Media Conceal True Nature of “Flash Mob” Racial Violence

Relying on documents made available exclusively through a Freedom of Information Act request, we can add another face to the growing picture of racial “flash mob” violence in America. It is a face that the media have concealed from public view.

This writer was forced to use the local Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ascertain the facts about the racial identity of one of the victims of these attacks. The media concealed the identity of the white victim apparently because of misguided racial sensitivity.

What makes this even more startling is that it is just one of many examples of racial mob violence occurring around the country, without any comment from national figures such as President Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder. But if whites were attacking blacks in this manner, you can bet it would have already have become a national story worthy of comment from national political figures.

Consider these incidents:

* At the Wisconsin State fair, groups of black teens numbering anywhere from 25 to 100 “were targeting anyone who was white or appeared to look white,” and beating them, according to the local police chief. At least 18 people were injured, and 30 have been arrested.

* In Denver, couples leaving restaurants were being attacked by a group of black men with baseball bats.

* A young white man named Carter Strange had his skull fractured by a mob in South Carolina. He was attacked at random while jogging.

* A young white man named Dawid Strucinski was beaten into a coma by a mob in Bayonne, NJ.

* Anna Taylor, Emily Guendelsberger, and Thomas Fitzgerald were beaten to the ground and stomped in separate Philadelphia flash mobs.

* “Every weekend in July,” according to local news, “police have battled large, flash-mob beatings and vandalism” in Greensboro, NC.

* In a mostly-white suburb of Cleveland, witnesses reported large groups of young blacks walking through the streets, “shouting profanities and racial epithets,” and one man was viciously beaten while leaving a restaurant with his wife and friends.

* A young white lady named Shaina Perry was taunted and beaten by a black mob in Milwaukee who remarked “Oh, white girl bleeds a lot.”

The similarities among these attacks point to a trend: First of all, these are not run-of-the-mill crimes. They typically involve group attacks against defenseless, random victims who have no means to resist and did nothing to provoke their attackers. These flash mobs often stomp their victims even after they are down, as most of the news reports describe.

Then there are the racial similarities: The attackers are invariably black. Philadelphia’s mayor conceded as much when he condemned flash mobs, addressing the rioters with the charge, “You damaged your own race.” The victims are usually not black.

Several qualifications are in order: It is clear that only a small number of black teens take part in these attacks. Blacks are more likely to be victims of violent crime than any other group due to black-on-black crime. Also, interracial crime is a fraction of all crime, and hate crime is an even smaller fraction of that.

Nonetheless, these flash mobs are a social problem that needs to be addressed. If the races were reversed, we would be witnessing an outpouring of guilt of biblical proportions. Instead, the victims are white and we get an outpouring of ignominious silence. So far, precious few leaders in academia, politics, the legal system, or the media have spoken out directly against this troubling trend.

Far from being isolated incidents, violent flash mobs are part of an emerging social problem that turns the traditional story of American racism on its head. If opinion makers reported accurately about these flash mobs, most Americans would probably alter their views about racism and conclude that these flash mobs are the worst form of racial violence in our nation today. Not all of the flash mobs meet the strict criteria of a hate crime. However, they do represent a growing wave of racial violence.

The national media should acknowledge what a serious and potentially widespread social problem they are, but instead the press has concealed the racial aspect of this problem.

To take one particular example, in Chicago on June 14 of this year, the local media reported on a 15-year-old, without identifying his race, who was attacked and robbed by “a group of seven male teens,” all “black.” In a summer filled with mob violence, this story registered as another small blip in an alarming trend that has emerged across the country. However, the June 14 robbery was more troubling than most of the other flash mob attacks: One of the attackers that day had a gun.

Following their official policy of self-imposed PC censorship, the local media didn’t mention the race of the victim. Thankfully, the Chicago Police Department replied to my Freedom of Information Act request and provided that information in a redacted version of the incident report. It should not surprise anyone that the victim on June 14 was white. (These FOIA documents are attached to this column).

I can hear the chorus of complaints asking, “Why does race matter?” That question is usually asked with a tone of consternation, as if the person asking the question has determined that race must not matter and is refusing to consider race.

‘It’s not about race!’ some will say. People are people, and crime is about bad people doing bad things—or good, poor people whose social conditions drove them to beat people.

But these mob attacks are most certainly about race, and there is only one specific type of person committing these attacks. In Chicago, and around the country, flash mob attacks have been committed by blacks, apparently without exception.

Not every interracial crime has racial significance. Sometimes a fight is just a fight, a robbery is just a robbery, a mob is just a mob. But when there is a trend of racial victimization and a stark racial component in the participants of the attacks, then there is racial significance. We are fully justified to be concerned with the racial aspect of flash mobs, given the larger context of the flash mob phenomenon in Chicago—to take only one example—this year.

The flash mobs in Chicago began with flash mob robberies in January when groups of teens shoplifted at three separate stores along Michigan Avenue. In February, Loyola University warned students and staffers about “flash mob offenders” stealing items from nearby stores. In April 2011, a group of 70 “youths” ransacked a McDonald’s and “created a disturbance” according to a news report.

Then, on Memorial Day weekend, the cultural enrichment turned ugly. A witness told Chicago’s NBC local affiliate that mobs of “animals,” as the witness described them, “were being rude and abusive and throwing trash around and defecating…” Other witnesses reported that “gangbangers” were pushing people off their bikes.

In June, the attackers showed up armed. In robberies on June 5, between eight and 15 teens boarded a bus without paying and “began hitting people,” according to the Chicago Tribune. Three of those teens were charged with armed robbery, one with unlawful use of a weapon.

The most publicized flash mob attacks took place when five non-blacks were attacked in one hour by a pack of 20 teens on the North Side. As of June 13, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that over 30 people had been arrested in the various mob attacks that month. Then, on June 14, the white 15-year-old was robbed at gunpoint by a group of blacks.

Not far away, the flash mobs could have reached an awful crescendo in Peoria. On June 24, a mob of at least 50 blacks teens were stopping traffic in the street, and “running wildly through yards and porches” in a quiet suburban neighborhood in what one witness described as a “show of force.” Another witness says that a black teen yelled out, “We’re gonna kill all the white people. This is our neighborhood.” In this context, a reasonable reporter would be acting appropriately to include the race of victims and attackers in group attacks.

However, when it comes to black-on-white crime, as Chicago Tribune editor Gerald Kern publicly admitted, “We do not reference race unless it is a fact that is central to telling the story.” In other words, the Tribune will not reference race. How will we know if a fact is central to a story unless we have context? We’ll never have context to understand racial violence if the media conceal racial facts. If we’re not told the race of victims and attackers, we can’t observe a pattern of behavior, and we will have no idea whether race is central to a story. The Tribune’s reporting is thus an Orwellian void that leaves us all less informed, and less safe.

But this is not unique. The Washington Post, New York Times, and L.A. Times join the Tribune in admitting that they have, in effect, a policy of not reporting race.

Whether or not a fact is “central to a story” is naturally a value judgment that says as much about the ideology of an editor as it does about the facts of a story. Needless to say, when the race of mob violence victims is white, a liberal editor will usually not find that fact “central” to a story.

White victimization in racial violence is an inconvenient fact for those who are dedicated to social justice, a dogma based on faith in perpetual white guilt. Journalism departments play their part in maintaining the dogma. We’re not going to remain addled with white guilt if we fully acknowledge anti-white crime. So liberals downplay white victims to maintain their traditional belief in monolithic white racism, the one tradition that liberals believe in maintaining.

If we are truly committed to “social justice,” however, we must acknowledge that concealing the facts about racial violence and other social problems leaves us endangered and intellectually impoverished. Refusing to face facts will inhibit finding a solution to the problem, and virtually guarantee that the problem will only get worse.

SOURCE

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Obama helped spark the black mob attacks

Lloyd Marcus

Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, said, "The speed of the leader is the speed of the gang." In other words, leadership flows from the top down.

Folks, I believe human beings are responsible for their behavior. However, as America's first black president, fair or unfair, Obama's presidency comes with enormous responsibility in terms of its influence on black youths. This is why it is so unfortunate that American black youths' ultimate role model is a characterless, race-baiting political hack.

While I am not saying president Obama is responsible for the epidemic of black youth flash-mob attacks on whites around our country, his race-baiting has to be a contributing factor.

Obama and his minions have despicably created racial tension for political gain -- accusing all who opposed his hostile takeover of our health care system of racism.

Clearly, the Obama administration's game plan for his presidency is to use race as a bludgeon whenever anyone opposes an Obama agenda item. Obama obviously considers the loss of harmony between black and white Americans to be acceptable collateral damage.

Here are a few examples of race exploitation by Obama and company which could be fueling rage in black youths.

Let's begin with ObamaCare. Several Democrats suggested that race was a factor in opposition to ObamaCare. Former President Jimmy Carter led the charge saying, "[A]n overwhelming portion of those who demonstrate against Obama are doing so because the president is a black man." In essence, President Carter was telling black youths, "Many Americans are racist and against you." Do you think Carter's statement may have inspired black anger?

Then, there was the black professor Gates vs. the Cambridge Police incident. Before knowing the facts, President Obama declared the white decorated arresting officer guilty of racial profiling, saying the police "acted stupidly." Obama continued, "[W]hat I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact."

Good Lord, the black president of the United States parroted the mantra of black gangsta rappers: "if you are black, the white po-po [police] are out to get you." I find it extraordinary that Obama did not anticipate the catastrophic negative impact his proclamation would have on the relationship between black urban youths and white law enforcement.

Would a man who values racial harmony say such a divisive thing, even if he suspected it to be true? Obama is the president of the United States, for crying out load. His words carry tremendous power and influence, particularly among black youths.

Obama's indictment of the nation's police was to cover his butt for assuming the Cambridge police was guilty of racism before knowing the facts of the incident -- thus confirming that Obama cares about only himself.

The Tea Party is a constant extremely annoying thorn in the side of Obama in implementing his fundamental transformation of America. This is why Obama has launched a campaign to bludgeon the Tea Party to death with false accusations of racism.

Obama said, "[R]ace is still a problem." He stated race to be a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, "especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent Tea Party movement." Obama added, "[A] subterranean agenda in the anti-Obama movement -- a racially biased one -- that was unfortunate."

Again, imagine how black youths process Obama's I'm-a-victim-of-racist-white-folks rhetoric.

Obama played the race card again in the Arizona immigration law debate. The Arizona immigration law was birthed out of frustration with the Obama administration's refusal to enforce federal immigration law. Arizonians suffer from epidemic levels of drug-trafficking, murders, and violent kidnapping by illegals. To court the Hispanic vote, Obama deemed Arizona's law racist.

Here's another example of Team Obama throwing race into the mix. Several black Democrat pundits andCongressional Black Caucus member Shelia Jackson Lee said that Republicans were rejecting raising the debt ceiling because Obama is black.

So, has the Obama administration's shameful disregard for preserving harmonious race relations inspired racial tension leading to black youths beating up whites? Well, let's just say, unquestionably, that Obama's Chicago thug vibe resonates.

Black conservative Kenneth Gladney was beaten and sent to the emergency room by SEIU thugs shortly after Obama sent a clarion call to his supporters to "[h]it back twice as hard." Obama encouraged Latinos to "punish our enemies."

It is not a stretch to suggest that highly impressionable black youths might retaliate against a white America perceived to be dissing their African-American idol.

SOURCE

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Obama economy approval slumps to 26pc

THE number of Americans who approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the sour US economy has slumped to an all-time low for him of 26 per cent, according to a poll released today.

The respected Gallup organisation's findings showed the embattled president down 11 points since mid-May on an issue sure to define his quest for a fresh term in the November 2012 elections.

Mr Obama also won low approval ratings for his handling of the runaway US federal budget deficit, at 24 per cent, while just 29 per cent approved of his record on job creation while unemployment is more than nine per cent.

More HERE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Nazis were not evil, they were 'social climbers', claims leading German historian

There is some truth in the ideas below but the psychologizing is pure speculation. What is true is that Hitler was personally very popular. He was seen as a fatherly lover of his people -- which is how he presented himself. And his antisemitism was completely normal worldwide in the prewar era.

The politics of envy always has a large following and the extraordinarily prominent position of Jews in prewar public life in Germany made them a natural target for envy.

There is of course much more to it but those two facts alone are just about enough to explain the holocaust without trashy assertions about inferiority complexes etc.

It does grieve me however that Jews have learnt so little since then. Once again many tend to seek out prominent positions in public life. It's like painting a target on their own backs

A peculiar German inferiority complex allied to a lust to 'get on' led to the country’s collective moral collapse which allowed the Holocaust of six million Jews to happen, a new book in Germany claims.

Götz Aly, an esteemed historian and social commentator, says their berserk social climbing led the ordinary people, far removed from the extermination camp system, to partake in the plunder of the Jews without troubling their consciences.

His book Why The Germans? Why The Jews? comes at a time when Germany is once more in the crosshairs of critics across the continent as the euro crisis lurches from bad to worse.

It is portrayed as bullying, domineering and inflexible as it tries to impose rigid, German-style rules on nations which do not share its social, political and economic ethics.

Most important Aly gets away from the 'evil Nazi' comfort zone that so many postwar Germans have wallowed in. The central thesis of his book is that the Holocaust happened “because people like you and me allowed it to.” And he says it can happen again.

It was the middle class fear of coming down in the world following defeat in WWI, the hyper-inflation and joblessness of the Weimar years, that allowed people to blind themselves to the excesses of the Nazis as they pledged to restore Germany to greatness.

Those who would pay the most for that greatness were the Jews; the culprits, said Hitler, behind the war.

Social climbing became an almost impossible thing during the jobless, moneyless days of the Weimar Republic: the Nazis brought it back into vogue with uniforms, work and, ultimately, plunder.

Massive auctions were staged every week throughout the lifespan of the Third Reich in Hamburg and several other cities of stolen Jewish goods. Massive ships docked regularly at the city’s port bringing furniture, silver, furs, tapestries, rugs and glassware that had been taken from Jews in the occupied countries.

'The Social Democrats and the trades unions wanted property too,' said Aly. 'The ‘bad one’ was the Jew in all this.'

Therefore, the common man reasoned, it was no bad thing for his or herself to advance themselves at the cost of this societal bogeyman.

The Nazis ignored the fact that Jews - making up less than one per cent of the population of Germany - had since around 1900 excelled in schools and universities, graduating at a rate eight times that of Christians.

They merely played up the fact that they took all the jobs, thus provoking yet more envy as they secured positions in high paying professions such as medicine and law.

He offers up the example of his own grandfather, Friedrich Schneider, one of the five million unemployed in 1926 who joined Hitler’s fledgling Nazi party because he believed, like so many others, that he would once more be able to “get on” if it was in power. 'He was one small part,' he said, 'of that whole of Germany that went on the way to violence and destructive rule.'

Aly also says coupled with the German envy complex was a deep-seated fear of true freedom; it had not existed under the Kaiser and democracy under the Weimar Republic had brought the country to its knees.

The Nazis, he said, were a catchment basin for socially envious people and people with inferiority complexes. He went on: 'I see in the Germans a substantial self conditioning for the murder of the Jews that developed from these feelings of national inferiority.

'The Holocaust can repeat itself. One should not believe that the anti-Semites of yesterday are completely different human beings to the ones of today.'

SOURCE

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Obama throws open the immigration doors to all but serious criminals

This is near-complete amnesty and a coup against Congress

In a surprise announcement, the Obama administration said it will review the deportation cases of 300,000 illegal immigrants and might allow many of them to stay in the U.S., a decision that angered immigration hard-liners and pleased Hispanic advocacy groups.

Under the plan, federal authorities will review individually all cases of immigrants currently in deportation proceedings. Those who haven't committed crimes and who aren't considered a threat to public safety will have a chance to stay in the U.S. and to later apply for a work permit.

The shift could help counter growing discontent among Hispanic voters and immigration advocacy groups about record deportations; audits of businesses that have pushed undocumented workers underground; and the lack of progress toward overhauling the immigration system under President Barack Obama.

The announcement comes as several states seek to pass laws to crack down on illegal immigrants, including millions who flocked to the U.S. before the recession to take blue-collar jobs in construction, agriculture and hospitality.

A senior administration official described the move as an effort to better use limited immigration-enforcement resources and to alleviate pressure on overburdened immigration courts. The idea, this person said, is to "identify low-priority cases…and administratively close the case so they no longer clog the system." The official added that such cases could be reopened by the government at any time.

While the announcement doesn't address illegal immigrants who aren't involved in deportation proceedings, it could benefit them indirectly. "They will be less likely to enter the caseload to begin with, so we can focus on folks in the caseload who are high priority," said the administration official.

Critics described the decision as a step by the administration toward offering amnesty for illegal immigrants. "The Obama administration should enforce immigration laws, not look for ways to ignore them," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), head of the House Judiciary Committee.

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies against legalization, said: "In essence, the administration has declared that U.S. immigration is now virtually unlimited to anyone willing to try to enter—subject only to those who commit violent felonies after arrival."

Others welcomed the move. Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan advocacy organization, described it as a "step forward" and a "sound policy decision that uses valuable law-enforcement resources to remove those who once caused harm but keeps contributing members of the immigrant community here."

The majority of agricultural workers are in the U.S. illegally. "We hope this is a move toward an immigration solution that works for agriculture," said Jason Resnick, general counsel of Western Growers, a California-based association that represents produce growers. "Even in this time of great unemployment, we are not seeing domestic workers apply for jobs."

Ordinarily, illegal immigrants can't get work permits, and most never apply for fear of opening themselves up to deportation. The new plan would enable some to get permits, said the administration official, who didn't elaborate other than to say decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nevada) outlining the plan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that an interagency working group would execute a "case-by-case review of all individuals currently in removal proceedings to ensure that they constitute our highest priorities."

Administration officials said low-priority cases likely to be shelved include individuals brought to the U.S. as children by their parents, undocumented spouses of U.S. military personnel and immigrants who have no criminal record.

"This process will allow additional federal enforcement resources to be focused on border security and the removal of public safety threats," Ms. Napolitano said in the letter.

Current immigration policy aims to deport illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes, but critics say it is snaring too many immigrants who have committed only minor offenses, like traffic violations, or who have called the police to report a crime. Controversy over a key element of the policy, the Secure Communities program, is threatening the president's relations with the Hispanic community.

This week, there have been protests in several cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, prompted by the surge in deportations and administration plans to expand the program.

More than 390,000 people were removed from the U.S. in each of the last two years, surpassing previous years. Immigration courts are so jammed it can often take more than a year for a judge to rule on a deportation case.

U.S. immigration policy has eclipsed the economy and jobs as the top issue for Hispanic voters, according to a national poll released in June. To Hispanic voters, Mr. Obama has touted his support for an immigration overhaul that would put illegal immigrants on the path to legalization, and has bemoaned a lack of support from Republicans.

The immigration issue is a critical one for Mr. Obama as he prepares for reelection. He won 67% of the Hispanic vote in 2008. Republicans are unlikely to significantly increase their share of the Hispanic vote, but Mr. Obama needs Latinos to turn out in large numbers.

SOURCE

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The past is another more courteous country

Book review of "EVERYMAN'S ENGLAND" BY VICTOR CANNING

Review by Val Hennessy:

Talk about the past being another country. Even the recent past. My nonagenarian mother and her contemporaries will certainly recognise, with regretful shakes of their heads, the England depicted by Victor Canning in these elegiac essays commissioned in the 1930s by the Daily Mail. But, for the rest of us, he could be describing another planet.

His England is a place where weekend cinemas are packed to bursting with enthusiastic film fans all cheerfully whistling, shouting and applauding the action.

The main street of a town in the Fens throngs, on Saturday nights, with a good-natured ‘slow-moving, joking, flirting, healthy mob’, dressed in their best, farm-labourers and their girls congregating ‘to forget the toil of the week ... to seek colour, warmth and laughter’.

From the doorway of every inn comes the plunk and tinkle of pianos and the group chorusings of mawkish ballads. By 11.30pm everyone has hurried home to bed, and the streets are deserted.

Hey ho! No vomiting, fornicating, brawling and scantily-attired, knock-kneed, boozed-up girls baring their bottoms. Those were the days...

Canning finds beauty everywhere, but never sentimentalises, and is consistently honest enough to highlight poverty and social inequality.

In Maryport in Cumbria, where the silent pit heads signal the decline of the mining industry, he discovers unemployed men foraging for small fragments of coal on the snow-covered shingle. A morning’s foraging will fill half a sack, to be hauled back to keep fires going in homes where fires are luxuries. Yet there is laughter too, and ‘the happy clatter of clogs’ from children playing in the streets.

In sooty Halifax, a town ‘which has wrung dignity and beauty from chimney stacks, gasometers, canals and mills’, the doorsteps and windows are spotless, and proud working men tog up at weekends in bowler hats, white collars and navy-blue suits.

In the Cotswolds Canning describes the soft patina of lichen and moss on walls, and senses the pride taken in ‘houses built to last ... reflecting the spirit of the master craftsmen who made them’, and in Norfolk he gets talking to an ancient sea salt who had joined the Navy when ‘sails and bare feet and a penny a week for boys made Britain mistress of the seas’.

In Rutland Canning describes an incident which is unthinkable in modern Britain. Exhausted after a long ramble, he knocks on a cottage door to ask for water.

A jolly, motherly sort invites him inside to freshen up, then sits him on the porch amongst the hollyhocks and roses, offers him tea and, referring to her husband who is out hedging and ditching, explains: ‘The master does the kitchen garden and I look after the flowers’. ‘Master’ indeed! What distant times!

His best anecdote concerns the hilarious men-only bathing rules at Parson’s Pleasure on the river Cherwell. Mixed bathing was forbidden due to the tradition that men bathed naked there.

In this male Arcadia (and I think Canning misses a significant social situation here, in his innocence) Oxford dons and undergraduates would loll about ‘clad only in spectacles and a copy of Plato’s Socratic Discourses’.

Any approaching punt steered solely by women would be halted; the punt would be taken through the bathing enclosure by an attendant, and the women were made to avert their eyes as they walked along a special footpath to rejoin it. Forgetful females were known to disobey the rules, causing a mad scramble as naked dons flattened themselves behind tufts of grass or scuttled for cover amongst the willows.

It is astonishing to remember that Canning’s pilgrimage to ‘understand the intricate pattern and appreciate the colour of the fabric of English life’ was made within living memory.

His gentle adventures will probably seem boring, if not ludicrous, to post-war generations who travel more often to exotic, far-flung foreign hot spots than to the towns and villages of England.

Canning travelled through a law-abiding, slow-paced, courteous country where a stranger in town (Canning) would address a passing resident like this: ‘Good day to you, sir. Would it be a breach of good manners if I was to ask you to oblige me by telling me a little history of this town?...’

Good-manners, and respect, yes. It certainly was another country... No obscene gestures, filthy language, feral yoof on the rampage or lawless, mindless morons burning and looting for the hell of it. And if I’m beginning to sound like my mum, I make no apologies...

SOURCE


My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Official: No Israeli apology to Turkey over raid

Israel will not apologize to Turkey over a raid on a Gaza-bound protest aid ship last year in which nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed, Israel's foreign minister said Wednesday.

On May 31 last year, Israeli commandos sent to stop a flotilla of protest ships from reaching Gaza clashed with activists armed with knives, clubs and iron rods aboard a Turkish vessel as the Israelis tried to take over the ship. Israel says soldiers acted in self defense after the activists assaulted them on deck, while the activists say they were defending themselves from an Israeli attack.

The flotilla was trying to break an Israeli blockade of Gaza. Activists charged that Israel was depriving Gaza's Palestinians of vital supplies. Israel said the blockade was necessary to keep weapons away from Gaza's Hamas rulers, calling the flotilla a political provocation.

Ties between Israel and Turkey, once close allies, deteriorated dramatically over the bloody raid. Each side blamed the other. Since then, Turkey has also moved closer to Israel's arch-enemy Iran, further souring relations.

Turkey initially said it would reconcile with Israel only if it apologizes and compensates the families of those killed.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel's Channel 2 TV Wednesday night that the decision to refuse to apologize sends a strong message to Turkey. "It is a just and wise position. A message of weakness is dangerous to Israel at this time," Lieberman said.

An Israeli official added that Israel had an apology ready as well as a compensation package, but then the Turks added more demands. One was shelving a U.N. investigation into the affair, believed to favor Israel's version of events.

More HERE

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The riots are a warning

Thomas Sowell

The orgies of violent attacks against strangers on the streets -- in both England and the United States -- are not necessarily just passing episodes. They should be wake-up calls, warning of the continuing degeneration of Western society.

As British doctor and author Theodore Dalrymple said, long before these riots broke out, "the good are afraid of the bad and the bad are afraid of nothing."

Not only the trends over the years leading up to these riots but also the squeamish responses to them by officials -- on both sides of the Atlantic -- reveal the moral dry rot that has spread deep into Western societies.

Even when black youth gangs target white strangers on the streets and spew out racial hatred as they batter them and rob them, mayors, police chiefs and the media tiptoe around their racism and many in the media either don't cover these stories or leave out the race and racism involved.

In England, the government did not call out the troops to squash their riots at the outset. The net result was that young hoodlums got to rampage and loot for hours, while the police struggled to try to contain the violence. Hoodlums returned home with loot from stores with impunity, as well as bringing home with them a contempt for the law and for the rights of other people.

With all the damage that was done by these rioters, both to cities and to the whole fabric of British society, it is very unlikely that most of the people who were arrested will be sentenced to jail. Only 7 percent of people convicted of crime in England are actually put behind bars.

"Alternatives to incarceration" are in vogue among the politically correct elites in England, just as in the United States. But in Britain those elites have had much more clout for a much longer time. And they have done much more damage.

Nevertheless, our own politically correct elites are pointing us in the same direction. A headline in the New York Times shows the same politically correct mindset in the United States: "London Riots Put Spotlight on Troubled, Unemployed Youths in Britain." There is not a speck of evidence that the rioters and looters are troubled -- unless you engage in circular reasoning and say that they must have been troubled to do the things they did.

In reality, like other rioters on both sides of the Atlantic they are often exultant in their violence and happy to be returning home with stolen designer clothes and upscale electronic devices.

In both England and in the United States, whole generations have been fed a steady diet of grievances and resentment against society, and especially against others who are more prosperous than they are. They get this in their schools, on television, on campuses and in the movies. Nothing is their own fault. It is all "society's" fault.

One of the young Britons interviewed in the New York Times reported that he had learned to read only three years ago. He is not unique. In Theodore Dalrymple's book, "Life at the Bottom," he referred to many British youths who are unashamedly illiterate. The lyrics of a popular song in Britain said, "We don't need no education" and another song was titled "Poor, White and Stupid."

Dr. Dalrymple says, "I cannot recall meeting a sixteen-year-old white from the public housing estates that are near my hospital who could multiple nine by seven."

In the United States, the color may be different but the attitudes among the hoodlum element are very similar. In both countries, classmates who try to learn can find themselves targeted by bullies.

Here those who want to study in ghetto schools are often accused of "acting white." But whites in Britain show the same pattern. Some conscientious students are beaten up badly enough to end up at Dr. Dalrymple's hospital.

Our elites often advise us to learn from other countries. They usually mean that we should imitate other countries. But it may be far more important to learn from their mistakes -- the biggest of which may be listening to fashionable nonsense from the smug intelligentsia.

These countries show us where that smug nonsense leads. It may be a sneak preview of our own future. "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."

SOURCE

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The latest fruits of Leftism

Ann Coulter

Like you, I've been horrified by the eruptions of mob violence around the globe this summer. But having spent the last two years researching and writing a book about mobs, I'm also grateful to the ruffians for taking to the streets so soon after my book was released.

Thanks, you dirty animals. I knew you wouldn't let me down.

When I decided to write about mobs, it was a relatively peaceful period. But as long as there is evil in the world, mobs will never be finally defeated. And as long as there are liberals, there will be some people stoking the mobs.

It was only a matter of time, although even I didn't expect it quite this soon.

Mobs are always the same -- destructive, left-wing and without any clear cause. Why were young people in Britain tearing apart their cities, burning down businesses and stealing electronics and designer clothes? Because the cops shot someone? Please.

What has gotten on the last nerve of rioters in Greece, Paris and Vancouver? They're jobless? Their government benefits have been cut? Their hockey team lost? They might as well destroy police cars because they're upset about rainy days. (That's not a suggestion, by the way -- more of a rhetorical flourish.)

Why were public sector union workers in Wisconsin busting up the capitol and physically attacking Republican legislators? MSNBC's Ed Schultz says it was because Republicans were trying to take away the people's "civil rights." (Evidently, research showed the last seven people actually watching MSNBC were Wisconsin public school teachers.)

You have to do some digging to find out the public sector employees were upset that Republicans wanted government unions to engage in collective bargaining only over salary, but not work conditions or benefits -- all funded by the taxpayers.

Why were black and Hispanic gang members looting after the Rodney King verdict? As if you needed to know, a Los Angeles policeman recently told me that the gang members he arrested in the riots said they didn't know or care about Rodney King.

Why were masked hoodlums smashing Starbucks windows in Seattle a decade ago when some bankers came to town? They're against the "global economy"? What does that even mean?

Like Satan, mobs are good only for destruction and chaos. The putative "cause" is always incidental. As Jesus said, "They hated me without a cause."

The French Revolution is the template for all mob uprisings, and the signal event of that lunacy was an attack on a prison housing only half a dozen prisoners.

As best anyone can tell, the storming of the Bastille was instigated by a rumor that the laughably impotent King Louis XVI was about to stage an attack on the National Assembly. Or perhaps they were upset that the inept finance minister, Jacques Necker, had been fired. Or they thought the Bastille was an eyesore.

(The only other possible cause was recently ruled out when it was conclusively determined that France had no teachers unions in the late 18th century.)

No one is sure -- but a good time was had by all! Except the prison administrators murdered in the attack.

Liberals love mobs because rioting and anarchy is their path to power. Making sound proposals based on facts and logic is not their metier. Issuing impossible promises to the easily fooled is their specialty. For more on this, see "The 2012 Democratic Platform."

The entire Democratic Party is currently promising to "save" Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in their present form. According to Obama's own Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, in less than 10 years, spending on those three entitlement programs, plus servicing the national debt, will consume 92 cents of every dollar in the federal budget.

The Democrats are openly lying to voters. It is a mathematical impossibility for these programs to continue without major reform now, or complete bankruptcy later -- and not very much later.

But Democrats' real achievement has been in destroying the family, and thereby creating an endless supply of potential rioters.

When blacks were only four generations out of slavery, their illegitimacy rate was about 23 percent (lower than the white illegitimacy rate is now). Then Democrats decided to help them! Barely two generations since LBJ's Great Society programs began, the black illegitimacy rate has tripled to 72 percent.

Meanwhile, the white illegitimacy rate has septupled, from 4 percent to 29 percent. Instead of a "War on Poverty," it should have been called a "War on the Family."

The vast and permanent underclass created by the welfare state is a great success story for the Democratic Party, which now has a loyal constituency of deadbeats who automatically vote for the Democrats to keep their Trojan horse "benefits" flowing. It's the Democrats' "heroin dealer" model of government.

Apparently, it takes a lot of government workers to minister to the poor, inasmuch as government employment has skyrocketed in tandem with the family's disintegration. As long as Democrats are serving their principal constituency -- recipients of taxpayer money -- they don't care what happens to the rest of society.

They champion any mob that will increase their political power. Liberals promote welfare dependency, class warfare, endless government programs staffed with public sector workers, street protests, coddling criminals and physical attacks on their ideological opponents. This is how they create reliable Democratic voters.

True, government employees are doing jobs we don't want done, can never be fired, are bankrupting the country and periodically break out in mob violence.

True, also, that the children of broken families sometimes burn city blocks to the ground or kill their great-grandmothers with swords. But what a voting bloc!

SOURCE

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Making Washington Inconsequential

WHEN TEXAS GOVERNOR RICK PERRY announced his campaign for president last weekend in a speech to the RedState Gathering in Charleston, S.C., he saved his best line until almost the very end. "I'll promise you this," he said to exuberant cheers and applause, "I'll work every day to try to make Washington, DC, as inconsequential in your life as I can."

To a Democrat steeped in the big-government tradition of the New Deal and the Great Society, there could hardly be a greater heresy.

For liberals, perhaps the only thing more absurd and disagreeable than the prospect of a Washington with radically reduced influence in American life is a presidential candidate pledging to make that reduction a priority. MSNBC's Chris Matthews, a former Jimmy Carter speechwriter and aide to Tip O'Neill, characterized Perry's applause line is nothing less than a call for anarchy. The governor is saying "not just that the era of big government is over," Matthews hyperbolically told his "Hardball" viewers on Monday, "he's saying the era of government is over. . . . Let's get rid of the government, basically."

But to countless libertarians and free-market conservatives, it is exhilarating to hear a candidate talk this way. And why wouldn't it be? After all, large majorities of Americans consistently say they don't trust the federal government and have little faith in the ability of Washington's immense bureaucracy to solve the nation's problems. In promising to curb Washington's outsize authority, Perry is responding to an alienation from government that is very much a Main Street phenomenon.

It is also a relatively recent phenomenon, one that has grown in proportion with the federal establishment's self-aggrandizement. As Charles Murray has written, the more Washington has tried to do, the less it has done well -- including the relatively few functions it used to perform competently. It is only natural that there should be such widespread frustration with the intrusive, expensive federal behemoth -- all the more so when efficient and attractive private alternatives (such as e-mail instead of snail mail) make clear just how apathetic and ungainly big government tends to be.

Over the past half-century, Washington has insinuated itself into a thousand-and-one decisions that individuals or local governments are more than capable of making for themselves. Which medicines can you buy? How efficient should your lightbulbs be? Can your children's schoolday begin with a prayer? Who qualifies for a mortgage? When do unemployment benefits run out? Can you pay an employee $5 an hour if that's what his labor is worth? Should abortions be restricted? Is health insurance optional? Do artists or farmers or broadcasters require subsidies? Are you in charge of your retirement income?

More HERE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Black racism and socialism

Thomas Sowell

Although much of the media have their antennae out to pick up anything that might be construed as racism against blacks, they resolutely ignore even the most blatant racism by blacks against others.

That includes a pattern of violent attacks on whites in public places in Chicago, Denver, New York, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Kansas City, as well as blacks in schools beating up Asian classmates -- for years -- in New York and Philadelphia.

These attacks have been accompanied by explicitly racist statements by the attackers, so it is not a question of having to figure out what the motivation is. There has also been rioting and looting by these young hoodlums.

Yet blacks have no monopoly on these ugly and malicious episodes. Remarkably similar things are being done by lower-class whites in England. Anybody reading "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple will recognize the same barbaric and self-destructive patterns among people with the same attitudes, even though their skin color is different.

Anyone reading today's headline stories about young hoodlums turning the streets of London into scenes of shattered and burning chaos, complete with violence, will discover the down side of the brotherhood of man.

While the history and the races are different, what is the same in both countries are the social policies and social attitudes long promoted by the intelligentsia and welfare state politicians.

A recent study in England found 352,000 households in which nobody had ever worked. Moreover, two-thirds of the adults in those households said that they didn't want to work. As in America, such people feel both "entitled" and aggrieved.

In both countries, those who have achieved less have been taught by the educational system, by the media and by politicians on the left that they have a grievance against those who have achieved more. As in the United States, they feel a fierce sense of resentment against strangers who have done nothing to them, and lash out violently against those strangers.

During the riots, looting and violence in England, a young woman was quoted as saying that this showed "the rich" and the police that "we can do whatever we want." Among the things done during these riots was forcing apparently prosperous looking people to strip naked in the streets.

The need to bring people down in humiliation that marked the mass violence against the Armenians in Turkey nearly a century ago, and that later marked the Nazi persecutions of the Jews in Germany, is still alive and well in people who resent those who have achieved more than they have.

A milder but revealing episode in England some time back involved burglars who were not content to simply steal things but also vented their hostility by scrawling on the wall: "RICH BASTARDS."

In the United States, young black thugs attacked whites with baseball bats and took their belongings in Denver, while voicing their hatred of whites. But it is all a very similar attitude to what has been found in other countries and other times.

Today's politically correct intelligentsia will tell you that the reason for this alienation and lashing out is that there are great disparities and inequities that need to be addressed.

But such barbarism was not nearly as widespread two generations ago, in the middle of the 20th century. Were there no disparities or inequities then? Actually there were more.

What is different today is that there has been -- for decades -- a steady drumbeat of media and political hype about differences in income, education and other outcomes, blaming these differences on oppression against those with fewer achievements or lesser prosperity.

Moreover, there has been a growing tolerance of lawlessness and a growing intolerance toward the idea that people who are lagging need to take steps to raise themselves up, instead of trying to pull others down.

All this exalts those who talk such lofty talk. But others pay the price -- and ultimately that includes even those who take the road toward barbarism.

SOURCE

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Ominous Parallels

Walter E. Williams

People are beginning to compare Barack Obama's administration to the failed administration of Jimmy Carter, but a better comparison is to the Roosevelt administration of the 1930s and '40s. Let's look at it with the help of a publication from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Foundation for Economic Education titled "Great Myths of the Great Depression," by Dr. Lawrence Reed.

During the first year of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, he called for increasing federal spending to $10 billion while revenues were only $3 billion. Between 1933 and 1936, government expenditures rose by more than 83 percent. Federal debt skyrocketed by 73 percent. Roosevelt signed off on legislation that raised the top income tax rate to 79 percent and then later to 90 percent. Hillsdale College economics historian and professor Burt Folsom, author of "New Deal or Raw Deal?", notes that in 1941, Roosevelt even proposed a 99.5 percent marginal tax rate on all incomes more than $100,000. When a top adviser questioned the idea, Roosevelt replied, "Why not?"

Roosevelt had other ideas for the economy, including the National Recovery Act. Dr. Reed says: "The economic impact of the NRA was immediate and powerful. In the five months leading up to the act's passage, signs of recovery were evident: factory employment and payrolls had increased by 23 and 35 percent, respectively. Then came the NRA, shortening hours of work, raising wages arbitrarily and imposing other new costs on enterprise. In the six months after the law took effect, industrial production dropped 25 percent."

Blacks were especially hard hit by the NRA. Black spokesmen and the black press often referred to the NRA as the "Negro Run Around," Negroes Rarely Allowed," "Negroes Ruined Again," "Negroes Robbed Again," "No Roosevelt Again" and the "Negro Removal Act." Fortunately, the courts ruled the NRA unconstitutional. As a result, unemployment fell to 14 percent in 1936 and lower by 1937.

Roosevelt had more plans for the economy, namely the National Labor Relations Act, better known as the "Wagner Act." This was a payoff to labor unions, and with these new powers, labor unions went on a militant organizing frenzy that included threats, boycotts, strikes, seizures of plants, widespread violence and other acts that pushed productivity down sharply and unemployment up dramatically. In 1938, Roosevelt's New Deal produced the nation's first depression within a depression. The stock market crashed again, losing nearly 50 percent of its value between August 1937 and March 1938, and unemployment climbed back to 20 percent. Columnist Walter Lippmann wrote in March 1938 that "with almost no important exception every measure (Roosevelt) has been interested in for the past five months has been to reduce or discourage the production of wealth."

Roosevelt's agenda was not without its international admirers. The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised "Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies" and "the development toward an authoritarian state" based on the "demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest." Roosevelt himself called Benito Mussolini "admirable" and professed that he was "deeply impressed by what he (had) accomplished."

FDR's very own treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, saw the folly of the New Deal, writing: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ... We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!" The bottom line is that Roosevelt's New Deal policies turned what would have been a three- or four-year sharp downturn into a 16-year affair.

The 1930s depression was caused by and aggravated by acts of government, and so was the current financial mess that we're in. Do we want to repeat history by listening to those who created the calamity? That's like calling on an arsonist to help put out a fire.

SOURCE

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Fear and Loathing of Bachmann

In the last election cycle, we heard a lot of complaining about the sexist treatment accorded to Hillary Clinton as she campaigned for president. One magazine wrote, "It's her resilience and capacity to survive and thrive against all comers that partly fuels the haters' fury." They even wrote "The anti-Hillary industry has never managed to bring down Hillary herself -- in fact, the more they have attacked, the higher she has risen."

That would be Newsweek magazine, in the June 18, 2007 issue. Four years later, Newsweek mocked Republican candidate Michele Bachmann on its cover, making her look pale and confused and, well, nutty -- with the headline "The Queen of Rage." Physician, heal thyself. Now the term "hater's fury" aptly describes the very same "news" magazine that so pompously lectures us about civility every one time one of their favorites is in political crosshairs.

It's impossible to imagine the "objective" news rags picturing Hillary with crazy eyes and a headline like "Queen of Rage." Newsweek titled their 2007 article "The New War on Hillary." There is a war on Michele developing, and the left-wing press is waging it. They won't stop until they achieve their goal of grinding her presidential hopes -- if not her entire political career -- into a fine powder. They despise this woman.

On MSNBC, Joe Scarborough was typical: "Michele Bachmann is a joke...Her candidacy is a joke." Joe has favored the sleep walking Jon Huntsman because "He can speak in complete sentences. One sentence actually relates to the previous sentence." Huntsman only got beat in the straw poll by Bachmann by, ahem...4,823 to 69, or a ratio of about 70 to 1. So who is the joke?

On NBC, former CNBC host Donny Deutsch defended Newsweek's right to mock Bachmann as a cartoon without care for accuracy and honesty: "Why can't they make a statement? Obviously that was a real picture, and they didn't air touch her. It's not a flattering article. By the way, why can't you write an unflattering, biased article?"

Deutsch wasn't kidding about the nastiness of the article. Newsweek's Lois Romano threw acid at Bachmann about her dangerous "shtick" of "intransigence." Here's a typical, sneering sentence: "For now, Bachmann revels in the Iowa crowds, which don't fuss about the missing fine print behind her ideas, the perceived contradictions among them, or their radicalism."

Newsweek claims to loathe contradictions -- as they write long, nasty editorials and then claim like complete hypocrites that they're publishing a "news" product.

There are at least three reasons for the media's everlasting enmity. The first is Bachmann's staunch and vocal conservatism on TV. She has become the most identifiable member of Congress aligned with the Tea Party, which to the liberal media is a cancer on our politics that like a tumor must be removed. Bachmann's opposition to President Obama and his radical agenda was red-hot before the Tea Party "rage" was born.

The second is Bachmann's deeply-held religious faith. She's an evangelical conservative who doesn't hesitate from a fight on cultural issues like abortion and "gay marriage." Our secular press corps seriously despises people who dare to assert that America is great in part because America has been and is inspired by Judeo-Christian values. Their ideal of a "devout Christian" is Barack Obama, who devoutly spends most Sundays golfing.

Third is Bachmann's gender -- but that's closely associated with the first two. If you're a liberal woman, the media will celebrate your presidential run as shattering a glass ceiling. But as we just learned with Sarah Palin, a conservative woman on a national ticket is going to get nothing but a carpet-bombing from the powers that be in "compassionate" journalism. (The same narrative applies to conservative blacks. Just ask Clarence Thomas.)

There are many Republicans infatuated with the idea of countering Obama in 2012 with female or minority conservatives, be it on the presidential and/or vice presidential ticket. But it's quite obvious that the media -- especially liberal females and minorities in the media -- loathe the very thought, regardless of the person. They don't want to give up their "making history" template for two seconds.

Five months ago, new Newsweek boss Tina Brown's first cover championed Hillary Clinton and "How she's shattering glass ceilings everywhere." Brown doesn't really want conservative women to shatter that metaphorical ceiling first. After a run of victories by conservative female candidates in the 2010 GOP primaries, Brown went on ABC and with a straight face called the wins "a blow to feminism."

And she calls Michele Bachmann the Queen of Rage.

SOURCE

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The Authoritarian Temptation

In the weeks during and since the debt-ceiling debate, the media, pushed by the Democratic Party, has peddled the propaganda that our government is broken -- because the Republicans in the House of Representatives negotiated a better deal than the liberals wanted.

While it was President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner who, during the debate, said they couldn't assure payments of Social Security or interest on the federal debt payments (while Republican leaders guaranteed there would be no lapse in such payments) it was the GOP that the media accused of irresponsible threats.

It is par for the course for the losing side in a congressional fight to bewail the end of democracy in America. But it is rare for the major media to push and the broader public to bite on, such a line.

Yet the surprisingly gullible Wall Street and European opinion leaders bought in to that propaganda. Indeed, Standard and Poor's downgraded U.S. Treasuries expressly on the preposterous proposition that the American governmental process was broken and unreliable. After all, a deficit bill passed without tax increases in it -- the process must be broken. From their point of view, any system that doesn't raise taxes is broken. (For explanations of why our governance is not broken, see Washington Post opinion writer Charles Krauthammer's column last week, "The System Works" and my article " Is Our Government Really Broken?" from February 24, 2010.)

The immediate price of this "broken government" propaganda is several trillion dollars in lost equity value last week on the stock exchanges of the world. But, the enduring danger -- if not intent -- of such propaganda is its potential to undermine public confidence in representative government.

Make no mistake: If our form of government is "broken," democracy's challengers would "fix" it by castration. In our case, these critics would castrate the "representative" bit. We have seen this argument before in our history. Put forward by authoritarians and their supporters, it disdains the messy and disorderly process whereby free people thrash out the nation's decisions.

The current recrudescence of this authoritarian temptation did not start with the debt-ceiling fight. Its been building for a couple of years. It comes -- as it always does -- at a moment when the nation faces serious economic or security dangers. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in September of 2009 gave early voice to the current authoritarian temptation: "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century."

More here

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Extreme Christian fanatics?

With the 2012 GOP presidential contenders already pretty clear -- some combination of Bachman, Romney and Perry -- the Donks have got their campaign of lies underway. All three contenders are "extreme Christian fanatics". Even the Mormon Romney presumably qualifies.

Below is an excerpt from one such attack. Notable in it is that NOT ONE WORD from Bachman, Romney or Perry is quoted. Views are attrbuted to them entirely out of thin air. They are accused of beliefs that they have never avowed. The only authority quoted for attributing nutty views to the GOP contenders is previous accusations by other Leftists.

But that's OK. Its a secret conspiracy, you see, just like the Jewish conspiracy to control the world or GWB's conspiracy to blow up the twin towers. Leftists mock Christians for their beliefs but Leftists will believe anything if it suits them. And they mainline on conspiracy theories.

So the fact that a rather nutty but tiny Christian sect exists is enough evidence to prove that any chosen Christian must believe in its tenets -- even if most people in the Christian world have never even heard of the sect concerned. Lies are the lifeblood of Leftism.

With Tim Pawlenty out of the presidential race, it is now fairly clear that the GOP candidate will either be Mitt Romney or someone who makes George W. Bush look like Tom Paine. Of the three most plausible candidates for the Republican nomination, two are deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism known as Dominionism. If you want to understand Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, understanding Dominionism isn’t optional.

Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing. But because it seems so outré, getting ordinary people to take it seriously can be difficult. Most writers, myself included, who explore it have been called paranoid. In a contemptuous 2006 First Things review of several books, including Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, and my own Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote, “the fear of theocracy has become a defining panic of the Bush era.”

Now, however, we have the most theocratic Republican field in American history, and suddenly, the concept of Dominionism is reaching mainstream audiences. Writing about Bachmann in The New Yorker this month, Ryan Lizza spent several paragraphs explaining how the premise fit into the Minnesota congresswoman’s intellectual and theological development. And a recent Texas Observer cover story on Rick Perry examined his relationship with the New Apostolic Reformation, a Dominionist variant of Pentecostalism that coalesced about a decade ago. “[W]hat makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government,” wrote Forrest Wilder. Its members “believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take ‘dominion’ over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the ‘Seven Mountains’ of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world.”

In many ways, Dominionism is more a political phenomenon than a theological one. It cuts across Christian denominations, from stern, austere sects to the signs-and-wonders culture of modern megachurches. Think of it like political Islamism, which shapes the activism of a number of antagonistic fundamentalist movements, from Sunni Wahabis in the Arab world to Shiite fundamentalists in Iran.

Dominionism derives from a small fringe sect called Christian Reconstructionism, founded by a Calvinist theologian named R. J. Rushdoony in the 1960s. Christian Reconstructionism openly advocates replacing American law with the strictures of the Old Testament, replete with the death penalty for homosexuality, abortion, and even apostasy. The appeal of Christian Reconstructionism is, obviously, limited, and mainstream Christian right figures like Ralph Reed have denounced it.

More HERE

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Damn that bad luck

"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again," Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. "But over the last six months we've had a run of bad luck." Obama listed three events overseas -- the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan, and the European debt crises -- which set the economy back.

"All those things have been headwinds for our economy," Obama said. "Now, those are things that we can't completely control. The question is, how do we manage these challenging times and do the right things when it comes to those things that we can control?"

"The problem," Obama continued, "is that we've got the kind of partisan brinksmanship that is willing to put party ahead of country, that is more interested in seeing their political opponents lose than seeing the country win. Nowhere was that more evident than in this recent debt ceiling debacle."

Actually Mr. President, you're the problem. You and your hypocrisy. You and your policies. You and your cohorts in Congress. You and the fools who continue to believe what you say. You and your blindness to your own partisan brinkmanship, your own incompetence, your hatred for capitalism, your embrace of socialist thought.

It is you Mr. President who wants to see this country lose, you and your war against fossil fuels, your embrace of union thuggery, your notions toward bigger government, your obsession with penalizing the productive, your ideology that enslaves the poor.

Mr. President, for once quit pointing your bony finger of blame outward, for once have the integrity to face the man in the mirror not in adoration but in humility, for once see that you Mr. President are the problem.

It's not bad luck Mr. President. It's you. You.

SOURCE

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Peddling lies is all Obama is good at

Seeing as President Obama cannot govern, he's had to go back to campaigning -- an activity with which he's quite comfortable but decreasingly successful, as evidenced by his falling poll numbers and his endless, repetitive speeches.

I don't just throw out this governance charge lightly. The Los Angeles Times reports that Obama is no longer receiving daily Oval Office economic briefings. More troubling, he doesn't even appear to have much of an economic team left to advise him. "The economic team lacks a top-caliber economist" and "is noticeably short on big-name players -- potentially hurting his ability to find solutions and sell them to Wall Street, Congress and the American public."

The Times quotes Edward Mills, a financial policy analyst with FBR Capital Markets, as saying, "When you ask about the economic team, it's kind of like, 'What economic team?' They are very thin at a very critical time."

Not to worry. At a time when Obama doesn't even have in place a chairman for his Council of Economic Advisers, he's talking about creating yet another federal department on "Jobs." That's the ticket; he doesn't have real people in real positions, so he just creates new positions. You can't fool all the people all the time, but you hope that you can fool just enough of them to ensure re-election.

Then again, perhaps we should be counting our blessings, because no one Obama would pick, despite that person's Ivy League credentials, would have the faintest clue how jobs are created or the slightest inclination to let the private sector work its magic.

Obama is obviously in way over his head. Don't get me wrong. He knows what he wants and is definitely in charge of big-picture items. He's the one driving the national car into a ditch. But he is not a detail guy. He doesn't want to be bothered with how things get done. "Just plug the damn hole."

Increasingly, people have caught on to the toxic combination of his extreme leftist ideology, his fundamental incompetence, his defiant refusal to accept accountability, and his mean-spirited partisan scapegoating. Gallup shows his approval rating at 39 percent, an all-time low.

So what's he supposed to do now? It's not as if he can just make the country vote for him against its will (Department of Justice voting supervision notwithstanding) as he crammed Obamacare down our throats.

But he can go back to the stump -- hoping to rekindle the messiah myth or the "hope and change" chimera. Voila!, The Associated Press reports that with his "dismal approval polls," Obama is planning on hitting the road and launching a political counteroffensive this week.

A counteroffensive? That word is obviously designed to depict a long-suffering, bipartisan Obama who has kept his nose to the grindstone on behalf of all Americans, only to be subjected to a unilateral Republican assault.

Excuse me? From the beginning, Obama has been on the offensive against everyone who dares oppose any part of his poisonous agenda. To suggest he's countering anything does damage to the language.

And what message does Obama have in store for us in his counteroffensive? Well, we don't have to guess, because he laid it out for us in his weekly radio address Saturday. I'll let you be the judge of whether he has any new ideas to tackle the economy and debt.

He said that putting people back to work "has got to be our top priority" -- as if he hasn't been saying that for a couple of years. He proposed putting construction workers "back to work rebuilding America," implying that he can just snap his federal fingers, spend borrowed money and inaugurate make-work jobs and things will all be well. He didn't specify how new stimulus schemes would be more successful than his previous $800 billion monstrosity.

He said he wants to cut red tape so entrepreneurs can get their ideas to market more quickly. So now our regent of regulation has become a champion of deregulation? Why not? He is, after all, a "fierce advocate of the free market."

Lest you think Obama is frozen in the same old rhetoric and impervious to new ideas, he seasoned his soliloquy with this brand-new assertion: "We didn't get into this mess overnight, and it's going to take time to get out of it."

And he leveled the novel charge that Congress only opposes him because of its partisanship. If it would only follow his example and "put country before party and the interests of our children before our own," we could solve these problems he "inherited."

In closing, Obama exhorted Americans to let their congressmen know how they feel. Finally, a course of action on which we can agree.

Yes, please do pick up your phones, send emails, tweet, text and shout from the rooftops. Good idea, Mr. President. Now you're talkin'.

SOURCE

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Social Degeneration

Thomas Sowell

Someone at long last has had the courage to tell the plain, honest truth about race. After mobs of young blacks rampaged through Philadelphia committing violence -- as similar mobs have rampaged through Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee and other places -- Philadelphia's black mayor, Michael A. Nutter, ordered a police crackdown and lashed out at the whole lifestyle of those who did such things.

"Pull up your pants and buy a belt 'cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt," he said. "If you walk into somebody's office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won't hire you? They don't hire you 'cause you look like you're crazy," the mayor said. He added: "You have damaged your own race."

While this might seem like it is just plain common sense, what Mayor Nutter said undermines a whole vision of the world that has brought fame, fortune and power to race hustlers in politics, the media and academia. Any racial disparities in hiring can only be due to racism and discrimination, according to the prevailing vision, which reaches from street corner demagogues to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Just to identify the rioters and looters as black is a radical departure, when mayors, police chiefs and the media in other cities report on these outbreaks of violence without mentioning the race of those who are doing these things. The Chicago Tribune even made excuses for failing to mention race when reporting on violent attacks by blacks on whites in Chicago.

Such excuses might make sense if the same politicians and media talking heads were not constantly mentioning race when denouncing the fact that a disproportionate number of young black men are being sent to prison.

The prevailing social dogma is that disparities in outcomes between races can only be due to disparities in how these races are treated. In other words, there cannot possibly be any differences in behavior.

But if black and white Americans had exactly the same behavior patterns, they would be the only two groups on this planet that are the same.

The Chinese minority in Malaysia has long been more successful and more prosperous than the Malay majority, just as the Indians in Fiji have long been more successful and more prosperous than the indigenous Fijians. At various places and times throughout history, the same could be said of the Armenians in Turkey, the Lebanese in Sierra Leone, the Parsees in India, the Japanese in Brazil, and numerous others.

There are similar disparities within particular racial or ethnic groups. Even this late in history, I have had northern Italians explain to me why they are not like southern Italians. In Australia, Jewish leaders in both Sydney and Melbourne went to great lengths to tell me why and how the Jews are different in these two cities.

In the United States, despite the higher poverty level among blacks than among whites, the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits since 1994. The disparities within the black community are huge, both in behavior and in outcomes.

Nevertheless, the dogma persists that differences between groups can only be due to the way others treat them or to differences in the way others perceive them in "stereotypes."

All around the country, people in politics and the media have been tip-toeing around the fact that violent attacks by blacks on whites in public places are racially motivated, even when the attackers themselves use anti-white invective and mock the victims they leave lying on the streets bleeding.

This is not something to ignore or excuse. It is something to be stopped. Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia seems to be the first to openly recognize this.

This needs to be done for the sake of both black and white Americans -- and even for the sake of the hoodlums. They have set out on a path that leads only downward for themselves.

SOURCE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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How Four Influential Socialist Anti-Semites Shaped the Left

by Daniel Greenfield

1. Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in the face of which no other god may exist… The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world.”

Marx’s influence on the socialist movement and its various streams cannot be underestimated, and neither can the extent to which his view of Jews as the embodiment of capitalism became embedded on the left.

In a handful of sentences, Marx depicted Jews as the anti-thesis of Socialism, a theme that he was to repeatedly revisit, and more poisonously in such essays as “The Russian Loan”, where he implicitly suggested that war would continue for as long as the Jews existed.

“Thus we find every tyrant backed by a Jew… In truth, the cravings of oppressors would be hopeless, and the practicability of war out of the question, if there were not an army of Jesuits to smother thought and a handful of Jews to ransack pockets.”

Coded forms of this thinking can still be found among leftists who blame wars on Wall Street and assemble Jewish neo-con war conspiracies. The linkage of capital, war and the Jews made Anti-Semitism a permanent part of Socialist thought. Since the Holocaust its expressions have become more coded, but the essence remains.

While Marx did not invent Socialist Anti-Semitism, he helped grant intellectual legitimacy to left-wing populists who merged worker’s rights rhetoric with bigotry. But Marx’s formulation implicitly set the elimination of the Jews as a necessary step to the end of war and capitalism.

2. H.G. Wells (1866 – 1946)

“And yet between 1940 and 2059, in little more than a century, this antiquated obdurate culture disappeared. It and its Zionist state, its kosher food, the Law and all the rest of its paraphernalia, were completely merged in the human community.”

While H.G. Wells is best remembered today for a handful of futuristic novels, some of his more significant work of the time envisioned the creation of a utopian, yet totalitarian socialist state. And arguably the European left has followed his plan a little too closely.

Wells follows Marx’s linkage between Jews, capital and war. The elimination of the Jews as a separate people is necessary for Wells’ modern world state to come into being. So while in “The Shape of Things To Come”, he disposes of Christianity in a single paragraph, and Islam in another (Wells supposed that Islam would disappear as Arabic fell into disuse), but several paragraphs are devoted to the elimination of the Jews.

The hostility toward Israel is manifestly there. The Jews are described as abandoning the Socialist cause of creating the world state, preoccupied instead with “the dream of a fantastic independent state all of their own”. “Only a psycho-analyst could begin to tell for what they wanted this Zionist state,” Wells sneers.

Wells’ solution to Marx’s Jewish Question was to wipe out the Jews as a distinct people, without engaging in physical extermination. But religion, state and even a distinct ethnic identity had to go.
Even as the Nazi Holocaust had begun, H.G. Wells wrote in The New World Order (1940);

“The hostile reaction to the cult of the Chosen People is spreading about the entire world to-day… there has never been such a world-wide—I will not use the word anti-Semitism because of the Arab—I will say anti-Judaism… it is becoming world-wide and simultaneous… Until they are prepared to assimilate and abandon the Chosen People idea altogether, their troubles are bound to intensify.”

It was a more elegant phrasing of a Julius Streicher quote from that same year, “The time is near when a machine will go into motion which is going to prepare a grave for the world’s criminal – Judah – from which there will be no resurrection.”

Wells had prefigured the left’s fixation on Israel as the cause and justification for the hatred of the Jews. It is very much extant today.

3. Henry Hyndman (1842–1921)

“The condition of the people… favours the spread of Socialist doctrines, whilst the attack upon the Jews is a convenient cover for a more direct attack at an early date upon the great landlords and Christian capitalists.”

Hyndman founded England’s first Socialist political party, the Social Democratic Federation. He also went on to found the National Socialist Party, which eventually became part of the Labor Party.

Hyndman and the SDF’s newspaper “Justice” carried on a relentless campaign of attacks against Jews. What is unique about Hyndman is that he employed those attacks only as a cover for a larger anti-war movement.

The high point of Hyndman and the SDF’s Anti-Semitism came during the Boer War. To oppose the war was to be accused of disloyalty. Instead Hyndman recreated the war as a Jewish conspiracy, and campaigned against “Imperialist Judaism in South Africa”, the “Jew War in the Transvaal” fought on behalf of an “Anglo-Hebraic Empire” in Africa.

Socialists had often legitimized Anti-Capitalism by associating it with Anti-Semitism, but Hyndman legitimized an Anti-War position by treating it as not a campaign against England, but against the Jews.

Hyndman did not appear to be any more bigoted than most of his contemporaries, but he was far more cynical. When Hyndman wanted to attack the press, he called it the “Jew-Jingo Press”. When he wanted to attack the government, it was the “Jew clique”. By employing bigotry, Hyndman transformed himself from a traitor to a patriot battling the ‘alien’ subversion of England.

This is the same tack taken by much of the Anti-war movement today, which dodges accusations of disloyalty by claiming to fight against a Likud or Zionist takeover of foreign policy. And today the Hyndman tradition is still strong in the UK with the likes of George Galloway, shouting, “Show us the shekels, Richard.”

4. Pierre Leroux (1797 - 1871

“When we speak of Jews, we mean the Jewish spirit, the spirit of profit, of lucre, of gain, the spirit of commerce.”

Leroux is credited with coining the term, ‘Socialism’. He also expressed the idea of commerce as an original Jewish sin in the clearest of terms. To Leroux, banking was the original sin of the Jews. And therefore commerce was the Jewish spirit.

Fourier, the co-creator of French Socialism, would take this premise to its more explicit conclusion, writing; “Every government having regard to good morals ought to repress the Jews”.

Unlike Wells or Marx, Fourier and Leroux were not so much aspiring to a new order, as they were to a scientific application of an old order. A return to a pre-commercial civilization based on cooperation, rather than competition. This would be impossible if commerce were a natural human form of resource organization and distribution. So it was necessary to theorize that commerce was something alien. A creation of the Jews.

The appealing idea that commerce is a Jewish entity, or that war is a Jewish entity, or in Hitler’s formulation, conscience is a Jewish entity, means that any part of humanity can be cut out so long as you define it as Jewish.

The error of Leroux, Fourier and so many other Socialists was that they built their entire philosophy on a lie about human nature, and then did their best to plaster over that lie with bigotry. The economics of their program were unworkable, the sociology of it even more so. And so the Jews became the scapegoats of Socialism.

To Wells, Jewish identity was an obstacle to the New World Order, but he was in denial about the fact that every cultural identity was an obstacle. So Wells too repeated the basic Socialist error of taking an unworkable premise, and assuming that it would be workable if only it weren’t for the Jews.

Today, the existence of Israel is treated as an obstacle to world peace. Once again the left is possessed by the idea that if the Jewish question is finally resolved, a modern rational world state can come into being. The flip side of this childish and bigoted belief is genocide. For if the Jews are all that stands in the way of Socialism and World Peace– then the Jews must go.

SOURCE

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We Can't All Get Along

Bruce Bialosky

In an attempt to quell the 1992 riots that broke out in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the police officers who beat him senseless, Rodney King uttered these famous words: “Can’t we all get along?” Today, Mr. King could go to Washington D.C. and ask the same question, but the answer, as it was 20 years ago, is breathtakingly simple: No. There was an unmistakable illustration of this in a recent Wall Street Journal column by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Ironically, Mr. Sanders is respected by many Republicans because he clearly, unabashedly admits what he is – a Socialist. He doesn’t try to hide behind wishy-washy terms like “progressive” or “liberal.” Like Popeye, he clearly says “I am what I am.” But really, how different is he from Mr. Obama, Ms. Pelosi, and the rest of their brood in Congress?

Mr. Sanders made his case for how to address the debt ceiling; but more importantly, he put forward his opinion on what is causing our enormous deficit:

1. He claimed that the “Rich,” along with large corporations, have been evading taxes in the United States.

2. He alleged that Republicans have been “fanatically determined to protect the interests of the wealthy and multinational corporations so that they do not contribute a single penny toward deficit reduction.”

3. He further stated that “if the Republicans have their way, the entire burden of deficit reduction will be placed on the elderly, the sick, children, and working families.”

Would someone explain how this rhetoric differs from the likes of Pelosi, Schumer, or Obama?

Sanders went on to state that the American people want the wealthy and large corporations to pay their “fair share” of taxes. Unfortunately, Mr. Sanders clearly doesn’t understand that corporations do not actually pay taxes, but merely pass them on to customers in the form of higher prices. He’s also clearly ignorant of the fact that the lower-earning 50% of the population pay less than 2% of all taxes, and that the upper 5% of earners already pay about 59%. So, exactly how much does he really want them to pay?

This is the impenetrable wall between Socialists like Sanders and we Capitalists. We believe that people who work hard and earn money are not obligated to support the remainder of the population, and that coercing them to do so is not only bad public policy, it is ineffective. We believe, unlike the President, that if someone has extra earnings – whether they need them or not – it is their choice how to dispose of (or invest) them, and that these assets should not be confiscated by the government, which habitually employs the money far less productively, or (worse) hands it over to favored constituencies.

Sanders believes that America is filled with large multitudes of pitifully stupid, “little” people, all of whom need the protection of government elites to make better decisions for them. Capitalists believe that these decisions are best made by individuals and their families who are actually quite capable in their own regard.

Regrettably for the last 80 years, Capitalists have been losing the argument in America. In the relatively peaceful period from 1960 to 2010, the percentage of GDP consumed by government has grown from 27% to 37%. Mr. Sanders and his comrades have the budget on a trajectory toward 50%, and the sad part is that too often, Capitalists have been complicit in the quest to bring Socialism to America.

In November 2010, the American people finally said “Enough!!” They haven’t totally come to their senses because there is still widespread resistance to long-needed reforms of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But at least they now have a true picture of Mr. Sanders’ ideal government, having seen how Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their acolytes strive to “fundamentally change the nature of America.”

We openly admit that we want smaller government. We also admit that not only is Capitalism the best economic system, it is the primary reason for the vast wealth of Americans. We believe that expansive government, complete with its invasive rules, mindless dictates, and shameless bureaucrats, is principally a vehicle for those who aspire to a truly Socialist society. And we also believe that they want more and more people getting those monthly checks (currently 80 million as stated by Treasury Secretary Geithner).

Like many European leaders, such as Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain, Mr. Sanders openly states that he’s a Socialist. Others like Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC show host, has stated clearly he is a socialist. Yet there’s not an inch of difference between their policies and almost every elected Democrat in this country. You can count on two hands the Democratic members of Congress whose opinions are materially different.

So there you have it: they are Socialists and we are Capitalists. We admit it and they almost totally deny it. They believe that if we’re in charge, there will be Armageddon. We know that they’ve been in charge and they’ve brought us to the brink of Armageddon. That is why there is so little bipartisanship in Washington D.C.

There’s a war going on for the future of America. God forbid the Capitalists don’t win.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Who says liberals want government out of the bedroom?: "Nothing is off limits anymore. Nothing. Not as far as politicians are concerned. Democratic State Senator Kevin De Leon wants California to mandate fitted sheets in the state’s hotels, and forbid flat sheets."

Post office proves government unions are a bad idea: "If you think government unions are not a threat to good government, just take a look at the U.S. Postal Service, which is what eventually could happen to every governmental unit that has union workers who are allowed to collectively bargain. The Postal Service is hemorrhaging money. It is spending $1 million a week paying employees not to work"

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc. He also has a lot to say about the latest British riots.

I have just put up a small Bible study of Jude verse 25 on my Scripture blog

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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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