Remember when climate porn was just a metaphor? Not anymore!

Folks who reprogram their scientific calculators to do all kinds of cool stuff.

Today’s column provides the denoument to the story of Jay and Stephanie Burkholder, whose property Roanoke has been trying to seize so it can give it to the valley bigfoot, Carilion.

A common assumption among advocates of nationalizing health care seems to be that reform is necessary because insurance companies, being evil, deny coverage to people who need it. Of course they deny coverage. But it’s fallacious to think that a public option, single payer, or any other system won’t. Here’s a real-world example showing why:

Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn.
They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib - which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed.
Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options.

The Government’s rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said the overall cost was ‘simply too high’ to justify the ‘benefit to patients’.
However, relatively few would be eligible for the treatment - around 700, or one in four of those diagnosed each year with primary liver cancer.

(Hat tip: Taranto.)

The email rumor mill once again is circulating claims that Michele Obama has more personal attendants than Buckingham Palace, and lots more than nice First Ladies like Laura Bush. This supposedly proves something about her, which supposedly proves something about him.

It’s all nonsense. Laura Bush actually had more.

As if the whole petty question mattered. But to those to whom it does matter, the question must be asked: If in fact Michele Obama has fewer attendants than Laura Bush did, does that mean Obama is a better president than George W.? No? Then what’s the point of raising the issue in the first place?

A new report provides data showing that the structure of Virginia’s tax system hasn’t changed much: the poor still pay more as a percentage of income.

Glenn Greenwald points out, quite reasonably, that when the Bush administration releases someone from Guantanamo for lack of evidence that he’s a terrorist, calling him a terrorist because he was held at Guantanamo is, well, kinda stupid.

There’s new evidence that it exists after all! Check out all these phantom congressional districts in which jobs were “created” by the stimulus. . . .

Anyone who still doubts that campaign-finance regulations stifle free speech should watch this video about Colorado resident Karen Sampson and her neighbors—who were sued for putting up yard signs.

A simple, but snazzy (and jazzy!) time-waster.

Some on the right seem bent out of shape that Pres. Obama bent at the waist before the Japanese emperor. C’mon. The next thing you know, they’ll be griping that he takes off his hat when he steps inside a church. No American president should debase himself like that, either! Grrrr!

Somehow, I think the glory of the republic will survive.

From the Ayn Rand Institute:

More government controls, we are told, are necessary to solve problems such as skyrocketing health-insurance prices, lack of competition among insurance companies, the inability of workers to keep their insurance policy when switching jobs, etc.

Really?

Then why do giants of the computer industry like Google, Microsoft and Apple compete vigorously without a “public option”? Why do we have such plentiful, affordable food without a government “food insurance mandate”? Why does laser eye-surgery, which is not covered by Medicare or government insurance laws, get better and cheaper all the time, while the price of health services the government is most involved in, skyrockets?

Today’s column says abortion-rights activists should consider health-care reform through the lens of their professed principles.

Danville Tea Party leaders are wisely reconsidering plans to burn Va. Rep. Tom Perriello and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in effigy.

Good call. The effigy-burning would not exactly shower the group in glory. Why join in the moonbattery?

The idea is so gawdawful, it’s almost tempting to think it’s a clever effort by advocates of health care reform to make opponents look bad, along the lines of G. Gordon Liddy’s notorious scheme to embarrass McGovern.

Almost, but not quite.

Do you recall the AP assigning almost a dozen reporters to fact-check Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father? Me neither. . .

When a patient —- let’s call him Trab —- goes to the doctor and shells out fifty bucks for a copayment,** because that’s what his insurance agreement requires, just like it says on the little card he hands over every time he sees the doc, maybe —- just maybe —- the insurance company doesn’t need to mail him an “explanation of benefits” pointing out that the insurance company paid a certain amount and that Trab paid fifty bucks because that’s what his insurance agreement requires, just like it says on the little card.

Most patients get the “co-“ in “copayment.“

—————-
**Hypothetically speaking, of course!

Environmentalists Sue Over Flying Squirrel.

VDOT has spent more than $60,000 to avoid paying a property owner $30,000. Today’s column has the details.

Mason Rayner, son of my esteemed colleague Bob Rayner, asks a good question: Why, exactly, are young people so supportive of Barack Obama when his policies—an insurance mandate aimed at dragooning the young into supporting the old, massive deficits the young will be paying off for decades as they get older—are so disastrous for the young?

(Answer: Because, as GMU’s Bryan Caplan has written and Rayner implies, “The view that people vote their self-interest . . . is empirically mistaken.  Instead, the twin foundations of public opinion seem to be education and ideology. . .“ Caplan notes, for instance, that relatives of soldiers are more likely to support foreign military intervention, and that a cab driver with a Ph.D will vote more like other Ph.D.s than like other cab drivers. . . .)

It’s “drubbing,“ not drumming:

Historically, the president’s political party takes a drumming in mid-term elections. . . .

Remember, spell-check programs are written by computer programmers, not English majors.

P.S.—Memo to Self: This post will invoke the Glass Houses Rule, a/k/a the Iron Law of Public Corrections—which states that any writer who puts on the high hat and corrects someone else’s mistake in public will, within 48 hours, commit an even more embarrassing goof, which the committer of the first goof will then be able to point out with unrestrained glee.**

I have been warned.

__________________

** To wit:

• “The Fort Hood Massacre: Be first or be right? Greg Marx measures the ripples of a story that a Texas paper ran with secondhand info that turns out to be wrong “—email from Columbia Journalism Review, Nov. 11, 12:34 p.m. ET


• “Dear reader, Our earlier e-mail message about this story said that the secondhand information in question turned out to be wrong. That is not accurate. Apologies, The editors”—email from Columbia Journalism Review, Nov. 11, 1:06 p.m. ET

(Hat tip: Taranto.)

It’s astonishing how hard people are working to pretend the hippo in the living room is really a coffee table. This morning on NPR, Daniel Zwerdling reported that Nidal Hasan’s colleagues were alarmed about him—not because of his religious extremism, Zwerdling hastened to add, but because of his “unprofessional”  behavior. See, he kept trying to proselytize, telling patients Islam could save their souls. . . .

Meanwhile, there’s this. More proof that Hasan’s religious fanaticism had nothing to do with his rampage! See esp. slide 49.

Update: In Zwerdling’s defense, he did do an earlier piece noting Hasan’s insistence that non-Muslims should have their heads cut off and have burning oil poured down their throats . . . which makes his one of fewer than a dozen media reports to mention that teensy little clue about Hasan’s state of mind . . .