Quick Roundup 42

Mouth Breathers to Lose Voice in Congress

Cox and Forkum have posted a good caricature of Cynthia McKinney, the first mouth breather elected to Congress. (It says something when you can put "Cynthia McKinney" and "mouth always open" into a search engine and turn up a result, even if it wasn't what you had in mind...) Apparently, the moonbat may face charges for assaulting a police officer.

Bad timing, Cynthia. I have a feeling that the Democrats won't exactly pull out all the stops to save a certifiable lunatic like you with the mid-term elections coming up!

Still Going

It looks like Curtis Weeks will be staying with us here in the blogosphere for quite a while longer! I'm glad of it. He has helped me numerous times on issues related to blog template coding and has provoked inspired me to write pretty good posts on several occasions. I often disagree with him, but he does a good job of making me think about why.

Health Savings Accounts

Allan B. Hubbard, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council, makes some good points in this New York Times editorial pushing for expansion of Health Savings Accounts.

Health care is expensive because the vast majority of Americans consume it as if it were free. Health insurance policies with low deductibles insulate people from the cost of the medical care they use — so much so that they often do not even ask for prices. And people don't recognize the high premium costs of this low-deductible insurance because premiums are paid by employers. Finally, the tax code subsidizes these expensive, employer-purchased insurance policies.

While this is a step in the right direction, the fact that this is basically the first I have heard about this bodes ill. I have, after all, blogged numerous times over the past year about various proposals I have encountered to try, again, to socialize medicine. This is somewhat like whispering at a chorus singing in unison. Worse still, space considerations may have been the cause here, but this piece failed to mention medical liability reform at all.

The way to fight calls for socialized medicine is not by offering one concrete proposal after another apparently at random, but to offer an integrated, capitalistic argument that shows why government intrusion into medicine has already failed, followed by proposals that will lead us in the direction of less government interference (i.e., towards freedom and better availability and quality of medical care) .

Chavez Grabs Oil

It seems that Hugo Chavez has decided to see whether foreign investors will bend over and take it when he wants his way. Sad to say, but I think they will.

A SISO, Sort of ...

I can't find a reference on the web for this, so if my terminology is a bit off, that would be why....

A "Suck 'em In, Spit 'em Out" (SISO) editorial is a great way to demonstrate to one's intended audience that an opinion they hold is wrong -- by showing them that they hold it in common with people they believe they disagree with. For example, I once wrote about hate crime legislation by initially attacking the left -- which "sucks in" conservative readers -- and then attacking the right for accepting the same incorrect premise -- "spitting them out".

The end result is that a thinking conservative would be more likely to reevaluate certain aspects of his own political philosophy after seeing that it is, in fact, no different from a leftist's in some respect.

Why do I bring this up? Because I realized this morning that this is what was bugging me about an article I blogged recently. It's a Christian SISO. In closing, I asked, "Is this an attempt to convince Christian Republicans not to support the war effort, or capitalism?" I think that that was precisely the aim of the article. Note that it would grab the social conservative's attention by attacking nihilistic leftists for their gratuitous attacks on Christianity, "defend the faith" a bit, and then move on to exhort a closer adherence to Christian morality -- before pointing out that many Republican positions are inconsistent with that same morality.

Look for many more articles like this in the near future as the religious left becomes a stronger political force and the Democrats seek to woo social conservatives.

Any Favorite Posts?

Some time soon, I plan to update my list of favorite posts, which is something I haven't done since about June of last year. Any suggestions are welcome.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Fixed two typos and an error.