JENNIFER RUBIN: David Brooks’ “Scary And Sloppy” Case For Health-Care Rationing. “Perhaps the point is to rationalize reductions in health-care dollars spent on the elderly, which by gosh is precisely what the Obama administration is trying to pull off with its Independent Advisory Patient Board. Limiting care, conscience free! After all, do all these old people really enjoy living to 90?” The “Death Panels” used to be a dishonest Republican talking point. Now they’re for your own good!

UPDATE: Reader Mike Ramberg writes: “The best argument that I can think of Against Don Clendinen’s essay and David Brooks support of same is Dr. Steven Hawking. He can’t do any of those things, yet he seems to be a rather productive member of society!”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

I am an RN and run a palliative care program for a home health agency in Northern California. These articles all raise very interesting and salient issues, but I’d like to make a couple of observations, from what I know:

It’s fascinating that hospice is not mentioned by Clendenin. This is consistent with what I have dealt with in my work, but that is the service that would most further his goals, short of shooting himself as he so cavalierly seems to think is an option. I have made visits with people who are dying of ALS, and they tend to not want all the interventions he is bringing up such as the vent and tubes, as they are well aware that their condition is terminal. When terminal, hospice best serves people. As an aside, I found it disheartening that the two big media champions of “health care reform,” Ted Kennedy and Elizabeth Edwards, chose to spend health care dollars on probably futile treatment at the end of their lives, rather than accept the inevitable and transfer to hospice.

Brooks’ column is annoying in that he does not seem to understand the very real issues surrounding the end of life. Cardiac disease can be managed in palliative ways, but often people panic and want to return to the ER for treatment until they no longer feel better after repeated hospitalizations. But to blame this on “Americans’ inability to deal with death” is condescending and unrealistic. These are conversations that rightly belong within the family and with medical professionals, not politicians. These conversations are immensely private and deal with one’s view of life, death, and morals that pundits cannot ascertain by reading one man’s struggle with his terminal condition.

“Condescending and unrealistic” — that could be Brooks’ epitaph, once he’s too far gone to enjoy life. I should note, though, that although hospice care gets good press, when my father-in-law was dying, the folks from the hospice were pretty awful. The funeral home people were much better, once he died. I was appalled.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Frigid North Dakota Is a Hot Draw For Out-of-State College Students. Because the schools are good, and cheap.

As a high school senior from Connecticut, Diva Malinowski took a coast-to-coast tour of 10 public universities, bearing acceptance letters from each.

She fell in love in Fargo. “The minute I stepped onto campus, I knew that North Dakota State was for me,” says Ms. Malinowski, a 21-year-old senior who matriculated from Miss Porter’s School, a private academy for girls in Farmington, Conn. . . .

But college students are flocking here in ever greater numbers. Out-of-state students account for about 55% of the 14,500 enrolled at North Dakota State University, as well as at similarly sized University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Nonresident students at North Dakota’s 11 public colleges constitute a higher ratio than in almost every other state.

High school juniors and seniors scouring online college guides find North Dakota universities are inexpensive and well-regarded, with modest-sized classes typically taught by faculty members rather than adjuncts or graduate students.

Price competition seems to be on the rise. That’s good news for low-price (and oil-rich) North Dakota. Not so good for overpriced, underperforming schools elsewhere.

STEPHEN KRUISER on leaving iTunes for Amazon MP3. I haven’t tried that, and I probably should.

PROF. W. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Why The Murdoch Scandal Is No Watergate. What it is, in the United States, is media battlespace preparation, trying to neutralize Fox News between now and the 2012 election. In Britain, it’s also about ensuring the reduction of alternative power centers.

UPDATE: Reader Steve Eimers writes:

I find the phone hacking allegations deeply disturbing and hope if true those guilty will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I do think the anger is a bit fake though. POTUS Obama just nominated Richard Cordray to lead the new consumer bureau. This is the same guy who used taxpayer dollars to defend partisan democrat appointees who illegally accessed Ohio state databases in an effort to dig up dirt on Joe ‘the plumber.’

Good point.

WEATHER DELAYS AREN’T JUST FOR AIRLINES: Midwest flooding causes rail delays, added expense. “Disruption caused by Midwest flooding has inundated Amtrak with delays and extra expense this summer while dampening the spirits of passengers traveling popular routes.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Law School Economics: Ka-Ching!

ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE: Reader Rob Cooper writes: “I meant to ‘wish list’ the RC helicopter you mentioned awhile back. I was browsing Amazon for my boy’s birthday in two weeks and couldn’t remember what you recommended. Any help would be greatly appreciated.” Here’s the link.

ON SALE: The Ultimate Pink Panther Collection on DVD. 9 movies, plus the cartoons, for $34.99.

INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN: A look at home-grown Islamic terror in India.

TIM CAVANAUGH: Carmageddon: L.A.’s Biggest Nothing Since Tom Bradley. “I spend a lot of time mocking the pretensions of mainstream journalism, but Carmageddon has reminded me of one point on which reporters really have some authority: You have to work in the news to understand how stupid the news is. In this case, the vacating of L.A.’s streets in the middle of summer will be seen as a success, and while everybody’s breathing a sigh of relief, nobody will remember what a pain in the ass it was to make way for the addition of a carpool lane that will do little to relieve the actual day-to-day congestion on the 405. Or actually, they’ll remember it next year, when the second half of this project is slated to be done, and we will all have to go through this charade again.”

POLICE INCREASINGLY looking at smartphones as evidence.

DAVID IGNATIUS: Say, Obama’s not really such a great communicator after all, is he?

HMM: Big Opening for ‘The Undefeated’ Has Implications for Possible Palin Presidential Run.

CHANGE: S&P Raises State of Ohio’s Credit Rating; Cites GOP Governor Kasich’s Whining About His Predecessor and His Budget, But Mostly His Budget. “Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services upgraded Ohio’s debt rating just one day after it put the United States on ‘creditwatch negative’ on what it calls a rising risk of policy stalemate in the debt limit negotiations. For Ohio, the rating was revised from ‘negative’ to ‘stable’ after Gov. John Kasich signed a new budget the ratings agency says will essentially balance the state’s finances for the next two years.”

DEBT: U.S. AAA credit rating in jeopardy as risks get reality check. “Moody’s and S&P warned this week that they might soon cut the government’s top-rung debt rating because of the political battle over the debt ceiling and spending cuts. Yet so far, that hasn’t scared off Treasury bond buyers. . . . There is the sense that Moody’s and S&P are playing hardball with Uncle Sam because their reputations are so tarnished by the many AAA ratings they handed out to mortgage bonds that crumbled with the housing bust.”

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Two never-used Navy ships head to scrapyard.

“WHERE HAS ALL THE MONEY GONE?” Thoughts On Administrative Bloat In Higher Education. “Based on data in the California State University Statistical Abstract, the number of full-time faculty in the whole CSU system rose from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, an increase of only 3.5 percent. In the same time period the total number of administrators rose 221 percent, from 3,800 to 12,183. In 1975, there were three full time faculty members per administrator, but now there are actually slightly more administrators than full-time faculty.”

AT AMAZON, lots of coupons.

THOUGHTS ON THE WARRIOR ETHOS.

REX MURPHY: “If America falls, it will not be from external enemies. It will be by her own hand. That is the inescapable conclusion one carries away from a reading of Reckless Endangerment, an account of the ferocious financial crisis that exploded in 2008 and through which, to this very day, the United States is still struggling to find safe and solid ground. . . . Any person with a regard for the United States, or with some surviving faith in the virtues of representative democracy, will finish this book severely angry. It’s a good game to play, should you start to read it, to keep count of the number of times you lay the book down in exasperated wonder that the American system could have been so twisted, so abused and so turned against itself.”

Plus this:

If there is ever a Mount Rushmore for hypocrites, the face of Democratic Congressman Barney Frank -Fannie Mae’s friend in every sordid scrape (until nothing could be hidden anymore) -should be the first to go up. It was the complaisance and complicity of elected politicians like him that enabled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to achieve the power they did, to violate so utterly their own charters, to defy and slander their regulators (they set rumours afloat that one honest overseer was having “mental problems”) as long as the mortgage giants tossed funds into their political kitties, gave them ribbon cutting ceremonies for “minority housing,” and greased their re-election efforts.

The real story of Reckless Endangerment is more a story of democracy corrupted than it is a story of financial fraud. It is a story of America’s great wounding of herself. And even now, with this book, the full account is not nearly as known as it should be; and as the authors so sadly point out, nearly every one of the principals who brought such misery and shame upon their countrymen are free, prosperous, in many cases highly honoured and “serving” still at the highest levels of political and financial power.

At the very least, this needs to be pointed out continuously.

OVER AT THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY, A Guest Post from Prof. Larry Tribe on the Constitutionality of the Debt Ceiling.

PAINTING SECRETS the pros won’t tell you.

INSTAVISION: I talk with Jerry Pournelle about space in the post-Shuttle era. Will the next person on the Moon be Chinese? Plus, I praise the Obama Administration’s space policy. (Bumped).

And if you haven’t been there in a while, check out Jerry’s blog.

UPDATE: Here’s the YouTube link, for those who don’t subscribe to PJTV.

THE WORLD’S LARGEST SHARK TANK, via live webcam.

FELIX SALMON: The horrifying AAA debt-issuance chart. “Firstly, the amount of debt in the world is soaring. That’s a bad thing, because debt is much more systemically dangerous than equity. And secondly, the amount of triple-A debt in the world is soaring as well. Which is a worse thing, because triple-A debt is much more systemically dangerous than most other debt. . . . In a nutshell, triple-A debt is dangerous; there’s far too much of it; its growth seems out of control; and the triple-A problem has now become a sovereign-debt problem, in a world where sovereign-debt crises are the most damaging crises of all. . . . If sovereigns start being downgraded from triple-A status, debt is going to get a lot more expensive, and those rollovers — which cost very little in the current interest-rate environment — will really start to bite. And the invidious thing about debt is that it doesn’t go away. Deleveraging is painful, and is often accompanied by inflation or default. And the more debt you have to start with, the more painful deleveraging is going to be. Prepare yourselves.”

But see this, which alas does not undercut the warning above.