The Rule of Three

Third time's a....

Back when I did computer tech support, we had a rule of thumb for evaluating the significance of reports of unusual and previously unreported failures .

*One report of a failure is a fluke.

*Two reports of a failure is a coincidence. It might just be two users making the same error.

*Three reports indicates a pattern of failure that arises from the hardware or software itself.

This rule of thumb evolved after observing the failures of millions of computers. We learned that three separate computers would only suffer the same failure if the failure arose from a common source in the computers themselves. Just three machines out of millions told us we most likely had a systemic problem.

Hmmmm....

And similarly with ACORN. Once is a fluke, can happen with any large organization, twice coincidence but...

Three identical reports of the same failure from three separate offices indicates the criminality arises from the organization itself. It is highly unlikely that, out of the hundreds of Acorn offices around the nation, the journalist just happened to wander into the three offices whose managers wouldn’t blink an eye at helping to set up a brothel using children.

This degree of organizational systemic rot has to come from the head. I think that much is obvious. Something in Acorn’s organizational culture made these people feel that it was okay and expected for them to give the criminal advice that they did. Certainly, if Acorn had been a private for-profit company, three separate and wholly unrelated incidents would have been enough for leftists to demand the heads of the corporate officers.

The really disturbing part is how in all three cases the managers of the Acorn offices don’t even bat an eye when the journalist asks about setting up a brothel. Further, they seem to have the logistics and legal tangles of using a brothel to fund a political career already well thought out. I don’t know about you, but if someone ask me how to run a brothel using minors and how to funnel that money into the a political campaign, I would have to stop and think about it for while. The fact that they have the answers already queued up and ready to go tells us one thing…

The emphasis here is that it's the same failure. The same response to a given stimulus. That makes it extremely hard to say "it's all a coincidence".

The really disturbing part is how in all three cases the managers of the Acorn offices don’t even bat an eye when the journalist asks about setting up a brothel. Further, they seem to have the logistics and legal tangles of using a brothel to fund a political career already well thought out. I don’t know about you, but if someone ask me how to run a brothel using minors and how to funnel that money into the a political campaign, I would have to stop and think about it for while. The fact that they have the answers already queued up and ready to go tells us one thing…

They knew how to do this; they had plans on how to do this. Not just one office, but many offices. They were not surprised when a pimp came to them for advice.

But this is what I really don’t understand:

This systemic criminality is an act of treason against both Acorn’s supporters and the people they were supposed to help! There is no other word for this level of betrayal. Honestly, what greater crime could an organization commit against the sensibilities and trust of leftists than to support criminal activities that degrade the communities of our nation’s most poor and helpless? What greater sin is there in the leftists’ lexicon than the literal sexual enslavement of children?

Where is the blind rage from the left? Why aren’t they mobbing the offices of Acorn and dragging the corporate officers out into the street? How bad do things have to become within a leftist organization before the rest of the left says, “Enough! You are no longer part of us!” How long will it take for the left to cast Acorn from the fold? How long before they stop making excuses and condemning those who brought this evil to light and instead clean their own house?

Remember this the next time someone says how inherently heartless the Right is and how inherently moral the Left is.

Remember.

Remember that it took two outsiders to do this undercover operation, and when they broke the story it was still ignored by the Mass media. They did not want to do this story and when it came out they did their best to ignore it; they're still trying to ignore it.

What do you call a news organization that concentrates less on reporting the news and more on keeping unpleasant facts from emerging?

Oh look, it's up to four now.

Mass Media loosing it.

The bulk of the media is doing its best to ignore the ACORN story.

Go to the link to hear what the NYT et al, literally don't want you to know.

Glen Reynolds: So how will the NYT, and other big-media outfits that have ignored the ACORN scandals so far, explain this to their readers? The same way they explained Van Jones’ resignation, I guess . . . .

A review of Obama's speech.

Powerline I think has the most detailed analysis of the speech, so here's a few quotations from it.

One striking aspect of the speech was that Obama kept talking about the "plan" that he "announced" tonight--but there is no plan; not in writing, anyway.

...

Here are some excerpts from the speech that I thought were noteworthy:

Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics.

Then, a few minutes later:

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result.

By far the biggest scaremonger on this issue has been Obama himself.

Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed.

I'm not sure whether Obama and his handlers understand how this sort of talk grates on those of us who are not liberal Democrats (a large majority of the country). Debating public policy issues is not "bickering." Disagreeing with a proposal to radically change one of the largest sectors of our economy is not a "game." This kind of gratuitous insult--something we never heard from President Bush, for example--is one of the reasons why many consider Obama to be mean-spirited.

I assume most people noticed how, in tonight's speech, Obama's assurance that we will not lose our present insurance coverage has been scaled back. This was after thousands of critics pointed out that under the Democrats' proposals, many people (more than 100 million according to some estimates) will in fact lose the insurance coverage they now have.

...

Consider the analogy to life insurance: could a dying, 90-year-old person expect an insurance company to issue him a million dollar life insurance policy? Maybe, but it would cost close to a million dollars. Why can life insurance companies sell policies at rates that people consider reasonable? Only because they are insuring against premature death, and the insured has been paying premiums for many years, during most of which time there was little risk of his dying. The same principle applies, pretty closely, to health insurance.

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

No, it isn't. The Democrats' bill doesn't call the agencies it sets up "death panels," it says they will decide on "best practices." But any socialized medicine scheme saves money by rationing care. Who gets shorted, the politically powerful? No, of course not; the elderly and those who are otherwise helpless. In the United Kingdom, the death panel goes by the Orwellian acronym "NICE."

As Steven Green says in his much breifer but more colorful "drunkblog" of the speech:

5:32PM Correction: Preventative care does save lives, but it costs more money, not less. Nothing costs less than a dead patient. Don’t forget that. Ever.

Give his account a read too.

Back to Powerline

In fact, Obama and Congressional Democrats have zero interest in increasing choice and competition. If they did, there is an easy solution. There are over 1,000 health insurance companies in the United States; why do you think it is that in Alabama, one company has 90 percent of the business? It is because there are major legal obstacles to insurance companies operating across state lines. State legislatures, and lots of the companies, like it this way. Competition is hard. But if Obama really wanted to expand "choice and competition" in health care, all he would have to do is go along with the Republican proposal to allow health insurance companies to sell on a national basis. Like, say, computer companies, beer companies, automobile companies, law firms, and pretty much everyone else. The Democrats' refusal to allow existing health insurance companies to compete against each other nationwide, more than anything else, puts the lie to their nonsense about "choice and competition."

Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business.

Really? We've all seen the YouTube video where Obama says that under his plan, private health insurance will be driven into extinction over a period of ten to twenty years. Has he changed his mind? When? Why? Does President Obama fail to understand the ubiquity of YouTube? Does he not understand that many millions of Americans consider him a liar when he says things like this?

Emphasis added. And its interesting that such a "tech savy" and "skilled communicator" forgets that his past statements can be called up and directly contrasted with what he's saying now. How stupid does he think we are?

Is it churlish to point out that profits are not overhead? It might be if this were just a slip of the tongue on the stump. But this was a speech that was carefully crafted by Obama and his top advisers. They really do not know the first thing about business or economics. So why should we put them in charge of our economy?

I want to speak directly to America's seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.

Actually, the administration has said that around half the cost of the plan, $500 billion, would be paid for by cuts in Medicare. So it isn't exactly "demagoguery and distortion" to suggest that there might be cuts in Medicare.

And some wonder why there's a lack of trust in the intentions and competence of government.

But wait! If we can identify hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid and we know how to eliminate it, why haven't we done so already? Why don't we do so--right now!--regardless of the administration's highly controversial health care bill?

There is no possible answer to these questions. The Obama plan--whatever it is, once reduced to writing--depends for most of its financing on the bare assertion that we are currently wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, and that we will stop wasting that money only if taxpayers knuckle under to Obamacare.

So the takeaway message is "Shut up" Stop pointing out the flaws in the "Plan" stop questioning the government, stop "bickering" Just Shut up.

Where have we heard that before?

Aaaaannnnnndd - under the bus.

Van Jones, resigned.

This is another "I told you so" for the White House's critics. Huh, guess Obama wasn't above putting radicals on his staff. Oh and the excitable overly-dramatic Glen Beck was right about this.

And talk about timing the release for burial.

According to Chuck Todd of MSNBC just now on Twitter, “Van Jones has resigned. Release just went out after midnight eastern.”

And another "tweet"

As Andy Levy Of Fox News’ Red Eye show notes on Twitter, “Won’t it be weird when people who don’t get their news from the internet or FNC have no idea who the guy who resigned is?”

More "pesky math"

Glen Reynolds has that unemployment chart. The one that shows the Whitehouses projections versus... reality.

Note how badly wrong the White House’s pre-stimulus projections were. Remember this when you hear their healthcare projections . . . .

That's what I don't get. Even if you support everything the WH and Congress claim about healthcare, why do you believe them? Why do you trust that things will actually go the way they promise?

Meanwhile people that aren't stary-eyed with faith in government not a certain... pattern.

Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.

"Oooh. Van Jones, alright! So, Van Jones. We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. -

-We were watching him, uh, really, he's not that old, for as long as he's been active out in Oakland. And all the creative ideas he has. And so now, we have captured that. And we have all that energy in the White House."

Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs on Van Jones.

And what creative ideas does Mr. Jones have?

A self-proclaimed Communist. A vulgar Marxist twice over. A supporter of cold-blooded cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal. A 9/11 Truther . A racist hater, whose hatred extends to the United States. And insofar as his current job is concerned, we have a man who sees the "green jobs" con as a tool for overthrowing capitalism. We have, in short, the complete left-wing nightmare package.

Don't you feel better that Obama's expanded all those czars. Remember the promises of transparancy?

Hopechange! Read it all. This is a story the mass media won't cover (itself a story).

Well at least Jones doesn't advocate mandatory sterlilizations of undesirables, unlike some of Obama's staff.

Some other thoughts.

The problems with Van “change the system” Jones are not just his serial slurs against much of American society (“an apartheid regime”) as we know it (e.g., capitalism, the coal industry, American farming, the white population, the Bush administration (for causing 9/11), the Republican “***holes”, etc. — but that he simply cannot tell the truth about his own history, in disavowing almost everything he has said, written, or signed in the recent past. (His involvement with the 9/11 “Bush did it” lunacy has a heritage beyond just his written endorsement).
Worse still, by its own admission, the Obama administration seems to have monitored Jones and selected him for his czardom precisely because of, not despite, his flamboyant past.

Going Galt.... on education?

At least for a day.

Obama wants to address the nation's youth.

Hmmm.....

Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:
What do you think the President wants us to do?

Does the speech make you want to do anything?

Steven Green's response:

Now my son is young enough that he won’t be subjected to the President’s smiling face, dulcet tones, and calls to action. He won’t be pressured by his teachers or peers to go along or get with the program.

Your kids might not be so lucky.

In impossible times, the only way to be a responsible parent is to do the irresponsible thing. If my son were in a public school…

I’d call him in sick next Tuesday. I’d keep him home. I suggest you do so. I urge you to do so. If pressed, be honest about your reasons — but be reasonable about presenting them. Otherwise, don’t offer an explanation. Make it a silent protest.

Steven Green's not the only one that advises you to do something.

Rights?

The whole problem with healthcare being a "right"

There is no automatic “right” to goods or services that must be produced by another — that would be state-sanctioned theft or slavery.

The article goes into what it actually means to ration. It's similar to the issue of what censorship auctally is. In that the key is ability or inability of goverment to exercise force on invididuals.