Leftist argumentation

I noted on Greenie Watch recently the low quality of Green/Left argumentation. Almost all of it is ad hominem abuse or appeals to authority. Any interest in the facts of a matter is conspicuously absent. I am sure that most conservative bloggers find the same in emails that they get from Leftists.

Just for fun, however, I thought I might put up here the latest such email that I have received from a Leftist. As per usual it is pure abuse and full of hate. It comes from an Allan Blackburn [tnewt@freeway.net].

I was reading your anti health care blog in America, when I came upon the fact that you are from Australia, have been married four times, and are about as redneck as they come. Please stay in Australia. If you are an example of someone who is professing to tell Americans how to live, with your value system as it is, where marriage is an institute of; "Love for the moment," please stay in Australia and focus your attentions on your own issues as well as your countries.

You remind me of Rush Limbaugh who has spread conservative hate mongering, against drug addiction, until he was caught engaging in illegal doctor shopping and then screamed; "I have a disease," and demanded the need to go to treatment which he denied to others for years.

They must have a mold that turns out people like you. Every fifth person, popping out of the womb, instant A-hole. Thanks for the laughs.

If that is an example of Leftist brains, no wonder America is in such a mess at the moment. I also note that even a Ph.D. who disagrees with him is a "redneck" apparently: A typical example of how Leftists use words for their abusive impact rather than their meaning.

Mr Blackburn is apparently in the business of "detoxing" druggies and alcoholics. One wonders if such a hate-filled and angry person is really appropriate in that role.

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Why Obama Is Unhappy

He's omniscient and benevolent. Doesn't he deserve to be omnipotent too?

Excerpt from JAMES TARANTO:

The latest effort to psychoanalyze President Obama comes from Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post. Hiatt offers "a theory about why President Obama is having a tough political time right now: He doesn't seem all that happy being president."

But Hiatt gets it backward. Obama isn't having political difficulty because he's unhappy; he's unhappy because he's having political difficulty. Or, as the president himself put it in an Ohio ObamaCare speech yesterday: " The American people want to know if it's still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future. They are waiting for us to act. They are waiting for us to lead. And as long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership. I don't know about the politics. But I know what's right."

He knows what's right. And he cares so much about the American people that he is determined to do what is right, whether we want it done to us or not. Yet he keeps coming up against delays and obstructions. Where's the fairness in that? If he's omniscient and benevolent, doesn't he deserve to be omnipotent too?

You can see why this is frustrating for the president. No one doubts what needs to be done for the people --no one, that is, except the people. They tell anyone who'll listen that ObamaCare scares them to death. They even voted a Republican into the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts!

An Independent Women's Voice poll of voters in 35 "key swing districts," all represented by Democrats, finds that 60% think Congress should scrap ObamaCare and either start over or give up entirely. A plurality say they'd be more likely to support their congressman if he voted for ObamaCare in November and against it now.

Obama knows what's right, and he keeps telling us, but we refuse to get the message. As a result, Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, tells McClatchy Newspapers he's not sure ObamaCare will come to the floor before Easter. That suggests that he and other Democratic leaders are having trouble rounding up the 216 votes they need to pass the legislation. You can see why they would be, if they listen to their poor deluded constituents.

That's why President Obama is unhappy. The American people voted for change. Dammit, why won't we change?

SOURCE

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The Worst Crisis in 35 Years?

by Daniel Pipes

On the surface, that the Obama administration decided one fine day to pick a fight with the government of Israel looks like an unmitigated disaster for the Jewish state. What could be worse than its most important ally provoking the worst crisis (according to the Israeli ambassador to Washington) since 1975?

A closer look, however, suggests that this gratuitous little spat might turn out better for Jerusalem than for the White House.

(1) It concerns not a life-and-death issue, such as the menace of Iran's nuclear buildup or Israel's right to defend itself from Hamas predations, but the triviality of the timing of a decision to build new housing units in Israel's capital city. Wiser heads will insist that White House amateurs end this tempest in a teapot and revert to normal relations.

(2) If Obama et al. hope to bring down Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government, they can't count Knesset seats. Peeling away Labor will lead to its replacement by rightist parties.

(3) An Israeli consensus exists to maintain sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem, so provoking a crisis on this issue strengthens Netanyahu.

(4) Conversely, U.S. histrionics make the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas more reluctant to enter into Washington's counterproductive negotiations.

(5) A recent poll of American voters shows an astonishing 8-to-1 sympathy for Israel over the Palestinians, so picking a fight with Israel harms Obama politically - precisely what a president sinking in the polls and attempting to transform one-sixth of the economy does not need.

SOURCE

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Neo-Soviet Russia and America

A revolution is brewing in Vladimir Putin's Russia. The chickens of his incompetence and shameless artifice are finally coming home to roost. Now, he has only neo-Soviet brutality to fall back upon. How long that will maintain him, only the likes of Barack Obama can say.

The Bruce Springsteen of Russia, Yuri Shevchuk of the seminal rock band DDT, recently launched into an unprecedented, lengthy, and biting critique of the Putin regime from the stage of one of Russia's most prestigious arenas. A video of the speech went viral and has already been viewed nearly 200,000 times and received over 500 comments. Then an online petition surfaced, attracting the support of virtually every significant opposition leader, and it too went viral. The call: Putin must go, now and permanently. The websites hosting the petitions were soon under furious attack from Putin's army of hackers.

Russians have good reasons to despise the increasingly neo-Soviet regime that Putin, a proud KGB spy, has created. And despite the shameful lack of support from Barack Obama and other craven Western leaders, they have good reason to be brave enough to challenge him.

When he came to power two years ago, Russia's so-called "president" Dmitri Medvedev (in reality nothing more than Putin's puppet) promised that he would bring a new level of fairness to Russia's infamously corrupt electoral process. But exactly the opposite has happened. A Russian court has totally banned Russia's most salient opposition party, Yabloko, from taking part in the next round of elections in the Russian regions. The court upheld the actions of local political leaders who rejected electoral petitions simply because they "just looked false." Grigori Melkonyants, deputy director of Russia's only independent election monitoring-organization, puts it bluntly: "The most important thing for officials is to get the necessary results."

Fairer elections are not the only campaign promise on which Medvedev has failed to deliver. According to the international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, in 2007, when Medvedev took power, 59% of Russian companies experienced economic crime. In response, Medvedev announced a major new initiative cracking down on corruption. Yet two years later, PWC reported that 71% of Russian companies were now being victimized by economic crime. In other words, as a result of Mededev's initiative to reduce economic crime, it increased by a shocking 20%.

Transparency International also releases a global survey of corruption, a broader index that surveys more countries across a wider spectrum of economic and political ills. In 2007, Russia ranked a shocking #143 out of 180 countries surveyed. One would not have thought that the country could get any worse. But two years later, Medvedev's Russia ranked #146.

Don't take my word for it; listen instead to former Russian parliamentarian Vladimir Ryzhkov, who calls Medvedev's performance dismal." Ryzhkov points to a survey by the World Economic Forum which shows that Russia significantly deteriorated in global competitiveness during Medvedev's first two years in office, ranking a woeful 63rd out of 133 nations surveyed, including a massive drop in the quality of the justice system (another pet project of Medvedev's). A study by the World Bank, Ryzhkov says, confirmed that domestic business conditions have significantly worsened, with Russia ranking 120 out of 180 countries surveyed.

In a brutal and lengthy article, veteran Russia correspondents Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova of Newsweek concluded that Medvedev is a "phony liberal" both because his promised reforms were only skin-deep fa‡ades and because he continues to serve not as the genuine ruler of Russia, but as a front for KGB strongman Vladimir Putin. Putin refers to Medvedev, the reporters say, with the pronoun "ty" that is used for children and underlings, while Medvedev refers to Putin with the respectful pronoun "vy."

Last week, the Russian newspaper Trud reported that Medvedev planned to create his own political party, to "rival" the United Russia party created by Putin, who now serves as "prime minister" after term limits forced him out. Given that it's Medvedev who supposedly rules the nation after being elected on the United Russia ticket as Putin's handpicked successor, it seems odd that it is Medvedev, not Putin, who is forming the new party. If the two run against each other in 2012, when Putin is allowed back into office, Medvedev will be at a clear disadvantage.

But it's not the least bit odd if you understand that Medvedev's "presidency" is a sham. As the head of a new "party" that represents freedom and democracy, Medvedev can be presented as an entirely viable candidate to the West. Then, when Putin crushes him, he not only proves that Russia has a real democracy, but that Russians don't want democracy. Instead, they'll appear to want the Soviet-style dictatorship that Putin has long been forming.

It's actually quite a brilliant scheme on Putin's part. Putin is likely delighted to see that Russia's performance has become even worse under Medvedev because it gives him the chance to further justify a return to power. Never mind that under Putin's two terms, Russia's scores dropped enough to lag behind some of the most lawless African states. Putin can claim that he is once again riding to Russia's rescue.

The scheme can work only because of the poor excuse for leadership being provided by the Obama administration, which has driven France into Putin's waiting arms and which has remained silent despite the opportunity to speak out for freedom that the Kremlin's ongoing failure has presented.

Obama's State Department recently released a human rights report that scathingly condemned Russia for state-sponsored kidnapping, torture, and murder in the Caucasus region, and of liquidating reporters who try to tell the tale. Yet Obama himself has remained silent and chosen to ignore the fraudulent nature of Russia's government. Instead of seeking to reset Russia's neo-Soviet decline, Obama has suggested resetting only U.S. attitudes towards Russia, in other words appeasement.

That means it's up to others, especially the leaders of the Republican Party, to show solidarity with the brave Russians who now seek to stop their country's slide into neo-Soviet oblivion.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

VT: State sued over phone tracking: "The ACLU of Vermont is suing the state after unsuccessfully seeking to find out whether police agencies are using cellphone tracking technology to keep tabs on people's whereabouts. The state attorney general's office refused public records requests by the ACLU seeking information about the practice, saying that information is exempt from public records statutes. So the ACLU filed suit Monday in Washington Superior Court, asking a judge to force the state to produce documents under the Public Records Act. `The attorney general's behavior here is a real breach of trust,' said Allen Gilbert, executive director. `The Public Records Act specifically requires public agencies to explain the factual basis for denying a request.'"

Senate passes "jobs" bill for Obama's signature: "Companies that hire unemployed workers will get a temporary payroll tax holiday under a bill that easily won congressional approval Wednesday in what Democrats hope is just the first of several election-year measures aimed at boosting hiring. The 68-29 bipartisan vote in the Senate sent the legislation to the White House, where President Barack Obama was expected to sign it into law Thursday."

Recent cases show challenge of US terrorists : "The growing front in the war on terrorism may be no farther than Main Street. The terror cases that have emerged in the past week have one common characteristic: The suspects are all Americans. One is a woman who looked after the elderly in suburban Pennsylvania. Another a security guard from New Jersey. Altogether more than a dozen Americans have been captured or pursued for allegedly supporting jihad, or holy war, over the past two years."

Medicare fraud costs taxpayers more than $60 billion each year : "A four month `Nightline' investigation into Medicare fraud makes one thing perfectly clear: this is a crime that pays and pays and pays. The federal government admits that a staggering $60 billion is stolen from tax payers through Medicare scams every year. Some experts believe the number is more than twice that."

Judge refuses to delay Blagojevich corruption trial: "A federal judge denied a request by former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to push back his trial date, saying he has had plenty of time to prepare. . Mr. Blagojevich was arrested Dec. 9, 2008, on charges that he tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama. He has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and other charges."

National broadband plan creates FCC central planning: "The long-awaited National Broadband Plan, hot off the presses of the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday, is an impressive document-if one is impressed by a federal agency grossly inflating its competence and proposing a vast expansion of its power. It's important to remember that Congress last year asked the FCC to do something relatively simple and straightforward after passing the 'stimulus' bill: Propose ways the government might increase access to broadband and make it more affordable."

Is the current recovery a pinata with no candy inside? : "In sum, when we disaggregate the recent increase in personal income, we find signs that the recovery has been weaker and less sustainable than many observers have taken it to be. Not all sources of personal income are created equal, and in the present circumstances, not even the rise in personal rental income counts as grounds for optimism. Because the recovery, such as it is, has begun only recently, it may acquire a healthier tone as it proceeds, if indeed it does. For the moment, however, we must recognize that recent changes give little warrant to the expectation of a full, sustainable recovery in the near term."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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