PREDICTING THE VOTE

A reader has written to me as follows:

I've been playing with charting various demographics against the vote in the 2004 Presidential election. The first table from my spreadsheet shows what looks a very significant correlation between Bush/Kerry voting percentages for the 50 states and population density, with the "huddled masses" states strongly pro-Kerry and the low-population states strongly pro-Bush.





What's surprising is that there seems to be an even stronger correlation against the "Generosity index", a measure of what percentage of income people reported as giving to charity on their tax returns (See here for the data). One would think that people who say they are for the common person would be more charitable. In retrospect, the Leftists seem very ready to "give to the poor" as long as it's somebody else's money they are giving.

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Brookes News Update

The return of Robert Shiller's Irrational Exuberance: The economic commentariat is jumping on the Shiller bandwagon in the hope of embarrassing the Bush economy. As usual, they just don't know what they are talking about
Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls smears labour market reform: The free market is a truly callous place, or so Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls seems to think. This economic whiz kid believes that labour market reform could drive wage rates down from $13 an hour to $7 an hour
Taxing the US dollar and taxing Democrats: The Democrats' opposition to tax cuts borders on the hysterical at time. Apart from their insincerity (the only kinds of tax increases they support are those their fabulously rich supporters can easily avoid) there is the utter bankruptcy of their so-called economic arguments
Why are so many journalists like Phillip Adams out and out bigoted liars?: Phillip Adams ranks as one of Australia's most vicious, and certainly most dishonest, leftwing columnists. This apologist for just about every communist regime that ever existed thinks Americans are being carted off to a Republican Gulag
The media can no longer be trusted to side with democracy and common decency: The depraved state of the media and their irrational hatred of America and their support for those who loath the West is becoming more obvious by the day
Interest rates and economic growth - more journalistic stupidity: Keynes never managed to grasp the nature of interest. He thought it was a purely monetary phenomenon that was determined by the supply and demand for money. This, however, is the same fallacious theory that the discredited mercantilists also used to explain the existence of interest and its rate
Not another Clinton Presidency: America cannot afford another Clinton Presidency - be it male or female. The Clintons' brand of politics was poison for the US and we cannot run the risk of moving backward at this critical juncture in our nation's history
Millennium Challenge and Morocco: In May 2005, Morocco's King Mohammed VI launched the 'National Initiative for Human Development' to promote decentralized development projects

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ELSEWHERE

Surprise! American whites are on their best behaviour when blacks are present: "In a study involving 200 participants on 29 mock juries, panels of whites and blacks performed better than all-white groups by a number of measures. "Such diverse juries deliberated longer, raised more facts about the case, and conducted broader and more wide-ranging deliberations," said Sommers. "They also made fewer factual errors in discussing evidence and when errors did occur, those errors were more likely to be corrected during the discussion." Surprisingly, this difference was primarily due to significant changes in white behavior. Whites on diverse juries cited more case facts, made fewer mistakes in recalling facts and evidence, and pointed out missing evidence more frequently than did those on all-white juries. They were also more amenable to discussing racism when in diverse groups."



The BBC has a fascinating article about the history of the Union Jack. Such matters are of considerable interest to Australians as the Union Jack is quartered in the Australian national flag. It was long customary to refer to the Union "jack" but purists point out that a "jack" is a naval flag (even the USA has a "jack" flag -- 50 white stars on a dark blue background) so the term "Union Flag" has come into some use in recent years. For me however it will always be the "Union Jack" and I am pleased to see that the BBC has adopted that as its standard usage too. In my view, nothing could be more appropriate for a country so long dependant on its navy that it should use a naval flag for its national flag.

Anti-terror laws are an affront to justice, says British High Court: "The Government's anti-terror laws were dealt a devastating blow yesterday when the High Court said that they were an "affront to justice" and breached human rights laws. Mr Justice Sullivan ruled that the controversial control order system, which keeps terror suspects under a form of house arrest, were "conspicuously unfair". The anti-terror laws denied suspects under control orders the right to a fair hearing and were incompatible with human rights laws, the judge said. Although the Government had attempted to apply a "thin veneer of legality" to the measure, suspects' rights were determined by ministers with no effective oversight by judges, he added. The Government was forced to bring in control orders after the law lords ruled that holding foreign terror suspects indefinitely without trial was unlawful. Ministers immediately announced that they would appeal against yesterday's ruling. In the meantime, control orders will remain imposed on eight foreigners and four British citizens. The ruling came in a challenge by the first British citizen to have a control order imposed on him as a terror suspect by Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary. Civil liberties groups welcomed the verdict."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS . Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here and here). I also post several times a week on TONGUE-TIED. There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION UPDATE

An interesting snippet about illegal Mexican immigrant workers from one of my Southern USA readers: "There is a lot of bleeding heart dialog about how "unfair" it is to pay "sub minumum wage" to Mexicans. Wage is about $5.50/hr. But in this Texas town (and elsewhere) the Mexican illegals get $ 8.00/hr. In fact, this is their "union" wage agreed by the underground. Anyone working for less would end up dead (sounds a lot like our Longshoremen). And one of these workers has a thousand acre ranch in Mexico. Not "the poor" as in the "image". American money buys a lot there".

A little-noticed consequence of a "guest-worker" program: "The inevitable drift toward Asian and Middle Eastern guest-workers would have important security implications. America has been fortunate to have a comparatively small Muslim population that is well-educated, prosperous, ethnically diverse, and geographically dispersed - all factors making radicalism and alienation less likely. But a new foreign-worker scheme could replicate Europe's experience, by importing large numbers of poor, uneducated, ghettoized Muslim peasants. And there would be little chance of thorough security screening, given the combination of administrative overload in our immigration agencies and intense pressure from employers to rubber-stamp their cheap labor".

Immigration doublespeak: "The parallel to the abortion debate is telling; both 'amnesty' and 'abortion' (not to mention 'acid!') are things people dislike, so their promoters have to invent new terminology. The National Abortion Rights Action League, for instance, is no more -- now it's 'NARAL Pro-Choice America,' fighting for 'reproductive rights' and 'women's health.' Like in the abortion debate, amnesty was called by its name in earlier, more naive phases of the debate. The legalization portions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act were almost universally referred to as amnesty, by both supporters and opponents. But when it became clear what a debacle that amnesty was (it legalized nearly three million illegal aliens, sparking massive illegal immigration and distorting the development of agriculture and other industries), it became necessary to find a different word for the next amnesty."

Sowell on illegal immigration: "Activists who are organizing mass marches and demonstrations in cities across America may well be congratulating themselves on the huge numbers of people they can get to turn out to protest efforts in Congress to reduce illegal immigration. No doubt that will impress many in the media and intimidate many politicians. But how these marches will be seen by millions of other Americans is another question entirely. The Mexican flags and the strident assertions of a right to violate American laws are a danger signal to this society, as they would be to any society.... Both liberals and free-market libertarians often see this as an abstract issue about poor people being hindered from moving to jobs by an arbitrary border drawn across the southwest desert. Intellectuals' ability to think of people in the abstract is a dangerous talent in a world where people differ in all the ways that make them people. The cultures and surrounding circumstances of those people are crucial for understanding what they are likely to do and what the consequences are likely to be.... "

The Leftists are beginning to realize that all those Mexican flags were a goof: "The Stars and Stripes outnumbered Mexico's El Tricolor in Sacramento Monday as thousands of local demonstrators joined immigration protests nationwide. From tiny plastic flags no bigger than a postcard to giant cloth banners streaming in the breeze, more marchers carried the red, white and blue than Mexico's green, white and red. But many of the protesters proudly displayed both flags. In earlier demonstrations across the country, the widespread waving of the Mexican flag triggered barbed rebukes from commentators who questioned the allegiances of the marchers

If you have broadband, there is a video here with some very comprehensive shots of the Leftist immigration demonstrators and what they are advocating.

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ELSEWHERE

Appeasing Oppressors: A Proud German Tradition Continues: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust "a myth." He's called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." He's the head of one of the most repressive governments on earth. And, as far as most German authorities are concerned, he's a welcome guest at this summer's 2006 FIFA World Cup"

Another teeth-grinder for the Wal-Mart haters: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, is a "good corporate citizen" that should be allowed to own a bank just as other retailers, including Target Corp. and Harley-Davidson Inc., have been, a top Wal-Mart executive told federal bank regulators yesterday."

A California victory for the Wal-Mart enviers: "Cities can outlaw big-box superstores in order to prevent the collapse of local businesses and resulting urban blight, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday in a case that sets a statewide precedent for ordinances aimed at retail giant Wal-Mart. Upholding a 2004 ordinance in the city of Turlock (Stanislaus County) that was backed by neighborhood supermarkets and labor unions, the Court of Appeal in Fresno said the city legally used its power to 'control and organize development within its boundaries.'"

Drug war dropout calls effort a "failure" : "For more than 14 years, Jack Cole fought the war on drugs as a New Jersey state narcotics agent. Now, he's had enough. 'It's not only a dismal failure, but a terribly destructive policy,' he said. Cole said he quit the narcotics force in New Jersey after realizing that the war on drugs not only cost billions in taxpayer money and landed millions of Americans in jail, but also had done little to curb the country's drug problem. In fact, Cole believes that the drug war -- beginning in 1970 during Richard Nixon's first term and continuing today -- may have helped escalate a national drug problem that only the end of drug prohibition can cure, he said."

I am rather pleased with a couple of my posts on Tongue Tied yesterday so I hope readers here go there next.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS . Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here and here). I also post several times a week on TONGUE-TIED. There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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SELF-DECEPTION

Any student of psychopathology will be aware that self-deception is a very common human frailty. So it is not particularly surprising when I and many others like me constantly point to inconvenient facts (such as the large influence of heredity) that Leftists ignore. Ignoring facts is very widespread generally, not only among Leftists. It may be useful to point to some other instances of it.

Perhaps the most amusing is the way people are always fussing about their diet. There is a constant stream of talk about what food is and is not good for you. And what is good for you today will almost certainly be bad for you in ten year's time -- and vice versa. Wicked Thoughts often reports such ups and downs as part of his coverage of humorous items in the news. But regardless of the details, almost everyone is convinced that eating "healthy" food and exercising more will make you live longer. Except that it doesn't. All the longditudinal studies of lifestyle change (including diet change) show no effect of such change on longevity. See here for just the latest such study. Fussing about your food is unlikely to add one extra day to your life. But people like to feel that they have some control over their health so the fussing will go on forever as far as I can see. And, sadly, some well-intentioned dietary changes are actually bad for you -- e.g. salt restriction.

Another example of blinkers being desperately clung to is the influence of upbringing on child personality. For at least 4,000 years, people have believed that how you bring up a child has a big influence on his or her "character". Except that it doesn't. All the twin studies of personality variables show that family environment has negligible effect on how a kid turns out -- with genetics being the main influence and with peer influence being a distant second. Even political attitudes are largely genetically inherited. So that's another little illusion of control that the facts snatch away.

A third example is the importance of IQ. In the Frank Ellis affair (much commented on by Chris Brand) loud and confident public assertions have been made in the media by practically everyone to the effect that IQ does not exist and if it does it is not genetically inherited. Yet all those who know anything about the academic research on the subject (e.g. here) know that IQ is highly measurable, highly influential in one's life and that it is at least two-thirds genetically inherited. So again we have to accept the hand we are dealt. Our lives are strongly affected by things over which we have no control.

A pity, isn't it?

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A QUIZ!

In case that post above was a bit depressing, let's have something more entertaining. Go here to read what seems to me like a fairly typical anti-Bush rant. Your job is to guess where it comes from. You may be surprised.

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ELSEWHERE

France embraces stagnation: "President Jacques Chirac caved in to protesters on Monday, canceling a law on youth employment that fueled nationwide unrest and raising questions about France's ability to reform rigid labor laws in a globalized world."

More California compassion: "An 82-year-old woman received a $114 ticket for taking too long to cross a street. Mayvis Coyle said she began shuffling with her cane across Foothill Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley when the light was green, but was unable to make it to the other side before it turned red. She said the motorcycle officer who ticketed her on Feb. 15 told her she was obstructing traffic".

Back to federalism: "The Founders designed a vast garment for America that hugs where it should hug and stretches where it should stretch; each state creates its own society, and the Constitution stitches them all together into a comfortable, sensible union suit. 'As this government is composed of small republics, it enjoys the internal happiness of each,' writes Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 9, 'and with respect to its external situation, it is possessed, by means of the association, of all the advantages of large monarchies.' But the collapse of federalism has ruined this valuable arrangement."

The Federal Bureau of Luddites: "Two weeks ago, the FBI's chief information officer admitted that the bureau couldn't afford to provide e-mail addresses for 8,000 of its 30,000 employees. The e-mail shortfall is only the latest in a series of embarrassed confessions the FBI has made about its information technology. The most significant mea culpa came when an attempt to upgrade the bureau's case-management software had to be scrapped last year after $170 million had already been spent. A Justice Department report listed all kinds of excuses, from poor 'enterprise architecture' planning to shifting design requirements. But behind the management analysis is a more implacable problem. Until very recently, being computer-savvy hasn't been considered much of an asset in the FBI, and clues were something you kept to yourself."

Congressional pork includes some real stinkers: "While cutting back on many pet projects, lawmakers have included some real stinkers in federal spending bills for 2006, according to a watchdog group that announced its annual Washington pork menu on Wednesday. $13.5 million for an Irish group that funds the World Toilet Summit? $1 million for water-free urinals? $500,000 for a teapot museum? Those projects, and nearly 10,000 others, account for a record $29 billion in federal pork-barrel spending for the current budget year, Citizens Against Government Waste said."

The latest brainwave of the Wal-Mart haters: Wal Mart threatens U.S. security! "The Dubai Ports World battle has trumpeted the gaping holes in our seaports' security systems, but few ask: Why are U.S. ports so poorly protected nearly five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001? Why has the government spent just $630 million -- less than 4 percent of the $18 billion-plus we have spent since 9/11 on airport security -- to make ports safer? House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said it best: '(While we) talk about having strong homeland security, checking 100 percent of cargo containers. In the end, our commercial interests get ahead of us.' Those commercial interests are led by the world's largest retailer and the United States' biggest importer, Wal-Mart."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS . Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here and here). I also post several times a week on TONGUE-TIED. There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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NEUROPOLITICS

There is an interesting site here that appears to be run by two microbiologists named Brack and Zhang. They have the entirely commendable aim of finding what the biological influences on political orientation are. And some of their findings sound fun indeed. For instance:

"In our most recent survey, Liberals in general were 43% more likely to report general anxiety disorder than Conservatives. They were 115% more likely to report panic disorders, 119% more likely to report agoraphobic symptoms, 118% more likely to report OCD symptoms. and 54% more likely to report social anxiety disorder. When broken down further into Very Conservative, Conservative, Liberal and Very Liberal cohorts, the numbers spread further apart. The Very Conservatives have the lowest rates of anxiety disorders, the Very Liberals the highest.

Sadly, we cannot get too carried away by that finding. It runs contrary to decades of previous research on the subject -- research of which Brack & Zhang seem to be unaware. In properly sampled surveys, the correlation between anxiety/neuroticism and politics has repeatedly been found to be negligible. See for instance here. And the "sampling" employed by Brack & Zhang is ludicrous. They base their conclusions on people who respond to internet surveys -- a group which can in no way be claimed to be representative of the population at large.

Another problem with the Brack and Zhang reports is that they give the statistical significance of the differences they find as if it were a big deal. But statistical significance is only a means of allowing for small sample sizes and their "samples" are large in statistical terms. It may help if I point out that with a sample of 400 people (the sort of "sample" they use) a totally negligible correlation of .10 would be shown as statistically significant. They would be much more impressive from a scholarly point of view if the first report of their findings were in terms of standard descriptive statistics such as (say) the Pearson product-moment correlations between their variables.

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ELSEWHERE

As Economy Roars, Dems Are in Denial: "Building on the nation's historic economic growth under the tax policies of the Bush Administration, the Department of Labor announced today that the economy added 211,000 jobs in March -- 21,000 more than the projected 190,000. Job growth in March brought unemployment to a record low of 4.7%, which is below the average of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The March employment numbers brought total job creation for the past 12 months to 2.1 million, and 5.2 million since May 2003. It looks like the best-kept secret in San Francisco is that tax cuts work".

Protectionism will kill Europe: "Protectionism is gaining ground even in member states such as Italy as a reaction against France -- top politicians from the left and the right have been calling for a retaliation against French companies. As a result, the voice of the European Commission (the executive branch of the EU) is getting weaker, especially if you consider that Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs comes from Latvia, a country whose influence is much smaller than France's, and that Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes can't possibly challenge every single protectionist move. Clearly, the European dream of a single market isn't likely to be fulfilled in the short run."

DoD wants Boy Scout ruling overturned: "The Defense Department wants to continue supporting the decades-old National Boy Scout Jamboree because preparing a military base for the event trains soldiers how to deal with displaced people, government attorneys said Thursday. The government is asking a federal appeals court to overturn a ruling that the Pentagon's support of the jamboree violates the First Amendment because the Scouts require members to swear an oath of duty to God."

GM, France and Albany: "At first glance, they seem to have little in common. But the riots in France over labor reform, the slow-motion suicide of General Motors, and the continuing decline of the New York economy all share one defining trait: entrenched and unchangeable union power. These columns have always favored the right to collectively bargain, and any private company that allows a union to organize its workers deserves what it gets. But that doesn't mean we should fail to appreciate the consequences when unions become entrenched inside any organization. On the evidence throughout business and politics today, unions do not provide individual job or income security. On the contrary, they undermine security by contributing to broader business and economic decline".

How Israel can win: "I refrain from suggesting specific steps Israel should take in part because I am not Israeli, and in part because discussing tactics to win is premature before victory is the policy. Suffice to say that the Palestinians derive immense succor and strength from a worldwide network of support from NGOs, editorialists, academics, and politicians; that the manufactured Palestinian 'refugee' problem stands at the dank heart of the conflict; and that lack of international recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital festers. These three issues are clearly priorities. Ironically, Israeli success in crushing the Palestinian war morale would be the best thing that ever happened to the Palestinians."

You can't outlaw a free lunch: "Abramoff and Cunningham ignored existing laws, so it's unclear why their malfeasance is inspiration for new ones. But the faux crackdown on lobbying does reflect a 'hey, how'd that happen?' theory of honest government, a worldview in which lobbyists, and not Congressmen they corrupt, are responsible for the earmarks that snake their way into appropriations bills. Like obese Americans launching lawsuits at McDonalds, Congressmen plead that they are unable to resist free lunch at The Willard without the force of law behind them. Meal restrictions are traditionally got around by exploiting exceptions for 'prior relationships,' so lobbyists and politicos can always claim to be old chums from prep school grabbing a bite. And if the attempt to regulate friendship is futile, the focus on wining and dining is simplistic."

"Pig Book" serves up $29 billion in pork: "For all the hand-wringing on Capitol Hill about larding bills with home-state projects, the latest report from a taxpayer group says lawmakers hit a record last year. Citizens Against Government Waste, in its annual 'Pig Book' released Wednesday, details $29 billion of what it calls pork-barrel spending. For the uninitiated, 'pork' means home-state and home-district projects specially set aside in congressional spending measures, chiefly the 11 annual appropriations bills. ... Some of these earmarks are more audacious than others. For example, last year, there was a 'bridge to nowhere,' a $223 million project connecting Alaska's Gravina Island, population 50, to the mainland. That project drew so much ridicule from the media that an irate public successfully demanded that the bridge be shelved."

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). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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An expedition into Volkskultur

My previous little personal memoirs here seem generally to have been well-received, so here is another!

Intellectually, I have been an utter atheist for over 40 years but emotionally I am still the Bible-bashing Protestant fundamentalist I was in my teens. And one consequence of that is that I have a great love of Christian music, including popular hymns. So I feel very much at home with ALL the sacred music of my Volk. I would scarcely be a lover of Bach otherwise as his inspiration was very much in German Protestantism and its great music.

So when Anne suggested that we attend a "Festival of Praise" last Saturday night at the Logan Entertainment Centre (a municipal facility in a working-class part of the Brisbane area), I was perfectly happy to go along. Since she came into my life, Anne has done a fair bit towards demolishing my previous reclusive lifestyle!

When we arrived, I noticed that the audience was 100% "Caucasian" (which seems to be the American euphemism for "white" -- a term one uses at some risk these days. Though the connection most "Caucasians" have with the Caucasus is very distant indeed). And I would guess that most of the audience were Anglo-Celtic too. Some people don't like that term "Anglo-Celtic" but seeing I am myself Anglo-Celtic in ancestry, I see no problem with it.

It was a little troubling, however, that only about 5% of the audience were younger than 40. The average age might well have been as high as 60. So perhaps I am writing about something that may vanish rather soon.

The music was provided by "The Brisbane Festival Male Voice Choir", with an average age similar to the audience but who were nonetheless in very good voice. The only accompaniment was a white Yamaha baby grand piano but there were a couple of microphones under the lid so it was completely adequate to its task. The pianist played in a very confident and emphatic style so that helped to give the occasion an evangelical "revival" feel. And a revival meeting it was. The emphasis was on the choral singing (with 15 songs/hymns in all) but there was preaching at every break in the music from the preacher-man MC --preaching in a very familiar evangelical style, with short sentences, lot of pregnant pauses etc. I was there for the music but I didn't mind the preaching. I was pleased that their old-time religion could still give many of our Volk hope and comfort.

And the music was not disappointing. We started out with a rendition of the national anthem, including the "apocryphal" third verse. I reproduce the whole thing below:

Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We've golden soil and wealth for toil;
Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in nature's gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In history's page, let every stage
Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We'll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands;
For those who've come across the seas
We've boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.

With Christ our head and cornerstone,
We'll build our Nation's might.
Whose way and truth and light alone
Can guide our path aright.
Our lives, a sacrifice of love,
Reflect our Master's care.
With faces turned to heaven above
Advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing
Advance Australia fair.

It's pretty good stuff in my opinion and it was sung with great gusto by both audience and choir.

The next thing I found memorable was a barbershop quartet, who did four songs in all. They were excellent. If you don't know barbershop singing, you are really missing something. They got huge applause of course.

The audience got to sing a few more times too. Our next opportunity was a rendition of "Old Rugged Cross", one of my favourite hymns, so I did my best to belt it out. Later on we had some simple evangelical-style chorus music which I did not know but they were undoubtedly good tunes for their purpose.

Another highlight was a quite remarkable soloist -- a good basso profundo. Very rare to hear a solo in such a low key. I am sure half the females in the audience fell in love with him.

So I greatly enjoyed all the music but one sad reflection I had at the end was that it probably could not have happened in America. After unremitting legal onslaughts from the Left, I gather that Christian preaching in a local government facility would just not be allowed. How sad for Americans!

So that was my Saturday night. On Sunday night we went to a classical music soiree. I guess I am not much of a hermit any more!

(In case anybody has not worked it out yet, Volkskultur literally means "People's culture", but Volk has much greater depth of meaning than "people" -- as I have mentioned previously)

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ELSEWHERE

There is a well-written commentary on the rubbishy "Judas Gospel" at The Volokhs but some Christians seem to be overlooking that the basic message of the fake "Gospel" is in fact quite scriptural. See John 13:27, where Jesus clearly told Judas to go and betray him.

Corruption with a difference: The EU lobbies journalists! "The European Parliament is subsidizing journalists to cover its parliamentary sessions in Strasbourg, a move that legislators say aims to ensure that the EU's only democratically elected body is not ignored. As part of a program dating to the 1980s, journalists from across the EU member states are receiving travel and entertainment subsidies from the Parliament to help defray the cost of covering the legislature when it shuttles once a month to Strasbourg, in eastern France, from Brussels, journalists and legislators say.... Brussels's 1,550 journalists, one of the world's largest press corps outside Washington, benefit from a host of perks and privileges from EU institutions, including free meals and unlimited free phone calls during EU summit meetings and free television studios at the European Commission. At the beginning of every six-month EU presidency, the presiding country invites journalists to a free junket in the capital. In February, Austria, the current holder of the EU's presidency, invited 62 Brussels-based journalists to Vienna, paying for their lodgings in a lavish Hilton hotel and hosting a complimentary dinner in an 18th-century baroque castle where a soprano sang Strauss operettas - all on the tab of the Austrian government".

Nutty German view of bloggers: Spiegel Online, that great German Rosetta Stone of media objectivity, has just located the source media-political corruption in the United States... And who is to blame? Bush and the Bloggers. Who else? In two recent articles, bloggers are characterized as corrupt, partisan, paid-off and out of control. And since no one in Germany currently fits that description, our friends at Spiegel have bravely set out to warn German readers of the grave dangers of the American blogosphere. The first article, entitled "Buyable Bloggers: Sweating Swingers," was authored by none other than Marc Pitzke... His prime example of what he labels "buyable bloggers" is Andrew Sullivan" [Of all people!!!!]

War casualties: An overdue NYT backdown. "An article on Feb. 9 about the military's recruitment of Hispanics referred incompletely to the belief of some critics that Hispanics in the Iraq war and blacks in the Vietnam War accounted for a disproportionate number of casualties. Statistics do not support the belief. Hispanics, who are about 14 percent of the population, accounted for about 11 percent of the military deaths in Iraq through Dec. 3, 2005. About 12.5 percent of the military dead in Vietnam were African-Americans, who made up about 13. 5 percent of the general population during the war years. The error was pointed out in an e-mail in February; the correction was delayed for research after a lapse at The Times."

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). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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THE U.S. IMMIGRATION DEBATE

I have just posted here some feisty comments from the Minutemen and below are some more comments on the same issue

The immigration question : "The recent immigration protests in Los Angeles have brought the issue to the forefront, provoking strong reactions from millions of Americans. The protesters' cause of open borders is not well served when they drape themselves in Mexican flags and chant slogans in Spanish. If anything, their protests underscore the Balkanization of America caused by widespread illegal immigration. How much longer can we maintain huge unassimilated subgroups within America, filled with millions of people who don't speak English or participate fully in American life?"

Immigration reform, risky business for Congress: "As a 26-year veteran of Congress, I am often asked to explain our system of government to members of foreign parliaments, college students and even high ranking members of our own federal civil service. There is one fundamental feature of our legislative process that I always highlight: it is much easier to defeat something in Congress than it is to pass major changes in law. In other words, the status quo prevails most of the time. A classic example is the current immigration law reform effort. I predict that Congress, after much huffing and puffing, will not pass any significant immigration legislation this year.

Borders and liberty: "Borders play a critical role in our lives. Some of the borders that matter to us are ones we establish ourselves: this is my house and property; that is your house and property. By choosing what is mine and using the legal system to mark it off from what is yours, I create a border. While not quite as invulnerable as suggested by the maxim 'A man's home is his castle,' my property gives me a firm border against you. Borders come from property rights and are essential to a free society."

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ELSEWHERE

Perhaps one should not gloat but one of Europe's proudest boasts seems to be on the verge of coming unstuck. The huge A380 airliner seems to have been swatted by smaller but superior Boeing products. It looks like the A380 will end up as the same huge boondoggle that the Concorde was. But the Europeans love paying taxes so blowing a couple of billion more won't bother them any. One can only hope that the A380 will not be as big a disaster as another "innovative" aircraft -- the the Comet airliner. See here and here for the A380 troubles.

Government goons murder puppies!: "In the course of researching paramilitary drug raids, I've found some pretty disturbing stuff. There was a case where a SWAT officer stepped on a baby's head while looking for drugs in a drop ceiling. There was one where an 11-year-old boy was shot at point-blank range. Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It's happened with all five.) Yet among hundreds of botched raids, the ones that get me most worked up are the ones where the SWAT officers shoot and kill the family dog."

Top half of US income earners see tax burdens grow: "As the annual tax filing deadline approaches, many public officials traditionally use the occasion to launch into a debate about the fairness of the nation tax laws. Policymakers who believe the federal income tax rewards the wealthy at the expense of the poor are likely to be shocked by the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF). IRS figures released late last year for Tax Year 2003 (for which returns were filed in 2004) show the richest Americans shoulder a disproportionate burden of the federal income tax, and the burden is getting heavier."

Grand jury to review actions of arrogant black: "A federal grand jury will soon begin hearing evidence about Rep. Cynthia McKinney's run-in with a Capitol Police officer, a lawyer familiar with the case said late Wednesday. The lawyer, who declined to be identified because of grand jury secrecy, confirmed that federal prosecutors had agreed to get involved in the case in which a black lawmaker is accused of striking a white officer after he tried to stop her from entering a House office building without going through a security checkpoint."

Meddling damn government again! "America's 70 million poker players say they aren't bluffing in their resistance to the latest congressional efforts to ban online casino gambling. To dramatize that determination, their leader, San Franciscan Michael Bolcerek -- president of the national Poker Players Alliance -- staged some unusual events on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. He brought three big-name professional poker stars to court the press, lobby members of Congress and attend an evening reception for members and their staffs at which a few hands of Texas Hold 'Em were probably played. Not for money, of course. Congress is considering legislation that seeks either to get banks to block customers' transactions with overseas Internet gambling sites or force Internet service providers to block access to poker Web sites. Poker players say the proposed bans attack nothing less than the American way of life."

Putting the cuckoo in our clocks "Shortly after April Fool's Day turned into today, we foolishly set our clocks forward for the annual launch of Daylight Savings Time (DST). Unless you show up an hour late for church, you probably won't think much about it. Thankfully, Congress is thinking about it for you. Not content to make a mess of just the federal budget, which is on pace to post a record $423 billion deficit this year, Congress has imposed chaos on our clocks. The pork-filled energy bill signed by President Bush last year will extend DST by about a month starting in 2007. Why? Congress thinks this little time trick reduces our 'addiction' to foreign oil and cuts electricity use. But the so-called evidence that DST accomplishes any such thing is as suspect as a clock that strikes 13." [I am pleased to say that the "Luddites" of Queensland where I live had a referendum on Daylight Saving and roundly rejected it. So we don't have it. Queenslanders don't like people messing with their clocks, however good it is in theory]

Laurence Simon has the latest Carnival of the Vanities.

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). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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Brookes News Update

The Wall Street Journal is distorting the truth about immigration: For some weird reason the Wall Street Journal has become obsessed with defending the alleged benefits of increased immigration: even to the point of wilfully ignoring historical and economic evidence to the contrary
The falling dollar: why commentators are getting it wrong: Looking at New Zealand we find that from March 1996 to January 2006 it expanded M1 by 111 per cent. For Australia it was 114 per cent. These are massive increases and should be taken into account when considering the falling exchange rate
Why the Liberal Party is getting it wrong on labour market reform: Australia has a touch of the "French Disease" Thousands have taken to the streets to demonstrate against the Liberal Party's labour market reforms. Meanwhile, the Party finds itself unable to successfully counter anti-reform arguments
Bernanke and the yield curve: Is the US economy heading for a significant slowdown? The yield curve suggests that this might be the case
Liberal Party's labour market reforms attacked by people who destroy jobs: The Liberal Party's labour market reform legislation has brought every lefty journalist wriggling out the political woodwork. What is interesting about these journalists is their utter ignorance of economics and history
How journalists turned a leftwing terrorist into a heroine: A vicious terrorist campaign is being waged in Iraq by reactionary forces, the main targets of which are innocent Iraqis. But to many in our media these sadistic thugs are not terrorists but 'freedom fighters', 'militants' or even the 'resistance'
Iranians give the regime another slap in the face : Millions of Iranians stayed home rather than celebrate the Mullahs' takeover of their country

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ELSEWHERE

A good critique of the confusion in America's "moderate" Left here. Excerpt: "Marxism was not only a catastrophe for all the countries in which Marxists took power, but a disaster for the reformist Left in all the countries in which they did not," according to Rorty. The Nation, by contrast, is wistful for the Soviet Union, whose presence "encouraged thinking and acting toward alternatives that would be neither capitalist nor Communist." The unrequited hope seems to be that if there are enough "annual meetings of an immense variety of groups, organizations and networks" someone will finally figure out how to make two plus two equal five. The case for capitalism doesn't require the belief that it is the best set of arrangements imaginable - just the best available".

It figures: "The secretary general of Italy's largest Muslim organisation, the Union of Islamic communities in Italy (UCOII), has called on Italian Muslims to vote for the Party of Italian Communists at the general election. Hamza Piccardo sent an email late Tuesday to Muslim centres saying that the party's leader Oliviero Diliberto had been sensitive to the needs of Muslim inmates when he was justice minister in the late 1990s"

A good article here about the destructive effects of polygamy. It does help to explain the aggression emanating from Muslim societies -- which have always allowed polygamy. Excerpt: "The social dynamics of zero-sum marriage are ugly. In a polygamous world, boys could no longer grow up taking marriage for granted. Many would instead see marriage as a trophy in a sometimes brutal competition for wives. Losers would understandably burn with resentment, and most young men, even those who eventually won, would fear losing. Although much has been said about polygamy's inegalitarian implications for women who share a husband, the greater victims of inequality would be men who never become husbands."

Immigration realism: "Forget the long-running bipartisan concern about creating an educated, highly skilled workforce. What the U.S. economy desperately needs is more high-school dropouts - so desperately that we should import them hand over fist. Such is the logic of the contention by advocates of lax immigration that the flow of illegal labor from south of the border is a boon to our economy. But it doesn't make intuitive sense that importing the poor of Latin America would benefit us. If low-skill workers were key to economic growth, Mexico would be an economic powerhouse, and impoverished Americans would be slipping south over the Rio Grande. The National Research Council reports that an immigrant to the U.S. without a high-school diploma - whether legal or illegal - consumes $89,000 more in governmental services than he pays in taxes during his lifetime... If we really need more poorly educated workers here, we can always rely, unfortunately, on the public schools to produce them indigenously."

The high cost of free lunches: "People like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, recognized that a constant threat to their regimes came from a strong middle class. And so they either killed them, imprisoned them, or re-educated them by means of whips, clubs and electrodes. American liberals, deprived of such tools, have had to settle for the next-best weapon; namely, the very good friend of just about every tyrant who's ever lived, the tax collector. It is the easiest means by which to destroy America's middle class. The less of their own money that Americans get to keep, the more dependent they become on the federal government to provide health, education and housing."

Telecompetition or binary bureaucracy? "Do we want more government control of technology, or do we want less? That's the million-dollar question as the House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. Joe Barton, Texas Republican, moves to rewrite the 1996 Telecommunications Act. A lot is at stake. The committee can unleash the market's raw potential by getting government out of the way. Or it can give lawyers, politicians and bureaucrats license to dictate the evolution of technology."

I used to be a keen motorbike rider in my youth. My brother still is a keen biker. So I was personally disturbed to hear of the unjustified "raid" on a California motorcycle club by the thuggish BATF just reported on Strange Justice. If memory serves me rightly, the BATF or its predecessors were last heard of in connection with the Ruby Ridge assassination, the Waco holocaust and the Elian Gonzales abduction. I think that dealing with the Mafia would be a more pleasant prospect.

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). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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SOME WORD FUN

Readers may have gathered that language and languages is one of my great interests and entertainments. In a recent email to me, Scottish blogger Neil Craig (who writes lots of letters to Scottish newspapers) said: "A very short letter in the Herald today. I am glad of this since I was somewhat scunnered that they hadn't published anything of mine since Christmas"

I was delighted to see the word "scunnered". I don't know where I remember it from. Maybe my mother used it. Maybe my Scottish wife used it. It is not really translatable but it means something like disgusted, emptied-out or defeated. Neil was in fact being a little reserved in his use of the word. A more common construction would be "fair scunnered". An Australian would probably say "really shat" under the same circumstances.

There are a lot of foreign words that are not really translatable into English -- which is why English has adopted so many foreign words. Two German words that we have lost from English seem particularly useful to me: Reich and Volk. I discuss the meaning of Volk here. I sometimes use both words in my postings on Majority Rights -- where they are fairly likely to be understood. The reason why they are rarely used in English these days is probably that Hitler used both words a lot, and used them prominently. So part of the reason why I use them is to "stir the possum": I have been waiting for some Leftist to pounce on me and accuse me of being a Nazi for using them. But, sadly, nobody has given me that pleasure. So I have given up waiting and will outline here the crushing reply that I had ready:

On all the products exported from the old Communist East Germany, there was a "brand name" -- which was "VEB". And what does "VEB" stand for? It stands for "Volkseigene Betrieb", which translates as "The People's own Enterprise" (though that translation could be argued about too). So if Communist East Germany put the word "Volk" on everything it produced, how come it is a Nazi word? The truth, of course, is that it is an ordinary German word that was in common use for at least 2,000 years before the Nazis came along.

And as for "Reich": For starters, the East German State Railway was known as the "Reichsbahn".

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GOOD POST FROM THE HORNY-HEADED ECONOMIST

Consider the following proposed amendments to the US constitution:

First, disallowance of immigrant participation in US political affairs. This includes a ban on participation in demonstrations and other public expression of political opinion.

Second, an "Americans first" employment policy, native born Americans having priority over foreigners for all positions in which status of citizenship is not deemed "indispensable."

Third, a ban on all immigrant or naturalized citizens' service as (a) federal elected officials, (b) members of the cabinet, or (c) justices of the Supreme Court.

Fourth, a ban on immigrant service in the clergy.

Fifth, a ban on immigrant ownership of land or aquisition of any rights to natural resources.

Sixth, authorization of private individuals to make citizen's arrests of any individuals suspected of being illegal immigrants.

Seventh, unconditional right of federal officials -- whenever they deem such action appropriate -- to deport immediately and without due process any noncitizen

So, what do you think of these? Are you opposed? Upset? Well stop for a second. Actually, nobody's proposing these as ammendments to the U.S. Constitution -- they are, rather, firmly established features of the Mexican Constitution.

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ELSEWHERE

Some linguistics researchers analysed speeches in the 2004 Presidential campaign and found (excerpt): "The vice president sounded the most honest of the four, and Kerry the least. Kerry's language also was most like that of a depressed person, followed by Edwards. Perhaps that's inevitable; after all, challengers must sound gloomy and doomy about their opponents' records, though in doing so they run clear risks. "Voters are most favorable toward those candidates who are the most optimistic," Slatcher said. "The depressive language that Kerry and Edwards used during the campaign may have contributed negatively to the way in which they were perceived by the public."

Flourishing Australian economy: Australia's unemployment rate was a seasonally adjusted 5.0 per cent in March, compared with a unrevised 5.2 per cent in February, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said. Total employment rose 27,000 to 10.085 million, adjusted. Of this, full time employment decreased by 12,400 to 7.173 million and part-time employment rose 39,500 to 2.913 million. The participation rate in March was 64.4 per cent, compared with an unchanged 64.4 per cent in February.... The male unemployment rate decreased by two percentage points to 5.0 per cent, while the female jobless rate was also down two points to 5.1 per cent."

The pagan Anglican Left: "Then there was the much-publicized dust-up over William Melnyk, the Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, who was asked to resign his post as rector after it became clear he was moonlighting as a Druid priest... Now, thanks to some research by commenter Liz at TitusOneNine, it turns out that Maury Johnston, author of Gays Under Grace: A Gay Christian's Response to Homosexuality and the recent widely-publicized essay "Facing the Spectre of Schism" is also known as "Shadwynn" and belongs to a Wiccan order called "Keepers of the Cauldron." The coven is described as being in the "grail quest tradition," based on the Arthurian legends..."

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). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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BRAINLESS LEFTISTS



Leftists are great projectors (tending to see their own faults in others) so to know what is true of them, you just have to look at what they say about conservatives. They even accuse conservatives of projection! So they are always trawling for utterances by conservatives that they can characterize as "hate speech", even though they themselves can hardly open their mouths without pouring out hatred of all those who oppose them.

One of their most constant ploys is to accuse conservatives of being stupid and they have done it so often that conservatives seem to be somewhat abashed by it and rarely treat it as the projection it is. For the record, the ONLY adult general population survey I know of that obtained both IQ scores and a record of political attitudes was Martin's study (which I helped write up for the academic journals). And that study showed that it was LEFTISTS who were most likely to be dumb.

One reason why the accusation that conservatives are dumb gains some weight is the great preponderance of Leftists among professors. That overlooks, however, that the situation was not always thus. Up until the 1960s, the professoriate was in general politically moderate. There were of course exceptions. The elite universities have always tended Left. The best known examples of that are England's two great universities, Oxford and Cambridge. We have all I think heard of the Cambridge spies (Philby et al.), and the Bloomsberries were far Left too. Such leftism can perhaps most economically be described as a "spoilt brat" syndrome. Less well known is the prewar fascination of Harvard with Nazism -- which was a popular form of socialism in its day.

The general moderation of the pre-1960s professoriate was however its undoing. Precisely because of its moderation, it came under ferocious attack from the 1960s student radicals and it responded in a typically moderate way -- apologetically. Curricula were revised in response to the radical demands and more and more Leftists were hired and promoted. And when in the course of time the radical academics so appointed rose in seniority and power, they behaved in a typically unscrupulous way and used their power to squeeze out as many conservatives from academe as they could. So smart conservatives these days go on to get rich in business while the Leftist academics fume away in their ivory towers!

Perhaps most amusingly, however, it should be noted that the Dems and the GOP split the college-educated vote about equally in the last Presidential election. In other words, about half of the people whom the Leftist professors themselves have certified as academically able in fact vote GOP!

The intellectual poverty of the Left shows itself very clearly in their lack of ideas. The only way that they can ever think of for bringing about their desired utopias is the brutishly simply one of FORCING people to behave in the "right" way, by way of legislation in democatic societies or on pain of death in Communist societies.

We have an excellent example of such brainlessness in a recent article which argues that the U.S. Left needs to become more socialist. The article consists of nothing but one long wail about the injustices of the world and simply ASSERTS that socialism is the answer -- with no supportive reasoning at all about HOW socialism might fix things -- which is all the more remarkable given the known FAILURES of socialism to fix anything. A few illustrative quotes:

"With corporate capitalism everywhere in command, the outlook is for increased poverty, more environmental degradation, ever more uneven distribution of resources and the undermining of traditional societies and ways of life... Doing battle against the prevailing inequality means invoking the idea that we all belong to a community, as opposed to the illusion, voiced famously by Thatcher, that "there is no society, only individuals." ... On the road to shaping an alternative, the left might respond with a time-honored socialist insight, namely that "I" only exists within a "we," and that unless we look out for everyone, no one is secure.

Note the non sequitur in the last sentence. It is reasonable enough to say that "I" only exists within a "we" but such a statement is only trivially true. Our socialist friend, however seems to think that the truth concerned also implies that "unless we look out for everyone, no one is secure". But England and early America existed in excellent security long before there was any welfare legislation! It is true that private charity at that time looked after the less fortunate but I don't think that private charity is what our socialist friend is advocating!

And another counterfactual assertion above is that capitalism will increase poverty. Since capitalism is provably the the best and surest way of increasing wealth, the statement is deliberately wrongheaded. And it is of course the advanced capitalist societies that have done most to clean up their environment and prevent further degradation of it. You have to be devoid of all knowledge and understanding of how the world actually works (and has worked) to spout the nonsense that our brainless socialist does.

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ELSEWHERE

Feisty Italian PM: "He has vowed to give up sex for the election, compared himself to Jesus and Napoleon, and admitted phoning late-night erotic chat lines. Nothing, it seems, is out of bounds for Silvio Berlusconi. But yesterday the Italian Prime Minister, trailing in opinion polls before Sunday's vote, perhaps went a step too far when he suggested that left-wing voters were "dickheads". Addressing the honourable Federation of Merchants and Shopkeepers, Signor Berlusconi said that only coglioni would consider voting for the centre-left opposition. "I have too much esteem for the intelligence of Italians to think that they could be such coglioni as to vote against their own interests.... For the record, Signor Berlusconi claimed that seven out of nine chatline girls said that they would vote for him".

Cutting regulations and taxes would work better: "The state has launched a new Web site aimed at attracting worldwide entrepreneurs to do business in California. The California Business Portal - www.calbusiness.ca.gov - provides information on starting, growing, financing and relocating a business to California. The site includes many links aimed at foreign businesses that want to work in California, and visitors can also find information on obtaining business permits, California business laws and regulations, and doing business with the state"

The plan to replace the welfare state: "Interview with Charles Murray on his new book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State: "We start with a country that is the richest country in the world, with most of its people having lots of money (compared to any historical standard), ample money to provide for their own retirements, medical care, and the rest of it. On top of this national wealth, we then add more than $1 trillion to help people provide for comfortable retirement and medical care, and so forth. And guess what? We still have millions of people without comfortable retirements, without adequate medical care. And only a government can spend that much money that ineffectually. The alternative I suggest is give every adult American, age 21 and older, $10,000 a year. And let them run with it."

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). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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AUSTRALIA'S UNREPENTANT TRUTH-TELLER

Academic Andrew Fraser will defy the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission by not apologising to the Sudanese community for his study linking African refugees to high crime rates.

In a landmark ruling that raises fresh questions about the limits to which academics can engage in public debate, HREOC chairman John von Doussa has found Professor Fraser's comments were unlawful because they amounted to a "sweeping generalisation" that was not backed by research. [High black crime rates are shown by ALL research!] Professor Fraser was suspended last year from teaching at Sydney's Macquarie University over his comments about Sudanese refugees in Australia. Sudanese Darfurian Union secretary Safi Hareer complained to the human rights commission that Professor Fraser breached the Racial Discrimination Act in a letter published in the Parramatta Sun newspaper. The letter said experience showed an expanding black population was a "sure-fire recipe" for increased crime and violence.

In a letter received by Professor Fraser yesterday, Mr von Doussa rejected his submission that his comments were made for "genuine academic purposes in the public interest". Mr von Doussa said while the legislation allowed for fair comment on matters of public interest and for genuine academic discussion, the comments were not made with "sufficient constraints and proportionality". Comments for academic purposes were expected to reflect standards such as balanced arguments and be well-researched, but Professor Fraser had made "sweeping generalisations" not supported by research. Mr von Doussa asked Professor Fraser to respond to Mr Hareer's demand that he publish a public apology to members of the Sudanese community acknowledging that he had engaged in unlawful conduct.

But Professor Fraser said he would not apologise to anyone. "Even those who disagree with me should be appalled at this attack on the freedom of academic debate," he said. "This gives the lie to all those politicians who've claimed that racial hatred legislation would not curb freedom of expression in Australia."....

More here. Chris Brand has an update on the similar denial of free speech to British academic Frank Ellis.

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FROM THE HEXAGON (Look at a map of France)

French government surrenders to the mob: "Students and public sector workers stage mass protests against French labour reform today, aiming to seize on a retreat by President Chirac who has been forced to relegate to the sidelines Dominique de Villepin, his Prime Minister.... M Chirac ordered the reduction of the trial period for workers younger than 26 to one year instead of two and the insertion of an obligation on employers to give an explanation if they dismissed a young employee. M de Villepin's law had sought to free employers from the constraints that are widely blamed for keeping France's youth unemployment rate at a crushing 23 per cent."

The French want to be babied: "whereas 71% of Americans, 66% of the British and 65% of Germans agreed that the free market was the best system available, the number in France was just 36%. The French seem to be uniquely hostile to the capitalist system that has made them the world's fifth richest country and generated so many first-rate French companies. This hostility appears to go deeper than resistance to painful reform, which is common to Italy and Germany too; or than a desire for a strong welfare state, which Scandinavian countries share; or even than a fondness for protectionism, which America periodically betrays."

A Frog who gets it: "The president of the world-renowned Sorbonne University has branded French students protesting about the country's new employment law "ignorant and stupid". Reacting to protests over the law, which makes it easier for employers to fire, and therefore presumably more willing to hire, young workers, Jean-Robert Pitte said the youngsters had no dreams but believed everything was due to them as a right without having to work for it. "I'm very angry about the demagogy, the ignorance and the stupidity of the young and of the French," said Dr Pitte, 56, a geography professor who has taught at Oxford and Cambridge and holds the Legion d'honneur.

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ELSEWHERE




No-taste Hillary: "Laura Bush has shaken the decorous world of America's unofficial First Ladies' club by taunting Hillary Clinton about poor housekeeping and bad taste while in the White House. Presidential wives traditionally refrain from the political pugilism of their White House partners. But with most of Washington convinced that Sen Clinton will try to emulate her husband Bill by running for the presidency in 2008, the mood has changed. These days even home furnishings are fair game. According to Laura Bush, an Intimate Portrait of the First Lady, published today, the trouble began when Mrs Clinton took the new First Lady on a tour of the White House after the 2000 election. Mrs Bush, famed for her impeccable presentation, disclosed that she was appalled by the state of the carpets and furniture in the West Wing. Many were described as frayed. Furnishings in the East Wing, the official quarters of the First Lady, looked dated, the book says. Mrs Bush was also taken aback by the garish, clashing colours of much of the decor, which included red, blue and gold".

Stuff happens, but why? : "Concentrated power is not only dangerous, it's difficult to manage. Powerful top-down organizations are at best clumsy and wasteful, at worst they are simply disastrous. Our government proves that on a daily basis. The individual players make little difference; the size and power of the system is the Achilles heel that will, sooner or later, fail. The bigger government gets, the more power it wields, the worse the results will be."

Shhh ... Don't mention the gulag: "Lost in last weekend's hubbub over the three year anniversary of the Iraq war was an anniversary from the Western hemisphere. March 18 marked the third year since the Cuban Black Spring of 2003. Tired of internal dissent, Fidel Castro dispatched his secret police that spring day to arrest 75 journalists, librarians, labor unionists and human rights activists on charges of 'anti-state' activities. According to journalist Marc Masferrer of Uncommon Sense, fifteen of the 75 have been released for health reasons. The rest remain in Castro's gulag."

EU bribes Greenlanders: "Greenland, the only place to have left the EU, will be brought back under the influence of Brussels as part of a global scramble for the mineral riches of the Arctic. Brussels will give the semiautonomous part of Denmark, which is home to 57,000 people, 43 million euro a year in return for control over policies including scientific research. Greenland has been of little geopolitical interest, 90 per cent of it being covered in ice. However, geologists believe that it has as much oil as the North Sea basin. Prospecting licences have tripled in the past three years".

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). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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