Near Miss

I have never seen Keith Oberman before. I have read about him, but didn't get the full KO Experience until I saw this YouTube clip on HotAir (Hat-tip: Insty I think)

He interviews a former CIA guy (Larry Johnson, who seems to be well known around the blogosphere as well -- I need to get out more). Johnson asserts that the London car bombs would have made a lot of noise but were unlikely to hurt anybody unless they were inside the car with the bomb. He and Oberman then go on a joint tirade about why we're in Iraq and why the London bomb gets more attention than bombs in Baghdad.

I'll cede that petrol and propane and nails seem less sophisticated than Iranian IEDs. But it plays into a media narrative that every foiled plot was "a bunch of jokers," "dropouts from al Qaeda," &c. The war isn't really real, terrorists aren't dangerous, we've been at war with Eurasia all along...

Imagine that 9/11 had been foiled. What a bunch of losers! Get this, they had box cutters. And they thought they would take over the plane and -- wait for it -- take over the cockpit and fly these planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon!

What a bunch of bozos -- clearly, we have nothing to fear from the likes of these losers.

Freedom is Popular

I know that Ron Paul isn't very popular around these parts, but this speech about freedom and liberty is stellar.

A Call for Pragmatism

The setting is the upcoming debate over the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or Schip, a brawl that could well determine the future direction of U.S. health care. Democrats see expanding Schip as the first step toward socialized medicine. If Republicans fail to meet that challenge with their own more compelling plan for market-based, consumer-driven reform, it may prove the beginning of the end of today's private model.

Kimberly Strassel, my new favorite WSJ Ed Page writer, details the Democrats' plan to incrementally enact Socialized medicine -- and GOP plans to stop it. It's an outstanding bit of inside baseball that has the potential to decide the World Series.

Rather than risk a 1993 full frontal, HillaryCare assault, they will provide health care "for the children." Then they will increase Medicare with a bailout of UAW workers and lowering the enrollment age to 55. Pretty soon, a huge majority of Americans will be getting health care from Uncle Sam, and the final takeover will be easy.

Schip is the first step. The program, with its $25 billion budget, was originally designed to provide insurance to only the poorest children. Democrats want to throw an additional $60 billion at it, expanding Schip's rolls by three million. They would expand eligibility so much that as many as half joining would drop private insurance to do so. Even adults could sign up.

Next: Even as Democrats work to expand Schip to cover older Americans, they'd expand Medicare to cover younger Americans. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell is said to have recently floated the idea of allowing the struggling Big Three auto makers to enroll workers in Medicare at the age of 55, or 10 years early. Consider this a pilot program for dropping Medicare's age limit overall and instantly subjecting tens of millions more Baby Boomers to the government's tender care.

Democrats will meanwhile argue the only way to pay for Schip and other expanded programs is to gut Medicare Advantage and similar free-market reforms. See how clever? Swallow up ever more Americans into federal programs, banish any last vestiges of popular market plans, and voilà! It is Hillarycare! Only nobody ever had to use the dreaded word!

They are going to fight at the margins: a little more socialism here, a little more there. A good friend tells me he's ready to let the GOP lose a few more elections to get "real conservatives" in power. Another 16 years from Goldwater to Reagan. At the same time, the ever restless libertarian wing is crying for more purity.

I know it is unpopular to be so impure but I am calling folks to get their head and heart and wallets into the game. We are going to lose in Iraq, and we're going to lose the most innovative health care system in the world. Or we can write a position paper on abolishing Medicare.

Lookout, Kids

Oh Crap! ThreeSources is Rated 'R' Thanks to crap (3x) and murder (1x). I could just kill the guy that's bringing us down.



Hat-tip: the truly vile, NC-17 A Second Hand Conjecture

Dear HP

I haven't written an angry letter to a company in a long time. Today, I broke my record. My new HP computer -- otherwise quite satisfactory -- arrived without Operating System disks. Instead, they have a disk creator program that hectors you into making them yourself (Windows Vista on 2 DVDs or 11 CDs).

I rolled my eyes a little at this cost cutting, but warmed up to ALL CAPS as the program doesn't work. You put in a DVD, wait forever... and it says



I emailed tech support, who suggested that I use DVD+R (even though it says DVD-Rs should work). I ordered a spool of those and got the same error today. Losing the immigration bill and toasting a couple more disks was too much. I snapped, and replied:

I ordered a spool of DVD+R media (I had been using DVD-R), but that still doesn't work. I have now wasted eight blank DVDs and many hours of my time. I am very frustrated: HP saved 50 cents not including an Operating System disk but I have wasted 6-8 bucks, bought media I did not need and spent hours of time -- and still have no OS disks to show for it.

How much is it to buy the GODDAM DISKS?

I can burn other DVDs and CDs, this happens only burning recovery disks.

I have bought several HPs and been happy -- but I am very angry. Maybe you could stop shipping the "Q" key on the keyboard; I'm sure your customers wouldn't mind fashioning one out of clay.

jk

Yes, AlexC, you may extol the Myriad Macintosh virtues in the comments if you so choose.

iPhones

Today is the day they come up, I'll be ordering my online.

But Philly Mayor John Street is camped out for an iPhone.

"I think it's not a bad a thing for a person who needs that device [the iPhone} to sit and wait. I could have used influence to get one, but I don't work that way."

You have got to be f*cking kidding me.

The mayor suddenly discovered ethics.

Just before his remarks, 22-year-old Larry West of Mount Airy confronted the mayor.

"How can you sit here with 200 murders in the city already?" West asked.

Street announced that "I'm doing my job."

He then left for City Hall, and it was not clear when he would return to the line. He assigned his spot to a male aide, who declined to be identified.

"I'm just holding a spot for the mayor," he said.

Well known for his Blackberry addiction, his Honor will be disappointed to know that despite the massive cool factor, it will still be available to subpoena.

I seem to recall that the mayor had trouble remembering that he had a Blackberry during the "bugging" investigation... but I can't find any articles about that.

Speaking of thieves and iPhones.

Watch this video...

Crazy guy steals the microphone... what's with people and FoxNews?

Oratory

The good news is the political speeches are shorter.

The bad news is that they are dumber.

The only compensation for the decline is that as the speeches get worse, they mostly get shorter. When all you have are bullet-points, your ammunition is pretty quickly spent. Modern presidential speeches are composed of dry, detailed lists of promised programs sandwiched between warmed-over boilerplate. It's the very combination that Tocqueville predicted: the boring particulars and the vapid generalizations; "the intermediate space is empty." The richness of earlier rhetoric, particularly in the Senate, is on display in the great triumvirate of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. Volume I contains the speech each made in the Senate on the Compromise of 1850. Clay's speech alone is 67 pages long and must have taken at least six hours to deliver. This is not filibustering where a senator reads aloud names from the phone book. This is closely reasoned argumentation on the constitutional powers of the federal government with respect to slavery. Seeing the length of these speeches, I intended to skim them but couldn't. They were gripping precisely because they made demands on the listener.

Debate Expectations

I guess the Democrat Presidential candidates debated yesterday...

Above Average Jane makes an interesting observation.

Did I miss it or were the importance of strong families, encouraging small business ownership, lower interest student loans for college, more mentoring programs, and an emphasis on strengthening father / child bonds not mentioned? I did hear talk of quality affordable child care and good schools. These are good things.

In a Democrat primary debate? Is that the right forum to express these ideas?

Read the whole post.

Epilogue

Or is it denouement? Post Mortem.

My brother in law called me last night for a quick gloat on the death of comprehensive immigration reform. While I had purported to give up last week, I cannot lie. This loss stung. I got a little grouchy and told him "that's okay, a lot more people will die but they are poor and brown, so who cares?"

Regaining my composure, I saluted President Bush for standing up to do what was morally and economically right against vocal opposition. It's the kind of Profile in Courage behavior we are always clamoring for at ThreeSources. The WSJ Ed Page joins me: (paid link)

As for the politics, the press will call this a defeat for President Bush, but he deserves credit for trying. This late in his term and with his low approval rating, he simply lacked the political capital to persuade Republicans spooked by talk radio and cable TV hosts. Mr. Bush was also trying to do his fellow Republicans a favor by forging a new relationship with Hispanic-Americans, even though he'll never be on another ballot. We look forward to seeing how GOP candidates win elections as Democrats grab a larger share of America's fastest growing voter bloc. Perhaps Lou Dobbs has some campaign tips.

As for Democrats, their cynicism has rarely been so obvious. Senate Majority Harry Reid pulled the bill earlier this month when GOP leaders wanted only another day or two for amendments. Then when he brought the bill back to the floor, he doomed it with faint support and by letting his party add amendments he knew would drive Republicans away. Now he and his fellow Democrats will tell Hispanic voters that they could have passed reform if not for those bigoted Republicans.

Mark it down: Chuck Schumer will use this against GOP Senators next year. And should they win more Senators and the White House, Democrats in 2009 will be in position to pass their own immigration reform that will be far less restrictive than this one. The conservatives who "won" this week will deserve much of the credit.

I'll lick my wounds and move on but this is a disappointment.

The Nine Per-cent Solution

I frequently quote this paper from Pew Research. I'm a pragmatist. In the lingo of Ryan Sagar's "Elephant in the Room," Frank Meyers's fusionist marriage must be saved. It is the best chance of keeping the United States from adoption European-style Socialism.

When libertarians say they can't work with those conservatives or vice versa, I'll start quoting Pew. I did this in a thread recently and the quotees have questioned the poll results for bias in questions and method. I'm not a gospel believer in polls, but the datum I quote most frequently, about 9% being libertarians, seems to match what I see in my countrymen. And Sager would say I am living in a densely libertarian part of the country,

People were sorted into the four categories based on the combination of socially liberal (or conservative) and economically liberal (or conservative) answers they gave. To be included in one of the four groups, a person needed to provide at least two answers consistent with either the social or economic dimension and at least one consistent answer in the other dimension - while also giving no more than one inconsistent answer in each dimension.

In other words, liberals tended to give consistently liberal responses to the six questions we chose, while conservatives gave consistently conservative responses. Populists, by contrast, gave conservative responses to the social issue questions but liberal responses to the economics questions. Libertarians took the opposite approach, giving conservative responses to the economic questions and liberal responses in the social issue sphere.

Based on this process, almost six-in-ten Americans fall into one of the four ideological groups; 18% are liberals, 15% are conservatives, 16% are populists, and 9% are libertarians.

Perry Eidelbus said "All it takes is enough people to get a majority of states' electoral votes by getting a plurality (a majority in some jurisdictions) of the vote in each." I say with 9%, that's a tall order.

Once they heard jk folded...

Senate blocks immigration bill

WASHINGTON - The Senate drove a stake Thursday through President Bush's plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the 2008 elections.

After the stinging political setback, Bush sounded resigned to defeat.

Now, I suppose we will agree on everything around here.

Quote of the Day

Speaking about the Senate immigration “process”

You can’t tell the will of the American people simply by those who call or object.

US Senator Arlen Specter, proudly serving my home state of Pennsylvania, on the day the Senate phone system is overloaded with phone calls.

Growing Glaciers

In case you were wondering, the glacier on Mount St Helens is enbiggening.

... and that with lava beneath it.

I blame global warming and man's pernicious influences.

iPod: Savior of Capitalism

Everyday Economist links to a NYTimes story about a study that tries to answer the question "Who makes the Apple iPod?" EE provides the great headline: "I Pencil: iPod Edition." I just recently learned that I, Pencil comes originally from Leonard Read, not Milton Friedman.

Three researchers at UC Irvine have traced its 451 components all over the world, with the most expensive components being the hard drive, display and a few chips. The study tries to allocate value geographically.

So $73 of the cost of the iPod would be attributed to Japan since Toshiba is a Japanese company, and the $13 cost of the two chips would be attributed to the United States, since the suppliers, Broadcom and PortalPlayer, are American companies, and so on.

But this method hides some of the most important details. Toshiba may be a Japanese company, but it makes most of its hard drives in the Philippines and China. So perhaps we should also allocate part of the cost of that hard drive to one of those countries. The same problem arises regarding the Broadcom chips, with most of them manufactured in Taiwan. So how can one distribute the costs of the iPod components across the countries where they are manufactured in a meaningful way?

I use the iPod more and more in my defense of free market capitalism. It is the one thing you'd never get from any other system. I have a 40GB RCA MP3 player that was one of the competitors squashed by the iPod. It works okay; it's the size of four iPods glued together and is 84.36% less cool, but I loved it. When I bought it, iPod was a Mac only thing and my RCA brick was $100 cheaper.

I tell my nieces and nephews that there would have been no reason to improve the RCA or even make one in the first place. It's a luxury item - who would make it unless they thought they could make a bob or two?

I will now add this column to my arsenal. Without globalization, kids, no iPod. Think about it.

Two Views of Iraq

A good friend of this blog sends a link to a Tony Blankley column in Real Clear Politics. Blankley's a smart guy and uses the same hair stylist as Senator John Kerry. But I don't agree with his downbeat assessment. He, like Congressional Democrats, is not waiting for September for General Petraeus's assessment. Blankley has an advance copy:

From all this and more, let me save you the bother of waiting for the September deluge of reports from the four corners of our government. Come September it will be the received wisdom of Washington that: (1) the Maliki government is hopelessly incapable of ever effecting the necessary political compromises to make Iraq a functioning government, (2) we cannot maintain our current troop strength in Iraq with the current size of our military, and (3) the Iraqi military will not soon be ready to replace our forces in combat or even heavy police duties.

That is the "metaphysical certitude" conventional wisdom, and one cannot pretend that that is not a likely outcome. But I have been heartened of late by reading Austin Bay, Michael Totten, and Michael Yon. Those guys serve it up pretty straight, and all three are cautiously optimistic about new operations and rules of engagement. Petraeus may surprise to the upside. I am joined in this belief by Victor Davis Hanson:

But for all the justifiable criticism of the Iraqi reconstruction, two truths still remain — the United States is taking an enormous toll on jihadists, and despite the terrible cost in blood and treasure, has not given up on a constitutional government in Iraq.

The Sunni front-line states, who subsidized jihadists and still enjoy our misery in Iraq , , but they are now terrified that these killers, in league with the Iranians, will turn on them. The net result is not just that some Sunnis are helping us in Iraq, but that they are being urged to for the first time by those in the Arab world, who would prefer to see the Iraqi government, rather than the terrorists, succeed. And if Iraq is still a terrible disappointment, Kurdistan is emerging as a success few envisioned, refuting some conventional wisdom about the incompatibility of capitalism and constitutional government with Middle Eastern Islam.

Theocratic Iran is not exactly as “empowered” as is generally alleged, but in the greatest crisis of its miserable existence. As the mullahs up the ante in the region, they could very soon not only lose Iraq, but also their own dictatorship.

Blankley is ready to install what my emailer calls a new Saddam, and return to more decades of realpolitik and realism. VDH notes that the United States "has not given up on a constitutional government in Iraq." I'm not ready to either. Senator Lugar and Tony can throw in the towel. I will be the last Sharanskyite.

UPDATE: And do not miss J. D. Johannes's views on NRO.

Meet John Cox

Chicago millionaire John Cox is running for president as a Republican. He has largely been ignored by the mainstream media -- until now. Matt Labash writes:

When you have a name like John Cox--a plain vanilla name, an achromatic name, a name that people with more distinctive names would choose if they'd committed a heinous crime and needed to start afresh on the lam--it's easy to feel like everyman and no man. Switchboard.com, the online directory, says that there are 1,979 John Coxes throughout the land. But there is only one John H. Cox. Actually, there are 66 of them. But there's only one who is running to be president of the United States of America.

That John Cox, the Chicago millionaire who was the first declared Republican candidate (as of March 2006), called our offices a few weeks ago. He sounded vexed. He sounded desperate. He sounded like a man who was tired of screaming into the void. He needed something that any self-assured, self-contained, well-adjusted person who enters the political arena needs: He needed the validation of people he'd never met.

A good Reaganite conservative, Cox has tried to be self-sufficient, financing his campaign thus far to the tune of $800,000. After 20 trips, he's been to all 99 counties in Iowa. He's been to New Hampshire 14 times, and South Carolina, 10. He's won a Republican straw poll outright in Aiken County, South Carolina, and finished fifth in total votes among all Republican contenders when three other counties were totaled. And yet, he's lucky if he ever gets mentioned in mainstream media candidate roundups. Meanwhile, doing interviews with the Small Government Times just isn't putting him over the top.

Fighting Back

A stunningly lame attack by the Democrats and the AP on Fred!'s lobbying jobs has resulted in some return fire from Fred!

... and then he punched a dirty hippie for good measure.

I love it. It's totally red-meat, but it's nice to hear that kind of talk from a politician not a talking head.

Well, I sort of take that back.

There's this too.

Congressional Republicans changing "Shame Shame Shame" in response to a Democrat switcheroo.

Nino and Jack

Here's one for my brothers. John Fund writes in OpinionJournal's Political Diary, "Two (Broken) Thumbs Up!"

I wound up chatting at a reception a couple years ago with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about his love of opera and his taste in popular culture. It turned out he was a huge fan of Fox's anti-terrorist drama "24," and he convinced me to watch it for the first time.

Well, little did I know just how much of a fan Justice Scalia is of the fast-paced show. The Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada reports he positively gushed about the Fox series recently at a conference on homeland security in the Canadian capital of Ottawa that was attended by an international panel of judges. Mr. Scalia couldn't refrain from commenting after Canadian federal Judge Richard Mosley opined: "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra, 'What would Jack Bauer do?'"

As viewers know, Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is a federal agent known for roughing up suspected terrorists who are holding out on important information.

"Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles!" Mr. Scalia interjected. "He saved hundreds of thousands of lives!"

Indeed, Mr. Scalia was just warming up. "Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him?" he asked rhetorically. "Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so!"

Other panelists promptly challenged the American jurist, arguing that some prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay on terrorism charges could be innocent.

"I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia replied. After the panel broke up, he continued to wax enthusiastically about his favorite show.

If I were the producers of "24" I would immediately invite Mr. Scalia to make a guest appearance on the series. Judicial decorum would probably prevent him from doing so, but who wouldn't want to see the highly expressive Mr. Scalia in the role of a judge presiding over the trial of an accused terrorist?

UPDATE: WSJOJPD is online this week, so James Taranto can move his palatial estate. Here's this one.

Guitar Center Goes Private

WSJ: (Pay to play, babies, Rupert doesn't want it for nothing)

Guitar Center is the latest retailer to go private, agreeing to a $1.9 billion buyout by Bain Capital Partners LLC.

Stockholders would get $63 a share, a 26% premium to Tuesday's closing price. Including debt, the deal -- set to close in the fourth quarter -- is valued at $2.1 billion.

The Westlake Village, Calif., firm has 210 Guitar Center stores in which it sells music instruments as well as music-related computer hardware and software. The company also has than 95 stores specializing in school band instruments for sale and rental.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. oversaw an auction that wasn't publicly known. Last month, a Goldman stock analyst said in a report that "Guitar Center is optimally positioned for a sale, given its dominant competitive position," but that he viewed a buyout as "a fallback strategy."

I've been an occasional Guitar Center customer. I buy my guitars at Wildwood Guitars, a world class boutique lovingly nestled in nearby Louisville, Colorado. But I have shopped at Guitar Center to get recording gear, drum equipment for my nephews, and accessories. My previous position took me to Austin a few times a year. I met people on the plane who were going to Austin just to go to the Austin Guitar Center store.

I'm probably not schooled enough to offer an opinion, but the LBO and private buyout craze seems a consequence of SarbOx, and somewhat worrisome. I like what the reduction in supply has done but worry that it is a sign of less flexible and competitive US capital markets. That cannot be good in the long term.

Keeping the Thread Alive

Perry Eidlebus of Eidelblog has provided some thoughtful and well articulated comments interleaved through three posts. Two new ones appeared yesterday, and the post will fall off the page today and my evil SQL script will soon disable comments.

Now, all these thoughtful and reasoned comments are in opposition to me. But they deserve better placement. Here are yesterday's two comments, concatenated into a single post:

---

"I'll counter that your don't-give-an-inch does not serve the cause of liberty."

It does not work today not because it isn't the right thing to do, but because so many people prefer "the tranquility of servitude" and the peace of compromise, being too afraid of the "extreme" of full-blown God-given rights.

We fought for independence because we refused to give in, because real liberty is not won with compromise or "accepting" that certain things cannot be. As a matter of "practical politics" (a phrase I often use), sure, elections aren't won by extreme candidates. But which do you want to win, centrist candidates, or the cause of real liberty?

"Braveheart" had a couple of great lines on how far one is willing to go. The Elder Bruce maintained, "But it is exactly the ability to compromise that makes a man noble." It is easy for people to compromise when their livelihoods are based on power, whether they wield it (politicians) or derive benefits from it (welfare state recipients). When the Princess of Wales offered Wallace the king's bribe, he retorted, "Slaves are made in such ways!"

"But I will stand up for the ownership society and Part D. You refuse to admit that it is built on market principles and that is unfair."

I refuse to admit it because it's patently false. The very fact that government is intervening (i.e. taking money from some people to give to others) means it is NOT free-market. Something can be based on "market principles," but that is NOT the same as a free market where people make purely voluntarily transactions. This is not John Kerry nuance. It's plain fact.

You can keep arguing "ownership society" until you're blue in the face, but it's an absurd phrase while Social Security and Medicare taxes are coerced out of my salary.

"The rest of Medicare is single payer; part D has private insurers competing for subscribers."

Via an infrastructure that government created, thus skewing market forces. Again, not free market.

"As such, it is the one government program that has surprised to the downside both in cost to the government and average premiums to its subscribers."

Which is only so far. People think they can keep credit card under control, too, but how much will they restrain themselves when they're borrowing money in other people's names? Not much.

I will point out for the umpteenth time that even the most conservative estimates show the program has high long-term costs to make Social Security look cheap. Have you ever looked at the full projections? I have.

"A future administration might build on those figures to spread market mechanisms into the rest of Medicare."

Again, it's only the skewing of free market forces. You need to understand the difference between "market forces" that have the appearance of the free market and what is truly the free market.

"The idea of the ownership society is that these mechanisms function like seed crystals. Over time, they become a larger percentage of the structure and crowd out the collectivist portion. It is a bold attempt and it may not work, but it is disingenuous not to recognize the attempt."

That I "recognize" the attempt is a ridiculous demand when the process is just another instance of government intervention. Not recognizing the programs for their proto-socialism IS what is disingenuous.

A real ownership society is one where government butts out and allows people to function on their own. History proves, time and time again, that all the planting of seeds will do is create a larger and larger bureaucracy. Look back to FDR's New Deal, and its constantly failed attempts that kept the U.S. mired in depression. Should we have "recognized the attempt" that he was "pragmatic" in his belief that government needed to "prime the pump"?

"You applauded the try for private Social Security accounts -- that's the exact same thing. Had legislation progressed, there was much talk of increasing benefits to sell it to the Democrats. Were you being a Socialist? Perry was trying to take my money against my will and give it to seniors! What a Communist that Perry is!"

Private accounts are very different from Plan D, because you're using your own money. It's not really free market because the state forces you to save, but you're not being given someone else's money to save. The rest of Social Security is complete socialism, however, just like Plan D. It's a very simple test: is government taking money from someone to give to you?

I support real privatization, namely the abolishment of the whole thing, but I will support private accounts as a first step. It's not enough, but it's legally important: it could force the SCOTUS to recognize people's legitimate claim on what they paid in. You may recall that it ruled otherwise in 1943.

"McClellan did not last long enough, but there was improvement in his tenure. Fast track approvals for terminal conditions and the Pharma funded faster approval process both happened under his watch. (Sadly, I think he was pulled off to do Part D -- that was a dark day for me)."

Which comes down to begging government for permission to do what is our natural right in the first place.

"I got a kick out of your prison sodomy line, but I think you are missing the saddest fact there is. Welfare for seniors is wildly popular beyond those who accept benefits. People like the idea of a safety net for themselves, their parents, and think that it is a component of "a just society." "

Oh, don't think I realize that. Limousine liberals aren't the only ones who feel "good" about coercing others into charity. Liberalism is all about generosity, after all: generosity with other people's money.

"Nine percent libertarians according to Pew. The other 91% are, sadly, very cool with collectivist, nationalized health care and pensions for the elderly. If you will not admit that, you will not be successful in a Madisonian democracy."

It does depend on the question's phrasing. If you ask someone, "Do you believe that people are entitled to the fruits of their labor," they may not realize it's completely at odds with, "Do you believe government should provide a safety net?"

Ask people if they're willing to support Part D to help seniors, then ask them if they're willing to pay massive tax hikes to fund it. Or ask them if they're willing to tax "the top 1% of taxpayers," notwithstanding it's that 1% that provide the business management, savings and investment to create jobs for the rest of us.

I forgot to comment further on Roberts and Alito. I'm not saying Bush nominated a pair of Souters. They're actually not bad, but they've disappointed me with past and present rulings. A while back, Professor Bainbridge had a great entry on why "originalist," "textualist" and "strict constructionist," which are often used interchangeably, are really different. So I really wasn't concerned if they were like Scalia and Thomas, who themselves have disappointed me. I don't care if someone's conservative, libertarian or liberal: my single test is how faithfully he will defend the Constitution.

Originally I said on my blog that Alito would be a good choice, and he could well be in the end, but I have a feeling his dispositions might be a problem for our freedom at some point in the future. For example, his dissent in Doe v. Groody was inexcusable. Granted it was when he was a federal appeals court justice, but it shows he's too willing to give police the benefit of the doubt. As my friend Billy Beck charged, the police are a part of government that has no right of presumptive innocence when charged with wrongdoing, by the very fact that they are pre-authorized to use force on behalf of the people.

Now, getting specific with Roberts, his ruling in Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority was completely inexcusable. That sets the tone for what will happen in the future, I'm afraid. Also, is he consistent? It bothered me during his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he said he'd be obliged to respect SCOTUS precedent. That doesn't jive at all when he said the Court was correct to rule as it did in Brown v. Board. As you may recall, it was a reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson. So which one does Roberts really believe? Did he say what he did before the committee just to placate abortion litmus test liberals, or will he rule as a matter of convenience for the politics of the president who nominated him?

Pretty good nominees overall, but it's that fraction that may come back to bite us.

Socialized Health Care

Fred! looks at Canadian and British national health systems.

and pronounces them a mess.

Think about it. This is what we're supposed to copy? The poorest Americans are getting far better service than that. And there's nothing about Americans that would make us any better able to run a government health care bureaucracy than the Canadians or the British. In fact, we've got less practice at that sort of thing than they do -- and we might be a lot worse at it.

A downside of an early candidacy annoucement is that we'll replace these great radio chunks for stump speeches, which are by definition rather boring and repetitive.

Unless he keeps them frank and fresh.

Way Too Cool

Create your own Simpson's characters,

Hat-tip: Galley Slaves

Only Nine Errors?

It's been a tough few years for Republicans, but the news is not all bad.

WASHINGTON -- Democrats may be winning elections. But they still can't win a baseball game.

Despite an influx of fresh talent from Pennsylvania -- and the coaching skills of Rep. Mike Doyle of Forest Hills -- the new majority party on Capitol Hill last night extended its losing streak in the annual congressional baseball tournament to seven games.

The GOP soundly defeated the Democrats 5-2, at RFK Stadium, home of the Washington Nationals.

Nine Democratic errors didn't help.

"That was a marked improvement over last year," said Mr. Doyle, referring to the 12-1 thrashing of 2006, his first year as coach. He wore a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform bearing No. 14, his Pennsylvania congressional district.

The Republicans have now won 32 of the last 46 games, according to Roll Call, a Capitol Hill publication.

Hat-tip: Karol at Alarming News, who says "There's no crying in baseball -- maybe that's why the Democrats can't play the game."

I Think I Heard This One

Consummate Washington insider Sally Quinn has a juicy Washington rumor, and she'll share it with you: A Plan to Oust Cheney

Removing a sitting vice president is not easy, but this may be the moment. I remember Barry Goldwater sitting in my parents' living room in 1973, in the last days of Watergate, debating whether to lead a group of senior Republicans to the White House to tell President Nixon he had to go. His hesitation was that he felt loyalty to the president and the party. But in the end he felt a greater loyalty to his country, and he went to the White House.

See, you replace the Vice President, who is a galvanizing force, with a popular, younger candidate, who would then be able to run in 2008 as a sitting VP with all privileges thereunto appertaining. What a startling idea, it's a wonder that 6,000 people have not thought of it before -- oh, wait, they have. For years, it was going to be Secretary Rice. Now? How about Senator Fred Thompson?

Giuliani is too New York, too liberal. His reputation as a leader, forged on 9/11 and the days after, carries him only so far. McCain, who has always had a rocky relationship with the president, lost much of his support from moderate Democrats and independents (and from a fair amount of Republicans) when the Straight Talk Express started veering off course. And no matter what anyone says about how Romney's religion doesn't matter, being a Mormon is simply not acceptable to Bush's base. Several right-wing evangelicals have told me they don't see Mormons as "true Christians."

That leaves Fred Thompson. Everybody loves Fred. He has the healing qualities of Gerald Ford and the movie-star appeal of Ronald Reagan. He is relatively moderate on social issues. He has a reputation as a peacemaker and a compromiser. And he has a good sense of humor.

Fred will prevent Armageddon.

He could be just the partner to bring out Bush's better nature -- or at least be a sensible voice of reason. I could easily imagine him telling the president, "For God's sake, do not push that button!" -- a command I have a hard time hearing Cheney give.

I suppose this could be the broken clock story that is right sometime. But if it never happened before, it's hard for me to see it happening now.

Hat-tip: Insty, who is worried about the GOP because of what he heard on Rush Limbaugh, via Riehl World View, who is ready to quit the GOP over this. I think I'm going back to bed.

Victory for Democracy

Those un-secret union ballots?

History.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a bill that would allow labor unions to organize workplaces without a secret ballot election.

Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed to force consideration of the Employee Free Choice Act, ending organized labor's chance to win its top legislative priority from Congress.

The final vote was 51-48.

The outcome was not a surprise, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying for months that he would stop the legislation in the Senate. The White House also made it clear that if the bill passed Congress it would be vetoed.

I have to wonder if everytime they fail to hit the supra-constitutional 60 vote threshold they kick themselves in the ass for being such jerks in the last Congress.

Franco-American Relations

The Democrats still campaign on "repairing the damage to international relations" done by the Bush Administration.

That's swell. But doesn't anybody ever notice how many of those fights President Bush won? I guess we lost Aznar on the Iberian peninsula to Socialist appeasers, but how can the media and the Democrats continue to ignore the Atlantist tide of Germany and France? John Fund writes about Sarkozy's new Finance Minister in OpinionJournal's Political Diary:

France is a land famous for its male chauvinism so some eyebrows were lifted this month when new President Nicolas Sarkozy named 51-year-old lawyer Christine Lagarde as the nation's first female finance minister. Indeed, Ms. Lagarde is the first female finance minister of any G7 country.

She is also a clear signal that Mr. Sarkozy intends to pursue a path of economic liberalization despite his party's somewhat disappointing showing in parliamentary elections this month. Ms. Lagarde was a tigress in championing French exports in her previous job as trade minister, but she also has strong free-market views.

She also is well acquainted with America. In 1999, the antitrust lawyer was made the first female chairman of the Chicago-based international law firm Baker & McKenzie and lived in Chicago for several years. She professes strong admiration for America and a belief that the two countries can enjoy warmer official relations.

This is not to say that Ms. Lagarde isn't quintessentially French in many ways. During a recent visit to the Wall Street Journal, she expressed skepticism that French consumers would ever buy frozen American chicken imports (sacre bleu!) and that trade barriers against them were therefore of not much consequence. Nonetheless, look for her to be a breath of fresh air in the normally musty French political climate. Last year, she was ranked the 30th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine. And that was before she was named Finance Minister. I have no doubt that she and our Secretary of State Condi Rice will have a lot more than frozen chicken to talk about when they meet.

Vive la France!

jk Folds on Immigration

-- and begins addressing himself in the third person. Both are scary.

Instapundit links to a post on the Influence Peddler blog that asks "Has Bush Squandered the Last of His Political Capital on Immigration?" Professor Reynolds says "I'd say the answer is pretty much yes, which is unfortunate with more war-funding battles coming up soon."

I still think that the President's immigration views are 100% right. I think he understands the economic needs of the nation and, as a border state Governor, understands the human cost of the present system. I do not share his religious convictions, but I am guessing that they play a part here as well. He is doing the right thing for all the right reasons, and exhibiting political courage.

BUT

This President has been called to deal with Islamist terrorism and has been forced to preserve the Enlightenment. He wanted to do Faith Based Initiatives and Guest Worker Programs and limn out the Ownership Society. I wanted to keep playing hockey and riding my bike. He got 9/11 and I got MS. Tough titties all around, Mr. President.

I don't know why I was wrong when I called it a big GOP win in 2005. It still makes sense to me but I was wrong. I misunderstood the electorate. This is too hard and the President should concentrate, instead, on the war. It is one thing to see Rep Tancredo and a bunch of uber-Conservative talk show hosts stand so firm on this topic. I'm used to disagreeing with those folks. I lost my ties to National Review when they put the FMA on the cover.

I'm quitting because we couldn't get Glenn Reynolds. He is the one human with a nuanced approach to Global Warming. If he cannot or will not see the arguments for more liberalized immigration, it's over. In the same post, he links to Laura Ingrahm and to a Gateway Pundit posts that expresses anger that Senators Kennedy and Martinez are seen...wait for it...laughing together at a press conference.

Jk folds, Mr. President, and suggests you keep your few remaining chips for the war.

Free Speechifying

While the rest of us are disappointed in today's Supreme Court "McCain-Feingold" ruling not going far enough to eliminate the dissent crushing provisions, "blackrobe" at Keystone Politics complains for another reason.

Once again, the court reverses a recent holding. This panel has shown that it has no respect for the notion of stare decisis.

It's funny how conservatives are concerned about the free speech rights when money and power are involved.

Yeah! Because a living constitution only flows in one direction! To the left! Political speech be damned!

Besides, there's no do overs in Supreme Court decisions! None! Once decided, things just are!

Waaaaaaaaaaah.

Explicitly political speech was exactly kind of speech the framers wanted to protect. McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance "Reform" was a direct attack on that.

Immigration Station

So, I was cruising the PhillyHistory.org website looking for old pictures of the waterfront from the 1950s, which I plan to dutifully recreate in HO scale in the basement.

I came across this picture from 1919.

I guess it's from the era when documentation was still part of the process.

Rage Boy

Slate Magazine uses this photo to illustrate a general character Christopher Hitchens calls "Rage Boy."



My favorite is still "Behead Those Who Insult Islam."

Hitchens is rightfully concerned that by fear of offending or inciting "Rage Boy," we allow him to set the rules of debate. Neither Hitchens nor I am too keen on avoiding any topic that offends him, because he looks rather easy to offend. Is it me, or does he look a little angry right now?

Over the last few years, there have been innumerable opportunities for him to demonstrate his piety and his pissed-offness. And the cameras have been there for him every time. Is it a fatwah? Is it a copy of the Quran allegedly down the gurgler at Guantanamo? Is it some cartoon in Denmark? Time for Rage Boy to step in and for his visage to impress the rest of the world with the depth and strength of Islamist emotion.
[..]
This mental and moral capitulation has a bearing on the argument about Iraq, as well. We are incessantly told that the removal of the Saddam Hussein despotism has inflamed the world's Muslims against us and made Iraq hospitable to terrorism, for all the world as if Baathism had not been pumping out jihadist rhetoric for the past decade (as it still does from Damascus, allied to Tehran). But how are we to know what will incite such rage? A caricature published in Copenhagen appears to do it. A crass remark from Josef Ratzinger (leader of an anti-war church) seems to have the same effect. A rumor from Guantanamo will convulse Peshawar, the Muslim press preaches that the Jews brought down the Twin Towers, and a single citation in a British honors list will cause the Iranian state-run press to repeat its claim that the British government—along with the Israelis, of course—paid Salman Rushdie to write The Satanic Verses to begin with. Exactly how is such a mentality to be placated?

The whole piece is superb. Hat-tip: Insty

FredOn

I imagine by the hundreth time this would be obnoxious.

But not yet.

Media Complicity

Roger Simon has a superb post on the media's deafening silence when their time came to defend Salman Rushdie against what Simon calls "enemies of the Enlightenment." Simon refers to a quote from Glenn Reynolds that bothered me in the same and a different way. Over the weekend Professor Reynolds said:

"Frankly, I think the best argument for electing a Democrat as President is that as long as a Republican is in office the media powers-that-be will refuse to condemn even the worst atrocities on the part of Islamists, for fear of helping the real enemy in the White House."

That upset Simon and me as lovers of freedom -- and further upset me as a partisan hack. Must we really put Senator Obama in the White House to nationalize medicine in the name of freedom? That's a level of Pragmatism I'm not ready to try.

Simon continues to darkly -- but not unconvincingly -- claim that the Iraq War was doomed because of media bias, exacerbated by administration partisanship.

The same prejudices that Rutten describes in his Rushdie article are the ones that have seriously undermined the possibility of victory for democracy in Iraq. A media that could call obvious fascists and religious fascists "insurgents" (a term once reserved for Pancho Villa) in the interest of "objectivity" encouraged a specious atmosphere of moral equivalence to democracy from the start. Whether this was conscious or unconscious is beside the point. Whatever it was, our enemies, the enemies of the Enlightenment, seized on it for propaganda purposes and continue to do so. (Note that in the new Daniel Pearl movie, Pearl's beheading is not even shown - that was praised as tasteful by Roger Ebert.) And, as everyone knows, the playing field of asymmetrical war is the media, far more than the battlefield. Only in the world of public opinion can we be defeated.

Dark days. Simon quotes Arthur Miller and it's not out of place.

Banned by PBS, Bumped by FOX

Warning: an angry rant follows. Those seeking polite, well reasoned commentary should click over to Michelle Malkin or Anne Coulter or something.

Will somebody please tell me what lottery we lost? Right of center folk get the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh; the crown jewel is FOXNews. My Boulder County compatriots get NPR, PBS and, well, everything else.

I HATE FOX NEWS! I like Brit Hume's show; I record it every day and watch it three or four times a week. I watch "Beltway Boys" and the "Journal Editorial Report" every week, and I watch Chris Wallace's Fox New Sunday every week. It runs on FOX Network but it seems fair to credit FOXNews with its production.

EVERY OTHER MINUTE IS PURE CRAP.

I accepted this Faustian bargain and chose to watch the shows I like. That's the deal with television. I don't have to watch "Two and a Half Men" because the same network shows the Broncos. I always chuckle that the most "conservative" show on TV has got to be Larry Kudlow's "Kudlow & Company" on CNBC. But FOX pre-empted all my shows this weekend, because 23 hours of tabloid news is not enough for them some days.

My heart goes out to the friends and the family of the pregnant woman in Ohio who was abducted and killed. I don't mean to minimize the tragedy in any way. It's a horrible crime; I certainly hope the perpetrators are found and punished. Beyond that, I don't need to know or care to know the names and the details. I cannot believe the family wants Geraldo, Greta, and me in their living room.

Beltway Boys was pre-empted at 4PM Mountain. I'm used to this and know I can try to record it again at 9:30 after WSJ Editorial Report. Surprise! They were still yapping through both of those. I found and recorded another replay at 4AM and, mirabile dictu, it ran.

I am ranting. It's only a TV show. What really got me was that I had also recorded "Muslims Against Jihad," which PBS had spiked for reasons many thought were PC and appeasement of victim groups. FOX didn't mind hyping the show:

Tune in this weekend, as FOX News Channel presents the documentary the Public Broadcasting System didn't want you to see.

It's a film about the difference between moderate Muslims and the radicals who want to kill us. It asks where are the moderate Muslims and why aren't they speaking out against the jihadists? And it was financed with $675,000 of taxpayers' money.

Of course, that would have meant that FOX would have HAD TO STOP TALKING ABOUT THE ATTRACTIVE, WHITE, MURDER VICTIM FOR 90 MINUTES. Even at one in the morning (three Eastern), we couldn't have that. So I recorded an hour and a half of "Breaking News" that was at least 12 hours old.

FOX.

The Reality is More Complex

Everyday Economist links to Michal Moynihan’s review of Michael Moore's Sicko in Reason Magazine. (I could do four prepositional phrases in a sentence, but it's Sunday.) "Watching 'Sicko' so you don't have to."

I may have to. It's my issue, so to speak, and I want to credibly rebut it. I also just learned that a freind-of-a-freind's parents are the objects of the opening segment. Pardon my name dropping. It is so crazy a premise, however, it seems an unfair world that would actually call one to reasonably rebut.

Viewers are taken to London's Hammersmith Hospital, held up as a shining example of socialized care, where doctors are well-paid and patients well looked after. Moore ambles through the corridors interviewing patients that acclaim the NHS's ‘free care,' and express horror at the barbarism of the American system. Indeed, the facility's "cashier" exists to give money to patients—for travel reimbursements—rather than taking it from them. But as is often the case with Moore's films, the reality is more complex.

In 2005, London's Evening Standard reported that Hammersmith Hospital would slash hundreds of jobs; the hospital, the most debt-ridden in Britain, was hemorrhaging money and desperately needed to cut costs. And while the hospital was "downsizing", Hammersmith's CEO—yes, even the NHS has an executive class—collected a year-end bonus of close to $20,000. Small beer by American standards, but enough to provoke tabloid headlines in Britain.

At least Britain and Ireland allow private care. This provides much more of a two-tiered system than Americans would tolerate. Part of me likes the Irish model: government provides a base level to all citizens but any sane human purchases private insurance to get better care. Not sure you could sell that to either side around here.

Worse is the Swedish system, which provides good care but proscribes purchasing better care. Which glass would you rather drink from?

But Dillner's truculent insurance provider was not Aetna or Kaiser, but the notoriously generous Swedish welfare state, where health care is "free." And because there is no private clinic in Sweden that could perform the operation, Elias will sit in a queue, hoping, in lieu of privatization, for prioritization. Swedish legislator Robert Uitto said that the Dillner case was unfortunate, but "People shouldn't, on principle, be allowed to purchase care in the public system."

Sicko also introduces us to Diane, whose brain tumor operation was initially denied by Horizon BlueCross because it didn't consider her condition "life threatening." She eventually received treatment, but "not without battling the insurance companies," Moore says.

Jack Szmyt found himself in a similar situation. After waiting two months for his initial diagnosis—he too had a brain tumor—Szmyt was told that it would be another month until doctors could start the necessary treatment. Rather than wait in a queue, he borrowed $30,000 from a friend, and flew to a private clinic in Germany. Had he not sought private treatment abroad, his German doctor said, he would likely have died. When contacted by the media, his insurer, again the Swedish government, said it didn't consider the assigned waiting period "unreasonable."

This is where HillaryCare really blew up, if I remember correctly. Somebody found $1,000 fines and jail time on repeat offenses for Doctors who took money to work outside the system. People -- rightly -- recoiled at that. It will be interesting to see the Democratic proposals and measure them on this yardstick: will they allow better care for the rich ("The Rich would live and the poor would die" I can hear Peter, Paul & Mary singing...), or would they forbid private care which is quickly shown as both un-American and something most people would not want to face if their child were sick.

From the review and Moore's history, I think it's safe to say that level of nuance is not explored. Maybe if Arnold Kling made a film version of "Crisis of Abundance..."

A Free Trader After All?

Senator Hillary Clinton has outsourced the composition of her campaign theme song. The LA Times reports:

Well, it's official. The H. Clinton campaign has just picked its official campaign song, "You and I" by Celine Dion. (Wait a minute, she's Canadian!)

Free movement of Labor, Capital, Goods and jejune pop music: that's a platform we can all get behind!

Hat-tip: Famous unknown blogger Extreme Mortman.

A Nonprofit to Support Sen. Edwards

There may not be comic strips in the NY Times, but this story on Senator John Edwards has a laugh a minute.

John Edwards ended 2004 with a problem: how to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff.

Mr. Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor students — the main beneficiary of the center’s fund-raising was Mr. Edwards himself, tax filings show.

The Center for Promise and Opportunity! Stop it! You're killin' me!

A nonprofit to finance the promise, opportunity and extreme styling needs of one of our nation's richest tort attorneys. Audaces fortuna juvat, baby!

Mr. Edwards mixed policy and politics in a way that allowed his supporters to donate to the causes he believed in — and to the organizations he had set up. He also set up two political action committees, something commonly done by politicians thinking of running for president.

But it was his use of a tax-exempt organization to finance his travel and employ people connected to his past and current campaigns that went beyond what most other prospective candidates have done before pursuing national office. And according to experts on nonprofit foundations, Mr. Edwards pushed at the boundaries of how far such organizations can venture into the political realm. Such entities, which are regulated under Section 501C-4 of the tax code, can engage in advocacy but cannot make partisan political activities their primary purpose without risking loss of their tax-exempt status.

Hat-tip: Insty, who points out "[T]here are two Americas: Those who manage to enrich themselves by exploiting legal technicalities, and those who do not."

Again, Bullwinkle?

That trick never works. So say Senators J. Bennett Johnson and Don Nickles in a guest editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal. (Paid link, TNSTAAFE[ditorial])

If the American people are suspicious of bold pledges from W