The Beach Boys have officially released their first single off their new album due June 5th. Checking out some of the entertainment and Beach Boys blogs there seems to be a mix of excitement and disappointment. I’m going for the former. Is it groundbreaking, riveting stuff? No, but the fact that these guys are all in their late sixties and early seventies, well it’s just nice to hear Brian Wilson music the way it was meant to be heard – with the Beach Boys. Good enough for me.

Speaking of the Boys, they kicked off their year-long 50th anniversary tour last night down the road in Tucson. By all accounts it seems to have been quite the joyous affar. As I expected, by the means of a video screen behind them they paid tribute to Brian’s brothers Carl and Dennis by having the live band accompany them on video singing “God Only Knows” and “Forever”, respectively. A nice touch. Can’t wait to see them in Vegas next month.

My brother Dave sent me this cool link of photos of New York City life going back one hundred years ago.

It’s stories like this and this that make me hope that the TSA is one of the first government agencies cut if we can get a Republican in the White House this coming November. I’ve met a couple of nice ones in my travels, but most of the time you see a bunch of people sitting around yakking and doing nothing…

This is a must read from National Review Online’s Victor Davis Hanson:

…If our students are burdened with oppressive loans, why do so many university rec centers look like five-star spas? Student cell phones and cars are indistinguishable from those of the faculty.

The underclass suffers more from obesity than malnutrition; our national epidemic is not unaffordable protein, but rather a surfeit of even cheaper sweets.

Flash mobbers target electronics stores for more junk, not bulk food warehouses in order to eat. America’s children do not suffer from lack of access to the Internet, but from wasting hours on video games and less-than-instructional websites. We have too many, not too few, television channels.

The problem is not that government workers are underpaid or scarce, but that so many of them seem to think mind readers, clowns, and prostitutes come with the job.

An average American with an average cell phone has more information at his fingertips than did a Goldman Sachs grandee 20 years ago. Over the last half-century, bizarre new words have entered the American vocabulary — triple-dipping, Botox, liposuction, jet set, COLA (cost of living adjustment), three-day weekend, Medi-something compounds (Medicare, Medicaid, Medi-Cal) — that do not reflect a deprived citizenry. In 1980, a knee or hip replacement was experimental surgery for the 1 percent; now it is a Medicare entitlement.

American poverty is not measured by absolute global standards of available food, shelter, and medical care, or by comparisons with prior generations, but by one American now having less stuff than another.

As America re-examines its military, entitlements, energy sources, and popular culture, it will learn that our “decline” is not due to material shortages, but rather arises from moral confusion over how to master, rather than being mastered by, the vast riches we have created. If decline is fighting just two wars at a time rather than three, budgeting as we did in 2008, tapping a bit more oil offshore, or having our colleges offer more grammar courses and fewer rock-climbing walls, then by all means, bring it on.

All we are is Rome two thousand years later.

OK, we’re $15 trillion in debt, we have entitlement programs careening down the road to bankruptcy, we have unemplyment and underemployment at levels not seen since the Great Depression, and Barack Obama wants to make global warming a major issue in 2012? Yeah, that’ll work.