Friday, April 2. 2010
 Stossel: The dangers of junk science. Including his view of nuke power (uneconomical, he says)
Govt. genius in MA: A new hack commission to investigate the need for all of the hack commissions. Their solution to government f-ups is always more government.
I don't need no steenkin' Constitution
Meta-capitalists are natural allies of the communists … What we have is a gigantic symbiosis of all globalist and statist forces around the world
Mike Lupica: Paranoid or spinning like crazy?. Related: April Fools: The ignorant racist tea-baggers
Also related: Demacrook Rangel Smears DC Protesters; Compares Them to Racist Groups During Civil Rights Movement
And also related: This isn't journalism - it's collusion
Sounds like they all got the same memo
Also, Surber: Apparently, dissent is no longer patriotic
Alice in Wonderland Ikea in Russia
Democrats Lying Low Over Recess As Polls Show Rising Anger Over Obamacare
Wednesday, March 31. 2010
Will Health Care Reform Finally Let Us Get That Divorce?
The vile Al Sharpton
The O plays the long game
The imperial history of the Middle East in 90 seconds
Skadden Arps has a good health care summary. h/t, Tiger
Via Dino:
“My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn’t understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him”…
Sissy: We're not going to let you smear merchants bury the truth anymore without a fight
Teach them young: Obama Just Made the Student Loan Program a Student Gift Program (With Your Money, Of Course)
Teach them young, Part 2: Colleges Help Big Government Expand Food Stamp Rolls
Obama Steps Up Confrontation - White House Seeks to Rally Supporters With Aggressive Tone Against Opponents
Insty: Waxman's war on accounting
Drill, drill, drill. Something good from the O
Shelby Steele: Barack the Good
Saturday, March 27. 2010
 Photo of a Cuban hospital from SDA's Fidel praises Obama's healthcare.
Dr. Sanity: THE PROGRESSIVE LEFT GOOSE STEPS INTO HISTORY
Frum's fall from grace. I tend to agree with Rick on this.
Gov. Christie: Saving NJ from its government. h/t, Insty.
Welcome to the Machine: Cultural Marxism in Education
Krauthammer: Watch out for the coming VAT
Timeline of the major provisions of the Dem healthcare bill
Krugman needs to get out more. The guy is a sneaky, dishonest putz in my opinion. And that is not because I often disagree - it's because he is. I'm sure he knows it, too.
Pelosi in Neverland:
The bill, she said, would lead to "healthier lives, more liberty to pursue hopes and dreams and happiness."
Is that a promise? Oh Boy! Sign me up! as a member of FCA (Future Curmudgeons of America), I want that free happiness.
Now It Can Be Told: Health Care Is About Wealth Redistribution
In totalitarian North Korea, every hour is Earth Hour
Jeff Goldstein tried to talk to one of his old writing profs. One quote:
It is an Orwellian world in which we live when fucking novelists want to distance themselves from those who criticize the government.
Yeah, we thought dissent was a high form of patriotism...oh, never mind. It's just not worth the effort.
Bottled Piety from VDH. Good term. Almost as good as "bully state."
Culture matters. Check out the link to the photos of Labrador.
The coming black market in medical care
Hutzpah of the day, via Surber:
Friday, March 26. 2010
Canada opts for nice state-enforced conformity. Be nice, or we'll kill you hateful bastards.
Bully State insanity du jour: EU wants to regulate bread. These people clearly have nothing to do. Let them eat cake.
Change: Personal Income Drops Across the Country
Krauthammer: The bureaucrats will decide your fate. I have a better idea: Save some $ and pay a private doc or private clinic for your care, and avoid the government plantation.
MA rebellion against Obamacare medical device tax. Is that, like, a Boston Tea Party?
Fidel Castro Praises Obama & Dems on Nationalizing Health Care
MSNBC: It's time for socialism. Groovy, dude. It has worked so well everywhere else. Let's begin by making profits for MSNBC illegal. For the Greater Good.
Pajamas: Is Anthropogenic Global Warming the New Intelligent Design?
Related: Add to the list - global warming causes street brawls. Everybody knows that. When it's nice out, everybody wants to go out and start a fight. Who doesn't?
PBS' Jim Lehrer gets it totally wrong. WTH? Wasn't he alive then? Or is he spinning lying? It was the Repubs who made it possible to pass the civil rights legislation in Congress. Also, Lincoln was a Repub, remember?
Health care and the Bully State. h/t Q&O's When Nanny Becomes Bully
Related: Big Baloney fans fear of conservatives
Re-posting: Milton Friedman on Solzhenitsyn on government health care
John takes on the AP's insanity over Jerusalem
Wednesday, March 24. 2010
 Science museums tamed by agendas
Re the anti-fat craze:
A world in which in many nations it is normal for the poor to be fat is a utopia by any measure from the perspective of someone who lived in 1900.
So true. That was when they had the term "prosperously plump." Now people spend thousands to try not to be plump, and the stats say the "poor" are the most plump. Why that is, I do not know. What I do know is that body lard is unattractive to me. If people want to be fat, though, it's their choice and I would never hold it against them.
Why Germany would decide to further enable Greece's socialism and corruption is beyond me. The NYT thinks they should.
Althouse: Are tea parties racist? Related: Figures. NY Times Still Pushing Bogus Tea Party N*gger Story Despite Video Proof That It Was Made Up
Conservative vs. Leftist industries in the US. h/t Chicago Boyz
Diversity training doesn't work
Amusing: Coulter to file grievance with Canadian human rights
At the time of the American Revolution
"Americans were the most prosperous people in the world, and also the lowest taxed. In fiscal terms the rebellion was inspired by ambition rather than hardship, by a desire not for financial freedom but for more financial freedom. This push for opportunity spurred people's envy of success, their scorn for failure, and their increasingly dubious view of their compatriots' integrity."
Why isn't this guy in jail?
From the Chicago Trib in As America Trots Down The Same Doomed Path, Chicago Tribune Notices Illinois Is Broke:
State government’s free-fall into insolvency was designed intentionally and executed methodically. Over the years, legislators devoted more to hoarding power and ensuring their re-election than to smart governance. They repeatedly created employee benefits, entitlement coverage and spending obligations that the people of Illinois cannot pay as costs come due.
9th Circuit nominee John Liu says he “envisions the judiciary…as a culturally situated interpreter of social meaning.” Is he a social worker, a forensic Psychiatrist, or a nut?
Image via Protein:
WSJ: Why ObamaCare makes us nostalgic for the Cold War.
Good summary of the reconciliation bill at Hennessey
Related: I am going to let 3 guys go
Mead: Why can't DC think outside the blue box?
“Already Insured? Get Ready to Pay More”
Free Viagra is in the health bill? How about penile enlargement? Every guy wants that.
In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality. Duh. But not by making it easier for people to create wealth - if wealth is what they want. No, just by taking mine and giving it to somebody else, preferably to a Dem voter.
Tuesday, March 23. 2010
"The Bully State." That is the perfect term.
Sort of related: Healthy Community Initiatives: A Microcosm of What We're In For
Some pundits have said that Obamacare completes the welfare state project begun back in the Progressive era and by FDR and Johnson. Does that mean there is nothing else they want to do?
Cobb has a message for black male youth. h/t, Vandy. I wonder whether Cobb appreciates that his message is for everybody (he probably does).
Federal efforts on education do not work. Of course not.
Explain to me why anyone would equate racism with being opposed to goverment medical care.
Google vs. China
Guardian admits wind causing Arctic ice loss
Sharpton: “Americans Overwhelmingly Voted For Socialism When They Elected Obama”
British Wind Farms Failing Due to Lack of Wind. I have an idea for all those bird-chopper wind machines: Plug them all into a power source and use them as fans to cool the rapidly baking planet.
No chance that courts will strike down individual mandates. I agree. "Commerce" has come to mean anything.
Repeal is hokum. Sad to say, I agree. Adjustments possible, but repeal will not happen.
Krauthammer has it right:
"We are on our way, there is absolutely no chance we are not going to end up with national health care."
And Krauthammer said our system will soon look like the one in the United Kingdom and in Canada.
"This is nationalizing health care, the insurance companies are now utilities, they are contractors," Krauthammer said. the government makes all of these decisions, only a matter of time and will probably happen after the Obama administration. But he will be remembered as the father of national health care as they have in Canada or Britain and it starts tonight.
Lowry: Dem win is built on sand
Zomblog: The real reasons Americans hate government healthcare
Monday, March 22. 2010
If you've been away this weekend, please scroll down and catch up with Maggie's. Some good stuff there.
Steyn: Happy Dependence Day!
WSJ:
While the passage of ObamaCare marks a liberal triumph, its impact will play out over many years. We fought this bill so vigorously because we have studied government health care in other countries, and the results include much higher taxes, slower economic growth and worse medical care. As for the politics, the first verdict arrives in November.
Viking:
This country's inability to address runaway entitlement spending has left us with nearly $108 trillion in unfunded liabilities. These are promises the government cannot possibly meet but there is no political will to tell Americans they can't have their ice cream. Now we're about to dramatically expand the role of government at the very moment in time when we should be shrinking it.
It's mortifying.
Devastating non-trends in US Climate
Coulter: I was hoping for a fruit basket, not a threat to prosecute
Saturday, March 20. 2010
Epigenetics: The limits of Darwinian evolution
Coburn: We won't permit deals for jobs for pols. Related: Lose the battle but win the war
Putin showing no respect for the O Admin
Van Jones: Tell me again - why is he at Princeton?
GOP candidate recruitment at Powerline:
A remarkable 31 of these candidates come from the medical professions, and 24 are doctors. Too bad the Democrats aren't trying to socialize the legal industry. Then lawyers would switch to the Republicans en masse, and return the GOP to its former glory.
AmeriCorps: Obama’s Scandal-Plagued Indoctrination Machine. Related: Admin restores full funding to ACORN
Human shields: Jules
Is this legal? Imagine if Bush...
Monday, March 15. 2010
A few links left over from yesterday - New England got hit hard by the nor'easter and Maggie's HQ is without power.
A blogger is a (compulsive) writer.
Human rights are from God, not from governments. Governments' jobs are to secure them. Where does a sexually strange prom fit in?
David Brooks says he knows how the O thinks. How does he know?
She talks like I would talk: Sarah Palin Lashes Out at Liberals, D.C. and Media
Shut up and act, Tom. VDH. Actors are not known for knowing things.
No global climate data from 50% of the world.
Free medical care for artists? Sheesh. Hey, I am a blog artist. Or at least a blog artiste.
Does higher ed mean more money? No. And that's not what it is for, either.
Texan textbooks. Good deal.
Capitalist Pig: Sulzberger to 6 mill/yr
Cold weather kills.
Friday, March 12. 2010
 Your recycling ends up in landfills
Temperature records gleaned from clamshells reveal accuracy of Norse sagas.
More on the foolishness of photovoltaics
Junk Science Bombshell: NASA & Media Knew About Bogus Climate Data 3 Years Ago
Arab Emirates: No Jews, please
Obama Justice Department Shut Down Federal ACORN Investigation According to Documents Obtained by Judicial Watch
Credit Default Swaps Under Fire
EU monitoring "hate" sites, hoping to ban them
Lots of good posts at Moonbattery
From SDA:
When the mother of a five year old girl received a letter detailing a litany of health risks her daughter would face in the future because her body mass index was one-percent outside the recommended limit, mom was appalled, and its no wonder: take a look at the child in question. Actually, take a close look, because she might be following you: various local Councils recruit "environment volunteers" as young as seven to report people for offenses ranging from littering to making too much noise to putting out their trash on the wrong day. The little recruits "are given information packs about how to collect evidence....which could later be used in criminal prosecutions."
In an essay titled Nanny State Britain is Killing Common Sense, Dr. Eamonn Butler writes:
"The organisers of a Christmas party in Embsay village hall were told they needed a full risk assessment, and nut allergy warnings on the mince pies. Schools have banned playground football. Clowns in Zippo's circus couldn't use trumpets in a three-minute sketch because they'd need a music licence. Manchester taxi drivers cancelled their annual outing for needy kids because each cab would need a risk assessment, each child would have to be accompanied by an adult, and each adult would need a six-week criminal record check." (emph. mine)
Tuesday, March 9. 2010
 Cover image via Jonah
You like him; how can you tell if a guy likes you back? h/t Linkiest
Harvard Law Prof Bill Stuntz Talks of His Impending Death, Faith
No Tweeting: Last year, a San Francisco Superior Court judge dismissed 600 potential jurors after several acknowledged going online to research the criminal case before them
Pinkerton:
Sen. Lautenberg voted for the Senate proposal that would have denied him the free choice that probably saved his life.
Euroland: Coming Soon: Gravity to be Legislated!
3 good reheated ones at Thompson
Twit is legend in his own mind: Friedman Aflame - The Times columnist’s mind melts fact and reason into nonsense. Can we say "narratives"?
Gore: Organized Campaign Behind Climate Skeptics. Yes, and Maggie's Farm is the well-funded HQ of the cabal.
Believes in NBC-driven media: NBC’s Chuck Todd Blasts “Drudge Driven Journalism”
Surber's Good v. Evil
Riehl: The Traveling ObamaCare Salvation Show
You know what America needs now? A brutal political battle over amnesty
Geert Wilders speaks in London
Green jobs scam
Via Q&O:
Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism.
Indeed.
Rep opposes school choice for his constituents. Does he oppose school choice for the Obama girls?
"He says he opposes an increase in charter schools, even though many of his constituents seem to want more of them, because he believes they have allowed the mayor and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, to abdicate their responsibility to improve Harlem’s regular elementary schools, which have shrunk as more parents have chosen charters."
Steyn on the Oscars:
It was fun when Marlon Brando had his award picked up by Sachem Littlefeather, Apache Indian and President of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, protesting about the treatment of Indians by Hollywood. It was even better when she turned out to be Maria Cruz, struggling actress and Miss American Vampire of 1970. It was touching, in 1977, when Debby Boone sang `You Light Up My Life’ backed by a chorus of 11 children from the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf interpreting the lyric in sign language. It was even more poignant when it subsequently emerged that they were just regular Equity kids pretending to be deaf and that the signing was complete gibberish. Ah, happy days.
Monday, March 8. 2010
Toon via Moonbattery
Mark Steyn: Obamacare worth the price to Democrats. Steyn gets it. It's worth any price.
America puts off the pain to have some jam today. And, CBO: $1T yearly deficits for at least the next 10 years
The Tides Foundation: Bagman for the Left
Feeling a "bit off" today? Who doesn't? Crystal meth is good for that feeling.
No mention that a "minority" made that noose. But exactly in what way is academia "tolerant"? Higher ed strikes me as the most intolerant place in America.
Tiger:
Barack Obama has called an "entrepreneurship summit" with the Muslim world. Naturally, I have a question: What could Barack Obama or anybody in his administration teach about entrepreneurship? Years from now, when the Muslim world has gone another generation without a single useful invention, will they look back at this "summit" and regard it as another evil western deception? Of course, they will have only themselves to blame insofar as the invitation promises advice from "social entrepreneurs," Orwellian slang for "transnational community organizer."
The Golden State's Me Generation - In the midst of the Great Recession California students protest in favor of themselves. Worth reading just for the quote from the Prof.
Reason: Busting the Well-Endowed - It's time to cut federal funding for the arts
Friday, March 5. 2010
Headed to Sugarbush for the weekend. (Do you know what a "sugarbush" is? It is a grove of Sugar Maples.)
In praise of Parsnips. We love parsnips. Steam, then light sautee in butter.
Chile will survive the earthquake because its democracy works.
Global aid harming Haiti economy. h/t, Tiger
‘The Science is Settled,’ They Told Copernicus
Population Bomb Author Giving Advice to Global Warming Nuts. A quote in the article:
Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics.
Want more kids to graduate from college? It can be easily done: just lower the standards even further.
Speaking of college, look at these ungrateful crybabies
Muslim group moves to ban burka
How loopy is Liu? He is a real live moonbat.
Legal aspects of the digitus impudicus
The NYT finally deigned to do an obit for Arnold Beichman. Final paragraph:
Socialism is dictatorship, he told Columbia College Today, the alumni magazine, in 2005. “The control of wealth is the control over human life,” he said. “So if a centrally planned economy decides how wealth is to be created and how it is to be distributed, then they really have a control over human life.”
Like we said:
In a private meeting with House progressives, President Obama said that this bill is just a foundation for future reform, and could pave the way for a later push for the public option and even single-payer systems at the state-level.
Hurricane Katrina Victims to Sue Oil Companies. That defense team is going to have fun.
From OMG! Global warming!!!
Thursday, March 4. 2010
 Many cheerful facts about aging
Obsolete: The US Mail
Why recycling glass is silly and useless
Reporters used to be tough guys. This one sounds like a big baby - plus he doesn't have a clue
US now #1 in natural gas production. Hey - it's organic!
Not predicted by models: Sea ice thickens
Prediction of the intertubes, c. 1995
Lowry: Clever rhetoric from the O:
It's all rhetorically clever as far as it goes. But the problem here has never been the salesmanship, but the bill itself, which is an anchor around anyone trying to sell it.
The problem with one-party government: Led by New York, big-government blue states sink deeper into corruption.
Why can't we sell our own bone marrow?
Mankiw:
Americans, as well as citizens of many other advanced nations, now spend about twice as many years in retirement as they did a generation or two ago. During that time, they expect the government to provide them with income support and healthcare. Is it any wonder that we face serious fiscal problems?
Why does this Tea Party thing drive Libs crazy?
Wednesday, March 3. 2010
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
Tuesday, March 2. 2010
 Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss.
I needed this quick refresher on Hobbes' moral and political philosophy
Our tax dollars at work: The FDA Takes on Cheerios
Hawaii elevates race, big-time. Aren't WASPs a tribe too?
Mohawks Only. Canadian Indians go for ethnic cleansing
To conservatives: Shut up. You are hurting the kids.
A new lame campaign to deal with evil talk radio
Black ministers for WalMart
Chicago Boyz:
There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.
We do not always vote this way, but I think this is true:
America is, quite simply, a center-right country. Many have cited polling data showing that self-described conservatives outnumber liberals 2 to 1. But that's not nearly so telling as the fact that self-identified conservatives have outnumbered liberals in every year since 1968; when combined with self-proclaimed moderates, the country is enduringly 65% to 75% moderates and conservatives.
Monday, March 1. 2010
Perfect place for moonbats to move to.
Powerline: Global Warming Fraud: The Big Picture
Related, A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC: The emerging errors of the IPCC's 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental, says Christopher Booker
From Roger:
It is just lovely that the New York Times — the world’s most discredited newspaper — would give so thoroughly discredited a mountebank this lavish soapbox upon which to make a fool of himself. Next stop, Hyde Park Corner — or maybe a padded cell.
Frank Rich: Liar
UK update: Now the Government wants competence tests before you can be a dog owner. How about to enter the country? Or to have kids?
Latest:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. healthcare even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.
Do you think they might just promise them jobs? I'm sure of it.
Now you know: The O says "We can't control nature."
Commenter at Politico:
Had Rangel had an "R" next to his name, he would've been gone last year.
Sunday, February 28. 2010
 In the NYT, We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change:
It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
Somehow I doubt that it would be "an enormous relief" to Al. He is doubling down. It's his familiar hysteria and fear-mongering accompanied by many factual errors.
From Am Thinker:
Al Gore sees himself as a redeemer - as Jesus Christ. And where is there room in a democratic republic for someone who thinks that the rule of law should be an "instrument of redemption?" Holy Mother, that is the scariest idea ever to drool from Gore's mouth. The rule of law is just that - the rule of law. There should be no special qualities that animate the enforcement of the law - certainly not a drive to "redeem" anything or anybody. That smacks of titanic hubris to use the law to enforce your idea of "redemption."
More push-back from Bill McKibben (h/t Legal Ins) - a guy with as much math and science in his background as Al Gore:
... inertia is what gives the climate cynics ground to operate. That's what we need to overcome, and at bottom that's a battle about data, but also about courage and hope. In the last year, we've rallied millions of people in almost every country to demand action on climate change, and to start building the world beyond fossil fuel. The truth will out.
Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books, including the forthcoming "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet." He's a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and the founder of 350.org, a global grass-roots climate campaign. A longer version of this article can be read at tomdispatch.com
So science is about "cynicism" and "also about courage and hope"? Maybe now it is. See Post-Normal Science (h/t, Vanderleun). A quote:
Normal science made the world believe that scientists should and could provide certain, objective factual information…The guiding principle of normal science – the goal of achievement of factual knowledge - must be modified to fit the post-normal principle…For this purpose, post-normal scientists should be capable of establishing extended peer communities and allow for ‘extended facts’ from non-scientific experts…In post-normal science, the maintenance and enhancement of quality, rather than the establishment of factual knowledge, is the key task of scientists… Involved social actors must agree on the definition of perceptions, narratives, interpretation of models, data and indicators…scientists have to contribute to society by learning as quickly as possible about different perceptions…instead of seeking deep ultimate knowledge.
How do we adjust to a world that is packed with narratives and lies? Not too difficult: be skeptical.
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