Friday, November 22, 2013

OREGON HAS ZERO OBAMACARE ENROLLEES ... but they've got a really neat video.
NEW YORK TIMES: We were for it (the filibuster) before we were against it.
FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was nineteen at the time, in my second semester of college after a six-month 'work phase' that took me to Europe and the Far East (Okinawa). I was going to lunch at the school cafeteria when the campus suddenly quietened and everyone knew that something bad had just happened. Kennedy's death was announced just moments after I arrived at the cafeteria.

Here are some thoughts on the assassination and the assassin from Kennedy historian Edward J. Epstein.

More context here.
MEMS [MICRO-ELECTRO-MECHANICAL SYSTEMS] MAKERS want to put even more sensors in smartphones for total situational awareness.

The $64 question is "Whose situational awareness?"
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Politicization of Everything.
What, then, is the Obama legacy? An insidious politicization of almost everything. Obamism has become a holistic concept of “fundamentally transforming America” that, like all ideologies, cannot be assessed solely by concrete laws and policies, but rather through a change in the mentality and spirit of Americans and those who govern them. Obama early on emphasized in messianic fashion that his hope-and-change agenda was not to be adjudicated by traditional metrics, but involved a cosmic transformation of hearts and minds: “I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
[snip]
What energizes this effort at holistic transformation is real anger at the perceived unfairness of the current democratic capitalist state—what Michelle Obama once referred to when she characterized America as “just downright mean.” Most of us unfortunately are unaware of these tensions in our otherwise “uninvolved, uninformed” lives. Indeed, in the words of former Energy Secretary Steven Chu, we are mere adolescents “just like your teenage kids” who “aren’t acting in a way that they should act.” The government defines “should”; the people do not.

The antidote has been for Obama administration technocrats to reexamine the way Americans go to the doctor, borrow money, pay their taxes, secure their borders, protect their country, explore space, and contemplate the weather. In each case, it turns out that someone wealthier and more privileged than the majority has done something wrong. The remedy is to provide more power and money to an all-knowing government elite who alone has the wisdom and morality to make things fairer by making them more equal.
Linked from Instapundit. Read it all.
OBAMACARE METAPHOR? Jumbo jet to take off from short runway.
Unlike ObamaCare, this takeoff will ... go smoothly because the jumbo jet doesn’t have square tires, a computer system routed through HealthCare.gov, Kathleen Sebelius in the pilot’s seat and the president of the airline continuing to promise “if you like your longer runway, you can keep it.”
No problems.
POOR BABIES: Wait, Obamacare is hurting students at my Ivy League school.

In their 'reality world' actions don't have consequences. Too bad they don't actually, you know, live in their 'reality world'.
DID YOU KNOW that eating or even talking about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich could be considered racist?

Do you think -- as I'm beginning to -- that sending your child to public schools might be considered child abuse?
TAKE TWO ASPIRIN and call me in three years.
NEWT GINGRICH: “Poised for a Breakout”–- from Obamaism.
TECHNOLOGY: Natural Gas Sets Off a Distributed-Energy Boom.

Interestingly, Instapundit has linked to the same article.
OBAMACARE’S NEXT HIT: Doctor pay. We already have a doctor shortage; many already refuse to accept or limit Medicare/Medicaid patients, and others are leaving for concierge practices (mine included) or just leaving medicine altogether. And this clown thinks the solution to our health care problem is to cut their pay.

It's hard to believe even a committed Leftist can possibly be this stupid.