Sheesh, that didn’t take long. Obama’s approval rating today stands at 48%, which means he was more popular back when he wasn’t Presidenting. Of course, you can say that about a lot of people, so let’s look at this a little more closely.
First, you’ll need a little historical context. Obama was among the most unpopular Presidents in recent years at the six-month mark, down there with the never-elected Gerald Ford and the won-with-only-43% Bill Clinton. So even in that context, Obama is performing poorly.
Second, you’ll need …

McDonald’s is one of my favorite illustrations of the power of the free market. Without any incentive except money, McDonald’s creates delicious food available at cheap prices over some 31,000 worldwide locations – food that tastes exactly the same whether you’re in Athens, Greece or Athens, Georgia. The service is so fast that you can expect hot food even without ever setting foot in the restaurant.
This last weekend, I watched “Big Mac: Inside the McDonald’s Empire.” Thanks to another company motivated by profit (YouTube, owned by …

Why is there a “health care crisis” in America? Why are so many people obsessed with covering every single American with health care?
After all, there’s no life insurance crisis in America. People don’t fret about the poor, uncovered family members and relatives of people who died without life insurance. There’s no call for “universal life coverage” so that even the poorest among us will be protected.
What’s different about health care? You get one guess.
As BPN member TalonJohn recently noted, health insurance started becoming a part of …

The government’s in charge of social security, so naturally there’s going to be a social security crisis.
If you’re listening, kids, that means that would be wise not to count on social security when you get old. Social security doesn’t get put into an account and then released to you later once you reach the required age – it just goes directly to today’s old people. No honest person growing up today should ever, ever expect to collect social security. If you do collect it, it’s just a …

I wanted to mention a column by Charles Krauthammer published last week, “The Moon We Left Behind.”
Michael Crichton once wrote that if you told a physicist in 1899 that within a hundred years humankind would, among other wonders (nukes, commercial airlines), “travel to the moon, and then lose interest . . . the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad.” In 2000, I quoted these lines expressing Crichton’s incredulity at America’s abandonment of the moon. It is now 2009 and the moon recedes ever further.
…
America’s manned space program is …

I’ve been having an interesting Facebook discussion with one of the members of the BPN Forums, LLansing. It started with my status update asserting that the new health care bill would make private individual medical insurance illegal. (By the way, here’s my Facebook page).
Here’s my initial Facebook status update:
Illegal to own individual private medical insurance? Bleep this bleeping piece of bleep federal bleeping government and every bleeping moron who voted to put these bleeping stupid bleepholes into office. Bleep every young stupid bleeping commie hippie bleepface and naive …

Update: A lot of big government-espousing political jerks are trying to make their health care goals sound moderate by saying you can retain your own insurance. They’re lying. There is a provision in the bill that makes it illegal – ILLEGAL! – to own individual private medical insurance. This is outrageous and tyrannical. (Link)
It isn’t difficult. Private incentive (read: profit/large income) motivate doctors to be good doctors who can do a lot to take care of a lot of people as efficiently as …

“You think you’re so [expletive] cute with your little column,” she told me. “I read your piece and all you want is attention. You’re just like Bill O’Reilly. You just want to get up on your [expletive] soapbox and have people look at you.”
Such is the intolerant orthodoxy of Academia. A University of Oregon student named Dan Lawton – who claims to be neither conservative nor Republican – did the research and found that of all the 111 registered voters in the faculty of the Journalism, Poly Sci, …

Note:  This post is also a contribution to the BipolarNation.com Platform.
Introduction
The Causes of Climate Change
Errors and Over-regulation Due to Fear of Man-Caused Climate Change
Countering Popular Counter-Arguments
Relevant BPN Posts
Introduction
My policy on climate change has two main points that argue against heavy federal government regulation of industry:
First, the Earth’s climate indeed changes, but most of the changes are results of fluctuations in Solar output.  Saying that the Earth’s climate changes is equivalent to saying “the sky is blue.”
Second, even if the Earth’s climate was changing predominantly because of human activity, domestic regulations …

Apparently, Michael Jackson was black. I can’t say for sure, since I was born after Thriller was released, but that’s what celebrities are trying to tell us.
“We want to celebrate this black man,” Jamie Foxx said, wearing a red jacket and white glove in tribute to Jackson. “He belongs to us and we shared him with everyone else.”
Hmm. Why did Jamie Foxx need to assert that Michael Jackson had African heritage? Was it Jackson’s Lipizzan-like transformation to a brighter, whiter hue that suggested he would rather …