EPA ECO-RADICALs Are Hurting Families at the Tap. Er, don't tell the EPA that I draw my water from a personal well on my property.

And that there are beavers just down the road.

RICK PERRY got C's and D's in college. Real C's and D's are more comforting to me than O's affirmative action A's and B's (assuming his transcript showed them).

JUNK THE BUDGETING PROCESS: the insanity of baseline budgeting. Hannity was all over this in the week leading up to the debt deal, and correctly so. I don't base my annual budget on what I overspent last year plus an inflation factor; I base it on what I reasonably expect my income will be next year.

TEN REASONS for having children.

And reason #11: children are more likely to help you when your Social Security checks quit coming.

SARAH PALIN: "We are the sons and daughters of that Greatest Generation who stormed the beaches of Normandy, raised the flag at Iwo Jima, and made America the strongest and most prosperous nation in the history of mankind. By God, we will not squander what has been given us!"

That's the message I want to hear from my next President.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Inexplicables.

Plus this observation about Vanity Fair's James Wolcott: "Usually his postings are crass, poorly written, and unimaginative, and they seem to have little value other than offering revelations of the psychodramas and angsts of a small insular class of admittedly irrelevant and talentless New York insiders."

SAVE MONEY JUST LIKE UNCLE SAM: "I was going to buy three, but I just bought one." Read the text before you click on the video.

DOWNGRADE DENIERS. Be sure to read the comments - here's an example: "The lead democrats strike the pose of some among us who are up to their eyeballs in credit card debt - the solution that is obvious to them is to secure another credit card and keep on spending. This is as tenderly insane as believing in the existence of perpetual motion machines and unicorns that excrete jelly beans and pink lemonade."

THE LOCAL DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION did me a big favor today. As I entered the subdivision where I live, there was a giant sign: "Warning - slow moving vehicles ahead". Now I can drive (slowly) in peace.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

President Obama often talks about wanting to raise taxes on "millionaires and billionaires" but -- in his actual tax proposals -- higher taxes usually begin with couples earning $250,000 between them. Apparently that makes you a millionaire or a billionaire.

Three little words -- "We the people," the opening words of the Constitution of the United States -- are the biggest obstacle to achieving the political goals of the left. For that, they must move decisions away from "We the people" -- from individuals to government; from elected officials to unelected judges; and from national institutions to international institutions like the United Nations -- all safely remote and insulated from "We the people."

At one time, it was well understood that adversity taught valuable lessons, which reduce the probability of repeating foolish decisions. But, today, the welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.

More here.

TEA PARTIERS are stupid Americans.

THIS IS WHAT AMERICA NEEDS. My vote will go to the Republican candidate who presents the most optimistic message.

THE REAL BITTER CLINGERS.

FACTS DON'T MATTER to Democrats. They believe in rainbows and unicorns.

AL GORE needs the peace and quiet of a padded cell.

OBAMA'S MESSAGE: Hey, it's not a depression. But he's working on it.

SHOULD CONGRESS RETURN? Well, there's plenty to be done, for sure, but frankly I think I'd rather they stayed away until after the 2012 elections. The risk of them doing something bad outweighs the risk of them doing nothing.

EVEN THE BIGGEST GUN isn't terribly fearsome when it's out of bullets.

A SUGGESTION for the Tea Party: "Since Reuters and other establishment media types embrace the moral relativism of the 'one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter' nonsense, why not hoist them with their own petard, and start referring to 'Tea Party freedom fighters'?"

THE BEST POLITICAL AD YET. And he's not (yet) a candidate.

CAN WASHINGTON do anything about jobs? Well, yes, they're pretty good at destroying them.

AS I'VE LONG SUSPECTED: the market long ago factored Obama's total incompetence into their business strategy and are now totally ignoring him.

HERE'S AN INTERESTING ARTICLE about a potential commercial race to the moon. I'm impressed by the inventiveness of the entrepreneurs, but they've missed a possibility from Heinlein's novel The Man Who Sold the Moon: selling the right to place advertising on the lunar surface. Heinlein sold the right to not advertise; but I suspect advertising would be more lucrative.

JUAN WILLIAMS: Is Ann Coulter right about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King?

You have to give Coulter points for shrewdly using the words of one black liberal civil rights icon to indict another liberal black liberal civil rights icon. She has a conservative agenda and she is a world-class provocateur who knows how to inflame her liberal critics.

Coulter and I disagree most of the time, especially on her regular use of harsh, partisan hyperbolic language to caricature people. Her tirades against liberals get lots of media attention and sell books but they overshadow the serious insights she has into American history. And when Ann is right, Ann can be devastatingly right.

Read it all.

I'VE GOT AN IDEA: Let's air drop them over the Mid-East and let them put their violent tendencies to good use.

CARTOON OF THE DAY.


More here.

CAN CONTRACTORS COME ALONG? Boeing Workers Will Fly to ISS Aboard Their Company's New Spaceship.

ORIGIN OF THE DEBT SHOWDOWN: Of course it was all the Tea Party's fault.

And it wouldn't have happened if the then-majority Democrats had voted to raise the debt ceiling before the new Congress convened. Big mistake.

FOR THE FIRST TIME in Obama’s national political career, [he has] an opponent who can fight back.

ELECTION 2012: Let the ballot-stuffing begin.