ANY IDEAS? A reader emails:

You’ve written and linked a bit lately about “changing the culture”. I don’t see myself buying a women’s magazine publishing company any time soon (or even getting involved in my local GOP, but I suppose that’s at least possible). I think you make great points about changing the culture (I’m sure you know Mark Steyn has written a lot on that subject lately as well), but what can/should non-millionaires do? Are Breitbart or O’Keefe soliciting donations to buy out Cosmo or anything? Curious if you have any practical suggestions.

Well, the magazine-buying thing was a suggestion for billionaires. I have some thoughts, but any ideas from the rest of you?

THE PROBLEM WITH SELF-ESTEEM. “What’s really become prevalent over the last two decades is the idea that being highly self-confident – loving yourself, believing in yourself – is the key to success. Now the interesting thing about that belief is it’s widely held, it’s very deeply held, and it’s also untrue.”

As an alternative to self-esteem, I would suggest self-respect, which comes from actual achievement and self-knowledge.

LIFE WHEN YOU’RE NOT DAVID GREGORY: D.C. prosecutes ordinary Americans for ‘high-capacity’ magazines.

The Washington Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) inquiry into whether NBC’s David Gregory possession on national TV of an illegal 30-round “high-capacity” magazine has been ongoing for three weeks. Meanwhile, U.S. Army veteran James Brinkley is still grappling with the fallout from his arrest last year on the same charge.

Mr. Brinkley’s story is just one example of at least 105 individuals who, unlike Mr. Gregory, were arrested in 2012 for having a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds.

On Sept. 8, Mr. Brinkley says he intended to drop his wife and young children at the White House for a tour and then head to a shooting range to practice for the U.S. Marshals Service test. Just like Mr. Gregory, Mr. Brinkley called MPD in advance for guidance on how he could do this legally. Mr. Brinkley was told that the gun had to be unloaded and locked in the trunk, and he couldn’t park the car and walk around.

Unlike Mr. Gregory, Mr. Brinkley followed the police orders by placing his Glock 22 in a box with a big padlock in the trunk of his Dodge Charger. The two ordinary, 15-round magazines were not in the gun, and he did not have any ammunition with him.

As he was dropping off his family at 11 a.m. on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Brinkley stopped to ask a Secret Service officer whether his wife could take the baby’s car seat into the White House. The officer saw Mr. Brinkley had an empty holster, which kicked off a traffic stop that ended in a search of the Charger’s trunk. Mr. Brinkley was booked on two counts of “high capacity” magazine possession (these are ordinary magazines nearly everywhere else in the country) and one count of possessing an unregistered gun.

Despite the evidence Mr. Brinkley had been legally transporting the gun, his attorney Richard Gardiner said the D.C. Office of the Attorney General “wouldn’t drop it.” This is the same office now showing apparent reluctance to charge Mr. Gregory.

In Obama’s America it’s all about the juice. Gregory has juice. Brinkley doesn’t. I talk about cases like Brinkley’s in my Second Amendment Penumbras article. Meanwhile, next time Brinkley should take along one of these:

TEN THINGS HAPPY PEOPLE DO DIFFERENTLY.

THE CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS: We have so many women we have to photoshop them in.

Kinda like Iranian missiles.

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS: Nebraska Gives Keystone Pipeline A Clean Bill of Health. “One of the final obstacles to the Keystone pipeline has just been cleared: A report released yesterday by Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality found that building the pipeline would not pose a threat to any of the state’s environmentally sensitive areas.”

I guess the science is settled. I sure hope there aren’t any science-deniers out there who still oppose the pipeline.

THE ECONOMIST: America’s European moment: The troubling similarities between the fiscal mismanagement in Washington and the mess in the euro zone. In America, we’ve got the worst political class in our history. Which means it’s kind of like Europe’s is all the time . . . .

I do like the pictures of Boehner in lederhosen and Obama in a beret.

MANUFACTURING: Economist Ricardo Hausmann says the U.S. has a chance to invent the manufacturing technology of tomorrow.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on bestsellers in Men’s Watches.

Also, new stuff coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray.

UNEXPECTEDLY! USA Today: Health Care Law May Mean Less Hiring In 2013.

“CASUAL FRIDAY” IS SO 1990s: If You Really Want to Defy Conformity, Dress Up on Fridays: ‘Formal Friday’ Suits Those Tired Of Casual Office Wear; Bow Tie, Top Hat. “At some tech startups, Formal Fridays stem from employees’ desire to free themselves from the hoodies and jeans that are standard weekday dress.”

SARAH HOYT: Shock Therapy. “In our current day and age, common sense can be almost startlingly subversive. . . . World War I was terrible, and for many reasons, including the prevalence of pictures and news, the fratricide/civil-war quality of it, the massive number of casualties. It shocked an entire generation into … writing an awful lot about it, and into trying to tear down the pillars of civilization, believing that Western Civilization (and not human nature, itself) was what had brought about the carnage and the waste. Do I need to tell you they were wrong?”

TAPE: IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Unruly passenger taped to seat on Iceland Air flight. “A passenger who became unruly after allegedly drinking too much alcohol had to be taped to his seat on a trans-Atlantic flight, witnesses and authorities said.”

KILLING MARRIAGE? Online Dating Is a Horrific Den of Humanity.

WHO NEEDS A SWIMSUIT CALENDAR when there’s a Nerd Calendar? “I just wanted to make the kind of calendar I’d always dreamed about when I was a boy.”

MORE ON NEW ZEALAND’S tsunami bomb experiments.

GARY BECKER AND KEVIN MURPHY: Have We Lost The War On Drugs? “The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs and the severe punishment for persons convicted of drug trafficking. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs. The many minor drug traffickers and drug users who spend time in jail find fewer opportunities for legal employment after they get out of prison, and they develop better skills at criminal activities.”

IN THE MAIL: From Rob Picoli, Blessed Are the Contrarians: Diary of a Journey Through Interesting Times.

JOE MANCHIN: “I’m not supporting a ban on anything.”

WHITE HOUSE HOPES TO OVERWHELM NRA with rapid gun blitz. So it’ll be kind of an anti-gun Blitzkrieg, then. . . . .

JAMES TARANTO stands up against sexism.

THE ARABS’ 30-YEARS WAR: What A Car Bomb In Iraq Means For The Civil War In Syria.

Iraq’s volatile mixture of Sunnis and Shia is once again boiling over, and the civil war next door in Syria is not making matters any easier. Iraqi fighters are operating in Syria on both sides of the war. The U.S. recently determined that the Nusra Front, which claims credit for several spectacular attacks on Syrian regime targets and is one of the strongest rebel groups, is virtually identical in personnel and ideology to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Iraq’s and Syria’s troubles are closely related—a fact the mainstream media often forgets, choosing instead to stubbornly define the Syrian war as a fight for democracy against a dictatorship and the violence in Iraq as a contained sectarian conflict. This shortsightedness fails to recognize that across the Middle East Sunnis and Shia are engaged in a struggle for political power and religious legitimacy. Sunni rebel groups backed by Sunnis in the Gulf are fighting a Shia regime in Damascus backed by a Shia theocracy in Iran. The same is happening in Iraq, where a Shia authoritarian regime backed by Iran is fighting Sunni groups backed by the Gulf Arabs. Other actors, like the U.S., Turkey, and the Kurds, make this a truly volatile international conflict. . . . This is the broad outline of what we see as a Sunni-Shia war for the Arab world, and its two most volatile fronts, Iraq and Syria. If Assad falls, this conflict won’t be over.

Sheesh.

IT’S NICE TO SEE A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL STAND UP FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: Oconee sheriff boycotts weapons dealer after gun control policy.

OCONEE COUNTY, GA (CBS ATLANTA) – Oconee County Sheriff Scott Berry said neither he nor his law enforcement agency will purchase weapons anytime soon from a major firearms dealer, after that dealer made a change to its policy on who can buy certain types of weapons.

Dana Safety Supply, which has a store in Sugar Hill, recently amended its policy to exclude any non-law enforcement customers from purchasing semi-automatic weapons. . . . Berry said that kind of exclusion of civilians from purchasing weapons they’re lawfully allowed to own is the reason he is boycotting the company.

Good for him.

IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS, a nice brief review, by Walter Russell Mead, of The Higher Education Bubble.

And note that in a couple of weeks, I’ll be addressing another piece of the puzzle in The K-12 Implosion.

WELL, GIVEN THAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS ADOPTED HIS NATIONAL-SECURITY PROGRAM, MAYBE THEY’LL START SHRINKING GOVERNMENT NOW: David Addington Takes Over Heritage Foundation Center for Legal and Judicial Policy. “Addington will focus on combating excessive claims of federal government power and overreaching claims of the Executive branch.”