Obama is a liberal Fascist

Liberalism or progressivism seeks to create a nanny state in which the state mandates all kinds of things for the good of the people. And no person is entitled to opt out or to thwart the decisions of the state. Thus liberal fascism.

Goldberg has on his cover a happy face with a Hitler mustache on it. By this he suggests that liberal fascism is appealing. Many people want a nanny state and thus are drawn to Hugo Chavez, Che Guevera and Barack Obama. i.e., fascism with a happy face. But as we have seen with Nazism, Communism and Islam, it can have dire consequences. In all cases it is accompanied by mind control which starts with controlling the message. Remember George Orwell's 1984, or Mao's farms for re-education or Arafat's inculcation of Jew hatred

Barak Obama is a proponent of liberal fascism. Not only does he want to take care of everyone, he means to take your money as if he was entitled to it, in order to finance his, the state's, plans. Gov. Palin pointed this out in her stump speeches. Joe Biden called giving your money to the state "patriotism".

In order to accomplish his ends he has concentrated on reeducating the kids to reject conventional wisdom and embrace his and Bill Ayers, wisdom. He supported ACORN and trained them to be shock troops. He mobilized moveon.org and the MSM to assist in cudgeling the people. We have seen videos of kids in school in fatigues chanting pro-Obama messages. This is very suggestive of the Hitler Youth movement that all German children were required to join. Many schools in the US are now educating the children to these socialist principles without the consent of the parents. Its called "social engineering".

On September 4th Investor's Business Daily (IBD), a mainstream paper of great repute, reported,

"Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993.

Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of `social change.

The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn't seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year "community leadership" positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They'll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats. In exchange, they'll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.

But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about "social change" through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation - the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul "The Red" Alinsky.

And Lee Cary wrote about Obama's Civilian National Security Force

Barack Obama's recent words to promote his image as Community Organizer in Chief were not about forming a paramilitary force of volunteer brown shirts. They were about turning America into one, giant, community organizer's sandbox at enormous cost to taxpayers. Senator Obama was nearly 17 minutes into his July 2 speech (yet another one where naming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was required) in Colorado Springs, Colorado when he deviated from his pre-released script and performed without the teleprompter net saying,

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

The immediate context for that amazing statement was a preview of parts of his plan to vastly expand community service opportunities for Americans of nearly all ages. He said,

"People of all ages, stations, and skills will be asked to serve."

On his web site he said that people would be "required" to serve. After much criticism he changed it to read "asked" to serve. And to make matters easier for his plans, he wants to disarm the people.

To be fair, both liberals and conservatives want to provide a security net for the people. They debate how big and strong that net should be. The real issue is at what cost to our freedom and independence. Conservatives are trying to protect such things and the liberals don't value them in the same way or to he same extent. They value the collective over the individual.

Democrats are quick to charge Republicans with fascism because, for example, Republicans want to maintain Guantanamo Bay and want profiling or wire tapping in certain cases. In effect they say this is an infringement of personal rights. As I said just above, providing the security net or or this case security itself, certain rights are infringed. What separates us is when restrictions are warranted and when they are not. Everyone must decide for themselves what is the biggest threat to their freedom.

Taking care of the weak in society is an admirable objective. The liberals have claimed this as their brand. But will they deliver on their promise?

Source

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Liberals clinically mad, concludes top psychiatrist

Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder. "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to "the vast right-wing conspiracy." For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.

Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by both Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton can only be understood as a psychological disorder. "A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity - as liberals do," he says. "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population - as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state - as liberals do."

Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

* creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;

* satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;

* augmenting primitive feelings of envy;

* rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

"The roots of liberalism - and its associated madness - can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Iraq's security deal with U.S. shows gains amid 'failure' mantras: "On Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's cabinet approved by a 21-7 vote a status of forces agreement with the U.S. It says that U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraq's populated areas by June 2009 and all forces will withdraw by the end of 2011. We have our own misgivings about the limits on U.S. forces suggested by the 2009 date. We suspect both sides understand the need to revisit this if conditions on the ground change dramatically. With George Bush gone, though, Mr. Maliki may have a harder time getting President Obama to approve U.S. troops leaving their bases, no matter how badly needed. This still won't satisfy the Democratic left in Congress or in the blogosphere, but now they will be President Obama's problem, as he transitions from campaign rhetoric to international realities. To that end, we offer a brief compendium of campaign myths about "failure" in Iraq that are belied by the Maliki government's security deal with the U.S."

Now the gutless Europeans bow down before Russia!: "EU leaders on Friday said they were resuming talks with Moscow toward an economic-cooperation agreement. The negotiations were put on ice 10 weeks earlier because of Russia's invasion of its tiny neighbor and refusal to abide by a French-brokered cease-fire. But by Friday's EU-Russia summit in Nice, France, Moscow's fulfillment of "a large part of its obligations" was good enough for French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Thus ends the lone sanction Europe placed on its belligerent neighbor after the August war. The talks are back on, but Georgians are still waiting for the promised pullback of Russian soldiers to their prewar positions. Numerous Russian troops remain in the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose self-declared independence has been recognized by only Russia and Nicaragua. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians are still unable to return to their homes both in and outside the conflict zone. EU and other Western observers remain blocked from entering the most war-torn areas, and as recently as Sunday were still reporting incidents in which they'd been fired upon near Abkhazia."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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 or here or here

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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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The psychology of politics

I did my first piece of research into the psychology of politics in 1968. It was my Masters dissertation. I have been studying the subject ever since -- now with many academic publications on it behind me. So it seems reasonable that in 2008 -- 40 years later -- I should look back and say as briefly as possible what I have learned in those 40 years.

In good academic style I start with a definition: The first thing to say is that Leftism is emotional. The second is to say that the emotion is negative and the third thing to say is that the negative emotion (anger/hate) is directed at the world about the Leftist, the status quo if you like. The Leftist is nothing if he is not a critic, though usually a very poorly-informed critic. And the criticisms are both pervasive and deeply felt.

What is routinely overlooked in most discussions of ideology is that conservatives don't like the status quo either -- but they don't hate it and they don't get burned up about it. Ask almost any conservative and he will give you a long list of things he would like to see changed in the world about him. It is only a Leftist caricature to say that conservatives support the status quo.

Left and Right do indeed differ in their response to the status quo but not in the simplistic "for and against" way that Leftists claim. The difference is in depth of feeling and in the changes desired. Leftists want change passionately and feel very righteous about the changes they want. Conservatives can see fault and do at times set out at length the reasoning behind the changes they think desirable -- but mostly they just want to get on with their own lives. There are undoubtedly some people who are completely happy with the world as it is but they are not concerned about politics. They probably do, however, vote conservative when called upon to vote. They would not be able to find much in common with the constant complaint that is the mark of the Leftist. The typical conservative does not simmer if his wishes for change are not implemented. The Leftist does.

One marker of the difference just set out will be well known to anyone who reads blogs from both sides of the divide: Profanity is hugely more common on Leftist blogs. A systematic study of the matter found profanity to be TWELVE TIMES more common on Leftist blogs. Profanity is of course an attempt to express one's feelings strongly.

Note that I do NOT use the word "liberal" for the Left side of politics. "Liberal" as a name for any left-leaning political party is just camouflage. Except in sex-related matters, liberty is in general a very low prioritiy for them. Tearing down sexual mores is a form of change that they have had much success at.

So what is conservatism? Basically it is caution based on a perception that the world is an unpredictable, dangerous and often hostile place. So change is not rejected. It is in fact, as just said, sometimes desired. But it is approached in a skeptical, step by step, way to ensure that its effects are beneficial or at least benign. And an important criterion of what consitutes "benign" is how the change affects individual liberty. At a minimum, a conservative wants to ensure that change will not reduce his individual liberty.

Because the Leftist is angry rather than prudent, however, he cares not a bit for the conservative's caution. The most thorough-going Leftist just wants to smash everything that exists around him out of the feeling that it is all so hateful that none of it is worth preserving. And in the French revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, the Maoist revolution and many more minor revolutions, the Leftists got their way -- with results we all know about. Doing any sort of a good job of putting back together what they have smashed is beyond them. They are destroyers only. Hate is not constructive.

Because we all know of those dismal results, Leftist activists and politicians in entrenched democracies have to be more careful. Expressing the full extent of their feelings and advocating revolution would simply marginalize them and they know that. So they have to find ways of undermining society in more subtle ways. And they are greatly aided in that by the complex nature of modern society. Most people have only the vaguest notion of how society works so the Leftist politician can propose various changes that sound good but which will be disastrous in practice -- with "share and share alike" being the classic example of that. And when the disasters unfold the committed Leftist cannot lose. He will get an internal glow of satisfaction from the suffering and disruption unleashed on all those fools around him that he hates but will be excused from blame because he "meant well".

So what motivates a Leftist to be so full of negative emotions toward the surrounding world? Many things. There is no one cause of Leftism. The Leftist activist or politician is mostly motivated by ego needs. He craves attention and praise. He needs to be perceived as wise and righteous -- and he tries to achieve that by pretending to be all heart and condemning the world for its many faults and imperfections. But it could simply be that the Leftist was born into a subset of society that is in general hostile to the larger society. Miners are a common example of that. Mining towns were once bedrock Left-voting places. Why that was so is beyond the scope of what I want to say at the moment, however.

And, as mentioned, there are of course degrees of Leftism -- degrees to which society is disliked. The out-and-out-Leftist (generally an intellectual of some sort) is just a rage-filled hater who wants to smash everything -- but the average Leftist voter is a gentler soul. They may simply be upset that they personally are not getting a very good deal from society as it exists and be generally critical of society for that reason. But the biggest category of Leftist voters by far would appear to be genuinely well intentioned people who are strongly emotionally affected by suffering in others. They see other people who are not doing well in some way and urgently want that fixed by whatever means it takes. They are angered by what they see as "injustice". And that emotion dominates all else. And it is the strong negative emotions evoked by the surrounding society that unites these people with the vicious and deliberately destructive haters at the top of the Leftist pyramid.

But anger is a very bad frame of mind in which to make decisions and craft policies so these basically good people will often be lured into voting for some unscrupulous Leftist politician who promises to fix it all -- but who must know in his own heart that the cure will be worse than the disease. But if offering false hope gets the activist into power, too bad! And the poor old conservative who knows how things work and says that there is no easy fix will be ignored -- and called "heartless".

And that, I believe is how politics works: It is particularly the people who are especially sensitive to the suffering of others who make us all suffer, paradoxical though that may seem. Without their numerous votes, the Leftist politicians would never gain power. And the converse of that is that a little bit of heartlessness can be desirable. Balance is needed in fellow-feeling, as in many other things.

One test of the above explanation is that Left-voters should be more unhappy than conservatives -- and that has been borne out in almost all the happiness surveys that I have seen. For some discussion of that, see here. Because they are less emotional and not as easily upset, conservatives are happier and more level-headed -- and so are not as easily stampeded into foolish actions by emotional appeals. Most of them don't even believe in global warming!

So, for most Leftists, their Leftism mostly dwells deep within the personality. Which is why from age 2 I could tell that my son would be a conservative. His favourite "joke" at that age (and indeed for some years afterward) was: "The boy fell in the mud". He was able to see the funny side of a minor mishap that would have been seen as a tragedy by an emotional Leftist.

And the soft-hearted Leftists have much to thank conservatives for. The conservative element in the population protects them from the consequences that they wish for. Nowhere is that better seen than when the revolution succeeds. Among the first people to be "liquidated" by the hard men of the revolution are the soft-hearted revolutionaries.

Fortunately, time also plays a part. Many of the well-intentioned Leftists do over time come to see that simplistic solutions to society's ills don't work and end up voting for more complex and balanced solutions. They become conservatives. Even the once very Leftist George McGovern sounds remarkably conservative these days. Many of the most vocal conservatives started out as Leftists and have become quite evangelical as a consequence of learning from experience that Leftist policies are destructive. They have the same benevolent aims as before but have grown wiser about what will best serve those aims. And the older they get, the more chance they have to see the counterproductive nature of simplistic Leftist "solutions".

The most succinct summary of what I have said above is that Leftism is the politics of rage. This contrasts with the usual summary that Leftism is the politics of envy. But Leftists these days seem to be a generally affluent bunch. They are certainly not on average materially disadvantaged. So I cannot see that material envy is any sort of major motive for most of them.

The above is of course only a summary. I go into great detail about what the history of Leftism and conservatism tells us here and here.

Note: The post above is an expanded version of the original -- JR

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Why Dogs, Not Liberals, Are Man's Best Friend

by Burt Prelutsky

Some people are convinced that a compassionate conservative is an oxymoron. But, I know better. I'm not suggesting I am one, but I do know a few. They're the people who occasionally take me to task for being too critical of liberals. They'll insist that some of their best friends are liberals. Liberals, they'll inform me, make fine neighbors and positively first-rate relatives. I patiently explain that they're preaching to the choir. I know first-hand that liberals can be all of those things, and more. My only problem with liberals is that they're hypocrites and they can't help lying.

Perhaps, like my friends, you now think I'm too harsh in my judgment. On the contrary, I think I tend to give liberals the benefit of the doubt. I happen to believe they are so besotted by their emotions that they can't help painting themselves into indefensible corners. To blame a liberal for lying and blatant hypocrisy would be as heartless as blaming an alcoholic for drinking. In fact, I suspect that, like alcoholics, liberals suffer from a chemical imbalance. Otherwise, how would you explain the enormous gulf between what they say and what they do?

For instance, how often have we read newspaper editorials arguing for Affirmative Action in schools and in the work place? In most cases, those pieces are not being written or edited by members of a racial minority group. So, if they were sincere, shouldn't these journalists clear out their desks and surrender their jobs to somewhat less qualified, but far more deserving, blacks and Hispanics?

Or consider, if you will, how consistently liberals object to tax cuts. They prattle on incessantly about how much the wealthy benefit, ignoring the logic that if there's a 10% reduction across the board, it figures that the person who pays more will save more. But, when liberals blather about the inequities of tax cuts, you realize they actually believe that if a millionaire saves fifty thousand on his tax bill, the guy who only earns, say, thirty grand-a-year should get the same return!

Liberals, for reasons that some of us will never comprehend, are convinced that the federal government can be trusted to spend money more wisely than the people who actually earn it. When Bill Clinton was in the White House, he said as much. They're entitled to their beliefs, you say. Where does the inconsistency come in, you ask? It's simply this -- liberals spend just as much money as conservatives on shrewd attorneys and clever C.P.A.'s, attempting to lower their own tax liability. There is nothing in the tax laws, after all, that prohibits an American citizen from paying Uncle Sam more than he owes. But, I have yet to hear of a liberal, even one as rich as George Soros, who claimed that, even though he belonged in the highest bracket, he so admired the way in which Congress spent his money, he was going to send the I.R.S. 70 or maybe even 80 percent of his earnings.

Finally, I have never heard a liberal speak out in favor of school vouchers. Instead, they wave the flag for public schools, even though everybody in his right mind knows that, in spite of the No Child Left Behind program, a majority of public schools in America are a disgrace. The system has routinely passed along youngsters who wound up graduating from high school lacking self-discipline and even rudimentary math and reading skills. Yet, every liberal in Congress can be counted on to pay lip service to public education, although not one of them has a child enrolled in the Washington, D.C., school system!

Source

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ELSEWHERE

What is Obama hiding?: "The California secretary of state should refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until President-elect Barack Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office, alleges a California court petition filed on behalf of former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and others. The legal action today is just the latest is a series of challenges, some of which have gone as high as the U.S. Supreme Court, over the issue of Obama's status as a "natural-born citizen," a requirement set by the U.S. Constitution."

The $639 Million Loophole: "We're fresh off the most expensive election cycle in history, in which the winning candidate raised record amounts of money while opting out of the campaign finance limits. With victory in hand, Barack Obama's allies now want to return to the alleged virtues of public money. If there was ever a demonstration of the folly and hypocrisy of campaign finance reform, this would be it. The GOP is using this demonstration to make another constitutional challenge to McCain-Feingold"

Russia in trouble: "Putin's personal fortune and the Kremlin's cash cow lies in Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly that supplies over 20% of the government's budget. Six months ago - last May - Gazprom had the largest market cap of any company in the entire world, US$360 billion. It is now (11/13) $91b. It has lost 75% of its value and so has its share price. That's gas. Let's take oil. The Kremlin says its budget is based on a price of $65 a barrel, while independent analysts think its at least $70. Yet the collapse of benchmark oil prices to below $60 currently masks the fact that Russia sells a lower grade, Urals Crude, than benchmark grades like Brent or WTI (West Texas Intermediate). Today, Urals crude closed at $48.80. Not only is Russia getting less money per barrel, it's producing less. Oil production fell for the 10th straight month in October. As the Russian economy disintegrates, so is the Russian state and the Kremlin's control over it. As respected commentator Dmitry Tayevsky recently wrote: "Of course there will not be a crisis in Russia. There will be something immeasurably worse."

A glamorous puppet: "The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship - its nearest equivalent - is focused on a man who actually did something. I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts. It already has all the signs of such a thing. If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn't believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he'd promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over. He needn't worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America's Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton's stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to".

UN spends aid money on $25 million office ceiling: "A $25m decorative ceiling for a United Nations building in Geneva has come under fire after it was disclosed that it was partly paid for by Spain's overseas aid budget. The decision to hire Miquel Barcelo, 51, one of the world's most highly paid abstract artists, to redesign a 14,000 sq ft dome has prompted furious protests from campaigners who believe it is an extravagant misuse of development funds. Barcelo has said his design aims to create a "grotto", with stalactites reflecting "infinity and the multiplicity of view-points". He has built a honeycomb of aluminium from which to hang resin stalactites up to 3ft long. They are coloured with paint containing pigments from all over the world. The work, at the headquarters of the UN Human Rights Council, will be unveiled this week by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain and Jose Luis Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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 or here or here

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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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A Way Out of the Wilderness

We've been walloped in consecutive elections, but we can't just dwell on the past. The future is already here

By Karl Rove (excerpts)

Yes, we lost the election. But in a year when all currents were running against Republicans and our campaign was lackluster and erratic, Barack Obama received only 3.1 points more than Al Gore in 2000 and only 4.6 points more than John Kerry in 2004. The Democratic victory becomes durable only if Republicans make it so with the wrong moves.

Losing the election has led to a debate about whether the GOP should return to its Reaganite tradition or embark on a new reform course. This pundit-driven shoutfest presents a sterile, unnecessary choice. The party should embrace both tradition and reform; grass-roots Republicans want to apply timeless conservative principles to the new circumstances facing America.

In the coming year, we will be defined more by what we oppose than what we are for; the president-elect and the Democrats in Congress will control the agenda. We must pick fights carefully and center them around principle. The goal is to have the sharp differences that emerge make the GOP look like the more reasonable, hopeful and inviting party-which is easier said than done. A road map:

1. Avoid mindless opposition. We should support President Obama when he is right (Afghanistan), persuade him when his mind appears open (trade) and oppose him when he is wrong (taxes). It is the Republican Party's job to hold him accountable on the merits only.

2. Be as comfortable talking about health care and education as national security and taxes. Republican health-care proposals are strong; they can trump the Democrats' big-government ideas, but only if we advocate them with clarity, passion and conviction.

We must stress that the GOP wants families to be able to save, tax-free, for out-of-pocket medical expenses. People should be able to take their insurance from job to job. Small businesses should be able to pool risk to get the same discounts that big companies get. You can buy auto insurance from anywhere in America, even from a lizard, so why not health insurance? A national market would mean that health coverage for a 25-year-old New Yorker wouldn't cost four times what it does in Pennsylvania. Individuals and families, not just companies, should get a tax break for buying health insurance. And we must stop junk lawsuits that drive up everybody's health-care bills.

3. Winning the war on terror is a matter of national survival. Republicans must be President Obama's best allies in waging unrelenting war against terrorists, and prod him sharply if he weakens or wavers.........

This is a long to-do list. But parties that have just been trashed in consecutive elections always have a lot of work to do. Yet Republicans, in recognizing the size of the challenge ahead, shouldn't despair: President Obama and the Democrats in Congress will, fairly or not, own every problem that emerges. We remain a center-right nation, and the GOP will remain a center-right party based on an optimistic conservatism.

And political fortunes can change quickly. In 1992, Bill Clinton stood atop the political world; in 1994, he stood defeated after Republicans took control of the House. We can't count on a replay of 1994, but we can take steps that will make 2010 a good year-and, with a bit of luck and skill, a very good year. Democrats control the levers of power, but Republicans still control their own fate.

More here

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Now that they control the White House and Congress, will Democrats usher in a new "progressive" era?

The last "Progressive" era produced the Great Depression so the question is of grave concern. "Progressivism" can be enormously destructive

Not likely. At first glance, the numbers do look encouraging for proponents of a new New Deal era in government: Obama claimed at least 364 electoral votes and more than 52.5 percent of the overall popular vote, while Democrats now control at least 57 seats in the Senate and 255 in the House.

But look more closely, and you see a heavy influx of moderate to conservative members in the incoming freshman Democratic class, particularly in the House. Of the 24 Republican-held districts that Democrats won in 2008, Kerry carried just three in 2004. Democratic victories on Nov. 4 included Alabama's 2nd district (where Kerry took 33 percent of the vote) and Idaho's at-large seat (where Kerry won just 30 percent). In fact, according to tabulations by National Journal's Richard E. Cohen, 81 House Democrats in the 111th Congress will represent districts that Bush carried in 2004.

The fact that roughly a third of the Democratic House majority sits in seats with Republican underpinnings (at least at the presidential level) is almost certain to keep a liberal dream agenda from moving through Congress. The first rule of politics is survival, and if these new arrivals to Washington want to stick around, they are likely to build centrist voting records between now and 2010.

More here

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Racism is dead . . . and we killed it!

I think that the article below is a bit optimistic but one hopes that the constant Leftist accusations of racism do die down a bit

Yep, you heard me right. Racism in America is dead. Allegations about inequality of opportunity have been smashed. Deader than a bug on the windshield. You and I killed it. Over 66 million voters waited in line to deliver the coup de grace. Many of them were proud blacks who've lived long enough to know what I'm saying. You gotta' feel good about that. Most, however, were guilty whites who queued up to the voting booth to get shed of an ugly stigma. As for the other 57 million voters, they already knew that racism was dead and decided to vote on principle. Well . . . okay . . . that last statement was tongue-in-cheek, but not as much as you think.

So join me, please, as we collectively stab our fingers at the rotting corpse of racism and - in unison with Robert DeNiro's character Al Capone in The Untouchables - shout our eulogy to America's great sin: Black inferiority: DEAD! White guilt: DEAD! Race-baiting: Dead! The U.S. of KKK: Dead! The politics of victimhood: Dead! On November 4, America took a baseball bat to those notions and knocked them out of the park. It was a grand slam of epic proportions.

Will diehards continue to preach that America is a horridly racist country? Of course they will. Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton still aim to make a living. The New York Times hasn't yet shut its doors. And pseudo-intellectual multiculturalists still have tenure in our colleges because . . . well, you know why. But the rest of us in America - red and yellow, black and white - have stopped listening to them.

Actually, racism in America died several decades ago, but the memo got lost. Last year I read with amusement about a black college student who traveled to Jena, Louisiana with a busload of other protestors - all going to support the "Jena 6" thugs - because she wanted to see what racism looked like. The irony of her comment is an epitaph in itself.

Racism died in America after decades of legislation and hundreds of billions in taxpayer reparations. Professional sports and the entertainment industry also helped. Oprah is one of the richest women in the world - and a former Miss America. And college athletic departments have produced far more black millionaires than white ones over the past thirty years. No one had to cross a picket line to get there.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Rahm Emanuel sorry he is not an Arab: "Obama chief of staff's father is a very right-wing Jew, a former member of Irgun. In the interview to Maariv, he wrongly surmised that Rahm will be very pro-Israel because "he is not an Arab." (Never mind Jimmy Carter also was not an Arab.) Rahm apologized to American Arabs for his father's remark."

Does anyone care about economic common sense?: "A bailout won't fix GM. It will only prop it up. And given it's situation, that won't last long either. So it most likely would mean a further --investment' would be necessary later -- the AIG model if you will. Bankruptcy is not only the smarter choice, it avoids the moral hazard inherent in government bailouts as well as avoiding throwing good money after bad."

Surprising sense from a Leftist: "Gordon Brown tonight called on the world's most powerful industrial nations to agree a programme of immediate and coordinated tax cuts to prevent the global economy sliding deeper into recession. Arriving in New York for this weekend's unprecedented gathering of the leaders of the world's leading 20 economies, the prime minister said the need for a "fiscal stimulus" both for the UK economy and the world had increased after an autumn in which accelerating job losses had intensified fears of a deep and lasting slump."

Wayne Lusvardi has an article up on California's latest "sustainable growth" legislation -- pointing out that it will require irrational use of one of California's scarcest resources, water.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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 or here or here

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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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Why they hate Sarah



(Irrelevant comment: Wotta babe!)

If it is generational change the electorate wants, some American conservatives are pinning their hopes on Sarah Palin. Unlike the recent crop of successful conservative leaders around the world, Palin is a bonfire lighter. She sparks a visceral hatred among her ideological opponents, more malign and more extreme than was the case even for Hillary Clinton, the previously most vilified politician since Margaret Thatcher. Note they are all women.

While race may no longer be an issue in post-partisan times, sexism is alive and well, but perpetrated most nakedly by the Aunty Alices of the media firmament. These are women who seek to ingratiate themselves with the dominant power group, even if it means trashing their own kind. They are to women what Uncle Tom was to black people.

And why? Mostly because of abortion, because as the American political analyst Michael Barone said this week, Palin did not abort her disabled baby. Barone later claimed he was joking, after being booed by journalists during a speech in Chicago when he reportedly said: "The liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby. They wanted her to kill that child." Palin represents so radical a disruption of the cultural order that she just has to be smashed. The amount of mud being thrown at her now is a measure of how seriously the threat of a Palin presidential campaign in 2012 is taken.

Source. Non-editorializing report of her recent press conference here

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All's Fair with the Left

Media ignore how unfair liberal plans really are.

Fair's fair, right? Not always - especially in the new America that dawns January 20. That's when the Obama administration takes over and they have bold plans for making America a fairer place to be. The Democratic platform Obama supports has 30 separate references to fairness in some form or another. Obama wants a "fair economy," "fair trade," women to get "fair pay," to make "sure that workers get their fair share," and to restore "fairness to our tax code." These items have nothing at all to do with being fair. They are Orwellian doublespeak like: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." They are the antithesis of what those terms are supposed to mean.

And America's sycophantic media refuse to call any of it into question. They even embrace some of it, like supposedly "fair trade." But what is fair or what makes up a "fair economy?" Is it one where everyone has the opportunity to succeed or the mandate for equality?

The Democratic platform makes it clear that the left wants government to do everything for us but tuck us in at night. "We Democrats want - and we hereby pledge - a government led by Barack Obama that looks out for families in the new economy with health care, retirement security, and help, especially in bad times. Investment in our country - in energy, education, infrastructure, science." That's their model of a "fair economy." They also plan to take a fair amount of money from hard-working taxpayers.

Look at fair trade. Liberals opposed to Western nations benefiting from globalization endorse the idea of "fair trade" over actual market freedom. The Fair Trade Federation calls the idea "a holistic approach to trade and development that aims to alter the ways in which commerce is conducted, so that trade can empower the poorest of the poor." It's so touchy-feeling you can almost feel it hug you. But it has nothing to do with business. Running a company means creating the best products for you customers and making the most money for your owners or investors. It does not mean sending love notes to the third world.

Yet the mainstream media love it. For Mother's Day 2007, CBS did a flattering story on an Ecuadorian florist embracing the "big color" green as part of "fair trade." In a coffee story, "Today" Food Editor Phil Lempert said "fair trade is very important" because "farmers are actually paid a fair wage." No one even questioned his use of the loaded term.

Then there are taxes. Obama is already famous for his ridiculous tax answer to ABC's Gibson Gibson during the primary debates. When told by Gibson that cuts to capital gains taxes produce more revenue than increases, Obama still favored hikes - because they are what he calls "fair." "I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness," he explained. He then described the current tax structure as "not fair." Liberals don't grasp that their interpretation of "fair" is un. One of the most obvious examples of this is their attempt to restore the misnamed "Fairness Doctrine," designed to silence critics in talk radio.

It's not a Fairness Doctrine. It's a Censorship Doctrine. Its rules are designed to force conservative talkers into submission by mandating equal time for liberal voices. As if those same voices aren't already dominant in every other form of media. Still several prominent Democrats have pushed for this regulation of free speech as a "fair" way to neutralize their opponents. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was only the most recent to promote this anti-1st Amendment regulation. In a Fox News interview he commented, "I think we should all be fair and balanced, don't you?" Other top Democrats who fear opposition voices have made a similar push from Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

So far, the new president is not agreeing. Back in June, Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported then-candidate Obama opposed that kind of "fairness." "`Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters,' press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to B&C late Wednesday," it reported. But that was when he was running for election and before he was openly complaining about Fox News and the Drudge Report or bumping reporters off the plane after their newspapers endorsed his opponent.

A newly empowered and prickly POTUS could decide he likes having the press as lapdogs instead of watchdogs. By going after talk radio, he gets rid of critics and ingratiates himself to media allies who despise talk radio. Conservatives need to fight this fight today and make sure Obama's "fairness" doesn't destroy our already limited voice. It's time we said fair enough.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! First we had a phony birth certificate for Obama now we have a phony selective service registration. Is there anything about this guy that is legit?

Next Up for Nationalization: the Internet: "Following the nationalization of investment banks, Fannie and Freddie, consumer banks, and private insurance companies, taxpayers are likely asking: What's left for the federal government to nationalize? How about the Internet? Network neutrality, or net neutrality, is the beneficent-sounding name for sweeping new government regulatory power that would prohibit Internet service providers from innovating in their own networks. This could lead to much less broadband investment by private companies, and could potentially force government subsidization, control, and outright nationalization of the Internet. The implications of this are chilling"

One reason why Detroit is broke: "Detroit is trying to clean up its image. In efforts to do so, the city council wants to give a $200,000 contract to a non-profit organization dedicated to the reforestation of the city. It's being called The Greening of Detroit. The group made up of volunteers would plant 2,000 saplings in neighborhoods that have been plagued by some invasive species. Enter the local union: AFSCME Local 542. This union has now stalled the City Council from authorizing this agreement for The Greening of Detroit. Why? Because the local union sees this as competition for the city's 50 forestry workers and they believe that the city is outsourcing THEIR jobs by allowing this non-profit organization to plant trees. Instead, this union would rather the government spend the $200,000 on trees and then pay the union workers to do the labor on top of that ... rather than allowing these volunteers to plant the trees for free."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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 or here or here

****************************

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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Hate By Any Other Name

The LA Times covers the mass protests against the passage of Proposition 8, which amends the California constitution and clarifies that marriage is restricted to one man and one woman. Set aside the fact that African Americans were the most overwhelmingly pro-Prop 8 voters, or that some may have supported the measure simply because they were offended at gay marriage being imposed through a one-vote margin by California Supreme Court judicial fiat.

What's worth noting is that since the proposition passed, some of its opponents have behaved in a way that would be universally condemned if, say, conservatives had behaved in the same manner about Obama's victory. Most appalling, here is video of a cross being ripped out of an elderly woman's hand and being trampled upon.

Just asking: Where is the ACLU, and where are all the hate crimes advocates? Surely if a Christian had stomped on a symbol of gay pride, there would be you-know-what to pay. What makes it all right for gay activists to stamp on the most sacred symbol of the Christian faith?

It strikes me that different standards of behavior are expected from Americans depending on their political persuasion. Acts that would be characterized as unacceptable and hateful if employed by conservatives are treated as an acceptable expression of legitimate grievance when committed by the left.

Source

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Hank Paulson, Naked Emperor

The urgent necessity of a few weeks ago is now useless, we hear

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson finally confirmed what lonely bailout opponents tried to tell the American public all along: The man doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

Paulson held a bazooka to taxpayers' heads. He groveled on his knees in front of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He lured leaders from both political parties into linking arms in a panicked Chicken Little line dance for the beleaguered mortgage industry. Paulson demanded an unprecedented $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) for the good of the country. For the health of the housing market. For the survival of the economy. No time for deliberation. No time to review the failures of such interventionist approaches around the world. Now, now, now!

And now? The pulled-out-of-the-posterior "$700 billion" price tag has ballooned into the trillions. The "mortgage industry rescue" has expanded to banks, insurance companies, automakers, credit card companies and possibly the entire national volume of consumer lending. Oh, and that vaunted "TARP" component, Paulson admitted this week, is nothing but a four-letter word that rhymes with TRAP.

In September, Paulson offered his lofty pledge: "The ultimate taxpayer protection will be the stability this troubled asset relief program provides to our financial system, even as it will involve a significant investment of taxpayer dollars. I am convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative -- a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets unable to fund economic expansion."

Two months later, Paulson's conviction melted faster than microwaved butter. "Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use TARP funds," he sheepishly told the nation Wednesday.....

Wielding his enormous authority, Paulson is desperately throwing our money at banks in a futile attempt to convince them to lend. Instead, those banks are either hoarding the cash or acquiring more assets. In other words: Paulson is helping the banks that were "too big to fail" grow even bigger with taxpayer backing. Swell.

Hank Paulson is not to be trusted. I repeat: This is the man who proclaimed the subprime crisis "largely contained" in April 2007; "near the bottom" in May 2007; and "largely contained" again in August 2007. This is the man who pledged that he had "no interest in bailing out lenders or property speculators" in October 2007 and couldn't "think of any situation where the backdrop of the global economy was as healthy as it is today."

This is the man who patted himself on the back for refusing to "put taxpayer money on the line" to rescue Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15 -- and then turned around the next day and engineered the $85 billion taxpayer-funded bailout of AIG. This is the man who vowed he had "no plans to insert money" into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- and then turned around and committed $200 billion in capital and credit lines to those corrupt, bloated, crumbling institutions.

Emperor Paulson's bipartisan courtiers in Congress berated anyone who dared challenge his wisdom. Minority Leader John Boehner sniffed: "This is no time for ideological purity." Well, ideological pollution begat this mess. It's time for a fiscal-conservative counterinsurgency to disrobe and disarm the charlatans before they do more harm.

More here

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Brookes News Update

Obama's New Deal v. the US economy: Just as I predicted, the US economy is in another recession. And what does Team Obama intend to do about it? The same things that Roosevelt did. And informed people know just how well that worked. The man will be an economic disaster if he implements his economic program
Why Keynes is not the answer to the financial crisis: We find it extraordinary to suggest that Keynes' ideas are now coming back to save the world. Keynesian ideas have never left the rooms of government and central bank decision makers. The essence of the thinking of the most influential economists was and still is Keynesian
Recession is already here - and has been for months: The economy started to slide into recession months ago. Yet the economic commentariat is still blaming the financial crisis. So what really happened and how is it to be dealt with?
Obama's wheelbarrow economics: Obama's primitive economics. The Messiah is seriously considering creating millions of new jobs by destroying capital, despite the fact that it is capital that raises real wages. That anyone about to occupy the Oval Office should give this garbage more than a moment's thought should beggar belief
The tide is finally turning against global warming cultists: All over the western world, the penny is dropping. People are coming to realise that "global warming" is a phony crisis. More slowly they are learning that the misguided policies being promoted to change future climate will create real crises in energy and food supplies and costs
Obama to shut down talkback radio? The right To remain silent: Obama's thugocracy is already moving to destroy conservative talkback radio. No doubt they will have the full support of America's viciously corrupt 'mainstream media', not to mention a horde of leftwing foreign 'journalists'
Miracles of the Obamaic faith: What Obama says does not make sense. His speeches, when not totally devoid of content, unceremoniously contradict themselves - and that is exactly why they work so well. Their content has no importance at all

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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 or here or here

****************************

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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Conservatives have a better sense of humour

The article below starts out with the claim -- popular among Leftist psychologists -- that conservatives are dogmatic and rigid and less flexible and less open to new ideas. There was never any good evidence for that, just some methodologically very weak research among college students. See here and here, for instance. It is a very common finding that conservatives are happier though. Whining is basic to Leftism. It is interesting that the findings below seem to have been based on an adult sample. The findings should therefore be more generalizable than the findings from college students -- whom psychologists normally study

In strict accordance with experimental protocol, we begin by asking you to rate, on a scale of 1 (not funny at all) to 9 (hilarious) the following three attempts at humor:

A) Jake is about to chip onto the green at his local golf course when a long funeral procession passes by. He stops in midswing, doffs his cap, closes his eyes and bows in prayer. His playing companion is deeply impressed. "That's the most thoughtful and touching thing I've ever seen," he says. Jake replies, "Yeah, well, we were married 35 years."

B) I think there should be something in science called the "reindeer effect." I don't know what it would be, but I think it'd be good to hear someone say, "Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect."

C) If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, though. It's Hambone.

Those were some of the jokes rated by nearly 300 people in Boston in a recent study. (You can rate some of the others at TierneyLab, nytimes.com/tierneylab.) The researchers picked out a variety of jokes - good, bad, conventional, absurdist - to look for differences in reactions between self-described liberals and conservatives.

They expected conservatives to like traditional jokes, like the one about the golfing widower, that reinforce racial and gender stereotypes. And because liberals had previously been reported to be more flexible and open to new ideas, the researchers expected them to get a bigger laugh out of unconventional humor, like Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts" about the reindeer effect and Hambone.

Indeed, the conservatives did rate the traditional golf and marriage jokes as significantly funnier than the liberals did. But they also gave higher ratings to the absurdist "Deep Thoughts." In fact, they enjoyed all kinds of humor more.

"I was surprised," said Dan Ariely, a psychologist at Duke University, who collaborated on the study with Elisabeth Malin, a student at Mount Holyoke College. "Conservatives are supposed to be more rigid and less sophisticated, but they liked even the more complex humor."

Do conservatives have more fun? Should liberals start describing themselves as humor-challenged? To investigate these questions, we need to delve into the science of humor (not a funny enterprise), starting with two basic kinds of humor identified in the 1980s by Willibald Ruch, a psychologist who now teaches at the University of Zurich.

The first category is incongruity-resolution humor, or INC-RES in humor jargon. It covers traditional jokes and cartoons in which the incongruity of the punch line (the husband who misses his wife's funeral) can be resolved by other information (he's playing golf). You can clearly get the joke, and it often reinforces stereotypes (the golf-obsessed husband).

Dr. Ruch and other researchers reported that this humor, with its orderly structure and reinforcement of stereotypes, appealed most to conservatives who shunned ambiguity and complicated new ideas, and who were more repressed and conformist than liberals.

The second category, nonsense humor, covers many "Far Side" cartoons, Monty Python sketches and "Deep Thoughts." The punch line's incongruity isn't neatly resolved - you're left to enjoy the ambiguity and absurdity of the reindeer effect or Hambone's affection for dolphins. This humor was reported to appeal to liberals because of their "openness to ideas" and their tendency to "seek new experiences."

But then why didn't the liberals in the Boston experiment like the nonsense humor of "Deep Thoughts" as much as the conservatives did? One possible explanation is that conservatives' rigidity mattered less than another aspect of their personality. Rod Martin, the author of "The Psychology of Humor," said the results of the Boston study might reflect another trait that has been shown to correlate with a taste for jokes: cheerfulness.

"Conservatives tend to be happier than liberals in general," said Dr. Martin, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario. "A conservative outlook rationalizes social inequality, accepting the world as it is, and making it less of a threat to one's well-being, whereas a liberal outlook leads to dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and a sense that things need to change before one can be really happy."

Another possible explanation is that conservatives, or at least the ones in Boston, really aren't the stiffs they're made out to be by social scientists. When these scientists analyze conservatives, they can sound like Victorians describing headhunters in Borneo. They try to be objective, but it's an alien culture.

The studies hailing liberals' nonconformity and "openness to ideas" have been done by social scientists working in a culture that's remarkably homogenous politically. Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one on social science and humanities faculties, according to studies by Daniel Klein, an economist at George Mason University. If you're a professor who truly "seeks new experiences," try going into a faculty club today and passing out McCain-Palin buttons.

Could it be that the image of conservatives as humorless, dogmatic neurotics is based more on political bias than sound social science? Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who reviews the evidence of cognitive differences in his 2005 book, "Expert Political Judgment," said that while there were valid differences, "liberals and conservatives are roughly equally closed-minded in dealing with dissonant real-world evidence."

So perhaps conservatives don't have a monopoly on humorless dogmatism. Maybe the stereotype of the dour, rigid conservative has more to do with social scientists' groupthink and wariness of outsiders - which, come to think of it, resembles the herding behavior of certain hoofed animals. Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

PayGo is now PayWent: "As Congress gears up to pass another spending "stimulus" bill, there's one political silver lining: Democrats are being forced to abandon the pretense of fiscal conservatism known as "pay as you go" budgeting. Late last week the leader of the House Blue Dog Coalition, Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper, announced that with Barack Obama about to enter the White House, "I'm not sure the old rules are relevant anymore." Why not? Because, Mr. Cooper said, "It would be unfair to the new President to put him in a budget straitjacket." Democrats ran on "paygo" in 2006, promising to offset any new spending increases or tax cuts with comparable tax increases or spending cuts. Once in charge on Capitol Hill they quickly made exceptions, waiving paygo no fewer than 12 times to accommodate some $398 billion in new deficit spending -- not that the press corps bothered to notice. That didn't stop Majority Leader Steny Hoyer from announcing in May that "We're absolutely committed to paygo. Speaker [Nancy Pelosi] is committed to paygo. I'm very committed to paygo. Our caucus is committed to paygo." Yet now Mr. Cooper is delivering official last rites, as the Washington spending machinery powers up in earnest. Paygo was always a big con"

The next Palin run is beginning: "As she seeks to recover politically from her failed election bid on Senator John McCain's ticket, the big question for Gov. Sarah Palin has been whether her backers would remain enthusiastic over the long run. As it turns out, over the past few days, about 1,000 people have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Our Country Deserves Better, a political action committee that is planning a pro-Palin advertisement later this month. "We thought it would be appropriate to have the thank-you ad run around Thanksgiving," said Joe Wiezbicki, the PAC's coordinator. The group expects to shoot on Monday and raise "a couple hundred thousand dollars" to buy airtime nationally."

Anti-science appointment to the EPA? "But what is no laughing matter is the lack of reason and the total disregard for science in what may be the imminent appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the EPA. I keep seeing his name bandied about among lists of potential cabinet members, but he must be barred in the name of science and reason. In short, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proved himself little better than Jenny McCarthy, that detestable mouthpiece of the anti-vaccine crowd who has directly contributed to declining health among children, has deluded countless parents, and has supported dubious, unscientific methods. This would be a disaster and an appointment anything but reality-based. You can read much, much more from Steven Novella at NeuroLogica Blog or from David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine, or from the many, many science bloggers and skeptics who have blogged in opposition. Notable among these is Orac who goes into very great depth on Kennedy and why he's such a terrible choice"

So General Motors is struggling. How come nobody is saying much about one of the major reasons? : "Unbelievably, at its assembly plant in Oklahoma City, GM is actually obliged by its UAW contract to pay 2,300 workers full salary and benefits for doing absolutely nothing. As The New York Times describes it, "Each day, workers report for duty at the plant and pass their time reading, watching television, playing dominoes or chatting. Since G.M. shut down production there last month, these workers have entered the Jobs Bank, industry's best form of job insurance. It pays idled workers a full salary and benefits even when there is no work for them to do."

What a mockery! Saudi Arabia to Lead U.N. Faith Forum: "Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich Islamic kingdom that forbids the public practice of other religious faiths, will preside Wednesday over a two-day U.N. conference on religious tolerance that will draw more than a dozen world leaders, including President Bush, Israeli President Shimon Peres and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown."

Obama likely to escape campaign audit: "The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign's record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul. Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain's campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend. Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors"

A brilliant American military rescue that the media have "overlooked": "The American businessman lay shackled in a mud hut 8,000 feet up a remote mountain in Afghanistan, armed captors posted inside and outside to prevent any escape attempt... he said. "In my mind I'd given a military intervention a one out of a hundred chance. Not that they couldn't do it, but they're busy and I'm not that important a fellow." On an airstrip many miles away, however, several twin sets of Chinook helicopter rotor blades were starting to turn as about 60 of America's most elite troops prepared to prove him wrong. Members of a task force that Military Times agreed not to name, the commandos had been hunting for the businessman since soon after he went missing. Now they were ready to act. This is the story of one of the most daring and successful U.S. hostage-rescue missions in years."

Obama's 'Change': Appointing Beltway Has-Beens: "What's with Obama's choice of old-time Clinton cronies and recycled Washington insiders to run the transition to his new politics of change? Can't the anti-Washington-insiders and the president-elect find anyone who isn't a Beltway has-been? Judging by the appointments to his transition committee and leaks about possible top staff and Cabinet choices, Obama appears to be practicing the politics of status quo, not the politics of change. Obama based his innovative campaign on an emphatic and convincing commitment to change the culture of Washington and bring in new people, new ideas, and new ways of doing business. But now, Obama has definitely changed his tune. As president-elect, he's brought back the old Washington hacks, party regulars, and Clinton sycophants that he so frequently disparaged"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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 or here or here

****************************

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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THE WORLD WON'T LOVE OBAMA FOREVER

By Jeff Jacoby

The storyline goes something like this: America's one-time popularity in the world was squandered by George W. Bush, whose belligerence and unilateralism after Sept. 11, 2001 alienated allies and engendered widespread anti-Americanism. But now, with the election of Barack Obama, America can restore its good name and regain the world's goodwill. One vigorous exponent of this narrative has been Obama himself. "The single most important issue that we're facing in this election," he said during the campaign, is choosing a leader "to repair all the damage that's been done to American's reputation overseas." On the day I become president, he often told voters, "the world will look at America differently."

Sure enough, much of the international reaction to Obama's election has been ecstatic. "Legions of jubilant supporters set off firecrackers in El Salvador, danced in Liberia, and drank shots in Japan," the Los Angeles Times reported. Kenya declared a national holiday, while a minister in the French government likened the occasion to "the fall of the Berlin Wall times 10." South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu exulted: "We have a new spring in our walk and our shoulders are straighter." BBC correspondent John Simpson pronounced Obama's election one of those events that renders the United States "young and vibrant, the envy of the world" and The Sun, Britain's most popular newspaper, headlined its story "One Giant Leap for Mankind."

For the president-elect, such worldwide jubilation must be gratifying. He should take it all with a healthy shake of salt, however. Because it isn't going to last. Antagonism to the United States is as old as the United States. It didn't begin with the current president, unpopular though he is, or in response to American military action in Iraq. Nor is it going to vanish on January 20.

In Hating America, a survey of more than two centuries of anti-American hostility, Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin note that an upsurge of anti-Americanism was already "strong in the Middle East and well under way in Europe" before Bush took office in 2001. In the 1990s, for example, Greeks opposed US support for Kosovo's Muslims, and vented their anger at President Bill Clinton. "Among the epithets flung at Clinton in the mainstream Greek media," the Rubins recount, "were criminal, pervert, murderer, imposter, bloodthirsty, gangster, slayer, naive, criminal, butcher, stupid, killer, foolish, unscrupulous, disgraceful, dishonest, and rascal."

A decade earlier, it was Ronald Reagan who provoked eruptions of anti-American fury. In 1983, millions of Europeans marched in protest when the Reagan administration countered the Soviet Union's deployment of nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe by installing US ballistic and cruise missiles in West Germany.

But it isn't only issues of war and peace that set off America's braying critics. In A Dangerous Place, a memoir of his tenure as ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan describes a 1974 world food conference in Rome that had been convened by the United States. "The scene grew orgiastic as speakers competed in their denunciation of the country that had called the conference, mostly to discuss giving away its own wheat," he wrote. America is a big, rich, and powerful nation; that alone is enough to provoke global resentment, no matter who lives in the White House.

As a presidential candidate, Obama argued that America's standing in the world had declined because of the Iraq war and unilateral actions by the Bush administration "emphasizing military action over diplomacy." Yet there will almost surely be times in Obama's administration when the United States will have to take action when others won't, to defend its principles or protect a threatened party. As one notable American has written: "There will be times when we must again play the role of the world's reluctant sheriff. This will not change -- nor should it." The author of those words? Barack Obama, in The Audacity of Hope.

Popularity is nice, but it isn't the goal of American foreign policy. Great nations have great interests -- interests that cannot always be secured through patient negotiation or Security Council resolutions. As the foremost military power, the United States must at times be "the world's reluctant sheriff," using force to maintain order or defend liberty. President Obama may speak more softly than his predecessor, but he will still be carrying a very big stick. Like other presidents, he will be loudly condemned when he uses it. As George W. Bush can tell him, the abuse goes with the job.

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Some Positive Reactions from the Right

By Dennis Prager

I spent a good part of the past year speaking and writing against the election of Barack Obama. During the last week of the campaign, my Salem Radio Network colleagues, Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved, and I spoke on behalf of the McCain-Palin ticket in the Battleground states of Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. One would expect that I would be devastated at Barack Obamas election -- as devastated as liberals were at the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004. I am not -- yet. Here are some reasons why:

1. Republicans won the election of 2004, an election that was more important to the future of America and the world than was this election. Had Sen. John Kerry won in 2004, America would have left Iraq in defeat and Islamists would have won their greatest victory ever. Millions of young Muslims would likely have seen in Islamic jihadism humanitys future and signed up for terror; and Iraq would have degenerated into genocidal chaos.

2. The election of a black president is good for blacks, good for whites, and therefore very good for America. At least at this moment -- no one can predict the future -- many more blacks feel fully American, and fewer blacks regard white America as racist than ever before. One cannot attain a higher status than the American presidency, and a black man will now occupy that position. As the Hoover Institutions Shelby Steele wrote, this is the first time in history that a majority white nation elected a black as its leader. Conservatives are not surprised. I have argued for decades that America is the least racist country in the world. By and large, only Americans on the right have believed, or at least had the courage to say, this. Now that fact is obvious to virtually anyone with eyes to see.

3. The Obama victory poses a serious challenge to liberalism and to the doctrine of black victimhood. If fewer and fewer blacks perceive white Americans as racist, a major reason for black support for liberalism could lose its appeal to blacks. On the other hand, if liberalism continues to portray blacks as victims of white racism, more white Americans will regard liberalism as phony -- or worse, as stirring up racial tensions for political gain. Most whites are tired of racial tension, tired of being portrayed as racist, tired of their children being taught in college that they are either consciously or unconsciously racist, tired of lowering standards for blacks or anyone else.

So the Obama victory puts liberals in a bind. They either acknowledge the reality of an essentially non-racist America and thereby alienate black and white liberals still committed to this proposition or they continue to play the America is racist card and alienate many whites.

The challenge the Obama victory poses to many blacks is that they will have to abandon ascribing black problems -- such as disproportionate amounts of violent crime and the highest rate of out-of-wedlock births in America -- to racism. Fewer and fewer white Americans will tolerate being blamed for problems within black life.

4. The Obama victory will bring clarity to Americas place in the world. Now that America is apparently loved again, we shall see how this plays out beyond emotional rhetoric. Will Europe contribute significantly more troops to Afghanistan? Will Germany now allow its NATO troops to shoot at Taliban fighters (thus far they have been allowed to shoot only if shot at)? Will our allies and Russia and China place the needed sanctions on Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear device? Or is Americas being loved irrelevant to how other countries behave?

5. Conservatives will be able to show how much more decently they act when they are out of power. The treatment of President George W. Bush by liberals has been despicable, undeserved and unprecedented. We who oppose Barack Obamas policies will, hopefully, act in accordance with conservative values of decency. Hence my simple announcement on the day after the election: I did not vote for him. I did not want him to be president. But as of January 20, 2009, Barack Obama will be my president. Barack Obama may have a successful presidency or a failed one. If he allows the left wing of the Democratic Party to set his agenda, it will be the latter. In the meantime, however, we can celebrate the aforementioned good of Barack Obamas election and pray for him and for our beloved country.

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ELSEWHERE

"Compassionate" conservatism was a mistake : "The liberal pundits who embraced the candidacy of Barack Obama are also eager to issue a death certificate for free market capitalism. They're wrong, and they remind me of what the great Willie Nelson once said: `I'm ragged but I'm right.' To be sure, the American people have handed power over to the Democrats. But today there is a categorical difference between what Republicans stand for and the principles of individual freedom. Parties are all about getting people elected to political office; and the practice of politics too often takes the form of professional juvenile delinquency: short-sighted and self-centered."

Freedom works: The case of Hong Kong : "Hong Kong has an impressive reputation for economic freedom and classical-liberal virtues. In a series of articles, Milton Friedman used Hong Kong to show how the power of free markets combined with little else can create wealth, pointing out that its per-capita income rose from 28 percent of Britain's in 1960 to 137 percent of Britain's in 1996. As Friedman wrote in 1998, `Compare Britain - the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the nineteenth-century economic superpower on whose empire the sun never set - with Hong Kong, a spit of land, overcrowded, with no resources except for a great harbor.'"

Guess what else is in the bailout bill: "Do you think the IRS should set up undercover operations to entrap unsuspecting taxpayers? Do you think the IRS should release your confidential tax returns to law enforcement and intelligence agencies upon request? If you answered `No!' to either question, you're out of luck. Before its October recess, Congress passed a bill giving the IRS these powers. You may ask, `Why didn't Downsize DC oppose this bill?' As a matter of fact, we wrote against it virtually non-stop for two weeks! Don't remember? That's understandable. These provisions are buried in Sections 401 and 402 of Division C in H.R. 1424, the Bailout bill."

Goodbye neoconservatives; hello to their liberal brethren?: "The media and the Washington foreign policy elite breathed a sigh of relief when Barack Obama thumped John McCain in the election. Had John McCain won, there was always the chance that the neoconservatives would have beaten out the Republican realists for his foreign policy soul. With a victory by the liberal Obama, however, the stake would finally be driven into the heart of the `jingoistic' neoconservative vampire. Yet even after Obama takes power, an evil foreign policy ghoul will still hover over the White House - this time wearing the benign clothes of a compassionate angel. Obama's top foreign policy advisors include Susan Rice, a member of the `muscular liberal' crowd - you know, the same crew that includes the bombing progressives Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke."

GOP needs Night of Long Knives: "The GOP has been laid low, thanks to politicians who swapped their principles for power and lost both. As the chief electoral vehicle for conservative and free-market ideas, the Republican Party cannot regain America's confidence, nor should it, until the guilty have been catapulted into the nearest volcano. Comrade George W. Bush has spearheaded the most aggressive federal expansion since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a delivery system for socialism, he has been the most effective Trojan Horse since that pine steed rolled into Troy."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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