The Nigh Seen Creeder

Next time you hear some liberal spouting that public/private ObamaCare is gonna do great things for the American people, like saving money over the long run, let 'em know what great things public/private Amtrak is doin' ... like this:

U.S. taxpayers spent about $32 subsidizing the cost of the typical Amtrak passenger in 2008, about four times the rail operator's estimate, according to a private study.

If you've ever read Adam Smith, Thomas Sowell, Jude Wanniski, Gary Becker ... you know what I'm talkin' about. Indeed.

In the October 29-November 4 Nashville Scene, Brantley Hargrove talks about U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper's 15-year-history fightin' in the "health car wars." In his essay, Brantley says we conservatives who oppose ObamaCare are "ginning up Big Government paranoia," just like we did back in 1993.

I hate to break it to Mr. Hargrove, but today's Wall Street Journal lets a big-ass cat outta a big-ass bag as it relates to health care, er, health insurance reform: If the monstrosity that squeaked through the U.S. House over the weekend ever becomes law, well, we might as well just re-name the country The United Statists of America.

Here's the Big Gov't rumpus (apologies to the Coen Brothers):

The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let's give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that "it's important to be clear about what the reform amounts to."

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration ... is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.

This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state. As Mr. Cassidy concludes, "Putting on my amateur historian's cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted."

No wonder many Americans are upset. They know they are being lied to about ObamaCare, and they know they are going to be stuck with the bill.

UPDATE: Speaking of Rep. Jim "He Who Has No Uppper Lip" Cooper and ObamaCare, and the Wall Street Journal, check this out:

Perhaps the most unsurprising news in this drama was the collapse of the Blue Dog "deficit hawks." Enough of them always cave in the end to give Mrs. Pelosi her way. It's nonetheless worth noting the surrender of that most vocal scourge of deficits, Tennessee's Jim Cooper, who voted aye on grounds that the bill can be improved in the Senate. ...

Mr. Cooper has with a single vote made his entire career irrelevant.

I'll have more to say 'bout Rep. Coop at a later date.

Barney Frank is nearly 70-years-old. He's been in the U.S. Congress since 1981. He was an attorney before that. And now he expects us to believe that he don't know that a marijuana plant looks like ... 'cause he ain't "a great outdoorsman" ...?!

Check this out:

FOX25 has learned that Congressman Barney Frank was present during a marijuana arrest at James Ready's home in Ogunquit, Maine. Ready is well-known for his relationship with Congressman Frank.

According to a police report, police charged Ready with marijuana possession, cultivation and use of drug paraphernalia in August of 2007. Ready admitted to civil possession and paid a fine. The remaining charges were dismissed in 2008.

Sources tell FOX25 that when Frank was questioned he told police that he did not live in the house and that he only smoked cigars.

Congressman Frank tells FOX25 that he was surprised and disappointed with what police found. He also tells us that he wouldn't recognize a marijuana plant if he saw one because he is, "not a great outdoorsman," and, "wouldn't recognize most plants."

Can a feller get a very bad speech impediment from smoking left-handed cigs?! Just askin' ...

After midnight
We're gonna let it all hang down
After midnight
We're gonna chug-a-lug and shout

-- Eric Clapton

Well ...

It looks like the U.S. House of Representative's vote on SocialistCare, er, OmabaCare will take place sometime after midnight. I have to say that I'm a weeee bit surprised that Tennessee Reps John Tanner and Bart Gordon have announced they're "no" votes ...

Wait, could it be that twenty-year-serving John Tanner's sweating the fact that his GOP opponent raised more money than him last quarter?

Could it be that Bart Gordon knows that he's going to get a GOP re-districting bitch-slap in 2011?

To borrow a line from Chet in Weird Science, I wouldn't give a squirt of piss for John Tanner or Bart Gordon's ass right now. After their years of supporting the likes of Jim Wright, Tom Foley, and Pee-losi ... well, addin' that support to Obama's SocialistCare, they're gonna have some 'splainin' to do (apologies to a certain Cuban feller) to the conservative-votin' folks in Tennessee.

So there.

President B. Hussein Obama says we shouldn't rush to judge the motives of the Army dude who murdered a dozen folks, and wounded two-dozen more, at Ft. Hood.

Even though the Army dude in question -- I refuse to re-print his name -- shouted "Allahu Akbar!" during his kill-crazy rampage; and even though he was reprimanded for trying to convert his patients to Islam when he served as an Army doctor; and even when it came to light that the Army dude in question attended services in a mosque in which anti-American sermons were preached, Obama don't want to do no judgement-passing.

Question: How long did it take Obama to peg the cops who arrested his disorderly-conducting friend, Henry Louis Gates, as a bunch of knuckle-thumping racists?

Answer: 'Bout 45 minutes, after which the infamous "Beer Summit" -- which will no doubt go down in history as one of the most asinine endeavors in which a U.S. President ever took part -- was planned.

From TWS:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the speaker will not allow the final language of the health care to be posted online for 72 hours before bringing the bill to a vote on the House floor, despite her September 24 statement that she was "absolutely" committed to doing so.

From TWS in September:

TWS: Madam Speaker, do you support the measure to put the final House bill online for 72 hours before it's voted on at the very end?

Speaker Pelosi: Absolutely. Without question.

What a lying liar Pelosi is! And just think:

Tennessee Reps Steve Cohen, John Tanner, Bart Gordon, Lincoln Davis, and Jim Cooper voted for her lying ass ...

Come Wednesday morning, President B. Hussein Obama's press dude, the intellectually-inept Robert Gibbs, is gonna have lots of 'splain' to do ...

Just you wait and see.

In a rational political world, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 1,990-page health care reform bill released last Thursday would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics, says the Wall Street Journal.

Read the rest here.

Exactly one year ago today, I told ya'll 'bout my favorite scary movies. Given that I just finished watched The Haunting, 'cause o' John J. Miller's recent name-check, and, well, let's just say that it's moved up a few spots in my list.

Anywho, here're my favorite scary movies (watch 'em if you dare!):

1. Psycho. What can I say about Psycho that's not already been said? From its unique-to-this-day opening title sequence until Anthony Hopkins' Kubrick-esque head down, eyes up look at the camera, Psycho is not only a fine horror film ... it's just a fine film, period. Next time you watch it, pay particular attention to the scene in which Norman (Hopkins) bites his fingernail as he watches his "mother's" victim's car, which also contains his mother's victim, slowly sink into a pond or lake or swamp. You'll want to start biting your fingernails along with him.

2. The Exorcist. I was ten-years-old when I first watched The Exorcist. My next-door neighbor rented it and insisted that I watch it with him. It so scared the bejesus out of me, I remember saying short prayers for weeks thereafter imploring God to save me from being possessed. As for the movie itself, everyone remembers Linda Blair's spewing pea soup and defiling herself with a crucifix. What most people don't remember about The Exorcist - and what makes it one of my favorite horror movies - is its deeply engaging back-story of Father Karras' questioning his faith, and regaining it as he takes an oh-so-memorable sacrificial tumble down a flight of stairs.

3. Suspiria. Dario Argento's masterpiece puts the gore in "gorgeous." The cinematography in Suspiria is just as impressive as the story it tells -- girl enrolls in an exclusive German ballet school and quickly learns that it's run by a coven of witches. One of the last movies to be filmed in Technicolor, the smashing stained glass and vivid rose-colored blood featured in the first 20 minutes of Suspiria will surely stick in your mind for days after you've watched the film.

4. The Shining. Steven King geeks have long criticized Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of what is arguably King's best novel. The idea that Kubrick was unfaithful to the book, in my view, is immaterial. The Shining is a truly great horror movie. Its lasting impact can be gauged by how often it has been, and continues to be, parodied. Perfectly cast and photographed in such a way that the Overlook Hotel shines (!) through as the true protagonist of the film, The Shining remains, as the Nashville Scene recently intoned, the most "chilling tale of cabin fever" in the history of cinema.

5. One Dark Night. This underrated film was the first horror movie I ever saw in a theater (I think I was in 6th grade). Since it was a PG-rated horror flick, my friends and I made a bee-line to our local theatre on the day it was released. Meg Tilly stars as a high schooler who must spend the night in a mausoleum as part of a club initiation. She quickly learns that a recent internee, if you will, who dabbled in the occult is still causing loads of trouble from beyond. The slow-motion introduction in which police and paramedics enter an apartment to find a closet full o' dead young women, as well as various kitchen bric-a-brac embedded in the walls, is one of my favorite all-time movie scenes.

6. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I didn't see the Texas Chainsaw Massacre until I was in college. Prior to seeing it, I had labored under the illusion that it was an über-gory flick. Wrong. If you've never seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre before, don't expect a lot of blood. What you can expect is a creepy tale of a group of kids who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time ... and it all seems so real. Spoiler alert: the scene in which the one-foot-in-the-grave grandfather futilely tries to kill a girl with a hammer is still a funny, if cringe-inducing, scene.

7. Bad Ronald. This movie was a staple on Saturday afternoon television until the late 1980s. Then it just disappeared. You can find VHS copies of Bad Ronald on eBay, but they'll cost you a pretty penny -- to which I can attest. Bad Ronald is a movie about a nerdy high schooler who accidentally kills a neighbor's young daughter. His mother, fearing no one will believe that it was an accident, moves her son into a bathroom that she's turned into a secret hiding place. When she dies, a new family moves in ... and that's when the fun starts. Ronald lurks about while peeping at his new "family" (who hear strange sounds that can never be explained); and he and his world-under-the-stairs is finally discovered in a climax that still makes me want to cover my eyes whenever I watch it.

8. Don't Look Now. You know you've watched a great horror flick when, at the conclusion, you can say, "I didn't see that coming!" That's what you'll say after watching Don't Look Now, which features one truly great climactic twist. Here's the story: John Baxter and his wife are living in Venice following the death of their daughter. He has psychic flashes of his daughter walking the streets in her red cloak, at the same time that dead bodies are turning up in Venice's canals. If you've never seen it before, just remember to watch for the red coat ... and pay particular attention to who is standing on the "funeral boat." 'Nough said.

9. Alien. "One more meal before bedtime. I'm buying." We all know what happens after that. I can remember the first time I saw Alien as if it happened yesterday. I was 9-years-old and I was at my grandparents' house. They didn't have cable, but their living room TV could inexplicably pick up HBO. I stayed up late one night and watched Alien ... and I don't think I slept a wink after I and my skinny ass finally got in the bed. There's one particular scene in Alien that sticks in my mind to this day, and it ain't the "face-hugger" or "white T-shirt" scenes. It's the scene in which Dallas "happens" upon the open-armed Alien in the bowels of his spacecraft. Scare-E!

10. The Haunting. This black and white gem is based on Shirley Jackson's novel, The Haunting of Hill House. Led by Dr. Markway, who's doing research to prove that ghosts exist, a group of wayward souls enters Hill House -- a large, eerie mansion with a history of death and insanity. They soon learn that they've gotten more than they bargained for when a ghostly presence manifests itself in terrifying ways. The scene in which assorted bumps and knocks and noises precede doors bending inward sends a chill up my spine to this very day.

This is fun-ee!

The World Chess Federation today announced that Barack Obama had become the world chess champion, nudging aside former undisputed champion Viswanathan Anand of India.

The news surprised some in the chess world, because Obama has never participated in tournament play. But FIDE officials said they felt certain Obama could become world champion if he ever decided to try.

Others were less surprised. Hungarian grandmaster Judit Polgar noted the world championship is just the latest in a string of triumphs for the American president. She cited his receipt two years ago of the Nobel Peace Prize. That award — for which Obama was nominated just a few weeks into his presidency, and a mere five years after he held the title of state senator in Illinois — was only the first in a series of accolades to come his way.

It was followed several months later when the International Mathematical Union bestowed on Obama the Fields Medal, often referred to as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics. The Fields is supposed to be given to individuals not over 40 years of age. The prize committee decided to waive the requirement, said the IMU's László Lovász, because some members had seen a "60 Minutes" interview in which Obama had done a rough percentage calculation in his head, and were impressed.

Read the rest here.

Given that most of my liberal friends' eyes glaze over when I start talking about "Chicago" economists, or when I mention that, historically, lowering cap-gains taxes has always resulted in more money flowing into the U.S. gov'ment's coffers, this blog from the The Weekly Standard don't suprise me ... none:

You likely won't see this poll result elsewhere, so I thought I'd highlight it here. This is a Pew Political IQ test conducted over the phone with 1,002 adults from Oct. 1-4. They were asked 12 questions, and answered an average of 5.3 questions correctly, according to Pew.

But here's the part you likely haven't heard about:



Read the rest here.