MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Obama saves himself by gunning down Democrats’ electoral chances: Talking about gun control keeps the spotlight off foreign policy failure and a sputtering U.S. employment engine.

THE RULE AGAINST REFREEZING is a myth. “Any raw or cooked food that has been thawed can be refrozen as long as it was thawed properly — in the refrigerator, not on the counter — and hasn’t spoiled. That includes raw meat, poultry, fish and seafood, Ms. Hanes said.”

MICHAEL MALONE: GREETINGS FROM NEWBURY PARK: “It’s been said that most of us stop listening to new music — especially by new bands — when we turn 25. And by the time we’re 40 we are hopelessly behind the Zeitgeist when it comes to the Latest Thing. So, how about a quick tutorial to make you cool with your kids on one of the hottest new sounds on the pop charts — courtesy of my son, Tad?”

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Novel Nanostructures Could Usher in Touchless Displays.

READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Jason Vail sends his nuclear thriller Gabriel’s Fire.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Robot See, Robot Do: How Robots Can Learn New Tasks by Observing.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Build a Self-Driving Mars Car—With Less Computing Power Than an iPhone.

ED VISITS THE FARNSWORTH HOUSE: Back in August, as part of my trek through the American Midwest, I toured Mies van der Rohe’s pioneering glass house design in Plano, IL. Building on my college-era obsession with Mies, I have a lengthy article on its circuitous (and often fractious) history and its legacy with numerous photos, over the PJ Lifestyle site.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 879.

THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY IS A GILDED AGE, IN WHICH MONOPOLISTS GROW FABULOUSLY RICH WHILE THE MIDDLE CLASS SUFFERS: The War of Amazon, Apple and Other Near-Monopolies.

Four companies — Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple — are all jockeying to control as much of our technology experience as possible. A legal expert that I interviewed a few years back called it “the war of the APIs,” but it goes well beyond that. Each company is trying to leverage the dominance it has in one area to push into as many other areas as possible, while simultaneously trying to undercut the other firms that are already there.

So when Apple announced that its mobile devices would finally permit ad-blocking apps, that was a win for consumers — and also a blow for Google, which makes its money off of those ads. Google, of course, has already challenged Apple where it makes its money, on pricey mobile devices. And now Amazon would like to force both of those behemoths to support its streaming video service — or steer consumers toward devices, like Roku, which already do.

This is exactly the sort of activity — leveraging a quasi-monopoly to gain dominance in another market — that caused the Justice Department to go after Microsoft in the 1990s. And indeed, one already hears rumblings about applying net neutrality rules to content providers (providers who, ironically, supported net neutrality as a way to keep cable companies off their turf). If Comcast can’t give preferential treatment to XFinity over Netflix, then why should Apple TV be allowed to favor iTunes content over Amazon Video?

A smart Republican would run a populist campaign against the out-of-touch oligarchs of Silicon Valley. A decade ago that would have been absurd. Now, not so much. And Democrats would be hamstrung because these are their funders.

WELL, FABLE-PEDDLING IS WHAT HE’S BEST AT: Hans Bader: Obama Peddles Gun Control Fable.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

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BLUE ON BLUE: Someone is leaving these incredibly harsh notes on Volkswagen diesel cars in Portland:

SYRIA IS OBAMA’S WATERGATE, Michael Goodwin writes:

What did he know and when did he know it? The immortal question about Richard Nixon and Water­gate should be posed to Barack Obama about Syria. What and when did he know about Vladimir Putin’s axis-of-evil coalition?

The significance is not limited to Syria. The question goes to the heart of the Iran nuclear deal, especially the timing of the congressional votes.

Imagine Obama trying to sell the Iran deal now. With Russia, Iran and Iraq working together to muscle the United States aside and defend Bashar al-Assad, the president couldn’t possibly argue that the nuke deal would help stabilize the Middle East. Nor could he argue that Russia could be trusted to help enforce ­restrictions on Iran.

The strong likelihood that Obama would have lost the Iran vote if Congress knew then what the world knows now suggests the possibility the president concealed the Russian plan until the Iran deal was done. That view fits with his single-minded determination to get a deal at any price, including making key concessions and downplaying Iranian threats to Israel and the United States.

After all that, what’s another lie?

Don’t think of Obama’s approach to the Middle East as a lie — think of it merely as a series of promises reaching their expiration dates.

WHEN THURGOOD MARSHALL ORDERED THE FBI TO INVESTIGATE NATIONAL LAMPOON MAGAZINE — because he didn’t like its brutal parody of him.

In sharp contrast, Saturday Night Live, which could arguably be considered a spinoff of the magazine due to the high crossover of writers and talent during SNL’s earlier, funnier startup days, is now “Basically a Hillary Clinton Campaign Ad,” as even the (equally Hillary-supporting) Daily Beast notes.

(H/T: Iowahawk, who adds that late Lampoon/SNL firebrand “Michael O’Donoghue [would be] spinning in his grave at 175,000 RPM” if he knew the pathetic corporatist fate of the TV show he helped pioneer.)

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Ispector General: IRS Improperly Withheld Information From Taxpayer FOIA Requests 12% Of The Time.

TIGTA reviewed a statistically valid sample of 65 information requests from a population of 2,809 FOIA/Privacy Act information requests and found eight (12.3 percent) for which the IRS improperly withheld information from the requestors. The IRS also improperly withheld information for four (7.3 percent) of the 55 I.R.C. § 6103 information requests reviewed. Although the IRS properly released thousands of pages from these documents, taxpayer rights still may have been violated because some information was erroneously withheld. In addition, TIGTA found that the Disclosure Office does not have direct control over how other IRS functions process I.R.C. § 6103 information requests, nor does it regularly assess the quality of disclosure responses throughout the IRS.

It’s as if they don’t want you to know what they’re doing.

AMERICAN APPAREL FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY: “As it turns out, hiring a CEO who hasn’t been accused of a variety of gross behavior wasn’t enough to revitalize American Apparel. The New York Times reports that the peddler of crop tops and body suits filed for bankruptcy protection early on Monday morning,” New York magazine notes today.

MICHAEL WALSH: Should Christians Arm Themselves?

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Australia’s 1996 Gun Confiscation Didn’t Work – And it Wouldn’t Work in America.

ROGER SIMON ON THE 2016 CAMPAIGN’S REAL IMMIGRATION ISSUE:

This new migration is as perfect a recipe for disaster as you could find.  I hate to sound like an exclusionist in the melting pot, but I would be lying to say that we should admit any of these people.  Well, maybe one or two, after they are vetted for a dozen years or so (not exactly cost effective). And, ironically, the only way for the Middle East to change is for these people to stay and fight it out.  (Yes, it could take a thousand years.)

Donald Trump, who evidently feels the same way, opened the door on the immigration question and got branded a racist for it. Of course he’s not.  He was only talking honestly, if a bit coarsely, about social problems we’re having.  For the left, it’s much easier and more effective to accuse him of racism.  Otherwise, they’d have to deal with the problem.  Who wants that?  It might cost you votes.  Nevertheless, bad as this southern immigration may be with all the attendant crime, we can survive it. We will assimilate in the end. We can come together.

This potential Middle Eastern migration is a different matter.  Far more fateful in our evolving, oh-so-modern society. You have to laugh when you think about the culture clash as Islamic kids deal with the transgendered bathrooms in our schools.  But you stop laughing when you think who’s going to win that clash, ultimately.  And it’s not the transgendered.

UPDATE: As I completed this post, I notice via Instapundit that the strongest opponent of sharia law in the United States among all the presidential candidates has risen to the top of the polls.  That is Dr. Ben Carson.  So what I have written above may not be the opinion of a minority crank.

Read the whole thing.

RELATED: Like America in 2015? Thank the Ted Kennedy of 1965.

CHANGE: Chick-fil-A Arrives in New York, Gays, Animal-Rights Nuts Hardest Hit.

WHY YES, YES THEY DO: Do civilians with guns ever stop mass shootings? Of course, if it’s stopped early, it’s never a mass shooting. . . .

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ASKS, OBAMA: NIHILIST, OR JUST INCOMPETENT?

As they say at Red State, “Embrace the healing power of ‘And.'”

THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Pitched battle under the Channel as dozens of migrants storm the Eurotunnel and get TEN miles down tracks before clashing with security guards in a ‘mass invasion co-ordinated by BRITISH anarchists.’

Related: Hungary’s been condemned for building a new Iron Curtain to keep out migrants. But its PM says he’s done it to avoid multicultural Britain’s mistakes… and his popularity is soaring.