Tweedledum and tweedledee -- and both wrong?

The article from Britian below was written just before the final French elections. My libertarian inclinations make me sympathetic to it but I think I should add that even small differences can be important.

To maximize their vote all successful politicians have to be fairly centrist. It is only very rare personalities like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher who can shift the whole political spectrum rightwards

Left and Right politicians like Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, and Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, sing from same hymn sheet. But political 'debate' ignores the fact that the market economy can't afford enormous social security programmes.

To listen to the excitable coverage, you might think that we were in the midst of a jolly stimulating election season in three separate countries. France, the US and London (a country within a country) would all seem to have been pitched into good old-fashioned struggles between Left and Right. One might be inclined to conclude that, after a generation of middle-ground consensus, there has been a revival of substantive debate about ideology on this side of the Atlantic, and even a startling move towards something of the kind in America - where true ideological differences between parties are almost unknown.

In London and in France, the contests were apparently between socialist adherents of the Old Faith (or historical throwbacks, if you prefer) and proponents of the market theory of wealth creation who were undaunted by the recent troubles of the capitalist system. Ken Livingstone and Fran‡ois Hollande represented the politics that time had once forgotten: unashamedly committed to the power of the state and to belief in the virtue of public spending. In the opposing corners, Boris Johnson positioned himself clearly and explicitly to the Right of his own party leadership, and Nicolas Sarkozy defended both free markets and foreign interventionism.

Meanwhile in America, a seemingly fundamental debate is taking place between the most Left-wing president in living memory and a Tea Party-dominated Republican Party that has moved significantly to the Right. So we are back to profound arguments about basic political philosophy, right? We now have serious differences of principle between parties (or at least between prominent candidates). Is there, at last, something more intellectually satisfying to fight over than the fiddly details of how little regulation, or how much taxation, is needed to hit just the right balance?

No, there isn't. This whole confrontation is overblown and illusory. All of the voices and personalities who come remotely close to power in mainstream political life in all these countries actually co-exist within the same narrow centrist spectrum. There is no Left of the old school - threatening to seize the means of production and the levers of the economy in the name of the proletariat. Not even Mr Livingstone advocates renationalising Britain's industries or the wholesale confiscation and redistribution of private property. And Mr Johnson, while he is certainly a more forthright spokesman for business interests and lower taxes than David Cameron, would not deny the need to regulate the banks or protect the disadvantaged.

The difference between the Centre Right and the Centre Left (for they are all that remains of the two sides of that old titanic struggle) is now almost entirely rhetorical. The CR wants a free-market economy with an entitlements programme attached to guard against social unrest. The CL wants an entitlement society with free-market activity attached to provide the necessary funds. The argument about the mix is very much confined to the margins - and about how you describe it. The actual differences being so slight (and there being so much flexibility needed to cope with fluctuating reality) that it is necessary to lard the descriptions with emotive, absolutist language to generate some faux passion.

So in the course of their bare-knuckle "debate" last week, Mr Hollande said to Mr Sarkozy, "I protect the children of the Republic, you protect the most privileged", thereby encapsulating the sentimental moral blackmail of modern CL-ism. And Mr Sarkozy retorted, "You want fewer rich people. I want fewer poor people," which pretty much sums up the view of CR-ism that only free markets can produce prosperity for the mass of the population.

In short, the CL more or less accepts that real wealth can only be produced by free-market economics but it still behaves as if it hates wealth creators. It continues to talk as if "profit" was an obscene word, deliberately confounding the idea of "profit-making" with "profiteering". Note the horrified reactions when there is any possibility of private profit being made through investing in public services such as health and education. Such services must remain free of the taint of the profit motive (which is to say entirely government-funded) even if that means they remain inefficient and in the grip of vested interests.

The CR, on the other hand, accepts the need for what EU spokesmen call "social solidarity": what amounts, in practical terms, to a more-or-less comprehensive welfare system which promises to ensure that no one can fall into poverty (as defined by government statistics) whatever life choices he may make. However much it may talk of "making work pay" and cracking down on benefit dependency, no official spokesman for the CR will actually repudiate the principle that it is the state's business to eradicate poverty.

So no, there is no ideological war here. The serious differences between these supposedly enemy camps - however much vitriol and personal abuse they may fling at one another - are minimal and mainly a question of labels and packaging.

Well, you may say, that's not so bad, is it? Everybody is in basic agreement about some very important things: free-market economics (for all its recent upheavals) is accepted as the only way to create wealth. And we all accept that we have a moral responsibility to reduce poverty. If politicians want to pretend that there is more differentiation between them than there really is in order to inject a bit of excitement into the electoral process, what's wrong with that?

Just this. In all the phoney ardour and heat, no one is paying any attention to the two facts that make nonsense of this supposed debate - which is not a debate. The first is that the assumption which all the principal parties have chosen to share is wrong. Relying on the free market to support a vast system of entitlements (whichever of the two you choose to make your first priority) is not sustainable. The market economy simply cannot afford the enormous cost of the social security programmes that are now regarded as politically untouchable in Europe and in the US - as both of their political elites are painfully discovering.

The second, and even more critical point, is that the economy has become so globalised that it is beyond the control of any national government, and therefore outside the reach of democratic accountability.

Politicians running for office may squabble and insult one another for all they are worth - but the economic future can now escape their grasp altogether.

SOURCE

A gradual return to blogging

As you will see below, I am getting my blogging shoes back on but I can only go short distances as yet. I will just put up interesting odds and ends that I come across occasionally rather than resume my usual full schedule of blogging. I expect that I might be back at normal activity in a couple of days.

I have also just put up a few things on TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH , POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH

Bibi outmaneuvers them all again

Definitely one smart guy

In a surprise turnabout, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to cancel the early elections he had called just 24 hours before and instead form a unity government with the opposition party Kadima, Israeli officials said Tuesday.

The decision shocked much of Israel's political establishment, which was gearing up to dissolve the parliament, or Knesset, and launch campaigns for a Sept. 4 vote.

By joining the government coalition, newly elected Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz avoids facing voters amid polls indicating that his centrist party would lose more than half its Knesset seats. Just a month ago, Mofaz declared he would not join the government and vowed to unseat Netanyahu.

In exchange, Mofaz has been promised a ministerial position in the government, officials said. His predecessor, Tzipi Livni, had rejected calls to join Netanyahu's government, saying it was not serious about reaching a peace deal with Palestinians.

For Netanyahu, the deal means he can retain his government, which many consider to be one of the nation's most stable, and reduce his dependence on smaller nationalist and religious parties, whose conservative agendas have dominated his coalition.

The primary loser will be the recently reformed Labor Party, which polls suggested was preparing to make a big comeback in the September vote to become the nation's second-largest party.

As they woke up Tuesday to the news, other political parties condemned the deal, calling it a cynical power grab that would backfire with Israeli voters.

Labor lawmaker Isaac Herzog called the new unity government an "alliance of cowards.... This is a golden opportunity for Labor to lead the people on a different course from that of Netanyahu and Mofaz, if not now, then in 2013," he wrote on his Facebook page, referring to next year's regularly scheduled vote.

There were questions about how long the unity government would last given the stark differences over certain issues, such as Palestinian peace talks. Mofaz is expected to push for a more aggressive effort to restart negotiations, which some right-wing members of Netanyahu's Likud are already warning could hurt West Bank settlement expansion.

One particularly divisive issue is a plan to begin drafting fervently-Orthodox young people into the army. Netanyahu and Mofaz both support the move, though the religious party Shas is staunchly opposed and had threatened to quit the coalition if the government adopted it. With the votes Kadima brings to the new coalition, such threats would not bring down the government as feared.

Hanan Crystal, a political commentator for Israel Radio, predicted Tuesday that the new unity government would allow Netanyahu to pursue a more centrist policy in dealing with Palestinians and other social issues in Israel. He called it the "move of a super-statesman."

Source

Jews Are a 'Race,' Genes Reveal

By Jon Entine

BOOK REVIEW of Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People By Harry Ostrer/ Oxford University Press, 288 Pages, $24.95

In his new book, “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People,” Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, claims that Jews are different, and the differences are not just skin deep. Jews exhibit, he writes, a distinctive genetic signature. Considering that the Nazis tried to exterminate Jews based on their supposed racial distinctiveness, such a conclusion might be a cause for concern. But Ostrer sees it as central to Jewish identity.

“Who is a Jew?” has been a poignant question for Jews throughout our history. It evokes a complex tapestry of Jewish identity made up of different strains of religious beliefs, cultural practices and blood ties to ancient Palestine and modern Israel. But the question, with its echoes of genetic determinism, also has a dark side.

Geneticists have long been aware that certain diseases, from breast cancer to Tay-Sachs, disproportionately affect Jews. Ostrer, who is also director of genetic and genomic testing at Montefiore Medical Center, goes further, maintaining that Jews are a homogeneous group with all the scientific trappings of what we used to call a “race.”

For most of the 3,000-year history of the Jewish people, the notion of what came to be known as “Jewish exceptionalism” was hardly controversial. Because of our history of inmarriage and cultural isolation, imposed or self-selected, Jews were considered by gentiles (and usually referred to themselves) as a “race.” Scholars from Josephus to Disraeli proudly proclaimed their membership in “the tribe.”

Ostrer explains how this concept took on special meaning in the 20th century, as genetics emerged as a viable scientific enterprise. Jewish distinctiveness might actually be measurable empirically. In “Legacy,” he first introduces us to Maurice Fishberg, an upwardly mobile Russian-Jewish immigrant to New York at the fin de siècle. Fishberg fervently embraced the anthropological fashion of the era, measuring skull sizes to explain why Jews seemed to be afflicted with more diseases than other groups — what he called the “peculiarities of the comparative pathology of the Jews.” It turns out that Fishberg and his contemporary phrenologists were wrong: Skull shape provides limited information about human differences. But his studies ushered in a century of research linking Jews to genetics.

Ostrer divides his book into six chapters representing the various aspects of Jewishness: Looking Jewish, Founders, Genealogies, Tribes, Traits and Identity. Each chapter features a prominent scientist or historical figure who dramatically advanced our understanding of Jewishness. The snippets of biography lighten a dense forest of sometimes-obscure science. The narrative, which consists of a lot of potboiler history, is a slog at times. But for the specialist and anyone touched by the enduring debate over Jewish identity, this book is indispensable.

“Legacy” may cause its readers discomfort. To some Jews, the notion of a genetically related people is an embarrassing remnant of early Zionism that came into vogue at the height of the Western obsession with race, in the late 19th century. Celebrating blood ancestry is divisive, they claim: The authors of “The Bell Curve” were vilified 15 years ago for suggesting that genes play a major role in IQ differences among racial groups.

Furthermore, sociologists and cultural anthropologists, a disproportionate number of whom are Jewish, ridicule the term “race,” claiming there are no meaningful differences between ethnic groups. For Jews, the word still carries the especially odious historical association with Nazism and the Nuremberg Laws. They argue that Judaism has morphed from a tribal cult into a worldwide religion enhanced by thousands of years of cultural traditions.

Is Judaism a people or a religion? Or both? The belief that Jews may be psychologically or physically distinct remains a controversial fixture in the gentile and Jewish consciousness, and Ostrer places himself directly in the line of fire. Yes, he writes, the term “race” carries nefarious associations of inferiority and ranking of people. Anything that marks Jews as essentially different runs the risk of stirring either anti- or philo-Semitism. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the factual reality of what he calls the “biological basis of Jewishness” and “Jewish genetics.” Acknowledging the distinctiveness of Jews is “fraught with peril,” but we must grapple with the hard evidence of “human differences” if we seek to understand the new age of genetics.

Although he readily acknowledges the formative role of culture and environment, Ostrer believes that Jewish identity has multiple threads, including DNA. He offers a cogent, scientifically based review of the evidence, which serves as a model of scientific restraint.

More HERE

By all means read the rest of this article but from what I can see it is overstated. If Jews are a race how do we account for the blue-eyed blond Jews who came out of Lithuania and look like Lithuanians while at the same time acknowledging the dark-haired, dark-eyed darker-skinned Jews who came out of Arab countries and look much like Arabs? And what do we make of the fact that some Palestinians have "Jewish" genes?

It seems to me that a much more defensible formulation would be to say that distinctive genes from the area of ancient Israel are still common among Jews today. That is certainly enough for Jews to claim Israel as their ancestral home -- JR

An interesting difference between Australia and the USA

I seem to be over the worst of my health problems but am unlikely to resume my previous level of blogging for a couple of days yet. Nonetheless you can't keep a good blogger down for long so there are a couple of things that have moved me to hit the keyboard today. I have put up a post on FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, for those who read that blog and I have another comment below

Australia and the USA are unusually similar countries so it tends to be the differences between them that are surprising. And one huge difference between the two countries has just emerged. Australia's LEFTIST government has just announced that it will be bringing down a SURPLUS budget tomorrow night.

Where Obama borrows 40% of every dollar he spends, the Australian government will not only fund every cent of its expenditure from taxes - it will also leave a small amount over to reduce existing debt.

Yet despite their many differences of detail, the tax burden in Australia is not particularly more onerous overall than it is in the USA. Standards of living are similar and the Australian rate of unemployment is much lower -- at about 5.2%.

Be that as it may, however, the important point is that the Australian government is hiking taxes only by a small amount, with the surplus to be achieved mainly by spending cutbacks -- defence, of course, but also welfare cutbacks. And the defence expenditure cutbacks will be achieved without reducing the numbers of the defence force.

So how come? It fits with my perception that Australian Leftists are much less loony than the American Left. Nancy Pelosi's comment that you'll have to pass the Obamacare legislation in order to find out what's in it summarizes the American Left for me. I cannot imagine that being proposed in any other democracy. Russia maybe.

So how have the Democrats become so detached from reality? I think it is because they can. They have such large and "rusted on" blocs of minority supporters that they don't need to be reasonable. With block votes from blacks, Hispanics and Jews, they can largely do no wrong. There is also among the majority population a subset who will always vote Left, come what may. Put those four blocs together and Democrats only have to seem vaguely reasonable for them to govern. Even amid America's great economic woes those groups have ensured that Obama's popularity remains strong. Romney will struggle to defeat him. In any other country, disastrous economic stewardship such as Obama's would utterly doom an administration.

So minority votes are responsible for the many follies that the Democrats have unleashed on America and may ultimately lead to American decline. Democrats have to seem reasonable to only a small part of the majority population because the addition of rusted-on minority votes will get them into power. Around half of the American electorate is not making any real evaluation of the candidates, thus undermining a basic assumption of democracy.

FOOTNOTE:

Since someone is bound to raise it I will say a few words about the fact that the Australian Leftist government has legislated a carbon tax. Is that not extreme? It is extreme but it is not what the governing Labor party wanted. They in fact went to the polls promising not to introduce such a tax. They reversed course only because they needed the Green party in order to form a majority government. Unlike the USA, but like most other countries, the Australian electoral system does give some power to third parties and the Greens in Australia had votes in parliament that the Labor party needed. But the price of those votes was a carbon tax. So it was a Green rather than a Leftist enactment.

Apology to My Regular Readers

I am in hospital.  May be mid next week before I am blogging again

Union bullying empowered by Obama

Thomas Sowell

Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being -- not by what they actually are or what they actually do.

Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off."

That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous.

First there was the grossly misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act" that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting -- a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to join a labor union.

Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers have been able to express their free choice of joining or not joining a labor union in a federally conducted election with a secret ballot.

As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining labor unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents -- signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.

Now that the Obama administration has appointed a majority of the members of the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB leadership has imposed new requirements that employers supply union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules.

In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union. Among the consequences of not signing up is union reprisal on the job if the union wins the election. But physical threats and actions are by no means off the table, as many people who get in the way of unions have learned.

Workers who do not want to join a union will now have to decide how much harassment of themselves and their family they are going to have to put up with, if they don't knuckle under.

In the past, unions had to make the case to workers that it was in their best interests to join. Meanwhile, employers would make their case to the same workers that it was in their best interest to vote against joining.

When the unions began losing those elections, they decided to change the rules. And after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, with large financial support from labor unions, the rules were in fact changed by Obama's NLRB.

As if to make the outcome of workers' "choices" more of a foregone conclusion, the time period between the announcement of an election and the election itself has been shortened by the NLRB.

In other words, the union can spend months, or whatever amount of time it takes, for them to prepare and implement an organizing campaign beforehand -- and then suddenly announce a deadline date for the decision on having or not having a union. The union organizers can launch their full-court press before the employers have time to organize a comparable counter-argument or the workers have time to weigh their decision, while being pressured.

The last thing this process is concerned about is a free choice for workers. The first thing it is concerned about is getting a captive group of union members, whose compulsory dues provide a large sum of money to be spent at the discretion of union bosses, to provide those bosses with both personal perks and political power to wield, on the basis of their ability to pick and choose where to make campaign contributions from the union members' dues.

Union elections do not recur like other elections. They are like some Third World elections: "One man, one vote -- one time." And getting a recognized union unrecognized is an uphill struggle.

But, so long as many people refuse to see the union for what it is, or the Obama administration for what it is, this cynical and corrupt process can continue.

SOURCE

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Romney Braces For Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy

    Byron York

"There will be an effort," Mitt Romney said recently, "by the, quote, vast left-wing conspiracy to work together to put out their message and attack me."

By those words, many observers thought Romney, speaking to Breitbart News, meant the press. After all, the Republican nominee is likely to face some pretty tough coverage from left-leaning outlets in the months ahead.

But Romney meant much more than the press. In fact, "vast left-wing conspiracy" refers to a set of institutions whose work helps shape the coverage that ultimately appears in the press.

That's what Breitbart questioner Larry O'Connor was trying to get at in the Romney interview. Mentioning Think Progress, a pro-Democratic war room that is part of the lefty think tank Center for American Progress, and the left-leaning media watchdog organization Media Matters, O'Connor said to Romney, "You really are going to battle with the media and these nonprofit groups who are all working together. Are you guys ready for that fight?"

"I think you're absolutely right," Romney said, noting that he's fully aware that a vast left-wing conspiracy will be arrayed against him.

In the past few months Romney aides have watched closely as Think Progress, Media Matters and others have hit the former Massachusetts governor both on important issues like jobs, taxes, the deficit and foreign policy, and also on flap-of-the-day stories like the "war on women" and Romney's dog. Accusations that originate with those organizations sometimes make their way into lefty publications like Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post, and then into the bigger outlets of the establishment press.

"There is a network that seems to coordinate and push the liberal agenda, which then gets picked up by the mainstream press," says a Romney aide. "We're working to combat that."

It's a network long in the making. In 2005 I wrote a book, "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy," that traced a group of then-new liberal organizations like the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org and the precursors of today's super PACs as they created a new style of liberal political activism. The groups used the Internet to organize supporters and push a message of the day -- or a message of the hour, or a message of the minute -- into the political conversation with aggressiveness and speed.

Some of the organizers liked to call themselves the vast left-wing conspiracy, a play on the time when Hillary Clinton, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, referred to her husband's antagonists as "a vast right-wing conspiracy." (Don't be too serious: Neither name refers to criminal conspiracies or wrongdoing.) And they based some of their ideas on older organizations they saw on the right. The Center for American Progress, for example, was modeled in part on the Heritage Foundation, and Media Matters on the conservative Media Research Center.

But the Center for American Progress, founded by former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta, turned into as much a war room as a think tank, spinning off Think Progress and other overtly partisan political message centers. Media Matters became a research operation indistinguishable from the Obama campaign. (In fact, its founder, right-wing-hitman-turned-left-wing-hitman David Brock, hopes to become a major Democratic super-PAC player.)

It's fair to say that in terms of purely partisan impact, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters wield more influence than their older models on the right.

Of course, they're not the only parts of the vast left-wing conspiracy. There are the traditional regions of the media, academia and Hollywood, too. For example, earlier this month the AMC series "Mad Men" featured a scene in which a character who works for 1960s-era New York Mayor John Lindsay was on the phone discussing campaign appearances. "Well, tell Jim his honor's not going to Michigan," the character says, "because (George) Romney's a clown and I don't want him standing next to him." (Mitt Romney's son Tagg had a quick response on Twitter: "Seriously, lib media mocking my dead grandpa?")

Of course, Romney has new resources on his side, too. The fact that Romney was doing an interview with Breitbart News, founded by the late conservative Web entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, is an indication that Romney will be using new right-leaning media to press his case. And conservatives are founding other organizations, like the Washington Free Beacon, that are specifically designed to try to counter the strength of the new organizations on the left.

But when Romney talks about the vast left-wing conspiracy, he's not joking.

SOURCE

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The SPLC Fails the Intelligence Test

Michael Brown

What do you call an organization whose so-called intelligence reports are sometimes an insult to intelligence, an organization that brands some groups “hate groups” and yet, using its own criteria, should itself be branded a hate group? You call that organization the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center). The scary thing is that many people still take them seriously.

According to the SPLC website, its quarterly magazine, the Intelligence Report, “provides comprehensive updates to law enforcement agencies, the media and the general public. It is the nation’s preeminent periodical monitoring the radical right in the U.S.”

The radical right? Well, let’s do a fact check on the Spring 2012 edition, Issue Number: 145, entitled, “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2011,” so we can find out just who this “radical right” really is. I’ll focus on the article by Ryan Lenz (with help from Evelyn Schaltter), “NARTH Becomes Main Source for Anti-Gay ‘Junk Science’,” since I spoke at a conference the article describes and since I was able to have the article reviewed by a staff person at NARTH (the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality).

The article starts off with a dramatic (and hardly impartial) description: “PHOENIX: Michael Brown took the dais in a sterile Marriott ballroom last fall, beaming for the 40 or so therapists who form the devout core of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). With a hulking frame packed tightly into a three-button black suit, one of the nation’s most vociferous anti-gay activists began his speech with a dire warning.”

Well, the “hulking frame” description wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t begin the speech with “a dire warning” and there were probably 75-80 (not 40) in attendance. So, not the best start for an investigative report. As for being “one of the nation’s most vociferous anti-gay activists,” I had no idea I had achieved that status.

Moving on, here are some of the most egregious errors in the report. Describing the NARTH conference itself, the article states that, “True to form, the people speaking at that conference were not therapists promising revelations about human sexuality, but rather prominent culture warriors of the religious right, like Brown [and Sharon Slater].”

This is unmitigated nonsense. As noted by my NARTH source (and as I witnessed firsthand), Slater and I were “the only two speakers who were not clinical, research, and academic experts, not to mention the keynote presentation of Dr. Nicholas Cummings, the former President of the American Psychological Association.” Broken down by the hour, “Clinical/Research/Academic presentations = 29.25 hours (21 speakers), Policy presentations = 2.75 hours (2 speakers).”

All Lenz had to do was look at the conference program to get the facts right, but who cares about facts when you’re writing biased articles designed to advance a particular agenda? Why let truth stand in the way when your goal is to discredit people by claiming they belong to the “radical right,” along with skinheads and neo-Nazis and the like?

The article claims that, according to NARTH, “homosexuality is an unnatural deviation from normal sexual development, a form of mental disorder.” Actually, my source notes that “NARTH does not use that term [a form of mental disorder] to label homosexuality.” The best the SPLC could do was cite a 15 year-old quote from a NARTH co-founder, the late Dr. Charles Socarides, but this was simply his personal opinion and is not part of NARTH’s official statements or standards.

The article quotes (and attacks) Dr. Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute without mentioning that he has nothing to do with NARTH. But why quibble?

The article then approvingly cites gay activist Wayne Besen who claims that, “There’s no other play in the playbook except going back to the fire and brimstone.” Is he kidding? A professional counselor helping a client deal with unwanted same-sex attraction equals “fire and brimstone”? And this is part of an “intelligence report”? (I know. The term is sounding more oxymoronic by the second.)

In 2009, a conservative watchdog group ran this headline: “Prominent homosexual activists lead screaming demonstration, terrorize Boston church sponsoring ex-gay religious event.” And it was none other than Wayne Besen at the helm of this event, shouting through a bullhorn outside the church windows. And he is a trusted source for the SPLC?

Besen is also famous for his over the top, vitriolic rhetoric, yet the groups he attacks, rather than his own organization, make it onto the SPLC’s hate-group list. (To give one of the more amusing examples, in a single article, he described me as a pathological monster, a slick, sick, cynical, diabolical madman with a messiah complex, also accusing me of trying to incite a bunch of “unstable thugs [referring to Christian families in North Carolina] . . . to engage in a violent physical clash with LGBT people.”)

Returning to the SPLC article, it claimed that, in 2007, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, then the president of NARTH, “came under fire after an essay seeming to justify slavery appeared on NARTH’s website,” as a result of which “Nicolosi stepped down as NARTH president after criticism mounted, but he remains instrumental in the group.” As noted by my NARTH source, this is a “total fabrication. Nicolosi was replaced as President by Dr. Dean Byrd, Byrd by Dr. Julie Hamilton, Hamilton by Dr. Christopher Rosik, all in good order as leadership changes on a regular basis.”

But I’m out of space. What is clear is that this “intelligence report” is riddled with fabrications, falsehoods, and fallacies, which means that either the SPLC is lying through its teeth or its research is so poor that it can’t even figure out how to read a list of conference speakers.

No wonder Townhall columnist and professor of criminology Mike Adams suggested to me that a more accurate name for the Southern Poverty Law Center would be the Intellectual Poverty Law Center.

SOURCE

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More on  The tyranny of cliches by Jonah Goldberg

I reviewed the book yesterday and another good review by  Jacqueline Otto  has just gone up.  An excerpt:

"What I most enjoyed about this book, is the subtle subplot he builds, slowly attacking the pseudo-moral-superiority that liberals enjoy in their ephemeral insipidity. Liberals generally have little use for religion in public life, hence the "separation of church and state" cliché. But when they need moral-sounding arguments for their pet projects they trot out all manner of sentiments and scriptures. We ought to care for the poor, therefore we obviously need this agency, and so on. "I'm unaware of any passages in the Hebrew or Christian bibles," Goldberg points out, "where God says that doing good to others means supporting bloated, inefficient, and often counterproductive government programs."

More HERE

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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

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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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The tyranny of cliches

I have just received my copy of The tyranny of cliches by Jonah Goldberg  and I cannot praise it highly enough.  Jonah combines an immense amount of knowlege with relentlessly logical thinking and yet presents the result with a lightness of touch that leaves us with at least a smile, if not a chuckle, on almost every page.

Jonah basically sets out to explode typical Leftist pronouncements as the empty and ill-thought-out hokum that they are.  He just does not accept any of their customary statements.  Leftists who discuss politics with him must find him very disconcerting.  They would come out with something that they think is obviously true and inarguable only to find that Jonah concedes none  of it and in fact asks some sarcastic questions about it that reveal its hollowness and inanity.  Any Leftist to whom facts and logic mattered would be severely shaken by an argument with Jonah

He is particularly strong in his immense knowledge of history.  I have written a lot on history in fields that Jonah covers and, like him, have found lots of things that Leftists would hope that no-one  ever hears about (like the KKK being Democrats, as a simple example).  So I think I know my history pretty well.  But Jonah still had a lot to teach me.  I was aware, for instance, that in the dispute between Galileo and the church, the Pope and Galileo were and remained good friends.  But it took Jonah to enlighten me about what the earth being at the center of things meant to the thinkers of the day.  It's a huge surprise.

So most readers of this book will learn something new on every page and will be extremely well-armed to punch holes in stupid  Leftist arguments.  At the risk of sounding cliche myself, I would say that this book is essential reading for all conservatives.  It's $18.45 on Amazon and likely the best $18.45 you ever spent.

Disclaimer:  I don't know Jonah personally and nobody paid me to review the book,  not even "Big Oil", "Big Pharma" or any of the usual Leftist boogeymen

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The dumbing down of America

Engineered by a Leftist educational establishment

Jay Leno showcases popular ignorance with his "Jaywalking" series, stopping people on the sidewalk and asking questions like: "In what country is the Panama Canal?" and they don't know. He asks "What countries border the United States?" and people guess: "Australia?" On and on it goes.

Schools issue diplomas, degrees and certificates to people who have completed a prescribed course of study. I can't tell you how many small business people complained to me as a local teacher that young people who have graduated from local high schools could not fill out simple job applications or read a ruler on a job site. They paid a big portion of our property taxes which funded our schools and they were angry.

Colleges are no better. Admission standards are so weak that a big percentage of freshmen must take remedial English and math courses for no credit. As long as applicants have high school diplomas and qualify for federal grants and subsidized loans, they're in. Many enroll in watered-down, pointless majors such as "Gender Studies"; Queer Studies; "Fashion Design"; and courses like "Cyberfeminism" (Cornell) and "The Science of Superheroes: (UC Irvine) that cost thousands. When I saw signs and interviews of people at "Occupy" demonstrations last fall complaining about their student loan debt, I wondered what it was they had studied. If they majored in Women's Studies and couldn't find a job, whose fault is that?

Our economy still reels from the housing bubble, but next on the horizon is the student-loan bubble. With average debt over $25,000, there's more than a trillion dollars of shaky loan debt out there. The biggest default danger, however, is the United States itself. As a republic, our leaders are elected by the people. Stupid people elect stupid leaders. Beginning with the New Deal, accelerating during the Great Society, and culminating with Hope and Change, those leaders made promises they couldn't keep. Voters believed them, which brings us to the biggest indicator of collective American stupidity: our steady march to bankruptcy.

Most people stop believing in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy by about third grade. By the end of fourth grade, Americans used to know basic arithmetic until the federal government began "fixing" public education. We cannot depend on that being true anymore, but I think we can still say that a majority know it by the end of eighth grade. Why then does a majority of Americans continue to elect and reelect leaders in Washington who borrow or print 40 cents of every dollar they spend?

Knowing that basic arithmetic, how can a majority of Americans continue to believe the federal government can borrow and print money for decades into the future to pay unfunded mandates in Social Security and Medicare approaching $100 trillion? It defies logic.

Remember the learning process around Santa Claus? We liked the myth of a kindly old man who could give us anything we want, magically. As long as we behaved, he would grant our requests. We started to have doubts about him in first or second grade when we questioned the likelihood of an old man with flying reindeer and a flying sleigh delivering all those toys around the world in one night. We still wanted to believe it though, so we pushed the doubts away. Our parents wanted us to believe it too so they reinforced the myth with ever more elaborate explanations of how it really was possible and we should keep on believing it.

Politicians do that too. They insist that people can retire at 65 with full benefits and free medical care for twenty-five years until death at 90 or so. President Obama and congressional Democrats assert the only thing that might derail the gravy train is tax cuts for greedy rich people.

When Congressman Paul Ryan pokes holes in the myth of Social Security's and Medicare's sustainability, when he says we cannot believe the Santa Claus-Democrats we sense that he's right, but we don't want to give up the myth. We know it's stupid, but we really, really want to believe it - so we do. Will a stupid majority re-elect stupid leaders - from either party - in November? Time will tell.  As Forrest Gump put it: "Stupid is as stupid does

SOURCE

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Obama Administration's Repeated Abuses Are Extension of Extreme Liberalism

Every day, we get a new kick in the gut from the Obama administration. Most recently, Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz was caught on video articulating his view of the agency's role in enforcing its regulations.

Armendariz said: "It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town somewhere; they'd find the first five guys they saw, and they'd crucify them. Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. ... It's a deterrent factor."

Indeed, we've seen this attitude by the administration in countless examples, from Obama's handling of the Obamacare legislation and restructuring of the GM loans to the administration's New Black Panther voter intimidation case to Solyndra to Fast and Furious to -- oh, never mind; I have to keep this to less than 20,000 words.

None of this should surprise us. Obama is the quintessential liberal, and his administration's recurring abuses are simply the logical extension of liberal hubris born of a self-righteous certainty of the superiority of leftist ideas. This inevitably leads to dictatorial usurpations and lawlessness from the liberal ruling class.

These liberals are sure not only that their ideas and policies are more effective but also that they are morally imperative -- and that conservative ideas and policies are not just ineffective but also woefully immoral.

Though conservatives are just as convinced of the superiority of their ideas and policies, they do not subscribe to the maxim that the end justifies the means. Their first allegiance, in terms of politics and statecraft, is to the Constitution and the rule of law. They don't believe they have the right to thwart or circumvent the Constitution or rewrite it judicially to advance their ideas and policies, no matter how important they are.

This is not merely because they are adherents of the rule of law but also because of the high value they place on the Constitution. Their reverence for the Constitution is not a matter of idolatry or some romantic abstraction; it flows from their conviction that it is the indispensable foundation of our political and economic liberties, such that safeguarding its integrity is paramount.

Leftists -- not fully appreciating the essential link between our Constitution and our liberties or maybe just not valuing either to the extent conservatives do -- are much more willing to subordinate and undermine the Constitution when it serves their ends, all the while paying lip service to their undying allegiance to it. Further, the left, not comprehending conservatives' commitment to these principles, tends to believe, through projection, that conservatives operate the same way -- that we, too, would casually throw the Constitution under the bus to achieve our ends.

But it simply isn't true. We don't advocate using the courts to make policies that are the constitutional prerogative of the legislative and executive branches. Nor do we condone abuses of executive authority by the president himself, his unaccountable czars or his rogue administrative agencies to achieve our political ends. We understand that for a court to judicially legislate conservative policy is just as dangerous to the Constitution -- and thus, ultimately, to our liberties -- as it is for it to legislate liberalism. We realize that for a conservative administration to do end runs around the legislative branch or the Constitution is as damaging to our liberties as similar abuses by a liberal administration.

So please understand that when liberals abuse their power in these ways, it won't do for them to throw out cynical claims of moral equivalence, as in "conservatives are every bit as guilty of these abuses as we are." That might fool their fellow cynics and the uninformed, but it's fantasy. This is not because we are morally superior but because a vital component of our commitment to the bilateral social contract is that we protect and defend the Constitution.

So every time the Obama administration abuses its power in furtherance of its political ends, we conservatives are not just upset that the destructive liberal agenda is being advanced. We aren't just outraged at its lawlessness. More importantly, we are horrified that it is thereby removing more and more bricks from our nation's constitutional foundation, our republic and our liberties.

SOURCE

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A strange Leftist fantasy

A typical Leftist loss of reality contact below

In the wake of the “War on Women” controversy, a number of individuals have seemingly gotten it into their minds that Republicans, particularly Republican men, ought to be punished for their callousness.

In mid-March, a women’s organization held a week-long “sex strike” in an awareness campaign for their “reproductive rights” (presumably this means free birth control), and now author and Huffington Post blogger John Blumenthal is encouraging another such strike, but with a much wider reach.

What, exactly, does he propose? No sex until November, and if by then you are not 100% convinced he will vote Democrat, “Make him stay home on election day.”  Blumenthal explains in his article:

"Maybe you haven’t heard the news lately ladies, but for reasons only they comprehend, Republican men are waging war on you. That’s right. Full-scale combat. A veritable crusade. We’re talking no contraception, no abortions, no Planned Parenthood, needless vaginal probing, and they’ve only just gotten started. And what are you doing about it? Not much.

Here’s the scenario: If we elect Mitt Romney, and both houses of Congress end up being dominated by passengers from the clown bus, God only knows how far they’ll go. Will humorless federal agents in black suits, earpieces and reflecting sunglasses be stationed in your bedroom? Will your ovaries become the property of the state? Will women’s suffrage be repealed? Will you be required to wear chastity belts and/or burqas? Will burning witches at the stake return as a reality show?

They’re holding all the cards, ladies, and their self-righteous imaginations are limitless.

Republican imaginations are limitless, critics ask? Burning witches at the stake as a reality show, if Republicans are elected? Federal agents stationed in your bedroom? Is he joking?
But it does not end there:

Here’s the good news: It’s within your power to prevent all this from happening. How? Simple. Deny sex to your men folk if they plan to vote Republican. Of course, you probably like sex too, but sometimes people in a democratic society have to make sacrifices for freedom and equality. [...]

Of course, you first have to determine whether your fella is a Republican, if he hasn’t already told you. This shouldn’t be too hard. Does he own a Glock, which he keeps in case a deer breaks into your house? Does he work for Goldman Sachs? Does he favor the missionary position because it sounds vaguely religious? Does he keep a Confederate flag in his sock drawer? When you go to Macy’s together, does he wander off while you’re in the cosmetics department and secretly fondle sweater vests?

Fast forward a few months:

Okay, so now it‘s November and you haven’t had sex with him since April. Drooling all over himself, he promises he’ll do anything you say. But what if he tries to trick you? Voting is confidential, so no matter how horny he is, he might tell you he’s voting for Obama, but then vote the Republican ticket instead. How do you prevent this from happening? Simple. Make him stay home on Election Day.

Then have sex with him and do what you usually do — fake [it].

For the last “liberal ladies sex strike,” one Facebook commenter posted pictures of Helen Thomas and wrote: “Somehow, I’m OK with this.”

Hundreds of others were inclined to agree, saying things along the lines of “Isn’t using sex as a bargaining tool contradictory with women wanting to be seen as more than just sex objects?“ and ”Combine this with the Roe Effect and liberals will be sexless AND childless.”

But this particular strike hits a different chord– instead of demanding the men vote for Obama, the author urges women to “make” the men stay home.

Why? Is it possible that even after an 8-month sex strike the author thinks they still wouldn’t vote Obama? It must be drastic times to call for such drastic measures.

SOURCE

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Israel’s ‘welcome letter’ to flytilla activists

A couple of weeks ago, Pro-Palestinian activists  planned  on arriving in Israel by plane as part of a "flytilla".  Below is the letter they were handed as they arrived

"Dear activist, we appreciate your choosing to make Israel the object of your humanitarian concerns.  We know there were many other worthy choices.You could have chosen to protest the Syrian regime's daily savagery against its own people, which has claimed thousands of lives.

"You could have chosen to protest the Iranian regime's brutal crackdown on dissent and support of terrorism throughout the world. You could have chosen to protest Hamas rule in Gaza, where terror organizations commit a double war crime by firingrockets at civilians and hiding behind civilians.

"But instead you chose to protest against Israel, the Middle East's sole democracy, where women are equal, the press criticizes the government, human rights organizations can operate freely, religious freedom is protected for all and minorities do not live in fear.

The letter concludes: "Therefore we suggest to let you solve first the real problems of the region, and then come back and share with us your experience. Have a nice flight."

 SOURCE

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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)

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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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Where has that inflation gone?

Something of a puzzle to many commentators is that Obama's vast money printing binge has not produced rapid inflation. A greenback buys less than it used to -- particularly overseas -- but not spectacularly less.

Jerry Bowyer wisely remarks that it often takes a long time for an influence to work its way through the system and he is undoubtedly right so that is clearly part of the story.

But I think the major factor is a straightforward example of what economists call the "velocity of circulation" effect.  Price inflation is a product of the amount of money on issue multiplied by its velocity of circulation and the velocity of circulation has fallen  precipitously just as the money supply has increased  -- the one influence largely cancelling out the other.

My apologies for introuducing a bit of economic jargon into a general political blog but I have been puzzled that none of the discussions of the matter that I have seen have mentioned the role of the velocity of circulation.  Perhaps it is just that other writers have better manners than I do.

To make amends, let me put it less technically:  Most of the money Obama has issued is just sitting still in the reserves of banks, other financial institutions and  major companies.  It is not being spent or lent out.  Its velocity of circulation is nil.  It might as well not exist as far as the economy as a whole is concerned.

And because of general nervousness that is not going to change soon.  But if and when it does change the party will  really be on -- a party for everyone except people who have savings.

Let me suggest a scenario.  Suppose Romney is elected and fires all the Obama cronies running the EPA and other business-obstructing agencies.  That suddenly gives everybody more confidence in doing business.  So the banks start lending again and businesses with reserves start using their reserves to expand.  The money starts flowing again.  The velocity of circulation rises.  There is now a greater demand for resources:  both labour and capital goods.  People might even start building new houses again.   For a   little while that greater  demand for resources will be met from presently idled resources:  Unemployed people  will get employed and shuttered mines and manufacturing facilities will reopen.  So everyone will be having a party.

But parties like that tend to feed on themselves and breed yet more optimism -- and so the demand for resources will soon go beyond what can be met by reactivating idled resources.  With the money now flowing again, prices will be bid up as everybody wants a piece of the action.  And an expanded volume of money chasing a relatively fixed resource base can only lead in one direction  -- to price rises.  Inflation will be underway.  How far it will go is anybody's guess but with everybody now using the extra money  that Obama has created, it could be a whopper of an inflationary process.  What a greenback will buy  could easily drop to (say) half of what it will buy today.

So Romney will inherit Obama's inflation and will probably be blamed for it.  And savers will rightly feel utterly betrayed by the political system that has cut the value of their savings in half.  "Spend it while you can" will  become the new wisdom.  My personal  hint:  Put  most of your savings  into blue-chip company shares NOW.  I did so long ago.

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The news from Havana:  The logic of capitalism is evil

Or so says a defrocked Nicaraguan priest who, funnily enough, is also the  UN General Assembly president

UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann said on Wednesday that the current global economic and financial crisis proves that the logic of capitalism is evil and suicidal.

During a ministerial meeting of the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Countries (NAM) hosted in Havana, d'Escoto said that the current world order promotes selfishness, usury as well as social and environmental irresponsibility.

"Those are the values of the capitalist culture, so bad is the situation that we take seriously our universal brotherhood and its consequences or we all die," d'Escoto said.

D'Escoto said the UN world conference in June is supposed to decide the design of a new global economic and financial architecture.

SOURCE

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Anti-Bullying Crusader Bullies  Christian Teens

If you are aware  that "bullying" is the latest Leftist word for expressing views they disagree with, this begins to make sense

Dan Savage, the founder of an anti-bullying campaign that has reportedly reached more than 40 million viewers, and has contributors that include President Obama to Hollywood stars, dove into unexpected territory while giving a speech at a high school journalism conference Friday.

There, instead the planned discussion on the dangers of bullying, Savage seemingly turned into a “bully” himself, albeit a powerful, adult one.

Reports say Savage’s speech quickly turned from the subject of anti-bullying into an event in “Christian-bashing,” causing as many as 100 students to simply walk out of the event.

Savage noted that Americans disregard much of the “bulls*it” in the Bible, from laws about shellfish to those about slavery, and we just need to clear one more “hurdle” in disregarding writings about homosexuality.

“The Bible says that if your daughter’s not a virgin on her wedding night– if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night– she shall be dragged to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death,” he says, yet “Callista Gingrich lives.”

One student in the audience, Rick Tuttle, remarked, “I thought this would be about anti-bullying…It turned into a pointed attack on Christian beliefs.”

He also reportedly told the students about how good his partner looks in a speedo, and called the students who walked out “pansy a*ses.”

The National Scholastic Press Association and Journalism Education Association, who co-sponsored the event, responded in a statement that they did not have a prior transcript of the speech, and wished he had stayed more “on target.”  However, they wrote optimistically: “We have already heard from some advisers who have turned this into a teachable moment for their students.”

One teacher was more condemnatory, saying the language and material was inappropriate for high school students, and if anything, Dan Savage was bully in this regard.

“If he was doing this with a bunch of college journalism kids, that would be a different story — that’s more rough and tumble. How many of the kids who didn’t walk out felt backed into a corner?  To me, that’s bullying behavior. It has all the symptoms, as far as I’m concerned.”

Candi Cushman, a CitizenLink blogger, concluded:  “Using profanity to deride the bible – and then mocking the Christian students after they left the room — is obviously a form of bullying and name-calling,” she wrote.  “This illustrates perfectly what we’ve been saying all along: Too many times in the name of ‘tolerance,’ Christian students find their faith being openly mocked and belittled in educational environments.”

More HERE

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Barack Obama attempts to intimidate contributors to Mitt Romney's campaign

Psychopathic amorality again:  "Free and fair" means nothing to Obama.  

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for "betting against America," and accuses you of having a "less-than-reputable" record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

Are you worried?

Richard Nixon's "enemies list" appalled the country for the simple reason that presidents hold a unique trust. Unlike senators or congressmen, presidents alone represent all Americans. Their powers—to jail, to fine, to bankrupt—are also so vast as to require restraint. Any president who targets a private citizen for his politics is de facto engaged in government intimidation and threats. This is why presidents since Nixon have carefully avoided the practice.

Save Mr. Obama, who acknowledges no rules. This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled "Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney's donors." In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having "less-than-reputable records," the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that "quite a few" have also been "on the wrong side of the law" and profiting at "the expense of so many Americans."

These are people like Paul Schorr and Sam and Jeffrey Fox, investors who the site outed for the crime of having "outsourced" jobs. T. Martin Fiorentino is scored for his work for a firm that forecloses on homes. Louis Bacon (a hedge-fund manager), Kent Burton (a "lobbyist") and Thomas O'Malley (an energy CEO) stand accused of profiting from oil. Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of a home-products firm, is slimed as a "bitter foe of the gay rights movement."

These are wealthy individuals, to be sure, but private citizens nonetheless. Not one holds elected office. Not one is a criminal. Not one has the barest fraction of the position or the power of the U.S. leader who is publicly assaulting them.

"We don't tolerate presidents or people of high power to do these things," says Theodore Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general. "When you have the power of the presidency—the power of the IRS, the INS, the Justice Department, the DEA, the SEC—what you have effectively done is put these guys' names up on 'Wanted' posters in government offices." Mr. Olson knows these tactics, having demanded that the 44th president cease publicly targeting Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, which he represents. He's been ignored.

The real crime of the men, as the website tacitly acknowledges, is that they have given money to Mr. Romney. This fundraiser of a president has shown an acute appreciation for the power of money to win elections, and a cutthroat approach to intimidating those who might give to his opponents.

He's targeted insurers, oil firms and Wall Street—letting it be known that those who oppose his policies might face political or legislative retribution. He lectured the Supreme Court for giving companies more free speech and (falsely) accused the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to bankroll U.S. elections. The White House even ginned up an executive order (yet to be released) to require companies to list political donations as a condition of bidding for government contracts. Companies could bid but lose out for donating to Republicans. Or they could quit donating to the GOP—Mr. Obama's real aim.

The White House has couched its attacks in the language of "disclosure" and the argument that corporations should not have the same speech rights as individuals. But now, says Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation, "he's doing the same at the individual level, for anyone who opposes his policies." Any giver, at any level, risks reprisal from the president of the United States.

It's getting worse because the money game is not going as Team Obama wants. Super PACs are helping the GOP to level the playing field against Democratic super-spenders. Prominent financial players are backing Mr. Romney. The White House's new strategy is thus to delegitimize Mr. Romney (by attacking his donors) as it seeks to frighten others out of giving.

The Obama campaign has justified any action on the grounds that it has a right to "hold the eventual Republican nominee accountable," but this is a dodge. Politics is rough, but a president has obligations that transcend those of a candidate. He swore an oath to protect and defend a Constitution that gives every American the right to partake in democracy, free of fear of government intimidation or disfavored treatment. If Mr. Obama isn't going to act like a president, he bolsters the argument that he doesn't deserve to be one.

SOURCE

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Another return to Zion

During the 1990s, Israel's elite took a vacation from reality and history and they brought much of the public with them.

Then-foreign minister Shimon Peres said that history was overrated. The so-called "New Historians," who rummaged through David Ben-Gurion's closet looking for skeletons, were the toast of the academic world. Radicals like Yossi Beilin, Shulamit Aloni and Avrum Burg were dictating government policy.

The media, the entertainment establishment, and the Education Ministry embraced and massively promoted plays, movies, television shows, songs, dances, art and books that "slayed sacred cows." Everywhere you turned, post-Zionism was in. Post-Judaism was in. And Zionism and Judaism were both decidedly out.

To understand the distance Israel has traveled since then, consider Tuesday night's Memorial Day ceremony at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. None of the performers attacked their fellow Israelis. And the best-received artist and song was Mosh Ben-Ari and his rendition of Psalm 121 - A Song of Ascent.

The psalm, which praises God as the eternal guardian of Israel, became the unofficial anthem of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-2009. And Ben-Ari's rendition of the song propelled the dreadlock bedecked, hoop earring wearing world music artist into super-stardom in Israel.

IT WAS impossible to imagine Pslam 121 or any other traditional Jewish poem or prayer being performed as anything other than an object of scorn in 1998. Back then, it would have been impossible to contemplate a crowd of tens of thousands of non-religious Israelis reverently singing along as Ben-Ari crooned, "My help is from God/ Maker of Heaven and Earth/ He will not allow your foot to falter/ Your Guardian will not slumber/ Behold he neither slumbers nor sleeps - the Guardian of Israel."

Israel's return to its Zionist roots is the greatest cultural event of the past decade. It is also an event that occurred under the radar screen of the rest of the world. No one outside the country seems to have noticed at all.

The outside world's failure to take note of Israel's cultural shift owes to its failure to recognize the significance of the failure of the peace process with the Palestinians on the one hand and the failure of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza on the other hand. The demise of the peace process at Camp David in July 2000 and the terror war that followed launched the Israeli public on its path away from its radical post-Zionist rebellion and back to its Zionist roots. The failure of the withdrawal from Gaza, and the international community's response to Operation Cast Lead, marked the conclusion of the journey.

More HERE

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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)

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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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BOOK REVIEW of Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins, by Robert Spencer

Spencer performs a super detective service for the West in this book.   He examines virtually every aspect of the composition and history of Islam and its purported founder, Mohammad.  Let us begin with one of his summations:

A careful investigation makes at least one thing clear: The details of Muhammad's life that have been handed down as canonical - that he unified Arabs by the force of arms, concluded alliances, married wives, legislated for his community, and did so much else - are a creation of political ferments dating from long after the time he is supposed to have lived. Similarly, the records strongly indicate that the Qur'an did not exist until long after it was supposed to have been delivered to the prophet of Islam. [pp. 214-215]

The Qur'an, the Islamic canon alleges, was the eternal "perfect book," coexisting with Allah, who sent it to earth via the Angel Gabriel to whisper into Mohammad's ear on Mount Hira, and which he, an illiterate, was able to communicate to the world in its entirety, unalterable, unchanged, and untouchable.

Well, because he couldn't write, he had secretaries to whom he dictated the Qur'an. No, wait. Those secretaries began recording the good book after he had died. No, wait

As Spencer demonstrates, it did not come into existence until long after Mohammad's death (presuming he even existed) in 632. (Gabriel was the "Prophet Whisperer.") The Hadith, the companion to the Qur'an purportedly a collection of Mohammad's sayings and doings, did not begin to accumulate until a century after his death. As Spencer shows, the Hadith became a kind of cottage industry for caliphs, Islamic clerics, scholars and anonymous scribes to invent its contents over the centuries for reasons that can partly be explained, and that partly remain conjectural.

Islam, Mohammad, and even Muslims did not begin to enter anyone's consciousness until early in the 8th century following Arab conquests of the Mideast and North Africa. Spencer emphasizes, and demonstrates, that it was Arabs, and not necessarily Muslims, or Moslems, or Mohammadans who waged jihad on that part of the Dark Age world. And those Arabs, while they were monotheists, were not necessarily Muslims.

Spencer demonstrates that possibly it was the biblical and Judaic Abraham who was the "prophet," not the person Mohammad. Surviving commentaries by chroniclers were ambiguous on the point. Moreover, that monotheist creed regarded Christians and Jews in a far more tolerant light of fellowship than would the Islam that finally emerged centuries later. It would explain many of the contradictory verses in the Qur'an, especially the earlier, abrogated ones.

Up until the time the Qur'an was being diligently assembled by a succession of clerics, politicians, and charlatans, no mention is made in the earliest documents that can be linked to Islam of the Qur'an or to Mohammad.  What chroniclers referred to when writing about those events and those Arabs - which include fictive battles that Mohammad fought - were Hagarians, Saracens, or Taiyaye.

The invaders referred to themselves as Muhajirun, "emigrants" - a term that would eventually take on a particular significance within Islam but that at this time preceded any clear mention of Islam as such. Greek-speaking writers would sometimes term the invaders "Magaritai," which appears to be derived from Muhajirun. But conspicuously absent from the stock of terms that invaded and conquered people used to name the conquering Arabians was "Muslims." [p. 33]

"Allah," Spencer points out, was not the exclusive name for God of Muslims in this period, but a common term shared by Christians and Jews. "Muhammad" was not necessarily a proper name, but often an honorific title meaning "praised one," which could be appended to any random "prophet" or religious preacher.

As Spencer shows with meticulous attention to detail, Islam and the iconic Mohammad were too likely a consequence between feuding tribes, „ la the Hatfields and McCoys, in the prophet's alleged home base, Mecca, in this instance, the Quraysh and the Umayyads.

Spencer also points to the dubious role of Mecca itself in the history of Islam, and of the Kaaba, which was originally a shrine for a host of pagan and polytheistic deities, and not the sole spiritual property of Islam as is the common belief. It shared the fate of many churches in lands conquered by the invaders, which were turned into mosques. It was appropriated by Islam. That is, stolen by conquering Arabs of questionable religious color.

The original Qur'an, writes Spencer, had to have been in Syriac, not Arabic, as the Islamic canon asserts it was. Allah commanded it to appear in Arabic, and not in any other language. Spencer bursts that balloon, too. And every fifth verse in the Qur'an is literally incomprehensible, having no intelligible reference to what precedes or follows it.

Spencer devotes important attention to the likelihood that the Qur'an is founded on a substratum of early Christian and Judaic texts. The Qur'an possibly was based on an early Christian lectionary.

My first introduction to Islam was the epic Lawrence of Arabia in 1963. I was in high school when I first saw it on a big theater screen. From a directorial and cinematography standpoint, it is still one of my favorite films. Spencer's book clears up some of the dialogue and scenes in that film. For example, when Lawrence and his Bedouin army are nearing Damascus, an Arab rider offers Lawrence a stem of grapes. Lawrence tastes one and grimaces. "They are not ripe!" laughs the rider.

Spencer discusses the actual meaning of those grapes and their relationship to the seventy-two renewable virgins promised martyrs in Paradise. Citing the researches of Christoph Luxenberg, a contemporary investigator of Islam's origins, he notes:

"A closer philological analysis indicates that the Qur'an does not offer such a promise. After examining the rasm, the other contexts in which hur appears in the Qur'an, and the contemporary usage of the word houris, Luxenberg concludes that the famous passages refer not to virgins but instead to white raisins, or grapes."

Yes, fruit. Strange as that may seem, given all the attention paid to the Qur'an's supposed promises of virgins in Paradise, white raisins were a prized delicacy in that region. As such, Luxenberg suggests, they actually make a more fitting symbol of the reward of Paradise than the promise of sexual favors from virgins.

Luxenberg shows that the Arabic word for "Paradise" can be traced to the Syriac word for "garden," which stands to reason, given the common identification of the garden of Adam and Eve with Paradise. Luxenberg further demonstrates that metaphorical references to bunches of grapes are consonant with Christian homiletics expatiating on the refreshments that greeted the blessed in Heaven.

The fact that the Syriac word Ephraem used for "grapevine" was feminine, Luxenberg explains, "led the Arabic exegetes of the Koran to this fateful assumption" that the Qur'an text referred to sexual playthings in Paradise. [p. 169]

Luxenberg is one of the many pioneer investigators and examiners of Islam's origins to whom Spencer gives ample credit throughout his book. Luxenberg focused on the philological quirks and inconsistencies found in Islam's holy book in his 2000 The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Qur'an.

A chief inconsistency of Islam for me is that the Qur'an is claimed to have been the "perfect book" that coexisted with Allah. Yet, no sooner had Mohammad died than his successors began to fiddle with its contents to conform to the expediency of the moment - surely a punishable offence in Islam. When this is pointed out to the faithful defenders of the Qur'an's inalterability, the pat answer is that Allah planned it that way, that is, implying that Allah had the Angel Gabriel whisper an incomplete and imperfect Qur'an into a delirious Mohammad's ear.

So, it's an either/or conundrum for which Islamists have no credible solution and no rationally comprehensible answer.

The Qur'an especially winds up being a kind of Rube Goldberg-like literary contraption that contains explanations for every unnecessary and obvious contradiction, and its defenders hardly blush.

Islam has swindled its faithful, its communicants, its followers, its believers. All the possible evidence points to the fact that Islam's substance and veracity comprise a theological and historical fraud. The walls of Allah's gold mine of salvation and his blessings were salted with glittering silicate from a shotgun, meant to dazzle and stun the gullible and irrational into buying into what is, at root and in purpose, a totalitarian ideology. Unfortunately, about a billion people are comfortable with being the playthings of that ideology. Which is why Islam is, root and branch, incompatible with America.

Spencer leaves few rocks unturned in his search for the truth about Islam and Mohammad. Beneath them he has found either nothing concrete, or another hand-buzzer of Islamic practical jokers. He posits at the end that Islam was knocked together as a political faith to anchor the Arab empire in the 8th century, and then began to acquire its contemporary character as sheer political circumstances demanded.

In this relatively short book, Spencer adds an invaluable resource to the growing and much needed corpus of literature that exposes, if not the peril posed by Islam, then its maleficent and felonious origins.

SOURCE

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Will the young realize that their Messiah has shafted them?

They should

Anyone with a functioning brain and a TV knows the economy is disintegrating faster than a newspaper in the rain, and this counts double for those out scouting for a new job.

The recent college graduates, that sparkling, eager group of new additions to the workforce are finding it harder and harder to procure employment now that they have received their diplomas. And if by chance they do find someone to hire them, it is usually a job that falls far below their qualifications.

In fact, according to Associated Press, 50 percent of recent graduates are under- or unemployed.

Unfortunately, this statistic isn't very surprising. As a recent college graduate myself, I know that a lot of my friends have struggled to find jobs, and many are still searching.

It's quite disheartening to come out of the secluded world of college and fight tooth and nail trying to find a way to support yourself, and the times are only getting worse.

An astonishing amount of recent grads have even had to move back in with their parents because of the fact that they are unable to afford their own place without a stable job.

The majority of available jobs that are above the "Do you want fries with that?" category are being fought over by not just recent college graduates but masters and doctoral graduates who were fired or are looking to make more money, and so the pool of available work is getting smaller by the day.

The most interesting part of this situation is that the very people who were Obama's biggest supporters are the ones who are suffering the most from his mistakes.

The young adult demographic, who once held up our illustrious president in the highest of regards, now have started to lower their standards as their hearts, wallets and gas tanks are running on empty.

Maybe in the coming months, with the election hot on our heels, Americans can stand up for what we need and demand results. Hopefully they can find enough change to take the bus to the polling place on election day.

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It looks like  the young may realize that their Messiah has shafted them

Looks like President Obama's college tour was all for naught: a new poll reveals that young people are unlikely to bother voting in 2012, despite the fact that they may prefer Obama to Mitt Romney.

A Gallup poll conducted earlier this week surveyed voter registration and likelihood to vote, broken down by age groups. Among the 18-29 set, 60 percent indicated that they are registered to vote. Obama enjoys a wide lead over Romney in this age group: 64 percent support Obama while only 29 percent support Romney. However, when asked if they definitely will vote in the general election, only 56 percent replied yes.

Comparatively, every other age group surveyed-30 to 49, 50 to 64 and 65 and over- had a yes response rate of 80 percent or more.

Obama ran away with the youth vote in 2008: Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 chose him over McCain 66 percent to 32 percent, exit polls showed.

The actual percentage of young voters who turned out in 2008 was not much higher than in previous years: In 2008, 18 percent of the electorate was comprised of voters between 18 and 29. In 2004 that age set made up 17 percent of the electorate. The same was true for 2000. John Kerry and Al Gore won the youth vote in those years as well, but their margins were nowhere near Obama's.

Still, as ABC's Amy Walter noted earlier this week, Obama's percentage of the youth vote in key swing states like North Carolina, Virginia and Florida grew substantially from that of John Kerry in 2004, no doubt helping him carry these important states and ultimately claim victory. If that group doesn't come out to support him this time around, that is definitely a concern.

Despite the fact that the president is doing his utmost to appeal to young voters, it looks like they're just not that excited. Obama said it himself, supporting him just isn't that hip anymore. Looks like the honeymoon is over, and the youth is heading back into its politically apathetic cave.

SOURCE

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Oklahoma Democratic chairman says Timothy McVeigh would be member of tea party were he alive today

He overlooks the fact that conservatives generally and the Tea Partiers in particular are in fact IN FAVOR of government:  Constitutional government.  Unlike Obama and his ilk, conservatives have great reverence for the Constitution.  But there are  lawless murderers and terrorists by the millions on the Left.  Just look back on the regimes of some of the self-described "socialists" of the 20th century:  Stalin, Hitler, Mao etc.  


A more extensive comment on the identity of McVeigh here

The chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party is refusing to back down from comments he made that likened convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to tea party activists.

"I certainly stand by my remarks, because it's widely known that McVeigh was anti-government. I think that he was a right-winger, and I think the current tea party people, while I'm not saying that they're proposing violence, they're anti-government," Collins said Tuesday. "They dislike the government. I don't know if you'd call them a government hater, but I certainly see them in a similar vein. Maybe they're an offshoot or offspring or next generation."

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Let's not worry about fake online drugs:  "Roger Bate has a curious op-ed in the NYT today. He's the lead author on a study which bought 370 drug samples from 41 online pharmacies around the world, and then tested their authenticity. The results? With the exception of Viagra bought from non-verified websites, every single drug was 100% authentic. But you'd never guess that from his op-ed."

Rick Perry was correct:  "When Texas Gov. Rick Perry, then in the early stages of his short-lived quest for the Republican presidential nomination, referred to Social Security as 'a Ponzi scheme,' he was excoriated by the press, left and right, and by his fellow Republicans, as well. Earlier this week, government actuaries revealed that Perry was correct."

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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)

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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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