TED CRUZ EXPLAINS THE DIFFERENCE: “Reaganomics: You start a business in your parents’ garage. Obamanomics: You move into your parents’ garage.”

TAX UPDATE BLOG: I didn’t know the IRS Chief Counsel worked out of Cincinnati. “The ‘nothing to see here’ apologists for the IRS harassment of right-wing exempt organizations have always said that nothing wrong happened, and it was the work of rogue employees in the Cincinnati hinterlands anyway. Perhaps not.”

25 FACTS ABOUT THE FALL OF DETROIT that will leave you shaking your head. But #9 explains a lot about the city’s lousy governance: “An astounding 47 percent of the residents of the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.”

WELL YES, YES IT IS: ‘Poor in Kenya Is a Lot Different Than Poor in America, Isn’t It?’

WELL, AT LEAST THEY’RE NOT BUYING BIG GULPS: NY food stamp recipients are shipping welfare-funded groceries to relatives in Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti. “Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found. The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.”

Plus: “We’re poor here, and they’re poor. But what we can get here is like luxury to them.”

TO SOME BUYERS, OF COURSE, THIS IS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG: Almost half of testosterone-boosting supplements contain illegal steroids.

VIOLENCE AND RACE: “Who’s up for a national conversation about Obama’s neighborhood?”

KARL DENNINGER: Detroit: The Shape Of Things To Come.

Related: Detroit’s 60-Year Decline into Bankruptcy Hell. “It’s hard to overstate the traumatic and lingering effects of the 1967 riots, which for many older native Detroiters forever marked the watershed in the city’s downward economic spiral and triggered the mass exodus of its population.”

NEW HAMPSHIRE POLL: Clinton Out Front Among Dems, Republican Field Wide Open. “Unsure” seems to be polling pretty well on both sides.

AT AMAZON, Back-to-School Deals On Computers & Accessories.

Also, get free 2-day shipping and unlimited video streaming with an Amazon Prime 30-day free trial. Prime has changed the way I shop for the better.

THEODORE DALRYMPLE: Does Badgering Patients to Exercise and Eat Better Actually Work? “The results of a very prolonged trial in America have just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Not encouraging.”

TAKING A HARDER LOOK AT hookup culture at Penn.

YOUR TEEN MAY BE READY FOR COLLEGE, but are you?

JERRY BOWYER: Youth In Revolt: The Demographics Behind Middle Eastern Uprisings.

BUZZ ALDRIN TWEETS that his science fiction novel Encounter With Tiber (written with John Barnes) is $1.99 on Kindle for today only.

THE END OF THE PATRIARCHAL DIVIDEND? Maybe that’s part of the explanation for this phenomenon.

The responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood tend to make men work harder to make money. Without ’em, why bother?

Related: Thoughts on gender and domesticity.

UPDATE: The Plight Of The Alpha Female. “Women remain scarce in the most elite positions. And it’s by choice.”

MORE: Related item here.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on groceries & gourmet food.

I BLAME BIRTH-CONTROL HORMONES IN THE WATER SUPPLY: Declining Male Fertility: Scientists Puzzle Over Declining Sperm Counts; a ‘Crisis’ or Not Enough Data?

IF THERE’S A BIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR HOMOSEXUALITY, is that bad for gay rights? Will there be a “cure?”

ANNALS OF THE ONE PERCENT: Roller Coasters For The Rich.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Don’t We Have Super High-Speed Rail Already?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Self-replicating alien probes could already be here.

PRIVACY: Bill requiring warrants for email searches nears Senate vote.

DETROIT’S PROBLEM:

Detroit’s situation seems almost unprecedented, and it’s not clear how the city can best respond to it. The unions’ biggest problem is that Detroit simply cannot pay their pension claims without destroying city services. Detroit doesn’t have the money to provide even minimal services to its current population while paying off the large numbers of retired workers, many of whom hail from times when the city was larger and richer.

Because there is no money, there is no solution that gives the unions the relief they seek. Total obedience to the state constitutional mandate might not be possible, and that’s a problem. The government can pass a law saying that everyone has a constitutional right to a free trip to the moon, but if it doesn’t build the spacecraft that can get you there the right is void.

While the principle that federal law trumps state law on most issues is pretty clear, there are real arguments on both sides in this complicated case. But if the state constitution is unenforceable as well as being in conflict with federal law, it would be that much harder for the state constitution to block the execution of federal bankruptcy law.

However the courts eventually decide, decades of misgovernance, the criminal corruption of the Democratic Party in Detroit, and the depraved indifference of politicians at every level as crooks and hacks conspired together to loot and wreck a great American city have brought us to a place where Detroit’s problems seem almost beyond solution. The saddest part of this story is that there is still much, much more pain to come for a lot of people. Both the residents of current day Detroit and the cops, teachers, firefighters and others who trusted in the promises of Detroit politicians and union officials face a world of hurt.

Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be.