Insularity Is the Problem

This is dead on. 

My father grew up in Irish-immigrant NYC and was the first in his family to go to college - let alone law school.  He wasn't reviled, but he was de facto abandoned.  It was assumed he considered becoming a cop or a fireman as beneath him.  It wasn't, but that's what everyone did, he just asked "Wait, why do I have to join the NYPD or FDNY..."

I won't get into the sociology of this but the role of women in the family fed this...my dad would always and everywhere want to see his brothers, but somehow the social calendar, ruled over by the wives, never worked.  I suspect that a FDNY wife wasn't keen to hang out with a lawyer's wife and vice versa.

Tom Perez Was An Awesome Choice!!

Two questions in response:

1)  Then how did they manage to get people to hand them 2 congressional majorities, the Presidency, 33 governorships, and 32 outright state legislative majorities?

2) Then why are we the best tippers?

Actually, three questions...

3)  Will you please please please keep doing saying stuff like this?

Bloomberg News Sausage-Making + A Great Free-Market Healthcare Idea

Bloomberg News has published one of its more atrocious, atrociously biased, articles in quite some time.  I've chronicled how they make the lefty sausage over there at Al Hunt's Haven for "Journolist" Minions.  This one is a classic of the genre.

It is still making my head reel, but it goes something like this.  Steve Scalise, having been shot in a clear political assassination attempt by a crazed left-wing nutjob, is exactly like a poor black man.  Why?  Because poor black men get shot alot (although mostly by gang rivals or other contemporaries within their urban milieu).  That commonality means he shouldn't support the Republican attempts at reforming healthcare because it aims to reduce benefits for pre-existing conditions, one of which is having previously been shot.

All this comes from a report by...wait for it...the Brady Center.  Yes, that long-standing, stalwart, mono-maniacal gun control advocacy organization is opining on healthcare, and Bloomberg News is there to report it.

It's got all the classic elements of lefty sausage manufacture - left-wing advocacy group, current topic needing a boost via some racial angle...oh, and misleading numbers.  For instance, the author says that 34,000 people die from gun shots each year.  Yes, but roughly 20,000 of those gunshots are fired by a finger attached to the body of the person dying...they're suicides, but hey, the larger the numbers in the article the better.

There is so much to pick apart, but perhaps this will be a final thought...a true, free-market healthcare reform will enable insurance companies to market policies tailored to the needs of consumers.  What's to stop, say, Aetna from marketing the "Gangbanger's Medical Plus" policy that covers all post gunshot healthcare?  It'd be a hot seller in Chicago, where gun control has worked so well.

Love the Hatin' on the Times

Apparently the New York Times acts like my pre-teen children.  Can't remember how many times I say, "It's 3 o'clock" only to be told "Actually, it's 2:54..."

I'm That Parent Too

Well, this is because parents pay the bill.  And, essentially, it doesn't matter where you go to college within a certain band of quality...