JOHN RANSOM responds to email, hate mail, and comments from readers. My favorite: “Truth is always just a point of view ....”

THROW GRANDMA FROM THE TRAIN - it’s too crowded under the bus.

JOHN GALT IS A LIBRA

(April 13) You like your drama with popcorn. As for the real-life show that’s going on, you didn’t buy a ticket, so you don’t have to watch ....

So am I.

BRYAN PRESTON explains why he and I didn’t - and won’t - vote for Obama.

I don’t want the government doing everything for me, I just mostly want it out of the way. I don’t want a president who’s sensitive, I want a president who will defend our country and not go around apologizing for it. I want a president who understands federalism, not one who attacks states for trying to uphold the rule of law. I want a president who understands economics in the real world, not just in the halls of academia. I want a president who has held down a real job, who has met a payroll, and who has achieved something on his own or met failure trying. I want a president who loves liberty, not one who is constantly finding ways to curb liberty. I want a president who appreciates our allies and stares down our enemies, and doesn’t hug our enemies and alienate our allies. I want a president I can trust, and I don’t trust Barack Obama at all, on any issue. I don’t trust his judgment or his instincts or his intentions.

Well said.

NOW THEY TELL US: hope is not a strategy.

WILLIAM McGURN: Economics, the "dismal science" isn't. Progressivism is.

"A NEW SPACE AGE is dawning now, a private one driven by profit and adventure, rather than national prestige and fickle politics, so the next half century is likely to be more exciting than the past one, with opportunities for all to go into space, and not just a few privileged government employees, whether Russian or American.” I hope so.

TAX, TAX, TAX ... AND TAX SOME MORE: the ‘People’s Budget’. “Perhaps the most extraordinary [part of] the caucus plan [is] to raise the Social Security tax to cover nearly all of a taxpayer's income.” Just to add some perspective to the ‘People’s Budget,’ when I started work in 1972 the FICA tax for Social Security (only) was 4.6% of the first $9,000 of income. Today it is 6.2% of the first $106,800 of income. That’s only a 1600% increase.

REFORMING YOUR WAY TO RICHES:

Remember how the health-care bill was about "standing up to the special interests" and the lobbyists? Tell that to Democrat Bart Stupak, perhaps the single most important rank-and-file House member in passing the bill, who just got a fat new gig on K Street.

Enough said.

THE NEXT OBAMA STIMULUS PROGRAM: Cash for Foreclosures. Of course, you'll have to have the house razed ...

Uh, no, it's not real. The idea came while waiting for today's deficit speech and perusing the comments here.

WHY BRAZIL HATES US: it's the environmentalists.

It's only partly tongue-in-cheek. Linked from Instapundit.

INSTAPUNDIT calls for shared sacrifice. Follow the last link to his earlier post.

OBAMA MOTORS FAIL: “What we do know is having the steering wheel fall off the car created by Obama and Government Motors is the most perfect analogy for this administration ever.”

Instapundit comments.

CHICAGO SCHOOL TO KIDS: You can’t bring lunch from home. I wish I could say “You gotta be kidding” but unfortunately it’s just another manifestation of the progressive superiority complex.

WHAT A WASTE OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION: the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein writes on economic policy. The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein slices and dices Ezra’s argument.

WHAT PARTS OF THE GOVERNMENT should be permanently furloughed?

Foreign Policy magazine tends to be a liberal domain, so there’s lots to quibble about in the first 8 items, but they generally come off as reasonably thoughtful. But the ninth? The best that can be said is that Michael Lind, of the New America Foundation, has come unglued. Here is his contribution (in italics):

[T]the federal government is too small, not too large, and should be expanded. At the price of inefficiency, things which could be done more simply and efficiently by the federal government have been delegated to the states or subsidized private corporations.

Name one thing - just one - that the federal government has ever done more simply or efficiently.

For example, hybrid federal-state programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance are threatened by unstable state revenues, unlike purely federal programs like Social Security.

Uh, Social Security is stable? Only Harry Reid doesn't recognize it is destined for eventual bankruptcy.

Tax-favored private retirement savings programs like IRAs and 401k's are riskier than Social Security and allow brokers to fleece unsuspecting clients with their fees. These programs should be shrunk and Social Security should be expanded.

Not so. My social security check is not nearly as big as it could have been had I been allowed to invest privately what I paid in FICA taxes.

Medical cost inflation threatens both the efficient Medicare program and the dysfunctional, employer-based health insurance sector.

Employer-based health “care” is dysfunctional because of government interference, not in spite of it.

The solution is cost controls, not rationing access to health care by Americans.

Wrong again. Cost control is a means of rationing access.

In a rational country, the federal government would take over functions that never should have been shared with the states or off-loaded onto the private sector.

Only if “rational” and “insane” are synonyms.

Higher federal taxes would be offset somewhat by lower state taxes and the abolition of tax subsidies for private insurance and private retirement savings.

It’s sufficient to just say “higher federal taxes.”

OBAMA REGRETS not voting ‘present’ in 2006.

WHY WOULD ANYONE PAY FOR BIAS AND INACCURACY? NY Times traffic down 11-30% since paywall went into effect.

HELL TO FREEZE OVER: Senate to vote to defund Planned Parenthood on Thursday. Urge your Senator to vote in favor of defunding. This isn’t about abortion; it is about getting a $1B behemoth off the government teat and getting government out of healthcare.