San Francisco shows how "Progressive" Policies Are BAD for the poor

In recent years, a contradiction has unfolded in San Francisco. On the one hand, the city continues to practice progressive economic policies. But rather than helping its poor and middle-class—as such policies are advertised as doing—these groups in San Francisco have become more unequal, downwardly mobile, and altogether priced-out. This raises the question of whether the policies themselves are contributing to the problem.

First, though, it's worth noting the magnitude of the city's inequality, which is problematic not so much because the rich have gotten richer, but because everyone else has gotten poorer. This was determined by a Brookings Institution paper earlier this year which found that between 2007-2012, San Francisco trailed only Atlanta as the nation's most unequal city, with the top 5 percent of households earning average incomes nearly 17 times higher than the bottom 20 percent. During this period, inequality grew far more quickly in San Francisco than in any other U.S. city, with incomes for those top households increasing by nearly $28,000 to $353,576, and incomes for the bottom 20 percent decreasing by over $4,000 down to $21,313. But other brackets were hit also, as incomes declined for the bottom 80 percent of households, meaning those making up to $161,000. The study validated media narratives about how gentrifying San Francisco had become exclusive to the rich at everyone else’s expense.

A lot of the reason for this shift is because of the tech industry's emergence. Once confined to the southern part of the region, Silicon Valley's imprint expanded across the city throughout the 2000s, and is now a mainstream cultural force. Not only have businesses like Twitter opened offices downtown, but once-working-class areas like the Mission provide housing and start-up space for industry workers, causing an influx of new wealth and neighborhood disruption.

But the city's progressive tendencies seem only to have worsened this shift, with an over-reaching government that offers inadequate—or plain wrongheaded—solutions to problems.

This is most evident in the way that it has handled housing. San Francisco now has one of the nation's most expensive markets, with median home prices at $1 million. Numerous explanations have surfaced for what caused the spike, ranging from the area's growing population and wealth, to its land constraints. But the spike can also be explained by regulations that discourage new housing. For example, lots within the city's downtown, where infrastructure is already in place to handle added population, are held to severe height restrictions, and this is even more the case in outlying neighborhoods. The structures that are built endure robust approval processes that can take years, and require millions in lobbying—creating expenses that get passed down onto customers. The developers of the proposed Washington 8 condo project on the downtown waterfront, for example, waited eight years and spent $2 million on campaigning only to have their project rejected.

The political establishment's response has been to impose anti-market forces onto the housing that does exist, under the impression that this will keep prices down. Three-quarters of San Francisco's units are rent-controlled because of a law that requires this for buildings constructed before 1979. Mainstream economists have long believed that such laws are counterproductive, because they encourage price spiking of market rate units, and under-maintenance or abandonment of the regulated ones. This has been the case in San Francisco: Along with laws that make evicting bad tenants difficult, rent control has prevented landlords from collecting the necessary fees for upkeep. As a result, they have left vacant an estimated 10,600 units, or 5 percent of citywide housing stock.

San Francisco's labor laws, also designed to help the poor, seem similarly counterproductive. In 2003, the city mandated a minimum wage of $8.50 per hour, with future increases tied to inflation. Later laws forced large businesses to also provide health care and paid sick leave. This has brought baseline hourly wages to roughly $13.12, with proposals to increase it to $15. But it's unclear whether the existing measure has been beneficial, or merely offset itself by raising living costs. A University of California, Berkeley, study showed that the law led to higher prices at restaurants, and it stands to reason that other low-wage industries were similarly affected, thereby causing inflation, but not necessarily any newly-created wealth. Indeed, in the decade since the law took effect, San Francisco's Consumer Price Index increased faster than any other Bay Area county. According to a Governing Magazine cost-of-living calculation, the purchasing power of $1 in San Francisco is 40 percent less than in cities like Houston and New Orleans.

Another thing jacking up prices is high taxes. San Francisco ranks ninth-highest out of 107 major cities in sales tax rates, with a combined state, county, and local rate of 9.5 percent. Although state laws have limited property tax rates to about the national average, San Francisco has a complex arrangement of business fees and taxes that can reach .65 percent of gross receipts. Residents also pay a flat income tax of 1.5 percent, in addition to a California income tax rate that can reach 13.3 percent, the nation's highest.

These taxes pay for government services that, in another ode to progressivism, are famously inefficient because of monopolistic union control. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Bay Area Rapid Transit, the two main public transportation agencies, have some of the nation's highest-paid transit workers, although the former has dismal performance ratings, and both have gone on strike in the last 13 months. Other government unions have defeated ballot initiatives to reform an expensive public pension system that is crippling the city's ability to provide services.

But perhaps the ultimate mark of a progressive city is that it relies on the government, rather than private industry, to micromanage economic outcomes. In San Francisco, this has produced a regulatory and administrative style that favors certain businesses—and demographics—over others. The creation of something called PDR zoning allowed the city to impose costly fines on white-collar start-ups for using office space that it wanted available for “light industrial” craftsmen, who are presumably more authentic to the nouveau riche. The city-run cab industry, meanwhile, has long crowded out new drivers, and private options like Uber, in order to protect existing medallion holders. Other disruptive urban innovations, such as food carts, micro-housing, and Airbnb, tremble under hawkish government oversight while large tech companies have received millions in tax breaks to locate in neighborhoods that were already revitalizing.

These policies do not seem to have hurt San Francisco’s growth, thanks to engrained advantages like a good climate, interesting culture, and proximity to educated workers. But those studying the causes of inequality should note the uneven nature of the city’s growth: While overall population has boomed since 2007, middle-class population has declined, and the share of poor households moving to the suburbs has increased, suggesting that the next step after income loss has been exile. Progressive economic policies—or at least the way they are applied in San Francisco, without apparent knowledge of government bureaucracy’s pitfalls—have contributed to the trend. Those policies have caused higher taxes and living costs, poor services, regulatory barriers to entry, and a loss of economic freedom. This creates a system that the rich can endure, and sometimes exploit to their benefit, but that poorer people cannot abide, helping to explain San Francisco's further plunge into stark class division.

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ObamaCare's Foundation of Lies

MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, one of the original architects of ObamaCare – which passed without a single Republican vote – is at the center of a new political storm Democrats can ill afford these days. Earlier this week, a video surfaced of a panel at the University of Pennsylvania last year in which Gruber discussed the “Affordable” Care Act. In the video, he argued the law had to be written in a way that obscured what it was actually about because there was no other way it could have passed. No kidding.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber told the audience. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass.”

There can be no better example of the hubris, arrogance and utter lack of respect for the democratic process than the words of this elitist.

Enraged yet? Wait, there’s more.

In that same clip, Gruber said, “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” Gruber also responded to a charge made earlier in the panel that the law had a “dumb way” of subsidizing high-risk insurance customers. Gruber tacitly granted as much, but said, “If you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.”

Caught in the act, Gruber went on MSNBC this week to explain himself. “I was speaking off the cuff,” he said. “And I basically spoke inappropriately, and, uh, I regret having made those comments.” This non-apology apology was nothing more than Gruber saying he’s sorry the comments were made public.

Shortly after his MSNBC appearance, another clip surfaced from another 2013 forum where he explained how the Democrats collectively worked to fool voters and get the bill passed: “That passed because the American voters are too stupid to understand the difference.”

Gruber was also recorded thanking a Massachusetts “hero” for inventing the so-called “Cadillac tax” on premium health plans: “John Kerry said, ‘No, no. We’re not going to tax your health insurance. We’re going to tax those evil insurance companies. We’re going to impose a tax that if they sell insurance that’s too expensive, we’re going to tax them.’ And, conveniently, the tax rate will happen to be the marginal tax rate under the income tax code. So, basically, it’s the same thing: We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on higher prices that offsets the tax break we get, it ends up being the same thing. It’s a very clever, you know, basically exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”

The White House is now doing damage control. White House spokeswoman Jessica Santillo said, “The Affordable Care Act was publicly debated over the course of 14 months, with dozens of congressional hearings and countless town halls, speeches and debates. … Not only do we disagree with [Gruber’s] comments, they’re simply not true.” Another anonymous White House official said, “[Gruber] did not work in the White House.” Then why was he paid nearly $400,000 for his work?

Press Secretary Josh Earnest protested, “The fact of the matter is the process associated with writing and passing and implementing the Affordable Care Act has been extraordinarily transparent.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi went even further, telling reporters Thursday, “I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill.” Maybe if she had read the bill, she would have found out what’s in it – or at least who wrote it.

In truth, Pelosi praised Gruber’s work in 2009 before it became inconvenient to know him. And her website cites him by name in at least seven places.

The Obama administration relied heavily, for example, on Gruber’s data to predict the effect ObamaCare would have on health care costs. In fact, administration officials praised the computer model he devised. His mouth got him into trouble in 2009 when, in the heat of congressional debate, he admitted the legislation “really doesn’t bend the cost curve.” This was a point many Republicans, notably Rep. Paul Ryan, made during the debate over the bill.

Gruber himself also tried to qualify his remarks and tried to redirect attention back to Republicans. During his MSNBC appearance, Gruber said, “I think that this comes to the master strategy of the Republican Party, which is to confuse people enough about the law so that they don’t understand that the subsidies they’re getting is [sic] because of the law.”

Wait, who’s trying to confuse people? Take a quick look at some of Barack Obama’s gems regarding his precious health care law over the last six years:

“If you like your current insurance, you keep your current insurance. Period. End of story.”

“We can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year.”

“Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.”

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future.”

And then there’s this one: “This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Not a single one of these statements contained a shred of truth. Now, thanks to Gruber, it’s even more clear these stump comments were never anything more than utter lies.

No matter what Gruber or Obama or Pelosi say now, the fact is the American people were conned and lied to. Obama and his people knew that was the only way ObamaCare would happen.

The future of ObamaCare is in serious doubt, not just legally but politically.

Take for example Ron Fournier, senior political columnist for National Journal and longtime champion of ObamaCare. “Gruber’s remarks may not be dispositive, but they certainly are evidence,” Fournier wrote this week. “And so even I have to admit, as a supporter, that Obamacare was built and sold on a foundation of lies.”

Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina may have said it best when asked about the motivations of Gruber and the Obama bureaucrats who supposedly knew better than the American people: “I would say this to the professor: Put down the cognac and the lost writings of J.D. Salinger, if you want to see how stupid our fellow citizens are, take a look at last Tuesday night because they rejected you, this bill and this administration.”

And let’s not forget that period in time following Obama’s election in 2008. No one was clamoring for health care reform. What the citizenry really wanted was a solution to the economic crisis. Yet the Obama administration saw an opportunity to exploit a crisis to its own advantage – to increase access to abortion, give the IRS unprecedented power to meddle in peoples' lives and increase regulatory reach over the health care sector.

ObamaCare was a vehicle not to solve the nation’s health care issues but to expand federal control over the populace. The final product was never, and still is not, popular with the public. It was one of the prime movers of the 2014 midterm elections. And if it was such a good bill, why was it necessary to lie to the American people to get it passed? The answer is now obvious.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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Why Liberals Read More Books Than Conservatives  

Wayne Allyn Root has some good points below but perhaps I can add something too.  I also rarely read books these days -- though I used to read 2 or 3 books a week when I was a kid.  I just don't have the time to read books because there is so much to keep up with online.  I spend around 12 hours a day reading but I read stuff off a screen, not from books.

Another probable factor behind book reading is that liberals have a greater need to "tailor" what they see and hear.  The content of a book is fairly predictable so the book can be chosen to tell you stuff you like to hear.  You can stay comfortably inside your little Leftist mental bubble by reading mainly books.  If instead you listen to radio and TV you might occasionally hear something that threatens your little fantasy world.  You might for instance hear what those wonderful peace-loving Muslims of ISIS are doing these days.  Horror!  We don't want to hear that!

And you might even hear fleetingly that Israel invaded Gaza only after Gazans had rained thousands of rockets down upon Israel.  Could those powerless but wise and heroic Palestinians do that?  Much nicer to read a book by Jimmah Carter or his ilk telling us that Israel is an "Apartheid state".  Never mind that Israeli Arabs have exactly the same rights as Israeli Jews and are found at all levels of Israeli society

A new study came out last week that proves that liberals (Democrats and Progressives) read more books than Conservatives (Republicans or Libertarians). Leading publishing executives even commented on it, saying that more books should be aimed at liberals because Conservatives just don't read. The inference, of course, is that Conservatives are ignorant, lazy, or just not intellectually curious. Meanwhile liberals will undoubtedly use these new "facts" to prove that they are intellectual heavyweights- the very kind of highly informed intellectuals who should be running our country.

What a crock! The truth is that facts are many times misleading- and this is a perfect example. The fact is that liberals have the time to read books simply because they are rarely in positions of authority or leadership- they do not own businesses, run companies, or serve in positions of great responsibility. It's easy to find the time to read a book on a couch or lazy-boy when you get off work at 3 PM daily- and have no responsibilities once you walk out the office door. Unfortunately for the rest of us in positions of ownership and leadership, our days never end. We are making business calls, participating in conference calls, and answering emails at all hours of the day and night. For the people defined as "conservative" our responsibilities never end- leaving us little, if any, time to even fantasize about reading books.

Who are "conservatives?" Conservatives are simply defined as the "producers" of our economy- Americans with important jobs; in leadership positions; with great responsibility; the type of people that are "on the go" 24/7- who make our economy go and grow.

No, conservatives don't have the time to read books. But they are busy creating, funding and shaping the businesses, industries, and jobs that make a difference in our world (and our economy). Reading books is not something they have time for in their busy schedules. They have mortgages, property taxes, income taxes, private schools and college educations (for their kids) to pay for. When you're bright and ambitious and want to provide a better life for your family, there are a lot of bills to pay- big bills. No, reading books is just not high up on the "priority list" for conservatives.

Equally misleading is the fact that, while busy entrepreneurs and executives (like me) don't have time to read books, we actually read far more than any liberal. We simply choose to read publications important to our careers, our success, and our understanding of the business world. For instance I rarely read a book- but I read 5 to 7 newspapers a day. My daily "must read" is the Wall Street Journal. I read it from front to back every morning. I also read the NY Times, LA Times, USA Today and my local Las Vegas Review Journal. But that's just the start. I read Forbes, Fortune, Robb Report and a multitude of other important business and political magazines.

By the way, I do "read" several books a month- but I do not have the time to sit and read them in traditional fashion. I read them by listening to books on tape. So while liberals are fancying themselves as "gifted intellectuals" because they read 2 or 3 books a month, I'm busy reading 50 to 100 business publications a month, while also listening to 20 books on tape. So who's really doing the most reading? I'd argue that reading the Wall Street Journal daily is far more intellectual and crucial to success, than reading 2 or 3 books (perhaps romance novels or psycho-babble by Dr. Phil) at the beach. Reading books is a good thing- but not nearly as good for society (or the economy) as working 24/7 to create and build businesses. Not even close. Liberals don't read more books than conservatives because they are smarter- they just have more leisure time.

The reason that Conservatives don't read books is the exact same reason that liberals fail miserably on talk radio. Just in the past few months, high-profile liberal talk radio networks Air America and Jane Fonda's GreenStone Media (feminist radio) both declared bankruptcy and went off the air. Why? Because radio is not something most people listen to at home. Talk radio is the perfect form of entertainment while driving in your car. And who drives in their cars (particularly during morning and evening rush hour)? People with jobs, businesses, careers- otherwise known as conservatives (at least fiscal conservatives). Talk radio is dominated by conservative hosts- they literally scream all day long about high taxes and wasteful government spending. You know why? Because the drivers listening to these shows are the ones who pay all the taxes!

Conservatives drive in the morning to work (sometimes an hour or longer commute), they drive back home at night, they drive in-between to business lunches, client meetings and sales calls. Then they drive on Saturday and Sunday mornings to their children's ballgames, karate classes, Lacrosse matches, and swimming lessons. These are people with families, big mortgages, careers. No wonder they are fiscally conservative.

SOURCE

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In Another Blow to Obamacare, the Supreme Court Will Hear This Case

As director of the Center for Health Policy Studies, Nina Owcharenko oversees The Heritage Foundation’s research and policy prescriptions on such issues as health care reform on the federal and state levels, Medicare and Medicaid, children’s health and prescription drugs. Read her research.
The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the King v. Burwell case exposes another potential weakness in the health care law. In the King case, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Internal Review Service has the authority to expand the application of healthcare subsidies to federal exchanges.

The subsidies are a key tool used under the law to drive individuals onto the government exchanges. Without the subsidies, fewer individuals likely would chose to purchase the government-mandated plans.

But only 14 states and the District of Columbia established state-based exchanges and even some of those (Oregon and Nevada) are backing out for 2015. In the remainder of states with exchanges, the federal government, not the state governments, established the exchanges.

As my colleague Andrew Kloster summarized in another post on a related case, “The tax subsidies for low-income Americans are only available, “through an Exchange established by [a] State under section 1311.” Federal exchanges are set up under Section 1321 of Obamacare – not Section 1311. But the administration still wants to provide subsidies, even though the law doesn’t appear to authorize the handout.” And there lies the problem.

So should the Supreme Court decide that the subsidies are not valid in the federal exchange, it will mark yet another major blow to Obamacare, because the subsidies in those states where the exchanges were established by the federal government no longer will be available.

One of the first blows to Obamacare also came as a result of a Supreme Court ruling. Although the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, as part of the NFIB v. Sebelius decision, the Supreme Court ruled that states choosing not to expand their Medicaid program as posited under Obamacare would not lose their entire federal funding for Medicaid, but would lose only the enhanced funding extended under the law. Today, 23 states still have not expanded their Medicaid programs, delivering another blow to the core of Obamacare.

There are other signs that Obamacare is weakening. The promise that Obamacare would bend the cost curve and lower premiums isn’t being fulfilled. Instead, there are increases and higher premiums inside and outside  the exchanges.

The promise that you could keep your plan and your doctor has been dashed as millions face involuntary cancellations, meaning they’ve lost their plan, only to then find narrowed networks in the government exchanges, meaning they have access to fewer doctors and services than before.

The promise of deficit-free spending has also been shown to be a mirage: Obamacare’s policies actually will increase deficits and fall short of producing the savings it promised. And even the revenues expected to help pay for the health care law aren’t materializing.

And probably the weakest link in Obamacare is its lack of public support. The latest Real Clear Politics average for October showed a 13.5-point difference between those who opposition Obamacare and those who support it. Election night exit polls reinforced this point.

As Obamacare’s core continues to weaken, the new Congress should start fresh and advance a new health care agenda.

This agenda, in sharp contrast with Obamacare, should be based on the principles of patient-centered, market-based health reform where individuals can own their own health care and choose the kind of plan that best meets their healthcare needs, and where a level playing field forces the healthcare sector to compete for consumers based on price, quality and value.

SOURCE

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"Big Truthy" Is Watching  You

On Monday, House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, requested that the National Science Foundation send him all information about how and why the taxpayer-subsidized "Truthy" data-mining project came into existence. Its lead researcher is Filippo Menczer — professor of informatics and computer science and the director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing — who is now on sabbatical at Yahoo! Labs.

Menczer and Indiana University vehemently deny that Truthy is a "political watchdog," a "government probe of social media," "an attempt to suppress free speech or limit political speech or develop standards for online political speech," "a way to define "misinformation," a partisan political effort, "a system targeting political messages and commentary connected to conservative groups," "a mechanism to terminate any social media accounts," or "a database tracking hate speech."

But Menczer himself admits the project arose after he learned about a conservative Twitter bomb campaign against failed Senate Democratic candidate Martha Coakley in 2010. His information-gathering system bears liberal comedian Stephen Colbert's neologism "truthy." And the Washington Free Beacon's Elizabeth Harrington reports that Menczer "proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama's Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International and True Majority."

In presentations to academic groups, Menczer has specifically highlighted his team's research on conservative groups, individuals and hashtags. I've seen it. At Harvard University's "Truthiness Conference" in March 2012, for example, he showed his audience the results of monitoring and mapping the hashtag "#obamacare" and singled out the D.C.-based Heritage Foundation for using it. His government-funded database mined information on who was retweeting #obamacare-labeled tweets and pinpointed "patterns of propagation."

Menczer and company also policed Twitter users who opined that Obama supported policies that promote Sharia law. Truthy targeted pro-Sarah Palin tweets and tweets using the hashtag "#tcot" — which stands for "Top Conservatives on Twitter" and which I've used since 2009. The government-funded researchers also went after opponents of Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, as well as a "Republican activist in Pennsylvania" whose Twitter account was then shut down after Truthy identified tweets that included web links to John Boehner's official congressional leadership page.

The goal, Menczer explained, is to "detect" Twitter users' themes and memes "early before damage is done — that is what we're trying to do." Truthy will "automatically detect language," and its overseers will conduct "sentiment analysis" to control and prevent "damage."

Nope, no political goals or ideological agenda there. Nothing to see here. Run along.

Menczer defends against leftwing bias by claiming that "almost all of the most popular hashtags, the most active accounts, and the most tweeted URLs, are from the right. We looked really hard for any 'truthy' memes from the left."

Look harder, pal.

As conservative radio giant Rush Limbaugh and his staff discovered (no tax grant money necessary), the astroturfed social media boycott campaign against his show for the past several years has been spearheaded by only 10 Twitter users who account for almost 70 percent of all "StopRush" tweets to advertisers, amplified by illicit software. Moreover, they found, "almost every communication from a StopRush activist originates from outside the state of the advertiser." These lib bots constitute "a small number of extremists sending tens of thousands of tweets and other messages" to bully and intimidate advertisers.

Yet, there hasn't been a peep about the insidious #StopRush smear campaign from Menczer and his Obama administration-backed liberal snitch squad. It's time for some truth in Truthy advertising.

SOURCE

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Apparent attack on voter confidentiality

Touch-Screen Voting Machines Collected Millions of Tea Party Fingerprints for Homeland Security

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a disgruntled engineer for the largest voting machine manufacturer in North America leaked information to NR about the Department of Homeland Security’s involvement with 2014 mid-term election voting data.

The source claimed that in the months preceding the election, more than seventeen thousand new touch-screen voting machines were deployed in almost every state in the union. The bulk of the machines were located in areas with known Tea Party and Libertarian population densities.

The latest generation of machines shipped with new fingerprint gathering technology developed by DHS in cooperation with Apple...  Apple has been working on ways to make the technology profitable by marketing it directly to military agencies and other companies.

Our source revealed that during the course of the election over 4 million Tea Party and Libertarian fingerprints were collected and distributed directly to the DHS Domestic Terrorist database.

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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A Smoking Gun for Us 'Stupid American Voters'

Recently, a very disturbing video emerged that contains the metaphorical smoking gun concerning President Obama’s many lies about Obamacare. This should remove any lingering doubt that we’re dealing with a fascist-type administration.

Of course, there should be no need for a smoking gun, because it is now undeniable that Obama lied on his major selling points about the Affordable Care Act. Unlike many Democrats in falsely accusing President George W. Bush of lying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, I don’t use the term “lie” lightly.

I don’t mean that Obama made good-faith statements about his bill that he honestly believed at the time but would later turn out to be erroneous. I am not even suggesting that he made promises he knew would be difficult to fulfill that he ultimately could not. I am saying that he made statements that he knew to be false when he made them.

Obama said countless times, despite knowing better, that if Americans liked their health care plans and their doctors, they could keep them. He said that average health care premiums for a family of four would decrease by some $2,500. He said his bill would be budget-neutral. His administration talked out of both sides of its mouth in characterizing the bill variously as a tax and as a penalty, depending on which label served his interests at the time. Team Obama assured us that employer-based plans would not be wedged out.

No one should need further proof of these multiple and oft-repeated lies, but should you need more, there is indeed more – and it’s explosive and hot off the presses.

The Daily Caller reports that in a newly surfaced video, Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, an MIT professor, made some stunning admissions concerning how the administration presented the bill and how it overtly deceived the public because the bill never would have passed otherwise.

To understand the administration’s contempt for the American people, it is important for you to watch the video. (It’s on YouTube, titled “GRUBER: ‘Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.”) But in case you cannot, here is what Gruber said: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure (the Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK? So it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money – it would not have passed. … Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass. … Look, I wish (health economist) Mark (Pauly) was right (that) we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

You can see the mindset that these people have. There is no mistaking it. They know better than we “stupid” American people what is good for us, so they’ll do whatever is necessary, including purposely deceiving us, to advance their political agenda.

This is the stuff of outright tyrants – arrogant, unaccountable, cavalier despots. This is political fascism. This is not representative government. This type of behavior nullifies the Constitution and disenfranchises the American people.

It’s one thing to have strong ideological views. It’s altogether another to impose those views at any cost and in derogation of the people’s rights. This is who this president is. These are the people he surrounds himself with.

Obama and his team are not chastened, much less repentant, over the recent election results. They remain undeterred, and they intend to continue using whatever means they deem necessary, in their self-assessed superior wisdom, to accomplish their political ends, beginning with immigration.

It’s hard to believe that this man was ever elected and exceedingly harder to believe he was re-elected, but it is now quite clear that even he and his team believe he wouldn’t have been able to achieve re-election or advance much of his agenda had he been truly honest and transparent about his aims and the effects of various bills.

If you were unaware of or in denial about Obama’s character and his willingness to deceive and act against the will of the American people before – despite other smoking guns, such as those concerning his lies on the Benghazi, Libya, attacks – you have no excuse now.

Two dangerous years remain in Obama’s term. Even Democrats who might agree with many of Obama’s remaining agenda items have a duty to oppose his further abuse of our system, including on immigration. But whether or not they step up, it is imperative that Republicans take a hard line against any such corrosive acts against the rule of law and our Constitution.

SOURCE

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Arizona voters did something that could stop Obama's unconstitutional moves

Voters in Arizona approved Proposition 122, an important amendment to the state constitution that enshrines nullification, or anti-commandeering. Specifically, it allows the state to “exercise its sovereign authority to restrict the actions of its personnel and the use of its financial resources to purposes that are consistent with the Constitution.”

This amendment, approved by a 2.8% margin, will make it easier for Arizonans to refuse to enforce federal laws, forcing Washington to do its own dirty work. Under the provision, voters could hold referendums on withholding state resources from enforcing Obamacare, federal impingement on American’s Second Amendment rights, NSA spying programs, and other measures, according to the Tenth Amendment Center.

Other states have considered nullification measures as a method of pushing back on the massive, unconstitutional expansion of federal government by un-elected bureaucrats in federal agencies under President Barack Obama or any future White House occupant, but this is believed to be the first amendment to a state constitution with such a broad scope.

Arizonans could have held such referendums at any time, but adding this language to the state’s constitution means that such referendums will now be statutory, rather than constitutional, making it easier — and far less expensive — to get on the ballot for the people to decide.

“Simply put, the amendment enshrines a process to refuse state cooperation with unconstitutional federal acts in the state constitution,” the report said, citing a statement from Judge Andrew Napolitano that state refusal to participate in federal programs makes them “nearly impossible to enforce.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld actions by states to refuse to implement federal programs. The report cites four key decisions — Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), New York v. US (1992), Printz v. US (1997) and National Federation of Businesses v. Sebelius (2012).

James Madison, writing in Federalist #46, said that two of the most important “means of opposition” to the federal government were the “disquietude of the people” and their “refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union.” Arizona just added to its constitution the means for its citizens to express both more readily.

It is sincerely to be hoped that other states will follow the example of The Grand Canyon State, but for now, it’s a good day to be an Arizonan.

SOURCE

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Republicans Can Upend the Democrat Race Narrative

Many realities utterly anathema to Democrats' divide-and-conquer strategy for winning elections revealed themselves last Tuesday. Yet perhaps the one that threatens their future far more than any other is the reality that, for the first time in decades, the Democrat race narrative is starting to crumble. Suddenly, black America’s invariably reliable allegiance to their party is in play.

For the last half-century, Democrats successfully painted the entire GOP as the “racist” party. The enormity of that success cannot be overstated, as Democrats managed to take American history completely out of the equation while doing so. History that reveals the Republican Party was established by anti-slavery activists, while it was Democrats who flocked to the Ku Klux Klan following its establishment as a Tennessee social club. In the middle of the 20th century, the “Dixiecrats,” including segregationists such as Alabama Public Safety Commissioner “Bull” Connor and former Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox, emerged. It was Connor who ordered the use of police dogs and fire hoses to disperse civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham during the spring of 1963. It was Maddox who refused to serve black customers in his restaurant, brandishing an axe handle in the process. And then there was the late Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd, who served over 50 years in that chamber, despite not only being a member of the KKK but a leader of his local chapter.

Many black Americans have no idea a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and were also responsible for ending a Democrat filibuster preventing a vote on the bill in the Senate.

What black Americans do know is that Democrats ultimately captured their hearts and souls, not only to the point of getting their votes, but to the point where any who dared stray from the Democrat plantation faced the kind of ostracizing best exemplified by the pathetic treatment afforded Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Emerge, a now-defunct black news monthly, portrayed Thomas as a lawn jockey on its cover with the heading “Uncle Thomas, Lawn Jockey for the Far Right.” USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio host Julianne Malveaux hoped aloud that “his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease,” because he is “a reprehensible person.” Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown claimed Thomas was “legitimizing the views of the Ku Klux Klan,” a view shared by Jesse Jackson.

All of this was and is perfectly acceptable in Democrat circles, where even now the only “authentic” black Americans are those on the liberal side of the political ledger. Thus it is no surprise that Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the first black senator elected in the South since the Reconstruction era, received an “F” from the NAACP, because he doesn’t believe in “civil rights” according to NAACP president Ben Jealous. What Scott really doesn’t believe in is the progressive agenda. Nor is it any surprise that execrable New York Congressman Charles Rangel expressed his belief that all southern Republicans “believe that slavery isn’t over and they think they won the Civil War,” implying all those GOP victories last Tuesday were attributable to racism. “I meant that they used to call themselves ‘slave-holding states,’” Rangel declared.“ They’ve been frustrated with the Emancipation Proclamation. They became Republicans, then Tea Party people.”

No one’s more frustrated than Rangel and other Democrats who see the writing on the wall. Their angst is undoubtedly exacerbated by the election of Utah Rep. Mia Love, the first black Republican woman elected to Congress in a state where the population is less than 1% black. Love is actually far more problematic than Scott because she also pokes a hole in another cherished Democrat narrative, a.k.a. the GOP’s “war on women.”

Yet while the cracks in the Democrat race narrative are beginning to show, those fissures can only be widened when the Right learns to be proactive and frame the argument. An exchange between Bill Kristol, the conservative publisher of The Weekly Standard, and CNN commentator Jay Carney, former White House Press Secretary, is illustrative. When Carney expressed the idea that GOP support for voter ID is racist, Kristol merely disagreed. What Kristol should have said is that there is nothing more racist than the notion that black Americans are inherently incapable of procuring an ID, and that Carney should be ashamed of making the kind of sweeping generalizations that are the essence of racism.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gets it exactly right. “The idea that you would play such a card and try fear-mongering among minorities just because you disagree with Republicans, that they are somehow all racists, I find it appalling. I find it insulting,” she said, specifically referring to a Democrat flyer disseminated in Georgia warning blacks that “if you want to prevent another Ferguson” you’d better get to the polls and vote Democrat.

It didn’t fly. Republican David Perdue handily won the Senate race against Democrat Michelle Nunn by eight percentage points.

Furthermore, there were potentially seismic indications of black disenchantment with Democrats before Election Day. On Friday, July 11 in Chicago, what started out as a protest against the violence that had resulted in 189 people being shot and 33 killed in that month alone turned into an Obama bash-fest. One black resident accused the president of “forsaking the African-American community and African-American families.”

Sadly, it’s nothing new. Democrats have conspired to maintain an odious narrative of black victimhood and GOP racism since the 1960s.

What more and more black Americans may now be realizing is the party they’ve hitched their wagon to for five-plus decades is still telling them things have barely changed for the better, if they have changed at all – and that maybe, just maybe, 50 years of unquestioning allegiance producing virtually no improvement means it’s time for a change.

In short, the Grand Old Party has been handed a grand opportunity to make serious inroads into the black community. The quickest way to blow that opportunity? Hop on board the comprehensive immigration reform train. The stats tell the story all the rosy rhetoric surrounding immigration reform can’t obscure: In Oct., black America’s unemployment rate remained double that of whites, 41,000 black Americans lost their jobs, and their labor force participation rate declined by 114,000 – all in an economy improving for everyone else.

It’s time the GOP made it clear to black America that they have their backs and stand in stark contrast to Barack Obama and Democrats, both eager to legalize millions of illegals who will further devastate black employment prospects. This is nothing less than a sellout of black America, and it is incumbent on the GOP to explain that Democrats see it as a reasonable tradeoff for unassailable power – power that is only possible because Democrats take black support for granted.

The opportunity to forge a new racial narrative is at hand. The Democrats' racial playbook is old and tired, the race card is more than maxed out. All that is needed is some serious GOP outreach in black communities over the next two years. Memo to the GOP: Those two years may buy you another four, including a Republican president in 2016.

SOURCE

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GOP adds another Senate seat as Sullivan wins Alaska

Republican candidate Dan Sullivan defeated Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Begich in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race Wednesday.  The win gives the GOP eight Senate pickups in the midterm elections. The party is also seeking a ninth seat in Louisiana’s runoff in December.

Sullivan ran a confident campaign, ignoring the debate schedule Begich established and setting his own terms.

He pledged to fight federal overreach, talked about energy independence and at seemingly every opportunity, sought to tie Begich to President Barack Obama and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, who are unpopular in Alaska.

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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Far-Left Hollywood actress to sue conservative publisher

Liberal Hollywood actress and darling of Planned Parenthood, Lena Dunham, is gunning for the Freedom Center and Truth Revolt --- and now I urgently need your help to build up our legal defense fund.

You might have read about it on the Drudge Report or seen it in The Hollywood Reporter, The Daily Mail, the Los Angeles Times, or People Magazine or any other mainstream media outlet...

Leftwing Hollywood feminist Lena Dunham is threatening to sue Truth Revolt and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, because we wrote an article in which we quoted her book, Not That Kind of Girl!

Who is Lena Dunham, you may wonder? She is the New Hot Thing-a leftist actress who is the darling of the liberal media; who has been one of Obama's most rabid backers; who has been in America's face as a supporter of what she calls "reproductive rights" and "female sexuality"; and who teams up with groups such as Emily's List and Planned Parenthood to try to tilt the playing field in favor of leftwing causes.

She's also a best selling author whose new book causes the flesh to crawl because, among other things, of the way it describes her relationship with her younger sister. This part of Not That Kind of Girl caught our eye, which is why we described it, using Dunham's own words, in Truth Revolt.

Without going into detail, I'll just say that it's very disturbing, especially coming from someone who has presented herself as so very progressive and such a critic of sexual abuse --- and in particular, a spokesperson against the right's fictitious War on Women.

Whether you want to call what Dunham wrote an admission of sexual abuse or just a very progressive view of sibling relations is up to you. What is not up for debate is that she wrote some bizarre and graphic passages that Truth Revolt quoted -- and the next thing we knew, we had a letter from her attorney, threatening suit for defamation.

In his "cease-and-desist" letter, Dunham's lawyer stated "Our client intends to vigorously pursue all possible legal remedies available to her . . . Remedies available to my client include, without limitation, actual damages to her personal and professional reputation which likely would be calculated in the millions of dollars [plus] punitive damages." The letter demanded that the story be immediately removed.

The letter also stated: "Demand is further made that you immediately print a prominent public apology and retraction at all media whereat you published the Story, stating that the Story is false, that you regret having published it, and that you apologize to Ms. Dunham and her family for having published it."

We refused to comply with these demands. In response to the attorney's threat, we stated: "We refuse. We refuse to withdraw our story or apologize for running it, because quoting a woman's book does not constitute a "false" story, even if she is a prominent actress and leftwing activist. Lena Dunham may not like our interpretation of her book, but unfortunately for her and her attorneys, she wrote that book - and the First Amendment covers a good deal of material she may not like."

Our lawyer advises us that we have a strong legal defense, based on the First Amendment, and we fully expect to prevail. But the costs of defending a case are high, and now we could be facing $250,000 in legal defense costs-a negligible sum for someone like Dunham, but a serious expense for us.

Lena Dunham is a very public figure that stars and directs the HBO show "Girls." She has made a career out of shocking her audiences and exploiting her celebrity to push hard-left causes. Her book is certainly fair game, as are questions about her sickening conduct with regard to her sister. That is what the First Amendment is for and what it protects.

Truth Revolt criticized Dunham. Dunham fired back on Twitter, and her sycophants in the media covered for her. But she didn't stop there. She decided, as leftists often do, that to silence critics is more appealing than simply utilizing her own freedom of speech under the First Amendment. People like Dunham want to be as "provocative" and "edgy" as they choose. But when anyone calls them on their conduct they want to unplug the microphone.

So, she ordered her attorney to issue this letter threatening suit. If she does sue, the Freedom Center and Truth Revolt are prepared to go to the wall in defense of free speech. Lawsuits can be incredibly expensive, especially when the other side is a major entertainer with millions in the bank and fellow Hollywood leftists urging her to silence a fearless conservative publication like Truth Revolt. But we will do what needs to be done to protect the First Amendment.

Via email.  You can donate to the defense here

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Salon sneers at the Military on Eve of Veterans Day, saying: 'It's been 70 years since we fought a war about freedom.'

It could be argued that America has faced no serious external threat to its freedoms since the war of independence.  But is that the point of past and present American military deployments?  In keeping with  the Leftist lack of feeling for others, the Salon writer is indifferent to attacks on the freedom of other people. People such as the victims of Hitler or ISIS are not worth defending, apparently

Salon.com has a funny way of honoring the military right before Veterans Day.

David Masciorta penned an offensive column Sunday titled, "You don’t protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracy" with the sub-head "It's been 70 years since we fought a war about freedom. Forced troop worship and compulsory patriotism must end." The reaction on social media was swift and merciless. The Salon Twitter account used a shortened version of the column's sub-headline to promote clicks to its site:

At the risk of polluting this site with Mr. Maciorta's leftist ranting, let's just take a quick look at his "argument":

"One of the reasons that the American public so eagerly and excitedly complies with the cultural code of lionizing every soldier and cop is because of the physical risk-taking and bravery many of them display on the foreign battleground and the American street. Physical strength and courage is only useful and laudable when invested in a cause that is noble and moral. The causes of American foreign policy, especially at the present, rarely qualify for either compliment. The “troops are heroes” boosters of American life typically toss out clichés to defend their generalization – “They defend our freedom,” “They fight so we don’t have to.”

No American freedom is currently at stake in Afghanistan. It is impossible to imagine an argument to the contrary, just as the war in Iraq was clearly fought for the interests of empire, the profits of defense contractors, and the edification of neoconservative theorists. It had nothing to do with the safety or freedom of the American people. The last time the U.S. military deployed to fight for the protection of American life was in World War II – an inconvenient fact that reduces clichés about “thanking a soldier” for free speech to rubble. If a soldier deserves gratitude, so does the litigator who argued key First Amendment cases in court, the legislators who voted for the protection of free speech, and thousands of external agitators who rallied for more speech rights, less censorship and broader access to media."

Salon's choice of subjects got an immediate reaction on Twitter

More HERE

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Border Patrol Stripping Agents Of Their Rifles

The Obama administration loathes its own agents -- because they want to do their job

The News 4 Tucson Investigators have uncovered that some U.S. Border Patrol agents have lost a key part of their arsenal. And that has agents who patrol along the border here, extremely worried.

We learned that U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Offices of Border Patrol and Training and Development are inspecting the quality of agents’ M4 carbines throughout Border Patrol sectors nationwide. But agents tell us, some of those M4s have not been replaced. And, we’ve learned, agents are required to share rifles amongst each other.

“There’s a lot of agents that are pretty upset over it,” said Art del Cueto, president of the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector union. “We know it’s a dangerous job. We know what we signed on for but we want to have as much of the equipment as we need to perform the job.”

The M4 carbine is used by the U.S. military and by Border Patrol agents. It’s even used by the Border Patrol’s tactical unit, BORTAC. Agent Brian Terry was carrying the M4 when he was shot and killed in December 2010.

Del Cueto tells us that because some of those M4s have not been replaced, agents are pooling their weapons, which makes it difficult to personalize the settings on a rifle, such as the sights.

“The problem is they are now pool guns so what happens is instead of having their individual ones they have sighted in they’re having to use a pool weapon that you don’t know who used it before you,” del Cueto said.

Customs and Border Protection released a statement to the News 4 Tucson Investigators last week, stating: “CBP’s Offices of Border Patrol and Training and Development are jointly inspecting the serviceability of M4 carbines throughout Border Patrol Sectors nationwide. Some of (the) inspected M4 carbines were deemed unserviceable and removed from inventory to alleviate safety concerns. Inspections will continue to ensure the unserviceable M4 carbines are repaired or replaced for reintroduction into the field. No further information is available at this time.” ...

Prather believes removing some of the rifles maybe politically motivated. He says he was told that many of these guns are being removed for issues that are easily repaired like the firing pin and bolt.

He broke down a M4 as he spoke.

“This weapon is designed to be able to be in a battle situation, changed out rather quickly even so fast that modern weapons have areas to hold spare bolts,” he said.

That makes him suspicious that the agency could be disarming its agents.

The U.S. government has enough surplus weapons that every local yokel Sheriff’s department gets machine guns and armored vehicles on your tax dollars.  But the Border Patrol agents are getting their rifles confiscated by the Border Patrol.  It sort of makes you think that the administration is trying to cause an invasion, no?

So it’s worse that sending weapons South of the border to criminal cartels in an attempt to shore up the case for a demand letter to FFLs.  Now we want to ensure that agents who want to stop the criminals aren’t armed.  There’s your administration and your tax dollars at work.

SOURCE

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The Bureaucrats’ Secret Buying Spree

Oh, to be a bureaucrat in the U.S. federal government! What other jobs pay just as much or more than similar work done in the private sector, but with much, much more generous benefits? Which would appear to be even more generous than we previously knew, thanks to the discovery of a surprising new perk by Scott McFarlane of Washington, D.C.’s NBC affiliate, News4 I-Team: taxpayer-funded purchase cards with no accountability!

The federal government has spent at least $20 billion in taxpayer money this year on items and services that it is permitted to keep secret from the public, according to an investigation by the News4 I-Team.

The purchases, known among federal employees as “micropurchases,” are made by some of the thousands of agency employees who are issued taxpayer-funded purchase cards. The purchases, in most cases, remain confidential and are not publicly disclosed by the agencies. A sampling of those purchases, obtained by the I-Team via the Freedom of Information Act, reveals at least one agency used those cards to buy $30,000 in Starbucks Coffee drinks and products in one year without having to disclose or detail the purchases to the public....

The I-Team, using the Freedom of Information Act, received a list of “micropurchases” made by the Dept. of Homeland Security at Starbucks vendors nationwide in 2013. The list includes dozens of transactions, including in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Several of the purchases were made at an Alameda, California, Starbucks vendor and cost more than $2,400 each, just below the $3,000 threshold for which purchases need not be publicly disclosed. After reviewing the I-Team’s findings, Rep. John Mica (R-FL), chair of a U.S House Oversight subcommittee said, “When you have $10,000 being spent at one Starbucks by DHS employees in one city in six months, someone is abusing the purchasing permission that we have given them.”

Now, multiply that single abuse by a single federal government bureaucrat for spending $10,000 at a single Starbucks location by the federal government’s two million civilian employees, and that goes a very long way to explaining how the bureaucrats’ secret buying spree can add up to a bill that totals $20 billion dollars.

More HERE

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Anti-Israel Jews object to having a light shone upon them

In October 2014, 40 professors of Jewish studies published a denunciation of a study that named professors who have been identified as expressing “anti-Israel bias, or possibly even antisemitic rhetoric.” While the 40 academics claimed they reject anti-Semitism totally as part of teaching, they were equally critical of the tactics and possible effects of the AMCHA Initiative report, a comprehensive review of the attitudes about Israel of some 200 professors who signed an online petition during the latest Gaza incursion that called for an academic boycott against Israeli scholars.

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) is troubled that a group of largely Jewish professors denounced a study which had as its core purpose to alert students to professors who have demonstrated, in a public forum, that they harbor anti-Israel attitudes. Since the individuals named in the report teach in the area of Middle East studies, they are also likely to bring that anti-Israel bias into the classroom with them, and students, therefore, would obviously benefit from AMCHA’s report.

SPME questions why the 40 academics would oppose such a report of bias that indicates where professors’ stand politically, especially, as in this case, when those anti- Israel attitudes are extremely germane to their area of teaching, namely Middle East studies.

As AMCHA co-founder Tammi Benjamin noted, “I don’t understand why a professor has freedom of expression to sign a boycott petition and we don’t have freedom to say, "Look who signed the boycott petition".

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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Conservatives are more disgusted by animal mutilation than are liberals

That is the finding of the article below.  See particularly their Table 4.  Seeing a ripped apart animal didn't disturb American liberals much at all.  Given the mass-murdering ways of socialists when they get untrammelled power (Lenin, Stalin. Mao, Hitler, Castro etc) that should not be much a of a surprise -- to say nothing of the Leftist indifference to abortion.  They have the psychopath's emotional shallowness and indifference to suffering in others. They are basically very nasty people.  Despite Leftist pretensions, it is conservatives who really feel for others.

The findings below are really quite striking.  The brain activity observed across a lot of brain regions in response to an image of a mutilated animal was quite a strong predictor of political orientation.  Conservatives were really stirred up by the image whereas liberals were not.  You can tell pretty reliably where a person is politically by how much suffering disgusts him

Rather vaguely, the authors of the article interpret their results as showing that conservatives have a general negativity bias. But their own results refute that. There was NOTHING general in the responses of conservatives. The authors used a number of different stimuli but it was only the mutilated animal that evoked a strongly differentiated response. It could be argued that the results show conservatives to have a weak stomach but if a strong stomach goes with being relaxed about mass-murder and killing babies,a weak stomach would seem highly desirable. The monstrous description of killing the unborn as "choice" showed Leftist hard-heartedness long before the research below did

Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology

By Woo-Young Ahn et al.

Summary

Political ideologies summarize dimensions of life that define how a person organizes their public and private behavior, including their attitudes associated with sex, family, education, and personal autonomy [ 1, 2 ]. Despite the abstract nature of such sensibilities, fundamental features of political ideology have been found to be deeply connected to basic biological mechanisms [ 3–7 ] that may serve to defend against environmental challenges like contamination and physical threat [ 8–12 ].

These results invite the provocative claim that neural responses to nonpolitical stimuli (like contaminated food or physical threats) should be highly predictive of abstract political opinions (like attitudes toward gun control and abortion) [ 13 ].

We applied a machine-learning method to fMRI data to test the hypotheses that brain responses to emotionally evocative images predict individual scores on a standard political ideology assay.

Disgusting images, especially those related to animal-reminder disgust (e.g., mutilated body), generate neural responses that are highly predictive of political orientation even though these neural predictors do not agree with participants’ conscious rating of the stimuli.

Images from other affective categories do not support such predictions. Remarkably, brain responses to a single disgusting stimulus were sufficient to make accurate predictions about an individual subject’s political ideology.

These results provide strong support for the idea that fundamental neural processing differences that emerge under the challenge of emotionally evocative stimuli may serve to structure political beliefs in ways formerly unappreciated.

SOURCE

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Backgrounder on the Middle east

The author is an American Kurd working for the U.N.

After thinking about your comment on the Kurds, and what the Press won't tell you, I thought you might like the perspective of someone whose spent a bit of time over here, and what I know from my personal experience of being over here, which is a perspective the general American public is clueless about because of our bought and paid for media.

So let me start by defining the players:

Arab Sunni Islam: They believe there was only one prophet, Mohammad, and that anyone that believes otherwise is an infidel.  They hate Israel, and don't acknowledge their existence. They were allies of the Nazi's in WWII.

Arab Shia (Shi'ite) Islam: They believe that there were follow-on prophets after Mohammad.  These "Prophets" are known as "Imam's" and their word is god's law, anyone who doesn't believe as they do is an Infidel.  They hate Israel, and don't acknowledge their existence.  They were allies of the Nazi's in WWII as well.

That's the primary difference between these two groups, but both are radical in their view of Islam, (wahhabism - the ultra conservative or orthodox belief in Islamic law, created by the Saudi royal family - think Amish v.s. Modern Christianity) and feel that anyone that doesn't believe like they do, is ok to kill as defined by their version of the Quran.

They all believe in Sharia law as greater than any government, and both sects believe in a Caliphate, or Islamic State forming again one day like the Ottoman Empire, which was the last one prior to the breakup after WW1.  That's why you see Christians being culled and killed in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Lybia, Syria, etc. ............ as both sides believe Christianity to be an abomination, and are intolerant of anything but their own religion.  Yes even in the countries we consider 'allies', like Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, etc. (Pretty much all the oil producing countries, and places with royal families)

80+% of the Arab Muslim population, whether Sunni or Shia, support what is going on with ISIS - as they are supporting ethnic cleansing of Christians and other beliefs which are non-Muslim.

There are no civilian casualties when bombing ISIS, as if they aren't pointing a gun, they are in direct support of the ISIS fighters, so don't believe a word the media says about civilian casualties. The military knows this, but the media doesn't have a clue.

Now for the Kurds.  The Kurds are a dispersed ethnic group, across the entire Middle East, and predominantly live in Kurdistan, Turkey, northern Syria, and northern Iraq, where there has traditionally been peace. Kurds comprise anywhere from 18% to 25% of the population in Turkey, 15-20% in Iraq, 9% in Syria, 7% in Iran and 1.3% in Armenia.  In all of these countries except Iran, Kurds form the second largest ethnic group. Roughly 55% of the world's Kurds live in Turkey, about 18% each in Iran and Iraq, and a bit over 5% in Syria. They are purportedly the descendents of King Solomon, and are Persian in ancestry.  They encompass a variety of religions: they are Islam, Yarsan (Muslim, but non-confrontational), Yazidis (Christian theology), Zoroastianism (Ahura Mazda - Persian religion), Judaism (yes, there are Kurdish Jews), and Christianity.

While I was in Iraq, it was in Irbil where private western financial capital was flowing, (not U.S. government bribes, like in the south) in building three to five star resorts like Marriot, Best Western, Howard Johnson, and was the only area considered "safe" enough in the entire country to walk the streets without body armour outside the wire.  Investment capital was flowing there, not in Bagdad as one might think, as the Kurds have a very European mindset, and are the only place in Iraq, and in the Middle East as a whole, where their public schools allowed girls to be educated.  They are thought as chattels everywhere else, including places like Abu Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait, etc., who are supposed to be our allies.

The Kurds have the Peshmerga, which has always been feared by both Sunnis AND Shia, because the Kurds have been used as canon-fodder for generations when under Arab control, and now that they have autonomy in northern Iraq, they despise most Arabs, which has the Royal families worried.  What scares them even more, is the Female Peshmerga --  which are so feared by ISIS, they are avoiding the Peshmerga wherever they can, which is why you don't see much in the way of conflict against the Kurds in the north.

All we have to do in order to get rid of ISIS, which all rumours indicate is being funded by both the Saudis, and the Yemenis, is to arm the Kurds, and tell them Iraq is theirs for the taking.  They have a 375,000 man/woman standing army in the Peshmerga, and only need the weapons to do the job.  They don't want our help on the ground, but welcome our air support.  It's the smart move to not get re-engaged in another Saudi-Prince-dictated war.

Hope that helps you to understand a bit about this side of the world, and why picking any allies against ISIS, puts us in bed with other terrorists, like Hamas, and Hezbollah, or puts us in cooperation with Iran, unless we do the right thing, and pick helping just the Kurds.  If Israel was very smart, they would come to the aid of the Kurds, join forces, and make us all look like idiots, as the Kurds and the Israelis together could clean out the entire Middle East with ease.

Via email

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Too much time on the present, not enough time on the past crusades

Imperialism was invented in the Middle East and the Jihadis are its modern-day exponents

“Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.” — Will Durant

We are forever hearing the Muslim world using the term “Crusader” in reference to the West when accusing us of every evil that has ever befallen them, as though we had invented colonialism and exploitation or the acquisition of booty in the pursuit of empire.

One of the most prevalent characteristics of the jihadist—when he’s not using the religion of Islam to justify his savagery—is his habitual revision and/or obfuscation of actual Middle Eastern history. Always careful to avoid turning back the pages far enough to reveal how Islam’s religious parvenus actually pioneered the very idea of imperialism and colonial rule, the jihadist must overlook the fact that long before there was a Palestine “occupied” by a State of Israel, there was also a Palestine when Jews lived absent the presence of religiously intolerant Arab Muslims. Today’s “pro-Palestinian” protester vehemently refuses any discussion regarding the awkward historical truth defining who is actually occupying who in the land of Israel.

Efraim Karsh has noted, “Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it is the Middle East where the institution of empire not only originated (for example, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Iran, and so on) but where its spirit has also outlived its European counterpart.” We are now accustomed to seeing anti-Zionism placards at any event arranged for the purpose of protesting against the State of Israel, as though any Jew should be ashamed of admitting to being a Zionist. Unlike the Islamic imperialist (read: jihadist), the Zionist doesn’t want to rule the world and hold indigenous captives under his thumb. Rather he simply wants to return to the land of Israel, his ancient homeland, and live there in peace, safely out of reach of the Islamic imperialist.

But the jihadist will travel back in history only so far as Jabotinsky and Herzl, as though Zionism began with them. Never mind the fact that Jabotinsky and Herzl and their Zionism saved many Jews from the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Sobibor, or repatriated into Israel those Jewish survivors who walked out of the darkness of Eastern Europe at the end of WW2, the jihadist, in his madness, erroneously sees only a mirror image of himself and Islam’s imperialistic tendencies in the Zionism of the Jew.

This is why the nefarious Protocols of the Elders of Zion has become the Arab Muslim’s most popular proof for his vitriol against the Jews of Israel. Never mind the ancient history of Zionism, that this same Zionism predates even the Muslim Arab invasion of ancient Israel, the Islamist sees only Jabotinsky and Herzl and the Jewish refugee fighting (and winning) his way back into what had been for so long a preponderant Arab Muslim Palestine.

The Arab Muslim, the original jihadist, has never been willing to tolerate a sovereign Jewish state, regardless the evidence of a perpetual Jewish presence in the land of Israel. As Jamil Mardam, Syria’s Foreign Minister, told Herzl’s friend Moshe Shertok back in 1943, “You won’t find a single Arab leader who would voluntarily acquiesce in your becoming the majority in Palestine…there can be no mutually agreed settlement as no Arab statesman will accept a Jewish majority.” Islam’s jihadist is willing to look only so far back into the history of the Middle East as serves his religion’s imperialistic dictates. About the fate of the Jews, even Jews running from the Holocaust, he couldn’t care less.

For every European and American kingmaker who travelled to the Middle East “to do the impossible for the ungrateful,” to borrow a phrase from Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, there was always an Arab Muslim waiting there who dreamed of empire and was more than willing to accept their money, even at the expense of the common Arab who was simply trying to raise a family and live in relative security. The reasons given today to justify Islamic jihad are simply born of a religiously taught hatred of everything Western but have no valid connection to the real history of the Middle East and therefore no credence when used to inculpate the West for the volatile instability of the region.

Arab Muslim empires rose and then came crashing down long before Western powers took their turn at exploiting the Middle East’s natural resources. One has only to take a short read into the history of Islam’s many kings and caliphs to realize that the jihad waged back then, with Arab Muslim killing Arab Muslim, was not at all dissimilar to the jihad waged today, with Arab Muslim killing Arab Muslim, Jew and Christian: jihad, not because there is any sense to it, or because there is an end that could possibly justify the means, but only because Islam and its tenets advocate jihad and for no other reason.

The jihadist is not interested in ancient history and how that history can never justify his crimes against humanity. The jihadist is only interested in the last twenty four hours and the measure of harm he has loosed into the world.

SOURCE

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Oprah the hater

She still hates America even though it has given her so much  -- in money and otherwise

Oprah Winfrey made some shocking comments in a recent interview with BBC, when she alluded that the only reason someone wouldn’t like President Barack Obama is if they were a racist.

When the interviewer asked Oprah if she thought people were against Obama because he was black, she responded, “There’s no question.”

She went on to say that she thinks “there’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that. And it’s the kind of thing no one ever says, buy everybody is thinking.”

Apparently Oprah isn’t aware that her comments don’t set her apart. Instead, they group her with a slew of Obama supporters that claim that disapproval of the president stems from either religious or racial discrimination. And she clearly hasn’t paid attention to stations like MSNBC or “celebrities” like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

She certainly isn’t alone in her accusations, but continued on to make a statement about racisms in general, stating that “As long as people can be judged by the color of their skin, problem’s not solved.”

So when does Oprah see racism coming to an end?

“There are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism,” Oprah said, “and they just have to die.”

That’s right, according to Oprah, when everyone who ever had a racist ancestor dies, America will be set free from all of its problems.

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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Is Obama a psychopath?

 Coach Dave Daubenmire correctly diagnoses Obama's pathology below

I am not asking this with my tongue in my cheek. I am as serious as a judge. As I sit here and write, I am listening to Mr. Obama's press conference. Something is very wrong with this guy. He is either mentally ill or demon possessed. Either choice is a possibility. But something is definitely wrong with him. He seems somehow inhuman.

I’ve lived my entire life in a world of athletic competition. I understand the human emotion that is associated with winning and losing. I grew up with the opening theme of ABC's Wide World of Sports continuously playing in my head. (If I close my eyes I can hear the voice of Jim McKay bouncing around the corners of my brain.)

The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat brings with it emotions. That is why we watch sports. We love the human drama of athletic competition. That's why we have press conferences after games. We love to hear the emotional reaction to winning and losing.

President Obama is a hollow man. He has no feelings. He feels no emotions. The human drama of competition seems to have no outward effect on him.

Can I be blunt? He got his butt kicked. Every talking head on the tube is pointing the finger at his unpopularity. “The bloom is off of the rose. It is a direct repudiation of his policies. The era of Obama is over.” It is as if everyone knows it but him.

Politics is nothing more than a beauty contest, and Obama has been voted off of the island. But he acts as if he still owns the island. There seems to be no agony in his defeat. It is not normal. His emotions do not line up with reality. He is either sick or he is possessed. I'm not laughing. I am serious.

His party rejected him. The American people rejected him. His fawning media has turned their affections in a different direction, yet he shows no emotion. I watch him on the TV. I watch him in his press conference. I watch his eyes as he responds to the media's questions. I believe he is a sick, dangerous man.

I Googled the word ‘sociopath’. “A person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.”

Bingo. That's him. That's the guy living the life of President of the United States.

I went a bit further and Googled “Characteristics of a Sociopath.” Read it for yourself. Permit me to summarize. You recognize his mental illness by these traits.

- An oversized ego.
- Lying and showing manipulative behavior.
- Incapable of showing empathy.
- No lack of shame or remorse.
- Staying eerily calm in dangerous situations.
- Behaving irresponsibly or with extreme impulsivity.
- Having few close friends.
- Being charming ---but only superficially.
- Living by the pleasure principle.
- Showing disregard for societal norms.
- Having intense eyes.

The man is either sick or non-human. He does not react like a normal human being.

Consider this from the article:

“Sociopaths can be very charismatic and friendly -- because they know it will help them get what they want. “They are expert con artists and always have a secret agenda,” Rosenberg said. "People are so amazed when they find that someone is a sociopath because they’re so amazingly effective at blending in. They’re masters of disguise. Their main tool to keep them from being discovered is a creation of an outer personality."

As M.E. Thomas described in a post for Psychology Today: "You would like me if you met me. I have the kind of smile that is common among television show characters and rare in real life, perfect in its sparkly teeth dimensions and ability to express pleasant invitation."

Reading that gives me the willies...how about you?

No emotions. Cold. Calculating. He doesn't even know that he lost. He is unaware that he has been rejected. He acts as if it is business as usual while the entire Democratic Party is wishing for a moving van out in front of the White House.

In my coaching career I lost a lot of games. I know how it feels. I know how it makes you react. He has destroyed his party. His friends are running for cover. But he acts as if he has just won.

Sociopaths are dangerous. Some famous sociopaths in recent history include Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gazy.

You laugh at me. You ridicule what I say because I compare him to serial killers. Go ahead. Laugh. He displays all of the characteristics of the above mentioned goons. They were charismatic and likeable.

SOURCE

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Removing the root cause of car attacks on Israelis

In the postmortems of the terrorist car attacks in Jerusalem, it is easy to see the writing on the wall.

Ibrahim al-Akary, the terrorist who on Wednesday ran over crowds of people waiting to cross the street and catch the Jerusalem Light Rail, was the brother of one of the terrorist murderers freed in exchange for IDF hostage Gilad Schalit. He had placed the photograph on his Facebook page of Moataz Hejazi, the terrorist killed by police after shooting Yehuda Glick outside the Begin Heritage Center last Wednesday.

A few days before Abdur Rahman Slodi got into his car and mowed down three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun and a dozen other pedestrians two weeks ago, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas exhorted the Palestinians to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, by all means possible.

The question is, what was the trigger and how was it pulled?

Today the main factor unifying al-Qaida and Islamic State and their sister groups and followers in the region and worldwide is ideology. They all share the same hatred of the West, of all religions other than Islam and of all competing forms of Islam. They all seek the establishment of a global caliphate that will rule the world under the banner of Islam.

As Pace notes, they see themselves as soldiers in a long-term struggle. Their goal is not necessarily to conquer their target populations. Rather they seek to make life impossible for target societies. Mass chaos sowed by constant, low intensity, near-scatter-shot attacks can over time be sufficient to break the will of a targeted society or military organization to fight them.

Ideology is not something that people pick up or discard quickly or easily. For a person to be attracted to the jihadist cause he has to undergo indoctrination over a significant period of time. You cannot incite a person to strike if he hasn’t already been indoctrinated in a manner that makes him amenable to your incendiary call to action.

And this brings us back to the Palestinians and the trigger for the attacks conducted by independent or semi-independent terrorist operatives.

With the exception of Pakistani students in madrassas, few societies have undergone the mass indoctrination that the Palestinians have undergone over the past 20 years of Palestinian Authority rule. From the cradle to the grave, and most significantly in the school system, Palestinians are indoctrinated to hate Jews and seek the violent destruction of Israel. They are told that it is an Islamic duty to fight Jews and destroy Israel. This is as true in regular PA schools as it is in schools run by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).

We are experiencing today in Jerusalem a decentralized terrorist campaign rooted in the 20-year indoctrination of the Palestinians.

Yes, Hamas and Fatah still operate terrorist cells and units that are members of terrorist hierarchies. But at the same time, they have used a model similar to al-Qaida’s in developing semi-independent and wholly independent networks of operatives and operational cells. These independent cells are highly motivated and are willing to wait until they receive generalized signals from their leadership to strike.

So it was for instance in June with the kidnapping and murder of the three teenagers in Gush Etzion. A few weeks before the kidnapping took place, from his home in Qatar, Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal remarked that Hamas needed more hostages to trade for jailed terrorists.

The terrorists in Hebron were motivated to strike. With the financial assistance of Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas ideologue and operational commander in Turkey, they were able to purchase what they needed for the kidnapping. And when Mashaal said the time had come to kidnap Israelis, the countdown to the kidnap and murder of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah began.

The cell was isolated and tiny. Mashaal’s order was indirect.
In the case of the violence in Jerusalem, indoctrination in UNRWA schools in places like Shuafat refugee camp where Akary lived, not to mention throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza, has raised generations of Arabs who hate Israel and Jews.

Owing to this indoctrination, when presented with mass incitement by preachers in the mosques, and most importantly by the official Palestinian Authority media, these calls for violence are immediately embraced on a massive scale. Indeed, the comfort level that the Arabs of Jerusalem feel today in supporting terrorism may well be unprecedented.

In dealing with this burgeoning, decentralized terrorist campaign, aside from taking action to protect bus stops with various barricades, Israel needs to go after the triggers.  It needs to break up the indoctrination system.  And it needs to destroy the Palestinian leadership’s ability to communicate their incendiary messages.

Since UNRWA schools operating in Jerusalem engage in anti-Semitic indoctrination, Jerusalem municipal authorities must give them the choice of using Israeli textbooks or shutting down. If Israel wishes to assert its sovereignty, UNRWA schools would be a good place to start. Beyond that, preachers in mosques who incite murder and call for the destruction of Israel should be arrested.
As for the PA’s communications networks, all of the radio and television signals operating in the PA come from the Israeli electromagnetic spectrum. It is time to shut them down.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Wednesday, Abbas is directly inciting the murderous attacks on Jerusalem through the PA media organs. The way to protect Jerusalem is to remove him and his Hamas partners from the airwaves.

In the long term, it is imperative that Israel provide incentives to both the Jerusalem Arabs and the Palestinians to integrate peacefully with Israeli society. But before the government can seriously engage in this task, it needs to destroy the triggers of this terrorist onslaught.

It is not enough to complain about Palestinian indoctrination and incitement. It is time for Israel to end them.

SOURCE

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Why Obama Hates Netanyahu

The writer below is too polite to mention it but I think a major reason why Obama hates Netanyahu is that Netanyahu is a real man -- while Obama has never been anything but a parasite

Obama's foreign policy was supposed to reboot America's relationship with the rest of the world. Old allies would become people we occasionally talked to. Old enemies would become new allies. Goodbye Queen, hello Vladimir. Trade the Anglosphere for Latin America's Marxist dictatorships. Replace allied governments in the Middle East with Islamists and call it a day for the Caliphate.

Very little of that went according to plan.

Obama is still stuck with Europe. The Middle East and Latin American leftists still hate America. The Arab Spring imploded. Japan, South Korea and India have conservative governments.

And then there's Israel. The original plan was to sideline Israel by focusing on the Muslim world. Instead of directly hammering Israel, the administration would transform the region around it. The American-Israeli relationship would implode not through conflict, but because the Muslim Brotherhood countries would take its place.

That didn't work out too well. Instead of gracefully pivoting away, Obama loudly snubbed Netanyahu. A photo of him poking his finger in Netanyahu's chest captured the atmosphere. Netanyahu delivered a speech that Congress cheered. And Obama came to see him as a domestic political opponent.

The torrent of anti-Israel leaks from the administration is a treatment usually reserved for political opponents. The snide remarks by White House spokesmen and the anonymous personal attacks on Netanyahu in the media echo domestic hate campaigns out of the White House like Operation Rushbo.

Netanyahu wasn't just the leader of a country that the left hated. He had become an honorary Republican.

When Obama met with him, Netanyahu firmly but politely challenged him on policy. He has kept on doing so ever since, including during his most recent visit. At a time when most leaders had gotten the message about shunning Romney, Netanyahu was happy to give him a favorable reception. Netanyahu clearly wanted Romney to win and Obama clearly wished he could pull a Clinton and replace Netanyahu. But Netanyahu's economic policies were working in exactly the same way that Obama's weren't.

The two men hate each other not only on a personal level, but also on a political level.

Netanyahu had successfully pushed through a modernization and privatization agenda that on this side of the ocean is associated with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper or Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. It's likely what Romney would have done which is one more reason the two men got along so well. Obama's visible loathing for Romney is of a piece with his hatred for Netanyahu.

He doesn't just hate them. He hates what they stand for. That's why Harper and Netanyahu get along so well. It's part of why Obama and Netanyahu get along so badly.

More HERE

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A new recipe

I rarely update my recipe blog these days but I have just put up a recipe for a diet curry

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for 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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