There is Good News Tonight

From Transterrestial Musing we have news that SpaceX, a commercial enterprise, may have placed something in orbit.

This is big news.  There is a theory out there that NASA is holding back the space program and President Obama's moves in that area may be opening up the space race to commercial activity.  If so, that could be good.  A little competition.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

I Don't See It

I don't see that this letter to Senator Jeff Sessions suggests that the White House might attempt to shield some of the writings of US Supreme Court nominee, as the Drudge Headline suggests.

The letter is from Mr Robert F Bauer, Counsel to the President.

It may be a bit weak on the issue of Mr Clinton reviewing his files, but even here it seems to suggest the 28 June deadline will be met.

Regards  —  Cliff

Israel and the Flotilla

The Israeli Navy attack on the Mavi Marmara, and several other vessels, attempting to run the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip has drawn wide condemnation.  The Israelis think that through the blockde they are keeping rockets out of the hands of Hamas, which the Hamas party could use to continue attacks on Israel.

We should be clear from the beginning.  Hamas is the freely elected party running the Government in Gaza.  Hamas and the PLO have split, with the PLO running the West Bank.

The UN maintains that Israel is the occupying power, but Israel limits itself to the blockade, attempting to ensure military equipment does not enter the Gaza Strip.

Amongst local bloggers, at least one, Kad Barma, has complained about the Israeli commando attack on the Mavi Marmara—see here and here.

I am prepared to stipulate that the Israeli commandos may have responded with excess force. In terms of error I wouldn't say it rises to the level of your typical SWAT takedown of the wrong apartment in the US.  However, ten dead is too many.  Ten is too many even given the other side was using flash bangs and several were on a suicide mission to make their point.

The flip side of this is the reaction of some of those outside Israel.  Quoting one commentator:

Until [EU] High Representative [for foreign affairs Catherine] Ashton’s demand to end the blockade, the EU had been party to a clear, explicit policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.  Since 2002, a group known as the Quartet—consisting of the EU, Russia, the U.S. and the U.N., with Tony Blair as its current special envoy—has said that no one could deal with Hamas, the occupier of Gaza, until Hamas fulfilled three conditions:  Recognize Israel’s right to exist.  Renounce violence.  Accept agreements already made by previous Palestinian negotiators.

Hamas hasn’t met any of those conditions.  After Ms. Ashton’s outburst, it knows it doesn’t have to.

The problem is, as the commentator, David Foster, of the Chicago Boyz notes, the likes of Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might take note and decide that they have less to fear from "the West" than they had previously thought.

Don't get me wrong. Israel has some problems to deal with, including the Gaza Strip.  The easy short run answer is to turn it loose, in cooperation with Egypt and just accept the rocket attacks, up to the point that people are dying in fairly large numbers, and then go in and clean out the Gaza Strip and detain the Government leadership (Hamas) for war crime trials.  The question is, how many Israelis is that? 10?  100?  1000?  10,000?

If you divide 300 million by 7 million, you get 43 (we are working with rough numbers here for the US and Israeli populations).  Now let us divide 3,000 by 43.  I get 70.  So the Israelis meet with the Gaza Strip Government, and invite the Quartet.  They do it in the middle of a road between Israel and the Gaza Strip, meeting on the border.  The Israeli negotiator says:  "It is all yours, free trade is hereby declared.  Don't mess it up."  He then bends over and with a big piece of chalk he writes 100 on the road, so it can be read from the Gaza Strip.  If any rockets fly from the Gaza Strip the number is adjusted (reduced toward zero) to account for the dead in Israel.

It is one thing to be a guerilla movement.  It is another to be a legitimate nation.

I am interested in other options for solving this mess.  NB:  My Middle East History Professor ruled out "Jewish Dakota" when I suggested that as the answer to a classroom project focused on achieving peace in the Holy Land.

Regards  —  Cliff

There Goes Mercury

There goes the Mercury line.

And, I am not happy about it.

My youngest son called me about it last week, having heard something, somewhere.  My wife called me today, as I drove home from Ohio.

Regards  —  Cliff

PS:  Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Where is Michael Yon?

In Thailand, instead of where he should be, Afghanistan.  This blog post speaks for itself.

Here is a report on Michael Yon in The Atlantic.

I don't feel more comfortable with Michael Yon out of Afghanistan.

If the future of news is independent journalists, you can help achieve that future by contributing to Michael Yon's tip jar.

Regards  —  Cliff

PS:  Hat tip to Instapundit.

Nominated Head of Medicare and Medicaid

OK, I am late on this.  However, I just came across this blog posting on this nomination by President Obama.  Here we have a blog post (hat tip to Instapundit) on Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announcing that Dr. Donald Berwick, an advocate of health-care rationing, had been nominated by President Barack Obama to run Medicare and Medicaid.  For you young folks, that is the program us old folks depend upon for our health care—the programs that took big hits to pay for the Reid/Pelosi Heath Insurance Reform Bill that was recently passed by Congress and signed by the President, sometimes referred to as "ObamaCare".

And, we have the HHS Secretary being reported as saying this:

“There’s no question, right now, health care is being decided by insurance companies,” said Sebelius. “Part of the Affordable Care Act is to make sure that the tools are back in the hands of health care providers and patients to make their own decisions and so I think his leadership at this time is going to be critical.”

Taking decisions out of the hands of insurance companies and putting those decisions in the hands of health care providers and patients sounds good to me.

However, Dr Berwick talks about not fully resourcing our health care system, so we can find where the bottlenecks are.

“You cap your health care budget, and you make the political and economic choices you need to make to keep affordability within reach,” Berwick said. “You plan the supply; you aim a bit low; you prefer slightly too little of a technology or a service to too much; then you search for care bottlenecks and try to relieve them.”

That doesn't sound like putting things in the hands of the physicians and patients.  It sounds like putting things in the hands of the accountants.  As usual, I come down on the side of those who believe the Government is not capable to setting prices efficiently for a whole economy.♠ 

The blog I originally went to noted that this approach of rationing to find the proper equilibrium in the medical market, provides this kind of situation:

Britain's higher cancer mortality rate results in 25,000 more cancer deaths per year compared to a similar population size in the United States.  But because the U.S. population is roughly five times larger than the United Kingdom's, that would translate into 125,000 unnecessary American cancer deaths every year.  This is more than all the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, cousins and children in Topeka, Kan.  And keep in mind, these numbers are for cancer alone. America also has better survival rates for other major killers, such as heart attacks and strokes.

I will agree with Dr Berwick that we need reasonably equal health care all.  We have too many people who are not getting reasonable care.  Part of that is due to a shortage of medical providers, something the new Health Insurance Reform is not going to fix.  But, are we really saying that Senator Edward Kennedy should not have been allowed to use his wealth to get the absolute best care he could afford?

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  And rationing of any kind leads to a growing black market.  The black market, in turn, can lead to financial and then political chaos.

Arizona vs NYC

From The Washington Post we have this lede to the article:  "U.S. police chiefs say Arizona immigration law will increase crime".

Arizona's new crackdown on illegal immigration will increase crime in U.S. cities, not reduce it, by driving a wedge between police and immigrant communities, police chiefs from several of the state's and the nation's largest cities said Tuesday.

I admit that I was a little concerned about this, even though I realized it was an Photo Op for Attorney General Eric H Holder, Jr and a chance for him to push his views, even though he may have still not read the Arizona law.

Fortunately, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was not mentioned in the article.  But, he is, strangely, against the new Arizona law.  And here is his ill-informed OpEd in the New York Daily News.  Mr Bloomberg is the mayor of a city with a stop and frisk law.  It would appear that he is, at best, inconsistent.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has come down against the New York City "stop and frisk" law, which is much more egregious than the Arizona Law.

Someone I know commented on the New York City law and its implementation:

Using the logic of the article, then one would be driving up crime in NYC because that S&F policy alienates the Black and Hispanic community, who will stop cooperating with police and would undermine community police in NYC. But as we know, crime has been going down since it was implemented. The NYC Police pull over, stop, and question more than 500,000 people a year to check for illegal guns (which is redundant as almost every gun is illegal in NYC). About 90% are Black and Hispanic (mostly young males).

One reason there is not as much uproar about S&F is that although it targets blacks and hispanics, it has driven down crime in those neighborhoods as well (and stopped thousands of murders). Blacks and hispanics might not like getting shaken down by cops, but many remember what it was like to be shaken down by drug dealers, and many are willing to put up with inconvenience/humiliation as the safety they now enjoy trumps that. When Giulinai ran for Mayor the 2nd time his precentage of the black vote went from 5% to 20%.

One thing I will say for Mayor Bloomberg is that he has one thing right:

Bloomberg said that because federal lawmakers have failed to tackle the thorny issue, lawmakers in states like Arizona have taken matters into their own hands.

"This country is committing national suicide," Bloomberg said.

I presume he means by not passing new immigration legislation.

Regards  —  Cliff