Happy New Year!!

Unlike Deepak Chopra who a) doesn’t believe in New Year’s resolutions because we’re all a bunch of losers, yet ha b) makes them every 4 months, I love them….so go, write them down. Review them, start the new year out fresh.

from an interview in the Sunday LATimes, (these 2 question/answers are out of order, but make more sense this way)

What do you think of New Year’s resolutions?

I think no one ever keeps them, so a while ago I started saying, my New Year’s resolution is no resolution. Because everybody joins the gym and they stop going after three weeks; everybody goes on a diet, but they never keep the diets. So I don’t think much of New Year’s resolutions.

…………

Do you participate in the annual ritual of taking stock at the new year?

I take stock every three or four months. Every four months or so, I take a week off to be in total silence, to look back and see what I should be looking at in the future. For me, it would be a quarterly ritual.

Ezra Klein’s Love Note to/for Obama

One thing I always loved about Bush and his administration is that he seemed to have a philosophy of governance. Unlike Clinton who just floated with polls, I got the feeling that Bush had a “Mission Statement” that he pushed his people to take seriously and that he reviewed daily.

Sure I would have tweaked it, but it existed.

So this morning when I read Ezra Klein asking “What is Obamanomics?” and the answer was “The administration didn’t have time for philosophy. It had to put out fires – and fast” I realized that answered a lot of questions.

No wonder Obama acts like such an amateur. He is.

The rest of the piece is a love fest trying to make Obama look pretty safe. As if Obama were enamored with the good of private markets even while taking them over. Mr. Klein looks at five sectors:

1. The Financial Sector

Calls to remake the financial sector were also rejected, and regulation focused on new safeguards and emergency procedures rather than a new way of doing business. Calls to nationalize the banks were rejected.

Instead of nationalizing the banks he instead “put out fires”.

So what happens is someone screams, “The poor need protection!!” and Obama rushes in with his weapons of regulation to force banks to play his game. Banks, of course are not playing ‘games’. They’ are in a business and are looking to make money. The poor suffer.
(ht Threesources)

2. The auto sector. Or more specifically GM and Chrysler. Here Mr. Klein admits Obama did not await private markets. Instead he suggests that Obama did what private markets really “would have done” had they been working correctly.

Members of the administration believe they did what a working market would’ve done, shepherding the automakers through a modified bankruptcy process,

GM is still with us. We’ll see how long they last now that they’re on their own again.

3. Stimulus
Apparently since there was no single reason for people to get out of the markets, yet people were still “hoarding”, the stimulus was, again, all about privatization. LOL

create sufficient confidence to get the market functioning again.

We know that didn’t work.

4. Housing
In housing the government “helped” privatization by handing out $8000, keeping interest rates low and buying up loans through Fannie and Freddie…..
Other people, those who actually believe in privatization, would more likely call this propping up a market so it continues to live in its bubble and not be allowed to bottom out as quickly as it could have so we’d be on the road to real recovery now.

5. And my favorite of all, Obamacare.
Ezra suggests that here Obama worked to “create a market” where previously none existed.

Elsewhere, when a market didn’t exist but needed to, they tried to create one. In the health-care overhaul, the administration looked to construct a functioning market for individuals and small groups, to replace one where for people with preexisting conditions, health insurance wasn’t available at any price.

Yes, Obama, moderate guy that he is worked hard to create this market of ….what was that number again….oh yeah...8000 people, in order to keep markets private.

Anyway – I woke this morning and chuckled at this column in the Washington Post by Mr. Klein. Then while cruising the sphere, I find he apparently made a funny even earlier. He spoke about the Constitution “not being binding”. Eyeblast has the video.

Funny, funny

This is funny.

ht JK who ht’s Jonathan V.

Perusing Jonathan V brought me to a great new site from Intuitor.com.
Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics.
Fun, fun.

Zombie Death Panels

The big news going around this weekend is the story in the NYTimes about the return of the death panels that Congress had removed from Obamacare before passing it in December last year.

Ed Morrissey has the best quote on the subject. First he notes there’s nothing wrong with preplanning what you want at the end of your life. After all, we ARE all going to die.

There is, however, something at least vaguely disturbing about a government incentivizing doctors to do so as part of an expansive regulatory program that has, as one of its primary goals, cost reduction.

In the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) this morning we see evidence of how this administration has resurrected the dead part of Obamacare. Spread lies.

The White House on Sunday said the new Medicare directive, reported Sunday by the New York Times, doesn’t constitute a resurrection of the original health-care-bill language. It said the George W. Bush administration had already put in place guidelines allowing for Medicare to pay for end-of-life consultations.

A Medicare revamp in 2003 created a “welcome to Medicare” visit for seniors newly entering the program to get a checkup. Another law passed in 2008 and signed by Mr. Bush specifies that the welcome visit can include a discussion of “end-of-life planning.”

The health-care overhaul in 2010 turned the welcome visit into an annual “wellness visit,” saying seniors could get covered for a checkup every year. The new directive makes clear that the annual wellness visit can include the same end-of-life planning already permitted in the welcome visit.

Here is the Politico version.

but
George W. Bush vetoed that law passed in 2008.

So let’s see…….Obamacare dead parts are all going to come back via some regulatory process and its going to pass the smell test by saying …..”Bush did it”.

How did Obama go from “blaming” Bush for all his troubles to giving Bush “credit” for his (Obama’s) decisions?

Merry Christmas!!

While we celebrate God’s gift today, I, generous as I am give you a couple of good links!

From Roger Kimball of Pajamas Media: Tis the Season to be Politically Correct.
His email exchange is a howler.

And, because I wanted to write on that Forbes article about how Americans can’t do “big things” anymore but didn’t, I’ll link to Warren Meyer’s response. It will warm your heart so you’re ready for a cheerful Christmas day!

All my best to you and yours.

UPDATE: Ooh – one more. Washington crossing the Delaware.

QOTD and Friday Fun

From the amazing and talented Kim Strassel:

As to its legal legacy, the only real question is whether this just-finished Democratic Congress was the most unserious in decades, or the most unserious in history.

Net Neutrality and the Evil Plot

QOTD from John Fund:

So the “media reform” movement paid for research that backed its views, paid activists to promote the research, saw its allies installed in the FCC and other key agencies, and paid for the FCC research that evaluated the research they had already paid for. Now they have their policy. That’s quite a coup.

Government Run Healthcare

As the NHS tries to save 20 billion pounds over the next 4 years, guess what happens?

Go read the link. There is too much to link to, but you can guess anyway.

Services get cut.
Overweight people don’t get to have knee surgery.
Pain management? Forgetaboutit.
Smokers don’t get treated.
Diagnostics go down.
“minor” things like varicose veins don’t get treated.
Requested items like fertility help is cut.

etc, etc.

David Stout, director of the NHS Confederation’s PCT Network, said: “Primary care trusts (PCTs) have the difficult job of putting in place the right health services to meet the needs of their local population while operating within a fixed budget. This inevitably involves deciding priorities.

Hello.
Tell me this is what Americans want again….

“Distracted Driving”

In a news article about the a push for a cellphone ban on truck drivers….

“Every time a commercial truck or bus driver takes his or her eyes off the road to use a cellphone, even for a few seconds, the driver places everyone around them at risk,” LaHood said in a statement.
………
Inattention was a factor in 9 percent of large truck crashes, which fell overall in 2009 from the previous year. Most truck crashes involve collisions with other vehicles.

Let me get this straight…..distracted driving is the biggest reason for crashes. But crashes were reduced by 9% in 2009 from 2008.
So let’s ban cell phones while driving?

I vote we keep cell phones so that truck drivers who drive for hours and hours and hours and hours won’t spend their time falling asleep, staring at nothingness, eating, fiddling with the radio and generally being so bored that they end up crashing.

You were warned

I tried to remind people back in September that the 2nd “stimulus” was actually a change in withholding amounts and not in actual taxes.

So you shouldn’t be surprised if this coming year you owe taxes (or more taxes) or will be receiving a smaller refund.

13M get unexpected tax bill from Obama tax credit