Video: The worst thing ever recorded in any medium

I can't think of anything to say about this that Allahpundit hasn't said already, and better. 

Ethanol’s Policy Privileges: Heading for History’s Dustbin?

PJM: 

"At the stroke of midnight on December 31 of this year, the 45¢ per gallon Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC), commonly known as the blender’s credit, and the 54¢ per gallon tariff on imported ethanol, will expire.

A bipartisan group of 17 senators, led by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), say it’s time for these special-interest giveaways to go gently into the night. A broad coalition of environmental, taxpayer, hunger, free market, and food industry organizations are urging House and Senate leaders to let the VEETC meet its statutorily appointed fate.

An exciting prospect — for the first time ever, Congress may decide to put the general welfare of consumers and taxpayers ahead of the corporate welfare of the ethanol lobby."

via Instapundit.

Health Reform and the Decline of Physician Private Practice

Dr, Paul Hsieh has links and comments on the subject, including this:

[R]esults from a national survey of 2,400 physicians, only 26% of whom said they would continue practicing the way they are in the next one to three years. The remaining 74% said they would retire, work part-time, close their practices to new patients, become employed and/or seek non-clinical jobs.

Why Do We Have a Central Bank?

WSJ: The Fed has been ceded a degree of operational independence by Congress to conduct monetary policy. That independence is viable only so long as the Fed sticks to conventional monetary policy. If it persists in acting also as a fiscal authority, ordinary citizens and their representatives are going to ask: Why do we have a central bank?

Extended family member hit by IED

We spend a lot of time with my son-in-law's family, the closest of whom is his cousin Jason and Jason's wife Julie.  Julie's brother, Josh, sent this to his mother yesterday:

"today was a bad day mom. two of my marines were hit with ieds. i cant tell
you the specifics yet but know that i am okay. i was 7ft from one of them
when it went off so you might be getting a call or something telling you im
hurt and somewhere getting treatment. dad should have called you and already
told you this. but know that i am perfectly fine and nothing is wrong with
me. i am just mentally scared from watching one of my best friends get blown
up. in time that will heal as well. sleeping tonight wont be easy though.
one of my junior marines lost both his legs above the knee. my buddy lost
his left foot and his right leg was gashed open pretty badly. i had to shove
my hand in his leg to keep him from bleeding out. i fucking hate this war
and i want to come home mom. only a few more months and i think i might be
done with this shit. but we'll see. i love you very much and i miss you.
cant wait to see you when i get home. i love you mom."
Prayers would be appreciated.  Josh is 25 years old.

Politically correct Portland rejected feds who saved city from terrorist attack

Examiner: In 2005, leaders in Portland, Oregon, angry at the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror, voted not to allow city law enforcement officers to participate in a key anti-terror initiative, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.  On Friday, that task force helped prevent what could have been a horrific terrorist attack in Portland.  Now city officials say they might re-think their participation in the task force -- because Barack Obama is in the White House.

The Triumphant Return of Hayek

At Newsweek (?!):

"From Europe to the United States, as voters started to reward candidates focused on fiscal discipline and less government intervention, Keynesianism quickly fell out of favor.

One key exception was U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. Dissatisfied with the gradual recovery and a high unemployment rate, he let it be known that he thought more stimulus was in order, and realizing that was not in the congressional cards, he decided to take monetary activism to a new level."

Spengler on the Wikileaks diplomatic cables

Read the whole thing.

"The initial reports suggest that the US State Department has massive evidence that Obama's approach - "engaging" Iran and coddling Pakistan - has failed catastrophically. The crisis in diplomatic relations heralded by the press headlines is not so much a diplomatic problem - America's friends and allies in Western and Central Asia have been shouting themselves hoarse for two years - but a crisis of American credibility."

April 11, 1954: The most boring day in the 20th century

Every day something of significance happens, a person is born who is destined for fame, there is an event in the arts or sports, history is created. With 300 million of these facts fed into the “brain” of True Knowledge, Tunstall-Pedoe’s Cambridge company, the computer was asked: “What was the most boring day in the 20th century?”

via Hot Air.

Must read: Fascinating story re Stuxnet

Links and comments at Hot Air, but be sure to follow the link to the full story.

"...not only did the coders need a mind-boggling degree of knowledge about the vulnerabilities in more than one software platform, they needed intelligence on Iran’s program so deep that not even the UN had all the details. On top of all that, the worm was programmed to disguise what it was doing so that the engineers on the premises would think the problem with the centrifuges was in the hardware, not the software."