Most interesting

A U.S. army officer, Major Cook, rejected his deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds that Obama was not born in the USA and hence ineligible to be Commander in Chief. He was ready to go to court over it. Rather than go to court, the army backed down and cancelled his deployment order. See the backdown here. Obama is clearly desperate to avoid this matter going to court, and the affair is receiving a fair bit of press coverage. Is this the beginning of the end? The lengths that Obama has gone to in order to avoid producing his original birth certificate are quite extraordinary.

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America's travesty of democracy

Lawmakes who don't read what they vote for

by Jeff Jacoby

SAY, DID YOU HEAR THE ONE about the congressman who was asked to do his job? Talk about funny -- this'll crack you up! Well, maybe it won't. But Steny Hoyer thought it was hilarious.

Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, is the majority leader in the US House of Representatives. At a news conference last week, he was talking about the health-care overhaul now being drafted on Capitol Hill, and a reporter asked whether he would support a pledge committing members of Congress to read the bill before voting on it, and to make the full text of the legislation available to the public online for 72 hours before the vote takes place.

That, reported CNSNews, gave Hoyer the giggles:

The majority leader "found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. 'I'm laughing because . . . I don't know how long this bill is going to be, but it's going to be a very long bill,' he said."

Then came one of those classic Washington gaffes that Michael Kinsley famously defined as "when a politician tells the truth." Hoyer conceded that if lawmakers had to carefully study the bill ahead of time, they'd never vote for it. "If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn't read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes," he said.

Hoyer's words can be given two interpretations, both of which are probably accurate: One is that the health-care "reform" will be such a noisome mess that anyone who really digs into its details will be more likely to oppose it. The second is that so few members of Congress will bother to read the bill that if reading it became a prerequisite for voting on it, almost no one would qualify. Either way, the majority leader was declaring it more important for Congress to pass the bill than to understand it.

"Transparency" is a popular buzzword in good-government circles, and politicians are forever promising more of it. On his first day in the White House, for example, President Obama vowed to make his administration "the most open and transparent in history." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has boasted of the "great openness and transparency" that her leadership has brought to Congress.

But as Hoyer's mirth suggests, when it comes to the legislative process, transparency is a joke. Congress frequently votes on huge and complex bills that few if any members of the House or Senate have read through. They couldn't read them even if they wanted to, since it is not unusual for legislation to be put to a vote just hours after the text is made available to lawmakers. Congress passed the gigantic, $787 billion "stimulus" bill in February -- the largest spending bill in history -- after having had only 13 hours to master its 1,100 pages. A 300-page amendment was added to Waxman-Markey, the mammoth cap-and-trade energy bill, at 3 A.M. on the day the bill was taken up by the House. And that wasn't the worst of it, as law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University noted in National Review Online:

"When Waxman-Markey finally hit the floor, there was no actual bill. Not one single copy of the full legislation that would, hours later, be subject to a final vote was available to members of the House. The text made available to some members of Congress still had "placeholders" -- blank provisions to be filled in by subsequent language. . . . Even the House Clerk's office lacked a complete copy of the legislation, and was forced to place a copy of the 1,200-page draft side by side with the 300-page amendments."

Ramming legislation through Congress so quickly that neither lawmakers nor voters have time to read and digest it is a bipartisan crime; Republicans have been as guilty of it as Democrats. The 341-page Patriot Act, to mention just one notorious example, was introduced in the Republican-controlled House on Oct. 23, 2001, brought to a vote on Oct. 24, adopted by the Democratic-controlled Senate on Oct. 25, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26.

Such efficiency is no virtue when it comes to lawmaking, which is why every member of Congress should be pressed to sign the pledge Hoyer was asked about. It is sponsored by a grassroots conservative group, Let Freedom Ring, and is readily accessible online. Equally worthy of support is ReadTheBill.org, which is backed by a coalition of liberal organizations. Still another push comes from the libertarian group Downsize DC, which urges Congress to pass its proposed Read The Bills Act.

Senators and representatives who vote on bills they haven't read and don't understand betray their constituents' trust. It is no answer to say that Congress would get much less done if every member took the time to read every bill. Fewer and shorter laws more carefully thought through would be a vast improvement over today's massive bills, which are assembled in the dark and enacted in haste. Steny Hoyer chortles at the thought of asking members of Congress to do their job properly. It's up to voters to wipe the grin off his face.

SOURCE

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Kabuki and Sonia Sotomayor

by Jeff Jacoby

THE NOMINATION of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has generated controversy, but its outcome is not in doubt. "Unless you have a complete meltdown, you will be confirmed," South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told the nominee when the Judiciary Committee hearings opened on Monday. It would be hard to find anyone who disagrees.

This week's hearings, then, are all that stand between Sotomayor and one of the most consequential jobs in American life. As a Supreme Court justice, she will be shaping national policy for years, perhaps decades, to come. Long after the president who nominated her has left the White House, Sotomayor will likely still be on the bench, wielding an influence on matters ranging from property rights to labor law to free speech to criminal procedure. With the other justices, she will exercise powers nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, yet by now accepted as the high court's prerogatives: to strike down state and federal laws, to bind other branches of government, to constitutionalize new rights, to have the last word on the meaning of terms like "due process of law" and "establishment of religion" -- and to do it all without being accountable to the American people or any elected official.

Before the Senate consents to investing Sotomayor with such sweeping authority, shouldn't it get some idea of how she would use it? As a matter of due diligence, don't senators have an obligation to learn Sotomayor's views on the legal and constitutional issues of the day? The stakes could hardly be greater, after all, or the public interest more intense. Would-be senators and presidents lay out their positions on current controversies, often in intricate detail. Shouldn't a Supreme Court nominee, who will never again have to submit to public scrutiny, be expected to share her thinking on important judicial and political questions? How else can the Senate, or the voters it represents, decide whether she belongs on the court?

Yet Sotomayor, like previous Supreme Court nominees, intends to tell the Judiciary Committee as little as possible about her views and intentions. In her testimony yesterday, she refused to express an opinion on contentious issues. "I come to every case with an open mind," she insisted. "Every case is new for me."

That isn't true, and everyone knows it -- just as everyone knew it when John Roberts and Samuel Alito were the nominees taking the "judicial Fifth" and politely declining to give straightforward answers when asked about their stands on key subjects. When Roberts was before the committee in 2005, then-Senator Joseph Biden voiced his frustration at "this kabuki dance we have in these hearings here," in which senators ask pointed questions and nominees give ultra-cautious replies, sidestepping any discussion of the convictions they would bring to the court.

Am I suggesting that nominees should telegraph how they would vote in any pending or probable case? Of course not. Should they make commitments to uphold or overrule specific previous Supreme Court decisions? No. But neither should they be allowed to turn the confirmation process into a grave and windy nullity on the grounds that that is what judicial impartiality requires.

The Supreme Court itself has said that such "impartiality" is illusory. "It is virtually impossible to find a judge who does not have preconceptions about the law," the court declared in a 2002 case. "Indeed, even if it were possible to select judges who did not have preconceived views on legal issues, it would hardly be desirable to do so."

Instead of artfully dodging them, Supreme Court nominees should be required to discuss those preconceptions, and to give substantive answers when asked about their legal worldview or their analysis of constitutional issues. In the Wall Street Journal the other day, Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett suggested some questions: "Does the Second Amendment protect an individual right to arms? . . . Does the Ninth Amendment protect judicially enforceable unenumerated rights? Does the Necessary and Proper Clause delegate unlimited discretion to Congress? Where in the text of the Constitution is the so-called Spending Power (by which Congress claims the power to spend tax revenue on anything it wants) and does it have any enforceable limits?"

It is the Senate's responsibility to check and balance the vast clout of the Supreme Court, and it abdicates that responsibility when confirmation hearings become merely an elaborate ritual for rubber-stamping judicial nominees. Too much is riding on every nomination not to demand serious answers to serious questions. Kabuki has its place, and it isn't a Judiciary Committee hearing room.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Sotomayor disavows 'wise Latina' remark: "Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor retreated from her praise of the "wise Latina," endorsed a privacy right to abortion in the Constitution and insisted she was not opposed to gun ownership during a day of questioning on a string of hot-button issues before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. In her first extended public exchanges since President Obama nominated her in May, Judge Sotomayor said her widely cited 2001 remark that a "wise Latina woman" would tend to make better judgments than a white man was a "failed rhetorical flourish that fell flat" - and not, as critics charge, evidence of racism. "The context of the words I said has created a misunderstanding," said Judge Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and the third woman nominated to the high court. "I want to state upfront, unequivocally, I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judgment. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge," she said. Republicans appeared unconvinced."

A second stimulus package? Yikes! : “Investors understand that increased government spending diverts valuable resources away from the private sector and ends up imposing even more demoralizing taxes on labor and capital. A major study of 18 large economies by Alberto Alesina of Harvard and three colleagues appeared in the 2002 American Economic Review. This paper, ‘Fiscal Policy, Profits and Investment’ found that the surest way to make economies boom can be through deep cuts in government spending — the exact opposite of the ‘fiscal stimulus’ snake oil.”

Banks winning at expense of taxpayers : “Banks surged and stocks followed yesterday, mostly on the heels of high expectations for trading firm Goldman Sachs, which really is more of a hedge fund than a real bank. Last Thursday, I said banks are my favorite stock market sector. So I got it right one time in a row. With a steep upward Treasury curve, even a banker can make money borrowing at near-zero and lending at much higher rates.”

California nightmare: “California has so degraded itself into a laughably leftist socialist commie-think nightmare that it has, as all socialist commie-think countries always do, finally bankrupted itself. As Margaret Thatcher, erstwhile UK prime minister, once said, ‘The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.’ Hahaha! Exactly! And now California has run out of money! Exactly! Now, to demonstrate their complete worthlessness as thinking, rational beings, California has decided that it will not cut expenses overmuch, but will pay for things not with money, but with IOUs! Hahaha! IOUs! Hahahaha! There is Something Beyond Surreal (SMS) about all this.”

Schwarzenegger TV spot warns of hard line on California budget: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has hit the airwaves with a television commercial underscoring he is in no mood to compromise in talks on the state budget. The Republican governor said in the 60-second spot that he would not sign a budget that plugs a $US26.3 billion deficit if it includes higher taxes and excludes changes in state government he has said will prevent welfare fraud. "And I will not sign a budget that pushes our financial problems down the road, because the road stops here," Mr Schwarzenegger said in the commercial, which aired amid growing concerns on Wall Street about the state's finances, especially its cash account. The state government started its fiscal year on July 1, and without a balanced budget agreement it is quickly burning through its cash. That has forced finance officials, grappling with declining revenues because of the recession and rising unemployment, to issue IOUs in order to conserve cash, promising payment to taxpayers owed refunds and vendors owed money for goods and services for only the second time since the Great Depression. Mr Schwarzenegger's TV commercial came amid hope in the state capital of Sacramento that budget talks are nearing a successful conclusion after fits and starts in recent weeks. The governor and top legislators of the state's Democrat-led Legislature have essentially agreed they will balance the state's books with deep spending cuts."

Heavy reading -- but as relevant as ever: “Imagine a novel of more than a thousand pages, published half a century ago. The author doesn’t have a talk-radio show and has been dead for 27 years. As for the storyline, it is beyond dated … The prose itself is a disconcerting mixture of philosophy, industrial policy, and bodice-ripping … In short, you would think Atlas Shrugged might be long forgotten. Instead, Ayn Rand’s novel is remembered more than ever. This year the book is selling at a faster rate than last year. Last year, sales were about 200,000, higher than any year before that, including 1957, when the book was published. Atlas Shrugged is becoming a political ‘Harry Potter’ because Rand shone a spotlight on a problem that still exists: Not pre-1989 Soviet communism, but 2009-style state capitalism. Rand depicted government and companies colluding in the name of economic rescue at the expense of the entrepreneur. That entrepreneur is like the titan Atlas who carries the rest of the world on his shoulders — until he doesn’t.

Should Americans be humble? : "“After president Obama traveled abroad recently it became clear that he wanted to present himself and, indirectly, America as a nation, differently from how he believed President George W. Bush did this. In particular, Mr. Bush was generally seen by his critics as more of an ‘ugly American,’ following the character of the novel by that name, written half a century ago by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer (who exemplified the sort of American who tended to be insensitive to the rest of the world’s population, their customs and languages, etc.). Mr. Obama seems to want to change this by appearing to be less arrogant, swagger less than Mr. Bush. Instead Mr. Obama wants to be friends with virtually everyone, even those who have no interest it being friends with America and Americans, including him.”

The Left’s dismissal of individual rights: "For those of us who have escaped Draconian tyrannies and reached America, for a long time it may be difficult to adjust to the fact that American Leftists are every bit the fascists that some claim they are. As Susan Sontag said, ‘Communism is successful fascism.’ A little inspection of modern American liberalism will also bring this to light — just consider that it was Woodrow Wilson and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. who had no patience with opponents of various public policies governments forged during their time and sent those opposed to them to prison. (It was Warren Harding, that negligible right-winger, who eventually set these dissidents free!) Today the Left’s fascistic tendencies are still quite evident, although there is often a kind of sophistication about them (e. g., via the doctrine of Communitarianism). Anyone who reads The New York Review of Books can testify to this. No matter what public policy issues is being discussed in its pages, The Review always treats the wealth of the nation as collectively owned, rejecting that quintessentially American idea of the right to private property. No, everything belongs to us all and government is to allocate the resources in line with how the elite deems proper.”

Addiction is a choice : “I read a book recently called, ‘Addiction is a Choice,’ by Jeffrey Schaler. He suggests that addiction is not a disease, and that people actually choose to use drugs. He points to the fact that although people might have a genetic predisposition to becoming addicted, some people also have a genetic predisposition to blue eyes, and having blue eyes is certainly not a disease. Schaler says that no one has been able to find a cause of the addiction disease in autopsies or medical exams. He says that one of the only treatments for the disease of addiction is therapy in the form of talking to someone. The success rate for this treatment is not much different from those who stop using drugs on their own.”

Fishy politics may harm US consumers: “The Wall Street Journal has a great editorial today on one US industry’s latest attempt to secure some protection against foreign imports, which just may spark a trade war with an important target for American exports. This time, it’s the farmed fish industry, and the imports in question are catfish from Vietnam. ”

UK: Ireland passport proposal shelved: “The government has climbed down over plans to make people show passports for travel between Britain and Ireland. There are currently no passport controls for Irish and UK citizens travelling in the Common Travel Area (CTA) between the two islandsImmigration Minister Phil Woolas had said controls should be in place to tighten security. But the House of Lords voted to remove the clause during the passage of a borders bill.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray in full). For more blog 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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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 Personal Inequity

by Thomas Sowell

Sometimes, when I hear about "disparities" and "inequities," I think of a disparity that applied directly to me-- the disparity in basketball ability between myself and Michael Jordan. When I was in school, I was so awful in basketball that the class coach wouldn't even let me try out for softball, at which I was actually pretty good.

I was more than forty years old before I ever got the ball through the basket. It wasn't during a game. The basket was in my brother's backyard and I was just shooting-- unopposed-- from practically right under the basket. The only pressure on me was that my little nephew was watching. After making that one basket, I never took a basketball in my hands again. I retired at my peak.

Think about it: Michael Jordan made millions of dollars because of having a talent that was totally denied to me. Through no fault of my own, I had to spend years studying economics, in order to make a living. Economics is not nearly as much fun as basketball and doesn't pay nearly as much money either. We are talking inequity big time.

Most discussions of "disparities" and "inequities" are a prelude to coming up with some "solution" that the government can impose, winning politicians some votes in the process. How could the disparity between Michael Jordan and me be solved? We could change the rules of basketball, in order to try to equalize the outcomes. Michael Jordan could be required to make all his two-point shots from beyond the three-point line, with five players opposing him and no one on his side. A three-point shot could require him to stand under the basket on the opposite side of the court and shoot from there. Meanwhile, I could make two-point shots from a spot half the distance from the foul line to the basket, and of course without any other players on the court to distract me. Any shots I might make from back at the foul line would count as three-pointers.

Even under these conditions, you would be better off betting your money on Michael Jordan. But, conceivably at least, we might change the rules some more to make the results come out less lopsided, in order to create "social justice."

The problem with trying to equalize is that you can usually only equalize downward. If the government were to spend some of its stimulus money trying to raise my basketball ability level to that of Michael Jordan, it would be an even bigger waste of money than most of the other things that Washington does.

So the only way to try to equalize that has any chance at all would be to try to bring Michael Jordan down to my level, whether by drastic rule changes or by making him play with one hand tied behind his back, or whatever. The problem with this approach, as with many other attempts at equalization, is that it undermines the very activity involved. Basketball would be a much less interesting game if it was played under rules designed to produce equality of outcomes. Attendance would fall off to the point where neither Michael Jordan nor anyone else could make a living playing the game.

The same principle applies elsewhere. If you are going to try to equalize the chances of women getting jobs as firefighters, for example, then you are going to have to lower the physical requirements of height, weight and upper body strength. That means that you are going to have more firefighters who are not capable of carrying an unconscious person out of a burning building. If you are going to have these lower physical requirements be the same for both women and men, that means that you are not only going to have women who are not capable of carrying someone out of a burning building, you are also going to have men who are likewise incapable of carrying someone to safety.

Most activities do not exist for the sake of equality. They exist to serve their own purposes-- and those purposes are undermined, sometimes fatally, when equality becomes the goal. Nor would a politician encouraging me to feel resentful toward Michael Jordan do any good. If I had such resentments, they would do me more harm than they would do Michael Jordan. They would make me feel bad-- and could make me miss seeing some great basketball.

SOURCE

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Using children as weapons

Frank Rich, in a stupid column for the New York Times, can't resist throwing an elbow at a politician's child: "The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. Yes, she is of the religious right, even if she winks literally and figuratively at her own daughter’s flagrant disregard of abstinence and marriage."

What a classless jerk. Other than having committed the unpardonable sin of being born Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol did nothing to warrant getting slammed in the pages of the New York Times. What's important is that the family respects life. And lives by those values. But he's too poisoned by libtardism and bitterness to see that. These ratf*cks have a pathological obsession with Palin vaginas.

The game is evident. The libtard media has driven Palin from office by targeting her daughters.... or think they have. They will stop at nothing to use Bristol Palin and her child to attempt to discredit Sarah and drive a wedge between her and Christian voters. It won't work, though. Christians don't condemn premarital sex nearly so much as they 1.) value the sanctity of life, and 2.) Hate the judgementalism and venom coming from people like Frank Rich.

The libtard media is nothing but a pack of rabid hounds. In another time and place, they would probably be Red Army soldiers lined up to gang-rape German girls. God, I hope she runs for President next time round. I can't say I'll vote for her over the other conservative nominees. I recognize her shortcomings as a candidate. But it might be worth voting for her just to give these bastards conniption fits.

More HERE

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Predators and Civilians

An intelligence report shows how effective drone attacks are

Several Taliban training camps in the Pakistan hinterland were hit last week by missiles fired from American unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), or drones, reportedly killing some 20 terrorists. Remarkably, some people think these strikes are a bad idea.

To get a sense of what U.S. drone strikes have accomplished in the past two years, recall the political furor that followed a July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which found that al Qaeda had "protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland [i.e., U.S.] attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. . . . As a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment." The media declared we were losing the war.

Less than a year later, then-CIA director Michael Hayden offered a far more upbeat assessment to the Washington Post.

What changed? At least part of the answer is that the U.S. went from carrying out only a handful of drone attacks in 2007 to more than 30 in 2008. According to U.S. intelligence, among the "high-value targets" killed in these new strikes were al Qaeda spokesman Abu Layth al-Libi, weapons expert Abu Sulayman al Jazairi, chemical and biological expert Abu Khabab al-Masri, commander and logistician Abu Wafa al-Saudi, al Qaeda "Emir" Abu al-Hasan al Rimi, and, in November, Rashid Rauf. Rauf, who had escaped from a Pakistan jail the previous year, was a coordinator of the summer 2007 plot to blow up passenger planes over the Atlantic.

Is the world better off with these people dead? We think so. Then again, Lord Bingham, until recently Britain's senior law lord, has recently said UAV strikes may be "beyond the pale" and potentially on a par with cluster bombs and landmines. Australian counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen says "the Predator [drone] strikes have an entirely negative effect on Pakistani stability." He adds, "We should be cutting strikes back pretty substantially."

In both cases, the argument against drones rests on the belief that the attacks cause wide-scale casualties among noncombatants, thereby embittering local populations and losing hearts and minds. If you glean your information from wire reports -- which depend on stringers who are rarely eyewitnesses -- the argument seems almost plausible.

Yet anyone familiar with Predator technology knows how misleading those reports can be. Unlike fighter jets or cruise missiles, Predators can loiter over their targets for more than 20 hours, take photos in which men, women and children can be clearly distinguished (burqas can be visible from 20,000 feet) and deliver laser-guided munitions with low explosive yields. This minimizes the risks of the "collateral damage" that often comes from 500-pound bombs. Far from being "beyond the pale," drones have made war-fighting more humane.

A U.S. intelligence summary we've seen corrects the record of various media reports claiming high casualties from the Predator strikes. For example, on April 1 the BBC reported that "a missile fired by a suspected U.S. drone has killed at least 10 people in Pakistan." But the intelligence report says that half that number were killed, among them Abdullah Hamas al-Filistini, a top al Qaeda trainer, and that no women and children were present.

In each of the strikes in 2009 that are described by the intelligence summary, the report says no women or children were killed. Moreover, we know of planned drone attacks that were aborted when Predator cameras spied their presence. And an April 19 strike on a compound in South Waziristan did destroy a truck loaded with what the report estimates were more explosives than the truck that took out Islamabad's Marriott Hotel last September. That Islamabad attack killed 54 people and injured more than 260 others, mostly Pakistan civilians but also Americans.

Critics of the drone strikes ought to ask whether, based on this information, the April 19 strike was worth the bad publicity. We'd say yes. We'd also say that the Obama Administration -- which, to its credit, has stepped up the use of Predators -- should make public the kind of information we've seen. We understand there will always be issues concerning sources and methods. But critics of the drone attacks, especially Pakistani critics, have become increasingly vocal in their opposition. They deserve to know about the terrorist calamities they've been spared thanks to these unmanned flights over their territory.

We're delighted to see that Pakistan's military is finally taking the fight to the Taliban and al Qaeda after ill-conceived truces that were a source of the country's recent instability. When Pakistan's government can exercise sovereignty over all its territory, there will be no need for Predator strikes. In the meantime, unmanned bombs away.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Promises, Promises. Sotomayor vows 'fidelity to the law': "Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor vowed "fidelity to the law" and said she has not advocated for policy since becoming a judge 17 years ago, gently addressing critics on the first day of Senate hearings that produced no fireworks, and even the prospect of Republican support. Judge Sotomayor, whos been mainly silent since becoming first Hispanic nominated to the high court, used her brief opening statement to address Republican questions about her impartiality and charges that she would legislate from the bench. "In the past month, many senators have asked me about my judicial philosophy. It is simple: fidelity to the law," Judge Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law. And it is clear, I believe, that my record in two courts reflects my rigorous commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its terms; interpreting statutes according to their terms and Congress intent; and hewing faithfully to precedents"

Obama’s empathy test: “In discharging their constitutional duty to provide advice and, if they deem appropriate, give consent to President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Senators should examine the critical importance the president attaches to empathy as a judicial virtue and to Judge Sotomayor’s claim to be well-endowed with it. They will find that the president and the judge have exaggerated empathy’s significance, understated its ambiguities, and obscured fundamental judicial virtues.”

Gun rights leaders join in opposition to Sotomayor confirmation: “Several of the nation’s leading gun rights activists, including the heads of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Second Amendment Foundation, today joined to oppose the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. ‘It is extremely important that a Supreme Court justice understand and appreciate the origin and meaning of the Second Amendment, a constitutional guarantee permanently enshrined in the Bill of Rights,’ said a letter from the group, which was hand-delivered to every member of the U.S. Senate.”

Obama is emulating Japan's huge policy failure in dealing with economic crisis: The scenario was eerily familiar. A long real estate bubble that had expanded extra rapidly for the previous five years suddenly burst, and asset prices came crashing back down to earth. Banks and financial institutions were left holding piles of worthless paper, and the economy soon headed south. The national government responded to the crisis by encouraging more lending and spending previously unfathomable amounts of money on public works projects in an effort to stimulate consumer spending and restart growth. But that stimulus did not save the Japanese economy in the 1990s; far from it. The ensuing period came to be known as the Lost Decade, characterized by multiple recessions, an annual average growth rate of less than 1 percent, and a two-decade decline in stock prices and corporate profits.

The average length of unemployment is higher than it's been since government began tracking the data in 1948: "The recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. What we can see on the surface is disconcerting enough, but the inside numbers are just as bad. The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion".

The Obama Democrats pick income redistribution over job creation and economic growth: "Jason Furman owes an apology to Michael Boskin, the Stanford economist who wrote a year ago on these pages that Barack Obama would raise American income tax rates nearly to 60%. Mr. Furman, then in the Obama campaign and now at the White House, claimed this was wrong and that Democrats would merely raise taxes back to their Clinton-era level. House Democrats are now proving that Mr. Boskin had it right, and before it's over even he may have underestimated how high taxes will go. In the middle of a recession and with rising unemployment, Democrats have been letting it leak that they want to raise U.S. tax rates higher than they've been in nearly 30 years in order to finance government health care. Every detail isn't known, but late last week Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel disclosed that his draft bill would impose a "surtax" on individuals with adjusted gross income of more than $280,000 a year. This would hit job creators especially hard because more than six of every 10 who earn that much are small business owners"

Banking doesn’t need further regulation in US: “The decision to write or reject a loan should lie with the lender, who should carefully consider the qualifications of the borrower. Many smaller community banks have come through the credit and housing crises relatively unscathed due to their more conservative model when writing loans (’Bay State bankers wary of reform plan,’ July 8). Unfortunately, even these successful banks are coming under greater scrutiny from banking regulators. If banks were being fraudulent, then they can and should be prosecuted under existing laws.”

Obama showed "willful disregard of political oppression" by leftist dictators: "Obama has demanded that Honduras allow its anti-American would-be dictator, Mel Zelaya, to return to power, arguing that President Zelaya’s removal by the Honduras Supreme Court, with the backing of his country’s Congress and military, was “undemocratic” because the now-unpopular Zelaya was once elected. He has ignored the many legal and foreign-affairs commentators who have pointed out that Zelaya’s removal was a legal response to Zelaya’s flouting of the constitution, and not a “coup,”... But Obama has shown no interest at all in criticizing the human rights violations, violent repression, and anti-democratic behavior of Venezuela’s anti-American strongman, as even the liberal Washington Post, which has not endorsed a Republican for president since 1952, noted today in an editorial by Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl, “Double Standards on Latin America.” The Washington Post’s Diehl notes Obama’s “willful disregard of political oppression” by anti-American regimes in places like Venezuela, and the fact that his Administration “for months refused to publicly” criticize human-rights abuses in Venezuela."

Iran on the brink : “When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, as a rule its dissolution follows two steps. Before its collapse, a mysterious rupture takes place. All of a sudden people know that the game is over, and then they are no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy, but that its own exercise of power is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons. The cat reaches a precipice, but continues walking, unaware that there is no ground under its feet. It falls only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When a regime loses its authority, it is like a cat above the precipice: In order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray in full). For more blog 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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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Clarence Thomas: The courage of his convictions

Justice Clarence Thomas has now served on the Supreme Court for 18 years, longer than most of the other 109 men and women who have sat on that high bench. Yet he remains an enigma to many. In the court’s open hearings he sits mute while most of his colleagues pepper counsel with questions. Yet he can be seen trading quips with his seatmate, Justice Stephen Breyer — a hint of the gregarious Clarence Thomas whose close friends describe him as a man with a wide-ranging intellect and gutsy sense of humor that takes flight in what they call “The Laugh.”.....

At first Thomas was dismissed as a clone of Justice Antonin Scalia. But today even liberal analysts of the court concede that he has set his own course. His opinions show an original and consistent approach to the law, and their distinctive prose — disciplined and graceful, but not flashy — indicates they are not the products of his law clerks but of the justice himself.

Two themes that run through his years on the court are illustrated by two of his opinions announced in the last full week of the court’s term last month. One of them was a dissent from the court’s 8-1 decision on the Voting Rights Act, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder. The other was his opinion for the court in a 5-4 decision on maritime law, Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend.

The first theme is that, as in Northwest Austin, Thomas has been willing to stand alone, or nearly alone, even against his natural allies. Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion, with concurrences by seven other justices, raised serious doubts about the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires Justice Department approval for changes in election laws in states that had low voter turnout in elections from 1964 to 1972. Thomas zeroed in on the issue the court sidestepped and argued that the law was unconstitutional. This was consistent with his view back in 1994 that almost all Voting Rights Act cases had been wrongly decided — and with his general willingness to overturn previous high court decisions he regards as wrong.

But it’s not fair to charge, as some critics have, that Thomas ignores past discrimination against blacks. His dissent paints a vivid picture of white Southerners’ “concerted acts of violence, terror and subterfuge to keep minorities from voting” from the 1870s to the 1960s, and endorses the court’s upholding the original provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

At the same time, he has objected to racial preferences in government contracting because they “stamp minorities with a badge of inferiority,” and in a 1995 case, he wrote, “It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.”

In the Atlantic Sounding case, he agreed with the four justices generally labeled liberal that an injured seaman may sue for punitive damages for “failure to pay maintenance and cure” — an admiralty law term. Thomas had similarly agreed with the liberals on the meaning of the Constitution’s ban on excessive fines. As in that earlier case, Thomas’ opinion went far back in history, citing English and American cases decided in 1676 and 1784 and interpreting the Jones Act of 1920.

Thomas’ willingness to write lonely opinions and to be guided by history has sometimes helped to change the law. For example, his 1997 concurring opinion setting out recent legal scholarship on the Second Amendment right to bear arms laid the groundwork for the court’s 2008 decision overturning the District of Columbia’s handgun ban. In setting his own course in case after case, Thomas has also done more than his detractors understand to change the course of the law.

The likely confirmation of Sotomayor and the possibility of future Obama appointments could change the balance on a court that has been closely divided on many major cases. But that seems unlikely to change the thrust of Thomas’ jurisprudence. He may write more dissenting opinions and fewer concurrences, but his insistence on going his own way may if anything become more pronounced. At the same time, his tendency to go back to first principles and to re-examine the origins of the law may prove, over time, persuasive and influential in ways surprising to both his critics and admirers — just as he has surprised both in his first 18 years on the court.

More HERE

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Sotomayor's Selective Empathy

She's not empathetic at all. She's just an arrogant racist

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is wrongly being sold by Team Obama as an "empathetic nominee." This adjective is shown a farce when one examines her record in two noteworthy cases involving Jeffrey Deskovic and Frank Ricci. In these instances, she acted callous and indifferent to the injustice and suffering of these men.

As a 17-year-old young man, Deskovic was convicted for the murder and rape of a classmate despite a negative DNA test. He ended up serving 16 years in prison before he was ultimately exonerated after additional DNA evidence proved another man was guilty. A good portion of his life was taken away by a justice system with Sotomayor playing judge.

Despite Deskovic serving 10 years in prison, Sotomayor refused to hear two of his valid appeals. These appeals were based on DNA evidence and coerced testimony. A county clerk gave his attorney inaccurate information and his attorney filed the appeal petition four days late. The court refused to hear this appeal, so the lawyer appealed the decision before Sotomayor's court, arguing that the error was the fault of the clerk; therefore, the case ought to be heard given Deskovic's innocence. Sotomayor ruled against hearing Deskovic's appeal, effectively sentencing an innocent man to six more years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

“Despite Sotomayor’s rhetoric, her ruling in my case showed a callous disregard for the real-life implications of her rulings,” Deskovic says. “She opted for procedure over fairness and finality of conviction over accuracy. Many of the victims of wrongful convictions serving long sentences had exhausted their appeals long before they were exonerated. In how many of those cases did Sotomayor vote to refuse to even consider evidence of innocence?” Even though Sotomayor displayed a callous indifference to the suffering of this innocent man, Obama wants people to ignore this case and confirm her immediately because she is a “wise Hispanic Woman.”

Another case showing her lack of empathy and poor judgment is the Frank Ricci firefighter case. Frank Ricci is a Connecticut firefighter with dyslexia who studied many difficult and challenging hours, due to his disability, to pass a written test. Along with the passing of the test came a promotion but Ricci’s aspirations for advancement quickly vanished as he watched the city throw his results away because no minorities passed the test and they didn’t want to get sued for discrimination. Sotomayor and her court agreed with the city and were willing to punish a white firefighter who succeeds just because minority candidates did not perform well on the test.

By allowing this discrimination and racism, Sotomayor proves herself to be anything but empathetic.

More HERE

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The Seinfeld Hearings

How Senators could, but probably won't, make the Sotomayor confirmation a show about something

If you suspect this week's Senate confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor will be, like "Seinfeld," a show about nothing, you are probably right. To understand why, we need to revisit an era that remade how lawyers and the public think about law, and especially the Constitution.

In the 1930s, academics developed a philosophy they called "legal realism" to undercut judicial resistance to "progressive" statutes such as laws restricting the hours a baker or a woman could work. Legal realism elevated just results over the rule of law. It saw analysis of "the law" as an after-the-fact rationalization that allowed reactionary judges to conceal their empathy for the oppressed. Because legal realists believed judges inevitably made law when they ruled, they thought judges should decide cases with progressive ends in mind.

At the same time, and somewhat inconsistently, realist progressives also condemned judges who declared progressive federal and state laws to be unconstitutional as judicial activists who were thwarting the will of the people. Never mind that the Supreme Court was only tepidly enforcing the original meaning of the Constitution and was upholding the vast majority of enlightened regulations. Any interference of the will of the people was deemed to be undemocratic.

Today we live in a legal world in which many progressives and conservatives share the legal realists' preoccupation with results. So justices must be chosen who will reach the politically correct results or opposed because they will reach the wrong results. Judicial confirmation hearings are thereby turned into a game of gotcha, with questioners trying to trip up the other side's nominees, and nominees quite properly refusing to reveal the only thing their inquisitors truly care about: how they would rule in particular cases that are likely to come before the Court.

But postures must be assumed and questions must be asked. So senators and nominees opine about two empty concepts. The first is "stare decisis" or precedent: Will the nominee follow the hallowed case of U.S. v. Whatchamacallit or not?

Of course, the legal realists detested precedent, which in their time stood in the way of their progressive agenda. Nothing has really changed. Both sides only want to respect the precedents that lead to the results they like. No one thinks justices should follow every precedent, so the crucial issue is picking and choosing which to follow and which to ignore. But how? Well, by the results, of course.

Now, when it comes to the meaning of the Constitution, I agree that precedent should not bind the Supreme Court. The written Constitution remains fixed, regardless of whether past decisions have gotten its meaning wrong. I am grateful that the Supreme Court reversed Plessy v. Ferguson -- the 1896 case that gave us "separate but equal" and an unconstitutional system of racial apartheid. Unfortunately, neither Democratic nor Republican senators will decry the post-New Deal rulings that transformed our constitutional order from what Princeton professor Stephen Macedo has called "islands of [government] powers in a sea of rights" to "islands of rights in a sea of [government] powers." Unless they can explain how we know which precedents to follow and which to reverse -- apart from liking the results -- all pontificating about "stare decisis" is really about nothing.

The second empty issue to be discussed is the bugaboo of "judicial activism" and its conjoined twin, "judicial restraint," which today's judicial conservatives have inherited from New Deal progressives. But what exactly is "activism"? Is it activism when any popularly enacted law is held unconstitutional? Neither Democrats or Republicans truly believe this, however, since they want judges to strike down laws as unconstitutional when doing so leads to the ["]right result["] (but not when it doesn't). So judicial activism means thwarting the "will of the people" when critics agree with the people, while they complain about the "tyranny of the majority" when they disagree.

We can do better.

Supreme Court confirmation hearings do not have to be about either results or nothing. They could be about clauses, not cases. Instead of asking nominees how they would decide particular cases, ask them to explain what they think the various clauses of the Constitution mean. Does the Second Amendment protect an individual right to arms? What was the original meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment? (Hint: It included an individual right to arms.) Does the 14th Amendment "incorporate" the Bill of Rights and, if so, how and why? Does the Ninth Amendment protect judicially enforceable unenumerated rights? Does the Necessary and Proper Clause delegate unlimited discretion to Congress? Where in the text of the Constitution is the so-called Spending Power (by which Congress claims the power to spend tax revenue on anything it wants) and does it have any enforceable limits?

Don't ask how the meaning of these clauses should be applied in particular circumstances. Just ask about the meaning itself and how it should be ascertained. Do nominees think they are bound by the original public meaning of the text? Even those who deny this still typically claim that original meaning is a "factor" or starting point. If so, what other factors do they think a justice should rely on to "interpret" the meaning of the text? Even asking whether "We the People" in the U.S. Constitution originally included blacks and slaves -- as abolitionists like Lysander Spooner and Frederick Douglass contended, or not as Chief Justice Roger Taney claimed in Dred Scott v. Sandford -- will tell us much about a nominee's approach to constitutional interpretation. Given that this is hardly a case that will come before them, on what grounds could nominees refuse to answer such questions?

Of course, inquiring into clauses not cases would require senators to know something about the original meaning of the Constitution. Do they? It would be interesting to hear what Sen. Al Franken thinks about such matters, but no more so than any other member of the Judiciary Committee. Such a hearing would not only be entertaining, it would be informative and educational. After all, it would be about the meaning of the Constitution, which is to say it would be about something.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Sotomayor faces easy route to confirmation: "The Supreme Court confirmation prospects of Judge Sonia Sotomayor appeared good Sunday as one Democratic senator said he expects her to receive more votes than the hefty majority for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Republicans indicated they don't expect a filibuster. The Senate Judiciary Committee starts at 10 a.m. Monday the confirmation hearing of Judge Sotomayor to replace outgoing Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter. Judge Sotomayor, a member of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has met with 89 senators. "She has wowed people," Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "She is going to be approved by a large margin." Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, said he doubts Judge Sotomayor will have a fate similar to another Hispanic nominee to the federal bench, Miguel Estrada, whose confirmation was filibustered by Democrats seven times. "We're not going to filibuster Judge Sotomayor like the Democrats did Miguel Estrada, who would have been on the Supreme Court, I would have predicted, if he had not been filibustered and denied an up-or-down vote," Mr. Cornyn said on "Fox News Sunday." "I think she'll have an up-or-down vote."

Out of Alaska: “Palin has a devoted following. No Republican politician energizes GOP crowds as much as she does. When I saw her speak at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner in Evansville, Indiana, in April, Palin was practically mobbed by well-wishers and autograph seekers. The conservative movement is rudderless, and social conservatives in particular would like a powerful spokesman for their cause. The social issues may not have played much of a role during Palin’s governorship, but once she is free from office she can emphasize them as much as she likes. One lesson from Barack Obama’s candidacy is that a politician should seize his (or her) moment. Elite opinion, remember, thought that Barack Obama wasn’t ready to run for president in 2008. He should sit back, the argument went. Gain seasoning. Master a few issues. Wait for his turn. But Obama understood that when you do that, you end up being Joe Biden. Obama understood that once the spotlight is on you, it’s foolish to let it pass on to someone else. He ignored the naysayers. He launched his campaign. Now he lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Mandating Unemployment. Congress prepares to kill more jobs: "Here's some economic logic to ponder. The unemployment rate in June for American teenagers was 24%, for black teens it was 38%, and even White House economists are predicting more job losses. So how about raising the cost of that teenage labor? Sorry to say, but that's precisely what will happen on July 24, when the minimum wage will increase to $7.25 an hour from $6.55. The national wage floor will have increased 41% since the three-step hike was approved by the Democratic Congress in May 2007. Then the economy was humming, with an overall jobless rate of 4.5% and many entry-level jobs paying more than the minimum. That's a hard case to make now, with a 9.5% national jobless rate and thousands of employers facing razor-thin profit margins.There's been a long and spirited debate among economists about who gets hurt and who benefits when the minimum wage rises. But in a 2006 National Bureau of Economic Research paper, economists David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Bank reviewed the voluminous literature over the past 30 years and came to two almost universally acknowledged conclusions. First, "a sizable majority of the studies give a relatively consistent (though not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects." Second, "studies that focus on the least-skilled groups [i.e., teens, and welfare moms] provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects."

Socialized medicine will stifle innovation: "The normal critique of socialized medicine is to point out that people have to wait a long time for . . . treatments in places like Britain. And that's certainly a valid critique . . . . The key point, though, is that these treatments didn't just come out of the blue. They were developed by drug companies and device makers who thought they had a good market for things that would make people feel better. But under a national healthcare plan, the "market" will consist of whatever the bureaucrats are willing to buy. That means treatment for politically stylish diseases will get some money, but otherwise the main concern will be cost-control. More treatments, to bureaucrats, mean more costs . . . . It's ironic that the same Democrats who were pushing the medical prospects for stem-cell research during the last election are now pushing a program that will make such progress far less likely."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray in full). For more blog 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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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Palin plans to stay in politics

Brushing aside the criticisms of pundits and politicos, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she plans to jump immediately back into the national political fray — stumping for conservative issues and even Democrats — after she prematurely vacates her elected post at month's end.

The former Republican vice-presidential nominee and heroine to much of the GOP's base said in an interview she views the electorate as embattled and fatigued by nonstop partisanship, and she is eager to campaign for Republicans, independents and even Democrats who share her values on limited government, strong defense and "energy independence."

"I will go around the country on behalf of candidates who believe in the right things, regardless of their party label or affiliation," she said over lunch in her downtown office, 40 miles from her now-famous hometown of Wasilla — population 7,000 — where she began her political career.

"People are so tired of the partisan stuff — even my own son is not a Republican," said Mrs. Palin, who stunned the political world earlier this month with her decision to step down as governor July 26 with 18 months left in her term.

Both her son, Track, 20, an enlisted soldier serving in Iraq, and her husband, Todd, are registered as "nonpartisan" in Alaska.

Mrs. Palin, who vaulted to national prominence when Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, chose her as his running mate last August, left the door open for a future presidential bid.

But she shot down speculation among Republicans that she might challenge incumbent Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski for the party's nomination to the Senate next year, and she blamed her resignation as governor on the nasty, hardball tactics that last year's presidential campaign brought to her state.

"I'm not ruling out anything - it is the way I have lived my life from the youngest age," she said. "Let me peek out there and see if there's an open door somewhere. And if there's even a little crack of light, I'll hope to plow through it."

More HERE

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Bush Deserves More Credit on Iran

By JOHN P. HANNAH

Defying their regime once more, Iranians have renewed their protests in the streets of Tehran. Last month, when the protests began, the New York Times ran a story hinting that Iran's demonstrators may have been inspired by an "Obama factor." The article suggested that President Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach, unlike his predecessor's approach, emboldened Iranians to rise up against their regime, demanding it repair relations with America and the world.

The Times reporter drew a stark contrast between the presidency of George W. Bush and that of Mr. Obama. According to the article, "Iran's regime was able to coalesce support by uniting the country against a common enemy: President Bush, who called Iran a pillar of the 'axis of evil.'" Alarmed by Mr. Bush's hostility, Iranians "swallowed their criticism of [their] hard-line regime and united against the common enemy."

Setting aside the article's claims about an "Obama effect," its characterization of the Bush years is unfair and misleading. As someone who served in Mr. Bush's White House, I can attest that the administration's Iran policy was far from perfect. The Islamic Republic's ongoing nuclear program is proof enough of the policy's serious shortcomings. Yet, in light of recent events, it seems apparent that Mr. Bush got some important things concerning Iran right.

First, some facts. Mr. Bush delivered his infamous "axis of evil" speech in January 2002. On several occasions thereafter he followed up with statements harshly attacking the legitimacy of the Iranian regime. He repeatedly distinguished between the people of Iran and their "unelected rulers."

Did Mr. Bush's confrontational posture really lead Iranians to rally behind the regime? Hardly. In November 2002 and again in June 2003, student-led protests rocked Tehran and other Iranian cities, as the New York Times itself acknowledged at the time. In both cases, demonstrators' demands included sweeping democratic reforms. During the 2002 clashes (which dragged on for weeks), the Times reported that protesters had been "boldly critical of the government, including the supreme religious leader [Ali Khamenei], who is normally beyond criticism." The protestors called for the "secularization of the religious system" -- an end to clerical rule.

Similarly, in June 2003, protesters rapidly focused on the need for fundamental change. A manifesto signed by hundreds of intellectuals and clerics declared that Ayatollah Khamenei's claims to absolute power were "a clear heresy towards God and a clear affront to human dignity." The BBC reported that chants of "Death to Khamenei" were heard at the rallies. More than 4,000 people were arrested before the demonstrations were suppressed.

The reality is that large-scale anti-regime protests erupted on multiple occasions throughout Mr. Bush's first term -- the very moment when his Iran policy was most aggressive. The suggestion that Iranians "swallowed their criticism" of the Islamic regime in an anti-American response to Mr. Bush's tough stance is simply not borne out by the facts.

The current crisis in Iran undermines another conventional wisdom about Mr. Bush's Iran policy. Many believe that his policy was grounded in ideology rather than realism. But Mr. Bush's assessment of Iran has so far proven much more accurate than Mr. Obama's. In his eagerness to draw Iran's rulers into negotiations, Mr. Obama has gone to great lengths to signal his acceptance of the Islamic Republic's legitimacy and permanence. In stark contrast, Mr. Bush always understood that large swaths of Iranian society do not consider their regime to be legitimate. They detest it and yearn for freedom and democracy. Mr. Bush knew that regime change was not the crazed fantasy of a small cabal of American neoconservatives. It was the deepest desire of tens of millions of Iranians.

Iran's recent turmoil also sheds light on Mr. Bush's conviction about pressuring the Iranian regime. Critics warned that Mr. Bush's attempt to isolate Iran diplomatically, sanction it economically, and threaten it militarily would trigger a nationalist backlash against Washington. But Mr. Bush believed that such efforts were essential. They would alert the Iranian people, as well as Iran's elites, to the disastrous consequences of the Islamic Republic's policies.

Today, Iran's burgeoning opposition is clearly angered by the country's dismal economy, ashamed of its status as an international pariah, and alarmed by the growing danger of military conflict. Opposition members will not accept the regime's efforts to scapegoat the U.S. Instead, their fury has been directed inward at the brutality, economic mismanagement, and outrageous behavior of the Islamic regime.

As Mr. Obama reassesses his Iran policy in the wake of the Iranian protests, he could do worse than to incorporate at least a few pointers from Mr. Bush's playbook. That would mean an adjusted Iran strategy that sees the Iranian people as allies of the Free World, not the Islamic Republic. It would also mean spending less time trying to reassure Iran's despotic rulers of the U.S.'s benign intentions. Mr. Obama should instead spend more time on using his enormous international popularity to further mobilize the world against Iran's tyrants.

SOURCE

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Putting Liberals on the Couch

by Burt Prelutsky

Being a conservative, I naturally spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to psychoanalyze left-wingers, trying to figure out what makes them tick. God knows I’m not bragging. It is, after all, time I could otherwise devote to alphabetizing my canned goods or trying to make contact with Harry Houdini, but I know from the large number of emails I receive that I’m not alone. The lunacy on the left is enough to turn a lot of us into little Sigmund Freuds.

For instance, why is it that lefties are so puzzled or pretend to be so puzzled that conservatives who are in favor of capital punishment are opposed to abortions -- particularly the 60,000 late-term abortions performed by the late unrepentant serial killer, George Tiller? Even a left-winger should be able to tell the difference between executing a cold-blooded murderer and sucking the brain out of an innocent little human being.

I’m wondering when the Mafia will officially ask for a government subsidy. Yes, I know it’s a criminal organization, but so is ACORN, which faces indictments for voter fraud in several states, and yet Obama and his Democratic cronies are funneling them millions of dollars.

Perhaps if liberals were merely wrong on all the issues, it would be easier to forgive them. But it’s their arrogance and self-righteous attitude that puts them beyond the pale. How often have we heard them claim that they’re being deprived of their right to free speech when what they’re actually complaining about isn’t censorship, but merely that a clear-thinking conservative has refuted some of their inane hogwash? Only liberals actually believe that if you disagree with them, you’re trampling on the 1st Amendment. For good measure, many of them -- including a number of pettifoggers in Congress -- are on an unholy mission to bring back the totalitarian device known as the Fairness Doctrine.

Speaking of fairness, I have come to see that Fox News is something like our own version of Radio Free Europe, getting the truth to those of us behind the Obama Curtain. What is ironic about the way that liberals carry on about TV Free America is that Fox has a large number of liberals on the payroll, including Greta Van Susteren, Bob Beckel, Geraldo Rivera, Alan Colmes, Chris Wallace, Juan Williams, Kirsten Powers and a few others, whereas CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times and the Washington Post, collectively, have only one non-liberal on salary and that’s John Stossel, who doesn’t even identify himself as a conservative, but as a libertarian.

A question nobody has ever answered to my satisfaction is how it’s possible that media people such as David Corn, Eleanor Clift and Ellis Henican, who do nothing but parrot the same insipid DNC talking points as Charles Rangel, Barbara Boxer and Patrick Leahy, are able to make a decent living without at least having to run for office and win an election.

I’m not an expert on body language, but my attention has been called to the fact that when he was on the phone with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama was photographed with his feet on the desk in the Oval Office, and when he took his photo op tour of Auschwitz with Elie Wiesel, he had his hands in his pockets. Yet in the august presence of King Abdullah, he bowed respectfully.

Finally, we were told that the world’s leaders were going to cooperate with Barack Hussein Obama in a way they never had with his predecessor. Well, so far, they’ve all refused his invitation to send troops to Afghanistan and, just in case he didn’t get the message, they’ve all refused to take 241 Muslim terrorists off his hands.

Now, we have Newsweek’s managing editor, Evan Thomas, grandson of the former grand Poo Bah of the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas, telling us with a straight face that Obama is greater than God. It appears, however, that the world’s leaders don’t even think he’s greater than George W. Bush.

SOURCE

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Higher Taxes, Anyone?

by George Will

Economic policy, which became startling when Washington began buying automobile companies, has become surreal now that disappointment with the results of the second stimulus is stirring talk about the need for a ... second stimulus. Elsewhere, it requires centuries to bleach mankind's memory; in Washington, 17 months suffice: In February 2008, President George W. Bush and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who normally were at daggers drawn, agreed that a $168 billion stimulus -- this was Stimulus I -- would be the "booster shot" the economy needed. Unemployment then was 4.8 percent.

In January, the administration, shiny as a new dime and bursting with brains, said that unless another stimulus -- Stimulus II wound up involving $787 billion -- was passed immediately, unemployment, which then was 7.6 percent, would reach 9 percent by 2010. But halfway through 2009, the rate is 9.5. For the first time since the now 16-nation Eurozone was established in 1999, the unemployment rate in America is as high as it is in that region, which Americans once considered a cautionary lesson in the wages of sin, understood as excessive taxation and regulation.

"Everyone guessed wrong" about the economy's weakness, says the vice president, explaining why Stimulus II has not yielded anticipated benefits. Joe Biden is beguiling when unfiltered by calculation, as he often is and as he was when he spoke about guessing ("Meet the Press," June 14) and how everyone "misread" the economy ("This Week," July 5). To be fair, economics is a science of single instances, which means it is hardly a science. And it is least like one when we most crave certainty from it -- when there is a huge and unprecedented event and educated guessing is the best anyone can do.

But before embarking on Stimulus III, note that only about 10 percent of Stimulus II has yet been injected into the economy in 2009. This is not the administration's fault, the administration's defenders say, because government is cumbersome, sluggish and inefficient. But this sunburst of insight comes as the administration toils to enlarge governmental control of health care, energy, finance, education, etc. The administration guesses that these government projects will do better than the Postal Service (its second-quarter loss, $1.9 billion, was 68 percent of its losses for all of 2008) and the government's railroad (Amtrak has had 38 money-losing years and this year's losses are on pace to set a record).

Let's guess: Will a person or institution looking for a place to invest $1 billion seek opportunities in the United States, where policy decisions are deliberately increasing taxes, debt, regulations and the cost of energy, and soon will increase the cost of borrowing and hiring? Or will the investor look at, say, India. It is the least urbanized major country -- 70 percent of Indians live in rural areas, 50 percent on farms -- so the modernizing and productivity-enhancing movement from the countryside to the city is in its infancy. This nation of 1.2 billion people has a savings rate of 25 percent to 30 percent, and fewer than 20 million credit cards. Which nation, India or the United States, is apt to have the higher economic growth over the next decade?

Yet while government diminishes America's comparative advantages, liberals are clamoring for ... higher taxes. Partly because of changes endorsed by presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, approximately 60 percent of taxpayers now pay either no income tax (43 percent) or less than 5 percent of their income. Because one cannot raise significant money by that tax without nicking the middle class, or without bringing millions of people back onto the income tax rolls, attention is turning to a value-added tax.

A VAT is levied at every stage of production. Like the cap-and-trade regime being constructed, a VAT is a liberal politician's delight: It taxes everything, but opaquely.

Before he became an economic adviser in the Obama White House, where wit can be dangerous, Larry Summers said: Liberals oppose a VAT because it is regressive and conservatives oppose it because it is a money machine, but a VAT might come when liberals realize it is a money machine and conservatives realize it is regressive.

At the June 29 White House briefing, press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked, with reference to health care legislation, if the president's pledge not to raise taxes on couples making less than $250,000 is "still active." Gibbs answered: "We are going to let the process work its way through." What is your guess?

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Rush to vaccinate in Britain: "The NHS is preparing to vaccinate the entire population against swine flu after the disease claimed the life of its first healthy British patient. A new vaccine is expected to arrive in Britain in the next few weeks and could be fast-tracked through regulatory approval in five days. Regulators at the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) said the fast-tracked procedure has involved clinical trials of a “mock-up” vaccine similar to the one that will be used for the biggest mass vaccination programme in generations. It will be introduced into the general population while regulators continue to carry out simultaneous clinical trials. The first patients in the queue for the jab - being supplied to the UK by GSK and Baxter Healthcare - may understandably be a little nervous at any possible side effects. A mass vaccination campaign against swine flu in America was halted in the 1970s after some people suffered Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system. However, regulators said fast-tracking would not be at the expense of patient safety. “The vaccines are authorised with a detailed risk management plan,” the EMEA said. “There is quite a body of evidence regarding safety on the trials of the mock-up, and the actual vaccine could be assessed in five days.” The UK government has ordered enough vaccine to cover the entire population."

More British bungling: "New vehicles purchased to protect British troops in Afghanistan have already been rejected as unsafe by the US military. The vehicles failed basic 'survivability' tests, which showed soldiers would be left vulnerable to roadside bombs, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. But although the Pentagon rejected them, the Ministry of Defence has ordered 262 to replace the controversial Snatch Land Rovers. In contrast, the Americans have now ordered a more robust model - at half the £600,000 cost of the vehicle the British have dubbed the 'Husky'. The disclosure, at the end of the blackest week for British forces in Afghanistan, came as Gordon Brown responded to growing anger over the death toll by promising to improve troops' equipment.

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

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray in full). For more blog 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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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Invitation

The Iranian Community of New York Metropolitan Area, in a show of unity with all Iranian compatriots across the Globe, will hold a political rally and demonstration in support of the young freedom fighters across Iranian cities in the struggle against the evil forces of the Islamic Regime. Please join us to show our unity and support to the United Nation and the World.

Time : Sunday July 12, 2009 – from 2oo to 5oo pm.

Place : DAG Hammerskjold Plaza,corner of First ave.and 47th Street, New york,NY

Looking forward to see you. The Iranian Society for Freedom, Peace and Justice

(Via Astute bloggers)

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Obama's Science Czar Wrote Book Advocating "Planetary Regime" Which Would Require Mass Sterilizations, Forced Abortions

This is the scariest book report you will ever read. Zombie has once again truly done his homework.

These are the ideas of John Holdren, Obama's newly appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, i.e., Science Czar. In a book he co-authored in 1977, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, he wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;

• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food;

• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise [which would seriously jack with Cloward-Piven];

• People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" -- in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.

• A transnational "Planetary Regime" should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans' lives -- using an armed international police force.

There's so much more. It's hard to take in all the evil.

More HERE

SCOTUS judge and Clinton appointee Ruth Bader Ginsburg has similar ideas. Prewar socialism is back it seems. Hitler got his eugenic ideas from the mainstream socialists of his day

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Obama's Climate of Fear

And why America's economic long night will continue -- as it did under FDR for similar reasons



Recently I had a long lunch with an old friend. He sits on the board of one of the largest and most successful publicly traded regional banks in America. He got his seat when that regional bank acquired the very successful community bank he built from the ground up. I will not name him or this bank, but I will pass on a few things he said to me.

He said, “Our bank’s leadership team and others I know at the local or regional level feel paralyzed and intimidated by the climate of fear created by the Obama administration. We believe we are targets of a very deliberate conspiracy.

“The new and proposed regulations will remove every competitive advantage of the community bank, and make every bank identical, forced to operate exactly as does Bank of America,” he explained. “Then, absent competitive opportunity, all of the independent banks will be greatly de-valued and handicapped. They’ll be vulnerable and easily rolled up into the handful of remaining giants … the small bank’s wealth made into fresh food for the insatiable hunger of the big banks’ deficits and losses. This is, I and others believe, the next step in Obama’s plan to take total control of the financial system and money supply, a requirement of dictatorship. “

What is most significant about these statements is the person making them. This is not some freak like the fellow Mel Gibson portrayed in the movie “Conspiracy Theory.”. He’s not somebody stockpiling food in a cabin hidden away in the woods, to escape to when anarchy erupts. Not anybody you would expect to hear express such thoughts. And he’s not a lone voice.

Another friend is the CEO of a mid-sized company that had been on an impressive trajectory of growth for the past three years but is now stalled. He and his advisers have reversed their viewpoint in the last few months. They are eager to sell the company if possible now rather than later. Why? They believe Obama is deliberately, systematically destroying the economy as a whole and is specifically targeting small business for extinction – because it’s too difficult to exercise dictatorial control over millions of small enterprises.

This fellow has begun the process of acquiring dual citizenship and hopes to cash out and leave the country. He said that he can only envision a growing, worsening, toxic climate of fear here – again that term – and he prefers to be away from it.

Well, liberal fruitcakes have always talked about leaving the country if a president they reviled got elected (Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon come to mind). You expect such empty-headed, empty threats from them, as you would from those on the extreme right about Obama. But if you knew this CEO, who made me swear not to mention him by name if writing about this, you would never in a million years expect to hear these thoughts from him.

A couple of weeks ago I talked to the director of marketing for a leading private aviation company, which offers fractional jet ownership, pre-paid membership packages of private jet flight, and concierge-organized private jet travel. In her 15+ years in the industry, she said, she’d never encountered as many people who would not buy and travel in this manner because they were afraid of being seen and judged harshly. Many even feared having their companies singled out for reprisal by the government. She said, “I’m doing business in a climate of fear, almost clandestinely, as if engaged in espionage rather than commerce.” She too asked not to be identified.

This is an untold story. The mainstream media would mostly refuse to report on it. But even if they wanted to, these business leaders and countless others like them would refuse to publicly talk about their views. Because they are afraid.

From free enterprise to fearful enterprise. From ambition, initiative and investment, to hoarding and inaction and exit. This the only thing Obama has actually stimulated: a climate of fear.

SOURCE

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Why We'll Leave L.A.: The business climate is worse than the air quality

The destructive results of a dominant Green/Left vividly displayed

If New Yorkers fantasize that doing business here in Los Angeles would be less of a headache, forget about it. This city is fast becoming a job-killing machine. It's no accident the unemployment rate is a frightening 11.4% and climbing. I never could have imagined that, after living here for more than three decades, I would be filing a lawsuit against my beloved Los Angeles and making plans for my company, Creators Syndicate, to move elsewhere. But we have no choice. The city's bureaucrats rival Stalin's apparatchiks in issuing decrees, rescinding them, and then punishing citizens for having followed them in the first place.

I founded Creators Syndicate in 1987, and we have represented hundreds of important writers, syndicating their columns to newspapers and Web sites around the world. The most famous include Hillary Clinton, who, like Eleanor Roosevelt, wrote a syndicated column when she was first lady. Another star was the advice columnist Ann Landers, once described by "The World Almanac" as "the most influential woman in America." Other Creators columnists include Bill O'Reilly, Susan Estrich, Thomas Sowell, Roland Martin and Michelle Malkin -- plus Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonists and your favorite comic strips.

From the beginning, we've been headquartered in Los Angeles. But 15 years ago we had a dispute with the city over our business tax classification. The city argued that we should be in an "occupations and professions" classification that has an extremely high tax rate, while we fought for a "wholesale and retail" classification with a much lower rate. The city forced us to invest a small fortune in legal fees over two years, but we felt it was worth it in order to establish the correct classification once and for all.

After enduring a series of bureaucratic hearings, we anxiously awaited a ruling to find out what our tax rate would be. Everything was at stake. We had already decided that if we lost, we would move. You can imagine how relieved we were on July 1, 1994, when the ruling was issued. We won, and firmly planted our roots in the City of Angels and proceeded to build our business.

Everything was fine until the city started running out of money in 2007. Suddenly, the city announced that it was going to ignore its own ruling and reclassify us in the higher tax category. Even more incredible is the fact that the new classification was to be imposed retroactively to 2004 with interest and penalties. No explanation was given for the new classification, or for the city's decision to ignore its 1994 ruling.

Their official position is that the city is not bound by past rulings -- only taxpayers are. This is why we have been forced to file a lawsuit. We will let the courts decide whether it is legal for adverse rulings to apply only to taxpayers and not to the city.

We work with hundreds of outside agents, consultants, independent contractors and support services -- many of whom pay taxes to the city of Los Angeles. This spurs a job-creating ripple effect on the city's economy. Yet I suspect many companies like ours already have quietly left town in the face of the city's taxes and regulations. This would help explain the erosion of jobs. Regardless of the outcome of our case, the arbitrary and capricious behavior of some bureaucrats is creating a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. If we win in court, the taxpayers of Los Angeles will have lost because all those tax dollars will have been wasted on needless litigation.

If we lose in court, the remaining taxpayers in Los Angeles will have lost because their burden will continue to swell as yet another business moves its jobs -- and taxpayers -- to another city. As long as City Hall operates like a banana republic, why is anyone surprised that jobs have left the city in droves and Los Angeles is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy?

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Black Muslim gang boss jailed for torturing French Jew to death: "The leader of a group that called itself a "gang of barbarians" was sentenced to life imprisonment by a French court for kidnapping and torturing a young Jewish man for more than three weeks before leaving him to die. The gang abducted 23-year-old Ilan Halimi in 2006, unsuccessfully tried to extort a ransom for their captive, tortured him until he was close to death and then left him near a train station. He died shortly after he was found. The case shocked France and turned a spotlight on anti-Semitic violence in the poor, multi-ethnic suburbs around many big French cities. Amid tight courtroom security, Youssouf Fofana, the gang's leader, who admitted killing Mr Halimi, was sentenced to life imprisonment, the maximum penalty under French law, with a minimum period in jail of 22 years. Twenty-four other gang members were handed sentences ranging from six months suspended to 18 years in prison. Two were acquitted. Aside from the horrific details of the murder itself, the case attracted wide attention because of what it seemed to suggest about racial tensions and anti-Semitism in France. Many in the Jewish community say that anti-Semitic aggression among French youths of Arab and African origin has been on the rise in recent years... Among the 26 other defendants were young men accused of taking part in the abduction and guarding of the captive, and a girl who is alleged to have lured Mr Halimi into the Paris suburb of Sceaux where he was kidnapped."

Hot air? We won't wait for Iran to build nuke, says Barack Obama: "US President Barack Obama has cranked up pressure on Iran, saying world leaders are "appalled" at post-poll violence and will not stand idly by while Iran builds a nuclear weapon. Welcoming a rare consensus on Iran among the globe's most powerful nations at the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, Mr Obama said he hopes Tehran will recognise that "world opinion is very clear". The G8 joint declaration expressed "serious concern" over post-election violence in Iran but called for a negotiated resolution to the standoff over Tehran's nuclear program, giving it until September's G20 summit. "And that's been always our premise, is that we provide that door," said Mr Obama. "But we also say we're not going to just wait indefinitely and allow for the development of the nuclear weapon, the breach of international treaties, and wake up one day and find ourselves in a much worse situation and unable to act. "If Iran chooses not to walk through that door, then you have on record the G8 to begin with, but I think potentially a lot of other countries that are going to say, we need to take further steps."

Obama to African leaders: Time for 'responsibility': President Obama on Friday said African countries cannot blame colonialism for problems caused by corruption and their own bad governance as he embarked on his first trip as president to sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. Obama also announced that he has secured a commitment from major countries to spend $20 billion on food security aid, or $5 billion more than expected from world leaders meeting in Italy this week. But he said rather than simple assistance, this money will be managed "to help people become self-sufficient, provide for their families and lift their standards of living." "We do not view this assistance as an end in itself. We believe that the purpose of aid must be to create the conditions where it's no longer needed," he said."

Former Gitmo Inmate Leading Fight Against U.S. in Helmand: "As U.S. forces are pushing ahead with the massive Operation Khanjar in the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand, Mullah Zakir is leading the Taliban fight against them. Mullah Zakir, also known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, surrendered in Mazar-e-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan in 2001, and was transferred to Gitmo in 2006. He was released in late 2007 to Afghan custody. Now as the United States is pushing ahead with the massive Operation Khanjar in the southern province of Afghanistan, Zakir is coordinating the Taliban fighters. Some 4,000 U.S. Marines and hundreds of Afghan forces have faced some resistance as they sweep across the province, reclaiming control of districts where Zakir and his comrades were running a shadow government. Zakir was released from Afghan custody around 2008, according to the New York Post. He re-established connections with high-level Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan after his second release. Zakir quickly became a charismatic leader, helping establish an "accountability commission" to track spending and monitor activities of Taliban leaders in the districts where they held power and were running a shadow government, according to the Post."

Pre-Eminence Lost: Is Wall St. Still No. 1?: "In the 15th and 16th centuries, Florence, Genoa and Venice were the financial capitals of the Western world. When they declined, financial leadership shifted to Amsterdam, then to London, and finally to New York, whose supremacy went unchallenged from 1945 until the end of the 20th century. In the new millennium, however, it is showing cracks. A decade ago, companies fought for the privilege of being listed on the New York exchanges. But interest has dropped significantly since the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000. The credit crisis has only made things worse. Will the city be able to retain its title as the world's finance king? What will Wall Street look like in 2015?"

Obamas's red-hot printing press has shaken confidence in the dollar: "Dai Bingguo, who is standing in for the Chinese president Hu Jintao at the G8 meetings, raised questions over the dominant role of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The discussion, which took place between the leaders of five emerging economies and the G8 industrialised nations, including Barack Obama, caused concern among western leaders. "We should have a better system for reserve currency issuance and regulation, so that we can maintain relative stability of major reserve currencies exchange rates and promote a diversified and rational international reserve currency system,” said Mr Dai, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. China has made a series of attacks on the dollar in recent months, and went as far as to question Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, about the trustworthiness of the currency on her visit to China earlier this year."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray in full). For more blog 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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

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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