Rhetoric during the 80s

Commentary » Blog Archive » Will Rewriting History Silence Conservatives?

Steven Hayward does us a public service by reminding us of what things were really like, with O’Neill saying, among other things, that “evil is in the White House at the present time. And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He’s cold. He’s mean. He’s got ice water for blood.”

To Hayward’s examples I would add a January 30, 1984, Associated Press story, which reported this: “Ronald Reagan has been a divider, not a uniter. He has divided our country between rich and poor, between the hopeful and the hopeless, between the comfortable and the miserable. He has not been fair and the people know it. The American people will reject four more years of danger, four more years of pain,’ [Thomas P.] O’Neill said.”

Ronald Reagan was, in fact, a deeply hated figure by liberals when he was president.

How I profited from the Tucson shooting

Within minutes of the announcement that a Congresswoman had been shot in Tucson, the web was awash in a flood of speculation about who the shooter would turn out to be, and what would turn out to make him tick. One of my facebook friends posted a link to the announcement along with his comment: "I bet the shooter gets all his news from Fox News."

So I posted a comment asking how much he'd be willing to bet. He suggested, "A nice dinner at a fancy restaurant."

Monday morning, he conceded that he had lost the bet. At my suggestion as to what I'd consider a "nice enough" dinner at a "fancy enough" restaurant, he mailed me a $20 gift card for Souplantation. (I was being nice, and so did not suggest Ruth's Chris, Gulliver's, or Yamashiro.)

Now what would have led me to make that sort of bet? I should point out I've been blessed with Dennis Prager's instinct for gambling. I could easily walk out of a casino with a million dollars in winnings, but I'd have to walk in with two or three million to gamble with. If I'm going to bet on something, I want it to be along the lines of Hideko Kawasaki and Ted Baxter.

My bet -- my willingness to take someone up on his bet -- was based on a difference in theories we held. My theory is that the people who watch Fox News -- and indeed, any of the news outlets -- are decent people, and are not being exposed to propaganda that is revving them up to go out and slay the evil opposition. In particular, the tendency to dismiss Fox News as "Faux News" or "Fox Noise" is part of an ongoing smear campaing, aiming to delegitimize the messanger because they can't handle the message. Because of this, I figured the shooter was no more likely than anyone else in the population to watch Fox News -- maybe a 10% chance. Not bad odds, but not quite enough to make me jump on the bet.

If we stipulate that Fox News viewers are predoinantly conservative, I note that conservatism (in contradistinction to liberalism) does not encourage people to think of themselves as victimized by others. There are other ideas I see as linked with conservatism and not liberalism, such as personal responsibility, being responsible for one's own actions, and the like. On balance, I think this is enough to have driven nutcases away from Fox News and other conservative outlets.

If a person sufficiently unbalanced to commit this sort of rampage follows any sort of news source at all, my theory is that the conservative message from Fox News (and Townhall and NRO) will drive such a person away. Far more congenial would be news outlets that give him permission to blame his troubles on Sexism, Intolerance, Xenophobia, Homophobia, Islamophobia, Racism, and/or Bigotry.

So I offered to take him up on his bet.

So far, my theory seems to be a good one.

Is Any Part of the Constitution Unconstitutional?

Sounds like an impossibility due to self-referential logic, but...
The American Spectator : Is Any Part of the Constitution Unconstitutional?

The 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for the direct popular election of senators, was enacted in 1913, at the height of the Progressive Era. Originally, the Constitution had provided for state legislatures to appoint U.S. senators, a realistic reflection that the Constitution was a compact of sovereign states. It meant that senators would not be focused on public campaigning; they could do what they were elected to do. They would represent the interests of the states that sent them -- not the people in the states, but the states as sovereign entities.

....

As the Tea Partiers educate themselves about what is good law and can stay, and what is bad law and must be purged, I would urge them to take a second look at the 17th Amendment and consider whether more democracy is what we want, or if it's really more checks on the voracious federal appetite for power that we need.

No, not unconstitutional. But maybe a bad idea.

Pfc. Manning = Mumia?

Jed Babbin argues that Bradley Manning, the Army private alleged to have provided WikiLeaks with hundreds of thousands of State and Defense Department classified e-mails, has become the left's "new face for the 'injustice' committed in America's name." Jed argues that Manning is perfect for the role because he enables leftists to indulge two of their pet views: that our justice system oppresses dissenters and that America, and by extension it secrets, is unworthy of protection. The fact that Manning is gay makes him an even more ideal "victim."

Power Line - The uses of Pfc Manning

The left has found a new face for the "injustice" committed in America's name: Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army private alleged to have provided WikiLeaks with hundreds of thousands of State and Defense Department classified e-mails. Manning is now the focus of a campaign that accuses his jailers of torture.

Liberal core values -- to the extent that liberals have any values at all -- proceed from two assumptions. First, that American criminal law must be unjust because people are not prosecuted -- or protected -- on the basis of their political beliefs. Second only to that, is that America -- and by derivation, its secrets -- are not worthy of defense.

The American Spectator : The New Mumia

The Discoverer of the Double-Helix Says Cancer Can Be Cured in the Near Future

If the FDA would get out of the way, that is.

“The FDA has so many regulations,” Dr. [James] Watson says. “They don’t want you to try a new thing if there’s an old thing that might work. . . . So you take the old thing, but we know cancer changes over time and we would really like to get it whacked early, and not late. But the regulations are saying you can’t do these things until we give you a lot of s— drugs,” he snorts. “Shouldn’t this be the patient’s choice to say I would rather beat the odds with a total cure rather than just to know that I am going to have all my hair fall out and then after a year I’m dead? . . Why should [FDA commissioner] Margaret Hamburg hold things up? There’s the cynical answer it gives employment to lawyers.”

The Discoverer of the Double-Helix Says Cancer Can Be Cured in the Near Future | John Goodman's Health Policy Blog | NCPA.org

More Palinoia

Media Matters Lies About Media Coverage of Sarah Palin North Korea Slip - Big Journalism

"North Korean Allies" was very obviously a slip of the tongue, just like those made by any number of other politicians.

The abuse of the term "blood libel"

Sarah Palin has taken a lot of heat for "misunderappropriating" the term "blood libel". Team Sarah Points to Even More Recent Uses of ‘Blood Libel’ - By Jim Geraghty - The Campaign Spot - National Review Online

Because of the numerous earlier uses of the phrase on both sides of the aisle, with no discernible objection or controversy, it is easy to conclude that voices driven to great outrage by Palin’s use of the term are just looking for any old excuse to be outraged.

Indeed.

Morality in Six Dimensions

The Science of Libertarian Morality - Reason Magazine

Rather than a five-dimensional morality scale, maybe there's a sixth scale that's been overlooked.

In his earlier work, Haidt surveyed the attitudes of conservatives and liberals using what he calls the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, which measures how much a person relies on each of five different moral foundations: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Typically, conservatives scored lower than liberals on the harm and fairness scales—that is, they gave those issues less weight when making moral judgments—and scored much higher on ingroup, authority, and purity.

....

Haidt and his colleagues eventually recognized that their Moral Foundations Questionnaire was blinkered by liberal academic bias, failing to include a sixth moral foundation, liberty. They developed a liberty scale to probe this moral dimension. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that libertarians dramatically outscored liberals and conservatives when it came to putting a high value on both economic and lifestyle liberty. Haidt and his colleagues conclude, “Libertarians may fear that the moral concerns typically endorsed by liberals or conservatives are claims that can be used to trample upon individual rights—libertarians’ sacred value.”

Palinoia

Don Surber writes, Liberals ain’t that smart about Palin

Bad theories kill people

This piece looks at the result of a bad theory killing people: Commentary » Blog Archive » Incitement Kills — but Not Always Its Intended Target

The inquiry concluded that “doctors believed Abu Rahmah was sickened by phosphorous fertilizer and nerve gas. She was therefore treated with atropine and fluids, without Palestinian doctors realizing that she had in fact inhaled tear gas.”

Atropine is the standard treatment for poisonous gas. But it can be deadly if given in large doses to someone who hasn’t inhaled poison gas.

And this is where incitement comes in. Anyone who knows anything about Israel would know that the IDF doesn’t even use nerve gas against combatants armed with sophisticated weapons, much less against rock-throwing demonstrators.

But wild allegations of preposterous Israeli crimes are standard fare among Palestinians, and indeed throughout the Arab world. Israel has been accused of everything from poisoning Palestinian wells with depleted uranium to sending sharks to attack Egypt’s Red Sea resorts in order to undermine that country’s tourist industry.

In this case, the theory is "Some gassed by Israeli police will have been gassed with a nerve agent". Acting on this theory -- giving the specific antidote -- killed the victim.

A theory is not just idle woolgathering. It's an explanation which helps you bring order to otherwise chaotic facts. If you have a bad theory, you don't wind up with nothing, you wind up with the wrong answer.

The Lizard Brain (Wizbang)

The Lizard Brain (Wizbang)
Got a fight on our hands.

Heads up, folks. This is yet another "damn, just when you think Charles Johnson has gone as loony as humanly possible, he just doubled down again on crazy" pieces. Proceed at your own risk.

This might be a good time to buy stock in Patterico.

You see, he's just become the latest target of choice for Charles Johnson and his (rapidly-diminishing) gang of rump-swabs, bum-kissers, and other sycophants. And if history is any lesson, that means he's going to be one very hot property. (This is becoming known as the Robert Stacey McCain principle.)

That's when Patterico apparently got under the lizard's skin. He and Charles got into a Twitter fight that Charles didn't do so well in. And making Charles look bad (usually by letting him do all the heavy lifting on that front) tends to provoke Charles and his legion of sycophants. Charles decided that it was time to go after Patterico's job.

Patterico's co-blogger, Aaron Worthing, found it amusing and made a casual reference to the whole thing in the context of an entirely different topic. That casual reference was enough for Charles to latch on to and proclaim that Patterico, through his co-blogger, had threatened his life.

Here's the part Charles quoted:

"we just chopped off Charles Johnson's head and mounted it on a pike on our collective front lawn..."

Here's the full quote, for context:

Okay so metaphorically, we just chopped off Charles Johnson's head and mounted it on a pike on our collective front lawn, so why not go for Andrew Sullivan next?

Here's where Charles could use a little grammar lesson. A "threat" is the declaration to do a certain action. "To do," as in "in the future." Aaron used the past tense -- "we just did this." If anyone was threatened, it was Excitable Andy. And if Charles is still able to whine about what Aaron said, it's pretty self-evident that the action was entirely metaphorical. I have to wonder if Aaron had said "handed Charles his ass," Charles would talk about the grave threat to his buttocks. 

The Curious Case of the Martyrdom of Frances Fox Piven

The Curious Case of the Martyrdom of Frances Fox Piven - Big Journalism

Frances Fox Piven has a history of flame-throwing. She's better known as one-half of the infamous Cloward-Piven strategy wherein she and her husband published a theory detailing how people could overwhelm the system, break the system, and then get higher, guaranteed income. From magic.
Now that Piven's calls for violent revolution have landed her in the ... spotlight (you thought I was going to say crosshairs, didn't you! You vitriolic person!) and the media is circling the wagons.

Progressives who speak of Piven's threats remain silent on the threats (worse ones) directed at Sarah Palin, whom progressives targeted online in death threats on Twitter and pages devoted to her death on Facebook
Again, situational compassion. Death threats are unacceptable in any fashion against anyone, but you'd be hard pressed to find a single progressive blogger or MSM character who has, or ever will, condemn death threats against conservative women. That's because progressives happily sanction (when they're not issuing the threats themselves) such behavior against conservative women. But that's a post for another day.

Piven defends her remarks:

“That is not a call for violence,” Ms. Piven said Friday of the references to riots. “There is a kind of rhetorical trick that is always used to denounce movements of ordinary people, and that is to imply that the massing of people itself is violent.”

Come again? Nice semantics, but no dice. Piven specifically called for a violent uprising. Her verbatim quotes and quotes in her own voice are above. If she's second-guessing her remarks, the thing to do is to apologize for them, say she was wrong, and move on. Sadly, progressives don't operate in such a manner; as we saw after Arizona: when there was more evidence to tie Jared Loughner to the progressive-Communist movement, progressives double-downed on blaming the tea party. You have to give them credit: they are tenacious to a fault.
Instead, Piven insults the intelligence of conservatives, even her own ideology, by calling criticism of her remarks ungood and saying that she meant something else other than the very clear language which came from her mouth. How does she insult her own ideology? By dumbing down their discourse to mere rhetoric and making them defend falsehoods as truth.

Patterico's Pontifications » Glenn Beck’s Warning More Prescient Than Previously Realized, But Let’s Shut Him Up Anyway

With every passing day, the left attempts to recharacterize standard political rhetoric as violent — even as we learn more about real violence on the left . . . violence that Big Media has chosen to hide from our view.

Power Line notes how the New York Times is publicizing a letter from the Center for Constitution Rights which seeks to muzzle Glenn Beck for telling the truth about Frances Fox Piven. As Power Line notes, Piven has engaged in rhetoric supportive of violence; Beck has pointed that out; and this supposedly means that Beck is responsible for a handful of anonymous Internet threats on her life.
Meanwhile, people lie about Sarah Palin, creating an explosion of death threats against her, and that doesn’t rate concern from the Center for Constitutional Rights or the New York Times. (Thanks to Dana for that point.)

Socialized medicine articles

From National Review Online Socialized Failure by John C. Goodman

The health-care systems of all developed countries face three unrelenting problems: rising costs, inadequate quality, and incomplete access to care. A slew of recent articles, published mainly in medical journals, suggest that the health-care systems of other countries are superior to ours on all these fronts. Yet the articles are at odds with a substantial economic literature.

What follows is a brief review of the evidence. As other writers demonstrate elsewhere in this issue, the American health-care system has plenty of problems. But it is not inferior to other developed countries’ systems — and we should therefore not be looking to these systems, most of which are characterized by heavy government intervention, for inspiration.

Scott Atlas at the NCPA concludes:

Conclusion. Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.

Wall Street Journal

But the comparison between public and private plans is a false comparison. Private insurance and public benefits are not the same business. For all its warts, private insurance tries to manage care. Medicare is mostly about paying the bills presented to it.

Many who favor a public plan as part of comprehensive health-care reform dismiss the administrative "overhead" of private plans as having little or no value. Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark (D., Calif.), for example, insists that "most private plans are poorly managed." Contrasting them with the supposedly sleek and efficient Medicare program, he labels commercial insurance "the General Motors of medical care."

In fact, the administrative expenses of private insurance plans represent money well spent for their members. Here are four reasons:

First, private insurers must build provider networks. These networks can include high-value providers and exclude low-quality providers. Except for certain circumstances, including criminal acts, Medicare is forbidden from excluding poor quality providers. It lets in everyone who signs up. So one question to ask is, will the public plan have Medicare's indifference to quality -- or invest in the cost of a network?

Second, private insurers must negotiate rates. Medicare just fixes prices using a statutory and regulatory scheme. And anyone who imagines a public plan would be less costly than private plans must keep the following issue front and center: In the many procedure categories where Medicare's statutory price does not cover full provider costs, shortfalls are shifted to private payers who end up subsidizing the public program. So, will a public plan negotiate rates or simply use fiat as a means of gaining subsidies from private insurance?

Third, private insurers must combat fraud -- or go out of business. Indeed, these payers have every incentive to invest in antifraud personnel and strategies down to the point where return and investment are equal. But anyone who thinks that a public plan could serve as a "yardstick" for the private sector needs to consider Medicare's dismal record with regard to fraud, waste and other abuse.

....

Fourth, private insurers must incur the administrative cost of marketing. Medicare, of course, does not need to market. A public plan competing with other alternatives would have to market itself to the public, and this means tax dollars used to advertise against private plans. Or the public plan could "compete" by using heavily subsidized marketing channels not available to private insurers, such as Social Security mailings, welfare offices, unemployment check stuffers, and the constellation of government-funded "advocacy organizations."

The Logarithmic Effect of Carbon Dioxide | Watts Up With That?

The Logarithmic Effect of Carbon Dioxide | Watts Up With That?
The influence of increasing carbon dioxide is not linear, but logarithmic. The radiative forcing works out to be:

F = 233.6 + 2.94 log₂[CO₂]

More on the NY Salt Ban Bill

More on the NY Salt Ban Bill - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

The nanny state strikes again.

Last week, New York state assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn) introduced a bill to ban the use of all salt in restaurant cooking and impose a fine of up to $1,000 on violators. Like all legislators who introduce absolutely insane legislation, he says he is trying to "make sure that we bring awareness."
Oddly, Ortiz seems to be raising awareness about someone else's bill. In an interview on Fox News today, he described the bill as offering consumers the choice "to ask the waitress and chef to don't put any additive sodium in their items." He further explained that "the bill clearly state that the consumer will have the right to ask whether that item is being prepared with sodium and also to either minimize or maximize [and] will allow the chef and the consumer to have a conversation about what we can add or no add."
That is not what his bill says. It says:
That's no salt, anywhere in the preparation of the food. Period.

Ortiz is right when he says that the bill doesn't prevent customers from adding salt after the fact. But any serious cook will tell you that sprinkling on salt at the end of the process isn't the same as using it in cooking. Pasta water must be salted, for instance, to flavor the noodles themselves. Salting onions at the right moment is key to successfullycaramelizing them. Salting eggplant before cooking reduces bitterness in the final dish. And then there's brining and pickling, not to mention the vital importance of salt in the science of baking.

Violent Rhetoric Strikes Again

I Guess It Depends On Whose Ox Is Being Pitchforked... (Wizbang)

The big hysteria going around now is how some of the Congresscritters who voted for ObamaCare are getting threats now. I suppose I should put on my grown-up pants and denounce all threats of violence related to politics, but I have to admit I'm pretty much inured to them by now. Quite frankly, my threshold of perceived threats is pretty high.

....

I recall an effigy of Sarah Palin being hanged off some idiot's house.

I remember a parking lot full of vehicles Republicans had rented for "get out the vote" use in Milwaukee getting their tires slashed -- by some rather well-connected young Democrats employed by the Kerry campaign.

I remember Carlos Mantos, a Democratic Party official in Philadelphia, turning away Republican poll watchers, arguing that his district was 100% Democrat, so they had no business there.

I recall two armed Black Panthers stationing themselves outside another Philadelphia polling station, making sure that every white voter knew that The Black Man was gonna win.

I remember "community organizers" organizing protest "field trips" to the homes of top banking executives, making sure that all their people knew precisely where these people lived.

And I remember seeing actual protests featuring actual idiots armed with actual torches and pitchforks.

So, I'm not going to make an effort to condemn these threats of violence. Instead, I'm going to try a different tactic:

Hey, Democratic members of Congress. I don't speak for anyone, really, but I'm one of those largely moderate-to-right-leaning citizens and voters. I've been to a Tea Party rally, and I don't like what you're doing. But I don't care for these threats of violence.

Right now, those are coming from a very, very small portion of the larger group to which I belong. And the fact that they're a minority means you don't have to worry about huge mobs coming after you.

Yet.

The Coffin on Carnahan's Lawn Was Part of Prayer Vigil, Not Threat

The Coffin on Carnahan's Lawn Was Part of Prayer Vigil, Not Threat | The Weekly Standard

It occured to me, as it would to any honest person not interested in painting anti-Obamacare protesters as irretrievably violent, that the coffin in question was likely a prop in a political protest. The Left used countless flag-draped coffins for eight years to symbolize the war dead in protests. As recently as this week, the use of such coffins was reported as "Symbolic coffins mark anti-war protests in Washington."

....

As it turns out, my hunch was right, and a Carnahan spokesperson admitted as much to a St. Louis publication.

Communications Director Sara Howard said about a dozen people brought the coffin to Carnahan's private St. Louis residence. After holding a vigil they took the coffin away.

The coffin is one of a list of incidents and threats made toward Democratic lawmakers in the days since the health care bill was approved.

If it was part of a "vigil," it was not a threat.

....

The Carnahans and Carnahan spokespeople also told reporters the coffin was left on their lawn. Hoft, who was part of the demonstration, says this is not true. He says the coffin is now in a garage, and was taken away by protesters after their Sunday vigil.

But rhetoric from the right kills, don't you know?

L.A. County Red Light Cameras Drain Taxpayers, Not Drivers

L.A. County Red Light Cameras Drain Taxpayers, Not Drivers - Big Government
And it turns out citations they generate are not properly served, under California State Law. And can thus be ignored?

However, the real lunacy of this program is that Los Angeles Superior Court judges have ruled that the citations are unenforceable. The successful legal argument was that because a human being did not actually hand the citation to the offender that the citation was not properly served.

If the citation is not legally served, then there is no crime to enforce. So people in Los Angeles County can ignore the citations with no repercussions. That’s right — drivers actually do get off scot-free. Yeah, you get sent to a collections agency, but even then there is no civil suit possible because no crime has been committed because no service was performed. Nor can the agency report your lack of payment to a credit agency or the DMV. Meanwhile, dozens of other court cases have made the camera enforcement a farce statewide.

And so the contract for red-light cameras has been renewed...

Health Care Mythology

There has been much recent debate about the merits of traditional capitalization weighted indexing, the chief propents being Jack Bogle and Burton Malkiel, and newer “fundamental weighted” indexes advocated by the likes of Rob Arnott, Jeremy Siegel, and

Myth #1 Health Care Costs are Soaring

You cannot judge the “cost” of something by simply what you spend. You must also judge what you get. I’m reasonably certain the cost of 1950’s level health care has dropped in real terms over the last 60 years (and you can probably have a barber from the year 1500 bleed you for almost nothing nowadays).

Myth #2 The Canadian Drug Story

So, repeat after me. We could go with the Canadian system and have super cheap drugs, if only we can find a much bigger, more medically advanced, freer country right next to us to make miracle drugs for themselves, and then we insist that we pay them only a bit above their variable cost for our share, and then they in turn agree to let us be their parasite. Mexico, would you mind helping us out?

Myth #3 Socialized Medicine Works In Some Places

This is a corollary to the “Canada as parasite” parable above. The funny part is socialized medicine has never been truly tested. Those touting socialism’s success have never seen a world without a relatively (for now) free US to make or pay for their new drugs, surgical techniques, and other medical advancements for them. When (and I hope this doesn’t happen) the US joins in the insanity of socialized medicine we will see that when you remove the brain from the body, the engine from a car, the candy from the striper, it just does not work.

Myth #4 Socialized Medicine Is Better Because Their Cost/GDP For Health Care is Lower

* Measuring cost/GDP is inaccurate as it leaves out most of the cost, the cost of lower GDP growth. As one would expect, countries with larger government sectors (including socialized medicine) generally seem to experience slower GDP growth. People are great at measuring costs that they easily can look up, but those are not all the costs!

* If I’m right about the US subsidizing the world of course their costs would be lower!

Myth #5 A Public Option Can Co-Exist with a Private Option

The government does not co-exist or compete fairly with private enterprise, anywhere. It does not play well with others. The regulator cannot be a competitor at the same time. It cannot compete fairly while it owns the armed forces and courts. Finally, it cannot be a fair competitor if when the “public option” screws up (can’t pay its bills), the government implicitly or explicitly guarantees its debts. We have seen what happens in that case and don’t need a re-run.

Myth #6 We Can Have Health Care Without Rationing

Rationing has to occur. This sounds cold and cruel, but it is reality. A=A. If you have a material good or service, like health care, that is ever increasing in quality, and therefore cost, there is no way everyone on Earth can have the best at all times (actually the quality increases are not necessary for rationing to be needed, it just makes the example clearer). It’s going to be rationed by some means. The alternatives come down to the marketplace or the government. To choose between those alternatives you judge on morality and efficacy.

Myth #7 Health Care is A Right

Nope, it’s not.

Fox News Makes You Stupid? - Brent Bozell - Townhall Conservative

Fox News Makes You Stupid? - Brent Bozell - Townhall Conservative

Here's Exhibit A: Fox viewers were more likely to believe "Among economists who have estimated the effect of the health reform law on the federal budget deficit over the next ten years, more think it will increase the deficit."

That is misinformation? This question is not about facts at all. It's about the opinions of economists looking into a crystal ball, and PIPA's "economists" estimate that herding 35 million uninsured Americans into a new federal entitlement program is going to reduce the deficit. This assertion by liberals that ObamaCare would cut deficits isn't technically a "lie" -- yet. It is merely a patently ridiculous claim that doesn't acknowledge the real world. But somehow, Fox News viewers are tagged as the "misinformed" dummies, because their opinions are grounded in logic.

Here's Exhibit B: Fox viewers were more likely to believe "Most economists who have studied it estimate that the stimulus legislation saved or created a few jobs or caused job losses." Once again, this isn't about facts, but about economists and their estimation. The idea that there is "misinformation" afoot, and it's not about the incredibly nebulous and politicized notion of "saving or creating" jobs -- something so nebulous it can never be factually verified -- shows you the bias of the PIPA pollsters.

....

They're not alone in trying to nail Fox. In August 2009, an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll reported 72 percent of self-identified Fox News viewers believed the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79 percent believed it will lead to a government takeover, 69 percent thought it would use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75 percent believed that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly.

Sadly for NBC, this "misinformation" is already coming true: On Christmas, The New York Times reported "death panels" are back in the ObamaCare regulations, and we knew by midsummer that states were funding abortions through ObamaCare.

These polls identify the real liberal fear: that someone will trust Fox News to tell them things the liberal media try to crush and bury.

Jonah Goldberg on Marriage

HoBos - By Jonah Goldberg - The Corner - National Review Online

All I can say is that my position on gay marriage and civil unions is the same as it’s always been. I would prefer civil unions for all the reasons people following this debate already know, but I suspect that eventually the state(s) will require that we call these unions marriages and that the sky will not fall as a result. I think that delaying that eventuality would still be good for society, but I’m sympathetic to the impatience of gays who believe that justice delayed is justice denied.

....

Marriage is an ancient, bedrock institution born thousands of years before anyone even knew how to spell democracy. It is impossible to even guess how many other institutions it supports. As Friedrich Hayek noted, such institutions are the real storehouses of human knowledge: “[M]ore ‘intelligence’ . . . is incorporated in the system of rules of conduct than in man’s thoughts and surroundings.”

And that’s why I’m willing to wait a while longer — to muddle through as we sort all this out — before we radically redesign marriage. If Andrew is right about gay marriage, waiting is no doubt unfair to gays seeking to have their monogamous relationships legitimized by the state. But it was Edmund Burke — the champion of temperamental conservatism — who noted that sometimes we “must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes.” Indeed, the conservative must point out that the beaches of history are littered not only with the human wreckage of bad ideas rushed out too quickly, but with the wreckage of good ideas rushed out too quickly as well.

Althouse: "History tells us" something that history doesn't tell us, say sociologists stumbling to protect Frances Fox Piven.

Althouse: "History tells us" something that history doesn't tell us, say sociologists stumbling to protect Frances Fox Piven.
Among things Ann Althouse notes is:

...vigorous debate about Piven's ideas is really important, but it better be the right kind of debate by the right kind of people and most certainly not that terrible, terrible man Glenn Beck. She's very lofty and serious, so, while she should be challenged, she must be challenged only by lofty and serious individuals, and of course, Glenn Beck is not one.

Comments by Jim Lindgren include:

So let's see if this makes sense:

1. Fances Fox Piven advocates left-wing violence by the unemployed against the government.

2. Glenn Beck criticizes her for this, calling such talk dangerous.

3. Then an unstable unemployed left-wing radical engages in violence against the government.

4. Glenn Beck then repeats his criticism of Piven.

5. Finally, the Am. Sociological Assn blames Glenn Beck for his criticism of Piven AND indirectly for the left-wing violence.

The logic of the Assn escapes me.

The Metrology of Thermometers

How do we take the temperature of a planet? How do we know the temperature to less than a tenth of a degree, when typical errors are on the order of a degree? Do we? The Metrology of Thermometers | Watts Up With That?

No, Charles Johnson, Glenn Beck Did Not Tell His Viewers to Shoot Anyone in the Head

No, Charles Johnson, Glenn Beck Did Not Tell His Viewers to Shoot Anyone in the Head: "
On Twitter, Charles Johnson excitedly says:

He links to a post, evidently written by an LGF user, which provides no context for the clip, but simply embeds it. Here is a screenshot of the entire post:

And here is the short and misleading video the post embeds:

Now, here is the context Charles and his blogger omit.
The full transcript is here. When you read it, you will see that the word “you” refers to the leftist politicians in Washington and their pals in the media, and “they” refers to their radical leftist friends — who, Beck warns, actually believe there must be violent revolution . . . and if they don’t get what they want, they may start one.
Beck is warning the comfortable pols that the people who put them in power aren’t going to be satisfied with seeing just a little of their agenda accomplished. They want it all. Because they are revolutionaries at heart — people who have called for violence and never repudiated it. And if they aren’t satisfied, Beck tells the pols, they will come after you. Violently.
You’re going to have to shoot them in the head. But they may shoot you.
Johnson wants you to believe that the “you” is Beck’s audience, whom Beck is inciting to violence. Nothing could be further from the truth.
But Charles Johnson doesn’t care about context or truth any more.
Now that this video has surfaced, expect it to spread like wildfire. Be prepared, with this post and the linked transcript, to rebut the lies.
"

A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists | Tim Radford

A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists | Tim Radford:

I wrote these 25 commandments as a panic response 15 or more years ago to an invitation to do some media training for a group of Elsevier editors. I began compiling them because I had just asked myself what was the most important thing to remember about writing a story, and the answer came back loud and clear: 'To make somebody read it.'
Ultimately, there's no other reason for writing. Journalists write to support democracy, sustain truth, salute justice, justify expenses, see the world and make a living, but to satisfactorily do any of these things you have to have readers. Fairness and accuracy are of course profoundly important. Without them, you aren't in journalism proper: you are playing some other game. But above all, you have to be read, or you aren't in journalism at all.
I wrote down what was in my mind and once I'd started numbering things, I had to go on. I got past 10, and then 20, and stopped guiltily at 25. I then didn't have time to reduce the text to a formal Ten Commandments. The 25 things got distributed among the Elsevier editors the next morning and then some time later I got asked to talk to some staff at Nature, so I used the same set of prompts, and one or two people asked me for copies.
I gave it the not-very-serious subtitle of 'manifesto for the simple scribe' and at around the same time, I realised that when stories that I had tried to write turned out wrong, it was because I'd broken one of my own rules. So I decided I might have written something quite useful, after all.
1. When you sit down to write, there is only one important person in your life. This is someone you will never meet, called a reader.
2. You are not writing to impress the scientist you have just interviewed, nor the professor who got you through your degree, nor the editor who foolishly turned you down, or the rather dishy person you just met at a party and told you were a writer. Or even your mother. You are writing to impress someone hanging from a strap in the tube between Parson's Green and Putney, who will stop reading in a fifth of a second, given a chance.
3. So the first sentence you write will be the most important sentence in your life, and so will the second, and the third. This is because, although you – an employee, an apostle or an apologist – may feel obliged to write, nobody has ever felt obliged to read.
4. Journalism is important. It must never, however, be full of its own self-importance. Nothing sends a reader scurrying to the crossword, or the racing column, faster than pomposity. Therefore simple words, clear ideas and short sentences are vital in all storytelling. So is a sense of irreverence.
5. Here is a thing to carve in pokerwork and hang over your typewriter. 'No one will ever complain because you have made something too easy to understand.'
6. And here is another thing to remember every time you sit down at the keyboard: a little sign that says 'Nobody has to read this crap.'
7. If in doubt, assume the reader knows nothing. However, never make the mistake of assuming that the reader is stupid. The classic error in journalism is to overestimate what the reader knows and underestimate the reader's intelligence.
8. Life is complicated, but journalism cannot be complicated. It is precisely because issues – medicine, politics, accountancy, the rules of Mornington Crescent – are complicated that readers turn to the Guardian, or the BBC, or the Lancet, or my old papers Fish Selling and Self Service Times, expecting to have them made simple.
9. So if an issue is tangled like a plate of spaghetti, then regard your story as just one strand of spaghetti, carefully drawn from the whole. Ideally with the oil, garlic and tomato sauce adhering to it. The reader will be grateful for being given the simple part, not the complicated whole. That is because (a) the reader knows life is complicated, but is grateful to have at least one strand explained clearly, and (b) because nobody ever reads stories that say 'What follows is inexplicably complicated ...'
10. So here is a rule. A story will only ever say one big thing. If (for example, and you are feeling very brave) you have to deal with four strands of a tale, make the intertwining of those four strands the one big thing you have to say. You may put twiddly bits into your story, but only if you can do so without departing from the one linear narrative you have chosen.
11. Here is an observation. Don't even start writing till you have decided what the one big thing is going to be, and then say it to yourself in just one sentence. Then ask yourself whether you could imagine your mother listening to this sentence for longer than a microsecond before she reaches for the ironing. Should you try to sell an editor an idea for an article, you will get about the same level of attention, so pay attention to this sentence. It is often – not always, but often – the first sentence of your article anyway.
12. There is always an ideal first sentence – an intro, a way in – for any article. It really helps to think of this one before you start writing, because you will discover that the subsequent sentences write themselves, very quickly. This is not evidence that you are glib, facile, shallow or slick. Or even gifted. It merely means you hit the right first sentence.
13. Words like shallow, facile, glib and slick are not insults to a journalist. The whole point of paying for a newspaper is that you want information that slides down easily and quickly, without footnotes, obscure references and footnotes to footnotes.
14. Words like 'sensational' and 'trivial' are not insults to a journalist. You read what you read – Elizabethan plays, Russian novels, French comic strips, American thrillers – because something in them appeals to your sense of excitement, humour, romance or irony. Good journalism should give you the sensation of humour, excitement, poignancy or piquancy. Trivial is a favourite insult administered by scholars. But even they became interested in their subject in the first place because they were attracted by something gleaming, flashy and – yes, trivial.
15. Words have meanings. Respect those meanings. Get radical and look them up in the dictionary, find out where they have been. Then use them properly. Don't flaunt authority by flouting your ignorance. Don't whatever you do go down a hard road to hoe, without asking yourself how you would hoe a road. Or for that matter, a roe.
16. Clichés are, in the newspaper classic instruction, to be avoided like the plague. Except when they are the right cliché. You'd be surprised how useful a cliché can be, used judiciously. This is because the thing about journalism is that you don't have to be ever so clever but you do have to be ever so quick.
17. Metaphors are great. Just don't choose loopy metaphors, and never, never mix them. Subs on the Guardian used to have a special Muzzled Piranha Award, a kind of Oscar of incompetence, handed to an industrial relations reporter who warned the world that the Trades Union Congress wildcats were lurking in the undergrowth, ready to dart out like piranhas, unless they were muzzled. George Orwell reports on the case of an MP who claimed that the jackbooted fascist octopus had sung its swansong.
18. Beware of street cred. When Moses ordered his commanders to slay the Midianites he wasn't doing it to show that he was well hard. When he warned Pharaoh to let his people go he wasn't saying 'give us room to breathe, man, and Pharaoh's, like, no way feller!' The language of the pub or the café has its own rhythms, its own body language, its own signalling devices. The language of the page has no accent, no helpful signalling tone of irony or comedy or self-mockery. It must be straight, clear and vivid. And to be straight and vivid, it must follow the received grammar.
19. Beware of long and preposterous words. Beware of jargon. If you are a science writer this is doubly important. If you are a science writer, you occasionally have to bandy words that no ordinary human ever uses, like phenotype, mitochondrion, cosmic inflation, Gaussian distribution and isostasy. So you really don't want to be effulgent or felicitous as well. You could just try being bright and happy.
20. English is better than Latin. You don't exterminate, you kill. You don't salivate, you drool. You don't conflagrate, you burn. Moses did not say to Pharaoh: 'The consequence of non-release of one particular subject ethnic population could result ultimately in some kind of algal manifestation in the main river basin, with unforeseen outcomes for flora and fauna, not excluding consumer services.' He said 'the waters which are in the river ... shall be turned to blood, and the fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall stink.'
21. Remember that people will always respond to something close to them. Concerned citizens of south London should care more about economic reform in Surinam than about Millwall's fate on Saturday, but mostly they don't. Accept it. On 24 November 1963, the Hull Daily Mail sent me in search of a Hull angle on the assassination of President Kennedy. Once I had found a line that began 'Hull citizens were in mourning today as …' we could get on with reporting what happened in Dallas.
22. Read. Read lots of different things. Read the King James Bible, and Dickens, and poems by Shelley, and Marvel Comics and thrillers by Chester Himes and Dashiel Hammet. Look at the astonishing things you can do with words. Note the way they can conjure up whole worlds in the space of half a page.
23. Beware of all definitives. The last horse trough in Surrey will turn out not even to be the last horse trough in Godalming. There will almost always be someone who turns out to be bigger, faster, older, earlier, richer or more nauseating than the candidate to whom you have just awarded a superlative. Save yourself the bother: 'One of the first ...' will usually save the moment. If not, then at least qualify it: 'According to the Guinness Book of Records ...' 'The Sunday Times Rich List ...' and so on.
24. There are things that good taste and the law will simply not let you say in print. My current favourites are 'Murderer acquitted' and (in a report of an Easter religious play) 'Paul Myers, who played Jesus Christ, emerged as the star of the show.' Try and work out which one has the taste problem, and which one will cost you approximately half a million per word.
25. Writers have a responsibility, not just in law. So aim for the truth. If that's elusive, and it often is, at least aim for fairness, the awareness that there is always another side to the story. Beware of all claims to objectivity. This one is the dodgiest of all. You may report that the Royal Society says that genetic modification is a good thing, and that depleted uranium is mostly harmless. But you should remember that genetic modification was invented by people who were immediately elected to the Royal Society for their cleverness, by people already in there because they knew how to enrich uranium fuel rods and deplete the rest. So to paraphrase Miss Mandy Rice-Davies (1963) 'They would say that, wouldn't they?'

WikiLeaks memos the mainstream media doesn't want you to read (Wizbang)

WikiLeaks memos the mainstream media doesn't want you to read (Wizbang)
Lots of evidence of WMD.

Political axis systems

Zombie » The Electric Tea Party Acid Test
I've also read a proposal for a third axis, reflecting morality.
And then there are those whose coordinate system doesn't match reality. Off the grid.

"a big lie just like Goebbels" (Wizbang)

"a big lie just like Goebbels" (Wizbang)

And it was last night that this took place on the floor of the House of Representatives:

In an extraordinary outburst on the House floor, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) invoked the Holocaust to attack Republicans on health care and compared rhetoric on the issue to the work of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

"They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels," Cohen said. "You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. And Congressman Cohen didn't stop there.

"The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it--believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care. Politifact said the biggest lie of 2010 was a government takeover of health care because there is no government takeover," Cohen said.

Do understand that the call for civility on the part of the leftists in this country is complete and total bovine fecal matter. They're as interested in civility as Michael Moore is in veracity. Not very. Or as the wider media is in telling this story.

Imagine for a moment what the hue and cry might've been if Republicans were saying things like this about Democrats. We'd be hearing about it for days. But let a Democrat say this kind of crap and it's largely ignored.

Civility?

Stick it in your ear.

Or as Don Surber might put it, "Bite me."

The roots of PDS

James Taranto on Sarah Palin’s abortion effect on liberals:

"
Mr. Bookworm loathes Sarah Palin:  “She’s not one of us.”  I don’t know what he means.  She’s a married mom with children.  She went to college.  She and her husband work.  They pay taxes.  She doesn’t drink (or not to excess), smoke, or do drugs (so far as we know).  She’s well-groomed.  She has a sense of humor.  She’s interested in the world around her.  She’s religious but we actually have some friends and neighbors who are religious too.
Of course, she’s really religious.  She actually takes it seriously.  I think that’s what irks him so much.
And that’s kind of what irks others about her.  Or, as James Taranto makes more specific, its her moral objection to abortion, which is undoubtedly a byproduct of her religion, that drives the women bonkers.  To the pro-choice crowd, abortion is the last gasp of freedom.
I know this for a fact, because it’s the way I thought.  Abstinence is great as birth control, but it denies a woman access to one of life’s fundamental pleasures.  Birth control itself is great, except for all the problems with it:  the hormonal nightmare of the pill, the mess of the diaphragm, the risk and embarrassment of the condom.
When all else fails, when you’ve given in to your instincts, but the birth control didn’t work, you’ve still got abortion.  Abortion keeps you from a life of less money, less sleep, less freedom, less control over your time, less self-indulgence, less time for movies, reading, dinners out, dates, etc.  And all that’s after the baby’s born.  Abortion also keeps you from nine months of vomiting, non-stop peeing, back pain, hemorrhoids, massive weight gain, heart burn, sleepless nights, all of which suffering is followed by a few minutes to several days worth of incredible pain.  Oh, yeah!
I totally get it.  I really, really get it.
The only problem is that the other end of this equation, the one causing the nine months of discomfort, followed by the 18 years of sleepless nights, no money, etc., is a human being.  It’s a baby, a toddler, a child, an adolescent and a young adult.  It is a person, whose smell is instantly recognizable to you, who turns to you in times of happiness and times of need, who constantly grows and changes, often making you very proud.  It is a potential mother, father, sister, brother, doctor, soldier, maintenance person, bus driver, lawyer, good Samaritan, criminal.  It is potential.  It is life.
These facts, the imbalance of parenting, means that those who are invested in freedom from pregnancy because it makes their own lives better (and it does) are very angry at Palin.  She reminds them that, not only is another life involved, but also that one can be happy and productive, both despite and because of that other life — even if that other life is disabled.  She makes liberals, especially women, feel inferior.  And there’s no one better to savage than the woman who makes you feel lazy, whiny, self-centered, and ugly."

Socialized medicine in China

The Volokh Conspiracy » BBC Objectivity? The BBC intereviews a Chinese citizen on how much better medical care was when it was free.

Reporter: But didn’t medical care used to be free?

Chinese Citizen: It was free, but it was terrible. The “doctor” assigned to our village had only a sixth grade education, and was more likely to kill you than to heal you.

Reporter: But didn’t everyone have equal access to this doctor?

Chinese Citizen: Sure. We were all poor, and we were all free to die in this quack’s care.

I'm reminded of a joke. A man is asking the price of some item at the store. When told, he exclaims that the store down the street sells it for only half the price. When asked why he doesn't buy it from that store, he explains they're out. "Oh, well," says the clerk, "When it's out, it's half price here, too."

What is this "doc fix"?

The Doc Fix Dilemma - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Here’s the problem: In 1997, Congress decided it was high time to get Medicare spending under control. Their solution was to tie physician reimbursement rates to an inflation-based formula called the sustainable growth rate. The formula worked fine as long as it called for increased payments. But that didn’t last long. In 2002, the formula, Congress allowed payments to drop 5 percent. The reaction from physicians was strong enough that they didn’t let it happen again. Since 2003, Congress has voted repeatedly to temporarily extend or increase existing reimbursement rates through deficit spending. The temporary patches have substituted for permanent fixes because no one knows how to pay for a long-term fix. But by relying on a series of temporary patches, Congress has made it even more expensive to enact a long-term fix.

Finding Out What’s In It: Part V

Finding Out What’s In It: Part V › 2.0: The Blogmocracy

You see, this sink hole of a new law is in fact also the single largest tax increase in American history. And, as you might expect, it is not just being levied on the, “rich.” We all get to share in this joy.   Here is the list of tax hikes which resulted from Obamacare. 

Individual Mandate Excise Tax(Jan 2014): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following.”

	1 Adult	2 Adults	3+ Adults
2014	1% AGI/$95	1% AGI/$190	1% AGI/$285
2015	2% AGI/$325	2% AGI/$650	2% AGI/$975
2016 +	2.5% AGI/$695	2.5% AGI/$1390	2.5% AGI/$2085

Employer Mandate Tax(Jan 2014): If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $2000 for all full-time employees. This provision applies to all employers with 50 or more employees. If any employee actually receives coverage through the exchange, the penalty on the employer for that employee rises to $3000. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer).
Combined score of individual and employer mandate tax penalty: $65 billion/10 years


Surtax on Investment Income ($123 billion/Jan. 2013): This increase involves the creation of a new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income

	Capital Gains	Dividends	Other*
2010-2012	15%	15%	35%
2013+ (current law)	23.8%	43.4%	43.4%
2013+ (Obama budget)	23.8%	23.8%	43.4%

*Other unearned income includes (for surtax purposes) gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents, and passive income in partnerships and Subchapter-S corporations. It does not include municipal bond interest or life insurance proceeds, since those do not add to gross income. It does not include active trade or business income, fair market value sales of ownership in pass-through entities, or distributions from retirement plans. The 3.8% surtax does not apply to non-resident aliens.

Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans($32 bil/Jan 2018): Starting in 2018, new 40 percent excise tax on “Cadillac” health insurance plans ($10,200 single/$27,500 family). For early retirees and high-risk professions exists a higher threshold ($11,500 single/$29,450 family). CPI +1 percentage point indexed.

Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax($86.8 bil/Jan 2013): Current law and changes:

	First $200,000 ($250,000 Married) Employer/Employee	All Remaining Wages Employer/Employee
Current Law	1.45%/1.45% 2.9% self-employed	1.45%/1.45% 2.9% self-employed
Obamacare Tax Hike	1.45%/1.45% 2.9% self-employed	1.45%/2.35% 3.8% self-employed

Medicine Cabinet Tax($5 bil/Jan 2011): Americans no longer able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin)


HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike($1.4 bil/Jan 2011): Increases additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.


Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka“Special Needs Kids Tax”($13 bil/Jan 2013): Imposes cap of $2500 (Indexed to inflation after 2013) on FSAs (now unlimited). . There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.


Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers($20 bil/Jan 2013): Medical device manufacturers employ 360,000 people in 6000 plants across the country. This law imposes a new 2.3% excise tax. Exemptions include items retailing for less than $100.


Raise “Haircut” for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI($15.2 bil/Jan 2013): Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction for medical expenses to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). The new provision imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI; it is waived for 65+ taxpayers in 2013-2016 only.


Tax on Indoor Tanning Services($2.7 billion/July 1, 2010): New 10 percent excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons


Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D($4.5 bil/Jan 2013)


Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike($0.4 bil/Jan 2010): The special tax deduction in current law for Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies would only be allowed if 85 percent or more of premium revenues are spent on clinical services


Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals(Min$/immediate): $50,000 per hospital if they fail to meet new “community health assessment needs,” “financial assistance,” and “billing and collection” rules set by HHS


Tax on Innovator Drug Companies($22.2 bil/Jan 2010): $2.3 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to share of sales made that year.


Tax on Health Insurers($60.1 bil/Jan 2014): Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year. The stipulation phases in gradually until 2018, and is fully-imposed on firms with $50 million in profits.
$500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives($0.6 bil/Jan 2013)


Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2(Min$/Jan 2011): Preamble to taxing health benefits on individual tax returns.


Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting($17.1 bil/Jan 2012): Requires businesses to send 1099-MISC information tax forms to corporations (currently limited to individuals), a huge compliance burden for small employers
“Black liquor” tax hike(Tax hike of $23.6 billion). This is a tax increase on a type of bio-fuel.


Codification of the “economic substance doctrine”(Tax hike of $4.5 billion). This provision allows the IRS to disallow completely-legal tax deductions and other legal tax-minimizing plans just because the IRS deems that the action lacks “substance” and is merely intended to reduce taxes owed

sd

Why the Left Hates Sarah Palin

Why the Left Hates Sarah Palin: "When I was ten years old, I participated in an act of unadulterated group evil."

The Volokh Conspiracy » The First Amendment and Speech That Allegedly Threatens Public Officials

The Volokh Conspiracy » The First Amendment and Speech That Allegedly Threatens Public Officials
Where are the boundaries?
Not where the "prosecute Sarah Palin for Incitement" groupies think.

2) In particular, the leading Supreme Court case, Watts v. U.S. (1969), held that the Constitution protects even the statement "If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.," said at antiwar rally. Statements that place the President in a bullseye or a crosshair might thus be entirely constitutionally protected, if for instance the statement is in a Democratic or Republican party mailer urging people to give money to help defeat the President in the next election.

Under Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), speech may be restricted on such a theory only if it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” (emphasis added). Hess v. Indiana (1973) makes clear that speech doesn’t satisfy the “imminence” requirement if it is merely “advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time” (emphasis added). But in any event, it certainly can’t qualify for the Brandenburg exception to the First Amendment when it is not at all directed to producing lawless action, and the concern is simply that a few kooks or extremists might be moved to commit a crime at some indefinite time as a result of seeing the speech.

Nonetheless, the Court firmly concluded that even speech that specifically calls for violence, or even seems to explicitly threaten violence, is unprotected only if it fits within the narrow “true threats” or “incitement” exceptions — and, as I said, political maps with targets painted on them, the “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun” line, and the like certainly fall far outside those exceptions.

I do not want civil discourse

I do not want civil discourse « Don Surber

Once in power, liberals were the opposite of gracious.

For two years now, I have been called ignorant, racist, angry and violent by the left. The very foul-mouthed protesters of Bush dare to now label my words as “hate speech.”

Last week, the left quickly blamed the right for the national tragedy of a shooting spree by a madman who never watched Fox News, never listened to Rush Limbaugh and likely did not know who Sarah Palin is.

Fortunately, the American public rejected out of hand that idiotic notion that the right was responsible.

Rather than apologize, the left wants to change the tone of the political debate.

The left suddenly wants civil discourse.

Bite me.

The left wants to play games of semantics.

Bite me.

The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.

Bite me.

There is grown-up work to do now. Liberals ran up the federal credit card, destroyed the American medical system and undermined the rule of law — which is the foundation of capitalism — with a bunch of unconstitutional fiats from the president and his bureaucracy.

When Sarah Palin was libeled, and her map presented as evidence of her evil intentions, her first impulse was to remove it. Her aides' first impulse was to show that the marks look more like survey marks or crop marks than like cross hairs.
When accused of indecent intent, any decent person's first instinct is to deny it and explain it away. This instinct must be overcome. Your opponents on the left will find an indecent motive and saddle you with it, no matter what you do. You cannot convince them of your decent motives because they don't care what your real motives are. They have to convince their followers your motives are indecent, and will do whatever it takes as long as there's any chance of it working.
Next time, double down. They object to targets or cross hairs, replace them with mushroom clouds. They complain about your use of "blood libel", complain about the "blood libel libel". Whatever they've cloaked themselves in to justify their shrill charges, make them wrap themselves tightly enough that they suffocate.
Let Darwin clear the gene pool of the insane, and maybe the sane can get some work done.

Sarah Palin and the "blood libel"

Sarah Palin and the "blood libel": "(Paul)

Sarah Palin is coming in for criticism for using the term 'blood libel' to describe accusations that she and other outspoken conservatives somehow have blood on their hands in connection with the Tucson shootings. Palin's remarks on the shootings are also being compared unfavorably to President Obama's speech at the University of Arizona. Obama's speech was healing and uplifting, while Palin's, some say, was divisive and defensive.

I find both criticisms of Palin unfair.

As to using the phrase 'blood libel,' it is true that the term originally referred to a very specific libel, namely that Jews kidnapped and killed Christian babies so they could use their blood as a food ingredient during Passover. Later, it became a more general accusation that Jews kill non-Jews in furtherance of Jewish religious observances.

However, the phrase 'blood libel' has come to be used much more generally to encompass the false assertion, made with malice, that someone is responsible for the spilling of someone else's blood. Jim Geraghty has collected examples of such usage.

Palin may be the first prominent politician to have charged others with a 'blood libel' in the broad, modern sense of the term. This shows her, once again, to be 'edgy.' But being edgy doesn't necessarily mean acting improperly. Once a certain usage gains acceptance in mainstream political discourse (I don't recall anyone objecting to the new usage of 'blood libel' until now), I see no obligation on the part of politicians to steer clear of that usage.

The Term ‘Blood Libel’: More Common Than You Might

Lots of people have used the term "blood libel" without referring to the accusations that Jews, specifically, at children. The Term ‘Blood Libel’: More Common Than You Might Think - By Jim Geraghty - The Campaign Spot - National Review Online

No one seems to have raised any objection to any of these instances.

But then, none of them involved Sarah Palin using the term.

Palin Was Terrific

Quin Hillyer writes at The American Spectator: AmSpecBlog : Palin Was Terrific

I continue to believe that Sarah Palin is not yet qualified to be president, but my admiration for her continues to grow. Her interview with Sean Hannity, just aired, was almost pitch-perfect. It was dignified. It was well-modulated. It was strong. And it was thoughtful. She kept her composure even as Hannity put on the screen some of the vilest, most vicious attacks against her -- the sorts of things that were so bad that if they were said about me they might shake me to my core. She explained her thought process after hearing about the shooting in Tucson, and explained the timing of her videotaped message, and explained her use of the term "blood libel." She insisted, rightly, that strong and honest -- but respectful -- political debate should not be stifled, and noted that it only seems like the right is asked to stifle its views. She was correct on all counts.

The truth is, there is almost nothing this lady has ever done or said that merits the sorts of venomous vitriol to which she has been subjected. Her rhetoric is sharp but not hateful. Her views -- and even more, her actual record -- are mainstream conservative, not extremist. And her story of a plucky, self-made rise from unlikely (for a politician) origins, on the basis of hard work and gumption, is remarkably admirable. And, frankly, whom has she hurt along the way? The feelings of those who are appalled that she wouldn't abort her Downs Syndrome baby? The ideology of those who thought she should force her daughter to get an abortion? The corrupt old-boy network who plagued (and effectively robbed) Alaska, whom she defeated in fair-and-square elections? The self-important worldview of those who believe that women who aren't liberal are illegitimate political actors? Go ahead: Show where Sarah Palin has been mean-spirited, abusive, or hateful? Can't do it. She hasn't been.

It's not about what Palin said...

...It's about who said it.

RealClearPolitics - Palin Holds High Ground Over Harsh and Unfair Critics

How dare Sarah Palin, cried the commentators, use that phrase to describe the criticism of her by those who blamed her for creating the atmosphere that set Loughner off in his murderous madness. Some took the position that it proved their ongoing charges that she is not an intelligent person and probably did not know what the phrase meant historically. In my opinion, she was right to denounce her critics and use blood libel to describe the unfair criticism that she had been subject to.

....

Why do I defend Palin in this case? I don't agree with her political philosophy: She is an arch conservative. I am a liberal with sanity. I know that I am setting myself up for attack when I ask, why did Emile Zola defend Dreyfus? Palin is no Dreyfus and I am certainly no Zola. But all of us have an obligation, particularly those in politics and public office, to denounce, when we can, the perpetrators of horrendous libels and stand up for those falsely charged. We should denounce unfair, false and wicked charges not only when they are made against ourselves, our friends or our political party but against those with whom we disagree. If we are to truly change the poisonous political atmosphere that we all complain of, including those who create it, we should speak up for fairness when we can.

NYT Crosses a Moral Line

The Authoritarian Media - WSJ.com

After the horrific shooting spree, the editorial board of New York Times offered a voice of reasoned circumspection: "In the aftermath of this unforgivable attack, it will be important to avoid drawing prejudicial conclusions . . .," the paper counseled.

Here's how the sentence continued: ". . . from the fact that Major Hasan is an American Muslim whose parents came from the Middle East."

The Tucson Safeway massacre prompted exactly the opposite reaction. What was once known as the paper of record egged on its readers to draw invidious conclusions that are not only prejudicial but contrary to fact. In doing so, the Times has crossed a moral line.

....

In the column, Krugman blames the massacre on "eliminationist rhetoric," which he defines as "suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary." He rightly asserts that "there isn't any place" for such rhetoric. But he falsely asserts that it is "coming, overwhelmingly, from the right."

He provides exactly one example: Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, "urging constituents to be 'armed and dangerous.' " Such a statement does seem problematic, although in the absence of context, and given what former Times public editor Daniel Okrent has described as Krugman's "disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults"--an observation that surely applies to nonnumeric facts as well--we are disinclined to trust Krugman's interpretation of Bachmann's statement.

Exclusive: Alan Dershowitz Defends Sarah Palin’s Use of Term ‘Blood Libel’

Exclusive: Alan Dershowitz Defends Sarah Palin’s Use of Term ‘Blood Libel’: "In an exclusive statement, famed attorney and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz defended Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” from multiple detractors. As the Media Matters/MSM/Democrat narrative on the Tucson tragedy unravels, they are getting a lot more desperate in their attacks on Palin. Fortunately, there are still plenty of honest liberals around:

The term “blood libel” has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.