ON WELFARE AND ECONOMICS

An American tragedy: "One out of 17 white homeowners owns a luxury home, but only one out of 33 minority homeowners has such a costly house". And one out of 33 million Bangladeshis has such a house.

Welfare destroys community: "Cohesion develops from the bottom-up. It emerges when families, workmates and neighbours come together to share common interests and to solve common problems. But people come together only when they have a reason to do so. The more the welfare state takes care of our needs, the less remains for us to do for ourselves. The result is that the bonds between us begin to fray... crime rates plummeted during the 1990s at precisely the same time as the government cut back on welfare spending and income inequality increased significantly". All of which is the opposite of Leftist orthodoxy.

Sowell on the "Big Lie of the Year": "It may be too early in this election year to determine which will be the biggest of the Big Lies in this political campaign. However, my feeling is that it may be 'the working poor.' While there are working people who are poor, most poor people are not working full time, not working very long, or not working at all... By focussing on those who work hard all their lives and still remain poor - no more than 3 percent of the population - and telling their personal stories endlessly, liberals can present the Big Lie with a human face. There is an even bigger lie behind all this. That lie is the implication that the purpose of all this hand-wringing is to help the poor. But the poor are just the bait in a political bait-and-switch game. ....The fraud becomes apparent the moment anyone suggests that there be means tests, so that the taxpayers' money will be spent only on the poor. Those who pose as the biggest champions of the poor are almost invariably the biggest opponents of means tests. They want bigger government and the poor are just a means to that end. "

The Left-leaning "Atlantic" to its credit highlighted the same economic mythology that Sowell refers to last year: "lack of money was more an effect of poor people's other, more-fundamental problems than a cause in its own right; and so handing out more cash would be of little help. Other research similarly pointed away from money and toward the importance of two-parent families, education, and work". And Peter Hitchens compares the welfare state to heroin addiction.

On business 'down sizing': The facts show it's mainly restructuring and "..about half of all downsizing firms end up with at least as many laborers within a few years' time... Manufacturing is fifteen percent of the U.S. labor force and thus only a small part of the downsizing story. Retailing and services have been upsizing considerably for many years."

There is an amusing article here about Lou Dobbs, the financial expert who knows nothing about economics -- or pretends not to in his hunger for popularity. The article suggests that he is actually quite a good investment guide -- if you do the opposite of what he recommends.

Should the whole US Senate be investigated for insider trading? "US senators' personal stock portfolios outperformed the market by an average of 12 per cent a year in the five years to 1998, according to a new study. "The results clearly support the notion that members of the Senate trade with a substantial informational advantage over ordinary investors," says the author of the report, Professor Alan Ziobrowski of the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University."

Good news for Israel: "Mr. Netanyahu has tackled economic reform with the zeal and single-mindedness that has marked his career, drawing comparisons to New Zealand's Roger Douglas, the finance minister who liberated his own nation's economy in the 1980s. Mr. Netanyahu's emergency economic plan spared no holy cows: It included cuts in government expenditures, welfare entitlements and public-sector jobs. It also sought to lower taxes and jump-start a stalled privatization program"

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ELSEWHERE

John Kerry's Senate votes put him farther Left than Ted Kennedy

Here is another generally conservative writer who doesn't give a hoot whether homosexuals "marry" or not. What they do only matters if you think they are important.

OK. I'll call a spade a spade: Israel's "disengagement" plan is apartheid. Except that Israel has no other peaceful choice left. Keeping the Jews and the Arabs apart is the the best way to protect the security of the Jews. But it will leave the Arabs free to do what they like in their part of Israel so it is nothing like the South African apartheid of yore.

Hostility is bad for your heart and can kill you. I showed something similar 20 years ago. Being an angry type of person is clearly not good for your cardiac health. I wonder if Leftists have more heart attacks? I must try to look that up one day.

I'd flog them too! "Thousands of Indian Muslims flogged themselves as they marched peacefully through the communally sensitive western Gujarat state to mark the Shi'ite Muslim mourning day of Ashura"

Most of the usual Leftist slurs against GWB ("Hitler", "moron" etc) are demolished here.

Adam Smith, neuroscience pioneer? Smith said "The ability to appreciate other people's agony is achieved by the same parts of the brain that we use to experience pain for ourselves" and it appears that he was right.

I have just posted here some more observations from Chris Brand -- including a comment about genetics and eugenics. My own view of eugenics is here.

I mentioned the Marxist theoretician Adorno yesterday and noted that I had just posted to the net one of my published articles demolishing the work of one of his disciples in psychology. I have just put up another article demolishing the work of yet another of his disciples. See here or here.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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FROM THE MIDDLE-EAST

Iraq mass graves: "Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. In November 2003 the remains of 400,000 people had been discovered. "If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.":

Watch points out that the UN report about Israel's security fence "does not describe a single terrorist act against Israelis". How can you report on something without looking at the cause of it? The U.N. can!

What's new in the Palestinian press? "Despite continuing United States and Western European support for Palestinian political aspirations, the tightly-controlled official Palestinian Authority (PA) media relentlessly incites hatred and violence against the US and the West... President Bush, in this global war context, is depicted not merely as a leader of the "enemy United States", but is the enemy of all civilization, the "Fuhrer of the globalization era," a greater danger than Hitler, leading the world to destruction" Sounds rather like U.S. Leftists.

A former go-between for Iraq's Saddam Hussein says: "I don't think there was any Arab in the seventies who did not want Saddam Hussein to have an atomic weapon. They wanted him to have military parity. Israel had atomic weapons. The Arabs wanted an Arab country to have atomic weapons. Iraq was the head of the pack and therefore all Arabs supported Saddam Hussein."

Arlene Peck thinks that Israel should treat the world like women treat men. Arlene has obviously been a handful in her time.

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ELSEWHERE

That old Marxist fraud, Theodor Adorno, still gets lots of respect in Leftist cultural circles so Denis Dutton's review of Adorno's book about astrology is a welcome corrective: "Karl Popper's famous critique of pseudoscience lumps Freud, astrology, and Marxism together. The difficulty with these theories, Popper said, is not that they don't explain enough, but rather that they explain too much. There is no imaginable human event which they cannot seize upon and place neatly in their theoretical scheme; they are unfalsifiable by experience. Despite my deep sympathy with Adorno's contempt for the occult, there is something similar going on here. If Adorno doesn't like something, no matter how inane or innocuous, it isn't long before he begins to detect in it the seeds of fascism." An amusing story: Theodor's original surname was "Wiesengrund" -- after his father -- but he obviously disliked such an obviously Ashkenazi name and adopted his dancer mother's Spanish stagename as his surname. So, translated into English, he went from being Theodor Meadowland to being Theodor Ornament: About as nutty as his theories. Adorno still has his disciples in psychology too. I have just put up (here or here) one of my published articles demolishing one such disciple.

This article says that public language has become full of waffle and obscurity these days. It's true. But you will find all straight talk on this blog. Even in my academic journal articles I always tried my best to put things simply and plainly and other academics often used to say to me things along the lines of: "We mightn't agree with you but at least we understand what you are saying".

French antisemitism: "During demonstrations in May 2002 organized by France's mainstream antiracist organizations, protesters shouted anti-Semitic slogans and tried to attack a couple of passers-by whom they believed to be Jewish... Since then, the Chirac government has made the crackdown on anti-Semitism a top priority. It has taken a series of emergency steps, from tighter policing of Jewish sites to quicker investigation and prosecution of hate crimes to proposing a heightened focus on the Holocaust in the public school curriculum." It should be noted thyat the Chirac government is a conservative one in French terms and that it was the preceding socialist government that did nothing about antisemitism.

France being such a hotbed of antisemitism, I can see their point on this one: "French cinema chains are refusing to distribute or screen Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ because of fears that it may spark a new outbreak of anti-Semitism."

No freedom of religion on the Left coast: "A Roman Catholic charitable organization must include birth control coverage in its health care plan for workers even though it is morally opposed to contraception, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday."

A statistical fluke if ever there was one: "Research from the University of Chicago's Centre on Ageing shows that daughters born to fathers in their late 40s or older live, on average, three years less than other women, yet their brothers are not affected."

Sending call-centre jobs to India: "It is inevitable in a networked world that our economy is going to shed certain low-wage, low-prestige jobs. To the extent that they go to places like India or Pakistan -- where they are viewed as high-wage, high-prestige jobs -- we make not only a more prosperous world, but a safer world for our own 20-year-olds."

Homosexual "marriage": "How about government simply getting out of the marriage-license-granting business? (Ditto for government licenses necessary to cut hair, drive a taxi, open a business or enter a profession.) Leave marriage to non-governmental institutions, like churches, synagogues, mosques, and other houses of worship or private institutions. Adultery, although legal, remains a sin subject to societal condemnation. It's tough to legislate away condemnation or legislate in approval. Those who view same-sex marriage as sinful will continue to do so, no matter what the government, the courts or their neighbors say."

VD Hanson: "Preemption is a concept as old as the Greeks. It perhaps was first articulated in the fourth book of Thucydides's history... What is new is the absolutist, blanket condemnation of the strategy altogether. In short, preemption is now a politicized, debased word. It is part of the anti-Bush lexicon and has lost any real meaning for the foreseeable future of its usage. The same may be true of "multilateralism" and "unilateralism... The Left's problem is not our embrace of the concept of "unilateralism" per se - or it would have attacked Clinton's U.N.-be-damned use of force in Iraq, Kosovo, and Haiti. No, the rub is something altogether different. A Christian, southern-accented, conservative Republican president, coming off a disputed election, has chosen to preempt. "

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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GREENIE CORNER

The Greenies will love this one: "Prolonged exposure to low-level magnetic fields, similar to those emitted by such common household devices as blow dryers, electric blankets and razors , can damage brain cell DNA, according to researchers in the University of Washington's Department of Bioengineering. The scientists further found that the damage from brief exposures appears to build up over time." Is there anything that is NOT bad for us? Odd that people are living longer all the time, though.

Climate science or science fiction? "Proponents of policies to control human-induced global warming cite science as the basis for their claims and proposals. There is only one problem -- as much as they claim otherwise, there is no scientific consensus for their theories. Here's a quick refresher. Science pursues knowledge through testing, observation and the systematization of facts, principles and methods. Progress is made when a hypothesis is proposed to explain or understand certain phenomena, and which is then tested against reality. A particular hypothesis is considered superior to others when, through testing, it is shown to have more explanatory power than competing theories and when other scientists can reproduce the results. The theory humans are causing global warming does not work this way, however."

Science in the service of power: "I am not convinced, actually, that ecology is much of a science apart from offering some explanations of how the globe's living systems behave. But just as most of the natural sciences cannot give us any direction as to how we should conduct ourselves, what we should aim for in our lives, but only tell us about certain limits and possibilities, so with ecology. This is especially so when it comes to the constant finger-wagging environmentalists engage in with the supposed backing of ecologists."

It's just another Greenie hoax: "When a 'scandalous' story breaks in the United States, makes no waves, resurfaces a few weeks later in the left-wing British press, and only then do liberal activists start haranguing people about it, it is safe to say that the story should be treated with a little suspicion. That is certainly the case with the environmental cri du jour, that the Pentagon is alarmed by the national-security aspects of global warming and recommends immediate action."

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ELSEWHERE

Christopher Nelson says that he too is an academic and he therefore knows why Keith Burgess-Jackson criticizes Andrew Sullivan a lot: Keith is envious of Sullivan's big readership. I think that shows that Nelson is a very young academic indeed. Academics traditionally care little about getting a wide public audience. It is their fellow academics they want to address. They want a high-level audience, not a mass audience. We academics are probably incapable of addressing a mass audience effectively anway. You have to be a politician or a film-maker for that. And among academics I would warrant that Keith already has a much bigger audience than Sullivan -- simply because Keith writes at a consistently academic standard. I myself have never found Sullivan very original and so never now read his blog unless someone points me to something on it but Keith is obviously optimistic enough to think he can talk sense into Sullivan where he needs it. The readership of this blog is small too when compared with Sullivan's readership but I know from the many emails I get that it is a thinking and intelligent audience and that certainly suits me.

Keith has a good comment on Leftist objections to THAT film: "And isn't it odd to see liberals, who usually defend the most obnoxious speech and art, come down so hard on a film?"

One of the great triumphs of the Australian Left has been to convict white Australians of the "stolen generation" crime -- the alleged forcible removal of 100,000 black children from their families so they could be brought up by white foster-parents instead. There has even been a film made about the subject -- Rabbit-proof fence -- which claims to be a documentary. The whole story is however just another Leftist lie -- as Andrew Bolt sets out at length here. The slender basis of fact that the story relies on is that some 1930s official do-gooders -- predecessors of the modern LEFT -- did place a few mixed-race children in white foster homes to give them a better chance in life -- but the placement was always made with written parental consent. There was NO forced removal. Nobody and nothing was "stolen". And that's not just Andrew Bolt's opinion. It is the finding of a year-long $10 million Australian court case about the claim. Officialdom acted only when the parents either did not want the children or felt that they could not care for them adequately.

Keith Windschuttle is again upsetting the Leftists and their view of Australian blacks: "Remote Aboriginal communities are a "failure" and their inhabitants should be moved to mainstream towns for their own good, historian Keith Windschuttle has claimed. Windschuttle told a conference in Perth yesterday the indigenous communities were the legacy of a 100-year-old policy of segregation that was continuing to fail Aboriginal people. He said Aborigines would be better off in urban centres where they could have access to jobs and social services. "On every measure of human wellbeing - employment, health and education - remote communities are a failure," he said". As Windschuttle also points out at length here, the do-gooders have always wanted to keep Australia's indigenous blacks in a sort of permanent anthropological zoo rather than treating them as real people.

RALPH NADER INC: "U.S. traffic fatalities per 100 million miles traveled had fallen rapidly throughout the century, from 24 in 1921 to 5.3 in 1965". All without Ralph Nader's help -- despite what his supporters claim. See also here: Ralph's ties with anti-import textile magnates and plaintiff lawyers, ...the best-paid lawyers in America..., undermine his claim to champion the 'little guy'

What "liberalism" has wrought: "In the wake of a fatal shooting, the security for a D.C. high school was officially turned over to the city's police department last week. Armed officers will patrol the halls. This is one more indication of the severe problems haunting the public school system: violence, illegal drugs, the mandating of medication such as Ritalin, low academic achievement, controversial curricula, perceived prejudice against boys."

"Cato the Elder" links to an article by Ion Mihai Pacepa (former Soviet bloc spymaster) saying that the absurd accusations made by John Kerry about the U.S. army in Vietnam look like being lifted directly from KGB propaganda of the time.

David's Medienkritik has excellent excerpts from two speeches by former V.P. Spiro Agnew showing that Leftist bias in the media was already pervasive in the 1960s.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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HUNTINGTON

Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilisations" has still got the Left on the hop: "In our time, few formulations have sparked more controversy than Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis. In the Harvard political scientist's view, laid out in a 1993 Foreign Affairs essay and expanded into a book three years later, the conflicts of the post-Cold War era will arise not from ideological or economic differences but from cultural divisions. To his admirers, Huntington is a prophet who foresaw the current confrontation with radical Islam... Last weekend, prominent thinkers gathered at a Skidmore College conference ... Participating was a virtual Who's Who of left-liberal academics and public intellectuals ... the panelists were nearly unanimous in their outright rejection of a "clash of civilizations....More than a reconsideration of Huntington, the event doubled as a high-powered bull session on the preoccupations of contemporary liberalism: What are America's obligations to the world? Can there be such a thing as a just war? How is democracy best promoted abroad? How can the secular be reconciled to the sacred? How do universal rights mesh with indigenous traditions?"

Huntington on Mexican immigration to the US and the rise of Spanglish: "Continuation of this large immigration (without improved assimilation) could divide the United States into a country of two languages and two cultures. A few stable, prosperous democracies-such as Canada and Belgium-fit this pattern... The transformation of the United States into a country like these would not necessarily be the end of the world; it would, however, be the end of the America we have known for more than three centuries. Americans should not let that change happen unless they are convinced that this new nation would be a better one. Such a transformation would not only revolutionize the United States, but it would also have serious consequences for Hispanics, who will be in the United States but not of it. Sosa ends his book, The Americano Dream, with encouragement for aspiring Hispanic entrepreneurs. "The Americano dream?" he asks. "It exists, it is realistic, and it is there for all of us to share." Sosa is wrong. There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English. "

Conservative columnist David Brooks argues against Huntington here. Brooks says that Latinos ARE integrating over time. It seems that a retreat from political correctness on this issue is allowing serious immigration debate to occur without a barrage of ad hominem attacks.

I myself think that Huntington is courageously accurate in his stress on the key role in America of Anglo-Protestant culture. Britain today comprises roughly one percent of the earth's population and I doubt that the proportion has varied much in the last few hundred years. Yet the influence of that one percent on practically everything has been immense. To take just one example that is almost never mentioned: Sport. Sport is a major human activity, yet the three sports that the whole world plays were all invented in Britain: Soccer, Golf and Tennis. And boxing is as far as I know still mostly done according to British (Queensbury) rules too. And there is the little matter of cricket. It's not played by all the world but a sport with around a billion followers (mostly in the Indian sub-continent) sure dwarfs most other "local" sports. And the vast British influence on sport is despite the fact that the British themselves are appalling at sports! A sporting win by a British person or team is a rare event.

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ELSEWHERE

Another interesting commonality between the Marxists and the Nazis: They both rejected objective reasoning in favour of the claim that an argument was right or wrong because of who it was that put the argument forward. Marxists rejected logical arguments that did not suit them because they were "bourgeois" and Nazis rejected arguments that did not suit them because they were "Jewish". For centuries the argument that the utterer influences the truth of an argument has been known among logicians as the ad hominem fallacy. The fallacious nature of such arguments is obvious to most people in examples such as the following: "Hitler loved dogs and Hitler was evil so loving dogs must be evil" but Marxists seriously believe such propositions. Another example of Leftist irrationality.

The book Conspicuous Compassion by Patrick West has attracted a lot of attention -- as well it might. It focuses attention on all the bogus compassion that infests our society. Since "compassion" is the false flag under which Leftists customarily sail, the book may make a few people look more critically at Leftist claims.

Have a look at the neo-Soviet system taxpayers are supporting at San Francisco State University.

Some interesting Haitian proverbs: "The constitution is paper, bayonets are steel." "The goat which has many owners will be left to die in the sun"

Economic ignoramus Greg Easterbrook is complaining that goods are too cheap. He thinks that making them dearer will help the poor. England's Sword puts him to rights.

What If accuses the Democrats of "schizophrenia" about prosperity. That's not a clinical diagnosis but it does capture their addled thinking.

I have just posted here some observations from Chris Brand about the publicity-hungry Naomi Wolf and about a split in the British Left over immigration control.

The anti-Semitism of the intellectuals: "It used to be said that anti-Catholicism was the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals. Today, anti-Semitism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals. ... Here the term intellectual is used loosely, to denote not only people who think about ideas -- about thinking -- but also people who think they do. The term anti-Semitism is used precisely, to denote people who dislike Jews. These people include those who say: We do not dislike Jews, we only dislike Zionists -- although to live in Israel is to endorse the Zionist enterprise, and all Jews are implicated, as sympathizers, in the crime that is Israel."

Some of the recent articles now up on the think-israel.org website:
"THE AGENDA OF ISLAM - A WAR BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS" by Professor Moshe Sharon
"THE ROOT CAUSE" by Boris Celser
"ISRAEL'S SECURITY: The Hard-Learned Lessons" by Yaakov Amidror
"WHY WE SUPPORT ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS" by Daniel Kaganovich and Michael Butler
"WHAT WOULD AMERICA DO?" by Beth Goodtree
"VIOLENCE AND LEFT-WING POLITICS: What's Going On At UCLA'S Hillel?" by Sharon Hes
"IS IT ANTISEMITIC TO CRITICIZE ISRAEL? IS ISRAEL AN APARTHEID STATE? Part 1." by Jared Israel
"ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT? The New York Times and Israel" by Tom Gross
"FORD FUNDS THE PALESTINIAN LEFT" by Lee Kaplan
"FORD HAS A BETTER IDEA: One Nation Under Allah" by Alyssa A. Lappen

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

The recession started under Clinton, not Bush No matter what the Democrats and their media stooges claim, the recession began under Clinton and not Bush - and this article proves it.
The Dems' pet scientists lie about Bush Democrats who are scientists have now joined the Party's smear campaign against Bush by falsely accusing him of attacking science.
A Murdoch reporter joins the Democrats against Bush One of Rupert Murdoch's Bush-hating journalists tries to stick it to Bush on behalf of Kerry and Cleland.
Murderous ban on DDT defended by scientists Scientists who defended the ban on DDT that killed millions get hauled over the coals.
How London's red mayor is driving the poor off the city's roads The higher the tax the more the better off will benefit by having more road space for their driving. Think of it this way: the better off pay a tax which is used as a device to coerce the less well off out of their cars.
A Murdoch reporter reveals his loathing for Bush and Israel In order to show how bad some reporters are, one must occasionally return to the scene, so to speak, of some of their previous crimes. This is certainly the case with Roy Eccleston.
Iraq & President Bush: On behalf of the dead A Brazilian author and philosopher takes to task critics of President Bush who refuse to admit the enormous good he did by overthrowing Saddam.

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

A broad-ranging article by the editor of The Lancet (Britain's premier medical journal) argues that scientists these days are far from impartial -- that the conclusions they draw depend very much on what is personally gainful for them: "Opinions are rented out to the highest bidder". My only disagreeement with him is over his apparent view that it could be different. Scientists are people and I have been pointing out for decades that self-interested garbage is common in the academic journals of my own field. The sooner everybody realizes that the better. The only defence against scientific deception and misrepresentation has always been replication -- seeing if other researchers (preferably those with different viewpoints) get the same results. And any conclusions that are the subject of widespread disageement among scientists -- such as the "global warming" theory -- should be disregarded until it is totally clear what the data shows.

Our nice "tolerant" Hollywood "liberals" are out to get Mel Gibson over THAT film. "You won't ever work again in this town, buddy" seems to be the message. But I guess, like Liberace, Gibson is crying all the way to the bank.

Fidel Castro opposes even necessary use of mirrors because they are 'bourgeois'. That sure would upset the Hollywood types who think he is a hero!

Britain's biggest labor union -- its union for government employees -- is sponsoring a "Unite against Fascism" movement which calls for "zero tolerance against the "politics of hate" peddled by the British National Party". The BNP is an anti-immigration party that has recently had some electoral success in working-class areas of Britain and our good Leftist unionists obviously want to shut them up. A feisty comment from a British reader: "It is probably significant that "Unite Against Fascism" makes not the slightest attempt to specify quite what it means by fascism and racism. My experience of would-be-progressive groups is that they routinely use those words as sloppy slandering stereotypes against anyone who challenges their own narrow dogmas. Yet if racism is defined as discrimination by skin colour, and fascism is defined as oppressing and suppressing of alternative viewpoints, then these "antiracists"/"antifascists" are as racist/fascist as anyone. What could be more fascist than a union which expels people merely for opposing some highly controversial political policies? The BNP will continue to grow and grow because their opponents, however well-meaning, will continue to rely on cheap name-calling, authoritarian bullying, self-deluded bias, untruthfulness, censorship and hypocrisy. One does have to wonder whether that's because they haven't actually got anything more substantial to offer"

Shouldn't feminists be outraged by this?. A reader emailed me: "Did you see the new US Government construction standards? All new construction requires 2 women's toilets to one for men. They cite "anatomical differences" - so much for "equality"".

Wow! The Salvation Army is a religious organization. Scandal! "Current and former Salvation Army employees sued the organization ... alleging the government-funded group preached religious and sexual intolerance to its staff. ... The charitable organization required employees to pledge to preach the Gospel, to identify their church affiliation and to authorize their religious leaders to reveal private information to the Salvation Army, according to the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union's New York chapter."

An overview of the scandal of so-called recovered memory syndrome and its associated witch hunts. "Attention to the chimerical task of divining a patient's early traumas is attention subtracted from sensible help in the here and now. The reason why psychotherapists ought to familiarize themselves with actual knowledge about the workings of memory, and why their professional societies should stop waffling and promulgating misinformation about it, is not that good science guarantees good therapy; it is simply that pseudoscience inevitably leads to harm." Unfortunately the authors have failed to explore the obvious connection between this abuse and the emergence on the left of a desire to transform the welfare state into a therapeutic state ...ever in search of new classes of "victims" to "empower". This new political culture provided fertile ground for this abuse to take root. (See Paul Gottfried, Thomas Szasz and "Spiked" on the therapeutic state )

The reality "Government for the people, by the people? What a load of crap. How about government by the government for the benefit of the government. And it's all paid for by the people. We pay through the nose to be persecuted by people we are supposed to trust.

No presumption of innocence under feminist-influenced law: "[W]hen the government accuses you of fathering a child, no matter how flimsy the evidence, you are one month away from having your life wrecked. Federal law gives a man just 30 days to file a written challenge; if he doesn't, he is presumed guilty. And once that steamroller of justice starts rolling, dozens of statutory lubricants help make it extremely difficult, and prohibitively expensive, to stop -- even, in most cases, if there's conclusive DNA proof that the man is not the child's father."

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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FOR FREE TRADE

The WSJ really demolishes Senators Kerry and Edwards over their opposition to free trade. The opening salvo: "Trade is a "moral issue," declares Senator John Edwards. The Democratic Presidential candidate is in high dudgeon that "bad trade agreements," by which he means those signed by Bill Clinton, are stealing jobs away from American workers. It should be no surprise by now that his main competitor, Senator John Kerry, has responded by saying, "Me too." Just as Mr. Kerry parroted the rhetoric of Howard Dean on Iraq, the man who voted for NAFTA now claims there is no difference between him and Mr. Edwards on trade."

The real morality involved: "Protectionism is a violation of natural rights because it is a use of governmental coercion to prevent people from peacefully pursuing their own interests in enhancing their lives, exercising their just liberties, and making use of their legitimately-owned property. It is a coerced transfer of income from consumers and foreign businesses to a small, politically active cabal of domestic businesses. It raises the prices consumers must pay for their goods and gives them nothing in return, thereby reducing their standard of living. Even worse, the lack of competition always results in lower quality products as well. By reducing the incomes of our trading partners -- leaving them with less income with which to buy American-made goods -- protectionism harms American exporters as well. Protectionism is legal plunder."

Fruitcake Dobbs: "as long as Lou Dobbs is still kicking at CNN, we'll continue to hear nightly nativist tirades against the loss of manufacturing jobs, the off-shoring of tech jobs, immigration, and general alarmism about the 'outsourcing of America.' The truth, of course, is a bit more complicated than the simplistic picture painted by protectionists."

An extreme example of 'outsourcing' shows that we have nothing to fear from it.

Friedman of the NYT has it right about the desirability of globalization, free trade and "exporting jobs": "I've been in India for only a few days and I am already thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I want to be a demagogue. Yes, I want to be able to huff and puff about complex issues - like outsourcing of jobs to India - without any reference to reality..... although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans".

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ELSEWHERE

"Culturally enlightened French writers show simplistic Americans what justice is all about" They just LOVED 9/11. Ever since my first encounter with French literature in my teens (over 40 years ago) I have always thought French culture was endemically corrupt and devoid of any morality. A superficial cleverness is about all they rise to -- Camille Saint-Saens excepted, of course.

Wow! David's Medienkritik has hit the jackpot. He noted that much was being made of the fact that the suicide rate of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is 13.5 per 100,000. So he looked up the suicide rates in the German and French armies nestling cosily away in their home countries: 17.00 and 19.25!

Comment from a reader on THAT movie: "A lot of the fuss about THE PASSION actually comes from the "liberal" end of the Christian spectrum. Whatever the faults of the movie (and all movies have faults), I suspect even "liberal" Christians would agree that Gibson's movie is closer to the Gospel tradition (however interpreted) than JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, GODSPEL, LIFE OF BRIAN or THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (where he has sex with Barbara Hershey), the last big Hollywood Jesus movie. Gibson is being judged by a much tougher critical standard than that applied to his Jesus movie peers. I can sympathise with critics who focus on the blood and gore portrayed, but this aspect was almost entirely absent from all previous Jesus Christ movies like THE ROBE. Considering the subject matter, this absence has probably been a major flaw of the movies to date. Modern audiences, who demand gritty realism from movies like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN would probably find the classic movie portraits of Christ's death boring and uninteresting. Gibson deserves credit for putting his money where his mouth is, and letting his audience know how confronting the Gospel and the Christian message really is. Like it or not, the Christian message is not saccharine syrup. And you don't have to like it".

Britain copies GWB: "Tens of thousands of Polish, Czech and other eastern Europeans who have been working and living illicitly in Britain, some for many years, are to be given an amnesty in all but name from May 1, the Home Office revealed yesterday. The immigration minister, Beverley Hughes, said that if they ''turn legit' under the new migrant workers' registration scheme, they will not face any retribution. 'They have a right to be here and there is no need for them to carry on working illegally,' she said. The generous attempt to provide tens of thousands of illegal migrants with a route out of Britain's 'hidden economy' comes as new official figures backed up ministers' claims to have drawn the sting out of the asylum crisis."

Illegal aliens are imposing an additional cost amounting to $900 per American child (i.e. child of American-born parents) in the public school system.

Appalling Texas "justice": "Citing misconduct by Texas prosecutors, the Supreme Court Tuesday threw out the sentence of Delma Banks Jr., one of the country's longest-serving death row inmates whose execution was halted last year with minutes to spare. The high court, ruling 7-2, said Bowie County prosecutors allowed two key witnesses to lie to the jury at Banks' 1980 murder trial. They also illegally withheld from defense lawyers the fact that one witness was a paid police informant and the other a two-time felon who cut a deal to testify in exchange for prosecutors dropping an arson charge against him."

"A German drag queen has been given an honorary professorship from the University of Hamburg's faculty for Gender Studies to teach Queer Theory. Oliver Knoebel, better known in Germany as drag queen Olivia Jones, has said he feels honoured to have received the title of professor. ... Queer Theory is primarily concerned with how gender and sexuality bridges social gaps. The subject has developed out of feminist and gay-lesbian research and is mainly taught in the USA."

If he had been studying Queer theory, feminism or environmentalism that would have been fine: "The Supreme Court, in a new rendering on separation of church and state, voted Wednesday to let states withhold scholarships from students studying theology. The court's 7-2 ruling held that the state of Washington was within its rights to deny a taxpayer-funded scholarship to a college student who was studying to be a minister."

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum and all that but John Lennon still seems popular for his peacenik "philosophy". So see here for a dissection of his nonsensical political lyrics -- "Imagine" in particular. Beatle politics are like Hollywood politics: Good for entertainment only.

Michael Darby is back on the net with a big range of posts. Some of his headings:
Caffre the Fairy
Elections in Zimbabwe
Strong, Silent Men Make Good Presidents
Yet another "bank" scam
Don't Worry, Eat Happy
The Mufti of Australia Calls for Jihad
It Takes More Than Spin To Make A Steel Project
Archive of terrorist websites with links

********************************

The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************

THAT MOVIE

Like many others, I have been puzzled by the fuss over THAT movie. The Pope has approved it, evangelical Christians are lining up to buy tickets to it and all it does is re-tell the basic Christian story -- now nearly 2000 years old. Jeff Jacoby makes the best job of explaining the fuss as far as I can see but I still think the claim that it will stir up antisemitism among Christians is do-gooder nonsense.

I do however like the point in the NYT that the film might make the "modern" (read "social") Christians sit up and think a bit.

Now they're threatening Mel Gibson. Never mind [that] 'The Passion of the Christ' will likely prove a hit, Mel is taking a hit from Hollywood types. One tells the New York Daily News he's all but a marked man. Directors will avoid him. And one goes so far as to say audiences will move on from him. No more 'Lethal Weapon' sequels. No more 'Signs.' Says who? Says some Hollywood honcho irked by the 'Passion' or Mel's passion to make it? I just wonder whether those in Hollywood would be jawboning as much if Mel had taken on a different movie project ... Let's say, 'The Passion of Global Warming' or 'The Passion of Migrant Workers.' No, Hollywood selects what passions are appropriate."

What Mel Gibson's foes forget: "These days, the most consistently pro-Israel group of Americans, oddly enough, are evangelical Christians. A sane and rational person might assume that fact would be appreciated and applauded by us. By and large, however, that isn't the case. Many of my fellow Jews don't like or trust devout Christians. When I ask them why, they suddenly become history professors. To listen to them, you'd think the Inquisition had ended earlier this year. Frankly, when I hear them dredging up ancient animosities, I'm surprised they haven't taken a page out of the Al Sharpton playbook and demanded reparations from Spain!"

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess-Jackson and many other conservatives have been appalled at Andrew Sullivan's extreme, irrational and hysterical reaction to GWB's opposition to homosexual marriage. From the way Sullivan speaks, you would think GWB was out to murder homosexuals. Sullivan is of course himself a homosexual so I was not myself surprised by his reaction. Homosexuals themselves now normally claim that they are genetically different and it is certainly my observation that over-emotionality is very prevalent among them -- wicked of me though it no doubt is to say so. And it is not the first time Sullivan has been noticeably irrational. His expression of contempt for British culture (he is himself British-born) is hard to see as anything other than an emotional outburst (See here and here).

Marriage: "It's really nothing more than a private contract between two individuals, consecrated by their notion of God. At least that is how it started. It was a completely non-governmental arrangement -- until the Socialists weaseled into the deal with promises of 'official certification' by the State. The recognition of this fine institution of human companionship by an artificial entity (government) proved to be the camel's nose under the tent, with the hump of regulation over the private affairs of individuals soon to follow."

An appalling tale in "Spiked" of an influential medical researcher determined to condemn the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine as a cause of autism -- without any scientific foundation and for his own personal gain. How many kids have become seriously ill for no good reason because of this greedy crook's lies and distortions? I know what I would like to do to him. This anus of a so-called doctor is particularly despicable to me because, as a libertarian, I cannot support compulsory vaccinations. Yet I hate to see kids suffer and and be permanently damaged needlessly. So the alternative is to persuade the parents that vaccination is a good thing to do -- and putting needless scares into parents about vaccination seems to me in the circumstances to verge on the criminal. As the "Spiked" article says: "One speculative paper, now utterly discredited, has had the effect of reducing the uptake of MMR far below that required to maintain community resistance to measles, mumps and rubella." For the record, my own son has had every vaccination going.

Conservatives have been saying this for a long time: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, stepping into the politically charged debate over Social Security, said Wednesday the country can't afford the benefits currently promised to the baby boom generation. He urged Congress to trim those benefits"

Probably more just than the official response: "An air traffic controller who ordered a passenger plane into the path of another aircraft over Germany - a crash that killed dozens of Russian children - was stabbed to death Wednesday"

Naderism's dark underbelly "Yes, the same man who rails against corporate welfare - because it coercively takes money from taxpayers and funnels it to corporations - has set up a rather ingenious, if underhanded and manipulative, way of coercively taking money from college kids - and funneling it to Ralph Nader".

Amusing: The Socialist International has just had a meeting in China and the Australian Labor party sent along a representative. His comment to his hosts was rather acid: "China's opening up policy is quite successful. If one looks at China's TV programs and reads the youngsters' state of mind, one has this to say that if China's march toward the world is compared to a film, then the film is one just started."

Martha Stewart's surreal ordeal: "This statement highlights what this trial is about -- not insider trading, but the right to declare one's innocence, even when the government later agrees with the declaration. Surely if others attempted a similar defense in the face of a Kafka-esque judicial machine, the bullying Justice Department would be seen for what it is, forcing it to assume a lower profile and move somewhere behind the front line of the government's funding trough."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its condensation of the blogosphere.

A humorous test to discover if you're a conservative, liberal, libertarian, or a communist here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************

HOMOSEXUALITY RAMPANT

From one of my correspondents: "Homosexual men already have equal marriage rights -- the right to marry a woman".

P.P. McGuinness on homosexual marriage: "Why should homosexuals when they have had all obstacles removed to making any arrangement of their affairs between themselves that they want to, insist on going through a form of marriage, and on calling it marriage? Clearly, they assign a greater significance to marriage than considering it just a civil contract, as do most heterosexuals. In principle, it seems they want the community to give them the kind of social approval which goes with marriage. The difficulty with this is that the social approval that goes with marriage has traditionally been related to a whole complex of beliefs about the desirability of stable and loving heterosexual union, usually intended to result in children produced by the natural methods."

Public schools are promoting homosexuality to kids: "Teachers and kids can't talk about Jesus Christ, Moses or Biblical ethics - at least not in a positive, plausible sense - in the classroom. But they can talk about Timmy and Tommy the Testicle Twins? About Daddy's male roommate? About anal sex and oral sex between teenagers of the same sex? Parents - the innocence you work your butt off trying to provide for your kids at home is being eroded, undermined or at least under-valued within the New Public School.

Keith Burgess-Jackson has lots of scholarly stuff on the homosexual marriage issue.

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ELSEWHERE

Nader: One of my medical correspondents writes: "Around 1970, there was a hysterical reaction to "microshock" in hospitals. New electrical equipment made people cautious about leakage currents around central venous catheters, pacemakers, etc.. Under the right circumstances, very small shocks could cause cardiac arrest. The claim that "5000 people die from microshocks" caused a hysteria like never before - this was the typical liberal "zero risk" knee jerk - to prevent "microshock" billions of dollars were spent making every ICU bed like an operating room - isolation transformers, special isolated floors - added about $50, 000 to each bed. Of course, architects and electrical contractors were overjoyed. And Nader was one of the crusaders to "save lives from microshock." One of the staff at our hospital was a recognized expert in electrical safety. He searched for the source of such information and discovered - There was no source - the numbers were "made up" somewhere along the way and people rode with it. Some common sense eventually prevailed. The logical conclusion was that these "microshocks" were unusual, and deaths rare. So a more conventional approach - to use a good grounding system and be careful - was effective. Again, this "zero risk" mentality was typical of Greens - like Nader - who are not concerned at all with costs." So good old Ralph helped make medical care more expensive for everyone. Well done! No wonder the people-hating Greenies like him!

Dick McDonald of the California Republicans has sent me a detailed email about the peacenik votes of John Kerry in the Senate which I have just posted here. It shows that if Kerry's votes in the Senate had carried the day, the U.S. armed forces would now have hardly any of the weapons that now make them so effective. See also Joshua Muravchik for a broader coverage of Kerry's pacifist record.

There is a most detailed site here refuting the "Bush was a draft-dodger" lie. It appears that, like myself, Bush DID actually volunteer for service in Vietnam but was not accepted.

I think that the homosexual marriage issue is a Godsend to GWB. How many normal Americans are going to want their own marriages cheapened by calling anything a marriage? I think Bush could win because of his stand on just that issue.

On the "dumbness" of George W Bush -- Another view from Australia: "But most simply, media claims of stupidity have more to do with a sneering kind of elitism and faux intellectualism typical of many commentators rather than being based in fact. One remembers the famous "60 Minutes" interview with Pauline Hanson when she admitted to not knowing what "xenophobic" means. While this was taken up with much glee by the commentariat at the time as proof of Hanson's unsuitability for politics, for many supporters this was in fact seen as proof of her common touch - a much more valuable trait in the political process. No doubt in a presidential election year, some media commentators.. will take great delight in labelling President Bush and other candidates "dumb". And yet the lack of intellectual rigour involved in such analysis suggests that some media commentators, looking for an easy angle to their coverage are perhaps not so bright themselves.

I like it: "Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation's largest teachers union a 'terrorist organization' Monday, taking on the 2.7-million-member National Education Association early in the presidential election year. Paige's comments, made to the nation's governors at a private White House meeting, were denounced by union president Reg Weaver as well as prominent Democrats."

Review of Peter Brimelow's The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education: "The point here is not to debate the dubious merits of Mr. Bush's plan to improve accountability in the nation's failing schools. As Brimelow proves, the perverse incentives in this socialized system don't allow for much latitude. The thing to observe, however, is how masterful the educrats are at mounting a noisy, well-masked offensive at the slightest threat to their Soviet-style status quo."

"A northern Islamic state in Nigeria that is at the heart of a spreading African polio outbreak declared Sunday it would not relent on its boycott of a mass vaccination program which it called a U.S. plot to spread AIDS and infertility among Muslims". With great difficulty, I will refrain from comment.

A very interesting letter here from a reformed peacenik who now supports the U.S. presence in Iraq. Apparently 9/11 provided the needed dose of reality. Via Bunker Mulligan.

Amusing: Conservative bloggers were recently asked to nominate the dinner guest from Hell. Michael Moore was the "winner" by a long chalk. I voted for Noam Chomsky.

David's Medienkritik has a lot of posts on Michael Moore at the moment. Apparently they can't get enough of him in Germany. He is viewed as "educational" there. Apparently he has sold more books in Germany than in the USA.

The Wicked one has some wise words about speeding and parking tickets.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************

ECONOMIC ISSUES

Virgina Postrel says official figures make unemployment look a lot worse than it is because the U.S. government's bean-counters miss out on whole categories of small business that have grown rapidly over the last few years.

Learn from Colorado: "Colorado is often cited as the state with the most stringent tax and expenditure limit (TEL) in the country. State elected officials nationwide can learn from how Colorado got its TEL and how it is attempting to cope with recent challenges. One of the most important changes in Colorado tax policy was the adoption in 1987 of a flat income tax set at 5 percent, replacing the graduated income tax."

Take, for instance, the case of Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. Mankiw has been castigated of late for his pronouncement about the loss of service sector jobs, saying that 'outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade.' Political opposites as different as John Kerry and Dennis Hastert roundly condemned Mankiw, accusing him of economic heresy. But while the lawmakers are right about the importance of jobs, their criticism of Mankiw is off-target. The economist may need some coaching in the art of phrasing his comments, but he is right that job shifting naturally occurs in a global economy."

A good article here about how globalization and outsourcing are changing large numbers of lives in India for the better.

"Argentina's flouting the rule of law explains the poverty of nations. Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' explained how a non-governmental 'invisible hand' in free markets fuels national prosperity. In contrast, as the Argentine example corroborates, national penury is explained by the 'black hands' of government leaders who torch the rule of law and private property rights for political benefit. A succession of Argentine presidents since 1999 have ruined the nation's fortunes by making the laws and contractual promises akin to a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only."

Official U.S. government data on who pays most tax here. Excerpt: "The top one percent of tax filers paid 36.18 percent of federal personal income taxes in 1999, the latest year for which data are available... The 4.00 percent share paid by the bottom half of taxpayers was virtually unchanged during this period, as was the 96.00 percent share borne by the top half". In other words almost all tax in America is paid by "the rich". "The poor" pay nothing.

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ELSEWHERE

I had a good laugh over Keith Burgess-Jackson's post about voting for Nader. I said yesterday that lots of idiots will vote for Nader but Keith says he will vote for Nader. So clearly some non-idiots will also vote for Nader. I think there is a rather overlooked possibility that some conservatives might vote for Nader as a way of registering their disgust at the big-spending ways of GWB. But I still think Nader is an idiot. Why? Because he is more of a danger to his friends than his enemies. Keith explains in detail why he votes for Nader here. I think Keith should think more about his reasons for rejecting the view that Nader is ego-driven, however. At least as far back as St Bernard of Clairvaux in the Middle Ages and Simeon the Stylite in Byzantium, material poverty and strong principles have been perfectly compatible with the pursuit and attainment of great fame and influence -- and fame and influence are the the egotist's chief desires. One of my readers commented about Nader's "Meet the Press" appearance: "He was just too funny. Nothing he said made any sense at all - and he offered NO SPECIFICS: Just blind rage against Reps and Dems and corporations and government. No amount of government oversight of corporations was ever enough for Nader."

Perhaps I shouldn't be amazed but I have discovered that "The Wall Street Journal's" chief editorial writer and I both think that old cars are a good thing. The car I drive at the moment was recently valued at $1,500! (Yes, $1,500, not $15,000). It works perfectly as far as I am concerned. Sheesh! Am I becoming a Ralph Nader?

Between a rock and a hard place: According to a study by the National Taxpayers Union, all the Democrat candidates for president propose spending tens, and in some cases, hundreds of billions of dollars more than Mr. Bush. The sad fact is at the moment the voters are left with a choice between bad and truly awful."

"It is a sad irony that the world's freest Muslims -- those who live in liberty in the West -- are so unwilling to publicly condemn the world's worst Muslims -- the militant Islamist fascists who believe in violent jihad, intolerant theocracy, subjugated women, and hatred of Jews and Americans...."

The Iraqi "resistance" seem more like Mafia crooks than traditional resistance movements: "Who's behind the suicide bombings, roadside attacks and prison breakouts in postwar Iraq? Whoever you want it to be, by the look of things. No Iraqi or Islamic group has claimed responsibility for the sporadic attacks, but there is no shortage of Western commentators, coalition officials and anti-war activists claiming responsibility on behalf of various groups and interests"

Sounds reasonable: "Britain will throw open its doors to workers from the former communist countries joining the European Union on May 1, but those that refuse to get a job will be denied benefits and thrown out, the government has pledged."

The Spectator has some good articles in their issue of 21st -- on what the British Tories need to do to regain power, on the "epidemic" of obesity and on Turkey's acceptance into the EU -- but they do not make it possible for anyone to link directly to their articles these days. You first have to register with them and even then you cannot get to the articles except via their table of contents. Registration is however very tricky and defeated me. I suggest you don't bother with it. I finally got to their articles by logging in as info@rationalreview.com with the password: rationalreview.

Melanie Phillips in The Guardian: "Anti-Semitism is on the increase and its roots are not in the Right but in the Sharon-hating Left"

There are a lot of short and to-the-point posts over at Texas Conservative

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Two more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************

GREENIE CORNER

Robert Bidinotto, of ecoNOT.com, recently posted a commentary on the ongoing campaign by a well-heeled green group, Oceana, to intimidate the Google search engine company. Oceana is attempting to use harassment and other tactics to pressure Google to carry attack ads against the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. After Oceana was notified about Bidinotto's commentary, one of the group's staff wrote a reply. In it, he attempted to rationalize Oceana's flagrant thuggery -- which includes publishing on its Web site the private contact information of Google and Royal Caribbean officers, and encouraging its members to subject those individuals to further harassment and intimidation. Bidinotto has now published a new response to Oceana. And "since turnabout is fair play," the letter includes the e-mail addresses of Oceana's relevant officers and staff members.

Patrick Moore, Greenpeace founder, now green apostate, versus his former co-religionists: "Compromise and co-operation among environmentalists, government, industry and academia are essential for sustainability. Not all my former colleagues saw things that way, however. Many environmentalists rejected consensus politics and sustainable development in favour of continued confrontation, ever-increasing extremism, and left-wing politics. At the beginning of the modern environmental movement, Ayn Rand published Return of the Primitive, which contained an essay by Peter Schwartz The Anti-Industrial Revolution. In it, he warned that the new movement's agenda was anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-human.... They have alienated themselves from scientists, intellectuals and internationalists. It seems inevitable that the media and the public will, in time, see the insanity of their position".

Green religion: "David Brower is, by wide agreement, the most influential environmentalist of the past 50 years. In the 1950s and 1960s he pioneered many of the tactics later used by environmentalists to stop the construction of dams, roads, shopping centers, and all manner of projects all over the United States. He was the executive director of the Sierra Club for seventeen years, and later founded another environmental organization, Friends of the Earth. Brower was also a leading figure in a book by one of the most observant chroniclers of our time, John McPhee. In Encounters with the Archdruid, McPhee wrote in 1971 that "Brower, who talks to groups all over the country about conservation, refers to what he says as The Sermon." McPhee found that, "to put it mildly, there is something evangelical about Brower".

"Sustainable development" in the Third world: "WORLDwrite believes that there is a danger of these policies sustaining poverty, rather than alleviating it."

"The [UK] government is to go ahead with genetically modified crops despite what it acknowledges is considerable public resistance, cabinet committee papers passed to the Guardian reveal. The minutes of the discussion -- which was held eight days ago and involved senior cabinet ministers including the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett -- disclose the government's final decision to give the green light to the first crop of GM maize in Britain."

The Greenies have nobbled our water heaters!. Hot water systems are all now routinely set at a temperature too low to kill bugs. But you can turn yours up and you will then live in a house that is a lot healthier to be in.

Dodging Greenie oppression: "A few years ago, my wife and I began seeing refrigerators and air conditioners lining the ditches on roads outside of Tulsa. It was strange; in the middle of the night people would come along and push old air conditioners off trucks into the ditches and fields. ... But what made us wonder was the sheer number of them and the ones that kept being added once we became aware of the problem. Why were so many people littering the outskirts of our lovely town?"

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ELSEWHERE

Whoopee! The idiot Nader is running for Prez. And lots of idiots will vote for him. GWB should give him a medal!

Lots of good historical quotes in this article. For example: "I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- John Kerry, Oct. 9, 2002

I have posted a few items pointing out that the outsourcing of service jobs to India is beneficial to the people at large in both countries. One of the big complaints is the outsourcing of computer programming jobs to India. As a programmer myself, I have always thought that the possibilities there have been much exaggerated. Typically, writing a program involves a constant interaction between the programmer and the person who wants it written and you basically have to be in the same room together for that to work well -- not continents apart. One of my readers who is a much more experienced programmer than I am agrees.

Unbelievable stupidity: "They're called living wages. But they are the wages of death -- economic death. Santa Fe is the latest villain here, abetted by local union activists. The city government recently passed a minimum wage of $8.50 per hour, scheduled to take effect in 2004. Another hike kicks in by 2008, boosting the minimum to $10.50. The big jump in labor costs means that many businesses in Santa Fe will close down, or move to another town. And it means that employees in Santa Fe who were worth hiring at $5 or $6 an hour, but not worth hiring at $8.50, will be out of a job."

The "worker's paradise" of North Korea "Well known in Japan from TV and tabloid coverage, Kim Jong Il's "Entourage of Delight" is just that-a group of entertainers devoted to providing Kim Jong Il with delight and gaiety. The women of this entourage were frequently summoned to the "Number 8 Banquet Hall" in Pyongyang to perform elegant dances... During a banquet one night a group of five dancers in the entertainment entourage were performing a disco dance. Suddenly Kim Jong Il ordered, "Take off your clothes!" The girls took off their clothes, but then Kim told them to take it all off. They seemed surprised and could not hide their bewilderment, but they could not object to their Dear Leader's orders. In awkward embarrassment they stripped down and continued their performance in the nude. After a while he turned to his cabinet staff members and instructed them, "You guys dance with them too." And soon enough I, too, was ordered to dance. However, he cautioned us, "You'll dance, but you won't touch. If you touch, you're thieves.""

Dave Huber is a U.S. Middle School teacher and has a big post saying that behaviour problems in his classes are as enormous as those I recently noted in British schools.

The most succinct comment yet on John Kerry's alleged affair with an intern. Anyone smell a coverup?

The Wicked one says blondes are smarter, not dumber.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

Another example of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries!

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