THANKSGIVING DAY

I supppose it is a bit dastardly of me to mark Thanksgiving Day in this way but I am going to remind my American readers that the devout Protestant Pilgrim Fathers who held the first Thanksgiving were also such devout communists that it took a couple of years of starvation before they gave communism up and rediscovered private property. One account of all that is here. Communism was a killer even in those days. So much for the idea that Christianity and conservatism are necessarily associated. I offer an historical look at the relationship between Christianity and politics here -- where I also look the authoritarian element in Christianity.

We have no Thanksgiving or other harvest festival in Australia but the original white Australians also had an ambiguous relationship to private property. Most of them were convicted thieves -- including two of my ancestors.

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ELSEWHERE

The secular Puritans of modern-day Massachusetts: "The Puritans of Massachusetts have been dead for 300 years, but their authoritarian ghosts haunt us to this day. Consider the plight of Whole Foods Market, an international chain of natural and organic food stores, which found itself accused of planning to engage in criminal activity in its 14 Massachusetts stores this week. What high crimes and misdemeanors was the upscale grocer plotting? It was going to open its doors for business on Thanksgiving. Shocking but true: It was going to sell fruit and vegetables and milk and desserts.... In short, Whole Foods was going to make its wares available to Massachusetts customers on Thanksgiving -- just as it does for customers in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and more than two dozen other states nationwide.... The attorney general of Massachusetts looked at it and saw a crime. In a stiff letter to Whole Foods last week, Attorney General Thomas Reilly noted that under Chapter 136 of the Massachusetts legal code, "the performance of work on legal holidays is prohibited, unless permitted by a statutory exemption." If Whole Foods opened its doors on Thanksgiving, the letter warned, it could face "criminal and equitable enforcement actions to enjoin violations of the Blue Laws." Ah, yes, the blue laws -- those rules and regulations imposed by New England's 17th-century Puritan theocrats to govern moral conduct and ensure proper observance of the Sabbath."

How unsurprising: Massachusetts in deal with Venezuela: "Thousands of low-income Massachusetts residents will receive discounted home heating oil this winter under an agreement signed Tuesday with Venezuela, whose government is a political adversary of the Bush administration. A subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company will supply oil at 40 percent below market prices. It will be distributed by two nonprofit organizations, Citizens Energy Corp. and the Mass Energy Consumer Alliance. The agreement gives President Hugo Chavez's government standing as a provider of heating assistance to poor U.S. residents at a time when U.S. oil companies have been reluctant to do so and Congress has failed to expand aid in response to rising oil prices. U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., met with Chavez in August and helped broker the deal. He said his constituents' needs for heating assistance trump any political points the Chavez administration can score".

Hillary hypocrisy: "Without question, Hillary Clinton is using every weapon of mass deception in her arsenal to attain the Presidency. With a solid lock on the liberal vote, Clinton is now pursuing moderate voters with breath-taking zeal. Senator Clinton has been remarkably successful at distancing herself from her husband's legacy of appeasing Osama bin Laden by casting herself as one of the few Democratic Party leaders who supports the liberation of Iraq. While she may be successful at fooling a pliable public, one of the major issues that will stand in her way is her unabashed support for abortion on demand".

Leftists indifferent to evils "If you want to understand the Left, most of what you need to know can be summarized thus: The Left hates inequality, not evil. As one raised as a New York Jew (who, moreover, attended an Ivy League university) and therefore liberal -- it took me a while to recognize this fatal moral characteristic of the Left. But the moment I realized it, it became immoral not to oppose leftist values.... Thus, when President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," the liberal world condemned him. The Cold War, once regarded as an epochal battle between freedom and tyranny, came to be regarded by liberals as an amoral battle between "two superpowers." Likewise liberals almost universally mocked President George W. Bush when he labeled Saddam Hussein's Iraq, North Korea and Iran an "axis of evil." It takes a mind that either has little comprehension of evil or little desire to confront it to object to characterizing three of the worst regimes in modern history as "evil." How else can one explain the Left's enchantment with Fidel Castro, the totalitarian ruler of Cuba?"

California's not-so-bright future: "By 2020, California will be more crowded, its population older and its racial composition dominated by Latinos, according to a report released Tuesday. The changes will pose challenges to state lawmakers, who will have to grapple with the additional pressures on already-strained schools and health-care systems, according to the report by the California Budget Project. In just 15 years, one in seven Californians will be age 65 or older, the state will add 10 million residents, and Latinos will account for 43 percent of the population, with whites accounting for about 34 percent. The white and Latino populations are expected to become equal in 2010, when each is projected to account for 39 percent of the population, said Barbara Baran, associate director of the organization and the report's author. The report, "Planning for California's Future," examined Census data and figures from the California Department of Finance. While it doesn't offer recommendations, its intent is to warn lawmakers of the coming shifts".

Attitudes to Iraq: "The Pew Research Center and the Council on Foreign Relations just released a survey of American elites that found that 64% of military officers are confident that we will succeed in establishing a stable democracy in Iraq. The comparable figures for journalists and academics are 33% and 27%, respectively. Even more impressive than the Pew poll is the evidence of how our service members are voting with their feet. Although both the Army and the Marine Corps are having trouble attracting fresh recruits - no surprise, given the state of public opinion regarding Iraq - reenlistment rates continue to exceed expectations. Veterans are expressing their confidence in the war effort by signing up to continue fighting."

The weird one is antisemitic too: "The Anti-Defamation League has demanded an apology from Michael Jackson after a US TV network aired what was said to be a telephone answering machine message in which the pop star referred to Jews as "leeches". The message was supposedly recorded two years ago and has now surfaced in connection with a lawsuit against the pop star. "Michael Jackson has an anti-Semitic streak and hasn't learned from his past mistakes," Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman said in a statement. "It seems every time he has a problem in his life, he blames it on Jews." Jackson infuriated Jewish groups in 1995 when his song They Don't Care About Us included the lyrics "Jew me, sue me, everybody do me, kick me, kike me"."

Grandpa John is a good blog. How do I know? They quote this blog quite a lot! They also seem to agree with Dick McDonald about the low casualty rate in Iraq. They need a new template, though.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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FOR THE LEFT, ABUSE TRUMPS LOGIC EVERY TIME

Excerpt from Daniel Pipes

My talks at university campuses sometimes occasion protests featuring Leftists and Islamists who call me names. A favorite of theirs is "racist." This year, for example, a "Stand up to Racism Rally" anticipated my talk at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I was accused of racism against Muslim immigrants at Dartmouth College, and pamphlets at the University of Toronto charged me with "anti-Muslim racism."

Anti-Muslim racism? That oxymoron puzzled me. Islam being a religion with followers of every race and pigmentation, where might race enter the picture? Dictionaries agree that racism concerns race, not religion...

Thus understood, the term racist cannot be ascribed to me, as I neither believe that race defines capabilities nor that certain races have greater capabilities than others. Also, my writings and talks never touch on issues of race.

Does that mean the word racist merely serves Leftists and Islamists as an all-purpose pejorative, a magical insult that discredits without regard to accuracy? No, the evolution of this word is more complex than that.... Note the evolution: As belief in racial differences and racial superiority wanes in polite society, some parties expand the meaning of racism to condemn political decisions such as worrying about too much immigration (even of poor whites), preferring one's own culture, fearing radical Islam, and implementing effective counterterrorist measures.

This attempt to delegitimize political differences must be rejected. Racism refers only to racial issues, not to views on immigration, culture, religion, ideology, law enforcement, or military strategy.

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ELSEWHERE

Corrupt Frog owns up: "One of France's most distinguished diplomats has confessed to an investigating judge that he accepted oil allocations from Saddam Hussein, it emerged yesterday. Jean-Bernard Merimee is thought to be the first senior figure to admit his role in the oil-for-food scandal, a United Nations humanitarian aid scheme hijacked by Saddam to buy influence. The Frenchman, who holds the title "ambassador for life", told authorities that he regretted taking payments amounting to $156,000 (then worth about 108,000 pounds) in 2002. The money was used to renovate a holiday home he owned in southern Morocco. At the time, Mr Merimee was a special adviser to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general"

French ambassador says the Muslim rioters just want to be French! "Though the vast majority of the rioters were Muslims, Mr. Levitte believes the violence was not motivated by religion. "It was not about the role of Islam influence," said Mr. Levitte. "It has nothing to do with the clash of religions or civilizations or cultures. I think it's very important to understand that. You may say, but are you so sure? Yes, I am. Religion played no role at all during these two weeks." ... "These teenagers feel alienated and discriminated both socially and economically. They don't want to affirm any difference, but they want to be considered as 100 percent French," he noted. "They are not fighting to be recognized as a minority, either ethnic or religious, but on the contrary, they want to be accepted as full citizens of the French republic. They want to be part of the French dream." Mr. Levitte says the government plans to spend $42 billion to improve educational opportunities for immigrants and build new, more welcoming housing developments." (Hat tip to Reliapundit)

Bill Clinton says U.S. must stay in Iraq: Former President Clinton said yesterday that the United States should wait until after mid-December parliamentary elections in Iraq to decide whether to set a timetable for troop withdrawal. Clinton offered a lengthy assessment of the Iraq war as part of a wide-ranging talk at Westchester Community College for The President's Forum, a school fundraiser. It marked a rare local appearance by the former president, a Chappaqua resident. Clinton, a Democrat who left office at the start of 2001, said he had personally never seen any intelligence linking Iraq to al-Qaida, and "no one I knew believed that was the case." But that doesn't mean President Bush, a Republican, lied or deliberately misled the country about the reasons for going to war, Clinton said. Bush probably believed the information he was relying on was right, Clinton said".

NAACP chief makes switch to GOP: "For decades, Republicans have struggled to reach out to black Americans. But now in Orange County, the GOP has to reach no further than the NAACP. As of this week, Derrick Wallace, head of Orange County's NAACP, has switched parties -- to become a Republican. "I've thought about this for two years," Wallace said Tuesday afternoon, just a few hours after returning from the elections office. "This is not a decision I made yesterday." It is, however, a decision that rang out like a shot among political circles."

The phosphorous beatup: "The US defended the use of white phosphorus munitions against insurgents in Iraq last year but denied civilians were targeted. The toxic agent was used during what a U.S. Army journal called "shake and bake" missions against insurgents in the battle for Fallujah last year. "It's part of our conventional weapons inventory. We use it like we use any other conventional weapon," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. Whitman said he had no knowledge of any civilian victims of attacks with white phosphorus.... Reports that white phosphorous was used in Fallujah has thrust the US into a new controversy over Iraq war tactics. But another Defense Department spokesman highlighted that white phosphorous has been used by armies around the world for the past century. A yellowish substance with a pungent smell similar to garlic, white phosphorous erupts spontaneously into fire when exposed to oxygen, releasing a dense white smoke".

"Pacifist" novelist Kurt Vonnegut supports suicide bombers. He thinks "It must be an amazing high". He draws an analogy with Harry Truman and the bomb. Does he really think Truman bombed Hiroshima to make himself feel good? And that would be OK? Just another nutty Leftist with no idea of right and wrong.

A good spoof here that equates Kofi Annan with Nigerian spammers.

Strange Justice has a very troubling post about how U.S. soldiers are prosecuted for "offences" in Iraq.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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EXTRAORDINARY ACADEMIC IGNORANCE ABOUT TWINS AND IQ

Below we see academic "experts arguing about something that they obviously know nothing about. The article is a discussion of the findings in "The cognitive cost of being a twin: evidence from comparisons within families in the Aberdeen children of the 1950s cohort study", by Georgina A Ronalds, Bianca L De Stavola and David A Leon, which appeared in the British Medical Journal of 18 November 2005:

"Twins may be livewires but they are certainly not bright sparks, according to new research showing that they have lower IQs than single children. The study has ignited debate, with some experts claiming the lower IQ is a result of the twins spending less time in the womb and having less room to grow while they are in there. But others have argued that what happens after birth is more important, with twins losing out because they do not have a parent's undivided attention.

"We know there are language problems with twins - it's very difficult for a parent to adequately develop the language skills of two children at the same time," said David Hay, professor of psychology at Curtin University in Perth, who challenged the assumptions of the British research team. Professor Hay said previous research had shown that if one twin died in early childhood, the IQ of the surviving twin reached normal levels, suggesting the post-natal environment - in particular, one-on-one contact with a parent - played a part.

The study, published yesterday, found a five-point average shortfall in IQ among twins compared to single children - and the difference remained apparent even after factors such as the mother's age, the child's sex and the number of older siblings were taken into account. When the twins in the study were aged seven, their average IQ was 5.3points behind the single children in the same family. By the age of nine, it was 6points behind. Girl twins tended to make up the IQ deficit by the age of about 13, which was not always they case with boys.

The researchers who wrote the paper, published online by the British Medical Journal, were sticking with their theory that the "likely explanation" was a shorter gestation. Lead author David Leon concluded that social and economic circumstances could not explain the IQ gap".

These guys must know twins only via columns of numbers about them. Anybody who has helped bring up twins -- as I have -- will know perfectly well what the problem is -- and it is "none of the above". What happens is that twins do not need others for social support as much as singletons do, so they develop language skills primarily to talk to one-another. But because of their similar age and situation, even dizygotic (fraternal) twins tend to understand one-another with a much reduced use of adult language. They to a degree develop a private and largely non-verbal language of their own. So they have much less incentive to develop adult language skills and are therefore slower to develop such skills. And language skills are a central part of IQ development.

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ELSEWHERE

I am pretty shaky, come to think of it! "People with high levels of education and demanding careers also have an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, research has suggested. Scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, have found that the chances of developing Parkinson’s rise with years of education, or intellectually challenging jobs. The highest risk was found in people who had studied for at least nine years. Miners, machine operators, metalworkers and farmers were less often affected. The study, published in Neurology, says that the findings do not mean that education or professional achievement cause the condition, but that people in these groups may lead lives that predispose them to the disease, or be more alert to its symptoms: doctors were the most likely to develop the disease".

Interesting point from a comment on Rishon-Rishon (also see here): How come the Left happily compare Bush to Hitler because of the invasion of Iraq, even though the guy Bush TOPPLED was a real dictator who did gas people, was a member of a national socialist party, AND had a moustache. Doesn't that make GWB more like FDR? There's no logic on the Left, though.

Muslims even intolerant of one-another: "France and other Western democracies offer Islam an opportunity that it has never enjoyed since the first Islamic civil war during Ali's Caliphate: the possibility for Muslims to develop their own approach to their faith and to practice it freely and in accordance with their deepest beliefs, without fear or hypocrisy. The West is the only place where all Muslim schools freely propagate their ideas and maintain their places of worships and seminaries without restriction. In Muslim-majority countries, the dominant school of Islam bans all other schools. Iran, for one, calls itself an Islamic Republic, but won't allow a single Sunni mosque to be built in Tehran, a city with at least 1.5 million Sunnis. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, sectarian feuds claim thousands of lives each year".

Islamofascism as a neurosis: "I came to the conclusion that we are facing a neurosis at the level of an entire civilization. Most neuroses have in common a dramatic event, generally linked to an unacceptable sexual behavior. In this case, we are talking of kids living all their lives in pure frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness or even understanding from the opposite sex. The separation between men and women in Islam is absolute. So is contempt toward women, who are totally dominated by men. This leads to a situation of pure anxiety, in which normal behavior is not possible. It is no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil. Since Islam describes heaven as a place where everything on earth will finally be allowed, and promises 72 virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution."

An early libertarian: "In 1851 Herbert Spencer published a treatise called Social Statics; or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified. Among other specifications, this work established and made clear the fundamental principle that society should be organized on the basis of voluntary cooperation, not on the basis of compulsory cooperation, or under the threat of it. In a word, it established the principle of individualism as against Statism -- against the principle underlying all the collectivist doctrines which are everywhere dominant at the present time. It contemplated the reduction of State power over the individual to an absolute minimum, and the raising of social power to its maximum; as against the principle of Statism, which contemplates the precise opposite."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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ANOTHER AMUSING EMAIL FROM A LEFTIST

A Melanie Barrett (mbarrett@bayoucity.net) wrote to me as follows (I have not endeavoured to fix the grammar or spelling):

"we should adhere to the belief that if you do not make more than $100K a year or you are mentally deficient or physically ill, tough luck. Are you so vain as to not realize that there are many people that actually contribute to this world that do need some help? Your blog brings reason for euthenasia.

Actually every time I read some conservative blog, hear Limbaugh or one of those radio talking heads, I cringe to think that there is so much hate in this world".

I replied:

"You want to kill me ("euthanasia") and you say that I am the one full of hate? You are a psychiatric case -- the phenomenon is called "projection" -- seeing in others what is really in yourself. How sad that people like you have to live a life of such deranged suffering"

In a subsequent email she made this rather sad statement: "And for your information - life is suffering, for everyone..... ". She really is a mess -- like another Leftist emailer I commented on recently.

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BIG ISSUES COMING UP FOR SCOTUS

No more striking down constitutions: "Let's drop the talking points about 'conservative,' 'constructionist' and 'originalist' nominees. Such language obscures what's going on. These nuances are a polite way of pretending that the mainstream in law and government interprets the Constitution differently than we do. No. They are oblivious to the actual content of the Constitution, or they are anti-constitutional. A polite term would be 'post-constitutional.' If Ginsburg, Souter, and friends have a 'theory' of constitutional interpretation, they're keeping it to themselves. When they shake the foundations of the earth from their bench it is neither theory, nor constitutional, nor interpretation. They are, wrote Jonah Goldberg after one heinous ruling, 'making it up as they go along.'"

Roe v. Wade was a legal absurdity: "What do Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe have in common with Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork? They all believe Roe v. Wade was a bad decision. Dershowitz and Tribe are not the only pro-choice legal scholars who denounce Roe as poor jurisprudence. John Hart Ely, another pro-choice legal scholar, wrote in 1973 in the Yale Law Journal that Roe was wrongly decided. Edward Lazarus, a dedicated pro-choicer and former clerk to Roe's author, says Roe was borderline 'indefensible.' Pro-choice Washington Post writer Benjamin Wittes calls Roe 'a lousy decision.' Slate columnist William Saletan--who left the Republican Party in 2004 because it was too pro-life--has written that Roe was a sloppy 'overreach.' Pro-choice Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen calls Roe 'a bad decision.'"

Privacy rights may be good but finding them in the constitution is absurd: "Nowhere does the Constitution guarantee the right to privacy. The word "privacy" isn't even mentioned in the text. But if all you had to go by was the obsessive interest in the subject whenever there is a Supreme Court vacancy, you might imagine that privacy is the very bedrock of American constitutional law. Few legal cows today are more sacred. A judicial nominee who referred dismissively to the "so-called right to privacy" or insisted that courts should not "discern such an abstraction in the Constitution [and] arbitrarily elevate it over other constitutional rights," would stand no chance of winning confirmation. That is why John Roberts, who wrote those words as a Reagan administration lawyer in 1981, smoothly disavowed them during his confirmation hearings in September. It is why Samuel Alito's nomination to the court was no sooner announced than his most important Senate ally -- Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter -- called a press conference to say that the nominee had assured him that "there is a right to privacy in the Constitution"

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ELSEWHERE

Dick McDonald has had his calculator out: "If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops (majority of the time over 250,000) in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000. The death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol"

The disgusting racist treatment of Michelle Malkin by Leftists: "The racist and sexist "yellow woman doing a white man's job" knock is a tiresome old attack from impotent liberals that I've tolerated a long time. It is pathetic that I have to sit here and tell you that my ideas, my politics, and my intellectual capital are mine and mine alone in response to cowardly attacks from misogynistic moonbats with Asian whore fixations. My IQ, free will, skin color, eye shape, productivity, sincerity, and integrity are routinely ridiculed or questioned because I happen to be a minority conservative woman. As a public figure, I am willing to take these insults, but I cannot tolerate the smearing of my loved ones. Because I have always been open and proud about his support for my career, my husband has taken endless, hate-filled abuse from my critics. His Jewish heritage, his decision to be a stay-at-home dad, and even his looks, are the subject of brutal mockery."

Sugar Daddies: "In a hall of fame for corporate-welfare queens, the sugar industry would occupy a place of special honor. For decades, powerful sugar growers have gotten politicians to enrich them with a protectionist scheme that inflates domestic sugar prices to the detriment of American consumers, American manufacturers, American farmers, and the American economy as a whole. In that congeries of absurdities known as U.S. farm policy, sugar’s sweet deal stands out as perhaps the most damaging and least defensible program. Now, more than ever, it needs to be scrapped."

Not a bad summary: "One way to describe libertarianism is that we believe in the separation of family and state as strongly as the American Civil Liberties Union believes in the separation of church and state. In contrast, both the Left and the Right view government as a substitute parent. As pointed out by George Lakoff in Moral Politics, the Left wants government to be a nurturant parent and the Right wants government to be a strict parent. Libertarianism does not want the government to act as a parent."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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ONE THAT SLIPPED THROUGH THE NET

It is part of the conventional religion among psychologists to believe that conservatives are the ones who are "authoritarian". Joe Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers party just did not happen, you see. And like most Leftist beliefs, this one is impermeable to evidence. I have reported in the academic journals heaps of carefully conducted research showing the belief to be false but I was wasting my time of course. You can't argue with something that people need to believe.

Still, every now and again, a piece of research pops up which questions the orthodox faith and one such article is: "Is political conservatism synonymous with authoritarianism?", in The Journal of Social Psychology of Oct 2005, volume 145, issue 5, p571ff. by H. Michael Crowson, Stephen J. Thoma and Nita Hestevold. Their research is of course the usual rubbish that passes for science in psychology: No attempt at sampling, no awareness of what the questionnaires they use actually say, internally inconsistent indices treated as informative, negligible correlations reported as if they offered useful information etc. but it is still nice to see a challenge of sorts to the orthodoxy being put up. I would give a more detailed critique of what they did but I don't want to discourage them too much. They should probably read this and this and this, though.

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BLOG COMMENTS

I am well aware that having a Comments facility would enhance this blog. As in many other things, however, I try to steer a middle way with comments. I welcome comments via email and am generally pleased at the quality of the comments I get that way. But comments that can be read by all are a much more attractive facility, of course. The three group blogs to which I regularly contribute -- Majority Rights, Tongue-Tied and Western Heart all have a comments facility that is managed by the owners of the respective blogs so I don't have to spend time deleting all the rubbish that piles up in any comments facility from time to time. And I do cross-post a lot -- put the same post up on more than one blog. Western Heart specifically encourages cross-postings so I put up there every day what I personally consider to be the three most interesting of all the posts on my own blogs that day. So if any reader especially wants to make a public comment on some particular post of mine, there is around a 50/50 chance he will be able to find the post elsewhere and comment on it there.

Since rationality is the only thing I am unwaveringly committed to, however, I am open to change in what I do. So I have enabled comments on my new Australian Politics blog. If that works out well, I may add a comments facility on more of my blogs. I occasionally get up to a hundred or more comments to my postings on Majority Rights, however, and many of them do in my view require a response from me, so the workload of a comments facility here may well be more than I can comfortably offer.

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ELSEWHERE

Liberals lured by free lunch: "I first became aware of the law of gravity as a small child when I pedalled by tricycle off the porch and crashed into the yard. Gravity was of course operating all along, whether I was aware of it or not. Economics is a lot like that. Many people who are completely unaware of economics sometimes discover it the same way I discovered gravity, through some personal or national crash. Liberals especially tend to think up all sorts of good things we want -- a 'living wage,' 'affordable housing,' 'universal health care,' and an ever-expanding wish-list of things that everyone should receive as 'rights' -- with little or no awareness of the economic repercussions of turning that wish list into laws."

Do-it-yourself legislation: "The aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita have proved a massive breeding ground for what former OECD Chief Economist David Henderson has termed 'Do-it-Yourself Economics' (DIYE), which he defines as 'firmly held intuitive economic ideas and beliefs which owe little or nothing to textbooks, treatises or the evidence of economic history.' The DIYE phenomenon is not restricted to the general public. Henderson points out that DIYE ideas are 'sincerely held, and voiced with conviction, by political figures, top civil servants, CEOs, [labor unionists], well-known journalists and commentators, religious leaders, senior judges and eminent professors.' Sadly, these ideas might do real harm to the U.S. economy."

Move the media elite outside its bubble: "Former CBS-TV correspondent Bernard Goldberg rocked the journalism world in 2001 with his bestselling book 'Bias.' It was an indictment of what Goldberg believes to be an unintended but pervasive liberal prejudice in America's television and print newsrooms. Now, Mr. Goldberg is back with a more in-depth look at why this perceived bias exists. In his new book, 'Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite,' there is plenty of fresh red meat for those who believe that too many people in the media hold a baseline view of things that runs too far to the left. That point is well taken, but Goldberg presents a more significant one in 'Bias.' The author posits the existence of a 'bubble' inside which most established national media live and work. By looking through an elite pair of myopically focused glasses, these media movers deceive themselves that everything revolves around their own business and social circles in New York City and Washington, D.C."

Ilana Mercer on racism or realism? "I stated that Chinese and Jews have 1) overall endured far greater depredations in modern times than Muslims and African-Americans (notwithstanding category overlap). 2) Have coped with such contingencies admirably while Arabs and blacks . not so much. Is this not an observation of reality? Am I not stating an objective fact? So why is realism framed as racism? Dare discomfit people with unsettling facts, and they threaten to tarnish your reputation with damaging labels; tell the truth, and, it would seem, you risk your reputation. That pretty much sums the direction in which discourse has been steered."

The Guardian atypically features an excellent essay of some of the hairy issues involved in the intellectual property area without getting all soap boxy over pharmaceutical companies and the third world etc.

Wicked Thoughts has obviously had a VERY wicked thought about a certain German torchlit parade.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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LONDON METROPOLITAN POLICE: THE NEW GESTAPO?

They are not quite the new Gestapo yet but they are a long way down the track. The immediate and savage execution of a Brazilian electrician just because he looked like a known terrorist and the lies the London police used in an attempt to exculpate themselves got worldwide publicity. That should have been a huge wake-up call for the British powers that be to bring their police back into civilization but the only difference now seems to be that they don't shoot you on mere suspicion. They can still be extraordinarily oppressive to innocent people if they are feeling a bit bored, however. Read this account of the ordeal that David Mery -- a totally innocent computer geek -- was put through just because he was wearing a backpack while quietly waiting for a London Underground train.

Like the Brazilian electrician incident, the Mery incident got heaps of publicity at the time it happened (in September) -- e.g. here -- but in spite of all the publicity. Mery still had to wait a long time and had huge difficulties getting all his possessions back from the police and heaps of data about him are still to this day held in police records. He was never charged with any offence in any court but he still effectively "has a record" that could seriously hamper him in the future. As Mery himself says:

"The Police eventually decided to take No Further Action (NFA): `a decision not to proceed with a prosecution'. In a democratic country such as the UK, one would be forgiven for naively thinking that this is the end of the matter. Under the current laws the Police are not only entitled to keep my fingerprints, palm prints and DNA samples, but apparently, according to my solicitor, they are also entitled to hold on to what they gathered during their investigation: notepads of the arresting officers, photographs, interviewing tapes and any other documents they collected and entered in the Police National Computer (PNC)....

Aren't the Police supposed to keep tabs only on convicted criminals and individuals under investigation? So even though the Police consider me innocent, otherwise they would have had a duty to prosecute me, there will remain some mention (what exactly?) in the PNC and, if they fully share their information with Europol and Interpol, in other Police databases around the world as well. Isn't a state that keeps files on innocent persons a police state? This gradual erosion of our fundamental liberties should be of concern to us all."

So how has a once highly-respected police-force degenerated so badly? After years of Leftist control, politically correct harassment and appointments of far-Leftists to leadership positions, the London police are now more a political police than a law enforcement body. Legal safeguards have been so eroded that they can now do almost anything they like without repercussions as long as their victims are white. The Left have destroyed the London police just as they destroy everything they get control over (education being another example of that).

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ELSEWHERE

A not very foxy Foxman: "Abraham Foxman has gone from nuisance to embarrassment to self-parody. The national leader of the Anti-Defamation League has declared war on conservative Christians. In doing so, he's not only attacking the best friends Israel and the Jewish people have, he's also repudiating Torah-based morality. At a New York meeting of the ADL's national leadership recently, Foxman experienced a near total meltdown. Groups like Focus on The Family and American Family Association are leading a full-scale assault on tolerance and diversity, Foxman foamed. As reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Foxman declared: "Today we face a better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before. Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America. To save us!""

Democrats Teach The World to Hate America: There is an old "joke" about a man who murders his parents and then pleads with the judge for leniency because he's an orphan. I think of this every time I hear a Democrat ask why the world so hates us. Could it be because, in places where people will never actually meet an American they can hear Bruce Springsteen, the Kerry flack, testifying over and over again that being "Born in the USA" is a horrible fate where people kick you when you're down and where you "end up like a dog that's been beat too much"? Could it be because, in places where the only Americans they'll ever see are in Hollywood movies made by leftists, the Democrat makes sure the villain is never an Islamic fascist terrorist and always an American, an American corporation or an American government agency? Could it be because when Michael Moore makes a movie that the Democrats know to be a lie-filled, hate-filled anti-American propaganda flick but those in other places might not, the Democratic Party leadership makes sure to smile for the cameras of al Jazeera and give the film a standing ovation and their endorsement of its message?

A good defence of Wal-Mart against the enviers: Just one excerpt: "Sam Walton's innovations created thousands of new jobs and allowed millions of Americans to save money. In earlier eras, John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt were depicted as evil. But the condemnation rarely came from consumers. It was competing businessmen who complained. And newspapers lapped it up, calling them "robber barons." Vanderbilt got rich by making travel and shipping cheaper. Lots of people liked that. No one was forced to buy the oil on which Rockefeller got rich. He had to persuade people by offering it to them for less. He offered it so cheaply that poorer people, who used to go to bed when it got dark, could now afford fuel for their lanterns. These are "robber barons"? (Hat tip to Commonsense & Wonder)

"Faiths for Fairness is a project of the American Interfaith Institute, an organization with a long history of working to remove bigotry and hatred from the religions of Abraham. Most recently, we have been concerned by the decision of the Presbyterian Church USA to begin a divestment process of its multi- billion dollar portfolio from select companies that do business with Israel. Not only has this action threatened the bonds of friendship between Presbyterians and Jews, it is likely to have even greater consequences by giving encouragement to anarchist organizations"

The Fourth Rail is a very good blog if you want to know what is actually happening in Iraq: Detailed coverage of military movements etc.

Pleasing: My new Australian Politics blog got 300 hits in a recent 24 hour period. Pretty good for a brand-new blog. Some of that will be an initial surge of course so what the return visitor numbers will be like is anyone's guess. It is the only one of my blogs where I have a comments facility so anybody who has always wanted to comment at me now has their chance! I will delete any drongo comments, though. Australians will know what a drongo is.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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Brookes News Update

US economy, Ben Bernanke and recession: Ben Bernanke, the new Fed Chairman, could be seriously misinterpreting economic data. If so, the consequences could be very severe
Is the Australian economy sinking into recession?: Economic indicators are looking bad for the Australian economy. Profits are being slashed and productivity is dropping
Liberal Government's labour market reforms looking shabbier -- so who's to blame?: The Government does not seem to understand that some of its claims are bogus -- unless it believes labour markets were freer in the 1960s than they are today?
Jobs and income security: another union myth: It is impossible for unions to bring about a permanent increase in real wages for everyone. Only by raising the amount of capital invested per head of the population can this be achieved
Economic growth, exports and falling currencies: Would a depreciation of the dollar promote exports and stimulate growth?
Why payroll taxes are really income taxes: Payroll taxes are not similar to so-called consumption taxes: and they can be no more passed on in the form of higher prices than can taxes on profits. They are part of the gross wage

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ELSEWHERE

Further to my post yesterday about the poor reality-contact of the Left, I thought I might note how even when they do acknowledge reality, they are very selective about it. One of the more serious attempts from the Left to find parallels that would justify their constant "Bush=Hitler" mantra is by Thom Hartmann. As is usual with Leftist rhetoric, it's what Hartmann leaves out that is instructive, however. Just one example: GWB has been trying for years to get all US grade schools to use phonics in teaching kids how to read and write -- and still has not succeeded at it. So, at that rate, if he is a dictator he must be the most pissweak dictator of all time! And how long do you think Hitler allowed a press that was critical of him?

A detailed article here on how the NYT collaborates with antisemitism. Excerpt: "While the Times exerts its immense resources to protest what they see as ill-treatment of every minority group under the sun, it seems to have little will to use its prestige to help one of the smallest minorities, Jews. Why American Jews continue their allegiance to a paper that ignores them at best and maligns them at worst is unfathomable. However, maybe some Jews are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee when they unfold the paper in the morning. Readership and circulation figures are plunging in its home market, and it is no longer the most-read paper in New York City. As the internet continues its ascent to become the number one news source for Americans, the Times will now have to face stiff competition. The news will no longer be what they choose to print as the news, and they will face the toughest competition they have yet to face: the truth". (Hat tip to Commonsense & Wonder)

Apparently, the Muslim rioters (sorry: "youths") in France have burnt a lot of churches as well as cars. Astute Blogger comments: "That's one every other day over the last two weeks. Quite a clip. And during the same period, not a single mosque was torched by the rioters, (whose Muslim-ness has nothing to do with the riots - according to the MSM. And nothing about these targeted attacks against churches has appeared in the MSM, either)".

Why not fair-trade beer and cakes?: "I heard the story again just a few days ago. You know the basic plotline: Poor coffee growers in third world countries get paid $1 per bag of coffee, which Starbucks then turns around and sells for $10 a pound. The story always concludes with a discussion about the evil firms involved and how markets result in people at the top getting rich and people at the bottom getting ripped off. But, in the end, this story can only survive due to ignorance of how markets work.....A six-pack of beer, for example, uses perhaps 5-8 ounces of barley (i.e. a few cents worth), and may sell for $3 to $9. That beats Starbucks. Or take wedding cakes. While an inexpensive one might cost a few hundred dollars, you could easily pay thousands for a cake by a master chef whose wheat (flour) cost $10. If Starbucks is evil for the vast difference between what growers get paid and what Starbucks receives for its coffee, these other cases are worse. Difference between input price and output price doesn't inherently imply injustice, and the example of the cake case captures this best. The value doesn't come from the ingredients, but from the skill that went into the cake"

Welfare is the real opiate: "Marx called religion the opiate of the people, and as usual, got it wrong. It was Marx's contention that religion and religious inhibitions against violence kept the proletariat in a stupor that prevented them from overthrowing their capitalist masters. The analogy is false because religion has no addictive quality. Quite the opposite, people must struggle to maintain faith and adherence to God's law. Choosing between good and evil requires awareness, not a stupefied state. Socialism, whether you call it communism, liberalism or whatever, is the opiate dependent ideology.... American liberals haven't quite convinced the American public to abandon the capitalist system for rule by an oligarchy of socialist elites. To advance their cause, liberals employ opiates. The attack on capitalism using opiates to diminish free will and abandon moral responsibility is incessant and insidious.... The welfare state is an opiate. The recipients receive their fixes in exchange for political support. It may not be paradise, but it sure beats working, saving and having to struggle for a living, at least for those whose greatest aspiration is to not miss their favorite television talk-show host or win the lottery."

Bush as Truman: "Why President Bush waited so long to respond to the baseless "Bush lied" lie is a mystery. Perhaps he thought he had more to gain by remaining above the fray than by rolling up his sleeves and wading into it. Perhaps he imagined that because the slander was so brazen, -- so easily refuted, so self-evidently untrue -- it wouldn't deceive the majority of Americans who supported his re-election last year. As the president has finally started pointing out, after all, leading Democrats argued forcefully during the runup to the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein was a lethal menace who had to go. "The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he is in power," Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said at the time. While Bush never described the danger from Iraqi WMDs as imminent, there were Democrats who did.... With public opinion of Bush's competence and honesty at record lows, it may be hard for many to imagine his ever being seen as anything but a failure. But in 1952, when Truman's approval rating was down to a miserable 22 percent, when he was so unpopular that he stood no chance of winning re-election, who would have guessed that millions of Americans 50 years later would look back on him with admiration as a man of character and a gutsy, plainspoken leader?"

According to my last look at Technorati my new "Australian Politics" blog already has 19 links, but as far as I can see only 2 of them are Australians. I have got a heap of Australian bloggers on my blogroll so a few people are being a bit slack.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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DELUSIONS PLUS LIES: ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE STANDARD LEFTIST RECIPE

Below are just a few excerpts from a loony Left article that bears as little relationship to reality as possible. Reality just does not suit Leftists at all. That's why they so love censorship when they can get away with it. Note the way GWB is equated to the North Korean Communist dictator -- who is normally referred to as "The Dear Leader" in North Korean propaganda. And the poor sod writing the article seems to believe that the media are in bed with the Bush administration. Pinch Sulzberger and his "New York Times" staff would be amazed!

"Media giants have consistently concealed the Bush administration's attack on civil liberties, supported the expansion of executive power, and paved the way for global war.... Now, it is the media that crafts the storyline of American magnanimity while the US military carries out war crimes in Falluja and torture in Baghdad. It is the media that showers praise on the Dear Leader while thousands wallow in squalor in New Orleans or are bombed into submission in Tal Afar... It is fair to say that the media has assumed an adversarial role to the American people. It now functions exclusively as a weapon in the imperial arsenal...

The media refuses to provide news of the Iraq war and the devastation of Sunni heartland. Al Qaim, Husbaya, and Tel Afar have all been attacked with the same ferocity as Falluja; forcing the townspeople to flee and then destroying the water, electricity, sewage and other critical parts of the infrastructure. The Pentagon is now engaged in a scorched earth strategy knowing full well that its policy of killing journalists will keep the story from being reported."

One of my readers comments:

"I checked those "cities" and found that Al Qaim is a microscopic place on the Syrian border. Husbaya I could not identify anywhere (but there's certainly not anything sizeable in central Iraq of that name), and Tall Afar is a little place up in northern Kurdistan. Sorry but that looks like a serious conspiracy theory disproven by the facts (unless Microsoft had pre-fiddled my Encarta 2000 for this purpose)."

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ELSEWHERE

The truth doesn't suit apologists for Islamofascism either: Since the end of August, the Holy See has had a new apostolic nuncio for Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, and Qatar. The new nuncio in these Gulf states is archbishop Mounged El-Hachem, 71, a Maronite from Lebanon... But one passage from his first public interview has provoked surprise and disappointment in the Vatican... In it, he restated the Church's opposition to the war in Iraq, which "can only deepen the gulf between the parties and increase fanaticism." He didn't say a word about the present phase of democratization in that country. But he dedicated many words to analyzing Islamist terrorism and expressing appreciation for its motives. To a question about the link between religion and terrorism, El-Hachem replied: ... "This reminds me of the distressing incident at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, when young Palestinians massacred Israeli athletes... At that time I was in the Vatican. It was a sunny Sunday and pope Paul VI appeared at his window and addressed the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square in these words: `We too reprove and denounce the massacre in Munich, but we ask the following question: why have young Palestinians committed this act? We reply: because the Palestinian people (it was the first time anyone had spoken of the Palestinian `people') have been the victims of the most dangerous of injustices in the history of humanity, an innocent and peaceable people turned out of their land, who have lost their roots and identity amid the indifference of the entire world. What impelled these young men to commit this act was to attract the attention of the world to their cause.'... But if you re-read the words Paul VI really spoke at the Angelus and at the Wednesday general audience before that, where he also commented on the massacre in Munich, you will find nothing of what El-Hachem puts into his mouth.

PETA summarized: "Penn & Teller, in their own inimitable style, have dished the dirt on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in a short video. Nothing is off-limits: they joke about the unhealthy appearance of vegans (skeletal and pasty), and are astonished that PeTA kills dogs and cats (apparently they killed two thirds of the 2,100 dogs and cats they "rescued" in 2002, see also petakillsanimals). Not least, they expose one of PeTA's leaders as an insulin dependent diabetic who seeks to prevent others benefiting from future medical advances, by trying to abolish animal research. PeTA would outlaw fishing, circuses, dog shows, horse riding, zoos, pets and guide dogs for the blind: their goal is "total animal liberation" says Ingrid Newkirk, PeTA's leader."

The wisdom to know the difference: "If there's an iron law in the universe, it is that you can not get the changes you want through force. You may get some encouraging immediate results, but in the long run the reaction to the use of force will never satisfy you. Prohibition, after all, did cut alcohol consumption, but that doesn't mean it was a success. When you persuade, people will willingly change; when you use force, people will do as little as possible to avoid harsh treatment, and then direct their energies as far away from you as they can. Even when they comply with the new laws, people do not behave the way those who forced the change intended. The people find loopholes, or are driven to even worse behaviors then the ones that were banned. The Law of Unintended Consequences can also be called the Law of Forced Change. All life reacts badly to force, to threats, to fear."

History of tax revolts: "More than a quarter century ago, Californians rebelled against an overbearing political establishment. Property assessments were climbing, state expenditures were rising, the budget surplus was expanding, and government officials were lying. Voters responded by passing Proposition 13, triggering tax revolts nationwide. The movement has waxed and waned over the years, but the stories rarely cease to inspire. Popular resistance to higher taxes almost always reprises David versus Goliath. Such is the tale spun by Phil Valentine, a Tennessee talk-radio personality who helped stop the bipartisan drive for a state income tax. Tax Revolt offers a delightful read, detailing betrayal and deceit, insider maneuvers and public protests, and big-bucks lobbying and horn-honking rallies. Particularly satisfying is the end: the people win."

Progressives, eugenics and the minimum wage: "American intellectual life in the early 20th century has a dirty secret and its name is Eugenics. Alex Tabarrok points out an excellent article by Thomas C. Leonard on "Protecting Family and Race: The Progressive Case for Regulating Women's Work" (PDF). Leonard makes the point that Progressive support for exclusionary labor legislation for women, including the minimum wage, was based among other things on ensuring "that women could better carry out their eugenic duties as 'mothers of the race'". Though most know that eugenics had some sort of open popularity prior to the Nazis giving it a bad name, few know how thoroughly it was supported by all the "best and brightest". Here's a partial list from Leonard's paper: Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence and economist Irving Fisher. Progressives, in part for eugenic reasons, wanted to make women and other groups unemployable. Their chosen tool: the minimum wage".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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MORAL VACUUM STARTS TO HURT

Excerpt from Dennis Prager

"Jordanians are shocked that Islamic terrorists would blow up families, including families celebrating a wedding. They are so shocked that for the first time in history, Muslims have taken to publicly demonstrating against Islamic terror. And why are they shocked? Because the terrorists blew up Jordanians. As long as Islamic terrorists blew up men, women and children who are Jewish, Christian, Hindu, American, Australian and black Sudanese, the Arab and larger Muslim worlds were not particularly disturbed. In fact, Palestinians, who comprise the majority of Jordan's population, celebrated when Jews were blown up at Passover seders and at weddings. And they took to the streets and cheered in the Palestinian fashion, handing out candy, when Americans were incinerated in office buildings.

For some reason, Palestinians, most other Arabs and many Muslims around the world thought that the credulity-straining evil of targeting the most innocent for death, paralysis, blindness and brain damage would be confined to non-Arabs and non-Muslims.... Now there is widespread condemnation of Zarqawi's terror in Jordan. There is even a fear that the name of Islam will suffer. Unfortunately, however, it is only because Zarqawi was foolish enough to massacre Jordanian civilians, and not confine his massacres to Iraqis and non-Arabs. What has aroused Arab voices against Zarqawi has nothing to do with the immorality of blowing up people celebrating at a wedding -- it has to do with the immorality of blowing up Muslims celebrating at a wedding.

Nevertheless, it is possible that a moral awakening of sorts may be taking place in parts of the Arab world. The London Telegraph reports that "Munder Moomeni, a 38-year-old former soldier who lives next to Zarqawi's house, 13 Ramzi Street, described his former neighbour as 'a bastard.' 'By killing Jordanians here in Jordan, civilian Jordanians going to a wedding, they did something that not even a Jew would do,' he said." That a neighbor and former supporter of Zarqawi publicly acknowledged that Jews would not engage in such terror may be a first step toward the moral awakening that the Arab world needs even more than oil revenues.

It may even come to realize the greatest truth regarding terror and evil: People who blow up Israeli weddings and cut Americans' throats are very bad people. And if you don't fight them, they will eventually blow you up, too."

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ELSEWHERE

There is a truly saddening report here of the sheer insensate hate that Leftists feel towards GWB and Israel. Just a couple of excerpts: "Craig J. Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan, asserted that the crimes committed by that country's rulers are "subsidized by the government of George W. Bush." Bush has done this, he said, for the benefit of Enron. The goal of Americans, he instructed the students, is to "get at the oil and gas so they can guzzle it." .... Yasser Arafat, he said, had been correct to reject the offer of Palestinian statehood made at Camp David in 2000 because it was "a pro-Zionist type of approach." It would have allowed the Jewish state to survive. He found that a distasteful prospect".

Sad that this bill was necessary: "Fears that overweight Americans will develop an appetite for litigation drove the House to pass a bill that would bar lawsuits by restaurant customers claiming burgers and French fries made them fat. "Trial lawyers have said they'd target restaurants the way they've targeted the tobacco industry," National Restaurant Assn. President Steven C. Anderson said".

Good Taiwan speech: "Taiwan has welcomed comments by US President George W. Bush praising the island's democracy and said it shares the same core values as its allies. "Democracy, freedom, and human rights have been the core values shared between Taiwan and its allies," the Presidential Office said in a statement.... The office said the remarks were especially significant since they were made in Kyodo, Japan, on the first stop of Bush's Asia visit. Mr Bush's unusually strong comments came during a tour in which he will visit Beijing for a brief summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao. "We encourage China to continue down the road of reform and openness because the freer China is at home, the greater the welcome it will receive abroad," Mr Bush said in what was billed as a keynote speech. "Modern Taiwan is free and democratic and prosperous. By embracing freedom at all levels, Taiwan has delivered prosperity to its people and created a free and democratic Chinese society.""

Some progress towards border control? "Concerned that the nation's borders are not properly protected against terrorists, illegal aliens and drug smugglers, a Senate committee warned Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that if he fails to correct the situation promptly, they will. Sen. Susan Collins [R-ME], chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Joe Lieberman [D-CT] want to know whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) should be merged to `enable them to operate more effectively.' In a report made public last week, the Homeland Security Department's Office of Inspector General recommended that the two agencies-with overlapping jurisdiction for border security and immigration enforcement-be merged, questioning whether they had the ability as separate organizations to carry out their homeland security missions. The report, requested by Collins and Lieberman, said a lack of effective coordination between the agencies had affected apprehension, detention and removal efforts."

The fallout from California's recent Special Election in which ballot initiatives for reforms of the inflexiblity of the state budget, compulsory union dues, and redistricting were all lost are now starting to emerge: Nissan Corporation is moving its headquarters out of California to Tennessee and A massive $50 billion bond is being contemplated by the Governor.

There is an article here that identifies the French welfare State as a key ingredient in causing the recent riots there.

Bill Cosby was right : Blacks do spend a lot more of their income on shoes!

I am having a lot of fun with my new Australian Politics blog. I have just put up what I think is a heap of interesting stuff there. The servers hosting the blog are sometimes a bit slow in responding so I have in my usual way done a mirror site for it that may be more convenient on occasions.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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WAL-MART TAKES THE LEAD IN DEFENDING BUSINESS FROM LEGAL PARASITES

Give Wal-Mart Stores credit for one thing--the company certainly doesn't scare easily. The world's dominant retailer has been facing a tidal wave of negativity--from community activists trying to keep its stores out of their neighborhoods, to local governments mandating that Wal-Mart supply workers with health insurance, to opportunistic lawyers trying to strike it rich by bringing on endless lawsuits. Critics--many of whom are as financially motivated as Wal-Mart is--are accusing the company of everything from discriminating against women, to mistreating illegal aliens, to denying overtime pay. Thousands of customers who slip and fall in a store aisle are also trying to reach into the company's deep pockets....

Management experts say the company's strategy of confronting the charges head-on while not wavering from its low-price business model is the most effective formula over the long haul. "When you're just about the largest company in the world, it's tough to breathe without offending someone," said Kathryn Harrigan, a professor at Columbia Business School.

Indeed, suing Wal-Mart is now a cottage industry, with some 5,000 lawsuits filed against the company each year. After one of Wal-Mart's 1.2 million employees gets to work at 9 A.M., three lawsuits will be filed against the company by the time he or she takes a 10:30 A.M. coffee break. By lunchtime, the count is up to six. By the time the employee heads home at 5 P.M., no fewer than 17 people or groups have brought a complaint in court. The same pattern will repeat itself tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.

The message is clear. To some, the American dream is no longer just about being successful, it's about not being too successful. Or it's about being successful enough for others to leech off of you.

The company is generally loath to settle all but the smallest suits, opting instead to take on plaintiffs' complaints while hammering home its message of "Everyday Low Prices" to the public. The more serious class-action complaints, each of which can potentially result in hundreds of millions of dollars in liability, are complaints the company has decided it won't take lying down.

Larry McQuillan, a director at the Pacific Resource Institute, a free-market think tank, said fighting the lawsuits makes the most long-term sense, based on building momentum for tort reform, and because winning some of these cases would deter more organizations from filing suits. The trial bar's strategy against corporate America up to now has been to file a suit, depress the stock price and bring the company to the table to get a settlement out of it, he said. "Wal-Mart has been a leader in not bowing to those pressures, unlike many companies that are afraid of bad publicity and want to settle," McQuillan said. "If you don't defend yourself early on, and be persistent, you will be steamrolled."

More here

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NEW OZ BLOG

I am a bit embarrassed to be reporting this but I have started yet another blog -- a blog devoted solely to Australian politics. There are of course already heaps of excellent Australian conservative blogs. You will find a list of just some of them towards the bottom of my blogroll. So the purpose of my new blog is very limited. I just want to put up there what in my view is the most interesting or striking bit of news or commentary to come out of Australia that I have encountered that day. Sometimes, I will also mention the item here on this blog -- if it seems likely to have international interest -- but on other occasions I will not.

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ELSEWHERE

Hot air from Chirac: "French President Jacques Chirac said today the riots that have rocked France revealed an identity crisis to which the country would respond with firmness and justice. "This is a crisis of meaning, a crisis of reference points, a crisis of identity," Mr Chirac said in a televised address to the nation. "We will respond with firmness and justice. "These events are the sign of a deep malaise. Some people started fires in their own neighbourhoods, burned the cars of their neighbours, their friends, attacked their schools and sports centres." .... "Children, teenagers need values, points of reference. Parental authority is key. Families must take their full responsibilities." "Those who refuse to do so should be punished, according to the law. Those who are facing serous difficulties should, on the other hand, be actively supported.""

Thomas Sowell explains how both high Muslim unemployment in France and high black unemployment in the USA are the result of do-gooder labor legislation: "Many people are blaming the riots in France on the high unemployment rate among young Muslim men living in the ghettoes around Paris and elsewhere. Some are blaming both the unemployment and the ghettoization on discrimination by the French. Plausible as these explanations may sound, they ignore economics, among other things. Let us go back a few generations in the United States. We need not speculate about racial discrimination because it was openly spelled out in laws in the Southern states, where most blacks lived, and was not unknown in the North. Yet in the late 1940s, the unemployment rate among young black men was not only far lower than it is today but was not very different from unemployment rates among young whites the same ages..."

Blogger Mary K. Ham on the transition from NASCAR reporter to political reporter: "Some folks ask me what the transition was like from NASCAR reporter to political reporter. It's easy. In one, you try to explain to your readers the significance of grown-ups getting paid exorbitant amounts of money to go around in circles indefinitely, always turning left. In the other, you get to interview racecar drivers."

A good summary here of the methods used by the media generally and public broadcasters in particular to inject covert Leftist bias into their coverage of events. I am pleased to note that Senator Santoro from my home State of Queensland is doing his best to expose the biases at Australia's major public broadcaster.

Dick McDonald has just given a good fisking to the latest moan from Jimmy Carter.

China Hand has just put up a couple of big new posts about life in China and the rocketing modernization now going on there. [NOTE: As people in China cannot access blogspot sites, I have put up mirror sites for "China Hand" here and here that should be accessible in China]

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics.

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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 THE NON-EXISTENT "PRINCIPLES" OF THE LEFT

I mentioned last month the book Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy by Peter Schweizer but I think a few more details about what it says are in order:

"Staunch union supporter Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has received the Cesar Chavez Award from the United Farmworkers Union. But the $25 million Northern California vineyard she and her husband own is a non-union shop. The hypocrisy doesn't end there. Pelosi has received more money from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union than any other member of Congress in recent election cycles. But the Pelosis own a large stake in an exclusive hotel in Rutherford, Calif. It has more than 250 employees. But none of them are in a union, according to Schweizer, author of "The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty" and a regular contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other periodicals. The Pelosis are also partners in a restaurant chain called Piatti, which has 900 employees. The chain is - that's right, a non-union shop.

Ralph Nader is another liberal who claims that unions are essential to protect worker rights. But when an editor of one of his publications tried to form a union to ameliorate miserable working conditions, the editor was fired and the locks changed on the office door.

Self-described socialist Noam Chomsky has described the Pentagon as "the most vile institution on the face of the earth" and lashed out against tax havens and trusts that benefit only the rich. But Chomsky has been paid millions of dollars by the Pentagon over the last 40 years, and he used a venerable law firm to set up his irrevocable trust to shield his assets from the IRS.

Air America radio host Al Franken says conservatives are racist because they lack diversity and oppose affirmative action. But fewer than 1 percent of the people he has hired over the past 15 years have been African-American.

Ted Kennedy has fought for the estate tax and spoken out against tax shelters. But he has repeatedly benefited from an intricate web of trusts and private foundations that have shielded most of his family's fortune from the IRS. One Kennedy family trust wasn't even set up in the U.S., but in Fiji. Another family member, environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr., has said that it is not moral to profit from natural resources. But he receives an annual check from the family's large holdings in the oil industry.

Barbra Streisand has talked about the necessity of unions to protect a "living wage." But she prefers to do her filming and postproduction work in Canada, where she can pay less than American union wages.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have spoken in favor of the estate tax, and in 2000 Bill vetoed a bill seeking to end it. But the Clintons have set up a contract trust that allows them to substantially reduce the amount of inheritance tax their estate will pay when they die. Hillary, for her part, has written and spoken extensively about the right of children to make major decisions regarding their own lives, including having abortions without parental notification. But she barred 13-year-old daughter Chelsea from getting her ears pierced and forbid the teen from watching MTV or HBO.

Billionaire Bush-basher George Soros says the wealthy should pay higher, more progressive tax rates. But he holds the bulk of his money in tax-free overseas accounts in Curacao, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

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