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But beyond humor that misses, with some audiences or with all, what characterizes snark? Two things, I think. One is that it is an appeal to emotion - it is a statement with a particular affect, and the affect is an appeal to an attitude in which both writer and reader participate, but they participate in an exclusionary way. This is what makes it a branch of irony. Instead of arguing to everyone on the basis of shared reason so that, at least in principle, everyone could be included in the shared sentiment, snark depends upon exclusion. It is a refusal to offer a public argument, with the possibility of reasoned inclusion, and instead depends upon prior shared views that merely exclude because snark does not make an attempt to persuade. It is ‘affectively exclusionary’ in the language of moral psychology.
 
[...]
 
Two, because snark depends upon a prior shared commitment, it is a form of question-begging argument. Not precisely a form of argument, because it is about affect, not reason. So, more precisely, snark is the affective cognate of a question-begging argument, in which the sentiment of the conclusion assumes the sentiment of the premise. It assumes that one already shares the attitudes necessary to … share the attitudes.

-Kenneth Anderson

The Honduran legislature, judiciary and military, acting in support of the rule of law, have removed President Manuel Zelaya from office, and US President Obama wants none of it. Obama and the media have mischaracterized the events as a “coup d’etat” when they were really a last-ditch attempt by the Honduran political establishment to block Zelaya — who is being aided by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — from holding an illegal referendum in an attempt to circumvent term limits on his office. The Obama administration is siding with Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Chavez against the democratic Honduran government in an attempt to get Zelaya reinstated. (Mary O’Grady’s excellent column is a good summary of the events and issues. Fausta and Gateway Pundit have much additional information and links.)

The best that can be said about our president’s involvement in this issue is that it risks transforming a difficult situation into a disaster. Absent US pressure (never mind US support) the Honduran political scene would likely return to something like normal, with popular and media focus shifting from the deposed Zelaya to the coming elections. By getting involved in support of Zelaya we probably make a drawn-out crisis inevitable, and we green light further subversion of Honduran democracy by Chavez and Ortega. In the worst case a military insurgency or civil war supported by the dictators is conceivable. That would be a catastrophe.

Honduras is small, poor, weak, generally pro-USA and depends heavily on our trade and goodwill. The Obama administration may figure that it can push the Honduran government around, and that may be true. But why should we get involved at all? Obama could say that he supports Hondurans’ right to representative government, and that we will help if asked, and leave it at that. That would be prudent. Why does he instead prefer to step into mud of unknown depth?

I think the likely answer to this question is either that the Obama people don’t know what they are doing or that they are acting out of ideological bias. Ordinarily I would assume incompetence, and I think that Obama is indeed incompetent. But as with Obama’s hostile treatment of Israel — another small, pro-American country — the Obama administration’s incompetence in Central America follows a clear ideological pattern. Anyone who does not see by now that Obama is a determined leftist radical with a transformative national agenda that most Americans don’t want is either blind or not paying attention.

Seablogger puts it well WRT Honduras:

The terrible precedent will in fact be set if this would-be dictator and ally of Hugo Chavez is returned to power through US meddling, just days after Obama spurned any meddling with Iran.
 
Obama’s true affinities are now exposed for all to see. Take a look, Obama voters. Do you really want the US aligned with Castro and Chavez — actually doing their bidding? Do you want the US siding with the blood-stained regime in Teheran, for the sake of imaginary future diplomacy?

(See the Seablogger post for full context of the above quote.)

We are on course for disaster, all because so many American voters have had it so good for so long that they thought it would always be so, and that they could afford to throw away their votes on an attractive cipher.

UPDATE: See also this post at Power Line, and Babalu is on fire with many excellent posts about Honduras.

UPDATE 2: Caroline Glick reaches similar conclusions:

The only reasonable answer to all of these questions is that far from being nonideological, Obama’s foreign policy is the most ideologically driven since Carter’s tenure in office. If when Obama came into office there was a question about whether he was a foreign policy pragmatist or an ideologue, his behavior in his first six months in office has dispelled all doubt. Obama is moved by a radical, anti-American ideology that motivates him to dismiss the importance of democracy and side with anti-American dictators against US allies.

UPDATE 3: Andy McCarthy on Obama and Iran:

The key to understanding Obama, on Iran as on other matters, is that he is a power-politician of the hard Left : He is steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment over what he chooses to see in America’s history, but a “pragmatist” in the sense that where ideology and power collide (as they are apt to do when your ideology becomes less popular the more people understand it), Obama will always give ground on ideology (as little as circumstances allow) in order to maintain his grip on power.
 
[...]
 
It’s a mistake to perceive this as “weakness” in Obama. It would have been weakness for him to flit over to the freedom fighters’ side the minute it seemed politically expedient. He hasn’t done that, and he won’t. Obama has a preferred outcome here, one that is more in line with his worldview, and it is not victory for the freedom fighters. He is hanging as tough as political pragmatism allows, and by doing so he is making his preferred outcome more likely. That’s not weakness, it’s strength — and strength of the sort that ought to frighten us.

The hysterical, unrelenting media coverage of Jackson crowded out almost all news reports of the Iranian massacres, of the terrible Congressional carbon-tax bill (which might not have passed the House or even been brought to a vote had it received more public attention), of North Korea and of who-knows-what other important issues at the end of the past week. Our corrupt, agenda-driven political leaders, not to mention this country’s enemies, are no doubt taking full advantage of the windfall.

The people who wallow in Jackson’s death are foolish and self-indulgent and lack grown-up perspective. Even worse are the mass-media who cater to the wallowers. Since most of the media are already covering Jackson one might think an enterprising network would see competitive advantage in covering, for at least part of the day, some of the important things that are going on in the world. But no, they are lemmings, and the result is 24/7 Jackson. (And here let me send a special fuck you to Fox News. The self-proclaimed antidote to biased big media confirms itself to be just another bunch of ratings whores whose supposed patriotism and interest in serious news vanish at the first notice of a missing white child or a celebrity scandal.)

Political bias is a big cause of the decline of the legacy media, but the inherent weaknesses of advertising-driven broadcasting shouldn’t be discounted. Broadcasters make money by generating traffic, which means they try to generate as much traffic as possible, typically by emphasizing the tawdry and the salacious and by ginning up controversy. On the Internet this is known as trolling and is derided. In the broadcast world this is known as the dominant business model. Our media status quo is better than having a government-controlled press (Fox is still superior to NPR), and the Internet now provides important alternative sources of information. Nevertheless, our broadcast media’s insane focus on Jackson’s death is an infuriating reminder of how much those media’s limitations may be costing us in the long run as a society.

The existence of widespread rape in our prisons is one of the real black marks on our society. We could easily make prisons more humane if we had the political will. Americans are less tolerant of cruelty to animals than used to be the case. Perhaps we will eventually become less tolerant of cruelty to members of our own Untouchable class.

(Via Instapundit and Rand Simberg.)

Not only are the ads stupid and misleading, they perpetuate the stereotype that, no matter what else is happening, a woman will always drop everything to answer the phone. If someone just broke into your house, and the alarm goes off and you’re trying to figure out what to do, are you going to run to answer the phone if it rings? I’m surprised there hasn’t been more comment on this point, if only for purposes of ridicule.

I understand the commercial rationale behind these ads. They seem to be directed at women who are concerned about being victimized but who don’t like guns and aren’t willing to take other serious measures to protect themselves. They want to feel safe, but either the mere feeling of safety is enough for them or they don’t understand that alarms by themselves do little to protect them. And because most such customers will not be victimized they may conclude that their alarms are worthwhile.

One of the reasons why there are few criminal break-ins of occupied homes in the USA is that many Americans do have real security systems, particularly firearms. If you prefer not to own firearms, which may be a perfectly reasonable choice for you, you still benefit from the likelihood, which most criminals probably understand, that some of your neighbors are armed.

Of course, an argument about the positive externalities conferred on communities by community members who are gun owners would be difficult to convey in a simple-minded TV commercial, and it might not help the alarm company’s business to point it out. But it’s a valid point and that’s a good thing for all of us.

Michael Ledeen on the Iranian elections:

But things are different now. The Iranians do not expect any help from the outside world. Bush did not help them, to his shame, and nobody thinks Obama would lift a finger for Iranian dissidents. They’re on their own, just as the Lebanese voters were a few days ago. I think many Lebanese decided that they’d better take a stand against Hezbollah before all hope for freedom was lost. Many Iranians may well reason the same way.
 
If violence breaks out, what will the West do? Probably nothing, except express concern, and call for sweet reasonableness. Good luck with that! What should the West do? Support freedom in Iran. Nothing would so transform the region as a free government, dedicated to good relations with the West. Such a government would end the profligate spending on terrorism and devote the country’s resources to domestic concerns. Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, and the other jihadis, would be dramatically weakened. Syria’s Bashar Assad would suddenly find himself without his big brother in Tehran. If you want to dream of peace in the Middle East, a free Iran is at the heart of your Utopia.
 
Finally, for those who unaccountably continue to believe that the most important thing in the Middle East is the Arab-Israeli conflict, the best chance is once again a free Iran that worries about Iranians instead of Palestinians. There is no chance of peace so long as Tehran runs the terror movements. But if the terrorists have to raise their own money, find their own weapons, and train their own killers, things might get a lot easier.

I think that Ledeen’s comment about Lebanese voters is probably right. Anyone who isn’t blind must see that US allies threatened by aggressive dictatorships, as well as oppressed populations in those dictatorships, are now on their own with no chance of receiving US help. Certainly most Israelis understand this, though it’s not clear whether their corrupt political class does. Nor are Japanese, Taiwanese, South Koreans, Australians, Georgians, Venezuelans and others likely to have any illusions. Interesting times ahead.

The Supreme Court has allowed the Chrysler takeover — and expropriation of bondholders’ equity — to go through.

Personally, I think Ricks is thinking about the problem the wrong way. The “political breakthrough” he speaks of could never have occurred under Saddam. But in a larger sense I think Ricks is right to warn about failure in Iraq. OIF was meant to send a signal to the despots of the Middle East to mind their manners; to avoid supporting nonstate terror actors; to avoiding seeking weapons of mass destruction. But the dominant meme to emerge from the last six years has almost been the exact opposite. That it is hopeless, except in the sense of buying them off, to deflect Middle Eastern despots from their schemes; that it is equally impossible, and possibly even immoral to stand forcibly in the way of those who seek nuclear arms. Obama is not entirely, as Ricks argues, the hapless victim of the policies of the last six years, rather he is the expression of a point of view that believes they are a failure.

-Richard Fernandez, Iraq, Victory or defeat?

I think the past six years should be seen as a controlled experiment. When we attacked the terrorists and their patrons directly, made them personally accountable as we did the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, they and their allies and emulators backed off. But when we hesitated and temporized and appeased we lost ground. Israel had similar experiences. Its assassination campaign against Hamas leaders was highly effective in suppressing terror attacks, but its negotiation attempts, precipitate withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, and irresolute handling of the 2006 Lebanese campaign helped to energize its enemies. In this context, Obama’s attempt to gain the favor of the Iranian regime rather than undermine it seems like an effort to replicate some of our and Israel’s recent strategic errors.

Chicagoboyz may be out of service intermittently tonight as I perform system maintenance.

Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: Done!

UPDATE2: Character-encoding issue is fixed.

A left-wing guest on “Hannity” tonight said we should stop enriching OPEC. He also said oil drilling off of the US coast is unacceptable because drilling platforms spoil the view. So which is it? Either energy production is most important or the esthetic values of people like him are most important. He can’t have it both ways. (The Left’s third alternative — forcing automobile companies to sell more small cars, hybrids and plug-in electric vehicles — is a false one, because Americans prefer larger vehicles and because increased vehicle efficiency leads to more driving.)

So much of leftist thought comes down to a childish unwillingness to acknowledge real-world tradeoffs.

If the instructions say to microwave something for 4 minutes on high and then 4-1/2 minutes on medium, and you can’t figure out how to set the power to medium so you say “screw it” and give it 8 minutes on high and then go do something and come back about fifteen minutes later, your results may not entirely resemble the “serving suggestion.”

A brilliant post about medical record-keeping by Michael O’Connor:

When it comes to Computerized Health Information Technology (CHIT), also known as the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), the pen is mightier than the computer.
 
Why? Because regulators and billing professionals seek comprehensive documentation, and believe that more information generates a clearer, more useful picture of what is happening (and has happened to) a particular patient. Malpractice attorneys and quality experts lust for this level of detail, as it will afford them the opportunity to point out the myriad failings of the health care system, and serve as a perch from which they can direct the continuous improvement in the quality of care. Patients, anxious that critical elements of their medical story might be lost or unappreciated, are anxious that every caregiver have complete and total awareness of the details and trajectory of their medical history. While noble, this aspiration is part of the problem with CHIT, and perhaps the major obstacle to its being a solution to any problem in medicine.
 
The relentless quest for higher resolution of detail has driven a relentless increase in the detail provided. Unfortunately, the coding available is often a poor fit for the clinical information (a mild dilation of the aorta classifies out as an aortic aneurysm, the former something that bears minding over decades, the later a potentially life threatening medical problem that commands close follow-up). Worse, much of this coding is generated by administrators remote from the bedside, and who typically are deprived of the information required to code accurately. The imperative to code something, anything, invariably trumps accuracy, and little inaccuracies creep in to the documentation in droves at this point. Please note the shift in language from record to documentation in the last sentence. Only outsiders regard such documentation as containing useful information about a patient; you will likely never meet a healthcare provider who has this view. You will never hear ‘Could you please request Mr H’s medical and billing records from his hospitalization at memorial hospital?’ Not gonna happen. In fact, practitioners know that there is more noise than information in this documentation, which is why they do not and have never had any interest in it. It is almost certainly the case that the cost of improving the accuracy of this documentation far surpasses any benefit that might accrue to the patient. The fantasy that you can monitor the quality of health care from this perch, or improve it, is, well, a fantasy. This has not stopped major players from falling for this, hook, line, and sinker:

Read the whole thing.

I know little of medicine. However, it strikes me that O’Connor’s post is an excellent explanation of how information-gathering systems tend to fail unless they are designed with a strong idea of what information is needed, and with careful attention to the incentives created (intentionally and unintentionally) for system users. The general problem is that bureaucratic incentives tend to encourage collection of as much data as possible, regardless of accuracy or utility for practitioners, while databases tend to become decreasingly useful as their scope increases and errors increase. The extreme case is something like the government’s “no fly” list, which is heavily seeded with inaccurate data and does not provide much if any benefit for all the hassles it causes. Medical databases designed by bureaucrats rather than doctors are likely to have similar problems, and O’Connor says that medical practitioners now avoid the electronic system in favor of a “shadow” version of the traditional medical chart.

The top-down imposition of database-driven information systems on medical practitioners is a promised feature of the Obama administration’s health-care reform scheme. O’Connor’s post gives a hint of how destructive such politically driven “reform” might be.

GayPatriotWest:

Do those who mocked her know how nasty they sound? Do they have any sense how people outside the liberal enclaves where they reside will react to such bile?

Of course they do. The main point of the viciousness is not to convince anyone but rather to intimidate critics into silence. This tactic probably won’t work with Prejean, but it will work with most critics of the gay/feminist/multiculti Left who aren’t driven by publicity.

Dan from Madison has an important post on a subject of great national interest.

UPDATE: Related post.