Author: McQ

Colin Powell said that it appeared to him that Americans not only wanted more government services, but were willing to pay for them. Michale Barone, who is probably one of the better poll interpreters out there, looks at a gaggle of them and isn’t so sure Powell is right (Powell has since become concerned with […]

First Paul Krugman calls anyone who opposes climate change legislation “traitors against the planet”. We then have Al Gore claiming fighting those who oppose such legislation akin to fighting Nazis. The latest to resort to ad hominem is Henry Waxman, who claims the GOP, and by implication, anyone who is against the nonsense he just […]

From Anthony Watts: Given the U.S. Senate is about to vote upon the most complex and costly plan to regulate greenhouse gases, while the EPA suppresses earlier versions of the chart shown below from a senior analyst, this should give some pause to those who are rational thinkers. For those that see only dogma, I […]

We continue to hear how wonderful it is as compared to the horrible US system. But is it? One of the fundamental truths of any health care system is you have infinite demand meeting finite resources (beds, doctors, availability, etc). Whatever system a country has, that truth doesn’t change. So, regardless of system, there is […]

He took off a few hours ago from the US in – wait for it – a Venezuelan plane. Naturally the UN has actually gotten off of its rear-end and taken what, for it, is “action”. The UN General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann and a number of journalists are accompanying former Honduran president Mel […]

I don’t use the “L” word very often but in this case it seems completely appropriate. The question: Would a government-run health plan upend the employer-based health insurance system used by 160 million Americans? The Democrats claim the answer is ‘no’. Here’s their rationalization: Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., say their plan […]

One of the favorite arguments of the government health care crowd is the supposed Medicare low overhead argument – i.e. Medicare is more efficient than private insurance because its overhead is so much lower than private administrative costs. It goes like this: But the administration of Medicare is a miracle of low overhead and a […]

One more time into the breach. The CBO has issued a warning to Congress about entitlement spending. Again. Here’s a key paragraph: Almost all of the projected growth in federal spending other than interest payments on the debt comes from growth in spending on the three largest entitlement programs–Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Most of […]

Paul Krugman came out today for “border adjustments” (tariffs) on goods from countries who aren’t participating in economy killing CO2 emissions control taxation. His argument: If you only impose restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from domestic sources, you give consumers no incentive to avoid purchasing products that cause emissions in other countries; as a result, […]

But not Iran. Hmmm. And even saying anything about Iran could be considered “meddling” in the internal affairs of another country, per the Obama administration, but apparently working actively within Honduras to stop what it characterizes as a “military coup” isn’t meddling. Confusing foreign policy. An interesting aspect of the Honduran “coup”, per Fausta is: […]

Here’s a perfect example of why Paul Krugman should stick with writing about economics: One of the favorite arguments of climate-change deniers is “but it was warmer in the late 90s.” In fact, the odds are good that I’ll get that argument from George Will on This Weak tomorrow. I basically know the answer: temperature […]

I understand that everywhere else today it is “Michale Jackson is dead” day – I suspect days such as this must be infinitely boring to most news junkies because the news is dominated by a single topic. Meanwhile Democrats are doing their best to rush cap-and-trade through the House today while the pseudo-science that supports […]

Apparently it will according to some who have actually beaten their way through the entire bill and read the contents: The Ways and Means Committee’s proposed bill language (pdf) would virtually require that the president impose an import tariff on any country that fails to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions. Of course in this […]

He sets it up with these observations: 1. There is nothing at all that any Western country can do to avoid the charge of intervening in Iran’s foreign affairs. The deep belief that everything–especially anything in English–is already and by definition an intervention is part of the very identity and ideology of the theocracy. 2. […]

Frankly, that’s precisely what’s going on with the developing situation in Iran. Our President is both inexperienced and naive, and in the world of foreign relations, that can be a fatal mix. As I previously pointed out about Gitmo, the president hadn’t done his homework when he announced his pre-election decision to close the prison […]

If ever there was a text book example of a false premise wrapped in an absurd ‘moral’ analogy, Glenn Smith at Firedoglake provides it: The gravity of America’s health care crisis is the moral equivalent of the 19th Century’s bloody conflict over slavery. This is not hyperbole, though the truth of it is often lost […]

We may be getting ready to see a repressive regime underestimating the power of the people or we may be on the cusp of another Tiananmen Square. Ayatollah Khamenei didn’t budge an inch in his speech today: Addressing Friday prayers at Tehran University, the bearded septuagenarian offered no concessions to the millions of irate Iranians […]

Daniel Henninger gives us a little walk down memory lane to remind us of the effect of our first attempt at “health care” reform. Back before recorded history, in 1965, Congress erected the nation’s first two monuments to health-care “reform,” Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid was described at the time as a modest solution to the […]

Caroline Glick, writing in the Jerusalem Post, seems to have as good a measure of Barack Obama’s “foreign policy” as anyone I’ve read. Discussing that in the context of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Sunday speech (two state solution/demilitarized Palestine), Glick writes of Obama and his advisors: To be moved by rational argument, a person […]

While I’ve been monitoring the upheaval in Iran, I’ve also been fascinated by the debate (and commentary) over what President Obama should or shouldn’t say about what is going on there. Politico makes the point that the administration doesn’t want to become is part of the story. Consequently the State Department has been studying the […]

Seriously, if George Bush hadn’t existed, the left would have had to invent him in order to have someone to blame the world’s ills on. CBS has republished a piece by Laura Secor that ran in the New Republic and calls Ahmadenijhad Iran’s “George Bush”. (This on the heels of the Bonnie Erbe piece calling […]

And China is making no bones about it: China will not make a binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions, putting in jeopardy the prospects for a global pact on climate change. Officials from Beijing told a UN conference in Bonn yesterday that China would increase its emissions to develop its economy rather than sign up […]

Two nuts apparently equal vindication of the Department of Homeland Security report on “right-wing extremists”. And Paul Krugman, like many of his ilk, ignores the dearth of statistical support his premise has to make this claim: But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a […]

Seriously. At least that’s what the macro model I built says. It has some very sophisticated algorithms. According to the model, the associated bandwidth cost for this post was enough to keep the blog hosting gang going and because of that, they kept making payments on all the computer equipment, power and rent/lease obligations they […]

It comes from James Delingpole of the UK Telegraph: Modern China cares about as much about “anthropogenic global warming” as Chairman Mao did about providing his population with five-course steak dinners. AGW’s only use, as far as the Chinese are concerned, is as an ingenious device to suck up money and power from the gullible […]

Ezra Klein discusses what has commonly become known as the “public plan” in the emerging “health care reform” legislation. Put simply it is “public insurance” which is supposed to compete with the private insurance industry and, as Paul Krugman claims, keep them “honest”. Klein lays out the various flavors being floated out there concerning this […]

One of the things we talked about on the podcast this week is how, in the broadest sense, socialism is a growing phenomenon in our country. As I mentioned, while government may not actually own the means of production, if its regulations are such that they dictate how a company must operate, then government exercises […]

There’s a bit of a kerfuffle rippling through the sphere today (which means, of course, that most of us are going to comment). Ed Whelan, who blogs over at NRO has outed Publius who blogs at Obsidian Wings. There seem to be mixed feelings as to whether what Whelan did is “ethical” or not. In […]

Politics and special interests now run General Motors – a company which should be making business decisions based on what is best for the company and its future and not what is best for some politician: Rep Barney Frank (D-Mass.) won a stay of execution on Thursday for a General Motors plant in his district […]

A few new developments, none of them good. One – Obama has indicated his willingness to entertain legislation that would tax your private health care benefits. What that means is you’ll be taxed on the money your employer spends on your health care insurance. Of course the obvious immediate effect would be to raise revenue […]