Iodine Tablets for the West Coast?

"Oh, it's definitely appropriate," said the U.S. Surgeon General, when asked about buying iodine tablets. "We have to be prepared. * * * And if we don't need them, then that's okay." Okay, indeed.



"Is there a concern" about radiation on the West Coast, she was later asked. "I think we have to wait and see," she replied, "but I do think we can't be over-prepared."

Health and Human Services has activated its "response teams" and put them on stand-by, Surgeon General Benjamin added, including government DMAT, or "medical response teams."

Lawdy, lawdy.

True, the "experts" are saying the chances radiation will float on over to the West coast are remote. But I can't help thinking about the volcanic ash from Iceland we had, back in April of last year. The ash from that thing seemed to drift everywhere.

All the good revolutionaries go it alone.

Photo credit: Netizen

With arugula and stuff.

Your taxpayer dollars at work.

Let's see. Here's a small sampling. We've got:

* Full-fledged police cars, with sirens and flashing lights, for the TARP bail-out auditors. What's that old saying? "Bureaucrats never die. They just get bigger"?


* $432 million for National Public Radio (which I like and to which I've contributed, don't get me wrong. But NPR ought not claim to be neutral when it's not). NPR's current err, former foundation president, Ron Schiller, says our big problem is a bunch of stupid people. White, uneducated, evangelical gun-toters, to be more precise. The intellectual elite are, well, too damn elite, the redundant Ron lamented, in true intellectual fashion.

* Little flying drone things ("micro air vehicles") for the police. So the tiny MAVs can hover in front of your kitchen window and show the government what's cooking in your kitchen. Meth, anyone?

Alrighty then. Get back to work, you two-thirds-remaining wage earners (alas, more than one-third of all wages are tax-payer handouts). We need more of your earnings. More, more, more.

Ah, well. At least Juan Williams is enjoying some Vivian Schiller schadenfreude today.

When good news is bad.

Oh, like say the new unemployment figures. announced today. "Unemployment" is down because more people dropped out of the work force -- just flat-out stopped looking for a job. Hardly good news.

Let me explain. Suppose ten people in a hundred have no job but they're looking for one. That's a 10% unemployment rate on the U3 line. Scary.

But if five of those ten people take a job-search break, that brings "unemployment" down to 5%. It's called the "labor force participation rate."

In fact, the number of unemployed people who aren't even trying to find work is at a 30-year high. And they don't "count." See how bad good news can be?



On a brighter note, this is definitely the time to do something really bad, what with the Charlie Sheen coverage and Quadafi and all. What's that? What about Mark Sanford?


Umm, who's Mark Sanford?

Greenspan shocker: Government regulation retarding recovery!

Waves of incredulity rippled throughout the financial world today when Greenspan said, "Much intervention turns out to hobble markets rather than enhancing them." Most companies' refusal to spend money “can be explained by the shock of vastly greater government-created uncertainties embedded in the competitive, regulatory and financial environments," he added.

Oh, to be old and wise . . . instead of just old.

On an unrelated note -- Mr. M has two birthday parties coming up -- you can get some pretty nifty t-shirts for kids and grown-ups here, at Out of Print Clothing. And for every t-shirt purchased, they'll donate a book to a school in Africa, to boot.

Can anyone venture a guess whether this would let me claim a partial charitable deduction for taxes? Questions like these keep Charlie Sheen out of mind . . .

Maybe Bruce Krasting will know.

If Only He'd Listened to Himself

Everyone's engrossed in Charlie Sheen's self-immolation and other grossly entertaining things. I know. Hell, I even took a cooking class last night.

But big stuff is happening. Like Libya, or "Lybia" as the Obama White House twittered. Lybia, labia, whatever. If you think high gas prices will be our only problem, tune back into Charlie Sheen. Quick. Before he's dead.


(Umm, all I can say is I would not play poker with that interviewer.)

And then there's Wisconsin, which is basically everything else.

It's 3:00 A.M. and we've got . . . nothing, man. Nothing.