ELSEWHERE

"Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released recently declassified documents showing that Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry accepted laundered contributions for his 1996 re-election campaign from the Communist Chinese government"

Ollie North's message to John Kerry. Excerpts: "The issue is what you did to us when you came home, John. When you got home, you co-founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War and wrote The New Soldier, which denounced those of us who served - and were still serving - on the battlefields of a thankless war. Worst of all, John, you then accused me - and all of us who served in Vietnam - of committing terrible crimes and atrocities".

If you want to have a look at John Kerry's disgraceful anti-American book of the 1970s, the whole thing is online here.

Kerrynomics: "Those politicians who propose policies that would restrict trade, increase taxes on capital and/or labor; and increase costly regulations on labor and business are in effect proposing policies to reduce economic and job growth. Unfortunately, Mr. Kerry proposes to do all of the above. He wants to put restrictions on both current and future trade agreements — and each one of these would cause a one-time drop in baseline economic growth and a permanently reduced economic level. His proposals to "tax the rich" would in fact increase taxes on capital — i.e., capital gains, dividends and savings, all of which will reduce the capital stock... Also, his proposals to raise the minimum wage and impose other restrictions on worker employment will only reduce jobs and real wages. Such policies are not compassionate but in fact are hurtful. Either Mr. Kerry does not or chooses not to understand economic reality".

The BBC gets it right at last: "The UN report confirms what many involved in counter-terrorism have increasingly come to believe - that, whilst they have their uses, sanctions and other attempts to stem the flow of money into al-Qaeda are not necessarily the most effective way of preventing future attacks."

Two "Middle Eastern" men have just been arrested for planning to blow up a NYC subway station

NYC shows that standards work: "Who, in the late '80s and early '90s, could have predicted that New York City would soon claim the title of safest big city in America? Yet national crime statistics compiled by the FBI say Gotham has done just that. The key was James Q. Wilson's and George Kelling's ideas about "broken-window policing," the concept that cracking down on small quality-of-life crimes (like turnstile-jumping and graffiti) could bring an out-of-control city under control. Giuliani's embrace of this strategy led to his being portrayed as a "thug" and a "fascist" - but it worked. In 1990, New York City saw 2,245 murders; in 2001, just 642. By 2002, the city's murder rate had dropped to its lowest level since 1963.... Can Bush bring Americans around to his compassionate-conservative agenda of holding children to tougher academic standards, opening up social services to entrepreneurship and reducing the tax burden on all Americans? Maybe he could if all Americans were New Yorkers."

The Singapore government understands incentives: "Tax relief for parents, family allowance for the first and fourth children in addition to the second and third, cheaper mortgages for large families, lower maid fees and longer maternity leave and holiday entitlement for mothers are just some of the measures [Singapore's] ministers hope will mean busier maternity wards from next May".

Useful experience: The blogger at Metal Yarmulke was recently having a big problem with her blog. Somehow, when anybody tried to access it, they got sent to an unrelated site! So her blog had become completely inaccessible! Hair-tearing stuff for any blogger! I could think of a couple of ways in which things could have gone wrong so tried to help. None of my solutions did help but I was able to work out that some hostile person had put a redirect up and told her so. She then got a techie friend to trace the bug and he found a javascript redirect in the blog template itself! I was rather irate at myself for not thinking of that so I thought I should pass the information on as a warning to others. If something similar now happens to my blog I will know where to look for the problem and should be able to fix it immediatey. I always have an up-to-date copy of my template saved to disk in case of crashes anyway, so it would take me only two seconds of copying and pasting to reverse any meddling. Forewarned is forearmed!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

**************************

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************