Wednesday, December 23. 2009
Toon via Theo -
Like we said yesterday, the Dem bill is just the launching pad. Yes, that's the whole point.
Trial Lawyers Win Added Clout From Democrats In Health Bill. Wonderful!
How China sabotaged the climate talks
Va. Republicans aim to take 4 Democrats' congressional seats
The happiest states in the USA
ObamaCare designed to be un-repealable
Similar message from Betsy
Nelson Says More Senators Seeking Special Treatment in Light of Nebraska Deal
It's getting hot out there. Better DRIVE TO THE HIGHER LATITUDES
Not your grandfather's England:
A millionaire businessman has been jailed for two and a half years for taking on a knife-wielding burglar who held him and his family hostage in their home. Munir Hussain, 52, was told he was wrong to take the law into his hands and attack Walid Salem, 56, after the masked intruder threatened to kill him.
That's why we refer to Europe as EuroDisney. Not a serious place. It was, for a short while in history. Now it's just a cool vacation destination.
Even the Huffpo is disenchanted with the O (h/t, Winds):Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator
Related: Would You Buy a Used Car from This Man?
Fun with Hugo! First - Was it Santa? Second: Hugo renames Angel Falls
Tuesday, December 22. 2009
 The Dem long-term goal is complete government control of medical care, as in Canada. They make no bones about that.
Their House and Senate bills take a big step in that direction. They do it by mandating the purchase of medical insurance - and then regulating what your insurance must pay for. From what I can tell, they are not really mandating insurance at all - they are mandating that most or all of your medical bills get paid by the general population, depending on what government panels deem worthy of coverage for you (watch that process become immediately politicized).
Thus the need for the hefty tax increases and for an inevitable leap in insurance prices. That leap in prices, down the road, will, the Dems hope, lead to people crying for the government to jump in completely. That's always the plan: break something, then arrive on the scene to "fix it."
A wiser path - but one which would never lead to Canadian medicine - would have been to disconnect medical insurance from the workplace, to ensure portability, to create high-risk subsidized pools (as is done for high risk drivers in auto insurance) for those who cannot purchase insurance, to take down interstate barriers to insurance competition so that people have the choice to buy whatever sort they want, and to do some tort reform so that docs do not need to spend $40-200,000/yr on their insurance. Plus no mandate - it isn't American to force everybody to buy something if they do not want the product.
(As I have mentioned in the past, I like my family medical insurance. It is portable, cheap catastrophic insurance which cannot be canceled - and which would become illegal under the Dem plan. The Dem plan requires me to buy all sorts of junk I neither want nor need.)
Related: The healthcare backlash is coming. Or maybe it already has. People know that this thing is a dog...not to insult our canine friends.
Also, via Insty:
PETER WEHNER: The Health-Care Backlash. “This health-care bill may well be historic, but not in the way the president thinks. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything quite like it: passage of a mammoth piece of legislation, hugely expensive and unpopular, on a strict party-line vote taken in a rush of panic because Democrats know that the more people see of ObamaCare, the less they like it.”
Climate touches every white liberal's erogenous zone. Krauthammer.
The UN's Pachauri, like Gore, is getting rich off climate.
Pajamas: The Socialist Revolution Has Come to America
Ted Dalrymple revisits Calcutta
Cool rocks. Slide show of some rochers extraordinaire
Kim Peek died.
A book: From Poverty to Prosperity
C of E vicar advises parishioners to steal
Debating national identity turns dangerous?
Point of Law: Impermissible Ratemaking in Health-Insurance Reform: Why the Reid Bill is Unconstitutional
Samuelson in the WaPo: A Parody of Leadership. One quote:
Even if Congress passes legislation -- a good bet -- the finished product will fall far short of Obama's extravagant promises. It will not cover everyone. It will not control costs. It will worsen the budget outlook. It will lead to higher taxes. It will disrupt how, or whether, companies provide insurance for their workers. As the real-life (as opposed to rhetorical) consequences unfold, they will rebut Obama's claim that he has "solved" the health care problem. His reputation will suffer.
Monday, December 21. 2009
 Milbank: An ugly finale for health-care reform
Hot Air: Don’t despair about ObamaCare
Classy: RI Dem Senator Calls ObamaCare Opponents Part of 'Aryan Support Groups'
Cash for Cloture: Harry Reid’s Vote Buying Cost Taxpayers $1.2 Billion
Trial lawyers get payoff in Dem medical bill
Gordon Brown calls for new group to police global environment issues.
Related: There'll be nowhere to run from the new world government
From Driscoll:
“Sen. Whitehouse: foes of health care bill are birthers, right-wing militias, aryan groups.” Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin adds, “it will be crystal clear who, when the chips are down, tried to stop the largest big-government power grab and tax-a-thon in decades and who rolled over. The opponents of those Democrats who rolled over will have a plethora of material for their campaign ads.”
Birthers and Aryan groups? Sounds like us. Along with over 60% of Americans, I guess, who oppose this fascistic, ie government-controlled - monstrosity.
Betsy: Ben Nelson's selling price
Powerline: Who's Meaner, Insurance Bureaucrats or Government Bureaucrats?
Healthcare Pork: Senate Bill Laden with Favors, Pet Projects for Democrats
Related, they did not omit the slacker kids, I mean, the adult children
Riehl remains an optimist.
An email from our Aliyah doctor friend in Israel:
I am still not used to things like this: as I am leaving one of my classes, a young woman - perhaps 22 - bends over to hoist her backpack; her sweater pulls up in back, revealing a holstered Beretta in the back of her belt.
Beats a tramp stamp, in my book.
 Photo on loan from Moonbattery -
Pethokoukis: The political blowback from healthcare reform
Kimball via Insty:
Since it was Ben Nelson of Nebraska that finally got Harry Reid his desperately needed 60th vote for socialized medicine, I hope 1) that the next two year are unpleasant for Sen. Nelson and 2) that he loses in 2012 by a landslide.
WSJ: Change Nobody Believes In - A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve.
Prepare for a new term: "climate instability"
What is "settled science"? From Global warming and the 'settled science' baloney at Am Thinker:
While not faulting journalists and politicians for their stupendous ignorance when discussing most scientific subjects, I do condemn their utter lack of coherence concerning basic scientific definitions, processes, and principles.
Specifically, the chattering classes have no appreciation of the following truisms: settled science comes only in the form of physical laws while the causes behind specific phenomena are sometimes never definitively settled. And the more complex the system being observed, the longer it takes to reach a consensus about the causal mechanisms.
Saturday, December 19. 2009
Begin your Christmas shopping yet? I thought I'd begin today or tomorrow.
Did everybody know that Wikipedia is a non-profit? FAQs about Wikipedia
What would they do to me today if they saw the pictures I drew in Kindergarten? (h/t, Tiger)
California as a failed state
Is health care reform a gift or lump of coal?
Above the law? SEIU and the MA Senate race
From Michael Feinstein in the NYT:
If you look at a list of the most popular Christmas songs, you’ll find that the writers are disproportionately Jewish: Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” “The Christmas Song” (yes, Mel Tormé was Jewish), “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “Santa Baby,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Winter Wonderland” — perennial, beloved and, mostly, written for the sheet music publishers of Tin Pan Alley, not for a show or film. (Two notable exceptions: “White Christmas,” introduced in “Holiday Inn,” and “Silver Bells,” written for “The Lemon Drop Kid.”)
Libertarians and Conservatives, at Ace. One quote:
Barney Frank is a crusader against any efforts to impose or even encourage any sort of traditional morality by the government. He is -- as regards only traditional morality -- a libertarian.
Meanwhile, he's supporting the government's efforts to throw you in jail if you don't purchase a government-qualified health insurance plan.
Liberals -- leftists, really -- continue to "bravely" (is it brave anymore?) tweak and thwart traditional mores and taboos while simultaneously replacing them with new taboos and new Temperance Crusades even more onerous and obnoxious and freedom-destroying than the ones they're so "courageously" freeing us from.
IN: Government-permitted gambling
OUT: Government-permitted Ho-Ho's and Mountain Dew
IN: Gay "bathhouses"
OUT: Actual baths -- too much water and too much energy used!
IN: Transgenderism
OUT: Transfats
IN: Anal bulbs
OUT: Light bulbs
h/t Gateway - An interview with one of our favorites, Thaddeus McCotter, plus the Republican Policy Committee Principles (listed below on cont. page)
Continue reading "Saturday links"
Friday, December 18. 2009
Since "the time for talking is over," we will try not to post further about the joke that is Copenhagen for the rest of this pre-Christmas weekend - except to note these observations:
Obama sez 'Time for talk is over.' China and India Say, "O Shut the F Up Bozo!"
Obama braves blizzard to preach at the Church of Climate Scientology
and, of course, big early blizzard predicted from DC to New England. Great! Somebody needs to remind me again: "Weather isn't climate."
From Warner in The Telegraph:
When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?
and
This week has been truly historic. It has marked the beginning of the landslide that is collapsing the whole AGW imposture. The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce. In the warmist camp the Main Man is a railway engineer with huge investments in the carbon industry. That says it all. The world’s boiler being heroically damped down by the Fat Controller. Al Gore, occupant of the only private house that can be seen from space, so huge is its energy consumption, wanted to charge punters $1,200 to be photographed with him at Copenhagen. There is a man who is really worried about the planet’s future.
From Hoven in Who Needs Data?, which begins:
The scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), and the people who funded them, did not know how utterly useless CRU was. All the research done at CRU made no difference whatsoever to the "science" of global warming . Just ask other scientists and global warming alarmists. Heck, ask CRU.
What do the EVIL WARMISTS want? Global domination! It's called the Belgrade Process. Ya can't make this stuff up.
Update: Is this for real? Give China and India a pass, and give away more of our $. Just to get a piece of paper signed. What a joke.
Photo is Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, during the summer. Nice place to drink some beer.
 Q&O on Copenhagen, etc:
China is emerging as a leader among the 130 nations that make up the misnamed Group of 77. While Hugo Chavez may be the court jester, the real power of that group lays with China. And China sees a developing power vacuum with the diminished role of the US – partially due to the financial crisis and partially due to a young and inexperienced president. Again, they’re not staking out a negotiating position, they’re telling the rest of the powers the way the table is set. Demands will follow later.
Too logical? Climate Change Is Nature's Way: It's our good luck one of Earth's many ice ages ended 12,000 years ago.
Yes, He Can: President Obama’s Power to Make an International Climate Commitment Without Waiting for Congress
Meanwhile, in this insanity, billions of taxpayer's $ to Third World countries to cope with an AGW which doesn't exist.
Video of no fuel, no emissions, no brains
He lives in a different world from that of Bernie Sanders
Hot Air: Merry Christmas: Senate ObamaCare vote may come on December 24th
Americans Souring on Democrats
Real global warming, at Insty
The atmosphere is cooling. Cold as hell in the Northeast now. And to our continued amusement, Copenhagen remains in a deepening deep freeze
Yes, Al Gore caught again lying like a Polar Bear-skin rug
Also via Lucianne: President Obama’s allies try to shield him from a potential climate catastrophe
Powerline on Pawlenty in NH. Right message.
Walker: Obama the America denier
Thursday, December 17. 2009
From A Jacksonian, trained as a geologist, on how science works and doesn't work:
The very first warning signs on Antrhopogenic Global Warming (AGW) and just plain old GW came from the paleoclimatologists who tried to run the models made for AGW/GW against known climates and what those models would predict for those climates. The models came through with junk, not even getting close to the actual climates they were tested against. When the paleoclimatologists asked for the datasets from those pushing AGW (mainly EA CRU, but elsewhere) they were stalled and rebuffed. Coming just after the K-T event and its aftermath, paleoclimatologists were not slow in criticizing the models, how they did not form into anything resembling known past climates nor did the models explain how those climates changed.
AGW/GW advocates refused to come out an play in the full contact body sport that was geology.
They retreated to the hothouse of academia, environmentalism and seeking to 'extract' government grants for their perfect theory of how bad man was to planet Earth. Apparently they couldn't model how nasty Earth was to life forms during the Permo-Triassic that saw over 95% of all species perish... but then geologists don't put an anthropomorphic form of the Earth on a pedestal and worship her. If you DID anthropomorphize the planet it would come out looking far worse than Pol Pot and all other mass murderers, combined, with just a hint of Charles Manson thrown in for fun. But then those seeking to castigate man don't bother to look at Earth's history, either.
On the Brink, at American Thinker. One quote:
Given the political landscape the left decided on a drastic approach: President Obama and his Congressional allies would take advantage of their temporary preponderance and go all in on their program to take control of three major sectors: health care, education and energy. Speed was of the essence; while the Republicans are in post-electoral disarray, attack, attack, attack, overwhelm the enemy's defenses, give him no time to regroup, and push through the coveted legislation. All the chips were placed on a blitzkrieg. Using a football analogy, the Democrats threw a Hail Mary pass into the enemy's end-zone, pinning all their hopes on one daring toss.
Fortunately, it hasn't worked out very well, thus far.
Wednesday, December 16. 2009
Tom Sowell's Christmas reading
How about a doppelganger for Christmas?
Militant Theophobes
Illegals, yes. Anatolie, no.
Climategate: Something’s Rotten in Denmark … and East Anglia, Asheville, and New York City
Copenhagen: 'This Guy's Just Showing Up to Collect His Check'
A good post with good links re Paul Samuelson
Good comments on our sexual addiction post
A book: Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law. Interesting reviews there at Amazon.
Ann Applebaum: Some climate-changers are anti-human.
The 2009 Obama Achievement List
Climate Scientists and Ethics: Some Advice from a Finance Professor
How would the Reid bill affect the middle class?
Protecting Investors or Prosecuting Innocents? The Dangers of Vagueness in Financial Fraud Laws
Kimball:
...if it is hard to ginger up any enthusiasm for the topic of health care reform, it is even harder to contemplate what is happening in Washington without an overwhelming sense of alarm. The Obama administration is not only on the threshold of usurping some 20 percent of the U.S. economy, handing it over to government bureaucrats to oversee, it is also just a few signatures away from utterly transforming medical culture and the way you will be allowed to interact with your doctors. Do you really want this?
And via Insty:
ANN ALTHOUSE: Blaming Obama Is The New Trend. “People just don’t want this bill. I think the big mistake was skipping the step of winning public support for a particular plan. It wasn’t enough that people believed there was a problem. People needed to believe the solution wasn’t worse than the problem. We were supposed to look away and trust them. The trust was never won, never earned. It’s been a horrific mess, and it just looks messier and messier as time wears on. Obama kept his distance, which looks pretty smart now.”
Alex Massie in Spectator: American Exceptionalism & the Decline of Limited Government
Re health care, the O says we're "on the precipice." Truth, for once. No wonder he uses a teleprompter most of the time.
DOE sends a “litigation hold notice” regarding CRU
Harry Reid, Card Shark
York: Why Democrats push health care, even if it kills them
City Journal: Teachers’ Unions vs. Progress—Again. New York resists reforms that would bring in millions and improve teacher quality.
Faster? Please. Yet another proclamation that global warming is "accelerating, much faster than we anticipated," as activists have been telling us since the late '90s.
I think that was shortly after the decade of global cooling scares.
Tiger on what Jamie Dimon should have said to the O, including this comment: "...it is hard to see how anybody smarter than a reporter would be fooled by such silliness."
Tuesday, December 15. 2009
Talking points and debating points, at Daily Express. Not that facts matter any more.
Related: Al Gore's mosquito story is pure BS. Malaria is only a tropical disease due to public health advances, DDT, and drainage of marshes in the developed world. At the turn of the last century, malaria was endemic in New England. Russia, too.
Related: It's all about the $. A quote:
Leaders of fifty African nations came to Copenhagen asking $400 billion for the next three years to "offset" carbon credit "damages" which they claim to suffer. Inexplicably, two days ago, that demand was increased to an eye-goggling 5% of GDP (gross domestic product), estimated at $722 billion from the United States alone. There never was a response from the industrialized world.
Related: Copenhagen summit carbon footprint biggest ever. Why not? Who cares? Live it up with the Danish hos and the limos and the grand hotel rooms and the smorgasbord and the aquavit. It's all for Gaia, after all.
Related, via Dino from some psychotic, self-aggrandizing moron at Copenhagen:
I just sat there thinking: It’s not enough. We didn’t do enough. I should have started earlier. People are dying already.
And, via Driscoll's It Was Necessary To Destroy The Carbon In Order To Save It:
Since we're doing sort-of fancy Christmas stuff, I am telling Santa that I like Christian Louboutin. Our gentlemen readers' wives or girlfriends might like that stuff too.
 Feeding the ego by going green
Terrible poll numbers for the O. Why?
Gimme money. That's what Copenhagen is all about.
WSJ: The 'Cost Control' Bill of Goods - How Peter Orszag and the White House sold a health-care illusion.
Didn't they say the polar ice would be gone in five years, three years ago? They are moving the goalpost.
Pick just one thermometer
Good political advice from Newt (video) h/t, reader
Thompson: The wrong kind of rich
30% of Dems believe in astrology. Good grief. Explains a lot.
Powerline: Are the wheels coming off healthcare?
Monday, December 14. 2009
Send a thanks, if you agree with him, to my independent and independent-minded Senator Joe Lieberman (with whom I agree about 30-40% of the time), for his strong stand against government-controlled medical care.
Here's his email.
I just sent him one. "Thank you, Sen. Joe."
 Oopsie daisy. Story at Dr. X. Luckily, it wasn't occupied yet. Only 1 guy was killed.
Government vs. Markets: Q&O
Vanderleun defuses Gore's lethal poem
Diversity Infects Medical School. Brilliant!
Heather Mac Donald: The Bilingual Ban That Worked
Thomas Sowell dissects intellectuals
How Mossad hacked the Syrian computers for their raid on the mysterious facility
Teddy Kennedy From The Grave: Medicare As A Path To Single Payer
Jimmy Carter: Abuse of Women Including Genital Mutilation is the Fault of Catholics & Southern Baptists.Everybody knew that.
Mark Steyn: Obama goes from dazzle to drone. A quote:
Can you believe this line made it into the speech?
"I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war."
Well, there's a surprise.
David Horowitz on Better Red than Dead.
Related, from Michelle: Hollywood & Howard Zinn’s Marxist education project. Good grief.
Why docs and hospitals are wary of government medicine, via Marginal Rev:
State Medicaid programs, by the way, are easily the worst payers, according to Athena's annual ranking. In New York, for instance, claims must be tendered on a dead-tree form instead of electronically and in blue ink—black is grounds for rejection—and then go on to spend a full 161 days, or almost a half year, in accounts receivable.
Sunday, December 13. 2009
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