ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS USING “Saudi Censorship Tactics.” Why not sue ’em?

A BOLD PREDICTION FROM ED MORRISSEY: Obama’s Campaign Incompetence Will Hand It To Romney.

UPDATE: Video: Wolf Blitzer rips Obama for skipping NAACP convention.

MORE: Gee, why would Obama blow off the NAACP?

STILL MORE: Romney Campaign Straight-Up Calls Obama A Liar.

AT AMAZON, markdowns in Patio & Garden.

Also, today only: Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX1 16 MP Micro 4/3 Compact System Camera with 3-Inch LCD Touch Screen (Body Only) for $395. This is a good deal. Mine came with the kit lens, but I pretty much always use the 7-14mm ultrawide lens. My review is here. It shoots great video, too.

INSTAVISION: I talk with Roger Kimball about his new book, The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia.

Among other things, we discuss the Gods Of The Copybook Headings, the pessimism of Mark Steyn, and the surprising popularity of The Dangerous Book For Boys.

LIBOR: The Regulators Blew It. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that the LIBOR scandal is not Lehman Bros. redux but rather Bernie Madoff redux. Indeed, in some respects it’s worse than the Madoff case, because at least some regulators were informed of the problems and did nothing and, worse yet, some may even have encouraged false reporting so as to maintain ‘confidence’ during the financial crisis. In sum, the regulator failures are very much part of the real scandal here.”

The New York Fed knew about this scandal in 2007. Tim “Turbo Tax” Geithner was President of the New York Fed at the time. Now he’s Treasury Secretary. Charles Gasparino asks What Did Tim Know?

The latest development in the Libor-manipulation scandal is that the banks weren’t really fixing the price of the key interest rate in total secret — US regulators were aware of the sleazy activities at the time, and seemed to have done nothing.

Which should surprise no one. . . .

The New York Fed has two main functions: It handles the transactions whereby the overall Federal Reserve controls the nation’s money supply, and it’s supposed to be the chief regulator of the big banks in its region.

When Obama named him for Treasury, the banking industry hailed Geithner as a godsend. Shares shot up on his announcement, and CEOs called it a wise choice for a key job at a time of crisis.

But the dirty little secret on Wall Street is that the New York Fed is a horrible regulator: It sees its chief job as keeping the banking system intact. Since it needs its member banks to buy US government debt and to control the money supply, the last thing it wants to do is shed light on the banks’ shady practices.

Which is why the Wall Street power brokers loved Geithner so much: On his New York Fed watch, he basically let them get away with the financial equivalent of murder, letting them take on the astronomical amounts of risk that ultimately blew up the system in 2008.

Read the whole thing.

FROM THE VOICE-IN-THE-WILDERNESS DEPARTMENT: Pakistani physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy speaks out for scientific rationality.

BLACK BOSTON MINISTERS speak out for Romney.

UPDATE: Tommy Christopher, Rachel Maddow Expose Their Racism In Misguided Romney Attack.

THE HILL: NRA draws red line on UN arms treaty. “The National Rifle Association (NRA) warned the United Nations on Wednesday that the effort to craft international rules for weapons sales will go nowhere in Congress if it includes civilian arms. Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the powerful lobby group, said 58 senators have pledged to oppose the treaty if it covers civilian weapons, fearing an infringement of America’s gun rights.”

Related: Tide Turns Against Law of the Sea Treaty.

JERRY BOWYER: Americans Revolt Billions of Times A Day.

Most people have absolutely no moral compunction about any of these violations, either of the spirit or the letter of the law, because deep down they no longer believe that the law, especially the tax code, represents any compelling moral principle, nor do its dictates seem any longer to be fair. They don’t think their home state has earned taxes on the Amazon purchases or that it deserves any share of the mutually beneficial exchange between you and your dry wall guy.

I bet you can think of a few dozen more examples, and increasingly we’re all in business and in personal life thinking of more and more ways to game a system which we have less and less faith in.

It’s not civil disobedience that I’m talking about. It’s the opposite: Civil disobedience is meant to be noticed. It is a price paid in the hope of creating social change. What I’m talking about is not based on hope; in fact, it has given up much hope on social change. It thinks the government is a colossal amoeba twitching mindlessly in response to tiny pinpricks of pain from an endless army of micro-brained interest groups. The point is not to teach the amoeba nor to guide it, but simply to stay away from the lethal stupidity of its pseudopods.

Ouch.

FRONTIERS IN LITIGATION: Accountant Claims Wrongful Termination Essentially Because Her Job Was Too Hard.

Accountant Tammy Armstrong is claiming wrongful termination and intentional infliction of emotional distress because her employer asked her to do a lot of work. She also wants to be paid overtime because her employer had the audacity to claim her as a salaried worker and then paid her a salary.

Basically, if she wins, then every single junior office worker in law or finance should be able to sue their employers. Which makes me think she’s not going to win.

I dunno, the way things are going these days, anything’s possible.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: 6 charts that show the Welfare State run amok.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Obama Sinks to Historic Lows Among Blue-Collar Men. “Throughout his career on the national stage, Obama has struggled among white men without a college education. But in these latest surveys, he has fallen to a level of support among them lower than any Democratic nominee has attracted in any election since 1980, according to an upcoming National Journal analysis of exit polls from presidential elections. . . . No one expects Obama to win these blue-collar men, who are now among the most reliably Republican segments of the electorate. But even so, these numbers, if sustained through Election Day, would represent a modern nadir for Democrats. Since 1980, the worst performance for any Democratic nominee among these working-class white men was the 31 percent Walter Mondale managed against Ronald Reagan in 1984; the meager 39 percent Obama drew in 2008 was actually the party’s best showing over that period. These new surveys show Obama that these non-college white men represent Obama’s largest source of decline in the white electorate since 2008. Still, Obama is also facing weak numbers among working-class white women.”

Remember when the Democrats represented the working class, instead of the Gentry?

REPORT: Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. receiving “intensive” treatment for a “mood disorder.”

RACISM IN AMERICAN POLITICS: “Cleaver just said Romney should not have criticized Obama in front of black audience.”

WELL, IT IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Branson’s spaceship steals the spotlight at airshow. “British tycoon Richard Branson stole the show here Wednesday, announcing that he and his family would be on Virgin Galactic’s first trip into space, as Airbus and Boeing eked out more plane orders.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Low-Paid Grads Not Spending Money Or Building Careers.

Underemployment isn’t debilitating only for individuals whose career and income opportunities are stunted. It threatens the economic expansion as college-educated young adults have traditionally fueled consumer spending on clothes, technology, entertainment and cars.

“If you have a stumbling entry into the labor market, you risk getting stuck in jobs for which you’re overqualified and poorly paid for the rest of your life,” said Katherine Newman, a sociologist and dean of the school of arts and sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who has studied the long- term effects of underemployment. “There’s a scarring effect, with employers you want marking you as undesirable. The economic toll is enormous.”

The underemployed include those of all ages who are working part-time but want full-time positions. There were 8.2 million people working part-time for economic reasons in June, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number had doubled to 9.1 million in the last quarter of 2009 from 4.5 million in the same period of 2007.

It’s not pretty.

REVIEWS: Wolf Blitzer Blasts President Obama for Being NAACP ‘No-Show’: ‘Romney Did the Right Thing. . . . The President Did Not.’ “As Blitzer noticed, it was respectful. he even got a standing ovation — a Republican, at the NAACP convention — besides the applause he received for his commitment to defend traditional marriage. And he was just a little Romney unleashed. If he keeps this up, he might just be our next president.”

IT’S ALL THE FAULT OF THAT EVIL SUV! “Scott wrote here about the appalling case of a 16-year-old St. Paul girl, Clarisse Grime, who was sitting in the grass at her high school, nowhere near the street, when she was struck and killed by a vehicle that careened out of control and bounced off a fire hydrant. The vehicle was driven by an illegal immigrant who has been in Minnesota for ten years without ever having a driver’s license. He was known to local authorities, having been convicted of drunk driving in 2001 and driving without a license just a few months ago. But the immigration laws are not enforced in St. Paul. So today, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported on Miss Grime’s funeral. This was the paper’s headline: ‘St. Paul teen killed by SUV remembered at her funeral.’ Killed by SUV? That doesn’t really seem to be the salient point.”

No, but focusing on it helps avoid the salient point. Which is, you know . . . the point.

I SUPPOSE THAT PRESS RELEASES LIKE THIS WILL ONLY BECOME MORE COMMON. IT IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW. Planetary Resources, Inc. Announces Agreement with Virgin Galactic for Payload Services. “Planetary Resources, Inc., the asteroid mining company, announced today an agreement with Virgin Galactic, LLC that will enable multiple launch opportunities for its series of spacecraft, including the Arkyd-100 low-Earth orbit (LEO) space telescopes.”

#NARRATIVEFAIL: Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now – and world has been cooling for 2,000 years.

Here’s the article from Nature Climate Change, which says that variations in the Earth’s orbit have 4 times more impact on climate than anthropogenic warming.

It’s looking more and more like Fallen Angels all the time.

I’D LIKE TO KNOW HOW SHE MANAGED THAT: DOJ Witness Can Fly to Washington, But Can’t Get Voter ID?

Because they always make me show government-issued photo ID to fly.

SHOCKING HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Keith Olbermann Is Kind Of Touchy. I think that, at this point in his career, taunting Olbermann is kind of cruel.

A BLEG: Reader Dave Tulka writes: “Our daughter Caroline is headed off to college next month as an International Relations major at North Georgia. I doubt I am the only dad shopping laptop backpacks for a college-bound kid. Any preferences from the enlightened Instapundit readership?” Any suggestions?

INTO THE FORBIDDEN ZONE: John Scalzi talks about his new book, Redshirts. It’s hell being an expendable minor character.

BIPARTISAN: Five Dems Join House Vote To Repeal ObamaCare.