PAUL RYAN ON MEDICARE: “Our plan is to give seniors the power to deny business to inefficient providers. Their plan is to give government the power to deny care to seniors.”

Read his whole speech.

GAIA WORSHIP: "National Histrionic, er, Geographic’s relentless litany of human-generated threats smacks of Planned Parenthood in a pith helmet."

Even though the pictures are always beautiful, I've reached the point where I won't even open the magazine for fear I might accidentally read the text.

SARAH PALIN: a grateful nation.

And not a single 'I' to be found.

WHO REALLY OWNS your Facebook and twitter identities? Not you.

FREE FROM BIN LADEN: Washington Post Eugene Robinson may have finally gotten one right.

Stopped clocks are right at least once a day.

BIZARRE? Not really; he’s a Democrat.

“WE ARE ABOUT two judges away from having the entire program of leftist conventional wisdom ruled a state church.”

And if you’ll allow me the analogy of the telephone and television being ‘doorways’ to my home, the Left does come door-to-door proselytizing. Jehovah’s Witnesses, at least, are polite (and will take 'no' for an answer).

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID: Let’s just (unconstitutionally) tax the hell out of certain oil companies.

The man is a joke - a bad joke. And his amendment failed, too.

FROM BALLISTICS TO PROGRAMMING: How some math-savvy women helped win World War II and became the first computer programmers.

The podcast is long, but worth listening to. The documentary, if you can find it, is Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of World War II.

THANKS TO ‘CASH FOR CLUNKERS’ the price of used cars has lately soared to a modern-day record.

GEORGE WILL: History 101 for Liberals. I’d be surprised at their ignorance except that I know - as Neal Boortz so succintly puts it - “they were educated in government schools.”

HAPPINESS is seeing Illinois in the rear-view mirror.

HARRY REID: but, but ... gold subsidies aren’t the same oil subsidies!

HOW TO SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET: use a shovel.

OOPS! VERIZON overbilled 15 million customers for years because of ‘software errors’. Uh-huh. The ‘error’ was in not hiding the software well enough.

THE STEALTH TAX (‘DEBT TRIGGER’) is back.

Obama administration budget director Jack Lew met with Senate Democrats to try to sell them on the need to include a debt trigger as part of the Biden talks. The debt trigger, which Obama proposed in his April deficit-reduction speech, would require spending cuts or tax increases to reduce the deficit.

Some would say that the Democrats just haven’t gotten the message about tax cuts. Personally, I doubt that. It’s all about control; they need the tax money to pay off their many syncophants.

‘TRANSFORMERS’ COME TO LIFE: little rolling robot transforms into helicopter.

WHO KNEW? Spending cuts are more effective than tax hikes at lowering deficits.

ANOTHER STEALTH TAX HIKE: Senate Democrats push to end tax breaks for big oil companies in order to cut deficit. And of course it won’t increase the price of gas ....

THE ACADEMY’S SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS: “The conscious setting up of academia as an adversary to the larger society, something that makes the larger society less interested in footing the bill once it’s [been] noticed ....”

Not to mention the conscious devaluation of the worth of higher education.

BUT OF COURSE. The only way to make ObamaCare “work” is to ensure you can’t seek health care elsewhere.

REDISTRUBUTION OF INCOME: the average retiree couple (us) will be getting roughly a million dollars through Social Security and Medicare throughout their retirement - courtesy of you younger workers.

Read the comments. What’s interesting is to note is that (a) there is a growing realization that Social Security/Medicare are real problems that can’t be kicked down the road any longer; (b) the retirees are increasingly willing to take a hit in order to protect their heirs; and (c) there’s still way to much ignorance on the subject in the general public.

An earlier post (linked to a Power Line post) is here.

MEMPHIS, TN, before and after. Yes, the flooding was bad, but these NASA photos lend a little perspective to the hyperventilation of the television news services.