Stupid, Treasonous Puns

In Captain Ed's Redefining Hard Intelligence post, he points to a WaPo article in which an Afghan tribal chief is convinced to help our side when a CIA officer gives him Viagra.

Great, WaPo. Now every tribal leader with whom we meet will be the butt of Viagra jokes, followed soon after by Al Qaeda trafficking in pallets of the stuff, probably on trucks emblazend with a Red Crescent banner. Humanitarian medical aid, it is.

And for a CIA officer to give up this tool of the trade? What a treasonous, or at the very least unethical, moron. While it may be immoral, I don't suppose it's unethical for a CIA man to give Viagra to a tired old polygamist. But it's certainly unethical for him to divulge tactics to a reporter.

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Roger Simon: Logic-challenged

At Politico:

I do not understand why some people are opposed to a $25 billion government bailout of the U.S. auto industry.

The price is cheap. That $25 billion represents less than three months of the cost of the Iraq war.

I oppose the bailout because unlike national defense, propping up certain industries is not an area in which the government should involve itself.

By analogy, Mr. Simon suggests that because a couple buys a car with a payment of $300/month, neither partner should object to using a home equity line of credit to buy $900 worth of crack cocaine.

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Government is the Devil's Evil Twin

Over at Power and Control, Simon says:

The government IS the Devil. Not metaphorically. Really.

Everything you get from government will have a price much larger than the value of the object gained. Some times the price will not be extracted from you. Sometimes it will be from your children, your grand children, or ten generations hence. But the full price the government wants will be extracted at compound interest.

We are still paying the price for trying to be a free people while holding slaves. My great great grand parents lived on another continent when all that went on. And yet the price is being extracted from me.

I think I blogged a generalization of this a while back, but maybe I just thought of it and never did. Ah, found it, in that link.

Government creeps. Given power in one area, it will keep that power as leverage to extend its reach into another.

You cannot deficit spend without an eventual tax increase -- or the lack of an otherwise obvious decrease.

You cannot say that drunk driving (without actually harming anyone or breaking any traffic laws) is illegal without eventually losing the right to take any other risky action.

You cannot have Roe v Wade and not later get Kelo.

And you cannot grow a bureaucracy big enough to manage the health care system without surrendering your right to criticize the government. You watch.

At least the devil lets you enjoy the crap you sold your soul for. Government doesn't even give you that.

Government is not the Devil -- it's the Devil's evil twin.

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Typical Bush Derangement Syndrome at Salon

Somehow managing to type wearing a helmet and drool bucket, David Sarota writes:

It wouldn't be the George W. Bush we all know if our shamed president didn't spend his remaining White House days in a final fit of polarization.

Wha? Talk about paranoia! Mr. Bush wants the Columbia Free Trade deal to go through, and knows that it's union opposition which makes Obama also oppose it. And why are the Democrats so in favor of an auto maker bailout? The unions want it, to keep their fat, blood-sucking lifestyle going.

But Sarota harkens back to NAFTA, managing to blame Bush41 for forcing it on Bill Clinton, which in Sirota's alternate reality caused the unions to skip voting in 1994. Those things must all be Known Facts on the Left, but having lived through that era I could have sworn I heard the centrist Bill Clinton championing NAFTA. And the 1994 elections were all about conservatives rallying behind conservatism as expressed by Newt Gingrich.

In Sarota's fantasies, George Bush is some kind of Machiavellian mastermind, rolling the dice with the world's economy in order to depress voter turnout in 2010:

Therefore, if Bush successfully uses the economic emergency to hustle a faction of Wall Street Democrats into supporting the deal, he will have potentially engineered 1994 redux: Democratic infighting, a demoralized progressive base, and these newly elected fair-trade Democrats humiliated — and thus electorally endangered — by their own party's standard bearers.

Dude. No one will vote, or not vote, two years from now based on whether there is a free trade agreement with Columbia. Lots of union members may not have jobs without one, but what do they care? They have the One.

Update: I think I like Kim Strassel's take better.

If there was a moment that highlights to what extent the Democratic Party has become captive to its special interests, this might be it. Mrs. Pelosi and Harry Reid have spent this week demanding that Washington stave off a car-maker collapse. What makes this a little weird is that Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid are Washington. If they so desperately want a Detroit bailout they could always, you know, pass one.

w/t Yid With Lid

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A pound of prevention barely worth an ounce of cure

Michael F. Cannon has a blog post at Cato.org about preventive medicine.

While I've always thought that prevention of disease would be less costly than treatment, that is only true, when we stop to ponder it, when the total cost per person treated with some preventive measure is less than the savings in cure costs. That means that the total cost per person treated or per preventive measure would have to be lower than the difference between the cure expenditure with and without prevention. Furthermore, those costs have three categories: direct costs, indirect costs, and abstract costs.

You there at the back! Please don't yawn unless you've got enough for the rest of us.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The direct costs are the costs of shots, educational materials, and so on.

The indirect costs include the time off work going to get some preventive treatment, the loss of efficiency when some supposed safety control is implemented, and the added bureaucratic sludge that happens whenever we try to prevent something bad by changing the behavior of everyone.

Abstract costs include the loss of freedom for the individuals who are given the prevention.

Nestled invisibly between the indirect and abstract costs of preventative medicine is what it does to people's opinion. Much of preventative medicine consists of "raising awareness" of the problem, so that people can avoid stepping into open pits and so forth.

But if told too many times about an open pit, or a hot stove, or dangerous intersection, people will be filled with thoughts only of safety and precaution, aftraid to risk opening their eyes lest ultraviolet radiation damage their unprotected corneas. They exist only to be safe.

Alternatively, the more preventive measures we implement, the more jaded the people become and the more difficult it becomes to raise their awareness to a preventive level.

But the key problem is that for prevention to work, the pool of those treated with the preventive measure must be larger than the number cured, in many cases far larger. Taken together, and since prevention must be applied to the wider pool while remediation only to those affected, the cost of the prevention must be very low, and its effectiveness very high, for prevention to make sense.

Depending on the depth of the pit and the type of snakes at the bottom, it may be more cost-effective and indeed more humane to wait for someone to step into the pit and throw them a rope. Put a sign on the pit perhaps, but don't develop a slick ad campaign to tell people to avoid the pit, which will likely draw more people to it anyway.

This all yields the best quote ever on socialized medicine:

The point of the medical-care system is to serve people. It is not the point of people to serve the medical-care system.
-- Louise B. Russell

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The Lincoln Park Pirates

I don't get to the city much. Been there, done that, got the car alarm.

But all over the great State of Illinois, a great confluence of allied actors presents itself to the average person as a monolithic force with the malevolent desire to trap him into paying a hefty fine for whatever infraction he can be charged as having committed.

In Chicago, which I think is on a whole other planet from the rest of Illinois, the cabbies have been asking permission to raise rates. No, that's not right: they've been asking the Mayor Daley to raise their fares. Why on Earth does Hizzoner Da Mayor set the prices for what is ostensibly a private enterprise? The socialists in the Democrat machine are why.

It seems that if you park your car in the wrong place in Chicago, it will be ticketed and towed. There is a $50 fine, but you get your choice: pay the $50, or pay $25 and go tell the judge, who will either order you to pay the other $25 or give you your money back on the first snowy day in Baghdad this summer. Not such a bad deal, unless you want to park your car somewhere other than your driveway, which you don't have because you foolishly live in a city.

And yet, somehow, there are reports of people sending in their $50 fine, getting a receipt for it, but the ticket gets filed as a $25 contested one. Bah. Cities. You can have 'em.

Rod Blagojevich wants to be the guy who provided health care to everyone in Illinois, maybe so someone will like him. Hard to say. But guess what, Rod ol' boy: when the Feds get through with your dirty campaign and even dirtier governance, you will be known as "George Ryan II".

I drive a lot on a particular stretch of Interstate in Illinois. I know where the Illinois State Police have their speed traps, so I'm careful not to exceed the speed limit where those traps are. I also know that when I see someone pulled over by a State Trooper, the motorist is usually Black or Hispanic.

Is it racial profiling? I don't know. All I know is what I see, and I usually see a lot more melanin in the face of the one pulled over than in the one standing under the Smokey hat.

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The Ungreen Party

If I had my own party, it would not be like the two major American political parties. It would also be unlike the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, or any other. Well, maybe a little like them.

To have one's own party is an exercise in intentional projection. Let us pretend, therefore, that there are more than, say, two people who would join a party that reflected my point of view. It hardly seems likely, but this is my blog.

I am green. I really don't consider myself an environmentalist, but I love the woods, hate litter, and I have a compost pile. However to me the Earth is not a Mother but a tool, at once a very large resource and a smallish planet circling a smallish star at the edge of a smallish galaxy, all of which are safely nestled in a caring hand. The Owner of that hand I believe holds us responsible for our use of the resource, but is also more concerned with other things.

I think most people are squarely in that same dichotomy of cognitive dissonance: there is a Creator to whom we are accountable, but our place in the universe is pretty insignificant. In the end, it seems right to leave the world and universe in at least as good a shape as we found it. It also seems right not to fret too much that we cannot.

My party would recognize the right of people to hold property, whether that be a paperclip or a continent, and to direct the use of that property as they see fit.

Humans and their ideals matter more to me than money or pollution. My party would be in favor of war to defend the freedom of other nations to direct their own affairs, but would otherwise leave them alone to do so. My party would not favor war to defend the environment, nor to correct or uphold unequal distribution of wealth.

My party would work to end the War on Drugs, as the War has proved to be more harmful than the Drugs.

My party would defend the right to keep and bear arms, not in terms of hunting, target practice, or even self defense, but simply as a right.

My party would defend the right to life, from the moment of conception to the last sweet breath.

My party would reject multiculturalism, farm subsidies, protectionism, hate crime laws, Jihad, the minimum wage, affirmative action, and smoking bans.

My party would build a wall and deport all illegal immigrants. We would then allow anyone who wanted in to come in, as long as they will speak English, renounce their foreign citizenship and loyalties, and meet certain reasonable background checks.

My party would know that nations are not people, and cannot be held to the same standards of conduct. A nation cannot be expected to respond as a person would. Yet each nation has certain rights among the others.

But the biggest reason my party would be so small is that we would assert that the only legitimate functions of government are to defend the rights of its citizens from internal or external violators, and to settle such disputes that may arise. In the end, my party would have as its highest goal the reduction of the overall size, scope, power, and importance of government at all levels, until such a time as it was able to fulfill its legitimate functions rather than wasting our resources trying to do things it should not be doing in the first place.

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No Stinking Way

In regard to a smoking ban last week, Tbone at Redstate, never being one to dance around a point when kicking it in the teeth would do, asked :

Do I have the right to carry around a dead fish of three days passing?

That question presumes a public interest in regulating and assuring the pleasantness of life, not merely some vague public interest in regulating the indoor air quality in a place of business, which is to say, on private property.

Does a business owner have the right to allow his customers to stink like dead fish? And if it's really a problem for customers and employees, why would a business owner not put out a sign

• No Stinking

and wait for the customers to start streaming in?

As a ruthless ex-smoker, I yield to no one in my distaste for cigarettes. And yet, without offense to Tbone, I am even more offended by those who would use the power of the state to deny people the right to stink, on their own property, or to charge others for the opportunity to smell bad as part of a business plan. As long as no one is force to endure stench or smoke, let us not grant government the power to dictate taste.

As for that waitress who claims that cigarette smoke at work gave her lung cancer: that's a bad deal. However, to the extent that she didn't think she would get cancer, neither did anyone else. That lack of knowledge played an equal part, therefore, in the thinking of the business owner and the waitress (even if one would have weighed it more heavily than the other). Any business owner from this point forward will have the spectre of cancer looming over his decisions.

By attempting to use this special case to ban all smoking in all work places, the anti-smoking crowd is using the government to limit our right to expose ourselves to long-term risk for short-term reward. How long before we're not allowed to drive vehicles for delivery, because that is too dangerous, too odorous, or too noisy?

Not long.

Are people allowed to smell like rotted fish? We can only hope! To paraphrase Voltaire, I may detest your stench, but I defend to the death your right to stink it.

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The Mass Hysteria of Convenient Targets

Mankind has a certain way of finding scapegoats, a method which seems to assign blame for causes on a scale inversely proportional with the ability of the scapegoat to defend itself against the charge.

Why do we insist on assigning guilt for all troubles great and small to the bogeyman of the day? While Satan, demons, pixies, elves, gremlins, and other such creatures have often received more blame than is their due, there can be little doubt that they are involved in some of our many troubles. But we don't stop there; we take actual things and people we see in the world and assign other-worldly power to them.

• Witches
  From as early as we can tell, witches enjoyed a special reputation for casting ruinous spells and unprovoked magicks on their hapless neighbors.
  
  These witches were so powerful as to control the climate, the economy, disease or war. That they chose in their omnipotence to live in a hut on the outskirts of some dirty little village ought to have given a thinking peasant reason to pause with his pitchfork. History being so woefully incomplete, we may never know whether the Cotton Mathers of the world gave that consideration.
  
  
• Jews
  Like witches, the Jews represented a convenient target. A small minority, with "odd" ways, the Jews were also quite a bit smarter on average. But beginning with the Black Plague in the 14^th century, Jews were blamed for various events which, with the benefit of hindsight, they probably wish they had not brought about.
  
  
• Corporations
  At the turn of the 19^th century into the 20^th, a populist movement began to vilify the Trusts as controlling all economic activity and exerting undue influence on government. This fell short of attributing weather patterns to corporate greed, but not too far short of it.
  
  
• Drugs
  At about the same time, Prohibition Fever caught hold of Americans, especially activist Christians. Opiates, marijuana, and alcohol were each vilified as ruinous to good living, and banned. This was at about the same time that self-propelled vehicles became common, allowing unprecedented leverage. Prior to this time, what a person drank or smoked was a matter of taste, with social benefits and consequences, but no concern of the government. With modern machinery came modern restrictions on freedom.
  
  Today the hysteria continues in certain circles, but it must be noted that drug use has not tapered off, despite laws to the contrary.
  
  
• Jews again
  The Nazis incorporated antisemitic hysteria into their governing philosophy.
  
  
• Commies
  In the United States at the height of the Cold War, the Red Menace was thought capable of any evil imaginable, and so communists were held responsible for even the evil they didn't do.
  
  
• Jews again
  What a surprise it is that the Islamofascists blame the Jews for their troubles. And what a shame that some Western dhimmis agree.
  
  
• Corporations
  Those evil corporations are said to be keeping a lid on 200-mpg cars, electric cars, a cancer cure, an AIDS cure, and the like.
  
  
• Global Warming
  But perhaps the all-time winner in the Mass Hysteria Sweepstakes, or at least giving antisemitism a runner up, is the Global Warming hysteria. Perpetuated by science worship and a willing media, the global warming myth plays on the fallacy that if something happens, there must be a human cause.
  

So if you start to think the Witches have unleashed the Jews on us with their Evil Corporations peddling Drugs and leading to Global Warming, just relax. It's really George Bush's fault.

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Encourage Integrity

People in government don't seem to understand that it is their duty to regulate immigration, at least in the sense of being able to count how many people are entering. In an era of constant terrorist attacks, allowing even a handful of people to cross the border without in the minimum identifying themselves is indefensible.

Like Diana Irey (who opposed Jack Murtha in '06), I want a 'tall fence with a wide gate'. Right now, the whole fence is a gate.

The law and all policy should encourage honesty and integrity, not reward its absence as this bill would. Or at least, that's the rumor, because as of this writing there is no bill.

• Do not give amnesty, nor a reward by any other name, to people who break the law. That only results in more lawbreaking.
• We must know, by fingerprint, every single person who enters the country, by whatever means they choose to enter.
• If anyone in the country is subject to a law, everyone must be subject to that law.
  
• There must be no second-class citizens.
• If anyone is willing to give up allegiance to his native land and any other, speak our language, and take up our common cause, I want him as a countryman.
• Economic concerns are of secondary importance
• No illegal alien should be allowed citizenship while there is anyone who followed the rules still in line for it.

Secure the borders.

Secure the workplaces.

Defend the defenders, not the attackers.

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Justice Will Not Be Mocked

A drug smuggler shot by two jailed US Border Patrol agents is in a world of hurt.

"They (the agents) talk (to the media). I don't talk. So people don't know," he said. "I know it was wrong what I did, but I'm paying for it with my health. People don't know how it is for me to go to the bathroom, how painful it is."

Aldrete Davila's urethra was shattered by the bullet two years ago, and he still lives with a rubber tube sticking out of his belly button that connects his bladder to a plastic bag.

Boo. Frickin'. Hoo.

w/t : Sondrak

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Habitual Liars

No, not politicians, though that was a really good guess. I hate cigarette smoke as much as anyone, but I think I hate lying commercials even more.

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Here There Be Monsters

The fog of government is ahead, and our charts give us only vague, but frantic warnings. All around are the dead seas of the Nanny State and the rocks of Tyranny. We soon sail into uncharted waters, neither able to see horizon, star, nor shoal, and not even able to sound the depth. Will we becalm ourselves in the Nanny Sea, or dash against the rocks of Tyranny? Neither, if we turn back while we can.

Increasingly, we've bought into the notion of preemption: if something you do increases the likelihood of danger to others (or to yourself), you should be A) barred from doing it or B) found to have intentionally caused whatever calamity happens as a result of your dangerous action.

The War on Drugs keeps us from harming ourselves .. but at the price of a loss of not just the freedom to self-medicate, but the freedom to travel with a large amount of cash on hand. Our property can be taken without trial, on only the suspicion of a police officer whose department benefits directly from the sale of our property at auction.

Our young people are seduced by the glamor of these substances, and by the fun of the party, though they are soon to find neither glamor nor fun when the price must eventually be paid. But rather than simply teach them that, and let the consequences of life serve as a warning, we yield our liberties and spend billions interdicting, prosecuting, incarcerating, and finally supporting people whose only crime is using the wrong substance. No, people should not self-medicate, especially with banned substances. That would be illegal and dangerous.

Drunk drivers are public enemy #1, it seems, for increasing the risk to others. Being drunk behind the wheel doesn't hurt anyone; crashing does. Drunk driving simply increases the risk of accident. But by making the risk itself illegal, we give the government the authority to inspect our bodies when we have not harmed anyone, whether we've been drinking or not. No, people should not drink and drive. That would be illegal and dangerous. But we've allowed the government to have authority it should not have.

Each behavior or product against which we rise up in holy indignation to promote, regulate, or ban, gives government that much more authority in our lives. Each tax increase, each spending increase, each War on Whatever, extends the power of government.

Because when government grows in ways we like, it invariably grows in ways which we don't. And when it grows, it doesn't ever un-grow. At least, not yet.

When government grows in expenditure, it also grows in authority, sooner or later. If we don't want government to intrude on our liberties, we must not let it spend more money. It doesn't matter if taxes are increased or cut, or if promises to preserve liberty are made. Eventually, a larger government will find a way to extend its power.

One effect of the expansion of power is to "regulate" the money being spent. It would be irresponsible use of public funds not to account well for it, after all. But the way the accounting works usually does very little to account for how the money is spent, but rather is designed to show that it is being spent well. Beneficiaries of government largess are obligated to submit to regular surveys showing how much better off they are with the program than before it.

When government grows in the power to regulate business, it grows in the power to regulate our personal lives, as well. A law passed today to keep that other fellow from polluting the air with carbon monoxide (a poisonous gas) will be used tomorrow to regulate the very breath from our lungs. When we give it the power to regulate the breath from our lungs, it will somewhere else grow to tax that breath, to measure it, dole it out, and ration how much we can exhale -- or inhale.

There is a clamor on the left for universal health care. Everyone must be cared for. It's a human right.

What the Nannyists don't realize (at least, they don't say) is that expanding government to take care of us is eventually impossible unless it takes steps to control us. After all, how can we be kept well if we're allowed to do all kinds of dangerous things, like playing in the snow, walking in the rain, or (Heaven forbid) riding a bicycle without a helmet? Civil servants, as Heinlein said, soon become civil masters.

It won't happen this time, they promise.

But it will become a standard talking point that dangerous behavior, as defined by the statistics, raises everyone's taxes, or health insurance, or both. That's not such a bold prediction, since one hears it already, even without universal coverage. When the government is charged with keeping us healthy, we will be protected, controlled, and never again free.

It's something of a chicken-and-egg problem. Are we sailing quietly into a tranquil Nanny State Sea because we want to ban, by legislative fiat, our reckless endangerment by others, or is the call to ban unsafe activity the result of incipient Nannyism?

It can't go on forever. Sooner or later, government must contract. We must come to understand that our position, though not known exactly, is far too close to both the Tyrant's rocks and the Nanny's maddening doldrums. The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to escape disaster in an orderly — and peaceful — way.

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