Man the Mythmaker

Part of the post-rationalism religion of environmentalism requires that previous claims remain forever uncorrected. One of them is the notion that the Maldives is being overwhelmed by rising seas. By some past alarming claims, it should have already happened. The odd fact is that the seas are receding slightly notwithstanding, the genuine mysteries that don’t support the global collectivization arguments need not be investigated.

So it becomes rather amusing to the dramaturgs maintainers of the myth, that in order to keep their apocalyptic hopes alive, that the leader of such a nation victimized by the weather (as if no people were ever affected in the past), must be made into a noble hero. Being a noble hero comes with celebrity in that circle. As such, Maldives President Noah Mohamed Nasheed said he would only attend the Copenhagen climate confab if someone paid for the trip.

Of course the idea of teleconferencing would be far too offensive, and wouldn’t offer any good luxury shopping opportunities for the participants. That notwithstanding, the image they have of themselves is the very opposite of modesty, and likely has more to do with Sci Fi visions of what an planetary government would look like, just in case the aliens show up. Even at that, peace required them to surrender their sovereignty to a Federation, so you can tell that it’s as firmly founded in fiction as anything Gene Roddenberry could concoct. Anyway, I digress...

Expect the pitch and tone of the already regular feeding tube of fear-inducing claims about what man has done to change the weather to rise like an angry, modernity caused sea, between now and December to Dervish-like hallucination levels. Until then I DARE your island to drown! So take THAT, Hokkaido, Ireland, and Madagascar!

As for cheering on the apocalypse, outside of a crazy person with a sandwichboard sign who smells slightly of urine, not much can beat this idea that man will soon be assigned to the fossil record when that ship behind the comet comes:

Danish conceptual artist Kristian von Hornsleth will be visiting the Roskilde festival as part of his Deep Storage Project.

Hornsleth previously came to prominence when he convinced the villagers of a Ugandan village to all legally change their name to Hornsleth in return for livestock as part of an art project. The artist also launched a project buying up stock in arms companies, with the proceeds going to relief organisations.

This time around, the 46-year-old artist will be collecting DNA samples from willing volunteers attending the festival. Hair and blood samples taken by trained personnel from 800 participants, together with DNA samples from around the world, will be installed in a five metre tall sculpture to be placed at the deepest part of the world’s ocean in 2010.

The futuristic and angular sculpture will be placed in the 11,000 metre deep Mariana Trench, 200 miles off of Guam Island between Japan and the Philippines, next January.

Hornsleth’s aim is that in thousands of years from now the DNA of the volunteers will still be intact, buried in the centre of the Earth, while life above will have vastly changed.

‘The sculpture looks as it does because it should not resemble something organic – its made up of triangles and sharp points. The idea is that 10,000 years from now, when someone sails by with their deep sea sonar, they’ll see something down there and retrieve it. The people who donated DNA could be regenerated and maybe even come to Roskilde again,’ Hornsleth explained to public broadcaster DR.

As to those who don’t want to become part of the constructed analog to the resurrection:

However, for those not taking part in futuristic art projects or being inspired by Nobel laureates to make a change, festival goers can still make a difference by taking part in the humanitarian and climate change initiatives

Of course. What else IS there to get involved in?

Curious about US healthcare statistics

Anyone care to explain this:

1993

And on any given day, over 37 million Americans, most of them working people and their little children, have no health insurance at all.

US President Bill Clinton

2009

There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage.

US President Barack Obama

An increase of insurance coverage for 19% of the uninsured since 1993! This is a good thing, right?

Truth from the NYT

David M. Herszenhorn from the NYT hits the nail right on the head, not sure if it was intentional:

In his speech to Congress at 8 p.m. Wednesday, President Obama will press his case for major health care legislation, not just with lawmakers in the audience, but also with a deeply wary public watching at home.

And while Mr. Obama will probably talk in clear, plain-spoken terms, decoding his remarks and the reaction he gets will require both a careful ear and a keen eye.

This is quite the issue that grates when it comes to our political betters. The attempts by political hacks (at any level) to talk in clear, plain-spoken terms yet having to decode remarks is precisely the problem. If the terms are clear and plain-spoken, why any need to decode?

Perhaps because the political hacks are not talking in clear, plain-spoken terms?

Update: So the clear, plain-spoken terms will be the "more people will die" routine? Does anyone even fall for that one anymore? It seems like just the other day that Americans (normal ones, not the "free" healthcare drones) were celebrating:

Americans are living nearly two-and-a-half months longer, according to new life expectancy statistics released today. In 2007, life expectancy in the United States reached a high of nearly 78 years, up from 77.7 a year earlier.

Life expectancy in the United States has been on the rise for a decade, increasing 1.4 years — from 76.5 years in 1997 to 77.9 in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The life expectancy data, compiled by the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics, are based on nearly 90 percent of the death certificates filed in the United States.

Yes – but who will Teach the Libyans how to Yodel?

or Great Moments in Arab Public Intellectualism

Kaddafi has always been a comedian,a kind of sideshow of strange stunts, a sort of “lovable young thief” of fables who also happens to be a dictator running a small country along militaristic lines. It’s a view held even among most Arabs.

According to Swiss minister Christa Markwalder, when Khadafy comes to New York Sept. 23, he will ask the UN to dismantle Switzerland and parcel out the land to neighboring France, Germany and Italy.

The UN charter specifically states that no member can threaten the sovereignty of another, so the demand is unlikely to get far. But it's another sign of tension to come during the eccentric dictator's visit.

The Libya-Swiss kerfuffle began a year ago, when Khadafy's trouble-making youngest son, Hannibal, was arrested in a Geneva hotel for beating two servants with a belt and a coat-hanger.

Dripping with respect for such noblesse oblige, the really amusing part of it is that Europeans who think well and think much of themselves and their geopolitical sophistication are the ones who have to deal with this joker. I’m sure it makes they look comparatively brilliant, but having to carry on a “public dialogue” this base with a de facto simpleton must not be doing a great deal for their dignity.

The response to the offense of arresting someone for assault was to take hostages, so that the toffs of the north had to ingratiate themselves to them for no reason other than that of a perceived personal snub to the potentate.

For a year, the issue festered. Two weeks ago, Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz traveled to Tripoli to apologize for the arrest and Libya promised to let the hostages go by Sept. 1.

However, they have yet to be freed. Now Merz is fending off accusations of appeasement and calls for his resignation.

Statecraft at its’ best!

But the view that a nation can simply be mechanically abolished on grounds of “cultural insult” or by some force simply because it can, without any recognition that nations and people can and should make or unmake themselves is too typical and common to call a stunt.

The greatest intellectual breakthrough of our age started with the enlightenment came in force on the last quarter of the 20th century: that is the genuine ability of most individuals to free themselves from an imposed ideology, a kind of personal self-determination that mocks the elementary bleating of everyone from “the me generation” to the idea that “Communism frees the individual to create and think”, but that it needs to command all human action and published ideas to do this.

Not just the Arab world, but most of the world, and quite sadly many Europeans too live in that state of mind, unaware that a good society, through the shared need of individual respect and autonomy can find its’ freedoms defended NOT by an governmental apparatus of control, but rather a well supported concept of justice founded on the person and not the group, and by the free acting and thinking themselves.

Much of that venality isn’t limited to “the Colonel”. Adloyada is dismantling, piece by piece, the British farce of trading the sentenced Lockerbie bomber, employing the flinching sentiment of the public to forgive anyone who would do violence to them, as part of a commercial deal. Just think of it as a “public-private partnership” at its’ best.

Snap Poll of the Day

How many of you out there want to spend everyday/all day (literally) shoveling shit for a living? Not your cup of tea, how about just old-fashioned ditch-digging?

Your ¡No Pasarán! Travel Tip for the Day

What I have observed is that in Europe more than anywhere else, will you find people who assume that they know what your opinions are based on your nationality, culture, or some other now-acceptable analog for your race, if not your skin color itself, as if the person, their individual experience, the means of their moral thinking, and their choices were too much to wrap the brain around. It’s also why these very average dipwits still think it very sharp to hear some view that’s seemingly contrarian to the ideology they attribute to the pigeon holes they put people in. I.E.: “Even as a Jew, he said that!”

It’s precisely why bigots are called simple.

Next time you get trapped in one of those hall-of-mirrors conversations with one of those great minds in a bar eager-to-verbally-pounce trying out all of his or her trained-in assumptions about your society of origin, put on an impossible-to-place accent and say that...

Eet eez the tradition in the land of my ancestors to complement the chef by flatulating loudly, and then emitting contrived seal-barks of laughter like of a Shopping Mall Santa nearing the end of his shift, as though his buzz is also wearing off.

Respect!

Because we must all be included, no matter what type of boiling cabbage you decide to smell like, demand your place at civilization’s table.

German Exceptionalism? Where’s the Outrage?

Exporting Germans, Normally Offended at the idea of Imports, Take one for the Planet.

Take it away, Clarsonimus, because I sure can’t figure it out:

With calls for “Buy hybrid cars from Toyota!” and other provocative German-car-industry-bashing and name-calling name calls, Künast is hurting her fellow Germans’ German car loving feelings right and left. Or maybe she isn’t, hard to say for sure.

Personally, I’ve always felt that Germans secretly want to own Japanese cars (you rarely see one here, you know), it’s just that their families would disown them and the neighbors wouldn’t understand. Not that they do now, the neighbors, but still.

Which leads me to one of the only bits of advice that I ever give out. Remember, use this knowledge only for good, and never, NEVER for evil: Don’t mess with a middle-aged German who’s cleaning his or her car. It’ll, like, break some magical spell thingy, and they’ll lose their marbles.

What happens when a leader's advisors mitigate our liberties, urinate on our values, and call us a**holes, Nazis, terrorists, Astroturf, and retards…

Call us common senseis weird,

quips Doug Giles,

but when a person—president or otherwise—spurns our desires and he and his top advisors wildly misspend our money, mitigate our liberties, urinate on our values, and call us a**holes, Nazis, terrorists, Astroturf and retards, well, said person and his pals will not only fail to receive our respect or votes, but they have forfeited the privilege of addressing our kids—or our dogs for matter.

A statist dreamscape....

....never mind that bit at the end when reality actually kicks in.

Weekend giggles, in a bad way

Are there really enough superlatives, in a good way, to describe the work done by Michelle Malkin?

Idiots to the Left, Morons to the Right

They neither understand interest or inflation, and carry around the Marxist idea that people putting their money to work don’t deserve to benefit from it because they assume that these people “don’t work”. Some of them carry seriously carry around a primitive belief (which is no different than Islamic culture a millennium ago,) that charging interest on a loan is a sin, and a few of them seriously think that building a concrete bunkers is their way out of their lack of understanding of the world around them.

One could ask where they made the money that was invested to begin with, but that notion isn’t simple enough for the average French nationalist. It’s all brown shirts and red flags for these folks – meet France’s black helicopter crowd, any of whom hold that “all money is fake” and it exist merely to support an aristocracy.

They are simply too stupid to understand that money is the most basic form of exchange media, but anything else representing something of tangible value is as well, such as an equity or a bond. To this limited world view, all of these things are wrong, seemingly because they have a different sort of spirit to cash. It’s a lot like a medieval druidic belief that a tree has a persona, a rock has a persona, that they all must be respected, but there is a great reason to be cruel to the villagers whose well you just took a leak in.

These other instruments they hold as wrong, seemingly possessing some sort of bad juju in the same way the primitive followers of the hard left do, in spite of believing that a randomly selected thing of value, gold, is somehow different, when it is no different than any other metal with a fluctuating price of some market determined value.

This is how they do it

To the initiated, it is rather doubtful that the contents of this post will shed any light as to how our governmentalist betters act behind closed doors. As we have seen repeatedly, there is really no depth to which our betters will not sink.

To the unitiated, still think it the halls of government are filled with earnest/serious types trying to tackle the burning issues of the day for the betterment of man-kind? This post is for you. This particular example just happens to be British in nature, rinse and repeat based upon your particular locale and issues:

A Labour plot to smear the new head of the Army, General Sir David Richards, because of his daughter's 'crime' of working for David Cameron was exposed last night.

The threat to target the General, who took up his new job just nine days ago, was one of the real reasons that Labour MP Eric Joyce resigned as an aide to Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth last week.

Former soldier Mr Joyce has told friends he attended a meeting at the Ministry of Defence where a discussion took place on how to target Sir David's predecessor, General Sir Richard Dannatt, for criticising the Government's failure to give enough support to British troops.

And The Mail on Sunday has established that Mr Joyce was also disturbed to hear Labour colleagues discuss Sir David’s 25-year-old daughter, Joanna Richards, who recently became Mr Cameron's diary secretary.

These particular brilliant policy experts (as their slavish toadies would no doubt describe them in terms of utmost solemnity) aren't tackling the tough policy questions: Should the UK be in Afghanistan? If not, why not? If so, why and how can we ensure the mission is supported? All fair questions.

No, these particular experts spend their time discussing how to shoot their own guy in the back because he is deemed a "loose cannon". As an aside, in governmentalist speak the term "loose cannon" is generally synonymous with "someone who tells the truth" and anyone labled as such is to be marginalised/smeared/hounded out (we can't have our carefully agenda-ised briefings continually shown-up as farce by those closest to the situation with actual facts on their side).

To our UK readers, if you wonder why the UK policy on Afghanistan seems to be a continual shambles, what do you expect upon learning how the brilliant policy experts spend their time?

To those know-it-all jaded hack-types who fall-back on the tired old, "This is how it is always done in politics....", no worries .... just one favour please, do stop pissing on our leg and tell us it is raining outside?

Update: How can one tell the British example above is actually true? Easy, those involved are denying the charges. Not sure if the denials are real-denials, non-denial-denials or Libyanesque-denials.

Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Haunted Suitcase

One minute my suitcase was open, the next there was a strange noise, and — the lid was closed...

Then, all of a sudden, something inside stirred...

Scared witless, I slowly took one step ahead and another and another — until, sweating profusely and trembling, I stood right in front of the haunted piece of luggage...



A quick glance inside made the blood freeze in my veins: Inside was a wild and dangerous beast frothing menacingly at the jaws...



A few moments later, the wild and vicious beast leaped out of the suitcase, raced across the room like a bat out of hell, and darted into a dark corner, where it wailed like a cornered demon from the depths of the infernal regions...

Queen's Day Killer: Left? Right? Other?

Recall the maniac which decided to use the Netherland's Queen's Day festivities to go on a vehicle-borne killing spree earlier this year? The report seems to be in as it relates to motivation:

According to the report it is unlikely that T. acted out of a particular ideology or belief. Neither is there is any evidence that he harboured an extreme aversion to the royal family. But in 2004, T. apparently told a former employer that he "would be famous." He added as a joke that he was thinking of launching "an attack against the royal family".

It is plausible, the prosecutor's office said, that Karst T. didn't known that there would be a big crowd of people in his path. Although he honked his horn at the on-lookers, he didn't slow down at any point. He was going 112 km per hour when he hit the monument.

Who are we to say different in this case? What are notable, some may call them a "clue", are the dying words of Karst T:

According to the investigation Karst T. told military police at the scene: "Willem-Alexander is a fascist, he is a racist and I knew that the queen would come here."

Now, we have been around long enough to know exactly what type of modern-day individual bitterly clings to the knee-jerk/reactionary words "fascist" and "racist", even as they lay dying.

Any amateur Poirot in the audience want to make an educated guess as to motivations? It can be can be confusing.

Do bureaucrats dream of fully-filled tickboxes?*

Seriously, are there readable studies out there which chronicle the mindset of the governmentalist bureaucrat? No doubt those Americans waiting for free healthcare would say, "Can't happen here". Something a little closer to the mark of reality:

"Dreadful, neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel." Those are the words used by Claire Rayner, herself a former nurse, to describe the way many nurses today treat elderly patients. Introducing a report by the Patients Association last week, she described shocking standards of nursing care in hospitals up and down the country.

The stories are horrifying — old people neglected, lying in their own faeces and urine, hungry, thirsty and afraid, while nurses chat callously at the nursing station, indifferent to the suffering around them.

Since the report was published the Patients Association has been flooded with hundreds of calls of support. "I am sickened," Rayner said, "by what has happened to some parts of my profession, of which I was so proud." One can only agree

At what point do anecdotes evolve into data?

*With apologies to Philip K. Dick

Useful Idiots no longer Useful

“Socially aware” Swedes who sure know how to party

The “Reclaim Rosengård” street festival, which was conceived as a protest against the social conditions in Rosengård, didn’t exactly go according to organizers’ plans. The event was supposed to get underway at 8pm on Saturday, but after about 15 minutes the activists who had gathered to participate were pushed out by Rosengård residents.

The activists' floats with music were also barred from entering the predominantly immigrant neighbourhood.

Wouldn’t it be nice if meddling lefty social pyromaths who were “acting in the interest of the downtrodden”, actually listened to the “downtrodden”?

Instead, the activists gathered in front of a nearby petrol station where they threw stones, bottles, and burning objects at police cars.

The activists' stated goal was to force a reduction in a police presence in the are. But Abu Hadis, one of the men involved in pushing back the activists, said Rosengård residents were of a different view.

The grownups’ response? Thanks but no, thanks.

"We who live in Rosengård want the police out here; their presence has had a calming effect for us and improved the area's reputation," he told newspaper Aftonbladet.

"We don't need drunken upper class kids to come here and speak on our behalf against our will," he added.

That’s funny, because neither do we, especially the unthinking promoters of fascism that call themselves “anti-fascist protesters” who are so deluded that they think that even the Swedish Police are agents of Fascism.

Nothing new under the sun

Something to make Joe and Erik's weekend:

Subsidy v. Subsidy

Caption Contest

On effective PSA's.....

Say what you will about the content and approach but a pretty effective PSA in terms of getting your attention (note, probably not a work-safe/kiddie-safe video clip):

Note to EULEX

This from the EU Observer gets one thinking:

With just a month to go until Ireland's second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, a poll has shown that 46 percent support a yes vote, down eight points since May.

Published by the Irish Times, the TNS mrbi poll shows a rise of one point in those saying they plan to vote No to 29 percent with the Don't Knows registering at 25 percent, up seven points in comparison to a pre-summer survey.

The newspaper notes that most of the people who have left the Yes side have entered the Don't Know category rather than crossed to the No camp.

The drop in support for the treaty is reminiscent of the trend in the weeks ahead of the first referendum which resulted in a No in June last year. It is set to spur the government to place more focus on a strong and coherent campaign.

We in the west are always beavering about helping developing countries create and enhance their own democratic aims, free and fair elections. How about pulling a switcheroo and calling in a group of Afghan election consultants to "advise and monitor" the Irish? The Afghans seem to have the process down pat:

Official results in Afghanistan’s presidential election that were to have been issued today are likely to be delayed for weeks by investigations of voting fraud, Afghan officials and independent election monitors say.

While the Independent Election Commission said last month it would announce preliminary results from the Aug. 20 poll today, the earliest possible date for that now will be Sept. 7, said spokeswoman Marzia Siddiqi today.

A separate, U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission will need at least two weeks, and perhaps longer, to process more than 2,600 reports of fraud, its chairman told reporters in Kabul yesterday.

The Afghans offer guaranteed results.

Deux Poids, Deux Mesures

The EU is trying to shake down Oracle and Sun, presumably to break up a merger on anti-monopoly grounds. Which would be fine if either company were based in the Eurozone, and they weren’t the same bunch of hypocrites who created Airbus as a monopoly (that intentionally steamrolled the smaller players like Fokker), or protect and prop up their “national champions”.

Imagine the Reverse

Consider the hyperventilation had the US government protested the Suez-GDF merger (36% of them still state-owned,) or the government subsidy to Alstom to prevent their acquisition by a non-French entity. Just imagine what the invective and accusations of imperialism would sound like.

The focus of the investigation is whether Oracle would gain too much power in the market for database software. Last year Sun bought a Swedish company called MySQL, which makes the leading open-source database program. Regulators are looking into whether Oracle, the leader in overall database software, might give MySQL's products short shrift in favor of its own products.

Short shrift, now being a crime against the state, requires that the any segment of a business with a European origin be preferred over others. THAT, as they see it, is an anti-trust issue, if you can believe that.

Inasmuch as one of them is a struggling hardware company, and the other a software company, the terminally stupid though of the day turned away from their own Dr. No-esque mustache twirling to the Emperor-Bokassa-like institutionalized theft of foreign owned property.

"The [European] Commission has an obligation to ensure that customers would not face reduced choice or higher prices as a result of this takeover," Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.

What they want is to dislodge Java from Sun, the US based company that created it.

Pale green riders

Revisited and filed under, who knew?

Despite Europe's boom in solar and wind energy, CO2 emissions haven't been reduced by even a single gram. Now, even the Green Party is taking a new look at the issue....

An interesting article. Not to say renewable sources of energy are a bad idea in and of themselves. The problem being they are offered up by greendom as a panacea for all societal ills, from acne to circumcision woes to the death of the Loch Ness monster. Renewables should be sold for what they currently are, a compliment to existing sources of energy generation with a hopeful eye to the future when technology advances and lowers the prices of implementation.

If greendom would only sell greenery as an economic issue v. apocalyspe now, now, now, they would get so much more support from the great unwashed. Then again, if greedom's underlying motivations were actually that of improving the environment v. the destruction of liberty/free markets, we might not be having this particular discussion of tactics.

Douce France

Ze Bang-Bang that took place in Marseille is obviously the fault of American pop-culture and in some sort of way Georges Boosh.

Four masked men in a BMW fired yesterday, shortly after midnight on customers at a street snack bar in the Farinière neighborhood, wounding two teenagers of 14 and 17 years. The first was hit on the arms, the other received fragments of glass. The police have identified thirty rounds of 9 mm and 7.62 Kalashnikov.

We all know that since assault weapons are banned to the public, that this really could not have happened.

UK Pre-financing bid falls short

Who ever thought that an un-workable, un-needed political scam based upon smoke, mirrors and headline-grubbing short-term non-thinking nothingism - would turn out to be - an un-workable, un-needed political scam based upon smoke, mirrors and headline-grubbing short-term non-thinking nothingism:

At the end of the G20 summit in April, the Prime Minister claimed to have built a "new consensus" among world leaders and was lauded for his role in securing the rescue deal. But a follow-up summit this month in Pittsburgh will take place against the backdrop of undelivered pledges and wrangles over how to curb bankers' pay.

Officials admit that almost $200 billion (£123 billion) pledged in credit facilities for the International Monetary Fund has yet to materialise. Most embarrassingly, the shortfall includes $75 billion due from the European Union. The Chancellor has warned Europe to set an example and do more to meet the target of $500 billion. Britain has agreed to lend up to $15 billion to poorer economies and is willing to provide up to $11 billion more as part of an EU package. So far, none of the extra credit has been called in by the IMF, although government insiders believe that it will be needed to prop up struggling economies before long.

Other European nations are resisting increasing their commitments to the IMF, demanding that China and India do more to shoulder the burden.

So much for the pre-financing. On to the next charade....

« Critiques d’____ »

More Europeans than anyone else I meet are likely to buy into this kind of self-serving nonsense to the point of having to defend their special kind of crazy, and defend it to the exact same adolescent lecturing that they get to a “point of no return”. At some point later on, there is usually some kind of mass murder and marching, followed by decades of pedantry about “ getting over things”, and all manner of other tortured rationalizations where the haters appeal for the shield of victimhood that characterizes the core of most European “public discourse”.

Et ils ont souillé d’excréments le drapeau français.

And it sounds awfully familiar too.

French Nationalists take this to the level of sneering elitism. To begin with, there is the “defense of freedom of speech” which only seems to real it’s head when it describes a mob’s desire to kick a selected population of civilians in the head, as one finds with a Swedish paper’s repetition of the decades-old self-serving allegation that Jews harvest Arabs’ organs.
No note was made at the uncanny resemblance that this had to the way Goebbels operated. The only difference now is that the press is pliant enough not to require any threats to tow a crypto-fascist’s line.

No matter how implausible, these things are always taken in whole in the fever swamps of the intellectual Wadi known as the EMEA, and it makes no difference that people are already quite certain that their children can’t be made sterilize by chewing gum.

American crazies aren’t that much better, but we have a habit of actually challenging them on their “facts” and evaluate the outcome of their form of moral reasoning, and they don’t appear to be anything like the ubiquitous passive-aggressive majority grumbling to itself in a dingy neighborhood bar in Europastan. To take a cue from the “eminent statesman” Carl Bild, it’s those flippanty accused who are at fault.

In Israel, the reaction was hysterical. The country is in danger of busting its guts in rage. Huge pressure has been exerted upon Swedish authorities to punish the offending author and to beg forgiveness. The Swedish Ambassador in Tel Aviv, a member of the influential Jewish family Bonnier who own the majority of Swedish newspapers, TV networks and cinemas, expressed her ‘shock and disapproval’. However, the Swedish government rejected her interference with the freedom of Press; the editors of Aftonbladet insisted on their right to say what they find fit and called for an international inquiry.

This proud stance lasted but a day or two. Carl Bildt, the Swedish Foreign Minister, was discomfited by Israel’s intention to cancel his scheduled visit and had already written in a blog that “such articles can cause anti-Semitism, and instigation is against the Swedish law.”

Carl will go on one day quite soon to blame his hemorrhoids and seal-bark vocalization on the very existence of some group of people assumed world view some time soon, no doubt.

In other words, Carl “What Despot?” Bild is trying to tell us (again), is that “Daddy drinks because you cry”, as if the roles of adult and child were really the way he thought they are.

Same-old-same-old-same-old

No doubt, the statists among us will point to this story and proclaim, "This is the type of situation which calls for MORE government NOT less!"

The watchdog of the Securities and Exchange Commission has found that the agency consistently mishandled its investigations of Bernard Madoff's business, despite ample warnings of the multibillion-dollar fraud.

No doubt government will be far more competent in the handling of your healthcare. As always, you know the routine.

Get off of your Barstool and Report the Facts, Donkey

Facts, it seems, are optional at the NYT.

How Is That New Respect for Our Friends'n'Allies Working for You, BHO? (II)

Thailand refuses to extradite Viktor Bout, aka the Merchant of Death, to Barack Hussein Obama's America and Russia rejoices in the fact that Viktor Bout, aka the Lord of War, will not be extradited to Barack Hussein Obama's America… (In addition, not a single Frenchman thinks this snub to Barack Hussein Obama's America worthy to comment upon…)

The Peckerwood Culture that Thinks Itself Illuminating Humanity

What goes over with a bang en Europe?: the absurd realignment of racially and ethnically based archetypal roles, ones whose ignition value have long since faded, but still fit the population’s elementary, and quite frankly bigoted, imaginary notions.

The greatest warring power in today's world is the USA, whose occidental interventions go hand-in-hand with sex and crime scandals. This is the stuff of Peter Sellars' "Othello". In the hands of this American director, Shakespeare's Venetians, who speak the original text word for word, are Afro-Americans and Latinos, communicating in their dark blue uniforms over cell phones. The decision to send General Othello to Cyprus to defend the outpost against the Turks is reached via telephone conference. And Sellars has updated both skin colours and sexes to fit today's reality. The governor of Cyprus is a woman, Signora Montano, which in the course of this epic tale, leads to complications. She becomes a rape victim. On the surface, military life is dictated by prudery. It doesn't take much to topple inhibitions. A few beers to celebrate the defeat of the Turkish fleet – Lieutenant Cassio loses control and turns on his female comrade.

Note the real draw in this: Eurolanders get to imagine that the “great warring power”, of which the Jihad can’t be included due to the technicality of not having a seat at the UN, is warring with Europeans.

Somewhere in the Romper-room of their world-view, this makes the viewers, the inevitable “seminar participants”, and whoever gasbags on about it, some sort of intellectual titan. If anything marks the height of the part of the European world view that hasn’t changed in the centuries since Shakespeare’s time is the desire to avoid ones’ obvious insularity: that Danes, strange and far-away as they are were actually Black, much in the way that Jihad that the US has been shielding Europeans from (by fighting then away from their obvious launching point, the Schengen desert,) is somehow not near.

So much so, that the far-less-bigoted nature of American society that they can’t grasp must also present them with the puzzle of the type of ethnicities that they have simplistic revolutionary fantasies about, the “oppressed” in the form of Blacks and Latinos, are involved in American society in the way that minorities in any European society can only dream of.

Have no doubts about this: the idea that people’s personas are not driven entirely by the way they characterize your genetics or ethnicity is still an eye-opener to Europeans. It’s why they still find some puzzlement in finding the opinions of, say, a Jew criticizing Israel an amazement, as though everyone else in the world is so simple and programmed compared to them that they can only function and operate as imagined by the ‘enlightened’ in Europe imagining that they are constructing out of their elementary and insulting assumptions about people are actually ‘dialectics’. Thus, the childishness of the review in the original German from Switzerland’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which smacks the shocked natives with the tag line:

Black is white, and white is Black

Multicultural, but taken at their word - Peter Sellars presents Shakespeare’s 'Othello'

It’s blindly obvious that the only thing these purveyors of the idea of their own cultural fluidity seem unable to understand is that other cultures are more than just a curiosity, they present the possibility of views of civilization and other people that might be different from theirs’. Thus we are to be enlightened and shocked, feel that moment of our own stupidity before their brilliance, to find that “Black is white, and white is Black.”

If this is where they’re starting from, they’ve got a long way to go, especially when it’s the consensus of the population that ‘other people, far away’ are the only ones who are vulgar and rotten enough to be bigoted.

Part of their Normal Recreation and Obsessive Self-Loathing

Jihadists unveil their amazing, force multiplying butt plug bomb.

Gladly the attack failed, otherwise Iraqi officials would freak out and demand that all visitors to government offices have their anuses probed before entry.

Not Evil Just Wrong

Once again dear friends

Unto the breach we go:

Spain's Socialist government is considering an increase in capital-gains tax as a result of the economic crisis but will not raise tax rates on earned income, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, prime minister, said on Monday.

Mr Zapatero and his cabinet have overseen a yawning budget deficit expected to reach 10 per cent of gross domestic product this year. They are now struggling to prepare a budget for 2010 in the face of falling revenues, higher state spending and resistance from the smaller political parties they need to pass laws in parliament.

Cuts in spending are never mentioned, contemplated or fathomed, even in the medium/long term. Of course, there is a bit of levity:

Mr Zapatero, who inherited a booming economy driven by construction and property development when he took office in 2004, has repeatedly told Spaniards that his governments have reduced the overall tax burden on the country and has said any increases will be "moderate and temporary".

Morons Compete to have their Concession Nationalized

South America’s “hope and change” affiliate, a man with a pea brain, no historical memory, and a taste for despotism, can’t even keep his lunacy under control as he suckers in some new tenderers.

Whose a Fundie now?

Rare that one agrees with the thrust of a New York Times editorial. From 2001:

Few would dispute the proposition by President Bush yesterday that religious groups can effectively provide social services for the poor. But Mr. Bush's ambitious proposal to channel federal funds to ''faith-based'' groups to serve social needs is a potentially dangerous erosion of the constitutionally shielded boundary between church and state. As the Supreme Court has observed, that boundary not only protects Americans from improper government support for religion. It guards religion itself from government encroachment and regulation.

Of course, the NYT editorial was undoubtedly propelled just as equally by anti-Bush sentiments as the separation of church and state argument (for the record, opposition in this corner relates to the religion not being tainted/infected by governmentalism route). One wonders if the NYT will be commenting on the latest advents related to officaldoms faith-based initiatives of today:

Six months after its rollout, Obama's office has dramatically shifted gears from the one that Bush started from scratch in 2001. Bush's office sought to "level the playing field" for faith-based and community groups seeking federal grants to deliver social services, like counseling drug addicts and mentoring at-risk youth. Obama, by contrast, has tasked his office with four broad policy goals: bringing faith groups into the recovery and fighting poverty, reducing demand for abortion, promoting responsible fatherhood, and facilitating global interfaith dialogue. "We're moving from a sole focus on leveling the playing field," says Joshua DuBois, the office's executive director, "to forming partnerships with faith-based and community groups to help solve specific policy challenges."

Yet some of the biggest questions surrounding Obama's office when it launched remain unanswered. The administration has not decided whether to allow religious groups to hire only fellow believers with federal funds, a hugely controversial issue. The outside faith advisory council, which will formulate proposals for achieving the office's policy goals—and for combating climate change and reforming the office itself—won't formalize its recommendations until next year. And the office is still devising metrics by which to measure its effectiveness, a subject of much debate during the Bush years.

Reinforcing its new policy role, Obama has brought his office under the purview of his Domestic Policy Council, delighting many faith leaders, particularly on the left. "The Bush office was totally disconnected from policy," says Wallis. "That White House was doing social policy that made poor people poorer, and the faith-based office would try to clean up the mess." The faith advisory council will submit first drafts of policy recommendations in October. "The council has access to experts, policymakers, and administrators [in the White House] at the levels we've asked for," says David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, who sits on the council.

Such access has upset some on the left, who say religious leaders shouldn't be shaping government policy, and some on the right, who say the work amounts to politically inspired religious outreach. "We would have gotten killed for doing that," says Jim Towey, who directed Bush's faith-based office and notes that religious outreach in the previous administration was handled by the White House Office of Public Liaison, which reported to Karl Rove. "It looks like a political office now."

The rare happening of the Left being onto something, yet their principles wilt in the face of an administration which is their own. Of course, coming from the ever-relativistic nature of the Left, this is not exactly a surprise. The only joy might be had from watching the hypocrisy stick in the old throats of the Left, take 'em where you find 'em. The faith of governmentalism must indeed be strong to allow competing faiths and fundies a place at the tax-payer trough.

As it relates to David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, we can't wait to see the first draft of policy recommendations which might be offered up on the subject of health care. Other than this banner found plastered on the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism website, it is rather hard to distinguish their political bent on the topic, mmmmhmmmm:

The Obama Doctrine: Abandoning our allies, emboldening our enemies, and diminishing our country

Yes, indeed, there is an Obama Doctrine, and it is clear to the naked eye what it is in the eyes of the Apologizer-in-Chief.

Should the United States indeed go that route [appeasement of Vladimir Putin's Russia], it will make plain to all the emerging "Obama Doctrine" with its three ominous characteristics

says Frank Gaffney:

abandoning our allies, emboldening our enemies and diminishing our country.

And then these Strange, Syphilitic Beings Showed Up

The Europeans have always sold their approach to “peacekeeping” (i.e. the part of war that comes after most of the risk is taken), and reconstruction, to be a sort of hallmark of their beneficence, characterized by enlightened and broad-ranging re-establishment of civility.

So one must wonder what it is that the government of Kosovo is thinking, in its’ unwillingness to honor the EU’s self-image, when the Kosovars objected to the idea of granting the Serbs a means by which to gather intelligence inside Kosovo and rig up reprisals under the supervision of the barely-there EULEX operation.

"We want the Republic of Kosovo to join the EU. But what we need are economic experts, doctors, scientists to help us develop. Not EU policemen to rule over us in a completely unaccountable way," Vetevendosja leader Albin Kurti told EUobserver.

Staffed in large part by non-EU hires, EULEX turned out to be little more than a rebranding operation, something largely concluded that the EU could present as a success of their eternally nascent state. The only problem is that Kosovo declared itself an independent state before the EULEXians arrived from planet EULAEXia, bringing with them their pedantry and title-mania: what they would have foamed on about needing support as a UN-branded operation named UNMIK which presented their lack of leadership, now has the prospect of scaring people because they are leading it.

Bjorn Lomborg puts the ball in the back of the net, again

Instead of France's "Stay'n'Play", Could American Paramedics' "Scoop'n'Run" Have Saved Princess Diana's Life?

Conspiracy theories, all unsubstantiated, abounded [12 years ago]. Had [Princess Diana] been assassinated by the royal family so her estranged husband, Prince Charles, could marry his longtime love Camilla Parker-Bowles? Did the British Secret Intelligence Service bump her off because she was pregnant with Egyptian Fayed's Muslim child?

But the most baffling question,

insists Susan Donaldson James (merci à Duncan), the most baffling question,

was whether doctors could have done more to prevent Diana, 36, from dying.

The horrific accident illustrated the difference between the French and U.S. approaches to emergency care — a relatively small piece of the French medical system, but deemed by some people to be the best in the world and often cited as a model for U.S. health care overhaul.

When rescue workers arrived, Diana was conscious, uttering, "My God" and "Leave me alone" to the swarming paparazzi. Although she had suffered internal injuries, she did not arrive at the Parisian hospital for 110 minutes — too late for the surgery that some speculated could have saved her life.

Diana's last hour — in cardiac arrest and bleeding to death — was spent in a mobile medical unit parked a few hundred yards from Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where an emergency team followed French protocol and administered treatment at the scene of the accident and en route to the hospital.

At the time, many people surmised that had a U.S. ambulance responded, Diana would have been rushed to the nearest emergency room, where a full set of professionals and diagnostic equipment might have revived her.

Colloquially known as "scoop and run," the U.S. system is grounded in studies that show a trauma victim's best chance for survival is reaching the operating room within 10 minutes.

Under the French system, "stay and play," a fully equipped medical ambulance with a doctor stabilizes the patient and then directs him or her to a specialized hospital, even if it is miles away.

Car Crash Victims Served 24/7

"When a patient rolls into the American system, they have a level-one trauma center that runs 24/7, with every specialty and myriad resources for a patient in a car crash," said Dr. Preeti Jois-Bilowich, emergency room doctor at the University of Florida's Shands Hospital.…

Diana Delayed 110 Minutes Before Death

Diana didn't arrive until after 2 a.m. — 1 hour and 45 minutes after the crash — and underwent an emergency thoracotomy. Coroners pronounced her dead from hemorrhaging that resulted from major chest trauma and deceleration that caused a rupture of the left pulmonary vein.

Later, surgeons said that her heart had been displaced from the left to the right side of her chest.

In the 1998 book, "Death of a Princess," Time magazine reporters Thomas Sancton and Scott MacLeod were critical of the French system, arguing that Diana could have been saved in a hospital operating room. SAMU was so upset with the indictment, according to the authors, that they threatened to sue.

…The French emergency care reflects the overall health attitudes of that nation — delivering basic primary care and health education to everyone will mean fewer expensive emergency room visits and hospitalizations later on.

Amid the health care debate here, some Americans are taking notice.

The French, at 10.7 percent of the gross domestic product, spend less than Americans do on health care at 16 percent of their GDP, according to 2009 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development health data. …

French Health Care Tops World

The World Health Organization recently rated the French system as the best in the world. By comparison, the United States rated 37th. The average life expectancy in France is 79.4 years, two years fewer than in the United States.

…In France, everyone is covered, regardless of their ability to pay, with an emphasis on primary care to prevent long-term illness.

"What we do is quite different," Rodwin said. "We take care of people, but not everyone, and we do it once they get very sick. We take diabetics with flare-ups and asthmatics in the emergency room, but we don't do primary care or health education as well for the poor.

"Our population is much sicker compared to France," according to Rodwin, whose research finds that Americans have the highest rates of avoidable hospitalizations — two and a half times higher than the French — for treatable conditions like pneumonia, asthma, diabetes and congestive heart failure.

That's according to a 2008 study from the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment. "The French have a term — solidarity," Rodwin said. "Since World War II, the system is grounded in the philosophy that everyone should have access to health care. That doesn't mean everyone is treated equally. There are those who are more educated or higher socio-economic groups that use more specialty care and probably have access to better quality care, but everyone has access to the minimum."

Mary, a freelance writer who did not want to use her last name, lives in Paris and is a "big booster of the French system." …

U.S. Emergency Rooms 'Tangle of Forms'

"I find the emergency room responses the most dramatic change from the U.S.," Mary said. "I've always had excellent health insurance in the U.S. and I've found every American emergency room visit a tangle as I fill out form after form and sign over my first born before anyone will even look at an injured or sick kid.

"Here, because everyone is insured, there's never any questions in hospitals that people will be treated, and treated quickly, because there's no worry someone's going to be stiffed with the bill."

Jois-Bilowich agreed that the French system is more cost-effective and that most people admitted to U.S. emergency rooms are treated and then released. But, she argues, the U.S. system of trauma care is superior.

There is no free lunch

Literally:

People are far more likely to go hungry in an NHS hospital than in a prison, researchers from Bournemouth University said.

Russians have forgotten that the Soviet Union in 1939 was "a totalitarian state characterized by repression, deportation, and massive executions"

…If they ever knew it…

While condemning the Hitler-Stalin pact in connection with the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II, writes Le Monde, Vladimir Putin says that France and Britain are mainly to blame (with their "Munich plot") and tells the Poles to let bygones be bygones.

Furthermore, Le Monde's Piotr Smolar brings into the discussion foreign elements to browbeat the Poles with, such as the fact that not all Poles participated in the resistance (the French should be experts in that matter) and — typically — the fact that certain Poles did participate in the murder of Jews…

La Pologne, toutefois, a ses propres dénis historiographiques : la majorité des Polonais était loin de la résistance active ; les massacres de juifs n'ont pas été que le fait des Allemands sur le territoire.

…while the (few) French readers who react tend — again (remember the dozens and dozens of them coming out to defend Russia in its more recent war with another tiny state) — to be "neutral" and to give the big brother and big bully the benefit of the doubt. But a couple of them have some choice words:

les géorgiens doivent etre rassuré de savoir que Staline est un ange de sagesse sans la nouvelle éthique russe!

Honte à Merkel, Sarkozy, Obama etc ...

In Russia, furthermore, we learn (from Marie Jégo's report from Moscow) that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a stroke of genius; that Stalin's invasion of Poland from the East was to defend the Polish populations; that the Russian envoy to monitor human rights in France is a vocal admirer of Stalin; and that Russians seem to have forgotten that the Soviet Union in 1939 was "a totalitarian state characterized by repression, deportation, and massive executions" (if they ever knew it: 61% of Russians in a recent poll were not aware that the Kremlin invaded Poland a few weeks after the signing of the pact).

Soixante-dix ans après sa signature, le pacte germano-soviétique est en voie d'être réhabilité en Russie. Ces derniers mois, les médias officiels et les historiens proches du Kremlin se sont lancés dans une véritable croisade pour sa défense. Le pacte est décrit comme un "coup de génie" de Staline, l'artisan des purges, dont il est de bon ton désormais d'encenser la politique.

…Alors que Moscou cherche la réaffirmation du rôle-clé joué par l'Union soviétique dans la défaite du nazisme, la lente réhabilitation sur la scène intérieure de Staline et de sa politique interroge sur la volonté russe d'ouverture vers l'Europe. Nourries d'un tel terreau, les relations de la Russie avec ses voisins de l'Union européenne, la Pologne et les pays baltes (Lituanie, Lettonie, Estonie) risquent de s'envenimer davantage.

…la Russie de Poutine n'est pas celle de Gorbatchev. Désormais, l'intelligentsia "patriote", qui a pignon sur rue, défend le pacte.

…Plus inquiétant, la défense du pacte a donné lieu à une offensive verbale contre la Pologne. "La Pologne aurait pu éviter l'agression hitlérienne en acceptant de donner le corridor de Dantzig, en concluant un pacte de sécurité collective avec la France, la Grande-Bretagne et l'URSS", estime le jeune historien Pavel Daniline. L'entrée de l'armée soviétique dans ce pays, le 17 septembre 1939 "n'était pas une agression". "Il s'agissait de défendre la population d'un Etat qui avait cessé d'exister", conclut-il.

L'annexion soviétique est abondamment justifiée. "Les territoires situés dans la sphère d'influence de l'URSS faisaient partie de la Russie impériale", a déclaré, à la chaîne publique RTR, Natalia Narotchitskaïa, historienne, fervente admiratrice de Staline, envoyée par le Kremlin à Paris pour assurer le suivi du respect des droits de l'homme en France.

…Le débat en cours, souligne [Nikita Petrov, historien à l'ONG russe Memorial], laisse de côté un élément majeur : "Impossible de ne pas prendre en compte la physionomie de l'Union soviétique de 1939 : un Etat totalitaire caractérisé par les répressions, les déportations, les exécutions massives." C'est précisément ce que les Russes semblent avoir oublié.

Ont-ils jamais su ? "Les gens continuent à croire, comme à l'époque soviétique, que l'armée soviétique est entrée en Pologne en 1939 pour protéger les Polonais. La même chose est dite aujourd'hui de l'Abkhazie et de l'Ossétie du Sud (régions séparatistes de Géorgie, enjeu d'une guerre entre Moscou et Tbilissi en août 2008). Selon le discours officiel, l'armée russe est intervenue pour protéger les populations", affirme cet historien, spécialiste de la période stalinienne.

Selon un sondage récent du centre d'études de l'opinion Iouri Levada, 61 % des sondés ne sont pas au courant que les troupes soviétiques ont envahi la Pologne le 17 septembre 1939, quelques semaines après la signature du pacte.

Chicken S**ts of the Sea

Perhaps it is a matter of being dense or just missing the memo, but all radar continue to be up as one British better parrots yet another British better regarding that oil-for-fools programme bubbling up out of the Scottish moors:

Today Straw was forced back into the debate after the Sunday Times claimed Megrahi had been "set free for oil" – a reference to BP's £500m exploratory agreement with the Libyan regime shortly after the PTA. Echoing Lord Mandelson's complaint that the charge was implausible and offensive, Straw called it an "absurd confection". What is not in dispute is that London had been keen to normalise relations with Tripoli after Gaddafi's renunciation of nuclear ambitions in 2003 and that Salmond had opposed including Megrahi in the 2007 PTA.

One notes that nobody in UK officialdom has actually categorically denied any involvement what-so-ever on the part of the UK government. This bit turns it up a notch even further:

Labour officials in Edinburgh, from where cross-border correspondence appears to have been leaked, poured scorn on the idea of any deal over Megrahi's release.

"How could Tony Blair or Gordon Brown offer a deal to Gaddafi which would depend on getting Alex Salmond to do something?" an official said.

Ahhh, the old answering a question with a question bit, a sure sign that subterfuge is afoot. Keep in mind, for better or worse there could be legitimate geo-strat reasons for releasing such a prisoner, as foul as the idea/deed actually is to most individuals. However, given the lack of comment, the lack of categorical denial and the subterfuge surrounding this situation, it is readily apparent that what lies at the heart of this matter is a truth which reeks of some short-term, small-minded oil-grubbing deal. If this is not the case, why is there no great statesman coming to the fore to explain the great matters of state involved?

If the story continues to have legs we may get to witness a personal favourite in the denial game, some washed out pol thundering that "these allegations are false!" The routine being an allegation of X, Y and Z happening on a Tuesday, when in reality X, Y and Z actually did occur, but on a Wednesday.

Then again, when it comes to our govermental betters ..... you know the routine.

We've just weakened America's standing in a critical region of the world and let our allies down

It would appear that the White House

has decided against building a missile shield to protect Poland and the Czech Republic

writes Investor's Business Daily, concerning the Jimmy Carter admi — sorry, concerning the Barack Obama administration's latest brilliant move.

The reason? Russian opposition.

Now, perhaps it becomes more clear why the Apologizer-in-Chief has sent no current U.S. officials to Warsaw for the ceremony of the start of World War II…

Now, if we want to build a defense system for friends in Europe, we'll have to place it in the Balkans, Israel or somewhere else. That is, if Russia approves.

This is a stark reversal of past policy and reneges on promises made by the current administration. Worse, it shows weakness. We got into a staredown with the Russian bear and we blinked.

…As for promises to our allies, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just this month said the U.S. would offer our allies a "defense umbrella" against threats from a possible Iranian nuclear weapon.

Now, all that high-sounding defense rhetoric is out the window.

…We've just weakened America's standing in a critical region of the world — Eastern Europe — and let our allies down. We've made them vulnerable, in ways that only we could, to Russia's growing military menace. Polish and Czech friends who had relied on us to stand firm and keep our word no doubt feel betrayed.

This diminishes our global influence. What smallish country will now take our word at face value when we promise to protect them?

In a parallel editorial, Investor's Business Daily heads halfway around the world to make the same stunning assessment of Jimmy Car— sorry, of Barack Obama's policies:

the U.S. acts as if good relations with Chavez is a high priority, but ties with allies Honduras and Colombia aren't.

What does all this tell us about the three characteristics of the Obama Doctrine?

Now That George W Bush Is Gone, America Is Finally Showing More Respect Towards Its Friends and Allies

The Apologizer-in-Chief's White House found nobody better to send to Warsaw for the seventieth anniversary of World War II, quips Hotair, than a man who last served as an American official 12 years ago (Dziękuję to Valerie)…

How Is That New Respect for Our Friends'n'Allies Working for You, Barack?

Now that the Apologizer-in-Chief has made tolerance and compassion his hallmark while reserving America's official criticism and principled opposition for none but America's true enemies — i.e., the internal ones, aka America's conservatives — a "compassionate" government minister in Scotland shows how much he enjoys the newfound open-mindedness…



And how about the being-nice-to-terrorists track, Barack, including giving the "war on terrorism" some new-fangled (and utterly forgettable) name? How is that working?!



Or, to quote the colorful language of 5ezpzez,

Moamar Yourdaffy was real quick to get in line and play nice when Bush started getting medevial on SoDamn Insane's ass. Now that Mr.Apology (obama) is the leader(ha ha) of the free(ha ha ha) world, Gadaffy obviously feels safe again to thumb his nose at the US & the rest of the World, including Scotland & the rest of the UK. MacAskill---the Neville Chamberlain of our time, is a National Shame to most right thinking Scots

Kind of a test

This from the Guardian on being snarky:

The sixth principle of snark: the hobbyhorse principle. Reduce all human complexity to caricature. Then repeat the caricature. Genuine seriousness, when it turns up (say, in a man like Al Gore), disgusts snarky writers - they refashion it into stiffness or pretension. The mystery of personality bores them into silence.

Is this post considered a snark by merely repeating the above?

Call it the grass-is-greener syndrome: the French have their own problems that show there's no such thing as a free lunch — or a free doctor's visit

Health care in France is often held up as a model the U.S. might follow

writes Investor's Business Daily.

Yet the French have their own problems that show there's no such thing as a free lunch — or a free doctor's visit.

The IBD (which also features editorials on the demonization of drugmakers — "members of Congress … think they can impose whatever costs they want on an industry, with no real-world impact" — and on Ted Kennedy's death) goes on to quote Guy Sorman's City Journal story. (Be sure to also check out Bojidar Marinov's "checkup"…)

Call it the grass-is-greener syndrome. Advocates of national health care, acknowledging the flaws in ObamaCare yet despising the current U.S. system that has the best medicines, the best medical equipment and the shortest waiting lists, have turned their eyes lovingly to places like France.

As City Journal contributing editor Guy Sorman notes, the French would also love to have the low-cost, high-service system some Americans gush about. Unfortunately, they don't. France's system isn't that cheap and is financed by high taxes on labor that have heavy economic consequences.

… Regardless of the cost, does the French system produce better outcomes? Not always. Infant mortality rates are often cited as a reason socialized medicine and single-payer systems are better than what we have here. But according to Dr. Linda Halderman, a policy adviser in the California State Senate, these comparisons are bogus.

…[Furthermore] France reimburses its doctors at a far lower rate than U.S. physicians would accept.

As David Gratzer, a physician and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in the summer 2007 issue of City Journal: "In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died."

After the tragedy, the French parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly.

It's hard to imagine that happening here, where hospitals have enough air-conditioned beds and doctors that aren't on vacation.

Fact is, most Americans like their health care. There are ways to provide expanded coverage at lower cost, such as pushing individually owned health savings accounts, malpractice reform and allowing insurance to be bought across state lines.

We needn't be forced to sacrifice quality for cost. Nor do we need to look to the French for a better solution. They don't have one.

What the American enamored with French health care doesn’t realize is that the French, too, would love to have such a perfect health system

Recently in the New York Times, mystery writer Sara Paretsky published “Le Treatment,” the story of how she took her husband, suffering from chest pains during their vacation in France, to a local hospital, where he was treated without delay. … Paretsky expresses one minor reservation about what she sees as a nearly perfect health-care system: the hospital staff’s behavior was more bureaucratic than cheerful. She concludes, however, that this is a small price to pay for excellent health care at an unbeatable price: “I might put up with a lot of ugly bureaucrats for that.”

Thus writes Frenchman Guy Sorman (merci à Pat Patterson) who was subsequently interviewed by Radio America's Greg Corombos.

What she doesn’t realize is that the French, too, would love to have such a system. Paretsky’s adventure is a parable based on a false assumption: that health care can be public, reliable, and free. It may indeed seem free, or close to free, for an American tourist receiving treatment in an emergency; as a French taxpayer, however, I paid a heavy price for Paretsky’s husband’s treatment. And you, my American reader, did too.

Read why "French national health insurance is also subsidized by American patients."

…In the end, who paid for Paretsky’s husband’s nearly free ride in a French hospital? French workers and taxpayers; American patients; and the young, unqualified, and out-of-work French unable to find jobs because of the unemployment that national health insurance engenders. There is no such thing, anywhere, as a perfect health-insurance system. It’s always a trade-off among competing goods, and the choices to be made are ultimately political ones. Americans commenting on health-care reform should try to make the costs and consequences of these choices transparent, rather than resorting to misleading morality plays.

Update — Four years later (!), Fausta writes:

And, what a lot of Americans who require medical treatment while traveling in Europe don't realize is that the US group insurance companies get billed through the nose for that treatment. 

I know because I had to authorize those payments back when I worked in insurance.

Peace Out!

They just don't like it up 'em

The surest path to baffling the statists and governmentalists among us is to simply tell them, "I am really not interested in your help":

Incompetence and Disorganization have never been this Dull Either

Remember the adulation that leftist had just a few months back, upon winning the White House that the “Republican Party was disappearing”? Ever in love with the vanquishment, if not torture and mass slaughter of anyone who disagrees with them, they took a great pleasure in the idea of living on a planet of people who nodded their heads to every thought they had, including their ideas about nature-defying “aspirational economic calculations,” or some other specious crap that has never works.

Well, they were wrong. Conservatives did not disappear at all. All it took was to have lefties open their mouths and aspirate to make this happen – even before they successfully legislate anything or manage to prop up an ideologically compliant potential dictator.

Now Taking Place in the U.S.: Mass Arrests, Mass Incarcerations Without Trial, Forced Confessions, Forced Separation of Children From Their Parents…

On August 11, 2009, Stephen Baskerville spoke in Amsterdam at the 5th World Congress of Families.

Carle Zimmerman emphasized an inverse relationship between the strength of the family and the strength of the state. In other words, he argued that as the state increases in power, the family weakens; and as the state loses power — when the state becomes weak, for whatever reason — the family becomes stronger…

It’s Still not as Important as Fighting the War Against Tooth Decay

A supremely sarcastic glow-ball warming guilt-trip victim gets tripped up - by a Russian dude, just being himself.

Aber sie is dennoch arm aber sexy, peeps. Muchas gracias to Hermann-observing Clarsonimus Maximus, a sort of James Tiberius Kirk of the Berlin clandestine observation post, for the clue-in.