Stones Cry Out

Today, for brevity and the holiday, you’re getting the whole list that normally get posted on my (personal) blog. On other day’s I cull them for what I think might be of higher interest to what I perceive as the reader’s interest here.

Yet another wordle, the Trisagion prayer. Tomorrow Le Tour begins (some history … the cannibal and his domination here).

Fourth of July

• From the Scoop.
• And Orthodoxy.
• Coolidge.
• Reasons to celebrate.
• Best wishes from the other side of the planet (and a prayer request).
• From Jay.
• A religious holiday?

Not holiday related:

•  University President, what not to do.
• A book, noted and recommended (in fact a series). Clever title too.
• Of Art, Evil underlining Doestoevsky’s note that Beauty willl save the world.
• God and silence.
• Verse (or more beauty).
• Faith and the State.
• Religion and state, in Russia. And conservation there as well.
• Yaay.
• 7th day Adventist Baptist wordle (updated: see the comment).
• One of the strangest picture’s you’ll encounter.

When we think about the American Revolution, we tend to think about the war itself. But as John Adams once wrote, “The American Revolution was a change in the hearts and minds of the people.” As Jane Hampton Cook shows in her excellent book Battlefields and Blessings: Stories of Faith and Courage from the Revolutionary War, the change of hearts and minds took place over a period of 25 years before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. There is also no doubt that the Revolution would not have occurred if people of faith hadn’t been leading the way.

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St. John Chrysostom wrote, just a few years ago (in the 5th century), the Divine Liturgy used in by the Eastern Orthodox. The link is to a wordle-ization of it.

Mr Obama is, as we speak, swinging to center. A question for those few who read this blog and support Mr Obama. Apparently, he is reneging on his, perhaps most emphatic primary campaign promse, that of “immediate” pullout from Iraq. I’ve three question(s):

• Do you believe the shift a lie? Why is this the lie and not the prior promise?
• What shift, if taken by Mr Obama, would cause you to no longer support him?
• If there is none, what does mean?

Or, if you want to explain the “shift” is due to “changes on the ground in Iraq”, uhm, those changes have been plain to see for almost the entire primary season. It seems disingenuous to just notice it “now” when it’s politically convenient is not inherently dishonest.

This post spurred some conversation which led me to further reflections.  My neighbor the Jewish Atheist (blogging here), remarked:

You don’t see it as “problematic” that person A has to work his ass off for minuscule wages, send his kids to the crappy local public school, and go without decent health care, while person B gets paid a king’s ransom to sit on a thousand-dollar office chair in a climate-controlled office for 40 hours a week? B should just count his lucky stars and live it up and not worry about A?

Consider the following:

 Examine a group of  kids in elementary school (or secondary school), compete. Our measure of merit for the day, instead of schooling, healthcare, and wages is speed in a running race. One kid will win, one kid will come in last. It is also likely that the one of the kids coming in close to last will be far greater than those who come in the top few places. Effort it seems does not necessarily grant results.

One might ask, if the winner should feel “guilty” because he won the race, perhaps even won it easily. My contention is that the answer is no. There is no “guilt” inherent in being gifted with greater talents, better circumstances (one might imagine in this second case some of those in the bottom of the race had less “opportunity” at home and had less chance to exercise, perhaps too much food, or other disadvantages).

The (correct) answer it seems to me to this question follows the Scriptural suggestion noted by Mr Carter (linked in the above linked post), to whit the Pentateuchal suggestion that we not covet that which is our neighbors. The winning kid not feeling guilty is the other side of the coin to the losing kid not coveting the winner’s athletic gifts. Neither feeling is any way to arrive at love (agape/charity) for the “Other”. Read the rest of this entry

Going into the Democratic primary, it was the conventional wisdom that this would be a walk-away for whomever won the Democrats nod.  With war support low and Bush approval ratings in the tank, it would be no contest.  And when it looked more and more like Obama would be the Democrats’ candidate, the possibility of electing the nation’s first black President is tantalizing.

So then, how is this possible?

With the dust having finally settled after the prolonged Democratic presidential primary, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll shows Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama locked in a statistical dead heat in the race for the White House.

With just over four months remaining until voters weigh in at the polls, the new survey out Tuesday indicates Obama holds a narrow 5-point advantage among registered voters nationwide over the Arizona senator, 50 percent to 45 percent. That represents little change from a similar poll one month ago, when the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee held a 46-43 percent edge over McCain.

CNN Polling Director Keating Holland notes Tuesday’s survey confirms what a string of national polls released this month have shown: Obama holds a slight advantage over McCain, though not a big enough one to constitute a statistical lead.

Frankly, I, too, was prepared early on for a Democratic president.  I thought the combination of history and the Iraq war would sweep a Democrat into the White House, but the polls — first Gallup, now CNN –  keep getting tighter and tighter. 

It’s the Democrats election to lose.  It could happen.

[tags]US politics,US presidential election,Barack Obama,John McCain,polls,CNN[/tags]

• On the Square looks at the New England “Pregnancy Pact.”
• China. Pollution.
• A book to disabuse the notion of a violent angry (Old Testament) view of God.
• Rights and jobs, rightly put.
• A film to anticipate.

When you have a balance scale and you put weight on one side of it, it tilts until you have something on the other side to balance it.  The Fairness Doctrine, that the Left would love to bring back, works on this same principle; opinions being presented should represent all opinions, never mind the ratings.  In essence, this is yet another anti-market-forces argument for what would essentially be government-controlled media. 

What this would really do for discussion on the public airwaves is a topic for another day.  What I’m here to note is that the free market has already worked its magic.  On the Internet, there are plenty of opinions to choose from from the entire spectrum.  No need for a Fairness Doctrine there.  But it’s in TV and radio where Democrats really want this doctrine to work.  Never mind all the liberal bias that has been the monopoly for decades, when Rush Limbaugh (who just signed a $400 milllion contract) and Fox News are mentioned, Democrats suddenly discover media bias, though through polarized lenses, and rant on about anything to the right of Ted Kennedy.

But Limbaugh himself noted that, "I am balance", meaning that with all the liberal bias out there on one side of that balance scale, he was on the other side, working to get the information out that the Left wasn’t.  In total, both sides were finally getting aired.  (And the people have apparently agreed in a big way.)

Which brings us to the latest glaring example of this free market balance in action.  Fox News’ "Special Report with Brit Hume" reported on some extremely good war news last night.

     BRIT HUME: Welcome to Washington. I’m Brit Hume. The White House is giving Congress a new indication of how far Iraq’s leaders have come in hitting performance standards established by the U.S. Chief White House correspondent Bret Baier has the story.

     BRET BAIER: In a new nine-page progress report obtained by Fox, U.S. officials in Iraq assessed that 15 of the 18 original political, security and economic benchmarks set for the Iraqi government are satisfactory, while two are unsatisfactory, and one has a split result. The May 2008 report card has almost twice the number of satisfactory marks than the assessment one year ago when the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were grilled by Congress over the ’07 report card that showed eight unsatisfactory marks, eight satisfactory marks, and two benchmarks that could not be determined.

Later in the show, there is a discussion segment with folks from the Left and the Right.  During this, Hume made a bold prediction.

     HUME: Let me ask you this question, Mara, before you get to that. Both of you [Mara Liasson and probably Mort Kondrake] suggest that the word of this progress is going to get through. I suspect that this broadcast tonight — and maybe some others on this channel — are the only ones who are going to make a headline out of this. This is not going to be a big story elsewhere.
     LIASSON: I think, over time, if the violence goes down, over time-
     HUME: The violence has gone down.
     LIASSON: Yes, and if it continues to, that’s going to change people’s opinions.

(Emphasis mine.)  The Media Research Center indeed found this to be true.

     Indeed, neither the CBS Evening News nor NBC Nightly News mentioned Iraq while on ABC’s World News anchor Charles Gibson read a short update about "increasing dangers for U.S. troops in Afghanistan" since "in the month of June there were 28 American fatalities in Afghanistan, just one less than died in Iraq last month." CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 was also silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks.

No mention of this improvement, and indeed no mention that the fact that "28 American fatalities in Afghanistan, just one less than died in Iraq last month" means that Iraq casualties are at historic lows for the war.  In this, as in other things, Fox News is the balance the Left says is missing. 

We don’t need a Fairness Doctrine.  We need the free flow of information and opinions that the public can then sort out themselves.  If the mainstream media won’t report thing that don’t fit their narrative, they are not living up to their own stated standards, and have only themselves to blame for the destruction of their market- and mind-share.

[tags]media bias,Fox News,Rush Limbaugh,ABC News,CBS News,NBC News,CNN,Anderson Cooper,Fairness Doctrine,Brit Hume,Mara Liasson,Mort Kondrake[/tags]

• Being human.
• Global warming and the “scientific consensus myth.”
• Christians at war.
• Progressive culture and sustainability.
• Orthodox marriage tradition … one difference … no vows.
• The very catholic John McCain.

Spurred on by the prior post of Doug’s and in attempt to start something more of a conversation here, I’ll offer some thoughts on healthcare.

Liberals and progressives like to hold forth the ideal that healthcare should be affordable and available to everyone. After all, we’re a wealthy country. However, this is one might say a Juan Ponce de Leon gambit, that is holding forth a search for the fountain of life which alas doesn’t exist. Health care suffers from one basic problem, which is so far insurmountable (although I’ll suggest how it might be surmounted at the close of this little essay). The problem is, of course, that health care is infinitely expensive. The amount of care which might be applied to the dying grows almost without bound if one disregards cost. For almost a decade we have been told that the biological “sciences” have been expanding their capabilities exponentially (Moore’s Law) like the computer sciences except … at an even faster rate (the doubling period of capabilities is shorter). However this hasn’t substantially been, as yet, bringing down costs, just making ever more expensive options tantalizingly available. Cancers which would kill 5 years ago are sometimes defeated today, however at great financial cost.

The elephant being missed is, alas, rationing is a necessity. The question is comes down to, how to ration.  Does the market decide unfettered? Do the knuckleheads in our legislative offices decree how rationing will go down. The conservatives would claim that ability to pay is fairest. The liberals and progressives largely deny the existence of the elephant, which is alas either a lie or some other form of self-induced insanity/delusion.  Read the rest of this entry

(Dan Trabue, in a comment here to my previous post on health care, referenced a think tank paper that predicts cost reductions without a loss of effectiveness with a single-payer system, and took issue with my terming this "socialized medicine".  I decided to put my response up as a post.)

From the Wikipedia entry on health care in Canada: "Health care in Canada is funded and delivered through a publicly funded health care system, with most services provided by private entities."  So in Canada, it’s not government-run hospitals but it is a government funded system.  While the writer of this Wikipedia entry insists it’s not truly socialized medicine, the article at the link to the words "socialized medicine" does concede, "The term can refer to any system of medical care that is publicly financed, government administered, or both", I suppose depending on who you ask.

But who’s in charge of the hospitals or what you want to call it is immaterial, as the outcome is the same.  Britain has government-owned hospitals and Canada doesn’t, but the result is still that bureaucracies make medical decisions instead of doctors and patients.  HMOs were the Left’s bogeyman for years, but their solution is to institute the nation’s, perhaps the world’s, largest HMO/insurance company to make our individual health care decisions.  This makes no sense at all.

From the think tank paper cited:

[The Lewin Group, "a nationally respected nonpartisan
consulting firm"] estimates the proposal would cover 99.6 percent of all Americans without raising total national health spending. It would also save hundreds of billions over time – more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years – in national health spending, according to Lewin.

The Lewin Group is inexplicably closing its eyes to the Canadian system, blue-skying his prediction.  The Canadian system uses both government- and employer-based payment system, utilizing private insurance/doctors/hospitals, and they are in crisis.  They are not saving money (Claude Castonguay, quoted in the original post, notes that rationing and "injecting massive amounts of new money" has not helped).  They most certainly do not serve effectively (Wikipedia cites a study showing 57% of Canadians wait 4 or more week to see a specialist).  And it unfortunately affects everyone (read the Wikipedia article sections titled "Government Involvement" and "Private Sector").

Are you really going to believe predictions on the efficiency and cost effectiveness of a massive government program.  No government program of such a size ever comes in under budget; not Medicare, not Social Security, not the Iraq War, nothing. 

The Lewin Group says that the government could bargain for lower costs, and yet Canada’s are skyrocketing.  They may have gone down at the beginning, but as The Acton Institute’s Dr. Donald Condit notes:

Resource consumption increases when people think someone else is shouldering the cost. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman observed, “Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.” More than 60 years of “someone else” paying for health care has led to medical expense inflation. Our predominately third-party reimbursement “system,” beginning after World War II for employees and after Medicare in 1965 for the retired, has resulted in out-of-control spending. Increasing the role of government will spur unbridled medical services consumption and further harm the underserved. Medical resources are limited. An expanded government role in health care will necessarily lead to rationing, shortages of health-care providers, delay in treatment, and deterioration in quality of care.

Medicaid is a socialized medicine microcosm. In that system, price controls and bureaucracy result in rationing by deterring provider participation and delaying treatment, with subsequent deterioration in quality of care. Affluent individuals are able to access better health care outside of any government system.

And this "Medicare model" is what the EPI plan wants to take the "best elements" of, which they only enumerate later on as the federal government administering it.  How can the Left possibly say they care more for the less-fortunate in one breath, and in the other hold up health care rationing as "caring"?  This makes no sense at all.

Canada’s system currently compares favorably to the US in terms of a couple of cherry-picked statistics, but that’s like judging a pyramid scheme based on the first few generations.  They are losing on other fronts, like a drain of doctors.  And they are now at the tipping point of that pyramid scheme, where the choice is either returning a bigger role to the private sector (what Castonguay called "radical" and what conservatives call "sensible") or sliding further down the slope to socialism.  The Left, not wishing to have their utopian vision challenged, will no doubt push for the latter.

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• A conservative suggestion of SSM critiqued.
• Le Tour begins Saturday. A look back at the 1968 edition for a little history.
• What passes for slings and arrows in the judiciary. Different fonts, my gosh.
• Marriage in perspective, and Hillaire Belloc.
• Some beauty for your Tuesday morning.
• Servers, liturgy and gender.

From Joe Carter at EO, we find a gem:

10. Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?

Recent surveys have indicated that conservatives, on average, report being happier than liberals. Two psychologists wanted to know why, so they re-analyzed data from several large national and international surveys. The conservative-happiness relationship was not explained by differences in demographics or thoughtfulness but was largely explained by conservatives’ greater rationalization of inequality, including belief in a meritocratic world. According to the authors, such beliefs serve a “palliative function” or act as an “emotional buffer” when confronted with inequality. The same was true overseas, especially in countries with lower standards of living. Moreover, the authors found that the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives in the United States has widened over the last three decades as inequality has increased here.

Alternate explanation: Lack of covetousness makes one happier.

If indeed part of the reason is that conservatives view inequality as less problematic I’d offer perhaps it’s less disturbing to not be bothered by inequality because it’s intrinsic to reality. The old maxim, “Yes, the game (life) is rigged, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play.” Everyone’s abilities are unequally bestowed, and our luck in finding a way to maximize the abilities we do have to our benefit is unequally distributed as well. Furthermore, our parents and their parents all had unequal abilities and in an unequal fashion bestowed as they saw best what advantages they could on their children … unequally. This is not unjust. It is just a fact of life and nature.

I tell my children that if they are bored, that’s not a problem intrinsic to the universe around them, it’s a problem with them. The universe has plenty to interest everyone all the time (especially in the absence of TV and computers).

By the same token, if you’re bothered by inequality between men, that’s a problem with you, not the universe.

Mr Obama has denounced Mr Clark’s remarks on foreign policy and Mr McCain’s service, being shot down, tortured, and so on. The remark:

When moderator Bob Schieffer interjected that “Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down”, Clark responded: “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

Well, no. But, Mr Obama is running for President. Is he doing that out of loyalty to his country and a sense of duty … or is it out of a personal drive for power or personal aggrandizement. That is a question that doesn’t need to be asked of Mr McCain. He put his life on the line for the country. Mr Obama has not. The distinction remains. Mr Obama, in theory, may be as patriotic as the next veteran like Mr McCain and thousands of others. But … unlike the veterans and those serving … and I might add like me, his (and my) claims of patriotism remain untested by fire.

No it does not qualify one for President, but it does give us some valuable information about the man and his character. Information which is lacking in the case of Mr Obama.

As the promise of Universal Healthcare continues to be sold to the American public by Democrats, the anecdotes fly. Look here; a case failure of our healthcare system! Look there; another person falls through the cracks!

The problem is, it’s the big picture that continues to put the lie to the selling of socialized medicine. As I’ve noted before, the system in Oregon will deny cancer patients life-saving or -extending medicine, but will gladly pay for life-ending “treatment”. You can decry all you want the profit motive of the private enterprise system, but with socialized medicine the profit motive is just as motivating, with a bigger bureaucracy larger than any insurance company you can name calling the shots.

And as Christians, is this the kind of system that we want to be encouraging? We’d have rationed healthcare (all socialized systems wind up here, sooner or later), equally poor quality, and a respect for life on par with Oregon’s.

But hey, it would be “equal”. Wonderful.

This bit of “hope” and “change”, however, has already been done on this scale. And how has it worked? Let’s talk to one of the founding fathers.

Back in the 1960s, [Claude] Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: “the father of Quebec medicare.” Even this title seems modest; Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.”

“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

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