A SHORT ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF radical life extension.

GREENHOUSE-FRIENDLY AND READY TO GO: The latest Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up!

THE BETTER YOUR HEART PUMPS, the slower your brain ages.

IN THE MAIL: The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

WHY AVASTIN MATTERS.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? “In a progressive culture, where ads blare hourly about skipping out on credit card debt, shorting the IRS, and walking away from mortgages, did the public employee unions really think they were exempt from a Chrysler-like renegotiation?”

HEY, AYATOLLAH: Leave Those Kids Alone!

GET READY FOR National Rum Day.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Peggy Noonan And The American Spirit. “Peggy is entirely right when she says that our intellectual and political leaders have no sense of the mood of the country. But that is not new. The new thing is that such types have now acquired an outrageous amount of power, and they are doing their damnedest to make us pay for our lack of adulation. That’s what the big fight is all about these days, and is likely to be about for several years.”

KRUISER CONTROL: Kruisin’ For A Bruisin’.

CHANGE: “Calling out the city of Bell’s flagrant misuse of taxpayer funds for enormous salaries for city executives has started a statewide movement for local cities and municipalities to post all salary information on their websites.”

PROF. JACOBSON: We Are Not Exceptional. Get Over it. “I think Noonan is well-intentioned, but I don’t think she gets it, or at least if she does, she’s not willing to go the last yard. The equalization of resources in which success is punished is part of the plan. It’s a feature not a bug. . . . On our current trajectory, success will be judged by political connections and correctness, not individual effort and hard work.”

MICHELLE OBAMA, THE MEDIA, and the Costa Del Sol.

Related: Capitol Gluttony: “In just nine months spanning late 2009 and early 2010, the House spent $2.6 million on food and beverages for members and staff, according to the Sunlight Foundation’s House Expenditure Reports Database. That figure includes $604,000 just for bottled water, showing that Congress is not just hungry but thirsty, too.”

HMM: Internal memo shows Fannie’s intense courting of Countrywide, Angelo Mozilo.

WASHINGTON POST: “No asteroids need apply — U.S. space policy is on a collision course with itself.”

LOOKING FOR WAR ON TERROR NEWS? Check Out Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg. Lots of Mexico drug-war news, too, alas.

FROM NICK GILLESPIE, A GREAT RANT ON DEBT AND SUBSIDIES. Excerpt:

Obama was never credible, even when he first took office and started yammering on about how “Tomorrow We Scrimp, But Tonight We Spend Like There’s No Tomorrow.” Bonus memory from January 2009: The great Wash Post headline, “Stimulus aside, Obama vows future budget restraint.”

If only. I like to look toward the future, but one thing that seems to have gone missing from even the recent past (much less prehistoric Bedrock) is the sense that, with apologies to Spider-man, with great debt comes great responsibility to pay it back. Or even any responsibility to pay it back. Jesus H. Christ, the whole point of flop sweat when you sign a housing contract or a car loan or a student loan is that you know you’re signing on for a potential world of hurt. The minute you stop thinking about that is the minute you start making really goddamned stupid decisions.

You get one bailout too many – that includes car companies and Wall Street banktards along with home buyers who stretched like Plastic Man to move into that dream house on an ancient Indian burial ground – and suddenly you start feeling really pissed that you have to pay for anything.

Which is no way to restart an economy.

Indeed.

WHO’S WHITER? The Tea Party, or the Southern Poverty Law Center? Heck, the SPLC is whiter than a bunch of MSNBC hosts at a Broadview Security commercial burglars’ convention. . . .

JONAH GOLDBERG: Obama’s Blunder.

BOMBSHELL STUDY: At last, the truth is out – men do work harder than women, says Neil Lyndon. “A study published this week by Dr Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics has found that men do slightly more work than the women they live with when employment and domestic work are measured together.”

Meanwhile, looks matter more to men’s earnings than to women’s. All your stereotypes are backwards!

CHRIS CHRISTIE: The Scourge Of Trenton. Which, like a lot of places these days, needs all the scourging it can get.

MARKDOWNS ON DVD and Blu-Ray.

ON THE ECONOMIC FRONT, a coming “panic attack?”

UPDATE: A reader who requests anonymity writes:

I’ve given some thought to James Pethokoukis’ “August Surprise,” and I think he’s right that something like a bailout of underwater loans will happen soon.

Economically, however, there is little upside and a whole lot of potential downside. The worst of these loans are never going to be paid back. The “owner” of a $200,000 Inland Empire home that he paid a half-million dollars for, was never going to pay back the whole amount anyway. So there’s really no argument that the bailout will have a stimulus effect. There’s simply no additional spending created by eliminating an unpayable
debt.

But there are two potential downsides: one inflationary and one deflationary. Right now banks are sitting on many billions of dollars worth of unlisted foreclosed homes. The President’s action would give the illusion of a floor under housing prices and just might be all that it takes for banks to release their backlog. If all that shadow inventory hits the market at once, housing prices in the communities already hardest hit will be hit even harder. That’s the deflationary effect.

The inflationary problem is a little more obvious. As a practical matter, Fannie and Freddie debt is probably already being counted as federal debt even if it isn’t currently being accounted for that way. So that argues
that the effect of transparently accounting for the debt will be negligible. However, the rumored amounts being discussed for the bailout (between two and eight hundred billion) are far smaller than the loss of
value in the nation’s housing market. Bond buyers will have to ask themselves if another round of bailouts is coming. A bailout of this size (and one that circumvents Congressional authority) is a very visible signal that the Administration will do anything it can get away with try to prop up the economy. I can’t see how this risk wouldn’t put upward pressure on treasury yields—and thus, mortgage rates.

Now, imagine both consequences of this bailout hitting simultaneously: The bailout is followed by a temporary floor under housing prices, precipitating a deluge of backlogged inventory hitting the market right
about the time that mortgage rates start creeping up.

No upside and a big potential downside. So why do it?

Politics. Three of the four states with the hardest hit housing markets are California, Florida, and Nevada. All three could see Republicans elected to the Senate. Not just any Republicans: In Florida and Nevada, the GOP candidates are Tea Party Republicans, while in California, the Democratic candidate is among the most liberal in the entire chamber. If purple states like Florida and Nevada will elect ruby red Republicans to statewide office, and a deep blue state like California can’t retain a liberal Democrat, imagine the political effect over the next two years.

There will be a rightward sprint in both parties. Furthermore, if all three of those states go Republican, it’s likely that Washington’s Murray and Wisconsin’s Feingold are in real trouble too. That could bring the GOP total in the Senate to 52. One party just doesn’t pick up a dozen seats in the Senate without the other party arriving at a little introspection.

And Barack Obama is deathly afraid of a little Democratic Party introspection under those circumstances. The fundraisers in the Democratic Party will find another nominee to back in the primary. He will be a lame duck within his own party.

To use a military term, California, Florida, and Nevada are Obama’s final protective fire. They are where all rounds of ammunition will be expended to stop the enemy’s advance. He will gladly commit the nation to hundreds of billion dollars of additional debt so that the people of those states feel just a little bit better–at least until they discover that even with a smaller mortgage, without a job, they can’t afford even that.

One hopes that the administration isn’t this cynical, self-centered, and unconcerned with the well-being of the country.

WELCOME TO THE “Summer Of Corruption.”

HEH: Scott Ott, Bill Whittle, and Stephen Green as a “Power Trio.”