Are Republicans More Principled Than Democrats?

Ordinarily I’d say that commitment to principle, or its absence, is bi-partisan, that Republicans are neither more virtuous nor more concerned with the public interest than Democrats (or, obviously, vice versa), but a glaringly obvious yet under-remarked aspect of Harry Reid’s recent “Cash for Cloture” auction for health care votes calls that assumption into question: all of the bribes financial inducements were taken by Democrats.

First there was the “Louisiana Purchase,” $100 million in extra Medicaid money for the Bayou State, requested by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). Then came the “Cornhusker Kickback,” another $100 million in extra Medicaid money, this time for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). This was followed by word that Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) had written into the legislation $100 million meant for a medical center in his state. This one was quickly dubbed the “U Con.”

Earlier, when GOP staff member mistakenly thought the medical center was destined for Indiana rather than Connecticut, they named it the “Bayh Off” for Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). For Democratic leaders, this created an appearance problem

Only “appearance”? Oh well. The list goes on: Indeed, the proliferation of deals has outpaced the ability of Capitol Hill cynics to name them. Gator Aid: Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) inserted a grandfather clause that would allow Floridians to preserve their pricey Medicare Advantage program. Handout Montana: Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) secured Medicare coverage for anybody exposed to asbestos -- as long as they worked in a mine in Libby, Mont.

Iowa Pork and Omaha Prime Cuts: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) won more Medicare money for low-volume hospitals of the sort commonly found in Iowa, while Nebraska’s Nelson won a “carve out” provision that would reduce fees for Mutual of Omaha and other Nebraska insurers. Meanwhile, Sens. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad, both North Dakota Democrats, would enjoy a provision bringing higher Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors in “frontier counties” of states such as -- let’s see here -- North Dakota!

Hawaii, with two Democratic senators, would get richer payments to hospitals that treat many uninsured people. Michigan, home of two other Democrats, would earn higher Medicare payments and some reduced fees for Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) held out for larger Medicaid payments for his state (neighboring Massachusetts would get some, too).

There are probably even more bribes deal sweeteners that we don’t know about, yet, or that haven’t been made yet but will. Indeed, Fox News reports this morning that Sen. Cornhusker Kickback Nelson: said Tuesday that three other senators have told him they want to bargain for the same kind of special treatment. “Three senators came up to me just now on the (Senate) floor, and said, ‘Now we understand what you did. We’ll be seeking this funding too’,” Nelson said.

All the known (and presumably these three unknown future) bribes deals involve Democrats. But it defies belief that Obama and Reid did not offer equally generous bribes concessions to Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and even Lindsey Graham and other Republicans. Remember, Reid needed 60 votes to ram his partisan bill through the Senate, but they didn’t every one have to be Democratic votes.

According to Harry Reid, every Senator who was worth his or her salt got something. “I don’t know if there is a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reasoned when asked at a news conference Monday about the cash-for-cloture accusation. “And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.”

Presumably Reid means every Democratic Senator, since no Republicans voted for cloture. As a Virginian, I wonder what my Senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, got. Does their silence about the bribes goodies for Virginia they secured mean they are embarrassed because they gave their votes away for free, meaning they liked the Reid bill so much they didn’t have to be bribed induced to vote for it? Or are they embarrassed to admit their votes were for sale? Or perhaps they are embarrassed for having sold too cheaply? I assume we’ll find out.

But, to return to my initial questions, why did no Republican succumb to the temptations that surely were offered? It can’t be simple political self-interest, since Snowe, Collins, and perhaps some other Republicans would have benefitted politically by a show of bi-partisanship. I hesitate even to suggest it, but could it be that devotion to principle is not randomly distributed between the parties after all?

UPDATE

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin calls the bribes “catering to self-interest” of wavering Democratic Senators no big deal. "Harkin dismissed deals dubbed vote-buying by GOP senators as “small stuff” that distracted Americans from the primary focus of the overhaul bill. We have to keep our eyes on what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to cross a demarcation line,” Harkin told “Early Show” co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez. “On one side is health care as a privilege, on the other side is health care as a right. With these votes, with the vote that we’ll take before Christmas, we will cross that line finally and say that health care is a right of all Americans.”

I actually agree with Harkin: the Democrats did cross the line.

SOURCE

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Obama Has Failed His Words

by Jonah Goldberg

On his own terms, President Obama is a failure. During the presidential campaign, he fought hammer and tongs with Hillary Clinton over the best way to govern. Clinton, casting herself as a battle-scarred political veteran, argued that diligence, dedicated detail work and working the system were essential for success. Obama, donning the mantle of a redeemer descending from divine heights, argued that his soaring rhetoric was more than "just words"; it was a way out of the poisonous, partisan gridlock of yesteryear. Early on, in New Hampshire, he proclaimed that his "rival in this race is not other candidates. It's cynicism."

Occasionally the Obama-Clinton argument was explicit (such as when they sparred over who was more important to the Civil Rights Act -- Martin Luther King Jr. or Lyndon Johnson), but it was always there, implicit in everything from their body language and stagecraft to position papers and platforms.

The great irony of it all is that it seems they were both wrong. Obama's rhetoric in fact looks to be the best way to achieve a Clintonian agenda. But a Clintonian agenda is the worst possible way to live up to Obama's rhetoric.

From his 2004 DNC keynote speech onward, Obama rejected the partisan divide. He earned points by insisting that invidious descriptions of political opponents were deleterious to civic health and distracted us from the fact that "we are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

In a speech following a June primary victory, Obama said he was "absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children ... this was the moment -- this was the time -- when we came together to remake this great nation."

So, does anyone feel like Americans are coming together? Obama the outsider hasn't changed the way Washington works; he's worked Washington in a way that only an outsider with no respect for the place would dare.

Consider his signature domestic priority: health care reform. After a year of working on it, his progressive base is either profoundly disappointed with him or seethingly angry. His Republican and conservative opponents are not only furious, they are emboldened. And independents -- who've been deserting the Democrats in polls and off-year elections -- are simply disgusted with the whole spectacle. Most important, an administration that once preened over its people-power roots can't even claim that Americans like what he's doing.

The bill does have its supporters: inside-the-Beltway pundits and Capitol Hill deal-makers, the pharmaceutical industry and the supposedly rapacious insurance companies (don't take my word for it, just ask Howard Dean -- or your stockbroker).

Under the Clintonian paradigm of governance, Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson's parlaying of his pro-life objections to the Senate bill into a windfall for his state and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' leveraging of his socialist principles for billions in special deals would be dramatic twists in a conventional story of LBJ-style arm-twisting.

But Clintonian means cannot further Obamaian ends. For the last year, Obama's party has made a mockery of everything Obama was supposed to represent. The tone has gotten worse as his communications staff spent the year demonizing Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called opponents of their health proposals "un-American." Over the weekend, Rhode Island's Sheldon Whitehouse insisted that Senate opposition is being driven in part by "Aryan support groups."

Everywhere you look, the sizzle doesn't match the steak. He won the Nobel Peace Prize as he (rightly) sent even more men off to war. He promised that the oceans would stop rising but delivered a nonbinding something-or-other in Copenhagen.

In his special health care address to Congress in September, he said, "I am not the first president to take up (the cause of health care reform), but I am determined to be the last." Those were just words, and everyone, including Obama, knew it. Indeed, the only grounds for supporting the bill, according to progressives, is that it is a "first step" or a "starter house" that they'll build on for years, even generations, to come. In other words, the health care debate is not only not going to end, it's going to get uglier for as far as the eye can see.

But here's the point: Obama's rhetorical audacity breeds cynicism, because utopianism always comes up short. Obama has many victories ahead of him, but his cause is already lost.

SOURCE

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"Shut up" is a favorite Democrat talking point

"This is not an administration that takes bad news well," Jennifer Rubin wrote on Commentary's blog, referring to Robert Gibbs' fit when asked to explain the Gallup poll showing the president taking on water, sinking into the high-to-mid 40s, and losing ground fast. Neither apparently does much of the left, which, faced with cratering numbers for both the health care proposals and for global warming, responded with all of the rational discourse and respect for debate and dissenting opinion that has made them so widely beloved.

First, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who emerged in the health care debate as the leading Republican anti-bill spokesman, was widely portrayed as sorry old coot acting from "bitterness," and who squandered his chance to establish a legacy by opposing the bill out of spite. He was a maverick, not an ex-Democrat, and his ally Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., fared even worse.

He was described as a "putz" by Jonathan Alter, as "the L-word" and as "Joe the Bummer" by Chris Matthews. He was also described as a traitor to Judaism by various bloggers -- by Jonathan Chait as the one Jew in the world too clueless to know what he's doing, and by Ezra Klein as a potential mass murderer, "willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score." Paul Krugman wanted him "hung in effigy," and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., urged he be "recalled" from office, though by whom was uncertain. Unfortunately, there is no provision in Connecticut law for recalls (much less for lynching) so they will have to wait for their chances in 2012.

In related news, Rep. Alan Grayson, Lunatic-Fla., known mainly for saying the Republicans' health plans called for asking the sick to "die quickly" and for telling former Vice President Cheney to "shut the f--k up," sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking the Department of Justice to investigate, fine, and perhaps send to jail for five years a Florida activist who reacted to his behavior by setting up a fundraising Web site called "mycongressmanisnuts.com." He complained that the blogger was "senseless and juvenile." "Just five years?" queried blogger Ed Morrissey. "Why doesn't Grayson just demand that Holder chop off her head?"

Then there was global warming, or the First Church of Al, where Al Gore sought refuge after the Florida recount and rapidly built a cult following. This was largely by warning that the Earth was in such danger from fossil fuel usage that in order to fight it he was compelled to jet all over the world spreading the message, and run up monstrous utility bills in his three or more homes.

When this cause was imperiled by e-mails showing that the global warming police had doctored the data -- and film showing Obama flying into a snowstorm on his trip to the summit at Copenhagen, Denmark, and then flying back into an even more extravagant blizzard in Washington -- certain members of the pundit-industrial complex responded by asking that news that impugned their consensus should be -- you guessed it -- suppressed.

ThinkProgress blogger Matt Yglesias complained that CNN ran a show called "Global Warming: Fact or Fiction" without taking sides on the side of the "Goracle," or saying that what he called the global warming "deniers" were totally out of their minds. He then said the news media -- along with the rest of what he called the elite of the country -- had a moral duty to the rest of humanity to censor their output, so that opinion contesting the "global climate-warming consensus" would never again see the light of the day.

At the New Republic, Ed Kilgore was in total agreement, blaming the mainstream press for being browbeaten by right-wing fanatics into thinking they ought to air different opinions, and even cover all of the news. Morals in this case seem to equal suppression. "Yglesias is right," he concluded. "This is one area of public policy where 'respect for contrary views' and 'editorial balance' are misplaced."

What a good thing Democrats are the party of logic and reason. They might tell their critics to "Shut the f--k up."

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Ala. Dem defects to GOP over health care, policy: "A U.S. House Democrat who opposes the health care overhaul announced Tuesday he is defecting to the GOP, another blow to Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith spoke to reporters at his home in northern Alabama, a region that relies heavily on defense and aerospace jobs. ‘I believe our nation is at a crossroads and I can no longer align myself with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy, and drives us further and further into debt,’ Griffith said as his wife Virginia stood by his side.”

Griffith party switch: Will other Dems follow suit?: "Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith’s surprise switch of parties on Tuesday shows how quickly electoral dynamics are shifting under the weight of massive social and economic policy gambits in Washington. In fact, Mr. Griffith’s defection could put pressure on other conservative and even moderate Democrats, especially in the Deep South, to jump ship to save their seats. They’ve been encountering backlash from the public against a Democrat-controlled progressive agenda in Washington. Griffith took over the seat of retiring congressman Robert ‘Bud’ Cramer (D) last year. Now, the freshman lawmaker is angry about being marginalized in the Democratic power structure. An oncologist, Griffith voted against healthcare reform, as well as against the stimulus package and cap-and-trade legislation.”

Obama, left behind: "Boy, this ‘Obama Derangement Syndrome’ really has gotten out of hand. Why, just this past week the decreasingly popular president has been called a ‘bald-faced liar,’ ‘an executive who can’t bring himself to lead,’ and even an ‘Uncle Tom.’ And that’s just by liberals. The progressive crack-up, before Obama even reaches the end of his first year, has been an awesome and occasionally humorous sight to see.”

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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Nearly 60 percent Say President Obama’s Decisions ‘Bad for America’

A majority of Americans believe an increased government role in health care would lead to more government corruption, while a plurality of Americans think that scientific data supporting man-made global warming is “mostly falsified.” That is what a new poll by Survey USA reveals. The poll also shows that 58 percent of Americans believe that decisions by the Obama administration have been “bad for America,” as opposed to 37 percent who think Obama’s decisions have been “good for America.”

These poll numbers come at a time when President Barack Obama is pushing for international agreement to address apparent global warming and is also advocating for a major overhaul of health care in America.

The poll of 1,450 adults by Survey USA was conducted Dec. 11-14, and was commissioned by the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch. The poll asked questions on several topics, including government corruption, transparency, illegal immigration and the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN). Specifically, the poll asked, “Do you think data suggesting global warming is the result of human activity is mostly genuine? Or mostly falsified?” A plurality of 49 percent answered “mostly falsified,” while 41 percent answered “mostly genuine” and 10 percent were unsure.

Evidence about global warming has come under fire in recent weeks after hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit apparently revealed that contrary evidence was suppressed while organized efforts apparently were made to discredit critics.

The health care overhaul proposal supported by Obama and congressional Democrats has been unpopular in most polls. This poll, however, asked, “Would an increased government role in the health care system lead to more corruption? Less corruption? Or will it make no difference?”

An overwhelming 62 percent said “more corruption,” just 14 percent said “less corruption” and 21 percent said it would “make no difference.” Four percent were unsure.

While other polls have showed Obama’s approval rating slipping below 50 percent, this poll asked, “As a whole, are the decisions being made by the Obama administration good for America? Or bad for America?” To that, 58 percent answered “bad for America,” 37 percent said good and 6 percent were not sure.

“On virtually every single issue polled, the Obama administration appears to be completely out of step with the prevailing views of the American people,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It ought to be an especially troubling sign for President Obama that the majority of likely voters believe his decisions have been bad for the country. Frankly, these poll results suggest that President Obama and many other politicians ought to rethink their approach to government.”

The poll further showed that 64 percent of voters think the government is too big and that 62 percent think that bigger government leads to more corruption. Also, 72 percent think political corruption play a “major role” in the financial crisis last year.

The poll also found that 56 percent think the federal government is operating “out of line” with the U.S. Constitution.

In regards to the scandal-plagued ACORN, just 8 percent have a favorable view of the liberal activist group currently under investigation in several states for alleged voter registration fraud. A clear majority of 56 percent have a negative view of ACORN.

Obama also supports a comprehensive immigration reform package, which opponents believe is “amnesty” for illegal aliens. The poll showed an unfavorable rating here too, as 59 percent disapprove of the way the administration is handling illegal immigration.

Among those polled, 1,020 said they were likely to vote in the 2010 elections for U.S. Congress. The margin of error for the poll ranged from 2.6 percent to 3.1 percent.

SOURCE

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Eurabia vs. Israel on Jerusalem

The recent Swiss vote to ban minarets was seen by many as a further indication that European populations are waking up to the threat of Europe’s Islamization and the need to stop the trend. If so, the European Union—the centralized bureaucracy that, as documented in Bat Ye’or’s important book Eurabia, went “over the heads” of European publics to meld the European and Arab/Muslim civilizations in the first place—still hasn’t caught up and remains locked in a pro-Arab/Muslim disposition.

At least, the EU’s stance on Jerusalem would suggest so. Last week the new EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, “came down hard on the Israeli government” in her maiden speech to the European Parliament and said: “East Jerusalem is occupied territory together with the West Bank. The EU is opposed to the destruction of homes, the eviction of Arab residents and the construction of the separation barrier.”

Her words prompted Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon to reply: “Just as the Romans did not succeed in cutting off Jerusalem from Israel, so too will diplomats from the UN and the EU be unsuccessful as well.”

Ashton, previously the EU’s trade commissioner and expected to be given considerable authority as a new sort of EU foreign minister, also called Israel’s recently launched ten-month moratorium on settlement construction a “first step”—representing, as the EUobserver comments, “a cooler tone than EU foreign ministers who last week took ‘positive note’ of the move.”

The EUobserver also pointed out that the speech was: “significant for what it left out: Ms Ashton did not say that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, that it faces a security threat from Palestinian ‘terrorists’ or that Palestinians should immediately return to formal peace talks—the classic tenets of Israeli supporters.”

Ashton’s statements also come hard on the heels of an EU-Israel spat over Jerusalem in which the EU explicitly called for East Jerusalem to become the capital of a Palestinian state. That demand was later only partially toned-down under intense Israeli objections.

In other words, even at a time when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly accepted the call for a Palestinian state and enraged part of his right-wing base with the settlement moratorium, the EU keeps reflexively embracing Arab/Muslim positions. As always, the EU’s stance on Jerusalem ignores several facts.

Jerusalem was unified under Israeli sovereignty in 1967, after nineteen years in which Jordan illegally occupied the city and finally used it to attack Israel despite being implored by Israel to keep out of the fighting.

Under Israeli rule, Muslims and all other groups (except Jews—on the Temple Mount itself) have enjoyed full freedom of worship—a stark contrast to the nineteen years of Jordanian rule when Jews and Christians were denied access to Jerusalem’s holy places and Jewish synagogues and gravestones were destroyed and desecrated.

Muslims already have full control over Mecca, Medina, and countless sacred locales and shrines throughout the vast Muslim world, and their demand for Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem and the redivision of Israel’s capital can reasonably be regarded as excessive – especially when, as noted, Israel gives Muslims full access to their Jerusalem shrines and full rights in the city.

Indeed, Jerusalem is full of minarets, and any visitor to its Old City or its Arab neighborhoods can attest to the vibrancy of Muslim religious life there. The EU should be more concerned with Islamization on the continent than with taking harsh stances against Israel as it struggles to survive and to find the right mix of accommodation and steadfastness in an Arab/Muslim environment hostile its very existence.

But for the EU, after decades of forsaking its Judeo-Christian roots for pro-Arabism, that may be too much to expect. Even if European populations are starting to grasp the consequences of this civilizational self-abnegation, Europe’s Brussels-based bureaucracy remains willfully ignorant of the stakes

SOURCE

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Who is more respected by the people, Sarah Palin or Al Gore?

One is a former vice presidential candidate who has been vilified in much of the press. The other is a former two-term vice president who has been celebrated in much of the press. So which is more respected by the public at large?

In the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released a few days ago, pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff asked, "I'm going to mention some people who have served in public life at some point in the past decade. Please tell me which one or two of these people, if any, you have the most regard and respect for." The list was filled with the predictable answers. The president was on top, named by 28 percent of respondents. Colin Powell was also way up there. But the striking thing is that Sarah Palin, after all the criticism that has been directed at her, finished tied for sixth place, respected by 13 percent of respondents, and Al Gore, after all the praise that has been directed at him, was in eighth place, respected by eight percent. (The poll was taken just before the global warming fiasco in Copenhagen, which seems unlikely to have a positive effect Gore's ratings.)

Hart and McInturff also posed the question the other way around, asking respondents who they have "the least regard and respect for." Gore tied for third place on that list, with 19 percent, while Palin was in fourth place, with 16 percent.

The poll also found that Palin's positive ratings have ticked up a bit, while her negatives have ticked downward. Fourteen percent of respondents say they have very positive feelings toward Palin; 18 percent have somewhat positive feelings; 23 percent are neutral; 14 percent are somewhat negative; and 26 percent are very negative. Her very positive and somewhat positive ratings are up a combined five points since October, while her very negative and somewhat negative ratings are down a combined six points.

One interesting thing about Palin's rating in the new poll is that the percentage of people who don't like her has not much changed from October, 2008, the moment when she was most popular. Back then, a combined 37 percent of respondents had very or somewhat negative feelings toward her. Now, the combined number is 40 percent. If you didn't like her then, you don't like her now. But the ranks of the Palin dislikers have not actually grown very much.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Oinking at the Trough: "Democrats in Washington have become completely oblivious to the fact that our money is not their money. They're like a bunch of fat, greedy kids in a candy store, charging their gluttony to someone else -- that would be us, the American taxpayers. Over at NRO, Daniel Foster totes up the expensive goodies that Democrats inserted into the health care bill. And Donald Lambro details more fat larded into the appropriations bill, also passed by Democrats largely on a party line vote. Remarkably, there is a 12% spending increase -- even as regular Americans remain unemployed and those not supping at the government trough continue to cut back. It may be that "love means never having to say you're sorry," but it's certain that working for the government means never having to live within your means."

The "Nazi Pope" myth lives on -- among people who should know better: "The founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center voiced dismay and disappointment Monday at weekend Vatican moves to raise controversial wartime pope Pius XII to sainthood. The Vatican sparked anger in Jewish communities worldwide with moves to nudge Pius — whose beatification process was launched in 1967 — closer to sainthood, its ultimate honor. The Catholic Church argues that Pius saved many Jews who were hidden away in religious institutions, and that his silence during the Holocaust — when millions of Jews were exterminated by Germany’s Nazi regime — was born out of a wish to avoid aggravating their situation. But others believe Pius’s inaction when it mattered to the lives of so many was appallingly wrong.” [There is still a lot of hatred for ALL Christians among Jews. More on Pius XII here and here]

Government imposes three-hour limit on tarmac strandings: "Stinky toilets, crying babies, airless cabins — the Obama administration said Monday passengers don’t have to take it any more. It ordered airlines to let people get off planes delayed on the ground after three hours. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the three-hour limit and other new regulations are meant to send an unequivocal message to airlines not to hold passengers hostage on stuck planes. Coming on the eve of the busy holiday travel season, the announcement was hailed by consumer advocates as ‘a Christmas miracle.’”

CDC: 2/3 of cocaine being cut with dangerous drug: "If you’re doing cocaine, chances are this story will not make you quit. But it may make you think twice about your supplier. A new report by the Centers for Disease Control follows 21 cases of the otherwise rare disorder known as agranulocytosis, which is hallmarked by a severe weakening of immune function. The condition is brought on by the drug levamisole, which used to be given to colon cancer patients. It is also widely used to deworm cattle. Citing the Drug Enforcement Agency, the CDC report claimed that 69 percent of all cocaine seized at US borders contains levamisole. The average concentration was near 10 percent. Tainted cocaine was also seized in New Mexico and Washington.”

Fallacious Political psychology: "Even before the Senate voted on cloture, the Democrats’ health-care legislation was already delivering benefits in the form of a free mental-health screening delivered by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: If you oppose this bill, you’re a dangerous nut. Such was the essence of Sunday’s floor speech in which the junior senator from Rhode Island quoted at length from Richard Hofstadter’s 1965 classic, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and offered it as a diagnosis of the health bill’s opponents.” [Some more rejoinders to such comments here, here and here]

The reprehensible Murtha "cleared": "While everyone is understandably obsessed with whether or not the Senate will pass this monstrosity of a health care bill, Congress decided they wouldn't find a better time to announce this news: "The Office of Congressional Ethics has closed its investigation into Reps. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) and their relationships to the lobbying firm PMA Group, and the OCE advised against a formal House ethics investigation, the lawmakers’ offices said Friday. George Behan, Dicks’ chief of staff, said the OCE, which reviews potential rules violations and refers investigations to the House ethics committee, informed the Washington lawmaker on Dec. 2 that it had recommended the inquiry be dismissed."

Chris Brand's Christmas greetings to readers are now up --in his usual "incorrect" style.

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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One year after Gaza invasion, Israel proved right

On my understanding, there WERE a few rockets fired into Israel after the IDF withdrew from Gaza but the bombardment did stop shortly thereafter -- JR

It's something that has largely gone unnoticed but, with Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech winning praise for his defense of war in the name of peace, it is a good time to point out, that in the year since Israel invaded Gaza, they accomplished what they had to do. There has not been one single rocket attack launched into Israel from Gaza. None.

It's important to remember this not only in light of Obama's speech and his defense of war in Afghanistan, but to remember the criticism of Israel's invasion of Gaza from around the world, mostly from people who were thousands of miles away from the rocket attacks and were not, nor their families, at risk.

At the time, many of them criticized Israel's invasion to defend its citizens against Hamas' rocket attacks and many criticized Israel for a "disproportionate" use of force, an argument that is both practically,intellectually and morally bankrupt ( if a criminal comes at you with a knife you are not obligated to make it an equal fight and come back at him with a knife -- if you have a gun, you shoot him in self-defense).

This reminder is also timely in light of the absurdity of a British magistrate issuing an arrest warrant for war crimes for Tzipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister during the Gaza invasion and one of three Israeli officials who were overseers of the invasion.

There were countless complaints of civilian casualties and what was called human rights violations. But the charges were baseless. There was no intention of the IDF to kill civilians but since Hamas used civilian structures to make their bombs and rockets destroying those facilities were necessary. If anyone was guilty of war crimes it was Hamas.

The fact is war is war. And that was a war started by Hamas as has all the wars in that region been started by those who sought to destroy Israel. And in war innocent people unfortunately become victims. Hamas should know. They have waged war for years by attacking unarmed civilians and using their own civilian populations as shields, hoping the Israelis had more respect for the lives of their own people than they did.

Israel ignored these complaints from the international community, doing what it thought was best for their own country and they have been proved right once again. There have been no more attacks. What's more, Hamas knows Israel will do it again with devastating effects on the Gaza infrastructure, economy, and Hamas itself, if any other such attacks are launched. And it is that deterrence that has kept the peace. Not the absurdity of the British government issuing warrants for war crimes.

SOURCE

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Stockholm syndrome? Jews who won't support their allies

Why don't Jews support those who support them? Last week, on December 13, Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) held a protest rally in what can only be described as an Islamic fortress in the heart of Harrow, England. I strongly urged Jews to attend. Islamic anti-Semitism is more poisonous and more dangerous than even Nazism was to the Jews. The promise of Jewish genocide is made "sacred" by Islamic texts such as the one in which Muhammad says that the end times will not come until the Muslims kill the Jews, and the Jews hide behind trees, which then cry out, "O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him."

The SIOE demonstration was against the building of a mosque there, and the larger issues of the advance of Sharia and Islamization in the United Kingdom. SIOE pointed out the words of the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and Muslims our soldiers..."

Political parties, racist chanting, banners and placards, and totalitarian symbols such as Nazi swastikas, communist hammer and sickles, and the Islamic star and crescent were banned. The initial announcement of the demonstration asked those attending to bring one thousand Israeli flags, and said: "SIOE supports Israel's right to defend itself against Islamist attempts to annihilate Jews." SIOE called on Jews living in London or within travelling distance of London to attend the demonstration, saying that "vile anti-Semitism is being preached in mosques across the world and almost certainly the one in your neighbourhood....Non-Jews are demonstrating on 13th December against the anti-Semitism being taught in mosques which goes unchallenged by politicians, the media and so-called ‘moderate' Muslims. Jews cannot, in all conscience, leave it to non-Jews to protest on the behalf of Jews who are once again the world's whipping boy."

But they did. The Community Security Trust, a leading Jewish group in Britain, urged the Jewish community there not to support the demonstration. The CST said in a statement that it "has drawn attention to the Islamaphobic comments on SIOE's website, and compared the group to the English Defence League, and the BNP's Nick Griffin, who have attempted to gain support from Jews through pro-Israel and anti-Muslim statements.... A demonstration against Harrow mosque under the banner ‘Stop the Islamisation of Europe', is as stupid and offensive as a demonstration against Harrow synagogue, under the banner ‘Stop the Zionisation of Europe.'"

Once again leftist Jews were lying and deceiving to advance the aims of the enemies of Jews and Jewish life. Stephen Gash of SIOE responded: "I have stood several times in elections against the BNP and what they stand for. Equating synagogues to mosques is reprehensible in my view. When terrorists leave synagogues to blow up planes and tube trains then we at SIOE might reconsider our position. Until that happens we will continue to support Israel and the right of Jews to exist and to defend themselves."

Rabbis attacked the campaign also. They said that SIOE's "only purpose" was "to spread hatred and fear," and wrote: "We share the desire of the Muslim community of Harrow to respect our mutual traditions, to learn from each other's cultures and ways of life, and to live together in peace." Even the Rabbis abandon Israel when the going gets rough. These morally ill rabbis have lost their basic instinct of self-preservation.

The Jewish Chronicle even went so far as to gloat when attendance was small. Did the Chronicle ask why so few people attended this demonstration in a town where the majority does not want this mosque? The majority knows what's happening in their country and fear it. But the Chronicle did not restate the obvious -- that people did not attend out of fear.

Did the Jewish Chronicle cover the Death to the Jews protests back in January? Does the Jewish Chronicle cover the ongoing jihad against the Jews?

Much like the Jewish councils of World War II Germany that helped assist in what would become the extermination of the Jews, we are witnessing Jewish groups like the CST aiding and abetting Islamic jihad and Islamic anti-Semitism. I see the Muslim community doing nothing to expunge their texts and their teachings of the virulent Jew hatred that fills the Koran and Hadith.

Jewish history is littered with these traitors. The failure of the Jews stand up and fight this century's Philistines after thousands of years of persecution is difficult to swallow. The death wish of the Jews....it is to break the heart. When has the Muslim community ever stood against ‘divisive' anti-Jewish protesters? I ask you. Where were Muslims during the death to Jews marches across the UK during the defensive in Gaza? Where are the Muslim groups and Jewish groups demanding that Jew hatred be expunged from the Koran and Islamic teachings?

Jews should have stood with SIOE. These cowards put all Jews at risk. If you are too scared to stand up, then shut up!

SOURCE

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On the Collapsing US Dollar

While I am normally not much of a fan of The New York Times, one of their articles in November 2009 about the ballooning US national debt is worth quoting. The White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the national debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion in 2009, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher. Although other industrialized countries have heavy debt loads, too, the United States is a special case because of its sheer size.

Put simple, had the United States been a private person he would have been declared bankrupt by now and put under administration by the bank. But the United States is not a private person; it is still the world’s largest economy and with huge armed forces. It is worth quoting Takuan Seiyo in one of the installments of his brilliant From Meccania to Atlantis series:

“The strongest, most admired country in the world until just a few years ago is now a cautionary tale of the wages of sin and stupidity told to Chinese schoolchildren. A nation that works for a living can weather perhaps even such great storms. But the jobs of the American lower class have been outsourced to imported Mexicans. The jobs of the American middle class have been exported to China and India. The jobs of the American upper-middle class have been taken from the white males who held them by merit, and given to resentful identity groups that hold them by the fiat of the government’s preferred skin colors and favored genitalia. And thejobs of the American upper class have been reprogrammed from leadership and service, to ripping off the less clever via lawyering, banksterism, and padding one’s golden CEO parachute, and then expiation via funding and leading socialist NGOs. A freefalling dollar cannot help by increasing exports, when you have off-shored your manufacturing, and your main industries are predatory lawsuits, selling shoddy American housing to Salvadorians with faked mortgages, and marketing financial weapons of mass destruction worldwide. And a falling dollar is not a good inducement for the world to keep buying dollar-denominated U.S. debt. The cessation of that buying has such dire consequences tothe United States that Chinese strategists have named them ‘the nuclear option.’”

I have sometimes encountered Americans online who are convinced that they will face an armed conflict with a rising China in the future. Perhaps. But they often seem to take it for granted that such a conflict will be triggered by Chinese aggression against “foreign devils.” I’m not so sure about that. Right now I don’t see what interest the Chinese should have in provoking a war. They are currently behaving smarter than the Americans in many respects. I suspect that the Chinese are quite happy with selling cheap toasters tothe United States while their presidents are bankrupting the country by making the world safe for sharia, their businesses are outsourcing jobs to Asia and their universities are educating Asian students.

The USA, on the other hand, is a country with a massive national debt and large armed forces, a potent combination which has facilitated wars in the past. I don’t rule out the possibility that Chinese nationalists could create trouble at some point but frankly, if there is a war between China and the United States in the near future it may well be triggered by the USA, not China.

Whether the Americans, whose armed forces are infiltrated by Muslim Jihadists and Mexican gang members, would win a conventional war is a different matter. After the Muslim Nidal Hasan killed many of his fellow soldiers the US military intensified its efforts to recruit more Muslims to the military. Recruiting people from hostile cultures to protect your country is the behavior of nations that want to die, and apparently, that is what the West now wants to do.

The US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for “saving” the global economy. Man of the Year, as the award was called before our gender neutral age, has earlier been awarded to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin (twice), the Ayatollah Khomeini and other distinguished gentlemen, so Mr. Bernanke is in good company.

Yet as the insightful financial observer Karl Denninger states, “Bernanke’s actions have singularly done more damage to the American economy - and America - than anyone in the history of this nation. He clearly eclipses Nixon in his dissembling, while making a mockery of the free market.” This is because “By encouraging the bubble economy during Greenspan's time in The Fed (Bernanke was the chief agitator for 1% interest rates - and holding them too low during the early part of the 2000s) and trying to restart the bubble economy this time around through both ZIRP and intentional distortions through the credit markets, shielding those who made bad decisions while cramming the inflationary pressures down the throat of trading partners, Bernanke has guaranteed the loss of global reserve currency status for The Dollar. Our Senate is too stupid to recognize this and stop his re-nomination.”

Regarding the financial crisis of 2008, Denninger comments that “We have fixed nothing in the last two years.” In his view, “…the root problem is an excessive level of debt in the system at all levels, a level of debt that exceeds capacity to pay, and as a consequence any and all attempts to restart the credit-driven consumption economy would fail, and if pressed too far the government will fail. The evidence strongly suggests that you are getting awfully close to your last chance to stop being stupid before the market hands you a lesson that has the potential to destroy both our economy and government.”

In case Europeans believe that the EU is in a much better shape, the same man also claims that the Eurozone is “an absolute train wreck” which is “dancing with jugs of nitroglycerine.”

The price of gold will probably continue to rise. Investors buy precious metals because they no longer trust many currencies, above all the US dollar, and they are right to distrust the dollar. Although the price of gold has already risen significantly, the expatriate American investor Jim Rogers believes this is not a bubble since virtually nobody still owns gold. As a friend of mine comments, “I think gold is going to hold the level for a while now, for some months bordering to half a year. Then, due to the money-printing, the sky will be the limit.”

I have heard several people who are into precious metals state that silver is currently preferable to gold, and platinum may be a good bet as well. Exactly which precious metal is better I will leave to the experts, but a combination of all three might be sensible, in addition to property or other assets. This could be one of the few cases where “diversity” really is a good thing. An ancient and time-tested advice is to never put all of your eggs in one basket.

According to blogger Dennis Mangan, “While predictions are difficult to make, especially about the future, Williams marshals the facts that support his analysis. Runaway government spending, aided and abetted by massive printing of dollars by the Federal reserve, have doomed the dollar. It is only a matter of timing. A hyperinflation will be accompanied by political upheaval and, in my opinion, could see the end of the U.S. as we know it. What shape that upheaval would take is anyone's guess.”

Not all observers agree that the USA is facing a hyperinflation; there are those who believe the result will rather be a serious deflation. Whatever will be the end result it is quite evident thatthe United States is now headed for turbulent times, financially and politically. Since ethnic diversity is rapidly increasing and national cohesion is decreasing correspondingly, a Second American Civil War could be considered one of several possible outcomes.

Frankly, I suspect that more or less the entire Western world is heading for serious financial instability and Multicultural tribalistic violence in the coming generation. The most important thing that the common man can do in such turbulent times is to be mentally and physically prepared to protect the life and property of his family as best as he can until the dust settles. This includes having guns and ammunition as well as money. All things considered I believe that Americans and Westerners in general would be smart to invest some of their savings in metals as soon as possible, starting with gold, silver and lead, not necessarily in that order.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Judge mulls key issues in US murder trial: "A judge is weighing a critical legal question in the case of a man who confessed to killing one of the few late-term abortion providers in the U.S.: Can the man claim at his trial that the slaying was justified to save the lives of unborn children? Scott Roeder, a 51-year-old Kansas City, Missouri, man, is charged with one count of premeditated, first-degree murder in Dr. George Tiller’s death and two counts of aggravated assault for allegedly threatening two ushers during the May 31 melee in the foyer of the doctor’s Wichita church.”

Dodd slips $100 million for hospital into “reform” bill: "A $100 million item for construction of a university hospital was inserted in the Senate health care bill at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who faces a difficult re-election campaign, his office said Sunday night. The legislation leaves it up to the Health and Human Services Department to decide where the money should be spent, although spokesman Bryan DeAngelis said Dodd hopes to claim it for the University of Connecticut.”

More homosexual aggression: "A Memphis attorney is being sued in connection with biting off a portion of a man’s nose at a Midtown restaurant. In a lawsuit filed this week by Greg Herbers, 48, local trial attorney Mark Lambert is accused of biting off part of Herbers’ nose during a fight last June at Dish in Cooper Young. The dispute started when Herbers, a self-employed hairstylist, entered the restroom around 9 p.m. and noticed the one stall was occupied by two men ‘performing some activity other than going to the bathroom.’ Herbers claims that when he told the men he needed to use the toilet, Lambert, who was standing at the urinal but appeared to know the men in the stall, became aggressive.”

In praise of Sweden: "We’re all familiar with the idea that Sweden is a social democratic hellhole where you cannot keep even an extra penny or krone for yourself but it gets taxed off you and used for the benefit of ’society.’ But as our Danish correspondent has been pointing out here those Nordic social democracies are not quite as they seem. High tax rates, yes, high levels of redistribution, yes, but underneath that social democratic bonnet there’s (to use the phrase of one commentator here) a surprisingly liberal capitalist economy purring along.” [See also some of my comments on Sweden here -- JR]

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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Freedom doesn’t have to ask the government for permission

The federal government was created by people who were sick and tired of a king’s government that controlled every facet of life. They wrote a Constitution that explicitly limited the power of the new government. Under this new government, individuals were free to pursue happiness as they chose. In 200 years, this new nation of free people created prosperity unmatched in all of history.

While free people were busy pursuing their happiness, others were free to pursue political power. Throughout the 20th century, a cancer grew in the very fabric of freedom. The idea that the role of government is to provide for its citizens is a return to the dark ages when the prevailing thought was that without the protection of a benevolent government (king), man’s life was, as Thomas Hobbes put it, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

The people who share Hobbes’ philosophy have been called by many labels over the years, but they all fit rather nicely into the ideas expressed most eloquently in modern times by Karl Marx.

It matters not what labels are pinned on the people who want to put government in charge of individual lives; what matters is that freedom cannot exist when it requires the permission of government. Freedom cannot co-exist with a government that insists on controlling its citizens

The people who have found life to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” are eager for government to take control of their lives, and the lives - and fortunes - of those people whose pursuit of happiness has produced prosperity. When government assumes control it can “spread the wealth around.”

The war in Washington is far more than a battle between political parties; it is a war for the survival of America. Forget the labels; forget the political affiliation. Focus on the people who believe that America must remain a nation that honors its’ Constitution and cherishes the freedom of every individual. These are the people who must be elected. People who want to transform the foundation of America must be rejected. Freedom cannot co-exist with a government that insists on controlling its citizens.

For generations, government has been moving away from the idea of Constitutional limitations. Now, Congress no longer even pays lip-service to the Article 1, Section 8 Congressional limitations of power. Now, led by a devout, admitted, “wealth-spreader,” the federal government is moving rapidly to bury all traces of individual freedom. The new government now under construction will require that the pursuit of happiness begin at the desk of a federal bureaucrat, and follow only the path prescribed by government.

The federal government has already imposed, or is imposing, what is called Sustainable Development. This “sound-good” label obscures the control that government exercises over where an individual may live, what type of transportation must be used, and even the kind of materials that may be used in his home. This is not freedom; this is tyranny.

Government has taken control of land use through wetland, critical habitat, urban boundary zones, and other control mechanisms. Government is attempting to take control over all water in the United States, as well as the activities that may affect water (S-787).

Government ignored its Constitutional limitation when it used its citizens’ money to bail out those financial institutions it favored, while allowing others to go broke. Government didn’t even consider the Constitution when it fired the CEO of General Motors, reorganized a private corporation and used tax dollars to buy a controlling interest.

Government is taking control over energy use by declaring carbon dioxide to be a pollutant, and allowing the EPA to regulate it. Government is attempting to create a “cap & trade” program that will not only control the energy available to individuals, but will also produce windfall profits for the government at the expense of the individual.

Nothing in the Constitution authorizes the government to take control of the health care industry. Nevertheless, legislation now pending will create more than 100 new bureaucracies to take control of virtually every facet of health care.

The federal government has become the tyrannical king that our forefathers fought so hard to cast off. The next two elections will determine whether the great American experiment succeeds – or not. The current majority in Washington, which obviously rejects the idea of limited government and individual freedom, must be removed, or at least significantly reduced, in 2010. In 2012, a whole new regime must capture the Capitol.

Support those who support the Constitution. Only candidates who demonstrate their reverence for the Constitution by pledging to vote only for legislation that cites its Constitutional authority should be elected. The people who must be removed from Washington are those who vote for government’s takeover of all water, energy use, or health care. There is no way a politician can “preserve, protect, and defend” the U.S. Constitution while allowing the government to ignore the limitations imposed upon it by the Constitution.

Patriots must look beyond party affiliation to see how individual politicians vote. Support those who support the Constitution and its principles of freedom. Reject all others.

SOURCE

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The Party of Repeal

In 1994, Republicans seized control of Congress, largely due to their Contract With America pledge which resonated with the electorate. The same concept will work for the 2010 election — if Republicans have the guts and the foresight to run with it. Note I used the word "concept," because this time their pledge should center around a completely different set of promises.

To begin with, Republicans must understand that Democrats and their media lapdogs are unwittingly doing them a huge favor by referring to them as obstructionists for refusing to abide Democrats' intention to socialize America. They should take that obstructionist label and double down on it: Republicans must become the "Party of Repeal." To wit:

If Democrats pass government-run health insurance, Republicans must first tell Americans they want no part of it — and them tell them that if they become a majority in 2010, they will repeal it.

Ditto for a host of other leftist agendas. Cap-and-trade passes? We'll "unpass" it. Terrorist trials in civilian courts? We'll overturn the Attorney General's decision by crafting a law stating that all non-citizen terrorists will stand before military tribunals. Democrats pass illegal immigration "reform?" We'll toss it overboard and enforce the laws already on the books — and we'll also cut federal funds to all "sanctuary cities" until they comply with those laws.

Runaway government spending? We'll peg federal spending to inflation and population growth, and come up with a realistic plan to reduce federal debt — including a pledge that no Republican will ever again add a single earmark to any federal bill. Democrats raise taxes? We'll lower them and get America working again.

Gutsy? Only if Republicans ignore the reality that Americans identify themselves as forty percent conservative, thirty-five percent independent and twenty-one percent liberal. Only if they have managed to miss the stunning uptick in people supportive of Tea Party Americans who have prospered despite a relentless bashing by the mainstream media and Democrats.

Only if they don't understand that one of the primal fears of most Americans is that once a government program is enacted, it is forever.

Republicans can make it crystal clear that nothing is forever, especially anything which has the capacity to undermine two hundred and thirty three years of individualism, freedom and prosperity.

If Republicans need reassurance that standing against rampant liberalism is a potential winner, perhaps they should cast their collective gaze toward Florida where their own "machine politician," Charlie Crist, has just been caught from behind by conservative upstart — and virtual unknown — Marco Rubio. This is happening despite Crist's huge advantage with regard to both campaign funding and name recognition. At the very least, such a startling development should tell them that Republicans are fed up with the status quo. Add the gubernatorial victory of Chris Christie in bluer-than-blue New Jersey — by an "ACORN-proof" one hundred thousand vote margin — and maybe Republicans might get the idea that moderates are ripe for the taking as well.

Moderates plus conservatives? Even the most math-challenged Republicans should be inspired by the possibilities.

One of the great strategies in selling anything is to turn a negative into a positive. Democrats and the media have excoriated Republicans, labeling them the "Party of No." Republicans should wear that label like a badge of honor — if they truly care about the country. A sizable majority of Americans are fed up with big — and getting bigger — government. If Republicans can't see that, they're comatose.

SOURCE

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A lesson from Greece for America

If you don't think heavy regulation, elephantine bureaucracies, union rule and runaway spending amount to poison for an economy, take a gander at what decades of such socialist policies have done to Greece. Last week, the tiny Balkan state seemed like a blazing house threatening to set the rest of its European Union neighborhood on fire.

It started when Greece earned the first of two sovereign downgrades from ratings agency Fitch over its $436 billion budget deficit. Then Standard & Poor's cut Greece to BBB+ from A- and sternly warned that if the government didn't get serious about controlling its spending, the downgrade wouldn't be its last. Through the week, investors dumped Greek bonds, and word rose that Greece would need a bailout from the European Union.

European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel loudly said no to that Wednesday, but it didn't help. By Thursday, Greece's problem became Europe's problem, with the euro tumbling to a three-month low against the dollar while U.S. Treasury prices -- a traditional safe haven for sovereign investors -- soared. On Friday, S&P announced "a more pronounced and faster economic deterioration than we previously anticipated" for Greece, with a "protracted hard landing" next.

The whole crisis has a perfectly logical basis: Greece's budget deficit is more than four times higher than the European Union's 3% ceiling and stands at 12.7% of GDP. Its gross debt, at 112% of GDP, indicates it has more debt than productive output. And its socialist government has no credible plan to quit spending. Years of embedded socialism -- in spending, labor and regulatory practices -- are responsible. They've enabled the government to consume the very economy that's supposed to sustain it.

Even supposedly right-of-center parties spent state cash the same way. The last party in power was nominally conservative, but failed to stop expansion of government. It kept hiring, kowtowed to union demands for fear of strikes and did little to change the culture's gimme-gimme mentality. Bureaucrats were hired like there was no tomorrow. These state employees are union members who can never be fired no matter how nasty, lazy or corrupt. Layers of such people go into ministries as payoffs for political favors.

The newly elected socialist prime minister, George Papandreou, claims he's cleaning up. He has denounced corruption and asked to freeze public hiring and pay. He has proposed to cut social security 10%, perhaps privatize state firms and gut military expenditures -- easy to do with the U.S. doing the heavy lifting in Afghanistan.

Papandreou still can't bring himself to lay the blame where it belongs -- on big government. Instead, he makes bankers the scapegoat, calling for a 90% tax on bank bonuses and vowing to end tax exemptions for everyone else to raise more revenues for the state. His own party blames foreigners. "This group dismisses Greece's financial predicament as a short-lived west European conspiracy to discredit the socialist government," according to a socialist policymaker quoted in the Financial Times.

Papandreou also has vowed to protect the little guys in the bureaucracy, making them immune to discipline even if they protest meager cuts. Already the communist labor union PAME has roused 5,000 teachers and hospital workers to strike, warning Papandreou to cut nothing and blaming the "greedy" private sector. "Papandreou, remember who elected you," the strikers shouted. Newspapers followed with their own work stoppage, and two of the bigger Greek unions warned the government to go gore someone else's ox.

With a shrinking private sector, that's getting harder. One in four Greeks is employed by the state, and 422,000 Greeks -- 10% of the work force -- are unemployed. Salaries and prices are as high as Germany's, but productivity is not. Job mobility is the most rigid in Europe. In 2009, Greece ranked second worst in Europe on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom.

This culmination of years of runaway socialism has left the public resentful, bitter and unwilling to pay taxes. "Why should I pay?" a Greek citizen told the New York Times. "I don't care about my government, I don't care about my country." Greece may be Europe's problem for now, but the lesson should not be lost on the rest of us.

SOURCE

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The Bondage of Debt

Obama's huge spending has already devalued the dollar, which means that the low prices Americans have been accustomed to pay for goods made overseas will rise -- thus making everyone poorer -- as a dollar buys less. And that process is just beginning

In the Old Testament book of Proverbs, King Solomon details the differences in thought, word, and deed between a wise man and a fool. In addressing the foolishness associated with borrowing money, he makes clear the relationship between debt and servitude: No man can truly be free when he is bound by financial indebtedness to another. It's clear, however, that the danger of debt is something a majority of the American people—including members of Congress and our President—have yet to take seriously. Even though our national debt is spiraling out of control, we appear unwilling to change our spendthrift ways.

Congress has just taken action to increase our national debt limit by $290 billion—bringing our debt ceiling to a whopping $12.4 trillion. This, after two years of unprecedented spending during which time we accrued the same amount of debt that we accumulated in the first 200 years of our nation's history. No matter how much money Uncle Sam extracts for his coffers, however, it appears it's never enough. The demand for entitlements continues to grow and liberals in government are only too willing to accommodate that demand by expanding the power of the nanny state. Contemporary society has been taught that when it comes to the world of finance, credit is king. Credit, we are told, is how we finance the good life. When Gordon Gekko told us that greed was good, we apparently believed him, and set about to prove his point.

But, as the old saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch. The United States cannot continue on this path of fiscal gluttony indefinitely. With every dollar we borrow, we sacrifice more and more of our freedom.

As individuals, we've come to rely increasingly on those credit cards in our wallets, charging 40 cents out of every dollar we spend. We finance everything: our homes, our vehicles, our educations, our entertainment...even basic essentials like food and clothing are more often than not purchased on credit in today's marketplace. Thanks to the folks at American Express, Visa, MasterCard, and Discover, the American worker's penchant for champagne and caviar need not be stymied by the constraints of a beer budget.

As a nation, we've racked up nearly $12 trillion in debt and have seen the budget deficit soar from $455 billion to $1.4 trillion in the last year alone. And in the same way a strapped homeowner takes out a second mortgage on his house to stave off financial ruin for one more year, Congress has time and again—in the name of the people's "general welfare" no less—voted to take on more and more debt to fund a ballooning list of appropriations and entitlements.

In the face of this grim economic picture, only one of Solomon's fools could say with a straight face that the American government and her people are economically free. To keep up with our consumption habits, we have surrendered the freedom that comes with true ownership and live in service to our lenders. Because we have lost the discipline and maturity to distinguish our needs from our wants, we find ourselves surrounded by material goods bought on credit. But, one too many missed payments and that luxury vehicle in the driveway will be repossessed, and that McMansion in the suburbs will fall into foreclosure.

The risks associated with excess borrowing are no different at the federal level. As it now stands, 35% of the United States' gross domestic product is comprised of foreign debt. Each year, we are financing a larger and larger chunk of the nation's day to day operations on borrowed money, and each year the cost of servicing this debt goes up. This debt burden not only impacts our fiscal strength, it also significantly compromises our political and diplomatic position on the world stage. When the U.S. Government is beholden to foreign nations because of its debt, it is not free to act in the best interests of the American people, particularly when those interests conflict with the interests of our lenders.

Up to this point, America's approach to dealing with the pressures of our debt has been to take on still more debt and leave the headache to future generations. This folly must end. If we truly value our freedom we must overcome our addiction to debt and learn how to live within our means.

SOURCE

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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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Obama: Hysterical exaggeration in a calm voice

President Barack Obama grimly warned America this week that if his health care plans fail, the nation will go "bankrupt." Sure, adding another trillion-dollar entitlement program to our $12 trillion of debt may seem like a counterintuitive way to stave off economic ruin, but who are we to argue? The president's got smarts. And as is the case with so many issues, Obama adorned his rhetoric with sharp warnings of calamity should he fail, fabricated consensus to buttress his case and a promise of rapture should he succeed.

You'll remember it was Obama who cautioned that failure to pass the stimulus boondoggle would "turn a crisis into a catastrophe." He claimed that a failure to act on cap and trade will lead us to "irreversible catastrophe" and that a failure to pass a government-run health care system will mean "more Americans dying every day." It's like living the Old Testament. Scary.

Holy burning bushes! Did you know that everyone -- and I mean everyone -- agrees with the president? Obama stressed this week that you can "talk to every health care economist out there and they will tell you that ... whatever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce costs for families, businesses and government, those elements are in this bill." Not "some" or "most" or "Peter Orszag on a two-day bender" but "every" health care economist in the entire world would tell you as much.

This sort of exaggeration reminds us of another whopper the president unloaded. While promoting the stimulus plan in January, he claimed that "there is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy." No disagreement whatsoever ... until the Cato Institute found 200 economists from major universities across the country who did have a disagreement -- and judging from the stimulus plan's impressive impotence, perhaps Obama should have lent them an ear.

So when Obama says that "whatever ideas exist" to help with cost are featured in the health care bills, let's chalk it up to his propensity to exaggerate, embellish or worse.

What about re-importation of pharmaceuticals developed and manufactured in the United States -- available now more cheaply abroad? Is that an idea that exists? (Drug companies, a group that Obama regularly condemned before cutting a sweetheart deal, made sure that idea was DOA.) What about balancing tax codes so that those with employee-provided health insurance and those with individual health insurance can benefit from the same benefits? Does that idea exist? You don't even need a staff of researchers to find economists who say it does. What about opening up health insurance markets beyond state lines to create competition and more access? What about tort reform to end frivolous lawsuits? What about expanding health savings and flex accounts instead of killing them?

Let's concede that there might be a number of ideas -- both on the left and the right -- that haven't been embraced. Still, the most misleading assertion of the president is that his focus is on bending the cost curve in the right direction -- or that it's even a goal. The prevailing objective of health care "reform" has been to expand coverage to the uninsured and to throw federal control on everyone. Cost has proved to be largely irrelevant -- other than being a political consideration.

Of course, ignoring the substantive ideas of the ideological opposition is not, in and of itself, new for presidents or politicians. But Obama's fondness for creating imaginary consensus and offering false choices to the American people has been something to behold.

SOURCE

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Jealous females can't think straight when talking about Sarah Palin

Calling Rupert Murdoch! There’s an errant hen in the Foxhouse. And she seems to have developed a particular penchant for pecking away at Sarah Palin – the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth notwithstanding. Here’s Chicken Little’s MyFox New York story – in its entirety:

Sarah Palin Blacks Out John McCain's Name on Hat

By LILY FU

Former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin appears to be making a bold statement about her feelings for John McCain. Palin was photographed in Hawaii while vacationing with her family and was sporting a visor that had blacked out "McCain for President," leaving just a faint outline of his name, according to the New York Daily News. See photos from TMZ .

The paper adds that the message on her T-shirt was much more clear -- "If you don't love America," it said on the front, "then why don't you get the hell out," it said on the back.

Palin has been on a nationwide tour promoting her bestselling book "Going Rogue" in which she admits that there was tension between her aides and the McCain camp while on the campaign trail . Palin writes that she was denied the chance to speak on election night and that McCain's people constantly kept her "bottled up" from reporters. McCain has said that he considers Palin's attacks "vicious ."

Now, here’s the rest of the story: If you happen to click on the line “he considers Palin’s attacks “vicious” … lo and behold, it turns out that McCain wasn’t talking about Palin’s attacks on him at all -- he was talking about the media’s attacks on Palin! Here is his actual quote: “’I’ve never seen anything like it in all the years that I’ve been in politics, the viciousness and the personalization of the attacks on Sarah Palin.”

Now, that seems to suggest one of two things: either Ms. Fu can’t read – or she shouldn’t write. Not for Fox News, at any rate. Perhaps it’s time for the Farmer Rupert to toss out some bad eggs. Mr. Murdoch, we report – you decide.

SOURCE

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Penetration Even At The Pentagon: Radical Muslims Setting Muslim Policy

The internal threat from Muslim extremists in the military extends to high-level Defense Department aides who have undermined military policy. In fact, one top Muslim adviser pushed out an intelligence analyst who warned of the sudden jihad syndrome that led to the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

An honored guest of the Ramadan dinner at the Pentagon this September was Hesham Islam, who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Ring despite proven ties to U.S. terror front groups and a shady past in his native Egypt. As senior adviser for international affairs to former deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Islam ran interference for the Islamic Society of North America and other radical fronts for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the subject of my new book "Muslim Mafia."

For example, Islam persuaded brass to sack a Pentagon analyst, Stephen Coughlin, after he advised cutting off outreach to ISNA, which he accurately ID'd as part of a covert terror-support network in the U.S. -- something the Justice Department recently confirmed in a major terror finance trial.

Islam invited ISNA officials to lunch with the avuncular England, known by insiders as Gullible Gordon, who in turn spoke at ISNA confabs. Islam also helped set up a Pentagon job booth at one recent ISNA convention to recruit Muslim chaplains and linguists. Most disturbing, Islam met regularly with Saudi and other embassy officials lobbying for the release and repatriation of their citizens held at Gitmo. He in turn advised England, who authorized the release of dozens of Gitmo detainees. Some have resumed terrorist activities.

No one really knew who Islam was when he was promoted -- in fact, the Pentagon removed his bio from its Web site after reporters noted major inconsistencies in it -- yet he was allowed to get inside the office of the Pentagon's No. 2 official. "In effect," a senior U.S. Army intelligence official told me, "we've got terrorist supporters calling the shots on our policies toward Muslims from the highest levels."

Meanwhile, politically incorrect prophets like Coughlin have been frozen out. After the betrayal at Fort Hood, the military could use his analysis of Islamic doctrine more than ever. I attended a private briefing by Coughlin in February. In a PowerPoint presentation, he detailed how jihadists use the Quran to justify their actions. Some of his slides matched almost word-for-word Hasan's own PowerPoint slides extolling the virtues of jihad and martyrdom. Both, for instance, quoted from the same Quranic passage known as the "Verse of the Sword."

Eerily, Coughlin predicted Hasan's mind-set. He first began briefing the Pentagon on this jihadist doctrine in 2002. So brass can't say they didn't know. They were warned that the enemy was drawing on religious principles, and that our own Muslim soldiers could succumb to such thinking. And they were warned that by using ISNA and other radical Brotherhood fronts to endorse Muslim chaplains and recruit Muslim soldiers, they were courting enemies of the U.S. -- and courting disaster. But they were too drunk with political correctness to listen.

The jihadist threat to U.S.-based armed forces is external as well as internal -- and far greater than reported. It comes from both inside and outside the military. Fort Hood follows in a line of attacks or plots against military personnel and installations since 2006, when al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn, an American convert to Islam, appeared in a video with Osama bin Laden and encouraged fellow Muslim-Americans to "go on a shooting spree at the Marines' housing facilities at Camp Pendleton" in California. Over the past few years, an alarming number of homegrown Muslim terrorists have targeted military installations, including:

* A North Carolina cell of white converts to Islam who trained to attack Marine headquarters in Quantico, Va.

* A New York cell of black jailhouse converts who planned to down planes at an Air National Guard base with shoulder-fired missiles.

* A lone Muslim convert who shot two soldiers at a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting station, killing one.

* A Los Angeles cell of black Muslim converts who plotted to hit military bases in California.

* A New Jersey cell of hardened jihadists who trained to attack Fort Dix by posing as pizza delivery drivers.

The Fort Dix terrorists had also talked about joining the U.S. Army so they could kill U.S soldiers from the "inside." They planned to hit the post just days after a National Guard unit arrived back from Gitmo. Some of them were inspired by al-Qaida preacher Anwar Awlaki, who on his Yemen-based Web site calls for jihad against U.S. military targets inside and outside the U.S.

But so do so-called moderate American clerics like Zaid Shakir. In "Muslim Mafia," I transcribe for readers a CD recording of one of his sermons circulating in mosques across America. In it, he exhorts the Muslim faithful to attack planes carrying the 82nd Airborne. Frequently booked by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a guest speaker at its events, Shakir tells his Muslim audience: "Jihad is physically fighting the enemies of Islam to protect and advance the religion of Islam. This is jihad." Acceptable targets of jihad, he says, include U.S. military aircraft. "Islam doesn't permit us to hijack airplanes filled with civilian people," he said, but "if you hijack an airplane filled with the 82nd Airborne, that's something else."

The 82nd Airborne is based out of Fort Bragg, which is part of North Carolina state Sen. Larry Shaw's home district. Shaw is CAIR's new chairman. He is also a minority contractor who operates Shaw Food Services Co. near Fort Bragg. According to the legislator's financial disclosure form, Shaw Food customers include the Defense Department. Yet CAIR, like ISNA, is an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator. The FBI says CAIR is a terrorist front group and has cut off formal ties to it. So should the military. Will Fort Bragg be next? Does anybody care?

More HERE

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Radical Is as Radical Appoints

I'm wondering whether there's anyone out there with the guts to pretend that it's insignificant that President Barack Obama keeps appointing radical after radical to his czar positions. Can anyone honestly say Obama's appointments don't tell us a great deal about Obama himself -- as if we needed any further proof he is a left-wing extremist?

I don't need to make a list of his radical appointees and detail proof of their extremism. Anyone paying attention knows it's irrefutably true that this has become a deliberate pattern. Statistically, Obama couldn't accidentally appoint this many radicals in two political lifetimes. Is he rubbing these people in our faces or just surrounding himself with like-minded soul mates -- or both? My educated guess is "both" because his general attitude toward governance has been utterly dictatorial. He knows what's best for America -- the type of America he envisions, anyway -- and he will proceed to implement it, full well knowing that he's violating the will of the majority every step of the way.

It's truly sad to me that our federal government has expanded to the point that no one flinches at the thought that we need some federal bureaucrat in charge of making our local schools indoctrination facilities for homosexuality, er, safe. As you know, Obama appointed known homosexual activist Kevin Jennings for the position.

Why would Obama, a self-professed Christian, choose Jennings, who admitted in his 2006 memoirs that he harbored a deep-seated hatred for God and religious believers at the time he embraced a homosexual lifestyle? Jennings wrote: "Before, I was the one who was failing God; now I decided He was the one who had failed me. ... I decided I had done nothing wrong: He had, by promising to 'set you free' and never delivering on His promise. What had He done for me, other than make me feel shame and guilt? Squat. Screw you, buddy -- I don't need you around anymore, I decided."

Jennings may have since modified his beliefs, but it's still clear that he hates Christian conservatives. LifeSiteNews.com reports that he told fellow homosexual activists in 2000 that members of the "religious right" were "hard-core bigots" who should "drop dead." He said he really wanted to tell them, "F--- you!" He was also on the advisory board for a 2001 PBS documentary "that slammed" the Boy Scouts of America for its policy of excluding homosexuals from membership. This video was then promoted at gay pride conventions to galvanize homosexuals against the Scouts.

More here

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BrookesNews Update

The US economy is looking very sick indeed : There has been a massive increase in the reserves of depository institutions which now pose an immense inflationary threat to the US economy. In the meantime, the monetary figures suggest an inadvertent tightening in credit that will have a detrimental impact on economic activity. The fall in capital orders could be an unwelcome sign of this event
The Australian economy is looking super - but is it a mirage? : Serious distortions could be developing in the Australian economy, one sign of which could be manufacturing as a proportion of GDP shrinking further while what is left becomes overly oriented to serving the mining industry in response to China's growing demand for our minerals
What has Obama accomplished? : Ignored by the left and the media, however, is the inconvenient fact that every single policy promoted by Obama and passed by congress has been a dismal failure. From the jobs 'stimulus' package that has cost taxpayers a whopping
Israel must not waste time on rebuke : Endless amounts of time and millions of dollars are wasted on rebuking false accusations and deliberate distortions of the facts of history as well as the current 'reality' invented by Arabs, made by traditional anti-Semites, self-hating Jews and all sorts of sophisticated and primitive xenophobes
Taking the wind out of energy : Spain's alternative energy policy has turned into an economic disaster, something any free market economist could have predicted. Spain's painful experience ought to be taken into account at the upcoming Copenhagen summit on climate change. In recent years, many countries, including the United States, have touted the Spanish model as an inspiration. They really need to look again
Look who's clubbing Tiger Woods now : For black activist Democrats, Tiger is not a self-determining soul, but a black man who must live by - and never violate - their constraining tribal rules. They are furious at Tiger - not because he cheated on his wife, but because his wife is white, and all of his affairs were with white women. Moreover, he has always refused to play the race. Now it's payback time
America's Great Leap Forward : Like Mao, Obama will most likely never be held to account when the socialist, big government policies he has championed fail. And fail they must. History shows us that. The American people will, once again, be forced to pay the very real price for Obama's naive attempt to prove socialism is a workable theory, as long as its Obama's version

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

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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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