TRIFECTA: Strange Brew: Why Is The Coffee Party Movement An Overnight MSM Sensation? But will Stephen Green start the Vodka Party movement?

JON VOIGHT: Join Me In DC Saturday to Stop ObamaCare.

MARKDOWNS ON musical instruments and recording equipment.

MOE LANE IS raining on Bart Gordon’s NASA hopes.

UPDATE: Moe emails: “That ain’t rain, Glenn.” So noted.

GOOD GRIEF: Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely. “More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.”

FIGHTING OBAMACARE at OH Congress! Justin Binik-Thomas writes: “Any letters received through tonight will be hand delivered to congress on Saturday.”

PJTV: Kill The Bill 3: Irate & Tireless, Americans Demand the End of Obamacare.

UPDATE: Sen. Conrad says health care process may never, ever end. “Sen. Kent Conrad, speaking to Roll Call and Fox, says the Senate will likely be unable to pass unchanged the reconciliation bill the House passes, even if the House can pass it.”

SHOCKER: L.A. Times: Gallup Finds Americans Souring On Obama. And not just Obama. “Speaking of Congress, the new Gallup Poll also finds that barely 16% of Americans approve of its job while 80% (as in eight out of every ten Americans) now disapprove of the work being done by both bodies and their Democratic leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.”

REP. DARRELL ISSA: The Lackluster Record of Government Health Care:

Already Medicare, which accounts for 14% of all federal spending, is rife with waste, fraud and abuse. Even Attorney General Eric Holder has said, “By all accounts, every year we lose tens of billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid funds to fraud.”

A recent analysis by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that federal subsidy programs cost taxpayers about $100 billion every year in improper payments, with Medicare and Medicaid accounting for more than half of that. Harvard Professor Malcolm Sparrow, a specialist in health care fraud teaching at the Kennedy School of Government, has estimated that as much as 20% of the federal health program budgets – or approximately $150 billion – is eaten up by improper payments every year.

No budget gimmick can hide that kind of wasteful spending from the American people, and no expansion of the government’s role in health care can mitigate the systemic problems that already exist. . . . Each year, the government spends an average of $927 in administrative costs per person for Medicaid and $509 for Medicare. Private insurance, on the other hand, costs only $453 per person in administrative costs. Until the government can demonstrate an ability to get administrative costs under control for programs that it already runs, Americans should vehemently oppose any effort to give bureaucrats in Washington any more power to control the one-sixth of the U.S. economy that affects health care.

Read the whole thing.

DEMS STILL DON’T HAVE THE VOTES? Well, good. Don’t be a stranger to your congresscritters. . . .

FATTY ACIDS CAN BE GOOD: 2 grams per day of omega 3 fatty acid EPA cut precancerous bowel polyps in those at especially high genetic risk of bowel cancer.

MEGAN MCARDLE:

Nick Kristof argues that once we pass health care, we’re going to see a big spike in life expectancy. Why? Because, well, it worked in the 1940s! . . . But it’s a nice testable prediction. I assume health care reform will pass. And if Kristof is right, and I am wrong about the limited mortality benefits of expanded health insurance access, then we should see a dramatic increase in life expectancy. Maybe seven years is too much, so let’s make it easy–say three or four years by 2020. That would make American among the the longest-lived people in the world. And if this happens, then absent some miracle invention like a broad-spectrum cure for cancer, I will happily admit that I was wrong.

Of course, if this doesn’t happen–if American life expectancy improvements continue to grind along at roughly the same slow pace–then it seems to me that Nick Kristof et. al. should unhappily admit that they were wrong, and that they seem to have convinced us to spend a whole bunch of money without saving many lives. Will this happen? Or will we be told that the problem is that we just didn’t spend quite enough money, and must spend even more to actually realize the full glory of reform?

The problem with socialism is always not enough socialism. More control by elites will fix everything!

UPDATE: Reader Ryan Taylor writes: “For socialists that is not a bug, it is a feature. Any success can be attributed to legislation/control; any failure is because not enough money was spent. They always win…” Only if you play their game.

And speaking of playing their game, reader Dan Michalewicz cautions Megan on her bet: “One thing Megan doesn’t consider is who is keeping the statistics. While I know intellectually Megan is correct, I also know that if health care passes the government and MSM will never report a drop in quality of health care.” Yeah, like they’ve been cheerleading Cuban healthcare for decades . . . .

MUDVILLE GAZETTE: The Lost City Of Marjah.

SPRING BREAK DESTINATION: Los Alamos!

TAXPROF: House Health Care Bill Includes 3.8% Medicare Tax on Investment Income.

CATCHING UP WITH RASMUSSEN: Obama’s approval goes negative in RealClearPolitics average.

NOT MY IDEA OF FUN: Katie Spotz On Endurance, Waves and Rowing 2817 Miles—Alone. “When she landed in the South American port of Georgetown, Guyana on Sunday, March 14, Spotz became the youngest person and the first American ever to row an ocean solo from mainland to mainland.”

THINGS THAT DON’T SUCK: So I bought this Brother wireless laser printer for a cheap price — $129.99 — and set it up last weekend. My HP wireless inkjet still works, but I hate to print long documents through it and since I increasingly print from laptops I wanted another wireless printer. Setup was fairly easy — because there’s no screen or keyboard on the HP, that involves hooking it up to the router to run the setup routine — and it’s worked perfectly ever since. I doubt I’ll ever have a printer as good as my HP LaserJet 4L, which still works after 15 years, but this seems quite satisfactory and was cheap.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Nolan writes:

I have this one and like you have had a very good experience, which surprised me because it was pretty inexpensive for the features included and the cost per sheet is really competitive as well. Like in the camera market (lovin my canon 5D MkII) competition is a good thing… if only government… whatever.

Yeah, if only.

KEITH HENNESSEY: Understanding the new Health Reconciliation Bill.

REASON TV: Saving Cleveland With Drew Carey, Part 5: Encourage Bottom-Up Redevelopment.

BART GORDON PROMISED A JOB AS NASA ADMINISTRATOR FOR A HEALTHCARE VOTE? Rand Simberg is not a Bart Gordon fan.

If true, this has at least two implications. First, the administration is willing to throw Charlie Bolden under the bus. Second, they’re also willing to throw the new plans for NASA under the bus for health care, because Gordon (who just happens to be the relevant committee chairman) has expressed skepticism about them.

There’s also a rumor that another retiring Tennessee Rep., John Tanner, has been promised a job as Ambassador to NATO. I wonder if Republicans in the Senate will interfere with appointments like this? I’d say so.

UPDATE: In an update, Simberg notes: “Gordon has announced that he is now a yes vote on the bill. FWIW. For some reason, no quid pro quos are discussed.” I think he’d be an iffy candidate for NASA Admin anyway, but this won’t help him. In fact, I suspect that anyone who changes position to favor this bill will face a lot more scrutiny in the Senate.

THEODORE DALRYMPLE: Our Contemporary Sanctimony Puts the Victorians to Shame. “Is it only in sexual matters that a man can be a hypocrite?”

HMM: Tennessee Bill Would Ban Faculty Authors From Earning Royalties (‘Kickbacks’) on Books Assigned to Their Students. I assign my space law casebook in my space law seminar, but that’s not a conflict of interest because . . . there really isn’t another book. I think it earns me about ten bucks for the class. I rebate my royalties by buying the students beer, but it would be more than ten bucks worth of trouble to figure out how not to get the money in the first place. Perhaps for people with really big classes, there’s a greater potential for conflicts, but I’m not seeing it. . . .

“I’VE HAD IT WITH THEM . . . I’LL NEVER VOTE FOR ANOTHER DEMOCRAT:” Howard Stern says he’s over the Democrats. (Via Rand Simberg).

UPDATE: Related: Union Teacher Hangs Obama in Effigy. If it had been a tea-partier, this would be racism.

COOL PICTURE OF THE DAY: Planck Satellite Illuminates Filaments of Cold Interstellar Dust.