The End of Britain as We Know It

The article below has considerable logic to it but reality can be peskily complex. Australia has had the voting system proposed for Britain for around a century now and is one of the most stable, conservative and prosperous countries in the world. It was also one of the few countries that was virtually unaffected by the global financial crisis. How about that?

Additionally it is far from a done deal that the new voting system for Britain will be approved at the proposed referendum. Britain has few referenda but Australia has had rather a lot -- and they have mostly been lost (i.e. got a majority "no" vote)

And the agreement to hold elections at strict 5 year intervals is only an agreement of the moment. It is nothing like America's 4 year constitutional requirement for Presidential elections. It can be overturned at any time by the British parliament and there are already rumbles of dissatisfaction over it. Few observers think it will outlast the present coalition government and it may not even last that long -- JR

By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

The United Kingdom, the mother of all democracies, is about to change its political system in fundamental ways -- changes that will spell disaster for the nation and for its politics. For those who love Britain, the news of these impending alterations can only cause angst and distress.

As a result of the inability of either the Conservatives or Labor to win a majority in Parliament in the recent elections, both parties had to bid for support from the Liberal/Social Democratic Party. The price the Conservatives ultimately paid was to agree to some of these changes and to refer others to the electorate for a referendum.

The changes that the parties have agreed to will transform the British government from a decisive decision-making machine into a morass of compromise, half-measures and deadlock. Gridlock will be exported across the ocean to the United Kingdom.

Right now, the prime minister can dissolve Parliament anytime he wants, forcing new elections. He is also obliged to order new elections if he loses a vote of confidence. This power holds the members of his parliamentary majority in check and restrains them from turning on their leaders since, should they succeed in a vote of no confidence, it would plunge them into the uncertainty of a new election, which would imperil their own seats.

The new rules would bar the prime minister from dissolving Parliament during its five-year term and vest that right in a two-thirds majority of parliament. In other words, Parliament would have to vote itself out of office -- something likely never to happen.

So, under the new rules, if a government loses a vote over a major legislative item -- or fails to survive a no-confidence motion -- it must resign, but there need not be new elections. Instead, Parliament can refuse to order new elections and just re-form a new government out of the old Parliament.

The effect of this rule change is likely to be that governments will rise and fall all the time since they may do so without forcing members to face new elections. Like in Italy, the new governments will just be formed by reshuffling the current parliamentary deck into new combinations and coalitions.

Whereas now, if a government falls, there is an election to decide the issue, under the new procedure, the deadlock could just go on and on without resolution.

More dangerous is the proposed new voting system that must be approved by a popular referendum. Rather than vote for one candidate for Parliament in each district, voters will be obliged to rank the candidates in their order of preference. If nobody gets a majority of first-place rankings, the candidate with the least votes drops off and his second place votes are distributed among the other remaining candidates. The Liberal/Social Democrats are pushing this change in the hopes that there may never again be a parliamentary majority for the Conservatives or Labor and that they will always hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.

And they are likely to achieve their objective if the new voting system passes. Most districts in the United Kingdom, as in the U.S., tend either to the left or to the right.

In a leftist district, for example, the Labor Party usually finishes first, the Liberal/Social Democrats second and the Conservatives third. If the Labor candidate did not win a majority of first place votes on Election Day -- and they frequently don't -- the Conservative candidate will drop off and his second-place votes will determine the winner. But what Conservative voter is going to name Labor as his second choice in the polarized politics of the U.K.? Most will name the Liberal/Social Dems as their second choice, and that candidate will win the seat. In right-wing districts, the same process will happen in reverse, again to the benefit of the Liberal/Social Dems.

That means more hung parliaments, less decisive election results and more mush compromise. Together, these changes will tend to paralyze the British government, substituting muddled, mushy compromise for decisive and bold action. We will miss the old United Kingdom.

SOURCE

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Should the U.S. Adopt Compulsory Voting?

The Author below obviously knows the Australian electoral system better than the authors above. And I agree with her. The Australian system of COMPULSORY voting would be a disaster in the USA. The conventional wisdom in Australia is that politically indifferent people who are forced to vote distribute their votes randomly so compulsion has no systematic ideological effect.

America is different, however, Blacks and Hispanics at present have very low rates of turnout and forcing them to the polls WOULD have a systematic effect. It would ensure permanent Democrat majorities

There are no similar large and disgruntled minorities in Australia -- JR

By Debra J. Saunders

California GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman has been taking a lot of heat for her voting record. Or non-voting record. The former eBay CEO didn't register to vote in California until 2002. She failed to vote in the 2003 recall election. She didn't register as a Republican until 2007.

Too bad Whitman didn't spend her business-big-shot years Down Under. In Australia, it's against the law for citizens age 18 or older not to vote.

Ask Aussies about the system and they generally support it. The Australian government passed mandatory voting in federal elections after voter participation slipped to 59 percent in 1922 from an earlier high of 71 percent. In recent years, about 95 percent of Australian citizens have voted.

Besides, some Australians will note, it is not a crime to fail to vote if you are not registered. For the vast majority of those who are enrolled but do not vote, it also is easy to get out of the fine -- about $20 for a first offense -- by citing illness or another extenuating circumstance.

Then there's the phenomenon known as "donkey voting" -- or just randomly ticking off names on the ballot. Call it a protest, call it lazy. The outcome is the same.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow William Galston has proposed that America adopt the same system to increase voter participation. In the 2008 presidential election, 61.7 percent of eligible Americans voted, according to George Mason University.

I object. For one thing, Washington should not coerce citizens by making them vote. In a free country, those who do not wish to vote should be free to abstain. For another, if people are so ill informed as to believe their votes have no import, well, they're probably right.

And while there is no proving that higher turnout means more left-leaning votes, political scientists of both stripes tend to believe that mandatory voting delivers more votes to the left than to the right. Again, quantity does not mean quality.

Even in Australia, even with compulsory voting, however, high-profile, big-money candidates with poor voting records can prevail. Peter Garrett -- you know, the tall bald singer from the rock band Midnight Oil -- ran for office in 2004. At the time, he was forced to admit that for all his politically correct lectures and exhortations for political activism, he himself had not been on the federal election rolls for 10 years.

At the time, conservative Treasurer Peter Costello told the Herald Sun of Melbourne, "If you haven't been interested enough to have registered and voted in elections, it's a bit rich to ask other people to vote for you." And: "It's like the pope saying he hadn't been to church for 10 years."

Today, Garrett is the Labor Party's minister for the environment. In both hemispheres, apparently, rich and famous count for something.

SOURCE

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Signs of the Times

Thomas Sowell

If you could spend vast amounts of other people's money just by saying a few magic words, wouldn't you be tempted to do it? Barack Obama has spent hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money just by using the magic words "stimulus" and "jobs."

It doesn't matter politically that the stimulus is not actually stimulating and that the unemployment rate remains up near double-digit levels, despite all the spending and all the rhetoric about jobs. And of course nothing negative will ever matter to those who are part of the Obama cult, including many in the media.

But, for the rest of us, there is a lot to think about in the economic disaster that we are in.

Not only has all the runaway spending and rapid escalation of the deficit to record levels failed to make any real headway in reducing unemployment, all this money pumped into the economy has also failed to produce inflation. The latter is a good thing in itself but its implications are sobering.

How can you pour trillions of dollars into the economy and not even see the price level go up significantly? Economists have long known that it is not just the amount of money, but also the speed with which it circulates, that affects the price level.

Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that the velocity of circulation of money in the American economy has plummeted to its lowest level in half a century. Money that people don't spend does not cause inflation. It also does not stimulate the economy.

The current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek has a feature article about businesses that are just holding on to huge sums of money. They say, for example, that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer is holding on to $26 billion. If so, there should not be any great mystery as to why they don't invest it.

With the Obama administration being on an anti-business kick, boasting of putting their foot on some business' neck, and the president talking about putting his foot on another part of the anatomy, with Congress coming up with more and more red tape, more mandates and more heavy-handed interventions in businesses, would you risk $26 billion that you might not even be able to get back, much less make any money on the deal?

Pfizer is not unique. Banks have cut back on lending, despite all the billions of dollars that were dumped into them in the name of "stimulus." Consumers have also cut back on spending.

For the first time, more gold is being bought as an investment to be held as a hedge against a currently non-existent inflation than is being bought by the makers of jewelry. There may not be any inflation now, but eventually that money is going to start moving, and so will the price level.

Despite a big decline in the amount of gold used to make jewelry, the demand for gold as an investment has risen so steeply as to more than make up for the reduced demand for gold jewelry, and has in fact pushed the price of gold to record high levels.

What does all this say? That people don't know what to expect next from this administration, which seldom lets a month go by without some new anti-business laws, policies or rhetoric.

When you hire somebody in this environment, you know what you have agreed to pay them and what additional costs there may be for their health insurance or other benefits. But you have no way of knowing what additional costs the politicians in Washington are going to impose, when they are constantly coming up with new bright ideas for imposing more mandates on business.

One of the little noticed signs of what is going on has been the increase in the employment of temporary workers. Businesses have been increasingly meeting their need for labor by hiring temporary workers and working their existing employees overtime, instead of hiring new people.

Why? Because temporary workers usually don't get health insurance or other benefits, and working existing employees overtime doesn't add to the cost of their benefits.

There is no free lunch-- and the biggest price of all is paid by people who are unemployed because politicians cannot leave the economy alone to recover, as the American economy has repeatedly recovered faster when left alone than when politicians decided that they have to "do something."

SOURCE

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, 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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A lawless Federal government

Voting Section Told Not To Enforce Purging the Dead or Ineligible from Voting Rolls -- an open invitation to voting corruption, long a Democrat specialty

by J. Christian Adams

I was at the Voting Section of the Justice Department for over five years. This office is responsible for enforcing most federal election laws which do not involve criminal matters. My previous articles at Pajamas Media have spoken of the DOJ’s lawless abandonment of race-neutral enforcement of voting laws, and other outrageous conduct. I will continue to publish here at Pajamas Media more instances of failure to enforce the law equally by the Department.

One such instance relates to the Motor Voter law, and will shock Americans who care about integrity in the electoral process.

The “Motor Voter” law was passed in 1993 to promote greater voter registration in the United States. It did this — most Americans now know from visits to the DMV — by requiring states to offer voter registration materials whenever someone had contact with a variety of state offices. These included welfare offices, social service agencies, and motor vehicle departments.

A lesser-known provision also obliged the states to ensure that no ineligible voters were on the rolls — including dead people, felons, and people who had moved. Our current Department of Justice is anxious to encourage the obligations to get everyone registered, but explicitly unwilling to enforce federal law requiring states to remove the dead or ineligible from the rolls.

In November 2009, the entire Voting Section was invited to a meeting with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes, a political employee serving at the pleasure of the attorney general. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Motor Voter enforcement decisions.

The room was packed with dozens of Voting Section employees when she made her announcement regarding the provisions related to voter list integrity: "We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it."

Jaws dropped around the room. It is one thing to silently adopt a lawless policy of refusing to enforce a provision of federal law designed to bring integrity to elections. It is quite another to announce the lawlessness to a room full of people who have sworn an oath to fairly enforce the law.

Worse yet, it is a broken campaign promise by Barack Obama, and I’m sure he would not be happy to have heard the announcement. After all, his Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez has been traveling around the country bashing the Bush-era Department of Justice. Perez says as often as he can: "Those who had been entrusted with the keys to the division treated it like a buffet line at the cafeteria, cherry-picking which laws to enforce."

Yet at this meeting, Ms. Fernandes openly relished her time at the buffet line in the Voting Section cafeteria.

The problem with this sort of lawlessness, apart from the fact that it is becoming a trend in this administration, is that it nullifies the important compromise that Congress reached in 1993. Greater access to registration came by turning welfare agencies into voter registration offices, but the law also included provisions to ensure greater integrity. It is a dangerous development for our electoral system when one part of that compromise is tossed overboard by a bureaucrat.

It will be impossible for this purportedly transparent administration to deny this direction was given. There were dozens of good people in the room that I know care more about the truth than about saving Ms. Fernandes’ career.

Plus, the cases the Justice Department has brought — or not brought — corroborate the account: the Department has not filed a single case under the Motor Voter provision where there are problems.

Are there problems with list integrity? Yes, but that’s a story for another article. Even worse than not bringing cases, the Holder Justice Department has dismissed a case against Missouri that the previous administration had started. In many places in Missouri, there are more voters than humans with a heartbeat old enough to vote. Instead of fully litigating the case to a favorable outcome, the DOJ made it go away, nicely, quietly, completely. Sound familiar?

SOURCE

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Republicans could win control of Congress, White House admits for first time

The White House has admitted for the first time that Republicans could win control of the House of Representatives in crucial elections in November. Robert Gibbs, the president's spokesman, acknowledged that deep frustration with the economy could see the Democrats' 75-seat majority in the lower chamber wiped out.

"There is no doubt there are enough seats at play that could cause Republicans to gain control, there is no doubt about that," Mr Gibbs told NBC's "Meet the Press".

All 435 seats in the House are up for grabs in the Nov 2 election as well as 36 of the 100 seats in the Senate, which the Democrats expect to hold.

The party is considered particularly vulnerable in southern and midwestern states, districts that turned Democratic in the latter years of the Bush administration. A consensus has emerged among Washington observers that the House would be lost or the ruling party's majority reduced to a handful of seats.

Such outcomes would make it difficult for President Barack Obama to push through his agenda, which is likely to include major reform of energy and immigration. It would not augur well for his re-election bid in 2012.

In the past week Mr Obama has set out his policy for the midterm vote, trying to convince impatient Americans that his economic policies are working and that improvements will take time.

"We understand people are frustrated, everybody is frustrated," Mr Gibbs said. "The president is frustrated that we haven't seen greater recovery efforts, but that doesn't stop us from doing what we know is right."

Rehearsing a line of attack that Democrats are likely to use ad infinitum, he said Americans should beware of "handing back the keys" to Republicans who had "driven the car into the ditch" when the economy crashed in late 2008.

He followed the president's lead in mocking Republican House of Representatives leader John Boehner, who criticised measures Mr Obama used to rescue the crisis-riddled economy as tantamount to using a nuclear weapon to kill an ant.

A recent Gallup poll released showed that 38 per cent of independent voters approve of the job Mr Obama is doing, compared with 81 per cent of Democratic voters and only 12 per cent of Republicans. Mr Obama's overall approval rating is 46 per cent. A year ago, his approval rating among independents was 56 per cent.

Democrats are trusting that Republicans are likely to come in for tougher scrutiny from voters in November, particularly over their record on the economy and almost total opposition to efforts by Mr Obama and the Democrats to improve it.

David Axelrod, a senior White House advisor, said: "On the other side of the ballot in November will be a party that has an economic theory, and it was tested, and it led to catastrophe.

"We lost three million jobs in the last six months of 2008. The financial market almost collapsed. They turned a $237 billion that Bill Clinton left into a $1.3 trillion dollar deficit. And they're running on the same policies."

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

The economy sure is getting Obama panicked: "President Obama, who vowed in his State of the Union address to double American exports over the next five years, said on Wednesday that he would renew his efforts to renegotiate long-stalled free trade agreements with Panama and Colombia and persuade Congress to adopt them. The two trade pacts, and a third one with South Korea, were negotiated by the administration of former President George W. Bush, but all three have languished in Congress because of deep opposition from Democrats. Mr. Obama said in Toronto last month that he intended to make a new push for the South Korean agreement, and on Wednesday he pledged to press ahead with the two Latin American pacts as well."

Obama Economy Sends Americans to Their Mattresses: "Government policies designed to stimulate the economy seem to be having the opposite effect. Consumers aren't buying, businesses aren't hiring, and those fortunate enough to have some cash on hand don't seem to be investing. I call it the mattress economy. People seem to be following this investment strategy. Step one: Go to Mattress Discounters and buy the biggest mattress you can find. Step two: Take it home, and stuff all your money in it. Step three: Lie down, and get some rest. This hurts the economy, but it's a rational response to the Obama Democrats' public policies.

Chinese credit firm says US worse risk than China: "A Chinese firm that aims to compete with Western rating agencies declared Washington a worse credit risk than Beijing in its first report on Government debt yesterday amid efforts by China to boost its influence in global markets. Dagong International Credit Rating Co's verdict was a break with Moody's, Standard & Poors and Fitch, which say US government debt is the world's safest. Dagong said it rated Washington below China and 11 other countries such as Switzerland and Australia due to high debt and slow growth. The report comes amid complaints by Beijing that Western rating agencies fail to give China full credit for its economic strength, boosting borrowing costs - a criticism echoed by some foreign analysts."

Outlawing pet sales or outlawing pets?: "The nanny statists not only want to to take care of you, they want to make sure every hamster in the world gets fair treatment. Supposedly, that’s why they proposed a ban on pet sales in San Francisco, which fortunately was voted down last night. Proponents say too many people make impulse decisions when they buy pets and, therefore, all pet sales should be illegal.”

One job forward, two jobs back: "The Great Obamanomic Job Creation Machine rumbled into action again over the Fourth of July weekend, promising to spend as much as $2 billion to support creation of 1,585 ‘permanent’ jobs by two solar energy companies. That comes to a potential cost of over $1.25 million per job. In his weekly radio address on July 3, President Obama chided the Republicans for failing to climb aboard his job-creation bandwagon, which he claims — against strong evidence to the contrary — has created or saved 2.8 million jobs over the past year. And he isn’t finished.”


Moratorium on offshore deepwater oil drilling wrong move: "Not only does the president’s moratorium on deepwater drilling fail to stop the oil leak, it costs jobs on the offshore rigs that he has shut down; reduces the amount of crude oil available for refining into gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil; and penalizes BP’s competitors, who have been pumping oil from offshore wells responsibly for decades. Until BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, no oil had been spilled as a result of offshore drilling in U.S. waters since an accident off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. Without energy production from deepwater areas, a vital source of jobs and tax revenue will be lost. And if offshore rigs remain idle for long, the Gulf’s economy will wither.”

Bad news for Obama: Conservative Justice Kennedy tells pals he's in no rush to leave Supreme Court: "President Obama may get liberal Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, but conservative swing-voter Anthony Kennedy says he's not going anywhere anytime soon. Justice Kennedy, who turns 74 this month, has told relatives and friends he plans to stay on the high court for at least three more years - through the end of Obama's first term, sources said. That means Kennedy will be around to provide a fifth vote for the court's conservative bloc through the 2012 presidential election. If Obama loses, Kennedy could retire and expect a Republican President to choose a conservative justice. Kennedy, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, has been on the court 22 years. He has become a bit of a political nemesis at the White House for his increasing tendency to side with the court's four rock-ribbed conservative justices.

Church of England rejects women bishop plan: "The Church of England was in turmoil after plans by its top leaders designed to avoid a split over allowing women bishops were voted down. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the leader of the world's Anglicans, and Archbishop of York John Sentamu, his number two in the Church of England, had put forward safeguards for objectors. They received the backing of a majority of the houses of bishops and laity of the General Synod. But the concessions did not win a majority of the House of Clergy, meaning that the proposals were lost. Anglo-Catholic objectors have warned that if their demands are not met, then "large numbers" of clergy and lay people could leave for the Roman Catholic Church under an offer for disaffected Anglicans made by Pope Benedict XVI." [This just shows how isolated from lay people the bishops are]

Why we should have a paid market in kidney transplants: "Less death, better health and all for less money, what could possibly be wrong with this idea? Well, other than the fact that the Great and the Good in our own dear Blighty seem infected with the idea that money, lucre, is just so icky and shouldn’t be used to solve some problems.”

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

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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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About Jon Jay

I have recently received some egregiously abusive email from a conservative blogger with a name rather similar to my most customary username: jonjayray. Even though I am an atheist, I have however always found Christian ethics to be the best guide to life so I am going to demonstrate Christian forgiveness by linking to his site.

He appears to be an elderly but very aggressive former military man who writes in a rather long-winded way and who is much seized by the threat of Islam. I have seen no unusual insights on his blog but from what I can make out, he appears to think that because fundamentalist Muslims have declared war on us then we should in some way take the war to them. I rather thought that George Bush did that but maybe I have missed something.

Anyway he seems much peeved that this "insight" of his has not been enthusiastically embraced by other conservative bloggers and so sent many of us a very condescending and abusive email over our perceived failings in the matter. Rather ludicrously, he even sent his screed to Dymphna of Gates of Vienna, possibly the most anti-Islamic blog in the blogosphere. She replied in rather kinder tones than Mr Jay deserved and I chipped in a few comments too. As a former military man myself who regularly blogs about the Islamic menace (See POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH), I felt that I was undeserving of his condemnation.

Anyway, some readers may find his thoughts useful. I hope so.

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Why the silent treatment?



As Scott points out in the post immediately below, the news that President Obama tasked NASA head Bolden, as perhaps his foremost mission, with raising Muslim self-esteem is entirely absent from the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as the nightly newscasts of ABC, NBC, and CBS. Why? Bill Otis argues, persuasively I think, that it's because this news is potentially devastating to Obama:

The reason the MSM has the lid on NASA's new "mission" to snuggle up to Islam (in between decapitations and floggings) is that it would be devastating to Obama if it became known. On the surface, the new NASA "mission" seems merely screwball, and thus a small story. But I think it's a good deal more than that. It shows that Obama's thinking is unrecognizable to the average person. It also shows that he's unserious -- frivolous, really -- about something that made a generation of Baby Boomers take pride in their country. How many millions of people sat in their junior high auditoriums and watched the Alan Shepherd and John Glenn launches? How many millions more were up at midnight on July 20, 1969 to watch the first human being, an American, put his foot on the moon?

When the domestic roots of skepticism about America (and sometimes flat-out anti-Americanism) were being laid -- in the 60's assassinations, the Vietnam War, and the exposure of the country's treatment of blacks -- the one thing in which we all took pride was the space program. So for Obama, it's now one thing that needs to be perverted. Making it a dumbed-down PR front for Islam is, in its way, a genius move for this purpose. But as the MSM recognizes by its silence, it's a bridge too far.

A lot of people out there haven't heard of "American exceptionalism," or, if they have, aren't too sure of what it means. But they have a good intuition for it: It is, among other things, but quite importantly, the excitement and pride they felt when America did something the human race had wanted to do since it looked up at the night sky. Space exploration took on added luster for our generation because it was so in keeping with the natural optimism, bravado and energy of our youth.

Under Obama, NASA has ended plans to go back to the moon, or go to Mars (something also underreported). Budgets are tight, you know. Time to hunker down and lower our sights. But we can do Muslim outreach.

This is a window on the kind of thinking Obama does. Were it widely known, it would be devastating: We will put away what has made the country a beacon, and act like the small, repentant ex-bully Obama takes us to be. Thus the rockets get mothballed as The Great Satan starts to make amends by printing comic books celebrating Arab contributions to trigonomety 4000 years ago, or whatever it was.

"You'll be able to keep your own insurance" was the most important political lie of the last year. But NASA's new mission is the most revealing truth. The MSM understands this, which is why it's been so resolute in keeping it out of sight.

SOURCE

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Fear: The real motivator behind the nanny state

In an article that really ought to be online but instead is consigned solely behind a paywall and to its print edition, National Review’s Kevin Williamson makes a point that ought to be made more often: for all that lefties love to talk about “fear-mongering” allegedly done by the right on foreign policy, when it comes to domestic policy, they really ought to look in the mirror.

Instead of being the side of optimism and reason, nanny-state advocates are actually trying to institutionalize their own personal fears about other members of society. Williamson begins with a quote from a blog post from the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reacting to recent Supreme Court rulings expanding the ability of people to own and possess guns:

My biggest worry with Monday’s Supreme Court decision is that by ruling, in effect, that every American can apply for a gun license, the justices will make gun ownership much more pervasive in a society that already has too many guns. After all, if I know that my neighbor is armed and preparing for Armageddon situations where law and order break down (as so many are–just read the right-wing blogs) then I have to think about protecting my family, too. That’s the state-of-nature, everyone for himself logic that prevails in places such as Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Williamson then begins the slicing and dicing:

Mr Ignatius here is remarkably forthcoming: He is not worried about guns in the hands of criminals but about guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, people who are willing to apply for a permit and jump through the bureaucratic hoops required of gun buyers. His nightmare is not an America in which criminals run amok with Glocks, or even an America in which gun permits are handed out liberally, but an America in which “every American can apply for a gun license.” Nevermind the approval of licenses, the mere application gives Mr. Ignatius the howling fantods. It is wonderfully apt that he references the “state of nature” in his criticism, imagining a Hobbesian version of life in these United States: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, permeated by the aroma of cordite. Mr. Ignatius, like Thomas Hobbes, is casting his lot with Leviathan and makes no apology for it.

That is the essence of 21st-century progressivism: In matters ranging from financial derivatives to education to gun control, the Left believes that we face a choice between a masterful state and a Hobbesian war of all against all. For all of the smart set’s vaunted and self-congratulatory nuance, it is this absolutist vision, this Manichean horror, that forms the foundation of progressivism.

This, and not the threat of uncontrollable crime, is really at the hear of the suburban progressives’ abomination of firearms. [...] To use lethal force in self-defense is the ultimate declaration of independence, a kind of momentary secession from the authority of the government whose laws and prisons and police officers have, in that moment, failed the citizen. To acknowledge the right to self-defense–and the concomitant right to be forearmed against aggressors–is to acknowledge that some things are outside the state and its authority, or at least that some moments are outside the state and its authority.

The horror that progressives feel for gun owners is in many ways like the horror they feel for homeschoolers [...] Just as state schooling is not about education, but about the state, gun control is not about guns: It’s about control. A citizen who can fend for himself when the predators come or the schools fail is less inclined to look to the state for sustenance and oversight in other areas of life. To progressives, that’s an invitation to anarchy.

SOURCE

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What If Glenn Beck Said, 'I Hate Every Last Iota of a N-----! Kill Their Babies!'

Some details of what Obama is protecting

This past week more unbelievable video of the dude the DOJ’s Eric “Let’s-Cut-Terrorists-N-Racists-Some-Slack” Holder found no guilt with in the Philly voter intimidation case made its way to YouTube for the whole world to see just how insane this black dude truly is. For those who haven’t seen the vid yet, let me give you some nuggets from this New Black Panther’s noggin.

One “King” Samir Shabaz, who looks like Milli Vanilli’s angry and petite brother, head of the Philadelphia branch of the New Black Panther Party, the dude Holder dropped an open-and-shut case on, was caught on film telling us how he really feels about “white crackers” and blacks who date or marry “white cracker whores,” which I guess would include President Obama because he is “half cracker,” as Shazam (or whatever his name is) would say, seeing that Barack’s mom was Caucasian.

Anyway, Shabaz went on the record saying that he hates “every last iota of a cracker.” Honestly, when he said that I didn’t know what he was talking about. Is he talking about Saltines or Ritz or Wheat Thins? Was it one particular cracker or all the thin-toasted biscuits that he abhors? And what would make a man hate these snacks so much? I was in a quandary about his bellicosity to crispy, skinny biscuits until I saw the entire video invective.

Apparently, white people are called “crackers” by the blacks who hate them; Shabaz said, “I hate white people. Every last iota of a cracker. I hate him.” Given the context, it is easy to see that “cracker” equals white devils, and he hates “every last iota of (them).”

Now for those of you who might be laughing hysterically at King Samir’s syntax, I wouldn’t judge him too harshly because even though he might not be that good with grammar, he might be off the chain in regard to math which could qualify him to be a player in Obama’s new NASA initiative. Ya neva know.

After the bubble-off-level Shabaz blasted his hatred for crackers, he then went full retard and began to scream at blacks on the street who were trying desperately to ignore him. He was yelling that if they truly wanted to be “free” they would have to “kill some crackers.” And not just some adult crackers, oh no! He also suggested that black people kill white baby crackers (I guess you would call them “croutons”) to be free. My question, Shamwow, is … free from what? Freedom?

There’s no way in hades Beck, or you, or I could say that stupid crap and walk away from it without a 5-10 sentence. The hate crime cops would be all over us—and justly so. But it appears that blacks can get away with it when it is directed at white devils while BHO is in da House.

Where are Sharpton and Jackson condemning this racial bigotry and call to murder? When’s Obama going to come out and say that this tool acted stupidly like he did to the upstanding Boston cop in the Henry Louis Gates case? Didn’t Imus get deep fried for saying something far less egregious? And, and, isn’t Mel Gibson experiencing hell on earth right now for being caught on tape dropping the N-bomb on his Russian-ex?

To bring it home, what if, once again, a conservative or a Christian said, “I hate n------and we should kill n------ and their black babies?” Or, I know, what if one of us said we should kill women? Or homosexuals? Or Muslims? Or kitty cats? It appears that if you’re black and block voting booths and scream murderous threats to whites, that’s totally cool and that’s “progress” in Holder’s world of hate whitey.

Oh, and one more thing: The mainstream media, like with the ACORN scandal, won’t touch this. Wow. What hypocrisy. You just know if it were Beck (or some lesser conservative luminary) the MSM would be banging that drum like a coked-up Keith Moon.

SOURCE

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, 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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Arrested for Getting Robbed by Illegal Aliens

Given that our legal system has been completely deranged by moonbattery, see if you can guess how it responded to this case from Wheat Ridge, Colorado:

82-year-old Robert Wallace said in February that he looked out his window and saw two men hooking his flatbed trailer up to their pickup. He yelled at them to stop, but they sped away, stealing his trailer. He told police he fired two shots at the pickup.

Minutes later, police say 32-year-old Damacio Torres dropped 28-year-old Alvaro Cardona off at a hospital emergency room with a gunshot wound to the face.

Torres did not stay to talk with police, but they caught up with him later. According to court documents, he admitted he and Cardona stole the trailer.

Wallace did not want to talk on camera, but when we asked him if the two men threatened him he said, "They almost ran me over."

Now the crooks — both illegal aliens with arrest records, one of whom was under investigation for taking part in a major auto theft ring — are safely behind bars on their way to getting deported, right? Of course not:

The Jefferson County DA's office said that neither Torres nor Cardona have been charged with anything at this point, even though Torres confessed to the crime. However, the homeowner, Wallace is facing twelve felony counts, including four counts of attempted first degree murder. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Since they believe in a criminal ideology of theft and coercion (aka "spreading the wealth around"), the liberals who run our courts and our government are criminals. It's hardly surprising that they look out for their own at the expense of their enemy, the respectable citizen.

SOURCE

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Democrat-created turmoil is blocking job creation

Business investment is the key to job creation but who would make any new moves with all the upheavals going on now?

These days, too many Americans are certain about things they should be skeptical about, and uncertain about things they need to be confident in. And our economy isn’t likely to improve unless we can reverse these positions.

“The Federal Reserve recently reported that America’s 500 largest nonfinancial companies have accumulated an astonishing $1.8 trillion of cash on their balance sheets,” wrote Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria recently. That’s the highest amount in decades. “And yet, most corporations are not spending this money on new plants, equipment, or workers,” he added.

Zakaria’s Washington Post colleague Steven Pearlstein has noticed, too. “There’s little doubt that businesses are holding back,” he wrote July 7. “Business investment as a percentage of economic output is at its lowest level in more than 40 years, while hiring continues to lag behind growth in output.”

So why are companies hoarding cash instead of hiring people? Simple. Uncertainty.

President Barack Obama likes to say “let me be clear” in his speeches. Before the State of the Union address, a Washington Post piece mocked Obama by saying that, “the ‘let me be clear’ preface has become a signal that what follows will be anything but.” And that’s true.

It’s not clear what Obama wants to do -- although he seems less than interested in simply enforcing the rule of law. He demanded that BP establish a $20 billion fund to pay claims filed against it by Gulf residents. Well, perhaps BP should have established such a fund on its own. But the president doesn’t have the power to compel it to do so.

And remember the automakers? Last year GM and Chrysler were on the verge of collapse. The administration bypassed the usual bankruptcy proceedings and instead engineered a federal buyout that benefited the United Auto Workers union. American taxpayers are now owners of auto companies, whether we want to be or not.

No doubt other companies were watching nervously. They’re also concerned about the possible effects of cap-and-trade legislation and financial regulation. In each case, legislation that would hurt businesses has passed the House and is being considered by the Senate. It’s impossible to predict what a final bill might look like or what it might cost. Hence, uncertainty. Hence, inaction.

And all this says nothing about immigration. “Laws like Arizona’s put huge pressures on local law enforcement to enforce rules that ultimately are unenforceable,” Obama declared on July 1. Thus the administration insists it cannot enforce the law, but adds it wants a new, “comprehensive” law to enforce. Uncertainty on top of uncertainty.

Meanwhile, one thing the president is clear on is the danger supposedly posed by global warming. “Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies and our planet,” Obama declared in Copenhagen in December. “That much we know.”

But how do we “know” this? Scientists have been warning about the supposed dangers of global warming for years. But the planet isn’t getting warmer. It’s getting cooler. As Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, wrote in an e-mail made public after hackers broke into the computers at a British university, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

What else are experts certain about? “The first thing about Social Security is it actually may be solvent forever,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman told PBS last year. “The low-cost case in Social Security always shows the trust fund going on forever, so it’s not even clear that we have a crisis.” Well, “forever” didn’t last as long as it once did.

“This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes,” The New York Times reported in March. The Congressional Budget Office hadn’t expected that this would happen for at least six more years.

For decades, people have been certain that Social Security would always be there for them. Yet from now on, Social Security can be expected to pay out more than it takes in each year. It will become an ever-growing drain on the already-strained federal budget. Without reform, there’s no reason to be “certain” it will survive to serve another generation of retirees.

Our leaders in Washington are undermining the rule of law in several ways. Meanwhile, they’re dealing with phantom threats (global warming), and ignoring real ones (Social Security’s insecurities).

Until something changes, there’s no reason to expect American companies to invest in our collective future.

SOURCE

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Hamas Sends Patients to Israel for Care

Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv treats up to 100 patients a month from Gaza, and often Hamas takes the role of middleman between Gaza residents and the Israeli hospital, Ichilov Director Professor Gabi Barabash said Thursday. Barabash spoke to Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara, a resident of the Druze village of Dalyat El Carmel near Haifa, who was touring the hospital and viewing its care for foreign Arab patients.

In addition to caring for patients from Gaza, the Ichilov staff treats many citizens of foreign Arab countries, including those that have no diplomatic ties with Israel. They all receive dedicated care, and the relatives who accompany them are provided with free food and a place to stay, Barabash said.

Kara praised the hospital's care at the end of the tour. Ichilov treats all of its patients equally, he said, but it is not the only one, and hospitals throughout the country send hundreds of people home to Gaza in good health each month after they arrived in Israel suffering from serious ailments.

He condemned Hamas for benefiting from the arrangement while giving nothing in return. “The time has come for Hamas to give us something small in return,” he said, “to release a single son of ours, who has been held for four years with no medical care, in exchange for the hundreds of people whose lives Israel saves every month.”

Kara called on Arab countries to take action: “I call on those Arab countries that are aware of how much we give them when it comes to medicine to call for Gilad Shalit's release as well.” Shalit's release would “make the peace talks much more meaningful,” he added.

SOURCE

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Is the MSM getting rattled by scrutiny from the alternative media?

Staffer fired for pro-terrorist bias

CNN hasn't officially commented on the firing of 20-year veteran Octovia Nasr for an impolitic tweet. But that hasn't stopped Nasr critics and supporters from battling it out over the past 24 hours.

Kagan says that Nasr’s no “firebrand extremist.” Rather, Kagan described her former colleague as a “brilliant asset in putting news from the Mideast in perspective.”

Indeed, Nasr—born in Lebanon and fluent in several languages—probably understands the Middle East's ongoing tensions and cultural sensitivities better than most. And yet she still got tripped up.

Nasr, the network's senior editor for Mideast Affairs, made a hasty remark that could serve as ammunition for those who believe her coverage, or the network's as a whole, is tipped against Israel.

She praised a leader of Hezbollah, a group that has battled Israel for decades and is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. On Sunday, Nasr simply tweeted: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot.. #Lebanon.”

These days, there's swift reaction to journalist missteps, or even giving off the appearance of bias. It's because Twitter and influential blogs can quickly amplify a comment to the point where the news organization feels immediate pressure to act.

More HERE

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BrookesNews Update

Obama's fascist economics is failing : Obama's policy are at best a recipe for stagnation — even if full employment was restored. At worst they will result in a steep decline in the standard of living, except for his billionaire pals and his Hollywood fan club
Will the Australian housing market crash or will interest rates fall instead? : Although the laws of supply and demand are the same everywhere and at any time the conditions of supply and demand are not. Conditions in America, for example, are not the same as those in Australia
Illegal immigrants are Obama's sixth column : Irrespective of what Obama supporters — or anyone else — claims an unrestricted flow of illegal immigrants will depress average wages and hence lower the standard of living. It could also gravely undermine social cohesion and create severe political instability
Hollywood leftists mourn Stephen Rivers, their Castro connection : Hollywood's celebrated leftists are mourning the death of Stephen Rivers. What none of the eulogies state is that Rivers was a Castro toady, an agent of influence for his sadistic regime. A liar who hated America and despised its patriots . Not once did this man offer a single word of sympathy for Castro victims. As far as he was concerned those that Castro tortured and murdered had it coming to them. No wonder Hollywood lefties loved Rivers
No one's capital is safe in Obama's America : Obama's poorly coded message to investors is to take your money out of America and keep it out. Whether through excessive taxation, suffocating over-regulation, or thuggish confiscation, the lesson to be drawn by anyone with excess capital is to look for friendlier places to put it to work
Will oil drilling become a pipe dream? : President Obama's Oval Office speech made one thing clear, it is that his administration and the activists who back it view the Gulf oil spill as simply an opportunity to advance their pre-existing agenda — which has nothing to do with cleaning up the Gulf, protecting the fragile coastal environment or fostering the region's economy
Leftwing media bigotry protects the sadistic Castro : Learning more about Castro's recent narco-terrorist activities draws attention to the Fairfax Media, a nasty organization that masquerades as a media company. It's leftwing bigotry is so brazen it would have shamed the Soviets' International Department of the Central Committee

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, 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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Whitewashing Black Racism

By Michelle Malkin

Why haven't national media outlets reported on the vile and violent rants of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) thugs whose 2008 voter intimidation tactics got a pass from the Obama administration? Simple: Radical black racism doesn't fit the Hope and Change narrative. There's no way to shoehorn Bush-bashing into the story. And, let's face it, exposing the inflammatory rhetoric of the left does nothing to help liberal editors and reporters fulfill their true calling -- embarrassing the right.

This week, Justice Department whistleblower J. Christian Adams came forward with damning public testimony about how Obama officials believe "civil rights law should not be enforced in a race-neutral manner, and should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities." In the wake of Adams' expose on how the Obama DOJ abandoned default judgments against the NBPP bullies for the sake of politically correct racial politics, a shocking video clip of one of the lead defendants in the Philadelphia voter intimidation case resurfaced on the Internet. It shows bloodthirsty King Samir Shabazz during a 2009 National Geographic documentary interview spewing:

"You want freedom? You're gonna have to kill some crackers! You're gonna have to kill some of their babies!"

These NBPP death threats and white-bashing diatribes are nothing new to those who have tracked the black supremacy movement. In August 2009, nearly a year ago, I reported on a sign on display outside NBPP defendant (and elected member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee) Jerry Jackson's home. It reads: "COLORED ONLY: No Whites Allowed." In July 2009, I interviewed poll watcher/witness Christopher Hill, whom Shabazz and Jackson called "cracker" several times while Shabazz brandished his baton.

"They physically attempted to block me," Hill recounted. He also saw a group of elderly ladies walk away from the polling site without voting while the duo preened in front of the entrance. "If you're a poll watcher, you shouldn't be dressed in paramilitary garb," Hill said, as he wondered aloud at what would have happened if he had showed up in the same sort of costume.

In May 2009, I reported on the affidavit of civil rights attorney and poll watcher Bartle Bull, who witnessed the NBPP thuggery in Philadelphia and reported on billy club-wielding Shabazz's election day boast: "You're about to be ruled by the black man, cracker."

In the fall of 2008, just days before he showed up to hector white poll workers, Shabazz told the Philadelphia Inquirer:

"I'm about the total destruction of white people. I'm about the total liberation of black people. I hate white people. I hate my enemy... The only thing the cracker understands is violence... The only thing the cracker understands is gunpowder. You got to take violence to violence."

The desire to kill, subordinate and demonize white people is a staple of NBPP propaganda. An NBPP Trenton, N.J., chapter "block party" music video posted on YouTube calls on black followers to "bang for freedom," "put the bang right into a cracker's face," and "if you're going to bang, bang for black power ... hang a cracker ... if you're going to bang, bang on the white devil ... burying him near the river bank with the right shovel ... community revolution in progress ... banging for crackers to go to hell, we don't need em."

Chanting "Black Power," Minister Najee Muhammad, national field marshal for the New Black Panther Party, and Uhuru Shakur, local chairman of the Atlanta NBPP chapter, issued a pre-Election Day 2008 threat to "racists and other angry whites who are upset over an impending Barack Obama presidential victory." Said Muhammad: "Most certainly, we cannot allow these racist forces to slaughter our babies or commit other acts of violence against the black population, nor our black president."

That's rich, given that the only racists talking about slaughtering babies are the ones with New Black Panther Party patches on their puffed chests.

If a Tea Party activist threatened to kill the babies of his political opponents, it wouldn't just be front-page news. It would be the subject of Democrat-led congressional investigations, a series of terrified New York Times columns about the perilous "climate of hate," a Justice Department probe by Attorney General Eric Holder, a domestic terror alert from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and another Important Teachable Moment Speech/Summit from Healer-in-Chief Barack Obama.

But with the racism shoe on the other foot, Team Obama and its media water-carriers are exhibiting the very racial cowardice Holder once purported to condemn. Thanks to Obama's feckless Department of Injustice, these black supremacist brutes are free to show up on the next national Election Day at polling places in full paramilitary regalia with nightsticks, hurling racist, anti-American epithets at those exercising their right to vote and at those protecting the integrity of the electoral process.

The reaction of our national media watchdogs: Shhhhhhhh.

SOURCE

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See You Next Tyranny Day!

Jonah Goldberg

According to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman in his mega-selling book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded," China banned plastic bags a few years ago. "Bam! Just like that -- 1.3 billion people, theoretically, will stop using thin plastic bags," he gushed. "Millions of barrels of petroleum will be saved, and mountains of garbage avoided."

China's got us beat, suggests Friedman, because its leaders aren't hung up on democracy or checks and balances or any of the other dusty old impediments found in the American system. Friedman has proclaimed his envy for China's authoritarian system countless times. It's why he titled one of the chapters in his book "China for a Day." The idea -- he calls it his fantasy -- is that if we could just be China for a day, the experts could impose by diktat what they cannot win through democratic debate.

If only the Founding Fathers had included an annual "Tyranny Day" in the Constitution. Every 364 days America could debate and scheme, pitting faction against faction, governmental branch against governmental branch, and on the 365th day the Supreme Soviet of the United States could simply "do things that are tough" and shove 10 pounds of policy awesomeness into democracy's five-pound bag.

Now, just for the record, China hasn't banned plastic bags. Just ask anybody who's been to China recently. But what a strange thing to sell your soul for. What was it Thomas More said, "it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but to ban plastic bags?"

Now, I bring all of this up for a couple reasons. The first is that I am mildly obsessed with Tom Friedman. He's easily one of the most influential columnists in America and he routinely and blithely expresses his envy for a barbaric police state that has killed tens of millions of its own people. I think pointing that out is worth a little repetition.

But it's also worth noting that Friedman is hardly alone. He may stretch his argument to the point of parody, but he shares a widespread view that the "experts" have all the answers and the "system" is holding them back.

Such arguments are as old as they are dangerous. And they are arrogant beyond description. People like Friedman automatically assume that their preferred policies are so obviously right, so objectively enlightened, that there's no need to debate them or vote on them.

Such arguments are usually deployed to avoid valid criticisms, not because there are none. Indeed, the Obama White House virtually lives by such claims. All of the experts agreed that their stimulus would work; that Obama's version of healthcare reform was both necessary and popular, that weaning the U.S. from fossil fuels will create "green jobs." The evidence on all of these fronts is mixed or weak and yet the president insists constantly that he doesn't want to hear from people who disagree with him on these issues because all the facts are in.

Such arrogance is dangerous. The literature on the unintended consequences of policies crafted by experts is at least as old as the field of economics. Frederic Bastiat, the great 19th-century economist, noted that all that separated the good economist from the bad is the ability to appreciate the possibility of the unforeseen. Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek demonstrated that healthy economies couldn't be controlled by experts, because the experts will always have a "knowledge problem." They can never know all of the variables and never fully predict how their theories will play out in reality.

Right now Congress is debating a financial reform bill that simply commands that regulators predict when an unforeseen crisis will occur. This is like demanding regulators know when stocks will go up or down. If they knew that, they wouldn't be regulators -- they'd be billionaires.

But forget all that. Let's get back to those evil plastic bags. A new study from the University of Arizona reveals that reusable shopping bags, the enlightened replacement for plastic ones, are breeding grounds for E. Coli and other dangerous bacteria. Roughly 50 percent of the bags inspected were found to contain dangerous, potentially lethal, bacteria.

No, this doesn't mean we should abandon reusable bags, let alone ban them too on next year's Tyranny Day. People can clean the bags and solve the problem. That's a hassle, to be sure. But that's the point. There's always going to be a downside to even the best policies, because the experts don't know as much as they think they do. Sometimes, they don't even know they're not experts at all.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Judge-made law again: "A U.S. judge in Boston has ruled that a federal gay marriage ban is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage. U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro on Thursday ruled in favor of gay couples’ rights in two separate challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA. The state had argued the law denied benefits such as Medicaid to gay married couples in Massachusetts, where same-sex unions have been legal since 2004. Tauro agreed, and said the act forces Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens.”

Defending the gypsy cab driver: "The taxi business in the United States usually works to the detriment of the poor and minority groups in two ways — as consumers and as producers. As consumers, their plight is well demonstrated by ethnic ‘taxicab jokes,’ and by the subterfuge and embarrassment blacks undergo in order to get a cab, which they are frequently unable to do. The reasons are not difficult to fathom. Taxi rates are set by law and are invariant, regardless of the destination of the trip. However, some destinations are more dangerous than others, and drivers are reluctant to service these areas, which are usually the home neighborhoods of the poor and the minorities. So when given a choice, cab drivers are likely to select customers on the basis of their economic status or skin color.”

In the game of picking winners and losers, the government picks losers: "A knowledge problem exists. When the government picks winners and losers, it asserts that it knows the optimal level of something. In practice, such a level is impossible to determine. I do not know the socially optimal mix of any set of products and services, and neither do government officials. No one has access to perfect information. It would be beneficial if the state government stayed out of playing favorites in the market and instead let individuals determine their own optimal levels by engaging in unrestricted trade.”

Time to let South Korea defend itself: "What would a new American policy on North Korea — one that is based on seeing reality as it really is, rather than what we dream it to be — look like? In essence, it should be a policy of empowerment for South Korea. This policy of empowerment would involve at least two concrete measures. First, it would involve the immediate ratification of the U.S./South Korea Free Trade Agreement. … Second, a policy of empowerment of South Korea would explicitly and publicly remove our constraints on South Korean weapons development. Let them start developing nuclear missiles as well.”

More decay from a mainstream denomination: "A Presbyterian assembly voted Thursday to endorse the ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians, sending the measure for ratification votes to regional presbyteries where resistance to such changes has diminished in recent years. Church representatives, meeting in Minneapolis at the weeklong General Assembly, voted 373-323 to lift the ban in the Louisville-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which has 2.1 million members. The assembly also was scheduled to consider on Thursday night a proposal to redefine marriage in the church’s constitution to encompass any two people, regardless of gender. Both measures would require approval by a majority of the regional presbyteries to become part of the church constitution.” [The Presbyterian church into which I was baptised accepted the Bible as the ultimate authority on faith and morals. Apparently they have found a "wiser" guide than that now!]

Parasitic tort lawyers: "Tort lawyers lie. They say their product liability suits are good for us. But their lawsuits rarely make our lives better. They make lawyers and a few of their clients better off — but for the majority of us, they make life much worse.”

The rats are cornered: "The stimulus and gimmicks initiated by a desperate political class prodded on by our Keynesian witch-doctors Summers and Geithner ran their course and at the end of that road was a massive pile of debt, chronic unemployment, a populace that doesn’t believe or trust anything the government says or does and a housing market set to resume its downward spiral. So basically the forces of deflation have taken over once again. Banana Ben Bernanke knows it and he knows what he wants to do about it. He wants to print so much money it would make your head spin.”

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, 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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New British PM talks big about power to the people

You might be forgiven for flying your Gadsden flag over this but will it actually happen? Sadly, this is Britain and we have heard it all before: From Tony Blair. If it brings any changes at all, it is most likely to mean more power to local busybodies. But I hope I am wrong

David Cameron will today promise to 'completely change' the way Britain is run by giving people real power over schools, hospitals, police and other public services.

The Prime Minister will outline what is being seen as a 'Blair-plus' reform agenda as he insists the coalition is not only interested in paying off the country's unprecedented budget deficit.

The Prime Minister will promise to 'turn government on its head' by taking power away from Whitehall and devolving it to people and communities.

The Government, he will say, intends to introduce 'competition and choice' throughout public services - a pledge that echoes the failed ambitions of 'ultra' supporters of the former prime minister Tony Blair, including Alan Milburn.

State monopolies will be smashed, with charities, businesses and even individuals invited to run schools, back-to-work schemes and other public services.

The coalition also favours the principle of paying providers by results to drive up performance.

It will combine this with its own 'big society' agenda, which will empower individuals by giving them more local democratic control - through elected police commissioners and more local referendums, for instance - and introducing transparency, so they can see how their money is being spent.

Every Government department will be required to publish a plan setting outs its priorities and 'measurable milestones', so anyone can check whether they are meeting their commitments. So-called 'structural reform plan' will replace Labour's old, top-down systems of targets and central mismanagement, the Prime Minister will say.

Speaking to an audience of 450 civil servants at a conference in London, the Prime Minister will say: 'People are making a big mistake if they think this Government is just about sorting out the deficit. 'That's not why I came into politics. It's not what the coalition came together for. We came together to change our country for the better in every way: the best schools open to the poorest children, a first-class NHS there for everyone, streets that are safe, families that are stable, communities that are strong.

'These ambitions haven't died because the money is tight. The real question is: how can we achieve these aims when there is so little money? How can this circle be squared? 'The answer is reform – radical reform. We need to completely change the way this country is run.'

Mr Cameron will say he is not criticising everything Labour did - but insist they went wrong with their 'top-down, controlling, bureaucratic' approach to public services. They created a system of 'bureaucratic accountability' in which almost everything was measured or judged against a set of targets and performance indicators, monitored, measured and inspected centrally.

'That was the past. Now we have a new government. A new coalition government, with a new approach. We intend to do things differently, very differently,' Mr Cameron will say. 'If I could describe in one line the change we plan for the way we approach public services, and reform generally, it's this: we want to replace the old system of bureaucratic accountability with a new system of democratic accountability – accountability to the people, not the government machine.

'We want to turn government on its head, taking power away from Whitehall and putting it into the hands of people and communities. ' We want to give people the power to improve our country and public services, through transparency, local democratic control, competition and choice. 'To give you just one example: instead of teachers thinking they have to impress the Department of Education, they have to impress local parents as they have a real choice over where to send their child.

'It really is a total change in the way our country is run: from closed systems to open markets, from bureaucracy to democracy, from big government to big society, from politician power to people power.'

SOURCE

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Transportation Stupid Agency

Once again, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) has distinguished itself as guardians of our security for airline travel. Certainly, in a post-9/11 world we have to expect that there will inevitably be some level of security to guard against terrorism. But you have to wonder what the "S" in TSA really stands for. Consider these two news stories from late June.

First, it seems that TSA needs to learn a lesson or two in common courtesy when it comes to airline passengers who are amputees (although some might say that’s true more generally). According to amputee Peggy Chenoweth who was flying with her 4-year old son:

"I had just been put in the plexiglass screening booth – which I expected. My 4-year-old son was made to sit across from me, crying because they would not let him touch me. Everyone was looking at us. Then the TSA agent asked for my prosthetic leg. I knew they could wand my leg, but he insisted on taking it from me. And if that wasn’t humiliating enough, he asked for the liner sock that covers my residual limb, saying I had to give it to him. I felt pressured to give him my liner even though it is critical to keep it sanitary. I was embarrassed to have my residual limb exposed in public."

Although TSA claims to have procedures for properly screening disabled passengers and that "under no circumstances is it TSA’s policy to ask a passenger to remove his/her prosthetic during screening," three-fourths of those surveyed (7,300 amputees out of about 1.7 million in the United States) by the Amputee Coalition of America said they were unsatisfied by their most recent airport screening experience. Among the complaints:

* Not being screened by a TSA agent of the same gender

* Not being allowed to have a caregiver accompany them into the screening room

* Being forced to lift their clothing during random checks for explosives

* And some amputees have had to submit to an inordinate number of x-rays to get through the screening process:

o Jeff from Denver: "TSA confiscated my vacuum system required to fit my prosthetic legs. I told them I need those tools to put on my legs. Without them, it can’t be done. They eventually gave them back after I boarded the plane, but it would have been more appropriate to have a conversation with me about it and let me know. Had they not given the tools back, I could not have put on my legs for my entire trip. This was the worst of my many TSA experiences, but because I fly a lot, I am also concerned about the level of radiation to which I am exposed. I have had as many as 20 exposures during one trip."

o Leslie from Minneapolis: "While I consider myself a seasoned amputee traveler, my situation brought me to tears for the inequity that I experienced because of having a prosthetic leg. I was led to a small room without being told where I was going and my husband wasn’t allowed to accompany me. Ten X-rays were taken of my leg, so I was concerned and inquired about the amount of radiation, but was given no answers. The TSA screeners made me stand on six unsecured, stacked storage bins. I told them it wasn’t safe – I only have one leg."

How hard is it to come up with a standard procedure for passengers with prosthetics? First and foremost, such screening needs to protect those passengers’ privacy – as well as accommodating their unique situation, such as allowing a caregiver to accompany them. It would seem that a simple wanding of the prosthetic to detect for suspicious metal would, in most instances, be enough to determine whether a more invasive search (such as running the prosthetic through x-ray) is warranted. And if for some reason it becomes absolutely necessary to remove a prosthetic, it could be chemically swabbed to detect explosives.

To be fair to TSA employees, a big part of the problem is lack of training – as well as proper supervision to ensure proper procedures are being followed. Compound that with the fact that being a government employee (or contract employee) largely means following all the rules and regulations without leeway for interpretation or the ability to use judgment. Or put another way, common sense is often not allowed to prevail. Indeed, it can be cause for punishment.

Speaking of common sense, how about the fact that 6-year old Alyssa Thomas is on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) infamous no-fly list? According to a TSA spokesperson, "The watch lists are an important layer of security to prevent individuals with known or suspected ties to terrorism from flying." Since Allyssa was allowed to fly on the day the Thomases were told that her name was on the no-fly list, she clearly isn’t a threat. But even though the Thomases have appealed to DHS to have their daughter’s name removed from the no-fly list, they’ve been told that nothing in Alyssa’s file will be changed. [This is exactly why Senator Lautenberg's (D-NJ) proposed legislation to prevent people on the no-fly list from being able to purchase a firearm is a dumb idea, not to mention unconstitutional – unless there are other legal reasons, such as being Osama bin Laden or a convicted felon, other than being on the no-fly list.]

This is what $7 billion (TSA’s annual budget, which is part of the $55 billion Department of Homeland Security budget) of your tax dollars buys you. Transportation Stupid Agency.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Britain has a small conservative political party called UKIP which wants Britain out of the EU. I agree with them. I think NAFTA would be a much better fit for Britain. Anyway, UKIP have a brilliant speaker named Nigel Farage. Ironically, he is a member of the EU parliament! He knows how to give them what for, however. His latest speech there is about the fact that the EU parliament has a presidency that changes every six months and it has just become Belgium's turn to preside. Mr Farage is NOT impressed by Belgium! Fun video here. I think he is even more outspoken than Sarah Palin!

Another triumph of U.S. airport security: "In what’s being called ‘an incredible comedy of errors’ that has embarrassed U.S. officials, four semiautomatic pistols belonging to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bodyguards vanished after arriving at New York’s JFK Airport, the New York Post reports. A source characterized the hunt for the 9mm Glock 17s as ‘priority No. 1 in American law enforcement.’ The paper says the pistols were among seven guns in the bodyguards’ luggage that arrived at dawn Sunday on an El Al flight from Israel.”

3 years down the track, there’s no recovery, just more hard times ahead: "Yes, there have been times when the economic data looked promising. During some weeks first time unemployment claims have been down. The economy has grown between two and three percent some months. And there have even been some months when new home sales have swelled and the prices of houses in general have increased. But the fact of the matter is that the worst of the crisis is yet to come and of course like the initial crisis which has lasted for close to three years already it will be Washington’s fault.”

The rout of Obamanomics: "In February 2009, I published a commentary in the Wall Street Journal entitled ‘Reaganomics v. Obamanomics,’ which pointed out that President Obama’s economic policies were exactly the opposite of President Reagan’s. I predicted that as a result they would produce exactly the opposite results. Art Laffer has produced a far more sophisticated argument advancing a similar analysis. But the June unemployment report released last Friday shows an economy doing much worse at this point than even I expected.”

Rogernomics needed in Britain: "Full marks to the dynamic Simon Walker of the British Venture Capital Association, who brought his fellow New Zealander Sir Roger Douglas over to explain how to turn around a failing economy and overblown government That’s what he did as NZ Finance Minister in just three short years in the 1980s. Even though he was a Labour Minister, he ripped into trade protections and subsidies, ended exchange controls, cut the deficit, halved income tax, let markets and not the state lead development, and brought honesty and transparency to government accounting. His key messages? Act decisively, and act quickly. You only get one shot at this. Don’t give the special-interest groups time to band together and drag you down.”

Fear of China is overblown: "‘When the Chinese become our overlords, will they be benevolent overlords — or horrific taskmasters?’ The Daily Show host Jon Stewart made that joke three years ago, but American anxiety over China’s rise is more intense today. The good news is that our anxieties are often misdirected — we fret more about dying in rare plane crashes than in common highway accidents. Is the current Sinophobia also overblown? When I give talks about my new book on China, people often ask me fearful questions about everything from Beijing’s large holding of US Treasury notes to its military buildup. I try to put their anxieties in perspective with these five points.”

Repeal the drinking age: "Somehow, and no one seems to even imagine how, this country managed to survive and thrive before 1984 without a national minimum drinking age. Before that, the drinking question was left to the states. In the 19th century, and looking back even before –– prepare yourself to imagine horrific anarchistic nightmares — there were no drinking laws anywhere, so far as anyone can tell.”

New York Times cluelessness, Part IX: "Okay, I admit I haven’t counted the exact number of stupid New York Times stories that I’ve blogged about, but it’s roughly nine. This time they ran a big story about Wal-Mart Inc.’s Sam’s Club: introducing a program in which it facilitates loans for shoppers of up to $25,000, backed by the Small Business Administration. … The Times suggests that such ‘facilitation’ is an exciting new sales promotion: retailers are taking matters into their own hands. … taking bold steps. … What? What’s bold? This is just crony capitalism. Sam’s Club uses government to help itself, and compliant government rips you off. If Wal-Mart really wanted to loan its customers money to help them buy stuff at Sam’s Club, fine. But why the heck is the SBA involved? It’s involved because we sucker taxpayers allow the SBA to reimburse up to 85% of the loan if a borrower defaults. Sounds familiar (remember Fannie and Freddie’s guarantees?).”

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, 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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