Deficit Spending and Abortion

Let's give John Maynard Keynes his due, and grant that deficit spending by governments, during economic downturns, is a good, counter-cyclical thing. Now let's examine George W. Bush. He insists that the economy has been growing since he assumed office, and he's signed off on massive deficits every year. My take: this kind of spending will have one of two outcomes - either it leads to a debt which is not honored, which is theft, or it leads to the enjoyment of goods by this generation which will be paid for by future generations. I say it is akin to abortion which in most cases is a decision to live conveniently now at the expense of a child.

Murtha's Impact: An Unexpected Twist

Mickey Kaus recently posted fascinating comments from Charlie Cook suggesting that Rep. John Murtha's call for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq actually served as a tipping point in favor of President Bush's policy. Cook says Murtha's high-profile remarks shifted focus away from recriminations over how we got where we are to questions about where we go from here.

All this is in striking contrast to the conventional wisdom at the time of Murtha's remarks. Right now Google turns up 68,000 hits on "Murtha 'tipping point'" and they're virtually all to the effect that Murtha's tipped the balance against the president. Prominent among them is this Howard Fineman piece in Newsweek which, in hindsight, just looks dead wrong.

A View

from the National Park Service webcam in Mt. Ranier National Park this afternoon (click on the image for a larger version).

The Y Chromosome and Procrastination

In a Reuters article noting that Christmas Eve retail sales in the USA were slower than expected, the general manager of Northpark Mall in Ridgeland, Mississippi makes a gem of an observation: "Our clientele has changed today to be more men."

Tony Dungy

What an unspeakable, unfathomable tragedy has befallen Tony Dungy in the loss of his son James just days before Christmas and weeks before his likely achievement of the pinnacle of success in the profession he has served so long, so honorably and so well.

Condolences can be addressed here.

Dungy is one of the class acts in American public life today. There aren't many like him.

President Bush Should Go to Congress

Trust in the beneficent intentions of the most powerful officials in government is not a secure foundation for liberty. I'm astonished that so few Americans on the right are now willing to concede the truth of this statement. I understand that some of them truly believe, and more of them are prepared to argue, that the very existence of our republic is threatened by Islamic terrorism. I understand that there are now, as there were not a century ago, nightmare scenarios according to which a few well-funded, well-organized miscreants could wreak unthinkable havoc on our people.

I differ with the "strong executive" conservatives concerning the procedures we, as a nation, ought to employ in assessing the risks and adjusting our civil liberties traditions in accordance with the assessment. I believe that congress should be involved in this process of evaluating the competing risks of retaining civil liberties traditions and remaining vulnerable to the potential of terrorists equipped with weapons of mass destruction, or risking domestic tyranny and enjoying security against threats from abroad. One of the pillars of our American way of life is faith that the truth is most likely to prevail in an unconstrained argument, and it is a pillar I am unwilling to surrender to Osama Bin Laden, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Our founding fathers never envisioned our present dilemma because, among other things, they never envisioned our nation going to war, and our president claiming the plenary range of "commander in chief" powers within our own borders, without a formal congressional declaration of war.

I believe it's in that spirit of our Constitution to argue that, if an executive unwilling to seek a formal declaration of war believes a new type of threat requires new limitations on traditional rights (read "the right of American citizens not to be searched without a warrant from a court", or "the right of Americans citizens imprisoned by their government to be charged, confront their accusers, and have their day in court"), the executive ought to be required to persuade the legislature to agree, before being empowered to proceed. Not to put too fine a point on it, it seems self-evident.

Impeach Bush over Domestic Surveillance?

Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan. He's a well known conservative legal scholar, especially in pro-life circles. He made these remarks yesterday to Nina Totenberg on NPR's All Things Considered:

"I was someone who defended strong presidential powers and we do need a strong presidency. But we don't want a presidency that elevates itself into a kingship even stronger than that of George III...if the president does not renounce this rather preposterous claim of inherent authority to run roughshod over every provision of the constitution under the banner of fighting a war, congress needs to consider an express statute reigning him in or even impeaching him."

A Catholic Bishop with Cajones

speaks his mind here.

This is fine with me.

As best I can tell, Israel is the only civilized nation in the Middle East (something I learned to articulate by reading John Derbyshire at National Review Online). I hope they do take out Iran's nuclear facilities, and I hope we, the United States, provide whatever followup support is necessary to ensure Israel's survival.

Richard Pryor, RIP

CNN has the story. His comedy said things Bill Cosby's wouldn't, and evoked hearty guffaws in the process. We'll not soon forget the frantic body language that was part of Pryor's trademark when he got on a rant. Not to diss Cosby - in recent years, he's said insightful things few other black Americans of national stature were willing to say (Thomas Sowell comes to mind as one of the few). Both men - Pryor first, and Cosby later, helped to open a frank American discussion about our peculiar national issues with race. Neither's contribution was "politically correct" - and therein lies the special worth their commentary has had for their countrymen, black and white.

Update 12/12/05: Drudge links to this excellent reflection on Pryor's life and work by Stanley Crouch.

An Ominous Sentence for Advocates of National Health Care

Note the second paragraph in this AP article about American life expectancy. Though I have been a lifelong advocate of some form of universal health coverage for Americans, I have a sneaking suspicion that once my health becomes "a major concern to American taxpayers", my freedom will be drastically curtailed - and having thought twice, I'll take a pass on the taxpayers' generosity, in advance, by not voting for candidates who favor national health insurance.

By MIKE STOBBE
Associated Press Writer
Dec 08 1:57 PM US/Eastern

ATLANTA - U.S. life expectancy has hit another all-time high _ 77.6 years _ and deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke continue to drop, the government reported Thursday. Still, the march of medical progress has taken a worrisome turn: Half of Americans in the 55-to-64 age group _ including the oldest of the baby boomers _ have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese. That means they are in worse shape in some respects than Americans born a decade earlier were when they were that age.

The health [that is, diet, exercise habits, alcohol and tobacco consumption, etc] of this large group of the near-elderly is of major concern to American taxpayers, because they are now becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security. [emphasis added]

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

Germany elects a new Chancellor, more pro-US than the one she replaces. The American Secretary of State pays a visit, and one subject that comes up is the case of an apparently innocent German citizen of Middle Eastern birth who was "held for five months as a terrorist suspect by the United States in an Afghan prison last year."

The German Chancellor reports to her media that "Washington had acknowledged it made a mistake in detaining him," whereupon a "senior U.S. official" says, in essence, "Baloney!"

" 'We are not quite sure what was in her head,' he said, referring to Merkel. "

Isn't the State Department the one that employs diplomats?

Apparently the calculus here is that it would be more costly to admit one mistake involving one prisoner, than it would be to alienate one potential ally which is among the world's most advanced and democratic nations. Very much in character for Dubya and the administration he's shaped.

Honor Well Deserved

AP reports that 20,000 police officers from around the globe turned out for the funeral of 35-year-old, Jamaican-born NYPD officer Dillon Stewart, who was shot through the heart during a November 28 traffic stop.

Another account of this man's funeral is here.

Blogical Positivist is glad to see this astonishing outpouring of solidarity in the face of an unspeakably ugly crime. God bless the thin blue line which protects us from people like the one who took the life of this policeman. And thanks to each officer and department for showing up in such force that we're reminded that protecting innocent lives is not necessarily a losing battle.

May the angels bear NYPD Officer Stewart to Paradise, and comfort his wife, and protect his 6-year-old daughter Alexis and his 5-month-old daughter Samantha.

And may justice be done to his assailant, whose name, from all indications, is Allan Cameron.

Breaking News, or, Your Tax Dollars at Work

"Schools that run bake sales and let teachers reward students with candy risk having more overweight pupils," says a new study, according to AP writer Steve Karnowski's report. The University of Minnesota's Martha Kubic, lead author of the study, concedes that she hasn't strictly proven a cause-and-effect relationship, but sagely notes, "there does seem to be a connection." A middle school principal interviewed for the article agrees that the hypothesized connection "makes sense", and can't restrain himself from alerting the Associated Press to a side-benefit of his school's ban on junk food: its hallways have become impeccably free of candy wrappers. Perhaps Nurse Ratched lurks somewhere in that joyless do-gooder's family tree.

Blogical Positivist suspects that anyone who needs a government-funded study to discover a possible connection between bake sales and weight gain must be a little underweight between the ears, and hopes those who look to government to mind the national waistline confine themselves to trimming pork from government budgets, not choices from citizens' menus.

American Blood and Treasure in Iran's Service

What the U.S. has unwittingly accomplished in Iraq: the birth of a "Shiite-dominated, Iranian buffer state that will strengthen Tehran's power in the Persian Gulf just as [Iran] seeks nuclear weapons and intensifies its rhetoric against Israel." So says retired Gen. Wesley Clark in today's New York Times.