Free kibbles

HEALTH CARE:

That same fruitcake Florida congressman called Republicans "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals" and says they should bow down and kiss Obama's ring. That that last part is a paraphrase, but it's pretty accurate. Grayson compares health care in America to the holocaust. It's too bad to find out this guy is a nutcase. He did a great job questioning the Fed's inspector general and showing nobody has a clue what's going on at the Fed.

Medicare rations care, just like the Democrats' plan will."National coverage decisions (NCDs) are assessments issued by Medicare's medical staff that define who is eligible for new but often expensive treatments. Medicare then assigns medical products and procedures with "codes" that determine which regulated category they fall into. Finally, price "schedules" are developed by Medicare's staff each year to assign each unique code with its own updated payment rate. The process for getting a favorable code on a new product is a source of intense lobbying. It can make or break a technology."

Part 6 of Ann Coulter's liberal lies about health care.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Apparently a US diplomat exchanged words in private with an Iranian diplomat over lunch about Iran's nuclear program. The Obama teams calls these significant talks. The reporter says the Obama team is intentionally overstating their importance because nothing happened.

"The BBC's Jon Leyne in Geneva says the Americans seem to want to play up their importance, perhaps as evidence that President Barack Obama's so-called "hand of friendship" is generating a positive response.
Later, the representatives of Iran and the six powers agreed to hold further talks by the end of October, according to Iranian state television.
However, our correspondent says, overall the nuclear talks do not seem to have made much progress."

The talkers agreed to talk again later, after Iran further develops nuclear weapon technology. Yay. What a joke, and it's on us.

Iran to invite the IAEA to inspect its recently revealed nuclear plant some time in the future. This is all part of the ongoing delaying tactics Iran is using to buy time to develop the bomb. You can bet the inspectors won't be granted access to the part of the plant devoted to weaponization. Then the UN will have to meet for a few months. Then there will be more delays. Blah blah blah. Then BOOM.

Iran agrees to ship uranium to Russia for Russia to enrich it. Why not? It saves Iran some money and doesn't impact their development of nuclear weapons. This is a ruse to buy time. They could have agreed to this years ago.

MISC:

Exoplanet is so close to its sun that heat vaporizes rock which then cools and rains down as pebbles.

Depressing experience at a private preview of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story.

4.4 million year old ancestor or cousin of pre-humans presented.

Obama trying to corrupt online education with Federal money.

Hayek explains why he is not a conservative:

"It is that by its very nature [conservatism] cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. But, though there is a need for a "brake on the vehicle of progress,"[3] I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake. What the [classic] liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move. In fact, he differs much more from the collectivist radical of today than does the conservative. While the last generally holds merely a mild and moderate version of the prejudices of his time, the [classic] liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists.
...
Advocates of the Middle Way[4] with no goal of their own, conservatives have been guided by the belief that the truth must lie somewhere between the extremes - with the result that they have shifted their position every time a more extreme movement appeared on either wing."

Reason's analysis of Scarborough's book makes this point very well. I've often pointed out that liberals made their biggest advance in decades during the Bush administration by vacating the field of ideas. As the liberals vacated, the conservatives raced to the left to fill the void. Medicare Part D. No Child Left Behind. Bailout madness. Thanks to Bush and Rove, conservatism today has boosted the leftist advance. Obama is the result. Hayek understood that conservatives are liberals-lite.

"Let me return, however, to the main point, which is the characteristic complacency of the conservative toward the action of established authority and his prime concern that this authority be not weakened rather than that its power be kept within bounds. This is difficult to reconcile with the preservation of liberty. In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule - not merely by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced by them.[7] Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people."

This essay is full of wonderful observations which shed light on US policy. When Hayek says "socialist", he's referring to the modern liberal. When he refers to liberal, he means classic liberal or a libertarian.

A bunch of pictures of Obama with Blagojevich. Apparently Obama claims he only met Blago one time. I don't know if that quote is accurate or the context, but it's worth blogging the link anyway.

How can anybody defend Roman Polanski? Why should he be above the law? Liberals have shown once again that they hate the rule of law. They prefer the rule of men as long as those men are liberals. I still wonder why Switzerland suddenly arrested him. Polanski has a house in Switzerland. He's visited Switzerland many times over the last 30 years. Why arrest him now? There has to be some political motivation.

Jesus Camp leaders get kids to praise cut out figure of Bush. This is just twisted, just as liberals coercing schoolkids to praise Obama is twisted. The difference is Jesus Camp is a tiny, voluntary event. Government schools control virtually every child in the US by force.

Roving wiretaps legalized by the Patriot Act helped thwart New York terrorist plan. I'm all for the roving wiretaps, but not other parts of the Patriot Act.

Hot conservative women calendar. This cracks me up.

Cato launches downsizinggovernment.org.

Supreme Court to hear gun control case from Chicago.