Individualists least likely to offer bribes
Bribery is condemned in most cultures; but it is more common in some countries than in others. Is poverty, political instability, or lax regulation to blame? A new study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests a surprising contributor: Collectivism—a culture that downplays individual self-determination and stresses interdependence and shared responsibility.
“Collectivism may promote bribery by diffusing responsibility,” says Professor Nina Mazar, who conducted the study with Professor Pankaj Aggarwal, also at the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management. Collectivism may allow individuals to sidestep their personal morality and do business in ways they know to be wrong.
To test this hypothesis, the authors conducted both a cross-national study and a lab experiment.
The cross-national study looked at 21 of the world’s most economically influential countries for correlations between collectivism and bribery in international business. Collectivism was rated using an established international survey of some 17,000 corporate managers, who rated the “degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations or families” in their countries. Another instrument tallied national rates of bribery by asking executives how often firms from various foreign countries offered illicit incentives when doing business in the executives’ countries. The researchers factored in the nations’ wealth as well as the extent to which they valued prosocial and ethical considerations.
The findings: The poorer and more collectivist a country, the more likely it was to turn to bribery. Controlling for wealth and also for moral standards, collectivism still correlated “fairly strongly” with the willingness to offer payments under the table.
To test causal relationships, not just correlations, the researchers conducted a laboratory experiment. In it, 140 business students were divided into two groups and primed with either an individualist or collectivist mindset using well-established manipulations.
Then participants were asked to assume the role of a sales agent competing against two other firms for a contract with an international buyer, and a commission. Would they bribe the buyer? Having answered that question, they rated the degree of responsibility they felt for their actions, their desire for the contract, inappropriateness of the bribe, likelihood the competitors would bribe or that a bribe would win the contract. Finally, participants were tested for mood and arousal.
As expected, the collectivists felt less personally accountable and more prone to grease the buyer’s palm. Collectivist mindset affected neither mood, moral judgment, assessment of a bribe’s effectiveness, motivation, nor any other factor.
Even when the choice to bribe or not was directly assessed — in a second experiment with 47 participants—the collectivist group felt less personal responsibility.
The study suggests that the motivations for corrupt business practices may be viewed too narrowly. Bribery is “not just about the economic costs or benefits, says Mazar. “‘Soft factors’ like cultural values might be quite important.” If we can understand them, “we may be able to design more effective and efficient measures of prevention.”
SOURCE
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Europe slides further into economic darkness
Some people are never going to get back the money they lent to spendthrift Southern European countries
Tim Hughes
IF YOU count all 27 members of the European Union together as one economic unit, then Europe is the world's largest economy.
In short, Europe is incredibly important to the world economy, and also in unbelievably severe financial difficulty.
Europe's financial system is held together by nothing more than temporary Band-Aids. And the only solution that anyone seems to have is to apply even more dressings to the wounds without treating the systemic failures at the root of the disease.
I have spent the past week talking to European pension funds, investment managers and economic experts. It has been a sobering experience of hope without foundations, of faith without real belief, and of despair without solutions.
The few things that everyone agrees on are that: the problem is very serious; that it would be economic suicide for any member of the Euro zone to seek to exit the Euro; and that much of the huge debt accumulated by some southern European countries can never be repaid.
Countries such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal have basically passed the point of no return on their public debt. The sheer interest bill on the debt is so large that it can only be paid by borrowing more. In other words, without default they face a spiral into the financial abyss.
The problem here is that any default would have an almost fatal impact on the German and French banks who own much of the debt.
But the only Europeans with the financial resources to bail out the big debtors are Germany and France.
So far not a single Euro of German or French money has actually gone to the failed nations. Rather all of the support is in the form of paper guarantees on new borrowings.
The reality here is that taxpayer anger at the thought of bailing out profligate, indolent, undisciplined southern Europeans is absolutely enormous. An actual bailout would spell absolute electoral disaster for any government that did it.
The only other option for the debtors appears to be to leave the Euro and suffer a massive devaluation of their new currencies. But with their debt all in Euros, this would increase their actual debt burden and make default inescapable.
SOURCE
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Kill Crony Capitalism
Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, was recently appointed by President Obama to chair the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. So it was no surprise when Immelt published a column in the Washington Post in which he applauded Obama for completing a free-trade agreement with South Korea – leaving completely unmentioned the fact that the agreement was actually negotiated five years ago, and was approved by Obama and Congressional Democrats only after it was changed to include costly giveaways to their union buddies.
Immelt somehow also failed to write about the thousands of American jobs lost purely because Obama and his Democratic posse have failed to affirm similar agreements with Panama and Colombia. This whole episode just illustrates how Big Business is beholden to Big Government, and why ”Crony Capitalism,” a huge tax on the vast majority of Americans, has got to be eliminated ASAP.
The left likes to attack Crony Capitalism because they only see it as the underhanded machinations of Big Business, Big Oil, or some other imagined Big. While these are indeed valid observations – even a stopped clock is right twice a day – Crony Capitalism comes in many forms and is a surefire sign of government run amok, which is why Republicans, prompted by the Tea Party, have begun to focus on the issue.
There are, regrettably, many styles of Crony Capitalism, each of which saps the federal government, states and municipal governments, as well as every taxpayer along for the ride:
Big Business – The sheer size of the federal government makes it conducive to large entities or consortiums sucking the life out of it for their own purposes. 80% of agriculture subsidies go to large agri-businesses. Big Steel was protected from competition for years. Billions were poured into the auto industry, much of which we’ll never get back. Insurance companies receive special dispensation in the tax code to enhance their profits. And, of course, there’s the AARP, whose Medi-Gap coverage was granted a waiver by Obama – conveniently placing every one of their competitors at a substantial disadvantage. These businesses are either feeding at the trough of government or manipulating regulation for their own devious purposes, and it’s why almost half of the political donations from large businesses go to liberal Democrats.
Big Business also uses its muscle to influence public policy. Walmart – along with the major drug companies – sold us out on the health care bill to get a competitive advantage. Now Wal-mart is teaming up with the government to coerce Amazon into collecting sales taxes for interstate sales – every dime of which will come out of our pockets. In both cases, Big Business is actively working to expand Big Government – and always at the cost of the little guy.
Walmart moves into a new market area and there are major protests. The protests are not because Walmart has tremendous advantage over local retailers with confronting government regulations such as OSHA. Although the argument centers on the ability of small retailers to survive with Walmart as a competitor, the campaign to stop the big box retailer is funded by Big Unions and other Big Businesses such as Safeway and Costco who hire those unionized workers. These entities use Crony Capitalism to achieve their goals to protect their own interests.
Business Licenses – We often complain about government intervention in our lives, but then we run to the government, usually at the State level, to protect our businesses from competition. The expansion of unwarranted licensing requirements is completely out of control, and just drives up the cost of government and the related licensed services.
No one will ever dispute that certain professions need to be licensed. From my standpoint as a CPA, I believe that it’s actually good that the Feds have stepped in to demand minimal testing for tax preparers – a requirement instituted in response to multiple instances of charlatans using the tax preparer role to defraud the government through the abuse of refundable credits.
Yet the list of “professions” lining up in state capitals to protect themselves under the guise of protecting the public boggles the mind. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal identified cat groomers, music therapists (whatever that is), tattoo “artists,” and tree trimmers as examples of “professionals” attempting to enhance their own revenue through Crony Capitalism. In New York State, you need a license to be an interior decorator. To be fair, some of the houses I’ve seen there clearly warrant criminal charges against their designers, but a license? Thankfully, there are no licenses required for movie makers, because most of Hollywood would be in Leavenworth.
These ridiculous requests by private citizens to have government safeguard them and protect their income are no less offensive than the policy and regulatory manipulations by big businesses.
Government Workers – Yes, this is also Crony Capitalism and it’s no better – and often much worse – than the categories above.
Many government workers are members of unions, which extract excessive dues through payroll deductions. The union then uses those dues to elect council members, school board members and state representatives who are beholden to them. The elected officials then rubber stamp their benefactors’ salary and benefit requests. If this isn’t Crony Capitalism, then I don’t know what would qualify as such.
The common thread here is that Crony Capitalism is a symptom of too much government. Business owners are often forced to make a tough decision: do I stay true to my free-market convictions, or do I play the game. Sadly, too many executives – like Jeffery Immelt – become whores to government and sell their principles for short-term benefits. Is there any surprise that GE announced it made over $14 billion in 2010 and made no American taxes? Unfortunately, those short-term benefits turn into long-term losses of freedom that may never be regained, and for which we all pay a very steep price.
SOURCE
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You Can Slaughter Christians, But You Can't Burn a Koran
After Pastor Terry Jones, Yosemite Sam’s cousin from Light-A-Fart Fellowship in Shag-Your-Cousin, Florida, fired up a Koran, the Muslim community of Afghanistan responded by lovingly praying for their enemy and asking to meet with Rev. Fuego for an interfaith pow-wow over a peach cobbler at the Ground Zero Mosque.
What’s that, you say? The Muslims didn’t turn the other cheek? I’m misinformed? The Afghani Muslims instead started killing people … as in, a lot of their own people? Well, hell, that ain’t right. I thought Islam was a religion of peace and that opium was a sedative!
I know, maybe it was just a few rogue adherents who acted, how would Obama say, unbecomingly. Yeah, that’s it. Yep, if we’re to believe the media it was probably just a few misguided congregants (with scimitars, of course) who went a tad too far and … uh … um, beheaded some folks.
That’s kind of like how the well-meaning ACORN employees overstepped boundaries and accidentally aided and abetted illegal home loans for whorehouses running 13-year-old sex slaves from El Salvador, or the other ACORNers who have now pleaded guilty to massive voter fraud in the 2008 presidential election. It was what we call in the south a “whoopsy-daisy.”
According to the main stream media, when dealing with Islam and the likes of ACORN (who I’ve heard changed their name to FCORN) we must remember the immortal words of Donny Osmond: When they do commit a misstep, “One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl.” Indeed, when Muslims decapitate their own people because Mark Twain lit his still with a Koran, it doesn’t mean that Muslims endorse or allow that kind of behavior. At least that’s what CAIR and Eric Holder tell us to believe. Anyway …
General David Petraeus, faithfully serving his Commander-in-Chief in Afghanistan, trotted out and condemned Minister Match’s actions this past week after the Afghani Muslims found out, via Karzai, what Pastor Pyro had done and thus took understandable kinetic action after their book was barbequed. What was strangely missing from Petraeus’ rebuke was the good General’s denunciation of Karzai for inciting the flammable of this quaint faith and the murder of a couple dozen innocent U.N. workers and many Muslims. Hello. I’d say, not to be unkind, that on the grand scale of things, killing people is more damnable than roasting a special paperback book.
I had a guy ask me the other day after this incident while I was shopping at Victoria’s Secret, “How would you feel if someone burned a Bible?” And I was like, “Dude, I’m trying to choose between getting my wife the lace-panel bustier versus the point d'esprit apron baby doll, and you’re fouling up my mojo decision-making process with your book burning questions.” I quickly realized I was being intemperate and told him I really wouldn’t care if they burned a Christian Bible or not. That’s between them and God, and they better hope that God thinks that’s hilarious because I hear His paybacks suck.
That said, I told my friend that I’m more concerned about the unreported, virtually uncondemned mass slaughter of Christians in Iraq—at the hands of Muslims—and the thousand or so who were slaughtered just this week on the Ivory Coast of Africa and the fact that they had nada to do with TJ flash grillin’ Mohammed’s bestseller. It’s just how Islam rolls when it comes to interfacing with other faiths; they kill them or oppress them, and thus it seems (at least to stupid ol’ me) a wee bit of an imbalance to sharply denounce uncle Jed’s cousin for morphing Allah’s book into ashes and not vehemently denouncing, in the strongest of terms and with deadly action, Muslims who are killing Christians worldwide.
SOURCE
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Sunday, April 10, 2011
Abuse as a response to threat
As most conservative bloggers can attest, the comments we get on our blogs or via email from Leftists consist almost entirely of a tirade of abuse. I have always thought that the abuse is a sign of a hostile or hating character but perhaps I have underestimated their awareness of their own situation. They know that the facts and logic are against them but cannot let go of their beliefs so rage is their only possible response.
I am moved to that thought by a comment put up in response to my recent post "Is God a racist"?. In the post I addressed once again the contentious question: "Who is a Jew?". The title would, however, I hope, alert anybody to the fact that I was offering a not-very-serious tease. And, to make sure I was not misunderstood, I stated that at the foot of the piece.
Most of the comments I got about it conceded that the piece was thought-provoking but that is all. In one of the places where I posted it, however, I got the following enraged response which consisted of nothing but extended abuse. It said in effect: "I know more than you do so you are wrong" A less persuasive argument would be hard to imagine:
That is of course exactly the sort of non-argument one would expect of a Leftist. He says nothing to support his assertion that he knows more and gives no detail about where my post might be mistaken. It is pure assertion.
And it is not even good assertion. He asserts that I bypass the original languages of the Bible when in fact I specifically refer to the original Hebrew in discussing the divine name. Readers of my scripture blog will know that I pay great attention to the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible -- though I must confess that I am more at ease with Greek than I am with Hebrew.
So who wrote such a sad effusion? A conservative Jew who uses the rather Portuguese-sounding nickname of "dahozho" [dahozho@yahoo.com] but whose real name is the very Irish-sounding J. Kelley.
My arguments obviously threatened him to the point where he was unable to give an intellectual reply. Why? From the name, I would guess that he is a Jewish convert. Real Jews have a perspective going back a long way so keep their cool with relative ease.
So the polemical incompetence of Mr Kelley suggests to me that maybe Leftists too know that they are on shaky ground when they respond to challenges with abuse.
Update:
Mr Kelley has now replied to the above -- simply repeating his contempt for gentiles who think they can understand the Bible without Jewish theology to guide them!
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You're kidding, right?
With due respect, I think those who are praising the budget deal are deluding themselves. Under circumstances where we are trillions of dollars in debt, the GOP just caved on its promise to cut the relative pittance of $61 billion in spending because it's just not worth fighting for more than the half-pittance of $40 billion Democrats claimed was their drop-dead number. "Drop dead" meant daring Republicans to shut the government down (which, as we know, doesn't actually shut the government down). The Republicans blinked.
For me, this is no surprise - as I've said several times (see, e.g., here and here), I don't think they're serious. But I want to make a point about how strange this praise of Boehner & Co. is. A mere four months ago, the big controversy in conservative and Republican circles was whether the GOP had reneged on their vaunted pledge to cut $100B in spending in the current fiscal year because they had seemingly come down to $61B. As I noted at the time, there was no question that, if you looked at the fine print of the pledge, the commitment was $61B - but that if you looked at reality, both $61B and $100B were laughably unserious. No matter. Folks around here pooh-poohed my criticism and insisted that a $61B pledge was a sober first step, showing real fortitude about getting our fiscal house in order.
So now they've stopped short, significantly short, of that purportedly serious step, and the reaction is, "We won!" You've got to be kidding me. The only thing Boehner won is future assurance that GOP leadership can safely promise the moon but then settle for crums because their rah-rah corner will spin any paltry accomplishment, no matter how empty it shows the promise to have been, as a tremendous victory.
And what's the rationale for settling? Why, that these numbers are so piddling - that the $21 billion difference is so meaningless in the context of $14 trillion - that it's best just to settle, make believe the promise was never made, make believe we didn't flinch, and put this episode behind us so we can begin the "real work" of the next promise, the Ryan Plan.
Regarding that plan, you're to believe that the captains courageous who caved on $21 billion - and who got elected because of Obamacare but don't even want to discuss holding out for a cancellation of $105 billion in Obamacare funding - are somehow going to fight to the death for $6 trillion in cuts. Right.
I look forward to next year, though, when the commentariat will no doubt be swooning over the just announced Ryan Plan 2.0. That will be an even more fantabulous, intellectually serious proposal to cut, oh, say $12 trillion (of course, if promises don't mean anything, why stop at 12?). By then, the same pundits will be warning that the Republicans must not shut down the government to hold out for Ryan 1.0?s trifling $6 trillion. After all, we'll have the real serious business of Ryan 2.0 to attend to, and the Obama Democrats will be offering to meet Boehner halfway with a swell, good faith counter-offer of $27.50 in spending cuts.
$27.50? Why, of course. Why should Democrats go to $30, or $30,000, or $30 billion? After all, when you're swimming in a multi-trillion dollar sea of red ink, you'll always be able to say it's all chump change, not worth squabbling over. And when the GOP is always promising to fight next time, it will seem so rightwing whack-jobby of us to demand that they fight this time.
So three cheers for the GOP's steely resolve in achieving a whopping $40 billion in spending cuts. Better yet, ten cheers: one for each of the ten days it will take Leviathan to borrow more than this budget deal cuts.
SOURCE
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The Price of Government Employees
One of the world's more pressing problems is sovereign debt. From Japan to Greece to America, the debts run up by governments are forcing painful choices. But some think we needn't make hard choices. They think things can go on as before and that government can take on even more debt and start up even more public programs. Some are unwilling to make any sacrifices; they don't want to give up anything.
In America as in Europe, those most averse to change are government employees. The evidence for this has been seen recently in states trying to get control of their deficits. Wisconsin is the prime example, where protesting government employees, teachers, students, unionists, and a few anarchists occupied the state Capitol for weeks.
The big issue for state employees in Wisconsin was the loss of collective bargaining. Wisconsin needed to scale back collective bargaining so that it can control runaway benefit costs and so that bad employees can be fired without incurring huge legal bills. States wanting to cut their deficits must address spending; they can't just raise taxes, as residents and businesses will decamp for other states.
To see what the states are up against, watch the video of filmmaker Michael Moore on March 5 in Madison, where he delivered a speech (transcript) to thousands of protesters, inflaming their passions and class resentments, telling them that America is "awash" in cash -- "It's just that it's not in your hands."
The cost of personnel is one of the biggest expenses for a state (or for any enterprise). If a state can't control what it pays for employees, it's unlikely to get control of its budget. In his April 1 article "We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers" for The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore relates that the annual cost of employees to state and local governments is $1 trillion, almost half their budgets. Here's more Moore:
The mushrooming number of government employees isn't the only problem, however; government employees have higher average compensation than private sector workers. Some contend that this is false. But a recent study from The Heritage Foundation by Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs confirms it. And on April 4 in a related article at NRO, they write:
The dollar impact of employee costs on government deficits isn't the only issue -- there's the issue of equity:
Borrowing money to pay for current government spending involves deferred taxation. And when elected officials make contracts with unions to pay for open-ended pensions and benefits, they are again kicking taxation off to the future. The problem is that one of the parties to these decisions -- the party that will fulfill such government promises -- was not represented: the future taxpayer. So deficit spending and open-ended benefits for government employees are a form of "taxation without representation."
In postponing taxation, politicians make a claim on the earnings of the future taxpayer for the purpose of handing out free goodies to the current taxpayer. Government contracts with government employees should only extend for the term of those officials approving such contracts, or two years. The next electorate may vote in officials who wouldn't sign such agreements. This is why "defined benefit" pensions have got to go. Such pensions are neither fair for the future taxpayer nor for the public employees who may lose their pensions. Better to own your pension than to rely on the willingness of future taxpayers to fulfill promises to which they didn't agree. Better to take the money and run.
If it is true that no Congress can bind a future Congress, then how can any Congress bind a future electorate or the future taxpayer? For that matter, how binding is any contract made for someone who didn't agree to it? Not even Congress should presume to sign agreements that others must fulfill -- except for the voters that gave them power.
If current taxpayers are unwilling to pay the price for current government, then scale back current spending. But don't make future generations into tax slaves.
Change may be OK for the rest of America, but not for government employees. They don't appreciate the gravity of the sovereign debt crisis, or that bankruptcy looms, or that ruin is at hand. If money is short, that's your problem.
So as The Judge so elegantly puts it on Freedom Watch: "Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?"
SOURCE
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Creepy Moonbats Apologize on Behalf of Men
It's a mystery why moonbats feel guilty about the sinfulness of masculinity. That's the one area where they are innocent.
Careful - it can be dangerous to laugh and throw up at the same time:
If you managed to sit through that, you now understand why moonbattery isn't something to be reasoned with - it is something to be eradicated, like a horrifically repulsive fungus.
SOURCE
I don't think any normal woman would have anything much to do with those guys either - JR
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You think tea partiers use crazy rhetoric?
Think Tea Partiers are crazy? They've got nothing on Democratic members of Congress defending federal abortion subsidies.
If you wonder why the traditional media ignored the rally for abortion on the National Mall yesterday, here's your answer:
Her ridiculous reference to the Nazis follows in the linked article from CNS News.
SOURCE
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Another Obama deception
Or is he just dumb?
President Obama talks about respecting science. He doesn't respect it so well when he says things like this:
Obama is conflating two very different ratios here. One represents the amount of oil we use as a share of what the world uses; the other has to do with proven reserves. Obama's sleight of hand is to use the two interchangeably, and he's just wrong to do so.
By using faulty math, Obama implies that we produce less than 20 percent of the oil we use. In fact, the number is 49 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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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As most conservative bloggers can attest, the comments we get on our blogs or via email from Leftists consist almost entirely of a tirade of abuse. I have always thought that the abuse is a sign of a hostile or hating character but perhaps I have underestimated their awareness of their own situation. They know that the facts and logic are against them but cannot let go of their beliefs so rage is their only possible response.
I am moved to that thought by a comment put up in response to my recent post "Is God a racist"?. In the post I addressed once again the contentious question: "Who is a Jew?". The title would, however, I hope, alert anybody to the fact that I was offering a not-very-serious tease. And, to make sure I was not misunderstood, I stated that at the foot of the piece.
Most of the comments I got about it conceded that the piece was thought-provoking but that is all. In one of the places where I posted it, however, I got the following enraged response which consisted of nothing but extended abuse. It said in effect: "I know more than you do so you are wrong" A less persuasive argument would be hard to imagine:
I'm not sure how you got this bee in your bonnet or why this is on an anti-ACLU blog.
You are not dealing with Torah in the original Hebrew or the accompanying Oral Law. There is SO much you don't know about or understand, and are filtering through your X-tian (albeit now atheist) viewpoint. Your sources are from the original via Greek, via Latin, and then into English. You lose a *lot*-- and you don't even know what you don't have. Each of those translations had its own agenda and is probelmatic when compared with the original-- why don't you discuss that?
Give it a rest. Go ahead & do this to the stuff of your tradition (X-tian). You have no idea your lack of foundation to be able to discuss Torah, and you do indeed come off as an anti-semite, despite your rationalizations and protestations.
That is of course exactly the sort of non-argument one would expect of a Leftist. He says nothing to support his assertion that he knows more and gives no detail about where my post might be mistaken. It is pure assertion.
And it is not even good assertion. He asserts that I bypass the original languages of the Bible when in fact I specifically refer to the original Hebrew in discussing the divine name. Readers of my scripture blog will know that I pay great attention to the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible -- though I must confess that I am more at ease with Greek than I am with Hebrew.
So who wrote such a sad effusion? A conservative Jew who uses the rather Portuguese-sounding nickname of "dahozho" [dahozho@yahoo.com] but whose real name is the very Irish-sounding J. Kelley.
My arguments obviously threatened him to the point where he was unable to give an intellectual reply. Why? From the name, I would guess that he is a Jewish convert. Real Jews have a perspective going back a long way so keep their cool with relative ease.
So the polemical incompetence of Mr Kelley suggests to me that maybe Leftists too know that they are on shaky ground when they respond to challenges with abuse.
Update:
Mr Kelley has now replied to the above -- simply repeating his contempt for gentiles who think they can understand the Bible without Jewish theology to guide them!
********************
You're kidding, right?
With due respect, I think those who are praising the budget deal are deluding themselves. Under circumstances where we are trillions of dollars in debt, the GOP just caved on its promise to cut the relative pittance of $61 billion in spending because it's just not worth fighting for more than the half-pittance of $40 billion Democrats claimed was their drop-dead number. "Drop dead" meant daring Republicans to shut the government down (which, as we know, doesn't actually shut the government down). The Republicans blinked.
For me, this is no surprise - as I've said several times (see, e.g., here and here), I don't think they're serious. But I want to make a point about how strange this praise of Boehner & Co. is. A mere four months ago, the big controversy in conservative and Republican circles was whether the GOP had reneged on their vaunted pledge to cut $100B in spending in the current fiscal year because they had seemingly come down to $61B. As I noted at the time, there was no question that, if you looked at the fine print of the pledge, the commitment was $61B - but that if you looked at reality, both $61B and $100B were laughably unserious. No matter. Folks around here pooh-poohed my criticism and insisted that a $61B pledge was a sober first step, showing real fortitude about getting our fiscal house in order.
So now they've stopped short, significantly short, of that purportedly serious step, and the reaction is, "We won!" You've got to be kidding me. The only thing Boehner won is future assurance that GOP leadership can safely promise the moon but then settle for crums because their rah-rah corner will spin any paltry accomplishment, no matter how empty it shows the promise to have been, as a tremendous victory.
And what's the rationale for settling? Why, that these numbers are so piddling - that the $21 billion difference is so meaningless in the context of $14 trillion - that it's best just to settle, make believe the promise was never made, make believe we didn't flinch, and put this episode behind us so we can begin the "real work" of the next promise, the Ryan Plan.
Regarding that plan, you're to believe that the captains courageous who caved on $21 billion - and who got elected because of Obamacare but don't even want to discuss holding out for a cancellation of $105 billion in Obamacare funding - are somehow going to fight to the death for $6 trillion in cuts. Right.
I look forward to next year, though, when the commentariat will no doubt be swooning over the just announced Ryan Plan 2.0. That will be an even more fantabulous, intellectually serious proposal to cut, oh, say $12 trillion (of course, if promises don't mean anything, why stop at 12?). By then, the same pundits will be warning that the Republicans must not shut down the government to hold out for Ryan 1.0?s trifling $6 trillion. After all, we'll have the real serious business of Ryan 2.0 to attend to, and the Obama Democrats will be offering to meet Boehner halfway with a swell, good faith counter-offer of $27.50 in spending cuts.
$27.50? Why, of course. Why should Democrats go to $30, or $30,000, or $30 billion? After all, when you're swimming in a multi-trillion dollar sea of red ink, you'll always be able to say it's all chump change, not worth squabbling over. And when the GOP is always promising to fight next time, it will seem so rightwing whack-jobby of us to demand that they fight this time.
So three cheers for the GOP's steely resolve in achieving a whopping $40 billion in spending cuts. Better yet, ten cheers: one for each of the ten days it will take Leviathan to borrow more than this budget deal cuts.
SOURCE
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The Price of Government Employees
One of the world's more pressing problems is sovereign debt. From Japan to Greece to America, the debts run up by governments are forcing painful choices. But some think we needn't make hard choices. They think things can go on as before and that government can take on even more debt and start up even more public programs. Some are unwilling to make any sacrifices; they don't want to give up anything.
In America as in Europe, those most averse to change are government employees. The evidence for this has been seen recently in states trying to get control of their deficits. Wisconsin is the prime example, where protesting government employees, teachers, students, unionists, and a few anarchists occupied the state Capitol for weeks.
The big issue for state employees in Wisconsin was the loss of collective bargaining. Wisconsin needed to scale back collective bargaining so that it can control runaway benefit costs and so that bad employees can be fired without incurring huge legal bills. States wanting to cut their deficits must address spending; they can't just raise taxes, as residents and businesses will decamp for other states.
To see what the states are up against, watch the video of filmmaker Michael Moore on March 5 in Madison, where he delivered a speech (transcript) to thousands of protesters, inflaming their passions and class resentments, telling them that America is "awash" in cash -- "It's just that it's not in your hands."
The cost of personnel is one of the biggest expenses for a state (or for any enterprise). If a state can't control what it pays for employees, it's unlikely to get control of its budget. In his April 1 article "We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers" for The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore relates that the annual cost of employees to state and local governments is $1 trillion, almost half their budgets. Here's more Moore:
If you want to understand better why so many states -- from New York to Wisconsin to California -- are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.
The mushrooming number of government employees isn't the only problem, however; government employees have higher average compensation than private sector workers. Some contend that this is false. But a recent study from The Heritage Foundation by Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs confirms it. And on April 4 in a related article at NRO, they write:
Sadly, it's easier to put out a dozen poor studies than to get a single analysis right. But many fights on public-sector pay are yet to come in states around the country. Taxpayers and their advocates need to be ready to counter false claims about government pay.
The dollar impact of employee costs on government deficits isn't the only issue -- there's the issue of equity:
Borrowing money to pay for current government spending involves deferred taxation. And when elected officials make contracts with unions to pay for open-ended pensions and benefits, they are again kicking taxation off to the future. The problem is that one of the parties to these decisions -- the party that will fulfill such government promises -- was not represented: the future taxpayer. So deficit spending and open-ended benefits for government employees are a form of "taxation without representation."
In postponing taxation, politicians make a claim on the earnings of the future taxpayer for the purpose of handing out free goodies to the current taxpayer. Government contracts with government employees should only extend for the term of those officials approving such contracts, or two years. The next electorate may vote in officials who wouldn't sign such agreements. This is why "defined benefit" pensions have got to go. Such pensions are neither fair for the future taxpayer nor for the public employees who may lose their pensions. Better to own your pension than to rely on the willingness of future taxpayers to fulfill promises to which they didn't agree. Better to take the money and run.
If it is true that no Congress can bind a future Congress, then how can any Congress bind a future electorate or the future taxpayer? For that matter, how binding is any contract made for someone who didn't agree to it? Not even Congress should presume to sign agreements that others must fulfill -- except for the voters that gave them power.
If current taxpayers are unwilling to pay the price for current government, then scale back current spending. But don't make future generations into tax slaves.
Change may be OK for the rest of America, but not for government employees. They don't appreciate the gravity of the sovereign debt crisis, or that bankruptcy looms, or that ruin is at hand. If money is short, that's your problem.
So as The Judge so elegantly puts it on Freedom Watch: "Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?"
SOURCE
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Creepy Moonbats Apologize on Behalf of Men
It's a mystery why moonbats feel guilty about the sinfulness of masculinity. That's the one area where they are innocent.
Careful - it can be dangerous to laugh and throw up at the same time:
If you managed to sit through that, you now understand why moonbattery isn't something to be reasoned with - it is something to be eradicated, like a horrifically repulsive fungus.
SOURCE
I don't think any normal woman would have anything much to do with those guys either - JR
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You think tea partiers use crazy rhetoric?
Think Tea Partiers are crazy? They've got nothing on Democratic members of Congress defending federal abortion subsidies.
If you wonder why the traditional media ignored the rally for abortion on the National Mall yesterday, here's your answer:
Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said today that the new Republicans elected to the House of Representatives last November came to Congress "to kill women." She also likened Republican efforts to prohibit federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is endangered to actions taken by Nazis.
“This is probably one of the worst times we’ve seen because the numbers of people elected to Congress. I went through this as co-chair of the arts caucus," Slaughter said. "In ’94 people were elected simply to come here to kill the National Endowment for the Arts. Now they’re here to kill women.”
Her ridiculous reference to the Nazis follows in the linked article from CNS News.
SOURCE
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Another Obama deception
Or is he just dumb?
President Obama talks about respecting science. He doesn't respect it so well when he says things like this:
We have about 2, maybe 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves; we use 25 percent of the world’s oil. So think about it. Even if we doubled the amount of oil that we produce, we’d still be short by a factor of five.
Obama is conflating two very different ratios here. One represents the amount of oil we use as a share of what the world uses; the other has to do with proven reserves. Obama's sleight of hand is to use the two interchangeably, and he's just wrong to do so.
By using faulty math, Obama implies that we produce less than 20 percent of the oil we use. In fact, the number is 49 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
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, April 09, 2011
Trump is Right, Obama is Hiding Something Big
Story originating from an anonymous email below. I have no idea how much of it is accurate but I know some is. I am putting it up as a possible motivator for anybody with time to investigate the matter
Incidentally, the 1950s picture here of Obama's mother should remind us that his mother was no normal modest Midwestern girl of the times -- so his genetics are not the best either from his mother's or his philandering father's side. Snopes has done an unusually poor job (even for it) of saying the photo of Mrs Soetoro mentioned above is in fact of someone else but have a look at the lady they think is in the photo. Most unconvincing. Genetics are a powerful determinant of behavior so, although scandalous, the suggestion about Obama's sexuality below is not implausible
As an IRS tax examiner,one of many former federal jobs, I have seen what it appears Barry Soetoro has done, mostly by illegal aliens attempting to acquire a new identity in the U.S and/or criminals looking to acquire a new ID.
Barry, AKA Obama, was lawfully adopted by a foreign national, Lolo Soetoro, and Barry's name was legally changed to "Barry Soetoro". (Barry’s own admission) Barry Soetoro was also made an official legal Indonesian citizen. (again Barry’s own admission) The adoption would be noted in Barry's vital statistics record in Hawaii on his original birth certificate...
OR Lolo Soetoro may have always been Barry's legal birth farther. The public does not know for sure at this point who Barry's father really was and Barry himself may not know.
Barry was raised as a Muslim in Indonesia and attended a Catholic funded school that permitted all faiths to attend.
Barry's mother dropped him as a dependant for some reason, maybe even when Barry was adopted by Lolo Soetoro. His mother's passport records dropped Barry as a dependent indicating Barry was no longer a legal dependent of his mothers. (The passport records of his mother have been produced showing Barry was no longer a dependent when Barry was permanently residing in Indonesia.) Barry went to Hawaii to live with his alleged grand parents after Lolo Soetoro and Barry's mother divorced.
A "certificate of live birth" can have names changed on it including a child's birth name, and birth parent’s names. Even a modified date of birth can be on a "certificate of live birth". This occurs frequently for adopted children where the birth parent does not want the child to know who they are. The public has no idea who Barry’s real birth father is or who Barry’s real birth mother is. (Barry could have been adopted by his mother) The original birth certificate is the only legal vital statistics record of a person’s birth parents, birth location, birth date, etc… I can get a “certificate of live birth” for a dead person; I cannot get a birth certificate of a dead person without “Deceased” on it. (I’ve tried)
There is no evidence Barry Soetoro ever lawfully changed his name to “Barrack Hussein Obama”. There is no proof Barry Soetoro was born with the name "Barrack Hussein Obama". I’m willing to bet the name “Barrack Hussein Obama” is not present on the real birth certificate as Barry’s birth name or as Barry’s birth father. I have pictures of me with my mother and Jimmy Buffet… that doesn’t make him my father even if I start using the name Jimmy Buffet.
The public knows Barry Soetoro finished high school in Hawaii as Barry Soetoro and attended Occidental as Barry Soetoro where he did drugs and flunked out of school. After dropping out of Occidental, Barry showed up in New York, homeless and on drugs. (Barry’s own admission) Barry then hooked up with a Pakistani to live with and traveled back to Indonesia on his new boyfriend’s dime to renew his Indonesian passport and traveled to Pakistan with him.
Ask any law enforcement officer in a large city or detective and they will tell you homeless young men on drugs in large cities usually end up as male prostitutes. Barry ended up as a world traveler with a degree… (Not likely)
Barry Soetoro returned to New York from Pakistan and began using the fictitious name “Obama” for some reason. (again Barry Soetoro’s own admission) One could only suspect that a person addicted to drugs returning from Pakistan to New York, the main route for Afghan heroin into the U.S., maybe Barry had a reason to start using a new name. There are literally over 1 million open warrants on file in New York… maybe Barry is one of them?....
After spending some time in New York allegedly working under the name “Obama”, It appears Barry used the fictitious name "Barrack Hussein Obama" for the first time to file his federal taxes in Connecticut at a Post Office Box for the purpose of evading paying taxes in New York and /or to establish a new identity. (This is a felony with no statute of limitation.)
When the IRS received Barry Soetoro’s federal tax filing, the IRS could not attach the name Barrack Hussein Obama to the SSI number provided or the address provided. So the IRS assigned the fictitious name "Barrack Hussein Obama" a tax ID number for a person from Connecticut (Where Barry unlawfully filed a federal tax form using a false name). Barry Soetoro began using the tax ID number as his SSI number when using the fictitious name Barrack Obama. This is why Barry Soetoro has a Connecticut SSI number. When I worked for the IRS, I saw this occur more than once and yes, it is a felony to knowingly file a fraudulent federal tax forms. Most of the politicians that cheat on their taxes claim it was an accident. That is how they get away with their tax cheat crimes. Using a fake name is no accident.
It appears Barry fled New York to Chicago using his new identity to get a job . He likely ordered a fake diploma to bolster his new identity as "Obama". Fake Diploma's were very big in the 80's and diploma mills were even being used by federal workers to get promotions. There is evidence his alleged attendance at Columbia was faked (Barry never attended Columbia) and Barry lied his way into Harvard (he had no transcripts to get in)... Including telling the Saudi royal family he was fighting in Afghanistan with the Muslim Jihad against the Russians, so they would help him get into a law school.
The Saudi's apparently loved Barry's story of Jihad in Pakistan/Afghanistan and paid for Barry to attend Harvard under the name "Obama". The Saudi family has admitted to paying for Obama to attend Harvard and gave Harvard a gift of $20 million dollars. Harvard in turn made their special attendy President of the law review a person that never wrote a single law review.... I guess that is what $20 million buys at Harvard.
It is unlikely Barry was a Jihadist and was most likely a drug mule if anything, maybe even a CIA street hire to haul Afghan heroin back to New York, so the Afghans could buy U.S. made stinger missiles with U.S. dollars to shoot down Russian helicopters?... I hired people over seas to do work below my pay grade all the time, even foreign nationals... I think this is the story Barry told the Saudi's, but he was most likely really just a drug mule/dealer and probably still wanted on an outstanding warrant in New York.
Barry’s selective service registration is not normal either.
After I looked at Barry’s selective service filing I noticed it was most likely fraudulent too based on the name he used. Barry did not start using the name "Obama" until he returned from Pakistan (long after he flunked out of school in California) His selective service record (maintained in Chicago coincidentally) shows he registered at a Hawaiian post office as “Obama” in Sept 1980... Problem, Barry was getting high in California at Occidental in Sept 1980 (Barry's own admission) and was not using the fictitious name "Obama" at that time. Barry began using the fictitious name "Obama" only after he returned from Pakistan. The selective service filing is fraudulent.
Barry returned to Chicago and attend a semi-christian radical black church with his first female love Michelle. Barry admits keeping in touch with Phil Boener, who traveled to New York from Occidental to be with Barry and was most likely Barry's first love.
Barry still could not get a real job, because he was still a fraud, even with his Harvard degree in hand he could lie and take the Bar exam, but he could not work as a lawyer for a major law firm without a back ground investigation and he would never pass one. So, Michelle got Barry a job at her law firm. Barry never filed a case alone and never filed a motion. He wrote lost of memos according to the law firm where Barry worked. (I think they know Barry is a fraud and don't want to be sued by previous clients) Barry rescinded his law licenses, so as not to be disbarred for fraud. The Bar knows Barry lied on his application. Michelle also had to turn over her law license for her involvement in corruption with the Chicago mayors office.
SOURCE
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Miserable bureaucrats: The Leftist anti-liberty drive is now everywhere
Who needs the human tapeworms behind these restrictions? St. Louis-Area Girls Told to Close Cookie Stand
Each February and March for the past six years, Caitlin Mills, 16, and Abigail Mills, 14, have put a card table in front of their home in Hazelwood, Mo., and sold Girl Scout cookies to drivers passing by. This year, however, the city of Hazelwood notified their mother, Carolyn Mills, that the girls’ cookie stand violated city ordinances and must be shut down.
Today, according to a news release from Freedom Center of Missouri, the Mills family — but not the Girl Scouts of America as they are not involved in the case — filed suit in state court to ensure that children in Hazelwood and all over the state will be free to set up similar stands in their own front yards.
“It is a time-honored tradition for American children to set up a stand in the front yard and sell lemonade or baked goods to people passing by,” said Dave Roland, Freedom Center of Missouri director of litigation. “These stands are not only a fun way to pass a summer afternoon, they are frequently children’s first encounter with the basics of entrepreneurship, customer service, and money management.”
Notice of the city’s move to shut down the cookie-selling stand came as a surprise to Mrs. Mills. “It never even crossed my mind that my girls might need to get permission from the city before setting up their cookie stand,” she said. “I was even more shocked when city officials told me that you couldn’t even get a permit for it.”
Caitlin Mills was diplomatic about the situation. “We know that our city officials are working hard to make sure that Hazelwood is a nice place to live,” she explained. “But even good city officials sometimes make mistakes. All we are asking is for the court to say it was a mistake for the city to tell us to shut down our cookie stand.”
The implications of this case, however, reach far beyond Hazelwood’s city limits, according to Roland:
For more than a century, American courts adhered to the principle that people could use their property almost any way they saw fit as long as they were not harming anyone else. Despite this general rule, courts allowed governments to use the “police power” to create laws carefully designed to protect the public health, safety, and welfare. Over time, however, courts shifted from the presumption that citizens should be able to make use of their property to a presumption that government should be able to restrict its use. The issue in this case is whether state and local governments still face any constitutional limitations on their ability to control the use of private property.
“Courts have already held that cities can control what citizens can build on their property, where they can build it… even what color they can paint it,” Roland said. “If Hazelwood and other cities can prohibit kids from setting up a harmless, temporary cookie stand in their own front yard, it is hard to say that our constitutions still offer any significant protection for private property rights. The Freedom Center of Missouri hopes to remind the courts that vigorous protection of property rights is vital to the American constitutional system and way of life.”
SOURCE
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Is America Becoming The Land Of The Part-Time Job?
Most Of The Jobs That Are Being Created Are Part-Time Jobs And Some Companies Are Going To A “Part-Time Only Policy”
Do you need a good job? If so, there are millions of other Americans that are just like you. Unfortunately, most of the jobs that are available in America today are either part-time jobs, temp jobs or are "independent contractor" jobs. The "full-time job with benefits" is a dying breed. There are so many desperate unemployed workers in America today that companies don't have to roll out the red carpet anymore. Instead, they can just hire a horde of inexpensive part-timers and temps that they don't have to give any benefits to.
But isn't the employment situation supposed to be getting better? No, it really is not. Yes, the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs in March. However, the truth is that approximately 290,000 part-time jobs were created and about 80,000 full-time jobs were actually lost. This is all part of a long-term trend in America. Good jobs are rapidly disappearing and they are being replaced by low paying service jobs that do not pay a living wage. In many American households today, both parents have multiple jobs. Yet a large percentage of those same households can't even pay the mortgage and are drowning in debt.
Whenever a new government jobs report comes out from now on, try to find out how many of the jobs that were created were actually part-time jobs. Most Americans that only have part-time jobs are living around or below the poverty line. The truth is that it is really hard to get by if you are only making a couple hundred bucks a week.
As mentioned above, the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs last month. The Obama administration and the mainstream media heralded that figure as evidence that the U.S. economy is recovering nicely. But is that really accurate?
Rebel Cole, a professor at DePaul University's Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, says that when you take the time to do a closer examination of the employment numbers they don't look so good....
"If you look deeper in the report, there were 290,000 new part-time workers, which means that there were 80,000 fewer full-time workers, that's not a good sign. Things are getting worse, not getting better."
Unless you are a teen or a college student or a retired person, most likely you would prefer to be working a full-time job. Most people do not actually have the goal of working part-time. Most part-time jobs pay very poorly and offer very few benefits.
Unfortunately, that is why so many big companies like part-time workers and temp workers. There are so many more rules, regulations and laws that pertain to full-time workers.
Hiring a bunch of part-time workers is so much easier and so much cheaper. Without a doubt it is definitely more profitable in most situations.
Today, there are millions of Americans that have part-time jobs that would love to have full-time jobs. In fact, the government says that there are about 8 million Americans that are currently working part-time jobs for "economic reasons"....
Right now America is rapidly losing high paying jobs and they are being replaced by low paying jobs. According to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.
So yes, jobs are being created, but most of them are jobs that none of us would really want under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, times are not normal and millions of desperate people are having to take whatever they can get.
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)
****************************
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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Story originating from an anonymous email below. I have no idea how much of it is accurate but I know some is. I am putting it up as a possible motivator for anybody with time to investigate the matter
Incidentally, the 1950s picture here of Obama's mother should remind us that his mother was no normal modest Midwestern girl of the times -- so his genetics are not the best either from his mother's or his philandering father's side. Snopes has done an unusually poor job (even for it) of saying the photo of Mrs Soetoro mentioned above is in fact of someone else but have a look at the lady they think is in the photo. Most unconvincing. Genetics are a powerful determinant of behavior so, although scandalous, the suggestion about Obama's sexuality below is not implausible
As an IRS tax examiner,one of many former federal jobs, I have seen what it appears Barry Soetoro has done, mostly by illegal aliens attempting to acquire a new identity in the U.S and/or criminals looking to acquire a new ID.
Barry, AKA Obama, was lawfully adopted by a foreign national, Lolo Soetoro, and Barry's name was legally changed to "Barry Soetoro". (Barry’s own admission) Barry Soetoro was also made an official legal Indonesian citizen. (again Barry’s own admission) The adoption would be noted in Barry's vital statistics record in Hawaii on his original birth certificate...
OR Lolo Soetoro may have always been Barry's legal birth farther. The public does not know for sure at this point who Barry's father really was and Barry himself may not know.
Barry was raised as a Muslim in Indonesia and attended a Catholic funded school that permitted all faiths to attend.
Barry's mother dropped him as a dependant for some reason, maybe even when Barry was adopted by Lolo Soetoro. His mother's passport records dropped Barry as a dependent indicating Barry was no longer a legal dependent of his mothers. (The passport records of his mother have been produced showing Barry was no longer a dependent when Barry was permanently residing in Indonesia.) Barry went to Hawaii to live with his alleged grand parents after Lolo Soetoro and Barry's mother divorced.
A "certificate of live birth" can have names changed on it including a child's birth name, and birth parent’s names. Even a modified date of birth can be on a "certificate of live birth". This occurs frequently for adopted children where the birth parent does not want the child to know who they are. The public has no idea who Barry’s real birth father is or who Barry’s real birth mother is. (Barry could have been adopted by his mother) The original birth certificate is the only legal vital statistics record of a person’s birth parents, birth location, birth date, etc… I can get a “certificate of live birth” for a dead person; I cannot get a birth certificate of a dead person without “Deceased” on it. (I’ve tried)
There is no evidence Barry Soetoro ever lawfully changed his name to “Barrack Hussein Obama”. There is no proof Barry Soetoro was born with the name "Barrack Hussein Obama". I’m willing to bet the name “Barrack Hussein Obama” is not present on the real birth certificate as Barry’s birth name or as Barry’s birth father. I have pictures of me with my mother and Jimmy Buffet… that doesn’t make him my father even if I start using the name Jimmy Buffet.
The public knows Barry Soetoro finished high school in Hawaii as Barry Soetoro and attended Occidental as Barry Soetoro where he did drugs and flunked out of school. After dropping out of Occidental, Barry showed up in New York, homeless and on drugs. (Barry’s own admission) Barry then hooked up with a Pakistani to live with and traveled back to Indonesia on his new boyfriend’s dime to renew his Indonesian passport and traveled to Pakistan with him.
Ask any law enforcement officer in a large city or detective and they will tell you homeless young men on drugs in large cities usually end up as male prostitutes. Barry ended up as a world traveler with a degree… (Not likely)
Barry Soetoro returned to New York from Pakistan and began using the fictitious name “Obama” for some reason. (again Barry Soetoro’s own admission) One could only suspect that a person addicted to drugs returning from Pakistan to New York, the main route for Afghan heroin into the U.S., maybe Barry had a reason to start using a new name. There are literally over 1 million open warrants on file in New York… maybe Barry is one of them?....
After spending some time in New York allegedly working under the name “Obama”, It appears Barry used the fictitious name "Barrack Hussein Obama" for the first time to file his federal taxes in Connecticut at a Post Office Box for the purpose of evading paying taxes in New York and /or to establish a new identity. (This is a felony with no statute of limitation.)
When the IRS received Barry Soetoro’s federal tax filing, the IRS could not attach the name Barrack Hussein Obama to the SSI number provided or the address provided. So the IRS assigned the fictitious name "Barrack Hussein Obama" a tax ID number for a person from Connecticut (Where Barry unlawfully filed a federal tax form using a false name). Barry Soetoro began using the tax ID number as his SSI number when using the fictitious name Barrack Obama. This is why Barry Soetoro has a Connecticut SSI number. When I worked for the IRS, I saw this occur more than once and yes, it is a felony to knowingly file a fraudulent federal tax forms. Most of the politicians that cheat on their taxes claim it was an accident. That is how they get away with their tax cheat crimes. Using a fake name is no accident.
It appears Barry fled New York to Chicago using his new identity to get a job . He likely ordered a fake diploma to bolster his new identity as "Obama". Fake Diploma's were very big in the 80's and diploma mills were even being used by federal workers to get promotions. There is evidence his alleged attendance at Columbia was faked (Barry never attended Columbia) and Barry lied his way into Harvard (he had no transcripts to get in)... Including telling the Saudi royal family he was fighting in Afghanistan with the Muslim Jihad against the Russians, so they would help him get into a law school.
The Saudi's apparently loved Barry's story of Jihad in Pakistan/Afghanistan and paid for Barry to attend Harvard under the name "Obama". The Saudi family has admitted to paying for Obama to attend Harvard and gave Harvard a gift of $20 million dollars. Harvard in turn made their special attendy President of the law review a person that never wrote a single law review.... I guess that is what $20 million buys at Harvard.
It is unlikely Barry was a Jihadist and was most likely a drug mule if anything, maybe even a CIA street hire to haul Afghan heroin back to New York, so the Afghans could buy U.S. made stinger missiles with U.S. dollars to shoot down Russian helicopters?... I hired people over seas to do work below my pay grade all the time, even foreign nationals... I think this is the story Barry told the Saudi's, but he was most likely really just a drug mule/dealer and probably still wanted on an outstanding warrant in New York.
Barry’s selective service registration is not normal either.
After I looked at Barry’s selective service filing I noticed it was most likely fraudulent too based on the name he used. Barry did not start using the name "Obama" until he returned from Pakistan (long after he flunked out of school in California) His selective service record (maintained in Chicago coincidentally) shows he registered at a Hawaiian post office as “Obama” in Sept 1980... Problem, Barry was getting high in California at Occidental in Sept 1980 (Barry's own admission) and was not using the fictitious name "Obama" at that time. Barry began using the fictitious name "Obama" only after he returned from Pakistan. The selective service filing is fraudulent.
Barry returned to Chicago and attend a semi-christian radical black church with his first female love Michelle. Barry admits keeping in touch with Phil Boener, who traveled to New York from Occidental to be with Barry and was most likely Barry's first love.
Barry still could not get a real job, because he was still a fraud, even with his Harvard degree in hand he could lie and take the Bar exam, but he could not work as a lawyer for a major law firm without a back ground investigation and he would never pass one. So, Michelle got Barry a job at her law firm. Barry never filed a case alone and never filed a motion. He wrote lost of memos according to the law firm where Barry worked. (I think they know Barry is a fraud and don't want to be sued by previous clients) Barry rescinded his law licenses, so as not to be disbarred for fraud. The Bar knows Barry lied on his application. Michelle also had to turn over her law license for her involvement in corruption with the Chicago mayors office.
SOURCE
**************************
Miserable bureaucrats: The Leftist anti-liberty drive is now everywhere
Who needs the human tapeworms behind these restrictions? St. Louis-Area Girls Told to Close Cookie Stand
Each February and March for the past six years, Caitlin Mills, 16, and Abigail Mills, 14, have put a card table in front of their home in Hazelwood, Mo., and sold Girl Scout cookies to drivers passing by. This year, however, the city of Hazelwood notified their mother, Carolyn Mills, that the girls’ cookie stand violated city ordinances and must be shut down.
Today, according to a news release from Freedom Center of Missouri, the Mills family — but not the Girl Scouts of America as they are not involved in the case — filed suit in state court to ensure that children in Hazelwood and all over the state will be free to set up similar stands in their own front yards.
“It is a time-honored tradition for American children to set up a stand in the front yard and sell lemonade or baked goods to people passing by,” said Dave Roland, Freedom Center of Missouri director of litigation. “These stands are not only a fun way to pass a summer afternoon, they are frequently children’s first encounter with the basics of entrepreneurship, customer service, and money management.”
Notice of the city’s move to shut down the cookie-selling stand came as a surprise to Mrs. Mills. “It never even crossed my mind that my girls might need to get permission from the city before setting up their cookie stand,” she said. “I was even more shocked when city officials told me that you couldn’t even get a permit for it.”
Caitlin Mills was diplomatic about the situation. “We know that our city officials are working hard to make sure that Hazelwood is a nice place to live,” she explained. “But even good city officials sometimes make mistakes. All we are asking is for the court to say it was a mistake for the city to tell us to shut down our cookie stand.”
The implications of this case, however, reach far beyond Hazelwood’s city limits, according to Roland:
For more than a century, American courts adhered to the principle that people could use their property almost any way they saw fit as long as they were not harming anyone else. Despite this general rule, courts allowed governments to use the “police power” to create laws carefully designed to protect the public health, safety, and welfare. Over time, however, courts shifted from the presumption that citizens should be able to make use of their property to a presumption that government should be able to restrict its use. The issue in this case is whether state and local governments still face any constitutional limitations on their ability to control the use of private property.
“Courts have already held that cities can control what citizens can build on their property, where they can build it… even what color they can paint it,” Roland said. “If Hazelwood and other cities can prohibit kids from setting up a harmless, temporary cookie stand in their own front yard, it is hard to say that our constitutions still offer any significant protection for private property rights. The Freedom Center of Missouri hopes to remind the courts that vigorous protection of property rights is vital to the American constitutional system and way of life.”
SOURCE
***************************
Is America Becoming The Land Of The Part-Time Job?
Most Of The Jobs That Are Being Created Are Part-Time Jobs And Some Companies Are Going To A “Part-Time Only Policy”
Do you need a good job? If so, there are millions of other Americans that are just like you. Unfortunately, most of the jobs that are available in America today are either part-time jobs, temp jobs or are "independent contractor" jobs. The "full-time job with benefits" is a dying breed. There are so many desperate unemployed workers in America today that companies don't have to roll out the red carpet anymore. Instead, they can just hire a horde of inexpensive part-timers and temps that they don't have to give any benefits to.
But isn't the employment situation supposed to be getting better? No, it really is not. Yes, the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs in March. However, the truth is that approximately 290,000 part-time jobs were created and about 80,000 full-time jobs were actually lost. This is all part of a long-term trend in America. Good jobs are rapidly disappearing and they are being replaced by low paying service jobs that do not pay a living wage. In many American households today, both parents have multiple jobs. Yet a large percentage of those same households can't even pay the mortgage and are drowning in debt.
Whenever a new government jobs report comes out from now on, try to find out how many of the jobs that were created were actually part-time jobs. Most Americans that only have part-time jobs are living around or below the poverty line. The truth is that it is really hard to get by if you are only making a couple hundred bucks a week.
As mentioned above, the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs last month. The Obama administration and the mainstream media heralded that figure as evidence that the U.S. economy is recovering nicely. But is that really accurate?
Rebel Cole, a professor at DePaul University's Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, says that when you take the time to do a closer examination of the employment numbers they don't look so good....
"If you look deeper in the report, there were 290,000 new part-time workers, which means that there were 80,000 fewer full-time workers, that's not a good sign. Things are getting worse, not getting better."
Unless you are a teen or a college student or a retired person, most likely you would prefer to be working a full-time job. Most people do not actually have the goal of working part-time. Most part-time jobs pay very poorly and offer very few benefits.
Unfortunately, that is why so many big companies like part-time workers and temp workers. There are so many more rules, regulations and laws that pertain to full-time workers.
Hiring a bunch of part-time workers is so much easier and so much cheaper. Without a doubt it is definitely more profitable in most situations.
Today, there are millions of Americans that have part-time jobs that would love to have full-time jobs. In fact, the government says that there are about 8 million Americans that are currently working part-time jobs for "economic reasons"....
Right now America is rapidly losing high paying jobs and they are being replaced by low paying jobs. According to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.
So yes, jobs are being created, but most of them are jobs that none of us would really want under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, times are not normal and millions of desperate people are having to take whatever they can get.
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)
****************************
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)
****************************
Brains differ in liberals, conservatives
There is little doubt that liberal and conservative brains do systematically differ. Liberals seem to have a bit missing where caution should be and an extra large bit where hatred resides. But proving that is another matter. The human brain is very complex and even particular parts of it seem to have many functions. The findings below do show that Left/Right brains differ but the detailed interpretation put on the results is just word-play. When does "fear" become "caution", for instance.
And the brain area said to drive "fear" is the amygdala. And associating the amygdala with "fear" is ludicrously simplistic. Other research has been interpreted as showing the same area to be associated with greater "sociability", for instance. So it would be equally logical to say that conservatives are more sociable rather than more fearful.
And the anterior cingulate cortex, which is said to be bigger in Leftists, is usually associated with emotion. So Leftists are more emotional! I won't quarrel with that!
The research below is interesting but hopelessly over-interpreted. All that the interpretations tell you is the politics of those who did the interpreting
EVERYONE knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.
Liberals have more grey matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study today in Current Biology.
"We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased grey matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala," the study said.
Other research has shown greater brain activity in those areas, according to which political views a person holds, but this is the first study to show a physical difference in size in the same regions.
"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation," said Ryota Kanai of the University College London, where the research took place. "Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure."
The study was based on 90 "healthy young adults" who reported their political views on a scale of one to five from very liberal to very conservative, then agreed to have their brains scanned.
People with a large amygdala are "more sensitive to disgust" and tend to "respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions", the study said.
Liberals are linked to larger anterior cingulate cortexes, a region that "monitor(s) uncertainty and conflicts", it said.
"Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views."
It remains unclear whether the structural differences cause the divergence in political views, or are the effect of them.
But the central issue in determining political views appears to revolve around fear and how it affects a person.
"Our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty," the study said.
SOURCE.
The original journal article is here. It regurgitates a lot of other old myths too. But I have already written on them in the journals (e.g. here) so I will not repeat myself here.
**************************
Government Shutdown 2011? – Things You Need To Know
Both sides are attempting to play political hardball. During the 2010 campaign, the Republicans promised to cut $100 billion from the budget for 2011 and they know that Tea Party activists are going to hold them accountable. The Democrats control the Senate and the presidency and they probably figure that when push comes to shove that many of the new, inexperienced Republicans in the House can be intimidated into giving in.
But in the end it really doesn't matter that much who wins this battle. The Republicans are proposing $61 billion in budget cuts which would cut the budget deficit for 2011 by only 3.8 percent. The Democrats are proposing $33 billion in budget cuts which would cut the budget deficit for 2011 by just 2.1 percent. Is that extra 1.7 percent really going to make a massive difference over the long run? Of course not.
But right now Republicans and Democrats are both in the mood for a fight, so we really might actually see a government shutdown.
If the government does shut down, it probably won't be for too long. The longest government shutdown of all time ended in early January 1996 and it lasted just 21 days.
So exactly what would happen if there is a government shutdown in 2011? If it does actually happen, the following are 16 things you will need to know....
#1 Hundreds of thousands of "non-essential" federal workers will be told to stay home during a government shutdown.
#2 Those in the military will not receive paychecks during a government shutdown but they will be required to keep performing their duties.
#3 The Obama administration is anticipating "significantly lower staffing levels" at the White House if a shutdown happens.
#4 Barack Obama will continue to be paid during a government shutdown.
#5 Congress will also be paid and will continue to operate at close to normal levels during a government shutdown.
#6 The Federal Reserve will continue to operate normally during a government shutdown. The Federal Reserve is not part of the U.S. government.
#7 In all probability, all government employees will eventually receive any pay that is missed during a government shutdown. During the 5 day U.S. government shutdown back in 1995, approximately 800,000 "non-essential" government employees were told not to come in to work. But eventually they all got paid retroactively anyway.
#8 During a government shutdown, the Department of Homeland Security will suspend operation of its e-Verify system. Employers will be unable to verify the immigration status of job applicants and that could have a substantial negative impact on hiring.
#9 The processing of small business loans and FHA mortgages will be delayed during a government shutdown.
#10 The U.S. Postal Service will not be affected by a government shutdown. You will continue to get your mail.
#11 According to the Social Security Administration, everyone that is currently receiving Social Security benefits will continue to receive those benefits during a shutdown. New applications will be delayed however.
#12 Medicare payments will continue during a government shutdown, but there will be a delay in processing new applications.
#13 During a government shutdown, the processing of paper tax returns by the IRS would be delayed.
#14 If there is a government shutdown, the processing of passport and visa applications could be seriously delayed. This could have a negative impact on the tourism industry.
#15 National parks, museums and tourist attractions will be shut down. According to the Washington Post, "about 500,000 visitors could be turned away this weekend alone from the National Zoo and the major Smithsonian museums on the Mall".
#16 The annual Cherry Blossom Festival parade in Washington D.C. that is scheduled for this weekend would be cancelled.
So why don't the two sides just compromise on a figure and get it over with? Well, it is just not that simple.
Barack Obama is pledging that he will not sign any budget bill that cuts funding for Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Protection Agency.
But to Republicans those are very important things. Many Republicans are sick and tired of large amounts of money going to the Planned Parenthood abortion mills and many Republicans are determined to take away the EPA’s authority to regulate the "greenhouse gases" that many Democrats believe are causing "global warming".
If the Republicans back down they risk alienating their Tea Party supporters. And we have already seen what happens to Republican politicians that cross the Tea Party. The truth is that many Tea Party activists are already upset with the compromises that Republican leaders have been making.
Originally, Republicans had pledged to slash $100 billion from the budget for this year. Then, they said that $61 billion was good enough because a large portion of the fiscal year was already gone.
Now that there are rumors that Boehner may be willing to reduce that figure even further, some Tea Party activists are becoming extremely upset. Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips posted the following message on his organization's website about a month ago.... "The Tea Party movement should find a candidate to run against John Boehner in 2012 and should set as a goal, to defeat in a primary, the sitting Speaker of the House of Representatives."
The truth is that this entire controversy shows how divided America is right now. The Democrat base is simply not going to accept cuts to Planned Parenthood or the EPA. The Tea Party base is simply not going to accept the small budget cuts that the Democrats are offering.
So who is going to give in? Whichever party does give in is going to have a lot of explaining to do to their base. But if neither side gives in we could be in for an extended government shutdown. It is certainly a fascinating game of "chicken" we have got going on. It is going to be extremely interesting to see who blinks first.
Personally I think it is going to be Boehner that is going to cave. If he can get the Democrats to agree to a budget cut figure in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 billion dollars I think he is going to grab it and try to "spin" it as a great victory for fiscal conservatives.
Unfortunately, the truth is that no matter who "wins" this current battle government debt is going to continue to soar. The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for this year will be 1.6 trillion dollars. Even if we were to cut $100 billion from that number it would barely make a dent. The U.S. financial system is dying, and nothing that the Republicans or the Democrats are doing right now is going to change that.
SOURCE
************************
Your government will protect you
Air traffic controllers have been catching a lot of grief for sleeping on the job lately. But do you know what Transportation Security Administration officials have been doing -- or rather, not doing -- lately? A federal watchdog revealed this week that TSA's counterterrorism specialists failed to detect 16 separate jihad operatives who moved through target airports "on at least 23 different occasions." The name of the TSA monitoring program paying for all this flying-blind failure, I kid you not: SPOT.
Under the "Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques" plan, TSA's designated behavior detection officers are supposed to closely watch travelers who pose potential security risks and who exhibit any number of appearances or activities "indicative of stress, fear, or deception." But long-entrenched, bipartisan American political correctness hampers the kind of effective, efficient national security profiling that Israeli airline security officials practice so well.
The result? TSA's snoozing SPOT-ters catch nobody -- for fear of being accused by the grievance lobby of singling anybody out.
Stephen Lord, who specializes in homeland security issues at the Government Accountability Office, reviewed Justice Department documents showing that "in December 2007 an individual who later pleaded guilty to providing material support to Somali terrorists boarded a plane at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport en route to Somalia. Similarly, in August 2008, an individual who later pleaded guilty to providing material support to al Qaeda boarded a plane at Newark Liberty International Airport en route to Pakistan to receive terrorist training to support his efforts to attack the New York subway system."
Other terror suspect travelers who slipped through the cracks have been subsequently tied to the 2008 Mumbai bombings; the plots to attack a Quantico, Va., Marine base and New York City infrastructure; and an attack by a Pakistani-trained American jihadi on an Afghanistan base.
Young. Male. Muslim. Traveling to al-Qaida friendly hot spots. How did these at-risk terror tourists escape scrutiny?
More HERE
*********************
ELSEWHERE
WI: Prosser gains 7,500 votes, reversing unoffical election result: "In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold released new vote totals adding a net total of 7,582 new votes in the tight state Supreme Court race to Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor. Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said Thursday that she failed to save in her computer and consequently report 14,315 votes cast in the city of Brookfield, omitting them entirely in an unofficial tally released after Tuesday's election. The new totals give 10,859 more votes to Prosser from Brookfield and 3,456 more to Kloppenburg, she said."
Israel shells Gaza after anti-tank missile deliberately fired at school bus: "Israeli artillery and attack helicopters retaliated on Thursday after an anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip hit an Israeli school bus, seriously wounding a teenage boy and injuring several others. Israeli forces immediately struck back, shelling various locations across the Gaza Strip, killing a 50-year-old man and wounding at least eight people including a 4-year-old girl, Palestinian medics said"
Shutdown can’t come soon enough: "In anticipation of the possibility that Congress will fail to 'reach a compromise' on a spending bill, CNNMoney reports that 'a shutdown is looking ever more likely.' Even in the event of a 'shutdown,' reminds the article, the federal government’s essential services, those 'operations necessary for the safety of human life and protection of property,' would carry on. It is perhaps telling, though, that government employees 'who protect … elements of the money and banking system' are among those 'essential' workers. In light of a potential 'shutdown,' the last of which came in 1995, we might take some time out to consider what the essence of the state really is, that is, what it is inherently designed to do in society."
Double standards on impeachment: "So The Nation was in favor of impeachment when the war was Bush's and it was useful to win votes for Dems in the 2006 elections. The Nation's editor was delighted with Holtzmann's article featured on the cover. But The Nation and the same editor now stand mute when the war and the violation of the Constitution are Obama's."
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)
****************************
There is little doubt that liberal and conservative brains do systematically differ. Liberals seem to have a bit missing where caution should be and an extra large bit where hatred resides. But proving that is another matter. The human brain is very complex and even particular parts of it seem to have many functions. The findings below do show that Left/Right brains differ but the detailed interpretation put on the results is just word-play. When does "fear" become "caution", for instance.
And the brain area said to drive "fear" is the amygdala. And associating the amygdala with "fear" is ludicrously simplistic. Other research has been interpreted as showing the same area to be associated with greater "sociability", for instance. So it would be equally logical to say that conservatives are more sociable rather than more fearful.
And the anterior cingulate cortex, which is said to be bigger in Leftists, is usually associated with emotion. So Leftists are more emotional! I won't quarrel with that!
The research below is interesting but hopelessly over-interpreted. All that the interpretations tell you is the politics of those who did the interpreting
EVERYONE knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.
Liberals have more grey matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study today in Current Biology.
"We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased grey matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala," the study said.
Other research has shown greater brain activity in those areas, according to which political views a person holds, but this is the first study to show a physical difference in size in the same regions.
"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation," said Ryota Kanai of the University College London, where the research took place. "Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure."
The study was based on 90 "healthy young adults" who reported their political views on a scale of one to five from very liberal to very conservative, then agreed to have their brains scanned.
People with a large amygdala are "more sensitive to disgust" and tend to "respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions", the study said.
Liberals are linked to larger anterior cingulate cortexes, a region that "monitor(s) uncertainty and conflicts", it said.
"Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views."
It remains unclear whether the structural differences cause the divergence in political views, or are the effect of them.
But the central issue in determining political views appears to revolve around fear and how it affects a person.
"Our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty," the study said.
SOURCE.
The original journal article is here. It regurgitates a lot of other old myths too. But I have already written on them in the journals (e.g. here) so I will not repeat myself here.
**************************
Government Shutdown 2011? – Things You Need To Know
Both sides are attempting to play political hardball. During the 2010 campaign, the Republicans promised to cut $100 billion from the budget for 2011 and they know that Tea Party activists are going to hold them accountable. The Democrats control the Senate and the presidency and they probably figure that when push comes to shove that many of the new, inexperienced Republicans in the House can be intimidated into giving in.
But in the end it really doesn't matter that much who wins this battle. The Republicans are proposing $61 billion in budget cuts which would cut the budget deficit for 2011 by only 3.8 percent. The Democrats are proposing $33 billion in budget cuts which would cut the budget deficit for 2011 by just 2.1 percent. Is that extra 1.7 percent really going to make a massive difference over the long run? Of course not.
But right now Republicans and Democrats are both in the mood for a fight, so we really might actually see a government shutdown.
If the government does shut down, it probably won't be for too long. The longest government shutdown of all time ended in early January 1996 and it lasted just 21 days.
So exactly what would happen if there is a government shutdown in 2011? If it does actually happen, the following are 16 things you will need to know....
#1 Hundreds of thousands of "non-essential" federal workers will be told to stay home during a government shutdown.
#2 Those in the military will not receive paychecks during a government shutdown but they will be required to keep performing their duties.
#3 The Obama administration is anticipating "significantly lower staffing levels" at the White House if a shutdown happens.
#4 Barack Obama will continue to be paid during a government shutdown.
#5 Congress will also be paid and will continue to operate at close to normal levels during a government shutdown.
#6 The Federal Reserve will continue to operate normally during a government shutdown. The Federal Reserve is not part of the U.S. government.
#7 In all probability, all government employees will eventually receive any pay that is missed during a government shutdown. During the 5 day U.S. government shutdown back in 1995, approximately 800,000 "non-essential" government employees were told not to come in to work. But eventually they all got paid retroactively anyway.
#8 During a government shutdown, the Department of Homeland Security will suspend operation of its e-Verify system. Employers will be unable to verify the immigration status of job applicants and that could have a substantial negative impact on hiring.
#9 The processing of small business loans and FHA mortgages will be delayed during a government shutdown.
#10 The U.S. Postal Service will not be affected by a government shutdown. You will continue to get your mail.
#11 According to the Social Security Administration, everyone that is currently receiving Social Security benefits will continue to receive those benefits during a shutdown. New applications will be delayed however.
#12 Medicare payments will continue during a government shutdown, but there will be a delay in processing new applications.
#13 During a government shutdown, the processing of paper tax returns by the IRS would be delayed.
#14 If there is a government shutdown, the processing of passport and visa applications could be seriously delayed. This could have a negative impact on the tourism industry.
#15 National parks, museums and tourist attractions will be shut down. According to the Washington Post, "about 500,000 visitors could be turned away this weekend alone from the National Zoo and the major Smithsonian museums on the Mall".
#16 The annual Cherry Blossom Festival parade in Washington D.C. that is scheduled for this weekend would be cancelled.
So why don't the two sides just compromise on a figure and get it over with? Well, it is just not that simple.
Barack Obama is pledging that he will not sign any budget bill that cuts funding for Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Protection Agency.
But to Republicans those are very important things. Many Republicans are sick and tired of large amounts of money going to the Planned Parenthood abortion mills and many Republicans are determined to take away the EPA’s authority to regulate the "greenhouse gases" that many Democrats believe are causing "global warming".
If the Republicans back down they risk alienating their Tea Party supporters. And we have already seen what happens to Republican politicians that cross the Tea Party. The truth is that many Tea Party activists are already upset with the compromises that Republican leaders have been making.
Originally, Republicans had pledged to slash $100 billion from the budget for this year. Then, they said that $61 billion was good enough because a large portion of the fiscal year was already gone.
Now that there are rumors that Boehner may be willing to reduce that figure even further, some Tea Party activists are becoming extremely upset. Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips posted the following message on his organization's website about a month ago.... "The Tea Party movement should find a candidate to run against John Boehner in 2012 and should set as a goal, to defeat in a primary, the sitting Speaker of the House of Representatives."
The truth is that this entire controversy shows how divided America is right now. The Democrat base is simply not going to accept cuts to Planned Parenthood or the EPA. The Tea Party base is simply not going to accept the small budget cuts that the Democrats are offering.
So who is going to give in? Whichever party does give in is going to have a lot of explaining to do to their base. But if neither side gives in we could be in for an extended government shutdown. It is certainly a fascinating game of "chicken" we have got going on. It is going to be extremely interesting to see who blinks first.
Personally I think it is going to be Boehner that is going to cave. If he can get the Democrats to agree to a budget cut figure in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 billion dollars I think he is going to grab it and try to "spin" it as a great victory for fiscal conservatives.
Unfortunately, the truth is that no matter who "wins" this current battle government debt is going to continue to soar. The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for this year will be 1.6 trillion dollars. Even if we were to cut $100 billion from that number it would barely make a dent. The U.S. financial system is dying, and nothing that the Republicans or the Democrats are doing right now is going to change that.
SOURCE
************************
Your government will protect you
Air traffic controllers have been catching a lot of grief for sleeping on the job lately. But do you know what Transportation Security Administration officials have been doing -- or rather, not doing -- lately? A federal watchdog revealed this week that TSA's counterterrorism specialists failed to detect 16 separate jihad operatives who moved through target airports "on at least 23 different occasions." The name of the TSA monitoring program paying for all this flying-blind failure, I kid you not: SPOT.
Under the "Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques" plan, TSA's designated behavior detection officers are supposed to closely watch travelers who pose potential security risks and who exhibit any number of appearances or activities "indicative of stress, fear, or deception." But long-entrenched, bipartisan American political correctness hampers the kind of effective, efficient national security profiling that Israeli airline security officials practice so well.
The result? TSA's snoozing SPOT-ters catch nobody -- for fear of being accused by the grievance lobby of singling anybody out.
Stephen Lord, who specializes in homeland security issues at the Government Accountability Office, reviewed Justice Department documents showing that "in December 2007 an individual who later pleaded guilty to providing material support to Somali terrorists boarded a plane at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport en route to Somalia. Similarly, in August 2008, an individual who later pleaded guilty to providing material support to al Qaeda boarded a plane at Newark Liberty International Airport en route to Pakistan to receive terrorist training to support his efforts to attack the New York subway system."
Other terror suspect travelers who slipped through the cracks have been subsequently tied to the 2008 Mumbai bombings; the plots to attack a Quantico, Va., Marine base and New York City infrastructure; and an attack by a Pakistani-trained American jihadi on an Afghanistan base.
Young. Male. Muslim. Traveling to al-Qaida friendly hot spots. How did these at-risk terror tourists escape scrutiny?
More HERE
*********************
ELSEWHERE
WI: Prosser gains 7,500 votes, reversing unoffical election result: "In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold released new vote totals adding a net total of 7,582 new votes in the tight state Supreme Court race to Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor. Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said Thursday that she failed to save in her computer and consequently report 14,315 votes cast in the city of Brookfield, omitting them entirely in an unofficial tally released after Tuesday's election. The new totals give 10,859 more votes to Prosser from Brookfield and 3,456 more to Kloppenburg, she said."
Israel shells Gaza after anti-tank missile deliberately fired at school bus: "Israeli artillery and attack helicopters retaliated on Thursday after an anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip hit an Israeli school bus, seriously wounding a teenage boy and injuring several others. Israeli forces immediately struck back, shelling various locations across the Gaza Strip, killing a 50-year-old man and wounding at least eight people including a 4-year-old girl, Palestinian medics said"
Shutdown can’t come soon enough: "In anticipation of the possibility that Congress will fail to 'reach a compromise' on a spending bill, CNNMoney reports that 'a shutdown is looking ever more likely.' Even in the event of a 'shutdown,' reminds the article, the federal government’s essential services, those 'operations necessary for the safety of human life and protection of property,' would carry on. It is perhaps telling, though, that government employees 'who protect … elements of the money and banking system' are among those 'essential' workers. In light of a potential 'shutdown,' the last of which came in 1995, we might take some time out to consider what the essence of the state really is, that is, what it is inherently designed to do in society."
Double standards on impeachment: "So The Nation was in favor of impeachment when the war was Bush's and it was useful to win votes for Dems in the 2006 elections. The Nation's editor was delighted with Holtzmann's article featured on the cover. But The Nation and the same editor now stand mute when the war and the violation of the Constitution are Obama's."
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, April 07, 2011
Paul Ryan's Budget Proposal is Half the Answer
This morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) unveiled a bold proposal to trim trillions off America's bloated budget. It represents the only serious proposal out there to get America's finances back in order, and as such he is to be congratulated for his courage and foresight.
However, as Margaret Thatcher found in the UK during the 1980s, spending is only half the battle. The nature of the bureaucratic beast is that it will expand again. That's why President Reagan's simplification of the Tax Code wore off, and we now have a far more complex tax code than we did before tax reform.
We therefore need a similarly comprehensive reform of the federal government that will address what might be termed the "supply side" of the federal bureaucracy, to prevent it getting in the way of an entrepreneur-led recovery.
This reform should include:
* Abolition of whole government departments that have no valid constitutional purpose, such as the Department of Education and the Department of Labor
* The rechartering of valid existing agencies as performance-based agencies that exist to serve the public, not hinder them
* Reform of federal pay and working conditions
* A reduction in the use of federal contracts and grants, to tackle the "shadow" public sector
* Introduction of a single, fair tax system and a new Taxpayers' Bill of Rights
* End labor unions' privileges that put them above the law
* Privatization of appropriate government functions
* and, above all: Genuine regulatory reform as proposed by Wayne Crews and Ryan Young.
A genuine public sector reform package must be as sweeping and comprehensive as Rep. Ryan's spending reform package. Only then will America be on the road to genuine, sustainable recovery.
SOURCE
***********************
The Swift Death of the New Tone
Mary Katharine Ham
A child's handwritten sign that reads "We hate Scott Wacre" is seen taped to a wall in the rotunda during protests against budget cuts proposed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, R, at the state Capitol in Madison. The "new tone" the Left has been demanding from conservatives was nowhere to be seen during the union protests
Remember the days, in August of 2009, when conservatives merely raising their voices at health care town halls portended the sure destruction of the Republic? There were large numbers of conservatives gathering peacefully (and, yes, sometimes angrily) to express their discontent with Obama's health care law. The media decided these protests were threatening and dangerous on their face.
The mere gathering together of conservatives critical of the president caused Chris Matthews to sputter and Rachel Maddow to whine about the closed-minded, racist and surely violent crowds that would be the undoing of the Union. The only problem was there wasn't much violence to speak of.
During the most heated month of the health care uprising, when more than 500 town halls took place over one month across the country, there were exactly 10 instances of documented violence. Most of them were confined to the ripping of signs and minor tussles (though there were a handful of punches thrown), and seven of 10 incidents were perpetrated by ObamaCare supporters on protesters, according to photos, police reports and witnesses.
Nonetheless, the media kept up its "Climate of Hate" narrative through 2010, tsk-tsking over the tone of protest posters, often erroneously blaming tea partiers for Lyndon Larouche activists' Hitler signs and generally making a giant, scary deal out of the least errant word from any right-leaning protester in any place at any time.
There was evidence in 2009 that the stringent requirements for polite protest were not going to apply to everyone. Concurrent with the health care protests that made the media to tremble with their ferocity, the international community held the G20 gathering in Pittsburgh. There, a collection of liberal and anarchist protesters did approximately $50,000 of damage to local businesses, and 190 of them were arrested for blocking traffic and rolling trash bins and throwing rocks at police.
The CBS headline for that story? "Police fire gas on G20 protesters."
By 2011, the "violent right-wingers" narrative took its most irresponsible turn yet and blamed Sarah Palin's political speech for the shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz. Giffords is recovering, praise God, after being shot in the head by a mentally ill man who had been fixated on her since at least 2007. To this day, there is no evidence that he was motivated by anyone's political rhetoric, martial words or imagery. The 28-page federal indictment of Jared Lee Loughner does not mention Palin's now-infamous crosshairs map as a cause of the incident because it wasn't.
Nonetheless, the country was called by all of national media to a time of soul-searching about our "tone." There should be a new tone, they said, and President Barack Obama echoed that in his Tucson speech saying our rhetoric should "honor" those who had been killed while engaging in our democratic process in that Safeway parking lot.
Several right-leaning pundits joined the call to civility, giving credence to the idea that rhetoric and Loughner's crime were somehow connected -- among them David Frum, Joe Scarborough and Jeb Bush.
But the new tone didn't last long. After all, it could last only until it was necessary for liberals to protest again, at which point all the rules imposed on conservative activists would be swiftly jettisoned.
Excerpt from the print edition of Townhall magazine
********************
Pelosi: The GOP's getting ready to starve six million seniors or something
I don't know which budget bill she's talking about, the 2011 one or Ryan's new one, but if it's the former than she's actually complaining here about a GOP budget that she could have prevented by passing a budget herself last year when she was Speaker. (Of course, with Democrats in control in the Senate and White House, any Mass Senior Starvation Program would require bipartisan support to pass now anyway.)
Anyway, get used to this: Warnings about grandma being forced to eat styrofoam peanuts and Fancy Feast because of heartless Republicans and their insane crusade for solvency will be a staple of Democratic talking points by next November, especially with the White House desperate to win back seniors alienated by ObamaCare.
Last week it was the GOP wanting kids abroad to die of malaria, this week it's our nation's elderly being made to eat out of garbage cans or else waste away, next week it'll be something to do with puppies. So let me repeat the question posed last week: If they're this worried about important programs falling through the cracks, shouldn't they want to come to the table and make some sort of deal on a long-term sustainable budget that protects welfare programs to some extent?
How does letting the country collapse fiscally, which would prompt truly draconian cuts under an austerity plan to rebalance the books, put more food on seniors' tables?
In fact, that's one of my core complaints with the GOP's "messaging" thus far, as bold as it's otherwise been. Thanks to Obama's appalling, irresponsible budget, the public is still under the illusion that we're debating whether to reform entitlements. We aren't. We're debating when to reform them - now, when we have the luxury of lengthy debate, or later under extreme duress.
I know how Nancy would solve this problem, but her answer is no more realistic politically than wanting to abolish Social Security and Medicare. So what's the magic Pelosi plan for keeping those seniors - and everyone else - fed and insured and averting a fiscal catastrophe, the part of the equation that somehow always gets lost in these heartbreaking tales of woe? She's the House leader for the Party Of Ideas, right? Let's hear some ideas.
SOURCE
**********************
Time Magazine Moonbat Explains Why Koran Is More Sacred Than Bible
According to the liberal creed of moral relativism, all religions are the same, except that Christianity is bad because of the Crusades, and Islam is good because Arabs have slightly darker skin. Also, it's okay to burn Bibles, but burning the Koran is an affront to God. Time Magazine, the liberal establishment's outpost in the dentist's office, explains through "World Editor" Bobby Gauche to Hardball bench player Chuck Clod:
No doubt that received a hearty "Amen!" from the dhimmified moonbats in MSNBC's odious audience.
Hopey Change and "fundamental transformation" aside, this is still America. We can burn any book we like - even the one book our liberal overlords least want us to burn. If Muslims don't use it as a pretext to murder people, they'll find some other pretext, because violent intimidation is the only thing that keeps their evil cult alive.
SOURCE
A pretty poor understanding of Christian doctrine there. Many Christians believe that every word of the Bible is inspired by God and is hence unerring. Muslims believe exactly the same about the Koran. The different responses of Christians and Muslims to desecration of their sacred book is in the religions concerned. Christians preach a God of Love. Muslims preach a God of jihad and world domination
May I make a small linguistic point in that connection? Some people (mostly non-Christians, I think) say that fundamentalist Christians believe in an "inerrant" Bible. They do not. "Inerrant" means "not wandering about". An "errant" knight is not a knight who makes a lot of mistakes but simply a wandering knight. "Errant" is ultimately derived from the Latin "iter", a walk or a journey. Compare "itinerant". The Christian belief is in an "unerring" Bible, a Bible that makes no mistakes.
Dictionaries report the mistaken usage these days but it is still a mistake -- JR
************************
ELSEWHERE
NV: ACORN pleads guilty in voter fraud case: "The defunct political advocacy group ACORN has pleaded guilty in a case alleging that canvassers were illegally paid to register Nevada voters during the 2008 presidential campaign. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday that ACORN defense attorney Lisa Rasmussen entered the guilty plea to one count of felony compensation for registration of voters."
Obama's first 2012 campaign event: Facebook "meeting" on Hitler's birthday, Columbine anniversary: "In 2008 thousands of Americans turned out to mass rallies in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. And the President has just announced plans for his first big rally of his re-election bid as he launches his run for a second term of office in 2012. But this time the first major gathering of the campaign is being held online as President Obama invites his Facebook friends to attend a '`virtual meeting.'"
How can anyone take this seriously?: "Republican fiscal conservatism is akin to a 500-pound-man declaring aloud in January that he is determined to lose weight, and so he promises to forgo exactly half a glass of eggnog on Thanksgiving - and if you protest, and insist he drink the whole glass, he will have none of it, because he has made up his mind to lose weight and refuses to compromise. This is the state of modern American politics."
Solis's pro-union bias: "Speaking to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., Labor Secretary Hilda Solis admitted she was biased toward unions. Unions only account for 11.9 percent of the workforce, but Solis' favoritism puts them ahead of the other 88 percent of the American workers."
What if the government shut down... and nobody cared?: "Everyone keeps talking about a possible government shut down on Friday, April 8 as though it is a bad thing. Someone will get the blame. The president or the Republicans or Democrats will suffer at the polls. The planets will fall out of alignment. Reporters might run out of things to pontificate upon. Listening to pundits one gets the impression that there will be a federal tsunami washing away life as we know it; chaos in the streets; weeping and gnashing of teeth for all. But one wonders, how bad would it really be for government to call in sick for a few days?"
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 morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) unveiled a bold proposal to trim trillions off America's bloated budget. It represents the only serious proposal out there to get America's finances back in order, and as such he is to be congratulated for his courage and foresight.
However, as Margaret Thatcher found in the UK during the 1980s, spending is only half the battle. The nature of the bureaucratic beast is that it will expand again. That's why President Reagan's simplification of the Tax Code wore off, and we now have a far more complex tax code than we did before tax reform.
We therefore need a similarly comprehensive reform of the federal government that will address what might be termed the "supply side" of the federal bureaucracy, to prevent it getting in the way of an entrepreneur-led recovery.
This reform should include:
* Abolition of whole government departments that have no valid constitutional purpose, such as the Department of Education and the Department of Labor
* The rechartering of valid existing agencies as performance-based agencies that exist to serve the public, not hinder them
* Reform of federal pay and working conditions
* A reduction in the use of federal contracts and grants, to tackle the "shadow" public sector
* Introduction of a single, fair tax system and a new Taxpayers' Bill of Rights
* End labor unions' privileges that put them above the law
* Privatization of appropriate government functions
* and, above all: Genuine regulatory reform as proposed by Wayne Crews and Ryan Young.
A genuine public sector reform package must be as sweeping and comprehensive as Rep. Ryan's spending reform package. Only then will America be on the road to genuine, sustainable recovery.
SOURCE
***********************
The Swift Death of the New Tone
Mary Katharine Ham
A child's handwritten sign that reads "We hate Scott Wacre" is seen taped to a wall in the rotunda during protests against budget cuts proposed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, R, at the state Capitol in Madison. The "new tone" the Left has been demanding from conservatives was nowhere to be seen during the union protests
Remember the days, in August of 2009, when conservatives merely raising their voices at health care town halls portended the sure destruction of the Republic? There were large numbers of conservatives gathering peacefully (and, yes, sometimes angrily) to express their discontent with Obama's health care law. The media decided these protests were threatening and dangerous on their face.
The mere gathering together of conservatives critical of the president caused Chris Matthews to sputter and Rachel Maddow to whine about the closed-minded, racist and surely violent crowds that would be the undoing of the Union. The only problem was there wasn't much violence to speak of.
During the most heated month of the health care uprising, when more than 500 town halls took place over one month across the country, there were exactly 10 instances of documented violence. Most of them were confined to the ripping of signs and minor tussles (though there were a handful of punches thrown), and seven of 10 incidents were perpetrated by ObamaCare supporters on protesters, according to photos, police reports and witnesses.
Nonetheless, the media kept up its "Climate of Hate" narrative through 2010, tsk-tsking over the tone of protest posters, often erroneously blaming tea partiers for Lyndon Larouche activists' Hitler signs and generally making a giant, scary deal out of the least errant word from any right-leaning protester in any place at any time.
There was evidence in 2009 that the stringent requirements for polite protest were not going to apply to everyone. Concurrent with the health care protests that made the media to tremble with their ferocity, the international community held the G20 gathering in Pittsburgh. There, a collection of liberal and anarchist protesters did approximately $50,000 of damage to local businesses, and 190 of them were arrested for blocking traffic and rolling trash bins and throwing rocks at police.
The CBS headline for that story? "Police fire gas on G20 protesters."
By 2011, the "violent right-wingers" narrative took its most irresponsible turn yet and blamed Sarah Palin's political speech for the shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz. Giffords is recovering, praise God, after being shot in the head by a mentally ill man who had been fixated on her since at least 2007. To this day, there is no evidence that he was motivated by anyone's political rhetoric, martial words or imagery. The 28-page federal indictment of Jared Lee Loughner does not mention Palin's now-infamous crosshairs map as a cause of the incident because it wasn't.
Nonetheless, the country was called by all of national media to a time of soul-searching about our "tone." There should be a new tone, they said, and President Barack Obama echoed that in his Tucson speech saying our rhetoric should "honor" those who had been killed while engaging in our democratic process in that Safeway parking lot.
Several right-leaning pundits joined the call to civility, giving credence to the idea that rhetoric and Loughner's crime were somehow connected -- among them David Frum, Joe Scarborough and Jeb Bush.
But the new tone didn't last long. After all, it could last only until it was necessary for liberals to protest again, at which point all the rules imposed on conservative activists would be swiftly jettisoned.
Excerpt from the print edition of Townhall magazine
********************
Pelosi: The GOP's getting ready to starve six million seniors or something
I don't know which budget bill she's talking about, the 2011 one or Ryan's new one, but if it's the former than she's actually complaining here about a GOP budget that she could have prevented by passing a budget herself last year when she was Speaker. (Of course, with Democrats in control in the Senate and White House, any Mass Senior Starvation Program would require bipartisan support to pass now anyway.)
Anyway, get used to this: Warnings about grandma being forced to eat styrofoam peanuts and Fancy Feast because of heartless Republicans and their insane crusade for solvency will be a staple of Democratic talking points by next November, especially with the White House desperate to win back seniors alienated by ObamaCare.
Last week it was the GOP wanting kids abroad to die of malaria, this week it's our nation's elderly being made to eat out of garbage cans or else waste away, next week it'll be something to do with puppies. So let me repeat the question posed last week: If they're this worried about important programs falling through the cracks, shouldn't they want to come to the table and make some sort of deal on a long-term sustainable budget that protects welfare programs to some extent?
How does letting the country collapse fiscally, which would prompt truly draconian cuts under an austerity plan to rebalance the books, put more food on seniors' tables?
In fact, that's one of my core complaints with the GOP's "messaging" thus far, as bold as it's otherwise been. Thanks to Obama's appalling, irresponsible budget, the public is still under the illusion that we're debating whether to reform entitlements. We aren't. We're debating when to reform them - now, when we have the luxury of lengthy debate, or later under extreme duress.
I know how Nancy would solve this problem, but her answer is no more realistic politically than wanting to abolish Social Security and Medicare. So what's the magic Pelosi plan for keeping those seniors - and everyone else - fed and insured and averting a fiscal catastrophe, the part of the equation that somehow always gets lost in these heartbreaking tales of woe? She's the House leader for the Party Of Ideas, right? Let's hear some ideas.
SOURCE
**********************
Time Magazine Moonbat Explains Why Koran Is More Sacred Than Bible
According to the liberal creed of moral relativism, all religions are the same, except that Christianity is bad because of the Crusades, and Islam is good because Arabs have slightly darker skin. Also, it's okay to burn Bibles, but burning the Koran is an affront to God. Time Magazine, the liberal establishment's outpost in the dentist's office, explains through "World Editor" Bobby Gauche to Hardball bench player Chuck Clod:
GHOSH: The thing to keep in mind that's very important here is that the Koran to Muslims, it is not - it is not the same as the Bible to Christians. The Bible is a book written by men. It is acknowledged by Christians that it is written by men. It's the story of Jesus.
TODD: Yes.
GHOSH: But the Koran, if you are a believer, if you're a Muslim, the Koran is directly the word of God, not written by man. It is transcribed, is directly the word of God. That makes it sacred in a way that it's hard to understand if you're not Muslim. So the act of burning a Koran is much more - potentially much, much more inflammatory than -
TODD: Directly attacking - directly attacking God.
GHOSH: - than if you were to burn a - burn a Bible.
TODD: Directly attacking God.
No doubt that received a hearty "Amen!" from the dhimmified moonbats in MSNBC's odious audience.
Hopey Change and "fundamental transformation" aside, this is still America. We can burn any book we like - even the one book our liberal overlords least want us to burn. If Muslims don't use it as a pretext to murder people, they'll find some other pretext, because violent intimidation is the only thing that keeps their evil cult alive.
SOURCE
A pretty poor understanding of Christian doctrine there. Many Christians believe that every word of the Bible is inspired by God and is hence unerring. Muslims believe exactly the same about the Koran. The different responses of Christians and Muslims to desecration of their sacred book is in the religions concerned. Christians preach a God of Love. Muslims preach a God of jihad and world domination
May I make a small linguistic point in that connection? Some people (mostly non-Christians, I think) say that fundamentalist Christians believe in an "inerrant" Bible. They do not. "Inerrant" means "not wandering about". An "errant" knight is not a knight who makes a lot of mistakes but simply a wandering knight. "Errant" is ultimately derived from the Latin "iter", a walk or a journey. Compare "itinerant". The Christian belief is in an "unerring" Bible, a Bible that makes no mistakes.
Dictionaries report the mistaken usage these days but it is still a mistake -- JR
************************
ELSEWHERE
NV: ACORN pleads guilty in voter fraud case: "The defunct political advocacy group ACORN has pleaded guilty in a case alleging that canvassers were illegally paid to register Nevada voters during the 2008 presidential campaign. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday that ACORN defense attorney Lisa Rasmussen entered the guilty plea to one count of felony compensation for registration of voters."
Obama's first 2012 campaign event: Facebook "meeting" on Hitler's birthday, Columbine anniversary: "In 2008 thousands of Americans turned out to mass rallies in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. And the President has just announced plans for his first big rally of his re-election bid as he launches his run for a second term of office in 2012. But this time the first major gathering of the campaign is being held online as President Obama invites his Facebook friends to attend a '`virtual meeting.'"
How can anyone take this seriously?: "Republican fiscal conservatism is akin to a 500-pound-man declaring aloud in January that he is determined to lose weight, and so he promises to forgo exactly half a glass of eggnog on Thanksgiving - and if you protest, and insist he drink the whole glass, he will have none of it, because he has made up his mind to lose weight and refuses to compromise. This is the state of modern American politics."
Solis's pro-union bias: "Speaking to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., Labor Secretary Hilda Solis admitted she was biased toward unions. Unions only account for 11.9 percent of the workforce, but Solis' favoritism puts them ahead of the other 88 percent of the American workers."
What if the government shut down... and nobody cared?: "Everyone keeps talking about a possible government shut down on Friday, April 8 as though it is a bad thing. Someone will get the blame. The president or the Republicans or Democrats will suffer at the polls. The planets will fall out of alignment. Reporters might run out of things to pontificate upon. Listening to pundits one gets the impression that there will be a federal tsunami washing away life as we know it; chaos in the streets; weeping and gnashing of teeth for all. But one wonders, how bad would it really be for government to call in sick for a few days?"
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)
****************************
Is God a racist?
Orthodox Jews seem to claim that God made a covenant with them as a nation, as a particular genetic group or race. I doubt that. From Moses on right through the Hebrew prophets, Yahveh (the name of God in the Hebrew Bible, sometimes translated as "Jehovah" in English Bibles) poured out imprecations and condemnations on the Israelites if they strayed from the true religion. It would seem clear that Yahveh defined his people by their RELIGION rather than by their race.
So how does that leave modern Jews in the eyes of Yahveh? As an atheist, I am in a poor position to say but if we assume his existence and read his words in the Bible, it does not look too good. They obey the Torah only selectively (they no longer put homosexuals to death, for instance) and they have not rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem despite being in a good position to do so.
Additionally they have done the exact opposite of what he intended regarding his name. We read in Psalm 83:18 "That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth" (KJV). Yahveh clearly had big ambitions for his name and regarded himself as ruling not only the Israelites but all the earth. And even in the Ten Commandments, he stressed the importance and dignity of his name -- forbidding disrespectful use of it.
Yet what did Israelites, starting from around 200 AD or earlier, do? Far from proclaiming Yahveh's mighty name worldwide, they stopped using it altogether! The Devil must have had his best laugh ever when that happened! And modern Jews go one better and render even the Germanic word "god" as "G-d". I can't see Yahveh being pleased with that! No wonder he let the Romans boot the Israelites out of Israel
So has Yahveh transferred his support to the Christians? It's possible. On numbers alone it would seem so. The descendants (spiritual descendants?) of Abraham were promised that they would be a multitude throughout the earth. "Abraham" means "father of a multitude" and we read: "And he brought him [Abraham] forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be". (Gen 15:5).
The Christians are that multitude but Jews are not. On best estimates there are even 200 million Christians in China these days. So whom does this text best fit? Jews or Christians: "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 12:2-3)". It's a matter of opinion, of course but it is Christians who have both the numbers and the influence. And has not Christian civilization been a great blessing to the whole world? And "Jew" is much more often a curse than a blessing.
And remember that respect for his law was what Yahveh cared about. He even provided a nifty executive summary of it (or what scientists would call an "Abstract"). I refer of course to the Ten Commandments. And Christians are very zealous about teaching the Ten Commandments. And they distribute Bibles worldwide that contain the Torah in full.
What would I know? Nothing, perhaps. But that is what I see in the Hebrew scriptures. I probably should give theology up.
Update:
OK. The post above was a bit facetious and that was probably bad of me. Of greater concern is that the post may be seen as anti-Jewish and pro-Christian. It is neither. I give Christian theology a hard time too -- as you can see from my Scripture blog. It is just that as an atheist I am in a position to read the original texts without religious preconceptions and I like to do that. Doing that does produce some awkward conclusions at times, though.
************************
A rather good news roundup from Fred Meekins
David Frum has mocked Glenn Beck from the standpoint of the 295 million Americans that don’t watch Beck. Wonder if Frum realizes that the number having no idea who David Frum is surpasses even that figure?
Al Sharpton held a rally against the Congressional investigation into radical Islam. Amazing dupes such as him fail to realize he will be among the first eliminated should an Islamist revolution (or any kind of leftist revolution for that matter) ever takes place.
Even if the government gave every ghetto youth a laptop and an IPOD as Jesse Jackson Jr. suggests, they wouldn’t use the devices for educational purposes.
Obama is having his own beer brewed at the White House. Guess it is revealed after all that the thing wrong with homebrewing is not so much the health concerns but rather that the government might not get its cut if you sell it to some friends or neighbors. You let it out that you brew your own beer and see if they don’t torch your place like the Waco compound in the name of public safety.
A true cowboy wouldn’t want the federal government to finance their poetry festival.
If you think it is mean spirited to cut Public Broadcasting, just think how mean spirited it will be when Americans are forced to live in conditions reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s “Mad Max” or Kevin Costner’s “The Postman”.
Castro’s Twitter account breaks 100,000 followers. His regime heralds it as the first Cuban themed account to reach that plateau. Most Cubans probably don’t even have access to electricity and any with Twitter accounts are probably sent to labor camps or executed before being allowed to attract such a following.
A state park has celebrated Pancho Villa’s attack. Only in America are those out to destroy us lavished with government funds and public accolades.
Representative Keith Ellison broke down during Congressional hearings into radical Islam in recounting the plight of a Muslim rescue worker that perished in the attack on the World Trade Center. Wonder if Rep. Keith Ellison shed any tears for any non-Mulsims that perished on 9/11. Rep. Ellison notes 29 Muslims died in New York on 9/11. I guess adherents of other creeds perishing that day aren’t worthy of this esteemed legislator’s mention. With the name “Keith Ellison”, it’s doubtful the Minnesota representative was born a Muslim. Wonder if a Muslim converting to Christianity would even be allowed to remain alive in an Islamist society much less serve in its legislature. Wonder how many tears Keith Ellison has shed over Muslims killed for converting to Christianity. How come its an emotional act of courage for Ellison to weep but a lack of manhood when the Speaker of the House sheds tears?
Religious fanatics have already categorized the Japanese earthquake as God’s judgment and insinuated the victims got what they deserved. Unless one of the victims was conducting seismic warfare experiments that got the best of them, isn’t such a conclusion a bit presumptuous? It’s not like the Almighty promptly issued a press release as to why this particular tragedy was allowed to occur.
A British mother claims her premature baby was tossed into a room to die. Struggling in his mother’s arms as life slipped from his one-pound body, hospital staff did nothing (as stipulated by hospital policy) to save his life. Apparently there is no money to save you if you have a solid English name like “Godwin” as did this child. However, no doubt bags of cash will be tossed your way if your name is “Akmed” or “Hasan” and intend to defecate all over the Union Jack.
A Florida school has implemented a virtual police state, including gastronomical prohibitions and low tech breathalyzer checks, over the peanut allergy of a single student. Wouldn’t responsible parents instead simply homeschool the child, acquire a tutor, or send their offspring to a special facility? So if a school can ban peanuts because even the aroma of this particular legume might send a single student into fatal apoplexy, if American students are sickened by the stench of the swill eaten by foreigners, will these kinds of victuals be banned as well?
Wasn’t aware votive candles could be eaten. If not, why are they in the aisle listed as “Hispanic Food”? I don’t remember there being an aisle demarcated as “Redneck Food” dedicated to Anglo dietary peculiarities.
On the 3/24/11 episode of “Radio Liberty with Stan Montieth”, privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht warned that electricity rates could go as high as $1,000 per month for those not upgrading their appliances and utilities to “smart grid” technologies.
Farrakhan explicitly insists that Americans (especially the White ones which his sect believes are the result of an ancient experiment in genetic engineering) are beasts and not human. This is so when his minions start killing, in their eyes it won’t be construed as murder since that is a crime committed against human beings and not animals.
Scientists from Harvard and MIT are developing instruments to confirm their preconceived hypothesis that life on Earth actually began on Mars. Yet if one believes the Genesis account as literal, they are laughed out of academia. This is being done for no other reason than to lay the foundation for declaring humanity the greatest invasive species of them all and to justify what will become history’s most notorious campaign of genocide. Mark 13:20 reads, “And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect’s sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.”
SOURCE
**********************
View of U.S. Shapes Lib/Con Divide
Michael Medved
An indignant Democrat of my acquaintance accuses conservatives of hypocrisy when they criticize President Obama for acting with caution and restraint in response to crisis. He accurately points out that caution and restraint represent core conservative virtues, and that most leaders on the right ripped the president during his first two years for pushing too fast for transformational change. How, then, can they attack him now for reacting too modestly, too slowly to Libya, Egypt, Japan, oil prices, or anything else?
Beyond fleeting politics of the moment, this challenge brings into focus a single explanation to two persistent mysteries:
First, how can conservatives passionately demand a smaller role for the federal government in every aspect of American life, while simultaneously insisting that Washington should play a more activist part in world affairs?
Second, why should liberals who trust the federal bureaucracy to address nearly all our domestic problems feel such powerful, palpable reluctance for that same government to assume a leadership role in the international community?
The answer to both questions centers on contrasting notions of American exceptionalism.
Nearly all citizens of the U.S. believe that our country counts as unparalleled and set apart from the rest of the world. The right views America as exceptionally blessed and righteous — chosen by God (or fate, if you prefer) to inspire humanity with distinctive ideals of liberty, self rule and free markets. The left, on the other hand, expresses an intensifying tendency to see the U.S. as exceptionally guilty (for slavery, "genocide" against Native Americans and arrogant imperialism) and exceptionally backward when it comes to "social justice." Progressives never tire of reminding us that the United States lacks the welfare state guarantees that characterize other wealthy nations, and that it tolerates a vast gap between rich and poor.
These sharply conflicting world views (or nation views, at least) inform dramatically different approaches to domestic and foreign challenges.
For conservatives, sweeping federal action is unnecessary and counterproductive when it comes to economic or social problems here in the USA. On the economy, they argue that normal business cycles would bring recovery if only government got out of the way. They point to more than a dozen downturns, all of which quickly gave way to powerful spurts of growth — except for the Great Depression which, according to the right, FDR needlessly extended with his wasteful New Deal. Republicans maintain an almost mystical faith in the American people and the powers of the market. That's why the only federal reform programs they promote with a true sense of urgency involve tax cuts, allowing more resources to remain in control of enlightened private citizens who can use those assets to repair problems more effectively than bumbling bureaucrats.
When it comes to the rest of the world, however, the right maintains far greater skepticism. The so-called community of nations (a musty euphemism that seems almost laughable today) can't heal itself without American direction and assistance. We tried leaving the world alone to solve its own problems in the isolationist 1920s and '30s, but then had to face Hitlerism and Stalinism, along with 60 million corpses in World War II.
Conservatives passionately embrace the idea that the United States is better than the rest of the world, so the American people need a strong hand from Washington far less than do beleaguered hordes in less fortunate societies around the world.
Progressives also believe that the U.S. stands out from other nations, but they tacitly or explicitly assume that we distinguish ourselves in a negative sense — encouraging greed, environmental pillage, materialism and neocolonialism. This vision of the United States gives rise to the claim that long-suffering citizens of this republic need decisive, reformist leadership from the nation's capital in order to drag the benighted USA into the 21st century, at the same time that the nation will fare better in the international arena by following the lead of multilateral organizations (as in dealing with Libya) and learning from governments with more advanced ideas.
These radically contrasting attitudes toward America and its position in the world shape the polarization at the center of today's politics. The fundamental questions that divide left and right nearly everywhere concern assessments of the United States. It's those questions that determine the point on the spectrum where individuals locate themselves:
•Is America a gift or a threat to the rest of humanity?
•Do American values count as nobler — or more dysfunctional — than, say, European values?
•Should the United States continue to lead the world or would the planet benefit from swaggering Americans learning from more civilized societies of Europe and elsewhere?
Given the sharp disagreements about the very nature of our distinctive national identity, it's not surprising that conservatives want less Washington interference at home and more Washington determination abroad, while liberals hope for less influence by the American government overseas along with a more muscular federal role in reshaping dysfunctional realities of the homeland.
In this context, Barack Obama is perfectly consistent in demonstrating aggressive leadership in stateside politics but a timorous, reluctant role in foreign affairs. His conservative critics also apply their own philosophy with unassailable coherence by demanding more American power abroad but less meddling with citizens here at home.
SOURCE
************************
ELSEWHERE
A good reason to learn English: "When an elderly patient asked Isabela to hand her three tablets, the home health attendant froze. The patient had read the label, which had been translated from English to Spanish, and it instructed her to take three tablets every time she took the medicine. Isabela, who did not want her last name used, knew from experience -- and a phone call to the doctor confirmed her hunch -- that the correct instruction should have been to take one tablet three times a day. The medication label, it turns out, had been wrongly translated."
Ryan budget: A huge opportunity to improve healthcare: "On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will release a budget blueprint that tackles the three big health care challenges facing the federal budget — ObamaCare, Medicare and Medicaid — with a strategy of repeal, vouchers and block grants. Done properly, those steps would simultaneously improve health care and help balance the budget within a decade."
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)
****************************
Orthodox Jews seem to claim that God made a covenant with them as a nation, as a particular genetic group or race. I doubt that. From Moses on right through the Hebrew prophets, Yahveh (the name of God in the Hebrew Bible, sometimes translated as "Jehovah" in English Bibles) poured out imprecations and condemnations on the Israelites if they strayed from the true religion. It would seem clear that Yahveh defined his people by their RELIGION rather than by their race.
So how does that leave modern Jews in the eyes of Yahveh? As an atheist, I am in a poor position to say but if we assume his existence and read his words in the Bible, it does not look too good. They obey the Torah only selectively (they no longer put homosexuals to death, for instance) and they have not rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem despite being in a good position to do so.
Additionally they have done the exact opposite of what he intended regarding his name. We read in Psalm 83:18 "That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth" (KJV). Yahveh clearly had big ambitions for his name and regarded himself as ruling not only the Israelites but all the earth. And even in the Ten Commandments, he stressed the importance and dignity of his name -- forbidding disrespectful use of it.
Yet what did Israelites, starting from around 200 AD or earlier, do? Far from proclaiming Yahveh's mighty name worldwide, they stopped using it altogether! The Devil must have had his best laugh ever when that happened! And modern Jews go one better and render even the Germanic word "god" as "G-d". I can't see Yahveh being pleased with that! No wonder he let the Romans boot the Israelites out of Israel
So has Yahveh transferred his support to the Christians? It's possible. On numbers alone it would seem so. The descendants (spiritual descendants?) of Abraham were promised that they would be a multitude throughout the earth. "Abraham" means "father of a multitude" and we read: "And he brought him [Abraham] forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be". (Gen 15:5).
The Christians are that multitude but Jews are not. On best estimates there are even 200 million Christians in China these days. So whom does this text best fit? Jews or Christians: "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 12:2-3)". It's a matter of opinion, of course but it is Christians who have both the numbers and the influence. And has not Christian civilization been a great blessing to the whole world? And "Jew" is much more often a curse than a blessing.
And remember that respect for his law was what Yahveh cared about. He even provided a nifty executive summary of it (or what scientists would call an "Abstract"). I refer of course to the Ten Commandments. And Christians are very zealous about teaching the Ten Commandments. And they distribute Bibles worldwide that contain the Torah in full.
What would I know? Nothing, perhaps. But that is what I see in the Hebrew scriptures. I probably should give theology up.
Update:
OK. The post above was a bit facetious and that was probably bad of me. Of greater concern is that the post may be seen as anti-Jewish and pro-Christian. It is neither. I give Christian theology a hard time too -- as you can see from my Scripture blog. It is just that as an atheist I am in a position to read the original texts without religious preconceptions and I like to do that. Doing that does produce some awkward conclusions at times, though.
************************
A rather good news roundup from Fred Meekins
David Frum has mocked Glenn Beck from the standpoint of the 295 million Americans that don’t watch Beck. Wonder if Frum realizes that the number having no idea who David Frum is surpasses even that figure?
Al Sharpton held a rally against the Congressional investigation into radical Islam. Amazing dupes such as him fail to realize he will be among the first eliminated should an Islamist revolution (or any kind of leftist revolution for that matter) ever takes place.
Even if the government gave every ghetto youth a laptop and an IPOD as Jesse Jackson Jr. suggests, they wouldn’t use the devices for educational purposes.
Obama is having his own beer brewed at the White House. Guess it is revealed after all that the thing wrong with homebrewing is not so much the health concerns but rather that the government might not get its cut if you sell it to some friends or neighbors. You let it out that you brew your own beer and see if they don’t torch your place like the Waco compound in the name of public safety.
A true cowboy wouldn’t want the federal government to finance their poetry festival.
If you think it is mean spirited to cut Public Broadcasting, just think how mean spirited it will be when Americans are forced to live in conditions reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s “Mad Max” or Kevin Costner’s “The Postman”.
Castro’s Twitter account breaks 100,000 followers. His regime heralds it as the first Cuban themed account to reach that plateau. Most Cubans probably don’t even have access to electricity and any with Twitter accounts are probably sent to labor camps or executed before being allowed to attract such a following.
A state park has celebrated Pancho Villa’s attack. Only in America are those out to destroy us lavished with government funds and public accolades.
Representative Keith Ellison broke down during Congressional hearings into radical Islam in recounting the plight of a Muslim rescue worker that perished in the attack on the World Trade Center. Wonder if Rep. Keith Ellison shed any tears for any non-Mulsims that perished on 9/11. Rep. Ellison notes 29 Muslims died in New York on 9/11. I guess adherents of other creeds perishing that day aren’t worthy of this esteemed legislator’s mention. With the name “Keith Ellison”, it’s doubtful the Minnesota representative was born a Muslim. Wonder if a Muslim converting to Christianity would even be allowed to remain alive in an Islamist society much less serve in its legislature. Wonder how many tears Keith Ellison has shed over Muslims killed for converting to Christianity. How come its an emotional act of courage for Ellison to weep but a lack of manhood when the Speaker of the House sheds tears?
Religious fanatics have already categorized the Japanese earthquake as God’s judgment and insinuated the victims got what they deserved. Unless one of the victims was conducting seismic warfare experiments that got the best of them, isn’t such a conclusion a bit presumptuous? It’s not like the Almighty promptly issued a press release as to why this particular tragedy was allowed to occur.
A British mother claims her premature baby was tossed into a room to die. Struggling in his mother’s arms as life slipped from his one-pound body, hospital staff did nothing (as stipulated by hospital policy) to save his life. Apparently there is no money to save you if you have a solid English name like “Godwin” as did this child. However, no doubt bags of cash will be tossed your way if your name is “Akmed” or “Hasan” and intend to defecate all over the Union Jack.
A Florida school has implemented a virtual police state, including gastronomical prohibitions and low tech breathalyzer checks, over the peanut allergy of a single student. Wouldn’t responsible parents instead simply homeschool the child, acquire a tutor, or send their offspring to a special facility? So if a school can ban peanuts because even the aroma of this particular legume might send a single student into fatal apoplexy, if American students are sickened by the stench of the swill eaten by foreigners, will these kinds of victuals be banned as well?
Wasn’t aware votive candles could be eaten. If not, why are they in the aisle listed as “Hispanic Food”? I don’t remember there being an aisle demarcated as “Redneck Food” dedicated to Anglo dietary peculiarities.
On the 3/24/11 episode of “Radio Liberty with Stan Montieth”, privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht warned that electricity rates could go as high as $1,000 per month for those not upgrading their appliances and utilities to “smart grid” technologies.
Farrakhan explicitly insists that Americans (especially the White ones which his sect believes are the result of an ancient experiment in genetic engineering) are beasts and not human. This is so when his minions start killing, in their eyes it won’t be construed as murder since that is a crime committed against human beings and not animals.
Scientists from Harvard and MIT are developing instruments to confirm their preconceived hypothesis that life on Earth actually began on Mars. Yet if one believes the Genesis account as literal, they are laughed out of academia. This is being done for no other reason than to lay the foundation for declaring humanity the greatest invasive species of them all and to justify what will become history’s most notorious campaign of genocide. Mark 13:20 reads, “And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect’s sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.”
SOURCE
**********************
View of U.S. Shapes Lib/Con Divide
Michael Medved
An indignant Democrat of my acquaintance accuses conservatives of hypocrisy when they criticize President Obama for acting with caution and restraint in response to crisis. He accurately points out that caution and restraint represent core conservative virtues, and that most leaders on the right ripped the president during his first two years for pushing too fast for transformational change. How, then, can they attack him now for reacting too modestly, too slowly to Libya, Egypt, Japan, oil prices, or anything else?
Beyond fleeting politics of the moment, this challenge brings into focus a single explanation to two persistent mysteries:
First, how can conservatives passionately demand a smaller role for the federal government in every aspect of American life, while simultaneously insisting that Washington should play a more activist part in world affairs?
Second, why should liberals who trust the federal bureaucracy to address nearly all our domestic problems feel such powerful, palpable reluctance for that same government to assume a leadership role in the international community?
The answer to both questions centers on contrasting notions of American exceptionalism.
Nearly all citizens of the U.S. believe that our country counts as unparalleled and set apart from the rest of the world. The right views America as exceptionally blessed and righteous — chosen by God (or fate, if you prefer) to inspire humanity with distinctive ideals of liberty, self rule and free markets. The left, on the other hand, expresses an intensifying tendency to see the U.S. as exceptionally guilty (for slavery, "genocide" against Native Americans and arrogant imperialism) and exceptionally backward when it comes to "social justice." Progressives never tire of reminding us that the United States lacks the welfare state guarantees that characterize other wealthy nations, and that it tolerates a vast gap between rich and poor.
These sharply conflicting world views (or nation views, at least) inform dramatically different approaches to domestic and foreign challenges.
For conservatives, sweeping federal action is unnecessary and counterproductive when it comes to economic or social problems here in the USA. On the economy, they argue that normal business cycles would bring recovery if only government got out of the way. They point to more than a dozen downturns, all of which quickly gave way to powerful spurts of growth — except for the Great Depression which, according to the right, FDR needlessly extended with his wasteful New Deal. Republicans maintain an almost mystical faith in the American people and the powers of the market. That's why the only federal reform programs they promote with a true sense of urgency involve tax cuts, allowing more resources to remain in control of enlightened private citizens who can use those assets to repair problems more effectively than bumbling bureaucrats.
When it comes to the rest of the world, however, the right maintains far greater skepticism. The so-called community of nations (a musty euphemism that seems almost laughable today) can't heal itself without American direction and assistance. We tried leaving the world alone to solve its own problems in the isolationist 1920s and '30s, but then had to face Hitlerism and Stalinism, along with 60 million corpses in World War II.
Conservatives passionately embrace the idea that the United States is better than the rest of the world, so the American people need a strong hand from Washington far less than do beleaguered hordes in less fortunate societies around the world.
Progressives also believe that the U.S. stands out from other nations, but they tacitly or explicitly assume that we distinguish ourselves in a negative sense — encouraging greed, environmental pillage, materialism and neocolonialism. This vision of the United States gives rise to the claim that long-suffering citizens of this republic need decisive, reformist leadership from the nation's capital in order to drag the benighted USA into the 21st century, at the same time that the nation will fare better in the international arena by following the lead of multilateral organizations (as in dealing with Libya) and learning from governments with more advanced ideas.
These radically contrasting attitudes toward America and its position in the world shape the polarization at the center of today's politics. The fundamental questions that divide left and right nearly everywhere concern assessments of the United States. It's those questions that determine the point on the spectrum where individuals locate themselves:
•Is America a gift or a threat to the rest of humanity?
•Do American values count as nobler — or more dysfunctional — than, say, European values?
•Should the United States continue to lead the world or would the planet benefit from swaggering Americans learning from more civilized societies of Europe and elsewhere?
Given the sharp disagreements about the very nature of our distinctive national identity, it's not surprising that conservatives want less Washington interference at home and more Washington determination abroad, while liberals hope for less influence by the American government overseas along with a more muscular federal role in reshaping dysfunctional realities of the homeland.
In this context, Barack Obama is perfectly consistent in demonstrating aggressive leadership in stateside politics but a timorous, reluctant role in foreign affairs. His conservative critics also apply their own philosophy with unassailable coherence by demanding more American power abroad but less meddling with citizens here at home.
SOURCE
************************
ELSEWHERE
A good reason to learn English: "When an elderly patient asked Isabela to hand her three tablets, the home health attendant froze. The patient had read the label, which had been translated from English to Spanish, and it instructed her to take three tablets every time she took the medicine. Isabela, who did not want her last name used, knew from experience -- and a phone call to the doctor confirmed her hunch -- that the correct instruction should have been to take one tablet three times a day. The medication label, it turns out, had been wrongly translated."
Ryan budget: A huge opportunity to improve healthcare: "On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will release a budget blueprint that tackles the three big health care challenges facing the federal budget — ObamaCare, Medicare and Medicaid — with a strategy of repeal, vouchers and block grants. Done properly, those steps would simultaneously improve health care and help balance the budget within a decade."
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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