Bookworm Room

Tweet Many years ago, when Holland first enacted its euthanasia law, NPR ran an interview with a Dutchman who explained why euthanasia was a good idea in Holland, while it would be a terrible idea in America.  The secret to Holland’s euthanasia, he said, was socialized medicine.  The man explained that, in America, where medical [...]

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Tweet A couple of weeks ago, I said to my sister, “Kate’s pregnant,” referring to the Duchess of Cambridge. “How do you know?” she asked. “Because,” I told her, “the British press was filled with daily stories about her, showing her going her and there, and always talking about her perfect style.  Suddenly, though, she’s [...]

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Tweet (Bookworm note:  This guest-blogger post deviates from other guest posts that have focused on political or social issues.  John O’Connor’s post is about hearing loss from medication, which is not something I usually talk about at my blog.  However, I’ve spent about 30 hours (including driving time) over the last few weeks taking my [...]

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Tweet Bruce Kesler highlights the largest ever survey of doctors on the subject of Obamacare — and they don’t like it. I can already hear the pro-Obamacare people saying, “Well, they don’t like it because it’s going to be more efficient and therefore cuts into their profits.” Think about that for a minute.  You can [...]

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Tweet With the election nearing, the Facebook frenzy is accelerating.  I got this from a Facebook acquaintance: Lots of food for thought, there: Ryan voted to end funding for Planned Parenthood.  Ryan’s vote is completely in line with Romney’s insistence that a broke U.S. government should repeatedly ask itself “Is this program worth going into [...]

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Tweet Here’s another great video to share with your friends, from Dr. Barbara Bellar, candidate for Illinois State Senate, District 18: If you’d like to help Dr. Bellar win the election, go here.  We need to support every candidate out there who has learned the judo technique of turning Alinsky tactics back against the Dems/Progressives.  Dr. [...]

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Tweet I wrote earlier today that both an old person and a young person understood that Obama’s economy is unsustainable.  This Romney-Ryan ad drives that point home with regard to Medicare for the elderly and future health care for the young:

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Tweet No comment — this is just another irritating story: The worst outbreak of tuberculosis in Florida in 20 years was kept  hidden from the public for months. In early February, Duval County Health Department officials were so worried about the surge in the number of cases that they asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [...]

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Tweet Gay Patriot posted the other day about yet another anti-Walmart protest.  His point was that the protesters, rather than being excited about real paying jobs coming to L.A., insisted that they would be better off with some hypothetical Mom and Pop jobs that might arise if they protested Walmart with sufficient vigor: Last week, [...]

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Tweet When lawyers were arguing ObamaCare before the Supreme Court, Obama’s attorney’s claimed ObamaCare was a tax, while everyone else’s attorneys claimed that it was an unconstitutional penalty.  Justice Roberts, for reasons unknown but still deeply suspect, agreed with both arguments.  Things got exciting after that. In the days since the opinion came down, both [...]

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Tweet I’ve now had the chance to digest myriad analyses of the Roberts decision on ObamaCare.  I think I can sum up the various conclusions that liberal and conservative pundits have reached.  Here goes: The decision is a victory for Obama and the Democrats because it keeps ObamaCare on the books.  However, it’s a victory [...]

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Tweet The Supreme Court opinion on ObamaCare runs to 193 pages.  It is the size of a book, only more boring than any book anyone would ever want to read — and that is true despite the fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the worst writer on the court, didn’t write it.  I’ve been making a [...]

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Tweet One of the hardest fought propositions on the California ballot this June is Proposition 29 which is described on the ballot as a new law that “imposes additional tax on cigarettes for cancer research.”  Doesn’t that sound nice?  Those who smoke have to fund cancer research.  It’s an indirect version of “smoker heal thyself.”  [...]

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Tweet George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of the best and most important books ever written. This is not hyperbole. It’s as close as one can ever get to an objective statement about a novel.  In addition to Orwell’s lean, elegant prose, it is impossible to imagine a more insightful or prescient book about the [...]

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Tweet A video that illustrates why the Democrats’ recurrent analogy between mandatory car insurance and mandatory health insurance works perfectly — works perfectly, that is, if you want to show the absurdity of mandatory insurance.

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Tweet A fluke is a one time thing, a bizarre coming together of circumstances that cannot be relied upon to occur on a regular basis.  We’ll hope that Sandra Fluke falls into this category, because she’s been a headache.  (Although, I suspect, for many outside of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, her arguments, [...]

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Tweet Conservatives of all religious stripes have been attacking the ObamaCare mandate regarding birth control and abortifacients on religious grounds.  The Obama administration’s response was to introduce an “accommodation” under which the insurance companies will henceforth offer these medicines and services for “free.” Anybody past the age of five understands that, in this life, nothing [...]

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Tweet When I lived in England, those who could afford to escape from government medicine by paying twice did so.  I addition to their high taxes, they bought a private insurance that I remember rejoiced in the name BUPA.  Things haven’t changed.  I don’t know why I’m on the mailing list, but I just got [...]

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Tweet Because our government isn’t yet doing enough, or costing enough, or interfering sufficiently in our lives, three researchers at the University of California San Francisco now recommend that the government should regulate sugar, just as it does alcohol and tobacco: A new commentary published online in the Feb. 1 issue of Nature says sugar is just [...]

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Tweet Alec Baldwin has undergone an amazing transformation in the last few months.  This is Baldwin at peak pudgy: And this is Alec Baldwin today: What’s even more impressive than this transformation is Baldwin’s claim that he dropped all the weight in four months, primarily by leaving sugar out of his diet: Baldwin, who’s dating [...]

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Tweet Back in the 40s or 50s, Esquire Magazine, when it was still a magazine for gentleman, published some quite funny, if very risque cartoons.*  One of them showed a gorgeous, voluptuous, obviously purely decorative woman talking on the phone in her apartment.  Behind her is a kitchen piled to the ceiling with dirty dishes.  [...]

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Tweet What do you all think of the Gardasil leviathan attached to Perry? Bachmann went off the deep end when she said that the vaccination causes mental retardation, but I know there are plenty of conservatives (Michelle Malkin is a good example) who think that Perry’s attempted Gardasil legislation makes him unfit for office.   Much [...]

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Tweet In Marin, a surprisingly large number of kids do not get vaccinated.  This is because a lot of the yuppies here have hippie inclinations.  They want everything natural.  They spend a fortune on organic foods, think raw is always good, and consider vaccinations to be an unnatural and therefore dangerous activity.  “Natural” is their [...]

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Tweet Interesting item from the New York Times today about a “mischaracterization” (what we knucklewalkers call a “lie”) Obama made during the 2008 campaign. The lede: “The White House on Wednesday declined to challenge an account in a new book that suggests that President Obama in his campaign to overhaul American health care, mischaracterized a central anecdote [...]

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Tweet Paul Ryan seems adamant about not running, but boy! do I like him.  This video perfectly exemplifies his highly intelligent policies and his extremely pleasant persona:

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