Gay marriage, the right way
The Quakers today agreed to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples and said they would ask the government to change the law to allow Quaker registering officers to register same-sex partnerships in the same way as marriages.
At their annual meeting, held at the University of York, 1200 members gave their unanimous approval to revise relevant parts of Quaker faith and practice to treat gay marriages in the same way as heterosexual unions.
Michael Hutchinson, of Quakers in Britain, said: "Many of our meetings have told us that there are homosexual couples who consider themselves to be married and believe this is as much a testimony of divine grace as a heterosexual marriage. They miss the public recognition of this in a religious ceremony."
I can't say that I understand their decision. How are they going to deal with numerous passages in the Old and New Testaments condemning homosexual acts? While I am sure there are ways to re-interpret the Bible to make the modern acts of homosexuality acceptable in the "eyes of God", well, I can't say that I would be convinced by the argument myself. But then, I am not theologian or pastor. (One way to argue would be that the homosexual acts referred to in the Bible were often part of idol worship, or in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, it wasn't so much that it was homosexual, but that it was a rape against guests—and how sacred host-guest relations are in the ancient world, that would have incurred the wrath of every god imaginable by men. Committed gay relationships (of two consenting adults) are ... a new phenomena to which there is no real comparison in history.)
But, in any case, speaking as a friend of freedom, if gay marriage is to be accepted, this is the only way it can be accepted—through private, voluntary association of men, whether it be religious (like this one), non-religious, or anti-religious. No government has any business forcing it on any one—the only possible business it has is in approving requests like the one Quakers make (assuming that this recognition is not forced upon other religious groups).
This is the only way that it can be done, and I see nothing wrong with it—except that it was by unanimous decision of 1200-member body. I am always suspicious of unanimous decisions, because it is in the human nature to disagree, especially on controversial issues that touch on the fundamentals of our belief systems. But then, I don't know the Quaker decision making process. Perhaps all (or most) of their decision making is through discussion and consensus. In that case, the unanimous decision makes sense, although getting 1200 people to agree on even one controversial issue seems like a herculean task.
Perhaps those who oppose gay marriage to the end will eventually die out—but if they do, then until they do, they should be able to find their own communities which accept them and associate with the like-minded people. The government has no business decreeing what people's views ought to be.
We don’t need a small government; we just need a better government, a Republican government?
At least that's what Mr. Morrissey appears to be saying:
Actually, Obama couldn’t count to four, either. His points were actually this:
1. Force insurers to cover pre-existing conditions.
2. Force insurers to keep people once they get sick.
3. Simply policies so people can understand them.
4. Force insurers into government-run exchanges and provide subsidies to lower-income Americans.
Most people would support the first three goals as part of any broad overhaul of health-insurance regulation, even if they differ on how to achieve them. What’s apparent is that we need people who can count to lead that effort.
Most people would support the first three goals? Who are these "most people"? Are these the same "most people" who want lots and lots of government services but don't want to pay for them in taxes? Shouldn't our goal be in educating these people that TANSTAAFL, not feed their fantasy of limitless government services that no one has to pay for and private companies that do not need to watch their bottom line?
Perhaps I am misunderstanding Mr. Morrissey here. Perhaps he meant that if we support a broad overhaul of health insurance regulation, then we would support the first three points. You know, the way if I were a billionaire, I would buy a yacht and private jet for their convenience. And how if there were real tooth fairies, we could get rich by stealing children's teeth.
All regulations are evil. Some just happen to be necessary, and it should be our foremost goal to render those necessary (but evil) regulations unnecessary. The only overhaul health insurance companies need is the government's filthy hand out of it, with its perverse distortion of the markets with tax incentives (or disincentives) and incomprehensible restrictions on coverages across the state lines (why have a union if we won't have free trade within the union?).
But, one could say, the health care costs are to high. Surely something must be done to fix that? Well, you can listen to a former health care professional who should be much better informed about this issue than anyone else in Washington. The reform we need isn't in health care. It's in our legal system. We need a tort reform, which prevents doctors from being exposed to the risk of unreasonable malpractice suits. I am not saying that we should outlaw malpractice suits, but we should keep the standards in these suits high, damages reasonable, and the punishments (probably financial) for frivolous plaintiffs high. Some say that for every dollar that goes to a patient in a malpractice suit, 70 dollars go to the trial lawyers who encourage this sort of things.
Why regulate when you can eliminate the problem at its source?
Wasn’t Obama supposed to be an enlightened being, not a vengeful, jealous one?
But I can't attribute any other reason than petty revenge or something for this inexplicable action:
Reporting from Washington -- The Obama administration, seeking to increase pressure on Honduras' de facto government to accept a peace deal, has revoked the diplomatic visas of four Honduran officials, the State Department said Tuesday.
Spokesman Ian Kelly said the targeted officials worked in the Honduran government ousted in a coup one month ago, but stayed on to serve in the government that took over. He said U.S. officials were reviewing the visas of all officials in the de facto government, as well as those of family members.
I suppose their "we don't have a diplomatic relationship with the current 'regime' in Honduras so there is no diplomatic visa for their officials" can be understood as some sort of justification, with some twisting of common sense and really bad strategic decision, given who our allies are and who are enemies are.
But I thought Obama was an enlightened being! After all, shouldn't this caring, extraordinary politician, nay messiah, care about the little guy (Honduran diplomats) caught in the middle of the storm?
The One isn't exactly trying to peg these diplomats to any particular crimes or overt act of sympathy towards the interim government in Honduras, so, let's suppose these guys are just ordinary government officials who serve their people, with no strong agenda of their own. Imagine that you are one of these diplomats, and you were serving your term in U.S. In the middle of your term here, the president is overthrown, and U.S. takes this opportunity to intervene in your country's internal affair, withdrawing diplomatic recognition and what not. What do you do?
You really only have three options here:
- you go back to your country: but if you are still willing to serve your country and the people, they probably want you to stay here to speak on their behalf
- you stay here, finishing up your term, on the same diplomatic visa (because really, no other visa is available)
- or you apply for refugee visa and "defect" to U.S.
So what is Obama trying to make these guys do? Are we to think that an enlightened, transcendental being like Obama would want to put the diplomats' families under duress by forcing them to move back to Honduras (no longer being unable to serve their people, they now only have two options)? Or are we to think that Obama is so deluded with his own majestic aura of charisma that he thinks he can openly encourage these diplomats to apply for refugee status in U.S. with impunity?
And after all, exactly how does this put pressure on the Honduran interim government (not that I want anyone to)? Obama admits that we already do not recognize our diplomatic ties. How does revoking their diplomats' visa pressure them any further? Are we going to arrest them for being here "undocumented" and maybe start torturing them? Make them go on "hunger strike" until Hondurans recant?
This makes no sense at all, unless, instead of being an enlightened, caring person, he is a petty, vengeful Chicago machine politician.
Edit: Oh. Apparently these are visas of government officials, but not necessarily those of active diplomats serving in U.S.. But most of my points above stand (perhaps minus causing duress to the diplomat families) regardless. These actions are at best petty and vengeful, like Arkansas revoking Clinton's law license, and at worst, we have further alienated a strategic ally in the region.
Provocation does not equal defence of civil rights
I think Allahpundit got it wrong. Colin Powell is right, at least in this case, and I say that as a self-described libertarian. This is what Colin Powell said:
I would say, the first teaching point is when you’re faced with an officer trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something. This is not the time to get in an argument with him. I was taught that as a child. You don’t argue with a police officer. In fact, in our schools today, in order to make sure that we don’t have things escalate out of control and lead to very unfortunate situations, we tell our kids, when you’re being asked something by a police officer, being detained by a police officer, cooperate.
And this is what Allahpundit claims:
If a nationally known figure who knows his rights can’t talk back to a cop in his own home, what rights does he have, really? I’m squarely in the Hitchens and Herzog camp on this, as any libertarian should be.
Well, as a libertarian and freedom-lover, I heartily support man and women like John Gilmore who use their personal resources to fight back creeping totalitarianism. I, as an average citizen, can't personally afford to do it (I have meetings and conferences that I have to arrive on time for, so I will carry my ID and show it like an obedient little citizen, for now), but I do like and support it when those who can do.
But what this professor did wasn't for standing up for his right. If we trust the police officer's testimony, this professor was provoking the cop and wouldn't stop provoking the cop. It's like yelling "Fire!" (or "I have a bomb!") at an airport and, when the authorities arrest or detain you for disturbing the peace, getting into some absurd argument about how they are making airport a First Amendment-free zone by arresting you like this and so on. There is a line between peaceful civil disobedience, which is the most common and effective method of fighting for your civil rights as a private citizen, and deliberate and unnecessary provocation—which does and should destroy your credibility to anyone with common sense.
Here's another example that may help show that difference more clearly: strong encryption. I love encryption. I encrypt everything. My hard drive is fully encrypted once with full-drive encryption, and important documents are encrypted again within an encrypted loopback device. I wouldn't leave town without encrypting my main computing and record-keeping device. And we all know that the governments around the world wants to make strong encryption illegal. Now, in this situation, what's the best thing I can do to protect my right against self-incrimination?
Should I carry my laptop over to the customs officer, set it down, and loudly and proudly proclaim that no matter what he may try, he cannot see what's in it because the encryption is so strong no government in the world has enough computing resource to break it? Or should I be discreet and try not to show that I even have encrypted data?
I think all reasonable persons would make the same choice, given these two choices. Here is what I do: I hide my encrypted devices behind an unencrypted device. If it's an external storage device, I split it into two partitions, the first being a small, unencrypted NTFS partition, and the latter being an encrypted EXT3 partition (Windows will usually detect the first and don't even notify the user that there is a second partition). If it's a computer, I usually keep around an unencrypted partition large enough to keep a functional operating system on it (about 10 GB or so). If I am ever forced to boot up my computer and log into it, I am booted into the unencrypted decoy OS. This is not exactly steganographic encryption, but it will pass casual inspection. Perfect steganographic encryption is believed to be impossible anyway.
Hand-picked data good for politics, but is it good for science?
Well, so the climate change truthers "won a battle" (via Slashdot), and I can't wait for the full range of data to be available.
In the meantime, we will have the liberals and environmentalist nuts gloating and claiming,
One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.
which is pretty inconsistent with their previous claims. Weren't they claiming that global warming was destroying the Earth for decades? What's ice doing near an Alaskan port in 2006? Couldn't it be that 2006 was an extremely cold summer, and the photo in 2007 is actually how it should look like (and how it looked like) for last century or so? And why are we comparing 2006 photo only to 2007 photo? What about 2008? 2005? or 2004? Don't they want to show the systematic and chronological retreat of the ice from the port, to support their claim that we are melting the polar cap down?
Even if we were to accept their premise that even a few degree of rise in global average temperature is extremely harmful to the condition of human life (which I doubt, given the conditions in which we were supposed to have evolved from, all without the benefit of modern technology and the incredible mobility we enjoy today), if they are hand-picking their data for what best supports their position, well, how can we trust them?
New math for liberal budgeting
I don't see how this is news, but Reuters is reporting it, probably to distract people from how much Obama is spending.
Obama's budget director, Peter Orszag, said on Monday government agencies had identified 77 cost-saving measures that would see $102 million saved in fiscal year 2009 and $140 million in 2010.
...
"These savings reflect the president's belief that even small savings can add up," Orszag said.
Ah, don't you love this liberal "new math"? Or should I call it faith-based budget initiative, given that it is based on Obama's "belief"—completely unsupported by reality or any projections of reality, e.g., by CBO. In any case, apparently in this liberal paradise, savings add up, while expenses get magically taken care of by budget fairy—some call her the "Federal Reserve" (we all know that unexpected inflation favors debtors, and once the government accumulates a large debt, they can trigger an unexpected, huge inflation to devalue the debt).
Didn't someone say that Obama will return "science from its rightful place"? Well, it looks like instead of that, he's taking math down—even George W. Bush wasn't accused of doing that.
Arm everyone!
Mr. Dionne makes a convincing case for allowing our senators the right for self-defense:
Isn't it time to dismantle the metal detectors, send the guards at the doors away and allow Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights by being free to carry their firearms into the nation's Capitol?
I've been studying the deep thoughts of senators who regularly express their undying loyalty to the National Rifle Association, and I have decided that they should practice what they preach. They tell us that the best defense against crime is an armed citizenry and that laws restricting guns do nothing to stop violence.
If they believe that, why don't they live by it?
No kidding. The airline pilots wanted to do the same thing for a long time, and finally after 9/11 they got it (mainly the cost of having an air marshal on every flight was prohibitively high). There is a danger that Obama may try to end it in the liberal attempt to produce a docile population, but I frankly don't think he has enough political capital left after squandering it in the meaningless health care debate.
So, by all means. Aren't senators people too? Don't they deserve the God-given, Constitution-guaranteed right to self defense?
Arm our senators. In fact, arm everyone. If we ever get to the point where, if we armed everyone, criminals will win, well, I think we would have a bigger problem than simple gun control.
Bernanke agrees that bailouts are bad
At least that's what he's claiming:
A small-business owner complained to Bernanke that such actions were "hard to swallow," saying he felt like small businesses -- also struggling to survive the recession and all the financial fallout -- were being shortchanged.
"Nothing made me more frustrated, more angry, than having to intervene" when companies were "taking wild bets," Bernanke said. But not acting would have had grave consequences for the economy, he added.
"I was not going to be the Federal Reserve chairman who presided over the second Great Depression," he said. "I had to hold my nose ... I'm as disgusted as you are.... I absolutely understand your frustration."
It's great to know that he shares our disgust in the government intervening to pick winners (usually the big companies like AIG, GM, and Chrysler) and losers (any small business owners getting crowded out by the government and big corporations).
Now, will he please agree to the GAO audit of the Fed so that we can verify that his sentiments are based on facts and reality, not just another set of lies spun off by the allies of the Obama administration?
Or does he have something to hide?
If a Democrat won’t vote for socialized medicine, why should a Republican?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats do not have the votes to pass healthcare reform without Republican support, a key Democrat said on Sunday, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he is confident a bill will pass by year's end.
Democrat Kent Conrad, a key player in bipartisan Senate Finance Committee negotiations on healthcare, refused to predict whether the panel will be able to produce a bill before the Senate breaks for a month long recess on August 7.
"There are not the votes for Democrats to do this just on our side of the aisle. It is not possible and perhaps not desirable either," Conrad said on ABC's "This Week."
These statements are absurd to anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for last few months, as illustrated by the same article:
Democratic leaders in the 100-member Senate, where the party has a commanding majority of 60 votes, acknowledge they cannot meet Obama's deadline to pass an initial version of the measure before the summer break. The deadline appears in serious danger in the House as well.
So, more than 10 Democrats already don't want anything to do with this mess. Why should a Republican commit a political suicide?
I guess Obama is really the new FDR. Remember that FDR's downfall in his court-packing bill wasn't the Republican opposition. It was the revolt from his own party that was disgusted with his Constitution-defying proposition.
If you thought mainstream media (i.e. Associated Press, for one) was fair and balanced, think again
And I am actually a little disappointed that Fox News re-published this garbage (and I do sincerely hope that no one at Fox was involved in writing this lefty propaganda):
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Gov. Sarah Palin gained fame -- and to some infamy -- since she embarked on a vice-presidential bid less than a year ago.
Her surprising departure from Alaska's top office is gaining her something else: questions over her motives and next big move.
She leaves office Sunday with her political future clouded by ethics probes, mounting legal bills and dwindling popularity. A new Washington Post-ABC poll puts her favorability rating at 40 percent, with 53 percent giving her an unfavorable rating.
All lies and misleading statements. None of the "ethics probes" found anything seriously wrong with her conducts. If I remember correctly, there were about 18 to 19 ethics complaints. The "troopergate" one (which, I believe, Gov. Palin initiated herself, to properly address the accusations of her wrongdoing) found that Gov. Palin did nothing illegal (although perhaps she should have been ... more vigilant about people around her, who also did nothing illegal). The only ethics complaint of the 18 or so that found anything remotely actionable was the state paying for Gov. Palin's children traveling with her—frankly, I don't see what's so wrong with it. People do similar things in academia; travel companion (i.e. spouses) costs are either outright reimbursed or rolled into the cost of the person traveling on business. Nonetheless, because Gov. Palin's standard of ethics for herself is so high, for this one incident, rather than fighting the finding, she agreed to reimburse the state for her children's travel costs, so the matter is settled. The latest one (involving her legal defense fund) found nothing wrong with anything that she did so far and only recommends her in regards to future actions.
So, exactly what did this weasel of a reporter mean by "clouded by ethics probes"? If this is "clouded by ethics probe", the Obama administration, with its illegal firings of independent IGs should be in the middle of a thunderstorm.
And mounting legal bills is no longer an issue: as the finding into the ethics complaint regarding Alaska Fund Trust suggests, either the state should reimburse the governor for her legal costs, or they should do something so that the legal defense fund can pay for her legal bills—and last I heard, the legal defense fund has attracted just about enough donations (at $150 max per person!) to cover most of the legal bills.
BTW, this worthless rat fails to connect the dots and show the relationship between "ethics probes" (more appropriately called "pointless ethics complaints") and the "mounting legal bills". This is the single largest reason that the governor cannot do her job as a governor effectively and is forced to "pass the ball".
And finally, the phrase "dwindling popularity" is highly misleading. Gov. Palin is the governor of Alaska, not the president of the United States (yet, anyway). This troll is referring to a nationwide poll to support the "dwindling popularity" statement. Even a bastion of liberal media like TIME magazine acknowledges that Gov. Palin is still very popular in Alaska. People are happy with what she has accomplished so far, and the people who are not happy are not happy that she is resigning, and that surely is not an indicator that she's unpopular in Alaska.
As for the nationwide polls, well, Gov. Palin is the one single person who has endured the longest sustained, most brutal, dishonest attacks by the mainstream media in many years. And she has been fighting with both her hands tied behind her back (one by her position and duties as governor, and the other by the pointless ethics complaints). I am confident that when Gov. Palin can fight these shameful attacks more vigorously and effectively, voters around the nation will eventually see the truth. After all, "You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time."
Truth will out.