Jeez I’ve been gone for only four years and Omaha is falling apart.

gunman killed eight people and wounded five others Wednesday at the popular Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, before apparently turning the gun on himself, police said.

I really hope that the media covers this extensively so as to encourage more of these tragedies.

Actually this give me an opportunity to make another point. While I think its bad for MSM to cover these tragedies extensively because its encourages this kind of behavior, I would not vote for legislation to control it. To enjoy freedom of the press I accept the noise of the press encouraging mass killings. There are other ways to constrain behavior other than through regulation. The most obvious is news editors recognizing the wisdom of not celebrating these killings through extensive coverage.

My prognostic skills tells me that some of you will respond that capitalism drives these editors to cover these events extensively. I think that is probably about right. However, markets are only an indicator of what people want so clearly there is a demand for this kind of coverage. In this regard, I would suggest one refrains from excessively indulging in this coverage so as to reduce the overall demand and in turn send the proper market signals that this kind of coverage is not desired. One can convey displeasure with a tragedy being transformed into a circus without using state coercion.

Speaking of wishing editors had wisdom, the way they played into the hands of terrorist in Iraq was despicable. Basic prudence suggested that the news editors realize they were being played like a fiddle and to find ways to cover the news in Iraq without so readily assisting our enemies. As such, they found way to magnify our enemies efforts while minimizing our own. A precedent that continues today with the surge being mostly ignored along with the improvements it has allowed.

Inevitably, this mass shooing will be covered through the gun control angle. Some of you will find yourselves sympathetic to passing gun control laws in an attempt to reduce mass shootings. However, I would argue that it might in fact be more effective to pass laws regulating how the press can cover these kind of killings. Setting up the argument this way pits one cherished right against another. Many of my readers would show disgust at the suggestion that the state should regulate press to save lives, but have no problem trampling all over the second amendment for the same purpose. As a libertarian, I favor neither. The government really needs to spend less time tinkering with my rights every time an unwise person thinks saving lives justifies diminishing my rights

The Supreme Court is going to take up another case about the indefinite detainments at Guantanamo Bay. The readers of this sight have on numerous occasions harped about how this is a violation of their rights (its not) and a violation of the Geneva Conventions (its not). Its easy to criticize a solution to a problem when you are not faced with dealing with that problem.

Lets say you have captured a group of non-citizens on foreign soil committed to doing harm to your citizens. Lets further say no state exists to claim responsibility for those individuals. Releasing them will most certainly lead to the outcome that a portion of them will rejoin groups intent on harming your citizens. Discriminating between those that would do harm and those that will not is virtually impossible. How would you manage this problem?

Bear in mind that if you find acceptable the outcome that some civilian death might occur so that theses individuals are treated fairly you weaken arguments for constraining other rights for the sake of reducing civilian death. The most obvious being gun control.

Just came across this study showing that ignorant people have a tendency to discount people with more knowledge.

Impresses me with this abortion discussion.

Michael writes in a recent post:

There are many angry people in the middle east, and I agree with Dr. Paul that our occupation of their lands makes the US a focal point of their anger, a lightning rod for their wrath.

I really need to address this exceedingly lame argument.

Prior to 2003, the US did not occupy land in the Middle East. This is problematic to your position given what happened on 9/11.

To be more charitable to your argument, I think you are echoing a common sentiment, typically referred to as isolationism, which goes something like this:

Meddling with other countries affairs is bound to breed discontentment. This discontent can boil over causing the formation of organizations intent on harming our country. Therefore, it’s best to not meddle in other country’s affairs.

Much like Humanism, isolationism is a hopelessly naïve view of the world. Let’s look at it some different reasons why.

First, we have meddled with many countries and yet only a small portion has seen organizations form set on causing direct harm to our country. There are the more obvious examples of our meddling like occupying Japan and Germany after WW2 or more subtle examples like placing high tariffs on certain Chinese imports. If the argument is that meddling in other countries affairs is the controlling variable for violent retaliation you have some explaining to do.

A second problem with isolationism and, it’s the basis for my charge of naivety, is that it’s completely unrealistic in a global economy. The very nature of international trade requires that countries meddle with each other. Often times that meddlesome comes in the form of treaties and agreements in international groups. Its worth noting that the more engaged a country is in global trade, that is the more amenable its to being meddle with, the less likely organizations from that country will form to harm the US. Unless you advocate the US pulls out of international trade it is simply impossible to strictly adhere to a isolationism policy and I don’t know about you but I like my iPods cheap.

The third problem is that isolationism restricts intervention in instances in which a state is committing atrocious acts against another state or it’s own people. Would Ron Paul have intervened in the Second World War? He certainly could not have done so on the basis of stopping the holocaust. How about Kuwait, Sudan, Darfur or Rwanda? Isolationism restricts intervention in any of these instances. Some might like to have the option open to intervene on moral grounds. I would like the option open.

There are more reasons why such a policy is foolish but I don’t want to list all of them.

If you ask me, a much more meaningful explanation for why some organizations do harm is because they live under an oppressive regime that often scapegoats US policy as to why they are oppressed. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Osama argue that his antipathy towards the US was based on his belief that Saudi Arabian oppressive government was able to retain power thanks to the US?

It’s not meddling that causes the problem but oppressive regimes blaming the US for the oppression that is the problem. If you ask me, this is one of the reasons why invading Iraq was prudent. While it’s the case that terrorism was not coming out of that country, the conditions were absolutely ripe for it to occur. By invading and setting up a democracy you nip in the bud the development of fractious organizations that could have been inimical to the US.

In this explanation, the best way to deal with US hatred is to regime change nations that oppress their people. Clearly this is unlikely to work from a political perspective but what you might try and do is set up some free market democracy in some key regions until you run out of political will. Hopefully, over time liberal ideology will spread to the more oppressive regimes leading to bloodless democratic revolution. This seems to be in part the current administration plan in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under this policy, I think it would wise to add Iran to the list. This would allow the three nascent Democracies to form a strong contiguous allied front for liberal values in the Middle East.

With any luck, Iran will continue its efforts to build nuclear weapons giving the next administration the political capital needed to invade and establish democracy in that country. We can only hope for such luck.

Those that are capable of summary judgments report higher rates of excellent mental health.

Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls.

Is it possible that nuanced understanding comes from insecurity? Out of fear of being incorrect the nuanced thinker refrains from assertion until they are certain of not being incorrect. The more generalized thinker is less concerned with being incorrect and happily asserts irrespective of being correct.

One thing for sure is that democratic ideology emphasize non-judgment while conservative ideology emphasize it. Many that are democratic no doubt find it compelling to join a group that is more interested in understanding then judging. Disinclination from being judged indicates insecurity about that which you are to be judge on. Well then, is it any wonder that the party of judgment has a higher rate of self reported excellent mental health? They have the confidence to judge themselves as excellent.

Over at NRO Mark Steyn notes:

Gee, whiz. That’s a toughie. Wonder what the reason could be. But don’t worry, the University of Amsterdam is on top of things:

Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder. Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity.

Bingo! Telling young Moroccan men they’re closeted gays seems certain to lessen tensions in the city! While you’re at it, a lot of those Turks seem a bit light on their loafers, don’t you think?

The social stigma explanation has got to be one of the lamest explanations ever. Its the same explanation that has been used for minority failure in this country. African American’s do poorly because the ’system’ is against them. Woman do worse because the ’system’ is against them. Talk about a snooze-o-rama in explanation. A dog could offer more useful insight.

No doubt data and models used to forecast the amount of hurricanes in the Atlantic coast partly inform the models used to predict global warming outcomes. Unsurprising then I read this:

Hurricane forecasters said their 2007 predictions were slightly off target this season, which ended Friday and produced just one U.S. hurricane and two Category 5 landfalls.

The season, which spans June through November, failed to match the predictions of U.S. government forecasters, which called for seven to nine hurricanes, including at least three at Category 3 strength.

Experts can not even predict how many hurricanes there are going to be one year in advance and i’m supposed to be convinced of catastrophic events that will occur fifty years from from a slight increase in temperature. In fact, I’m supposed to be so convinced that I’m willing to harm the poor by constraining the economy. Puhlease. The hubris of man is astounding particularly in the so-called educated ones.

After spending several years trying to force the President to leave Iraq, due to the success of the surge Democrats are changing their rhetoric in Iraq.

Congressional Democrats are reporting a striking change in districts across the country: Voters are shifting their attention away from the Iraq war.

Rep. Jim Cooper, a moderate Democrat from Tennessee, said not a single constituent has asked about the war during his nearly two-week long Thanksgiving recess. Rep. Michael E. Capuano, an anti-war Democrat from Massachusetts, said only three of 64 callers on a town hall teleconference asked about Iraq, a reflection that the war may be losing power as a hot-button issue in his strongly Democratic district.

I never understood why the democrats employed the rhetoric of retreat. I realize they used other words to make it not sound like a retreat but if I was running the democratic party during the height of the anti-war sentiment I would of used the rhetoric of strategy change. Had the democrats been on top of Petreaus plan before Bush brought him in, and applied the necessary political pressure to get Bush to use Petreaus surge strategy they would currently be reaping the fruits of the success of the surge. It would of been a great political coup and resulted in significantly more positive coverage about how Iraq is now working.

As such, they squandered the political will by arguing a defeatist position and leaving open the more much more political palatable change in strategy approach to the GOP. No doubt part of the problem was that the democrats were listening to the far anti-war left and foolishly believed the majority of Americans echo this partisan desire to withdraw from Iraq. This was clearly not the will of the people, which was perfectly captured by the video in which democratic rep. Obey, frustrated by some citizens demanding a vote to withdrawal funding from the war, yells that they don’t the votes.

It was obvious to me that the majority of Americans did not want to leave Iraq but were definitely unhappy with the way things were progressing due in large part to the way the war was being covered. The fact that the democrats were unable to correctly distinguish between these two sentiments is what separates good politicians from bad politicians.

Good politics is finding the rhetorical message that matches the will of the majority. Republicans have consistently beat the Democrats in Iraq by finding the proper rhetorical message. Last night, over dinner, Michael mentioned that he liked Ron Paul because he does not spin his message. Ron Paul ’speaks the truth’ as he said. The problem with speaking the ‘truth’ is that a majority of people rarely share the ‘truth’. Your truth does not get elected with a minority. This is the case with Ron Paul and was most certainly the case with democrats attempting a withdrawal of the troops out of Iraq.