* Liberals seemed to have settled on one description of people who want the government to spend less than it takes in: Terrorists. Perhaps Obama has a special speech ready for the 10th anniversary of 9/11: “While what happened ten years ago wasn’t… well… optimal, we have to remember that the real terrorists are people who impose the rules of basic math on the rest of us.”

How did we let something of such basic common sense — that one’s budget should add up — become such a radical, progressive notion? And it’s so basic, it’s hard to explain to liberals why it’s important because it’s such a truism. Do we have to explain to liberals why rape is wrong (oh yeah, Roman Polanski) or why murder is wrong (oh yeah, Ted Kennedy)? I don’t even know where to start with a liberal who doesn’t think we should spend less than we take in; I guess you start with explaining why negative numbers are bad.

ME: “See, you now have negative three apples. That means when you finally get three more apples, I’ll also take those away.”

LIBERAL: “Terrorist!”

ME: “Now I’ll give you positive three punches to the face. Count them out loud.”

* I hate hearing people in the government — especially Obama — say they have a solution for creating jobs. If they knew how to create jobs, they’d be in the private sector and not in government. Here’s my jobs plan for the government: We hand Obama an iPad loaded with Angry Birds and say, “You’re not to do anything else until you get three stars on every level.” That’ll keep him out of our hair for a while. If the country is to recover, we need to get Obama to stick to the golf course.

* So it looks like the U.S. gets to keep its AAA debt rating a while longer. Moody’s was all worried with our out of control spending and slow growth, but now that we have still out of control spending but slightly less than before, everything is good for now. I almost kind of want us to lose our rating, though; that will give us something to work for. Balance the budget, and then we can get to AAA again. As we’ve learned, Democrats only respond to al Qaeda-like terrorist threats such as “You no longer get a blank checkbook.”

* Self-identification of conservatives is at an all time high, with more people saying they are conservative than say they are moderate and almost twice as many people saying they are conservative than saying they are liberals. I know liberals are hoping this whole “we have to control spending” thing is just some terrorist fad, but it’s starting to look like it has the makings of a permanent movement, which is probably why we’re seeing the people whose time has passed lashing out so hysterically. There’s already a new status quo on the raising the debt ceiling, and we should expect the next time it comes up — whether with a Democrat or Republican president — to be an interesting time. The only thing is making the hard cuts in entitlements. That will be painful thing, but it would help if the liberals act so hysterical and condescending that hatred of them trumps the short term pain. I think they can manage it. Thanks, guys, we couldn’t get anywhere without you.

* Looks like the FBI has figured out who D.B. Cooper is from that unsolved plane hijacking from 1971. So for those saying the country is making no progress, there you go.

* When I posted about the countries that like America most yesterday, I didn’t realize this but a commenter pointed it out: The country that likes us the most is the one we once nuked. So that’s a lesson for you: If you stand up to a country, they’ll eventually respect you for it.

Hey, we’re pretty unpopular in the Middle East; what could we do to turn that around?

Hey! I’m kidding!

Maybe.

* It’s looking like the days of $50-$60 video games are coming to an end. It seems like video games have always cost $50 new all the way back to NES, but in the recent PS3 and XBox 360 generation that’s gone up to $60 (and sometimes with the PC release too). I’ve yet to pay that for a video game because that just seems insane to me (and I rarely pay the $50 — I’m old; I can wait for a price drop). But now that’s all competing with the iPhone and iPad, where a game has to be pretty special to ask for more than $5. So the new strategy may be to have a small price up front (or be free) and then slow bleed you on extra content ($5 here and $3 there until you get to real money). That’s capitalism; always changing stuff. Do you know of any other economic system that results in cheaper video games? No, because all the others are evil.

* Here’s a number of clips from RiffTrax celebrating their five year anniversary:

I love RiffTrax, and if you don’t, I hate you.

* Wisdom of the Day: “So we’re terrorists for ‘holding the country hostage’? Okay, then: For what you’re doing to future generations, you are pedophiles. Own it.” –Jim Treacher

* I’m back! Yay! Praise the Great Landlord!

* So I guess there’s been some sort of debt deal. There’s dispute over whether it could possibly lead to more taxes or will just be spending cuts, but the important thing is that liberals seem outraged. Obama wanted to spend more money, and everyone was supposed to be like, “We’ll just get out of your way and let you spend as much money as you want.” Instead, everyone was like, “You insane idiots, stop spending so much money!” Such basic common sense confused and enraged liberals. Yeah, we’re not going to get much in the way of real cuts and our debt is just going to keep going up, but how much were we going to achieve while Obama is president? The important thing is getting things moving in the right direction. Let’s see what happens next time the debt ceiling comes up… especially if we have a Republican president.

* This whole thing just further emphasized how useless Obama is, but once again I need to point out there was no reason to think he’d be anything but. In his previous job — mediocre legislator — he literally did nothing you couldn’t train a dog to do. Just voted yes or no on stuff, and that was it — nothing else of note. And before you say, “He gave speeches; a dog couldn’t do that,” I would mention that you could have a dog stand in front of a teleprompter and bark for ten minutes, and it would say just as much of substance as any speech Obama has ever given.

Anyway, the point is let’s have some better standards for the president in the future. Let’s make sure he was at least assistant to the manager at a real company or something.

* The movie Cowboys and Aliens was number one over the weekend, and it also seems like a good description of the two sides in this country now. You have cowboys — independent people who don’t need a giant government — and aliens — people who don’t live on this world and think you can spend and spend forever without consequence. If only we could defeat them by throwing water on them like those stupid aliens in Signs.

* SarahK and I have been following that Dave Ramsey plan to get our finances in order. Basically, you first attack your debt, then get an emergency fund, and then handle retirement, college savings, and paying off the house. While the latter part probably doesn’t apply to government, the first few steps do seem like what we should be working towards for the country. We need to get aggressive about our debt, first trimming down the government as much as possible so we’re spending less than we take in and can finally hit that long term debt. When the debt is handled, we save up a couple trillion in an emergency fund — that way we could have a new war or something and not go back into debt. When we have no debt and a emergency fund saved up, then the federal government can just refund any left over money. Of course, the plan only works well if you can really cut your budget down and keep it down. Might have to exile liberals to Antarctica to insure that — which is yet another expense. I guess you could consider it an investment.

* There was a survey done of which countries like the U.S. the most, and Japan and Kenya both have a higher favorable rating of America than Americans do. I guess it’s because they don’t have hippies to deal with. Interesting, France loves America only a little less than Americans do even though we all like hate France. World’s gone topsy turvy, people.

* A survey says that people who use Internet Explorer have below average IQs. Makes sense; I can’t think of any reason you’d use IE other than that you’re too dumb to know how to install another browser. When we got a new computer to connect to our TV as an entertainment center, I tried using IE briefly, but after five seconds with it I got so frustrated that I went to download Chrome. If you like big, bloated pieces of software that are really slow, Microsoft has you covered, but smart people don’t like that.

* I got the 3DS back when it first came out even though there weren’t really any games for it. Months later… there still aren’t really very many worthwhile games for it. And now Nintendo has announced a $80 (32%) price reduction already. Doesn’t sound like this systems is printing money like the Wii or the previous DS. What I get for being the sucker who bought early, though, is the title “ambassador” (like John Bolton!) and 10 free NES and 10 GameBoy Advanced game downloads for it. Of course, the whole handheld game paradigm is changing, as why pay $40 for a game on the 3DS when you can get Angry Birds for iPad for $5 (or Sid Meier’s Pirates for $4 — Awesome!). Nintendo just needs to slap together some game of Mario being thrown out of a slingshot at goombas and be done with it.

* I had mentioned before I’m reading The Hunger Games at SarahK’s urging and someone asked what I thought of it. Well, I finished it, and though I have a few minor quibbles, it was overall very engrossing. Definitely will read the rest of the series. Technically, it’s a young adult book, but it sure has a lot of violence and killing for young adults. Then again, maybe kids these days aren’t learning enough gory violence from games like Angry Birds.

* My congressman Raul Labrador was on Meet the Press on Sunday and everyone thinks he did pretty awesome representing the Tea Party side of things. His opponent tried to do racist attacks on him in the 2010 election, implying since Labrador was Hispanic he’d let illegal immigrant crack dealers into our state, but the Democrat incumbent still lost handily because he had one big problem: He was a Democrat. In Idaho. In 2010.

Bad idea.

* Wisdom of the Day: “The tea party didn’t hold America hostage, it gave DC an intervention.” –Jeremy