Jonah Goldberg - If We Become Europe, Who Will Be America?

Look at it this way. My seven-year-old daughter has a great lifestyle. She has all of her clothes and food bought for her. She goes on great vacations. She has plenty of leisure time. A day doesn’t go by where I don’t look at her and feel envious of how good she’s got it compared to me. But here’s the problem: If I decide to live like her, who’s going to take my place?

Europe is a free-rider. It can only afford to be Europe because we can afford to be America.

Dr. Zero - For the Love of Capitalism

Another must read.  "Socialism always seems to have a marketing advantage over capitalism.  This is not surprising, because socialism is a deeply romantic notion: a dangerously seductive dream of prosperity as a function of justice, where the wise redistribute the profits of the wicked to care for the needy.  Socialism’s promises are so alluring that questions about its poor performance are dismissed as rude.  It is a childish philosophy, and like any errant child, it receives a limitless supply of forgiveness and second chances."

Deepak Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake

The U.S. Geological Survey is blaming day-to-day seismological changes for Sunday's 7.2 earthquake along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Deepak Chopra, the famed alternative-medicine practitioner and transcendental meditation guru, is pretty sure he knows what really happened.

"Had a powerful meditation just now -- caused an earthquake in Southern California," Chopra wrote to his Twitter followers shortly after the quake.

And then, to clarify: "Was meditating on Shiva mantra & earth began to shake," he tweeted. "Sorry about that."

IRS chief: Buy health insurance or lose your tax refund

Individuals who don’t purchase health insurance may lose their tax refunds according to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. After acknowledging the recently passed health-care bill limits the agency’s options for enforcing the individual mandate, Shulman told reporters that the most likely way to penalize individuals that don’t comply is by reducing or confiscating their tax refunds.

Unions looking for taxpayer help to payout expensive pensions

Legislation introduced last week could shift costs of union pension plans to taxpayers in an attempt to stave off organized labor’s pension funding crisis.

Smart Women Drink More

The report concludes: "The more educated women are, the more likely they are to drink alcohol on most days and to report having problems due to their drinking patterns. 

"The better-educated appear to be the ones who engage the most in problematic patterns of alcohol consumption."

WSJ: The VAT is Coming

So we are to have a European-style value-added tax (VAT). That's the emerging consensus in Washington as people come to recognize the reality of the deep financial hole into which the Obama administration has dug us. 

The Congressional Budget Office reckons we will be Greece by the end of the decade, owing the world—mostly the Chinese—a sum equal to 90% of our gross domestic product.

Fake story meant to ensnare bloggers catches NYT instead

At Libertypundits.net: "The basic idea was this: A bunch of law bloggers would try to punk the political bloggers, whose reputation is to grab any old rumor and run with it. Fact checking hasn’t always been the strong suit of this community.

But the political bloggers, to their collective credit, didn’t bite, despite wide dissemination of the story. Not on the right or the left. Instead it was the vaunted New York Times that ran with the story without bothering to check its facts. The Times, of course, had no sense of humor about it when the angry phone call came to me a couple of hours later."