Legal, But Neither Safe Nor Rare

May 31, 2012 by

Jaw-dropping and chilling video, by way of The Daily Caller, of a Planned Parenthood counselor in Texas advising the undercover patient on how to get an abortion because the baby would be a girl.

It’s well established that sex-selective abortions in Asia result in skewed sex ratios there. One would be naive to think that all Asian immigrants to the U.S. leave those cultural attitudes behind. Sex-selective abortion, distressingly, is practiced in the United States as well, mainly by those of Asian descent (and one hopes it’s just a tiny minority of them). It’s most apparent when looking at the statistics of third births. Following is excerpted from a study at the University of Connecticut Health Center:

Results: The male to female sex ratio from 1975 to 2002 was 1.053 for Whites, 1.030 (p < 0.01) for Blacks, 1.074 (p < 0.01) for Chinese and 1.073 (p < 0.01) for Filipinos. From 1991 to 2002, the sex ratio increased from 1.071 to 1.086 for Chinese, 1.060 to 1.074 for Filipinos, 1.043 to 1.087 for Asian Indians and 1.069 to 1.088 for Koreans. The highest sex ratios were seen for third+ births to Asian Indians (1.126), Chinese (1.111) and Koreans (1.109).

Conclusion: The male to female livebirth sex ratio in the United States exceeded expected biological variation for third+ births to Chinese, Asian Indians and Koreans strongly suggesting prenatal sex selection.

The above-mentioned video refers to an Economist cover story from two years ago that laments the abortion-induced gender imbalance in Asia.

Two thing about that article. On the plus side, give The Economist credit for presenting a topic that you would rarely or never see presented by another publication or news outlet comprised of (presumably) mainly pro-legalized-abortion reporters and editors.

On the minus side, The Economist flatly states in the article, “For those such as this newspaper, who think abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” (to use Bill Clinton’s phrase)….”

But that’s a contradiction in terms. You’d think that editors, of all people, would recognize and avoid such oxymorons. If you think abortion should be legal, then you can’t expect that it will be rare – just as if you raise the speed limit to 75 mph you can’t expect that people won’t drive that fast. Before 1973, most unwanted children were given up for adoption, which is why one meets a lot more adopted children who were born in America before 1973 than after. After 1973, most unwanted children have been, to use the euphemism, terminated.

The Economist – and Bill Clinton – must think abortion is reprehensible if they think it should be rare. But if they really want it to be rare then they have to support making it illegal. I guess wanting to have it both ways fools themselves into helping them sleep better at night.

As for wanting abortion to be safe, by definition it’s not safe. That’s like saying killing should be safe. Oh sure, legalized abortion may make things safer for the mother who wants to carry out the killing, but as noted above, when you legalize abortion, you make the practice much more common. That means far more human lives are subject to terribly unsafe living conditions when the abortion doctor comes ‘a calling.

Filed Under: Abortion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Two Oceans

May 29, 2012 by

If you look out at the ocean, you’re actually looking out at two oceans. One is an ocean of water, the other is an ocean of air.

Yes, we live in an ocean all right – what we call the atmosphere. It’s not as heavy as water, but it’s heavy nevertheless – with a total weight of something of the order of 5.7 quadrillion tons. Here at the bottom of the air ocean, there are 14.7 pounds per square inch pressing down on us – just like at the bottom of the water ocean, where the weight is greatest. Just as you can feel water as you rush your hand through it, you can feel air as you do the same. And just as fish can swim through water, birds can “swim” through air, and humans can do so using technology.

I was always bummed out as a kid that I couldn’t fly just by flapping my arms. But little did I realize that I could fly – through water. That’s what fish do thanks to their fins. You could say they’re flying instead of swimming. Meanwhile the bottom-dwelling sea animals are walking on the land – i.e. the ocean floor – just like we’re walking on the bottom of the ocean of air.

It is said that our evolutionary ancestors evolved in the ocean of water, and then evolved to adapt to air. So we actually come from both oceans.

And the ocean of air – like the ocean of water – is the ultimate life force. It holds our oxygen. It generates the water cycle. It blocks out the sun’s harmful radiation. It prevents us from dying of extreme heat during the day and extreme cold at night. This “thin blue line” is what distinguishes our planet that’s teeming with life, from the desolation and lifelessness of the other planets of the solar system, and probably of the trillions of other planets throughout the universe. (If there are trillions of stars there’ve got to be at least that many planets orbiting them.)

So next time you go to the beach to look out at the beauty of the ocean, be sure to appreciate the beauty of both of them.

Filed Under: Science & Nature Leave a Comment

Some Beach

May 29, 2012 by

Attention atheists: since in your view there’s no heaven or afterlife to look forward to, perhaps your goal is to live life to its fullest in order to achieve the closest thing you can to heaven on earth.

Have I got the thing for you.

Go jogging on the ocean beach in your bare feet. Do it close enough to the water so that the surf and foam from the crashing waves rush around your feet and ankles. And go in the early morning before the crowds come.

That’s what I did a couple of times this past Memorial Day weekend, at Bethany Beach in Delaware. And I’ve gotta tell ya, I was wondering if that’s what heaven is like.

If you’re not a jogger, going for a walk along the beach in your bare feet in the early morning, letting the surf rush around your feet and ankles, will give you nearly the same effect.

Filed Under: Health & Fitness, Religion Leave a Comment

Eat The Whole Seed

May 24, 2012 by

Quick: What is “bran”?

I bet you said a type of breakfast cereal, like raisin bran or bran flakes. That’s what I would have said up until a few days ago. Actually bran is the outer skin of the grain – i.e. a grain of wheat, a grain of rice, grain of corn, or grain of oat. Grain, by the way, is synonymous with “seed”.

And the bran of the seed is something you should be eating. In most grain-based foods, the bran along with the “germ” (the seed’s embryo) is stripped away during the processing, leaving only the endosperm or the seed’s food supply. But when you strip away the bran and the germ, you’re stripping away a lot of the nutrients. Click here for details.

No, stripping away the bran and the germ isn’t some evil plot carried out by the multinational corporations. It’s something that the multinational corporations, along with the mom-and-pop shops before them, do and did because that’s what people have always wanted. After all, wouldn’t you prefer French toast made with white bread rather than whole wheat bread?

Sometimes richer isn’t always better. In the Orient, brown rice has been associated with poverty; it’s simpler to process. The middle and upper classes generally consume white rice because they prefer the taste and texture thereof.  But they’ve been depriving themselves of the beneficial health effects of brown rice, which contains the bran and the germ. A similar situation has held true in the West. In days of old, grist mills refined grains down to flour consisting of just the endosperm because that’s what people wanted. It was a more expensive process, so mainly just the middle and upper-income classes could afford it. Ironically that often resulted in worse health among the upper classes. Captains of ships would come down with health conditions that the sailors avoided, because the sailors were eating foods made from the less-expensive whole grain flour.

Whole grain is just that – all of the grain: the bran, germ and endosperm. Ironically, because our food processing infrastructure is tailored toward non-whole-grain foods, whole grains today are usually (but certainly not always) more expensive.

Whole-grain foods include brown rice, oatmeal, breakfast cereals containing the word “bran” in their names, buckwheat pancakes, and other foods with “whole grain” or “whole wheat” written on their labels.

So avoid the fate of the middle and upper class people of the Orient, and don’t deprive yourself of whole grain foods.

Filed Under: Health & Fitness, Science & Nature Leave a Comment

Urban Should Not Mean High Crime & Poverty

May 19, 2012 by

In China and elsewhere, many apparently think that the more urban the area, the safer the area.

A lawsuit against the University of Southern California over the violent crime deaths of two Chinese graduate students alleges that, given that the online application says the school is in an urban area, school officials should have known that the Chinese would interpret that to mean a safe area.

First of all our hearts go out to the slain Chinese students and their families. As far as the lawsuit, it’s silly. When applying to a college it’s prudent to find out the crime statistics of the surrounding area. A simple Google search will do that. Moreover I’ve been to China and have spent lots of time around Chinese, yet never got the impression that the Chinese associate “urban” with “safe”, as far as crime goes. And to be sure, I just asked a Chinese whether, prior to coming to America, she associated urban with more crime or less crime. She said more crime. Besides, there are 38,000 students at USC. If two of them fall victim to violent crime, that means you have a 1 in 19,000 chance of the same. Those odds are probably a lot safer than most places.

Nevertheless, I could see how someone from another country could be unaware that in the United States, urban and especially inner city are associated with higher crime. That’s because in many other countries, inner city is not necessarily associated with higher crime.

We Americans take it for granted that inner city means high crime. But in fact, the inner city is not a “natural” place for crime. We artificially made it that way – “we” meaning American federal, state, and especially local governments and the people who voted them in. To borrow from something I wrote before:

“The areas of high concentration of poverty are determined largely by the location of subsidized housing.” The federal decision long ago to locate subsidized housing projects in America’s inner cities prompted many lower-income people – and criminals who tagged along with them – to relocate there or to stay there.

To drive home the point, in France, certain suburbs are associated with high crime.

“A similar thing happened in France decades ago, when authorities decided to erect its subsidized housing projects in the outer suburbs of Paris. They were a magnet for poor immigrants, and they are where many of the rioting youth now live. Unemployment is as high as 50 percent in some neighborhoods.”

So there’s a “pull effect” created by government programs like subsidized housing. There’s also a “push effect” created by government policies, pushing out businesses and responsible citizens through such measures as a higher minimum wage compared with the surrounding communities, higher taxes on businesses and individuals, and a tortuous system of licenses and regulations. As noted here, a business owner tried for years to get a license to set up shop in New Orleans, to no avail.

Of course, in America these days, it’s not just the inner city anymore that’s crime-ridden. It’s suburbs too. Take my own metro area. Several decades ago the University of Maryland College Park was in a county – Prince George’s – that was just as safe as practically anywhere else. But now the crime rate is higher in Prince George’s County compared with D.C.’s Virginia suburbs.

That’s because of the push effect and pull effect described above. Maryland and D.C. are bastions of the Democratic left. I think of all of those liberal/left professors at the University of Maryland College Park, and how their workplace is surrounded by what their politics have wrought. They provide the anti-intellectual firepower for the liberal/left agenda that’s implemented by the nation’s federal, state, and especially local governments.

The result? Driving businesses away, pulling criminals in, and making the area less safe for human habitation.

Filed Under: Crime, Urban Issues Tagged With: , , , Leave a Comment

NPR’s Peter Overby: Reporting the Left’s Side of the Story but Not the Right’s

May 13, 2012 by

If one comes across blatant bias and shirking of journalistic responsibility on the occasional occasions when one does listen to NPR, imagine how much bias and irresponsibility a dedicated listener must be exposed to.

I fall into the former category of listeners. The other day I came across a story by NPR’s “Power, Money and Influence” reporter Peter Overby on a recent American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference. With a job title like that, it’s a good bet that Mr. Overby isn’t going to treat those he disagrees with fairly. And in this recent story, that certainly was the case. He reported on the left’s recent campaign against ALEC for its support of voter I.D. laws “which Democrats say are meant to keep minorities and young voters from casting ballots in November.”

OK, so listeners hear from Overby why the left doesn’t like voter I.D. laws (which, by the way, is hogwash). But does Overby ever mention why the right likes voter I.D. laws, which is because such laws help reduce voter fraud?

Nope, not a peep of that.

So listeners hear from Overby the left’s stated reason for disliking voter I.D. laws, but never hear from Overby ALEC’s stated reason for liking voter I.D. laws. Overby could have made a simple and short mention of “voter fraud” in order to inform listeners of ALEC’s rationale for supporting voter I.D. laws. But he conspicuously left that out.

And that’s a downright shirking of journalistic responsibility. It crosses over into propaganda.

I’m thinking of the young people listening, like high-school and college students who are just becoming politically aware, and how deceived they are being. They hear stories like that from Mr. Overby, and lacking exposure to alternative viewpoints, think the only reason organizations support voter ID laws is racism – “to keep minorities and young voters from casting ballots in November.”

Abolish the taxpayer subsidy for NPR now.

Filed Under: Media Bias, NPR/PBS Tagged With: , , , , , Leave a Comment

Norman Ornstein: Dems Willing to Cut Entitlements. Huh?

April 29, 2012 by

Folks born in my home town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota (not Michigan) can say the darndest things sometimes.

Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute, writes (together with Thomas Mann) in the Washington Post that the Democrats “are centrist protectors of the government, reluctantly willing to revamp programs and trim retirement and health benefits to maintain its central commitments in the face of fiscal pressures.”

Democrats willing to trim retirement and health benefits? Huh? Where? When?

Is he sure he and his co-writer didn’t accidentally drop in the word “Democrats” whereas they meant to write “Republicans”? Because that statement characterizes Repubs much more than Dems. Gotta be a typo. Where are the Washington Post’s proofreaders when you need them?

Last I checked, the Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to maintain and increase government-provided retirement and health benefits, even in the face of national bankruptcy. In fact, just two years ago they pushed through the most massive increase in government-provided health benefits in U.S. history (Obamacare)!

Maybe, just maybe, Dems would consider slightly slowing the rate of entitlement growth (which is not “trimming” or cutting) only in exchange for a massive tax increase. Supposedly Obama put together a budget plan containing some of that. But his fellow Democrats rejected it outright. Which just goes to show that while perhaps an individual Democrat or two would consider trimming entitlements – especially in exchange for a tax increase – it’s practically a non-starter for Democrats as a whole.

Those who implement new multi-trillion-dollar government redistribution programs even though we’re already many trillions of dollars in debt are protectors of redistributionist government all right. But they’re not “centrist.” They’re downright leftist. And massively fiscally irresponsible.

Filed Under: Entitlement Crowd-Out, Welfare State Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment

Lactose Intolerant? You’re Normal

April 27, 2012 by

A recent page 1 WSJ article reports on China’s efforts to expand its domestic milk production capacity. But the article has a gaping hole. Reportedly, some 95 percent of Asians above the age of five are lactose intolerant (lactose intolerance doesn’t begin until around that age). So that begs the question: Where is all this demand for milk in China coming from?

Is it coming from the 5 percent? The five-and-under crowd? Is the lactose being removed during the production process? Are people drinking milk despite their lactose intolerance, and suffering the consequences? Is it just a myth that 95 percent of Asians are lactose intolerant? Questions like these needed to be answered in the article.

At any rate, the subject of lactose tolerance is most interesting. It’s evolution in action.

To be lactose intolerant isn’t an abnormality or aberration. It’s more of an aberration to be lactose tolerant. Humans weren’t designed to drink milk beyond the toddler years.

Lactose tolerance is said to have arisen in cattle-raising societies: in Europe around 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, and in East Africa around 4,500 years ago.

A gene mutation gave some people the ability to drink cow milk without getting diarrhoea, stomach aches and other symptoms associated with lactose intolerance. Observe the following advantages of milk amid harsh living conditions:

Milk is uncontaminated by parasites, unlike stream water, making it a safer drink. Also, if those that were intolerant of lactose tried to drink the milk, they would develop diarrhoea and vomiting – this could be lethal in difficult living conditions and they could therefore die of dehydration in the most extreme cases. Another suggestion is the benefit of having a continuous supply of milk as opposed to seasonal crops – cows will give milk all year round whereas crops can only thrive at certain times in the year. Also, milk has many nourishing properties – it is high in fat and calcium, amongst other nutrients. All in all, the ability to drink milk gave some early Europeans and East Africans a big survival advantage.

That was in Europe. Some 90 percent of Danes and Swedes are lactose tolerant. The farther south you go in in Europe, the less lactose tolerance. About 50 percent of Spanish and French are said to be lactose tolerant. And according to this same source, in non-pastoral societies such as China only 1 per cent of the population are lactose tolerant.

So if you’re lactose intolerant, don’t sweat it. You’re normal. Some 60 percent of adults fall into that category. If you’re lactose tolerant, you have your cattle-raising ancestors to thank.

Filed Under: Health & Fitness, Science & Nature 1 Comment

Journalistic Malpractice at PBS Frontline

April 24, 2012 by

If there were a clearer case of journalistic malpractice, I can’t think of one at the moment. This isn’t just media bias. It’s out-and-out journalistic malpractice bordering on deceit.

This evening the PBS series Frontline broadcast a program called “Money, Power and Wall Street”. It’s about the origins and consequences of the financial crisis that began in 2008. Just from the title, you know it’s dripping with bias.

Still, in order to try to maintain a facade of impartiality, and given that the program’s funding comes from American taxpayers of all political persuasions – not just from leftist taxpayers – you would have thought that Frontline would have at least briefly acknowledged the very popular and very convincing argument that the U.S. government had a significant hand in causing the financial meltdown.

During the program when the topic of subprime mortgages was introduced, which everyone agrees was at the crux of the financial meltdown, the narrator said that the subprime market went from being a very small niche market to a huge one. That begged the obvious question that surely was on the mind of any discerning viewer: how did the subprime market get so big?

This is where the journalistic malpractice really kicked in. Frontline totally ignored why the subprime market got so big. That’s because if they were to explain why it got so big, they would have had to discuss the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and the fact that banks, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and other lending institutions were required by law to make loans to subprime borrowers. (Click here or here for a smidgen of the voluminous literature on the subject.)

Journalists and producers with a modicum of journalistic integrity, even if they leaned left, would have at least briefly mentioned that well-established line of thinking.

Based on what I watched, Frontline didn’t even mention the name Barney Frank in the whole discussion, let alone Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae – all players who were instrumental in promoting the continuation of loans to subprime borrowers.

One speculates as to why they would ignore it. It’s either deceit or ignorance or both. Deceit if the producers of the show were familiar with that line of thinking, and privately acknowledged that it even made some sense, but chose to not present that information because it wasn’t consistent with the agenda they’re trying to promote. Ignorance if the producers of the show have been so conditioned by leftist viewpoints over their lifetimes that they’re mentally incapable of understanding how any arm of the government, except perhaps the military and CIA, can do any wrong, leading them to dismiss the whole CRA angle outright – and ignore the question of how the subprime market got so large because they have no idea themselves how that happened.

Journalistic malpractice, while unfortunate, is a fact of life in a democracy. It’s inevitably going to happen in societies where there’s freedom of the press. People can choose not to patronize or fund the entity committing the malpractice. But what’s galling is when journalistic malpractice is carried out by entities that people are forced to fund through their taxpayer dollars. That goes against everything a free society should stand for. Taxpayer-funded entities should be bound to the highest of standards. Instead, in this case, PBS has been captured by leftists trying to foist an agenda. As the people forced to finance such entities come from both sides of the political spectrum, such taxpayer-funded entities should lose their subsidies, or barring that, be required to hire reporters, editors and producers on both sides of the political spectrum.

Journalists have a professional obligation to present all significant angles of a story. That’s woefully lacking in Frontline. It’s far from a news program. And it doesn’t bill itself as an opinion program. So propaganda program is a more apt description. “Money, Power and Wall Street” easily could have passed as a Michael Moore production.

The principal Frontline interviewer, by the name of Martin Smith, was fond of using the term “crap” while interviewing his subjects, in characterizing the subprime securities that caused the whole mess.

Mr. Smith, your manner of presentation of the issue at hand falls into that category, too.

* * *

BTW, here are some names behind the content of the above-referenced program:

  • Producer – Callie T. Wiser
  • Web Design & Development – Jordyn Bonds
  • Senior Digital Producer – Sarah Moughty
  • Director of Development – Sam Bailey
  • Director of Digital Media/Senior Editor – Andrew Golis
  • Managing Editor – Philip Bennett

Filed Under: Financial Crisis, Media Bias, NPR/PBS Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Dr. Madeleine Albright’s Warning Sign

March 29, 2012 by

Well, so much for aging with grace and dignity.

In an appeal for donations of $3 or more, seventy-four-year-old former secretary of state Madeleine Albright described those opposed to the legalized killing of human fetuses and those who oppose socialized contraception with such respectful language as “extremists“, “attackers on women’s rights” and purveyors of “vicious misogyny”.

A genteel and above-the-fray elder stateswoman she is not.

Another term she used was “radical Republicans”. Why thank you Dr. Albright. Little do you realize it but that’s actually a compliment. Those up on their history know that the famous Radical Republicans were the ones who pushed for unconditional abolition of slavery before and during the Civil War, and civil rights for former slaves after the war.

Madeleine Albright being in the news again brings to mind an amusing incident described in Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Steve Jobs. Former Apple CEO Gil Amelio, who presided over the company when it was hemorrhaging massive amounts of cash, is described in an unflattering light. “He was just such a buffoon, and he took himself so seriously,” recalled Jobs. “He insisted that everyone call him Dr. Amelio. That’s always a warning sign.”

(Note: Jobs was notorious for his insults and intolerance for folks who don’t think like him, so I’m sure Dr. Amelio didn’t deserve such harsh language from Jobs.)

Yes, insisting that everyone call you doctor-so-and-so just because you spent an additional two or three years studying at a university, can be a warning sign. I remember reading a news article back when Dr. Albright was secretary of state, describing an incident where she insisted that everyone call her “Dr. Albright”, especially since people addressed one of her predecessors as Dr. Kissinger.

Yep, that was a warning sign all right.

 

***

Update: a few months later. I listen to a C-Span radio interview with Dr. Albright on a recent book of hers about her family’s experiences in Czechoslovakia during the Nazi and Soviet eras, and she was wonderful to listen to. Elder-stateswomanly-like. Too bad she has to go and sign her name to some crass political mailing which someone else probably wrote.

Filed Under: Abortion, Demagoguery Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment

Intelligent Life Out There? Maybe, But They’ll Never Come Here

March 28, 2012 by

Astronomers have concluded there could be billions of other planets in our galaxy capable of supporting life, and hundreds of them within just 30 light years of earth.

Just 30 light years? Get me my astronaut suit! If we were to set out for one of those planets in one of our 20,000-mph spacecraft, we’d reach it in a mere one-million-five-thousand years!

As far as ever reaching the speed of light or even just 1 percent of that speed, that’s impossible. Aliens from other worlds may exist, but they have never and can never visit us. All those stories you hear about UFOs and alien abductions? Total bunk. The distances are just too vast.

Cozying Up to One of the Only Campfires in Antarctica

A related but different subject: Next time you’re feeling miserable in the hot sun, just picture this: Antarctica during the dark season, with only a few campfires scattered throughout the whole continent, and you happen to be next to one of those campfires feeling its warmth (but not close enough to burn yourself). That’s how it is with us vis-à-vis our sun. We’re in the middle of trillions and trillions of cubic miles of emptiness and near-absolute zero and desolation, but happen to be just close enough to a star to feel its warmth but not close enough to burn up. (To put it into scale, if the sun were the size of a campfire, it would be about 1,000 km away from the next closest star.)

Likewise, next time you’re out in the cold, just remember that cold is only relative. You’re actually feeling heat from the sun, but less of it than you’re used to. You want cold? Try absolute zero, or 455 below zero on the Farenheit scale. That (or a couple of degrees above that) is the norm in this universe.

The potential temperature range is from near-absolute zero out beyond Pluto, to a thousand degrees near Venus (and of course a lot hotter closer to the sun). The temperatures most of us experience  – from summer to winter – are just a tiny, tiny fluctuation within that larger temperature range. A small blip downward makes us feel cold, and a small blip upward makes us feel hot.

We happen to be just the right distance from one of the huge nuclear reactors that are peppered throughout the galaxy, separated by unimaginably large voids of near-absolute zero.

So be thankful we’re living just close enough to a galactic campfire so that, most of the time, we’re neither too cold nor too hot.

Filed Under: Science & Nature Tagged With: , , , 1 Comment

Another One Becomes Part of the Solution

March 25, 2012 by

Things can get so bad as a result of the liberal/left agenda that sometimes even liberals/leftists recognize the folly of their ways.

That’s what happened to Gina Raimondo, the Rhode Island state treasurer who was mortified to see the union-driven state pension system turn into a black hole, sucking in money and resources at the expense of everyday public services. The leftist-dominated state has resulted in there being more public pensioners than workers paying into that system.

Ms. Raimondo read “an article in the paper about libraries closing and public bus service being cut nights, weekends and holidays, and I just thought it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Of course for most liberals, the solution would be simple: raise taxes. But the now-bankrupt town of Central Falls provides a good example of what happens when you do that. When it raised property taxes to finance worker pensions, “many residents fled, sending the city into a tailspin.”

So Raimondo helped push through pension reforms in order to help stem the state’s deteriorating situation.

Hey all you Wisconsinites who want to throw out Governor Walker: can’t you see that Walker has been doing almost exactly what Raimondo has been doing? He’s trying to prevent your state pension system from turning into a black hole that gobbles up everything in sight like libraries and roads and schools and parks. Quit being part of the problem and be part of the solution for a change.

Of course the only difference is the label – Raimondo calls herself a Democrat while Walker calls himself a Republican. Walker is having a tougher go of it because the term Republican has been so demagogued by the left, even though he, like Raimondo, is only trying to save the state from the ravages of union-created black holes.

Filed Under: California and Welfare States, Entitlement Crowd-Out, Labor Unions, Welfare State Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment

Systematic Deception at High Levels of Government, With Devastating Consequences

March 21, 2012 by

There’s an organization called the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) that reportedly published a paper in 2007 that instructed Muslim jurists to “do everything within their power to make the Islamic Shari’a supreme, even if that means engaging in deception in certain cases.”

I don’t know how influential AMJA is among Muslim jurists; hopefully not much. In any case it’s an outrage that it’s encouraging legal professionals to engage in deception in order to implement its agenda.

But you know what? Legal professionals in the Justice Department got caught red handed in what appears to be a clear case of engaging in deception. It wasn’t with the purpose of making Sharia law supreme, but it had the effect of making Obamacare law supreme.

In their attempt to convict Republican Sen. Ted Stevens (who later died in a plane crash) for alleged monetary improprieties – a conviction that was later overturned – at the trial the DoJ prosecutors allegedly withheld key evidence that would have exonerated Sen. Stevens, according to a report. Not only that, but they “selectively quoted the foreman to make it appear as if he had said the opposite, and they used his comments to falsely attack Stevens.” In other words they deceived and misled in order to convict him. That doesn’t reflect well on their character or integrity.

It has all the markings of how things get done in corrupt governments of third world countries. And this wasn’t some little private law firm in Podunk, Kentucky doing this. It was the United States Justice Department.

A report ordered by Judge Emmet Sullivan found that the attorneys engaged in “systematic concealment” of “significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated Senator Stevens’s defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government’s key witness.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the names of the DoJ attorneys in question are Matthew Friedrich, Rita Glavin, Brenda Morris, Joseph Bottini, James Goeke and Edward Sullivan. To be sure, some of them could deserve less blame, if any, than others; e.g. it’s possible that factors such as incompetence or naïveté rather than willful misconduct played a role, for some of them. Sullivan appears to have been the victim of management problems. And he, Goeke and Bottini reportedly urged disclosure of material that would have helped the defense, only to be rebuffed by Friedrich and Glavin. Still, the report concluded that Goeke and Bottini  deliberately withheld the information. Confusing, eh? (Update, March 23. In today’s WSJ a letter to the editor written by a partner of Matthew Friedrich states that “Mr. Friedrich was not among those under investigation and is not accused of any ethical improprieties in the report’s findings,” and that Mr. Friedrich is “a lawyer of the highest integrity.” But that adds to the confusion, because Friedrich appears to be one of those who rebuffed other attorneys’ request to disclose the key information. Still, If more information is forthcoming on Friedrich or any of the other attorneys, it will be duly noted.)

Despite the legal hot water they found themselves in, one wonders if they took solace in a certain event that took place a year and a half after the Stevens conviction. That was when Obamacare got passed, with all the devastation it’s wreaking on our healthcare system. You see, DoJ’s conviction of Sen. Stevens came just a couple of weeks before the 2008 election. That caused him to lose the election to Mark Begich, an Obamacare supporter. Sen. Begich provided the 60th vote to pass it.

The ends justify the means, perhaps some of them were thinking. Which is what the folks at the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America are probably thinking as well.

Filed Under: Legal Abuse, Radical Islam Tagged With: , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

The Greatest Person Who Ever Lived Redux

March 19, 2012 by

This Saturday the atheists are planning a big rally on the National Mall. With that in mind, allow me to put in my two cents.

While purging some old files I came across a short write-up of mine from December 19–. Wait. Scratch that. It was from so long ago that I’m not giving away the year for fear of revealing how many decades I’ve been around. Let’s just say it was from the 1990s.

It was addressed to Max Wilkinson, Competitions Editor, Weekend FT – a.k.a. Financial Times. The competition was to explain in a few paragraphs who one thinks is the greatest person who ever lived and why.

I know I didn’t win because I never heard back. Today I did an Internet search to see if I could find out who did win, but there’s no trace of the competition – apart from someone who said their claim to fame was that they won an essay contest on the greatest person who ever lived (and didn’t reveal their pick). A search for the whereabouts of Max Wilkinson came up dry as well, so I can’t ask him directly.

Looking back, I thought my entry was pretty damn good. My pick? Jesus Christ. As I mentioned to Mr. Wilkinson, my conclusion has nothing to do with anything divine. Even if one is an atheist and believes Jesus Christ wasn’t endowed with any divine attributes, one still should concede that J.C. was the greatest person who ever lived, for reasons explained below.

So here goes:

The Greatest Person Who Ever Lived

Jesus Christ was the greatest person who ever lived because he more than any other person was responsible for helping to suppress humans’ innate tendency for aggression.

For the vast majority of human existence, our species were hunter-gatherers in which people lived in self-sufficient small bands primarily consisting of the extended family. They depended on no other bands for their sustenance. Indeed, outsiders were usually regarded as competition for resources.

Human beings evolved under this system. Millions of years of natural selection shaped them to be loyal to and supportive of members of their own group, while none of these built-in tendencies developed vis-à-vis persons outside of the group. Lack of concern and suspicion toward outsiders often engendered outright hostility and violence.

Beginning about 8000 B.C. this simple, stable way of life largely disappeared in the western world. The agricultural revolution and subsequent urbanization radically altered “in-group” and “out-group” relations. Economic interdependency caused the number of face-to-face contacts to increase enormously—not only among family members and workmates, but also among casual acquaintances and complete strangers. Survival now depended on cooperation, not competition, with out-groups.

Humans’ innate propensity to be unfriendly toward out-groups ran directly counter to this need for cooperation. Happily, Jesus Christ helped solve the problem. He created an all-powerful social institution that instructed humans to show love, benevolence, and forgiveness toward fellow humans. His Golden Rule probably has done more to promote smooth relations among humans than any other mechanism.

Unlike virtually all other animals, humans have the ability to employ cultural adaptation in order to get around our biological shortcomings. Christianity has been our most important cultural adaptation.

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Cancer Incidence from Fukushima Disaster: Negligible

March 11, 2012 by

On this one-year anniversary of the tragic Japan earthquake and Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, there’s one bit of positive news. It turns out that the release of radioactivity was far less than initially feared. It was so small that, according to Japanese government researchers as cited by a Wall Street Journal article, so far no one has gotten cancer from that radiation exposure.

Among people living in three towns that were at high risk, 95 percent of them were exposed to less than 5 millisieverts, which is half as much what one is exposed to during a typical CT scan. The highest level of radiation that anyone was exposed to, a worker at the disaster site, was 679 millisieverts. So far he’s fine. In fact his chances of getting cancer from that are still quite low. According this chart, exposure to 500 millisieverts puts you at a lifetime cancer risk of 1 in 250. That means if 250 people were exposed to that amount, just 1 would get cancer during their lifetimes, as a result of that exposure.

To be sure, the article also says that over the long run, 300 to 500 people could develop thyroid problems as a result of the Fukushima radiation release.

So one can rest a little easier over nuclear power plant worries, at least in developed countries. Even a large-scale disaster like Fukushima resulted in far fewer radiation exposures than initially feared.

Hey Germany, ya think you acted a little too hastily in deciding to shut down all of your nuclear power plants, in the wake of Fukushima?

Of course, sabotage of nuclear power plants is always a concern, as is terrorism and destruction resulting from war. Regarding terrorism, a common worry is crashing an airliner into a reactor. But here’s one bit of reassurance: when they crashed an F-4 Phantom jet into a 6-foot concrete wall, the jet disintegrated and nothing happened to the wall. I’m certainly no expert but perhaps crashing an airliner into the thick metal and concrete containment building of a nuclear reactor would yield similar results.

What about shooting a barrage of missiles into a containment structure, and/or a full-scale release of radiation? I actually got hold of a book on that. Book report to come soon.

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