PCUSA: Presbyterians who no longer accept the authority of the scriptures

Which separates them from all their traditions as Presbyterians. They have fallen under the influence of a Satanic Leftist gospel rather than the true gospel. Needless to say, they have lost a huge slice of their membership over the years (estimated at nearly half in the last forty years) as there are many other Presbyterian denominations in the USA for faith-filled Christians to choose from. This latest act of hate will drive many more of their members away

The Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUSA) is about to release a report which denounces Israel as a “racist” nation which has absolutely no historical, covenantal, or theological right to the Holy Land. The report calls for the United States to withhold financial and military aid to Israel and for boycotts and sanctions against Israel. That’s not all. The report also endorses a Palestinian “right of return” and “apologizes to Palestinians for even conceding that Israel has a right to exist.” According to the press release, it also states that Israel’s history begins only with the Holocaust and that Israel is “a nation mistakenly created by Western powers at the expense of the Palestinian people to solve the ‘Jewish problem’.”

In addition, PCUSA has also resolved to divest in companies that supply military equipment to the American Army, e.g. Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, etc.

In 2004, this Church became the first mainline Protestant denomination in America to “approve a policy of divestment from Israel.” This was rescinded, but in 2008 the Church “created a committee dominated by seven activists holding strong anti-Israel beliefs. The lone member sympathetic to Israel, quit in protest when he saw their radical agenda.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center notes that 46 members of the US Congress and Senate are Presbyterians and fears potentially “significant repercussions in the political domain” as well as a negative “impact on interfaith relations.” They urge us all to protest directly to the top leadership of the PCUSA “to stop this dangerous campaign which denies the legitimacy and security of Israel,” and to “reach out to your Presbyterian friends.”

Amalek (the eternal enemy of the Jews) has arrived, right on time for the Purim festival. The war against the Jews is precisely what Purim is about. We read the classic indictment against the Jews for the first time in full in the haunting story of Esther. Haman, the Persian King’s advisor, tells him this: “There exists a particular people, far-flung, widespread among the peoples in all the colonies of your realm. Their customs differ from those of all peoples, and they do not abide by his majesty’s bylaws; his majesty has nothing to gain by tolerating them.” Haman also points out that the Jews are wealthy and offers the King the lion’s share of the spoils.

The Jews have been looked at suspiciously, murderously before — in Egypt for example, where their prosperity, fertility, and potential of becoming a fifth column greatly worried the new Pharaoh. But even Pharaoh did not propose what Haman (and Hitler after him) proposed: send the same edict everywhere, “to devastate, slaughter, and annihilate all the Jews (Yehudim), from the youngest to the oldest, children, women, in a single day…with their booty to be despoiled.”

More HERE

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More hatred of black conservatives

Leftists are great haters. That's why they are always desperate to find something in conservatives that they can label as hate

As Black History Month draws to a close, the web site The Root has chosen to publish a hateful article that demeans black conservatives solely for their political views -- grouping them with brutal dictators, convicted criminals and self-centered celebrities. This has drawn a stinging rebuke from Project 21 member Bob Parks. "It doesn't take much for liberals to call black conservatives 'self-hating,'" noted Parks, "but what is it called when someone decides that blacks deemed inappropriate should be wholly removed from history? What kind of egos are we talking about here?"

The Root is operated by The Washington Post. Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. serves as The Root's editor-in-chief. In a recent posting, "Black Folks We'd Like to Remove From Black History" by Jada Smith, 21 blacks are singled out for being "embarrassing." Smith wrote: "[W]hile we love our own, we sure do dream of erasing a few of them."

"It's not enough that progressives intentionally distort and rewrite black history to their political advantage, but now The Root, the Post and Professor Gates are showing additional contempt for black people by allowing open suggestions about who should be excluded from that rewritten history," Parks pointed out.

Of the 21 blacks selected by Smith to purge from black memory, there are five American political figures, five infamous foreign dictators, two criminals and nine celebrities. The two liberal politicos -- current D.C. councilman and former mayor Marion Barry and former Baltimore mayor Sheila Dixon -- earned their shame by being convicted of breaking the law.

The three black conservatives are demeaned solely for their politics. Republican Party chairman Michael Steele is the "Bozo of politics." Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas allegedly lacks "standing" among blacks because "he looks to the Constitution as 'colorblind.'" Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes, whose activism extols the values of the Declaration of Independence and the rights of the unborn, has "never managed to make a lick of sense."

Project 21's Parks added: "The Root meticulously nominated five political figures among narcissistic celebrities and murderous dictators. The two liberals broke written laws, while the others were convicted of the crime of being black and conservative. It's ironic that the hyper-sensitive Professor Gates presided over this fantasy of removing certain onerous blacks from our history. Now that he's got me riled up, I wonder if he and his bosses at the Washington Post will have me over for a beer to talk about their writer acting stupidly."

SOURCE

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Obama's nanny care insults the American spirit

You are victims. You are helpless against the wiles of big corporations and insurance companies and you need protection. You need the government to take over and do things you cannot do for yourself. That is the thinking of what David Brooks calls "the educated class" that favors the Democrats' health care bills. Members of this elite spout tales of woe of people denied coverage or care with the implication that there but for the grace of government go you. So sign on and the government will take care of everything.

It's an argument that has often been appealing to Europeans but that has always been unappealing to Americans. That's why these advocates segue to other arguments, like Barack Obama's assertion that the government can expand coverage and save money at the same time. But voters quickly sniff out what this means. The government will use the "science" of comparative effectiveness research to achieve cost savings the only way government can: denial of care. The Soviet medical system kept down the heart disease caseload by placing cardiac care units on the fifth floor, walk up. Death panels, anyone?

In the meantime, the House, Senate and the latest iteration of the Obama health care legislation -- which is too vague for a cost estimate, according to Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf -- promise to eliminate Medicare Advantage and cut $500 billion from Medicare, and increase federal spending by something like $1 trillion. Obamacare Plan B would add a new layer of federal regulation on health insurance.

Why do Americans reject such policies while Europeans seem content with them? One reason is history. Twentieth-century history -- and 19th- and 18th-century history too -- showed Europeans that they were often the helpless victims of tyrants and total war. That made them content to rely on government for security. Americans have had a different experience. As scholars like Seymour Martin Lipset have documented, Americans are more likely than Europeans to believe that there is a connection between effort and reward. And to believe that they can improve their situation by their own hard work and ingenuity.

As a result, Americans cherish their independence. One interesting aspect of the spontaneous Tea Party movement is the constant invocation of the Founders and the prominence of the "Don't Tread on Me" flag. Eighteenth-century Americans declared their independence, 19th-century Americans fought so that blacks could be independent too, and 20th-century Americans sacrificed to extend the blessings of independence to the wider world.

Americans tend to see themselves as independent doers, not dependent victims. They don't like to be told, especially by those with fancy academic pedigrees, that they are helpless and in need of government aid. That's why the politically popular American big-government programs -- Social Security, Medicare, veterans' benefits, student loans -- all make a connection between effort and reward. You get a benefit because you've worked for it.

In contrast, Americans have loathed and rejected big-government programs with no nexus between effort and reward. Welfare was begun in the 1930s to help widows with children, whose plight, as Russell Baker's memoir "Growing Up" showed, was often dismal. But when welfare became a mass program to subsidize mothers who didn't work and to excuse fathers from responsibility for their actions, it became wildly unpopular.

Bill Clinton recognized this when he signed welfare reform in 1996. Clinton worked his way up in Arkansas, a state with a highly unequal income distribution, with a few very rich families -- the Waltons, Tysons, Stephenses -- and many people with modest incomes. But polling shows that the Democrats' health care plans are overwhelmingly unpopular in Arkansas, even more than nationally.

Obama, who has chosen to live his adult life in university precincts, sees Arkansans and Americans generally as victims who need his help, people who would be better off dependent on government than on their own. Most American voters don't want to see themselves that way and resent this condescension.

Obama hopes to embarrass Republicans at his Thursday summit and persuade Democrats to change the legislative rules and jam through a health care bill. Tactically he's not likely to succeed. But his greater problem, on health care and other issues, is strategic. Most Americans don't share his view that they are victims, in need of protection and supervision by "the educated class."

SOURCE

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The "stimulus" may have created some jobs, but it created no real optimism

A new government analysis says the stimulus act funded between 1 million and 2.1 million jobs as of December and kept the economy humming at a faster rate than it would otherwise, but consumer confidence has tumbled anyway - potentially hindering the continued recovery. With the economy and the unemployment rate crowding out much of the rest of President Obama's agenda, both the jobs figures and consumer confidence will become key pieces of evidence as Republicans and Democrats argue over last year's stimulus and how much more spending is needed.

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday said the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed a little more than a year ago, was responsible for lowering the unemployment rate by between 0.5 percent and 1.1 percent in the final three months of 2009, and added 1.5 percent to 3.8 percent to the country's gross domestic product. "The policies that were enacted in the stimulus bill are increasing GDP and employment relative to what they otherwise would be," said Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans, though, said the stimulus has been good for government but not for creating private-sector jobs. "The fact is, if you are a government worker you probably got a pay raise from the stimulus; if you are a manufacturing or construction worker you got a pink slip," said Rep. Kevin Brady, Texas Republican.

Stimulus contractors say they've created about 600,000 jobs directly from spending, but CBO uses economic modeling to reach its conclusions. That accounts for the wide range of potential job creation. Going forward, CBO said, the effects of the stimulus on GDP will peak next quarter, and its effects on job creation will peak over the next six months before diminishing.

At the same time, consumer confidence is already dipping, according to the Conference Board Consumer Research Center, a private group that surveys consumer confidence. The board, in a survey released Tuesday, recorded a giant drop in confidence from January to February and said its "present situation" index, which measures confidence in the economy as it stands now, is at its lowest point in 27 years. The expectations index, which measures optimism about the future economy, also dropped after three months of improvement.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

I can't help noticing that the problem with runaway acceleration in Toyota cars affects drivers of automatic cars only. If my Toyota Echo started uncontrolled acceleration, I would just push in the clutch and move the gearshift into neutral: An entirely mechanical process under my complete control and the end of the problem. Another triumph for old-fashioned tried and true systems?

Public Opinion of Unions Plummets, ALG Cites Public Sector Union Kickbacks as Cause : "A new poll conducted by Pew Research shows public opinion of unions plummeting, which Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson said was caused “by the endless handouts and kickbacks to public sector unions that are milking taxpayers and bankrupting the states.” According to the poll, as reported by HotAir.com, “Favorable views of labor unions have plummeted since 2007, amid growing public skepticism about unions’ purpose and power. Currently, 41% say they have a favorable opinion of labor unions while about as many (42%) express an unfavorable opinion. In January 2007, a clear majority (58%) had a favorable view of unions while just 31% had an unfavorable impression.” “The American people are sick and tired of the class warfare engaged through public policy by government unions and their willing accomplices in federal and state legislatures,” said Wilson."

"Broken" Government is when Liberals Lose: "When Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana announced last week he wasn't running for re-election, he didn't state what may have seemed obvious. He couldn't say he wanted to avoid the embarrassment of losing, or that he worried he'd never achieve national office if that happened. Instead, he launched into a lecture about what was wrong with everyone else. The government is "dysfunctional" with "brain-dead partisanship." It's "Groundhog Day." This scenario repeats itself every time the Democrats take control. Bayh's bleats hardened quickly into the media's conventional wisdom. Why can't the politicians hold hands in a "Kumbaya" circle and get "something" done? Translation: When Obama and a Democrat-dominated Congress can't nationalize the health care system and force everyone to drive a Prius, suddenly government is "dysfunctional." When gridlock is holding up the liberals' agenda, Washington should know "the people" sent them to pass massive ultraliberal bills."

Obama Begins His Assault on Your Life Savings: "The welfare state and your life savings are two cars heading down a one-lane road in opposite directions. One must yield, or there will be a crash. For Americans who believe in the old-fashioned virtues of hard work, self reliance and respect for private property, the solution is obvious. The welfare state must yield. For politicians who believe in the welfare state and redistributing wealth, the solution is equally obvious. Your savings must yield. Barack Obama is of the latter group. In the new health care proposal he outlined this week, he suggested a series of unprecedented tax increases that would extend the greedy hands of government into the life savings of hard-working Americans. These new taxes would essentially construct a new fiscal pipeline capable of carrying money out of the savings of private citizens and dumping it into government coffers specifically for subsidizing Medicare under the new health care system Obama envisions. The White House summary of Obama's proposal presents this would-be pipeline as a facilitator of economic justice."

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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Pathetic argument for more government spending

We know that Democrats are great haters but being anti-men is hardly wise -- particularly when the abuse is based on a lie. Reid just does not sound very bright

Advocates for men are calling for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to apologize for suggesting that men are more likely than women to commit domestic violence, especially when they're out of work for long periods of time. But Reid's spokesman told FoxNews.com on Tuesday that the Nevada Democrat is not apologizing for arguing during Senate debate a day earlier that the $15 billion jobs bill he is sponsoring should be passed to help prevent an uptick in violence.

Marty Nemko, co-president of The National Organization for Men, described Reid's comments as "irresponsible," citing numerous studies that show women are just as likely or even more so to commit domestic violence against their male partners. Nemko also noted that that the police reports women advocacy organizations use are misleading because "men are embarrassed to say their wives beat them over the head with a frying pan." "Instead of looking to try and find men jobs, he's bashing men completely unfairly," Nemko told FoxNews.com....

On Monday, the Nevada Democrat seized on a trend in the rise of domestic violence cases across the country that experts say can be linked partly to the recession that has left millions of Americans unemployed. "I have met with some people while I was home dealing with domestic abuse. It has gotten out of hand. Why? Men don't have jobs. Women don't have jobs either, but women aren't abusive -- most of the time. Men, when they're out of work, tend to become abusive. Our domestic crisis shelters in Nevada are jammed. It's the way it is all over the country."

HotAir.com questioned Reid's suggestion that abusive men outnumber their female counterparts, citing a British study in 2000 that found that women are just as likely to initiate domestic violence." "If recession-related stress and money woes are shortening men's tempers, they're probably shortening women's too -- which, ironically, only improves Reid's argument about the jobs bill, although he's too captive to identify politics to try to make that point," reads one post.

Nemko also cited a California State University study that finds that women are as physically aggressive or more aggressive than men in their relationships with male partners.

More here

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A very interesting interview with Rupert Murdoch, the new owner of the WSJ

I liked the bit where it was noted that out of ten major American newspapers, nine had lost circulation recently while the WSJ actually increased its circulation.



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Obama’s Phony Populism

President Obama likes to portray himself as a man of the people. But a look behind the veil shows this to be a deception. Take the financial regulatory overhaul brewing in Washington. I know what you’re thinking: What could better illustrate Obama’s bona fides as a champion of the people? He wants to regulate the banking industry after the recent debacle and is being fought by the banks and the Republicans. Doesn’t this clearly demonstrate his pro-people agenda?

A closer looks reveals the real story to be something quite different. First, there has never been an unregulated banking industry in the United States. You can look it up. And since 1914 we’ve had a central bank, the Fed, whose regulatory powers have only increased over the decades. Several other agencies also regulate the banks. There are regulators at the state level too.

But to focus only on regulation is to miss a big part of the story. In truth what we have had is a banking cartel, a partnership of government (state or national) and nominally private financial institutions. This partnership has two broad aspects that function as a quid pro quo: regulation and protection from free competition, that is, special privilege. The two sides haven’t always agreed on the exact proportions of the two elements, and the bankers have even disagreed among themselves. But lack of unanimity about details should not be mistaken for lack of agreement about the fundamental nature of the system. It is a government-banking alliance. Neither side would have it any other way....

The upshot is that the government’s promise to represent the public is false. Even if it wanted to, it wouldn’t have the information required to do the job. The irony is that in presenting itself as the guardian against “systemic risk,” the regulators present the largest systemic risk of all. It’s the Federal Reserve after all that brought us the Great Depression and damaging inflationary booms and bust ever since.

So what can we do? A real program aimed at the people’s well-being would take decision-making away from the government-banking cartel and put the financial industry into a free and open market, where competition would discipline bankers and decentralize decision- making. No small group would be in a position to make economywide mistakes and then get bailed out by their friends in high places. Only in the free market is there accountability. Profits would be private, but so would losses.

Obama should study the Democrats of the 19th century, who stood for competition and free trade in all things, especially money and banking. The party has surely gone downhill since then.

More here

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ACORN Gives Itself a Makeover

ACORN, the community organizing group unable to erase the scandals associated with them, appears to be dismantling their operating structure. Politico’s Ben Smith reports:

"The embattled liberal group ACORN is in the process of dissolving its national structure, with state and local-chapters splitting off from the underfunded, controversial national group, an official close to the group confirmed.

"'Consistent with what the internal recommendations have been, each of the states are developing plans for reconstitution independence and self-sufficiency,' said the official, citing ACORN's 'diminished resources, damage to the brand, unprecedented attacks."'

"The new organizations, he said 'will be constituted under new banners and new bylaws and new governance,' he said, consistent with the recommendations of an outside panel."

No matter the structure, this is the same group shown on video last summer recommending methods to create an illegal prostitution business. It is the same group which intimidated banks into risky financial practices before the financial collapse. It is the same group whose employees have been indicted for voter registration fraud.

It's my fear that rather than confronting their shady actions of the past, it will just be business as usual for ACORN going forward.

SOURCE. Fuller coverage of the ACORN makeover here

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The Really Dark Side of the Proposed Employee Free Choice Act

Many observers are justly alarmed by one of the biggest pending thank-you gifts from the Obama administration to Big Labor—the proposed Employee “Free Choice” Act (EFCA). Already passed by the U.S. House of Representatives (HR 800), the measure would radically change how unions organize employees. Under federal law since 1935, employees have voted by secret ballot on whether to accept a union as their bargaining agent.

But union bosses are now in a panic because not enough workers have been voting the “right” way. Private-sector union membership has plunged from 30 percent in 1958 to just 7.2 percent in 2009. And for the future? A poll conducted by Opinion Research Corp. last year found that, by a margin of 82 to 13 percent, non-union workers did not want their jobs unionized.

But under EFCA, once a bare majority of employees in the target “bargaining unit” signs authorization cards, the National Labor Relations Board will install the union as bargaining agent for all employees in the group. Never mind that the Supreme Court has declared such cards “inherently unreliable” — no more secret ballot.

When confronted by union organizers, workers would have to vote publically for or against the union by either signing a card or not. And most employees know that if they don’t sign and the union is installed, they will, as “scabs,” be marked men and women on the union-dominated shop floor.

Though there have been outcries against this attack on individual voting rights, another feature of EFCA that could do real damage to the economy has been less publicized. A brave worker can still say no to signing a union card, but if EFCA becomes law, firms whose employees become unionized must roll over to union demands in first contract negotiations.

EFCA would force the parties to submit to federal mediation if they cannot reach agreement in 90 days. If that fails, government appointed arbitrators would dictate the new labor contract. Knowing that the purpose of EFCA is to reward unions for supporting the political party to which they have been joined at the hip pocket for 80 years, these arbitrators will not be confused about their marching orders: give the unions what they want.

Such fiats will be binding for two years. There is no appeal. It matters not that arbitrators might lack knowledge of business operations, of the employer’s competitive position, or of the long term implications of their orders, e.g., cancelled expansion plans.

If passed, EFCA will thus be one more step toward nationalization of the U.S. economy, and the tab will be paid in higher consumer prices, higher unemployment, curtailed business investment, or all three.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Hands up: Who has heard of Senator Joseph McCarthy? All hands shoot up. The Left make sure that we never forget him. Hands up again: Who has heard of Richard Ichord? All hands stay down. Yet both men did much the same thing: Endeavour to expose crypto-Communists in America's public life. And Ichord's House Un-American Activities Committee ran for much, much longer than Senator McCarthy's inquiry. So how come we hear so much of one man but hear virtually nothing of the other? Easy: McCarthy was a Republican. Ichord was a Democrat.

America's failed communist past: "Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America, established in Virginia in 1607, had an experience similar to the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Early years of starvation were followed by converting to a system of property rights and a free market, which brought abundance. Under collectivism, less than half of every shipload of settlers survived the first 12 months at Jamestown. Most of the work was done by only one-fifth of the men, to whom the socialist system gave the same rations as to the others. During the winter of 1609-10, called ‘The Starving Time,’ the population fell from 500 to 60. But when Jamestown converted to a free market, there was ‘plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure,’ wrote the colony secretary Ralph Hamor in 1614.”

Credit CARD Act penalizes thrift and entrepreneurship: "Today, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 goes into effect. While the law, passed last May, is being hailed as a boon for consumers, it's already causing a slew of unintended consequences. Congress should carefully consider how the CARD Act will harm consumers and entrepreneurs and revise the law’s flawed provisions. Furthermore, Congress should resist populist proposals that would further distort the credit card market, such as interest rate caps or price controls on payment card interchange fees. The CARD Act will make it harder for consumers to get credit just as policymakers are trying to get credit flowing. Ironically, the bill will result in higher interest rates for many cardholders, because it limits the ability of banks to properly price the risks associated with cardholders who make late payments."

The incredible, vanishing greenback : "The ruling elite in Washington is going to try to inflate its way out of its debt conundrum, attempting to pay off the government’s foreign creditors with greenbacks that lose value right before your eyes, like an ice cream cone melting on a hot summer day. The process is already well under way. If you could once buy a silver dollar for one greenback, but it now costs 15 greenbacks, then the dollar is now worth seven 1960 cents. If gold once cost $35 an ounce and it now costs $1,100 an ounce, than the greenback is now worth about three 1940 pennies.”

City to be barred from hiring the most competent firefighters? "The Supreme Court signaled yesterday that it may be willing to let a group of African-Americans sue Chicago for discrimination over a hiring test that weeded out black applicants to become firefighters. It is the second time in as many years the high court has tackled discrimination in testing within the firefighting ranks. In a landmark case last year, the Supreme Court in a 5-to-4 decision said New Haven violated white firefighters’ civil rights by throwing out an exam in which no African-Americans scored high enough to be promoted to lieutenant or captain. In yesterday’s case, the City of Chicago decided to use a test to weed out potential firefighter trainee applicants. Anyone who scored 64 or below was deemed not qualified. But the city set a second cutoff score of 89 points. Officials told applicants who scored below 89 but above 64 that although they passed the test, they probably would not be hired because of the large number of people who scored 89 or above. The majority of those in the top-scoring group were white; only 11 percent were black.” [If my house was on fire, I'd like the guys trying to save it to be REALLY smart]

We gain from trade with China: "To protectionists and Sinophobes, the news of China recently surpassing Germany to become the world’s largest exporter represents yet another nail in the coffin for manufacturing in ‘[insert Western country].’ But China’s exports include Apple’s ubiquitous iPods and countless other products designed in the West. More than a reflection of China’s growing economic might, this is testament to the erosion of economic, political, physical and technological barriers to production. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism as a viable model, together with containerised shipping, GPS, just-in-time supply, and other technological marvels, has spawned a global division of labour and production that defies traditional analysis — and trade accounting.”

The “stimulus” actually raised unemployment: "Since federal spending accounted for exactly zero of the only significant increase in GDP, how could such spending possibly have ‘created or saved’ 2 million jobs? The bill was launched last year amid grandiose promises of ’shovel ready’ make-work projects. In reality, as the CBO explains, ‘five programs accounted for more than 80% of the outlays from ARRA in 2009: Medicaid, unemployment compensation, Social Security … grants to state and local governments … and student aid.’ In other words, what was labeled a ’stimulus’ bill was actually a stimulus to government transfer payments — cash and benefits that are primarily rewards for not working, or at least not working too hard.”

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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The Australian Leftist government can say "jihad" and "terrorism". Why can't Obama?

Could Obama say ANY of the things below? Americans eat your heart out!


Prime Minister Rudd, above, is a committed Christian, and, unlike Mr. Obama, is not known to believe that the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset"

THE Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will today try to regain political momentum with the release of the Counter-Terrorism White Paper which warns of an increased threat from people born or raised in Australia who have become influenced by a "violent jihadist message". The paper, commissioned after the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008, finds successes in fighting terrorism, such as the diminution of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and other groups in South-East Asia, have been offset by the rise of movements in Yemen and Somalia.

Mr Rudd will accompany the launch by pledging to spend $69 million over the next four years for the introduction of biometric checks on visa applicants from the 10 top suspect countries. Anyone applying for a visa will have to present in person to be fingerprinted and photographed. The information will be used to prove the applicant's identity, in part by matching it against information held in the databases of other nations. Mr Rudd will not reveal the identity of the 10 countries until the measures in each are implemented over the next year....

The paper found terrorism had "emerged as a persistent and permanent feature of Australia's security environment". "The main threat to Australia's security comes from a global jihadist movement, including al-Qaeda and those inspired by a similar world view," it says.

The new white paper says the threat has evolved to incorporate one that is more home-grown in nature. "There has been an increase in the threat from people born or raised in Australia who have become influenced by the violent jihadist message," it says.

More here

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Destruction of the world's money

The U.S. dollar and the British pound have lost value and now the Euro is way down too. Only minor currencies such as Swiss Francs and Australian dollars have kept their value. People with savings have already lost a lot with more to come -- all because most governments printed a heap of new money during the GFC

Derivative traders are signalling that the euro's slump to a nine-month low will continue even if European Union leaders bail out Greece. Short-term rates for borrowing in euros in the forwards market are the cheapest relative to loans in dollars since September. The 50 per cent collapse in that spread this month signals investors are betting the European Central Bank will keep its target interest rate at a record low, sacrificing euro strength to prevent deficit cutting by debt-laden economies in the region from stymieing growth.

"Investors have already started to think about the next likely phase of the present crisis, and it appears that all they are finding are new reasons to sell the euro," said David Woo, global head of foreign-exchange strategy at Barclays Plc in London. "Aggressive fiscal tightening by Greece, Spain and Portugal are likely to plunge their economies back into recession. All else being equal, this calls for a looser monetary policy."

The shift underscores a turnabout in the two most-traded currencies. In the last three quarters of 2009, the euro outperformed the dollar relative to 15 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, with Deutsche Bank AG's euro index gaining 1 per cent and the IntercontinentalExchange Inc.'s Dollar Index down 9 per cent. Since Nov. 25, the dollar is up 8.3 per cent and has outdone all but four major currencies as the euro lost ground against them. The euro traded at $US1.3613 in New York, unchanged from Feb. 19. The currency is down 5 per cent against the U.S. currency this year.

More here

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Worried Democrat governors turn on Obama

BARACK Obama has copped a political hiding from state governors in his party who believe he has failed to connect with voters and needs to rethink his strategy. At a meeting of the National Governors Association in Washington yesterday, many Democrats said the US President had lost the communications battle with his Republican opponents over the past year. Worried about their future and their party's prospects in mid-term congressional elections in November, Democrat governors pointed the finger at the head of their party.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said the White House strategy needed to be better thought out after Republicans successfully tarnished last year's $US787 billion ($874bn) economic stimulus package to combat the recession. "Ironically, the best communicator in the history of political campaigning turned out, in his first year in office, not to communicate very well," Mr Rendell said. "They let the Republicans take the spin right from the beginning. The stimulus got beat up before one dollar was spent."

Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico and an Obama supporter, urged the President to quickly decide on the future of the healthcare legislation, which is stalled by the Republicans in the Senate, and then move on to jobs and the economy.

The Democrats' tough advice comes as Mr Obama tries to revive his health legislation by proposing a pared-back version at a bipartisan summit with party leaders later this week. Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell confirmed yesterday that his party would attend the summit, to be televised nationally. Mr Obama is expected to offer a trimmed-down proposal to overhaul US healthcare with limits on premium increases by the health insurance firms to help stop a costs blowout.

After a year of acrimony on the health reforms, Senator McConnell yesterday lashed out at the White House and signalled a rough year ahead in the lead-up to the mid-term congressional elections at which his party expects to win back many seats and possibly regain majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The White House hopes Mr Obama's oratory and debating skills will help win public support in the televised health summit. But Senator McConnell said: "The fundamental point I want to make is the arrogance of all this. You know, they are saying, `Ignore the wishes of the American people. We know more about this than you do, and we're going to jam it down your throats no matter what'."

Mr Obama sought support from both parties for his stimulus package, which has been revised upwards to $US864bn. Speaking to the governors, he said the economic crisis had forced urgency and extraordinary measures to "right the ship". While many Obama opponents have blasted big government spending, California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, praised the stimulus package as positive

SOURCE

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Obama the philosopher king

President Obama is readying to unleash a variety of executive powers to circumvent Congress and push his agenda. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said that a review of mechanisms was under way to "get the job done across a front of issues." The president claims he has to resort to extraordinary methods because of partisan gridlock, but he has learned the wrong lessons from his failed freshman year in office. Mr. Obama's initiatives haven't stalled because of partisanship but because they are transparently bad for America.

It's odd that the president and his apologists blame partisanship for his legislative problems. Mr. Obama came into office with a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority, the largest since the Jimmy Carter era, and the most Democratic House members since the early 1990s. Those comfortable majorities should have meant smooth sailing for Mr. Obama's legislative agenda, and some of his early initiatives, such as the so-called stimulus package, passed fairly easily. Republicans were shunted aside unceremoniously and could not stop the liberal juggernaut.

The reason Mr. Obama began to run into problems had less to do with partisanship than with public opposition to his ideological agenda.

When the ambiguous "hope and change" theme was replaced with a series of hard-left policies, America balked. A Feb. 8 Gallup survey shows that Mr. Obama suffered 60 percent or worse disapproval ratings on his economic policies, health care proposals and budget deficit management. Resistance in Congress reflects the mood of the electorate, and the critical push-back comes from within the Democratic Party. Previously safe congressional seats are suddenly in play, and many members of Congress wonder if they will soon be joining the swelling ranks of the unemployed.

A prudent president would understand that his policies are the problem and move to the center to give moderates in his party room to breathe. Instead, Mr. Obama is seeking ways to advance his agenda by circumventing Congress, even though Democrats will bear the brunt of the blame in November.

Exploiting executive power is nothing new for Mr. Obama. He has appointed more executive-branch policy "czars" than any of his predecessors. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a liberal West Virginia Democrat, sent a letter to the White House in February 2009 expressing concern that a surfeit of czars can "threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances." But last fall, Mr. Obama pressured Democrats in the Senate to kill legislation that would have brought his czars under congressional oversight.

Mr. Obama claimed emergency powers to reshape two of the Big Three auto manufacturers. He has sought the authority to assume extraordinary powers to deal with cyberthreats and purported climate change. He has used executive orders to pursue pet causes, such as EO 13502, which effectively banned nonunion labor from federal construction projects, and EO 13509, which established the Soviet-sounding Council on Automotive Communities and Workers. Even Mr. Obama's liberal supporters have blanched at his claims of power regarding extraordinary rendition, surveillance, state secrets, signing statements and executive privilege.

Mr. Obama seems to have basic problems with democracy. He doesn't like it when people disagree with him; he resists compromise, and he seems to think he should be free to reshape the country to suit his vision. Those who challenge him are ignored, mocked or told to shut up.

During his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama said, "Let me be perfectly clear: I have taught the Constitution, I understand the Constitution, and I will obey the Constitution when I am president of the United States." As president, however, he seems increasingly to view himself as a philosopher king. If Mr. Obama seeks to exploit executive power to ram through policies the American people oppose, they will hold him and his party accountable. There will be a lot for his successor to undo in 2013.

SOURCE

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Coverup! Obama Administration Denies Public Access to Fannie and Freddie Documents

Judicial Watch has been digging hard into the scandals behind the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their role in helping trigger the global financial crisis. A key component of this investigation involves the role political corruption played in the failure of adequate congressional oversight and the catastrophic collapse of these "government sponsored entities" in 2008. That's why we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama administration to get hold of documents related to Fannie and Freddie's campaign contributions over the last several election cycles.

We figure since American taxpayers are on the hook for trillions of dollars, potentially including $400 billion alone for Fannie and Freddie, we deserve to know how and why this financial collapse occurred and who in Washington, D.C. is responsible. Unfortunately the Obama administration disagrees. Just last month the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the agency responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, responded to our FOIA lawsuit by telling us that all of the documents we seek are not "FOIA-able"!....

So there you have it. You and I are paying the tab for the collapse of Fannie and Freddie, but we are not allowed to ask any questions about why it happened. The Obama administration is saying, in effect, "None of your business."

This is an outrage! Obama administration officials and their lawyers can argue until they are blue in the face that Fannie and Freddie are not federal agencies. But their reasoning is straight out of Alice in Wonderland.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Va. Episcopalians narrowly vote not to recognize gay marriage: "The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia hedged on recognizing same-sex unions Saturday, instead voting to form a committee to set standards for church-sanctioned blessings of such unions once they are approved by the entire 2-million-member Episcopal Church. About 346 delegates to the dioceses annual council meeting at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria narrowly voted -- by a show of hands -- to form the committee. It was a less radical choice for the 80,000-member Virginia diocese, the largest in the Episcopal Church. A substitute amendment suggesting the diocese allow openly gay clergy and same-sex blessings failed after a lengthy debate."

Lawmakers to press military on fate of homosexual ban: “Lawmakers this week will press the military’s top uniformed officers for the first time on whether they think repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ makes sense or would be too disruptive. The testimony from each of the service chiefs on Capitol Hill will be crucial to the debate in Congress on whether to repeal the 17-year-old law, which bans gays from serving openly in the military.”

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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The Avandia beatup

I would normally cover this on my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog but as it seems to be part of a political war against the drug companies designed to shore up support for Obamacare, I am covering it here. It is a huge crock, as I will point out at the foot of the article below. Politicians faulting the super-cautious FDA on drug safety really is a laugh

A Senate report that revives concerns about a GlaxoSmithKline PLC diabetes drug's link to heart attacks is putting pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to make changes to its drug-safety program. People familiar with the situation say agency leaders held calls over the weekend to discuss how to address complaints from Sens. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who released a new report Saturday on the Glaxo drug, called Avandia.

The FDA is trying to assemble a timeline of what the FDA knew of risks associated with Avandia, these people say, and plans to call a meeting of an outside advisory committee in the next few months to look at recent information on the drug, which Glaxo reported as having global sales of £771 million ($1.2 billion) in 2009.

According to a two-year investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, Glaxo knew about data linking Avandia to elevated risk of cardiovascular events for several years, but played down the information and tried to suppress doctors who raised concerns. Starting in 1999, Glaxo executives complained to superiors about researchers who questioned Avandia's safety, the report says.

Glaxo rejected those conclusions. It said in a statement that the increased risk of heart attacks hasn't been proven and noted that the FDA "has ruled that Avandia remain available." The company says it never tried to suppress doctors' views but sought to correct what it considered misinformation.

Internal FDA reviews included in the Senate report show that in 2008, longtime FDA scientists David Graham and Kate Gelperin urged the FDA to get Avandia off the market. They analyzed data on side effects in dozens of Avandia studies, but their recommendations were rejected by FDA chiefs. The senators want to know why.

Avandia is still on the market, but it has a strong warning label about cardiac risks. Its sales dropped after a widely publicized study in May 2007 by the Cleveland Clinic's Steven Nissen that linked Avandia to a 43% greater risk for heart attack.

More HERE

Below is a meta-analysis of the data upon which the FDA based its decision. The meta-analysis appeared in the prestigious "Journal of the American Medical Association"

Long-term Risk of Cardiovascular Events With Rosiglitazone: A Meta-analysis

By Sonal Singh et al.

Context: Recent reports of serious adverse events with rosiglitazone use have raised questions about whether the evidence of harm justifies its use for treatment of type 2 diabetes.

Objective: To systematically review the long-term cardiovascular risks of rosiglitazone, including myocardial infarction, heart failure, and cardiovascular mortality.

Data Sources: We searched MEDLINE, the GlaxoSmithKline clinical trials register, the US Food and Drug Administration Web site, and product information sheets for randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses published in English through May 2007.

Study Selection: Studies were selected for inclusion if they were randomized controlled trials of rosiglitazone for prevention or treatment of type 2 diabetes, had at least 12 months of follow-up, and monitored cardiovascular adverse events and provided numerical data on all adverse events. Four studies were included after detailed screening of 140 trials for cardiovascular events.

Data Extraction: Relative risks (RRs) of myocardial infarction, heart failure, and cardiovascular mortality were estimated using a fixed-effects meta-analysis of 4 randomized controlled trials (n = 14 291, including 6421 receiving rosiglitazone and 7870 receiving control therapy, with a duration of follow-up of 1-4 years).

Results: Rosiglitazone significantly increased the risk of myocardial infarction (n = 94/6421 vs 83/7870; RR, 1.42; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.06-1.91; P = .02) and heart failure (n = 102/6421 vs 62/7870; RR, 2.09; 95% CI, 1.52-2.88; P < .001) without a significant increase in risk of cardiovascular mortality (n = 59/6421 vs 72/7870; RR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.63-1.26; P = .53). There was no evidence of substantial heterogeneity among the trials for these end points (I2 = 0% for myocardial infarction, 18% for heart failure, and 0% for cardiovascular mortality).

Conclusion: Among patients with impaired glucose tolerance or type 2 diabetes, rosiglitazone use for at least 12 months is associated with a significantly increased risk of myocardial infarction and heart failure, without a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular mortality.

JAMA Vol. 298 No. 10, 1189-1195, September 12, 2007

In other words, a survey of the strongest data available showed that taking Avandia increased your risk of having a heart attack from 1.05% to 1.46%, an increase in risk of less than one half of one percent -- which is vanishingly trivial compared to the risks we take in most things we do. Given the large sample size, however, the result is statistically significant, if not significant in any other sense. If we were to reject such small risks as that we would have NO drugs on the market because all drugs have some adverse side-effects.

But here's the real kicker. Read the last clause in the abstract above. What it means in plain English is this: Although Avandia takers had a minutely greater risk of having heart attacks, the "extra" heart attacks DID NOT KILL THEM. Avandia takers were no more likely to die from a heart attack than anybody else! And THAT is the drug that is so evil that the Senate Democrats are making a huge fuss about it! It's just the usual search for evil in the world about them that IS Leftism. See the article immediately following this one.

Update

Grassley is a Republican but he was an easy target to get sucked into this affair as he has in the past made something of a career of exposing researchers who had failed to declare payments received from drug companies. His interest is clearly in the possibility of corruption rather than in the science.

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The Perpetual-Crisis Machine Of The Apocalyptic Left

The left is in crisis-overdrive. Imminent disaster is its rallying cry. The world will end, if we don’t appropriate billions, launch another massive government program, shower condoms on 6-year-olds, socialize another sector of the economy, cede more of our freedom to Washington, and venerate the polar bears.

Since at least the early 1960s, the left has been in a constant state of agitation, prophesying doom at every turn. Any who question its hysteria-mongering are labeled anti-science, a tool of corporate interests, insensitive or just plain Republican.

The refrain is always the same: Don’t question. Don’t examine the evidence too closely. Don’t debate the proposals. Whatever you do, don’t read the legislation before you vote. Just give us what we want, or civilization, as we know it, will cease to exist, millions will die horrible deaths – and it will be your fault.

Like its progenitor, Karl Marx, the left is always wrong – often hilariously so. On September 24, 2008, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (to speak of a Kennedy scion from the low end of the gene pool implies there’s another end), in a commentary for the Los Angeles Times, pointed to recent mild winters in the D.C. area (“anemic” he called them) as conclusive evidence of global warming.

Junior disclosed, “Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home … for lunch. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow of our back yard.” Yet, in the face of irrefutable evidence of lack of igloo-building, “Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy.” Kennedys know a lot about deceiving the American public.

Meanwhile, the blizzard from which Washingtonians just dug out surpassed the record snowfall of 1899. At one point, Dulles Airport reported that 72 inches had fallen. The response of the apocalyptic left? Well, we told you global warming will result in extreme weather conditions. You see, mild winters prove global warming – as do severe winters. Any questions?

Karl Marx was the original progressive doom-and-gloomer. In the mid-19th century, Marx (who never set foot in a factory or met a blue-collar worker) confidently predicted the “crisis of capitalism” – the rich would keep getting richer, while the proletariat would have children, until, on the verge of starvation, the latter would throw off their chains in a worldwide revolution.

Instead of poverty, the proletariat got collective bargaining, employer-paid health insurance, and comfortable pensions. Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your 401-k plans.

It wasn’t quite a straight line from “The Communist Manifesto” to Rachel Carson’s “The Silent Spring” (1962). The Al Gore of her day, Carson warned of environmental catastrophe from the widespread use of DDT to control the mosquitos that spread malaria. Considered the mother of the environmentalist movement, Carson was responsible for the 30-year ban on DDT, finally lifted by the World Health Organization in 2006. Her book claimed the compound caused cancer in humans and genetic damage to birds and beneficial insects – all based on anecdotal evidence and rats doing laps in vats of DDT.

In 1981, Rachel Carson got a commemorative U.S. postage stamp. Millions in the Third World – especially pregnant women and children – got early deaths from malaria, which DDT had largely eliminated by the mid-60s.

From “The Silent Sprint” to “An Inconvenient Truth" and beyond, it’s been a steady march of hysteria, manufactured statistics and speculation totally detached from reality. Stroll down memory lane and meet the ghosts of liberal crises past.

• The Homeless – The “homelessness crisis” suddenly appeared in the early ‘80s, conveniently, just as the left was looking for an emotional way to indict Reaganomics. Supposedly, millions of homeless wandered the streets of our cities, pushing shopping carts, sleeping on heating grates and mooching change. Shelters were filled to capacity. Rising unemployment, lack of affordable housing and the disappearance of the proverbial safety net were to blame, liberals charged. We were all just a few steps away from the streets, they told us.

Mitch Snyder, self-anointed advocate for pavement people (Martin Sheen played him in a made-for-T.V. Movie – “Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story”), informed an ever-credulous media that there were 3 million homeless, a statistic he later admitted making up. In a campus address, Snyder, who committed suicide in 1990, tearfully told us that in America, 45 homeless people die every second. That would mean 1.4 billion (four times the total U.S. population) expire annually, and then are resurrected to die again the following year.

P.J. O’Rourke once wrote that if you put all of the homeless in affordable housing, half are so crazy they’d jump out the windows and the other half would sell the plumbing for drugs or booze. According to one study, between 65% and 85% of the homeless are mentally ill, alcoholics, addicts, or a combination thereof.

We were all just a few cases of Thunderbird or a psychotic episode away from the streets.

• The AIDS Epidemic – Discovered about the same time as the homeless crisis, the dread contagion wasn’t a gay disease, we were assured – on the theory that, if it was, we wouldn’t care enough. Everyone was susceptible. If we didn’t spend billions pronto, AIDS would sweep the nation like wildfire.

“Now No One Is Safe From AIDS,” screeched the cover of Life magazine. It was worse than the Black Plague, a Joe Biden speech and daytime television combined. Then-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop (who was co-opted by the AIDS lobby) forecast a “heterosexual AIDS explosion.” Oprah said that by 1990, 20% of all heterosexuals would be dead from AIDS. Clinton’s HHS Secretary Donna Shalala said AIDS may leave “nobody left.”

These projections were delusional, to put it mildly. According to The Centers for Disease Control, in 2007, 14,561 died from AIDS – not much of a mega-plague, when compared to 631,636 deaths from heart disease, 559,888 from cancer and 137,119 from stroke in the same year.

A 1988 New York Times story (“Researchers List Odds of Getting AIDS in Heterosexual Intercourse’) gave away the game. According to the paper, which never misses a chance to proselytize for the gay agenda, the chances of contracting AIDS from a single act of heterosexual intercourse – with an infected partner and without a condom -- were 1 in 500. No one was safe from AIDS – no one who was gay, bisexual or into sharing (needles).

• The National Epidemic of Hate Crimes – The late Sen. Edward Kennedy called hate crimes “domestic terrorism” – thereby suggesting that they were just as much a threat to our nation’s security as al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hezbollah and every jihad-preaching imam around the world. Neo-Nazis, Ku-Kluxers and freelance haters were roaming our streets looking for victims on which to inflict their vile animus. The alleged epidemic led to the passage last year of The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which added “sexual orientation” to the category of protected classes.

Just how much of a hate-crimes crisis there is may be seen from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. (The FBI is required to compile statistics of so-called bias offenses.) According to the UCR, in 2007, there were 16,929 murders and over 855, 000 cases of aggravated assault in the United States. There were also a grand total of 7,624 hate crimes of all kinds – motivated by race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, whatever.

Of that number, 78% involved either intimidation (words alone), or simple assault (no serious injury occurred), which included pushing and shoving. In 2007, 9 murders were classified as hate crimes – which constituted .0005 % of total homicides. Your chances of being the victim of a hate crime – any hate crime – are comparable to being struck by lightening twice while bungee-jumping on Groundhog Day. For this, we abrogated the First Amendment’s Free Speech clause.

• Global Warming—To justify spending trillions of dollars, drastically altering our way of life and wrecking our economy with idiocies like Cap and Trade, in “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore forecast that the sea level could rise by as much as 20 feet, due to melting polar ice caps. Even, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, run by the global-warming alarmists, was more modest – predicting that sea levels would rise 17 inches by 2100.

Besides his Oscar, Gore deserved a Nebula Award for science fiction writing. Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, a Swedish geologist and physicist who formerly headed the International Commission on Sea Level Change, says that, despite fluctuations, the sea level “has not risen in the past 50 years.” And if there is any change in this century, it will “not be more than 10 cm (4 inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10 cm.” The mainstream media would call Dr. Morner a “global-warming denier.”

Still, Gore’s forecast could come to pass. If the 1.4 billion homeless who die in America every year each had a burial at sea … .

• Over-population – The world was “overpopulated” in 1798, when Thomas Malthus wrote “Principles of Population” and planet earth contained less than a billion people. In his tract, Malthus predicted mass starvation in the coming century. Instead, we got the Industrial Revolution and the greatest expansion of material well-being in history.

The world was overpopulated in 1968, when there were 3.63 billion on earth and Paul Ehrlich wrote “The Population Bomb,” in which he predicted mass starvation in the 1970s – and thus joined the ranks of Malthus and Marx as a prophet of dumb. Today, the world’s population is 6.8 billion. It’s been said that you could fit everyone currently on earth into Texas, and they’d have 1,000 sq. feet of living space. If those quarters are too tight, you could send them all to Brazil, where they'd each have three acres.

If starvation and overcrowding won’t do the trick, how about climate change? Now, it’s argued that a growing population increases carbon fuel consumption, depletes the ozone layer and – aaaaarah! We’re all going to die! Thus, the left has one of its newest myths (global warming) driving one of its oldest myths (overpopulation).

• The Health Insurance Crisis – In his State of the Union address, Barack Obama warned, “By the time I’m finished speaking …. more Americans (45 a second?) will have lost their health insurance.” “Millions will lose it this year.” Plus, (you guessed it) we’re all just a job away from being one of the health insurance-less.

Obama and the Democrats are wedded to the figure 46 million for the number of uninsured in America. For a change, the stat comes from a reliable source, the U.S. Census Bureau. But this is a snapshot of a point in time. It does not mean that 46 million Americans are uninsured over the course of a year. It also doesn’t tell us why they’re uninsured. (Some are between jobs.)

The same data shows that 38% of the uninsured earn more than $50,000 a year and 9.1 million earn more than $75,000. They could afford health insurance. Many are young and healthy and willing to gamble the cost of insurance against the prospect of a serious illness. Another 14 million qualify for government programs that they’re not currently using. And almost 10 million aren’t U.S. citizens. Obama swears on a stack of Korans they’ll never get federally mandated health insurance.

The chronically uninsured are about 8 million, in a population of 305 million. For this we’re expected to turn the best health-care system in the world over to the politicians and bureaucrats who gave us sub-prime mortgages, $1,000 toilet seats and the U.S. Postal Service – and get rationing, death panels, and federally funded abortion in the process.

If they were honest, liberals would confess: “There’s a severe power crisis in this country. When it comes to power over your own life, you have too much and we have too little. Please help us to rectify this situation.”

Of course, that would get them nowhere. Hence, the left’s perpetual-crisis machine – apocalypse now. ”Unless you let us do something drastic right away, you could get AIDS, end up homeless, lose your health insurance, see your beachfront property under 20 feet of water, and watch as beach towels are airlifted to the Eskimos." Goebbels wouldn’t have the gall to concoct the lies they’ve been peddling for half a century.

But more than a power grab is involved. The left hates the middle-class, hates private property and hates limited, constitutional government. It wants to make us feel guilty for what we have. Whatever the crisis, ultimately, it’s our fault – it’s our greed, stupidity, callousness or bigotry that fuels the catastrophe.

In the movie “The Invention of Lying,” Ricky Gervais lives in a world where everyone tells the absolute truth. The protagonist becomes the first person to intentionally tell a lie. (Could the invention of liberals be far behind?) To see how much he can get away with, in one memorable scene, Gervais approaches a beautiful woman on the street and tells her, “If we don’t have sex right now, the world will end.” She responds, “Do we have time to go to a motel, or do we have to do it here?”

That's the way liberal crisis-mongers operate – Let us screw you, right now, or the world will end.

SOURCE

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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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Pick an Excuse, Any Excuse

Remember that great scene from the Oscar-robbed classic "The Blues Brothers"? Jake and Elwood (John Belushi and Dan Akroyd) are finally cornered by Jake's former fiancée (Carrie Fisher). Jake left her at the altar with 300 guests and the best Romanian caterers in the state waiting. "You betrayed me!" she exclaims. "No I didn't. Honest," Jake explains. "I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!" This is pretty much how Democrats sound these days. None of their problems are their fault.

For the first time, more than half of voters think President Obama doesn't deserve to be re-elected. Almost three out of four Americans believe that the stimulus was wasted.

Evan Bayh's retirement has triggered a bowel-stewing panic among Democrats. Bayh is from Indiana, one of the two crown jewels of Obama's "red-blue" victory (the other being Virginia). Even a month ago, the notion that Republicans could get within striking distance of taking back the Senate was considered absurd. Now, it's a live possibility.

Obama's defenders note that he is personally popular, which is at best debatable. But even if that were true, Obama's personal political capital is as non-transferable as an out-of-state check drawn in crayon. It's certainly useless in getting ObamaCare or cap-and-trade passed. And, so far, it hasn't helped Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts.

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader and Obama's lead legislative Sherpa, is almost surely toast in his re-election bid. Richard Blumenthal, the popular Democratic candidate running for retiring Sen. Chris Dodd's seat in Connecticut says it's an "open question" whether he will even invite Obama to campaign for him. That's a vote of confidence.

Why is this happening? If you listen to the White House and its defenders in the press, the answer is simple: It's everyone else's fault. Well, that's not entirely right. The Obama administration admits one mistake -- and one mistake only. It didn't explain itself better. In both his State of the Union address and interviews, Obama insisted he got all the policies right. It's just that the reportedly greatest orator in the history of the republic couldn't quite make himself clear enough.

The good news is that he recognizes his mistakes and is going to try again. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told the Washington Post this week that "In 2010, the president will constantly be doing high-profile things to be the person driving the narrative."

The multiple trips to Copenhagen, the five-Sunday-shows-in-one-day marathon, the three joint session addresses to Congress in one year, the prime-time news conferences, the state dinner, the speech in Cairo: These don't add up to "constantly" doing "high-profile things"? I can't wait to hear what "high-profile" means. Explain health-care reform while parting the waters of the Potomac?

But even this explanation amounts to dodging blame. It's still code for "You stupid Americans, why can't you understand I'm right and you're wrong?"

That's certainly how Joe Klein, Obama's de facto press flack at Time magazine, sees things. In a piece titled "Too Dumb to Thrive," Klein argues that Americans are too stupid to understand how totally awesome the stimulus was. (Time's Peter Beinart makes a similar argument in a debate with me for Bloggingheads.tv.) What's funny about this is that if nearly two-thirds of Americans are idiots, that means roughly half of Obama's voters were idiots, too. His election was once the epitome of American wisdom. Now it seems he was elected despite the stupidity of his supporters.

Of course, the Obamaphiles switched to this argument only after months of pounding their spoons on their high chairs about the unfairness of Republican "obstructionism" in the Senate. The filibuster was once a bulwark against tyranny, according to Democrats trying to block George W. Bush's agenda. Now, it's proof that the American political system "sucks," according to Obama confidante and liberal super-wonk John Podesta, and evidence that America's system is arguably "worse" than totalitarian China's, according to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

And they switched to that argument only after insisting that Bush was responsible for every evil under the sun. (Now, the White House brags about using Bush's anti-terror policies and insists it deserves the credit for success in Iraq.)

Coming soon: A terrible flood! Locusts! Anything and everything to avoid admitting their problems are their own fault.

SOURCE

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Is Obama really 'brilliant'?

During his State of the Union address, with eight of the Supreme Court justices sitting right in front of him like clay pigeons, Barack Obama told the world that he would have to correct their mistake by bringing back McCain-Feingold. Well, why wouldn't he say such a stupid thing? After all, he's been wrong about everything else.

It's perfectly reasonable that Obama would oppose corporations donating money to political campaigns. Where do oil, coal and pharmaceutical companies get off thinking they should have the same right as the UAW, the SEIU, ACORN and George Soros to finance elections? For that matter, while whining about some corporations playing a role in the election process, I haven't heard Obama say boo about the role such corporations as NBC, CBS, ABC, the Washington Post or the New York Times have played in creating and burnishing his image.

But, then, who are regular, run-of-the-mill, taxpaying Americans to question Obama? He's brilliant, after all. It's not just liberals who say so, either. I keep hearing people like Bill O'Reilly saying so day after day. The problem is that I keep looking for signs of his brilliance, and looking and looking. It doesn't help that the O'Reillys of the world never point out any examples.

Still, if Obama is so brilliant, why does he parrot the words and thoughts of a bunch of schmucks like Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, Al Gore and Michael Moore? Why does he insist that the trouble with the Constitution and the civil-rights movement is that they didn't focus on the redistribution of wealth? Why would he hand over the federal budget to a couple of morons like Pelosi and Reid? And why on earth would he put Henry Waxman in charge of his energy program? A brilliant person wouldn't trust Waxman to bring baked beans to a picnic.

When someone decides to model a health-care plan after such dismal failures as England, Canada and Cuba, while exhuming the failed economic policies of FDR, why would anyone suggest he is anything but a left-wing ignoramus?

This is an American president, for heaven's sake, who has more in common with Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez and some Berkeley hippie than he has with Washington, Jefferson and Adams. Except that he is now 30 years older, Obama seems to think exactly the same way he was thinking back in college, when he was a pot-smoking idiot who sought out students who were self-professed revolutionaries and professors who were communists.

If we have come to a point where the ability to read scripted lines off a teleprompter is considered a sign of brilliance, no matter how fatuous the actual words may be, we are in even worse shape than I imagined.

In a movie I loved, "The Princess Bride," the villain, Vizzini (Wallace Shawn), keeps saying "Inconceivable!" each time something happens that he failed to anticipate, mainly because, in his arrogance, he underestimated his adversary. Finally, after he has said "Inconceivable!" once too often, one of his cohorts turns to him and says, "I don't think that word means what you think it does."

But I wouldn't want to leave liberals and some goofy conservatives entirely speechless when it comes to describing the president. So to fill the void, I'm happy to supply them with some options, such as stubborn, pompous, inflexible, dishonest, officious, partisan, unpatriotic, duplicitous, socialist, untrustworthy and dictatorial. Any of those words is far more fitting than brilliant, as are self-enamored, egotistical, narcissistic, long-winded and boring.

You want to know who I think is truly brilliant? Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, that's who. His demeanor is pleasant, and his decisions are invariably sensible and well-considered. And that includes his most recent decision, which was to skip Obama's State of the Union harangue.

SOURCE

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If Obama REALLY wanted to create jobs ....

He would cut the corporations tax (and enrage all his far-Left supporters -- but they're all now livid with him anyhow)

By Jon Hall

America has the second-highest corporate tax rate on Earth. Economists say that this puts America at a competitive disadvantage. So to spur growth and help get us out of the Great Recession, some have urged Congress to lower the corporate tax rate. But rather than cutting rates, why not suspend the Corporation Income Tax altogether? In the Age of Trillion-Dollar Deficits, what would that do to federal revenue?

The highest federal revenue from the corporate income tax for any fiscal year was $370B in 2007. By contrast, fiscal year 2009 saw total corporate income tax revenue fall to $138B, a drop of 62.7 percent. (All years cited herein are fiscal years. Data herein can be found in the OMB's latest Historical Tables, pages 31-33. Chart below.)

But 2007 was a rather good year, when total federal revenue hit the all-time record of $2.568 trillion; while 2009, an indisputably dismal year, saw total federal revenue slide to $2.104 trillion, an 18-percent decline. So the percentage decline in corporate income tax revenue was 3.48 times greater than the percentage decline in total revenue.

Looking at pages 32 and 33 (Table 2.2), we see the portion of total federal revenue taken up by the corporate income tax to be higher in years 2005 through 2007 than in any year since 1980. And from 1980 going back to 1934 (where the table starts), we see that the corporate income tax's portion of total revenue was always in the double digits and was above 20 percent from 1941 through 1967, even hitting 39.8 percent in 1943. In 1983, when America was rising out of a recession, corporate taxes accounted for 6.2 percent of total revenue, the lowest percentage on the chart. But the next-lowest (6.5 percent) was that of 2009, that indisputably dismal year.



From 1941 through 1961, the share of total revenue contributed by corporate taxes ranged between 20.3 and 39.8 percent and averaged 28.1 percent. But from 1980 to the present, it ranged between 6.2 and 14.7 percent, averaging 8.92 percent from 1981 through 1990 and 10.61 percent from 1991 through 2000.

So the trend for the last seventy years has been for corporate income taxes to take up less and less of total federal revenue. This is certainly true of the boom years in the 1980s and the '90s, which averaged a 9.76-percent share. In 2008, a fiscal year mostly in recession, the corporate tax's share of total revenue (12.1 percent) was higher than in any of the boom years under Reagan, Bush the elder, and Clinton.

Let's compare the corporate income tax with another source of federal revenue:

The Individual Income Tax has been the largest source of federal revenue since 1944, when it shot up to 45 percent of total revenue. This tax's share of total federal revenue has stayed in the forty- to fifty-percent range ever since (except for 1949 and 1950), and it reached its all-time high of 49.9 percent in 2001. In 2000, the first year total federal revenue topped $2 trillion, individual income taxes made up 49.6 percent of total revenue, while corporate income taxes made up only 10.2 percent.

If Congress were to suspend the corporate income tax to spur the economy, what would corporations do with their "windfall"? Would they just give themselves raises and bonuses? To prevent such a thing, Congress might put provisos on what companies could do with their profits, like insisting that they take on new hires. But how can a business add workers when the consumer isn't spending?

In the Age of Trillion-Dollar Deficits, the federal government can't afford to forgo any revenue. But some have proposed a "payroll tax holiday," which could deprive the feds of far more revenue than a corporation tax holiday. Revenue from the payroll tax has provided 30-40 percent of total fed revenue for decades.

So suspension of the corporate income tax seems to be a nonstarter. Besides, if a corporation doesn't have any profits, which is often the case in a recession, it won't be paying any taxes anyway. Suspension of certain targeted taxes for low-income earners might be feasible if Congress were to suspend its infernal spending.

If suspension of taxes isn't a good idea, then neither is a temporary cut in tax rates. The problem with a temporary tax rate cut is that when a recession is over and the rate is reset back to "normal," it puts a drag on the recovery. Tax rates should be set to rates that work during both recessions and booms. Temporary measures are an override of the free market. What Congress should do is set the corporate tax at competitive rates permanently. Scott A. Hodge of the Tax Foundation reports: "[O]ver the past two years, more than 50 nations -- including China, Great Britain and Germany -- have cut their corporate income taxes in order to maintain their global competitiveness. Many of these countries have pleasantly discovered that lower tax rates reduce the incentive for businesses and individuals to engage in income-shifting which means more taxable income stays in-country."

If America wants to be truly competitive, then her corporate tax rates should be no more than the average rates of other major industrial economies. If we want to be competitive with France, Germany, Canada, and the U.K., then this would mean a reduction in rates of 11.1 percentage points. Using static analysis, this would mean a loss of $15.3B for 2009, a mere rounding error for our profligate Congress.

Let's permanently lower corporate income tax rates and make America a more attractive place to do business.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Keystone Kops give up: After years hounding the unfortunate Dr. Hatfill, the FBI finally decide that a dead guy sent the anthrax letters in 2001.

Dems' Advantage Among Young People Slips: "According to Pew Research, young people's support for the Democrat Party took a beating during 2009: The Democratic advantage over the Republicans in party affiliation among young voters, including those who "lean" to a party, reached a whopping 62% to 30% margin in 2008. But by the end of 2009 this 32-point margin had shrunk to just 14 points: 54% Democrat, 40% Republican. While the Republican Party picked up support from Millennials during 2009, this age group continues to favor the Democratic Party more than do other generations. And the underlying political values of this new generation continue to be significantly more liberal than those of other generations on many measures."

Soldier's defense gets another $50,000 from Savage listeners: "Talk radio icon Michael Savage has put another $50,000 in a defense fund for a U.S. soldier who was jailed for shooting a terrorist in self-defense. According to the Radio Business Report, Savage yesterday confirmed on his radio show he sent the additional funding for the defense of Lt. Michael Behenna, the Army Ranger sentenced to jail for killing known al-Qaida operative Ali Mansur in Iraq. "I want you to understand that we do make a difference here on The Savage Nation. This is not just a show," the report said Savage announced about the money collected from listeners through the Savage Legal Defense Fund. "Even if you haven't sent him any money, even if you only e-mailed him or wrote him a letter it's giving him the hope that one day he will be freed."

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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MSM denial over IRS bomber's Leftism

Gee, looks like angry people! Must be the Tea Party movement!

Before crashing his plane into an IRS office building, Joe Stack wrote and posted online a diatribe against insurance and drug companies, private health care, George W. Bush, and the Catholic Church. Subtract out the subtle hints at his planned terror act, and a similar rant could have appeared in some form on any of several left-wing message boards.

Despite this, it isn't just willfully blind posters on those same left-wing message boards that are trying to insinuate some connection between the Tea Party movement and this apparent tax-evader and suicide pilot, who railed against Congress for failing to pass health reform. A reader emails in a few examples from the mainstream media, including this gem from New York Magazine, whose author does not seem either to have read the manifesto very closely or to have attended any Tea Party rallies: "In fact, a lot of his rhetoric could have been taken directly from a handwritten sign at a tea party rally.”

Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post shoots from the same hip, and even goes out of his way to omit, without an ellipsis, Stack's attack on capitalism (and nod of approval to communism) at the end of his rant: “But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement.”

Time Magazine settles for placing a reference link to another piece, The making of the Tea Party movement, in the middle of its coverage.

So the next time you see a Tea Party rally, try to spot as many anti-Christian supporters of health insurance reform who hate George W. Bush as you can. Send the photographs and videos to us at The Washington Examiner.

Seriously, though, you'd think educated, intelligent people would see the difference. Unless they don't want to see it.

SOURCE

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Beware of "Comprehensive" Anything

Victor Davis Hanson below applies some classic conservative advice to present-day politics

Before envisioning dramatic change, the Roman emperor Augustus is said to have warned, "Make haste slowly." The reformer Augustus was eager for radical social transformation. But he also knew he had to deal with generations of Roman tradition and habit -- and thousands of entrenched special interests. President Obama should heed Augustus' advice before he plans any more doomed top-to-bottom change.

Take his stalled health-care reforms. Rather than trying to turn a largely private system all at once into a huge state-controlled and regulated industry at a time of historic deficits, he would have been better off advocating incremental changes. Tort reform, for example, would reduce frivolous lawsuits that drive up medical expenses. Or health insurers could be allowed to compete across state lines. Tax credits and grants could focus on the uninsured. The costs of such changes would have been marginal, the savings large.

Instead, a 1,000-plus-page health-care bill had so many regulations that not even its congressional authors could explain all the details or predict their effects. And so President Obama's massive overhaul looks like it will meet the same fate as Bill Clinton's doomed 1993 "comprehensive" effort to remake American health care.

Obama also promised a remake of the war on terror -- including changing even its name to "overseas contingency operations." He campaigned on ending military tribunals, renditions and the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The Patriot Act and Predator drones were supposed to be trimmed back. Candidate Obama wanted combat troops to leave Iraq in March 2008 and declared the surge there a failure.

That comprehensive "reset" strategy was also quietly dropped. Obama has instead continued almost all the old Bush anti-terrorism protocols. Despite campaign talk of quickly getting out of Iraq and criticizing our supposed terrorizing of civilians in Afghanistan, Obama follows most Bush policies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Loud promises to close Guantanamo, investigate former CIA interrogators and try terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York so far have not happened -- and probably won't.

Unfazed by his health-care implosion, about-face on terrorism and falling polls, the president has promised Hispanic groups he will seek comprehensive immigration reform, and will probably support the Democratic-sponsored "Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act."

George Bush, of course, failed with massive immigration legislation in 2008. Bush wanted to address all at once every problem from closing the border and guest workers to amnesty and earned citizenship. Instead, far better would be a more modest effort to just close the border -- and worry about the other problems later. That could be done fairy easily through enforcing existing employer sanctions and finishing the border fence.

Once the influx of new arrivals is curtailed, the other contentious issues can be dealt with piecemeal. Without a million new arrivals each year -- while we argue and debate -- the size of the illegal community would shrink due to voluntary repatriation, deportations and greater assimilation (such as through marriage).

In fact, very few presidents succeed in "comprehensive" reform. President Bush -- pointing to his mandate after the 2004 victory over John Kerry -- vowed to change public Social Security into a semi-private enterprise. It was a radical Obama-like plan in reverse, in which younger workers could open their own private investment accounts. But just like Obama's effort to remake health care, the more Bush campaigned across the country for comprehensive Social Security reform, the more the public seemed to be opposed. Far easier would have been raising the retirement age by a year or two.

Why do such comprehensive efforts usually fail? Often existing policies are not all bad. Remaking them from the ground up has as much to do with politics and bragging rights about achieving "big change" as real need. Comprehensive reform also often involves new laws, more money and additional bureaucrats. Yet almost every problem facing America arises from too much federal spending and borrowing -- not too little government.

Finally, offering "comprehensive" reform usually means years of arguing and horse-trading among pressure groups to get anything done. By the time all the special interests are appeased or bought off, the resulting elephantine legislation typically looks nothing like what was intended.

In short, big-government medicine usually doesn't work on big-government sickness. If President Obama wants "comprehensive" change, it would be better simply not to spend any more money we don't have -- another lesson from Augustus, who put financial reform and budgetary sanity above everything else.

SOURCE

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The Greek Lesson

By Victor Davis Hanson

No, I don’t mean the classical Greeks, but their present-day counterparts. Economists have given us all the usual diagnoses of what went wrong in a now bankrupt Greece — high taxes, tax cheating, too generous retirements, unsustainable entitlements, government corruption, and anemic demography.

Add to such socialism the natural foreign policy and collective expressions that always follow statism in the modern Western world — increased pacifism, utopian pretension, moral equivalence, cheap anti-Americanism — and we have the foreign policy expression of Greece (and much of the EU) of the last 30 years. (A citizen who believes by birthright that he is to be taken care of by the state always hates the state that can never do enough, in the fashion that the country who is taken care of militarily always hates its protector.)

In other words, Greece is the canary in the mine of the impending crack-up of the modern welfare state. It is a great gift to us all, this example. A year ago, the socialists, even as they were juggling and falsifying their books, were bragging that the Wall Street meltdown was a referendum — and capitalism was doomed. Now, the entire socialist dream is exposed and even the most ardent statist knows that there is no longer enough “others” to pay the tab.

The poor EU learned that the Greek siesta, the 10PM Athenian dinners, the state power company vans at the beaches in the workday afternoons, the kafenions full of 50-year-old men at 11AM, the angry students perpetually in the streets at each hinted reform, and the moonlighting telephone employees all came at the expense of far harder-working Scandinavian and German socialists, who apparently now realize a nice two weeks each year on Santorini or Crete aren’t worth billions of their own Euros in rescue bailouts.

Here in California we see the symptoms of the same Greek malady as we go from one budget shortfall to the next — dream-like borrowing, raising taxes, and furloughing, in lieu of the tough medicine of cutting government payrolls, changing pension payouts, and freezing the pay of state-workers until their compensation mirror images those in the private sector.

Postmodern Western society will soon witness a real showdown, analogous to the teenager who rebels and either accepts that he is still dependent on his parents and therefore subject to the rules of the house, or runs away and implodes in a sea of drugs and street-life.

In short, how will an entitled society react when the money runs out and it learns that it must change or wither away — and all the whining rhetoric about “social justice” and “a green future” and “spread the wealth” and “redistributive change” won’t bring another barrel of oil or bushel of wheat or Douglas fir 2” x 4”?

On the one hand, the money is vanishing. Income, state and federal, as well as payroll, taxes here in California may soon top 60% on top incomes (10% state, 15% plus payroll on most of one’s self-employed income, 39% federal). Add in property and sales taxes and we’ve reached the point where the lemon can no longer be squeezed without either more than the current 3,500 a week leaving the state, or going the Greek route of endemic cheating.

Where did all the wealth go? Modern Western society is in some sense becoming drone-like, its entitled sensitive citizens assuming ceremonial roles and attitudes about the very landscape they inherited from their industrious predecessors.

Here in California we idle farmland, though we have the water, expertise, and soil to produce far more food than we do. We put vast swaths of both land and sea off limits to gas and oil production, though we could produce far more petroleum and natural gas than we do. We snub nuclear power, though our population steadily increases and its desire for electronic appurtenance grows, not shrinks. We like “wilderness areas” (who doesn’t?) where we build no roads, harvest no timber, and build no dams. We strangle Silicon Valley with all sorts of labor and business regulations until it fabricates and outsources abroad. In other words, we are creating no real new sources of concrete wealth as we nuance the shrinking capital we inherited.

Yes, before we have the actor, the writer, the professor, the insurer, the investor, the regulator, and the politicians, we need the elemental among us to find or create material wealth. We, the sloganeering class, forgot that, and so subsidize our high living either on borrowed money or the prior productive investment of those now in the grave yards.

And the tab is coming due faster than we ever dreamed. All the soaring, teleprompted rhetoric, the Ivy-League credentials, and the social justice boilerplate will no more create wealth than ceremonial fifth-century AD consuls and robed bishops could fabricate the glory of Rome.

Why am I not too optimistic right now? Our President, who submitted the largest deficits in recent memory, and who is on track to nearly double the national debt in record time, continues to blame Bush — not just for Bush’s lamentable deficits, but for Obama’s own new unsustainable ones. I think his weird logic is: “Bush’s bad deficits made me trump them by a factor of four.” When the Commander-in-Chief expects the populace to believe that, or drops real unemployment figures and talks instead of theoretical jobs saved, or flip-flops on everything from evil Wall Street bankers now suddenly good, or bad nuclear power now vital, then we have about as much hope as we would have under Jimmy Carter.

More here

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A good letter

On 23 August 2009, the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger published a letter to the editor from Dr. Roger Starner Jones, a physician who specializes in emergency medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Dr. Jones' letter was published under the title "Why Pay for the Care of the Careless?" and read as follows:

During my last shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tatoos and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ring tone.

Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid.

She smokes a costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our president expects me to pay for this woman's health care? Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture -- a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.

Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Obama banned from Las Vegas: "The list of people banned from Las Vegas is a litany of dishonour. But among the swindlers, fixers and mobsters — many of their mugshots displayed on the Nevada Gaming Commission’s website under the heading Excluded, Wanted & Denied — is a new and rather unlikely name: that of Barack H. Obama, of Washington. “I want to assure you that when he comes [here], I’ll do everything I can to give him the boot,” growled Oscar Goodman, the Mayor of Las Vegas, before Air Force One swooped down over Sin City’s infamous “Strip” for a presidential visit that was expected to last less than 24 hours. Mr Goodman was not there to greet Mr Obama when he stepped on to the tarmac of McCarran International, having turned down an invitation from the White House. Nor was he expected to attend any of the President’s events — an astonishing rebuff by a lowly city mayor to a US leader. With Obama’s visit intended in large part to help the re-election chances of the deeply unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — a man who opined with excruciating candour that the President’s victory in 2008 was a result of him being a “light-skinned African-American, with no Negro dialect” — the mayor’s snub was threatening to turn an already awkward situation into a full-blown political debacle... the 70-year-old mayor is livid about what he regards as Mr Obama’s repeated attacks on his beloved city, which has been hurt badly by the recession."

Obama finds a useful RINO: "The same day President Obama called for another $50 billion to $100 billion stimulus plan (and concomitant increase in the deficit), he also appointed the chairmen of his Deficit Reduction Commission. It says a lot about Washington that almost no one got the irony of those paired announcements. The two cochairmen will be Democrat Erskine Bowles, President Bill Clinton's former White House chief of staff, and Republican Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming Senator. Mr. Simpson was best known for being a thorn in the side of conservatives and supply-siders when he was in the Senate. "He is a tax increaser and he's anti-immigrant," says Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Larry Kudlow of CNBC's Kudlow Report is even more critical. "Simpson's to the left of Erskine Bowles," Mr. Kudlow scoffs. "This thing [the bipartisan deficit panel] needs to be blown up. It's an excuse to raise taxes -- when we need to be cutting tax rates."

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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