“Stocks around the world fell sharply Thursday on intensifying investor fears about a slowdown in global economic growth and worries about Europe’s ongoing debt crisis, which is centered now on Italy and Spain… A fear haunting markets is that the United States economy may be heading for a double-dip recession.” [NYT]

Our guest columnist is Michelle Obama.

Every day, I see Barack make choices he knows will affect every American family. That’s no small task for anyone — and more proof that he’s earning every last one of those gray hairs.

This has been a busy week in Washington, but today happens to be Barack’s 50th birthday. I’m writing to you because this year, the girls and I would like to do something a little different.

I’m asking friends and supporters of this campaign to wish him a happy birthday by signing his card, and sharing why you’re on this journey with us.

Your names and notes will become part of a book that tells the story of this campaign — who’s building it, why we’re in this thing, and what he means to us. We’ll deliver a copy to Barack and send one to our campaign offices across the country.

Sign the card for Barack [Campaign email]

There are, by our count, three competing explanations for Barack Obama’s negotiating strategy.

The first, what we’ll call the Cave Analogy, posits that Obama tends to give away the store even before the customer walks in. We’ve been partial to that thesis.

The second, offered by Practical Realists, claims that Obama is a victim of circumstance: The Republicans really were going to shoot the hostages, which tends to limit your options.

And the third, promoted very strongly by Glenn Greenwald, suggests that Obama always gets what he wants — only what he wants is very different from what we think he wants. After all, he was offering social-service cuts that even the Republicans feared to demand. And he never really cared for the Public Option a few crises ago.

We’re not going to render a verdict, although Greenwald’s winning on points by our score. Rather, we’re curious about the Circumstantial Presidency. Obama’s (remaining) supporters like to undermine the Cave Analogy by mentioning his decisive action on things like killing Bin Laden, killing the Somali pirates, and killing Libyans.

No, wait. Nobody’s mentioned Libya. But that’s the telling comparison.

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“He and his wife, Karen, have some fruit trees back home. Their family harvested about 600 early peaches and then he and their kids peeled them and made them into jam at their house. They ended up transporting about 40 jars of peach preserves to Iowa.” [Des Moines Register, via TPM/JWMcSame]

“President Barack Obama tapped Sen. Mike Lee’s legal counsel to be the next U.S. attorney for Utah, a move that infuriated Democrats from the state and ended a lengthy political drama over who would claim the high-profile position.” [Salt Lake Tribune, via ThinkProgress]

According to Tacitus, Petronius Arbiter:

…spent his days in sleep, his nights in attending to his official duties or in amusement, that by his dissolute life he had become as famous as other men by a life of energy, and that he was regarded as no ordinary profligate, but as an accomplished voluptuary. His reckless freedom of speech, being regarded as frankness, procured him popularity. Yet during his provincial government, and later when he held the office of consul, he had shown vigor and capacity for affairs. Afterwards returning to his life of vicious indulgence, he became one of the chosen circle of Nero’s intimates, and was looked upon as an absolute authority on questions of taste (elegantiae arbiter) in connection with the science of luxurious living.

The Tom Ford of his day, his was among the more spectacular suicides. As the story has it (and no, I don’t care if it isn’t true), in 65 CE, the emperor dropped by for an evening of gladiator buttsecks during which he noticed the many priceless works of art littering Petronius’s penthouse triplex overlooking east 57th. Having had a day or two to work himself into a state, the emperor sent word that, admiring his subject’s collection, Petronius should do everyone a favor and kill himself leaving everything to said emperor.

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“With most of the 18.4-cent tax per gallon of gasoline set to expire Sept. 30, renewing the tax could be the next political controversy to spark a brawl in an ever more deeply divided Capitol Hill.” [Politico]