Sometimes You Get What You Deserve

This may surprise people, but I’m all in favor of Scotland breaking away from England. Why you ask? Is it my love of Scotland and its vast open soggy spaces? Nope. Perhaps it’s my love of freedom. Indirectly. More to the point, I’m a lover of irony and I think Scotland breaking away would be a great lesson for the world. Here’s how I see things...

First, I doubt Scotland will vote to break away. I know that some polls show the YES vote with a slight lead, but polls require no commitment. When it comes time to actually vote, people tend to get a little less fanciful.

That said, I can see a YES vote winning in a squeaker. If that happens, then Scotland will break away and chaos will ensue. In fact, the first thing I see happening is Scotland issuing a new currency (the “Duhmhass”) which they will discover offers the average Scott a good deal less buying power than the pound. Why? Well, here’s the thing.

A country’s currency is based on the economic potential of that country, and Scotland’s economic potential is about the same as if West Virginia broke away from the US. Scotland is a high tax country which relies on steady cash infusions from productive England to keep their sorry economy limping along. More than 55% of Scotts work for the state, putting them around East German levels. Their unemployment rate sits around 19%. They have no natural industries except sheep molesting. In fact, the majority of their largest companies are actually English companies who have opened branches in Scotland.

The one industry they do have is North Sea oil, but there are several problems with that. First, oil economies are notoriously fragile. Secondly, the commodity price of oil is falling at the moment and isn’t likely to recover for quite some time. Third, the Scottish National Party (SNP) has already made noises about nationalizing the industry. Not only will these statements alone chill further investment, but if they actually do it, then you can write off their oil industry for decades. And fourth, they are running out of oil in any event.

The issue of nationalization brings up another interesting point. Every single company of any size has warned against a YES vote. Many have threatened to close stores or hike their prices dramatically. Several Scottish banks have promised to flee to England. The SNP has responded by talking about getting even with these companies through nationalizations, heavy taxes or regulation, or other means not addressed. That’s a sure fire way to kill an economy. Indeed, that is the Hugo Chavez plan... the one that ended up with shortages of toilet paper and food and everything except shortages.

As I see it, here is what will happen if the Scott’s vote YES.

(1) Their currency will crash and they will be shocked to find themselves the poor man of Europe.

(2) The lack of English subsidies will crush their tax revenue base, which will lead to layoffs of government employees and hard choices when it comes to spending.

(3) They will push far left into quasi-socialism with the obvious result of following Venezuela into the toilet. This will be a great lesson for the rest of Europe in what not to do.

(4) England will shift solidly right. Indeed, the only thing making Labor competitive now is that Scotland votes overwhelming for them. With them gone, the Tories should dominate. The effect in England will be similar to the effect here if the Northeast stopped voting in our elections. This too will be good for the world as England, freed from its freeloading cousins, should undergo an economic renaissance.

(5) Other similar groups will follow Scotland’s lead. Specifically, I would expect Spain to break into three or more incompetent countries. Then Belgium will break into two. Italy might follow shortly afterwards, breaking into rich Northern Italy and dirt poor Southern Italy.

This will result in a serious shakeup in Europe, which may well inject a good deal of localized power into a system designed to trample the locals in favor of unification. The result should be an increase in competition of the kind we have here, where the states act as laboratories for ideas, which then drift upward. This could honestly revive European competitiveness to a large degree, and that’s a good thing. So let’s give the Scotts what they want and then let their suffering be a beacon of sanity for the rest of Europe.

Thoughts?

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Moar Friday Hits

Back by popular demand (and because I need to shift a more substantive article to next week), here are a few quick hits to round up the week's stories in post-partum depression and liberal failures, but mainly liberal failures.

Just A Reminder: Universal Health Care Is Terrible And Will Probably Murder You In Your Sleep

Okay, maybe that's a bit strong. But in the ObamaCare debate, we were always reminded by liberals how awesome socialized medicine is overseas, so turnabout's fair play, I think. Anyway, the link is to an article from the Daily Telegraph, which found that under Britain's NHS, over 1,100 nursing home residents have died since 2003, not because of their illnesses or old age but because of severe dehydration--despite the homes having adequate numbers of staff and (of course) good ratings from the government review boards, the patients weren't getting enough water. As if that wasn't bad enough, nearly three times as many died over the same period from malnutrition or bed sores. Yikes.

It's been noted before that the Brits remain stubbornly positive about their health care system, partly because it does work under certain circumstances but partly because they just don't want to admit defeat. One wonders how many stories like this they have to hear for that to change. (Just to show Britain's not the one bad apple, here's a story from Canada about how the wait times to see a doctor have become so long, the Great White North's considering re-privatizing some of its health care. Good times, good times.)

Rule Of Thumb: Always Fact-Check A #HATECRIME!!!!!! Story

This seems to be a running theme lately--messages bashing an ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation get reported, community crackdown on anything slightly offensive ensues, everyone gets lectured by higher-ups on the need to be respectful and accepting of others....and then it turns out the victim and the perpetrator are one and the same. Of course. No sooner did New York's Vassar College start a witch hunt, I mean launch a task force to find out who was writing messages like "F--k N-----s" and "Hey Tranny, Know Your Place," then it turned out the transsexual student who filed the hate speech report was the one who wrote them in the first place...and was also a vice-president of student government, and a member of the investigating task force. Ohhhh.

I could go into detail on other stories, like the Boston-area high school which ended its football season early (but not the requisite candlelight vigils) when racist graffiti was scrawled on one of the players' houses, then found out his mom did it to get attention; but I'll let you read through that one on your own.

GOP Hypocrisy? Eh, Not So Much

Among the things liberals (especially those in the media) just LOVE doing, calling out the Republicans for hypocrisy, or at least betraying their constituents' own interests, stands near the top of the list. Take this Time article noting that congressional Republicans have voted to scale back the food stamp program (not that much, mind you), despite the fact that, on average, a GOP lawmaker is likely to have a higher proportion of his constituents on food stamps than is a Democrat. The implication is clear enough: Republicans care more about their ideology than they do about helping real people, and also Democratic voters are usually more successful and probably smarter, too. Except, not only is a sizable chunk of the data on which the article based this claim missing, that which is present shows the results are really all over the map, with red states such as Idaho, Nebraska and even West by God Virginia (!!!) relying on food stamps than, say, "progressive" Oregon. Oops.

Though, even if the evidence had borne out Time's claims, I'm not sure what that would prove. Given that the Left relies on some watered-down quasi-Marxist rhetoric about class conflict to make many of its claims, wouldn't such proof show that rich people are not mean jerks who want to screw over the poor?

Paging Descartes....

And finally, just to reassure you that you really may be smarter than a big chunk of the population, check out this article from the so-called Scientific American which basically says that, because scientists are a bit vague on the boundaries between life and non-life and because you can sorta think of organisms as just really complex machines, "life" doesn't actually exist at all. I briefly toyed with the idea of laying out an objection to this, but you know, on that rare occasion when you find an article so patently dumb you don't have to waste breath refuting it, it's best to take advantage of it. Just go into the weekend with the knowledge that you know more about the world than some "scientists" do.

If you've got other good stories, mention them in the comments, by all means. Otherwise, enjoy.

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Unruly Britannia?

Ever since 1945, we have been told and told about how superior a system our cousins across the pond have where state welfare and such are concerned. A caring government, dependable services, blah blah blah. So of course, Britons themselves are fond of and loyal to their welfare system, right? Well....

2013, like the past few years before it, has been unsettling in many ways for the British establishment. The spring's regional and local elections saw a massive jump in popularity for the anti-EU, anti-technocrat, pro-national sovereignty U.K. Independence Party, which voters, after being warned by politicians and the media about how fringe and racist it was, turned out for in droves. Then the brutal murder of a British soldier by a Muslim radical caused major upheaval and a lot of pushback against multiculturalist policy. Now it appears that the country's up-and-coming generation may be abandoning both the official Left and its radicalism.

Not that you would know it from how the British state is often portrayed in the news. Supposedly, its people love their universal health care and all the endless regulations, and the only complaint to be made is that it's not free-spirited and benevolent enough. And at one time, that might have been the attitude. But it appears that the abuses of the welfare state have finally worn on Brits' patience. A poll this spring found that 74% of U.K. citizens believe the government ought to cut benefits; even more surprisingly, there seems to be a majority in favor regardless of generation or political affiliation. Among youths, though, this sentiment appears to be strongest. When surveyed, only 20% of 18- to 34-year-olds would agree that the creation of the welfare state was among Britain's "greatest achievements."

Probably there are multiple factors at work here. True enough, immigrants, especially those from the Third World countries of the former Empire, make up a sizable proportion of the welfare recipients, so there's that. Plus, there are some regional divisions, with prosperous Londoners and others in southern England upset at subsidizing the less productive "Celtic fringe," especially the basketcase that is Northern Ireland. But it would also seem that people are getting tired of the stories of abuse. Most recently, there was the story of the Heaton family in Lancashire, which despite not having a single employed member gets 30,000 pounds in benefits per year, enough for them to afford a house with a flat-screen TV, computer, Wii, and some nice "vacations." With an average income among working Britons of only 26,000 pounds, even the most socialism-loving lad or lass has to see that there's a real problem here. And it does appear to be causing a large-scale disenchantment with the whole system.

This is no case of Conservatives whistling in the dark, either: Some of the strongest evidence comes from observations by leftist papers such as The Guardian, one of whose reporters recently lamented that his country's "twentysomethings sound like devout Thatcherites." He blames hostility to immigrants, because why not, but also admitted that these Britons are blaming themselves for their difficulties, saying "Lads especially need to be pushed into jobs more," and "I should have picked myself up in the morning, got out...tried more."

This is good because it means that not only are youths tired of the failures of Britain's nanny state--in itself not all that remarkable--but they are reacting in the opposite direction, wanting more freedom and responsibility instead of demanding more and better free stuff, as often happens in these cases.

Bottom line: Things are getting shaken up in Britain. This may be one of the few cases today where young people are making a genuine turn to the Right--not because of contingent events, but because they seem to have figured out that socialism, even the watered-down version, is ultimately unworkable, and that personal responsibility and unshackling the private sphere are better options over the long run. And that is certainly good news. So when you celebrate our independence and the things that make America great this week, remember for a moment the mother country, and those who seem to be finally getting the message.

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More Evidence of the Anti-Immigrant Left

Interesting. A couple weeks ago, I wrote about an article (LINK) by a Harvard professor which struck me as the first shot laying the groundwork for the left to turn against immigration. The professor never said that specifically, but it was the only conclusion to draw from his study even as he steadfastly claimed not to reach any conclusion. So guess what I found last week? This time someone actually said what I concluded. Observe.

The article I wrote originally discussed a study by a Harvard professor who talked about why immigration could lead to a Republican majority rather than a Democratic majority. According to this professor, people get racist when they come into contact with people of another race. Thus, he believed that as more foreigners come to the US, whites will become more likely to vote as a block, which means they will vote Republican so they can oppose the new minorities. On the surface, this sounded like the typical “Republicans are racist” stuff. But it wasn’t. What was interesting about the Professor’s article was that he offered no solution even though his claims left only one possible conclusion: the left must turn against immigration if it wants socialism. This is what struck me as being the first attempt to lay the intellectual groundwork for an about face by the left on immigration.

So imagine my surprise to find an article in the Daily Mail (LINK), written by a Brit who described himself as a “left-leaning ‘Hampstead’ liberal,” which not only reaches the conclusion I told you was coming but says so in point plank language. Note this key conclusion found near the end of the article:

“The problem with mass immigration is that, without integration, it damages the internal solidarity of a country such as ours. And if values and lifestyles become more diverse, it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of the welfare state.”

Bingo. This is exactly what I was talking about. According to this author, the left must realize that importing massive numbers of foreigners makes it impossible to convince the public to accept the welfare state. As this author put it, it damages the “legitimacy” of socialism. How does it do that? Well, the author says that people are only willing to give up a “third of our income into a common national pool” because we have a “belief that, despite different interests, we’re also part of the same team.” Bringing in immigrants destroys this belief. Hence, socialism becomes a hard sell.

What this guy suggested was that the left needs to admit they were wrong to let so many immigrants into Britain, and he suggested that it was time to stop immigration cold. He also absolved the left in advance for making this change. First, he did what the left always does and he denied that the left was at fault. He claims that their immigration problem wasn’t something the left actually did, it just sort of happened when no one was paying attention. This is the classic leftist denial. He also blessed the change to a racist immigration policy by pointing out that while certainly some Britons are dirty racists, it was not racist to oppose immigrants because this was about the team spirit, not about race. Yeah, try parsing that one. He even suggested that majority whites should be allowed to feel the same sense of identity that minority groups do and that the majority has rights over the minority.

No doubt, you recognize each of these thoughts because you’ve heard the left call people who said them “racists”. But don’t worry, these things will henceforth not be considered racist because the left is preparing to adopt them.

This is all really interesting. Here we are in on the ground floor of a massive shift in the left’s groupthink and we get to watch the intellectual gyrations even before the hive gets their marching orders. In the space of a couple weeks, we’ve now seen the real reason for such a shift offered by a Harvard professor (quoted in the liberal Washington Post) and suddenly in Britain we have a leftist advocate the identical theory, but dressing it up with all the justifications the hive will need to feel smug about adopting positions they once demonized. This is going to be fascinating to watch.

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Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Global Warming is failing. Yep. Just as Marxism slammed into human nature without a helmet and got decapitated, Global Warming Enthusiasts are finding that reality can be harder to manipulate than they hoped. And it’s been a bad year or two for them. Observe:

You’d kind of have to be an idiot not to realize that the biggest determinant of the temperature on our planet would be the sun. That is not only the primary source of warmth on our planet. . . it’s the only source. Moreover, we know that the sun does not put out a constant heat. This means that any model that fails to address the effects of the sun on our temperatures is worthless. Yet, the global warming models used by the enthusiasts all ignore the effect of the sun.

This point has been brought home by a leaked report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the lead propagandists for the Enthusiasts' ideology. This report admits (buried in Chapter 11) that the sun is more important than previously acknowledged:

“Results do suggest the possibility of a much larger impact of solar variations on the stratosphere than previously thought, and some studies have suggested that this may lead to significant regional impacts on climate.”

Translation: “yeah, the sun could be causing a lot more warming that we thought it was. Curse you sun!!”

But here’s the kicker. Despite this admission, the models upon with the IPCC report relies in concluding that warming is a a man-made problem do not take the sun into account. How in the world can you legitimately exclude something from your analysis which you admit could be a much larger cause of your problem than you realize? This is nonsense. This is theology, not science.

And don’t forget, this isn’t the first bit of evidence that they are fudging the science and ignoring evidence that blows apart their theories. The biggest example was of course Climategate (and Climategate 2) where they were caught manipulating data and using political pressure to smear opponents. But there’s more. Consider these things we’ve seen from Warming Enthusiasts:

● Climategate exposed the manipulation of data to generate a warming trend where none existed. Specifically, they excluded a warming period in the Middle Ages and they only used certain data to make sure that the present period showed abnormal warming.

● The famous “hockey stick” which shows the supposed warming (the one highlighted by High Priest al Gore) was debunked. It uses a fake formula which will take any sequence of numbers and spit out a hockey stick type result.

● The IPCC relied upon data from flawed weather stations which wrongly created warming.

● The IPCC wrongly used summer data for winter months to generate warming.

● The IPCC claim that global warming will hurt biodiversity was shown to have no basis -- not to mention that the world’s species are at least one million years old and thus have all been through hundreds of climate cycles.

● The IPCC had to retract a completely unsupported statement that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.

● The IPCC had to retract unsubstantiated statements about threats to the Amazon rainforests.

● In January 2011, IPCC scientist Osvaldo Canziani was listed as an advisor on a report that overstated warming by 1000%, and which was published unfixed even after this error was pointed out to the study’s authors.

● In January 2010, the IPCC had to retract the part of its report which claimed that Global Warming would cause sea level rises equal to 2.3 meters per century, with 2.7 feet happening this century. This report was retracted because of “mistakes in time intervals and inaccurately applied statistics.” It also turns out this report was based on data collected in a part of Hong Kong that is sinking.

Incidentally, in May of that year, a paleogeophysics/geodynamics professor from Stockholm University in Sweden issued a report that observations from around the world showed NO rising sea levels in the last 40 years. How did Enthusiasts respond? A year later, the University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group simply added 0.3 millimeters a year to their sea level figures to create rising sea levels where none exist.

● In June 2011, experts from Finland and the United States were shocked. . . shocked to learn that rising carbon dioxide levels caused forest density to increase: “Global warming, blamed by the U.N. panel of climate experts mainly on human use of fossil fuels, might itself be improving growth conditions for trees in some regions.” That’s right, trees are getting fatter. And the consequence of this is. . . well. . . um. . . it’s “offsetting climate change.” In other words, it’s keeping global warming from happening.

So let me sum this up...... there was supposed to be warming, but there wasn’t... the seas were supposed to rise, but they didn’t... the sun is an “unknown factor” in warming that is much more significant that the models expect but we don’t want to know how much... trees absorb carbon in much greater amounts than we expected. And all of this is based on data that either doesn’t exist or which has been manipulated to exclude contrary data or which is the result of bad collection techniques or which is the result of the fraudulent use of statistics. Nice work, boys.

Now there’s undeniable evidence that the warming ain’t happening. In a truly embarrassing admission, the British agency responsible for pimping Global Warming, the Met Office, admitted on Christmas Eve (to try to bury the story) that there has been no warming for 17 years now, even though all the models predicted significant warming for that period – they attribute this to solar activity, natural variability, and the movement of the oceans.... all things any competent model needs to account for. Anyway, what makes this a particularly humiliating admission is that during this same period, Enthusiasts were claiming that warming was actually accelerating.

Moreover, in 2008-2010, global temperatures dropped sharply enough to cancel out the entire supposed net rise in the 20th century. This is important because global warming theory relies on cumulative increases. Thus, their whole theory has fallen apart. . . again. Enthusiasts tried to blame this on the "unexpected" solar cycle -- an eleven year pattern that has repeated itself consistently throughout history and seems to coincide with scaremongering about new global ice ages or new global warming. Enthusiasts also complained that the oceans reacted in an "unexpected" manner by doing what they've always done rather than changing as the climate models suggested. And then the dirty trees have done the "unexpected" by doing what they've always done and refusing to conform to the models. Are you seeing a pattern? It seems that every time the Earth does what it's always done, it's "unexpected."

The jig seems to be up for the Enthusiasts. When cap and trade failed in the US, that signaled the death of their movement. Obama lost interest and the Democrats haven’t picked it up. Obama then went to Copenhagen with the idea of securing a fake agreement to agree which would get the environmentalists of his back and even that blew up in his face when China, Brazil, India, and South Africa met behind his back and agreed to do nothing to change anything. At this point, there are some stragglers. The UK, for example, remains brainwashed, though I’m reading lots of reports about the huge cost and consequence of trying to reduce their carbon emissions which may make them think twice. Australia’s Labor Government seems intent on imposing a carbon tax. But that’s about it. Everyone else seems to be ready to move on.

It’s never wise to predict the death of a religion, but I think the Cult of Warming’s days are numbered.

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The Theater of the Absurd

Politics often involves theater, that’s unavoidable. But right now, our politics seems to have become the theater of the absurd. Brace yourself. Things are about to get ugly.

● Debt Ceiling Showdown: The Republicans are gearing up for a huge fight over raising the debt ceiling. It’s going to be a slaughter. In fact, this is turning into a textbook example of what not to do:

1. You never announce that you are planning to hold the country hostage over some future event. That’s the surest way to get the public to turn against you because you’ve basically announced that you plan to cynically hurt people in the name of getting something you want. Yet, that is what the Republicans have done, they’ve actually bragged about their ability to get goodies out of Obama by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. Wow.

2. You never take hostages without a good reason. Yet, the Republicans haven’t come up with their list of demands. This has disaster written all over it. By announcing their plan to take hostages this early without the slightest hint of a reason for doing so, the Republicans just pitched the media the perfect softball. The media can now attack them as cynics who want to hurt the country for partisan reasons, and without that list of demands, the Republicans have left the media with total control to frame the issues and the arguments.

Moreover, without a list of demands, i.e. goals, it’s impossible to define victory or to develop a plan on how to achieve it. Further, without such goals, it becomes impossible to get everyone on the same page, which is a recipe for infighting, especially with responsibility-free purists screaming bloody murder from the sidelines to help their ratings and fundraising.

3. You never remind people of the other times your plans blew up on you before you try something like this. Yet the Republicans have already started connecting this to the fiscal cliff fiasco and are even foaming at the mouth about shutting down the government again... the same maneuver that neutered a much stronger Newt Gingrich. Yee haw.

I am now 95% sure that the Republican Party is just being played for parody.

● Chuck Hagel: With Leon Panetta leaving as Secretary of Defense, Obama has appointed former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to replace him. Hagel is being attacked by the left over some gay slur he made in 2008 and because they don’t like the fact he’s a Republican, even if he does endorse Democrats. So they want him gone. Enter the Republicans.

The Republicans are upset because: Hagel was one of the only Republican critics of the Iraq War, he voted against US sanction on Iran and Libya, he tried to lift the embargo on Cuba, he described the Defense Department as “bloated” and said it needed “to be pared down,” and he apparently made some disparaging remarks about the influence of the “Jewish lobby.” So they are banding together to bring him down.

The most likely result is that the Republicans beat their pudgy chests for a while and then Hagel gets confirmed with 60+ votes, proving Republican impotence. A worse result would be that they take him down, doing the left’s dirty work for them, and Obama appoints a hard-core Democrat who sails through easily and does significant damage to the Defense Department.

More parody.

● Harrumph Tax Evaders: Finally, just to prove that idiocy isn’t purely domestic, the Prime Minister of Britain, who looks increasingly like a Cupie Doll to me, huffed and puffed and whined about those big bad international companies who avoid British taxes. Rather than fix Britain’s tax laws, which are what allowed these companies to avoid paying taxes, Cupie wants some sort of tax treaty or something to keep companies from following the rules established by Britain to avoid British taxes. Take that Starbucks!

Does this seem like a joke to anyone?

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This Means War!

With Black Friday upon us in a couple days, I thought I would discuss something shopping related. Specifically, several countries have decided to go to war with the most powerful organizations on this planet. My money is on Google and friends.

For those who live under a rock (or in West Virginia), it will come as a great surprise that many governments are out of money. They have promised WAY MORE in benefits than they could ever afford and they put those promises on the old credit card. Now the bill is due and they are struggling to find someone to stick with the tab.

This has resulted in things like the French jacking up their upper income tax bracket. Britain is now planning to impose a massive property tax on expensive homes. The EU tried to milk foreign airlines by imposing a carbon tax that applied for the entire flight, not just the portion spent over EU airspace. Obama and the airlines told the EU no, and Europe surrendered. But they haven’t given up. Fees, surcharges, tax rates. . . they’ve all gone up. And yet, revenues keep falling because of the double-dip recovery Europe is going through. So what is a tiny failing country on a tired continent to do? How about taxing multinational companies?

Good luck with that folks. . . you are out of your league.

France fired its first shot by hitting Amazon with a massive $252 million tax bill claiming that Amazon is shipping into France from Luxemburg to avoid French tax. Sacre bleu! Britain is now doing the same thing. The British government also hauled in Starbucks executives to explain how a company that sold around $5 billion in the UK in the past thirteen years could declare that it only made a profit once and paid a grand total of about $10 million in tax. Starbucks blames high rent. Google earned $4 billion in the UK last year alone and has a 33% profit margin, but managed to report a loss in the UK in 2010 and 2011. What a shame. Google apparently routes their profits. . . er, inventories through Bermuda. France hit Google with a one million Euro tax bill. None of these companies intend to pay.

Britain and France are determined to squeeze money out of these companies, but I don’t think they have the brains to do it frankly. Indeed, as outraged as these countries are, what Google and Amazon have done is legal under UK and French law. That’s the funny part. And the only way to change that would be to change their tax laws to prevent it. But the same fools who created the current system will be charged with fixing this loophole so I doubt they have a chance. Not to mention, a change like this would make local businesses unhappy too and that’s bad for votes.

Moreover, if they do make a real change, then this becomes a question of strength and Britain and France need big old Google and powerful Amazon much more than Google and Amazon need tiny Britain or stagnant France.

My guess is there will be some legal changes that amount to nothing. The locals will be placated by the thought they slayed the dragon, and Google and Amazon will pay some token tax. . . which they will promptly get refunded the following year. Alternatively, Google and Amazon will agree to pay more and will impose massive surcharges so they end up making more by imposing the tax than they will lose paying it. Starbucks, which has physical locations, will just jack up their expenses again.

So act as outraged as you like good people of Europe, these companies aren’t paying another cent.

Germany is doing this too, only they decided to toss a little protectionism into the mix. They just passed a bill which will force Google to pay German newspapers every time their search engine links to one of these articles. In other words, if you run a search for “naked Fritz” and you find an article in The Daily Fuhrer about a group of Germans running naked through the streets toward Poland, Germany now wants Google to cough up some payolla to The Daily Fuhrer. Yeah, that’s gonna work.

Let me spin the likely scenario on this one: Germany passes law. Google makes Germany vanish from internet. For all practical purposes, Germany ceases to matter to the rest of the world. Sales of German goods collapse. Germany begs Google for forgiveness. . . but Google doesn’t forgive, nor does it forget. Polish Army caught unaware by invasion of naked Germans.

The moral to the story is that right now, only two countries are truly capable of standing up to multinational companies: the United States and China. Our markets are so large that these companies need us. Everyone else can pretty much go f* themselves, they are little more than an irritant beneath Goliath’s imported sneakers.

Is this a good thing? No. But it is the reality. . . and something seems wrong with that.

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Naked Royal Flush

The biggest story this week, if the British Press is to be believe, is that Italian and French gossip magazines are running naked pictures of Kate Middleton, who is apparently married to some dude with a famous mother. While I’m indifferent to celebrities/royalties, this does raise an interesting question. Should the press be allowed to print naked pictures of famous people?

For those who haven’t heard about this, what happened is that Ms. Middleton and her hubby went to some private estate in France for a little vacation. Then they got naked and got jiggy. This was caught on camera by a French photographer who was about 1,500 yards away with a high-powered lens. The photos were sold to a French magazine and an Italian magazine. Now the royal family has brought civil suit to stop the publication of these photos (that failed) and they’ve asked a French prosecutor to bring criminal charges against the photographer for trespass and invasion of privacy.

That’s the background. What interests me is the question of whether or not this should be legal? Should the press be allowed to publish naked pictures of famous people taken while the target believed they were in private?

My answer is no because it serves no public purpose in this instance.

The First Amendment, which obviously isn’t implicated overseas, was created for the purpose of making sure that the press would be able to keep the public informed of matters of public import without the government censoring what information it wanted the public to know. Key in that point is the issue of the public interest, and what we need to consider when examining freedom of speech/press issues is to weigh the public interest against the violation of privacy rights.

When you start to think this issue in those terms, it becomes pretty obvious that naked pictures taken of celebrities who believe they are in private when the photos are taken are not something where the public interest outweighs the loss of privacy rights. Indeed, there really isn’t even a public interest here. It’s not like they were doing anything illegal or hypocritical. This wasn’t a crime. There was no drug use or anything which would make you question their judgment. So what exactly is the public interest?

I could see a public interest if they had done this at a bar downtown, but then the public interest would be in knowing they had gotten naked in public. In other words, it’s not the naked part that’s the problem, it’s the doing it in public part that’s the problem. I could also perhaps see a public interest if they had foresworn sex or nudity or something, and they were using that to build an image or reputation. But that’s not the case. This was just another married couple having sex.

So I leave you with these questions. Should the press be allowed to publish these images? Should it be criminal to invade privacy in matters like this? And where would you draw the line?

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Deciding Who Lives And Dies

Liberals love to control everyone around them. From demanding seatbelts to banning salts and transfats to banning soda in schools, liberals just can’t stop telling you how to live your life. But how far would they really go? Would they deny you medical care if you don’t conform to the way they think you should live? Take a wild guess.

Today’s story comes from Britain, which is often a trendsetter for our left. This story specifically involves a poll conducted by the UK of 1,096 doctors in the National Heath Service. They were asked if the NHS, i.e. the government agency which controls all healthcare in Britain, should have the right to deny non-emergency treatments to smokers and to people who are overweight. Fifty-four percent (54%) answered “YES”.

Think about that for a moment. A slight majority of British doctors (“do no harm” types) felt that the British government should have the right to deny Britons medical care if they were smokers or fat. And don’t forget, in Britain, there really is no other choice for medical care, so this is effectively a ban, not simply a demand that they fund it themselves.

The ostensible reason for this is a shift in attitudes resulting from the need for medical cut backs. In other words, because money is scarce, they want to decide who they consider worthy of receiving treatment and ban everyone else from getting it. But when is money ever not scarce?

And don’t think this is theoretical either. A prior investigation has already found that 25 of 91 Primary Care Trusts in England (think “Obama Insurance Exchange”) have imposed treatment bans since April 2011 in an attempt to save ₤20 billion by 2015. Indeed, in parts of England, smokers and obese people are being rejected for hip and knee replacements so these trusts can allocate their resources to people whose lifestyles they deem more justified of receiving treatment. And you can bet that once it’s acceptable to deny “non-emergency” care to undesirables, emergency care will be next. . . like in euthanasia countries, where doctors now decide if your life is worth saving or if the state wouldn’t be better off letting you shuffle your now-worthless ass off this mortal coil.

So once again, liberals are dividing the world into those they like and those they don’t and they are trying to use the power of government to punish those they don’t. The NHS is a system from which Britons cannot escape. . . just like a single payer plan would be here. They make you pay massive taxes for that system your entire life, i.e. they turn you into a slave, with the promise that you will be taken care of. Then they deny medical care to those they dislike. So much for medical care being a basic human right.

This is the problem with liberal “do-gooder-ism.” It quickly becomes fascism of the worst kind. From banning things you eat to taking your children if you teach them the wrong lessons to imprisoning you for having the wrong thoughts to letting you die if they don’t like you. Don’t ever believe a liberal when they start whining about human rights or dignity because they don’t really mean it. . . they always omit the critical words they are really thinking: “for some.”

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Why The Nanny State Destroys All It Touches

Britain has just provided us with a fascinating example of why conservatism works and liberalism fails in the real world, and we should be paying attention. What they’re doing is removing street signs and other devices meant to keep people safe on the roads. Why they’re doing it, is because these signs were having the opposite effect. Get this!

Our story comes to us from the DailyMail Online (LINK), perhaps the greatest source of actual information left on the planet. This particular story deals with changes that have been made to Exhibition Road in the heart of London’s museum quarter.

For years now, liberal safety advocates have been installing ever more safety measures to protect drivers and pedestrians. This has ranged from restrictive rules for drivers to signs warning drivers about dangers to curbs meant to separate the road from the sidewalk to railings meant to pen in pedestrians to designated crosswalks, etc. The idea was that the government would find all the potential dangers and then warn drivers and pedestrians about them or they would find ways to eliminate those dangers.

Of course, that’s not how it worked out. Why? Because once the government took over warning people about what to watch for, they stopped taking precautions themselves and they relied on the government’s warnings. So now the conservative government is yanking these things out again and lo and behold, it’s actually getting safer. Here’s a picture of the road today with all the gates and curbs and signs removed:

Why is it getting safer? Because people are paying more attention. Said Sir Jeremy Dixon, the lead architect on the new project:

“When the rules by which traffic normally operates are removed - signs, barriers and curb markings - drivers become more observant. They make more eye-contact with pedestrians which produces greater watchfulness. They use the road more like pedestrians. They take more responsibility for their actions. [S]tudies have shown that when traffic lights are removed from crossings, traffic flows more freely and efficiently because drivers take more care.”

Imagine that. When the government takes responsibility for something, people take less personal responsibility for their own actions. When the government stops playing nanny, people take more responsibility for their actions. Who could have guessed?

And there’s more. Daniel Moylan, the Deputy Chairman of Transport for London said this:

“The psychology of this scheme is fascinating. Experience seems to show that when you dedicate space to traffic and control it with signs and green traffic lights, motorists develop a claim on it. It becomes ‘my space.’ Drivers become annoyed if people move into it.”

In other words, they develop a sense of entitlement.

Folks, this is exactly what conservatives warn about with government. When the government gives something to people, they develop feelings of entitlement and they become belligerent to anyone who violates “their rights.” What’s more, they stop taking personal responsibility for their own actions in those areas, i.e. they become dependent on the government.

This issue right here is the human condition in a nutshell and proves the conservative belief that the nanny state is destructive, not constructive. It destroys those it seeks to help. This is exactly why generations of government welfare have destroyed the families who accepted the government’s intervention in their lives. This is why big businesses who have come to rely on the government need bailouts to keep them afloat. This is why we are facing a crushing amount of regulation today, because once the government begins taking care of you, it keeps moving into more and more aspects of your life as you become increasingly helpless. These are not coincidences.

This is why government stinks on a human level and it applies to everything the government touches. There is an incredible lesson here, will anybody learn it? Seeing as how Los Angeles just banned footballs and frisbies from being thrown on the beach. . . I’m thinking the answer is no.

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Immigration: Reality Strikes Liberals Again

If you haven't seen it yet, my latest article is up at Big Hollywood (Click Me).

Sometimes it’s amazing how daft leftists can be. We spent more money than we could afford and now we’re broke? How did that happen?! We tax rich people and they send their money overseas. Nobody could have seen that coming!! We let criminals out of jail and somehow the crime rate soars?! How? Now liberals have discovered that massive immigration depresses wages. Ya think?

While Britain’s Labour Party was in power between 1997 and 2010, they threw open the immigration doors to let pretty much anyone who wanted into Britain into the country. Part of this had to do with new European Union rules which allowed free movement from Eastern Europe and part of it was leftist political correctness which sought to de-British Britain.

To give you a sense of how open the doors got, consider these figures:

● Between 1980-1991, the UK lost an average of 42,000 people each year.
● Between 1992-1995, the UK gained 9,200 immigrants per year.
● Between 1996 and 2010, under Labor, the UK gained 178,000 per year.

A couple weeks ago, a report was released, which had been commissioned by Labor when it was in power and then suppressed, because Labour didn’t like its conclusions. In fact, they ran around telling the public the exact opposite of what the report found. But now the truth has come out.

According to this report, this wave of immigrants flooding Britain depressed British wage and “undercut” British workers. You don’t say?! It was so bad in fact, the Labour Party has had to admit Labour “got it wrong” on immigration and concedes this “had a big effect on people in Britain.” Great. . . now explain why you kept lying about it?

But can they seriously claim they had no idea this would happen? Assume you make widgets and you need a new worker. In Room A, there are two potential employees. . . they look surly. In Room B, there are 500 potential employees. Do you think you will end up paying more if you hire from Room A or Room B? It’s pretty obvious isn’t it? Yet, somehow it was never obvious to liberals that flooding Britain with workers, i.e. turning Britain’s labor market from Room A into Room B, would have a negative effect on the workers already in the country? How stupid do you need to be not to see that coming? Oh, that’s right, liberals don’t think about the future, they assume there are no unintended consequences.

Britain has shown that the consequence of importing a ton of labor are very clear. It will increase the competition for jobs, which will result in wages being depressed because there are more people bidding for the same number of jobs.

Now let's look at America. We are letting people in at three times the rate the British were when they “got it wrong”. . . we are letting enough people into this country every year to populate Denver, Colorado. That’s unsustainable.

The Democrats support this because they think these immigrants will vote Democrat, which will overcome the white flight their party has experienced. But what do they think the effect will be on the wages of blacks, Hispanics and uneducated whites.... the very groups the Democrats claim to want to help? The fools currently squatting outside Wall Street want this too (check out Bev’s article on their list of demands). Those idiots want both (1) a hike in wages and (2) open borders. But of course, those are contradictory demands because once you open the borders, wages will crash. Not surprisingly, Big Business wants this too because it keeps their costs down.

Talk about an unholy alliance!

I'm all for immigration, but there need to be limits. Clearly, three times the British level is too much.

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Boiler Boiler, Toil and Trouble. . .

There is an old saying that God watches over idiots and drunks. But the arrogantly stupid are another matter. In fact, the universe seems to love messing with those people, and it LOVES ironic punishments. Take the case of Britain, a leading proponent of global warming, and the “condensing boiler.”

Five years ago, drunk with self-righteousness, New Labor passed a law outlawing existing boiler technology. In its place, New Labor decreed that the people would use condensing boilers. Thus, it became illegal to install any kind of boiler other than a condensing boiler. Consequently, eight million of these things have been put into service in Britain, and every year another 1.2 million of the old ones are scrapped.

The reason for this change was simple: global warming must be real, despite the science to the contrary, because all the right people say it is. By forcing people to install condensing boilers instead of the old kind favored by the ignorant masses, everyone would save money in the long run on fuel bills and the country’s carbon footprint would be reduced.

Here’s why. A regular boiler produces hot gases when the methane fuel is burned off to heat water for radiators, dishwashers, tap water, etc. Around 25% of that heat vents out the exhaust pipe in the form of steam and evil CO2. But a condensing boiler captures that steam, lets it condense back into water, and returns it to the system. According to advocates, this should increase the efficiency of the units from 75% to 93% and will thereby lower fuel bills and reduce carbon emissions. Hurray! Praise the maker!

But something went wrong between the drawing board and reality.

First, these things cost around £2,000, which is a lot more than the older versions. Indeed, assuming the fuel bill savings are as advertised, it will take ten years to make up the price difference over the older models. BUT... these things don’t last ten years. According to a plumbers association in London, the boilers are only likely to last three to six years, whereas the old ones lasted twenty years. Moreover, the replacement parts are so expensive that it’s usually cheaper just to replace a broken unit than it is to have it repaired.

Secondly, these things don’t work as advertised. For the water to condense, it needs to be below 55 degrees Celsius. But the steam typically produced is around 65 degrees Celsius. To fix this, customers either need to buy over-sized radiators for their homes (thereby wiping out the environmental efficiency benefits) or pipes need to be installed into the walls and floors to let the steam cool. This can cost thousands of pounds.

Third, the condensed water vapor is often acidic, as it contains nitrogen and sulphur oxides, and will corrode the boiler components and lead to breakdowns.

But the biggest, most ironic problem of them all was exposed over the past few weeks. See, it turns out that while this steam is racing through these pipes to cool off and condense, the cold air from a particularly cold winter. . . like the one they are having at the moment despite claims that global warming would end such weather forever. . . will cause the condensed water to freeze up into ice. This blocks the pipes. Once the boiler senses the blockage, it shuts down.

Yep. No heat.

In Yorkshire alone this past week, very angry British people called British Gas to come fix 60,000 units because they froze up. The cost of these plumber visits ran between £200 to £300 per visit, plus 20% VAT tax.

So think of the irony: a record cold snap that should no longer exist according to global warming enthusiasts, is destroying heaters that are being foisted on people by those same enthusiasts for the sole purpose of stopping the global warming that isn’t coming. Way to not-solve a non-problem! If that isn’t the definition of irony, then I don’t know what is.

Moreover, this technology that was meant to save the planet costs more and ultimately pollutes more (when you consider the scrapage and the cost of replacing units more frequently) than the tried and true technologies it was meant to replace. In other words, the enthusiasts made the very problem they are combating worse.

Nice huh?

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1979-1980/2010-2012. . . History Repeating?

Ronald Reagan became President at a low point for the United States. Our economy was failing, our military was neglected, our politics were poisonous, and our nation was demoralized. Over the next few years, Ronald Reagan turned all of that around. But even before Reagan brought us Reaganomics, Margaret Thatcher was beating Reagan to the punch, with similar stunning results. Well, our two countries feel a lot like 1979 again, and once again the British are showing us the way out of this mess.

In two short years, the Democrats have made a royal mess of our country. They’ve wasted trillions of dollars we could not afford, they’ve created what appears to be a permanent structural deficit, they’ve demoralized our foreign policy, they’ve disgraced our political system, and they’ve put the public on the verge of revolt. Labor did the same thing to Britain. But Britain is now turning this around.

When the British replaced their Labor government with a Conservative/Liberal coalition, few expected much in the way of reform. The Conservatives were led by David Cameron, who seems more like an effete elitist than a reputable leader. Indeed, his claim to fame before being elected was to rid the Conservatives of most of their ideology and to turn them into Tony Blair impersonators. His coalition partners, the Liberals, are a confused jumble of socialists and civil libertarians. That’s hardly the recipe for daring achievements. Yet, that is exactly what they are doing. Consider this:

1. Facing a $245 billion deficit (11.4% of GNP), the government issued a dramatic budget containing previously unthinkable cuts. Government agencies will be cut by 19% on average, 500,000 government jobs will be eliminated, welfare benefits will be cut, a middle class child credit will disappear, the retirement age will rise from 65 to 66, college tuition and train fares will rise, and so on. The only two errors were to exempt the National Health Service from cuts and to increase spending on foreign aid.

This is an incredible budget for a coalition that can hardly be called fiscal hawks and whose members range from both fringes to the squishy middle. So when our media is throwing up their hands trying to explain why not one penny of federal spending can be cut, keep Britain's example in mind. This is a blue print for the United States.

2. The government plans to cut overall immigration from 196,000 a year to below 100,000 by 2015. To achieve that, they’ve just imposed a 20% cut in the number of non-Europeans allowed to work in the U.K., cut the number of visas granted to foreign students, and will impose a minimum standard for English proficiency on marriage visas.

The focus on student visa (which account for 60% of immigration) is the result of many “students” coming to England but not actually working on degree programs, and of concerns that some “schools” are simply schemes to exploit student visas to get immigrants into the country -- and which may provide a gateway for terrorists to enter the U.K. Thus, the new government also will begin stringent background checks into the credentials of schools that offer visas to overseas students, and will give a preference to students in degree programs.

3. The government is completely reforming British schools. For example, they are dismantling the system put in place by Labor where students could get non-academic qualifications (like certificates in “sports leadership”) as a substitute for traditional subjects. They will grade schools on the performance of their students in English, math, science, history or geography, and a modern or ancient language. Moreover, teachers will need to pass math and English aptitude tests. Principals will be given more powers to restrain violent pupils, put students in detention, and search them for mobile phones. Also, about 400 schools will be taken over. Further, they have introduced a program to train soldiers to become teachers with the idea that they have the experience to teach students and to improve classroom discipline. Finally, they are planning reforms to “drive out ‘trendy’ learning methods” brought in under Labor.

That’s not a bad start for a coalition that wasn’t supposed to do much of anything, and it is a lesson for our country. Right now, people are ready for a radical remake of the current system. They don’t want to hear, “we don’t know how to cut the budget.” They don’t want fake 10 year plans where the cuts never come. They don’t want public sector employees to keep getting raises and untouchable jobs when their own jobs are hanging by a thread. They don’t want unchecked immigration. And they don’t want to double down on the liberal stupidity that has ruined the public schools.

If a coalition of quasi-Euro-socialists, actual socialists, and libertarians can do this, then so can the Republicans. It won’t happen until Obama is gone in 2012, but it’s time to start now and to fully implement what we start when the new Republican president takes office in 2012. Anyone promising less than that, need not apply.

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(Un)Exempting Churches From Gay Rights Laws

One of the concerns religious groups raise whenever they are confronted with gay rights laws is that they will be forced to condone something they consider immoral. “Nonsense!” say the proponents of these laws, “we’ll exempt religious organizations from the law.” Well, England has now shown exactly what those exemptions are worth, and churches are right to be concerned -- especially since British leftism eventually infests our left as well.

Some time ago, England passed laws forbidding discrimination against homosexuals in hiring. At the time, those laws included an exemption for religious groups that consider homosexuality immoral. In the past month, the British Labour Party has tried to pass a law “clarifying” those exemptions. What they tried should send up huge red flags to anyone who thinks that people have the right to maintain their own beliefs.

Specifically, Labour tried to pass a law that expanded the anti-hiring-discrimination laws to all aspects of religious organizations, except for the hiring of clerical personnel. That's right, everyone except the actual priests, ministers, rabbis, shamans or imams.

Calling this a “cautious aim” and “fairly modest,” The Economist said:

“[The government] was not questioning the right of religious bodies to follow their own beliefs when hiring priests or imams; it merely wanted to clarify that, in recruiting for non-religious jobs (accountants, for example), churches must obey the law and refrain from discrimination against gays.”

Oh, is that all? So churches have the right to their beliefs, but they can only exercise those rights in rare occasions -- when it comes to choosing actual priests. For all other jobs, they need to follow the beliefs established by the government, instead of their own?

Does anyone see a problem with this? The Economist surely doesn't because they don't really believe churches should be doing this. But I wonder how they would feel if we looked at this principle more broadly. Indeed, while we’re busy defining when you can and can’t exercise your beliefs, why stop with sexual orientation? Why do we allow religious discrimination for example? Shouldn't we force churches to hire atheists? So long as we don’t require them to hire atheistic priests, then we aren’t really questioning their right to follow their own beliefs, are we?

No doubt The Economist would approve of that because they have over the years shown a pretty clear dislike for Christianity. But Christianity isn't the only religion. Maybe we should force Mosques to employ Jews and Synagogues to hire Muslims? I can't see why this would be a problem so long as they were free to pick their own imams and rabbis?

By the way, if you think this can't be a problem, let me point out part of an argument before the Supreme Court this week. In a case where the court is deciding whether universities can ban Christian groups who refuse to admit gay members, one of the justices asked the representative for the gay group: if we don't let the Christian group control its own membership, what keeps others who disagree with their views from flooding into the group and voting themselves into the leadership and, basically, taking over the group? The answer: well, they could go form a new group if that happened. Seriously? Ok, let's run with that...

With that in mind, let's not forget that these laws apply well beyond religious institutions as well. So shouldn't gay groups be forced to hire devout Catholics and Muslims. . . except for their most senior positions of course. Though, now that I think about it, I'm not even sure why we should exempt their senior positions as those aren't "religious" positions, are they? And while we're on a roll, why shouldn't pro-abortion groups be required to hire devout Roman Catholics? Shouldn't feminist groups be required to hire devout Muslims? And if not, why not. . . as The Economist says, it’s not like this will interfere with their beliefs. And if they don't like it, they can just go form another group, right?

Seriously, this shows the left’s promises for what they are: lies. They promise an exemption and then quickly redefine the exemption into absurdity and then eliminate it all together.

It also show the danger of letting the government decide what you can believe and when you can act on those beliefs. If we take this law seriously, then no group can be safe from a determined opposition seeking to infiltrate the group and destroy its message. . . all sanctioned with the force of law.

If you believe, as I do, that people have the right to their own beliefs, be they right, wrong, stupid, offensive or otherwise, then this is the sort of thing that should scare you: the government telling you when you can and cannot exercise your beliefs.

And if these things do happen, then activists on the right should get their resumes ready. It's open season on leftist interest groups!


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The Dark Ages (Redux)

A few years back, a group of environmentalists decided to see what would happen if you thrust a country back into the Dark Ages. They chose Britain, possibly because the British were too busy stabbing each other and binge-drinking themselves into a stupor to notice. With nary a hint of protest, the environmentalists set their plan into motion. Now the free range chickens have come home to roost.

Here’s what happened. Beginning in the 1990s, the Labor government started a concerted effort to destroy the British power grid in the name of stopping global warming. . . er climate change. . . er the next ice age.

Noting that coal and nuclear power plants account for about 45% of all power generated in Britain, Labor chose those forms of power as the best place to start. So they made it virtually impossible to build nuclear plants. Then they made it unprofitable to run existing coal-fired plants, and finally they all but forbade the construction of new coal-fired plants. And here is what they’ve achieved:

Britain currently gets around 13% of its electricity from nuclear plants. But most of their nuclear plants are simply too old to carry on. Indeed, half of their existing nuclear plants have already been shut down and the remaining plants will soon follow. The last one should be closed by 2023. New nuclear plants are planned, but the earliest one of those could be up and running is 2017, and that’s probably insanely optimistic.

Britain also gets around 31% of its electricity from coal-fired plants, but this will end soon. EU environmental rules require that coal plants be fit with expensive scrubbers or be shut down. But these scrubbers are too expensive to make economic sense. So owners are finding it cheaper to just shut the plants down. Indeed, right now these plants are operating (in a reduced capacity) under an exception that expires in 2015, after which time they will be shut down.

So by 2015, Britain will lose about 44% of its capacity to generate electricity. Alas, they don’t have the capacity to spare. The chart on the left shows the problem. Beginning in 2015, Britain will not be able to generate enough electricity to meet demand. This gap between supply and demand will continue to grow until around 2030, at which point Britain will be able to meet only half of its demand.

What does this mean? Blackouts.

In the 2007, South Africa experienced blackouts because of a moratorium put in place in the 1990s on the building of new power plants. Consequently, the national power company, Eskom, began rolling blackouts, cutting off power for hours at a time. Initially, these blackouts were announced. But they soon discovered that this attracted thieves to the affected neighborhoods, so they stopped announcing them.

Britain will be heading down the same path. So, if burglary is your thing -- and if you live in Britain, we know it is -- you are about to experience a golden age of crime. It will be glorious!

But wait, in all fairness, I don’t want to overstate the problem. The same idiots who caused the problem have a “solution.” They prayed to the Great Unicorn for magical new technologies that will produce the missing electricity without harming the environment. Here is what they got:

Over the next eleven years (fortunately 2015 is more than 11 years away), they intend to build enough maritime windmills to produce 33 Gig Watts of power. Not bad huh? And while many claim that Britains lacks the resources to produce this many windmills, we should not doubt that they can pull this off. After all, Britain is the world’s biggest producer of wind power. In fact, in 2008, Britain produced a whopping 0.6 GW! See, they're almost there. . . only another 98.2% to go!

But there is a catch with this marvelous plan. The government estimates that it’s about to lose 75 GW of power because of all these plant closures (failures). Thus, even if Plan Quixote works, it will still come up 42 GW short. . . actually, that’s not true. There’s another problem I haven’t mentioned yet. It turns out that windmills don’t work on calm days. I know, knock you over with a feather! Even the government estimates that 25 GW of potential from windmills will only be able to replace 5 GW of fossil-fuel fired power. Thus, to plug the gap with wind, the Brits need to produce 375 GW of wind power -- more than ten times what they’re building. It would seem, the Great Unicorn has failed them?

And this doesn’t even account for the fact that their oil and gas fired plants are running out of fuel as their North Sea reserves run dry (they peaked in 1999).

Yet, there is an out. When the darkness and the cold become unbearable and the number of patients dying in the dark in hospitals increases well beyond its currently high levels, the Brits can start building gas-fired plants. And to fuel those plants, they can call upon old reliable, dependable Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Of course, that will be expensive and will wreak havoc on anyone who pays for their own electricity, partly because the prices will vary dramatically day by day, and partly because Putin loves him some predatory pricing. But it should keep the lights on most of the time. And so what if it makes Britain dependent on Russia. Economic slavery sure beats global warming. . . cooling. . . whatever.

Of course, there is something else they could do. They could burn environmentalists and Labor MPs to keep warm.

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How Good Is European/Canadian Health Care Really?

I’m convinced. We need a government-run, single-payer health care system. Why? Because our health care system is miserable -- it’s the worst in the developed world. And everybody else's is so good. Yep. The end.

What’s that? You want me to produce evidence? Fine, but it’s a waste of time. . . just like reading a bill before you vote for it.

Let’s start with life expectancy. Did you know that the United States ranks 50th out of 224 nations in life expectancy? That’s pretty bad. Of course, we live to an average age of 78.11 years, whereas the world average is only 67. So I guess that’s not so bad. And I guess I should mention that the European Union only ranks 41st, at 78.67 years. Interesting. . .

Hey, did you know that the most observable determinant of life expectancy is obesity. And if you factor out the increase in obesity in the United States between 1991 and 2004, the American life expectancy would increase by six months to 78.71, a little better than the EU. Wow, I never saw that coming!

Ok, so the life expectancy thing didn’t work, but we ALL know that the United States leads the world in infant mortality. What? That’s not true either.

The US infant mortality rate is 6.26 deaths per 1000 births, placing us 44th on the list of 224. The EU rate is 5.72 deaths per 1000, placing them 42nd. Only two spots higher. But there's more you say? Not all countries count infant mortality in the same way? In Canada, Germany and Austria, premature babies weighing less than 500 grams are not considered living children and are not counted toward mortality statistics. In Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a baby is not considered a baby unless it is at least 30 centimeters in length at the time of death. In some countries, babies that survive less than 24 hours are considered “stillborn” and are excluded as well. Hong Kong and Japan classify these as “miscarriages” and don’t count them either. Norway has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world until you add these exclusions back in. When you do that, the have the same rate at the US.

Who could have guessed that the two big reasons cited for switching to a single payer system are false? I wonder what else we don’t know. . .

• Breast cancer mortality is 88% higher in the UK, 52% higher in Germany, and 9% higher in Canada than in the US.

• Prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher in the UK, 457% higher in Norway, and 184% higher in Canada than in the US.

• Colorectal mortality is 40% higher in the UK and 10% higher in Canada than in the US.

• Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases like heart disease. For example, 56% of Americans who could benefit from statin drugs receive them. This compares to 36% of the Dutch, 29% of the Swiss, 26% of the Germans, 23% of the Britons, and 17% of the Italians.

• Canadian and British patients face waits that are twice as long as those in America.

• The US has 34 CT machines and 27 MRI machines for every million Americans, whereas Canada has only 12 CT machines and 6 MRI machines per million, and Britain has only 8 CT machines and 6 MRI machines.

Nor are foreigners all that happy with their systems. Just like Americans, more than 70% of Germans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and Britons report that their health care systems need either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.” That is surprising if one is to believe that the single payer system is such a good idea?

Further, the idea that American drugs are expensive compared to the rest of the world is a myth. Recent studies have shown that while the US, on average, has higher prices for newly originated drugs, it has the lowest generic prices compared to other countries. The US also has the lowest over-the-counter costs. Moreover, while the US consumer would have spent, on average, 3% more for the same basket of drugs in Canada and 27% more than your average German, the American would have spent 30% less than the average French patient, 9% less than the average Italian, 8% less than the average Japanese, and 24% less than the average Briton.

Finally, consider that the world is piggybacking on American innovation.

• The top five US hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in every other developed country combined.

• Since the 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to US residents more than the residents of all other countries combined.

• The United States spends three times as much as the rest of the world on R&D in biotechnology.

So maybe, in the end, our system isn’t the disaster we’ve been told? Or maybe, emulating the European/Canadian single payer model just isn’t a good idea.

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Bermuda Love Triangle Gone Wrong

President Obama is man of few skills. But there is one skill in which he truly excels. . . angering the British. He’s done it again.

As you may recall, there are currently 17 Uyghurs residing at Guantanamo Bay. . . that is to say, there were.

Earlier this month, the United States obtained the agreement of the president of Palau, Mr. Johnson Toibiong, to take thirteen of these gentlemen off our hands for the minor sum of $200 million. Why he could not take all seventeen is not known. Perhaps the Palau Hilton was full? Perhaps Palauan President Toibiong didn’t like the fruit basket? We don’t know. But we do know that this left Team Obama with the little problem of four unwanted Uyghurs.

The brain trust charged with handling this delicate situation are named Greg Craig and Daniel Fried, two senior level Obama advisors who have been assigned the task of dispersing the inmate at Gitmo, giving new meaning to the barman’s call: “You don’t have to go home. . . but you can’t stay here.”

So what did Team Obama come up with? No, they didn’t just drive them to a rest stop in Cuba and shove them out the door. They flew them to Bermuda, and set them free.

Now, don’t think for a moment that they did this without the permission of Bermuda’s Premier, Ewart Brown. No, they weren’t that crass.

And don’t worry, there was no dirty deal. Bermuda was simply “playing the Good Samaritan in recognition of its 400 year friendship with the United States,” said Brown. The fact that 78% of the island’s income comes from financial services, an industry now owned by Mr. Obama, or that 90% of Bermuda’s tourist industry is dependent on the United States had nothing to with this, or so we are assured.

Nevertheless, Fried and Craig got them quite a good deal. Premier Brown not only agreed to let them settle in Bermuda, but he agreed to let these Uyghurs become naturalized citizens -- a right not even held by many persons born on the island itself.

So why would this upset Britain? Well, there seems to be some vague relationship between Britain and Bermuda. Indeed, Bermuda is considered a British Overseas Territory. Thus, Bermuda’s head of state is the Queen of England, and all matters related to foreign policy and/or security, which includes immigration, fall under the purview of the Governor of Bermuda, Sir Richard Gozney.

And here’s the kicker. . . Team Obama never told anyone in the British Government they were doing this until it happened. Read that again.

This is a major diplomatic slight, equivalent to Britain negotiating a secret treaty with the Mayor of Kansas City. Naturally, the British are quite upset. Whitehall officials are privately accusing Team Obama of treating Britain “with barely disguised contempt.” Said one senior British official:

"The Americans were fully aware of the foreign-policy understanding we have with Bermuda and they deliberately chose to ignore it. This is not the kind of behavior one expects from an ally."

Moreover, the British now face a very real problem. Remember that promise of citizenship? That will give these Uyghurs the right to travel to the UK and to apply for British citizenship. Thus, while they can still be denied entry to the United States, they cannot be denied entry to the United Kingdom. Take that you dirty Brits.

But wait, there’s more. After the British became upset, Team Obama lied about informing the British. Indeed, Team Obama trotted out zombified-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to claim that she discussed the transfer with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband in what she described as “an uneasy conversation.” Really? “Guess what we’re about to do to you!” I wonder how that conversation ended?

Britain, however, denies this, as does Bermuda Governor Gozney who stated, “We were only told this morning.”

United States official, speaking off the record, seemed to concede this point with their defense: “We did talk to them before the Uyghurs got on the plane.” As does Premier Ewart Brown, who himself described the talks that led to this as “private and somewhat restricted.”

And like that, the love between America and Britain vanishes without a trace. . . another victim of the Bermuda Love Triangle.
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