More Fascist tactics from American "liberals"

Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue is a wanted man -- at least according to the liberal activist group that's put a de facto bounty on his head

A network of liberal groups known as Velvet Revolution started an ad campaign offering $200,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the man whose trade organization has become a thorn in the side of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

The group is not leveling any specific charges of criminal behavior. Rather, it is casting a wide net, fishing for any whistleblowers from Donohue's past who might come forward with allegations of wrongdoing. The campaign against the Chamber was launched in response to the group's opposition to climate change legislation and health care reform, and its plan to spend $100 million lobbying against these and other initiatives. "On every issue, the Chamber is kind of the lead corporate advocate for the status quo," said Kevin Zeese, a lawyer who sits on the board for Velvet Revolution, calling Donohue a "knee-jerk reactionary" and the Chamber a "right-wing extremist group."

The Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, decried the ad campaign and threatened possible legal action. "The media should be following the money trail behind this scurrilous group instead of giving credence to its outrageous tactics -- and we are considering legal options with the ad," spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel said.

The Chamber has already taken a lot of heat from the White House. Top aides tried to neutralize the group earlier in the year by doing an end-run around the organization and dealing directly with members, as some big companies, like Apple, peeled off from the Chamber due to disagreements over issues like climate change.

The organization was also not invited to Obama's jobs forum in Washington last week. But Zeese said the White House has nothing to do with the bounty on Donohue. "It's individual donors. We have no connection to the White House or unions or anything like that," he said.

Velvet Revolution launched the StoptheChamber campaign in October and started offering a bounty for information on Donohue a month later. A $100,000 reward was increased to $200,000 early this month, thanks to what Zeese called a "handful of larger donors" whom he would not identify. A full-page print ad that looks like a "wanted" poster out of the wild West began to run in the Washington City Paper this week. It features a head shot of Donohue and offers a tip line for "insiders and whistleblowers possessing information not already in the public domain."

The tip line is live. When FoxNews.com called, the operator asked for "criminal" information about Donohue. Zeese said that a handful of tips have come in which the group is "pursuing."

SOURCE

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GOP Seeks Principle After Scozzafava Controversy

A group of eleven party officials introduced a resolution for the upcoming Republican National Committee winter meeting to verify candidates conform to at least eight of ten basic party principles in order to receive party funding for their races. It’s their answer to the controversy aroused earlier this fall when it was revealed the RNC had donated heavily to the campaign of New York 23rd Congressional District candidate Dede Scozzafava, a candidate whose viewpoint and New York State Assembly voting record on several issues differed greatly from Republican orthodoxy.

Citing the “eighty percent” rule invoked by President Reagan, who argued that someone who politically agreed with him eighty percent of the time was his friend, the “Proposed RNC Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Principle for Support of Candidates” outlines ten key issues which sponsors believe should be a litmus test for fealty. The issues include, among others: smaller government, lowering taxes, market-based health care reform, opposing restrictive gun laws, refusing amnesty for illegal immigrants, and containment of Iran and North Korea.

While some conservative stalwarts oppose determining financial support based on fixed principles and issues, this resolution can be seen as a response to the defection of Republican icons like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Dick Armey, and a number of conservative media personalities to the cause of Doug Hoffman, who ran under the Conservative Party banner after state party insiders granted the GOP nod to Scozzafava.

In truth, this initiative by conservatives in the Republican Party mirrors that of Democrats. The Blue Dog coalition within their party disagrees with the rank-and-file only on the scope or approach to government intervention in various policy areas. At the end of the day, practically all Democrats still jump on the bandwagon of big-government solutions because that’s what the interests backing Democrats pay for.

This GOP proposal, sponsored by members of the party’s conservative wing who hail from the states many consider “flyover country,” faces an uncertain fate at the winter RNC meeting. It’s a Republican Party where Chairman Michael Steele overcame questions about his conservative bonafides during the runup to his election last January, yet it’s also a party which won two governorships with candidates who called for conservative solutions to their states’ problems – New Jersey’s Chris Christie in particular vowed to address the tax burden faced by residents and property owners.

But the true schism this idea attempts to address is the one created by Dede Scozzafava and her NY-23 Congressional bid. Where those on the right are lockstep in opposition to the liberal agenda put forth by Barack Obama and Democrats, any Republican defection to the Democrats’ side is heresy. Witness the conservative wrath directed at targets like Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who voted for a Democrat health care reform proposal in committee, and the so-called “cap-and-trade eight,” eight GOP House members who provided the winning margin to pass the Waxman-Markey bill.

While some may see this proposal as too restrictive, the fact that disagreeing with two of the ten planks is still allowable suggests there’s room for compromise under the big tent. Being in step with eighty percent of a party’s platform shouldn’t be too much to ask when a candidate comes looking for financial help. A message of limited government will carry the day in 2010, so putting the party’s officeseekers on the same page philosophically should pay dividends at the ballot box and give the GOP the opportunity to be a real thorn in Barack Obama’s side.

SOURCE

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A blunt letter to liberal elitist Senator Barbara Boxer

Do you remember the scene? The Senate. Barbara Boxer hearing from a Brigadier General? Silly General! He addresses Barbara as "Ma'am", and she CORRECTS him in front of millions of people, telling him she's "worked SO hard to earn the title, "Senator", so please to use that when speaking to her.



The letter to Boxer below is said to be from a National Guard aviator and Captain for Alaska Airlines named Jim Hill. The letter has been around for a while but is still well worth a run here

Babs:

You were so right on when you scolded the general on TV for using the term, "ma'am," instead of "Senator". After all, in the military, "ma'am" is a term of respect when addressing a female of superior rank or position. The general was totally wrong. You are not a person of superior rank or position.. You are a member of one of the world's most corrupt organizations, the U.S. Senate, equaled only by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Congress is a cesspool of liars, thieves, inside traders, traitors, drunks (one who killed a staffer, yet is still revered), criminals, and other low level swine who, as individuals (not all, but many), will do anything to enhance their lives, fortunes and power, all at the expense of the People of the United States and its Constitution, in order to be continually re-elected. Many democrats even want American troops killed by releasing photographs. How many of you could honestly say, "We pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor"? None? One? Two?

Your reaction to the general shows several things. First is your abysmal ignorance of all things military. Your treatment of the general shows you to be an elitist of the worst kind.. When the general entered the military (as most of us who served) he wrote the government a blank check, offering his life to protect your derriere, now safely and comfortably ensconced in a 20 thousand dollar leather chair, paid for by the general's taxes. You repaid him for this by humiliating him in front of millions.

Second is your puerile character, lack of sophistication, and arrogance, which borders on the hubristic. This display of brattish behavior shows you to be a virago, termagant, harridan, nag, scold or shrew, unfit for your position, regardless of the support of the unwashed, uneducated masses who have made California into the laughing stock of the nation.

What I am writing, are the same thoughts countless millions of Americans have toward Congress, but who lack the energy, ability or time to convey them. Regardless of their thoughts, most realize that politicians are pretty much the same, and will vote for the one who will bring home the most bacon, even if they do consider how corrupt that person is. Lord Acton (1834 - 1902) so aptly charged, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Unbeknownst to you and your colleagues, "Mr. Power" has had his way with all of you, and we are all the worse for it. Finally Senator, I, too, have a title. It is "Right Wing Extremist Potential Terrorist Threat." It is not of my choosing, but was given to me by your Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. And you were offended by "ma'am"?

Have a fine day.

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Jobs or Snow Jobs?

by Thomas Sowell

President Obama keeps talking about the jobs his administration is "creating" but there are more people unemployed now than before he took office. How can there be more unemployment after so many jobs have been "created"?

Let's go back to square one. What does it take to create a job? It takes wealth to pay someone who is hired, not to mention additional wealth to buy the material that person will use. But government creates no wealth. Ignoring that plain and simple fact enables politicians to claim to be able to do all sorts of miraculous things that they cannot do in fact. Without creating wealth, how can they create jobs? By taking wealth from others, whether by taxation, selling bonds or imposing mandates.

However it is done, transferring wealth is not creating wealth. When government uses transferred wealth to hire people, it is essentially transferring jobs from the private sector, not adding to the net number of jobs in the economy.

If that was all that was involved, it would be a simple verbal fraud, with no gain of jobs and no net loss. In reality, many other things that politicians do reduce the number of jobs. Politicians who mandate various benefits that employers must provide for workers gain politically by seeming to give people something for nothing. But making workers more expensive means that fewer are likely to be hired.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Forbes has just put out its annual Rich List of Fictional Characters, Uncle Sam is on top, with Scrooge McDuck in second place. A few years ago Santa Claus was number one but was removed following a deluge of mail advising that he is not a fictional character.

All the president’s regulators: "During the first year of the Obama administration, conservatives have directed much of their fire on the major legislation the president is pushing through Congress. This concern is justifiable, as Democrats are moving bills aimed at taking over the nation’s health care system, creating a national energy tax to limit carbon emissions, and enabling unions to rapidly add members by denying workers a secret ballot on unionization. But as critical as it is for the right to expose the damaging consequences of such major legislation, conservatives must not lose sight of the fact that there is more than one way for the president to impose his vision on the country.”

Iran: Streets, campuses erupt in protest: "Campuses across Iran erupted in protests Monday as defiant college students chanting anti-government slogans clashed with security [sic] forces armed with clubs in a forceful new round of confrontations over the nation’s disputed June presidential election. The daylong protests on National Students Day were not as large in Tehran as those that broke out in the days after the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But they took place in a larger number of cities and towns and followed weeks of ominous warnings by security [sic] officials. They continued through the day despite efforts by security [sic] forces arrayed on streets and inside campuses.”

Commercial spaceship makes first public appearance: "A spacecraft designed to rocket wealthy tourists into space as early as 2011 was unveiled Monday in what backers of the venture hope will signal a new era in aviation history. The long-awaited glimpse of SpaceShipTwo marks the first public appearance of a commercial passenger spacecraft. The project is bankrolled by Virgin Galactic founder, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, who partnered with famed aviation designer Burt Rutan, the brains behind the venture.”

NJ: Homosexual Marriage bill passes key Senate hurdle: "A proposal to legalize gay marriage in New Jersey narrowly passed a key state Senate committee on Monday, paving the way for a legislative showdown this week and boosting the possibility New Jersey will join the handful of U.S. states allowing gay couples to wed.”

Government event on transparency … closed to public: "It’s hardly the image of transparency the Obama administration wants to project: A workshop on government openness is closed to the public. The event today for federal employees is a fitting symbol of President Barack Obama’s uneven record so far on the Freedom of Information Act, a big part of keeping his campaign promise to make his administration the most transparent ever. As Obama’s first year in office ends, the government’s actions when the public and news media seek information are not yet matching up with the president’s words.”

Pay back the debt: "Sunday, the Administration released what should normally be considered good news: The Obama administration is planning to slash its estimate of the losses from the government’s bailout package by about $200 billion. That from today’s Washington Post. Apparently, banks have been so eager to pay back the TARP (perhaps so that they won’t have to submit to a ‘pay czar’), that TARP won’t increase the deficit as much as initially expected. That would be good news if this Administration wasn’t hell-bent on digging itself deeper into a fiscal hole. The move could pave the way for Democrats to tap some of the unspent TARP funds for a jobs bill, currently being crafted by House Democrats. … Administration officials talk about their commitment to reducing the deficit, but they keep doing the opposite.”

Inside Cuba: Guerrilla blogging: "‘Blog.’ Many people in Cuba don’t understand all the fuss regarding this mono-syllabic word that seems to have no relationship to the daily routine of survival. On the Island, the blogosphere is an incipient media and, outside of Havana, all but invisible. Though their work generates controversies and awards worldwide, Cuban bloggers are largely unknown here. With Internet access in Cuba restricted to the very few, the nation’s bloggers function as a kind of guerrilla underground. They work as independent agents whose existence heralds a civic re-activation that will modulate the Revolution’s Realpolitik — or is that Raulpolitik? Blogs Sobre Cuba, an online database founded in 2007, lists more than 1,000 blogs on Cuban topics, both on and off the island.”

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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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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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Avoid the "zero catch" webhost

Unlike its name, http://0catch.com has lots of catches. It is an old fashioned webhost with lots of intrusive popups and a small webspace allowance. I had my content up there for some years but they have recently deployed some very aggressive bots which have now shut down my site twice for no apparent reason. Content that was OK for years is now not OK, apparently. I of course used their help system to protest but just got brushed off. So goodbye to them! The free webhosts I like best at the moment are http://www.110mb.com/ and http://www.000webhost.com/

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There Go The Jobs In The Energy Sector

The EPA led by Lisa Jackson, a big global warming acolyte, is prepared to announce next week that CO2 is a dangerous gas. That's right, everytime you exhale according to our imperial federal government you will be emitting a dangerous gas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to several people close to the matter.

Such an "endangerment" decision is necessary for the EPA to move ahead early next year with new emission standards for cars. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said it could also mean large emitters such as power stations, cement kilns, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants would have to curb their greenhouse gas output.

The announcement would also give President Barack Obama and his climate envoy negotiating leverage at a global climate summit starting next week in Copenhagen, Denmark and increase pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill that would modify the price of polluting.

I guess this another case of where the science is settled.

In the past activist judges have used previous reports citing CO2 as a dangerous gas as a reason to bar the construction of clean coal plants and to restrict the building of refineries, even though there was no official stamp on that line of reasoning. With the EPA making it official, it will be yet another blow to manufacturing and the energy sectors of our economy.

There won't any recovery anytime soon at the rate this is going. Without jobs and entire sections of our business world being handcuffed with everything from salary caps to ridiculous rulings like this, there simply won't be anywhere to hire people.

No, I am not putting much stock in those November unemployment numbers. Businesses just weren't up to laying off more people at the end of the year. Keep an eye on the numbers for January, which will of course take all the experts once again by surprise.

SOURCE

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SARAH AT THE GRIDIRON

Jack Wheeler gives us what appears to be a full account of Sarah's speech at the Gridiron Club. The club is the oldest and most prestigious journalist organization in Washington DC. The annual Gridiron Dinner is attended by the media elite, at which the president is traditionally the speaker. This year, President Zero was the first president to refuse to address The Gridiron Dinner since Grover Cleveland. On Saturday December 5th., this year, the black tie dinner had double the attendance of recent years - for instead of Mr. Zero, the speaker was Sarah Palin. The tradition of the dinner is that the speaker pokes fun at himself and the attendees. Wheeler says that Sarah was such a hit there were dozens of the most liberal elite journalists in America laughing their heads off, many wiping tears of laughter from their eyes:

Good evening. It's great to be in Washington. I am loving the weather [it was snowing]. I braved the elements and went out for a jog! Or, as Newsweek calls it, a cover-shoot. I feel so at home here in DC. I can see the Russian Embassy from my hotel room!

It's a privilege to be here tonight at the Washington DC Barnes & Noble. Tonight, I'll be reading excerpts from my new book. Perhaps you've heard of it? "Going Rogue." Yukon wasn't sure if I'd go with that title and somebody suggested I follow the East Coast self-help trend and go with, "How To Look Like A Million Bucks...For Only 150 Grand." Todd liked, "The Audacity of North Slope." [She nods to him as he's at the head table]

Hey, I considered not having a title at all. I've said it before, but you Beltway types just don't seem to get it. You don't need a title to make an impact. But anyway, let's get started. I'll begin my first reading on Page 209.

It was pitch black when we touched down in Arizona late on August 27, 2008. The next morning we drove to John McCain's ranch in Sedona. John was waiting on the porch. Before he can say a word, I tell him, I'm quoting now: "I know why I'm here, and I'm ready. But, I'm worried. The cost of credit protection for the largest U.S. banks is rising precipitously. Have you given any thought to the run on the entities in the parallel banking system? Do you realize the vulnerability created when these institutions borrow short term in liquid markets to invest long term in illiquid assets?"

John said, "you betcha!" I thought, "you betcha?" Who talks that way?

Well, sometimes you just have to trust your instincts. When you don't, you end up in places like this. Who would have guessed that I'd be palling around with this group? At least now I can put a face to all the newspapers I do read. It is good to be here and in front of this audience of leading journalists and intellectuals. Or, as I call it, a death panel.

To be honest, I had some serious reservations about coming to visit your cozy little club. The Gridiron still hasn't offered membership to anyone from my hometown paper in Wasilla, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley Frontiersman. And my dad thought it was just a plain bad idea to leave the book tour for some football game. He might have a point! [She waves to her parents at a table at the back of the room] Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom! They crashed the party, you know.

I've been touring this great, great land of ours over the last few weeks. I have to say, the view is much better from inside the bus, than under it! But really, I am thrilled to be with you. And I'd like to thank the Gridiron for the invitation and Dick Cooper for his introduction. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, this has to be the most extraordinary collection of people who have gathered to viciously attack me since the last corporate gathering at CBS.

Despite what you have read, or more likely, despite what you have written, I do feel a real bond with all of you. I studied journalism, earned a communications degree and for a time only wanted to be a journalist. I was even a television sportscaster back home. I'm guessing some of you probably got your start the exact same way... once there was television. Let me get back to the book.

I know that many of you are still upset because I wouldn't play that silly Washington game. You know, the one where all of you read a book in its entirety, from the first page of the index to the last. But think about it, because you actually had to read the whole book in the vain hope of finding your name, you now know all about Denali, mom, dad, ungulate eyeballs, slaying salmon on the Nushagak and Ugashik near Alegnigak, where we make agootak and moose chili! You're welcome.

Still, I want to do something very special for this audience of Washington elite. So, I'll read from the index--which I chose not to include in the hardback. Would you believe me if I said I didn't include it because we wanted to save trees?

Under A we have... Alaska, media not understanding. Pages 1-432.

Under B... Biased media. Pages 1-432

And under C... Conservative media. See acknowledgments. I'll stop there.

I know this can be a long night, and as I understand it, we're going to break with a Gridiron tradition. Normally, the Democrat speaker would deliver a speech after me. But instead, John McCain's campaign staff asked if they could use that time for a rebuttal.

A lot has been made of a few campaign relationships. The closeness. The warm fuzzy feelings. John and I both agree all those staffers should just move past it. It's history. Let's just say, if I ever need a bald campaign manager, it appears all I'm left with is James Carville. I don't want to say that I've burned a bridge, but I know all about canceling a bridge to nowhere.

That Democrat speaker I referred to is, of course, the one-and-only Barney Frank. And I'm the controversial one? Barney, the nation owes you and the government a debt. A huge, historic, unbelievable debt. But, it's good to be here with you, Mr. Chairman. Because by Chairman, I don't just mean the House Financial Services Committee. As far as I can tell, Barney's also the Chair of AIG, CITI, and the Bank of America.

I don't want to say that the U.S. Government is taking over the role of the private sector, but I have to admit, on the flight here, thumbing through a magazine and looking at a photo of President Obama with the President of China, the person next to me pointed at it and said, "Hu's a communist." I thought they were asking a question.

Still, when I see this administration in action, I can't help think of what might have been. I could be the Vice President overseeing the signing of bailout checks. And Joe Biden would be on the road, selling his new book, "Going Rogaine."

Speaking of books.... Did I mention mine? "Going Rogue" Makes a great stocking stuffer. Available now at a bookstore near you. Hey, I have to pay for my campaign vetting bill somehow. Really, the response has been great. So I'll close by reading a final passage.

Page 403: ...I've been asked a lot lately, "Where are you going next?' Good question!

Wherever I go I know that, as with anyone in the public eye, I'll continue to have my share of disagreements with those in the media. Maybe even more than my share. It will come as no surprise that I don't think I was always treated fairly, or equally. But despite that, I respect the media very much. It's important. A free press allows for vigorous debate! And that debate is absolutely vital for our democracy. So as hard as it can sometimes be, we must all look past personal grievances. We must move beyond petty politics. And we must allow these incredibly talented and hard-working women and men to ask the hard questions and hold us, and our government, accountable. Because their mission is as true as the sun rising over the Talkeetna and Susitna Mountains....

Okay - so none of that is actually in the book. Not a word. But I do believe it! And I believe we live in a beautiful country blessed with so many different people who want the best for their children, families and for our great nation. I'm so proud to be an American.

And that is what I'll be talking about when I travel to where I'm headed. No better place than here to announce where I'm going. I'm going to Iowa! I'll be there tomorrow from noon to 3:00 pm at the Barnes & Noble on Sergeant Road in Sioux City. Come early. Long lines are expected. Thank you everyone. God Bless the U.S.A!

SOURCE

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The Only Thing Less Popular Than Paul Krugman is the New York Times

Scott Rasmussen ran a couple of surveys to illustrate the importance of how poll questions are framed. The results make that point quite effectively, but are also interesting in their own right.

Rasmussen surveyed likely voters with respect to two pundits, Paul Krugman and John Fund. He found, not surprisingly, that neither is well known to the general public. Krugman scores exactly even, 22 percent favorable and 22 percent unfavorable, with 55 percent knowing nothing about him. Of those who know who Krugman is, 4 percent view him "very favorably" and 6 percent "very unfavorably." Fund is even less well known; his favorables/unfavorables are 12/22. (My guess is that most of those 22 percent either had Fund confused with someone else or were just reacting to the sound of his name.)

Here's the interesting part: in a separate survey, when Krugman was identified as "New York Times columnist Paul Krugman," his numbers plummeted to 25 percent favorable and 37 percent unfavorable. Moreover, his "very unfavorable" percentage more than tripled to 20 percent. On the other hand, when Fund was identified as a Wall Street Journal columnist, the opposite happened: his favorable/unfavorable percentages flipped to 34/20. All of which suggests that the public has pretty well caught on to the Times, which, as Rasmussen notes, was viewed favorably by only 24 percent in a 2008 survey.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Rupert Murdoch attacks bailout funds for media companies: "News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch has rejected the idea of public funding for media companies, saying if news outlets were not attracting audiences they deserved to fail. The government's only role in helping media should be to reduce unnecessary regulation and eliminate obstacles to growth and investment, he said last week at a US Federal Trade Commission workshop on the future of journalism in the internet age. "The prospect of the US government becoming directly involved in commercial journalism ought to be chilling for anyone who cares about freedom of speech," Mr Murdoch said. US congressional hearings in September -- into how the government could help -- heard ideas such as giving tax breaks to newspapers that restructured to operate as non-profit businesses. "In exchange, of course, (papers would be) giving up their right to endorse political candidates," Mr Murdoch told the FTC. "The most damning problem with government help is . . . (it) props up those who are producing things that customers do not want. In other words, it subsidises the failures and penalises the successes." A newspaper aid program is under way in France"

Nobel acceptance will be a tricky moment: "He’s the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who just ordered 30,000 more troops into war. He’s the winner who says he didn’t deserve to win. He’s not quite 11 months on the job and already in the company of Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. This is President Barack Obama’s Nobel moment, an immense honor shadowed by awkward timing. When Obama leaves for Oslo, Norway, on Wednesday to be lauded for his style of international diplomacy, he goes knowing that the American people are more concerned about something else: peace of mind. The economy has left millions of them hurting. … Unemployment is in double digits even as the bleeding of jobs has slowed. Meanwhile, there’s no hiding the contrast of war and peace.” [The magic of Leftism: Only Obama can escalate a war and get a peace prize at the same time]

More on general market efficiency: "It’s very difficult for any single individual/entity to beat index returns. For anyone who has some money set aside, the advice, ‘Put it in an index fund’ is sage. Very few mutual funds beat index returns in a given year. Over many years, almost none do. The average investor does not have access to inside information. The stock price moves within seconds in response to any information made public. If someone sees an incongruity or arbitrage opportunity, many others have probably already seen it and have already acted on it. ‘What makes you think you can beat the market?’ is a good question. It is also a question which I don’t think is applied enough.” [Hmmmm ... I don't know about that. I don't follow the market much these days but when I did I was always ahead of the index. You just have to have correct theories. Most people don't. And my portfolio came through the GFC in pretty good shape. Even the Dubai affair has had only a minor effect on it]

UK: The big squeeze: "Next year, Britain’s middle classes and the rich will face the biggest squeeze on their living standards in decades, shows research produced by accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers for The Independent. In the build-up to what promises to be an exceptionally tough pre-Budget report this Wednesday, PwC says the typical British family (’Middle England’) already faces a decline of 2.4 per cent, or £300 a year, in its discretionary spending power, after tax, mortgages, food and other essentials.”

Nonsense on poverty: "The Joseph Rowntree Trust released its report on the state of poverty in the UK and brought forth the usual howls of outrage about, well, pretty much everything really. I was actually rather enjoying the howls of how we now have Dickensian, Victorian, levels of poverty for I always do enjoy hysterical hyperbole. But it set me thinking, do we actually have such levels? Of course, we simply do not have, absent a very few families blighted by mental illness, drugs or drink, anything like the physical poverty of those days.”

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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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

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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Genetics win out

It is obvious that life experiences have some influences on us. Chinese kids grow up speaking Chinese, for instance. But genetics are also powerful and the latest research indicates that they do to a remarkable extent overwhelm environmental influences. Environmental handicaps tend to fade in importance as we get older. Abstract of the latest paper on the heritability of IQ below:

The heritability of general cognitive ability increases linearly from childhood to young adulthood

By C M A Haworth et al.

Although common sense suggests that environmental influences increasingly account for individual differences in behavior as experiences accumulate during the course of life, this hypothesis has not previously been tested, in part because of the large sample sizes needed for an adequately powered analysis. Here we show for general cognitive ability that, to the contrary, genetic influence increases with age. The heritability of general cognitive ability increases significantly and linearly from 41% in childhood (9 years) to 55% in adolescence (12 years) and to 66% in young adulthood (17 years) in a sample of 11 000 pairs of twins from four countries, a larger sample than all previous studies combined. In addition to its far-reaching implications for neuroscience and molecular genetics, this finding suggests new ways of thinking about the interface between nature and nurture during the school years. Why, despite life's 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune', do genetically driven differences increasingly account for differences in general cognitive ability? We suggest that the answer lies with genotype–environment correlation: as children grow up, they increasingly select, modify and even create their own experiences in part based on their genetic propensities.

Molecular Psychiatry

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Palin speaks in D.C.

Sarah Palin gave an 11-minute speech before Washington’s Gridiron Club at its Winter Dinner. Politico billed it as: “a moment somewhat akin to Karl Marx touring the New York Stock Exchange or Charles Darwin lecturing at a creationists’ convention.” Um, the Gridiron Club is supposed to be peopled by journalists. Her co-star was Congressman Barney Frank. Gridiron officials expected a big turnout. She does that a lot.

The remarks are off the record, so naturally Politico leaked like a sieve. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Tribune also broke the silence. As did Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times. From their leaks, I offer this:

Her book has no index so that people can check to see what page they are on in her book. Politico said she provided one: “A: Alaska, media not understanding it, page 1-432. B: Biased, Page 1-432.”

Other lines: “If the election had turned out differently, I could be the one overseeing the signing of bailout checks and Vice President Biden could be on the road selling his book, ‘Going Rogaine’.”

And this line: “It’s good to be here though, really, in front of this audience of leading journalists and intellectuals, or as I like to call it, a death panel.”

And: “Sometimes you just got to trust your instincts. And when you don”t, you end up in places like this.”

And: “You betcha. Who talks that way?”

And: “At least now I can put a face to the newspapers I do read.”

And on Frank: “And I’m the controversial one?”

And a dig at John McCain’s campaign staff: “The view is so much better inside the bus than under the bus.”

And on campaign manager Steve Schmidt: “If I need a bald campaign manager, I guess I’m left with James Carville.”

And the line about seeing a picture of the president and China’s president Hu Jinato and being told, “Hu’s the communist.”

Palin: “I thought he was asking a question.”

And her alternative title for her autobiography: “How to Look Like a Million Bucks for Only $150,000.”

And the line of the night (or what was reported so far) on her hotel room: “I could see the Russian Embassy.”

Self-effacing humor works best.

SOURCE

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In defense of Sarah Palin & conservative women

Is chivalry dead? Have we conservative men allowed political correctness to prevent us from treating women the way we instinctively know we should? When my three brothers and I started dating, my dad instructed us. "You take good care and return her home the way you found her". Following dad's instruction made us feel good about ourselves. We felt like men.

It is time we conservative guys start acting like men and defend our women folk (a little cowboy lingo). Since her acceptance speech as McCain's VP nominee, attacks on Sarah Palin have been vile, extremely vicious and beyond the pale. Even Palin's family including her 14 year old daughter were targeted for destruction by an, dare I use the "E" word, evil media. The Left's hatred of Sarah Palin is good vs. evil. Palin's book tour is pouring gasoline on the Left's "destroy Palin at any cost" fire.

Governor Palin positively represents motherhood, marriage and traditional Christian values. The Left appears to despise any and all things so wholesome.

Unfortunately, it appears even some on our side (conservatives) have bought into the media's "she is not too bright" portrayal of Palin. When Obama says we have 57 states and other faux pas, the sycophant media circle the wagons around him by saying he was tired or simply misspoke. Meanwhile, every word out of Palin's mouth is viewed through the template that she is stupid. Who amongst us could withstand such harsh scrutiny?

Well, I am standing up for my awesome conservative sister, Gov. Palin. She has the right stuff to get our country back on track. I love how Palin boldly, without apology, challenges the concept of government run health care, the global warming/climate change scam and her desire to drill for oil to make us energy independent. Talk about backbone. Could Sarah Palin be the reincarnation of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan? No, I do not believe in reincarnation; just having a little fun. My point is despite what the snobby elites -- conservative and liberal -- think, Sarah Palin is a powerful force to be reckoned with and is great for America.

We the people are so sick of namby pamby "middle of the road speak" focus group-tested candidates. "Don't say this because you will offend this crowd and don't say that because you will offend the other." For crying out loud, just say what you mean and mean what you say. Show us voters who you are. These are the kind of candidates we voters are longing and tea partying for. And this is why Sarah "what you see is what you get" Palin is a rock star!

I believe strong women inspire men to be strong. They are not offended when we open the door for them, carry their heavy packages and mind our conversation around them. Or has such behavior from men become too "Andy and Mayberry" for our secular progressive crude culture? Trust me, I am not a prude, but radical feminists have diminished women's power in our society. I was raised to believe that a real man treats women with a level of respect. Nobody is allowed to "dis" your momma, wife or your sister.

Sarah Palin is a breath of fresh air; a woman using the God-given power of her femininity to be a mom, a wife and govern a state. Awesome. I would be honored to say, "Yes, Madam President"....

The Left deceptively call their pro abortion movement a pro choice movement. If choice is their issue, why are radical feminists so offended when a woman chooses not to have an abortion? They have a weird anti male (particularly white male) and family agenda. Outrageously, a feminist leader said "all sex is rape". These angry bitter women have a distorted view of the world.

Then along comes Sarah Palin; happily married, a happy mom and effective governor. Feminists should regard Sarah Palin as their hero; a shining example of women's liberation enjoying success in both words, family and career. But instead, the Left seeks to destroy her. Palin is too happy, too good, too pretty, too effective, and most intolerable, too powerful.

More HERE

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The Beck phenomenon



Many authors adorn the covers of their books with flattering recommendations from notable reviewers. Not Glenn Beck, whose latest bestselling diatribe, Arguing With Idiots, proudly sports a range of slurs from some of the many critics of his right-wing radio chat show.

“Glenn Beck is an idiot,” declares Discover magazine. He is “a lying sack of dog mess”, says Whoopi Goldberg, the Hollywood actress. He is “Satan’s mentally challenged younger brother”, adds Stephen King, the novelist.

After almost 30 years working in radio and television, Beck has this year emerged from the apocalyptic hubbub of American conservative political chatter to become a fully fledged cultural phenomenon. It is not only his verbal pyrotechnics that have entranced his growing audience — he is possibly the only crewcut Mormon in America who once claimed to have smoked marijuana every day for 15 years.

Beck has claimed that America’s first black president had “a deep-seated hatred for white people”.

The White House accused Fox News of “undertaking a war” against Obama. Yet even Beck’s critics acknowledge that he is not a conventional foe and, far from being a Republican stooge, he sometimes espouses startling views. “Not all Democrats are idiots,” he notes in his latest book. He says he is not a “partisan zombie” and declares that “being an idiot has nothing to do with your party affiliation”. Unlike most of his listeners he has a soft spot for Hillary Clinton.

Mostly, though, he has made his fortune by giving voice to a growing sense of frustration that the much-vaunted president of hope and change has delivered neither; and that a sycophantic media dominated by liberals has failed to be tough enough on Obama.

Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, has declared herself a big fan of Beck. In polls of listeners to his programmes, she is the overwhelming favourite for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Palin, the surprise choice as Senator John McCain’s running mate last year, was asked last month if she would spring a similar surprise by considering Beck as her 2012 running mate. The idea is not as far-fetched as it may seem — Beck recently adopted a more active political profile and is touring the country encouraging voter registration. Palin’s reply was: “I don’t know, we’ll see.”

Between them, Beck and Palin dominate America’s right-wing conversation but he was not always so eminent. His career encompasses an only-in-America arc that includes bouts of alcoholism and drug abuse, a late turn to redemptive religion and several family tragedies.

Beck was 15 when his mother’s body was discovered in the waters of Puget Sound in Washington state. His parents had divorced. Beck would later claim his mother committed suicide, but other accounts referred to a boating accident.

Seven years earlier, Mary Beck had given her son a record set entitled The Golden Years of Radio. Beck has written that the birthday gift had “an immediate and lasting impact . . . I was mesmerised . . . how radio could create pictures in my head”. Moving to his father’s home near Seattle, Beck took a part-time job at a local radio station, beginning an odyssey that would turn him first into a disc jockey, then into a chat show host. His early rise was fuelled mostly by beer and cocaine.

By the time Beck reached Kentucky in the mid-1980s, he was by his own admission drinking heavily, snorting coke and contemplating suicide. “I’m only alive today because a) I’m too cowardly to kill myself and b) I’m too stupid,” he wrote.

It was in Kentucky that the first signs emerged of the rabid super-patriot that Beck would become. After the bombing in 1986 of a Berlin nightclub frequented by US soldiers — an attack blamed on President Muammar Gadaffi’s Libya — Beck repeatedly played a song called Gadaffi Sucks. Listeners hailed him for “standing up for America”.

Mostly, though, he was falling down drunk. After stops in Phoenix, Houston and New York, his former manager described him as “out of control”. His marriage was failing, he was mixing recreational and prescription drugs. In Phoenix he had joked on air about his wife being pregnant and invited listeners to guess the sex of the child. The jokes stopped after his daughter was born with cerebral palsy.

Yet somehow he managed to clean himself up. In 1994 he began attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Five years later he embraced the Mormon religion and acquired a supportive second wife. As he honed his talent for mischievous commentary, he rose through news radio ranks to his high-profile berth at Fox.

Obama’s early stumbles have proved a boon for Beck’s career. Broader dismay at the president’s perceived failings has re-energised an otherwise moribund Republican party, propelling it to eye-catching victories in state elections in Virginia and New Jersey last month.

Yet many Republicans remain concerned that the Beck-Palin axis of antagonistic populism may prevent the party attracting middle-of-the-road voters who swung to Obama last year, but are disillusioned and potentially ready to swing back. “We have to decide whether we want to be a debating society or a broad-based, centre-right governing coalition,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, a moderate Republican from Tennessee.

Beck and Palin scoff at critics who claim they are damaging Republican chances by scaring off moderate voters and previously sympathetic Latinos. They dismiss such theories as the kind of political game-playing that got America into a mess in the first place. The stage is set for a long strategy debate as Republicans seek a much earlier return to the White House than seemed possible a year ago. The only certain outcome is that Beck will be sitting at his microphone, urging conservatives to action. “It’s time to find our teeth and sharpen our teeth — and we’re going to do it,” he promised.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

I probably should mention that I have put up a few things on my Paralipomena blog lately. A lot of what I put up there is history of one sort or another, as history is a great interest of mine -- as I think it should be for any conservative. History is a very large topic, however, so one has to specialize. My main interest is 19th and 20th century British and German history and I still have only very partial knowledge of that.

LibertyPhile notes that even readers of Britain's Leftist Guardian overwhelmingly approved the Swiss vote to ban Muslim minarets in that country.

There is an interesting video here about the extent of Muslim activism in Britain.

British PM snubbed by soldiers' 'curtain' protest: "Gordon Brown was snubbed by badly injured Afghan veterans when they closed curtains round their beds during a hospital visit and refused to speak to him. More than half the soldiers being treated at the Selly Oak hospital ward in Birmingham either asked for the curtains to be closed or deliberately avoided the prime minister, according to several of those present. The soldiers, who have sustained some of the worst injuries seen in Afghanistan, described his visit as “opportunistic” and a “waste of time”. Furious about equipment shortages and poor compensation for their injuries, one soldier said: “It is almost as if we are the product of an unwanted affair ... he has done nothing for us.”

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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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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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Blog down

My POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH blog seems to be "down" at the moment. The mirror site is here.

Tony Judt and the confusion of the modern Left

It is with a little sadness that I write this. I am going to comment on a recent essay by Tony Judt. Even though he is an anti-Israel Jew, he is a brilliant mind and a most knowledgeable historian. He is now however suffering from a severe physical disability and the essay I wish to comment on could well be his last substantial work. So, with respect:

The essay boils down to two things: A rejection of "economism" and a dreamy glorification of 20th century democratic Leftism. And he ends up saying that Leftists should be conservatives. A more confused, though lucid, set of ideas would be hard to imagine.

For a start, his central dilemma is one that is ever-present on the contemporary Left: He argues for moral values while also believing that there is no such thing as right and wrong. If self-contradiction is a mark of insanity, the modern Left is terminally deranged.

It is purely in the name of some unspecified moral order that Judt rejects "economism". And what he condemns as "economism" boils down to being concerned about your financial state of affairs. It is wrong, apparently, to be concerned about how much money you have in your pocket. It is no doubt an outcome of Judt's own privileged life that he literally seems unable to understand why people would have such concerns.

It was one of my correspondents who alerted me to Judt's essay and the comment he sent with the link was simply: "A moron". One can understand that judgement. Let me be a little more professional about the matter, however, and say that Judt's moral ideas are seriously underdeveloped and that a full elaboration of his moral beliefs and reasoning would be needed for anyone to draw any reasonable conclusions from his essay.

He goes on to glorify government-provided services generally but once again seems not to be living in the real world. Who has not experienced the horrors of dealing with large bureaucracies and who does not find small businesses easier to deal with? He seems unaware that you get much better treatment as a valued customer than you do if you are a mere number to some bureaucrat. You are virtually powerless against a bureaucracy but you have some weight as a person who can take his business elsewhere.

Judt's primary example of a service that should be government provided is the railways. He thinks that they are "an essential public service". That people in some places get along quite well without them and that the vast majority of Americans hardly use them at all appears to have had no impact on his thinking. His argument seems to boil down to saying that railways run purely for profit would not serve isolated regions or the poor very well. He is probably right about that but does it follow that a government-run railway is the answer? If we are going to subsidize anything, why not subsidize small buses to run on the route concerned? That would undoubtedly be a lot easier on the taxpayer's pocket.

So his final plea that we remember the past glories of socialism is as deranged as his moral ideas. Leftists should hope that people do NOT remember how awful past government services have been. What Judt wants us to "remember" is a dreamy ideal that never existed. His closing assertion that "The left, to be quite blunt about it, has something to conserve" is undoubtedly a common Leftist belief but it is just another example of his moral incoherence and blindness to the actual past.

In an effort to do justice to the man, however, I will happily concede his point that privatizations of government services have not always worked well. And since he seems to have railways on the brain, let me mention the privatization of British Rail. I remember the shabbiness, erratic services and awful sandwiches of British Rail well so am perhaps in some position to comment. Who could believe train drivers who drove off while people were still trying to board? I do because I saw it. I was one of the passengers concerned.

There is no doubt that rail services in Britain today are often very poor but that is a consequence of their very PARTIAL privatization. The infinitely better rail services of the Victorian era were provided by companies that OWNED not only the trains but the tracks they ran on. In Britain today, however, the private rail companies own very little. They bid for the privilege of providing a service and get a government-controlled monopoly in return. So, once they have obtained their monopoly, it makes sense for them to screw passengers for all they can. Roadspace and parking are severely limited in Britain so passengers usually have no real option of other forms of transport.

In the Victorian era, by contrast, railways DID compete (and also co-operated when that was useful). There was more than one set of tracks running North and if you wanted to get from (say) London to somewhere in Scotland, there were competing ways of doing so. So it seems reasonable that a recreation of the completely private Victorian ownership structure would give results comparable to the Victorian experience. But modern Britain is too socialist for that to be contemplated.

And as for government-sponsored or government-run train services in Australia these days, don't get me started. The Melbourne services are run on British lines and just ask any Melbourne commuter how that works out.

There many more points in Judt's essay that I could contend with but the eloquence of the essay hides such a poverty of ideas that I cannot justify spending more time on it.

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Chinese appeasement irks Indians

By Dr John Lee -- a foreign policy specialist with a particular interest in India

President Barrack Obama’s choice of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as his first state visitor last week was meant to be about reassuring New Delhi that Washington intends to build on the strategic partnership between the two countries that blossomed under George W. Bush. But after Obama’s much criticised trip to China, the meeting was largely about repairing the damage and reassuring New Delhi that Obama will be as good a friend to India as under Bush.

Why are the Indians upset? Obama’s supporters admit that the administration appeared ‘conciliatory’ towards the Chinese. His detractors argue that by treating China as an equal partner when it is not yet one, he appeared ‘weak.’

As far as New Delhi is concerned, the joint US-China communiqué strikes at the heart of Indian strategic sensitivities. China seems to have got something it desperately wants – at India’s expense – without offering anything in return.

By prematurely raising China’s profile and offering it a central role in working with Washington to promote peace and stability in South and Central Asia, the United States has added to India’s insecurities. India sees China’s role in these regions as destabilising and insidious. China has been attempting to distract India with land-based disputes by offering diplomatic, military and nuclear support to Pakistan while Beijing extends its influence in South Asia. And it sees US appeasement of China as America’s inadvertent blessing to continue distracting India.

Obama seems to have underestimated the long-standing regional tensions when he casually offered to China ‘the fundamental principle of respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity.’ This seems innocuous except for the fact that China has fundamental disputes with India (as well as with Russia, Japan and Southeast Asian countries) as to what constitutes Beijing’s ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity.’

Words matter. ‘Acknowledging’ China’s territorial claims is one thing. Respecting them is another and should be withheld until the disputing partners resolve the issues.

Taking a page out of the Harvard Negotiation Project’s Getting to Yes manual is not the best way to deal with the Chinese. The US-China relationship might be the most important in the world, but President Obama must learn that America cannot ‘manage’ China without help from friends and allies.

The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.

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The labor union president

Journalists have spent countless hours writing and discussing how remarkable it is that a predominately white America has elected a black president. It is remarkable that a man born of a white mother would consider himself the first black president. However, based upon the actions of the Obama administration since January 20th, the more remarkable and less publicized story is how the American public really elected a purple president.

Purple is the color of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). SEIU spent 61 million dollars helping to get Barack Obama elected. Along with their sister organization, Association of Community Organizers Now (ACORN), they also contributed thousands of hours of grassroots organizing. In some cities, this grassroots “organizing” meant a Chicago style voter intimidation. SEIU and ACORN members stood at polling places to prevent voters unlikely to vote for Barack Obama from voting.

The efforts of SEIU and ACORN have not gone unrewarded. In previous Democratic administrations, organized labor spent millions of dollars to get their candidate elected, however presidents like Bill Clinton did not devote their entire presidency to achieving organized labor’s agenda. President Obama has clearly made the promotion and enrichment of organized labor at the expense of the American taxpayer the top priority of his administration. The last time this occurred was in the 1930’s under FDR, with disastrous consequences for the American people.

According to the White House visitor records recently published, the president of SEIU, Andrew Stern, has been the most frequent visitor, visiting 22 times since January. Mr. Stern’s visits have paid off, since virtually every action or piece of legislation by the Administration is for the benefit of organized labor and especially the SEIU.

Obama’s appointments have included a disproportionate number of SEIU and ACORN leaders in key policy positions. Anna Burger was appointed to the President’s Economic Recovery Board of Advisors. She was previously SEIU Secretary-Treasurer. Patrick Gaspard from SEIU Local 1199 was appointed as White House policy advisor. He was previously SEIU Vice President of politics and legislation. Craig Becker was nominated to the National Labor Relations Board. Is there any doubt about how the former SEIU associate general council will rule in labor cases brought before the NLRB?

The stimulus bill was promoted as a job creation bill so essential that it needed to be voted upon before the House and Senate members even had time to read it. In reality only about 10% of the Stimulus Act provide funding for the infrastructure projects it proponents touted. Even that 10% included provisions to ensure that only union construction workers could work on those projects.

The remainder of the Stimulus Act funded government programs, not infrastructure jobs. It provided funding to cash strapped states so they would not be forced to lay off public sector union employees to balance their budgets. When destitute California tried to lay off union (SEIU) workers to help reduce its budget deficit, the Obama administration threatened to cut off stimulus funds. The bill also provided additional funding to select Federal programs and reversed provisions of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.

One of the driving forces behind the grossly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act or Card Check bill is the SEIU. They have made numerous public statements that they do not believe in secret elections to determine whether employees want to be represented by a union. They have been extremely successful in using coercion and intimidation rather than secret elections in their organizing of healthcare workers in a number of states.

SEIU President Stern and SEIU Healthcare Chairman, Dennis Rivera, have been instrumental in determining the language of the Administration’s healthcare bills. If the public option is included, the SEIU will have the opportunity to organize millions of new government healthcare workers. It has spent millions of dollars promoting healthcare bills through advertising and sending well coached SEIU and ACORN members to disrupt healthcare rallies. If Americans are forced to spend far more in taxes to fund healthcare programs, no one benefits as much as the purple shirted SEIU.

Never before has a President allowed the policies of an entire nation to be based upon the interests of a public sector labor union destined to bankrupt America. Clearly to President Obama, “spread the wealth” means taking the wealth of working Americans through taxation and giving it to groups like ACORN and SEIU that helped him get elected.

SOURCE

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The Fatuous Job Summit

Obama's amazing confession: He doesn't know how jobs are created. Cutting government burdens on business is a sort of Masonic mystery to him, apparently. If the summit had been solely focused on how to reduce the costs of business it might have been useful



What are the odds that yesterday’s White House jobs summit will lead to the creation of any real jobs? The summit was based on the magic theory of government: Say the right incantations and reality will be reshaped according to one’s desires. There are no economic laws. There is only will. If we all think good thoughts and exude the spirit of cooperation, we’ll end these hard times and get the economy moving again. This is the sign of a primitive mentality. In reality economic laws exist, reality sets limits, and good feelings can’t create prosperity out of nothing, especially when government stubbornly stands in the way....

The downward employment spiral we have witnessed is an effect, not a cause, of economic trouble. People were laid off and consumption slowed down, with rippling effect, because of earlier bad policies. In the current case, government housing policy and Federal Reserve conduct united to create unsustainable distortions in finance, construction, and allied industries. When the boom came to end and the bubble burst, what looked like rational investments were revealed as errors that needed to be corrected so that the market process could get back on its natural track. This takes time. Decisions cannot be instantly and costlessly reversed. There’s too much construction equipment and not enough of something else, but that cannot be rectified overnight. Capital was wasted in the boom, and new saving is needed not just to replenish the capital stock but to make sure it’s the right kind of capital.

But the policymakers won’t let the market heal itself. Why? Because letting it happen means doing nothing —or rather undoing lots of things— and politicians are incapable of that. Imperative No. 1 is to get re-elected. Whether a politician understands economics or not, the electorate for the most part does not. So he caters to the economic illiterates by appearing to boldly take on problems that were created by his earlier takings-on. Almost any policy he backs will be opposite of what ought to be done.

The two things that government needs to do are exactly what politicians find so distasteful. It must 1) dramatically lighten its burden on the people and 2) abstain from causing producers to wonder what new burdens may be around the corner.

The burden of government is great. This is to be measured not in taxes alone, but in total spending, mandates, regulation, and Federal Reserve distortion. Politicians and special interests have lived as though the burden could be increased indefinitely with impunity. We see now that it can’t. Spending must be substantially cut — departments and agencies abolished — so that resources can be left in the productive sector. Taxes must be reduced sharply — better yet, repealed. The heavy hand of bureaucracy must be lifted from production. Government is a destroyer, not a creator, of value. It must stop....

The root problem is the privilege-ridden corporatist economy that shifts power to politicians and the politically connected. This has only gotten worse in recent years, with the Fed and Treasury directly guiding the flow of capital to favored companies. Abolish the privilege, the subsidies, the barriers to entry, the impediments to self-employment, the currency manipulation — and watch a stable and growing economy appear — one based on freedom rather than privilege, mutually beneficial exchange rather than exploitation. Once again the best course for government is: Get out of the way!

More here

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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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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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In panic over jobs, Dems detour from health care

There’s a reason Barack Obama squeezed a hastily-arranged "Jobs Summit" into a White House schedule dominated by national health care and Afghanistan. You can find it on every page of "The Economy and Politics of 2010," a new survey of voter attitudes circulating among Democrats that, despite its dry title, betrays a sense of dread and horror among party strategists hoping to avoid defeat in next year's mid-term elections.

The report is the work of Democracy Corps, the influential polling organization run by Democraic strategists James Carville and Stanley Greenberg. The two men found voters are nearly beside themselves about unemployment, angry about the deficit, pessimistic about the future, and in a mood to punish Democrats if things don't get better soon. "This is about the economy, and it's not pretty," they write.

Most ominous for Democrats is the rise in the number of people who believe the country is on the wrong track. That number grew steadily through the later Bush years, reaching a high of 85 percent just before last November's elections. But with Obama's win, discontent began to subside. By inauguration day, the number was 66 percent. By March, it was 56 percent, and by May it was 46 percent. It was a remarkable turnaround, attributable mostly to the new president. But since then the turnaround itself has turned around. By July, the wrong track number had inched up to 50 percent. It was 55 percent in September. Now, it's 58 percent.

The reason is unemployment. When Carville and Greenberg asked respondents to list the one or two most important problems facing the country, 64 percent named jobs -- more than twice the level of concern about the deficit and rising health care costs, which were named by 29 percent each.

The pollsters found a lot of residual blame for George W. Bush. But they also found that Obama is gradually coming to own the economy. They read voters two statements. One was, "President Obama's economic policies helped avert an even worse crisis, and are laying the foundation for our eventual economic recovery." The other: "President Obama's economic policies have run up a record federal deficit while failing to end the recession or slow the record pace of job losses."

Among likely voters, 44 percent agreed with the pro-Obama statement, while 50 percent blamed the president for deficits and job losses. As Bush recedes into history, the blame will only go up if conditions don't improve. And for the first time since 2002, Carville and Greenberg found that more voters, 45 percent to 42 percent, say Republicans would do a better job handling the economy than Democrats. Just last May, Democrats held a 16-point lead.

Is there anything that could avert Democratic defeats? Of course something unexpected could always happen. But short of that, Carville and Greenberg found, things would have to improve markedly in the next few months. If unemployment falls below 10 percent and begins a steady decline, and the values of homes and retirement funds start to rise, then Democrats will be OK. But if joblessness remains high, along with the deficit, and the Dow and home values are shaky -- that's a brutal scenario for the party in charge. "The punishing of incumbents for negative economic scenarios is most pronounced in Democratic-held seats," Carville and Greenberg write.

The two Democratic strategists take some comfort in the fact that the Republican brand is still pretty unpopular. "This does not yet look like a wave election," they write hopefully, noting that the public doesn't particularly like the GOP. But the report points to something paradoxical going on in our politics. After a huge election, the victorious party usually has some time to govern while the loser rebuilds. But this time, Democrats have messed up so fast that the Republicans haven’t had time to recover.

All in all, it's a perilous situation for Democrats taking their House and Senate majorities into next year's elections. "The slow recovery and continued job losses, combined with Wall Street bailouts, big bonuses, government takeovers, deficits and possible gridlock are an ugly brew," Carville and Greenberg write. "For Democrats to reverse the slide in their standing, they need to focus with urgency on jobs."

Urgency -- that's the key word, and the reason for Obama's "Jobs Summit." But voters know Democratic leaders haven't shown that urgency about jobs, and are in fact working 24/7 to pass a national health care bill that isn't the country's top priority. What "The Economy and Politics of 2010" shows is that this could be a very costly mistake.

SOURCE

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Building Peace Without Obama's Interference

A promising, independent Palestine is quietly being developed, with Israeli assistance

It is difficult to turn on a TV or radio or pick up a newspaper these days, without finding some pundit or other deploring the dismal prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace or the dreadful living conditions of the Palestinians. Even supposedly neutral news reporters regularly repeat this sad tale. "Very little is changing for the Palestinian people on the ground," I heard BBC World Service Cairo correspondent Christian Fraser tell listeners three times in a 45 minute period the other evening.

In fact nothing could be further from the truth. I had spent that day in the West Bank's largest city, Nablus. The city is bursting with energy, life and signs of prosperity, in a way I have not previously seen in many years of covering the region.

As I sat in the plush office of Ahmad Aweidah, the suave British-educated banker who heads the Palestinian Securities Exchange, he told me that the Nablus stock market was the second best-performing in the world so far in 2009, after Shanghai. (Aweidah's office looks directly across from the palatial residence of Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri, the wealthiest man in the West Bank.)

Later I met Bashir al-Shakah, director of Nablus's gleaming new cinema, where four of the latest Hollywood hits were playing that day. Most movies were sold out, he noted, proudly adding that the venue had already hosted a film festival since it opened in June.

Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets. Indeed I counted considerably more BMWs and Mercedes than I've seen, for example, in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

And perhaps most importantly of all, we had driven from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all since the Israeli security services (with the encouragement and support of President George W. Bush) were allowed, over recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring. (There was one border post on the return leg of the journey, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but the young female guard just waved me and the two Palestinians I was traveling with, through.)

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently, and I was surprised to see villas comparable in size to those on the Cote d'Azur or Bel Air had sprung up on the hills around the city. Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe. Local Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.

A new Palestinian city, Ruwabi, is to be built soon north of Ramallah. Last month, the Jewish National Fund, an Israeli charity, helped plant 3,000 tree seedlings for a forested area the Palestinian planners say they would like to develop on the edge of the new city. Israeli experts are also helping the Palestinians plan public parks and other civic amenities.

Outsiders are beginning to take note of the turnaround too. The official PLO Wafa news agency reported last week that the 3rd quarter of 2009 witnessed near-record tourism in the Palestinian Authority, with 135,939 overnight hotel stays in 89 hotels that are now open. Almost half the guests come from the U.S or Europe.

Palestinian economic growth so far this year —in a year dominated by economic crisis elsewhere— has been an impressive 7% according to the IMF, though Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad, himself a former World Bank and IMF employee, says it is in fact 11%, partly helped along by strong economic performances in neighboring Israel.

In Gaza too, the shops and markets are crammed with food and goods. But while photos from last Friday's Palestine Today newspaper, for example, depict sumptuous Eid celebrations, these are not the pictures you are ever likely to see on the BBC or Le Monde or the New York Times. No, Gaza is not like a "concentration camp," nor is the "humanitarian crisis in Gaza is on the scale of Darfur," as British journalist Lauren Booth (who is also Tony Blair's sister-in-law) has said.

In June, the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl related how Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him why he had turned down Ehud Olmert's offer last year to create a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank (with 3% of pre-1967 Israeli land being added to make up the shortfall). "In the West Bank we have a good reality," Abbas told Diehl. "The people are living a normal life," he added in a rare moment of candor to a Western journalist.

Nablus stock exchange head Ahmad Aweidah went further in explaining to me why there is no rush to declare statehood, saying ordinary Palestinians need the IDF to help protect them from Hamas, as their own security forces aren't ready to do so by themselves yet.

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance. So long as the Obama administration and European politicians don't clumsily meddle as they have in the past and make unrealistic demands for the process to be completed more quickly than it can be, I am confident the outcome will be a positive one. (The last time an American president —Bill Clinton in 2000— tried to hurry things along unrealistically, it merely resulted in blowing up in everybody's faces —literally— and set back hopes for peace by some years.)

Israelis and Palestinians may never agree on borders that will satisfy everyone. But that doesn't mean they won't live in peace. Not all Germans and French agree who should control Alsace Lorraine. Poles and Russians, Slovenes and Croats, Britons and Irish, and peoples all over the world, have border disputes. But that doesn't keep them from coexisting with one another. Nor —so long as partisan journalists and human rights groups don't mislead Western politicians into making bad decisions— will it prevent Israelis and Palestinians from doing so.

SOURCE

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We scratched your back -- now you scratch ours -- say the MSM

Watching liberal journalists desperate for a government bailout as they prostrate themselves before Congress can be so confusing: Should we be embarrassed as these media representatives of the "best and brightest" beg for official handouts while proclaiming their devotion to independent journalism? Or should we laugh at the irony of what is left of a once-proud liberal media establishment choosing to become wards of the very state they so vigorously promoted for the past several decades? Speaking as somebody who has made his living reporting and analyzing the news for more than two decades, I tend towards the embarrassment option.

In any case, it's clear that the fix is in and all that is left now is for the liberal journalists and their new masters in government to complete their kabuki dance enroute to congressional approval and presidential signature on a massive package of aid for politically correct newspapers and broadcasters.

You've heard of "too big to fail." Now it's "we're too important to fail, so cough it up, suckers." Hey, when you can't produce a product enough people are willing to pay for to keep you in business, President Obama and the congressional Democrats are happy to bail you out, you've been helping each other for a long time anyway, you went to the same elite schools, etc. etc.

Actually, maybe "outraged" would be a more accurate word to describe my reaction than "embarrassment." I can't help it; I love journalism, the unique pace and culture of most newsrooms, the smell of printers ink, journalistic lore, the courage and blood required to win journalism's independence, the whole works, and that's why this makes me madder than ...

Anyway, Accuracy in Media's Danny Glover reports from the FTC's two-day workshop coyly entitled "How will journalism survive the Internet Age?" that Rep, Henry Waxman is ready to begin writing legislation. Liberal journalists and their fellow travelers from the non-profit and academic communities are eager to sign on the dotted line for what used to be called "indentured servitude." "Rep. Henry Waxman trekked from Capitol Hill to Federal Trade Commission headquarters today to deliver a message to journalists and news consumers: All of you need to reach a consensus about working with the government in order to bail out the struggling news industry.

"The California Democrat, who chairs the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, didn't say it quite so bluntly, but his point was clear. Government's going to have to be involved, in one way or the other,' to save journalism from an ongoing 'market failure' that will only worsen without intervention, Waxman said," Glover reports.

Happily chirping in with the chorus to Waxman's vocal lead was a media heavy. Glover tells us that Jon McTaggart, the senior vice president and chief operating officer of American Media Group, informed workshop attendees that "as a civil society, we don't trust the open market or the free market" to provide such valuable services. McTaggart also proclaimed, according to Glover, that the media should not be allowed to suffer because of market forces (aka "consumer choice").

Singing right along with McTaggart, Glover tells us, was Georgetown University communications professor Mark MacCarthy who dismissed critics opposed to a government bailout. Critics are wrong, he said, because government involvement in the arts, sciences and other fields is "traditional, mainstream and all-American. ... This is not some weird, strange aberration and alien intrusion into our life. This is the way we do things in this country."

Geez, these two guys must have taken a media history course taught by Beatrice and Sydney Webb, who not only founded the British Fabian Society that led the socialization of Great Britain, but also wrote a couple of books praising Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator.

McTaggart in particular ought to ring up former GM CEO Rick Wagoner for a little chat about the value of promises of non-intervention by government officials. Wagoner found out the hard way when President Obama summarily - and probably illegally, but what's a mere constitution between friends? - fired him barely hours after professing to have absolutely no desire "to run the auto industry."

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Great care needed in shopping online: "More than 1,200 illegal internet shopping websites that have made millions of pounds for criminals have been shut down by Scotland Yard in the biggest operation of its kind in Britain. The sites claimed to sell heavily discounted designer goods, including Ugg Australia Boots, ghd hair straighteners and jewellery from Tiffany & Co and Links of London. Buyers either received counterfeit products or nothing at all. It is also likely that their credit card details have been used to fund other illegal activity. It is estimated that British shoppers have spent millions on the sites but police are convinced that by shutting them down consumers have been saved millions more. Intelligence gathered by the Metropolitan Police’s Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) showed that the majority of the sites were registered in Asia, despite their UK domain names, using false or misleading details. This made it “almost impossible” for victims to complain to the source about poor quality, counterfeited items or goods not received, said an officer. But after several complaints were received by Trading Standards officers, Operation Papworth was set up. The PCeU deregistered 1,219 domain names. Detective Superintendent Charlie McMurdie, head of the PCeU, said: “Fraudsters target the victim’s desire to buy designer goods at reduced prices, particularly at this time of year. “The risk begins when your desire to purchase blinds your judgment or leads you to illegal websites. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is."



Conservatives hail West Point cadet who read 'Kill Bin Laden': "Waiting for his Commander-in-Chief to speak, a West Point military academy cadet had some blunt strategic advice this week: “Kill Bin Laden”. The title of his book captures in three words the one easily-defined goal that has eluded US forces in eight years of conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was indentified this evening as Konrad Bunde, a freshman or first year cadet, belonging to Company A3. His choice of reading material was hailed on conservative websites in the US as a rebuke to President Obama’s circumscribed new strategy for Afghanistan, which does not specifically target bin Laden and makes no mention of the word “victory”. The picture was taken in the academy’s Eisenhower auditorium an hour and a half before Mr Obama took the podium there for his address to the nation on Tuesday night. For security reasons, cadets were seated four hours before the speech and many brought reading and study material, an academy spokesman said. A Times analysis of the badges on the cadet’s chest shows that he is a “prior service” student at the academy, recommended for a place there after active service in Iraq."

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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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