U, U, D, D, L, R, L, R, BSA, Select, Start...

For those of you who aren't males who were teenagers in the 80's, the title of this post is taken from the sequence of buttons you press at the beginning of the game "Contra" on the original Nintendo to get unlimited lives. (the only way anyone I knew could ever beat the game).

I've added the BSA to it, because the Boy Scouts and cub scouts have added a video game award that scouts can earn.

The cub scout award actually looks like it might be helpful:

1. Explain why it is important to have a rating system for video games. Check your video games to be sure they are right for your age.

2. With an adult, create a schedule for you to do things that includes your chores, homework, and video gaming. Do your best to follow this schedule.

3. Learn to play a new video game that is approved by your parent, guardian, or teacher

We've been thinking about creating just such a schedule for Reed and Douglas to limit their time on "Club Penguin"

The higher award though is much less useful the scout must do 5 of the following:

1. With your parents, create a plan to buy a video game that is right for your age group.

2. Compare two game systems (for example, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii, and so on). Explain some of the differences between the two. List good reasons to purchase or use a game system.

3. Play a video game with family members in a family tournament.

4. Teach an adult or a friend how to play a video game.

5. List at least five tips that would help someone who was learning how to play your favorite video game.

6. Play an appropriate video game with a friend for one hour.

7. Play a video game that will help you practice your math, spelling, or another skill that helps you in your schoolwork.

8. Choose a game you might like to purchase. Compare the price for this game at three different stores. Decide which store has the best deal. In your decision, be sure to consider things like the store return policy and manufacturers warranty.

9. With an adults supervision, install a gaming system.

Coincidentally, 5 of the options include the phrase "play . . . video game" I wonder which 5 the scouts are going to choose?

Oh, well. Plenty of other awards to earn.

Never Thought I'd Say This...

...and get ready for Hell to freeze over ... but Keith Olbermann makes an excellent point.

Yes, you read that right. The guy is a raving left-wing loon, but he is right about the senate healthcare bill, specifically the requirement that all Americans purchase government approved insurance. He lays out what it will cost the President:

[T]his bill costs you the [support of the political] left —and anybody who now has to pony up 17 percent of his family’s income to buy this equivalent of Medical Mobster Protection Money.

Olbermann continued:

The mandate in this bill … must be stripped out...It is above all else immoral and a betrayal of the people who elected you….

And this sounds awfully rebellious:

I am one of the self-insured, albeit by choice. And I hereby pledge that I will not buy this perversion of health care reform. Pass this at your peril, Senators, and sign it at yours, Mr. President.

I will not buy this insurance.

Brand me a lawbreaker if you choose.

Fine me if you will.

Jail me if you must.

Wow, I couldn't have said it any better myself. What a weird feeling to agree with him...

Granted his reasons for opposing it are much different than mine, as you can see reading the entire post. He's ticked that it is not fully socialized. But I understand his dislike of the mandate. The enemy of my enemy is my friend? . . . well, maybe not quite yet.

Why Trying the 9/11 Terrorists in NYC is a BAD Idea

An excellent analysis of why trying Khalid Shiekh Mohammud in New York is a colossal mistake. The legal jargon is a little dense, sorry.

The writer is an attorney who lays out how the trial will inevitably play out. I think he's exactly right. We've seen this already in the trial of Zacharias Moussoui (however it's spelled), the alleged 20th hijacker. In short it will be a massive media circus, cost incredible amounts of money, give the confessed terrorists an international platform and publicity, and require that the U.S. disclose our secret intelligence gathering techniques. Not to mention setting the defense attorneys up for life financially, and ruining the reputation of the U.S. legal system.

He also speculates on the President's motivations for bringing the trials here, and concludes that it is part of a sinister left-wing plot. On that point I think he gives President Obama too much credit. A plot requires competence and planning. I'm not sure it's a plot, so much as just plain stupidity, naivete, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the world and of human nature coupled with a disdain for any policy or measure enacted by President Bush.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'd rather see them tried at the International Criminal Court. It's reputation has no where to go but up, and when the terrorists are all freed, it would help cement public opinion against international institutions, and strengthen faith in America. All the opposite outcomes of a trial in NYC.

Random Quote:

From a National Review Blog:

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—November 12 [Ed Whelan]

1908—In Nashville, Illinois, the human fetus to become known as Harry A. Blackmun emerges safe and sound from his mother’s womb. Some sixty-five years later, Justice Blackmun authors the Supreme Court opinion in Roe v. Wade. (See This Day for Jan. 22, 1973.) Somehow the same people who think it meaningful to criticize Justice Thomas for opposing affirmative-action programs from which he putatively benefited don’t criticize Blackmun for depriving millions of other unborn human beings the same opportunity that he was given.

Another Anniversary

Twenty years ago today, the East German government lifted all travel restrictions on its citizens. Later that night, Germans began tearing down the Berlin Wall.

The press seems to be taking much more notice of this one than they did of the Tiananmen Square anniversary.

I remember the events, but I didn't appreciate them as much at the time as I do now. This was a truly historic event, and was the highlight of the series of peaceful revolutions which dismantled the Communist bloc within only 2 years.

A miracle if there ever was one.

Too bad our President didn't think it necessary to attend the celebration. Peter Robinson says it best at National Review Online.

The Cold War was the defining struggle of the second half of the 20th century — a clash of beliefs about God, man, government, and economics so utterly basic, so primal, that it stands in comparison with the Persian Wars or the long conflict between Rome and Carthage. “My view of the Cold War is simple,” Reagan once famously explained. “We win, and they lose.” And with the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago on Monday, that is just how it turned out. Liberty vanquished tyranny.

Barack Obama? He has no idea. No idea at all.

And from George Weigel:

It’s a very big deal, because the president’s absence bespeaks a woodenheadeness about the history of our times: a woodenheadness likely influenced by the classic left-liberal notion that the Cold War was just an action-reaction cycle between two “great powers” (“two scorpions in a bottle,” as a Jimmy Carter appointee notoriously put it), not a moral contest for the human future between imperfect democracies and pluperfect dictatorships.

There have been few moments in modern history when the good guys won, cleanly, and without mass violence; Americans had a large role in creating the conditions for the possibility of that. The fall of the Wall was the symbolic centerpiece of the Revolution of 1989 — it’s shameful and, frankly, embarrassing that an American president is not in Berlin to celebrate the implosion of the worst tyranny in human history. But it’s hardly surprising, given the president’s performance before Russian students earlier this year.

The politics of national self-deprecation — moral blindness wrapped in moral sanctimony — continues.

In Praise of the Great Leader!

The lyrics are here (there were two songs) if you have the stomach for it. Now, I know the President didn't have anything to do with this, but when I saw this, it literally sent a chill down my spine. This is how you build up a cult of personality. We do NOT do this kind of thing in America!

As an adult, fine, sing whatever you want, you have the freedom to do so. But to teach children this kind of thing in school is just plain wrong. Music has power, it conveys emotions very effectively.

We teach children songs to impress upon them that some things are worthy of respect or worship. We teach them to sing about our country, and our freedoms because we have reverence for them. At Church we teach them to sing praise to God because we reverence Him.

We do not worship our leaders in this country!

We do not bow to kings or presidents. All men are created equal. This is not the Soviet Union, and this is not North Korea. Leaders come and go, we revere the freedoms and ideas upon which our nation was founded, not whomever happens to have won the last election.

Just two more points:

1. Whoever did this is completely ignorant of history at best, and insane at worst and should not be anywhere near children.
2. This is showing up almost nowhere on the news. Can you imagine the uproar if kids were taped singing a song praising President Bush or the Iraq war?
3. Ok, three points. Maybe we didn't need to worry about the President's address to school children, maybe we need to worry about which teachers have complete access to our kids every Monday - Friday for 6 - 8 hours.

Is this the next song they'll learn?

Sensible Healthcare Reform

I've resisted posting on healthcare reform here for 2 reasons:

1. No one wants to read a 10,000 word rant complete with charts and analogies.
2. I can't find the time to write said 10,000 word rant.

So, I leave it to others with greater powers of brevity. Charles Krauthammer has two suggestions that should be tried before any radical restructuring of the current healthcare system. They will genuinely reduce costs and lessen the influence of government in our lives.

(1) Tort reform: As I wrote recently, our crazy system of casino malpractice suits results in massive and random settlements that raise everyone's insurance premiums and creates an epidemic of defensive medicine that does no medical good, yet costs a fortune.

I'm a lawyer, and even I agree with that. The inability of malpractice insurance companies to predict what crazy awards juries will give leads to astronomical premiums. In addition, it causes doctors to order unnecessary procedures "just to make sure:"

An authoritative Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals -- amounting to about 25 percent of the total -- solely as protection from lawsuits. Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year.

Krauthammer envisions something like the workers' compensation plan to handle malpractice incidents.

Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.

The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. There is no more serious deterrent than forfeiting a decade of intensive medical training and the livelihood that comes with it.

Second, uncouple health insurance from employment and from geography:

(2) Real health-insurance reform: Tax employer-provided health care benefits and return the money to the employee with a government check to buy his own medical insurance, just as he buys his own car or home insurance.

There is no logical reason to get health insurance through your employer. This entire system is an accident of World War II wage and price controls. It's economically senseless. It makes people stay in jobs they hate, decreasing labor mobility and therefore overall productivity. And it needlessly increases the anxiety of losing your job by raising the additional specter of going bankrupt through illness. . . . If we additionally eliminated the prohibition on buying personal health insurance across state lines, that would inject new and powerful competition that would lower costs for everyone.

Good common-sense things to try which will lower the cost of medical care and reduce both the need for, and the cost of, health insurance.

Quote of the Day

Regarding a British 11 year-old girl who posted nude pictures of herself online, a reader commented:

Scary! When I was 11 I was still playing with dolls.
That young lady needs to grow up a lot before acting without considering the consequences.

Amen. Children, consider the consequences, acting without considering the consequences is strictly for adults.

Darkness and Light - 20 years since Tiananmen Square

Since few others marking this day, I will.

The Tiananmen protests started in April 1989, when students began calling for greater democracy and anti-corruption measures. After weeks of protests, which saw the square packed with up to 1 million people, troops and tanks moved in on the night of 3-4 June 1989. An unknown number of people were killed in the crackdown. Estimates range from 0 - 5000. For what it's worth, the Chinese Government acknowledges 241 dead and 7000 injured. Thousands more were arrested throughout the country. Some are still held, others haven't been seen since. Among the "disappeared" is the unknown man in the photo above. It is known he was arrested, but the Chinese government has not been able to "find" him in response to international pressure.

The last official statement from the PRC government about the "Tank Man" came from Jiang Zemin in a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters. When asked about the whereabouts of the "Tank Man", Jiang responded that the young man was "I think never killed".

Kudos to the BBC - they have a story about the official Chinese reaction to the anniversary. And a video of a reporter trying to enter the square:



These brave students may well have been part of the cause of the great events of 1989 - the fall of the Berlin Wall being the most memorable. They were the last great uprising against communism to be ruthlessly suppressed, the ones that came after succeeded, and the world is a better place for their courage.

They deserve to be remembered together with The Hungarians in 1956, and the Czechs in 1968.

We must remember that Communism is not just another political system, it has objectively measurable, real effects on the lives of the people oppressed by it. The ultimate ends are the destruction of the human soul, both body and spirit, grinding pervasive poverty, darkness and death.

This darkness is not just spiritual, but literal as this composite satellite image of the nighttime Earth shows:



Japan is the string of lights from bottom center to top right, surrounded by the dark of the ocean - Japan is a thriving democracy, and is an island.

South Korea is center left, surrounded by darkness too - South Korea is a thriving democracy. South Korea is not an island.

The darkness to the north is North Korea - the "purest" communist nation on Earth. The scattered "Islands" north of that are Communist China.

No matter how much we talk and trade with them, communists are evil. We must never forget that. And we must never forget those who died 20 years ago today.

Random Readings

First Item:

Not believing in the greenhouse effect, I mean global warming, I mean "climate change" is not a kook-fringe position. Even some of the authors of the UN's climate reports don't believe it.

See this story.

By the way, have you noticed how the problem has morphed over the years?

I remember reading all about "The Greenhouse Effect" in elementary school and junior high. A specific, verifiable problem with a specific, verifiable mechanism driving it, which turned out to specifically not be happening.

Next, we heard about global warming. A specific, verifiable problem with a vague mechanism driving it, that turns out to have happened for about 30 years, but now . . . not so much.

Enter "climate change." This may be a winner. This is the real "change we can believe in" Both the problem and the mechanism are vague enough that no one can disprove them. Earth gets warmer = climate change! Earth gets colder = climate change! Every honest person, when asked "is the climate changing?" must answer "yes." Then the yelling about the horrors of capitalism, the evils of SUVs and the poor polar bears starts, and no one listens to the rest of the answer (from the article):

what do I believe about climate change? Firstly climate change is real, and has occurred on Earth for at least 4 billion years as long as an atmosphere and oceans have existed. Climate change occurs in cycles at various time scales, with the shorter time scales known as weather (by convention the distinction is 35 years). Trying to stop or control climate change is akin to stopping ocean tides. Secondly, I believe human activities affect climate, otherwise why would I bother with a mortgage. The climate inside my house is different to the climate that would exist if my house were gone.

Second Item:

Maryland has done us a service by demonstrating the effects of a huge tax increase on "the wealthy." The Wall street Journal has the story here.

Basically they raised the tax rate on those making over $1 million dollars a year. Here's what happened:

The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it." One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

Huh, who'd have thought? As the article explains "this is one reason that depending on the rich to finance government is so ill-advised: Progressive tax rates create mountains of cash during good times that vanish during recessions."