Simplifying The Argument

The Ultra-Conservative Christian's problem in the abortion/stem cell debate is simply this: he generally thinks he's right. Sure, he will say things like, well, the Bible is clear, but, to the rest of the world, and even to a lot of Christians, no, it isn't. The fact of the matter, of course, is that it does not even slightly matter whether or not he is right: that won't save one baby. What matters is whether or not he can convince -- and the "The Bible says so" argument is not convincing anyone but the ones making it.

The pro-choice liberal's problem, on the other hand, is not so much that he thinks he is always right, but rather that he thinks himself always wrong. It would be wrong to tell a woman what to do with her body. It would be wrong to try to legislate morality. And how in good conscience can ANYONE say to a rape victim, "It is terrible and tragic what happened to you. It is unthinkable how your rights were taken away. But what about the rights of the tiny life living inside you?"

1. God hates abortion.

2. A woman has a right to do whatever she wants with her own body.

There is nothing wrong with holding either or both of these beliefs, but they are also distractions. The issue, as has of course been pointed out, though not yet to the degree that we get past these distractions, is "When does life begin?" That is the pertinent question. Because if the baby/fetus/embryo/blastocyst is alive, his or her rights cannot be ignored. He or she is clearly an innocent -- whose only crime is not yet being born. And just as the parents of a born child have a responsibility to that life, the same would go for the parents of an unborn life.

If on the other hand, it is determined that at some stage of prenatal development, what is growing inside is not a life, then the woman who is pregnant should have full authority over the property in her possession.

We need to wade through all the distractions and cut to the issue: When does life begin? I know at one point Obama said this is above his pay grade. But what he may not realize is that the failure to decide here is a decision. If we allow abortions of the unborn, we are either deciding they are not alive, or we are allowing murder. I firmly believe if we would have just looked at this clearly and simply 40 years ago around the time of Roe v Wade, we might have decided then. It is a complex issue, but it is an impossible issue if you don't know what, or who, you're dealing with.

Risk and Reward

A lot of this is very similar to the first post on this blog, written in May. I hate to rehash the same old topics, but government doesn't ever seem to want to actually change anything, so these things tend to keep coming up.

In this article by Mike Shedlock, he states his outrage for the lack of outrage toward Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, etc. Mike talks about how the bailout-enriched Goldman Sachs is at it again, where "it" is huge bonuses and questionable merits. (Note: technically GS was not a direct bailout recipient, but of AIG's $70 billion bailout, they immediately paid 13B to Goldman. Well, that worked out well!) He links to many other sources and articles, but the highlight of it all is this quote from Rolfe Winkler:

"Main Street still owns much of the risk while Wall Street gets all of the profit."

That is the point of everything. And I'm not even using hyperbole there. When it comes to the entire US economy -- yea, the entire financial system -- this is the crux of everything. The common person (Main Street) ends up bailing out the rich when things go bad, but in better times, the spoils all go to the "Masters of the Universe." The risk/reward is completely screwed up.

The #1 thing we can do about this is support getting rid of, auditing, limiting the power of, or basically hindering in any way possible, the Federal Reserve. Take away this "lender of last resort" to fall back on, and certain companies couldn't joy-ride their RIDICULOUS amounts of risk to huge returns until the bottom falls out, then get bailed out, and do it all again. IT WOULD NO LONGER HAPPEN. Companies would fail as the result of bad leadership. And you know what? That's good. We need that. Because at a time where we have 10% unemployment, some of the tax money of those recently unemployed was sent, just months ago, to companies that are now paying out $Million+ bonuses to their executives. That...is outrageous.

The government in the marketplace

This great article got me to thinking about how government tries (and fails) to subsidize and regulate business. The government needs to be in the business of protecting and not so much providing. It is good at enforcing the law -- being a punisher of Madoffs -- but not so good at fixing things and solving everyone's problems. When gov't tries to solve problems in the marketplace, it:

A. screws up the market pricing with its (subsidized) alternatives

which in turn makes businesses, in their attempts to compete with government prices:

- take excessive risks
- decrease services
- lay off employees (which can be a downward spiral for the whole economy)

B. lulls more competent (private) watchdogs into thinking it is taking care of industry oversight "the gov't has this under control"

C. creates excessive burdens on employers who then have to spend money adhering to government-made (not market- or consumer-made) regulations rather than employing more American workers.

That's not even to get into the tax money wasted on regulation and subsidization. Nor have we considered all that government tries to do just to deal with the problems it creates (e.g. the unemployment benefits it pays to the people laid off when it screwed up the market pricing). If we did, this list of ills could go on forever.

Choice

Tiller was protected not only by a praetorian guard of elected Democrats, but also by the protective coloration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America -- coincidentally, the same church belonged to by Tiller's fellow Wichita executioner, the BTK killer.

The official Web page of the ELCA instructs: "A developing life in the womb does not have an absolute right to be born." As long as we're deciding who does and doesn't have an "absolute right to be born," who's to say late-term abortionists have an "absolute right" to live?

I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing men making difficult, often tragic, decisions be an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the shootings of abortionists?

Following the moral precepts of liberals, I believe the correct position is: If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, then don't shoot one.

-from 49 MILLION TO FIVE by Ann Coulter

Sarcasm doesn't have to be blithe; it can in fact be powerful. To me, this is. Granted, Coulter does shock for a living, but this one is quite sobering.

Make up your mind!

This is what I've always felt about Obama. I've heard a lot of folks complain that he's just a skilled Rhetorician and is all talk. That he makes all kinds of glorious promises but never delivers. But the more important (and painful) reality is that even in these glorious promises, he doesn't actually say anything.

It's not just a matter of throwing around euphemisms that stand for something else. It's euphemisms and statements and policies that mean nothing at all. In a rare moment of actually making a judgement, Obama said, "The decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable." That is probably one of the most commital statements he has made in his term thusfar, but in reality, all it commits him to is doing things differently than Bush and his administration.

So he promises to change everything. We're gonna close Guantánamo! But we're going to construct a legal regime to decide who should be detained indefinitely. How is that any different!?

Finally someone sees it -- and not even a conservative, but Rachel Maddow. All his re-branding of "prolonged detention" and rhetoric about "the rule of law" is just a clever way to change nothing. That's really what Obama wants: The status quo -- but it has to seem like everything has changed. He will keep from rocking the boat, but at the same time use flowery words to make it sound like he has swooped in and reversed every unpopular policy of the Bush administration.

Maddow has caught him in this. And I appreciate it.

Socialized Capitalism

In this blog post, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, provides a great explanation of the problem with the economy. I don't think his solution is viable, because as he says at the very end, "If you are a great financial engineer and make tons of money at what you are doing, more power to you.If you are good at what you do, you pay more to Uncle Sam, but you still make a boatload of money." We don't need anyone doing financial engineering, even if they're willing to pay more in taxes than they currently do. We need financial engineering to stop completely, and the only way to do that is to let institutions fail. Contrary to whatever they feel like they've done to help the situation, the government is the thing that keeps this system going. If the Fed didn't extend credit to huge institutions (let's call that socialism) every time those institutions' risky business got them in huge debt, institutions couldn't continue to operate that way for cycle after cycle. In other words, they learn to play by the rules or they're gone. As MxPx said, "Responsibility? What's that?"

I think most people in this country would say they are anti-socialism and pro-capitalism. But we HAVE socialism! It is socialism when the government bails out our supposed capitalism. Capitalism requires responsibility. So when you take irresponsible risks, your business may go under. No one bails you out.

Like classical Socialism, this "Socialized Capitalism" is a doomed system, and even more importantly, it is completely unfair to the 99% -- the less fortunate classes, who don't get in on the upside when the risks are being taken, nor get bailed out, but are in fact the ones doing the bailing out and losing their jobs when the other shoe drops. The poorest get thrown bones called "welfare programs" that are ostensibly meant to give them a chance to succeed, but in reality are just products of a system where that chance doesn't really exist. Because the precious few who "succeed" need the rest of us to bail them out.

So down with bailouts! They may or may not save jobs in the short term, but in the long term they prop up a system that amounts to giving to the rich, and stealing from everyone else.