Links and Minifeatures 05 01 Monday (Mayday!)

Carnival of Insanity Recommended: Thomas Joscelyn, Canadian Financial Stuff, Israelly Cool (16 minutes but especially recommended!), One Cosmos, Done With Mirrors,



The above was a carryover from last week. I didn't submit to any carnivals this week, although I'll have Carnival of Liberty tomorrow. Here are the links from some I often do submit to:



Carnival of Capitalists



Carnival of Personal Finance



RINO Sightings

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A lot of people are writing about how translating "The Star Spangled Banner" into spanish bugs them. It would not bug me if the words and sentiment were the same as the original, but they are not. Mind you, I think the protesters
have every right to do their version, but it's not helping them make their case, as far as I'm concerned. If they sang "The Star Spangled Banner" in english, or even translated literally into spanish, I might be impressed with their patriotism and willingness to adopt the US as a homeland, to assimilate enough into our culture, etcetera. With the version they are pushing, they make me believe they are whining gripers about having merely gotten the best immigration deal available anywhere in the world.



We need immigrants who want to be part of our society. Would be colonists need not apply, as far as I'm concerned.



Now, I live in San Diego, and my office is in a heavily hispanic area less than 10 miles from the Mexican border. Thus far, I have noticed zero difference between today and any other day, nor has anyone else in my office.



Seems to me that the big May 1 "strike" is a bust, as I predicted.



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Via ROFASix, an article detailing Congress' willingness to cut appropriations for combat necessities in order to pay for weapons systems that may never work. I cannot believe they are still spending money on the V-22. That thing should have been staked through the heart ten times by now, and would have, if not for Congress.



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What he said: Respectful Insolence has the best take on the Andrea Clarke case that I have read so far. Money quote:

If the hospital and those supporting the withdrawal of care against a family's will are going to make the argument that we as a society can no longer afford to provide what it considers "futile care" to Clarke and others like her, that doing so raises everyone's health care costs and uses up scarce resources for little or no benefit, they should make that argument rather than hiding the what is clearly primarily an argument weighing the good of the patient versus the good of society in unconvincing arguments based "personal autonomy"--or explain how it serves personal autonomy to let a woman die against her and her family's will.

I agree completely.



Make no mistake. Eventually we are going to have to have that argument. Attempts to avoid it by claiming, like the hospital here did, that further treatment is against the best interests of the patient when the patient does not agree, is deceitful at best. As medicine gets more and more capable, and more and more expensive, there will clearly be a point at which we have to give up treating a given patient. I fully expect that that point will eventually be variable from patient to patient and even from time to time, based upon monetary concerns. But attempting to sidestep this debate by pretending you are motivated by patient welfare is vile.



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neo-neocon has an article up questioning whether we in the United States should prosecute leakers, and whether it should be criminal.



My take is that it varies with the status of the individual doing the leaking. If it is someone with no special access or priveleges, who came by the information because others failed to contain it, that should not be a criminal offense.



If, on the other hand, it is someone who pledged secrecy through obtaining and accepting a security clearance, with all that that entails, then it should be prosecuted as Treason without exception.



If this is someone who truly believes the good of the country requires this disclosure, they should be willing to accept the consequences of doing so. Gandhi, MLK, and others who used civil disobedience thusly were quite willing to face the consequences. Gandhi faced the judge and told him that he freely admitted his guilt, he was unrepentant, and he planned to commit the same crime again, so if the judge believed that the law was just, that judge had no alternative but to impose the maximum penalty.



We will not continue to function indefinitely as a society unless we can rid ourselves of the poisonous idea that that those placed in positions of authority are always evil, always wrong, or always cowards fleeing the political consequences. Like it or not, these are the people that have been entrusted with making those decisions by the people of this country. It does all of us violence to dodge the decisions of those who have acquired said power legitimately. You want to be the one to make those decisions, you get yourself elected. Until then, you agreed to be a minion. If you cannot continue to do so in good conscience, the correct thing to do is resign. Not that this gives you the right to leak the information you were entrusted with, of course.



For those cases where it did serve the good of the country, that is what executive clemency is for. But in order to procure this kind of clemency, you have to roll the dice that the average citizen of the country will agree that what you did was, under the circumstances, correct. You may have to spend some time in jail first, of course. But that never stopped those whose teachings and example the leakers are claiming to be following.



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Sorry - out of time for today!