DEMOCRATS: We’re not spending enough of your money. “[A]n amalgam of influential liberal bloggers, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and even nervous White House and congressional politicos have concluded that the Obama administration erred in not pushing for a 50 percent larger stimulus plan than the $800 billion effort in early 2009 — or for a massive second dose of steroids since.”

They can’t even spend what’s already been allocated, and they want to spend more?

PRIORITIES: “[S]hould a TSA nominee really argue that global warming deserves the same amount of attention and prioritization as the war on terror?”

Uh, no. But to be fair, read the whole thing. Read - and watched - in context, it’s disturbing only insofar as it demonstrates the reactive mindset of the Obama administration.

HAITI DEVASTATED. The devastation was so complete that it seemed likely the death toll from Tuesday afternoon's magnitude-7.0 quake would run into the thousands.

Hmm. The Dominican Republic and Haiti share the same island of Hispaniola, yet we hear nothing about the devastation in the Dominican Republic. Why?

Here are some interesting factoids. Haiti has a per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $1700; the poverty rate is 80%. For the Dominican Republic, the per-capita GDP is $5800, nearly 3 times higher; the poverty rate is only 25%.

The conclusion should be obvious to everyone except the willfully obtuse.

TIME MAGAZINE’S Michael Scherer reports on Sarah Palin’s debut on the O’Reilly Factor:

[Fox News creator Roger] Ailes had hired a mascot for Fox News, a living breathing symbol of all that the network hopes to be: a place for the forgotten, besieged, suburban and rural American middle, long victimized, often dismissed, beset on all sides by elites and liberals, haters and foes.

I find his description of Fox viewers -“forgotten”, “besieged”, “victimized”, “beset” - interesting, as it brings to mind this quotation:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

I wonder if Scherer recognizes it.

[Postscript] Scherer’s blog is called “Swampland” - how appropriate.

DON’T SMILE; the government is here to help you.

We can’t have any of our subjects citizens smiling.

HARRY REID may be a hack, but he’s a damned expensive hack.

The sooner we’re rid of him, the better.

UNTIL THE LEFT feels the sting of political correctness, the idiocy of this double standard will continue.

Melissa Clouthier is on a roll. Read it all.

THE CONTRADICTION OF BEING REPUBLICAN: an interesting essay by Scott Ott.

THOMAS SOWELL on boxing and “tolerance”:

The loutish, loudmouth and childish displays that have become all too common today in boxing, as well as in other sports, began in the 1960s, like so many other signs of social degeneration.

The old-timers [referees] didn't keep issuing warning after warning, for round after round. They penalized violations. More lax officiating may be why so many fights in recent times have had so many clinches and so much wrestling and dirty fighting.

If only it were confined to boxing and not a reflection of general trends.

ACCURATE BUT FAKE ....

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has ordered his staff to revise a computerized forecasting model that showed that climate legislation supported by President Obama would make planting trees more lucrative than producing food.

Mr. Vilsack said he has directed his chief economist to work with the EPA to "undertake a review of the assumptions in the [Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model] FASOM model, to update the model and to develop options on how best to avoid unintended consequences for agriculture that might result from climate change legislation."

Maybe he should consult with the University of East Anglia. They appear to have experience with “fake but accurate” climate models.

IT’S A WAR, not a crime spree.

Courtesy of Don Surber.

SOME THOUGHTS about electronic health records (EHRs):

Starting the [ObamaCare] campaign, President Obama touted digital medical records to reduce errors, improve care, and cut costs. More than $19 billion of stimulus funds were earmarked for it. But when the Washington Post examined the matter, they discovered that digital records not only fail to produce the promised benefits, they actually reduce efficiency and cause errors. The digital systems currently available give physicians too much information. Pages upon pages of digital information document every conceivable ailment a patient might have. Doctors have difficulty wading through all of the unnecessary data to reach the critical information. One emergency room physician at a hospital that had adopted a digital system complained, "It's been a complete nightmare. I can't see my patients because I'm at a screen entering data . ... Physician productivity and satisfaction have fallen off a cliff."

Uh, huh. A little more bluntly, “ To err is human; to really screw things up requires a computer.” It’s the GIGO rule: garbage in, garbage out. The ‘data mining’ issue has been around for the 20+ years I’ve worked in the intelligence community; it’s never been resolved.

Nor am I the least bit surprised that the cost savings aren’t. Neither is the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). From a summary article in the IEEE Spectrum:

Given that EHRs are being touted by US government officials as a way to significantly improve the quality and reduce health care administrative costs (including saving Medicare), the data don't look so good for achieving either of these objectives.

A quick 5-minute Google search seems to confirm this assertion. I found only one article suggesting a net potential savings roughly $80 billion per year, but a careful reading suggests to me that the savings are largely illusory without substantial patient compulsion.

The savings are chimeras – predicated on controlling behavior.

Then there’s the issue of privacy.

The $787 billion economic stimulus bill, the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” signed into law by President Obama in February, calls for “the utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014.” The law says the records should include a person’s “medical history and problems list.”

The law also says the electronic health record (EHR) will become part of a “nationwide health information technology infrastructure,” accessible with authorization by health-care providers and the government.

But individual Americans can opt to never have an EHR entered in the system, according to Dr. David Blumenthal. “We want to make it clear that no one will ever have to use an electronic health record, if they don’t want to, and that when you do have electronic health records, they’ll have every conceivable privacy protection that is compatible with a useful health care system.”

Er, sorry Charlie, but that last little italicized phrase guarantees that I most certainly will opt out unless there is an iron-clad lock on my medical records for which I have the only key, complete authority to decide who – and under what conditions – will be granted access, and the ability to revoke access for any reason sufficient only to me.

And there are reasons for being obstinate on that point:

[A] story in the American Medical News in late November about the Cleveland Clinic giving $1 million to a start-up company called Explorys to "commercializ[e] the patient database search system Cleveland Clinic developed." The Cleveland Clinic has a very extensive EHR system and data base of patient information that it now wishes to exploit.

[A] report by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP that found 76% of healthcare executives surveyed felt that all the data being collected in their EHR systems was going to be their organization's greatest asset over the next five years. It also found that the executives only felt they could recoup their investments if they could exploit that information in some way.

Bluntly put, electronic health records are about control - not care.