Progressivism is a lucrative career opportunity for clever cynics

"A valuable reminder of the best argument for reducing economic inequality."

As hateful as Matthew Yglesias is, I'm happy that the overflowing fruits of capitalistic enterprise are so abundant in this country that a mediocre blogger armed with unearned privilege can find a way to pay for a $1.2 million home.

David Burge points out that with $1.2 million, a bleeding-heart progressive journolista could buy seven houses at the median US home price.  Or pay a greedy doctor to provide health care for poor people for the better part of decade. Or buy dinner for four at Sizzler Steakhouse for 30,000 hungry families.

But I'm happy for Matt.  And I'm glad that Matt has come to terms with the heartrending inequality of this cruel world well enough to luxuriate in his good fortune while writing sloppy, poorly-researched agitprop for the proles.

Now read this, the source of the title of this post: The 1% Progressive Bloggers Club and the Bourgeois Dialectic of Comrade Yglesias






H/T The Other McCain

Government Can't Change What Marriage Means

You are hoping by its force and might, by fiat, that government will change what marriage means. But government can’t change the state of marriage fundamentally. Nobody can. The best it can do is to use the word incorrectly, and require that others do, too.

McCain, Graham Need to End the Super-Hawk Crap

Ace: 

I still consider myself a hawk.

But I don't consider myself a super-hawk. Post-9/11, I became a super-hawk. I'm not one any longer.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham are still pushing a super-hawk line that the public widely rejects.

They need to stop. If the only choice is between appeasement and super-hawk full-commitment total war, the public will choose appeasement. 

Read the rest.

Recommended Album

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
Performer: Il Giardino Armonico
Conductor: Giovanni Antonini
Composer: Antonio Vivaldi
Audio CD (October 25, 1994)

"There is a feeling that every second of music was deeply thought through in an innovative way.”
Oron Zachar

"This is a Four Seasons you will want to share with the most scrutinous musical colleagues.”
Debra A. Hayes

TAX2DEF

From the Annals of the Evil 1%, Red State Edition:

Photographed near Chattanooga, TN

5300% More Likely...

If you're worried about getting killed by a gun, you should be about 5300% more worried about dying of heart disease:

Via

Music Sales

Via

When Bureaucrats Attack: Stabbed While Crocheting, Hurt at the Opera

Behold, the marvels of 21st century, bureaucrat-driven health care:

The U.S. health care system is ramping up to implement a massive new coding system called ICD-10. It’s a bland name for a system capable of coding thousands of colorful injuries. A full 68,000 to be exact, as opposed to the 13,000 under the current ICD-9. The codes are intended to help health care providers keep track of what happened to you, how much it should cost and what follow-up care you need. 

Take these, straight from ICD-10:

• Hurt at the opera: Y92253
• Stabbed while crocheting: Y93D1
• Walked into a lamppost: W2202XA
• Walked into a lamppost, subsequent encounter: W2202XD
• Submersion due to falling or jumping from crushed water skis: V9037XA

We are the ones we've been waiting for and this is the stuff of hope 'n' change.

Via Poor Richard

UPDATE: How To Prevent Injury While Crocheting

Dumbing Down Conservatism

You've heard Big Media use the term "conservative Democrat," but can you think of the last time you've heard them use the term "liberal Republican"?

No?

There's a reason for that.

Liberal Progressives* -- including liberal-progressive Republicans -- want to stretch the definition of "conservative" to the point that it's broken.  And they want to make "Republican" fully substitutable with "Conservative."  Controlling the terms of the debate in this way gives them an advantage in the war of rhetoric and makes it easy to stigmatize and bastardize conservatism.

The faux outrage over exclusion of liberal-progressive Republicans from conservative gatherings is a fine example of the liberal impulse to define conservatism for conservatives, as Ace aptly points out:

The gathering is called C-PAC, not R-PAC. Chris Christie's success as a registered Republican does not qualify him automatically as a "certified" conservative. I hate the Conservative Purity Purges as much as the next person.... but in this case? I think there is a valid point to be made. 

Chris Christie is not just soft on the Second Amendment. He is downright hostile...

Politicians who don't trust law-abiding citizens to own guns do NOT see them as equal members of a democratic republic. To put it bluntly, they see them as serfs...

Read the rest.

*I don't want anybody to feel left out.

Good Guys

New lib argument: Good guys can't be trusted with guns because "good guys" threaten their wives with guns:

It Keeps Getting Worse

Hat tip: Insty

Sloppy, Poorly-Researched Agitprop

We pay our doctors way too much?

The decade-old data from the OECD report don't account for workload or hours worked (i.e. productivity). The data are thus insufficient to support the notion that US physicians are immoderately compensated relative to physicians in Europe, Canada and Australia.

Sloppy analysis.

Individualism is dead. Long live the State!

Nauseating: Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism

Flashback: “Where are these angels who are going to organize society for us?”

Update: Sweet Sarcasm:

And indeed, our history proves Conly's claim, as objective government officials have acted with the reason and balance of experts who are not tempted by direct involvement in the questions being decided: the Sedition Act of 1798, which led to the imprisonment of newspaper editors who criticized government. Indian removal. The Fugitive Slave Act. The Dred Scott decision. The Wounded Knee massacre. Plessy v. Ferguson. Jim Crow laws. The firebombing of Tokyo. The mass internment of Japanese-Americans. The secret bombing of Cambodia. Drone attacks on Pakistani wedding parties. Indefinite military detention. The wisdom of government is virtually infinite, and has created a world of steady progress. When we act individually, we are irrational and reckless. When government officials act upon the human society from which they ascended, they do better to help us all reach our proper goals.

Do read the rest.