Quick Hitters

I thought about an explanation for my absence from blogging, but I remembered a post-game quote from one of the players explaining why Navy was able to come back after a bad first half last weekend. He said Coach Niumatalolo's most frequent catch-phrase is "No excuses, no one cares." More than a rebuke against whining, it also means you need a short memory for failure and should just focus on moving forward to success.


At the end of a video-teleconference at work this week, one of the participants wished everyone a Merry Christmas. Unbelievably, a senor Navy officer stated afterward, soto voce to me, "You can't say that." I was aghast and just walked away. PC really is running amok in the Navy today.

HotAir has become my favorite news source. They tipped me to this lengthy article about the real reason people hate government run health care. Once the government is paying for health care, or your employee for that matter, we all end up paying for other people's stupid choices in lifestyle and behavior. The result?

Because that’s what socialized medicine does: it turns each of us into a little fascist. A nagging nanny who tells other people what to do and how to live.

Now, I really don’t care if you overeat, smoke like a chimney, hump like a bunny or forget to lock the safety mechanism on your pistol as you jam it in your waistband. Fine by me. And as a laissez-faire social-libertarian live-and-let-live kind of person, I would never under normal circumstances condemn anyone for any of the behaviors listed above. That is: Until the bill for your stupidity shows up in my mailbox. Then suddenly, I’m forced to care about what you do, because I’m being forced to pay for the consequences.

I earlier commented on BwD that Krauthammer should let Iowahawk do the satire and Charles "the Hammer" should stick to the wonky stuff. Iowahawk returns the favor with a very lengthy post on the machinations behind "value added homogenized data" proving AGW. It's worth a read, especially if you have a technical background.