Minor Thoughts from me to you

I've petitioned the Neolibertarian Network to add our new blog to the list. I've also blogrolled, for the first time, everyone else in the Neolibertarian Network. Thanks go to fellow member Josh Poulson for the code that keeps that part of the blogroll up to date. While you're over at his site, check out his puns. They're quite funny and I'm hoping to see more online soon.

The Daily Show and the Colbert Report have become successful by demonstrating just how laughable most of our elected representatives are. This is most true when politicians are responding to press questions. Unfortunately, most press questions tend to be rather laughable themselves. Fortunately, someone who knows what he's talking about managed to slip into a news conference today. Mark Tapscott provides a good summary Senator Durbin's bad day:

Capitol Hill is buzzing with talk of a news conference earlier today in which Powerline's Paul Mirengoff was pushing some hard questions at Sen. Teddy Kennedy, D-MA, and Sen. Richard Durbin, D-IL, about the NSA's anti-terrorist international "eavesdropping" program.

Kennedy apparently got flustered with Mirengoff, so Durbin started fielding the questions and himself became increasingly flustered. Finally, according to one account, Durbin asked Mirengoff what news organization he represented.

Yes, Senator Durbin ran into the buzz saw known as Paul Mirengoff and Power Line. The proprietors of Power Line are best known for their role in forcing Dan Rather to retire, after Rather pushed the false Texas Air National Guard story about President Bush. Paul and the rest of the gang are legal experts, unlikely to be intimidated by Senator Durbin's impressive blustering. Apparently, Senator Durbin was the more intimidated person. I'm looking forward to watching the video once I get home.

The Heritage Foundation has published a new report entitled "Federal Spending: By the Numbers". If you value fiscal conservatism, if you value living within your means, if you wish your government shared your values, you'll find this to be a depressing read. If this keeps up, we'll have nothing to leave our children -- the government will have taken it all in taxes, leaving our children and grandchildren with nothing but debt and memories of prosperity. Courtesy of Captains Quarters:

However, federal spending has kept the pace of the expansion in revenues. Last year's budget came in at $2.472T, and this year we expect to spend $2.77T, according to estimates released this week. Of that money, $969B comes in so-called discretionary spending, up $300B since 2001. But by far and away the worst of the bill comes in entitlement spending, which went to $1.32T last year, up from $1.009 in 2001. As a measure of the rate of increase in both areas, discretionary spending has increased 93% since 1990, but entitlements have gone up 132%, while revenues have increased by 109%.

Where has the increase come? Some of it has gone to national defense, but not all of it. In fact, the federal budget has grown across the board since 2001, outstripping inflation (12% overall) in several categories, such as Education (137%), Community and Regional Development (342%), Medicare (58%), Housing and Commerce (58%), Medicaid (49%), and Water Transportation (46%). Do you like the idea of nationalized health care? We may be heading there by default, as the federal budget for Health Research and Regulation has grown by 78% since 2001 and now consumes $76B of our budget.

I'll take Jerome Bettis on his home turf and the unstoppable Ben Roethlisburger. Steelers by 14.

UPDATE: It was actually Steelers by 11. You can read a recap of the game courtesy of Captain Ed. Patrick of Badger Blogger live-blogged the Super Bowl commercials. If you missed the game, but are curious about the commercials, that's your stop.

While I'm on the subject of the State of the Union, S. T. Karnick had some ideas for making the speech more entertaining:

Another nice effect, and one which would emphasize the President's role as both leader and team player, would be for him to have one of those big, clear plastic boards behind him, on which he could tape photos and write with a dry-erase marker, like a police captain talking to his team as they chase down a serial killer. Viewers would be fascinated as they watched the board fill up with words and pictures, and there would be great suspense as we wondered whether that snapshot on the upper right which is hanging precariously and even fluttering in the breeze from the air conditioning was going to fall down, and whether the President would leave up the phrase about health care expenditures or erase it in order to write something about China. Now that's theater!

Four justices attended the State of the Union address last night: Justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and Breyer. It is an interesting thing to be a Supreme Court justice, the world's most non-political job, at a State of the Union, one of the world's most political events. Dana Milbank reports on when the Justices chose to Clap On or Clap Off:

At times, Alito followed the lead of the other three justices who sat with him in the front row. When Bush said "We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it," Thomas looked at Roberts, who looked at Breyer, who gave an approving shrug; all four gentlemen stood and gave unanimous applause.

At other times, Alito showed independence from his senior colleagues. When Bush delivered the stock line "The state of our union is strong," Alito dissented while the other three robed justices in the front row applauded. When Bush declared that "liberty is the right and hope of all humanity," Alito was the only member of the judicial quartet to provide his concurring applause.

The problem with easy solutions is that they never are. Healthcare is a problem that has no easy solutions, despite what many politicians on both sides of the aisle will tell you. Take a look at The Fix-It Myth:

Here's the paradox: A health care system that satisfies most of us as individuals may hurt us as a society. Let me offer myself as an example. All my doctors are in small practices. I like it that way. It seems to make for closer personal connections. But I'm always stunned by how many people they employ for nonmedical chores -- appointments, recordkeeping, insurance collections. A bigger practice, though more impersonal, might be more efficient. Because insurance covers most of my medical bills, though, I don't have any stake in switching.

On a grander scale, that's our predicament. Americans generally want their health care system to do three things: (1) provide needed care to all people, regardless of income; (2) maintain our freedom to pick doctors and their freedom to recommend the best care for us; and (3) control costs. The trouble is that these laudable goals aren't compatible. We can have any two of them, but not all three. Everyone can get care with complete choice -- but costs will explode, because patients and doctors have no reason to control them. We can control costs but only by denying care or limiting choices.

Growing up, I was upset about Congress's spending. I was convinced that if we only had a Republican President and a Republican Congress we could really cut the fat out of the Federal budget. Well, not so much.

We're richer than we've ever been before. Don't believe me? Don Boudreaux takes a walk through a 1975 Sears catalog:

Other than the style differences, the fact most noticeable from the contents of this catalog's 1,491 pages is what the catalog doesn't contain. The Sears customer in 1975 found no CD players for either home or car; no DVD or VHS players; no cell phones; no televisions with remote controls or flat-screens; no personal computers or video games; no food processors; no digital cameras or camcorders; no spandex clothing; no down comforters (only comforters filled with polyester).

It seems to me that people were poor back in the '70's.

Kudos to Ken Pierce for posting this essay on Morally Outraged Atheists:

Now, I tell that story (which, I should say, I made up) because it goes to the heart of one of atheism's major problems. An atheist is eager to tell you that there ain't no transcendent moral laws -- and then he'll just as eagerly jump all over your butt when you do something he thinks is "wrong." But if atheism is true, then an atheist telling you that, say, people ought not to be "racist" (by whatever definition he's attached to that extremely fluid loaded word) is like Sherriff L. C. sayin' he don't like red cars. If the atheist can hurt you (because, e. g., he's running the government) then maybe you say to yourself, "That's total b.s.," but you still lower your head and play along so you won't get hurt. Otherwise, when the atheist tells you that he finds your "racism" outrageous and it honks him off, you just cheerfully and rationally respond, "Well, homie, I guess it sucks to be you, huh?"

If you're wondering what's up with Sherriff L.C. not liking red cars, well, go read the full essay.

As an incumbent politician, it's easy to protect yourself in re-election campaigns. Your political protection is only three steps away:

1. Convince your constituents that political campaigns are hopeless corrupt
2. Pass a "Campaign Finance Reform Act"
3. Use the new law to stomp on anyone who threatens you

It's not just provocative, it really happened. Read the true story behind the McCain-Feingold Bipartisian Campaign Finance Reform Act.

An obscure German scientists publishes some intriguing formulas in the 1950’s, then proceeds to shun the limelight. He writes three books, but only publishes them in German. Most physicists never hear of his work. Another scientist expands on the theories in the 1980's, but they languish in obscurity for another 20 years. It sounds like science fiction, but this is science history. The result could be a real hyperdrive and real anti-gravity -- if today's scientists can only manage to understand these arcane formulas.

The general consensus seems to be that Dröscher and Häuser’s theory is incomplete at best, and certainly extremely difficult to follow. And it has not passed any normal form of peer review, a fact that surprised the AIAA prize reviewers when they made their decision. It seemed to be quite developed and ready for such publication, Mikellides told New Scientist.

At the moment, the main reason for taking the proposal seriously must be Heim theory's uncannily successful prediction of particle masses. Maybe, just maybe, Heim theory really does have something to contribute to modern physics. As far as I understand it, Heim theory is ingenious, says Hans Theodor Auerbach, a theoretical physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who worked with Heim. I think that physics will take this direction in the future.

It may be a long while before we find out if he's right. In its present design, Dröscher and Häuser's experiment requires a magnetic coil several metres in diameter capable of sustaining an enormous current density. Most engineers say that this is not feasible with existing materials and technology, but Roger Lenard, a space propulsion researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico thinks it might just be possible. Sandia runs an X-ray generator known as the Z machine which could probably generate the necessary field intensities and gradients.