Around The Blogs 2014-02-08

Here goes with this week’s roundup.

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Rev. Donald Sensing points out that ‘idle people will not get health insurance without work‘.

It is the Left’s usual M.O. First they make health insurance mandatory by law to buy. Then they create a premium and subsidy structure that guarantees most of the bottom 50 percent of earners will have to be subsidized. More importantly, though, is that those people soon realize that they cannot earn much more money or their subsidies will be yanked. The financial flogging that would follow therefrom would be unbearable. So they stay poor and dependent on the government simply to stay in stasis.

To the Left, that is not a bug, it is a feature.

Word.

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Carteach0 brings us a few lessons learned during several days without power.  Looks like he came through it fairly well.  (By the way, I have most of the products he found very useful during this limited emergency, and I second his recommendation of them.  See his post for more information.)

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A law officer writes to Survival Blog with some interesting information about a survival cache that was discovered by youngsters.  He has several thoughts on the matter, including suggestions to avoid similar complications.  I don’t maintain buried caches of supplies – I can’t afford excess supplies for that purpose, and if I have fewer supplies in the first place I want them where I can get at them! – but if you do, or are considering it, you’ll find this useful.

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Wirecutter brings us another reminder of why there’s America . . . and then there’s California.

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Ben Horowitz brings us an interesting story of how being legally astute and very careful helped him to avoid going to jail – but landed his former Chief Financial Officer behind bars.  Moral of the story:  be careful whose advice you take . . .

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Blue brings us two very amusing posts this week.  First up is a reminder of why the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.  Second is a tale that aptly sums up the difference between teachers and educators.  Both made me laugh out loud.

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JayG brings us news of the progress of an interesting hybrid between a light car and a motorcycle.  He’s thinking of putting down a deposit for one.  After reading his account, I must admit, I’m thinking about it myself.

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Eric S. Raymond can’t resist the temptation to go ‘Down the feminist rabbit hole‘.

I think this sort of bitter involution is what eventually and inevitably happens when you marinate in left-wing duckspeak for long enough. (Clue: if you find yourself using the word “neoliberal” as non-ironically as these women do, you’re there. For utter lack of meaning outside of a dense thicket of self-referential cod-Marxist presuppositions disconnected from reality, this one has few rivals.)

Accordingly, George Orwell would have no trouble at all identifying the language of the feminist twitter wars as a form of Newspeak, designed not to convey thought but suppress it. Indeed, part of the content of the wars is that some of these women dimly sort of get this – see the whole argument over “callout culture”. But none of them can wake up enough to see that the problem is not just individual behaviors. Because to do that they’d have to face how irretrievably rotten and oppressive their entire discourse has become, and their worldview would collapse.

Don’t hold back, Eric – tell us how you really feel!

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C. W. Swanson brings us photographic evidence of a doctor with a problem . . .

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XBradTC reminds us of an old, but still amusing commentary on the difference between AK-47, AR-15 and Mosin-Nagant rifles.  This one will appeal to the gunnies among us.

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Finally, Og the Neanderpundit made me spit tea all over my screen with visual evidence that there is, indeed, a factual foundation to blowing smoke up someone’s ass.  Ye Gods and little fishes . . .

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That’s all for this week.

Peter

5 comments

  1. I got to sit in a prototype Elio when they were here in Denver, and wrote it up on my blog. I liked the concept and the execution as I had built something along the same lines about 20 years earlier. It has a pretty good projected weight to horsepower ratio and so should be fairly lively as built.

    They say they have no plans for a "sport" version, but everyone at the showing knew someone who would happily put a turbo on the thing. Voids the warranty, but so what?

    I think I could have a lot of fun with one of those. They were originally planning to begin production this year, but that has now slipped to next year. Starting a business right now is painfully difficult on top of the difficulties of coordinating a complex project like a motor vehicle.

    I'm waiting for units to begin rolling out the factory doors to place an order, but yes, I want one. They now have deposits for over 8000 units.

  2. I am literally–as in actually, no metaphor, no hyperbole–willing to pay more for a fiddle than for a car.
    Among other things, this means that generally I'm self-excluded from the new-car market.

    That Elio is genuinely interesting, though. If and when they actually start producing the things, they'll have my attention.

    Thanks for posting that link!

  3. The back-story here about the profusion of three wheeled vehicles is that, IIRC, they are exempt from NHTSB regulations, as they are deemed to be "motorcycles" by definition.
    AFAIK, that is about the sole reason for three instead of four wheels. So we have a designed around a rule, instead of for optimums.

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