Showing posts with label P.J. O'Rourke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label P.J. O'Rourke. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Sunday, September 10, 2017

Are Bourgeois Values A Bad Thing?

Hot Air: Is the U.S. declining because Americans abandoned 'bourgeois values'?

NRO: A University of Pennsylvania professor gets heat for promoting 'bourgeois values.'

Are 'bourgeois values,' which most of us call the Protestant Work Ethic, a bad thing?


Ironic this controversy about 'bourgeois values' would arise at the University of Pennsylvania, given that institution was founded by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, a boy from humble beginnings, promoted those very same values, which he described as hard work and self-discipline.

Aren't bourgeois values a large part of American exceptionalism? Isn't American exceptionalism about the combination of freedom, property rights and opportunity that allowed individual people to find their potential?

Short Answer: Why don't we compare the success and failure of other value systems?

Instapundit: Richard Fernandez: The End of American Exceptionalism

Town & Country: P. J. O'Rourke: Why Snobbery Is A Good Thing

EBL: Fishtown vs. Belmont Candidates

In a related story, The NYTs had an article about certain wealthy folks who are embarrassed by their purchases and hide price tags on things from the help.  Is that because of some moral dilemma or because they think it will help protect them when the mob storms their co-op Bastilles?

Friday, August 25, 2017

The Canadian Healthcare System Sucks...


Our Democrat betters want to impose a single payer Canadian system on us. It was revealed (to no surprise) that Nancy Pelosi privately admits to it. As we know, Bernie Sanders openly calls for it.


Universal health care coverage: What could go wrong?



Obviously the system in the United States has serious inefficiency problems too. United States spends more on heath care than most any other industrialized country, yet patients are less satisfied than ever. Obamacare, while expanding coverage to some, made the overall system considerable worse for those who had insurance (not paid for by their employers). Rather than rolling back that entitlement and exploring changes that might make a positive improvement, there remains stupid insistence that more government control, less free market principles at play, will make heath care better. It won't.

I did not have high hopes for any GOP "fix" on ObamaCare. I get the feeling that Murkowski, Collins and McCain are voting the way they do just to spite Trump.

While changes are needed, Canada's system is NOT the model to follow. We should be going in the opposite direction of CanadaCare. It is expensive without delivering value for what is spent. Canadian Healtcare wait times are now running about 20 weeks (it varies by Province) for medically necessary procedures.   Those wait times are also for diagnostic services (such as MRIs and other testing), which escalates the problem. You have to wait for the referral to a specialist, then wait for the diagnostic testing, then wait for treatment.

What is the Canadian system like? It's like the VA. Which means sometimes it works well, a lot of time it works really slowly and inefficiently with less than optimum outcomes, and sometimes it fails horribly. And as much as people rail about how lawsuits drive up the cost of health care in the United States (to some extent that is true in it results in defensive medicine), the truth is that competition between providers and the risk of consequences for bad service in the private sector do improve health care outcomes.

What the United States should be exploring is how to make our current system more efficient and deliver better, cost effective care, while figuring out how to address gaps for certain segments of the population.  The Canada Healthcare system is definitely not a viable system to follow.

We constantly hear how drugs are less expensive in Canada. Canada achieves this by working out deals (really more extortion) with drug makers and offering less drugs to choose from.  Which means if a certain less common drug is best for your particular condition, it might not be available in Canada. And also, prescription drugs are not covered under the Canada healthcare system (you pay that out of pocket). Strangely enough, some generic drugs are actually more expensive in Canada than the US.

"Free" healthcare in Canada is also limited health care. So in the end, unless you are good with those long wait times and limited coverage, you will need private healthcare insurance (or cash) to access healthcare in the United States and other countries (you also need it traveling between Canadian Provinces).

90 Miles From Tyranny: Penn Jillette on Compassion

Lem's Place: Healthcare reform and how the US stacks up

Proof Positive: Making it suck for universally for everyone!

Heritage: Sanders' Single Payer would be a disaster for the country

Powerline: P.J. O'Rourke, call your office and It takes a distillery (or three)

Instapundit: Trudeau tells illegals, stop coming to Canada  Not enough 'free' healthcare for them?

Wombat: Twitchy: Stardate ROFL – Canadian William Shatner Battles Hordes Of SJWs (Even A PUPPETEER), Jokes Write Themselves, Canadian Mark Steyn: Looming And Creeping, Bring The HEAT: An Interesting Look At The WW2 Canadian Munitions Industry

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Diane Lane and The Outsiders


TOM had a post on The Value of Motherhood (it was the Feast of The Holy Family this Sunday). Stacy McCain's post brings up Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994). It has to be one of the most misunderstood books out there. While I know people (especially on the left) get apoplectic in discussing the genetic issues in that book, what is really interesting is Murray's work on nurture, which is addressed in his later work Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 (2012) looking at the growing rift between working class Caucasians (Fishtown, Pennsylvania) and upper middle class Caucasians (Belmont, Massachusetts).

We can debate all day whether there are genetic differences. The Bell Curve correctly identifies data and results, but not their cause. Personally I tend to go with P.J. O'Rourke's take on the subject:
People are all exactly alike. There's no such thing as a race and barely such a thing as an ethnic group. If we were dogs, we'd be the same breed. George Bush and an Australian Aborigine have fewer differences than a Lhasa apso and a toy fox terrier. A Japanese raised in Riyadh would be an Arab. A Zulu raised in New Rochelle would be an orthodontist. People are all the same, though their circumstances differ terribly.
Okay, O'Rourke over states it a bit, but it's culture that matters more (children lacking stimulation in infancy have lower IQs---which would corollate to Murray and Herrnstein's findings). I suspect there is a good component of environment too (children fed on crap processed food and lead paint chips have lower IQs and cognitive function too). These are issues that transcend race as demonstrated by Murray's Coming Apart book.

You can't have a serious discussion of class structure in America and nature and nurture without addressing those seminal films that proceeded the Bell Curve: Trading Places (1983) and The Outsiders (1983). Apparently most people are miserable (and whiners), so I guess we all have that in common.

Okay. There is someone with superior genes who also looks great in jeans (or really pretty much anything)--Diane Lane.

EBL: Diane Lane (September 2012) and Diane Lane (October 2013) For some reason these posts get a lot of clicks (far more statistically than other EBL posts). Why is that?













Rule 5 and FMJRA

Instapundit: Let's hope 2016 is better than 2015

IMAGE CENSORED

Ok, this post does reference The Outsiders...

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Hitler finds out about Brian Williams…



Instapundit: “It’s like being unsure if you had a threesome with Sofia Vergara and Kate Upton! Some shit you just do NOT ‘misremember.’”

P.J. O'Rourke shows some sympathy for Williams: All war correspondent stories grow bigger with time and drinks… 

True, but it helps to actually have some old school war story chops in the first place (reporters and writers like James Jones, Norman Mailer, Herman Wouk, Irwin Shaw, Walter Cronkite and the late Bob Simon were actually repeatedly in harms way). And while I was no fan of Walter Cronkite, I do not recall him ever self promoting himself with war stories like Brian Williams did. 


And I will take those old guys at Elaine's in the seventies over the current crop of TV celebrity reporters anytime. EBL: Brian Williams and NBC's Game of Thrones
Instapundit: Social Media Politics
NBC put the kibosh on Brian Williams references/jokes at SNL 40, but Seinfeld and Carrey apparently did not get the memo…

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Happy Birthday P. J. O'Rourke

P. J. O'Rourke is 65 years old!  Happy Birthday.  
Here are some O'Rourke quotes.  O'Rourke is a giver that way.