HEALTH CARE EGO-TRIP

Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post:

What's driving the great health debate of 2009 is not a popular clamor for universal insurance.... The underlying driver is politicians' psychological quest for glory.

I’m afraid he’s right.

HEALTH CARE FOR ILLEGALS

Liberals Seek Health Care Access for Illegals.

I’m all for it. They should be required to purchase healthcare - in their native countries.

STILL WHINING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

Bill Clinton said a vast, right-wing conspiracy that once targeted him is now focusing on President Obama.

Funny, I don’t recall George W. Bush whining about a (half)-vast left-wing conspiracy targeting him for eight years ....

More proof that Democrats are adolescent whiners in need of parental discipline (a hockey mom, perhaps?).

OBAMALYMPICS

Obama Heading to Denmark in Olympic Appeal.

I’m of two minds on this one.

On the one hand, what the hell is Obama doing? He’s the President of the United States , for Christ’s sake, not a Chicago snake-oil salesman.

On the other hand, maybe it’s a good idea -- the more involved with trivia he is, the less damage he can do to America’s real national interests.

PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY

Commenting on his newspaper’s coverage - or rather its lack thereof - of the ACORN scandal, Clark Hoyt, "public editor" of the New York Times, writes that

[Jill Abramson, the NYT managing editor for news] and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person "a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere."

Somehow, I think that the refusal to identify the editor is to protect him/her (and the New York Times) from being “bombarded” with facts, tips, research, stories, leads, etc., from the right side of the blogosphere. It’s hard to maintain plausible deniability of knowledge of a story when a hundred bloggers can post “Hey, I sent you a tip on ... and here’s the email to prove it.”

MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY

No more business for "Nobama" salesman. Mall officials met with [the owner of the mall kiosk] and told him to take down the anti-Obama items on display by closing time or face immediate eviction. And it wasn't political.

Oh, no. Absolutely. Not. Political.

Via Instapundit.

FAULTY CONSERVATION

Victor Davis Hanson, writing on California's water shortage.

[E]ach acre of food we idle in the United States - just like every barrel of oil we don't pump - means we will import what we take for granted from somewhere else.

We can be sure that even if we find the money to pay those who sell us our imported food and fuel, they will produce it in a lot messier fashion than we can ever imagine - ensuring a poorer America and a dirtier planet all at once.

TANSTAAFL.

NOWHERE TO GO BUT HOME ALONE

Brigid Schulte, a reporter for The Washington Post, is upset.

With the start of sixth grade this year, my son officially became a latchkey child. School lets out at 3:15. My husband and I both work and often don't get home until well after 6. [I]n elementary school, there were at least four different formal after-school programs that filled the gap between the end of his school day and the end of our workday [but] the little that [i]s available for his age group [i]sn't right for him.

Well, she and her husband both work - doesn't that suggest something?

I found smug comments lamenting parents' love of two incomes over the well-being of their children. (Anybody bother to digest the statistic that nearly 80 percent of women with school-age children work outside the home? That's up from 55 percent in 1975. And my guess is they all love their children very much.)

But did she think to look for data about what percent of women with school-age children had to work outside the home? Nope. She has a right to work outside the home, a right to have children, and a right to have the government take care of them.

[Ellie] Mitchell, director of the Maryland Out of School Time Network, argues, as does U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, that the school day is outmoded. "After-school is always seen as something extra," she said. "But I don't know why 9 to 3 is so much more important than 3 to 6. It's all just the time that kids are not with their families."

Doesn't she have a responsibility somewhere in all those rights?

[Update] It's illegal to be a good samaritan and do something liberals believe the government should be doing.

GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY

What Obama said. "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this Presidency."

What Obama meant.

CAN SODA TAXES

Soda tax myths.

1. Sin taxes are for our own good.
2. Soda is causing the obesity epidemic.
3. Soda taxes help everyone.
4. High-fructose corn syrup is extremely hazardous to your health.
5. Obesity is driving health-care costs up. A soda tax is just a user fee.

The myths are obvious, but go ahead and read the article for details.

WHAT 'CADILLAC' REALLY MEANS

When is a Cadillac not a Cadillac?

When it's my Cadillac.

WE, THE JOURNALISTS

Michael Gerson on ”cyber-bigots:”

The triumph of Nazi propaganda in this period is the subject of a remarkable exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum....

Ah, yes ... let’s start with the Nazi comparison, shall we?

[I]n the course of a few years, a fringe party was able to define a national community by scapegoating internal enemies; elevate a single, messianic leader; and keep the public docile with hatred....

This obviously doesn’t apply to the Democrat party, right?

But it was radio that proved the most powerful tool.... “You were bombarded by information that you were unable to verify or critically evaluate. It was the Internet of its time,” [says Steve Luckert, curator at the Holocaust
Museum]....

Ah, yes, the “poor dumb masses” trope.

It is a disorienting atmosphere in which information is difficult to verify or critically evaluate, the rules of discourse are unclear, and emotion -- often expressed in CAPITAL LETTERS -- is primary. User-driven content on the Internet often consists of bullying, conspiracy theories and racial prejudice.... It ... allows hatred to invade respected institutional spaces on the Internet, gaining for these ideas a legitimacy denied to fringe Web sites.

And “professional-driven” content doesn’t? (cf. “teabaggers”.)

Legally restricting such content ... is impossible. In America, the First Amendment protects blanket statements of bigotry. But this does not mean that popular news sites ... are constitutionally required to provide forums for bullies and bigots. As private institutions, they are perfectly free to set rules against racism and hatred. This is not censorship; it is the definition of standards.

And the standards should be set by?

Some online institutions, such as The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, screen user comments ... to identify objectionable content.... [H]atred must be confined to the fringes of our culture -- as the hatred of other times should have been.

And just the Obama administration is full of “thin-skinned whiners”? Oh, ... never mind.

MORE FROM MY EMAIL

Another email gone viral:

I guess I must be on the wrong page …

A vehicle at 15 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 800 gallons a year of gasoline. A vehicle at 25 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 480 gallons a year. So, the average clunker transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons/year.

They claim 700,000 vehicles – so that's 224 million gallons/year. That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. Five million barrels of oil is about 1/4 of one day's US consumption. And 5 million barrels of oil costs about $350 million dollars at $70/bbl.

So we all contributed to spending $3 billion to save $350 million.

How good a deal was that?

They'll probably do a better job with healthcare, though!

Cash for Clunkers is just another example of government failure to think through all the possible ramifications of a policy. My Three Laws of Systems Engineering apply, at least indirectly, in that the intended consequence was to demonstrate environmental sensitivity without regard to cost.

I will submit that the intended consequence of ObamaCare is substantially the same.

LEFT RIOTS; RIGHT PROTESTS

“Police fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke and rubber bullets at marchers protesting the Group of 20 summit Thursday after anarchists responded to calls to disperse by rolling trash bins, throwing rocks and breaking windows.”

The demonstrators numbered less than 1,000; there were 17-19 arrests. Contrast that to the 9/12 DC anti-tax protest: upwards of 500,000 demonstrators; no police in riot gear; no violence; no arrests.

And no garbage to be cleaned up afterward.

WHY PAY FOR THE CARELESS?

From a letter to the editor in the August 23 (Jackson, MS) Clarion-Ledger.

During my last shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone.

Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid.

She smokes a costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our president expects me to pay for this woman's health care?

Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture - culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.

Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.

Starner Jones, MD
Jackson, MS

This came to me as an email gone viral, but it is real - the author is on the emergency room staff at the Anderson Regional Medical Center in Meridian, Mississippi, and an 8th-generation Mississippian.

It's easy to sympathize with Dr. Jones, but the question remains: what is society's responsibility, if any, to those unwilling or unable to care for themselves?

JUST LIKE THE POST OFFICE

Democrats moved Thursday to give special relief to the financially strapped Postal Service, which would be allowed to defer $4 billion in payments due at the end of this month to cover retirement benefits for its employees.

Since Obama himself offered the USPS as the model of the public option, we can point to this as the inevitable result of a government program in a private market. When it fails or runs over its revenue, the government will inevitably act to subsidize it. The public option will be no different at all in this regard.

Surprise, surprise.

DEMOCRACY VS. LIBERTY

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! — Ben Franklin

Found in the comments to this post.

AMERICA IS OBAMA U

President Obama thinks America is a university and that he is our campus president.

Victor Davis Hansen is at his best:

It is the role of the university, from a proper distance, to help [the unwashed masses] by making sophisticated, selfless decisions on health care and the environment that the unwashed cannot grasp are really in their own interest — deluded as they are by Wal-Mart consumerism, Elmer Gantry evangelicalism, and Sarah Palin momism. The tragic burden of an academic is to help the oppressed, but blind, majority.

Read the complete article.

NAVIGATING POLITICS

I wish I had said this:

It's becoming so simple to find the right path through the political mine-field -- If the Democrats are in favor, I'm against it. If the news media says it, I doubt it. If a politician says its critically important, I know it's pork.

But I didn’t, so I’ll have to give credit where credit is due.

YOU ARE ALL MORONS

Another email that's gone viral around the internet. I've edited it to fit within a blog post.

Dear members of the Legislature:

It is now official: You are all morons.

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right. It is broke. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right. It is broke. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right. It is broke. The War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right. One trillion dollars of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor"; it hasn't worked. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get them right; they're broke. Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - you have had 39 years to get it right. It is broke.

Trillions of dollars in the massive political payoff called the TARP bill of 2009 show no sign of working.

And finally to set a new record: "Cash for Clunkers" was established in 2009 and went broke in 2009! It took good dependable cars (that were the best some people could afford), replaced them with high priced, and mostly Japanese models, so a good percentage of he profits from the sales went out of the country.

So with a perfect 100% failure rate and a record proving that the "services" you shove down our throats are failing faster and faster, you want Americans to believe you can be trusted with a government-run health care system? 15% of our economy? Are you crazy?

Truly, the inmates are running the asylum!

It's a fair point. Every one of the programs mentioned started with good intentions; every one - with the possible exception of the Postal Service - failed to live up to expectations. So if one agrees with the quotation often misattributed to Ben Franklin, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results," it follows that the inmates are indeed running the asylum.