I have joined Facebook. Here.

I have also become a Twit. Here.

Goody. Two MORE web sites for me to very infrequently post to, monitor, or otherwise waste my time with. Yee. Hah.

And no, I don't know what, if anything, I will do with those sites. I barely know what to do with THIS one most days.

I keep thinking of this simple concept when everybody comes down from On High (i.e. Washington, D.C.) telling us all how the health care system is f**ked up, and needs to be fixed RIGHT THE HELL NOW!!!!!

Maybe so. Don't make it worse, Washington.

And, given the housing industry, the car industry, etc., etc., in fact every single government intervention into our economy all the way back to the New Deal and beyond, the politican's track record for "fixing problems" doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

In short, my default position is that anything you try to do will make things worse than they are now. But you're welcome to convince me otherwise.

Postscript: I saw This over at National Review Online which appears to be on point:

As the great Arthur Seldon said, "Risks which cannot be removed or shifted profitably must be born by the entrepreneur. He will generally do so only as long as his expectation of profit outweighs the chance of loss." Systemic risk can therefore exist only when there is systemic removal of that chance of loss. Government (or organized thievery = same thing, essentially) is the only thing that can do that. Systemic risk cannot therefore exist without a government distorting the market.

So, what kind of additional "systemic risk" will be introduced by a much larger intervention of the government into the health care system? Or do you even care that the likely result will be, as in England, waiting periods measured in months for even routine surgeries?

First, do no harm.

Michael J. Totten, one of the better independent journalists around, is calling what's happening in Iran a revolution now. He's blogging it here.

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Actually, there's a germ of a good idea here. Unfortunately, considering the general economic illiteracy of those currently in power, they can be trusted to implement the idea in the worst possible way, resulting in a situation in "Rust Belt" cities that's even more miserable than what we have now.

Any of the Progressive Insurance "Flo" commercials.

Any pharmaceutical commercial.

Any commercial that includes a phone number.

There are probably more, but those would be a good start . . .

June 7th, a deranged psychotic assassinates notorious abortion doctor.

June 8th: a deranged psychotic assassinates one soldier, and wounds another in Little Rock.

Next, a deranged psychotic kills a guard at the Holocaust Museum.

In all cases, everybody EXCEPT the deranged psychotic is blamed, mainly to score some kind of political point. As you see at the last link, the Holocaust suspect apparently belonged to just about every wacko fringe movement, without regard to "left" or "right."

Sometimes, a deranged psychotic killer is just a deranged psychotic killer. The one in Wichita was an anti-abortion fanatic. The one in Little Rock was an Islamic fanatic. The one in Washington, DC. was just plain nuts. I'm not sure how much more analysis of them is necessary or prudent.

The title says it all. Forever more the CBS late night show host should be referred to as:

“Statutory rape fantasist David Letterman”

You said what you said, Davey boy. It can not be unsaid. You, and any writer or producer who participated in the writing of—or knew the contents of—that “joke,” and still allowed it to be broadcast, should resign. If you don’t resign, you should be fired.

That would be the beginning of an acceptable “apology.”

Don't REALLY put all your money in your mattress. Or if you do, make sure you don't have a daughter that likes to surprise you:

An Israeli woman unknowingly threw out her mother's old mattress which contained $1 million in savings, the Yediot Ahronot reported on Wednesday.

The woman, identified only as Anat, said she wanted to give her elderly mother a surprise and had bought a new mattress on Monday, throwing the old one out.

However, the "surprise" turned into despair for the mother, who kept all her savings in the mattress, and the news initiated a mad, desperate search through Tel Aviv's myriad of waste tips.

The search has already been going on for three days but there has been no trace of the $1 million-dollar mattress, which may be hard to find among the 3,000 tons of trash dumped every day at the site.

Oops.

A link to gmretardation.com. As Moe Lane notes, the person or persons behind this site are "not happy".

I predict that they will have much more company in the next six to twelve months, given the economic illiteracy of our rulers.

"See how we totally screwed over the American taxpayer."

Question Authority. Buy a Ford.

Let's say, for whatever reason, you can't afford health insurance. The Government comes along and says "buy health insurance or we'll fine you (or slap a tax on you---same thing). So, if you can't afford health insurance, how do you afford the tax? Bonus question: Under this new scheme (which given the current rulers of this country, is likely to become law), will they also close emergency rooms to uninsured people--people who have access to emergency rooms as clinics-of-last-resort? If you take from people money they don't have, what stops you from taking everything else?