Mideast Peace Now!

By Gene Schwimmer

Is it time for those who clamor for a Middle East peace to "declare victory and go home"? Two recent events in the region signal the answer. And that answer, resoundingly, unequivocally, is "yes."

In 2006, Hezb'allah crossed Israel's northern border and kidnapped two soldiers, triggering a massive Israeli retaliation that caused hundreds of deaths, billions of dollars of damage and came close to destroying Hezb'allah, who were literally saved by the bell when the "international community" combined with a hapless left-wing administration on the Israeli home front pressured the Israelis into halting their advance short of complete victory.

And yet, in the aftermath of that war -- a war that reduced parts of Lebanon to rubble; a war in which Hezb'allah failed to invade, let alone conquer, an inch of Israeli territory; a war in which, a Hezb'allah officer confessed to The Jerusalem Post that, had it continued only ten more days, "we all would have surrendered -- Hezb'allah, astonishingly, declared victory. Apparently, in the topsy-turvy milieu of whatever passes for logic in the Arab Middle East, one can do that (and among the Israel-hating Left, get away with it).

So the Israelis pulled out, a UN "peacekeeping force" came in and, as we who opposed ending the war without a clear victory predicted, Hezb'allah returned and not only replenished their rocket arsenal, but increased it fourfold.

But then, something important happened. Hezb'allah won 57 seats (out of 128) in Lebanon's recent parliamentary elections. And on July 5, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning to Lebanon (emphasis mine) "that Israel will hold the Lebanese government responsible for any attack launched from within the country's territory, including Hizbullah operations."

Israel-bashers who waited for the usual Hezb'allah bluster and threats were disappointed for none has been forthcoming. One might even go so far as to say that, after Netanyahu's warning, Nasrallah has become all hat and no camel, to the point that:

"[a] week after a group of 15 people carrying Lebanese and Hizbullah flags crossed into the Shaba Farms, the terror organization called on its followers... not to demonstrate in the area under Israeli control."

Also,

"top Hizbullah and Amal officials made a commitment to the UN envoy in Lebanon not to organize rallies along the border with Israel and to block any attempt to demonstrate there".

And at the same time, in the West Bank, according to Ethan Bronner of the New York Times: "Seven months after Israel started a fierce three-week military campaign here to stop rockets from being fired on its southern communities, Hamas has suspended its use of rockets and shifted focus to winning support at home and abroad through cultural initiatives and public relations."

Of course, if Israel attacks Iran, all bets are off regarding Hezb'allah. But for now, all is quiet on the northern front. And the eastern front. And the southern front.

What does this sudden quietude along every inch of Israel's border with every one of her neighbors mean?

It means that now, today, amid all the "international community's" caterwauling about a supposed need for Israel to make substantial unilateral, self-endangering concessions "in the interest of Middle East peace, the chances of Israel being attacked by any of her neighbors right now is virtually nil. Which, in most people's definition, but especially in that of those who dwell in the Middle East and are familiar with the region's long and bloody history, means, there is peace.

Unnoticed, unheralded, not even reported, under their very upturned noses, the international community's professed goal of a peaceful Middle East, at least relative to Israel, has been achieved.

Peace, finally, has come to the Middle East, and it came not through Barack Obama's and the international community's (and Neville Chamberlain's) prescription of "negotiation" and appeasement, but through Ronald Reagan's -- and Franklin Roosevelt's; and Harry Truman's and, yes, Tony Blair's -- prescription of peace through strength and the resolve to stand forthright against one's enemies. (Even the only arguable exceptions, Israel's negotiated peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, came only after Israel's victory in the 1973 war.)

More HERE

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Acting Without the Facts — A Presidential Pattern Emerges

By Michael Reagan

Last week, President Obama was almost finished with his nationally broadcast press conference when he was asked to comment on the arrest, and subsequent release, of renowned Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by the now-famous Cambridge, Mass. police Sgt., Jim Crowley.

In his response to the question, the president started off with a legitimate point for discussion — his concern over the alleged practice of profiling across our nation. Had he stopped there, the matter would most likely have been put to rest and the president and national media could have re-focused on more pressing matters facing our nation such as the economy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or even the debate on health care. However, the president inexplicably decided to expand his response by saying the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” in their handling of the matter — while admitting that he did not yet have all of the facts at his disposal.

While this certainly turned out to be a significant political blunder, thankfully this particular occasion did not directly impact national policy or international standing. However, the unfortunate truth is that a pattern is emerging — one where President Obama decides to speak in advance of the facts on matters of much greater importance than a mistaken arrest.

First, when it came to the economy and the administration’s prediction that unemployment would stabilize at 8 percent or less, Vice President Biden himself admitted they were in error and that “there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited.”

Despite pumping billions of dollars of “stimulus” money into the economy, unemployment — currently at a 26-year high — continues to rise, and we are left to understand that this administration does not have a solid feel for where the economy is heading and, indeed, never did. Talk about boosting consumer confidence.

The litany continues. Just a few days after assuming office, President Obama again jumped the gun by signing three executive orders relating to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. One order in particular called for the facility’s closure within a year of his signature — by this coming January. Again, after taking full measure of the situation it now appears that this accelerated timeframe is premature and infeasible — causing embarrassment for the administration and casting doubts on our international credibility.

There were plenty of warning and cautions beforehand, but again it seems the president did not take the time to acquire all the facts before making a decision, and now we’re left with prisoners whom no one will accept, and an administration forced — yet again — to admit they’re unsure of how to proceed.

During his campaign, Barack Obama promised all troops would be out of Iraq within 16 months of his assuming office. Barely a month after entering office, the president had already adjusted that plan to end combat missions within 18 months and allow for a complement of 35,000 troops to stay even longer. Yet just this week Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki suggested that the troops may be needed even longer than currently planned.

Most recently, we see the same pattern emerging with his proposed health-care plan, where even Democratic Congressional leaders are trying to rein in President Obama and distance themselves from his timetable, not to mention the details of his plan, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office releases report after report regarding the deficit increase and economic danger the President’s plan poses. This, of course, sits on top of the CBO’s analysis that the program is also at least a decade away from any savings and would still leave tens of millions of Americans uninsured. It seems to me like that sort of information would have been helpful to have in advance, and thankfully voters are already seeing through the scheme.

It’s not that we, the American people, don’t appreciate the ability to adjust to the reality of circumstances. Indeed, upholding a foolhardy promise would be reckless insult on top of gross error. But is it too much to ask that next time our president get the full information before he rushes towards judgment?

SOURCE

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BrookesNews Update

Obama's big spending fallacy could ruin the US economy: a history lesson : The historical evidence and sound economic reasoning do not support Obama's colossal spending programs — and Americans instinctively no this. Yet he and advisors are hell bent on implementing these programs even though the only result will be a great weakening of the economy, if not something far worse. Only an unreasoning and fanatical belief in the power of state can account for such behavior
Is the US economy close to recovery? : Most experts and commentators are of the view that the worst of the US recession may be over by year's end. However, the so-called recovery is a monetary illusion based on government-constructed economic indicators, nothing more than that
The recession and the right's shoddy economic thinking: It is being argued by luminaries like John Stone that this is 'not a conventional recession, but a much more unusual balance sheet one'. This is complete nonsense. The recession — and the financial crisis — is entirely due to grotesque monetary mismanagement by the central banks
Overvalued currencies and floating exchange rates : For some perverse reason our rightwing economists refuse to accept the indisputable fact that overvalued currencies do exist even though we have floating exchange rates. This refusal to fact facts has degenerated into a personal vendetta
An open letter to the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull MP on his support for a destructive carbon tax : The despite the evidence that man-made global warming is a myth and that carbon taxes will devastate the economy Malcolm Turnbull arrogantly insists on implementing a thoroughly destructive police
Obama's Kerenskyism, Honduras and the Chavist abyss: Hillary approved the acquittal of the bloody Castro dictatorship. The very secretary of state that, along with president Obama, is open for a dialog with the pro-terrorist Iranian government has opened her arms to the Cuban communists. The same woman who met with smiles with dictator-president Chávez; and who shut the door to the civil Honduran delegation that went to Washington simply to explain their version of the facts. So why are Obama and Clinton supporting Marxist thugs who want to destroy America?
Obama's science czar wants forced abortions and government control of the family: John Holdren is America's new 'science czar'. He is also a dangerous green fanatic who believes in forced sterilizations, forced abortions, that abolition of the right of people to determine the size of their families. He also believes in total state control of the economy. So why did Obama appoint this dangerous fanatic and have the media covered for him? Is because they agree with his fanatical views?
Congress should not rush through something as important as changing our healthcare system: The Obama administration's cost estimates of Obamacare are phony. The real cost will be at least double the estimate. Add the cost of the healthcare program to already-incurred other costs of the no stimulus Stimulus Bill and other spending for the budget deficit, TARP, et al, and you have a total expenditure and deficit which is unimaginable even in modern times
Calibrate this, Mr. President: Why didn't Obama address the fact that the only oppression happening these days is by his buddies Castro, Chavez and all the other third world dictators he seems to think are misunderstood men of good will

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ELSEWHERE

Iran’s Stalinist justice further exposes the nature of the regime: "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be sworn in for a second term as Iran’s president tomorrow, following an election described by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as a “vote for the fight against arrogance and brave resistance to the international domination-seekers.” Maybe President Obama will note that his no-meddling stance hasn’t yielded much in the way of humane restraint or political accommodation. All the more reason, then, for Mr. Obama now to denounce the Stalin-style show trial of some 100 leading reformists accused of seeking to overthrow the regime. The detainees were hauled out of prison in their pajamas, brought to court without the aid of defense lawyers, and in some cases forced to deliver publicly televised confessions. “I believe the reformists had prepared for two or three years for this election, in order to limit the power of the Supreme Leader,” confessed former Iranian vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi. Mr. Abtahi’s wife told the Associated Press her husband had probably been drugged. Lest there be any doubt about the regime’s intentions, its mouthpiece newspaper Kayhan called for the execution of the leading defendants."

White House rejects tax-hike suggestions: "The White House on Monday knocked down the prospect of tax hikes on the middle class to help close the growing federal deficit, walking back comments made by two of President Obama's top economic advisers. "The president's clear commitment is not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. "He is not raising taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year." Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence H. Summers ignited the discussion of middle-class taxes during separate appearances on the Sunday talk shows, venues where administration representatives typically carry disciplined and well-planned messages to the public. By broaching the tax issue, the two men raised inevitable questions about the sanctity of one of Mr. Obama's most potent campaign promises: his vow to protect the middle class from any increase in their tax bill. Mr. Obama has defined the middle class as a family making less than $250,000 or an individual making less than $200,000"

Congressmen hit over healthcare bill: "Senator Arlen Specter and the health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, were heckled and booed in Philadelphia on Sunday. In Austin on Saturday, a throng of protesters enveloped Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, at a supermarket where he was trying to meet constituents. They carried signs that said “No Socialized Health Care” and chanted “Just say no!” And in Morrisville, Pa., Representative Patrick J. Murphy, a Democrat, expected 25 people at a “Congressman on Your Corner” event on Saturday. Instead he was met by a boisterous crowd of about 150 and a barrage of questions on health care."

The health bill is an Edsel: "Congress is getting an earful about Barack Obama's health care "reform," but before August is out, nobody's ears will be big enough to hold it all. Not even the president's... An aide to one Democratic congressman likens his boss' vacation to a hopeless campaign to "sell the Edsel." The Edsel, as only old-timers recall, was a new car introduced by Ford five decades ago. The car arrived with lots of weirdly shaped sheet metal and expensive bells and whistles, only to become the enduring metaphor for humiliating failure. The Republicans hold advantages as the monthlong congressional recess begins. The Democrats' only pitch is that Obamacare will "save" money - nobody believes that. [See more on this at SOCIALIZED MEDICINE]

Republicans closing gap in polls: "Nine months after Republicans suffered their worst political defeat in decades, President Obama and the Democrats are slipping in the polls and the Republican Party is expected to make gubernatorial and congressional gains in the 2009-10 election cycle, according to pollsters and election analysts. Six months into his presidency, Mr. Obama's approval ratings have fallen from the 70s to the low 50s or less and the Democrats' once-muscular lead in the polls also has shrunk. Republicans are leading in this year's two governorship races, in Virginia and New Jersey, and analysts say they likely will capture several more governor's mansions next year."

Panel blasts Panther case dismissal: "The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is demanding that the Justice Department explain why it recently dismissed a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during last year's election, saying the department has offered only "weak justifications." Commission Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds, a former deputy associate attorney general under President George W. Bush, said he fears the legal precedent set by the department in its May decision to drop the case might encourage "other hate groups" to act similarly at polling locations in the future. Mr. Reynolds also charged that other groups might not have been treated so leniently. "If you swap out the New Black Panther Party in this case for neo-Nazi groups or the Ku Klux Klan, you likely would have had a different outcome," he told The Washington Times in a telephone interview Monday. "A single law, a single rule should be applied across the board. We are communicating with the department in hopes of gaining a better understanding of just what happened."

An optimum size of government?: "A new study by economists with the Institute for Market Economics (IME) in Sofia, Bulgaria, using the latest OECD data, finds that the government sectors in OECD (developed countries) are too large relative to their private sectors to maximize economic growth. Economists have long known that the government sector can be too small or too large to maximize economic growth, job creation, and the social welfare of its citizens. Governments that do not adequately protect the people and their property and the rule of law may be too small, while governments whose size and inefficiencies cause a misallocation of resources are too large. Over the last several decades, economists have tried to determine and quantify the optimum size of government (recognizing that not all governments and societies are the same). Most studies have shown the optimum size of government is between 12% and 30% of GDP. The new IME study, entitled The Optimum Size of Government, finds (using standard methodology) the government sector should be no larger than 25% (and perhaps considerably smaller) to maximize GDP growth. All major governments, including the U.S., Germany, U.K., France, and Italy greatly exceed that level. The average government sector for the OECD countries now exceeds 41% of GDP."

British helicopters 'not fit for use': "BRITISH military helicopters set to be deployed to Afghanistan were not properly equipped to fly combat missions, a newspaper said today, fuelling a row over adequate resources for troops. The helicopters were not fitted with special armour, leaving them vulnerable to attack by Taliban extremists while transporting troops, the Daily Telegraph newspaper said, citing unnamed Royal Air Force sources. The Ministry of Defence rejected the report, saying the six aircraft set to be deployed by the end of the year were "fit for operational use." "Our Merlin Mk3 helicopters have ballistic protection as standard, and are being fitted with a range of modifications to make them fit for operational use," a spokesman said. The newspaper said pilots wanted the helicopters fitted with Kevlar armour, which would cost about £100,000 ($200,944) for each aircraft, to protect them from bullets and rocket-propelled grenades. Claims of a shortage of helicopters have been at the centre of a political row over adequate equipment for the armed forces amid a surge in the British death toll in Afghanistan."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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On race, 'No, he can't!'

By Andrew Breitbart

Well, that was pathetic. And it wasn't an accident. The fix was in from the beginning. Last week's lackluster "Beer Summit" featuring Sgt. James Crowley, professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was orchestrated to end a national discussion on race, not begin one. That's why there were no microphones, even though each participant showed himself to be perfectly qualified, astoundingly articulate and camera-ready for an illuminating and much-needed public debate.

The problem for the White House was the more the esteemed professor talked, the more trouble he created for his friend, the president. The clever photo-op sans audio was crafted to yank the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research off the stage, lest anyone begin to question what is being taught at Harvard these days.

Conversely, the more Sgt. Crowley weighed in, and his brave black co-workers spoke out, the more obvious it became that a national discussion featuring this cast of characters may not end with the results the professor and the president wanted. The status quo was at risk, and Mr. Obama used his extraordinary powers to protect it.

Any serious discussion would have put multiculturalism on trial, but the pretrial public hearings showed America opposes this false and corrosive idea, an opposition that our chattering classes can only understand as bigotry and prejudice. In the public eye, being a victim of past injustices does not win the right to propagate current and future ones, and that's intolerable to those in charge of the race industry today, whose power relies on maintaining forever a latent rage that can be turned on and off at the will of the nation's elites.

America is Tiger Woods country for a reason, and she elected Barack Obama to punctuate this new reality. The nation's laws, education system and media attitudes now need to catch up, but such catching up is exactly what Mr. Obama doesn't stand for.

My long-held fear is that Mr. Obama is hiding something about his education. During the endless 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama would not release his college grades. Given that President George W. Bush and Sens. Al Gore and John Kerry all had proved mediocre grades were no impediment to a presidential bid, Mr. Obama likely had other concerns.

While I have no desire to see Mr. Obama's birth certificate, I do want to see his college transcripts. My suspicion, one could even call it a conspiracy theory, is that Mr. Obama committed himself to a radical curriculum, aligned himself with the far-left professoriate, and sought to keep this biographical information from his political enemies, especially then-rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, for fear that they would paint the former community organizer and follower of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as something other than an advocate of racial reconciliation.

Through his acts over the last few weeks, Mr. Obama has reinforced my fears and my admittedly speculative thesis. He has shown he has neither the desire to provide a fresh angle on race, nor wants to draw attention to the bad ideas that dominate higher education and stifle the mainstream media.

Not only were there no fresh ideas about race and living in multiethnic America, but there were hardly even any stale ones. Perhaps this was because Mr. Obama's and Mr. Gates' initial - and thus probably most authentic - reactions in playing the race card had proved so unpopular, and so they just wanted to have their frosted malt beverages and get outta Dodge.

But for whatever reason - this ballyhooed beer summit proved merely to be a semi-private photo-op that just happened to be held at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. There were rote, banal and opaque statements, with no public discussion, no interaction with reporters, or even with voices as identifiably conservative as Mr. Gates is identifiably liberal. For what Mr. Obama had called a "teachable moment," the teachers were pretty much absent and there wasn't even much of a lesson plan.

Isn't the mainstream media that built up the narrative of the black professor versus the white cop the least bit curious why in a tailor-made scene the wondrous orator and America's first multiracial president failed miserably to fulfill his great promise to usher in an era of better race relations?

The Democratic Party - which is now Mr. Obama's party - now depends on the ability to keep blacks in fear: of cops, of Republicans, of conservatives, of "Uncle Toms," and even of Tiger Woods, who proves that America, while still imperfect, is clearly heading in the right direction.

The beer at the White House tavern was served flat last Thursday because the president is less the living embodiment of America's melting pot than he is an adherent of the toxic ideas that - "thanks" to Mr. Gates among many, many other tenured radicals - dominate the modern university, permeate media thinking, saturate public policy and seek to define us in perpetuity by the color of our skin.

It took black and white blue-collar civil servants to expose that the race game is rigged at the highest levels. The majority in the United States wants to enter a better, more egalitarian and diverse, and even racially mixed future. We still need to have this big national discussion. We'll just have to have it without the president of the United States.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Sweden downsizes government to deal with economic crisis: “Think the answer to America’s problems is bigger government? Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg has seen the result up close and says it’s not pretty for the economy or investors. Anders Borg has a message for those who look to government to take over health care, rescue the financial system and run troubled corporations: I have seen the future — and it doesn’t work. As the finance minister of Sweden, Borg is the chief financial officer of a country long known as a walking billboard for a social welfare state …. Left-leaning politicians pushed government spending, excluding investment outlays, from 22% of gross domestic product in 1970 to 30% in 1980. Real growth fell from an average of 4.4% annually in the 1960s to 2.4% in the 1970s and remained low for the next two decades. ‘Like many societies, we went too far in our welfare-state ambitions,’ say[s] Borg.”

Dismissing your thoughts: “When I entered college, after a four year stint in the US Air Force, I discovered that a great many intelligent people commit what is called the genetic fallacy. As the entry in Wikipedia puts it, this fallacy is committed when ‘a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone’s origin rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context.’ Whenever I would voice any of my views about politics, economics, child rearing or whatever, these folks explained it away by my origins, my having been born and raised in Budapest, Hungary, then a Soviet (communist) satellite. Everything I thought and said was deemed to have been caused by my background. This approach to understanding what people think and do has one very serious problem: the person’s views who is doing the explaining would then also be subject to such an explanation; indeed, the explanation would have to be considered caused by that person’s background.”

Wanted: A modest Obama : “By all accounts, Barack Obama’s father, the Kenyan student studying in America, was cocksure and impressed with his own talents. The arrogance gene must be dominant. Obama clearly has it. And that, more than any other factor, is driving his summertime swoon. Hubris made him reach for too much, too soon; brazenly overpromise about the effects of his program; overestimate his control of events; think the golden touch of his brilliant team could solve intractable problems; and believe his words could trump reality. The Obama team is fiddling with his health-care talking points. But the verbiage is beside the point. What Obama needs is a little modesty.”

The stimulus lesson : “Let’s stipulate that Congress may yet pass some sort of health insurance overhaul by the end of the year, that the future in politics is never a straight-line projection from the present, that President Obama is a savvy and charismatic guy, that Democrats control both houses of Congress, and — yadda, yadda, yadda — that the climate for ‘reform’ has never been better. Still: One can’t help noticing that the more Obama talks about his health plan, the less the public supports it. Why? Partly because voters have connected the dots between the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and Obamacare. They have seen the meager results and huge deficits that the stimulus produced, and can’t come up with a good reason to embark on yet another government shopping spree. For the public, the stimulus was bad economic medicine. Now Obama wants it to try another, unapproved experimental drug.”

It’s a new bull market: “Let’s call this what it is: A new bull market in stocks has emerged from the ashes of the financial meltdown and the deep recession that followed. And it’s signaling the onset of economic recovery. Free-market capitalism is more durable, resilient, and self-correcting than its detractors would have us believe. This is not just a summer rally — although a 12 percent market rise since July 10 is absolutely splendid. There’s a lot more going on here. Over the last five months, since March 9, the broad-based S&P 500 is up 46 percent. If I’m not mistaken, a 20 percent rally that is not quickly reversed constitutes a bull market. We are more than double that, and there will be no total reversal. Consequently, I want to change the agenda. This is much grander than what most commentators are describing. This is a new bull.”

For women, not resisting attackers can be a lethal strategy : “The following story challenges the belief that resisting your attacker only escalates the violence. Just give them what they want and they’ll leave you alive, right? Seattle residents Teresa Butz and her partner were in bed sleeping when Isaiah. M.K. Kalebu allegedly broke into their home and stabbed both multiple times. The women escaped the house, while Kalebu ran away. A neighbor heard somebody screaming for help and ran outside. Butz died at the scene from her injuries. A neighbor said Butz told him the attacker said that if they did what he asked, he wouldn’t hurt them. Her last words: ‘He lied, he lied.’”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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NIGERIAN FORCES CAPTURE, EXECUTE BIN-LADEN WANNABE; "HUMAN RIGHTS" GROUPS MOURN MASS-MURDERING MANIAC

You really can't make this stuff up, nor even consider it plausible if it had been made up. This homicidal maniac, this archetypal escapee from a hospital for the criminally insane, a man whose cause was to violently destroy EDUCATION, for God's sake, and who caused the deaths of more than 700 humans and mass kidnapping and arson in a few days...His richly-deserved death in custody, which was understandably greeted by the firing squad literally dancing around his stinking corpse in total glee, is treated as a matter of grave concern by HUMAN RIGHTS groups.

Unbelievable. All I can say is: "WELL DONE, LADS!!" to the police and military of Nigeria, and may their robust and focused response provide a cautionary lesson to other Muslim troubemakers in that vast and struggling country.

NOTE the nasty weaponry and improvised weapons in this vid...Amazing what a jihadi mob armed with just sledgehammers, machetes and jugs of gasoline can "accomplish" in a small peaceful neighborhood...

SOURCE (See the original for links, graphics)

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Gender-Segregated Mourning in Rinkeby, Sweden

The Swedish media were almost totally silent about this affront to their famous feminist principles

A week ago a fire broke out in an apartment building in Rinkeby, a suburb of Stockholm. Rinkeby, like Roseng†rd in Malm”, is almost entirely populated by immigrants, and all seven people who died in the fire were Muslims.

As a matter of interest, Rinkeby has also been in the news during the last few days as a major recruiting center in Sweden for ethnic Somalis who have been returning to their homeland to wage jihad against non-radical Muslims and Christians.

I postponed writing about the Rinkeby fire until the cause of the fire was announced. Was this the usual Enricher arson, already so familiar in the immigrant ghettos of Sweden, but taken to a new level? Or was it a tragic accident?

So far there has been no word on the cause of the fire. However, the funeral for the victims became a national media event, with major politicians making an appearance to mourn with the families of the victims.

As the Axess blog points out, since this was a Muslim funeral there was gender segregation, and the mourning women were directed to stand under the trees at the back.

But none of the media all across feminist Sweden remarked upon this gender segregation. Except for Dagens Nyheter (DN), which at least had a comment that - although remarkably slippery - brought up this circumstance. They indicated that one of the women motivated the whole setup, and explained that the women "understand that they cannot be allowed to be any closer to the coffins, since they are so sensitive and don't want to disturb the ceremony with their crying."

The title of the DN article is "Everybody carries the grief together", where "together" is PC-newspeak for "separated".

The article was written by Ulrika By, a woman. As a woman, she was directed to travel in gender separated buses to the funeral, in a bus full of Somali women. She writes about how two cultures meet, but she couldn't have missed how two sexes didn't meet.

More HERE (See the original for links)

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OBAMA'S DEPARTMENT OF POLITICS

We've written repeatedly about President Obama's politicization of the Department of Justice under Eric Holder. In this week's Weekly Standard, Jennifer Rubin does a fine job of recapitulating the case so far. Given that we are barely six months into Obama's term, the picture is a stark one. Signs of overt partisanship are a symptom of what is going on beneath the surface:

While the Bush administration was investigated for seeking out conservative lawyers and staff, the Obama administration has been given a pass for going to the other extreme and stocking Justice with ultra-left leaning partisans. Overt signs of political activity and support now are on full display throughout the department. While it was unheard of to display campaign literature or paraphernalia during the Bush years, in the Holder Justice Department "Yes we did!" signs are fully evident, as are copies of reverential Obama campaign posters.

The bottom line is a degree of politicization that we have not witnessed in modern times:

Any demarcation between the Obama administration's political agenda and the impartial administration of justice is being eradicated. "Holder is the most political, partisan attorney general I can remember," says Frank Wolf. A former Justice Department official says that "the entire equilibrium of the department is out of whack." Lamar Smith, too, is dismayed. He says he has met with Holder several times. "You hear the words but there is a disconnect with the actions. We keep hoping for better."

SOURCE

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They can't run a "cash for clunkers" scheme yet America needs them to run healthcare??

An excerpt about how "cash for clunkers" is going:

The White House and Congress may be giving the "cash for clunkers" program a reprieve, but one can't help wondering how many dealers and customers will have the confidence to go forward at this point. Things sound like a total mess in the showrooms.

"There is absolute frustration across the board," Alex Kurkin, a lawyer based in Miami who represents several car dealerships, tells The Lede today. "As of this morning, they're not really confident about any deals, and no one can give them advice about what they should be telling their customers."

One thing still not clear is how many older cars have actually been sold and scrapped with the original $1 billion, and how many more the new $2 billion will be able to cover. Mr. Kurkin tells us that the government Web site where dealers are supposed to register their deals has been crashing, and the dealers haven't been able to plug in their information....

The program requires that the clunkers be put out of service for good, so dealers must destroy the engines on cars that are traded in. We watched this process yesterday at the DCH Paramus Honda in Paramus, N.J. It is quite laborious and potentially dangerous. And it certainly is final.

Nick Clites, who is in charge of used cars for the dealership, was prepping a 1988 BMW 535IS, with 214,000 miles on the odometer, for its death. He drained the oil, then donned a silky blue protective suit, goggles and gloves and poured a sodium silicate solution into the engine. He revved the car, and within a few seconds, the solution hardened into a glass-like substance, the engine seized up and the car was dead.

So here is one question: With the program now on shaky ground, even with a new infusion of money, what consumer and what dealer will risk rendering an engine irretrievably unusable?

Well, as it turns out, a lot of them are doing so, because unless the dealers can prove to the government that they have killed the engines and scrapped the cars, the government will not reimburse them for the $3,500 or $4,500 discount that they have given the customer on a new, more efficient vehicle.

Barry Magnus, the general manager of DCH Paramus Honda, told us he was owed more than $80,000, and he wondered if he would ever see it. The government has said it would take 10 days to reimburse the dealers, but that was before the program apparently ran out of money and devolved into chaos Thursday night.

More HERE

The scheme was supposed to cost $1 billion but now has cost $3 billion. What does that tell you about likely healthcare costs?

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Divided they fall

We all know how Sunni Muslims hate Shiite Muslims (and vice versa) but there other divisions too. Is there any hope for the West in that? The author below thinks so

When eight Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in London recently began trials of an all-halal menu, a backlash erupted from an unexpected source. Some Muslims are "boycotting the restaurants because they say the meat has not been killed correctly." Adding to the dissonance, two halal monitoring organizations are engaged in a public dispute over the matter.

Besides illustrating the law of unintended consequences, the above episode underscores a vital truth: in contrast to how they often are depicted, Western Muslims do not think with one brain or speak with one voice. Much of this plurality breaks down along moderate-versus-Islamist lines, as seen in events from the past few months:

* In late May, Islamic extremists marching in Luton, England, were confronted by a group of Muslims shouting, "We don't want you here!" Its leader explained that such protesters have been giving Muslims a bad name and fueling hatred. "The community decided to move them on because the police won't," he said. "We hope they get the message that the law-abiding community is sick and tired of them."

* Somalis took to Minneapolis streets in June to accuse the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of "discouraging local Somalis from cooperating with the FBI," which is investigating the trend of youths returning to Somali to take part in jihad. Days later, a CAIR-friendly crowd gathered to rebut the allegations.

* Recent calls by Nicholas Sarkozy and French legislators to outlaw face-covering veils have highlighted divisions among Muslims. While most Islamic advocacy groups quickly slammed leaders for daring to broach the topic, some prominent imams have denounced the niqab and backed a prohibition. Furthermore, Fadela Amara, a government minister and practicing Muslim, boldly described burqa-like clothing as a "coffin for women's basic liberties" and "proof of the presence of Muslim fundamentalists on our soil."

* When some Muslims in the UK started rejecting alcohol-based cleansing lotions that had been recommended to combat swine flu, even the Islamist-leaning Muslim Council of Britain sounded reasonable in comparison: "We would advise people to follow the medical advice so we would, of course, encourage people to use hand gel. People need to find ways to accommodate their beliefs."

For all concerned about the rise of Islamic radicalism, the most promising approach is clear. Rather than painting adherents of Islam with a broad brush, let us recognize the range of viewpoints exhibited by Western Muslims and stand beside moderates in the struggle against a common Islamist foe.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

The hatred that may not be mentioned in modern Britain: "Here is a non-story. There were more than 600 attacks on British Jews in the first six months of the year. This is twice as many as the same period in 2008. Most consisted of verbal abuse – frightening enough for elderly Jews or Jewish schoolchildren – but 77 of the attacks were violent, including an attempt to kill a Jew by running him over. So far, no British paper has reported this increase in antisemitic attacks. Why? There are six to seven times as many Muslims as Jews in Britain. If since January there had been – scaled up proportionately – 2,000 attacks on British Muslims, it would make headlines everywhere. Those whose language and discourse created an atmosphere that denied British Muslims their right to a peaceful life under law would be the object of investigation – journalistic and intellectual – and put under pressure. But, in today's Britain, to be anti-antisemitic is to invite scorn, as if no problem existed.

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 (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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 Revealing Beer Summit Photo



Who's helping whom? ..... Obama couldn't care less.

"Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own." So who is showing compassion here for a minority? It's the cop. The cop is helping Skippy Gates down the steps, and Obama is walking two steps ahead ignoring him.

America did previously have a President who was a gentleman:



GWB helps an old political foe, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd. Obama did not even think of helping his friend. Character will out.

Full commentary here

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Is Obama A Racist?

By Frances Rice (Frances Rice is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, a lawyer and chairman of the National Black Republican Association)

How do we decide who is a racist? The dictionary tells us a racist harbors feelings of antagonism and superiority based on biological differences, such as skin color. So, what demonstrates that President Barack Obama harbors such feelings toward white people? Glimpses of Obama’s mindset can be obtained from reading his two books, “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams from My Father” where Obama describes his animosity toward white people.

In “Dreams from My Father” Obama wrote: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.” This book also contains an explanation of why Obama joined and remained for 20 years in Trinity United Church of Christ, the church of black liberation theologian Rev. Jeremiah Wright who preached hatred against whites. Obama wrote: “It came about as a choice and not an epiphany”. The core of black liberation theology is black separatism, a movement that, for more than a century, has been opposed to racial integration. Equally troubling is Obama’s church giving a lifetime award to one of our nation’s most racist men, Louis Farrakhan.

Obama’s belief system on race was on full display during the 2008 campaign when, on a Philadelphia radio sports program, he described his grandmother as a “typical white person” who fears blacks.

From the roots of Obama’s enmity toward white people sprang his gratuitous attack on Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley. Obama declared that the sergeant “acted stupidly” while doing his duty, when all Obama knew, admittedly, was that the sergeant was white and the person arrested, Obama’s friend Harvard Processor Henry Gates, was black. Without bothering to learn the facts, Obama used the power of his position as President of the United States to demonize an American citizen because of his race. Details of the arrest are in the article “Obama Plays the Race Card” by Ronald Kessler that is on the Internet here

A video featuring the testimonial of two black officers in support of Sergeant Crowley, including the comments of Officer Kelly King who states that she supported and voted for Obama, but would not vote for him again, is posted on YouTube here.

Obama, in his rush to judgment, ignored pertinent facts, such as one of the arresting officers is black, the Cambridge Mayor is black and the Massachusetts Governor is black. From his lofty perch as the leader of the free world, Obama focused like a laser beam on the skin color of one man and engaged in grievance mongering about “racial profiling,” a charge that hampers law enforcement in black communities and was not even a factor in the Cambridge case. In an instant, Obama abandoned any pretense of being “post racial” and, before our very eyes, was transformed into our “race-baiter-in-chief”.

How ironic that the wrongs against blacks that are the genesis of Obama’s racial hostility were committed by the whites who supported the racist agenda of the Democratic Party (not that many years ago), the party Obama now heads. During his research, author Wayne Perryman uncovered documents which reveal that the Democratic Party was once proudly called the “Party of White Supremacy”. According to Perryman, Democratic Party campaign posters issued from 1868 to the early 1900’s declared: “This is a white man’s country - let the white man rule”. Perryman further pointed out that Democratic Senator Ben Tillman in 1909 said: “We reorganized the Democratic Party with one plank and only one plank, namely, that this is a white man’s country and the white men must govern it.”

Today, Obama is changing the Democratic Party into a party with the sinister premise that America is a black man’s country and the black men must govern it. Perhaps this is why Obama refused to prosecute Black Panthers who wielded weapons, hurled racial insults at voters and blocked the entrance at a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 Election. “Protecting Black Panthers” is an editorial by “The Washington Times” that reveals how Jerry Jackson, one of the Black Panther defendants, is an elected member of Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher for Obama and the Democratic Party. That article can be found on the Internet here.

The intimidation tactics by Black Panthers are a chilling reminder about how the Democrats not long ago used the Ku Klux Klan, the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, to intimidate and terrorize Republican voters, black and white. Democratic Party racism is precisely what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican, was fighting against. In Obama’s world, the civil rights accomplishments of Dr. King have been abandoned, and we are now encouraged to judge people by the color of their skin, not the content of their character. An analysis of Obama’s embracement of racial bigotry is provided in the article “How Our Post-Racial President Uses Race Card As Both Sword And Shield” by Larry Elder and is on the Internet here.

The article “A Post-Racial President?” by Thomas Sowell reveals in stark relief how destructive to our national fiber is Obama’s racial politics and can be found on the Internet here

SOURCE

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Obama sagging



On almost every domestic issue, polls show that support for Obama and his agenda is plummeting, and that the Democratic Party's advantages over Republicans on the economy, taxes, the deficit and health care have been erased or severely reduced.

All presidents go through rough patches, and Obama's no exception. Odds are his poll numbers will get better -- and worse -- in the years to come. All of this is typical.

But this misses a crucial point: Obama isn't supposed to be a typical politician. He was supposed to be The One. He was supposed to change Washington. Transcend race. Fix souls. Bake 12-minute brownies in seven minutes.

Oprah promised Obama would help us "evolve to a higher plane." Deepak Chopra said Obama's presidency represented "a quantum leap in American consciousness." Last month, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas proclaimed that Obama stood "above the country, above -- above the world, he's sort of God."

Well, now he's the god who bleeds, and once you're the god who bleeds, it's hard to get the divinity back in the tube, as it were.

Obama undoubtedly has major accomplishments ahead of him, but in a real way the Obama presidency is over. His messianic hopey-changiness has been exposed for what it was, and what it could only be: a rich cocktail of pie-eyed idealism, campaign sloganeering and profound arrogance.

As president, he's tried to apply the postpartisan gloss of his campaign rhetoric to the hyperpartisan dross of his agenda. And he's fooling fewer people every day.

More HERE

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Ending Transparency; A day in the life of the Obama Department of Labor

The Obama Administration has been hard at work since day one to end financial transparency for labor unions. This is essentially payback for the incredibly expensive support the unions gave Obama during his presidential campaign costing incalculable amounts of money.

The Labor Department recently announced that it is considering revoking recent updates to the financial transparency regulations (Form LM-2 and Form T-1) and the conflict of interest regulations (Form LM-30) that are statutorily mandated. One of the required steps in this process is holding a “stakeholder” meeting to solicit comment from the public regarding potential regulatory changes. The Department held this meeting on July 21 and the results were all too revealing.

When the Labor Department under President Bush held such meetings, the lack of substantive comment received from attendees made the meetings awkward. No union reps wanted to go on record regarding anything approaching transparency for fear of losing support among their peers.

But that’s all changed now. With a new sheriff in town who is fully intent on getting rid of all this pesky transparency, the union reps were literally giddy at the prospect of hiding items such as the following: expenditures of union members’ money; substantial gifts to union officers from entities attempting to influence the union; the “offshore accounts” of unions, i.e., their trusts, etc.

After the issues were introduced by Department personnel, the floor was opened to comments. Up first was counsel for the AFL-CIO, who claimed among other things that the Form LM-30 is “overwhelmingly complicated” and that it is “impossible for union lawyers to understand.” If that is the case, they may need better lawyers. What he probably meant is that it is now much harder to structure transactions in such a way as to avoid reporting and hide graft.

More HERE

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The Abrogation of the Social Contract

An argument used in many current business ethics textbooks today to morally justify the intrusion of Big Government into corporate and small business decisions turns on the notion that we now are in the process of re-writing the understood social contract between business and society. So, let’s take a quick look at this convenient fallacy and see if we can figure out why the left contrived it in the first place.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries what Americans most wanted from business was rapid economic growth and job creation. Back then, we were willing to overlook many negative consequences of business activity on the environment to see business achieve this end. Now, the argument goes, society has concerns other than simple economic growth -- specifically, quality of life and environmental concerns -- that mean that it can no longer absorb costs associated with these side effects.

The argument claims that society, largely through government regulations, is now justified in forcing business (especially large corporations) to internalize these costs, even if doing so will have a negative impact on their bottom line....

First of all, who is saying that our society is modifying its understood social contract with business if not the same liberal academics and politicians who have, for the past 30 years or so, been calling for ever-increasing, anti-productive and burdensome environmental regulations by Big Government on business? Writing on this issue, Jesuit scholar Edward W. Younkins insightfully observes, “It is interesting to note that when corporate critics refer to the public interest or the common good, they are frequently referring to the good of some individual or group of individuals intent on imposing their own views or goals upon others.”

Have ordinary Americans ---who after all are society, with no particular environmental axe to grind and who are most affected by their loss -- really been in favor of seeing hundreds of US factories close and millions of American jobs shipped overseas during the last few decades because ever increasing environmental regulations? Did they really want the contract modified in spite of these consequences?

Those who ardently advocate Big Government corporate regulation view businesses essentially as creations of government---on society’s behalf---which exist solely to serve public needs. Whatever assets they have they possess as a matter of privilege granted by government concession, not as a right. Defenders of liberty, on the other hand, view corporations as created not by government, but by the voluntary actions of private individuals. As such they are private property, not public property. And they exist primarily for the financial benefit of their owners.

So, if and when government abrogates its social contract with business – for whatever reason – it not only destroys jobs and stifles initiative, it violates the most basic precepts of freedom in the process. For, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management."

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Obama gives medal to Israel-hating Mary Robinson: "The White House just announced 16 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. According to the White House release, "America’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom is awarded to individuals who make an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." Two of the recipients are folks that travel in our circles. UN Foundation board member and micro-lending pioneer Muhammad Yunus and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson" [Background here]

Traffic to the Obama's White House Web Site Has Plummeted: "The traffic at President Obama's official White House Web site--whitehouse.gov--has fallen from a post-Inauguration peak to nearly the same level it was during the waning days of the Bush administration. The dramatic drop in traffic has happened despite the Obama Administration's complete redesign of the site. According to the web-traffic tracking site Alexa.com, whitehouse.gov was almost the 500th most popular Web site in the world in February. Since then, it has fallen to the 3,732 ranked Web site in the world. Traffic to the site has fallen 51.6 percent in the last three months. People are also spending less time on the site than they did before. Time spent on a Web site is often used as a barometer for how interested visitors are in a site’s content. Time spent on whitehouse.gov declined 15 percent since May to an average of 2.6 minutes per visitor. Visitors are looking at less and less on the site, despite the daily increase in content. Visitors viewed an average of only two pages per day over the past three months, declining 18.5 percent during that time. In fact, the number of different pages viewed by the average visitor has fallen nearly 50 percent since February"



My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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Work, Jobs, and Worth

By Bruce Walker

The Left has long confused work, jobs, and worth. The Stimulus Package, the grand catastrophe, was intended to create and preserve jobs that could make America poorer, not richer. A century ago nearly everyone in America had a "job," and most had jobs on farms. Men, women, and children got up before sunrise. Women slaved with iron stoves to make breakfast, while men and boys ate in preparation for a long grueling day of generally boring work. Then the women, after doing all their chores, prepared lunch, and at sundown, they made supper.

Everyone had a job. Everyone engaged in productive labor. And everyone looked toward a hopeful future in which there would be less work that needed to be done. We reached that goal after the Second World War. Our nation had what we call "full employment," but the jobs were engineers, oil field workers, men in factories, clerks in stores and shops. We had people engaged in activities that produced goods and services which people in the free market wanted to consume.

Government can end "unemployment" tomorrow by paying people to sit home and watch television, reporting in every fifteen minutes. Instead, it has done something else. The Left has "invented" whole areas of work that no one really wants, except for those whose livelihood is connected to that industry. Consider, for moment, the civil rights "industry." One reason why this noxious doctrine is defended so fiercely is that hundreds of thousands of white collar Americans work in federal, state, local, corporate, charitable, advocacy, school, and academic bureaucracies supervising this meaningless work. No one wants the dubious "goods" these functionaries provide, but who can tell them that they are no longer needed?

Anytime government steps into our lives, it creates "jobs" which are the equivalent of one company of men digging a hole and the other company filling it in. Why doesn't the media expose this grand fraud? Because all of the major news organizations, all the journalism schools, all the self-important pundits who reside in Washington, along with all the countless armies of lobbyists, need us to believe that every single vital decision in our life is made in Washington. So we have a whole army of such odd creatures as "reporters covering the Supreme Court." Make-work in Washington, which itself makes nothing more than hot air, is seen not as a problem, but rather the way to full employment.

But what do legislative staffers "produce"? Bills which literally no one has read or analyzed or may ever fully understand? What do presidential Czars produce, except an additional layer of confusion regarding who is responsible for what policies in our government. Yet no one in Washington can imagine the farmers, oilmen, chefs, architects, nurses, car dealers, grade school teachers, policemen, drug company reserachers, surgeons, heating and air conditioning businesses or all the other folks who actually produce good and services we want could function without the unproductive employment of Washington and the unproductive employment invented and shipped to us from Washington.

This accounts for some of the weirdest language in the stimulus bill. The money cannot be used, for example, to build swimming pools or golf courses. Why, in Heavens, not? People use those. Not only that, but public swimming pools and golf courses can generate their own revenue and create more actual productive jobs for lifeguards, caddies, and café staff. It would actually make sense to fund parts of the country that lacked adequate swimming polls and golf courses, and fund their construction -- if market studies indicated even a mild chance of success.

Building a nuclear defense shield, if we really threw resources at it, could create a lot of high paying jobs for scientists and engineers. That would produce something we could use. Obama, in his stimulus, does not want that sort of work. America, to him, is rich enough already. He wants jobs that do nothing really but glorify the majesty of his Leftist doctrines. So do not look for Obama to grant each small business a big tax credit for each additional employee hired after the stimulus was passed, although small business is a mighty generator of real jobs. Look, instead, for Obama to have stimulus funds trickle down the well worn lines of federal largesse through its many pointless intermediaries until, at some point, the dregs are used to hire, say, another community organizer in Chicago.

It is hard to say whether the Left has simple contempt for productive genius or simply fear of it, but it is very easy to see that creating nominal "jobs" with no purpose seems noble and logical to those who have never really created a good or a service that consumers would actually buy in their lives.

SOURCE

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BrookesNews Update

US economy: What recovery? : Obama's insane energy policy and the Democrats' rising tide of tax increases that will sweep across the economy could send the US economy into another severe downturn. Then there is the tidal wave of money that Bernanke been built up. Unless it is permanently sterilised the US will be confronted with surging inflation, a falling dollar and rising unemployment. It won't be a pretty picture
Share markets, equities and monetary policy : In a progressing economy aggregate profits will always exceed aggregate losses. This means that equity returns must exceed the return on bonds. This explains the equity 'premium puzzle'. Unfortunately, monetary mismanagement can severely distort share markets
Witchfinder General Graeme Samuel declares war on warlocks, covens and cartels : A cartel cannot suppress competition. This is a fact that the likes of Samuel never address. Even if there is an absence of competition among its members this cannot logically be taken as meaning the absence of competition in the market place. To make this assumption Samuel would have to explain why cooperative action that generates profits does not attract competitors. Seeking out cartels is akin to economic witch finding
Democrats: Who's out of touch?: The awful truth about liberalism is its central delusion, the notion that life can be neatly organized into rational bureaucratic programs. It turns everything it touches into soulless clanking monster. The glorious truth about conservatism is its love of life. Before princes, principalities and powers comes life and love, mothers and babies, children and families, struggle and sacrifice, a city on a hill
How Obama is targeting the internet : Obama wants to appoint Cass Sunstein as head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Sunstein is of the stated opinion that Americans have been getting false information from the net, particularly concerning Obama. To that end he hopes to curb what he calls 'falsehoods' and that others call opinions The truth is that Sunstein is a mendacious political bigot and an enemy of liberty who intends to target online critics of the Obama administration
Obama shoots down the raptor : Obama cancelled the world's most advanced combat plane. The man whose reckless spending and borrowing is driving an unsustainable deficit uses his fiscal incompetence as an excuse to cut back on a project that would keep the US far in advance of any opposing air force. So billions for boondoggles are good for the US economy but billions to effectively defend Americans is not
Under the radar: 10th Amendment Movement picks up steam: Millions of Americans watch with horror as the Obama administration continues to implement its own version of 'change.' Change that involves an unprecedented and systematic devolution of power to the federal government, in direct contravention of the Constitution

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ELSEWHERE

A racist administration? Black Panthers immune from prosecution over thuggery? "Congressional Republicans on Thursday escalated their criticism of the Justice Department for dismissing a controversial voter-intimidation case, demanding that civil charges against the New Black Panther Party be restored. They also renewed their request to interview career attorneys who disagreed with the administration's decision to dismiss the charges. Rep. Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, a senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, obtained an opinion Thursday from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) affirming that charges could legally be refiled without violating the double-jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution and said he thought Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was obligated to refile the case. "In all fairness, he has a duty to protect those seeking to vote and I remain deeply troubled by this questionable dismissal of an important voter-intimidation case in Philadelphia," Mr. Wolf told The Washington Times."

US government to stop idiot “cash for clunkers” scheme: "The government plans to suspend its popular ‘cash for clunkers’ program amid concerns it could quickly use up the $1 billion in rebates for new car purchases, congressional officials said Thursday. The Transportation Department called lawmakers’ offices to alert them to the decision to suspend the program at midnight Thursday. The program offers owners of old cars and trucks $3,500 or $4,500 toward a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle. The congressional officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Rae Tyson, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which administers the program, declined comment.”

Why not a public option for automobile insurance?: “Why are the Administration and Congressional leaders so intent on having the federal government compete with private health insurers — but not with State Farm, Allstate, and other companies that write car insurance? Why not a new Fedicrash option? Only the government, we are told, can keep the corporations honest, and prod them to develop innovative products. Why would this apply only to health insurance?”

Stimulus bill funds going to porn houses: "“Talk about a stimulus package. The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night ‘pervert’ revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco. The NEA was given $80 million of the government’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill to spread around to needy artists nationwide, and most of the money is being spent to help preserve jobs in museums, orchestras, theaters and dance troupes that have been hit hard by the recession. But some of the NEA’s grants are spicing up more than the economy.”

The criminalization of a generation: “Ten years ago I received a t-shirt from the October 22 Coalition. The back of the shirt read ‘Stop the Criminalization of a Generation.’ The Coalition’s focus is on police brutality, but the slogan can, unfortunately, be applied to many other situations. A recent trend, for example, is the crackdown on ’sexting.’ … District attorneys across the country have begun to criminalize teenagers who decide to send nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves to lovers, friends, or others (sometimes by mistake). Minors taking provocative pictures of themselves are no longer experimenting with their sexuality and their bodies, they are now creator-victims of child pornography.”

Hillary out to strong-arm Swiss: “First we attacked Afghanistan. Then we attacked Iraq. Now the U.S. has it sights set on Switzerland. Peaceful, neutral Switzerland? That’s right. What’s the crime? It’s not sponsoring terrorism or harboring weapons of mass destruction. No, in the eyes of the U.S. government, Switzerland has done far worse: it’s kept money out of the hands of the Internal Revenue Service, money to which the IRS may not even be entitled under any law anywhere.”

Defending freedom in the age of Obama: “Back [in 1993] we were facing some of the same assaults to the free market and individual liberty that confront us today. Hillary Clinton was leading the charge for government provided ‘universal health care’ and President Bill Clinton and members of his inner circle, such as economist Robert Reich, had resurrected talk of government guiding the workings of the market through ‘industrial policy’ and advocated the placing additional mandates on employers. The fact that we are arguing many of these same issues now, 16 years later, points to the fact that those of us who believe that protecting individual liberty is the primary role of the government, came out, to a significant degree, victorious in those previous battles. ‘Hillary Care’ went down to defeat, industrial policy did not take off, and though we lost the argument on increasing the minimum wage and other employer mandates, we did win on achieving meaningful welfare reform. On the flip side, however, our renewal of many of these same debates reflects the fact that we did not win the ideological war.” (You can't win it. Ideology is not about facts. It is about hatreds)

21 has lost its buzz: Time to lower drinking age: “Somewhere in America, there may be a college student who is dissuaded from drinking by Legal Age 21. It’s a big country, you know. But exactly 25 years after Washington turned 18-, 19- and 20-year-old drinkers into criminals, the evidence is piling up like a mountain of crushed Budweiser cans: Despite fine intentions by the Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other anti-alcohol groups, the 21-year-old drinking age actually has caused more harm than good. It’s promoted dangerous binge drinking on American campuses. It’s pushed underage drinkers into dorm rooms, frat houses and moving automobiles. It’s led to a wave of alcohol-fueled assaults and other destructive behavior.”

Is a new bubble being formed? : “Again, the bubble is being filled with bad investments. A recession is a time when we should sort out bad investments and transfer capital and labour from failed sectors into more competitive industries. Instead, it seems as if European politicians would like to keep failed investments on life support until economic growth makes it possible for them to survive on their own. The result may be a delayed return to healthy economic growth. Moreover, European leaders appear not to have understood that government failures contributed to the crisis, not just market failures. A failing that the markets and governments shared in was the creation of a monoculture. Banks did so by using the same standards and computer models; governments did so by harmonising regulation.”

Bolivia: First law prohibiting animals in circuses: “Bolivia has enacted what animal rights defenders are calling the world’s first law that prohibits the use of animals in circuses. A handful of other countries have banned the use of wild animals in circuses, but the Bolivian ban includes domestic animals as well. The law, which states that the use of animals in circuses ‘constitutes an act of cruelty,’ took effect on July 1 and operators have a year to comply, according to the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Ximena Flores. The law was proposed after an undercover investigation by the nonprofit London-based group Animal Defenders International, or ADI, found widespread abuse in circuses operating in Bolivia.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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Do warm climates shrink your brain?

The latest scientific findings on the evolution of the brain below. In my usual totally "incorrect" way, I am going to point out that modern-day data confirm the hypothesis too. Africa is a generally warm place and African heads tend to be noticeably smaller. Some of the East Africans (Sudanese etc.) that I see around Brisbane could almost be classified as microcephalic. And, as the article below implies and as modern research confirms, there is a connection between brain size and general intellectual ability. Now that I have pointed out the connection, I think we will see the research finding below vanish from sight

It is one of the biggest mysteries in human evolution. Why did we humans evolve such big brains, making us the unrivalled rulers of the world? Some 2.5 million years ago, our ancestors' brains expanded from a mere 600 cubic centimetres to about a litre. Two new studies suggest it is no fluke that this brain boom coincided with the onset of an ice age. Cooler heads, it seems, allowed ancient human brains to let off steam and grow.

For all its advantages, the modern human brain is a huge energy glutton, accounting for nearly half of our resting metabolic rate. About a decade ago, biologists David Schwartzman and George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington DC hypothesised that our modern brain could not have evolved until the Quaternary ice age started, about 2.5 million years ago. They reckoned such a large brain would have generated heat faster than it could dissipate it in the warmer climate of earlier times, but they lacked evidence to back their hypothesis.

Now hints of that evidence are beginning to emerge. Climate researcher Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, modelled present-day temperature, humidity and wind conditions around the world using an Earth-systems computer model. He used these factors to predict the maximum rate at which a modern human brain can lose heat in different regions. He found that, even today, the ability to dissipate heat should restrict the activity of people in many tropical regions (Climatic Change, vol 95, p 405).

If keeping cool is a problem now, Kleidon says, it would have been even more challenging - perhaps too challenging - 2 or 3 million years ago when temperatures were a few degrees warmer than today and air-conditioning units were harder to come by.

A new study by Schwartzman and Middendorf suggests that a small drop in global temperatures may have made a big difference. The pair used basic equations of heat loss to estimate how fast the small-brained Homo habilis would have been able to cool off. Assuming overheating limited the size of H. habilis's brain, they then calculated what drop in air temperature would have been needed for Homo erectus to be able to support its bigger brain (see diagram). They found that a drop in air temperature of just 1.5 °C would have done the trick (Climatic Change, vol 95, p 439).

Given the timescales involved, it may be near-impossible to match definitively the onset of an ice age with speciation, but a 1.5 °C drop is consistent with the cooling climate of the time, says Middendorf.

"In principle, I'm receptive to the hypothesis," says Dean Falk, a palaeoanthropologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, "but I need the data." She says that if measurements showed that people living in tropical countries today have smaller brains relative to their body size than people in temperate climates, this would go against expectation and lend support to Kleidon's model.

Being able to cool bigger brains can only be part of the story, however. It would have lifted the brakes on expansion, says psychologist David Geary at the University of Missouri in Columbia, but there has to be something driving the increase.

Over the years, researchers have come up with three broad reasons why bigger brains might have been advantageous: to give their owners the ability to cope with changing climates by exploiting technologies such as shelter, fire and clothing; to deal with the cognitive demands of hunting and gathering; or to help people outsmart their neighbours.

To help narrow this down, Geary collected data from 175 fossil hominin skulls, from 1.9 million to 10,000 years old. Then he looked to see whether brain size was best correlated with climatic variability - a crude measure of biodiversity which could indicate the complexity of hunting and gathering - or the human population size at the time, which could reflect the complexity of social interactions.

Geary's analysis found that population size was the best predictor of brain size, suggesting that our ancestors' need to outcompete their neighbours in order to survive may have been the strongest driver of brain growth (Human Nature, vol 20, p 67).

The case is far from closed - Geary's study does not demonstrate cause and effect, for one thing - but the picture beginning to emerge suggests that an ice age set the stage for a socially driven brain boom. And from that time on, it was the brainiacs who stole the show.

SOURCE

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The iron law of bureaucratic expansion

An excerpt from the recently reprinted article on "Parkinson's Law"

It would be interesting to follow the further progress by which the 8,118 Admiralty staff of 1935 came to number 33,788 by 1954. But the staff of the Colonial Office affords a better field of study during a period of Imperial decline. The relevant statistics are set down below. Before showing what the rate of increase is, we must observe that the extent of this department's responsibilities was far from constant during these twenty years. The colonial territories were not much altered in area or population between 1935 and 1939. They were considerably diminished by 1943, certain areas being in enemy hands. They were increased again in 1947, but have since then shrunk steadily from year to year as successive colonies achieve self-government.



It would be rational, prior to the discovery of Parkinson's Law, to suppose that these changes in the scope of Empire would be reflected in the size of its central administration. But a glance at the figures shows that the staff totals represent automatic stages in an inevitable increase. And this increase, while related to that observed in other departments, has nothing to do with the size—or even the existence—of the Empire. What are the percentages of increase? We must ignore, for this purpose, the rapid increase in staff which accompanied the diminution of responsibility during World War II. We should note rather the peacetime rates of increase; over 5.24 per cent between 1935 and 1939, and 6.55 per cent between 1947 and 1954. This gives an average increase of 5.89 per cent each year, a percentage markedly similar to that already found in the Admiralty staff increase between 1914 and 1928.

Further and detailed statistical analysis of departmental staffs would be inappropriate in such an article as this. It is hoped, however, to reach a tentative conclusion regarding the time likely to elapse between a given official's first appointment and the later appointment of his two or more assistants. Dealing with the problem of pure staff accumulation, all the researches so far completed point to an average increase of about 5¾ per cent per year.

Much more HERE

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Liberals Support Crime, Not Punishment

The New Duranty Times devoted nearly an entire Sunday op-ed page to l'affaire Henri-Louis Gates and Barack Hussein Soetoro's reprehensible grandstanding. They chose to feature the thoughts of Professor Glenn Loury, an economist on the faculty of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Loury devoted 1500 words to his basic conclusion:

I believe we should be pursuing far-reaching reforms in our criminal justice system. We should invest more in helping the troubled people — our fellow citizens — caught in the law enforcement web to find a constructive role in society, and less in punishing them for punishment’s sake.

Notice the way he describes robbers, rapists, murderers, dope dealers, burglars, carjackers, thieves, and wife-batterers:

troubled people caught in the law enforcement web

As if the police, the courts, and the community were predatory spiders catching innocent flies.

Of course, the opposite of what Professor Loury imagines is in fact the case. Criminals are not innocent victims of the law enforcement system, they are willful predators, who prey on the weak and the innocent in order to satisfy their own desires. And the purpose of incarcerating them is not punishment for punishment's sake, the purpose of incarceration is not punishment at all -- its purpose is simply to keep them off the street so that their innocent victims can have some respite time from their depredations.

Professor Loury, of course, is a racialist. His major concern with the administration of criminal justice in the United States is that it appears to affect his own race more than he thinks it should:

Another inescapable fact is that most of those incarcerated are black and Hispanic men. (They constitute approximately two-thirds of those being held in state prisons and municipal jails.)

And in typical antinomian fashion, this Gramscian apologist for murderers, rapists, and doppe dealers thinks that imprisonment causes the crimes for which the imprisoned are incarcerated:

Overrepresentation of blacks among lawbreakers is the result as much as it is the cause of our overrepresentation among the imprisoned — a fact about which the conventional racial narrative has too little to say. Nevertheless, this is a principal source of the tension in interactions between the police and black men like me.

And what were Professor Loury's interactions with the police? He describes them:

Readers should know that I have had my own run-ins with the law. Twenty-two years ago a former girlfriend accused me of assault. While the charges were dropped, I had to endure the indignity of being “processed” by the police and judged in the press. Later that year, I was caught in possession of a controlled substance, spent the night in jail, and was required to enroll in a drug treatment program for my sins. My interest in the issues of race and law enforcement reflects more than academic curiosity.

Readers should also realize that in neither of those two episodes, including one that involved a "controlled substance," was Professor Loury incarcerated. And the "controlled substance" was (according to a contemporaneous article in the New Duranty Times) marijuana and cocaine. He just can't bring himself to name it in the Times, because to do so would give the lie to his claim that we need to go about "ratcheting down the federal penalties for low-level drug trafficking." Yet he still has the audacity to claim that:

We should seriously consider that many of our sentences are too long — “three strikes” laws may be good politics, but they are an irrational abomination as policy. We should definitely consider decriminalizing most drug use. We need to reinvent parole.

On the contrary, my dear Professor. "Reinventing" parole and shortening sentences will do nothing but increase the population of criminals in the community, and the crimes they commit will worsen the plague. "Three strikes" laws are designed to take incorrigible criminals off the streets, and prevent them from committing more crimes.

What I find particularly offensive about Professor Loury's advocacy on behalf of rapists, murderers, carjackers, thieves, and dope dealers is that most of the victims of the criminals whose cause he champions are in fact members of the same black community that Professor Loury claims to be supporting. The victims murdered by the black murderers who are let off the hook by black urban juries are overwhelmingly other black men. It is the black community in which, as Professor Loury phrases it, "drug trafficking and gang activity are important parts of the social economy of the inner city."

Professor Loury should spend a few minutes to consider that the black criminals whose careers he would facilitate are not in fact victims of the criminal justice system, but victimizers of their own community. Unfortunately, the inner city black communities have come to tolerate a level of lawlessness which the hard-working, church-going, family-raising black men and women who migrated from the deep South would never have allowed.

And there you have the problem in a nutshell. The black family survived slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, World Wars I & II, and the Depression. But the black family could not survive the liberal wrecking ball of the Great Society programs that facilitated illegitimacy and idleness. A once proud community of men and women whose seemingly infinite capacity for backbreaking work made them sought-after by industrial employers in the Northern cities, has been reduced to dependency by liberal politicians who created a socialistic plantation where docile, reliable Democratic voters were used to perpetuate their own helplessness. And reduced to a condition of tolerating the crime and mayhem that is tearing it apart.

Such is the America that socialistic liberals wish for us all.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Is there any better way to boost the cosmetic surgery business in Mexico?: "The Democrats are still scrounging to figure out more ways to tax the tar out of Americans in order to fund their government healthcare scheme. The latest idea they are said to be considering is a 10% excise tax on cosmetic surgery .. face-lifts, tummy tucks, hair transplants, etc. It would use the tax code as a means of enforcement. Not only would procedures prohibited under Section 213 of the tax code not be deductible, but they would be subject to a new tax. Well .. here we go again. This is more of the same from the Democrats - go after those evil, disgusting high-achieving rich people by taxing the stuff that they do with their money. That ought to bring them down to size. The middle class isn't out there getting face lifts ... so they won't complain about the new tax. I told you yesterday that sooner or later the Democrats will find a way to tax pretty much anything that high-achievers can do by virtue of their higher earnings. That will include special taxes on nicer homes, better cars and more exciting vacations. Think I'm kidding? Just wait ... and you have a chance to put more of these dangerous people in office next year, go for it."

China/Taiwan relations improving: "The leaders of China and Taiwan have communicated directly with each other for the first time in the 60 years since Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan with the remnants of his army. The outreach followed Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou being elected president of the Kuomintang (Nationalists) on Sunday, with 92.5 per cent of the 300,000 votes cast -- although the turnout was low at 58 per cent of party members. It enabled China's President, Hu Jintao, to send a message to Mr Ma from one party leader to another, rather than having to acknowledge that Mr Ma also holds the leading role in the government of a state whose sovereignty Beijing does not recognise. This news was acclaimed in China, leading the country's main 7pm China Central TV news bulletin, which is relayed throughout the country. The latest warming of relations marks another historic step of the rapid thawing which has taken place since Mr Ma replaced Chen Shui-bian as president 14 months ago. Since then, direct communications have been established by air, sea and post, and Chinese businesses have been permitted to begin investing in Taiwan, and Chinese tourists to visit the island state. The countries have also advanced, to October, talks towards a form of free trade agreement similar to that between China and Hong Kong. [Now that China and Taiwan are both doing well economically, China can afford to recognize Taiwan without losing face]

TX: Police can use force to compel hurricane evacuation: “A new state law will allow police to arrest people who don’t leave town under mandatory evacuation orders. As it stands, officials cannot compel people to evacuate, only warn that those who stay behind won’t have any emergency services at their disposal. The new law gives county judges and mayors the power to authorize use of ‘reasonable force’ to remove people from the area. The law, passed this year, takes effect Sept. 1, in the heart of hurricane season in Texas. It also applies to other disasters, such as fires or floods.”

Obituary: The Episcopal Church in the United States (1789-2009) Cause of Death: Suicide: "The Episcopal Church in the United States took another major step toward ensuring its own demise last week, by adopting a resolution endorsing the ordination of homosexuals as clergy and bishops. The resolution was widely interpreted as abandoning a moratorium on the ordination of homosexual bishops that was adopted after the furor surrounding the appointment of Gene Robinson, a homosexual man, as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. Several branches of the worldwide Anglican Communion, particularly the more conservative churches in Africa, rejected the decision to elevate Robinson. In the U.S., a number of Episcopal parishes and dioceses have already left the Episcopal Church altogether, and they recently organized as the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)... Most observers believe that this year’s resolution may be the last straw that results in a complete rupture of relationships between the Episcopal Church and most other worldwide Anglicans... In addition to a break with worldwide Anglicans, the Episcopal Church action is likely to lead to further erosion here in the United States as well. News about the release of the American Religious Identification Survey earlier this year focused on the 10% drop since 1990 in the percentage of Americans who identify as Christians (from 86% to 76%), without noting that almost all of the decline occurred in the 1990’s. But they also failed to highlight that the biggest drop in Christian self-identification has come among the more liberal “mainline” Protestant bodies—such as the Episcopal Church, which dropped from 3.5 million adherents in 2001 to only 2.4 million in 2008."

Spinning has been stimulated anyway: " How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months. But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state's accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime. "Sometimes some work for an individual is better than no work," said Oregon's Senate president, Peter Courtney. With the economy in tatters and unemployment rising, Oregon's inventive math underscores the urgency for politicians across the country to show that spending programs designed to stimulate the economy are working — even if that means stretching the facts. At the federal level, President Barack Obama has said the federal stimulus has created 150,000 jobs, a number based on a misused formula and which is so murky it can't be verified."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). 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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