Category: Stupidity

Returning with a bit of this and a bit of that.

My schedule’s been a bit chaotic over the last two weeks. It’s too late to start any in depth blogging tonight, so instead, here are a few quick recaps of the news items I’ve logged as interesting over the last week or so.

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First, I know nothing of the legal argument involved in the recent case of Major League Baseball and “its” statistics. I don’t doubt that the Supreme Court was correct to reject the case because there’s just no property right there to describing what happens during a game. The recap from a specific service provided would easily meet a licensing requirement, but I’m not paying a fee for saying that Chase Utley has a home run in five straight games or that he was 3-4 with a homer and two singles last night.

That said, anything that gives Commissioner Bud Selig a figurative black eye is good. He had “good enough”, which was more than the owners could legitimately claim. Yet they let greed at the expense of fans interfere with basic long-term business sense. Again. More than any other sport, statistics dominate baseball. Let fans have that and they’ll continue to demonstrate their love for the game by buying tickets and jerseys and the $200 television package. This is not complicated.

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I haven’t paid enough attention to the FLDS case in Texas to remark on the judge’s ruling that the State must return the children to their parents. However, this is not proof for those libertarians who believe that the state has no role in parent-child relationships. An anecdote makes a strained theory, at best. Many libertarians have made convincing arguments that the state has a legitimate role in the parent-child relationship, principally in protecting the rights of the child.

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Sebastian Mallaby misses on “pro-growth”:

… Given the yawning budget deficit and the coming demographic crunch, tax cuts aren’t affordable anyway.

The same goes for deregulation. Getting the nanny government out of trucking and airlines yielded huge benefits in the 1970s and 1980s. But the “price-and-entry” regulations that used to cosset such industries have long since gone, and remaining regulation is harder to demonize. We are left with government rules to protect the environment, check the safety of medicines and prevent systemic financial crises. These rules are generally helpful. There’s nothing “pro-growth” about bashing them.

“Generally helpful” is enough? Is Sarbane-Oxley hard to demonize for being only generally helpful? On what criteria may we base future decisions to cause just a little, allegedly inconsequential harm?

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Like extending movie franchises 20 years later, old habits die hard:

Members of the Russian Communist party have called for the new Indiana Jones film to be banned in the country because they say it distorts history.
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St Petersburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told the Reuters news agency it was “rubbish”.

“Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?”

He said many Russian cinemagoers were teenagers who would be “completely unaware of what happened in 1957”, when the film is set.

Good thing the censoring communists are no longer in charge in Russia. Oh, wait.

(I liked last year’s Die Hard movie, and I’m looking forward to seeing the new Indiana Jones movie.)

John McCain endorses majoritarianism over individual rights.

From John McCain’s speech to the NRA:

Real activists seek to make their case democratically — to win hearts, minds, and majorities to their cause. Such people throughout our history have often shown great idealism and done great good. By contrast, activist lawyers and activist judges follow a different method. They want to be spared the inconvenience of campaigns, elections, legislative votes, and all of that. Some federal judges operate by fiat, shrugging off generations of legal wisdom and precedent while expecting their own opinions to go unquestioned.

Is there an upper bound on how many individuals may have their rights violated before we conclude a constitutional solution is better than a democratic solution? If so, what’s the number? Is there a distinction marking which rights are sacred and which may be violated at will by a majority? Is there any reservation worth considering to limit this complete trust in The People that might acknowledge those hearts and minds that are either incapable or unwilling of being won?

Like every politician, John McCain is a propagandist unworthy of being in a position of leadership. He will not behave as a leader.

“I don’t even need to.”

I agree with almost everything in Andrew Sullivan’s entry titled “Obama’s Cowardice On Marriage”. Marriage equality is not a “far left” position when the core principle is considered. Any dismissal based on such a belief is at least partially an attempt to avoid uncomfortable analysis that might reach an “incorrect” outcome. I’m not as certain that it’s possible to minimize the federal implications of equal rights in favor of federalism given that our reality (14th Amendment, DOMA, etc.) is what it is. But Mr. Sullivan quickly gets to the point of why this “far left” charge is mistaken.

Still, I must qualify my agreement as incomplete because of this:

I should add that Obama’s position strikes me as transparently flimsy. … Marriage is the one issue where Obama is still politically afraid, intellectually vacuous, and a moral coward.

His position is transparently flimsy because he’s a politician and marriage is a “tough” that politicians don’t want to address as long as there are voters who treat equal, individual liberty with the same approach used by children being asked to eat foods they don’t like. I’m loathe to compare politicians to parents because they already act that way too often, but it fits here. Proper parenting involves telling the child that she must eat broccoli instead of the candy she wants. The same applies here. Politicians Leaders must tell voters that some parts of American life are not up for a vote because they involve more fundamental principles of individual liberty. Majoritarianism on issues of how many rights society should respect for certain groups is the nutritional equivalent to liberty of serving only M&M’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

But is this really the only issue where Obama is “politically afraid, intellectually vacuous, and a moral coward”? He is a politician, right? As I see it, pandering on free trade to win votes is hardly a sign of bravery, especially when it’s apparent that the only way he will back his pandering with action is if he handcuffs himself too tightly into the position to weasel out of it later. He wouldn’t pander if he trusted voters to support the difficult truth rather than the pleasant lie. And I trust that he understands the value of free trade and the hollowness of his anti-NAFTA rhetoric in Ohio.

As I’ve said before, I think Senator Obama is the least bad of the three two options we now have in this race. That’s not enough for me to vote for him, but I can acknowledge that my analysis suggests his superiority over Senator McCain as the next president. Still, we shouldn’t pretend that Obama is anything more than a politician until he demonstrates a longer string of statesmanship when it’s politically inconvenient.

Note: The title reference is an inside joke.

We have our first loser.

We do not have a winner in the race for an entry of praise. But I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn the identity of the first candidate to drop out. You’re going to be so not surprised, although much Hillarity (pun intended) and ignorance ensues.

“There is something seriously wrong with our economy when Exxon’s record $11 billion in quarterly profits are seen as a disappointment by Wall Street. This is truly Dick Cheney’s wonderland.

“But on Main Street, middle class families are facing devastating choices every day between buying groceries and filling up their gas tanks to get to work. They are being squeezed by a vice grip of record high gas prices, record declines in housing values and an economy that is shedding jobs and tumbling into recession.”

“I believe these families need immediate relief. That’s why I have called for making Exxon and other oil companies with record profits pay the federal gas tax this summer. Now, Senator Obama doesn’t believe in any kind of gas tax holiday. And Senator McCain doesn’t want to pay for one. I believe we should impose a windfall profits tax on big oil companies and use that money to suspend the gas tax and give families relief at the pump. They typical family could get $70 in relief, and families that drive more for work could get even more. Truckers will get a $50 break every time they fill up their tanks.

“At the same time, we need to set a new course for our long term energy strategy, and move away from oil and towards new sources of clean energy. That’s why I have proposed a $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund that will invest that money in clean energy sources like wind and solar.”

I try not to deploy this term, but it’s the only description that fits here: hack. Unfortunately, this is probably the only race she’ll drop out of any time soon.

Post Script: Per Mark’s comment to yesterday’s entry, I’m including Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr in the race. The LP nomination is far from certain, although I suspect Barr will win it. And I’ve already discussed my concerns with the other leading candidate for the LP nomination, Wayne Allen Root. I’ll also set a deadline of Monday. (This story doesn’t have legs.) Any candidate who shows restraint will receive an entry of praise about some policy position.

Post Post Script: Here’s an excellent essay on the actual issues involved in oil and profits.

Partisan buffoonary is certain to lead to a solution. Somehow.

President Bush talks about the economy, a topic he has proven himself qualified to discuss on par with his podium’s ability to explain game theory. Not that it matters, of course, because the best a president can do is get in the way. Talk of helping is politics, not economics. As it was today:

President Bush today blamed Congress for many of the nation’s economic woes, charging that lawmakers have blocked his proposals for dealing with problems ranging from soaring gasoline prices to the increasing cost of food.

Wasn’t the Free Money economic stimulus package the solution? That hasn’t even gone out yet, so it’s advertised benefits are unproven. I did get the letter telling me I might be getting the Free Money. I won’t, but why let that save me the cost of the postage and paper?

And he charged that instead of dealing with rising food prices, lawmakers are “considering a massive, bloated farm bill that would do little to solve the problem” and would not “eliminate subsidy payments to multimillionaire farmers.” Describing the U.S. farm economy as “thriving,” Bush said now is the “right time to reform our nation’s farm policies by reducing unnecessary subsidies.”

When he vetoes one of these massive, bloated farm bills, maybe I’ll think he’s serious.

Equality means equal suffering?

One more for today (and one more for tomorrow, then there will likely be a lull in the circumcision posts). In a comment to this anti-circumcision essay, commenter “MizMoxie” wrote this:

… I would have sex with anyone with one not “cut”. [sic somewhere in there, as you’ll see] Too much waste and bacteria and gunk. Yuck. Besides, women have to go through a bunch just because we are women. I personally think that a male child should have to suffer a little. I’ve never heard a grown man say he remembers the pain of his circumcision! …

I hope that’s meant as a lame effort at humor. I’ve encountered that argument in the past, so I don’t think it is. I assume it’s real, if only for my purpose here. When dismissing principle in favor of subjective defenses like tradition and fear, this will occur. The law currently permits this justification as much as any other, even though the intent is clearly harm (among multiple poor excuses) to the child.

Is permitting harm to male children to balance the harm females suffer a legitimate trade-off to protect the perceived rights of parents to decide what is anatomically in the best interest of their children sons? If not, what is the consistent, objective rule of law to prevent this harm that doesn’t also prevent “good” reasons (that still lack medical need)?

The U.S. owes the world. The world owes nothing to individuals.

Here’s an interview (part 2 of 3) with Stephen Lewis¹, a former diplomat now involved in HIV/AIDS issues. Here are a few curious excerpts (italics added):

What do you think should be done [to fix PEPFAR]?

People should demand more – much more. No one denies that when you pump several billion dollars into a response it will mean something. Of course it will; millions of people will be treated. That’s terribly important.

But that’s what we deserve to expect from the United States. You don’t kneel down before a country because it’s doing… something that the world has a right to receive. The American administration is so discredited, George Bush is such a lamentable president, that when anything of a positive kind happens people are prostrate at the unlikelihood of it and they shouldn’t be.

It gets worse from there, but it’s most important to focus on the key assumption. The world has a right to receive American funding for its problems. I’d like to know the socialist theory Lewis is using to arrive at the conclusion. Presumably we’re only allowed to call our giving “charity” if we need to feed our American egos. The world will acquiesce with that concession, but the dollars must continue to roll in to satisfy the world’s right to receive.

I don’t have anything else nice to say about that, so I’ll move on to the next interesting bit. (Again, italics added.)

How about the response of the United Nations to HIV/Aids in Africa?

There is just so much more to be done. Frankly, one of the things that is inadequate is the United Nations agencies. Some of it is bewildering.

For example, you get the Minister of Health in South Africa (Dr. Manto Tshababala-Msimang [sic]) attacking and dismissing circumcision as a preventive technology. Here you have three determinative studies, definitive studies, we have UNAIDS and WHO encouraging male circumcision as a way of reducing transmission and you get an attack on it by the minister of health in South Africa. Where is the United Nations’ voice? Why haven’t they taken on the minister? Why haven’t they said what should be said, which is that she’s effectively dooming people to death and it need not be done? You have to have a much stronger voice of advocacy from the United Nations in dealing with disease and related matters.

Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is nuts is HIV, yes, but Lewis’ rant against the United Nations is bizarre. Whether it’s pushing circumcision through UNAIDS with breathless calls-to-action, issuing press releases touting the latest hype on the original story from WHO, or endorsing gender-based human rights violations through its remaining organizational reach, I’m not sure it’s possible to do more for the organization to insert its reach any further into this debate on the wrong side of human rights. But that’s defensible. Instead, let’s complain that they never criticized Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang for being stupid and dangerous.

Except, they did.

The United Nations special envoy for Aids in Africa has closed a major conference on the disease with a sharp critique of South Africa’s government.

Speaking at the end of the week-long gathering in Toronto, Canada, Stephen Lewis said South Africa promoted a “lunatic fringe” attitude to HIV/Aids.

Mr Lewis described the government as “obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment”.

Hey, wait a minute. Stephen Lewis? Stephen Lewis, working as special envoy for AIDS in Africa, attacked Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang’s comments in August 2006. Denouncing idiotic statements is necessary, but move on. Leave the grudge match to the WWE. Instead, every microphone is dead horse meets Stephen Lewis’ stick.

I did thoroughly enjoy this, in an “I’m disgusted” way:

“It really is distressing when the coercive apparatus of the state is brought against the most principled members of society,” he said.

Clearly Lewis is exhibiting a textbook case of Kip’s Law. I would challenge Lewis’ assertion that he is principled, since the UN’s Declaration of the Rights of the Child clearly forbids medically unnecessary genital cutting, without exceptions for gender or potential disease prevention. Nor am I particularly moved by his claim of oppression. Are infants subjected a coercive apparatus when they are circumcised, in part based on the rantings of individuals like Stephen Lewis?

¹ The following biography accompanies the article:

Formerly the special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa for United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, [Stephen Lewis] is now chairman of the board of the Canada-based Stephen Lewis Foundation, which endeavors to ease the pain of HIV/Aids in Africa by funding grassroots projects. Lewis is also co-director of Aids-Free World, a new international Aids advocacy organization based in the United States.

This will be important later in the entry.

With advocacy like this, who needs enemies?

Advocates for Youth is

… dedicated to creating programs and advocating for policies that help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health. Advocates provides information, training, and strategic assistance to youth-serving organizations, policy makers, youth activists, and the media in the United States and the developing world.

Helping young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health is a noble goal. This is not that:

  • Human rights—Planners must take an approach to offering male circumcision that acknowledges the human rights of the client:
    • Every adult male who is considering circumcision for himself should be able to give informed consent.[1]
    • Where a minor is the prospective client, counselors must take extra time to ensure that the minor and his parents understand the procedure and that the young male consents to it.[1]
    • When an infant is to undergo the procedure, his parents must be fully informed.

If he is an adult, the male must consent. If he is young, the male must consent. If he is an infant, no human rights principles apply to him. That is a pathetic view of human rights. Anyone who accepts that view is not an advocate. At best, he is a propagandist who does not believe in principles, only principals who may act on another according to an undefined criterion.

What is the delimiter indicating when a male ages out of “pre-young” and into young, conferring a human rights requirement for consent before his healthy genitals may be surgically altered? I reject the answer in advance for reasons I’ve explained in detail. Still, I want to know because I do not understand the magical powers wrapped around the penis that reduces mankind’s ability to think when applying principles to its anatomical sanctity. So, advocates of the “pre-young” qualifier within human rights, when do “pre-young” males get the (ahem) equal right to consent – or refuse consent – to the surgical alteration of their healthy genitals that young and adult males possess?

Post Script: The footnote attached to the young and adult requirements points to an excuse from the usual suspects in infant male genital cutting advocacy. I will not provide a link to that report here.

Post Post Script: I addressed a similar, gender-based ethical lapse in a previous entry challenging nonsense from UNAIDS.

It’s like legislating that puppies are cute.

Congress, protecting you from the world they built:

Lawmakers have agreed to make it illegal for employers and insurance companies to deny applicants jobs and health care coverage because DNA tests show they are genetically disposed to a disease.
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It also makes clear that, while individuals are protected from discrimination based on genetic predisposition, insurance companies still have the right to base coverage and pricing on the actual presence of a disease.

Here’s an idea: eliminate the favorable incentive that irrationally ties health insurance in America to employment. If employers are no longer in the insurance business, they’ll have no opportunity to discriminate on the basis of future health care expense. Instead, Congress leaves the underlying problem that permits possible discrimination and codifies “discrimination is bad, mmmkay.” Never mind that politicians discriminate against the unemployed, under-employed, and self-employed.

Naturally Congress misses the point that discrimination is not inherently evil. It is often used for reasons we don’t like, so we’ve attached an exclusively pejorative interpretation to it. But I discriminate against meat when I choose vegetables instead. I discriminate against Ford when I drive a MINI. The Phillies discriminated against a local player when they traded him for a player they value more. Politicians discriminate against one expenditure when they vote for another. Sometimes, discrimination is just about making choices in a world with limitations.

I’m playing semantics right now. Conceded. But semantics matter, as this shows:

[Senator Olympia] Snowe noted that nearly 32 percent of women offered a genetic test for breast cancer risk by the National Institutes of Health declined because of concerns about health insurance discrimination.

I’m not advocating mandatory screening against a person’s wishes. But I’m also against prohibiting insurance companies from pricing risk more precisely by requiring genetic information through the voluntary application process. (Is that the inevitable future from this legislation?) Yet, just as an insurance provider may require the test, no applicant is forced to accept that condition. Competition breeds options where it is permitted. To a significant extent, it is not permitted while insurance is tied to employment, so we get further legislation.

Although it’s not explicit, I think the sponsors of this legislation are more content with the collective outcome of this. Insurance providers are good at knowing their business. They understand risk and how to price it based on statistics. Congress seems to be saying that pricing it better – to the individual, based on the individual – is discriminatory. Perhaps. But the risk will be priced. The only question for discussion is who pays. Is it shared across the insurance pool or paid by each according to his risk?

Legislation like this, as opposed to the more logical solution that removes the faulty incentive, clarifies the political mandate: genetic luck, just like financial “luck”, increases one’s responsibility to the unlucky.

Surgery as a Replacement for Parenting

I used to feel some reservation about quoting parents when they’ve said something stupid about circumcision. You’ve probably figured out that I shed that a long time ago. When someone says something stupid to a reporter, I highlight it solely to point out that people are using stupidity to justify imposing permanent, medically unnecessary surgery on their child. (Doctors are complicit in this nonsense, which will also be obvious.) From an article out of St. Louis:

“I tell people there’s not a real medical reason for them to have [ed. note: Have? Force.] a circumcision,” said Dr. Jack Klein, chief of obstetrics at Missouri Baptist Medical Center, where 1,873 of the 2,144 boys born in 2007 were circumcised. “I will tell you the majority reason that people get circumcised is because they want their kid to look like other kids.”

That social conformity is reason enough, say some parents concerned about future locker room comparisons and sexual relationships.

“I really didn’t want to be faced with a teenage boy asking me why I didn’t do this and not have a really good reason for him,” St. Louis resident Amy Zimmerman said of her 2-year-old son John.

Notice who she is concerned about. Her concern was about her own feelings, her own desire to avoid the potential for (allegedly) tough questions from her son. That was enough for her to justify unneeded surgery on her son. She seems to wish to parent her son only in ways that do not exceed her level of comfort with potential issues. If it might be uncomfortable for her, her fear is enough to dismiss the healthy, intact (i.e. normal) individual he was, as well as the preference he may one day hold for having his genitals intact. Ms. Zimmerman fails to understand what it means to “not have a really good reason”.

Not that he would’ve complained if she didn’t have him circumcised. That’s speculation. But even if he would eventually complain, it’s an easy position for parents to say “We didn’t cut your healthy penis because it was healthy.” That’s rather simple. If he’s not placated by that, it would still have been possible for him to choose circumcision. But if she’s faced with a teenage boy asking why she did this, and he is not happy about it, what then? Oops?

If an individual does not want to parent his or her children, that person should not have children. Cosmetic surgery on healthy children to avoid future questions is a coward’s solution.

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Unfortunately, doctors are complicit in this abdication of parenting. Dr. Klein’s statement above makes this clear, since the surgery is objectively not indicated. But they cede this point in the name of parenting, a very poor conception of that responsibility.

Ultimately, it’s a personal decision, said Dr. Joseph Kahn, chief of pediatrics at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center.

“Like every decision for every surgery on every child,” he said, “it really needs to be something that’s discussed with the parents.”

Ultimately, we don’t treat it as a personal decision. The male choosing or rejecting circumcision for himself would be a personal decision. And like every other decision for every other surgery on every female and male child, it really needs to be something that’s medically necessary. That’s the first principle that’s ignored. Or can parents just order any cosmetic surgery for their child son(s)?

Female genital cutting is prohibited, of course, regardless of the “personal decision” parents might wish to make. We don’t listen to nonsense about parents deciding what’s best for their family, the newest mantra I see developing around male genital cutting. What’s best for your family, when you decide to have a family, is that each person’s bodily integrity is respected. You decide to have children. When they arrive healthy, you do not then have a special veto power over the form of that child’s body just because he is a he and not a she.

Where medical need is absent, intervention is illegitimate.