Nov
23
2009

URLs du Jour

2009-11-23

  • In our occasional "This Is How These People Actually Think" Department we have an actual quote from Senator Harry J. Reid from Nevada:
    "Today we vote whether to even discuss one of the greatest issues of our generation - indeed, one of the greatest issues this body has ever face: whether this nation will finally guarantee its people the right to live free from the fear of illness and death, which can be prevented by decent health care for all."
    This is not just hard-socialist (as Skip at Granite Grok notes), but delusional. A person who believes that government action can remove the fear of illness and death from the citizenry is a person who has decided to invent his own reality. And he's in charge. Good luck with that. (Via Darleen at Protein Wisdom).

  • Cato's Downsizing Government blog reports on the $3.8 Billion lost by the United States Postal Service in the last fiscal year, and the likelihood that it will lose $7.8 billion in the current fiscal year.

    I've often wondered about the strangeness of the "lost" euphemism when it comes to business matters. Businesses don't "lose" money the way we "lose" our car keys. Generally speaking, businesses know exactly where the "lost" money is: in the pockets of competitors or customers who decided to forego their products and services.

    But in the case of the USPS, the notion that they could really lose billions of dollars doesn't seem that farfetched. "I swear I mailed that pile of cash to myself."