Monday, July 26, 2010

Richard Jewell says hello

And Jim Valvano. And the Duke Lacrosse Players.

Newsbusters:
Should there be a "gatekeeper" regulating internet bloggers? In the aftermath of the Shirley Sherrod incident, that's what CNN promoted on July 23.


Those folks I mentioned know that it doesn't take blogs or anonymity to drag someone's name through the mud. They had their lives turned upside down by the traditional media. In fact, in the Lacrosse Players' case, they were happy for blogs like Durham in Wonderland, who acted as a check on the crusade by the media.

As for anonymity generally: many of the political broadsides and pamphlets and books that voiced the ideals of American independence and liberty were published anonymously or under pseudonyms. Writing anonymously has always been a way to put forth controversial ideas. They discussants on the program acknowledge the need for such a thing, but not in places as free and open as America. I think that's taking an awful lot for granted. Especially given the amount that free speech has been under attack around the 'free' world.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Man builds, lives In 89 square foot house

http://vitality.yahoo.com/video-second-act-jay-shafer-20910192

Interesting story. Not for me, but I'm glad this guy can do something different like this that makes him happy. And also that he can connect with others who feel similarly and provide a service to them.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Hayek agrees with me!

Ok, that's putting it a bit generously.

Back during the debate... well, back when the debate over Obamacare was just getting revved up, I made the point to all who would listen that the legislative effort was not about universal health care. In fact, if that was the goal, there was a much cheaper, healthier, more freedom respecting way to go about doing it:

Step 1: Let markets work! Both in the provision of health care services directly and in how they are financed. Competitive markets, more than any other power on this planet, drive efficiency. The outcomes would be lower real costs in service, along with higher quality.

Step 2: Give direct assistance to those who can't afford health care services. Look, if you're going to declare access to health care services an affirmative right, to be provided by the government, then you should go about implementing it in the otherwise most efficient way possible. Let the markets work. It's just about the exact same argument as the school choice argument, though perhaps with or without the same Establishment Clause issues that would lead me to support education tax credits over vouchers. I don't know, I haven't given that bit a lot of thought.

Anyway, any form of relief will have it drawbacks, but surely this would be far and away a better system than either the one that existed before Obamacare, or the one that will replace it. It leaves the markets intact (or as intact as possible), and actually achieves universal coverage, which one of the most leftist presidents in recent history couldn't even pull off with a sympathetic Congress.

Oh yeah, the title. Hayek said more-or-less the same thing:

http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2010/07/11/so-hayek-basically-had-ezra-kleins-views-on-health-care-right/

nod to Angus at KPC for pointing that link out

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Kagan: comfortable with laws that COULD ban books

Kagan’s Own Words: It’s Fine If The Law Bans Books Because Government Won’t Really Enforce It

At least as Solicitor General. There are a couple of very disturbing elements at play here. One is the obvious: that a law that includes the possibility of banning books could at all be tolerated. This is so obviously anathema to the principles upon which this country was founded that it needs no further examination. The second, and Scalia almost touches on this, is that Kagan seems completely oblivious to the fundamental injustice of unenforced (or practically unenforceable) laws. Unenforced laws only restrict the actions of one class of individual: the conscientiously law abiding citizen. It does not, however, restrict the actions of merely the practically law abiding citizen. This results in a de facto unequal application of the law. Yet another reason we need criminal justice reform to strip away all the unclear, unjust laws on the books.

As a side note, it's interesting that books are treated sacrosanct, but other forms and mediums of communication are not, when it comes to crafting and judging legislation like that overturned in Citizens United. Why is that? Is the distinction really valid?

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Us and Them

"Forward!" he cried, from the rear, and the front rank died
The general was sacked, and the lines on the map moved from side to side

Friday, March 05, 2010

Ray LaHood's kids must have had terrible nightmares around Christmas

Ray LaHood as Santa Claus

From the linked article:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is fast becoming one of President Obama's most influential cabinet bosses, and not just because he's in charge of doling out billions of stimulus dollars. Yes, he tells Whispers, it's fun playing Santa Claus to states and cities around the nation.


So his children grew up with the story that Santa Claus didn't have elves to make his toys. Santa Claus came into your house to take all the toys you had, and that's what he gave out again at Christmas. You just hoped you got your favorite toy back, or got more toys than you had before.

ht: Cato @ Liberty

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Kristmas Karma

Every year around Christmas, for the past 7 years or so, and some years before that (ie. before and after I thought I could possibly be cool), I make it a point to watch Home Alone. Sure it's silly and not especially deep, but it's enjoyable, reminds me of my childhood, and it's good escapist fun.

Having already accomplished this tradition for 2009, I was pleased this morning, whilst snowed in from the Blizzard of '09, to find Home Alone 2: Lost in New York showing on ABC Family. It's a pretty good sequel, so I sat down to watch it.

Amongst the absurdity of the situation, screenwriter John Hughes works in his take on the 'True Meaning of Christmas'. Kevin feels remorse for how he has treated his family. His new friend, the pigeon feeding homeless lady tells him that a good deed "cancels out" a bad one. More than that, good deeds count double on Christmas Eve! Which religion's holiday are we celebrating again? Such shallow spiritualism is hardly new, but it brought my attention back to the following blog post my sister-in-law pointed me towards:

BenandJacq in the Blog: Santa Claus.

It's a short post, but very worth reading.

On a foundational level the story of Santa and the story of Jesus are exact opposites. Santa gives based on how good you are. Jesus gives based on how much you admit your inability to be good. And that might be confusing to my child.


None of how much the world celebrates Christmas should be surprising. In fact, you could almost say that turnabout is fair play. When a majority of "Christmas traditions" are non-Christian, either secular or of pagan origins, it's not much good to complain the world is co-opting our celebration when Christians have clearly co-opted much of theirs. Fighting back against the "War on Christmas" is a waste of time. Don't expect the world to be anything it's not.

On the other hand, don't overreact, by wholly minimizing Christmas like the Puritanical or Parliamentarian Protestants (to be fair, the type of behavior associated with Christmas in their time would likely make the most libertine of modern secular Christmas celebrators blanch). The Incarnation of God in flesh is a tremendous and crucial miracle for the redemption and reconciliation of mankind. Lets stop these cultural battles and tend to our own homes, taking care to keep the joy and thanksgiving to be found in Christ's birth first in our hearts.

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Preventable Legislative Errors

Flipped over to CSPAN to see one of the HR-3962 supporters going on about preventable medical errors (in opposition to GOP tort reform efforts - which I'm not really a fan of myself, btw). They're the sixth bigger killer in the country, costs billions of dollars, etc. Curiously, he didn't mention what forcing fee-for-service down provider's throats had to do with the issue.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Fear the Reaper

I used to think Palin had gone off the deep end. Death Panels? Whatever one might say of the political position of a majority party having to respond to the Facebook post of a quitter ex-governor of a sparsely populated state, the death panel comment was over the top. Right? I mean, there wasn't anything in the healthcare reform bills that actually established such a thing. The mandatory (?) end of life counseling for seniors doesn't quite fit the bill.

At least that's the line I bought the whole time now. Then I found a link to this article on the Locker Room:

Obama's Health Rationer-in-Chief

A number of excerpts are worth pointing out:

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.


...

True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations. In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Dr. Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the "overuse" of medical care: "Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness," he writes. "This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath's admonition to 'use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment' as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."


...

"You can't avoid these questions," Dr. Emanuel said in an Aug. 16 Washington Post interview. "We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions."


Emphasis mine.

Then there's what the column author grimly calls the "Reaper Curve"

In the Lancet, Jan. 31, 2009, Dr. Emanuel and co-authors presented a "complete lives system" for the allocation of very scarce resources, such as kidneys, vaccines, dialysis machines, intensive care beds, and others. "One maximizing strategy involves saving the most individual lives, and it has motivated policies on allocation of influenza vaccines and responses to bioterrorism. . . . Other things being equal, we should always save five lives rather than one.

"However, other things are rarely equal—whether to save one 20-year-old, who might live another 60 years, if saved, or three 70-year-olds, who could only live for another 10 years each—is unclear." In fact, Dr. Emanuel makes a clear choice: "When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get changes that are attenuated (see Dr. Emanuel's chart nearby).




Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. . . . Treating 65 year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not."


Don't worry, Geezers aren't the only ones who aren't as worthy.

The youngest are also put at the back of the line: "Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, 'It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,' this argument is supported by empirical surveys." (thelancet.com, Jan. 31, 2009).


Babies? Meh.

Folks, this is the ideological impetus for the type of health care reform being sought. Whether you feel this kind of philosophy has merit, it definitely smacks of the sort of bureaucratic panel that Palin mentioned.

Also, I think Palin did accomplish something in bringing the issue up: she put it in everyone's minds. She forced the Democrats to denounce the concept, not just as being absent from their plans, but something they viewed with equivalent disgust. So when the next round of healthcare reforms are being proposed*, anything remotely approaching a death panel will be jumped all over.

----------------------
* What, do you think they'll stop with one new law? Did you think Iraq was going to be a quick expedition to remove Saddam, install a pro-west democracy, and get out?

Friday, August 21, 2009

Hai guyz! Pls to violate your 501(c)(3) kthx

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/20/army-lord-obama-seeks-health-care-push-pulpit/

Alternate title: Theocracy on the Left II
Alternate alternate title: What if W did this?

Oi! The chutzpah!

ht: jlf lr

Friday, August 14, 2009

The face of 'Hate Groups'

Apparently we're to believe that it's William Kostric. According to ABC News, at least.

ABC News and "Scare Quotes"

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/comments?type=story&id=8322658

Mackey provided eight "reforms" he argued the U.S. can do to improve health care without increasing the deficit.


Contrast that with:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8326545&page=1

The president's remarks today, to be delivered to about 1,300 attendees, will focus on health insurance reform and the uninsured.


Meanwhile, supporters of health care reform have upped their rhetoric.


Urging Americans to keep going on reform, the former president -- whose own efforts for health care reform in office were unsuccessful -- expressed confidence that a bill will pass, even if the GOP is not on board.


So for ABC, when you support government centric healthcare reforms, they're reforms. When you support market based healthcare reforms, they're "reforms".

Any doubt that ABC has an institutionalized bias on the issue?

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

President unveils religion reform platform

Washington – The President took to the podium today to announce an ambitious new plan to provide a “public option” for religion. Citing statistics about the growing number of unbelievers in America, President Obama made his case standing amongst leading congressional Democrats. “America has long been a nation that looked to a higher power for guidance,” the President began. “But for too long now, private religion has been failing average Americans.” The President stated that the number of unbelieving Americans has risen to at least 35 million. Millions more, he says, have only minimal agnostic coverage. “The number is rising at an alarming rate. Private religion has had its chance to make believers out of this country, but it has failed.” The President stressed that the public plan would exist alongside private religion, competing with it. “If the private religions think that competition works, then we welcome it! If you’re satisfied with your current religion, you will be able to keep it!”

Key congressional leaders behind the proposal admit that things will have to change for private believers. Chris Dodd, a Democratic Senator from Connecticut and chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, says that the private religions will have to bring themselves under a unified tithing system. “Americans deserve justice, and God’s regressive flat-tithe keeps money in the hands of the super-rich.” Under the Senate version of the plan, private religions will have to implement a progressive tithe structure approved by the Board of Religious Practitioners and Examiners, headed by the President’s new Religion Czar. Dodd also promised to go after those who seek the protection of offshore tithe shelters, such as those popular in Israel and the Vatican City.

Among the most controversial proposals in both houses’ version of the plan is a religion mandate. All Americans must either currently have private religion, or enroll in the public plan. President Obama has moved to assuage those concerned by pointing out that anyone not quite as spiritual can enroll in plans such as “Secular Obamaism” and “Green”, and stresses that his Attorney General has informed him such a plan would therefore not be in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

The desired timeline for getting such a plan passed is tight. Democrats in Washington argue that there are escalating social costs to a growing population of unbelievers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, stated, “Many Americans find themselves without the moral grounding a good religion gives them. Trapped and helpless in a dark and confusing world, they turn to preying on their fellow man. But what if, before they pulled the trigger of their pistol, they stopped to consider the greenhouse gases the burning gunpowder would produce?”

It remains to be seen whether a plan can come together in time for the August recess. There are still changes being made every day, and the last modification came when Congressman Mike Thompson, a Democrat from California’s 1st Congressional District, inserted a requirement that all communion wine in the country must contain alcohol. When asked if members of Congress would be required to find religion under the same choice of plans, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said that members of Congress already have their own religion.

Summarizing his push, President Obama said he wanted to remind Americans of one of the principles on which the nation was founded. “Religion has always been considered a natural right. Since the first pilgrims escaped from persecution centuries ago, this nation has espoused that every American can have religion. Now, with the public finally ready to step up and provide this right for others, Americans will get the religion they deserve!”

Monday, July 14, 2008

Another wire service editorial

Reuters: Bush lifts offshore drilling ban in symbolic move

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday lifted a White House ban on offshore drilling to try to drive down soaring energy prices, a largely symbolic bid unlikely to have any short-term impact on high gasoline costs.


...

Congress too has a ban on offshore drilling and while it expires on September 30, it could be renewed. Plus, federal officials say it would take years for any oil to be produced in those areas, together making Bush's move largely symbolic. [emphasis added]


Now if they simply made the statement that it was symbolic just because of the legislative ban, then that’s fine. But the writer is clearly implying that the move is also symbolic because it would not produce oil any time in the near future. This is patently ridiculous. First of all, even if it didn’t have any effect on prices in the near-term, that it would eventually have an effect means that is not symbolic. By their same logic, quitting smoking at the age of 25 would be a symbolic move, because the serious health effects of smoking likely won’t manifest in the near term. And never mind that part of it, because the idea that gas prices aren’t at all affected by a future expectation of the market is just plain ignorant. And I wonder how many who would make such a claim are the same who have been on a rage demonizing speculators for driving up the price of oil?

(essentially cross-posted here)


Actually, come to think of it, even the fact that half of the barrier is down could have an effect on market anticipation. Prices should still be affected, if only slightly.

The Obamessiah ain't got nothin' on Judson C. Hammond

I'm reading through Gene Healy's The Cult of the Presidency. It's a fascinating examination of how the office of the Presidency has transformed from its original role of a simple Chief Magistrate, to one of a more enlightened, benevolent deity figure. As the book jacket quotes (haven't gotten to it yet, I think), "Very few Americans seem to think it odd, says Healy, 'when presidential candidates talk as if they're running for a job that's a combination of guardian angel, shaman, and supreme warlord of the earth.'"

Anyway, turns out this encroachment is nothing new. At the end of the chapter, "'Progress' and the Presidency," which is a chapter on how early 20th-century progressives pushed for an expanded executive authority, Healy recounts what must be an equally hilarious and disturbing film:

A remarkable film produced in 1932 and released shortly after FDR's election captured the changes in the public's orientation toward the presidency. Financed by William Randolph Hearst and starring Walter Huston, Gabriel over the White House depicts a president literally touched by an angel and empowered to heal the country and the world. The movie's fictional president, Judson C. Hammond, begins as an unflattering amalgam of Harding and Coolidge, a party hack more interested in bedding his comely assistant than in dealing with the country's ongoing economic woes.

After Hammond is gravely injured in a car crash, the archangel Gabriel visits him in the hospital. Gabriel imbues the comatose Hammond with the Holy Spirit of presidential activism. Hammond awakens from the coma, declares a state of emergency, and threatens Congress with a declaration of martial law should they refuse to pass his legislative program, which includes federally subsidized agriculture, a ban on mortgage foreclosures, and a CCC-style "Army of Construction" that will give a job to every unemployed man in America. To eradicate organized crime, Hammond authorizes a special army unit to fight gangsters, several of whom are convicted via military tribunal, then executed with the Statue of Liberty visible in the background. Toward the end of the movie, President Hammond uses a demonstration of American air power to force other world leaders to disarm, thereby ending the scourge of war. Then, with his work on Earth done, the president ascends into Heaven."


Unreal. I have to think it's slightly exaggerated, but I sure hope not. I MUST find this movie and see it. And I hope an excerpt that long was well within fair use. I'll shoot the author an email with a link to see if he minds. Two points in my defense: 1) I have found the book so far to be very enjoyable, and would encourage folks to read it -and- 2) No one reads this blog anyway.

Ya THINK!?

Headline: "Doctors pull screws, nails from metal-eating man"

Quote: "Luis Zarate was taken to the regional hospital of Trujillo earlier this week by his family after complaining of sharp stomach pains."


There are all kinds of joke and pun opportunities here, but what's the point?

Sunday, June 08, 2008

Keep on rockin' in the Free World

Alternate title: The Freedom of Religion and Expression are dormant in Canada

Too much?

Read this and decide for yourself.

And did you see what I did there with the Canadian artist in the title?

Anyway, money quotes:

A Christian pastor has been given a lifetime ban against uttering anything "disparaging" about gays. Not against anything "hateful", let alone something legally defined as "hate speech". Just anything negative.

So a pastor cannot give a sermon.

But he must give a false sermon; he is positively ordered to renounce his deeply held religious beliefs, and apologize to his tormentor for having those views.

And then that pastor is ordered to declare to his entire city that he has renounced his religious views, even though he has not.


And from a commenter:

-The truth is no defense

-Intent is no defense

-The rules of evidence do not apply

-The precedents in courts do not apply

-Legal jurisdiction does not apply

-The Constitution does not apply; including the Charter

-Consistency and sense do not apply

-Mens rea and Actus rea do not apply

-Burden of proof does not apply

-Canadian law itself does not apply; including the Charter of rights and freedoms

-The Magna Carta and 800 years of legal inheritance does not apply

-Human rights do not apply

-Democracy does not apply

-Sanity does not apply

-The fine country we call Canada.... does not apply

Those in the Star Chamber will pass their judgment on us all and drive out the witches among us.

Welcome to Salem.
May | 06.06.08 - 6:53 pm | #


Here is the letter in question, that appeared in the Red Deer Advocate, a local paper in Alberta.

Now personally, I think publicly crafting an idea of battle between homosexuals and heterosexuals is a very wrong thing to do. I think Christians should be reaching the world with the Gospel, and let the chastening of God do the changing. All beside the point, though. The idea that such writings should not be protected speech is outrageous. And present a very real example for the slippery slope argument that has been employed against "Hate Crime" legislation since the beginning.

ht: jlf lr

Sunday, February 24, 2008

The Minimum Wage, Eugenics, and the NAACP

This morning on NC Spin, the panelists were addressing the NAACP in North Carolina and their effectiveness, after their rally in Raleigh, in which they presented their 14 point agenda. Included was the following item:

Restitution for the 1891 Wilmington race riots and sterilization of poor, black women in the first half of the 20th century


The sterilization part is in reference to a horrid, dark period in our state's history. Long after eugenics had fallen out of favor, the North Carolina eugenics program continued into the late 70s!

As you can expect, the NAACP is rightly denouncing this horrible practice. And if any of the people affected by this program remain, then I hope they seek restitution.

But there is an irony here for the NAACP. As mentioned by Chris Fitzsimon, the NAACP fought especially hard for the minimum wage increase in the state in the last session. And the historical impetus for the minimum wage is not too distant from that of Eugenics, as I first saw here. As Sidney Webb, early minimum wage warrior, put it:

Of all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites [undesirable classes], the most ruinous to the community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete as wage earners.


The minimum wage would price the 'undesirables' out of the labor market. Eugenics through economics. So it just seems funny to me to see the NAACP simultaneously condemning (rightly) eugenics with the one hand, and unwittingly attempting to advance it with the other.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

We're from the government, and we're here to fix your soul.

Alternate title: Theocracy on the Left

Since I just had a post about Obama as demigod, this needed a post on here.

Michelle Obama, during a speech at UCLA about a month ago, said:

That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls - our souls are broken in this nation.


Creepy stuff.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Great quote

So my roommate and I are watching one of the ESPN Top 20 list shows, and they're doing Top 20 NFL Postseason Performances. On the list was Desmond Howard from Super Bowl XXXI. In reference to a kickoff return for a touchdown, he said:

I'm actually looking up at the Jumbotron to make sure no one's gaining ground because I wanted to get to the end zone and do my robot dance.