TOO BAD: Burt Rutan retires from Scaled Composites. The aerospace industry will miss him.

WELCOME BACK KOTTER CARTER.

Linked from Instapundit.

MORE CRONY CAPITALISM: AARP president inadvertently makes the case against ObamaCare. “We absolutely believe people should be able to choose” - among programs only we offer.

HERE’S THE Tea Party Budget for 2012. Which simply goes to show that neither party’ is worth a tinker’s damm. The next election is time to throw out the current babies with the bathwater.

WANT TO UNDERSTAND THE BATTLE OF WISCONSIN? Follow the (union dues) money.

JUST BALANCE THE DAMN BUDGET! Well, even symbolic gestures are a beginning.

ROBOTIC SWISS QUADRACOPTERS hold their own at tennis.

The YouTube link is here.

TEA PARTY TO GOP: get tough on budget cuts.

I’m ready to shut the government down if that’s what it takes. On a trillion dollar annual budget, 61 billion amounts to only a 16-day shutdown.

WHITE HOUSE threatens to veto FAA bill to shield unions. Let him veto. It seems to me that the Constitution vested law-making powers to the Congress, not the Executive.

ANOTHER OBAMACARE BAILOUT: "Investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee have discovered that a little-known provision in the national health care law has allowed the federal government to pay nearly $2 billion to unions, state public employee systems, and big corporations to subsidize health coverage costs for early retirees."

Crony capitalism at its best.

UPDATE: the winners are ... not us.

WISCONSIN UNIONS threaten to boycott businesses that don't display their signs.

I’m looking forward to the first store to display a sign reading “We reserve the right to refuse service to union members.” It’ll never happen, of course, but a “Go ahead and boycott; we don’t need your business” sign might take hold.

OBAMA’S LIBYA SPEECH and the royal 'I'.

Didn’t I write something similar? Why, yes. Yes, I did.

UFO MYSTERY SOLVED: road flares tied to balloons. “Of course it's also possible that aliens visited Colorado last week in a spacecraft that just happens to look like road flares tied to balloons ...”

THE BLOOM IS OFF THE ROSE. Dana Milbank, the Washington Post’s leading Obamaphile, appears to be having second thoughts.

INDIANA DEMOCRATS RETURN, carrying their union cards: Republican concessions for their return include "prevailing wage" agreements (padding for construction unions) and diminution of educational choice programs (padding for teachers' unions).

Damn. Republicans have no cojones. I was hoping that the states, at least, would show some courage in the face of Democrat/union thuggery. That doesn't appear to be happening.

SHUT IT DOWN: 57% of Americans prefer government shutdown to current levels of spending.

SOMEONE SHOULD TELL THE PRESIDENT that tanks don't fly.

WISCONSIN HAS become 'exhibit A' for not electing judges. Not really; it's become 'exhibit A' for not electing Democrats.

MAYBE VOLCANOES aren't all that bad. Your great-great-great-...-great grandaddy may have been born in one.

Read to the very last line for an intriguing factoid.

NOT ENOUGH GLOBAL HAWKS: U-2's will continue to fly over Afghanistan for the forseeable future.

NO WONDER they're afraid to cut the budget.