JOHN HINDERAKER: “There are, indeed, two Americas: the increasingly straitened world of the private sector, where jobs are competitive, money is scarce, and job security is, for many, nonexistent; and the lush world of the government employee, where competition is more or less unknown, salaries and benefits often double those available to private workers, retirement is ten or more years earlier than in the private sector, and it may take a felony to get fired. This is the central economic conflict of our time, between lavishly compensated and ever more gluttonous government employees, and wealth-creating private citizens who are increasingly unable to support their public-sector masters in the style to which they have become accustomed.”

Check out this video from Dan Mitchell:

AL AND TIPPER: What happened? “The inconvenient truth, it seems, is that they simply grew apart—a side effect of his traveling for climate change, spending less and less time together.”

Nah. It’s all George W. Bush’s fault.

CLINTON REDUX: The Joe Sestak Affair.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: Thoughts on the death of Al Qaeda’s Number Three.

AT AMAZON, it’s the new Amazon Wireless site. How long before they start selling cars? Too long!

IT’S THE Carnival Of Creative Destruction!

POT MEET KETTLE: Former Clinton Hack George Stephanopoulos Calls James O’Keefe a ‘Political Activist’.

NEXT-GEN CHEVY VOLT could use diesel or rotary power. Much as I love my RX-8, diesel seems more sensible. But maybe I’m wrong.

UPDATE: Engineering Prof Chris Kobus writes: “Glenn – you’re absolutely correct. Diesel technology is inherently more efficient. If all spark-ignition engines were replaced with diesel, we’d reduce our dependence on foreign oil by almost 50%. As good as hybrids are in terms of fuel economy, hybrid diesels would blow them all away. Locomotives have been hybrid diesels for some time now.”

HOW OIL DISPERSANTS WORK.

WHY TINKERING is always time well-spent.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

INSTAVISION: I interview Fred Thompson about his new book, Teaching The Pig To Dance. Plus, lessons from Europe’s turmoil, and the future of the Tea Party movement.

Like what you see? Do me a favor and subscribe to PJTV. Alternative media need your support to flourish.

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY FREEWARE FOR WINDOWS.

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY OWNERS FACE declining rents.

BRUSHING YOUR TEETH is good for your heart.

LEFTY BLOGGERS BEING SPUN BY THE PRC? I’m sure they’ll retain the fierce intellectual independence for which they’re so well known.

Keep rockin’!

WANT TO BE HAPPY? GET OLD.

It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can’t run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old. It sounds miserable, but apparently it is not. A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older, and researchers are not sure why.

Well, I’m certainly happier than I was in my 20s, or even 30s. But I’m not really feeling any physical effects of aging yet. I suggest, however, that this is a good argument for life extension — if people get happier as they live longer, and if that remains true even as their bodies fall apart, they’re likely to be happier still if they remain healthy.

ON THE VERGE OF “VITAL EXHAUSTION?”

“ ‘Nervous breakdown’ is one of those sturdy old terms, like ‘melancholia’ and ‘nervous illness,’ that haven’t really been surpassed, although they sound antiquated,” the historian Edward Shorter, co-author with Max Fink of the book “Endocrine Psychiatry: Solving the Riddle of Melancholia,” said in an e-mail message.

I’m feeling a touch of the vapors, myself. Perhaps a couple of vodka and tonics will set me on my feet again . . . .

PJTV: Al Qaeda On Board: Who Was on the Flotilla the Israelis Raided? “Roger L. Simon talks to the former features editor of The Jerusalem Post Ruthie Blum Leibowitz. Was the aid being delivered to Gaza really humanitarian? Leibowitz shares some key details on the raid that may not be getting the coverage they deserve.”

AT REASON TV, it’s the Nanny Of The Month.

DR. MILTON WOLF: Meet Obama’s “Rationing Man.”

THE MICKEY KAUS CAMPAIGN launches its first TV ad. “Mickey Kaus is no politician — he can tell the truth.”

CLAIM: Being at the birth ‘can make dad feel a failure’. It didn’t make me feel that way. And, if the obstetrician had been five minutes later I would have delivered my daughter myself, which would have made him feel like a failure. Plus — as I told a nurse at the time — if that had happened, I wouldn’t have paid one thin dime. . . .

SO HOW’S THAT CHICAGO GUN CONTROL LAW WORKING? At least 25 shot, 1 killed in Chicago weekend violence.

I WROTE ABOUT SOME COOL STUFF that amateur astronomers are doing in An Army of Davids, but it just gets cooler: Amazing shot of ISS and Jupiter… during daytime!