One last post on the London riots a couple of weeks ago, in this case an observation from Jonah Goldberg.

If you begin a sentence saying that nothing excuses wanton mob violence and theft, but refuse to come to a full-stop with a period or, better yet, an exclamation point, you know that there’s a “but” coming that will invalidate all of the platitudes that came before it. When someone says, “There’s no excuse for violence, but . . . ,” that “but” is a Pandora’s box of leftist banshees that have left human wreckage in their wake for millennia.

Ultimately, the Left’s weakness for riots stems, I believe, from two things: statist paternalism and power-worship. It’s an amazingly reactionary sentiment when you think about it. The lower classes are savages who need the benign power of the state to keep them from acting on their savage instincts. When the state doesn’t nurture and civilize them, the urban masses revert to their animal natures. The Left doesn’t condone the violence, of course, they just say the violence is to be expected when conservatives cut social spending. Or as I put it in my column, “In other words, the cuts don’t justify the violence, but the threat of violence justifies avoiding cuts.” On a cynical level, when the lower classes rise up and wreak havoc, the self-appointed spokesmen for society’s “victims” see an opportunity to press their advantage. They hold up the mob like a Medusa’s Head, to petrify the bourgeoisie into making ever more concessions.

As for power worship, there’s always been something about the power of crowds that seduces the leftist mind (see Liberal Fascism). There’s also something about the “authenticity” of street thugs that’s intoxicating to liberals and way too many young people generally, particularly if there’s a racial component thrown in. (If the Black Panthers were white, everyone would instantly recognize them as indistinguishable from neo-Nazis.) How else to explain how so many middle class and even upper class criminals got caught up in this authentic expression of lumpenproletarian rage?

Here’s the best retort and thought of the week on what I call the entitlement-hooligan riots in the U.K.

Presumably, London-type riots would not last long in either Texas, or Arizona. — Adam Baldwin on twitter.

Indeed. Thank God for the Second Amendment. I say thank God rather than “Thank Jefferson” because even Jefferson would have understood that such a right is natural, bestowed by The Creator, or if you’re not religious at very least by virtue of having been born a human being. Contrast that with the grand Ponzi scheme, house-of-cards, and castle built on sand known as the Entitlement State, which you better believe is bestowed by consent of the government, rather than by the governed. Things legislated as exceptions and fractions have grown into behemoths as rule and whole. Even so, fully expect that as our 80-million-checks a month government grows amok such riots will no doubt begin here once those government dole checks end. That’s the trap of Socialism-lite — rather difficult to replug that genie once it’s out.

What’s the point of taking off our shoes at airport security if the screenings can’t pick up a myriad of explosives and detonators?

According to reports the “underwear bomb” worn by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a military-grade plastic explosive called Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, and neither that nor the detonator would have been caught by standard metal detectors. Airports in the United States have a smattering of “sniffer” booths or occasional bomb-sniffing dogs that would have caught such explosives, but for the most part it would be pure luck if an explosive-laden terrorist was sent to the proper “sniffer” line.

So now we know that the vast majority of security we’ve undergone for the past 8 years has been a facade, designed to make us feel better about flying. At the end of the day it’s really vigilant passengers and malfunctioning bombs that have saved lives. While Abdulmutallab and “shoebomber” Richard Reid have both been categorized as bungling nincompoops it’s just a matter of time before one of these bombs works as designed and kills a slew of people.

Meanwhile, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab clearly received aid. If the presence of military explosives wasn’t enough to show that, at least one eye-witness claims that another man coaxed Amsterdam security officials into allowing Abdulmutallab get on the plane even though he had no passport. Abdulmutallab has since told federal authorities that there are others like him in Yemen preparing to bomb airliners. Well, that’s a no-brainer, or at least it should be. But don’t tell that to the Obama administration, which just this month sent another 6 Guantanamo detainees back to Yemen! (Of the 200 remaining detainees, 91 of them are from Yemen). Many released detainees have since returned to their terrorist roots. Indeed, Said Ali al-Shihri was released in 2007, and although Saudi, has since become the “deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.”

Not very reassuring, is it?

And yet here’s our Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, telling us everything is fine. She’s already retracted what was a carefully worded statement that “once the incident occurred, everything went according to clockwork,” which is like saying everything went according to plan after the fox ate all the chickens, or, after all the animals left the proverbial barn. What a joke she’s become. She now agrees, after much legitimate criticism, that the system failed. No kidding? We need an overpaid bureaucrat to tell us that?

And while we’re on topic, what’s the point of all these different agency no-fly lists if they’re all so big and uncoordinated that a guy like Abdulmutallab — no passport, on at least one watch list, buys a one-way ticket, has no luggage, his own father attempts to warn authorities about him — can get on an airplane?

But we’ll just keep taking our shoes off…

Oh, and can we go back to calling it The War on Terror again? Because apparently al Qaeda didn’t get the memo or know that Obama pressed a “reset” button.

Here’s a little more from ABC News’ John Stossel:

Can you name any new drugs or medical devices that are invented in France? Nearly all the world’s innovation comes from the relatively profit-driven American system.  If we relied on government healthcare, the world would still be getting 1950’s quality care.

Also, it is by no means clear that the French get “excellent” care.  When you account for “Fatal Injury” rates (mostly car accidents and murder), US life expectancy is higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation, including France. And this doesn’t even account for the fact that Americans are four times as likely to be obese.

First a video from CNN (via Weekly Standard):

Next, the Wall Street Journal explains the U.K. healthcare rationing system, through an agency with an Orwellian name — N.I.C.E., or the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. “Americans should understand how NICE works because under ObamaCare it will eventually be coming to a hospital near you,” says the Journal.

What’s truly frightening? The U.K. determines a life’s worth — $22,000 for every 6 months. Should the treatment cost more? So sorry. Please go die elsewhere.

In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer. This followed on a 2008 ruling against drugs — including Sutent, which costs about $50,000 — that would help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients. After last year’s ruling, Peter Littlejohns, NICE’s clinical and public health director, noted that “there is a limited pot of money,” that the drugs were of “marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost,” and the money might be better spent elsewhere.

In 2007, the board restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness. The drug Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, restricting it to about one in five sufferers. Even then, the drug was only approved for use in one eye, meaning those lucky enough to get it would still go blind in the other. As Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of NICE, explained at the time: “When treatments are very expensive, we have to use them where they give the most benefit to patients.”

NICE has limited the use of Alzheimer’s drugs, including Aricept, for patients in the early stages of the disease. Doctors in the U.K. argued vociferously that the most effective way to slow the progress of the disease is to give drugs at the first sign of dementia. NICE ruled the drugs were not “cost effective” in early stages.

Other NICE rulings include the rejection of Kineret, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis; Avonex, which reduces the relapse rate in patients with multiple sclerosis; and lenalidomide, which fights multiple myeloma. Private U.S. insurers often cover all, or at least portions, of the cost of many of these NICE-denied drugs.

NICE has also produced guidance that restrains certain surgical operations and treatments. NICE has restrictions on fertility treatments, as well as on procedures for back pain, including surgeries and steroid injections. The U.K. has recently been absorbed by the cases of several young women who developed cervical cancer after being denied pap smears by a related health authority, the Cervical Screening Programme, which in order to reduce government health-care spending has refused the screens to women under age 25.

We could go on. NICE is the target of frequent protests and lawsuits, and at times under political pressure has reversed or watered-down its rulings. But it has by now established the principle that the only way to control health-care costs is for this panel of medical high priests to dictate limits on certain kinds of care to certain classes of patients.

The NICE board even has a mathematical formula for doing so, based on a “quality adjusted life year.” While the guidelines are complex, NICE currently holds that, except in unusual cases, Britain cannot afford to spend more than about $22,000 to extend a life by six months. Why $22,000? It seems to be arbitrary, calculated mainly based on how much the government wants to spend on health care. That figure has remained fairly constant since NICE was established and doesn’t adjust for either overall or medical inflation.

Proponents argue that such cost-benefit analysis has to figure into health-care decisions, and that any medical system rations care in some way. And it is true that U.S. private insurers also deny reimbursement for some kinds of care. The core issue is whether those decisions are going to be dictated by the brute force of politics (NICE) or by prices (a private insurance system).

The last six months of life are a particularly difficult moral issue because that is when most health-care spending occurs. But who would you rather have making decisions about whether a treatment is worth the price — the combination of you, your doctor and a private insurer, or a government board that cuts everyone off at $22,000?

One virtue of a private system is that competition allows choice and experimentation. To take an example from one of our recent editorials, Medicare today refuses to reimburse for the new, less invasive preventive treatment known as a virtual colonoscopy, but such private insurers as Cigna and United Healthcare do. As clinical evidence accumulates on the virtual colonoscopy, doctors and insurers will be able to adjust their practices accordingly. NICE merely issues orders, and patients have little recourse.

This has medical consequences. The Concord study published in 2008 showed that cancer survival rates in Britain are among the worst in Europe. Five-year survival rates among U.S. cancer patients are also significantly higher than in Europe: 84% vs. 73% for breast cancer, 92% vs. 57% for prostate cancer. While there is more than one reason for this difference, surely one is medical innovation and the greater U.S. willingness to reimburse for it.

* * *

The NICE precedent also undercuts the Obama Administration’s argument that vast health savings can be gleaned simply by automating health records or squeezing out “waste.” Britain has tried all of that but ultimately has concluded that it can only rein in costs by limiting care. The logic of a health-care system dominated by government is that it always ends up with some version of a NICE board that makes these life-or-death treatment decisions. The Administration’s new Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research currently lacks the authority of NICE. But over time, if the Obama plan passes and taxpayer costs inevitably soar, it could quickly gain it.

Mr. Obama and Democrats claim they can expand subsidies for tens of millions of Americans, while saving money and improving the quality of care. It can’t possibly be done. The inevitable result of their plan will be some version of a NICE board that will tell millions of Americans that they are too young, or too old, or too sick to be worth paying to care for.

Mark Stein comments on the lack of cost-benefits to European single-payer healthcare:

According to the U.N. figures, life expectancy in the United States is 78 years; in the United Kingdom, it’s 79 – yay, go socialized health care! On the other hand, in Albania, where the entire population chain-smokes, and the health care system involves swimming to Italy, life expectancy is still 71 years – or about where America was a generation or so back. Once you get childhood mortality under control and observe basic hygiene and lifestyle precautions, the health “system” is relatively marginal. One notes that, even in Somalia, which still has high childhood mortality, not to mention a state of permanent civil war, functioning government has entirely collapsed and yet life expectancy has increased from 49 to 55. Maybe if government were to collapse entirely in Washington, our life expectancy would show equally remarkable gains. Just thinking outside the box here.

When President Barack Obama tells you he’s “reforming” health care to “control costs,” the point to remember is that the only way to “control costs” in health care is to have less of it. In a government system, the doctor, the nurse, the janitor and the Assistant Deputy Associate Director of Cost-Control System Management all have to be paid every Friday, so the sole means of “controlling costs” is to restrict the patient’s access to treatment. In the Province of Quebec, patients with severe incontinence – i.e., they’re in the bathroom 12 times a night – wait three years for a simple 30-minute procedure. True, Quebeckers have a year or two on Americans in the life expectancy hit parade, but, if you’re making 12 trips a night to the john 365 times a year for three years, in terms of life-spent-outside-the-bathroom expectancy, an uninsured Vermonter may actually come out ahead.

Here’s another Jonah Goldberg. Read the whole thing.

The government effectively owns General Motors and controls Chrysler, and the president is deciding what kind of cars they can make. Uncle Sam owns majority stakes in American International Group, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and controls large chunks of the banking industry. Also, President Obama wants government to take over the business of student loans. And he’s pushing for nationalized health care. Meanwhile, his Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that it reserves the right to regulate any economic activity that has a “carbon footprint.” Just last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said climate change requires that “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory.” Rep. Barney Frank, chair of the Financial Services Committee, has his eye on regulating executive pay.

Of course, nationalization of industry is only one kind of socialism; another approach is to simply redistribute the nation’s income as economic planners see fit. But wait, Obama believes in that, too. That’s why he said during the campaign that he wants to “spread the wealth” and that’s why he did exactly that when he got elected. (He spread the debt, too.)

And yet, for conservatives to suggest in any way, shape or form that there’s something “socialistic” about any of this is the cause of knee-slapping hilarity for liberal pundits and bloggers everywhere.

For instance, last month the Republican National Committee considered a resolution calling on the Democratic Party to rename itself the “Democrat Socialist Party”. The resolution was killed by RNC Chairman Michael Steele in favor of the supposedly milder condemnation of the Democrats’ “march toward socialism.”

The whole spectacle was just too funny for liberal observers. Robert Schlesinger, U.S. News & World Report‘s opinion editor, was a typical giggler. He chortled, “What’s really both funny and scary about all of this is how seriously the fringe-nuts in the GOP take it.”

Putting aside the funny and scary notion that it’s “funny and scary” for political professionals to take weighty political issues seriously, there are some fundamental problems with all of this disdain. For starters, why do liberals routinely suggest, even hope, that Obama and the Democrats are leading us into an age of socialism, or social democracy or democratic socialism? (One source of confusion is that these terms are routinely used interchangeably.)

For instance, in (another) fawning interview with President Obama, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham mocks Obama’s critics for considering Obama to be a “crypto-socialist.” This, of course, would be the same Jon Meacham who last February co-authored a cover story with Newsweek‘s editor at large (and grandson of the six-time presidential candidate for the American Socialist Party) Evan Thomas titled — wait for it — “We Are All Socialists Now,” in which they argued that the growth of government was making us like a “European,” i.e. socialist, country.

Washington Post columnists Jim Hoagland (a centrist),  E.J. Dionne (a liberal) and Harold Meyerson (very, very liberal) have all suggested that Obama intentionally or otherwise is putting us on the path to “social democracy.” Left-wing blogger and Democratic activist Matthew Yglesias last fall hoped that the financial crisis offered a “real opportunity” for “massive socialism.” Polling done by Rasmussen — and touted by Meyerson — shows that while Republicans favor “capitalism” over “socialism” by 11 to 1, Democrats favor capitalism by a mere 39% to 30%. So, again: Is it really crazy to think that there is a constituency for some flavor of socialism in the Democratic Party?

When the question is aimed at them like an accusation, liberals roll their eyes at such “paranoia.” They say Obama is merely reviving “New Deal economics” to “save” or “reform” capitalism. But liberals themselves have long seen this approach as the best way to incrementally bring about a European-style, social democratic welfare state. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (Robert’s father) wrote in 1947, “There seems no inherent obstacle to the gradual advance of socialism in the United States through a series of New Deals.”

Part of the problem here is definitional. No mainstream liberal actually wants government to completely seize the means of production, and no mainstream conservative believes that there’s no room for any government regulation or social insurance. Both sides believe in a “mixed economy” but disagree profoundly about where to draw the line. One definition of social democracy is the peaceful, democratic transition to socialism. A second is simply a large European welfare state where the state owns some, and guides the rest, of the economy. Many liberals yearn for the latter and say so often — but fume when conservatives take them at their word.

Personally, I think socialism is the wrong word for all of this. “Corporatism” — the economic doctrine of fascism — fits better. Under corporatism, all the big players in the economy — big business, unions, interest groups — sit around the table with government at the head, hashing out what they think is best for everyone to the detriment of consumers, markets and entrepreneurs. But, take it from me, liberals are far more open to the argument that they’re “crypto-socialists.”

CF-18s intercepted Russian plane before Obama visit

CTV.ca News Staff
As security officials worked to secure Ottawa on the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit, Canadian fighter jets were scrambling to intercept a Russian bomber plane in the Arctic skies.

That’s a huge story! I mean who knew that Canada had an air force! ; )

Does putting an arsonist into prison only create more arsonists? What about car jackers? Then why does detention for terrorists only propel them to commit terrorism upon their release? It’s an absurd proclamation, yet it is exactly what the Washington Post has spent the past weekend arguing on their front page.

The story regards Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti captured on the Afghanistan battlefield in 2002, held in Guantanamo until 2005. He was eventually released to Kuwait, but crossed into Iraq and detonated an explosive-laden truck on Easter Sunday, 2008, that killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 42 others. Thus, the argument goes, recidivist detainees are created by us.

Sunday, February 22, 2009; A01
From Captive To Suicide Bomber;
Accused of Being Little More Than a Low-Level Taliban Fighter, Abdallah al-Ajmi Was Held by the U.S. for Nearly Four Years. After His Release, He Blew Up an Iraqi Army Outpost. Did Guantanamo Propel Him to Do It?

Monday, February 23, 2009; A01
A ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ Goes Off
When Abdallah Al-Ajmi Returned to Kuwait After Nearly Four Years at Guantanamo, His Family Tried to Get Him to Move On. But He Didn’t Want to Let Go.

Both reports are filled with inaccuracies, misnomers and outright falsehoods.

They are also filled with apologies for terrorism, such as, my favorite, a defense that in Afghanistan Al-Ajmi “fired his weapon only one time…” Or, “Before he went to Afghanistan, he was a normal teenager…” So “normal,” that he hung out at firebrand mosques, twice attempted to follow the calling of Jihad, first in January 2001 to try to fight Russians in Chechnya. Then again in March 2001 to try to fight the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. This “normal teenager” thus twice tried to join Jihad months before the world had heard of 9-11. Thank heavens your local neighborhood kids aren’t so “normal.”

There’s, next, the misnomer “that the United States shouldn’t be holding people incommunicado and that even terrorism suspects should have the right to defend themselves.”

“But there is also a view in some quarters of the U.S. government that cases such as Ajmi’s are the inevitable result of locking up 779 foreigners in an austere military prison, without access to courts or consular representation, and subjecting them to interrogation techniques that detainees say amount to torture.”

The above paragraph is falsehood after falsehood. The fact that of the 800 original detainees there are only 200 remaining in Guantanamo proves that they are not held indefinitely or incommunicado. Every single detainee is given representation and military trials (parole hearings basically). Because it is the military establishment that conducts these — and not our civil law system — the Washington Post feels it can mislead its readers through a technicality into thinking that these detainees are just held in secret forever, throw away the key, with no due process. It’s a lie.

It lacks all context as well. For example, how many Axis POWs were held indefinitely during the Second World War, and in Midwestern work camps no less? The answer: 400,000 German and Italian POWs held in some 500 U.S. work camps. Note: work camp, and no trials, no representation, no parole. The Second World War detainees had even fewer civil rights than our War on Terror detainees.

From this same context, then, U.S. officials had had no idea when the Second World War would end, so was their detention of Germans and Italians likewise abuse or inhumane or torture? This is an important point because the critics demand POW status for detainees, even while the detainees are in fact, right now, being treated exactly as POWs! What’s in a name? It’s the acts that matter. We may not call them POWs, but in fact they are exactly that because we are treating them as such (I would argue against our better judgment).

Regarding representation, there are multi-million dollar law firms lining up to provide Guantanamo detainees with free representation. Try getting such a deal in Kuwait should you pick up an AK and combat the government.

The allegations of torture are pure libel and slander, too. Period. Guantanamo is a military facility, not CIA. The U.S. military has never even waterboarded an individual (torture debatable), as the CIA was the institution that did (not at Guantanamo, and only to three senior members of al Qaeda, all before 2003, and all producing actionable intelligence).

And so we see the watering down, no pun intended, of the definition of torture. Thus, barking dogs (often used in civilian prisons), or disincentives to detainees who injure the prison guards are labeled by the critics as torture.

The bleeding hearts all cite Guantanamo treatment even as they are totally ignorant of our civilian penitentiary system. For example, this related Washington Post article cites the solitary confinement of (only the most dangerous) detainees as harsh or abusive.

“Prisoners in Camp 6 and the highly secret Camp 7 — which holds such high-value detainees as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed organizer of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — can be held in windowless cells for up to 22 hours a day.”

The article also complains about forced-feeding of detainees starving themselves, even though were the military to take no action and allow the detainee to die while in their care they would be legitimately vilified for it.

Ironically, those who demand the closure of Guantanamo offer as an alternative federal facilities such as Supermax in Colorado, which houses such notorious individuals as the 1993 WTC bomber (Ramzi Yousef), and the Unibomber (Theodore Kaczynski), and prior to his execution, Tim McVeigh, the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber.

This is my favorite aspect to the anti-Guantanamo champions: they don’t realize that the worst of the worst at Supermax are isolated in windowless cells for 23 hours a day! Indeed, a 1999 Justice department report found “that more than 30 states are operating a Supermax-type facility with 23-hours-a-day lockdown and long-term isolation.”

Thus, by this “isolation” standard our CIVILIAN prison system is less humane than Guantanamo. But this should be no surprise, as it rivals even European models. The deputy head of Brussels’ federal police anti-terrorism unit praised Guantanamo in 2006. And from descriptions of Guantanamo officials including the commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, former JAG officers (Kyndra Rotunda), and retired high-ranking military visitors, the detainees enjoy treatments better than in most civilian prison models.

Indeed, the only persons being tortured at Guantanamo are the prison guards. A 2006 Pentagon report found some 440 separate attacks on guards by detainees including using “broken toilet parts, utensils, radios and even a bloody lizard tail into makeshift weapons.”

But these truths are not known to the vast majority of the American public because the media machine has its agenda. That agenda includes painting Guantanamo as something it isn’t, no matter how dangerous that agenda is to the next innocent victims of recidivist detainees. Last time it was in Iraq, perhaps next time it will be within the U.S.

…Klaus, the 67-year-old president of the Czech Republic — an iconoclast with a perfectly clipped mustache — continues to provoke strong reactions. He has blamed what he calls the misguided fight against global warming for contributing to the international financial crisis, branded Al Gore an “apostle of arrogance” for his role in that fight, and accused the European Union of acting like a Communist state.

Now the Czech Republic is about to assume the rotating presidency of the European Union and there is palpable fear that Klaus will embarrass the world’s biggest trading bloc and complicate its efforts to address the economic crisis and expand its powers. His role in the Czech Republic is largely ceremonial, but he remains a powerful force here, has devotees throughout Europe and delights in basking in the spotlight.

– IHT.