Body Parts

Full Moon

Using a moon phase calculator, I have determined that I was born under a full moon. Knowing me, who would agree?

Fairness Also Means 'Protecting Merit and Freedom'

Arthur C. Brooks (President, American Enterprise Institute), "The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism", The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 30, 2009. A15.

"Advocates of free enterprise must learn from the growing grass-roots protests, and make the moral case for freedom and entrepreneurship. They have to declare that it is a moral issue to confiscate more income from the minority simply because the government can. It's also a moral issue to lower the rewards for entrepreneurial success, and to spend what we don't have without regard for our children's future.

"Enterprise defenders also have to define 'fairness' as protecting merit and freedom. This is more intuitively appealing to Americans than anything involving forced redistribution ..."

The root issue is freedom. Capitalism is built on freedom--the freedom of the capitalist to invest money for the greatest return, the freedom of the producer to produce as s/he sees fit, the freedom of the consumer to buy products for their greatest personal benefit. All three--investment, production, consumption--require private ownership of property. Nationalization of big corporations, governmental planning, socialism, communism, fascism--all are based on restriction of freedom of capitalist, producer, and consumer. In denial of economic freedom, the government decides what is best for an economy, for its workers, producers, investors, for its consumers; and directly or in directly compels these citizens to produce and buy what government wants. When private citizens reject, or protest, or oppose governmental steering of the economy, then, to protect its management of economy and society, the government restricts their political freedom, by one means or another. Economic freedom and political freedom go hand in hand. These truths have been confirmed positively in history (e.g., the industrial revolution) and proved negatively (e.g., the failures of socialism). They are the basis of the essential political philosophies of the republic. They are the basis of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly protects both. Despite all this history and philosophy and political commitment of the American people for capitalism, private property, economic freedom, and political freedom, here we are, in 2009, debating the merit of them all with an American president and American political party who neither respect nor appreciate them. One shakes one's head in disbelief.

Favors From Iran Means US Will Not Stop Iranian Nuke

According to DEBKAfile, the Obama administration is in talks with Iran to obtain passage of US troops and supplies across Iran to Afghanistan. Iran certainly will not agree to such privilege without the US relinquishing opposition to an Iranian nuclear weapon. If such an agreement comes near reality, expect Obama to signal its arrival by changing US policy on an Iranian nuke and expending much talk about the Iranian fist being unclenched. As for Israel and the increased threat of nuclear holocaust from Iran ... tant pis.

Barack Obama's Tribal Mentality Behind Political Persecution

The first original conceptual analysis I have read about Obama the politician; from ShrinkWrapped.

lslamic Religion Radicalizes Home-Grown Terrorists

An empirical research study of home-grown Muslim terrorists in the UK and the US finds that the Islamic religion radicalizes individuals, who then become terrorists. By one of the authors of Counter-Terrorism Blog.

Why Americans Want Big Cars and Light Trucks

The auto companies got it; the Greens, the Lifestyle Regulators, and Washington don't. The latter think that autos are only used for one-person personal transportation for commuting or convenience trips to the supermarket. They can hold that view, because as people of money and privilege, they hire other, nonprivileged, people to do their work for them. But those other people, who lack privilege and don't have lots of money, comprise the majority of Americans; and they need large cars and light trucks to do work for the privileged and to do their own work. Here are observed uses of automobiles, requiring large vehicles with powerful engines capable of carrying cargo and six passengers. I see these uses in my neighborhood, which includes black, white, and Latino middle class and professional class, and black and Latino working class households. These are necessary transportation jobs for maintaining households, raising families, maintaining kin support networks, and hold wage-labor jobs.

Women driving--car pooling to and from school (i.e., two trips a day, etc. as follows), car pooling to and from day care; day care car pooling to and from school; car pooling to work; car pooling to and from work to nearby cities; car pooling girls scouting groups; car pooling athletic teams; car pooling to and from church; carrying baskets of laundry to pay-laundry; carrying bags of groceries; moving household goods and furniture; motoring vacations; family to family long-distance visits; door-to-door selling with sample cases; car pooling for door-to-door distribution of religious literature; housekeepers with co-workers and cargo of cleaning equipment.

Men driving--car pooling to and from work (i.e., two trips a day, etc. as follows); carrying work cargo (lumber, painting eqpt., plumbing eqpt., auto and truck parts, welding equipment); carrying work crews; lawn care and landscaping crews and equipment; car pooling boys scouting groups; car pooling camping groups with equipment; car pooling to sporting venues with equipment (e.g., snow skiing); pulling small trailers with work equipment; pulling small trailers with sporting equipment (water jet skiis) and boats; pulling horse trailers; car pooling softball and soccer teams with uniforms and practice equipment; moving household goods and furniture; motoring vacations.

It is easy to see that these vehicles are clocking 50-100 miles a day in these uses, not counting inter-city commuting. 

There are obviously many more such uses of large automobiles and light trucks than I have observed in my neighborhood; but the uses above illustrate why working class households are willing to spend a considerable portion of their incomes on these vehicles (SUVs, cross-overs, Ford 150s and similar class light trucks from Chevrolet, Chrysler, GMC, and Toyota). That is to say, purchase of such vehicles is economically rational.

A neighbor, an elderly black lady who had moved from Alabama to Los Angeles in the 1930s to pursue an interest in sky-diving, and then moved out to Sprawling Suburb to teach, explained the issue simply. Referring to why she wanted her son, an unskilled laborer, to have a light truck, she said: "Why, you can make a living with a truck!"

Revised.

Car Companies Fall Apart; There's Little Left To Save.

I had been strongly in favor of governmental intervention to save the old-line American car companies. So much of the industrial economy of the upper Midwest is dependent on auto manufacture. And I've argued that the US desperately needs to stay in the car business, because it is where the research and development frontier will be. Indeed, with the spread of car culture to China, South and Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it looks very much like this 21st century will be the era of the automobile.  But now it looks like governmental intervention will only make matters worse for the US. It will burden the manufacturing economy with antiquated autos and hobble the ability of the private sector to innovate and build cars people want here and abroad. GM will survive as government motors, building autos designed to pay unionized workers high wages and to meet policy goals that defeat the purpose of automobiles. The company will be burdened with horrendous debt, debt so great that the company will have to be subsidized forever. Chrysler is going to be broken up. It would be better to start over with a simple, deregulated industry and market so investors will have a reason to start new car companies, and so car companies can find what sells and begin to develop new kinds of personal transportation that meets car needs in the new overseas markets. But have no doubt; the feds won't let this happen. And the government will find policy measures to compel Americans to buy government cars they don't want. If you look around, the big cross-over vehicles, the SUVs, the Hummers, the light trucks, and so on are very popular. They are what people bought and wanted (and were enormously profitable to the companies). But the Left, the Democrats, and the parties enthused about lifestyle regulation never asked why such vehicles were/are economically good investments, why consumers were wanted to spend so much money for these vehicles. (They never watched families or wage earners or independent contractors work, so they wouldn't know why these vehicles sold.) And so we walk down the path of throwing taxpayer money away. Europe and Britain walked down this road a generation ago as old English car makers started to fade away. Government ownership won't work.

Four Myths About Employer Based Medical Insurance

David A. Hyman (University of  Illinois, School of Law), "Employment-Based Health Insurance and Universal Coverage: Four Things That People Know That Aren't So". Download. Well worth reading. 14 pages. PDF. 

EBC (employer-based coverage) works well for the majority of Americans, who are covered through it. The main question that the article does not address is, however, portability of insurance coverage.

H/T Instapundit.

One Seabee Safe (One Seabee Down)

Our young friend comes regularly to Sabbath eve dinner. She is a delight, full of high spirits, lively conversation, and stories about her adventures of being an eighteen-year old woman. Her twenty-year-old boy friend--her first, serious, committed relationship--is a Navy Seabee. He left for Afghanistan last month. He's stationed at a forward base in Taliban territory, where he and his fellow Seabees are building the camp for the Marines, who are due shortly. In the dark of night, the Taliban come close enough to the base to lob mortar fire at it. It's a regular occurance. Our friend has regaled us, with an ambivalent mixture of pride and fearful concern, with the ongoing account her boy friend's acclimation to the incoming fire. He told her two weeks ago, he was used to it and sleeps through the explosions. Sleep deeply, he might, since he works from six AM to 11 PM on construction. This week, she told us that he told her, a morter hit a sleeping tent. A Seabee was killed. He doesn't sleep through the mortar fire any longer. And he feels his tiredness more. Shortly, the Seabees' construction assignment at the camp will be completed, the Marine detachment will arrive, and he will be shipped to another new, nameless, forward, operating base at an undisclosed location in hostile territory somewhere in Afghanistan. And we will wait for news of him. Here at our Friday evening home front.

Obama Will Okay Torture In Emergency

My bold prediction. If the US receives another 9/11 scale terrorist attack, during Obama's presidency, I predict that Obama will approve torture--ooops, "harsh interrogation methods"--as needed to coax information about follow-up attacks out of captured terrorists. He will approve waterboarding if needed and perhaps some new and inventive method. He will sing and dive and do the shuffle and jive, rhetorically soaring with code words and new terminology; but he will authorize the methods. He won't risk a second strike.  He doesn't want to go down in history as the first black president to be compelled to resign the office, along with the vice-president and the speaker of the house, for failure to execute responsibility to protect the nation. Just thought you'd like to know. I'm feeling optimistic today.