Take two similar stories and try to figure out how the media will cover each.  With a hat tip to Newsbusters, here are the two stories:

1. A former Catholic priest comes forward Monday (4/20/09) to claim that another priest abused him as a teenager nearly 30 years ago. (The accused priest has no other similar public complaints and denies the allegations against him.)

2. A former school teacher was sentenced Wednesday (4/22/09) after pleading no contest to eight felony counts, including having sex with two girls under the age of 16. The man "admitted to having intercourse with the girls, performing oral sex with the teens and taking extremely explicit nude photographs of his victims — including pictures of him with one of the girls – before sending the images over the Internet."

OK, they’re not entirely equivalent.  The priest story is from 3 decades ago and the teacher story is from this month.  OK, and the priest denies the allegations while the teacher is being sentenced.  So given that, what was the disparity in coverage?

NewsBusters answers:

Now it’s quiz time! To which story did the Los Angeles Times devote two generous color photos and a 640-word article? Which story did the Times totally ignore?

If you’ve been a close follower of this issue here at NewsBusters, you already know the answer. The Times loudly trumpeted the case of the Catholic priests, even though the original story was reported three years ago (!). Meanwhile, it totally ignored the story of the teacher (Contra Costa Times, 4/23/09; Long Beach Press-Telegram, 11/5/08).

In addition, at Google news, the story of the priests returns "about 128" results. The story of the teacher? One.

We’ll say it again: It seems the most important element to the Times when reporting the awful abuse of children is whether the words "priest," "bishop," or "Cardinal" is in someone’s job title.

Given the Google results, it’s not just the Times that has this ailment.  It’s almost journalists have some blind spot when covering negative stories on government schools and / or a hot spot when it comes to negative stories regarding religion in general and Christianity in particular. 

I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.

1. Well, if you think the US press is wildly inaccurate, we’re not alone.
2. That seems impractical.
3. On health care.
4. On Mr Brown’s book.
5. The fate of an ordinary Obama supporter.
6. Will the Obama administration, the Press, and Congress manage to push the fiction that the “torture” imbroglio was not bi-partisan?
7. Another day, another broken campaign promise … a pattern emerges?
8. Politics, faith and wandering.
9. Ghandi’s gun, heh.
10. Of knowledge and myth.
11. Vermin or ermin?
12. Doubt and Christ.
13. Stop chasing happiness? Only a problem, I think, if you have a modern shallow understanding of the word happiness.
14. Of horological artisans and their work.
15. Piracy as political AIDS.
16. Fascism today.
17. Men and the wind.
18. Why no news stories?
19. Tales from a tea party.

Well, in the light of the fact that it’s been touted that “conservatives” have abandoned their defense of high culture. I’ll freely admit that I have not. Friday night my beloved, who coincidentally is also my wife 😉 , and I attended the CSO for a concert conducted by Bernard Haitink. I was surprised this year, for I don’t recall Mr Haitink having such trouble getting around. He used a cane to assist his walking and stood/sat/leaned on a edge of an elevated chair while conducting. I have to admit his mastery of the orchestra and his use of subtle controlled gesture to get his meaning across was a wonder to behold.

Three peices were performed, none of which I’d ever heard earlier. They were Max Webern’s Im Sommerwind (In the Summer Wind), Gustov Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder, and Franz Schuberts 9th Symphony (the Great). I’d like to offer a few remarks on the short Mahler songs. They were five Ruckert poems set to music sung by Mezzo Soprano Christianne Stotijn. Ms Stotijn sang beautifully, and my only critique might be that I thought she needed sing a little more strongly to counterbalance the orchestra better. Of these poems, the fourth was a simple love poem which Mahler dedicated to his new bride. It is simple but poignant.

Liebst du um Schonheit (If you love for beauty)
(translation from program notes)

If you love for beauty,
then do not love me!
Love the sun,
for he has golden hair.

If you love for youth,
then do not love me!
Love the spring,
which is young every year.

If you love for money,
then do not love me!
Love a mermaid,
for she has many find pearls.

If you love for love,
then yes, do love me!
Love me forever,
I’ll love you evermore.

If you love baseball and you love God, or if you just love baseball or just love God, you have to read a great post at Mere Comments  by  Anthony Esolen on the historically amazing St. Louis first baseman, Albert Pujols.  A sampling:

I caught Albert saying that he did not want to be remembered as a baseball hero. . What he did want to be remembered as, I’ll tell you in a minute.  But first let me affirm that Albert Pujols is going to retire as either the greatest or the second greatest (to Lou Gehrig) first baseman ever to play the game.  If he retired tomorrow, he’d be in the top five or six, easy.  The man is not only a hitting machine.  He is intensely focused on whatever he can do to help his team win a game. 

It’s what moves his heart that interests me.  He said to the SI reporter, “I only want to be remembered as a man who loved the Lord.”  That is how he talks, when he talks.  And it occurs to me that even if you considered it only as a social phenomenon, the love of Christ — Christ’s love for us, and our love for Him — is the most remarkable thing in the history of the world. 

There’s much more.  Read it.  Trust me on this one.

Kevin Roose, student at the ivy league and liberal-leaning Brown University in Providence, RI, decided to go "undercover" at a religious conservative school and write about his observations.  And what more religiously conservative than Liberty University, founded by none other than Jerry Falwell.

To Roose’s credit, it was not his intent to take the path of least resistance.

"As a responsible American citizen, I couldn’t just ignore the fact that there are a lot of Christian college students out there," said Roose, 21, now a Brown senior. "If I wanted my education to be well-rounded, I had to branch out and include these people that I just really had no exposure to."

[…]

He was determined to not mock the school, thinking it would be too easy — and unfair. He aimed to immerse himself in the culture, examine what conservative Christians believe and see if he could find some common ground. He had less weighty questions too: How did they spend Friday nights? Did they use Facebook? Did they go on dates? Did they watch "Gossip Girl?"

I would encourage you to read the whole article.  He seems to have been generally fair about the whole thing, a feeling that Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. shares.  He even got an interview, while still "undercover", with the elder Falwell himself.

And once he got to know the people, and what they really thought and believed, there were some changes he noticed in himself.  He didn’t necessarily agree with them politically, but…

Roose said his Liberty experience transformed him in surprising ways.

When he first returned to Brown, he’d be shocked by the sight of a gay couple holding hands — then be shocked at his own reaction. He remains stridently opposed to Falwell’s worldview, but he also came to understand Falwell’s appeal.

Once ambivalent about faith, Roose now prays to God regularly — for his own well-being and on behalf of others. He said he owns several translations of the Bible and has recently been rereading meditations from the letters of John on using love and compassion to solve cultural conflicts.

He’s even considering joining a church.

Not the outcome one would expect if Liberty was rife with homophobic, intolerant ignoramuses.  In fact, the article notes that one "aggressively anti-gay" student was an "outcast on the hall, not a role model". 

I imagine this would be an interesting read.  Amazon is selling it, and I found a review from Publisher’s Weekly on it with this odd line:

He trains himself to control his foul language and even begins to pray and study the Bible regularly, much to the bewilderment of his liberal Quaker parents.

Is it bewildering to his liberal Quaker parents that he would pray and study the Bible?  Or bewildering to them that prayer and Bible study would be found at Liberty University?  Either of those option seems strangely close-minded.  There may be another, but I’m hard-pressed to figure it out.

Roose has a blog on the Amazon site and I peeked at some of the entries.  Most had to deal with his book tour and a giveaway promotion, but this entry written at Easter, entitled "Why you need to know the Bible (even if you’re an atheist)" was another example of how his time at Liberty had affected him. 

Liberty University could possibly be termed the capitol of the Religious Right, and, as I said, given what you hear from media and pundits, you’d not expect this sort of outcome.  And yet an open-minded student walks in and comes out with a deeper appreciation for God and His Word.  The rest of the liberal punditry would do well to figure out why they’re stereotype is so wrong.

Okay, today’s lesson is to test how well you’ve been paying attention. Listed below are gaffes uttered by a prominent politician. Your task is to choose whether the gaffe was committed by: a) George W. Bush, b) Sarah Palin, or c) Joe the Plumber (no, he’s not a politician, but he’s been in the political limelight).

Good luck.

Our person in question:

1. Made the claim that the 1908 Model T had better fuel efficiency than a typical 2008 SUV.
2. Repeatedly pronounced the word Orion as “OAR-ee-on”.
3. Referred to Great Britain as England.
4. Referred to the “Austrian” language.
5. Thought that the nation of Turkey is older than the U.S.

Well, how’d you do? Truth be told, this was a trick quiz. Each gaffe listed above was committed by our own President Barack Obama*. While no one is immune from making minor goofs, I have to wonder, how would the media have treated these slip-ups had they been committed by Bush?

* HT: (HotAir) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

1. Mr Obama the bigot? Well, yes but he’s a hopey-changey bigot and that makes all the difference, just like Mr Clinton the sexist was a sexist of the right sort so it didn’t matter.
2. That little universe.
3. Debates and changes of perception.
4. The big race Sunday. Three background stories, one, two, and three. I find that of my purchased recordings of classics, the L-B-L tops the list which means by some measure it is my favorite of the classics to watch.
5. A interesting new website noted.
6. A film noted. Another one here.
7. Considering public education.
8. A new Philokalia translation? And a note “reading is not practice.” … Rats. 😉
9. Pakistan and the Taliban.
10. A Orthodox response to a Lutheran question.
11. Ms Pelosi and the waterboarding issue.
12. Dya think?
13. That “stupid book” as an opportunity.
14. The real villain behind WWII … and he got away with it.
15. More innumeracy in the White House.
16. Low-brow? Well, I guess I’ll have to blog about my symphony experiences more often.
17. UPS and modeling faith.
18. It’s not the thought that counts.
19. God and the quantum universe.

One point here I’d like to make clear. I am firmly against institutional support for torture. I have no qualms stating that and think that torture at best should have institutional guards against its use. It is not clear that it is ever necessary to use it and there are reasons not to. However, I don’t think the utilitarian case can be effectively made against it, that is, that I think the historical record clearly shows that torture can be used to extract information. Blog neighbor Mr Kuznicki accuses me of not carefully reading his point of view on torture when I describe it as “ineffective”. His actual words (from a later post):

Along the way, Dr. Arrigo also supports the independent argument that I’ve been making, namely that torture tends to reveal a great deal more false but convincing information in addition to whatever truth happens to come out, and that, for this reason, it’s a bad informational bargain. [note: emphasis mine]

That’s a bit more nuanced objection than one normally finds, my characterization as “ineffective” is wrong where “a bad informational bargain”, oh no that’s just way way different. A complete misreading … or not. For to me that reads a lot like “ineffective”, doesn’t it? Alas, I’m a little unclear on the difference.

There are remain two problems here. One is that resistance movements in general have always reacted to capture of one of their members in a regime in which torture is utilized by quickly moving safehouses and scrubbing all contact with the captured member. Why? The most likely reason they do that is experience in the organization shows that if they don’t move quickly the captured person will “break” under “enhanced interrogation” and they and those to whom he/she was in contact are now at extreme risk. As a odd side note, I’d add that a book The Quiller Memorandum from my childhood, err, mispent youth of cold-war spy vs spy genre (except agent was deemed “reliable under torture” instead of “licensed to kill”) was quite interesting and psychological was quite good even if the later books in the series suffered for moving to the action side and away from the thoughtful end of the storyline arc. The point is if it was true that torture was so bad at giving information then such organizations, which do learn from experience, would stop moving after capture. They didn’t so it seems highly probable that torture from an experimental viewpoint on the victims side … works. So, to put it bluntly: If you think torture is ineffective, why do organizations when facing an opponent who uses torture in an assymmetric struggle always have to quickly move to cut ties and move safehouses when someone is being tortured and interrogated if the claim (of its bad information content) is true?

Why is that? Well, here is my guess. The problem located likely at the the phrase supplied by Mr Kuznicki, that is “bad information.” Almost all information from intelligence sources in a conflict are “bad” in the same way that confessions under duress are. The signal to noise ratio is horrible in all but ideal situations … and ideal situations are very very rare. The best information in a semi-static situation is obtained by a good cultivated relationship with a snitch, just as was found to be the case in Iraq. But from an intelligence gathering point of view, most of the intelligence gained is bad. This, in the crime fighting genre, leads to the “chasing down leads” side of the equation. Snitches, double agents, satellites, drones, phone taps, cell phone monitoring, radio spectrum analysis, internet/switch monitoring, bribed, interrogation, and “enhanced interrogation” are all bad sources of intelligence when you get down to it. The signal to noise ratio of all of these methods is horrible. Correlation between intelligence leads to higher probability of fact. In the absence of good leads, agents and people chase down every available lead, again from the crime drama world … leads have to be chased down with footwork. The point being while torture is indeed “bad information.” The problem real problem arises that so are all the other sources of information. When all information is bad, more bad information which can lead to correlation with other information is in itself entirely useless. When the gestapo or whatever agency got 75 names from torture. They chased down all those leads. Perhaps many were bad. But they had resources and the time and if 5 of the 75 led to a little evidence then they have 5 more people with which to have an enhanced chat. And that led to more names that lead to further connections. That was worth the payoff (for them).

There is another issue regarding torture I’d raised years ago which is the culturally relative problem in defining torture. The colonial era trans-Atlantic voyage, not to speak of the Darwin/Cook trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic voyages, today would be regard as cruel and inhumane punishment. The quantity of pain regularly indured by NFL, professional cyclists, and many other professional atheletes is astounding to the uninitiated and likely exceeds that delivered to those under many forms of “enhanced interrogation.” The sleep deprivation noted in some of the accounts compare that to the Shackleton’s amazing journey or those who race sailboats around the world and around the horn. Read the beginning of this book (The Soul Of A New Machine) for the geek variant on sleep deprivation. There is an old joke which goes something like this.

Joe Frazier is in a bar drinking and one surly drunk stumbles up to him and starts swearing about the money he lost betting on him. The drunk is ignored by Joe which just bugs the drunk and spurs him to exclaim how he’s going to haul off and wing Joe but good. Joe finally ever so slowly turns to him and says, “If you hit me, and I happen to find out about it ….. “

The point is what is torture to one person in one time and era is making an ordinary living to another.

1. Linking to links.
2. Some thoughts on torture.
3. Beauty and nature.
4. Profit in the business world (re)considered.
5. Technology?
6. Boris?
7. Dork?
8. On the Caprica pilot.
9. Scent.
10. Estimating neuron counts in the beltway.
11. Upheaval?
12. Or is it time to close the schools?
13. Changes at First Things.
14. The Ikon screen or Iconostasis considered.
15. Hope and change apparently does not include more honesty in government, less?
16. Being in the right place at the right time.
17. An amateur rides the Huy.
18. Pals.

Torture seems to the be the hot topic of discussion today.

• Ms McArdle offers an interesting alternative way to object to the notion torture even granting its effectiveness.
• Mr Kuznicki continues to hold on the notion, which seems more and more likely to be incorrect, that torture is actually ineffective.
• And … Mr Fernandez points out a big reason why it is likely that torture works and that those who think it isn’t actually effective live in ivory towers wearing rose tinted glasses. It has to effects, it can extract information and it can terrorize a population. Both work, i.e., torture can get information and can terrorize a population.

Torture is almost certainly effective. To isolate the one of the points Mr Fernandez raises:

But I didn’t need Mr. Cheney to tell me that. When I ran safehouses in the anti-Marcos days the first order of business whenever a cell member was captured by the police was to alert the surviving members, move the safehouse and destroy all links to the captured person. That’s because everyone knew that there was a great probability that the captive would talk under duress, however great his bravery and resistance. Nobody I know, or have heard of who has had experience in real-life situations has ever said, “our cell should continue as usual and the safehouse should remain open, despite the fact that one of our own is being tortured by the secret police, because I read in the New York Times that coercion never works.” The probability is that torture works and for that reason its use constitutes a moral dilemma; and the reason why Jacoby believes he is expressing a noble sentiment when he forswears it even as “a last and desperate option” in the War on Terror.

This is not a isolated reaction of a resistance movement in the Philippines … resistance in France in WWII and elsewhere in modern and ancient eras had to react quickly after one of their companions was captured. Why? Because under torture, the threat that the person held would talk was more likely than not. Mr Kuznicki would have it that the notion that the gestapo and/or the Marcos regime might extract under duress valuable information is not likely. He would not (apparently) “alert the surviving members, move the safehouse and destroy all links to the captured person”. Doing those things takes effort and entails risk. According to the “torture doesn’t work” theory that would be counter-productive, expensive, and risky. According, alas, to the real world … it may be expensive and risky … but it is also necessary. And the reason why it is necessary is the erroneous assumption that torture doesn’t work. Torture it seems in the real world, doesn’t always work … but very often does.

However that being said, Ms McArdle’s proposed argument has merit. We are not and have not been a people that condones torture. My contention is that torture and methods of torture should be known and understood by our state agents. But that when and if they use it, they should understand that it is illegal. We ask our soldiers to lay their lives down for the benefit of their country. The existence of effective torture techniques means that we may also ask our operatives and agents to lay down their career and possibly their freedom and good name for the benefit of the country. To put in in the parlance of popular theater, Mr Baur may use torture (effectively even) to save (many?) American lives … but in the aftermath he should go to jail for it … absent a (rare) Presidential pardon. We should remain a people and an nation that never systematically employs torture as a method. It may be that making it illegal is a way to do that. It may also be that there are other, just as effective ways of doing that.

I am no lawyer and I have no idea how the law stood and the law stands now. Apparently waterboarding and similar techniques as were used recently has been used on occaission as a method of extracting information in times of need for over 50 years by our country. If Mr Bush and Mr Cheney and their administration is to be now tried for the methods they employed should not the previous 6-8 administrations be vetted and tried too?

Live (blogged sort of) coverage of the 73rd La Flèche Wallonne can be found here. A preview here.

1. A death of a CFO.
2. Blood and a gift.
3. A film for fun.
4. For Earth day, a modest proposal.
5. Stimulus (HT: Carl Olson)
6. A sixth century icon from Mount Athos.
7. A carnival asks for submissions.
8. On the rhetorical phrase, “Of Course”.
9. The first tremors of the current economic downturn was the collapse of the housing bubble … how’s that housing situation look now?
10. Hate? Hate is not the first thought comes to my mind. Actually it’s not even on the list.
11. Fasting, end of the fast, and the convert.
12. Dickens re-imagined and the POTUS.
13. The other side of waterboarding prosecutions.
14. Archaeology and Aegypt.
15. Espionage.
16. On prayer and footprints.
17. Verse.
18. On hope.
19. From the left on waterboarding and interrogation.
20. Taking acting seriously.

I’ve mentioned Lila Rose before. She’s the adult that poses as an underage girl at Planned Parenthood clinics and finds out how they deal with a statutory rape victim.  She’s got another video showing that PP just follows the money.

HotAir has the video.

Today’s links started a short discussion on healthcare. The Liberal/Progressive left see universal health insurance (one insurance provider) as a way to ensure the “right” that they believe every American has to good healthcare. Now, I don’t think healthcare is a “right” but then again I’m admittedly quite shaky when it comes what the word “right” (with or without scare quotes) might mean and think that by and large think that we don’t have what is meant commonly by that word, especially for healthcare. But I digress, for the point of this essay is to establish a few “talking points” regarding healthcare from a policy standpoint.

I’ll begin with noting a few flaws with universal coverage.

• One of the primary problems with universal coverage/one provider for insurance is structural. Representational government, involving elected officials, is particularly poorly suited to handle actuarial matters. Politicians like to promise, and very often promise short term gains ignoring long term costs, e.g., flood insurance rates set by the State is traditionally far below what reasonable actuarial calculations will provide. The representitive banks on the “payback” or disaster which is being insured against will not occur in his/her lifetime.
• Good actuarial calculations demand an eye to the cost, to the bottom line. That future cost is the future of the company and cannot be overlooked, unlike it can in a politician’s rhetoric.
• Insurance-as-business has a short term interest in cutting costs, but a long term interest in them going up. That is to say, in the short term a medical insurance provider benefits from cutting health care costs. If a medical procedure costs less, it costs them less and they don’t have to pay as much to provide a given benefit. On the other hand in the long term, their rates and profit are based on a percentage of average costs … which if they go up, then aggregate profits go up as well. One might suspect that the cost/benefit analysis works differently for a government run agency, but this is not likely the case as power as well as profit goes into the government’s payback.

Now some thoughts on healthcare in general.

• Why is healthcare expensive today? The reason shirts, food, shoes, and toasters are cheap today is because of two factors. Mechanization allows for multiplication of human labor involved in their production and the availability of cheap power. If a skilled or unskilled laborer can produce 10,000 widgets a day with a machine where he can only make one per day by hand, then the price of the widget being sold can drop by orders of magnitude. Unless we increase greatly the number of health care workers and pay them slave wages the price of healthcare is going to stay prohibitively high. Humans, especially skilled humans, cost money (they need to get paid). Ultimately the only way to make healthcare available and cheap for everyone is to get the humans efforts multiplied by technological means. If a doctor today sees 40 patients a day, the only way to reduce health care costs by orders of magnitude is to increase the number of patients he can minister to in a day the same orders of magnitude. This is not as impossible as it sounds. The average village pediatrician sees childhood diseases in waves. When a flu sweeps through the town, he gets hit with hundreds of kids with identical symptoms. Does he need to give the same diagnostic care to all? Couldn’t some intelligent automation and cheap intelligent diagnostic tools multiply his effectiveness?
• Another reason is regulation. FDA regulation is very expensive, and largely useless from the point of view of the manufacturer. FDA approval does not indemnify a manufacturer from fault. After going through extensive and expensive tests a drug is approved. If later it is found harmful, the manufacturer is still liable even though they got certification. FDA approval is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has cost. That cost should be an option not a requirement and should indemnify the manufacturer from fault. If the FDA approves thalidomide for pre-natal maternal care then there should be no way to bring suit in case harmful effects are discovered later unless the manufacturer fudged or falsified the certification procedure. Requiring FDA approval is likely the single biggest roadblock to innovation in the healthcare industry in the US today. I’m not suggesting it be eliminated, in fact by indemnifying a manufacturer upon gaining FDA certification it is instead strengthened. The other side of that coin is that FDA approval for drugs and health care products should be optional.
• Univeral/single payer plans miss out on the goal. The goal for government policy should not be to bring equal health care to everyone but to provide a path to better, cheaper, and more effective future health care for all of us. Government driven policy and insurance is not the way to innovate.

Look at an example noted in Monday’s highlight’s comments:

A down to earth example might be the law student whose letter Andrew Sullivan published recently. He has asthma but no coverage since he is in school. He has to basically get his friends mom to swipe samples of the drug he needs. He was jogging on a treadmill and got a sudden pain in his foot. He stayed off of it for several months. In the meantime someone with good coverage will get regular checkups for a $20 co-pay and maybe spend $100 for an emergancy x-ray if they got that mysterious pain in their foot. This type of ‘rationing’ does not seem very efficient or fair.

How might this end up in a “mechanized” health care environment? Today we have many categories of “prescription” drugs and over the counter drug and as well we have protected and generic drugs. My suggestions would severely limit the first category opening up the number of drugs available over the counter, which would almost certainly include asthma inhalants. And as well to the “protected” and “generic” classifications of drugs, other approval schemes would be available besides FDA approved medications. Other independent certifications (or no certification at all) would be available to drug manufacturers. That would leave a larger array of price points for the albuterol this young student needs. In the second case, the student could go to a semi-automated (think Kinko’s) medical diagnostic clinic, rent some scan time with a automated scanner (x-ray or ultra-sound likely) and have the pain in his foot examined. He could have an automated result from an expert system tell him what therapeutic options would be best in his case and the an estimate of accuracy of diagnoses which he could use to decide if he needed his pictures to be examined by a human expert. The clinic would be making money by providing this machine for likely less than that $20 co-pay. Note that in my “plan” anti-plan no insurance is needed. In fact, the existence of insurance would mean that the things needed to give control back to the patient and provide for more health care “product” to be consumed by the population would not be occuring. Single payer or universal health care is exactly the wrong way to get to where we need to go. It is moving to a more covered, more controlled and less effective health care industry, which gets it exactly backwards.

Consider 400 years ago, I’d bet that over 60% of the population farmed. Consider food as analogous to health care. Single payer is a plan to provide “fairer distribution” (an arguable point) and redistribute and control what food is produced. That sounds like a move to the collective farming of peasants who stay with non-mechanized labor for production. But history has shown, a more effective way to provide inexpensive food is to bring in harvesters, trucks, fertilizer, refrigeration, super-markets, and other (farmers, ethnic, health) markets into the equation. Single payer supporters are the ones fighting for staying with the horse drawn solutions on collectivized farms at the same time as a better solution. Today a small fraction of the population farms … and obesity because, in part, of cheap available food is the problem.

So essentially the single-payer supporter is campaigning for the five-year plans of the Soviet era and the failed farm collectivization projects of Lenin and Stalin which caused mass starvation and shortages. So when looked at from a practical standpoint, single-payer healthcare might have pretty poetic stories and market jingles to push its agenda forward. But to put it bluntly, one might ask the supporters single payer, “So which is it are you stupid or evil?” ‘Cause it seems like those are only the two alternatives that remain.

You’ve may have heard by now some of the fallout from Miss California’s answer to a same-sex marriage question from one of the Miss USA judges, Perez Hilton.  If not, it’s probably because, like me, you didn’t watch the Miss USA pageant (or because, also like me, didn’t even know it was on).  What happened there has put on display for all to see what happens when you stand up for beliefs which are contrary to the liberal line.

Perez Hilton asked Carrie Prejean, "Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage," he said. "Do you think every state should follow suit, why or why not."  Prejean answered:

I think it’s great Americans are able to choose one or the other.  We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what in my country, in my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be, between a man and a woman.

While starting out with a little fumbling for words, she ultimately comes to her honest answer.  And that, in what is now a pageant fully engulfed in liberal dogma, was her downfall. 

According to this ABC News article, the initial boos were ultimately overcome by applause.  However, Hilton was taken by surprise.

"I was floored," Hilton told ABCNews.com Monday. "I haven’t said this before, but to her credit, I applaud her for her honesty. However, she is not a politician, she’s a hopeful Miss USA. Miss USA should represent everyone. Her answer alienated millions of gay and lesbian Americans, their families and their supporters."

Instead, I suppose, he wanted an answer that alienated tens of millions of those who do not support same-sex marriage.  If it’s about the numbers, Hilton is currently on the down-side of that.  If it’s about not alienating people, Prejean’s answer, no matter what it was, would alienate some, so she actually did well on that front, if that’s what you’re going to judge her by.

So what answer would Hilton have preferred; one that would be less political and represented everyone?

Hilton said Prejean could have chosen an answer that he believed would have been less political. When he asked Miley Cyrus the same question on Twitter after the show, he was surprised by her response: "I believe that EVERYONE deserves to be happy. That’s all I’m saying."

Comparing Cyrus and Prejean, Hilton said, "A 16-year-old gave a better answer. If she [Prejean] had said those two sentences, that would have been a better answer."

On his video blog, he offered another alternate answer. "I would have said, ‘Hmm, Perez, that’s a great question, that’s a very hot topic in our country right now. And I think that’s a question that each state should decide for themselves."

He was looking for politically correct (i.e. liberal) and / or one that is, in fact, more political.  Not to mention, what if you don’t actually believe that answer?  The truth, to these left-wing elites, means little.

It wasn’t just this gossip columnist that was irked by her answer.  This aversion to a truthful answer extends to the Miss California organization itself.

Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California competition, released a statement to the media in response to Prejean’s answer last night.

"As co-director of the Miss California USA, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss California believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman," said Lewis in a statement. "I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit. I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone and religious beliefs have no politics in the Miss California family."

Co-director Shanna Moakler, the 1995 Miss USA, told the media that she fully supported Lewis’ statement.

Apparently, the Miss California organization can’t handle an honest answer that diverges from the liberal line without issuing a statement and denigrating their own representative.  At least Hilton had the guts to give Prejean credit for honesty before he tore her up.

And that honest also cost her more than just national scorn from the Left.

"She lost it because of that question. She was definitely the front-runner before that," Hilton said, adding that he’s "very happy with whom the judges chose," Miss North Carolina’s Kristen Dalton.

He’s a judge.  He would know.  He didn’t want her to politicize her answer, but he politicized the who event. 

From the Nobel Prize committee, who made past Peace Prize choices to tweak George W. Bush, to the Miss USA Pageant, the Left is showing just how much they tolerate dissent.  They don’t.  Oh the irony.

1. Our (apparently innumerate) President’s budget cuts.
2. Genesis. Genealogy and charts.
3. St. Cyril on Isaiah.
4. Intrinsically Anti-Semitic theology noted.
5. Kids and fire.
6. Market (not gov’mint fiat).
7. A doorknob.
8. A return to the fold and the faith.
9. Not liking The Shack so much.
10. HRM for swimmers.
11. Not liking Mr Obama … but still of the mind that Mr McCain would have been worse (and perhaps forgetting the benefits of gridlock regarding economic response).
12. A quote on carbon.
13. A thousand words on the prosperity gospel.
14. Training and life.
15. Faith and thought.
16. Faith and divorce … three myths.
17. Of God and Caesar.
18. An impressive bedroom floor booklist.
19. In my youth, B-school literary fancies ran to the Book of Five Rings today a more regrettable choice is apparently popular.
20. Planned Parenthood covering more crime.
21. Dance.