Lee E. Ohanian, a UCLA economist, blames President Herbert Hoover for the Depression but with a surprising twist that I've never heard: his pro-labor policy that kept wages too high and encouraged job sharing, which in turn depressed employment. Ohanian says that this was the single most important event that caused the Depression. See this link. Well, let's take this further: Roosevelt's Section 7a of the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), Wagner Act (1935), Fair Labor Standards Act (1938). That's off the top of my head.

The usual culprits are the Smoot-Hawley tariff and raising taxes. 

After writing my Congressman and Senators on July 24, I have now heard from them all. It was a pleasure to receive their form letters ignoring every point I had made and repeating the litany about the health care crisis in this country and its 47 million uninsured. They were all very glad to hear from me, and they are taking the whole matter very seriously.

One of them whined that USPS mail was slow getting to Washington DC but he still wants the government to run our health care system.

After raucous town hall meetings and declining poll numbers, Politico predicts significant losses for Democrats in 2010. We may be getting ahead of ourselves. On the Republican side, they have no leadership.

Looking back

I started this blog less than a month ago, and this will be my 65th post. I don't know what inspired me and created such an outpouring of activity. Apparently I needed a outlet for excessive energy, but I think that the explosion of the health care debate played a larger role. This issue is close to me because of my own health issues and my attitudes about politics and the economy.

I blogged a few years ago and enjoyed it. My posts were linked to classes that I was teaching at the time, and I think I was able to give students something extra that they could not get in the classroom. If I had had access to an internet connection in the classroom, which is more common now, then that would have worked as well. I tried to post something every day, and keep up with the course.

I don't know what the future of this blog will be. Some bloggers are able to keep up their pace for years. I don't see how some of them have the time that's required. That's not a problem with me. A sense of fatigue may set in, but at this point I hope not. I'm not writing this blog for anyone else. You could just call it a hobby. Well, I don't hunt, I don't fish....

Elmer Kelton, a western writer, has died. He was best known for The Time It Never Rained.

Rasmussen: 57 percent would vote to replace the entire Congress and start over. Amen! Congress' approval rating has, at least in my memory, never been high. The usual focus on the president's rating ignores Congress'.

Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo): The GOP will probably not be on board for ObamaCare. The reasons are economic. Despite what Obama says, the Democrats want to strip $200 billion from Medicare to pay for uninsured workers.

Gallup: Conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states. You won't know this if you watch Charlie Gibson.

St. Paul's College in Charleston, WV, has canceled its first game of the season with West Virginia Wesleyan. Their helments and pads have not come in. Borrow them from somebody!

Opposition to ObamaCare may have peaked at 53 percent.

I've just discovered Barbara Oakley, an engineering Ph.D., who writes a blog on the Psychology Today site. She asks, why are most journalists are Democrats? This is a big subject, but her answer begins with the fact that most journalist want to help people, or better the world. They are self-selected; we are not talking about random selection here. If you don't want to help people, you must be interested in money, and therefore greedy.

As college students, they tend to take a lot of courses in history, psychology, sociology, and political science. Sociology is totally focused on, guess what, inequality. For the most part, these courses are taught by Democrats, who stress that corporations are the bad guys, and that society can be improved only by unions and government programs, especially ones that lean toward socialistic solutions. So everybody -- students, teachers, and later editors -- have a certain mind-set, and everybody buys into it. Often they can't see anything else, and denigrate or even demonize anyone who dares question them.

Oakley also makes this interesting point: It's easy for journalists to find targets for investigation in open, capitalistic societies, since "totalitarian governments are journalistic black holes."

Charles Krauthammer predicts how the health care imbroglio will turn out. It's a very plausible scenario.

You have probably heard that the U.S. ranks 37th in health care according to the World Health Organization. I don't believe it. I wanted to find out what this ranking is based on. See here for an explanation. When we make rankings, we must be careful about what we are ranking.

Snyder: public option out

In a new town hall meeting yesterday, Vic Snyder (D-AR) said he thinks the public option will likely not be part of changes in our health care system. He stated it doesn't "add a lot" and brings out opposition — the "camel's nose under the tent" that will lead to socialized medicine. But he didn't say he would vote against it.

The Democrat-Gazette story is here, but you have to be a subscriber to read it all.

Cutting Medicare

The health care debate has ratcheted up in the past few days. The idea that has floated to the surface is that Medicare will have to be cut. This possibility has been there all the time, and I just didn't notice it. Of course the mainstream media did not help at all. But now it's getting the attention it deserves.

Of course, Obama has vowed that he will not cut Medicare. He asserts he wants to reduce waste and fraud. How will a reduction in total outlays achieve that is not clear. Obama is going to cut Medicare for seniors and use the money to fund health care for the uninsured. So seniors will get the short end of the stick.

Cardiologists and oncologists are in an uproar over prospective cuts, arguing that services in small towns and rural areas will be adversely affected. Many doctors already refuse to accept Medicare patients because of low Medicare reimbursements. I myself have had to shop around for doctors who accept Medicare. I could not see the doctor who was my first choice.

Unbelievable!

Obama has proposed to eliminate Medicare Advantage insurance plans. So everybody can keep their insurance, right?

Depression, good or bad?

Scientific American has an article that raises the question of whether depression is a malfunction or an adaptation. People can suffer because of depression and even become impaired in some ways, but this article argues that it serves the purpose of focusing one's mental energy on some critical problem. This process is called rumination.

We all get depressed from time to time. I certainly do, and I don't like it. I can't think of anything else except what's bothering me. But as the article suggests, I can come out of it quickly when I have a solution to the problem.

I recall often when I worked on a computer problem — not exactly the same thing as depression, I know — my attention would be extremely focused but I failed to see the answer. I could not stop thinking about it. Sometimes I would just go to bed, but when I woke up in the morning, I would immediately see the answer.

Virginia Postrel sums up Ted Kennedy for me and the whole Kennedy phenomenon. But I wonder if Democrats today would actually support JFK's major policies. Think war, tax cuts, etc.

Finally some good news

The IRS will allow a sales tax deduction for new car purchases on your 2009 taxes. You can take this deduction even if you don't itemize and take the standard deduction.

Cash for Clunkers report card

Japanese automakers benefited more than U.S. companies in sales under the Clunkers program. The most popular new vehicle purchased was the Toyota Corolla, followed by the Honda Civic, Toyota Camry, and Ford Focus. However, these vehicles are all assembled in the U.S. The leading trade-ins were the Ford Explorer, Ford F-150, and Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Political Wire reports a poll that shows Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) tied with three potential challengers who lack any name recognition.

Lincoln has 40 percent, Gilbert Baker and Curtis Coleman have 42 percent and 41 percent respectively, and Tom Cotton has 39 percent. They of course are all Republicans.

Her approval rating is 36 percent, while 44 percent of the voters in the state disapprove of her job performance. She is down 13 points since March.

UPDATE: Powerline has this comment. I believe it would be difficult to unseat her.

Estimating the uninsured

How many people are actually uninsured in the United States? The figure you usually see mentioned is 47 million. This number is only an estimate, and it's on the high side. If we are discussing how to insure those people, we really need to know how many we are talking about.

The source of the 47 million number is a Census Bureau report, but the bureau is admittedly not sure of its data. The Moderate Voice whittles down the number and settles on 14 million. This site has links to the Census report.

Ed Morrissey also thinks that the correct number is closer to 14 million.

Both rely on a study by the Keiser Family Foundation. See also this summary.

Fourteen million is still a lot of people but it makes the uninsured problem more realistic. Part of the problem with these estimates is that many people can indeed afford insurance but they choose not to buy it. Young and healthy, they take a calculated risk they can get by without it. Probably a good bet. People who risk living without insurance are not going to like it if the government forces them to buy coverage. Some of the uninsured are between jobs, and they will pick up insurance in a few months. With the recession, this may not happen. Some of the uninsured already quality for government health care programs. The debate goes on.

In a column a few days ago, Charles Krauthammer, whom I trust implicitly, asserted that ObamaCare was dead — killed not by Republicans or Blue Dog Democrats but by the CBO. What we will get is health insurance reform.

Yesterday I saw a SUV which boasted that the driver was a 2010 "senoir." Unfortunately the school was named — "PA," Little Rock's Pulaski Academy. School pride has definitely gone too far in this case.

AARP's endorsement

AARP has endorsed Obama's health care reform. That's what it looks like to me.

Thomas Sowell: "The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one's own behavior."

The appendix is good for something after all, not a worthless evolutionary artifact.

Public trust collapse

Clark S. Judge: Obama administration may be heading for a collapse of public trust. This is a shocking article.

Cash for Clunkers will end today. It has been a controversial program that stimulated sales for car dealerships, but mostly exchanged American vehicles for foreign vehicles. It took many gas guzzlers off the road and replaced them with more efficient vehicles (in some cases the improvement was negligible), but also destroyed serviceable cars that had plenty of life left in them. The government has been slow to reimburse dealers, who are cash strapped. In the interest of full disclosure, I took advantages of this program myself.

See here for criticisms of the Clunkers program.

Joe Lieberman: Health care changes can wait until the recession is over. He's an independent.

No Social Security COLA

People on Social Security will get no COLA — cost of living adjustment — for the next two years, according to this AP report. These automatic increases were adopted during the stagflation of the 1970s. Since the adjustments are tied to inflation and recent inflation has been negative, no adjustment is required. I suppose it would not make sense. But many seniors live on fixed incomes, and the average monthly SS payment is $1,153 this year. They spend a larger share of their income on health care than most other people. Their drug costs under Part D will rise slightly. Part B premiums will probably also rise. So seniors will have to get by on less. Our government is saying good luck until 2012.

Mike Ross story

The ADG today featured a story on Mike Ross, the 4th District Congressman who leads the Blue Dog Democrats. No link available. In a long, rambling background story that the paper likes to publish, the author Jane Fullerton interviewed a bunch of historians who placed the Blue Dogs in the context of the conservative Democrats who joined with Republicans in the late 1930s and brought the New Deal to a screeching halt. Ross is very popular in his south Arkansas district, which went for McCain by 58 percent last year. (Ross received 86 percent.) Fullerton also highlighted Ross' ties with the health-care industry. The funniest line was Ross' admission that "when people start standing up, I think they're going to assault me." That was a joke, I hope.

Arkansas school report cards

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette today reported grades for the state's school districts based on a study by the Arkansas Policy Foundation, which describes itself as "a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that analyzes the impact of public policy on Arkansas and makes recommendations."

According to the report, the top-scoring districts earning A's or A-'s include Fayetteville, Bentonville, Conway, Bryant, Searcy, Lake Hamilton, Valley View, and Parkers Chapel.

The failing districts, with F grades, are Forrest City, Dermott, Augusta, Helena-West Helena, Turrell, Earle, Hughes, Dollarway, and Hermitage.

Pulaski County's three districts all received C's. Most districts statewide received either B or C grades. You can read the entire report online. See this summary. And here. The foundation does a good job of revealing all their data broken down by school district. Superintendents and school board members will want to take a good look.

I wish I could show you the map that accompanied the newspaper article. The districts earning A's are largely located in the northwest part of the state, in the Arkansas River valley, and in the Ouachita Mountains. The districts earning F's are found in eastern and southeastern regions -- that is to say, most of them are Delta districts. What a surprise! Only one district in south Arkansas, Parkers Chapel near El Dorado, received an A.

The poorest-performing districts have dramatically higher percentages of students eligible for free lunches, single-parent households, and lower percentages of adults with at least a high-school education. Many of the heads of households are grandparents, usually grandmothers. No mention is made in the newspaper article of racial percentages.

The newspaper report quoted the Hughes superintendent as stating that comparisons between Delta schools with other schools is like comparing apples and oranges. Agreed. That shows how bad conditions are.

Another Blue Dog holds a town hall meeting with predictable results.

This Marine just blasts Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) at a town hall meeting. It's devastating. Rock 'em and sock 'em.

William Calley

William L. Calley, Jr., has re-surfaced and apologized for his role in the My Lai massacre in 1968. Now 66, he was a young lieutenant when he was court martialed and convicted in 1971 of murdering 22 civilians. My Lai was just one of the many things that went wrong in 1968.

What won't they learn

A new website called What Will They Learn shows what universities (some of the major ones anyway) require that students take in composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. history or government, math, science, and economics. You may be able to check your alma mater. But you will probably be looking at what students will not learn. Shockingly, the school's I've checked so far leave out history and economics. See Vanderbilt, which omits everything except science, and Rice University, which omits everything! No wonder we are in such trouble.

This site proposes a new strategy for college shopping: where are requirements the lowest? Back to Animal House. See also here.

An unsurprising correlation

Ed Morrissey's post deals with a possible a correlation between the stock market and the prospects for Obama's congressional agenda. Since health care reform and other plans have run into snags, the stock market has trended upward. The idea that government actions may be predictors of market trends is not a new idea. I first ran across the relationship in Jude Wanniski's The Way the World Works. He argued that the stock market in 1929 was keying on the progress of the Smoot-Hawley tariff through Congress, which played a large role in plunging the nation into the Depression. When the legislation appeared to gain support, the market went south and vice versa. Of course Smoot-Hawley passed after the 1929 crash, but Wanniski followed this relationship well before the tariff passed. See also here.

Health care wars continue

In Little Rock, Michael Steele, chairman of the RNC, dared Democrats to go it alone and pass the health care overhaul. Steele declared, "You want it done? Pass the bill. But they know it's poisonous and they know the American people will not tolerate it. They're scrambling now and they're beginning to turn on each other because they've got a big problem, a political one, and they can't solve it."

Mike Ross (D-AR), leader of the Blue Dog Democrats, has this problem: How to get a health care bill minus the public (government-run) option through the House. Extreme left Democrats will not vote for a bill without it. Ross: "The challenge is it's going to be difficult to get a health care reform bill through the House that doesn't include a public option. It's going to be difficult to get a health care reform bill through the Senate that does include a public option, so this is a long way from being over."

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn): “People are ticked off and scared. You have a situation where a good chunk of the country is waking up to the fact that Obama is proposing things that are out of step with common sense, out of step with the notion that the government isn’t going to run everything."

Noland Finley: "It's inconceivable to the liberal political establishment and their pals in the media that the people might have legitimate and fully informed objections to the grand government expansion they've orchestrated."

Thomas Sowell: "Are the problems created by the current [health care] situation worse than the problems that will be created by the pending legislation?"

Why college costs too much

Economist Richard Vedder's new book, Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs too Much, deserves a wide reading. Tuition covers a fraction of college costs, and graduation rates run about 50 percent after four years. Instruction is slighted and turned over to teaching assistants or assistant professors. Teaching loads are about 9 hours or less in major universities. And much instruction is worthless, biased, and irrelevant.

Vic Snyder (D-AR) has held another town hall meeting with an overflow crowd. This link requires a subscription to read the entire article. He stated he was "no big fan" of the public option (i.e., government-run health care), but he did not say he would vote against it.

An Ugly Truth

I’ve been reading about “death panels” (Section 1233), and I don’t know whether they will exist in the final version of ObamaCare or not. But here is what I do know:

Medical care is not a right, it has to be paid for like everything else; it is produced by limited resources. As the demand for something increases, costs will go up. Obama's objective is to expand health care services, but he also promises to hold down costs. But the law of supply and demand is still valid, and costs will rise. The only way government can contain costs is to refuse to pay for services. Your 80-year-old grandmother may not get that needed hip replacement. That’s called rationing. Supporters of ObamaCare don’t like to hear that word. They don’t like to face an ugly truth. But evidently they will not balk at denying your grandmother whatever they feel she doesn’t need, which some panel somewhere will decide. See The Ugly Truth of Obamacare. And Thomas Sowell's Alice in Medical Care.

60,000 AARP members cancel

According to CBS News, 60,000 AARP members have cut up their membership cards and mailed them in with their resignations over the organization's position on health care. While the AARP insists it has not officially endorsed any plan, they seem to favor ObamaCare because they have taken no position. Senior citizens are leading the charge against ObamaCare because it proposes to gut Medicare.

Many former AARP members are joining the American Seniors Association, which is outspoken in its opposition. Their website invites AARP members to mail in their torn-up AARP card and receive a 2-year for 1-year membership in ASA.

YouTube has a video of an AARP meeting in which an AARP representative refuses to listen to the audience, leaves the room, and then returns to take the microphone away when the meeting does not disperse. Very funny but disturbing too. See this along with the comments.

Betsey Wright

UPDATE: Betsey Wright has turned herself in at the Lincoln County jail at Star City and was booked. She is free on a $1,500 unsecured bond. Her arraignment is set for October 5 in Lincoln County Circuit Court.

Soon schools everywhere are starting a new year. Teachers are preparing. A cartoon in the local paper showed a teacher in front of an empty classroom. She was wearing a pith helment and holding a whip and a chair. She's ready.

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama's Health Care Mess

Pay-day lenders shut down

The state of Arkansas has just shut down its pay-day lenders, all 275 of them. According to the deputy attorney general, they were sucking $25 million out of their victims each year that should have been spent on mortgages, food, utilities, etc. See also here. But the occasion is not an altogether happy one. Many people are now going to be buying lottery tickets instead spending their money on mortgages, food, and utilities, etc. There is always a big market for the sucker's money.

Michael Barone

Michael Barone: "There are more conservatives than Republicans and more Democrats than liberals. That's one of the asymmetries between the parties that helps to explain the particular political spot we're in." Read the entire column.

PajamasMedia: Has the real Mt. Sinai been found?

Whole Foods

Reading Ann Althouse's blog, I came across her comments on an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal by Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey that attacks ObamaCare. Given Whole Foods' reputation as an up-scale store with high prices, I was surprised. The best solution for me would be not to pay either Whole Foods prices or ObamaCare costs. But I'm not joining the boycott of Whole Foods because I'm happy shopping at Wal-Mart.

Specter again

Arlen Specter continues to hold town meetings and he continues to get harassed.

Taunts followed many of his comments. When he said he wouldn't support a bill that would increase the deficit, many laughed. And when he said he wants to encourage people to stop smoking, one person yelled: "What about Obama smoking?" President Obama has said he struggles with an on-and-off smoking habit, reportedly for two decades.

But you have to admit that he is doing more than some members of Congress who are not holding meetings at all.

Mike Ross on the hot seat

Mike Ross (D-AR), the leader of the Blue Dog Democrats, has gotten a lot of national attention in the health care debate. He is also taking some heat. News reports show him sitting on the fence, but he better make up his mind. Reading between the lines of his comments, I believe he already has. My advice: vote no or plan on reentering the drugstore business.

Astroturfing

The term astroturfing, as in "Republican astroturfing," has been thrown around in the health care debate. It's a play on words that suggests a campaign or advertising is more popular with the grassroots than it really is. Astroturf is of course a phony grass, not the real grassroots. Both sides have used it or would like to. See this as an example. And here a woman introduced herself as a doctor but was actually no doctor at all. She was an Obama delegate.

New York town hall meeting

Congressman Anthony Weiner's town hall meeting in a blue New York district went about like many of them have these days. JammieWearingFool comments:

It's not only the fact people are very suspicious of government taking over an entire industry that's dooming this scheme, but it's the smug arrogance, the imperious pomposity of the Weiners of the world that will relegate this to the dustbin. Here you have a man whose entire career is based on focus group talking points and tired liberal cliches whining that someone is using talking points, as if a constituent who's speaking his or her mind is carefully coached on what to say in public like Weiner is.

The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game here with the constant references to people being un-American, racist and evil-mongers, all simply for exercising their freedom of speech. A slippery slope they may not be happy to be riding down pretty soon if they don't wise up and start respecting the very people they work for.

Into the donut hole

While I have been critical of health care reform, I do have complaints about my current health care plan. I'm on Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit with its infamous donut hole, a gap in coverage between $2,700 and $4,350. Here's how it works. You pay 100 percent of your drug costs while in this gap. In 2007, according to this report, about 25 percent of people on Part D or 3.4 million seniors reached the gap by July or August.

I use all the generics I can, but as a diabetic I still have several expensive prescriptions. Insulin is expensive, so are syringes and test strips. Of course my blood testing supplies are free, but apparently they still count toward my total drug cost and help to put me in the donut hole. So I'm really paying for them anyway, and that's not fair in my opinion. My test strips cost almost $1.50 apiece.

I also take an expensive blood pressure med because I am alergic to the cheaper ACE inhibitors. They give me a hacking cough.

I have just fallen in the donut hole and will probably remain in it until the end of the year. Has anyone ever tried to tell you about the free lunch?

Betsey Wright in the news

Betsey Wright is in the news. She was Gov. Bill Clinton's chief of staff while he was governor of Arkansas. She was well known for being in charge of "bimbo eruptions" (her term). She also worked in Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

On Wednesday she was charged with trying to smuggle a knife and 48 tattoo needles stashed in a bag of Doritos into Arkansas' death row. She claimed she found them at the bottom of a vending machine. According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this morning, her attorney accused the Arkansas Department of Corrections of singling her out because of her support for prisoner rights. A spokesman for the department said this was "ridiculous." She will report to the Lincoln County jail next week.

Where are Arkansas' senators?

Today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has an editorial that asks, Where are our senators? Why are Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor not holding town hall meetings the way other members of Congress are? Lincoln says she held her meeting months ago, and Pryor plans a meeting via the telephone, lol.

Flummoxed Democrats

Jennifer Rubin of Commentary magazine has some interesting comments on the Democrat party and health care:

The Democrats are understandably stunned. They and those sympathetic to them do control everything—the White House, Congress, the mainstream media, the popular culture, and elite education. And they still—despite all that power—can’t get the public to pipe down and go along quietly with their planned takeover of health care. What is wrong with everyone? You can sense the anger, the resentment. And the panic.

Michael Barone says Democrats are flummoxed by health care:

My tentative conclusions: The Democrats’ health care bills have stirred widespread and deeply felt opposition. While some of the protests are organized, the turnout and strong feeling expressed indicate that we are watching something that is largely spontaneous. Try organizing such a protest when almost no one cares much about your issue: no one will show up. It’s the supporters of the Democrats’ health care bills, not their opponents, who are astroturfing—and spending plenty of moolah on television ads and the like.

The Democrats are spoiled because they are used to a mainstream media who spin things their way and a general public whose only expressions of spontaneous enthusiasm in 2006-08 were opposition to (if not hatred of) George W. Bush and support of Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates. Now the spontaneous enthusiasm is all on the other side, with the Democratic astroturf efforts producing pathetic turnouts and largely spontaneous opposition to the Democratic health care plans producing large turnouts.

Flummoxed: bewildered, confounded, confused.

Townhall turmoil in Little Rock

While I'm looking at Townhall meetings, I was interested in the one held in Little Rock a few days ago with Reps. Mike Ross and Vic Synder. You can follow reports here and here. There's another meeting scheduled at the Clinton Library on August 18.

White House website on health care

The White House has created a new website called Reality Check to push the administrator's view of health care. We shall see.

Blanche Lincoln's apology

Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) has criticized town hall critics of Democrat health care bills. But she apologized for calling them "un-American." See here also. Democrats just refuse to see that this widespread frustration over current health care proposals is a grass-roots phenomenon.

On the other hand, she was the first Democratic Senator to oppose card-check bill that unions heavily favor. Oh well, she's up for re-election in 2010 and Arkansas is the home of Wal-Mart's headquarters.

Townhall turmoil

I have been amused, surprised, and gratified by the reports I've seen of the raucous townhall meetings on health care. One of the most interesting was the one held by Arlen Specter at Lebanon, Pennsylvania. (Full video is here.) The crowd was just not having any of his non-answers to their questions and concerns. People are skeptical of a government-run program, especially if it deals with something as important as health care. That's an issue that everybody is concerned about, or if they are not now, they will be.

The Democrats have promised universal health care for so long and apparently believe in it so deeply that they can't believe anyone would disagree. But they do and critics see it as a huge bait-and-switch scheme. No matter what the administration says, it will lead to health rationing. No one believes that it will produce the results that are promised. This thing will be run like the postoffice.

What tells you that something is seriously wrong is the hurried efforts to pass it NOW. We can't debate, we can't disbelieve, we must submit to the wisdom of the Obama administration. In the meantime, support is dropping around the country.

Even some Democrats are becoming skeptical. See Camille Paglia's "Obama's healthcare horror." This has become the most talked about topic in the country.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa): "It seems to me that people are expressing, not just on health care, but people are just very scared about the direction the country is taking."

Will you buy me a Gulfstream, daddy?

This WSJ article is critical of the Congressional purchase of 8 Gulfstream and Boeing jets for $550 millon. I like this comment:

"The whole thing kind of makes me sick to my stomach," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) in an interview Sunday. "It is evidence that some of the cynicism about Washington is well placed -- that people get out of touch and they spend money like it's Monopoly money."

Be sure to read the comments. In today's political climate, the comment sections on the web are the most interesting part.

A Prius, a Tahoe, and Me

Brent Littlefield, a Republican startegist, comments positively about the Cash for Clunkers program, the most positive thing to come out of the Obama administration among many bad ideas. Give taxpayers the freedom to spend their own money, and the economy will grow, he says.

Absolutely, true. I took advantage of the program myself, trading in a 1999 Chevy Tahoe for a 2010 Toyota Prius. The Tahoe was a good vehicle, but it had developed potential problems that I didn't want to fix, and I loved getting $4,500 for it.

The Prius is shown on the day before we actually bought it. Click to enlarge.

I love the Prius. It still has less than 500 miles on it and I'm still driving on the gas the dealer gave me. I'll report back later on my experience with the car, especially the gas mileage. In the meantime you can check out this site for someone who has plenty of experience with these vehicles.

A Face in the Crowd, Budd Schulberg, and Andy Griffith

I just noticed the reports of the death of Budd Schulberg, novelist and playwright. Among other information, Powerline noted that Schulberg's A Face in the Crowd was based on his short story called "Your Arkansas Traveler." For information see the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.

What I also found interesting was Andy Griffith's performance in this movie. He showed that he was more than Andy Taylor or Ben Matlock.