"THERE IS NO RATIONAL REASON why a small republican experiment in 1776 grew to dominate global culture and society -- except that America is the only nation, past or present, that put trust in the individual rather than in the state and its elite bureaucracy."

Read it all.

BOOSTER CAMERA VIDEO from the Atlantis launch. Cameras mounted on the two solid rocket boosters that helped propel space shuttle Atlantis into orbit on July 8 provide unique angles of the launch from the Kennedy Space Center and their subsequent water landing downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

The whole sequence is about 30 minutes long, 5 minutes each from 6 embedded cameras. SRB separation is at about 120 seconds in each video; then the remaining video is of the booster tumbling in reentry before the parachutes open for landing at about 400 seconds.

FIRE THE MBA'S and put engineers in charge. "[M]oving numbers around can do only so much. Over the long haul, you've got to invent or improve real products and services to grow."

THE GREAT CHARADE: The spenders are negotiating among themselves how much debt they’re going to burden you with.

Read it all.

DEFICITS ARE A GRRRL'S BEST FRIEND: And this is what passes for education these days? The only intelligence is in the comments.

FROM MY EMAIL: a little history of Social Security. Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised:

1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary;

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program;

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year;

4.) That the money the participants put into the Independent 'Trust Fund' rather than into the General Operating Fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other government program; and,

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month -- and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the federal government to 'put away', you may be interested in the following:

Q: Which political party took Social Security from the Independent 'Trust Fund' and put it in to the General Fund so that Congress could spend it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democratically- controlled House and Senate.

Q: Which political party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party .

Q: Which political party started taxing Social Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the 'tie-breaking' deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the U.S.

Q: Which political party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?

A: Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.

Even though the email is clearly partisan, the lesson to be learned is nonpartisan: the Government is under no compulsion to honor the terms of a contract. Which is why I strongly favor privatization (it's also a better financial deal).

FLASHBACK: Every Democrat in the Senate voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006. To be surprised would be to assume politicians have convictions.

TEXAS GOV. RICK PERRY used to be a Democrat! And, um, so did Ronald Reagan.

QUOTE OF THE CENTURY: "Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're number one. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'. The four of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words." -- Los Angeles Times columnist Burt Prelutsky.

From my email.

AND YOU'RE SERIOUSLY going to tell me that the federal debt ceiling must be raised? "The federal government helped fund a study that examined what effect a gay man's penis size has on his sex life and general well-being."

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on St. Obama and the Debt Dragon.

The annual deficit and the aggregate debts are so massive that all the talk of a few billion cuts here and there, or even a trillion or so, means little. To save us, we would have to slash two or three entire departments (e.g., perhaps energy, education, agriculture, etc.), end all agriculture subsidies, raise the retirement age, freeze cost of living raises for Social Security, clamp down on food stamp and entitlement abuses (almost 50 million now receive them), and do far, far more — while encouraging the private sector to drill, mine, grow food at unprecedented rates, as government trimmed regulations and revised the tax code to encourage wealth creation.

So let's do it. Especially the part about slashing 2 or 3 departments.

JEFF JACOBY on the light bulb ban: "[It] may not be the biggest issue on the nation's agenda. But it's intrusive and obnoxious and it sets many teeth on edge."


Life in ObamaLand ....

IS IT 2012 YET? Just undo it.

TAX LOOPHOLES ARE BAD -- unless it's my loophole.

WHY COLLEGE EDUCATION FAILS: "In the same time period [1975-2008] the total number of administrators rose 221 percent, from 3,800 to 12,183." Follow the link for details.

A BRIEF HISTORY of the U.S. Federal Government and Innovation: From World War I through World War II (1917 – 1945).

I posted Part I here. I'm hoping for a Part III picking up in 1945, since my own areas of professional expertise (communications technology and radar) have their origins -- at least of interest to me -- in the immediate post-WWII period.

WHOLE FOODS, half wits.

OOPS! 'Carmageddon' fails. As predicted.

More here: "Our public officials are increasingly more interested in lifestyle hectoring than in actually doing their jobs."

WHICH PRESIDENT is Barack Obama most like? I had a hard time choosing between Jimmy Carter and Zaphod Beeblebrox.

From the comments, I would judge that Obama is in a class by himself ....

THINGS THAT MAKE OBAMA CRY make me laugh. Be sure to scroll to the bottom.