What does it mean to be exceptional?

Bill Whittle uses facts and math to answer the question: Is America exceptional?

He looks at 4 measures:

1 Military
2 Economic
3 Scientific
4 Cultural

And he uses math and numbers. The horror. Watch it and see if you don't agree that there is something unique about America.

Then wonder what it takes for supposedly intelligent people to not see it.

And any piece that mentions Norman Borlaug is worth it.


Seriously. if all you get out of this is learning a bit about Norman Borlaug then that's enough.

So which side is using the paid goons?

Steven Crowder goes undercover to expose those sinister astroturfers using big money to push an undemocratic agenda.





Watch it all, as he explains what 33k a year gets you and where it comes from.

A question

Ed Morrissey:

what authority does the federal government have to set up commissars for private industry at all? This question becomes even more urgent when these “czars” have no accountability to or oversight from Congress, whether they choose to exercise it or not. Obama has more czars than Cabinet members now, and none of them required any confirmation from the Senate or answer to anyone but the President.

That's right, more czars that Cabinet members. It's almost like a shadow government.

Glen Reynolds shows a list of just who these people are and what they're czars of.

Change!

The Power & Danger of Iconography: The Resistance Steals Obama's Weapons

Bill Whittle shows the dangers and weaknesses of Obama's symbols.

Here's just a taste. Notice how Obama's still using his campaign symbol for all this official White House stuff? Just imagine if Bush had kept using his W for everything he did after his elections.

Again with the Turst

Glen Reynolds has some thoughts

My thought has been that — in order to avoid the perception of an Obama defeat — Congress would eventually pass some sort of watered-down bill, proclaim health care “reformed,” and declare victory. But the trust-level is so low now — with a majority of voters saying that it would be better if nothing passed at all — that I’m not sure that approach is viable. Once you don’t trust reports of what’s in the bill, you’re not likely to trust reports that “we’ve fixed all the problems.” Indeed, I think opposition to health care is largely about distrust of the entire political class, which is something you can’t fix with a few amendments.

...

Yes. And trust, once lost, is hard to regain. Just ask the Republicans . . . .

Part of Obama's appeal was that many people wanted to believe him, his promises of new politics, of transparency, of moving beyond petty partisanship was a salve to people that were sick of politics and wanted... Change.

Which was exactly why Obama said those things.

But, in the end, reality wins. Obama's promises are crumbling before his actual performance.

And once you start seeing the gap between rhetoric and reality, it's hard to unsee it.

More on the Healthcare Snake Oil.

Using logic? Well you're just a cynic.

Under the plan discussed at President Obama’s infomercial-esqe town halls, America would cut costs and expand coverage while avoiding rationing. Apparently, it’s paranoid to think that’s too good to be true.

Imagine you’re in charge of bringing pie to a company picnic. You’re planning to provide dessert for 100 people. Then, your boss says you need to hand out pie to 150. Fine, you say, I’ll make more pies. But — oh no! — you can’t, because you’ve also been told costs must go down. Okay, then you can cut slices of the existing pies smaller so everyone can have a piece. Wait! You can’t do that either, because you’re not allowed to ration (i.e., give less to more).

According to Obama, the health-care pie will be sliced into more pieces, of equal or greater size than available now, for less money — all because government is so much better than the private sector at managing large projects.

Emphasis added. Yes, a man that compars his health care plans to the Post Office in terms of competitiveness and service wonders why we don't trust him.

Such contradictions run through the talking points for Obamacare. Consider life expectancy. In his big speech before the American Medical Association in June, Obama insisted that “the quality of our care is often lower, and we aren’t any healthier. In fact, citizens in some countries that spend substantially less than we do are actually living longer than we do.”

...

Even greater disparities exist within America. Asian-American women, according to a 2006 study by Harvard’s School of Public Health, have a life expectancy of 87 years, while for African-American men it’s 69. The healthiest white people in America are the low-income folks of the Northern Plains states. Again, is our health-care system the biggest factor?

It's like people that don't understand parametric influence are trying to use whatever they can grab to justifty controling your life.

But here’s the kicker: The more life expectancy improves, the more we will spend on health care. Despite his professed outrage over charges of “death panels” and whatnot, Obama admits this. In an interview with the New York Times last spring, he acknowledged that oldsters are a “huge driver of cost.” The “chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health-care bill out here,” Obama explained. Which is why he advocated an advisory panel of experts to offer “guidance” on end-of-life care and costs. But don’t you dare call it a “death panel.”

...

When it comes to civil liberties, liberals are often distrustful of government power. But, for reasons that baffle me, they are quite comfortable with Uncle Sam getting into the business of deciding, or providing “guidance” on, which lives are more valuable than others. A government charged with extending life expectancy must meddle not just with our health care, but with what we eat, how we drive, how we live. A government determined to cut costs must meddle not just with how we live, but how we die.

"

Goldberg continues here

A point I didn't flesh out too much in my column seems to have struck a chord with a lot of readers nonetheless. Once the government decides it is in charge of health care, it has a say in everything you do (this, natch, was an argument of my book). Guns, diet, and cars are more relevant to our slightly lower life expectancy than insurance premiums and reimbursement rates, so of course Henry Waxman and Barbara Boxer and the rest of the gang are going to use their control over the health-care system as an excuse to go after those aspects of our lives. Why wouldn't they? They already want to influence those aspects of our lives now. Health care is really the only other policy area — after "the children" and global warming — that gives the State access to the most private spheres of our lives. Whenever someone says "it's a health-care issue" it's somehow supposed to trump traditional rights and liberties. That's what the push in the 1990s to make gun control a health-care issue was all about. That's why cameras once used to catch terrorists are now used to catch people eating in their cars in the U.K.

I've never heard anyone say something is a "health-care issue" as a preface to an argument for getting the government out of something.

It's like they're just looking for an excuse to control your life. For your own good, of course.

Turst, again....

There are smart and experienced people who say whatever the mess right now, the president will get a bill of some sort because he has the brute numeric majority. A rising number say no, this thing has roused such ire he won't get much if anything. I don't know, but this is true: If he wins it, will be a victory not worth having. It will have cost too much. It has lessened the thing an admired president must have from the people, and that is trust.

It is divisive save in one respect. The Obama White House has done the near impossible: It has united the Republican Party. Social conservatives, economic conservatives, libertarians—they're all against the health-care schemes as presented so far. They're shoulder-to-shoulder at the barricade again.

And more on that tricky, tricky math.

Prevantative care, a cost savings?

Think of it this way. Assume that a screening test for disease X costs $500 and finding it early averts $10,000 of costly treatment at a later stage. Are you saving money? Well, if one in 10 of those who are screened tests positive, society is saving $5,000. But if only one in 100 would get that disease, society is shelling out $40,000 more than it would without the preventive care.

Tricksy math!

That's a hypothetical case. What's the real-life actuality in the United States today? A study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, "if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100 percent success," the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country's total medical bill by 162 percent. Elmendorf additionally cites a definitive assessment in the New England Journal of Medicine that reviewed hundreds of studies on preventive care and found that more than 80 percent of preventive measures added to medical costs.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing illness. Of course we should. But in medicine, as in life, there is no free lunch. The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment -- that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them -- is simply nonsense.

Read the rest.


Here's a bit of a history lesson for all those that complain about the "uncivility". Just a few examples of the protests that took place under the last president.
President as National Socialist, then and now


It's kind of hard to sell a product when you don't know what it acutally is.




Plans? What Plans?

Remember how Bush was supposed to be the idiot who went into Iraq without a plan, while Obama was supposed to be the cool methodical one? But Reich is admitting that despite all the Administration hoopla, there’s still no plan. Or, possibly, that the White House has a plan, but won’t tell us what it is. And yet the people who don’t want to see a bill — some bill, doing who-knows-what — rammed through in the dead of night are somehow the ones who are ignorant and being manipulated. Right.

Hope for Rights?

Maybe there is some hope

SCENES FROM A NEW AMERICA: So I dropped the girls off at a movie, and — since the Insta-wife was lunching with her mom — stopped at a Sonny’s Barbecue for lunch. A man — late 40s, big, with a wife and a daughter — came in with an empty holster on his belt. As he sat down at the booth next to mine, the manager came by and asked him if he’d left his gun in the car. Yes, said the man, who had a permit but thought he wasn’t allowed to carry in restaurants in Tennessee.. Well, they’ve changed the law, said the manager, and if you want to go get it that’s fine with us. It’s legal now, and I’m happy to have you carrying — if somebody tries to rob me, it’s two against one.

The man stepped outside and returned with a Springfield XD in the holster, chatted with the manager for a bit about guns, and then sat down and had lunch with his family.

Glen continues with more examples.

One of the goals of gun-controllers over the past several decades was to “denormalize” gun ownership, stigmatizing it instead as something deviant and suspect. It appears to have failed.

Says Uncle has some thoughts on the trend against demonization.

More states have concealed carry than don’t. AWB not renewed. And quite a few other pro-gun victories. People seem more friendly to gun owners. And people who have never shot before want to go shooting. Issuance of handgun carry permits is at a record high.

I’ve often attributed it to grassroots activists who, with Al Gore’s internets, seem to have gained a knack for working together. But I’ve also realized something else is having an influence. Cable/satellite TeeVee. In a recent episode of Mythbusters (posted earlier about some safety concerns), Jamie was pulling out a .50 caliber and made a comment about how if you were a gun enthusiast, the 50 caliber was awesome. Then, the show Timewarp did an episode on automatic weapons.

All kinds of educational programs on cable TeeVee deal with weapons and guns. Mail Call, Timewarp, Mythbusters, Tales of the Gun, and there are even hour long shows devoted to the history of a particular gun. People didn’t have this stuff piped into their homes 30 years ago. Now, they do. People became acclimated to guns instead of afraid of them. And people see them and realize what gun nuts knew all along: guns are fucking cool. And when handled appropriately, they’re safe.

The gun control movement depends on ignorance and lies. Look at their muddying of semi-auto versus auto, their creation of "assault weapons" based on cosmetic features. They depend on you staying ignorant and afraid. Knowledge and experience is the best way to fight it.