HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): On This Week In History, Gas Prices Have Never Been Higher.

Yet strangely, there’s little press attention to this fact.

ELIOT COHEN: Are You Safer Now Than You Were Four Years Ago? “Why is this the Obama administration’s record? Perhaps the president and his aides are declinists, who think of the United States as too weak to act; perhaps they are indifferent; perhaps they are merely incompetent. In any event, this president will leave his successor a country that is considerably less secure than it was when he took the oath of office.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Middle East Mess Part One: Over There.

Coming in the middle of the American campaign season and timed to coincide with eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the violence now shaking the Middle East has inevitably turned into a US domestic issue. I’ll write about that as the situation unfolds, but at the moment it seems most important to think about what is happening over there — and then to think about what this might mean for US policy or politics. . . .

If Americans are going to understand what’s going on and process it effectively, the first thing we’ve got to realize is that this isn’t all about us. The riots in Cairo are basically part of a local power struggle. Radical Salafists are in a power struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood; attacking the US embassy forces President Morsi (as the radical strategists presumably expected) to side with the US, however slowly or reluctantly. That’s a win for the radicals, who want to tar the Muslim Brotherhood as soft appeasers who side with the Americans against their own outraged people.

Striking at the embassy pushes Egyptian politics in a more radical direction short term, and over the medium term it weakens the Muslim Brotherhood and strengthens the more radical groups. After these last attacks, you are not going to see many tourists or foreign investors traipsing to Egypt anytime soon. The already struggling Egyptian economy has taken a hit that will cut employment. That’s going to hurt, and it’s going to reduce the popularity of the government, much to the benefit of the radicals who hope to replace it.

In many other places, from the West Bank and Gaza to Yemen and Tunisia, the protest movements are also more important for what they mean in local politics than about global policy.

Read the whole thing.

JOSHUA SHARF: “If there’s one thing President Obama hasn’t been good at, it’s taking responsibility. But it seems as though, in the matter of the anti-Muslim YouTube video, [he] may just have done so, and in the worst possible way.”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: State Department: Stop asking us about the Benghazi attack. “The State Department told reporters Friday afternoon that it won’t answer any more questions about the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans until the investigation into the incident is complete.”

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THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, POLITICALLY TROUBLESOME INDEPENDENT FILMMAKERS WOULD BE HARASSED BY THE AUTHORITIES — AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Alleged ‘Innocence of Muslims’ filmmaker taken in for interviewing by deputies.

This running gag isn’t as funny as it used to be. Imagine the uproar if we had a Republican in the White House — but it’s the absence of uproar over these tactics that is really revealing. It’s going to be really hard for the press and pundits who should be raising a stink about this, but aren’t, to play their “have you no decency?” games during a Republican Administration. They’ll try, of course, but they should be treated with the contempt they deserve. And that should start now, actually.

SHIRKER-IN-CHIEF: White House shirks Ways and Means deadline to provide Delphi documents.

President Barack Obama’s White House failed to meet the deadline to provide documents related to the Delphi pension scandal to the House Ways and Means Committee, The Daily Caller has learned.

On Aug, 15, Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp sent official document requests to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation director Josh Gotbaum and White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. Camp asked for documents relating to Treasury and the White House’s involvement in the decision during the 2009 bailout to terminate the pension plans for 20,000 non-union Delphi salaried workers while topping off the pension plans for union workers.

Each government entity was to provide these documents to the committee by Sept. 7.

A committee spokesperson told TheDC that the Treasury Department and PBGC each provided some documents, but the White House failed to provide anything by the deadline.

Remember all those promises to be the most transparent administration in history? Well, they are. You can see right through them.

THE HILL: House Approves “No More Solyndras” Act. “The House passed legislation Friday afternoon that would curtail a Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee program that backed a $535 million federal loan to Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar-panel maker. Members approved the No More Solyndras Act, H.R. 6213, in a 245-161 vote. Republicans have held the failed green-energy company as proof that the Obama administration has funneled billions of dollars to undeserving firms.”

My favorite bit: “Passage sends the bill to a Senate that is expected to ignore it completely.” Hey, it interferes with graft.

DAVID SOLWAY: The End of Obamerica. “Events in the Middle East cast into sharp relief the choice facing Americans this fall.”

NICK GILLESPIE: Get Ready for Stories About How Cutting $1.2 Trillion in Future Spending is Responsible for Today’s Government Failures.

Now that the White House has released its massive sequestration report detailing the $1.2 trillion in possible cuts to future spending over the next 10 years, expect to read more headlines like the following from Buzzfeed:

Mandatory Defense Cuts Would Slash Funding To Security At Embassies, Report Says

You got that implication, kemo sabe?

Possible future trims in spending have something to do with what’s going in the Middle East right now. Not that embassies are under attack now because of American foreign policy or world events or rotten security or whatever. Or that we can’t defend our citizens and diplomatic corps right now despite record-high levels of spending on defense and military operations for most of the 21st century.

No, the real bad news is coming if and when the United States stops its 12-year long spending spree that has all but killed any chance of recovery and piled on the debt like Dagwood Bumstead loading cold cuts onto a sandwich roll.

I would make fun of Buzzfeed, but it’s not like the others are really any better or more honest. Meanwhile, if we had had competent management we could have secured our embassies pretty easily. And that’s without even adopting my flamethrower-based embassy-defense strategy.

Plus Nick’s bottom line: “In fact, the cuts for 2013 amount to maybe a whopping $120 billion in an annual budget that is likely to run about $3.8 trillion. Out of the $120 billion, about $50 billion will come out of military budget that will be well north of $650 billion, including war funding. Let’s leave aside the mad rush by every part of the government to link its current failures to a future spending cut and instead point out the obvious: Sequestration in no way threatens any basic governmental function. Period.”

The first thing we should be sequestering are Congressional salaries. If we did that, we wouldn’t have to worry about any of the rest . . . .

MISSING THE FOREST for the YouTube video.

IF TRUE, WE MIGHT AS WELL SWEAR ROMNEY IN NOW: 72% in poll say Obama economic record to be key factor in their vote.

DO TELL: WaPo “Fact Checker:” Say, The Obama Plan Does Kinda Undermine Welfare Reform After All.

Also, Mickey Kaus has much more.

ZOMBIE ON THE NARRATIVE WARS: Slap the Honey Boo Boos with Truthaganda. “Memo to non-leftist bloggers, reporters and culture-shapers: TAKE THE GODDAMN GLOVES OFF. This campaign just got real. From right now until election day, no holds are barred. . . . The MSM knows full well it manipulates The Narrative, and invariably does so to the benefit of Obama, the Democrats, and “progressivism” in general. And people like you and me know this full well too. But until now the media has at least feigned impartiality, not to trick us but in order to maintain credibility and influence over the Honey Boo Boos.”

Call them out by name. Make it personal. Do it every single time.

BOB OWENS: Look on my mom jeans, ye Mighty, and despair! Not an undecided vote remains.

STANDING UP TO THE CENSORS: YouTube tells White House it will not remove video blamed for sparking riots.

UPDATE: “Thanks to Google, a corporation, with stronger free-speech values than the United States government is willing to support.”

Well, it’s not like Chicago Machine politicians were ever big fans of free speech. Only a dolt would think otherwise.

TIME FOR HILLARY TO RESIGN? Colonel: Hillary Made Decision Not to Post Marines at Benghazi.

I’d have marines. With flamethrowers. #Reynolds2016

WHOA, DUDE: Are We Inside A Computer Right Now?

According to Moore’s Law, which states that computing power doubles roughly every two years, all of this will be theoretically possible in the future. Sooner or later, we’ll get to a place where simulating a few billion people—and making them believe they are sentient beings with the ability to control their own destinies—will be as easy as sending a stranger a picture of your genitals on your phone.

This hypothesis—versions of which have been kicked around for centuries—is becoming the trippy notion of the moment for philosophers, with people like Nick Bostrom, the director of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, seriously considering the premise.

Until recently, the simulation argument hadn’t really attracted traditional researchers. That’s not to say he is the first scientist to predict our ability to run realistic simulations (among others, Ray Kurzweil did that in his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines), but he is one of the first to argue we might already be living inside one. Rich has even gone one step further by attempting to prove his theories through physics, citing things like the observable pixelation of the tiniest matter and the eerie similarities between quantum mechanics, the mathematical rules that govern our universe, and the creation of video game environments.

Just think: Whenever you fuck up there could be the intergalactic version of an overweight 13-year-old Korean boy controlling you and screaming “Shit!” into an Xbox headset. It sort of takes the edge off things.

Sort of.

REPORTING FROM EGYPT: Sandmonkey from Cairo — Exclusive PJM Audio Interview.

SHOCKER: HuffPo Misreported What Romney Said About “Middle Income.”

I’ve bolded a few inconvenient words. Observe: the HuffPo reports “$200-$250″; the AP story elsewhere says $200K-$250K and less. Add the “and less” and suddenly Romney is saying the same limits as Obama — and the other bolded words make clear.

By the way, this is first in a series of Romney Rumors; it’s become clear that we need to capture these things just as we did with Palin. If you see anything you think needs to be debunked, pass it along.

Indeed. You can’t trust the press — as many are now observing, they’re just Democratic operatives with bylines.

UPDATE: Andrew Kaczynski tweets: “Not really reported by HuffPost, they posted the AP story, who got it wrong. HuffPost had no way of knowing.” Okay, so it’s AP who are the Dem operatives with bylines.

ALAN BOYLE: The Lighter Side of Neil Armstrong.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: In world’s first, atomic force microscope sees chemical bonds in individual molecules (w/ video).

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ED DRISCOLL: Obama: The First Amendment? Never Heard Of It.