AND YET PEOPLE TAKE IT FOR GRANTED: Whether Public or Private, Information Technology Is Hard To Do Right.

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Wesley Morrison, Let No False Angels. $2.99 on Kindle.

SARAH HOYT ON book covers and sales. Whatever works.

A TEA PARTY CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS IN MASSACHUSETTS, ENDORSED BY ROBBIE GEORGE, NIALL FERGUSON, AND WILL HAPPER: Mike Stopa. I’d love to see him elected.

UPDATE: This post is actually by me, not by Helen. Tricked by the PJ Media Single-Sign-On and computer-sharing again. Likewise the one below.

TWELVE QUESTIONS about self-driving cars.

SCOTT RASMUSSEN ON THE SHUTDOWN:

Not long ago, the conventional wisdom in official Washington held that the so-called sequester spending cuts would be a disaster for the Republican Party. They were expected to rise up in vehement protest once the “cuts” went into effect.

Instead, nobody outside of Washington noticed.

Today, the conventional wisdom suggests that the so-called government shutdown is a big time loser for the GOP. But, once again, few Americans other than federal workers have really noticed any difference.

That’s a big problem for the president. Nothing can be more frightening to liberal politicians than proving how little impact many federal programs have on the day-to-day lives of individual Americans. If nobody notices when they’re missing, it’s hard to argue against trimming the size of government.

Indeed.

PRESIDENT NYET: Obama Rejects House Plan.

UPDATE: More Nyettism from the Democratic Senate: Democrats reject Susan Collins proposal.

Democratic leaders in the Senate are rejecting an offer by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to end the budget impasse, arguing it asks for too much in return for too little, senators and aides tell POLITICO.

The development comes on the same day that the Senate voted 53-45 to block a Democratic bill that would raise the debt ceiling through 2014 without any spending cuts or changes to Obamacare.

The House and Senate GOP should make a “best and final offer,” then leave town if it’s rejected.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 155.

JOEL KOTKIN ON Bipartisan Distrust Of The Beltway.

Much has been written and spoken about the deep divide between “red” and “blue” America, but the real chasm increasingly is between Washington and the rest of the country. This disconnect may increase as both conservatives and liberals outside the Beltway look with growing disdain upon their “leaders” inside the imperial capital. Indeed, according to Gallup, trust among Americans toward the federal government has sunk to historic lows, regarding both foreign and domestic policy. . . .

This chasm between the ruled and the rulers has both widened and deepened during the Obama years. Initially, Democrats supported the idea of a strong federal expansion to improve the economy. Yet, as it turned out, the stimulus and other administration steps did little to help the middle and working classes. The Obama economic policy has turned out to be at least as much – if not more – “trickle down” than that of his Republican predecessor.

Similarly embarrassing, the administration’s embrace of surveillance, as demonstrated by the National Security Agency revelations, has been no less, and maybe greater, than that of former vice president Dick Cheney and his crew of anti-civil libertarians. And it’s been the Left, notably, the British Guardian newspaper, that has led the fight against the mass abuse of privacy. Americans as a whole are more sympathetic to leaker Edward Snowden and increasingly concerned about government intrusions on their privacy. A July Washington Post-ABC News poll found fully 70 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans said the NSA’s phone and Internet surveillance programs intrude on some Americans’ privacy rights. Nearly six in 10 political independents who saw intrusions said they are unjustified.

The Right intrinsically opposes expansion of the civilian part of the federal government, but it supported the national security state both during the Cold War and after 9/11. This has now begun to change. The revelations about IRS targeting of Tea Party and other grass-roots groups likely have not reduced their fears of Big Brother. Yet, by better than 2-1, Democrats, according to a Quinnipiac survey, also supported appointing a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of this scandal. . . .

Besides shared concerns over Syria, the NSA and IRS, grass-roots conservatives and liberals increasingly reject the conventional wisdom of their Washington betters. What increasingly matters here is not political “spin,” but the breadth of anti-Washington sentiment. After all, while most of the country continues to suffer low economic growth, the Washington area has benefitted from the expansion of federal power. The entire industry of consultants, think tanks, lawyers and related fields, no matter their supposed ideologies, has waxed while the rest of America has waned.

This has been a golden era for the nation’s capital, perhaps the one place that never really felt the recession. Of the nation’s 10 richest counties, seven are in the Washington area.

It’s like our own little version of The Hunger Games.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: IRS, White House officials that shared confidential taxpayer info had 155 White House meetings.

OHIO INSURANCE DIRECTOR ON OBAMACARE PROBLEMS: “This is what we expected.”

AN ARMY OF STAKHANOVS: Russia’s Online-Comment Propaganda Army.

AT AMAZON, Fall Deals in Outdoor Grills and Grilling Equipment.

Also, Digital Deals Galore.

WELL, THEIR CLIENT IS SUPPOSED TO BE JUSTICE: Should Appellate Judges Urge Government Attorneys To Confess Error?

HMM: Up for Obama’s Consideration: Competing House and Senate GOP Shutdown Deals. Perhaps someone can explain to me why the House and Senate GOP are offering “competing” plans and putting Obama in the position of decider? Maybe that’s smarter than it sounds, but . . . .

THEY NEVER SHOULD HAVE SUBSCRIBED TO BOTH THE INSTAPUNDIT RSS FEED AND THE INSTAPUNDIT TWITTER FEED SIMULTANEOUSLY: Is the NSA’s Data Center Melting Down Because It’s Spying Too Much? “The WSJ reports that the NSA’s new Utah data center has suffered 10 meltdowns in the past 13 months because of electrical surges. The NSA is basically using so much power in its spying efforts that it is poetically killing its data centers. Seriously, the surges have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars in machinery.” Sorry, guys. You should really just pick one or the other.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Tavis Smiley: ‘Black People Will Have Lost Ground in Every Single Economic Indicator’ Under Obama.

NO OFFENSE, BUT IF YOU WERE BUILDING A HARD-CHARGING STARTUP, WOULD YOU REALLY WANT TO STAFF IT WITH furloughed government workers?

INEQUALITY: Measured In Gold, The Story Of American Wages Is An Ugly One. “Workers’ wages buy less and less. In fact, workers have lost purchasing power during the past half-century. Comparing prices to wages, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose more than six times from 1965 to 2011—while the minimum wage rose less than five times.”

RODRIGO SERMENO: Can Entitlement Reform Squeeze Its Way into the Grand Bargain? That would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath.

NIALL FERGUSON: The Shutdown Is a Sideshow. Debt Is the Threat. “In the words of a veteran investor, watching the U.S. bond market today is like sitting in a packed theater and smelling smoke. You look around for signs of other nervous sniffers. But everyone else seems oblivious.”

TRANSPARENCY: Utah Won’t Disclose Records On Police Militarization.

One of the main forces behind the mass militarization of America’s police officers has been the Pentagon’s 1033 and 1122 programs, which makes surplus military equipment — think guns, tanks, helicopters, grenade launchers, etc. — available to police agencies across the country for almost nothing. (Usually, they pay only the cost of shipping.) As I reported last spring, the ACLU is currently engaged in a nationwide effort to collect information about how this equipment is being used.

In Utah, Connor Boyack of the libertarian-leaning Libertas Institute recently filed a state open records request with the Utah Department of Administrative Services. (Possibly the most bureaucratically-named agency ever.) Boyack wanted information on how Utah police agencies are using the 1033 program, and what sorts of stuff they’re getting from it. His request was rejected.

None of your business, peasant.

FROM POPULAR MECHANICS: A Disaster Survival and Preparedness Video Course.

DATING: Beware of the “Stage Five Clinger.”