THAT RIGHTWARD SHIFT

A Leftist tries to cope

There is a book review in the NYT of "Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys". For the reviewing task, the NYT picked Stephen Metcalf -- well-known for vitriol -- and so the review is predictably hostile and, as such, very lightweight. There is no attempt to engage what the writers say at all. He summarizes two of the essays in the book as: "Pig popsicle, bad; babies, good"!

The purpose of the review is not of course scholarship of any kind. It is meant simply to prop up threatened Leftist egos. And the threat that enrages the Left most of all is the way conservatives connect so easily with ordinary mainstream white Americans -- something most vividly seen in the popularity of conservative talkshow hosts such as Rush Limbaugh. So how come? asks our reviewer. Is there some way Leftists can piss on that?

Our reviewer has the answer: Conservatives connect with the workers because conservatives were social failures at college who were marginalized and never got the girl: By experiencing failure conservatives learnt to understand others who are failures in life. The elitism and stereotyping of that explanation is breathtaking, of course. The claim that the ordinary mainstream white American feels a failure shows how little our Leftist reviewer knows about the people concerned. He has obviously lived most of his life in a little like-minded Manhattan social bubble. He seems quite unaware that most ordinary mainstream white Americans are hard-working people who find great joy in their families, their friends, their church, their hobbies and even often in their work. They do NOT consider themselves failures! They look at the "success" they see in places like Hollywood and are thankful for their own more wholesome lives.

I suspect that it is a dim awareness of that happiness which really makes Leftist elitists like Metcalf hate ordinary mainstream white Americans. He has to project feelings of failure onto them to boost his own feelings of superiority. Accepting that they may well be happier than him would be just too intolerable -- though even that he would no doubt be able to dismiss temporarily with some contemptuous adjective such as "bovine".

But all good lies have an element of truth in them and that conservatives often feel alienated and marginalized in their college days is no doubt true. I certainly did. I arrived at university having already read most of the Greek canon, from the miracle of Homer to the bright clarity of Plato, and already knowing such arcane things as what a Pindaric ode was. I met very few others as culturally grounded as that. Babblers like Sartre were what passed for sophistication and culture among most people I met and there were not even many of those -- even though I attended a major university.

But the major reason why conservatives feel alienated at university is the lack of intellectual diversity there. American universities seem to think that a thing as superficial as skin color is the only important sort of diversity. The lockstep Leftism that characterizes most professors (at least in the Humanities) would alienate and marginalize any conservative, no matter how well-adjusted he might be.

Fortunately, however, academe is just one rather deviant bubble within the wider world and conservatives often do well outside it. I myself particularly enjoyed my time in the Army -- where I reached the rank of Sergeant. Bitter elitists like Metcalf no doubt have in their heads a comforting stereotype of the army as a bunch of rockheads but reality is much more complex than that. The army in fact particularly values and rewards the all-round man (e.g. General Petraeus) and in my army unit I was far from alone in my liking for Bach and Palestrina.

That the real reason for the conservative communicative advantage might lie in the fact they do not inhabit the Left's mental cloud-cuckoo land Metcalf cannot of course concede.

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Another corrupt Democrat: "What West Virginia lacks in jobs, population, and reasons to live there, it more than makes up for in receipt of loads of government money. So who can blame Rep. Alan Mollohan> for unethically steering millions of dollars to his “poverty-ridden district” (and, uh, to his own personal poverty-ridden bank account)? Turns out lots of people can blame him for this, including the FBI, and now the House Rules Committee. Mollohan rather hurriedly asked last night that all his earmarks be stripped from the Agriculture appropriations bill, because the Republicans were about to point out that he was still funneling money to the shady nonprofits he set up with former aides and business partners. Lawmakers requesting that their own earmarks be removed from bills is pretty much unprecedented and definitely hilarious.

100 Taliban believed killed in air strike: "The Afghan government has said it believed more than 100 Taliban may have been killed in an air strike in the south of the country and did not rule out civilian casualties. But General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a defence ministry spokesman, rejected some media reports that scores of civilians were killed or wounded in the US-led coalition strike Thursday in Helmand province. Gen Azimi said it was unclear how many people had been killed in the attack on a large gathering of Taliban. "But the enemy casualty is very high,'' he told a press conference in the capital, Kabul. "There might be more than 100 killed.'' Hospitals in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, and in the nearby city of Kandahar, said Friday that nearly 40 civilians had been brought in for treatment. But Gen Azimi questioned this figure, saying: "Even if there were civilians, there were very few of them. Their number would not reach 10.'' He added: "How can you distinguish when someone is a civilian or not? When he has his gun laid on the ground, he's a civilian but when he has it on his shoulder, he is not?'' The area had been under aerial surveillance for more than 24 hours before the strike, Azimi said, and images showed there were no women or children in the group".

Broadcast Networks Ignore Murder of Oakland Post Editor: "When a member of the journalism community is murdered, wouldn't you expect most news agencies to report it? Well, on Thursday morning, Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, was gunned down by an at that time unknown assailant. On Friday morning, Oakland police arrested seven people at Your Black Muslim Bakery in connection with Bailey's murder. Yet, despite all this, ABC, CBS, and NBC haven't said a word about this shooting, or the connection to Your Black Muslim Bakery. Why?"



Duggar family not stopping at 17: "An Arkansas couple had a baby daughter on Thursday - their 17th child and seventh girl - and the pair say they're still not ready to give it a rest. Jennifer Danielle was born at 10.01am at a hospital in Rogers, Arkansas, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar said in an interview. "We'd love to have more," Michelle said, referring to baby girls. "We love the ruffles and lace." Jennifer joins the fast-growing Duggar brood, who live in a 650sq m home in Tontitown. All the children - whose names start with the letter J - are taught at home. The oldest is 19 and the youngest, after Jennifer, is almost two. "We are just so grateful to God for another gift from him," said Mr Duggar, a former state representative. Mr Duggar, 44, is a real estate-agent who served in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1999 to 2002. He was a candidate for the US Senate in 2002 but lost the ballot. Mrs Duggar, 41, and her husband are politically conservative fundamentalist Christians. They reportedly live debt-free. [This latest birth will no doubt make the hideous Mark Morford hate the Duggars even more]

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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Some crime statistics

In the 19-month period - over a year and a half - from Jan. 1, 2006 until the morning you read this, misbehavior by our troops resulted in a total of 59 scheduled court-martials in Iraq - 21 of them general court-martials, which are reserved for the most-serious crimes (murder, rape, robbery, assault, arson and so forth). The other 38 were special court-martials, invoked for lesser offenses, such as disciplinary infractions or petty theft.

OK: 59 trials in 19 months, among an average troop population of almost 140,000. Compare that to civilian crime statistics back home, and it's clear that any of us would welcome the chance to live among such model citizens - even though our troops are overwhelmingly within the age window where criminal behavior is most frequent.

Start with a city that Money magazine rated as "one of the 10 best places to live" in the United States: Ann Arbor, Mich. Home to a great university, the town has a population of about 113,300 - about 20,000 lower than our pre-surge troop numbers in Iraq.

In 2005 (the last year for which statistics are available), that ideal place to live recorded 1,476 crimes that, if committed by a soldier, would have required a general court-martial - plus a further 2,282 thefts and similar infractions that, depending on the details, would have been handled by either a general or a special court-martial.

Twelve months in Ann Arbor, 3,758 court-martial-equivalent trials. If all the crimes had been taken to court, which one doubts. Nineteen months in Iraq, under the complex stresses of combat? 59 court-martials. Guess that bastion of ethical liberalism in Michigan needs to go through basic training.

But let's give peace a chance: The most dogmatically left-wing city in the United States is undoubtedly (the People's Republic of) Santa Cruz, Calif. With a population of some 55,000 - about a third of our current troop numbers in Iraq - Santa Cruz, where the Age of Aquarius reigns, had 503 violent crimes in 2004 (the latest statistics available) and a total of 3,665 crimes that would qualify for court-martials.

Extrapolate those numbers to match our current troop strength, and you'd have a requirement for more than 10,000 court-martial equivalents. If Santa Cruz were as serious about punishing its criminals as our military is.

Source

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Your government will protect you: "The interstate highway bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River had been rated "structurally deficient" for 17 years and was regularly inspected by state engineers, who spotted corroded bearings and stress fractures but remained confident that the bridge was safe, authorities said Thursday."



Such a pretty hypocrite: "John Edwards, who yesterday demanded Democratic candidates return any campaign donations from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., himself earned at least $800,000 for a book published by one of the media mogul's companies.... The campaign didn't respond to a question from The Post about whether it was hypocritical for Edwards to take money from News Corp. while calling for other candidates not to"

U.S. Should Threaten Islamic Holy Sites: "Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo says the best way he can think of to deter a nuclear terrorist attack on the U.S. is to threaten to retaliate by bombing Islamic holy sites. The Colorado congressman on Tuesday told about 30 people at a town hall meeting in Osceola, Iowa, that he believes such a terrorist attack could be imminent and that the U.S. needs to hurry up and think of a way to stop it. "If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina," Tancredo said at the Family Table restaurant. "Because that's the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they otherwise might do." Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia, are Islam's holiest cities. All able-bodied Muslims are required to make a pilgrimage there at least once in their lives".

Nice! Precision-guided munitions kill top al Qaeda leader: "The top target for al Qaeda in Iraq south of Baghdad was killed July 14 in Arab Jabour by precision-guided munitions, the Excalibur. Shortly after 12 p.m., 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, received a call that Abu Jurah and 14 anti-Iraqi forces were meeting at a house in Arab Jabour. Abu Jurah was an AQI cell leader and was responsible for improvised explosive devices, vehicle-borne IED and indirect fire attacks on Coalition Forces in Arab Jabour. At approximately 1:12 p.m., the house was positively identified allowing 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery Regiment to fire two Excalibur rounds destroying the meeting house. An unmanned aerial vehicle observed persons leaving the house, loading injured individuals into a sedan and fleeing the scene. An AH-64 Apache helicopter engaged the sedan destroying it. Three people were observed running from the meeting house to a nearby house. A U.S. Air Force F16 Fighting Falcon dropped two 500-pound GPS-guided bombs on the second house."

No outrage from the Left? "Egyptian soldiers shot and beat to death four Sudanese refugees who were trying to illegally cross the border into Israel, Israel's Channel 10 television reported Thursday. A soldier from an Israeli military unit near the border said the Egyptian border police fired many rounds of bullets at the refugees, killing two and injuring one. The fourth refugee tried to climb the border fence. The Israeli soldiers, in what they described as a "tug-of-war," said they tried to pull him over to their side, but the Egyptians overpowered them and captured him. The shocked and audibly shaken soldier said he and others from his unit heard screams of agony as they helplessly watched the Egyptian soldiers then beat the two refugees to death" [Now if Israelis had done it ....]

Doin' the Raghead Rag: "By now just about everyone has heard about "Jihad: The Musical", the hilarious stage send-up of Islamic terrorists being performed this month in Scotland. If you haven't, go watch this video at LGF; it made me laugh until the tears ran down my cheeks. And now - surprise, surprise! - members of a certain religious group have taken offense. A satirical musical about Islamist terrorism and Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has sparked protests in Britain, with critics blasting it as tasteless. "Jihad: The Musical", which features songs including "I wanna be like Osama" and is described as "a madcap gallop through the wacky world of international terrorism," is on at the Edinburgh Fringe festival this month.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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More slippery Leftist talk about race

The conclusion of a recent article by Matthew Syed in "The Times" is as follows: "The conclusion is unavoidable: those who invoke race as an explanation of real and perceived differences between humans have an agenda that is other than scientific"

How does he arrive at that conclusion? By pointing out, quite correctly, that there are well-known differences WITHIN races. West Africans are better at sprinting and East Africans are better at long-distance running, for instance. So therefore, he thinks, in a breathtaking overgeneralization, all talk of race is misleading.

That is an old quibble, however. While it is true that statements such as "Blacks make the best sprinters" are much less precise than they could be, they are nonetheless true statements -- as are other generalizations about race -- such as: "African-Americans commit violent crimes about 9 times as often as white Americans". Such statements are simple statements of fact and saying that anyone who utters such statements "has an agenda that is other than scientific" is just indulging in the usual fact-ignoring Leftist abuse.

Insofar as I can find any logic at all in Syed's pontification, I think he may be pointing out that what is true of any group is not necessarily true of all members in that group. I know of no-one who would dispute that, however, so Syed's attack is an attack on a straw man.

Syed also seems unaware that the usual racial classifications are well-reflected in the DNA of the people concerned. See e.g. here and here.

From his surname, I suspect that Syed is a Muslim. So let me give him another generalization to chew on: "The statements of prominent Muslims are not notable for their reliance on logic". That statement is of course a generalization and, as such, does not preclude some prominent Muslims from being very logical -- but Syed is clearly not one of those.

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Leftist rag TNR (Truth Not Required) has now admitted that their Scott Thomas Beauchamp was not even In Iraq when his alleged tales of horror occurred. See here and here and here. Gateway Pundit thinks he has just qualified as the next Senator from Massachusetts.

Britain's dangerous Keystone Cops: "Two years have elapsed since the de Menezes shooting. Since then the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has conducted two inquiries -- at a combined cost of 600,000 pounds -- and concluded that only one man can be held to account. None of the firearms officers who pulled the trigger has been charged with any offence. The surveillance officers who changed the police log to try to cover up their mistakes have not been reprimanded. The operational commanders who gave the order to shoot have, so far, not faced any disciplinary action. But the IPCC says that Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, head of Special Operations at Scotland Yard, should be disciplined. Mr Hayman must be held to account for failing to tell Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner, that there was mounting evidence that police had shot an innocent man. He is also accused of deliberately misleading the public by providing contradictory accounts of what he knew in press briefings."

Do Dems finally understand the collateral effects of taxing the "rich"? : "Back in the hot summer of 1990, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell proudly engineered the infamous "luxury tax," a nasty little tithe on everything from furs to jewelry to yachts. Democrats were proud: Not only were they throwing new dollars at the Treasury, they'd done it by socking it to the rich. The wealthy, in the words of then-House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, would finally pay "their fair share." Within a year, Mr. Mitchell was back in the Senate passionately demanding an end to the same dreaded luxury tax. The levy had devastated his home state of Maine's boat-building business, throwing yard workers, managers and salesmen out of jobs. The luxury tax was repealed by 1993, though by the look of today's tax debate, its lessons haven't been forgotten. Top Democrats are working to implement a new class-warfare tax strategy, only this time they're getting pushback from those in their party who fear the economic consequences"

Sarkozy to vacation in the USA: "France's President Nicolas Sarkozy would not have to stray far from the Champs-Elys‚es to find a summer holiday spot most Americans can only dream of. A castle in the Loire valley. A country estate in Provence. A villa on the French Riviera. But non. Sarkozy, his country's celebrated new leader, is planning to get some rest and relaxation on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. Wolfeboro -- a popular vacation destination for countless Bostonians -- is buzzing with excitement about his visit.... Wolfeboro, which bills itself as the oldest summer resort in America, takes great pride in its natural beauty and low-key sensibility, and over the years the town has drawn rich and famous people from all over the world -- including Mitt Romney, who owns a summer home a few minutes by boat or car from Appe's mansion. Adam Gopnik, who has written extensively about French politics and culture for The New Yorker and in his own books, said yesterday it would be "a huge mistake" to think Sarkozy idealizes America, but he said the new French president appears to want to "drain the drama" from relations between the two countries. Asked about the prospect of Sarkozy's visit, Gopnik said he did not know whether Sarkozy had any political purpose in his trip, but if he did, it might be to make it seem "completely normal and unfreighted that a French president could vacation in America."

The empty vessel runs at the mouth and then realizes it: "Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday he would not use nuclear weapons in any circumstance. "I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance," Obama said, with a pause, "involving civilians." Then he quickly added, "Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."

Fighting drones now in Iraq : "Danger Room reports that modified Swords bomb-disposal robots with M249 machine guns mounted on them are now in Iraq. In development the units were somewhat sluggish in responding to commands which made them dangerous for use. The problems have apparently been solved."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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Leftists worldwide are moving Right -- except in America

The excerpt below comments on European developments but it perhaps even more so in Australia -- where the Leftist leader (Rudd) sounds very conservative indeed on most issues. He even seems to be a genuine Christian

In Europe, reforms are in vogue. Though many special interests are fiercely resisting change, it is striking to see just how many European Social Democrats have come to recognize the need for structural reforms to welfare states.

Witness Gerhard Schroeder, the center-left former chancellor of Germany: in 2003, he called for a "change of mentality" in his own party, the SPD, as well as in German society as a whole. "Much will have to be changed to keep our welfare and social security at least at its current level," he added, as he argued in favor of reforms that would trim entitlements, and cut taxes. The chairman of the SPD, Franz Muentefering, supported Mr. Schroeder by saying that "we believe that things must be rearranged and restarted in Germany in this decade." Not long thereafter, Mr., Schroeder took the lead in making German labor laws more flexible.

In France, Socialist former prime minister Lionel Jospin shocked the left several years ago: When asked on TV what he was going to do to help laid-off factory workers beyond the public assistance already on the books, he said that "the state cannot do everything." It was not so much the truth of the statement that came as a shock; it was that a leader of the French left would say it so candidly. Throughout his tenure, Mr. Jospin privatized numerous state-owned companies, including Air France, even as he criticized capitalism.

Labour former British prime minister Tony Blair became famous for his "Third Way" philosophy, which he said moved "beyond an old left preoccupied by state control, high taxation and producer interests."

And in Italy, on July 20, center-left prime minister Romano Prodi announced a deal raising the retirement age to 61 from 57. Though the deal was a somewhat watered-down version of the pension reform plan originally passed by his center-right predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, it shows that the Italian left is aware that structural reforms are urgently needed.

Source

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Rushbo liked the above rendition of American "liberal" thinking.

There's a post here showing the complete empty-headedness of Andrew Sullivan.

Leftist Boris Reznick wakes up to Cesar Chavez: "Like so many other Americans, I cheered Hugo Chavez' early work to restore dignity to the people of Venezuela. I chuckled when I listened to Chavez express many of the same opinions of president Bush as many Americans have. I was deeply engaged when Mr. Chavez talked about education and health improvements and put the resources into programs to do so.... Today, to see the end of criticism, the end of the legislative progress, in fact the entire process of democratic give and take makes me feel like a fool for believing Hugo Chavez would be any different than any other leader. Hugo Chavez may have been a socialist democrat at one time ... but he has become a nothing more than the egocentric dictator Aleksander Boyd warned me about. God help the people of Venezuela."

The world's least favourite airline: "British Airways has been named as the worst performing of all Europe's major airlines, with its passengers more likely to face delays than those on any other airline. Between April and June, 35.7 per cent of short or medium haul flights did not arrive on time and 32.7 per cent were delayed on departure, according to a report by the Association of European Airlines (AEA). The airline's performance on long haul flights was even worse with 44 per cent of these arriving late and 36.6 per cent departing later than scheduled. The figures come after BA was fined almost 270 million pounds ($646m) for price fixing after colluding over fuel surcharges with Virgin Atlantic. AEA said that for every 1000 passengers travelling in the three months between April and June, an average of 28 bags were delayed on BA flights compared with around three bags for every 1000 Air Malta travellers"

Defeatism defeated?: "If victory in Iraq was oversold at the outset, there are now signs that defeat is likewise being oversold today. One of the earliest signs of this was that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he could not wait for General David Petraeus' September report on conditions in Iraq but tried to get an immediate Congressional mandate to pull the troops out. Having waited for years, why could he not wait until September for the report by the general who is actually on the ground in Iraq every day? Why was it necessary for politicians in Washington to declare the troop surge a failure from 8,000 miles away? The most obvious answer is that Senator Reid feared that the surge would turn out not to be a failure -- and the Democrats had bet everything, including their chances in the 2008 elections, on an American defeat in Iraq. Senator Reid had to pre-empt defeat before General Petraeus could report progress. The Majority Leader's failure to get the Senate to do that suggests that not enough others were convinced that declaring failure now was the right political strategy."

The empty vessel now wants to invade Pakistan!: "Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama issued a pointed warning Wednesday to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf by saying, as president, he would be prepared to order U.S. troops into that country unilaterally if it failed to act on its own against Islamic extremists. In his most comprehensive statement on terrorism, the Illinois senator said the Iraq war has left the U.S. less safe than it was before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and said he would seek to withdraw U.S. troops as president and shift the country's military focus to threats in Afghanistan and Pakistan".

Don't let them grind you down: "An Italian politician whose party represents Christian values has been embroiled in a scandal involving two prostitutes, a hotel room, and a large amount of cocaine. Cosimo Mele, 50, a Christian Democrat UDC MP, was caught out when he had to call an ambulance to the hotel in Rome after one of the girls suffered breathing problems.... Mr. Mele said, "I did nothing other than go to dinner with a friend who introduced me to this girl. Since it was late, she came to bed with me. How many politicians go to bed with young girls?" He said he had nothing to do with the other girl who had "taken drugs or something else." She had felt ill, and he had called reception. He added: "So politicians in the UDC do not make love? Of course, I recognize Christian values. But what has that got to do with going with a prostitute? It is a personal matter. This affair has nothing to do with family values. I cannot be branded a bad father and a bad husband simply because after five or six days away from home, an occasion presented itself."" [Having a mistress as well as a wife has a long history of acceptance in Italy]

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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Interesting war review

In a wider sense, the war is as most wars: an evolution from blunders to wisdom, the side that makes the fewest and learns from them the most eventually winning. Al Qaeda and the insurgents in 2004-6 developed the means, both tactical and strategic, to thwart the reconstruction, but we, not they, have since learned the more and evolved.

As in the Civil War, WWI, and WWII, the present American military - which has committed far less mistakes than past American forces - has shifted tactics, redefined strategy, and found the right field commanders. We forget that the U.S. Army and Marines, far from being broken, now have the most experienced and wizened officers in the world. Like Summer 1864, Summer 1918, and in the Pacific 1944-5, the key is the support of a weary public for an ever improving military that must nevertheless endure a final storm before breaking the enemy.

The irony is that should President Bush endure the hysteria and furor and prove able to give the gifted Gen. Petraeus the necessary time - and I think he will - his presidency could still turn out to be Trumanesque, once we digest the changes in Europe, the progress on North Korea, the end of both the Taliban and Saddam, and the prevention of another 9/11 attack. How odd that all the insider advice to triangulate - big spending, new programs, uninspired appointments, liberal immigration reform - have nearly wrecked the administration, and what were once considered its liabilities - foreign policy, the war on terror and Iraq - may still save it.

Source. Note also below:

Honest reporting at last: "On Monday this week Rush Limbaugh talked about all the members of the mainstream media who are now coming to the conclusion that the surge is working. I think Burns and his fellow Times correspondent Michael Gordon have done more than anyone to change those attitudes and they did not do any of it as partisans. It is especially ironic that these two men of integrity work for the paper that has done its worse to insure defeat." [See also here]

The Left are afraid of success in Iraq: "As I predicted earlier in the day, the left wing blogosphere has turned on the Brookings scholars who went to Iraq and noted the results of the surge. Glenn Greenwald, a.k.a. “The Lion of Jalalabad”, penned a characteristically windy attempt at character assassination. Thankfully, Matthew Yglesias showed more brevity. Characteristically, both pieces didn’t take issue with what Brookings-men Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon reported seeing in Iraq but instead attacked them personally. If you’ve studied the moonbats in their native habitats as I have the past several years, this comes as no surprise. After all, what is the chickenhawk meme but an attempt to win an argument by attacking your opponent rather than engaging his ideas? Has anyone come back from Iraq recently and not seen progress? Wouldn’t an effective rebuttal of O’Hanlon’s and Pollack’s article sought out such friendly sources?

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ELSEWHERE



Graphic above courtesy of Englishman's View

Gateway Pundit has some excellent photos of scenes in Jerusalem.

The publisher of the WSJ offers assurances that standards will not decline now that it is owned and run by Rupert Murdoch. The top-quality "Times" of London has thrived under many years of Murdoch ownership so one would have to be a bit paranoid to expect otherwise. I read "The Times" every day but I read no American publication regularly. As with Murdoch's Fox News, "The Times" gives conservative viewpoints a fair run -- a great contrast with its New York namesake.

The New York Times and Partisan Book Reviewers: "If one were to turn to The New York Times Sunday Book Review section today, the front page features a long indictment of the Bush Administration and the way it is conducting the War on Terror by Samantha Power. It is a curious article because there is no single book "reviewed" in the piece but rather it offers a tour d'horizon of books on the conflict that Power thinks we should all be reading. Power is identified as "the Anna Lindh professor of the practice of global leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard." That's fine as far as it goes. But what the Times doesn't mention is a travesty. Samantha Power served last year as an adviser for the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama .Apparently, she still serves in some capacity as an adviser on his foreign policy team The fact that the New York Times chose her to deliver a harsh attack on the Bush Administration was a journalistic failing and reveals an agenda at work at the paper that has nothing to do with the journalism. The fact that the Times failed to disclose this campaign tie is a sin of omission"

Incredible British bungling: "Known sex offenders are living unchecked in the community because there are too many of them to be monitored regularly, according to research commissioned by the Home Office. The rapidly growing number of people registered as violent criminals or sex attackers is threatening to overwhelm the police, probation officers and social workers who have to keep them under supervision"

Eliot Spizer in the gun at last: "The fisherman is Andrew Cuomo, Spitzer's successor as New York's attorney general. In a state long known for remorseless Machiavellians willing to do whatever is necessary to get to the top, Cuomo may be the only man with more intense ambitions than Spitzer. The son of a previous New York governor, Cuomo recently made public his evidence that Spitzer used state employees to generate a false charge against state senate majority leader Joe Bruno, a Republican, with whom Spitzer was clashing. Cuomo clearly hopes to incite a feeding frenzy against Spitzer by those other well-known man-eaters, the Empire State's news media."

Respect must be earned: "Why, then, should we be commanded to "respect" those who insist that they alone know something that is both unknowable and unfalsifiable? Something, furthermore, that can turn in an instant into a license for murder and rape? As one who has occasionally challenged Islamic propaganda in public and been told that I have thereby "insulted 1.5 billion Muslims," I can say what I suspect-which is that there is an unmistakable note of menace behind that claim. No, I do not think for a moment that Mohammed took a "night journey" to Jerusalem on a winged horse. And I do not care if 10 billion people intone the contrary. Nor should I have to. But the plain fact is that the believable threat of violence undergirds the Muslim demand for "respect.""

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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A failed study of academic ideology

A study published late last year by sociologists John F. Zipp and Rudy Fenwick under the heading "Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony? The Political Orientations and Educational Values of Professors" has got a fair bit of attention. It is a rather desperate attempt to deny the obvious -- that American university and college teachers are overwhelmingly Leftist.

They concede that party identification runs 7 to 1 in favour of Democrats among professors but argue that this does not adequately reflect ideology. Conservatives would certainly agree with that -- seeing professors as much more extreme Leftists than most Democrat voters are. That is the WRONG conclusion, however, according to the zippy one. He and his friend in fact argue that a lot of those academic Democrats are really centrists!

The study has been thoroughly shot down on a number of grounds by others (e.g. here and here) but I thought I should have a look at it nonetheless. I spent 20 years or so trying to measure people's political attitudes as precisely as possible and have over 100 academic journal articles in print reporting on the results of that. So the research concerned really is in my line of country. I thought I might be able to see defects that others have missed.

And I sure did! The attitude surveys from which they derived their data had only a 50% response rate! For many purposes that may not matter. That is actually a fairly good response rate compared to attitude surveys and opinion polls in general. But there is ONE occasion where a low response rate does matter a great deal. And that is the sort of occasion we have in the present case: Where one's sample includes a large number of political extremists. I tried for many years to get Communists and Nazis to complete my attitude surveys. I used every trick in the book to persuade them to do the task -- including getting recommendations of the task from their own authorities. But the comrades just would NOT do the task. They obviously felt -- probably rightly --that the results could be used to "get at" them in some way. And, as we all know, academe is now the only place where Marxism still has a strong following. I taught in a Sociology Department at a major university myself for many years so I can vouch for the popularity of Marx in such places. And what is true of Marxists as far as paranoia is concerned is probably also true of the fruitier versions of Leftism that also infest academe.

So Zipp and friend based their research on data from which the real Leftists were self-excluded! No wonder they found that the Leftists they did have were rather moderate! Rather hilarious, really.

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An American liberal's view of American liberalism

The sad truth is that if the FBI really is following anyone on the American left, it is engaging in a huge waste of time and personnel. No matter what it claims for a self-image, in reality it's the saddest collection of cowering, ineffectual ninnies ever assembled under one banner on God's green earth. And its ugly little secret is that it really doesn't mind being in the position it's in - politically irrelevant and permanently relegated to the sidelines, tucked into its cozy little cottage industry of polysyllabic, ivory tower criticism. When you get right down to it, the American left is basically just a noisy Upper West side cocktail party for the college-graduate class. And we all know it. The question is, when will we finally admit it?

Here's the real problem with American liberalism: there is no such thing, not really. What we call American liberalism is really a kind of genetic mutant, a Frankenstein's monster of incongruous parts - a fat, affluent, overeducated New York/Washington head crudely screwed onto the withering corpse of the vanishing middle-American manufacturing class. These days the Roosevelt stratum of rich East Coasters are still liberals, but the industrial middle class that the New Deal helped create is almost all gone. In 1965, manufacturing jobs still made up 53 percent of the US economy; that number was down to nine percent in 2004, and no one has stepped up to talk to the 30 million working poor who struggle to get by on low-wage, part-time jobs.

Thus, the people who are the public voice of American liberalism rarely have any real connection to the ordinary working people whose interests they putatively champion. They tend instead to be well-off, college-educated yuppies from California or the East Coast, and hard as they try to worry about food stamps or veterans' rights or securing federal assistance for heating oil bills, they invariably gravitate instead to things that actually matter to them - like the slick Al Gore documentary on global warming, or the "All Things Considered" interview on NPR with the British author of Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. They haven't yet come up with something to replace the synergy of patrician and middle-class interests that the New Deal represented.

More here

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For those who don't know much history, Israel is above being compared with Czechoslovakia before WWII. Thanks in part to the appeasement policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Czechoslovakia was eventually overrun by Hitler

Some polls are not fit to print: "Janet Elder of the "All The News" paper has a laugh-out-loud story about what happens when the Times doesn't like a poll result - they bury it: "The war in Iraq is the single most important continuing news issue right now. Public opinion about the war is a critical part of that story. That's why when a finding about the war in a New York Times poll could not be easily explained, the paper went back and did another poll on the very same subject. It turns out the poll had gotten it right. Support for the initial invasion of Iraq, as measured by a question The New York Times/CBS News Poll has asked since December 2003, increased modestly compared with two months ago."

This is incomprehensible to the Left: "In a time of war, when Americans have soured on the grinding conflict in Iraq, and the rosters of the dead lengthen daily, young men and women continue to join the military. Although the Army missed its recruiting goals in May and June, all four services exceeded their goals last year. More than 80,000 recruits joined the Army, 36,000 the Navy and 30,000 the Air Force. An additional 32,000 joined the Marine Corps. In June, 4,113 Marine recruits signed up, exceeding the monthly goal of 3,742."

British airport screening adds inconvenience but no security: "Britain's airport screening policies inconvenience passengers without boosting security according to the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). "Harmonised security measures across borders are more important than ever," IATA General Director Giovanni Bisignani said in a ciritical statement on first half civil aviation statistics. He said "governments must focus much more on further harmonisation to ensure that effective security is also convenient for passengers." "A particular focus will be the UK, where unique screening policies inconvenience passengers with no improvement in security. "The only beneficiary is the airport operator - BAA - that continues to deliver embarrassingly low service levels by failing to invest in appropriate equipment and staff to meet demand. This must stop."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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HILLARY'S YOUTHFUL LETTERS

The NYT has some (no doubt carefully selected) excerpts from letters written by Hillary during her college years. The excerpts below give some idea of the pathologies that drive her: Inauthenticity, misanthropy and narcissism

"Since Xmas vacation, I've gone through three and a half metamorphoses and am beginning to feel as though there is a smorgasbord of personalities spread before me," Ms. Rodham wrote to Mr. Peavoy in April 1967. "So far, I've used alienated academic, involved pseudo-hippie, educational and social reformer and one-half of withdrawn simplicity." ....

"Can you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?" Ms. Rodham wrote in an April 1967 letter....

Her letters at times betray a kind of innocent narcissism over "my lost youth," as she described it in a letter shortly after her 19th birthday. She wrote of being a little girl and believing that she was the only person in the universe. She had a sense that if she turned around quickly, "everyone else would disappear. "I'd play out in the patch of sunlight that broke the density of the elms in front of our house and pretend there were heavenly movie cameras watching my every move," she says. She yearns for all the excitement and discoveries of life without losing "the little girl in the sunlight."

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Hillary's Slithering from Legal Jeopardy Nearing an End? "The ability of Hillary Clinton to slither away from legal scrutiny is uncanny. Consider Travelgate, Whitewater, and the Barrett Report, all examples of alleged crimes and coverups that would have toppled a Republican administration. Now a civil case brought by Clinton fundraiser Peter Paul threatens to dismantle's Hillary's hard-won reputation for evading legal jeopardy. According to insiders, on Sept. 7, 2007 the appellate court will rule whether Hillary will be included as a defendant in the case. No matter the outcome, though, she will be forced to testify under oath regarding the fundraising for her 2000 Senate campaign."

US/UK relationship continues: "The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, would not unveil plans for an early withdrawal of British troops from Iraq in talks with the US President, George Bush, Mr Brown's spokesman said yesterday. The two leaders were scheduled to meet yesterday for the first time since Mr Brown succeeded Tony Blair last month. Speculation has been rife in British media that Mr Brown might distance himself from Mr Blair's Iraq policy.... The White House and Downing Street are stressing that little has been disturbed in the "special relationship" between Britain and the US since the elevation of Mr Brown. Although friction may lie ahead on issues such as Iran's nuclear program, US officials appear confident there will be no sudden departures from Mr Brown on the key issues - especially on keeping Britain's 5500 troops in Iraq. Officials in both governments said this week's summit would focus on building a rapport between the leaders, aided by the bucolic setting of Camp David, the mountain retreat where Mr Bush entertains his closest foreign allies. "This will mainly be a reassurance thing," said the British author and political analyst Peter Riddell. "They want to knock down any suggestion that there is distance between them. Yes, they are different people, but they are fundamentally on the same wavelength."

Why Are We Reading Their Names?: "I don't get this, Mark Steyn points to the seemingly ridiculous cases against Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13 and their names and faces are being splashed all over the news. It's bad enough that, at least from what I've read, it appears they are being railroaded on some trumped-up charges by the PC Police, but we already know the lengths media goes to protect the identities of under-aged gang members and even murderers. Suddenly these two young boys are fair game? Messrs Mashburn and Cornelison are pupils at Patton Middle School. They were arrested in February after being observed in the vestibule, swatting girls on the butt. Butt-swatting had apparently become a form of greeting at the school - like "a handshake we do," as one female student put it. On "Slap Butt Fridays," boys and girls would hail each other with a cheery application of manual friction to the posterior, akin to a Masonic greeting. The boys spent five days in a juvenile detention facility and were charged with several counts of felony sex abuse for what they and their parents said was merely inappropriate but not criminal behavior."

Clinton CIA Wouldn't Give Torture Assurance : "A new report has just been released that says Britain offered to give intelligence to the CIA on the whereabouts of bin Laden, with one catch: we had to promise not to torture him. The CIA refused to give that guarantee, and so bin Laden remains free to strike again. Now I can hear all you libs out there saying your usual nonsense, that Bush caused this, blah, blah, blah. See here's the problem with that. This was long before abu Ghraib, Gitmo, or even the war on terror. Yeah, this happened on Bubba Clinton's watch."

Musharraf risks civil war as he invades the Al-Qaeda badlands: "In North Waziristan, the wild border land that America hopes will be Osama Bin Laden's graveyard, the normally busy roads are almost deserted and the fear is pervasive. Army helicopters sweep the valleys at night hunting for Al-Qaeda militants as troops and gunmen exchange artillery and rocket fire. America and Britain regard this usually autonomous tribal area - where Bin Laden is long believed to have been hiding - as the logistics centre of Islamic terrorist attacks around the world. President Pervez Musharraf sees it as the centre of a campaign to "Talibanise" Pakistan. Spurred on by Washington, he has abandoned a truce with Waziristan's Islamist guerrillas and ordered his army to root them out"

Leftist voting fraudsters didn't mean it! "King and Pierce County prosecutors filed felony charges today against seven people who allegedly committed the biggest voter-registration fraud in state history. The defendants, who were paid employees and supervisors of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, concocted the scheme as an easy way to get paid, not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections, King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg said. "This was an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls of King County," Satterberg said."

Sudan blames Darfur genocide on Jews : "Sudan's defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused "24 Jewish organizations" of "fueling the conflict in Darfur" last week in an interview with a Saudi newspaper. Hussein was interviewed during an official state-visit to the Saudi kingdom last week. A journalist from Saudi Arabia's Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: "Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in Darfur and that there is no conflict there?" "The Darfur issue is being fuelled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust in their campaigning," the Sudanese defense minister replied."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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SOME RECENT POSTINGS ON ICJS

Why I am not joining the party
The case for mistrusting Muslims
Letter to Mark Scott
Islamophobia idiocy
Radical Islam's Goal is Global Conquest
Speech to Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce by Alexander Downer

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ELSEWHERE

Outrage of the Week: Arrested for Desecrating a Koran: "This is completely insane. It's now officially a mindcrime in the United States to violate Islamic law. At Pace University, a man has been arrested and will face "hate crime" charges for throwing a Koran into a toilet, after the university caved in to demands from Muslim students" [If he stole the Korans he should be prosecuted for theft -- not hate crime]

People not buying the media whitewash of Muslims: "A new Newsweek Poll on American attitudes toward Muslims and Islam has found that 46 percent of Americans believe that the United States is taking in too many Muslim immigrants. 32 percent think that Muslims in America are less loyal to the United States than they are to Islam. 28 percent believe that the Qur'an condones violence, and 41 percent hold that Islamic culture "glorifies suicide." 54 percent are either "somewhat worried" or "very worried" about Islamic jihadists in this country, and 52 percent support FBI surveillance of mosques, with the same percentage rejecting the claim of American Muslim advocacy groups that Muslims are being singled out by investigators and police. What are we to make of these figures? Do they mean that American Muslim advocacy groups have to do more to combat "Islamophobia"? That is the likely response: watch now for the follow-up stories about "Islamophobia," in which the onus for all the attitudes displayed in this poll is placed firmly and solely upon non-Muslim Americans, as if Muslims were an entirely innocent, passive group that was doing nothing whatsoever to make anyone suspicious or angry at all.

A dangerous legacy in time of war: "Democrats have destroyed the trust of the American people in government, not just the Bush administration. As I speak, New Yorkers are refusing to accept assurances that the air is safe in the wake of a steam pipe explosion. The assumption is that the city government is lying--why? Because Hillary Clinton, in an effort to slime the Bush administration, told New Yorkers that "she knew how it worked in the White House", which meant of course that she knew how it worked in the Clinton White house. Democrat have won a Pyrrhic victory--even as the Bush administration has a 30% approval rating, Congress "enjoys" a 14% rating. Nobody wins in a situation like this, except perhaps the nation's enemies"

The CIA's war against the war : "Rowan Scarborough's superb new book Sabotage lays out a boatload of evidence documenting years of serious misconduct, malfeasance and incompetence at the CIA. Excerpted this week at his newspaper, the Washington Examiner, Scarborough's book has plenty of news-breaking revelations that should stimulate an abundance of discussion in the ensuing days. The book is likely generate a tepid response from the drive-by media. They'll have to acknowledge it because Scarborough is one of the most respected reporters on the national security beat. But they'll do their level best to diminish its importance, mostly by ignoring it."

Sheikh delays plane over seating, pilot unintimidated: "A Qatar sheikh held up a British Airways flight at Milan's Linate airport for nearly three hours after discovering three of his female relatives had been seated next to men they did not know. When none of the other business class passengers agreed to swap seats, the sheikh, a member of Qatar's ruling family, went to the pilot, who had already started the engine, to complain, an airport official said. But the pilot ordered him and his traveling companions, the three women, two men, a cook and a servant, off the plane."

Walter Williams neatly summarizes the difference between free markets and the alternative: "Free markets are simply millions upon millions of individual decision-makers, engaged in peaceable, voluntary exchange pursuing what they see in their best interests. People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What's more, they believe they've been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others. .Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite. For example, I might plan to purchase a car, a shirt or apples from a foreign producer because I see it in my best interest. The powerful elite might supersede my plan, through import tariffs and quotas, because they think I should make the purchases from a domestic producer. My daughter might plan to work for the hardware guy down the street for $4 an hour. She agrees; he agrees; her mother says it's OK, and I say it's OK. The powerful elite say, "We're going to supersede that plan because it's not being transacted at the price we think it ought be -- the minimum wage."

America's Anti-Competitive Corporate Income Tax: "At least 25 developed nations have adopted Reaganite corporate income tax rate cuts since 2001. The U.S. is conspicuously not one of them. . Even in France, of all places, new President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed reducing the corporate tax rate to 25% from 34.4%. What do politicians in these countries understand that the U.S. Congress doesn't? Perhaps they've read "International Competitiveness for Dummies." In each of the countries that have cut corporate tax rates this year, the motivation has been the same -- to boost the nation's attractiveness as a location for international investment. Germany's overall rate will fall to 29.8% by 2008 from 38.7%. Remarkably, at the start of this decade Germany's corporate tax rate was 52%. All of which means that the U.S. now has the unflattering distinction of having the developed world's highest corporate tax rate of 39.3% (35% federal plus a state average of 4.3%), according to the Tax Foundation. Lower corporate tax rates with fewer loopholes can lead to more, not less, tax revenue from business. Tax receipts tend to fall below their optimum potential when corporate tax rates are so high that they lead to the creation of loopholes and the incentive to move income to countries with a lower tax rate. Ireland is the classic case of a nation on the "correct side" of this curve. It has a 12.5% corporate rate, nearly the lowest in the world, and yet collects 3.6% of GDP in corporate revenues, well above the international average. The U.S., by contrast, with its near 40% rate has been averaging less than 2.5% of GDP in corporate receipts. most economists understand that corporations don't ultimately pay any taxes. They merely serve as a collection agent, passing along the cost of those taxes in some combination of lower returns for shareholders, higher prices for customers, or lower compensation for employees. In other words, America's high corporate tax rates are an indirect, but still damaging, tax on average American workers" (H/T CFP)

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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Why Does the Left hate Israel?

A small excerpt (a summary) below from a very large and thorough article by Richard Baehr here. I think the reasons given below all have some point but the main reason is basic: Leftists hate success in others and Israel is in many ways a great success story. Leftists always claim that they want to lift up the poor and downtrodden. But their real motive can be inferred from what they do whenever they can: They never do much good for the poor but they do attack the rich and successful. "By their fruits shall ye known them", as a wise Jew once said

1. It is an easy way to express one's hatred for America.

2. Israel is viewed as an outpost of colonialism , and an active practitioner of it.

3. Israel is a western nation, and hence can be judged by the left. Israel is not protected by cultural relativism, as the Arabs are.

4. Leftist Christian churches can escape any lingering guilt about the Holocaust, by turning Israel into a villain. Some leftist churches hate Israel because they think this will help protect their members in the holy land- in other words they feel threatened.

5. Ferocious Muslim hatred of Israel and the Jews reinforces the natural cowardice of many on the left who go along with the Muslims to stay out of their line of fire.

6. Jewish leftists are prominent in the anti-Israel movement. This opens the floodgates for everybody else.

7. Israel is attacked because the secular left is appalled by the influence of religious settlers and their biblical connections to the land of Israel, and by the support for Israel by evangelical Christians, and Christian Zionists.

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Brookes News Update

The dangerous fallacy that consumer confidence drives economic growth: That the ridiculous fallacy that consumer confidence drives an economy is still widely held and promulgated is a damning indictment of the appalling state of what passes for economic thought in our newspapers and business magazines - not to mention our universities and colleges
The media gives terrorists the friendly Wilfred Burchett treatment: The hostility of so many journalists to the liberation of Iraq reminds me of the very gentle way in which these paragons journalistic virtue handled Wilfred Burchett who was an out-and-out traitor to his country
South America: Carbon Copying Cuban Tyranny: Once again proving that socialism is just another power cult, leftwing goons like Chavez are working to impose socialism on South America. This would be hilarious if the situation were not tragic
Should President Bush's Surgeon General pick make the cut?: A Surgeon General who succumbs to intimidation tactics by extremist left-wing special interest groups, especially the powerful homosexual lobby, cannot be good for America
Like the Clinton boom the Bush boom will also crash: Why the Bush boom is bound to crash. Although is possible that a recession could be forestalled by significant injections of credit into the economy a point would still be reached where the Fed would have no alternative but to use the monetary brakes to wring inflation out of the economy

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ELSEWHERE



Why are Leftists so reliably illiterate? I don't blame a humble man for being unable to spell but Leftists parade themselves as knowing it all. The emails I get from Leftists are reliably illiterate but I also enjoyed an email from a Leftist called Steve Mack that Dean Barnett put up for our amusement. A tiny excerpt: "marshal sensibilities, fervent worship at the alter of". In that short passage the writer showed that he did not know the difference between "martial" and "marshall" or "altar" and "alter". There are some things that spellcheckers cannot save you from. Steve Mack thought he was clever. He has himself shown that he is not. Verbal skills are the highest single correlate of IQ, by the way.

al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Termite Control: "We can use all the fancy terms we want such as "violent Islamist extremists", or "Islamic terrorists", or "terrorists" in accordance with Gordon Brown's tough stand, or "Muslim terrorists". Point is they are termites gnawing away at our culture, our secular rule of law just as termites gnaw at the foundation and structure of your home. Now, tell me - truthfully - would you even consider "negotiating" with the termites? Even once. No, you'd call your Termite Control folks and zap the little bastards! You'd breathe a sigh of relief and have your home re-treated on schedule. Well, al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Jamaat ul-Fuqra, and all of the rest - let's toss in MS-13 too - are the termites of our time. They are more dangerous than Hitler - I said dangerous, not more brutal - Hitler wore a uniform and so did his SS. We had an enemy we could see."

U.S. State Dept. worse than French Intelligence? "Despite protests from the U.S. ambassador in Lebanon, the State Department is pushing ahead with plans to build a new embassy in a part of Beirut city controlled by the anti-U.S. Hezbollah group. A U.S. official tells the Blotter on ABCNEWS.com that Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, in a May 31, 2007 classified cable to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, registered his strong objections, saying his staff "unanimously opposes construction" of the embassy on the proposed site. Hezbollah is believed to be behind two attacks on the U.S. Embassy and an embassy annex in 1983 and 1984 that led to the deaths of 87 people, including eight CIA employees. Let us not forget the 241 Marines murdered back in 1983 by Hezbollah by order of Iran."

Babies back in Germany: "For Rico Thisius and Juliane Herda the decision to have a child was spontaneous. Many of their friends had children, and Mr Thisius, 31, says "It was just the right time." But then, having children is suddenly back in fashion in Germany. Having once had one of the lowest birthrates in Europe, it is now experiencing a baby boom. Officials in Germany's biggest cities reported a rise in births of more than 20 per cent during the first quarter of the year after the Government of the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, introduced a range of family-friendly incentives. Her policies were a response to dire warnings that the country's once-generous welfare state and comprehensive health service could collapse. The country's birthrate has slipped to 1.34 children per woman over the past 30 years, and the population is predicted to shrink from about 83 million to about 70 million over the next 40 years."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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Asymmetrical war? Let's even it out

Trying to appease terrorists or look for common ground - a prerequisite for opening a dialogue - is irrational. Nothing can be done to change their steadfast conviction. Indoctrinated by family, state, mosque, media, school, university, and millions of fundamentalist spokesmen that form the base structure of their societies, there is nothing that can make these people change their position that it is better to kill or die than to live.

Throughout the Islamic world, there is a blinding indoctrination that calls for conversion or submission to Islam or the destruction of the infidels. Diplomacy cannot manage this situation. The only option is war, but not a war of surgical strikes that pretend to remove the cancer without touching or damaging the other organs. The cancer is in all the organs, and they all need to be attacked. The terrorists' objectives are civilians, so the western response must also include their civilians. The Islamists will change their defiant attitude only when the West is willing to destroy the populations that sustain, protect, and applaud terrorism, and to defend itself using the same methods that were used to attack it.

Bertrand Russell said, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubt." If the war is asymmetrical, then it is an issue of restoring its symmetry. The foremost reason for this imbalance is because the west is weak-willed. In addition to a feigned sensitivity for humankind (motivated more by political collusion than by tenderness towards its fellow man), the west fears a large-scale fire that might reduce the supply of oil. The Islamists declared war against everyone, including our elderly, women and children. The west must act the same way if it wants to put an end to the massacre. The Islamists take advantage of the humanitarian sensibilities of the "infidel" and use their civilians as human shields, but when they see that their ruse has no effect, they will tremble in fear and return to their caves.

With each passing day, the hatred of the west grows, especially towards the United States. This hatred - fruits of leftist propaganda and the sensationalist press - is opportunistic, anti-democratic and suicidal; it uses euphemisms to describe the Islamic fascists who try to justify their actions as if there were something justifiable in the murder of anyone who does not share their religion. Terrorism is never acceptable because by definition, its targets are civilians. If in more than thirty years, Arab governments have not demonstrated any interest in stopping the terrorists, it is because they are part of the plan. The jihadis who attempted to carry out the most recent thwarted attacks in London were doctors; their reason was because Salmon Rushdie had been knighted. The murderers occupy all social strata.

If the west wants to return to normalcy and establish peace on Earth, it needs to finish off Saudi Arabia, the ideological mentor and financial backer of radical Islam; Iran, the promotor of Nazism and nuclear destruction; Pakistan, if Musharraf is toppled; and that leaves others like Syria, Libya, and the insignificant Hugo Chavez, who loves to participate in conflict and looks for more relations with the Islamists to gain political and military support.

Approximately every 50 years, history teaches that psychiatrically disturbed individuals achieve high levels of power, form alliances, and look to make themselves masters of the world. Nuclear proliferation has made their motives a global cause for concern. As a result of technological advances, arms and armies are more powerful, and military conflicts result in more death and destruction. Around 50 million people died in World War Two. The current world war that we face will certainly bring much more victims. Only when the Islamists are attacked by a west committed to bombing its cities, destroying its refineries and demolishing their multi-million-dollar sources of income, and obligating them to spend the coming decades reconstructing their countries and economies, will the world live in peace for another half century

Source

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ELSEWHERE



There is a comprehensive roundup here on the "Scott Thomas" affair -- where a serving U.S. soldier wrote obviously untrue stories about the evils of his fellow soldiers and got them published in the Leftist TNR. It seems that he is a Leftist and an admitted liar. By his own admission he joined the army only to do a John Kerry -- to give himself an air of authority when he denounced the U.S. military.

The Leftist "expert" on the Middle East (a professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History in the History Department at the University of Michigan), Juan Cole, gets shown up for the know-nothing he is here. For an older debunking of Cole, see Mark Kleiman. And I had a post in 2005 in which I pointed out that Cole thinks Iraq is on the Mediterranean. And if you read here you will see that the wacky Prof. Cole does not even know that a large part of what is the USA today was taken from Mexico! It's rather a wonder Cole still dares to stick his head above the parapet at all. Perhaps we should leave the dummo alone. He really is a rather pathetic case. Leftists and the facts just do not get on. Cole calls his blog Informed Comment, in the fine old Leftist tradition of calling a thing by its opposite.

The forgotten Jews driven out by Arabs: " Former justice minister Irwin Cotler and other Canadian scholars presented the U.S. Congress yesterday with its first testimony on Jews driven from Arab lands following Israel's creation in 1948. The group was among experts helping U.S. lawmakers decide on a pair of bills that would oblige the Bush administration to actively oppose the Arab-led practice in Middle East peace efforts to speak only of Palestinian refugees. While key Arab voices continue to push for a "right of return" for descendants of some 600,000 Palestinians whose pre-1948 homes are now inside Israel, the general discourse for decades has all but ignored tens of thousands of Jews, Christians and other minorities who were similarly turned into refugees... "Today, we cannot allow a second injustice, namely for the international community to recognize rights for [only] one victim population," Mr. Urman, executive director of New York-based Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, said."

A surprisingly devout and moving comment from Wretchard: "As children we know one sort of God, the kind who loves us like our parents. He is the God who we spoke to just as if He was in the next room in the moments before we went to sleep. And as we grow up, the God of our childhood slips away forgotten, but He is replaced, if we are in Grace, by one we can speak to as adults. He never truly goes away, but as we are adults, leaves us mostly on our own. The God of adulthood comes seldom and usually in moments of great happiness and loss. There finally is the Lord who speaks to us when we are old, when we awake bewildered to watery brightness of each new day, when we know we are close to leaving the flowers and yet are not wholly despairing of meeting them again."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual themes.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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".

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