The Dish

The president’s superb speech yesterday had many memorable moments. But I was struck particularly by this passage:

We are a nation that is dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal. We live that truth within our military, and see it in the varied backgrounds of those we lay to rest today. We defend that truth at home and abroad, and we know that Americans will always be found on the side of liberty and equality. That is who we are as a people.

It is. Although it has always been a process, always a struggle, and America’s great virtue is in having those struggles right out in the open, and the rawness of the issue placed front and center. Race first, of course. One of the most moving movies I’ve ever seen is “Glory”, Ed Zwick’s remarkable film about the first African-American volunteer company in the Civil War, its battle against prejudice on its own side as well as among the Confederate enemy. The reason it hit home for me is that I realized that this must have been the first time that black Americans actually fought for their own country that included them as citizens. Before then, they had been slaves or somehow marginal to the civic task of national defense. But by fighting for their country, in some ways they finally became full citizens of their own country.

It is not a right, military service. But it is transformative of a citizen’s place in the world. We rightly see servicemembers as special – because they make possible everything else. Without defense, we would have no secure country. And without citizens prepared to risk their lives, we would have no defense. And when a country says that one section of its own citizenry is barred from service simply because of who they are, even though they may be fine soldiers, it is saying a very clear thing to them:

You are not real Americans. This is not your country. Because of who you are, you must take an observer’s role in the defense of your own country. More to the point, if we discover that you are in the ranks, we will expel you. We will do this to you at any time, even if you have served honorably for years. We will strip you of your pension. We will allow anyone to expose you. And even if your skills – like fluent Arabic – are desperately needed, you are so repulsive to the military, and so disruptive to its cohesion, that we will throw you out anyway. There is nothing you can do to avoid this. There is no act heroic enough to overcome this. There is no record good enough to avoid it. You are beneath this ultimate act of citizenship because of who you are.

The sad truth, then, is that the president was wrong yesterday. When he said

We are a nation that is dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal. We live that truth within our military,

He misspoke. We do not live that truth. We betray it.

And there are some Americans whose open, proud chance for glory is yet to come.

David Ignatius has a splendid column on the character and courage and resilience of those tasked to defend us. Humor, perseverance, sacrifice: these appear to be routine even under the extraordinary stress of these two endless, confusing occupations. On this, David is surely right:

In truth, the U.S. military may be the most resilient part of American society right now. The soldiers are clearly in better shape than the political class that sent them to war and the economic leadership that has mismanaged the economy. (I'd give the same high marks to young civilians who are serving and sacrificing in hard places — the Peace Corps and medical volunteers I've met abroad and the teachers in tough inner-city schools.)

James Joyner disapproves of the president calling those killed at Ft. Hood heroes:

The people aboard Flight 93 who took on the hijackers to prevent them from crashing into an unknown target?  Heroes.  The people in the Towers and the Pentagon who responded to crisis by trying to help others?   Heroes.  The firefighters and police officers who rushed into the burning buildings at great personal risk to save others?  Definitely: Heroes.

Similarly, police Sergeant Kim Munley, who shot and captured Major Nidal Malik Hasan, doubtless preventing him from killing more people, was a hero.

Most of those who died, on both 9/11 and that day at Fort Hood, by contrast, had no opportunity for heroism.  They were taken by surprise while going about their daily routine and murdered. They did not “give” their lives; they were robbed of them.

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

A reader writes:

I offer this in response to the reader who wrote in and said that a ultrasound tech wouldn't see abnormalities to suggest Down's Syndrome: I actually had a ultrasound tech mention to me that they can see a thicker neck, an indication of Down's Syndrome, in an ultrasound.

My husband and I got a abnormal diagnoses on our second's son initial ultrasound, and had to go in for a second, longer ultrasound (with an obviously more trained technician than the first one). We were sweating bullets, waiting to hear something about the baby. This technician looked the baby over for a while, did all the measurements, and finally she said, "Why are you guys here?" When we told her, she reassured us that she saw nothing abnormal. And then she went over the things they can see from an ultrasound, and specifically mentioned Down's Syndrome and the thickness of the fetus' neck. I know that she was not a radiologist, because the radiologist came in later, and did her own ultra-sound to reassure all of us that everything was indeed normal.

Now, I'm sure ultrasound techs don't officially "diagnose" Down's Syndrome, but they can see an indication, and they pass the information on so the doctor can urge an amniocentesis to diagnose. Out of the mind-boggling, bizarre details about Trig's gestation and birth, this bit seems accurate and believable. 

A reader who contributed an "It's So Personal" story back in June also touched upon the subject:

About 5 years ago, after a lot of effort, my wife got pregnant with our second child. We did the regular genetic screening (I can't recall the name of the test, but it was just a simple blood test). It came back positive for Down's Syndrome, but only at a slightly higher risk. Our OB/Gyn said the odds for someone my wife's age (27) to have a Down's baby were about 1 in 10,000. The positive test result put the odds closer to 1 in 150. He recommended we go to a doctor who specialized in high-risk pregnancies to confirm there was no problem. She was 5 months along at the time.

During the additional testing, we had an ultrasound done with an amazingly high-tech machine. During the scan we kept asking the tech if she saw anything, but she kept telling us she wasn't legally allowed to say one way or the other. We sat quietly until the end of the test, at which point the tech turned to us and said, "Well, I'm going to be honest with you, because it's the only way I know how to be. I see some problems with the head."

I could hear my wife's breathing quicken, and my hands started to shake uncontrollably. The doctor came in and said he saw holoprosencephaly, which, as we learned, essentially means that the brain did not divide into two hemispheres. In fact, although we were 19 weeks along, the brain had stopped developing at 11 weeks.

Read the rest here.

If you're as bleary-eyed as I am by the minutiae of health insurance reform, and somewhat discouraged by the developments of late, take a look at David Leonhardt's brush-clearing column today. The House bill does a decent job of expanding access to coverage, but fails to tackle the deeper problems of costs. David has six criteria to determine whether the final bill will be better. They all make sense to me – although they all face the usual entrenched opposition. Read the whole thing. But here's one eye-opener:

Each year, about 100,000 people die from preventable infections they contract in a hospital. When 108 hospitals in Michigan instituted a simple process to prevent some of these infections, it nearly eliminated them. If Medicare reduced payments for the treatment of such infections, it would give hospitals a huge financial incentive to prevent them. The Senate bill takes a small step in this direction by cutting payments to hospitals with high infection rates by 1 percent. The House bill merely requires hospitals to report their rates publicly.

Think of it this way: America's hospitals are responsible for avoidable casualties thirty times that of 9/11 every year. Preventing that could save tax-payers' money. But the Congress seems unable to do anything about it. For me, finding a way to allow individuals to opt out of their employer health plan for a cheaper one in the insurance exchange seems to me a vital foot in the door for more competition and consumer choice. 

The benefit of Obama allowing the legislature to legislate and letting this arduous process take its time is that it maximizes chances for evolution, correction, evaluation … and improvement. Let's improve this thing as well as pass it.

Glenn Beck loses a lawsuit against a satirical site.

Umdiddlediddlediddleumdiddleye. Umdiddlediddlediddleumdiddleye:

That's Michelle Malkin's broad brush. And that kind of rhetoric can have consequences:

Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

And here's a classic moment:

When officers arrived, police say, Bruce told them he heard the man say “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is great.” “That’s what they say before they blow you up,” Bruce said, according to police.

But this too is worth noting:

McElroy said Bruce "teared up when we told him that (Marakis) was a Greek Orthodox priest and not a terrorist."

A reader writes:

Your reader wrote:

"The biggest upshot of the self-publishing revolution is the greater likelihood of people finding the crap that means something to them rather than having experts tell them what crap should mean something to them."

I agree with most of what he or she wrote, but I think the statement above is partially wrong. With more people publishing, there is more "noise" out there. That means that even though there is now a greater likelihood that some crap out there means something to me, there is also a smaller likelihood I'll be able to cut through the noise and find it.

In a Long Tail economy, the role of the gatekeeper becomes extremely important. The gatekeeper can be a traditional one, like the NY Review of Books, or a more modern one like the reviews on Amazon, or it can be some unknown blogger who I happen to find has interesting taste. But I need someone or something to help me find the crap that means something to me. That's why Netflix felt the need to have a competition to improve its recommendation engine by a very small amount. The gatekeepers own the future.