OBAMANOMICS and the Jewish deli dilemma: How much competition -- or regulation --is too much?

WHICH COUNTRY PAYS THE MOST PER CAPITA FOR HEALTH CARE? It's not the U.S. (yet), but we're close.

Follow the links, but especially to this one.

And here's an ingenious plan for solving the pre-existing condition conundrum.

CALIFORNIA EDUCATION: "Thank God for Mississippi."

My wife and daughter are California survivors....

THREE CHARTS that show America doesn't have a spending problem. If that's the case, why is the national debt clock approaching $17 trillion (at a rate of about $2.5 million/minute)?

REMEMBERING BENGHAZI: the President never called back to check on Behghazi, nor did he attempd to do anything. PowerLine explains why:

Our president’s tendency will always be to manipulate the facts in favor of inaction. And when the facts can’t be manipulated, as with Benghazi, he seems prepared simply to absent himself until meaningful action is no longer possible.

How do you spell incompetence? O . B . A . M . A .

OBAMA'S campaign of pain.

MARINE CORPS joke of the year.

A Marine squad was marching north of Fallujah when they came upon an Iraqi terrorist who was badly injured and unconscious. On the opposite side of the road was an American Marine in a similar but less serious state.

The Marine was conscious and alert and as first aid was given to both men, the squad leader asked the injured Marine what had happened.

The Marine reported, "I was heavily armed and moving north along the highway here, and coming south was a heavily armed insurgent. We saw each other and both took cover in the ditches along the road. I yelled to him that Saddam Hussein was a miserable, lowlife scum bag who got what he deserved. and he yelled back that Barack Obama is a lying, good-for-nothing, left wing Commie who isn't even an American. So I said that Osama Bin Laden dresses and acts like a frigid, mean-spirited lesbian! He retaliated by yelling, Oh yeah? Well, so does Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer. And, there we were, in the middle of the road, shaking hands, when a truck hit us."

From my email.

A REASON NOT TO BE POPE: no cats allowed.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Let’s Help Academia Destroy Itself. "[T]he real joy will come from watching millions of the College-Progressive Complex’s inhabitants forced to actually produce something besides fascist speech codes and dissertations like A Three-Hour Cruise to Male Oppression: Gender Identity Issues on Gilligan’s Island."

OBVIOUSLY WE MUST BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS so those gun nuts will quit shooting down asteroids.

MICHAEL BARONE: For Obama, Politics Always Trumps Governing.

Emperors don't govern; they dictate.

NOT EARTH, CERTAINLY. "What planet do these [global warmist] guys come from?"

Is it any surprise that Americans no longer trust -- or pay attention to -- [political] scientists and politicians?

THE 23RD PSALM (OBAMA EDITION).

Heh.

$1.4 BILLION: the annual cost of the Obama Presidency. The Queen only costs England $58 million/year.

CONN CARROLL: the California gold spending rush.

LITTLE DID I KNOW IT THEN, but my 1973 Volkswagen Microbus was actually a mobile micro-apartment.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES. This is my favorite ...



... but there are many more here.

A GUN OUT OF A MOUNTAIN OUT OF A MOLEHILL:

When I was a kid, my parents made pancakes in various shapes: Clowns, wagons, Mickey Mouse. My mother may have made a gun-shaped pancake for me once. If not, certainly my father did. According to the latest 'thinking' amongst 'educators', that gun-shaped pancake was child abuse.

Oh, really?

No issue shows the utter poverty of thought in modern public education than this insane war on fun, fantasy, fingers and fake guns. Thankfully, most kids are probably learning a different story than the one taught. They are getting their first lesson on the need to question authority.

My wife, who is an educator, agrees on both points.

"THE IDEA of a minor decrease in the amount of increase in government spending causing end-times is laughable to everyone who has more IQ points than teeth."

ANGELO CODEVILLA: Country club Republicans vs. country class Republicans.

After the leadership’s electoral disaster of 2012 and its subsequent pathetic fecklessness the only vision of a possible future in Republican ranks – the only programmatic and organizational coherence –was among the Party’s dissident majority in the House and dissident minority in the Senate. By 2013 it was less meaningful to ask what the leadership would do with the dissidents than what the dissidents would do with the leadership. The answer seemed to be: increasingly to ignore it, to go one’s own way; more and more, to go along with conscience and with voters. By 2013 as their numbers continued to grow without counter trend, it was difficult to imagine how the leadership might reduce their numbers.

That, I think, is true of the citizenry as well; more and more Americans are simply ignoring the government and going their own way.