THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, BRITISH PUNDITS WOULD MOCK OUR PRESIDENT’S DIPLOMATIC INEPTITUDE. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Nile Gardiner: Barack Obama’s delusions of grandeur: compares Syria intervention to fighting World War Two.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: Bad News About Unemployment:

The unemployment rate has fallen, but keep the cork in the champagne bottles: it’s falling because people are just giving up looking for work. The share of the population that is either working, or looking for work, has fallen to a 35-year low. The economy created just 169,000 jobs last month, barely more than we need to keep up with population growth. It’s nowhere near enough to absorb the people who have been out of work for months or years — what Karl Marx called the reserve army of the unemployed. No wonder fast-food workers are demonstrating for higher wages; jobs designed as supplementary income for kids, or housewives, are now being taken by breadwinners who can’t find anything else.. . .

Here’s the really bad news: The weak economy may be accelerating the rate at which older workers exit the labor market. Thanks to changes in Social Security benefits (and the entry of women into the workforce), labor force participation rates among those over 55 have been trending upwards since the 1990s. But since the recession, that progress has plateaued. Older workers are actually less likely to be out of work than their younger counterparts (probably in part because they’re clinging to jobs in order to make up big losses in their retirement accounts). But if they do end up out of work, they have a much more difficult time finding new jobs.

That doesn’t just bode ill for the present; it also promises lower growth for the future. There is no ray of sunshine to be found in this jobs report. The best thing you can say about it is that it wasn’t worse.

Well, Obama’s got three years left. . . .

THIS ARGUMENT IS OBVIOUSLY RACIST: Presidents Shouldn’t Be Able to Credibly Threaten Wars That the People Oppose; There’s no shame in telling the world the truth: that our system intentionally constrains the executive branch.

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CHARLIE MARTIN: 13 Weeks: Low glycemic load diets: good blood sugar control, good food — and even reduced calorie?

IT HAS ME THINKING ABOUT DINNER: Invasive Asian Tiger Shrimp Species, Now in the U.S., Has Scientists Worried About Ecosystem.

Adult tiger shrimp, whose native habitat stretches from southern Japan through Southeast Asia to South Africa, are known for distinctive black stripes, can grow to the length of a man’s arm and weigh as much as a pound. While the monster shrimp are just as edible as U.S. shrimp, marine scientists are trying to figure out whether they will upset local ecosystems and possibly supplant smaller brown and white shrimp, mainstays of the U.S. shrimping industry.

I have a solution. And some people seem to be catching on already:

Tiger shrimp sightings reported by U.S. commercial shrimpers increased in 2011, and then dropped in 2012 and 2013. But scientists and shrimpers agree the decline isn’t because the tiger shrimp aren’t there.

“We don’t turn them in anymore,” said Brian Schjott, 36-year-old captain of the Mr. Fic, a Bayou La Batre-based shrimp boat. “We just eat ’em.”

Shrimping last year off the East Coast, his crew pulled in tiger shrimp that were 14 inches long, he said. “We wrapped them in bacon and grilled them with sweet-and-sour sauce,” he said.

If only all our problems were this simple. . . .

PAULA BOLYARD: 7 Objections to Homeschooling Teens: And why they are not insurmountable obstacles. The Insta-Daughter did online school for high school, and it worked well for her.

MARK HENDRICKSON: A Fight Over The Debt Ceiling At A Tea Party Rally Makes Me Happy. “There is a widespread understanding that our country has problems that extend far beyond the deleterious economic policy of the current administration.”

PART-TIME NATION: “An incredible 96% of the jobs added this year were part-time jobs.”

THE HILL: Congressional veterans line up against military action in Syria. “Of the 16 veterans of those two conflicts serving in Congress, only GOP Reps. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) have publicly supported the White House’s plan.”

WELCOME TO THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: What Happens When You Can’t Believe A Thing The President Says?

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Collapse of American Influence Recalls Dis-Integration of Soviet Union, Fall of France.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Millennials Have Nothing To Celebrate When It Comes To Employment. “Millennials’ future is summed up by joblessness, part-time work, and a cozy futon in mom and dad’s basement. But it didn’t have to be this way. Our economic struggles are a direct result of years of an ever-growing regulatory regime, in which reams of red tape are making steady, full-time employment for young people harder to find and more difficult to keep.”

WELL, IF YOU WANT TO TRIGGER A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS: Source close to administration: WH might accept Senate-only approval of Syria strikes. Top WH official says source is “just guessing.”

IN NASHVILLE, taxpayer subsidies for ABC’s series of the same name.

SCIENCE: Flakes of Graphene can now be handled with lasers to make new classes of devices and access new physics.

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A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE A CHECKBOOK NEEDS A PEN: Alimony For Your Eggs.

Sure, just so long as ex-husbands get post-separation sex. Hey, according to science, it’s beneficial. You don’t want to be anti-science, do you?

PROF. JACOBSON: Contemplating Three Years Without A President.

SCIENCE: Shale Report Shows Greatest Benefits to Manufacturers are Still to Come. “In their latest report on the economic benefits of the shale revolution, the global research firm IHS makes a number of encouraging findings. IHS estimates that the unconventional oil and gas value chain already supports over two million jobs, is responsible for $1,200 in average additional net income per household and is contributing nearly $300 billion to GDP. The most promising finding for manufacturers is that the best is yet to come. Looking at just one manufacturing sector, the chemical manufacturing sector, capital investments in new plants and expansion at existing plants is expected to more than triple in just four years. These estimates are not theoretical; they are largely based on real projects that are already under development, some of which are identified in the report. Similar growth is expected in several manufacturing sectors, which collectively will drive more production, create more jobs and further fuel the economy.”

Good.

SCIENCE: Listen: ‘Bending’ Sound Makes It Difficult to Hear Firefighter Alarms.

BRAD SMITH: The Supreme Court and Ed Corsi’s Life of Political Crime: How one Ohio man’s blog on politics got him in trouble with campaign-finance law. It’s almost as if these laws were intended to keep the little people out of the game.

CANADA: Slouching Toward Hereditary Rule?

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BUT OF COURSE: Liberal Activist Ed Asner Explains Hollywood Silence On Obama, Syria: They ‘Don’t Want to Feel Anti-Black.’

UPDATE: On the other hand, a report of an actual anti-war protest in Chicago.