MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS:

Taxpayer: someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert , in five years there'd be a shortage of sand. ~ Milton Friedman

From my email.

KICK ASS and take names. A most excellent 'fisking' of a Der Spiegel editorialist.

EXCELLENT: EPA set to miss deadline on ozone rules.

DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS: and that truck is getting mighty close.

A WARNING TO EARTH? Get your act together lest I decide to start over.

WE CAN HOPE: "The GOP holding onto the Wisconsin Senate is a major blow to Big Labor, maybe their biggest setback in a generation. The big unions will not go quietly, but go they will, eventually."

"THE HARDEST OBSTACLE to overcome will be the idea that anyone who challenges the prevailing consensus of the past 50 years is irrational and irresponsible. That is what is being said about the Tea Partiers. In fact, what is irrational and irresponsible is the assumption that we can go on as we are."

I KNOW TEXAS IS A BIG STATE, but Antartica is a part of Texas?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Crashing Chariot of Our Young Phaethon.

WE SHOULD BE SO LUCKY: Should Obama Resign?

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.