A future of work-houses and prisons… a future where Americans who lose their jobs, or get sick (or have a relative get sick), or get divorced, or any of the usual hard luck stories associated with financial troubles, will now have to go through several more hoops and pay back some or all of their credit card bills, ’cause the President is about to sign bankruptcy reform legislation. What’s interesting is not that virtually every single Republican member of Congress voted for this clear whoring for large banks and credit card companies, but half of Democrats joined in the banking...

The House of Representatives continued its streak of brilliant legislation, following up on the unpopular, unconstitutional, and best of all, ineffective Terri Schiavo private legislation, by addressing the most burning and important issue in the nation: whether those standing to inherit over $5,000,000 should ever pay any taxes again. That’s right: the People’s House passed a bill to make estate tax repeal a permanent feature of the American landscape. Of course, this being America and all, chances are, even though at this point less than 1% of the population even stands to be in a position anywhere near being involved...

Apparently, this is not advice to Americans visiting the Third World, as advice to marathon runners to limit fluid intake to avoid possible hyponatremia (abnormally low blod sodium)… advice announced seeing as next Monday is the Boston Marathon. Interesting to me, for a variety of reasons. For one, I handled a legal case involving a patient who, unfortunately, during a gynecological procedure, was infused liters and liters of fluid, and died from… hyponatremia. A most unpleasant condition– it leads directly to brain damage, and quite possibly, death. For another, I’ve finished seven marathons (with an eighth one scheduled for this...

President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard “Dick” Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were paid the ultimate scientific homage by a group of retired Cornell University entomologists: they get to have slime-mold beetle species named after them. (Hat tip to Mrs. TD.) Two of the three named species, Agathidium cheneyi Miller and Wheeler and Agathidium rumsfeldi Miller and Wheeler, are found predominantly in Mexico, while the third, Agathidium bushi Miller and Wheeler, is, appropriately enough, found in such Red States as Ohio and North Carolina. The beetles feed on slime mold (some kind of fungi type… stuff), and...

And now to the final part of our brief survey of The Communist Manifesto, Parts III and IV, entitled Socialist and Communist Literature and Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties, respectively. As usual, Marx and Engels prove absurdly accurate in their diagnosis, and even in their prognostication (note how chilling the section on German Socialism is) and as usual, can’t seem to come to a decent plan of action as to how to make any of it actually work out in anything other than a hash, rejecting one scheme which actually seems somewhat viable–...

Experts from China, according to this week’s visit to our friends at Beijing’s People’s Daily, assert that even if China takes strong steps to adjust its currency (the yuan… or the RMB… or the renminbi… which I believe are all the same thing…) against the yankee dollar, the structure of the American economy (household debt off the chart, national savings non-existent, the federal government borrowing because actually taxing those with ability to pay taxes would be taxing the people’s money) will still cause us to run massive trade and current account deficits with China… so instead, we’ll just borrow the...

And so, we’ll continue my deconstructive/reconstructive view of the surprisingly accurate diagnostically and (not surprisingly) absurdly inaccurate prognostically Communist Manifesto, by our long dead buddies Fred and Karl. We’ll move onto the Second part entitled “Proletarians and Communists”. Here, we get into more specific discussions of Marx’s/Engels’ grand plans with some specificity: not the abolition of all property, but the abolition of bourgeois property. The problem, of course, is what (the f***) in practice this actually meant. History only proved that one of the Marx/Engels’ prognosis proved deadly accurate: Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by...

I had promised not long ago to analyze the Communist Manifesto against my proposition that Karl and Fred were, in fact, brilliant diagnosticians using tools like magnetic resonance imagers and microbiology, and then, after diagnosing the iillnesses of capitalism with brilliant precision, proceed to prescribe leeches and cupping, thereby accomplishing… well, you know the rest. Section I is entitled “Bourgeois and Proletarians.” One of the suppositions of Marxian theory is that capitalism always sows the seeds of its own destruction, as the necessity for the bourgeoisie to grab ever more power and fruits of production at the expense of a...

Legislators in Florida are hell-bent on passing legislation that would radically reduce possible criminal liability for those who decide to invoke violent deadly force merely because they feel threatened. The prior rule would allow a presumption of deadly force in the home (damned Jehovah’s Witnesses!… oh wait… IN the home…) This will expand that to everywhere. If you cause some gun totin’ maniac to “feel threatened”, he (it will always be a he) may blow your ass away, without fear of prosecution. Home is evidently where your Glock is. As if there weren’t enough reasons never to set foot in...

Vice-President Dick Cheney told the editorial board of The New York Post (you didn’t think he’d be talking to the Nation did you?) that he disagreed with Congressional Great Leader Tom DeLay’s suggestions of “retribution” against the federal judges who refused to order reimposition of a feeding tube or other life-extending or saving measures for Terri Schiavo. (Perhaps, in my best “Hillary Clinton”, there are bridges to be built: even those of us who may have disagreed with the underlying decision to end Ms. Schiavo’s life by a fortnight’s dehydration and starvation still appreciate the agonizing work of the federal...