Author: Dave

Just try to imagine the deafening shrieks of “McCarthyism! Oppression! Mob tactics!” if we substituted, say, Al Gore for the subject of this piece. Remember, this is the same MSM that ignored the Edwards adultery story for years and allows climate shillionaire Gore to bar them from his events with little scrutiny. But this story?…

A brilliant bit of analysis from Allahpundit: Taking a modest pro-legalization position (i.e. “I don’t use it myself and don’t want kids using it, but…”) would (a) electrify the debate over a hot-button issue, which she obviously relishes doing (see, e.g., “death panels”), (b) prove that she doesn’t mindlessly follow Republican orthodoxy, which would force…

Megan McArdle’s experience at a Post Office highlights the inefficiencies of a government monopoly. I’m always surprised people can ignore the most obvious economic lessons of the 20th Century: statism slows productivity growth, and in the end productivity growth is more important than anything else (GDP is just population x productivity). You’re about ten times…

(to John Scalzi, lately author of the very entertaining and well-written The God Engines) John, I’ve noticed there is a large fairness gap in writing. While a large proportion of writers are unable to garner even 1,000 book-purchasing readers, others are routinely taking hundreds of thousands or even millions — and most shockingly, many books…

The inimitable Jeff G brings it, as only he can: I mean, what teen in his rebellious stage isn’t going to embrace the edgy cries of, “all our shower heads are uniform in pressure!”, or “hell no, we won’t go (to restaurants that cook with table salt)!”. Why, it’s just like following the Dead around…

Historians may well mark this as the moment Iraq entered a new phase of existence, beginning to enter the Western world the way South Korea and Japan did after U.S. occupations: BAGHDAD – The secular challenger who stunned Iraq with his razor-thin parliamentary election win turned his attention to negotiations over a future government Saturday…

Pelosi is once again claiming the end is near on healthcare. That’s nothing new, a fact Drudge had some fun with today, but this bit rankles: These states, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts among them, already provide coverage under the low-income program for the poor that other states do not but would be required to…

A whiff of corruption: Kent Conrad says no, of course you can’t pass Obamacare through reconciliation. And it has to go through his committee, so… I’ve said for a while liberal wonks like Jonathon Cohn were underestimating the collegial tradition in the Senate, and sure enough it turns out they aren’t going to change all…

Does it seem strange to anyone else that after months and months of falling poll numbers mostly because of negative public reaction to Obamacare, Obama now wants a summit to focus more attention on… Obamacare? It’s like he wants his party out of power as quickly as possible. You’d almost think we elected someone with…

A fairly absurd argument that Dems’ health care reform bill will increase liberty from William Galston: So when the Tea Partiers complain that a government health insurance mandate invades their liberty, they reveal a defective understanding of the logic of liberty in a modern society. Individuals who choose to go without health insurance could try…

Mark Steyn sizes up Barack Obama: In the last 60 years, the size of America’s state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it’s still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine. Like most lifelong…

…and the Met is worried they might end up going to Mohammed. Apparently the “image of Mohammed” controversy is a little too… explosive for some museums. Can’t imagine why. “We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just accede to their anticipated demands.” That’s the safe play. It’s a temporal version of Pascal’s Wager: terrorism isn’t…

From Tim Blair, the amusingly flawed history of “consensus” as reported in the NYT: — 1955: “Sun power still is a losing proposition in dollars and cents. But experts agree that its prospects never have looked so good.” And haven’t things changed since then! Apart from the dollars and cents, of course. — 1956: “WEAR…

A couple gems from Glenn Reynolds. First, on finance: I decide how much money to save, and it goes into a money market account, automatically every month. The key is that this account is for money to go into, not to come out of, except for major purchases (like a house or car) or emergencies.…

From Ron Bailey, the best piece on health care I’ve seen all year: What would the results look like? It’s impossible to predict all the specifics, but here’s one partial vision of what markets might bring us. The typical American might purchase high-deductible insurance policies that cover expensive treatments for chronic diseases such as heart…

It looks like health care “reform” will pass. Nick Gillespie asks: How Many Americans Will Choose to be Uninsured Even if Insurance is Mandatory? This problem is MUCH worse than it seems at first glance. Since there’s no PEC (pre-existing condition) denial anymore, you aren’t buying insurance, you’re buying the right to exchange your medical…

Riveting Rousseauian warporn, set in a gorgeous hi-def Azerothian CGI landscape, ironically itself a dazzling gem of the technological civilization it decries.

Among the many wonderful links from the 2009 IEC conference, we learn the boys at the University of Sydney have made their own small Polywell device: Cute little guy. Congrats to proud parents Matthew Carr and Dr. Joe Khachan, who got the wee tyke up to 1T magnet strength and 250KV drive depth. Also of…

MMcA notes some health care polling: Are you opposed because it gets government too involved in health care or because it would not involve government enough? Too much government involvement: 90% Not enough government involvement: 6% Not sure: 4% I am so damned proud of my country right now. PROGRAM NOTE: My blogging may continue…

Unfortunately, I have no friends beyond the visible universe with which to test the quantum “many-worlds” interpretation of relativity’s claims of possible time travel… but I’m still pretty sure decoherence is irreversible. So even if you could use a distant (~200B LY) intermediary to, say, pass yourself tomorrow’s lottery numbers via quantum entanglement and the…