Ripples continue in the wake of the Halbig decision, over which Obamacare enthusiasts have been getting their knickers in a knot since the ruling came down. In today’s Washington Post, blogger Greg Sargent wrote a detailed item explaining, or so he thought, that the intent of the law was always to provide subsidies to people […]
In case you haven’t heard, the Ebola virus — the same one that gave readers the willies in the 1994 book The Hot Zone — is now out of control, and spreading rapidly, in West Africa. Ebola kills you in horrible ways, and there isn’t any cure. If you catch it, you will almost certainly […]
As I wrote some time ago, to observe the culture wars is to realize that grievance is fractal: There’s no limiting principle. And if you watch for a while, you begin to realize that “social injustice’ is not only infinite, but fractal. It’s a Julia set of grievances. Zoom in all you like; new affronts […]
Every so often one is asked: If you could assemble a dinner party with anyone who ever lived, whom would you invite? For me, the list would have to include Baltasar Gracián y Morales, a Jesuit writer, philosopher, and courtier who lived in seventeenth-century Spain. He’s hardly a household name, but he has always struck […]
As Michael Anissimov explains in an excellent essay about class and the history of labor, that endgame culminates in: 70 hours of work a week, no children, no family. We read: The capitalist system pushes us to work as hard as possible to increase our wealth and therefore our social status. In a world with […]
The Obamacare Federal-exchange-subsidies plot just thickened a bit, with the discovery online of video of one of the Affordable Care Act’s architects, Jonathan Gruber, explaining in 2012, that the exclusion of Federal health-care exchanges from eligibility for IRS subsidies was no bug, but a feature. Its purpose, Gruber explained, was to pressure the states to […]
My late sifu, William Chung, used to quote an old Chinese saying: “Where there is confusion, there is profit.” Here’s an example.
With a hat tip to Bill Vallicella, here’s a dark and piercing essay by Richard Fernandez. The gist: the Devil has the power to make you do evil yourself in order to defeat him — and so you cannot really defeat him at all.
Shortly after yesterday’s post, a different circuit court — a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond — ruled on a similar case about the legality of IRS subsidies for health-care plans sold on Federal exchanges. (The language of the Affordable Care Act is absolutely unambiguous about this: […]
When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was about to become law, Nancy Pelosi famously scoffed at its critics, many of whom had said the proposed legislation was an incomprehensible dog’s breakfast of a bill, far too complicated for anyone in Congress to understand. “[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can […]
The lovely Nina and I are off to a wedding this weekend up in New Hampshire. There will be much feasting and merriment, but likely very little blogging. Back next week.
It was 45 years ago today that the philandering, corpulent drunkard Teddy Kennedy drove his car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, got himself to safety, and abandoned the young Mary Jo Kopechne to drown in the wreckage. The affair likely cost him the Presidency, but little else. If there is any justice in the hereafter, […]
The world is on fire today. At the moment I have nothing to add, other than to express my sorrow at the death of the great Johnny Winter. I did, however, just have a splendid evening, and I’d rather talk briefly about that. A couple of years ago my lovely wife Nina made the acquaintance, […]
Australia has repealed its carbon tax. Good for them! Australia’s CO2 emissions are a mere 1% of what China alone produces; the idea that a punitive tax on Australian enterprise was going to rescue the Earth from annihilation was a morally narcissistic fantasy, and its implementation nothing more than an ostentatious act of faith. No […]
This from @FoolishReporter on Twitter:
From meteorologist Joe Bastardi. Here.
Here’s a handy guide from the firearms experts at Rolling Stone: The 5 Most Dangerous Guns in America We read: Contrary to what those who defend the right to own high-powered assault rifles believe, not all guns are created equal. Due to a combination of availability, portability and criminal usage the following five types of […]
The comics used to be escapist entertainment. If you’re trying to find a place to escape the mind-bludgeoning drumbeat of cultural Marxism, though, these days you’d better look somewhere else. Not only is Archie Andrews about to martyr himself in the name of homophilia and hoplophobia (a pacifist, anti-cis-heteropatriarchal twofer!), but now we learn that […]
Sorry, no post tonight. Too humid.
From Watts Up With That: Antarctica continues to defy the global warming script, with a report from Meteo France, that June this year was the coldest Antarctic June ever recorded, at the French Antarctic Dumont d’Urville Station. According to the press release, during June this year, the average temperature was -22.4c (-8.3F), 6.6c (11.9F) lower […]
DARPA apparently has a .50-caliber sniper round, called EXACTO, that can adjust its trajectory in-flight to stay on target. I wonder how it works.
It’s hard to believe that all the Ramones are now dead, but there it is: Tommy Ramone, the last man standing, died yesterday of cancer.
Our old e-pal, the estimable Deogolwulf, appears to have caught the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek in a spot of plagiarism. Žižek is something of a “rock star” in certain Continental circles, and so the affair has attracted some attention — so much so that Newsweek has now run an article about it all. That the […]
Chicago has been a bloody place lately. Over the Fourth of July weekend, there were 82 shootings, 16 of which were lethal. The reflex of the Left, as always, is to call for more (and in keeping with the relentless impulse of both the Left and of democracies generally, more centralized) government control. Here’s the […]
With the mood among our rulers and their media apparatus becoming increasingly intolerant of what they call climate-change “deniers”, here’s a gratifyingly defiant post from the U.K. Spectator. (That such a viewpoint as reasonable as this should now seem “defiant” is a depressing sign of how far things have come.)
It’s been jam-packed week or so: a family getaway with both our kids (a rarity these days, now that both are grown and our daughter lives in Guangzhou), and plenty to do today upon getting back to New York. (Apologies to those of you who’ve emailed me over the past few days…) Solitude has been […]
Following on our previous post, here’s a link I ought to have included: Jeremy Bentham on the Declaration of Independence.
Happy July Fourth, everybody! Although we generally celebrate Independence Day with carefree and bibulous abandon, it’s important to remember that this is a solemn occasion, and a day to honor America’s timeless founding principles. So it’s good to see that some Independence Day rituals still embody this ennobling tradition. Foremost among these, of course, is […]
There’s another important court ruling on the way, one that focuses on a serious weakness in the language of the Affordable Care Act. Learn more here. .
The UK is now importing sperm. I am not making this up. (HT: Kevin Kim.)
Here’s a tart essay on the Obama administration’s stance toward Israel, from Noah Pollak.
I haven’t said much lately about current political events — not because there isn’t plenty to comment on (the situation at our Mexican border being, perhaps, foremost at the moment), but because it’s all just so fatiguing. This in itself is worth commenting on, because I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this way; it […]