From Ed Morrissey, posting at Hot Air:

If Jimmy Carter believes that the “overwhelming” portion of criticism towards Barack Obama is due to racism, does he also believe that the overwhelming portion of criticism towards Israel is anti-Semitic?  Wouldn’t that apply to a man who hangs out with people who target Israeli citizens for terrorist attacks?  After all, Hamas regularly issues anti-Semitic harangues and smears, and yet Carter has no problem cozying up to them and claiming that their criticism of Israel is legitimate.

The race card is a two-edged sword, to mix metaphors.  And when you use the term "overwhelmingly", you expose yourself as someone desperate to handwave away any and all criticism by labeling it, rather than considering it.  And Carter’s association with those who spew actual racist rhetoric is charmingly ironic.

Is 60% of America really racist?  Do you really believe that?  No, I don’t think Jimmy Carter really believes that.  Assuming intelligence on his part, it can only be cover that he giving to Obama to try to marginalize critics.  And it’s not working, as the numbers continue to drop for the One.

1. Contra syncretism.
2. Just the sort of thing to implement during a major recession. Putting it succinctly as felony stupidity.
3. What passes for argument from the left. Left leaning elitist propaganda here too.
4. Pie … now!!!
5. Of church and state in Morocco.
6. A strange argument indeed, in which political fitness is measured by pork, which I would think is a bad thing, not a good one.
7. Waste, done Democrat flavor.
8. Just a few kids and not a lot of money can produce remarkable results.
9. Yet another day, yet another boldfaced lie from the Administration.
10. A genuine adult film.
11. Future polymath projects.
12. Watching the DOJ.
13. Will there be any notice of this on the left?
14. Missile defense, is this more of Obama’s foreign policy strategy of coddling your enemies and rejecting your friends?
15. Taxonomy of NGO.
16. Now, I thought in my essays that sometimes I connect disparate ideas … but Nazi movies and the thoughts of dead fish … that’s noetic movement indeed.

Rifqa Bary is the Sri Lankan girl who converted to Christianity from Islam and fled her family in Ohio concerned for her own safety, as her parents belong to a radical mosque.  She’s now in Florida, and was living with a Christian pastor and his wife until Florida’s DCF took over her case.

This is a video of her testimony.  It’s incredibly moving.  Spend the 7 minutes and 44 seconds to watch the whole thing, and keep this girl in your prayers.

Rifqa Bary testimony

James Hanley at Positive Liberty reflects on recent experience with lawyers and the law:

Despite the mythology surrounding our adversarial system of justice, it is a terrible way to pursue the truth. I already knew that, but it became ever more clear to me that one of the primary duties of the lawyer is to obscure the truth, to hide and dissemble about all facts that are not conducive to his case.

and

But I think there is a difference in incentives in our occupations. A lawyer, at least in certain fields, can be quite well-rewarded for purposefuly obfuscating the facts. And while for academics it can be rewarding to unintentionally obfuscate the truth, as long as enough others are also fooled, purposefully obscuring it can be treated as a serious offense.

I think Mr Hanley hits on an important point here. In an adversarial system of justice nobody involved is interested in discovering the truth, they are all interested in winning.

Chantal Delsol in Icarus Fallen has a chapter on Democracy, in which she locates doubting Democracy as something of a third rail in our culture. She writes:

So it is that contemporary democracy has become the only cornerstone considered to be untouchable. Lacking the inquisitorial methods that it condemns, it practices its own brand of intolerance through verbal ostracism. Whoever dares to criticize finds himself either scorned for weak or backward reasoning, or accused of barbarity, relegated to the darkness, and placed in the company of our historic enemies. All of which clearly demonstrates the sacralization of democratic thinking: its adversaries are doomed to ruination, diminshed by moral condemnation, and deprived of the right to take issue. The sacred is precisely that against which contradiction kills the contradictor.

(as an aside, I’m uncertain whether I understand what she’s saying in that last sentence, but I don’t think it consonant with a Christian meaning of sacred.) But getting back to the matter of hand. If the problem with an adversarial system of justice is that it is not optimized to find truth, but instead to provide an arena in which a noetic gladiatorial event transpires. An event not to find any underlying truth, i.e., did he do it, or who is right. It doesn’t help that the playing field itself is uneven, having been set by another gladiatorial event, the jousting for favor of elected officials who themselves are jousting for approval of the electorate. In our short American history, we have had the practice of electing to high office those military leaders who are successful (who run) after a war. While these men very often are very poor Presidents, the reason might be that leading civilians is as similar to leading soldiers as is herding cats and herding dogs. However, one of the main reasons on which their electoral success is based is that the test which they passed, leading men successfully, is seen a better test of their fitness to lead the state than rhetorical brilliance in the public forum, debating skills, or finding a good team to run a campaign.

Democracy, Ms Delsol suggests, is a system designed to optimize happiness. (As another aside, this might explain why a common flawed misreading of happiness as related to pleasure underlies the regretful decisions being made by our nominally democratic government today.) However this raises two important questions. The first is one I’ve asked before, namely, “Is our electoral process one which might reasonably expected to winnow out and discover a good leader?” This is related to Mr Hanley’s observation that our legal system is not one designed of fit to find truth, and that if it does occasionally find truth that discovery is more accidental than not. I’d offer, just as our conflict based judicial process is not one which is designed to find truth, I’d offer neither is our electoral procedure one which is designed to find good leaders. A second question arises from the observation of Ms Delsol’s of what is being optimized that is, “What should in fact be optimized by government?” If you are considering the fitness of various forms of the state and how government might best be constructed, it surely prior to engaging on that enterprise, one should consider what is it that should be maximized by our design?

I’d like to offer a non-intuitive stab at an answer to the second question.  I would offer that the thing which government should optimize is just authority. If I define the just authority of a state that authority which is freely granted by the people, then good government is a “straightforward” min-max problem. Maximize authority with a minimum of coercion. Straightforward is in scare quotes because the solution is almost certainly not crystal clear nor straightforward. In this view, Libertarians have it half right. Minimizing coercion is a key ingredient to government. But they also have it exactly half wrong, in that minimizing state authority is getting it exactly backwards. Authority should in fact be maximized …within the condition that coercion be minimal. A totalitarian state maximizes coercion and authority. In an ideal government, any and every act by the government performed would be seen by its citizens as within the authority they granted. Unlike a minimal authority state, it would also fill the roles expected of the state in accord with the desires of its people. It would be free to do anything it wished because it would not wish to do anything that its people did not desire.

What sorts of tentative suggestions might one make toward a system of government that tries to min/max coercion and authority. Two factors come to mind. One, the subsidiarity arises as a important factor a large state, where large regional and micro-regional differences exist regarding expectations of how far the authority of government and its role extends. If you are trying for a min/max solution the flexibility of local adjustments can find a tighter solution than a single global one. Secondly, the forms of government which are considered normally on the playing field, oligarchy, monarchy, democracy and republic are forms which were developed centuries ago. How might information technologies and the ease of transportation in the modern era permit new forms to be imagined (and tested)?

Contrary to claims by the Obama administration, they don’t actually have the majority of doctors on their side.

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors’ own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

Joe Wilson, call your office.  You may have spoken just a bit too soon.

Major findings included:

• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration’s claims that doctors are part of an "unprecedented coalition" supporting a medical overhaul.

[…]

• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

[…]

• More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered "no" when asked if they believed "the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better."

If this passes, rationing, here we come.  The result would be fewer doctors handling more patients; how could you not wind up with rationing? 

And this really should be news to anyone who’s paying attention.  US states as well as other countries with socialized medicine already have this problem

A key reason for the doctor shortages, according to the study, is a "lingering poor practice environment in the state."

In 2006, Massachusetts passed its medical overhaul — minus a public option — similar to what’s being proposed on a national scale now. It hasn’t worked as expected. Costs are higher, with insurance premiums rising 22% faster than in the U.S. as a whole.

"Health spending in Massachusetts is higher than the United States on average and is growing at a faster rate," according to a recent report from the Urban Institute.

Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.

This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.

In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service.

"A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland" because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted.

British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.

Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country’s national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.

So they’ll make up for poor coverage by making you pay more for it, whether directly or via taxes.  Lose-lose.

In our understanding of the communication aspect of language, the concept of “units of thought” is critical. At its lowest level of detail, a word comprises a unit of thought. However, the meaning of the word, in the context of the author’s intent, is best understood when one moves up to higher level units of thought – those of sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books.

As John Holzmann shows us, another critical aspect of understanding the meaning to a passage of text, is that of grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. In Get Myself into trouble…, he bravely addresses that tenuous issue of Worship Songs.

Spelling, punctuation, grammar, the words themselves: they matter very much to me. And I realize they mean much more to me than they do to the average bear. That’s my training. That’s a discipline I have pursued since I was very young. I realize that the structural elements of language make a difference, and so I seek to use them to the best effect.

I am concerned that [our church], in its worship/singing on Sunday mornings, seems, often, to ignore these elements . . . to the detriment of meaning.

Among the various songs he takes aim at is Everything, by Tim Hughes.

…at the tail end of the song, we wind up singing a heretical pantheistic affirmation that God is everything [“You are everything”]–repeated at least four times over (though, as I recall, [our worship leader] encouraged the congregation to sing it 8 times). Please! God is not “everything.” He made all of creation. He made human beings. Etc. He is not the things He made.But then, after a pantheistic affirmation, finally, the song winds up repeating a kind of Hinduistic mantra, a meaningless jumble of words: “Jesus everything.” Four times over on the screen. Eight times over as a congregation:

Jesus everything. Jesus everything.
Jesus everything. Jesus everything.

As above: Whatever is that supposed to mean? . . . Or is it the intention of [our church] to advocate that its members enter into a kind of mindless euphoria through thoughtless repetition of meaningless–but holy-sounding–words?

How many of the worship songs we sing, on Sunday mornings, fall into the trap of pushing non-Christian (or even heretical) ideas at the expense of thinking through more theologically proper songs? Do we dumb-down our worship songs to accommodate a touchy-feely culture, or in response to a less intelligent society? Or both?

In the Middle Ages, stained glass was used to illustrate narratives of the Bible because the populace was largely illiterate (as was the case in most societies in history). Now, it seems, we purposely cater to a culture that, despite the means and ability, prefers to feel than to think.

Also reference Holzmann’s post, Hymns and praise songs: what’s the difference?.

Let me know if you like the remarks or not or prefer the brief version.

1. Ob-Wings is a liberal blog and I haven’t thought about it enough to figure out if I agree or disagrees with the main thrust of this piece. “Second, if colleges ultimately shift to an on-demand model, students will be missing what I consider to be the best parts of “college.”  The aggregation of years of dining hall conversations, tavern debates, and dorm room bull sessions are my most valuable memories.” This makes no sense to me. I mean, I enjoyed bull sessions. But they weren’t in any sense better or ultimately more valuable than my classes. This must be the clearest demonstration that a comparing a non-science/non-technical higher education to a science/math/engineering education is like comparing apples and rocks.
2. ACORN should in any reasonable universe, taking a fatal blow. My guess is that business as usual will continue unabated.
3. Water we are told is the resource more threatened than petroleum, which itself might have passed the point of no return. I would like to note (brag?) that about a month ago we installed a dual/low flush toilet in our house (this one: Kohler K-3654-0).
4. Three simple rules for Afghanistan. Mr Easterly has some questions. I’d add, another. Wasn’t David Petraeus sent to Afghanistan. He seemed to grok COIN. Where is he now?
5. I don’t get it. This notion that the tea party is the “last gasp/stand” of the demographically waning rural/small town Christian white demographic seems to have
6. So it’s over. If you didn’t lose your job you’ve figured that out … and are likely working a lot harder than you were a year ago. I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing (that is the working harder part). The unemployment will likely ease on its own over the next year. Too bad we wasted 800 billions on an unnecessary stimulus package that had to be passed in the dark of the night as an emergency measure.
7. Mostly foreign policy links. I can’t figure Mr Obama’s foreign policy ideas out. He’s nasty to our allies, mushy to those who don’t like us, who still don’t like us, but now they don’t respect us either. And then there’s Honduras.
8. Mr Boudreaux asks how Mr Obama can call the financial sector “reckless”. Well, many a drunk can recognize another man to be drunk. I don’t see how that’s a problem. Ms McArdle, however, has repeatedly pointed out regarding the prior crisis for any indication that this was a regulatory failure, for it seems pretty clear the regulators were egging the whole mortgage bubble on.
9. A mother’s choice celebrated.
10. I read that book some years ago (before I began blogging). It should be in the scholastic canon, by which I mean everybody should have read that book. Recalling the linked notes on the Dostoevsky/Tolstoy (false?) choice … I’d offer that this one (The Death of Ivan Ilyich) is superlative and short.
11. Saving the whales … at what expense. Mr Kuznicki once offered that issues on the front burner don’t necessarily push others out of the limelight. That, in his case, even if SSM is on the front burner, we’ll all be attentive and paying attention to the myriad other issues. That there is no bandwidth problem for activism. This is, I think, clearly false as Mr Carter’s example demonstrates. Sudan/Darfur and the Congo is another example. Attention to the one, where the other is worse but not in the limelight … is a common problem. And yes, I realize that was not the main thrust of Mr Carter’s essay, but I’d offer it as a side matter.

“We want you to engage honestly on the issues in this debate on healthcare” … “but if you oppose the healthcare bill, you are a racist.”

“This healthcare bill will not raise taxes or deficits at all” … but Mr Wilson is “officially” reprimanded for accusing the “One” of lying and an apology is demanded (although it was already tendered within hours of the speech) … this in a bill the CBO flat out says will raise spending and for a bill which specifically includes new taxes.

We’re not going to have any death-panels … We want this instead. It’s not a panel, it’s a formula.

So, let’s attempt some more rational discussions on healthcare. Hopefully, some progressives will be able, unlike the President, to engage in actual debate that isn’t accompanied by poisoning the well.

An eminent not-so-directly politically connected (Nobel winning) economist has an interesting offering here. He concludes:

Why is it that although the average age of onset of disabilities has been delayed by ten years, and that these disabilities have become milder than they used to be, the share of GDP spent on health is rising? One factor is the increase in the proportion of the population that is elderly. However, such changes in age structure account for a minor part of rising expenditures, on the order of 10 percent.

The main factor is that the long-term income elasticity of the demand for healthcare is 1.6—for every 1 percent increase in a family’s income, the family wants to increase its expenditures on healthcare by 1.6 percent. This is not a new trend. Between 1875 and 1995, the share of family income spent on food, clothing, and shelter declined from 87 percent to just 30 percent, despite the fact that we eat more food, own more clothes, and have better and larger homes today than we had in 1875. All of this has been made possible by the growth in the productivity of traditional commodities. In the last quarter of the 19th century, it took 1,700 hours of labor to purchase the annual food supply for a family. Today it requires just 260 hours, and it is likely that by 2040, a family’s food supply will be purchased with about 160 hours of labor.¹²

Consequently, there is no need to suppress the demand for healthcare. Expenditures on healthcare are driven by demand, which is spurred by income and by advances in biotechnology that make health interventions increasingly effective. Just as electricity and manufacturing were the industries that stimulated the growth of the rest of the economy at the beginning of the 20th century, healthcare is the growth industry of the 21st century. It is a leading sector, which means that expenditures on healthcare will pull forward a wide array of other industries including manufacturing, education, financial services, communications, and construction. [Ed: Emphasis mine]

So, my argument all along has been that if you want to increase the availability of healthcare and to increase the quality you need to encourage and advance ways of making the healthcare product we consume today an easier and more available commodity. That will take a radical restructuring and a heavy reliance on automation which is not available today. Entrenching the current system in heavier and ever more layers of bureaucratic burdens is exactly the wrong way to go about reshaping healthcare for the future. Regulation is not the means by which innovation is found. The only innovation heavy regulation and control achieves are innovative ways to get around said innovations.

All of the industrial commodities and consumable items today which have been reduced in price over the past decades have achieved their price reduction via automation. From the humble tractor to automated robotic lines and CAD/CAM processes. Computer automation and information technology are going to be a big part of the innovations that we will need in order for the price to drop by an order of magnitude or more. We are famously told that since the mid-80s the capabilities of biotechnology have been increasing exponentially faster than our computing power (Moore’s Law). Much of the computer industry derived its innovations from very small scale startups and single individuals. Yet it is impossible to imagine a single individual or small group in today’s regulatory environment getting a new drug, therapy, or diagnostic device to market. If it is impossible to imagine … it won’t happen. If Congress gets its hands on managing (and likely micro-managing) healthcare for the nation, innovation will require an act of Congress.

Congress can fix healthcare. By taking its hands off, letting go. By simply burning the as many regulations as it can and lighting the a fire of innovation into the field. Put cost and accountability and choice in the hands of the consumer. Release restrictions and let the market reward successful innovation.

A study shows that, it’s not that conservatives don’t write best-selling books, it’s just that the media are loathe to cover them.  From the Culture and Media Institute, an example:

Reaching No. 1 on the Nonfiction Hardcover List is a notable achievement. To maintain that spot for more than a single week is truly impressive.

Two liberal authors reached the No.1 spot on the List in 2009. Elizabeth Edwards’ “Resilience” was No.1 for just one week and Thomas Friedman’s “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” held that spot for two weeks.

They received media coverage befitting No.1 best-sellers, garnering nine instances of coverage on the networks between the two.

But there was another book that hit No.1. In fact, it held the No.1 spot for 12 of 18 weeks, and has yet to fall under the No. 4 spot. (Also, at this writing, it ranked No. 24 on Amazon.com, and has enjoyed 186 days in Amazon’s Top 100.)

That book, “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto,” by conservative political commentator and nationally syndicated radio-host Mark Levin, was by far the most successful book on the list – nothing even came close.

[…]

Yet Levin’s book received zero coverage from any of the networks since its release on March 29. Nor did his name appear on any of the news programs since the release.

Contrast that with Edwards’ and Friedman’s nine instances of coverage for books that spent one and two weeks respectively at the top of the list. Equivalent coverage for Levin would require 36 mentions on the networks.

And the media blackout of “Liberty and Tyranny” extended beyond the networks and has been nearly complete.

Levin confirmed to CMI that “we have not heard from any of the major networks, and the only major newspaper that has interviewed me is Philadelphia Enquirer, and that’s because I’m from Philadelphia.”

If the media were truly drawn to ratings, and if ratings are driven by popularity, Levin would be all over the place.  He’s not, and I’m betting they’re not, either.  It’s ideological, plain and simple.

1. Mr Borlaugh … climate sceptic?
2. The Dems pull the race card … yawn. A reply here.
3. Truth to power?
4. You are a cyclist if …
5. The big five.
6. How many at the tea party … getting closer to real numbers, which I might add might also be a weather vane for the bias of your sources. When the MSM calls identical crowds between 1.5 to 5 million when they are for Mr Obama’s inauguration and as low as 30-60k for a tea party … bias seems the only plausible explanation.
7. A van, not unrelated.
8. I guess if you say, he lied, that would be racist (or true).
9. Ethics and the Old Testament.
10. The tire tariff, political pandering? More here.
11. Ms McArdle rebuts Mr Sullivan.
12. Lasers explained.
13. I think this is a very important point made about American healthcare spending.
14. Why is that an either or question? (the original article is here)
15. The Tueller drill.
16. A book recommended. Looks very good to me.
17. Wow. That is very cool.

The Tree of Liberty. Don’t Tread on Me.

The left today sees these as threatening. They only see the tree of liberty in the context of Jefferson’s quote about the blood of patriots. They see the NRA connections of the right combined with that quote and trees in abundance on poster as tantamount to assault, i.e., a direct armed threat in the legal sense. However that is not really tenable.

When one puts this symbolism in a historical context the threat to the established Democratic party rule is purely electoral. Look at the results of a little historical research. In David Hackett Fisher’s book Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding Ideas one finds copious examples of liberty trees, bells, snakes and the like … which are to be now found in the tea party posters. They are not hinting at violence but instead are unconsciously (and likely consciously in some cases) tapping the collective visual signs and symbols of our American heritage. While these symbols trace to the revolutionary period, which understandably makes the party in power nervous. They are not exclusively from that period, nor were (historically) used to tie back to that era. That it is to say they are no long primarily tied to revolution and overthrow but are in fact national symbols tied to freedom and liberty. To restate, they are primarily American symbols of freedom and liberty.

If Democrats today are nervous at the thought of liberty and freedom, that is a depressing and unfortunate turn of events. That 30% of this country is so enamoured of statist solutions that ideas of liberty and personal independence scares them.

The November 12th tea party is an political opportunity for those who might capitalize on it. The size of the gatherings alone indicate a large groundswell support. The Democratic party has been long tied to bigger and more intrusive government. The GOP has paid lip service and one might argue recently paid heavily at the polls for their hypocrisy in that matter regarding smaller government. Democrats have argued that people pay lip service themselves to liberty but “really want” the comfortable entitlements that they promote. Yet the tea party movement and the GOP electoral defeats in 2008 might indicate that this is not the case. There are a goodly number of people that really want less from the Feds. It remains to be seen if any number GOP candidates with both seize this opportunity in campaign rhetoric and more importantly follow through once in office.

The linked post and associated picture ask “Can you imagine the outrage if this sign showed up at a MoveOn rally instead of Saturday’s tea party?”

I’m not getting it. What is there to be outraged about?

Help me out here, what outrage and about what?

And what would be a “trigger” related MoveOn rally poster even say that would be objectionable?

Patriotic dissent?  That’s so last year.

Eight months into Barack Obama’s presidency, as criticism of his administration seems to reach new levels of volume and intensity each week, the whispers among some of his allies are growing louder: That those who loathe the nation’s first African-American president, and especially those who would deny his citizenship, are driven at least in part by racism.

It’s a feeling that’s acutely felt among those supporters of Obama who are themselves minorities. Conversations with Democrats at an otherwise upbeat Democratic National Committee fall gathering here, an event largely devoted to party housekeeping, reflected a growing anger at what many see as a troubling effort to delegitimize Obama’s hold on the office.

“As far as African-Americans are concerned, we think most of it is,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), when asked in an interview in between sessions how much of the more extreme anger at Obama is based upon his race. “And we think it’s very unfortunate. We as African-American people of course are very sensitive to it.”

It’s not like we didn’t see this coming, but it highlights a serious double-standard among Democrats.  Apparently, only they can dissent properly.  Criticism of them?  Well, there are clearly nefarious undertones going on.

1. In favor of auto-expire in legislation.
2. Mr Sullivan’s case considered, more here. The real issue.
3. One view of the Mr Wilson address outcry kerfuffle.
4. Philosophy, well, there you go.
5. Pretty pretty.
6. Some conservative links.
7. A stacked deck.
8. Notes from the tea party. More here and here. And as seen from the other side of the world.
9. MMA and the gospel, and a question asked.
10. Of Bangles and bikes (doing “bike like an Egyptian”).
11. Moving toward a 1 liter (that is 1 liter/100km) car.
12. On our economic woes.
13. Untruth in advertising (although it might be noted that it if you take “stoned” literally instead of a figure for execution, it might be true).
14. Self as illusion, modern science and religion.

I had been working on a lengthy post responding to the President’s health care speech and then ran across this column by Shikha Dalmia that makes my case better than I could so I’ll just encourage you to read it instead.