John, my main criticism of Sarah Palin’s “death panel” remarks is that they reduce in scope the disapproval of the proposed health-care bill to a concern that, while not wholly unfounded as you pointed out, sounds exaggerated and rhetorically ill-pitched. Rightfully fearing a backlash from senior voters, Democrats yielded to the opposition regarding provisions for end-of-life counseling and removed them from the bill—and some consider this a victory for Palin.

But her outrage seems to have been misallocated, as now more must be mustered for countering the rest of the bill, which remains chock-full of problematic stipulations, some much more deleterious to both the health-insurance industry and the interests of health-care consumers than what Sarah Palin chose to focus on. The natural resources of rhetoric can be depleted by the overuse of incendiary language, to which the public gradually grows insensitive.

While as a private citizen Sarah Palin is entitled to express her criticism of the bill however she sees fit, Michael Steele, as a leader of the opposition party, showed questionable judgment in backing remarks likely to court gratuitous controversy. Focusing on end-of-life consultations leaves the opposition vulnerable to the rejoinder that such services are already covered by existing private-insurance plans. It also derails the argument from one about socialized health care, whose most objective merits or lack thereof are grounded in economics, into one about controversial social issues such as the right to die. Involving euthanasia in this debate may agitate mixed loyalties among the socially liberal but fiscally conservative—a needless risk for the opposition.

Obama’s statements that you quoted are suggestive of the extreme utilitarian mindset that permeates the bill. To be sure, its architects do intend to ration care to the elderly and the chronically ill, but how such rationing would be implemented is not through any “death panels” but rather through the perverse actuarial calculus known as comparative effectiveness research. This is a formula that divides the cost of a treatment by the number of “quality-adjusted life years” that the patient is likely to enjoy—a cost-benefit quotient to guide bureaucratic boards on allocating medical resources. In Britain, the formula leads to denying treatments for older patients who have fewer years to benefit from care than do younger patients: until recently, older patients with macular degeneration, which causes blindness, were told that they had to go totally blind in one eye before they could get an expensive new drug to save the other eye.

As Betsy McCaughey notes at the Wall Street Journal: “The House bill shifts resources from specialty medicine to primary care based on the misconception that Americans overuse specialist care and drive up costs in the process (pp. 660-686). In fact, heart-disease patients treated by generalists instead of specialists are often misdiagnosed and treated incorrectly. They are readmitted to the hospital more frequently, and die sooner.”

This is just another corollary of the utilitarian ethics motivating the bill, concerned with allocating communal resources for the greatest benefit to the greatest number. In such context, it’s hardly a misconception that Americans overuse specialty care. Indeed, however grave a disease may be, if it ails only an unlucky few, the medical resources tied to treating it could instead help a greater number of people stricken by more common ailments. If such considerations dictate the allocation of scarce resources on a large scale, the result will be generic health care for all and specialized treatments—those needed the most—for few or none.

Winning the debate against socialized health care requires educating the public on what it entails for them, to which end plenty of facts, statistics, and case studies can be employed, often originating in countries that have adopted similar systems to the one America is contemplating. But the public is more boggled than enlightened by talk of “death panels.” Why resort to bombastic rhetorical devices when facts—cool, objective, dispassionate facts—are already on our side?

Multiple readers have contacted us with inquiries about Jennifer Rubin’s recent absence from the blog. To all those concerned, please rest assured that Jennifer is merely on a much deserved vacation, from which she will return soon to resume blogging.

Max, not only are wealth redistributionists rhetorically inflating the perception in today’s terms of a million dollars’ worth of purchasing power (a million bucks certainly ain’t what it used to be), but perhaps most important, they fail to consider such a sum in the context of an entrepreneurial economic system.

Innovative drive, America’s engine of economic growth, is largely fueled by bottom-up risk-taking. Every day, thousands of young entrepreneurs toil away in either their parents’ basements or comparable living arrangements, investing their talents, skills, and career-advancement years in the bootstrapping of risky, ambitious start-ups, which usually pay very little, if at all, over the first years of operation.

A small percentage of such ventures, owing to a synergy of luck and merit, eventually establish a customer base and steady cash flow. The most successful ones are often bought out, partially or completely, by industry giants. But the vast and silent majority dwindle down into oblivion — we never hear and rarely think of the ventures befallen by this fate — when resources run out and the entrepreneur eventually settles for a steady, if less ambitious, stream of income at an established business.

America desperately needs these energetic entrepreneurs to expand our technological frontier, but our tax system penalizes their risk-taking behavior. A million dollars or a sum in that range to them may be the culmination of many years of fervent effort toward materializing a business or product no one else has conceived of — years in which they have forgone the income obtainable from salary positions. When and if their efforts finally do pay off, not only does the time value of money erode the real worth of their lump-sum payment, but being treated under a high marginal tax rate further evaporates their earnings unduly. Unlike corporations, individuals cannot spread their losses over time in the eyes of the IRS. Therefore, the government is incentivizing a lifestyle dedicated to steady moderate earnings over one in pursuit of an open-ended, risky large payoff after years of financial sacrifices.

Because most taxpayers, at whom this “millionaires’ surtax” political pitch is aimed, are wage earners themselves, they can scarcely relate to the immense risks and sacrifices often involved in earning anything close to a million dollars. But entrepreneurial activity and the financial benefits accruing thereto are higher in America than anywhere else in the world. Ergo, a significant proportion of the millionaires burdened by the proposed surtax will be young entrepreneurs of unsteady income whose fruits of hard work are already embittered by our progressive tax code.

Does this administration really want to break the backbone of the American economy?

Tom Gregg, on Peter Wehner:

I find myself astonished that so many people seem incapable of perceiving this obvious point: As far as the Iranian Islamofascist regime is concerned, America’s only possible function is to serve as The Enemy, i.e. a focal point for the hatred and fear without which such regimes cannot sustain themselves. The ayatollahs have absolutely no interest in making making nice with America. What would be in it for them? The approval of the “world community”? They couldn’t care less about that. No, what they want and need is the Great Satan. That the G.S. is now personified by Barack Obama rather than by George W. Bush is a matter of complete indifference to them.

Tom Gregg, on Jennifer Rubin:

A couple of points:

1) The Iranian regime is totalitarian in character. Thus it requires enemies in the same way that a democratic state needs civil liberties: as a condition of its survival. The regime’s chosen enemies are Israel and the U.S., a.k.a. the Little Satan and the Great Satan. That Obama expected the ayatollahs to tear up their enemies list in exchange for the good opinion of the “world community” shows that where foreign policy is concerned, he is out of touch with reality.

2) Though of course no one can predict the future, it would be dangerous in the extreme to discount the regime’s bloodthirsty rhetoric and assume that having obtained nuclear weapons, it would never use them. I suppose that Obama, who seems to have the backbone of a chocolate éclair, will nevertheless embrace this assumption. But Israel can’t afford to take a chance.

Tom Gregg, on Jennifer Rubin:

What people have a hard time accepting is that health care is no different from any other type of economic activity. It’s an amalgam of goods and services that must compete with other sectors of the economy for a share of total available resources. To view health care in isolation, as if it somehow constitutes an exception to the rule, and to treat health care is if it is a right, is the cardinal error of most so-called reform proposals.

RCAR’s story is a sad one. But the fact remains that somehow, in some way, health care costs have got to be contained. Nobody likes to think about it, but that’s the reality. To give people all the health care they demand is plainly impossible. There is no conceivable health care system that could guarantee that such abuses would not occur. In Britain, for instance, widespread shortages of specialists, equipment and hospital beds lead to numerous preventable deaths.

We see how the unfunded obligations embodied in Medicare threaten to devour the whole federal budget. Obama’s “reform” proposal (what we know of it) would inevitably make a bad situation even worse. Probably the fairest and most efficient health care system would be one that is market-based and largely free of government regulation. Would it eliminate all abuses? No. But without doubt, it would allocate resources most efficiently, and produce the greatest good for the greatest number—which is all we can reasonably expect.

J.E. Dyer, on Jennifer Rubin:

It’s impossible to get excited about this. The moment is passing as we dither. Right now, at this very minute, is when the gas would need to be drying up for the Iranian regime, if we wanted its loss to do the reform protestors any good. This is obvious to other nations as well, and the likelihood of anyone joining us in a gasoline embargo declines with each passing hour.

Maybe Obama has been affected only by polls and criticism in the US, in his recalibrated level of outrage. Maybe he has been affected by increasing certainty that the existing regime is going to win this one. He now knows more about what’s going on in Iran than the rest of us do, through the national intelligence apparatus.

I’d really love to be wrong on the likely outcome here. But at this point, I assess the following as about equally likely, with a slight edge for the second:

1. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad remain where they are.

2. There is some shuffling of personnel on the Guardian Council, and in the national executive, and that is what is taking time right now. An outcome along these lines is being negotiated. It will be designed to prevent complete loss of control by the hardliners, represented by Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, but institute some pro forma power-sharing with reformers. The intention of this would be a gesture, not an opening to true liberalization, and what would take the time is coming up with a permutation of power position assignments that would hold things together as much through tension as through loyalty or cohesion.

David S. Mazel, on John Steele Gordon:

It’s been said before and it merits repeating: The pace of technology is tremendous. It should give us all a wonderful feeling about the future and how much our lives have changed as well as how much our children’s lives will change and, of course, who can say how our grandchildren’s lives will be lived.

As other fine people have noted, it’s not just technology that has progressed so much but health care as well. I might add that our nation has come far socially with the integration and assimilation of a multitude of peoples on our shores.

As we ponder the current problems of the world on this blog, it is refreshing to look at the immediate past and realize how far we have come. To look back only a few short years and see such progress allows us to look forward and realize that our predictions, while worthwhile for discussions and planning, can never take account of unseen technological changes that, for the most part, will improve our lives.

This doesn’t solve our problems, but it does allow us to give perspective to our sometimes gloomy predictions and to see that what we often worry about does not come to pass.

John, thanks for the lovely reminder.

Matt in Portland, on Peter Wehner:

In his article, Mr. Klein states:

There is no question that President Obama’s more prudent path is the correct one right now.

It’s simply too early to tell, and Mr. Klein’s conclusion is not warranted. Mr. Obama’s policy at this point is to “wait and see.” Given the images coming out of Iran at this time, there are plenty of reasonable questions about that policy.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of Mr. Klein’s article was predicated on the unwarranted conclusion, and appeared to be a vehicle for ad hominem attacks against Senator McCain and Mr. Wehner. That’s no substitute for reporting or analysis. It would have been much better to have responded to the substance of Mr. Wehner’s article, and in so doing to further an honest and legitimate debate.

Groupmember, on Jennifer Rubin:

I think the movement is probably hard to characterize. Perhaps many of them haven’t even developed their political instincts sufficiently to identify with any one political party. Maybe its just the pervasive stifling of freedoms, professional, personal and spiritual, that motivates them to seek change. Over here, we’re all preoccupied with defining ourselves. Isn’t there a sense that these protests, spontaneous as they were, are expressing things that are more fundamental than can be captured in any one slogan or policy position? That’s why the Obama business about likening Mousavi to A’jad seems ridiculous to me; who knows how the people might have voted had there been a genuine spectrum of options from which to choose. And ultimately, it’s the people who will matter, not the man they’ve chosen to make their champion, in the absence of any other officially sanctioned candidates.

turlock, on Peter Wehner:

I still struggle to see the downside in speaking out. If we speak out, what would change tomorrow that doesn’t already exist today? The Iranian government- largely discredited in the eyes of the world- would say “The Americans are behind the opposition” and… well, what? Shoot protesters? Shut down the universities? Stop re-counting their rigged outcomes? Not negotiate with us about nuclear weapons?

And what do we have to gain by staying silent? The opposition loses and we spend another decade tussling over “what ifs” until the opposition rises again (or if they do). The opposition wins and gains power and gives no thanks to us, because we stayed silent.

If it was true that Americans speaking up discredits the people we speak for, the best thing we could do is internationally announce that we recognize the outcome of the Iranian elections and call Ahmadinejad to congratulate him on his solid victory. But no one is seriously calling for that — why? Because if we speak up on behalf of Iran, that provides the legitimacy for the regime to smash the protesters. And if we speak up for the protesters, *that* discredits the protesters and empowers the regime to smash them. Is every outcome for America advocating freedom on behalf of the oppressed truly a setback for freedom globally? The freest nation on earth must be quiet? Even then silence would only become proof of our perfidiousness.

Somehow, it seems the idea that “if America shuts up, the protesters will be empowered” seems more and more like a ruse apologetic originated by backers of the Iranian theocracy that has wheedled its way into the western conscience, than an actual rational strategy. It’s time we realize that the people who want to hate us, will hate us, no matter what we do. We need to give a reason for the right people to admire us, and we do not gain the admiration of the noble by remaining silent like cowards.

Altalena, on Jennifer Rubin:

Drudge is now reporting that Egypt’s president Mubarak has declared, “Not Egypt nor any other Arab country would accept Israel as a Jewish state.” This is further proof, if any were needed, that the Arab world is gripped by fear. Even if Mubarak were disposed to accept Israel as a Jewish state (a huge “if”), he’s constrained from doing so by his memory of what happened to Anwar Sadat when Sadat made nice with Israel. The threat of Muslim Brotherhood reprisal hangs heavy over Egyptian society, just as the threat of reprisal by other jihadi groups hangs heavy over other Arab countries. The threat of violence, reinforced by an occasional assassination, is all it takes to keep Arabs from even thinking about making peace.

Depressing, huh?

Maine’s Michael, on Jennifer Rubin:

Who vilifies America’s gun culture?

The ‘morally superior’ Europeans who either participated or stood back and watched during the industrial destruction of a people in WW2, and who depended on the force of American arms to pull their asses out of the fire.

The other block that vilifies our gun culture is the American left, for whom the above Europeans represent the paragon of human social development.

As for the rest of the world, most live under the tyranny of rulers who use guns to keep an unarmed population under control. We don’t know what their opinions about America and guns are, and neither should we care, until they can demonstrate they are free peoples.

Growing up in Canada, I was conditioned to consider gun toting Americans as having a serious personality flaw of potentially lethal consequence.

How shocked I was to discover, as an adult, that my father (an ex-IAF officer) had secretly been going to the range and participating in competitions for decades, without my knowing it. He was far from typical tho, in this regard.

After moving to the U.S., and into the rural state of Maine, gun ownership became as natural, if not quite as important, as eating breakfast.

J.E. Dyer, on Jennifer Rubin:

Anyone know what the Republicans are doing on this, other than chanting “Me too, Me too, Me too”?

A whole lot of people would respond to the option of being able to carry catastrophic-only medical insurance, and paying for routine visits out of pocket. In a majority of states, you are not allowed to do that. You must be insured to a standard that includes things like covering sex-change operations and mental health treatment. In other words, you must be enrolled in a “health plan,” and not just carry “insurance.” It would cost a LOT less for people to carry just “insurance.” E.g., break your leg, get in an accident, get diagnosed with cancer — insurance pays fees. Go in for routine visits, need allergy medicine — patient pays fees.

Enlarging the tax advantage for health savings accounts; allowing the savers to bequeath them tax-free to legatees, for the purpose of health savings; and tax advantaging private gifts to cover the health costs of others would all be popular measures as well.

There are a number of other measures we need, such as states capping litigation awards (and, ideally, instituting a “loser pays” system). Their effect on health care costs would be substantial, but harder to build a popular wave of support for.

One thing Republicans need to be hammering is the fact that focusing on the “uninsured” has to end up dragooning a lot of more lightly-insured or uninsured young people as PAYERS, into a system they will statistically have less use for than their elders for some time. Naturally, universal health care advocates never say this out loud, but we can be sure it has not escaped them that many of the “uninsured” are people under 30-35 who do not choose to carry insurance. They can’t be brought into the system without being made to PAY into it. The prospect of that influx of cash is far more significant than you’d think, from the complete silence about it maintained among universal coverage advocates.

Rob, on Michael Totten:

What a wonderful thing that Lebanon was not intimidated by Hezbola assassins and bombs.
That kind of courage is what it will take to turn back the tide of terrorism.
This election shows that free Lebanon deserves our continuing support.

Lebanon is another place, somewhat like Afghanistan, where problems generated in their neighboring countries are pushed inside and form a toxic brew.

Obama appears to have done the right thing here, although his soft soft talk to Iran can embolden them to create another war with Israel and fight it in Lebanon.

Thanks to Michael Totten for the clear report. Other news from this area reads more like an echo of Hezbollah propaganda than real news.

CK MacLeod, on Jenifer Rubin:

The climate change propaganda already reached the saturation/diminishing returns point last Summer, as evidenced polls that show people believe global warming/climate change has been exaggerated. People do want to believe they’re doing their bit for Mother Earth, but they also don’t want to believe they have to suffer widely: They sense a scam and the occasional fact that dribbles out casting doubt on the ecological doomsaying, on the hypocrisy of major eco-campaigners, and on the efficacy of pseudo-solutions does immeasurable harm. People notice, and 10 car ads and PSAs per hour aren’t going to change their minds.Even in the best of times, ecological hair shirts are a tough sell. The Dems need to go through the motions, at least, for a while longer – but even that will hurt them, since increasingly it will make them seem like out-of-touch losers.

David S. Mazel, on Jennifer Rubin:

Hubris meet unprofessional.

The President is on holiday and has the nerve to tell those who are working to work harder. That’s poor management, but then we know that the President has very limited experience running anything. Then, as if out of a bad skit, Senator Grassley sends a message that is reminiscent of a spoiled child. Such childishness on both parts. Oy.

It’s bad form for a President to spend so much time talking and not working, as our President is wont to do. But it’s equally bad form for a Senator to publicize his own rantings and in a such an unprofessional format (for a Senator, that is, not so for a teenager). Couldn’t Mr. Grassey call the White House or send an email? At least he wouldn’t be limited to what, 160-characters or such. And maybe the message would read a bit better, too.

And what’s worse is these same guys are working on our nation’s health care. Good grief. Everyone had better start taking better care of themselves, because if this is any indication, when it comes to health care, we are all on own.

Good luck to all of us.

Richard S., on Abe Greenwald:

Obama belives in a living constitution, and, apparently, a living Road Map.

chuck martel, on Jennifer Rubin:

Toyota, Honda, and other foreign flag manufacturers are experiencing dramatic decreases in sales as well. Auto sales are down all over the world.

And how is the next to last paragraph a “strawman”? Those are certainly options, in fact they are options that have been and are now being used in industries in other parts of the world.

The real issue here is the private/public dichotomy. The management of GM signed a contract with the UAW. If they can no longer financially honor that contract they have the recourse of bankruptcy. They are a private company and their demise would have a limited effect on the public purse, contrary to the youthful car czar. Public operations, on the other hand, that employ teachers, fire fighters, cops, and others of which you are aware, are on the hook for wages, health and retirement benefits at least as lavish as a UAW worker. I don’t have to buy a GM car and I didn’t have to contribute to the UAW benefits package. Now, apparently, I do. Along with the ignored public employee obligations that make the UAW look truly minor league.

David S. Mazel, on Jonathan Tobin:

“The fact is Israel has been anteing up for peace since 1993, when it signed the Oslo Accords, brought the PLO and its terrorist leader Yasser Arafat back to the country, and handed most of the West Bank and Gaza over to him.”

I think Israel has been anteing up for peace since 1948 when she accepted the two-state proposal of the UN. Again in 1967 when she wanted to give back the territories but Arabs would not take them. Again when she gave up the Sinai to Egypt. Once again, when she gave the PLO legitimacy in 1993 (you got that one) and then once more when she withdrew from Gaza.

How much more anteing up should Israel do? Granted that Egypt did sign a treaty for what is now a very cold peace, and Jordan has a treaty with Israel. But, anteing up? Give me a break. Israel has been seeking peace since day one. It’s time for the Arabs to ante up, let them show their willingness for peace. Israel can be counted on to seek and implement and follow-through with a peace plan. Are Arabs ready to do the same?

And lest this go unnoticed, how are Jews faring in Arabs country? Arabs in Israel are doing a lot better Jews in Arab countries. Let’s see some reciprocal treatment there as well.

Chris Bolts Sr., on Kejda Gjermani:

Umm, Mr. Deese obviously did not see that one of the main problems with GM was the very stupid deals that it went into with a variety of foreign companies. One of those deals nearly drove GM into bankruptcy a few years ago. After swallowing a bitter pill that almost cost $4 billion, GM was finally able to shed that foreign company and live to fight to die only a few years later. What was the name of that company? FIAT. Now, we want a small, defunct company from Italy that was dumped by GM to help save its hide, which didn’t help at all, to team up with Chrysler, a company that was dropped by Daimler-Benz (even the Germans, a social democracy that loves unions wanted nothing to do with the UAW) and expect them to be competitive. If this is the kind of education one can expect from a Yale student, then I’m glad I didn’t attend that school. :P

Brian Deese hails from the establishment elites: the son of an engineer specializing in “renewable energy” and a political science professor at Boston College, he majored in political science at Middlebury College, went on to Yale Law School, took leave to become deputy economic policy director for the Obama campaign, then moved on to the White House’s National Economic Council. The New York Times recently profiled  Mr. Deese, 31 years old, as the face behind the dismantling and restructuring of General Motors:

Mr. Deese’s role is unusual for someone who is neither a formally trained economist nor a business school graduate, and who never spent much time flipping through the endless studies about the future of the American and Japanese auto industries.

The profile quotes Lawrence Summers on Deese:

“And there he was in the Roosevelt Room, speaking up vigorously to make the point that the costs we were going to incur giving Fiat a chance were no greater than some of the hidden costs of liquidation.”

Yet Mr. Deese’s impressive legal and politically scientific education has apparently not instilled in him any basic understanding of opportunity cost. Presiding over General Motors’s operations should teach him a few lessons, which he is likely to ignore, as have scores of career bureaucrats preceding him. The argument Mr. Deese employed in favor of nationalizing General Motors — that costs to the government would be greater under dissolution due to associated unemployment and insurance expenses — betrays inability to see past the numbers in front of him.

Mr. Deese was not the only one favoring the Fiat deal, but his lengthy memorandum on how liquidation would increase Medicaid costs, unemployment insurance and municipal bankruptcies ended the debate.

This simplistic approach to the cost equation takes for granted the immediate negative consequences of liquidation but looks no further. It doesn’t factor in the future, possibly perpetual, operating losses of an inefficient company still burdened by unreasonable contractual obligations to the UAW. Also, it doesn’t take into consideration the high likelihood that the majority of workers terminated in the wake of liquidation would soon find employment elsewhere (restoring a significant fraction of the lost income) instead of eternally remaining on the dole.

Unprofitable ventures have been regularly going out of business since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. According to Mr. Deese’s line of reasoning, every market-dictated liquidation yields permanent unemployment. If so, vibrant market economies with fewer barriers to exit (as well as to entry) would be plagued by the highest unemployment rates in the world — an obviously absurd conclusion. Contrary to Mr. Deese’s cost-benefit analysis, liquidation of an unprofitable venture does not mark a black hole of spiraling unemployment and welfare costs, but rather a reallocation of scarce resources (including capital and, most importantly for the administration, labor) toward productive ends. In fact, it makes more sense to speak of the hidden costs of nationalization rather than those of liquidation. The billions funneled to bailout General Motors and the workforce tied to it could be put to more profitable uses by the market. But D.C. bureaucrats cannot see the unrealized private alternatives to the taxpayer money they are spreading around; they only see the palpable, if temporary, salvaging of a constituency-group’s pet-cause. The abstract (but oh so real) opportunity costs are flushed down the political blind spot.

It does say something about the merits of General Motors’ nationalization that its biggest champion in the administration was a political science major law-school quasi-graduate with no business experience.

chuck martel, on Jennifer Rubin:

The Sotomayor nomination and its “identity politics” feature bring up some considerations. What’s with this “minority” thinking? Why should belonging to a minority give one a priori status as a member of a disadvantaged group? In the case of Judge Sotomayor, there’s no real evidence that Hispanics of any stripe are even a numerical minority, except in a national sense. In Hispanic communities they are a majority, by definition. At the same time, evidence that there has been political suppression of Hispanics on a national level is scanty. Just because the Hispanics are less than 51% of the general population doesn’t make them downtrodden or deserving of special treatment from the government.

So we move on to minorities in general. It’s obvious that belonging to a minority guarantees you no special consideration, unless the numbers and influence of that minority reach a certain level, if the group becomes a “super minority”. In a heterogeneous nation of perhaps 300 million souls there are no end of minorities but most receive little attention. We seldom hear of the problems experienced by Finnish immigrants, Druids, red-heads, yo-yo enthusiasts, and garlic farmers. There aren’t enough of them to actually constitute a minority. There are vociferous exceptions, of course, like the parents of children with nut allergies, but those are anomalous. The point is, minorities don’t become important until they reach the point where they’re really only statistical minorities, until they’ve become members of the “big minority” club. In fact, there really is no majority group in the country, except, perhaps females. Everyone else belongs to a number of different minorities.

J.E. Dyer, on Peter Wehner:

Stuart Rose — proliferation is the immediate problem, and to address it a blockade isn’t actually necessary. Continuation of what we’ve been doing for years now — using intelligence to identify suspicious shipments, and intercepting them (with Israel occasionally attacking plutonium reactors under construction) — is actually a fairly adequate method. That isn’t to say it’s a perfectly effective method, of course. But North Korea can only transport prohibited materials to bad customers by sea, with a lesser role for air, and her commercial activities are not so varied or robust that suspect shipments are all that hard to identify.

If there is a tripwire in this regard, it may be hit if Pyongyang starts dealing directly with non-governmental entities; e.g., Al Qaeda.

I saw Charles Krauthammer’s suggestion that Japan be encouraged to go nuclear, and this is one on which I have to disagree with him. Bad idea. What we should be doing instead is staying on track with our missile defense program, instead of cutting its funding, cutting the Multiple Kill Vehicle element entirely from the program, and (an Obama/Gates move that looks insane in light of Pyongyang’s activities in April and May 2009) leaving the intercept sites planned for Alaska incomplete: basically, without their interceptor missiles installed.

Missile defense would be an excellent principle on which to build a ramped-up exercise series with Japan (and Australia, if they’ll join in). We also need to just be bustling about the Far East as noisily as possible, reevaluating the security situation of the Korean peninsula, taking another look at Taiwan’s defense procurement requests, charming the socks off Indonesia, and giving big wet smooches to India, and inviting her armed forces into as many regional exercises as we can come up with. Seems like we haven’t had a good heart-to-heart with Vietnam for way too long. And Thailand? An ally we’ve been neglecting. Really need some joint naval and air exercises with Bangkok. We’d all benefit from practicing some antipiracy and counterterrorism in the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca, with Singapore and the Philippines joining in. A great place for India to participate too.

There’s more than one way of influencing China’s sense of what’s going on. A project best undertaken with a smile.

Ed Lasky, on Jonathan Tobin:

Apparently, Barack Obama does prefer one kind of outsourcing, that is, of our American foreign policy. Here comes the internationalization of American foreign policy. What is most perilous about this preferred course of conduct is that entrusting the transformation of Pax Americana into Pax United Nations is a fool’s errand. The halls of the UN are similar to a sketch in my M.C. Escher: an endless series of steps and stairways twisting and turning with very little hope for progress visible. But there is a greater and altogether not recognized danger from the depths of the UN structure. Iran occupies key posts throughout the UN: it has colonized that body. I recommend Claudio Rosett’s column in Forbes magazine that ran on Dec 11th, 2008. She reveals the extent of Iranian penetration of the UN, occurring over the years, underneath the radar screen. Does Susan Rice appreciate that American reliance on the UN will be diverted and blocked out not just by vetoes held by Security Council members or by almost the worthless General Assembly, but also by key executives who receive bounteous and tax-free salaries, partly from American taxpayers?