LIFE'S LESSON: I've learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake.

From my email.

SCUTTLE NASA NOW: It’s time for the Obama administration to make NASA a facilitator of private space ventures.

A SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY School of Law adjunct professor resigns over the school’s handling of a fellow faculty member’s military-bashing email.

U.S. Army Reserves Major Robert J. Roughsedge, who spent eight years as an adjunct Suffolk Law professor, resigned in a letter to Dean Camille Nelson over Suffolk Law Professor Michael Avery’s five-paragraph email to colleagues stating that it was “shameful” for students at the school to send care packages to soldiers who “have gone overseas to kill other human beings.”

Roughsedge called in from Kabul to explain his decision to resign.... “I do not want to provide them cover from what they really are.”

The law school should have fired Avery and promoted Roughsedge. More here.

ANOTHER REPUBLICAN DEBATE, tonight, 8 pm on CNN.

WHY OCCUPY WALL STREET will keep up the fight [Registration may be required]. Kalle Lasn and Micah White, who claim to have launched the OWS movement, use the Washington Post to describe what our future holds:

The people’s assemblies will continue with or without winter encampments. What will be new is the marked escalation of surprise, playful, precision disruptions — rush-hour flash mobs, bank occupations, “occupy squads” and edgy theatrics. And we will see clearly articulated demands emerging, among them a “Robin Hood tax” on all financial transactions and currency trades; a ban on high-frequency “flash” trading; the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act to again separate investment banking from commercial banking; a constitutional amendment to revoke corporate personhood and overrule Citizens United ; a move toward a “true cost” market regime in which the price of every product reflects the ecological cost of its production, distribution and use; and with a bit of luck, perhaps even the birth of a new, left-right hybrid political party that moves America beyond the Coke vs. Pepsi choices of the past.

In this visceral, canny, militantly nonviolent phase of our march to real democracy, we will “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” We will regroup, lick our wounds, brainstorm and network all winter. We will build momentum for a full-spectrum counterattack when the crocuses bloom next spring.

I can sympathize with some of their concerns, but they have real problem understanding the difference between capitalism and crony capitalism. It's also apparent that they do not -- or cannot -- understand that it is exactly their solutions that got us into this mess in the first place.

MICHAEL BARONE: Why not put tax breaks for mortgages and local taxes on the table?

Why not? Aren't we all in favor of ending tax breaks for 'the rich'?

“YOU KNOW the old saying that if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy?” Well, momma ain't happy, and she's leading the Tea Party.

LOS ANGELES MAYOR TO OCCUPIERS: How about a permanent camp ... somewhere else? As a former resident of the Antelope Valley, I can assure that they would not be welcome.

UPHOLDING OBAMACARE will encourage endless meddling.

When the government forces you to pay for other people's medical treatment, either directly through taxpayer subsidies or indirectly by requiring insurers to take all comers and charge them the same rates regardless of health, you have a financial stake in other people's lifestyle choices, including their diets, their exercise levels, their sleep patterns, their oral hygiene and their risky habits.

These decisions, aggregated together, have a substantial effect on health care spending, which the Obama administration has vowed to control. Imagine the fun that Congress could have coming up with mandates aimed at coercing healthier lifestyles once it has a constitutional blessing as well as a fiscal justification. Even if it sticks to regulating purchases, the possibilities for meddling will be wide and varied, ranging from food to recreational activities.

Endless meddling. You can be sure the nanny-staters will take every advantage, just as they've forced you into wearing seat belts, not smoking in public places anywhere, driving tin cans, attending declining public schools, ... and on and on.

IF THIS GOES ON .... Texas highland lakes will soon be dry.


As a former -- and intermittent -- resident of Central Texas, this is the worst I can recall ever seeing. When my family first moved to Austin in the early 50's, Lake Travis (the easternmost major reservoir) was still filling. I've seen its 'sometimes islands' appear and disappear, but they've never become the 'sometimes peninsulas'. I've never heard of anyone being able to drive over the Lake Buchanan (the westernmost major reservoir) to old Bluffton.

Lake levels are nearing historic lows since records have been kept.

IS CLIMATEGATE back in the news?

SPENDING OTHER PEOPLES MONEY: Occupy D.C. cost local taxpayers $1 million.

PRESIDENT PRESENT: Romney Blames Obama for Supercommittee Failure.

BRIDGE TO HOPE 'N CHANGE NOWHERE: Supercommittee fails.

A FRIGHTENING FORUM IN IOWA. The secular Left simply cannot fathom any principled objection to their cultural fantasies. Read the comments.

EUROPEAN TAX RATES: If these rates are accurate, then one must concede that no matter how bad things looks in the U.S., they're worse in Europe.