Brits getting poorer under socialism

While the average household gross income has climbed over the past decade from 34,796 to 53,835 pounds, people have far less of that money to spend each month after they have paid essential bills. In 1997, when Labour came to power, people were left with 34.5 per cent of their gross income once they had paid taxes, national insurance, mortgage or rent. Now they are left with 32.6 per cent, says a report by uSwitch, a price comparison website.

It is the latest survey to highlight how millions of households have failed to benefit from the strong economy because of rising taxes and escalating bills. Ernst & Young, the accountants, calculated this year that the average family had 838 pounds left to spend each month, compared to 899 four years ago. The uSwitch report makes clear that many household bills have actually risen more modestly than people's salaries, including the monthly, electricity, water and gas bills.

Increases have hit four key areas in the past 10 years. Petrol [gasoline] - often the biggest cost for a family after their housing - has increased by 55 per cent and phone and internet bills have risen 77 per cent as millions more use broadband and mobile phones. The cost of getting on to the housing ladder has more than tripled, but taxes are perhaps the most significant cost. Council tax rose from an average of 688 a year to 1,321 - an increase of 92 per cent, or three times the rate of inflation.

Mike Warburton, one of the City's most senior accountants, said: "The Government can argue that tax rates have not gone up and that they are merely benefiting from people's rising incomes. But a lot of indirect taxes have gone up, especially council tax. This is why pensioners - on fixed incomes - are so badly hit. The squeeze is definitely on." The report from uSwitch comes a week after it emerged that stamp duty had risen by more than 40 per cent in the past year alone, as the Government cashed in on ballooning house prices.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The Leftist hatred of patriotism is self-defeating: "For the Left, with its traditional emphasis upon fraternite, or the cultivation of human solidarity and communal values, such realities are particularly difficult to reconcile with an ethos of limitless criticism. To say that we are a part of one another-or even to acknowledge that man is by nature a "political animal," thinking here of Aristotle and not of James Carville-is not merely to say that we should deliberate together; it is also to say that, at some point, the discussion ceases and we make a commitment to one another to act together. Furthermore, it is to say that we cannot sustain serious, demanding, and long-term commitments to one another if those commitments are regarded as provisional and easily revoked for light and transient causes. We make an agreement and we agree to stand by it. Call it a contract, a covenant, or a Constitution, it is the same general kind of commitment, a commitment not merely of the intellect but also of the will. For any freely organized political undertaking, this vital qualification presents a difficulty. But for the Left, it becomes a profound dilemma"

Media lies: "We are being fed false and misleading information, in matters big and small. It has come from trusted sources such as established newspapers, experienced journalists, Pulitzer Prize winners and Nobel Peace Prize winners. It has been going on for a long time, sometimes by carelessness and sometimes by deliberate lying. I have compiled a list of 101 such incidents. Did you know that Time magazine and other news organizations had a Vietnamese communist on full-time staff in Vietnam during that war? Do you remember that ABC, CBS and NBC have all rigged cars or trucks with explosives or other devices to make them look dangerous on TV, or that Consumer Reports lied about the Suzuki Samurai enough to put it out of business? Do you know that multiple "veterans" of the Viet Nam and Iraq wars who told of atrocities there were never even in the military? Did you realize reputable news organizations such as the Boston Globe and Reuters cannot tell the difference between a real soldier and a toy doll, commercial pornography and soldiers committing rape, a burning tire dump and a bombed building, a fired and an unfired rifle round, or footage of the North Pole and a clip from the movie Titanic?"

Neo-Cons and Neo-Commies: "Everybody talks about the evil Neo-Cons, but nobody talks about the resurgent Neo-Commies. "Communist" has been expelled from the Politically Correct lexicon -- which tells us a lot about the Commissars of the PC. They bear the most amazing resemblance to the old Commissars of (deleted) who killed 60-100 million people in the 20th century. (And Kim Jong Il, not to mention Red China, are still doing it....) Mikhail Gorbachev, who should know them when he sees them, recently warned about a "resurgence of Stalinism" in Russia and Eastern Europe. The history of Communist crimes was being erased, he said. Well, he was right. But resurgent Stalinism is not limited to those countries. It's in the US and all over the world, as David Horowitz, another former radical, continues to document in great detail... So here's a proposal. Let's allow the Left to rant about Neo-Cons; but conservatives will be allowed to call the "new" Left exactly what it is: The Neo-Commies. Fair's fair. Words mean things. These folks crawling all over Moveon.org and other Soros fronts are not "Marxists" or "Progressives," "Radicals" -- or especially "Liberals" in any real meaning of the word. They are Neo-Commies."

The Sun Rises In The East: "That this recent Gallup poll finds, "that only 9% of Americans say they have a great deal of trust and confidence in the mass media to report the news `fully, accurately, and fairly,' " is about as surprising as a similar percentage might not believe the sun rises in the East. That, "Nearly half of Americans -- including over three-quarters of Republicans -- perceive the media as too liberal while fewer than one in five say the media are too conservative," is similarly not surprising. Study after study has found the overwhelming liberal orientation of most journalists, particularly at the national level."

Hillary has no problems with a crook: "Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Berger, who was fired from John Kerry's presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton's campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton's admirers. "It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger's serious misdeeds," said law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University"

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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FAR-LEFTIST RAGE

The Far Left has seen their ideology resoundingly rejected by the American populace. While it may well be that a majority of Americans have grown weary and disgusted with the Iraq War and willing to punish the Republicans for our failures there, in fact, socialism and socialism-lite, ie the European model, have been found wanting by the voters. This is partially recognized by the fact that the Democrats routinely eschew calling themselves liberals and focus on the language of their politics rather than the ideological beliefs that underpin their policies. The recent unearthing of the memo from the early 90s suggesting achieving universal government run health care in stages, by stealth (re: the S-CHIP debate), is another example of the Democratic perception that a straightforward approach to their goals of increased government control over the economy is a losing proposition.

When one's ideas are rejected, especially when those ideas form an important part of one's self-image, it is a personal injury. People respond to personal injury with pain and anger. When the anger is internalized, the risk of depression and despair becomes significant. Many find it more tolerable to eject the anger, ie defense known as projection, and are then drawn into all the psychological problems that flow from that. One's opponents then become evil, rather than wrong, misguided or simply in disagreement, and every reverse simply fuels the rage burning inside. Such a cycle would appear as follows:

Anger -> Projection -> Attribution of unacceptable impulses to the "enemy" -> Fear of the projected/disowned anger being returned (retaliation) -> Overt paranoia -> Further rejection -> Intensified anger

Under the influence of such rage, encapsulated by the feeling that one is manifestly correct and no other possible interpretations of others' behavior are tenable, reason is lost. We see this rather graphically in the imbroglio over Rush Limbaugh and his supposed anti-military comments. I rarely listen to Rush and have not read a transcript, however, on the face of it, the charges against him are risible. No one with any sense is going to believe Rush is anti-military and people like Harry Reid and Tom Harkin are pro-military in comparison. Even the Far Left should be well aware that this is a losing argument. Yet they convince themselves they have a winning argument and only the weakness of their champions in the Senate and House prevent them from beating Rush and getting him off the air. Jane Hamsher, the proprietor of a major website on the Left, (see Siggy for a rather witty and biting appellation) can barely contain herself:

Is That A Fat Lady I Hear Singing? Pills Limbaugh just keeps diggin' and diggin'. I've been delighted to see that it's been all over cable news today, and Wes Clark has been promoting the move to get Limbaugh off Armed Forces Radio Network.

She goes on to approvingly quote Digby:

Newtie's now irrelevant. Delay is gone. Only Rush remains and he is probably the biggest prize. On a purely practical, hardball political basis, the Democrats should have been working to take him out for years. Now is their chance to turn the Republicans' patented hissy kabuki back on them and hoist an avowed political enemy with his own poisonous petard at the same time. There are many others who will happily take his place, no doubt about it. But his voice is uniquely associated with the radical wingnuts, and it is an important symbolic message to the country if they can finally make an example of him.

I have become extremely reluctant to link to any Left wing sites because when visitors come here from their sites they come armed with invective and rarely read and understand what I write. For any visitors from the Left, I am not here commenting on your ideology; I have no problem with your distaste for Rush and I have no reason to support him. Beyond the fact that he hardly needs my help, I rarely listen to him, preferring NPR when I am interested in gaining any depth on issues (despite the fact that I so rarely agree with NPR's point of view.) I am suggesting that your tactics and strategy involved in going after Rush Limbaugh suggest an inability to adequately appreciate how your attacks are being and will be perceived. Your anger is blinding you and confusing you. As for the Democrats, ultimately, unless they can find a way to repudiate the most angry within their party, they will find themselves irredeemably tarred with all the worst aspects of the Far Left.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Tories crow, as Brown loses his bottle: "BRITAIN'S Gordon Brown is facing the gravest crisis of his brief prime ministership after a Conservative surge in opinion polls forced him to scrap plans for an early election to win his own mandate from voters. After two months of letting speculation run that he would call a poll in the autumn, Mr Brown told the BBC yesterday that there would be no election because he wanted time to show Britons his "vision" rather than merely his "competence". But as some cabinet members privately expressed disquiet over Mr Brown's handling of the issue, an elated Conservative leader, David Cameron, said the Prime Minister had "shown great weakness and indecision". [For non-Brits, the Cockney term "bottle" translates roughly as "courage"]

Christianism Alert! Presidential Candidate Preaches From Church Pulpit, Says Faith "Plays Every Role In Life": "I am sure the media, Democratic presidential candidates and Andrew Sullivan will be all over this outrageous violation of the separation of Church and State. Except the won't. Why? Because the Christianist in question is none other than the Obamessiah himself. Obama told the congregation at Redemption World Outreach Center in Greenville Church, South Carolina, "I can be an instrument of God they same way all of you are." An instrument of God as President? Of the United States? Oh my. Funny, for all the media reports of Bush being a daffy Christian who talks to God, I don't remember seeing him actually preaching from the pulpit of a church."

Syria: where 1930s Germany meets Borat: "The Jews did 9/11. They control the mass media, international banking, the UN, and Washington. The Holocaust never happened, or if it did, the Jews orchestrated it to exploit public sympathy for their "entity" in Palestine. Welcome to Syria, best described as 1930s Germany meets Borat, a land of paranoia where everyone is being watched. And that includes you. It is easy to miss this if, like most foreigners, you study Arabic at the university and your contact with locals is limited. But leave campus, speak only Arabic, immerse yourself in the society, and a totally different picture emerges. When I first arrived, a lot of people told me: "We are not against Jews, we are only against Zionists." But cross the language threshold and the extent and ferocity of the antisemitism hits you like a slap in the face. The guy who ran the corner shop near my flat refused to sell Coca-Cola because: "It is a Jewish corporation. Everyone knows that!" Walk into any Damascus bookshop and you will find all the classics, from Mein Kampf to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I once found a book entitled Jews of Damascus. Just don't ask why all the photos are black and white."

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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Megan McArdle misses some very basic stuff

Megan McArdle ("Jane Galt") is a very smart lady who seems to have learnt a lot about economics when she did her MBA. She has written much that I admire. She seems to be a bit light on psychology, however. Her recent article on racism and sexism in America shows very little understanding of impression-formation and the stereotyping literature, or, indeed, of current politics.

She quotes research studies which show that people with identical resumes get preferential treatment if they are white or male and infers racism and sexism from that.

She totally ignores the very well-known effects of affirmative action -- effects that Clarence Thomas has recently waxed eloquent about. The plain fact is that affirmative action has totally betrayed back people by creating the reality of a "black" university degree -- a degree which may signify negligible academic achievement because of the different standards applied to blacks both at the time of admission and during their university studies. There was even one case where a black graduate of a New York university was barely literate.

Does Megan think people are unaware of that? Does she think people are unaware of what has been one of the major political issues in America for decades? So if two people offer resumes that claim identical academic qualifications and one of the applicants is black, does Megan think that any rational person would regard the "black" degree as REALLY equivalent to the degree held by the white candidate? Surely the question answers itself. Under such circumstances it is a very good bet that the white candidate REALLY IS more qualified than the black candidate. Favouring the white candidate shows realism, not racism.

The situation with women is a bit more complex. Megan refers to a study by feminist Elizabeth Spelke which shows that men and women with identical mathematical qualifications are not treated equally. The male candidate is preferred. To understand that, it helps to know that the research literature on stereotyping shows the exact opposite of what most people believe. See here and here. What that literature shows is that impression-formation is very responsive to reality. If people think that women are not generally good at mathematics or interested in it, that will probably be true IN GENERAL (though not of course without exceptions).

And all the research that has ever been done on mental abilities has shown that women are best at verbal skills while men are best at mathematical skills. Does Megan really think that people are unaware of that difference between the sexes? They are certainly not. They might not know of the research but they know of the reality that it describes. So when people judge that men and women with ostensibly similar qualifications in mathematics are probably not really equally able at or interested in mathematics, they are simply doing something that humans do well -- using ALL the information they have to make a decision rather than just relying on a few bits of paper before them. Again, their lower expectations of female mathematical ability are realistic, not "sexism".

Megan should give her fellow-Americans more credit for intelligence and good sense.



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Articles recently up on ICJS

Was Israel hurt by Ahmadinejad at Columbia?
Bollinger stuns Ahmadinejad
Senator Troeth speaks out about kidnapped soldiers
Readers subjected to slant and error
Support Danny Lamm
Teach our 'nakba' too, say Arab-born Jews
A matter of education
The Question Of Islam
Crusader for refugees
Libel Tourism: Where Terrorism and Censorship Meet
Looking for Scapegoat, World Again Turns to Jews
In India a Jewish outpost withers

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ELSEWHERE

Ho Hum! UN fraud again: "Tsunami reconstruction funds worth $US500 million are being lost to fraud and corruption because of the failure by the United Nations to implement its own anti-fraud measures. This claim is made by the UN's former deputy director of investigations, Frank Montil, a former ASIO officer who for a decade was the deputy director of the UN's internal watchdog unit, set up to investigate fraud and corruption within the UN and its agencies. In an exclusive interview with the Herald, Mr Montil said "the oil-for-food scandal taught them nothing". The fraud and corruption which had been occurring during the tsunami reconstruction period would come back to haunt the UN, which had wilfully ignored all the warning signs. As a senior UN investigator, Mr Montil was sent to the devastated areas of Indonesia after the tsunami. His task was to assess the risks of fraud, waste and mismanagement to the public funding that the tsunami public appeal generated and for which the UN was responsible for allocating"

Waiting for the furious protests from Western Leftists: "Two men in Saudi Arabia have been sentenced to 7000 lashes each after being convicted of sodomy and have received their first round of punishment in public, a newspaper said today. The men, who were not identified, were meted out an unspecified number of lashes in public in the the southwestern city of Al-Bahah on Tuesday evening, the Al-Okaz daily reported. They were then returned to prison where they are to be held until the full punishment is completed, the newspaper added, without saying how many sessions this would involve. Homosexual acts are illegal in Saudi Arabia, which metes out strict punishment based on sharia, or Islamic law."

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 Leftist bigotry from NPR

National Public Radio was one of the first out of the box greeting Clarence Thomas's memoir, My Grandfather's Son. Nina Totenberg acknowledged that it was, "in some ways a beautifully written book" but went on to declare it "a book of complete bitterness and rage." The Washington Post's front page announced that Thomas had "settled scores" in his "angry" book. And Washington Post columnist (as well as Charen pal) Ruth Marcus writes of Thomas's "blast furnace" anger.

Imagine that. He hasn't gotten over it. Totenberg, for those who may have forgotten, was the journalist who first reported that Anita Hill had made allegations against Thomas (though at the time, Hill had not agreed to go public). And she was a prominent Hill enthusiast during the contretemps.

Totenberg affects surprise that Thomas is angry? It would require a masochist not to be angry. Imagine that your spotless reputation had been thoroughly trashed before a worldwide audience. Imagine further that everything you had attempted to accomplish in your career was undermined in two weeks by ideological opponents ready to do anything to keep someone with your heterodox views down. It is my experience that people often become enraged when they read even small inaccuracies about themselves in the newspapers. Contemplate enduring a campaign of vilification. How many years is it supposed to take to get over something like that? Is Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky thing?

Actually, speaking of President Clinton, the brouhaha over Thomas and what he did or did not say to Hill now seems almost quaint in retrospect. Even if we assume (and I do not) that the worst of Hill's allegations were true, they do not stack up to the kind of brutish behavior attributed to Bill Clinton by Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick. But the very same people who adjudged Thomas one of the lowest creatures on Earth, found Clinton's behavior a private matter of no consequence with no public implications.

More here. For a brief but thorough refutation of the Anita Hill perjury, see here.

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ELSEWHERE

Several readers have asked me to link to Stewart Dimmock Day. Stewart Dimmock is the British truck-driver who got the British High court to criticize Al Gore.

An amusing comment from Taranto: "Apparently there are a lot of New York Times readers who go to bed hungry each night. Well, that's probably true. They're all on a diet."

How stupid can an Archbishop get? "The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has launched a renewed attack on the war in Iraq and called for "urgent attention" to stabilise the country. [And just how does he propose to do that?]

BBC admits goof: "Peter Fincham, the Controller of BBC One, resigned yesterday after the publication of a damning report outlining a litany of errors that led him to release inaccurately edited footage of the Queen. Following him was Stephen Lambert, the producer of the footage, which purported to show the Queen storming out of a photoshoot when she was actually walking in. Accused of "cavalier" editing, Mr Lambert was forced to quit his job as chief creative officer of RDF Media - the production company also behind Faking It. A three-month inquiry by Will Wyatt, a former senior BBC executive, concluded that the incident revealed "misjudgments, poor practice and ineffective systems", with BBC employees described as "naive" although nobody "consciously set out to defame or misrepresent the Queen". [I doubt that there was anything unintentional about it. Lots of BBC types are anti the monarchy]

It's the Joooos again: "When I asked Hersh who wants to bomb Iran, he said, "Ironically there is a lot of pressure coming from Democrats. Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have all said we cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran. Clearly the pressure from Democrats is a reflection of - we might as well say it - Israeli and Jewish input." He added the obvious: "a lot of money comes to the Democratic campaigns" from Jewish contributors." [A now familiar phenomenon: Antisemitism from a Leftist Jew who hopes they will come for him last]

Anthropologists join war against Taliban: "In this isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are fielding what they consider a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations here: a soft-spoken civilian anthropologist named Tracy. Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her team's ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations - in one case spotting a land dispute that allowed the Taliban to bully parts of a major tribe - has won the praise of officers who say they are seeing concrete results. Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with the anthropologists here, said that the unit's combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the scientists arrived in February"

1 in 5 Dems admit they want to lose war : "Nearly one out of every five Democrats thinks the world will be better off if America loses the war in Iraq, according to the FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll released Thursday. The percentage of Democrats (19 percent) who believe that is nearly four times the number of Republicans (5 percent) who gave the same answer. Seven percent of independents said the world would be better off if the U.S. lost the war."

Decency prevails at last in Britain: "Iraqi interpreters and other key support staff who have risked their lives to work for Britain are to be allowed to settle in the United Kingdom, The Times has learnt. Hundreds of interpreters and their families are to be given assistance to leave Iraq, where they live under fear of death squads because they collaborated with British forces. Those wishing to remain in Iraq or relocate to neighbouring countries will be helped to resettle. After a two-month campaign by The Times, Gordon Brown is set to announce that interpreters who have worked for the British Government for 12 months will be given the opportunity of asylum in Britain. The offer also applies retrospectively to interpreters who worked for the Government but have ceased to do so. Government sources have disclosed that a few hundred vital support staff would also be helped, although they declined to give details."

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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When & why I left the Democrat party

Post below excerpted from The Anchoress. See the original for links

My turn from left to right began with the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas debacle, and Captain Ed does a great job of demonstrating in this post exactly how despicable and underhanded was the behavior of the left in that circumstance.

Ed has been writing about Clarence Thomas for several days now, and all of his posts are worth reading, but do read that first one I've linked to, because I remember watching that exchange and becoming more and more frustrated by what I saw members of my party doing. I remember watching this "high-tech lynching" and knowing that Thomas was correct; that was exactly what it was. I remember people testifying on behalf of Thomas and both the press and the congress simply dismissing them (in much the same way Democrats dismissed Gen. David Petraeus, recently) before they'd opened their mouths. I remember the whole sense of bared-teeth salivation coming from my party, and I remember thinking, "wait.this isn't right." It was like a coming of age.

I remember reading my local newspaper and finally canceling it, because the writing had clearly and distinctly moved from "reportage" to "propaganda" in the space of what seemed like a few weeks. When I called to cancel the subscription they asked why and I told them pretty much this: "I'm very interested in these hearings, and I look to the paper for information and instead I'm being served something very different from what my own eyes are seeing, what my own brain is receiving. Instead of unbiased information that allows me to decide for myself, I'm getting something very unbalanced, and I don't want it."

A few hours later a woman from that newspaper actually called me up and asked me if it was true that I had canceled my subscription because of their coverage. I said yes, and she said, "you mean you actually believe him?" I was stunned. "Yes, I do," I said. "And I can't believe you're calling me like this. Your job is supposed to be about informing, not persuading." She sputtered but by then I was hanging up.

The Clarence Thomas hearings were the beginning, for me. They were when I began to open my eyes and see something happening within my party - the Democrat party my entire family had been loyal to for as long as I could remember - that I really did not like.

I didn't leave the left just then. But I started paying more attention to everything, and trusting the press and my own party a bit less.then a bit less.then a bit less. When it got to the point where I felt I was no longer allowed to dissent from the "Democratic position" without being thought of as a "bad person," when it began to feel like I was simply supposed to "fall in line," and parrot the party, when I began to feel completely disrespected by other Democrats for daring to think for myself and form my own opinions, (when I was essentially made to feel that I was not entitled to those opinions or to full respect for them), and when it became clear to me that the word "liberal" no longer meant "open-minded, respectful and broad" but quite the opposite, that's when I finally left the left.

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ELSEWHERE

Giuliani has a chance: "Yes, Giuliani has supported legalized abortion, various policies collectively referred to as gay rights, and gun control measures. And yes, those issues will cause millions of primary voters to pull the lever for someone else. They are important, mainstream issues, not topics cared about only by some unintelligible cult. But polls show a significantly large minority of Christian right voters supporting Giuliani in the primary even after being apprised of his position on the three most prominent social issues. The truth is that even the oft-caricatured voters of the Christian right also care about leadership qualities, taxes, crime, a strong defense, and the war against jihadist terrorists. The Christian right, or at least a very large percentage thereof, feels a particular affinity for Israel. After all, the Bible says that Jews are God's chosen people, and that Israel is their land. Those who vow to wipe Israel off the map, therefore - and who, worse, would attack us in the United States in part because of our diplomatic support for Israel - are seen as particularly dangerous and particularly to be opposed... anybody who can be trusted to support Israel and, most importantly, to battle with effectiveness and competence against those who would destroy Israel, is somebody worthy of at least potential support."

Reagan forgotten: "We've been hearing a lot about Ronald Reagan from the Republican presidential field of late, but there is little trace of him in the position papers issued by the various campaigns thus far. Take energy. Whereas candidate Reagan proposed to solve the energy crisis of the 1970s by abolishing the Department of Energy, deregulating the energy sector, and letting free markets rip, candidates Giuliani, Romney, McCain, and the rest propose to solve today's energy crisis with elaborate national energy plans, lavish subsidies for favored fuels and industries, mandatory renewable-energy consumption orders, and government dictates to manufacturers regarding how energy-related goods and services are made."

Dishonest US farm policy: "Politicians claim to be friends of the small 'family farmer' but most government payments go to large farms. Half of all U.S. farms receive nothing at all because they don't grow corn, wheat, cotton and other major crops that qualify for commodity payments. Because most payments are based on a farm's past production history, they likely have little effect on current commodity prices. But they do cause land prices to be bid up, meaning those who own the most land receive the most benefits. Escalating land prices, in turn, raise the cost of entry into farming, hurting the little guy again."

The myth of U.S. manufacturing decline: "Politicians acting on behalf of particular industries or unions routinely cite the erosion of U.S. manufacturing primacy as justification for trade barriers. But here's the kicker. U.S. manufacturing is not in decline - not by any stretch. Manufacturing is thriving by historic standards and relative to other countries' manufacturing sectors. In 2006, the sector achieved record output, record sales revenue, record profits, record profit rates, record return on investment, and record exports. U.S. factories continued to be the world's most prolific in 2006, accounting for just over 20 percent of the world's manufacturing value-added. By contrast, Chinese factories accounted for just 8 percent. And 2006 was not an aberration. Since the nadir of the manufacturing recession in 2002, all of those indicators have been trending upward. The most recent quarterly Census data show that the trends have continued into 2007, where second quarter sales, profits and output are at all time highs.

Iran supplying Taliban with EFPs: "Iran is supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan with the same bomb-making equipment it provides to insurgents in Iraq, according to British military intelligence officers. US Army General Dan McNeill, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, said that the discovery of more than 50 roadside bombs and timers in lorries crossing the border from Iran last month proves that Iran's Quds Revolutionary Guards are actively supporting the Taliban.... He claimed the vehicles contained materials to make explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), a type of roadside bomb. Britain and America have accused Iran of supplying such bombs to Iraqi insurgents."

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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Sadness: Not Middle English after all

I have always been something of a language fiend And it has always interested me how words from older forms of English (Old English and Middle English) that no longer form part of Modern English can still be found in some dialectical forms of English -- particularly in Scots. The Scots in fact have a whole consonant (the guttural in "Loch") that is lost to modern English.

I was once, for instance, talking to a lady from the English Midlands and she described someone as "nesh" (meaning sickly, weak). I of course looked it up and found that it came straight from Old English (Anglo-Saxon). Most pleasing.

American speech also preserves some older forms (the pronunciation of the letter 'r', for instance) so I was quite excited to see the following sentence in Taranto: "this dumb-ass redneck from Alabama cleped it". I immediately recognized "cleped" as a Middle English word so felt quite excited to see such a survival in Alabama.

On digging deeper, however, I found that the writer was in fact referring only to the College Level Examination Program. What a disappointment.

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ELSEWHERE

Not amazing: "The Department of Homeland Security (no less) cannot even keep its own email service secure! Trust your government to protect you?? Better get a gun, maybe several.

Have a look here at the Islamic losers who fancied that they could take over the U.S. government.

Terrorist Bill of Rights: "This week, House Democrats say they plan to hold hearings on a misguided bill that would grant habeas corpus rights to terrorist detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The proposal would allow terrorists to publicly challenge their status as detainees in the U.S. court system, fracturing the cohesive structure already in place to ensure that highly dangerous suspects are held and processed in a secure and timely fashion. House Republican leaders are furious that Democrats are seeking to give unprecedented legal protections to terrorists, calling the measure a "terrorist bill of rights." The Republicans are justified in protesting the plan that would give special rights to terrorists - rights not afforded to our own men and women in the armed services serving overseas"

A Leftist comment on a washed up Pelosi: "If there was any doubt before, which there wasn't, it's gone now. Watching Nancy Pelosi on The View yesterday morning provided the final proof that the backbone of the House is only as strong as its speaker. Her body language said it all. There she sat in the center of the table, sandwiched between Elizabeth Hasselbeck and the "Is the world flat? I don't know" lady, looking anxious and devoid of stately confidence. She could barely look in the eyes of America's Favorite True Believer on her left, who immediately smelled fear and pounced on her prey. "If the violence in Iraq had gone up," she started in (I'm paraphrasing), "you would be insisting that the surge was a failure. Now that the reports say it's gone down drastically, aren't you willing to admit that the surge is a success?" So what does Pelosi do? ... she looks somewhere in Hasselbeck's general direction and squeaks meekly, "But that's still a lot of deaths." (I'm not paraphrasing). She then quickly changes the subject"

Where Have All the Peaceniks Gone?: "Three days ago we saw the first pictures of Burmese villages being destroyed. We have learned about the massacres of monks and other civilians peacefully protesting in Myanmar. British PM Gordon Brown said that "the death toll in the Myanmar crackdown to be `far greater' than has so far been reported." That's at least three whole 24-hour news cycles, plenty of time to start a storm of protest. Where is the BBC? The Guardian? Der Spiegel? Der New York Times? Where are all the peaceniks of the Left? Mother Sheehan, where art thou? As far as I can tell, Burma's fascist massacres of peaceful Buddhist monks has not yet led to a peep from our self-proclaimed peaceniks. Where are they?"

Wackjob Dems Lose - Senate Intel Bill Passes: "The Senate has scrapped its bid to obtain the archive of daily intelligence briefings given to the president on Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. That request was among several controversial provisions dropped from an intelligence bill, leading to the measure's unanimous Senate passage Wednesday. The provision sought to give the Senate and House intelligence committees access to all presidential daily briefs between 1997 and 2003 that referred to Iraq _ an attempt to determine whether the White House mischaracterized intelligence prior to the war. Senate Republicans objected, saying the documents had already been reviewed by an independent commission, according to a congressional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. The final version of the bill also dropped a requirement that the director of national intelligence conduct an assessment of the effects of global climate change on national security. The overall legislation would give Congress' approval for the whole range of intelligence programs over the coming year, including spy satellites and eavesdropping, human spying and battlefield collection, along with recommended spending levels."

An atheist who believes -- in Jewish conspiracy theory!: "A renowned atheist cited the "Jewish lobby" as a model for his campaign to promote atheism in the United States. Richard Dawkins said he wanted to gain the same kind of influence as the Jewish lobby, saying it "monopolizes" U.S. foreign policy. "When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told -- religious Jews anyway -- than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolize American foreign policy as far as many people can see," Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist who advocates atheism, told the Guardian newspaper. "So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place." Dawkins, an Oxford professor who wrote the best-seller "The God Delusion," told the Guardian that he wants to organize American atheists to counter the influence of religious groups." [For someone as hostile as Dawkins it does figure. The man is just a hater].

Chaliapin: Is there any greater work of art than Feodor Chaliapin's rendition of the "Twofold Litany of St. John Chrysostom"? There is a tiny excerpt from it here. Although I am an atheist, I undoubtedly have strong religious instincts and I am very pleased about that. It means that I can relate to some of the most profound of human experiences. The loss is great for those who cannot.

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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SOWELL ON FLYNN

Thomas Sowell has another one of his admirably balanced articles here -- where he broaches the heavily forbidden topic of the heritability of IQ. He is not a psychometrician, however, so he misses a few things.

He points out the long-standing evidence that IQ is strongly hereditary but then goes on to question that evidence on the basis of research by James Flynn -- who has documented a large rise in IQ scores throughout the 20th century. Since genetics do not change over such a short time, one might conclude that the causes of IQ are therefore non-genetic and presumably environmental. He seems to miss the point that psychometricians have always said that the environment has SOME influence on IQ. He is right, however, in saying that environmental improvement is universally seen as what lies behind the "Flynn effect". Exactly what environmental factors lie behind the "Flynn effect" is a decades-old topic of research and discussion among psychometricians but it is a controversy largely unknown to the general public and Sowell has done us all a service in bringing it to the attention of a wider audience.

Sowell would seem to be of the view that the famed black/white difference in average IQ is called into question by the Flynn findings. It is therefore regrettable that he does not mention that the changes of the 20th century seem to have affected most groups equally. Blacks now score more highly than they once did but so do whites. The black/white gap, in other words, has NOT been narrowed by the general rise. That the gap remains the same DESPITE obviously favourable environmental circumstances would therefore seem to STRENGTHEN the evidence in favour of the black/white gap being wholly genetic.

The broadest explanation for the rise in IQ scores over the 20th century is that it reflects the advantages of modernity in general: The elimination of hunger in Western countries, improved perinatal care (particularly less damaging obstetric practices), improved medical care generally, greater access to mental stimulation via movies and TV etc. But the leading cause is thought to be greater test sophistication. The many more years that kids now spend in education makes them good at test-taking strategies generally (e.g. the wisdom of guessing when you don't actually know the answer).

All these influences are essentially one-off however. Once the major limits on maximum brain development are removed, no further improvement in IQ scores can be expected. And in some countries that does already seem to have happened. Test scores there have ceased to increase. Environmental influences do have SOME effect on IQ but once the environment is removed from the equation, the still-large remaining differences in scores between individuals can only be genetic. So Flynn's findings in fact STRENGTHEN the evidence in favour of genetics being the overwhelming influence on IQ.

And the twin studies showed that long ago, anyway. Twins usually have extremely similar environments but identical twins have almost exactly the same IQs whereas fraternal (genetically different) twins may or may not. I personally know of one set of fraternal twins where one flunked High School and the other got a University degree.

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The DEMOCRAT ATTEMPT TO "GET" LIMBAUGH

More Leftist dishonesty -- smearing Rush Limbaugh: "The latest attempt to crush Rush is by pretending that Rush called any soldier who questions the war a "phony soldier." The claim is baldly false. Peter Wehner over at National Review has a transcript of the call that is the root of this made-up controversy. In short, it is clearly that when Rush talked about phony soldiers, he was referring to actual phony soldiers: people who have made up military credentials in an attempt to add heft to their criticism. And there have been a lot of such phony soldiers during the course of this war and its criticism. Yet since that time Senators Kerry and Harkin and others have been smearing Rush with these false charges. It would be kind to assume that they simply haven't heard the show or seen a transcript, so don't know that the remarks were taken out of context. That would show an astonishing degree of irresponsibility, not to bother having staff actually check what someone said before taking to the Floor of the Senate to denounce him. But I think the truth is that they do know that what they are saying is absolutely untrue and simply don't care. [Kinda amusing that one of Limbaugh's Democrat accusers is himself a phony war hero -- as is another]

Attack on Limbaugh aimed at talk radio generally: "If you need any proof that the Democrats are going to try to rip the guts out of talk radio when they gain control of the White House, you need look no further than the current storm surrounding Rush Limbaugh. The instigator here is Media Myrmidons. They like to call themselves "Media Matters" but myrmidons fits so much better. Media Myrmidons is an ultra left-wing machine created by Hillary Clinton and her supporters and backers to carry forth the attack on conservative talk radio. Media Myrmidons started this attack on Limbaugh by writing that Rush called "service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq 'phony soldiers.'" Media Myrdions is lying .. and they know they're lying. They also know that they can depend on the mainstream media in this country to not only ignore their distortion, but to actually work to support and spread it. This whole mess starts with a clown by the name of Jesse Macbeth. Macbeth became very popular with the media earlier this year when he started telling stories about all of the hideous crimes he saw our soldiers commit while he was serving in Afghanistan and Iraq as an Army ranger. Oh, how the leftist media sopped it up. The only problem was, Macbeth was lying. "Jesse Macbeth, 23, Tacoma, Washington, sentenced today in connection with his fraudulent claims of military service. Macbeth never traveled outside the U.S. with the Army"."

No consistency in Leftism again: "Ah Democrats. Too clever by half, again. In denouncing Rush Limbaugh, Reid had to admit that in Iraq: "Our troops are fighting and dying to bring to others the freedoms that many take for granted." This is the same Harry Reid who in April pronounced the war in Iraq was lost."

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ELSEWHERE



Palestinian Propaganda Coup finally coming apart: "Last month, a French court heard an appeals case whose forthcoming verdict will have far-reaching ramifications for all who value truth and accuracy in Middle East news reporting. The case involves Philippe Karsenty, a French journalist and media commentator, who was found guilty of defamation after he called for the firing of two France 2 Television journalists responsible for the Sept. 30, 2000, news report on the alleged killing of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It has been seven years since France 2 Television broadcast the excruciating footage of Mohammed and his father Jamal crouching in terror behind a barrel in Gaza's Netzarim Junction while, according to the report, under relentless fire from IDF soldiers. The 59-second clip, which ends with the boy apparently shot dead, was presented around the world as an unambiguous case of Israeli savagery. Shortly following the al-Dura incident, however, a series of inquiries cast grave doubt on the accuracy of the original France 2 report. And yet France 2 refused to release Abu Rahmeh's full 27 minutes of raw footage. It did, however, agree to let three prominent French journalists view the footage. All three concluded that it comprised blatantly staged scenes of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces, and that France 2's Jerusalem Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin had lied to conceal that fact.

Cheap wine: I have just bought from my local liquor store a box containing 6 standard bottles of Australian Chardonnay wine -- for $18, a similar amount to what I often pay for a single bottle. I intend to open one of the bottles immediately after I post this. Should be interesting. Many cheap Australian wines are quite good and, even though I give away thousands of dollars to selected recipients, my Presbyterian upbringing always makes me interested in a bargain: "Waste not, want not", and all that. Update: It is a perfectly pleasant wine -- though with a bit of bitterness in the aftertaste. Great value for $3.00!

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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TIKKUN FAILS TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR

Does this sound like a pretty good comment on the Left?

"What we are suggesting is that being stuck in a doctrinal belief system which is intolerant of another's personal interpretation, or one which disregards facts and foments intolerance of others while setting its followers apart as elite and uniquely special, is a move away from our full potential and from the kind of reasoning that has brought humanity its marvelous advances"

That statement is an only slightly edited version of a passage from a long article in "Tikkun" -- a Left-wing Jewish periodical with vague pretensions to being religious. It is meant to apply to religious fundamentalists and is basically an attack on fundamentalist Christians and Jews.

The theme of the article is that the Christans and Jews concerned are "rigid" in their beliefs. They are incapable of changing their views in response to new evidence. Does that sound like anyone you know? Does it sound like people who blame "poverty" for everything, even Islamic hostility to the West? DESPITE the fact that Bin Laden is a billionaire and most of the 9/11 hijackers were thoroughly middle-class?

Tikkun also seems to be unaware that the concept of mental rigidity has been actively researched by psychologists since before WWII and in fact originates with the Nazi psychologist Jaensch. Nazism and Communism are siblings, however, so it is not particularly surprising that the transplanted German Jewish Marxist theoretician Theodor Wiesengrund (aka Adorno) carried on the Jaensch research after the war, making much of it in his co-authored 1950 book "The Authoritarian Personality". Wiesengrund also thought that it was conservatives who are mentally rigid.

The Wiesengrund/Adorno theory attracted a lot of attention and follow-up research and the outcome of that research was precisely the opposite of what Tikkun asserts. Far from being a general attribute with deep roots in the architecture of the brain, rigidity was in fact found to be highly situational. People who were rigid in one way were often not at all rigid in other ways.

So mental rigidity does exist. We would hardly have Leftism otherwise. But rigidity in political or religious matters does NOT imply a general handicap or trait of rigidity. People who are rigid in their politics can easily be very flexible in other ways. And the "flexibility" of Leftists when it comes to morality of any sort is a good example of that.

I was myself intimately involved in the psychological research I have just described for around 20 years and my many published papers on the subject offer a comprehensive introduction to the whole body of research on the topic. A brief summary of the research with full citations can be found here

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ELSEWHERE

There have been warlike women at least since Boadicea: ""I was a member in good standing with the NDP and was in solidarity with gender parity on party executives and at party meetings. I believed in affirmative action and testified in favor of it in front of legislative committees at Queens Park in Toronto. I was no reactionary behemoth back then. But when I would hear how women would govern by consensus and that there would be no more war I drew the line. I would inevitably point out that Margaret Thatcher led Great Britain into the Falklands Islands War against Argentina in 1982. Almost to a woman, the response to that would be, 'Thatcher's more like a man.' As one might imagine, this would be said in the most derisive way imaginable. Yet history demonstrates that women leaders -- be they monarchs or presidents -- will just as surely go to war as their male counterparts and very often for the same reasons."

"New Deal" debunked: "Sometimes, books create paradigm shifts in how we view history. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes, is just such a book. An absorbing journey through that era, it sets the record straight on both the causes of the Great Depression and how the New Deal policies failed. Conventional wisdom holds that the Great Depression was sparked by the 1929 stock market crash; that capitalism had to be saved from itself; that Hoover failed to do so; and that Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped us through the period with his New Deal policies. But this narrative, as Shlaes makes clear, fails to recognize how the economy actually works since it reflexively champions government as a savior for the common man. In reality, reckless government intervention can make a bad economic situation much worse. The New Deal, in fact, is what put the "Great" in the Great Depression."

Leftist "Strib" to be less Leftist and more local: "The new owners of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune have parted ways with veteran editorial page editor Susan Albright because she did not want to focus on local issues. It also appears the Strib lost the law suit over hiring the former editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The story notes the chairmen of the paper is now acting as publisher because Par Ridder was forced out by a court ruling. Chairman/publisher Harte echoed what I wrote earlier about the St. Paul Pioneer Press being the better read of late because it contained local information, not just a rehash of last night's network news and editorials that could have been from the NY Times."

From the inimitable Ann Coulter: "Uttering lines that send liberals into paroxysms of rage, otherwise known as "citing facts," is the spice of life. When I see the hot spittle flying from their mouths and the veins bulging and pulsing above their eyes, well, that's when I feel truly alive. This happens, I dearly hope, once a week when my column is released. But the public gnashing of teeth that I incite occurs approximately every six to eight months, which is rather peculiar, since I believe I annoy liberals much more often than that. Liberals' response to unbridled right-wing speech makes the Muslims look laid back. Reacting with stupefied indignation whenever someone disagrees with them-especially in a way that makes people point and laugh at liberals-they seem to be in a constant state of outrage. Liberals, and the conservatives who fear them, have a look of perpetual outrage, kind of the way Nancy Pelosi has a look of perpetual surprise".

Senator Tom Harkin, another Democrat phony: "While running for his Senate seat in 1984, and again while running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, Harkin has faced criticism for claiming that he had flown combat missions over North Vietnam. In a 1979 round table discussion with other Congressional Veterans, Harkin said of his service as a Navy pilot: "One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions". These comments were later published in a 1981 book by David Broder. After subsequent inquiries by Barry Goldwater and The Wall Street Journal, Harkin clarified that that he had been stationed in Japan and sometimes flew recently repaired aircraft on test missions over Vietnam. His service flying F-4s and F-8s was later, while he was stationed in Cuba. References to this controversy were deleted from Wikipedia by staffers from Harkin's senate office"

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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Leftist hypocrisy again

Last week, every major newspaper in Texas published a report of a study by "nonpartisan" Texans for Public Justice. It detailed the amounts of money that donors contributed to legislative and major statewide races during the 2006 election. One implied TPJ criticism echoed by the newspaper reports: Millionaire contributors have too much influence on Texas elections.

Most of the articles singled out Houston builder Bob Perry, who favored Republican candidates. His 2006 total: $7.1 million.

What neither the authors of the TPJ study nor any of the journalists reporting the story mentioned was the fact - easily found on the TPJ Web site - that one source of TPJ funding is the "Open Society Institute, New York, NY." The institute - as easily determined by five minutes of Google research - was founded by billionaire George Soros, who remains its chairman. During a 2006 interview, Soros told a New York Times writer that he gave "something like $27.5 million" to MoveOn.org and other anti-Republican groups during the 2004 election campaign.

I mention all of that simply to say ... It's a good thing George Soros doesn't reside in Texas. If he did, the "nonpartisans" at Texans for Public Justice would be pouncing on him like a duck on a June bug. Don't ya think?

Source

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ELSEWHERE

A quality person: "Last Wednesday, while flying from Phoenix to the Alamo City on U.S. Airways Flight 207, a San Antonio man, Gil Anderson, witnessed something memorable. Shortly before takeoff, he overheard a flight attendant tell a young uniformed soldier sitting in front of him: "A lady in first-class wants to switch seats with you." The soldier accepted the offer and walked up to the first-class section. "When the lady came back to our area, I had a tear in my eye," Anderson said when he phoned this column soon after his plane landed. "I gave her a little round of applause. "Then, by golly, everybody in that area started applauding," he said in a voice tinged with emotion. "It was a very moving moment." Acknowledging the applause of Anderson and the other passengers, the first-class lady said simply: "I did it because he deserves it."

PBS Rewrites World War II with Ken Burns' 14-1/2 hour documentary "The War": "Although promoted as "non-partisan," it keeps up a relentless monotone drumbeat of political correctness, incessantly hammering American mistakes, incompetence, and racism. Burns' documentary is a propaganda pulpit, e.g., for activist Black liberal historian John Hope Franklin. Franklin boasts that after a military recruiter told the young Harvard Ph.D. that he had "everything right but color," he decided to sit out the war because he was "too good" to fight for such a country. Burns made little attempt to juxtapose Franklin to his documentary's footage of African-Americans who fought heroically for America as pilots, artillery men, and Marines. Burns conjures the impression that all Japanese-Americans were sent to concentration camps. Japanese-Americans in Hawaii such as Inouye were not interned in local Manzanars. They comprised a third of the population and an even larger share of Hawaii's skilled manual laborers, so to round up these loyal Americans would have shut down the islands' economy. Burns credits the founder of our present welfare state Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt for what went right in the war. But when loyal Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were forcibly herded into camps like Manzanar, FDR's responsibility for this racial discrimination is downplayed."

We Shall Overcome: "Perhaps ashamed that during both major Civil Rights battles (the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movements), Democrats allied themselves against African Americans, modern Progressives not only proclaim themselves the defenders of Civil Rights in America, but they also continue to wage the battle against racism as if it's still Selma, 1964. In the Progressive world, racial oppression is an omnipresent aspect in the fabric of American life, with every white American (who isn't Progressive, of course) a slavering racist anxious to degrade and dehumanize blacks".

European Protectionism Targets American Companies, Worldwide Innovation: "Unable to defeat American companies in the open marketplace, protectionist European bureaucrats are instead resorting to litigation and regulation to kneecap American companies and protect their own. This week, the European Court of First Instance (CFI), Europe's second-highest court, upheld a $690 million European Commission (EC) antitrust judgment against Microsoft, which it accused of "abusing its market power." And precisely how did Microsoft abuse its power? According to the EC, by having the audacity to cater to consumer preference by including its digital media player in Windows. It should be noted that when Microsoft compliantly offered a stripped-down version of Windows without the media player, almost no one chose to purchase that version. Just brilliant, those European central planners."

President Thompson: "Conventional wisdom is hardening around the proposition that Fred Dalton Thompson is too lazy, ill-prepared, tired, old, lackluster, inexperienced, inconsistent and bald to make a successful run for President. Of course, conventional wisdom rarely gets anything right. When it does, it's only by accident. In this case conventional wisdom is not just wrong but comically so. Thompson will win the Republican nomination for two reasons. First, he's a very impressive candidate. Second, there's no realistic alternative. He will win the general election for the same two reasons":

Europeans Want America to Stay in Iraq: "The Atlantic Community Editorial Team asked European policy experts for their opinions on proposed ways forward in Iraq. Respondents from ten different countries provided some surprising results. While the American public and policy debate revolves largely around exit strategies and "redeployment," there is apparent consensus among European policy analysts that American troops should remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future. In contrast to both European media opinion and the prevailing views of American liberals, our respondents supported sustained troop levels. Many consider the announcement of a timetable for withdrawal to be counter-productive and even outright dangerous, saying that lack of American involvement would drive Iraq into further chaos."

Another triumph of British bureaucracy: "The government has paid out a record 450,000 pounds for an end-of-terrace house in one of the Victorian streets being bulldozed across northern England to make way for modern housing developments. A Cheshire-based property investor picked up the payout, which is more than double the price that any other property has fetched on the same road in the last two years. Property experts said it could be completely refurbished for less than 100,000 pounds. [Governments have always done housing badly]

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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Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt

What FDR had in common with the other charismatic collectivists of the 30s. Excerpts:

On May 7, 1933, just two months after the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New York Times reporter Anne O'Hare McCormick wrote that the atmosphere in Washington was "strangely reminiscent of Rome in the first weeks after the march of the Blackshirts, of Moscow at the beginning of the Five-Year Plan..America today literally asks for orders." The Roosevelt administration, she added, "envisages a federation of industry, labor and government after the fashion of the corporative State as it exists in Italy." That article isn't quoted in Three New Deals, a fascinating study by the German cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch. But it underscores his central argument: that there are surprising similarities between the programs of Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler.

With our knowledge of the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II, we find it almost impossible to consider such claims dispassionately. But in the 1930s, when everyone agreed that capitalism had failed, it wasn't hard to find common themes and mutual admiration in Washington, Berlin, and Rome, not to mention Moscow. (Three New Deals does not focus as much on the latter.) Nor is that a mere historical curiosity, of no great importance in the era following democracy's triumph over fascism, National Socialism, and communism. Schivelbusch concludes his essay with the liberal journalist John T. Flynn's warning, in 1944, that state power feeds on crises and enemies. Since then we have been warned about many crises and many enemies, and we have come to accept a more powerful and more intrusive state than existed before the '30s.....

In the North American Review in 1934, the progressive writer Roger Shaw described the New Deal as "Fascist means to gain liberal ends." He wasn't hallucinating. FDR's adviser Rexford Tugwell wrote in his diary that Mussolini had done "many of the things which seem to me necessary." Lorena Hickok, a close confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt who lived in the White House for a spell, wrote approvingly of a local official who had said, "If [President] Roosevelt were actually a dictator, we might get somewhere." She added that if she were younger, she'd like to lead "the Fascist Movement in the United States." At the National Recovery Administration (NRA), the cartel-creating agency at the heart of the early New Deal, one report declared forthrightly, "The Fascist Principles are very similar to those we have been evolving here in America."

Roosevelt himself called Mussolini "admirable" and professed that he was "deeply impressed by what he has accomplished." The admiration was mutual. In a laudatory review of Roosevelt's 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, "Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices..Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism." The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised "Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies" and "the development toward an authoritarian state" based on the "demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest."

In 1973 one of the most distinguished American historians, John A. Garraty of Columbia University, created a stir with his article "The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression." Garraty was an admirer of Roosevelt but couldn't help noticing, for instance, the parallels between the Civilian Conservation Corps and similar programs in Germany. Both, he wrote, "were essentially designed to keep young men out of the labor market. Roosevelt described work camps as a means for getting youth `off the city street corners,' Hitler as a way of keeping them from `rotting helplessly in the streets.' In both countries much was made of the beneficial social results of mixing thousands of young people from different walks of life in the camps. Furthermore, both were organized on semimilitary lines with the subsidiary purposes of improving the physical fitness of potential soldiers and stimulating public commitment to national service in an emergency."

And in 1976, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan incurred the ire of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), pro-Roosevelt historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and The New York Times when he told reporters that "fascism was really the basis of the New Deal."

Source

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ELSEWHERE

About time: "Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead apologized today for the school's lack of full support for the three lacrosse players falsely accused last year of raping an escort service dancer. It was Brodhead's first public apology for the university's handling of the case, which drew worldwide media attention. He said the university should have done more to reach out to the players and their families at a time of great peril. "This was a mistake. I take responsibility for it and I apologize," he said.... "If there's one lesson the world should take from the Duke lacrosse case," Brodhead said, "it's the danger of prejudgment and our need to defend against it at every turn." His short speech was greeted with a standing ovation by many in the crowd.... Brodhead forced the resignation of the lacrosse coach and canceled the 2006 Duke lacrosse season after the dancer claimed she was assaulted at a lacrosse team party on March 13, 2006"

Life in the California dream world: "A rash of recent murders has not only shattered the peace in Sacramento, it has shaken our community's sense of itself as a safe place to live and raise families. Two weeks ago, armed robbers broke into a home in southeast Sacramento County where residents were apparently selling drugs. Detectives say the assailants shot to death Sean Aquitania, a visitor at the home who tried to fight them off. One of the killers then walked outside and shot Aquitania's 7-month-old son, Sean Jr., in the head. The boy was strapped in a car seat, helpless. It was the cold-blooded murder of an infant. And it didn't happen on the streets of bloody Baghdad. It happened on a neighborhood cul-de-sac here in Sacramento. As local residents absorbed the horror of the deliberate murder of an infant, someone pumped four bullets into 21-year old Rodrigo Rodriguez, a scholarship student at the University of California, Berkeley, the first of his family to go to college, a young man who organized food drives and tutored kids from poor neighborhoods. The killing took place outside a barber shop in Oak Park two days after baby Sean's murder. Witnesses say the killer shot twice, and after Rodriguez fell, twice more. The shooter then jumped into the passenger seat of a waiting car and drove away."

British Leftists to destroy the navy that Napoleon and Hitler could not: "Ministers have drawn up confidential proposals to slash the number of ships in the Royal Navy, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose. The expected reductions follow a fierce row between Service chiefs and the Treasury over defence spending. The Ministry of Defence has produced a plan to decommission five warships from next April, which would reduce the Navy's capability to the level where it could carry out only "one small-scale operation".

Superannuated traitor now totally nuts: "Daniel Ellsberg must miss being in the spotlight. The former star of the radical left, best known for giving the New York Times the "Pentagon Papers", is on the comeback trail, trying to restablish his radical credentials on the college speaking circuit. But times have changed and Ellsberg knows he must change with them; he must become as hysterically unbalanced in his criticism of government as any other lefty if he expects to stand out in a crowd. At American University on September 20, Ellsberg didn't disappoint. He said: "And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran - an escalation - which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps."

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

****************************

"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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