Lift Up Your Hearts!

More from the backblog . . .

The Strange Double Standards of Abortion  John Stackhouse muses on the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, vigilantism, and hypocrisy.

This past week, a teenager in Vancouver was arrested by police because friends of his had noticed a “hit list” of over 100 people posted on his Facebook page. When the police seized the Grade 12 student, they found an arsenal of knives, guns and batons.  That young man attends my son’s high school.

Suppose he lived next door. Suppose I read the Facebook page one evening because my son brought it to my attention. Suppose the next morning I saw him loading weapons in the trunk of his car. What would I do to stop him from killing innocent people?

 

Reflections on My Termination Peter Augustine Lawler, former member of the President's Council on Bioethics, considers what is lost by President Obama's approach to the moral issues of the day.

For Obama, a valuable Council does nothing but offer advice to the administration. The Bush Council was actually given the additional mandate of public education, of developing a national dialogue on controversial bioethical issues. It's with that Socratic second mandate in mind that President Bush chose for his first chairman a man trained in medicine, natural science, and the wisdom about being human embodied in the Great Books from Plato through Shakespeare to Genesis--Leon Kass. For Obama, it would appear, there's no need for such moral and political discussion or such "humanistic" guidance because the experts know the nonideological and objective answer to the key questions that face us in our high-tech and increasingly biotech world. Personal opinion is trumped by what the "studies show," and public opinion should be guided toward a consensus based on those studies.

For many of the bioethical issues that face us, there's no obvious, objective solution—meaning one that emerges from experts without real moral and political deliberation. That doesn't mean that the contending parties involved should be narrowly ideological or blindly fundamentalist. It's their duty to be and in fact they often really are guided by what we can really know through science. But as Socrates himself constantly reminded us, for the most reasonable of men and women the key questions often remain more obvious than their answers. There's no substitute, in a democracy, for thinking together about who we are before deciding what to do, and it's not "anti-science" to sometimes conclude that science alone doesn't resolve every dilemma we face about human freedom and dignity.

The rule of experts might be fine if they were philosopher-kings who had united in themselves not only technological power but perfect wisdom. But of course, it's much more clear that the human power over nature and human nature is growing faster than is our wisdom to use it well for authentically human purposes. The experts, we have to remember, very often hide their own personal opinions and ideological agendas behind their impersonal claims to merely be following what the studies say. We can learn from them, but as long as they fall short of perfect objectivity based on perfect wisdom, we shouldn't trust them. These days, the people, above all, should distrust meddlesome, schoolmarmish judges and bureaucrats (and presidents who enable them) who want to deprive them of the capacity of thinking for themselves.

 

State Slaps Dr. Do-Good  Insurance laws have a purpose, as most well-intentioned laws do.  What laws rarely have is common sense, something judges sometimes, but increasingly rarely, provide.

The state is trying to shut down a New York City doctor's ambitious plan to treat uninsured patients for around $1,000 a year.  Dr. John Muney offers his patients everything from mammograms to mole removal at his AMG Medical Group clinics, which operate in all five boroughs.  "I'm trying to help uninsured people here," he said.  His patients agree to pay $79 a month for a year in return for unlimited office visits with a $10 co-pay.

But his plan landed him in the crosshairs of the state Insurance Department, which ordered him to drop his fixed-rate plan—which it claims is equivalent to an insurance policy.

He says he can afford to charge such a small amount because he doesn't have to process mountains of paperwork and spend hours on billing.  "If they leave me alone, I can serve thousands of patients," he said.

The state believes his plan runs afoul of the law because it promises to cover unplanned procedures—like treating a sudden ear infection—under a fixed rate. That's something only a licensed insurance company can do.

The doctor's plan is no substitute for health insurance, since it doesn't cover anything he can't do himself, eliminating the catastrophic, big-ticket items that are the raison d'être for insurance.  People who are generally healthy might find $1000 plus per year a bit steep for simple office visits, but what could be wrong with offering fixed-fee services, as long as he's not the only game in town?

 

Unplugging Grandma Isn't the Problem The problem is getting Grandma care in the first place.  The article also debunks the much-thrown-about life expectance statistics.

[President Obama] has no plans, as he put it, to "pull the plug on Grandma."  The problem with government health systems is not that they pull the plug on Grandma. It's that Grandma has a hell of a time getting plugged in in the first place. The only way to "control costs" is to restrict access to treatment, and the easiest people to deny treatment to are the oldsters. Don't worry, it's all very scientific. In Britain, they use a "Quality-Adjusted Life Year" formula to decide that you don't really need that new knee because you're gonna die in a year or two, maybe a decade-and-a-half tops. So it's in the national interest for you to go around hobbling in pain rather than divert "finite resources" away from productive members of society to a useless old geezer like you. And you'd be surprised how quickly geezerdom kicks in: A couple of years back, some Quebec facilities were attributing death from hospital-contracted infection of anyone over 55 to "old age."

I had an elderly British visitor this month who's had a recurring problem with her left hand. At one point it swelled up alarmingly, and so we took her to Emergency. They did a CT scan, X-rays, blood samples, the works. In two hours at a small, rural, undistinguished, no-frills hospital in northern New Hampshire, this lady got more tests than she's had in the past decade in Britain—even though she goes to see her doctor once a month. He listens sympathetically, tells her old age often involves adjusting to the loss of mobility, and then advises her to take the British version of Tylenol and rest up. Anything else would use up those valuable "resources." So, in two hours in New Hampshire, she got tested and diagnosed (with gout) and prescribed something to deal with it. It's the difference between health "care" (i.e., going to the doctor's every month to no purpose) and health treatment—and on the latter America is the best in the world.

 

Daughter Saves Mother, 80, Left by Doctors to Starve  Speaking of unplugging Grandma . . .

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex [England], is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.  Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.

Fenton was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. Although [her daughter, Christine Ball] acknowledged that her mother was very ill she was astonished when a junior doctor told her she was going to be placed on the plan to “make her more comfortable” in her last days.  Ball insisted that her mother was not dying but her objections were ignored. A nurse even approached her to say: “What do you want done with your mother’s body?”  On January 19, Fenton’s 80th birthday, Ball says her mother was feeling better and chatting to her family, but it took another four days to persuade doctors to give her artificial feeding.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, physician Scott Gottlieb blames governmental overcaution for the shortage of H1N1 flu vaccine.  Unlike Europe, the U.S. (1) does not allow additives to the vaccine that stimulate the immune system and make a smaller dosage effective; (2) requires single-dose syringes, which require less of the mercury-containing preservative thimerosol than do multi-dose vials; and (3) continues to use the slower, egg-based manufacturing system rather than a new procedure using mammalian cells.

President Obama, the doctor believes, should be pushing us forward, dropping the precautions put in place to protect us.  Perhaps the doctor has forgotten 1976, when President Ford's swine flu vaccination program resulted in an unacceptable level of fatal or debilitating side effects.  Perhaps he has also forgotten the thalidomide tragedy, in which our cautious Food and Drug Administration's refusal to approve the new drug largely spared our children the horrible birth defects that afflicted the Europeans.

My hat's off the the president on this one.  Or it would be, if I were wearing one, which I hardly ever am.

On the Nobel Prize system, that is.

I mean, it's bad enough they don't have anything for mathematicians.

When I was in college, my roommate's father was a chemist.  Whether he ever had a chance at a Nobel prize I never knew, but we always watched the Nobel news carefully because he certainly knew many fellow chemists who did.  In the process, I learned that there was often a signficant time lag involved, the work for which the prize was given having been done many years earlier.  When I thought about it, that made sense:  one never knows the true impact of a discovery or an action until one can look back on it from a more distant perspective.

But now we have the Nobel Peace Prize given, not for actions proved peace-promoting from the perspective of history, but to encourage actions that might, maybe, possibly, we hope will do so?

President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to encourage his nascent initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and replace unilateral American action with international diplomacy and cooperation.

For once, words fail me.  To his credit, I hear President Obama was surprised.  It would be greater credit if he refused the honor on the grounds that he doesn't deserve it, even if he hopes to someday.  But that may be too much to expect of any human being, let alone a politician.

I'm sure there must be a legitimate reason behind the new Federal Trade Commission rules for bloggers, but it looks pretty nonsensical from my perspective, another example of one-size-fits-all rules that inconvenience millions in an attempt to collar a few offenders.  It invites comparisons with the TSA's airport screening, except that I'm a lot more worried about terrorists than about those "I lost 300 pounds on this simple diet" ads.

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday took steps to make product information and online reviews more accurate for consumers, regulating blogging for the first time and mandating that testimonials reflect typical results.  Under the new rules, which take effect Dec. 1, writers on the Web must clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.  Testimonials will have to spell out what consumers should expect to experience with their products.  [From the Hartford Courant, October 6, 2009]

So here goes.  I suppose I'll have to put it in my About link, too.

I have no idea what others should expect from anything I review or comment on.  I'm one person, not a research laboratory.  You may love a book I find objectionable; you may dislike the recipe I say is fabulous.  Such is life.  Sometimes I get books for free, from publishers, which I'll acknowledge in the review, but no small tip is going to make me say I liked a book when I didn't.  (So far, I've received all of one book this way, and I haven't read it yet, which is why you haven't seen any such acknowledgement.)  I also get incalculable return from Lime Daley, but I like to think that's because of my familial relationship with the owners, not because of any endorsements I make on this blog.

I don't mean to pick on the FTC; they have a tough job.  But I'm much more interested in disclosures, say, of gifts given by textbook publishers to school boards, or from pharmaceutical companies to doctors.  When Internet bloggers attain the respect, authority, and power of doctors and school boards, when it takes more than common sense to realize their reviews might not have universal applicability, then I may be convinced of the need for regulation.  I won't be in that category anyway. 

Learning the lesson of Napoleon and Hitler.  Never underestimate Russia.  C. S. Lewis observed that mankind tends to alternate between taking the Devil too seriously and not taking him seroiusly enough.  Without making any implications on the order of "the Great Satan" or "the Evil Empire," it's a good analogy for the way we look at other countries, whether friend or enemy.  During the Cold War, for example, our fears of Russia—especially in the 1950s—were probably exaggerated, and it's likely that now we're not sufficiently worried about how far the influence such a large country with so many resources might reach.  Here's a New York Times article on the activities of Moscow's mayor, not to provoke fear, but to make us think.  The article is a bit dated, but the ideas are not.

 

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And it doesn't even mention health care.  This analysis of then president-elect Obama's upcoming challenges was written nearly a year ago.  It is left as an exercise to the reader to decide how well he is meeting them.

U.S. President George W. Bush demonstrated that the inability to understand the uses and limits of power can crush a presidency very quickly. The enormous enthusiasm of Obama's followers could conceal how he—like Bush—is governing a deeply, and nearly evenly, divided country. Obama's first test will be simple: Can he maintain the devotion of his followers while increasing his political base? Or will he believe, as Bush and Cheney did, that he can govern without concern for the other half of the country because he controls the presidency and Congress, as Bush and Cheney did in 2001? Presidents are elected by electoral votes, but they govern through public support.

 

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And now for something completely different.  A long and ususual but fascinating look at changes in Austria (and the world) since the days of Kaiser Franz Josef.

Until recently, Cairo had a refuse-collection system unlike any you'll find in the United States, but it worked—and might even be commended for its efficiency and environmental responsibility.  Cairo's households enjoyed free or inexpensive garbage collection, right from the door, by the zabaleen ("garbage people"), an impoverished community of Egyptian Christians living in an area of Cairo known as "Garbage City."   The collectors and their families then sorted the trash, reusing, repairing, and recycling what they could, and feeding the organic waste to their livestock, primarily pigs.

Sanitation workers do not generally enjoy high status anywhere, and the zabaleen are despised not only for their jobs, but also for their poverty, their religion, and their willingness to keep pigs as livestock.  However, as even American cities discover during a protracted sanitation strike, we do not do well to devalue other human beings, least of all those responsible for keeping us from suffocating in trash. 

In a misguided effort to stave off a swine flu epidemic, Egypt ordered that all the pigs be killed, even though the disease is not, in fact, spread by pigs.  By the law of unintended consequences, Cairo's citizens are now more vulnerable to disease than before.  The zabaleen no longer collect the trash, and the government's effort to replace them with multinational corporations has largely failed.  The poorest of the poor have lost their only livelihood as well as their source of food, and Cairo's streets overflow with filth.

I don't write this to belittle Egypt or the Egyptian government, but as a warning.  Our country has a problem:  Our healthcare system, once arguably the best in the world, is falling apart.  (We can disagree over the causes, or even the definition, of "falling apart," but that's not the point here.)  There's no shortage of wrangling over what the intended consequences of a federally-imposed health plan might be, but whatever shakes out of that debate, I fervently hope that we will consider the possible unintended consequences before killing off the pigs.

(Sources used for this post included The New York Times and Wikipedia.)

Today marks our Constitution's 222^nd birthday, in honor of which I present another depressing civics quiz.  The questions are drawn from the test prospective U.S. citizens must pass, and if these standards applied to all, apparently 97% of Oklahoma's public high school students would be in danger of losing their citizenship.  I'm sure no one is under any illusions that the problem is limited to Oklahoma.  Here are the questions; for the answers, and what percentage of the students surveyed answered each question correctly, see the original article.

1. What is the supreme law of the land?   
2. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
3. What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
4. How many justices are there on the Supreme Court?   
5. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
6. What ocean is on the east coast of the United States?
7. What are the two major political parties in the United States?
8. We elect a U.S. senator for how many years?
9. Who was the first President of the United States?
10. Who is in charge of the executive branch?

What I find interesting about this quiz is that, although I did get answer every question correctly, I would say few if any of my answers were due primarily to what I learned in school, but rather to merely living life.  When it comes to history and politics, I admit to being abysmally ignorant; I wangled my way out of Pennsylvania's required semester of American Government by taking an extra year of independent study physics.  (Don't ask me why they let me get away with that, but I trust the Statute of Limitations covers it somehow.)  I loathe politics in general and other than voting am shamefully neglectful of my civic duties.  Yet even with my notorious lack of observational skills, I couldn't avoid learning enough to pass the test.  Perhaps my additional years on this planet do count for something.

My Swiss family doesn't let me forget that "universal health care" does not necessarily mean a system like that in the United Kingdom.  For this I am grateful, because of the horror stories that keep emerging from that system, such as the cases of Charlotte Wyatt, Leslie Burke, Linda O'Boyle, Jayden Capewell, and too many others to write about.  It's worth looking at alternatives, and T. R. Reid's The Healing of America does just that.

I haven't read the book; my opinion is based on the New York Times review. There's much I don't agree with in the review, and I'm sure in the book also, but I like the gimmick:  Reid had shoulder problems that were interfering with his golf game, and he decided to present the case to 10 different doctors around the world.  The results?

• When Mr. Reid presents his shoulder to his own orthopedist in Colorado, the doctor is quick to recommend a shoulder replacement. It will cost his insurer tens of thousands of dollars (assuming it agrees to pay), with unknown co-payments for him. Risks include all those of major surgery; benefits include a restored golf swing.
• In France, a general practitioner sends him to an orthopedist (out-of-pocket consultation fee: $10) who recommends physical therapy, suggests an easily available second opinion if Mr. Reid really wants that surgery, and notes that the cost of the operation will be entirely covered by insurance (waiting time about a month).
• In Germany, the operation is his for the asking the following week, for an out-of-pocket cost of about $30.
• In London, a cheerful general practitioner tells Mr. Reid to learn to live with his shoulder. No joint replacement is done in Britain without disability far more serious than his to justify the expense and the risks, and if his golf game is that important, he can go private and foot the bill himself.
• In Japan, the foremost orthopedist in the country (waiting time for an appointment, less than a day) offers a range of possible treatments, from steroid injections to surgery, all covered by insurance. (“Think about it, and call me.”)
• In an Ayurvedic hospital in India, a regimen of meditation, rice, lentils and massage paid for entirely out of pocket, $42.85 per night, led to “obvious improvement in my frozen joint,” Mr. Reid writes, adding, “To this day, I don’t know why it happened.”

I don't know what happened in the other four countries, but this sample is sufficient warrant for questioning "best practices," wherever we are.  Maybe second opinions ought to be obtained in a second country.

I've been avoiding this topic for some time, hoping people would come to their senses and get on with real political debate, but it just won't go away.  President Carter now chimes in:

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man....[The] racism inclination still exists, and I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people...that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country....[Responses like comparing Obama to a Nazi] are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care...."

What is so intriguing, and frustrating, about these remarks is that they are held by so many otherwise intelligent, educated, and reasonable people.  What is it in the mental make-up of what I'm loosely calling the American Left that blinds them to two stunningly obvious facts:

• Many of President Obama's apparent ideals and attitudes, and certainly his stated policies, are anathema to a large segment of the American population.  Not a majority, as the election proved, but enough that even such an unattractive candidate as McCain garnered almost half the vote.  If the opposition to Obama were coming from those who largely agreed with his policies, then perhaps one could wonder if racism were playing a part.  But when the opposition comes from those who have all along favored alternative ideals and policies, it's nonsense to claim that they'd be supporting Obama if only he were 100% white.
• The accusations, invective, and foam-at-the-mouth hatred thrown at President Bush were orders of magnitude worse than President Obama has received—he hasn't even seen his first shoe yet.  I know, it's still early, and in any case that's no way to treat a person.  But it should give one pause before assuming that racism is behind political opposition.

The only thing I can conclude is that we are so divided in our country (and in our world) that we not only do not understand each other's positions, but at some gut level we can't even believe that a normal human being can truly hold a position opposite from ours.  That our ideals are so right and so obvious that there simply must be something else, something dark and sinister, behind our opponents' position.

During my teen years I was amused by the editor of a small, local newspaper who insisted on seeing Communist influence behind everyone who didn't think as he did.  It was an idiosyncracy of the kind one lovingly puts up with in one's own family or amongst one's neighbors.  Widespread, however, such an attitude is poison.

I've written before on the value of cultural exchange programs among countries; it may be that our own country is so diverse that we need an internal cultural exchange.  Perhaps then we might reach the point of one husband I know:  An extreme extrovert who is energized by the presence of other people, he cannot understand why his introvert wife needs quiet time alone to recharge.  What is most important, however, is that he worked to understand and respect his wife in this area.  By getting to know each other better, they developed the give and take—the respect and deference—that makes life so interesting and enjoyable.

So, too, I wish for our country. 

It would not be too strong to say that I loathe politics.  I vote, and have done so since I was first able to at age 19, but mostly without enthusiasm; choosing the least objectionable candidate is gritty, unsatisfactory work.  Other than that, I try to ignore politics.  Unfortunately, politics does not return the favor, so I occasionally give in to the prodding of my conscience and attempt to articulate a political opinion in a blog post, or write a letter to an elected official, or attend a political meeting.

The last is rare indeed, but that's what I did the other night.  Our state representative held a health care "town hall meeting."  On my list of preferred activities it was somewhat below scrubbing the bathroom floor with a toothbrush, but I put on my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and ventured out into the rain anyway.  Not without a bit of grumbling under my breath, but this was one of the few candidates in memory who actually impressed me in his campaign—or maybe credit goes to the campaign worker who rang my doorbell; those of you who know me know that it takes someone really special to impress me after starting out on such a wrong foot! Anyway, I decided to go because I can't very well complain about what they're doing to health care if I don't express my opinion, and because I think our representative is a good guy and what a shame it would be if he held a meeting to get people's opinions and no one showed up.  I thought I'd at least go and say hi and maybe get to know him better.

Now that was a pretty funny idea!  Shows how little I know about politics.  I began to suspect I might have been wrong when I saw all the cars in the parking lot.  I managed to find a parking space, and later a seat, thanks to the fact that Google Maps is unaware of an important street closing on the way to the hall, so many people arrived late.

Anyway, the room was packed—I'm guessing 300-350 people—with policemen stationed around to prevent...what?  Riots?  We Central Floridians are pretty civilized folk, I guess.  There was some speaking out of turn—though one man who did later apologized—and clearly feelings were running strong, but at least up to the time I left, it was pretty calm.

Yes, I left early.  I had decided soon after seeing the crowd that I would listen, not speak, and many of those who spoke expressed my concerns for me.  So after about an hour I decided I'd had enough.  I'm the kind who leaves ball games in the middle of the ninth and exits EPCOT before the fireworks—anything to avoid the madding crowd of cars all trying to leave the parking lot simultaneously.  The headache induced by the strobe effect of the ceiling fans that hung below the lights was all the excuse I needed.  Fortunately, the Mozart clarinet concerto on the radio on the way home brought relief; Advil and hydration at home completed the cure.

It was worth the effort, even if our representative has no idea I was there.  Here are a few observations:

• Feelings, as said, were strong.  What's happening with health care is an important issue to a whole lot of people who have far better things to do than go out in the rain to a political meeting.  (Scrubbing the bathroom floor, for instance.)
• Our representative, along with others, is sponsoring a bill that would (if it makes it through the many necessary steps) enshrine in the Florida Constitution an individual's freedom of choice when it comes to health care and insurance.  My first reaction was that the idea was pretty silly, because if the federal government imposes dislocations in the health care market that drive out private competition, our state constitution isn't going to make any difference.  Upon reconsideration, however, I think it's a worthwhile effort.  Governmental and corporate subsidization of public education, for instance, has indeed placed a burden on private and home education, but that's all the more reason the right to the alternatives needs to be clearly established.  What's more, if successful, this and similar efforts under way in other states will make a clear point, one which the national government will do well not to ignore.
• The crowd was far from uniform, but a great majority were very worried that we are about to dismantle the best health care system in the world.  As one person put it, sure, there are some changes needed, but if 85 percent of the population is content with the health care they have now, is it necessary to take such drastic action to please the remaining 15?  At the risk of ending up with much more than 15 percent unhappy?
• Dissenters generally spoke well, and made some good points, though sadly they were by and large irrelevant.  It sounds good—and we no doubt need the reminder—to plead that we need to be compassionate and care for the poor and needy, but it begs the question as to what policies will best accomplish that goal.   It reminds me of a "status message" that made its way around Facebook recently:  "No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick."  True, but you might as well say, "no one should die, and no one should go broke."  The issue is not a simple, "Should we help people?" but the much more difficult, "What is the best way?"
• Which brings up another point from the meeting:  health care rationing.  Everyone speaks of this as a bad thing, and I agree, but what most people are unwilling to acknowledge is its inevitability.  Thirty years ago a physician friend of ours shocked people with this idea, and I haven't forgotten his logic:  as medical care becomes more and more technological, complex, and expensive, it will become impossible to give the highest level of care to everyone.  He was a Catholic and as pro-life as you could want, but even he spoke of triage, of the necessity of addressing the issue of the best allocation of healthcare resources.  Whether the allocation is done economically (some will die because they are too poor to afford care), or through availability (some will die because they must wait too long or travel too far for care, or because innovations have been discouraged), by policy (the old and disabled will die because care is diverted from them to those younger and more fit), or by some other means, there is no getting around it: people will die.  So far, my own opinion is that the economic allocation is actually the fairest of these, because it holds out more hope for individuals:  financial obstacles, difficult as they may be, are easier to overcome than unavailable care or bureaucratic rules.
• On the lighter side, the crowd at this meeting was not only civil, but educated.  We began with the Star Spangled Banner, sung by the representative's young daughter, who turned out to have a very nice voice.  But you couldn't hear her for long, because most of the audience joined in the singing—and knew the words.  Best of all, the daughter must be an alto, because the song was pitched so that no one screeched on the rocket's red glare.  It's a pity we didn't sing my favorite verse,* but then no one would have known all the words, not even me.
• One final note.  No one should hold a public meeting without giving the audience members a quick lesson in microphone use:  hold the mike close to your mouth if you aren't a trained singer, a regular church lector, or a trial attorney.  Clearly this crowd had not been to enough karaoke bars....

I don't expect most of my Loyal Readers to wade through the entirety of Paul Gottfried's Voices Against Progress: What I Learned from Genovese, Lasch, and Bradford at the Front Porch Republic, but I include the link for those of us who were students at the University of Rochester during those times.  I find it fascinating to glimpse the political maneuverings that were going on over the heads of mere students.  I knew neither Eugene Genovese nor Christopher Lasch; I stayed as much as possible in the science and engineering part of the school, and never set foot in that "hotbed of the New Left, the University of Rochester history department."  But everyone had heard of Genovese, whom we usually referred to as Our Resident Commie, and his wife, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, the Resident Feminist.

Of even more interest is how the thoughts and ideals of these people changed over time.  I don't regret having avoided the U of R history department in the 1970's, but find myself wishing I had known these folks as friends.

I'm filling out a political survey.  My friends can now pick themselves up off the floor, as they know that in our house such things go immediately into the trash without passing Go.  Political surveys, from either party, are inane nonesense with loaded questions on the order of, "You certainly don't support our evil opposition's murderous polices, do you?" and of which the true purpose is to solicit contributions.  But this survey is different.  Oh, it's inane, all right, with all of the above problems.  But this survey, which is REGISTERED IN MY NAME ONLY and MUST BE ACCOUNTED FOR, which requires my immedate attention, and which assures me that my answers are important in the battle against the Obama Democrats' aggressive push to expand the federal government into every area of our lives and businesses; this survey from the National Republican Senatorial Committee that is sent only to a select few to represent ALL Republicans living in my voting district because it is cost-prohibitive to send a Survey to every registered Republican in my area; this survey is addressed to me.

It appears to have escaped the attention of the National Republican Senatorial Committee that I've been a registered Democrat for all 38 years of my voting life.

Well, I commend them, inane questions or no, for reaching out to the opposition even at the cost of slighting the registered Republicans.  I hope they enjoy my answers, which for some questions will indeed sound as if I were "one of them" and for others will leave them scratching their heads.  But they're not getting the $11 contribution they ask for "to help cover the cost of tabulating and redistributing my Survey,"  even though $11 isn't out of line for a days' amusement.

On June 12—tomorrow—Food, Inc. opens.  As usual, we'll probably wait for the DVD, but it's definitely one I want to see.  Do I really want to hear more about the dangers of our factory farming system?  Unfortunately, yes.  True, it produces plenteous, apparenly low-cost food—we spend less of our paychecks on food than in any time in our history—but the true costs are hidden, and high.  Did you know that 90% of the items in our grocery stores contain some form of corn or soy?  That our supply of beef, chicken, potatoes, and many other foods is driven by the fast-food industry? One reason I'm looking forward to the movie is that supposedly it is not entirely a doom and gloom horror flick, but also celebrates the power of the individual to make a difference.  We shall see.  Thanks to DSTB for the alert.

Here's the official Food, Inc. website, where you can see the trailer.

And a PBS show about the movie.

Not only does North Korea continue to flaunt its testing of nuclear explosives and ballistic missiles, but it has abrogated the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean war.

Since its nuclear test Monday, North Korea has issued a stream of harsh rhetoric, even declaring that the armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War is null and void.

The situation in North Korea, with what appears to be a madman brandishing nuclear bombs, will require more knowledge and wisdom than even President Obama's most ardent supporters can claim for him.  Hence the prayers; feel free to join me.

For every presidential election in recent history (meaning at least the last 30), I have had one overriding concern:  the nomination of Supreme Court justices.  I was asked once why it would be a problem if President Obama merely replaces retiring liberal justices with more liberals—other than missing the opportunity to "pack" the court to my liking.  That's when I realized that I don't want a biased Supreme Court, at least not in the sense my friend was implying.  But neither do I want a "balanced" Supreme Court.  I want one that will rule based on the Constitution, whether they are for or against me.  I don't want the Judiciary taking over the role of the Legislature.  If our Justices are chosen based on their positions on particular issues rather than for their position vis–à–vis the Constitution and the Law, I think we have little hope for real justice.

But enough heavy thinking!  Mallard Fillmore can make me smile, even about such an important issue.