Nina Totenberg is an NPR news correspondent.  She’s supposed to report the news straight and without bias.  This has not kept her from offering opinions over the years anyway.  She went so far as to wish AIDS on Jesse Helms or his grandchildren. 

So Charles Krauthammer wanted to know the difference between what she’s been doing for at least the past 15 years, and what Juan Williams did that got him fired.  Juan is, or was, an NPR news analyst, which Krauthammer argues might have less of an appearance-of-objectivity standard than a correspondent.  So he asks, what’s the line that Juan crossed?

No one can give him a straight answer, not even Totenburg herself.

NPR’s long history of liberal bias answers the question itself.  You don’t get a second look if you wish death to a Republican or his grandchildren.  But express your honest fears, even acknowledging that they are irrational, and you’re out the door. 

There should no longer be any question whatsoever of the overwhelming bias of the NPR news organization.  Intellectual honesty demands an accounting of the Juan Williams firing, after which that is the inescapable conclusion.

More links this week since I didn’t get around to it last week.

What’s keeping this recession going for so long?  Ask James Madison. Yes, that James Madison.

The 6th Circuit judge that upheld the health care reform individual mandate to buy insurance has really redefined terms in order to make his ruling.

With that reasoning, Judge Steeh thoroughly unmoors the commerce clause from its concern with actual economic activity that Congress can regulate to a more amorphous realm of “economic decisions” which apparently include the decision to NOT enter into commerce at all.

A better example of an activist judge you’re not likely to find soon.

Roger Ebert, in reviewing “Waiting for Superman”, acknowledges that the private school highlighted does better than public school, proclaiming “Our schools do not work”.  His solution?  (Wait for it…)  More money for public schools, for the ones that don’t work instead of encouraging what does work and at typically a lower cost per student.  Liberal education policies are now just talking points rather than reasoned arguments.

Remembering a sociopathic mass murderer, who is extolled by liberal students T-shirts everywhere.  (No, not Charles Manson. I’m talking about Che Guevara.)

The Rise of the (Conservative, Christian) Woman in American politics.

Juan Williams responds to the NPR sacking.  Ah, the tolerant Left in action.

And to close it out, two cartoons to make up for missing a week.  I just love Chuck Asay.  (Click for larger versions.)

Good morning.

1. A word from the Holy mountain.
2. So, if you didn’t watch the VC youtube lecture on individual mandate, something of a summary.
3. On the Mr Williams firing, with lots of links.
4. More thoughts on that here.
5. 90 TB? At home no less.
6. On religion and higher ed.
7. Better than “going for dirt”, going for irony and comedy.
8. Here’s the thing, lots of people complain about Ms O’Donnell. But those fragments I see quoted are quite reasonable in context.
9. The first new coming out that approaches the efficiency of my 2000 model. Perhaps in five or six years they’ll manage to improve on that benchmark. 
10. Talking about classified information. I think the administration’s strategy is to lie so often that credibility is completely lost. That way real secrets are safe.
11. A book noted.
12. Blasphemy just changed its name.
13. I’ll huff and puff and … well, take a look.

This song has been going through my head the past week, so now I’m sticking it in yours.  🙂

"Life in My Day"
Newsong
More Life (2003)

Good morning.

1. Stimulus irony.
2. Gitmo in the news.
3. BP’s payment and consequence.
4. Transplants and an interesting development.
5. The future of skin art?
6. A different way to look at H/S cultures. A few months ago I was considering the thesis (I still am) that H/S cultures are happier, just not wealthier, than the Western individualistic one. Perhaps the “more natural” fit with human nature is the reason why.
7. A VC threesome, on the individual mandate and Constitutional considerations, the historical origins of the separation of Church and State in US jurisprudence, and why lawyers seem to prefer technicalities to ethics.
8. Scary tales.
9. Two links to Serbia and cinema.
10. Speaking of cinema, a film everybody should see noted.
11. Heh.
12. One of the consequences of progressives insistence on ‘good racism’, is that they need to constantly maintain their artificial hierarchal victimology.
13. Brain drain, democracy and the third world.

It’s a trend that has been going on for some years now, but the latest manifestation of it is troubling the pot sellers.

Coffee shops legally selling cannabis have been a feature of Amsterdam’s streets for more than 30 years, both a magnet for younger tourists and a symbol of the Dutch brand of liberal exceptionalism.

But the fragrant haze found in the city’s 200 or so establishments could be dispersed under plans by the incoming government, which is looking to roll back the “tolerance policy” that has allowed such coffee shops to operate since 1976.

Coinciding with a tightening of laws around prostitution – another tolerated industry – the authorities’ new stance on cannabis is raising questions as to whether Dutch society is moving away from laisser-faire traditions, which have included some of the earliest gay-friendly policies in Europe and the provision of free contraception to teenage girls.

Certainly the outlook for coffee shops is bleak. Among the few policies that the three parties in the new coalition agree upon is the need to cut back on, if not entirely abolish, coffee shops. The governing agreement released last week laid out plans that will force them to become member-only clubs and shut down those located within 350 metres of schools.

This comes, as I said after years of gradual restrictions.

The new stance comes after years of gradual tightening of the rules governing cannabis sales and a 2007 ban on the selling of alcohol in the coffee shops. After proliferating in the 1980s and early 1990s, their number in the Netherlands has halved from a peak of 1,400 in 1995 to just over 700 today.

Is this a result of conservative knee-jerk reactions, pandering to their base?  No, it appears that there’s a good reason for this.

For Paul Schnabel, director of the Social and Cultural Planning Office, a state advisory board, the move reflects a growing view that the tolerance policies have not achieved their aims of controlling the ills associated with drugs and prostitution, rather than a recasting of Dutch liberalism.

“There’s a strong tendency in Dutch society to control things by allowing them. It’s always been there, a pragmatic tradition, typical of a trading nation. We look for better alternatives to problems that we know exist anyway,” he explains.

But, he adds, “Dutch society is less willing to tolerate than before. Perhaps 30 years ago we were a more easy-going society.”

Heh, a "recasting of Dutch liberalism".  That should read, "the Dutch becoming more conservative", I think.  And liberals here in the US keep insisting that this policy, controlling things by allowing them, will work here, but the society that they hold up as a model, is moving away from that.  Will we learn from them (I’m looking at you, California)? 

And what are some of these ills?

The equation that led to the policy of tolerance has changed in the past decade, as large-scale crime around both coffee shops and the legal sex trade became more visible. In particular, the absence of legal means for coffee shops to acquire the cannabis they sell has highlighted its association with organised criminality.

But, but, I thought legalizing pot would get the criminals out of the equation?  It hasn’t, and former allies are even turning against this.

But the open-minded instincts that helped foster the tolerance policies in the first place have also come to be questioned. And it is not just the far-right that is opposing coffee shops. The traditional parties of power on the centre-right, the Christian Democrats and the Liberal VVD party, have also moved against the tolerance policies they once promoted.

It’s not working there.  Why do we think it’ll work there?  Is American liberalism paying attention to the Dutch when the facts go against their policies?  Appears not.

Good morning.

1. Repulsive? How about unsurprising.
2. One year back … 
3. A cool drawing.
4. Finding common ground … with Mr Gerson.
5. Selling tech.
6. Advice.
7. Hmm. But are on the verge of stealing on of our companies unofficial mottos, “Sucks Less.” 
8. A question for those who question the competence of Ms O’Donnell.
9. While its a little late for graduation addresses, this feels like one.
10. Mr Stevenson and some of his verse regarding the progressives of his day.
11. So dear, what did you do today?
12. Cinema and conservative/libertarian separation.
13. Mooooooo.

My daughter related that in health class today they saw a small film on two girls, on anorexic and the other (her friend) was bulimic. Her remark on coming home, “Now I feel fat.” 

FAIL!!!

Good morning.

1. What? Was Monday “weird literary comparison day” and nobody informed me? Mr Greenwald starts the game off with a really weird allusion in his first sentence. Now is that the Mr Baum witch (Dorothy) or the Mr McGuire (Wicked) one? Does he really believe that there exist there that the set of decent serious people has 100% overlap with those who think Ms McDonnell is “the Wicked Witch.” Seriously? That’s just dumb.
2. The Vatican apparently is not to be outdone on WLC day. I say apparently because you can’t always take Protestants as accurate when the report on what Roman Catholics say.
3. The word canon and what it meant (and should mean?).
4. “Do-over” and mortgages. I think you’d be hard pressed to come up with a worse idea than that one, economically speaking. 
5. Uncertainty and regulation.
6. Follow up on the Constitutional discussion regarding compulsory insurance.
7. Russia, a call to “man up.” 
8. So, if your labor ain’t worth $14 an hour -> no job.
9. Recommended reading for the thoughtful.

Recently, a conversation led me to read this book Stalin’s Slave Ships: Kolyma, the Gulag Fleet, and the Role of the West which was an interesting and quick read. This led me to a question … before which I pose, I will offer some background.

The Kolyma basis is a river valley system in the arctic and sub-arctic regions of western Siberia. This region is rich in mineral resources, and in 1932 Stalin decided that retrieving the gold from the river valley was important, and that free-market was not the solution. Instead, perhaps typically, he decided to use slave labor. For the first few years, Kolyma was one of the “better” prison/slave camps in the gulag system, but that changed in the later 30s to being the very worst. About a million persons were shipped to Kolyma between 1932 and 1953. The first parts of the journey by rail and part by sea and it is on the sea portion of this voyage the book noted above concentrates. The vessels used in this part of the passage were mostly obtained from the US. Mr Bollinger points out that he can find no evidence that anyone in th West was aware of the purpose of those ships when they were sold to the Soviets. During the war, the management of the Kolyma fleet, as did virtually everything in the Soviet world, moved to the military. The Kolyma fleet split time during this period between transporting slaves and stuffs to the Kolyma camps and transporting war material as part of the US/Soviet Lend-Lease program. 

Military books that I have read on WWII point out that the victory over the Axis powers was a near thing. Many authors point to a small number of crucial decisions and events which if had been made or fallen out differently would have likely meant that Hitler may have won. The US Lend-Lease program has been pointed as a one of the important factors in giving the Soviets the breathing room to stave of defeat. The point to take away from this is Lend-Lease was critical to the Allied war effort. There were two routes for ships supplying the Soviets, an Atlantic route up past Norway to Murmansk and a Western/Pacific route. The Kolyma fleet was part of this latter group. Prior to the US directly entering the war and Japan/US hostilities being in the open, Soviet (non-US) ships were preferred for transport of material via the Pacific route.

The Kolyma vessels were in a rough trade. They were older steam powered ships that plied ice choked Arctic seas and were badly in need of repairs. Many times these ships put in they were repaired by US shipyards. 

Which leads us to the question at hand. 

Consider yourself in the role of the American President. Kolyma vessels have docked in your ports for Lend Lease operations. By 1944 to 1945 two things have become clear:

1. Germany’s fate is sealed and the Allied victory is assured.
2. Kolyma is a part of the gulag/slave camp system and these ships needing repair are part of that system.

Recall also, Stalin and the Soviets at this point are allies and Lend-Lease has been a vital part of the war effort. 

So. Do you authorize repair of the vessels? These vessels split time between slave transport and carrying Lend-Lease material. What do you do? What records might you leave regarding your decision?

Historically, the repairs were made. Was that the right decision?

This is a question, probably mainly for the right, but the those readers on the left might offer their two cents. 

The $800b stimulus package has now been acknowledged by the President and pretty much everyone with their heads not in the sand to have been a waste. This criticism is especially strongly held on the right. However, what if the stimulus package instead of being useless road projects and expansions of bridges to nowheres (for example expanding the Byrd airport) had only one single project/point to which it was aimed. That is to say, all $800 billion was allocated to one thing. That the stimulus only allocation was to build and install 40-50 new Gen-IV nuclear reactors (or best current technological practice) throughout the country accompanied by ’emergency’ executive orders designed to steamroll any and all environmental and green-activist objections. Furthermore these plants might have been be small and quickly installable and all fast-tracked to be on-line by, say, late October 2010. 

Here’s the question(s).

1. Would that have changed your opinion of the stimulus package? 
2. Would that have changed today’s economy for the better? 
3. Would the election in three weeks from now be trending differently? 

I offer that the my answer might be yes (and with an “alas” on the last) to all three questions. What d’y’all think?

What happens when you give all sorts of socialist "freebie" to your populace, and then realize (sooner or later) that it’s going to cost too much, and thus try to take away a tiny portion of those "freebies"?

This.

PARIS, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Striking French oil refinery workers shut down a fuel pipeline supplying Paris and its airports on Friday and airport workers grounded some flights as protests mounted to derail an unpopular pension reform.

France’s airport operator played down worries of fuel shortages, but strikes at all of the country’s 12 refineries and fuel depot blockades prompted motorists to stock up on petrol.

Truck drivers also were set to join the fray as momentum built for a day of street rallies on Saturday.

The widening protests have become the biggest challenge facing President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is struggling with low popularity ratings as he tries to appease financial markets by stemming a ballooning pension shortfall.

This is why ObamaCare is so dangerous.  It will cost too much at some point (history bears this out) and either services will have to be cut back or taxes raised or (more likely) both.  In America we don’t have the same socialist culture and expectations they have in France, but that’s our future if we continue down this road.

As Christians, should we abandon the political parties that have moved to the left and right and establish a radical center? Calvin College professor Steve Monsma argues that we should, in a post at the fine new blog at Q Ideas. He has tired of the polarization of politics and finds much of it unchristian. He writes:

This leads me to plead for a radical Christian center.  Centrism may appear to be wishy-washy and undecided or so apathetic that one refuses to take sides.  But a radical Christian center is far from being either.  It is radical in that it goes to the root of today’s political issues, asking basic questions of purpose, value, and worth.  It puts the common good ahead of partisan advantage and narrow special interests.  If you don’t think that is radical, you haven’t been paying much attention to this fall’s partisan election campaigns

I’m not surprised that Dr. Monsma is exasperated. Generally, Christian academics don’t like partisan politics, for two good reasons. First, in the heat of political fights, there tends to be a suspension of godly character. Second, political campaigning is, for the most part, the repetition of simple messages.

While I personally sympathize with the need for more moderate positions on many issues and cringe at the tired rhetoric of political extremes, I don’t believe a move to the center is the answer. And to call centrist political positions “Christian” is as misguided as it is for progressives or conservatives to assume that there enlightenment is generated by the Light of world.

There is much for Christians and all people of good will to dislike about political campaigns and the methodology and practices of the major political parties, but it isn’t rigid political positions that make partisan politicking distasteful or less Christian.

It would be a shame for Christians to eschew partisanship, which is the sinew of our political process and has helped produce nearly 250 years of stability and peaceful transition of power. Instead we should call and work for three things in political argument– at all times, but especially in the most virulent campaign months:

Authentic passion

Flamboyant language, exaggerated charges, and the demonization and stereotyping of the opposition are particularly distasteful when they rely on borrowed passion. We roll our eyes at the repeated talking points that are foisted upon by an endless stream of political spokespersons or candidates who fail to do their own thinking. Our response is totally different when we hear the deep groans of an aggrieved soul, whether it is a partisan of the left or right. Authentic passion is the lubricant of healthy and vibrant political discourse.

Robust honesty

Nothing makes political argumentation more unChristian than dishonesty. We have to continue to insist on honesty from the left, the right, the center, or the uncommitted. We need to end not only bold lies, but the disguised lies the pervert understanding. Christians in the political process will not only tell the truth, but will refuse to tell a sideways truth that gives a false impression, or will lead the listener to a false conclusion.  We suffer from an avalanche of statements that—although not lies—routinely hide the truth. We are disgusted when politicians use statistics or characterizations that are true on the surface but impede genuine clarity. Robust honesty in the political process will restore confidence.

Uncommon civility

Just as damaging and unChristian is campaigning that tears apart people, disrespects opponents, and inflames the base obsessions of constituencies. Ad hominen attacks damage politics and keep good people from choosing to subject themselves to the character assassination of the political game. Candidates and campaign leaders often decry negative campaigning, then turn to the tactics if they fall behind. Poll numbers improve when candidate tear at the fabric of the opponent’s character, but they leave us all disgusted with partisan politics. As Christians, we should insist on uncommon civility from those who seek to represent us in government.

Good morning.

1. Obama’s town hall meetings from the right.
2. Cell phones, women, and the third world.
3. Words from the Elder Seraphim.
4. A book noted.
5. Photo-tech: dancing water.
6. A different diet strategy.
7. Strength training advice for endurance athletes.
8. As Constitutional protections and amendments are discussed, I think penning this one into an Amendment might be a good idea (HT: Borepatch). For those naive enough to figure the Tea Party is “about racism” might pause to consider that probably such a notion would get almost unanimous support from the T-P supporters and would be one that protects minorities at that place where the rubber meets road (or truncheon meets flesh). 
9. Real or photoshop? Does it matter?
10. King David and guys in a deep hole.
11. Good advice for the right.
12. Support for my thesis concerning the left and the 10th Commandment. Specifically, “Most middle class Americans of my acquaintance would be much happier if they lived on a much less steeply-sloped income curve,” … and much of the middle class of my acquaintance would not … but I think that is because his acquaintance is almost certainly more left leaning than mine.

One of the ongoing themes that I endeavor, with little success, is to identify critical ideas on which the progressive/left and conservatives (and for that matter libertarians) differ in their views of political and social matters. If have the good fortune to have two liberal/progressive dialog partners here. In recent conversations over the last few months this difference has arisen and I wonder if this point of difference is applicable to a wider groups, i.e., right/left, and significant.

The key point in to consider is that the progressive/left in question has abandoned  the 10th Commandment while the right has not. The 10th commandment speaks against coveting one’s neighbors possessions. A simple ethical generalization of this is that this is an injunction against considering one’s economic condition by comparison with ones neighbor. Read the rest of this entry