ELSEWHERE

Australia’s token antigun laws. A .38 sixgun is still legal! “The states will ban a range of small handguns, handguns with a calibre above .38 and those with a magazine capacity exceeding 10 rounds.”

We all know that there are some morons in the world but how did this guy get to be an air-traffic controller? Frightening. “A Swiss air traffic controller jokingly put an "al-Qaeda" label on a French helicopter that strayed into restricted air space during the Group of Eight summit, nearly leading to a shooting down of it by the French air force.”

There is a good article in the WSJ about the implications of the recent U. Mich. affirmative action decision by the U.S. Supreme court. It says that American institutions know that blacks can never be equal in achievement so also know that they need racial preferences to look good. It also explains anti-Americanism as a “holier than thou” attitude.

I think they are pretty right about this: “The Dept. of Defense ... just announced the launch of a new advertising campaign that links military values with success in life. The military believes the values soldiers learn through military service to be a key to success in civilian life as well. The primary goal of the ads? To encourage adults to to advocate military service to the young people in their lives."

Disturbing: "Even without a prescription drug benefit, the cost of Medicare will double as a percentage of GDP by 2040. The program's unfounded liabilities are more than $13.3 trillion, dwarfing even Social Security's massive debt. ... a more courageous or sensible Congress might have tried to reform this deeply troubled program and bring some restraint to its escalating costs. Instead, Congress decided that what Medicare really needed was a brand new entitlement estimated to cost at least $400 billion over the next 10 years ..."

The Wicked one has an email from a U.S. medical specialist about the incredible red-tape being generated by subsidized prescription drugs.

My latest academic posting: “AUTHORITARIANISM AND ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION IN INDIA” can be found here or here. I find that the Indians are a submissive but ambitious lot.

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