Aha! There It Is!

I knew I left my blog around here someplace. Couldn't for the life of me remember where, though.

It's been a strange week. No blogging of any kind, among other anomalies. I'm going to mark the overdue end of this week, finally, by going camping.

Now, if I can just remember, next week, where I'm leaving this thing. I know -- I'll just stick one of those little post-it arrows right here on the edge of the monitor, right by where it says "New Post." There! That ought to do it.

The Word for Wednesday, October 28 Edition

Finishing James chapter 3 (from verse 13):

Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Most of us, I'd guess, are familiar with a song called "Kum-ba-ya" (or "Kumbaya"). Before looking it up, I'd assumed it was of 1960s vintage, but it's a little older; it seems to go back to at least the 1920s or 30s. I don't like it, really: melodically tiresome and lyrically insipid, it always seemed to me like a dull waste of time.

Back around the time Emperor Bush II was kicking off Gulf War II, I noticed the title of the song becoming used as a sort of go-to insult by my former companions in political conservatism; if you argued that invading somebody else's country might not be the thing to do, you were apt to be accused of being a kum-ba-ya singer. (That happened to me, at least, lots of times.) But in the passage above, when I read James's description of the wisdom from above (pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy), it occurs to me that many, many war fans would likely suggest that "Kum-ba-ya" must have been a real favorite with James. Shamefully, the American evangelical "church" tends to be heavily infested with such folks; several have been my pastors during my long, weary trek of the last couple of decades.

I still don't like the song. But, please, give me the wisdom from above. Maybe it'll displace some of that other kind of wisdom, that I still have plenty of.

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Truth in Government

Sometimes a little piece of truth pops out by accident. I think our lawfakers are experiencing some Freudian slips:

In a dramatic sign of Democrats' growing confidence that they have the votes to pass a far-reaching healthcare overhaul, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Monday that the bill he intended to send to the Senate floor next month would include a "public option."

The provision would allow the federal government to create an insurance plan to be offered to Americans who do not get medical coverage through their employers -- with the proviso that states could opt out of the program.

"While the public option is not a silver bullet, I believe it's an important way to ensure competition and to level the playing field for patients with the insurance industry," Reid said during a Capitol news conference.

All right, we have our ammunition. Now, how about parts for the weapon?

And some senators, most notably Maine Republican Olympia J. Snowe, favored adding a "trigger" to the public option -- letting a government-run plan be offered several years down the road only if private insurers failed to meet cost and coverage targets.

Delightfully bipartisan -- Sen. Snowe has the trigger, and Sen. Reid brought the ammunition. As the commissars chatter on and on, as is their wont, about how they'll provide "competition" to keep those evil insurance companies honest, they've helped us keep in mind what government, ultimately, is: a gun. Force. Power. Compulsion. Cops, armies, guns, tasers, prisons, lethal-injection gurneys, electric chairs, waterboards, sound cannons, microwave projectors.

Everything you could want in a family doctor, no?

The Word for Wednesday, October 21 Edition

James chapter 3, verses 1 through 12:

Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we shall incur a stricter judgment. For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well. Now if we put the bits into the horses' mouths so that they may obey us, we direct their entire body as well. Behold, the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder, wherever the inclination of the pilot desires. So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. Behold, how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by the human race. But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father; and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way. Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water? Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Neither can salt water produce fresh.

This passage encourages me to be quite sparing in commenting upon it. It speaks for itself quite plainly anyway, I think. Perhaps it is sufficient to say that saying nothing is seldom a mistake, and even when it is a mistake, it's one that's easily corrected. There are exceptions to every rule, but in general, when you later decide that you really should have said something, you can usually still say it ("I love you" is the exception that comes immediately to mind here). But saying something when it would have been better not to is basically uncorrectable; you can apologize for what you said, but you can't really unsay it.

And I speak from sad experience.

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A Little Troop-Think

I'm not a big Supporter of The Troops. If you are, though, you might want to consider this. Suppose you're an American Troop in Afghanistan. Whatever your alleged mission might be, you might reasonably think your chances of accomplishing it and returning home in one piece would be enhanced by having more Troops as company, helping you, watching your back, and so on. So, what do you think when your great leader (or his chief minion) is saying this stuff:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will not commit more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until he is convinced that the central government can be a credible and effective U.S. partner, a senior White House aide said Sunday.

But it was unclear whether Obama intends to accept the recommendation by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for thousands more American troops and other resources in the 8-year-struggle to stabilize Afghanistan.

The central question before Obama, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said, is "not how much troops you have, but whether in fact there's an Afghan partner."

Gee, that's interesting. We install a puppet, and then decide, close to a decade later, that he's maybe not such a good puppet. What's the Hopey-Changey Administration's response? Do they get rid of the celebrated Mayor of Kabul and install another collaborator? Do they decide to wash their hands of the whole business -- a bad investment, you see -- and pull The Troops out? Neither one. Instead, they say that they're not convinced that Puppet Karzai is worth propping up, so you stay there and keep on propping, while they express their displeasure by not sending you any help.

If that doesn't make much sense to you, well ... you're not alone. But actually, O Troop, it does make a certain kind of sense. It's a way of temporizing, based on your leaders' evaluation of the worth of your butt: slight. Near-negligible, in fact.

Meanwhile, a failed contender for the Emperorship is puzzled:

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, who visited Kabul over the weekend, said Obama should wait until the election cloud has lifted.

"I don't see how President Obama can make a decision about the committing of our additional forces or even the further fulfillment of our mission that's here today without an adequate government in place or knowledge about what that government's going to be," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Well, Senator, I can help you there. If Obama were a decent human being, he could make his decision in a few milliseconds. He could decide that the "mission" is either nonexistent, or something that can't be truthfully defined without even the somnolent American public becoming upset. And he could decide to adjust the number of killer-Americans in Afghanistan by -N, where N is the number currently there. Then he could order the entire imperial stock of flying deathbots to be flown out over the Indian Ocean somewhere and crashed into the sea. Next, he could ...

Ah, never mind. If Obama were a decent person, he'd hardly be employing the likes of Rahm Emanuel. And the rest follows, as the night follows the day.

Hey! This Is a PROTECTED Operation!

I'm not here to suggest that there's any virtue associated with health-insurance corporations. My actual thought about them, I suppose, is that they're like any other corporate entity that exists to enrich stockholders: vacuum cleaners for cash, automata, basically existing below the level of personality and moral choice and so on. Machines. Be that as it may, though. Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that Big Health Insurance is thoroughly reprobate. Let's assume that they are the moral equivalent of a crack house, or a brothel, or a bookie parlor. That leaves the words of Our Glorious President and Nobel Laureate, as reported here, a little troublesome:

President Obama mounted a frontal assault on the insurance industry on Saturday, accusing it of airing “deceptive and dishonest ads” to derail his health care legislation and threatening to strip the industry of its longstanding exemption from federal anti-trust laws.

In unusually harsh terms, Mr. Obama cast insurance companies as obstacles to change interested only in preserving their own “profits and bonuses” and willing to “bend the truth or break it” to stop his drive to remake the nation’s health care system. The president used his weekly radio and Internet address to push back against industry assertions that legislation will drive up premiums.

Let's leave aside for the moment the hilarity of any successful big-time politico affecting to wax wroth against those who bend the truth, or break it. ("Hey, quit lying -- that's my job!") Let's think for a moment about the structure of the threat being made here.

When I was just a young engineer, back in high school, they taught me in Government class about antitrust. Antitrust, they said, was the height of civic virtue. It was the only thing keeping the top-hatted capitalists from taking our first and last pennies, enslaving us, and probably sleeping with our moms and sisters while they were at it. Inasmuch as I now know that at least 98% of what I was taught in Government class was pure, high-potency, weapons-grade crapola, I find myself skeptical about the benefits, the constitutionality (as if that mattered!), and the efficacy of antitrust. Again, though, let's agree to assume that antitrust is the real goods: our strong and solitary bulwark of defense against the malefactors of great wealth and their depredations.

Then: why does the Health Insurance Crackhouse & Massage Parlor have an exemption from Holy Antitrust? How did they get it? Did they, perhaps, at one time, purchase our noble lawfakers? If so, they must have continued to purchase all the subsequent ones; else, they'd have eliminated this criminal exemption long since.

And, more toward the immediate problem: why does Pres. Rainbow Brite not immediately strip those criminals of their shameful exemption? Why does he instead threaten to enforce the higher law of antitrust unless the criminals shut their mouths for his political benefit?

What is the difference between Prexy saying what he said, and any corrupt police chief reminding the proprietor of a local house of ill fame that, unless the protection money gets paid, there'll be a little trouble with the law?

I don't want to be misunderstood, now. There really is a difference between government and an ordinary organized-crime gang. Government enforcers usually have snappy uniforms to wear, and often have pretty lights atop their cars. Distinctions, you see, must be made. Distinctions are critical.