Are Liberals More Open-Minded Than Conservatives?

Self-confessed hater, Jonathan Chait says below that they are. I add some comments below that -- JR

In a paper they wrote about the ideological leanings of blog readers and news-watchers, Henry Farrell, Eric Lawrence and John Sides find that conservatives tend to read only conservative blogs, while most liberals read only left-leaning blogs. That's not a huge surprise. They also find this:

Those few people who read both left wing and right wing blogs are considerably more likely to be left wing themselves; interpret this as you like.

I'm going to go ahead and interpet it: Liberals are more interested in listening to opposing points of view than are conservatives. Now, most people in general do not like listening to opposing views, but those who do are overwhelmingly on the left. I'm going to wallow in smug self-satisfaction for a few minutes, then go over to the Corner to see if anybody has a rebuttal.

Source

Chait is quoting some research about blog readers that appeared on the Leftist "Crooked Timber" website. Even if the findings concerned are sound, therefore, they tell us nothing about the population at large. From blog readership alone, for instance, we can tell that blog readers are far from typical. Leftist blogs in general have far higher readership than conservative blogs. Kos readership completely dwarfs Instapundit readership, for instance. Most blog readers are Leftist but that is not true of the population at large.

So what IS true of the population at large? Are people in general more open-minded if they are Leftist? That is a very old question among political psychologists -- going back to the book The open and closed mind by Milton Rokeach, published in 1960. Rokeach constructed a questionnaire (the D or "Dogmatism" scale) to measure open mindedness. He allowed for it being equally prevalent on both sides of politics but found some tendency for Leftists to be more open-minded.

As it happens, by far the most prolific author of the many subsequent papers in the academic journals on the subject was myself. You can access all my papers on the subject here.

What I found at the end of many years of research was that the "D" scale really measured nothing at all. Since the topic was a very popular one within political psychology, it seems reasonable to say that the best brains on the subject have so far been unable to produce a definitive conclusion. In the circumstances, I think we have to treat Mr Chait's assertions as mere unsubstantiated opinion.

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McCain is right on trade -- but it may sink him

John McCain demonstrated the global reach of America's presidential election last night by flying to Colombia where he will once more declare his support for the free-trade deals opposed by Barack Obama. The Republican nominee claims that Mr Obama's promise to embrace the rest of the world is contradicted by his populist rhetoric pandering to US trade unions and Rust Belt voters who blame trade deals for the loss of industrial jobs.

Opinion polls suggest that two thirds of US voters believe their economy has suffered from globalisation and, speaking before his visit to Latin America, which will also include a stop in Mexico, Mr McCain said that he had a "very tough" task in convincing the electorate that trade can help them.

He cited the example of President Hoover, whose 1930 decision to sign sky-high tariff legislation into law had ensured "we went from a recession into one of the great depressions of our history". Mr McCain added: "You gotta stand on principle. I believe in the principle of free trade." Mr Obama, described by the McCain campaign as "the most protectionist candidate that the Democratic Party has ever fielded", is planning his own international tour of Europe and the Middle East this summer.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Greedy unions and complacent management get their just reward: " GM, once an emblem of U.S. post-war economic might, is being driven to the brink by dwindling sales that are expected to test cash reserves and the nerves of investors in the months ahead. Crosstown rivals Ford Motor Co and privately held Chrysler LLC face similar pressures. As the automakers weigh their options to ride out the industry's most-trying slump in 25 years, thousands of Detroit families are doing the same.... GM's sales have dropped 15 percent so far this year, and its share of the U.S. market is down to just 21 percent. When major automakers report sales for June on Tuesday, there is a chance that GM will be overtaken by Toyota Motor Co as the monthly sales leader, a reversal that points to the popularity of small cars like the Yaris and the abandonment of SUVs and trucks like the Yukon and Silverado. GM has responded by slashing costs, cutting truck production and slashing its factory work force to less than half of the 118,000 it employed four years ago. For Detroit, the downturn has been brutal. Michigan's jobless rate jumped to a 16-year high of 8.5 percent for May. Detroit led the nation with its home foreclosure rate in 2007."

Brainless attacks on oil companies: "Rather than do something productive to increase fuel supplies, Congress wastes time hunting bogeymen and fabricating distractions. Lately they have excoriated Big Oil for the cardinal sin of "under-investing" in alternative energy... But before Congress tars and feathers Big Oil CEOs for this alleged inaction, a simple question occurs: So what? Where is it written that any industry must spend money to subvert its business model? Since when must any company plow scarce resources into helping consumers avoid its products? If enterprises now must meet this standard, the interesting possibilities are endless... why does Senator Barack Obama (D., Ill.) insist on fundraising only for his campaign? When will he hold a benefit for John McCain? Despite this notion's manifest absurdity, Big Oil, in fact, has spent plenty on alternative energy. While Washington politicians spit venom at the petroleum industry, it funds more of such research than does Uncle Sam".

Britons set to retire in poverty: "British workers are set to retire on less than half their annual pay in retirement -significantly lower than many workers worldwide. The average British worker is looking at a retirement income of about $430 a week, according to research from investment house Fidelity International, less than the current minimum wage. In America and Germany, pensioners will expect to receive 58 per cent and 56 per cent of their current earnings respectively. Only Japan is on a par with the UK, with their pensions set to reach an average of 47 per cent of a worker's salary. The average weekly wage in the UK is $914, said Simon Fraser, president of the Retirement Institute at Fidelity International. But in retirement Brits can expect to receive just $430 a week on average, which would be less than those working a 40-hour week on the minimum wage of $11 an hour".

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Why do people vote? Genetic variation in political participation

This is only a small advance on what was already known. It is known that Left/Right orientation is strongly genetic and the study below shows that the strength of that orientation is also genetically inherited -- JR

A groundbreaking new study finds that genes significantly affect variation in voter turnout, shedding new light on the reasons why people vote and participate in the political system. The research, conducted by political scientists James H. Fowler, Christopher T. Dawes (of UC San Diego) and psychologist Laura A. Baker (of University of Southern California), appears in the May issue of the American Political Science Review, a journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

"Although we are not the first to suggest a link between genes and political participation," note the authors, "this study is the first attempt to test the idea empirically." They do so by conducting three tests of the claim that part of the variation in political participation can be attributed to genetic factors. The results suggest that individual genetic differences make up a large and significant portion of the variation in political participation, even after taking socialization and other environmental factors into account. They also suggest that, contrary to decades of conventional wisdom, family upbringing may have little or no effect on children's future participatory behavior.

In conducting their study, the authors examine the turnout patterns of identical and non-identical twins-including 396 twins in Los Angeles County and 806 twins in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Their findings suggest that 53% of the variation in turnout can be accounted for by genetic effects in the former, with similar outcomes in the latter.

Moreover, genetic-based differences extend to a broad class of acts of political participation, including donating to a campaign, contacting an official, running for office, and attending a rally. According to Fowler, "we expected to find that genes played some role in political behavior, but we were quite surprised by the size of the effect and how widely it applies to all kinds of participation." "The fact that we have found genetic variation in voting, and political participation in general, should not be surprising given the large numbers of behaviors that have already been found to be heritable," observe the authors.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

A point that's so obvious that the MSM can't seem to comprehend it: "As dumb as this claim is, and it is stupid on it's face, the one that continues to bug me is when the Dems keep whinning that any additional drilling offshore or in ANWR wouldn't yield any oil for a number of years. Instead, they want to invest in unproven technologies such as electric cars and solar and wind which will cost significantly more, require a massive overhaul of supporting infrastructure and...wait for it...won't yield any results for even more years if ever. Yet, nobody points out this obvious yet inconvenient truth."

That wicked outsourcing to India is OK when the NYT does it: "Reciting the outsourcing mantra is a required ritual for any self-respecting Democrat office seeker this cycle. Obama and Clinton both took up the battle cry in the primaries to rally big labor bosses and agitate the rank and file. Assisted by their allies in the drive-by media like the New York Times and NBC News, the candidate's rhetoric was reinforced with strategically placed stories to amplify the propaganda. For observers interested in exposing media hipocrisy, the announcement that the New York Times is outsourcing their internet operations to a unit of Mumbai India Newspaper publisher Deccan Chronicle is a most delicious nugget."

The Anthrax Fiasco: "Steven Hatfill finally has his life back. Thanks to FBI incompetence, he also has $5.8 million. In a late Friday news dump, the Justice Department announced it had settled a lawsuit with Mr. Hatfill, a former military scientist whom then-Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly identified in 2002 as a "person of interest" in the investigation into the anthrax attacks in the aftermath of 9/11. Mr. Hatfill sued, claiming the FBI had libeled him in leaks to the media. Justice's mea culpa is a major embarrassment, exceeding even the Richard Jewell debacle. It's worse because it is a virtual confession that the anthrax case is cold. Throughout one of the largest investigations in law-enforcement history, agents were fixated on a "lone wolf" theory that Director Robert Mueller's FBI, for all intents and purposes, now admits was wrong."

Spitzer remembered: "In 2005, then-Attorney General Spitzer sued Mr. Grasso over his $190 million pay package from the exchange, which was then a private nonprofit. To make his case, he stretched to the breaking point several obscure state laws designed to protect nonprofits from self-dealing directors. The state's highest court has now ruled that the AG had no authority to bring four of the six claims, affirming a lower court's finding. Exceeding his authority was one of Mr. Spitzer's predilections. The question is whether his successor, Andrew Cuomo, wants to continue down that path after this latest setback. The two remaining claims require the AG to prove that Mr. Grasso breached his fiduciary duty to the exchange and knowingly engaged in wrongdoing. The judge in the case granted partial summary judgment last year on one of those counts, but that legally tenuous ruling is also under appeal."

Church of England clergy plan mass exit over women bishops: "More than 1,300 clergy, including 11 serving bishops, have written to the archbishops of Canterbury and York to say that they will defect from the Church of England if women are consecrated bishops. As the wider Anglican Communion fragments over homosexuality, England's established Church is moving towards its own crisis with a crucial vote on women bishops this weekend. In a letter to Rowan Williams and John Sentamu, seen by The Times, the signatories give warning that they will consider leaving the Church if two crucial votes are passed to introduce female bishops. The Church's moderate centre is being pressured as never before by evangelicals opposed to gays, and traditionalists opposed to women's ordination."

Another mad British priority: "Violent assaults and serious antisocial behaviour are lower priorities for councils than stopping people smoking, town hall targets showed yesterday. Despite a government poll showing community safety was voters' overwhelming priority, anti-crime initiatives will not be the main focus of authorities. Details published yesterday by Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, set out the targets picked by each local authority - and agreed by her department - to be their future priorities. While performance will be measured across the whole range of 198 indicators, targets will be set only for the 35 chosen as top local concerns".

A good German: "There was another blow for the Lisbon treaty yesterday from Horst Koehler, the German President, who refused to complete his country's ratification. President Koehler decided not to sign the documents until a legal challenge is heard by the country's constitutional court, a process that could last until the autumn. Although the German head of state is a symbolic figure mainly, he has the power to delay legislation and can use that bought time to generate a national debate."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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A strange politician: A man who does not shout his good deeds from the rooftops (Matthew 6:1-6)

Post below recycled from Atlas. See the original for links

The dirt, muck, and corruption scandals surrounding Obama are overwhelming. So much so that McCain's sterling character and list of accomplishments get little ink. McCain was not my candidate and I have serious domestic policy differences with the man but in the run for President - the contrast between McCain and Obama could not be more stark.

There's a wonderful piece in The Jerusalem Post on McCain's background. It's no wonder Obama is terrified to engage in Townhall debates with McCain. Obama is not fit to share the stage with McCain, let alone lead in the polls.

There is so much of his life that reveals an absolutely sterling character, but remains largely unknown to the public. And in spite of the tremendous political advantages that publicity could confer, McCain instinctively keeps that information private. Although as a presidential candidate he may be forced to overcome this reticence, he honorably shies away from using his personal heroics for political gain.

How aware is the public that McCain has raised seven children? Or that he adopted his two oldest sons as small boys (children from his wife's prior marriage)? Or that he has raised a Bangladeshi girl with severe health problems adopted from Mother Theresa's orphanage? Or that his own sons have served in the military, including in Iraq?

It's widely known that McCain, a Navy pilot, was shot down, captured and tortured by the North Vietnamese for 5 and a half years - an episode worth a forthcoming column all its own. But few are aware that he refused early release until all the POWs captured before him were freed, and that he refused special treatment offered once it was discovered that he was the "crown prince" (the son of the admiral in charge of the Pacific Fleet) because he wouldn't provide the enemy with any propaganda victories.

Even fewer seem to know that those years were a fraction of a 22-year Navy career. Although broken and battered, after his release from Vietnamese captivity he went right back to the Navy, where he continued to serve for an additional eight years....

Anyone can talk about "supporting our troops"; the McCains serve. McCain's father and grandfather were respected American admirals. Of McCain's four sons, three have gone the military route. One was a Navy pilot like his father, one enlisted in the Marines at age 17 and recently completed a tour in Iraq, and one is completing his education at the Naval Academy (raising the strong possibility that, for the first time in half a century, the United States will have a president with a son at war).

Yet, likely because of those same values, McCain maintains a strict code of silence about his sons' military service, no matter how legitimate his pride or politically useful their military status. Through 2007, McCain was the strongest Senate advocate of vastly increasing troop levels in Iraq, strongly influencing the administration's wildly successful "surge" strategy. Yet McCain never brought up his own son's service in some of the roughest areas of Iraq. His principled refusal of political advantage from his son's Iraq service extends to refusal even to be interviewed on the subject, or to introduce his son to campaign audiences.

Also little-known is the story of McCain's youngest child. As a result of a 1991 Cindy McCain visit to Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, the McCains adopted an infant daughter dying from a host of health issues. The orphanage could not provide the medical care needed to save the little girl's life, so the McCains, already the parents of six children, brought the child home to America, and paid for desperately needed surgeries and years of rehabilitation. That child is their teenage daughter Bridget. In fact, there was a second infant girl brought back from the orphanage that the McCains saved. She ended up being adopted by one of McCain's aides, Wes Gullett, and his wife. "We were called at midnight by Cindy," Gullett has stated, and "five days later we met our new daughter Nicki at the LA airport."

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The Wild Differences in The Polls, Explained

If you've been watching Presidential preference polls over the past week, you might feel a bit whipsawed. For the second straight day, Gallup's daily tracking poll Thursday has John McCain and Barack Obama tied. Both candidates dropped a point from yesterday's tracking poll, down to 44 percent. The margin of error is +/- 2 percentage points. The Rasmussen daily tracking poll in the same period of time has shown a 3-7 point gap between the two candidates.

Neither of the daily tracking polls square with two polls from that show Barack Obama holding a stunning double-digit lead. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll showed Obama with a 12 point lead over McCain, and a Newsweek poll had Obama leading by 15 points, if Ralph Nader and Bob Barr were included in the mix.

Why the difference? Were the Newsweek and L.A. Times biased in favor of Obama? Do the Rasmussen and Gallup pollsters favor McCain? Or maybe the public is wildly changing its views, daily. All unlikely, says Richard Morin, a senior editor at the Pew Research Center. In an interview with CQ Politics, he said the discrepancy is probably a result of the Newsweek and L.A. Times/Bloomberg polls over-representing Democrats.

"When I look at those results, I know something is going on," said Morin. "The first place that I look when I see these discrepancies, I look for the percentage of Republicans, Democrats and Independents in the sample. We know that the best predictor of how someone is going to vote is their party ID. "Both the L.A. Times/Bloomberg and the Newsweek polls have (too) large percentage of Democrats and a (too) small percentage of Republicans." While there are indeed more people who identify themselves as Democrats than Republicans in the country, Morin says the other polls, including Gallup, are more in line with the actual disparity than the Bloomberg or Newsweek polls.

"Interestingly enough," Morin said, "if you do the math and apply the proper percentages to the L.A. Times/Bloomberg and the Newsweek findings, you find that their results change dramatically." In fact, Morin says, if the two polls that show Obama winning by a large margin were to modify their findings using the same percentage of Democrats and Republicans as other polls, Obama's lead would come down to somewhere between a toss-up and a small, single digit lead for Obama.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

They're laughing at us: "You realize that when Libya says it is thinking about cutting oil production, or when the OPEC president muses about $170 oil, they are in all likelihood multiplying their already huge profits by playing the long side of the futures market. They know all too well just how the oil market will soar even higher when it hears such words, and they are happy to profit by the speculation as well as by their product. And why shouldn't they? They play Americans for suckers, and Americans oblige them by taking no action to fend for ourselves. They're laughing at us for the fools that we are. A serious country would not tolerate such a situation. We do. Yet another reason for them to laugh".

French military competence on display (they should stick to white flags): "Two people including a child were in a critical condition today after live bullets were used instead of blanks during a French special forces open day, army and regional officials said. Another two people are in a serious condition. Seventeen people, 15 of them civilians and two of them soldiers, were injured in the bizarre incident, as parachutists from a marines parachute regiment demonstrated to the public the techniques involved in hostage liberation exercises. According to the army toll, two are in a critical condition after "incomprehensible'' scenes at a barracks near Carcassone, in the country's southwest. One soldier has been detained, although no explanation was immediately forthcoming for why the wrong ammunition was loaded into weapons." [There was similar display of competence from another notorious group of bunglers -- British police -- not long ago]

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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A social science attack on that wicked voter ID

In my days as an employed academic, I used to follow the social science literature quite closely. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that I knew the current findings better than almost all of my academic colleagues -- and I have the published critiques to show for that.

And keeping up with the scientific literature was particularly onerous for a conservative. One knew that the summary and conclusions of any given article would always be "spun" as supporting a Leftist viewpoint. So one had to go to the "Results" section of the article and plough through a lot of statistics in order to find out what really happened in the research concerned. That did of course take a lot of time but was often very instructive. I have seen results that could not have been more destructive of a Leftist theory presented as if they supported the Leftist theory. I offer a small appendix below in which I give an example of that.

After about 20 years of that, however, I gave up. There was so little wheat among the chaff that I just ceased to take the whole body of social science literature seriously. What was reported was usually very poorly done (Leftists corrupt anything they touch) and anything that was openly supportive of a conservative view would almost never get published anyway. So one was reading bigotry rather than science.

So it is only now that an article published last January has come to my attention. And even now I cannot justify a long look at it but I thought that I might make a few comments. The article claims that asking for ID from voters is a BAD THING. I reproduce a summary of it below and I will then go on to point to some of its weaknesses.

A new Brown University study reports that U.S. states that require voters to present identification before casting ballots have lower levels of political participation. The research also indicates that voter I.D. policies discourage legal immigrants from becoming citizens, particularly for blacks and Hispanics, reducing odds of naturalization by more than 15 percent.

Since 2000, and stimulated by new security concerns after 9/11, there has been an upsurge in state requirements for voter identification. By 2004, a total of 19 states required some form of documentation of a voter's identity, sometimes in the form of photo I.D. Proponents of such requirements believe identification is a necessary tool to prevent voting fraud, such as voting by noncitizens or people who are otherwise ineligible to register. Others argue that whatever its intention, I.D. policies have the effect of suppressing electoral participation, particularly among minorities.

The report, co-authored by S4 Director John Logan and graduate student Jennifer Darrah, concludes that voter I.D. is one of many factors that negatively influence civic participation in the United States. The report states, "At a time when many public officials express regret that immigrants seem to lag in their participation in mainstream society, even small suppressive effects on naturalization - the formal step to becoming an American citizen - work in the wrong direction and should be taken into account as people evaluate the benefits and costs of more stringent identification requirements."

The new study extends previous research on I.D. requirements by analyzing not only voter turnout, but also voter registration and - "the key prior step for immigrants" - the decision to become a citizen, across racial and ethnic groups. Key findings include:

* in states with a voter I.D. policy in 2000, the odds of naturalization for foreign-born residents of the United States were reduced by more than 5 percent, with the strongest impact on Hispanics;

* in election years from 1996-2004, the odds of being a registered voter among citizens aged 18 and older were higher for whites by about 15 percent in states with voter I.D. requirements. But this effect was more than counterbalanced by a reduction in white voter turnout. In 2004 alone the net effect was to reduce white turnout in these states by about 400,000 votes;

* in this same period, voter I.D. policies reduced Asians' registration and diminished voter turnout by blacks and Hispanics, by about 14 percent and 20 percent respectively. The net reduction in minority voting in these states in 2004 was more than 400,000 votes;

* the suppressive effect of voter I.D. disproportionately affected not only minorities, but also persons with less than a high school education and less than $15,000 income, tenants, and recent movers. While persons with these characteristics are substantially less likely to participate in civic affairs regardless of their state of residence, they experience an additional significant reduction in participation relative to others in voter I.D. states.

"It is incredibly clear how voter I.D. requirements disproportionately affect and suppress minorities," said Logan, professor of sociology. "This data shows that if voter I.D. policies had not been in place in 2004, voter turnout would have increased by more than 1.6 million. That is a strong argument in itself for change."

Source

Those "incredibly clear" results are not so clear if one looks at them with the skeptical eye that is proper in science, however. For a start, how did they equate States with and without voter ID laws? As a broad generalization, I would expect that it would be the more conservative States that have such laws. So are observed differences between the States caused by the greater conservatism of those States or are they caused just by the voter ID laws? It could be either one of those -- and any attribution of the interstate differences to the voter ID laws is nothing more than speculation.

There are of course statistical means (analysis of covariance etc.) for holding one influence steady while examining the effect of the other influence but that requires a good measure of both influences. And how does one quantify the degree to which a State is conservative? Does one use percentage voting for the GOP in the previous Presidential election? Maybe. But as many conservatives will tell you with some vehemence right at this moment, even a GOP Presidential candidate may not be very conservative so a vote for him could be a long way from an expression of conservatism. So statistical control founders on such objections.

In essence, then, the research above is essentially epidemiological -- and therefore heir to the big limitation of all such research, the limitation that correlation is not proof of causation.

And there are in the results themselves indications that the guesses about causation are poor. How do we explain that voter ID allegedly increased white voter registration but reduced white voter turnout? The two effects seem contradictory. Surely registration should INCREASE turnout and surely ID requirements should REDUCE voter registration? Yet the opposite happened in both cases. One can of course come up with ad hoc explanations for both effects but once again we are forced into speculation rather than having clear evidence of anything.

And one should finally note that a reduction in voter turnout is precisely what the voter ID laws aimed at. If you prevent ineligible people from voting, that must (ceteris paribus) lead to a reduction in the numbers who vote. So if the research above proves anything, it proves that voter ID laws had the intended effect. The fact that the reduction seems to have been particularly marked among Hispanics (many of whom suffer from a sad lack of "documents") supports that interpretation.

APPENDIX

An article on racism by Gough & Bradley (1993) is an example of how a respected author in the field concerned can reverse the plain implication of his research results. The article started out well. Gough & Bradley were unusual in that they used a properly constructed multi-item scale to measure rated racist behavior. They correlated it with a form of the California "F" scale (usually described as measuring authoritarianism but perhaps more informatively referred to as measuring a type of old-fashioned thinking). They found a correlation between the attitude and behavior measures of essentially zero (.08). A clearer disconfirmation of their theory would be hard to imagine.

So did they say: "We were wrong"? Far from it. They then decomposed their attiutude and behaviour indices into the individual items making up those indices and looked for correlations in the large matrix of correlations between the individual items. And there were some non-negligible correlations there. But there would be by chance alone! If you take 5% probability as your criterion for significance (which is conventional) and you have 100 correlations, 5% of them will (ceteris paribus) be identified as significant! What Gough and his friend did was then exactly what you are warned against doing in Statistics 101. And on the basis of that fraudulent procedure they claimed to have produced evidence in support of their theory

Reference: Gough, H. & Bradley, P. (1993) Personal attributes of people described by others as intolerant. In P.M. Sniderman, P.E. Tetlock & E.G. Carmines (Eds.) Prejudice, politics and the American dilemma (pp. 60-85) Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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ELSEWHERE

Decision Made -- McCain Wins : "Today's Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment is going to decide the next President of the United States and that is John McCain. The fact that the ruling was not 9-to-0 but only five-to-four means that one more leftist on the Supreme Court and the people's right to defend themselves would have been abolished. If I were McCain, I'd run an ad day and night for the next 90 days saying simply: the Four leftist judges voted to take away your right to protect yourself. One more and they would have succeeded. The next president will nominate one, two or even three Supreme Court justices, your freedom -- and your family's safety -- lies in the balance".

Bill Clinton still unhappy with Obama: "Mr Obama is expected to speak to Mr Clinton for the first time since he won the nomination in the next few days, but campaign insiders say that the former president's future campaign role is a "sticking point" in peace talks with Mrs Clinton's aides. The Telegraph has learned that the former president's rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence. A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could "kiss my ass" in return for his support."

Anglican schism: "The Anglican Church faces what is in effect a schism this weekend after the declaration last night of conservative evangelicals to create a "church within a church". The new body, called the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, will have its own bishops, clergy and theological colleges. Details of the fellowship were announced in Jerusalem last night at a summit of conservative Anglicans, the Global Anglican Future Conference. It follows a protracted battle within the church over gay clergy. Many evangelicals were outraged when it was revealed this month that the civil partnership of two gay priests had been blessed in a London church with a traditional wedding liturgy... The new fellowship will return to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 39 articles of religion, train its own priests and insist on more orthodox practices in its churches."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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The Can't Do Society

Excerpts from Victor Davis Hanson below. There is much truth in what he says but I disagree with his use of "We". Why should Americans in general and conservatives in particular take the blame for what Leftists have wrought?

We have become a nation of second-guessing Hamlets. Shakespeare warned us about the dangers of "thinking too precisely." His poor Danish prince lost "the name of action," as he dithered and sighed that "conscience does make cowards of us all."

With gas over $4 a gallon, the public is finally waking up to the fact that for decades the United States has not been developing known petroleum reserves in Alaska, in our coastal waters or off the continental shelf. Jittery Hamlets apparently forgot that gas comes from oil -- and that before you can fill your tank, you must take risks to fill a tanker......

We are nearing the seventh anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Its replacement -- the Freedom Tower -- should have been a sign of our determination and grit right after September 11. But it is only now reaching street level. Owners, renters, builders and government have all fought endlessly over the design, the cost and the liability.

In contrast, in the midst of the Great Depression, our far poorer grandparents built the Empire State Building in 410 days -- not a perfect design, but one good enough to withstand a fuel-laden World War II-era bomber that once crashed into it.

Despite unsophisticated 19th-century architectural and engineering science, not to mention legions of snooty French art critics, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was finished in a little over two years and is as popular as ever well over a century later.

In my home state of California, we spent a decade arguing over the replacement for portions of the aging and earthquake-susceptible San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Now that the design has finally been agreed to, it will be several years before it is finished. That's quite a contrast to the original bridge that was completed in just over three years.

California is also in yet another predictable drought and ensuing water shortage. Despite strict conservation and new water-saving technology, we simply don't have enough water for households, recreation, industry and agriculture. Building new dams, reservoirs and canals, you see, would apparently be considered unimaginative and relics of the 20th century.

The causes of this paralysis are clear. Action entails risks and consequences. Mere thinking doesn't. In our litigious society, as soon as someone finally does something, someone else can become wealthy by finding some fault in it. Meanwhile a less fussy, more confident world abroad drills, and builds nuclear plants, refineries, dams and canals to feed and fuel millions who want what we take for granted. In our present comfort, Americans don't seem to understand nature. We believe that our climate-controlled homes, comfortable offices and easy air and car travel are just like grass or trees; apparently they should sprout up on their own for our benefit.

Americans also harp about the faults of prior generations. We would never make their blunders -- even as we don't seem to mind using the power plants, bridges and buildings that they handed down to us.

Finally, high technology and the good life have turned us into utopians, fussy perfectionists who demand heaven on earth. Anytime a sound proposal seems short of perfect, we consider it not good, rather than good enough. Hamlet asked, "To be, or not to be: that is the question." In our growing shortages of infrastructure, food, fuel and water, we've already answered that: "Not to be!"

More here

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POLL: 74 PERCENT SUPPORT OFFSHORE DRILLING

Three in four likely voters - 74 percent - support offshore drilling for oil in U.S. coastal waters and more than half (59 percent) also favor drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.

A majority of likely voters across the political spectrum support offshore oil drilling, with vast majorities of Republicans (90 percent) and independents (75 percent) in favor of drilling for oil off U.S. coastal waters more than half of Democrats (58 percent) also said they favor offshore drilling. Republicans (80 percent) and political independents (57 percent) are much more likely to favor drilling for oil in ANWR than Democrats (40 percent).

The telephone survey of 1,113 likely voters nationwide was conducted June 12-14, and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Apes are human in Spain: "Spain is to become the first country to extend legal rights to apes, wrongfooting animal rights activists who have long campaigned against bullfighting in the country. In what is thought to be the first time a national legislature has granted such rights to animals, the Spanish parliament's environmental committee voted to approve resolutions committing the country to the Great Apes Project, designed by scientists and philosophers who say that humans' closest biological relatives also deserve rights. The resolution, adopted with crossparty support, calls on the Government to promote the Great Apes Project internationally and ensure the protection of apes from "abuse, torture and death". [No naughty comments about Hispanics now!]

Hong Kong cuts a tax : "For all their own policy foibles, Hong Kongers still understand one thing that sometimes eludes American pols: Tax cuts stimulate the economy. Witness Financial Secretary John Tsang's speech yesterday recapping the benefits of the territory's elimination of its 40% wine duty. The February measure has instantly made Hong Kong an Asian wine hub. An auction last month fetched HK$64 million ($8.2 million), an Asian record, on the heels of an auction in April that brought HK$11.5 million. The government's investment promotion agency says five wine-related companies, including dealers and storage companies, are considering opening Hong Kong offices. All of this creates jobs - perhaps only in the dozens so far, but industry insiders expect that number to grow over time."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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"Paralipomena"

As regular readers here are well aware, I am a man of many blogs. I seem to have a blog for most things, even though some of them are "in hibernation". See the side column here for links.

Sometimes, however, I come across news reports that I find interesting, but which, amazingly, don't seem an immediate fit for any of my blogs. I don't like to let such reports escape me, however, so I have recently began putting them up on a special site which is really intended for me only. I call it "Paralipomena", which is Greek for "things left out". They don't always stay left out. After a while I often decide that I can make use of some of them elsewere.

Today, however, for some reason, there was a real rush of interesting reports for which I could not find an immediate home on any of my regular blogs. So "Paralipomena" is at the moment overflowing with what I think is interesting stuff. In the circumstances, I thought it might be reasonable to let readers know it is there. I have no intention of posting to it regularly but it is probably worth glancing through today.

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We're winning this War on Terror

Gerard Baker, writing in "The Times" of London, says that "Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are in retreat, the surge has worked in Iraq and Islamism is discredited". So that must be right! See his reasoning below:

"My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!" If only our political leaders and opinion-formers displayed even a hint of the defiant resilience that carried Marshal Foch to victory at the Battle of the Marne. But these days timorous defeatism is on the march. In Britain setbacks in the Afghan war are greeted as harbingers of inevitable defeat. In America, large swaths of the political class continues to insist Iraq is a lost cause. The consensus in much of the West is that the War on Terror is unwinnable.

And yet the evidence is now overwhelming that on all fronts, despite inevitable losses from time to time, it is we who are advancing and the enemy who is in retreat. The current mood on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, represents a kind of curious inversion of the great French soldier's dictum: "Success against the Taleban. Enemy giving way in Iraq. Al-Qaeda on the run. Situation dire. Let's retreat!" Since it is remarkable how pervasive this pessimism is, it's worth recapping what has been achieved in the past few years.

Afghanistan has been a signal success. There has been much focus on the latest counter-offensive by the Taleban in the southeast of the country and it would be churlish to minimise the ferocity with which the terrorists are fighting, but it would be much more foolish to understate the scale of the continuing Nato achievement. Establishing a stable government for the whole nation is painstaking work, years in the making. It might never be completed. But that was not the principal objective of the war there.

Until the US-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan was the cockpit of ascendant Islamist terrorism. Consider the bigger picture. Between 1998 and 2005 there were five big terrorist attacks against Western targets - the bombings of the US embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, 9/11, and the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005. All owed their success either exclusively or largely to Afghanistan's status as a training and planning base for al-Qaeda.

In the past three years there has been no attack on anything like that scale. Al-Qaeda has been driven into a state of permanent flight. Its ability to train jihadists has been severely compromised; its financial networks have been ripped apart. Thousands of its activists and enablers have been killed. It's true that Osama bin Laden's forces have been regrouping in the border areas of Pakistan but their ability to orchestrate mass terrorism there is severely attenuated. And there are encouraging signs that Pakistanis are starting to take to the offensive against them.

Next time you hear someone say that the war in Afghanistan is an exercise in futility ask them this: do they seriously think that if the US and its allies had not ousted the Taleban and sustained an offensive against them for six years that there would have been no more terrorist attacks in the West? What characterised Islamist terrorism before the Afghan war was increasing sophistication, boldness and terrifying efficiency. What has characterised the terrorist attacks in the past few years has been their crudeness, insignificance and a faintly comical ineptitude (remember Glasgow airport?)

The second great advance in the War on Terror has been in Iraq. There's no need to recapitulate the disasters of the US-led war from the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 to his execution at the end of 2006. We may never fully make up for three and a half lost years of hubris and incompetence but in the last 18 months the change has been startling.

The "surge", despite all the doubts and derision at the time, has been a triumph of US military planning and execution. Political progress was slower in coming but is now evident too. The Iraqi leadership has shown great courage and dispatch in extirpating extremists and a growing willingness even to turn on Shia militias. Basra is more peaceful and safer than it has been since before the British moved in. Despite setbacks such as yesterday's bombings, the streets of Iraq's cities are calmer and safer than they have been in years. Seventy companies have bid for oil contracts from the Iraqi Government. There are signs of a real political reconciliation that may reach fruition in the election later this year.

The third and perhaps most significant advance of all in the War on Terror is the discrediting of the Islamist creed and its appeal. This was first of all evident in Iraq, where the head-hacking frenzy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates so alienated the majority of Muslims that it gave rise to the so-called Sunni Awakening that enabled the surge to be so effective. But it has spread way beyond Iraq. As Lawrence Wright described in an important piece in The New Yorker last month, there is growing disgust not just among moderate Muslims but even among other jihadists at the extremism of the terrorists. Deeply encouraging has been the widespread revulsion in Muslim communities in Europe - especially in Britain after the 7/7 attacks of three years ago. Some of the biggest intelligence breakthroughs in the past few years have been achieved from former al-Qaeda supporters who have turned against the movement.

There ought to be no surprise here. It's only their apologists in the Western media who really failed to see the intrinsic evil of Islamists. Those who have had to live with it have never been in much doubt about what it represents. Ask the people of Iran. Or those who fled the horrors of Afghanistan under the Taleban. This is why we fight. Primarily, of course, to protect ourselves from the immediate threat of terrorist carnage, but also because we know that extending the embrace of a civilisation that liberates everyone makes us all safer.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

What fun! "Labour came a humiliating fifth place behind the BNP and the Greens last night in the Henley by-election caused by Boris Johnson's election as London Mayor. Gordon Brown's first anniversary as Labour leader began with the party securing only 1,066 votes, losing its 500 pounds deposit, and having its working majority in the House of Commons cut to 65, as John Howell, the Conservative candidate, succeeded Mr Johnson in the Oxfordshire seat. The Liberal Democrats consolidated their position in second place"

Christians dubious about McCain: "If Christian conservatives stay on the sidelines during the fall campaign, presidential hopeful John McCain probably stays in the Senate. Christian conservatives provided much of the on-the-ground, door-to-door activity for President Bush's 2004 re-election in Ohio and in other swing states. Without them, the less-organized and lower-profile McCain campaign is likely to struggle to replicate Bush's success. And so far, there's been scant sign that the Republican nominee-in-waiting is making inroads among these fervent believers. "I don't know that McCain's campaign realizes they cannot win without evangelicals," said David Domke, a professor of communication at the University of Washington who studies religion and politics. "What you see with McCain is just a real struggle to find his footing with evangelicals." Family groups in Ohio outlined their doubts about the Arizona senator in a meeting with McCain's advisers last weekend. They're concerned about his record on abortion rights and on campaign finance laws that they believe limited their ability to criticize candidates who are pro-choice on abortion."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Just amazing: Executing Child Rapists is a "cruel and unusual punishment"?

Yet it is OK to execute murderers?

Sorry Justice Kennedy, but rape, especially the rape of a child, IS comparable to murder. Today's Supreme Court opinion, in another 5-4 decision, in Kennedy v. Louisiana demonstrates the fragility of the balance on the Court as we approach this year's election, meaning our choice matters. The five justice majority ruled it was unconstitutional to apply the death penalty to a child rapist. From the dissent authored by Justice Alito:

"The Court today holds that the Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits the imposition of the death penalty for the crime of raping a child. This is so, according to theCourt, no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator's prior criminal record may be. The Court provides two reasons for this sweeping conclusion: First, the Court claims to have identified "a national consensus" that the death penalty is never acceptable for the rape of a child; second, the Court concludes, based on its "independent judgment," that imposing the death penalty for child rape is inconsistent with "`the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.'" Ante, at 8, 15, 16 (citation omitted). Because neither of these justifications is sound, I respectfully dissent."

And, the dissent concludes:

"In summary, the Court holds that the Eighth Amendment categorically rules out the death penalty in even the most extreme cases of child rape even though: (1) This holding is not supported by the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment; (2) neither Coker nor any other prior precedent commands this result; (3) there are no reliable"objective indicia" of a "national consensus" in support of the Court's position; (4) sustaining the constitutionality ofthe state law before us would not "extend" or "expand" the death penalty; (5) this Court has previously rejected the proposition that the Eighth Amendment is a one-way ratchet that prohibits legislatures from adopting new capital punishment statutes to meet new problems; (6) theworst child rapists exhibit the epitome of moral depravity; and (7) child rape inflicts grievous injury on victims and on society in general."

The dissent accurately portrays the activism of the majority and the imposition of those justices' policy positions over the reasoned choices of the other branches in the state and federal governments.

Source

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AP's weird perspective on warfare in Afghanistan

The news agency which does not want to be quoted will be today. In a story in which 22 enemy are killed and the remaining enemy flea to Pakistan and no Afghan or coalition troops are killed the AP says:

Fighting between Taliban-led militants and security forces is surging, clouding hopes that the six-year, multibillion-dollar effort to stabilize the country will succeed any time soon.

The problem with this perspective is that it is divorced from the reality of warfare. Fighting is why it is called a war. What should be blazingly obvious is that the Taliban are losing this fight and every other engagement with coalition forces. The AP has this weird perspective that violence is the enemy of peace. They divorce the concept from the fighters. They made similar mistakes in Iraq where violence was used as a metric disembodied from keeping score on casualties and more importantly who controlled the real estate.

Any fair observation of the conflict in Afghanistan would note that the Taliban do not control real estate or people and they are losing all the fire fights. Because they are fighting an insurgency, the war may drag on, but the outcome is clear if we stay with it.... In contrast the Reuters story points to an even larger defeat for enemy forces.

U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces killed up to 35 Taliban insurgents after the militants attacked two towns in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border overnight, a police chief said on Wednesday.... About 100 Taliban insurgents attacked the towns of Gomal and Sarobi in Paktika province overnight, but fled when they were engaged by Afghan police supported by coalition troops, said provincial Police Chief Nabi Jan Mullah Khail.

Source

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Brookes News Update

The Democrats' socialist lunacy: Democrat congressmen Maxine Waters and Maurice Hinchey revealed their socialist agenda by calling for the nationalization of the oil companies. According to the ideology of this extreme leftwing duo nationalization would give the state the power of controlling prices
Inflation and wages - another dangerous economic fallacy : Money is not neutral. This means is that attempts by central banks to stabilise prices distort the pattern of production and trigger off the so-called boom-bust cycle. From this we can deduce that even when the CPI is apparently stable inflation can still be rampant beneath the monetary surface. Those who think otherwise have not learnt the fundamental lesson of the 1920s
The market created money, not the state : On the day a commodity becomes money it already has an established purchasing power or price in terms of other goods. This purchasing power enables us to set up the demand for this commodity as money. This in turn, for a given supply, sets its purchasing power on the day this commodity starts to function as money
Green Oil : A study by LSU's sea grant college shows that 85 percent of Louisiana's offshore fishing trips involve fishing around these structures. The same study found 50 times more marine life around an oil production platform than in the surrounding mud bottoms
Return of the dupes and the anti-anti-communists : The irony of journalists like Dana Milbank is that while they are laughing at the anti-communists, they seem to have no idea that the loudest howls of laughter have always come from the communists who see such journalists as dupes
Unshackle American enterprise to increase oil supplies : Democrats and other leftists seem incapable of learning simple economic facts and continue to resist and oppose all efforts to make America oil self sufficient and independent of foreign sources controlled by our enemies
The flawed and costly war : Barack Obama is out on the stump using the skills he learned as a 'community organizer' to try and woo support while talking about little of substance. He has the liberal psychobabble down pat and uses tried and true tactics any time someone levies any criticism against him
Hugo Chavez, Colombia, and FARC : For months, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were the darlings of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
From coal to fuel to oil : Apart from engendering economic turmoil and worries of many kinds, the skyrocketing price of oil has also done something momentously beneficial: It has created conditions for America's oil independence by making it economical to extract fuels from coal, our most abundant energy resource

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ELSEWHERE

Another characteristically humorous article from London Mayor Boris Johnson here. Another indication of why he is arguably the second most popular man in Britain (Jeremy Clarkson obviously comes first). If you are familiar with British doings, there is a good article ABOUT Boris by humorist Anne Treneman here. I am a great lover of British humour but I think you may have to know Brits well to "get" it.

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Is there such a thing as a good phone company?

What I hear about American and British phone and cable companies is pretty appalling and my experience with such companies here in Australia is similar. I have put online some of my correspondence with three such companies as follows: TELSTRA, OPTUS, VODAFONE. I rather foolishly hope that others might learn from my bad experiences with the companies concerned and avoid some of the pitfalls. I have sometimes gone to quite extraordinary lengths to get the companies to address problems but even that has not always worked.

A story I heard today from my local cellphone retailer leads me to believe that the equipment providers are just as bad as the service providers. He tells me that some time ago he returned a cellphone to Nokia for repair under warranty. Rather incautiously, however, he left the memory stick in it when he sent it in.

When he got the phone back the memory stick had vanished. He asked for it back but was told it had been destroyed. Nokia had destroyed someone else's private property! He asked why. He was told that they did not inspect the content on the stick concerned but some sticks can have pornography on them so it is company policy to destroy the lot!

He took great umbrage at that and kept kicking at Nokia over it. Initially they would not even replace the stick pace any content on it. He eventually contacted the State Sales Manager, however, and pointed out that he was a retailer who did not HAVE to stock Nokia products. That breached the dam. They replaced the stick. It took him half a dozen calls over a period of months to get that result however.

Imagine how far up the creek you would be if you were just an ordinary customer who did not have a retailer onside! No apology for the lost content on the stick was ever received, of course.

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A wise decision

Jared Gray is an 18-year-old high school student who works as a janitor for Southern Utah University. One day he found a bag of cash lying in the parking lot, obviously one of the school's deposit bags. The bag was labeled with the amount: $108,000. Jared didn't hesitate to return the cash, saying he was raised to be honest. To express their gratitude, SUU officials will give him a scholarship if he attends the university.

Most people would applaud Jared's honesty. Sadly, though, not everyone. A number of people, posting to the CBS News website, called the young man a "loser" or "stupid" for not keeping the dough. Apparently, they assume it's reasonable to steal whenever one is unlikely to get caught. If so, wouldn't it also be reasonable actively to pursue such opportunities - in short, to become a career criminal? That makes we who work "suckers."

If you're going to live a moral life, it's common sense to live it on principle. This means you don't become an entirely different person, a crook, when it's allegedly "easy" to do so. Easy, that is, for a person of poor character. Starting life as a crook would have blighted Jared's whole life. Instead, now he'll always be able to recall his easy good deed with pride; and, happily, people who know him will be able to trust him . . . stuff that's more valuable than money itself.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Nixon in retrospect: "It is not mentioned that only Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in more daunting circumstances than Nixon. Four years later, he was reelected by 49 states and a plurality of 18 million votes, because he stopped the assassinations, race riots, anti-war riots, skyjackings, inflation, extracted the U.S. from Vietnam without losing the war, opened relations with China, warmed up relations with the U.S.S.R., negotiated and signed the greatest arms control agreement in history, started a Middle East peace process, founded the Environmental Protection Agency, vastly expanded the national parks system, pioneered welfare reform and fiscal decentralization, reduced the crime rate, eliminated the draft, and ended school segregation without recourse to the court-ordered nostrum of transporting millions of schoolchildren all around the cities of America by bus to effect racial balance. He was overwhelmingly reelected because he was an excellent president, not because of dirty tricks and the ineptitude and hypocrisy of his feckless opponent, George McGovern."

The Forgotten Refugees: "Few remember that there were more Jewish refugees from Arab countries than of Palestinians from Israel. In 1948 there were 856,000 Jews living in Arab countries. By 2005, only about 5,000. This Monday, through Wednesday, in London a cooperative of 77 Jewish communities and organizations in 20 countries, Justice For Jews, will hold a conference and briefing to Parliament on the plight of these Jews."

The Ukrainian genocide: "Grigori Garaschenko remembers seeing his classmates starve slowly to death in a famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine. A neighbour driven mad by hunger killed her six-year-old daughter and began to eat her, he said, after Soviet soldiers confiscated all the food in their village during house-to-house searches. Mr Garaschenko, 89, is one of the few remaining survivors of the famine of 1932-33. Now, 75 years on, Ukraine wants the world to recognise that what it calls the Holodomor was a deliberate act of genocide by Stalin's Soviet Union."

Ireland faces first recession since 1983: "Ireland's economy will fall into a recession this year for the first time in more than two decades, the Economic and Social Research Institute said, slashing its forecasts for construction, exports and consumer spending. Gross domestic product will drop by 0.4% this year, the Dublin-based institute said, having predicted growth of 1.8% in March. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said the economy is facing a ``serious problem.'' The economy's first full-year contraction since 1983 would follow a decade-long boom sparked by exports in the mid-1990s and then extended by record homebuilding. Higher borrowing costs and the credit squeeze have already curbed construction, pushing unemployment to a nine-year high of 5.4% and dragging consumer confidence to a record low. ''The decline in housebuilding has had a dramatic impact,'' Lenihan said on RTE Radio. ''It's compounded by international factors in relation to a non-availability of credit, by the increase in oil prices and food prices. All those factors are coming together.''

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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2nd Intifada forgotten

The second Intifada, which started in October 2000 and ended in October 2004, is barely being discussed or written about. It has been marginalized and pushed out of public discourse. Books about it are hidden away at bookstores. Political journals barely mention it. The media forgot it. Cultural institutions ignore it. The amnesia in relation to the second Intifada is surprising in the face of its high casualty toll and the heavy price it exacted from Israel's society and economy, as well as the ruin it brought to Palestine and the Palestinians. What then is the reason for this amnesia, which borders on denial? The human desire to ignore a sequence of events that undermines and breaks away from convention. Once it's over, we all rush to repress it from our consciousness and return to the comfort of the familiar, acceptable, predictable, and normal.

The second Intifada contradicted and disproved two basic assumptions, axioms almost, which were commonly accepted at its outset and end. The first one: Economic prosperity brings peace. The second one: Terrorism cannot be defeated by force. Both these arguments were and still are deeply rooted in our collective perception and instigate the leading narrative when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both axioms are politically correct and provide an orderly doctrine for analysis and interpretation.

Bidding these arguments farewell means abandoning viewpoints we have become accustomed to and heading into the unknown. Therefore, so many prefer to forget that there was ever an Intifada here and ignore its lessons. However, that which is repressed will resurface - it always does.

The second Intifada broke out at the zenith of Palestinian economy prosperity. The fruit of the Oslo Accords finally started trickling down to the poor and neglected strata in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian standard of living skyrocketed, money was readily available, tourists flocked to the whole of the Holy Land, foreign investors discovered cheap and skilled Palestinian labor, and Palestinian merchants discovered the purchasing power of Israeli consumers. These achievements were erased on one clear day in October 2000. The second Intifada cost the Palestinians an economic loss of a generation. It will take at least 10 to 15 years before the per capita income in Palestine will return to its level on the eve of October 2000. ...

And what for? For nothing. After all, there is no arguing that Israel scored an overwhelming and unpredictable win in the second Intifada. Hundreds of articles written in its midst warned Israel's leadership against attempting to fight terror by force, because the failure is guaranteed: The regular army of a democratic state would never defeat terror-resistance-guerilla groups that operate within oppressed civilians like fish in water. This is what we learned from Cuban genius Che Guevara and Vietnamese genius Ho Chi Minh.

In the absence of any other choice, Israel ignored the strategic warnings. In an integrated move, which included assaults on urban terror headquarters, assassinations of the most senior terror leaders, and the extensive deployment of human and technological intelligence means, Israel defeated its enemies. The unbelievable happened - and was repressed after it happened, particularly after Ariel Sharon's hospitalization.

Meanwhile, the false conviction that "a terror organization cannot be defeated" has paralyzed the Israeli government ever since Hamas came to power; at the end, we shall be forced to recognize the state of Hamastan, instead of Hamas recognizing us. Did the Intifada ever happen, or was it just a bad dream?

More here

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ELSEWHERE

77 % of Israeli Arabs want to stay in Israel : "Seventy-seven percent of the State of Israel's Arab citizens would rather live in the Jewish state than in any other country in the world, according to a new study titled "Coexistence in Israel". The survey was conducted by the John Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with the assistance of researchers from Haifa University."

A good start: "Republican Sen. John McCain: Quit taxing ethanol gasoline from Brazil at $20+ a barrel. Corn ethanol is over-subsidized and protected by a protectionist tariff on sugar ethanol from Brazil of 54› a gallon. At 42 gallons a barrel, that works out to $22.68 a barrel. McCain wants to stop that. In addition to a prize of $300 million for the person who comes up with a way more efficient car battery for plug-in cars, McCain wants to drop the duty on sugar ethanol. It's called free trade"

Bigoted NYT: "The New York Times loves to review porno books, while ignoring best-selling conservative authors. The Encounter Books publishing house will no longer send advance books for review to the New York Times. Encounter publisher Roger Kimball wrote: "Of course, the editors at the Times are welcome to trot down to their local book emporium or visit Amazon.com to purchase our books, but we won't be sending gratis advance copies to them any longer." The reason? Despite having several best-sellers, the NYT never reviews an Encounter book. Or Mark Steyn, for that matter."

Railways inadequate in the home of railways: "Passengers face acute overcrowding on key railway routes because capacity will be exhausted many years before any new lines could be built, according to Network Rail. The infrastructure company is to commission a study into the costs and benefits of new lines on five inter-city routes. But it admitted that a high-speed network was unlikely to be built soon because of funding constraints and environmental concerns. The company is expected to focus on a few short stretches of track operating at conventional speed to relieve the worst pinch points on long-distance routes, including London to Peterborough, Rugby and Swindon. Iain Coucher, the chief executive of Network Rail, said that the Government's plan for expanding rail capacity by 22.5 per cent by 2014 would be inadequate on some routes, which are growing by 10 per cent a year. He said: "Clearly some routes will grow more than that and there may be a problem. The most congested parts of the network are about 80 miles out of London. People used to be prepared to travel for 45 minutes and now it's an hour and a quarter." The high cost of housing in London and fuel prices were two of the factors contributing to the continuing strong growth in demand for rail travel."

Krugman gets something right: "The New York Times economics columnist is right about universal home ownership: It burst the housing and lending markets, and it made no sense. OK. So Paul Krugman is taking a swipe at President Bush for saying, in 2002, "Owning a home lies at the heart of the American dream." Fine. But in the hands of the government, dreams become nightmares. Pushing uncreditworthy people - the irresponsible - to buy houses at low-interest rates did 2 things. It drove up demand for houses, which shot housing prices up. It imperiled the lending industry. In his column today, Krugman asked the pertinent questions: "Why should ever-increasing homeownership be a policy goal? How many people should own homes, anyway?" Some people are meant to be renters, he wrote. True. Some of us no more want home-owning responsibilities than we do root canal"

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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The Democrat lurch Leftwards

The New Democrats were born in the 1980s, in response to Ronald Reagan's triumphs. Prominent Democrats worried the party was out of touch, and created the Democratic Leadership Council. Its members were foreign-policy hawks, unafraid of cultural conservatism, and preached economic centrism. Their poster boy: Bill Clinton. The 1990s were their midlife heyday, though even then the New Dems struggled. Party liberals despised Mr. Clinton's embrace of free trade, hated his accommodation of welfare reform, cringed when he pronounced "the era of big government" over. But no one could deny his success at giving the party its first two full terms in the White House since FDR. So they shut up and went along.

When Mr. Clinton left, so did the most prominent New Democratic voice. Party liberals have been reasserting control ever since. Howard Dean's 2004 consolation prize was the Democratic National Committee. Nancy Pelosi became House Speaker in 2006, and gave back committee chairs to the old 1960s liberal bulls. And now comes Mr. Obama, the party's most liberal nominee since Hubert Humphrey.

What's left of the New Democratic agenda? On foreign policy, Bill Clinton engaged in Bosnia, and as recently as 2004 John Kerry saw the wisdom of running as at least a moderate hawk. But today's unpopular war has only emboldened the party to revert to its antiwar comfort zone. Mr. Obama calls for an immediate pullout of troops from Iraq, no matter what the consequences. His foreign policy, to the extent it is one, flows not from strength, but from greater American accommodation in the name of diplomacy. Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have together held some 72 votes on Iraq, most devoted to cutting off troop money, blocking the surge, or forcing a pullout. Last year, all but 10 House Democrats voted for a withdrawal timeline.

Economic centrism? What's that? Even Mr. Clinton's wife disavowed his New Democratic legacy by trashing free trade and Nafta. Mr. Obama raised her bet, aligning himself with leftist trade populists. The Democratic leadership has held up deals with Colombia, Peru and South Korea. Big Labor is calling the shots, and Big Labor will suffer no new trade.

Mr. Obama is hawking a tax policy that would take the nation back to the effective marginal tax rates of the Carter days. He wants to further tax income, payroll, capital gains, dividends and death. His philosophy is pure redistribution. Congressional Democrats voted for a budget that includes the largest tax hike in American history.

About all that remains of the New Democratic economic agenda is the mantra of "fiscal discipline." But since taking power, Democrats have passed spending bills far beyond President Bush's limits, and broken their own "pay-as-you-go" rules. The party's Blue Dogs have fought its leaders on some spending, though not when it risks derailing, say, farm bills. Mr. Obama recently revealed that his plan for economic recovery was to spend the nation out of its doldrums.

The one place where New Democrats have made a more lasting mark is on the culture. The party leadership has seen the wisdom of relaxing litmus tests on guns and abortion, a change that in 2006 let them field candidates who won conservative districts. But even here, Mr. Obama is a skeptic. He's said he'd repeal the Defense of Marriage Act - which Bill Clinton signed. He's criticized the Supreme Court for upholding the partial-birth abortion ban.

More here

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Tax dangers

Robert Mundell isn't in the habit of making fruitless policy recommendations, though some take a long time ripening. Nearly four decades passed between his early work on optimal currency areas and the birth of the euro in 1999 - the same year he received the Nobel Prize for economics....

Democratic nominee Barack Obama regularly professes disdain for the Bush tax cuts, suggesting that those growth-spurring measures may be scrapped. "If that happens," Mr. Mundell predicts, "the U.S. will go into a big recession, a nosedive." One of the original "supply-side" economists, he has long preached the link between tax rates and economic growth. "It's a lethal thing to suddenly raise taxes," he explains. "This would be devastating to the world economy, to the United States, and it would be, I think, political suicide" in a general election.

Should taxes instead be cut again, I ask him, to stimulate the sluggish economy? Mr. Mundell replies that he favors a ceiling of 30% on marginal rates (the current top rate is 35%). He recounts how the past century experienced a titanic struggle over whether tax rates are too high or too low: from a 3% income tax in 1913; up to 60% during World War I; down to 25% before Congress and President Herbert Hoover raised taxes back to 60% in 1932 and "sealed the fate of our economy for a long, long time"; all the way up to 92.5% during World War II before falling in three steps, reaching 28% under President Ronald Reagan; and back to nearly 40% under Bill Clinton before George W. Bush lowered them to their current level.

In light of this fiscal roller coaster, Mr. Mundell says, "the most important thing that could be done with respect to tax rates now is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Eliminating that uncertainty would be more important than pushing for a further cut - in the income tax rates, anyway." One tax that he would cut, to 25%, is the corporate tax rate. "It could be even lower," he says, "but I think it would be a big step to lower it to 25% . . . I made that proposal back in the 1970s."

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Peace activist finally encounters reality: "Somali gunmen shot dead a peace activist and kidnapped a senior UN official, while a roadside bomb killed three policemen in the anarchic Horn of Africa country today, witnesses said. In Beledweyne, central Somalia, assailants assassinated the regional head of respected local non-governmental organisation Centre for Research and Dialogue. "Men armed with pistols killed Mohamed Hassan Kulmiye in front of a cafeteria," said resident Ismail Farah. "They shot several bullets in the head. He died on the spot. The men ran away and we do not know who they were."

The networks unilateral withdrawal from Iraq : "According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been "massively scaled back this year." Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The "CBS Evening News" has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC's "World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News." (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.) CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed. Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television "with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.".... Interviews with executives and correspondents at television news networks suggested that while the CBS cutbacks are the most extensive to date in Baghdad, many journalists shared varying levels of frustration about placing war stories onto newscasts. "I've never met a journalist who hasn't been frustrated about getting his or her stories on the air," said Terry McCarthy, an ABC News correspondent in Baghdad."

What the left does not know about warfare : "Working out last Monday, I heard a campaign flunky on TV insist that progress in Iraq is an illusion. "The war isn't over until all of the troops come home!" she grumped. Guess we're still at war with Germany. And Japan. Even Italy. Oh, and let's not forget all of our military bases occupying the Confederacy. The poor woman knew nothing about warfare, history - or Iraq. She just wanted to see her candidate win in November and wasn't going to let reality get in the way. And one look told you she didn't even know any "troops."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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

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

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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