Is Reuters to Blame for the Terrorism in Norway?
By Cliff May, President of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
The New York Times last week ran an editorial arguing that Anders Behrig Breivik was “influenced by public debate and the extent to which that debate makes ideas acceptable.” The “broader” issue, says the Times, is that “inflammatory political rhetoric is increasingly tolerated.”
Exploiting atrocities to settle political scores through guilt by association is a nasty game but if we are going to play it, I’d look elsewhere. I’d start with Reuters or, more precisely, what we might call the Reuters Doctrine. After the attacks of 9/11/01, there were individuals and groups (emphatically including the policy institute I head) making the case that terrorism should be defined as the use of violence against civilians to further a political cause, and that expressing a grievance by intentionally killing other people’s children is never justified.
We argued that civilized people, of whatever religion or nationality, ought to be able to agree on this principle and, if they did, those who target innocents would be seen only as terrorists, unequivocally condemned by the “international community.”
Reuters disagreed. The global news agency took the position that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” This expression of moral relativism was embraced by many in the media, on the far left and far right, in academia, government and transnational organizations. And that may indeed have paved the way for Breivik -- who unquestionably fancies himself a fighter for European freedom -- to believe he could use terrorism to focus attention on his grievances without de-legitimizing those grievances. If it works for militant Islamists, why not for a militant Norwegian?
In his rambling 1,500 “manifesto,” Breivik lists the names of many individuals whose writing he has read and who are therefore now being accused of membership in the “Islamophobic blogosphere.” Among them: Mark Steyn, Theodore Dalrymple, Melanie Phillips, Bruce Bawer, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom and Pamela Geller. (And he cites FDD reports and congressional testimony on such topics as terrorist financing and Islamist oppression of Christians in the Middle East.) Anyone familiar with these sources knows that the views they hold vary widely – and not one advocates terrorism.
Breivik’s manifesto also includes digressions on George Orwell, John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain and William James. Does that imply that those writers share the blame for Breivik’s murders? Shall we burn their books? (Memo to young readers: Read them while you can.)
Or should we reject as illogical and hypocritical the charge that anyone critical Islamism is beyond the pale and tarred with Breivik’s brush? Consider: Both the Sierra Club and “Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski are concerned are committed to fighting ecological degradation. Does that mean that all environmentalists have blood on their hands? (Breivik plagiarized extensively from Kaczynski’s writings for his manifesto perhaps suggesting he sees militant environmentalists as a model.)
Back to the Times editorial: It states that there is a “disturbing, and growing, intolerance across Europe for Muslims and other immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.” Where is the evidence for that? Which European countries have closed their borders to Muslim refugees? Which European countries have passed the equivalent of Jim Crow laws? Which European mass murderers have targeted innocent Muslims? The answer is none but of course innocent Muslims have been slaughtered – and continue to be slaughtered -- by Iran’s rulers, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and Tehran-backed Shia militias in Iraq. Do the math: Muslims, more often than Christians, Jews or Hindus, are the victims of Islamic militants.
But nowhere in Europe do Muslims suffer oppression and discrimination on the level that religious and ethnic minorities do in most of the 50 or so countries that hold membership in the Organization of the Islamic Conference. (Can you find any editorials on this issue in the Times or other major newspapers?)
To be sure, there may be some Europeans and Americans who suspect that all or most or too many Muslims endorse the crimes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ayman al-Zawahi, Anwar al-Awlaki and other self-proclaimed jihaidis. That’s wrong. But it’s no less wrong to encourage the fiction that Muslims are victims and that Christians, Jews and Hindus are their victimizers.
This construct already has led to a weird sort of affirmative action for Islamix extremists. For example, Naser Asser Abdo was awarded “conscientious objector” status by the U.S. Army not because he was morally opposed to killing but because he was morally opposed to killing fellow Muslims. Imagine if a U.S. soldier had refused deployment to the Balkans saying he couldn’t defend Bosnian Muslims against Serbian Christians. You think he’d have been regarded as a conscientious objector and given an honorable discharge? If there were ever any doubts about the conscientiousness of Abdo’s objections to taking up arms, he cleared those up following his release from the Army when he immediately stocked up on guns and explosives, apparently intending to replicate the massacre carried out by Maj. Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood. Hasan is another instance of what might be called reverse discrimination: Had he been a white supremacist instead of a Muslim supremacist, do you think his views would have been ignored and he would have been able to rise in the American military as he did?
Toward the end of his manifesto, Breivik argues that “democratic change” is an illusion and that the only answer is “armed resistance.” He predicts “more moderate” political efforts will be “persecuted” and that attempts at “peaceful reform will be crushed” leaving violence as the only alternative. By demonizing those concerned by the pathologies afflicting the Muslim world and emanating from it, Times editorial writers and their allies are actually giving credence to Breivik’s worldview.
SOURCE
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MSNBC pulls out favorite Soviet/KGB trick: Declare your opponents insane
Psychologists have been misrepresenting conservatives in a similar way since 1950. But nobody listens to them, fortunately
On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir launched the most transparently biased and abusive segments yet against Tea Party activists. Not content to simply repeat the slurs of the usual suspects of the legacy media, Bashir out-did himself by trotting out one of the most favored tactics of the Soviet KGB to hurl at the advocates of limited government and fiscal sanity.
In a series of questions and responses with addiction guru Stanton Peele, MSNBC proceeded to label childish, delusional zealots who are mired in their “psychosis.” And how does the esteemed author and quack come to this conclusion? Simple. Tea Party advocates are adamant that government become smaller, tax less and have a diminished role in people’s lives. That is what MSNBC and their mouthpieces consider mentally ill, suffering from childish psychosis.
It would be funny if it never had been done before. But, of course, it has. In the 1950s, Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev needed to control dissent. But the old Stalin ways of shooting people or packing them off to Siberia wasn’t effective enough. So, he and the KGB secret-police started to use psychiatric hospitals as the new gulags. Khrushchev proudly proclaimed, “there are no political prisoners (in the USSR), only persons of unsound mind.” The practice was so repugnant that even the New York Times ran a front page story condemning it in October, 1987.
So why would the in-house organ of the socialist left in America, MSNBC, revert to using the old tactic of labeling their opponents of being of “unsound mind”? Because, they have nothing else to undercut the forces building in the nation against them. The Left has no arguments. Their policies are destroying America and increasingly people recognize the truth. As more and more citizens gravitate to the Tea Party message of limited government and reduced government spending, the Left is desperate to isolate and denigrate the messengers of American renewal. They long for the days when Republicans were those nice, well-mannered people who gave them whatever they demanded.
A time-honored political debating ploy is to accuse your opponent of your own worst crime. It appears that this is what MSNBC and all the attack-dogs snarling at the Tea Parties are up to. It is they, after all, that are delusional.
It is the Left in America that believes with all their hearts that the way to solve a debt crisis is to take on mountains of new debt. It is the liberal establishment who advocates as hard as they can that the economy will grow if only we radically increase the cost of energy and limit its supply. It is the leftwing pundits who can look upon a $3.7 trillion dollar federal budget and not see a single thing to cut.
Sadly, these people have been suffering from their delusions for decades. Their illness has only gotten worse. These are the same people that denounced the conviction and execution of spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. “A travesty,” they screamed. Fundraisers were held with all the celebrities of the day denouncing America. But, when the files of the KGB were opened after the fall of the Soviet Union and it was learned for an absolute fact that the Rosenbergs were Soviet spies that had committed treason against America, the Left fell uncharacteristically silent. I guess putting the American people in jeopardy was “no big deal.”
The list of other examples is very long. The liberal-leftist-socialist elements in America, with their allies and water-boys in academia and the media, simply refuse to see the reality of things. They are delusional to the point of insanity.
So, in the spirit of community and neighborliness, let me help out our brethren on the Left with a reality check.
The Tea Party doesn’t care what you think. You have no credibility. Small government advocates will not be cowed or isolated by your ranting and raving. You have no effect, you are as impotent as your policies. The American people are seeing through your lies, deceits and manipulations. You cannot get them back. The Ponzi scheme you have built is falling apart and there aren’t enough printing presses in the world to prop it up much longer.
Enjoy your taunts and snide remarks now while you can. Snuggle down with others of your ilk in your self-satisfied stupor, assured that you can slander the limited government advocates enough to keep them at bay. Continue, please, in your delusional state, ignoring the reality that is threatening America and the coming tidal wave that next year is likely to wake you up too late to save your rancid agenda.
SOURCE
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Obama Administration Added $9.5 Billion in Red Tape in July
Conservatives take aim at job-killing regulations
Many House and Senate conservatives are reviving their battle against federal regulations, claiming that the president hasn't stopped issuing job-killing rules during the debt ceiling fight. "While Washington and Americans have been focused on the debt ceiling, the Obama administration has continued to roll out more crushing red tape," said a spokesperson for Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who's been championing the regulation fight.
At Tuesday's GOP Senate caucus lunch, the lawmakers said that they will renew their efforts, supported by business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In a memo Barasso handed out to the lawmakers, he claimed that the administration in July only has put in $9.5 billion in new regulatory costs by proposing 229 new rules and finalizing 379 rules. Among those he cited were EPA, healthcare reform, and financial regulatory reform rules.
SOURCE
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Leftists have no ideas
That vacuum between Obama's ears is not unique to him
What happens when people who completely dominate the conversation have nothing to say? What happens when the people who talk the most and are listened to the most about our nation’s most serious problems do not have a plausible solution to any of them? What I think happens is the current state of affairs.
Let me explain. Sometime in the mid-1970s, near the end of the Vietnam War, liberalism in America died an intellectual death. Since that time, virtually every new idea — whether good or bad — about how to solve our most important economic problems has come from the right. Virtually nothing has come from the left.
Do you doubt that? Okay, it’s test time. Tell me what the liberal answer is to the problem of our failing public schools. …..tick, tick, tick ….. I’m waiting …. tick, tick, tick …. Give up? What about the liberal solution to the failed War on Poverty? … pause….. pause ….. pause …. No luck there either?
Okay, let’s take what President Obama says is the biggest domestic problem we face. What is the liberal solution to the huge unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare? ….. Can’t think of one? What about solving the problem of unfunded pensions and post-retirement health care benefits for state and local workers? …. Not even a vague suggestion or two? Wow. We seem to be really striking out.
Well, can you tell me what a liberal income tax code would look like? Zip. How about a liberal international economic system? Nada.
Note: I’m not asking if you have a liberal acquaintance who has an opinion or two on these matters. I’m asking if you can produce a solution that would be generally recognized as the liberal solution.
If I asked what are the conservative solutions, you probably wouldn’t hesitate for very long. For education, there is school choice. For a failed welfare system, tough love. For unfunded entitlements, personal accounts so that individuals can save and invest and pay for their own retirement benefits. Instead of the current income tax code, a flat tax. In international affairs, free trade.
Is there anything that is comparable to these solutions on the left of the political spectrum? I believe not. The reason it’s so easy to rattle off the conservative answers is because for the last 30 years or so those are the proposals the nation has been debating. The nation has not been debating liberal ideas because there haven’t been any liberal ideas.
More HERE
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ELSEWHERE
Consumers have dim view of lighting law: "After years of looming as a distant threat, the federally mandated phaseout of some incandescent bulbs is about to become very real. Many Americans have no idea that most traditional light bulbs are about to disappear, to be replaced by energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights, light-emitting diodes, and halogen incandescents. For some of those in the know, the change means just one thing: It is time to start hoarding old-fashioned bulbs"
Italy advances burqa ban bill: "A parliamentary committee in Italy has approved a bill that would ban the wearing of the burqa and other garments that cover the face. Parliament is expected to vote on the bill in September, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. ... Violators could be fined up to 300 euros ($420) or sentenced to community service 'aimed at encouraging integration.'"
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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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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Friday, August 05, 2011
Thank you Mr. Obama
In scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression these are the ramshackle homes of the desperate and destitute U.S. families who have set up their own 'Tent City' only an hour from Manhattan. More than 50 homeless people have joined the community within New Jersey's forests as the economic crisis has wrecked their American dream.
And as politicians in Washington trade blows over their country's £8.8 trillion debt, the prospect of more souls joining this rag tag group grows by the day.
Building their own tarpaulin tents, Native American teepees and makeshift balsa wood homes, every one of the Tent City residents has lost their job.
These people have been reduced to living on handouts from the local church and friendly restaurants and the community is a sad look at troubles caused as the world's most powerful country struggles with its finances.
'We have been in and out of the camp for a year,' said ex-hotel worker Burt Haut, 43, who lives with his wife, ex-teacher Barbara, 48 in a tent styled like a teepee from the Old West. 'Our financial difficulties since the credit crisis three years ago have caused us to camp on public ground, at the back of churches and down the backs of closed down stores. 'We have had help from our friends and family, but we have run that well dry.
'We are trying to get back on our feet and with help from the camp leadership we hope to get back onto a social security scheme or help with some assisted housing.'
Ravaged by the loss of their jobs and their homes, the residents of Tent City struggle to get by without day-to-day luxuries that we take for granted such as food on the table and a roof over their heads. Ex-minister Steve Brigham, 50, runs Tent City, which consists of a dirt road running through a two-acre encampment which has flowerpots laid out front of proud tents and homes.
Functioning as near to a normal town as possible, Tent City is governed by democratic rules agreed by all the residents.
More HERE
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Dereliction of Duty
Oliver North
The potentates on the Potomac claim that President Barack Obama's signature on the "debt deal" solves the immediate problems created by Washington's spendthrift fiscal madness while "protecting America's future." Truth be told, it does neither. Here's why.
The arcane legislation cobbled together by House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the Obama White House doesn't increase our taxes, but it does raise the U.S. government's debt limit by a staggering $2 trillion in order to "preserve our AAA credit rating." The agreement says our government will somehow reduce spending by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. It also creates a special 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction -- composed of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, six from each house of Congress -- to propose ways to reduce our federal deficit by $1.5 trillion. This joint committee is to present its deficit reduction plan by Thanksgiving, and Congress must pass it by Christmas. Sound complicated? It is. And worse, the whole agreement is chock-full of dirty little secrets.
The "deal" identifies no automatic cuts in so-called entitlement spending -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. But it does require reductions in national defense expenditures, of 6 percent next year and 7.5 percent in 2013. In round numbers, that's about $400 billion less that the U.S. will spend on defending itself over the next decade. Worse, the cuts will begin while we still are fighting 2.5 wars. And that's not all.
Though Republicans claim the legislation will "protect" our military -- now closing on a decade at war -- from "major cuts," that's a hollow promise. The new law mandates that funds for national security and "discretionary domestic programs," not entitlements, be automatically "sequestered" -- meaning "not spent" -- if Congress cannot agree on $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions by Christmas. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said this "trigger mechanism" would double cuts in defense and require across-the-board reductions in military spending. He termed this outcome "dangerous" and "completely unacceptable."
The defense secretary's comments echo those of U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey's last week. During confirmation hearings to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dempsey warned members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that it would be "extraordinarily difficult and very high-risk" to double the Obama administration's commitment to cut $400 billion from our military over the next decade. In a written response to committee questions, he said, "National security didn't cause the debt crisis nor will it solve it."
It's hard to imagine Panetta and Dempsey's hard truth's being welcomed in the West Wing, but it's refreshing to hear nonetheless. For months, administration officials and too many in Congress have been quoting outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen's claim that "the biggest threat we have to our national security is our debt."
Notably, this "threat assessment" justified major cuts in defense by the Obama administration in the fiscal 2011 budget. Ballistic missile defense, the F-22 fifth-generation fighter, the Marines' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the Army's Future Combat Systems, new C-17 cargo aircraft and the Navy's next-generation nuclear submarine all got the ax. It didn't matter what risk these cuts imposed; all that mattered was cutting.
Since then, the Iranians have accelerated their quest to acquire nuclear weapons. China's new assertiveness in the Pacific now alarms our allies in Tokyo, Seoul and Manila. Russia's oil and natural gas-fueled modernization of its nuclear arsenal and intercontinental ballistic missiles has expanded -- even as Vladimir Putin describes us as "parasites."
For the record, the Obama administration's original fiscal 2012 request for our military -- made in February by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- was for $553 billion. The Pentagon now is planning to fight 2.5 wars, replace worn-out equipment and retain the world's brightest, best-educated and most combat-experienced military force on less than $520 billion. Though Congress is now on recess and the president is playing golf, the new fiscal year starts in less than eight weeks -- and there still is no defense budget.
When our elected officials finally get back to work in Washington, it would be nice if they would recall a few of their responsibilities. First, what we spend on defending ourselves should be based on the risks we face if we don't buy what we need. Second, "provide for the common defense" is an essential function of government. Third, the word "entitlement" does not appear in our Constitution. We the People regard failure to heed these admonitions as nothing less than dereliction of duty.
SOURCE
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Obama’s hollow claim of commitment to Israel’s security
Is President Barack Obama committed to Israel’s security? Reassuring bromides to that effect in his recent speeches are nullified by specific statements that spell out dangerous Israeli concessions and disregard for Israeli vital interests. Worse, the administration’s wider Middle East policies further denude those commitments of meaning.
Moreover, Obama’s unprecedented call for a Palestinian state to have “permanent Palestinian borders with… Jordan” would require Israel ceding the Jordan Valley, whose retention successive Israeli governments have regarded as vital– another first for a US president.
Obama has also become the first US president to suggest that issues of “territory and security” be agreed upon first, before proceeding to negotiations on all other matters, including Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants.
Upholding Israel’s basic security would also mean repudiating the repatriation of the refugees and their descendants. Bush did so in his May 2004 letter; Obama has not. On the contrary, he has supported the so-called Saudi peace plan, which demands not only a return to the 1967 lines, but also the return of all refugees and their descendants.
In May, Obama reiterated that the US “will hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions and their rhetoric.”
But he never has – nor does he now. When, in August 2009, Fatah held a conference in Bethlehem, reaffirming its refusal to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, glorifying terrorists, insisting on the so-called ‘right of return,’ and rejecting an end of claims in any future peace agreement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton astonishingly claimed that the conference showed “a broad consensus supporting negotiations with Israel and the two-state solution.”
When in 2010, the PA named a Ramallah square after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, Clinton falsely claimed that this ceremony was initiated by a “Hamas-run municipality.” Refusing to identify the PA as responsible, Obama has not penalized it.
INDEED, FAR from holding Palestinians accountable, Obama has consistently rewarded them, increasing aid to almost $1 billion per year. A Palestinian Media Watch report just presented to the US Congress documents that, in May 2011 alone, the PA paid $5,207,000 in salaries to Palestinians in Israeli jails, including blood-soaked terrorists. Last year the US provided $225 million to the general Palestinian budget from which these salaries are paid.
If Obama was genuine about holding the PA accountable, he would be demanding the disbanding of Fatah’s own Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – a US- recognized terrorist group. He would demand the abrogation of the PA’s unity agreement with Hamas (which calls for a genocide of Jews) as a precondition of any future talks. He has done neither.
It is also difficult to imagine what conception of American and Israeli security interests led Obama in January to ditch Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and call for political “transition… now” when protests erupted in Cairo. Still less clear is why his administration spoke immediately of involving “non-secular actors” – a clear allusion to the Muslim Brotherhood – given its virulent hostility to the US and Israel. Now, Obama has legitimized the Brotherhood by initiating contacts with it.
THE NET result is that Egypt is on the road from lukewarm ally and peace-maker to a dependable enemy – one to which Obama has announced the sale of 125 state-of-the-art M1A1 Abrams tanks. It is also disturbing that Obama has not pressured Egypt to close its Gaza border at Rafah, whose recent opening has enabled the flow of weaponry into Hamas-run Gaza.
For a year, Obama prohibited any new US sanctions to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons – a looming existential threat to both Israel and the US. Indeed, further measures which must be taken to stop Iran is precisely what Obama left untouched in his recent speeches.
Thus Obama’s words and deeds not only fail to match his stated commitment to Israel’s security – they negate it.
SOURCE
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A Clash of Visions
In a revealing interview this week with The Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor addressed the division that will make compromise in the budget fights ahead nearly impossible. In describing the negotiations leading up to the debt-ceiling deal, Cantor said the talks were made difficult because of a major clash of visions between the parties.
"It's almost as if the president and his party really are bent on promoting a welfare state and then thinking about ... our free enterprise system second," Cantor said. "And their emphasis ... has been in trying to promote programs of economic redistribution. And if you hear them speak, it's always about 'everybody should pay their fair share.' And I think the difference is, we believe everyone should have a fair shot."
Indeed, Cantor's remarks succinctly describe the different worldviews of liberals and conservatives.
Liberals, who think of themselves as more compassionate than conservatives, are always trying to come up with programs and policies that even out the differences between individuals. Liberals want to take a bigger chunk of money from those who earn more because they are harder workers, are brighter or more skilled, have invested more in education, or just happen to have been born into a wealthy family. And liberals want to use that money to create programs to help those who are less fortunate. Our federal income tax system is based on this principle.
Conservatives, on the other hand, aren't as concerned about evening out inequalities between individuals and would rather encourage individuals to pursue their own interests, for better or worse. Most conservatives believe that government should not penalize hard work, risk-taking and success by insisting that government take a larger share of the fruits of those efforts.
But with the advent of the modern welfare state, conservatives have been on the losing end of the policy debate when it comes to providing government assistance to a growing portion of the American population. And the money to pay for those programs is coming from a shrinking portion of our population. According to the latest figures available from the Internal Revenue Service, nearly half of all Americans pay no federal income tax, and that proportion has been on a steady rise for decades.
Given these dramatic disparities between worldviews, it's hard to imagine how a divided government is going to achieve the budget cuts promised in the debt-ceiling compromise or rewrite tax laws that nearly everyone agrees need to be reformed. And an election year is probably the environment least likely to produce satisfactory results.
So what can we expect from the new congressional committee set up to tackle these issues? Not much, which means that the mandatory budget cuts agreed to in the compromise are likely to be the best we can hope for -- along with a hefty tax increase when the so-called Bush tax cuts expire. And when that happens, liberals will have won the day once again.
The $1.2 trillion in mandatory cuts required if Congress doesn't accept the recommendations of the new bi-partisan committee come mostly from cuts in military spending and payments to Medicare providers. That's assuming that the committee can even come up with a plan. What these cuts don't do is tackle the entitlement infrastructure, which is what is threatening to bankrupt the country.
In 2008, the American people chose the liberal worldview by electing Barack Obama and large liberal majorities in both houses of Congress. By 2010, Americans were having second thoughts and gave conservatives a large majority in the House of Representatives. In 2012, voters are going to have to decide whether to complete what they started in 2010 and elect a conservative president and Senate or default to the liberal position of 2008.
With so many Americans now on the receiving end of the greatly expanded welfare state, I'm not sanguine about the prospects of the conservatives winning. But if we don't change course soon, liberals may find that there is little American wealth left to redistribute to anyone.
SOURCE
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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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In scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression these are the ramshackle homes of the desperate and destitute U.S. families who have set up their own 'Tent City' only an hour from Manhattan. More than 50 homeless people have joined the community within New Jersey's forests as the economic crisis has wrecked their American dream.
And as politicians in Washington trade blows over their country's £8.8 trillion debt, the prospect of more souls joining this rag tag group grows by the day.
Building their own tarpaulin tents, Native American teepees and makeshift balsa wood homes, every one of the Tent City residents has lost their job.
These people have been reduced to living on handouts from the local church and friendly restaurants and the community is a sad look at troubles caused as the world's most powerful country struggles with its finances.
'We have been in and out of the camp for a year,' said ex-hotel worker Burt Haut, 43, who lives with his wife, ex-teacher Barbara, 48 in a tent styled like a teepee from the Old West. 'Our financial difficulties since the credit crisis three years ago have caused us to camp on public ground, at the back of churches and down the backs of closed down stores. 'We have had help from our friends and family, but we have run that well dry.
'We are trying to get back on our feet and with help from the camp leadership we hope to get back onto a social security scheme or help with some assisted housing.'
Ravaged by the loss of their jobs and their homes, the residents of Tent City struggle to get by without day-to-day luxuries that we take for granted such as food on the table and a roof over their heads. Ex-minister Steve Brigham, 50, runs Tent City, which consists of a dirt road running through a two-acre encampment which has flowerpots laid out front of proud tents and homes.
Functioning as near to a normal town as possible, Tent City is governed by democratic rules agreed by all the residents.
More HERE
**************************
Dereliction of Duty
Oliver North
The potentates on the Potomac claim that President Barack Obama's signature on the "debt deal" solves the immediate problems created by Washington's spendthrift fiscal madness while "protecting America's future." Truth be told, it does neither. Here's why.
The arcane legislation cobbled together by House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the Obama White House doesn't increase our taxes, but it does raise the U.S. government's debt limit by a staggering $2 trillion in order to "preserve our AAA credit rating." The agreement says our government will somehow reduce spending by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. It also creates a special 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction -- composed of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, six from each house of Congress -- to propose ways to reduce our federal deficit by $1.5 trillion. This joint committee is to present its deficit reduction plan by Thanksgiving, and Congress must pass it by Christmas. Sound complicated? It is. And worse, the whole agreement is chock-full of dirty little secrets.
The "deal" identifies no automatic cuts in so-called entitlement spending -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. But it does require reductions in national defense expenditures, of 6 percent next year and 7.5 percent in 2013. In round numbers, that's about $400 billion less that the U.S. will spend on defending itself over the next decade. Worse, the cuts will begin while we still are fighting 2.5 wars. And that's not all.
Though Republicans claim the legislation will "protect" our military -- now closing on a decade at war -- from "major cuts," that's a hollow promise. The new law mandates that funds for national security and "discretionary domestic programs," not entitlements, be automatically "sequestered" -- meaning "not spent" -- if Congress cannot agree on $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions by Christmas. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said this "trigger mechanism" would double cuts in defense and require across-the-board reductions in military spending. He termed this outcome "dangerous" and "completely unacceptable."
The defense secretary's comments echo those of U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey's last week. During confirmation hearings to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dempsey warned members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that it would be "extraordinarily difficult and very high-risk" to double the Obama administration's commitment to cut $400 billion from our military over the next decade. In a written response to committee questions, he said, "National security didn't cause the debt crisis nor will it solve it."
It's hard to imagine Panetta and Dempsey's hard truth's being welcomed in the West Wing, but it's refreshing to hear nonetheless. For months, administration officials and too many in Congress have been quoting outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen's claim that "the biggest threat we have to our national security is our debt."
Notably, this "threat assessment" justified major cuts in defense by the Obama administration in the fiscal 2011 budget. Ballistic missile defense, the F-22 fifth-generation fighter, the Marines' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the Army's Future Combat Systems, new C-17 cargo aircraft and the Navy's next-generation nuclear submarine all got the ax. It didn't matter what risk these cuts imposed; all that mattered was cutting.
Since then, the Iranians have accelerated their quest to acquire nuclear weapons. China's new assertiveness in the Pacific now alarms our allies in Tokyo, Seoul and Manila. Russia's oil and natural gas-fueled modernization of its nuclear arsenal and intercontinental ballistic missiles has expanded -- even as Vladimir Putin describes us as "parasites."
For the record, the Obama administration's original fiscal 2012 request for our military -- made in February by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- was for $553 billion. The Pentagon now is planning to fight 2.5 wars, replace worn-out equipment and retain the world's brightest, best-educated and most combat-experienced military force on less than $520 billion. Though Congress is now on recess and the president is playing golf, the new fiscal year starts in less than eight weeks -- and there still is no defense budget.
When our elected officials finally get back to work in Washington, it would be nice if they would recall a few of their responsibilities. First, what we spend on defending ourselves should be based on the risks we face if we don't buy what we need. Second, "provide for the common defense" is an essential function of government. Third, the word "entitlement" does not appear in our Constitution. We the People regard failure to heed these admonitions as nothing less than dereliction of duty.
SOURCE
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Obama’s hollow claim of commitment to Israel’s security
Is President Barack Obama committed to Israel’s security? Reassuring bromides to that effect in his recent speeches are nullified by specific statements that spell out dangerous Israeli concessions and disregard for Israeli vital interests. Worse, the administration’s wider Middle East policies further denude those commitments of meaning.
Moreover, Obama’s unprecedented call for a Palestinian state to have “permanent Palestinian borders with… Jordan” would require Israel ceding the Jordan Valley, whose retention successive Israeli governments have regarded as vital– another first for a US president.
Obama has also become the first US president to suggest that issues of “territory and security” be agreed upon first, before proceeding to negotiations on all other matters, including Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants.
Upholding Israel’s basic security would also mean repudiating the repatriation of the refugees and their descendants. Bush did so in his May 2004 letter; Obama has not. On the contrary, he has supported the so-called Saudi peace plan, which demands not only a return to the 1967 lines, but also the return of all refugees and their descendants.
In May, Obama reiterated that the US “will hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions and their rhetoric.”
But he never has – nor does he now. When, in August 2009, Fatah held a conference in Bethlehem, reaffirming its refusal to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, glorifying terrorists, insisting on the so-called ‘right of return,’ and rejecting an end of claims in any future peace agreement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton astonishingly claimed that the conference showed “a broad consensus supporting negotiations with Israel and the two-state solution.”
When in 2010, the PA named a Ramallah square after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, Clinton falsely claimed that this ceremony was initiated by a “Hamas-run municipality.” Refusing to identify the PA as responsible, Obama has not penalized it.
INDEED, FAR from holding Palestinians accountable, Obama has consistently rewarded them, increasing aid to almost $1 billion per year. A Palestinian Media Watch report just presented to the US Congress documents that, in May 2011 alone, the PA paid $5,207,000 in salaries to Palestinians in Israeli jails, including blood-soaked terrorists. Last year the US provided $225 million to the general Palestinian budget from which these salaries are paid.
If Obama was genuine about holding the PA accountable, he would be demanding the disbanding of Fatah’s own Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – a US- recognized terrorist group. He would demand the abrogation of the PA’s unity agreement with Hamas (which calls for a genocide of Jews) as a precondition of any future talks. He has done neither.
It is also difficult to imagine what conception of American and Israeli security interests led Obama in January to ditch Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and call for political “transition… now” when protests erupted in Cairo. Still less clear is why his administration spoke immediately of involving “non-secular actors” – a clear allusion to the Muslim Brotherhood – given its virulent hostility to the US and Israel. Now, Obama has legitimized the Brotherhood by initiating contacts with it.
THE NET result is that Egypt is on the road from lukewarm ally and peace-maker to a dependable enemy – one to which Obama has announced the sale of 125 state-of-the-art M1A1 Abrams tanks. It is also disturbing that Obama has not pressured Egypt to close its Gaza border at Rafah, whose recent opening has enabled the flow of weaponry into Hamas-run Gaza.
For a year, Obama prohibited any new US sanctions to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons – a looming existential threat to both Israel and the US. Indeed, further measures which must be taken to stop Iran is precisely what Obama left untouched in his recent speeches.
Thus Obama’s words and deeds not only fail to match his stated commitment to Israel’s security – they negate it.
SOURCE
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A Clash of Visions
In a revealing interview this week with The Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor addressed the division that will make compromise in the budget fights ahead nearly impossible. In describing the negotiations leading up to the debt-ceiling deal, Cantor said the talks were made difficult because of a major clash of visions between the parties.
"It's almost as if the president and his party really are bent on promoting a welfare state and then thinking about ... our free enterprise system second," Cantor said. "And their emphasis ... has been in trying to promote programs of economic redistribution. And if you hear them speak, it's always about 'everybody should pay their fair share.' And I think the difference is, we believe everyone should have a fair shot."
Indeed, Cantor's remarks succinctly describe the different worldviews of liberals and conservatives.
Liberals, who think of themselves as more compassionate than conservatives, are always trying to come up with programs and policies that even out the differences between individuals. Liberals want to take a bigger chunk of money from those who earn more because they are harder workers, are brighter or more skilled, have invested more in education, or just happen to have been born into a wealthy family. And liberals want to use that money to create programs to help those who are less fortunate. Our federal income tax system is based on this principle.
Conservatives, on the other hand, aren't as concerned about evening out inequalities between individuals and would rather encourage individuals to pursue their own interests, for better or worse. Most conservatives believe that government should not penalize hard work, risk-taking and success by insisting that government take a larger share of the fruits of those efforts.
But with the advent of the modern welfare state, conservatives have been on the losing end of the policy debate when it comes to providing government assistance to a growing portion of the American population. And the money to pay for those programs is coming from a shrinking portion of our population. According to the latest figures available from the Internal Revenue Service, nearly half of all Americans pay no federal income tax, and that proportion has been on a steady rise for decades.
Given these dramatic disparities between worldviews, it's hard to imagine how a divided government is going to achieve the budget cuts promised in the debt-ceiling compromise or rewrite tax laws that nearly everyone agrees need to be reformed. And an election year is probably the environment least likely to produce satisfactory results.
So what can we expect from the new congressional committee set up to tackle these issues? Not much, which means that the mandatory budget cuts agreed to in the compromise are likely to be the best we can hope for -- along with a hefty tax increase when the so-called Bush tax cuts expire. And when that happens, liberals will have won the day once again.
The $1.2 trillion in mandatory cuts required if Congress doesn't accept the recommendations of the new bi-partisan committee come mostly from cuts in military spending and payments to Medicare providers. That's assuming that the committee can even come up with a plan. What these cuts don't do is tackle the entitlement infrastructure, which is what is threatening to bankrupt the country.
In 2008, the American people chose the liberal worldview by electing Barack Obama and large liberal majorities in both houses of Congress. By 2010, Americans were having second thoughts and gave conservatives a large majority in the House of Representatives. In 2012, voters are going to have to decide whether to complete what they started in 2010 and elect a conservative president and Senate or default to the liberal position of 2008.
With so many Americans now on the receiving end of the greatly expanded welfare state, I'm not sanguine about the prospects of the conservatives winning. But if we don't change course soon, liberals may find that there is little American wealth left to redistribute to anyone.
SOURCE
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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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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Thursday, August 04, 2011
Was Breivik inevitable?
Leftists are very keen to identify the "root cause" of various social ills. And the root cause identified in most cases is "poverty". They even sang that song for some time after the events of 9/11/2001. It was allegedly Muslim poverty that caused those events. It took several months of people reminding the Left that Osama bin Laden was actually a billionaire before the Left abandoned that song. About a third of them went on after that to say that George Bush did it anyway -- and the remainder said that GWB was at least to blame in some way.
And we remember recently the Arizona massacre by Jared Loughner. That was allegedly caused by hate speech from Right-wing radio hosts, despite the fact that Loughner was a reader of such "conservative" works as the Communist Manifesto and was clearly mad (psychotic). After many people reminded the Left that plenty of furious hate speech emanated from them also, that one petered out too.
And now of course most of the Left is convinced that conservatives are to blame for Breivik's massacre. The fact that no conservative mentioned by Breivik actually recommended anything like what Breivik did is no problem, apparently. Conservatives created a "climate" (surely one of the Left's favourite words) conducive to Breivik's deeds.
That the "climate" seems to have influenced nobody but Breivik would however be seen as problematical by rational beings. Hundreds of millions of people read the sort of writers that Breivik quotes but no others of them go on murderous rampages. If conservative speech were a drug and I was submitting it to the FDA for approval, the FDA would wave it through -- on the grounds that a drug safely taken by millions with only one bad reaction had to be evaluated for safety by reference to the hundreds of millions of cases rather than the one isolated exception.
So it is clear that even if the frenzied claims of root causes made by Leftists are totally addled, they do set a precedent for others to look at root causes too -- but hopefully in a more rational manner. And if Leftists say that conservatism is the root cause of Breivik's deeds, why should I not make the case that Leftism is the root cause of Breivik's deeds? What's good for the goose is surely good for the gander.
So I contend that the root cause of Breivik's onslaught is not to be found in Breivik's head (though the proximate cause lies there) but rather in the long-term policies of the antisemitic and Muslim-loving Norwegian Left.
And those policies have been destructive indeed. Norway now has Muslim ghettoes where the police rarely go and crimes such as rape have become a Muslim specialty -- with ANY crime by Muslims being rarely prosecuted and punished. The Norwegian Left has inflicted grave harm on Norwegian society. And adding insult to injury, you will usually be abused as a racist if you even mention any of that harm (but calling for Israel to be bombed is perfectly respectable, of course). An excerpt from just one report of what the Norwegian Left has wrought, by way of example:
So am I blaming the victim? Am I blaming the Leftist elite whom Breivik targeted? I certainly am. If someone initiates an assault and gets hurt in the reaction, then they are certainly to blame for the hurt they suffer. And the Norwegian Left has inflicted great harm on ordinary Norwegians. And even before Breivik, Norwegians had begun to wake up to that. Despite their long domination of Norwegian politics, the Labour party lost the last election and had to form a Red/Green coalition with two other parties to stay in government.
And this disillusionment with the pro-Muslim policies of the Norwegian Left has led -- as we are repeatedly told by Norwegian experts themselves (a recent example here) -- to views such as Breivik's becoming widespread among Norwegians. So Breivik was quite normal in his beliefs and different only in doing something about them.
In those circumstances it seems clear to me that if Breivik had not struck then somebody else would eventually have done so. There was a head of steam building up in Norway that would eventually have burst out somewhere. The Viking genes can't entirely have died out there.
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America Can Thank the "Terrorists"
You know what they say; one man's terrorist is another man's democratically elected congressman. That's just one of the many lessons of the debt ceiling compromise, a deal that heralds a new era of electrifying political rhetoric. Nazis are out. Jihadists are in.
The tea party "acted like terrorists," Joe Biden reportedly said of negotiations. One reasonable New York Times columnist called the tea party the "Hezbollah faction" of the GOP, and the other advised the radicals to "put aside their suicide vests" -- for now. And in a sweeping assault on the tea party, metaphors, syntax and clarity, MSNBC's Chris Matthews packed everything he'd read on the blogs into a glorious globule of rhetorical confusion.
But fret not. Terrorist analogies are welcome when democracy fails to break to the left. Republicans should never refer to the Congressional Progressive Caucus as a bunch of wealth-destroying jihadists who wear suicide vests packed with prosperity-killing stimulus plans. That kind of overheated hyperbole would be catastrophic, leading to violence and/or another alarmist Diane Sawyer television special. But Bob Beckel is just being cute when he discusses the "tea terrorist party" on Fox News. (He later apologized.)
And it turns out that the extremist freshman wing of the Republican Party (which wing isn't extreme, though -- am I right?) voted 59-28 in favor of the bipartisan "sugar-coated Satan sandwich" debt deal. What kind of namby-pamby hostage takers are these people? (Did you know that 95 House Democrats also voted against raising the ceiling? From what we've learned about staggering dangers of fooling around with this policy, we apparently have another 95 nihilists running around D.C.)
If you're wondering why these elected officials, representing their constituents within the system, are the equivalent of terrorists, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania bores to the heart of the matter: "This small group of terrorists," Mike Doyle explained, "have made it impossible to spend any money."
Well, damn near impossible. Washington will have to squeeze by on $43,900,000,000,000 over the next decade while wrestling with real cuts that are likely to rise to zero -- or maybe less. If we can't spend money, who are we as a people?
Perhaps it's because of some psychological ailment such as Stockholm syndrome -- and why else would a person believe in libertarian fiscal policy? -- that I hope the tea party does a better job next time around. It is, after all, silly watching the establishment celebrate a compromise on debt that adds $7 trillion to the nation's liability and uses a base line that assumes some pretty significant tax hikes.
But you needn't sympathize with the American Taliban to understand the significance of the day. No amount of hysterics changes the fact that there has been realignment to the national conversation. The country has been radicalized by reality. A new CNN poll finds that though they rightly disapprove with everyone involved, 65 percent of those polled think that cuts in the debt deal were appropriate. Most polls find that voters believe government is too large and favor spending cuts. Remember that polls showed that most voters were against raising the debt limit at all.
It's not the terrorists who drive this change. It's the evidence. It's the economic suffering that "spreading it around" policy has created. It's institutionalization of a recession. For a while, at least, those who claim that bankruptcy spending and bullet trains create jobs -- no matter how regularly the media offer these myths as fact -- can't be taken seriously.
Fleeting as this shift may be, we were brought a sliver of good news this week. During one glorious day, the United States passed legislation with the sole intention of cutting government rather than "creating" so-called jobs or "investing" in some cockamamie energy boondoggle or "helping" "working families" -- which is, of course, the biggest help Washington can offer us. For that, we can thank the "terrorists."
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
What Breivik shot up was an antisemitic training ground: "Labour Youth League summer camp at Utøya got the Labour Party’s young hopefuls a visit by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store. The Palestinians “must have their own state, the occupation must end, the wall must be demolished and it must happen now,” said the Norwegian Foreign Minister to cheers from the audience. The main activity at the Utoya Island Meeting were mock “Break the Israel blockade” games. Utoya camp was not Islamist but it WAS something not much more wholesome (by our standards, at any rate). It was a summer indoctrination camp run by Norway’s ruling Labor Party for up-and-coming children of the ruling elite."
Of straws and camels: "Here’s the problem: borrowing is only right when you can pay back your creditors. US policy is to fund our debt payments with additional debt. Tax revenues, even vastly increased tax revenues, cannot pay back the present debt. Growing that debt more slowly is not a solution; if the federal government can’t pay its bills without perpetual borrowing now, how is it supposed to pay those bills later? At some point, some creditors must be left holding the bag."
Free cell phones are now a civil right: "Recently, a federal government program called the Universal Service Fund came to the Keystone State and some residents are thrilled because it means they can enjoy 250 minutes a month and a handset for free, just because they don't have the money to pay for it. Through Assurance Wireless and SafeLink from Tracfone Wireless these folks get to reach out and touch someone while the cost of their service is paid for by everyone else. You see, the telecommunications companies are funding the Universal Service Fund to the tune of $4 billion a year because the feds said they have to and in order to recoup their money, the companies turn around and hike their fees to paying customers."
UN Security Council issues statement condemning violence in Syria: "The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday issued a statement condemning the Syrian government's crackdown on protesters and calling for an immediate end to violence by all parties. 'The Security Council condemns the widespread violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities,' the eight-paragraph statement says." [A fat lot of good that will do. As Bismarck said: "Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided but by iron and blood"]
Poll: Muslims, atheists most likely to reject violence: "New data from polling firm Gallup shows that out of all the religious groups in the U.S., Muslims are most likely to reject violence, followed by the non-religious atheists and agnostics. Through interviews with 2,482 Americans, Gallup found that 78 percent of Muslims believe violence which kills civilians is never justified, whereas just 38 percent of Protestant Christians and 39 percent of Catholics agreed with that sentiment. Fifty-six percent of atheists answered similarly" [The old attitude/behaviour gap again, it would seem]
Lemonade freedom: "August 20 is Lemonade Freedom Day and everyone who can do so is asked to set up a stand; everyone else is urged to imbibe. The reason? Authorities across America are closing down kids’ lemonade stands because, in many states and localities, they violate health codes, licensing laws, and other permit requirements. A recent headline in Reason online declared, 'Lemonade-Stand Crackdown Continues: Cops Make Girls Cry From Georgia to Wisconsin.'"
The case against John Bryson: "President Obama's nominee for secretary of commerce, John Bryson, is a terrible choice for a Cabinet department ostensibly dedicated to promoting economic growth and job creation. In fact, Bryson has made a career out of undermining both. Over the years, he has used his government connections to game the political process and receive billions in bailouts and subsidies. America does not need any more crony capitalists in high places."
Welcome to what recovery?: "Today, August 3, 2011, marks the one year anniversary of Treasure Secretary Tim Geithner’s op-ed in The New York Times, ostentatiously titled 'Welcome to the Recovery.' ... He might as well have printed that on a banner and hung it over a battle ship for how much he has likely grown to regret those words. 'We are on a path back to growth' Geithner declared, as he went to great lengths to justify and praise the stimulus package."
The latest black swan: Caylee’s law: "Black-swan law: a law created in response to a highly unrepresentative situation or legal case, which is typically rushed into effect and then used to regulate everyone's daily life. Never trust a law named after a person. It is most likely a politician's act of self-aggrandizement or the result of public frenzy. Caylee's law is the latter."
Our unsustainable entitlement growth: "As news of Washington’s debt ceiling clash flashed across the wires, a reader sent me a clipping this week from a column written by a Texas radio pastor in 1975. It decries the gargantuan size of President Gerald Ford’s proposed federal budget, which 'constitutes a continuation of the spend, spend, spend philosophy' with enormous deficits passed on to the nation’s children. The arguments are familiar, but the numbers are staggering. The total projected size of the deficit back then? $52 billion. The total size of the proposed budget? $349 billion"
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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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Leftists are very keen to identify the "root cause" of various social ills. And the root cause identified in most cases is "poverty". They even sang that song for some time after the events of 9/11/2001. It was allegedly Muslim poverty that caused those events. It took several months of people reminding the Left that Osama bin Laden was actually a billionaire before the Left abandoned that song. About a third of them went on after that to say that George Bush did it anyway -- and the remainder said that GWB was at least to blame in some way.
And we remember recently the Arizona massacre by Jared Loughner. That was allegedly caused by hate speech from Right-wing radio hosts, despite the fact that Loughner was a reader of such "conservative" works as the Communist Manifesto and was clearly mad (psychotic). After many people reminded the Left that plenty of furious hate speech emanated from them also, that one petered out too.
And now of course most of the Left is convinced that conservatives are to blame for Breivik's massacre. The fact that no conservative mentioned by Breivik actually recommended anything like what Breivik did is no problem, apparently. Conservatives created a "climate" (surely one of the Left's favourite words) conducive to Breivik's deeds.
That the "climate" seems to have influenced nobody but Breivik would however be seen as problematical by rational beings. Hundreds of millions of people read the sort of writers that Breivik quotes but no others of them go on murderous rampages. If conservative speech were a drug and I was submitting it to the FDA for approval, the FDA would wave it through -- on the grounds that a drug safely taken by millions with only one bad reaction had to be evaluated for safety by reference to the hundreds of millions of cases rather than the one isolated exception.
So it is clear that even if the frenzied claims of root causes made by Leftists are totally addled, they do set a precedent for others to look at root causes too -- but hopefully in a more rational manner. And if Leftists say that conservatism is the root cause of Breivik's deeds, why should I not make the case that Leftism is the root cause of Breivik's deeds? What's good for the goose is surely good for the gander.
So I contend that the root cause of Breivik's onslaught is not to be found in Breivik's head (though the proximate cause lies there) but rather in the long-term policies of the antisemitic and Muslim-loving Norwegian Left.
And those policies have been destructive indeed. Norway now has Muslim ghettoes where the police rarely go and crimes such as rape have become a Muslim specialty -- with ANY crime by Muslims being rarely prosecuted and punished. The Norwegian Left has inflicted grave harm on Norwegian society. And adding insult to injury, you will usually be abused as a racist if you even mention any of that harm (but calling for Israel to be bombed is perfectly respectable, of course). An excerpt from just one report of what the Norwegian Left has wrought, by way of example:
I live in Oslo, Norway. We have lots of problems with muslim immigrants. Official crime statistics over a three year period shows 49 of 49 assault rapes in Oslo was made by a person from a "non-western background" which is basically government code for muslim immigrants. Just yesterday Aftenposten; on of Norway's most respected newspapers, interviewed the police chief in Oslo where she advised Norwegian women not to walk the streets alone at night, the police have basically given up combating the problem with crime.
The muslims in Norway are just as hatefull as in Sweden, which has the same problem but in a much worse degree. From a young age they openly call Norwegian women for whores, their own sisters are locked inside the home to protect them from the Norwegian society. The young muslim men often date Norwegian girls, but do not marry them because they are perceived as whores; they are ok to have sex with but too filthy to marry, basically.
Muslims in Norway also are not very interested in their kids learning to read or write in Norwegian, making them losers in the educational system from an early age. This is also true for second and third generation immigrants. Across my streets lives the only muslim family in my neighborhood, all the kids (they have like 5 of them with one 1/2 to 2 years between them) talk Arabic and never Norwegian.
While Norwegian kids are more quiet and reserved the muslim kids seem to be more violent, usually carrying sticks and shouting all the time where Norwegian kids are more silent and withdrawn. When growing up in Oslo I experienced the same violent behaviour with my muslim peers, personally I believe that their whole culture is more based around the "power of the strong", where if you are strong you are perceived to have more power; which the muslims look up to as something good.
My impression from dealing with immigrants is that they feel Norway owes them something, even though it is *them* who don't fit in. Many muslims don't like Norwegians or Norwegian rule, but they rarely move back to a muslim country and change citizenship.
The worst thing is when that the socialists, who are the major political force in Norway, hear these arguments they immediately call you racist or Islamophobe. They also have concealed crime statistics for years by refusing to publish crime numbers based on origins. Once when they did it was found that 10% of the population, the immigrants, stood for 90% of the crime and more specifically 100% of assault rapes in Oslo! I personally am against any religion or ideology that spreads separation and hate, be it Islam or Christian fundamentalism.
So am I blaming the victim? Am I blaming the Leftist elite whom Breivik targeted? I certainly am. If someone initiates an assault and gets hurt in the reaction, then they are certainly to blame for the hurt they suffer. And the Norwegian Left has inflicted great harm on ordinary Norwegians. And even before Breivik, Norwegians had begun to wake up to that. Despite their long domination of Norwegian politics, the Labour party lost the last election and had to form a Red/Green coalition with two other parties to stay in government.
And this disillusionment with the pro-Muslim policies of the Norwegian Left has led -- as we are repeatedly told by Norwegian experts themselves (a recent example here) -- to views such as Breivik's becoming widespread among Norwegians. So Breivik was quite normal in his beliefs and different only in doing something about them.
In those circumstances it seems clear to me that if Breivik had not struck then somebody else would eventually have done so. There was a head of steam building up in Norway that would eventually have burst out somewhere. The Viking genes can't entirely have died out there.
**************************
America Can Thank the "Terrorists"
You know what they say; one man's terrorist is another man's democratically elected congressman. That's just one of the many lessons of the debt ceiling compromise, a deal that heralds a new era of electrifying political rhetoric. Nazis are out. Jihadists are in.
The tea party "acted like terrorists," Joe Biden reportedly said of negotiations. One reasonable New York Times columnist called the tea party the "Hezbollah faction" of the GOP, and the other advised the radicals to "put aside their suicide vests" -- for now. And in a sweeping assault on the tea party, metaphors, syntax and clarity, MSNBC's Chris Matthews packed everything he'd read on the blogs into a glorious globule of rhetorical confusion.
But fret not. Terrorist analogies are welcome when democracy fails to break to the left. Republicans should never refer to the Congressional Progressive Caucus as a bunch of wealth-destroying jihadists who wear suicide vests packed with prosperity-killing stimulus plans. That kind of overheated hyperbole would be catastrophic, leading to violence and/or another alarmist Diane Sawyer television special. But Bob Beckel is just being cute when he discusses the "tea terrorist party" on Fox News. (He later apologized.)
And it turns out that the extremist freshman wing of the Republican Party (which wing isn't extreme, though -- am I right?) voted 59-28 in favor of the bipartisan "sugar-coated Satan sandwich" debt deal. What kind of namby-pamby hostage takers are these people? (Did you know that 95 House Democrats also voted against raising the ceiling? From what we've learned about staggering dangers of fooling around with this policy, we apparently have another 95 nihilists running around D.C.)
If you're wondering why these elected officials, representing their constituents within the system, are the equivalent of terrorists, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania bores to the heart of the matter: "This small group of terrorists," Mike Doyle explained, "have made it impossible to spend any money."
Well, damn near impossible. Washington will have to squeeze by on $43,900,000,000,000 over the next decade while wrestling with real cuts that are likely to rise to zero -- or maybe less. If we can't spend money, who are we as a people?
Perhaps it's because of some psychological ailment such as Stockholm syndrome -- and why else would a person believe in libertarian fiscal policy? -- that I hope the tea party does a better job next time around. It is, after all, silly watching the establishment celebrate a compromise on debt that adds $7 trillion to the nation's liability and uses a base line that assumes some pretty significant tax hikes.
But you needn't sympathize with the American Taliban to understand the significance of the day. No amount of hysterics changes the fact that there has been realignment to the national conversation. The country has been radicalized by reality. A new CNN poll finds that though they rightly disapprove with everyone involved, 65 percent of those polled think that cuts in the debt deal were appropriate. Most polls find that voters believe government is too large and favor spending cuts. Remember that polls showed that most voters were against raising the debt limit at all.
It's not the terrorists who drive this change. It's the evidence. It's the economic suffering that "spreading it around" policy has created. It's institutionalization of a recession. For a while, at least, those who claim that bankruptcy spending and bullet trains create jobs -- no matter how regularly the media offer these myths as fact -- can't be taken seriously.
Fleeting as this shift may be, we were brought a sliver of good news this week. During one glorious day, the United States passed legislation with the sole intention of cutting government rather than "creating" so-called jobs or "investing" in some cockamamie energy boondoggle or "helping" "working families" -- which is, of course, the biggest help Washington can offer us. For that, we can thank the "terrorists."
SOURCE
*******************
ELSEWHERE
What Breivik shot up was an antisemitic training ground: "Labour Youth League summer camp at Utøya got the Labour Party’s young hopefuls a visit by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store. The Palestinians “must have their own state, the occupation must end, the wall must be demolished and it must happen now,” said the Norwegian Foreign Minister to cheers from the audience. The main activity at the Utoya Island Meeting were mock “Break the Israel blockade” games. Utoya camp was not Islamist but it WAS something not much more wholesome (by our standards, at any rate). It was a summer indoctrination camp run by Norway’s ruling Labor Party for up-and-coming children of the ruling elite."
Of straws and camels: "Here’s the problem: borrowing is only right when you can pay back your creditors. US policy is to fund our debt payments with additional debt. Tax revenues, even vastly increased tax revenues, cannot pay back the present debt. Growing that debt more slowly is not a solution; if the federal government can’t pay its bills without perpetual borrowing now, how is it supposed to pay those bills later? At some point, some creditors must be left holding the bag."
Free cell phones are now a civil right: "Recently, a federal government program called the Universal Service Fund came to the Keystone State and some residents are thrilled because it means they can enjoy 250 minutes a month and a handset for free, just because they don't have the money to pay for it. Through Assurance Wireless and SafeLink from Tracfone Wireless these folks get to reach out and touch someone while the cost of their service is paid for by everyone else. You see, the telecommunications companies are funding the Universal Service Fund to the tune of $4 billion a year because the feds said they have to and in order to recoup their money, the companies turn around and hike their fees to paying customers."
UN Security Council issues statement condemning violence in Syria: "The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday issued a statement condemning the Syrian government's crackdown on protesters and calling for an immediate end to violence by all parties. 'The Security Council condemns the widespread violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities,' the eight-paragraph statement says." [A fat lot of good that will do. As Bismarck said: "Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided but by iron and blood"]
Poll: Muslims, atheists most likely to reject violence: "New data from polling firm Gallup shows that out of all the religious groups in the U.S., Muslims are most likely to reject violence, followed by the non-religious atheists and agnostics. Through interviews with 2,482 Americans, Gallup found that 78 percent of Muslims believe violence which kills civilians is never justified, whereas just 38 percent of Protestant Christians and 39 percent of Catholics agreed with that sentiment. Fifty-six percent of atheists answered similarly" [The old attitude/behaviour gap again, it would seem]
Lemonade freedom: "August 20 is Lemonade Freedom Day and everyone who can do so is asked to set up a stand; everyone else is urged to imbibe. The reason? Authorities across America are closing down kids’ lemonade stands because, in many states and localities, they violate health codes, licensing laws, and other permit requirements. A recent headline in Reason online declared, 'Lemonade-Stand Crackdown Continues: Cops Make Girls Cry From Georgia to Wisconsin.'"
The case against John Bryson: "President Obama's nominee for secretary of commerce, John Bryson, is a terrible choice for a Cabinet department ostensibly dedicated to promoting economic growth and job creation. In fact, Bryson has made a career out of undermining both. Over the years, he has used his government connections to game the political process and receive billions in bailouts and subsidies. America does not need any more crony capitalists in high places."
Welcome to what recovery?: "Today, August 3, 2011, marks the one year anniversary of Treasure Secretary Tim Geithner’s op-ed in The New York Times, ostentatiously titled 'Welcome to the Recovery.' ... He might as well have printed that on a banner and hung it over a battle ship for how much he has likely grown to regret those words. 'We are on a path back to growth' Geithner declared, as he went to great lengths to justify and praise the stimulus package."
The latest black swan: Caylee’s law: "Black-swan law: a law created in response to a highly unrepresentative situation or legal case, which is typically rushed into effect and then used to regulate everyone's daily life. Never trust a law named after a person. It is most likely a politician's act of self-aggrandizement or the result of public frenzy. Caylee's law is the latter."
Our unsustainable entitlement growth: "As news of Washington’s debt ceiling clash flashed across the wires, a reader sent me a clipping this week from a column written by a Texas radio pastor in 1975. It decries the gargantuan size of President Gerald Ford’s proposed federal budget, which 'constitutes a continuation of the spend, spend, spend philosophy' with enormous deficits passed on to the nation’s children. The arguments are familiar, but the numbers are staggering. The total projected size of the deficit back then? $52 billion. The total size of the proposed budget? $349 billion"
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
An amusing email from a reader
But I understand how he feels:
Back in the 70's when the world was young, I was a subscriber to "Human Events". I eventually found it so depressing, however, that I cancelled my subscription!
So I hope this blog is not falling into the same hole. I therefore begin today's postings with what I think are two more cheerful articles:
***********************
The real story of the US debt deal is not the triumph of the Tea Party but the death of the Socialist Left
Comment from Britain
For British conservatives, the US debt deal is a thing of beauty. Under the terms of the deal, the federal government will cut spending by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years and there won’t be any corresponding increase in taxation. That is to say, the American Government has agreed to tackle its deficit by spending cuts alone. The British Government, by contrast, is planning to cut its deficit through a combination of spending cuts and tax rises – and it’s cutting it by a smaller amount.
Even if the Tory Party had won an overall majority at the last election, it’s hard to imagine it adopting such a bold fiscal policy. Yet the American Government is on the verge of adopting this plan in spite of the fact that the Democrats control the Senate and the White House. A year ago, American conservatives were showering David Cameron with praise for adopting such a radical approach to reducing Britain’s deficit and contrasting him unfavourably with their own spendthrift President. Now, our Prime Minister looks like a weak-kneed liberal in contrast to the hard-headed Obama. Whatever happened to the stimulus?
Most pundits are crediting this U-turn to the political muscle of the Tea Party and it’s true that President Obama would never have agreed to this deal if the Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives hadn’t engaged in the brinkmanship of the past few weeks. But to focus on the Tea Party is to ignore the tectonic political shift that’s taken place, not just in America but across Europe. The majority of citizens in nearly all the world’s most developed countries simply aren’t prepared to tolerate the degree of borrowing required to sustain generous welfare programmes any longer.
As I pointed out in a blog post last May, tax-and-spend Left-wing parties have fared poorly in election after election over the past two years: "Labour was punished by the British electorate last year, polling its lowest share of the vote since 1983, but not as severely as the Social Democrats were by the Swedes, polling their lowest share of the vote since universal suffrage was introduced in 1921…"
The same picture emerges wherever you look. In the European election in June, 2009, the Left took a hammering. In Germany, the Social Democrats polled just 20 per cent of the vote, their worst result since the Second World War. In France, the Socialist Party only mustered 16.5 per cent, its lowest share of the vote in a European election since 1994. In Italy, the Democrats polled 26.1 per cent, seven percentage points less than they received at the last Italian election. As David Miliband pointed out in a recent lecture: “Left parties are losing elections more comprehensively than ever before. They are fragmenting at just the time the Right is uniting. I don’t believe this is some kind of accident.”
For believers in redistributive taxation and egalitarian social programmes like David Miliband, Obama was the last great hope. Here was a centre left politician capable of building the kind of electoral coalition that underpinned the massive expansions of state power in Britain and America, from Attlee’s post-war Labour Government to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. That is, a coalition of the white working class, minorities and middle class liberals. Yet in spite of sweeping to power in 2008 and ensuring the Democrats won in both the House and the Senate, Obama has proved unable to sustain that coalition. Last night’s debt deal represents the moment when he acknowledged that trying to maintain the levels of public spending required to fund ambitious welfare programmes is political suicide. Which is why the deal has been greated with cries of impotent rage by the British Left.
In both Britain and America, the Left has been reduced to hoping that cutting public spending on this scale will snuff out economic growth and plunge our respective economies back into recession. Not only will the Coalition be turfed out as a consequence, but if Obama can somehow blame the Tea Party for the “double dip” he might be able to persuade the people to grant him four more years. What the Left hasn’t grasped – and what Obama has – is that for the foreseeable future no political candidate or party will be able to increase public spending and win re-election. Socialist welfare programmes have become politically toxic. A sea change has taken place within the West’s most developed countries and last night’s debt deal is a reflection of that.
SOURCE
***********************
The complex and frustrating U.S. system of government is its greatest strength
Comment from Australia
THE world is badly misinterpreting the US debt crisis - it is not a sign of the weakness of US politics, but its strength. This crisis, more than anything, demonstrates why America is not Europe.
European governments have found nothing easier than raising their national debt limits, until their debt gets more, or less, beyond their ability to service it.
If the US was Europe, raising the debt ceiling, rather than threatening government spending, especially entitlement programs, would be as easy as apple pie. It is true that the US is still in a deep fiscal hole. It is also true that this deal has its good and bad points, and is only one episode in a huge, panoramic drama.
And taking the game right down to the last day or two certainly showed a willingness by all sides to flirt with disaster.
But here's one crucial lesson about government debt. It's far better to have a political crisis about getting into it before you have an economic crisis about how you pay it.
This negotiation has been an astonishing victory for congressional Republicans.
They have won the intellectual and political argument. President Barack Obama, the biggest-spending president in a generation of US politics, has abandoned plans for new taxes, effectively abandoned plans for any significant new government programs and accepted - in principle and in practice - that there must be deep, structural cuts to US government spending.
Of course, it will be difficult for Republicans to enforce this and to keep their pledges to avoid new spending or merely leaving existing programs on a business-as-usual basis of endless expansion.
But Republicans have moved debt and the need to reduce spending to the centre of American life, made it a bipartisan consensus and conscripted the President to their cause.
There is plenty to criticise in the Tea Party and it certainly attracts its share of nuts and cranks. But only in the US could a recession produce a popular movement demanding government cut spending. Thus, the Tea Party has played its part in this debate and that has been a constructive part.
Of course, they are always in danger of overplaying their hand.
Most fanaticism begins with a good idea. The problem with the fanatic is the tendency to take the good idea to illogical conclusions, and to see it as the only good idea, and thereby lose the sense of balance which all good social politics requires. But the US political system is not just the Tea Party.
There is a foolish tendency among non-US commentators, and too many Americans as well, to regard the US system, because of its many checks and balances, as incoherent and dysfunctional.
But this episode is one where the US demonstrates the at least occasional superiority of its governing model to that of a parliamentary system.
A Westminster government that enjoyed majority support for the executive in parliament would have just raised its debt level, and kept doing so until it reached the logical end point of Greece: insolvency. That, unfortunately, seems to be the policy instinct of the Obama administration.
But the US system, with its two-yearly congressional cycle, forced debt reduction and the danger of the ballooning deficit to the centre of the debate.
It is perfectly reasonable to blame George W. Bush for a great deal of the public debt, though Obama is an epic government spender.
I would disagree with the Tea Partiers in advocating some action on the revenue side (that is, the abolition of some tax breaks) and some cuts in defence expenditure. Hopefully, eventually, US growth will ease the situation. And there are 1000 other factors. But when all is said and done, the key to the government debt problem is government expenditure.
That US politics is focused on that issue as the centre of the crisis is a sign of political health.
SOURCE
*************************
The budget deal doesn’t cut federal spending at all
Republicans and Democrats have come together on a “historic” budget deal that cuts federal spending by more than $2 trillion over 10 years. The Washington Post’s lead story calls the cuts “sharp” and “severe.” However, the budget deal doesn’t cut federal spending at all.
House Speaker John Boehner’s bullet points on the deal say that it cuts discretionary spending by $917 billion over 10 years, as “certified by CBO.” These discretionary “cuts” appear to be the same as those in Boehner’s plan from last week. The chart shows CBO’s scoring of those spending cuts (see here and here).
Wait a minute, those bars are rising! Spending isn’t being cut at all. The “cuts” in the deal are only cuts from the CBO “baseline,” which is a Washington construct of ever-rising spending. And even these “cuts” from the baseline include $156 billion of interest savings, which are imaginary because the underlying cuts are imaginary.
No program or agency terminations are identified in the deal. None of the vast armada of federal subsidies are targeted for elimination. Old folks will continue to gorge themselves on inflated benefits paid for by young families and future generations. None of Senator Tom Coburn’s or Senator Rand Paul’s specific cuts were included.
The federal government will still run a deficit of $1 trillion next year. This deal will “cut” the 2012 budget of $3.6 trillion by just $22 billion, or less than 1 percent.
The legislation does create a “Joint Committee” to design a second round of at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts by November. Presumably, interest savings will be included in those “cuts” as well, reducing the amount of actual program cuts needed to about $1 trillion.
Will these Joint Committee cuts be real? This deal’s immediate cuts aren’t real, nor were many of the cuts in the 2011 budget deal earlier this year. It won’t be hard by the Joint Committee to manufacture $1 trillion in pretend savings in coming months.
SOURCE
***************************
Obama Is Fresh Out of Ideas
One of the most striking facts about the course of the Obama presidency so far is that Obama has no constructive solutions for anything, which is one reason he campaigned on vague promises. It's why he established bogus metrics, such as "saved or created jobs."
It's also why he's always pointing the finger of blame on others for his policy failures. Everyone knows by now that Obama's reckless and corrupt stimulus package failed to restrain unemployment as he had promised and that instead of accepting responsibility for it, he blamed Bush.
He also played another familiar liberal card: He insisted his stimulus bill would have worked if he had been allowed to spend more money. So he started pushing for a second stimulus, all while increasing the government's regulatory stranglehold on business and cramming Obamacare down our throats.
All of which is to say -- with added emphasis -- that Obama is fresh out of ideas. Worse, he's the immovable force standing in the way of those who do have constructive proposals.
He didn't even submit a plan during the debt ceiling negotiations, and his party's Senate majority hasn't presented a budget for more than 800 days. We have a spending and entitlement problem, but Obama's ideology precludes him from addressing either. It drives him, instead, to insist on increasing taxes on the rich. But raising rates would further smother the economy and not significantly increase revenues.
The GOP is far from perfect, but it has presented serious proposals to address the debt crisis, which include capping discretionary spending, restructuring entitlements, passing a balanced budget amendment and reforming the tax code. These plans could work, but the Democrats have steadfastly and shamelessly opposed them and ridiculed their proponents, such as Rep. Paul Ryan.
More HERE
**********************
Obama admits to Fascist thinking
And his supporters like the idea
Last week, when President Barack Obama spoke to the National Council of La Raza, he said something that should alarm every American. He confessed that he'd like to "bypass Congress and change the laws" on his own. He added, "Believe me; the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you."
He doesn't need to promise us. We believe him, because we've been watching his rogue behavior since the moment he entered office.
Way back in February 2010, even The New York Times unveiled his modus operandi, in its report "Obama Making Plans to Use Executive Power." It summarized, "With much of his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities."
As The New York Times reported at the beginning of last year, Obama's exploits to bypass Congress are intended to "advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities." We now can add America's border problems to those, as Obama also elaborated last week that the temptation to bypass Congress includes "not just immigration reform." No wonder the crowd began to chant "Yes, we can!" (Tragically, it seems that too many citizens want a Fuehrer more than they do a president.)
More HERE
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
But I understand how he feels:
I read your blog daily. Lately I have found it leaving me feeling depressed and powerless in an asylum run by the inmates.
But now I have found the cure. After reading Greenie Watch, Education Watch, Immigration Watch et al, I finish of with Gun Watch - really the best antidote and sets me up for the rest of the day!!!
Back in the 70's when the world was young, I was a subscriber to "Human Events". I eventually found it so depressing, however, that I cancelled my subscription!
So I hope this blog is not falling into the same hole. I therefore begin today's postings with what I think are two more cheerful articles:
***********************
The real story of the US debt deal is not the triumph of the Tea Party but the death of the Socialist Left
Comment from Britain
For British conservatives, the US debt deal is a thing of beauty. Under the terms of the deal, the federal government will cut spending by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years and there won’t be any corresponding increase in taxation. That is to say, the American Government has agreed to tackle its deficit by spending cuts alone. The British Government, by contrast, is planning to cut its deficit through a combination of spending cuts and tax rises – and it’s cutting it by a smaller amount.
Even if the Tory Party had won an overall majority at the last election, it’s hard to imagine it adopting such a bold fiscal policy. Yet the American Government is on the verge of adopting this plan in spite of the fact that the Democrats control the Senate and the White House. A year ago, American conservatives were showering David Cameron with praise for adopting such a radical approach to reducing Britain’s deficit and contrasting him unfavourably with their own spendthrift President. Now, our Prime Minister looks like a weak-kneed liberal in contrast to the hard-headed Obama. Whatever happened to the stimulus?
Most pundits are crediting this U-turn to the political muscle of the Tea Party and it’s true that President Obama would never have agreed to this deal if the Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives hadn’t engaged in the brinkmanship of the past few weeks. But to focus on the Tea Party is to ignore the tectonic political shift that’s taken place, not just in America but across Europe. The majority of citizens in nearly all the world’s most developed countries simply aren’t prepared to tolerate the degree of borrowing required to sustain generous welfare programmes any longer.
As I pointed out in a blog post last May, tax-and-spend Left-wing parties have fared poorly in election after election over the past two years: "Labour was punished by the British electorate last year, polling its lowest share of the vote since 1983, but not as severely as the Social Democrats were by the Swedes, polling their lowest share of the vote since universal suffrage was introduced in 1921…"
The same picture emerges wherever you look. In the European election in June, 2009, the Left took a hammering. In Germany, the Social Democrats polled just 20 per cent of the vote, their worst result since the Second World War. In France, the Socialist Party only mustered 16.5 per cent, its lowest share of the vote in a European election since 1994. In Italy, the Democrats polled 26.1 per cent, seven percentage points less than they received at the last Italian election. As David Miliband pointed out in a recent lecture: “Left parties are losing elections more comprehensively than ever before. They are fragmenting at just the time the Right is uniting. I don’t believe this is some kind of accident.”
For believers in redistributive taxation and egalitarian social programmes like David Miliband, Obama was the last great hope. Here was a centre left politician capable of building the kind of electoral coalition that underpinned the massive expansions of state power in Britain and America, from Attlee’s post-war Labour Government to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. That is, a coalition of the white working class, minorities and middle class liberals. Yet in spite of sweeping to power in 2008 and ensuring the Democrats won in both the House and the Senate, Obama has proved unable to sustain that coalition. Last night’s debt deal represents the moment when he acknowledged that trying to maintain the levels of public spending required to fund ambitious welfare programmes is political suicide. Which is why the deal has been greated with cries of impotent rage by the British Left.
In both Britain and America, the Left has been reduced to hoping that cutting public spending on this scale will snuff out economic growth and plunge our respective economies back into recession. Not only will the Coalition be turfed out as a consequence, but if Obama can somehow blame the Tea Party for the “double dip” he might be able to persuade the people to grant him four more years. What the Left hasn’t grasped – and what Obama has – is that for the foreseeable future no political candidate or party will be able to increase public spending and win re-election. Socialist welfare programmes have become politically toxic. A sea change has taken place within the West’s most developed countries and last night’s debt deal is a reflection of that.
SOURCE
***********************
The complex and frustrating U.S. system of government is its greatest strength
Comment from Australia
THE world is badly misinterpreting the US debt crisis - it is not a sign of the weakness of US politics, but its strength. This crisis, more than anything, demonstrates why America is not Europe.
European governments have found nothing easier than raising their national debt limits, until their debt gets more, or less, beyond their ability to service it.
If the US was Europe, raising the debt ceiling, rather than threatening government spending, especially entitlement programs, would be as easy as apple pie. It is true that the US is still in a deep fiscal hole. It is also true that this deal has its good and bad points, and is only one episode in a huge, panoramic drama.
And taking the game right down to the last day or two certainly showed a willingness by all sides to flirt with disaster.
But here's one crucial lesson about government debt. It's far better to have a political crisis about getting into it before you have an economic crisis about how you pay it.
This negotiation has been an astonishing victory for congressional Republicans.
They have won the intellectual and political argument. President Barack Obama, the biggest-spending president in a generation of US politics, has abandoned plans for new taxes, effectively abandoned plans for any significant new government programs and accepted - in principle and in practice - that there must be deep, structural cuts to US government spending.
Of course, it will be difficult for Republicans to enforce this and to keep their pledges to avoid new spending or merely leaving existing programs on a business-as-usual basis of endless expansion.
But Republicans have moved debt and the need to reduce spending to the centre of American life, made it a bipartisan consensus and conscripted the President to their cause.
There is plenty to criticise in the Tea Party and it certainly attracts its share of nuts and cranks. But only in the US could a recession produce a popular movement demanding government cut spending. Thus, the Tea Party has played its part in this debate and that has been a constructive part.
Of course, they are always in danger of overplaying their hand.
Most fanaticism begins with a good idea. The problem with the fanatic is the tendency to take the good idea to illogical conclusions, and to see it as the only good idea, and thereby lose the sense of balance which all good social politics requires. But the US political system is not just the Tea Party.
There is a foolish tendency among non-US commentators, and too many Americans as well, to regard the US system, because of its many checks and balances, as incoherent and dysfunctional.
But this episode is one where the US demonstrates the at least occasional superiority of its governing model to that of a parliamentary system.
A Westminster government that enjoyed majority support for the executive in parliament would have just raised its debt level, and kept doing so until it reached the logical end point of Greece: insolvency. That, unfortunately, seems to be the policy instinct of the Obama administration.
But the US system, with its two-yearly congressional cycle, forced debt reduction and the danger of the ballooning deficit to the centre of the debate.
It is perfectly reasonable to blame George W. Bush for a great deal of the public debt, though Obama is an epic government spender.
I would disagree with the Tea Partiers in advocating some action on the revenue side (that is, the abolition of some tax breaks) and some cuts in defence expenditure. Hopefully, eventually, US growth will ease the situation. And there are 1000 other factors. But when all is said and done, the key to the government debt problem is government expenditure.
That US politics is focused on that issue as the centre of the crisis is a sign of political health.
SOURCE
*************************
The budget deal doesn’t cut federal spending at all
Republicans and Democrats have come together on a “historic” budget deal that cuts federal spending by more than $2 trillion over 10 years. The Washington Post’s lead story calls the cuts “sharp” and “severe.” However, the budget deal doesn’t cut federal spending at all.
House Speaker John Boehner’s bullet points on the deal say that it cuts discretionary spending by $917 billion over 10 years, as “certified by CBO.” These discretionary “cuts” appear to be the same as those in Boehner’s plan from last week. The chart shows CBO’s scoring of those spending cuts (see here and here).
Wait a minute, those bars are rising! Spending isn’t being cut at all. The “cuts” in the deal are only cuts from the CBO “baseline,” which is a Washington construct of ever-rising spending. And even these “cuts” from the baseline include $156 billion of interest savings, which are imaginary because the underlying cuts are imaginary.
No program or agency terminations are identified in the deal. None of the vast armada of federal subsidies are targeted for elimination. Old folks will continue to gorge themselves on inflated benefits paid for by young families and future generations. None of Senator Tom Coburn’s or Senator Rand Paul’s specific cuts were included.
The federal government will still run a deficit of $1 trillion next year. This deal will “cut” the 2012 budget of $3.6 trillion by just $22 billion, or less than 1 percent.
The legislation does create a “Joint Committee” to design a second round of at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts by November. Presumably, interest savings will be included in those “cuts” as well, reducing the amount of actual program cuts needed to about $1 trillion.
Will these Joint Committee cuts be real? This deal’s immediate cuts aren’t real, nor were many of the cuts in the 2011 budget deal earlier this year. It won’t be hard by the Joint Committee to manufacture $1 trillion in pretend savings in coming months.
SOURCE
***************************
Obama Is Fresh Out of Ideas
One of the most striking facts about the course of the Obama presidency so far is that Obama has no constructive solutions for anything, which is one reason he campaigned on vague promises. It's why he established bogus metrics, such as "saved or created jobs."
It's also why he's always pointing the finger of blame on others for his policy failures. Everyone knows by now that Obama's reckless and corrupt stimulus package failed to restrain unemployment as he had promised and that instead of accepting responsibility for it, he blamed Bush.
He also played another familiar liberal card: He insisted his stimulus bill would have worked if he had been allowed to spend more money. So he started pushing for a second stimulus, all while increasing the government's regulatory stranglehold on business and cramming Obamacare down our throats.
All of which is to say -- with added emphasis -- that Obama is fresh out of ideas. Worse, he's the immovable force standing in the way of those who do have constructive proposals.
He didn't even submit a plan during the debt ceiling negotiations, and his party's Senate majority hasn't presented a budget for more than 800 days. We have a spending and entitlement problem, but Obama's ideology precludes him from addressing either. It drives him, instead, to insist on increasing taxes on the rich. But raising rates would further smother the economy and not significantly increase revenues.
The GOP is far from perfect, but it has presented serious proposals to address the debt crisis, which include capping discretionary spending, restructuring entitlements, passing a balanced budget amendment and reforming the tax code. These plans could work, but the Democrats have steadfastly and shamelessly opposed them and ridiculed their proponents, such as Rep. Paul Ryan.
More HERE
**********************
Obama admits to Fascist thinking
And his supporters like the idea
Last week, when President Barack Obama spoke to the National Council of La Raza, he said something that should alarm every American. He confessed that he'd like to "bypass Congress and change the laws" on his own. He added, "Believe me; the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you."
He doesn't need to promise us. We believe him, because we've been watching his rogue behavior since the moment he entered office.
Way back in February 2010, even The New York Times unveiled his modus operandi, in its report "Obama Making Plans to Use Executive Power." It summarized, "With much of his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities."
As The New York Times reported at the beginning of last year, Obama's exploits to bypass Congress are intended to "advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities." We now can add America's border problems to those, as Obama also elaborated last week that the temptation to bypass Congress includes "not just immigration reform." No wonder the crowd began to chant "Yes, we can!" (Tragically, it seems that too many citizens want a Fuehrer more than they do a president.)
More HERE
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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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Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Norway's bigotry
by Alan M. Dershowitz
In a recent interview, Norway's Ambassador to Israel has suggested that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway. His reasoning is that, "We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel." In other words terrorism against Israeli citizens is the fault of Israel. The terrorism against Norway, on the other hand, was based on "an ideology that said that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is foregoing Norwegian culture." It is hard to imagine that he would make such a provocative statement without express approval from the Norwegian government.
I can't remember many other examples of so much nonsense compressed in such short an interview. First of all, terrorism against Israel began well before there was any "occupation". The first major terrorist attack against Jews who had long lived in Jerusalem and Hebron began in 1929, when the leader of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ordered a religiously-motivated terrorist attack that killed hundreds of religious Jews-many old, some quite young. Terrorism against Jews continued through the 1930s.
Once Israel was established as a state, but well before it captured the West Bank, terrorism became the primary means of attacking Israel across the Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese borders. If the occupation is the cause of the terror against Israel, what was the cause of all the terror that preceded any occupation?
I was not surprised to hear such ahistorical bigotry from a Norwegian Ambassador. Norway is the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe today. I know, because I experienced both personally during a recent visit and tour of universities. No university would invite me to lecture, unless I promised not to discuss Israel.
Norway forbids Jewish ritual slaughter, but not Islamic ritual slaughter. Its political and academic leaders openly make statements that cross the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism, such as when Norway's former Prime Minister condemned Barak Obama for appointing a Jew as his Chief of Staff. No other European leader would make such a statement and get away with it. In Norway, this bigoted statement was praised, as were similar statements made by a leading academic.
The very camp that was attacked by the lone terrorist was engaged in an orgy of anti-Israel hatred the day before the shooting. Yet I would not ever claim that it was Norway's anti-Semitism that "caused" the horrible act of terrorism against young Norwegians.
The causes of terrorism are multifaceted but at bottom they have a common cause: namely a belief that violence is the proper response to policies that the terrorists disagree with. The other common cause is that terrorism has often been rewarded.
Norway, for example, has repeatedly rewarded Palestinian terrorism against Israel, while punishing Israel for its efforts to protect its civilians. While purporting to condemn all terrorist acts, the Norwegian government has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism as having a legitimate cause. This clearly is an invitation to continued terrorism.
It is important for the world never to reward terrorism by supporting the policies of those who employ it as an alternative to reason discourse, diplomatic resolution or political compromise.
I know of no reasonable person who has tried to justify the terrorist attacks against Norway. Yet there are many Norwegians who not only justify terrorist attacks against Israel, but praise them, support them, help finance them, and legitimate them.
The world must unite in condemning and punishing all terrorist attacks against innocent civilians, regardless of the motive or purported cause of the terrorism.
The world must unite in condemning and punishing all terrorist attacks against innocent civilians, regardless of the motive or purported cause of the terrorism. Norway, as a nation, has failed to do this. It wants us all to condemn the terrorist attack on its civilians, and we should all do that, but it refuses to live by a single standard.
Nothing good ever comes from terrorism, so don't expect the Norwegians to learn any lessons from its own victimization. As the Ambassador made clear in his benighted interview, "those of us who believe [the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel] will not change their minds because of the attack in Oslo."
In other words, they will persist in their bigoted view that Israel is the cause of the terrorism directed at it, and that if only Israel were to end the occupation (as it offered to do in 2000-2001 and again in 2007), the terrorism will end. Even Hamas, which Norway supports in many ways, has made clear that it will not end its terrorism as long as Israel continues to exist.
Hamas believes that Israel's very existence is the cause of the terrorism against it. That sounds a lot like the ranting of the man who engaged in the act of terrorism against Norway.
The time is long overdue for Norwegians to do some deep soul searching about their sordid history of complicity with all forms of bigotry ranging from the anti-Semitic Nazis to the anti-Semitic Hamas. There seems to be a common thread.
SOURCE
***********************
Norway itself helped give Breivik the idea that terrorism works and is justified
BY BARRY RUBIN
One of the most sensitive aspects of the very sensitive subject of the murderous terrorist attack in Norway by a right-wing gunman is this irony: The youth political camp he attacked was at the time engaged in what was essentially (though the campers didn’t see it that way, no doubt) a pro-terrorist program.
The camp, run by Norway’s left-wing party, was lobbying for breaking the blockade of the terrorist Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip and for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state without that entity needing do anything that would prevent it from being a terrorist base against Israel. They were backing and justifying forces that had committed terrorism against Israelis and killing thousands of people like themselves.
Even to mention this irony is dangerous since it might be taken to imply that the victims “had it coming.” The victims never deserve to be murdered by terrorists, even any victims who think that other victims of terrorists “had it coming.” This is in no way a justification of that horrendous terrorist act. It’s the exact opposite: a vital but forgotten lesson arising from it that can and should save lives in future.
If terrorist murders by Hamas and Islamists did not stop well-intentioned future leaders of Norway from enthusiastically considering them heroic underdogs, a local evil man could think his act of terrorism would gain sympathy and change Europe’s politics. After all, it has already changed the Middle East and even been sanctified by Western media, intellectuals, and governments.
When Norway’s ambassador to Israel distinguishes between “bad” terrorism in Norway and “understandable” terrorism against Israelis that opens the door to a man in Norway who thinks his country is “occupied” by leftists and Muslims?
In this sense, the most important thing about the terrorist in Norway is not that he is right-wing or anti-Islam, The most important thing is that he believed terrorism would work on behalf of his cause. After all, if he had held all of the same beliefs but didn’t think deliberate murder was a good strategy, nobody would be dead from his actions.
Nevertheless, many people gave him the idea that terrorism would change minds, gain support, and bring victory. They weren’t those whose blogs he quoted a few times in a 1500-page manifesto and who explicitly rejected violence. They merely gave him programmatic ideas. It was the successful terrorists and their Western enablers who gave him the strategy he thought would work and implemented.
Oh, and one more thing: A young survivor of the terrorist attack at the camp in Norway explained:
“Some of my friends tried to stop [the gunman] by talking to him. Many people thought that it was a test … comparing it to how it is to live in Gaza. So many people went to him and tried to talk to him, but they were shot immediately.”
He’s right but in a very different manner from what he thought. It is more comparable to how it is to live in Israel being targeted by Palestinian or Lebanese terrorists who won’t be talked into sparing your life. But it is people like the victims in Norway who want Israelis ”to stop” the gunmen “by talking” to them.
More HERE
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Misleading Words
Thomas Sowell
Many years ago, the Saturday Evening Post was one of the best-known magazines in America. But somehow I learned that the Saturday Evening Post was actually published on Wednesday morning. That was a little disconcerting at first. But it was one of the most valuable lessons, that words do not necessarily reflect reality.
Recent statistics on the average wealth or net worth of blacks are a painful reminder that rhetoric favoring blacks does not mean that politicians using such rhetoric are actually helping blacks. The media seized upon the statistics published by the Pew Research Center to show that whites averaged far more net worth than blacks, and that this disparity was now greater than it was in years past. But what is even more revealing is that the net worth of blacks in 2009 was less than half of what it was in 2005.
What happened to cause such a sharp loss in such a few years? After all, the Republicans controlled both the Congress and the White House in 2005, and the Democrats had control by 2009. There was now a black President of the United States, with much of the media celebrating the beginning of a new era in race relations.
What happened was that the political words had no relationship to the economic reality. But few people judge any administration's effect on blacks by what actually happens to blacks under that administration.
A finer breakdown of the data on the net worth of blacks shows that the most drastic loss of net worth was in the value of the homes owned by blacks. This occurred after years of both Democratic and Republican administrations pushing policies designed to enable more blacks to buy homes.
Much of the media rallied behind the idea that there should be more home ownership by blacks. Editorials rang out across the land, denouncing statistical disparities between rates of home ownership by blacks and whites as showing racial discrimination in the private sector that needed to be corrected by the government.
Even when it was shown that blacks, on average, did not meet the same financial standards as whites, both politicians and the media denounced those standards as too stringent.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for example, called for "fairer mortgage-lending standards" and declared that "lending institutions are being far more conservative than they have to be in determining the creditworthiness of minorities." The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston likewise declared that "unreasonable measures of creditworthiness" were not "appropriate to the economic culture of urban, lower-income, and nontraditional consumers."
The New York Times reported that "even within the same income group whites are nearly twice as likely as blacks to get loans." Many in the media treated that as proof positive that racial discrimination explained differences in mortgage loan approval rates. They were not talking about racial differences in net worth in those days -- much less taking note of the fact that blacks in the same income brackets as whites had far less net worth.
Racial discrimination was where it was at, as far as liberal politicians and most of the media were concerned. And the familiar "solution" was massive government intervention in the market. Government agencies, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Federal Reserve leaned on lenders to lower lending standards, and the Department of Justice threatened prosecutions for discrimination if the racial makeup of people approved for mortgage loans did not match their preconceptions.
It worked. In fact, it worked so well that many blacks got loans that they could not have gotten otherwise. Now the statistics tell us, belatedly, that blacks lost out, big time, from this "favor" done for them by politicians.
These lowered lending standards applied to many others besides blacks. Everybody lost out when the resulting risky mortgages led to a collapse of the housing market, followed by a collapse of the economy. Lofty words led to bitter realities.
The same mindset that led to these disasters is still prevalent in Washington. Indeed, the very people who spearheaded those political crusades -- Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd -- crafted new legislation offering the same kind of "solution" to our current problems, namely more massive government intervention in the economy. Words triumphed again.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
WWII Veteran Vows to Keep Flying American Flag After Vandal Torches It: "An 85-year-old veteran in New York City who says he still has traumatic dreams about World War II is extremely upset over the torching of his American flag. Harold Bernstein says his neighbors on Staten Island first noticed the recent vandalism, which apparently occurred in the middle of the night. Bernstein tells the Staten Island Advance that other flags on his block were untouched. He wonders: "Why did they pick on me?" He said if he'd encountered the culprit, he would have "strung them up there along with the flag." He vows to keep displaying it, even though it's scorched. Says the former Marine: "I fought for that flag."
Obama jacks up the cost of private health insurance again: "Private health insurers must now give birth control and other women's health tests for free, the Obama administration said Monday. ... The administration argues that the requirement, affecting most insurance plans, is aimed at encouraging women who might otherwise not be able to afford them to get critical services which can pre-empt the onset of disease. ... Coverage with no copays for the morning-after pill was likely to become the most controversial part of the change."
Congress out to spy on your ‘puter: "If Congress had to name laws honestly, it would be called the 'Forcing Your Internet Provider to Spy On You Just In Case You're a Criminal Act of 2011' -- a costly, invasive mandate that even the co-author of the Patriot Act, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), says 'runs roughshod over the rights of people who use the Internet.' But because it's disguised as the 'Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act,' the House Judiciary Committee approved it last week by a wide margin -- even though it's got little to do with child porn and won't do much to protect kids."
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
by Alan M. Dershowitz
In a recent interview, Norway's Ambassador to Israel has suggested that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway. His reasoning is that, "We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel." In other words terrorism against Israeli citizens is the fault of Israel. The terrorism against Norway, on the other hand, was based on "an ideology that said that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is foregoing Norwegian culture." It is hard to imagine that he would make such a provocative statement without express approval from the Norwegian government.
I can't remember many other examples of so much nonsense compressed in such short an interview. First of all, terrorism against Israel began well before there was any "occupation". The first major terrorist attack against Jews who had long lived in Jerusalem and Hebron began in 1929, when the leader of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ordered a religiously-motivated terrorist attack that killed hundreds of religious Jews-many old, some quite young. Terrorism against Jews continued through the 1930s.
Once Israel was established as a state, but well before it captured the West Bank, terrorism became the primary means of attacking Israel across the Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese borders. If the occupation is the cause of the terror against Israel, what was the cause of all the terror that preceded any occupation?
I was not surprised to hear such ahistorical bigotry from a Norwegian Ambassador. Norway is the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe today. I know, because I experienced both personally during a recent visit and tour of universities. No university would invite me to lecture, unless I promised not to discuss Israel.
Norway forbids Jewish ritual slaughter, but not Islamic ritual slaughter. Its political and academic leaders openly make statements that cross the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism, such as when Norway's former Prime Minister condemned Barak Obama for appointing a Jew as his Chief of Staff. No other European leader would make such a statement and get away with it. In Norway, this bigoted statement was praised, as were similar statements made by a leading academic.
The very camp that was attacked by the lone terrorist was engaged in an orgy of anti-Israel hatred the day before the shooting. Yet I would not ever claim that it was Norway's anti-Semitism that "caused" the horrible act of terrorism against young Norwegians.
The causes of terrorism are multifaceted but at bottom they have a common cause: namely a belief that violence is the proper response to policies that the terrorists disagree with. The other common cause is that terrorism has often been rewarded.
Norway, for example, has repeatedly rewarded Palestinian terrorism against Israel, while punishing Israel for its efforts to protect its civilians. While purporting to condemn all terrorist acts, the Norwegian government has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism as having a legitimate cause. This clearly is an invitation to continued terrorism.
It is important for the world never to reward terrorism by supporting the policies of those who employ it as an alternative to reason discourse, diplomatic resolution or political compromise.
I know of no reasonable person who has tried to justify the terrorist attacks against Norway. Yet there are many Norwegians who not only justify terrorist attacks against Israel, but praise them, support them, help finance them, and legitimate them.
The world must unite in condemning and punishing all terrorist attacks against innocent civilians, regardless of the motive or purported cause of the terrorism.
The world must unite in condemning and punishing all terrorist attacks against innocent civilians, regardless of the motive or purported cause of the terrorism. Norway, as a nation, has failed to do this. It wants us all to condemn the terrorist attack on its civilians, and we should all do that, but it refuses to live by a single standard.
Nothing good ever comes from terrorism, so don't expect the Norwegians to learn any lessons from its own victimization. As the Ambassador made clear in his benighted interview, "those of us who believe [the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel] will not change their minds because of the attack in Oslo."
In other words, they will persist in their bigoted view that Israel is the cause of the terrorism directed at it, and that if only Israel were to end the occupation (as it offered to do in 2000-2001 and again in 2007), the terrorism will end. Even Hamas, which Norway supports in many ways, has made clear that it will not end its terrorism as long as Israel continues to exist.
Hamas believes that Israel's very existence is the cause of the terrorism against it. That sounds a lot like the ranting of the man who engaged in the act of terrorism against Norway.
The time is long overdue for Norwegians to do some deep soul searching about their sordid history of complicity with all forms of bigotry ranging from the anti-Semitic Nazis to the anti-Semitic Hamas. There seems to be a common thread.
SOURCE
***********************
Norway itself helped give Breivik the idea that terrorism works and is justified
BY BARRY RUBIN
One of the most sensitive aspects of the very sensitive subject of the murderous terrorist attack in Norway by a right-wing gunman is this irony: The youth political camp he attacked was at the time engaged in what was essentially (though the campers didn’t see it that way, no doubt) a pro-terrorist program.
The camp, run by Norway’s left-wing party, was lobbying for breaking the blockade of the terrorist Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip and for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state without that entity needing do anything that would prevent it from being a terrorist base against Israel. They were backing and justifying forces that had committed terrorism against Israelis and killing thousands of people like themselves.
Even to mention this irony is dangerous since it might be taken to imply that the victims “had it coming.” The victims never deserve to be murdered by terrorists, even any victims who think that other victims of terrorists “had it coming.” This is in no way a justification of that horrendous terrorist act. It’s the exact opposite: a vital but forgotten lesson arising from it that can and should save lives in future.
If terrorist murders by Hamas and Islamists did not stop well-intentioned future leaders of Norway from enthusiastically considering them heroic underdogs, a local evil man could think his act of terrorism would gain sympathy and change Europe’s politics. After all, it has already changed the Middle East and even been sanctified by Western media, intellectuals, and governments.
When Norway’s ambassador to Israel distinguishes between “bad” terrorism in Norway and “understandable” terrorism against Israelis that opens the door to a man in Norway who thinks his country is “occupied” by leftists and Muslims?
In this sense, the most important thing about the terrorist in Norway is not that he is right-wing or anti-Islam, The most important thing is that he believed terrorism would work on behalf of his cause. After all, if he had held all of the same beliefs but didn’t think deliberate murder was a good strategy, nobody would be dead from his actions.
Nevertheless, many people gave him the idea that terrorism would change minds, gain support, and bring victory. They weren’t those whose blogs he quoted a few times in a 1500-page manifesto and who explicitly rejected violence. They merely gave him programmatic ideas. It was the successful terrorists and their Western enablers who gave him the strategy he thought would work and implemented.
Oh, and one more thing: A young survivor of the terrorist attack at the camp in Norway explained:
“Some of my friends tried to stop [the gunman] by talking to him. Many people thought that it was a test … comparing it to how it is to live in Gaza. So many people went to him and tried to talk to him, but they were shot immediately.”
He’s right but in a very different manner from what he thought. It is more comparable to how it is to live in Israel being targeted by Palestinian or Lebanese terrorists who won’t be talked into sparing your life. But it is people like the victims in Norway who want Israelis ”to stop” the gunmen “by talking” to them.
More HERE
***********************
Misleading Words
Thomas Sowell
Many years ago, the Saturday Evening Post was one of the best-known magazines in America. But somehow I learned that the Saturday Evening Post was actually published on Wednesday morning. That was a little disconcerting at first. But it was one of the most valuable lessons, that words do not necessarily reflect reality.
Recent statistics on the average wealth or net worth of blacks are a painful reminder that rhetoric favoring blacks does not mean that politicians using such rhetoric are actually helping blacks. The media seized upon the statistics published by the Pew Research Center to show that whites averaged far more net worth than blacks, and that this disparity was now greater than it was in years past. But what is even more revealing is that the net worth of blacks in 2009 was less than half of what it was in 2005.
What happened to cause such a sharp loss in such a few years? After all, the Republicans controlled both the Congress and the White House in 2005, and the Democrats had control by 2009. There was now a black President of the United States, with much of the media celebrating the beginning of a new era in race relations.
What happened was that the political words had no relationship to the economic reality. But few people judge any administration's effect on blacks by what actually happens to blacks under that administration.
A finer breakdown of the data on the net worth of blacks shows that the most drastic loss of net worth was in the value of the homes owned by blacks. This occurred after years of both Democratic and Republican administrations pushing policies designed to enable more blacks to buy homes.
Much of the media rallied behind the idea that there should be more home ownership by blacks. Editorials rang out across the land, denouncing statistical disparities between rates of home ownership by blacks and whites as showing racial discrimination in the private sector that needed to be corrected by the government.
Even when it was shown that blacks, on average, did not meet the same financial standards as whites, both politicians and the media denounced those standards as too stringent.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for example, called for "fairer mortgage-lending standards" and declared that "lending institutions are being far more conservative than they have to be in determining the creditworthiness of minorities." The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston likewise declared that "unreasonable measures of creditworthiness" were not "appropriate to the economic culture of urban, lower-income, and nontraditional consumers."
The New York Times reported that "even within the same income group whites are nearly twice as likely as blacks to get loans." Many in the media treated that as proof positive that racial discrimination explained differences in mortgage loan approval rates. They were not talking about racial differences in net worth in those days -- much less taking note of the fact that blacks in the same income brackets as whites had far less net worth.
Racial discrimination was where it was at, as far as liberal politicians and most of the media were concerned. And the familiar "solution" was massive government intervention in the market. Government agencies, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Federal Reserve leaned on lenders to lower lending standards, and the Department of Justice threatened prosecutions for discrimination if the racial makeup of people approved for mortgage loans did not match their preconceptions.
It worked. In fact, it worked so well that many blacks got loans that they could not have gotten otherwise. Now the statistics tell us, belatedly, that blacks lost out, big time, from this "favor" done for them by politicians.
These lowered lending standards applied to many others besides blacks. Everybody lost out when the resulting risky mortgages led to a collapse of the housing market, followed by a collapse of the economy. Lofty words led to bitter realities.
The same mindset that led to these disasters is still prevalent in Washington. Indeed, the very people who spearheaded those political crusades -- Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd -- crafted new legislation offering the same kind of "solution" to our current problems, namely more massive government intervention in the economy. Words triumphed again.
SOURCE
***************************
ELSEWHERE
WWII Veteran Vows to Keep Flying American Flag After Vandal Torches It: "An 85-year-old veteran in New York City who says he still has traumatic dreams about World War II is extremely upset over the torching of his American flag. Harold Bernstein says his neighbors on Staten Island first noticed the recent vandalism, which apparently occurred in the middle of the night. Bernstein tells the Staten Island Advance that other flags on his block were untouched. He wonders: "Why did they pick on me?" He said if he'd encountered the culprit, he would have "strung them up there along with the flag." He vows to keep displaying it, even though it's scorched. Says the former Marine: "I fought for that flag."
Obama jacks up the cost of private health insurance again: "Private health insurers must now give birth control and other women's health tests for free, the Obama administration said Monday. ... The administration argues that the requirement, affecting most insurance plans, is aimed at encouraging women who might otherwise not be able to afford them to get critical services which can pre-empt the onset of disease. ... Coverage with no copays for the morning-after pill was likely to become the most controversial part of the change."
Congress out to spy on your ‘puter: "If Congress had to name laws honestly, it would be called the 'Forcing Your Internet Provider to Spy On You Just In Case You're a Criminal Act of 2011' -- a costly, invasive mandate that even the co-author of the Patriot Act, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), says 'runs roughshod over the rights of people who use the Internet.' But because it's disguised as the 'Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act,' the House Judiciary Committee approved it last week by a wide margin -- even though it's got little to do with child porn and won't do much to protect kids."
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
Monday, August 01, 2011
Breivik wins again
In typical Leftist kneejerk fashion, the first appearance in court by Breivik was held in secret, which is contrary to Norwegian custom, as I understand it.
So the government of Norway itself has confirmed Breivik's complaint that Norway and other European countries suppress speech of which they disapprove. They were so afraid of Breivik's "loony" ideas that they forbad Norwegians from hearing anything about them.
So they're not even smart Fascists. It confirms my contention that the ultimate cause of Breivik's appalling rampage was not Breivik's mental limitations but rather the Leftist government of Norway. If words are suppressed, bullets may be the only thing that can replace them.
If only Norway had a First Amendment .....
Another writer looks ahead to Breivik's next court appearance:
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Unbelievable: Obama admin. trying to set up America for a second big bank crisis
The Department of Justice is executing a "Witch Hunt" against banks. Through the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Eric Holder is forcing banks to "relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination," according to a published report by Investor's Business Daily after reviewing court documents.
The DOJ has already extorted $20 million for weak and poor credit loans from banks that "settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist." The DOJ admits another 60 banks are already under "investigation." Holder's demanding the banks sign "non-disclosure" settlement agreements barring them from talking while allowing the DOJ to operate behind a curtain of secrecy.
The settlements already extracted from banks force them to make "prime-rate mortgages to low income blacks and Hispanics" with credit problems, even if they are living on welfare. According to IBD, the DOJ has ordered banks to advertise that minorities cannot be turned down for a loan "because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps." No job; no problem!
In other words, the DOJ is forcing banks to make loans to people that they know don't qualify for them and likely won't be able to afford to repay them, which is precisely the kind of failed public policy that precipitated the financial collapse and recession in 2008.
The DOJ ordered Midwest BankCentre to provide "special financing" in the predominantly black areas of St. Louis for fixed prime rate conventional home loan financing for borrowers "who would ordinarily not qualify for such rates for reasons including the lack of required credit quality, income or down payment."
Eric Holder and the head of his Civil Rights Division, Tom Perez were both protégés of Janet Reno who launched a similar attack on banks in the early years of the Clinton Administration. That led to an expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, CRA, and an explosion of forced lending to low-income, poor credit risk borrowers and the sub-prime mortgage industry that collapsed in 2008. Under the weight of massive guarantees of poor quality and defaulted mortgages, the federal government was forced to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To date about $150 billion has been required to bailout the two agencies to keep them solvent.
Like Reno, Holder and Perez are pushing their own social agenda, and ramifications to the financial sector and total economy are meaningless to them. They willingly pervert the law and leverage the full weight of the Justice Department to intimidate banks to accomplish their objectives.
Credit analysis and repayment ability of the borrower matter none to Holder and Perez. To them, if a minority is turned down for a loan, it must surely be evidence of racial discrimination. Perez has gone so far as to compare bankers to the Ku Klux Klan. The only difference between bankers and the KKK, he says, is that bankers discriminate "with a smile" and "fine print," but they are "every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood."
Holder and Perez appointed another Janet Reno alumnus, Eric Halperin, as Special Counsel for Fair Lending. Previously, Halperin was a lobbyist for the leftist Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) where he pressed congress and the various agencies for continued relaxing of lending standards. Just how objective do you suppose this "special lending cop" is in applying the law?
CRL's website reveals their leftist perspective and agenda; "lenders have strong incentives to engage in unfair, deceptive practices and to aggressively market loans designed to fail." That's pure hooey, of course. Banks make a profit if loans are paid back. They sustain losses when loans fail. But, this phony theory of "disparate impact" or "red-lining" has been used by the left for decades to convince politicians and bureaucrats to force unsound, unsafe lending practices, the consequences of which have been manifested in the current economic mess.
The forced settlements have gone well beyond lending. The concessions that DOJ has imposed have even required banks to fund inner-city "community organizers." According to IBD, "lenders are being forced to bankroll Acorn clones that often exist just to shake them down for risky loans."
As DOJ strong arms banks to relax lending standards to satisfy the Obama Administration's racialist social agenda, other federal agencies are telling banks to do just the opposite. "Banks are damned if they do, damned if they don't," according to Ernest Istook, a Heritage Foundation fellow and former Member of Congress who is critical of DOJ for forcing "affirmative action lending."
The current economic crisis has stressed even the strongest of banks. Bank safety and soundness examiners from the Federal Reserve, the OCC, FDIC, OTS, and NCUA have put the fear of God into banks all across the nation demanding tightened credit standards. They have forced banks to increase capital, add to reserves for losses, mark down asset value of existing credit assets, and questioned virtually every loan the banks make. The CEO of one historically successful community bank told me a regulator demanded, "You will not make another commercial real estate loan." How that bank was supposed to meet the needs of the small businesses in the community while not making loans on commercial real estate was of no concern to the regulator.
The newspapers are full of reports that the government has seized and closed banks, removed management and boards of directors, placed banks on written agreements so tightly drafted that the government has essentially assumed management of the bank while the shareholders, directors and management are still stuck with full risk and liability.
Banks are selling, consolidating, and closing all across America, and going with them is the access to capital and importantly the personal relationship that historically has been vitally important to the success of our entrepreneurial free-market economy. Over 1400 bank offices have closed in the last two years, and many more are expected in 2011. In the wake are exasperated small businessmen wondering what to do next.
If you're confused by the mixed signals and heavy-handedness of government, how would you like to be a banker? Little wonder that banks are afraid to lend and many are almost in lock down. Politicians can talk all they want about getting capital and the economy moving again, but the uncertainty and mixed signals coming from Washington are big reasons why both lenders and borrowers are hiding out in their bunkers.
Thomas Lifson, writing in American Thinker about the DOJ's witch hunt, notes that bankers tend to be "a cowardly lot when confronted by the power of the State." Who can blame them when the government has the power to lock their doors and seize their assets?
Lipson goes on, "Nobody in a highly regulated business wants the government publicly charging racism. A comparatively small group within the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department has assumed the role of national bank regulators with the intent of favoring groups they support. It's a corruption of the legitimate role of government." Corruption may be an overly polite description.
Added to the bi-polar treatment from the DOJ and other regulators is the fact the very government that controls their every move is now a larger source of consumer credit that all of the private sector banks combined. Recently released Federal Reserve Bank data documents a remarkably rapid and substantial shift to the government as the new credit goliath.
As recently as 2006, the private banking sector provided $2 in outstanding home mortgages and consumer credit for every $1 of government financed loans. The data from the Fed, however indicates that government loans and guarantees now total $6.32 trillion, up from just $4.40 trillion at the end of 2006. For the same period, the private sector market share shrunk to $6.58 trillion from $8.48 trillion.
Curiously, the Fed doesn't count the half-trillion dollars worth of guaranteed student loans as part of the government's total. Historically, local banks originated and financed the Federal Family Education Loan program and the government insured the loans against any loss. But, in 2009 as part of the ObamaCare legislation, the private sector was completely eliminated and beginning in 2010 the government took total control of the entire program. When student loans are added, the government surpasses the entire private sector totals. Even without student loans, with the current trend the government is poised to eclipse the private lenders likely within the current quarter.
The almost overnight collapse of the market for mortgage backed securities as a result of the sub-prime lending debacle – largely precipitated by misguided federal policy forced on lenders – evaporated the private mortgage market, and left Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – that had been seized by the government – as the only game in town for home mortgages.
In the blink of an eye, the federal government went from the small player facilitator to the dominant force in the financial industry dwarfing the combined efforts of the entire private sector competitors. Additionally, the Top Dog in the credit market place is also the all-powerful regulator over the little dogs in the private sector wielding absolute and largely unaccountable authority over their every move. Through the Federal Reserve, that same government controls the price, the access, the circulation, and amount of the currency on which the rest of the market must be dependent. With a national debt of $14.5 trillion and growing, the largest supplier of loans in the world also has the world's greatest demand for credit sucking up massive amounts of available investment capital to finance the growing national debt before the rest of the market gets a chance.
In reality, the federal government during the last two years has essentially seized the banking industry.
SOURCE
*****************************
Opposing the Health Law, Florida Refuses Millions
When it comes to pursuing federal largess, most of the states that oppose the 2010 health care law have refused to let either principle or politics block their paths to the trough. If Washington is doling out dollars, Republican governors and legislators typically figure they might as well get their share.
Then there is Florida. Despite having the country’s fourth-highest unemployment rate, its second-highest rate of people without insurance and a $3.7 billion budget gap this year, the state has turned away scores of millions of dollars in grants made available under the Affordable Care Act. And it is not pursuing grants worth many millions more.
In recent months, either Gov. Rick Scott’s administration or the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature has rejected grants aimed at moving long-term care patients into their homes, curbing child abuse through in-home counseling and strengthening state regulation of health premiums. They have shunned money to help sign up eligible recipients for Medicare, educate teenagers on preventing pregnancy and plan for the health insurance exchanges that the law requires by 2014.
While 36 states shared $27 million to counsel health insurance consumers, Florida did not apply for the grants. And in drafting this year’s budget, the Legislature failed to authorize an $8.3 million federal grant won by a county health department to expand community health centers.
In interviews, Mr. Scott, a Republican, and state legislative leaders were clear about their rationale. They said they detested everything about the federal health law, which was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in a case filed by the state. Unless ordered to do otherwise by an appellate court, they said, they had no intention of putting it in place, even if that meant leaving money on the table.
“There are a lot of programs that the federal government would like to give you that don’t fit your state, don’t fit your needs and ultimately create obligations that our taxpayers can’t afford,” said Mr. Scott, a former hospital company executive who rose to political prominence by financing an advertising campaign against the health care legislation.
State Representative Matt Hudson, the chairman of the Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee, said his chamber’s leadership felt the same way.
“I do not believe that act is the right thing for the country or the right thing for Florida,” Mr. Hudson said, “and I am not going to start implementing things that I don’t believe in.” Asked whether states had the authority to stymie federal law, Mr. Hudson answered, “We’re not required to accept a grant.”
More HERE
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Felons to Join the Upper Caste in San Francisco: "Under liberalism, America has become a class-based society. Some are born into privilege as a result of their skin color, but you can also enter the favored caste by being in the country illegally, by affirming your homosexuality, or — since 9/11/01 — by being Muslim. If none of those approaches works for you, just commit a felony and then move to San Francisco: San Francisco’s Human Rights Board wants to add ex-cons to the protected classes list that includes a person’s race and sex when it comes to housing and seeking employment. Only the lower castes can be denied jobs and housing, not special people like felons. As always with tyrannical moonbattery, lawyers will benefit from the pernicious law; it sets up endless opportunities for nuisance suits by ex-cons who aren’t given whatever they want."
Poll: Obama approval at new low (40%): "US President Barack Obama's job approval rating slumped to a personal low of 40 percent in a public opinion survey out Friday, a possible reflection of the political war over US debt. The respected Gallup polling organization said Obama had previously slipped to 41 percent several times since taking office in January 2009, but noted his approval rating was 50 percent as recently as June 7."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc. -- though he has quite a bit to say about Breivik, this time
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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)
****************************
In typical Leftist kneejerk fashion, the first appearance in court by Breivik was held in secret, which is contrary to Norwegian custom, as I understand it.
So the government of Norway itself has confirmed Breivik's complaint that Norway and other European countries suppress speech of which they disapprove. They were so afraid of Breivik's "loony" ideas that they forbad Norwegians from hearing anything about them.
So they're not even smart Fascists. It confirms my contention that the ultimate cause of Breivik's appalling rampage was not Breivik's mental limitations but rather the Leftist government of Norway. If words are suppressed, bullets may be the only thing that can replace them.
If only Norway had a First Amendment .....
Another writer looks ahead to Breivik's next court appearance:
"There has been widespread support within Norway for a closed trial, to deny Breivik the platform he appears to be seeking. Given the scale of what has happened there is unquestionably something obscene about the prospect of watching him expound his lunatic worldview to an international audience.
But the fear that such exposure would necessarily boost Breivik’s cause, and encourage likeminded bigots elsewhere, must be resisted. In fact it is precisely on occasions like these that a vibrant public sphere matters most.
The belief that freedom of expression is the fundamental requirement of an open society is based on the idea that grievances like those which animate racist and xenophobic political groups throughout Europe are better aired in the context of civilized debate rather than allowed to fester in private societies.
Distasteful as it may seem to many of us, it is better in the long run for prejudices to be openly debated and defeated by better arguments. Otherwise the hatreds of these groups become self-reinforcing.
Prejudice and paranoia never survive the rigours of open debate, and the horrors of the massacre in Norway should not be allowed to obscure this important truth.
Source
********************
Unbelievable: Obama admin. trying to set up America for a second big bank crisis
The Department of Justice is executing a "Witch Hunt" against banks. Through the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Eric Holder is forcing banks to "relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination," according to a published report by Investor's Business Daily after reviewing court documents.
The DOJ has already extorted $20 million for weak and poor credit loans from banks that "settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist." The DOJ admits another 60 banks are already under "investigation." Holder's demanding the banks sign "non-disclosure" settlement agreements barring them from talking while allowing the DOJ to operate behind a curtain of secrecy.
The settlements already extracted from banks force them to make "prime-rate mortgages to low income blacks and Hispanics" with credit problems, even if they are living on welfare. According to IBD, the DOJ has ordered banks to advertise that minorities cannot be turned down for a loan "because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps." No job; no problem!
In other words, the DOJ is forcing banks to make loans to people that they know don't qualify for them and likely won't be able to afford to repay them, which is precisely the kind of failed public policy that precipitated the financial collapse and recession in 2008.
The DOJ ordered Midwest BankCentre to provide "special financing" in the predominantly black areas of St. Louis for fixed prime rate conventional home loan financing for borrowers "who would ordinarily not qualify for such rates for reasons including the lack of required credit quality, income or down payment."
Eric Holder and the head of his Civil Rights Division, Tom Perez were both protégés of Janet Reno who launched a similar attack on banks in the early years of the Clinton Administration. That led to an expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, CRA, and an explosion of forced lending to low-income, poor credit risk borrowers and the sub-prime mortgage industry that collapsed in 2008. Under the weight of massive guarantees of poor quality and defaulted mortgages, the federal government was forced to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To date about $150 billion has been required to bailout the two agencies to keep them solvent.
Like Reno, Holder and Perez are pushing their own social agenda, and ramifications to the financial sector and total economy are meaningless to them. They willingly pervert the law and leverage the full weight of the Justice Department to intimidate banks to accomplish their objectives.
Credit analysis and repayment ability of the borrower matter none to Holder and Perez. To them, if a minority is turned down for a loan, it must surely be evidence of racial discrimination. Perez has gone so far as to compare bankers to the Ku Klux Klan. The only difference between bankers and the KKK, he says, is that bankers discriminate "with a smile" and "fine print," but they are "every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood."
Holder and Perez appointed another Janet Reno alumnus, Eric Halperin, as Special Counsel for Fair Lending. Previously, Halperin was a lobbyist for the leftist Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) where he pressed congress and the various agencies for continued relaxing of lending standards. Just how objective do you suppose this "special lending cop" is in applying the law?
CRL's website reveals their leftist perspective and agenda; "lenders have strong incentives to engage in unfair, deceptive practices and to aggressively market loans designed to fail." That's pure hooey, of course. Banks make a profit if loans are paid back. They sustain losses when loans fail. But, this phony theory of "disparate impact" or "red-lining" has been used by the left for decades to convince politicians and bureaucrats to force unsound, unsafe lending practices, the consequences of which have been manifested in the current economic mess.
The forced settlements have gone well beyond lending. The concessions that DOJ has imposed have even required banks to fund inner-city "community organizers." According to IBD, "lenders are being forced to bankroll Acorn clones that often exist just to shake them down for risky loans."
As DOJ strong arms banks to relax lending standards to satisfy the Obama Administration's racialist social agenda, other federal agencies are telling banks to do just the opposite. "Banks are damned if they do, damned if they don't," according to Ernest Istook, a Heritage Foundation fellow and former Member of Congress who is critical of DOJ for forcing "affirmative action lending."
The current economic crisis has stressed even the strongest of banks. Bank safety and soundness examiners from the Federal Reserve, the OCC, FDIC, OTS, and NCUA have put the fear of God into banks all across the nation demanding tightened credit standards. They have forced banks to increase capital, add to reserves for losses, mark down asset value of existing credit assets, and questioned virtually every loan the banks make. The CEO of one historically successful community bank told me a regulator demanded, "You will not make another commercial real estate loan." How that bank was supposed to meet the needs of the small businesses in the community while not making loans on commercial real estate was of no concern to the regulator.
The newspapers are full of reports that the government has seized and closed banks, removed management and boards of directors, placed banks on written agreements so tightly drafted that the government has essentially assumed management of the bank while the shareholders, directors and management are still stuck with full risk and liability.
Banks are selling, consolidating, and closing all across America, and going with them is the access to capital and importantly the personal relationship that historically has been vitally important to the success of our entrepreneurial free-market economy. Over 1400 bank offices have closed in the last two years, and many more are expected in 2011. In the wake are exasperated small businessmen wondering what to do next.
If you're confused by the mixed signals and heavy-handedness of government, how would you like to be a banker? Little wonder that banks are afraid to lend and many are almost in lock down. Politicians can talk all they want about getting capital and the economy moving again, but the uncertainty and mixed signals coming from Washington are big reasons why both lenders and borrowers are hiding out in their bunkers.
Thomas Lifson, writing in American Thinker about the DOJ's witch hunt, notes that bankers tend to be "a cowardly lot when confronted by the power of the State." Who can blame them when the government has the power to lock their doors and seize their assets?
Lipson goes on, "Nobody in a highly regulated business wants the government publicly charging racism. A comparatively small group within the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department has assumed the role of national bank regulators with the intent of favoring groups they support. It's a corruption of the legitimate role of government." Corruption may be an overly polite description.
Added to the bi-polar treatment from the DOJ and other regulators is the fact the very government that controls their every move is now a larger source of consumer credit that all of the private sector banks combined. Recently released Federal Reserve Bank data documents a remarkably rapid and substantial shift to the government as the new credit goliath.
As recently as 2006, the private banking sector provided $2 in outstanding home mortgages and consumer credit for every $1 of government financed loans. The data from the Fed, however indicates that government loans and guarantees now total $6.32 trillion, up from just $4.40 trillion at the end of 2006. For the same period, the private sector market share shrunk to $6.58 trillion from $8.48 trillion.
Curiously, the Fed doesn't count the half-trillion dollars worth of guaranteed student loans as part of the government's total. Historically, local banks originated and financed the Federal Family Education Loan program and the government insured the loans against any loss. But, in 2009 as part of the ObamaCare legislation, the private sector was completely eliminated and beginning in 2010 the government took total control of the entire program. When student loans are added, the government surpasses the entire private sector totals. Even without student loans, with the current trend the government is poised to eclipse the private lenders likely within the current quarter.
The almost overnight collapse of the market for mortgage backed securities as a result of the sub-prime lending debacle – largely precipitated by misguided federal policy forced on lenders – evaporated the private mortgage market, and left Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – that had been seized by the government – as the only game in town for home mortgages.
In the blink of an eye, the federal government went from the small player facilitator to the dominant force in the financial industry dwarfing the combined efforts of the entire private sector competitors. Additionally, the Top Dog in the credit market place is also the all-powerful regulator over the little dogs in the private sector wielding absolute and largely unaccountable authority over their every move. Through the Federal Reserve, that same government controls the price, the access, the circulation, and amount of the currency on which the rest of the market must be dependent. With a national debt of $14.5 trillion and growing, the largest supplier of loans in the world also has the world's greatest demand for credit sucking up massive amounts of available investment capital to finance the growing national debt before the rest of the market gets a chance.
In reality, the federal government during the last two years has essentially seized the banking industry.
SOURCE
*****************************
Opposing the Health Law, Florida Refuses Millions
When it comes to pursuing federal largess, most of the states that oppose the 2010 health care law have refused to let either principle or politics block their paths to the trough. If Washington is doling out dollars, Republican governors and legislators typically figure they might as well get their share.
Then there is Florida. Despite having the country’s fourth-highest unemployment rate, its second-highest rate of people without insurance and a $3.7 billion budget gap this year, the state has turned away scores of millions of dollars in grants made available under the Affordable Care Act. And it is not pursuing grants worth many millions more.
In recent months, either Gov. Rick Scott’s administration or the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature has rejected grants aimed at moving long-term care patients into their homes, curbing child abuse through in-home counseling and strengthening state regulation of health premiums. They have shunned money to help sign up eligible recipients for Medicare, educate teenagers on preventing pregnancy and plan for the health insurance exchanges that the law requires by 2014.
While 36 states shared $27 million to counsel health insurance consumers, Florida did not apply for the grants. And in drafting this year’s budget, the Legislature failed to authorize an $8.3 million federal grant won by a county health department to expand community health centers.
In interviews, Mr. Scott, a Republican, and state legislative leaders were clear about their rationale. They said they detested everything about the federal health law, which was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in a case filed by the state. Unless ordered to do otherwise by an appellate court, they said, they had no intention of putting it in place, even if that meant leaving money on the table.
“There are a lot of programs that the federal government would like to give you that don’t fit your state, don’t fit your needs and ultimately create obligations that our taxpayers can’t afford,” said Mr. Scott, a former hospital company executive who rose to political prominence by financing an advertising campaign against the health care legislation.
State Representative Matt Hudson, the chairman of the Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee, said his chamber’s leadership felt the same way.
“I do not believe that act is the right thing for the country or the right thing for Florida,” Mr. Hudson said, “and I am not going to start implementing things that I don’t believe in.” Asked whether states had the authority to stymie federal law, Mr. Hudson answered, “We’re not required to accept a grant.”
More HERE
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Felons to Join the Upper Caste in San Francisco: "Under liberalism, America has become a class-based society. Some are born into privilege as a result of their skin color, but you can also enter the favored caste by being in the country illegally, by affirming your homosexuality, or — since 9/11/01 — by being Muslim. If none of those approaches works for you, just commit a felony and then move to San Francisco: San Francisco’s Human Rights Board wants to add ex-cons to the protected classes list that includes a person’s race and sex when it comes to housing and seeking employment. Only the lower castes can be denied jobs and housing, not special people like felons. As always with tyrannical moonbattery, lawyers will benefit from the pernicious law; it sets up endless opportunities for nuisance suits by ex-cons who aren’t given whatever they want."
Poll: Obama approval at new low (40%): "US President Barack Obama's job approval rating slumped to a personal low of 40 percent in a public opinion survey out Friday, a possible reflection of the political war over US debt. The respected Gallup polling organization said Obama had previously slipped to 41 percent several times since taking office in January 2009, but noted his approval rating was 50 percent as recently as June 7."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc. -- though he has quite a bit to say about Breivik, this time
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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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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