Poll on entitlements
Not surprisingly, people agree that undefined "cuts" to Medicare and Social Security are "unacceptable." But specific, meaningful changes to these programs are broadly supported — so much for truth in labeling.
In fact, reducing Medicare and Social Security benefits for wealthier retirees was supported by 62 percent of those asked. Raising the Social Security retirement age to 69 was backed by a 56-42 margin. Taken together, these two adjustments, supported by the president’s deficit reduction commission, would cover roughly 60 percent of the long-term shortfall in Social Security.
Most voters do not consider these changes to be "significant" cuts because the ideas strike them as common sense: the wealthy should pay a larger share of their Medicare costs; retirement age should reflect long-term changes in life expectancy. The challenge is to read far enough into a story to find the truth. Significance is in the eye of the beholder.
And what constitutes "significant" in the debate over this year’s discretionary spending levels? Extending the current spending resolution through the end of the fiscal year would cost $1.08 trillion. House Republicans passed a bill that would reduce this level by about $57 billion, while the president proposed $6 billion in cuts. The White House argues that its recommended reductions — about one-half of 1 percent — are "significant." Republicans disagree.
Strip away the rhetoric, and the difference between the two is about 5 percent of federal discretionary spending. Controlling a budget is never easy, but families and businesses rein in their spending by 4 or 5 percent all the time. More important, given that the United States just posted the largest monthly budget deficit in world history — $223 billion — one might hope we could do better than a half-percent reduction.
In fact, the NBC/WSJ poll showed that majorities support budget cuts to state government assistance, the Environmental Protection Agency, and transportation projects as well. Interestingly, after all the poll questions about program cuts had been asked, preference for "cutting important programs" actually increased from 35 to 37 percent, while support for raising taxes declined from 33 to 29 percent.
Polls shouldn’t determine budget policy; they simply show the degree to which the public recognizes that tough choices are at hand. Today’s fiscal crisis is bigger than any one government program, but if budget negotiators were to embrace public sentiment on retirement age and means-testing and find 3 or 4 percent in discretionary savings this year, they just might be on to something "significant."
SOURCE
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Rules for Wisconsin Radicals
Hint: Lose the whole '60s thing
Just before the package of labor reforms favored by Gov. Scott Walker made it through the Wisconsin legislature, students demonstrating inside the Capitol mobilized to show their resistance. On the floor of the rotunda, they linked their bodies to offer a little protest art for the photographers: a human peace sign.
Two days later, upwards of 100,000 people, some bussed in from elsewhere, converged on Madison to say that this is only the beginning. The idea, of course, is that the Republican governor and his Republican majorities in the Wisconsin legislature have thwarted democracy. By "overreaching," they are said to have done for Democrats what ObamaCare did for the Republicans: galvanize a demoralized base.
That's what the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, meant when he told an audience last Thursday at the National Press Club, "Thank you, Scott Walker. We should have invited him here today to receive the Mobilizer of the Year Award."
Certainly the Badger Revolution has provoked protests on a level few anticipated. It's true too that many Americans are not yet sold on the need to roll back collective bargaining, even for public employees. Whether Wisconsin represents the emergence of a broad-based, national campaign against reform-minded Republican leaders, however, depends on something far less clear: the ability of the protest movement to reach beyond its own echo chamber to the nonunion middle class.
Saul Alinsky, the father of community organizing, would have relished the challenge. In the last chapter of his classic "Rules for Radicals," he put it this way. "Tactics must begin with the experience of the middle class, accepting their aversion to rudeness, vulgarity, and conflict. Start them easy, don't scare them off." The aim was to make the other guy look heavy-handed, and thus gain sympathy for your side.
In that spirit, here's an updated list of 10 rules for Wisconsin protesters:
1) No more Jesse Jackson . This man is a national symbol of agitation for agitation's sake, and he suggests to people who have not yet made up their minds that the protesters may be more radical than they claim.
2) Ditto for Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon and Tony Shaloub. Outsiders like these may excite the crowds, but they'll alienate people you need.
3) Lose the peace signs. It suggests a hankering for the anti-middle class 1960s, rather than a 21st-century struggle for a middle-class standard of living.
4) Put out more flags. Many of the farmers who drove past the Wisconsin Capitol on Saturday featured American flags. It wouldn't hurt to add a few verses of "God Bless America"—which demonstrators sang to good effect during last month's protest in Michigan's capital.
5) Respect the law. The broken doors and windows that resulted when protesters overwhelmed police trying to keep mobs out and allow legislators in did not help. By contrast, Gov. Walker was noticeably restrained in his use of force (perhaps because he feared the police, themselves members of a public-employees union, wouldn't obey him).
If you absolutely have to have people carted off by the cops, make sure they are moms and grandmoms—not bearded University of Wisconsin grad students.
6) If you are teachers, don't call in sick as a group so you can all protest. It suggests a certain insincerity about putting students first, especially when classes are cancelled.
7) No more Hitler mustaches on Gov. Walker. Not because is it unfair, but because Hitler analogies are tired. Ridicule would be far more effective.
8) Make local workers your public face: real teachers, real cops, real firemen. Even unpolished, they make a much more sympathetic case than the professional union leaders.
9) Don't call for grand actions likely only to end up confirming your weakness. Instead of going after all GOP state senators—a losing proposition—better to target one and make an example of him. The guy whose own wife signed a petition for his recall would be a good candidate.
10) Show some sympathy for the taxpayers. Show them you know they are paying your salaries—and that you know they are hurting.
Rallying those who share your outlook is easy. But Alinsky succeeded in neighborhoods such as Back of the Yards, Chicago in good part because of his ability to work with people and institutions with whom he had little in common. Accordingly, the first thing he often told would-be organizers was to get a haircut and a decent suit.
In "Rules for Radicals," Alinsky urged his successors to "return to the suburban scene of your middle class with its PTAs to League of Women Voters, consumer groups, churches, and clubs" and find "common ground." Especially for protesters hoping to come back from a resounding political defeat in Wisconsin, that's still good advice.
In fact, there's already one group following it—taking to the streets, demanding radical change, and upending the political status quo. It's called the tea party
SOURCE
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Why We Don't Agree
The writer below calls himself a "bleeding heart libertarian" but his views are essentially conservative. Conservatives have always accepted the need for some welfare measures and what we now call welfare was the invention of two notable 19th century conservative leaders: Otto von Bismarck and Benjamin Disraeli
The remarkable truth of this conversation between bleeding heart libertarians and progressives is that our disagreement is exclusively empirical. If we all agree that political institutions should be arranged to alleviate poverty, then the only remaining question is which policies actually do this. Why is it then that we cannot agree, or at least converge, by just looking at reliable data, studies, and empirical theories?
I suggest an answer: in the political arena, a person often supports a policy, not because of the effects he thinks that policy will have, but because his supporting it has symbolic value for himself or others. Supporting the minimum wage is an act that stands for a value such as concern for the poor. The person who is concerned for the poor wants to express that concern, and there are acts that socially symbolize that concern: praising the New Deal, announcing that you voted for a Democrat, supporting public schools, criticizing Bush.
Symbolic behavior, I hasten to say, is not exclusive of progressives. In libertarian circles someone may oppose environmental regulation for symbolic reasons. That position evinces a hostile attitude toward government regulation in general which he wants to express. In his haste to send the right signals he overlooks (say) the problems of externalities and market failure.
The speaker in these cases might not simply want to express himself. He may be anxious to be accepted in certain groups who associate the verbal act with other beliefs that the speaker presumably has and that make him a desirable candidate for admission.
I have found that this problem, self-defeating political symbolism, is extraordinarily hard to eradicate and fatally gets in the way of agreement between these two audiences. Progressives feel compelled to stand by their positions even in the face of evidence that the policies they advocate frustrate the goal they profess. They stick to those views because the views strongly symbolize and give unity to a vision of the world associated with social justice. Libertarians, on the other hand, have a hard time convincing progressives that they care for the poor because they endorse policies that do not socially symbolize concern for social justice.
I do not know how to get around this problem, but, for whatever is worth, I find symbolic behavior morally objectionable, because the speaker cares about the values he expresses more than about those persons he says he wants to help.
SOURCE
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"Death Panels" sneak back in
Sarah Palin was right
IBD has received a letter from Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius requesting information on “the improper inclusion of a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning in a Medicare regulation in the fall of 2010.”
Late last year, a controversy erupted when in November a set of final regulations for Medicare contained a provision enabling Medicare to pay for “end-of-life” counseling. A furor ensued over the fact that (1) this raised the entire “death panel” specter again; and (2) the provision was not in the proposed regulations released in August, thereby shielding the provision from the lengthy public comment period that is supposed to follow proposed regulations.
No one was sure who was responsible for slipping the provision into the 692-page final regulation. Until eleven days ago. Here is Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., asking Sebelius about the matter. In short, Sebelius admits that she was the one who slipped it in without allowing for public comment.
This has prompted Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee to send a letter Monday to Sebelius demanding more information. The letter says that the “inclusion of this regulation was clearly an attempt to subvert the democratic process.” Further, the Republicans state:
"We are very disturbed by your actions. It is clear that end-of-life regulations would not make it through Congress or survive a public debate during the rulemaking process, and were thus dropped into the final rule without allowing the public any opportunity to comment. The secrecy surrounding their inclusion in the final rule indicates that this was a political maneuver designed to avoid public scrutiny and comment."
The letter further asks Sebelius to make a “designee” available to committee staffers next week so they can learn more about the “internal discussions” at HHS regarding “how the proposal was surreptitiously inserted.”
SOURCE. (See the original for links)
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Dems at radicalization hearings recite Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group’s talking points
The Daily Caller has acquired the talking points that the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a group with deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, supplied to its supporters as an aid in attacking the Muslim radicalization hearing New York Republican Rep. Peter King held Thursday. Save for Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s incoherent ramblings on Thursday, Democrats’ statements and testimony against King’s hearing, whether intentionally or unintentionally, largely mirrored MPAC’s talking points.
MPAC recommended that its supporters accuse King of “pure political posturing,” and told them to say, “these hearings appear little more than a political circus with Rep. King as the ringleader.” MPAC also recommended supporters say that the “hearings hurt our national security” because of their “narrow scope.” Finally, it said supporters should say that the hearings were unnecessary because “active” partnerships between law enforcement and the American Muslim community already exist.
California Democratic Rep. Laura Richardson hit on the “pure political posturing” point in the MPAC memo. She compared King’s hearings to those of the McCarthy era.
Rep. Al Green, Texas Democrat, asked why King wasn’t investigating the Ku Klux Klan, something that plays right into the MPAC “suggested message” that the “hearings hurt our national security” because of a “narrow scope.”
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison regurgitated all the MPAC talking points in his testimony at the beginning of the hearing.
“Ascribing the evil acts of a few individuals to an entire community is wrong; it is ineffective; and it risks making our country less secure,” Ellison said. “Targeting the Muslim American community for the actions of a few is unjust. Actually all of us–all communities–are responsible for combating violent extremism. Singling out one community focuses our analysis in the wrong direction.”
A spokesman for Ellison told TheDC that the congressman didn’t receive the MPAC talking points and “wrote his testimony himself.” A spokesman for Green did not immediately respond to TheDC’s request for comment.
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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Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Leftist dishonesty
If it suits their emotional needs, Leftists will defend the indefensible. They are incapable of admitting that their opponents are right. And they are not ashamed to use the most disreputable and invalid forms of argument. Note below how they defend their friends, the Muslim extremists:
How many KKK members have gone on shooting sprees at U.S. army bases? But the argument is a non-argument anyway. If someone wants to investigate the KKK, let them. It could be interesting to find out whether they are still all Democrats! But to claim that there should be another enquiry speaks not at all to whether the first enquiry is justified!
And the other classic of illogic is the ad hominem attack: Abusing the arguer rather than addressing his argument. And you can find heaps of attacks on Peter King of that sort here.
And there have of course been innumerable comparisons of Peter King with Joe McCarthy. Again, however, that is a barb without a sting -- if only because McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse King of McCarthyism is to accuse King of accuracy!
And the most amusing thing of all about McCarthy is that he is regularly blamed for the deeds of the Democrat-led HUAC. Yet McCarthy was a Senator and HUAC stands for "HOUSE Un-American Activities Committee"! And the HUAC enquiries lasted far longer (37 years!) than McCarthy's enquiries did. How odd that we never hear Democrats blaming HUAC for anything! They only criticize HUAC when they think they can attribute it to McCarthy!
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ATF Should Change Its Name to WTF
Doug Giles comments on efforts by the ATF to "plant" evidence of gun smuggling
What finally drew my ire and ink was the underreported story about how, according to Alan M. Gottlieb, Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), the Obama Administration and members of Congress are still trying to take away our Second Amendment rights, especially in the wake of the Tucson shootings.
And I quote: “The ATF has a very political agenda in mind, and that is to take away your gun rights—even if it means allowing gun sales to criminals so they can present ‘evidence’ to the administration that the Second Amendment should be restricted or abolished!”
For instance, Gottlieb reports:
On December 14, 2010, Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry was shot as he tried to capture heavily armed “bandits” targeting illegal immigrants trying to get across the border near Rio Rico, Arizona. He died the next morning. It was a tragic incident that occurs frequently on our southern border, made all the more tragic because the semi-automatic rifle that was used to kill Agent Terry was bought by a criminal and smuggled into Mexico under the watchful eye of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).
William La Jeunesse (Fox News broadcast, February 22, 2011) states, “The gun used to kill Agent Brian Terry has been sourced, not to Mexico, but to a gun store in Phoenix that was actually part— and cooperating with—a federal investigation into arms trafficking. However, U.S. agents did not stop the sale or the transfer of that gun to the cartels that killed Terry.”
Quoting Gottlieb again, the accusations against ATF and DOJ officials include:
1. They intentionally allowed perhaps as many as 3,000 firearms to “walk” across the U.S. border into Mexico.
2. They instructed U.S. gun dealers to proceed with questionable and illegal sales of firearms to suspected gunrunners.
3. They intentionally withheld information about U.S.-sanctioned gun smuggling from the Mexican government.
4. One of the guns ATF allowed or helped to be smuggled into Mexico was involved in the death of CBP Agent Brian Terry.
Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) is now demanding answers on ATF's “Project Gunrunner.” Hundreds of guns were allowed to be purchased along the border by alleged straw buyers, while ATF conducted its investigation and DID NOTHING. The ATF looked the other way while these guns slipped into Mexico into the hands of drug cartels, and then they blamed gun laws in the United States for the transactions.
Anti-gun activists, led by the Obama administration, are doing all they can to make the connection between law-abiding citizens and deranged criminals—even standing by while known drug dealers purchase guns on our soil and take them back to Mexico ... and then use them to take the lives of our brave border agents!
Whistleblower John Dodson, 39, a front-line agent for the ATF, told the Center for Public Integrity that the guns the ATF allowed into the hands of drug lords and gun runners “are going to be turning up in crimes on both sides of the border for decades. With the number of guns we let walk, we'll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed ... there is nothing we can do to round up those guns. They are gone.” Dodson said his supervisors were “elated every time a gun was recovered in Mexico” because they “saw it as proving the nexus that we were dealing with a real drug trafficking group.”
For two years, we've been hearing from Holder and others in the Obama administration about a so-called “iron pipeline” of American guns across the border, and federal officials have been working to strip you of your rights.
Wouldn't it be ironic to learn that while the Obama administration was blaming our gun rights for the drug war violence in Mexico, its own gun sting operation was a major source of illicit firearms?
Gottlieb and The CCRKBA call on Congress to support Senator Grassley's investigation into “Project Gunrunner” and to cut funding to the corrupt ATF immediately. Obama nominated anti-gun zealot Andrew Traver to head up the ATF prior to Congressional recess last year and reappointed him in the 112th Congress, but the Senate Judiciary Committee has yet to hold hearings. Rumors are that this Gunrunner issue is causing problems because the ATF doesn’t want questions about this case to come up. What does the ATF not want us to know?
SOURCE
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The Real Battle: Makers v. Takers
Ideological budget battles between GOP and Dems in congress mask the real battle erupting across America-- the battle between the makers and the takers. Entrepreneurs and other working Americans, the makers, are growing tired of government's rapacious hand in their financial pocket and they are becoming more aggressive and more outspoken in their protests. Dems should expect this trend to continue.
The recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report citing systemic high unemployment for the past two years shows that of the approximately 300 million Americans, only 47% of adults have full-time jobs. It's a mind-boggling statistic: 53%-- or a majority -- of American adults do not work. The repercussions for our country are dire, despite the White House proclaiming the recent Labor report as good news.
Meanwhile Dems in Congress are relying on an elaborate Ponzi-scheme of increased taxes and hide-the-budget-pickle to justify spending increases on a bevy of social re-engineering programs while the White House continues to champion an expansion of the regulatory straight jacket hobbling entrepreneurs.
Clearly, the White House operates in a cloud of incredible conceit. Team Obama seems to believe that entrepreneurs can innovate and create new jobs and grow the American pie regardless of his anti-growth, pro-tax, increasingly regulatory policies that are crushing small businesses. Even as President Obama and Dems in Congress maneuver and scheme to help "takers" protect their claim to an ever larger slice of the pie, the pie is likely to get smaller and is no longer growing as before.
GOP mostly represents the "makers"--the entrepreneurs who create the pies that the White House wants to tax and regulate to death. Increasingly, the Dems represent the "takers"--the folks on the dole, receiving entitlement support, government subsidies and those deriving power from government protectionism. The battle lines between these two groups, the Makers and the Takers, has never been more apparent.
Takers, dependent upon government and their union allies, argue that in these rough economic times, they need to preserve or increase their slice of the pie. Makers are worried whether, given the increase in government regulatory handcuffs and increased tax knee-capping, they can even make a pie.
Our country now runs the risk that the equivalent of donor fatigue is setting in as the 47% of Americans who actually work are asked to bear even greater burdens for public support. Dems should be worried about how much longer their demands will be tolerated. Eventually, even a dancing chicken will jump off the hot stove.
The March 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report showed that private industry employers spent an average of $27.75 per hour worked for total employee compensation and that the average cost for legally required benefits was $2.28 per hour worked in private industry (8.2 percent of total compensation).
Is it any wonder that businesses aren't able to grow at a rate to keep up with the growth in government spending?
Another disturbing statistics from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) reported that the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 1.6 percent over the last 12 months. This is more bad news for taxpaying Americans because the price of goods went up for them, which means their paychecks don't stretch as far, but it also means that the voracious requirements for increasing government wealth transfer schemes grow, which increases Democrat demands that working Americans pay even more.
Rush Limbaugh has said that "no nation in history ever taxed itself to prosperity." How true. But, George Bernard Shaw best explained the dilemma faced by the GOP makers when he said: "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on Paul's support." The takers, currently outnumbering the makers, will always be willing to vote more taxes on the Makers. The takers will continue to use guilt-tripping rhetoric to try to make Makers feel guilty that they aren't doing more for them.
The Makers v. the Takers--now that's the real battle for the ages.
SOURCE
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Obama: 'The best revolutions are organic'
James Lewis (below) sees in a recent statement by Obama traces of extreme Leftist theology. He may be right. Obama certainly has been steeped in that thinking. On the whole, however, I am inclined to think that Obama may have simply meant that the best revolutions are ones which originate as a spontaneous uprising among the people
We finally have a quote from Obama that sounds authentic. It's something he believes, or at least it's something that some Marxist professor told him back at Occidental or Columbia, in the old dope-smoking days, one that stuck in his mind. Behind the scenes in the White House Obama apparently trotted out this gem of Marxist-Leninist wisdom several times during the Middle East firestorms of the last two months, according to this source: "The best revolutions are organic."
This is while they are trying to decide whether to save any lives, and the whole Muslim world is exploding. Obama is doing nothing except giving a push to Mubarak and Khadafi -- which is bound to make things worse in the short run. In Egypt the military took over and stabilized the situation, and Libya has a real civil war. But Iran is doing fine, thanks to Obama's gullibility in dealing with the blood-spattered mullahs. Oh, well. Zero out of three ain't bad.
But now we know why The President of the United States was doing nothing. He wasn't protecting the rebels in Libya from the tender mercies of Khaddafi's air force, because a Western intervention in Africa would not be "organic." That's `cause "the best revolutions are organic."
Now "organic" doesn't mean that the Egyptian rebellion was grown in goat manure, or that it came in little recycled bags complete with a jolly banana sticker and locally grown, certified E coli. No, this is "organic" the way grand historical speculators like Marx, Lenin, Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler liked to use "organic."
Here's an example from Wikipedia: "In 1920 Spengler produced Prussiandom and Socialism (Preuáentum und Sozialismus), which argued for an organic, nationalist version of socialism and authoritarianism... "
The Nazis claimed that their revolution was "organic," just like Spengler's idea. The word "organic" has a specific meaning in this madcap fantasy world. It means "having a united racial soul." No kidding. It all makes perfect sense in German Romanticism, which loved being organic.
Obama's notion of "organic revolutions" comes from a French Leninist movement of "negritude," or ideological blackness. It means "really, truly black," as opposed to phony blackness, like the kind Justice Clarence Thomas has. To the Madcap Left, Sarah Palin is not a real woman, Justice Thomas isn't black, and Obama, who has no personal roots in the American black experience at all, is really black. Black is not a color.
None of this belongs in a White House of sane and realistic people. It is grotesque. Obama's White House today is evading the very real question of innocent people whose lives are at risk in Libya. They are pumping dense clouds of smoke to cover up their real thinking.
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Reclaiming the word “liberal”: "I propose that we call left-liberals just that, not 'liberals' without qualification. Doing so would help reclaim the original name of an honorable old political tradition. It would resist the purloining and perversion of the word 'liberal' as used in the United States."
Wikileaks suspect being mistreated in jail says State Department spokesman: "US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley has said the Pentagon is being 'ridiculous and stupid' in subjecting American soldier Bradley Manning to mistreatment at Quantico in Virginia over the alleged leak of US diplomatic cables through the Wikileaks website. Crowley said Manning was being "mistreated" in the military brig, adding: "What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the Department of Defence." Manning is being held for 23 hours in solitary confinement in his cell and stripped naked every night." [Crowley was later fired for speaking out so it sounds like he was right]
Obama’s disgrace: "Traditionally in the United States, when the government cannot bear its burden of proof before a court, it must set a suspect free. But the so-called 'war on terror' changed all that for people arbitrarily branded terrorist suspects or enemy combatants. Carrying on the policy established by Bush, the Obama administration takes the position that someone felt to be a threat to national security can be denied a trial and held prisoner indefinitely. Nothing is more un-American. "
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)
****************************
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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If it suits their emotional needs, Leftists will defend the indefensible. They are incapable of admitting that their opponents are right. And they are not ashamed to use the most disreputable and invalid forms of argument. Note below how they defend their friends, the Muslim extremists:
On his popular nationally syndicated talk-radio show yesterday, Michael Savage spotlighted the behavior of Democrats at the controversial House hearing on radicalization in the Muslim community in America. "Did you see how the Democrats behaved? How disgusting their behavior was?" Savage asked, pointing to Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, as one of many examples.
After the hearing Thursday, Green bullied a reporter who pointed out that of 126 terror indictments by the Justice Department, all were of Muslims. But Green insisted the Ku Klux Klan should have been investigated along with Muslim radicalization.
"Mr. Green, Mr. Green," Savage interjected as he played the clip. "The KKK is a despicable organization. They've been investigated, they've been penetrated. Half of them are FBI agents." Instead of embracing an investigation of Islam in America, Savage wondered, "why is Al Green suddenly talking about the KKK?"
More HERE
How many KKK members have gone on shooting sprees at U.S. army bases? But the argument is a non-argument anyway. If someone wants to investigate the KKK, let them. It could be interesting to find out whether they are still all Democrats! But to claim that there should be another enquiry speaks not at all to whether the first enquiry is justified!
And the other classic of illogic is the ad hominem attack: Abusing the arguer rather than addressing his argument. And you can find heaps of attacks on Peter King of that sort here.
And there have of course been innumerable comparisons of Peter King with Joe McCarthy. Again, however, that is a barb without a sting -- if only because McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse King of McCarthyism is to accuse King of accuracy!
And the most amusing thing of all about McCarthy is that he is regularly blamed for the deeds of the Democrat-led HUAC. Yet McCarthy was a Senator and HUAC stands for "HOUSE Un-American Activities Committee"! And the HUAC enquiries lasted far longer (37 years!) than McCarthy's enquiries did. How odd that we never hear Democrats blaming HUAC for anything! They only criticize HUAC when they think they can attribute it to McCarthy!
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ATF Should Change Its Name to WTF
Doug Giles comments on efforts by the ATF to "plant" evidence of gun smuggling
What finally drew my ire and ink was the underreported story about how, according to Alan M. Gottlieb, Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), the Obama Administration and members of Congress are still trying to take away our Second Amendment rights, especially in the wake of the Tucson shootings.
And I quote: “The ATF has a very political agenda in mind, and that is to take away your gun rights—even if it means allowing gun sales to criminals so they can present ‘evidence’ to the administration that the Second Amendment should be restricted or abolished!”
For instance, Gottlieb reports:
On December 14, 2010, Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry was shot as he tried to capture heavily armed “bandits” targeting illegal immigrants trying to get across the border near Rio Rico, Arizona. He died the next morning. It was a tragic incident that occurs frequently on our southern border, made all the more tragic because the semi-automatic rifle that was used to kill Agent Terry was bought by a criminal and smuggled into Mexico under the watchful eye of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).
William La Jeunesse (Fox News broadcast, February 22, 2011) states, “The gun used to kill Agent Brian Terry has been sourced, not to Mexico, but to a gun store in Phoenix that was actually part— and cooperating with—a federal investigation into arms trafficking. However, U.S. agents did not stop the sale or the transfer of that gun to the cartels that killed Terry.”
Quoting Gottlieb again, the accusations against ATF and DOJ officials include:
1. They intentionally allowed perhaps as many as 3,000 firearms to “walk” across the U.S. border into Mexico.
2. They instructed U.S. gun dealers to proceed with questionable and illegal sales of firearms to suspected gunrunners.
3. They intentionally withheld information about U.S.-sanctioned gun smuggling from the Mexican government.
4. One of the guns ATF allowed or helped to be smuggled into Mexico was involved in the death of CBP Agent Brian Terry.
Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) is now demanding answers on ATF's “Project Gunrunner.” Hundreds of guns were allowed to be purchased along the border by alleged straw buyers, while ATF conducted its investigation and DID NOTHING. The ATF looked the other way while these guns slipped into Mexico into the hands of drug cartels, and then they blamed gun laws in the United States for the transactions.
Anti-gun activists, led by the Obama administration, are doing all they can to make the connection between law-abiding citizens and deranged criminals—even standing by while known drug dealers purchase guns on our soil and take them back to Mexico ... and then use them to take the lives of our brave border agents!
Whistleblower John Dodson, 39, a front-line agent for the ATF, told the Center for Public Integrity that the guns the ATF allowed into the hands of drug lords and gun runners “are going to be turning up in crimes on both sides of the border for decades. With the number of guns we let walk, we'll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed ... there is nothing we can do to round up those guns. They are gone.” Dodson said his supervisors were “elated every time a gun was recovered in Mexico” because they “saw it as proving the nexus that we were dealing with a real drug trafficking group.”
For two years, we've been hearing from Holder and others in the Obama administration about a so-called “iron pipeline” of American guns across the border, and federal officials have been working to strip you of your rights.
Wouldn't it be ironic to learn that while the Obama administration was blaming our gun rights for the drug war violence in Mexico, its own gun sting operation was a major source of illicit firearms?
Gottlieb and The CCRKBA call on Congress to support Senator Grassley's investigation into “Project Gunrunner” and to cut funding to the corrupt ATF immediately. Obama nominated anti-gun zealot Andrew Traver to head up the ATF prior to Congressional recess last year and reappointed him in the 112th Congress, but the Senate Judiciary Committee has yet to hold hearings. Rumors are that this Gunrunner issue is causing problems because the ATF doesn’t want questions about this case to come up. What does the ATF not want us to know?
SOURCE
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The Real Battle: Makers v. Takers
Ideological budget battles between GOP and Dems in congress mask the real battle erupting across America-- the battle between the makers and the takers. Entrepreneurs and other working Americans, the makers, are growing tired of government's rapacious hand in their financial pocket and they are becoming more aggressive and more outspoken in their protests. Dems should expect this trend to continue.
The recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report citing systemic high unemployment for the past two years shows that of the approximately 300 million Americans, only 47% of adults have full-time jobs. It's a mind-boggling statistic: 53%-- or a majority -- of American adults do not work. The repercussions for our country are dire, despite the White House proclaiming the recent Labor report as good news.
Meanwhile Dems in Congress are relying on an elaborate Ponzi-scheme of increased taxes and hide-the-budget-pickle to justify spending increases on a bevy of social re-engineering programs while the White House continues to champion an expansion of the regulatory straight jacket hobbling entrepreneurs.
Clearly, the White House operates in a cloud of incredible conceit. Team Obama seems to believe that entrepreneurs can innovate and create new jobs and grow the American pie regardless of his anti-growth, pro-tax, increasingly regulatory policies that are crushing small businesses. Even as President Obama and Dems in Congress maneuver and scheme to help "takers" protect their claim to an ever larger slice of the pie, the pie is likely to get smaller and is no longer growing as before.
GOP mostly represents the "makers"--the entrepreneurs who create the pies that the White House wants to tax and regulate to death. Increasingly, the Dems represent the "takers"--the folks on the dole, receiving entitlement support, government subsidies and those deriving power from government protectionism. The battle lines between these two groups, the Makers and the Takers, has never been more apparent.
Takers, dependent upon government and their union allies, argue that in these rough economic times, they need to preserve or increase their slice of the pie. Makers are worried whether, given the increase in government regulatory handcuffs and increased tax knee-capping, they can even make a pie.
Our country now runs the risk that the equivalent of donor fatigue is setting in as the 47% of Americans who actually work are asked to bear even greater burdens for public support. Dems should be worried about how much longer their demands will be tolerated. Eventually, even a dancing chicken will jump off the hot stove.
The March 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report showed that private industry employers spent an average of $27.75 per hour worked for total employee compensation and that the average cost for legally required benefits was $2.28 per hour worked in private industry (8.2 percent of total compensation).
Is it any wonder that businesses aren't able to grow at a rate to keep up with the growth in government spending?
Another disturbing statistics from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) reported that the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 1.6 percent over the last 12 months. This is more bad news for taxpaying Americans because the price of goods went up for them, which means their paychecks don't stretch as far, but it also means that the voracious requirements for increasing government wealth transfer schemes grow, which increases Democrat demands that working Americans pay even more.
Rush Limbaugh has said that "no nation in history ever taxed itself to prosperity." How true. But, George Bernard Shaw best explained the dilemma faced by the GOP makers when he said: "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on Paul's support." The takers, currently outnumbering the makers, will always be willing to vote more taxes on the Makers. The takers will continue to use guilt-tripping rhetoric to try to make Makers feel guilty that they aren't doing more for them.
The Makers v. the Takers--now that's the real battle for the ages.
SOURCE
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Obama: 'The best revolutions are organic'
James Lewis (below) sees in a recent statement by Obama traces of extreme Leftist theology. He may be right. Obama certainly has been steeped in that thinking. On the whole, however, I am inclined to think that Obama may have simply meant that the best revolutions are ones which originate as a spontaneous uprising among the people
We finally have a quote from Obama that sounds authentic. It's something he believes, or at least it's something that some Marxist professor told him back at Occidental or Columbia, in the old dope-smoking days, one that stuck in his mind. Behind the scenes in the White House Obama apparently trotted out this gem of Marxist-Leninist wisdom several times during the Middle East firestorms of the last two months, according to this source: "The best revolutions are organic."
This is while they are trying to decide whether to save any lives, and the whole Muslim world is exploding. Obama is doing nothing except giving a push to Mubarak and Khadafi -- which is bound to make things worse in the short run. In Egypt the military took over and stabilized the situation, and Libya has a real civil war. But Iran is doing fine, thanks to Obama's gullibility in dealing with the blood-spattered mullahs. Oh, well. Zero out of three ain't bad.
But now we know why The President of the United States was doing nothing. He wasn't protecting the rebels in Libya from the tender mercies of Khaddafi's air force, because a Western intervention in Africa would not be "organic." That's `cause "the best revolutions are organic."
Now "organic" doesn't mean that the Egyptian rebellion was grown in goat manure, or that it came in little recycled bags complete with a jolly banana sticker and locally grown, certified E coli. No, this is "organic" the way grand historical speculators like Marx, Lenin, Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler liked to use "organic."
Here's an example from Wikipedia: "In 1920 Spengler produced Prussiandom and Socialism (Preuáentum und Sozialismus), which argued for an organic, nationalist version of socialism and authoritarianism... "
The Nazis claimed that their revolution was "organic," just like Spengler's idea. The word "organic" has a specific meaning in this madcap fantasy world. It means "having a united racial soul." No kidding. It all makes perfect sense in German Romanticism, which loved being organic.
Obama's notion of "organic revolutions" comes from a French Leninist movement of "negritude," or ideological blackness. It means "really, truly black," as opposed to phony blackness, like the kind Justice Clarence Thomas has. To the Madcap Left, Sarah Palin is not a real woman, Justice Thomas isn't black, and Obama, who has no personal roots in the American black experience at all, is really black. Black is not a color.
None of this belongs in a White House of sane and realistic people. It is grotesque. Obama's White House today is evading the very real question of innocent people whose lives are at risk in Libya. They are pumping dense clouds of smoke to cover up their real thinking.
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Reclaiming the word “liberal”: "I propose that we call left-liberals just that, not 'liberals' without qualification. Doing so would help reclaim the original name of an honorable old political tradition. It would resist the purloining and perversion of the word 'liberal' as used in the United States."
Wikileaks suspect being mistreated in jail says State Department spokesman: "US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley has said the Pentagon is being 'ridiculous and stupid' in subjecting American soldier Bradley Manning to mistreatment at Quantico in Virginia over the alleged leak of US diplomatic cables through the Wikileaks website. Crowley said Manning was being "mistreated" in the military brig, adding: "What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the Department of Defence." Manning is being held for 23 hours in solitary confinement in his cell and stripped naked every night." [Crowley was later fired for speaking out so it sounds like he was right]
Obama’s disgrace: "Traditionally in the United States, when the government cannot bear its burden of proof before a court, it must set a suspect free. But the so-called 'war on terror' changed all that for people arbitrarily branded terrorist suspects or enemy combatants. Carrying on the policy established by Bush, the Obama administration takes the position that someone felt to be a threat to national security can be denied a trial and held prisoner indefinitely. Nothing is more un-American. "
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)
****************************
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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Monday, March 14, 2011
Will Obama Give Stealth-Fighter Secrets to Iran and China?
A traitor President? It's possible. If you elect a man because of the color of his skin rather than the content of his character, there's no knowing what you will get. We will see what happens sooner or later I guess. Let's hope it's not later
Plans continue apace to sell Turkey our next generation F-35 Joint Strike fighter. While Turkey is part of a consortium and will help build the fuselage, its participation is a diplomatic nicety rather than a necessity. Even so, the fuselage does not contain the top-secret electronics and other technology that the increasingly antagonistic Turks might share with their new partners in Iran and China.
After all, Turkey’s new intelligence head is known to be an Islamic Republic groupie, and Turkey earlier hosted aerial war games with the Chinese air force without first informing the Pentagon or NATO.
Against this backdrop, it is good news that the Turks are now complaining that the United States is reluctant to give them flight codes for the new fighters. Let’s hope that President Obama will not concede when Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, calls to complain.
Given the propensity and ability of both the Iranians and Chinese to reverse-engineer, it would be far better if the United States declined to sell any F-35s to Turkey. Alas, Senators Carl Levin and John McCain are asleep at the switch: the Senate Armed Services Committee has not even required that the Pentagon report to Congress on the vulnerability of F-35 technology leakage should the United States sell any planes to Turkey.
SOURCE
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Who Are These Suckers?
James O'Keefe's NPR sting has to be one of the most beautifully orchestrated deceptions in the annals of journalism. I think the academy award for performance in a documentary should go to that bushy-bearded "Arab" who, on hearing NPR executive Richard Schiller say, "Let me take off my NPR hat" and launching into his Tea Party rant, intones in a marvelously phony North African accent, "I like it when you take off your NPR hat." That was the laugh line of the year.
So now everybody will be talking about how embarrassing it was and how NPR has put its neck in the noose and how they will soon be losing their federal funding -- which they say they don't need anyway. All that scurrilous badmouthing of the American public will be reverberating around the political arena for quite some time.
The question that hangs in my mind, though, is this: How could people who think of themselves as so intelligent be such suckers? How could they be taken in by an American black and a bushy-bearded "Muslim" talking in a grade-B Hollywood accent and really believe they were being offered $5 million? After all, these are people who define themselves as being intelligent. They're the "educated elite" of whom we supposedly don't have enough of in this country. And yet they were no more alert than a bunch of high school dropouts sitting around a shabby ACORN office in Baltimore. How do you explain that?
Well, I think it is possible to offer an explanation. Here's an attempt.
First, liberals can be suckered precisely because they think they are the only intelligent people in America. This smug confidence insulates them from having to pay attention to what anybody else is saying. The conventional wisdom among liberals is that people disagree with them only because they are stupid, uneducated, or have been bought off by the sinister forces of American capitalism. (The New York Times'current obsession with the Koch brothers is a case in point. Conservatives have the same mania over George Soros but they only resent Soros's funding of liberal projects; they do not dismiss any liberal intellectual working in one of his organizations as being "bought off" by his money.)
You cannot find a liberal intellectual anywhere who can give you an honest, objective accounting of conservative positions on major issues. All they know is that conservatives are "stupid," racist" and "scary" -- boilerplate terms but unfortunately the exact words employed by Schiller on the tape.
Practically the only liberal around who has ever been able to give a recognizable presentation of a conservative position is Barack Obama, who was always very good at repeating everybody's argument before choosing the most liberal point of view. For that we elected him President.
By assuming they are smarter than everybody else, liberals leave themselves utterly vulnerable to anyone who plays on their sense of superiority. It's a classic Italian Renaissance comedy -- the wily servant who, with cajoling and flattery, outwits his master. It's been going on for centuries. Liberal intellectuals could write you an unintelligible paper on the subject for the Modern Language Association, but they can never see it happening to themselves!
Second, for liberal intellectuals, race is the key to everything (alright, the holy trinity of race, class and gender, I'm abbreviating). If you get on the right side of the fence on race, everything else falls into place. It was an absolute stroke of genius for O'Keefe to send in an American black to tell Schiller he could have $5 million if only he could be a little more balanced in his coverage of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Could it have possibly crossed Schiller's mind, "I wonder if this guy is putting me on?" Never! His whole body would rise up in anguish to banish the thought. That would be racist! Besides, blacks are on our side! All American blacks are beholden to liberals because they support affirmative action and genuflect to Kwanzaa and therefore how could a good-hearted African American possibly be deceiving? Instead, one must only assume the proper patronizing tone, as Schiller did throughout.
Then there is the bushy-bearded fellow passing for a Muslim. I won't even go into that. All I can say is it reminds me of one of the Hardy Boys mysteries where a bushy-bearded pirate named Bluebeard appears on the scene shouting "I tattoo ye!" and then disappears again without explanation.
So how could the nation's "educated elite" possibly be played for such suckers? The answer is simple. They live in a bubble. Everybody says the same things and thinks the same things and anybody who is any different is to be marveled at as an exotic flower rather than engaged in serious conversation.
Last Sunday's New York Times ran a long profile, for instance, on Wayne Barrett, the longtime Village Voice investigative reporter who after 37 years has been unceremoniously fired, apparently for budget reasons. During the decade of the 1980s, according to the Times, Barrett's greatest scoop was to reveal Cardinal John J. Conner, head of the New York Archdioceses, was…are you ready for this?… a Republican!
It's the same with all the riffraff out there. Tea Party people are easy to identify. They are the industrial parts salesman you meet on an airplane in the Midwest or the local real estate agent who'll give you the rundown on what people are buying these days.
They know nothing about semiology and wouldn't be able to discuss the hockey stick graph but they are intelligent people nonetheless who understand business and know how the world works. I recall one outspoken realtor I covered years ago as a suburban reporter who had become the local "gadfly" for opposing a teachers' strike.
Watching the teachers parade around with picket signs reading "Millions for basketball players, pennies for teachers," she commented, "They have to compare themselves to basketball players. They've already passed everyone else." Sure enough, I checked the numbers and found that public school teachers had just passed the median wage earner in the district. Tea Party people have always been around. They are just now finding their voice.
So where do NPR intellectuals get the idea they are the only smart people around? Only by ignoring the opposition. Tune in to Fox News any night and listen to Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Steve Hayes or Fred Barnes discussing complex issues. Could anybody say that they are not intelligent? Would it be correct to say that they understand the opposing liberal position but just don't happen to agree with it? Now, try this. Can you imagine Charles Krauthammer being taken in by a bunch of bushy-bearded strangers claiming to be Orthodox rabbis ready hand him $5 million for taking a more balanced view on their effort to move the Dome of the Rock off the Temple Mount?
As a fellow human being, I have to feel sorry for Ron Schiller. Only a few weeks ago he was sitting on top of the world, discussing seven-figure donations, ready to move on to a cushy job at the Aspen Institute. Now, because of one luncheon, he'll probably never make than $80,000 the rest of his life. It's a cruel fate. Maybe he can take this opportunity to learn a little more about the world. "Be nice to everybody on your way up because you're gong to meet them on your way down," as they say in show business. It might make a nice memoir -- "The Education of Ron Schiller." For now, though, all I can think to say is, "Ron, try to be a little smarter next time."
SOURCE
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The arrogant Left
The majority of things on network television appear there by design. And since it is the American left that controls most of the agenda coming out of popular culture and hence television programming, you have to ask yourself, "Who are they hoping to convince?"
I'm pretty sure a lot of parents were asking themselves that question among many others as "network television's most 'family friendly' show"--Glee posed a conundrum for the father of a homosexual character on the broadcast.
In a scene that left many a parent with gaping mouths hanging open, a character of this season's cast mildly scolds the father of another character who believes himself to be homosexual. In this direct confrontation the viewer is left with the unabashed idea that unless a parent is willing to secure homosexually erotic literature and speak to their son or daughter about how the parts "work" (when in fact they don't,) they are a bad parent.
The conflict portrayed by the father is that he needs to (in order to be a good Dad) give his virgin son instruction on homosexual activity in order to not be perceived as hateful, or negligent, or careless by the son, his friends, and most importantly the watching audience.
Glee has played in the "gay garden" many times since its first episode. The producers have gone so far as to have open lesbian interaction between two of the cheerleading characters (because that's oh so often how it happens) on multiple occasions and this week one of the two cheerleaders openly declares her "need" for the other one.
The inundation of disproportionate amounts homosexual behavior on this show has made it unpalatable to most faith based families in America. But in taking the steps as far as they did this week, the producers advocated--that in all my debates on the marriage issue to date I've never heard--a most aggressive manipulation to be forced to think about homosexual acts (something most gay advocates attempt to avoid in their debates,) and additionally pressure cautious parents to call the activity "decent."
* It is now not merely enough to be allowed to do what you want in your own bedroom.
* It is now not merely enough to allow certain amounts of that behavior to be expressed in public.
* It is now not enough to say, "I love you, even if I disagree with your actions.
Nope, now it is incumbent upon the majority to learn, explain, and teach the sex habits of the most perverted kind merely in order to be considered a good parent.
And people wonder why I keep saying I won't let Baby James watch TV till he's 21.
It is these same bully tactics that the unions have utilized these past weeks in Wisconsin. I am glad to see that the Governor stood by my advice from two weeks ago to bust those unions wide open. Yet nonetheless the bullying continues.
Jesse Jackson claimed that Wisconsin had set "basic rights" back hundreds of years. Of course no reporter had the gall to ask him, "You mean like when people who looked like you weren't allowed to hold press conferences?"
See Rev. Jackson was lying because he knows that bringing the collective bargaining agreement into line with where the private sector is--isn't a true setback to someone like him. He's made his money. He's got his shtick and he's good at propagating it.
To the left you must always see the world only as they do. You must not merely tolerate that they exist or live and let live.
Nope, now the expectation of the left is for you to pay for their gold standard benefits. The expectation of the left is for you to grow poor while empowering them. The expectation is for you to keep your mouth shut while they get to speak. And now you must also teach your son the art of homosexual sexual practice, to even be considered a good Dad.
The ranks of those who think with common sense should be swelling. Resistance to these tyrants is not futile. After all NPR is short two key executives this weekend because of their over confidence in their intellectualism. We need to issue more public policy spankings and punish those who would hold our free society hostage.
And with the whipping that Scott Walker applied to the AWOL state senators, and with the red-faced buffoonery that James O'Keefe exposed in all persons' Schiller at NPR perhaps the tide is turning.
At the very least we have some very basic illustrations of how we can go about it in the midst of all the outcry and anger the ginned up protestors will muster.
SOURCE
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The decaying brain of a Leftist economist
Since they kicked him out of Harvard for telling the truth he has just lost it
As the Japanese work to bring the injured to safety and to recover the bodies of the dead — and as the world watches in sadness, and shivers — someone, somewhere will throw a touch of absurdity on the whole event.
Enter Larry Summers. According to one report, entitled “Tsunami an economic disaster? Not necessarily,” the “former director of President Obama’s economic council and a former head of the World Bank, said rebuilding could temporarily boost the Japanese economy.”
Every disaster we hear this old chestnut. Last year, Nancy Pelosi cheerfully noted that the Haiti earthquake had a bright side. This form of gallows cheer is known, in the literature of economics, as “The Broken Window Fallacy,” in honor of the brilliant, classic analysis by Frédéric Bastiat.
Bastiat was a French politician and economist. He starts his famous 1850 essay, “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen,” with a short lesson on causation, and then proceeds to tell the tale of a village confronting a minor tragedy: the shopkeeper’s son had broken the glass pane of the shop’s window.
The lesson is that for every cause (event, act, policy, etc.) there are many effects, a series of them. Bad economics only takes note of a small subset of effects. Good economics takes note of the whole series. Indeed, great economists look for hidden and even obscure results.
In the story, the villagers commiserate. But they quickly find a silver lining. If windows didn’t break, what would glaziers do? The broken pane of glass, they suggest, would provide a boon to the local economy. A boomlet, if not a boom.
They trace the effects of what happens to the shopkeeper’s money, after he hires the glazier to fix the window. The glazier buys donuts or something, helping the baker. And . . . and . . . and . . .
But Bastiat calls to our attention an unseen effect: What would have happened to the shopkeeper’s wealth if his window hadn’t broken. He would have spent the money — at least eventually — elsewhere. And a similar pattern of spending and economic activity would unfold, if along a different path. You just don’t see that, because that’s what’s been precluded by the disaster.
More HERE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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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A traitor President? It's possible. If you elect a man because of the color of his skin rather than the content of his character, there's no knowing what you will get. We will see what happens sooner or later I guess. Let's hope it's not later
Plans continue apace to sell Turkey our next generation F-35 Joint Strike fighter. While Turkey is part of a consortium and will help build the fuselage, its participation is a diplomatic nicety rather than a necessity. Even so, the fuselage does not contain the top-secret electronics and other technology that the increasingly antagonistic Turks might share with their new partners in Iran and China.
After all, Turkey’s new intelligence head is known to be an Islamic Republic groupie, and Turkey earlier hosted aerial war games with the Chinese air force without first informing the Pentagon or NATO.
Against this backdrop, it is good news that the Turks are now complaining that the United States is reluctant to give them flight codes for the new fighters. Let’s hope that President Obama will not concede when Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, calls to complain.
Given the propensity and ability of both the Iranians and Chinese to reverse-engineer, it would be far better if the United States declined to sell any F-35s to Turkey. Alas, Senators Carl Levin and John McCain are asleep at the switch: the Senate Armed Services Committee has not even required that the Pentagon report to Congress on the vulnerability of F-35 technology leakage should the United States sell any planes to Turkey.
SOURCE
**************************
Who Are These Suckers?
James O'Keefe's NPR sting has to be one of the most beautifully orchestrated deceptions in the annals of journalism. I think the academy award for performance in a documentary should go to that bushy-bearded "Arab" who, on hearing NPR executive Richard Schiller say, "Let me take off my NPR hat" and launching into his Tea Party rant, intones in a marvelously phony North African accent, "I like it when you take off your NPR hat." That was the laugh line of the year.
So now everybody will be talking about how embarrassing it was and how NPR has put its neck in the noose and how they will soon be losing their federal funding -- which they say they don't need anyway. All that scurrilous badmouthing of the American public will be reverberating around the political arena for quite some time.
The question that hangs in my mind, though, is this: How could people who think of themselves as so intelligent be such suckers? How could they be taken in by an American black and a bushy-bearded "Muslim" talking in a grade-B Hollywood accent and really believe they were being offered $5 million? After all, these are people who define themselves as being intelligent. They're the "educated elite" of whom we supposedly don't have enough of in this country. And yet they were no more alert than a bunch of high school dropouts sitting around a shabby ACORN office in Baltimore. How do you explain that?
Well, I think it is possible to offer an explanation. Here's an attempt.
First, liberals can be suckered precisely because they think they are the only intelligent people in America. This smug confidence insulates them from having to pay attention to what anybody else is saying. The conventional wisdom among liberals is that people disagree with them only because they are stupid, uneducated, or have been bought off by the sinister forces of American capitalism. (The New York Times'current obsession with the Koch brothers is a case in point. Conservatives have the same mania over George Soros but they only resent Soros's funding of liberal projects; they do not dismiss any liberal intellectual working in one of his organizations as being "bought off" by his money.)
You cannot find a liberal intellectual anywhere who can give you an honest, objective accounting of conservative positions on major issues. All they know is that conservatives are "stupid," racist" and "scary" -- boilerplate terms but unfortunately the exact words employed by Schiller on the tape.
Practically the only liberal around who has ever been able to give a recognizable presentation of a conservative position is Barack Obama, who was always very good at repeating everybody's argument before choosing the most liberal point of view. For that we elected him President.
By assuming they are smarter than everybody else, liberals leave themselves utterly vulnerable to anyone who plays on their sense of superiority. It's a classic Italian Renaissance comedy -- the wily servant who, with cajoling and flattery, outwits his master. It's been going on for centuries. Liberal intellectuals could write you an unintelligible paper on the subject for the Modern Language Association, but they can never see it happening to themselves!
Second, for liberal intellectuals, race is the key to everything (alright, the holy trinity of race, class and gender, I'm abbreviating). If you get on the right side of the fence on race, everything else falls into place. It was an absolute stroke of genius for O'Keefe to send in an American black to tell Schiller he could have $5 million if only he could be a little more balanced in his coverage of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Could it have possibly crossed Schiller's mind, "I wonder if this guy is putting me on?" Never! His whole body would rise up in anguish to banish the thought. That would be racist! Besides, blacks are on our side! All American blacks are beholden to liberals because they support affirmative action and genuflect to Kwanzaa and therefore how could a good-hearted African American possibly be deceiving? Instead, one must only assume the proper patronizing tone, as Schiller did throughout.
Then there is the bushy-bearded fellow passing for a Muslim. I won't even go into that. All I can say is it reminds me of one of the Hardy Boys mysteries where a bushy-bearded pirate named Bluebeard appears on the scene shouting "I tattoo ye!" and then disappears again without explanation.
So how could the nation's "educated elite" possibly be played for such suckers? The answer is simple. They live in a bubble. Everybody says the same things and thinks the same things and anybody who is any different is to be marveled at as an exotic flower rather than engaged in serious conversation.
Last Sunday's New York Times ran a long profile, for instance, on Wayne Barrett, the longtime Village Voice investigative reporter who after 37 years has been unceremoniously fired, apparently for budget reasons. During the decade of the 1980s, according to the Times, Barrett's greatest scoop was to reveal Cardinal John J. Conner, head of the New York Archdioceses, was…are you ready for this?… a Republican!
It's the same with all the riffraff out there. Tea Party people are easy to identify. They are the industrial parts salesman you meet on an airplane in the Midwest or the local real estate agent who'll give you the rundown on what people are buying these days.
They know nothing about semiology and wouldn't be able to discuss the hockey stick graph but they are intelligent people nonetheless who understand business and know how the world works. I recall one outspoken realtor I covered years ago as a suburban reporter who had become the local "gadfly" for opposing a teachers' strike.
Watching the teachers parade around with picket signs reading "Millions for basketball players, pennies for teachers," she commented, "They have to compare themselves to basketball players. They've already passed everyone else." Sure enough, I checked the numbers and found that public school teachers had just passed the median wage earner in the district. Tea Party people have always been around. They are just now finding their voice.
So where do NPR intellectuals get the idea they are the only smart people around? Only by ignoring the opposition. Tune in to Fox News any night and listen to Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Steve Hayes or Fred Barnes discussing complex issues. Could anybody say that they are not intelligent? Would it be correct to say that they understand the opposing liberal position but just don't happen to agree with it? Now, try this. Can you imagine Charles Krauthammer being taken in by a bunch of bushy-bearded strangers claiming to be Orthodox rabbis ready hand him $5 million for taking a more balanced view on their effort to move the Dome of the Rock off the Temple Mount?
As a fellow human being, I have to feel sorry for Ron Schiller. Only a few weeks ago he was sitting on top of the world, discussing seven-figure donations, ready to move on to a cushy job at the Aspen Institute. Now, because of one luncheon, he'll probably never make than $80,000 the rest of his life. It's a cruel fate. Maybe he can take this opportunity to learn a little more about the world. "Be nice to everybody on your way up because you're gong to meet them on your way down," as they say in show business. It might make a nice memoir -- "The Education of Ron Schiller." For now, though, all I can think to say is, "Ron, try to be a little smarter next time."
SOURCE
**************************
The arrogant Left
The majority of things on network television appear there by design. And since it is the American left that controls most of the agenda coming out of popular culture and hence television programming, you have to ask yourself, "Who are they hoping to convince?"
I'm pretty sure a lot of parents were asking themselves that question among many others as "network television's most 'family friendly' show"--Glee posed a conundrum for the father of a homosexual character on the broadcast.
In a scene that left many a parent with gaping mouths hanging open, a character of this season's cast mildly scolds the father of another character who believes himself to be homosexual. In this direct confrontation the viewer is left with the unabashed idea that unless a parent is willing to secure homosexually erotic literature and speak to their son or daughter about how the parts "work" (when in fact they don't,) they are a bad parent.
The conflict portrayed by the father is that he needs to (in order to be a good Dad) give his virgin son instruction on homosexual activity in order to not be perceived as hateful, or negligent, or careless by the son, his friends, and most importantly the watching audience.
Glee has played in the "gay garden" many times since its first episode. The producers have gone so far as to have open lesbian interaction between two of the cheerleading characters (because that's oh so often how it happens) on multiple occasions and this week one of the two cheerleaders openly declares her "need" for the other one.
The inundation of disproportionate amounts homosexual behavior on this show has made it unpalatable to most faith based families in America. But in taking the steps as far as they did this week, the producers advocated--that in all my debates on the marriage issue to date I've never heard--a most aggressive manipulation to be forced to think about homosexual acts (something most gay advocates attempt to avoid in their debates,) and additionally pressure cautious parents to call the activity "decent."
* It is now not merely enough to be allowed to do what you want in your own bedroom.
* It is now not merely enough to allow certain amounts of that behavior to be expressed in public.
* It is now not enough to say, "I love you, even if I disagree with your actions.
Nope, now it is incumbent upon the majority to learn, explain, and teach the sex habits of the most perverted kind merely in order to be considered a good parent.
And people wonder why I keep saying I won't let Baby James watch TV till he's 21.
It is these same bully tactics that the unions have utilized these past weeks in Wisconsin. I am glad to see that the Governor stood by my advice from two weeks ago to bust those unions wide open. Yet nonetheless the bullying continues.
Jesse Jackson claimed that Wisconsin had set "basic rights" back hundreds of years. Of course no reporter had the gall to ask him, "You mean like when people who looked like you weren't allowed to hold press conferences?"
See Rev. Jackson was lying because he knows that bringing the collective bargaining agreement into line with where the private sector is--isn't a true setback to someone like him. He's made his money. He's got his shtick and he's good at propagating it.
To the left you must always see the world only as they do. You must not merely tolerate that they exist or live and let live.
Nope, now the expectation of the left is for you to pay for their gold standard benefits. The expectation of the left is for you to grow poor while empowering them. The expectation is for you to keep your mouth shut while they get to speak. And now you must also teach your son the art of homosexual sexual practice, to even be considered a good Dad.
The ranks of those who think with common sense should be swelling. Resistance to these tyrants is not futile. After all NPR is short two key executives this weekend because of their over confidence in their intellectualism. We need to issue more public policy spankings and punish those who would hold our free society hostage.
And with the whipping that Scott Walker applied to the AWOL state senators, and with the red-faced buffoonery that James O'Keefe exposed in all persons' Schiller at NPR perhaps the tide is turning.
At the very least we have some very basic illustrations of how we can go about it in the midst of all the outcry and anger the ginned up protestors will muster.
SOURCE
************************
The decaying brain of a Leftist economist
Since they kicked him out of Harvard for telling the truth he has just lost it
As the Japanese work to bring the injured to safety and to recover the bodies of the dead — and as the world watches in sadness, and shivers — someone, somewhere will throw a touch of absurdity on the whole event.
Enter Larry Summers. According to one report, entitled “Tsunami an economic disaster? Not necessarily,” the “former director of President Obama’s economic council and a former head of the World Bank, said rebuilding could temporarily boost the Japanese economy.”
Every disaster we hear this old chestnut. Last year, Nancy Pelosi cheerfully noted that the Haiti earthquake had a bright side. This form of gallows cheer is known, in the literature of economics, as “The Broken Window Fallacy,” in honor of the brilliant, classic analysis by Frédéric Bastiat.
Bastiat was a French politician and economist. He starts his famous 1850 essay, “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen,” with a short lesson on causation, and then proceeds to tell the tale of a village confronting a minor tragedy: the shopkeeper’s son had broken the glass pane of the shop’s window.
The lesson is that for every cause (event, act, policy, etc.) there are many effects, a series of them. Bad economics only takes note of a small subset of effects. Good economics takes note of the whole series. Indeed, great economists look for hidden and even obscure results.
In the story, the villagers commiserate. But they quickly find a silver lining. If windows didn’t break, what would glaziers do? The broken pane of glass, they suggest, would provide a boon to the local economy. A boomlet, if not a boom.
They trace the effects of what happens to the shopkeeper’s money, after he hires the glazier to fix the window. The glazier buys donuts or something, helping the baker. And . . . and . . . and . . .
But Bastiat calls to our attention an unseen effect: What would have happened to the shopkeeper’s wealth if his window hadn’t broken. He would have spent the money — at least eventually — elsewhere. And a similar pattern of spending and economic activity would unfold, if along a different path. You just don’t see that, because that’s what’s been precluded by the disaster.
More HERE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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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Saturday, March 12, 2011
Politics is just another beauty contest
By Dr. Oliver Marc Hartwich, a German economist
Those working in politics and the media often assume that elections are lost or won on the big issues that so excite them. In reality, very few voters actually care about the intricate details of the National Broadband Network, Australia’s role in the G20, or the next round of the Doha talks. Sometimes even a politician’s smile is more important than his or her policies.
Voters bias towards more beautiful politicians has long been confirmed in surveys. Where voters are uninformed about politicians’ plans and beliefs, they instinctively go by their appearance. But new research from Scandinavia reveals that good looks are quite unevenly distributed in this beauty contest.
In their discussion paper The Right Look: Conservative Politicians Look Better and Their Voters Reward It, economists Niclas Berggren, Henrik Jordahl, and Panu Poutvaara analysed the attractiveness of more than 1,300 Finnish politicians by asking non-Finns to rate their facial appearance.
Given that most people outside Finland would not recognise the Finnish president, let alone obscure politicians from Jämsänkoski and Lappeenranta, it is safe to assume that there was no political bias involved.
The results were surprising. Right-wingers were on average found to be more attractive and more competent than left-wingers, especially in local government. Perhaps even more interestingly, right-wing voters also cared more about good looks than left-wingers. The ‘beauty premium’ in electoral contests was bigger on the right than on the left.
As the authors of the study suggest, this could lead clever right-wingers to go for a dual strategy. While investing in a new pair of glasses and a stylish haircut, they could be running their campaigns on a more left-wing platform. They could harvest the beauty-conscious right-wing voters while simultaneously reaching deep into left-wing spectrum with their policies. Ironically, right-wing beauty would then generate left-wing outcomes.
The study also speculates whether the increasing role of television in elections tends to favour right-wing candidates. But they may be at an advantage anyway. Left-wing election strategists, unaware of the importance of appearance, still try to woo the electorate with boring policy details when all that voters really care about are lipstick colours and beard fashions.
Without a doubt, the Scandinavian research team has opened a can of worms with their survey. New existential questions in politics urgently need to be answered: Why does conservatism make you more beautiful? Or why are beautiful people more conservative? Why don’t lefties care about looks? And why do people believe that being attractive automatically makes you more competent?
After this seminal piece of research, politics will never look the same again. Quite literally, politics may be more of a beauty contest than political wonks realise.
The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated Mar. 11. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.
*********************
Democrat Thuggery in Its Worst Form
After Democratic state senators fled the state to block a fair vote, and after union members took over the capitol building, and after Republican senators received death threats, Wisconsin state Sen. Robert Jauch, D-Poplar, labeled Republican passage of a bill to reduce public employee collective bargaining power "political thuggery in its worst form."
And the left wonders why so much of America doesn't take it seriously.
At 9:18 Wednesday night, an e-mail was sent to Republican state senators in Wisconsin. Its first paragraph reads:
Republican senators reported receiving harassing and threatening phone calls, being physically bumped around at the state capitol, and having their cars struck by protesters. Yet here is how Sen. Jauch described the protests:
Unfortunately for Sen. Jauch, more than three-fourths of Americans have Internet access, and, therefore, the ability to see for themselves whether the protesters and Democratic senators were being mature, responsible and thoughtful.
They can decide whether Jauch was more correct than Republican state Sen. Glenn Grothman, who said: "This has been all about intimidating, be it the death threats, the screaming in the face, the late night phone calls or the recalls, this has been all about trying to intimidate Republican legislators into bowing to the public unions, and it has only steeled our resolve."
Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry said Republicans had denied Wisconsin citizens a "voice." OK, just so we have this straight, fleeing the state to strip the majority of the duly elected Senate of a quorum, shutting down the capitol building, and intimidating the majority with phone and e-mail threats is OK, but passing a bill by majority vote after getting the OK of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the Legislative Council and the Legislative Reference Bureau is silencing the people?
Speaking of denying the people their voice, former Democratic Congressman David Obey is trying to have Gov. Scott Walker recalled. That's not legal under Wisconsin law. Only politicians in office for at least a year can be recalled, and Walker has been in office for eight weeks. But Obey says he should be recalled anyway, ABC News reports, because he's "abusive."
Obey isn't alone. Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca made an effort to have Speaker Joe Fitzgerald removed from office, yelling on the Assembly floor, "your speaker is impaired."
Wisconsin Democrats are trying to recall every Republican senator who has been in office for at least a year. Republicans are trying to recall eight Democrats who fled the state to avoid voting on the union compensation and bargaining bill. Democrats want to recall the Republicans "because they support Walker's anti-union bill," according to ABC News.
But it's the Republicans who are trying to silence the people? Gov. Scott Walker won election last fall with 52 percent of the vote. The state Senate went from 18-15 Democrat to 19-14 Republican. The Assembly went from 50-45 Democrat (with two independents) to 60-38 Republican (with one independent). Sen. Russ Feingold lost the seat he'd held for 18 years, and the House seat Obey held for 41 years went Republican.
It was a Republican electoral victory of historic proportions. And the Democrats and public-sector labor unions are trying to undo it by shutting down the legislature, intimidating the majority, and removing fairly elected politicians simply because they disagree with them. In Wisconsin, it's not the Republicans who are subverting the will of the people.
SOURCE
**********************
Another Unqualified, Unethical Liberal Appointed to the Court
Apparently she thought that a superior American liberal like her had no need to take seriously a gang of slanty-eyed gooks and that lies would suffice as a response to them
On January 5, 2011 President Obama renominated Susan Carney to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Carney is unqualified to serve as an appeals court judge. She has never tried a case to conclusion, she has rarely examined witnesses, and she has never even argued a case before an appeals court. Even the American Bar Association gave her a lackluster rating of Substantial Majority Qualified, Minority Unqualified. Fn.1.
While serving as Yale’s Deputy General Counsel, Carney was heavily involved in a scandal, which calls her integrity and competence into question. The following is an excerpt from the Yale Daily News about the scandal:
Carney’s liberalism is evidenced by her board service and contributions. For example, she has given money to Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), and the National Organization for Women (NOW). She served as a boardmember and officer of Women Organizing Women Political Action Committee (WOWPAC), another pro-abortion group. She also served on the board of Fine by Me, a gay advocacy group.
SOURCE
*************************
Planet Washington
By earth-logic, if you got a raise of 10 percent last year, but this year you're only getting a raise of 8 percent, you're still getting a raise. On Planet Washington, that qualifies as an indefensible slashing.
So when the GOP cut $4 billion from the budget last week, the Democrats acted as if it was an involuntary amputation.
Now the GOP wants to cut $61 billion of discretionary nondefense spending from the total budget of $3.7 trillion, and Democrats are responding as if this will spell the end of Western civilization.
But given their terror of forcing a government shutdown, Democrats were forced to counteroffer with a cut of $10.5 billion, or 0.28 percent of the federal budget.
Imagine you have a budget of $10,000 (about 40 percent of it borrowed on a credit card), then "slash" 28 bucks. That's what it's like to be a frugal Democrat....
Look at it this way. Those heartless Republican bastards would cut 2011 nondefense discretionary spending from 3.6 percent to 3.2 percent of GDP. Under Bill Clinton, such spending averaged 3.1 percent of GDP.
We owe $14 trillion we don't have. Our total liabilities -- i.e., Social Security and other entitlements -- dwarf that. So we can't just cut discretionary spending alone. But if it's this hard to ask cowboy poets to pony up, how are we going to deal with what everyone agrees is the much harder stuff?
More HERE
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Obama regime pushes massive mortgage bailout; would rip off pension funds, bank shareholders
Back before the election, intellectuals with ties to the Obama Administration proposed a trillion-dollar bailout for some (but not all) underwater mortgage borrowers, as a way to increase consumer spending.
Now, the Washington Post reports that bureaucrats at the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) want to do something similar on a smaller scale. Their proposal would require banks to write off part of the mortgages of certain (but not all) mortgage borrowers who owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth. Worse, they would require mortgage servicers to write off loan principal on loans owned by other institutions, like pension funds, violating their property rights.
Virtually all of America’s pension funds own mortgage-backed securities. Pension funds (including the unions) that millions of people rely on for their retirements would lose billions of dollars due to reduced mortgage value. These demands are contained in a 27-page proposed settlement sent to the banks by the CFPB, the Justice Department, and state attorney generals who sued the banks over their recent foreclosure documentation lapses. Such demands flout court rulings like Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford (1935), which overturned a federal law that wiped out mortgage value.
Meanwhile, the write-offs would reward the most financially irresponsible borrowers, while punishing responsibility. If you were thrifty, and made a big downpayment, you will not be eligible for a write-off, since your mortgage will still be smaller than your house is worth, even if your house declined in value. But if you saved little money, and took out a no-downpayment loan, your loan may be bigger than the value of your house even if the value of your house didn’t fall much. Even a small fall in value would leave you “underwater” on your loan, and thus eligible for a bailout under the proposed settlement, to reduce the size of your mortgage to less than your home value.
More HERE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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)
****************************
By Dr. Oliver Marc Hartwich, a German economist
Those working in politics and the media often assume that elections are lost or won on the big issues that so excite them. In reality, very few voters actually care about the intricate details of the National Broadband Network, Australia’s role in the G20, or the next round of the Doha talks. Sometimes even a politician’s smile is more important than his or her policies.
Voters bias towards more beautiful politicians has long been confirmed in surveys. Where voters are uninformed about politicians’ plans and beliefs, they instinctively go by their appearance. But new research from Scandinavia reveals that good looks are quite unevenly distributed in this beauty contest.
In their discussion paper The Right Look: Conservative Politicians Look Better and Their Voters Reward It, economists Niclas Berggren, Henrik Jordahl, and Panu Poutvaara analysed the attractiveness of more than 1,300 Finnish politicians by asking non-Finns to rate their facial appearance.
Given that most people outside Finland would not recognise the Finnish president, let alone obscure politicians from Jämsänkoski and Lappeenranta, it is safe to assume that there was no political bias involved.
The results were surprising. Right-wingers were on average found to be more attractive and more competent than left-wingers, especially in local government. Perhaps even more interestingly, right-wing voters also cared more about good looks than left-wingers. The ‘beauty premium’ in electoral contests was bigger on the right than on the left.
As the authors of the study suggest, this could lead clever right-wingers to go for a dual strategy. While investing in a new pair of glasses and a stylish haircut, they could be running their campaigns on a more left-wing platform. They could harvest the beauty-conscious right-wing voters while simultaneously reaching deep into left-wing spectrum with their policies. Ironically, right-wing beauty would then generate left-wing outcomes.
The study also speculates whether the increasing role of television in elections tends to favour right-wing candidates. But they may be at an advantage anyway. Left-wing election strategists, unaware of the importance of appearance, still try to woo the electorate with boring policy details when all that voters really care about are lipstick colours and beard fashions.
Without a doubt, the Scandinavian research team has opened a can of worms with their survey. New existential questions in politics urgently need to be answered: Why does conservatism make you more beautiful? Or why are beautiful people more conservative? Why don’t lefties care about looks? And why do people believe that being attractive automatically makes you more competent?
After this seminal piece of research, politics will never look the same again. Quite literally, politics may be more of a beauty contest than political wonks realise.
The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated Mar. 11. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.
*********************
Democrat Thuggery in Its Worst Form
After Democratic state senators fled the state to block a fair vote, and after union members took over the capitol building, and after Republican senators received death threats, Wisconsin state Sen. Robert Jauch, D-Poplar, labeled Republican passage of a bill to reduce public employee collective bargaining power "political thuggery in its worst form."
And the left wonders why so much of America doesn't take it seriously.
At 9:18 Wednesday night, an e-mail was sent to Republican state senators in Wisconsin. Its first paragraph reads:
Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes [sic] will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.
Republican senators reported receiving harassing and threatening phone calls, being physically bumped around at the state capitol, and having their cars struck by protesters. Yet here is how Sen. Jauch described the protests:
I have deeply respected the mature, responsible and thoughtful manner in which hundreds of thousands of citizens have politely exercised free speech in protesting Governor Walker's proposal to end 52 years of collective bargaining.
Unfortunately for Sen. Jauch, more than three-fourths of Americans have Internet access, and, therefore, the ability to see for themselves whether the protesters and Democratic senators were being mature, responsible and thoughtful.
They can decide whether Jauch was more correct than Republican state Sen. Glenn Grothman, who said: "This has been all about intimidating, be it the death threats, the screaming in the face, the late night phone calls or the recalls, this has been all about trying to intimidate Republican legislators into bowing to the public unions, and it has only steeled our resolve."
Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry said Republicans had denied Wisconsin citizens a "voice." OK, just so we have this straight, fleeing the state to strip the majority of the duly elected Senate of a quorum, shutting down the capitol building, and intimidating the majority with phone and e-mail threats is OK, but passing a bill by majority vote after getting the OK of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the Legislative Council and the Legislative Reference Bureau is silencing the people?
Speaking of denying the people their voice, former Democratic Congressman David Obey is trying to have Gov. Scott Walker recalled. That's not legal under Wisconsin law. Only politicians in office for at least a year can be recalled, and Walker has been in office for eight weeks. But Obey says he should be recalled anyway, ABC News reports, because he's "abusive."
Obey isn't alone. Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca made an effort to have Speaker Joe Fitzgerald removed from office, yelling on the Assembly floor, "your speaker is impaired."
Wisconsin Democrats are trying to recall every Republican senator who has been in office for at least a year. Republicans are trying to recall eight Democrats who fled the state to avoid voting on the union compensation and bargaining bill. Democrats want to recall the Republicans "because they support Walker's anti-union bill," according to ABC News.
But it's the Republicans who are trying to silence the people? Gov. Scott Walker won election last fall with 52 percent of the vote. The state Senate went from 18-15 Democrat to 19-14 Republican. The Assembly went from 50-45 Democrat (with two independents) to 60-38 Republican (with one independent). Sen. Russ Feingold lost the seat he'd held for 18 years, and the House seat Obey held for 41 years went Republican.
It was a Republican electoral victory of historic proportions. And the Democrats and public-sector labor unions are trying to undo it by shutting down the legislature, intimidating the majority, and removing fairly elected politicians simply because they disagree with them. In Wisconsin, it's not the Republicans who are subverting the will of the people.
SOURCE
**********************
Another Unqualified, Unethical Liberal Appointed to the Court
Apparently she thought that a superior American liberal like her had no need to take seriously a gang of slanty-eyed gooks and that lies would suffice as a response to them
On January 5, 2011 President Obama renominated Susan Carney to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Carney is unqualified to serve as an appeals court judge. She has never tried a case to conclusion, she has rarely examined witnesses, and she has never even argued a case before an appeals court. Even the American Bar Association gave her a lackluster rating of Substantial Majority Qualified, Minority Unqualified. Fn.1.
While serving as Yale’s Deputy General Counsel, Carney was heavily involved in a scandal, which calls her integrity and competence into question. The following is an excerpt from the Yale Daily News about the scandal:
In September 2005, officials at Dongguk [University] sent a letter to Yale requesting confirmation of a letter provided by one of their professors, Shin Jeong-ah, who said she had received her doctorate from Yale’s Graduate School. Pamela Schirmeister, associate dean at the Graduate School, told Dongguk officials that she had signed the letter, failing to check her records or notice that her name had been misspelled, the lawsuit claims.
In 2007, suspicious of Shin’s credentials, Dongguk University President Youngkyo Oh sent a letter to University President Richard Levin asking if Shin had graduated from the University. Yale officials checked their records and found that Shin never did. Still, they denied that Dongguk had sent the original letter asking for verification.
When Oh contacted Levin in July 2007, Yale officials had already been sent a copy of the 2005 letter and a facsimile of Schirmeister’s response. The next day, Yale Deputy General Counsel Susan Carney replied to Oh, saying that the facsimile of her response was not authentic. But, as the Dongguk lawyers found, Yale officials had made this assessment without checking their files.
And despite what she told Oh, Carney described the letters as “troubling” in an e-mail to Nina Glickson, an assistant to Levin, expressing concern that the 2005 letter and her response might be real.
The following August, Dongguk officials again tried to prove that Yale had received and responded to the 2005 letter. They e-mailed Carney, telling her they had a receipt for the letter that said it had been handled in the Yale Central Mailroom by an employee named Michael Moore.
Still, even with the specific information provided by the receipt, the lawsuit claims that no Yale official attempted to search University records to check if the letter had been received.
Dongguk’s lawyers said the internal e-mails show that Yale officials were not taking Dongguk’s request seriously. For example, one Yale official — Edward Barnaby, a graduate school assistant dean — joked in an e-mail to Carney that “maybe the letter wound up in the hands of the controversial documentary filmmaker …”
[Yale] officials took action when, at the request of Korean prosecutors, the U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed Yale on Oct. 17, 2007 for documents related to Shin’s upcoming criminal trial in Korea. The next day, an assistant to Schirmeister searched the dean’s files — and found the September 2005 letter, with its original envelope.
Yale’s actions following the discovery of the letter, Weiner said, went beyond negligence and constituted “dishonorable and disgraceful behavior.” Rather than correcting themselves, the lawsuit claims, Yale officials met over the next week to develop strategy to contain the mistake.
On Oct. 29, they finally told the Department of Justice that they had received and responded to a letter from Dongguk in 2005 that sought to verify Shin’s degree. They told Dongguk the same on Nov. 29. Yale did not release a public statement until Dec. 29, two days after Dongguk held its own a press conference. During this time, the lawyers said, the Korean media continued to condemn Dongguk for the scandal, which it termed “Shingate.”
Dongguk has since alleged that Yale’s actions led to damages equivalent to $50 million.
Weiner said his team plans to take depositions from Carney, Reinstein and Schirmeister in December [2009].
Carney’s liberalism is evidenced by her board service and contributions. For example, she has given money to Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), and the National Organization for Women (NOW). She served as a boardmember and officer of Women Organizing Women Political Action Committee (WOWPAC), another pro-abortion group. She also served on the board of Fine by Me, a gay advocacy group.
SOURCE
*************************
Planet Washington
By earth-logic, if you got a raise of 10 percent last year, but this year you're only getting a raise of 8 percent, you're still getting a raise. On Planet Washington, that qualifies as an indefensible slashing.
So when the GOP cut $4 billion from the budget last week, the Democrats acted as if it was an involuntary amputation.
Now the GOP wants to cut $61 billion of discretionary nondefense spending from the total budget of $3.7 trillion, and Democrats are responding as if this will spell the end of Western civilization.
But given their terror of forcing a government shutdown, Democrats were forced to counteroffer with a cut of $10.5 billion, or 0.28 percent of the federal budget.
Imagine you have a budget of $10,000 (about 40 percent of it borrowed on a credit card), then "slash" 28 bucks. That's what it's like to be a frugal Democrat....
Look at it this way. Those heartless Republican bastards would cut 2011 nondefense discretionary spending from 3.6 percent to 3.2 percent of GDP. Under Bill Clinton, such spending averaged 3.1 percent of GDP.
We owe $14 trillion we don't have. Our total liabilities -- i.e., Social Security and other entitlements -- dwarf that. So we can't just cut discretionary spending alone. But if it's this hard to ask cowboy poets to pony up, how are we going to deal with what everyone agrees is the much harder stuff?
More HERE
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Obama regime pushes massive mortgage bailout; would rip off pension funds, bank shareholders
Back before the election, intellectuals with ties to the Obama Administration proposed a trillion-dollar bailout for some (but not all) underwater mortgage borrowers, as a way to increase consumer spending.
Now, the Washington Post reports that bureaucrats at the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) want to do something similar on a smaller scale. Their proposal would require banks to write off part of the mortgages of certain (but not all) mortgage borrowers who owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth. Worse, they would require mortgage servicers to write off loan principal on loans owned by other institutions, like pension funds, violating their property rights.
Virtually all of America’s pension funds own mortgage-backed securities. Pension funds (including the unions) that millions of people rely on for their retirements would lose billions of dollars due to reduced mortgage value. These demands are contained in a 27-page proposed settlement sent to the banks by the CFPB, the Justice Department, and state attorney generals who sued the banks over their recent foreclosure documentation lapses. Such demands flout court rulings like Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford (1935), which overturned a federal law that wiped out mortgage value.
Meanwhile, the write-offs would reward the most financially irresponsible borrowers, while punishing responsibility. If you were thrifty, and made a big downpayment, you will not be eligible for a write-off, since your mortgage will still be smaller than your house is worth, even if your house declined in value. But if you saved little money, and took out a no-downpayment loan, your loan may be bigger than the value of your house even if the value of your house didn’t fall much. Even a small fall in value would leave you “underwater” on your loan, and thus eligible for a bailout under the proposed settlement, to reduce the size of your mortgage to less than your home value.
More HERE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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)
****************************
Australia a true friend, Prime Minister says in speech to Congress
I am not sure how well this was covered in the American media. My guess is a one minute mention on some TV news bulletins. It is however an excellent speech on the whole. It could well have emanated from a conservative Prime Minister. It is however the work of a Prime Minister who hails from the Left faction of Australia's major Leftist party -- and that faction has been in the past rather anti-American. The speech is therefore an indication of how realistic the Australian Left is on the whole. Despite their old anti-American reflexes, they can obviously see clearly the great extent to which Australian and American interests coincide. That even a Leftist Prime Minister has come out with such emphatically pro-American sentiments does therefore confirm that Australia is America's best friend internationally
JULIA Gillard received a four-minute standing ovation after making a historic address to a joint meeting of the US Congress in Washington.
During the half-hour address she hardened Australia's military commitment in Afghanistan, telling the Congress Australia remembered America's help in World War II and would always stand by it as "a true friend Down Under".
Conceding that the transition to local control in Afghanistan will take "some years", Ms Gillard threw herself fully behind President Barack Obama's Afghanistan strategy, saying the two nations were inextricably linked by shared values and common aims.
Ms Gillard also challenged the US to use its capacity for reinvention to join Australia in pressing for new rounds of trade liberalisation and economic reform.
Describing herself as a "true mate", Ms Gillard urged the US to "be worthy to your own best traditions," calling on the nation to turn its creativity to addressing climate change.
And she called for US leadership in the Asia-Pacific to balance the rise of China and India and ensure all nations in the region could enjoy the benefits of prosperity and growth.
Ms Gillard's comments came in an address to a joint sitting of Congress to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the ANZUS treaty - a military alliance which binds Australia, New Zealand and the US.
Among Australian prime ministers, only Bob Hawke and John Howard have been accorded the same honor, while Robert Menzies addressed the House of Representatives in 1955.
Ms Gillard used her speech to make clear that Americans should expect firm and ongoing support from Australia.
"In both our countries, real mates talk straight," she said. "We mean what we say. You have an ally in Australia. An ally for war and peace. An ally for hardship and prosperity. An ally for the 60 years past. And Australia is an ally for all the years to come."
Ms Gillard said Australia had not forgotten that the US helped defeat the Japanese in World War II. She said the US should expect that Australia would not swerve in its support for the Afghanistan war. "I have told Australia's parliament in Canberra ... what I told General (David) Petraeus in Kabul ... what I told President Obama in the Oval Office this week," she said. "Australia will stand firm with our ally the United States. Our friends understand this. Our enemies understand this too."
Referring to her recent visits to the war zone, she said she was convinced the Afghanistan coalition had the right strategy.
However, as she outlined her solidarity on the war, she threw out challenges to the gathered US politicians on the economy and climate change.
Calling for US support for the economic reform process through the G-20, she also appealed for the reignition of the stalled Doha Round of international trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation.
On climate change, she called for continuing collaboration, insisting that the world must find a way to decouple economic growth from growth in carbon emissions.
Turning to security, Ms Gillard noted that political power was shifting towards China and India, and urged the Americans to call on the same courage that saw them provide leadership during the Cold War and to apply it to the emerging new world order.
She also praised former US President Ronald Reagan, describing him as a great figure of American optimism who had displayed the same values she believed would see the US continue to prosper and provide global leadership.
"I firmly believe you are the same people who amazed me when I was a small girl by landing on the Moon," she said. "On that great day, I believed Americans could do anything. I believe that still. You can do anything today."
SOURCE
***********************
Evil Oregon Democrats attack Republican candidate's children
By Art Robinson
In an effort to do my part in rescuing our country from the out-of-control Obama administration, last year I ran for Congress in Oregon's 4th District against 12-term incumbent, far-left Democrat Peter DeFazio, co-founder of the House Progressive Caucus.
Although I won the nominations of the Republican, Independent and Constitution Parties and the endorsement of the Libertarian Party, a massive media smear campaign by DeFazio, paid for with money raised by MoveOn.org and from special interests favored by DeFazio in Washington, resulted in a 54.5 percent to 43.6 percent victory for DeFazio in a race that was expected to be much closer. Although I had never run for public office before, I immediately announced my candidacy for Congress again in 2012.
However, when you take a stand for what's right, sometimes there is retribution. On Nov. 4, 2010, as soon as the election results were in and they were sure their candidate had won, faculty administrators at Oregon State University gave new meaning to the term "political payback."
They initiated an attack on my three children – Joshua, Bethany and Matthew – for the purpose of throwing them all out of the OSU graduate school, despite their outstanding academic and research accomplishments. OSU is a liberal socialist Democrat stronghold in Oregon that received a reported $27 million in earmark funding from my opponent, Peter DeFazio, and his Democrat colleagues during the last legislative session.
Thus, Democrat activist David Hamby and militant feminist and chairman of the nuclear engineering department Kathryn Higley are expelling four-year Ph.D. student Joshua Robinson from OSU at the end of the current academic quarter and turning over the prompt neutron activation analysis facility Joshua built for his thesis work and all of his work in progress to Higley's husband, Steven Reese. Reese, an instructor in the department, has stated that he will use these things for his own professional gain. Joshua's apparatus, which he built and added to the OSU nuclear reactor with the guidance and ideas of his mentor, Michael Hartman, earned Joshua the award for best Masters of Nuclear Engineering thesis at OSU and has been widely complimented by scientists at prominent U.S. nuclear facilities.
Meanwhile, faculty member Todd Palmer notified four-year Ph.D. student Bethany Robinson (OSU grade point average 3.89) that he was terminating her thesis work and taking all of her work in progress for himself. Some of Bethany's graduate work has already been used, without credit to Bethany, in the thesis of another favored student now recently hired on the department faculty.
Palmer, until recently married to a member of the OSU psychology faculty, is now married to former OSU student Camille Lodwick. They are both faculty members in the nuclear engineering department.
It is also rumored that Higley, a long-time associate of Palmer's and who is adamant that Bethany leave OSU, may dislike Bethany because of criticism Higley received when department students complained of sexual assault at wild drunken parties of OSU nuclear engineering students during taxpayer-financed trips to scientific meetings. These incidents may have been more likely because Higley had failed to report to OSU authorities an earlier instance of milder sexual harassment against Bethany, probably because Bethany – a brilliant but very mild-mannered, conservative, homeschooled Christian young lady – does not share Higley's views.
My children and I attempted to counter all these actions against us as they unfolded, but were initially uncertain as to their ultimate intent. All became clear, however, when OSU faculty administrators abruptly took a further and very serious prejudicial action toward Joshua. At that point, OSU Professor of Nuclear Engineering Jack Higginbotham, who was privy to all of the meetings and actions, warned us and came to our defense.
Professor Higginbotham, who also serves as president of the OSU Faculty Senate and director of the Oregon NASA Space Science Consortium, has been a member of the OSU faculty for 24 years. He has held many responsible positions in the university and has received numerous professional awards. Moreover, he is very widely admired for the many instances in which he has given special help to students at OSU. This is a man who thinks always of his students and never of himself.
Professor Higginbotham warned us that faculty administrators at OSU were working to make certain that Joshua, his sister Bethany and, if possible, his brother Matthew never receive Ph.D. degrees in nuclear engineering from OSU, regardless of their examination, academic and research performance. Professor Higginbotham then reviewed with us the details of the plan to destroy the education of these students and advised me to do anything I could to protect my children.
Since November, a remarkable battle has been raging within OSU. I considered an immediate public exposure of this plot and warned the faculty of this possibility, but instead my family and I decided to try to prevent a scandal at OSU and save the students within the confines of OSU. We fought these unprincipled academics on their own ground and held them off for four months. That effort is, however, now failing, and Joshua and Bethany are both slated for dismissal from the department of nuclear engineering very soon. Also, unless action is taken immediately, Professor Higginbotham's career will be completely destroyed.
Indeed, in retribution for Professor Higginbotham's efforts to protect the Robinson students from these unprincipled attacks, he personally has become the target of a campaign of defamation, vilification, persecution, Star-Chamber humiliation and other career-destroying actions orchestrated by Higley and the other people who are attacking us.
Now nearing success is a disgraceful effort to strip Professor Higginbotham of his faculty position and his research grants. His career now potentially in ruins, he is fighting back in hopes of saving himself and the positions of the students and staff who depend upon him at OSU and who may also lose their careers as collateral damage in these astonishing events.
The attack on Professor Higginbotham, if not stopped, may also destroy the graduate work of his student, Matthew Robinson. Matthew (OSU grade point average 3.91) passed up a $57,000 per year offer from the MIT graduate school so he could join his brother and sister at OSU two years ago.
Demonstrating unanimity with the DeFazio cause, both responsible OSU deans and the president of OSU, Edward Ray, have so far failed to halt these dishonorable and illegal actions. Ray, a supporter of DeFazio on the campus, has refused even to meet with me or my son Joshua concerning these events. Knowledgeable observers have concluded that orders for the attacks on the Robinson students are coming from sources far above Ray in the Democrat political machine.
The department of nuclear engineering attracted the Robinson students to OSU during a better day when it was directed by distinguished nuclear engineer José Reyes, who has now moved to NuScale Power. The department was in the hands of a group of very outstanding nuclear engineers. The ranks of these engineers have unfortunately been thinned by retirements and departure to other universities, including Michael Hartman now at the University of Michigan, but still mentoring Joshua. The engineers no longer control the department.
The department is now controlled by ideologues, most of whom do not have Ph.D.s in nuclear engineering. Nepotistic husband-and-wife combinations and new hires of their own graduate students have brought the department under the control of unprincipled people who have enthusiastically participated in the attacks on the Robinson students and Professor Higginbotham – attacks that have violated numerous OSU academic rules, several laws and the most basic professional ethics.
Professor Higginbotham, Joshua, Bethany and Matthew Robinson can still be rescued – but only by immediate, intense public pressure.
OSU administrators think they can violate ethical academic standards of professional conduct, break formal OSU rules and regulations, and even violate U.S. laws with impunity because, in any resulting litigation, they would be defended by lawyers from the Oregon Department of Justice, assuring that only students with huge sums of money and many years to invest in litigation can oppose them. The Robinsons do not have those huge sums of money, and, moreover, they want to complete their education – not receive money in exchange for the destruction of their education and opportunities.
If these people succeed, a delighted Peter DeFazio will be able to brag to the voters that the Robinson children were thrown out of Oregon State University. Why else but to favor DeFazio would the OSU administration condone seemingly irrational actions that are potentially so damaging to the reputation of the university? OSU dances to the tune of the Democrat machine, and DeFazio controls that machine.
As things stand today, Jack Higginbotham and his students and staff, along with Joshua Robinson are in immediate danger. Bethany Robinson is slated for dismissal soon after and without the Ph.D. that she has nearly completed. The dismissal of Matthew Robinson may not be far behind. And the danger to Professor Higginbotham's other students is likewise very high.
Please don't let this happen!
Please notify OSU of your interest in this matter and urge the university to stop its destructive actions against Joshua, Bethany and Matthew Robinson and against Professor Jack Higginbotham, the remarkable president of the OSU faculty senate who has risked his career to help them!
Contact information for the OSU nuclear engineering department is:
Phone: 541-737-2343
Fax: 541-737-4678
E-mail
Mailing address:
116 Radiation Center,
Corvallis, OR 97331-5902
Please also contact the president of OSU, Edward Ray:
Phone: 541-737-4133
Fax: 541-737-3033
E-mail
Mailing address:
600 Kerr Administration Building
Corvallis, OR 97331-2128
For more information or to take further action, please visit OregonStateOutrage.com.
Please ask these people why the destruction of the academic work and careers of these students and Professor Higginbotham is so important that they are willing to sacrifice the good name of Oregon State University.
Please ask them to stop the attacks on the Robinson students and Professor Higginbotham.
SOURCE. (See the original for email addresses)
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)
****************************
I am not sure how well this was covered in the American media. My guess is a one minute mention on some TV news bulletins. It is however an excellent speech on the whole. It could well have emanated from a conservative Prime Minister. It is however the work of a Prime Minister who hails from the Left faction of Australia's major Leftist party -- and that faction has been in the past rather anti-American. The speech is therefore an indication of how realistic the Australian Left is on the whole. Despite their old anti-American reflexes, they can obviously see clearly the great extent to which Australian and American interests coincide. That even a Leftist Prime Minister has come out with such emphatically pro-American sentiments does therefore confirm that Australia is America's best friend internationally
JULIA Gillard received a four-minute standing ovation after making a historic address to a joint meeting of the US Congress in Washington.
During the half-hour address she hardened Australia's military commitment in Afghanistan, telling the Congress Australia remembered America's help in World War II and would always stand by it as "a true friend Down Under".
Conceding that the transition to local control in Afghanistan will take "some years", Ms Gillard threw herself fully behind President Barack Obama's Afghanistan strategy, saying the two nations were inextricably linked by shared values and common aims.
Ms Gillard also challenged the US to use its capacity for reinvention to join Australia in pressing for new rounds of trade liberalisation and economic reform.
Describing herself as a "true mate", Ms Gillard urged the US to "be worthy to your own best traditions," calling on the nation to turn its creativity to addressing climate change.
And she called for US leadership in the Asia-Pacific to balance the rise of China and India and ensure all nations in the region could enjoy the benefits of prosperity and growth.
Ms Gillard's comments came in an address to a joint sitting of Congress to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the ANZUS treaty - a military alliance which binds Australia, New Zealand and the US.
Among Australian prime ministers, only Bob Hawke and John Howard have been accorded the same honor, while Robert Menzies addressed the House of Representatives in 1955.
Ms Gillard used her speech to make clear that Americans should expect firm and ongoing support from Australia.
"In both our countries, real mates talk straight," she said. "We mean what we say. You have an ally in Australia. An ally for war and peace. An ally for hardship and prosperity. An ally for the 60 years past. And Australia is an ally for all the years to come."
Ms Gillard said Australia had not forgotten that the US helped defeat the Japanese in World War II. She said the US should expect that Australia would not swerve in its support for the Afghanistan war. "I have told Australia's parliament in Canberra ... what I told General (David) Petraeus in Kabul ... what I told President Obama in the Oval Office this week," she said. "Australia will stand firm with our ally the United States. Our friends understand this. Our enemies understand this too."
Referring to her recent visits to the war zone, she said she was convinced the Afghanistan coalition had the right strategy.
However, as she outlined her solidarity on the war, she threw out challenges to the gathered US politicians on the economy and climate change.
Calling for US support for the economic reform process through the G-20, she also appealed for the reignition of the stalled Doha Round of international trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation.
On climate change, she called for continuing collaboration, insisting that the world must find a way to decouple economic growth from growth in carbon emissions.
Turning to security, Ms Gillard noted that political power was shifting towards China and India, and urged the Americans to call on the same courage that saw them provide leadership during the Cold War and to apply it to the emerging new world order.
She also praised former US President Ronald Reagan, describing him as a great figure of American optimism who had displayed the same values she believed would see the US continue to prosper and provide global leadership.
"I firmly believe you are the same people who amazed me when I was a small girl by landing on the Moon," she said. "On that great day, I believed Americans could do anything. I believe that still. You can do anything today."
SOURCE
***********************
Evil Oregon Democrats attack Republican candidate's children
By Art Robinson
In an effort to do my part in rescuing our country from the out-of-control Obama administration, last year I ran for Congress in Oregon's 4th District against 12-term incumbent, far-left Democrat Peter DeFazio, co-founder of the House Progressive Caucus.
Although I won the nominations of the Republican, Independent and Constitution Parties and the endorsement of the Libertarian Party, a massive media smear campaign by DeFazio, paid for with money raised by MoveOn.org and from special interests favored by DeFazio in Washington, resulted in a 54.5 percent to 43.6 percent victory for DeFazio in a race that was expected to be much closer. Although I had never run for public office before, I immediately announced my candidacy for Congress again in 2012.
However, when you take a stand for what's right, sometimes there is retribution. On Nov. 4, 2010, as soon as the election results were in and they were sure their candidate had won, faculty administrators at Oregon State University gave new meaning to the term "political payback."
They initiated an attack on my three children – Joshua, Bethany and Matthew – for the purpose of throwing them all out of the OSU graduate school, despite their outstanding academic and research accomplishments. OSU is a liberal socialist Democrat stronghold in Oregon that received a reported $27 million in earmark funding from my opponent, Peter DeFazio, and his Democrat colleagues during the last legislative session.
Thus, Democrat activist David Hamby and militant feminist and chairman of the nuclear engineering department Kathryn Higley are expelling four-year Ph.D. student Joshua Robinson from OSU at the end of the current academic quarter and turning over the prompt neutron activation analysis facility Joshua built for his thesis work and all of his work in progress to Higley's husband, Steven Reese. Reese, an instructor in the department, has stated that he will use these things for his own professional gain. Joshua's apparatus, which he built and added to the OSU nuclear reactor with the guidance and ideas of his mentor, Michael Hartman, earned Joshua the award for best Masters of Nuclear Engineering thesis at OSU and has been widely complimented by scientists at prominent U.S. nuclear facilities.
Meanwhile, faculty member Todd Palmer notified four-year Ph.D. student Bethany Robinson (OSU grade point average 3.89) that he was terminating her thesis work and taking all of her work in progress for himself. Some of Bethany's graduate work has already been used, without credit to Bethany, in the thesis of another favored student now recently hired on the department faculty.
Palmer, until recently married to a member of the OSU psychology faculty, is now married to former OSU student Camille Lodwick. They are both faculty members in the nuclear engineering department.
It is also rumored that Higley, a long-time associate of Palmer's and who is adamant that Bethany leave OSU, may dislike Bethany because of criticism Higley received when department students complained of sexual assault at wild drunken parties of OSU nuclear engineering students during taxpayer-financed trips to scientific meetings. These incidents may have been more likely because Higley had failed to report to OSU authorities an earlier instance of milder sexual harassment against Bethany, probably because Bethany – a brilliant but very mild-mannered, conservative, homeschooled Christian young lady – does not share Higley's views.
My children and I attempted to counter all these actions against us as they unfolded, but were initially uncertain as to their ultimate intent. All became clear, however, when OSU faculty administrators abruptly took a further and very serious prejudicial action toward Joshua. At that point, OSU Professor of Nuclear Engineering Jack Higginbotham, who was privy to all of the meetings and actions, warned us and came to our defense.
Professor Higginbotham, who also serves as president of the OSU Faculty Senate and director of the Oregon NASA Space Science Consortium, has been a member of the OSU faculty for 24 years. He has held many responsible positions in the university and has received numerous professional awards. Moreover, he is very widely admired for the many instances in which he has given special help to students at OSU. This is a man who thinks always of his students and never of himself.
Professor Higginbotham warned us that faculty administrators at OSU were working to make certain that Joshua, his sister Bethany and, if possible, his brother Matthew never receive Ph.D. degrees in nuclear engineering from OSU, regardless of their examination, academic and research performance. Professor Higginbotham then reviewed with us the details of the plan to destroy the education of these students and advised me to do anything I could to protect my children.
Since November, a remarkable battle has been raging within OSU. I considered an immediate public exposure of this plot and warned the faculty of this possibility, but instead my family and I decided to try to prevent a scandal at OSU and save the students within the confines of OSU. We fought these unprincipled academics on their own ground and held them off for four months. That effort is, however, now failing, and Joshua and Bethany are both slated for dismissal from the department of nuclear engineering very soon. Also, unless action is taken immediately, Professor Higginbotham's career will be completely destroyed.
Indeed, in retribution for Professor Higginbotham's efforts to protect the Robinson students from these unprincipled attacks, he personally has become the target of a campaign of defamation, vilification, persecution, Star-Chamber humiliation and other career-destroying actions orchestrated by Higley and the other people who are attacking us.
Now nearing success is a disgraceful effort to strip Professor Higginbotham of his faculty position and his research grants. His career now potentially in ruins, he is fighting back in hopes of saving himself and the positions of the students and staff who depend upon him at OSU and who may also lose their careers as collateral damage in these astonishing events.
The attack on Professor Higginbotham, if not stopped, may also destroy the graduate work of his student, Matthew Robinson. Matthew (OSU grade point average 3.91) passed up a $57,000 per year offer from the MIT graduate school so he could join his brother and sister at OSU two years ago.
Demonstrating unanimity with the DeFazio cause, both responsible OSU deans and the president of OSU, Edward Ray, have so far failed to halt these dishonorable and illegal actions. Ray, a supporter of DeFazio on the campus, has refused even to meet with me or my son Joshua concerning these events. Knowledgeable observers have concluded that orders for the attacks on the Robinson students are coming from sources far above Ray in the Democrat political machine.
The department of nuclear engineering attracted the Robinson students to OSU during a better day when it was directed by distinguished nuclear engineer José Reyes, who has now moved to NuScale Power. The department was in the hands of a group of very outstanding nuclear engineers. The ranks of these engineers have unfortunately been thinned by retirements and departure to other universities, including Michael Hartman now at the University of Michigan, but still mentoring Joshua. The engineers no longer control the department.
The department is now controlled by ideologues, most of whom do not have Ph.D.s in nuclear engineering. Nepotistic husband-and-wife combinations and new hires of their own graduate students have brought the department under the control of unprincipled people who have enthusiastically participated in the attacks on the Robinson students and Professor Higginbotham – attacks that have violated numerous OSU academic rules, several laws and the most basic professional ethics.
Professor Higginbotham, Joshua, Bethany and Matthew Robinson can still be rescued – but only by immediate, intense public pressure.
OSU administrators think they can violate ethical academic standards of professional conduct, break formal OSU rules and regulations, and even violate U.S. laws with impunity because, in any resulting litigation, they would be defended by lawyers from the Oregon Department of Justice, assuring that only students with huge sums of money and many years to invest in litigation can oppose them. The Robinsons do not have those huge sums of money, and, moreover, they want to complete their education – not receive money in exchange for the destruction of their education and opportunities.
If these people succeed, a delighted Peter DeFazio will be able to brag to the voters that the Robinson children were thrown out of Oregon State University. Why else but to favor DeFazio would the OSU administration condone seemingly irrational actions that are potentially so damaging to the reputation of the university? OSU dances to the tune of the Democrat machine, and DeFazio controls that machine.
As things stand today, Jack Higginbotham and his students and staff, along with Joshua Robinson are in immediate danger. Bethany Robinson is slated for dismissal soon after and without the Ph.D. that she has nearly completed. The dismissal of Matthew Robinson may not be far behind. And the danger to Professor Higginbotham's other students is likewise very high.
Please don't let this happen!
Please notify OSU of your interest in this matter and urge the university to stop its destructive actions against Joshua, Bethany and Matthew Robinson and against Professor Jack Higginbotham, the remarkable president of the OSU faculty senate who has risked his career to help them!
Contact information for the OSU nuclear engineering department is:
Phone: 541-737-2343
Fax: 541-737-4678
Mailing address:
116 Radiation Center,
Corvallis, OR 97331-5902
Please also contact the president of OSU, Edward Ray:
Phone: 541-737-4133
Fax: 541-737-3033
Mailing address:
600 Kerr Administration Building
Corvallis, OR 97331-2128
For more information or to take further action, please visit OregonStateOutrage.com.
Please ask these people why the destruction of the academic work and careers of these students and Professor Higginbotham is so important that they are willing to sacrifice the good name of Oregon State University.
Please ask them to stop the attacks on the Robinson students and Professor Higginbotham.
SOURCE. (See the original for email addresses)
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)
****************************
Thursday, March 10, 2011
An amazing story from Canada
This is the sort of thing Obama is aiming to fix on Americans
That the Ontario health-care system is under pressure isn't news. But every so often another case comes along that proves, yet again, just how dysfunctional it is.
Jill Anzarut, a 35-year-old mother of two young children, has had the misfortune of becoming the latest Canadian whose story speaks to the system's broader problems. Anzarut detected a lump in her breast and tests determined the lump was indeed a cancerous tumour - an aggressive kind. Worse, Aznarut's genes mean she is at high risk of her cancer reoccurring. There is a drug, already used in other provinces and in some cases in Ontario, that has been shown to reduce the likelihood of the cancer returning. But Aznarut can't get it in Ontario: She had the misfortune of catching her cancer too early to qualify.
Anzarut has fallen afoul of a quirk in Ontario's policies on the use of the drug in question, Herceptin, which can cut in half the odds of cancer returning after a successful treatment. In Ontario, the drug can be prescribed for cases where the tumour is more than one centimetre in diameter. Anzarut, having caught it very early, has a tumour smaller than that.
How can this possibly be justified? How much money has been spent on public health campaigns stressing the importance of women performing self-exams for cancer, following up on any abnormalities and getting regular mammograms as a precaution? After all that effort, a young mother does everything exactly right, immediately seeks medical care and is told . sorry, you're not quite sick enough to get the medicine best able to treat you. Perhaps she should go home and wait while the cancer cells invade her body, then come back later and hope she qualifies. Welcome to Ontario, where we value early warning so long as it's not too early. You really gotta straddle a fine line with these life-threatening diseases, ya know.
For most of us, the absurdities of state-monopoly health-care usually mean inconvenience, delays and sometimes, added pain. For Anzarut, the cold inefficiencies of a ration-based system could cost her far more. But all is not yet lost, there is a review panel that can examine her case and grant an exemption. God knows if there was ever a case warranting an exemption, she's it. If so, that will be good news not only for Anzarut, but the 100 or so women estimated to find themselves in a similar situation every year.
Some Ontario patients have been able to access Herceptin because they're lucky enough to have some coverage under a private insurance plan. If the only way to survive in the public health-care system is to come packing private insurance, is that not a sign that the public system isn't working?
SOURCE
*************************
Maine Gov. Paul LePage
Our new Maine Gov. Paul LePage is making New Jersey 's Chris Christie look like a wimp. He isn't afraid to say what he thinks. And, judging by the comments I hear at the cigar shop and other non-political gathering places, every time he opens his mouth his popularity goes up.
He brought down the house at his inauguration when he shook his fist toward the media box and said, "You're on notice! I've inherited a financially-troubled state to run. Observe...cover...but don't whine if I don't waste time responding to your every whim for your amusement."
During the campaign he was talking to commercial fishermen who are struggling because of federal fisheries rules. They complained that President Obama brought his family to Bar Harbar & Acadia National Park for a long Labor Day holiday, found time to meet with union leaders but wouldn't talk to them. LePage replied, "I'd tell him to go to hell and get out of my state." Media crucified him but he jumped 6 points in the pre-election poll!
The Martin Luther King incident was a political sandbag which got national exposure. Media crucified him but word on the street is very positive.
The NAACP specifically asked him to spend MLK Day visiting black inmates at the Maine State Prison. He replied if he visited the prison he would meet all inmates regardless of race.. NAACP balked. They then put out a news release claiming falsely that he refused to participate in any MLK events. He read it in the paper for the first time next morning while be driven to an event and went ballistic (none of the reporters called him for comment before running the NAACP release).
So he arrived at an event and said on TV camera that "...if they want to play the race card on me they can kiss my butt..." and reminded them that he has an adopted black son from Jamiaca and that he attended the local MLK Breakfast every year he was mayor of Waterville (he started his morning there on MLK Day yesterday.)
He then said there's a right way and a wrong way to meet with the governor and he put all special interests on notice that press releases, media leaks and demonstrations are the wrong way. He said any other group which acts like the NAACP can expect to be on the bottom of the governor's priority list!
Then he did this which broke yesterday and, judging from local radio talk show callers, increased his popularity even more:
The state employees union complained because he waited until 3 p.m. before closing state offices and facilities and sending non-emergency personnel home during the last blizzard. The prior governor would often close offices for the day with just a forecast before the first flakes. (Each time the state closes for snow, it costs the taxpayers about $1-million in wages for no work in return.)
LePage was CEO of the Marden's chain of discount family bargain retail stores before election as governor. He noted that state employees getting off work early could still find lots of retail stores open to shop. So, he put the state employees on notice by announcing: "If Marden's is open, Maine is open!"
He told state employees: "We live in Maine in the winter, for heaven's sake, and should know how to drive in it. Otherwise, apply for a state job in Florida !"
Refreshing politician!
SOURCE
**********************
At last: unscripted honesty
THE CURRENT standoff in Wisconsin has put tough-talking Governor Scott Walker in the headlines, but for sheer candor, no one holds a candle to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. For the past year in town hall meetings, interviews, and speeches, Christie has been cheerfully, relentlessly, and brutally honest. People appear to love it. His approval/disapproval rating now stands at 52/37 in a state where Democrats outnumber Christie's fellow Republicans by 700,000. Yet imitators remain few and far between.
During Christie's campaign in 2009, CNN reporters tried to create an awkward moment by asking him about his weight. He earnestly replied, "I've had a weight problem for 30 years, so what?'' When they pushed him to criticize President Obama's visit to New Jersey, he simply noted that, "it's always an honor to be visited by the president of the United States.'' Clearly, the sincerity of these responses confused the pundits at CNN.
At a town hall meeting when a public school teacher suggested that she was worth up to $80,000 per year, Christie made two observations: first, New Jersey, unlike the federal government, cannot print money; and second, she didn't have to teach if she didn't want to. There was no pandering rhetoric about our children, our future, or our values - just simple, honest truth.
About Social Security, Christie says, "We're going to have to raise the retirement age.'' He refers to high-speed rail, electric cars, and universal broadband access as "the candy of American politics,'' which we simply cannot afford until we deal with our budget crisis. And when confronted with a possible government shutdown in New Jersey, he announced that if it happens, "I'm going to order a pizza and watch the Mets.''
This type of candor is exceedingly rare. No one, least of all a politician, enjoys telling someone "no we can't.'' Instead, most people instinctively respond to questions in the most positive way possible, and running for office only makes the problem worse. Beyond this desire to appease lies the fact that confrontation also takes more work. Refuting someone else's argument or point of view requires facts, reasoning, and analysis. By contrast, nodding in sympathetic agreement saves time and energy, and eliminates the need to think.
Last week's release of a Government Accountability Office report on duplication and overlap in government shows what happens when you try to please all of the people all of the time. We end up with 56 financial literacy programs spread over 20 federal agencies, 80 economic development programs in four departments, and 82 programs for teacher quality - as much as $100 billion spent without any way of measuring the outcome or benefits. The only real antidote to such out-of-control bureaucracy is toughness, oversight, and attention to detail - and the ability to say "no.''
Christie says he's not running for president, and given the consistency of his first year in office, you would be a fool not to take him at his word. But with the federal budget awash in red ink, the timing looks right for a national leader cut from the same cloth. Speaking with CBS's Bob Schieffer last week, Christie again denied national aspirations while offering advice for would-be candidates: "You have to have unscripted moments. [Americans] want unguarded moments - that's when they can really judge your character.'' It was a valuable suggestion from the man who has had more unscripted moments than any other American politician during the past year.
In fact, the history of the New Hampshire primary favors the blunt. Ronald Reagan and John McCain thrived on the retail politics of the Granite State, where a candidate can be asked any question, by any voter, at any moment. In the same vein, both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were viewed as plainspoken outsiders when they made a name for themselves in New Hampshire on the way to the White House. All of these candidates were comfortable in the unpredictable, unscripted moments of the campaign, and earned a reputation for candor. They were willing to give voters an unvarnished look at themselves, and reveal their character in the process.
Do Americans really want brutal honesty in a president today? Perhaps Reagan best carried the "tough love'' approach into office. He fired the air traffic controllers, cut domestic spending, reformed the tax code, and, in 1983, signed the last major overhaul of Social Security. Last month, a Pew poll identified Reagan as the most respected president of the 20th century. It may be difficult to emulate, but it appears to be a recipe for success.
Meanwhile back in Washington, Harry Reid refuses to even discuss Social Security as part of budget negotiations. On the national scene, Republican presidential contenders are spending an awful lot of time selling books and producing TV shows. We've seen a lot of tough talk during the past few weeks, but frankly, most of it feels scripted. Even more to the point, the idea of ordering pizza and watching the Mets during a government shutdown seems to be the last thing on anyone's mind.
SOURCE
************************
ELSEWHERE
Leftist hypocrites felled by a camera. First ACORN, now NPR: "NPR's CEO and president, Vivian Schiller, has resigned, the radio broadcaster announced Wednesday, following an undercover sting in which an executive was videotaped describing Tea Party members as 'racist.' On Tuesday, Schiller condemned the comments by Ron Schiller (no relation), which were caught on camera by political activist James O'Keefe of 'Project Veritas.' But a statement by the chairman of NPR's board of directors, Dave Edwards, said the board had accepted Vivian Schiller's resignation 'with deep regret.'" [Leftism is one big fraud that can't stand the light of day]
TN: Healthcare opt-out bill goes to governor: "A proposal that would allow Tennesseans to opt out of the federal health-care law is headed to the governor for his consideration after passing the Republican-controlled House 70-27 Monday on a party-line vote. The companion to the 'Health Freedom Act' also passed the Senate 21-10 on a party-line vote last month. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam is expected to review the proposal when it reaches his desk. Republican House sponsor Terri Lynn Weaver of Lancaster said the legislation doesn't argue for or against the federal law, but just gives Tennesseans a choice."
How times have changed! A Chinese frigate in the Mediterranean: "Late last week, the geostrategic implications of the still-unfolding crisis in the Middle East began to reveal themselves, as China positioned the advanced missile frigate Xuzhou off the eastern coast of Libya - the country's first deployment in the Mediterranean. The ship, and the special forces personnel it carried, were there to make sure that the estimated 30,000 Chinese workers in Libya were safely evacuated, in the face of a rash of attacks on Beijing-owned oil facilities."
Anti-democratic Democrats trumped: "The leader of Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate says his caucus will return to the state, but he won't say when. Senate Democrats fled the state nearly three weeks ago to block a vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's plan to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights. But Senate Republicans used a procedural move on Wednesday to pass the proposal without the Democrats present. The floor session lasted just minutes, and the state Assembly is scheduled to take up the measure on Thursday morning. That's the last step before it can go to Walker for his signature.
ID: Bill limits teachers' bargaining powers: "A far-reaching bill that removes most of Idaho teachers' existing collective bargaining rights passed the Idaho House on Tuesday, sending the measure to the governor's desk and marking a big win for state schools Superintendent Tom Luna, who proposed the plan. Luna hailed the move, calling it 'a great step forward,' while Idaho's teachers union, the Idaho Education Association, declared a 'Day of Action' with after-school rallies across the state today to protest."
Why we need an asteroid strike: "See, societies are like people in that they get old, clot, lose flexibility, and then croak. They can't get better. Like most things, they just get worse. A rule of thermodynamics says that rivers don't flow backwards, plaque does not voluntarily leave arteries, and governments do not become more reasonable, efficient, or interested in the well-being of their populations."
A little understanding goes a long way: "As the world confronts one of the most critical periods of economic upheaval that it has ever seen, it is clear that our most influential economic stewards have absolutely no idea what they are doing. But, like kids with a new chemistry set, they are nevertheless unwilling to let that stand in the way of their experimental fun. As they pour an ever-growing number of volatile ingredients into their test tubes, we can either hope that they magically stumble on the secret formula to cure the world's ills, or more pragmatically, we can try to prepare for the explosion that is likely to result."
Why ObamaCare mandate penalty can't be a tax: "Within a year or two, the Supreme Court probably will decide whether the new federal mandate to purchase a particular type of health insurance is authorized by Congress' constitutional power to 'regulate Commerce ... among the several States.' If the Obama administration cannot convince the court that the commerce clause allows Congress to force people to engage in commerce, the administration has a backup argument: The mandate is separately authorized by Congress' constitutional power to tax. If this argument succeeds, the constitutional system of a federal government of limited, enumerated powers will, for all practical purposes, come to an end."
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)
****************************
This is the sort of thing Obama is aiming to fix on Americans
That the Ontario health-care system is under pressure isn't news. But every so often another case comes along that proves, yet again, just how dysfunctional it is.
Jill Anzarut, a 35-year-old mother of two young children, has had the misfortune of becoming the latest Canadian whose story speaks to the system's broader problems. Anzarut detected a lump in her breast and tests determined the lump was indeed a cancerous tumour - an aggressive kind. Worse, Aznarut's genes mean she is at high risk of her cancer reoccurring. There is a drug, already used in other provinces and in some cases in Ontario, that has been shown to reduce the likelihood of the cancer returning. But Aznarut can't get it in Ontario: She had the misfortune of catching her cancer too early to qualify.
Anzarut has fallen afoul of a quirk in Ontario's policies on the use of the drug in question, Herceptin, which can cut in half the odds of cancer returning after a successful treatment. In Ontario, the drug can be prescribed for cases where the tumour is more than one centimetre in diameter. Anzarut, having caught it very early, has a tumour smaller than that.
How can this possibly be justified? How much money has been spent on public health campaigns stressing the importance of women performing self-exams for cancer, following up on any abnormalities and getting regular mammograms as a precaution? After all that effort, a young mother does everything exactly right, immediately seeks medical care and is told . sorry, you're not quite sick enough to get the medicine best able to treat you. Perhaps she should go home and wait while the cancer cells invade her body, then come back later and hope she qualifies. Welcome to Ontario, where we value early warning so long as it's not too early. You really gotta straddle a fine line with these life-threatening diseases, ya know.
For most of us, the absurdities of state-monopoly health-care usually mean inconvenience, delays and sometimes, added pain. For Anzarut, the cold inefficiencies of a ration-based system could cost her far more. But all is not yet lost, there is a review panel that can examine her case and grant an exemption. God knows if there was ever a case warranting an exemption, she's it. If so, that will be good news not only for Anzarut, but the 100 or so women estimated to find themselves in a similar situation every year.
Some Ontario patients have been able to access Herceptin because they're lucky enough to have some coverage under a private insurance plan. If the only way to survive in the public health-care system is to come packing private insurance, is that not a sign that the public system isn't working?
SOURCE
*************************
Maine Gov. Paul LePage
Our new Maine Gov. Paul LePage is making New Jersey 's Chris Christie look like a wimp. He isn't afraid to say what he thinks. And, judging by the comments I hear at the cigar shop and other non-political gathering places, every time he opens his mouth his popularity goes up.
He brought down the house at his inauguration when he shook his fist toward the media box and said, "You're on notice! I've inherited a financially-troubled state to run. Observe...cover...but don't whine if I don't waste time responding to your every whim for your amusement."
During the campaign he was talking to commercial fishermen who are struggling because of federal fisheries rules. They complained that President Obama brought his family to Bar Harbar & Acadia National Park for a long Labor Day holiday, found time to meet with union leaders but wouldn't talk to them. LePage replied, "I'd tell him to go to hell and get out of my state." Media crucified him but he jumped 6 points in the pre-election poll!
The Martin Luther King incident was a political sandbag which got national exposure. Media crucified him but word on the street is very positive.
The NAACP specifically asked him to spend MLK Day visiting black inmates at the Maine State Prison. He replied if he visited the prison he would meet all inmates regardless of race.. NAACP balked. They then put out a news release claiming falsely that he refused to participate in any MLK events. He read it in the paper for the first time next morning while be driven to an event and went ballistic (none of the reporters called him for comment before running the NAACP release).
So he arrived at an event and said on TV camera that "...if they want to play the race card on me they can kiss my butt..." and reminded them that he has an adopted black son from Jamiaca and that he attended the local MLK Breakfast every year he was mayor of Waterville (he started his morning there on MLK Day yesterday.)
He then said there's a right way and a wrong way to meet with the governor and he put all special interests on notice that press releases, media leaks and demonstrations are the wrong way. He said any other group which acts like the NAACP can expect to be on the bottom of the governor's priority list!
Then he did this which broke yesterday and, judging from local radio talk show callers, increased his popularity even more:
The state employees union complained because he waited until 3 p.m. before closing state offices and facilities and sending non-emergency personnel home during the last blizzard. The prior governor would often close offices for the day with just a forecast before the first flakes. (Each time the state closes for snow, it costs the taxpayers about $1-million in wages for no work in return.)
LePage was CEO of the Marden's chain of discount family bargain retail stores before election as governor. He noted that state employees getting off work early could still find lots of retail stores open to shop. So, he put the state employees on notice by announcing: "If Marden's is open, Maine is open!"
He told state employees: "We live in Maine in the winter, for heaven's sake, and should know how to drive in it. Otherwise, apply for a state job in Florida !"
Refreshing politician!
SOURCE
**********************
At last: unscripted honesty
THE CURRENT standoff in Wisconsin has put tough-talking Governor Scott Walker in the headlines, but for sheer candor, no one holds a candle to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. For the past year in town hall meetings, interviews, and speeches, Christie has been cheerfully, relentlessly, and brutally honest. People appear to love it. His approval/disapproval rating now stands at 52/37 in a state where Democrats outnumber Christie's fellow Republicans by 700,000. Yet imitators remain few and far between.
During Christie's campaign in 2009, CNN reporters tried to create an awkward moment by asking him about his weight. He earnestly replied, "I've had a weight problem for 30 years, so what?'' When they pushed him to criticize President Obama's visit to New Jersey, he simply noted that, "it's always an honor to be visited by the president of the United States.'' Clearly, the sincerity of these responses confused the pundits at CNN.
At a town hall meeting when a public school teacher suggested that she was worth up to $80,000 per year, Christie made two observations: first, New Jersey, unlike the federal government, cannot print money; and second, she didn't have to teach if she didn't want to. There was no pandering rhetoric about our children, our future, or our values - just simple, honest truth.
About Social Security, Christie says, "We're going to have to raise the retirement age.'' He refers to high-speed rail, electric cars, and universal broadband access as "the candy of American politics,'' which we simply cannot afford until we deal with our budget crisis. And when confronted with a possible government shutdown in New Jersey, he announced that if it happens, "I'm going to order a pizza and watch the Mets.''
This type of candor is exceedingly rare. No one, least of all a politician, enjoys telling someone "no we can't.'' Instead, most people instinctively respond to questions in the most positive way possible, and running for office only makes the problem worse. Beyond this desire to appease lies the fact that confrontation also takes more work. Refuting someone else's argument or point of view requires facts, reasoning, and analysis. By contrast, nodding in sympathetic agreement saves time and energy, and eliminates the need to think.
Last week's release of a Government Accountability Office report on duplication and overlap in government shows what happens when you try to please all of the people all of the time. We end up with 56 financial literacy programs spread over 20 federal agencies, 80 economic development programs in four departments, and 82 programs for teacher quality - as much as $100 billion spent without any way of measuring the outcome or benefits. The only real antidote to such out-of-control bureaucracy is toughness, oversight, and attention to detail - and the ability to say "no.''
Christie says he's not running for president, and given the consistency of his first year in office, you would be a fool not to take him at his word. But with the federal budget awash in red ink, the timing looks right for a national leader cut from the same cloth. Speaking with CBS's Bob Schieffer last week, Christie again denied national aspirations while offering advice for would-be candidates: "You have to have unscripted moments. [Americans] want unguarded moments - that's when they can really judge your character.'' It was a valuable suggestion from the man who has had more unscripted moments than any other American politician during the past year.
In fact, the history of the New Hampshire primary favors the blunt. Ronald Reagan and John McCain thrived on the retail politics of the Granite State, where a candidate can be asked any question, by any voter, at any moment. In the same vein, both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were viewed as plainspoken outsiders when they made a name for themselves in New Hampshire on the way to the White House. All of these candidates were comfortable in the unpredictable, unscripted moments of the campaign, and earned a reputation for candor. They were willing to give voters an unvarnished look at themselves, and reveal their character in the process.
Do Americans really want brutal honesty in a president today? Perhaps Reagan best carried the "tough love'' approach into office. He fired the air traffic controllers, cut domestic spending, reformed the tax code, and, in 1983, signed the last major overhaul of Social Security. Last month, a Pew poll identified Reagan as the most respected president of the 20th century. It may be difficult to emulate, but it appears to be a recipe for success.
Meanwhile back in Washington, Harry Reid refuses to even discuss Social Security as part of budget negotiations. On the national scene, Republican presidential contenders are spending an awful lot of time selling books and producing TV shows. We've seen a lot of tough talk during the past few weeks, but frankly, most of it feels scripted. Even more to the point, the idea of ordering pizza and watching the Mets during a government shutdown seems to be the last thing on anyone's mind.
SOURCE
************************
ELSEWHERE
Leftist hypocrites felled by a camera. First ACORN, now NPR: "NPR's CEO and president, Vivian Schiller, has resigned, the radio broadcaster announced Wednesday, following an undercover sting in which an executive was videotaped describing Tea Party members as 'racist.' On Tuesday, Schiller condemned the comments by Ron Schiller (no relation), which were caught on camera by political activist James O'Keefe of 'Project Veritas.' But a statement by the chairman of NPR's board of directors, Dave Edwards, said the board had accepted Vivian Schiller's resignation 'with deep regret.'" [Leftism is one big fraud that can't stand the light of day]
TN: Healthcare opt-out bill goes to governor: "A proposal that would allow Tennesseans to opt out of the federal health-care law is headed to the governor for his consideration after passing the Republican-controlled House 70-27 Monday on a party-line vote. The companion to the 'Health Freedom Act' also passed the Senate 21-10 on a party-line vote last month. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam is expected to review the proposal when it reaches his desk. Republican House sponsor Terri Lynn Weaver of Lancaster said the legislation doesn't argue for or against the federal law, but just gives Tennesseans a choice."
How times have changed! A Chinese frigate in the Mediterranean: "Late last week, the geostrategic implications of the still-unfolding crisis in the Middle East began to reveal themselves, as China positioned the advanced missile frigate Xuzhou off the eastern coast of Libya - the country's first deployment in the Mediterranean. The ship, and the special forces personnel it carried, were there to make sure that the estimated 30,000 Chinese workers in Libya were safely evacuated, in the face of a rash of attacks on Beijing-owned oil facilities."
Anti-democratic Democrats trumped: "The leader of Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate says his caucus will return to the state, but he won't say when. Senate Democrats fled the state nearly three weeks ago to block a vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's plan to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights. But Senate Republicans used a procedural move on Wednesday to pass the proposal without the Democrats present. The floor session lasted just minutes, and the state Assembly is scheduled to take up the measure on Thursday morning. That's the last step before it can go to Walker for his signature.
ID: Bill limits teachers' bargaining powers: "A far-reaching bill that removes most of Idaho teachers' existing collective bargaining rights passed the Idaho House on Tuesday, sending the measure to the governor's desk and marking a big win for state schools Superintendent Tom Luna, who proposed the plan. Luna hailed the move, calling it 'a great step forward,' while Idaho's teachers union, the Idaho Education Association, declared a 'Day of Action' with after-school rallies across the state today to protest."
Why we need an asteroid strike: "See, societies are like people in that they get old, clot, lose flexibility, and then croak. They can't get better. Like most things, they just get worse. A rule of thermodynamics says that rivers don't flow backwards, plaque does not voluntarily leave arteries, and governments do not become more reasonable, efficient, or interested in the well-being of their populations."
A little understanding goes a long way: "As the world confronts one of the most critical periods of economic upheaval that it has ever seen, it is clear that our most influential economic stewards have absolutely no idea what they are doing. But, like kids with a new chemistry set, they are nevertheless unwilling to let that stand in the way of their experimental fun. As they pour an ever-growing number of volatile ingredients into their test tubes, we can either hope that they magically stumble on the secret formula to cure the world's ills, or more pragmatically, we can try to prepare for the explosion that is likely to result."
Why ObamaCare mandate penalty can't be a tax: "Within a year or two, the Supreme Court probably will decide whether the new federal mandate to purchase a particular type of health insurance is authorized by Congress' constitutional power to 'regulate Commerce ... among the several States.' If the Obama administration cannot convince the court that the commerce clause allows Congress to force people to engage in commerce, the administration has a backup argument: The mandate is separately authorized by Congress' constitutional power to tax. If this argument succeeds, the constitutional system of a federal government of limited, enumerated powers will, for all practical purposes, come to an end."
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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