Larwyn's quick takes

 
* QandO quotes Megan McCardle (hat tip: TigerHawk):

Paul Krugman is voting for doom. It's worth keeping in mind, however, that Paul Krugman has predicted eight of the last none recessions under the Bush administration.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, but Krugman's track record would have to significantly improve to match the proverbial busted timepiece.

* Gerard Vanderleun highly recommends Neo-Neocon's Cultural and moral relativism, Part I and Part II.
Good and evil are admittedly difficult concepts for "progressives" to grok.

* The Spectator's Philip Klein deconstructs HillaryCare™ version 2.0 (now with thinly disgused Socialism™!):

...The plan would require insurers to provide coverage to everybody who applies, regardless of pre-existing conditions or risk factors, at a price the government deems "affordable." But insurance companies exist to manage and price risk. If car insurers were required to provide low-cost auto coverage to motorists who have had licenses suspended multiple times for reckless driving, they would not remain in business for long. Similarly, the Clinton plan would eventually lead to the collapse of the private medical insurance market, even if she left it "intact" in the meantime for the purposes of selling the plan. Her proposal would also create a new government-run health-care program modeled after Medicare. This would set the stage for future liberal politicians to argue that with the private market in shambles, the only choice is to go to a fully socialized system...

Perhaps it will be the only time in recorded history that centralized government control resulted in lower prices and better service.

* With more seriousness than the candidate deserves, Ace questions the case for Ron Paul:

...I don't get the claim that he's "the only man" who can save America, "the only man" who can restore the Constitution, "the only man" who can bring limited government back in vogue.

All of this is extraordinarily fanciful. I don't mean this as a cheap line -- it's rather serious. If the man couldn't keep a handle on his own small newsletter operation, can someone explain to me how he can possibly be "the only man in America" capable of forcing the federal government into a direction that the great mass of the American public simply does not want?

A whiney, sniveling isolationist -- with a history of racism and a plethora of bizarre backers? What's not to like?

* The American Thinker's Selwyn Duke on The race for the American mind:

...the old media fears the new one. The latter watches the watchers, polices the police. It has cut into the Rathersphere's market, causing a diminution of circulation, viewership and - this is what really gets their collars up -- power. They can no longer propagandize with Tass-like impunity, for the e-hills have eyes... Yet this is no time for a victory dance. The new media is under attack, as the left aims to silence dissent before it grows strong enough to block the thought police's coup de grace. This is the race for the American mind.

And we are losing...

When does political correctness (or Steyn's "creeping Sharia") infringe upon the First Amendment?

* Gateway Pundit reminds us that George Soros, a notorious sufferer of Bush Derangement Syndrome, funded the corrupt "Lancet Study":

...Soros was the money man behind the grossly inaccurate Lancet-Johns Hopkins study that claimed that 650,000 civilians had been slaughtered in Iraq since the start of the war... Soros provided nearly half of the funding for the study.

Sounds like there are economic incentives for more than just the global warming crowd.