Tuesday, October 13. 2009
 Afghan Pop. Watch the Afghan Star trailer.
From John yesterday re Columbus Day:
Speaking of Columbus, the Associated Press finds that the boldest explorer in world history did not have quite the same sensibilities as a liberal 21st century schoolmarm. This apparently surprises some.
Is mass transit really green? Probably not, but could you imagine NYC without trains, buses and subways? It just wouldn't work.
Nuclear weapons deserve the Nobel Peace prize
Most ominous graph of the day
So how many properties does Charlie Rangel own?
This kid definitely needs Reform School
Businessman Steve Wynn takes on Michigan Gov.
A fine Driscoll essay: Man’s Crisis Of Identity In The Latter Half Of The 20th Century
Parents & Kids Protest Obama, Democrats & The Teachers' Unions: PJTV Video
Oh great: Obama to SEIU: "Now the Time Has Come For Us to Do It All Across the Country - We Are Going to Paint the Nation Purple With SEIU"
Instructing monsters to be monsters. Am Thinker
Jules:
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn whines that Fox acts as a “wing of the Republican Party.” No complaints about the rest of the White House Press Corps acting as a Democratic high-rise condo development, though.
John at Powerline says of the Dem medical reform "this isn't reform, it is stupidity." I disagree. I believe it is a medium-to-long-term strategy to raise prices to drive people to the government plantation. Trouble is, people will blame the insurance companies instead of the government. The Dems have not really made a secret of their clever but deceptive strategy to achieve government control. Graph from Powerline:
Monday, October 12. 2009
This is the plan - to drive private insurance out of business so we can be relieved of the burden of making our own choices.
The insurers have finally caught on to the Dem strategy.
Yes, at the very least the Dem reform will drive costs far higher in the short term. That is, insofar as anybody knows what the heck is in it.
One thing we do know is that insurance creep will be part of it. Not only will we lose the choice of major medical, or to be self-insured, but we'll end up paying for sex change operations, abortions, hair transplants and massage therapy.
Here's the Dem war against the specialists.
The most insulting thing about this whole mess, however, is that the taxes for it begin right away - but the program doesn't begin until after the next Pres election. Hmmm.
MarketWatch.
In fact, it was won by these guys.
Interesting change of heart, from Afghanistan -
LETTER FROM THE ROAD, #37
Rabia Elizabeth Roberts, October, 2009
Kabul: armed guards, machine guns and sand bags at every intersection and at the door to my guest house - open sewers and fecal dust - traffic jams of SUVs, military convoys, bicycles and pedestrians – six-story buildings amidst crumbling houses and filthy refugee encampments - men, lots of men everywhere, and street children. The women on the streets are conservatively dressed (no skin showing) with big scarves. About a quarter of them wear the signature blue head-to-toe burqa.
I have come to Kabul because I want to experience for myself what is happening here, eight years after the U.S. ousted the Taliban. I have spent the past 40 years of my life protesting war and working for peace in conflict areas. I don’t believe that killing leads to peace.
I came here as part of a small peace delegation of mostly women who share my conviction that President Obama must not send more troops and should set a timeline for withdrawal of the 60,000 that are here.
But now - after seven intense days and nights of interviews and meetings in Kabul - I no longer have that conviction.
Continue reading "Letter from a Peace Activist"
Aren't most folks working today? Scroll down and catch up with our posts from the weekend.
 Darn good point from Powerline: "Any government medicine system suffers from a fatal contradiction: health care is a "right," but a right that must be rationed."
Former Dem Senator Bob Kerry (via Gateway's post on Sen. Feinstein):
On vision, President Obama is very inspiring. He has given moderates in Muslim countries room to move by speaking to them directly and respectfully, while at the same time continuing to wage an aggressive and necessary battle against radical Islamists who have declared war on the U.S. However, he has made too many apologies. And at this point, his strategy is too naïve and has too little coherence to be called a strategy. If the issue of foreign policy had been more important in his presidential campaign—and therefore important to the electorate—I might be more critical. And if I weren't a supporter, my judgment would be harsher. But in this realm, I'm still hoping for improvement.
Insty wonders
COULD MONTY PYTHON BE MADE in today’s Britain?
And as Mark Steyn puts it:
As Canadians have discovered, liberty is lost very quietly and quickly. And trying to get it back is slow and painful - particularly at a time when artists, universities, publishers and others who congratulate themselves incessantly on their truth-telling courage find increasingly pre-emptive self-censorship the better part of valor.
Surber:
Al Gore’s big question is paper or plastic.
I don’t have time for this fool.
A brief history of the prevention of tyranny. Doug Ross. One quote:
The French nobleman and legal expert Charles-Louis de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu, studied the rise and fall of the Roman Republic. He believed that a properly designed government, in order to prevent tyranny, would require three branches of government. He wrote, "If it is to provide its citizens with the greatest possible liberty, a government must have certain features. First, since 'constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it … it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power' . This is achieved through the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government... [to prevent any one] from acting tyrannically."
Want more to read? Try Federalist #42
Sunday, October 11. 2009
 What's the #1 reason women want sex? (Hint: Same thing guys would say)
The last days of the polymath?
The action of the journalists was to shut down the journalist and defend the politician
What's the matter with you, Sen. Graham? It's a political hoax, you bozo.
CBO: Malpractice reform would save 40 billion
CBO: Finance Plan Would Save $81 Billion - by raising taxes like crazy on everything, by cutting Medicare - and by one other trick
Related: Massachusetts Is like health-care hell for one universal health care advocate
Related: The health care bill - which doesn't even exist yet - will go unread and unreadable
Too old for medical care? Brit Docs leave old lady to starve
Banning the bulb? Not too smart
Related: Record cold kills playoff game. The Ice Age is coming. How often do we have to warn y'all?
Ship of Fools: Obama's Intimates and Advisors
Obama wins Miss World 2009
On Chavez' side? Why won't the O support Hondauran elections?
Saturday, October 10. 2009
The bank everybody seems to love to hate - because they're so smart.
Friday, October 9. 2009
One of my dearest, longest and most respected friends has stared more deeply and widely into the dark side of reality than anyone. We just discussed my “Davy Crockett attitude” toward President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. My way of being is to find reasons to smile in the face of challenges. I, also, believe this travesty further removes him from the ability of serious-minded people to support him.
My friend is qualified to be less sanguine: he served as a combat advisor in Vietnam, a MSM war correspondent in SE Asia, a refugee worker for the Cambodians who could escape massacre, became a Catholic priest, served at the Vatican, is currently a challenging professor of philosophy at a major college, and continues his priestly ministering.
Here’s what my friend has to say about what he titles “Taliban Peace Prize For Obama.” (My friend chooses to withhold his name from this post, so as not to intrude politics into his classroom or ministry.)
Giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize is an even more political act than giving it to Arafat. More shrewd as well.
The Nobel committee hopes to influence Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. Now that he is an internationally recognized man of peace, he is not going to order a surge in Afhanistan. McChrystal won't get the troops he says he needs.
The White House has been preparing this ground for weeks, suggesting that since Al Qaeda is now weak a Taliban return to power needn't worry us. We can live with that, they say off the record. The great military thinkers Joe Biden, John Kerry, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod have developed a long-range John Murtha strategy that will operate along the lines of a video game: if you see movement on the screen, push a button.
And with the Taliban back in power, we won't have to worry about messy elections. But what about those who fought with us? What has the Taliban in store for them? If Afghanistan were not a land-locked country, we could expect thousands of boat people.
But not to worry. When asked about a possible bloodbath following a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, Obama said he didn't really have a problem with it and its possibility should not determine policy. He won't have a problem with it in Afghanistan either. After all, we've been told, Afghanistan, like Vietnam or Iraq before the surge, was always unwinnable. We'll accept a certain number of refugees to help ease the short-term sting of conscience over betraying an allly. But as with all vices, repetition makes the practice easier. This won't be the first time we've betrayed an ally.
It will destoy the military, of course, but by the time that becomes clear Obama will have passed from the scene.
Also read this on Obama's attitude toward bloodbath in Iraq, and this commentary on the political award to President Obama.
1. Everyone should start their day with a good laugh, it scientifically proven to lead to better attitudes toward whatever we do, which is scientifically proven to lead to better results;
2. Because I can’t find any other commenter who believes he deserved it, it’s heartening that we can unite around common-sense;
3. Since none can justify it, commenters on other candidates for the 2010 congressional and 2012 presidential election may be more honest about those who run on empty records and words;
4. President Obama’s preparation for and delivery of an acceptance speech may distract him from doing more to weaken the US and allies and reward foes, thus furthering peace;
5. President Obama no longer actually has to do anything to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, which may reduce he further worsening the outcomes of the measures already taken, thus furthering peace;
6. All those living in countries wracked by conflict and those in countries where they are oppressed can relax instead of fighting or standing up, knowing that hope is enough to be rewarded for accomplishing nothing, thus furthering peace;
7. The Nobel Prize will fit in nicely to the new White House décor alongside the Obama chosen faux painting;
8. Displaying encouraging honesty, President Obama says “ ‘I do not feel I deserve to be in the company’ of previous winners, ‘transformative figures who've been honored by this prize, men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.’ ”
9. I can look forward to President Obama’s picture officially being hung alongside Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho’s.
10. The 50-year old childhood book I have of Nobel Peace Prize speeches that inspire by the winners’ track-records will rise in value. Perhaps, President Obama will use the prize money to buy it from me.
For those interested, here’s the Nobel Peace Prize announcement. Here’s some of those considered less deserving by the Nobel committee. The faux painting honored by being chosen to grace the White House. President Obama’s acceptance comments, including no comment about what he plans to do with the $1.4-million prize money – my hope should be adequate, right? The New York Times, of course, struggles to find foreigners who are diplomatically complimentary, but finds few. Nonetheless, the New York Times coverage is predictably laudatory of "Imagine". Struggling to draft my Happy Face list, I finally found someone on the Left able to find a reason to favor of the Prize choice as a repudiation of President Bush. Since this diverges from other leading Left commenters, who find it absurd and undeserved, we can look forward to they ignoring their prior words as they once again shamelessly find excuses to extol the sagacity hidden to everyone else. To prolong your Happy Face, don't click on Memeorandum for the outpouring of incredulity.
An email:
Jimmy Carter.
Al Gore.
Barack Obama.
Some of the greatest leaders of our time, and all Nobel winners. This can be no coincidence!
Advice about marriage. Villainous
A Conservative Bible? Include me out.
Is anti-trust used for consumer protection anymore?
Charlie Rangel: Poster Boy
The O: Taliban should be part of Afghan govt.
How reform is destroying medical care in Massachusetts
The Quinnipiac health care poll. Related: Docs turn to GOP
Stanford U doesn't want you to see this video. It's yet another Prof who swtiched from being an Ice Age alarmist to a warming alarmist.
The plummeting US tax recepts.
Related: The example of Vermont:
In sum, 13,912 Vermonters were responsible for almost half of the revenue generated through the income tax, and the income tax revenue constitutes about half of all the general fund revenue the state collects.
To visualize this inverse relationship, consider a pyramid standing on its head, with the broad side at the top representing what’s being spent, and the bottom point being the few upon which all this spending depends.
It doesn’t take much to upset a fragile balance.
Insty:
TAXPROF: 80% Marginal Tax Rates After Health Care “Reform”?
Thursday, October 8. 2009
h/t Theo -
VDH begins his piece on Obama's career thus far:
I have believed in the power of the goddess Nemesis (“dispenser of dues”) ever since I was introduced to the concept as a teenager studying classics, especially in the texts of Hesiod, Herodotus, and Sophocles.
Some of you know her also as a variant of eastern Karma, or the folk notion of ‘what comes around, goes around’, or the now common “ain’t payback a bitch”? We all agree on the symptoms: overweening success and surfeit (koris) lead to hubris (gratuitous arrogance), which in turn promotes destructive behavior (atê), that at last calls you to the attention of divine Nemesis—who ensures your ruin. At Rhamnous on the Attic coast there is a beautiful temple to the goddess, proof of her ubiquity and power.
Read the whole good thing.
 The CBO did a mark-up on the Baucus Bill - but there is no bill. As noted at NRO:
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, says that the new CBO report is “an estimate of a concept, not a formal cost analysis of an actual bill.”
“What we know at this point is that the bill cuts Medicare, raises taxes, and increases insurance premiums for tens of millions of Americans,” says Alexander. “It imposes onerous new costs on states and is likely to increase the federal debt. We need to see the actual bill text and know its exact text before we begin a lengthy debate about whether it’s the right direction for our country.”
WSJ: The major provisions of ObamaCare already have been tried. They've led to increased costs and reduced access to care.
Rove: The GOP Is Winning the Health-Care Debate: Gallup says independents now favor Republicans by nine points.
Is the GOP folding?
Gateway:
Currently, only 29% of Americans say it’s more important to give people a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option than to keep their current plan.
But, facts don't matter to the agenda driven democrat-media complex.
 Insty:
GETTING SNEAKY: New plan might allow Dems to slip public option through Senate.
Senate Democrats desperate to find a way to pass a health care bill that includes a federal insurance plan may have come up with a way to do it without putting moderate members who oppose it in political jeopardy.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is weighing a plan to bring the final health care bill to the floor without a public option — making it much easier to get the 60 votes needed to prevent a Republican filibuster — and then adding the provision later as an amendment.
Yeah, that’ll work . . . .
Via Marginal Rev:
Jim Capretta looks at the Baucus healthcare bill and concludes that, because the subsidies phase out as income rises, it imposes an effective marginal tax rate on income of about 30 percent for many families. Add that figure to the income tax, the payroll tax, and the phase-out of the EITC and "the effective, implicit tax rate for workers between 100 and 200 percent of the federal poverty line would quickly approach 70 percent — not even counting food stamps and housing vouchers."
Whatever the Baucus bill will say, we can be certain that it is designed to screw things up badly enough that people will beg for single-payer government-controlled medicine.
Upper photo: Are you too young to know who those Docs are?
Lower photo via Jammie's piece on the NHS
Wednesday, October 7. 2009
 I pledge allegiance to the debt
Here we go again. Dems plans for Urban Renewal. How did that work out last time?
How Hopey Changey is strangling our economy. Tiger. I hear the same things from businessmen. Including from Coyote.
Confessions of a Middlebrow Professor
Wilkinson: Cap and Trade is ritual self-flagellation
Even if you're not in the union, you have to pay the union to work on a Federal project.
ACORN threw out Repub registrations. Surely that is a Federal crime.
Is Washington studying the wrong war?
Free money in Detroit. Obama delivers! But wouldn't a bus ticket to Texas, where they have jobs, be more useful?
 Bill Ayers admits writing Obama's book. OK, maybe he was kidding. Who knows? Photo is home-grown commie terrorist Prof. Ayers. I hope he was paid for his work.
Another Obama nominee nutjob. She wants polygamy. Where do they find these people? I mean, like, who could afford polygamy except multimillionaires? Well, but on the other hand, you could send them all out to work and just hang out and collect their paychecks...
Is "Obama Trauma" beginning to sink in? (Ms. Robin, note you have mixed up cow-tipping with kowtowing. "Cow towing" is a distasteful sexist term for a method of removing a spouse from the mall)
John Leboutillier has a website. We'll link it. We like him.
For crying out loud, would you please sit up straight. Sheesh.
New strict rules for the Aussie's Bathurst races:
Australian police are gearing up for an annual crackdown on motor-racing fans - limiting race-goers to 24 cans of beer a day. Spectators at the Bathurst 1000 - a three-day race meeting staged this week - will be told to stick to just the one "slab" of beer while at the racetrack. Wine-drinkers must also show restraint, facing a four litres per day limit.
One carton or four bottles of wine per day? Have the Aussies become pussy drinkers?
African-American "Studies" has been around for 40 years.
When you control the cash, you can control everything. Pay Czar wants to slash exec salaries. That's one way to get rid of them.
Good-bye Chrysler. They are going down, but still scrambling.
Related: How much of what "American" cars are made in the US, and how much of foreign brands are? Truth is, these concepts no longer have much meaning.
Education: Government thinks they came up with a brilliant idea. Turns out it is already being done privately, and is widespread. Watch government try to do it anyway and try to duplicate what is already being done.
I used to think that giving away the Panama Canal was the dumbest thing Carter did, but nowadays I think it was creating a Federal Dept of Education. Education is neither a Federal responsibility nor a Federal power.
Because the first "stimulus" worked so well, let's do it again
The propaganda unit of the DOJ. Imagine if Bush had pulled this trick...
Medical-related
As a companion to Bobby Jindal's piece posted yesterday, here's What a Republican health-care plan should look like. The Dems could have hit a home run with ideas like these, instead of imagining that they can run American medicine.
Save your pennies. You may be subject to an "individual mandate." AKA a big "tax"
Tuesday, October 6. 2009
Just a note to the White House PR jokers: Docs do not wear white coats outside of work settings. Nowadays, they sometimes wear them in the office, and usually during hospital rounds (but increasingly less so).
I never heard of a Doc wearing a white coat in a public setting. It's absurd. Those Docs in DC were used. They are tools. I doubt that any of them are practicing Docs.
If you can read this, you’re aware there’s a debate within and outside the Obama administration about what the US is to do about Afghanistan. If you are, also, a careful reader you are probably confused or conflicted. With good reason.
Eight years after 9/11, the objectives and the means to them are still unclear or ill-focused. We’re told by various authorities the objectives range from containing a relatively few Al-Quaeda to reconstituting much of the social fabric and governance of Afghanistan and its immediate neighbors. Similarly, authorities recommend means that range from narrowly targeted attacks from within or outside Afghanistan, or Pakistan, to increased ground forces to major social welfare and government reform efforts, each with differing time horizons.
Those authorities with the most experience in these matters tend toward the broader objectives and means. Yet, all of them caveat their course with hard-learned reservations about success.
THE authority, as provided by the Constitution, the President, despite his and supporters’ politically convenient mouthings meant to win an election, is determined to, according to reports from insiders, re-examine the entire matter from basic assumptions forward.
Opponents of his presidency find themselves in the comfortable position that Obama capitalized upon pre-election of pointing out the gross inconsistencies in the president’s words, actions and results. This is furthered by the arch comedy of verbal hypocrisies from his supporters.
A few more global strategists, like Henry Kissinger, point to the broader tableau of possibilities, involving India, China and Russia much more deeply. However, none have demonstrated such inclination. Indeed, even the NATO countries are, as usual, hesitant to increase their meager commitments, especially to unsure decision-making in Washington and prospects.
Compounding all this is that, now including the global economic shakeout, none of the Western countries appear willing to devote the commensurate resources to the broader missions.
So, ultimately, the start-from-scratch debate is healthy in revealing the stakes, the stake-holders, the opportunities, the risks, the costs and the constraints. Regardless of efforts for the debate or process to be more transparent, it is reasonably so, and such decisions are always finally made among a small circle and the inescapable responsibility of the President.
Obama administration insiders preclude withdrawal. That leaves either a full-bore effort, which may or not succeed, or a lesser effort that everyone with access to the best information says will only prolong everyone’s agonies with less to no expectation of satisfactory resolution.
No one’s eloquence can mask that stark choice. Polling indicates that is recognized by most citizens.
Politicians tend to see compromises as the natural order of things. The rest of us live in a more directly consequential reality.
All of the evidence so far about President Obama indicates his reality is dedicated to vapid speeches. No tangible results have come from any. On any subject, only his hardest-core supporters still rally to his words.
I support the fullest re-examination of all aspects of our involvement in Afghanistan, both in itself and for its vital educative function for all of us.
I support the direct consequences of whatever decision is made by President Obama to be properly seen as his responsibility alone. He has finally cornered himself, and has run out of words to distract from that.
What we’re debating is not just the fate of Afghans, Pakistanis, other countries, our or others’ security and pockets. It is, also, the determiner of our own and President Obama’s mettle, integrity and future.
 The big lies of the UN Climate Report. Am Thinker. Related, I still think the notion of CO2 as a "pollutant" is patently insane.
Related: Dr. Holdren used to be a Coming Ice Age catastrophizer. Maybe he is a catastrophizer by nature.
Equally insane: schools banning bake sales. Next they will replace pancake breakfasts with raw broccoli and tofu - and nobody will show up.
Camel's nose in the tent: FTC to begin to regulate blogs
I blame last year's economic mess ultimately on the government. Now they want to do it again. Of course, a good down-payment is a good idea - but what if the government gives you that too?
It's a great time to be a consumer - if you have any $ left
The 125th birthday of Ludwig Van Mises. Why he is important.
Medical-related
Jindal: The Conservative case for reform. I like it.
Democrats Mired in Chaos, Confusion Over Healthcare Bill
The infant mortality canard
Country With Worst Health Care In The World Wins Nobel Prize
I don't know where the WH rounded up those docs yesterday, but docs are overwhelmingly opposed to further government involvement and control.
Monday, October 5. 2009
Another point of view re Polansky, from NYM:
I tend to view the Polanski affair, not as an authentic case of rape, but as a payment dispute in which one side is able to whistle up the assistance of the criminal law.
Mayor at Drudge: Bloomberg: 'We can't just say everybody can go everyplace and do anything they want'... (fixed link)
A guy who wrote verse for Hallmark Cards (h/t, No Left Turns)
A new way to think about crime deterrance
Nice photos of the Adirondacks from Tiger. Nice place he has there.
How government is keeping unions alive
Did we elect a Beta male?
Horowitz banned from speaking on campus
The NEA is all about power
Do you want this Copenhagen Treaty? I don't.
California wake-up call
Althouse on the insulting, condescening, adolescent speeches to the Olympic Committee
Prelutsky:
The idea that any sane person would be in favor of the government’s running the health industry simply doesn’t compute. Leaving such important matters in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats is beyond mind-boggling; it’s lunacy.
Can the middle class afford Obamacare?
Baucus' plan is the same old thing. From Weekly Standard:
Along with new taxes, the bill seeks to offset its enormous increases in government spending by squeezing Medicare, and particularly the Medicare Advantage program that millions of seniors use to get extra coverage through private insurers. But rather than use cuts in Medicare to shore up that program's ailing finances and help make it sustainable, the Baucus bill (like other Democratic plans this year) would use the money to create yet another unsustainable entitlement.
The bill would therefore exacerbate the chief causes of the rising costs at the core of our health care woes: inefficient entitlement spending and the absence of real market pressures in health insurance. Instead of addressing these, Baucus is offering tax increases, a new entitlement sure to grow more costly every year, fewer options for doctors and patients, a far greater government role in health care, and the prospect of health care service shortages, disruptions, and rationing.
Why do the Dems want to undermine Medicare Advantage?
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