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Soon to be a Peter Jackson movie?

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And explains it in terms so simple that even Democrats ought to be able to follow along.

One key thing to remember is that there’s a big difference between a situation where the government is a sizeable buyer/producer, and one where the government is essentially the only buyer/producer.  In the latter case, the market still works, even if the government presence distorts it–prices are set by supply and demand, research is done, and so forth.  Indeed, it is not well appreciated on the left how dependent Medicare is on private insurers to tell them what the competitive price is for the treatments and products it pays for–if the private sector went away, Medicare would have to develop some sort of pricing system, and so would all the health care systems abroad.  Once the government becomes the dominant player, however, everything changes.

Right now, the US has a market–no matter how screwed up–for medical goods.  It is not a good market.  But no one in the market, except Medicare, has enough pricing power to totally undermine the market mechanism, so it grinds out an equilibrium that bears some resemblance to consumer demand.  In turn, Europe can buy those market-produced products.  But if you kill the last market, everything suddenly looks very different.  What’s the right price for innovation?  What should we research?  Those questions stop being decided on the basis of the number of consumers served, and start being decided on the basis of who has the best lobby.

It’s not uncommon for Americans getting treatment in Europe to be asked “You’d never be able to afford this in America, right?” by their doctors and nurses, when “this” is stitches or antibiotics.  I’d be terrified of switching places with an American too, if American health care were actually one eighth as bad as most Europeans seem to believe.  Yet despite that, as far as I know the net migration is actually the other way.

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Mr Vaughan-Evans, who was in his late seventies, was killed on the eve of his wife Jean’s 80th birthday.

“She is frail and in a wheelchair from a previous attack, also in their home,” he said.

Boy, those Zimbabweans are sure lucky they’re no longer under the boot of that oppressive white regime.

Thank God for the U.N. and the international community, or who knows what sort of hell they’d be living in now.

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The elephant-in-the-room irony is that the liberal cause is supposed to be about improving the prospects and economic security of ordinary Americans, whose beliefs and intelligence liberals so often enjoy deriding.

Thus, higher education is remedial education, and the affliction it remedies is an American upbringing.

The professors, by contrast, expect to be deferred to, not to be the ones deferring. Their “intellectual arrogance” is a consequence of the assumptions of progressivism, an ism that treats progress as the fundamental reality. The belief in progress is the belief that the present is better and wiser than the past, and the future will be better and wiser than the present. Truths outside of history, such as the laws of nature and nature’s God, either don’t exist, can’t be known, or don’t matter. Unlike the Marxist, the progressive does not believe history is following a defined path to a specific, inevitable conclusion. Rather, the evolution of human society is constant and eternal. Its entirety is unknowable, the idea that it has an ultimate destination a complete misconception, but history’s next phase can be discerned by some better than others.

We see here all the basic elements, employed for the past 28 years, of liberal condescension. Every issue of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone makes clear that the policy positions of George W. Bush, Republicans and conservatives in general are wicked and stupid. The real problem, however, is that everything about these people—where they reside, what they believe, how they live, work, recreate, talk and think—is in irredeemably bad taste. To embark on a conversation with one of them, based on straight-faced openness to the possibility of learning something interesting or important, would be like choosing to vacation in Wichita instead of Tuscany.

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Did human evolution really stop? If not, our sense of who we are — and how we got this way — may be radically altered. Messrs. Cochran and Harpending, both scientists themselves, dismiss the standard view. Far from ending, they say, evolution has accelerated since humans left Africa 40,000 years ago and headed for Europe and Asia.

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

Tim Matheson and Tom Selleck both tested for Indiana Jones; Karen Allen actually screentested with Tim Matheson. Tom Selleck did very well and was the frontrunner, but had to bow out due to Magnum P.I. Harrison Ford was brought up early in the casting discussion, but George Lucas wanted to avoid casting him since he had already become so closely associated with Star Wars.

Selleck would have been great.

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Just in case your World of Warcraft account is somehow unavailable.

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The Japanese are actually an alien species. Here’s proof.

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Too much television really is bad for you.

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And who could blame them?

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The media and political pundits refuse to see this gap between the state’s budget and its ability to pay as an essential issue.

But the fundamental problem remains. California’s economy–once wondrously diverse with aerospace, high-tech, agriculture and international trade–has run aground. Burdened by taxes and ever-growing regulation, the state is routinely rated by executives as having among the worst business climates in the nation. No surprise, then, that California’s jobs engine has sputtered, and it may be heading toward 15% unemployment.

Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect. Rinse. Repeat. Go bankrupt.

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Speaking to the American Medical Association last month, President Obama waxed enthusiastic about countries that “spend less” than the U.S. on health care. He’s right that many countries do, but what he doesn’t want to explain is how they ration care to do it.

While the guidelines are complex, NICE currently holds that, except in unusual cases, Britain cannot afford to spend more than about $22,000 to extend a life by six months. Why $22,000? It seems to be arbitrary, calculated mainly based on how much the government wants to spend on health care. That figure has remained fairly constant since NICE was established and doesn’t adjust for either overall or medical inflation.

The NICE precedent also undercuts the Obama Administration’s argument that vast health savings can be gleaned simply by automating health records or squeezing out “waste.” Britain has tried all of that but ultimately has concluded that it can only rein in costs by limiting care. The logic of a health-care system dominated by government is that it always ends up with some version of a NICE board that makes these life-or-death treatment decisions. The Administration’s new Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research currently lacks the authority of NICE. But over time, if the Obama plan passes and taxpayer costs inevitably soar, it could quickly gain it.

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The 1996 murder of seven French Catholic monks in Algeria, called the Martyrs of Atlas because of the Atlas mountains where their monastery was located, was not the work of Islamist militants as officially stated at the time, according to testimony by a retired French general to an inquiry into the killings.

In fact, he told a closed-door inquiry in Paris, Algerian troops in a helicopter inadvertently gunned down the Trappists when they strafed an isolated camp they believed belonged to the radical Armed Islamic Group (GIA) that was battling the Algerian state at the time. When they landed to inspect the scene, the troops found the bullet-ridden bodies of the monks who had been kidnapped two months beforehand. Algeria then concocted the story that the Islamists had slit the monks’ throats to hide their fatal blunder.

The GIA has a sordid part in this story, as they apparently abducted the monks after the Trappists had been kidnapped by Algerian agents in a complicated plot. But if these testimonies are correct, the monks did not die at the hands of Islamists who slit their throats, as the official Algerian explanation has it.

Truth will out.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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It will only take about ten years for the bureaucrats to catch up.

There’s probably a fat Ph.D. dissertation in cataloging all of the laws that enshrine outmoded science.

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Soon to be the perfect Democrat party candidate. All white, of course.

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Yet another reason not to play cricket.

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In the age of YouTube, there simply is no excuse for people who refuse to grasp the Muslim agenda for the free world.

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Telling the school that the children were related to European royalty and that his brother was a senior Army officer, the father is said to have asked for permission – which was granted – to pick up his children inside the two schools attended by his eldest children.

However, one of the head teachers went to the police because of her “concerns”.

Lord Monckton, who has investigated the allegations, described the episode as “the worst case of child abduction by social services that I have ever come across”.

He accused a social worker and a police officer, both female, of plotting together against the couple, who live in the east of England.

The father has told the peer that when he was asked to accompany her, he demanded to see her identification but she refused to show him. He claims he was then hancuffed by two police officers.

His wife was also detained when she went to remonstrate, and their youngest child was taken away screaming, according to the family’s account. Later all three children were taken into care.

Good thing they weren’t Mormons — they’d never get their kids back.

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They are the traditional pleasures of a British summer fair. But the spin of the tombola and the fun of the coconut shy are being eclipsed by the rustle of paperwork and the shuffle of the inspector’s footsteps.

Village fete organisers say they are having to cancel events because volunteers are struggling to cope with the demands of officialdom.

Saw that comin’.

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

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From Megan McArdle, who is finally getting off the dime and marrying Peter Suderman.

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Works for me.

Better yet, let’s put a stake through his heart, cut off his head, and fill his mouth with garlic.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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“We plan to use the sequence to establish a breeding programme for bluefin tuna as most aquaculture farmers presently use wild juveniles,” he said. “We want to establish a complete aquaculture system that will produce fish that have good strength, are resistant to disease, grow quickly and taste delicious.”

Somehow, I don’t think his name will be Charlie.

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

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Yeah, the article is about Southern Baptists, but the map is fascinating. Southern Baptists are second only to Roman Catholics — and not far behind them, either — in the number of counties in which they are the largest religious group.

Mainline church leaders may struggle to grasp this, but the most ethnically diverse churches in America are found in these three bodies — the Roman Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God and, yes, the Southern Baptist Convention.

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The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to be pausible.

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A car salesman used his kung fu expertise to kill his partner, an executive with Mercedes, after she announced she was leaving him for her married boss.

Soon to be a major motion picture.

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Like others in the so-called good-food movement, Allen, who is 60, asserts that our industrial food system is depleting soil, poisoning water, gobbling fossil fuels and stuffing us with bad calories. Like others, he advocates eating locally grown food. But to Allen, local doesn’t mean a rolling pasture or even a suburban garden: it means 14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing project.

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The document, which is in perfect condition, is believed to be one of only 200 ever printed and was found among files at the National Archives in Kew in Richmond, Surrey.

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The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials.

I’m sure glad we re-elected Bush. That Obama guy sounded pretty scary.

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I’m thinking Bigmouth Billy Bass here.

Tyler Cowen boils it down.

The case against is simple too.  Say that previously unprovided health insurance would have cost the employer 60 and would have been valued by the worker at 40.  You’re imposing a tax of 20 on the employment relation.  In the short run firms will hire less labor and during a recession is an especially bad time to produce that effect.

In the longer run, if the market is competitive, wages will fall by 20.  We’re forcing relatively poor workers to consume more medical insurance, and more medical care, than they wish to, at the expense of their cash income.

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Let the machine do the work, that’s what I always say.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

That Justice Ginsburg’s dissent in Ricci managed to get four out of nine votes points out major flaws in both American intellectual life and in the Supreme Court.

Some of what’s wrong with the Supreme Court is structural. Justices used to drop dead of heart attacks before they aged too far into mental decline.

A more subtle defect in the Supreme Court is the lack of adult supervision. We still have the obsolete system of ailing Justices such as 76-year-old Ginsburg (cancer surgery in February) and extremely elderly Justices (Stevens is a ridiculous 89) being assisted solely by clerks who are largely in their late 20s: the senile being aided by the puerile.

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The designer sweet potato, grown for its anti-cancer purple pigment, is also said to contain anti-ageing and antioxidant chemicals.

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So even though I tend to focus on under-the-radar euphemisms in this column, sometimes you have to take your radar and throw it in the bathtub, rubber duckies be damned. Hiking the Appalachian trail is too good to pass up, and if we’re lucky, it may describe cheaters far into the future, even during the long-prophesied era when the right to gay-marry Martians is hotly contested.

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Wal-Mart buys protection by selling out its competitors.

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One of the purported benefits of nationalized health care is that it will be more efficient than private insurers since it would lack the profit motive and have lower administrative expenses, like Medicare. But one reason entitlement programs are so easy to defraud is precisely because they don’t have those overhead costs — they automatically pay whatever bills roll in with valid claims numbers.

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Those of us dedicated to the zoology of celebrity should have known it was over when the death of next-to-nobody Anna Nicole Smith filled the airwaves in 2007 for a week. Celebrity had lost its meaning. We will bury its golden age in Jacko’s tomb.

South Carolina and New York can have only one deranged governor. Mass marketing can’t produce politicians and cheapen them further. Most of the time they don’t do much of anything, just like celebrities. Meet Senator Franken.

A poll in the last election found that most people think they could do a better job than their own Member of Congress. So I expect that TV will soon create a reality Congress show. Average people could pretend to run a whole country, just like the celebrities who are pretending to run Washington.

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When President Obama signed legislation in mid-June to bring tobacco under FDA regulation, few seemed outraged that the legislation had been co-written by Philip Morris USA (PM). The bill was designed, critics say, to stabilize the place of cigarettes in our society: to diminish the threat of health-related lawsuits, to prevent competitive yet possibly safer products from being introduced, and to lock in Philip Morris’ market share. It’s not just the Harvard School of Public Health leveling these charges but even Sen. Bob Bennett, Republican of Utah, a supporter of the intent of the bill who was nonetheless “convinced we would do better if we told Philip Morris to stay out of the process of writing tobacco legislation.”

Five years after the tobacco buyout, and with the second prong of tobacco legislation newly passed, it’s worth checking in. As with other crops, the government had for years been paying some farmers not to grow tobacco to maintain prices for those who did. By the time 2004 rolled around, nearly 85 percent of tobacco permit holders weren’t growing tobacco at all. The permits were being bought and sold for their annual cash payments, like some sort of strange tobacco bond. The quota system, which could have been used to end domestic tobacco production altogether, worked in that it kept prices high and kept small farmers in business.

According to one story on the buyout, some farmers have stopped growing commodity crops like corn and wheat to switch to the wildly more profitable tobacco crop. “A reasonable profit for an acre of corn is about $100. For tobacco,” T.J. Vaughan said in that story, “it’s $1,000 to $1,500.”

With this new FDA move, no doubt tobacco will soon be added to the War on Drugs. I’m sure the Mafia is rubbing its hands and counting up the potential profits, with memories of Prohibition fresh in everyone’s mind — except that of the bureaucrats in Washington.

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Bryan Caplan looks behind the handwaving.

If an economist wants to ward off the spirit of laissez-faire insurance policy, all he has to do is repeatedly chant “moral hazard and adverse selection.”  The funny thing about this two-part mantra, though, is that the “moral hazard” part doesn’t do any of the work.  Almost no one even pretends that governments do anything to mitigate it.

Bottom line: Real-world insurance regulation has little or nothing to do with economists’ “moral hazard and adverse selection” mantra.  The “intellectual” bases of real-world regulation of insurance are rather populism and paternalism: Big bad insurers won’t cover people unless it’s profitable, and simple-minded consumers don’t care enough about their own health to pay for it themselves.

Contrary to e.g. Krugman, insurance isn’t a “special” market where laissez-faire doesn’t work.  Instead, it’s a normal market where democratic politics doesn’t work, because both the public and economists remain wedded to populism and paternalism.

Steve Sailer cuts to the chase.

The Ricci reactions have made more evident that liberals are peeved that anybody takes seriously all that language in the civil rights laws about equal protection. In the liberal mind, the specific wording of the laws was just a sham to get them approved. The laws are really simply about “Who? Whom?” Thus, the idea of civil rights laws being used by the Supreme Court to protect the civil rights of white guys like Frank Ricci is an affront against all that is holy (i.e., civil rights laws).

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The map, commissioned by English Heritage, is to be placed in a suite of rooms in Dover Castle’s keep which are being refurbished to look as they did when King Henry II built them in the 1180s.

Ooo! Ahh! Pretty!

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New claims of torture and abuse of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers will be made in 20 fresh cases being prepared by human rights lawyers in London, it is reported.

Hm. No mention of there being any human rights lawyers in Baghdad. Wonder why that is?

I have an idea: Let’s torture the human rights lawyers. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

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No one can destroy an economy like the government.

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One of the country’s leading sculptors is suing for damages after his “life’s work” was destroyed when a garage was knocked down to make way for a housing project, a court heard.

This is what happens when you put your life in storage.

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The Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of last year’s disputed Senate race, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman’s gracious concession at least spares the state any further legal combat. The unfortunate lesson is that you don’t need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.

If we’re going to have a Senate that’s a joke, the least we could do is get somebody who’s actually funny, like Robin Williams.

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Go ahead. You’re free to donate to cancer research.