YouTube - Chris Matthews Guest: "You're Making My Leg Tingle"

Mathews shows again that he can dish it out but can't take it. What a pathetic performance.

Herbert Pardes: The Coming Shortage of Doctors - WSJ.com

In the debates about the current "hot topic" of political conversation there seems to be a steady confusion, or maybe obfuscation is a better word, between "health coverage" (that is, insurance) and "health care" (that is, doctors, hospitals, medicines and affiliated technologies). All of this conveniently glosses over the issue of supply (demand we seem to have a handle on)...

Even in the absence of health-care reform, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, the U.S. will face a shortage of at least 125,000 physicians by 2025. We have about 700,000 active physicians today. One factor driving this shortage is that the baby-boomer generation is getting older and will require more care. By 2025 the number of people over 65 will have increased by about 75% of what it is today—to 64 million from 37 million today.

Doctors are also aging. By 2020, as many as one-third of the physicians currently practicing will likely retire. If health-care reform adds millions of people to the health-care market, the shortage of doctors will be even greater than it is projected to be now.

Dems Need to Start Over - WSJ.com

Mr. Obama campaigned on a pledge to spare 95% of Americans from tax increases, but the American middle class is slowly figuring out that it will eventually be asked—that's the polite way of putting it—to pay for all of this. These looming bills, and not only from the $787 billion stimulus, are clouding the investment outlook.

Nowhere is this more true than on health care. The House bill is the very definition of a job killer, funding another entitlement program with a payroll tax equal to 8% of wages on businesses that don't offer insurance even as it inflicts a huge 5.4-percentage-point marginal rate tax hike on those earning over $500,000. The Democrats' own Joint Tax Committee says that one-third of the $460.5 billion this is estimated to raise over 10 years will come from small businesses that create most new jobs.

Some TVs Go Directly Online for Streaming Movies - NYTimes.com

The early answers didn’t inspire many couch potatoes to get off the sofa. You could either plug a laptop computer into your TV set (assuming the computer and the television had the right connections) or buy a box, called a media extender, for your home theater that received streaming files from your computer. Media extenders proved obstreperous and confusing: some files wouldn’t play on some extenders, the boxes were awkward to set up and movie downloads were painfully slow.

Paul Ingrassia: How Ford Made Its Comeback - WSJ.com

"It's interesting, then, that Consumer Reports rates the quality of the four-cylinder Ford Fusion higher than the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, and the Lincoln MKZ higher than its Acura and Lexus counterparts. The Fusion and MKZ are built in a factory without job classifications because it's in Hermosillo, Mexico, and isn't represented by the UAW. If Ford targets future expansion in Mexico, the recent contract vote will spell further decline for a union that, like Detroit's car companies, badly needs cultural change."

Obama administration missteps hamper Mideast efforts - washingtonpost.com

"President Obama came into office insisting that his administration would press hard and fast to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But after nine months, analysts and diplomats say, the administration's efforts have faltered in part because of its own missteps."

...

Daniel Levy, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator now at the Century Foundation in Washington, summed up the administration's efforts in recent days as "amateur night at the Apollo Theater." He said the administration did not game out the consequences of its demands on the parties -- and then flinched. "They just dug deeper and deeper their own grave," he said. "All of this talk of negotiations doesn't cut the mustard in the region."

Coincidental Obscenity Deemed Extremely Dubious - WSJ.com

In a looking back article on a recent California gubernatorial veto the mathematics are discussed and the comments contain some amateurish efforts to mimic the veto letter, but then there is one gem:

For a former actor and bodybuilder, this governor shows a remarkable
understatement in letting the legislature know what he really thinks, and in
communicating what those moonbats need to hear, even if it upsets their
karma or chakras or whatever.

Their problem is not illiteracy; they can read between the lines without any
help from the media. Their problem is innumeracy; they don't get basic
economic principles enough to see what everyone else can see, that
most of their state's economic problems are of their own doing.

Saying No To Big Software - Forbes.com

According to Sims, open-source software is not only as good as proprietary vendor software, but in many cases, he claims it's even better. In addition, he says he has saved his company over 50% in IT costs annually since he replaced proprietary software from Oracle, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard with open-source solutions.

Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad.

How's that "change" working out for ya?

Cuomo Files Antitrust Suit Against Intel - WSJ.com

"The suit alleges that for several years, Intel sought to maintain its dominance of the computer-chip market by paying billions of dollars in kickbacks to computer makers under the guise of 'rebates.' The suit also alleges Intel threatened computer-makers—including Hewlett-Packard Co., International Business Machines Corp., and Dell Inc.–with retribution if they marketed products with chips made by competitors."

I'm glad I'm not the only one to spot this guy's obvious resume building activities. While in this case I agree that Intel probably has dirty hands, this would make more sense as a Justice Department action, who instead has been saber rattling at IBM while turning a blind eye to the activities of Intel and Microsoft.

We need someone to investigate the investigators.