Mark Steyn finds an excellent example:

This story from Le Journal de Montréal is en français, but you don’t have to know the lingo of the Continent to figure out the meaning of le mot “incontinent”:

Des patients souffrant d’un problème d’incontinence grave doivent attendre jusqu’à trois ans pour une opération qui dure à peine 30 minutes.

Which means: In the Province of Quebec, patients suffering from serious incontinence — ie, they have to aller aux toilettes jusqu’à 12 fois par nuit (that’s 12 times a night) — have to wait three years for a half-hour operation. That’s 3 years times 365 nights times 12 trips to the bathroom.

There are only two urologists in the province who perform the operation, in part because hospital budgets are so tight they decline to buy the necessary “neurostimulator.”

The central point about socialized medicine is that restricting access is the only means of controlling costs. And, when comparisons of health “costs” between nations are made, the time you spend in the bathroom each night and the subsequent impact on your work performance the following day are not factored in.

It just amazes me that people who must have had experience with the DMV yet think that government running health care is a good idea. Look, if it would work, I’d support it – I mean, come on: high quality, low cost health care? Why wouldn’t I want a piece of that? Because I know that it will actually be low quality and high cost. How do I know this? Because I know human nature – and the hospital director who has a certain amount of funds for the year can buy a “neurostimulator”, or he can have the lounge redecorated and give his secretary a pay raise. True, a very high minded and dedicated director would buy the “neurostimulator”, but most people who run government-funded agencies are not known for their dedication to the welfare of the people. On balance, any government run health system will fail, and fail completely.

Oh, to be sure, our liberal friends who want the DMV to run the hospitals can cherry pick out a story or two showing the stunning success of government funded health care. Impervious to facts and completely willing to believe absurd things, our liberals are easily tricked by their leaders into stoutly asserting that the paint isn’t peeling off the walls at the government hospital…because government bureaucrats have always been so hyper-efficient in making things run and, of course, the fact that they get paid the same whether they help 1 or 100 actually makes them want to see more people and treat them better. Such nonsense has to be ignored – there is no other side of the debate, here.

Feeling pleased with yourself lately? Well, stop it:

Use every man after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping? – William Shakespear

While Obama and Co continue to lay blame for all ills on President Bush, the fact of the matter is that whatever Bush might have done, Obama and the Democrats have done enough at this point to own the results:

Bad as the deficit was under Mr Bush, it will quadruple this year, from $459 billion in 2008 to $1.845 trillion (from 3.2% of GDP to 13.1%), according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Mr Obama vows to slash it in half within four years, but that will still leave it bigger than the deficits for which he once lashed Mr Bush. His aides hint that he will get tough when the time is right, but he is reluctant to break campaign promises of tax cuts for all but the rich just yet. The CBO reckons the deficit will still be running at more than $1 trillion a year in 2019.

For a couple more months you liberals out there will be able to hit back at us with the “where were you when Bush was spending?” meme…but very shortly now, it will become clear that your side is spending like a pack of drunken sailors on a three day pass to a booze factory. Your side promises us this will do the trick – that we’ll become richer after we spend all this money. Fine and dandy. If it works, you’ll clobber us in 2010 and 2012…but if it doesn’t, then its all yours.

The left is trying to paint Von Brunn as a kook out of the conservative, Christian worldview and thus post-facto burnish the Department of Homeland Security report about the risks of right wing terrorism in the United States. The fact of the matter is that Von Brunn was anti-Christian and socialist in his views:

..I actually downloaded the first few chapters of his “book,” so you wouldn’t have to. It has a slow connection, but that’s the least of its problems. He drank deeply, quaffing down the whole Kool Aid stein of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Let me head off the next slander, soon to come — as it did about Tim McVeigh, who was agnostic.

This guy was no Christian. Oh yeah, he uses the word quite a bit in the book, but only to repeat the various blood libels and to point out how the Christians have suffered at the hands of the Jews. Others, with stronger stomachs than me, waded through all the insanity and hate of the full volume, and verified that in fact he is anti-Christian. He believes that “socialism represents the future of the west,” and that the Bush administration was behind 9/11 — putting him firmly in the camp of the left, not the right.

Christians, to him, are just props on the stage of his hateful passion play. Which, of course, makes the Navy rear admiral who endorses him on the web site a dupe. No Christian could have written such a screed…

…Punish this guy as a domestic terrorist, but please, don’t give us any slanderous blather about how he was a “right-winger,” or a “conservative,” or a “Christian.” He’s not, any more than the British National Party (basically a spiffed-up albionized version of the German National Socialist Workers Party also known as “Nazis”) is…

At bottom, Von Brunn is insane – a man entirely disconnected from the Judeo-Christian civilization he lived in. As to just why he became disconnected, who knows? But by one means or another, and step by step, Von Brunn started down the path towards insane hatred – at the start, there was a lie, and Von Brunn choose to believe it, and then he followed that lie down into the sewer until he was believing that the Protocols are true, President Bush was behind 9/11 and, ultimately, that he had to go shoot people at the Holocaust museum. It is always lies at the bottom of whatever evil we encounter – to try and say that this man was part of the truth of conservatism and Christianity is just a mindless slander of Christians and conservatives, and does no one any service as it doesn’t attack the lies which started Von Brunn on his path.

Ouch:

…Letterman also invited the Alaska governor to come on his show.

UPDATE: Per ABC News’ Kate Snow: Gov. Palin pushed back at Letterman again this morning, issuing a statement via Palin PAC spokesperson Meghan Stapelton.

“The Palins have no intention of providing a ratings boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show,” Stapelton said in an email to ABC News. “Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman.”

I’ve long enjoyed David Letterman’s show but the fact that such a joke could make it out of the writer’s office indicates a severe lack of judgment all too common for media elites like Letterman. In the back and forth of creative writing for a show like Letterman’s, there are probably a lot of jokes which don’t make it on air for reasons of simple decency – this one slithered out of the gate, and David Letterman is fully responsible for it as he is the man who ultimately picks which jokes to use. How would Letterman like it for someone to make jokes about his son spending the night at Michael Jackson’s place?

For reasons unfathomable to regular folks, the political left and the media elite have developed an unreasoning, visceral hatred of Sarah Palin and her family. I believe this is because Sarah Palin and her family – united by love and clearly having a ball as they live their regular-folks life – are a standing indictment of the shallowness, cruelty and infidelity commonly found especially in the lives and alleged families of the media elite. The clear self-donation between the Palins and their devoted love for their children are in stark contrast to Letterman’s only recent marriage to the woman who bore his child and, it seems, he lived with for many years prior to marriage – something in the Palins struck a cruel chord in Letterman’s make up and he lashed out in what he may, indeed, thought of as a funny joke but which was actually the slur one expects from a gossip, or a bully.

The best thing for Letterman to do is ponder what he did, why it caused pain and what is the duty of a man who has achieved vast wealth and great fame towards others in the world.

A reminder of what we need:

The supply-side claim is not a claim. It is empirically true and historically convincing that with lower rates of taxation on labor and capital, the factors of production, you’ll get a bigger economy. – Jack Kemp

I can see it:

The price of oil burst through the $71 a barrel mark today amid revelations that proven reserves had fallen for the first time in 10 years and predictions that the price could eventually hit $250.

The latest high – from lows of $30 only four months ago – came on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where the cost of July deliveries rose by $1.35 to $71.36.

This comes on top of a $2 rise the day before as investors rushed into the market on the back of lower stockpile figures, higher demand estimates and speculation against further falls in the dollar.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re testing $80 in a week or two,” said one analyst, while BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, questioned whether $90 could be the “right” value.

Proven reserves and other such news is important, but what is really happening is a flight from fiat money – especially rapidly devaluating US dollars – to hard assets. Whatever the price of oil will be in a year, it won’t be zero. Neither will gold, silver, copper, wheat, etc, etc, etc…meanwhile, the dollar’s value could be halved in a year or two due to Obamunism, so why hang on to something become progressively worthless by the day?

We’re heading for complete economic disaster, and only a sharp turn about by Obama will stop it from happening.

Because, surprise surprise surprise, people don’t want to buy US debt right now:

US long-term interest rates rose to the highest level of the year on Wednesday, threatening the “green shoots” of recovery, after the latest sale of 10-year government debt met with a tepid response from inflation-wary investors.

Concerns about the growth of government borrowing forced the US Treasury to give investors in an auction of $19bn in 10-year notes a yield of 3.99 per cent – 4 basis points higher than the yield available before the auction. That constituted the biggest yield markup since a 10-year auction in May 2003, said Morgan Stanley. Yields on the 10-year note, the benchmark rate for US mortgages, hit a high of 4 per cent during the day, up from 3.6 per cent a week ago.

We can’t borrow our way to prosperity, nor can we print money and think we’re rich – only if we earn money will be be able to get out of this hole, and in order to earn we’re going to have to create actual, tangible wealth. This means we have to make, mine and grow things – take our sweat equity and turn it into wealth…and then use the wealth to pay off the massive debt we’ve wracked up. This does mean, liberals, that your grand plans for a socialist America are going to have to be put on hold. Or, you can keep up with Obamunism, bankrupt the country entirely and shove us into a 10-20 year long economic depression.

Your choice – we on our side will deal with it just fine, either way.

And a tip of the hat to the man who must be the smartest Democrat in America:

California’s government risks a financial “meltdown” within 50 days in light of its weakening May revenues unless Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers quickly plug a $24.3 billion budget gap, the state’s controller said on Wednesday.

Underscoring the severity of California’s cash crisis, Controller John Chiang, who has previously warned the state’s government risks running out of cash without a budget deal, said revenues in May fell by $1.14 billon, or 17.7 percent, from a year earlier.

Additionally, the revenues of the government of the most populous U.S. state fell short of estimates in Schwarzenegger’s budget plan by $827 million, Chiang said…

…California’s revenues have been on a dramatic slide as a result of recession, rising unemployment and its lengthy housing downturn.

The state’s revenues from personal income taxes tumbled by 39.3 percent in May from a year earlier while revenues from corporate taxes fell by 52.1 percent and revenues from sales taxes sagged by 7.6 percent, according to a report released by Chiang’s office.

“A truly balanced budget is the only responsible way out of the worst cash crisis since the Great Depression,” Chiang, a Democrat, said.

Memo to President Obama: Get Chiang in charge of your budget as fast as possible.

Only drastic cuts in spending can save California from disaster – even if they cobble together something which appears to get CA through the immediate crisis, the fact remains that revenues next year are almost certain to be less than projected, and any hang-over from this year will just be added to a worse situation next year. This goes for the federal government as well. We’re speeding down the road to complete fiscal disaster, and if we put on the brakes real hard and right now, we can stop ourselves from going over the cliff – but it has to be right now, not six months from now.

By now you have probably heard the news that Obama administration has ordered FBI agents to read Mrianda rights to captured terrorists.

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

And can you imagine… Congress was not briefed…

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

Can Obama be detained for aiding terrorists? This is absurd. Terrorists who are not talking, or being interrogated cannot provide us with information to prevent future terrorist attacks. It was no accident that we have not been attacked since 9/11. But Obama seems determined to make it harder for us to collect intelligence, and easier for terrorists to attack us.

It is worth noting that Obama himself claimed to oppose reading Miranda rights to terrorists. He said, “Now, do these folks deserve miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not.” The Weekly Standard posts video of Obama on he campaign trail last year, mocking this claim made by Sarah Palin during the Republican National Convention:

“Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and [Obama]’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

Well, looks like Sarah Palin was right. Obama is a liar. Obama is more interested in protecting the so-called rights of terrorists than in protecting Americans. Obama is clearly unfit for office.

UPDATE: More at Atlas Shrugs…