ELSEWHERE

I am very sorry to hear of the death of Arthur Seldon, founder of the (British) Institute of Economic Affairs, one of the earliest free-market think-tanks. I knew Arthur personally and he was everything they say of him here. I have also put up here a tribute to Arthur from Chris Tame, whom I also know. Chris is himself in precarious health these days so it is good to see that he is still in there fighting for the light.

There is an interesting article here on the admissions policies of Ivy League universities such as Harvard. Rather amusing that, like that great imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, they look for the "all-round man" rather than intellectual excellence alone. The original intent of the policy was of course to keep Jews out. Harvard had a very good relationship with the Nazi regime in the 1930s. I myself went to a government-run Australian university that admitted people on the basis of high-school examination results only and seem to have done pretty well in all sorts of ways despite such a "handicap". I consider my life to have been something of a "dream run" in fact. I have sure had a lot of fun. As the article itself concludes, if you have the drive and the ability, that is all that matters in the end.

Tony Blair gets tough on crime: "Signalling a big expansion of what he called summary justice through on-the-spot fines and anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), he said: "You cannot do it by the rules of the game that we have at the moment. You just can't." Using words that will infuriate the legal profession, he said: "Half of them end up getting off at the end of it . . . It's too complicated, too laborious. The police end up completely hidebound by a whole series of restrictions and difficulties. It doesn't work." .... He told his monthly press conference: "If you are a police officer patrolling the streets, and someone throws a brick through a window, or abuses an old lady on the way to the shops . . . If you have to take that person all the way through a long court process, you are not going to do it.... "The reason I introduced fixed penalties was I said `we have had enough of that'. You give them a fixed-penalty notice then they have to come to court to challenge it. That's summary justice. It's tough and it's hard but in my judgment it's the only way to deal with it." The Government is preparing a series of laws to be enforced by fixed penalties or Asbos. Mr Blair cited plans to use Asbo-style orders to evict drug dealers instantly from council houses and flats.

Mike Adams at his hilarious best. Just one excerpt: "Republican women are simply more attractive than Democratic women. It certainly feels good - after years of keeping it in - to state the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Those who don’t immediately accept this revelation as true can just click on this link. Of course, I knew that Republican women were more attractive than Democratic women, long before I saw the above link. But I didn’t know that it was proper to discuss the difference until just before my speech at Ohio University. That was when three very attractive women came into the room to take their seats and I asked innocently “Are you ladies all Democrats who are here to heckle me?” Their blue-eyed blond leader responded with this far more intelligent question: “Do we look like Democrats to you?” .... The public discussion of this issue will help Republicans answer some important questions. For example: “Should we assume that being gay often causes one to be a Democrat? Isn’t it more likely that the lack of exposure to attractive women causes Democrats to be gay?” And “Do Democratic women consider compliments in the workplace to be sexual harassment simply because they rarely hear them?”"

Anything rather than sack some bureaucrats: "San Diego is more than $1.4 billion in arrears on its pension payments. Its bond rating is so low that it cannot issue bonds for needed public works. Last month city leaders acknowledged that a plan to help deal with the crisis by selling city land was almost unworkable because city bureaucrats had overvalued the city's assets by more than $600 million and the city's inventory of real estate assets actually includes land it sold, never owned or hopes to buy. "Simply put," said Jesse Knight Jr., the president of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, "San Diego is a mess." The budget crisis doesn't just humiliate San Diegans -- it's cutting into their quality of life. The crisis has forced the elimination of a citywide day-care program for children from middle-to-lower-income families. Public library hours have been slashed, and plans for a new central library in the rejuvenating downtown district have been shelved. The city's sewer system is so decrepit that it could face federal fines. Police are jumping ship to nearby cities that offer bigger salaries and the promise of a real pension. In 2004, for the first time in seven years, the region's population actually fell -- by 600. And road repairs have ground to a standstill".

I occasionally have a look at blog rankings. The "Truth Laid Bear" ranking for this blog is here. I seem to be no. 647 out of 19 million blogs at the moment so I can't grouch. I got into the top 200 a year or two ago but that was when there were only a measly 2 or 3 million blogs in existence. All these rating systems have huge holes in them, however. The two blogs with relatively high readership that I blog on -- Tongue-Tied and Majority Rights -- seem to be unknown to the "Truth Laid Bear". Technorati seems to be the most erratic of the blog evaluation systems, however. It used to show this blog as having links from nearly 500 other blogs but as of today, that has plummeted to 239. Believe it if you want to. I am pleased to say that Greenie Watch and PC Watch have picked up a few readers lately -- with "Greenie Watch" now getting about 400 hits a day and "PC Watch" now getting about 650 hits a day.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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