Paul M. Jones

Just one day after an Islamic activist attempted to cover over private property in spray paint (and a woman who got in her way), the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York has announced they will amend their rules to prohibit the types of advertisements that offended her.

The New York Times reports the MTA will prohibit any advertisements that it “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.” Those “viewpoint” ads that do not meet this criteria will be allowed, so long as a disclaimer is included saying the MTA does not endorse them. The MTA met on Thursday to discuss the rules, which were approved unanimously 8-0. 

Maybe Christians should start spray-painting over speech they find offensive, too. Via NYC Prohibits Controversial Subway Ads in Wake of Islamist's Vandalism.

There’s been a lot of trumpeting about how health care spending has been slowing. Some attributed that to the economy, others to the ACA. Some of us, on the other hand, have been more skeptical. I hate it when cynicism is rewarded. Here’s a sampling of the bad news:

Per capita health care spending for under-65 year olds with employer based insurance went up 4.6% to $4547

Per capita health care spending for children went up 7.7% to $2347

Per capita out-of-pocket spending went up 4.6% to $735

Surgical admission average facility price went up 8.5% to $29,858

Emergency room average facility price went up 5.4% to $1381

Via And this morning was looking so promising… | The Incidental Economist.

As a followup, Megan McArdle

says:

I had a somber conversation with an economist of my acquaintance about what health care cost moderation might mean. If Obamacare's boosters were right, it would mean more money to spend on other things--at least, for those of us who are not doctors or nurses. But if they were wrong, and the moderation in cost growth indeed resulted from the economic slowdown, any long term moderation in cost growth would also be accompanied by long-term moderation in economic growth--a cure worse than the disease. Health care costs that grow at 3% when the economy is growing at 1% are not better than health care costs growing at 5% when the economy is growing at 3%. They are much, much worse.

I was talking with Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee, the other day; she offered a different approach, one that harkens back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Back in the Great Depression, FDR was more focused on getting people back to work than on handing out money. He set up the WPA and the CCC to provide employment for out-of-work Americans -- jobs building needed infrastructure: bridges, post offices, courthouses and other federal buildings.

The idea was that taxpayers should get something out of helping the unemployed.

The Green Party’s Stein has a similar suggestion, and comments: “If you don’t have work, you’d go to an employment office, not an unemployment office, and you’d get a job, not sit home, depressed, with a check.”

Emphasis in original. Via Barack Obama v. Jill Stein on dependency--Glenn Reynolds - NYPOST.com.

Please consider this a public service announcement for my married friends.

She broke the unwritten contract that by having a Date Night, and plying her with food, wine, fun and maybe a surprise nice thing, you were going to get laid. How dare she do that and ruin your perfectly planned evening. Why the hell do you have to jump through so many freaking hoops just to get laid BY YOUR WIFE anyway? Good grief she’s a selfish spoiled bitch who should be having sex with you. Right? Right! …right?

Ah… yes and no…

Yes - Yes indeed getting laid on Date Night is a reasonable expectation. It’s a special night to connect and have fun together. Having sex is a great way to connect and have fun, and in fact you should have a reasonable expectation that you’ll even have somewhat above average sex that night. After all, more time to relax and ease into it, no kids, a little wine. It should all be good. That’s why you have a Date Night in the first place.

No – She’s just not attracted to you sexually. An evening of special whatever simply isn’t going to make that change in a single evening. She doesn’t want to have sex with you, so she blew it all up in your face. If she was right on the line of being interested in you, Date Night might have earned you getting laid on Date Night, but if she’s below the line if interest in you, the whole evening is just unwanted pressure to screw a guy she doesn’t want to screw.

If you were both single and this date went down, she wouldn’t go back to your place. She’d probably screen your calls out afterwards too. She’s just not interested, but she’s married to you, so she has to go back to your place and find a way to ruin the evening.

So what to do?

Read the rest of the article to find out. Via What To Do When You Don’t Get Laid On Date Night | Married Man Sex Life.

Your teacher asks you to challenge me to give “one good reason why the law should not require that women be paid the same as men for the same work.”  I’m happy to oblige.  There are many good reasons, but I’ll here stick to one.

That one reason is that it’s practically impossible for government officials to determine when two jobs involve “the same work.”  What might look like the same work to outside observers – to government officials, lawyers, or even the workers themselves – might well be very different work.

via Letter to a Very Bright 11th Grader.

CBO concluded: The tax credits would still need to be about 50 percent higher than they are now to fully offset the higher lifetime costs of an all-electric vehicle.

I know that someone is thinking that gas prices are going up, and when they do, electric cars will prove to be a smart thing. I’m not so sure. The CBO provided a breakeven on this line of thinking. If gas prices go north of $6, electric starts to make sense. When gas goes to $10, all of the vehicles break even to conventional autos. The problem I have with this line of reasoning is that if gas were to go to $8, the US economy (and the rest of the world) would come to an economic halt. In that environment a fellow would be grinning if he had an electric car, but he would probably be out of work, and most of the stores he would want to drive to would be closed.  What good does the electric car create for him if things go very bad? Not much.

via CBO: Electric Cars Are A Waste Of Money - Business Insider.

Muslim outrage over an amateurish trailer for a probably non-existent video coincides with an ongoing hit Broadway play ridiculing the Mormon Church, the reappearance of the once government-subsidized Piss Christ photos, and so on. When the administration apologizes for the excess of a private individual, but ignores condemnation of far more widely disseminated similar venom, some of it sponsored by the U.S. government, it is making a policy statement -- we dare not tamper with free speech unless it touches upon Islam, not out of principle but because of sheer cowardice.

via Please, No More Apologies For Free Speech - By Victor Davis Hanson - The Corner - National Review Online.

This past year, he gave $4,020,772 of his  $13,696,951 in (“mostly investment”) income to charity.  That’s 29.65%.  Interestingly, “The Romneys [only] claimed a deduction for $2.25 million of those charitable contributions.”

Romney also provided details on his past 20 years of tax returns, indicating that he paid taxes in each of those years.  Do wonder if Harry Reid will now apologize for slurring the good man from Massachusetts.  And “Over the entire 20-year period, the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45% of their adjusted gross income.”

By contrast in the ten years prior to his nomination to be the Democratic candidate for Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden gave 0.15% of his income to charity.  (UPDATE:  For comparison purposes, in the 20 years prior to his current bid for the White House, Mitt Romney gave ninety times as much of his income to charitable institutions as did Joe Biden in the 10 years prior to his nomination as the Democratic candidate for Vice President.)

via GayPatriot » Tax returns show Mitt Romney’s empathy.

The "Fast and Furious" gunwalking operation resulted in at least one dead American and several dead Mexicans.

Asked about the Fast and Furious program at the Univision forum on Thursday, President Obama falsely claimed that the program began under President George W. Bush.

“I think it’s important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration,” the president said. “When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned a inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued, confirming that in fact Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and the people who did initiate this were held accountable.”

In actuality, the Fast and Furious program was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.

via President Obama Falsely Claims Fast and Furious Program “Begun Under the Previous Administration” - ABC News.

While in the Clinical Research Center, about a week after my return, I came down with pneumonia. This raised on the part of the staff a level of concern that, initially, I did not understand. Their worry was that I had what they called “hospital pneumonia” and not the more ordinary “community pneumonia.” The former was said to be resistant to antibiotics, and, on the off-chance that I had it, I was put on a cocktail of antibiotics, delivered intravenously, that I had never heard of. They were harsh and corrosive, and, after a day or so, the vein into which they had been introduced would collapse. In time, the staff in the Department of Infectious Diseases, managed to grow a culture on my sputum, and from this they learned that I had “community pneumonia.” When the word came through, I was put on Amoxycylin, and I recovered with reasonable alacrity.

What I did not know the time was that the previous summer a woman with an antibiotic-resistant strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae, who was in desperate straits, had been brought from another hospital to the Clinical Research Center at NIH; that the antibiotics given her had failed to do the job; that, in the six or seven months that followed, the disease had spread to seventeen other patients at NIH; and that five of these had, as a consequence, died. The “hospital pneumonia” that the staff feared that I had contracted was the so-called superbug; and, as they almost certainly knew when they treated me, another patient – a boy who had had arrived in April – had been diagnosed with the disease on 25 July, the day after my return to the facility. He died this past week.

That I am now cancer-free and that I did not contract the superbug is a matter of dumb luck, and it gives one an appreciation for what modern science can do and for what it cannot do. It should also give one pause.

The particular superbug that ended the life of my fellow patient at NIH is found today in only 6% of American hospitals, but there are other antibiotic-resistant diseases lurking in other hospitals, such as Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, E. coli, and Clostridium difficile, to mention just a few. In the years to come, their number will grow, and in the pipeline, I am told, there are almost no new antibiotics. If nothing is done, our children may live in a world akin to that of our forebears – in which there are no antibiotics capable of being deployed against the most common diseases.

via The NIH Superbug - Ricochet.com.