Friday, March 12, 2010

I take that back... he is an idiot!

Obama veers into the Daily Ditch:
"It's no surprise that liberal media figures like Sullivan and Jon Stewart (see post below) are ill-informed and not very intelligent. But what does it tell us that our own President's knowledge of history is so thin that he relies on them for information?"

Sound like another debate we're in the middle of?

Toyotas Are Safe (Enough):
"Let’s do the math.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations (explained in a footnote below) suggest that if you drive one of the Toyotas recalled for acceleration problems and don’t bother to comply with the recall, your chances of being involved in a fatal accident over the next two years because of the unfixed problem are a bit worse than one in a million — 2.8 in a million, to be more exact. Meanwhile, your chances of being killed in a car accident during the next two years just by virtue of being an American are one in 5,244."

But why should a Congress eager to impress and grandstand pass on the opportunity to pass a few new laws and bully a few businesses so that it can be seen as "Doing Something!" about a problem that really may not be as big a fucking deal as the papers are making it out to be?

George F. Will (I thank you)...

Justices and politicians should boycott the State of the Union:
"In the unlikely event that Obama or any other loquacious modern president has any thoughts about the State of the Union that he does not pour forth in the torrential course of his relentless rhetoric, he can mail those thoughts to Congress. The Postal Service needs the business."

Health Care Hell - and then some more....

Jonah Goldberg:
"The time for talk is over.

So proclaimed the most talkative president in modern memory. I can’t remember when Barack Obama said that. Maybe it was during the first “final showdown” on health care. Or maybe it was the third. The fifth? It’s so hard to tell when pretty much every week since the dawn of the Mesozoic Era, either Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid has proclaimed that it is now Go Time for health-care reform.

So you’ll forgive me if I’m somewhat skeptical about the possibility that the health-care reform debate is about to come to an end."

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Once again: Nothing hates success more than failure...

Nothing is Written:
"Kaplan is almost afraid America might win. In the contest between Man and Afghanistan, the US military and fate, the former may beat the latter. But that will only make things worse. “Once again, we might be poised to overcome the vast, impersonal forces of fate, even as we contribute to our own troubled destiny as a great power.”"

Thank you, Megan...

The Unkindest Cut:
"I'm interested to know who's skipping dialysis because they can't afford it, given that this is the one piece of medical care that is guaranteed by the United States government. But this is quibbling. Why can't fiscal conservatives say that if we want to have the entitlement, we should first make sure the cuts we're proposing work? Why can't they say that we can't afford this particular expansion, and that it's time to go back to the drawing board? 'The fierce urgency of now' is obviously totally compelling to those who think nothing can go wrong, but for the rest of us, it's not a good reason to commit ourselves to a very risky course of action."

Oh, this ought to turn out just fine...

Time for sunshine, Fannie and Freddie:
"Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton says that 'when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, the Obama administration is saying, in effect, 'none of your business.' Obama administration officials and their lawyers can argue until they are blue in the face that Fannie and Freddie are not federal agencies, but their reasoning is straight out of 'Alice in Wonderland.' There is nothing ambiguous about the government's absolute control of Fannie and Freddie. Which raises the question: What does the Obama administration have to hide?' That last question is important because Obama was the recipient of the second largest amount of Fannie and Freddie contributions even though he was only in the Senate for three years. A presidential declaration that all Fannie and Freddie documents are covered by the FOIA would make Sunshine Week 2010 memorable indeed.!"

Schmucks... just Schmucks:

How the Campuses Helped Ruin California's Economy:
"One group at UCLA stumbled into the truth, though it was a truth they did not understand. At Bruin Plaza a crowd chanted 'Who's got the power? We've got the power.' In its context this was just another slogan of a mindless day, but the reality is that those people do indeed have the power, and routinely use it in a way that makes them the author of their own troubles."

The Perfect Solution - Let's Make it Worse!!! That oughta work...

New Strike Paralyzes Greece:
"All scheduled flights into and out of the country were canceled, international trains were not operating, bus and subway service was suspended, and ferries remained in their ports. Tax offices and courts shut down, and hospitals were operating with emergency staff. The streets, eerily empty early in the morning ahead of three scheduled protest rallies, were littered with mounds of trash as a strike at the city’s main landfill entered its sixth day."

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Simply - NO!

E-Donnybrook:
"Can it be a coincidence that J. D. Salinger died the same day the iPad was introduced? After all, Salinger belonged utterly to the era of typewriters and overflowing ashtrays and dog-eared paperbacks yellow with age. Perhaps he could not live long in a world where the Next Big Thing in publishing was not an author, but an electronic reading machine. Forget the literary giants who once traded barbs at Elaine’s or the Algonquin. Now the battle over the world’s literary territory, a contest on the epic scale of Mothra vs. Godzilla, is between Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad."

Who woulda' thunk?

Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead:
"The Grateful Dead Archive, scheduled to open soon at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will be a mecca for academics of all stripes: from ethno­musicologists to philosophers, sociologists to historians. But the biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created “customer value,” promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning."

It took 3 years too long, but.....

Mission accomplished, indeed:
"RONALD REAGAN liked to say that there was no limit to what a man could accomplish if he didn’t mind who got the credit. The transformation of Iraq from a hellish tyranny into a functioning democracy will be recorded as a signal accomplishment of George W. Bush’s presidency, and he probably doesn’t mind in the least that the Obama administration would like to take the credit."

The perfect reason NOT to have national health care....

P.S.A. prostate screening is inaccurate and a waste of money:
"EACH year some 30 million American men undergo testing for prostate-specific antigen, an enzyme made by the prostate. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994, the P.S.A. test is the most commonly used tool for detecting prostate cancer.

The test’s popularity has led to a hugely expensive public health disaster. It’s an issue I am painfully familiar with — I discovered P.S.A. in 1970. As Congress searches for ways to cut costs in our health care system, a significant savings could come from changing the way the antigen is used to screen for prostate cancer."

Profound in its simplicity...

Artificial Stupidity:
"People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators."

Where Feminists Get It Right...

Jonah Goldberg :
"Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands force them to be. “Liberate” men from those expectations, and Lord of the Flies logic kicks in. Liberate women from this barbarism, and male decency will soon follow."

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Pay attention, and read the whole thing...

Walter Russell Mead:
"We’ve come a long way in fighting both types of prejudice, but you’d have to be naive and ignorant to think they have just vanished away. I am always nervous around people who stridently insist that racism has disappeared in mainstream American life and only lingers on in weirdo subcultures; I feel the same way about people who say that anti-Semitism is no longer a significant feature of western culture. I am especially leery when people who loudly and implausibly assert that anti-Semitism isn’t a problem anymore make harsh and unbalanced criticisms about the world’s only Jewish state.

...But even after making all the possible and necessary allowances, there is something disturbing about the widespread excessive fixation on Jewish shortcomings. Almost the whole world is barking obsessively and furiously at the Jews while ignoring equal or worse problems on every side. At worst and far too frequently, this is anti-Semitism in full career: virulent, murderous, irrational, vile. It must be opposed, and it must be called to account.
"

Monday, March 8, 2010

Somebody try to differentiate bewteen the MSM old media boys and the record and movie pigs - there ain't no difference!

Journalism’s Worst Crime:
"Mr. Todd’s comments embody a particular mindset – one deeply resentful that the MSM is no longer the gatekeeper of the news, that there are now hundreds of outlets and blogs that influence the news and allow the American people a choice in what they are able to watch. The old guard hates the competition – and they hate the end of their monopoly. That’s understandable; every person who has been a part of a monopoly has resented its end, even if it advances the public interest.

Chuck Todd and his colleagues can continue to howl into the wind. They can continue to complain and plead their case. It doesn’t much matter. Events have moved way beyond them. The genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no turning back."

Important Stuff:

The House Vote on the Senate Healthcare Bill Is the Final Vote; Obama Will Sign It Into Law

Using some parliamentary mirrors is the only way this monster is going to pass. Feel like your being submarined?

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Hard to argue....

What a Disaster Looks Like:
"It is now exactly a year since President Obama unveiled his health-care push and his decision to devote his inaugural year to it—his branding year, his first, vivid year.

What a disaster it has been.

At best it was a waste of history's time, a struggle that will not in the end yield something big and helpful but will in fact make future progress more difficult. At worst it may prove to have fatally undermined a new presidency at a time when America desperately needs a successful one.

In terms of policy, his essential mistake was to choose health-care expansion over health-care reform."

He's really good... read the whole thing

Walter Russell Mead's Blog:
"Read The Communist Manifesto. It will remind you that history is real, that it matters, and that you must strive to see the world on its own terms, rather than passively accepting the comfortable ideas and perceptions that society encourages you to take for granted. It may even prepare you for the future by giving you a glimpse into the storms ahead.

Next week on Literary Saturday: the wit and wisdom of Joseph Stalin."