FREE TRADE

I am afraid this is true: "Over the past three years, President Bush has positioned himself as one of the more hostile opponents of free trade. Last week the Bush administration announced it was levying antidumping duties on shrimp imported from China and Vietnam, with more countries perhaps to be added soon. Last year, a tariff on catfish from Vietnam was enacted. These, in addition to antidumping duties on bras and wooden furniture, the now-infamous steel tariffs, and a heavy dose of agricultural subsidies, expose a President who is as openly hostile to free trade as any in modern history."

The "dumping" excuse: "Do you like shrimp but wish it cost more? Need bedroom furniture but hate getting a good deal on it? If so, you're very different from most Americans. You are, however, one of the few who can rejoice in our national trade policies. Politicians know U.S. consumers are more than happy to buy foreign goods if the quality is sufficient and the price is right. They also know explicit efforts to shut out imports are usually political fool's gold, more likely to bring defeat than victory at the polls. So how can our leaders cater to corporate executives and workers who resent competition, without looking like hidebound protectionists? Simple: They don't attack trade -- they attack 'dumping.' When it comes to trade, many Americans cherish the notion we are victims of our innocent good-heartedness. In this picture, we're always being cynically exploited by underhanded foreigners while our own companies play by the rules."

Free trade always beneficial: "Free trade intertwines international voluntary exchanges to such an extent that war is unthinkable to the participants; it is a doctrine of international peace in which the frontiers of nations are immaterial to their citizens. Any voluntary exchange benefits both participants. No fact about trade is more superficial than the particular pieces of geography concerned, so a single nation pursuing free trade unilaterally still gains."

Ten truths about trade: "Is globalization sending the best American jobs overseas? If you get your news from CNN's Lou Dobbs, the answer is 'of course' and the only real issue is how many trade restrictions should be applied to stem the bleeding. But the recent scare about 'offshoring' is just the latest twist on an inaccurate, decades-old complaint that global trade is stealing jobs and causing a 'race to the bottom' in which corporations relentlessly scour the world for the lowest wages and most squalid working conditions."

Icelandic blogger Ice & Fire takes a big interest in the Left/Right basics. One quote: "When jobs are competed for on an international scale, low-skilled manufacturing jobs often move to poorer countries, thereby decreasing the power of local unions often controlled by the Left. All other reasons for the Left to fight free trade worldwide are derived from this reason".

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ELSEWHERE

More hilarious Leftist nonsense: "It's a rarely stated truth that global terrorism is a monster of the West's own making". I guess Mohammed had nothing to do with it.

Riots! Good news for Britain. Similar riots in Australia caused "refugees" to stop coming: "Hundreds of asylum-seekers were being held in prison and police cells last night after a riot at an immigration centre. Inmates seized control of the Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre in west London for several hours in a protest that threw a harsh light on the handling of failed asylum-seekers."

Marxists and Islamists unite: "When the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, few would have imagined that the move might lead to the formation of an alliance between the radical Left and hard-line Islamists in Western Europe. But this is precisely what happened. In Britain, the new Marxist-Islamist alliance is the offspring of the so-called anti-war coalition set up two years ago to prevent the liberation of Iraq. The coalition has a steering committee of 33 members. Of these, 18 come from various hard Left groups: communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castroists. Three others belong to the radical wing of the Labor party. There are also eight radical Islamists. The remaining four are leftist ecologists"

Non-Advancing Blacks: "Last week, for the fourth year in a row, President Bush declined the NAACP's invitation to speak at its annual convention. Predictably, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume railed that the Bush administration failed to recognize the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group as being significant or important in any way. The sad thing is, the Bush administration's attitude toward the group is justified. The NAACP is stuck in a mind-set that worked 30 years ago but makes little sense today.

Mark Steyn has some interesting stuff up on crime in Britain -- pointing out that it is gun-controlled Britain that has high rates of crime rather than America. If you took out black-on-black crime the difference would be even more stark. I was intrepid enough to point out years ago that the percentage of blacks in a community was overwhelmingly the strongest of all predictors of crime in the USA.

That unending TV "news" bias: "With the scandal surrounding former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger deepening in the rest of the media, Dan Rather and his colleagues decided to ignore the story, proving once again that while any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, any sufficiently biased journalism is indistinguishable from official propaganda. .... Back when the Wilson/Plame story broke, CBS cast the disclosure in severe terms.... Now that a Democrat was accused of committing a felony, however, CBS has changed its tune.... After jumping all over the Plame disclosure story, none of CBS's news shows ran anything on the Berger story Wednesday."

A comment from a Sydney reader on multiculturalism and "diversity": "Strange that the multicultis are also anti-American. Having a McDonalds in your suburban shopping strip is a sign of cultural invasion but the half dozen or more Thai or Indian restaurants on the other corners are not. Where I live in the Eastern suburbs, the Thais outnumber the McDonalds by maybe 20 to 1 !!"

Gutless Filipinos: "How many more people will lose their lives because the Filipino government has no balls? Do you think if we kidnapped and threatened to behead a Filipino in New Zealand they might send their troops back to Iraq? There is one thing that is worse than evil and that is cowardice in the face of it. How do Filipino politicians sleep at night?"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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MOORE IS LESS

Michael Moore and the consecration of victimhood: "...the film, and in fact Moore's entire oeuvre, revolves around the consecration of victimhood. After all, this is a man who hides behind the crippled, the bereaved, and the deceased whenever he tries to make a point. In Bowling for Columbine, he swaggers into Wal-Mart's head office pushing a wheelchair-bound, bullet-ridden teenager, and demands that the supermarket chain stop selling bullets... The assumption that underlies Moore's work is that victims have greater moral authority than anyone else, simply by virtue of their victimhood. This approach does a disservice to those disenfranchised individuals it purports to help, because it casts their predicament in crude emotional terms and thus precludes arriving at a rational understanding of it. Such an approach may appear compassionate, but it is actually about the egotistical display of Moore's own emotional credentials."

"The cinema is fast becoming a pulpit. And Michael Moore is not the only preacher in town. Showing in Europe are two companion pieces to Fahrenheit 9/11, both by acolytes of the American controversialist.... American power seems to loom so large in the Left imagination that the rest of the world is occluded from view. One rarely hears any discussion of the real global crisis: poverty.... An interesting configuration seems to be taking place. The Left is angsting about the US - the latest edition of Courrier International, titled Made in Bush, is entirely dedicated to American ugliness - while the US is beginning to talk about the world.... If your politics are fed by popular culture, particularly by the new trend in cinematic pamphleteering, you probably have the impression that only one thing really matters: the US. But this is easy politics - too easy. It is being fed by an alliance between film culture and Left politics; unfortunately, however, it represents shallow culture and narrow politics".

"Moore isn't just antiwar and anti-Bush; he is also virulently anti-American. That's a label some right-wing pundits tend to slap on anyone critical of the war and of President Bush. In Moore's case, however, the label fits."

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello has an accurate description of Moore after Moore said that both the Australian Prime Minister and GWB were idiots: "Mike Moore is entitled to his opinion but that's the quintessential ugly American, sitting down attacking the Australian prime minister,"

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ELSEWHERE

An amusing article by a Leftist here -- accusing the GOP of an unprincipled desperation that will make it do anything to hang on to power. Classic Leftist projection! Seeing your own motivations in others! The Left themselves are so desperate to gain power that they have put up a man whose proclaimed policies are almost identical to those of the despised Bush! Given that same man's far-left congressional voting record, who is the desperate and unprincipled one?

LOL: Another self-revelatory article by a Leftist here: He goes out and interviews ordinary non-intellectual GOP voters and finds that, like most ordinary people, they don't have much grasp of political minutiae. He finds that they vote for GWB simply because they see him as a man of good character. Our Leftist does not understand that at all. Character? What is that? The best explanation he can come up with is that it is some kind of religion! The Leftist's poster-boy is the psychopathic Clinton -- a man of no character at all but who can talk the feelgood talk. So Leftists love him. The warm inner glow of feeling superior is all that matters to them.

A good quip: "Now that obesity is a disease, we don't have to work. All we have to do is call in fat!"

Theodore Dalrymple on multiculturalism in Britain "if we are to avoid violently disaffected and resentful ethnic enclaves in our midst, we need to teach immigrants that the freedom, prosperity, and tolerance that they enjoy result from a long spiritual and cultural development, not to be taken for granted, and that they have a magnificence and grandeur. In the modern multicultural climate, though, there is no quick way of doing this.

Peaceful Muslims ignored: " President Bush likes to talk about nurturing democracy within the Muslim world, but he's doing little for the pro-Western Muslims of the Western Sahara whose future rests in his hands... They have been languishing in refugee camps in western Algeria for nearly 30 years and will remain there until the United States stops playing chief enabler to a Moroccan government that invaded and seized their country when it was freed from colonial rule by Spain in the '70s."

Leftist racism OK? "Because of the racially-insensitive content of a recent cartoon, members of the African-American leadership network Project 21 are asking Universal Press Syndicate to cease the distribution of comics drawn by Ted Rall. Project 21 also is challenging several other civil rights-oriented groups to join in the demand. A July 1 comic by Rall suggests "appropriate punishments for deposed Bushists" that parodies alleged treatment of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. The panel featuring Bush Administration national security advisor Condoleezza Rice has her saying "I was Bush's beard! His house nigga. His..." She is interrupted by a character wearing a shirt reading "You're not white, stupid" who says, "Now hand over your hair straightener.".. "Is it OK for Ted Rall to use such vile language because he's using it against a black conservative?" asks Project 21 member Michael King. "I'm beside myself with anger over this comic."

Hitler idealized youth too: "For liberals, obsession with the support of 'the youth' is power worship too, but it's something as well. Liberals believe that youth has a moral authority independent of the substance of its arguments. Youth politics is a variant of identity politics which imbues in young people an authority they did not purchase with work or with insight -- just as liberalism does with gender, race, infirmity, etc"

Prof. Bunyip is good at mockery. On seducing his students: "True, one must listen to all sorts of late-teenage emptiness en route to boudoir or the floor of one's office, but that's really par for the course, as a willingness to nod and agree with vigourously asserted vacuities is the prime prerequisite for building and preserving a relationship with any woman. When they're young, it's all about sympathising with observations about illegal aliens and how we must do something to ease their plight, and how -- my word, isn't that a coincidence! -- it is indeed really, really special when a young woman comes across an older gentlemen who genuinely digs unicorns, too"

Which German to choose? "German law bars any trade using Hitler portraits, swastikas or National Socialist symbols." But communist symbols are perfectly acceptable; Germany even produces Karl Marx vodka."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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MORE ON IMMIGRATION

Defenders of recent American immigration practices like to defend them in terms of 'multi-culturalism' and 'diversity'. But as Samuel Huntington points out, the diversity argument backfires. "...the new immigration intake is much less diverse than the immigrants in earlier periods. In brief, one half of new legal immigrants come from Latin America-- and 25 percent of them from a single national source, namely Mexico."

The Australian electorate was once somewhat welcoming of immigration, something polls show has hardened up in recent years. Just compare the 1951 results listed here to these 1996 results here. 48% wanted to reduce immigration in 1951 but this had risen to 65% in 1996. Nothing to do with the welfare price-tag now attached to each newcomer courtesy of the multiculturalism industry, of course. Migrants were once left to sink or swim so it was clear to all that they deserved their success and were not leeches on the taxpayer.

Hispanic kids NOT assimilating: "Before immigration optimists issue another rosy prognosis for America's multicultural future, they might visit Belmont High School in Los Angeles's overwhelmingly Hispanic, gang-ridden Rampart district. "Upward and onward" is not a phrase that comes to mind when speaking to the first- and second-generation immigrant teens milling around the school this January. "Most of the people I used to hang out with when I first came to the school have dropped out," observes Jackie, a vivacious illegal alien from Guatemala. "Others got kicked out or got into drugs. Five graduated, and four home girls got pregnant." Certainly, none of the older teens I met outside Belmont was on track to graduate.... Debate has recently heated up over whether Mexican immigration-unique in its scale and in other important ways-will defeat the American tradition of assimilation. The rise of underclass behavior among the progeny of Mexicans and other Central Americans must be part of that debate. There may be assimilation going on, but a significant portion of it is assimilation downward to the worst elements of American life."

Surprise, surprise! "More than nine out of 10 white Britons have no or hardly any ethnic minority friends, according to a poll that reveals the continuing gulf between races and religions more than 40 years after the UK became a multicultural society."

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ELSEWHERE

That pesky IQ again. Yet again a team of researchers have found what Terman & Oden reported over 50 years ago -- that high IQ kids grow up to be healthier adults. The latest findings are by Martin, Fitzmaurice, Kindlon & Buka in The Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health of 2004, vol. 58, pp. 674-679. The full report is here (PDF) and a summary is here. The reason for such findings would be obvious if it were not for politics: High IQ signifies good brain function but the brain is part of the body so good brain function tends to go with good body functioning generally. People who pooh-pooh the importance and centrality of IQ have got a lot of explaining away to do.

And another study tracking down the brain-basis of IQ: "General human intelligence appears to be based on the volume of gray matter tissue in certain regions of the brain, UC Irvine College of Medicine researchers have found in the most comprehensive structural brain-scan study of intelligence to date." Leftists long tried to deny that IQ scores corresponded to real differences between brains -- "all men are equal", of course. But modern neuroscience is constantly proving them wrong -- unsurprisingly. Not that facts interest them. Simplistic theories are their forte.

There is a wonderful story about Ronald Reagan here. Leftists despise ordinary people. Ronald Reagan loved them.

Childish Islamic hatred explained: "The Islamic world is a society dominated by "shame." Pride is an overwhelming value, where an obsession on dishonor means tremendous weakness. This is the underlying reason why America and Israel are hated with such passion. The incredible successes of our religious societies coupled with overwhelming military power gives "envy" a new meaning."

Sowell: "In today's climate, too many teachers think they are doing black students a favor by feeding them grievances from the past and telling them how they are oppressed in the present - and how their future is blocked by white racism. These are the kinds of friends who do more damage than enemies. Why endure all the hard work, self-discipline and self-denial that a first-rate education requires if The Man is going to stop you from getting anywhere anyway? People who have been pushing this line for years are now suddenly surprised and dismayed to discover that many black students across the country regard academic striving as "acting white."

Hope for American education? "Sol Stern argues that President George W. Bush's much-maligned education reforms represent real progress. Stern says the president's No Child Left Behind act, though flawed, is expanding education choices for poor parents and prodding school districts to rely on scientific standards instead of ideology in selecting reading programs-essential to closing the reading gap that underlies the black-white education gap. What's more, a new Bush-promoted voucher program for Washington, D.C. may point the way toward further education reform in a second Bush term.

The usual Leftist stupidity: "As the election looms, Labor's industrial relations policy will attract attention not just as a focus of business alarm but because it is a threat to the growth economy that Mark Latham champions. The recent report by Access Economics on the ALP's industrial platform, commissioned by the Business Council of Australia, finds a conflict between Labor's economic rhetoric and its policies..... Access Economics begins its report by listing Labor's main goals - maximising economic growth, a high wage and high-skilled workforce, an unemployment rate below 5 per cent and equity for all. The issue, of course, is how to achieve these goals - and Access forms the lethal conclusion that Labor's industrial platform actually undermines them. Access says the ALP platform's "emphasis on greater centralisation and regulation of labour markets contrasts with the direction of reforms over the past decade and more [and] it also contrasts with the thrust towards greater decentralisation of regulation in other Australian markets".... Its core argument is that Labor's policies will undermine the productivity gains that are the key to higher wages and sustainable lifts in living standards".

There is a Belgian site here devoted to recording Leftist street violence. The descriptions are all in Flemish but the pictures are good. Strange that there is no collection of conservative street violence! As soon as the Berlin wall came down, there was some anti-immigrant violence from unemployed East German youth but they were all the product of a good Communist education!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME IMMIGRATION FACTS

Germans more "xenophobic". Does nothing change? "46 percent of Americans said immigration was a bad influence and 42 percent a good influence; 57 percent of Germans rated immigration bad and 39 percent good in Germany"

Australians will laugh about this one: "As of June 20, 2002, there were 414,000 New Zealanders living in Australia; the migration of New Zealanders to Australia is the highest rate of migration between industrial countries". But the socialist N.Z. government won't be laughing. How come people never vote with their feet TOWARDS that comfy socialism? (Don't tell me. I know. Socialism = poverty).

"Apprehensions of Mexicans just inside the US border totaled 1.1 million in FY03, and are on track to top 1.2 million in FY04"

About 10 percent of the 115 million persons born in Mexico have migrated to the US, and Mexicans continue to settle in the US at the rate of about 500,000 a year. Mexicans are coming from most areas of Mexico"

"On July 1, 2003, the US had 39.9 million Hispanics, up from 35.6 million in April 2000; there were 38.7 million Blacks and 237.7 million non-Hispanic whites. The number of Asian-Americans was 13.5 million, up from 12 million in 2000.... Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in June 2004 said he opposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. .... The "Protect Arizona Now" (PAN) Initiative appears to have qualified for the November 2, 2004 ballot. If approved by voters, it would deny state-funded services to the estimated 350,000 unauthorized foreigners in the state, require people registering to vote in Arizona to prove they are U.S. citizens and to show an ID when voting, and make it a misdemeanor punishable by a $750 fine and up to four months in jail for any state employee to fail to report illegal immigrants applying for services".

Canadian nonsense: "Almost two-thirds of the professionals arriving in Canada under the point system are engineers, but many cannot get licenses to work as engineers... Canada has an estimated 600,000 Muslims, and critics say the government does not do enough to prevent the immigration and naturalization of terrorists. Algerian-born Ahmed Ressam was arrested in December 1999 trying to enter the United States from Canada in a car packed with explosives. Ressam ignored a Canadian deportation order and managed to obtain a Canadian passport.... Some 880 foreign women received work permits to be nude dancers in Canada in 2003. Two-thirds were Romanians with one-year work permits. Exotic dancers are considered a shortage occupation by Canada's Labor Department".

Even the Dutch are learning: "The Dutch, who took over presidency of the expanded EU on July 1, 2004, called for tough new EU-wide immigration laws that would speed the expulsion of unsuccessful asylum seekers and unauthorized foreigners. The Dutch Parliament recently adopted a bill that should result in deportation of 26,000 failed asylum seekers, many of whom have been in the country for years."

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, a Maori who opposes higher immigration levels, charged that New Zealand was being turned into an "Asian colony"

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ELSEWHERE

USA Today really sinks the boot into the mainstream media over their "hiding" the news that GWB did NOT lie or twist the truth over Iraqi attempts to buy uranium: "But now that the Wilson case has been debunked, it is interesting to note that the news media, so eager to build him up, and tear Bush down, now seem reluctant to tell the rest of the story, or at least the next chapter. Wilson, who had been a fixture on television, now seems to have disappeared. Democrats are silent. Why were the media so willing to believe Wilson when he was an obvious Democratic partisan?" They don't want to mention that it is Democrat operative Wilson who was the "liar". Safire In the NYT does however do his bit to set the record straight. And Michael Barone also takes apart the "Bush Lied" lie.

An excellent essay in the WSJ about Americans being called "cowboys": "When foreigners see us as cowboys, they are not mistaken. As a people, we still exhibit a high degree of courage, independence, aggressiveness, competence, and spirit. Diplomatic Europeans have responded to tyranny over the latest century mostly with accommodation... Cowboy Americans, on the other hand, have hungered to confront and defeat tyrants, in real life as in legend". The whole essay is an excellent evocation of the American spirit.

Sign of the times: There is a big article on Iraq in the WSJ by an Australian blogger! They had another article up by Australia's Foreign Minister a few days before. Bloggers in the same company as top government officials? The WSJ even has Prime Ministers writing for it at times.

A recent Australian government white paper seems to pour cold water on the Leftist claim that Al Qaeda terrorism is linked with the Palestine/Israel conflict. "It ...challenges the furphy of a link between al-Qaeda and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the scholar of political Islam Olivier Roy has pointed out, the new generation of radicals did not flock to Palestine to fight, they went to Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and more recently to New York and Madrid. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians may starve the fire of some fuel, but it won't put it out."

France fears being left with Muslim dregs: "France has denounced a call by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to French Jews to emigrate to Israel because of the level of anti-Semitism in the country. "We immediately made contact with the Israeli authorities to ask them to explain these unacceptable comments," a foreign office statement said. Earlier, Sharon told a meeting of an American Jewish association in Jerusalem: "Altogether I have to advocate to our brothers in France: move to Israel as early as possible. That's what I say to Jews all around the world, but there (France) I think it's a must. They have to move immediately.""

Pathetic: "It's probaby not the most pressing issue of the day, but it's typical nanny state activism. A consortium of fire safety groups wants a federal ban on consumer fireworks."

I have revised slightly the photos on my home page. So there are now two photos of me in ethnic dress! See here or here

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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KEILLOR: A SELF-RIGHTEOUS FOOL

This review of a book by the righteous Garrison Keillor is amusing. After hearing a torrent of mindless abuse directed at conservatives in the usual Leftist style, we learn that in his youth Keillor "joined the campus radio station, unwittingly broadcasting the news for six months to nobody because the transmitter had burned out". Definitely a man of good judgment and realism, wouldn't you say? Sounds like typical Leftist lack of reality-checking to me. Like all Leftists, Keillor asserts that anyone who does not share his simplistic approach to welfare therefore opposes all welfare -- completely ignoring the fact that the three greatest welfare innovators in history -- Disraeli, Bismarck and TR -- were all conservatives! See here. Did you ever wonder why the U.S. Social Security Administration has a picture of this Prussian militarist up on their site? It's not only because of his great hat.

From Keillor, you would never guess that twenty-seven out of thirty-three Republican senators supported the famous 1964 civil rights bill or that twenty-one Democrat senators voted against it. And the Garrison that Garrison Keillor was named after was presumably the great anti-slavery activist, William Lloyd Garrison, who "remained an active Republican until his death in 1879". Leftists are good at propaganda but only because they ignore the facts. (Link to the review via What If).

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ELSEWHERE

About the occupation of conquered Germany just after World War 2: "John Dos Passos, a communist, wrote in Life magazine in January 1946, "Americans Are Losing the Victory.. Never has American prestige in Europe been lower," a phrase oft repeated by former Vice President Al Gore when speaking about Iraq."

German TV loved Michael Moore and the Abu Ghraib abuses but not a single station has agreed to broadcast a more balanced account of U.S. troops in Iraq. Childish envy of America's dynamism and power is what they display.

Another group of "social" Christians shows what they are: "By an overwhelming vote of its general assembly, the Presbyterian Church USA, boasting 3 million members, is siding with Palestinian Arabs and against Israel, choosing to divest from the Jewish state as it did only with apartheid South Africa.

Iran and El Qaeda : "A senior U.S. official told TIME that the Commission has uncovered evidence suggesting that between eight and ten of the 14 "muscle" hijackers-that is, those involved in gaining control of the four 9/11 aircraft and subduing the crew and passengers-passed through Iran in the period from October 2000 to February 2001. Sources also tell TIME that Commission investigators found that Iran had a history of allowing al-Qaeda members to enter and exit Iran across the Afghan border". See also here.

Sometimes in war you need to kill people to win: "Faced with implacable enemies who would kill every man, woman, and child in our country and call the killing good (the ultimate war of attrition), we must be willing to use that power wisely, but remorselessly. We are, militarily and nationally, in a transition phase. Even after 9/11, we do not fully appreciate the cruelty and determination of our enemies. We will learn our lesson, painfully, because the terrorists will not quit. The only solution is to kill them and keep on killing them: a war of attrition. But a war of attrition fought on our terms, not theirs".

Rap music: "For some people this music is a religion.... It's a body language, it's a way of speaking. It's a creed. It's literally a religion." It's a religion that McWhorter finds deeply repellent. In his interpretation, rap preaches "recreational outrage" to the black community, encouraging "oppositionalism" for the sake of it. McWhorter's main gripe is with gangsta rap, which originated in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s and represented, for a time at least, the music's most popular genre.... "The point is the thug attitude is what anchors rap and what sells most," he says. "No matter how much consciousness rap brings, no matter how many cuts there are that are constructive, what really drives it is that thug pose.

One bishop who does not waffle: "Denver's Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput was interviewed on Colorado Public Radio about his position in the debate over giving communion for Catholic public officials who support abortion. He wrote a column, one of a continuing series, in which he said that Catholics' who support abortion are not really Catholics, but "a very different kind of creature."" (Via Mark Shea)

"Homophobia"? "The idea that opposition to homosexual activity and its public sanction is equivalent to or leads to hatred of individual homosexuals is a "big lie" created to demonize, intimidate, and silence opponents of the "gay rights" agenda. And the data confirms the "big lie." Every crime of violence against another human being is reprehensible, but according to the latest FBI Hate Crimes statistics, it is estimated that less than 0.0001 of homosexuals were victims of violent assaults; not exactly an epidemic of homophobic rage spreading across America"

Wayne Lusvardi has a rather Straussian account of why the USA invaded Iraq here. I myself think it was simpler than that. Saddam was the most dangerous and defiant anti-American in the Middle East so was the logical next target after Afghanistan. The invasion was a lesson that America WILL strike back when attacked.

Marc Miyake and David Boxenhorn are having an amusing debate about "existence". They seem to think that believing in existence is an act of faith! I would like to know what a non-faith belief was like in that case!

Australian illustrator Kilmeny Niland, one of the two artistic daughters of famous Australian author D'Arcy Niland has just put up a most impressive gallery of her art. How do I know that? Australian philosopher Rafe Champion tells me so. I believe he has a personal interest in the matter.

Wicked Thoughts is recommending an essay by Tom Wolfe and has a link to a hilarious story about the Nigerian scammers.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE INSANITY OF DRUG PROHIBITION

"Drug prohibition is an incredibly important policy in the United States, and it affects millions of lives every day. We lock up hundreds of thousands of people. We arrest approximately one-and-a-half million a year on drug-related charges. We spend tens of billions of dollars, and forego billions of dollars in tax revenue that could be collected if drugs were legal instead of being prohibited....

a very simple observation, which may seem trivial-prohibition doesn't eliminate the supply or demand for drugs. It seems really obvious, but it's important to emphasize, because policy makers, advocates of prohibition, sometimes act as though, gee, if we prohibit drugs, there won't be drugs. The problem will go away. That's patently untrue....

for the past 20 to 25 years in the United States, the attempts to enforce drug prohibition have escalated enormously. We're arresting way more people. We're incarcerating four or five times more people than we were 25 years ago. We're spending four times as much money for the Drug Czar's office and things like that. Yet drug prices have fallen by a factor of about 80 percent. If prohibition is an effective policy, if it's useful for raising the cost of supplying drugs, that's exactly the opposite of what one would expect to see. In fact, the decline in drug prices has been dramatic...

The prohibition itself creates violence, because the participants in a black market cannot resolve their disputes using lawyers, and arbitration systems, and judges. They have to resort to guns, or knives, and other forms of violence, because they don't have access to the non-violent legal dispute resolution system... If prohibition raises drug prices, then there is more incentive for people who use drugs, low-income persons who use drugs, to commit theft, robbery other income generating crime, to be able to afford their drug habits. A second reason prohibition might generate crime more generally, is that prohibition diverts the police from trying to deter standard crimes such as murder, robbery, rape, arson, etc., because they're off-the police are busy, preoccupied, trying to deter a drug crime". More here.

And as it says here: "We just passed the halfway point of 2004 and it is time for an update on the "war on drugs." Sad to say, it is still going strong. According to the website www.drugsense.org, we have spent more than $20 billion so far this year on this "war," putting us on a pace to surpass last's year's expenditure of $39 billion."

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! Clinton has just cut the legs off Kerry: "Bill Clinton says that no government could have failed to act against Iraq after the 11 September 2001 attacks in view of intelligence provided". Lots of people have been saying that the Clintons don't want Kerry to win. Dick McDonald has some stuff up to that effect.

But Kerry has quickly jumped on the bandwagon: "Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry said Friday he would be willing to launch a pre-emptive strike against terrorists if he had adequate intelligence of a threat. Kerry offered some support for one of the most controversial aspects of President Bush's national security policy" (Though how he jumped on a bandwagon without legs is a mystery!)

Tim Berners-Lee has just been knighted by the Queen for inventing the Worldwide Web. Al Gore must be jealous.

Blogger.com's recent changes have traps for the unwary. There are now two ways of inputting text. If you choose "Compose", you get more things that you can do but you lose all your breaks between paragraphs! The "Edit html" option is the one you need if you don't want to re-do all your paragraphing manually.

An interesting article on 19th century Russian "Liberals". They were remarkably like American "liberals" today. And 19th century Russian "liberals" ended up producing the Russian revolution: "We might wonder, then, if the liberal worldview would survive a successful ascent to political power. Or would most of it be shed along the way in favor of, say, opportunistic morality and lack of concern for human suffering? We do know that when the originally liberal and humanitarian Russian intelligentsia finally took power in 1917, the results were catastrophic in those precise directions."

Interesting book by a Russian writer: He says that Russians feel a need for a strong father figure as their ruler. It would explain the rather amazing popularity of President Putin -- particularly when you contrast it with the chaos that preceded him.

Even the UN disses Arafat : "After more than 20 years of championing the Palestinian cause, the U.N.'s Middle East peace envoy lashed out at Yasser Arafat and received a stinging rebuke. Expressing frustration as he winds up his Mideast mission, Terje Roed-Larsen blamed Arafat for lack of progress toward vital reforms and peace moves backed by the world body. He was speaking Tuesday before the U.N. Security Council.

The affirmative action myth: "The Supreme Court decided one year ago that racial preferences at public universities are legal, as long as they aren't too mechanically applied. But this has proved cold comfort to affirmative action supporters besieged by evidence that preferences can't deliver the results desired. ... Just what is affirmative action supposed to do? Educators trumpet the virtues of 'diverse' campuses, but their enthusiasm dates suspiciously to a 1972 court decision suggesting diversity as a legal justification for preferences. Ordinary Americans are more practical. Those sympathetic to affirmative action assume that it offers concrete benefits to disadvantaged students. They hope that preferences will narrow our nation's painful racial divide along such metrics as income, literacy, home ownership and health. But affirmative action in this sense is a myth."

"UK home secretary David Blunkett is having another go at banning the incitement of religious hatred.... Laws against religious hatred will grossly infringe on our right to free speech and our ability to criticise religions however we please.... the whole point about free speech is that it is free - and that it's not up to Blunkett or anybody else to decide whether your opinion is reasonable or not. Unless we are able to be wrong, rude and offensive, about Allah, Jesus or even the home secretary, then the right to free speech exists only in theory rather than in practice"

There is a pretty insightful article in Quadrant -- Australia's best-know conservative publication (apparently once financed by the CIA!) about the homosexual marriage issue. I rather liked this report of a typically pungent comment from Australia's most recent Leftist Prime-minister: "Very many heterosexual people will be inclined to remark, as former Prime Minister Keating is reputed to have done in cabinet, "I don't care what you say - two blokes and a cocker spaniel don't make a family.""

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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LEFTIST HISTORY AND FASCISM

Being a Leftist historian must be a depressing job: So much of history upsets Leftist preconceptions. The only way out for them is to lie -- as Keith Windschuttle has repeatedly shown. The Australian historians criticized by Windschuttle are minor offenders compared with some of their colleagues in the USA and the UK, however. I have twice previously mentioned (here and here) the utter trash put out by Robert Paxton in his alleged history of Fascism. He's the guy who said Hitler was an "antisocialist" when the very name "Nazi" is a German abbreviation of "National Socialist"! The whole point to the twists and turns of Leftist historians is of course to deny that Fascism was a Leftist sect and to deny that Fascist ideas still live among modern Leftists -- things that I point out at length here. Even the Marxist Terry Eagleton admits the latter point.

I was rather amused therefore to note a good point made by Orrin Judd in his review of Paxton's book. Orrin notes that in his desperation to deny what Fascism really was, Paxton ends up defining Fascism as modern, scientific and anti-Christian. Which is of course very much how modern-day Leftists see themselves. So no matter where he turns, Paxton cannot escape the fact that the modern-day Left is in most respects the lineal descendant of Fascism. The modern Left is even becoming pretty antisemitic these days. And, as Orwell points out, modern Leftists even have their own version of nationalism. The group-minded politics of the modern American Left would not have surprised Orwell one bit. It is only conservatives who stand up for the individual.

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ELSEWHERE

There is a huge review here of books that try to explain anti-Americanism. The Leftist explanations are hilarious in their selectivity about America's faults. It all boils down to envy of course but I found this bit interesting: "Because as they struggle to learn and speak English and to find a comfortable meeting place between America's culture and their own, these foreigners are acutely aware that Americans don't have to make a comparable effort. English is our language; American culture, our culture. It is our exemption from this otherwise global burden of adaptation, Purdy suggests, that makes us seem "imperial."". I had never thought of that -- probably because Australians generally feel perfectly at home in America without making any effort at all. Old guys like me even appreciate the fact that America still has proper measurements -- like feet and inches and miles and pounds instead of the kilometers and kilograms that now prevail almost everywhere else. Australia went metric in 1970 -- at enormous cost and for no good reason. With metric you have only got to misplace a decimal point and you are history. You can't make that sort of mistake with feet and inches.

A powerful article here: ""When a white person kills a black person, we all go out in the street to protest," said Reverend Floyd Flake. "But our children are being educationally killed every day in public schools and nobody says a thing.".... The Democratic Party's two evil co-conspirators in this systematic destruction of black childrens' minds, dreams and futures are a labor union, the National Education Association (NEA), and what used to be regarded as a civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). All three groups in this unholy trinity exploit children - as surely as did 19th Century plantation slave owners or Dickensian industrial factory owners - destroying millions of young African-American lives for their own selfish gain.... today, by cynically working together the NAACP, NEA and Democratic Party have created for themselves a symbiotic iron triangle of wealth and power that would fall apart if any one of the three departed from their symbiotic, self-aggrandizing behavior. Their wealth and power are being paid for with the enslavement and wrecked futures of millions of black children and the betrayal of African-American parents."

America's anti-American cult: "Now most people, when they hear about something called anti-racism, do not want to criticize it. After all, we would all agree that racism-acts and speech aimed at harming people of a particular race because of their race-is a morally bad thing. In the real world, however, anti-racism means something far more than the condemnation of discrete and morally objectionable acts and statements. It means the indictment of America as America, and of white people as white people. The anti-racist movement has advanced itself most prominently through the schools"

The latest attack on people's liberties: "Children who watch more than two hours of television a night seem to be at higher risk of becoming smokers or being fat, out of shape or having high cholesterol as adults, according to a new study." Who doubts that being inactive makes you fat and unfit? But if people are not entitled to decide what they want to do with their own bodies, what liberties do they have?

How the Canadians hate anybody getting good health care! "Ontario is striking back at the creeping privatization of health care by preparing to buy out seven private clinics and bring them into the public sector, The Canadian Press has learned."

A great victory over the feminist man haters: "On June 30, a California man being forced to pay child support for a child he had not fathered got his day in court when the Second District Court of Appeal of California overturned a paternity judgment against him. Los Angeles County, which had imposed the judgment, knew that Manuel Navarro was not the father of the child in question because DNA testing had proved so. Yet under both federal and state child-support laws, the county was still able to demand Navarro pay child support. The court's landmark decision in Navarro's favor may well become the controlling authority for contested paternity in California and a legal precedent nationwide."

The British Labour Party is now pushing "Britishness". Why? "They fear an English parliament - or, more to the point, English issues being voted on solely by English MPs - because it would soon mean that Labour would never rule in England again". The reference is to the fact that Labour usually has to depend on Scottish voters to win power.

Chris Brand has a new post about the BBC tripping itself up while trying to discredit the anti-immigration British National Party. More on the story here. I am told that this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/tvseq/newsnight/newsnight.ram shows the actual interview concerned, though you may need broadband and RealPlayer to view it.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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ARE ALL LEFTISTS UNPRINCIPLED?

Leftist intellectuals certainly are. "There is no such thing as right and wrong" seems to be one of their central doctrines. But normal decent working people who vote for Leftist political parties at election time are most unlikely to be so amoral. In between, however, there do seem to be some Leftists who take an intelligent interest in politics and who also also reject the amorality of the Leftist intellectuals. This writer would appear to be one of them:

"Several kids of my friends are amazed that: A) I could support the war in Iraq and, B) have a sympathetic view of Israel and blame the Palestinian leadership and Arab leadership for the plight of the Palestinians. In other words, their teachers have not even attempted to point out that their might be another side to the argument. In fact, the bias against Israel in schools, in Universities, in human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, and in the supposedly quality media (including or especially the BBC) has reached poisonous levels. This is more serious than bias on talkback radio etc which is not taken as seriously. Israel, it seems, is in the wrong when it takes action after suicide bombers have destroyed the lives of its citizens and after numerous others attempting similar destruction have been stopped. The fact that since the second war the Palestinian leadership and Arab countries have on several occasions rejected the offer of a continuous Palestinian state and have sought to destroy the Jews instead is blithely ignored. In fact, they are ignored to such an extent that I am no longer, in many cases, prepared to put it down to ignorance but rather down to anti-Semitism. From a left perspective, the anti-Semitism of many academics, intellectuals and social activists combined with their past ideological allegiances (to Marxism, etc) has made it far too easy for the right to claim the moral and intellectual high ground."

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ELSEWHERE

Well, I've learned that I am not the oldest guy in the blogosphere. Dick McDonald tells me he is nearly 70. And he started blogging only this year. And he's still got plenty of fire in him too. I hope I do as well.

Dick has just put up a new article by Evan Sayet -- taking pretty-boy John Edwards apart.

A comment from a reader about my musical tastes: "Somehow I can't see Philip Glass along with your otherwise impeccable (by my opinion,) tastes in music. Attached please find a cartoon about Glass with which I agree fully. I sent the cartoon to a Chicago area Classical Music radio host who had interviewed Glass among his many fascinating interviews of classical musicians. He said Glass described one of his early concerts where a woman came walking down the aisle during one number and started pounding on the floor with her umbrella next to the piano yelling, "Please stop, I can't stand it any more!"." Philip Glass is of course sometimes called the "cracked-record" composer for his mesmeric use of repetition. I have posted the cartoon here or here

"If intelligence mistakes are inevitable, is it better to worry too much about potential threats or to worry too little? Worrying too much -- if that's what happened -- resulted in the toppling of one of the planet's most murderous tyrants. Worrying too little resulted in 9/11." -- Jeff Jacoby

Windschuttle has just put up a lot of links to the latest expose of lying Australian Leftist historians.

Private education even helps Alzheimers: "A year ago, Alzheimer's disease was so advanced in her that she could hardly recognize a pencil. Now, after having an increasingly popular treatment in Japan called "Learning Therapy," her once blank expression is punctuated with smiles.... But thanks to methods developed by Professor Ryuta Kawashima of Tohoku University in Sendai and backed up by an army of volunteers and textbooks from Kumon Institute of Education Co. - Japan's largest private education company - she has regained an ability to communicate and interact with people".

OK to eat bacon but not OK to put a pig in a car? "A Florida woman who offered up a Yorkshire pig as bait to entice an escaped tiger back home will face charges of animal cruelty, local newspapers reported on Thursday... Meredith said that the trunk of her Cadillac was air conditioned and that she had planned to eat the pig anyway once it had grown up".

In another scathing review of the Michael Moore distortions, Paul Sheehan points out that even Moore's account of himself is a distortion.

Enron: "Is Enron what happens when markets are unsupervised and regulators are asleep at the switch? No, ... California's restructured electricity market was, in fact, the furthest thing from a capitalist jungle imaginable. The government forced electric utilities to sell-off most of their power plants and discouraged them from buying electricity outside of a complicated state-managed spot market. Furthermore, the electric utilities were forced to open their power lines to anyone who wanted to use them - like Enron - under tightly regulated terms and conditions. The day-to-day management of the grid was likewise taken from the utilities and given to state regulators. While wholesale electricity prices were deregulated, retail prices remained tightly controlled - a combustionable combination. In sum, the state was more heavily involved in the restructured market than it was in the old system we all grew up with."

Gun realism in India: "Bangalore City's spiralling crime rate has had one major spin-off. Instead of looking up to the guardians of law for security, why not arm oneself? This seems to be the one of the motives behind the gradual but steady rise in the number of gun licences among Bangaloreans. Going by statistics with the police department, there has been a two-fold increase in demand for gun licences during 2003 as compared to previous years. While in 2001, there were 145 applicants for gun licences, the figures have shot up to 399 in 2003. In 2004, as on June 24, there are 141 applicants. This includes the sixty licences that are yet to be issued. According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (Administration) N Shivkumar, people arming themselves is a healthy trend. 'Guns give people confidence. It is not always possible for the police to be there at the spot every time a person is attacked. Self defence is the next best alternative,' he says."

"It might as well have been Michael Moore - or the New York Times. It is hard to react any other way to "Pakistan for Bush. July Surprise?" That was the kooky story trumpeted late last week by the usually more responsible "progressives" at The New Republic. Putting down their "Bush is an imbecile" playbook momentarily to draw from their "Bush is a diabolical genius" script, the fellas at TNR (the ordinarily reasonable John Judis, joined by Spencer Ackerman and Massoud Ansari) contend that the imperious president has ordered Pakistan to capture Osama bin Laden - not to promote national security, not to smash al Qaeda, but to interrupt the four-day infomercial otherwise known as the Democratic National Convention."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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I TURN 61 TODAY

I've got the key of the door.
Never been 61 before...
or something....




SOME RECENT BUT FORGOTTEN HISTORY

From a reader: "Leftists seem to have very selective memories about the Clinton Administration. The truth is that it was more of a Republican Administration after the 1994 Congressional elections. The 1994 elections did two things. They placed Clinton on notice that he would be trounced in 1996 if he continued along the same path and it unshered in a Republican Congress that was truly revolutionary in its desire to make changes for the better. The State of the Union address in January 1995 when Clinton announced that the "era of big Government to be over"was forced on him even if he didn't really mean it. Prior to the elections Clinton did a few things that really got the electorate angry with him. He raised taxes after he said he wasn't going to. He tried to usher in the Hillary health care reform that was despised by the American people and he introduced some silly changes in the military brought forward by the feminist lobby.

Up until 1994 Clinton was talked about as a one term president because his tax increases had again belted the economy around and growth was pretty enemic. Similarly bond rates had also gone up and the stock market was depressed. It was the Republican Congress which ushered in a welfare reform and introduced spending cuts and host of other things. Clinton took credit for these reforms and while the economy was turning around managed to triangulate these issue for himself. Jobs grew during the Clinton tenure because the Congress introduced sweeping welfare reforms, cut spending and stopped Leftist policies in their tracks. Up until 1995 the economy was sluggish, described as a jobless expansion. If Leftists like the growth rates of the 90's, someone needs to ask them what part of the Republican 10-point "contract with America" do they like?"

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CALVINISM

I must admit to being a bit surprised at this post. A blogger is boasting of being a Calvinist. Although a born-and-bred Presbyterian myself, I thought that nobody these days identified as a Calvinist. The fact that Calvin burnt the brilliant scientist Servetus at the stake would make most people hesitant about mentioning Calvin these days, I would think. The Calvinists actually denounced Servetus to the Spanish Inquisition but when he escaped the Spaniards, the Calvinists burnt him themselves. Amazing. He was arrested while attending church in Geneva, convicted of heresy and blasphemy against Christianity, and burned at the stake on October 27, 1553.

And what was Servetus's great sin? He reported the circulation of the blood in 1553, among other things -- long before William Harvey reported it in 1628. Servetus's biggest blunder, however, was to point to what a lot of gobbledegook that great theological compromise known as the doctrine of the Trinity is. Although the doctrine originated as a solution to battles among the Christian fanatics of old Byzantium around the year 300 A.D., Calvinists still believe it (or try to) to this day. I did a post on the most distinctive doctrine of Calvinism on June 11th.

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess-Jackson has recently told his readers what sort of music he likes so maybe (seeing it's my birthday) I should do that too. Pretty simple really: Bach and Mozart at the top of the tree with other strong contenders being Haendel, Vivaldi, Albinoni, Monteverdi, Beethoven, Elgar, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky ... and Philip Glass. Boffin-stuff, I know. But they really do great things for me. Bach transports me into another world.

Democrat hypocrisy is well summed up in a list on Front Page Magazine. Excerpt: "Clinton spends $77 billion on war in Serbia - good... Bush spends $87 billion in Iraq - bad. Clinton awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Yugoslavia - good... Bush awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Iraq - bad. Clinton allows UN weapons inspectors to be kicked out of Iraq - good... Bush does not allow UN weapons inspectors to search Iraq for eternity - bad. Clinton imposes regime change in Serbia - good... Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad."

The pot calling the kettle black: "Three countries -- India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey -- voted to refer the Israeli security fence to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion, even though they had themselves built barriers in areas contested by their neighbors, write David Makovsky and Ben Thein of the Washington Institute. * India is just completing a 460-mile barrier in contested Kashmir to halt infiltrations supported by Pakistan. * Within the last two years, Saudi Arabia built a 60-mile barrier along an undefined border zone with Yemen to halt smuggling of weaponry. * Turkey built a barrier in an area that Syria claims as its own."

The NEA: "Of course, the NEA's focus isn't on children's success. It's on money for itself and its members. After all, it's a labor union. And as Albert Shanker, the former president of the NEA's main rival, the American Federation of Teachers, once said, 'I'll start representing kids when kids start paying union dues.'"

The weirdness of Nader: "On June 28 in Washington, D.C., Candidate/Citizen Ralph Nader gave a speech under the auspices of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Nader skips blithely over the murderous events of September 11. Not a word does he devote to the nineteen Muslim jihadists who captured American civilian airliners and piloted them into the Trade Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, a bloody field in Pennsylvania. But, he has room for this: We should remember the crusades. We should remember over 200 years between 1095 and the following 200 years. Armies from Christendom moved in to Asia Minor, slaughtering as they went. In one conflict, the Christian generals took out 2500 Muslim prisoners and beheaded them--just one conflict."

Saudi Arabian socialized medicine no good either: "Huda Baghaffer had suffered a heart attack on the beach and relatives found no medical staff at the North Obhur clinic.. In a complaint filed with the Ministry of Health, the victim's sister, Hind Baghaffar, describes what happened. "We were all at the beach when my sister fell unconscious, which we later discovered was a result of a heart attack. We rushed her to the nearest medical facility, which was the North Obhur clinic. When we arrived, there weren't any doctors or nurses in the emergency room except for three Bangladeshi workers who refused to let us in," she said. "They said the nurses had left ten minutes earlier and that the doctor was at the supermarket".

Cowardly British cops: "Neighbours want to know why two women were left to bleed to death while police with machine guns carried out a 'risk assessment' from four miles away." All British cops know these days is political correctness. The real police are long gone.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big range of reading -- interspersed with a lot of stuff about rock music.

Chris Brand has a new lot of his exceedingly incorrect postings up.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

I have a new rubric below.

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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NICK O'TEEN

My post yesterday about the sometimes benign effects of nicotine drew a few responses. Here are the two most interesting:

"Nicotine blocks re-uptake of dopamine in the brainstem. It is also a powerful respiratory stimulant and bronco-dialtor. If you were'nt inhaling a mess of other junk along with it, it might be helpful for asthma and emphysema. I have a friend who treats only Parkinsons Disease. He maintains that cigar smokers delay the onset of parkinsonism until they've died of something else. He himself smokes three Churchills a day."

Blocking dopamine re-uptake is how some antidepressants work, of course. High levels of dopamine make you feel cheerful.

"Prof. Rodu (see here and here) reports the low risks of smokeless tobacco products: "The results of our analysis reveal that the average remaining life expectancy of a 35 year old nonuser of tobacco is 45.96 years, which is 0.04 year more than that of an smokeless tobacco user. The reduction in life expectancy of a smokeless user amounts to 15 days and is in sharp contrast to a reduction of 7.8 years experienced by the smoker. Thus, the 35 year old tobacco abstainer and smokeless tobacco user will both live on average to be 80.9 years of age compared with 73.1 years of age for the smoker. Only 67% of smokers will be alive at age 70 compared with over 87% of smokeless tobacco users and nonusers of tobacco.""

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Whoopi Goldberg: obscenities, Chevy Chase, Hollywood and moral stupidity The pathological behaviour of Hollywood celebrities, particularly Whoopi Goldberg, at Radio City Music Hall was like an Orwellian hate session
John Edwards - will the real one please stand up What the partisan media is not telling the public about John Edwards
Iraq War: The New York Times slimes President Bush The New York Times' Maureen Dowd maliciously lied about President Bush and the Iraq war
Rupert Murdoch: the Bush Presidency & a leftist myth One leftwing myth has it that Rupert Murdoch is in the pocket of President Bush. The alleged evidence for this is the way 'Fox' reports the news

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Yes. I know it's Bastille day. The real birthday of Communism. The French revolution gave us the first Communist regime of modern times and then Napoleon gave us the first Fascist regime. How cultured the French are! And what high principles they follow! And if you need any proof of the moral corruption and cowardice of modern-day France, read this report of their everyday indifference to gross antisemitism.

If you have not yet read the talk by Haim Harari on the Islamic problem, you really must. It is here, among other places. It is the most realistic and level-headed account I have read. Harari is an eminent Israeli scientist. Just one tiny excerpt on suicide bombers: "The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media."

The pervert church again: "Two leading officials at a Catholic seminary in Austria have been identified in an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of student priests and the possession of pornographic and pedophile material. The worldwide scandal involving allegations of sexual abuse aimed at practicing priests within the Catholic Church has surfaced in Austria after pictures of senior church officials caressing and kissing student priests at a seminary were published in an Austrian magazine."

While others are pulling out: "Australia is to send more troops to Iraq. Defence Minister Robert Hill said an extra 30 troops and six armoured vehicles would be sent to boost protection of forces already in Iraq."

Osama bin Laden's sister-in-law has given a rare insight into the notorious terror leader, his extensive family in Saudi Arabia and life inside the secretive Middle East state. In an interview on the eve of a visit to the US to promote the book, to be published next Wednesday, she describes bin Laden as a man so driven by his beliefs that he would deny a water bottle to his infant son in the heat of the Saudi desert, insisting his wife use a spoon. "It's certainly possible that Osama retains ties to the royal family, too," she said. "The bin Ladens and the princes work together, very closely. They are secretive and they are united. They have been inextricably linked for many decades through close friendships and business ventures."

This kindly pastor is doing all he can to keep the fires of black anger burning: "These Black people are often misled, thinking African-Americans are free. But the perceived freedom is not real, says Todd. "You're free to eat at hotels you can't buy. You're free to eat at restaurants you can't buy. You're free to elect politicians who don't represent you. You're free to put your money into banks that won't give you loans. There's something about us. We like counterfeits. We like fakes.""

Look who's talking: "It is amusing to hear Washington liberals lament that all civility in political discourse is lost upon hearing vice-president Cheney tell the Senate's most notorious partisan, Vermont Senator Pat Leahy, Democrat, to 'F*** yourself' during the annual Senate photography session. Lost in scandalous thought over this, the media tsk-tsk's the raging flames of incendiary hate set in every medium by raving segments of the Democratic Party while it decries the minor flair-up in the oft-times cynical United States Senate."

Egyptian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, "spiritual leader" of Egypt's bloodstained "Muslim Brotherhood" and a defender of Palestinian suicide bombers, is rather pathetically portrayed as a "moderate" by The Guardian . The London-based Iranian Communists give a very different view of him. See here. Genuine Islamic moderates do exist, but Qaradawi is not one of them.

Michael Darby has just come out of hibernation to put up a big post on the latest developments in the Iraqi weapons saga -- with particular reference to the implications for Australia.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

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STRAUSS REVISITED

An interesting paper on Leo Strauss just out from Claremont. It argues that Strauss was more in tune with traditional American isolationism than the neocons are. The argument centres on whether America's foreign policy should be solely centred on self-preservation (Strauss) or whether it should also be evangelical for democracy (Kristol and the neocons). Much of the rhetoric coming from the White House does give the impression that a neocon agenda is being followed but I am sure that GWB would have done nothing in Afghanistan and Iraq except as a way of protecting America from further terrorist depredations. So the neocons are just a sort of Greek chorus on the sidelines.

But arguing about theories of isolationism versus interventionism is to me a bit too reminiscent of Leftist devotion to oversimplified theories. I prefer traditional conservative skepticism about generalizations and an emphasis on each case being judged on its individual merits. Note that the conservative government of my country appears to be untouched by either Straussianism or neoconservatism and yet behaves in a similar way to the USA. It has twice recently intervened militarily in the affairs of neighbouring countries and done so with great humanitarian success by most standards. Neither country was any threat to Australia so the intervention was almost wholly altruistic. It sprang from conservative decency, not any grand theory. I am sure that both Australia and the USA will continue to be motivated by a mix of self-interest and altruism that will defy any theory to predict or describe it.

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