A graphic of heights/depths and where the BP well fits in.
Yowzer!!!!
(ht Jonah Goldberg at the Corner)
Archive for June, 2010
Gulf Oil
Interestingly – I just don’t believe it when BP says “virtually all” oil to be captured soon. Especially when there are all these other plumes of oil that are not capped.
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Nationalized Health Care (in Gr Britain)
In his first interview as Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley talks about the urgent need for reform within the NHS
Why? Because its just that bad. Sadly their solutions do not include empowering the patient, because, via the author:
Lansley seems serious about addressing this problem, but I must confess that when he refers to “patient choice” and empowerment, I can feel myself wincing. I tell him that patients feel about health care the way parents feel about state education; they don’t want to have to exhaustively research their options and find their way through the labyrinthine system, weighing up distance and league tables.
That’s right – patients don’t really want choices, they just want you (the government) to take care of them….which leads me to
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The Single Ladies
In a new book out reviewed by One Cosmos (ht Maggie’s Farm) called New Threats to Freedom we find in the part by Jessica Gavora (Chief speechwriter for Attorney General John Ashcroft and a senior policy advisor at the Department of Justice and wife of Jonah Goldberg) that single women are a huge threat to freedom. Here’s the factoid, followed closely by the conclusion.
Gavora notes that in the 2008 election, single women “delivered a whopping 71 to 29 percent majority for Barack Obama.” It is simply a truism that liberty is not high on the list of values that animate the single woman. Rather, they much prefer to be swaddled by the state, largely because “increasingly these women are substituting the security of a husband [for] the security of the state.”
This is a simple trick of wordfoolery. Put the fact and the conclusion close together and people will assume causation even where none exists. ie My hands hurt…..I must be blogging too much.
Yes, because single women voted for Obama, it must mean that they want the security of the state since they can’t have the security of a husband. Huh?
It wasn’t because of Obama’s 6 pack abs vs McCain’s age.
It wasn’t because he was “cool” or “intellectual”.
It wasn’t because (like many people) single women felt the time was right for a black man.
It wasn’t because of general dissatisfaction with George Bush.
It wasn’t because of the memories of the good economic years of Clinton.
It wasn’t because a huge number of single women are also poor and poor people voted for Obama.
It wasn’t because a huge number of single women are women of color and black people voted for Obama.
It must have been because single women long for a man that they can’t have so they choose the state.
Can you imagine the interviews post election as the single ladies came out of the ballot box in order to get to this conclusion in an actual fashion?
Who did you vote for? Obama
Why did you vote for Obama? Because Obama will take care of me where other men have been, shall we say, less than satisfying.
Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.
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The other questions [other than "Does restriction on housing make it more or less affordable"] were: 1) Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree). 2) Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree). 3) Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree). 4) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree). 5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree). 6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree). 7) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).
Apparently liberals aren’t nearly as enlightened as the rest of us.
Go ahead. You try it.
U.S. ‘secret war’ expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role.
Apparently we’re going all over the world and sticking our noses into other people’s business. Not necessarily al-Qaeda’s.
The Obama administration has rejected the constitutional executive authority claimed by Bush and has based its lethal operations on the authority Congress gave the president in 2001 to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” he determines “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the Sept. 11 attacks.
Many of those currently being targeted, Bellinger said, “particularly in places outside Afghanistan,” had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks.
The new war is now against “radical groups”. I’m not that comfortable with this. Either we take the reins and become the worlds police force officially and with outward cooperation, or we deal with our own enemies and let the Yemen etc governments deal with their own enemies and quit using our forces while dissing us in the headlines. (of course al-Qaeda is fair game)
Looking at just how newsworthy Gibb’s ‘informational’ response on the Sestak affair is, won’t it be fun, if the government comes in to “save” journalism and journalists find themselves beholden to these non news spewers?
the FTC staff declares defeat in the search for business models so it may explore many government interventions, including:
* Expanding copyright law and restricting the doctrine of fair comment to benefit legacy publishers.
* Granting antitrust exemptions to allow publishers to collude on pricing to consumers and to business partners.
* Giving news organizations tax exemptions.
* Subsidizing news organizations by increasing government funding to public broadcasting; establishing an AmeriCorps to pay reporters; giving news companies tax credits for employing journalists; creating a national fund for local news, and giving the press an increased postal subsidy.
1. Read Ed Morrissey on how, now that the BP fix didn’t work, Obama is distancing himself from being in charge again. Hmmmm, something I asked about the other day. Re his speech.
General impression: (and I couldn’t stand watching it so I read it) Obama said he was “in charge” so many times, it’s pretty clear he’s not in charge. I suspect he went this route because he guestimated this latest top kill technique was going to work. Now what if it doesn’t. I wonder who will be “in charge” then. Hopefully we don’t have to find out.
2. Health Care in Canada. It’s like no one knew……things like how supply and demand works, when there is freedom of supply and demand….
“Why are we paying more or the same for cataract surgery when it costs substantially less today than it did 10 years ago? There’s going to be a finer look at what we’re paying for and, more importantly, what we’re getting for it,” he said.
Who says it costs substantially less today, when the government is setting the prices?
Go read it, it’s funny. (via Insty)
3. And a story of the fun and gutsy folks who just quit paying their mortgage and hire attorneys to keep them in the bank’s homes for years without payments at all.
Why – because those crooks at the bank made them take those loans you know.
