The Dish

I keep coming back to Hayek on this – because government-sponsored health insurance is not government-run healthcare. Maybe it's my British roots that make this so clear to me (if the British Tories proposed a universal health insurance scheme, with care provided by private doctors, nurses and hospitals, it would rightly be regarded as a major shift to the right.) Here's Hayek's discussion of why this is not heresy for libertarians and conservatives of the old school:

Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision.

Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong… Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make the provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken," – The Road To Serfdom (Chapter 9).

Demanding and helping people insure themselves in a context where emergency care is already guaranteed is not socialism. It's prudence.

It's worth examining the precise wording he used in front of military leaders this afternoon:

After more than a decade of opposition and delay, we've passed inclusive hate crimes legislation to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, or who they are.

This simply doesn't make sense. Hate crime laws for most categories, including federal measures,  have been around for a long time. The only new thing here – the only thing that has fostered "a decade of opposition and delay" – is the addition of sexual orientation. So the president had a chance to defend gays from being excluded from the usual roster of victims, in front of military leaders, and he had to walk backwards into this strange circumlocution.

Obama's is the support that dare not speak our name. And what exactly is that referendum in Maine about? Not sure. Haven't heard enough. Want another party at the White House?

Packer explains:

The country’s politicians refuse to call the war in Afghanistan a war. Germany’s participation was sold to the public here as peacekeeping and reconstruction, and that’s what it must remain to prevent any further erosion of support—even though it’s becoming more and more obvious that the war has come to the Germans in the north, the first real fighting the German army has seen since 1945. The German politicians and journalists I’ve spoken with want Germany to do more, not less, in Afghanistan, even if that means fighting. Public opinion in this amazingly pacifist country runs otherwise, though only the extreme left and right want an immediate withdrawal.

Doug Short's latest chart on the stock market.

The Awl (via DT) proffers a grim visual picture of what has happened to newspaper circulation these past couple of decades. If you work for a newspaper, this is troubling stuff – so it's after the jump to avoid too much hysteria/panic/depression:

Here's an insight into why the Israelis have no intention whatever of moving toward a two-state solution:

"When we [Israelis] say that this is a political conflict, then we lose the battle," [Major Adrian Agassi] told the Guardian, adding that it should be remembered that the ancient land of Israel is "given to us by the Bible, not by some United Nations". Agassi, one of the most important officials in the military courts wielding authority over large parts of the West Bank, says settling Jews on lands that made up ancient Israel stands above all other biblical commandments and only when it is done can they have "a promised land and a promised life".

"You say that these lands 'passed into Jewish hands'. Others would say that they came back into Jewish hands. Others would say that they are obviously ours, inherently," he said. It was, he claims, a mistake to call it the State of Israel. "If we would have named it the State of Jews, the Arabs would have understood that this land belongs to the Jews."

At some point, what people do is more eloquent than what they say.

The state supreme court rules they have to abide by Maine's laws for disclosing their out-of-state donors. Here's the PDF ruling. Money quote:

Maine is entitled to conclude that its electorate needs to know, on an ongoing basis, the source of financial support for those who are taking positions on a ballot initiative. It will not do to say that a one-time disclosure in the week before the election is sufficient. That would not give the opposing viewpoint the opportunity to point out the source of the financing and seek to persuade the electorate that the source of support discounts the message.

Eric Holder, asked earlier this week in Maine about the marriage referendum, deflected the issue. When asked at today's hate crime shindig if he could clarify that, he said:

"I don't really know enough about the referendum over there to comment."

That a) untrue and b) cowardly. Meanwhile, let's check back in six months to see if this hate crimes bill has made any difference to anyone in the entire US. Remind me, won't you? I need to be kept honest as well.

Visakhapatnam, India, 4 pm

Dreher doesn't blame newspaper executives for the downfall of print:

I don't know that the most brilliant and enlightened publisher with a staff of geniuses could have figured out how to make a daily newspaper survive the advent of the Internet. I think about the small corner of the newspaper world that's my bailiwick, the editorial and op-ed pages. I grew up reading whoever was on the op-ed page that day for insight and analysis into issues and current events. Now, I mostly read blogs, because it's easier for me to find the kind of information I'm interested in, and it's often written in a more lively, engaging style, frequently by people who, unlike columnists like me, are not generalists. How can a print newspaper, which has a finite amount of space, and which has to cater to a broad audience, hope to compete with that?