YOUR WEDNESDAY DOSE OF DOOM AND GLOOM: What the August Jobs Number Didn’t Tell You.

TIM COOK’S LEGACY: Apple Goes Middle-Aged with Bad Fashion and Live Slip-Ups. Well, all the Steve Jobs stuff has basically gone through the pipeline, and Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs. “And there’s something missing in Tim Cook’s presentation style, too. The whole event today felt sloppy and awkward and some of the products were simply daft. Apple is crapping slightly on Steve Jobs’s legacy by introducing a stylus, called the Apple Pencil and retailing at a whopping $99. Jobs famously scoffed in 2010 that if you see a stylus, someone screwed up.”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: EPA admits never planned for ‘worst-case scenario’ at site of toxic mine spill.

HMM: UT president: Gender-neutral pronoun controversy ‘like nothing I’ve seen.’ People saw it as symptomatic, or maybe emblematic, of a deeper out-of-touchness in academia, I’d say.

But adopting a sexual consent policy when you know that at least two courts have already found it “ridiculous” seems like a bigger misstep.

WHEN THEY DON’T LIKE YOUR POLITICS, THEY LIE ABOUT YOU:

First, it is indeed a striking coincidence that Judge Day’s miscellaneous ethical lapses are suddenly of interest to the Oregon Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability. The commission’s complaint (PDF) even includes allegations that Judge Day was a bad soccer dad, for heaven’s sake (Day said the other guy pushed first) and improperly raised money for a veterans’ display. It’s hard not to agree with Judge Day that this is a politically motivated hit.

What about that Hitler photo? According to Korten, it was part of a World War II display. “We went to war against Hitler,” Korten told Reuters. “His picture was there. It was not admiringly. It was him as the epitome of the enemy that we went to fight against.”

A photograph of the display has now surfaced, and appears to bear out this story. While Hitler’s image is unusually large, it is surrounded by American veterans’ memorabilia. It is in bad aesthetic taste, perhaps, but is hardly a shrine to Hitler.

Surely the commission acted in bad faith. They had to know the headlines that would result from its accusation of Judge Day “hanging a picture of Hitler in the Marion County Courthouse.” After all, what did you picture when you read the first line of this story? This allegation makes Judge Day into the victim of a progressive-led hit job.

This is who they are. This is what they do.

SO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DID ALL THE STUFF THEY ACCUSED BUSH OF DOING. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS, BUSH WON THE WAR, AND THEY LOST IT. Exclusive: 50 Spies Say ISIS Intelligence Was Cooked. “The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command.”

To be fair, each administration got what it wanted.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Independent Agency Confirms: VA Retaliated Against Whistleblower.

SO YESTERDAY, A SUGGESTION THAT TRUMP MIGHT STEAL ENOUGH BLACKS FROM DEMOCRATS TO WIN.

And today, a suggestion that Trump’s father kinda/maybe/who knows? was arrested at a KKK rally in . . . 1927. We even get this qualifier, several paragraphs down: “To be clear, this is not proof that Trump senior—who would later go on to become a millionaire real estate developer—was a member of the Ku Klux Klan or even in attendance at the event. Despite sharing lawyers with the other men, it’s conceivable that he may have been an innocent bystander, falsely named, or otherwise the victim of mistaken identity during or following a chaotic event.”

Upside for Trump: The number of blacks who read Boing Boing is probably roughly equal to the number of blacks who attend Bernie Sanders rallies. . . .

WHEN SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS HAVE KIDS: “This sounds like so terrible an idea that it almost has to be a joke — parents seriously proposing to give their daughter a large amount of money because she’s a girl…”

FIGHT THE POWER: College Promises To Punish Students Who Heckled Mandatory Play. Mockery is the best response. They can’t take it.

A TAX REFORM PLAN from Jane The Actuary.

BOEHNER CAVES TO CONSERVATIVES ON IRAN VOTE: Looks like pressure from the House conservative Freedom Caucus membership has forced House Speaker John Boehner to agree the House will not pass a resolution disapproving of President Obama’s Iran deal. Instead, the House will apparently vote Friday on the resolution introduced by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), which will state that Obama has not complied with the Corker-Cardin law because he has not submitted the full Iranian nuclear “agreement,” which that law explicitly defines to include all “side deals,” between third parties (including the Iran-IAEA side deals).

The House is also anticipated to now vote on a second resolution, which would state that because the President has failed to submit the “agreement” defined by Corker-Cardin, the President has no corresponding authority to lift any existing Iranian sanctions.

The move by Boehner came after Freedom Caucus members threatened to vote down a planned resolution disapproving of the Iran deal, leaving the House on record as approving the deal. This threat was designed to leverage Boehner via potential political embarrassment, and encourage GOP leadership to consider the Roskam alternative, which will both delay congressional action on the Iran deal, as well as provide a stronger legal basis upon which to challenge any presidential action lifting sanctions.

This alternative approach was first put forth in a Washington Post oped over the weekend by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) and constitutional lawyer David Rivkin.

TED CRUZ ON THE IRAN DEAL: A catastrophic threat to security.

AUSTIN BAY: Behind the Persistent Crisis of Refugees and Displaced Persons.

The Assad regime has clung to power, despite using chemical weapons. Recall that the Obama administration said use of chemical weapons against civilians constituted a “red line” the Assad regime could not cross. But cross it did, without punishment. ISIL rose when the U.S. withdrew from Iraq and left a power vacuum.

Assisting refugees by providing aid and shelter is necessary, but both are second-order responses. The first-order response is confronting the violent, malevolent local regimes that spur the flight. They thrive on poverty, oppression, persecution and war. Confronting them may mean regime change.

Weeping for the refugees’ plight is a superficial reaction unless you’re willing to fight the evil that produced it.

True, but for many it offers a convenient distraction.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Among the Secret Christians of Brooklyn. “It can be a struggle to be publicly Christian in Brooklyn.”

VIDEO: Mangled Response by Jeb! to Gun Control Question was Edited from Late Show Premiere.

U.S. NEWS AND THE REPLICATION OF HIERARCHY: The U.S. News and World Report college rankings: A public vs. private dilemma.

AT AMAZON, get top dollar when you trade in your phone.

Also, save up to 40% on Fine Art.

AN ARMY OF DAVID GERROLDS: “Smithsonian Enlists Star Trek Fans to Help Send USS Enterprise Back in Time,” asking them to “search their memory banks for firsthand, pre-1976 images or film of the original studio model of the USS Enterprise. Conservators are working to restore the ship to its appearance from August 1967, and they will use the primary-source photos as reference materials for the project…The current restoration will restore the ship to its August 1967 appearance, during and after the production of the episode ‘The Trouble with Tribbles,’ which is the last time the Enterprise was altered throughout the original Star Trek.”

MARTIN O’MALLEY: Hey, you know what America needs? More Syrian refugees!

HOW TO MAKE ENEMIES: Try inventing a vegan egg.

Three years after embarking on a sweeping effort to build a cheaper, safer, and all-around healthier egg using all-natural plant proteins, Silicon Valley startup Hampton Creek is facing The Big Backlash. All Silicon Valley startups reach this point, somewhere along the way—though the backlash is perhaps more extreme in the case of Hampton Creek.

In early August, fueled by disgruntled ex-Hampton Creek employees, Business Insider published a story questioning both the company’s ethics and its science, raising doubts over how Hampton Creek portrayed its egg-less products, which include cookie dough and mayonnaise. Three weeks later, the Food and Drug Administration told the startup that its eggless mayonnaise can’t be called mayonnaise. And by the beginning of September, a Freedom of Information Act request turned up emails showing that the American Egg Board—the egg-industry marketing organization (“incredible edible eggTM“) overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture—had marshaled PR professionals and other forces in an effort to blunt the startup’s progress and perhaps even encourage unfavorable treatment from the FDA and others.

Naturally, Hampton Creek is in fight-back mode. It played a role in the widespread distribution of those FOIA-ed emails—an MIT researcher with connections to one Hampton Creek co-founder acquired the emails, before Hampton Creek helped distribute them to journalists—and now, it’s pushing for added leverage.

What I hate about vegan eggs is, they tell you they’re vegan within the first 30 seconds after you meet them.

BREAKING: Judge Rosemary Collyer of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia has just ruled that the House of Representatives has standing to sue President Obama, challenging the constitutionality of the executive branch’s decision to spend billions of unappropriated dollars to support Obamacare. Judge Collyer denied legislative standing to pursue the House’s claim that President Obama has disregarded the 2014 effective date of Obamacare’s employer mandate. More updates will follow once I’ve had a chance to digest Judge Collyer’s opinion.

FROM A “GLOBAL WARMING” PERSPECTIVE, ISN’T THIS GOOD NEWS? Sam Champion’s morning show cancelled as Weather Channel pulls back on original programming reporting that online is now their most lucrative platform.

Back in 2007, when he was a weatherman on ABC’s Good Morning America, that show ran a Chyron hysterically asking, “Will Billions Die from Global Warming?”, over which Champion declared:

That’s what’s in this report and why everyone is trying to jump this report that officially comes out Friday, Robin. There are big, new headlines and some of them are coming out of Australia in media reports. Now, they say that those scientists in Paris will estimate that between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people will suffer from water shortage problems by 2080. That’s not your grandchildren, that’s your children. And between 200 million and 600 million more people will be going hungry.

Well — gosh. (Video at link.) If things are that bad, don’t the networks have an obligation to go off the air and shut down their Internet server to reduce energy use and help save the planet? Even if they’re doing it one show at a time, anyone who asks “Will billions die from global warming?” with a straight face should applaud these baby steps taken by the Weather Channel.

RELATED: Prominent Environmentalist Finally Discovers His Religion’s Catch-22.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law Prof Jobs Are Drying Up. “The number of new law professors hired at American Bar Association-accredited law schools fell nearly 55 percent between 2011 to 2015, according to data compiled by Sarah Lawsky, a professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Just 70 people snagged tenure-track teaching jobs last year, compared with 155 in 2011, Lawsky’s data shows.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Seven Steps to Building a Baby Schedule, from Susan L.M. Goldberg at the PJ Parenting section.