As August slows to a crawl, I’m looking at the calendar: two weeks until Labor Day; ten days until College Football season begins.

Here are some final items of the day:

* Greg Sargent notes wrinkle in sequester law making next year’s defense cuts even deeper, which could give Dems leverage in eliminating it.

* The Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta talks to frustrated Republican women about their party’s gender problems.

* Pew survey shows Americans supporting cutoff of military aid to Egypt by 2-1 margin (51-26, with 23% expressing no opinion).

* At Ten Miles Square, Harold Pollack makes short work of the libertarian tendency to identify mild income redistribution with totalitarianism.

* At College Guide, Daniel Luzer explains why Obama administration education officials intensely dislike Diane Ravitch; it’s not for the reasons they usually cite.

And in non-political news:

* 1934 Packard wins best of show at Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, which snarled traffic on Monterey Peninsula this weekend.

Let’s sign off today with two more from Ida Cox: First, “Any Woman’s Blues:

And then: “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues:”

Selah.

Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.