* Obama wants to assure us that we’re not in danger of another recession… but if things do stall, it’s because people disagreed with him and didn’t do what he told them. Other presidents — also known as better presidents — somehow dealt with congresses that disagreed with them and got things done. Obama had huge majorities in the Senate and the House and somehow still struggled at everything, and now that he’s lost that his only idea to try and make things happen is constant whining. How do you make an argument that this guy is not a horrible leader? Does the first step involve drilling a hole in your own head?

* Apparently, Obama has been avoiding black communities on his bus tour. Why would he need to talk to black people and assure them everything will be all right? They only have like twice the unemployment of everyone else.

Of course, it’s obvious why he isn’t visiting black people. This tour is to convince people to vote for Obama in 2012, but he doesn’t need to do that for blacks. They have to vote for Obama because they’re black. They have no choice in the matter. If you’re black, you vote for the Democrat. So Obama can just ignore them his whole presidency and then come election time have some advocacy group claim the Republican is going to burn crosses to scare them into voting as they’re supposed to. Is this news to black people? Hasn’t this agreement been going on for decades?

* Obama has reached a new low on his handling the economy — only 26% approve. And you gotta kinda wonder what in the world it is those 26% are approving of. Maybe some people don’t like economies and want them destroyed.

But don’t worry: Obama has a new jobs plan. Aren’t we excited. All his other plans were complete and utter failures, but this time he’s sure to get it right! Apparently, we won’t get the plan until he comes back from his next vacation. Which leads to my job plan: Obama does nothing but vacation for the rest of his presidency. By now, it’s pretty obvious that most useful thing he’s capable of doing is staying out of the way.

Actually, he hasn’t proved he’s capable of that.

* I’ve never watched Stephen Colbert’s show; I’ve seen glimpses of his shtick, but I’ve never understood if he’s supposed to be a parody of a conservative or a parody of what liberals who know FOX News is evil but never watched it think a conservative is like. Whatever he is, he’s a thief:

You’re watching Stephen wants to ‘nuke the moon’ on ‘The Colbert Report’ 08/16/11 – TV Replay. See the Web’s top videos on AOL Video

* I always thought the illusion with the cylinder casting a shadow on a checkerboard was the best I’ve ever seen. Usually when I’m told what the illusion is in an image, I can squint and see the trick. Not with this one; I need to actually manipulate it in photoshop to actually see that the two squares are the same color. Anyway, here’s the same illusion in video form. It looks like a special effect but it isn’t:

See, basically your brain automatically compensates for the shadow so you can perceive the checker pattern (because if you perceived the two squares as the same color you wouldn’t see a check board and miss the pattern). Your brain is doing all this background processing all the time to help you understand what your’re seeing, but it never gets any credit or even a thank you. It just gets yelled at when it gets tricked by an artificial illusion. Poor brain.

* Wisdom of the Day: “For fans of The Notebook, ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ is now on Netflix Instant.” –Michael Deppisch

* I like this: A California college student is asking liberal students in favor of wealth redistribution whether they would favor having their GPA redistributed to the less fortunate. One even responded, “If I do give GPA points to students that don’t deserve it, it isn’t fair, I work for what I have.” See, the conservative instinct is in everyone. You just have to figure the right way to wake it.