From a news article on the measures Greece is taking to deal with their financial crisis.

Among the most significant features of the plan, a Greek government official said, would be a measure making it easier for the government to lay off some of the many thousands of public sector workers, whose low levels of productivity and high wages are a big contributor to Greece’s debt problem. Until now, the government has not been able to lay off civil servants, whose employment rights are in effect constitutionally guaranteed.

Another reform high on the list is removing the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors like health care, transportation and energy and allowing private investment. Economists say that the liberalization of trucking routes — where a trucking license can cost up to $90,000 — and the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe.

What right-wing rag would point out how reducing government payrolls, and more privatization, including in the health care industry, would be useful parts of a plan to save money?

Answer below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry

There is an encouraging move afoot by conservative evangelicals to deal constructively with the immigration issue and to find a solidly biblical approach not necessarily in line with majority Republican or Democratic positions.

The effort is headed by Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Matt Staver, dean of the Liberty University Law School, and Samuel Rodriquez, head of the largest evangelical hispanic group in the nation.

Today’s news:

A growing chorus of conservative evangelical leaders has broken with their traditional political allies on the right. They’re calling the Arizona law misguided and are attempting to use its passage to push for federal immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

The group, which includes influential political activists such as Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing, and Mathew Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law, will soon begin lobbying Republican leaders in Washington to support comprehensive immigration reform under President Obama.

But a big part of their job is to first persuade rank-and-file evangelicals to get on board.

“There’s a misconception among people at the grass roots that the pathway to citizenship is amnesty, and it’s not, but we have to overcome that,” said Staver, who heads the law school at the university founded by Jerry Falwell. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”

Staver and Land have partnered with the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, an influential Hispanic evangelical figure, and Rick Tyler — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s longtime spokesman and head of Gingrich’s new values-based organization — to try to draft a consensus evangelical position on immigration reform.

Good morning (and a belated happy mothers day). Links?

1. VE day in Moscow through Ukrainian eyes.
2. Thoughts on banking.
3. Aging populations.
4. On a remark by a Mr Klein.
5. Candy in school.
6. Marriage … some thoughts.
7. Ya think?
8. Mannequin as cultural marker.
9. An excellent way to recast the “Obama: Socialist or not?” question.
10. Exactly.
11. Miranda.
12. Kagan and Meiers.
13. The next American rifle?

Regarding the incident, at a Morgan Hill high school, in which several students were told they couldn’t wear shirts with the American Flag on Cinco de Mayo, Roger Ebert gives us this Leftish bit of wisdom,

Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July.

Good morning.

1. A word which for the pre-adolescent will trigger a snigger.
2. A suggestion for the progressives.
3. Beautiful curves.
4. On immigration.
5. How the “reality party” does business.
6. And then you hit a switch and the it switches to economy mode and gets 30 mpg … or as is more likely, uhm, not.
7. Some notes on that much linked Onion piece on the Constitution.
8. A man without a country? 
9. Hmm. 
10. Well, now that one of our elected official dunces has said so … it must be true.
11. A story about love.
12. For the cricket race fans.
13. A book noted.
14. Greece.
15. A parental dispute. Well, that’s the wrong decision. I’d think that either the judges should have ruled ala Solomon that the kid be cut in two and the parents can name their half as they please …. or the parents get five minutes to clear this up and come out in agreement on a name or the court would rule the kid will forever be named Farky McSnarky (or something similar).

Good morning.

1. On the NY bombing attempt, everything is just peachy … or not?
2. A look at the terrorists family life.
3. Now, I don’t know who Mr Miliband is, but I think the statement “part Polish, part Belgian, and part Jewish” doesn’t need modification. A person can reflect and represent his national origins and his ethnic background in “parts” without any difficulty.
4. Supply side.
5. Ethnic issues in the Russian Federation … and this is not unrelated.
6. Turks and Orthodoxy.
7. A book of interest.
8. The balloon is still inflated?
9. The state of economics.
10. Perhaps Mr Obama’s “Katrina Moment” is not in the place you’re looking.
11. Ride a bike. Race a bike. Did you know in 1920 in the US professional bike racing was a much bigger sport than baseball?
12. Why write (or blog).
13. Music for the morning.
14. Reflections on AZ.

Moore made some money making the movie "Sicko", which extolled the virtues of the Cuban health care system, such as it is.  Margaret Chan might be trying to do the same for the North Korean one.

GENEVA (Reuters) – North Korea’s health system would be the envy of many developing countries because of the abundance of medical staff that it has available, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, speaking a day after returning from a 2-1/2 day visit to the reclusive country, said malnutrition was a problem in North Korea but she had not seen any obvious signs of it in the capital Pyongyang.

No, nothing to see here, as long as you look where we say you can, and only in the "obvious" places.  But it gets better.

North Korea — which does not allow its citizens to leave the country — has no shortage of doctors and nurses, in contrast to other developing countries where skilled healthcare workers often emigrate, she said.

This allows North Korea to provide comprehensive healthcare, with one "household doctor" looking after every 130 families, said the head of the United Nations health agency, praising North Korea’s immunization coverage and mother and child care.

"They have something which most other developing countries would envy," Chan told a news conference, noting that her visit was a rare sign of the communist state’s willingness to cooperate with outside agencies.

See?  All we really need to do is seal the borders, and we’d have the best healthcare in the world!  We could solve the illegal immigration and health care issues with one stone.  Then we’d be the envy of the developing world, and be complimented during the rare times we talked to anyone on the outside.  (Hey, that solves our "lost our standing in the world" problem, too!)

Chan spent most of her brief visit in Pyongyang, and she said that from what she had seen there most people had the same height and weight as Asians in other countries, while there were no signs of the obesity emerging in some parts of Asia.

But she said conditions could be different in the countryside.

News reports said earlier this year that North Koreans were starving to death and unrest was growing as last year’s currency revaluation caused prices to soar.

And that’s how you solve the obesity problem; centrally control the economy to invoke food shortages and starve your people!  It just seems so simple.  (And I gotta’ wonder if Jonathan Lynn, the Reuters news service writer, had a grin on his face as he deadpanned that last paragraph.)

Chan, who described her visit as "technical and professional" — in other words avoiding politics — said the North Korean government’s readiness to work with international agencies, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, was encouraging.

The Global Fund requires countries it works with to provide sound data, account for resources contributed and allow access by officials, she noted.

"I can confirm that at least in the area of health the government is receptive to engagement with international partners," she said.

Which, when translated, means, "They’re ready for their bailout."

Kim Jong Il (who is a man) has eliminated obesity, stopped illegal immigration, is complimented by world organizations, and has held on to his country’s doctors.  Margaret, you need to emphasize this in your documentary.  I smell Oscar!

Some may argue that South Korea, the wealthier southern capitalist neighbor, is doing better economically, but you know something, Margaret; I bet they have fat kids there.

Good morning.

1. A book on notice.
2. Amazon history meme. My first purchase was, oddly enough, a movie … Peking Opera Blues in 1999. My first book was A Deepness in the Sky.
3. Dealing with controversy.
4. Yes. Do go in, its stunningly beautiful inside.
5. Not exactly safe.
6. Background on Miranda rights.
7. $800 billion down the rat hole.
8. No silly, we can’t do that ’cause he hasn’t been tortured yet, duh.
9. Isn’t “not heeding your own advice” hypocrisy unless you are repentant?
10. Some politically incorrect notions.

For cryin’ out loud! I thought I was making a joke with my, “No word yet on whether any Tea Partiers were involved” comment regarding the arrest of Faisal Shahzad for the attempted bombing in Times Square. Yet here is video of an MSNBC analyst stating that the attempted bombing will strengthen – are you ready? – the Tea Party.

Are liberal analysts really so incapable of thinking?

No, I’m not referring to the Arizona immigration law (that does not impose any new documentation requirements).  I’m talking about a national, biometric ID card.  Liberals are shocked — SHOCKED — that this is being proposed by Democrats.

But this conservative is not surprised at all.  In Georgia, they digitize your fingerprint and print it on your driver’s license.  This was passed, on a party line vote, when Democrats controlled the state.  Having committed no crime, your fingerprint is in the database.  And now Democrats on the national level are essentially doing the same thing.

This is a freedom thing, and it meshes with the idea of the state taking all control over your life, from what health care you buy to obtaining your fingerprint without charges.  More government control.  That’s the direction Democrats want to take us.

Good morning.

1. Hopefully he did more than “confront” his daughter.
2. Willing ignorance by the left. One might wonder in the wake of CMU and the hocky stick lies how the notion that the willingness to sell off fact for partisan causes is not strictly on one side of the aisle. Perhaps agnotology is the word for that?
3. Having blamed Bush and global warming on any number of natural occurrences which were clearly not at fault, some on the left are curious why the right is not as dumb. 
4. I guess redefining the problem away hasn’t fixed things.
5. I for one, wish the “under the bus” phrase would just go away and die quietly.
6. Couture. 
7. Our small President.
8. Mr Gore’s example setting.
9. A gentleman’s questions on Arizona.
10. Another book reading/blogging project.
11. Physics links.
12. That shouldn’t have had to be stated.
13. Open immigration at odds with the welfare state.
14. For the Ms Palin fans.

Or maybe not.

Via HotAir, NY mayor, and staunch anti-gun proponent, Michael Bloomberg recently speculated* that the bomber was someone upset about the healthcare [sic] bill. From the article,

Law enforcement officials don’t know who left the Nissan Pathfinder behind, but at this point the Mayor believes the suspect acted alone.

“If I had to guess, twenty five cents, this would be exactly that,” Bloomberg said. “Homegrown maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”

Yet word comes in that Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen recently returned from a trip to Pakistan, has been arrested after he attempted to flee to Dubai.

No word yet on whether any Tea Partiers were involved.

* actually, “speculate” is too generous.

One of the wonderful moments in St. Augustine’s Confessions returned to me in force from out of the blue. Now, I’ve not been a Christian for long in my adult life, having been raised within the fold of the Church, but having fallen away for 20 years of my adult life until fairly recently. The point of that observation is that regular and ordinary Christian culture is often new to me. The point of that observation is that I have questions about my experiences now as a Christian for which I lack the context and background of one who has been within the community for that missing time as an adult. This question in turn requires a little background or stage setting, which in turn can be found below the fold. Read the rest of this entry