Category: Uncategorized

This is a disjointed post that I’ll probably regret publishing, but what the hell. (In blogging, it’s usually better to regret doing something than to regret doing nothing.) Quite innocently — and by that I mean I had no particular ideological axe to grind –last night I was reading about Elizabeth I of England and…

“Man Jailed Three Months for Breath Mint Possession.” I wish that I could say headlines like that were a joke, but no, it wasn’t. A man is suing the Kissimmee Police Department for an arrest over mints. When officers pulled Donald May over for an expired tag, they thought the mints he was chewing were…

In an earlier email, M. Simon mentioned Thomas Jefferson’s famous remark about a revolution every 20 years, and here is the exact quote: “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion… We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in…

It seems our government has been holding out on us when it comes to drugs that may be helpful in fighting cancer. “Cannabinoids possess … anticancer activity [and may] possibly represent a new class of anti-cancer drugs that retard cancer growth, inhibit angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels) and the metastatic spreading of cancer…

Yo can find more Jimmy Smith at Amazon. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Do your part for global warming by supporting Tim Blair at the Green Awards: Blair continues to drive fast and furious and cackle publicly about leaving as big a carbon footprint as possible. Tim offers a rousing self-endorsement: Napkins? Ha! No napkin is more disappointing than me. Vote now! Tim’s got a good lead at…

“For the Left, war without Bush is not war at all,” argues Byron York. Nor are a lot of things considered what they once were. It’s the post-Bush double standard, and while I’ve been complaining about it, I worry that the problem goes to the nature of power. In general, most ideologues think that power…

There is some amazing news in the world of high energy batteries. Coors Ceramics thinks they have a way to make Sodium-Sulfur batteries that can operate at 90° C ( 194° F which is below the boiling point of water)and charge-discharge once a day for ten years. The battery breakthrough comes from a Salt Lake…

One of the things I hate about the Internet is what I love about the Internet. I find fascinating stuff, and then I often can’t determine whether the fascinating stuff I find is true. For example, there’s a deck of cards for sale in England, and each card features a picture of prominent politician accompanied…

The singer is my cousin and childhood friend Janice Meyerson. I spent a lot of time with her and her husband this past weekend at the Simon Family Reunion. Janice and her husband drove my mate, my mother, and I to my mothers apartment Saturday night after the reunion dinner at the Offutt Air Force…

Mark Milian at the LA Times blog misses a few fundamental points about political speech and street art: it’s not political speech until someone injects the politics, and it’s not street art until it hits the streets. When cryptic posters portraying President Obama as the Joker from “Batman” began popping up around Los Angeles and…

A story I missed from last month ties in with what I said earlier about using the “Bush did it too!” argument to justify Orwellian tactics. According to this article, the Department of Homeland Security has placed a political enemy of Janet Napolitano on the DHS “No-Fly” list: On July 16th, Arizona State Treasurer Dean…

Can you believe that the Massachusetts health care “miracle” was cooked up by a Republican? Praise Mitt Romney. Three years ago, the former Massachusetts Governor had the inadvertent good sense to create the “universal” health-care program that the White House and Congress now want to inflict on the entire country. It is proving to be…

Commenter Veeshir alerted me to the possibility that I was overreacting (in this post) to an ABC report which in turn quoted a retired FBI agent who claimed that Rush Limbaugh’s comparison of the Obamcare logo to a Nazi logo “legitimizes people who are on the edge to go do something or say something.” While…

The “public option” is dead. We did it. We killed the worst part of this bill, the part that probably meant government would eventually end up taking over 15% of the economy. Ed urges we not be complacent, and he’s right, but nonetheless this is a moment to savor. Congratulations to everyone who spoke out…

While it doesn’t have much to do with Obamacare, I’m nonetheless fascinated by the public reaction to a YouTube video that’s gone viral, showing a woman dragging her leashed toddler through a Verizon store. Many people are outraged, and they’re calling for harsh punishment. The woman is charged with felony child cruelty and she faces…

I’m probably behind the times but until today I never heard the word “girlcott” before. However, I support the idea, Whole heartedly. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods (and a former socialist) has taken a huge amount of flak for daring not only to oppose Obamacare, but to say so in a WSJ Op-Ed. This…

A little advice to the right-wing crazies enthusiasts who are using Hitler and other Nazi iconography to protest health care reform government takeover: 1) Bush protesters already beat this meme to death. Don’t bother. 2) Anyways, there’s a much more effective icon you can employ: Che! The murdering socialist has long been a favorite of…

More on death panels. The provisions in the healthcare bill which gave rise to the term are being scrapped. At the same time (as the LA Times condescendingly reports), the provisions are being said to have not ever existed: A Senate panel has decided to scrap the part of its healthcare bill that in recent…

One of my most frequent complaints involves the tendency ((of activists, usually) to blame people who did not do something for the actions — often criminal in nature — of people who did. The blame game usually takes the form of a communitarian political argument. A favorite target of left wing political activists is Rush…