southchild

This is an excellent visualization of how quickly, and by how much, the National Debt has grown. But the real message is how Obama’s spending is unprecedented, even compared to George W. Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility.

Don’t miss “How ObamaCare Will Affect Your Doctor” in today’s Wall Street Journal. The author, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, starts with the widely-accepted notion that Obama’s “public option” will cause millions to move from private insurance into the government plan which will eventually reduce doctor’s incomes.

At the heart of President Barack Obama’s health-care plan is an insurance program funded by taxpayers, administered by Washington, and open to everyone. Modeled on Medicare, this “public option” will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose. It will restructure the practice of medicine in the process.

Republicans and Democrats agree that the government’s Medicare scheme for compensating doctors is deeply flawed. Yet Mr. Obama’s plan for a centrally managed government insurance program exacerbates Medicare’s problems by redistributing even more income away from lower-paid primary care providers and misaligning doctors’ financial incentives.

Like Medicare, the “public option” will control spending by using its purchasing clout and political leverage to dictate low prices to doctors. (Medicare pays doctors 20% to 30% less than private plans, on average.) While the public option is meant for the uninsured, employers will realize it’s easier — and cheaper — to move employees into the government plan than continue workplace coverage.

The Lewin Group, a health-care policy research and consulting firm, estimates that enrollment in the public option will reach 131 million people if it’s open to everyone and pays Medicare rates, as many expect. Fully two-thirds of the privately insured will move out of or lose coverage. As patients shift to a lower-paying government plan, doctors’ incomes will decline by as much as 15% to 20% depending on their specialty.

Physician income declines will be accompanied by regulations that will make practicing medicine more costly, creating a double whammy of lower revenue and higher practice costs, especially for primary-care doctors who generally operate busy practices and work on thinner margins. For example, doctors will face expenses to deploy pricey electronic prescribing tools and computerized health records that are mandated under the Obama plan. For most doctors these capital costs won’t be fully covered by the subsidies provided by the plan.

So what will doctors do?

Doctors will consolidate into larger practices to spread overhead costs, and they’ll cram more patients into tight schedules to make up in volume what’s lost in margin. Visits will be shortened and new appointments harder to secure. It already takes on average 18 days to get an initial appointment with an internist, according to the American Medical Association, and as many as 30 days for specialists like obstetricians and neurologists.

Right or wrong, more doctors will close their practices to new patients, especially patients carrying lower paying insurance such as Medicaid. Some doctors will opt out of the system entirely, going “cash only.” If too many doctors take this route the government could step in — as in Canada, for example — to effectively outlaw private-only medical practice.

These changes are superimposed on a payment system where compensation often bears no connection to clinical outcomes. Medicare provides all the wrong incentives. Its charge-based system pays doctors more for delivering more care, meaning incomes rise as medical problems persist and decline when illness resolves.

Read the rest of the article for more sensible ways to address the problems with how medical care is funded in this country. Obama’s plan will cost a fortune, lead to health care rationing, longer waits, and poorer health outcomes. That’s some bad medicine.

More good stuff over at iOwnTheWorld.com.

This is hilarious! To the tune of “The Candy Man”:

To borrow Al Gore’s favorite word, there’s a consensus that “green power” is good. Right?

This story is further evidence that in California, the BANANA’s* reign supreme.

It was a squirrel, a labor group and an environmental group along with California’s tough environmental regulations, which helped kill a hybrid solar power plant project for a Mojave Desert city.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The City of Victorville prides itself on being a green city. They recently bought a number of hybrid vehicles for their city fleet. And they are located in the Mojave Desert which receives large amounts of sunshine every year.

When California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), signed legislation that requires a portion of additional electric power generation to be sustainable, the City proposed a hybrid solar electric power plant. The plant would combine a solar thermal powered system along with a natural gas fired system.

After much fanfare at the start, the project began to run into problems during the permitting phase. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) imposes a strict review process. The California Energy Commission (CEC) is the state agency that conducts the environmental review.

The first problem was the squirrel, or more specifically, the Mohave ground squirrel, which is considered to be threatened. While the squirrel has never been found at the project site, nor was there any evidence it had ever lived there, it could decide sometime in the future to live there. As a result, the California Department of Fish and Game decided that the squirrel required a mitigation ratio of 3:1. This means that 3 acres of the desert needs to be purchased and set aside for the squirrel for every acre of project site. This increased costs dramatically since there were few parcels available for set aside.

Read the entire article. You won’t believe how ridiculous this situation has become. This is actually a very sad story for this town. Victorville sounds like a nice place — I hope it can survive this injustice.

* We’e all heard of NIMBY’s — “Not In My Back Yard”. Well, BANANA is a similar variation: “Build Absoloutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything”. If that sounds good to you, well, in California they’re going bananas!

Andy McCarthy’s letter to A.G. Eric Holder declining to be on the “President’s Task Force on Detention Policy” is absolutely brilliant. Here’s an excerpt:

Dear Attorney General Holder:

This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases. An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading.

The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants—or what the Department now calls “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.” I admire the lawyers of the Counterterrorism Division, and I do not question their good faith. Nevertheless, it is quite clear—most recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germany—that the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States). Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people. Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop.

Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers—like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy—may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct. Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.

That’s just the beginning. It gets better. If you read nothing else today, read this.

Rush Limbaugh commented on this letter on today’s show.

A gallon freezer bag full of falafel balls. Click photo to enlarge.

Here’s the latest from the southchild kitchen: Yummy, yummy falafels.

Here are the steps with details:

1. Soak a one pound bag (2 cups) of dried garbanzo beans 24-36 hours.

Details: Pour a one pound bag of dried beans onto a cookie sheet, scatter about and inspect to remove any rocks or non-bean stuff. Rinse beans well in a strainer. Put the beans in a big bowl and cover with water a good 4 inches above the beans (they will soak up a bunch of water!). Add 2 Tablespoons salt and stir. You can leave the beans out for many hours, but you should probably refrigerate them overnight.

2. Get all the stuff together to make the falafel batter.

(You can do this step and the next ahead of time and refrigerate the batter which keeps for many days in the fridge.)

Details:
– Drain the garbanzo beans and rinse just a little. Set aside.

– Roughly chop one, yellow onion (I prefer “sweet”) and lightly crush 3 large cloves garlic (or 4 medium). Set aside.

– Mix the following spices in a bowl:

• 1 Tablespoon salt (table salt is fine, if you use kosher, use maybe a third more.)
• 1 1/4 teaspoons freshly-grated black pepper
• 1 Tablespoon ground coriander powder
• 2 Tablespoons ground cumin powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper powder (or a pinch more, to taste).

Set bowl aside.

– Prepare fresh parsley: This is Italian, flat-leaf parsley, not the curly stuff. On average, I use a little more than half a “supermarket sized” bunch. Pick off the leaves and tender stems, rinse and dry in a salad spinner. Finely chop enough parsley to measure at least 1 1/4 cups when gently packed. A little more parsley may even be better. Don’t be shy.

– Squeeze the juice out of two lemons into another bowl, separating out seeds. Get all the juice out of them possible (within Geneva Convention regulations, of course). You guessed it, set bowl of lemon juice aside. I bet the folks who invented falafel didn’t use this many bowls!

3. Make the falafel batter. Get out the food processor.

My food processor is small — 9 cups thereabouts — so I make my batter in two batches, each with half of all the ingredients, then I mix them together in a bowl.

Details: Put half the onion, garlic, parsley, garbanzos in the food processor and blend a good 15-20 seconds. Scrape down the sides and add half the spices and half the lemon juice. Continue blending, three or four times, stopping every 10 seconds or so to scrape down until the mixture is well-blended and slightly grainy. Do not over blend this into hummus! The batter should be slightly wet and sticky, but not drippy. You shouldn’t need to add any water when blending, but if it’s too dry, you can add just a little.

Pour mixture in a bowl and repeat blend with other half of ingredients. Combine mixtures and stir together well.

4. Fry the falafel balls.

I don’t own a deep fryer, so I use the smallest stainless steel pot I have (1 quart pot) and fill it approximately 2 inches deep in canola oil (may alternatively use peanut, grapeseed, or corn. Olive oil can’t take this heat, and soy oil? Bleh. Use canola.)

Details:
Prep the takeoff area by setting a draining rack over some paper towels. Your deep-fried falafels will drip and cool here.

Prep the fryer: Be careful! If you have a deep fryer, use it. Otherwise, my 1 quart pot fryer works well. Feel free to use a bigger pot if you’re not an oil cheapskate like me; although, I can cook 75 falafels in half an hour in that tiny pot! Heat the oil over medium heat, and employ a candy thermometer to ensure you hit 350 degrees Fahrenheit. (If you don’t own a candy thermometer, well, buy one. $10 tops, and I’ve had mine 20 years. Plus it’s great for making candy.)

Prep the balls: Using a teaspoon, scoop a healthy teaspoon-plus amount of batter into one hand. Toss batter into a ball in your hand, then place on a pan of some sort (I use one of those flimsy, plastic cutting “boards”). Since I’m using the “cheap-pot” fryer, I can fry 5 balls at a time, so I place the prepared balls in rows of 5. Adjust according to your fryer’s capacity.

Fry: Make sure you have a slotted, metal spoon to fish out your falafel balls. When oil hits 350+, carefully drop 5 prepared balls into the fryer (again, adjust according to your fryer’s capacity). They should sink and then float. If they don’t float, the oil isn’t hot enough. Cooking time is 1-3 minutes, depending on the size of the balls and how brown you like them. Brown is good: I think a darker brown color is better than a lighter brown. Try out both and decide for yourself! When done, fish them out with the slotted spoon and place on the rack to drain.

WARNING: If using the homemade “fryer”, danger time is when you first drop the balls into the hot oil. If you’ve used too much oil (or add too many balls), the oil can boil out of the pot. This can burn down the house, so turn off the burner, remove the pot from the burner, and call your wife/husband to help with the fire and/or cleanup.

Keep the heat on the oil throughout the frying sessions since oil cools down whenever you add a batch of batter…I let the oil have 15-30 seconds between batches to heat back up.

5. Lemon-tahini Dressing

Mix this ahead of time. It keeps in the fridge at least a week.

Details: Put 1/2 cup yogurt and 1/2 cup smooth sesame tahini in a bowl. Add a big pinch of salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and cumin powder. Add 1/2 clove minced garlic, and the juice of 1 lemon. Blend well. (If you’ve got some chives you’d like to use up, add a minced tablespoon.) CAUTION: Can also add some minced parsley if you’re not sick of it by now!

6. Shepherd’s Salad.

Also make this ahead of time, as it gets better the longer it marinates. Good for several weeks, if yours lasts that long.

Details: Finely chop and add to a bowl the following: 1 small onion, 2-3 roma tomatoes, and 1/2 – 1 cucumber (peeled and seeded). Basically, add equal parts of each. Add pinch of salt, pepper, 2-3 Tablespoons olive oil, and 1-2 Tablespoons vinegar (red wine is best…red cider works well also). Add a Tablespoon or two chopped parsley (see Caution above).

7. Construction.

In addition to all that stuff above, you’ll need some pita bread (home made is best, but we’ll save that for a later installment), plus some romaine lettuce.

Details: Nuke each piece of whole pita about 9 seconds just to soften. Cut in half and carefully open pocket. Put a piece or two of the romaine lettuce in the bottom of the bread like a liner in the keel of a ship. Lightly spread sauce over the lettuce. Add 3-4 warm falafel balls in a row. I slightly squish each ball to make for a better fit and stable end-product. Dribble a little sauce between and around the balls. Add a generous helping of shepherd’s salad, followed by more sauce on the top.

8. Eat and enjoy!

9. Leftovers.

This recipe normally will make 70-80 falafel balls. I cool the leftovers on the rack and store them in a gallon freezer bag in the fridge (or freezer if longer than a week). With the already made bread, falafels, sauce, salad, and with some lettuce in the spinner, it’s falafels for lunch all week! Heat the falafel balls up in the microwave for 20-30 seconds. They don’t have the same crunch as fresh, but the flavor and smell are all there.

Also, don’t throw out the leftover oil. Instead, use a funnel and a strainer to filter the oil into a clean bottle. Save the used oil for the next time you make falafels!

(Thanks, David)

Yesterday we wrote about the Orwellian GIVE/SERVE act, and the fact that Georgia’s two Senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, were supporters.

Late yesterday, the bill passed the Senate, and of course Georgia’s two RINO Senators crossed over with the Democrats and voted for it. The great State of Georgia deserves better than Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. The final vote was 79-19. Click on the link to see which authentic and brave Republican Senators voted against this authoritarian bill to mandate “national service.”

One thing’s for sure: they ain’t from Georgia.

Are you following the progress of the Orwellian “GIVE/SERVE Act’s” stampeding through Congress? This legislation is bad news, and the Republican sheep are a big part of the happy herd. We think “Republican” is a synonym for “stupid and gullible.” Michelle Malkin’s column today has some of the details:

Volunteerism is a wonderful thing, which is why millions of Americans do it every day without a cent of taxpayer money. But the volunteerism packages on the Hill are less about promoting effective charity than about creating make-work, permanent bureaucracies, and left-wing slush funds. …

Especially troublesome to parents’ groups concerned about compulsory volunteerism requirements is a provision in the House version, directing Congress to explore “whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”

Those who have watched AmeriCorps from its inception are all-too-familiar with how government voluntarism programs have been used for propaganda and political purposes. AmeriCorps “volunteers” have been put to work lobbying against the voter-approved three-strikes anti-crime initiative in California and protesting Republican political events while working for the already heavily-tax-subsidized liberal advocacy group ACORN. …

Taxpayers GIVE their money to SERVE a big government agenda under the guise of helping their fellow man. It’s charity at the point of a gun.

Senator DeMint is one of handful of Republicans that seem to understand what is at stake. Here is his floor speech, and we’ve included a few excerpts below. While we would never expect Democrats to understand this (or to care), when are the Republicans going to learn that government compassion is not compassion, and mandatory voluntarism isn’t volunteering? The passage of this bill by the Senate is proof positive that the current crop of Senate Republicans do not have the Right Stuff when it comes to protecting liberty and freedom. We cannot depend on this bunch to fight the tide that is washing us out into a sea of soft tyranny. They are, in fact, rowing us out to more quickly meet our doom while they whistle and smile approvingly to their Democrat captains.

Thanks, Michelle, for the video and transcript.

NATIONAL SERVICE REAUTHORIZATION ACT — (Senate – March 24, 2009)

Mr. DeMINT…

This bill is everything wrong with how Congress sees the world. Government will make service organizations less effective, less responsive, and less personal. When the French historian de Tocqueville came to the United States not long after we were founded, one of the things that amazed him about our country that was so different from France was that in his home country when there was a problem, people would say: Someone ought to do it and government should do it; but in America we were different. When someone saw a problem, they went and got a friend and formed a small group and solved the problem themselves. Much of that was motivated by religious convictions that our place in this world is not only to help ourselves but to love and help those around us. That was key.

Jefferson called it little democracies, when he saw these little groups all around America voluntarily doing things to solve problems and make communities better. Burke called them little platoons. Most people who understand America know that those voluntary groups are what made our country great and what sustain us even today. Civil society binds communities, not by its fruits, but by its motives–charity, donations, giving without thought of getting anything in return. This is the selfless sacrifice that happens throughout America today. This is what works.

What does not work is what we are doing right here. The big difference is private service organizations exist for the people who receive the aid. Government service organizations exist for the people who give it–in this case, for the people who are paid to do it. You cannot pay people to volunteer and expect the organization to remain focused on its mission. Charity is a private, moral impulse, not a government program.
…

Projects that do not work in a civil society get cut. Organizers who lose or abuse funds are dismissed. It is voluntary. So everyone is invested in its success. We know the large groups throughout America, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the United Way, the Salvation Army, the YMCA, Catholic Charities, fraternal orders, groups such as Kiwanis, Rotary, Knights of Columbus. These are large organizations, but they work because they are locally controlled.

Smaller groups, local arts councils and community theatres, PTAs, youth sports leagues, the animal rescues, the book clubs, crisis pregnancy centers, soup kitchens, food and other clothes drives that go on, church service groups, they are everywhere.

Those are the little platoons, the little democracies that make this country work. For us to presume, in the Congress, that somehow we are going to reach out into all these groups and make it work better is pretty presumptuous based on our history.
…
But I think we need to come to a point as a government that we recognize we cannot do everything. That is why we take the oath to the Constitution to defend and protect the very limited form of Government. This Congress, this Government, does not need to start or expand an organization to a quarter million people, when we are paying people to do work that we decided needs to be done and take those decisions out of the hands of millions of Americans who look around every day and see what they can do to make their families, their communities, and their country a better place to live.

These are not Government decisions. We need to focus on what we were set up to do and do it much better than we are doing, instead of every week coming in here, bringing our good intentions and our compassion and every problem we see across the country we say something needs to be done. Then we say: The Government needs to do it.

That is the fatal flaw of the Congress today, is we forget that sacred oath of office that says: We will protect and defend the Constitution which says this Federal Government has a very limited function. And those functions that are not prescribed in the Constitution are left to individuals and to the States.

Sadly, both of Georgia’s Senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, voted for this monstrosity. We had hoped Saxby at least had an epiphany after his recent, narrow victory, but it appears he’s right back to his bad habits. These two — bless their hearts — just don’t get it, and we think Georgia deserves better.

Senators, just what the hell are you thinking? Only a Community Organizer in Chief could support such a huge intrusion of Federal control over our private institutions of Civil Society. Do you not realize that with Federal money comes Federal institutions, bureaucracies, and control? Are you both just suckers for any random bill with a feel-good-sounding name? What do you think of Sen. DeMint’s comments? You two have been played the fool by the Community Organizer in Chief. You bought this thing hook, line, and sinker. This bill is nothing more than a power grab by radical, leftist community-organizer groups like ACORN to get control of the private, and truly voluntary institutions that make our civil society the envy of the world. Sen. DeMint said, “This is a huge well-intended mistake we are making”, and he’s correct: the road to hell is paved with good intention, but Georgia’s two Senators seem to have never learned that lesson.

Senator’s Isakson and Chambliss: since you two aren’t bright enough to figure this kind of thing out on your own, and since you continue to get spanked like a Frat boy by President Obama, would you please — please! — just vote like Senator DeMint from now on? Perhaps South Carolina can save Georgia. We can only hope.

Let them know what you think by clicking on their names below:

Johnny Isakson

Saxby Chambliss

The Pope Goes to Alaska

The Pope took a couple of days off to visit the rugged mountains of Alaska for some sightseeing. He was cruising along the campground in the Pope Mobile when there was a frantic commotion just at the edge of the woods. A helpless Democrat, wearing sandals, shorts, a ‘Vote for Obama’ hat and a ‘Save the Trees’ t-shirt, was screaming while struggling frantically and thrashing around trying to free himself from the grasp of a 10-foot grizzly.

As the Pope watched in horror, a group of Republican loggers with ‘Go Sarah’ t-shirts came racing up. One quickly fired a 44 magnum into the bear’s chest. The other two reached up and pulled the bleeding, semiconscious Democrat from the bear’s grasp. Then using long clubs, the three loggers finished off the bear and two of them threw it onto the bed of their truck while the other tenderly placed the injured Democrat in the back seat.

As they prepared to leave, the Pope summoned them to come over. “I give you my blessing for your brave actions!” he told them. “I heard there was a bitter hatred between Republican loggers and Democratic environmental activists, but now I’ve seen with my own eyes that this is not true.”

As the Pope drove off, one logger asked his buddies, “Who was that guy?”

“It was the Pope,” another replied. “He’s in direct contact with Heaven and has access to all wisdom.”

“Well,” the logger said, “he may have access to all wisdom, but he doesn’t know squat about bear hunting! By the way, is the bait still alive, or do we need to go back to Massachusetts and get another one?”

(Thanks, John)

Subject: Awaitting your responce.

My name is Barack Hussein Obama, one of the sons of Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya, and of Ann Dunham Soetoro.

As a result of my recent election to a high government post, I have come into possession of $3,550,000,000,000 ($3.55 trillion of U.S. dollars), that I wish to transfer to various agents in the states and abroad during the years 2009 and 2010.

However, there are many in the U.S. legislative body who want to restrict or encumber these funds. I have spoken with my advisers Messrs. David Plouffe and David Axelrod, also high government officials, on how to distribute this money without hitches, and they advised me to liaise with various U.S. citizens by email who can act as partners to impress upon their representatives that the money in question is urgently needed for important projects.

It is on this basis I am seeking for assistance. Your percentage is negotiable. Please note; your age and profession doesn’t really matter in this transaction. Waiting for your immediate response.

Regards,
Barack Hussein Obama
Scrappleface.com

(Hat tip: GPBurdell)

(Hat tip: Andrew Stuttaford)

The coronation of Prince Charles as global warming soothsayer should thrill the climate chicken littles. Perhaps the good and wise Prince should be nominated for a Nobel prize. That he is getting rich peddling snake oil tinctures is a fitting tribute to the scientific knowledge of his supporters. We recommend Prince Charles and Al Gore consult Bernie Madoff on setting up a carbon credits investment scheme. They’ll “clean up.”

Global warming has reached a ‘defining moment,’ Prince Charles warns:

Prince Charles told 200 business leaders in Rio de Janeiro that the world has “less than 100 months” to save the planet.

“As the world’s economy heads further into recession, it would be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture; to commit the sin, as we say in England and if you will pardon the terrible pun, of ‘not seeing the wood for the trees’. For we are, I fear, at a defining moment in the world’s history.

“We are facing a series of challenges so immense that we can, perhaps, be forgiven for feeling they are all too forbidding to confront.”

In his speech, Prince Charles quoted Chico Mendes, the great Brazilian environmentalist, who said we are all “fighting for humanity.”

Prince Charles’ Duchy Originals ordered to remove ‘misleading’ herbal remedy claims:

Prince Charles’ Duchy Originals brand has been ordered to remove claims about the effectiveness of its herbal remedies from its website, after regulators ruled they were “misleading”.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has upheld a complaint over the online advertising of two remedies, Duchy Herbals Echina-Relief Tincture and Duchy Herbals Hyperi-Lift Tincture, which are sold for £10 for 50ml in selected Boots and Waitrose stores. Although the MHRA has given the company a license to sell the remedies it does not allow them to make any claims about their effects, merely to stress their “traditional use”.

Since the ruling, made at the end of January but only made public, Duchy Originals has since amended its website and agreed not to make similar claims in any future advertising. The remedies have been available in stores and through the company’s website since the end of January and the MHRA made its ruling after a complaint from a member of the public.

The move comes just a week after a leading scientist accused the Prince of “exploiting the gullible” with the Duchy Originals’ tinctures…

Don’t miss Michelle Malkin’s column today on the Kabuki theater smokescreen.

Charles Murray gave a speech this week at the American Enterprise Institute. While the speech is about the cultural and psychological causes of happiness, he decimates the European model through a comparison of those causes and the actual effects of European democracies.

There’s been an ongoing debate on the speech over at the National Review’s “The Corner,” and it’s been pretty fascinating stuff. The most consistent disagreement with the speech concerns Murray’s “wild optimism” that changes in science will cause the “elites” (the ruling intelligentsia) to change their views on certain social policies such as affirmative action or to re-think their obsession with equality in the face of inherent, genetic differences between men and women (think the Larry Summers brouhaha).

Murray defended his prediction at the Corner. It’s an interesting response.

We think Murray is overly optimistic in that regard, mainly because the elites have a staggering capacity for ignoring science (including economics) when it contradicts their world view and philosphy (think global warming). Nonetheless, if science eventually decimates the whole notion of “equality of outcome” that defines the bulk of liberal/progressive philosphy, it will be a wonderful thing indeed.

Murray’s speech is something that no one should miss. It is wonderful. Here’s an excerpt and link to the entire speech.

From “The Happiness of the People”:

First, the problem with the European model, namely: It drains too much of the life from life. And that statement applies as much to the lives of janitors—even more to the lives of janitors—as it does to the lives of CEOs.

I start from this premise: A human life can have transcendent meaning, with transcendence defined either by one of the world’s great religions or one of the world’s great secular philosophies. If transcendence is too big a word, let me put it another way: I suspect that almost all of you agree that the phrase “a life well-lived” has meaning. That’s the phrase I’ll use from now on.

And since happiness is a word that gets thrown around too casually, the phrase I’ll use from now on is “deep satisfactions.” I’m talking about the kinds of things that we look back upon when we reach old age and let us decide that we can be proud of who we have been and what we have done. Or not.

To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don’t get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it (hence the cliché “nothing worth having comes easily”). And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.

There aren’t many activities in life that can satisfy those three requirements. Having been a good parent. That qualifies. A good marriage. That qualifies. Having been a good neighbor and good friend to those whose lives intersected with yours. That qualifies. And having been really good at something—good at something that drew the most from your abilities. That qualifies. Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation, and faith. Two clarifications: “Community” can embrace people who are scattered geographically. “Vocation” can include avocations or causes.
…

It is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four institutions, nor do I array them in a hierarchy. I merely assert that these four are all there are. The stuff of life—the elemental events surrounding birth, death, raising children, fulfilling one’s personal potential, dealing with adversity, intimate relationships—coping with life as it exists around us in all its richness—occurs within those four institutions.

Seen in this light, the goal of social policy is to ensure that those institutions are robust and vital. And that’s what’s wrong with the European model. It doesn’t do that. It enfeebles every single one of them.

Thomas Lifson has a great piece at American Thinker on how our modern politicians are following in the footsteps of dictators and kings of yore: they’re living a life of luxury and excess that, through their ruthless power, is reserved for them alone. From The New American Class Structure:

In the old Soviet Union, the ruling elite shopped at different stores, lived in different areas, and enjoyed a life apart, one very different from the lives of ordinary citizens. America is all too rapidly going down the same path. We are at a peculiar moment in history where the top American political leadership excoriates the perquisites of private wealth and power — the luxury retreats, the private jets — while shamelessly helping themselves to unprecedented levels of the same levels of consumption, or more. …

At the top, while America tightens its belt, President Obama jets off on his presidential 747 to take his bride out for Valentine’s Day at a favorite Chicago restaurant. Executives may be scampering to cancel contracts for future private jets, but the 89th Airlift wing at Andrews Air Force Base, in charge of ferrying around political bigwigs, is as busy as a Vegas casino during the bubble.

In China and Japan under Confucian political ideology, sumptuary laws regulated the material goods which members of the ordinary public would be allowed to own. Most famously, silk was reserved for the elite class of mandarins and samurai. The much-despised merchant class faced criminal prosecution if discovered using the wrong type of ceramics or cloth.

In today’s America, the new mandarins of government seem to despise those who accumulate wealth in the private sector almost as much as the Confucians of Asia’s past. Public humiliation in front of Congressional hearings, punitive legislation, and regulatory hell are rained down upon those who seem to trespass on the ground reserved to the higher caste of public officials.

Read the whole thing here.

(Hat tip: Lisa Schiffrin)

Check out this great song by Kathleen Stewart, It Ain’t Your Money To Spend. (Click on the link to download the MP3).

It’s witty and catchy with a great message. Plus, this woman can really sing! Lisa Schiffrin accurately calls it the “Anthem of the Counter-Revolution”.

Nice job, Kathleen Stewart!

(Hat tip: Andy McCarthy)

This is unconscionable. This is insanity. See if you can find the logic in this:

1. US military captures murdering muslims in Afghanistan.
2. Murdering muslims are imprisoned in Gitmo.
3. US politicians release murdering muslims from Gitmo.
4. Murdering muslims return to Afghanistan to murder Americans.

We don’t pay squat to the brave men and women in our military compared to the sacrifices that they make on behalf of every American. As a society, we don’t sufficiently honor their service, and in the more liberal parts of the country (like Che Francisco), the military is held in disdain and shunned by local politicians and deranged citizens. And now we’re turning the murderers that our military caught in the first place back into the field to murder more of our brave soldiers. Where’s the outrage?

Officials: Taliban’s New Top Operations Officer Is Former Guantanamo Bay Detainee:

The Taliban’s new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration’s efforts to close the prison.

U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials.

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, formerly Guantanamo prisoner No. 008, was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan government in December 2007. Rasoul is now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a nom de guerre that Pentagon and intelligence officials say is used by a Taliban leader who is in charge of operations against U.S. and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan.

The officials, who spoke anonymously because they are not authorized to release the information, said Rasoul has joined a growing faction of former Guantanamo prisoners who have rejoined militant groups and taken action against U.S. interests. Pentagon officials have said that as many as 60 former detainees have resurfaced on foreign battlefields.

Pentagon and intelligence officials said Rasoul has emerged as a key militant figure in southern Afghanistan, where violence has been spiking in the last year. Thousands of U.S. troops are preparing to deploy there to fight resurgent Taliban forces.

One intelligence official told the Associated Press that Rasoul’s stated mission is to counter the U.S. troop surge.