ELSEWHERE

Lying about lies: Among the many distortions, misrepresentations and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed. What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact"

There is a rather amazing article here (hat tip to Infinitely Prolonged) about the large number of men who lie about being military veterans or lie about what they did whilst in the military -- John Kerry and Jimmy Massey being particularly obnoxious examples of the latter. I myself do on relevant occasions mention that I was a Sergeant in the Austalian Army during the Vietnam war but you will find a copy of my certificate of discharge included in my internet biography so anyone can check up on me any day. I have of course blotted out my signature from the online copy. If anyone thinks I am going to put my signature online they can think again.

The genetics of race mentioned in the NYT!: "In a finding that is likely to sharpen discussion about the merits of race-based medicine, an Icelandic company says it has detected a version of a gene that raises the risk of heart attack in African-Americans by more than 250 percent. The company, DeCode Genetics, first found the variant gene among Icelanders and then looked for it in three American populations, in Philadelphia, Cleveland and Atlanta. Among Americans of European ancestry, the variant is quite common, but it causes only a small increase in risk, about 16 percent. The opposite is true among African-Americans. Only 6 percent of African-Americans have inherited the variant gene, but they are 3.5 times as likely to suffer a heart attack as those who carry the normal version of the gene, a team of DeCode scientists led by Dr. Anna Helgadottir reported in an article released online yesterday by Nature Genetics".

No hope for Germany: "Germany's two major political parties on Friday sealed an agreement to govern the country together under Angela Merkel, who would become the country's first female chancellor. But after six weeks of grueling negotiations, which exposed fissures on both sides and necessitated deep compromises, the new government faced a murky future, shorn of the reformist zeal that many here believed is necessary to fix Germany's stagnant economy and stem its soaring unemployment.... Mrs. Merkel has had to set aside many of her proposals for overhauling Germany's economy, including a simpler tax regimen; reform of health care and pensions; and a more flexible labor market. The Social Democrats objected to Mrs. Merkel's proposals to curb unions and to make it easier to dismiss workers. Plans to restructure the medical and pension systems were also either watered down or deferred. And the Social Democrats succeeded in nudging up the tax rate for people with high salaries."

If you have not yet read or heard GWB's excellent Veteran's Day speech, it is here. There is too much good stuff in it to attempt an excerpt.

Les Bates on the basic idea of Leftism: "It is to replace the society of social and economic consent that we live in with the social and economic primacy of the parasites over the productive"

China Hand has just put up an interesting post on China's linguistic muddle. One excerpt: "Riding the No.78 bus through the outskirts of Suzhou this morning I saw a big red banner urging on all the importance of speaking in putonghua, the so-called "common language" of China... In English is it known as Mandarin - or the language of the court officials. But in Hong Kong when they speak of Chinese - they mean Cantonese. When they mean the Beijing dialect they say mandarin or putonghua... The Beijing dialect is the standard the model for putonghua although it is a very formal version of Beijing dialect which is just as unintelligible as any other dialect to a Mandarin-only speaker". [NOTE: As people in China cannot access blogspot sites, I have put up mirror sites for "China Hand" here and here that should be accessible in China]

Blog Herald says there are now over 100 million blogs. A bit hard to believe. If you want to back up your blog, these utilities might come in handy. I do daily manual backups myself. It only takes me a couple of minutes.

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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