Handheld cell phone bans do not affect crash rates.

Next up: They will try to ban phones while driving altogether, handheld or hands-free.

Via The Daily Caller.

…and mandated them all to low-flow, and I said nothing because I didn’t care. I just flushed a few more times … although others took a different approach. At some point they mandated the wine bottles, and I said nothing, because as long as they still have a hole in the top it doesn’t affect me.

Now they’re coming for the light bulbs, and most people seem completely insensible to the danger.

Yet about 75 percent said they are not aware of the impending federal requirement for greater energy efficiency that will lead to the phaseout of less efficient lighting.

“Less efficient” by a standard of raw energy consumed, perhaps. “Less efficient” by a standard of, you know, actually lighting things to a visible spectrum and being safe to handle around your toddler, not so much: Incandescents are far more efficient than flourescents on both counts. And there’s this ill-considered boilerplate from GE:

“We’re not sensing a rush by consumers to comply with the looming federal standards,” Kathy Sterio, GE Lighting’s general manager of consumer marketing said in a prepared statement.

“There’s a major shift to CFLs but it’s clearly is a matter of educated consumers choosing CFLs for their strengths,” she said. “Our marketing, advertising and packaging have espoused the value of energy-efficient CFLs for over a decade.”

Such a charming implication, that those of us who still prefer incandescents are uneducated yokels.

H/t J.

Imagine that.

“You guys … are not only not talking about a second stimulus, you’re talking about trying to cut … the budget,” Maddow said. “I have to tell you, it sounds completely, completely insane.”

["Top economic adviser to the president" Jared] Bernstein vowed “there`s going to be no stupid Hooverism around here, to use your, I think, very apt term.”

“Spending programs, in order to generate the kind of job growth that we need to offset this — the impact of what was the deepest recession since the Great Depression — generally will fall outside of this freeze,” he said.

But Michael Linden, associate director for tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress, argued a week ago that this kind of a freeze would make only a dent in the country’s structural problems.

“The federal government spent a bit more than $625 billion on non-defense discretionary programs in 2009. The Congressional Budget Office projects that, in five years, the federal government will spend about $660 billion on the same programs,” he wrote.

“Freezing non-defense discretionary spending at current levels would therefore only produce a total savings of $35 billion in 2015. That year, the budget deficit is expected to be around $760 billion. Saving $35 billion would solve less than 5 percent of the problem. There may be some savings to be found in non-defense discretionary programs, but a spending freeze would accomplish extremely little in the way of measurable deficit reduction.”

Food stamp programs? Education programs? College loan programs? Even … spit … health care “reform” programs? No. Spending programs. Spending programs that will in no way be affected by a “spending freeze.”

Well, hell. Gotta admire a person who calls it what it is in defiance of his own political interest, right? Go ahead, keep stating your real goal out loud till everybody understands that spending was the real goal all along. Kthxbai.

You’ve peeved Ray Stevens now.

The man’s 70 years old and made this, and while I don’t know that he necessarily came out of retirement to do so ([to me it seems that way, but that might be just because] I haven’t followed him in a while, though when I was little, “Mississippi Squirrel Revival” was the funniest thing I had ever heard), I say … you go, Ray. I particularly like the embrace of the “yokel” image to make the point that the ones Obama et. al. would like to write off as “yokels” are quite capable of “yokeling” him et. al. right out of office. Seriously–I know a lot of people of my parents’ age who look a lot like the Ray playing the plunger, except they play real guitars–extremely well. His point is real and well made.

Next best line: “You might want to start looking for another line of work. How about the medical profession? Yeah, they’re going to need everybody they can get who will put up with the red tape and the pay cut.”

H/t See-Dubya.

“The president also wanted to do something, I think, unusual today,” National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said during a web chat after Obama’s speech. “Not only was this a very quick accounting, not only did the president accept responsibility for it, but the president also wanted to do this as transparently as possible.”

H/t Hot Air headlines.

So Obama said “the buck stops with me” and Ace is unimpressed. So am I. First, his own text makes it clear that while he really believes blame lies somewhere else, he’s only saying this because he’s supposed to:

“I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer. For ultimately, the buck stops with me. … When the system fails, it is my responsibility.”

He would pass the blame, but he’s more interested in something else, so, sure, he’ll grant that the buck can stop with him, if you’ll grant that we can talk now about how to learn and correct.

Second … it’s just the same old jerky Obama pattern that’s been evident since the beginning. He can’t disown Jeremiah Wright … until the growing unrest of the voters makes it clear that disowning is the winning position. He must close Gitmo … until the growing unrest of the voters makes it clear that not closing it is the winning position. He must end our involvement in Iraq immediately … except things are better there and abrupt pull-out would be silly, so not ending it immediately is the winning position. He says nothing about the underwear bomber … until the growing unrest of the voters makes it clear that he must say something. He says, and Janet Napolitano says, idiotic things about the underwear bomber until the growing unrest of the voters makes it clear that he must say something more forceful and definite. So he does.

For a guy with, as used to be said about Chamberlain, his wetted forefinger in the wind, he sure doesn’t seem to know which way it’s blowing until it ruffles his hair.

A Facebook status meme going around for a while last year read: “I will proudly pay more taxes if that means someone less fortunate than I receives health care.”

If it were that simple, I’d cheerfully pay those extra taxes too. (Subject to a conversation on percentages, of course.) It’s not just about that. That’s only where it starts.

I responded to one person sporting the status, “And even if it reduces your health care and your family’s, too?” And he said, “Yes.”

I should also have asked, “And are you also willing to proudly fork over more taxes for people who are not less fortunate but who are just lazy freeloaders?” It’s not just about “fortunate.” He didn’t get to be an expert engineer through luck. He went to college, worked hard, and has been with the same company for over ten years.

I have a couple of unpalatable options here. I feel the more charitable is to assume that he only says that because he doesn’t really believe it would come to that. Like most utopian, semi-utopian, or somewhat utopian liberals, he probably doesn’t really believe it would pan out that way. We’re America! We’re smart! We have a lot of crappy socialist models to learn from! Surely no bureaucrat is going to put off my son’s operation six months or more because the doctors have no room in their schedules!

I have no trouble at all believing government-run health “insurance” would indeed come to that. I am angry about the current system as it is–it’s not “insurance,” it’s a service that pays your doctor on your behalf for which you pay far more than you’re ever likely to need to pay doctors and hospitals. It’s throwing bad money before good, and in my unexpert opinion it has driven up prices far beyond where they’d be without it. Health “insurance” should no more pay for routine doctor appointments than auto insurance pays for oil changes–that’s not insurance. Insurance is protection against something catastrophic and unforeseen, like a car accident or a chronic and critical disease. I’d far prefer to pay my doctors as I go, with a catastrophic-coverage backup, which is not really an option under our current employer-centric “insurance” system, because of government interference that doesn’t tax employer-provided coverage but only that bought privately. But even if we could do that, that won’t satisfy liberals who believe that everybody has an obligation to pay into a system that covers people who are too poor or too sorry to either buy health “insurance” or pay for their own health care. (“Sorry,” in this context, just means disinclined to take care of one’s self and responsibilities–the lazy freeloader.)

But that’s beside the current point. Government-run health “insurance” would come down to some bureaucrat postponing my friend’s kid’s operation, for the simple reason that while doctors and hospitals are not necessarily finite resources, the operation of government would provide heavy incentives for them to be self-limiting. The government, in its zeal to cover every person for every condition–i.e. make all medical care “free,” would find itself limited by the amount of money available and would have only two choices: Stop covering certain medical services or pay the doctors and hospitals less–probably, in the end, both. Who wants to enter a business where the government decides what you get paid for your services (excluding professions where the government is actually paying you for service rendered the government, not to a third party), giant student loans be damned? Only people with a truly high calling to heal people for healing’s own sake–a self-limiting pool. The number of doctors goes down. The number of people wanting to see doctors goes up. The federal government controls the purse strings. Conflicts of interest, to put it mildly, are inevitable. (more…)

Interviewing Rod Blagojevich and using words unfamiliar to him, such as “accountable.” Apparently it kind of pissed him off.

Blagojevich became so riled by the questioning, Hunt jokingly asked for “a sidebar.”

“You went to law school, I didn’t,” she says. “I’m only a nurse, but I might inject you with something just to get you to quiet down.”

If we can’t have any more movies like Return to Me, at least we can hope she’s going to keep interviewing bigger and bigger politicians in the same way.

Via Hot Air headlines.

Oh, and when the government’s also responsible for building an extension onto your housing: 1) If you disagree with or question the government doctors, the government social workers take your children; 2) If you question the government’s failure to provide the proper housing, the government social workers say you can’t care for your child because you lack adequate housing and they take your children.

This is chilling.

Via Instapundit.

So the president will address schoolchildren at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 8.

Let me stipulate up front that my child doesn’t start school till Wednesday, Sept. 9, by the scheduling of the school and not by me keeping him home. Which raises the question of whether or not his kindergarten teacher will record the speech and show it once school starts.

I’ve read a lot of opinions, from (I think) childless AP and Ace to Mama Venom and Daddy Vodka–one “Keep your kids home,” one “Really?” one “Yeah, I can sorta see that,” one “Pick your battles,” and Keep-’em-home Vodka’s follow-up answer to AP.

As Vodkapundit agrees in that last link, the problem is probably not the probably-pap speech itself. The problem is twofold: 1) The arrogance inherent in the president declaring himself the teacher for the time being and 2) The smacking–even if it is just a smacking without substance–of the Little Octobrists. This is not the Presidential Physical Fitness Award, with an impersonal established award for any student meeting the stated criteria. Obama doesn’t establish much, as a matter of fact, that he doesn’t then have to backtrack on, as the administration has already done once on this here speech. But what he does establish, or attempt to establish, is statist all the way. If the president really just wants to send a personal message to students to work hard and stay in school, that’s one thing, but when heavy statism is all you’ve shown yourself willing to sell, why should you be surprised when parents don’t like even the bare possibility of it being sold to their kids behind their backs?

And why does the president believe anybody’s kids need his personal message, even if it is just about staying in school and working hard? I think there’s a lot of merit to Kate’s point that if you make a big deal, the kids will make a bigger deal of it in their minds than you otherwise would. Fortunately I do not have to choose whether the Bean will hear the president in school or not … this year. Like so many things about statism, though, this could be, or try to be, the thin end of a wedge. And, as always, I can’t help but picture the outrage had Bush put an address into schools, something he did not do even right after 9-11. He did not appoint himself our children’s personal grief counselor. The president is not our kids’ teacher or nanny, either.

And: Nice Deb goes fairly nuclear.

And also: What I’m trying to say is that in this case, the message might well be the messenger himself. The essential fact that the president puts an address into the schools sends a message of statism, whatever the speech itself does or doesn’t say–that children should work hard because the president says so. That’s not why they should, and they shouldn’t be taught otherwise.

So now that it looks like the public “option” is dying, those of us who want the government to stay out of our purchasing and consumption of medical treatment can breathe a sigh of relief, right? Don’t believe it. They will next try to pass some watered-down piece of garbage that is still garbage, probably at the very least to include mandated health insurance. And doesn’t that look like fun? And if they pass that and it’s a boondoggle, they’ll point to it to say “See! That’s why we need the government to run it!” The camel’s nose under the tent.

I don’t understand why I’ve only seen one post anywhere that even mentions the real problem and points the way to a perfectly workable, even fairly cheap, solution: cut the tie between employment and health insurance. How many people even know what that tie is–the reason why most people get medical insurance from their employers? It’s because when you buy it that way, it’s bought with pretax dollars, whereas if you buy it yourself, it’s posttax. So your company is paying some money in on your behalf instead of paying it to you as wages, it doesn’t get taxed, and you kick in the rest off your paycheck, pretax as well. So who do the insurance companies market their plans to? Your employer, who wants to get a great plan that pays for everything that it can hold up as a swell “benefit” of coming to work for them. I’d rather have more money and buy cheap insurance myself–catastrophe-only insurance that would pay if I had to be hospitalized or needed ongoing treatment for a serious illness but that would let me pony up on my own when I go to see my doctor about that damned itchy eczema on my elbow or take my son to his doctor because he bonked his head even though there’s obviously absolutely nothing wrong with him.

Sever the link via changes in the tax law. Either lay the income tax on all money that pays for medical insurance, or take it off of all of it–one seemingly simple way to do that might be to have your insurance company send you a tax form in February, like a W-2, that lists the total of all money you’ve paid in insurance premiums that year, and you file that with your tax return and the amount is deducted from your taxable income. Then insurance companies would have to market their plans to individuals, not corporations, and suddenly paying $600 per month or whatever it is for a small family to go to the doctor a total of seven times in a year doesn’t look so damn good, does it? Buy yourself some cheap catastrophe-only insurance with a high deductible, and wham, you’ve just “lowered your costs.” And the real cost of an actual doctor’s visit would come down too, since the docs would be so happy to have patients who pay cash on delivery rather than cutting through eight layers, minimum, of red tape to get paid less than they charge. You think doctors and hospitals don’t inflate charges because they know the insurance companies won’t pay at that rate anyway? I don’t think that.

I’m no expert in any of these fields; I’ve just been watching what’s going on for a long time and watching Obama attempt to push us off the cliff of socialism. IF they can’t pass socialized medicine, they’ll pass something lesser and expect us to wipe our foreheads and give thanks that we dodged the bullet, Comrade. Don’t do it. Don’t blink. Stand firm and insist that instead of more regulation, they take regulation away. Strip out the tax irregularity that incentivizes employers to “pay” for our medical insurance instead of paying us and letting us get our own. Medical insurance never should have come to this pass; it should be like car insurance, which would never pay to take the car in for an oil change. Deregulate medical insurance and I got your costs savings right here.

It sure sounds like a nice place to live.

The third that hates Huckabee with a fiery passion and the third that loves him with a … fiery white passion. Don’t mess with me, punk.