YOU GO TO WAR with the clowns you’ve got.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: USA Today: Obama education plan at war with itself.

MAUREEN DOWD: In his head, is Barry at war with the commander in chief? But note that she manages to try to blame Bush, too.

JUSTICE: 107-year-old Arkansas man dies in shootout with S.W.A.T. This actually looks like it was a justified shooting. But couldn’t they have just waited until his nap?

TAR AND FEATHERS ISN’T ENOUGH FOR THIS CASE: State Takes Baby for First 75 Days of the Baby’s Life, Because of Mother’s Use of Poppy Seed Dressing. Perhaps being horsewhipped naked through the streets, then tarred and feathered. Though I’m not sure even that is severe enough. Maybe branding “I am an idiot” on the forehead? Or tattooing it, anyway.

Seriously, the people involved in this should face the kind of life-devastating consequences that will deter such behavior in the future. That they probably will not is just one more small step toward a world where such behavior will in fact be responded to with extralegal violence.

NOT SURPRISING: NSA Can Tap Into Your Smartphone Data.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, WARMONGERING BLOWHARDS WOULD BE TRYING TO BRING BACK THE DRAFT. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Rep. Charles Rangel Cites Possible Intervention in Syria as a Justification for his Call for Reinstating the Draft.

IN JUST A FEW MINUTES ON AMY ALKON’S RADIO SHOW: Dr. V. Griskevicius: Make wiser choices via Deep Rationality.

Her guest is the coauthor of The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Worst Marriage Advice of All Time. I dunno, #11 seems okay.

MEH. Hasn’t the churchy stuff pretty much always been about women controlling men, really? With an awful lot of Hugo Schwyzer types in the ministry? At any rate, this does support a certain thesis.

Related: Why black men went on strike first.

AT AMAZON, up to 40% off on headphones & earbuds.

Also, top-rated multitools.

OFF THE PLANTATION: Roll Call: Rangel Suggests Nuking Poverty, Not Syria. We already lost the war on poverty. At least we haven’t lost the war on Syria yet.

TELL ME AGAIN HOW INCREDIBLY SMART MARK ZUCKERBERG IS: These Boobies Were Banned From Facebook. “When Christmas Island Tourism Board posted an ad for its annual Bird’n’Nature Week with the caption ‘Some gorgeous shots here of some juvenile boobies,’ Facebook blocked it immediately. In this instance, boobies are a species of blue-footed birds found on the island.”

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Pentagon adjusts plans for more intense attacks on Syria.

I HAVE TO SAY, HE’S ALWAYS GOT SOMETHING COOL GOING ON: Elon Musk’s New Project: Iron Man’s Gesture-Based Interface.

AT AMAZON, 60% or more off on Hunting & Tactical Knives.

Also, fall deals in cookware.

CONFESSION: True Story: I Only Use The Pullout Method. “I only use the pullout method, but am loathe to say so to my Pill loyalist friends or my gyno, who I’m convinced will give me a finger-wagging lecture. I’m in my 30s! While I’m not actively looking to be a parent right this minute, an unplanned pregnancy also would not ruin my life.” Well, okay then.

BILL QUICK: Range Report From Gunblogger Rendezvous.

OH, GOODY: The Pension Crisis Is Worse Than We Thought.

America’s pension crisis may be much worse than we thought. A new report from State Budget Solutions looks at each state’s pension liabilities using a lower estimate of the rate of return than the states use themselves, and found that the country’s plans are underfunded by $4.1 trillion, and only 39 percent funded overall. The state-by-state breakdown looks even worse, with Illinois, Connecticut, Kentucky and Kansas holding plans that are less than 30 percent funded, and another 27 states below 40 percent. Other states have it bad as well: Reuters notes that in five states, pension liabilities more than 40 percent as large as the state’s economy as a whole, and in Ohio and New Mexico, they’re more than half as large. Considering that many people consider plans to be “safe” only when their funded level is over 80 percent, this is troubling news indeed.

These numbers are significantly higher than those we’ve seen before, which is due to the extremely conservative estimates of the rate of return. Rather than assuming a rate of return in the 7-9 percent range, as most plans do, State Budget Solutions is using the “risk free” rate of 3.225 percent, which is tied to the yield on treasury bonds.

I can’t help but feel that the pressure for inflation to bail all sorts of public-sector entities out of their indebtedness is going to grow and grow.

SO HERE IS WHAT Amazon is recommending for me. Two thoughts: (1) Can this really work? and (2) Does Amazon know something I don’t? . . .

IT’S ALSO AWKWARD WHEN YOU’RE THINKING OF SENDING THEM TO INVADE SYRIA: Marines retreat on court-martial charges in Taliban urination case. “The Marine Corps has suddenly dropped criminal charges against an officer in the infamous Taliban urination video case, heading off what promised to be an embarrassing pre-trial hearing for the commandant on Wednesday. Defense attorneys for Capt. James V. Clement had won a judge’s order, over objections from Marine prosecutors, for two staff attorneys to testify in open court about how senior commanders had interfered in the case to get a guilty verdict. . . . Capt. Clement had been charged with dereliction of duty for not properly supervising Marines who urinated on Taliban corpses. A video of the act went viral on YouTube, drawing harsh criticism from the White House.”

There does seem to be a lot of trouble with unlawful command influence lately.

I BLAME FACEBOOK AND TEXTING: For Millenials Connections Are Easy, Friendships Are Hard.

MERYL YOURISH WRITES:

I recently reviewed a fantastic book for teenage boys by KC Sprayberry. It’s a SF novel set on a space station in the 24th century with a teenage protagonist who runs a detective agency. I could NOT put it down, and I don’t usually read this genre! The author is also an Air Force veteran.

As an FYI, book two of The Catmage Chronicles, which also features a teenage boy protagonist, will be coming out in a couple of months.

Here’s Book One.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 122.