Tuesday, October 27. 2009
Here's one of my favorites:
It's a simple matter of incentive. With government medicine, you are a cost unless you are still paying plenty of taxes - which is around only 10% of the population, or less. If you are sick or disabled, you become even more of a burden to "the common good."
With private insurance, they want you alive to pay your premium.
Anybody who believes in government benevolence is in dreamland: as we have been saying here, government is just another powerful special interest group. A doc's committment is quite the opposite.
And nobody wants their doctor worrying about "the common good."
 More on the health care debate as a moral struggle
NRO: The conformity enforcers of "tolerance" and "diversity" are growing ever more explicitly totalitarian.
How to lie and get away with it. h/t, Vanderleun
Our Golfer-in-Chief. Hmmm. I don't care if he plays golf a lot. I just wonder what they'd be saying if it were Bush. Plus sets a record for attending fundraisers. Easy gig, President. Just be the figurehead while others do the work.
The power of the Soros-funded think tanks in DC
ACORN. Read the first comment on this Tiger piece. Good grief.
The problem with ignoring Milton Friedman
Via Legal Insurrection:
Instead of solely considering costs, shouldn't we ask if Americans are willing to die sooner from cancer, to give up access to specialists, to be refused safer, more accurate diagnostic imaging, to lose the most accessible screening programs, and to lose their autonomy in pursuing treatments for their families? Shouldn't we ask if Americans want to replace the most advanced and successful medical care in history with the restricted care and lower cost social programs of Europe, and insure the less than 5 percent of people who don't buy insurance but receive care anyway?
Those evil health insurance companies
Via Powerline:
57% of voters nationwide believe it will raise the cost of health care, and 53% believe the quality of care will get worse. ... Just 18% say passage of the congressional plan will reduce costs, while only 23% believe it will lead to better care.
Remarkable: by a margin of 3-1, voters think Obamacare will raise the cost of health care, and by more than two to one, voters believe it will make the quality of health care worse. Isn't that the death knell for government medicine? If not, why not?
Via SDA:
The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity", according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett. [...] The "deliberate policy", from late 2000 until "at least February last year", when the new points based system was introduced, was to open up the UK to mass migration, he said. Some 2.3 million migrants have been added to the population since then, according to Whitehall estimates quietly slipped out last month.
I know that leaf photos are corny as heck. So what? My Red Japanese Maple is colorful. I would never have planted one of these flamboyant things, but somebody else planted it there about 30 years ago, and I am not going to cut it down.
Monday, October 26. 2009
 The other night I became distracted by reading the series on radio soap operas which James Thurber wrote for The New Yorker in 1948. "Soapland" is in Thurber's The Beast in Me and Other Animals.
I envy Thurber's clarity, simplicity, and directness of writing, whether he is doing humor or regular reporting. Liked him better than EB White, with whom Thurber collaborated in writing the spoof on self-help books, Is Sex Necessary?, in 1929.
If you have never read Thurber, you are missing a real delight. Start with The Thurber Carnival. I could not find any of his toons on line, but I didn't spend much time searching.
Here's a good summary of the history of the radio soaps. Thurber's piece on the topic is a masterpiece of straightforward New Yorker-style reportage; the kind that can make any random topic fascinating because it is so well-written.
Mistakes help us learn. Of course they do. Who ever doubted that?
 Note to self - when fishing in the Alaska bush
More on the polls: New Gallup Poll Finds 40% of America Conservative– 20% Liberal
The O's war on business. Via Driscoll:
Obama has demonized just about every business sector in America. Through the 2008 campaign to the present, he has gone after credit card companies, the coal industry, mortgage companies, real estate companies, steelmakers, utilities, drug companies, doctors, oil companies, Wall Street, defense contractors, and health insurance companies, just to name a few. In each case he has dinged them for greed, taking excessive profits, and failing to put people first. His criticisms have not been over minor matters but over their basic core functions, and their values or lack of them. [His demonization of talk radio and Fox News also constitutes a front in his attack on business -- Ed]
Obama demonstrates almost complete ignorance about the private sector and it’s no wonder: he has so little experience in it.
Noonan: He owns the rubble now
WSJ: Why Government Health Care Keeps Falling in the Polls - The health-care debate is part of a larger moral struggle over the free-enterprise system.
Samuelson on the fake health care debate:
The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more "choice" and "competition") to expand government power. But why would a plan tied to Medicare control health spending, when Medicare hasn't? From 1970 to 2007, Medicare spending per beneficiary rose 9.2 percent annually compared to the 10.4 percent of private insurers -- and the small difference partly reflects cost shifting. Congress periodically improves Medicare benefits, and there's a limit to how much squeezing reimbursement rates can check costs. Doctors and hospitals already complain that low payments limit services or discourage physicians from taking Medicare patients.
The Dems are the fast road to Socialism and the Republicans are the slow road to Socialism.
Many people say this, but heard most recently from my son and one of my daughters (the Ron Paul one at Kenyon - not the McCain one in NYC). We observed during our drives yesterday, with irony, that the only reason China has been able to slowly, step-wise get rid of Socialism is by having an authoritarian, police-state government. Places like France, England, and Germany will never be able to do that, with so many people sucking on the government teats. They are screwed economically, spiritually, and humanly. Their people with verve and ambition still come to America...for now.
 The revealing photo from Politico
Why do I own pianos? AVI explains, or tries to.
David Horowitz’s “Alinsky, Beck, Satan, and Me” Series
Remembering the fall of Communism, 20 years ago. However, the O does not find it a worthy event: I think the Lefties still mourn the day of the collapse of authoritarian socialism and the burst of freedom behind the old Iron Curtain.
Joblessness, by state
Books to read for people who disagree with me. Insty
"Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009..."
Jerry Nadler's ethics
Dr. Sanity:
The truth is that most of the drivel that issues from the radical environmentalists' mouths these days is pure, unadulterated neo-Marxist fascism, disguised as compassionate concern for the planet; and steeped in a deep hatred of humanity.
Via Blue Crab: What the fraudulent health care “reform” will actually do to health care costs
Check out the stuff we posted over the weekend. Some fun stuff, I think.
Did a bit of driving around this weekend. Took some lousy photos. We did drive past a doctor's office in Norfolk, CT: Dr. Ralph Emerson. We all agreed we'd be glad to go to him. (In some areas the leaves were wonderful, and in some spots not so good, but we were not looking for leaves.) This is Canaan, CT:
The Housatonic Valley, Route 7 in Western MA:
More random road photos below the fold:
Continue reading "Driving around Southern New England"
Sunday, October 25. 2009
The pup who works in NYC is studying for her GMAT. It sounds like a rightly demanding and discriminating exam.
She says the grammar correction sections are extremely subtle aspects of complex sentences, and that the two-part interactive math problems only give you two minutes each if you want to finish them. If you get one right, the computer gives you a more challenging one. It ramps up fast, she says, to try to find your limits. That's a great idea, like an automated oral exam where they can push each line of questioning until you are totally stumped and crushed with humility. The two-part math questions involve something like Which of the following additional pieces of information do you need to solve this problem? A,B, Both, Neither.
Brain swirls. These sorts of logical challenges quickly separate the men from the boys.
There are two essays also. Sounds like good fun to me, but I like exams. No. I love exams, whether offered by schools, institutions or, most importantly, by real life every darn day.
The pup does too: she is busy re-memorizing her exponent and square root tables to save time on the exam. She has great fun doing it, and says "It will never hurt you in life to have 9 to the 5th on the tip of your tongue." She began with 1-12 to the third and is working her way up.
No calculators allowed for this exam. Good on them for that.
 I am in the middle of Conroy's new book, South of Broad, which is set in Charleston.
Being a Yankee, I had no idea what Benne Wafers were. Here's the recipe.
It's nice to know that there are still places in America where ladies routinely have teatime with homemade tea cookies. It is civilized and civilizing, like so many old Southern habits.
Regarding other low-country foods, She-Crab Soup is fine and dandy, but this summer I discovered how much I enjoy Shrimp 'n Grits (and I don't even love shrimp. I like it with the smaller shrimp).
It's amusing. Sort of. Morally and intellectually appalling, however.
This is a re-post of an NJ piece from a couple of years ago -
There are people living "deviant" lifestyles in the Northeast, and, sadly, they are frequently invisible and marginalized. After much searching to locate the most deviant family your reporter could find in western Massachusetts, we decided to interview Jim and Sarah D. We summarize our interview with this extremely deviant, euphemistically-termed "traditional family," here:
 Social deviant Jim D. 42, leads what we might best term a paleo life, largely out of touch with modern reality and seemingly oblivious to the exciting opportunities of modern lifestyle choices. Married for 21 years, with three kids, Jim drives 25 minutes to work each morning in his 8 year-old Subaru sedan. A college grad, Jim, on his fourth job, is CFO of a medium-sized manufacturing corporation based in Pittsfield, MA, making around $120,000 per year, not including generous benefits.
"I worked my way up the ladder to reach my level of incompetence," he laughs. "The job is a daily challenge, so I try to meet it each day determined to have some fun with it, and to rise to the challenges with a can-do spirit, corny as that sounds. I go to work every morning wondering what sort of pitch will be thrown to me, and hoping at least to hit a single. When I get stuck and confused, I call Sarah to talk it over." Really? "She's my partner, in every way. We joke that by combining the two of us, we add up to one barely competent human."
Jim claims his wife is "great to me and for me" and says "I love my kids to death." They go to their Presbyterian Church together every Sunday, and they tithe. "Budgeting our tithing is a blessing to us," says Sarah. Jim and Sarah have a date night every Thursday night, and family Sunday dinner with his in-laws.
They have lived modestly, and have accumulated over $500,000 in their 401-K savings. Jim says "Business hasn't been loyal to its employees for 20 years, so you have to take care of yourself. That's fine with me. My Dad did it by always living below his means, which were minimal for a long time, and I do the same. Unlike my Dad, though, I doubt anyone will let me continue working as long as I want to."
What did his Dad do? "He quit high school to join the Army. Hated school. They stuck him in the Corps of Engineers. Then worked up to a construction supervisor as a civilian, which he still does. He will never quit work, although he could retire now if he wanted to. He owns three houses; rents two and lives in one. The job gives him something to grouse about, and gets him out of the house and out into the world."
When asked what were the most important things in his life, Jim answers "Knowing God and being a responsible adult male. Working hard, paying my bills, being a good parent and husband, a good citizen and a good friend." For hobbies, Jim and Sarah enjoy gardening, jogging in the Berkshire Hills, and cooking together. When their first child was born, they gave their TV away and have been without one since. "Brain rot," says Sarah. "It interferes with family time, and we didn't want the kids to be passive zombies."
Sarah was a grammar school teacher until the kids came. "I would never have married a woman who wanted to work while we had young kids," Jim says. "That's an experiment with human nature I would not want to subject them to." As the kids enter high school, Sarah is planning to return to teaching high school English this time, having made herself "an amateur expert" in Medieval and Renaissance literature over the past 15 years. "I polished up my French, and learned Italian." What's her dream job? "Teaching Beowulf and Dante."
"Unlike Sarah, I was the first kid in my family to ever go to college," Jim says. "My first day at UMass, my Mom insisted I wear a jacket and tie. That is how traditional - or out to lunch - my parents were then. Mom baked a huge layer cake when I got my admission letter. They were both children of immigrants, my Dad's parents from Romania and my Mom's from Ireland." He says "UMass set me up for a fine career, but I had no big dreams. I just wanted to be able to support my family, and to find a way to have a fairly good time doing it. Math was easy for me, so I majored in it, but I made sure I got myself educated as widely as I had time for, while staying on the Rugby team and without too many drunken nights. I took some accounting classes to be practical about the future, but I met Sarah in a Chaucer class. She was cute as hell, and I said to her after class 'I don't think I belong in this class.' She said 'Let's discuss it.' The rest is history."
Politics? As Sarah says "We go to every Town Meeting, and we speak up when an issue is important to us. We don't obsess too much about national politics. We are local." When pressed on the issue, they confessed "Well, we do listen to Rush when we have the chance, but we are usually too busy."
 This is my idea of a fine dressing for Mr. Turkey: Foie gras, apple and chestnut.
I have baked some quail with foie gras stuffing (damn good), but never turkey. Time to do it.
I may do a side of oyster stuffing and a side of the foie gras stuffing, but fill the bird itself with the expected chestnut, sausage and cornbread stuffing. Or maybe not.
Anyhow, I have to cook two, so I'll do one on the grill, unstuffed of course.
 Hinckley Yachts experiencing the recession. Photo is a classic Hinckley DS 42. Perfection. Only problem: in my (limited) experience, Hinckleys cannot point worth a damn.
Kindle-killer: Barnes & Noble Unveils Kindle-Killing, Dual-Screen ‘Nook’ E-Reader
Nookie-reader?
Laptops for overseas Marines - plus dancing Marines
"Victicrat" - cool video
The O in Stamford, CT on Fri raising Dem money, with Dump Dodd. Ted Kennedy's old skirt-chasing, low-life, pub-hopping partner Dodd is a goner.
Mark Steyn: Obama a tough guy, at least with Fox News. With real tough guys, the O is a pussy.
On the other hand, the WH did pick a fight with the Chamber. That takes nerve, because they are tough. They aren't exactly Conservative though.
Related: Beck on The Chicago Gangsta Way
Camille Paglia, last of the open minded liberals
Let's All Buy a Hybrid! It will pay for itself in 25 years!
The facts about high executive pay. WSJ. I don't care what they make. I do care about what I make. I could never be CEO of Goldman Sachs or GE: I lack the brains, talents, skills, knowledge, decisiveness, interpersonal skills and personality for that. Great biz managers are as rare as great shortstops or sopranos or ballerinas. Got to reward them well for what they do or they will quit, retire - or go to your competitor. That's how free labor markets work, isn't it? It's about scarcity and added value. Like truffles. Supply and demand is a fundamental of freedom.
Destroying all the forests can save the planet!
The bailouts were not meant to really save GM and Chrysler. Duh. It was just a payoff to the union - by us, the lowly taxpayers.
More on your tax dollars at work: Cash for Clunkers fails again
Of great value to single, social-climbing, or designing women: Tax records open in Norway
Medical insurance costs rise for small biz. So can they dump the cost on me? People ought to be able to buy their own insurance on their own, like adults, in a free market.
Saturday, October 24. 2009
As a counterpoint to yesterday's Country-Pop You Belong With Me, here's Dylan's wonderful version of You Belong To Me, with some repetitive video of Bob with Sarah, his first wife, in what appears to be their bedroom in NYC - it doesn't look like their Woodstock, NY house.
Seeing all the Amish in Ohio last week got me to thinking about Rumspringa.
It seems to me that this is nothing unique about the Amish. A fair number of adolescent kids in any culture spend some time taking a vacation from their parents' values and way of life. Fortunately, most return to sanity sooner or later if they don't lose themselves or destroy themselves in the process.
 One of the biggest disappointments with Windows Vista is that they dropped the 'Identities' feature from Outlook Express, now renamed "Windows Mail". The 'Identities' allow you to have completely separate email accounts, each with their own Inbox, Outbox, settings, etc. This way you can have one account using your real name for friends and family, one with an anonymous handle for Internet stuff, maybe one for business and a fourth acting as a 'throwaway' address that you use for online transactions, just in case some unscrupulous dealer sells it to the spam merchants.
It was, in short, an invaluable feature, and there's no reason on God's Green Earth why they should have removed it. The only way it can be done with Windows Mail is to actually log off the entire system and then log back on as a different 'identity'. That's friggin' ridiculous.
So, the hunt was on to find an email program that supported multiple identities. Two days and about a dozen programs later, I found the answer. It costs $35, but if you want true multiple identities, it's the only program I found that does the trick.
More info + setup tips below the fold.
Continue reading "Doc's Computin' Tips: Multiple email identities in Vista"
Just found out Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour has finished its 100-piece series.
It can be found on line, though, and in reruns on Sirius. It's enjoyable, with a great selection of old tunes.
Friday, October 23. 2009
Viking wonders whether country music is the new rock and roll. I stole this Youtube from him because it's touching as hell. Taylor Swift:
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