Read it.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Indiana.
2. The rot has already set it.

Read it.

The thing about the bully pulpit is that Presidents can make the most fantastic claims and it takes days to sort the reality from the myths. So as a public service, let’s try to navigate the, er, remarkable Medicare discussion that President Obama delivered on Wednesday. It isn’t easy.

Medicare’s unfunded liability—the gap between revenues and promised benefits—is currently some $37 trillion over the next 75 years. Yet the President uses this insolvency as an argument to justify the creation of another health-care entitlement, this time for most everyone under age 65. It’s like a variation on the old Marx Brothers routine: “The soup is terrible and the portions are too small.”

Read it.

Here are the top 10 reasons this program should not be a model for reform, and why it would be dangerous for the federal government to be put in charge of any more of our health sector….

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

Read it.

And yet Google, who will put up a fancy new logo cartoon for the most obscure anniversary of a comic book character, considers it just another day. Nothing to see here — move along, move along.

Read it.

Two nights ago I included a translated article in the news feed about three suspected “Swedish” Al Qaeda terrorists who were arrested in Pakistan. The article didn’t say so explicitly, but one would assume that these were culturally enriched fellows rather than blond-haired blue-eyed guys with surnames like Svensson and Eriksson.

It turns out that our assumptions were correct, and to make the matter even more poignant, one of the apprehended “Swedes” is Mehdi Ghezali, who graduated from Guantanamo before moving on to higher things.

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

Read it.

More bad news for the Peak Oil doomsday cult. Russian boffins say they have proved that fossil fuels can be created synthetically by replicating the high pressure, high temperature conditions found in the upper parts of the Earth’s crust.

Read it.

A Norwegian company that invented the inspiration for cinema’s best-loved light fixture is suing The Walt Disney Company and animator Pixar for alleged trade mark infringement.

Luxo makes swivel table lamps that Pixar founder John Lasseter has said were the inspiration for his company’s logo. A pair of Luxo lookalike lamps appeared in Pixar’s first film in 1986, Luxo Jr.

Read it.

Nowhere did anyone address the fundamental question: under what principle do we all acquire a right to health care paid by someone else, and under what principle do those who have to pay acquire the obligation? Whatever principle that is must have some other consequences, and I’d like to know what those are. It’s a pretty fundamental change in our political philosophy. Does it mean that everyone is entitled to anything that someone else can afford? It probably doesn’t apply to health care alone. Where does this right stop? Does it apply to cosmetic surgery for burn victims? Those with genetic malformations? Aging skin sag? Breast implants? I don’t ask these questions frivolously: since I don’t know what principle is being applied to infer that everyone is entitled to health care whether they can afford it or not, it’s hard to see what else that principle implies. There must be other implications, but what are they?

Read it.

Ah, well, the Irish aren’t what they used to be — most of those came over here.

Read it.

Read it.

When was the last time you read anything about Indian Muslims fleeing to Pakistan?

Read it.

Another cinema legend, down the drain. How disappointing.

Mencius Moldbug points a finger.

It is too much to expect evil to walk naked in the world. In real life, evil does not wear a skull helmet or speak through a respirator. Why would it? Why not drape itself in silks of good? But this clothing interferes, by its very nature, with the fangs and sting and claws. So the patient watcher is rewarded, every now and then, with a flash of black scales or a yellow demon grin. But most of the time, he sees a kindly, wise and charming pillar of the community. Such is State.

Now, one could continue indefinitely in this vein. But this is UR, not Mark Steyn.

Read it.

And about time, too.

Read it.

Yeah, welcome to the safety school of the Ivy League.

Read it.

Suggestion: Cancel American foreign aid for every country who had a politician in that crowd. Let them sink back into the neolithic existence they enjoyed before.

Read it.

Assholes with money. That’s modern America for you.

Read it.

If you’re scratching your head about that, so am I.

President Barack Obama sent a letter this week to President Ali Abdullah Saleh pledging to “stand beside Yemen, its unity, security and stability”.

“The security of Yemen is vital for the security of the United States,” he said.

Uh … why? It’s a noplace in the middle of nowhere. Why can’t the Saudis, who are right next door, spend some of their oil money and take care of business? Why is it always the U.S. that has to do something about these stone-age bandits? Hello? Hello?

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Read it.

Be the first on your block….

Read it.

A South African IT outfit has shamed telecoms operator Telkom by sending 4GB of data 60 miles by pigeon in two hours – faster than it arrived by the ISP’s broadband service.

We have the technology.

Read it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Read it.

In the first case of its kind, an employment tribunal decided that Nicholson, 41, had views amounting to a “philosophical belief in climate change”, allowing him the same legal protection against discrimination as religious beliefs.

Environmentalism is now considered a religion in Britain.

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

Read it.

Read it.

Read it.

So much for Global Warming.

Read it.

In a telephone interview with FOXNews.com, U.N. spokesman Fahran Haq explained that the MSD has a legal right to hire unlicensed doctors and nurses to work on U.N. property, because “U.N. headquarters is not part of New York.”

The Medical Services Division provides “basic health services,” according to its Web page, but the doctors and nurses who work there are not permitted to assume primary responsibility for U.N. employees during a medical emergency crisis, even though the department’s two-year budget for 2007-2008 accounted for more than $38 million in operating expenses. The U.N. receives most of its funding from national government bodies across the globe.

Read it.

Read it.

Hey, it’s all about priorities. Those book deals don’t grow on trees, you know.

Read it.

We have the technology. Of course, he’ll never play the violin again….

The Other McCain has a short fuse.

Remarkable, really, how the Left’s erroneous presumptions haven’t changed at all: If the social welfare state is synonymous with enlightenment, opponents of the welfare state must therefore be unenlightened. The only question remaining for the liberal theorist is to identify the variety of psychopathology that explains this (presumably irrational) opposition.

So it is that Max Blumenthal, who no doubt favors putting the federal government in control of America’s health-care system, effectively nationalizing 1/7th of the economy, presumes to diagnose opponents of such policies as suffering from “the fear of freedom.”

Read it.

Read it.

Guess Communists take their property rights pretty seriously.

Read it.

If Mark Hopkins or any of his family contracted cancer, TB, polio, heart disease, or even appendicitis, they would probably die.  All the rage today is to moan about people’s access to health care, but Hopkins had less access to health care than the poorest resident of East St. Louis.  Hopkins died at 64, an old man in an era where the average life span was in the early forties.  He saw at least one of his children die young, as most others of his age did.  In fact, Stanford University owes its founding to the early death (at 15) of the son of Leland Stanford, Hopkin’s business partner and neighbor.  The richest men of his age had more than a ten times greater chance of seeing at least one of their kids die young than the poorest person in the US does today.

Read it.

In the meantime, though, greenwashing has become a virtual industry in the political and policy worlds. Take, for example, the growing push for economically regressive and environmentally problematic HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes. HOT lanes are toll lanes on public highways. Prices are set dynamically so that HOT lanes keep moving even if all the other lanes are stuck. Governor Schwarzenegger and many leading Democrats favor the idea and use it to paint themselves green. HOT lanes are also popular with many affluent motorists who love the idea of driving their SUVs in the carpool lane for what amounts to pocket change. It’s an odd alliance.

Read it.

The psychology of political attention and labeling here is fascinating. ‘Stimulus’, according to Merriam-Webster, is “something that rouses or incites to activity.” So the very terminology, ‘economic stimulus,’ already decides the debate in favor of the view that it boosts the economy.

Read it.

And it’s a beautiful house, at that.

Bryan Caplan examines an interesting thought.

The Other McCain waxes philosophical.

The September issue of Commentary has a symposium in which six writers discuss Norman Podhoretz’s latest book, Why Are Jews Liberals?

Read it.

Your life under Islam. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Read it.

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

Steve Sailer is on the case.

This is well worth buying.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Paul Krugman has a long article in the NYT Magazine entitled “How Did the Economists Get It So Wrong?” which demonstrates quite nicely, by all the topics it avoids mentioning, how the economists got it so wrong.

Not to mention that “how Krugman got it wrong” is a hole with no bottom….

Read it.

When reading science fiction stories, I find it very difficult to accept alien species as really alien unless they are at least as incomprehensible as the Japanese.

Read it.

Now in its thirty-ninth year of operations, the government-controlled Amtrak provides good service between Boston, New York and Washington, and Los Angeles and San Diego. Elsewhere, it’s a land cruise company.

Beyond the corridors, Amtrak plies routes that were hastily drawn in 1971 to insure that they touch as many congressional interests as possible. That means meandering sleepers from New Orleans to Los Angeles, or Chicago to Seattle, which are a delight to vacationers (myself included), but inconsequential to the business of America, which drives or flies in order to get somewhere. Amtrak handles less than 1% of America’s intercity travel.

Perhaps stagecoaches will be the Next Green Thing — after all, they would reduce our Dependence On Foreign Oil, although the Emissions Problem might cause a few furrowed brows.

Read it.

Ah, yes, the ROUS. We know it well.

Read it.

Privacy disaster? You betcha.

But ten years ago we’d be horrified by what we nonchalantly share on Facebook and Twitter every day.

Some of us still are.