OUR OWN GREEK TRAJEDY: Mark Steyn explains:

While President Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care "summit," thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe.

Link from Instapundit.

THE TEA PARTY: Wal-Mart hippies. “There are many differences between the New Left and the Tea Partiers ... but the similarities are more striking than the differences.”

Huh? David Brooks should really get out of his New York office more ....

OBAMAVILLES: Industrial communities teeter on the edge. More here.

What happens when manufacturing is regulated out of existence?

Link via Instapundit.

GOING GALT. Registration is required, and free. Go ahead; it’s worth it for the "busybodies" comment at about the 17 minute mark.

PIGS FLY; FISH BUYING BICYCLES: “[A] new Iraq is being fashioned -- the Iraq Bush foretold in an address to the National Endowment for Democracy in November 2003, when he declared that "Iraqi democracy will succeed" and predicted that "the establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." Six years later ... that prophecy is coming to pass.”

SHOCKED! SHOCKED, THEY SAY. Reporters who sold their services at a premium price to the Defense Department to produce some blathery blog about cultural understanding in Afghanistan are shocked that the military used the information they gathered for killing people.

It may be hard [for Liberals] to remember, but that’s still kind of the military’s job.

CERTAINLY AN INTERESTING PERSPECTIVE: Tea party brings energy, change and tumult to GOP.

NUMBERS DON’T LIE. And 4525 is bigger than 30.

DEMOCRATS AREN’T SUICIDAL. They're self-executing.

Heh.

GOVERNMENT MONEY

And being green, it must grow on money trees ....

Link here.

NO OFFSHORE DRILLING while Obama’s in office: “So for the next three years and probably more [Not if I can help it! - Ed.] , trillions of dollars in domestic energy assets will remain untouched while billions of dollars more are spent on foreign oil.”

MAINSTREAM MEDIA: weapons of mass distraction.

PAY HOMEOWNERS TO SELL AT A LOSS: Good news for fraudsters – the government will soon start leaning on banks to accept short sales on home loans. You get a cheap house, your partner gets $1,500 and the bank (and diligent borrowers) get screwed.

A LIST OF CONGRESSCRITTERS you might should want* to contact about ObamaCare. I did; 48 of 49 so far.**

Link from Instapundit.

*Yes, I know, but I like the phrase.

**And I practiced safe fax (wireless).

[Update] Here's the letter I sent:

I am writing to ask that you vote against any version of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama health care reform bill that will come before Congress. I recognize that some reform of the laws governing health insurance in the U.S. is both desirable and necessary, but the bill now before Congress is not the reform needed.

At last count some 53% of all Americans oppose the current reform. I doubt it’s coincidence that that number is approximately the same percentage as the percentage of Americans who pay federal income taxes each year.

Kill it. Drive a stake through it. Then start over in the next Congress with incremental and bipartisan changes. Reduce mandates; let us decide what level of insurance we wish to carry. Enact tort reform. Allow more competition by permitting insurance across state lines (just how many companies are multi-state?). Allow private affinity groups to sponsor health plans. Remove the employer tax exemption.

Done right, these changes can get bipartisan support.

And I can get health insurance I can live with.

Respectfully,

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S PLAN to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan in July 2011 has emboldened terrorists and increased distrust of U.S. intentions in the region.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Thursday "The administration's withdrawal date was music to the ears of the militants and terrorists."

GOP HOPES TOWN HALLS take health care off table. And we must do our share.

THE MEDIA loves tea partiers. Really!

It’s the smoking.

MICHAEL BARONE - Low-tax Texas beats big-government California.

[Compared to California] Texas has low taxes -- and no state income taxes -- and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California's year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent.

But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California's. But its test scores -- and with a demographically similar school population -- are higher. California's once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In the meantime, Texas' economy has been booming. Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

SURPRISE! We set up new subsidies for clean, green energy, and the jobs go overseas.

The great irony is that not only will the windmill-building jobs go to China, but the windmills will be built only by burning some of the cheapest, filthiest coal in the world.

And to top it off : if cap and trade ever goes into effect, the energy user firms will also start exporting their jobs to China, to escape high energy costs.

The DUH! light illuminates; liberal Senators suddenly grasp what their 'green' stimulus actually does.

THE TRUE COST OF PUBLIC EDUCATION



What is particularly appalling is to find that the cost of public education in Washington D.C. public schools is about 2/3 the cost of one of the most elite private schools in the metro region (Sidwell Friends).