whoa!

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Jonah Goldberg Embarrassed By Emporer Tom's Nakedness

Mr. G serves up a real treat here. I've often wondered what planet Friedman is hailing from. Here's an excerpt exemplifying and instance where Tommy F's adulation of China's dictatorial statism is based on an "theoretical" event which he himself manufactured—in other words, it's patent nonsense:

For instance, Friedman particularly loves the fact that China’s State Council banned plastic bags. “Bam! Just like that — 1.3 billion people, theoretically, will stop using thin plastic bags,” he writes in Hot, Flat, and Crowded. “Millions of barrels of petroleum will be saved, and mountains of garbage avoided.” It’s as if Madison, Hamilton, and Jefferson had been morons for not decreeing an annual Tyranny Day when all the work can get done. Regardless, as usual, “theoretically” means “not in reality.” China never did any such thing. It simply required that stores charge customers for bags. They do the same thing at my local Safeway, yet plastic bags continue to lurk, threatening all we hold dear. More to the point, it is either deranged or dishonest to suggest that China — with its ever-growing tally of coal factories, poisoned rivers, corrupt regulators, etc. — is some great steward of the environment. It may or may not be leading in the manufacture of green technologies — though don’t take Friedman’s word for it; he rarely sources his too-good-to-check claims — but it is also burning fossil fuels faster than any other country.

Emphasis mine. But, of course, if you ignore the millions of people killed by the Chinese government then what's a few kilotons of fossil fuel between comrades?

And lolz @ "...plastic bags continue to lurk, threatening all we hold dear."

Conclusion:

One doesn’t have to read Dostoevsky to know this sort of thing is hardly new — the envy for authoritarian regimes that can force the wheel of history in the right direction; the contempt for the messiness of democracy; the conviction that all good things go together and that certain enlightened and visionary revolution­aries can apply their intellects to any problem, can pick the lock of History and start over at Year Zero. This all-consuming passion for a unified theory of everything and the indomitable conviction that you are right has consumed many a brilliant mind.

Friedman doesn’t want America to become a totalitarian country — at least not for more than 24 hours. Whenever he goes too far in that rhetorical direction he pulls back a few paragraphs later, but his to-be-sures about how America is still better become less convincing every time, more pro-forma and cutesy. He is possessed by his own prophecy, consumed by his clairvoyance about the One Right Way. Half-measures succumb to the mental furnace; the case for democratic deliberation cannot withstand the heat. Everything fuels the fire in Tom’s mind.

You get the feeling that the guy could fall in love with a blow-up doll.

Government-run Health Care Kills Again in UK

People should go to jail for this, hopefully they will. But one must admit that the system worked as intended; a cancer patient was eliminated from the system.

A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital.

Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.
They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.

The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.

She said nurses had failed to give him vital drugs which controlled fluid levels in his body. 'He was totally dependent on the nurses to help him and they totally betrayed him.'

Will he ever get tired of this?

Nerd GOP Wonks

Funny yet thoughtful article on "Republinerds". Starts out as a riff on the "One Tough Nerd" Superbowl ad, which I think is pretty effective.

Here's an excerpt from the end of the piece.

So are the nerds taking over the GOP?

I posed that question to a friend of mine, Benjamin Nugent. He wrote the book on nerds, really, "American Nerd: The Story of My People."

"It's funny that you should spring this on me. I live in Iowa City now. And Iowa City has this diner where I write every morning, where basically every politician in the country comes to," Nugent told me. "I was minding my own business and suddenly these Republicans come in and start setting up posters and they hand me the little postcard about Branstad. And it's a muskrat with glasses. The youngest person to ever become governor. He is the nerdiest!"

That's former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. He wants to be governor again. Classic over-achiever.

"The entire tone of the event could not be more different from Sarah Palin-land or Mike Huckabee-land. Branstad had these huge glasses and looked like he got the shit kicked out of him in college," Nugent recounted. "And he makes a speech. It is the nerdiest speech. No mention of 9/11. No mention of military anything. No Palin-esque Fox News language. It was entirely jobs, balancing the budget, how responsible I am. And as president of Des Moines University, how effective I was.

"And the GOP hardliners were eating this up," Nugent added. "It made me think that my people have their moment in the GOP."

Personally I'll vote for any nerd over Mike Huckabee.

FYI: Cuyahoga County Tax Relief

The Cuyahoga County Board of Revision Complaint site is a good resource for those in Cuyahoga who bought houses recently and the assessments are way too high. I just filled it out and all you really need is the parcel number of your property which you can find here if you need it. (Frank Russo's pic, aye-yai-yai...)

I've been told that it's a good bet that they will lower the assessed value if you can demonstrate a lower market value. There's even a spot where you can state that you will have a professional appraiser present testimony if the house hasn't been sold recently. I have to still get the thing notarized, but I'll let y'all know how I do.

D.C. ARCHDIOCESE HALTS SPOUSAL BENEFITS

From the Catholic League.

March 2, 2010 - Starting today, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington will no longer extend health benefits to spouses of new employees and to spouses of current employees not already receiving these benefits.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue supports this decision:

This decision by the Washington Archdiocese was driven by the marriage inequity activists who will brook no dissent in their crusade to ram their gay-marriage agenda down the throats of the faithful. They know full well that no Catholic entity is about to prostitute its own teachings merely to do business with the government. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is at stake: Catholic Charities had to halt spousal health benefits lest it be sued for discriminating against homosexuals who will shortly claim to be married in the District.

Nature, not the Catholic Church, was the first to ordain that it is biologically incongruous for a man and a man to conceive a child. That ability is wholly the reserve of a man and a woman, and no amount of social and legal fictions can alter it. This issue isn’t about equality, it is about creating an inequitable condition—allowing people of the same sex the same rights afforded men and women—that will only disable the institution of marriage in the long run. Which is why it must be resisted.

Common Sense on Bringing Down Health Care Costs

CATO dude Michael Tanner points out that the best way to bring down health care costs is to use less health care. He's right that the Republicans are not broadcasting this economic fact, probably out of fear of it's unpopularity. But it needs to be stated, so we have to let the libertarians say it. Excerpt:

No one is suggesting that people shouldn't have insurance. But insurance is ultimately meant to spread the risk of catastrophic events, not to simply prepay your health care. Your homeowners insurance covers you if your house burns down. It doesn't pay to mow your lawn or paint the fence.

I suppose I feel justified by this since I'm one of those catastrophic policy holders that the President doesn't considered to be really insured. Well, I don't smoke like he does, so I'll probably have less health problems. Besides, it's my life. And it's my money.