RACISM: Obama College Plan Would Hurt Historically Black Institutions.

IF AN ARMED CITIZEN DID THIS, IT WOULD BE A NATIONAL SCANDAL: Police officers shooting at what appeared to be an emotionally disturbed man in New York City’s Times Square accidentally struck two innocent bystanders instead, police said today. “When officers approached the suspect, he appeared to reach into his pocket to draw a gun. Two officers then fired a total of three shots, ABC station WABC-TV in New York reported. While they missed the man, they accidentally hit two women instead.”

NYPD’s gun-safety record could use some work.

NO OFFICIAL MEMORIAL, BECAUSE THAT WOULD MAKE HILLARY LOOK BAD: State Department Staffers Forced To Mark Benghazi Anniversary On Their Own.

Staffers at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. held their own private ceremony Wednesday to commemorate the first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya after finding out the agency would not be organizing a formal, official memorial service.

The Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack left four people dead, including the American Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and Sean Smith, an information management officer in the department’s foreign service.

A State Department staffer who worked with Stevens in Libya and asked not to be named told TPM there were about 20 to 25 staffers at the memorial. The informal gathering was put together after staffers inquired and learned the department would not be holding an official event to mark the anniversary.

It’s just sad.

JUST A REMINDER THAT THE IRS’S TEA-PARTY TARGETING also went after individuals by name.

TIM CARNEY: To win minority vote, GOP has to show it’s ready to battle privileged interests.

The party establishment seems to think the answer begins with amnesty and more low-skilled labor — which just happens to be the policy preference of the GOP’s donor class. Beyond this, the party’s top consultants offer only rhetorical tweaks around the typical GOP package of low-tax corporatism.

A better minority outreach can be found in libertarian populism.

The libertarian populist argument is that the game is rigged in favor of the big and well-connected and against the small and unconnected. This argument should be aimed mainly at the “47 percent” that Mitt Romney wrote off and denigrated: working-class voters who find it hard to get ahead.

Yep. Also, repeal the Hollywood tax cuts!

AT AMAZON, up to 40% off select DIY Essentials.

Also, Fall Deals in Electronics.

Plus, Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop.

MILT WOLF MAY RUN FOR SENATE: Obama’s GOP cousin may primary Pat Roberts. “Barack Obama’s second cousin once removed, is laying the groundwork for a potential Republican primary challenge against Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts next year. Milton Wolf has been gauging support, sources told POLITICO, sending an email to GOP activists the last week of August asking them to get in touch if they want more senators like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul. Wolf, a 42-year-old practicing radiologist, accused Roberts of raising the debt ceiling, bailing out Wall Street and supporting earmarks.”

I like his proposed logo.

APPARENTLY, COVERING FOR OBAMA’S DIPLOMATIC FAILURES IS PART OF HER JOB DESCRIPTION: CNN’s Candy Crowley: ‘Do We Really Care that Russia Got the Diplomatic Edge?’

UPDATE: “The Media Protect Obama Where It Counts.”

PAUL REYES: Why did Obama snub Spanish-language TV on Syria?

JEFF JACOBY ON Obama’s Mideast Power Vacuum.

Having won a difficult war in Iraq, the United States should have settled in for the long haul, just as we did in Japan, Germany, Italy, and South Korea, where tens of thousands of American troops remain to this day. Instead President Obama pulled the troops out, as he had always made clear he would. Iraq’s fragile constitutional democracy, so hard-won, was left to fend for itself. Al Qaeda in Iraq, all but wiped out, gained a new lease on life. Now a new generation of Americans, including young Alex, is learning that the loss of US influence makes the world a more menacing place.

We are nearly five years into a presidency whose foreign policy is driven by the conviction that America’s profile in the world, above all the Muslim world, must be lowered. “One of the things I intend to do as president is restore America’s standing in the world,” Obama vowed as he pursued the presidency in 2008. Abandoning Iraq wasn’t the way to do it. America’s standing in the world has reached a new low. So low that even Bashar Assad can thumb his nose at an explicit presidential “red line” — then laugh as Vladimir Putin effortlessly suckers Washington into doing nothing about it.

George W. Bush made plenty of mistakes, but he understood the difference between leading and “leading from behind.”

Bush had different objectives, too.

BOB MCMANUS: De Blasio Is NYC’s Obama — And He Won’t Get Results Either.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Rashomon Effect: Obama Then And Now. “There was a time when everything Obama said was given the benefit of the doubt, when a presumption of good will and competence bathed everyone in an exculpatory light. Those days are long past. The atmospherics now are decidedly less cordial, less forgiving, and the problems, foreign as well as domestic, that Obama’s ineptitude has compounded become ever more pressing and exigent.”

NOT THAT SURPRISING: Audi’s Diesel V10 SUV Supercar Somehow Gets 30 MPG. “While the race-derived V10 is only good for a paltry 544 horsepower, like all diesels, it’s about torque, and the Nanuk packs 738 pound-feet of the stuff. Combined with a specially tuned Quattro all-wheel-drive system and a 4,189-pound curb weight, Audi claims the lifted coupe is good for a 0-60 MPH run of 3.8 seconds and a top speed knocking on 190 MPH, all while returning over 30 miles per gallon.”

This doesn’t surprise me. The Audi A8L TDI super-luxury-barge gets 36 on the highway and does zero to sixty in just over 5 seconds. With massage chairs included. My A8L review is here.

INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY: Emails Show Lois Lerner Targeting Tea Party.

Like the Internet video the Benghazi terrorist attack was blamed on, the only thing phony about the IRS scandal is the administration’s cover story that a couple of rogue agents in the Cincinnati office concocted and executed this most blatant abuse of power by the most powerful and feared agency of government. Lerner’s email further blows out of the water that discredited fiction.

It also confirms a suspected reason for the planned intimidation and hamstringing of conservative opposition to the Obama administration’s policies, saying that those tea party group applications for tax-exempt status could end up being the “vehicle to go to court” to get more clarity on the 2010 Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance rules.

This would explain the bizarre and repeated questionnaires requesting lists of donors, books members read, contents of their prayers, texts of speeches given before the group and whether any member is thinking of running for office. The Obama administration was gathering information for possible future court cases to gut Citizens United while it was keeping its political opponents at bay.

It does look that way.

Related: ‘Citizens’ Ruling Spurred Fears at IRS of Tea-Party Challenge.

THE UNSURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT THOSE WOMEN-ARE-NOW-THE-BREADWINNER STORIES: Sixty percent of “breadwinner-mom” families are really just single-mom families. In fact, single moms account for precisely one-quarter of U.S. households.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Chicago Mom Charged With Raping A Man At Gunpoint.

AT AMAZON, Movies & TV: Criterion Collection Bestsellers on DVD & Blu-Ray.

Also, check out the Fall Outlet Event.

THIS IS KIND OF COOL: Researchers Go Into Battle To Test Bronze-Age Weapons. “Researchers are to go into battle using replica Bronze Age weapons to help them understand how people at the time fought. Using imitation swords, axes, spears and shields, researchers at Newcastle University are to recreate Bronze Age combat. The weapons will then be studied using sophisticated use-wear analysis techniques to see how the marks and damage compares with Bronze Age weapons in museum collections.”

I wonder how realistically vigorous the simulated combat will be? Done right, that could be dangerous, though I suppose modern steel chainmail is pretty resistant to bronze edged weapons.

SCIENCE: Did a hyper-black hole spawn the Universe? Big Bang was mirage from collapsing higher-dimensional star, theorists propose.

IF YOU ASK ME, IT’S MORE ABOUT UNDERARMOUR MARKETING THAN “WHITE PRIVILEGE,” but hey, race & gender studies majors gotta eat, too.

TEST-DRIVING THE AUDI Q5 TDI.

THE ATLANTIC: Michelle Obama’s “Drink More Water” Campaign Makes Odd Claims.

FEEL LUCKY, PUNK? Then Invest In Twitter’s IPO. “The first way to look at it is to carefully examine Twitter’s profit-making potential. Here’s the catch: We have no idea of its profit-making potential. The IPO documents aren’t yet public, but it doesn’t seem likely that they currently have any profits. There are all sorts of theories about how they totally could make profits, but not so many theories about how they currently are.” I’m in!

#1 ON AMAZON IN POLITICAL HUMOR: Stephen Kruiser’s Don’t Let The Hippies Shower.

ANNA FRANCO: The Dark Future Of Energy Exploration.