedia.

WELL ABOVE 47%: ‘Nine in ten Scots ‘living off state’s patronage.’   My grandmother used to say “him who feeds you, rules you.”  If nine in ten people depend on the state, how free are they to vote their conscience?  While we still can, we should think: is this where we want to go?

“NOT IN MY CITY.”

ROMNEY TAKES THE OFFENSIVE on foreign policy.

DEMOCRATS GONE WILD: Obama supporters ‘key’ cars displaying pro-Romney bumper stickers.

Time to update the logo and dust off this T-shirt slogan, which was “unexpectedly” popular in the fall of 2004:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback: My reporting from the bullet-riddled Bush-Cheney headquarters in 2004.

THE NEO-PURITAN VOTE: Romney and Obama: Dueling Bostonians. “When Wilsonians turn their gaze toward the United States, they become what I think of as the Bostonian school in domestic politics. Like the New England Puritans to whom they owe so much, today’s Bostonians believe that a strong state led by the righteous should use its power to make America a more moral and ethical country. This, I believe, is the tradition in American domestic politics that most profoundly shapes President Obama’s worldview. . . . Bostonians over the years have changed their ideas about morality; few today would agree with Increase Mather and John Winthrop that the state should punish any deviation from Biblical morality as understood by 17th century puritan divines. But when it comes to punishing offenses against righteousness as defined by a congress of humanities professors, multiculturalist activists and foundation grants officers, the liberal morality police are ready to march — and to smite. Today’s neo-puritans would certainly agree that once morality has been re-defined in a suitably feminist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-tobacco and anti-obesity way, it is the clear duty of the Civil Magistrate to enforce the moral law—and that our governing constitutions and laws must be interpreted—by the godly who alone ought to be seated on the judicial tribunals—to give said magistrates all the power they require for their immense and unending task of moral regulation and uplift.”

THE EMPEROR’S OLD CLOTHES: Obama’s post-debate negativity shows he has nothing to say.

COVER-UP: Obama Administration Yanked a 16-Member Special Forces Team From Benghazi, A Month Before Attack (And A Month Before The Calender-Predictable Arrival of September 11th). Don’t miss the accompanying videos.

SCANDAL: Bombshell: Obama.com Owned by Bundler in Shanghai with Business Ties to Chinese Government.

In an explosive report set to send shockwaves through official Washington, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) released a 108-page GAI investigation into the threat of foreign and fraudulent Internet campaign donations in U.S. federal elections (visit campaignfundingrisks.com to download the full report).

Breitbart News obtained an advance copy of the bombshell report which reveals that the Obama.com website is not owned by the president’s campaign but rather by Obama bundler Robert Roche, a U.S. citizen living in Shanghai, China. Roche is the chairman of a Chinese infomercial company, Acorn International, with ties to state-controlled banks that allow it to “gain revenue through credit card transactions with Chinese banks.”

There’s more.

The unusual Obama.com website redirects traffic directly to a donation page on the Obama campaign’s official website, my.barackobama.com, which does not require donors tob enter their credit card security code (known as the CVV code), thereby increasing the likelihood of foreign or fraudulent donations. The website is managed by a small web development firm, Wicked Global, in Maine. One of Wicked Global’s employees, Greg Dorr, lists on his LinkedIn page his additional employment with Peace Action Maine and Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights. According to the GAI report, 68 percent of all Internet traffic to Obama.com comes from foreign visitors.

And still more.

In 2011, Mr. Roche obtained one of the most sought-after pieces of real estate in Washington, DC: a seat at the head table for President Obama’s State Dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao. How Roche—a man whose infomercial company hawks fitness equipment, cell phones, and breast enhancement products—landed a seat alongside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton, Sen. John Kerry, former President Jimmy Carter, and Chinese President Hu Jintao remains unclear.

Since 2009, White House Visitor Logs list the name Robert Roche at least 19 times, despite the fact Mr. Roche’s primary residence is in China.

Those of us who remember the dubious-donation scandal of 2008 — largely ignored by the press, of course — won’t be surprised. Will this get more attention now?

More from Katie Pavlich.

Because of the lack of a CVV code requirement, the door is opened for OFA to accept robo-donations, or in other words, large numbers of small and automatic donations made online to evade FEC reporting requirements. Although it isn’t illegal to decline the use of a secure CVV credit card code for campaign donations, it is illegal to accept campaign donations from foreign sources. Campaigns are required under criminal code not to solicit, accept or receive foreign donations in any amount. The Federal Elections Commission doesn’t require campaigns to disclose the names of donors making contributions of less than $200 unless audited. In addition, FEC rules don’t require campaigns to keep records of those giving less than $50. These rules combined with the lack of a CVV numbers make it easy for campaigns to get away with taking foreign donations.

According to GAI, it is the duty of the campaign to “ensure compliance with the law. Indeed, they risk criminal prosecution for the conscious failure to do so. This means that whether or not the FEC requires it to be reported, campaigns have an independent duty under the law to discover and protect against criminal campaign contributions.” Protecting against criminal campaign contributions is easily accomplished by requiring a CVV code on the campaign donation page.

OFA has specifically touted its “grassroots” success by showcasing the majority of its donations coming from those giving less than $200. It appears the campaign also solicits funds for less than $200 in order to avoid having to report the name of the person making a donation under FEC rules.

Read the whole thing.

HMM: Elon Musk on SpaceX, Tesla, and Why Space Solar Power Must Die. I certainly agree with this:

SpaceX isn’t just in it to make money on those contracts. Ultimately, Musk envisions a self-sustaining civilization on Mars—thus his remark about becoming an interplanetary species. That way, in case the worst happens and Earth is obliterated or used up, “the light of consciousness is not extinguished.” But his vision requires tens of thousands or even millions of people on the red planet. “We’d need really big rockets launching a lot,” he says.

But I’m more positive on space solar power.

GALLUP: Romney 47, Obama 47. Among registered voters.

LA COURBE DE ARTHUR LAFFER TRADUIT EN FRANÇAIS COMME BIEN: Comme Margaret Thatcher a dit, “le problème avec le socialisme est que par la suite, vous exécutez hors de l’argent d’autrui.”

(Blame Bing if the translation is off, but you’ll get the gist of it by clicking on the above link.)