Today's Example of Ridiculous Media Bias Against Israel

By Barry Rubin

Along Israel's border with Lebanon, east of Metulla, some bushes were pushing in on the border fence. The fence is set in slightly from the border precisely so that Israeli soldiers can work on it. The IDF called UNIFIL and informed the UN that this work was going to be done today so that they could tell the Lebanese army that there was no aggression going on but just routine maintenance. Soldiers from UNIFIL came to observe and can be seen standing next to Israeli soldiers in the photos. Photographers were also standing by to film the operation.

But Lebanese soldiers opened fire on the Israelis who were working and in no way acting aggressively. The fact that journalists were standing next to the Lebanese soldiers shows that they knew Israel was going to do this maintenance and were observing. After the Israeli soldiers were ambushed, they returned fire. One Israeli officer was killed, another seriously wounded; three Lebanese soldiers, and a Lebanese (?) journalist were killed.

So how did Reuters and Yahoo report this? By saying that Israeli soldiers had crossed into Lebanon and been fired on, thus implying the Lebanese army was acting in self-defense! Other news agencies merely reported: Israel says the soldiers were inside Israel; Lebanon says they were on Lebanese territory....

More HERE

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Another strange gap in Obama's history

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department has released passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama's mother – but records for the years surrounding Obama's 1961 birth are missing.

The State Department claims a 1980s General Services Administration directive resulted in the destruction of many passport applications and other "non-vital" passport records, including Dunham's 1965 passport application and any other passports she may have applied for or held prior to 1965.

Destroyed, then, would also be any records shedding light on whether Dunham did or did not travel out of the country around the time of Barack Obama's birth.

The claim made in the FOIA response letter that many passport records were destroyed during the 1980s comes despite a statement on the State Department website that Passport Services maintains U.S. passport records for passports issued from 1925 to the present.

More HERE

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Tax: Ideology v. Reality

The dog days of summer are almost upon us, and as autumn approaches and the midterm elections loom, the American people have many important issues on their minds. One of the most important issues is whether Congress will elect to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, which are due to expire on January 1, 2011. President Obama has made clear his opinion that the tax cuts should expire for families making over $250,000 a year. Some liberal economists and pundits go further, pointing to our skyrocketing deficits and budgetary woes as compelling reasons why none of the tax cuts should be extended. Thus, as a new year – and a new chapter in our nation's political and economic history – looms, Americans in every socioeconomic bracket face a potential tax hike.

Is a tax increase the answer to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Is it the best way to stimulate economic growth, create jobs, and renew confidence in the American dollar at home and abroad? How one answers these questions depends, fundamentally, on one's belief about the role of government and its relationship to and impact on the economy. Is government the greatest engine of economic growth and prosperity or should the fate of America's financial future be determined by the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people?

Clearly, President Obama and his allies in Congress believe that all social questions, be they economic or otherwise, are best addressed by government. This is the philosophy that has driven the various bailouts and stimuli of the past three years (a philosophy that, to many conservatives' chagrin, was shared in part by former President George W. Bush), and the philosophy that led Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to assert recently that unemployment benefits create jobs faster than any other kind of economic activity.

As with most of life's important questions, we can often find guidance and edification in the lessons of history. What kinds of economic policies (and what kind of governmental philosophy) have resulted in growth, prosperity, and financial strength, and what kind of approach has led to economic stagnation and deterioration? Writing for the Wall Street Journal in February 2009, Peter Ferrera, director of entitlement and budget policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation and former Reagan administration official, offered some historical insight:

"The best way to understand [President Obama's ideological approach to the economy] is to compare what's being proposed now with what Ronald Reagan accomplished. In 1980, amid a seriously dysfunctional economy, Reagan campaigned for president on an economic recovery program with four specific components. The first was across-the-board reductions in tax rates to provide incentives for saving, investment, entrepreneurship and work. The second component was deregulation to remove unnecessary costs on the economy. . . . Third was the control of government spending. . . . The fourth component of the Reagan recovery plan was tight, anti-inflation monetary policy, which was spectacularly successful. . . . We know such policies work because they turned around in just two years an economy far worse than today's. We were suffering from multiyear, double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates, declining incomes, and rising poverty. In fact, what we suffer with today is not the worst economy since the Great Depression, but the worst economy since Jimmy Carter – the last time liberals were dominant politically and intellectually. The Obama administration's economic policies do not include any of the four Reagan components. . . . This is why America seems so hopeless right now, and so depressed. We are stuck going in exactly the wrong direction on economic policy because of currently dominant ideological fashions."

Ferrera's concise reminder of the policies that led to great economic prosperity under President Reagan is worth considering as our representatives weigh the pros and cons of increasing taxes, particularly on the "rich." While it may seem counterintuitive to those without degrees in economics, the Reagan tax cuts actually increased tax revenues by stimulating economic activity that, in turn, increased economic output and growth. The government was collecting less in terms of percentage but more in terms of real dollars.

This economic history lesson thus begs the question of whether it is wise for President Obama – in the midst of a severe recession – to advocate for a policy that will, in effect, penalize economic success for the segment of American society most responsible for creating jobs – that is, America's small business owners. The only way that such an approach makes sense is if you believe that government is a wiser steward of the American people's money than the American people themselves – it only makes sense to those who prefer ideology over reality.

The American people must ask themselves these questions. They must decide which version of the past they want to guide our nation's future. Do we long for the malaise of the Carter years, or the prosperity and hope of the Reagan era? I, for one, believe that it's time for a new morning in America, and that the sooner the sun begins to rise, the better off we'll all be.

SOURCE

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Electoral College bypassers should be careful what they wish for

Jeff Jacoby points out that Massachusetts legislators are about to approve a law that can only benefit Republicans!

IT IS ELECTION NIGHT, 2012. The polls have closed. State by state, the votes are being counted, and gradually it becomes clear, to the bottomless horror of some voters and the unbridled delight of others, that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican presidential nominee, has bested President Barack Obama in the popular vote nationwide.

In Massachusetts, where Obama crushed Palin by a landslide of 79 percent -- the most lopsidedly anti-Palin vote of any state -- "bottomless horror" doesn't begin to describe the political reaction. For in 2010, Massachusetts joined the National Popular Vote compact, making a commitment to cast all of its electoral votes for the presidential candidate receiving the most votes nationally, regardless of the results in Massachusetts. The compact took effect in December 2011, when California became the 15th state to join, thereby combining enough states to control a majority of the Electoral College. Now Massachusetts, the bluest of the blue states, must award its presidential electors to a candidate Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly opposed.

Well, that's one scenario. Maybe it won't be Sarah Palin, maybe it won't be 2012, but sooner or later a Republican is going to win the largest number of votes in a presidential election, and that Republican probably isn't going to carry Massachusetts. What will Bay State liberals and Democrats say when the National Popular Vote compact that so many of them endorsed requires Massachusetts electors to line up behind the Republican? Imagine if Massachusetts had been compelled to give its electoral votes in 1972 not to George McGovern, but to Richard Nixon. Or to the first George Bush in 1988, instead of Michael Dukakis. Or to Bush the Younger -- not John Kerry -- in 2004.

As the National Popular Vote bill was making its way through the state Legislature last month, the chairman of the Election Laws Committee, Senator Thomas Kennedy, warned opponents against trying to block it. "We're committed to this," he said. "It's the will of the people." The will of which people? Not the people of Massachusetts: The whole point of this scheme is to frustrate their will. From now on, anytime Massachusetts voters march to the beat of a different political drummer than most of their countrymen, the National Popular Vote compact will make sure their votes don't count.

Massachusetts is the sixth state to approve this end run around the Constitution, following Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington. It is no coincidence that all six are Democratic strongholds. This movement is fueled by lingering Democratic resentment of George W. Bush, and of the Electoral College system that made him president in 2000, even though Al Gore drew more popular votes. It is a comical irony that if the compact ever goes into effect, its only practical impact in these states will be to occasionally award their presidential electors to the Republican nominees their voters reject.

In 1972, Massachusetts was the only state to vote against the re-election of Richard Nixon. Should its electoral votes have gone to him anyway?

Democrats talk about 2000 as though it represented some colossal subversion of democracy. "Something happened in the 2000 presidential election that should never be permitted to happen again," writes Michael Dukakis in the Salem News. "The candidate who failed to win the popular vote became president of the United States."

But the national popular vote total has no constitutional significance and never has. American presidents are not elected in a single national plebiscite. They are elected by the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia), each of which holds a democratic election to determine its vote in the Electoral College. In political scientist Matthew Franck's terminology, US presidential elections are federally democratic, not nationally democratic.

In the selection of presidents as in so many other areas -- from the equal representation of the states in the Senate to the supermajorities required to override vetoes -- the Framers of the Constitution rejected blind majority rule. For more than two centuries, the formula they devised has resulted in stable and peaceful governance. That is no small achievement in a nation as vast, diverse, and complicated as this one.

Can the Electoral College be improved on? Not with the National Popular Vote scheme, it can't. Most Americans will never accept a system that operates through the nullification of their vote. Today Massachusetts politicians may like the idea of awarding their state's electors to the most popular presidential candidate. Watch how fast they change their minds the first time that candidate is a Republican.

SOURCE

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Former Australian Prime Minister went to a PRIVATE hospital for his procedure

Another Leftist hypocrite. Leftists routinely glorify socialized medicine -- but only for "the masses". Britain's "Red Queen" in the 60s was Barbara Castle, a minister in Harold Wilson's Labour government. She was famous for saying that it was "obscene" for anybody to "carve their way to a hospital bed with a chequebook". But what did she do when her son got sick? Being very well-paid as a government minister, she got him admitted to a private hospital, of course, under a false name. Rudd could hardly hide his identity, however

KEVIN RUDD spent a restless night after his release from hospital, his wife Therese Rein said yesterday. But at least the former prime minister was able to get prompt attention.

Nearly 50,000 people in Australia had their gall bladder removed last year and - apparently unlike Mr Rudd - most of them had to wait. The average time on a public hospital waiting list was 47 days, while one in 10 waited six months. In NSW, one in 50 endured intermittent symptoms for a year.

But Michael Bickford, a Melbourne surgeon who specialises in upper gastrointestinal conditions, said about 20 per cent of cases came on suddenly with severe pain that required urgent surgery - and such people were usually operated on promptly regardless of them having private health insurance....

The average hospital stay is 1.5 days in private hospitals and two days in the public system. Mr Rudd had exceeded this in his Thursday-to-Monday stay at the Mater Private Hospital in Brisbane.

More HERE

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

Many American Jews seem to think that they will always be safe in America and that they therefore have no need of Israel. I hope they are right but I fear that they are wrong.

American tolerance and British tolerance are basically the same beast of the same ancestry so as one goes so should go the other in time. But the attitude to Jews in Britain is undoubtedly getting worse. If the dovish Shimon Peres can come out and accuse Britain of antisemitism, surely it is time to sit up and take notice.

The BBC's coverage of Israel is probably all you need to see that Peres got that one right but if any doubt remains see here and here and here and here and here

I know that there are counter-arguments to say that America does not always march in the same direction as Britain but I think that it mostly does eventually. The recent enactment of Obamacare despite the appalling example of Britain's "National Health Service" should give everyone pause for thought.

It is true that the enmity towards Israel and Jews generally emanates mainly from the British Left but, as in America, the Left are enormously influential regardless of whom the people elect to government. How? Because, as in America, the Left control the education system and the bureaucracy. Gramsci's long march is nearly complete.

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USSR

Does anybody reading this know what "USSR" represents? I doubt that younger readers do, such is the state of modern education -- but no doubt some of my older readers recognize it as the name of the old Soviet Union -- centred on Russia.

But what does "USSR" actually stand for? Now we're getting tricky! I'm guessing that only a subset of those who know what the USSR was remember what the term "USSR" actually stood for. It stands for "The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics". And I won't embarrass anyone by asking what a "Soviet" was.

But now comes the really hard bit: Why did the USSR in fact always refer to itself as the "CCCP"?

Give up? It's because "CCCP" looks like it's in the Latin alphabet that we use but it is not. It is in the Cyrillic alphabet. St. Cyril adapted the Greek alphabet to represent the sounds of Slavic languages and Slavic countries use it to this day. So "CCCP" transliterated into the Latin alphabet would be "SSSR", which stands for the "Sodality of the Soviet Socialist Republics".

So now you have to be au fait with both "Soviet" and "Sodality" to be fully knowledgeable about the matter! If you want to be ...

Another way in which Cyrillic can be confusing has been noted by almost every recent visitor to Russia. They learn by experience to look out for a sign that says PECTOPAH. Why? Because the Cyrillic PECTOPAH is pronounced as "Restoran" (Restaurant)!

Update: The actual Russian word behind the first C in CCCP is "soyuz". Russian dictionaries give a variety of translations for it but I chose the rather obscure "sodality" in order to preserve both the meaning AND the initial letter sound.

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Paycheck Fairness Act would mandate equal pay for unequal work

The Obama administration wants to force employers to pay some people equal amounts for doing unequal work, through a deceptive bill known as the Paycheck Fairness Act. “Male supermarket managers with college degrees couldn’t be paid more than female cashiers if the college degree for the manager wasn’t consistent with ‘business necessity,’” says economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth in a July 23 column in The Washington Examiner. The bill would also radically increase damage awards for what it labels as “discrimination.”

As I noted in a July 27 letter in response to her column,

Diana Furchtgott-Roth was right to criticize a bill that would require some people who do unequal work to be paid equal amounts. The perverse ‘Paycheck Fairness Act’ is indeed a bad idea. But her column understated the case by suggesting that ‘now,’ an employer found guilty of discrimination is only required to pay ‘back pay,’ not ‘punitive damages.’ Actually, employers already have to pay not only back pay but also damages up to $300,000 under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The so-called ‘Paycheck Fairness Act’ would eliminate the cap on punitive damages in gender-based pay discrimination cases, leaving the sky as the limit. Other provisions in this perverse bill could force employers to pay people who do nasty, dangerous, unpleasant jobs as little as those who do nice, pleasant ones, if the unpleasant jobs are performed mostly by members of one gender, and the pleasant ones mostly by the other gender. (Examiner, Pg. 20)

The supporters of the bill falsely claim it would simply treat gender-based pay discrimination the same as other pay-discrimination cases. Lazy journalists sometimes parrot this claim. But it is simply false, as I noted earlier.

The falsehoods may well succeed. In 2009, another bill known as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed Congress based on false claims about what the Supreme Court held in a pay discrimination case known as Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007). In signing the bill into law, Obama himself misstated the facts and holding of that Supreme Court decision, and broke a campaign promise dealing with transparency in the process.

SOURCE

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America has moved beyond race, and the president should, too

By Victor Davis Hanson

Weren't we supposed to enter a new age of tolerance with the election of President Barack Obama? His half-black, half-white ancestry and broad support across racial lines suggested that at last Americans judged each other on the content of our characters — not the color of our skin or our tribal affiliations.

Instead, in just 18 months of the Obama administration, racial discord is growing and relations seem to have been set back a generation.

Black voters are galvanizing behind Obama at a time of rapidly falling support. White independents, in contrast, are leaving Obama in droves.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has claimed that the loosely organized Tea Party includes "racist elements." The National Council of La Raza has ripped the state of Arizona for its new anti-illegal alien legislation. Jesse Jackson characterized aspects of the multimillion-dollar bidding war to acquire basketball superstar LeBron James in terms of masters and slaves. Pundits are arguing whether the fringe racist New Black Panther Party is analogous to the Klan.

In turn, a number of Americans want to know why some national lobbying organizations still identify themselves by archaic tribal terms such as "colored people" or "La Raza" ("the race") when it would be taboo for other groups to adopt such racial nomenclature.

Indeed, race seems to be the subtext of almost every contemporary issue, from the soaring deficit and government spending to recent presidential appointments and the enforcement of existing immigration law. In times of growing deficits, white people are stereotyped as being angry over supposedly paying higher taxes to subsidize minorities, while minorities are stereotyped as being mostly on the receiving end of entitlements.

Why the escalation of racial tension in the supposed postracial age of Obama?

First, Obama's reputation as a racial healer was largely the creation of the media. In fact, Obama had a number of racially polarizing incidents that probably would have disqualified any other presidential candidate of the past 30 years.

His two-decade apprenticeship at Trinity Church under the racist and anti-Semitic Rev. Jeremiah Wright has never been adequately explained. Obama indulged in racial stereotyping himself when he wrote off the white lower-middle class of Pennsylvania as clueless zealots clinging to their guns, religion and xenophobia.

Obama also characterized his grandmother as a "typical white person" when he implied that her supposed fear of young black males symbolizes the prejudices of the entire white community. Michelle Obama did not help things when, in clumsy fashion, she indicted America as "just downright mean" — a nation she had not been proud of in her adult life until it embraced the hope and change represented by her husband's candidacy.

Recently, Obama appealed to voters along exclusionary race and gender lines — not traditional political allegiances — when he called upon "the young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women, who powered our victory in 2008."

Yet the country passed the old white/black divide years ago. In a world of conservative Cubans and liberal whites, race is no longer necessarily a guide to politics.

The more the president appeals to his base in racial terms, the more his appointees identify themselves as members of a particular tribe, and the more political issues are framed by racial divisions, so all the more such racial obsession creates a backlash among the racially diverse American people.

America has largely moved beyond race. Tragically, our president and a host of his supportive special interests have not.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

If President Obama carries on like this, he will be a lame duck: "The president hasn’t grown into the job — all that’s needed to beat him is a serious Republican, says Simon Heffer in New York. Simon Heffer of the Daily Telegraph of England finds President Obama and his administration interested in their philosophical agenda at the expense of good governance. He writes: ‘This immediate proof of mismanagement adds to the cumulative feeling on so many other fronts that Mr. Obama and his team simply don’t understand governance.’”

Let them eat cake: "According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state …. let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.”

Newsweak sold to old guy: "Sidney Harman, the 91-year-old founder of audio equipment maker Harman International Industries, has agreed to buy Newsweek. Newsweek has been struggling to find a profitable niche amid poor economic conditions and a flood of online competition. Declines in circulation and advertising led to a nearly $US30 million ($33m) loss in 2009. Newsweek expects to lose money again this year. In a statement, Post Co chief executive Donald Graham said Mr Harman has pledged to keep most of the magazine's staff. [A bad move]

New US sanctions aim to dry up North Korea’s cash sources: “Washington’s new sanctions seek to cut off North Korea’s illicit moneymaking sources by freezing the assets of those who help the regime fund its nuclear weapons program, a senior U.S. envoy said Monday, describing a blacklisting tactic aimed at further isolating Pyongyang financially. The U.S. will publicly name institutions and people accused of helping North Korea make money illegally in the next few weeks, Robert Einhorn, the State Department’s special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control, said in Seoul.”

Judge: Virginia can challenge ObamaCare: "Virginia can challenge in court the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reform law, a judge has ruled. … The state argued the law’s requirement that Americans purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. … The Obama administration has argued the requirement is structured like a tax on those who do not purchase insurance and that the federal government has broad constitutional authority to design tax policy.”

Soaking the rich?: "The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, which means a big tax hike in 2011. Tax rates for all brackets will increase, the double tax on dividends will skyrocket from 15 percent to 39.6 percent, the child credit will shrink, the death tax will be reinstated (at 55 percent!), the marriage penalty will get worse and the capital-gains tax rate will jump to 20 percent. Higher taxes in 2011 will be unwelcome news for taxpayers. But equally troubling are the indirect costs to the economy.”

On reforming the British welfare system: "The current system is a nightmare, that it is complex, bureaucratic and riddled with perverse incentives that mean it often makes more sense for a person to be on welfare than in work. No one would ever ha[ve] designed such a system intentionally — it is just the result of one political initiative being piled on top of another, until you’re left with a Byzantine mess that makes no sense whatsoever. Given that the current system is so bad, Duncan Smith is absolutely right to want to tear it up and start again.”

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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An American Stasi?

The surveillance state


The "Stasi" was the former Communist East German Secret Service, notorious for spying on its own citizens

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported on July 25 that “there are 72 fusion centers around the nation, analyzing and disseminating data and information of all kinds. That is one for every state and others for large urban cities.”

What is a fusion center? The answer depends on your perspective. If you work for the Department of Homeland Security, it is a federal, state, local, or regional data-coordination units, designed to improve the sharing of anti-terrorism and anti-crime data in order to make America safer.

If you are privacy or civil-rights advocate, it is part of a powerful new domestic surveillance infrastructure that combines data from both the public and private sectors to track innocent people and so makes Americans less safe from their own government. In that respect, the fusion center is reminiscent of the East German stasi, which used tens of thousands of state police and hundreds of thousands of informers to monitor an estimated one-third of the population.

The history of fusion centers provides insight into which answer is correct. Fusion centers began in 2003 under the administration of George W. Bush as a joint project between the departments of Justice and Homeland Security. The purpose (pdf) is to coordinate federal and local law enforcement by using the “800,000 plus law enforcement officers across the country” whose intimate awareness of their own communities makes them “best placed to function as the ‘eyes and ears’ of an extended national security community.” The fusion centers are hubs for the coordination. By April 2008 there were 58.

The growth has continued under the Obama administration. Indeed, Obama has also continued Bush’s concealment of domestic intelligence activity by threatening to veto legislation that authorizes broader congressional oversight or review of intelligence agencies by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). As a result of that threat, the GAO provision was removed from the Intelligence Authorization Act.

Due to secrecy, it is difficult to describe a typical fusion center. But if the Indiana Intelligence Fusion Center is typical, this is what one looks like.

Indiana’s center has essentially become an arm of Indiana law enforcement…. It has 31 full-time staffers and two part-time employees. Some … are state employees. Others are assigned to the center from other agencies, such as the FBI, Transportation Security Administration, and Marion County Sheriff’s Department. They are joined by workers from the Department of Correction, the Indiana National Guard, the Indiana State Police, the Department of Natural Resources and local campus police…. There are also private sector analysts on contract. Previously those analysts were from EG&G Technical Services of California. The most recent contract with EG&G called for payment of $1.1 million….

Fusion centers invite reports from public employees such as firemen, ambulance drivers, and sanitation workers as well as from the private sector such as hospitals and neighborhood watch groups. They often operate tip hotlines; this means a “suspect’s” name could be submitted by a disgruntled employee, a hostile neighbor, or an ex-spouse who seeks child custody.

What or who is targeted by this sweeping coordination of data? To get an idea, let’s look at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) program, which the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said “should be a national model.” In June 2008 the departments of Justice and Homeland Security recommended expansion of the LAPD program to other cities.

In April 2008 the Wall Street Journal reported on a new LAPD policy that compelled officers to report “suspicious behaviors” to the local fusion center. LAPD Special Order #11, dated March 5, 2008, defined a list of 65 suspicious behaviors, including using binoculars, taking pictures or video footage “with no apparent esthetic value,” abandoning a vehicle, taking notes, and espousing extremist views. Local police were converted into domestic surveillance agents.

Voices of caution were present from the inception of fusion centers. Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr stated: "Using the resources of federal and state law enforcement to encourage the citizenry to submit to the government information on the political, social and even religious views of other people, is in itself outrageous. For the government to then data-base that information, disseminate it widely, and clearly imply that views with which it may disagree provides an appropriate basis on which to surveil citizens and collect information on them, is beyond the pale. It is also a poor and inefficient use of police resources."

Political Abuse

Violation of privacy rights, excessive secrecy, lack of congressional oversight, the inevitability of inaccurate and noncorrectable information, the lack of due process for the accused, the encouragement of racial/religious profiling, the creation of a “snitch” nation, the merging of the military with the private sector, the political abuse of dissidents – the objections scroll on. Specific abuses scroll on as well....

Only Aberrations?

Clearly, the elaborate infrastructure of fusion centers has spied on peaceful citizens. Those who believe the abuses are aberrations, rather than an inherent or intended function, may argue that increased transparency will bring accountability and solve the problem. But that belief is naive. At least four reasons indicate that a lack of transparency and accountability are built into the system — the absence of real congressional oversight being number one.

Second, the ACLU and others have filed numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. They have had to fight tooth-and-nail for any scrap of information.

Third, as the ACLU (pdf) notes, “[T]here appears to be an effort by the federal government to coerce states into exempting their fusion centers from state open government laws. For those living in Virginia, it’s already too late; the Virginia General Assembly passed a law in April 2008 exempting the state’s fusion center from the Freedom of Information Act.

According to comments by the commander of the Virginia State Police Criminal Intelligence Division and the administrative head of the center, the federal government pressured Virginia into passing the law…. [T]here is a real danger fusion centers will become a ‘one-way mirror’ in which citizens are subject to ever-greater scrutiny by the authorities, even while the authorities are increasingly protected from scrutiny by the public.”

A massive database on peaceful citizens, a tip hotline that encourages turning in of neighbors, the casting of suspicion on daily activities, enlisting private workers as national surveillance agents — this is a police state in the making. And if its creation is invisible to most people, well, that is another characteristic of a police state. You are not a believer until it knocks on your door … in the middle of the night.

More HERE

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The Left Hates Conservatives

Dennis Prager

Perhaps the most telling of the recent revelations of the liberal/left Journolist, a list consisting of about 400 major liberal/left journalists, is the depth of their hatred of conservatives. That they would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. But what is jolting is the hatred of conservatives, as exemplified by the e-mail from an NPR reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death -- and the apparent absence of any objection from the other liberal journalists.

Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous extreme comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs -- such things exist on the right as well -- but to mainstream elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists. Yes, nearly all conservatives believe that the left is leading America to ruin. But while there is plenty of conservative anger over this fact, there is little or nothing on the right to match the left's hatred of conservative individuals. Would mainstream conservative journalists e-mail one another wishes to be present while Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or Michael Moore dies slowly and painfully of a heart attack?

From Karl Marx to today, the Left has always hated people on the Right, not merely differed or been angry with them. The question is: why? Here are three possible answers.

First, the left thinks the right is evil.

Granting for exceptions that all generalizations allow for, conservatives believe that those on the left are wrong, while those on the left believe that those on the right are bad, not merely wrong. Examples are innumerable. For example, Howard Dean, the former head of the Democratic Party said, "In contradistinction to the Republicans ... (Democrats) don't believe kids ought to go to bed hungry at night."

Or take Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who, among many similar comments, said, "I want to say a few words about what it means to be a Democrat. It's very simple: We have a conscience."

Has any spokesman of the Republican Party ever said anything analogous about Democrats not caring about the suffering of children or not having a conscience?

Second, when you don't confront real evil, you hate those who do.

You can see this on almost any school playground. The kid who confronts the school bully is often resented more than the bully. Whether out of guilt over their own cowardice or fear that the one who confronted the bully would provoke the bully to lash out more, those who refuse to confront the bully often resent the one who does. During the 1980s, the left expressed far more hatred of Ronald Reagan than of Soviet Communist dictator Leonid Brezhnev. And, when Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire," the liberal world was enraged ... at Reagan.

Those (usually on the left) who refused to confront communism hated those (usually on the right) who did. They called the latter "war mongers," "cold warriors," charged them with having "missile envy" and with loving war.

Today, the left has similar contempt for those who take a hard line on Islamic terror. The liberal and leftist media routinely place quote marks around the words War on Terror. To the left, such a war is manufactured by rightists for nefarious reasons (oil, self-enrichment, imperialism, etc.). Indeed, the Obama administration has actually forbidden use of the term "Islamic terror." America is at war with a nameless enemy. The real enemies the Democratic administration is prepared to name are the Republican Party, tea parties, Fox News and talk radio.

Third, the left's utopian vision is prevented only by the right.

From its inception, leftism has been a secular utopian religion. As Ted Kennedy, famously quoting his brother Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Some (people) see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?" That exemplifies leftwing idealism -- imagining a utopian future. There will be no poor, no war, no conflict, no inequality. That future is only a few more government programs away from reality. And who stands in the way of such perfection? Conservatives. How could a utopian not hate a conservative?

To put in another way, the famous '60s left-wing motto "Make love, not war" embodies the problem as the left sees it: The left makes love in the world and the right makes war in the world. How could you not hate the right? The right, with its beliefs in a strong military; in individuals, not the state; taking care of themselves, their families and their neighbors; and in punishing criminals, is the anti-Love, a figure as reviled on the left as the antichrist is to Christians.

This hatred will only increase if the left feels its programs to greatly increase the size of the government are in any way threatened in the forthcoming elections. The problem is that this hatred does not decrease even when the left is in power.

Hatred of conservatives is so much part of the left that the day the left stops hating conservatives will mark the beginning of the end of the left as we know it.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

I thought I might mention again for anybody who missed it last time round that my EYE ON BRITAIN blog is also a blog about socialized medicine in action. I lead off the blog every day with a story about some new horror of British government medicine. That the horror stories crop up DAILY probably tells you all by itself how bad the system is. Some days -- e.g. yesterday -- there are actually TWO such horror stories on the blog -- JR

The Ruling Elite called: "I just got off the horn with the Ruling Elite. We had an emergency conference call and to tell you the truth, they ain’t happy. You little people are not responding the way you are supposed to. A significant portion of you are not getting more optimistic because they tell you to. Instead of just reading the headline on Bloomberg that durable goods orders skyrocketed in June, you actually read the details that said durable goods orders plunged. It is getting difficult for the ruling elite to keep the masses sedated and dumbed down. These damn bloggers, with their facts and critical thinking, are throwing a wrench into the gears. Obama and his crack team are working round the clock to lock down the internet, but it will take time. Not that they are totally dissatisfied. They’ve been able to renovate their penthouses and purchase new mansions in the Hamptons with the billions in bonuses you supplied through TARP. The $1.2 trillion supplied by your children and grandchildren to buy up toxic mortgages off their balances sheets was a godsend. They will never call you suckers, to your face.”

What to expect from New York’s “workplace bullying” law: "Almost anyone who has been employed most likely has been bullied, and maybe some of us have bullied underlings (or even bosses) — though we never would admit it. Bullying is an unfortunate fact of life so, naturally, Progressives believe they can legislate it out of existence in order to form their More Perfect World. Not surprisingly, Progressive New York State is leading the way with a proposed workplace anti-bullying law, and 16 other states are pushing forward with similar legislation.”

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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For decades American college students have been taught a Communist version of history

The prominent "progressive" historian Howard Zinn, whose books are force-fed to young people on many college campuses, was not only a member of the Moscow-controlled and Soviet-funded Communist Party USA (CPUSA) but lied about it, according to an FBI file released on Friday.

The file, consisting of three sections totaling 423 pages, was made available on the FBI's website and released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from this writer.

Zinn taught in the political science department of Boston University for 24 years, from 1964 to 1988, and has been a major influence on the modern-day "progressive" movement that backed Barack Obama for president.

Although Zinn denied being a member of the CPUSA, the FBI file discloses that several reliable informants in the party identified Zinn as a member who attended party meetings as many as five times a week.

What's more, one of the files reveals that a reliable informant provided a photograph of Zinn teaching a class on "Basic Marxism" at party headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. A participant in the class said that Zinn taught that "the basic teaching of Marx and Lenin were sound and should be adhered to by those present."

The FBI file also includes information on Zinn's pro-Castro activism and support for radical groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Progressive Labor Party (PLP), Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and Black Panther Party. Much of the latter was in connection with Zinn's support for a communist military victory in Vietnam. His dealings with the Communist regime in Hanoi included a visit to the communist capital.

Zinn was included on the "Security Index" and "Communist Index" maintained by the FBI. The "Security Index" was more ominous and included individuals who could be detained in the event of a national emergency.

The files confirm Zinn's membership in the party from 1948-1953 and one says he was "believed to be a CP member as of October, 1956." However, he denied membership in the party when interviewed by the FBI in 1953 and 1954 and claimed to be just a "liberal" or "leftist." He did admit involvement in several CPUSA front organizations, the documents say.

A 1964 FBI memorandum refers to Zinn as "a professor and writer who has a background of known membership in the Communist Party (CP) and has continued to demonstrate procommunist and anti-United States sympathies." It says that while Zinn had denied membership in the CPUSA, his denial "was not supported by facts"-a reference to the substantial evidence and eyewitness testimony provided by informants in the CPUSA.

Much more HERE

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More brainwashing coming up

Everybody from the Jesuits to Hitler have tried to capture the education of the young as the best way to perpetuate their ideology

Hey mama grizzlies, it appears as if the White House wants more time with your cubs. Yep, I guess Barack and his socialistic cabal have had a rough go at “fundamentally transforming our nation” in dealing with the increasingly-jaundiced thinking adults who’ve lost the Obama buzz, still dig America, love God and our Constitution, and ask questions (and crap like that). So, like good brainwashers who cannot bamboozle adults, they go in for our babies.

Yep, for the sake of socialism and with an eye to “changing our traditions, our history,” as Michelle Obama said, BHO’s boy Arne Duncan is tabling a plan for parents to give “them” more time with our tots. That means “alone time,” as in big chunks of alone time with the teachers whom “they” have fed a steady diet of “America sucks and socialism is yummy” sauce.

It’s the same stack of teachers the NEA has greatly encouraged to read Saul Alinsky’s commie rag, Rules for Radicals. And you won’t have to worry about them being physically harmed while they’re away from your gaze, Mr. and Mrs. Grizz, because radical gay activist Kevin “Fistgate” Jennings will make sure your kids are okay. Especially your teenage boys.

This past week, Secretary of (Re)Education Arne Duncan said at the National Press Club that he’d like to have schools open 12 to 14 hours a day and 11 to 12 months out of the year. Dr. Evil couched his desires for huge chunks of time spent with your children in the most flowery of language, musing aloud that he wanted to have your children for an extended period to help them “compete internationally.”

Really, Arne? Correct me if I’m wrong, but we used to compete internationally … as in run the flippin’ planet … didn’t we? That is until dipsticks like you and your progressive posse decided to toss God, the Constitution, common sense, a clear delineation between right and wrong, and discipline out of school and replace it with Muslim sensitivity training classes, books about Penguins sodomizing each other, and social justice as you passed out condoms to first graders and provided secret abortions for 13-year-old girls. It’s funny that America never had a problem excelling until secular progressives, with their Marxist bent, became the pace car for the public school system.

The ambitious Obama administration is not content with trying to rule our freedom of speech (especially squelching critiques of their feckless policies), but they also want to put the joystick of our economy, our car companies, our health care, our self reliance and independence, our retirement, and now our kids into their sweaty palms because, you see, they’re wiser than we are in regard to what our kids need to know about how the world should tick—thus Duncan’s talk about more time to uh … um … “educate” your cubs.

This is no surprise, however, as the re-education of our kids has been the wet dream of Bill Ayers, domestic terrorist and Obama’s buddy, as well as his radical ilk for a long, long time.

For mama grizzlies truly concerned about the health and well-being of their cubs and the environment they grow up in (i.e. the USA), you have two options for this public school mess: either get into the system and fight this virulently anti-American agenda … or remove your children from it.

SOURCE

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Tea Party not really racist but so what?

Ever since the NAACP began stepping up its attacks on the limited government movement through charges of racism against the Tea Parties, it’s become rather apparent that there was a concerted effort behind this rhetoric.

After reading the words of Mary Frances Berry, one of the more prominent leaders in the far-left black political scene, one need no longer merely surmise this. In an astonishingly frank email to Politico, Berry declares that the tea-partiers-as-racists meme is “an effective strategy for Democrats” despite the fact that she believes “there is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans.” Here’s the full quote:

“Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”

Aside from the morality of knowingly advancing a blatantly false line of thinking, Berry and her cohort’s embrace of race-baiting has real implications for race relations as R. Dozier Gray, a member of the conservative black group Project 21 put it in a statement about Berry’s remarks:

“This willful and purposeful use of the race card for nothing more than political gain is toxic to race relations, and Mary Frances Berry must know that. But she evidently does not care. Based on her comment, political posturing takes primacy over whatever real issues regarding race that she might pretend are her calling cards. I have seen this all before. I find it shameful.”

All too true. It’s shameful also that the NAACP and other black groups with honorable achievements in days past would willingly shill for partisan politics.

SOURCE

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Evil Michigan welfare bureaucrats

This is a bit of a blood-boiler: Man not the Dad, but Owes the State Welfare Reimbursement for the child anyway

This time it’s the State of Michigan that’s suing Gary Harper for AFDC payments made to a woman named Dorothy Hoose. She had a son in 1988 and named Harper as the dad. There’s just one problem, though; he’s not.

But the State of Michigan isn’t interested in technicalities like who the actual father is. It’s known for many years that Harper is not the dad and, as far as I can tell, lifted nary a finger to find out who is. That’s because it’s got Harper on its line and the hook is set. Why go after another fish when you’ve already got one reeled in?

You see, when Hoose named Harper as the dad, he was in prison. According to Michigan law, the state has to pay for a DNA test for any inmate for whom it seeks to establish paternity. The state knew Harper was in the joint because a Friend of the Court sent correspondence there about his case. But it never offered him the genetic testing.

After he got out, he didn’t have the $500 it would have taken at the time to determine whether he was the dad or not. He didn’t do the test until years later, when he had the money. That test proved he wasn’t the dad, but it was too late. His window of opportunity for disproving his paternity had closed.

That’s one of those technicalities the state is interested in.So as of now, Harper’s on the hook for $22,500, down from the $50,000 the state claimed at first. He’s got an attorney, Susan Pushman, who says that the state’s failure to provide DNA testing when Harper was inside means it can’t complain that he didn’t do it on his own when he got out. If Michigan had done what it was obligated to do, it would have known Harper isn’t the father, is her argument.

The case is pending. The “child” in question is now 22 years old. Perhaps oddly, he and Harper have gotten to know and like each other pretty well. That’s a positive development in an otherwise tawdry affair.

It’s worth asking why the State of Michigan has expended such effort in trying to bankrupt a man it knows has no responsibility for Hoose’s son. After all, Harper has been trying to get his life back together after his time in prison, and he’s done a pretty good job of that. But if the state has its way, it’ll tear down whatever he’s built. Nice.

What truly escapes me is why state welfare authorities don’t just ask Hoose who the father is, do DNA testing on him and, if she’s right this time, demand payment. What’s the problem with getting the right man and letting the wrong one go? What state interest is served by soaking a man who’s not the father and letting the man who is go free? One of the points of child support is that he who fathers a child should be financially responsible for it. In Harper’s case, the State of Michigan has it exactly backwards.

SOURCE

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Can some racial realities now be mentioned?

In the stifled, constipated political discourse of the modern West, there are quite wide categories of facts that are rather obviously true, but which it has for decades been considered gross bad manners to mention aloud. Now, suddenly, we are seeing those facts printed in respectable organs of news and opinion. Early signs of a paradigm shift? Or just a momentary aberration?

The first such instance that registered with me was David Frum’s May 3 piece on CNN.com. Frum tackled the issue of illegal immigration from one of the verboten angles: human capital. He cited some references to the fact that Mexicans don’t do very well in U.S. society, even after three or four generations.

Many Americans carry in their minds a family memory of upward mobility, from great-grandpa stepping off the boat at Ellis Island to a present generation of professionals and technology workers. This story no longer holds true for the largest single U.S. immigrant group, Mexican-Americans.

The lackluster average quality of the human capital we have been importing in the tens of millions from Mexico should not have come as a surprise to anyone. Mexico is a lackluster kind of country. Quite inconsequential nations—Hungary, for example, which has one-tenth Mexico’s population and one-twentieth its area—have contributed more to the sum of human civilization in a few decades than Mexico has managed in 500 years....

More HERE

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

There is an update over at Armed Citizen about their battles with copyright piranha "Righthaven". There are a couple of addresses given there for you to write to if you would like to help.

Note that although all the past content on "Armed Citizen" has been taken down, everything they have covered over the last few years was also covered on my GUN WATCH blog so is still available in the archives there. The difference between GUN WATCH and "Armed Citizen" is that my blog covers general gun news as well as reports of self-defense shootings by citizens.

Another difference is that, on GUN WATCH, I very rarely put up more than a short excerpt of a report -- which makes that blog an unlikely target for a copyright suit. "Armed Citizen", by contrast, reproduced whole articles at times.

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The old "Jewish money" slur revived -- by a Democrat

The claim that "Jewish money" controls politics has long been a staple among the antisemitic fraternity. The fact that the bulk of Jewish political donations go to the Democrats makes that claim all the more risible. George Bush was a much better friend to Israel than Obama has been. And in the Yom Kippur surprise attack of 1973 it was Nixon who made sure that Israel was promptly sent what it needed to defend itself, even though Jewish voters had overwhelmingly opposed his election. Golda Meir describes Nixon in her autobiography as the best friend Israel ever had in the presidency

Mike Grimm, a G.O.P challenger to Democrat Mike McMahon's Congressional seat, took in over $200,000 in his last filing.

But in an effort to show that Grimm lacks support among voters in the district, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, the McMahon campaign compiled a list of Jewish donors to Grimm and provided it to The Politicker.

The file, labeled "Grimm Jewish Money Q2," for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home....

Grimm recently went to a religious service led by Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, a Kabbalahist who is known as a rabbi to the rich and famous. Several of his followers, including Haim Revah, whose company owns the Lipstick Building and Ilan Bracha of Prudential Douglas Elliman, donated to Grimm.

Reached by phone, Grimm, who is part-Italian, part-German, said he was proud of his Jewish support and said he was disturbed to hear that the McMahon campaign compiled a separate list of his Jewish donors.

"The fact that a U.S. Congressman would separate out any group by religion or even by ethnicity is nothing short of outrageous," he said. "This goes beyond politics."

More here

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Deficits Up, Unemployment Up

Next year's budget deficit is projected by Mr. Obama's own analysts to be $1.4 trillion, up from $1.3 trillion projected in February. Over the next decade, under his own policies, the cumulative deficit would be $10 trillion. And the national debt would rise from $6 trillion in 2008 to $19 trillion in 2020.

These are Mr. Obama's numbers, not those of his Republican critics.

The deficit as a percent of GDP is projected at 10% in fiscal year 2010 and 9% next year, and is not forecast to fall below 3.5% until 2017, after President Obama's possible second term. Then, it rises again in 2019 and 2020.

This is far above levels seen earlier in the decade. The deficit as a percent of GDP stood at 9.9% in fiscal 2009, but before that the highest percentage this decade was 3.5% in 2004.

Government receipts are projected to be lower, not just in 2010 and 2011, but through 2017, because fewer Americans will be working. When fewer people work, the government collects less tax revenue.

Outlays are also projected to be lower, which should be good news. But a third of the savings over the next decade are attributed to Medicare, either through the new health care law, which mandates cuts in Medicare, or through savings in the current program.

These Medicare savings are a mirage. Congress has repeatedly overridden statutory Medicare cuts, the latest being cuts of 21% in physician reimbursement, due to take place on June 1. Instead, Congress voted a 2.2% increase. With an expanding elderly population, other planned cuts are equally unlikely.

OMB acknowledges that "the collapse of the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis have taken a significant toll on the economy, and many of the after-effects are likely to be felt for years to come." Yet the report forecasts real GDP growth to be 3.6% in 2011, in contrast to the forecast of the International Monetary Fund of 2.9% and the Congressional Budget Office forecast of 1.9%. GDP growth rates are projected to be above 4% for 2012 through 2014 and 3.6% in 2015.

This is a five-year average of 3.9%, a pace our economy has rarely met over the past 40 years. One exception was the five years from 1996 to 2000, not coincidentally, the last time the federal budget was balanced.

Such growth rates necessitate a falling unemployment rate and rising real incomes fuelling a decent recovery in consumer spending, along with a substantial boost from net trade over coming years. There are no signs yet that any of these are occurring.

In fact, administration economists project higher levels of unemployment, albeit slowly declining, than have been the case under prior expansions. Between 1996 and 2000, unemployment averaged 4.6%, and in 2003 to 2007, it averaged 5.2%. In contrast, the Mid-Session review predicts annual average unemployment to stay above 8% through 2012, falling below 6% only in 2015.

A boom in trade seems far from certain given Europe's precarious economic situation, with Spain due to follow Greece as the next bailout candidate and French and German taxpayers on the hook for the tab. Meanwhile, Congress has shown no signs of ratifying pending free-trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia, agreements that, if approved, would help to boost American exports.

The most serious issue facing Americans today is lack of employment opportunities and how to deal with growing spending and entitlement programs.

What is the path to economic prosperity? Many Democrats recommend raising taxes on upper-income taxpayers in order to shrink government deficits and rein in growth of the national debt. Many Republicans - and some Democrats - counter that these tax increases would slow economic growth by reducing incentives to work and invest.

For one sensible observation on tax increases and growth, look no further than a new paper published in June's American Economic Review, the flagship journal of the economics profession. It was written by Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer and her husband David Romer, both professors at the University of California (Berkeley).

Entitled "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," the paper distinguishes between the effects of tax changes arising from legislation and increases in effective tax rates that occur automatically, for instance as individuals move into higher tax brackets.

The Romers conclude that legislated tax changes had far more effect than had automatic tax increases. Looking at data from 1947 to 2007, and examining the legislative record behind the tax changes, they conclude "Our estimates suggest that a tax increase of 1% of GDP reduces output over the next three years by nearly 3%." A major reason is that higher taxes have a markedly negative effect on investment.

The Mid-Session Review, which underscores the worrisome economic and fiscal conditions that prevail, should be a warning that our current policies are unsustainable. As Mr. Obama, along with other Americans, awaits the July jobs numbers due out on August 6, he might want to glance at his CEA chair's latest paper.

SOURCE

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Obama's ideology is very American -- sadly

In addition to the points below see my extensive summary of the evidence that American "Progressives" were the first Fascists of the 20th century

Reading the scholarly work of Woodrow Wilson is an educational experience. It is shocking to read the expressions of his disaffection for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. As R.J. Pestritto has demonstrated, the intellectual roots of modern liberalism lie in an assault on the ideas of natural rights and limited government. They eventuate in an administrative state and rule by supposed experts. Obamacare represents something like the full flowering of modern liberalism.

Wilson's expressions of disapproval are the precursor to Barack Obama's disdain for the Constitution and the Warren Court. Obama perfectly reflected Wilson's views in his 2001 comments on the civil rights movement and the Supreme Court. In the course of the famous radio interview Obama gave to WBEZ in Chicago, Obama observed that the Warren Court had not broken "free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties." To achieve "redistributive change," the limitations of the Constitution would have to be overcome by the Court or by Congress.

Franklin Roosevelt touted welfare state liberalism in the "second Bill of Rights" that he set forth to Congress in his 1944 State of the Union Address. "Necessitous men are not free men," Roosevelt asserted, and enumerated a new set of rights, among which were the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation, the right of every family to a decent home, and the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

Implicitly arguing that the teaching of the Declaration had become obsolete, Roosevelt asserted: "In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed."

The economic "rights" asserted by Roosevelt in his second Bill of Rights differ and conflict with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are claims on the liberty of others. If I have a right to medical care, you must have a corresponding duty to supply it. If I have a right to a decent home, you must have a duty to provide it.

The argument for the welfare state belongs in the same family as "the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden."

Lincoln memorably derided the underlying principle as "the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it."

William Voegeli's Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State is one of the books of the year. George Will drew attention to Voegeli's book in his excellent column "The danger of a government with unlimited power." Michael Lind attacks Will and comes to the defense of liberalism. William Voegeli strikes back in "Why liberalism is dangerous." Voegeli has reignited a profoundly important argument that ultimately requires us to recover a basic understanding of limited constitutional government.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Israeli airstrike kills senior Hamas rocket maker: "Israeli warplanes fired missiles, killing a senior commander of the Hamas military wing and wounding 11 people in five targets hit across Gaza overnight, the group and the military said Saturday. The Israeli military said the strikes were in response to a powerful rocket fired from Gaza that hit the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon on Friday, causing damage but no injuries. Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers said their slain member was Issa Batran, 42, a commander of the groups' military wing in central Gaza and a senior rocket maker. The strikes hit a smuggling tunnel that runs under the Gaza-Egypt border used for smuggling weapons, the military said, as well as Batran's shack in central Gaza, which was likely used to make rockets, and a Hamas military training camp in Gaza City. However in Friday's attack, Ashkelon was hit by a military-grade Grad rocket that can travel longer distances and cause far more damage.

Waters plans US House trial to fight ethics charges: "Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., plans to go through a House trial to contest charges of misusing her office, NBC News confirmed Friday night. A House ethics subcommittee says Waters, 71, improperly intervened in 2008 with federal regulators to help get bailout funds for a bank that her husband owned stock in and on whose board he once served, said NBC and other media reports. Waters also once held stock in the bank.”

Growing pains : "Health care costs — and thus Medicare costs — are growing faster than GDP. Between 1998 and 2008, the rate of the program’s growth outpaced GDP by about 2.8 percent. That may not seem like much, but as long as that trend continues, it means that, every year, all else being equal, Medicare eats up a larger share of the budget. In the short term, that’s worrying. In the long term, it’s a huge problem. Somehow, all that excess growth will either have to be contained or paid for. That leaves policymakers with three basic options: Raise taxes, borrow more, or cut costs. But as Joseph Newhouse pointed out last week in Health Affairs, each presents significant difficulties.”

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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Non-Hiatus

The electricity outage in my street was shorter than expected so I got the chance to update all my blogs today

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Dishonest Democrat campaign tactics

Counsel for a Democrat Congresscritter:

The strategy is one you may remember from past campaigns. They call it the Great Smoke Blower. Jimmy Carter used it against Reagan in 1980. When things are objectively bad and you can't run on your record, you accuse the Republicans of extremism. Remember? In 1980, inflation was running at 14 percent. Interest rates were about 15 percent. American hostages were paraded on Iranian television. The economy was febrile.

What did they do? They accused Reagan of being a warmonger. They said he would divide north from south, white from black, union from management, and Christian from Jew. They said he would plunge the world into nuclear Armageddon. It was a reprise of the anti-Goldwater effort of 1964.

The newest ad from the DNC seeks to link the Republican Party with the tea party. Flashing faces on the screen, now Rand Paul, now Paul Ryan, now Sharron Angle, now John Boehner, all distinctions are blurred. Then they present the "Republican Tea Party Contract on America" with 10 items. These, they expect, will frighten the heck out of John Q. Public.

Item 1: "Repeal Health Insurance Reform." Item 2: "Privatize Social Security or Get Rid of It." Item 3: "End Medicare as it Presently Exists." Item 4: "Extend the Bush Tax Breaks for the Wealthy and Big Oil." Item 5: "Repeal Wall Street Reform." Item 6: "Protect Those Responsible for the Oil Spill." Item 7: "Abolish the Department of Education." Item 8: "Abolish the Department of Energy." Item 9: "Abolish the Environmental Protection Agency." Item 10: "Repeal the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators)."

Clever, right? Hey, why are you still weeping? Oh, I see. Rasmussen found that as recently as June, 58 percent of voters favor repealing the health care behemoth? So it wouldn't be scary if Republicans actually ran on that item.

Oh, and your opponent doesn't favor privatizing Social Security? Not even a little? Hasn't she ever said something like "We may have to consider changes to the retirement age?" because that can be demagogued as wanting to privatize Social Security. Well, you make a good point. The Republicans (to the dismay of philosophical conservatives and libertarians) have been embracing Social Security as Linus did his blanket, for many an election cycle. I guess, while we're at it, we might as well go ahead and concede that these same domesticated Republicans haven't exactly been carrying the banner for eliminating the Departments of Energy and Education (far less EPA!) for a really, really long time, though some wish they would.

There, there. Don't fret. What? Your opponent actually is in favor of repealing the "Wall Street Reform"? She says it will create 243 new regulations, just for starters, and that the federal government will now have the power to decide whether pretty much every business in America is taking too much risk. If a federal regulator decides you are making bad decisions, he can close down your shop. Besides, it completely sidestepped the biggest reason for the financial meltdown, Fannie and Freddie, because those were Democrats' sandboxes. Hmmm.

The unemployment rate in your district is 17 percent? Twenty-five percent among the young? The expiration of the Bush tax cuts will raise taxes for small-business owners, and this will make hiring even less likely? According to the Small Business Administration (another agency principled conservatives would happily kiss goodbye), small businesses were responsible for between 60 and 80 percent of net new jobs in the past decade. But now they're worried. They don't know how the new Financial Reform bill will affect them, and they've seen what the Massachusetts health reform did to business there so they're extremely nervous about the effects of the national health reform. They're getting by, but they're in no mood to hire.

SOURCE

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The great warriors of old are still to be found among Americans

When someone who has earned the Medal of Honor enters a room, a hush follows, like waters opening. The stillness in his wake is palpable. Men are filled with more than admiration. The emotion is a mix of awe, envy and wonder. "Would I be capable of that?" each asks himself. Genteel ladies understand and hang back. Generals stand aside. "I'd sell my immortal soul for that medal," George S. Patton confessed.

Even politicians stop thinking of themselves. And the best of them are humbled. Harry Truman, a captain of artillery himself in the Great War, was heard to remark, "I would rather have the blue band of the Medal of Honor around my neck than be president."

Years ago, when the society of Medal of Honor recipients gathered here in Little Rock, the sensation was overpowering as each was called to the stage. Name, rank, branch of service, race, color, creed ... none of that mattered. Only their courage.

Freedom is much praised, but without courage, it is fleeting. As all know but too easily forget. Till the presence of someone wearing that blue band around his neck speaks that truth without a word being said. Or needing to be.

From the moment the country's highest honor is presented, the recipient is a marked man. He is different, and everyone knows it. He bears a great honor and an even greater burden. For all eyes are on him, and will be as long as he lives. And his story will be told long after he is gone. He no longer belongs to himself but to posterity. No wonder one recipient said it was harder to wear the medal than earn it.

Perhaps even more remarkable than his heroism was the grace with which Nick Bacon, a farm boy from near Caraway, Ark., wore that indelible honor. When you met him, he might ask only about your branch, unit, length of service and what he could do for you.

But you knew that behind the friendly, unassuming manner was a story as distinctive, and as essential to whatever remains of the West's civilization, as when the poet first sang of arms and the man.

There are fewer than a hundred Medal of Honor recipients still living, and now there is one less: Nick Bacon has died. At 64. Of the cancer he'd long fought. The state is in mourning. He'd earned the medal in Vietnam, taking command of one platoon after its leader was wounded, and of another when it, too, lost its leader, personally wiping out an enemy machine-gun nest as he led a counterattack that would save what remained of his unit and accomplish its mission. Talk about a trial by fire, and Nick Bacon met it with something above and beyond courage that endless day.

The formal words of the official citation, marching across the printed page as if in full review, tell of what he did one endless day in Vietnam:

"For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. S/Sgt. Bacon distinguished himself while serving as a squad leader with the 1st Platoon, Company B, during an operation west of Tam Ky. When Company B came under fire from an enemy bunker line to the front, S/Sgt. Bacon quickly organized his men and led them forward in an assault. He advanced on a hostile bunker and destroyed it with grenades. As he did so, several fellow soldiers including the 1st Platoon leader, were struck by machine gun fire and fell wounded in an exposed position forward of the rest of the platoon. S/Sgt. Bacon immediately assumed command of the platoon and assaulted the hostile gun position, finally killing the enemy gun crew in a single-handed effort.

"When the 3d Platoon moved to S/Sgt. Bacon's location, its leader was also wounded. Without hesitation S/Sgt. Bacon took charge of the additional platoon and continued the fight. In the ensuing action he personally killed 4 more enemy soldiers and silenced an antitank weapon. Under his leadership and example, the members of both platoons accepted his authority without question. Continuing to ignore the intense hostile fire, he climbed up on the exposed deck of a tank and directed fire into the enemy position while several wounded men were evacuated.

"As a result of S/Sgt. Bacon's extraordinary efforts, his company was able to move forward, eliminate the enemy positions, and rescue the men trapped to the front. S/Sgt. Bacon's bravery at the risk of his life was in the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army."

When pressed, Nick Bacon would tell the story of that day -- August 26, 1968 -- in his own way:

"I got my boot heel shot off, I got holes in my canteens, I got my rifle grip shot up. I got shrapnel holes in my camouflage covers, and bullets in my pot. A bullet creased the edge of it, tore the lining off."

Sergeant Bacon also got the Medal of Honor, presented at the White House in 1969, in addition to his other decorations, among them the Distinguished Service Cross, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. After two tours in Vietnam (he tried for a third but was turned down) he would retire from active duty in 1984 with the rank of first sergeant.

First Sergeant Bacon, first in more ways than one, would go on to serve more than a decade as his state's director of Veterans Affairs. Anything and everything he could do for his old comrades-in-arms, and those to come, he did. He was not just the face of Veterans Affairs in Arkansas, but its embodiment.

Some men are tested by one single, exhilarating day lived at high pitch, others over the course of a lifetime of day-in, day-out service to others. Nick Bacon passed both tests, excelled at them, yet somehow remained just Nick Bacon, whom everyone loved.

In the end, what needs to be said, and isn't often enough, is simply: Thank you for your service.

SOURCE

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NAACP blackmail?

Sorry for the pun

I was just intrigued or worried by a threatening letter that a Virginian boss of NAACP, a U.S. group promoting reverse racism, sent to James Webb, a Virginian Democratic senator who has opposed affirmative action - maybe more openly than his former G.O.P. opponent, George Allen.

A week ago, Webb wrote a WSJ op-ed, Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege, in which he was advocating the end of affirmative action programs.

The intimidating tone of the NAACP reply sucks. They want to meet him and they ask him whether there are any more rotten apples around him so that they could go after their necks, too. I think that beyond a certain threshold, such communication of organized groups with the politicians has to be viewed as blackmailing.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Time to stop listening to the Keynsian economic orthodoxy: "The truth can hurt. As I see it, the truth is that the Ph.D.s and Keynesian economists haven’t prevented our nation, and in fact the world, from falling into depression. They haven’t prevented massive unemployment. They haven’t prevented the boom/bust cycle from taking place. They haven’t stabilized the economy as they were supposed to. Indeed, they have caused these things. They have created the conditions that have made these things possible. They can point fingers all they want and make the claim that the economy is just too darn complicated, but that’s because they don’t want to look at themselves in the mirror and admit they were wrong.”

Boat saga hurt Kerry, but how much? "As political missteps go, Senator John F. Kerry’s yacht issues may ultimately be considered just a minor stumble. But in a state that has just elected a new US senator with the carefully crafted image of a pickup-driving, barn jacket-wearing common man, Kerry now seems likely to be perceived as ever more out of touch, political analysts said yesterday. And with the recession feeding a fire of anti-establishment indignation, the appearance that Kerry may have tried to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on a $7 million luxury yacht by docking it in Rhode Island could solidify a sense among voters that his life and concerns range far above their own. ‘It’s the definition of a self-inflicted wound,’ said Jeff Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. ‘Politicians try to create a sense of empathy with rank-and-file voters, to show them that they can stand in their shoes. … John Kerry doesn’t seem to know where the shoe store is.’”

Rangel charged with 13 ethics violations: "A House panel accused Rep. Charles Rangel of New York Thursday of 13 ethics rules violations, placing his storied 40-year political career in jeopardy and guaranteeing Democrats an election-year headache. The violations were unveiled in a meeting that set the stage for a rare, full-blown trial that could take place as early as September. Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem, did not attend the meeting and has maintained he will be exonerated.”

Fixed retirement age to be scrapped in Britain: "The government has announced that the default retirement age will be phased out by October 2011. The default retirement age permitted employers to retire workers at the age without justification, and is an exception to United Kingdom labor law, which prohibits employers from making employment decisions on the basis of age and forces them to provide justification for dismissing a worker. Personnel groups and those supportive of the elderly cheered the announcement, while business groups such as the Confederation of British Industry expressed concern about the law. There is merit in both reactions.”

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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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Reduced posting

The electricity in my street will be "off" for most of the rest of today so I am unlikely to have time to post to all my blogs. I have already posted on TONGUE-TIED and IMMIGRATION WATCH for today but who knows what else I will be able to get up?

I do expect to have something worthwhile to post on this blog towards the end of my day however.