Homeopathic A & E

Via SBM.

What’s an A&E? Apparently it’s what the brits call an Emergency Room. Or, thanks to socialized medicine, the “Ambulance Parking Lot“.

Have the Best Independence Day Ever

Clever Video OTD

It’s a virtual Friday, isn’t it? This will bring a smile to your face and give you a headache all at the same time.

Enjoy “Hibi no neiro” by the band Sour.

Time On His Hands

Check out the Clock Project. (Try clicking on a clock a couple of times. Then wait a minute or so. Repeat.)

Think Cap-And-Trade is Expensive?

You have no idea.

The United States emits about 9 billion tons of CO2 per year. Therefore, at a rate of $15/ton fee for emission indulgences, the bill would impose a tax of $135 billion per year on the nation. Divided by the U.S. population of 300 million, that works out to a cost of $450 per year levied on every American man, woman or child, or $1,800 for a family of four. While for wealthy individuals like Al Gore such an impost might represent a mere pittance, for working families struggling hard to make ends meet it would be a very significant burden.

But that is not even the worst part of it. As a result of the markup of carbon costs, a lot of those working families will be out of work and unable to pay their existing bills, let alone new ones. Consider: Burning one ton of coal produces about three tons of CO2. So a tax of $15 per ton of CO2 emitted is equivalent to a tax of $45/ton on coal. The price of Eastern anthracite coal runs in the neighborhood of $45/ton, so under the proposed system, such coal would be taxed at a rate of about 100 percent. The price of Western bituminous coal is currently about $12/ton. This coal would therefore be taxed at a rate of almost 400 percent. Coal provides half of America’s electricity, so such extraordinary imposts could easily double the electric bills paid by consumers and businesses across half the nation. In addition, many businesses, such as the metals and chemical industries, use a great deal of coal directly. By doubling or potentially even quadrupling the cost of their most basic feedstock, the cap-and-trade system’s indulgence fees could make many such businesses uncompetitive and ultimately throw millions of working men and women onto the unemployment lines.

And that doesn’t even count what it will do to the world food supply. Read the whole thing.

Update:

It’s not just coal and food. There’s what it’ll do to the price of oil.

Another Update, and bumped:

Oh, and private homeowners will have to perform federally-mandated upgrades to their homes when they sell them. (Where in the constitution is congress authorized to do this, again?) Anyway, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Mission Creeps

That could be the new nickname for the jackbooted dimwits at the TSA (Too Stupid for Arby’s).

No one questions arrests made after TSA runs into evidence of drugs or other crimes during weapons searches. A bulge in baggy pants can be investigated, for example, because it might be an explosive. If it turns out to be cocaine, TSA is expected to report it to police or Drug Enforcement Agency officials.

But once TSA has determined that someone doesn’t have weapons or explosives, agents sometimes keep searching—leading some legal experts to wonder whether questioning people about how much cash they’re carrying, the number of credit cards they have and even prescription drugs in their bags stretches the intent of airport security law.

The kabuki theater at the airport is beyond stupid anyway. We should be looking for terrorists, not weapons. Of course, the TSA doesn’t have the market cornered on ineptitude. The hand-inspection of my backpack as I boarded a flight from Mexico City recently almost made me laugh out loud. The woman made a big show of unzipping the laptop compartment and sweeping it with her official, gloved hands. She completely ignored the other, larger compartments with the camera, cables, and my bottle of hand sanitizer.

At the Phoenix airport we were treated to a condescending routine by a young, male TSA goon who clearly relished his position of authority. But I guess it’s hard to get a job there if you don’t first pass the Stupid, Abusive and Rude aptitude test.

If you think the TSA makes you a whit safer than you were on 9/10, I have bad news for you about the Easter Bunny.

Update:

Meanwhile, they’re finally getting their wrists slapped over their absurd plans for General Aviation. It would be better, of course, to just disband the TSA. But this is something. Leave it to a unionized, government entity to come up with onerous procedures to prevent a non-existent threat.

Newspaper Finds Novel Revenue Stream

Apparently the WaPo has decided that as long as it’s in the tank, it may as well sell tickets.

“Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate,” says the one-page flier. “Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. … Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders.”

Update:

Read this without laughing.

“It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase,” Brauchli said. The proposal “promises we would suspend our usual skeptical questioning because it appears to offer, in exchange for sponsorships, the good name of The Washington Post.”

Feeling a Draft, Emperor?

When even that old moonbat Helen Thomas notices, The Messiah may have trouble with the press. Pretty embarassing performance by Gibbs. I’m sure most of the press remains in the tank, but this (to mix metaphors) looks like a chink in the wall.

Update:

Helen is clearly in her dotage. I mean, she just now noticed? Where was she during the campaign? The difference between Nixon and The One is that, in Nixon’s time, the press didn’t volunteer to be controlled.

I Hope Israel Has this Law on the Books

Because then they could arrest and detain Cynthia McKinney for Felony Stupid.

2009 Bullwer-Lytton Awards

I’m rather fond of this Special Mention:

Fleur looked down her nose at Guilliame, something she was accomplished at, being six foot three in her stocking feet, and having one of those long French noses, not pert like Bridget Bardot’s, but more like the one that Charles De Gaulle had when he was still alive and President of France and he wore that cap that was shaped like a little hatbox with a bill in the front to offset his nose, but it didn’t work.

Read the winner and runners up here.

Breaking: A Famous Person Has Died

So Much for So Little

What’s the potential benefit of what Tom McClintock calls “the biggest economic mistake since the days of Herbert Hoover?

Not much. A few tenths of a degree. But there’s a lot at risk.

The problem is that we’re putting a global economy with present value of $2,000 trillion at risk to go after less than $4 trillion of expected present value of benefit. The desire to regulate the global economy to avoid the risk of catastrophic climate change is not a one-sided bet.

Anybody outside California is asked to ponder this: Do you really want the whole country going the way this state is going?

An Open Letter to Governor Sanford

Dear Governor Sanford:

Resign, shut up, and just go away, you bastard. You’re lucky your wife doesn’t exercise her Second Amendment rights. (In my dad’s day women who did so got judgments of “justifiable homicide”.) You’ve ruined your own family, dishonored your kids, and I’ll thank you kindly not to drag what’s left of the Republican Party down the sewer with you.

And spare us the David-inspired delusions.

“What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily — fell in very, very significant ways, but then picked up the pieces and built from there,” Sanford told members of his cabinet in a session called so he could apologize to them in person and tell them the business of government must continue.

Yeah. Let it continue without you, you schmuck. If you want to repent, go do it on your own time.

Updated, and bumped:

Oh, for crying out backwards.

In a written message to supporters Monday, Mark Sanford asserted that God’s plan for him includes finishing his term as South Carolina governor.

For an adulterous politician you sure seem to have a direct line to the Big Guy. I wonder what part of God’s plan included sneaking off to Buenos Aires to <your favorite verb here> your Gaucho hottie?

Not content with dragging down the Republican party, you want to take Christianity with it? Fine!

Our Numbers Rise Like the Tide

Apparently the number of “Global Warming Deniers” (I prefer “skeptics of anthropogenic climate change” are swelling.

I’ll follow the data. When enough scientists not working for a systemically-corrupt political agency present compelling evidence, and can explain why the temperature of the earth has been going up and down for at least hundreds of millions of years without our help, I’ll believe that we’re changing the climate.

The next challenge will be convincing me that warming the planet a few degrees is a bad thing since, historically, it’s been a very good thing.

But I’m not holding my breath for a global crisis whose solution just happens not to be socialism, higher taxes, or dismantling capitalism.

Let’s hope that a lot of Senators visit The One’s office before the vote.

Update:

A “boquet of ironies” at the EPA.

Another Update (and bumped):

Roger Simon sees a trend.

The Obamedy Continues

You mean, we still have a reputation problem?

Now, do not confuse me with somebody who cares very much what editorialists in Der Spiegel or other outposts of the European chattering classes think of any American president. I could not care less, in no small part because I believe that the interests of such people generally diverge from mine own. I note, however, that many of the cosmopolitan Americans who voted for Barack Obama did so because they were embarrassed by the Bush administration’s reputation among foreigners, particularly European elites. They hated having to explain themselves over dinner in Paris, Brussels, and Frankfurt, and worried that most Europeans would not understand that we are not all unnuanced rubes. I therefore wonder how such people will react if anti-Obama sentiment in Europe grows to the point where they have to explain themselves all over again. Will they rise in Barack Obama’s defense, agree with the foreign critique but deny that they voted for him, or explode from the cognitive dissonance?

The possibilities for hilarity are not small.

“I inherited this crisis”

So says the buffoon with the $500 a day Teleprompter habit.

A Reminder

A Real Pilot Passes

Col. Kenneth L. Reusser, USMC Retired, known as the most decorated aviator in history has died. He was shot down in three wars.

In 1945, while based in Okinawa, he stripped down his F4U-4 Corsair fighter and intercepted a Japanese observation plane at a high altidude. When his guns froze, he flew his fighter into the observation plane, hacking off its tail with his propeller.

In 1950 in Korea led an attack on a North Korean tank-repair facility at Inchon, then destroyed an oil tanker almost blowing himself out of the sky.

In Vietnam he flew helicopters and was leading a rescue mission when his Huey was shot down. He needed skin grafts over 35 percent of his badly burned body.

Whatever the Right Stuff is, Reusser had it.

Snorting Zinc

The Zicam stink.

The moral? If you’re going to sell homeopathic medicine – and boy, is it a lucrative business – make sure that you don’t put anything in there except sterile water. That’ll cut down on your expenses, too, since most ingredients cost more than water, anyway. Stick with that strategy, and you can be absolutely sure that nothing bad will happen to your customers. Nothing good will happen to them either, but they won’t know that. When their cold/headache/whatever goes away of its own accord, they’ll ascribe it to your miracle product. Sit back and profit! Be sure to thank Senator Hatch while you count your money, though – it’s only proper.

Orrin Hatch has done a lot of stupid things, but his part in exempting “dietary supplements” from FDA approval is one of the stupidest. He has damaged the health of who knows how many Americans just so his buddies could sell snake oil.

His argument sounds libertarian:

So Hatch fired back at the IOC, saying that athletes could not blame their bad drug tests on him, or on the supplement industry, which he claimed was properly regulated in the U.S. “I am tired of this childish finger-pointing,” Hatch said. “The last time I checked, neither the prince nor the athletes were experts in food and drug law.”

I’d argue that policing the science behind medicine is part of the “referee” function of government. The FDA doesn’t ban anything, it simply provides a gating function for what claims people can make for their products. You want to claim a drug cures a specific disease? Fine. Just follow the steps needed to show efficacy and safety. The claims for “dietary supplements” range from useless and vague to outright lies, usually tending toward the latter. Confusion will naturally result when quack pills are placed on shelves next to FDA-approved medicines. Every customer can’t be an expert in food and drugs, either.

Actions have consequences.

Thanks to Hatch, the U.S. now has standards as low as those in many Third World countries for the sale of many products with serious, pharmacological effects. The results have been deadly. Between 1993 and 1998, the FDA linked at least 184 deaths to dietary supplements, which are now suspected of contributing to the sudden deaths of three football players in August.

I can’t believe

I’m sitting next to a Republican!

The fact is, conservatives living and working among the liberals, among them but not of them, are not unlike field reporters for “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom”; we know them better than they know themselves. Since there is an approved left-of-center position on every subject — just check out The New York Times or NPR — We know in advance how they’ll react to every controversy, every utterance by a public figure; we anticipate, politically and public policy-wise, their sighs, their frowns, their ups, their downs.

This is a lot what it’s like at work, except that most people I work with are much nicer. While I don’t care what others think, and don’t make my libertarian/conservative views a secret, I know of many conservatives who keep their heads down. I get private emails all the time saying, “I”m glad you said that.”

It’s really sad that Liberals are really the most intolerant people on the planet. Well, next to Islamists, I guess. Maybe that’s why He gets along with them so well.

Dawkins Camp

I’m on record as thinking Richard Dawkins has made some serious errors in his Atheism outreach. This, however, strikes me as a good idea.

The emphasis on critical thinking is epitomised by a test called the Invisible Unicorn Challenge. Children will be told by camp leaders that the area around their tents is inhabited by two unicorns. The activities of these creatures, of which there will be no physical evidence, will be regularly discussed by organisers, yet the children will be asked to prove that the unicorns do not exist. Anyone who manages to prove this will win a £10 note – which features an image of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory – signed by Dawkins, a former professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University.

The Messiah’s Epic Fail

His domestic policies are hideous failures sure to do lasting damage to America, but at least His foreign policy is suicidal and naive.

“We are surprised at Mr. Obama,” Ahmadinejad said. “Didn’t he say that he was after change?

Every Islamic barbarian in the world is laughing at us. Weakness is provocative. Just remember, all you who voted for The One, the next attack is on your heads.

Update:

David Pryce-Jones sees the mistakes the Mullahs and the Brits, and The One, are making.

The length of time that passes before some British or even American official says that none of this bears on willingness to enter negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program will be the measure of Western defeatism and masochism. And the mullahs will then conclude that they have only to extend the chain of mistakes and lying.

I Love This Country

Because no other country, no other civilization in the world, could come close to producing this:

Update:

I just found out that it was edited by the ex boyfriend of a guy I work with. I think there’s a blog post (or a Ph. D. thesis) to be written about the fascination with the original video, which you should see before watching the above mashup. It’s captured the minds of many but, apparently, not so many as in the homosexual community. Knowing why that is would be interesting. I have some theories, but no time to think it out and write it all down just yet.

For any (Hi, mom!) who thought the video was making fun of Mayberry, you should know that I actually like this Beyoncé tune. It’s really catchy, and the lyrics that say “if you’d like an exclusive relationship you’d better marry me” are a lot better than typical hip-hop fare. I think the musical confluence between the two songs is really fun.

The Cap-N-Traitors

Eight RINOs helped Pelosi screw the country.

Bono Mack (CA)
Castle (DE)
Kirk (IL)
Lance (NJ)
LoBiondo (NJ)
McHugh (NY)
Reichert (WA)
Smith (NJ)

Make them pay.

Meanwhile, please tell me how this is possibly legal.

Nobody could have read the bill the House passed last night because there is no bill.  There apparently wasn’t time to pull together a finished product that accounted for the hundreds of pages of amendments because of Pelosi’s headlong rush to slam this lunacy through before anybody had a chance to learn what was actually in it. So there is no “it” that all the pages and pages of words can be found “in.”  Democrats have passed a concept — not a bill.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

The “news” is wall-to-wall Michael Jackson. Yes, he was famous. But the people behind the economy-killing “Cap and Trade” bill must be glad to be out of the spotlight.

That’s the real news. We must do whatever it takes to strangle this monster in its crib.

Update:

Use this link and call your congressman!

And ask yourself what kind of moron would say this?

“Why would [a government plan] drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

I do not think the word “logical” means what He thinks it does.

Gone Too Soon

Goodbye, Michael.

Goodbye, Farrah.

Not Satisfied with Making Us Sick

Pelosi and her fellow Washington morons also want to make us poor.

Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can’t repeal that reality.

In brief: If The Messiah, Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy and their minions succeed in enacting their agenda, it will be the end of the American experiment.

Update:

Here are some guys to contact to try to kill this killer tax.

Messiah’s Infomercial a Ratings Bust

The Overexposed and Underqualified One failed to attract many viewers in spite of ABC’s (All Barak Channel) sycophantic and shameful pandering.

Do you support ObamaCare? If so, please answer the following questions:

1. In view of the fact that socialized medicine has been a failure everywhere and every time it’s ever been tried, what makes you think it will work here?
2. What makes you think that a Washington bureaucrat can make better health decisions than you and your own doctor can?
3. When was the last time that the government actually lowered the price of anything?
4. When was the last time the government made something better?
5. Where will Canadians go for quality, timely health care after our system collapses under the jackboots of Obama, Pelosi, et al?

Born in 1955, I’m at the tail end of the baby boom. If the government succeeds in taking over health care, the collapse will come in time for my life to be shortened. So I take this quite personally: The Democrats are trying to kill me. If you are under about 80 years old they are trying to kill you , too. If you’re over 80 they just want to scare you to death.

If you don’t believe me, ask anybody who relies on government-run healthcare in any country in the world.

Click on each poster below for more.

Oh, Cry Me a Frozen River, Lady

How about just being a grownup? US Air already did more than it needed to.

Perhaps Tess Sosa should consider this in lieu of therapy:

Write the airline a letter that starts, “Thanks to you, my family is alive. I am so grateful.”

This Ought to Work