An Object Lesson in Universal Health Care

[T]hose who favor national health care schemes should take a good, hard look at our veterans' hospitals. There is your national health care. These institutions are a national disgrace. If this is the care the government dispenses to those it honors as its most heroic and admirable citizens, why should anyone else expect to be treated any better?
Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto (p.90)

That point is so good, I need to quote it again.

[T]hose who favor national health care schemes should take a good, hard look at our veterans' hospitals. There is your national health care. These institutions are a national disgrace. If this is the care the government dispenses to those it honors as its most heroic and admirable citizens, why should anyone else expect to be treated any better?
Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto (p.90)

Good People Carrying Dangerous Things

There was a pro self-defense talk at Virginia Tech the other day, where a student protester had this gem of an insight into what just might happen if guns were allowed on campus:

I still think a lot of it was slanted and very rights-oriented, and did not fully address the idea of what having guns on campus is going to mean for safety in classrooms and the environment in general of Virginia Tech.

Yeah, like 33 people might get murdered next time instead of only 32. Incredible.

Indeed, as John Lott never tires of pointing out, would-be mass murderers aren't unaware of the fact that bureaucrat-inspired "Gun-Free Zones" are perfectly suited to their evil ways since the gathered public have been conveniently dis-armed on their way in.

And add to that the reality that even courageous and lightning-fast police response times are simply too slow to do much good in actually stopping the murderer in his act; considering how quickly these multiple-victim shootings come to their grotesque end, all they can do is count the bodies.

"Dial 911 and die," as they say.

So the future of public massacre defense is precisely this: Lots of good people carrying very dangerous things.

How Do They Still Exist If They're "Banned"?

"Every right, including freedom of speech, is subject to some limitations. The legal and public policy arguments for allowing broad government regulation of firearms are compelling. District law bans private ownership of handguns and requires long guns to be kept in the home disassembled or stored with a trigger lock. This approach reflects the grim realities of an urban setting where handguns account for a disproportionate number of homicides and are used in a great majority of robberies and rapes. "
--Washington Post Editorial

Please forgive me for being obtuse, but how is it possible that DC's reality is "grim" with murders, rapes, and robberies if they've "banned" the private ownership of handguns? Surely you aren't suggesting that the people willing to break the laws against those heinous crimes also have the nerve to possess handguns illegally?!? Unthinkable!

So gosh, if only the people who play be the rules could have some powerful way of protecting themselves from this "grim reality."

I dunno, that's probably just crazy talk..

I'm Curious

Is this still going to be true when a Democrat wins in November?

Just wondering.

Intemperate Thoughts on Global Warming

-- I keep seeing "green" issues of this and that outdoor magazine. But if they really wanted to save the environment, they should do a "green nonissue" and go a month without printing millions of magazine pages (which are mostly ads anyway).

-- People creep me out by how emotional they get about Priuses. Promise you bro, those extra couple MPGs really aren't the meaning of life.

-- Forgive me if I don't trust a single word Newsweek has to say on the subject considering their not-too-distant cool-mongering. And anyway, if they really were so hot and bothered about global cooling thirty years ago, wouldn't the advent of warming be an answer to prayer? In other words, shouldn't the effects of this warming trend be welcomed with grateful relief as being the noncatastrophic solution to our parents' worst fears?

-- Read the Copenhagen Consensus 2004, do the cost/benefit, and then try and tell me with a straight face that spending trillions (with a "t") to gain a couple degrees over the next 100 years is not absurd.

-- The hypocrisy of the mansion-owning, motorcade-driving, private-jet-flying Reverends of Climatology really pisses me off. I'll listen to their breathless warnings when they start to live like they really believe it. (And anyway, there's not much more I could personally be doing as it is- I recycle, use those fancy light bulbs, share 800 square feet and a 40mpg car with my wife and baby, and walk to work. And funnily enough, I somehow do all of that without taxing you to death or regulating the hell out of your business.)

-- Carbon offsetting is a joke. But Tetzel would be proud.

-- Read Scrappleface.

-- And Steyn:

"A COUPLE of days before Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Peace prize, Michael Burton, an English High Court judge and apparently a fine film critic, ruled that Al's Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth was prone to "alarmism and exaggeration" and identified nine major factual errors.
For example, the former vice-president predicts a rise in sea levels of 6m "in the near future". "The Armageddon scenario he predicts," declared Burton, "is not in line with the scientific consensus."
I'll say. The so-called scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests rising sea levels across the next century of somewhere between 15cm and 60cm, with about 30cm being most likely. An Inconvenient Truth insouciantly adds a zero to the worst-case scenario.
And nobody minds. His Honour was examining the vice-president's acclaimed crockumentary because the British Government, in its wisdom, has decided to force-feed it to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. It would be nice to think it would have to be preceded by a warning that any resemblance between this film and any actual planet living or dead is entirely coincidental, but it seems more likely that the Nobel Peace imprimatur will completely insulate the picture from even the most modest quibbles.

[...] That's where Gore comes in. No matter how you raise the stakes ("It might take another 30 Kyotos", says Jerry Mahlman of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research), Saint Al of the Ecopalypse can raise them higher. Climate change, he says, is the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced. Ever. And not just humankind, but alienkind, too. "We are," warns Gore, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe".
Wow. It's not just the Maldive Islands, but the balance of energy between Earth and the rest of the universe. You wouldn't happen to have the stats on that, would you? Universal "balance of energy" graphs for 1940 and 1873? Gore is the logical reductio of what the popular Australian blogger Tim Blair calls global warm-mongering: Worst-case scenario, with all the zeroes you want on the end, and then a few more for holes in the ozone layer as yet undreamt of. Anyone can, as the environmentalists advise, think globally and act locally, but only Gore thinks cosmically and acts not at all.
[...] Well, the average US household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000kWh.
221,000kWh? What's he doing in there? As his spokesperson explained it, his high energy usage derives from his brave calls for low energy usage. He's burning up all that electricity by sending out faxes every couple of minutes urging you wastrels to use less electricity. Insofar as he's made any contribution to global peace, it's in persuading large swaths of a narcissistic Western world to busy itself with non-solutions to pseudo-crises to such a distracting degree that al-Qa'ida may wind up imposing the global caliphate without having to fire a shot."

The Daily Bread of Love

"Another secret of happiness in married life is courtesy. By what law of nature or life is it that after the peals of the wedding bells have died away, and they have established themselves in their own home, so many husbands and wives drop the charming little amenities and refinements or manner toward each other that so invariably and delightfully characterized their intercourse before marriage? Is there no necessity for these civilities any longer? Are they so sure now of each other’s love that they do not need to give expression to it, either in affectionate word or act? Is wedded love such a strong, vigorous, and self-sufficing entity that it never needs sunshine, rain, or dew? Is politeness merely a manner that is necessary in intercourse with the outside world, and not required when we are alone with those we love best? Are hearts so peculiarly constituted that they are not pained or offended by things that would never be pardoned in us if done in ordinary society? Are we under no obligations to be respectful and to pay homage to our dearest friends, while even to the rudest or the veriest stranger we meet outside our own doors we feel ourselves bound to show the most perfect civility?

On the contrary, there is no place in the world where the amenities of courtesy should be so carefully maintained as in the home. There are no hearts that hunger so for expressions of affection as the hearts of which we are most sure. There is no love that so needs its daily bread as the love that is strongest and holiest. There is no place where rudeness and incivility is so unpardonable as inside our own doors and toward our best beloved. The tenderer the love and the truer, the more it craves the thousand little attentions and kindnesses which so satisfy the heart. It is not costly presents at Christmas and on birthdays and anniversaries that are wanted; these are only mockeries if the days between are empty of affectionate expressions. Jewelry and silks and richly bound volumes will never atone for the want of warmth and tenderness. Between husband and wife there should be maintained without break or pause, the most perfect courtesy, the gentleness attention, the most unselfish amiability, the utmost affectionateness. Coleridge says: ‘The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions, the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.’ These may seem trifles, and the omission of them may be deemed unworthy of thought; but they are the daily bread of love, and hearts go hungry when they are omitted. It may be only carelessness at first in a busy husband or a weary wife that fails in these small, sweet courtesies, and it may seem a little matter, but in the end the result may be a growing far apart of two lives which might have been for ever very happy in each other had their early love but been cherished and nourished."

--J.R. Miller, Home-Making

Remember Barrels

"[General George] Washington also wanted barrels filled with earth set in rows in front of the parapets, to add to the appearance of strength, but more importantly to stand ready to be rolled down the steep slopes on the advancing enemy [at Dorchester Heights, Boston]. He had 'a very high opinion of the defense which may be made with barrels,' he told Artemus Ward, stressing that the hoops should be well nailed so the barrels would not break to pieces. [...]

On Saturday evening, March 2, Washington wrote in haste to Ward that everything must be set and ready to go as planned on Monday night, March 4. After folding and sealing the note, he scrawled on the back, 'Remember barrels.'" (David McCullough, 1776, pp.89-91.)