IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID: Battleground States Poll: Curiously, So-Called War on Women Not an Issue. #Obamafail.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: “Watchdog” Who Exonerated Administration on Energy Loans Turns Out To Be Major Obama Donor.

JOEL KOTKIN: Utah Up, Chicago Down: Why Mitt Romney Should Embrace His Mormonism.

Utah netted 150,000 new arrivals from other states in the last decade, while Illinois lost a net of 70,000 people each year to other states. And Utah’s new arrivals include more than Mormons returning to Zion; Salt Lake County is now only 54% Mormon. Twenty-six percent of the county’s residents are minorities, mostly Hispanic immigrants. . . .

A recent Gallup survey ranked Utah first in terms of quality of life, in part because of its citizens’ “low smoking habits, ease of finding clean and safe water, having supervisors who treat workers like a partner rather than a boss, learning something new or interesting on any given day, and perceptions that your city or area are ‘getting better’ rather than ‘getting worse.’”

While Illinois competes with California for the nation’s worst credit ranking, Utah stands at the AAA apex. The job-growth rate in Salt Lake City and the state rank near the top while Chicago and Illinois have sunk relentlessly toward the bottom. Forbes recently ranked Utah “the best state for business and careers” for the second straight year; Illinois ranked 41st.

As with all Kotkin pieces, read the whole thing.

DEBORAH JONES MERRITT: The Scholarship Smokescreen.

PRESIDENT QUAYLE: Team Romney calls out Obama for misspelling ‘Ohio’ at campaign stop. Obama must not have been paying attention in his geography classes.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Progressive’s #Fail in Social Media May Be Warning to Insurers.

Progressive Corp. was trying to save $75,000. Instead, it unleashed a flurry of social-media rage against the company. Now, the question is whether Progressive’s experience will prompt changes throughout the auto-insurance industry as more consumers use the Internet to tell their side of the story when they feel they’ve been slighted by their insurers.

The car insurer found itself in the middle of an online firestorm last week after a blogger named Matt Fisher took to his Tumblr page to complain about the way Progressive treated his family as they sought to collect on his deceased sister’s insurance policy.

Mr. Fisher’s story went viral, and four days later, Progressive agreed to settle with the family for an undisclosed sum. Whatever the settlement amount, the total cost of the incident will be much higher, with a tally that will include those people who made good on their Twitter threats to switch their insurance away from Progressive, as well as those who won’t consider Progressive for their insurance in the future.

Yes, the balance of power has shifted. If only someone would write a book on this phenomenon or something.

MORE VIOLENT ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC FROM THE WHITE HOUSE: Obama: Team Romney coming on strong, playing dirty, time to ‘put them away.’

ANOTHER FAKE HATE CRIME: Cops: Lesbian Fakes Attack In Which She Carved Anti-Gay Slurs Into Skin.

GOOD QUESTION: Are The Democrats Delusional On Abortion? “The Democrats apparently think they have hit the jackpot with Todd Akin’s moment of stupidity, but I’m not so sure. How, exactly, are they going to take advantage of Akin’s blunder? By talking ceaselessly about abortion. . . . If there is one thing we can say with certainty this year, it is that the overwhelming majority of voters don’t want to hear about the social issues. They want to know how we are going to climb out of the four-year economic funk that has been the Obama administration. If undecided viewers tune into the Democratic convention and hear all about abortion, and tune into the Republican convention and hear all about the economy, Romney will win in a landslide. And, by the way, Republicans should help drive this contrast by saying nothing–and I mean, absolutely nothing–about any social issue.”

Makes sense to me.

JOURNALISM: If the media is mystified over the definition of “forcible rape,” hoo boy, are we going to have a hard time explaining felony murder to them. . . . It is distinguished from “statutory rape,” which is not forcible rape, but considered rape due to a statutory forbiddence– jailbait.

Related: Clearly the Koch Brothers and ALEC planted the phrase “forcible rape” in FBI lingo decades ago to set up Paul Ryan’s future!

20 YEARS LATER: Jesse Walker: Ruby Ridge Is History, But the Mindset That Led to Ruby Ridge Is Thriving. “It isn’t hard to find examples of marginal groups whose paranoia about the government drove them to violence. The tale of the Weavers shows how the government’s paranoia about marginal groups can drive it to violence, too. The feds looked at a family with fringy views and perceived a threat, and as a result a woman, a boy, a dog, and one of the government’s own agents were killed.”

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in medicine.

HURRICANE WATCH: Will Isaac Occupy Tampa?

HMM. WHAT IS DRUDGE TRYING TO TELL US HERE?

AT LIBERTY ISLAND, a call for submissions. “Our new venture, Liberty Island, will identify and publish the best of a new generation of politically independent and culturally contrarian writers. We’re recruiting writers in a wide range of genres, including thriller, crime, fantasy, mystery, adventure, science fiction, satire, historical and political fiction—even western and romance. Independent in all senses of the word, we are starting a cultural insurgency using the tools of digital technology to circumvent and challenge the mainstream publishing establishment. Liberty Island exists to identify, promote, and introduce these new writers to a likeminded audience that shares their tastes and values—specifically the values of liberty, individualism, and American exceptionalism.” (Bumped).

HMM: Study: Economic Data Predict Big Romney Win. “A University of Colorado analysis that has correctly predicted every presidential election since 1980 based on state-by-state factors forecasts that Mitt Romney will unseat incumbent Barack Obama to become the new president in November’s general election, according to a release.”

Don’t get cocky, kids.

ABUSIVE LAB TEST: Who makes the toughest flashlight?

They didn’t test the LifeGear, though. It looks tough. And remember, candlepower equals authority!

AUDIO: Paul Ryan on Mark Levin’s show.

TWEET OF THE DAY: Republican makes a gaffe, @WashingtonPost reports it for a week. Obama makes one, they assume it’s PhotoShop.

CHANGE: Watch Obama Supporters Melt Down In Real Time. “This is how elections get lost.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Occupational licensing in Game Of Thrones.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on Industrial and Scientific Equipment.

Hey, if you wind up buying this oscilloscope calibrator, please do it through my link!

UPDATE: Roger Kimball emails: “And there’s only 1 left in stock! (I note Amazon does not, as it regularly does with books, say ‘More on the way.’)” Buy it now — before they run out!

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Shear-activated nanoparticles may target blood clots.

A BLOGGER WHO COULD USE SOME HELP. I donated.

WHAT HATH AKIN WROUGHT? Democratic Convention To Become Celebration of Abortion Rights.

With an eye on Rep. Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comments and the GOP’s mad dash away from the sinking Missouri Senate candidate, the Democrats are turning their upcoming presidential convention into a pro-choice assault on the Republicans with the help of major abortion supporters.

Just as the Akin crisis was reaching a crescendo, the Democrats on Wednesday announced that three starlets of the pro-choice movement will be featured at the convention, an event that will now drive the liberal charge that the Republicans are anti-women.

Democrats said that they will feature Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parent Action Fund, Nancy Keenan, president of the NARAL Pro-Choice America and Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student whose plea for federal birth control funding drew the ire–and a subsequent apology–from Rush Limbaugh.

What’s more, the Democrats are expanding their list of women ready to assail the GOP on women’s issue, adding Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski and actress Eva Longoria to the list that already includes Sen. John Kerry and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.

Hmm. Of course, the “legitimate rape” bit isn’t the part that mattered in Akin’s remarks. Everybody agrees that there’s “legitimate rape” and non-legitimate rape. For example, when Bill Clinton is charged with rape, that’s non-legitimate.

On a more serious note, both pro- and anti-abortion groups are focusing on the “legitimate rape” part because it distracts from the very issue Akin himself was trying to hide from: What about pregnancy that results from rape? Akin doesn’t want to confront that this happens, which is why he put forth his dumb rape-doesn’t-cause-pregnancy theory. Pro-choicers, for the most part, don’t want to confront that an abortion that happens after a rape is still just as much an abortion as one that happens because nobody bothered with birth control.

I think both sides should own it. Stand in your truth and be straightforward about what you really believe.

Meanwhile, I’ve got my DNC wardrobe together. And I was just complaining that I had nothing to wear! Plus, an abortion-politics flashback to 2008, in which I explain why men have a right to abortions, too.

Related: Naomi Schaefer Riley: Why do we never hear about “pro-choice extremists?” What, my “abortion rights for men” campaign doesn’t count?

I mean, surely that beats this.