THE DEEP IRRATIONALITY OF THE LEFT

The lack of interest in rational argument that pervades the Left is one of the most striking things about them. As Jeff Jacoby points out, even such senior Leftist figures as Ted Kennedy seem to think that a constant spew of hate-speech suffices as an argument. And, as Jeff Jacoby also points out, the hate speech usually has no rational basis either. If I were to refer to Ted Kennedy as "The fat man from Chappaquiddick", that would be similar abuse to what the Left dish out but everything in such a description would have a factual basis. He IS fat and his conduct at Chappaquiddick IS notorious. But factual underpinning is usually too much to ask of Leftist abuse. Let me illustrate by giving a recent example of Leftist abuse and by then pointing out a few things about it. The following comment is from a review of an "antiwar" film of the Michael Moore genre:

"This film illustrates in crystal clear detail why the U.S. military needs to recruit very dumb, totally uneducated, and mostly southern cracker soldiers who are already racist bastards who have never left their hometowns and believe all the garbage they are taught in school about how we are the good guys, and everything we do is just and right. The Army can then brainwash them to treat other human beings in such a grotesque and inhuman manner. Anyone who had any previous education, intelligence or just plain decency, would never consent to treat people in the unbelievably harsh manner in which these prisoners, most of which were just swept up in raids and had nothing to do with the Taliban, were treated.

I would normally not waste any time on such a spew of hate but for once I will make a few notes. Note for a start that the derogatory term "cracker" implies that the soldiers are white. He skates over the fact that a large part of the U.S. army is comprised of minorities. And would he refer contemptuously to black soldiers as "niggers". Hopefully not. But why is it OK to use a term of contempt for white soldiers? And Southerners are "racist bastards"? I guess they may have been in North/South war days but even Abraham Lincoln wanted to send the blacks back to Africa so was he a racist too? Or were racial views simply universal at that time? And what of today? I constantly hear that black/white relations are in fact more cordial in the South than they are in the North. Has our Leftist ever looked into that possibility? He offers no basis for his assertion at all.

And the idea that the army recruits dumb and totally uneducated soldiers is simply and demonstrably false. Our Leftist author can have no basis for that careless assertion. As a former army psychologist, I can vouch for the fact that no modern Western army does that. Dumb and totally uneducated would-be soldiers are simply knocked back. No modern Western army wants them. The army does careful psychological assessment of each volunteer, using psychological tests, biography etc., to ensure that all recruits measure up in terms of education, intelligence and emotional stability. Putting deadly weapons into the hands of anyone other than that would make him more of a danger to his buddies than to the enemy.

And as for the idea that the army wants its men to treat anybody in a "grotesque and inhuman manner", has our Leftist ever heard of publicity? The army comes under sustained attack on the home front if ever its men lapse from the most ideal behaviour so to say that the army wants brutal behaviour of its men is not to credit them even with pursuit of their own self-interest.

And the idea that preventive detention of terrorists captured in the field would not be consented to by anyone with education or intelligence is again counterfactual. The officer corps is even more highly educated and intelligent than the foot soldier. To get into officer school, you have to be a very high quality person on almost any criterion and officers graduate with at least the equivalent of a university degree. And it is the officer corps that runs the prisons.

So even disregarding the hatred and abuse in the extract above, there is nothing in it that even resembles the truth. That the author is contorted by hate is all that one can reliably conclude from it.

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ELSEWHERE

Sowell on Leftist indifference to the facts: "Despite the warm glow of self-satisfaction that the liberal vision confers on liberals, ugly facts keep intruding to undermine that vision.... Research dealing with innate biological differences are of course anathema to those with the liberal-left vision. Even research that turns up cultural or other behavioral differences between groups is almost as great a danger. Both kinds of research undermine the notion that there are "solutions" that government can impose to eliminate differences, gaps, disparities or "inequities" that liberalism claims to be able to eliminate. Scientific research into differences in the way male and female brains function is denounced by radical feminists, who are calling for a ban on such research. No matter what the MRIs say, the radical feminists say all differences are due to "society." ... That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare state is only one example. Liberals have been driven to the desperate expedient of attributing this and other social pathology in today's ghettos to "a legacy of slavery" -- even though black children grew up with two parents more often under slavery than today. Blacks only a generation or two out of slavery also had higher rates of employment and lower rates of crime than today."

The British are whitewashing Che Guevara. London's famous Victoria and Albert museum is having an exhibition about him which describes him as "young, handsome, charismatic". No mention that he was a murderous totalitarian thug. (HT Astute Blogger).



French wine junked: "The unquenchable desire of Britons for New World wines has forced Brussels to order nearly a billion bottles of French and Italian wine to be turned into fuel and disinfectant. The European Commission will then spend 2.4 billion euros digging up vineyards across the continent. The drastic measures to drain Europe's swelling wine lake come as winemakers across the Continent face a seemingly unstoppable invasion of cheaper and more consistent wines from Australia, Chile, the US and South Africa. Wine critics say it is an inevitable result of French wine producers not adapting to demand".

NYC Squandered Billions in 9/11 Aid: "New York politicians allowed up to one-third of the $20 billion in federal aid awarded to the city in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to be squandered right under their noses, an analysis by the New York Daily News found last December. But that hasn't stopped some of the same politicians from complaining all weekend about a mere $80 million cut in New York City's federal anti-terrorism budget. Senators Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer and Rep. Peter King say they're outraged over the new cuts, with Clinton and King teaming up to launch a post-card writing campaign against the Department of Homeland Security. The bipartisan duo sounded a lot less angry six months ago, when the News uncovered evidence that billions in 9/11 cash had been misspent, gone unaccounted for and, in at least one case, was awarded to the Mafia."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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LEFTIST NARCISSISM

Excerpts from Dennis Prager

Virtually every news report about President George W. Bush's support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman describes it as "pandering" to the "far Right," the "radical Right" or, less pejoratively, "social conservatives" of the Republican Party. Democrats regularly describe the amendment as enshrining "discrimination in the Constitution." In the words of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., "A vote for the amendment is a vote for bigotry -- pure and simple."

This is another example of how the news media present news. First, Democrats are rarely, if ever, described as "pandering" to the Left, let alone "radical Left." Why not? For one thing, the news media do not believe there is a "radical Left," only a "radical Right." Second, liberalism regards positions held by Democrats to be sincere and noble, therefore, Democratic positions can never pander to anyone.

This is part of the larger liberal view of Republicans and conservatives: They are not merely wrong; they are either phonies or bad. It is inconceivable to most liberals that a Republican politician can sincerely oppose redefining the most important social structure of society. And if that Republican's opposition to redefining marriage is deemed sincere, it is inconceivable to most liberals that the person is anything but a bigot.

That most liberals cannot understand conservatives' views about marriage as anything but bigotry and/or pandering is part of a narcissism that characterizes much of the Left. The very definition of narcissism is an inability to see the world through the eyes of another. Whatever conservatives' flaws, far more conservatives understand liberals' views on same-sex marriage. Most opponents of same-sex marriage appreciate that liberals feel bad about gays' inability to marry a person of the same sex. In fact, as a proponent of a marriage amendment, I not only understand the liberal desire to enable people to marry someone of the same sex, I feel genuine compassion for gays on this matter. But such empathy for ideological foes is all but absent from the narcissistic world of the Left. To virtually every liberal writer and spokesman, only liberals mean well, only they are sincere, only they are compassionate, and only they are intellectual, rational and tolerant.

Liberals' use of the word "radical" to describe opponents of same-sex marriage illustrates this self-aggrandizing mindset. To describe as "radical" those who wish to preserve the man-woman-based definition of marriage known to every civilization is to stand the word on its head. It is beyond intellectually dishonest -- it is mendacity -- to describe those who favor preserving the definition of marriage as "radical" rather than to so describe those who wish to change the gender-based definition of marriage for the first time in history. Even if you support same-sex marriage, you should at least have the honesty to admit that it is you who favors something radical.

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ELSEWHERE

Good to see that Taranto reproduced a point I made on Majority Rights about political correctness. It gives my thinking a much wider readership than usual.

Serious lawbreakers escape U.S. law: "You may have heard about the shooting in Milwaukee over the Memorial Day weekend. Even in America's volatile, crime-infested urban areas, it's not every day that a guy goes on a firearms rampage, killing two and injuring three others. The suspect's name is Octaviano Juarez-Corro. Yes, he was in the U.S. illegally when he spilled all this blood and created all this mayhem. Yes, he is one of those Mexican illegal immigrants we're told will do the work Americans wouldn't do. And, yes, like so many other violent and wanted fugitives in the U.S., he is believed to be back in Mexico - safe from extradition to barbaric America where he could, of course, face the death penalty... Because of a 1978 treaty and a 2001 court ruling, Mexico generally has refused to return suspects to the United States if they face the death penalty or a life-without-parole sentence, paving the way for thousands of suspected drug kingpins and killers to flee to Mexico to avoid U.S. prosecution"

French Jews facing Nazis again: "On the last Sunday of May, 30 angry black men stormed into the heart of the old Jewish quarter, terrorizing residents, shopkeepers, and Sunday strollers. The self-styled militia of the Ka Tribe, a black separatist group originally connected to the no-longer funny black comic Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, embodied the worst fears of a Jewish community exposed, since January 2006, to a new rise in anti-Semitic attacks. Three months after the torture-murder of Ilan Halimi, the intimidating incursion of the Ka militia into the narrow "Jewish" street of the Marais looks like an ominous sign of worse to come... Eyewitnesses concur about the incursion: 30 men in paramilitary formation stormed into rue des Rosiers, shouting threats and insults against Jews. Some wore boxer's mouthpieces and leather gloves with brass knuckles. They burned with anger and itched for a fight. Frantic calls to the police met with laconic replies: "Yes, we have been informed." ... Outside the ORT school, where the minister met with residents, a dapper gray-haired shop owner said, with dignified regret, "It's over for Jews in France." And added, "The police told me . . . they said it's over for us . . . they can't handle this problem. . . . It's too late."

Boycotts of Israel: "Anti-Semitic or not, the movement to boycott Israel is hypocritical, sanctimonious, and quite simply wrong. It is a shocking example of selective outrage. Yes, Israeli policies are a legitimate target for criticism, and even most of Israel's supporters will admit there has been ill-treatment of Palestinians. Yet no one is demanding a boycott of Russian academics over Russia's occupation of Chechnya, and the accompanying atrocities (which dwarf Israel's human rights abuses in the occupied territories). No one wants to boycott China because of the occupation of Tibet, the persecution of religious minorities, and other abuses by the Chinese regime. No one wants to boycott Saudi Arabia because of its misogyny and religious intolerance."

Genetics for entrepreneurship: "Scientists believe entrepreneurship could largely be a genetic trait after a study found that almost half an individual's propensity to become self-employed was due to genetic factors. Contrary to popular belief, family environment and upbringing had little bearing on a person's desire to go it alone. Researchers from Britain and the USA studied 609 pairs of identical twins and 657 pairs of same-sex non-identical twins in the UK. Identical twins have the same genes whereas non-identical twins share only half. Comparing the two can therefore highlight genetic traits. The scientists looked at whether entrepreneurship was more common among identical twins, suggesting a genetic influence. They found that if a pair of twins were identical, they were significantly more likely to both be self-employed than if they were non-identical. Professor Tim Spector, director of the Twin Research Unit at St Thomas's Hospital, London, who took part in the study, said: "This relatively high heritability suggests the importance of considering genetic factors to explain why some people are entrepreneurial, while others are not..." (HT Chris Brand)

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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ANOTHER SHONKY "STUDY"

"Shonky" is a very useful word much used in Australia which is ROUGHLY translatable as "fraudulent", "misleading" or "a confidence trick". In academe, political correctness is a great source of shonky research reports. An article in "The Times" of London drew my attention to this study. The basic claim of the article is that student motivation is the main determinant of success at school. Ability is given short shrift. As soon as I read the report in "The Times", I thought it looked like the authors were spinning like a top. And so I found it to be when I looked at the research report itself.

The authors start out under their heading Explanations with: "there is no evidence that genetic factors such as systematic differences in innate ability play a significant role in ethnic test score gaps". NO evidence? A very bold claim -- particularly in the light of around 100 years of psychometric research showing LARGE interracial differences in IQ and in view of the undoubted correlation between IQ scores and educational attainment. If the authors had said that there was "some controvesy" about the importance of innate differences in ability, they would have made a properly cautious academic statement. What they DID say is a straight-out lie.

And in their own data analysis they make sure that ability will not be shown to have any effect. They "match" (control) for the neighbourhoods from which the students are drawn by using the official "Index of Multiple Deprivation" (IMD) for the neighbourhoods concerned. No prizes for guessing that deprived neighbourhoods tend to be inhabited by lower IQ people. Smart people are not often "deprived".

Not satisfied with that, they also matched students on their "Mosaic" postcode classification -- a classification which again picks out poor versus affluent neighbourhoods. They were determined that nothing in their study would reveal anything about ability. They used proxies of ability to remove its influence on their results.

So in the end they conclude that some ethnic groups outperform whites in educational attainment. That may well be true. As far as Indians are concerned, I have little doubt of it. But that is not what their research showed. What it showed is that blacks outperformed POOR whites only, not whites as a whole.

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A MOST UNUSUAL FRENCH LEFTIST

Segolene Royal, the leftwing favourite for the next French presidency, outraged fellow Socialists for the second time in a week yesterday by attacking the 35-hour working week, the main legacy of the party's last term in office. The 35-hour week had the "unintended consequence of worsening the situation for the most vulnerable workers, notably for women with few qualifications" who now had less time to spend with their families, she said. Mme Royal's criticism of the sacrosanct 1999 working time law followed her call last week for military training for delinquent teenagers from the housing estates and boot camps for their parents.

The unorthodox positions are part of a campaign by Mme Royal, 52, who is far ahead of other contenders, to cast herself as a tough-minded reformist who is in touch with the people rather than just the Socialist party. Among the rivals whom Mme Royal is unsettling is Francois Hollande, who is party leader as well as her partner and father of her four children. So far the self-described "gazelle" of French politics, is succeeding in her strategy of winning so much public support that the party will have to nominate her for the spring 2007 elections, despite what traditionalists see as her heresy over cherished doctrines....

Laurent Fabius, one of the other would-be nominees for next April's election, demanded that Mme Royal, an admirer of Tony Blair in a party which abhors the British Prime Minister, be reprimanded for promoting ideas contrary to Socialist tradition. Yesterday, however, an Ipsos poll by Le Monde showed that Mme Royal had struck a nerve. Some 69 per cent of the public said that they agreed with her ideas for imposing discipline.

More here

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ELSEWHERE



We were evil, Google founder admits: "Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged the dominant internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course. Meeting with reporters near Capitol Hill in Washington, Brin said Google had agreed to the censorship demands only after Chinese authorities blocked its service in that country."



Australian PM firmly against homosexual marriage: "Prime Minister John Howard said today he had scuttled the ACT's homosexual unions law because it challenged a major characteristic of Australian society. "The Bill is plainly an attempt to mimic marriage under the misleading title of civil unions," Mr Howard told ABC radio. "We are not anti-homosexual people or gay and lesbian people, it is not a question of discriminating against them, it is a question of preserving as an institution in our society marriage as having a special character."

The egregiously destructive war on drugs: "I personally find all currently illegal drugs loathsome; they stunt the mind, inhibit the body, and curtail productivity. I would never consume such substances myself, and I would advise others against doing so. Yet, compared to the adverse effects of their illegalization, the harm of drugs themselves is small indeed. Drug-taking is extremely unhealthy for the persons engaging in it, but not for anybody who abstains from it. The 'War on Drugs,' by contrast, harms everybody subject to a government that undertakes it. I have no sympathy for drug addicts; I wish to argue the case of the innocent, moral, productive people who have never used such substances in their lives but are nonetheless harmed by the coercive illegalization of drugs."

The pitfalls of government "wars": "We have heard that "war is hell," "all's fair in love and war," and "war is politics by other means" (any combination of which illustrates the risks of compounding imperfect analogies). We heard that the 1970s oil crisis was the moral equivalent of war (although government price controls did far more damage than OPEC, making one wonder who declared war on Americans). Government has declared war on every conceivable problem, from drugs and crime to poverty and illiteracy. But the imagery of urgency, resolve, and "giving it all we've got" for the good of the country doesn't match the policies or their effects on the taxpayers' pockets and liberties. Rather, declarations of such "wars" are often just dramatic rhetoric used to promote politicians' pet programs, which frequently do more harm than good, such as the vast invasions of property and privacy, and the increases in violence and corruption, triggered by the War on Drugs.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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Dubious link between strict parenting and overweight kids

Those who did the study excerpted below admit that they left out a couple of important factors but they fail to mention the factor that REALLY explains their results

"Clean your plate or else!" and other authoritarian approaches to parenting can lead to overweight children, a new study finds. Strict mothers were nearly five times more likely to raise tubby first-graders than mothers who treated their children with flexibility and respect while also setting clear rules. But while the children of flexible rule-setting moms avoided obesity, the children of neglectful mothers and permissive mothers were twice as likely to get fat.

"The difference between the different parenting groups is pretty striking," said the study co-author, Dr. Kay Rhee of Boston University School of Medicine. The study of 872 families appears in the June issue of Pediatrics, released Monday. Rhee speculated that parents who show respect and warmth within a framework of rules may help their children learn to make good decisions about food and exercise. Or it could be that strict parents create a stressful household where overeating becomes a comfort and escape, she said...

Not enough fathers participated in the study to measure their effects on children's weight, Rhee said. And since more than 80 percent of the study participants were white, the findings may not be applicable to other racial groups, she said. The study also did not take into account the weight status of the mothers, so the researchers couldn't rule out that a mother's weight might influence both her parenting and her children's weight. However, a previous study showed that parenting style is not linked to weight status, Rhee said.

To determine parenting style for the new study, researchers surveyed the mothers and observed them interacting with their children when the kids were 4 years old. The children's body mass indexes were measured later when the children were in first grade..."

Sorry to mention it, but dumb people are more likely to get fat and dumb people tend to be more rigid and have more simplistic approaches to things. It's that nasty old IQ that we see at work again in the above study. You need to look at WHY some parents treat their children less flexibly. Too much to ask of many academics, sadly

Update:

I did not think it necessary to state the obvious above but perhaps I should: Fat parents tend to have fat children -- mainly for genetic reasons, though not entirely so. So dumb, fat, rigid parents will tend to have fat children -- which can arise solely from the genetics for fatness that are passed on, not anything at all that the parents do.

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ELSEWHERE

Taranto has another excellent takedown of the contemptible Andrew Sullivan. I like Taranto's sarcasm about the would-be bombers recently arrested in Canada too.

Wicked Thoughts has a good coverage -- or should I say uncoverage? -- of the naughty Mrs McCartney affair. Australian Politics is a bit colourful today too.

German bias again: "Members of the German media have tried and convicted American soldiers of alleged war crimes before they ever go to trial. The latest case involves an article featured on the homepage of ARD tagesschau, a large, state-sponsored news program... Ironically, the same ARD journalists who can't seem to stop screaming about the denial of judicial due process to Guantanamo inmates are not even willing to afford the same privilege to American soldiers, despite the fact that American soldiers stood guard for decades and guaranteed their freedom of speech during the Cold War. In the ARD world, Guantanamo terrorists are innocent until proven guilty, American soldiers guilty until proven innocent."

Good if it happens: "Immigrants to Britain who have refused to learn the English language should be required to do so, Gordon Brown said yesterday. The Chancellor said that immigrants should also gain an understanding of British history to learn the values of freedom, liberty and tolerance. "People who come into this country, who are part of our community, should play by the rules," he told the Today programme on Radio 4. "I think learning English is part of that. I think that understanding British history is part of that. That is why I want to see changes in the curriculum. "I would insist on large numbers of people who have refused to learn our language that they must do so. If someone is unemployed, who does not speak English, they should have to learn English to make themselves employable. "If you take preachers coming into this country, they should be speaking the English language and not refusing to speak the English language." Mr Brown was expressing an opinion that goes farther than present Home Office legislation. Since last year immigrants have had to show a Standard 3 level of competence in English to acquire citizenship and, if they do not, they must take a course to reach the requisite level."

How the welfare state corrupted Sweden: "Old people in Sweden say that to be Swedish means to supply for your own, to take care of your self, and never be a burden on anyone else's shoulders. Independence and hard work was the common perception of a decent life, and the common perception of morality. That was less than one hundred years ago. My late grandmother used to say something had gone wrong with the world. She was proud to never have asked for help, to have always been able to rely on herself and her husband, proud that they could throughout their lives care for their family. I'm happy that when she passed away at the respectable age of 85, she did so with that dignity still intact. She was never a burden."

Lying is Acceptable for Some: "Wednesday's Washington Times ran a column on global warming by Cato's Patrick Michaels in which he quoted Al Gore as saying, "I believe it is appropriate to have an overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience." As a public service I will now translate this politically obtuse statement into English; It is alright to lie to people in order to scare them into doing something that is against their own interest. I feel qualified to present this rendition, as I am very familiar with the concept expressed by Gore, because the main focus of my studies has been the war on people who use certain kinds of drugs".

NYC: Tammany Hall lives on: "Clients big and small spent a whopping $36.1 million last year to hire an army of lobbyists to push their varied causes and financial interests with city officials. The ever-rising lobbying tab jumped by more than 7% over the $33.6 million spent in 2004. And it's 21/2 times the $14.5 million spent only five years ago in 2000. The top 10 earning lobbying firms alone were paid more than $16 million, according to the annual report issued yesterday by the City Clerk's office. The No. 1 slot went to Kasirer Consulting, with $2.4 million in fees. It's headed by Suri Kasirer, a fund-raiser for city Controller Bill Thompson and the wife of former Rudy Giuliani political lieutenant Bruce Teitelbaum. Her clients include Cemusa Inc., the Spain-based firm that recently won the city's huge franchise for bus shelters, newsstands and pay toilets. Cemusa paid Kasirer $96,000. Gene Russianoff, a lawyer with the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit watchdog organization, called the rising lobby tab "disturbing" because "more and more people seem to think government is so complicated they have to grease the skids to get anywhere."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 DILEMMA OF THE POST-SOVIET LEFT

After the collapse of the Soviets, the Left have no alternative to capitalism so they deny reality instead. Some excerpts below from an article by George Watson on their sad state:

The commonest form of subjectivism in our times, moral or cultural, is to deny that any value judgment counts as knowledge. Moral scepticism in that familiar style is most commonly multiculturalist, and holds that all judgments are born of circumstance and conditioning. In departments of literature, by now, it is difficult to hear any other view. Gender studies and black studies are its children, not to mention gay studies, and by now the children have grown middle-aged. Such are the views of many who once assured the world, and with enormous certainty, that capitalism was wicked-which certainly sounds like a value judgment-or that America was wrong to be in Vietnam or Iraq, which sounds like another. It is a cosy place the Left has retreated to, as to a Masada, in the hope of finding it impregnable. Subjectivism is the last bunker of the intellectual Left.

Consider this counter-instance to subjectivism. A mindless murder occurred a few years ago in Dunblane, in Scotland, when sixteen schoolchildren were shot dead by a maniac who then committed suicide. Worldwide condemnation was instant and universal. Did anyone, at that moment of anguish, stop to consider what the theoretical basis for that judgment might be? Did those who insist that there is no moral agreement in the world ever admit that they might have been mistaken? To be a subjectivist, at least for long, you have to shut your mind, and keep it shut. It is like being a solipsist, or believing that nothing exists but yourself.

Years ago, in Human Knowledge, Bertrand Russell told how he once had a letter from an eminent American logician, Mrs Christina Dadd Franklin, explaining that she was a solipsist: why were there so few of them? But if she had noticed there were so few, she must have noticed, or thought she had noticed, something that was not herself. Russell was content to tell his little story ungarnished, leaving the point to sink in, and you could do the same with moral and cultural subjectivism. Just think about it. If you cannot judge anything, then you cannot judge that you cannot judge. As a great philosopher once said centuries ago-he was called Pascal-it is not certain that nothing is certain.

Subjectivism, it is widely believed, means tolerance and openness. Nobody can say you are wrong: it all depends on where you are coming from. It is a cosy place to be-until, that is, somebody points out that belief in social justice is a judgment; so if all judgments are merely personal, so is that.

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up here a small correspondence for and against Rush Limbaugh.

Official chemophobia: "The first startling thing Joy White saw out of her bedroom window was a man running toward her door with an M16. White's husband, a physicist named Bob Lazar, was already outside, awakened by their barking dogs. Suddenly police officers and men in camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. 'Come out with your hands up immediately, Miss White!' one of them yelled through a megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear ... The target of this operation, which involved more than two dozen police officers and federal agents, was not an international terrorist ring but the couple's home business, United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, a mail-order outfit that serves amateur scientists, students, teachers and law enforcement professionals."

Book Review: "Sociologists, anthropologists, and television commentators tell us that race is biologically meaningless, that the physical differences between Danes and Pygmies are insignificant evolutionary accidents. Race, we are told, is an artificial concept white people invented only a few hundred years ago to justify colonization and slavery. If we free ourselves from this delusion, we can all march hand in hand into a future free of "racism." Everything about this view of race is obviously wrong, but since so few of the people who know better are willing to say so, this nonsense is beginning to tighten its grip on the popular mind. Now a book has finally appeared that blows to bits every one of these tendentious arguments. Race is a long overdue corrective that deserves wide circulation".

Blacking out speech -- Comment by Newt Gingrich: "In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson became president and swept his party into power due, in part, to the country's overwhelming opposition to the Sedition Act of 1798. This act was a deliberate attempt by the Federalists in power to silence their political opponents. The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law enacted in 2002 is an equally dangerous modern-day assault on the First Amendment. It could more accurately be called the McCain-Feingold censorship law because it stifles political speech, protects incumbent politicians and consolidates power in Washington. This law is of the Congress, by the Congress, and for the Congress, because it protects members of Congress by silencing opposing points of view."

Beware of oil pundits: "Those who espouse clever government-led solutions to high oil prices should bear in mind that new discoveries have outpaced consumption for a number of years, but too much bureaucratic interference has hampered supply. Restrictions on building new refineries and pipelines in the U.S. have kept prices up and increased America's dependence on foreign energy. Half of Europe's motorists already use diesel fuel, but the lack of refining capacity to turn heavy crude into diesel has made the rest of the world rely a lot more on light crude, pushing up its price. And, of course, supply would be higher if almost 80 percent of oil reserves did not belong to incompetent government-owned companies around the world, such as in Russia, Sudan and Nigeria. Not to mention that huge tariffs on imports of Brazilian sugar cane have hampered the development of ethanol in the U.S. (Brazil's use of ethanol as an energy source has been a huge success.) Why make matters worse by meddling further?"

Will the Senate impose race-based government on Hawaii?: "America's motto is "E pluribus unum," Latin for "Out of many, one." Some U.S. senators seem to be reading it backward. This week the Senate will consider legislation that would create an independent, race-based government for Native Hawaiians. If the bill becomes law, it would create a racial spoils system that would hand special privileges to up to one-fifth of the state's population--including many with only a trace of Hawaiian blood. It could inspire mainland groups such as Hispanic separatists to seek similar spoils, should they ever gain enough political leverage. The notion is the obsession of Sen. Daniel Akaka, an 81-year-old Democrat whose 16-year Senate record has been so undistinguished that Time magazine listed him in April as one of the five worst senators"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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HOW SIMPLE IT IS!

In the debate over immigration reform in the United States, some citizens have called for a halt to illegal crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border, while others contend it is impossible to completely stop the flow of poor migrants across the 3,000-km. (1,864-mile) line. But a new Border Patrol pilot program is showing that strict enforcement of existing U.S. immigration laws can have a dramatic effect.

The Del Rio sector of the U.S.-Mexico border runs for 288 kilometers (179 miles) along the Rio Grande River, which forms the boundary between Texas and Mexico. Since December of last year, the U.S. Border Patrol has tried a new program here that has curtailed both immigrant crossings and drug trafficking. With the cooperation of local law enforcement and U.S. attorneys in the area, the Border Patrol has sent hundreds of illegal entrants to be prosecuted for their crimes.

Under existing U.S. law, a person who enters the United States at any point other than an official port of entry is guilty of a misdemeanor and can be sentenced to up to six months in prison. In an interview, Del Rio Border Patrol spokesman Randy Clark said the threat of punishment has discouraged people from crossing here. "In our busiest station, where we once apprehended the most aliens, we are now close to 70 percent down for the month of May, when we compare it to 2005," he said. "For the period of the operation, which is December 2005 to present, we have noticed a 50 percent decline in the station, overall, for those six months."

Clark says the secret to the program's success is the application of existing law and the use of penalties spelled out in the statutes. In the Del Rio sector, agents have ended the so-called "revolving door" practice, whereby captured illegal immigrants were simply processed and sent back into Mexico, where they could then make another attempt at crossing. It has been common for Border Patrol agents to apprehend the same individual two or three times in the same day because of this practice.

More here. (Scroll down. Worth reading the lot)

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ELSEWHERE

Only whites can commit hate-crimes: "The pack of thugs who mugged and fatally beat a New Jersey man outside a Chelsea nightclub had robbed before, police sources said yesterday. "Get that white m----------r!" one of the attackers shouted before three of them surrounded Thomas Whitney Jr., 24, and threw the first punch, according to two women who saw the beating. Najib Noor, 19, punched Whitney in the head while Daryush Omar, 20, and Walliullah Hashimi, 22, kicked him as he lay bleeding on W. 19th St., not far from the Spy Club, where Whitney had been partying, prosecutors said. The trio then flipped the financial analyst over so they could rummage through his pockets and steal his wallet and cell phone, authorities said... Police said they didn't charge the three with a hate crime because the comment was seen as a way to identify a drunken mark, rather than a racial slur, police sources said. Omar and Noor are natives of Pakistan and Hashimi of Afghanistan".

French Protestants saved Jews in WW2: "The French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon played an extraordinarily courageous role in the second world war, providing sanctuary for thousands of Jews.... In an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country, the area's inhabitants were predominantly Protestant. The first Protestants in France had long suffered murder at the hands of their countrymen. Many fled the country. But here they clung tenaciously to their rocky territory - and their equally unshakable beliefs. The area became a sanctuary for the dispossessed. At the turn of the century they welcomed the impoverished children of newly industrialised France. In the 1930s it was refugees from the Spanish civil war - and then the Jews. "The key to their extraordinary behaviour during the war is their collective memory of their own persecuted past," says Sauvage. One pastor told him: "The Jews felt close to us, because we believed in the Old Testament and they were the people of the Old Testament.""

Lefty media declining: "About 70 reporters, editors, photographers and newsroom administrators have taken early retirement offers from The Washington Post Co. amid declining circulation at its flagship newspaper. About 100 employees outside the newsroom, such as those in The Washington Post's pressrooms or on the advertising staff, also took the offer, The Post announced in Thursday's editions. Circulation at The Washington Post and most daily newspapers has decreased in recent years as readers turn to television and the Internet for news. Daily circulation at The Post peaked at 832,232 in 1993. The Post's daily circulation for the first three months of this year averaged 690,700, the company reported last month... Several other newspapers are using buyouts or layoffs to cut costs. The New York Times Co. is cutting 700 company-wide jobs. Tribune Co., which publishes 11 newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, said last week that it would use layoffs to cut costs. Last year, Tribune newspapers eliminated 185 positions through buyouts and layoffs. This is The Post's second round of buyouts in the past three years, the newspaper reported."

Leftist ethics crumble: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has dropped her demand that Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., resign from the powerful House Way & Means Committee - in exchange for a promise from the Congressional Black Caucus that they won't campaign against her in advance of this fall's critical mid-term elections.... Pelosi had ordered Jefferson to step down last week after he was caught hiding $90,000 in alleged bribe money in his freezer, saying his resignation would be "in the interest of upholding the high ethical standard of the House Democratic Caucus."

Responsible lending to high-risk groups: "Black and Hispanic home buyers are more likely to pay high mortgage rates than white borrowers with similar credit ratings and income levels, an advocacy group found... The study, released Wednesday, found that blacks were 29 percent more likely to pay a high interest rate on a fixed-rate home purchase loan. A Hispanic borrower also was more likely to pay a high rate, it found.... "African Americans and Latinos are paying a premium for home loans because of the color of their skin," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau.... The center's data did not include all the factors used by lenders, such as a borrower's total debts, making the study's conclusions incomplete, said Doug Duncan of the Mortgage Bankers Association. He also questioned the ability of any national study to prove discrimination, which would require an analysis of specific lenders".

Surprise! African graft stings donors: "Uganda -- a small, poor country still best known for its infamous former dictator, Idi Amin -- isn't used to being first in much. But in the 1990s, it became the first African country to substantially bring down its AIDS rate. It has since become a darling of international donors, especially in the health sector. So no one was surprised when, in 2003, Uganda became one of the first countries to receive a multimillion-dollar grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. But three years later, the phrase 'Global Fund' has become synonymous with graft in Uganda. A government inquiry recently revealed that tens of millions of dollars of the country's Global Fund grants have gone missing, much of it plundered by high-ranking public officials."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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FRENCH LEFTIST GETS IT RIGHT

The Socialist frontrunner to succeed French President Jacques Chirac, Segolene Royal, has broken ranks with her party by calling for a crackdown on youth crime - challenging the conservatives on their home turf. "We need a return to the heavy hand," Ms Royal said in a speech delivered in the north Paris suburbs, where an outbreak of street violence has raised fears of a repeat of last year's riots.

Unveiling a crime and security platform that is a break with the Socialists' normal emphasis on tolerance and funding for education, Ms Royal said the tough anti-crime policies of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy - the top conservative contender in next year's election - had failed to prevent an explosion of violence in poor French suburbs.

But in a break with the Socialists, who brand Mr Sarkozy as a hardliner, the mother of four called for "a much firmer approach" to young offenders. "The Left has long underestimated" the crime problem, she said. "Now is the time to tackle it head-on." Military-style academies could be set up for young offenders aged 16 or over, she suggested, steering troubled youths into aid work or apprenticeships, and teaching them "how to behave ascitizens".

For younger offenders, parents would be enrolled in compulsory courses at the first sign of trouble, with social benefits scrapped for those who failed to bring their children into line. Troublemakers under 16 should be removed from school and put in special boarding schools under close supervision by teachers, sports workers and volunteers.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The big powers united on Iran: "World powers stood shoulder to shoulder yesterday in the clearest sign yet of unity on how to deal with Iran's determination to master nuclear technology. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, just 24 hours after announcing the US would consider direct talks with Tehran for the first time in more than 25 years, joined her counterparts in Vienna to strike the most significant deal yet to try to force Iran's hand. The US, with five other world powers and the European Union, agreed to offer Tehran incentives if it halted its drive for nuclear enrichment, but also threatened unspecified "further steps in the Security Council" if Iran refused. But after months of tortuous diplomacy, perhaps more telling than the communique from the US, Britain, Germany, France, China and Russia was the image of representatives of the world's most powerful nations standing together to deliver it.

Illegals and sex crimes: "Based on a one-year in-depth study, a researcher estimates there are about 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States who have had an average of four victims each. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta analyzed 1,500 cases from January 1999 through April 2006 that included serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants. She found that while the offenders were located in 36 states, most were in states with the highest numbers of illegal immigrants. California had the most offenders, followed by Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York and Florida. Schurman-Kauflin concluded that, based on a figure of 12 million illegal immigrants and the fact that more of this population is male than average, sex offenders among illegals make up a higher percentage than offenders in the general population. She arrives at the figure of 240,000 offenders - a conservative estimate, she says - through public records showing about 2 percent of illegals apprehended are sex offenders".



Why Japanese don't like "Americans" (See picture) in their country: "A court has convicted an American sailor of killing a Japanese woman during a robbery near Tokyo and sentenced him to life in prison. A court in the port city of Yokohama convicted Seaman William Reese, 22, who had been based aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, of robbing Yoshie Sato and beating her to death on January 3. Reese pleaded guilty but said he had not intended to kill the woman. Nearly 50,000 US military personnel are stationed in Japan under a bilateral security treaty, and issues of crime, pollution and noise associated with the US bases make them highly unpopular with locals. Concerns boiled over into large protests after three US servicemen raped a schoolgirl on the southern island of Okinawa in 1995, but tensions have cooled in recent years."

Homeland "security": "The [British] Halle Orchestra recently cancelled a tour to America after being told that all 120 members would have to report in person to the American Embassy in London, at an allotted time early one morning, and pay 63 pounds for the privilege. No, said embassy officials regretfully, it would not be possible for one member of the orchestra to visit in person, presenting everyone's passport. Given that the orchestra is based in Manchester, this would have meant hiring two coaches and finding overnight accommodation for all 120 players. Bewildered by the rules, the orchestra cancelled the American visit".

Agonizing over raid on corrupt black: "It's been amusing to watch Congress fret over the FBI's decision to raid the office of their colleague, Rep. William Jefferson. Current Speaker Dennis Hastert called it 'the wrong path,' and has demanded a return of the documents seized. An unnamed member told the Washington Post that the tactics was 'unduly aggressive.' Rep. John Conyers called the raid 'an act of tremendous violence.' On Tuesday, Rep. James Sensenbrenner held hearings titled, 'Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?' At those hearings, Sensenbrenner announced his intention to introduce legislation protecting Congress from future, similar police searches. Funny. Congress -- especially GOP leaders like Hastert and Sensenbrenner -- don't seem nearly as concerned when much more violent, confrontational raids happen to their own constituents."

Fat liar sued: "By the time Iraq war veteran Sergeant Peter J. Damon learned he was an unwitting star in Michael Moore's 2004 movie 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' he already had a lot of explaining to do. Relatives wanted to know why the 33-year-old Damon, a staunch supporter of the war effort and President Bush, agreed to be in a movie that was harshly critical of both, his lawyer said yesterday. Friends wanted to know why Damon, who lost both his arms in a helicopter repair accident, was portrayed as a veteran who had been left behind when, in fact, military medical personnel had helped him learn to use his artificial arms and veterans groups had helped build his family a new house in Middleborough, the lawyer said. This week, Damon sued Moore and several film production companies for $85 million and plans to tell a jury exactly what he told his friends and relatives: that Moore included him in the movie without his permission and misrepresented his stand on the war, said his lawyer, Dennis Lynch."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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BEATING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WITH A FEATHER

Ann Coulter explains. Excerpt:

The "path to citizenship" that Bush and the Senate are trying to pawn off on Americans requires that illegals pay huge fines and back taxes, with "huge" being defined as a $2,000 fine and taxes for three of the last five years. Even with the special "Two Years Tax-Free" package for illegals, this is about as likely as me paying my dad back the money I "borrowed" from him when I was in college.

We're told illegal immigrants are dying to pay taxes if only they can become citizens. Oh, by the way, they also will have a panoply of government benefits available to them if they become citizens - in fact, even if they get green cards. They're probably unaware of this and are just dying to send half their paychecks to the government just like us shiftless, lazy Americans.

Inasmuch as most of these low-skilled immigrant workers are in the 0 percent tax bracket, this should be a real boon for the U.S. Treasury. Indeed, the government may end up paying the illegals money: "Let's see, Juan. According to our records, you owe us 0 percent for the past three years, and because you qualify for the earned-income tax credit, we actually owe you! Are 20s OK?"

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ELSEWHERE

General Motors is in financial difficulties at the moment as a result of past bad decisions so the NYT has seized the opportunity to promote their anti-business agenda by attacking GM. GM have however given a very sane and factual reply here

Chinese and Vietnamese ballots for Boston: "State and city election officials urged lawmakers yesterday to quickly back a bill that would permit Boston to print ballots for state and federal elections in Chinese and Vietnamese. Secretary of State William F. Galvin and Boston Election Department chairwoman Geraldine Cuddyer asked members of the Legislature's Election Laws Committee to recommend the legislation to the full House. The bill stems from a September settlement between the city of Boston and the US Department of Justice requiring the state and city to provide ballots in those languages for non-English speaking voters."

Ben Shapiro on the MSM: "The mainstream press is worried about what it has always been worried about: maintaining its own status. Mainstream media breathlessly await reports of atrocities by Americans because media outlets gain authority by attacking governmental authority. It wasn't enough for Time magazine to turn over its information on the alleged massacre to the military; it had to "alert the public." This story isn't about alleged misconduct -- it's about the press feting its own bravery for exposing what should have remained private. This is what the press has done for decades. Since the advent of television, media outlets have been engaged in a systematic attempt to tear down the credibility of the United States government in order to bolster their own authority. "You can't trust the government," the media says, "but you can trust us." The Vietnam War became more about journalists (Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite) than about a war for the survival of liberal democracy in Southeast Asia. The welfare of the troops took a back seat to the press' sense of its own importance. It is a happy accident of history that this ongoing ego trip began after the rise of Hitler, or Nazism might well remain the dominant ideology on the European continent."

British government won't use its own mail service: "Government departments are being told to stop sending letters via the Royal Mail because it does not offer the same value for money as its rivals, despite its huge subsidies. The Government wants to cut 30 million pounds from the cost of delivering post and is urging departments and councils to consider using one of the eight private-sector suppliers. The news comes two weeks after the Royal Mail said the Government had given it 1.75 billion pounds in emergency help to plug its pension fund deficit and pay for modernisation."

"Diversity" not good for happiness: "It is an uncomfortable conclusion from happiness research data perhaps - but multicultural communities tend to be less trusting and less happy. Research by the Home Office suggests that the more ethnically diverse an area is, the less people are likely to trust each other. The Commission for Racial Equality has also done work looking at the effect of diversity on well-being. Interviewed on The Happiness Formula, the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips accepts that people are happier if they are with people like themselves. "We've done work here which shows that people, frankly, when there aren't other pressures, like to live within a comfort zone which is defined by racial sameness. "People feel happier if they're with people who are like themselves"

Interesting point: "This column has not been kind to the Da Vinci Code, but it strikes me that there is a useful lesson to be derived from Dan Brown's fiction. His idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children, a line of descent ending up with gorgeous Parisian police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), shows the wisdom of the Catholic Church in insisting on priestly celibacy. Where families and power meet, dynasties are created; and where dynasties are created, rivalries abound; and where rivalries abound, killing and war ensue. The history of Christianity has been bloody enough as it is; imagine what it would be like if Christ really had had children. Actually, you don't need to imagine it - you can simply study the history of Islam. Because Mohammed had many wives and many children (though no surviving son), there was, almost from the beginning, a dispute about who was rightful successor (caliph). That is why Sunnis and Shias fight one another to this day. For his next novel, Brown should "uncover" an amazing Muslim conspiracy to conceal the fact that Mohammed had no children and that the early caliphs made it up. That should do a roaring trade at airport bookstalls."

Christians Under Siege in Kosovo: "While the U.S. fights Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. and the United Nations are helping allies of Muslim terrorists come to power in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. This is a foreign policy disaster in the making that you should hope and pray gets some immediate attention from the media. To illustrate the dimensions of the problem, Father Keith Roderick of Christian Solidarity International has testified that Albanian Muslims in Kosovo have been systematically destroying Christian churches and other sites in Kosovo and the Serbian Christian population in the province is being "squeezed down to oblivion."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 CRUMBLING GOP BASE

Some words of warning from Jeff Jacoby. Excerpts:

How disgruntled is the party's base? In recent polls, fewer than 70 percent of registered Republicans said they approve of the way President Bush is handling his job, a sharp drop from the 90 percent support on which he once could count. Among self-identified conservatives, Bush's standing is even lower: Just 51 percent rate his performance favorably, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. At a time when the president's support among Democrats has shrunk to single digits, and when only 1 independent in 4 gives him a positive job rating, the last thing he can afford to lose is the goodwill of his core supporters. But he is losing it.

And Congress is doing even worse. According to the most recent CBS News poll, while 59 percent of the public disapproves of the way the House and Senate are functioning, the figure among Republicans is 62 percent. Read that again: Republicans dislike the Republican-controlled Congress even more than Democrats and independents do....

Many on the right are no less acid in describing Bush. One conservative commentator described him recently as a "dime-store Democrat" and "something of an embarrassment" and wrote that "a Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc." It says something about Bush's willingness to listen to such criticism that the author of those words -- Tony Snow -- has just become the White House spokesman.

Reaganite conservatives have been the mainstay of the GOP for more than 20 years, and many of them are disgusted with the abandonment of Reaganite principles at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. If they had wanted skyrocketing budgets, new federal bureaucracies, more regulation of political speech, and stalemates on immigration, energy, and Social Security, they say, they would have voted for Democrats. Instead they voted for Republicans -- and what did they get? Skyrocketing budgets, new federal bureaucracies, more regulation of political speech, and stalemates on immigration, energy, and Social Security...

For the party's Reaganite core, the list of outrages is a long one, everything from steel tariffs to McCain-Feingold to gasoline demagoguery. Most troubling of all has been the explosive growth in the size and cost of government. On Bush's watch, the federal budget has grown twice as fast as during the Clinton years. Expenditures this year will come to nearly $24,000 per household -- the most, in real terms, since World War II. Not since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House has spending soared so recklessly.

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ELSEWHERE

Anything to shock: "Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations from 16 to 12 and the legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage. The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party said on its web site it would be officially registered tomorrow, proclaiming: "We are going to shake The Hague awake!" The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether. "A ban just makes children curious," Ad van den Berg, one of the party's founders, told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper. "We want to make pedophilia the subject of discussion," he said, adding the subject had been a taboo since the 1996 Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in neighbouring Belgium. "We want to get into Parliament so we have a voice. Other politicians only talk about us in a negative sense, as if we were criminals," Van den Berg said... The party also said everybody should be allowed to go naked in public and promotes legalising all soft and hard drugs and free train travel for all."

Immigration cowardice: ""The Senate isn't serious about enforcing the nation's immigration laws. It is bad enough that the bill that 39 Democrats and 23 Republicans just voted to pass provides an amnesty to illegal immigrants already here. There might be an argument for doing that if there were any evidence of a commitment to enforce the immigration laws in the future. But the bill actually prohibits local police from enforcing civil violations of immigration laws-which in practice, given the byzantine rules distinguishing between civil and criminal violations of those laws, will get local police out of the enforcement business altogether. No serious effort is being made to make the bureaucracy capable of the enforcement tasks that will now be asked of them, such as performing background checks on the illegal population. The bill forbids the federal government to use any information included in an application for amnesty in national-security or criminal investigations. Any federal agent who does use that information would be fined $10,000-which is five times more than an illegal alien would have to pay to get the amnesty... The Senate should stand down in favor of the House's enforcement-first approach, not the other way around. But it would be much better to enact no bill than to enact the Senate bill."

Bloated and overpaid U.S. Federal bureaucracy: "Compensation for the federal government's 1.9 million civilian workers in the executive branch costs almost $200 billion annually. Federal wages and benefits have been rising quickly, and by 2004 the average compensation of federal workers was almost twice the average in the private sector.... The average federal worker earned $100,178 in wages and benefits in 2004, which compared to $51,876 for the average private-sector worker, according to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data. Looking just at wages, federal workers earned an average $66,558, 56 percent more than the $42,635 earned by the average private worker."

More of Britain's very selective law-enforcement: "Thousands of illegal immigrants are being issued with national insurance numbers every year even though officials know that they have suspect immigration documents. Staff in Jobcentres have been told that they have a duty to issue an NI number even if they realise that the applicant has forged documents and no legal right to work, official papers seen by The Times reveal. The NI number, which employers regard as a prerequisite to work, can also be used to claim various benefits."

A notorious British failure to die at last: "The Child Support Agency will be scrapped this summer and replaced with a pared-down operation to collect cash from the most hardened absent fathers who refuse to pay maintenance. The Times has learnt that, in future, separating parents will be told to sort out their own financial arrangements with the help of national guidelines on appropriate levels of child maintenance. Cash incentives may even be offered to couples for staying away from the new, slimmed-down agency. The decision to abolish the CSA, which has been plagued with problems since it was set up in 1993, is an admission by the Government that it is unable to deal with the scale of the problem of maintenance payments after family break-up."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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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MORE GOOGLE SHENANIGANS?

I can post at the moment only from my old computer with a dialup connection. I just get an error message when I try to post from my normal broadband computer. Has my normal address been banned? It seems like it. I have purged cookies but that does not help.

Sunday Night with "Don Giovanni"

A small memoir of a pleasant evening last Sunday (28th. May):

Even in quiet little old Brisbane, the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart is a big deal -- with many concerts in celebration being put on. The latest one that I attended -- last Sunday -- was a concert performance of the famous opera "Don Giovanni".

Anne and I went with another couple, Jill and Lewis. Jill is actually an ex-girlfriend of mine but in my usual way I have kept in touch with her. We have a very similar love of music -- which is a very significant bond. Both Anne and Lewis put up with that past with good grace as they understand the nature of the bond.

Before the concert I made a simple dinner of sandwiches for us all -- thick-cut Gypsy ham with American mustard, lettuce and tomato -- on fresh grain bread. Being a sandwich-lover, I know how to make a good sandwich -- though that is about the limit of my culinary talents. We had planned to have the sandwiches in the park adjoining the concert venue but the weather looked a bit overcast so we had them on my verandah

As a concert performance, the sets for the opera were minimal but the costumes were reasonable and the singing was good. As always, I particularly liked the bass singer (Don Pedro), who was very competent.

It did however have the casting problem that plagues all opera: Singers wildly out of character but chosen for their voices -- as it has to be, of course. On this occasion, Don Giovanni was a quite insignificant guy and not at all convincing as a great lover -- but he had an excellent baritone. And in an amusing reversal, instead of large and aging ladies being cast as young girls, we had a young girl cast as an older woman!

The concert was in one of Brisbane's old powerhouses, converted some years ago into a performing arts centre now that Brisbane gets its electricity from vast generators situated alongside equally vast central Queensland coalfields. The conversion into an arts centre deliberately retained a fair bit of the original powerhouse interior. The idea of that was undoubtedly "arty" but it works well enough and I of course am very much in favour of retaining reminders of how we all got to where we are today.

The most surprising thing about the night was the audience. Far from being geriatric, there were people there of all ages, with a good representation of young people. I like to think that we have the universal appeal of Mozart to thank for that.

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BRITISH ACADEMICS' VOTE OF SHAME

(Post lifted from Norm Geras)

NATFHE has today voted to blacklist Israeli academics:

The largest university and college lecturers' union in Britain on Monday voted in favor of a motion recommending that its members boycott Israeli academics and institutions that do not publicly declare their opposition to Israeli policy in the territories. The motion passed with 106 in favor and 71 against. There were 21 abstentions. The 69,000-member National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) debated the proposal for the boycott at its annual conference in the northern English city of Blackpool. Two parts of the motion passed with a show of hands while a third went to a vote. Under the boycott, union members also will not submit articles to Israeli research papers.

The report in Haaretz goes on to quote Paul Mackney, NAFTHE general secretary, as saying:

Criticizing the Israeli government does not make me anti-Semitic...

Fancy footwork there, Paul, but not good enough. A blacklist of individuals isn't 'criticism' of their government; and the issue isn't whether you, personally, are an anti-Semite, but whether a policy of targeting the academics of one and only one country - Israel - is anti-Semitic. There's also the small matter of an academic union requiring of people a political declaration as a precondition of their being extended the usual courtesies and advantages of scholarly cooperation. What a disgrace to the profession the NATFHE decision is.

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Brookes News Update

Are dark clouds forming over the US economy?: How has the US economy roared ahead while undergoing a monetary slowdown? I think the answer lies in President Bush's cut to capital gains taxes. Nevertheless, though a recession can be delayed it cannot be avoided
Savings, jobs and Professor Quiggin's bad economics: The absurd and long-ago discredited economic fallacy that taxation can expand the demand for labour by putting the unemployed on the public payroll is reemerging
Liberal Party trips up on labour market reform: Who the hell is advising the Liberal Party on labour markets? It seems that not a single Liberal Party official has a clue about how these markets function
Google censors critic of Islamofascism: The well-known columnist Arlene Peck has been censored by Google for "hate speech". And what did this speech consist of? Criticizing ACLU and the US-based Muslim organization CAIR that is allegedly the `legal arm' of HAMAS, an Islamofascist terrorist organisation
Lefty journalist bashes Republicans as "reactionary" over illegal immigration: Stephen Ellis, US correspondent for Murdoch's `Australian' seems to think that the debate about illegal immigration that is now raging in the US is a handy weapon to bash Republicans with by referring to the so-called "reactionary wing of the party" that opposes open borders
Leftwing journalist slimes US conservatives on civil rights: According to Elliott the Democrats has always been the `traditional supporters of minorities `. This is pretty rich as well as being lousy history when one considers that the Republican Party was the Party of abolition and the Dems were the slave Party
Journalists smear President Bush over NSA spying program: It's reached the point where no reasonably informed person can take the media seriously any more, at least as a source for news. Anyone who values honest reporting can only be appalled at the bigotry and out right dishonesty of leftwing journalists
The latest dangers in cyberworld: The problem is mySpace.com, a supposedly innocuous Internet website where people can post their pictures, chat, and post their musings about the universe. The trouble is, mySpace attracts individuals who want to sexually exploit teenagers

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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)

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