HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Emerging market rout is too big for the Fed to ignore. “This has the makings of a grave policy error: a repeat of the dramatic events in the autumn of 1998 at best; a full-blown debacle and a slide into a second leg of the Long Slump at worst.”

JEFF JACOBY: Yesterday’s Atrocities Are Happening Again.

AT AMAZON, big markdowns in Movies & TV.

Also, 25% off on Back-To-School Grocery Items through September 15.

DRUDGE BRINGS THE SMACK:

BOGUS HIT PIECE ON LOUIE GOHMERT spreads through “progressive” media, now retracted.

YOU KNOW THERE’S A DEMOCRAT IN THE WHITE HOUSE WHEN YOU SEE HEADLINES LIKE THIS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Bomb Syria, Even if It Is Illegal.

LABOR: Court: First Amendment protections don’t allow unions to engage in nuisance lawsuits. “Here’s a case worth keeping an eye on: the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a union’s First Amendment rights do not allow it to engage in a pattern of legal harassment against a non-union business. Given that such legal campaigns are major tool of Big Labor, this case could have broad implications.”

“THE FOOLS. WHY ARE THEY CHEERING?”

SPYING: Here’s how phone metadata can reveal your affairs, abortions, and other secrets.

WHY CAN’T HUMANS Regenerate Body Parts? “Regeneration is a fundamental, basic, biological property, just like reproduction.”

MICHAEL GRAHAM: Obama Inflates The Higher Education Bubble.

What was the dumbest idea of the summer of 2013: Ignoring previous Syrian chemical attacks? The
 Massachusetts tech tax? Letting Miley Cyrus pick out her own clothes?

How about this one:

Telling college kids that if they spend six years running up a student loan tab getting an unmarketable diploma, they’ll only have to pay back a fraction of what they borrowed. In fact, the less valuable their degree and the more money they borrow — the more they win!

And the more we taxpayers have to pay.

I know what you’re thinking: An idea that bad can only come from Washington, D.C.

So let me quote from the White House fact sheet on President Obama’s plans to make college “more affordable:”

“The president has proposed allowing all student borrowers to cap their federal student loan payments at 10 percent of their monthly [discretionary] income … and forgives any remaining debt after 20 years of payments.”

So if Susy Science majors in a challenging STEM program (Science, Technology, Engineering or Math) and gets a good-paying job, she’d be on the hook for her entire student loan bill. Because she did the right thing.

But if Paulie Pompous parties his way to a degree in liberal arts before starting his job in “currency exchange and comestible retailing” (a.k.a. “Want fries with that?”), he’d end up paying back just a fraction of his loans.

Obviously, giving away more money to encourage more mediocre students to create more demand for space on campus isn’t going to drive costs down. Even someone as unfamiliar with basic economics as Obama (hello, “stimulus?”) should be able to grasp “supply and demand.”

Read the whole thing.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: On Marrying a Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse. “Given the near-universal shame in the telling and the near-universal discomfort of the listener, as his wife, it makes me uncomfortable how we, as a community, fail to protect our little boys.”

SHOCKING NEWS: Economists find in large groups, money facilitates cooperation.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Tim Scott, nation’s only black Senator, not invited to speak at March on Washington.

I have a dream, that one day black Republicans won’t be turned into nonpersons by the establishment.

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Home Goods.

Also, end-of-summer deals on outdoor shoes and hiking boots.

INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE: Government Forces Business To Overcharge Customers.

FASTER, PLEASE: New device warns patients of heart attack hours before it happens.

We’re getting closer to my idea of a body computer.

MEH. SOUNDS LIKE CRIPPLEWARE: Copy Protection for 3-D Printing Aims to Prevent a Piracy Plague. Embrace the machine.

EXERCISE: 5 Fitness Apps From Off the Beaten Path.

The Insta-Wife and Insta-Daughter still like the Blogilates videos.

SO I JUST RAN ACROSS A POST FROM THINKPROGRESS IN 2005 urging their followers to flood me with emails about a post involving Jamie Gorelick. This was the first I’d ever heard of that effort. Heh.

WHAT GOOD IS SPYING ON EVERYONE’S EMAILS IF YOU’RE TOO DUMB TO RESPOND TO WHAT YOU READ? Nearly a year before the massacre, the FBI intercepted emails between Nidal Hasan and radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki that officials called “fairly benign.” They are anything but.

Advocates for Fort Hood victims find this decision puzzling. “A US Army major is writing to this imam and essentially asking for religious sanction to kill American soldiers,” said attorney Reed Rubinstein, who represents a group of victims who are suing the federal government. “And the FBI’s Washington field office doesn’t even interview the man or make a phone call to his superiors. It’s utterly incomprehensible.”

I’d like to know more about the people who made these decisions.

SEEMS LIKE WE’RE SEEING MORE OF THIS KIND OF THING: Woman brutally beaten by group of teens in North Side says attack was ‘racially motivated.’

FRACKING: The Netherlands Inches Toward Shale.

DAVID LEONHARDT IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: “Yes, the unemployment rate has fallen. But almost the entire reason it has fallen is the drop in the number of people in the labor force.”

NEW JERSEY SENATE: Steve Lonegan Goes After Cory Booker On Newark Crime. Plus: “Lonegan also ripped into Booker on education and employment, saying that Newark’s high school dropout and unemployment rates were appalling. ‘We have a dropout rate . . . in one of the most expensive school districts in the United States . . . of about 70 percent, which is unconscionable,’ he said.” Yeah, but have you seen Booker’s Twitter feed?