“
A tag fell off the underside of my chair today. Here is what it says:
“Notice: This article is manufactured for use in public occupancies and meets the flammability requirements of California Bureau of Home Furnishings Technical Bulletin 133. Care should be exercised near open flame or with burning cigarettes.”
I’m trying to figure out who this warning would help.
First off, the person would have to be lying on the floor. With his head under the chair.
And not on his stomach. On his back. Staring up at the underside of the chair.
Then he’d have to be on the verge of smoking. Not already smoking, because that would be too late. He’d have to be contemplating it.
Then he’d have to be able to read. Not necessarily a given for a guy who spends his spare time with his head lodged under a desk chair.
Then there’s the biggest problem: The warning doesn’t tell the person NOT to smoke. It just says that “care should be exercised.” That’s a lot of discretion to give to a guy who’s already made the decision to smoke with his head lodged under a desk chair.
I’m thinking someone at the California Bureau of Home Furnishings wasted a lot of his time trying to protect a guy that Darwinian law is trying push out of the gene pool.
I’m rooting for Darwin.
” —I’ve been reading the blog of Stephan Pastis, the cartoonist who draws Pearls Before Swine. It has both its serious moments and bits like this, which crack me up.
The 100 most-read Bible verses at BibleGateway.com
John Cassidy of The New Yorker explains what they are doing:
The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment to help provide health coverage for the vast majority of its citizens. I support this commitment, and I think the federal government’s spending priorities should be altered to make it happen. But let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t.
Many Democratic insiders know all this, or most of it. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it (and many other Administrations before that) is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind. At some point in the future, the fiscal consequences of the reform will have to be dealt with in a more meaningful way, but by then the principle of (near) universal coverage will be well established. Even a twenty-first-century Ronald Reagan will have great difficult overturning it.
That takes me back to where I began. Both in terms of the political calculus of the Democratic Party, and in terms of making the United States a more equitable society, expanding health-care coverage now and worrying later about its long-term consequences is an eminently defensible strategy. Putting on my amateur historian’s cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted. But as an economics reporter and commentator, I feel obliged to put on my green eyeshade and count the dollars.
So, to sum up, in the name of an abstraction (“making the United States a more equitable society”) and because it fits their “political calculus,” Obama and Nancy Pelosi are planning to impose upon the country a massively expensive burden that can never be lifted. And they’re lying to us about it (“some subterfuge is historically necessary”).
Cassidy is for ObamaCare. Imagine what he’d say if he were against it.
“Now, jail isn’t a certainty; depending on the infraction, fines are also an option. And, looked at another way, all this really means is that the government continues to retain the authority to lock up those who don’t pay their taxes. But still, this is a stark reminder that when liberals talk about “health care as a right,” what they really mean is “health insurance as a requirement.” —
No Health Insurance? Go Directly to Jail. - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine
It’s the last sentence that is astonishingly right. This debate began as a discussion of health care as a right. But the legislation winding its way through the system isn’t about that—it’s about health care as a requirement. As a mandate. As an obligation. It’s not a right to health insurance; it’s the loss of the right not to buy insurance from insurance companies.
I hate the idea of government-provided health care, but in many ways that seems preferable to the product we’re getting. Once again, the Democrats sold out their principles and managed to find something worse than what they originally promised.
(via jeffmiller)
Here’s my tip: start with next to nothing. It makes the gains so much easier.
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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), laments that “it makes news when Democrats and Republicans do something of substance together and that truly is a shame.” From cable TV news channels, you get the impression of a country not so much politically divided as verging on civil war.
Here’s a solution to that problem: Stop watching cable TV news channels and listening to politicians. Using them as a gauge of how divided we are is like using the National Hockey League to estimate the level of violence in America.
Most Americans aren’t rabid liberals or fanatical conservatives. Gallup recently found that more people call themselves conservative than liberal or moderate. But other polls contradict it. According to a 2008 survey by the National Opinion Research Center, when you give them more options—extremely liberal, liberal, slightly liberal, moderate, slightly conservative, conservative, or extremely conservative—you find that the largest ideological group is moderates, with 37.3 percent compared to 34.5 percent for the three conservative groups combined.
Add up the moderates and those who are only slightly liberal or slightly conservative and those who don’t know—those clustered in the middle of the road—and you’ve got about two-thirds of the citizenry. As political scientists Morris Fiorina of Stanford’s Hoover Institution and Samuel Abrams of Harvard put it, “the American electorate in 2008 is much better described as centrist than polarized.”
” — America Only Seems Polarized - Reason MagazineThe Double Standard About Bias in Journalism - Reason Magazine
237 millionaires in Congress - POLITICO.com -
Which is more shocking, 237 millionaires in Congress, or Joe Biden’s net worth of 27k?
Man Stabbed Self To Keep Job - November 3, 2009
Meet Aaron Siebers. The 27-year-old Denver man, a Blockbuster employee, was skateboarding yesterday afternoon when he fell and ripped his uniform pants. Due to work last night—and concerned about getting “written up” by Blockbuster superiors for not wearing his work-issued khakis—Siebers came up with a harebrained idea. Instead of just calling in sick, he stabbed himself in the leg and showed up at work claiming to have just been attacked by three Hispanic males. Siebers, who told cops he was assaulted as he walked toward the Blockbuster in Edgewater, had a deep stab wound in one leg and several other minor cuts on his face and stomach. As investigators began hunting for the assailants, they reviewed surveillance video from outside a Target store where Siebers claimed the attack occurred. The footage, however, showed no such assault. Confronted by cops, Siebers, pictured in the below mug shot, admitted that he had stabbed himself. He told investigators about the skateboarding accident, the resulting ripped pants, and how “he did not want to lose his job so he stabbed himself in the leg,” according to an arrest affidavit sworn by Officer Shawna Naumann. As a result, Siebers was named in a criminal complaint charging him with filing a false report and obstructing police, both misdemeanors.
“You Can’t Produce a Baby in One Month by Getting Nine Women Pregnant” —
Warren Buffett: New York Magazine
Indeed.
(In case you missed it in the metaphor, that’s why it is going to take some time for the economy to turn around.)