Read it.

Hint: One way or another, if the statists have their way, either by law or through taxation to support a National Health Service-type plan.

But some powerful Democrats have supported a mandate, including Hillary Clinton, Max Baucus (a key health-reform power broker in the Senate) and Tom Daschle (OK, maybe he’s not so powerful anymore).

The health insurance industry also backs a mandate. This is no surprise — the Health Blog would certainly back a mandate requiring all Americans to read health-related blogs. But we were reminded of the industry’s position again this morning, with the report that two health insurance trade groups wrote a letter to the Senate, offering to stop charging sick people more for coverage, provided that everyone is required to buy insurance.

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The PC witch hunt against “hate speech” apparently trumps any right to free speech. Canada has fallen far.

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Prediction: The only people who will try this will be lefty agitators like Ward Churchill and William Ayers who oughtn’t to be teaching anyway, and who will attempt to leverage the “radical street cred” thus gained to pressure faculties into granting tenure where it is otherwise not deserved.

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This would be amusing if it weren’t that it involved real people.

Welcome to the U.S.S.A.

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Or, at least, in the Real America that lives on the Left Coast.

Just as Apple ads reflect the Real America that lives in Cupertino.

Neither bears any resemblance to the Real America that lives in Dallas, Des Moines, Dulute, or Detroit.

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American policymakers used to take bold action like that. Now they just sit and whine and wring their hands.

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I don’t think this is a episode of the Three Stooges, but you can never be sure with the British police.

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At last a “progressive” admits that there objective is to reverse the industrial revolution.

Gee, in the old days they called that “conservative”, even “reactionary”. But now it’s “progressive”.

Times change — and apparently so do words.

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If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

Of course, if NATO weren’t a bunch of useless wankers, this problem wouldn’t be a problem.

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What a revealing development.

A science teacher who secretly filmed shocking scenes of pupil misbehaviour for a Channel 4 documentary has been found guilty of unprofessional conduct.

I guess “being professional” means “not ratting out your colleagues about the dirt swept under the rug”. Well, I’ve always suspected that. No wonder it’s such a behavioral sink over there.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably anywhere that the NEA holds sway.

Martin Feldstein points out some inconvenient truths about alleged-smart-guy Obama’s plan to mutilate the charitable giving deduction.

In effect, the change would be a tax on the charities, reducing their receipts by a dollar for every dollar of extra revenue the government collects. It is hard to imagine a rationale for taxing schools, hospitals, medical research budgets and arts organizations in this way. I suspect that the administration officials who drafted this proposal did not understand that it would have this perverse effect.

Well, it’s not as if anybody in the Obama Nation has demonstrated any understanding of how money and the tax system actually work. For people with a lot of advanced degrees from spiffy upper-class institutions, these guys don’t give any appearance of being the sharpest knives in the drawer.

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“Travellers” are what the Brits call gypsies and other itinerant riff-raff, very roughly equivalent to the American concept “white trash”.

An elderly couple who complained in a survey about mess left behind by travellers’ groups have been told their comments will be ignored because they were deemed to be racist.

Although “travellers”, like “Muslims”, aren’t a race — but that really doesn’t matter, these days; “racism” is merely a convenient term to use for “not liking a politically fashionable fringe group”.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Uh, because they’re not part of the Favored Class? That’s just a guess, you understand.

Read it. And watch the video.

Female. Black. Democrat. Lunatic. The gift that keeps on giving.

I guess Barbara Jordan was the last black female Democrat that was a functional adult.

Pity.

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Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Just another day in Londonistan.

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Notice that you will never see a headline that says “U.S. Seeks Reduced Power”.

Think about that.

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And that additional period of uncertainty will, of course, have no effect on the financial markets or job productivity.

What is it about being elected to public office that lowers the IQ by 20 points?

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And the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes yet again. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

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Homeowners choose cul-de-sacs because, they say, they offer safety, security and a sense of community.

“Cul-de-sacs are the safest places in America to live,” said Mike Toalson, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Virginia, which opposes the new rules. “The first lots sold are often on the cul-de-sacs because they are safe.” As for developments with single entrances and exits, Toalson said, such configurations ensure that all traffic is local, neighbors watch out for each other and speeds are kept down. “Crooks look for multiple exits.”

Apparently safety, security, and a sense of community are against public policy in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Suffolk City Council member E. Dana Dickens, who is on the state panel that approved the changes, said cul-de-sac dwellers like the privacy and “fear traffic and all those types of things. But those are often the same people who also complain about paying for building capacity on the collector road if you don’t have the connectivity.”

No party affiliation listed, which means he (she?) is almost certainly a Democrat. Which isn’t surprising. State nanny knows better than the people that actually live there.

The new requirements also call for roads that are dramatically narrower, 24 feet to 29 feet wide for local streets. Now subdivision streets can be 40 feet wide — wider than three highway lanes — and cars often share the asphalt with baby carriages and joggers. Montgomery County also recently approved new rules for narrower streets. Narrower roads reduce speeds, decrease storm water runoff and save on maintenance costs, officials say.

Thereby promoting the very congestion that (in theory) they are attempting to fix. Sort of makes the rationalization rather transparent, doesn’t it?

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Once a hippie, always a hippie. It never fails to astound me that people whose main desire seems to cancel the Industrial Revolution are nevertheless accepted as “progressives”. Prior to 1965 these people would be regarded as reactionaries, of a particularly hardcore type.

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“But you don’t understand,” the Colombian said. “We’ve seen this before.”

“He’s right, my good friend,” the Cuban said. “We Latin Americans know the pattern. Believe me we do.”

“It starts with a cult of personality,” the Cuban explained. “One man declares himself the jefe, the caudillo, the big leader.”

“After the cult of personality,” the Colombian explained, “what comes next is nationalization.” Fidel had nationalized the Cuban sugar mills, Chavez the Banco de Venezuela, Morales the Bolivian oil and gas industries.

“The last step?” asked the Cuban. “Censorship. It won’t be obvious at first–they’re always too smart for that. But it will come.”

“Never,” replied the American. “We have the First Amendment.”

“And soon enough,” the Cuban said, smiling sadly, “you will also have the Fairness Doctrine.”

Quite possibly.

The essence of “single payer” medicine is that no one other than the government is allowed to pay for medical care. Thus the term “single payer.” There are a few exceptions in Canada but, by and large, the more serious the ailment, the more stringent the ban. So, for example, if you want to be treated for cancer in Canada, you can not do so legally and any doctor or hospital that tries to charge you faces serious penalties, up to and including a prison sentence. In that sense, Canadian health care is one of the most totalitarian systems in the industrialized world and is far more extreme than the National Health Service of Britain.

And yet this is the system that Barry’s Boys (and Girls) want to establish in this country. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Read it.

(In light of the death threats, when Mr. Cuomo received the list of A.I.G. bonus recipients on Thursday, he promised to consider “individual security” and “privacy rights” in deciding whether to publicize the names.)

Would you trust your safety to the discretion of Andrew Cuomo, a politician on the model of Elliot Spitzer and Chuckie Schumer? I wouldn’t. The only thing you can trust him to do is to sell out for the highest price.

How can you run a company when the rules keep changing, when you have to worry about being second-guessed by Congress? Who can do business under those circumstances?

Answer: You can’t. And you can’t get intelligent people to sign up for such a crap shoot.

This program could help revive the consumer credit market. But at this point, most Wall Street bankers would rather be attacked by wild dogs than take part. They fear that they’ll do something — make money perhaps? — that will arouse Congressional ire. Or that the rules will change.

So the only people who are willing to run a large company these days are the sort who are former boyfriends of powerful Congressmen, or equivalent, who are sufficiently connected to remain protected.

What the country really needs right now from Congress is facts instead of rhetoric. Instead of these “raise your hand if you took a private jet to get here” exercises of outraged populism, we need hearings that educate and illuminate.

Good luck getting that from this Congress.

Read it.

Two dozen black lawmakers angrily stalked out of the Georgia House on Friday amid assertions that a decision by white Republican leaders to delay passage of a resolution honoring President Obama had racist overtones.

House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R) said the proposal to make Obama an honorary member of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus required changes to its language and sent it to a committee. Supporters of the resolution said the move was a snub to the nation’s first black president.

So legality doesn’t matter when it stands in the way of the Half-Blood Prince being honored. Henry VIII would be right on board with that.

Let’s just see how much more efficient that legislature can be without two dozen race-obsessed politicians. But of course that’s an experiment that will never be tried.

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I am not making this up.

Ruben Noe Coronado, 25, from Spain, postponed the process of becoming a man so that he could keep his female reproductive organs and give birth.

‘He’ fell pregnant after undergoing fertility treatment when doctors told his girlfriend, the mother of two children from a previous relationship, she couldn’t have any more children.

Read it.

Mr. Quinn ran as Mr. Blagojevich’s Lieutenant Governor on a platform of no new taxes. But now he defends his huge tax increase by saying this will only hit those who have the “ability to pay.” Of course, employers and the wealthy also have the ability to leave — which they have been doing. In the last decade 736,000 more Americans have left Illinois than have entered, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

It’s amazing how many politicians and bureaucrats believe that taxpayers, like sheep, will stand still and be fleeced. When they don’t, of course, the immediate reaction is to attempt to shave them on the way out — as witness the many proposals in Congress for confiscatory taxation on American citizens who are tired of being bled white and decide to leave for greener pastures.

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Michelina Roy, 70, was handed the on-the-spot penalty after tossing bread and left-over crumpets down for the pigeons.

Most of the food had already been devoured by more than 20 birds which had landed on the grass when she was approached by two council wardens last week.

They informed her she was guilty of littering in Green Park, near her home in Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, and instantly issued her with the ticket.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in New York.

Read it.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in California.

Arnold Kling likes to delve into strange stuff — for an economist.

In other words, because economists do not want to punish rich people, altruists believe we must be punished.

But it’s worse than that. You can signal that you are an altruist not by engaging in altruistic acts, but simply by expressing a desire to punish others. For example, by taking away AIG bonuses, you do a great deal to signal altruism, even though the actual social gains from taking the bonuses away are miniscule (the gains may even be negative).

And I have no problem believing that.

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There really isn’t a lot of development in this area.

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I know that would certainly pinch me.

Marie Douglas-David, a former investment banker, says she has no income and needs her 67-year-old husband, George David, to pay her more than $53,000 a week – more than most U.S. households make in a year – to cover her expenses.

I guess getting a job, for an investment banker these days, would be rather difficult.

David and Douglas-David married in 2002, but the marriage was in trouble by 2004, court papers show. Amid a series of reconciliations, the couple signed a postnuptial agreement in October 2005 that would give her $43 million when they divorce.

Douglas-David wants the agreement invalidated. She accused her husband of coercing her to sign it by preying upon her fears of being divorced and childless.

She could always get pregnant. A lot of people are doing that. And I don’t suppose she’ll have a problem finding someone to marry, with $43 million.

Douglas-David has filed court papers showing she has more than $53,800 in weekly expenses, including for maintaining a Park Avenue apartment and three residences in Sweden. Her weekly expenses also include $700 for limousine service, $4,500 for clothes, $1,000 for hair and skin treatments, $1,500 for restaurants and entertainment, and $8,000 for travel.

How does one spend $1,000 a week for hair and skin treatments?

Read it.

Many civil libertarians were hopeful that the Obama administration would be a lot more reasonable on certain issues, like warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of Americans.

Guess not. So far the major difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama speaks well in public. Oh, and wants to spend more of your money, which no one would have predicted was possible.

Read it.

Saw that coming.

Andrew Rasiej, founder of the political technology site Personal Democracy Forum, said too many messages consist of warbling monologues that miss the point.

Have you ever heard a better description of Congess in your life?

Other postings, including one by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, were said to be too eccentric or random to resonate.

In a minute-long video, Mrs Pelosi showed footage of her life behind the scenes in the Capitol Building through the eyes of two pet cats.

Making matters more bizarre, the minute-long film was captured to the strains of Rick Astley’s disco hit, Never Going To Give You Up.

Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

Read it.

Actually, I think they ought to be deported. But that’s me.

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It’s easy to laugh at Britain but America isn’t any better.

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And how would they? Most mothers these days don’t cook, and many don’t know how themselves.

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However, the depression conditions in the great valley reflect more than a mere water shortage. They are the direct result of conscious actions by environmental activists to usher in a new era of scarcity.

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A teachable moment.

Think of it as evolution in action.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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And yet we’re all forced to buy it. Why is that?

Corn ethanol producers — led by Wesley Clark, the retired general turned chairman of a new biofuels lobbying outfit called Growth Energy — want the Obama Administration to make their guaranteed market even larger. Recall that the 2007 energy bill requires refiners to mix 36 billion gallons into the gasoline supply by 2022. The quotas, which ratchet up each year, are arbitrary, but evidently no one in Congress wondered what might happen if the economy didn’t cooperate.

Oh, yeah, I forgot — Congress is involved.

Read it.

Land tenure in Indian country is complicated thanks to laws, dating back to the 19th century, which put millions of acres of tribal and individual Indian land under the trusteeship of the Interior department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. These lands cannot be sold, used as collateral, easily inherited, or managed productively. Instead of giving Indians more federal welfare, Mr. Obama has the opportunity to increase their autonomy. It is, after all, their land. Let them manage it, borrow against it, and make it productive.

If you want to see what America would be like if the socialists get their way, just look at how the Skraelings live. There’s a reason why vodka was such a problem in the old Soviet Union.

Read it.

Traditionally they used angry peasants with pitchforks and torches. It’s a shame to see the old ways die….

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Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

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We have the technology.

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Why stop with two?

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Let that be a lesson to us all. Be careful what you wish for.