Blogging at National Review Online, here’s Mark Steyn on the health bill, the passage of which will be an occasion for America to mourn:

“Right now, [the Democrats] can trade anything – abortion, death panels, whatever. The trick is to plant the seed and let the ratchet effect of Big Government take care of the rest. I said on Rush’s show on Friday that if Barack Obama had been Bill Clinton he’d have woken up on Wednesday morning and begun triangulating. Instead, Obama woke up and figured that he needed more fierce urgency, and right now. The short-term hit in 2010 is worth it for the long-term benefits: Obscure congressmen will be just as happy as obscure ambassadors or obscure chairmen of obscure agencies. And the prize of permanent irreversible statist annexation merits the risk: Governmentalized “health care” puts us on the fast track to Euro-sclerosis and redefines the relationship between citizen and state in ways that make genuine conservative politics all but impossible.”

And here’s NR’s Rich Lowry on the same ubject, offering a glimmer of hope:

“Listening to the debate on the floor today, it was clear that Democrats considered it a moral and ideological obligation to pass this bill — consequences be damned. The leadership is congratulating itself now — Pelosi is already the greatest speaker of all time apparently — but there’s a tough rough ahead in the Senate. Pelosi could lose 39 votes. Reid can’t lose any. Passage in the House definitely creates more pressure on Reid to get it done, but the slender margin — despite the size of the Democratic majority in the House and all the arm-twisting and deal-making (what did Cao get?) — has to make Senate moderates even more nervous. There’s a long string yet to be played out here, and it’s still likely to stretch into next year, by which time Pelosi’s historic accomplishment of November 7 may look foolish.”

Here’s a good one from Mish on our favorite topic, deflation.  This essay doesn’t go too deep — but then, profundity is unnecessary when you are debating with people who still believe that a purportedly all-powerful Fed “will never let it happen”.  Click here to access the essay, which is as compelling as it is easy to understand.

Here is the latest dispatch from Rick’s Picks’ pandemic correspondent, Erich Simon:

Spain is getting slammed tonight, R.

In the Ukraine, 200,000 new cases with each passing day. Also in the Ukraine, the “swine flu” has mutated. The mutations are “small” and “subtle”, but increase virulence and receptor binding domain affinity. Virus samples sent to Mill Hill in London, a top-tier lab, are not being released and the delay is raising eyebrows.

 The same mutations are being profiled in different countries from all corners.

Meanwhile, the virus has broken the human-animal barrier. Cross-species transmission is now in pigs everywhere, ferrets, turkeys, cats and domestic pets. Hitherto an impossibility running contrary to the very laws of Nature, the epizootic and panzootic qualities of the HP H5 virus and now the HP H1 virus can only indicate that the virus ancestries have been tinkered for universal transmission with open door into the human realm.

Indeed, news release now is finally documenting the fact that the HP H5 virus (Bird Flu) is surprisingly like the 1918 Spanish Flu, the greatest human mortality event in history. Also, the jury is back, finally as well, and the 1918 Flu was indeed a Highly Pathogenic virus, despite its H1 status and the fact that the realm of the HP was previously reserved for only the H5s and H7s.

It is obvious to myself, at least, that the Highly Pathogenic 1918 virus was ‘reverse-engineered’ and sequestered into the two Pandemics making the rounds today. It would appear that the Bird Flu was designed to infiltrate the human species by way of the migratory bird population and more intimately via the poultry food supply, while the Swine Flu was intended to infiltrate through the profligate pig population and that population’s role also as a staple human food source.

The fact that both Bird Flu and Swine Flu are churning mutations around the clock… and infecting more and more species… is a march towards predictable outcome.

Any day now.

For guys in their sixties, this article by Pat Jordan may strike a chord.  It did for me:  You Get Old

Mike Churchill of Churchill Research has examined his own worst-case scenario for gold.  You’ll be heartened to learn — as even Mike would be all too happy to concede — that it is not a very compelling scenario, since it’s based in part on a robust economic recovery in the U.S.  Click here for the full analysis, which comes to us courtesy of Jonathan Auerbach at Auerbach Grayson.