Well, “health care reform” is on its way to the Senate floor. When it passes (not if, but when), it will amount to little more than billions of dollars worth of wasted money and one big “WIN” check-mark in Team Blue’s column… and make no mistake, this isn’t about the so-called “right” to health care, looking out for the disadvantaged, making things more “affordable*”, or any of the other noble rhetoric people are deploying — it’s about politicians being able to point to some astoundingly expensive piece of legislation and being able to say, “LOOK!!! WE DID SOMETHING!!” Period. Full stop. Democrats get to crow about their “big win” for the common man and Republicans get to strut around and talk about all that “fiscal responsibility” they forgot about between 2000 and 2008.

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I’d like to extend our congratulations to OC Editor Emeritus and current editor of the excellent The Truth About Cars blog for getting an op-ed published in no lesser a venue than the New York Times. Anyone who said the OC was nothing but a bunch of drunken bums… err, well… was probably right. But these drunken bums sometimes get published in the Times. I bet you haven’t been published in the Times. Jerk.

Read this. Just do.

Yes.

Reversing the Bush Administration’s absurd policy of prosecuting users of medical marijana, regardless of individual state laws, the Obama Administration has announced that it

will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws…

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

Score one for states rights.

(Via Instapundit)

I was interested in reading the Emerald’s article about yesterday’s anti-Columbus Day protest held in the EMU Amphitheatre by the Native American Student Union (NASU). In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past fifteen or twenty years, there’s been a somewhat high-profile effort nationally to end the celebration of Columbus Day because of the centuries-long decimation of peoples indigenous to the Western Hemisphere that happened in the wake of Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas.

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What happens when an influential Senator dies and the law says that he can’t be replaced without holding a special election? Just get rid of the law, which your party put in place back in 2004 to prevent the rival party from potentially taking a vacated Senate seat, so you can appoint this guy to the seat and have 60 “aye”‘s when it’s time to vote on health care:

That pesky little document that seems to be continually thwarting the best laid plans of our political class, the Constitution of the United States of America, was signed 222 years ago today. Let’s hope it keeps pissing people off and frustrating their ambitions for another 222 years.

(H/T: Instapundit)

“US President Barack Obama does not believe current criticism of his policies is based on the colour of his skin, the White House has said.” Prediction: angry letters in next week’s Eugene Weekly excoriating the President for being a racist.

But seriously, the guy just went up a few points on the “classiness meter” as far as I’m concerned.

Reason’s Jesse Walker discusses at length some of the ideas I’ve been trying to get at recently:

When mainstream commentators treat a small group of unconnected crimes as a grand, malevolent movement, they unwittingly echo the very conspiracy theories they denounce. Both brands of connect-the-dots fantasy reflect the tellers’ anxieties much more than any order actually emerging in the world. When such a story is directed at those who oppose the politicians in power, it has an additional effect. The list of dangerous forces that need to be marginalized inevitably expands to include peaceful, legitimate critics.

[…]

The killers, they acknowledge, aren’t taking their marching orders directly from Fox News and AM radio. But by giving serious attention to theories associated with the fringe right—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing concentration camps, that Barack Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen—Glenn Beck and other broadcasters are validating the grievances of potential killers, giving them the impression that they aren’t alone.

[…]

The first is that it ignores the autonomy of people on the fringe. Not just the radicals who commit the crimes, but the radicals who don’t commit crimes. There’s a complex ecology at work here.. Words have influence, but they influence different people in different ways; you can’t reduce media effects to simple push-pull reactions. Accusing Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly of validating right-wing violence isn’t so different from accusing pornography of validating rape, Ozzy Osbourne of validating teen suicide, or Marilyn Manson of validating school massacres.

Think about that. Then go back and read Blue Oregon’s Carla Axtman’s comments on this blog attempting to link mainstream Republicans (and conservatives in general) with “wildly fringe conservative organizations” listening to “eliminationist rhetoric” “within [the] context of guns and stoked-up town halls.”

Axtman (among others) is engaging in the Team-Red vs. Team blue equivalent of blaming Marilyn Manson for Columbine.

"You're the Republican Ernst Röhm!"

"Is it the hat?"

——
Speaking of “have you no shame!?” posturing…

Wait, I wasn’t speaking of that at all. Whatever.

It’s been awhile since I’ve regularly checked Blue Oregon. Once Obama moved into the Oval Office, got rid of some dusty old bust of Winston Churchill, and made himself comfortable, the wind kind of left their sails. The zeal for victory that had seemingly been the trademark of all Democrats before January 20th faded and what replaced it was so much sore-winner chest-pounding and a sudden disdain for that “highest form of patriotism” which they’d long championed through those long, dark years of incipient fascism between 2000 and 2008.

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Racism. It’s at the heart of every disagreement with “progressive” policy reforms. Meet Diane DeVillers of Eugene, who lays it all out in today’s issue of the Eugene Weekly:

There is not as much confusion about the health care issue as we are led to believe. Much of the resistance is all about not wanting President Obama to succeed. The town hall haters, gun-toting radical right wingers, have been steaming since our President was elected. It has taken them this long to finally have the nerve to tell America how much they hate the fact that a black man won the election. It is all about being racist.

While the sane people in America try to get health care reform, the minority is trying to mislead and ruin any attempt for this bill to pass. This includes the whole Republican party… Their loyalties are only to themselves. The majority of people elected this president, so they need to get used to it.

…

The majority of Americans want health care reform, so the Democrats should just do it, any way they can…

Everyone in the room should yell back for them to be silent and let the discussion continue.

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I’ve been reading Fivethirtyeight.com lately, and I thought I should point out something particularly interesting and rather insane. Nate Silver, after successfully predicting Obama’s win, has followed through on his promise to try to predict senate races. While the model is solid for the moment it’s important to remember that it’s long term accuracy is admittedly shaky, even by it’s creators.

In any case, the exercise is pretty cool and if it all goes to pot then at least it will be funny. Here’s what the top 15 races look like for the month of August.

Of course, if somehow the world cruises along at it’s current pace and the model holds, then we will have another amazing prediction from Nate Silver and his buddies. In case you don’t know who Mr. Silver is by now, he’s the guy who predicted the winners of the Oscars and the presidential election within fractions of their actual outcomes. Oh yeah, and this.

Kudos to Dracobly for this one.

Radley Balko calls this “the most thorough, clear elucidation of the problems with U.S. health care” that he’s seen. I’m inclined to agree, even if I don’t necessarily buy the author’s prescriptions (no pun intended) for fixing the problem.

It’s a long read, but well worth it and a far cry from the usual “death panels” and “racists” bilge that the right and left have been tossing about in the last few weeks.

In case you weren’t aware the American media machine has been slowly (or quickly depending on your viewpoint) going insane over the past few years. Mostly I think it’s anxiety over the “death” of print journalism.

Either way this Newsweek blog post about Michelle Obama should put some perspective about how desperate and fucking retarded American media is.

The Examiner declares Obama beautiful, then bemoans the fact that “some members of the media and the public” are upset. Who are those members of the media and the public? We don’t know—the article then goes on to endorse Obama and rebuke the nameless attackers.

The Huffington Post says Obama “may” take flak for baring her “gorgeous gams” (after all, we were up in arms about her sleeveless dresses),  then polls the readers as to whether shorts are an appropriate look. More than 80 percent of the respondents were OK with shorts, though a third of them took issue with the length.

The L.A. Times blog says “some people are actually outraged” … and links to the Examiner post as proof.

For the most part the first half of the article is about the ridiculous fact that reputable journalists are linking to other media outlets while none of them have proof of any outrage.

It’s something that should probably more heavily exposed considering how stupid this is making this places look.

The second half devolves into a mini discussion on objectifying women and how we objectify Mrs. Obama. Boo-hoo. Don’t bitch about objectifying a celebrity first lady if our current celebrity culture is all about staring at “gorgeous gams” and tight or not so tight stomachs.

Once again, if you hadn’t seen this slow motion train wreck in action here’s further proof of the demise of intelligence in most mainstream American media. Save I suppose this one woman at Newsweek but I’m just waiting for her to slip up. Hell, she probably sits next to that columnist that wrote an entire article on why he hates Crocs.