Tuesday, June 23. 2009
From Samuelson on Our Sinking Welfare State:
What most Americans identify as government "welfare" are payments to single mothers, food stamps and (perhaps) Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor. But that's not the half of it. Since 1960, government has changed radically. Then, 52 percent of federal spending went for defense, 26 percent for "payments for individuals" -- the welfare state. By 2008, 61 percent consisted of "payments for individuals," 21 percent for defense.
Social Security and Medicare -- programs for the elderly -- represented the lion's share: $1 trillion in 2008. Most Americans don't consider these programs "welfare," but they are. Benefits are paid mainly by present taxes; there's little "saving" for future benefits; Congress can alter benefits whenever it wants. If that's not welfare, what would be?
Pressures on private and public welfare won't abate.
Related, from Kohlmayer at Front Page:
This is what Tait Trussell of the Acton Institute wrote in an article just last week:
“[I]n just three years from now, Social Security and Medicare will need one out of ten tax dollars, John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis points out. And just 11 years in the future—by 2020—Uncle Sam will need one out of every four income tax dollars to fund these programs for seniors. If we continue with all other government programs in operation today and raise the taxes to pay for Medicare, plus Medicaid—the health program for low-income folks—the Congressional Budget Office estimates a middle-income family by the middle of this century will have to pay two-thirds of its total income in federal taxes.”
This situation defines the term “unsustainable.” Why is not President Obama proposing a “fix” to avert this approaching catastrophe? Curiously enough, not only he is unconcerned, but he seems to think that the unviable entitlements constitute some sort of achievement. This is what he said about them in Chicago:
Presidents have called for health care reform for nearly a century…But while significant individual reforms have been made – such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program – efforts at comprehensive reform that covers everyone and brings down costs have largely failed.
The president apparently believes that these failing federal programs already represent reform and that all that is needed now is to create something that would quickly become the mother of all entitlements – governmentally guaranteed universal healthcare.
Americans should really worry when their president fails to recognize the real dilemma we face as a nation: Either we reform entitlements or we let them drag us down the dark pit of insolvency.
Monday, June 22. 2009
Enjoyably humorous rant at Doug Ross. A quote (and image on right):
They've been lying about the number of people without health care. They've been lying about whether the public is satisfied with health care. They've been lying about every aspect of health care.
They unleashed the slip-and-fall lawyers on the medical system, causing untold higher costs for medical practitioners. They've attacked the health care system relentlessly, driving up costs just like they've attacked the energy industry and the automakers.
And even when they have complete monopolistic control of a system, like the educational system in America, they want more control. It's never enough. They want more money, more regulations. More. They need to "invest". They need to raise taxes. They need to repress. They need to compel.
Because the Statist cannot make the imperfect perfect, even though he says he can. The Statist is more imperfect than anyone else.
Related: Labour is like our Dems: their perennial strategy is to make as many as possible dependent on the government. That way, they hope to have jobs and power forever. Via TimesOnline:
Labour lags behind on almost every indicator, save one: it is still regarded as the party more likely to protect public services. An Guardian/ICM poll last week revealed that 48% of voters think Labour will protect services, whereas 46% think the Conservatives will do the same. Labour has a positive score of 1%, ie, more people believe Labour will protect services than harm them. The Tories have a deficit of 3%.
An architect of new Labour whispers in my ear, and Gordon’s, that people do not yet have full confidence in the Tories. The position of Cameron is much better than that of his party; the opposition’s lead is shallow. “If you do not trust them on the public services,” he says, “it’s a reflection of a deeper distrust that they have not really changed.”
White House admits not telling truth about health care scheme
Something happenin' here...CBS compares Iran to Kent State. You could, if you ignore the realities.
"Ma'am and "Sir." Blue Crab. I was raised to use those words.
Call me old-fashioned. I thought golf was for gentlemen.
More on those health care polls. Powerline
Taliban doesn't want boys to learn to read either. It's like a glimpse into Europe, c. 600 AD
What is it about Liberals and the military?
Ignorance or perfidy? The NYT's reporting on the DNA case
Steyn comments on The State Despotic
Samiz:
I have tried pointing Americans at the British example to show them what an appalling idea it is to have the state directing any industry, let alone medical care. But alas it is very hard to overcome that special kind of insular American optimism that does not think what happens in another advanced first world nation can teach them anything, because in the USA things will be different.
Her name was Neda
Good hoax. I love stuff like that.
Widow of murdered fly seeks White House apology
Surber via Insty:
DON SURBER: Don’t Become West Virginia. “If poverty is so good, then why do we have anti-poverty programs? Using her logic, we should have pro-poverty programs.” Well, that’s pretty much what’s going on right now . . . .
Unbelievable: Barney Frank calls on Fannie and Freddie to relax lending standards. What, again?
Oregon has the California Disease: Driving business away with zillions of tax hikes
We said we would not make fun of Michelle O's garden, but this is ridiculous. Didn't they just plant the seeds a few weeks ago? I want to know what magic fertilizer they use. Potemkin garden? Or is this a loaves and fishes deal?
Sunday, June 21. 2009
Superb on-the-ground report in the second half. Read it all. When people bleed for tyranny, we feel ill. When they bleed for freedom, we are inspired - and we hope we could be so bold ourselves.
Continual Iran updates at Gateway, whence the photo. We wish the best for all of the brave and lovely women in Iran's Lipstick Revolution.
Related: Driscoll notes that great powers always have a dog in the fight, because a posture of evenhanded neutrality always has non-neutral effects.
Related: Ace rightly notes that the O's refusal to stand strong with the protesters can damage future relations with Iran. The man is a pussy, a Prom Queen. The only things he gets tough with are Republicans, FOX news, and our international allies and friends like the Brits and Israel.
Related: NYT says Supreme Leader has lost his aura. They are not referring to the O.
Fresh grilled, organic Neanderthal. Yum
Via Dino:
Obama himself gave us ample warning of his reckless grandiosity during the 2008 campaign. So we can’t say we weren’t warned. The situation has only gotten worse in the months since his inauguration. And there’s 3.5 years to go. Help!
Related: No enthusiasm for medical care reform
Related: Medical care plan would not apply to Congress! Via Blue Crab:
From what is known about the tippity-top secret bill at this point, it appears that it is bad enough that Congress will not allow it to apply to themselves or the rest of the Federal government.
That should tell you all you need to know about this bill.
Roger Cohen of the NYT is in the streets. Related: The O steps up to the plate, befuddling those who defended his silence.
Vanderleun found a new financial manager
Big goose hunt in NYC. Wish they had called us. It could have been a good Maggie's Farm outing with 12 ga. guns, BB shot, and no limit.
Michelle O and Walpin.
I agree that the "war against drugs" failed. It's been going on since Nixon. All it does is raise the cost of drugs and increase the crime. It's past time to re-think it. It's too bad that drug users generally have little interest in getting over it, but that's reality.
What the late lamented Milton Friedman said about medical care costs. He makes a number of excellent points, including that it is employee insurance that drives the prices up. h/t, Mankiw
Why would anyone want to release rabid rats?
Do not take photos of kids in England. It's assumed you're a pervert if you do.
The looming middle class tax increases. Even some Dems are waking up, like drunks after a bad binge. They have been drinking on our nickel since January.
Move over, Climate Change. The hysteria du jour is Swine Flu.
Saturday, June 20. 2009
The New York Times, otherwise known as the Grey Lady, might more appropriately be known as Obama’s Shady Lady. Believe its poll and get a Times Square disease.
The lead headline is about a NYT/CBS News Poll, trumpeting “Wide Support for Government-Run Health.” The lead paragraph:
Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind [72%] one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
BUT, according to the actual poll data, of the 73% of respondents who said they voted in 2008 only 34% voted for McCain and 66% for Obama. The actual vote was 46% (corrected) McCain. So, 29% of McCain voters ignored by the poll must not be Americans, according to the NYTs methodology, and there are about as much an overpolling of Obama voters. NYT's Shady Lady polling.
If you don't have unlimited funds and if you are not the sort of experienced traveller who likes to do everything yourself, your own way, check out our friends at Club ABC before the summer is over.
As you can imagine, times are tough in the travel biz but that means that there are still ways to go someplace interesting without breaking the bank. The prices are better than they should be.
The folks at ABC have been generous to Ducks Unlimited. Enuf said.
In the wake of trying to squelch three federal Inspector Generals, there’s this story about how those who try to expose Obama, Obama administration, and Obama ally activities are dealt with.
[UPDATE: ACORN tries to hide behind a change in name, and more about it trying to squelch former members. Same smell remains.]
ACORN/ProjectVote has filed a suit against Anita Moncrief, asking damages of well over $5 million. Anita Moncrief is a former employee who has distributed internal emails to exhibit illegal ties between the Obama presidential campaign and ACORN/ProjectVote, and she has testified and written widely about what she knows. ACORN/ProjectVote has received tens of millions of federal funds and is slated to receive many, many more millions.
The 30-page civil action filed by ProjectVote is downloadable here. Legal papers are not my usual Saturday morning reading, but this one caught my eye as an illustration of legal thuggery.
The charges are basically three:
Moncrief misappropriated about $1700 while an employee, of which she’paid back about $500 before Moncrief’s employment was terminated. She helped expose how a former executive stole $1million. In a blogpost by Moncrief last November, she admits her own misuse of funds and takes responsibility, pleading extreme need due to poor health insurance benefit and pay. Yet the suit presents nothing about trying legally to recover the remaining funds from her. The charge appears in order to lay groundwork for reducing Moncrief’s credibility and as reason for her seeking vengeance.
The next charge is that Moncrief misappropriated ProjectVote’s trademark by her use of the email address projectvotenews@mail.org to distribute internal emails exhibiting embarrassing doings to donors. This appears a weak charge as in this grey area of law it does not appear she infringed on the trademark. See, for example, “Fair Use of Trademarks” at the The Publishing Law Center.
The next charge is that Moncrief damaged relationships with donors. No impact on donations is presented. Another weak charge.
The complaint includes, in addition to Moncrief, a “John Doe”, another employee who may have supplied Moncrief with additional internal material. This appears an effort to unearth the remaining whistleblowing mole.
A competent legal team for Moncrief should be able to deal with the charges, and in the process of discovery and media coverage bring further to light ACORN/ProjectVote’s nature. Hopefully, Moncrief will obtain it, or be squelched by her own lack of funds to defend herself and our right to know where and how our tax dollars are used.
Of note, the New York Times shut down its investigation of ACORN/ProjectVote. Newsbusters describes some of the details.
But apparently Moncrief's information was suddenly no good when it might have embarrassed the Obama campaign.
Heidelbaugh testified before a congressional committee in March that the nonprofit group violated a host of tax, campaign finance, and other laws. She said the Obama campaign sent ACORN its "maxed out donor list" and asked two of the avowedly nonpartisan group's employees "to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN."
The 48' Colin Archer above is for sale, but what we really need up here in the Northeast is an Ark. Almost up to 40 days and 40 nights of cold rain. Nobody is boating much yet. I call all crummy weather "climate change" now. Don't you? Aren't we entitled to nice weather? Why doesn't the government do something about it?
Consumer Reports on digital cameras
Why is The Economist thriving?
Cool military mini-flying robots, with video
Iran has clamped down, but one message goes out
Via Examiner:
...when asked the most important economic issue facing the country, 24% chose the budget deficit and only 11% chose health care
Related, at Cafe hayek:
I want more rationing with less control where power is dispersed. The "reformers" want more rationing with more control and more power. They scare me.
Related: The O's own Doc knocks Obamacare
Related: Honeymoon is over
Related: Dems cannot agree on cap & trade.
What happened to AARP? Volokh:
AARP's official mission is now stated as leading "positive social change".
Sheesh. Gimme a break. They think they are the YWCA? But why should I care?
From Insty:
JOHN TIERNEY: U.S. Climate Report Assailed: “The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters.”
Does academia believe that they all think alike because they're smarter than me? I do not think that they are. They just chose different careers. Everybody is a careerist, to some extent.
Coyote calls out the BS brigade. There is no warming, boys and girls.
The usually serene Kimball loses it about Frank Rich. Don't we all?
Tort law in America is like a lottery. $16 million for what?
Megan: Is comprehensive health care dead? Related, at NRO:
It is a foregone conclusion that the bill now getting marked up in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) is not going anywhere.
Related, Wherein Tyler Cowan makes no sense to me:
Note that the economy has seemed to stabilize, more or less, and well under ten percent of the stimulus money has been spent to date. Moving forward, if no further major programs will be put into place, how would you like to spend the rest of that cash?
Seriously.
But Tyler, that cash doesn't exist yet. It's debt. Debt isn't money - it's negative money.
Friday, June 19. 2009
My grandmother, advocate of the turn of the century (that’s early 1900’s) democratic socialism based in defense of the little guy from rampant big business, taught me that the biggest myth in America is the efficiency of big business. So, government grew in regulations and programs, and so did unions, to counter big business and favor the little guy. ‘Till now it’s a truism that big government is inefficient and too little the friend of the little guy, and big unions are money founts for their leaders at the expense of labor having jobs. Meanwhile, big business has more and more become an ally of big government and unions to divide the spoils, and stifle competition and innovation. All that leaves to maneuver for the little guy against the increasing encroachments of the biggies is small business and individuals.
It’s time for more small businesspeople and individuals to defy the biggies with a chant of I am Spartacus, or I am an American.
(No, I didn’t purposely ignore big academia. It has made itself largely irrelevant via meaningless coursework enriching self-serving pedants.)
Consider a few datapoints:
Investigative journalist Tim Carney reminds us that in 1993 the biggest insurers supported Hillarycare, to shift liability risk onto taxpayers and profit from claims-processing contracts. Small insurers, brokers who work with small companies, and individuals revolted. Today, the big insurers are again cooperating with the government-dictated health care advocates, as long as the big insurers can profit from more premium payers steered their way.
The Canadian medical societies remind us not to go north for a model of government-dictated health care, as the waits are excessive by even long-wait standards approved by the government.
The former Chief Economist of the US Chamber of Commerce reminds us (sorry, a subscription only column) that when government as umpire controls a team, bad and self-serving calls are to be expected.
Michelle Malkin reminds us that Mrs. Obama and President Obama’s chief political operative worked to reduce care for the poor, to enrich her employer (and her compensation).
Mickey Kaus reminds us that unions are to be exempted from Obamacare, and further benefit from attracting members through higher benefits than the rest of us.
The CEO of the consumer highest-rated insurer in the US reminds us that he doesn’t so much fear government-plan competition but, “more about the federal government’s ability to do this at all, much less do it well. Merely coordinating basic demographic information between Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - three big federal programs that millions of Americans belong to - can be a chore for beneficiaries, their children, and their health plans.”
Be Spartacus. Say "I am American. I refuse to be pushed around by the biggies, or under their thumb."
Write or call your congressional representatives to represent your views.
Ask your employer and your doctors to do so too.
Bill Whittle, on why socialized medicine matters. (It's the door to socialized everything.)
From Moonbattery:
"Mr. Gorbachev, that wall is none of our business." — Ronald Reagan
"December seventh, nineteen forty-one. A date upon which we must ask ourselves, what could we have done to avoid this?" — FDR
"Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you!" — JFK
"If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. Pretty sure that's gonna happen on my watch." — G. W. Bush
"Speak softly and eloquently." — Teddy Roosevelt
"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you really only need to fool the majority of people until the election is over." — Abraham Lincoln
"To be prepared for war is far too provocative." — George Washington
Ruling cleric warns protesters. I know it doesn't take 51% of a population to make a revolution: it only takes a 5% highly-motivated core or, as in our American Rev, about 30% support.
But what if their election was relatively legit, with only Chicago-style fraud?
We would all be pleased to see Iran return to modern civilization, but what if the majority do not think that way? What if the majority want a combative Islamic theocracy with a dopey selected figurehead in his Members Only jacket?
What if a majority value their religion over modernity and the Western community, and the protesters are mainly the urbanites and students? Then what?
Photo: Esfehan protest this week, via Gateway who is constantly on top of this story
Related: No hope and change for Iran. Krauthammer
Got rain? Man, have we had rain. Great for our new transplants. We are working on an ark as I type. No doubt global warming is causing the cooling and rain.
Why Waterloo is important to us all. Jules
A Kangaroo story, with special photo.
Pure reasonableness re Iran. Tiger. Proof that these intertubes need not always be an emotional vomitorium.
Also reasonable: Get off the O's garden. Fake or not, gardens are good. Rich folks like the Os can afford instant gardens - but we pay the bills for them. Thus it's your garden too, in a government sort of way. Ask for a tomato.
And also reasonable: AVI speaks on on Health Care
Let's discuss medical insurance. No, says ABC and the WH. I guess it's settled science.
Why higher ed is stuck in the middle ages
Here's a dumb lawsuit for ya. Althouse
Rural Dems have beefs with the O. Of course they do. He doesn't know any of those us people.
Where did life come from? The NYT wants to know. Let's just call it a Cosmic Life Force. God forbid we term Cosmic Forces "God." h/t, LGF
Insty:
P.C. POLICING: British cops stop and hassle thousands to “balance racial statistics.”
So true: Stressful life events are themselves quite heritable.
"I'll never trust a man again." Good idea. We are all Evil. Barely human.
Related, from Dr. C:
The problem for the feminists is that the brand is ruined beyond recognition. When people think feminists they think man-hating, abortion-loving, children-resenting, big-mouthed butch lesbians.
We sure do. Once their goals were accomplished, they were coopted by the loonies. Like this one.
Via No Pasaran:
A primary reason America is "waiting" and "watching" and "monitoring" while Iranians are beaten in the streets of Tehran is that the country is led by the left.
…the world is "closely following the situation," just as it followed the situations of the Jews during the Holocaust, the Ukrainians, the Chinese under Mao, the Rwandans, the Cambodians, Tibetans, and so many others.
Thursday, June 18. 2009
It’s not yet time to beat a dead horse, but it’s increasingly obvious that the Left’s horse is faltering badly before the finish line of grasping control of healthcare.
The Pew Research Center reports that public support for healthcare reforms is lower now than in 1993 for HillaryCare.
More centrist congressional Democrats are staking out a more moderate position than the Democrat Party’s more radical leadership.
Jennifer Rubin, at Commentary’s Contentions blog, chuckles at Leftist naïf Ezra Klein’s revealing the Senate Democrats are being forced to significantly scale back their grand scheme: “One has to laugh: no Santa and no universal healthcare plan that ‘holds down costs.’ ”
How much longer before President Obama has to throw this dead horse under the bus, or falls off his high-horse?
As the Wall Street Journal points out:
This was supposed to be a red-letter week for national health care, as Democrats started the process of hustling a quarter-baked bill through Congress to reorganize one-sixth of the economy on a partisan vote. Instead it was a fiasco.
Most of the devastation was wreaked by the Congressional Budget Office, which on Tuesday reported that draft legislation from the Senate Finance Committee would increase the federal deficit by more than $1.6 trillion over the next decade while only partly denting the population of the uninsured. The details haven't been made public, but the short version seems to be that President Obama's health boondoggle prescribes vast new spending without a coherent plan to pay for it even while failing to meet its own standards for social equity.
Daschle urges the O to drop public "option". People want more choices (which is good), but are fearful of being locked into a gummint bureaucracy.
People aren't stupid. As we posted earlier today, It's not about you. They just want you to have to come to them, hat in hand.
Seraphine
"Séraphine is one of the most evocative films about an artist I’ve ever seen—and in its treatment of madness one of the least condescending." (New York Magazine) Séraphine, which swept the Césars with seven wins earlier this year, is a dramatic new biopic from French director Martin Provost. Once a humble servant in a small town, Séraphine de Senlis rose to prominence as a self-taught “naïve” painter. Her discovery by art critic and collector Wilhelm Uhde, however, led to the fame and fortune that eventually cut her off from her inspiration, and ultimately to her unraveling. This film—a throwback to the European tradition of vintage arthouse storytelling—was described by the L.A. Times as “an examination, both unsettling and deeply touching, of the sources of creativity, the vagaries of renown, and the complexities of relationships.” Martin Provost. 2008. 125 m. NR. France/Belgium, French/German/with subtitles. Music Box Films.
Official website/Trailer | L.A. Times review
For those not living near a foreign film theater, go see The Hangover for some fun and big laughs.
Big headline in this morning’s San Diego newspaper: “Californians largely favor health care fixes.”
The [Field Poll] survey of registered voters in California found that a huge majority favors President Barack Obama's proposal to allow people to choose between a government-sponsored health plan and private insurance.
The poll also showed considerable bipartisan agreement among voters about various health care proposals, but sharp disagreement between Democrats and Republicans about how to pay for them.
Basically, looking at the actual poll tabulations, about 90% of those polled having health insurance, there’s generally broad agreement among Democrats and Independents on nice sounding goals (“Given the serious economic problems facing the country, which of the following two statements comes closest to your own views regarding what should be done about health care reform?” It is more important than ever: Democrats 85%, Independents 69%, Republicans 39%) but an lesser willingness to personally pay more for them, preferring that someone else does (“Having a new value added tax which is like a national sales tax” Favor strongly or somewhat: Democrats 53%, Independents 39%, Republicans 25%; Compare to “Limit the tax deductions available to families making more than $250,000 a year” Favor strongly or somewhat: Democrats 69%, Independents 60%, Republicans 42%).
When it has come, however, to actual votes, even the liberal California state legislature has shied away from imposing government-dictated health care schemes. As the “progressive” New America Foundation said of the lesson from the rejected 2007 scheme for California, “the issues of affordability for families and sustainability for taxpayers must be satisfactorily addressed.” An understatement. As a Kaiser Foundation 2009 poll sums up: “A slim majority of Democrats (53%) are willing to pay more for providing coverage, while 38% of independents and 29% of Republicans say the same.” Other polls indicate that even among those willing to pay more, the amount is nominal. For example, among the uninsured, those of small income (under $20,000/year) are willing to pay $100 per month and those earning much more ($80,000) $200, versus actual comprehensive insurance costs of about $400 for individuals and over $1,000 for families.
The overall California results and the split between Democrats, Independents and Republicans is more marked than elsewhere, but indicative of splits elsewhere. California is a heavily Democrat state, with the proportion of registered Democrats and Democrat leaning Independents increasing significantly between 2004 and 2008. The Field Poll is of those registered to vote, not of those who do vote. Even though registered voters are whiter, earn more and are older than the population, those moved to vote are even more so.
Take note Congress.
Pro-government-dictated health care pup Ezra Klein points out that, according to a cited study, only about 10% of early deaths from disease are due to “shortfalls in medical care,” versus from “behavioral patterns, 40 percent” or “genetic predispositions, about 30 percent.” Klein asks, then, “If medical care has such a minor impact on a person's longevity, why are we spending so much time and energy reforming the industry?” Klein says it’s because the focus is on the profits, jobs and government-largesse at stake for the interests involved. I would add, it’s because of the power that can be garnered by Washington over our lives and pockets, and the contributions that can be garnered by politicians.
Take note taxpayers. Take note citizens. Take note those in real health care need. It’s not about you.
BTW: According to the latest New York Times poll, only 7% see health care problems as the nation’s top priority, versus 38% the economy and 19% jobs. That’s why the Times reports, “fewer than half [44%] of Americans saying they approve of how he has handled health care and the effort to save General Motors and Chrysler [41%].” 56% say the government is doing too much that is better left to individuals and business. 60% say Obama hasn’t a clear plan to deal with the budget deficit. They’re wrong. Obama clearly aims to deepen the deficit.
US public wary of deficit, economic intervention. Rightly so. Only fools trust a government. Related: 100 Stimulus projects to really piss you off. You earned this money, friends. Has anybody thanked for it you, lately?
Via Never Yet Melted:
The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from its disposition to deplete rather than replenish the capital required for self-government. Entitlement programs overextend not only financial but political capital. They proffer new “rights,” goad people to demand and expand those rights aggressively, and disdain truth in advertising about the nature or scope of the new debts and obligations those rights will engender. The experiment in self-government requires the cultivation, against the grain of a democratic age, of the virtues of self-reliance, patience, sacrifice, and restraint.
Iran, welcome to the intertubes. The revolution will be twitterized. Related: State Dept appreciates Iranian debate
Join a union, and get tax-free med insurance. Like a free toaster? We Maggie's Farm slaves need a union now. Fellow slaves, when did we last get paid?
Hey, Conservatives. Time to connect with your inner Visigoth.
Drunk pedophiles in Canadian government? It hasn't been disproven.
Lots of smart people are bearish. Morgan Stanley's Roach certainly is. Kudlow, much as I enjoy him, is a perennially sunny optimist by nature, so you almost have to discount him.
AmeriCorps scandal update. Michelle
Autistics quicker at problem solving. h/t, Marg Rev
Mr. Free Market with an alternative to the no-stab knife
Is it all about shoes? Pointing out the dangers of socialism simply won't sway liberals in the health care debate.
The first female President. From Sissy:
Muscular prose reflects muscular thinking (Churchill, Reagan, GW). Flabby prose reflects flabby thinking (Chamberlain, Carter, Obama). Never use one metaphorically-charged noun or active verb when a string of colorless nouns and passive verbs will do.
We're with Frank J of IMHO, who twitters "If you wanted someone to speak forcefully on Iran, you should have elected a president with testicles."
"The people of Iran will not forgive Barack Obama for siding with the evil regime." More at Gateway. Plus the American kid who is trying to save Iran
Signs of recession: All You Can Sex flat rate
Putin warns the O about increasing corporate taxes. America is the world's driving economic force, so the rest of the world needs our spending back.
Will Feds refuse to bail out California?
Related: The "Public Option" is the Son of Medicaid. Henninger. He also explains why state legistators have become irrelevant, often corrupt clowns: they have nothing to do because most spending is mandated leaving them little room for their own fun spending of your money.
Related: Stan Greenberg on Why Health Care could fail again
Why would anybody go into medicine if the government is going to make your decisions for you on a cost basis, if you are essentially on the government payroll and compensated on a money-losing basis (after overhead, Medicaid is a money-loser for doctors and Medicare pays them for office work at clerical rates), and yet you remain entirely vulnerable to lawsuits for every outcome?
Scientists pan Obama climate scare report. But the uninquisitive NYT swallows it whole. Related, from Tim Blair:
This administration forcefully confronts Americans but kisses up to those who would destroy America. God moves in mysterious ways.
The report, produced by more than 30 scientists at 13 government agencies dealing with climate change, provides the most detailed picture to date of the worst case scenarios of rising sea levels and extreme weather events: floods in lower Manhattan …
Like the 1953 flood that was caused by a high tide? Or the 1961 flood, also caused by high tides? Or maybe like the NYC floods in 1901, 1903, 1927 and 1977 that were simply caused by rain? Hey, what if New York is hit by a Paris-style flood? That would be a climate change nightmare. Further from Obama’s worst-case confrontation case file:
… a quadrupling of heat waves deaths in Chicago …
More information, please. Would that be a quadrupling of the 64 deaths during one day in 1911? The 2996 deaths across the northwest in 1936? The ten deaths in one Chicago morning 131 years ago? The 20 deaths in two days during 1900? Would the rise match the 65 per cent increase in heat-related deaths from 1935 to 1936? Might one person die every thirty minutes, as happened during a 1916 heatwave?
… withering on the vineyards of California …
Now you’re getting serious.
Wednesday, June 17. 2009
Kondratiev (once a JAG Corps Lieutenant Commander) got a rare opportunity this week to attend a “Current Strategy Forum” which is periodically put on by the U. S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. It was a fabulous event, featuring Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, subtitled One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time. Other keynote speakers were Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University; Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations, Raymond Mabus, Secretary of the Navy; Anne-Marie Slaughter, Esq., Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State; and General James T. Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Panel discussion members included Stephen Walt, Harvard University; G. John Ikenberry, Princeton University; Mitchell Reiss, The College of William and Mary; Donald Kagan, Yale University; Eliot Cohen, Johns Hopkins University; Daniel Byman, Georgetown University; Michael Doran, New York University; Thomas Fingar, Stanford University; Shibley Telhami, University of Maryland; Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings Institution; Thomas G. Mahnken, Johns Hopkins University; and Patrick M. Cronin, National Defense University. The conference was a spectacular demonstration of the talent the U.S. Government can bring to bear at this time, regardless of the party in power.
Focusing on the Greg Mortenson talk, NBC newscaster Tom Brokaw calls Mortenson "one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, who is really changing the world." In a 1993 climb of Pakistan's treacherous K2, the world's second highest mountain, Greg stopped 500 yards from the summit and had a sense of failure. On returning to a village below, he was struck by the desperate, unfulfilled desire of the inhabitants for education, and made a rash promise to somehow return to build a school.
Since 1993, Mortenson has dedicated his life as a humanitarian devoted to promote education, especially for girls, in remote, volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and as of 2007, Mortenson had established 58 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 24,000 children, including 14,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before.
His efforts (and the efforts of others like Educate Girls Globally) have been generally received well by the Afghans and the Pakistanis. Although the MSM doesn’t have time or space to report it, in year 2000, 800,000 Afghani children attended school. In 2008, 8,600,000 were attending school, and of these, 2,300,000 are girls.
It has not been easy. In 1996, he survived an eight day armed kidnapping in the Northwest Frontier Province tribal areas of western Pakistan, and escaped a 2003 firefight with feuding Afghan warlords by hiding for eight hours under putrid animal hides in a truck going to a leather-tanning factory. He has overcome two fatwehs from Islamic mullahs, one of which banished him from the country for teaching girls. He appealed to the top cleric, agreeing to leave if that was the decision, and after several weeks received a letter in a gift box which described his work as blessed by Allah.
Mortenson is a living hero to rural communities of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he has gained the trust of Islamic leaders, military commanders and tribal chiefs from his tireless effort to champion education, especially for girls.
His cross-cultural expertise has brought him to speak on U.S. Capital Hill, national think tanks, the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, the U.S. State Department, libraries, outdoor groups, universities, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, business and civic groups, women's organizations and many more.
As General Conway said, he, Admiral Mike Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs), and others in high places all read Three Cups of Tea (which has been on the NY Times best-seller list for 123 weeks) on their wives’ recommendations, but this essay comes from the discovery that they are all taking it very, very seriously!
It was the view of Professor Michael Doran, another speaker with broad State Department experience, that the State Department is an entity which exists to “negotiate behind closed doors with duly appointed representatives of recognized governments”. As an organization whose mission is “process”, success or failure are not important considerations – they are just a part of the process.
However, for the military on the ground in the Middle East, success is enormously important - in fact, an issue of life or death, and failure is unacceptable. It always takes several years of war for the American military and its political bosses to sort out the warriors from the politicians, and now it is done. To the U.S. government, Greg has advised listening, listening long and listening genuinely.
Admiral Mullen, General Stanley McCrystal, General Conway and one other top guy (I missed his name) have visited Afghanistan 32 times in the last year. On Adm. Mullen’s last trip he gave a slightly offended Karzai an hour or less and then spent twelve hours meeting local imams and elders, drinking tea and listening to them, and they said some things that were not very polite, but he listened. And then he flew to the tribal areas of Pakistan and drank tea listened to another group of leaders for another twelve hours.
Speaker after speaker among the academics agreed that it was only the U.S. military which had the intellectual ability, the motivation, the tools, the cultural sensitivity and the presence to relate to the people of diverse cultures around the world. They are not perfect, but they are the best the United States has to offer.
Incidentally, Greg is from Montana, of Norwegian Lutheran extraction, and will not accept a penny from the U.S. government. He has a new book coming, fans, about his recent experiences, which will be titled Stones into Schools. On his way to K2, he was not sensitive to the misery in the villages, and had he succeeded in reaching the summit, he might never have been.
From WSJ:
The president and his aides have reached a point of potential political peril, where the massive interventions they have made to deal with the recession and virtual collapse of Detroit -- to be followed soon by an attempt to overhaul the U.S. health system -- can be seen as the opening stages of a reordering of the American economy.
To deflate that impression, Mr. Obama's chief White House economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, was in New York a few days ago to give a speech saying essentially: No, we aren't socialists.
Have you used Bing? Do you like Bing? Is Bing better?
They do have nice photos (looks like Switzerland today), a better name, and, I am told, a slicker algorithm.
The Liberal solution is always more government. Hubris and power-seeking are their problems. Their shame is their distrust in the peoples' ability to run their own lives: maybe some cannot or will not, but I do not like to be governed as if I were the lowest common denominator.
Is anything anybody does "Interstate commerce"? Montana and guns
How competition, not regulation, could transform American medicine.
Why the Dreamliner, Boeing's cool new plastic airplane, is two years late
Semi-related: This is a good time to be the market for an airplane. I wish. But I am an oppressed wage slave (wage + bonus slave) of the Capitalist System and thus will not get my own personal G4 until Obama gives me one. Still waiting.
Will global cooling damage Al Gore's cred?
The WaPo wants you to bail out California. Who's gonna bail me out?
Ralph Peters:
...the strongest response Obama can muster to the blood in Tehran's streets is: "I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television." How bold, how manly, how inspiring . . .
Geert Wilders' June 14 speech about preventing the Islamization of Europe. h/t, Theo
Walpin update at Insty
A new church: The Anglican Church in North America. Hmmm. If, unlike the Brit Anglicans, they seek faith in God and want to save souls, good on 'em.
Via Am Digest at Belmont Club, Home, sweet home:
Communism was never about crafting a Worker's Paradise; it was always about creating a place of unlimited power for those who craved it: not the toiler's Home, but the second rate intellectual's.
Rebecca Bynum asks whether Islam is a religion. One quote:
...you’re right to be wary of the strength of religion. Religion is the most powerful force in human affairs, bar none. Ideology alone doesn’t come close. Religion is the prime mover because religion forms the basis of a shared worldview. From this basic worldview grows culture and from culture societal structures are formed and the final fruits of this process are political systems. Our culture, social affairs and politics are ultimately anchored in morality and morality is anchored in the basic world view derived from religion.
Religion answers the primal question, what is the nature of reality? Do we inhabit a benevolent universe, a malevolent universe, or an indifferent universe? This is not trivial question and its answer determines the basis of all human interaction.
Tuesday, June 16. 2009
Somebody please remind me what the alleged rationale is for a government take-over of medical care in America.
It sure isn't those uninsured, since the plan admits it would only cover 1/4 of them (16 million out of a supposed 50 million uninsured). Is it to reduce the cost of medical care to Americans by rationing medical care by an appointed board charged with cost-effectiveness? Nobody would put up with that.
Or is it a simple power grab of a large % of the US economy by the politicians, who admit that they intend to eliminate any private medical care and any private medical insurance thus putting us all helplessly and powerlessly into the hands of a government monopoly?
I, for one, would hate to see the destruction of American medicine purely for ideological (Socialist) and power-lust reasons. Primum non nocere. Mind you, I always thought that Social Security and Medicare should be means-tested for the poor, and not general entitlements.
Related: This is what happens when medical care becomes politicized. Do you think some ER Doc wants to spend a half hour on the phone explaining to a government bureaucrat why he wants you to have a CAT scan when he has an acute MI in the next bed, a GI bleeder in the next room, and a non-English-speaking drunk attacking your security guard down the hall?
Related: Moonbattery puts it this way
Productive Californians are leaving in droves to the Dust Bowl. Photo from link.
I like these trails, but why does the government have to do it? Volunteers would do this.
Cool English gates, with boner bonus
When milliseconds really matter
Credit card regulation. If you don't like your credit cards, get rid of them. They can compete, and we are capable of making our own decisions.
The sun would roast us if the earth didn't have tricks to radiate heat
The O's mega-trillion take-over won't do much for "the uninsured." Thus proving, once again, that those uninsured are just pawns in a bigger political power game.
More later. Very busy today with a cool new biz proposal I dreamed up.
|