Monday, September 21. 2009
Why this flu has taken up as much hysterical bandwidth as the hysterical global warming hysteria is beyond me. I guess media needs exciting "content" - just as we do here.
But this seems ridiculous. It's just a flu, for heaven's sake. It's not airborn AIDS or plague.
For my excitement, a good new Bolognese recipe works very well.
A quote from Mankiw's excellent op-ed in the NYT:
Imagine that someone invented a pill even better than the one I take. Let’s call it the Dorian Gray pill, after the Oscar Wilde character. Every day that you take the Dorian Gray, you will not die, get sick, or even age. Absolutely guaranteed. The catch? A year’s supply costs $150,000.
Anyone who is able to afford this new treatment can live forever. Certainly, Bill Gates can afford it. Most likely, thousands of upper-income Americans would gladly shell out $150,000 a year for immortality.
Most Americans, however, would not be so lucky.
Saturday, September 19. 2009
How did I get stuck with this link job this weekend? Oh well, there's no heavy-lifting, and I spent all day doing garden and yard work.
The O goes for the Full Ginsberg. It has never worked before. It makes you look desperate.
Right-wingers killed the Kennedys? That's news to me. This is nuts. JFK was killed by a Cuba-linked Commie, and RFK by some sort of Moslem fanatic. No, it was not "you and me" despite the doubtless deep wisdom of Mick Jagger.
50 things that are getting killed by the internet
The Dark side of cooperation
Update on the global fisheries. h/t, Jungleman
Unbelievable: Albright to Russians: The US wants to be weaker. What's up with that? Is weakness a way to try to get love?
Insty:
SO IF, AS MICHELLE OBAMA SAYS, women are “crushed” under our health care system, then how come they live longer than men?
A Canadian doc: I quit when they put doctors under state control.
Related: 56% now oppose Obamacare, whatever it is.
Race-bait as we say, not as we do. Jules
ACORN and the Catholic church: A legacy of big hearts and small brains
Did you see Chris Wallace's comment on his treatment by the WH? He is not amused.
Taxing the heck out of the poor and the middle class. And everybody else, too. We are supposed to want to slave for our wise masters in Washington. I am happy to work at any job at all - I can dig a ditch, cut down trees, carry rocks, push a wheelbarrow, or drive a tractor all day - but I do not like to work for those jokers. They are the Maggie's Farm we have trouble with.
Related: Medved on the two attitudes towards America. I think it's correct.
What Socialism will do for you: California's 12.2% unemployment. Why work?
Re Russia, Lowry with A Masterstroke of Weakness. Most nations only respect power, whether you like it or not.
 Footsteps of Angels
When the hours of Day are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;
Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful firelight
Dance upon the parlor wall;
Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more;
He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life!
They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!
And with them the Being Beauteous,
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.
With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine.
And she sits and gazes at me
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.
Uttered not, yet comprehended,
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from her lips of air.
Oh, though oft depressed and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!
Friday, September 18. 2009
 Travel tips: "Come to Denmark. Our women are easy." (Photo of an easy Danish Pastry from Theo.)
Driscoll:
The far left Common Dreams Website drops the mask and exclaims, “Climate change is not an environmental issue. It’s about resources and global justice, about the future direction of capitalism, about where the next wars will be.”
Is anybody listening to the doctors?
75 Percent of Oklahoma High School Students Can't Name the First President of the U.S.
Kling: Not What They Had in Mind: A History of Policies that Produced the Financial Crisis of 2008
The O:
So I just want everybody to know, Congress will have time to read the bill. They will have time to debate the bill. They will have all of August to review the various legislative proposals. When we come back in September, I will be available to answer any question that members of Congress have. If they want to come over to the White House and go over line by line what’s going on, I will be happy to do that.
But it just ain't true.
How green energy can be an environmental disaster
Jules on the O:
...as long as this opposition = racism story line is allowed to continue unchallenged, it ultimately reflects badly on him. Because it is an insult and a condescension for his prominent supporters to refuse to let him govern as anything but a black man.
Related, from Anchoress:
In her most recent rambling discourse Maureen Dowd writes that President Obama is “at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension.”
Is that true? Have we had 9 months of “racial turbulence” or have we had about six weeks of it, spurred on in great measure by a press/punditry corps has been wondering “is this opposition actually racism?” since the springtime Tea Parties, but really starting panting the question once the August townhall meetings got hot and it became clear that the Democrats were not effectively selling their bill.
Related, from Kimball:
In our culture, the charge of racism is not only a conversation-stopper it is a thought-stopper. We cannot publicly tell the truth about race, so the charge of racism always carries with it not only an element of intimidation, but also an element of exposure. Everyone knows that Al Sharpton, say, is a mountebank, but we must be chary of saying so because of his race.
Stanley Kaplan died. From Minding the Campus:
As a Jew with a degree from a public university (City College), Kaplan felt that he had been discriminated against in his attempt to gain admission to medical school. So he turned standardized tests into a weapon to be used by students who might otherwise have no chance of getting into a quality university. With high scores, he reasoned, they could not be ignored.
In doing so, Kaplan called the test makers' bluff. The College Board, which sponsors the SAT, and Educational Testing Service, which develops and administers the test, had long maintained that the test was not coachable. Kaplan exposed this as the blatant and self-serving falsehood that it was.
Thursday, September 17. 2009
 Honduras: For the first time in this country's history, our leaders in government are siding with Marxists Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Raul Castro and Evo Morales against a democratic foreign leader.
W.H. collects Web users' data without notice
More details of Baucus' bill. Who would like this? More grim details at WaPo.
Why Dems are balking at health care reform
From Doug Ross, on What do Jimmy Carter, Maureen Dowd and Mike Lupica have in common?
ObamaCare -- Unlike previous Democrat efforts to implement socialized medicine, if you oppose Barack Obama's form of National Socialized Democrat health care, you're a Nazi racist bastard. That is, according to:
• Jimmy Carter
• Maureen Dowd
• Mike Lupica
• and numerous other liberal crackpots.
Even though Republicans, Libertarians and those who support the United States Constitution have been fighting socialized medicine for 75 years, your opposition represents: RACISM. You're all f***ing racists, get it?
Screw the Constitution! Screw the Bill of Rights! Screw the Declaration of Independence! You've got a President with a slightly different skin color: you're not allowed to express dissent! You're all racists! So shut the hell up, you wingnuts!
Simpson at Am Thinker:
As I reported last September, and as Glenn Beck and others have reported since then, ACORN was created specifically to execute the Cloward Piven Strategy of manufactured crisis across our country. This series of videos demonstrates in microcosm how ACORN workers promote the strategy.
We linked to Cloward-Piven last year thus: "Here's an excellent explanation of it. Yes, it's Alinsky/Gramsci-type strategy."
From Why are liberals still angry?
See things from their point of view. The most fundamental principle liberals have is that they are all very, very smart, and everyone should listen to them. Nothing angers them more than something that challenges them to reexamine that core tenet. And that’s why they were so delighted by the election of President Obama and further wins in the House and Senate. For a moment they thought the American people had recognized liberals as their superiors and said to them: “Please! Smart people! Lead us and tell us what to do!”
Of course, it is quite obvious right now that that’s not at all what the election was about.
How Waxman-Markey would be a gigantic middle-class tax. As the guy says:
... it is - make no mistake - a tax on the middle class of huge proportions. This is nothing more than a wealth redistribution scheme and a bureaucracy-building program for the Federal government.
More than that, it will lead to additional costs for everything that uses energy. Food will cost more, the things you buy will cost more, eating out in a restaurant will cost more - everything will cost more. A lot more. So the hit will be amplified. It will cost jobs, steal wealth and ruin us as a great nation.
That is it will cost whatever jobs, wealth and greatness is left after the ObamaCare health care “reform” robs us and our children of the future.
And it will not do one darn thing about dropping carbon in the atmosphere - something its crafters realize full well. It is a lie, top to bottom.
Wednesday, September 16. 2009
Just Google "Chris Dodd and ACORN." I don't have time to write a post right now except to note one link.
You are, of course, quite right, BL: Sen. Dodd was The Man From ACORN, (well, and so was Obama).
Ed. addendum:
John Fund today on why ACORN should get no more federal funds. Scathing review of the issues, including their links with SEIU. I still find it difficult to believe that there are nuts like this around.
 The Mayflower and the Speedwell left Holland on Sept 6th, 1620, and left England on Sept. 16th. They were headed for New York Harbor where the Dutch already had a flourishing small trading colony (and Boston already had some rowdy, all-male Brit settlers with no evident religious inclinations and with a taste for rum and violence), but those Pilgrims never made it to New York because of bad autumn weather. How would American history be different had they made it to NYC? Our post on the story.
Health care reform and the unions. It's a boondoggle.
George Will: Why nobody believes Obama
NPR jumps to defend ACORN, with a condescending and insane theory like "You can't expect poor black folks to act any differently." I can't? Why not? I expect decent behavior from everybody.
I thought the League of Women Voters was non-partisan.
As the O's proposals struggle, the race card gets played. It won't work, though, because so many of the O's struggles are with the Dems.
Mark Levin's book has sold 1 million copies - without a single MSM review.
Your choices show your character, and the Declaration of Dependency. Dr. Sanity.
Chavez challenges the US: Stop us from going nuclear
I agree that this is nuts: Three quarters of a million arrested for possession of pot in 2008
Tuesday, September 15. 2009
Breitbart's Big Government site sure launched with a bang. The ACORN team visits California. For those who have not been following the story, this is not satire.
The MSM doesn't want to touch this, because the O served as ACORN's legal counsel, as I understand it. And/or leadership trainer, etc. Beck says ACORN and SEIU are joined at the hip.
For more ACORN fun for you hungry squirrels, former ACORN employee Anita Moncrief discussed ACORN corruption. (fixed). This is an old tape.
Update: Now it appears that the lady may have been pulling their legs. That makes more sense, because her game was just as outrageous as Jim's.
h/t, NYM.
Here's Health care reform the right way. Anybody would sign onto this, I think.
Salad-eating threatens the planet (h/t, Thompson). That means no more salads for me, thank goodness. It's just rabbit food, anyway.
Michelle: ACORN is a criminal enterprise. My question is how many of the bad housing loans they were responsible for. And now Senate votes to deny funds to ACORN. Notably, the MSM still ignores the story.
Obama as Soros' Manchurian Candidate
Why don't we permit interstate insurance sales?
How government policies helped create medical care inflation.
Kimball on the will to believe
Related: The O is deliberately misleading the people. I have no doubt about it.
Monday, September 14. 2009
Via Moonbattery:
The current left-wing position on death panels would appear to be: "Death Panels are a horrible, wonderful idea and you racist Republicans should be ashamed for claiming they were in the bill, which they should be." Which is actually more coherent than the usual leftist government in favor of government health care, which is "Republicans are racists."
Indeed, I see a serious Ageism problem at work here which has been neglected, even while I acknowledge Maureen Dowd's doubtless accurate view that any debate about any of the O's notions is nothing but covert racism. Man, she is so perceptive.
That rhetorical question from Barry Goldwater still haunts us today. Many of us who supported the US being in Vietnam found ourselves in the uncomfortable posture of, in effect, backing President Johnson’s floundering, painful, costly half-way measures. Instead of early on going deep and hard to close Haiphong, punish Hanoi, and cut the infiltration routes, the US dribbled in and hesitated. What earlier forcefulness would have yielded is indicated by the more compliant reaction from North Vietnam immediately following our major Linebacker pummeling of it in 1972.
Analogies can be misleading. Rather, the question of why not victory is to open readers’ minds to wider possibilities than appear in most of the discussions of what to do about Afghanistan. The very concept of victory seems to have disappeared from our vocabulary and consciousness.
Victory is the accomplishment of the objective of a reasonably lasting situation in which Afghanistan is not a threat to its neighbors nor ourselves in the West. Pakistan’s nukes cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of foes. Iran cannot be allowed to extend its influence, or coercion, upon others. India’s security interests must be respected.
The arguments against a perimeter containment are compelling, as ineffective. The arguments against complete or hasty withdrawal are compelling, as worsening the threats. The arguments against solely counter-insurgency without enough securing forces are compelling, as inadequate.
Democratization, modernization, social services, etc. may be tactics toward the objective, but are insufficient without trusted security. Security requires seriously reduced cross-border sanctuaries and support together with seriously diminished internal capabilities of Taliban, Al Quaeda and drug lords.
For Afghanistan’s sake, as well as other corollary objectives, that means several measures: 1. Surgically take out Pakistan’s nuclear capability, combined with India’s open pledge and actions to reduce its arming, presence and targeting of Pakistan, recognizing that India’s fears of Pakistan are real; 2. Substantially take out Iran’s nuclear capability, and embargo its critical gas imports; 3. Buy Afghanistan’s opium production while simultaneously training and supplying Afghans who cooperate with viable replacement crops and businesses, to reduce the funds flow to drug lords; 4. With vote of Congress, commit 100,000 more primarily combat troops to Afghanistan to clear and hold, while energetically pursuing longer (2-3 years, at least) building up of competent Afghan security forces, us and they pursuing forward counter-insurgency.
In 1964, Goldwater lost by a landslide. The rest is history, or commentary. President Obama, like President Johnson, deserves respect and support for not bugging out. However, experts judge both’s half-way courses result in long drawn out losses.
In 2006, President Bush changed course in Iraq. The loud bipartisan support from Senators Lieberman and McCain, commanding the center, was critical. They have again come forth. “Only Decisive Force Can Prevail in Afghanistan: A middle path of muddling through is the real recipe for quagmire and loss of public support.”
Barry Goldwater’s words in 1964 are as appropriate now: “Why Not Victory?...I’m convinced that in this year 1964 we must face up to our conscience and make a definite choice. We must decide what sort of people we are and what sort of world we want–now and for our children.”
The new site Big Government is all over ACORN. The fact that Obama used to work for them seems of no interest to the MSM.
The new undercover videos from NYC are as bad as the other ones. It is clear now that it is up to independent journalists to find the truth. This O'Keefe guy deserves a Pulitzer - but he won't get one.
Related: MSM cred sinks to new low
Sunday, September 13. 2009
Andrew Breitbart's new site, Big Government, looks good. I will make it a regular visit.
Things on the intertubes keep getting better, thanks to free enterprise.
Or the Patriot's Woodstock?
Photo below from a report and good collection of photos - and many amusing signs - at Looking at the Left.
Here's how the NYT briefly covered it.
Sen. Feinstein sounding like Rush
Sullivan skates after being caught smoking pot in Cape Cod park
Honduran "ruler"? I cannot believe the US policy towards these guys. The guy just rescued the country from a dictator.
Why men love crazy women
The O admin explained, in terms of community organizing
A 100 mph anti-smuggling boat
They are nuts. Sarkozy's new carbon tax
Why the MSM is losing money: propaganda is boring
Canadian Human Rights Commission goes after the Catholic Church. h/t, SDA
Yes, reader, we did miss this: Who owns the news?
It's so smart, I am relinking to this Steyn piece via Barrister:
...governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture — one in which elections are always fought on the Left’s issues and on the Left’s terms, and in which “conservative” parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can. Listen to your average British Tory or French Gaullist on the campaign trail pledging to “deliver” government services more “efficiently.”
Saturday, September 12. 2009
When the AP says, as in this piece,
© 2009 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
do they mean that it cannot be linked? What do they mean? Is linking "redistributing"?
Help me out, somebody. One would think that they would want linking to their stuff.
Well, slap me with a mackeral and call me Edna. Up to 2 million march in DC to protest growing federal power. This puts the anti-Vietnam War protests to shame.
Power to the people! We Americans aren't dead yet.
Obama willing to meet Kim Jong-Il, but not John Boehner.
That's the insanity of it all. The Left continues to show their true colors.
 Reagan still rules. Odd, isn't it?
Who was Rick Rescorla? He helped save a guy I met in NYC.
Dave Barry on 9-11, at Wizbang:
"The people who did this to us are monsters; the people who cheered them have hate-sickened minds. One reason they can cheer is that they know we would never do to them what their heroes did to us, even though we could, a thousand times worse. They know that when we hunt down the monsters, we will try hard not to harm the innocent. Those are the handcuffs we willingly wear, because for all our flaws, we are a decent people."
Bickering? I'm sorry, but the time for messy democracy is now
My time with ACORN. Related: Census Bureau (finally) cuts ties with ACORN
What is it about Dems and not paying taxes?
Docs: Our patients are not livestock on a government ranch
From Rick Moran:
Obama is saying that if it’s not written into the bill that a public option will lead eventually to a single payer system, then you cannot draw logical conclusions that such would be the case. I totally reject that idea, based not only on the way the system is set up but also because several liberals have made absolutely no bones about the fact that this is exactly what the public option is for. When your opponent admits that your slippery slope argument is true, why would it be a lie?
The same holds true for the few other slippery slope arguments I believe are legitimate. For instance, is it possible for a bill (HR3200) that contains provisions to create 53 new panels, committees, and boards with regulatory or statutory authority over health care in America really, really lead to more “efficient” and “cheaper” health care?
Related: First do harm, then exploit the crisis
Related, from Carpe Diem:
As I have pointed out before, basic medical insurance is currently available right now for millions of Americans at about the same monthly cost of a cell phone.
Related, from Krauthammer:
Friday, September 11. 2009
 We spend it because we make it. We spend more on medical care because we can. It's why 75 year-old American men expect to play tennis and ski and climb mountains and chase girls while Euro men that age are hobbling around on canes - if they are still alive.
It's not just medical care than we spend more on. We spend more on charity, churches, furniture, research, houses and vacation houses, food, gyms, bass boats, trips, lawn care, gardening, psychotherapy, marriage counseling, cars and F-150s, recreation, clothes, tools, guns, lawyers, starting new businesses, electric guitars, magic crystals, massage, booze, laser-vision, hair transplants, new knees, hips, shoulders and heart valves, sports, education - everything, including rockets to the moon.
We are a prosperous nation, but it is not because of good luck. It's because of a culture of work ethic, freedom, the value of free choice, and personal independence. Each person pursuing his own vision of what this brief life ought to be, while constantly contending with hard realities and tough choices.
Via Shrinkwrapped, if Italy, France or Germany joined the US, they would be the poorest states in the country.
(I always remind myself that, in Europe, it's the mega-wealthy and the fishermen who own boats. In the US, it seems like every cop and fireman has a more expensive one than I do. Well, actually, I managed to sell all of our darn boats last year. What a relief.)
Barrister addendum: If we just spent as much on health care as Mexico, think how happy we would be.
Dylanologist addendum: The average, middle class person in Europe lives at about the material level of an American on welfare, if not slightly below. I know: I have lived over there.
This came in over the transom. Curiously, most schools hadn't opened yet at the time of the O's nagging nanny speech to schoolkids: "Work hard, stay in school, don't chew gum you don't wanta be a bum, stay outta jail, eat your spinach, become President, bla bla bla."
Who needs another Mom?
It's easier to BS adults than kids.
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