Two follies

Despite being midwinter, it was a beautiful day in Brisbane yesterday: A cloudless blue sky, no wind and a temperature of something like 80 degrees in the old money. I could not stay indoors on a day like that so I got the Humber Super Snipe out of the garage and took a drive down to Wynnum -- a Brisbane bayside suburb. I went for a walk along the esplanade and bought a take-away coffee and cake to enjoy as I sat in the shade looking out to sea.

As I was sitting there, I was thinking about this report. It is a report about the great difficulties that the U.S. immigration authorities put in the way of many LEGAL immigrants to the USA. It seems that the U.S. authorities go to as great a length in avoiding their duties with legal immigrants as they do with illegal immigrants. They make it as hard for legal immigrants as they make it easy for illegal immigrants -- which is the exact reverse of what any sane person would want.

So the first thought that occurred to me was how heedless of all experience you have to be to think that governments can do anything well. As a libertarian, I would think that of course.

My second thought was about the people specifically highlighted in the article -- refugee Jews. They belong to the group that many nutters on both Left and Right believe runs America. If Jews run America, how come the American authorities give needy Jews such a hard time?

It seems to me that the influence Jews have in America is proportional to their numbers multiplied by their intellectual clout -- no more and no less. In other words, their influence is greater than their numbers alone would suggest but they are still only one piece on the chessboard of competing interests.

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Brookes News Update

US economy and the trade deficit: Many economists will tell you that there is nothing wrong with trade deficit. After all, they will say, trade is mutually beneficial, so those foreigners who sell to Americans are benefiting as much as those Americans who buy the products. This is a superficial view that completely misses the point
Productivity, wages and jobs - more economic stupidity from the media, part II: Anti-market journalists argue than only heavily regulated labour markets can deliver higher wages. But US economic history completely refutes this statist belief. It was recognized at the time that American workers enjoyed higher real wages than highly unionized Europeans. This article explains why this was so
The Labor Party is itching to meddle with the Australian economy and the trade deficit: The Labor Party thinks it knows how to cure our trade deficit. It's deluding itself. The real problem is not the deficit but a monetary policy that gravely distorted the price structure. No amount of meddling by politicians can correct this. Only the market can make the final and necessary adjustments
Democratic Senator Murtha is not a war hero: It seems that Senator Murtha has a lot in common with Senator John Kerry. He stands accused of inventing his Vietnam heroics and lying about his military awards. Now Murtha has the nerve to try and demoralise the troops
Marxists never learn: The collapse of communism has, as expected, taught our Marxists nothing. They are incorrigible cultists, completely impervious to facts and carefully reasoned arguments. These cultists now argue that instead of capitalism causing the immiseration of the proletariat, it is exploiting Third World peasants. In other words, peasants have been substituted for Western workers
The Democrats: The 'Party of Death's' ploy: The federal government's abortion policy has decimated the African-American population. While blacks make up only about 12 percent of the population, they account for more than 40 percent of abortions
Conservatives who support same-sex marriage?: Republicans are Republicans and conservatives are conservatives. This has now raised the question of homosexual marriage vs. traditional values

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ELSEWHERE

The major Australian public broadcaster (the ABC) recently put up a children's program about Lebanon that gave the impression that Israel was to blame for all the suffering. Under pressure, they have now apologized for the misrepresentation and removed the story from their website. Some details here. The original story (with emendations) is reproduced here. Two conservative Senators helped in motivating the backdown.

Israeli PM rejects call to end Lebanon war: "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected mounting international pressure to end its war against Hezbollah and launched a new incursion into Lebanon, as world powers squabbled over the urgency of a cease-fire.... But despite an international outcry over an air strike on Sunday that killed 54 civilians, most of them children, Mr Olmert said there would be no cease-fire for now. "The fighting continues. There is no cease-fire and there will not be any cease-fire in the coming days," Mr Olmert told local officials, drawing sustained applause. Despite its pause in air raids from early on Monday, Israel says it may still use aerial strikes to target Hezbollah leaders and rocket launchers and back up ground operations."

There is an article here about an evangelical preacher who refuses to support conservative political causes. Nothing wrong with that. Some of the most fundamentalist Christians (Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses etc.) oppose involvement in "the world" and Christ himself said to Pilate that "My kingdom is not of this world". But this guy is a fraud. He also says that Christians should not take a stance on moral issues like homosexuality. He must never have read Romans chapter 1. REAL fundamentalists have ALWAYS taken strong moral stances.

Who did this guy forget to pay off?: ""Immigration agents had prepared a nasty surprise for the Garcia Labor Company, a temporary worker contractor, when they moved against it on charges of hiring illegal immigrants. They brought a 40-count federal indictment, part of a new nationwide strategy by immigration officials to clamp down on employers of illegal immigrant laborers. Maximino Garcia, the president of the company, which provides low-wage laborers to businesses from Pennsylvania to Texas, stood before a federal judge here on Tuesday to answer conspiracy charges of aiding illegal immigrants and money laundering. If convicted, Mr. Garcia, who pleaded not guilty, could serve 20 years in jail and forfeit his headquarters building and $12 million. . . . Hiring illegal immigrants 'has been a low-risk, high-reward enterprise,' said Brian M. Moskowitz, the agency's [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] special agent in charge for Ohio and Michigan. 'We want to send the message that your cost of business just went up because you risk your livelihood, your corporate reputation and your personal freedom.'"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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