Monday, July 13. 2009
 A lightbulb just went off in my head.
Instead of paying doctors to treat patients, have the government pay doctors not to treat patients. For every patient who needs tests or treatments, pay the doc half of what those would have cost if he promises not to have them done.
It's so simple, really. All you have to do is to modernize that old-fashioned, no longer applicable Hippocratic Oath to bring it up to date (just like the Constitution). All waste and unnecessary costs will be eliminated, with the potential to cut medical costs almost in half.
But would the trial lawyers go for my plan?
 "Former Vice President Al Gore declared that the Congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.”" Good Lord! Is he taking his medications? Says Tiger:
Anybody who thinks that "global governance" is anything other than a profound evil is a woefully misguided dreamer, a nut, or an authoritarian.
Steyn notes that some believe that fears of Eurabia are greatly exaggerated.
NY to London in 1 hr 54 minutes.
The new new European anti-Americanism. Powerline
Dems going after Frank Ricci
James Schlesinger on why we need nuke weapons
The Massachusetts health care mess.
Betsy: That's your Congress for you: a hearing in search of a problem that doesn't exist.
Kudlow: The road to economic demoralization
Kristol begins:
The air is seeping out of the Great Liberal Hot Air Balloon. American liberals have been hoping, wishing, and praying--okay, maybe not praying--for over a quarter-century for an end to the ghastly interlude of conservative dominance ushered in by Ronald Reagan. Surely it was all a bad dream, a waking nightmare, a bizarre deviation from the preordained path of history.
With the Democratic congressional victories in November 2006, the nightmare seemed to be ending. And in November 2008, with the election of Barack Obama and increased congressional majorities, it seemed to be over. A new era had dawned.
But did it? Maybe we're now experiencing a liberal interlude, not a liberal inflection point. After all, only six months into the new administration, even a talented hot air blower like President Obama, assisted by friendly gusts of wind from the media, is having trouble keeping the liberal blimp afloat.
Taxes. They are going to ask? But will they ask nicely? Related, from Kaus: Tremors of doom for health care. I see no groundswell of support for anything other than "leave us alone."
Liberal Fascism Department: The O's Science Czar considered putting sterilants in the drinking water.
Has the potato blight hit your garden yet? Global cooling causes it. Meanwhile, global warming wreaks havoc on ferris wheels. But maybe that's a good thing: The Prince of Wales says we should stop having a fun easy life like his.
What's with tenure? Why should Profs be in any different position than everybody else? I don't get it. Related: Is the price of higher ed worth it?
Housing prices, going nowhere. I agree. Not a bad thing, either.
Who is responsible for this Age of Foolishness that grips America?
Ugly data on single motherhood. Pajamas
When they laugh at Sarah Palin, we feel them laughing at us.
What the hell is this? Surber
What about Rubio? Dr. Clouthier. Seems like Rubio is a potential star, and Crist the safe bet.
From Viking:
Payroll tax rates by decade:
1940: 2%
1950: 3%
1960: 6%
1970: 9.6%
1980: 12.3%
1990: 15.3%
The geniuses in government think you aren't fit to figure out how to spend your own money.
Jules begins The Nanny State Goes to War:
“War is redneck as hell,” as Sgt. Howison observed one hot morning in Baghdad. Lots of big vehicles, lots of blowing shit up, and with all that lead and high explosive flying around the place, lots of smoking and dipping. Yeah, smoking’s really bad for you, but …
The Big Crisis (h/t, Insty):
Photo on top is something I want but do not really need: A Kobuta with loader and bushhog
Saturday, July 11. 2009
 Now they're leaning towards a surtax - aka a tax on a tax
Marginal Rev uses the E Word to describe the health care negotiations in DC
What's a bigger deal? Pols with romantic indiscretions or pols with $ corruption?
More good recent mil photos from Afghanistan
Neo on Walpin:
I have little doubt that, had the same allegations been made towards the Bush administration, the story would rate front page headlines every day. But somehow, the following news failed to make the cut at the NY Times, the Boston Globe, as well as the WaPo (although I must say that the WaPo, being among other things a DC paper, has been a great deal better about covering the Walpin case in general). Imagine, if you will, how the following would have been covered by the MSM if the administration in question had been a Republican one; I doubt that Byron York and the Washington Examiner would be the lonely voices letting us know that the Obama administration is stonewalling Congress by refusing to answer pertinent questions and figuring that they can probably get away with it.
And they are getting away with it—at least for now
Via Mankiw:
From Michael Kinsley:
Six hundred billion doesn't sound like all that much to achieve, or come close to achieving, an important and long-standing goal such as universal health care. But keep in mind that health-care reform is supposed to save money. Its premise is that the current path is unaffordable. In that sense, a "mere" $600 billion extra is total defeat.
China vs the US, just a quote from a piece at NRO;
Fortune magazine recently reported that the number of U.S. companies in the world’s top 500 fell to the lowest level ever, while more Chinese firms than ever before made the list. Thirty-seven Chinese companies now rank in the top 500, including nine new entries. Meanwhile, the number of U.S. firms has fallen to 140, the lowest total since Fortune began the list in 1995. This is not good.
China also surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest automaker in the first half of 2009, with June sales soaring 36.5 percent from a year earlier. The Chinese registered 6.1 million car sales for the first half of the year. That way outpaced American sales, which were only 4.8 million.
And China has no capital-gains tax. It only has a 15-to-20 percent corporate tax. The U.S., on the other hand, is raising its cap-gains tax rate to 20 percent. It’s also increasing its top personal tax rates.
Seems to me that the Chinese govt has been moving towards an Authoritarian Capitalism, like Singapore. It works. Sucks, but works.
Funny, it's the blue states that are in trouble.
Is it gonna be Romney? And what about Sarah's star appeal?
Did the O misread his mandate?
Is water a human right? Is this a meaningful use of the word "right"?
Why does the US get stuck with these Pali refugees?
Re the O Admin and the economy, The Audacity of Conceit at Am Thinker:
It is a common mistake of intellectuals to confuse IQ with common sense and verbal fluency with leadership qualities. They are simply unable to comprehend that academic success does not necessarily translate into a firm grasp on reality; the knack for endlessly bloviating on an abstruse subject does not automatically imply administrative ability; an academic degree is not a substitute for practical experience; and a professors' lounge is not a corporate boardroom.
Nobody would deny that the members of Obama's circle of economic advisors are indeed academically adept, well-spoken men and women. But have any of them ever run a lemonade stand, much less a bona fide business? Have they ever met a payroll? Do they know what it means to toss and turn in bed, worrying over the coming rise in vendor prices? They may have academic theories and marshal vast amounts of data, but have little practical knowledge of how things work in the real world.
So what do they bring to the administration other than long resumes and fearsome reputations as intellectual polemicists? All these brilliant academics have been brought on board for the sole purpose of lending an intellectual veneer to Obama's political schemes and validate his power grab. Hence the pitiful sight of these noted intellectuals being trotted out to the microphones to bleat pathetically in defense of the administration's agenda.
Friday, July 10. 2009
From a David Brooks interview, via Althouse:
BROOKS: You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.
The O was remarkably obsequious to Russia. Why? Powerline.
No reason to be. The O seems to have a relentlessly apologetic, if not masochistic, reflex towards competing or adversarial powers. (Unless they are fellow-American Evil Repubs, of course.)
"Not in my name," please. He is looking for love in all the wrong places, in the wrong way. He does not appear to understand that other nations have the serious and often grim job of advancing their own interests.
That's the tough job we hired him to do for us, too.
Wise up, kid, and work for the wonderful country which pays your wages instead of working out your personal issues on the world stage.
Ed: related, via Right Wing Prof:
Greetings great and mighty culture, I am the Obama leader of New America. I am a cultured, urbane, black man with a Muslim name and I carry no baggage.
Your culture is great and wonderful, your poets brilliant, I will now quote one I have never read. Your food wonderful, I will now mention a dish I have never eaten.
Our countries have had issues in the past and they were all the fault of the old America, run by old white men.
Your country has done no wrong and any history of atrocities or rapaciousness or repression was just a reaction to Western meddling
I apologize on behalf of the old white men who wronged you.
New America will not judge you, we will not pretend our free culture is better than your backward, tyranny.
We just want you to like me us.
 The University of Texas mugs Western Civ. How advanced! How Progressive! How modern! How sophisticated!
Shmuck du jour: Gavin Newsom
Too many lawyers? Too many law schools? Prof B
In China, pols and their extramarital affairs
In the UK, sex-ed doubles teen pregnancy rate. Homework?
Why some people stay poor. Viking. I've seen plenty of folks like that. They just cannot make good decisions.
"It's no Trojan Horse - it's right there." NRO
Tiger:
...few people other than news junkies have noticed how extraordinary Barack Obama's agenda is. Perhaps a number will help: 35%. That is the aggregate percentage of United States GDP produced by the three industries that the Democrats hope to restructure from the top down: Health care (17% of GDP), energy (9.8% of GDP), and financial services (8% of GDP). Think about that. Without even considering the transformational impact of proposed anti-business laws of general application, such as the Orwellian "employee free choice act," the Obama administration wants to redesign 35% of gross domestic product from the center. And he proposes to do it all in a rush this summer, lest the decline in his popularity and that of the Congressional Democrats erodes his power to do so.
Thirty-five percent. Somebody needs to turn that into a bumper sticker.
Thursday, July 9. 2009
 I hate, hate, hate anybody who would sponsor or support federal criminal legislation with language like this in it:
Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
Just consider what that could entail: in effect, it could make bad internet manners a felony. Atlas has the story.
Glenn Reynolds interviews Joel Kotkin on politics, California, and Gentry Liberals.
The first power generating nuke reactor (it was Russian).
Jeb Bush talks politics. Interesting. Definitely a likeable fellow.
Gone sane: Dr. Sanity goes offline
G8 promises to control world temperature. Ya can't make this stuff up.
Your mammogram by the lowest bidder
The second time we agree with the O: time to get rid of farm subsidies. Including ethanol, please.
Carlyle, Dickens, Adam Smith, slavery, and related topics: The Secret History of the Dismal Science. Part II. Brotherhood, Trade, and the Negro Question
Autopsy of the Fannie and Freddie debacle: Michelle
The White House is spending millions of your $ for media manipulation. Bush (obviously) did not do that. Perhaps he should have, but I think it would have been beneath his dignity - and his Connecticut Dad would have disapproved. Yankees frown on self-promotion.
Weak on Russia? The O seems to want to be limp-wristed to everybody except to us fellow Americans. Hmmm.
Dems: We do not intend to read any health care bill. He says that, laughing. Naturally, it does exempt federal employees, suckers.
Healthcare bill is packed with pork.
Waxman asks: Are you against America?
Imagine the press if Bush had gotten his daughter's age wrong
Newt: How team Obama hijacked Change
Sen Tom Udall: Ignoring the facts to scare you
Politics: Americans just want prosperity
The O's apparent soft spot for Marxist dictators
Failing. Unite us, Obama. I guess that was code for Get rid of the Repubs.
The demise of campaign finance "reform"? That might be a good thing.
Via Powerline:
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.
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