Missing no opportunity to trash the free market

James Fallows, writing in The Atlantic, says he has no idea how to protect your kids from the lead in Chinese-made toys.

No family without its own metallurgy lab can reliably tell safe toys from risky ones. This is a useful reminder that while market forces are marvelous, they’re not the answer to all problems. (Let’s spell it out: a strictly market-based answer would mean waiting to see which kids got sick, hoping parents could figure out why, and assuming that their knowledge would guide future parents’ purchases.) Public health regulations, enforced in both China and America, are a crucial part of the answer.

Regulations! Government is the answer!

Quite the straw man he set up there. Waiting around for kids to get sick is not the only strictly market-based answer. How about parents deciding not to buy Chinese-made toys while their kids are in the few years of risk for exposure? Once your kid is past the point of sticking random things in his mouth he’s safe. You can’t get lead poisoning from paint if you don’t at least lick it. So parents of infants and toddlers just give up Chinese toys for, at most, four or five years.

There would be a dip in Chinese toy sales. That would pressure Chinese toy makers to clean up their act. And what’s the name for that pressure? Hmm?

Regulations are fine when they reflect reality. That would include regulating the lead content of paint on children’s toys, obviously. He’s right, it’s only part of the answer. But crucial? Debatable.

ID Meets Its Match

As is to be expected of any fraudulent philosophy, its worst enemy turns out to be its own proponents. I was urged by the latest podcast from The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe to read Judge Jones’ 2005 decision in Kitzmiller. This was the case in Pennsylvania where the school board and the “Intelligent Design” movement were sued for putting a “disclaimer” into 9th-grade biology texts in an attempt to supplant the theory of evolution with their own.

Jones is thorough, thoughtful, and scientific. (Three things refreshing in a judge.) The decision is here in PDF format. Some of the most damaging testimony came from Professor Behe, Mr. ID himself. It includes gems such as this:

In fact, on cross-examination, Professor Behe was questioned concerning his 1996 claim that science would never find an evolutionary explanation for the immune system. He was presented with fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications, nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system; however, he simply insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence of evolution, and that it was not “good enough.”

And this footnote made me laugh out loud.

The one article referenced by both Professors Behe and Minnich as supporting ID is an article written by Behe and Snoke entitled “Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues.” (P-721). A review of the article indicates that it does not mention either irreducible complexity or ID. In fact, Professor Behe admitted that the study which forms the basis for the article did not rule out many known evolutionary mechanisms and that the research actually might support evolutionary pathways if a biologically realistic population size were used.

The decision is recommended reading unless you want to hold on to the false dichotomy presented by the ID movement, namely that acceptance of evolution as a scientific theory somehow disproves the existence of God. Judge Jones does an excellent job at dismantling that fallacy.

Tangled Web Watch

A very nice graph from the Counterterrorism Blog shows just how hip-deep in the poo that Saudi-funded, unindicted co-conspirator, Hamas-supporting gang at CAIR is in Islamofacism.

If you have the patience for a slow-ish Java app, you can get the live version here.

Call It What It Is

It’s war.

We cannot simply re-classify or redefine the actions of those who kill us and openly seek to destroy us. When a state’s military conducts regular attacks upon another, it is by definition an act of war. We may not like it. We may even try to redefine it. And we may ultimately decide that such provocation does not warrant an in-kind response. But it is what it is, regardless. We need not conflate the “non-state” or “sub-national” definition of a terrorist group in order to justify targeting – militarily or financially – any state or group that kills or seeks to kill our civilians or soldiers.

As unclear and muddled as is Bush’s response to the war with Iran, I fear an even less productive and muddled response from a Democrat president.

When do we get a grown-up in the White House again? It’s been a long wait.

Ghost Ship

One U-Boat won’t give up.

You Don’t Have To Speak the Language

The visuals tell the story in this commercial for the Afghan National Army.

She should have had a gun

instead of a knife.

And she shouldn’t be in jail.

Surrender Monkey News Agency Update

Not only do they try to pass off a photo of unfired ammo as proof of an American attack, they steal images from American soldiers. As Tigerhawk notes, the MSM is typically in high dudgeon over such hijinks by other corporations.

And now, for something completely different

Animator vs Animation.

Zombies

It’s funny. So sue me.

Wikidgame

I’m a little late to the party here on the blog. Virgil Griffith, a Caltech graduate wrote a web site which identifies anonymous edits made at Wikipedia. Behold the power of Wikipedia Scanner.

LGF has lots of coverage on this. Wired just set up a great page where readers contribute dirt they’ve uncovered. Pretty much everybody has been snared. Government agencies, big businesses and churches are all caught red-handed.The New York Times, though, really shines for its sheer immaturity.

Everybody knows that Wikipedia has to be taken with a grain of salt. I’m stunned that they even allow anonymous editing, though. That’s just asking for trouble. Griffith has done the world a great service.

Why Soldiers Cry

I’m going way out on a limb here and saying that The New Republic won’t be posting this.

Mira!

(A little bilingual pun, there.)

Check out a star that’s leaving a tail 13 light years long.

Envision No Gas Taxes

John Hood has been posting over on The Corner about how gas taxes are rapidly becoming a poor measure of road usage, thanks to high-mileage vehicles. He says GPS tracking may take its place.

Some readers say GPS is uneccesary because we could use odometer readings. Hood fears that presents a too-tempting beauracracy.

The second major objection is that using GPS technology to price road usage is a huge invitation to Big Brother to monitor everyone’s driving habits. I am nervous about the privacy implications, too, though I will point out that as I understand it, carrying a cellphone around gets you pretty far along to that troubling prospect, if Big Brother is so inclined. Still, if the high-tech solution is problematic on privacy grounds, I’d be open to some other solution to the problem of transportation finance, which is very real and inherent in any system based on taxing gas consumption.

Here’s what I just emailed to Hood:

Big Brother can get a rough idea of where your mobile phone is. But he doesn’t know how fast you’re going.

GPS tracking of cars would be such an egregious intrusion I can’t believe you’re taking it seriously. I take it seriously, but as a threat.

I fail to see the advantage to taxing differently based on time of day. That would imply the government knows better than I when I should be driving and that, somehow, pavement wears out faster at certain times of day. Taxes should be collected to fund the minimum and necessary functions of government. Any use of taxes to modify behavior is immoral. Which is why the left will love this idea.

High-tech isn’t the problem. An odometer that responds to a remote signal with the VIN and current miles would be easy to make, and cheaper than GPS. Then sensors get installed on all gas pumps (or 220V outlets for electric cars). Every time you gas up, Big Brother knows only how far you’ve driven, and where and when you gassed up. Then you can get a bill at whatever interval the government decides. An advantage to this system is that people will be aware, as you say, of how much they’re spending in transportation taxes.

Anybody see any downside to my idea that’s any worse than current fuel taxes?

When Filthy Religions Collide

I’m beginning to think Christopher Hitchens was being kind when he described Islam as a “filthy religion”. In northern Iraq the small Kurdish sect, the Yazidis, once stoned a girl for having a Muslim boyfriend. And now some filthy Islamists have committed mass murder among the Yazidis.

The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of Tuesday’s bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are “anti-Islamic.”

Anti-Islamic. That’s all the reason these barbarians need to slaughter people while blowing themselves up. Filthy hardly begins to cover it. The only thing that seems to make the Yazidis any less filthy is that, so far, Yazidis haven’t declared war on civilization.

Michael Yon has a heartbreaking story to tell about what the Yazidis are likely feeling right now.

One Problem With Being A Surrender Monkey

is that you don’t know the first thing about guns.

Update:

Like so many Islamic Grievance Theatre Players, she’s done this before.

Signs of Hope

Someone buried deep in a giant Federal bureaucracy has a sense of humor.

Diplomacy at 24 Frames per Second

Note how the WaPo manages to get in a deranged dig at Bush in the midst of a human-interest fluff piece.

In the nearly five years since French officials defied President Bush and opposed the invasion of Iraq, people here generally feel they’ve gotten little from America. They were nonplused at the U.S. movement to take the French out of fries and refer to them as freedom fries. They were appalled at Americans pouring French wines down the sink in protest.

So when France shirked its duty to civilization by refusing to help put down the Islamofacists who threaten it and all of us, it was really just a personal affront to George Bush.

Riiiiiiight.

Still, I’m glad they like the movie. And Sarkozy seems like a step in the right direction.

“Ratatouille” opened in 721 French theaters. At the same time, newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy is beseeching his countrymen to embrace the American belief that anyone can achieve dreams through hard work. The little rat chef, Remy, who repeats the same line to his garbage-eating fellow rodents, could have walked right out of a Sarkozy speech.

Three Marks on the Horizon

Yon’s latest dispatch has a lot of great stuff. Read his description of an ambush:

Their Command Sergeant Major, James Pippin, was shot just before Memorial Day. He and his soldiers were in a large ambush near Yarmook Traffic Circle. When the ambush kicked off, Pippin ordered his driver to head straight into the heart of the attack where there were enemy machine guns, rockets and so forth.

Pippin ran out and shot one enemy. The guy had an RPG aimed at the Humvee, but the Humvee came right at him, Pippin jumped out. Pippin told me it was a lucky shot, but he hit the man in the face. A big firefight ensued, and Pippin got some bullet holes, but made his people keep fighting that day until they broke the ambush. This kind of stuff freaks out the enemy: our guys didn’t get them with jets or fancy machines from a distance, but just rushed into them and outfought them. Despite an enemy with perfect surprise, our guys still killed four of them and CSM Pippin was the only American casualty. Countless acts like these around Iraq are a large part of what has given our guys moral authority with Iraqi Police and Army.

Got that? The guys who got ambushed scored four kills. The ambushers only wounded one.

Excellent batallion indeed.

Update:
Michael emails the Instapundit to say:

Alexandra Zavis is an excellent correspondent. She gets around Iraq and I always find her stories consistent with what I am seeing on the ground. Her recent story on Baqubah adds more context to my own dispatches, and I believe the inverse is also true.

Read her for yourself.

Hitch Doesn’t Suffer Fools

He pares them with a sharp pen.

To say that the attempt to Talibanize Iraq would not be happening at all if coalition forces were not present is to make two unsafe assumptions and one possibly suicidal one. The first assumption is that the vultures would never have gathered to feast on the decaying cadaver of the Saddamist state, a state that was in a process of implosion well before 2003. All our experience of countries like Somalia and Sudan, and indeed of Afghanistan, argues that such an assumption is idiotic. It is in the absence of international attention that such nightmarish abnormalities flourish. The second assumption is that the harder we fight them, the more such cancers metastasize. This appears to be contradicted by all the experience of Iraq. Fallujah or Baqubah might already have become the centers of an ultra-Taliban ministate, as they at one time threatened to do, whereas now not only have thousands of AQM goons been killed but local opinion appears to have shifted decisively against them and their methods.

The third assumption, deriving from the first two, would be that if coalition forces withdrew, the AQM gangsters would lose their raison d’être and have nothing left to fight for. I think I shall just leave that assumption lying where it belongs: on the damp floor of whatever asylum it is where foolish and wishful opinions find their eventual home.

Duck Stew

That Washington lawyer who tried to keep Robert Spencer from talking just picked on the wrong columnist.

Marine Poet

What color is he?

American.

I’d like to see him try this from inside the cage.

But that would probably be un-Islamic. Or something.

Yon on NRO

He’s posted a dispatch with links to his previous stuff.

Almost everyone (by now) has heard about the “lazy” Iraqi parliament members who, like so many Nero’s fiddling while Rome burns around them, are taking a month off. Yet comparatively few Americans will ever hear or read about IA Scorpion Company Commander, Captain Baker; or Iraqi entrepreneur and community catalyst, “Tonto;” or the mayor of Baqubah, who summoned the courage to step out of the shadow of al Qaeda and fight to get his constituents a warehouse-sized stockpile of food.

The mantra that “there is no political progress in Iraq” is rapidly becoming the “surge” equivalent of a green alligator: when enough people repeat something that sounds plausible, but also happens to be false, it becomes accepted as fact. The more often it is repeated, and the larger the number of people repeating it, the harder it is to convince any one of the truth: Alligators are not green, and Iraqis are making plenty of political progress.

Do Not Fear the Unitary

It’s become a scare word among the BDS set. Might as well know what the Unitary Executive really is.

Leftmedia’s Desperate “Fred” Attack

The Washington Post has evidently started hiring high-school kids as “staff writers”. They’re so deathly afraid of Fred they’re reduced to school-yard taunts.

Meanwhile, in another office at the WaPo, heads are being scratched trying to understand the decline in subscriptions. It doesn’t get much funnier than that.

Islam in Denial

A very useful post up at Jihad Watch. It should be required reading for all Muslims. And for those of us who want to know the enemy.

Lipstick on a Pig

That’s my metaphor. The Chamber of Commerce has another.

History Lesson

Pop quiz:

You have to choose between two scholars of Greek History. One is named Gravel. The other is named Hanson.

Think fast.

Our Friends, The Saudis

I find the NR’s defense of the Saudi arms deal tepid at best. What do you think?