Friday, September 11. 2009
 500,000,000 year-old photos from Hubble. It's the "Butterfly nebula." Who knew they had digital photography back then?
Just 8 years ago. Lucianne
If you haven't seen those ACORN videos yet, here they are. Why am I not surprised?
10 questions to ask your Congresscritter, with a sample letter. Villainous
All about the Science Czar. The guy is beyond the pale.
Palin: Obama is pretty much a dick.
Why so many polls of "concern" are worthless.
What good are weak students with mushy degrees?
Is GDP per capita a good measure of well-being?
Goldberg says it: Tom Friedman is a Liberal Fascist. Yes he is. Sad thing is, he doesn't know it: he just thinks he is better than me. Volokh rips him a new one. Who the heck do these people think they are?
Where does the Federal government get these powers?
Look for the union label: Need more proof that the Dem “health care” reform is more about political power than it is about protecting Americans health?
The climate frenzy is unraveling fast. Related: The Brit government is certifiably insane.
Organic farms are bad for the birds
Olasky: What's up with "social justice"?
What do you know about ERISA? Plus a very simple explanation of medical insurance It matters a lot. The devil is always in the details. h/t, Vermont Tiger
From a commenter at a CNN piece:
For every $1 spent on private healthcare insurance, 3c is insurance company profit, 6c government taxes and 10c malpractice insurance and defensive medicine.
It seems to my simple mind, that the place to start with reform is with the lawyers. Malpractice insurance and defensive medicine currently gets more than 3x what the healthcare insurance companies gets.
How did Putin get elected? Those bombings remain a mystery.
AVI thinking about Archie Bunker and himself
The long recent history of heckling Presidents during formal speeches
"If we only spent more money on education..." From Coyote:
Thursday, September 10. 2009
Big Tea Party in Bridgeport, CT tomorrow afternoon. Why not stop by if you can? Might be fun.
Ann Coulter will be there to help beautify old Bridgeport.
Photo is Bridgeport's Seaside Park.
Toon above via Theo
Powerline: This was not, to put it kindly, a speech that was directed at thinking people. Tucker Carlson wonders at the O: It's a bunch of lies.
Percent of crimes solved.
Movement Conservatives vs. The Pragmatists: The Battle is Joined
Thomas Friedman goes over the edge. Thus is the inner Fascist revealed. Even O supporter Camille Paglia is beginning to get it.
Mr. Free Market: Why We Drink
The angry mobs just don't quit.
We are never going to see that auto bailout money again. What a waste of taxpayers' hard-earned funds.
Barone: The convenient fantasies of Pres. Obama
Do our ROE make sense? I do not get the concept of a "nice" battle.
Coyote:
The leftist political strategy for over 100 years has been
- Regulate something
- Blame the free market for inevitable disruptions caused by the regulation
- Use the above to justify more regulation
- Repeat
Wednesday, September 9. 2009
From Camille Paglia:
Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."
But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why?
From T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII, Editor at Large, the National Topsider:
The seasonal affective disorder seems especially hard on Montauk's children, cleft as they are from the loving breasts of their household staffs by the stately carillons of distant preparatory academies. I could see it in the dilated pupils of young T. Coddington VIII last week, as his driver Evgeny packed the lad's trunks into the old family Daimler for the long lonely drive to Quonsocket Boy's Prep and Rehabilitation Center. At our farewell I left him with the same bracing words of encouragement left me by my father, swashbuckling Topsider founder T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI, upon my annual boyhood departures to the finishing schools of Switzerland: "the Alps will bloom soon enough, dear boy -- persevere, persevere."
How Castro got his job through the NYT
Why medical care is not a "right". I can easily make a case for the right to "legal care," however. Related: 10 things I hate about health care reform
What's the real unemployment rate?
Why are Jews Liberals?
Obama everywhere, all the time. He is turning out to be a lightweight, which is a good thing for all of us.
What exactly does a union leader know about creating manufacturing jobs? They surely know how to destroy them...
The minimum wage hike damaged teens the most
If you are from Chris Murphy's district (D-CT), he needs to hear from you
The Rubber Room: The battle over NYC's teachers
Via Marginal Rev:
The Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education is not itself listed in the Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education.
Steyn: It's official! Environmentalism is now a religion.
The speech begins:
Members of Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen, Children of the Obama Youth Corps—I come to you tonight to speak frankly about our nation's health-care crisis and how we in Washington can make it worse.
Related, from Insty: TIM NOAH: Please God, no more health reform speeches.
Using your computer is killing the planet. Yikes. But I am an addict. I need free help.
Wisdom from Milton Friedman, via Dr. Helen's Who cares what a President thinks?:
The paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, 'what you can do for your country' implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors, and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.
Tuesday, September 8. 2009
PJ O'Rourke at Reason TV. h/t, Driscoll. A quote: "Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit". Another: "People who go into politics are bad people."
Editor note: Good fun to listen to, even though this is the serious side of PJ.
 BD must be hankering for a real cup of coffee this morning after drinking those teeny Euro coffees. They bring it to you and you think "That's it?" And if you ask for a "cafe Americano" they react with disgust, and just add hot water and put it in a bigger cup.
Why women have sex: Surber. Sheesh. I thought it was because they were getting damp and crazed with desire for my magnificent body, my Apollonian face, my endless charm and wit, and my six-pack abs... and that it is a gentleman's duty to meet her overheated physical need.
Obama the Mortal. Krauthammer
Alinksy nods. Tiger
The Great Crittendino does economics.
How to avoid taxes: run for Congress
Cuba's free health care. Wizbang
What is it with all of these Czars? Dino. Who are these people? Related: One Czar gone, 30 to go.
People Power. A quote:
For a while now, the message from Washington has been that we know what's good for the public, whether the public likes it or not. One after another, both parties have attempted to foist a series of grand reforms on a skeptical populace--in areas ranging from Social Security and immigration to energy and health care. Politicians have made decisions affecting millions of lives without accountability and oversight. The upshot has been more government, more debt, and--coming soon to a 1040 form near you--more taxes. No wonder the public is anxious.
It should hardly come as a surprise that the public views American elites with suspicion and disdain.
Related, from Powerline:
Obama portrays himself as a visionary, able to view the petty disputes that preoccupy the rest of the world from a higher plane, divorced from anything as banal as America's interest. That posture is offensive enough. But what if, like so many extreme leftists who came before him, he's just a man without a moral compass that points anywhere other than in direction of sharing the wealth and increasing government power?
I got a kick out of Dr. Merc's post about Life on Other Worlds
It's always fun to catch up on Moonbattery when you have been away for four weeks or so.
A book: The Complete Therese of Lisieux.
The O and the Dems face a tough September.
Am Thinker:
...what actually is preventing Democrats from finally realizing their authoritarian dream of controlling the multi-trillion dollar healthcare industry?
The Democrat leadership is afraid to pass the bill unilaterally because, once voters realize they were duped, the Democrats will need Republicans to blame. Democrats reportedly are targeting the usual suspects for defection, Maine Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. But so far, Senator McCain appears to be the only Republican lawmaker gullible enough to be lured into that political wood chipper.
Frugality is the new normal.
Hollywood goes nuts over Chavez. What is more greedy-Capitalist than Hollywood? Go figure.
"First we socialize all the lawyers": Am Digest.
Dr. Merc found this site. Cool. Here's another from them:
Monday, August 31. 2009
Preparing for 2010. + Ed Morrissey opines: “Maybe the question isn’t so much whether the GOP can win back control of the house, but how quickly that possibility has arisen since Democrats took full control of the Beltway.” Then, Ed raises the ifs-ands-and-buts.
Likely voters: Obama -11%, 30% strongly approve vs 41% strongly disapprove; rest are up for grabs or grabbing lunch or not paying attention as busy working to pay taxes.
Obama = Ivy-League Huey Long, says George Will
Victors in Japan Are Set to Abandon Market Reform. That ought to work out, right? But, “Japan may need more American-style deregulation and market-led growth, not less, to invigorate its stagnant economy.” What’s Japanese for Obamanomics?
Iraq locates lost air force – in Serbia
Tom Ridge backpedals, he wasn’t pressured to raise security flags. Plus:
• He is "dumbfounded" that the government still has no way to track foreign visitors who don't leave the country when their visas expire, noting that two of the 9/11 hijackers were in the country on expired visas.
• Government officials and members of Congress rarely discuss homeland security issues and have "lost the sense of urgency" about protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. Because of the economy and growing budget deficits, he also is worried about funding for future efforts to tighten security.
Palestine problem hopeless, but not serious
Israel, Iran and Obama
“And now, my Famous All-Time All-Jewish Baseball Team, including some backup players”
Without major personnel changes, the Khmer Rouge trial risks descending into farce.
How to Lose in Afghanistan
Economic Conditions and US National Security in the 1930’s and Today
Reuters notes, “Most economists in the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) semi-annual poll were concerned about the outlook for the U.S. government budget. Also, they doubted health-care reforms proposed by the Obama administration would lower costs while increasing access and maintaining quality.”
Hollywood’s perverted patriotism
TAXING THOSE EVIL PROFITS
Dear White Liberal America
The Russian Navy has named the 4th of its Borei class SSBNs after a saint — Santa Claus to be exact. The Strategy Page says, “no one has ever named a nuclear submarine after Saint Nicholas before.” What could be more ridiculous than naming a boomer after Santa Claus? How about calling a health care “reform” bill a “a core ethical and moral obligation” and likening it to a religious crusade even as senior clerics of the Catholic Church denounce it as a Trojan horse for taxpayer funded abortion?
“Higher human needs”! Study: “We find significant differences in the response of donations to taxes across different types of charities. Donations to charities that provide basic goods and services to humans in need appear to be unresponsive to tax incentives, while donations to charities that appeal to higher human needs, animals, and the environment are very sensitive to tax incentives.” In other words, we help the needy, regardless of tax benefits, but the government has to incent us to give to those deemed deserving by government.
Please give to LtCol Chessani Defense Fund. Although court martial charges dropped, Chessani, now, still is forced to defend himself before a more lax rules of evidence Board of Inquiry, after court martial charges were dropped against him.
“The government’s persecution of this loyal Marine officer continues because he refused to throw his men under the bus to appease some anti-war politicians and press, and the Iraqi government. Any punishment of LtCol Chessani handed down by a Board of Inquiry would be a miscarriage of justice because he did nothing wrong, and our lawyers will mount the same vigorous defense in this administrative proceeding as they did in the criminal.”…
“Marines are renowned for their courage and their willingness to follow their commanders into battle against all odds. Their commanders, on the other hand, owe justice to these brave men and women who face death for them. That obligation requires commanders to defend their troops when politicians attempt to make them political scapegoats,” said Thompson….
LtCol Chessani was considered one of America’s most effective combat officers. He was on his third combat tour in Iraq when the Haditha incident occurred.
Steered by Tigerhawk
Organizing Against WorldNetDaily. I agree with my friend Jon Henke but would start by private letters to the CEOs thanking them for their ads in conservative venues and expressing that others are more representative and responsible.
Max Boot boots Sullivan et.al. for Emasculating American Intelligence.
Which reminds me of these boots. (Hey, that’s how my mind works! You should see my answers to Rorschach inkblot tests.)
The patient is replying to each Rorschach inkblot that he sees a sexy image. The psychiatrist tells the patient that he has a sex obsession. The patient replies, “Me? You’re the one showing me the sexy drawings.”
Dr. Joy Bliss’ post below reminded me, I’m hungry. (See what I mean about how my mind works.)
Nice to see that Massachusetts is going to follow some of the federal law. “Under the 1996 federal law that overhauled the nation’s welfare system, the 31,000 affected immigrants do not qualify for Medicaid or other federal aid. Massachusetts is one of the few states — others are California, New York and Pennsylvania — that provide at least some health coverage for such immigrants.”
In Britain,
Thousands of women and older people who suffer heart attacks are dying unnecessarily because they are not being prescribed the gold standard treatment which could prevent another attack…. The findings, based on an analysis of the national registry called the Myocardial Infarction National Audit Project collected between January 2004 and December 2005, were presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona.
The Real Story On The Uninsured
Question: Didn’t the Country Music Association Awards used to be more country, and better?
Why Does Nancy Pelosi Have a Problem With Patriotic Music?
For years, congressional offices have played patriotic anthems as the background music during hold times.
Not any more. After we were startled by the hold music when we called a House office recently, sources on Capitol Hill informed us this week that the Democratic House leadership has made a sweeping decision that congressional offices now have the options of “smooth jazz” elevator music or no music at all.
I’d like to see more independent confirmation before I completely blow a gasket.
Be back after I check on the lifeboats for the Obama-Biden Titanic voyage. (from Moonbattery)
Sunday, August 30. 2009
This one is a little different...Two Different Versions! .................Two Different Morals!
OLD VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.' Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.'
Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
Saturday, August 29. 2009
From Rick Moran on Is the end of American as we know it so bad?:
No one except some addle brained liberals believe that big government is not a threat to individual liberty, not to mention being at odds with the very first principle espoused by the Founders; that America should be a land of free men who govern themselves under a Constitution that clearly defines and limits the role of the federal government.
I don’t necessarily begrudge President Obama his efforts to “remake America” - if those efforts were carried out with a respect for that first principle uppermost in his mind. I would probably still oppose most of what he would do, but after all, elections have consequences and the president has a perfect right to try and change America if he finds it wanting in some respects.
But President Obama has no right to fundamentally alter the relationship between the governed and the government as defined in the Constitution. If he feels so strongly about having the federal government gradually taking over 1/6 of the American economy by being able to dictate to free men what kind of health care they will receive and their families will receive, then he should do it in the Constitutionally approved manner of amending our founding document to reflect that change.
Thursday, August 27. 2009
From Australia on "climate" taxes:
People see this as madness. And they actually get the gist of it. They know it’s a new tax and they are asking: ‘How does putting another new tax on me change the temperature of the globe?’
Wednesday, August 26. 2009
Via Powerline:
A few weeks ago, Eric Holder saw nothing wrong with Black Panthers using billy clubs to intimidate voters. Today, he thinks intimidating terrorists with cigars is a crime. Holder is the one who should be answering tough questions under oath.
Via No Left Turns:
Private insurance works well where it’s least regulated. To find the unaffordable disasters, you must head to states such as New York or New Jersey that have pioneered the reforms Obama is peddling for the entire country. . . .
A 55-year-old man in Allentown, Pa., can choose from 99 plans starting as low as $141 a month for hospital coverage. A zero-deductible HMO plan costs $418 a month. Or he can pick a more flexible PPO, with a higher deductible and pay less monthly out-of-pocket for the premium.
Enough already. I do not need to add to it nor can I, as I can do neither saccharine nor sentimental very well. I have yet to hear the word "controversial" or "extreme Left-wing" or "limousine Liberal." If the guy was such a saintly historic figure, how come nobody told me before today? (It does sound as if he was kind to people in person, but I never thought much of his personal or political integrity, even if he had good manners.)
Not to be mean-spirited or anything - just being normal Yankee-grumpy. Now I see the Left is already politicizing his death. Never waste a crisis death. And now here it comes, just as Rush predicted a year ago (and was given hell for saying).
Addendum, from Mr. Tiger:
...Ted Kennedy did more to push American government and civil society toward a European social welfare model than any politician of the post-war era, with the possible exception of LBJ. By my reckoning, he left the country worse off than he found it, and to the moment of his death supported legislation that, if enacted, will make it a lot harder for the generation of my children to succeed, thrive, and reach for their own stars. So I will end on perhaps a churlish note: I wish Ted Kennedy had not led the life he did.
Addendum: Scott at Powerline thinks that Kennedy's "borking" of Bork was his most shameful action. After Mary Jo, I assume.
Mary Jo, and the chicks in the Georgetown pubs that he and Chris Dodd reportedly entertained constantly, were probably the only regular people he ever knew. But "he cared" - always with other peoples' money, of course.
But I am voluntarily off duty for news, so I will shut up.
It all suddenly becomes clear to Randall Hoven. He has this graph:
I guess we're all not gonna drown this week. His post is rational, and deserves to be widely spread around.
I have no doubt that all of the global warming climate change etc. nonsense is about politics and power. And I do not give a darn what the weather does: whatever it does is fine with me as long as I am healthy and free, and my kids are ok.
Tuesday, August 25. 2009
The new taxes the Dems are contemplating
Blue Crab: "This is fairly shocking. The New York Times discovers that a lot of people who oppose ObamaCare are not raving lunatics - something the Times has not exactly been reporting before now." Related: Those darn violent right wing nuts.
Related: I thought it odd that we have heard very few ordinary people supporting government medicine. Of course not, since polls say 80% of people are happy with their medical care. Gateway found out who does support government medical care. Not exactly ordinary people.
Via RCP, from a Dem in Forbes:
Step back for a second, listen to what the non-screaming skeptics are saying, and it's clear the party severely overestimated its mandate and underestimated the public's growing unease with the government's massive growth over the last year. What would have been a hard sell in any environment has turned into an epic challenge. Yet the Democrats have been charging ahead as if it's still November 2008, oblivious to the dramatic change in the electorate's mood.
At Pajamas:
Now, as Matt Welch of Reason magazine points out, fear of big government is all the rage — and is cause for rage. He writes:
This isn’t about liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. A majority oppose Obama’s policies because they fly in the face of this country’s bedrock values of personal liberty and limited government. Robbing Peter to pay Goldman Sachs does violence to that fundamentally American ethos.
And increasingly, Obama administration policy does violence to European values, as well. The continent has for the last two decades been systematically disengaging national governments from domestic industries. Top officials from Sweden, of all places, complained about Washington’s auto bailout, tersely announcing that “the Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”
And while conservatives find it hard to believe that voters didn’t see this coming from the most liberal man in the U.S. Senate, Welch correctly concludes, “Americans didn’t vote for big government last November. They voted for a guy who looked like he could keep his cool in the heat of battle. If Obama wants to regain that cool, he needs to rein in the power-grabbers in Washington.”
But that goes for Republicans as well.
1799, via Volokh (h/t, Insty):
Let me place myself in the President’s chair, at the head of a party in this country, aiming to extend the influence of the governing powers at the expence of the governed; to increase the authority and prerogative of the Executive, and to reduce by degrees to a mere name, the influences of the people. How should I set about it? What system should I pursue?
1st. As the rights reserved by the State Governments and the bounds and limits set by the Constitution of the Union, are the declared barriers against the encroachments of entrusted power, my first business would be to undermine that Constitution, and render it useless, by claiming authority which, though not given by the express words of it, might be edged in under the cover of general expressions or implied powers — by stretching the meaning of the words used to their utmost latitude, — by taking advantage of every ambiguity — and by quibbling upon distinctions to explain away the plain and obvious meaning. It would be my business to extend the powers of the Federal Courts and of Federal Officers — to encroach upon the State jurisdictions — to throw obloquy on the State Governments as clogs upon the wheel of the General Government — for that purpose to promote a spirit of party among them, and subject to accusations of disaffection those who were opposed to the measures I would pursue. In addition to this I would now and then exercise trifling acts of authority not granted by the Constitution, under some undefined notion of prerogative. If by such means one encroachment should be made good, it would be a precedent for another, until the public by degrees would become accustomed and callous to them.
"Us right-wing nuts sure is scary!" Our hero PJ, Still 'Crazy' - And Proud of It. Conservatives induce a case of the vapors at the Washington Post.
They do not know how to write an English sentence. Stanley Fish on What Should Colleges Teach? I thought that writing, logically developed argument, and coherent essay writing was a job for high school, not college. h/t, Althouse
Via Bernard Goldberg:
Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.” Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.
I am a Neanderthal. OK. That's what I always thought anyway. I eat red meat too. Yummy.
Can medical care be a Constitutional entitlement?
Castro comes out in defence of Obama. That will help a lot. An endorsement only Hollywood could appreciate.
Were the bailouts a good idea? Marginal Rev
Will Scotland learn from this?
Our friend Jonah's final post on his Liberal Fascism blog.
The Admin joins the defence team for terrorists. Brilliant move. I am sure that will make them love us. Here comes the Grand Inquisitor from Connecticut.
More stimulating stimulus dollars. Why not just give Vouchers for Hookers? Like Cash for Clunkers?
No Pasaran:
Carle Zimmerman emphasized an inverse relationship between the strength of the family and the strength of the state. In other words, he argued that as the state increases in power, the family weakens; and as the state loses power — when the state becomes weak, for whatever reason — the family becomes stronger…
Russia's ongoing romance with Stalin. They like strong (paranoid) men.
Our corner of Maine, where we try to spend much of August boating, blueberrying, catching up on reading, playing tennis and golf and socializing over cocktails has broadband now, astonishingly. Re cars: Right now, I drive an oldish Lexus sedan, hubbie drives a fairly new F-250. Spare car? A 2002 Suburban for when needed, which we are considering replacing with a Toyota minivan. I'll begin with this minor rant -
 I hear that Cash for Clunkers - a wonderful subsidy for the Japanese auto makers - has had to extend their time frame for reimbursement from the government. Today is the latest deadline, but who knows?
The car dealers need the money to pay their bills.
It's the amount of paperwork, plus government computers crashing and making terrible errors. And most car dealers do not have, and cannot afford, the staff to get the government forms entered properly. Why would they? They are in the private sector...
That's why I refuse to get involved in government medicine. I don't have the time, and I cannot afford the staff to do their paperwork. And these bozos think they can run American medical care? They do not have a clue.
Errors on government paperwork are potential felonies. Who needs the hassle? Not me. I just want to be a simple doctor, and I would rather be paid with a bushel of potatoes from your garden than with a puny and way-overdue government check.
 The 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope (photo from the article). Related: The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D
Training drone pilots (with attack video) h/t, Neptunus
Photographers' Rights. h/t, Insty
Rick Moran: Why You couldn't pay me to be a doctor
Unbelieveable. IQ too high for the police department. Must be stupid bosses. You cannot be too smart to be a good cop.
The GOP's Hispanic problem
Big surprise:
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, had shown “no sensitivity” to the families of those who died, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, told the Scottish Parliament....
Hmmm. I see no Christian repentence there.
Sowell: A new push to play God from Washington
Saints are no more common in the insurance industry than in politics or even among paragons of virtue like economists. So there will always be horror stories, even if these are less numerous or less horrible than what is likely to happen if Obamacare gets passed into law.
Obama even gets away with saying things like having a system to "keep insurance companies honest"-- and many people may not see the painful irony in politicians trying to keep other people honest. Certainly most of the media are unlikely to point out this irony.
More Sowell: Utopia vs. Freedom
The nightmare of rationing in Oregon. Pajamas
Via NRO:
American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.
The only President America treated with anything like a cult of personality was George Washington (and maybe FDR, sad to say). Washington rejected it, and rightly, graciously, and honorably refused to run for re-election. Americans do not "anoint" - we hire and fire. We should probably fire more often, and more pols should make themselves temporary public servants rather than careerists. Government is not a religion - and politics should not be a road to an easy life and a generous pension for lazy or incompetent narcissists, schmoozers, and con artists.
Monday, August 24. 2009
 The "health care" war - and it is a war - attests to the extent to which Americans are divided on the proper role of government in their lives, not to mention in the most personal and sensitive areas of their lives.
For example, Coyote in a piece titled US Medicine - The best in the world, he said this:
I had a professor that used to poll his class — he would ask them if they would prefer a society where the gap between rich and poor was narrower but where the poor were, on an absolute basis, worse off than in the less equal society. He reported the vote almost always split about 50/50. (of course the is a purely utilitarian formulation of the question. Adding in individual liberties issues makes the question far more stark, as to achieve an egalitarian society one must give up both wealth and liberty.)
As a more-or-less Conservative person who was raised in the heart of the American Revolution, my instincts are to distrust centralized power (power is a zero-sum game, unlike money and wealth) and the wisdom and trustworthiness of politicians - and to trust the people to figure out their own lives as best they can (while providing the abundant safety nets we have now for those who stumble and fall).
I know that Lyndon Johnson's Medicaid and Medicare (for the poor, the chronically disabled and the old - imagine considering 65 to be old!), were viewed as first steps towards universal government medical care. Those measure took care of those people that everybody felt badly about.
The Left, which pretends to see "market failures" everywhere as an excuse to place as much as possible under the control of the State (see Dr. Clouthier: Simply put, the government needs to relearn its place, who notes the Left's tendency to promise the sun, moon and stars for free, for all.)
Does Government Know Best? I doubt it very much. There are few people in government, I believe, who are as educated, honest, informed, or thoughtful as I am (and that's not saying much). Regan at American Thinker asks Does Government Know Best?. One quote:
Frighteningly, team Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress -- who have taken on the role of the prudent parents of juvenile Americans -- have proven to be more than occasionally wrong for the country. In their desire to completely control American lives, they have progressed from losing their tempers to losing their way. Americans are now living in a nanny state in which the Democrats in power are implementing policy after policy designed to reduce freedom of choice and increase government control. Big government, socialized institutions, and sharing the wealth are policies supported by the Democrats - the party whose membership includes academics, Hollywood pseudo-intellectuals, and community organizers. The members of the Democratic Party are those who believe that they are smarter and wiser than the average American and that government intervention in all aspects of our lives is necessary in order to prevent social and economic catastrophe.
William Anderson at Weekly Standard says what I wish to say much better than I can in his Who Owns Your Body? One quote (my bold):
We are berated, ad nauseam, with imprecations that America is the only advanced nation that fails to have universal health care. This statement is often followed by the rueful remark that the debate over government controlled health care has been going on without progress for 60 years and, ipso facto, it is time to settle it.
All right, let's do that. Let's look a little deeper. Why is there no settlement of the issue, and why is America unique in its obstinate reluctance to follow the example of our older cultural brothers in Europe?
When a debate continues for decades without resolution, it is prudent to consider the deeper underlying assumptions. Principles which underpin the arguments are likely being ignored and marginalized rather than addressed in a forthright manner.
America is the only advanced country whose founding assumption is popular sovereignty. This is a proposition that stands with hardly a seconding voice throughout the contemporary international community. Yet it is the taproot of American exceptionalism.
Even here, however, the principle of government subordination to the people is by no means universally accepted. It has never been firmly ratified by our political class, those spiritual descendants of Europe's nobility. Our soi-disant elite appear to view with dismay their countrymen's continuing preference for self-rule.
Thus arises the question of corporal ownership. For Americans, the answer has been settled. Since the terrible bloodletting of the Civil War, and now excepting military service, ownership of one's body is a matter between the individual and God, with no intermediation by government.
Yet assertions are now being made that government should have responsibility for, and thus authority over, the maintenance of our bodies. It necessarily follows that government must have the power to approve or withhold care. This concept collides destructively with the founding principles of individual responsibility and autonomy upon which popular sovereignty depends.
This is the reason that the debate never ends. It is also the reason that any resolution of the question will necessarily either confirm or deny the original intent of the Founders.
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I have occasionally posted here about the sad, if not pathetic, willingness of some to sell their American birthright of individual sovereignty and freedom for a bowl of lentils. This is especially sad for a shrink because part of our job is to help people emotionally mature. It is no help to a shrink's job for government to be an enabler of perpetual childhood and dependency. Read Anderson's whole good essay (link above).
 Rules for Radicals turns to the right. Tiger. We have discussed Alinsky and Gramsci many times here. Along with 1984, Brave New World, Das Kapital, and Animal Farm, they seem to be the handbooks of the Left.
Oh, brother is right. The racist national parks. Related, from the hideously white Mr. Free Market
The Death Book for Veterans. Nice. Didn't we already ask them to die for their country once? Related: Obama to elderly: Drop Dead
A CT Rep who doesn't want to face the voters. Phone it in.
From Rev. Sirico:
Faith communities should recognize the Religious Left’s ‘40 Days’ campaign for what it is: a politically driven effort to expand a bloated state and make Americans evermore dependent on politicians and bureaucrats for healthcare.
Cash for clunkers was great for the Japanese car companies. I thought it was supposed to help American car companies.
Sen. Joe Lieberman must be listening to people. Slow it down.
Is a Federal insurance mandate Constitutional? No. Not under the Commerce clause, anyway. The Constitution gives no such power to the government. h/t, Viking
Important essay via Betsy: Do we expect too much from medical insurance? I believe so. At some point, some people seemed to expect "insurance" to pay all of their bills for them instead of simply insuring them against especially high or costly expenses. If a $60 pediatrician visit is too much for somebody, then they cannot afford to have kids yet.
Related: It's the big government, stupid. A quote from the NY Post piece:
While the commentariat's condescension is almost comical, the whole evil-or-stupid explanation misses the elephant in Obama's room: Americans of all stripes, it turns out, aren't very keen about the government barging into their lives.
Related by Lewis at Am Thinker:
Obama is trying to sell us Euro-socialism, which means bribing and intimidating people with their own tax money and corralling everyone with an endless sea of laws and regulations, until they know they can never fight City Hall. The crux of ObamaCare is centralizing power; everybody is made helpless except the politically connected.
Noubini: A double-dip vs a U-shaped recession?
Steyn via Dino:
Mark Steyn has further comments on Obamacare:
Why be scared of a government health program? After all, says the president, “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” and if “we’re able to get something right like Medicare,” we should have more “confidence” about being able to do it for everyone.
On the other hand, says the president, Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money.” By the way, unlike your run-of-the-mill politician’s contradictory statements, these weren’t made a year or even a week apart, but during the same presidential speech in Portsmouth, N.H.
Whatever. This would be amusing in a not-so-dangerous world. This incoherence does seem to track with Obama’s 41% strong disapproval rating. Heaven help us all!
Steyn neglects to mention that, last I heard, the Dem plan is to fold Medicare and Medicaid into the government-controlled single-payer program. Let's face it: their ultimate goal is to put us all in government-run and controlled post-office-style clinics like the Indian Health Service. Clinics in schools too, because modern parents cannot be entrusted to take care of their own kids, can they?
The "Oh sh-t" photo from Theo. A timely metaphor.
Sunday, August 23. 2009
This came in over the transom:
Let me get this straight...
We're going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn't read it (and who smokes) with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke.
What possibly could go wrong?
 I am home for a moment to do some wash, re-pack my gear, and to get some fresh cash. Then up to Maine by boat with excellent new girlfriend.
While our news linking team is on vacation until after Labor Day, I recommend these large volume news link sites (which have always tended to have plenty of overlap with our posts anyway):
Doug Ross Journal
Conservative Grapevine
Newsmax
and, of course, RCP.
Dig ya later...
From a Town Hall meeting in Washington state. h/t, Classical Values. I know what the Congressman is thinking inside: "Why do I have to put up with these damn annoying citizens when we have such good plans for them?"
In my view, no real American wants anybody to make plans for their lives.
We had speculated this this could be happening, but doubted that the Admin would really go this far: Breaking: White House Confirms It Used US Taxpayer Dollars to Sell Obamacare! Not legal, I believe, if true.
It's a scandal, possibly criminal (I am not a lawyer) - and it smells like Chicago.
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