Thursday, June 18. 2009
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.
Via Drudge, ABC turns programming over to White House. Good grief. So much for the MSM, press ethics, and journalistic healthy skepticism and integrity. But that's not news.
This is a sick, perverted symbiosis.
Monday, June 15. 2009
 Urban coyotes. h/t, Jungleman
AVI's theory on not hitting squirrels with your car
Walpin gives the inside story. It's an ugly story. Imagine if Bush...aw, why do I keep saying that?
Hayek: Why I am not a Conservative. h/t, Neptunus
Men are now on the wrong side of the degree gap at every stage of education
Immigrants from redistributionist countries vote for redistributionists
The realities of college education: Four years of propaganda, partying, and buying a mostly worthless degree.
Conservatism thrives. All it needs are compelling leaders. Related: The Gallup poll. Related: Is Sarah the threat?
The Boston Globe is on sale.
Minimum wages do cause unemployment.
The public plan would be the only plan. Related: the CBO will have something to say about it. I'm beginning to think that the Admin bit off more than they can chew. Related from Dick Morris: The O's issues are crumbling. Related from Samuelson: Naive, hypocritical, and dishonest, Related from Yuval Levin and Kristol: Defeat Obamacare.
Also related: the Indian Health Service as a model
The $787 billion mistake
Chris Dodd's wife, via Insty
Fancy a cuppa?
 The Bird Dog family has a multi-generational attachment to Bermuda. We always stay at Cambridge Beaches: it's our place. No glitz, unostentatious, no jacuzzis, heavy on Brits, lots of little one-room "villas" perched on the hill over the ocean, sort-of mediocre but edible food. I like to feed on Grouper, Bermuda Fish Chowder, Conch fritters and Dark 'n Stormies whenever I am in Grouper-land. (We do not golf, so we do not need the Mid-Ocean Club.)
You can walk to a place that rents little Whalers and snorkeling or scuba gear, and they will give you a map of the good coral reefs. You go offshore and find them yourself. Mopeds always, but you drive on the left so it's a bit of an IQ test in the traffic circles.
It would pain me to see the US take over Cambridge Beaches as a place to put the Gitmo terrorists. It would tick off the Brits too, no doubt.
Remarkable cell phone (?) video from Iran protests, at LGF
“…I found on most of these questions that the desire for change and support for reform was slightly stronger 16 years ago…”
So says Stanley Greenberg, CEO and co-chair with Dem pitbull James Carville of polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. Greenberg served as a polling advisor to President Bill Clinton, was deeply involved in Clinton’s failed 1993 effort to rewrite Americans’ health care, and is today a prominent Democrat pollster.
Greenberg points out that, “the country has maintained the same anxieties about government's ability to improve the system.” Greenberg continues:
…Our inability to talk credibly about how we would reduce health care spending or costs for individuals and the country built a contradiction into all our efforts--the more we talked about the comprehensiveness of our plans, the more voters worried this would yield higher premiums or higher taxes. Very quickly, voters came to conclude that their families would face higher costs.
And those dynamics are still in play. In my recent polling, I found that voters are skeptical about claims that reform will reduce costs and personal health outlays. Claims about simplicity, information-technology modernization, and best practices don't seem to be enough to persuade them otherwise.
For example: “It may surprise you that Obama has already lost seniors, according to our current survey--only one-third approve of his plan. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see there isn't much in it for them.” Similarly for union members: “Yet the members will ultimately judge whether the plan is good for their families--and I'm certain that all the talk about taxing insurance contributions has not gone unnoticed.” Similarly for blue collar Americans: “Ross Perot is a distant memory, but his more libertarian, blue-collar male voters are very much alive. They are pretty certain government will mess this up--and only about 30 percent support Obama's health care plan right now. With Republicans reciting their mantra about no ‘government takeover’ of health care, the plan's opponents have found a common text.”
Greenberg ends with:
He [Obama] must respect the thoughts, feelings and calculations of ordinary citizens who are not easily spun on important issues. People will take out their calculators when he lays out his plan, and he can't avoid speaking candidly about its costs and consequences. And he can't forget that he has a big story to tell about a changed America, one in which health care is but a pile of bricks in the new foundation he is laying.
“Health care is but a pile of bricks in the new foundation” by Obama for America? Pile of bricks or pile of statist BS? Most Americans can tell the difference.
How the Uighurs got to Bermuda
Kucinich tells Ken Lewis how to run a bank
The O as the Great Leveler. So why would anybody work hard?
Boarded-up palaces in Detroit
Anarchy in Rotterdam
Imagine if these were Repubs. Also, the Walpin story at Powerline and more at Wash Times
Perhaps it's time to apply even stronger adjectives to N Korea
Moonbat thinking from Monbiot
The road to single-payer begins with public option deception. The goal is to eliminate choice.
Bill Maher to Obama: Get off TV and start socializing the country, darn it. US Chamber of Commerce to O: Stop ruining our country
Ezra Levant, CTV, and the censors
Why do they hate her? Via Protein
Biden on the Stimulus: We guessed wrong. That's a lie. It was pure political payoff.
CBS: Ahmadinejad is George Bush? WTH? Related: Pre-election polls showed Ahmad. with strong majority
Union Jack banned at Heathrow
Saturday, June 13. 2009
From Dick Morris:
As it becomes clearer that the deficit caused by spending has landed us in a new economic crisis, entirely of Obama’s own making, his popularity and job performance are likely to drop as well.
The old recession — that the public says was caused by Bush — shows signs of winding down. But the new recession and/or inflation — triggered by Obama’s massive deficits — is just now coming upon us.
If Obama refuses to cut back on his spending/stimulus plans (despite convincing evidence that Americans are not spending the money), he has three options:
a) He can raise taxes, which will trigger a deeper recession;
b) He can print money, which will trigger huge inflation;
c) He can pay more interest to borrow money, which will send the economy diving down again.
The blame for these outcomes will fall squarely on Obama’s deficit and spending policies. The fact that Americans are aware of these issues, and already disapprove of Obama’s performance on them, indicates that they will be increasingly receptive to blaming him for the “new” recession.
 Photo: Pres. Bush jumps from 10,000 feet for his 85th Birthday. His comment: "I don't feel a day over 84"
Have you seen Wolfram Alpha? http://www.wolframalpha.com/
The 2009 Zagat Fast Food Ratings
Somebody is getting pissed off. VDH with Just Make Stuff Up: President Obama’s war on the truth.
What the heck constitutes an actionable hostile work environment?
Ain't Socialism great? Chavez to shut down another critical TV station
The Animal Rescue Site needs your help http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=3
Why Philip Morris backed the tobacco bill. (h/t, Tiger) Regulations always work for somebody. Yes, Obama still smokes.
Yes, it is a political scandal. Americorps. Imagine if Bush had...
Also at Dino: Health care and the youth vote
Why is the gay Bishop worring about this instead of worrying about saving souls?
Urge ya to at least listen to the first part of Prof. Plimer
Afghanistan isn't a nation. It's a place. Neptunus
California: In spite of having the highest taxes in the nation, the state is broke.
Good example of how to lie with graphs
Canada's ObamaCare precedent. It's not for me.
Why bands like to perform on carpets
Frum is not thrilled with Mark Levin's book
Many students should give community college a try. There's a lot more to life than 4-year college.
Bulldozing shrinking cities. Sounds like a good idea to me. Start with the suburbs and the malls.
From Insty:
ELISABETH EAVES: Stop Worrying and Enjoy the Recession! Yeah, a recession can be nice if you’ve got steady income. And, of course, a recession under President Obama is surely a good thing for America and Americans! Under Bush it would have been a disaster of Steinbeckian proportions, but under Obama it’s a “purifying fire!”
Lefties like their spankings. No Pasaran
Why the Supremes should and probably will strike down Chicago's gun ban
Ace: More evidence that President Obama is everything the left accused George W. Bush
of being, but wasn't.
What if the Bush family tried this?
Uighurs to Bermuda. Sheesh.
Dino on the O's self-obsession:
Let’s see. Aloof, charismatic, obsessed with power, “absolutely certain” that he has a special personal destiny. This can’t end well. No, this can’t end well at all.
Friday, June 12. 2009
Our current global cooling trend threatens world grain production.
If warming were doing this, it would be front page news.
You do not want to know yourself
Repubs should adopt a strict paygo
How ACORN intends to use the US Census
WUWT looks back at his first weather station inspiration
How to save $: Let the boomers die
Villainous, on how I became a Conservative. One quote:
Over the years I noticed that rescuing friends from serial disasters of their own creation didn't encourage them to make smarter decisions. If anything, my interventions skewed the risk/reward calculation we use to select the best course from a range of alternatives. By stepping in and helping each time friends chose poorly, I made it harder for them to learn from their mistakes. They continued to do predictably self destructive things and then look for someone more responsible to bail them out.
Over time I realized I couldn't keep substituting my judgment for theirs. The natural world punishes bad decisions. This natural feedback mechanism helps us distinguish what works from what doesn't. But I was subverting the learning process; unintentionally rewarding bad decisions and encouraging more of the same. With the best of intentions, I had produced the worst of results.
And so I became a conservative. I embraced the idea that people make the most efficient and productive choices when they base their decisions on the way the world does work, not the way they wish it would work. I came to believe subjectivity, empathy, and tribalism make extremely poor foundations for building a society or governing one's personal conduct because they elevate subjective feelings over objective experience and morality. I learned to separate my personal feelings and loyalty from notions of right and wrong, responsible and irresponsible. I learned that even though I often chafed at them, rules are not always bad.
Herbal "medicines, at Insty:
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: $2.5 billion spent on “alternative medicine,” no cures. “Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.” How did this happen?
he center was handed a flawed mission, many scientists say.
Congress created it after several powerful members claimed health benefits from their own use of alternative medicine and persuaded others that this enormously popular field needed more study. The new center was given $50 million in 1999 (its budget was $122 million last year) and ordered to research unconventional therapies and nostrums that Americans were using to see which ones had merit.
That is opposite how other National Institutes of Health agencies work, where scientific evidence or at least plausibility is required to justify studies, and treatments go into wide use after there is evidence they work - not before.
I can’t wait until Congress is in charge of all health care. Who knows better what’s good for you than “several powerful members” of Congress . . . .
Thursday, June 11. 2009
It begins:
"Our vehicles came under a barrage of enemy RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) and machine gun fire. One of our humvees was disabled from RPG fire, and the Marines inside dismounted and laid down suppression fire so they could evacuate a Marine who was knocked unconscious from the blast." That's not from an episode of The Unit or 24. It's not from an anti-war movie. It's not from any newspaper or TV news reports I could find.
Whole thing at One Marine's View
 1. Dems seek to control executive pay
2. How and why to stop the nationalization of medical care. Related, if medical insurance is a right (how can it be?), then how can it be forced on you? They don't force us to buy guns.
3. What's on the Dems' nationalization agenda after medical care? Education. Yes, they want to run K-12 education next. Heck, they are so good at running things, aren't they?
4. Your tax dollars to pay for lawyers for Jihadists
5. Taking global warming hysteria seriously
Crack, coke, or LSD? You tell me.
Ed note: Great minds think alike. I see neoneo on this same theme today.
 On reading difficult books. Chronicle. Somebody's got to do it.
The morally superior continent of righteous indignation.
Basking Sharks in Cornwall. Cool underwater.
What is courage?
The latest on those fancy spies for Cuba.
Can this be said? Sub-Saharan African IQs. I tend to doubt it's true, but what do I know? Or maybe it's the Flynn Effect.
Financial crises can arise from extreme bad luck. Indeed.
What you should know about CPR. Video
Tornado passed over their car this week. Video
Rush: Free speech is in danger. Is it true that the US is the only nation with free speech?
Yes, it is shaping up to be the year without a summer. Global warming does that. The Japanese aren't worried. They will play the game, but they don't mean it. It's all a big joke, but it is not funny that the earth is cooling.
Dems double down on medical care. Politico
Is the O America's first Muslim President? Kinda sorta, yes.
Rove: Dowd is twisted, deranged. Nothing that a studly Republican boyfriend couldn't cure.
Update on the California Meltdown. Good grief. They are like little children.
McArdle: Nobody really cares about the deficit. But markets do care.
Vanderleun's proposals for a new foreign policy approach
A dreamer at the helm: Nyquist
Photo from a Memphis Burger King
Wednesday, June 10. 2009
Hugh Hewitt has been calling on the nation’s doctors to take their customary leading role of trust by Americans to oppose Obamacare, especially the so-called “public” (read, government) health insurance that would displace private insurance at astronomical costs, bureaucracy, and interference in medical advancements and treatment decisions. Hewitt has been pessimistic they would, feeling the American Medical Association is “cowed…by the Obama/Pelosi/Reid hard-left edge of the Democratic Party.”
Hewitt should have had more faith in the AMA’s 250,000 doctors. The New York Times reports:
But in comments submitted to the Senate Finance Committee, the American Medical Association said: “The A.M.A. does not believe that creating a public health insurance option for non-disabled individuals under age 65 is the best way to expand health insurance coverage and lower costs. The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans.”
If private insurers are pushed out of the market, the group said, “the corresponding surge in public plan participation would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers.”
The New York Times tries to cushion the blow to Obamacare advocates by saying:
The A.M.A., an umbrella group for 180 medical societies, does not speak for all doctors. One group, Physicians for a National Health Program, supports a single-payer system of insurance, in which a single public agency would pay for health services, but most care would still be delivered by private doctors and hospitals.
However, the New York Times fails to mention that the Physicians for a National Health Program claims just “more than 16,000 members,” and that one does not have to be a physician to join, its joining page requiring just “$40 / Year -- Health reform advocates (Non Physicians)” to be a member.
I suppose that the NYTs’ coverage of Obama’s speech to the AMA’s convention next Monday will laud Obama for his great courage in telling the overwhelming majority of the nation’s doctors they don’t know medicine.
It is loony. Everybody will need to bring a lawyer to a fight instead of one of these cool machines:
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