What are the best novels about politics?

Post below lifted from Tyler Cowen. I think I would have put The Last Hurrah and All the King's Men somewhere on the list. Tyler is obviously a classical fiend. I am too but I think the modern world also has its wisdom. I think the two novels I have listed tell you more about American politics than all the sociologists and political scientists put together

Queried here, I will simplify and make it books, period, but restrict it to fiction, not counting philosophy.  My list of five:

1. Shakespeare's Henriad, a no-brainer at #1, if you count it as more than one book it still should take up as many slots as it needs.  Psychology is primary and stands above politics, and libertinism is by no means unrelated to power.

2. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, vanity, pride, and self-deception are the keys to understanding political behavior, plus Swift shows an understanding of "the rules of the game."

3. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, yikes, have you ever seen that Monty Python skit "Summarize Proust"?

4. Sophocles, Antigone, the claims of the family vs. the claims of the state continue to plague Iraq and many other places.

5. Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, the former is not just a good tale but also a profound comparative study of regimes, the latter is the brutal truths of war.

Interestingly none of these are proper novels.  I read Kafka's The Trial as more about theology than worldly affairs.  As for politics as a profession, the source from The Economist recommends "Primary Colors", C.P. Snow's "The Corridors of Power", and "All the King's Men".

It is less fruitful and less fun to guess at the best novels about business and economics, perhaps because the relevant truths seem banal in a fictional context.

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Credibility: "According to the New York Times, President Bush and Vice President Cheney “have done grievous harm to the credibility of the Oval Office and the country.” Perhaps so, but by being so blatantly partisan in its political coverage, the Times has done grievous harm to its own credibility and to the profession of journalism. Does the Times not see this?"

Media hostility: "President George W. Bush's father accused the news media of "personal animosity" toward his son and said he found the criticism so unrelenting he sometimes talked back to his television set. "It's one thing to have an adversarial ... relationship -- hard-hitting journalism -- it's another when the journalists' rhetoric goes beyond skepticism and goes over the line into overt, unrelenting hostility and personal animosity," former President George Bush said. The elder Bush, the 41st U.S. president, had a relatively collegial relationship with the press but things turned sour during his losing 1992 re-election campaign. He got so fed up with media coverage that supporters at the time circulated hats with the slogan "Annoy the Media -- Re-Elect Bush."

Air America Can't Even Pull Listeners In Santa Cruz: "Pretty telling when liberal radio can't even pull listeners in one of the most liberal cities in America. Al Franken, Randi Rhodes and Sam Seeder - articulate liberal pundits - don't sell well, even in Santa Cruz. The trio are part of the nationally syndicated Air America, which was dropped from Santa Cruz radio station KOMY 1340 AM on Thursday and replaced with music from the 1950s, `60s and `70s. The left-leaning radio network, aimed at taking on Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk shows, debuted on Central Coast airwaves in July 2005, but local advertisers never bought in, station owner Michael Zwerling said. "We didn't sell a single ad in a year and a half," Zwerling said Thursday. "I thought liberal radio would work as a viable advertising business in the most liberal town in America. I was wrong" Santa Cruz isn't the only place Air America has problems. The network is struggling nationwide and filed for bankruptcy four months ago."

IRS can't even collect taxes from government employees: "Internal Revenue Service documents show that the government is still trying to recover nearly $2.8 billion in back taxes from over 450,000 active and retired federal government employees who failed to file tax returns or pay taxes, or some 3.3 percent of the federal bureaucracy. Spreadsheets obtained by Washington, D.C., radio station WTOP under the Freedom of Information Act show that hundreds of thousands of government employees failed to file a tax return for the 2005 tax year.... The United States Postal Service was the agency with the highest level of noncompliance, while the Treasury Department had the lowest level. IRS agents can be fired if they fail to pay taxes. But, an IRS spokesman told WTOP, it's no easier to collect from the bureaucrats as it is from the rest of us. Indeed, the IRS can hardly get a handle around the tax noncompliance issue, and has been reduced to prosecuting high-profile people who they allege have failed to pay taxes owed, such as Wesley Snipes."

Immigration Benefit 'Equivalent to a Mars bar a Month': "New figures out today reveal that, on the Government's own figures, the benefit to each member of the native population of the UK from immigration is worth about 4p a week - or less than the equivalent of a small Mars bar a month. In an analysis of a series of reports on the economic impact of immigration on the UK think-tank Migrationwatch has found that overall the much vaunted contribution of immigrants to the economy is very slight indeed - a finding that coincides with the results of major studies around the world."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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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Obama: Just another "No Ideas" Leftist

Like most Leftists, he is so short of ideas that he just recycles old ideas that have repeatedly failed elsewhere. He wants to downgrade American healthcare to the appalling level of Britain's NHS. But no Leftist cares how destructive their ideas are -- as long as it sounds good at the time. They exploit the low level of knowledge of the average voter -- a low level of knowledge that they have themselves created by their white-anting of public education

Every American should have health care coverage within six years, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday as he set an ambitious goal soon after jumping into the 2008 presidential race. "The time has come for universal health care in America," Obama said at a conference of Families USA, a health care advocacy group. "I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country," the Illinois senator said.

Obama was previewing what is shaping up to be a theme of the 2008 Democratic primary. His chief rivals, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, also are strong proponents of universal health care and have promised to offer their plans.

Obama said while plans are offered in every campaign season with "much fanfare and promise," they collapse under the weight of Washington politics, leaving citizens to struggle with the skyrocketing costs. He said it's wrong that 46 million in this country are uninsured when the country spends more than any one else on health care. He said Americans pay $15 billion in taxes to help care for the uninsured. "We can't afford another disappointing charade in 2008, 2009 and 2010," Obama said. "It's not only tiresome, it's wrong."

Obama's call was an echo of a speech he made last April when he said Democrats "need to cling to the core values that make us Democrats, the belief in universal health care, the belief in universal education, and then we should be agnostic in terms of how to achieve those values." His argument Thursday not only will be considered through the prism of the presidential campaign, but weighed against rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's ill-fated plan to overhaul the health care insurance system when she was first lady. Even after leading that calamitous attempt in 1993, Clinton remains in favor of universal health care and has made it a central theme of her presidential bid....

More here

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DEMOCRATS' SILENCE ON THE GLOBAL JIHAD

For McCain, a Republican presidential hopeful, the struggle against the Islamists is the paramount issue of the day. His campaign website, while spare, highlights a recent speech in which McCain called stopping radical Islam "our most important moral obligation." He described the jihadists as "moral monsters but . . . also a disciplined, dedicated movement driven by an apocalyptic religious zeal, which celebrates martyrdom and murder." We are in a battle with "those who would shackle humanity, especially women, in a feudal theocracy," McCain said. "We cannot afford to take a holiday from history."

Sounding nearly as resolute is former governor Mitt Romney, whose campaign website puts "Defeating the Jihadists" first in its list of key campaign issues. "The jihadists are waging a global war against the United States and its allies," Romney is quoted as saying, "with the ambition of replacing legitimate governments with a caliphate -- a theocracy." Speaking in Israel yesterday, Romney asserted that "a central purpose of NATO should be to defeat radical Islam," through means both military and ideological.

The Democratic candidates, by contrast, are virtually silent on the subject. Barack Obama launched his exploratory committee with an online video that mentioned the economy, healthcare, vanishing pensions, college costs, and the fractiousness of partisan politics. His only nod to national security was a passing reference to the war in Iraq, which he opposes. But 9/11 and its aftermath? The worldwide jihad? The global conflict between democratic freedom and Taliban-style repression? Not a word.

Hillary Clinton's highly praised kickoff video likewise included nothing about the overriding threat of our time. Her website does contain a speech she gave at the Council on Foreign Relations last October, but it is filled with windy rhetoric about diplomacy and international conferences and how we must address the "troubled conditions terrorists seek out." New Yorkers don't need to be told "that we are in a war against terrorists who seek to do us harm," Clinton says. But if she recognizes that the future of the civilized world depends on winning that war, she shows little sign of it.

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A peace scam: "The Israeli-Palestinian peace process was a "scam" during the 1990s and because of that Washington should not be pushing Israel to make a "land for peace deal" now, a former head of the CIA said here.... Bush is the first U.S. leader to publicly back the idea of a "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But former CIA director James Woolsey said this week the U.S. should learn from past experience. Until something changes in the P.A. there would not be an Israeli-Palestinian deal, he said.... "I don't know how you realistically expect a friend and ally to negotiate a land-for-peace deal with an entity that in effect still wants to destroy it," he added."

Winston Churchill had observed Muslims close up. He said: : ""How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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

US economy: production and jobs: The Austrian explanation for the so-called business cycle easily explains the patter of employment in the finals stages of the boom
Economic growth, interventionism and the state: One only has to look at the rapid developments in the computer industry in particular and electronics in general to see that the notion of under-investment in technology is completely at variance with the facts
Can non-banks create money?: It is monetary injections by the central bank that destabilise the economy and not the response of people to these injections, which are manifested by the speeding up of the creation of credit
Castro's terrorist network: Since he turned Cuba into a socialist dictatorship Castro has nurtured international terrorism. Curiously enough our intrepid media has made a point of ignoring Castro's roles in training and funding terrorist thugs. Well, that's par for the course when the dictator is a socialist
Leftwing Congressional Democrats condemn US reinforcements for Iraq - veterans respond: Why are some congressional Democrats plotting to stab US troops in the back? Is it because their 'loyalty' is to a party and not their country?
Resurging Islam and the revival of slavery: Islam has a stranglehold on its slaves and will neither let them go, nor do the Muslims seem to have the insight or the will to leave it in large numbers. But hope, as slim as it is, keeps me sounding the alarm before the fire of Islam engulfs us all
The American economy and taxes: the Democrats don't get it and neither does Larry Kudlow and the GOP: Republicans haven't even peeped about a tax cut in years. They are desperately trying to keep the Democrats from letting Bush's tax cuts expire; a fact that the in-house media omitt from their Democrat propaganda

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Congratulations to the UAW and complacent managers: "Ford Motor Co warned today that its troubles were far from over after it reported a staggering $US12.7 billion loss in 2006, the worst in its 103-year history. The struggling US automaker conceded that it would probably lose the No.2 spot in its home market to Japanese rival Toyota this year as it drastically shrinks its production and sees its market share drop to 14 or 15 per cent from 16 per cent in 2006. Much of that loss would come from decreased reliance on fleet sales (primarily to rental car companies) which were significantly less profitable than the retail market, Ford chief executive Alan Mulally said. Sales were also expected to continue to fall as overall demand declined in 2007 and that was expected to put further pressure on automotive pricing, he said. Huge charges associated with Ford's plan to shut 16 plants in North America and eliminate up to 44,000 jobs accounted for much of its 2006 losses"

Some decent feelings in India: "Two men accused of killing at least 21 children in the New Delhi House of Horrors case have been severely beaten during a court appearance, with one of them knocked unconscious by lawyers and members of the public gallery. Accused millionaire businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, 55, who is known as "Goldy", was last night receiving medical treatment after losing consciouness during the beating in a court at Ghaziabad, near the Indian capital. According to the Press Trust of India, Pandher and his co-accused, his servant Surendra Kohli, were set upon by outraged lawyers and members of the public when they were being taken from the courtroom to the lock-up by the CBI, India's investigation agency. "As both Pandher and Kohli were being taken to the lock-up from the courtroom, a group of lawyers caught hold of them and beat them black and blue," PTI reported. Television footage showed the mob lashing out at the accused and hitting them as police tried to protect them. Mr Pandher was shown lying on the ground."

Islamic germ warfare? "Britain's laboratories have been ordered to strengthen security on stocks of more than 100 deadly viruses and bacteria after an MI5 warning that Islamic terrorists are training in germ warfare. The biological agents include polio, rabies, tuberculosis and bird flu. Food-poisoning bacteria such as E.coli and the sources for a number of rare tropical and Middle Eastern illnesses are also included. Scientists and lab staff in universities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies who deal with agents will have to be vetted by police, and their laboratories will be checked by government safety inspectors. Stock will have to be accounted for and regularly audited. The crackdown comes after MI5 privately warned the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that al-Qa'ida was actively recruiting scientists."

Reasonable decision ignites British hysteria: "A British judge freed a convicted "pedophile" today after citing a government warning about prison overcrowding, instantly igniting a law-and-order furore that could damage Prime Minister Tony Blair's government. Mr Blair's Home Secretary John Reid had already drawn fire from opposition Conservative critics and mass-circulation newspapers for writing to judges to warn of prison overcrowding and urge that prison places not be wasted on non-violent offenders. But a senior judge's decision to free a man who downloaded sexual images of children suddenly catapulted the story to the top of news reports, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the Home Office law-and-order ministry over the past year. The BBC reported from North Wales that Judge John Rogers cited Mr Reid's remarks while handing a suspended jail sentence to Derek Williams, 46, who downloaded child pornography... Britain is scrambling to find new places for prisoners after a sharp upsurge in the prison population, with the Government suggesting it could house offenders in disused military barracks, police jail cells and on ships.... On Tuesday, Mr Reid told a conference of regional newspaper journalists that courts should not be "squandering taxpayers' money to monitor non-dangerous and less serious offenders". "Prisons are an expensive resource that should be used to protect the public," he said, according to the BBC." [My paper on penological policy is here]

A despicable award from a despicable regime: "I missed this the other day... The French government, the same people who gave aid and comfort the the instigators of the Rwanda genocide, and have done everything they could to thwart the arrests of mass murderous Serbian war criminals in Bosnia, have decided to 'honour' one of their own. They have awarded the Legion D'Honneur, France's highest award, to Harold Pinter, that well know playwright, man of letters, literary colossus and apologist for mass murdering national socialist Slobodan Milosevic and mass murdering national socialist Saddam Hussain. Vermin, one and all.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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 Psychology of the Self-Hating Liberal

The good news is that, after a whole century of heading in the wrong direction, a moral and intellectual challenge to the bleeding-heart version of liberalism is finally welling up in the West. This is in no small part thanks to the liberating force of the Internet that has made freedom of expression possible again after decades of suffocating mass media orthodoxy.

There is however a tendency to focus only on the effects of the West's philosophical malaise. The rampant spread of our parasitic victim-culture and our impotence in the face of Islamic terrorism - these are both symptoms. The root cause lies in the psychology of sublimated self-hate that has come to be the prevalent psychic condition middle class liberals and especially those in media and academic circles. The truth is that virtually the entire `social justice' project of the last century - driven by middle class liberals on behalf of `the oppressed' - was motivated not by something noble but by something weak and creepy.

Its roots are a self-hating neurosis that, in different forms has afflicted the European intelligentsia since the time of Rousseau. I first became aware of the strange mind games of the self-hating middle class liberal at university in the 1970's. It is a mindset that did then (and still does) dominate academic life. Students and their tutors alike - mostly the beneficiaries of upward striving family backgrounds - were consumed with a phoney and entirely self- absorbed infatuation with something they called `the working class struggle'.

Through its disproportionate hold on academic and media culture this mindset has now become mainstream. As it has spread through our culture it has been diluted and sublimated, Paradoxically this has made it even more poisonous by making it more difficult to apprehend. It has become a gossamer web of vaguely held attitudes. Here are some of them:

Being middle class is something to be slightly ashamed of. Being working class on the other hand - or better still affecting to be working class - makes you seem more heroic......As long as you are `left wing' you are not only a nicer person but you are also `radical' and therefore not boring. If on the other hand you are `right wing', well that means you are `reactionary' and mean......Business enterprise is essentially disreputable whereas getting a living off the public purse or in the arts and media is highly civilised. Being an engineer or a scientist is OK too, up to a point - for boring people anyway.....And of course all the problems of people in the rest of the world are the fault, not of those people themselves but of the prosperous West. More specifically, the blame lies with `the capitalist system'; not you personally of course. You show how much you care by going to Live Aid concerts and that makes you feel much better about yourself.

In the obsessive struggle to subvert the perceived social hierarchy, a new politically correct hierarchy is rammed down your throat. At its apex would be someone like a Red Indian lesbian; at the bottom of the heap would be a middle class, Southern English male. In the latter half of the last century this mentality spread through all professions and institutions and so has become self-perpetuating. By the time the influence filters down to the population at large it is so diluted as to be just a vague lack of confidence in Western civilisation and a linguistic fog of moral relativism which disorientates people and makes them doubt their own common sense instincts about right and wrong.

Of all institutions the most powerful in this respect is the mass media, on account of its insidious ability to drip-drip its influence on every aspect of the way you perceive the world beyond your own direct experience. Everything you know - or think you know - about, Iraq or `global warming' or `the latest social research' on this or that subject, you probably got via the media. The great media conjuring trick is the illusion that it is merely a transparent window whereas in reality it is a window, richly decorated with mythology. It breathes into your ear things like this:-

All people in the Third World are shouldering with dignity a burden imposed upon them by the West in general and America in particular....All businesses are probably trying to screw you....You as a consumer have plenty to whinge about....Politicians should do something about each and every one of the problems you encounter in life....And if you are making a mess of your life its because someone else should have given you more information or more help.

The trouble with all this apparent social conscience is that what really drives it is not some profound humanism but the desire of a highly privileged elite to feel better about themselves and stave off the unconscious and sublimated self-loathing which was drip fed to them at university.

Virtually everyone in the Western world today will have had his or her perception distorted to some extent by this fake but highly seductive fashion-accessory kind of social conscience. By subverting a perfectly valid hierarchy of values in judging human behavior, this fake social conscience has had a hugely corrosive effect on what was best in our civilization. Take, for example, the near universal acceptance now of the notion that to discriminate is wrong.

Wrong. It is bigotry that is wrong. The capacity to discriminate - far from being wrong - is actually vital to civilized society; the more of it the better.

The psychology of middle class self-hate of is complex and multi-layered. It is, in part a mindset of frozen adolescence whereby people never entirely move beyond the inchoate parent-anger of their youth. Even sophisticated professionals can still carry their adolescent baggage, now displaced into a vague resentment against their own middle class roots or against America as the parent figure of the Western world. In part it is Rousseau and D. H. Lawrence: the cerebral intellectual's Romantic infatuation with the primitive. And in part it is perhaps a stray fragment of the shattered star of Christianity - the first shall be last etc. This fragment, detached now from its overall religious context, floats meaninglessly in the post-Christian philosophical ether.

The consequences of this confused and self-indulgent philosophy are full of paradox. First: when do you ever hear any credit given to the wicked American enterprise culture for the microchip, the personal computer, the Internet, Google, and all the rest of the apparatus that every lefty-liberal anti-globalisation warrior or anti-Western terrorist now blithely uses in pursuit of her agenda? In a staggering act of biting the hand that feeds, the liberal intelligentsia sneers at the kind of souls without whom there would have been no Western civilisation in the first place. Meanwhile South East Asia is turning out science graduates in the millions.

Second: the spread of attention-seeking, wilful victimhood in our culture - the whingeing, blaming and litigating -has tragically been assisted by the very scruples of self reliant, non-drama-queen type people preferring to just keep their own counsel and say nothing.

Third: Whilst we may not exactly have 1984, we do have plenty of Orwellian Doublethink. Being a `radical' means thinking just like everyone else in your peer group. Caring about the catastrophic failure of mankind in large parts of the planet means going to rock concerts.

In challenging this malaise, it is not enough to attack the crazy social policies and the political correctness it has spawned. It is also necessary to challenge the century long myth that a left-wing type of `social conscience' is good-hearted even if it is naive. This is one huge fallacy. The truth is that it is more usually self-centred, self-deceiving and ultimately self-serving.

Source

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Blacks Say Bush Blows Opportunity to Fight for Judges: "President George W. Bush mentioned the importance of filling vacancies in our judicial system with qualified nominees, but he failed to use his State of the Union Address to discuss the problem of liberal obstructionism of these nominees in the Senate. Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie says President Bush should have used the high-profile speech to make his case to both the Senate and the public about the severity of the problem. "So many of the things President Bush spent ample time covering in his State of the Union Address - the War on Terror, health care reform, quality education for our children and even our energy policy - will ultimately be shaped by our courts. The President failed to use last night's address to chastise liberal senators who are obstructing the judicial confirmation process and endangering his ability to name judges," said Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie.

Unpopular Palis: "Palestinians living in Iraq have been warned they will be killed by Shi'ite militias unless they leave the country immediately. Iraqi police say the immigrants, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, are the target of a backlash by hard-line Shi'ites, including members of the Mahdi Army led by Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.... More than 600 Palestinians are believed to have died at the hands of Shi'ite militias since the war began in 2003, including at least 300 from the Baladiat area of Baghdad. Many were tortured with electric drills before they died. Now the Shi'ite militias are stepping up their campaign to drive out Iraq's 15,000 remaining Palestinians -- less than half the estimated 40,000 living in the country at the start of the war, all of whom were welcomed by Saddam Hussein and provided with housing, money and free education. Sheik Mahmoud al-Hassani, a spokesman for the Mahdi Army, said the Palestinians had brought their suffering on themselves. He said Shi'ites believed the Palestinians were in league with Sunni extremists and al Qaeda".

Another failure of Britain's leftist government: "The police rounded on the Home Secretary yesterday, accusing him of letting down officers by failing to provide enough prison places for the criminals they are catching. Leaders of junior and middle-ranking officers in England and Wales expressed dismay that John Reid was appealing to courts to jail fewer people. They said that he and other Labour ministers had "let down" officers who worked hard to catch crooks. Chief constables privately backed the public criticism of the Government's failure to provide enough jail cells, which has resulted in severe overcrowding. The police criticism of Mr Reid and ministers is deeply embarrassing for the Government and its credentials on law and order. The attack on the Home Secretary came as the Prison Service was forced to start putting remand prisoners in cells in a wing at Norwich jail, parts of which has been condemmed as "unfit for human habitation". It also emerged that cells at the Old Bailey in Central London were on standby to receive prisoners as the jails ran out of cell spaces in London and the South East. Prison numbers rose again overnight, taking the total population yesterday to 80,070, including an estimated 400 in police cells around England and Wales. Eleven prisoners were forced to spend Tuesday night in cells at Inner London Crown Court."

Pathetic British authorities still cannot handle even light snow: "Each year it comes as inevitably as, well, winter, but yesterday the first snow of the year caught the transport system on the hop. Again. A tentative sprinkling was all it took to bring chaos as commuters suffered long waits on freezing platforms and tailbacks on the roads. One woman, 49, died when she stopped at Haresfield in Gloucestershire to help a 17-year-old driver after his car overturned on an icy road. Another vehicle then skidded into her. The M23 from Surry heading into London was closed for two hours after a coach collided with two cars. Hundreds of trains were delayed and dozens cancelled as the rail network was blighted by frozen points. Network Rail said that the disruption was mainly due to the failure of the heating systems that are supposed to prevent freezing. Points failure struck at some of the network's major hubs, including, in London, Clapham Junction, Waterloo and Wimbledon. Other trains were left stranded after ice on the tracks caused power surges".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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 POPULISTS MAKE EVERYBODY EQUALLY POOR

With the Democrats back in power in Congress and with the 2008 election campaign already upon us, you'll be hearing much more about "income inequality." This is a major issue for "progressives" (when you hear that word, think "socialists") like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Populism is back in fashion.

By populism, I mean the exploitation of the uninformed, angry impulses and unfiltered passions of the masses. That anger and resentment has historically been directed at the usual villains and cardboard stereotypes: bankers, insurance companies, "big pharma" (that means drug companies), agri-business, "the military-industrial complex," free trade, free markets and, of course, "the rich." This mentality feeds on conspiracy theories and simplistic fantasies about the way the world works. It seeks to impale the minority of "haves" on the pitchforks of the more numerous "have nots." When you do the political calculus, it can seem like a seductive winning formula for many politicians.

Complaints of income inequality are nothing new. Will Durant traces its history to ancient Rome. He observes that: "The concentration of wealth is a natural and inevitable result of the concentration of abilities in a minority of men and regularly recurs in history . . . Despotism may for a time retard the concentration; democracy, allowing the most liberty, accelerates it." ....

To be sure, there are some very rich people in America who earn and possess hundreds or thousands of times what poorer people earn or possess. But the poor in this country are only relatively poor. We have no abject poverty. On the contrary, America's "poor" have cars, TVs, appliances, computers, $200 basketball shoes and own their own homes. Their lifestyle would be the envy of most of the world's population.

As long as there's relative wealth, there will always be relative poverty. The only alternative is an impossible one: absolute income and wealth equality. In a market economy like ours, the state of the economy will be never be good enough for some and never bad enough for others. In a dynamic economy, there will always be relative winners and losers. Some industries will be ascendant and others will be in decline. For the vast majority of Americans, today's income disparities are mostly related to differing levels of education and skills of marketable value.

Be wary of misleading economic statistics glibly tossed around by populist politicians. A flood of low-skilled immigrants, many illegal, has had a downward influence on average wages. Increases in nonwage compensation - like employer-provided health insurance or deferred compensation in the form of generous defined-benefit pension plans for government employees - are frequently ignored in the wage data. Then there's the discrepancy between reported incomes and consumption, with consumption data - a much better measure of living standards - showing far less inequality.

Politicians and the U.S. government have long been in the business of redistributing income through progressive taxation (the top 2 percent of Americans pay two-thirds of all income taxes; the bottom 50 percent pay only 3 percent) on the one hand, and transfer payments to the poor and middle class on the other. Remarkably, the official income-distribution figures don't subtract income taxes paid by heavily-burdened net taxpayers. Compounding the distortion, cash transfers and the cornucopia of government services and subsidies obtained by net tax receivers are also ignored. Even though we spend hundreds of billions on this, it's like those benefits don't exist.

Individual incomes are determined objectively in the marketplace. When politicians or labor unions don't like the results, they meddle in people's lives and businesses in pursuit of power while invoking the name of "social justice," today's name for egalitarianism. Excessive concentration of income and wealth can destroy a society politically. We're nowhere near that point. Excessive redistribution of income and wealth - without regard for talent and productivity - can destroy a society economically. That's the more tangible danger.

More here

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I have just posted here a review of "America alone" by Mark Steyn. There have been plenty of admiring reviews of the book from conservatives so I thought I would try it out on "Ken", my middle-of-the-road reviewer. I am pleased to see that he thought highly of the book too.

Many readers may have seen the story about a firm called "Discount Floor Mats" refusing to send their product to troops in Iraq. Bloggers kicked up a storm about it (e.g. here) and the offending firm received heaps of condemnatory emails. The employee responsible for the refusal has now apparently been sacked. See here.

There is an appalling story here about the limits placed on the love lives of medical and healthcare personnel in Washington State. You can commit a crime by doing perfectly innocent and normal things.

Black Activists Outraged Over Liberal Merger of Abortion and Civil Rights: "Inclusion of Planned Parenthood in a self-described civil rights coalition has outraged members of the black leadership network Project 21, as Planned Parenthood advocates and provides abortions - particularly in the black community. "How can a civil rights group that claims to support underprivileged blacks embrace an organization created expressly to hasten the demise of black people?" asked Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie. "People of conscience should be appalled and outraged by this alignment." The Planned Parenthood Federation of America recently became a member of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), a political coalition of almost 200 groups representing liberal racial, gender, age, disability and religious special interests as well as labor unions. The LCCR is most often known in recent years for its opposition to judicial nominees who adhere to an orginalist interpretation of the Constitution."

CAFE standards lead to lighter, less safe vehicles: "In his State of the Union address, President Bush said: "At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy [CAFE] standards for cars the way we did for light trucks - and conserve up to eight and a half billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017." "CAFE standards kill," said Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "In our view, the best way to 'reform and modernize' fuel economy standards is to eliminate them. It is hypocritical, and to some, lethal, for a government that forbids drilling in ANWR to, in the name of energy independence, force families into vehicles that are less safe than they otherwise would be." "In a choice between saving gallons of gas or the lives of some of our fellow Americans," said Ridenour, "we should choose their lives."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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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Kling Klanger

I greatly admire the writings on economics by Arnold Kling. His recent comment on IQ is deficient, however. He falls into the trap of regarding mental abilities as specific when the whole thrust of a century of research into IQ shows that they are general. Everybody has things that they are best at but in general a person who is good at solving one sort of problem will be good at solving many sorts of problems. IQ represents in fact precisely that general ability which Kling concedes is badly needed in today's world. IQ is therefore a useful sorting method for determining in advance who can handle college education. And the SAT that is much used for that purpose in the USA is in fact little more than an IQ test.

To be fair, Kling seeems to be talking about top talent rather than normal ability. He is correct that extreme ability in any field is poorly predicted by IQ tests. Once you get into the genius range (say the top 2%) IQ tests can no longer sort out who will be the highest achievers among that population.

But Kling seems to conclude from that that IQ tests are not GENERALLY useful -- which is false. There may of course be a few rare cases where a person of genius ability in some particular field cannot make it into the top 20% of IQ scorers and who might therefore in a strict system be barred from higher education. But making provision for exceptional cases is part of any form of administration. Teachers do it all the time already when they award marks. So that poses no great difficulty.

Footnote:

Perhaps an example of ability generalizing might be in order -- to show what I mean:

My own greatest ability is getting papers published in academic journals. I am exceptionally good at that -- which is why I have had hundreds published. Papers which I have taken only a day to write generally get accepted for publication whereas some of my unfortunate colleagues labour for a year over a paper and then get it knocked back.

So I am hopeless at other things, right? Yes. I am a total washout at sport for instance. But I am also reasonably good at many apparently unrelated things. I am good at fixing old locks, for instance, and I have been quite successful in business.

But I am no billionaire and any locksmith is better at fixing locks than I am. I have just the one special ability but, associated with that, I also have a range of lesser abilities in which I am no world-beater but in which I do better than most. And that is pretty much how abilities generally are related to one another.

Jesus put it rather bluntly: "To him that hath, more will be given him. And to him that hath not, what little he hath will be taken away".

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WHY THEY HATE AMERICA

Environmentalism, free trade and globalization don't bring people or nations together. Neither do feminism, human rights, cures for disease or the myriad of other common causes, all vying for our attention. There is only one cause that unites people and nations, today, like no other. That cause is anti-Americanism. The dislike or hatred of America and Americans is an obsession that unifies most people on the planet. That hatred crosses race, religious, gender and age barriers. It is an activity that produces almost sexual like pleasures among those that engage in it. They are in a word, obsessed. America is the root all evils- past, present and future.

It is hard for those who have such great hatred for America to opine on which gave them greater pleasure- the people who jumped to their deaths from the World Trade Center, or those who burned to death. That is not hyperbole or exaggeration. Ward Churchill has become a respected and sought after speaker to a certain segment of the population, justifying the deaths of all those `little Eichmanns'- to cheering audiences. Those who blame George Bush for the all the ills of the world make no apologies for their decit or despicable behavior. As Dr Sanity points out,

The chant, "Bush Lied, People Died" would be revised to, "3000 People Died on 9/11 before Bush Said Anything" . The former has the advantage of rhyming, but the latter is closer to truth in advertising. And, that is exactly why the people chanting the former cutesy phrase are so indignant and scream ragefully like stuck pigs about "cynical manipulation" when images of 9/11 are shown; or even when that horrible day is mentioned. They know all about it. The "cynical manipulation" they are referring to is entirely a product of their own minds.

Pesky truths! Of course, virulent anti Americanism is not just home grown (dysfunctional hate is rarely a confined and local phenomena). With great irony, the French and Germans feel compelled to lecture America on militarism, despite their own spectacular and bloody legacies. When you consider that US military intervention has been for the most part at the request of and as a result of European military and adventurism of all other varieties, their charges are laughable and accepted only as fact by the `useful idiots.'

Over the years, anti-Americanism has evolved from the minor religion of has-been Marxists, professional victims, radical Islamists and Third World tin pot dictators playing to the cameras, into what can best be described as new found religious status, elevated to unimaginable heights. Hugo Chavez, and other recently minted Latin American dictators-in-training are a few of the latest new apostles and saints of the left (Look for Castro to be canonized immediately upon death). Along with with Che Gueverra, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and every Middle Eastern dysfunctional despot, to name a few, are now the angels sitting on the shoulders of the leftists, all blessed and ordained by Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and the religious orders of MoveOn, TruthOut and CounterPunch.

Of course, every religion needs demons and sin. The objective of the new religion is to put the US into the worst possible light, defined as evil and whose every motive is suspect and deadly. Equally as important is ignore those things that the US does well, or redefine those things into evil. For example, the MSM had virtually nothing to say when US soldiers were brutally murdered along with Iraqi children, as the soldiers were passing out gifts. In fact, the story was ignored and almost immediately forgotten. The pretend Quran desecration story, went on for weeks.

America is the hell and Mr Bush is the devil in this new religion. Of course, there can be no heaven or God- anti American ideology of the left precludes the need for a deity (If you are an anti-American, Jew hating radical Islamist, you can impose your beliefs at will with the cheers and encouragement of the `we feel your pain, for the most part' crowd. FGM is just `cultural expression.' Don't you know that?).

What the anti American religion pretends to offer it's millions, if not billions, of adherents, is the same as any other faith-meaning. Of course it is really no more than an illusion, a mirage, to mitigate an otherwise useless existence (When anti-Americanism is the focus of your life, that life is indeed meaningless). A life predicated on hate and rage is not real meaning at all. A life predicated on positive actions and efforts is a life with real meaning.

To be a successful adherent to this new faith requires a lot of mental gymnastics and leaps of faith. The High Priests of the anti-American religion would have you believe is that no matter how hypocritical, backward, bigoted, ignorant, corrupt, evil, murderous or cruel you or the regime you pledge allegiance to, you are better than the disgusting Americans.

The new religion of the left, anti-Americanism, was founded for one reason and one reason only: to counter the incoming high tide of truth. Revolutions today aren't about marxist or socialist agendas. Today's revolutionaries cannot hide the truth any longer. Today's revolutions are about power. Today's revolutionaries need to upend free societies, capitalism and market economies. That is what people want, from Africa to South America to Eastern Europe because those are the ideas that have liberated and empowered billions of people. The war of ideas is over and the socialist agenda has been soundly defeated on every front. The high tides of freedoms and the aspirations of free men can no more held be back than the high tides of the oceans. Todays' leaders of `the revolution' will be forgotten. Their proved excesses in death, destruction and the curtailing of human rights have guaranteed their legacy- and the legacy of their supporters....

Are there liberal voices today, demanding freedom for oppressed peoples? Of course not. The despots and totalitarian regimes found all over the world are reflective of what passes for liberal ideology. The failed economies, failed education systems and entrenched failed human and civil rights disasters all scar and identify these nations....

The religion of the left is as bereft of ideas as it is of political integrity. The sloganeering of `No to Terror! No to War!` is as relevant as saying `No to Cancer! No to Radiation!` Terror cannot be addressed with conversation any more than cancer can be cured by focusing on crystals and eating root of rutabaga. Terror and cancer must be addressed head on and aggressively. To believe otherwise is to delude oneself. The simple fact is, we cannot all just get `along.'...

For today's leftist, it is about `the color of one's skin' and not the `content of character. It is about image and not substance. The deliberate obfuscation continues and the blurring of reality continues. As the left indicts America as self absorbed and drunk with materialistic inclinations, they ignore yet another truth. In fact, the most self absorbed and materialistic regimes are the leaders of the most tyrannical regimes in Africa and the Arab world, where greed, corruption, excess and deceit are the defining adjectives of those regimes. Those levels of greed, excess, corruption and self serving attitudes rival the most fanatical religious extremists in their tenacious expressions by citizens of all strata in those countries- and these are the leaders the left reveres. For the left the truth is as toxic as is the sun to a vampire.

More here

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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 Grinning Peanut: Morally vicious, totally dishonest

It was Jimmy Carter who wrote speeches for Yasir Arafat, so that he could make a better impression (see Douglas Brinkley's biography of Carter). It was Jimmy Carter who hectored and bullied the Israelis incessantly at Camp David, and caused them to finally sign that terrible (from the point of view of Israel) agreement. By that agreement, in three tranches over a very short period, the entire Sinai, with its oil and critical airfields and infrastructure all put in by the Israelis, was handed over to Egypt.

And in return nothing tangible at all was given -- mere promises to discourage hostility toward Israel and to encourage a "peaceful" attitude. The antisemitism of Egyptian television and its press, that is so reminiscent of Der Stuermer in its depiction of Jews lying in wait to snatch a child in order to use his blood for some ritual, has not exactly been an example of what the Israelis had in mind, and what, under the Camp David Accords, was the only thing that they had a right to expect. Even that was denied them.

Shall we go into Carter's credulous acceptance of the "Palestinian people"? What about Carter knowing -- the documents have now been released, and it is clear that the American government knew all along, but was hiding it in order to protect Arafat -- that Arafat himself signed the order for the seizure and killing of two American diplomats in Khartoum by Black September? How could Carter, knowing that, proceed not merely to protect Arafat by not making this information public, but increase his efforts to help Arafat improve his image and polish his sinister message? ...

He's a guide to nothing. And an obvious antisemite. Not only in his indifference and cruelty toward Israel, demonstrated on so many occasions. No, that antisemitism is also demonstrated in the sympathy he gave to a self-serving letter from the daughter of a Nazi concentration camp guard and murderer, who had been found out and was in the process of being expelled. Carter found the daughter's letter convincing, and wrote that it was worthy of sympathetic consideration, and then had it sent on to the O.I.S. How often, by the way, does any President ever read any of the mail sent to him? And of the few letters that he actually reads, how often does he feel compelled to write a handwritten note urging that the letter's contents be favorably considered? And how often does that letter's contents, about a Nazi murderer who is being expelled by the Office of Special Investigations after a thorough and meticulous study, become the object of such remarkable presidential solicitude?

More here



The Grinning Peanut is shameless: "Former President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that the storm of criticism he has faced for his recent book has not weakened his resolve for fair treatment of Israelis and Palestinians. "I have been called a liar," Carter said at a town hall meeting on the second day of a three-day symposium on his presidency at the University of Georgia. "I have been called an anti-Semite," he said. "I have been called a bigot. I have been called a plagiarist. I have been called a coward. Those kind of accusations, they concern me, but they don't detract from the fact the book is accurate and is needed." [Or is he just insane?] "Carter said he was pleased the book has stimulated discussion of an issue that has been "omitted from the public consciousness" for at least the last six years" [Israel and the Palis have been "omitted from the public consciousness"????. See here for how "accurate" the Peanut's book is]

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ELSEWHERE



So, is a volatile economy good for America?: "Economic populism is one of the more striking features of our politics today. Wal-Mart is excoriated by liberal intellectuals and labor unions. Sen. Jim Webb recently argued that in "the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future." CNN's Lou Dobbs characterizes this troubling future as a result of a "War on the Middle Class." ... A disquiet with our turbulent economic times is at the root of the political concern over economic security. And it has yielded an economic dialogue shrouded in pessimism and unease. But is it entirely warranted? To answer that, it helps to know if the overall economic turbulence is beneficial or not. The authors of the new book, "Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America?" are not ideological gun-slingers. Clair Brown, John Haltiwanger and Julia Lane have studied the overall impact of America's dynamic economy on jobs, workers and firms by examining in depth five major economic sectors -- semiconductors, software, retail food, trucking and financial services. They are careful not to overstate or inflate claims. And what they find, given the current climate of opinion about American economic change, is surprising: "The analysis of literally millions of worker histories and hundreds of career paths for workers and job ladders for firms leads to the reassuring finding that although turbulence imposes short run costs, in the long-run job change leads to improved jobs for most workers."

2006 U.S. warming strengthened the economy: "While we keep hearing from environmentalists about alleged negative effects from global warming, it seems that it can have positive effects. As is explained here,warmer weather might be the main reason for the stronger than expected U.S. economy. This is because warmer weather means that activities supressed by winter weather will take place after all. Moreover -and this is not mentioned in the story- the warmer weather is a key reason for why oil prices have fallen so much, as less heating is needed. Lower oil prices have been a key factor in boosting the purchasing power of U.S. consumers."

Electricity failing badly in black-run South Africa: "South Africa's major banks have signalled that they can no longer rely on parastatal provider Eskom for electricity after countrywide blackouts this week, and will be implementing measures to guarantee uninterrupted power. One of SA's largest retail banks, First National Bank (FNB), will spend R50m this year alone to buy backup generators and uninterrupted power supply (UPS) units to guard against the adverse effects of power outages similar to those that hit most of the country this week. The emergency power suppliers would be installed in all FNB branches across the country.... Branches in the Western Cape made of more than half of the recipients due to the province's intermittent power outages... Maroga said Eskom was experiencing unplanned outages of 4600MW due to technical generating plant problems..... An investigation by the energy regulator last year into the six major power outages in Cape Town found negligence, inadequate maintenance and the failure to adhere to licence conditions as the "root causes" of the rolling blackouts. "There was also a trend that indicated ill-discipline in certain areas and non-conformance to procedures"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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 Alien Sex Offenders

There are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States. This staggering statistic, rarely mentioned by the media, was revealed in a study by Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. "It is clear," she says, "that the U.S. public faces a dangerous threat from sex predators who cross the U.S. borders illegally." What's more, she adds, "Then they gradually commit worse crimes and are continually released back into society or deported. Those who were deported simply returned illegally again." If ever there was an argument for building a border fence, this is it. But other than two stories on WorldNetDaily, generated by an appearance on CNN, we haven't found any coverage of these extraordinary statistics.

Yet, as reported by Wes Vernon in a new AIM Report, the Bush Administration is embarked on a controversial and secretive plan to effectively erase U.S. borders and establish a North American Union to facilitate the flow of people and goods from Mexico into the U.S.

The study investigated 1,500 cases of "serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides, and child molestations committed by illegal immigrants" between January, 1999 and April, 2006. Of the 1,500 cases examined, illegal immigrant offenders were located in 36 states with the highest number of sexual offenders in California, Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, and Florida.

Schurman-Kauflin reports that according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records, sex offenders comprise two percent of illegals apprehended. Using the statistics by ICE and the conservative estimate of 12 million illegal immigrants in this country, Schurman-Kauflin estimates there are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders currently residing in the United States. Also using the two-percent figure, this means that 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sex offenders are illegally crossing the border into the U.S. every day.

Of the 1,500 sex offenders examined in this study, each sex offender averaged four victims for a total of approximately 6,000 victims over the 88-month period. Using these statistics, Schurman-Kauflin estimated that there were 960,000 sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants between January, 1999 and April, 2006. Particularly disturbing was that 22% of the victims of sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants had physical or mental handicaps, and all disabled victims were under the age of 18.

Of the 1,500 cases examined, 35% were child molestations, 24% were rapes, and 41% were sexual homicides and serial murders; 617 cases. Of the child molestations, 47% of the victims were Hispanic and 36% were Caucasian. In 82% of the cases, the victims were known to their attackers, and 18% were molested by strangers. Of those victims molested by strangers, Schurman-Kauflin reports that "the illegal immigrants typically gained access to the victims after having worked as a day laborer at or near the victims' homes. Victims ranged in age from one-year-old to 13-years-old, with the average age being six." Although nearly 30% of the victims of sex crimes by illegal immigrants were illegal immigrants themselves, 70% of the victims were Americans.

In the 358 rape cases investigated, the women were often brutally attacked, and over 70% of the time the rape victims were beaten by their attackers. In addition, in .007% of the cases, the victims were gang-raped by two or more illegal immigrant sex offenders. The study also found that although serial rapists only accounted for three percent of all illegal immigrant rapists, serial rapists averaged five victims, and two of serial rapists examined in this study were confirmed HIV positive. In six percent of the cases of sexual homicide and serial murder, the bodies of the victims were mutilated. Caucasians were the most likely victims of sexual homicide by illegal immigrants. The average age of all victims of sexual homicide by illegal immigrants was 42, but the victims varied in ages from 16 to 81.

Although the illegal immigrant sex offenders came from various countries around the world, the highest number came from Mexico; El Salvador was the country of origin for the next highest number of illegal immigrant sex offenders. In another testament to how poor security remains along the U.S.-Mexico border, the report found that nearly 63% of the illegal immigrant sex offenders had been deported at least once before prior to committing a sex crime in the U.S. The illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes here in the U.S. typically have committed more crimes than simply entering this country illegally. "Only two percent of the offenders in this study have no history of criminal behavior, beyond crossing the border illegally."

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Iran wavering?: "Iran's supreme leader is considering a change of policy on the country's nuclear programme in an effort to defuse growing tension with the West, according to senior sources in Tehran. Alarmed by mounting US pressure and United Nations sanctions, officials close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei favour the appointment of a more moderate team for international negotiations on the supervision of its nuclear facilities. The move would be a snub to the bellicose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose threats to destroy Israel have left Iran increasingly isolated and facing a serious economic downturn".

Special health care for Muslims? "Muslims should be provided with faith-based services - including male circumcision - on the NHS, says one healthcare expert. Professor Aziz Sheikh is also calling for women patients to see same-sex medics, better access to prayer facilities in hospitals and more information so Muslims can avoid alcohol and pig-derived drugs. Writing in the British Medical Journal, the University of Edinburgh professor also claims Muslims should be given health advice on attempting the Hajj pilgrimage-to Mecca which he insisted was a 'religious obligation and not a holiday'. The BMJ contrasts his opinions with those of Professor Aneez Esmail, of Manchester University, who says in another article that it would not be practical to meet everyone's demands for special services based on religious identity. He warned some faith groups might support practices which may be unacceptable to the majority - such as female circumcision and the refusal to accept blood transfusions."

MA: Job program for welfare recipients falls flat: "A central piece of the state's sweeping welfare reform, which sought to enlist Massachusetts companies to hire and train welfare recipients, has failed to attract employers and is virtually defunct, records show. The program began with fanfare a decade ago, with the expectation that thousands of private employers would be lured through wage subsidies and tax breaks to actively recruit and hire welfare recipients. But statistics show that business participation in the state's Full Employment Program has fallen dramatically from its peak of 500 employers in 1998 to only 32 businesses today, and the state has stopped enrolling new companies. Now, with the number of people on the welfare rolls up since 2001, state officials are pledging to find ways to revamp the program and address concerns of employers."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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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DEEDS SHOW UP THE "COMPASSION" OF THE LEFT

Their deeds have been doing that since the gory French and Russian revolutions

People who lay claim to the compassion of others merrily advocate pulling out of Iraq the better to let the Sunnis and Shi'ites butcher one another, as though that conflict was rooted in the people's desires and not propelled from the top down. What are they to us, after all? Just more surly brown people.

The same people who lay claim to having an abundance of compassion have no problem, it seems, with igniting a bloodbath. Because they can point their fingers and say it was someone else who started it. They wash their hands of it, and do not notice that they are washing them in blood.They have no problem saying they believe in human freedom but also cheerfully advocate closing off free trade. Even though there is ample evidence that free trade policies do more to lift the world's poor out of misery than do all the handouts and debt-relief measures they advance as solutions. Those ideas serve only to reward poor governance. But they wash their hands again, this time in the blood of the starving poor they don't really notice. They advocate endless negotiations with tyrannical regimes despite the fact that those negotiations in the past have never solved anything. And they wash their hands in yet more rivers of blood in the aftermath when the negotiated "solution" fails.

Because the realpolitik is easier than morality. Pushing the problems off to future generations is easier than dealing with the situations today. Pressing the next war onto other's sons and daughters or grandchildren is easier than dealing with hard facts. For these are not the people who volunteer to defend or fight for their country. These are the people who look to others to do that when their ideas and policies are found wanting. But they will screech and point fingers at their defenders when the time comes and ignore the other players in the war and their depredations. Indulging in feel good policies at home is easier - oh, so much easier - than making lasting change in the rest of the world. Scolding has always been easier than doing. Screeching has always been easier than actually solving problems.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Conservatives most compassionate: "It's tempting to say that Arthur Brooks, in his definitive new book on American charitable giving, has shown that there is nothing oxymoronic about the term "compassionate conservative." That, at least, is the conclusion that critics have drawn from Brooks's demonstration that conservatives, despite the myth that they lack compassion, give significantly more to charity than liberals do. But in fact Brooks has shown something even more significant: that "compassionate conservative" is not only overly defensive, but actually redundant. When it comes to charitable donations, volunteer activity, and even donating blood, it's liberals, not conservatives, who should feel compelled to prove their compassion.... So perhaps the times are, again, a-changing. We will only know that they have truly changed, however, when liberals stop using "compassion" as a synonym for expanded government, and when conservatives--the most charitable Americans--no longer feel forced to defend their virtue against those who lack it.

Obama 'was educated in madrassa': "Barack Obama was given a rude awakening to the cut-throat world of presidential politics yesterday after being accused of hiding four years in which he was educated at a madrassa when a teenager. The claim, made in the conservative Insight magazine, also revealed the Machiavellian scheming of political activists in a presidential race still nearly two years away. It was aimed at tarnishing Mr Obama’s image in the week he announced himself as a White House contender. But the article also claimed that the madrassa allegations came from aides to Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s main opponent for the Democratic nomination... the Insight allegations represent an exquisite double shot at the Democrats’ two leading White House contenders: it implies that Mr Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, is a closet Islamic extremist, and that Mrs Clinton is so rattled by his candidacy she is using underhand tactics to weaken him... Mr Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas; his father, a black Kenyan Muslim."

Blacks benefit from crackdown on illegal immigrants: "Stark evidence now exists that a crackdown on illegal immigration greatly benefits poor blacks. We have a teachable moment in the immigration debate, if only the movement to protect our borders has the wit to capitalize on it, and add a vital and potent constituency. It is one thing for theorists like me point out the basic economics, but it is quite another to have real people in a real town demonstrating that economic laws really work.... Today, a Wall Street Journal article describes the effects of a crackdown on illegal immigrants and how it affected one company in particular. "After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local [Stillmore, GA] chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75% of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town. But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant.... For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area's state-funded employment office -- a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider -- most of them black -- the plant hired about 200."

European Airbus in trouble: "Long delays to the A380 Superjumbo will send Airbus spiralling into the red this year, parent group EADS said today. The aerospace company said that compensation payments, writedowns and a string of "unforeseen" charges at the aircraft maker will be booked into the 2006 accounts. But shares in EADS fell 4 per cent in Paris, as figures confirmed that Airbus lost the annual battle for aircraft orders to fierce rival Boeing last year for the first time since 2000. Despite record deliveries, Airbus received only 790 net orders compared with 1,044 at Boeing."



Israeli military saves endangered species: "An idea inspired by the biblical tale of Noah's Ark to give elderly zoo animals a dignified but useful end to their lives, has led to an unlikely boost in numbers for several endangered species. They are contentedly grazing on the scrubland surrounding bases of the Israel Defence Force's northern command, keeping down vegetation where bushfires are a constant threat to ammunition and explosive stores. Eland, Africa's largest species of antelope, as well as the rare desert oryx and Atlas mountain goats are among the species to have benefited from the brainwave of Major Ofer Cohen, 20 years ago... Major Cohen persuaded his seniors to give a home to eight greying eland, which were about to be withdrawn from Tel Aviv zoo, and set them free within the heavily patrolled perimeter fences of a military exercise area. "Eland were just perfect - they are very selective eaters and we found that they eat exactly the right amount of vegetation," Major Cohen told The Times. Now the Eland are thriving, their numbers have risen to 400 and they have been joined by oryx and the goats from North Africa."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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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