Post-industrial ghost towns. Why won't these folks move for jobs, like most people do? Texas has tons of work.
Krauthammer on Congress.
Sowell: Alice in Healthcare
Related, The WSJ's Abuse of Power begins:
A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can't stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it's good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.
Wilkinson gets it:
A lot of people are saying government is broken. They’re mainly saying it because the Democratic health care bill isn’t going to pass in a form that gives most Democrats what they wanted. The argument, in its general form, goes like this: There is this huge problem! My team’s favored solution to the problem is politically infeasible. So, politics is broken! When you put it like that, it’s evidently a pretty silly argument.
To get a better grip on the debate behind the debate I think you need to understand that big entitlement politics is about enacting policy that generates a kind of lock-in effect for a new power-shifting political equilibrium. Savvy political operators know that big entitlements, once established, create their own political demand. That’s why, for example, it was so important for the left to kill Social Security reform.
"create their own demand." Exactly right. From one seed, another mighty weed to strangle our garden.
Frank Rich: Obsessed and deranged. And Paul Krugman: Always pissed off. These two cranks have a problem with gratitude. We may be cranks too, but we have gratitude - and try for a bit of humor.
Tea Party violence
Inst. of Physics slams CRU
Weekly Standard: Media Failure: Global Warming Edition
