Pelosi is once again claiming the end is near on healthcare. That's nothing new, a fact Drudge had some fun with today, but this bit rankles:

These states, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts among them, already provide coverage under the low-income program for the poor that other states do not but would be required to if the legislation passes. The 12 are concerned that they will effectively be penalized for having been more generous than the rest of the country.

Memo to whoever writes the AP's style guide: it isn't generosity when you're spending other people's money. That's called "social justice" or more commonly "socialism." Generosity describes an act whereby the politicians donate all their own personal assets to charity (the accompanying frost warnings in Hades might also end the whole global warming scare).

Oddly, the article doesn't mention Stupak. Unless he and his bloc back down on abortion, the House cannot pass the Senate version, and if they pass a modified version the Senate cannot pass the modified abortion language through reconciliation even if they can get the votes for such a move, as it isn't a budgetary measure.

Meanwhile, Obama's healthcare push has him at a new low of 43 percent approval -- and an astounding -21 on the passion index; he's down almost two to one among those with a strong opinion. It's a longish way to November 2012, but Obama has a lot of ground to make up. And the number of people who buy the Obamacare budget numbers is about the same who think Elvis is somwhere out there crooning to little gray people on a mothership.

It does look like this will probably be the last Obamacare push either way it goes, if only because there won't be enough elected Democrats to pursue the destruction of American healthcare after November. So anyone who doesn't want their bodies or the U.S. budget on the Liverpool pathway should give their last, best, hardest push over the next few weeks.

Spread the mantra!

U.S. does 2x as many transplants as OECD average

U.S. has best cancer survival rates in OECD

Death panels in Britain are putting people to death who could have recovered

Death panels: now in kids' sizes too! Infants being left to die.

U.S. has more MRIS "it was found that Canada had 4.6 MRI scanners per million population while the U.S. had 19.5 per million"

U.S. has about twice as many MRIs as OECD average

The U.S. gets new drugs 1 year sooner "On average, the FDA approval came 1 year ahead of clearance by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA)."

"Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway."

"The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country"

U.S. performs more operations than any country in the world.

Lower U.S. life expectancy does not argue U.S. has worse health care due to lifestyle factors and differences in how infant mortality is reported

Please share, steal, print on a bumper sticker, chisel in granite, or drip in syrup on a naked woman any of the above facts, no attribution needed. Don't let them take the best care in the world away from us without a fight!

Dr. Helen has reviewed Amy Alkon's book I See Rude People: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, and she also interviewed the author for PJTV.

In one of her posts about the book (which I bought), Dr. Helen asked what I thought was an excellent (but not easy) question:

If someone is rude in public, do you say anything?

...in response to the question -- "If someone is rude in public, do you say anything?" -- in my case it would depend on whether the rude person is "reachable." Some people are clearly hopeless -- even hostile and antisocial -- while others may not realize they are being rude. The former, being either deliberately rude or hopelessly ignorant, are likely to attack their correctors, while the latter might learn something, say they're sorry, etc. I don't think it is incumbent on me to police the world's assholes, and when they are being deliberately rude and provocative, policing them means being ready to get into a physical altercation when you might just feel like walking from Point A to Point B. The question arises, "Is it worth it?"

Sometimes, though, when the rudeness involves trampling on the rights of other people, and the other people are not standing up for their rights, it is worth making a scene.

Saying "DON'T LET THAT GUY CUT IN FRONT OF YOU!" is often in order -- even if the line crasher falls into the hopelessly and deliberately rude category as happened to me once when a guy deliberately cut in front of a long bank line and actually sneered at the people who were waiting. When I objected, the spineless people in line did nothing except look guilty, and the teller waited on him (quite improperly in my view). So I escalated the situation by going to the manager, and he scolded me! For interfering with bank policy! The tellers, he said, are trained not to get involved in these disputes, and the more I complained about such a policy, the more irritated the manager became. I realized that to them, I was the problem. I had tried to make my point, and I left in disgust. How far are we to escalate these things? I don't know, but I'm sure I could have done more. Maybe write a long letter to whoever the manager's boss was. (Doubtless someone will tell me what I should have done back in the mid-1980s in San Francisco, but it's too late now.)

I have learned that rudeness often works. Rude people tend to get their way because nice people are nice. So rudeness is enabled by niceness. The result is not nice.

The trick is to somehow stand up to the unbearable assholes of the world without becoming one.

I saw a guy throw a coffee cup on the ground over the weekend, and as he glanced glaringly at the people around him it occurred to me that he might consider putting the cup in a nearby trashcan to be beneath his "dignity" -- or even "sissy" behavior. (An unfortunate truth is that society once had the whipping post precisely to deal with miscreants like that.)

There are too many people like that, and today I saw more evidence in a news report about a theater patron who was assaulted with a deadly weapon for asking another patron to turn off her cell phone during a movie:

Deputies say that while the movie was playing, a woman was talking on her phone and the victim asked her to turn it off.

The victim was attacked by the woman's boyfriend and another man. Deputies say he was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer.

The stabbing victim is expected to survive and is recovering at a local hospital. Two others who tried to help the victim were also injured, according to KTLA.

This creates an interesting problem for someone who is carrying concealed, because suppose you are carrying concealed, you ask someone in a movie theater to turn off his cell phone, and he stabs you. You're justified in using deadly force to protect your life, but firing a gun in a crowded theater is problematic, so it might be best to just avoid escalating things with people who are deliberately being provocative in crowded public places.

Trouble is, if you complain to the theater ushers, they don't want to get involved either. That nervous pimply-faced kid don't consider his job worth dying for, so most likely the manager will offer you a refund. But that's no good, because you want to see the damned movie and wasted your time going there.

Perhaps we need armed politeness brigades, to engage in armed outreach to the unreachable. There must be a way to politely remind people that an armed society is a polite society.

From Ed Driscoll, here's the Quote Of The Day from Nancy Pelosi on why the health care bill should be passed:

"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

Instead of one of my usual rants about how these people have no respect for the constitutional process, I thought I'd look at Nancy Pelosi's remark in a slightly different context.

Glenn Reynolds has mentioned the leak attacks on Rahm Emanuel, Eric Massa (who seems knowledgeable about such matters) has complained about naked shower fights with Emanuel (whom he calls "the son of the devil's spawn"), and it has become clear that certain folks are determined to make him the fall guy.

I can't be sure, but I suspect that "away from the fog" is probably inside code language for something else.

Little wonder that since the above picture was taken, Pelosi has told Rahm Emanuel to (in her words) "cool it."

I smell not only a coverup, but a sexist double standard.

Seriously, can anyone imagine what would happen if Emanuel had been photographed doing exactly the same thing to Eric Massa?

MORE: Ann Althouse discusses the meaning of word "grope" and offers a definition:

grope

1: to feel about blindly or uncertainly in search
2 : to look for something blindly or uncertainly
3 : to feel one's way

Famulus at Prometheus Fusion had a close encounter with an angel investor from Europe. He gives an account of his interactions. Famulus was kind enough to ask me for some assistance with his proposal. I also got one of my physicist friends (Dr. Mike) to help out.

Famulus needs to raise funds to continue his experiments. He is getting close to his goal.

Donate Here.

Cross posted at Power and Control

Nick Gillespie's post about the Pennsylvania crackdown on unlicensed allegedly "unregistered" beers makes me glad I left the state:

More than a dozen armed State Police officers conducted simultaneous raids last week on three popular Philadelphia bars known for their wide beer selections. The cops confiscated hundreds of bottles of expensive ales and lagers, now in State Police custody at an undisclosed location.

The alleged offense: Although the bar owners had bought the beer legally from licensed Pennsylvania distributors and had paid all the necessary taxes, the police claimed that nobody had registered the precise names of the beers with the state Liquor Control Board - a process that requires the brewers or their importers to pay a $75 registration fee for each product they want to sell in Pennsylvania.

Based on a complaint from someone the State Police refuse to identify, three teams of officers converged last Thursday on the three bars, run by Leigh Maida and her husband, Brendan Hartranft. Checking their inventories against the state's official list of more than 2,800 brands, the cops seized four kegs and 317 bottles, totaling 60.9 gallons of beer, according to police calculations.

In fact, according to Maida, more than half the beer removed by the State Police was properly registered - but the cops couldn't find it on their lists because of "clerical errors" or "blatant ineptitude" between the police and the Liquor Control Board, with whom the officers were conferring by telephone.

Pennsylvania, readers may remember, is a place where you can't buy a sixpack of beer in a convenience store, but instead have to buy it by the case at specially licensed "beer distributors" which are only open during certain hours. The latter, of course, now constitute a well-funded lobby that fights to keep their monopoly.

The unregistered beer brand bust is so typical of the way government works. Petty tyrants like the Liquor Control Board bureaucrats love nothing more than playing Eliot Ness reenactment games at the taxpayers' expense.

Why ordinary people put up with it is one of the mysteries of life.

MORE: It seems that whether ordinary people want to put up with it or not, they have very little to do with it. As former Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornbugh explains, attempts at reform are blocked by an odd coalition:

"In my view, the principal roadblock to reform has traditionally been an odd coalition of state store employee unions, fundamentalist anti-alcohol groups and organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, all of which perceive that they have legitimate interests which are not susceptible to statewide budgetary considerations," Thornburgh said.

"It would take some courageous leadership to stare down this combination, something I do not see in the Commonwealth today," he added.

Dan Rather's remark that Barack Obama couldn't sell watermelons has drawn a lot of attention and ridicule, and Ann Althouse is inclined to give Rather a pass, but with a caveat:

So I'll give Dan Rather a pass. But if we give Dan Rather a pass for the accidental appearance of racism, will anyone who isn't liberal be given a pass? I know they won't. That's the way it is.

Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. "Listen he just hasn't been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death." And a version of, "Listen he's a nice person, he's very articulate" this is what's been used against him, "but he couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic." (Emphasis added.)

If Limbaugh had said exactly the same thing (to say nothing of Rather's earlier "Buckwheats" remark), it would trigger another national tirade about what a bigot he is.

NOTE: This post was written by M. Simon (who is having computer problems), and posted by Eric.

The natural order of things is for the rich to steal from the poor. Any other order is unnatural. So how do you maintain an unnatural system where the poor have a chance?

The only way is that no one steals from any one else. Once you allow stealing into the system the rich get their usual extra advantage. Which is why our founders stated that the system they designed can only be maintained by a moral people. And the morality was not about who was having sex with whom but the morality relating to property.

Socialism is a system for stealing from the rich in the hopes of advantaging the poor. But once you allow theft into the system it reverts to the natural order where the poor have no chance. Which is why socialism always fails.

So the trouble with socialists is that they mean well but have no understanding. Which is why I am no longer a socialist.

==

And note: when you take into account the incentives for production socialism comes out even worse. If you can't keep a very large portion of what you earn the incentives for production decline and we are all worse off. The rich and the poor alike. Of course for the rich it makes less difference.

The moral of the story is that socialism leads to feudalism (anther name for a system where warlords rule) and the people are then reduced to serfs. And serfs are held in place by force. And force came into the system through government as a way for the poor to steal from the rich.

It may be why F. A. Hayek called his book on socialism:

The Road to Serfdom

And it gives added meaning to what George Washington said:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

Sharing photos of the bizarre Barcelona blizzard, Barcepundit's José Guardia speculates that Al Gore must be in town. Snow in mid-March is of course extremely unusual because Barcelona has a mild Mediterranean climate.

Telegraph reports forecasts of snowfalls of up to 20 inches, school closures, and 200,000 clients without electricity.

So where is Al Gore?

I don't know, but he is displaying the most ferocious bunker mentality I've seen in a long time. Not only does he refuse to back down, he's actually turned up the volume of his rhetoric, claiming that human beings "face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.'' As to the snow, he steadfastly maintains that "Climate change causes more frequent and severe snowstorms.''

Hmmm.... The style seems familiar to me.

Has anyone seen Baghdad Bob lately?

MORE: Thank you, José Guardia for the link (and for confirming my suspicions...)

Carl Cannon thinks Barack Obama will win reelection in 2012 for a variety of reasons, one of which involves the dynamics of Congress. He compares the situation to that of Reagan and Clinton:

...Incumbency is supposed to be a disadvantage in the current political environment, but that perception is worth a closer look. It's certainly true that people have a low opinion of Congress. A recent Gallup Poll put the percentage of Americans who approve of the job Congress is doing at 18 percent, the lowest figure in a year. A number of governors have seen the bottom fall out of their polling numbers, too. So yes, anti-incumbency is potent right now. But so is the bully pulpit. At this point in his presidency Ronald Reagan's job approval rating was in the mid-40s, lower than Obama's is now. In the 1982 midterm elections, Reagan's party lost 26 seats in the House. Two years later, Reagan carried 49 states while winning 58.5 percent of the popular vote in his re-election bid.

"In a midterm election, it's possible to get really far by just saying 'no,'" astute political observer Bill Schneider said at a breakfast meeting with political reporters last week. "In a presidential year, you have to present a real alternative."

The 1994 elections positioned Clinton perfectly to offer an alternative, and to appeal to the traditional love affair American voters have with "checks and balances."

Plus, there's always the chance of something unforeseen and nasty happening:

In 1994 when I was covering the White House for the Baltimore Sun, I spent the week of the midterm elections vacationing in Arizona. It turned out I missed a pretty big political story -- the first GOP takeover of Congress in 40 years, to be precise -- and when on my return our congressional correspondent told me breezily, "While you were gone, your beat disappeared." I accepted the needle, but remember my private reaction, "I don't think the White House disappears."

As it happened, Bill Clinton had some of those same feelings: "The president is still relevant here," he said somewhat defensively in a news conference the following April. Clinton was right, even if he was mostly bucking himself up. The president appoints judges, vetoes bad legislation (and sometimes legislation that isn't so bad), manages the executive branch, and serves as the commander-in-chief. He also is the person this nation turns to when tragedy strikes. They can rise to the occasion, or not. For Reagan it was the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. In Clinton's case it was the Oklahoma City bombing.

Of course, there's no way to go back in time and play out alternate history scenarios. What if the Democrats had managed to hold Congress in '94? What if there had been no Oklahoma City? Might he too have been a one-term president like Carter? We'll never know.

But we do have an unpopular president with a much more unpopular Congress.

Here are the current RCP Poll Averages:

President Obama Job Approval

RCP Average
Approve
48.7
Disapprove
45.8
Spread +2.9

Congressional Job Approval
RCP Average
Approve
18.8
Disapprove
75.6
Spread -56.8

After all, he can't very well run against his own Congress, can he?

Who are "they"?

It's an ongoing question here, and I have devoted a number of posts to the issue.

In a piece titled "Boss Rangel and the Spirit of 1876," Walter Russell Mead really nails them:

....take the upper middle class neo-Puritan goody-goodies out of the mix and there isn't all that much left of the Democratic Party.

These folks, spiritually if not biologically descended from the original New England Puritans, really believe that the state is here to make virtue reign among men. In the nineteenth century they were the 'Conscience Whigs' who opposed Sabbath delivery of the mails, the relocation of the Cherokee Indians and slavery. Later they supported female suffrage, Prohibition and disarmament. Today they are against torture, tobacco and trans fats.

These are the cats, Joe, who really believe that the state is here to make us Do Right. These are the university professors and academic bureaucrats who believe in suppressing free speech in the name of polite discourse -- just as they did 100 years ago when dirty books were banned in Boston. These are the folks who want to write long 'codes of conduct' to regulate sexual encounters among undergraduates in the name of feminism -- which again is pretty much what they were doing when Victoria was queen. These folks want a strong national government because they deeply, truly and instinctively believe that true freedom means doing right, and that a government that makes people behave right makes them more free.

They must just hate that.

Confronted with the spectacle of the gluttonous David Axelrod chomping on a drumstick, President Obama is reported to have "surveyed the spread on Mr. Axelrod's desk with a slight smirk" and then quipped "What is this, King Arthur's court?"

Neo-Neocon notes that the president committed a historical gaffe:

King Arthur's court? I believe Obama must have meant to refer to King Henry VIII, who was often pictured as a glutton holding a drumstick...

Much as I'd like to shrug this bit of sloppiness off entirely (and much as I'm inclined to agree with Glenn's "whatever"), my inner paranoid conspiracist worries that the choice of King Arthur might reflect a conscious desire to scrupulously avoid anything that hints of the dreaded "Tudor Obama" meme. British historian David Starkey is considered the world's leading Henry VIII scholar, and here is what he said in comparing Henry VIII to Barack Obama:

'Henry comes to the throne as the Tudor Obama,' explains David. 'How does the thin, beautiful, elegant, musical, poetical, reasonable, charming, sweet-tempered man who marries for love... how does he turn into Henry who was the horror, Henry who was the tyrant?'

But hey, at least there's no physical resemblance!

All cholesterol jokes aside, if I were Barack Obama, I think I'd keep the imagery focused on Arthur (and Camelot) too.

Government run medicine in Britain strikes again.

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.'

Don't bet your life on it.

Hospital bosses received huge pay rises as up to 5,000 patients in their care died needlessly

Three thousand needless deaths every year in hospital as watchdog fails to spot poor standards

Patients were 'routinely neglected', says most savage indictment of NHS trust

And that is not all. It seems the hospitals in Britain have a cockroach problem. And a rat problem. And mice too. Did I mention maggots?

British Hospitals Overrun With Rats, Bed Bugs, Maggots, Cockroaches

Hospital maternity unit closed after cockroach infestation

NHS hospitals report thousands of pest infestations

At least 30,000 patients were starving in NHS wards in 2007

Evidently the Brits don't need death panels. They let individual staff decide on a case by case basis who lives and who dies. Of course if we get government health care in America things will be different.

H/T JLawson Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Power and Control

While I've used Ebay to buy and sell for many years, about a year ago I decided that I would never be a seller again. That's because after many years of a feedback system that allowed both buyers and sellers to leave negative feedback, Ebay suddenly instituted a "no-negative feedack" rule -- but only against buyers. What that means is that the buyers now have all the power and sellers have none. If I sell an item and the buyer never pays for it, I cannot leave negative feedback, but there is nothing to stop him from leaving negative feedback against me. Sellers are screwed. They might complain, but it's the rule.

It's NOT fair at all that buyers can leave Neg fb for sellers but not the other way around. It should be EQUAL for EVERYONE. I'm a buyer AND a seller so it's not like I'm saying this because i'm a bitter seller or anything. It's the TRUTH. EVERYTHING is aimed to please the buyers now - because that's where ebay gets most of their money. You know what they did? They reeled everyone in with "normal" and "fair" rules when they first started, and then, when they became popular and the #1 auction site in the world, THATS when they changed all the rules - when they already had everyone at their every beck and call.

But none of this is really news. What prompted this post is that I recently learned that sellers are now no longer allowed to warn "deadbeat buyers" or "deadbeat bidders" not to bid on their listings! The reason for the rule?

People might be offended! Ebay explains:

A listing can't include words like "deadbeat bidder" or "deadbeat buyer" because they can offend people and discourage them from buying your item.

Please edit your listing, making sure there's no mention of those words or something similar. If there is, you won't be able to list your item. You could also lose your Top-rated seller status.

Find out more about our selling practices policy.

Sure it's unfair, but what else is new? It's not censorship, as no one is required to sell on Ebay. Still, what most fascinates me is the Orwellian condescension on the part of Ebay. As I said in an email to a friend who sells a lot and complained about this policy,

The only people who might be offended are deadbeat buyers. In which case, I would WANT them to be offended, and thereby discouraged from bidding!

I can only conclude that ebay wants to encourage deadbeat buyers.

What about people who get offended by morons who cannot write a simple English sentence? Why isn't it offensive to misspell?

And if we return to the original feedback theme, isn't negative feedback offensive by its very nature? If so, then why does Ebay allow it at all? Is the idea that it's OK to offend some people, but not others?

By any standard, that's not fair. Because, if there is a right not to be offended, then it is a right held by all people, not just some people.

The video that Glenn Reynolds posted reminded me of something I have discussed before -- there is a serious problem with absolute idiots on the road. For whatever reason, our society deems it unnecessary to ensure that drivers know how to drive. Watch and weep as Mike Allen of Popular Mechanics demonstrates that (doh!) you can actually stop a car with a runaway accelerator by:

I'm sorry, but people who don't know this are morons. Idiots. Retards. They do not belong on the road, period. They are a far greater hazard to the public than the Toyota accelerator problem which has generated the huge recall.

Worse yet, there seems to be a demand that the industry now modify its product so that when you apply the brakes, the car automatically shifts into neutral:

Because Toyota did not incorporate the critical safety feature that shifts the car into neutral during braking, the driver must manually shift the vehicle into neutral.

I think there needs to be a driver recall.

Except I know it will never happen. We live in a country in which
someone who never had a drivers license nonetheless managed to have her nonexistent license "suspended" 12 times, yet after her fatal accident, officials say that "no one wants to pass judgment." (And now, of course, she has another excuse: she can blame the car!)

Madness.

In a post about short actors, Ann Althouse features a YouTube video of the original "Mr. Skeffington" trailer:

It's a great film which starred Bette Davis and Claude Rains, and the two of them were perfectly matched -- as Bette Davis was 5' 3" while Claude Rains towered over her at 5' 6 1/2". You'd never know from watching the film that these two legendary giants of the screen were so tiny in real life.

While height is not the same factor in women that it is in men, Ann Althouse wondered whether Davis' average looks might have been the equivalent of male shortness:

Is there something comparable for women? Maybe we could make a list of women who have fairly average looks who play beautiful women on screen. My favorite example of this is Bette Davis in "Mr. Skeffington," where the raving over Bette's beauty occasionally crosses the line into the laughable. No man could resist her...

And speaking of creating illusions, Claude Rains had to contend with more than just his height. He was nearly blind in one eye, and more important for an actor, he had a speech impediment:

He grew up, according to his daughter, with "a very serious cockney accent and a speech impediment".[1]

Great acting by any standard. His voice made people leave the lights on:

Universal was embarking on its new-found role as horror film factory, and they were looking for someone unique for their next outing, The Invisible Man (1933). Rains was the very man. He took the role by the ears, churning up a rasping malice and volume in his voice to achieve a bone chilling persona of the disembodied mad doctor. He could also throw out a high-pitched maniac laugh that would make you leave the lights on before going to bed.

MORE: Sean Kinsell links this post (thanks Sean!) and offers Rains' performance in Notorious as an example of the actor at his most chilling.

...I'd be hard pressed to think of a recent movie that achieved anything like the quiet, oppressive horrifying-ness of that scene...

Watch out for that innocent-looking covered plate!

I missed this video when it first came out. It is reporter Phelim McAleer asking Stephen Schneider some questions. Check out the totalitarian response to an inconvenient question.

And just who is Stephen Schneider? He is the academic who said:

"To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This "double ethical bind" we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."

And Mr. SS has written a book:

Science as a Contact Sport

Evidently the contact has been a bit too much for him.

Schneider is also a member of the Club Of Rome. Here is a bit on The Club of Rome along with a cast of characters.

"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

David Rockefeller

And these folks wonder why there is a Tea Party movement? It seems like a rational response to their plan for world domination.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Could Climate Alarmists be dupes in the

Consider. When it was global cooling - coal plants were the enemy. Now with warming - coal plants are the enemy. I'm beginning to detect a pattern. Perhaps James "Coal Trains are Auschwitz Trains" Hansen can tell us more.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The Tea Parties have gotten a lot of people's shorts in a knot. Check out this video:

And this response to it:

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In his column today, Leonard Pitts echoes a tired but familiar theme -- that because crazy people show up at Tea Parties, the movement is itself crazy, and because "conservatism" is reluctant to denounce the nutcases, all conservatives are somehow tainted:

...in the tea party movement, some conservatives finally meet a cognitive disconnect they simply cannot bridge.

A recent New York Times profile found the tea party movement to be amorphous and largely without an organizing principle other than its anger toward government and fear of a supposedly imminent dictatorship. Beyond that, tea partiers are an unwieldy amalgam of tax haters, global warming holdouts, illegal immigration protesters, secessionists, gun rights advocates, white supremacists, militia types and conspiracy theorists, all banging their gongs at the same time.

Like the liberal noisemakers who follow the World Trade Organization around, their lack of message discipline renders them -- that word, yet again -- incoherent. Like them, they have yet to figure out that to protest everything is to protest nothing.

Make no mistake: Every movement or marginalized people has its fringe extremists who threaten to define the whole. Thus, moderate American Muslims are periodically required to rebuke Islamic terrorists, environmentalists are obligated to rebuff eco-terrorists and moderate African Americans are expected to reprove Louis Farrakhan.

But conservatives, outside of a few integrity-driven souls over the years, have not rushed to repudiate the crazies among them, even as the crazies have grown crazier and threatened to engulf the whole.

But I can't spend all of my time denouncing and repudiating everyone I disagree with. For example, last night's Pentagon shooter appears to have been a genuine loon, as well as a Rothbard libertarian, a marijuana advocate, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, a Bush hater, and more. But do I really have to "denounce" and "repudiate" him in order to have credibility? Of course I denounce him, but
are he and people like him really threatening to engulf "the whole"? Whose
"whole" might that be?

If we apply Pitt's standard to Pitt himself, why shouldn't he be held accountable, and forced to denounce and repudiate all crazies on the left? Not merely Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky, but people more recently in the news, like the protesters in Berkeley who say things like this:

"Take a look around you--ages, colors, gender," said Nancy Kato, assistant registrar at Boalt Hall, told the crowd. "All of us are united as workers, students and community members. Our movement is national and international."

Students spoke of emails and letters of encouragement trickling in from their peers and supporters in Moscow, Brazil and Mexico.

"They are going after public schools because they want our youth to join their wars and fill their prisons," Kato said. "We will not let the university or the bureaucracy or the police intimidate us. Tax the rich and the big businesses!"

In a demonstration closer to home, activists in Detroit are protesting in front of DTE Energy (the local power company), which they blame for the fact that power stolen from DTE caused a fatal fire:

In the wake of a fire that killed three young children earlier this week, some protesters Thursday called on DTE Energy to halt the shutoff of gas and electricity during the winter months.

"We want a moratorium from October to April," said Stacey Ross Streeter, a member of Detroit's Downtown Citizens District Council.

DTE spokesman John Austerberry said that isn't necessary.

"We offer protection for customers who are most vulnerable already," he said.

Streeter was among a few dozen protesters who gathered Thursday outside of DTE headquarters in downtown Detroit. The gathering was sparked by the Tuesday night fire that raged through a home on Detroit's west side and killed three children identified by the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office as Travion Young, 5, Fantasia Young, 4, and Salena Young, 3.

DTE had disconnected illegal hookups for gas and electricity hours before the blaze. Someone illegally reconnected the electricity and warmed the home with an electric space heater, which is being investigated as a possible cause of the fire.

There was an article about this yesterday. In December, the power was turned off at the request of a former resident, following which an illegal hookup was made. Then, after that was turned off, someone broke off the padlocks and hooked it up again, plugging in an electric heater. Seven kids were then left alone by their mother, a fire started, and three of them were killed. Despite the fact that DTE has a program to allow poor people power in the winter, no one apparently called them.

"We can't encourage customers enough to contact us if they're having problems paying their utility bills," said Scott Simons, a DTE spokesman, "but if we don't know about them, it's very tough."

Fire officials said the investigation is ongoing. Sylvia Young told WDIV-TV (Channel 4) that her landlord had supplied her with the space heater.

DTE had disconnected gas and electricity to the home at 3 p.m. Members of the utility's theft-investigation team removed the gas meter and double-locked the electricity meter, Simons said.

Less than four hours later, the home was engulfed in flames.

Seven children were home alone when the fire broke out, said Jarmar Taylor, 18, who lives nearby and said he rushed to the home when he saw flames bust through a front bay window.

Anton Mills, 20, said he lived in the house until December, after which the new family moved in. The property is a rental home that, as of March 1, was $637 delinquent in property taxes, according to City of Detroit records.

Keith Owens, Wayne County director of communications, said the listed owner is Darnell Jackson of Detroit. A woman answering the phone at Jackson's residence said he wasn't available for comment.

Today, the front porch of the home had turned into a makeshift shrine as people dropped off stuffed animals, balloons and candles.

LaTonya Jackson, 42, approached the home and blessed it, then bellowed scripture.

"DTE has got blood on their hands," she yelled. "DTE!"

Simons said a previous resident had DTE cut off services to the home Dec. 11. No one had asked for it to be restored since then, he said.

So where are the denunciations and repudiations?

Anyway, now that I have denounced and repudiated J. Patrick Bedell, I am feeling very morally sanctimonious, and therefore duty-bound to note an obvious connection to the Tea Party Movement that many analysts have missed. And I do mean connection; in this area, DTE supplies power to most of Southeastern Michigan, which means it is beyond dispute that a number of Tea Partiers are on the same fatal grid that murdered the children in Detroit. Moreover, many of them pay their bills on time, and this generates revenue for the same murderers who force people to steal power and who force mothers to leave their children alone in buildings with the illegal power they were forced to steal!

The Tea Partiers have blood on their hands! So who will be the first to denounce them?

AFTERTHOUGHT: Guilt by association really seems to be quite the rage these days.

The more members you have, the more members you have who can do something disastrous to your party's public image.

But are ordinary people that easily fooled? I'm optimistic about what Megan McArdle called "the rise of electronic media," because I think the more we are saturated with guilt-by-association, the less it will sting.

DISCLOSURE: As I've said repeatedly, it's time to confess:

I killed the kids at Columbine, and my collective guns regularly murder hundreds of children in Philadelphia. I have murdered millions of unborn babies. I tortured Iraqis at Abu Ghraib! I pulled the tube from Terri Schiavo! I also clubbed the baby seals, and probably helped Richard Speck murder all those nurses in Chicago in 1966.

(Oh, yeah, I also owned and transported lots of slaves. Lots and lots of genocide was committed by the "we." I am therefore guilty as charged!*)

Fox News is reporting that the bank owned by the family of Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias will fail.

Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias says things don't look good for the struggling bank his family owns.

Giannoulias told the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board Wednesday that it's likely the bank his father founded 30 years ago will fail.

Broadway Bank entered into a consent decree with regulators in January and has 90 days to raise about $85 million in new capital. The bank also has to deal with bad assets and improve its management.

Giannoulias touted his banking experience when he was elected Illinois state treasurer in 2006.

Unfortunately for Giannoulias it looks like it is already too late.

Democratic Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias spent 10 hours on Wednesday in eight interviews with Chicago print and broadcast outlets, taking questions about his family owned Broadway Bank. Giannoulias, 33, was a loan officer at the bank before he was elected treasurer in November, 2006.

If it is Illinois (and especially Chicago) the boyz at Hill Buzz have the best rumors around. Check this one out:

The rumor today in Chicago is that Alexi Giannoulias is going to be forced to step aside as the Democrats' nominee for the Senate race to fill Roland Burris' seat upon retirement. Not to "spend more time with his family", as slimeballs like this usually say, but because the criminal enterprise his family runs, the mob's bank, Broadway Bank, is collapsing.

It's coming out the Giannoulias family siphoned more than $70 million from the bank, to pay their back taxes, and to pretty much recreating the HBO series "The Sopranos", all around Chicago.

There is absolutely nothing good we can say about Alexi Giannoulias, except that it's nice he's not a twin, and great he's fathered no children. Perhaps, dare we dream, his genes will end with him.

Former Senator John Edwards is going to be indicted soon, for misappropriation of campaign funds. We wonder if an indictment of the Giannoulias Family is all that far away: how can they just take $70 million out of a bank? That has to be illegal.

How can Democrats think they can run this man for the Senate when the mob bank his family runs is going under, and all its secrets will be revealed once the government seizes it?

Things sure will get messy, once taxpayers realize government funds will be going directly to Giannoulias, to bail his family out...with tax dollars also going to mobsters, since those are Giannoulias' clients...and they will be the ones the government bails out when it takes over Broadway Bank.

Not only will the White House own General Motors, but it could end up running the Chicago mob, too.

So other than the mob how is Illinois doing? Not so good.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has proposed cutting spending and raising taxes to deal with one of the biggest state budget crises in the nation, but his plan will likely be unpopular with some voters and lawmakers during a tough election year.

Illinois's deficit through mid-2011 is estimated at $11 billion to $13 billion--close to 50% of the expected $26.7 billion in available revenue for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. That is among the worst such percentages among states. Health-care and social-service agencies routinely wait three months or more for the state to pay its bills.

The state pension system also is the worst-funded in the U.S. Illinois borrowed nearly $3.5 billion last year to make its annual pension payment. State auditors estimate that the pension systems are underfunded by $62 billion.

The unemployment rate in Illinois is back over 11 percent. New data released today by the Illinois Department of Employment Security shows that non-farm payroll fell for the 23rd straight month and the jobless rate jumped to 11.1 percent, the highest it's been since 1983.

Fortunately The Madam who is speaker of the house (see Parliament of Whores) says the Democrats are not in crisis.

- Obama has to buy a Congressman's vote by appointing his brother to the Federal Apellate Court

- Charlie Rangel (D-Ghetto) has to step down from Ways and Means due to bribe taking

- Mary Landrieu (D-Mardi Gras) is the poster child for "Buy My Vote Please" on ObamaCare

- Congressional approval rating (Pelsoi's leadership) is lower than the outside temperature at the North Pole

- One DEM Congressman changed parties

- Congressman Massa (D-Blow Job) is leaving office having sexually harrassed a MALE employee

When Ali Babba is the Treasurer of Illinois and wants to be governor you can see a party that has lost its way. And it is not like we won't have other thieves to contend with. As my grand pappy Max used to say about politicians, "they are all crooks". The question is are they bringing 40 thieves with them or 40,000?

I think this video is an excellent illustration of the errors of the Illinois crooks. "Never underestimate the mark." Or as William Burroughs liked to say: The Marks Are Wising Up.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

There's a lot of speculation here about the Pentagon shooting suspect who has been identified as "John Patrick Bedell" since Glenn Reynolds linked the original report. If the Freepers are correct, he may be a Lew Rockwell-following, gay, Obama-loving, pot-growing, Bush-hating 9/11 conspiracy theorist.

As to whose narrative this might fit, I have no idea.

MORE: Obviously, I cannot vouch for the integrity of any of the information at the links I found at Freeper, and by reciting and mentioning them here I am in no way implying that the person(s) to which they pertain is (are) necessarily the suspect.

There's a lot of information floating around on the Internet, and this illustrates that speculation is not without risks. I'm not speculating about anyone; only observing the phenomenon as it unfolds.

Regardless of what the shooter's politics turn out to be, unless there are others who helped him, he alone is responsible for his actions. Not Lew Rockwell, not the marijuana agenda, not the gay agenda, and not even the 9/11 conspiracy theorist agenda.

MORE: And if the accused turns out to be this guy (as some say he is), then Wikipedia is not responsible either!

AND MORE: Bush-hating Truther or not, it didn't take long for certain leftists to start calling the suspect (now reported dead) a "Tea Bagger" while pointing the finger at libertarians and the Tea Party movement.

If the same Bedell was a committed libertarian devoted in part to legalizing marijuana and in full to reducing government control over our lives, he might be a "teabagger" ideologically-speaking, for the Tea Party movement has sought to bring both libertarians and extremely conservative Republicans into the fold.If the same Bedell was a committed libertarian devoted in part to legalizing marijuana and in full to reducing government control over our lives, he might be a "teabagger" ideologically-speaking, for the Tea Party movement has sought to bring both libertarians and extremely conservative Republicans into the fold. But Bedell possibly having a teabagger attitude towards the government may not in the end be to blame for his alleged, attempted rampage. It may just be that he was nuts all along.

MORE: Here's a YouTube video in which J. Patrick Bedell describes his "Rothbardix" "information currency" software.

Will anyone blame the late Murray Rothbard? Or Linux?

UPDATE: Thanks to Memeorandum for the link.

Glenn Reynolds quoted part of a remark by Ann Althouse which made me wish I had voted for Barack Obama:

...Barack Obama won the presidency by holding himself out as powerfully virtuous, as the man who would change the way Washington works. When I voted for Obama, I didn't think that was going to be the set-up for sarcastic, world-weary jokes.

While this may sound strange, I believe that had I voted for him, I'd have felt reinvigorated, and I would have taken new pride in my worn-out, world-weary sarcasm. It would have felt like.... an entitlement. I would have felt special! Like, you know, a genuine dissenter from the ranks or something.

Instead, all I can do is lamely say "I told you so" like hordes of conservatives who have no regrets.

Yawn....

Having been wrong and having regrets makes life interesting. Having been right is irritating and boring.

What really hurts is to think of how much fun I would have been having by now had John McCain won. He'd be getting it from liberals and conservatives, and I would be able to get all defensive about my vote, defending McCain against the sarcastic, world-weary jokes by countering them with more sarcastic, world-weary jokes.

And the coolest thing of all is that because McCain is a white guy, none of the sarcastic, world-weary jokes would be racist!

Except I'd still be racist for having voted for McCain in the first place, wouldn't I?

What this means is that, speaking purely from the viewpoint of a sarcastic, world-weary daily blogger, the most overall fun result for me would have been for McCain to win after I voted for Obama. Seriously, if you were able to pick an ethos, that's about as clear as a conscience as a blogger can get!

But we can't have everything, can we?

Can people be taxed into adopting better health habits?

It's a fascinating idea, and it seems to be the primary goal of Philadelphia's Mayor Michael Nutter, who wants to impose unprecedentedly high taxes on soft drinks:

Mayor Nutter, balking at cutting "core services" and running out of ways to raise money, is expected to balance next year's budget with a steep tax on sugary drinks and a $300 annual residential trash fee, sources familiar with the plan said yesterday.

City Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. said he anticipated a 2-cent-per-ounce tax on sweet drinks as part of Nutter's 2010-2011 budget, to be presented tomorrow. That's $2.88 on a 12-pack of soda cans

Nutter would not comment on details of the budget yesterday, but did say: "The major tax sources are not really available."

That's because the property tax still relies on notoriously inaccurate and inequitable assessments that are at least two years away from being fixed; the city raised the sales tax 1 percentage point last year; and Nutter and others remain opposed to increases in income or business taxes, whose receipts have plummeted in the slow economy.

Combined, the trash fee and soda tax likely would raise enough revenue to wipe out the city's 2010-2011 deficit, which has been projected at $125 billion to $150 million.

Can't wait for the high fat tax to implemented on a pizza, burgers and hot dogs next. This is all getting a little too out of control, food and liquids are a necessity and the government has no business increasing prices on what they decide is the healthier or non-healthier choice.

Imagine that.

The best way to fight this sort of thing might be to remind them that the policy will hurt the city economically. On that point, those affected in business and labor seem to agree:

"Philadelphians already pay the highest sales tax in the state, and this would increase the cost of the beverages they enjoy by as much as a staggering 100 percent," said Tony Crisci, legislative counsel of the Pennsylvania Beverage Association (PBA). "This proposal is unfair to Philadelphians, who already are being gouged by the city's high taxes. And, without question, this plan could have a significant impact on the family-sustaining jobs offered by our industry."

Danny Grace of Teamsters Local 830 in Philadelphia agreed.

"If the government drives up the cost of the products our members deliver, there will be a direct impact on jobs," said Grace. "The math is simple: Less production and distribution will mean fewer jobs available for those who work in an industry that actually has ADDED jobs throughout the ongoing economic downturn. In these economic times, Philadelphia can't afford to bleed anymore middle-class jobs."

Crisci noted that the beverage industry in Philadelphia is strong, and, in fact, added jobs at a time when Philadelphia's unemployment rate climbed to more than 10 percent. All told, about 2,000 Philadelphia-area jobs are directly attributed to the beverage industry.

"It's hard to understand why anyone would lay out an idea that not only would heap new burdens on Philadelphians when they can least afford it, but also put the city at a competitive disadvantage, especially in these still challenging economic times," Crisci said.

The mayor claims this new tax plan will help make the city's residents healthier. But Philadelphians aren't falling for it. They know that taxes don't make people healthier; diet and exercise do that.

Besides, the City of Philadelphia cannot handle the money it now has. Any more just goes down the rat hole. A new program like a soft drink tax will almost certainly cause the hiring of more administrative staffers, whose salaries will eat a good chunk of whatever increased revenue is raised.

Even the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which ought to be a cash cow, manages to spend it all on administrative salaries, while being completely unaccountable. But that sort of thing so typifies big cities and government in general that it's unremarkable.

Over a year ago, the number of government employees surpassed the number of jobs in manufacturing and construction, and Fabius Maximus posted this graph:

If you ask me, that looks unhealthier than soft drinks. If a graph like that illustrated a similar imbalance inside a patient's body, you can be sure that a responsible doctor would want to do something about the serious and growing problem.

The problem is that it's the serious and growing problem -- government -- which wants to be our physician. Those who eat out our substance are telling us that we are sick, and that if we just give them even more money, we will then be healthier.

Sorry, but that's too much like saying that cancer cures cancer.

MORE: Here's another unhealthy looking chart which shows the average compensation of the Federal Civilian workers versus the U.S. private sector workforce (as of 2004):

(Copied from a CATO article titled
"Federal Pay Outpaces Private-Sector Pay.")

It used to be that government jobs paid less (which they should, for a variety of reasons).

Are we getting what we pay for?

UPDATE: My thanks to Fabius Maximus for linking this post, and more importantly, for updating the post I linked with additional data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

* Good-producing employment peaked in 2000 at 24.6 million.
* Since then the number of goods-producing workers has dropped by 1/4, to 18.6 million.
* In 2007 for the first time both groups were equal (22.2 million).
* Since 2007 private sector employment has dropped by 7.0 million, over 1/2 of that from good-producing industries.
* Since 2007 the number of government employees has risen by 2% (by 326 thousand).

I am very sorry to see that Jon Swift -- whose real name was Al Weisel, and who described himself as "a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture" -- has died.

I can't help notice that his blogging seems to have stopped not long after the inauguration of Barack Obama. I don't know whether that was a coincidence in his case, but for me it was really, really difficult (and sometimes still is) to make the transition without succumbing to total burnout. (The rip-saw effect of Obamamania versus Obama Derangement Syndrome can lead to bigtime Obama Burnout Syndrome. And being sick of Obama is a hell of a way to start a blogger's day.)

Jon Swift is being remembered by a number of bloggers, including Ann Althouse. who liked him even though he enjoyed antagonizing her:

...He died after 2 aortic aneurysms, which happened as he was on his way to his father's funeral, according to a comment on his blog -- which hadn't been updated in about a year. The comment is (apparently) from his grieving mother.

Swift was a terrific writer. He liked to antagonize me, but that means nothing now, other than that I'm honored to have provided some raw material to a fine writer.

It's sad, and he'll be missed.

The New York Times linked to my article Climate "Science" Is Ruining Everything. My article was about how the government gets the science it pays for.

I discussed drug war "science" and how it relates to climate "science". The NYTs thinks that the problem with climate science is not dodgy science but a failure to communicate on the part of climate scientists. I'd have to agree.

And so I responded to the NYTs piece thusly:

There is no doubt (in the science community - sceptics and warmists alike) that a doubling of CO2 (absent any other effects) will produce a 1 deg C rise in the Earth's temperature. Not very exciting.

Where it gets tricky is the water vapor amplification factor. Warmists claim it will increase the warming from CO2 by 1.5X to 3 or 4X. i.e. from 1 C from CO2 to 1.5 to 4 C for CO2 plus water vapor. The sceptics say the amplification is around .5 i.e. the 1 C from CO2 is reduced to .5C.

Now the warmist community (as well as the sceptics) admit that the effects of water vapor are the least understood part of climate science. So we are fed alarms based on what is currently incomplete science. And you know what? None of the scientists in the warmist camp explain this to the public.

There is your communication failure.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

From the comments in a New York Times piece on why so many engineers in the Muslim world are terrorists:

In every field
and every endeavor
there are those who are just
as crazy as ever.
But even the crazy
see one thing clear:
If you want something done,
call an engineer.

Robert Marino

H/T #2 Son via e-mail

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Clayton Cramer is expounding at length on why pot should not be legalized. He cites a government funded study. In the comments I found this:

13. Roux's Papa:

Well - having used pot twice in my life and the second time experiencing a debilitating effect that would truly alarm a vibrant young man and exactly at the wrong time. So, I got religion and prayed that everything would be alright and my deal with GOD was that I would never use it again. GOD kept his end of the bargain and I kept mine. The point of this story that happened almost 45 years ago is that I am not a user or purveyor of the substance. However, I strongly favor legalization and as for the STUDIES? Hey, you offer grants to study something - My life depends on continuing research grants - I love money - I want to please you - tell me the desired results that you are seeking - deliver money and I will deliver the desired results.

After the Global Warming fiasco, I find it extremely pathetic that members of the general public would continue to fund,with their tax dollars, and believe scientists. The Scientific Community ranks alongside Politicians, Lawyers and Ponzi Schemers in trustworthiness. Any test or study can be manipulated to deliver desired results. The results in this article are like all other Scientific?!!? research??!!?? another desired result produced for $$$$$$$$. In all things SEEK THE TRUTH by following the $$$$$$ MONEY $$$$$$ TRAIL !!$$$$$$

Note that Eric has also taken a look at the "scientific" report cited from a slightly different point of view. Have a read.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Back in the good old 1930s, when radio and talking movies were the rage, few Americans thought to question the voices of authority which issued sanctimonious pronouncements in stentorian tones. "Marihuana" was addictive and dangerous! And all of our youth were at risk to dope peddlers in schoolyards!

What the authorities wanted most of all was to drum up public support for federal legislation to "stamp out this scourge." A massive propaganda campaign was spearheaded by Federal Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger, who testified at congressional hearings that marijuana caused insanity, and who wrote a truly amazing piece titled "Marijuana -- Assassin of Youth" which posited that the weed could turn your kids into psychotic murderers. This was precisely the plot of the now-classic 1936 exploitation film Reefer Madness:

And of course the rampant, media-fueled hysteria all culminated in the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, but because marijuana still did not disappear, the law was expanded to include draconian penalties in the 1940s and 1050s.

Forgive my nostalgia, but I love this stuff.

I don't know whether it's a coincidence or not, but now that people are so sick of these silly and unconstitutional laws that public sentiment has turned against them, there seems to be a revival of the old "reefer madness" meme. A much-ballyhooed recent Lancet study shows a correlation between prolonged marijuana use and the development of psychoses, and it wouldn't surprise me if people started claiming that the 1930s hysteria was actually not hysteria at all, but a form of wisdom. (Would that be Neo-Reefer Madness?)

The Lancet study is a regurgitation of past research:

LONDON -- Using marijuana seems to increase the chance of becoming psychotic, researchers report in an analysis of past research that reignites the issue of whether pot is dangerous.

The new review suggests that even infrequent use could raise the small but real risk of this serious mental illness by 40 percent.

Doctors have long suspected a connection and say the latest findings underline the need to highlight marijuana's long-term risks. The research, paid for by the British Health Department, is being published Friday in medical journal The Lancet.

"The available evidence now suggests that cannabis is not as harmless as many people think," said Dr. Stanley Zammit, one of the study's authors and a lecturer in the department of psychological medicine at Cardiff University.

The researchers said they couldn't prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis, a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known.

There could be something else about marijuana users, "like their tendency to use other drugs or certain personality traits, that could be causing the psychoses," Zammit said.

Does it matter to anyone that prison is a more dangerous consequence than schizophrenia?

Anyway, where it comes to statistics, I am always skeptical. I am sure that the right-kind of number crunching could demonstrate that lot of things people don't like are statistically correlated with other social ills. Abortion might correlate with depression (I'd be surprised if it did not), and homosexuality with AIDS. Does that mean that we should imprison these people to save them? I don't think so.

As a result of these recent reports, though, a number of people are changing their minds. Clayton Cramer no longer supports decriminalizing marijuana, and while I understand his reasoning, it would not matter to me if actual causation were irrefutably demonstrated, because I don't think the government has the right to prevent adult citizens from ingesting whatever they want -- including addictive drugs like heroin, or even deadly poisons like arsenic or strychnine.

As I keep saying, freedom has its costs.

...if there is one lesson I have learned from freedom, it's that there are risks and downsides, and you have to take the good and the bad.

Economies do not always thrive. The American people are acting like a bunch of babies. (Or whiners as Phil Gramm said). Like gays clamoring to shut down the bathhouses once they got AIDS (which some did).

Hedonism, the irresponsible fast lane of freedom, is a high risk activity -- whether economic, sexual, or chemical. You cannot have freedom without allowing it, and people are going to get hurt. Ditto, legal guns.

The problem is, no one wants to hear this.

Beyond that, the more the government intervenes (as they did in this economy), the greater the demand for more intervention when intervention fails, which it inevitably will.

True conservatism (at least, the old fashioned kind) involved allowing freedom and encouraging -- not mandating -- responsibility. It's AYOR (at your own risk) stuff, and it's not for children.

Failure in all these things has to be allowed, but the voters want safety nets and will not allow it.

There's tragedy in this.

Politically speaking, individualism is so unworkable as to be a form of madness.

(I don't doubt that individual resistance to the communitarian impulse could be correlated with insanity....)

MORE: Sean Kinsell has a great piece about the government as an instrument of collective will:

Yes, the federal government is an instrument--"expression" sounds weird to me there--of our collective will. That's exactly why it should be smaller. Americans have principled disagreements over a lot of issues. Getting together and talking about them can help establish goodwill and make things less contentious, but that doesn't mean we're ever going to be able to agree on most of them. Whatever you want to say about the air, state power would be better used if it were contained as much as possible. Competition and the right of exit allow citizens to make the trade-offs that best suit them; collectivism and central planning force citizens to adjust their aspirations to Washington's master plan. It's all very well to use the federal government to "address collective problems," but we still have to decide what those problems are and are not.

My worry is that it might have become ineradicably established.

As M. Simon made clear in his post about a recycled story, things are going worse than we thought in the Drug War (rapidly approaching its centennial).

The drug war is touted as one war worth fighting. Does anyone still believe that any more? And what is the lead in every single article? It is worse than we thought. Worse than ever before. Of course we get the same drivel in climate war news. It is always worse than we thought.

But when things are better than we thought, that also means we must redouble our efforts!

The implied threat is that we will lose. Either because we are losing because we didn't fight hard enough, or because we stand to lose what we have already fought to win!

All bases are covered. Americans don't want to lose wars. Attaching the word "war" to a social problem is the best way to ensure that government solutions will never go away.

Why do people fall for it so easily?

Justin pointed me to a fascinating Newsweek report about a new archeological find at Gobekli Tepe, in Turkey which turns conventional knowledge of early human on its head:

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago--a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture--the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember--the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

...Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.

Though not as large as Stonehenge--the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high--the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt's German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Gobekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford's archeology program. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Gobekli, Hodder--who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites--says: "Many people think that it changes everything...It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong."

While it would be a major error to conclude that everything we know is wrong (because a lot of it is right), the findings so far at Gobekli Tepe would seem to confirm the wisdom of healthy skepticism.

Meanwhile, I'm sure the new findings will be hotly debated by the guardians of the old consensus.

MORE: Author Tom Knox makes an interesting but somewhat fanciful case that Gobekli Tepe was a temple in the Garden of Eden.