*(Be sure to give us your opinion at the end of this post!)
Problems with defining what is uninsured
During the Clinton administration, proponents of universal health care created a compelling sense of urgency by citing a government statistic that said 40 million Americans lack health insurance for at least one year. Proponents called them "persistently uninsured." The National Coalition on Health Care reports that the 2007 figure is up to almost 47 million American.
But -- in 2004, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the correct figure (as of 2004) was really 21 to 31 million, a correction of almost 110% downward:
In recent years, it has been frequently stated that about 40 million Americans lack health insurance coverage. That estimate, by itself, presents an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of the uninsured population. The uninsured population is constantly changing as people gain coverage and lose coverage. Furthermore, people vary greatly in the length of time that they remain uninsured. Some people are uninsured for long periods of time, but more are uninsured for shorter periods. (CBO Testimony before the Subcommittee on Health Committee on Ways and Means U.S. House of Representatives, March 9, 2004).
Shifting the focus to the UNDER-insured
Because of problems with defining what it means to be uninsured, experts have shifted the focus to looking at the UNDER-insured.
]]> The latest Commonwealth Fund study looks at the problem of counting the underinsured, i.e., counting the number of people who have health coverage -- but where it fails to fully protect them from high medical expenses. They conclude the numbers are rising:The number of underinsured U.S. adults—that is, people who have health coverage that does not adequately protect them from high medical expenses—has risen dramatically, a Commonwealth Fund study finds. As of 2007, there were an estimated 25 million underinsured adults in the United States, up 60 percent from 2003.
Much of this growth comes from the ranks of the middle class. While low-income people remain vulnerable, middle-income families have been hit hardest. For adults with incomes above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (about $40,000 per year for a family), the underinsured rates nearly tripled since 2003.
Welcome Attention to the Real Problem: How do We Control Costs?
This study is timely as the presidential match up is now between McCain and Obama. This will shift the national debate from universal coverage and individual mandates to costs.
Obama proposes having the government try to control costs by significantly increasing the regulation of the insurance industry, establishing a standard minimum benefits package, requiring insurers to accept all applicants regardless of their health, and prohibiting risk-rating of insurance premiums.
Obama's Plan -- The Unintended Consequences of Rising Costs and Rationing
Clinton was correct that one goal of health-care reform should be to get people to enter the insurance pool while they are young and healthy. Ideally, what you want is to make insurance inexpensive for young and healthy and to penalize them if they wait to buy insurance when they are old and sick. This is the one tried and true way to keep overall costs down.
But in an insurance market, Obama's mandate requiring insurers to accept all applicants regardless of their health, and prohibiting risk-rating of insurance premiums will achieve the opposite goal: it'll raise the cost of insurance for the young and healthy and remove any penalty for waiting. Of course, this creates incentives for young healthy people to make an unintended rational choice -- to go without insurance.
Additionally, to control costs -- Obama's plan would likely lead to rationing health care: For example, Obama assumes that allowing the federal government to directly negotiate Medicare drug prices will yield substantial savings. But the Congressional Budget Office has said that private insurance plans have already reduced drug prices about as far as they can go -- unless the government is prepared to severely restrict drug formularies and denying seniors access to some drugs.
If the health care costs for the young and healthy start moving up, then this is exactly what the government will need to do.
McCain's Radical Proposal & Real Change (for a change)
One of the world's top blogs on health care issues is Cato@Liberty (Health Care) (ranked 14 out of 100). They suggest that McCain's plan (so far) removes these uncontrolled and unintended consequences by proposing the most radical overhaul of American health-care policy in over a decade:
71 percent of Americans now receive insurance through their place of employment. This limits consumer choice by giving decisions over coverage to employers rather than employees, meaning workers who lose their jobs lose their insurance. McCain would move us away from such a system. He would count at least some of a worker's employer-paid insurance as taxable income. At the same time, he would provide all Americans with a $2,500 refundable tax credit for individuals and a $5,000 credit for families, regardless of how people obtain their insurance.
In addition, McCain's campaign maintains that his proposal would make insurance more affordable for everyone, including those with pre-existing conditions. In particular, by making insurance more affordable to the young and healthy, McCain's plan will attract them into the market before they develop pre-existing conditions. And McCain rightly claims that deregulation will lead to the creation of new and innovative insurance products that can help solve these problems.
Most notably, McCain would allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines, a practice now prohibited. For example, New Jersey imposes more than 40 mandated benefits. As a result, according to the Commonwealth Fund, the cost of a standard health insurance policy for a healthy 25-year old man in New Jersey comes to $5,580. However, a similar policy in Kentucky, which has far fewer mandates, would cost him only $960 per year. Unfortunately, it is illegal for that hypothetical New Jersey resident to buy the cheaper Kentucky plan. McCain would change that. (Michael D. Tanner, Orange County Register on May 6, 2008)
One reason regulations increase costs is that they typically increase complexity. McCain is calling for more simplicity:
"We should pay a single bill for high-quality health care," he says, "not an endless series of bills for pre-surgical tests and visits, hospitalization and surgery, and follow-up tests, drugs and office visits."
McCain also rightly calls for greater transparency for health care costs and prices:
"We should pay a single bill for high-quality health care," he says, "not an endless series of bills for pre-surgical tests and visits, hospitalization and surgery, and follow-up tests, drugs and office visits."
Steve Parente, professor of finance at the University of Minnesota, estimates that the McCain plan would cut the number of uninsured Americans by roughly half. But equally important, McCain's proposal would drive down the cost of health care for everyone.
Humm . .. NOT having the government take over even more of the health care system? Now that's a real change!
Shout !t Out! Tell us what You Th!nk!
Shout !t Out! Results:
If you have time in the coming days and weeks and months and years, browse the tributes to Tim Russert on youTube, and you'll be struck with two questions:
What kind of person am I?
How will I be remembered?
Tim Russert's impact and influence went well beyond his journalistic excellence. His greatest excellence was the lasting and positive and uplifting impact he had on his friends and his family. Tim was showered in love, because he gave so much to those he loved.
An old old Irish blessing and prayer: Remembered Joy
]]>Don't grieve for me, for now I'm free!
I follow the plan God laid for me.
I saw His face, I heard His call,
I took His hand and left it all...
I could not stay another day,
To love, to laugh, to work or play;
Tasks left undone must stay that way.
And if my parting has left a void,
Then fill it with remembered joy.
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss...
Ah yes, these things I, too, shall miss.
My life's been full, I've savoured much:
Good times, good friends, a loved-one's touch.
Perhaps my time seemed all too brief—
Don't shorten yours with undue grief.
Be not burdened with tears of sorrow,
Enjoy the sunshine of the morrow.
The anti-HRC liberal blogsmearsphere roared it's disapproval on the most inane and silly of grounds, e.g., Robert Scheer argues a better approach is to lecture the world in
a serious, non-rhetorical, multinational [tone] that makes clear that no nation has the right to obliterate the population of another, and that nations, even our own, that claim that right should be challenged as unacceptably barbaric. (Robert Scheer, Clinton Threatens to ‘Obliterate’ Iran, April 22nd, 2008, www.truthdig.com)
Yes, I'm sure once the Iranians (and any other nation) fully understands that they don't have a "right" to obliterate entire populations, why then the worry, concern, and -- indeed -- the threat will be over.
If Mr. Scheer however, were to consult any history book that happens to be in easy reach, he would learn that human history is full of instances where tyrants, mega-maniacal-maniacs, and other like individuals and groups have tried to obliterate entire populations -- and in many cases, they succeeded.
It's hard to imagine that Mr. Scheer thinks this has happened because these individuals and groups didn't "get" that they just shouldn't be doing things like that because they really don't have the "right," and I really can't imagine that Mr. Scheer believe that if this was pointed out to such individuals and groups, then they would immediately slap their foreheads in sudden realization and immediately call a halt to any obliteration campaigns they've put in motion . . . but, I can't read Mr. Scheer's mind, so I don't know what he thinks . . . or if he's really thinking at all . . .
]]> Another confusion coming mostly from the liberal blogDoes Clinton want Iran to develop nuclear weapons? That may seem like an absurd question. But it's inspired by her threatening statement. Iran had a nuclear weapons program, halted it, and now appears to be headed in that direction again. Threatening to "obliterate them," all 71 million Iranians, offers up ample incentive, along with propaganda cover, for the Mullahs in charge to move forward with these weapons of mass destruction (Michael Collins, Hillary Proves Her "Toughness," The Liberal Journal).
but . . .
Tehran's nuclear ambitions date back to the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. The bulk of the evidence suggests that a "peaceful" nuclear program has widespread support in Iran for reasons of national pride and regional prestige. The goal of a nuclear-weapons arsenal is more controversial, but given the dangerous neighborhood in which Iran is located, support for that objective also goes well beyond the mullahs and their staunch allies. Washington could be making a serious miscalculation if it assumes that [even] a democratic Iran would be content to remain non-nuclear. (Ted Galen Carpenter, Dubious Assumptions about Iran, Foxnews.com on February 8, 2006).
The liberal blogsmearsphere has largely accused HRC of being a Neo-Con, but Neo-Cons generally believe that Iran cannot be rationally deterred and that leaves the U.S. and it's allies no choice but to launch a pre-emptive war with the goal of regime change. HRC, instead, is arguing for deterrence, probably because she understands that this neo-con position is the real incentive for Iran to build nuclear weapons.
This isn't to say that HRC isn't kind of grandstanding here, i.e., Israel doesn't need us to defend it against a nuclear armed Iran:
Israel does not need the US to counter attack. Israel has the world's sixth largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, behind only the US, Russia, China, the UK and (maybe) France. It can handle ANY Iranian threat on its own, thank you very much.
The U.S. estimates Israel has about 200 nuclear weapons made up of five different classes of weapons. Israel assembled its first two bombs on the night of Nov. 2, 1966. In the Six-Day War, it had two weapons on alert; by the Yom Kippur War in 1973, 20 were on alert; by the Gulf War, the number had reached more than 200.
There are thermonuclear missile warheads on missiles with intercontinental (Jericho II) and intermediate (Jericho I) range, nuclear landmines, artillery shells and neutron bombs to stop assaults across their vulnerable borders, aerial bombs attached to American-made F-15's dispersed and on alert. It has a nuclear target base of nearly 100 targets, which, like the US base, is continually updated and which, like the US, can be updated in near real time. And it has an entire wing of its Air Force, the secret 2nd Wing, to manage it all.
More importantly, Israel has a second strike capability, that is, a capability of striking any enemy even if that enemy has already destroyed Tel Aviv. A single nuclear weapon might able to take out most of the Israeli population, which lives around Tel Aviv, but Israel has enough capability to deliver a society-smashing blow on Iran within hours. Iran would be triumphant, and then incapable of functioning as a society, in very short order.
And there isn't a strategic thinker in the Middle East who doesn't know that, as should Senator Clinton. (Domenico Montanaro, 'OBLITERATE?' ISRAEL CAN DEFEND ITSELF, MSNBC, First Read, May 5th, 2008).
What Mr. Montanaro is arguing here is that Israel by itself is enough of a deterrence against Iran, and you can bet the Israelis have made it very, Very, VERY clear to Iran what would happen to it if it attacked Israel, and you can bet they didn't morally lecture them as Mr. Scheer would have them do.
So, the real question the liberal blogsmearsphere should be asking about all this is: does deterrence work (against a Nation State), and I think history and the rational nature of human psychology suggest it does.
Even if it's not foolproof (and, of course, it's not), the costs and problems associated with deterrence are far Far FAR less than WAR, which is what the Neo-Cons want (see Forget about War with Iran? and The Blueprint of Blame: Provoking War with Iran).
The left and the liberal blogsmearsphere should be thanking, not condemning, HRC.
Could HRC worded it all a bit differently? Sure -- but the message, the intent, the "idea" would need to have been exactly the same,
. . . and just as crystal clear.
]]>For example, while Obama-Rome burns, Peggy Noonan (though not a liberal) has nothing more to offer than demanding that world should be more "right-thinking" than what she feels it is:
I also think that if Hillary Clinton wins because of the Wright scandal, it will leave a sad taste in the mouths of many. Mr. Obama reveals many things in his books, speeches and interviews but polarity and a tropism toward the extreme are not among them. What happened with Mr. Wright should not determine the race. Mr. Obama’s stands, his ability to convince us he can make good change, his ability to be “one of us,” that great challenge for a national politician in a varied nation, should determine the race.(Peggy Noonan, Loyal to the Bitterness, WSJ, May 2nd, 2008).
Yeah, should not determine the race, but -- like it or not, it is.
]]> How Liberal Values views the controversy shows just how deeply in denial he is, i.e., he simply asserts, mindlessly, incredibly, that Obama's relationship to join Trinity, to have a relationship with Wright, are completely separate from Rev. Wrights appalling views:Obama’s decision to join the church had nothing to do with Wright’s more controversial views, regardless of which sermons Obama actually heard. The radical views expressed by Wright have nothing to do with Obama’s views or how he would govern and should not be a factor in the election. (Liberal Values, Why Obama Joined Trinity, April 30th, 2008).
If Liberal Values thinks that's going to fly, there's a bridge outside my window in Brooklyn that I'd like to sell him, i.e., it doesn't answer (in fact, it doesn't even come close to attempting to answer) the valid question at all of what Obama was doing there, all those years, in Trinity:
Although Senator Obama would now have us believe that he is shocked, shocked, at what Jeremiah Wright said, that he was not in the church when pastor Wright said those things from the pulpit, this still leaves the question of why he disinvited Wright from the event at which he announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination a year ago.
Either Barack Obama or his staff must have known then that Jeremiah Wright was not someone whom they wanted to expose to the media and to the media scrutiny to which that could lead.
Why not, if it is only now that Senator Obama is learning for the first time, to his surprise, what kinds of things Jeremiah Wright has been saying and doing?
No one had to be in church the day Wright made his inflammatory and obscene remarks to know about them. (Thomas Sowell, Obama's Speech, Townhall.com, March 19th, 2008).
When Obama did, finally, repudiate Wright, Liberal Values had this to say:
At least it is fortunate that this is happening in April and not in October. The election is about Barack Obama and his views, not about Rev. Wright, but there is no doubt that this could be damaging to Obama’s campaign. Hopefully by distancing himself from Wright in this manner now this story will be ancient history by November.(Liberal Values, Obama Repudiates Wright, April 29th, 2008).
. . .At least it is fortunate that this is happening in April and not in October . . . that's a understatement: if Obama had waited until even June let alone October, the damage would likely have been irreparable. And like Peggy Noonan, Liberal Values is just wishing and hoping this will all go away . . . but it's won't.
Liberal Values exemplifies a lot of panicked wishful thinking when it came to the Obama-Wright controversy by simply asserting that it wasn't a big deal and desperately/vainly trying to distract everyone with Hillary's "problems:"
Matthew [Yglesias] is correct that this issue is being raised primarily because political opponents believe it can hurt Obama, and not because of any of Obama’s actual views. I must still place Obama’s relationship with Wright as a somewhat of a negative. However, as with his overall negatives related to religion, these remain rather trivial. (Liberal Values, Obama Responds to Controversy over Wright, March 18th, 2008).
A while ago this blog was shared some of the views it's now critiquing, e.g., it thought that Obama's repudiation of Wright had a good chance of laying it all to rest, but now it believes that Obama took too long to reject Wright. Wright was an inexcusable affront and an offence to 99% of people in this country who wish for and work for the betterment of others, and now Obama is paying the price:
Polls: Obama falters with working-class whites.
Liberal Values, other influential bloggers & Liberals need to get a grip, Now!, on who and what Rev. Wright really is, and they should have come out on day one and openly acknowledged, front and center, loud and clear, that Wright was an anathema and beyond the pale. Liberal supporters of Obama and I (a libertarian) want to the same thing: Obama to get the nomination, but if Obama listens to the advice of these Liberal apologists, it's going to get Obama's political head blown off.
Finally, if the discontented mentioned in the Polls: Obama falters with working-class whites article grows -- Please! Liberal bloogers, don't make the mistake of calling them racists. That will be the beginning of the end. They're responding rationally to a lack of leadership and responsibly on Obama's part. Even his honesty in the matter is called into question, even by me, though I don't want to believe that.
He's in well-deserved trouble and has no one to blame but himself. If he and enough of his highly visible supporters acknowledge that, he may be able to start to turn this around.
]]>Liberal Values quakes in fear over Hillary becoming Commander In Chief, and (as usual) for all the wrong reasons:
Earlier in the race the Clinton campaign tried to portray Obama as being reckless on foreign policy, even when making proposals which were the same as Clinton has made or which, like pursuing known terrorists into Pakistan, are consistent with current U.S. policy. The Boston Globe discusses how Clinton is really the dangerous one: AMERICANS have learned to take with a grain of salt much of the rhetoric in a campaign like the current Democratic donnybrook between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, there are some red lines that should never be crossed. Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that, if she were president, she would “totally obliterate” Iran if Iran attacked Israel. (Editorial, The Boston Globe, Hillary Strangelove)
Liberal Values agrees with The Boston Globe that the Saudis are "sound" advisors on this issue (completely missing the obvious: in a war between Iran and Israel, what other public position could Saudi Arabia possibly take?!):
The Saudi paper called Clinton’s nuclear threat “the foreign politics of the madhouse,” saying, “it demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush’s foreign relations.”
The Saudis are not always sound advisers on American foreign policy. But they understand that Rambo rhetoric like Clinton’s only plays into the hands of Iranian hard-liners who want to plow ahead with efforts to attain a nuclear weapons capability. They argue that Iran must have that capability in order to deter the United States from doing what Clinton threatened to do. (Editorial, The Boston Globe, Hillary Strangelove).
What did HRC threaten to do?
Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them." (MSNBC, Hillary Clinton says US could `totally obliterate' Iran after nuclear attack on Israel).
The Boston Globe makes a valid point about Iran's rational for pursuing nuclear weapons, but in completely the wrong context, i.e., the last thing the Iranians are arguing is that they intend to attack Israel, and they need nuclear weapons to protect themselves from a possible U.S. nuclear response. Rather the Iranians are worried about the prospect of the United States forcibly overthrowing them -- and as argued by RAND analysts David Ochmanek and Lowell H. Schwartz. Ochmanek in their monograph, The Challenge of Nuclear-Armed Regional Adversaries released April 15, 2008, North Korean and Iranian leaders have compelling reasons to consider developing nuclear weapons for that very reason.
Now that we've cleaned up the usual intellectual mess and confusion left by Liberal Values, we can get to the real issues.
]]> In April 1988 the American and Iranian navies fought the biggest air-sea battle waged since World War II. By the time it was over, carrier-based U.S. attack planes had sunk the frigate Sahand and disabled the frigate Sabalan, the pride of the Iranian navy.Harold Lee Wise, author of Inside the Danger Zone: The U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf, 1987-1988, which came out last year from the U.S. Naval Institute Press argues there are two basic lessons to be gleaned from the fight 20 years ago that do not bode well for the future, i.e., a Iran-U.S. Naval War may be just around the corner.
1. Even if outgunned, Iran will not back down from a fight. In 1988 the Iranians surprised American intelligence officers with their "aggressiveness and boldness," says Wise. In one of the shootouts during the battle in April 1988 an Iranian guided missile patrol boat confronted three U.S. warships. "Despite radio warnings that the Americans intended to sink it, the patrol boat captain did not surrender and instead attacked," says Wise. "Later in the battle two Iranian frigates left the safety of port to join the fight against what they surely knew were overwhelming odds."
2. Low-tech weapons are effective in naval conflict. "Modern technology remains weak at detecting undersea mines," says Wise. But mines are not the only problem. In the 1980s, as now, the Iranians used "swarming" tactics against larger merchant and naval vessels, sending relatively small boats at high speeds buzzing around and near the U.S. ships. The same thing happened in January this year, and possibly—the boats were never identified—just last week around a merchant ship on contract to the U.S. Navy.
The inescapable conclusion is -- The Iranians believe that they can take on a larger foe, and if not win, then do a hell of a lot of damage, and history shows they may be right.
There's a lot of bull***t from the Neocons that Iran cannot be deterred, that they're basically "crazy" and out of touch with "reality" so that we have no choice but to go to war.
The Iranians can be fierce -- but they're not insane, and therein lies the rational strategy and approach, and Hillary has hit it on the head:
If diplomacy with Iran fails over it's nuclear program (a highly likely outcome), the United States will be left with only two options: deterrence and preventive war. Of these policies, deterrence is the "least bad," asserts a study released today by the Cato Institute. In the policy analysis The Bottom Line on Iran: The Costs and Benefits of Preventive War versus Deterrence, Justin Logan, foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, systematically analyzes the short- and long-term consequences of both deterrence and preventative war, demonstrating that the costs of military action in Iran would be nightmarish.
Hillary, I think, gets this, and she correctly believes that the Iranians are not suicidal (the top leadership anyway) and that they are in good contact with reality and that they are capable of rational geopolitical calculation. Given this -- what do you do? Exactly what Hillary did:
You define reality for them. You deter them -- you scare the living the shit out of them and let them know in absolutely no ambiguous uncertain terms that utter and complete destruction awaits any really dumb stupid thing they could do, like attack the U.S. or an ally with a nuclear weapon. If they don't get that, if they don't believe that, then hundreds of thousands if not millions of Middle-Eastern peoples are more likely to face living and dying in a real nightmare someday.
We can't have a war with Iran. So -- deter them. Deter the HELL out of them.
Thank you Hillary. I won't vote for you (you sound too much like a hawkish military interventionist for my tastes), but on this specific issue, I wish Obama would take your lead and double down on your threat: err on the side of over rather than under-deterrence. And if Obama goes up against McCain, he's going to have to push deterrence, not war, to distinguish himself, and Obama listening to someone like Liberal Values is just going to get his butt kicked in the race against McCain.
]]>
Probably not -- compared to this, it'll be an exercise in bathos . . .
]]>
Deborah Jeane Palfrey (March 18, 1956 – May 1, 2008) hung herself to avoid a lengthy prison sentence (up to 55 years in federal prison) for facilitating the trading of sex for money between free, rational consenting adults.
]]> If it sounds unbelievable, if it is hard to comprehend, check out:Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything
The Politics of Freedom: Taking on The Left, The Right and Threats to Our Liberties
]]>Obama strongly denounces former pastor
It was remarkable how liberals and the Left generally missed the necessity of doing this (they miss a lot, but this should have been obvious), e.g.,
Liberal Values completely missed the political time bomb by seeing the Obama and Wright relationship as one distastefully based on religion rather than a reflection of Obama's character and judgment, which is where the real issues and questions lay:
Obama’s infusion of religion in politics was one major reason why he was not my first choice from the start . . . [however] I’ve been able to support Obama despite his mingling of religion in a political campaign to a degree far more that I would like due to his strong support for separation of church and state. (Liberal Values, Obama Responds to Controversy over Wright).
In response to the release of the initial Wright video, Obama gave a great speech, and it satisfied a lot of people, mostly liberals, e.g., Liberal Values's Obama's Speech, Charles Murry from The Corner, and, of course, Andrew Sullivan, however, it shouldn't have -- because it was a cop-out. It showed a lack of true leadership, true responsibility, and experience.
]]> One of the great relationships in modern literature is that of Prince Hal and his great friend Falstaff. It's a great story and a great relationship because it is a relationship that has existed over and over throughout time immemorial. Obama is Prince Hall, and Reverend Wright is Falstaff.Sound farfetched? It's really not, when you think about it, and I think conservatives and true independents saw Wright as a very VERY serious problem for Obama right from the start:
At the beginning of Henry IV, Part Two, it is clear that Hal has yet to realize that he must fully break from his wasted youth as well as the vestiges of the dissolute past. The callow Prince of Wales must undergo a series of trials so that he internalizes kingly values rather than merely assuming an inherited mantle. An essential and problematic element in this process is Hal coming to terms with his surrogate father, Sir John Falstaff. Falstaff plays an essential role in the arc of Hal's development, but ultimately becomes an obstacle that must be transcended. Falstaff provides the final hurdle, the decisive test, that Hal must overcome before he is ready and able to lead England back to greatness. (Henry IV, Part Two, By William Shakespeare Produced by The Shakespeare Theatre: Washington, D.C. 2003-2004 Season Directed by Bill Alexander Program Note: The Limits of Friendship).
In one of the most moving and poignant moments in any play, we see what Prince Hal, now King Henry V, must do:
FALSTAFF
My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
KING HENRY IV
I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform'd the tenor of our word. Set on.
Here Falstaff (Played by Anthony Quayle) learns that old King Henry IV is dead, and Prince Hal (played by David Gwillim) is now -- King Henry V:
Obama had to do it. The longer he waited, the more damage waiting would do. Obama's a great guy -- loyal, honest, decent, but you have to know when to cut someone off, as cruel as that can be: when it comes to national leadership, for the nation, any nation, the stakes have always been extraordinarily high, and this shows that Obama can rise to the challenge: actions, like this, will always trump any speech. He's learning that.
]]>The topic of his lecture was not about his work, not about computational algorithms or immersive virtual reality systems -- its topic was instead:
Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.
The lecture, just for his students, colleagues and visitors, swelled to over 400 attendees in the large McConomy Auditorium. It was recorded and released on youtube where it became a world wide phenomena.
The Apostle Paul counsels us in the 13th Corinthians, verse 11: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.
Yet there are some childish things that should not be put away, or at least not thought of as childish things, and that is -- our Hopes and our Dreams. They are what we begin with, and they will be with us in the end -- if we keep, hold, and cherish them always.
Give yourself a quiet uninterrupted hour and 15 minutes to listen to his lecture. He's a very successful happy guy, and he gives some great advice, but what stands out, in the end, is what we think are the most important things are not really those things -- it's something else: it's not what we get (though that is very important stuff!) -- it's what we give, and we give though the realization of our hopes and dreams:
]]>
Postscript
MacArthur speaks eloquently of Duty, Honor, Country. It is not an accident that these words, their deep meaning, becomes intertwined with a metaphor of where he was at the end of his life, and how service to his country, the fulfillment of all of [his] boyish hopes and dreams, remained with him to the end:
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.
Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. (General Douglas MacArthur, Sylvanus Thayer Award Acceptance Address, May 12th, 1962, West Point)
Our Hopes and our Dreams are our Country, and living them is our Duty and our Honor.
]]>His energies and talents in his later years went more towards promoting traditional conservative causes, such as the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
]]> But -- agree or disagree with his politics, he was GREAT Actor, and he will be remembered for that for a very very long time.Thank you Chuck! You did damn good up there, on the Boards and in the Lights:
The great roles are always Shakespearean
- Charlton Heston.
While the legacy of Charlton Heston's political activitism spans almost 50 years, from traditional progressive causes such as civil rights to his later traditional conservative causes, It was probably his unabased support of gun rights that earned him both the most admirmation and scorn. Admirmation and scorn aside, there's no question that Charlton Heston's later years, full of passion and energy, had a profound effect on the entire debate, i.e., I ran across this from The Right-Wing Liberal blog:
]]>Yet it was in 1998 that the gun rights movement was making a comeback, bucking the trend of defeat and demoralization on the right wing. This was in no small part due to one man - Charlton Heston, who in that year was elected President of the NRA.
By the time Heston stepped down five years later, the political world had changed. Certainly, 9/11 and the WBK War had much to do with that, but 9/11 could just as easily been a gun-control bonanza. It wasn’t because the gun-rights movement was energized, confident, and mobilized, in a way it never could have been without Heston. Thus, in 2004, the “assault weapons” ban of 1994 was allowed to sunset. Four years later, Washington’s ridiculous gun ban seems on the way out, courtesy of the Supreme Court, and with the approval of the Republican nominee for President
I knew it I knew it I knew it I knew it!!!!!!
Liberal Values almost had me fooled -- Obama is absolutely lethal to what's left of the tradition of individualism, self-reliance, and small government.
Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish has this to say:
]]> Andrew Sullivan (author of The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom, and the Future of the Right) supports Obama less (and now MUCH less) as a viable candidate than as severe shock therapy for a conservative movement that needs to be slapped back into reality:I went to see Obama last night. He had a fundraiser at H20, a yuppie disco/restaurant in Southwest DC. I was curious about how he is in person. I'm still absorbing the many impressions I got. But one thing stays in my head. This guy is a liberal. Make no mistake about that. He may, in fact, be the most effective liberal advocate I've heard in my lifetime.
The overwhelming first impression that you get - from the exhausted but vibrant stump speech, the diverse nature of the crowd, the swell of the various applause lines - is that this is the candidate for real change. He has what Reagan had in 1980 and Clinton had in 1992: the wind at his back. Sometimes, elections really do come down to a simple choice: change or more of the same? (Andrew Sullivan, The Reagan of the Left?)
And just as Carter branded liberalism in a bad way for a generation, so Bush and his acolytes have poisoned the brand of conservatism for the foreseeable future. When you take a few steps back and look closely, you realize that Bush has managed both to betray conservatism and stigmatize it all at once. That's some achievement.
I fear he [Obama] could do to conservatism what Reagan did to liberalism. And just as liberals deserved a shellacking in 1980, so do "conservatives" today. In the Bush era, they have shown their own contempt for their own tradition. Who can blame Obama for exploiting the big government arguments Bush has already conceded?
Andrew wraps up my greatest fears realized with this ominous question:
There's a reason for his wide appeal. The over-whelming question for me at this point in this historic campaign is a simple one: who will stop him?
Good Lord! After 8 years of Bush, is Andrew right? Do we now probably have 4+ years of a "cure" to look forward to?
(sigh)
]]>Five years ago, few predicted that the Iraq war would turn out this way (except for the thinkers at my favorite think tank: Cato called it all correctly even before the invasion)
The war's supporters, like Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, issued endless false assurances to the American people before the war that 'we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.' Senator Hillary Clinton could not be bothered to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before voting to send U.S. troops into battle.
With the Ship Of State feeling more like the Titanic, no wonder people are grabbing onto Obama not realizing he's a leaky and unsteady lifeboat:
First, the fact is -- the Democratic party let us down. I've never voted Democrat before, but I did durning the midterm elections because I was troubled by the growth in government spending and -- frankly -- pissed off and fed up with the Iraq war. John Kerry and the Democratic party talked a good game and seem to be a light at the end of a very long and very dark tunnel.
]]> But almost two years after the Democrats took control both the House and Senate, where are we?the surge has changed [the entire narrative about the war] over the course of the last 12 months. As initially conceived, the surge was intended to make a space for political reconciliation among the Iraqi people that would, in the president's words, "hasten the day our troops begin coming home." But after a year in which the Iraqi government has, with the possible exception of the new agreement on de-Baathification passed over the weekend, failed to enact and implement the crucial political benchmarks spelled out when the president announced his strategy, the advocates of the surge now argue that we cannot withdraw now lest Iraq fall back into chaos. (Christopher Preble, Redefining Success in Iraq).
While the surge has improved the security situation in Iraq, Mr. Preble argues:
The surge was [also] successful in one [other] sense: it took sufficient steam out of the "get out now" movement to effectively halt congressional efforts to force a troop withdrawal. It also allowed Sen. McCain to resurrect his moribund campaign. "Thank God [Iraq]'s off the front pages," the leading proponent for the war told reporters on board the Straight Talk Express.
Second, Obama is right-headed on Iraq, but . . . does anyone really think he'll really be able to do anything? Samantha Power, before she was unplugged from her role as a top Obama foreign policy advisor, described Sen. Obama's plan to withdraw combat troops from Iraq within 16 months as a best case scenario. Power added, He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator.
So, on the issue of Iraq, it all comes to down to a previous post on this blog: Mr. Obama, Where's the Beef?
Interestingly, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), i.e., the World Socialist Organization probably has it right:
In a debate last September, Clinton, Obama and former senator John Edwards all refused to commit themselves to withdrawing all American forces from the occupied country by the beginning of their second term—in 2013. Edwards, in an evident attempt to reverse his fall in the polls, has since shifted his position, claiming earlier this month in an interview with the New York Times that he would withdraw all US troops from Iraq within his first year of taking office. Even then, he added, “We obviously would keep troops there to protect the embassy in addition to the quick reaction forces.”
The reactionary character of the debate within the Democratic primary contest, combined with the increasing claims by the Republican camp of “success” for the Bush administration’s military surge, only confirm that once again the two-party system will present the American people with no genuine alternative in 2008 and that the substantial majority of the American people, who support the withdrawal of American troops and an end to the war, will find themselves politically disenfranchised.
Finally, Justin Logan, associate director of foreign policy studies at the Libertarian Cato Institute, sums it up this way:
Today, Senator McCain chortles about staying in Iraq for 100 years. The American people shrug their way to the next Britney Spears story. The sad fact is that until the American people demand more from their political leadership, there is no hope for a meaningful change in policy. In all likelihood the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war will come with U.S. troops patrolling Iraq. Perhaps that anniversary will precipitate a genuine change in policy.
So -- who will save us? Obama? I think I'm with Mick Arran who acknowledges the poetry and idealism of Kyle E. Moore's canticle to Hope and Change but in the end sees it as sad "grasping at straws" reaction to just how bad it is out there:
The fact that it’s both wrong-headed and at the same time amounts to little more than wishful thinking and generational warfare shouldn’t undercut the importance of having these sentiments out in the open where they can finally be addressed.
If by "addressed" what Mr. Arran means taking off the rose-colored glasses and really looking at what Obama has to offer, then I couldn't agree more.
]]>
Dear Reader of The Charters Of Dreams
TCOD is now a member of Smorty where bloggers can blog for money -- from the smorty.com website:
Smorty is a bridge between bloggers and advertisers. Advertisers start campaigns with us and we deliver them to the right bloggers for publishing an opinion on their Blogs (http://www.smorty.com)
I like smorty's approach to advertising: great advertising isn't about selling you "X," it's about your relationship to "Y," and "X" either helps that relationship or makes it better!
For example, zoom in on the wife (ca. 1958) saying oh dear, my husband's shirt has this terrible stain, and he's got a big presentation to do tomorrow. What do I do? Pan over to another woman poking her head in the laundry room window an saying don't worry Beth, X will clean that spot right out, and the shirt will look as good as the day you bought it! Cut to Beth and her husband, and husband says Honey! the presentation went great! They loved it! Now we can afford to move into a bigger house! Oh . . . by the way, you didn't have to buy me this new shirt, but -- it's looks great! You're the best honey!
See -- it's not at all about "X," it's about sex and love, so when I write an post for smorty client, you'll never know that I'm doing it to get paid for blogging-- you'll think I'm writing about sex and love, but then . . . strangely, inexplicably, you'll start thinking about "X" . . .
ah . . . Capitalism + psychology/human nature = money, and the Universe works!
]]>A few weeks ago, both Hillary and Roarin' John put nice guy Barack on the defensive by suggesting he had not the needed experience to "man up" under a possible future national security crisis:
Sen. Barack Obama is facing attacks on two fronts on one of the toughest issues facing his campaign: whether he has the experience necessary to be the nation's commander in chief.
Both Sen. Hillary Clinton, his rival in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, are arguing that Mr. Obama, who has no military background and few foreign-policy credentials, is ill-equipped to serve as commander in chief. Both say he would stack up poorly next to Mr. McCain, a Vietnam War hero who has been involved in many foreign-policy debates during his Senate career. Mrs. Clinton also has some foreign-policy experience from her time in the Senate and as first lady. (Clinton, McCain Push Experience Button, WSJ, 02 . 21 . 2008)
If Barack's immediate first instinctual response was any indication of his ability to "man up" under an attack, it was beginning to look like Hillary and Roarin' John were right:
]]>Wow! What a nice guy -- and as Comments from the Left Field pointed out yesterday, this nice guy approach had gotten a lot of his supporters a bit worried . . . but that was yesterday baby!:
For those who have been dismayed by Obama’s lack of fight back lately, the Obama campaign couldn't have thrown a harder punch than this memo supplied by Obama FP advisor and one time Clinton administration aide, Greg Craig (to see why, check out Obama Memo: No Support For Claim That Clinton Has Passed 'Commander-In-Chief Test' by Greg Sargent released yesterday on TPM).
A power punch indeed.
I Can't disagree with this memo -- but, Hillary has succeeded in drawing Barack out, and the question still remains: independent of how much experience Hillary has, how much experience does Barack really have? How prepared is he?
I don't know how good comedy/SNL is as an indirect measure of the political zeitgeist, but this SNL skit does suggest that the left has some misgivings about BOTH candidates on the point of foreign policy experience (GWB was not very experienced either [see Bush lacks Gore's foreign policy expertise, CNN allpolitics.com, June 24, 1999] and -- good God -- look at where we are now):
(Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for the video and pointing out the art-political zeitgeist connection ;)
Of course, even if Barack is about as prepared to meet a national security crisis as a troop of boy scouts is prepared to go up against a highly trained and heavily armed SWAT team, as one acute observer pointed out in the comment section of a post on the The Trial blog:
Hillary Clinton and John McCain both disqualified themselves for the job of Commander-in-Chief when they voted for the worst military blunder in modern American history. End of story.
Yup . . .
]]>Libertarian conservatives are, quite frankly, terrified of the centralized government's growing power and reach, a power and reach that Liberals and the Left either seem not to worry about or -- worse -- outright encourage.
They seem to have a view that some "special" people are so good, so wise -- like a perfect idealized fantasy parent figure -- that no amount of State Power is too much as long as their "hearts" (i.e., their values, their "liberal values") are in the right place and their "minds" (their ability to predict and control the physical external world) are a cut of above the rest. While some liberals debate strategy, as long as these "special people" are pursuing "The Common Good," the ends will ever justify the means, i.e., an ever growing government (E.g., The Liberal Values blog is perversely content to see government grow albeit at a slower pace all the while inexcusably oblivious to the negative relationship between the size of government and economic freedom, human rights, civil liberties, & prosperity: the neocons learned all too well from their distant & estranged left brethren).
]]> Such is the nature of the tragedy and the shock that liberals (both hard and soft) feel about Eliot Spitzer: The Independent Liberal's Kevin Sullivan is understandably depressed, and the Intrepid Liberal Journal's Robert Ellman fears that the Spitzer scandal will halt the Empire State's recent progressive momentum:As a reform minded New York liberal I'm deeply saddened by today's events. For too long, state government in New York has awarded contracts based on bribes instead of merit while decisions impacting the livelihood of millions were made in secret. In 2006, Spitzer earned a mandate from the people to tackle Albany's pervasive influence peddling culture that squanders tax dollars, mismanages the Mass Transit Authority, ignores public education and only excels at building prisons. Spitzer's fall from grace may well have set back the cause of reform in the Empire State for another fifty years. (Intrepid Liberal Journal, The Fall of Eliot Spitzer).
The Liberal Journal, like most of us, is frankly at a lost to explain Spitzer's behavior, other than to say that, somehow, Spitzer began to think he was above the law:
Spitzer was a high achiever his entire career, and after a successful tenure as Attorney General, he cruised to the highest office in the state. He campaigned on taking that same fight to the big guys in Albany, but he seems to have caught that syndrome of feeling "untouchable."
Interestingly enough, Comments From The Left Field's Kyle E. Moore gets it exactly right by putting the whole sordid episode in the correct frame:
We put them [politicians] on these incredibly high pedestals, pedestals so lofty no human should be rightfully put upon them, and then we heap money and power upon them and then dare them to stay on the straight and narrow.
We are, in truth, begging to be disappointed.
Dr. Daniel Amen, director of the Amen Clinics, sums up the puzzle and confusion over Spitzer's tragically self-destructive behavior, i.e., it just doesn't make sense, and he affirms CFLF's conclusion that this type of "fall" is all too human and common:
As you may have heard in today’s news, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, has apologized after allegations surfaced that he paid thousands of dollars to a prostitution ring. At a news conference today, Spitzer told reporters… I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family. I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself, I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family.
One might wonder why someone with so much to lose would risk such hurtful and harmful behavior. As the Governor and former states attorney general, Spitzer has enjoyed a reputation as a crusader against misconduct and corruption. He has a wife and three teen daughters. It just doesn't make sense.
Unfortunately, his is not an isolated case – we’ll explore that in greater detail on tomorrow’s Good Morning America broadcast. Think of the recent Lisa Nowak case, where the former astronaut drove cross country in a mad dash to resolve the hurt of a lost love. Members of Congress, Presidents, powerful corporate heads and popular athletes have all thrown away portions of their lives and families for seemingly unimportant reasons. (Dr. Amen's Brain Blog Newsletter).
We are begging to be disappointed because, esp. on the Left, there is a denial of basic human nature. As Steven Pinker lays out in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, liberals and left intellectuals implicitly have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmas: The Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), The Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and The Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology). As Pinker states, these dogmas have justified the liberals and the Left's passion to reshape, and make better, humanity, e.g., the most extreme expressions of the Left, Nazism and Marxism shared a desire to reshape humanity (p. 157). The religious right also stands accused of placing dogma over human nature.
This is precisely why libertarians place "principles" above "liberal values," placing the goal of limiting government power over Obama Econometrics. David Boaz, in his recent book, The Politics of Freedom: Taking on The Left, The Right and Threats to Our Liberties, clearly lays out the attack on the separation of powers and limited government by the both the Left (hard and soft liberals) and the Right (i.e., the religious right, the necons). In defending the separation of powers established by the Constitution, Libertarians go back to James Madison who clearly tied the arrangement of the separation of powers to the goal of limiting government power
It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next instance oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. (Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers. Signet Classics.)
]]>What is needed for the survival of limited government is a renewal of both of the forces described by Madison as controls on government: dependence on the people, in the form of an informed citizenry jealous of its rights and ever vigilant against unconstitutional or otherwise unwarranted exercises of power, and officeholders who take seriously their oaths of office and accept the responsibilities they entail. (Cato Handbook For Congress. Policy Recommendations For The 108th Congress)