Thursday, August 9. 2007
Call the authorities to bring the cops to arrest those who promote the Bushitler police state. Dr. Sanity, via the piece at Never Yet Melted. Ya can't make this stuff up.
1958. The guy was a damn good crooner. When I look back on how kids dressed for a night out, or for college, through the early 60s, I realize that they aspired to adulthood. Now, everybody aspires to youth. Youth is wasted on the young.
I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis. Glenn Reynolds on global cooling global warming climate change.
The best test of your tolerance is whether you can tolerate my intolerance. Dr. Joy Bliss, who is in Maine this month - a crusty old state where nobody tolerates anybody and where nobody ever says "Have a nice day." In Maine, the correct response to "Have a nice day" is "Don't tell me what kind of day to have."
 Kling on the "universal distraction" of "healthcare," at TCS. It begins:
"Nobody is talking about a free-market approach in health care. The spectrum today is between fascism and Communism."
--John Graham The Pacific Research Institute's John Graham offered this glum assessment during a brief chat recently when he came to Washington, DC for a meeting. He points out that the focus of health care policy is on how to get to "universal coverage." In this context, the conservative approach involves mandatory health insurance. The liberal approach involves expanding government coverage. Hence, it is either fascism or Communism. The main proponents of "universal coverage" want to throw more money at the current health care system, which strikes me as unwise. I believe that the "universal coverage" mantra is dysfunctional for the same reason that "more money for public schools" is a dysfunctional mantra for education. When your current approach is digging you into a hole, the sensible thing to do is not to dig faster. It is to stop digging. Later in this essay, I will offer my thoughts about the uninsured. First, I want to present free-market approaches to reform our health care system. I mention the assumptions that I make in offering these proposals.
Read the whole thing.
"I married Isis on the fifth day of May,
But I could not hold on to her very long.
So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away
For the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong.
I came to a high place of darkness and light.
The dividing line ran through the center of town.
I hitched up my pony to a post on the right,
Went in to a laundry to wash my clothes down.
A man in the corner approached me for a match.
I knew right away he was not ordinary.
He said, "Are you lookin' for somethin' easy to catch?"
I said, "I got no money." He said, "That ain't necessary."
We set out that night for the cold in the North.
I gave him my blanket, he gave me his word.
I said, "Where are we goin'?" He said we'd be back by the fourth.
I said, "That's the best news that I've ever heard."
I was thinkin' about turquoise, I was thinkin' about gold,
I was thinkin' about diamonds and the world's biggest necklace.
As we rode through the canyons, through the devilish cold,
I was thinkin' about Isis, how she thought I was so reckless.
How she told me that one day we would meet up again,
And things would be different the next time we wed,
If I only could hang on and just be her friend.
I still can't remember all the best things she said.
We came to the pyramids all embedded in ice.
He said, "There's a body I'm tryin' to find.
If I carry it out it'll bring a good price."
'Twas then that I knew what he had on his mind.
The wind it was howlin' and the snow was outrageous.
We chopped through the night and we chopped through the dawn.
When he died I was hopin' that it wasn't contagious,
But I made up my mind that I had to go on.
I broke into the tomb, but the casket was empty.
There was no jewels, no nothin', I felt I'd been had.
When I saw that my partner was just bein' friendly,
When I took up his offer I must-a been mad.
I picked up his body and I dragged him inside,
Threw him down in the hole and I put back the cover.
I said a quick prayer and I felt satisfied.
Then I rode back to find Isis just to tell her I love her.
She was there in the meadow where the creek used to rise.
Blinded by sleep and in need of a bed,
I came in from the East with the sun in my eyes.
I cursed her one time then I rode on ahead.
She said, "Where ya been?" I said, "No place special."
She said, "You look different." I said, "Well, I guess."
She said, "You been gone." I said, "That's only natural."
She said, "You gonna stay?" I said, "If you want me to, yes."
Isis, oh, Isis, you mystical child.
What drives me to you is what drives me insane.
I still can remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzlin' rain." "Isis," our first-ever selection from Desire. A live version from the Rolling Thunder Revue, with Dylan in whiteface, is below.
Michael Yon. Great photos of Americans at work. A quote: As the attack unfolded, about a thousand Iraqis fled their homes, and it was the job of C-52 to screen for al Qaeda. Some al Qaeda—who cross-dressed and tried to slip out as women—were caught when their disguises failed. Some Iraqis reported that homes in their areas had been destroyed, and I recall one saying that people were trapped in the rubble, though civilian deaths from our attacks were so low they were difficult to count. (I had free range and was specifically watching for civilian fatalities, yet did not see any civilians killed by us during the attack.) The deliberate pace of the attack, the systematic and thorough process of clearing the city house by house, street by street, and block by block, were factors in this; but the civilian and military casualties were also kept low by the unexpected and overwhelming cooperation of ordinary Iraqi citizens, who pointed out the enemy and many of the bombs set to ambush troops. There were interesting dynamics unfolding. For instance, our soldiers were much more reluctant to use force when civilians were helping. I saw numerous occasions where soldiers cleared out all the civilians in areas before attacking known targets that civilians had pointed out. For instance, in the more than two dozen houses and buildings rigged as giant bombs, civilians pointed out many of those bombs. Our soldiers and Iraqi soldiers simply stopped, cleared out the people, and then destroyed the buildings, but each time they worked harder to mitigate damage to surrounding houses, and paid people for the unavoidable damages when they occurred.
The quote is from Part 1. Here's Part ll.
Preventive health care to save costs? An absurd idea, on the face of it. Unless we invent a form of healthy immortality, your terminal illness will cost about the same whether you die of colon cancer at 50 or heart disease at 80. Everyone gets sick and dies. The only reason to try to take care of yourself is for your own participation in, and enjoyment of, life. Since something like 70% of all medical care costs are in the last 12 months of life, the best way to cut costs is to euthanize folks when they get sick - as they do in nations with socialized medicine via waiting lists rather than saying directly what they are doing. Better yet, just abort them before they have a chance get sick. The "soul deadening effects of war." Yes indeed, war does seem to have a soul-destroying effect on the media. The soldiers, on the other hand, generally seem to handle it fairly well. Upside-down world. Brit homeowner could face life sentence. In the UK, I believe that one must offer tea to a home invader. Grading, when we were young: A: 95-100
B: 88-94
C: 80-87
D: 70-79
F: Below 70
This one is 16' with a 4 cylinder engine. 
Wednesday, August 8. 2007
This is from the mid-80s. Domino's "I'm Walking" was the first song Nelson recorded.
 I have always heard about the Series 7 exam, but never bothered to look into exactly what it tested until the pup told me that she has to pass it this month, after two months on the job.
It covers a lot of territory. I believe that she is studying hard for it, in the few hours in the day they don't keep her at work. Wall Street is an exciting place this month: interesting things happening. As Warren Buffet says, when the tide goes out, you find out who is swimming nude.
 We posted this well-known presentation by Michael Crichton a year ago, but I was recently reminded of it by the Assistant Village Idiot who cops to finding complexity to be complicated.
If you haven't read it, please do. It's an excellent discussion of how complicated nature is, and how readily our human good intentions can produce serious unintended consequences. Good graphics, too.
 Yes, their numbers are rising, BUT THAT'S BECAUSE WE CAN COUNT THEM BETTER NOW. How many Atlantic hurricanes that never touched land did we count in 1920?
It's as stupid as saying the number of Lyme Disease cases has gone up 10 gazillion percent since 1975. True - because it was not defined as a disease until 1975. But this isn't stupidity - it's deliberate data-abuse to fool the statistically-ignorant and scientifically-unsophisticated. Or am I still paranoid and giving the Al Gores too much credit? By the way, we love hurricanes. We don't like to see people's lives damaged, and would not be so foolish as to live in a place where such damage could be expected. But we do stand in awe of the power of nature.
It's called a New York Travel Guide, but I think NewYorkology is just as good of a source of local info for residents and for day-trippers, who are known in Manhattan, disparagingly, as "the bridge and tunnel crowd."
 Heck, I'd pay not to read Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd. Times to drop Times Select
What is it about Wagner? TimesOnline I don't watch these candidate debates, but my take on the Repubs is not too far from Willisms' As you may know, it is a felony to practice private medicine in Canada. But Quebec's top court has now struck down that ban, which could rescue Canadian docs from serfdom. h/t, Dr. Bob. Watch the govt try to put a five-year hold on that decision. New tree ring data: normal climate fluctuation (h/t, Flares) How to pass a class in high school in NYC My excellent adventure at Yearly Kos. Rick Moran 16% of the American economy is related to medical care. That % is expected to go higher. Will people go for socializing 16% of the economy? They might, if they think it's a free lunch. h/t, Mankiw. My view is that if the Dems were a bit craftier, and less ideological, they could propose to make Medicare available to everyone who wants to sign up. It would be a budget-buster.
A garden at Villa le Balze, Fiesole, a year and a half ago. The morning mist obscures the view of Florence spread out across the Arno valley below. 
Tuesday, August 7. 2007
I noticed the similarity between Gen. Pacepa's examples of KGB psy-ops and John Kerry's testimony in Congress. So did Sissy Willis, but Gateway shows the real deal. Gateway calls it "useful idiocy," but I think otherwise. "Useful," but not an idiot: I am not saying he was a spy, but perhaps a willing ally of the Soviets, and one who had clearly been handed a KGB script designed to undermine support for the war. I agree with Sen. Kerry about almost nothing political, but he isn't an idiot. Kerry was reading from the KGB propaganda script, word for word. So am I insane when I sometimes wonder what Bill Clinton was doing on that trip to Moscow (also here) while be was at Oxford? Yes, probably paranoid, but if I had told you a week ago that Kerry was reading a KGB script when he testified to Congress, you would have (rightly) called me crazy too. There are Americans out there who truly hate America enough to ally themselves with America's enemies. That sad and unsettling fact opens the door to all sorts of suspicious thoughts which are unpleasant to entertain. That is what happens when one's reality is shaken. I thought Kerry was disloyal, but not a man who would read a KGB script in Congress.
Coulter on poverty. It's a simple fact that poverty in America correlates with terrible decisions in life about having babies (h/t, Vanderleun): "Democrats resolutely refuse to tell the poor the secret to not being poor: Keep your knees together until marriage. "That's it. Not class size, not preschool, not even vouchers, though vouchers would obviously improve the education of all students. You could have lunatics running the schools -- and often do -- and if the kids live with married parents, they will end up at good colleges and will lead happy, productive lives 99 percent of the time. "But Democrats don't care about the poor. They don't care about the children. They care about government teachers and other government bureaucrats -- grimy, dowdy women who "woo" at political debates. Or as CNN calls them, the "young," "hip" crowd."
John Stuart Mill's ideas of liberty are obsolete, says Mr. Hattersley in The Guardian. He claims that times have changed, and people need more statism and less personal freedom. He says people are more interdependent that they were in 1856. I see no reason at all to believe that but, if they are, it is because Western governments have made people more dependent, stifled their instincts for self-reliance, and crippled their spirits by training them to look to government for their wants and needs. And does Mr. Hattersley include himself as one of those needing a liberty-depriving state? I doubt it. Rather, I suspect he sees himself as one of that superior sort who should be telling me how to run my life. Frankly, I find this variety of condescension frightening, and the desire to control others contemptible. Tim Worstall discusses. The reason I post this is because it sounds so much like the American Left - and as an excuse to link to Mill's essay.
Are we seeing the KGB playbook being re-used by Western Leftists? Gen. Pacepa in the Opinion Journal, via Libertarian Leanings. More on the subject at SISU.
We are interested in IQ at Maggie's Farm. I suspect that most of our readers are among the 10% that measures over 120. If yours is over 120, Charles Murray believes you need Special Education. (Sorry those links on the archived piece didn't work.)
h/t, Dust My Broom. In America, grandiose suicidal psychotics like her shoot up schools and post offices. Her cheerfulness isn't creepy - it's just plain stupid. What a waste.
 Walking is bad for Gaia. Driving is better. No need to even try to satirize the warming movement: it satirizes itself.
Hillary Clinton's "experience." What experience? We missed this April piece by Dick Morris from The Hill. As we have asked before, What has she ever run? What has she ever done? Erik von Markovic: Master Seducer. I need this guy's book. Tom Wolfe on the Hedgies: Pirate Poseurs and Twinkie Wives. Modern Scouting in Dorset. Pitiful. Sounds like a program designed to turn men into Victorian girls mice. The critics and Jon Swift on Antonioni and Bergman. Lots of good news from Iraq that we aren't being told. This bit has been passed all around, but we found it first at Synthstuff. The Ask What Your Country Can Do For You Department: Here's a candidate who has a different view: “Government cannot take care of you. You’ve got to take care of yourself.” He said the marketplace, not the government “nanny state,” needs to do the work of fixing the nation’s health care problems. He said that “We’ve got to solve our health care problem with American principles, not the principles of socialism.”… “Americans believe in free-market solutions to the challenges we face, and I believe we can reduce costs, expand access to, and improve the quality of health care by increasing competition. America’s health care system is being dragged down by decades of government-imposed mandates and wasteful, unaccountable bureaucracy.”… “I don’t care what Michael Moore says in his movie,” he said. “I’ve never had anybody ask me for help to get into a Cuban hospital or a Canadian hospital or an English hospital. They all want to come to America. So let’s take what’s right about our system and let’s improve it.”
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