Links and Minifeatures Special RINO and LLP edition
Be sure to come back Tuesday morning for Carnival of Liberty VIII. And I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me if my blog rolls to the right are missing any members of either group.
Armies of Liberation talks about a Yemeni sheikh convicted in the US to fund Hamas. This is damning stuff.
Armies of Liberation also tells us of a possible hopeful situation in Yemen as Saleh has said he's stepping down.
She's got a half dozen other articles all worth reading -worth linking. If you think I'm trying to say that Jane should be on the blogroll of and regularly visited by anyone interested in world freedom and democracy, you're right. I feel embarrassed that it's been a week since I got to her site. If you'll note, I've moved her up in my blogroll to the right.
Nathan Newman makes an excellent point about using aid as a weapon: It makes people mad, rendering it useless for the PR purposes used to sell it back home. HT to aTypical Joe
Ballon Juice provides a leftspeak to english translation of somebody who claims he was taken out of context. I am happy to see more people pointing out the contradictions in "I support the troops, but I've staked my political future upon the things that will happen if they lose."
Done With Mirrors scores with another argument dissection.
Forward Biased has more on the true level of non-support required to support the troops but not their mission.
Big Cat Chronicles has another worthwhile article on elder care, and facilitating their decisions. It has been my experience that children obsessing about their parents being ripped off often make the opposite mistake. When I worked the Long Term Care market as part of my planning business, I used to have an inflexible rule that said I had to try to bring the next of kin in if I were at all in doubt about their mental solidity. Many children automatically assumed I was trying to rip off their parents, and I lost a lot of income over it, but every once in a while I got a child who'd actually do their due diligence before assuming I was trying to rip off their parents. And I'm sorry for the parents whose kids prevented them from buying something that would actually help them. I got several phone calls that began "Listen, you con artist, I told you to leave my dad alone, and you went and sold him this policy. I'm calling my lawyer," where I had counter with "Look, Mr. Jones. I was the one who got you involved in the first place. You told your dad not to buy from me and he didn't. So somebody else came into the picture and probably sold him something more expensive and not as good as what I had because I only sell California Partnership policies, and I offered your dad the most effective bang-for-the-buck partnership policy for someone in his situation, and that other salesperson sold a policy it by not getting you involved. I hope that makes you feel just wonderful. So don't you threaten me with a lawsuit, because I'm not involved here." Not to mention two instances that I'm aware of where they subsequently tried to buy insurance after the parent developed an actual need for long term care. Once the problem is a certainty, you can't buy insurance against it, or at least not on beneficial terms. Nobody sells two million dollars of life insurance to people on their death bed for less than two million dollars (It may sometimes be a good idea anyway, but that's another essay). Nobody sells disability insurance to someone who's already in traction. And nobody sells Long Term Care Insurance to people already in Long Term Care Facilities. Insurance is something you buy before the fact. If you fit the need profile, get it. Got it? Good.
I've got to finish my article on Long Term Care Insurance soon.
Catallarchy has a great narrative on what they'd say if they had to sell the public on social security today. Check out the comments as well. The hard thing to get through your head is that every choice that's made is a trade-off and has good and bad. If the elderly people in Chicago that died due to lack of air conditioning had had the choice of where to invest their social security money, odds are long they wouldn't have been so poor. Scary as it may be, freedom must include the freedom to fail, or you get stuff like the current system. If retirees had had the ability to invest their social security contributions in the market, some few would still be destitute, but the vast majority wouldn't be eating dog food on $950 per month. Social Security as currently constituted is not going to last the life expectancy of anyone under 60. The train wreck is already unavoidable, and delay only makes it worse.
Libertarian Purity Test. I got a 50, but have no desire to become a hard core libertarian. HT: Classical Values
Combs Spouts Off has a good point in his article "Purity" vs. Principles. Unfortunately, I've found the average person avoids thinking even more than they avoid physical labor. They don't want to have to think; they want an easy answer. Unfortunately, as Combs notes, easy answers are suspect. There's the old question about "Do the ends justify the means, in general?" People with pat answers either way make me nervous.
Decision '08 has some information that may give the Clinton Administration some partial cover here, in that at least they were working on a known problem.
Done With Mirrors notes some campus speech codes. These are first amendment violations at state universities, but shh! don't tell the ACLU. They are not interested. So FIRE steps in.
I am a little more libertarian on drug legalization than INDC Journal. I'd like to see FDA's role reduced to an advisory one, rather than approval, I'd like to see everything legalized, and if that means that some poor souls will march straight off a cliff into oblivion, it's not like we're really stopping them now, and it would lessen or prevent all kinds of stuff related to the fact that this stuff is illegal now. But I would be extremely happy to take his position, or anything similar, as a starting point, and we fiddle with it plus and minus until we find something that works. Heck, I'd be ecstatic with taking the current situation, and experimenting on an incremental basis, to find out what works. Yes, it'll take a long time, and we'll make mistakes. But the position of changing nothing because this is the received wisdom of the ages is both akin to being safe again in the arms of the Inquisition of the fourteenth century and feudalism, and a belief that society should be static for all time, when in fact, the best solution is likely to change. Today's ideal is certainly not the same as a century ago, and it will not be the same a century from now. Our descendants will have more information, more thinking capacity, and better ways of exchanging ideas than we have.
And on the subject he really meant to cover, yeah, many people do fly off the handle with folks they disagree with too easy. Instead of interpreting it as an ego attack, how about considering it as an opportunity to check one's assumptions?
As I have said before, I'm trying to ignore a former Crawford Camper as much as I can. But Inside Larry's Head just uses her as a starting point for a well thought out logical post on supporting the troops. I don't agree 100%, but let him make his own case - go read it.
Mad Mikey has an excellent article on NIMBYism and trying the repeal the laws of economics. It doesn't work; neither does allowing hatred of corporations to rule your politics. He illustrates how.
No Angst Zone has an excellent article on the mindset of the military post Cold War. I largely agree with the proviso that the military and their civilian controllers are historically always preparing to fight the last war. I strongly suspect that we're going to need a military capable of frontal warfare again, so we cannot forget the practice.
Pigilito says has an excellent article on geology and medicine, of all combinations of technology.
Uncommon Insanity examines Hamas, the Palestinians, and Arab actions in dealing with Israel. What they say means nothing compared to what they do, and what they do is destructive.
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