Cato-At-Liberty, via Coyote Blog:

The Left’s approach to health-care cost containment is to give more health coverage to more people with more ailments, all the while making everyone pay less.

That really sums it up pretty well--in fact, it pretty well summarizes why socialism, in any form, wherever it's tried, no matter how well-intentioned, doesn't work.

Sounds good at first, but doesn't work.

One danger of telling Snookums that you're done buying cool stuff (MacBook Pro; Casio EX-F1 camera, articles and reviews forthcoming someday) is that you turn around and somebody comes out with some new cool thing.

This time:  Belkin with their wireless HDMI box.  Perfect for extending the reach of my DirecTV box(es) to the bedroom HDTV.  I want.

 

The long, miserable history of Homeland Security at the airports continues . . . just why exactly is Homeland Security confiscating U.S. citizen's laptops at airports when the citizens are returning from overseas trips?

New York Times:

There have been widespread reports of the government searching — and often seizing — laptops, BlackBerrys, iPhones and other portable electronic devices at airports. It is not clear how often these searches occur, and the government will not say. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives says that of 100 people who responded to a survey it conducted this year, 7 said they had had a laptop or other electronic device seized.

Having done my share of overseas flying, it's my considered opinion that Homeland Security is a government agency that's completely out of control.  If the Judiciary continues to allow this level of intrusive searches and seizures, and the President won't rein them in a bit, it'll have to be Congress.  Yeah, that Congress with the 9% approval rating.

I won't hold my breath.  But I may just have to travel with an extra hard drive, so I could just dump a full disk image to it and give to the airport security bozos in order to be on my merry way.  Sheesh.

via BoingBoing.

Neighborhood idol (and, coincidentally, American Idol winner) David Cook has signed a deal to hawk Sketchers shoes, according to a Kansas City Star report. His mom and step-dad live just down the street from us, as Snookums loves to tell nearly everybody she meets.

Faux-conservative (but real authoritarian) Pat Buchanan appears on a neo-Nazi radio show (from Little Green Footballs):

If you were paying attention during the battles over the Belgian Vlaams Belang party, the name of that radio show may be familiar to you; other guests of “The Political Cesspool” have included David Duke and Vlaams Belang leaders Filip DeWinter and Frank Vanhecke: Vlaams Belang and the US White Supremacist Cesspool.

On behalf of everybody, let me say:

Let the shunning begin.   Starting with MSNBC and any other TV network stupid enough to let this guy near a camera, microphone, and kleig lights.

From California simian correspondent Bill (who's apparently branching out in the evolutionary tree), 'Germ Warfare' fear over African monkeys taken to Iran (Times of London):

Hundreds of endangered monkeys are being taken from the African bush and sent to a “secretive” laboratory in Iran for scientific experiments.

An undercover inquiry by The Sunday Times has revealed that wild monkeys, which are banned from experiments in Britain, are being freely supplied in large numbers to laboratories in other parts of the world. All will undergo invasive and maybe painful experiments leading ultimately to their death.

Because, you see, Muslims don't like dogs.  It's a joke, Son!

Seriously, what are those wacky Mullahs in Tehran up to now, hmm? 

Boingboing brings to our attention the naked man who hijacked a Las Vegas city bus.

On Tuesday morning, Charles P. Sell, 35, stole a beer from a Las Vegas 7-Eleven and then hijacked a bus. He was buck naked at the time. He is charged with robbery, grand larceny, and malicious destruction of private property.

I can't wait to see the next commercial from the Vegas tourism folks.

Occasionally, you read something that lets you better understand somebody else's thinking.

Obama, as quoted at Gateway Pundit:

--I think you are privatizing something that is what essentially sets a nation-state apart, which is a monopoly on violence

Of course, the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment is all about ensuring that the state in fact does not have a monopoly on violence.  Should the state become sufficiently tyrannical, it is the right (and, perhaps, the duty) of the people to dissolve it--that comes from the Declaration of Independence.

States very seldom dissolve peacefully.  Just ask the Iraqis about that.

Primates evolved larger brains at least twice, says Science Blog:

"The result is clear: early fossil members of both the New World and Old World anthropoid lineages had small brain sizes, thus the larger brain sizes seen in both groups today must have arisen independently," says Flynn. "Documenting that large brains evolved separately several times within Primates will enhance understanding of the timing and pathways of brain expansion and its effects on skull growth and shape, and may lead to new insights into the genetic controls on encephalization."

Braaaaains!  I just like typing 'braaaains!' 

is John Scalzi.

He writes some decent science fiction, too.

I thought y'all would like to know.