Friday, June 12. 2009
In my dotage I have two young sons. Both are smart. And, I help and drive them. I worry about whether I’ll instill enough in them so that after I’m a goner they’ll be able to handle life’s decisions well. I also worry how well the major financial investment in college will work out.
So I got drawn into a series of blog posts from the American Enterprise Institute about a study listing colleges’ graduation rates, based on US Department of Education gathered data. The discussion has centered on why many rankings don’t make sense. The latest post reveals that colleges are not under any compunction to accurately report data.
For example, “Arkansas Baptist College, which boasts a 100 percent graduation rate in the database, admitted that the school’s data were reported erroneously.” An author of the AEI study comments: “It is worth noting again that these data are congressionally mandated and collected by a major federal agency. Would we tolerate such inaccuracies from the companies who report workplace injury rates to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the state agencies that administer the food stamp program?”
I don’t think my sons will end up at Arkansas Baptist College. But, before Washington funnels hundreds of millions or many billions of taxpayer dollars into higher education, it does seem reasonable to require greater accountability, of Washington and of colleges.
From Coyote:
Bill Whittle makes a great point in this video which is at the heart of the problems with this administration: While Obama and his young policy wonks may be smarter (or at least think they are smarter) than other folks individually, they cannot possibly be smarter than the sum of 300 million well educated, relatively affluent Americans making decisions for themselves. Every technocrat founders on these rocks, when they substitute their decision as command and control planners for individual decision making (example). Everyone talks about a revival of interest in Ayn Rand, and that is great, but it is Hayek who has never been more relevent.
More on the failures of technocrats here.
His final link includes the key phrase "You don't have the right to make decisions for other people." Smart or not, most technocrats and policy wonks have never had a job outside of government, academia, or think tanks - and thus tend to be disconnected from how reality works. Their insulation protects them, and reinforces their rationalizations for their power-seeking.
Our current global cooling trend threatens world grain production.
If warming were doing this, it would be front page news.
“You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”
Al Capone, quoted at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy in a piece on CaponeCare
 You do not want to know yourself
Repubs should adopt a strict paygo
How ACORN intends to use the US Census
WUWT looks back at his first weather station inspiration
How to save $: Let the boomers die
Villainous, on how I became a Conservative. One quote:
Over the years I noticed that rescuing friends from serial disasters of their own creation didn't encourage them to make smarter decisions. If anything, my interventions skewed the risk/reward calculation we use to select the best course from a range of alternatives. By stepping in and helping each time friends chose poorly, I made it harder for them to learn from their mistakes. They continued to do predictably self destructive things and then look for someone more responsible to bail them out.
Over time I realized I couldn't keep substituting my judgment for theirs. The natural world punishes bad decisions. This natural feedback mechanism helps us distinguish what works from what doesn't. But I was subverting the learning process; unintentionally rewarding bad decisions and encouraging more of the same. With the best of intentions, I had produced the worst of results.
And so I became a conservative. I embraced the idea that people make the most efficient and productive choices when they base their decisions on the way the world does work, not the way they wish it would work. I came to believe subjectivity, empathy, and tribalism make extremely poor foundations for building a society or governing one's personal conduct because they elevate subjective feelings over objective experience and morality. I learned to separate my personal feelings and loyalty from notions of right and wrong, responsible and irresponsible. I learned that even though I often chafed at them, rules are not always bad.
Herbal "medicines, at Insty:
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: $2.5 billion spent on “alternative medicine,” no cures. “Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.” How did this happen?
he center was handed a flawed mission, many scientists say.
Congress created it after several powerful members claimed health benefits from their own use of alternative medicine and persuaded others that this enormously popular field needed more study. The new center was given $50 million in 1999 (its budget was $122 million last year) and ordered to research unconventional therapies and nostrums that Americans were using to see which ones had merit.
That is opposite how other National Institutes of Health agencies work, where scientific evidence or at least plausibility is required to justify studies, and treatments go into wide use after there is evidence they work - not before.
I can’t wait until Congress is in charge of all health care. Who knows better what’s good for you than “several powerful members” of Congress . . . .
Nina Anasiashvilli in Giselle:
 The Letterman thing exposes something. Something other than what's being discussed. It's difficult to write, and in turn, tell jokes. Really funny people rarely tell jokes. They outline a narrative in a humorous way. If you sprinkle in a funny turn of phrase here and there, those are jokes, but they're not the point. If you've ever seen a good comedian appear in a nightclub when they're working on new material, it's generally really disjointed and unfunny. There's no thread running through it yet, and the jokes bomb or get a laugh, but you can't get a wave to ride on. A monologue done nightly is just watercooler chat. The day's happenings in a stream. But Letterman's DOA joke about Sarah Palin's daughter wasn't really topical, and it wasn't funny, and it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was an excuse to be vicious, and it showed that Letterman had been waiting for quite a while for any chance to say something unpleasant about someone he really doesn't like.That's why it seemed so jarring. Letterman likes to trade on his midwestern homeliness, and likes the association people have always made between him and Johnny Carson. Carson was from the midwest, too, of course, and Carson liked Letterman and had a lot to do with his success. It always rankled Letterman that he didn't replace Carson. He's become bitter about it, and it shows. But the impetus of the joke that bombed is exactly why Letterman never replaced Carson. Carson was talented, and funny, and wry, and light on his feet, and he was every bit the equal of every star that sat across from him. He knew what to talk to stars about, because he was a star. Letterman was always a kind of lame-o Lucifer to Carson's Archangel, and everybody knew it. Letterman made his name by being the king's fool. The king suffered someone aping him, to amuse him, but a fool is always a fool. You're allowed to say what you want, but there's no promotion ever in the offing. You get to hang around until you put your foot in it. And when you displease your sovereign, you get the ax, not the hook. Letterman's congenital problem manifested itself in spades. He is a Beta male in an industry filled with Beta males. Even the industry's a Beta. He's not even an entertainer -- his job is to talk to and about entertainers. They say politics is show-business for ugly people, and the similarities are manifest. Politics is often home to Beta males that try to cut in front of the big men on life's campus by the side door. Same deal. That's why they get along famously.
Continue reading "Hey Jenny Slater. Hey Jenny Slater. Hey Jenny Slater"
Thursday, June 11. 2009
Via a colleague from a patient in his 40s this afternoon: "With my unemployment now with 23 weeks, plus the State's 12 weeks, and the federal 18-week extension, I figure I can begin looking for a job in November. Since my wife got laid off later, she can wait until December or January. We're both burned out and need a break from work. She's been getting job offers, but there's no way she would take one now. And keeping our income down will help my youngest get a scholarship."
I didn't know this new world was offering Sabbaticals For All. How do I get mine?
It begins:
"Our vehicles came under a barrage of enemy RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) and machine gun fire. One of our humvees was disabled from RPG fire, and the Marines inside dismounted and laid down suppression fire so they could evacuate a Marine who was knocked unconscious from the blast." That's not from an episode of The Unit or 24. It's not from an anti-war movie. It's not from any newspaper or TV news reports I could find.
Whole thing at One Marine's View
 1. Dems seek to control executive pay
2. How and why to stop the nationalization of medical care. Related, if medical insurance is a right (how can it be?), then how can it be forced on you? They don't force us to buy guns.
3. What's on the Dems' nationalization agenda after medical care? Education. Yes, they want to run K-12 education next. Heck, they are so good at running things, aren't they?
4. Your tax dollars to pay for lawyers for Jihadists
5. Taking global warming hysteria seriously
Crack, coke, or LSD? You tell me.
Ed note: Great minds think alike. I see neoneo on this same theme today.
Ron Rosenbaum muses about the Salinger archives.
High Water (for Charlie Patton)
High water risin' - risin' night and day
All the gold and silver are being stolen away
Big Joe Turner lookin' East and West
From the dark room of his mind
He made it to Kansas City
Twelfth Street and Vine
Nothing standing there
High water everywhere
High water risin', the shacks are slidin' down
Folks lose their possessions - folks are leaving town
Bertha Mason shook it - broke it
Then she hung it on a wall
Says, "You'll dance with whom they tell you to
Or you don't dance at all."
It's tough out there
High water everywhere
I got a cravin' love for blazing speed
Got a hopped up Mustang Ford
Jump into the wagon, love, throw your panties overboard
I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind
I'm no pig without a wig
I hope you treat me kind
Things are breakin' up out there
High water everywhere
High water risin', six inches 'bove my head
Coffins droppin' in the street
Like balloons made out of lead
Water pourin' into Vicksburg, don't know what I'm going to do
"Don't reach out for me," she said
"Can't you see I'm drownin' too?"
It's rough out there
High water everywhere
Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
"You can't open your mind, boys
To every conceivable point of view."
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the High Sheriff,
"I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don't care."
High Water everywhere
The Cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies
I'm preachin' the Word of God
I'm puttin' out your eyes
I asked Fat Nancy for something to eat, she said, "Take it off the shelf -
As great as you are man,
You'll never be greater than yourself."
I told her I didn't really care
High water everywhere
I'm getting' up in the morning - I believe I'll dust my broom
Keeping away from the women
I'm givin' 'em lots of room
Thunder rolling over Clarksdale, everything is looking blue
I just can't be happy, love
Unless you're happy too
It's bad out there
High water everywhere
The song is from 2001. This is London, April 26, 2009:
 On reading difficult books. Chronicle. Somebody's got to do it.
The morally superior continent of righteous indignation.
Basking Sharks in Cornwall. Cool underwater.
What is courage?
The latest on those fancy spies for Cuba.
Can this be said? Sub-Saharan African IQs. I tend to doubt it's true, but what do I know? Or maybe it's the Flynn Effect.
Financial crises can arise from extreme bad luck. Indeed.
What you should know about CPR. Video
Tornado passed over their car this week. Video
Rush: Free speech is in danger. Is it true that the US is the only nation with free speech?
Yes, it is shaping up to be the year without a summer. Global warming does that. The Japanese aren't worried. They will play the game, but they don't mean it. It's all a big joke, but it is not funny that the earth is cooling.
Dems double down on medical care. Politico
Is the O America's first Muslim President? Kinda sorta, yes.
Rove: Dowd is twisted, deranged. Nothing that a studly Republican boyfriend couldn't cure.
Update on the California Meltdown. Good grief. They are like little children.
McArdle: Nobody really cares about the deficit. But markets do care.
Vanderleun's proposals for a new foreign policy approach
A dreamer at the helm: Nyquist
Photo from a Memphis Burger King
Promo heard on the radio this morning for the Imus show:
"This radio show may not be appropriate for mature audiences."
 Insty notes that one would think that California legislators would have more to worry about than day care center diets. Maybe not.
They want 2 year-olds to eat vegetables and skim milk to deal with the "obesity crisis." What they apparently forgot is that the natural diet of 2 year-olds is sweet, fatty Mother's Milk.
And what they probably never bothered to learn is that normal brain development depends on getting the right fats. Myelenization of the brain continues through adolescence. Whole milk is the right thing for kids, whether it's Mom Juice or Cow Juice.
Wednesday, June 10. 2009
Hugh Hewitt has been calling on the nation’s doctors to take their customary leading role of trust by Americans to oppose Obamacare, especially the so-called “public” (read, government) health insurance that would displace private insurance at astronomical costs, bureaucracy, and interference in medical advancements and treatment decisions. Hewitt has been pessimistic they would, feeling the American Medical Association is “cowed…by the Obama/Pelosi/Reid hard-left edge of the Democratic Party.”
Hewitt should have had more faith in the AMA’s 250,000 doctors. The New York Times reports:
But in comments submitted to the Senate Finance Committee, the American Medical Association said: “The A.M.A. does not believe that creating a public health insurance option for non-disabled individuals under age 65 is the best way to expand health insurance coverage and lower costs. The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans.”
If private insurers are pushed out of the market, the group said, “the corresponding surge in public plan participation would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers.”
The New York Times tries to cushion the blow to Obamacare advocates by saying:
The A.M.A., an umbrella group for 180 medical societies, does not speak for all doctors. One group, Physicians for a National Health Program, supports a single-payer system of insurance, in which a single public agency would pay for health services, but most care would still be delivered by private doctors and hospitals.
However, the New York Times fails to mention that the Physicians for a National Health Program claims just “more than 16,000 members,” and that one does not have to be a physician to join, its joining page requiring just “$40 / Year -- Health reform advocates (Non Physicians)” to be a member.
I suppose that the NYTs’ coverage of Obama’s speech to the AMA’s convention next Monday will laud Obama for his great courage in telling the overwhelming majority of the nation’s doctors they don’t know medicine.
It is loony. Everybody will need to bring a lawyer to a fight instead of one of these cool machines:
What's the difference between Obama and God?
Obama gets better press.
Rush, on the radio today
 Photo is Pvt. Long. Did he die in battle?
One more reason to teach your dog the command "Drop it"
Cheerful news: Colombia - A nation Reborn
How's that Porkulus working out for ya?
Related: NYT blames Bush for the growing deficits. Liars. Related, via Front Page:
By current CBO’s estimates Obama’s deficits will add some $10 trillion to our national debt in the next decade, nearly doubling it. This number, however, will also be revised upwards once the new deficit figures are factored in. Dreary as these figures are, things are likely to be worse. This is because the CBO calculations do not take into account the costs of some of the president’s most ambitious programs such as health care reform. Providing universal health insurance would effectively create the most far-reaching entitlement program in American history. The administration puts its cost at some $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Most experts, however, dismiss this figure as grossly understated. It is only enough to look at the exploding costs of Social Security and other entitlements to see how profoundly unrealistic the administration’s numbers are. But even if we take Obama’s estimate at face value, the resulting national debt would by 2019 stand at more than twice the level he inherited when he took the oath of office.
Related, via Viking:
All together now - Megan McArdle has a great post explaining how a government health care program largely depends on getting young, healthy workers to subsidize less-healthy participants. Also, the bureaucracy will be mind-blowing.
A glimpse at the Real America
LAT shows some consistency on rights
Crumbling municipal finance. Watch out for your munis: they are not guaranteed.
Video: Jon Voight at the Repub fundraiser
Why oil prices rise despite a recession
Inflation and higher interest rates on the way. WSJ
Ditto, Jammie:
I'm sick and tired of the government telling me what to eat, when to eat it and what's good or bad for me. I can figure this out on my own. I take care of my body, am in excellent shape for my age and am 25 pounds less than when I graduated high school. While I enjoy some fatty foods and alcohol in moderation, I know what I can handle and pay attention to my doctors.
I don't need a government spending program to monitor my diet. Stay out of my business!
Warfare: It is For the common good
Could British Christians Be Sued for Having Crucifixes in Their Home? h/t, Anchoress
A little birdie told Sissy that the GOP is back. But is Newt running for Pres?
Conservatives beware, lest you drive moderates to extremism. Huh?
Local Math Wars. h/t, RW Prof. My view? Just make 'em learn to use it. Even geniuses don't necessarily understand the depths of math, much less the rug rats.
I thought Hartford would be on the list, but I guess there's nobody left to rob there. Top 15 crime cities in the US. Note absence of NYC.
Cruel and unfunny, Dave. She visited NYC to raise $ for autism, for heaven's sake.
Tax tall people. Mankiw
Even some in the media are getting nauseated by Obamamania in the press
Dr X labels this photo:
Caruthersville, Missouri (Russell Lee).
Farm Security Administration client who will become a farm owner-operator under the tenant purchase program.
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