Wednesday, July 8. 2009
From a commenter on our abortion post yesterday:
That we live in a land in which one can go to prison for harming the egg of a piping plover yet enjoy a Constitutionally protected right to exterminate their unborn human child speaks only the unspeakable about our national legacy.
Plover eggs: Yum. (Kidding aside, I am all in favor of protecting the endangered Piping Plover.)
Via Protein:
Mr Gore admitted that it was difficult to persuade the public that the threat from climate change was as urgent as that from Hitler.
And via Tim Blair re Al Gore:
He’s getting rich from environmentalism, not just by being paid a whopping $US175,000 ($217,500) a speech but by using political pressure to force government policy in a direction that benefits his business interests.
Via Wilkinson:
I worry that today’s equivalent of Robert McNamara is Peter Orszag, who I fear is poised to do for our health care system what McNamara did for Vietnam.
Michael Jackson still dead, etc, at Outside the Beltway:
Ah . . . the public’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge. It never ceases to amaze.
Via Wiz re the Repubs:
It is looking more so everyday that the Republican congressional leadership (pardon the oxymoron) is going to stand by and watch the place burn down.
It's the Rope-a-Dope strategery.
Via Ace:
"I sure hope [Sarah Palin's] family recovers from what she has done to them."
- Andrew Sullivan, independent roving ad-hoc obstetrician-at-large to Sarah Palin, and unofficial "gonzo geneologist" of Trig Palin
Via Marginal Rev:
The economy of sub-Saharan Africa—including Nigeria and South Africa—is smaller than the economy of New York City.
Government medical care means the government has nationalized your body.
Mark Steyn, filling in for Rush today. Hate to say it, but I'd rather listen to Mark these days.
From a piece at Junk Science, The Vision of our Healthcare. These are the correct rates for docs as determined by the geniuses at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid:
 Emergency medicine is valued at $38.36/hour, while chiropractors are at $65.33/hour (even 31% higher than previously) and osteopathic manipulative therapy is valued at $53.93/hour. Endocrinology (think especially diabetes and obesity) was valued by the PPIS at nearly twice what the CMS had been using to determine physician payments, and is now at $84.39/hour. Family medicine saw a similar increase and is now valued at $90.15/hour. In contrast, for example, Cardiologists’ value was cut nearly in half to $88.04/hour. Allergy and Immunology care was increased to $162.68/hour and Dermatology was increased to $184.62/hour.
When you’re injured or have a real medical emergency, or actually develop a disease, which of the best doctors will you hope are available to care for you: emergency medical physician, cardiologist, family medicine doctor, chiropractor or dermatologist?
News to me that chiropractors are covered by government insurance but, for all I know, they may cover massage too. Anyway, are these numbers insane? No doc could pay his school debt and his malpractice insurance on those fees, plus office and staff overhead.
This is valuing ER docs lower than what I pay my part-time secretary. But my real comparisons are my excellent plumber ($125/hr) and the local electronics repairman ($175/hr).
Read the whole piece. Another interesting bit he has in there is about the quackery of "Lifestyle Medicine." He has it right:
The popular belief, rigorously spread by the growing lifestyle medicine movement, is that chronic diseases of aging; such as cancers, heart disease and diabetes; can be prevented and are to blame on unhealthy diets and lifestyles and failing to control health risk factors. The actual fact is that the best randomized controlled trials (the gold standards of medical evidence) continue to fail to support such premises behind lifestyle medicine, as we’ve seen time and again. The 64 percent drop in age-related deaths from heart disease over the past 50 years, for example, is largely attributed to our modern, advanced medical care and coupled with the survival advantage of a better fed, immunized and overall healthier population. Even mainstream medicine is finally realizing lifestyle medicine is more pseudoscience and ideology than sound, evidence-based science.
Fads and quackery have always abounded in Medicine. Who would expect government to be able to tell the difference?
Related, how they keep medical costs down in England
Iran executes 5 Kurd students for "political activities". (Video - not a postcard - of the group hanging)
Related to the previous post on this site: An Abortion Party. I guess it's a sick variant of a baby shower?
Why does the US still have a bicameral legislature? Becker-Posner
Elegy found in a Seattle churchyard:
It seems to me that the hundreds of millions now addicted to "celebrity" are like those addicted to a heroin of the soul. Like heroin, "celebrity" must be taken in ever increasing doses to fill a hole in the user's soul. And just like heroin, "celebrity" doesn't fill anything but only increases the emptiness. Which, of course, only increases the need and requires an ever larger dose of the illusion; of the shrieking unquiet voices.
In my view, it's a misdirected striving for connection with God.
Is the economy headed for an iceberg? Debt and inflation.
England's new Green Cops. Good grief
Re oil prices: It Flabbergasts Me. Not me. It's politics.
Re cap and trade, at Q&O:
This is a massive attempt by government to take more control of the economy, based in shaky science at best, and as Anthony Watts claims, pure dogma. When warmers such as Paul Krugman are reduced to calling scientific skeptics “traitors to the planet”, you know they’ve essentially lost the argument and now have only emotional and populist rhetoric left to defend the indefensible.
Meanwhile, Al Gore says it's the war against the Nazis.
From IBD on the stimulus:
...there are only two possible conclusions: One, the stimulus has been the most inept public waste of money in history. Or two, it was a cynical attempt by the Democrats to vastly expand the scope of government during a time of crisis. Or maybe it's both.
Extend and Pretend, via SDA:
Bryan Marsal, CEO of Lehman Brothers Holdings (via Calculated Risk)
One of my partners said yesterday that we are going to call this phase the "extend and pretend" phase in our economy. Which is you extend someone's maturity - because they are going to default - and you pretend that business will come back or that leverage factor is going to come back.
Then we'll enter phase two, which he said is the request to extend or "amend".
Then "send". In other words send the keys.
That is the phases we are in right now. Everyone is trying to buy time, as opposed to dealing with the leverage, they are trying to buy time. Whether you are a banker or a company, they are all trying to buy time. I don't see the leverage coming back, and I don't see the consumption of good and services coming back.
Honduras in the WSJ: Why is the US not supporting the rule of law?
Musical beds and coed dorm rooms. How much studying would you get done?
Tuesday, July 7. 2009
 Global temps have crashed since Al Gore's movie (Photo: note health effects of our New England chill on one of our farm workers).
I think my main linking competitor in our square millimeter of the intertube kingdom isn't Insty - it's Larwyn at Doug Ross. He does a very good job, and he seems to have a similar notion of what needs to be put out there.
Always needs to be discussed: Negative and Positive Rights
Rep. Peter King goes after the Michael Jackson Dianafest.
The One. It's not a fairy tale, at Theo
Let the rich pay for my medical care. Why should I pay for it? And why should I have to be a grown-up, anyway?
Mayor Bloomberg as closet wussie. Malanga at City Journal
Mullah vs. Mullah in Iran. Sounds like civil war.
The ActBlue - Soros Complex
A piece at Am Thinker begins:
The health care debate in this country is an old story. It began in 1934 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to include government-funded health care in his "New Deal" as part of his comprehensive Social Security legislation. President Roosevelt was very concerned that the Supreme Court might rule parts of his "New Deal" unconstitutional. He tried to induce Congress to approve increasing the total number of justices on the Supreme Court to fifteen, attempting thereby to circumvent the judiciary and the Constitution by stacking the Court in his favor.
Subsequently, government funded health care has been debated in nearly every session of Congress since 1939.
It's an antique.
African delivers excellent put-down of liberal do-gooders.
Obama the student radical. Even the NYT wrote about it. Anchoress. However, we are all foolish in youth, because we haven't bumped into enough reality yet.
Billions in health care fraud and abuse? Where? What? The only medical abuse I am aware of is defensive medicine to avoid lawsuits.
Insty:
FABIUS MAXIMUS: Women dominating the ranks of college graduates – What’s the effect on America? I don’t know, but obviously we need to establish Men’s Centers and the like on campuses to help out a minority that seems to be doing poorly. Some earlier thoughts on the subject are here.
Economist needed. And it's a government job, too.
Why investment banks like Cap and Trade
As Moonbattery notes:
Imagine trying to explain to one of Obama's foot soldiers why food, housing, and medical care can't all be free.
Check out these deep thinkers:
People have stopped buying stuff. They are either paying off debt, or saving if they can. It's simple logic.
This from Surber's Saving our way into a recession:
Monday, July 6. 2009
If not, read this gloomy piece at Wizbang, and then break out the Prozac.
The Dems' twist on a GOP strategy: Spend now, tax later
Related at Am Thinker: How would you design a tax?
A radical feminist wonders why people hate Sarah Palin so much
Related, from Dr. Clouthier:
How many iconic images can one woman conjure? Well, that imagery links energetically to the common person’s hopes and fears. She brings out the clucking church ladies, yes, I’m talking about feminists, wanting to brand her with the scarlet letter for being powerful, sexual, female, beautiful and most of all, feminine. The fangs and claws are bared and it’s as transparent as the politics of a sixth grade dance. Make no mistake: If she were butch, we would not be having this discussion.
Related at Hugh Hewitt: Sarah is running a marathon
Daily sex with younger women helps men live longer.
Australian wine prices dropping lower than bottled water
From Spencer at Watts, re Cap&Trade:
...even if cap-and-trade does what is intended, the reduction in CO2 emissions as a fraction of global CO2 emissions will moderate future warming by, at most, around one tenth of a degree C by late in this century. That is probably not even measurable.
Of course, this whole discussion assumes that the climate system is very sensitive to our carbon dioxide emissions. But if the research we are doing is correct, then manmade global warming is being overestimated by about a factor of 5, and it is the climate system itself that causes climate change…not humans.
If that is the case, then nothing humanity does is going to substantially affect climate one way or the other. Indeed, given the fact that life on Earth depends upon the tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, I continue to predict that more atmospheric CO2 will, in the end, be a good thing for life on Earth.
Yet, many politicians are so blinded by the additional political power and tax revenue that will come from a cap-and-trade system that they do not want to hear any good news from the science. For instance, in my most recent congressional testimony, the good news I presented was met with an ad hominem insult from Senator Barbara Boxer.
I can only conclude that some politicians actually want global warming to be a serious threat to humanity. I wonder why?
The NYT implicitly doesn't want Waxman-Markey. Too weak, they think. They'd rather keep the issue going.
FDR and Positive Rights, etc, at Villainous
"A common bias among the smart is to overestimate how smart everyone else is." Stupider than you might realize
Are you better off than you were 2 years ago, when the Dems took over Congress?
Seen a Christian martyr lately? Here's one.
From Bloomberg on government spending:
The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.
It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors.
California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.
The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. I would imagine that he would be the intergalactic champion as well, if we could gather the data on deficits on other worlds. Obama has taken George W. Bush’s inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.
Robert Strange McNamara died today. The New York Times devotes thousands of words to justifying why McNamara should have been more a “dove” like today’s Times is on most issues. The Washington Post is only a bit more reserved in its thousands of words.
McNamara’s passing, however, in another take, does not end the Summer dreams that turned into national nightmares. Those nightmares are still being played out this Summer by President Obama and his advisors who recklessly pursue their lesson from Vietnam, to kiss up to our mortal enemies and to abandon our friends and those who rely upon the US as a bulwark of principled freedom.
In the Summer of 1964, we had incumbent President Johnson purposely downplaying the challenge in Vietnam of North Vietnam’s aggressions against the South, to further his election by gulling the electorate, while Barry Goldwater – painted as bringing on Armageddon in the Daisy political ad ranked as one of the vilest ever – spoke more plainly:
Make no bones of this. Don't try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And yet the President, who is Commander-in-Chief of our forces, refuses to say - refuses to say, mind you, whether or not the objective over there is victory. And his Secretary of Defense continues to mislead and misinform the American people, and enough of it has gone by….
Continue reading "McNamara & Obama's Summer Of Love"
Who knew? Good grief. In fact, Toyota is the most American car company.
 Please take a minute to catch up on our posts from the past few days. Some of us have been working while others have been playing.
Cuba: the happy country. That's why so many are taking leaky boats to live there.
Megapussi! Why not?
In which Nicholas Kristoff proves himself to be a fad-chasing dope (like Thomas Friedman). How much science did Kristoff take in school? Does he really know how to skeptically analyse data - with the math?
Related, from Shrinkwrapped:
Once upon a time, MSM reporters, columnists, and editors mediated our information environment. Authoritative newspapers, such as the New York Times, and newsreaders, like Walter Cronkite, not only determined what the news of the day was but also established the acceptable parameters for discussing the news. The advent of the blogosphere introduced a complication to this structure. Suddenly, true experts in their fields could discuss what they considered to be the news in an unmediated fashion with their readers. One of the more interesting outcomes of such "contamination" of the once pristine MSM narrative was the spreading awareness that reporters, much of the time, are out of their depth talking about most technical subjects and that their biases blind them all too frequently to a full understanding of their subjects. This would be embarrassing and deflating to our MSM sages if they but noticed. Unfortunately, to a large extent, the MSM still determines what qualifies as "news" and continue to exercise their role as information gatekeepers in ways which damage our society.
The buggy-whip problem. What good is there in saving obsolete, union-controlled businesses?
Semi-related: regulations usually just protect the established, and inhibit the new. Just one of Washington's dirty secrets.
Stats show it was the no money down mortgages that were the real problem
Kaus: 'We'll raise your taxes and in exchange we're going to cut your treatments.' I mean, how could that not have widespread appeal?
How bad is Waxman-Markey? Read Betsy's link, and weep.
How bad is Dem dominance?
Sounds like an historic crack in Iran to me, too. We will see.
Tax Day Tea Party: Socialism is slavery. Of course it is. Our slaves were happy, weren't they? Free house, free food, guaranteed job, singing all day and strummin' on the ol' banjo in the evening?
Reminds me of Paul with his jailor: Convert the Atheist Game Show.
Saturday, July 4. 2009
Pity us San Diegans. It’s really hard to get too worked up about anything when you live in paradise. Especially when today’s Tea Party was held at perhaps the most crowded, impossible to park at site in our area, the beautiful Mission Bay Park, magnet for picnicking and water-frolicking families and friends. Mile long lines to exit I5, then a two-lane access road of bumper-to-bumper traffic hemmed in by the largest congregation of monster RV’s who must have arrived at dawn to hog 5+ parking spaces apiece.
The several hundred who showed up for the Tea Party at 11 AM had to hike in a mile or two, if not giving up. I persevered, finding a spot on the other side of Fiesta Island, enjoying the long walk in the balmy, sea breeze sun, counting thongs, and watching the ski boaters. 
Fellow walkers.
 I finally arrived. For the drivers crawling along, this roadside bunch received honks and cheers from thousands of traffic-clogged drivers. No road rage here, just Obama-irked.
Here’s a photo of the crowd as I approached.
My Catskills humor, whoever picked this spot has less judgment than the President, drew chuckles from the crowd of laid-back San Diegans. Better received than the droning on of the featured speakers, an organizer telling me no local notables invited. Would have had to commandeer a Marine chopper and rapelled in, anyway.
Appreciated being given a free pocket-size, indexed Constitution, on the front: “…its only keepers, the people” quote from George Washington, and more good Founders’ quotes inside the covers.
These Don’t Tread On Me T-shirts sold out at only $10 each. As many Don’t Tread On Me flags waving as Stars-n-Stripes.
So, that’s what the Tea in Tea Party stands for.
Friendly people wherever I stopped.
I didn’t see anyone passing contact lists or such. A nice event, but some work needed to build an activist movement. But, in San Diego’s paradise, we’re just Lotusized.
Now, I’m on to the juiciest, meatiest rack of ribs, and some delectable Belgian beer. Happy 4th.
BTW, here's some other Tea Parties, courtesy of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds.
Taking a little break from cleaning the basement, which has now dried out but still smells musty. I had to hose down and sun-dry tons of hunting and fishing gear. Mold on my Filson wax trousers and chaps, but it could be hosed off.
Later, will trim some hedges. Then, take a needed shower, and go to a big annual 4th barbecue party with the reading of the Declaration followed by bbq pork, squid salad, shrimp risotto, lobsters, and burgers, tons of different salads and pies including rhubarb - my favorite - and real cocktails too. Hope it doesn't rain again, but a t-storm will probably blow through. It always does, as if to remind us of the battles for freedom. God's fireworks make man's fireworks seem small.
 At Reason TV, PJ O'Rourke asks "Where was the government with Studebaker?" I miss seeing them, but never would have bought one.
The Anchoress has tons of misc thoughts about Palin. I like the lady, but I'm just not that into celebs.
Speaking of Palin, here's Alaska
Speaking of celebs, fat celebs are stoking the obesity crisis. Stoke on, celebs. It's a free country.
East Germans: life was better under Communism. As we have said repeatedly, not everybody is suited for freedom. Americans are supposed to be.
The "ominous rise" of adjuncts in colleges and universities. Seems to me like normal job conditions for most folks.
Is Afghanistan "winnable"? Matthew Parris doubts it. Afg. isn't a country, except in name only. So what is there to win? Afg, it seems to me, is an attempt at nation-building where there never was a nation. A tall order.
The Great Lakes water levels are rising again. They said AGW was making them drop. Waiting to see if they'll say that AGW is making them rise. My view? There is no "normal" level any more than there are "normal" temperatures. Nature is always in flux.
Shut down debate on health care, says the O to the Dems
What's with Powell? Is he just a regular confused person like me?
Powell in May: Americans Want to Pay More Taxes... Powell in July: But We Can't Afford This
Image: Our international readers may not realize that the Gadsden flag, often featured on libertarian-minded websites, was an early American flag back before the upholstery stripes.
To our independence we owe that our first among firsts President, George Washington, labored to keep a poorly supplied army in the field. George Washington had at his back a Jew, Haym Solomon, largely responsible for obtaining crucial funding. (See below) Now we have as President a man of another stripe, whose commitment to our security and the lives of our fighting men and women is summed up as WTF! That seems his attitude toward others’ as well, say Israel for example, or to be made an example of his pusillanimity.
Jules Crittendon and Herschel Smith bring us, sadly, up to date.
First Crittendon:
Bob Woodward on the ground at Camp Leatherneck reported this morning in an article ridiculously headlined, Preventing Another Iraq/US Says Key to Success in Afghanistan: Economic, Not Military, that the Obama admin considers it a “new era.”
The headline is not Woodward’s fault, except to the extent he buried and obfuscated his lede. He reports after the jump that National Security Advisor James L. Jones briefed commanders on the ground that there won’t be more troops, that requests for more troops will prompt a “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” response in the Oval Office.
That’s your lede, Bob. There’s your hed, Washington Post copy desk. Obama to Troops: “WTF?”
…
…Jones knew when he took the job it would involve smiling through a lot of shit sandwiches. Shit sandwiches like telling other Marines, going into combat, “Sorry boys, you don’t get what you need. Not because we can’t give it to you. But because President Nancypants won’t give it to you. Doesn’t like the way war looks on him and he’ll go all Whiskey Tango Foxtrot if you try to foist it on him. So suck it up.”
…
Too bad. It’s something American troops have dealt with before and will most earnestly endeavor to deal with now. Maybe they can pull it off. The United States military, after all, has proven remarkably resourceful, resilient and adaptive not just in these wars but in all the wars it has fought. It would be helpful this time, going into this difficult task, if the Commander in Chief’s attitude toward the expertise of the men who will to the heavy lifting was something other than “What the fuck?”
Now Smith concludes:
So we now know that the current administration sees Operation Enduring Freedom as the WTF? war. We know that the National Security Advisor doesn’t have the fortitude to whisper the hard things in the ear of the President. We know that the President doesn’t really want to deploy more troops to Afghanistan, and we also know that the Colonels want more troops to cover their area of operations.
This sets the stage for the coming phase of the campaign. We have seen this before in Iraq: hasty turnover to the ISF and more difficult counterinsurgency than had previously been planned. The dissimilarity is a President who was willing to send the necessary forces to get the job done.
Now, Wikipedia on Haym Solomon:
Solomon negotiated the sale of a majority of the war aid from France and Holland, selling bills of exchange to American merchants. Solomon also personally supported various members of the Continental Congress during their stay in Philadelphia, including James Madison and James Wilson. Acting as the patriot he was, he requested below market interest rates, and he never asked for repayment.[4]…
In 1975 the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Haym Saloman for his contributions to the cause of the American Revolution. This stamp, like others in the "Contributors to the Cause" series, was printed on the front and the back. On the glue side of the stamp, the following words were printed in pale, green ink:
"Financial Hero—Businessman and broker Haym Solomon was responsible for raising most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution and later to save the new nation from collapse." The Congressional Record of March 25, 1975 reads, "When Morris was appointed Superintendent of Finance, he turned to Solomon for help in raising the money needed to carry on the war and later to save the emerging nation from financial collapse. Solomon advanced direct loans to the government and also gave generously of his own resources to pay the salaries of government officials and army officers. With frequent entries of 'I sent for Haym Solomon,' Morris' diary for the years 1781–84 records some 75 transactions between the two men."
Haym Solomon died unpaid back and broke.
We may have thought things had improved in America over the past centuries of attaining greatness. But, then, we got Obama.
Friday, July 3. 2009
 Her speech showed how good she is, how real she is.
No notes, no teleprompter either. From the heart. I almost cried when she said "The world needs more Trigs" to keep us oriented to the important things. The "elites" don't get it - nor do they know how to operate a fishing boat.
She sounds sane, refreshingly unpolished, as Levin says. She has a life, unlike most pols. Too sane for politics? Or what does she want? Whatever it is, she sure does get attention, doesn't she?
A cool story.
A few links at Insty.
Via Attack Machine -
He thinks so deep that he studies Urdu poetry. No doubt.
That Urdu poetry might be why he is becoming such a screw-up. An overdose of Urdu poetry is known to be dangerous and I know why: I have read more of it than the O has.
 Billions and billions of Indian sodomists are off the hook. What a relief.
Betsy, with more on Ricci:
As people celebrate the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor simply because of her ethnic background and not because of her judicial background, we know that giving people a leg up solely because of their ethnicity is nowhere near over.
Kristol:
Almost a half-century before, a young Democratic president had said this:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Once an American president had promised we would bear any burden. Our current president promises "we will continue to bear witness." It's quite an evolution.
Is this like "I like to watch"?
From his boss at the EPA:
Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate." Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.
I say, Burn the heretic at the stake. Thereby adding a little CO2 to warm up New England. We need it.
Powerline:
Where does the Obama administration end and the Washington Post begin? That is becoming an increasingly metaphysical question.
Related from Discoll: Was anybody really surprised?
More Honduras:
Last Saturday, Honduran soldiers marched into the presidential palace, bundled up President Manuel Zelaya and put him on a plane for Costa Rica.
The ouster had been ordered by the Supreme Court and approved by the Congress, as Zelaya was attempting an illegal referendum to change the Honduran constitution so he could run for another term.
Will someone please explain why this bloodless transfer of power to the civilian legislator first in line for the presidency, in a sovereign nation, is any business of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers or Barack Obama? For all have denounced the "coup" and demanded Zelaya's immediate return.
The hypocrisy here is astounding.
Thoughtful post on adverse selection at Marg Rev. It's a handy concept.
Krugman makes for a fine straw man. Sort of like Sullivan does. Usually straw men are unreal, as in "some say...", but these buffoons are, seemingly, real. Krugman wants more government stimulus. WTH? This is like idiot religion: If your prayers aren't answered, just pray harder.
h/t to Tiger for this series of photos from Afghanistan from the past couple of days. God bless 'em and protect them. Here's one of the pics (note the pup keeping an eye on the photog):
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