Saturday, July 10, 2010

OBAMA THREATENS to follow in FDR's economic missteps. Democrats never learn.
A LESSON IN COMMON SENSE: Thoughts about immigration, ‘racism,’ and political correctness.
THE ROAD TO SERFDOM IS A LONG ONE, but I fear that we are well on our way.
AND NOW THERE ARE THREE: Earlier I posted an Instapundit interview with J. Christian Adams, the former Department of Justice Civil Rights Division lawyer who resigned to protest the dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case.

There’s much, much more – including statements by former DOJ lawyers backing Adams.
ANOTHER REASON not to trust the major media.
NEW BLACK PANTHER CHAIRMAN Malik Shabazz praises Osama bin Laden.
EXCELLENT HEALTHCARE “is by definition redistributional." So said Dr. Donald Berwick, Obama’s recess appointment to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

You can see why President Obama couldn't allow senators, Democrats as well as Republicans, to ask Dr. Berwick what he meant by such a ditzy remark. "Excellent health care," as everyone else understands it, is health care that makes a patient well, or at least better. A quack understands that much.
Obama wants to control healthcare, not improve it.

MORE on Dr. Berwick. Watch the video clip.
INSTAPUNDIT ASKS: “What would Earth look like if it stopped spinning?

More likely, Washington, D.C., and its environs would float off into outer space because of all the hot air. That could be good.
MALLARD FILLMORE on cats.


Trust me. When dinnertime approaches, you’ll know they’re there.
HMM. Satellite photos support testimony that Iraqi WMD went to Syria.

This one still bothers me. There was near-unanimity in the world’s intelligence agencies prior to the onset of the war that Iraq had, at least, a WMD research program and yet nothing was ever found.
OBAMACARE WORKS! “In fact, it works so well that it works ex post facto! Either that, or our health care system was delivering excellent outcomes and effective preventive care without requiring a government intervention to do so.”

I suspect the latter.

Friday, July 09, 2010

GONE GALT: from full-time to part-time to on-call (read as effectively retired) in just over a year. The moves were voluntary, but inevitable, driven by a poor economy and lack of corporate interest in keeping a senior staff member fully employed.
CAN BLACK AMERICANS AFFORD OBAMA? Walter Williams asks an unsettling question.
Early indications suggest that the Barack Obama presidency might turn out to be similar to the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter. That's bad news for the nation but especially bad news for black Americans. No white presidential candidate had to live down the disgraced presidency of Carter but I'm all too fearful that a future black presidential candidate will find himself carrying the heavy baggage of a failed black president.
I’m afraid he’s right.
WHEN YOUR ONLY TOOL IS A HAMMER, all your problems start looking like nails. Richard Fernandez writes on the Obama administration. While the article is much broader, citing several points of insanity within the administration, the key graf is this:
They are the Peter Principle writ large: they have been promoted past their level of competency.
What really frightens about this administration is that its only guiding principle is expediency in an unrelenting pursuit for unlimited power. All else is window dressing.
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE WITH GOVERNMENT-FREE SCHOOLS. “Separation of church and state has made America an exemplar of religious pluralism and tolerance. Imagine what separation of school and state could do for education.”

Imagine what separation of marketplace and state could do for the economy.
EDUCATION FOR PROFIT.
[I]n recent years, the University of Phoenix has become the poster child for everything the mainstream academic establishment thinks is wrong about for-profit higher education.... But much of what academic traditionalists see as problems, Phoenix advertises proudly as solutions. The university aims to meet underserved demand for post-secondary education, tailor-made to fit the individual circumstances of harried adults.
Give the Reason article a read. It’s a bit lengthy, but generally fair. My only quibble is in the first page where the for-profit schools are equated to subprime mortgages in the housing market. Given elite schools track record at producing political “leadership” I would be strongly inclined toward the opposite judgement.

The University of Phoenix and it’s competitors do what the mainstream academic establishment (particularly the elites) are increasingly disinclined to do: prepare students for the marketplace – and political correctness is neither measurable in any meaningful sense or marketable.
PRETTY STUPID.

WHITHER CAP-AND-TRADE? Referendum on California’s carbon-limit law qualifies for November ballot. If California is truly a bellwether state, this could be a defining moment in the return to environmental sanity.
AUSTERITY: Queen of England cuts back; Princess Nancy Pelosi doesn’t.
It’s bad enough that pork barrel spending and scores of useless, inefficient government programs have cost the public purse what they have, but for the Speaker of the House of Representatives to set the wasteful example that she has is positively disgraceful.
It would be nice if Princess Pelosi would practice some austerity with my money.
McDONALDS CEO TELLS FOOD POLICE ORGANIZATION to go pound non-fat, sodium-free sand.

About time someone did.