Amazing Flying Machines

NPR interviewed Michael Dickinson about his work with fly behavior (audio and video here). According to NPR's Joe Palca, Dickinson found that these pesky little critters:

"...perform an elegant little ballet with their legs. They move their legs around to reposition their bodies so that when they do jump, they will push themselves away from the looming threat."

That ballet appears to give them a critical edge in escaping the swatter.

Dickinson says what's remarkable about this body position is how fast it happens. In less than a 10th of a second, the fly has to perceive the threat using its eyes, determine what direction it's coming from, and then make the appropriate movement with its legs so it jumps in the right direction. And all this is accomplished by a brain that's the size of a poppy seed.

"When you see a fly flitting around your hair, or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance," he says. "But in my lab you really see a marvelous machine, arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet."

Wow. More sophisticated, even, than aircraft designed by intelligent engineers?! Hmmmmm.

RLC

Reconquista

Jason Mattera of Hot Air goes undercover to mingle with the folks at a rally ostensibly supporting Mexican immigrants, including illegal aliens. The march took place at the DNC in Denver last week, and some of the sentiments expressed by the people Jason talks to are more than a little disturbing, not the least of which is the ease with which he manages to get people to go along with his faux organization, People for the Elimination of White People (PEWP, pronounced POOP). Nevertheless, you have to laugh at the guy:

You might save this video in case you ever encounter someone who says that the only thing illegal immigrants want is a chance to make their way in the world. I'm not sure that's true of quite all of them.

RLC

Shameless

Just when you think our political discourse is going to rise above the mean, nasty and destructive, it slouches right back into the sewer. Unable to find anything critical to say about Sarah Palin that's anyone's business her opponents have resorted to smearing her by claiming her son is really her daughter's child, by blaming her son's mental challenges on poor prenatal care (Alan Colmes), and now by gleefully pointing out that the oldest Palin daughter is pregnant and not yet married (and Governor Palin is in favor of abstinence-only education, don't you know? Isn't the irony delicious?).

Someone for whom the labyrinths of the political mind are terra incognita might wonder what any of these allegations have to do with Sarah Palin's fitness to serve in the office she seeks, but relevance is not important. What's important is utterly destroying one's opponent and her family, if need be, so that the unthinking, uninformed masses will be dissuaded from voting for her. Unable to stand against the GOP on the field of ideas some on the left have chosen to retreat to the latrine where they find plenty of glop to lob at their foes. They're little more than adolescent political thugs hoping that if they toss enough offal in the direction of the Pailn family some of it will stick.

Thankfully, Barack Obama has dissociated himself from this, but it doesn't seem that all of his supporters are following his adjuration to leave Palin's family alone.

Then there's Don Fowler, former head of the DNC, chuckling about the fact that a hurricane was about to disrupt the Republican National Convention, and Michael Moore, delighted that a natural disaster was about to arrive on the first day of the convention and proclaiming that it was proof that "there is a God".

Neither of these men seemed to be much bothered by the fact that they were rejoicing at the prospect that thousands, maybe millions, of people stood to lose their homes and all they own in the storm. Such tragedies are not on the radar screen of these "compassionate liberals" who think only in terms of winning elections. The storm will throw a monkey wrench into the GOP convention so it a gift from God and an occasion for mirth.

It's very sad that our society has degenerated to the point where such people are rewarded with positions of power and wealth, but that's where we are. Indeed, those of a certain age will recognize that the left has had long years of practice in destroying people. Just ask Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas.

Despite the sliming of her family and the invasion of her family's privacy I'm told Mrs. Palin is undeterred and upbeat. When asked yesterday about the attacks and her response to them, she said: "Do you know the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick".

RLC

Palin's Popularity

A candidate's selection of his running mate tells us much about the candidate himself. It's ironic that the prophet of hope and change offers us as his pick a lifetime Washington insider in Joe Biden while John McCain chose someone who really does represent genuine change and has actually achieved it as Governor of Alaska. For Senator Obama change we can believe in is Joe Biden, for McCain it's Sarah Palin.

Governor Palin has been faulted for a lack of experience, a charge that sounds hollow coming from Obama supporters whose man has much less of the kind of experience relevant to serving as a national CEO than does the Alaskan Governor, but one thing in which she is surely experienced is battling political corruption.

This article in the Weekly Standard by Fred Barnes fills us in a little on who Sarah Palin is, and why she's so popular. She really does represent what Barack Obama claims to represent - a new kind of politics. Palin has been the scourge of shady politicians in Alaska, but unlike reformers whose focus is only on malefactors in the other party, she seems to have gone after her own party first.

There's much about her for both conservatives and liberals to like. I wish she had been Governor of Pennsylvania.

Thanks to Jason for passing the article along.

RLC

Health Care

The other day we linked to this essay which was very critical of socialized health care. One of the criticisms of the Democrats' plan to nationalize medical care is that people in countries which have adopted similar plans must endure extremely long waits before they can have even critical procedures done.

This cartoon by Ramirez pretty much sums up what many experts think we can expect if we ever do adopt a European style system:

Ramirez has a special talent for making a picture speak a thousand words.

RLC

Israelis Prepare to Strike Iran

Carl at Israel Matzav has a fascinating discussion of the Iranian nuclear situation. First he reports this:

The Israeli cabinet has reached a 'strategic decision' not to let Iran go nuclear.

According to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, whether the United States and Western countries will succeed in toppling the ayatollah regime diplomatically, through sanctions, or whether an American strike on Iran will eventually be decided upon, Jerusalem has put preparations for a separate, independent military strike by Israel in high gear.

So far, Israel has not received American authorization to use US-controlled Iraqi airspace, nor has the defense establishment been successful in securing the purchase of advanced US-made warplanes which could facilitate an Israeli strike.

The Americans have offered Israel permission to use a global early warning radar system, implying that the US is pushing Israel to settle for defensive measures only.

Because of Israel's lack of strategic depth, Jerusalem has consistently warned over the past years it will not settle for a 'wait and see' approach and retaliate in case of attack, but rather use preemption to prevent any risk of being hit in the first place.

Carl goes on to talk about why Europe is not interested in either diplomacy or sanctions and how it therefore seems as if the only options left, unless the U.S. acts, are an Israeli strike or allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

It's a very informative piece.

RLC

Objections to Palin

Ed Morrissey considers the arguments against Sarah Palin seriatim and gives each the back of his hand. Here are the objections that have emerged from different quarters. You'll have to go to Hot Air to read his replies:

• It's a desperation pick - McCain didn't make up his mind until Thursday!
• Why would he put a small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?
• McCain can't talk about experience any more - he's shot himself in the foot!
• Troopergate! (An alleged "scandal" involving the firing of her state trooper brother-in-law)
• Palin's pick insults more qualified Republican women like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Elizabeth Dole, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, etc.
• Sarah Palin wasn't REALLY pregnant - it's her daughter's child. (This came up on the DailyKos, as you might expect, but I hear that Democratic Underground is running with it, which is also not surprising.)

This last, of course, is very odd. Even if it were true, why is it an argument against Ms Palin's fitness to serve that she encouraged her daughter to birth the child and is raising it as her own? If anything, and given that the child has Down's syndrome, it would be to her credit were it true. Of course, the far-lefties at DailyKos think that one has a moral obligation to abort children in cases like this so they see this rumor as a stain on her character and a serviceable enough clump of sleaze with which to smear her.

RLC

Dumb Mistake

My thanks to Jared for pointing out my mistake about sons of candidates in Iraq. It turns out that contrary to what I wrote, Senator Biden, like Governor Palin, does indeed have a son headed to Iraq later this year.

My apologies to the Senator and to our readers for the error. It was a dumb mistake.

Nevertheless, the main point is still valid. Both GOP candidates have children serving in the war zone so the criticism levelled at politicians, usually Republicans, that they have no personal stake in their decisions to use force, won't work against McCain and Palin.

RLC

Irena Sendler

Last October we wrote about Irena Sendler. It has come to my attention that Mrs. Sendler passed away last May. I missed the notice of her passing, but I'm not surprised at that. She wasn't the sort of woman whose life and death would attract much notice. She was not, after all, a celebrity. She wasn't young or beautiful as the world sees beauty. She wasn't rich as the world counts riches. There was no glamour or scandal associated with her life, like there was with Princess Di. Nothing about her was the sort of thing that would cause Americans, infatuated as we are with athletes, Hollywood stars and rap artists, to mourn her passing.

She did, though, possess extraordinary amounts of both courage and compassion, and her story is amazing.

Irena Sendler (March 2007)

I urge you to go to the New York Times' article on her to learn why her's was a life the whole world should honor and her death one that the whole world should mourn.

Then, after you've read about her, consider this: She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year, but didn't win it. The committee which decides who should be honored with the award concluded that the most deserving recipient was Al Gore who did a slide show on global warming.

I wonder if Mr. Gore ever thought that maybe the right thing to do would have been to decline the award and insist it be given instead to Irena Sendler. I'm sure he was ashamed to accept the prize which manifestly belonged to someone like Mrs. Sendler.

RLC

New Politics

Why is Barack Obama so reluctant to let reporters access to the records of his public life? John Fund at the Wall Street Journal urges reporters to refuse to be dissuaded by the stonewalling that has greeted their attempts to find out a little more about who Barack Obama really is:

Chasing the rest of Mr. Obama's paper trail is often an exercise in frustration. Mr. Obama says his state senate records "could have been thrown out" and he didn't keep a schedule in office. No one appears to have kept a copy of his application for the Illinois Bar. He has released only a single page of medical records, versus 1,000 pages for John McCain.

Then there's the house that Mr. Obama bought in 2005 in cooperation with Tony Rezko, his friend and campaign fund-raiser -- a move the candidate concedes was "boneheaded." Rezko was convicted in June of 16 counts of corruption. (Mr. Obama was not implicated in Rezko's crimes.)

Rezko's trial raised a host of questions. Was Mr. Obama able to save $300,000 on the asking price of his house because Rezko's wife paid full price for the adjoining lot? How did Mrs. Rezko make a $125,000 down payment and obtain a $500,000 mortgage when financial records shown at the Rezko trial indicate she had a salary of only $37,000 and assets of $35,000? Records show her husband also had few assets at the time.

Last April, the London Times revealed that Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi-born billionaire living in London, had loaned Mr. Rezko $3.5 million three weeks before the day the sale of the house and lot closed in June 2005. Mr. Auchi's office notes he was a business partner of Rezko but says he had "no involvement in or knowledge of" the property sale. But in April 2004 he did attend a dinner party in his honor at Rezko's Chicago home. Mr. Obama also attended, and according to one guest, toasted Mr. Auchi. Later that year, Mr. Auchi came under criminal investigation as part of a U.S. probe of the corrupt issuance of cell-phone licenses in Iraq.

In May 2004, the Pentagon's inspector general's office cited "significant and credible evidence" of involvement by Mr. Auchi's companies in the Oil for Food scandal, and in illicit smuggling of weapons to Saddam Hussein's regime. Because of the criminal probe, Mr. Auchi's travel visa to the U.S. was revoked in August 2004, even as Mr. Auchi denied all the allegations. According to prosecutors, in November 2005 Rezko was able to get two government officials from Illinois to appeal to the State Department to get the visa restored. Asked if anyone in his office was involved in such an appeal, Mr. Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times last March, "not that I know of." FOIA requests to the State Department for any documents haven't been responded to for months.

After long delays, Mr. Obama sat with the editorial boards of the Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune in March to answer their questions about his connection to Rezko. He had no recollection of ever meeting Mr. Auchi. He also said he didn't understand a lot about house buying, and gave vague answers to other questions. Since then, he has avoided any further discussion of the Rezko matter.

Is this what the "New Politics" looks like?

RLC

The Torricelli Gambit

Jim Geraghty at National Review Online makes a tongue-in-cheek prediction:

One month from now, the Palin pick has proven a bonanza for the McCain campaign. A large chunk of Hillary's 18 million voters have been won over. Conservatives are unified and energized, and the previously-undiscovered "Maxim magazine vote" is suddenly giving McCain large margins among young males.

Joe Biden will disappear from the campaign trail, and we will later learn it was to see a doctor. A previously-undiscovered, vaguely ominous health issue will be discovered, and Biden will sadly announce that he cannot continue as Obama's running mate. With a sudden need for a new one, Obama will turn... to Hillary Clinton.

Call it the Torricelli gambit.

This is a reference to incumbent New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Torricelli who fell under an ethical cloud just before the election in 2002. With his poll numbers dropping off the chart he was pressured by the party to drop out of the race so Frank Lautenberg could be appointed to run in his place. Lautenberg won.

Maybe Geraghty's idea is not so tongue-in-cheek.

RLC

Sarah Palin

Here's the video of Sarah Palin's speech today after John McCain announced that she'd be his running mate. It gives a good idea of the kind of woman she is.

Thanks to Hot Air.

RLC

On the Job Training

Senator Obama's candidacy is historic, and we can all rejoice that the country has arrived at the place where someone like him can be nominated to run for the presidency. Even so, there is reason to be gravely skeptical that this particular candidate is the best man to pioneer the advance of minorities into the White House.

When one's political opponents say one is not ready to serve as president that can be dismissed as self-interested rhetoric. When one's own colleagues say one is not ready to be president it should give the electorate pause, but when the candidate himself says he's not ready to be president perhaps we should be very reluctant to see him ensconced in the Oval Office:

Senator Obama is correct in this clip. He has never run a business or a government, he has no military or foreign policy experience, his economic prescriptions seem untempered by practical experience, his past social associations and votes in the Illinois senate are not such as build confidence in his judgment, and his only demonstrated ability is in giving speeches off a teleprompter. He does do this exceedingly well as last night's acceptance speech demonstrated, but rhetorical grace is no substitute for a résumé.

John McCain could turn out to be a disaster, who knows? But as responsible voters we have the obligation to examine a candidate's qualifications and select the one who seems best prepared to do the job. It's quite likely that most of the people in your local chamber of commerce have a stronger set of qualifications than does Senator Obama.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Liberal Fascism, Case in Point

A wealthy Texan by the name of Harold Simmons funded an ad which asks questions about Barack Obama's associations with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers. Now in a development that reveals something truly frightening about an Obama presidency, his lawyers are petitioning the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute Simmons and his organization, The American Issues Project.

Here's the ad that Simmons' group funded:

If the Obama people feel that Simmons has violated election laws why not take their complaint to the Federal Election Commission? By seeking an investigation by the Justice Department they're trying to use the Attorney General to intimidate political opponents and suppress political opposition. This is something that Democrats screamed about when they thought Nixon was doing it back in the late sixties.

If Obama wins in November will he be inclined to use his Attorney General as a political enforcer to silence his opponents and critics? He certainly gives us reason to think so by this move.

When Jonah Goldberg wrote that liberalism is a form of fascism he probably didn't expect Barack Obama to provide an illustration of the point.

RLC

McCain Picks Palin

John McCain has picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Palin has quite a story - she's a mother of five, the youngest of which is a Down's syndrome child that she and her husband chose to have rather than abort. She's a lifetime member of the NRA, a former high school basketball player, and has much more executive experience than either Senator Obama or Senator Biden. She's also been a relentless fighter against government corruption in Alaska.

Her acceptance speech today is worth watching. I'll post it as soon as it becomes available.

In the meantime, her selection raises two questions off the top of my head: Will Jacob Weisberg at Slate now write a column explaining how those who don't vote for McCain/Palin are sexist?

What will those critics of the use of American force who like to say that the politicians who send our young men to war have no personal stake in their actions say now? Both Republican candidates have sons in, or on the way, to Iraq. Neither of the Democrats have ever served or have family who has yet both of them support sending young men to fight and die. Obama promises to send more troops to Afghanistan and Biden voted for the war in Iraq.

This is turning into a fascinating election.

RLC

The Search for a Cure for Deafness

New Scientist reports on a milestone in the search for a way to treat and perhaps cure deafness and hardness of hearing.

Since one of the major causes of hearing loss is exposure to loud sounds and since the amplitude of the noise to which we are exposed in modern life, particularly the noise to which young people who play their music at such high volumes are exposed, I suspect that a treatment for deafness will be in great demand in a decade or two.

This article offers hope.

RLC

The Ignoble Lie

Imagine for a moment that a Christian minister had written somewhere that even though he knows the stuff he tells children in their confirmation classes is factually wrong it's helpful in solidifying their faith and in making them committed church members. Suppose that the press got hold of such a statement falling from the lips of, say, Pat Robertson. What would be the reaction, do you think?

Well, it's happened, except it wasn't a Christian minister. It was a Darwinian evolutionist named Bora Zivkovic. In a rambling post on his blog in which he naively enthuses over liberalism and almost completely mischaracterizes conservatism, he talks about how it's necessary to be "sneaky" in presenting evolution in the classroom and how it's okay to lie to students about evolution if it helps them believe it:

You cannot bludgeon kids with truth (or insult their religion, i.e., their parents and friends) and hope they will smile and believe you. Yes, NOMA [the idea that science and religion deal with two different aspects or spheres of life, RLC] is wrong, but is a good first tool for gaining trust. You have to bring them over to your side, gain their trust, and then hold their hands and help them step by step. And on that slow journey, which will be painful for many of them, it is OK to use some inaccuracies temporarily if they help you reach the students. If a student, like Natalie Wright who I quoted above, goes on to study biology, then he or she will unlearn the inaccuracies in time. If most of the students do not, but those cutesy examples help them accept evolution, then it is OK if they keep some of those little inaccuracies for the rest of their lives. It is perfectly fine if they keep thinking that Mickey Mouse evolved as long as they think evolution is fine and dandy overall. Without Mickey, they may have become Creationist activists instead. Without belief in NOMA they would have never accepted anything, and well, so be it. Better NOMA-believers than Creationists, don't you think?

Evidently, Zivkovic doesn't think the facts are sufficiently compelling to persuade students to believe his brand of evolution so one must be prepared to forego the truth and resort to lies if that's what it takes to persuade the reluctant. One might wonder what evolutionary "facts" we believe today that the Darwinians have been lying to us about.

In his post, Zivkovic proudly proclaims that he's a liberal. Contemporary liberalism is a form of fascism, and fascists ever since Plato have believed the concept of the Noble Lie, the lie that's necessary to persuade those who are otherwise too reactionary to go along with the fascist program. Zivkovic stands in that ugly fascist tradition that stretches back to ancient Greece and runs through 20th century Europe into modern America. It's the tradition that holds that those who know what's best for us are justified in lying to us in order to get us to swallow the bitter medicine of social and political conformity. It's an idea that destroys freedom and democracy, which can only exist when people know the truth.

Next time someone tells you we should trust scientists who are, after all, only engaged in a dispassionate search for the truth, give them the name of Bora Zivkovic.

HT: Anika Smith

RLC

Obamanomics

George Will weighs Obama's economic plans in the balance and finds them dangerously underweight.

Here's an excerpt discussing Obama's energy proposals:

But back to requiring this or that quota of energy from renewable sources. What will that involve? For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing. Obama seems to believe that if a particular outcome is desirable, one can see how to require it. But how does that work? Details to follow, sometime after noon, Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama has also promised that "we will get 1 million 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years." What a tranquilizing verb "get" is. This senator, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, is going to get a huge, complex industry to produce, and is going to get a million consumers to buy, these cars. How? Almost certainly by federal financial incentives for both -- billions of dollars of tax subsidies for automakers, and billions more to bribe customers to buy these cars they otherwise would spurn.

Conservatives are sometimes justly accused of ascribing magic powers to money and markets: Increase the monetary demand for anything and the supply of it will expand. But it is liberals like Obama who think that any new technological marvel or other social delight can be summoned into existence by a sufficient appropriation. Once they thought "model cities" could be, too.

Where will the electricity for these million cars come from? Not nuclear power (see above). And not anywhere else, if Obama means this: "I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming -- an 80 percent reduction by 2050."

No he won't. Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute notes that in 2050 there will be 420 million Americans -- 40 million more households. So Obama's cap would require reducing per capita carbon emissions to levels probably below even those "in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood."

The piece is about more than just energy and is worth reading, as Will's work usually is.

RLC

Socialized Medicine

Barack Obama wants to bring us universal medical care. Sally Pipes explains why this is just a terrible idea in an essay at dcexaminer.com.

Given the aspirations of Democrats to impose a European style health care system on us Pipes' column is both timely and important. For that reason I've placed almost all of it here on Viewpoint in hopes that readers will be more likely to examine it.

Pipes writes:

Take the much-vaunted Canadian system. More than 825,000 Canadian citizens are currently on waiting lists for surgery and other necessary treatments. Fifteen years ago, the average wait between a referral from a primary-care doctor to treatment by a specialist was around nine weeks. Today, that wait is over 16 weeks.

That's almost double what doctors consider clinically reasonable. As Canadian physician Brian Day explained to The New York Times, Canada "is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

In part, these waits are due to a doctor shortage. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canada ranks 24th out of 28 countries in doctors per thousand people.

Why so few doctors? Over the past decade, about 11 percent of physicians trained in Canadian medical schools have moved to the United States. That's because doctors' salaries in Canada are negotiated, set and paid for by provincial governments and held down by cost-conscious budget analysts. Today, in fact, the average Canadian doctor earns only 42 percent of what a doctor earns in the United States.

Canada also limits access to common medical technologies. When compared with other OECD countries, Canada is 13th out of 24 in access to magnetic resonance imagings, 18th of 24 in access to computed tomography scanners, and seventh of 17 in access to mammograms.

The problems plaguing Canada are characteristic of all universal health care systems.

In Britain, more than 1 million sick citizens are currently waiting for hospital admission. Another 200,000 are waiting just to get on a waiting list. Each year, Britain's National Health Service cancels around 100,000 operations.

Britain even has a government agency explicitly tasked with limiting people's access to prescription drugs. Euphemistically called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Effectiveness, the agency determines which treatments the British health care system covers. More often than not, saving money takes priority over saving lives.

In 2008, for instance, NICE refused to approve the lung cancer drug Tarceva. Despite numerous studies showing that the drug significantly prolongs the life of cancer patients - and the unanimous endorsement of lung cancer specialists throughout the United Kingdom - NICE determined that the drug was too expensive to cover relative to its effectiveness. As of August 2008, England is one of only three countries in Western Europe that denies citizens access to Tarceva.

Britain's behavior is typical - every European government rations drugs to save money. Eighty-five new drugs hit the U.S. market between 1998 and 2002. During that same time period, only 44 of those drugs became available in Europe.

The evidence clearly indicates that patients under socialized medicine are suffering. Why, then, do countries with government-run health care consistently outrank the United States on international quality surveys?

It's not because the American health care system is inferior. It's because these surveys use deeply flawed metrics that don't reflect health care quality.

Case in point: The World Health Organization rankings of overall health system performance placed the United States 37th out of 191 countries. That's behind not only Canada, Britain and France, but even countries like Costa Rica, Morocco and Cyprus.

Life expectancy accounted for 25 percent of a nation's WHO ranking. But life expectancy is the function of a variety of factors. Medical care is just one of them. Just as important are a nation's homicide rate, the number of accidents, diet trends, ethnic diversity and much more.

Another factor accounting for 25 percent of a nation's ranking was "distribution of health," or fairness. By this logic, treating everyone exactly the same is more important than treating people well. So long as everyone is equal - even if they're equally miserable - a nation will do quite well in the WHO rankings.

In measuring the quality of a health care system, what really matters is how well it serves those who are sick. And it's here that America really excels.

According to an August 2008 study published in Lancet Oncology, the renowned British medical journal, Americans have a better than five-year survival rate for 13 of the 16 most prominent cancers when compared with their European and Canadian counterparts.

With breast cancer, for instance, the survival rate among American women is 83.9 percent. For women in Britain, it's just 69.7 percent. For men with prostate cancer, the survival rate is 91.9 percent here but just 73.7 percent in France and 51.1 percent in Britain.

American men and women are more than 35 percent more likely to survive colon cancer than their British counterparts.

It's no wonder then that foreign dignitaries living in countries with socialized health care systems routinely come to this country when they need top-flight medical treatment.

When Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi needed heart surgery in 2006, he traveled to the Cleveland Clinic - often considered America's best hospital for cardiac care. When Canadian Member of Parliament Belinda Stronach, who had denounced a two-tier health care system for Canadians, needed breast cancer surgery herself in 2007, she headed to a California hospital and paid out of pocket.

So much for the "free" health care they could have received at home.

As for the supposed cost advantages of socialized medicine? Those are illusory, too. True, other developed nations may spend less on health care as a percentage of gross domestic product than the United States does - but so does Sudan. Without considering value, such statistical evaluations are worthless.

And one of the primary reasons health care costs more in America is that we are a wealthy country that demands the best. And, we're investing a lot more in medical research.

The United States produces over half of the $175 billion in health care technology products purchased globally. In 2004, the federal government funded medical research to the tune of $18.4 billion. By contrast, the European Union - which has a significantly larger population than the United States - allocated funds equal to just $3.7 billion for medical research.

Between 1999 and 2005, the United States was responsible for 71 percent of the sales of new pharmaceutical drugs. The next two largest pharmaceutical markets - Japan and Germany - account for just 4 percent each.

While no one can deny that there are significant problems in the American health care system, overall it provides exceptional value. The ideologues who claim we'd be better off under socialized medicine are massively wrong. Government-run health care has proven to be heartless and uncaring - and the inferior treatments it provides come with a very steep price tag.

So, why do the Democrats want to kill the goose that's laying golden eggs? Maybe that's like asking why birds fly. It's just what birds do.

RLC

Brave New World

We've written much about Obama's vote to permit the killing of infants in Illinois hospitals and the seeming indifference to this among the media and other Democrat support groups.

That so few people seem to care is quite frightening for several reasons, one of which is that we seem to be well down a horrifying slippery slope. If people aren't roused about allowing infants who survive an abortion attempt to die, by what logic will we be able to persuade them that unwanted infants born in the normal fashion shouldn't be allowed to die? If the relevant criterion for life and death is whether the child is wanted there's no rationale for permitting infanticide of unwanted babies which the mother has tried to abort, but not permit it in the case of unwanted babies which were never aborted.

It's not hard to imagine the arguments that will be presented on behalf of allowing mothers to choose to allow their babies to die after they've been born: Many mothers, we'll be told, are too poor to have an abortion so why should we "burden her" with the child, to use Senator Obama's felicitous expression, when she wouldn't be forced to keep it were she wealthier? We're discriminating against poor women, don't you see, by not giving them the same right that wealthier women have. Besides, making infanticide an option will reduce the number of abortions. Et cetera.

We're headed for a day when a mother in labor will be asked whether she wants to keep the child, and, if the response is no, the child will wind up being discarded like the placenta and other medical waste.

This is the Brave New World of liberalism. It's change we can believe in. It's the future that awaits us under leaders who think as does Barack Obama.

RLC