IT’S NOT JUST TAXES: 40% of every small-business dollar goes to pay for federal regs.

WASN’T THIS DR. RICHARD DAYSTROM’S DOWNFALL? “Scientists to simulate human brain inside a supercomputer,” Time magazine reports. Following up on another recent article that asked, “Is the universe just a computer simulation?,” a commenter at Hot Air rides the Mobius Loop between the two articles: “So we are simulating a brain inside a computer, which is just part of another computer simulation of the universe? I need to go to bed…”

Just be on guard for Monsters from the Id.

I DISAGREE: “I’ve lived under a dictatorship before. And that’s exactly what you’ve got coming here.” Fascism is forever descending upon the United States, but somehow it always lands on Europe. It is true that there are certain rather creepy strains of leader-worship in the Obama camp, but I don’t think those are representative. Still, it’s easy to see why gun sales have been booming.

FLORIDA: Romney Closing Gap Among Hispanic Voters. “Mitt Romney is closing the gap on President Barack Obama among likely Hispanic Florida voters, a majority of whom say they’re not better off than four years ago, according to a new Florida International University/Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald poll.”

Well, most people aren’t.

I WASN’T “THREATENING TO LINK-STARVE BUZZFEED.” I don’t do boycotts, generally. But they seem to have wider ambitions than being a poor man’s ThinkProgress, and if they convince everyone to the right of Kos that they can’t be trusted, that’s what they’ll become. Lost trust can cost.

FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET: AP is now reporting that Felix Baumgartner did indeed break the sound barrier. “Baumgartner hit Mach 1.24, or 833.9 mph, according to preliminary data, and became the first person to reach supersonic speed without traveling in a jet or a spacecraft after hopping out of a capsule that had reached an altitude of 128,100 feet above the Earth.”

WELCOMING CAMILLE PAGLIA back to the “Woman Wars.”

“CAN I GIVE IT TO MY MONKEY?”

THE PAST ECHOES IN THE PRESENT: In everything we say, there is an echo of 1066

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Why College May Be Totally Free Within 10 Years. I’ll need people to keep coughing up for law school for another 20, though. . . .

THE SERGEANT SCHULTZ OF AMERICAN POLITICS: Elizabeth Warren Claims Not to ‘Know’ Whether Union Members Were Fined for Not Supporting Her.

YOU CAN’T FIGHT A CULTURE WAR IF YOU AIN’T GOT NO CULTURE: Is what L. Neil Smith used to say.  In the interest of disintermediating the culture gatekeepers and destabilizing the cultural-industrial complex — which makes giving my readers and friends a leg up sound so culturally relevant! — every week I put up a post with links to my commenters’ books and other work.  Here is this week’s post.

EXPLORING PERSONALIZED MEDICINE.

AT AMAZON, up to 70% off on select watches. For men and women.

“WE’RE GOING THROUGH A ‘MISSION ACCOMPLISHED’ MOMENT,” said Darrell Issa on “Face the Nation” today:

This is not very Republican, if you will, but when President George W. Bush went aboard an aircraft carrier and said, “mission accomplished” I listened rightfully so to people saying, look, but there’s still problems, and they’re still dying, and quite frankly, things got worse in many ways after that famous statement.

Excellent interviews at the link with both Issa and Sen. Lindsey Graham. Graham accuses the Obama administration of “trying to spike the ball after killing bin Laden” and “creat[ing] a false narrative about the true state of al Qaeda and it all caught up with them in Libya.”

UPDATE: (From Glenn): Reader Ron Jones writes: “Both Dr. Althouse and Mr. Issa apparently need a reminder that President Bush didn’t say ‘Mission Accomplished’ — it was on a banner on the ship he was speaking from. And as has been pointed out hundreds of times, it was the SHIP’s mission that had been accomplished, not Mr. Bush’s.”

AND: I’m just quoting Issa, but I don’t think Bush can disown the banner he spoke under. I know there’s this way of constraining the meaning of the banner, but Presidents should take responsibility for their messages, and Bush (kind of) did in his book “Decision Points”:

I hadn’t noticed the large banner my staff had placed on the bridge of the ship, positioned for TV. It read “Mission Accomplished.” It was intended as a tribute to the folks aboard the Lincoln, which had just completed the longest deployment for an aircraft carrier of its class. Instead, it looked like I was doing the victory dance I had warned against. “Mission Accomplished” became a shorthand criticism for all that subsequently went wrong in Iraq. My speech made clear that our work was far from done. But all the explaining in the world could not reverse the perception. Our stagecraft had gone awry. It was a big mistake.

Ironically, Issa was trying to highlight how bad it was for the Obama administration to push the narrative that it had vanquished al Qaeda.

ALSO: Bush is such a convenient punching bag. Many Republicans leverage moderating-seeming comments off what they assume is our rejection of Bush. I wonder how many of us there are who really do appreciate what Bush did and would like to see him brought in from out in the cold.

CHANGE: USA Today Shocker: ‘Obama, Romney Nearly Tied in Electoral College.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Is the universe just a computer simulation? Now, we can check.

TSA NIGHTMARES: Dana Loesch tweets another outrageous account of harassment.

To paraphrase Obama’s comments to Dmitry Medvedev, in a second Obama term, the TSA would likely have even greater flexibility when groping harassing questioning passengers.

SPACE: NASA and SpaceX to Probe Falcon 9 Engine Failure.

MEDIA CREDIBILITY DAY IS COMING.

PIERS MORGAN FOR MITT: CNN Star Says Romney ‘Might Just Save America.’

But isn’t the real story here the discovery that there’s a CNN host who actually isn’t completely in the tank for Obama?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 8 Ways Sex Makes You Beautiful.

COMPETENCE: Axelrod Refuses to Say Whether Obama Met with Nat’l Security Team Before Heading to Las Vegas.

UPDATE: A reader sends this photo from Facebook, where it’s making the rounds.

HATING BREITBART: Andrew Marcus, the director of the upcoming documentary on the late Andrew Breitbart, and Larry Solov, the president/CEO of Breitbart.com were interviewed today on Fox & Friends.

PARENTING ADVICE at NeoParent.com.