…are they losing it? I think that the researchers are confusing “science” with many of the modern self-proclaimed practitioners of it. I’m know that my faith in science is as strong as ever. My faith in institutions of it? Not so much.
The Health-Care Disaster
Thoughts on the failure of the Blue model from Walter Russell Mead:
Obamacare was supposed to be the capstone in the arch of a new progressive era. The Dems were going to show us all that government really does work. Smart government by smart people, using modern methods and the latest up to the minute research from carefully peer reviewed articles in well regarded social science journals can solve big social problems. Obamacare was going to be such a big hit that even the bitter clingers would have to put down their guns and their Bibles long enough to thank the Democrats for this wonderful new benefaction.
But even if the Supreme Court doesn’t pull the trigger and kill the law in June, the darn thing won’t fly. The public hates it, and the longer it’s on the books the less popular it gets. This isn’t like Social Security, a program the public fell in love with early on and still cherishes today. It isn’t like Head Start, which remains dearly beloved even though there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that it helps anybody other than the people it employs. Obamacare is only marginally more popular than the Afghan War; already its estimated cost has doubled and we all know these numbers are likely to continue to increase. Obamacare so far is a political flop and shows ominous early signs of being a policy misfire as well. The benefits don’t seem to measure up to the hype, more people are going to lose their existing insurance, premiums are going up and the impact on the deficit is going to be worse.
This is a horrible piece of legislation — as misbegotten and useless to its friends as it is menacing to its enemies. The question is: why? Why did the blues write such a bad law? Why, given a once in a lifetime chance to pass a program that Dems have longed to achieve ever since the New Deal, did they craft a sloppy mess that nobody understands and few admire, and then leave their law so unnecessarily vulnerable to constitutional challenge?
The answers tell us much about why blue progressive thinking is losing its hold on the body politic — and why blue methods generally aren’t working as well as they used to.
It can’t lose its hold fast enough for me.
Barack Obama
Race hustler. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. It wouldn’t even be surprising, if not for all of the fraud and lies about the “post-racial” president he would be four years ago.
[Update a few minutes later]
Merchants of Despair: the latest from Bill Whittle.
Cuban Health Care
Here we go again: the continuing media myth.
Earl Scruggs
The king of the five-string banjo has finger picked his last. Along with Lester Flatt, Chubby Wise and of course Bill Monroe, he invented a new American jazz form. And of them, he was the last to go. If there’s a heaven, let’s hope they get their own instruments, and not harps.
[Update a couple minutes later]
(Transplanted Brit) Andrew Stuttaford remembers him.
Here he is (via Alex Massey), playing his signature classic with Steve Martin, who has some thoughts here.
[Late afternoon update]
I should add that, with all respect to Lester Flatt, he wasn’t the pioneer that the others were — he was just in the right place at the right time. He is known primarily for the “Flatt lick,” which he didn’t invent, but did popularize, but as any bio will tell you, he didn’t want to move into the sixties, and he wasn’t a real flat picker — he really just played rhythm. It took the likes of Doc Watson, Clarence White, Dan McCrary, Norman Blake, Tony Rice (and others I’m probably leaving out) to catch the guitar up to the rest of instruments in the genre, in terms of virtuosity.
What Did George Zimmerman Say?
If this is true, it’s not good for the Narrative.
[Thursday morning update]
Did ABC News doctor the video to make it look like Zimmerman was uninjured?
[Bumped]
Ion Propulsion
My thoughts on the implications of Boeing’s new electric-propulsion satellites for space development, over at Popular Mechanics.
It’s Not Just The Mandate
ObamaCare is tyrannical with regard to doctors and insurance companies as well.
Martha Zoller Show
I’ll be on at 10:15 EDT tomorrow morning to talk about my PJMedia piece.
The White House/Media Cocoon
…and why it led them so far astray on ObamaCare. My latest is up at PJMedia.
[Update a while later]
ObamCare, and how nice people crush freedom:
…there’s always a good reason to take your freedom away — your health, the poor, your evil opinions, the lousy way you raise your kids — and never a reason to preserve freedom except the love of freedom itself. Thus, so often, the people destroying the American way of life are actually nice people who just want to help.
The paving stones of the road to perdition…