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Despite all the detail in THAT film, there is still little evidence outside the New Testament about the events of Jesus's life and death -- as is pointed out here and here. But so what? Even from an atheist viewpoint, what the critics overlook is that the New Testament is a COLLECTION -- made very early on -- of quite different documents by different authors on the subject. And to have all four histories (Gospels) plus the Pauline epistles telling much the same story -- despite differences of detail -- is in fact remarkably good evidence that events pretty much like what was described did in fact happen. Of course to Christians faith fills any gaps. But exactly the same goes for the Left. Their faith is that the early documents, the traditional Christians and 2,000 years of belief are wrong. Most Leftist intellectuals (such as the post-modernists) explicitly reject the quest for hard evidence in any event. To them traditional Christians beliefs are just examples of argument from authority and blindly following a historical consensus. But recent fashions and modern elite opinions are authoritative, of course!

Socialized medicine again: Patients have to wait so long to see a doctor in Queensland public hospitals that they get aggressive towards any hospital staff that they DO see. So what is the government going to do about it? Hire more doctors? No way! They are going to spend more money on security to keep the patients away from the staff! What would a business do if it had a similar upsurge of customers?

Good for the French!: "An Algerian-born imam who said wife-beating was justified in cases of adultery, was expelled from France yesterday... The Interior Ministry said: "The Government cannot tolerate words contrary to human rights, detrimental to human dignity and in particular to the dignity of women." " More Western countries should follow suit.

Sudan is in flames: No Leftist outrage of course. The imperialists there are Muslim Arabs. See also here

Dick McDonald has got a lot of good postings up -- most of which I could have written myself.

My recipe for today is another fried chicken recipe from Thailand. This is an easy one. See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and 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.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring some principles with them. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

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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SOME MORE ECONOMICS

Amusing: The two almost universally-known icons of American business are arguably McDonalds and Coca Cola. McDonald's is now headed by an Australian and the outgoing head of Cocal Cola, Douglas Daft, is also an Australian. Watch out KFC! The international marketplace in skills certainly produces results that no planner would ever dream of.

Marginal Revolution points out two new Hayek sites. One of them is CafeHayek -- which has this comment on the many millions of Americans who pay zero tax: "But the political economy of large numbers of people paying little or no tax is a bit frightening for the long-run growth of government. When you pay little or nothing for something, you tend to want a lot more of it."

Charles Murray on how to give taxpayers more say over where the dollars go. Marginal Revolution on where US tax dollars actually go. Health and welfare is the big item -- nearly three times bigger than defence spending.

"Free trade is again under assault. If there is one reason for the perennial attack it is likely the one Frederic Bastiat made so much of: the failure to look for what is "unseen." The costs of free trade (temporary job loss, closed firms) are easily traced to the free movement of goods, services, and capital. The benefits (lower-priced goods, new products, new job opportunities), though great and impossible to produce any other way, are not readily traceable to that movement.... Bastiat illustrated the point with his tale about Crusoe and the plank that washes ashore. Crusoe had intended to make a plank. Should he destroy the free one in order to protect the plank-making job he anticipated? Or should he welcome the good fortune because now the hours earmarked for plank-making are free for coconut-gathering, hammock-weaving, or leisure? The answer is obvious.... Import restrictions intended to protect jobs inevitably reduce foreigners' export-buying power; that costs Americans well-paying jobs. The restrictions also tend to provoke protectionist retaliation, which harms still more Americans. Living standards just don't stagnate; they drop."

"They call him 'rightwing extremist' and 'xenophobic' among many other epithets but this hasn't stopped Switzerland's Christoph Blocher from standing tall in his love of limited government, independence and sound finances. Just last week, he made the tourist promotion people upset by suggesting that the government reduce the subsidy it gives them to a mere 30 centimes (about 25 US cents). Their sceaming and name calling echoed all through the Gotthard tunnel but the message was clear. Why should the taxpayer subsidize any industry?"

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Another triumph of socialized medicine: They left a large pair of scissors inside a woman after surgery and only a demand for X-rays by the woman herself finally revealed them. And it was NOT human error. It was a careless system. Careful surgery would count everything in and everything out but who cares about public patients? And the "Health Care Complaints Commission" refused to look into it until the media got involved! But you can always rely on your government to protect you, can't you? That's what all those regulations and all that bureaucracy is for!

Unarmed robbery is not a serious offence according to California judges! I guess that means that "hate speech" and pollution must be no crimes at all! Or am I being naive here?

Conservative Truth points out in detail why and how the 9/11 Commission has become a kangaroo court rather than a serious judicial body.

Good stuff from a Leftist leader: "The federal Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, has unveiled a new conservative vision for an Australian identity that redefines multiculturalism. In a wide-ranging, landmark speech delivered in Sydney yesterday, Mr Latham said Australians had moved on from the concept, which he said risked being frozen in time.. Multiculturalism needed to be redefined to prevent it being a policy that separated people from each other, he said. A "new and realistic way of thinking about multiculturalism" was necessary, he said, emphasising that "social cohesion is as important as respect for difference"."

Australia's federal system fights tax too: "Victoria is expected to lure property investors with a $1 billion tax reduction, just as NSW buyers have been hit with higher land taxes. The real estate industry is predicting investment dollars could also move south as a result of the changes, which the Victorian Government claims will mean 96 per cent of Victorian property owners paying less land tax than they would in NSW."

My recipe for today is another Thai chicken recipe -- for when you are tired of KFC. See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and 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.

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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THE BRITISH DISEASE

Tony Blair's U.K. government has been caught ENCOURAGING massive immigration fraud: "It is hard to exaggerate the scale of the crisis that now faces Tony Blair and his Home Secretary. They are confronted with a failure of public policy of massive dimensions". And This is the sort of thing Blair's policies have brought about: "Dozens of refugees were living on Wrexham's Caia Park estate before the two nights of rioting that earned the place its notoriety last June. Now the old, white monoculturalism is back; the refugees have all but vanished without trace. At the Red Dragon pub, the scene of last summer's battles, a man was set upon a few weeks ago on the mere suspicion of being an Iraqi."

Peter Hitchens details why Britain's Leftist "New Labour" government has winked at mass illegal immigration. "One, it provides a constant excuse to censor the past and change the future. The false argument is made, for example, that migrant minorities will be offended if British history is taught as it should be, or if specifically Christian ceremonies are retained...Two, it props up the economy ...messed up welfare benefits at one end and penal taxation at the other mean that it simply isn't worth it for most British people to work for low-wage jobs. What's more, restrictive laws make it hard for small employers to create such jobs. .."

UK poll: "80% say that government policies on immigration and asylum are "not tough enough". ..a mere 4% share the view of some of the Government's critics that its policies are "too tough" and "76% back the expulsion or imprisonment of Muslim preachers who support extreme Islamic fundamentalism". It reminds one of a 1996 poll in Australia: "According to the results of a Herald-AGB poll released on June 19, Australians think their country is accepting too many immigrants, especially from Asia. About 65 percent of 2,063 people polled thought that immigration was too high; three percent favored more immigration..." 1996 was the year anti-immigration politician Pauline Hanson arrived on the Australian political scene and challenged the major parties to respond to popular rather than elite opinion. Hanson's popular challenge was eventually taken up by the major parties but still has many of Australia's Leftists in denial. Will the UK Leftist elites be the next to feel the shock treatment? A few British National Party victories in the North have certainly rattled them.

Another triumph of British bureaucracy: "Britain spent 259 million pounds ($400 million) on a fleet of unusable military helicopters that can't fly through clouds, a public spending watchdog revealed today. Eight advanced Chinooks designed to carry troops and equipment in all conditions were grounded in the "massively botched" deal."

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There is an intellectually rigorous paper from some economists here (short PDF) which treats Islamic martyrdom as a supply and demand phenomenon. The important conclusion from it is that the "payment" martyrs receive (fame, promises of paradise etc) is the main motivation. You have to stop communities from offering such rewards. Punishing (e.g. bombing) the community as a whole may be the only quick way to do that.

Most Shi'ite Muslims are moderate: "Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most recognizable and respected Shi'ite leader in Iraq, firmly believes in the separation of mosque and state. His belief is also held by mainstream Shi'ite Islam, which believes in the separation"

There is an excellent article in the WSJ on the old chestnut that blacks do poorly on IQ tests because of lack of motivation. The truth is that blacks try harder: When given unlimited time to do tests, blacks tend to stick at it longer. All that seems to be forgotten in the latest bout of weird reasoning, however. Leftist psychologists now say that "Stereotype threat" causes the low scores. The claim is that blacks try less because they fear that their poor results will reflect badly on blacks generally. One would have thought that such fears would cause them to try HARDER but all that is brushed aside. The WSJ concludes: "Lack of evidence and grave methodological defects haven't prevented the stereotype threat industry from taking off. Distortions are now pervasive." My fellow psychometrician, No. 2 Pencil, liked the article too.

There is a good conservative humour site called The Hatemonger's Quarterly. They have plenty to laugh at. From the beginning of one post: "A correspondent from our Boston (M.A.) office recently sent us a flyer from the dubiously titled "Boston School of Herbal Studies" Apparently, this veritable Vegetable University sponsored a fete called "Shamanic Plant Journeying", which was under the careful tutelage of one Tommy Priester, professional herbalist..."

My recipe for today is a Thai classic that is also easy to make: Pork with garlic and pepper. See here. Some readers have reported problems with getting my recipe blog to load lately. If that happens, there is a mirror site here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH.

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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.

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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STERNBERG'S "TRIARCHIC" THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE

Although I am a psychometrician by trade, my specialty is the measurement of attitudes and personality rather than the measurement of ability so I don't regularly follow the academic literature on IQ. I have been doing a bit of catch-up reading lately, however, and continue to be amazed at the gyrations Leftist psychologists go through in order to reach ideologically acceptable conclusions. One of the people best known for disparaging the importance of IQ (general problem-solving ability) is Robert Sternberg. He acknowledges the reality of IQ but says it is only one of three types of important mental functioning that can be measured.

But the other two he puts forward are pretty desperate proposals. The second one he himself summarizes as "street smarts" so is nothing more than knowledge of a particular culture or environment -- and nobody has ever disputed that you need both intelligence and knowledge to solve problems well. So while knowledge is important, to refer to it as an "ability" is evasive. And his third alternative is creativity -- which again seems reasonable at first. The problem with creativity, however, is that there appears to be no such thing. Different indices of creativity often fail to correlate with one another. You can be creative in one field and not in another. I myself, for instance, am highly creative at scientific writing or I would not have 250+ academic papers in print -- but I would not be able to write a novel for nuts. So although problem-solving ability is demonstrably general -- which is why we have the concept of IQ -- creativity is not. So Sternberg is still left with IQ as the single useful generalization about abilities.

And the criticisms of his work simply seem to have driven Sternberg to retreat further and further into dishonesty. He simply ignores whole bodies of data -- including things he had acknowledged in his own earlier work -- as Linda Gottfredson (PDF) points out.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Iran's role in the recent uprising in Iraq Iraq uprising planned and funded by Tehran's murderous Mullahs who have put al-Sadr on their payroll.
"My Battalion is Right in the Middle of Sadr's Challenge" Iraq is not the disaster bad news that you are seeing on CNN and other networks.
How the left debased the 9-11 tragedy and turned it into a Bush-bashing media carnival Not content with politicizing the deaths of their own loved ones, these people had the gross indecency to try and politicise the deaths of others whose closest relatives are still grieving.
No Excuse This Time Around It's so bad it's almost impossible for any speaker who is Jewish or from Israel to speak on campus. The Arab coalition and their clueless, Jew-hating supporters are strong and the universities have been greatly weakened by the politically correct dribble that is being taught to the students there.
A socialist journalist bags laissez faire and tax cuts Defending the free market from a journalist's vicious libels.

Details here

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Under the heading "The wimps of war" Dick McDonald points out in his latest posting that those who blame GWB for lack of foresight about Iraq were themselves spectacularly wrong in their predictions about Iraq.

Energy bill illusions: "Why must the government establish a 'coherent energy policy?' Generally, we've left decisions about energy investments to private investors. Five- or ten-year economic plans are traditionally the stuff of Russian Politburos, not American presidents. It's amazing to hear Republican politicians argue that, absent some guidance from Washington, businessmen will blindly stumble through the marketplace, unable to intelligently invest in the energy sector absent some sort of congressional blueprint. It's also insulting to one's intelligence to hear politicians claim that, absent political interference in the marketplace, consumers will not have the faintest idea how to conserve energy or even be aware of the benefits of doing so in the face of high prices."

Leftists think they are superior beings: "Will Hutton, Britain's foremost critic of capitalism and an outspoken advocate for affordable social housing, is married to a property developer who has made a fortune out of selling and renting inner-city properties, often at rates which local council housing officers describe as exorbitant."

I have just put up here Chris Brand's most recent postings -- on sex differences, Leftist universities, Muslims, Femiloons and a BIG climbdown from Leftist theory by British teachers. Teachers don't like enforced equality when it puts them out personally.

The wicked one has some Irish jokes. Get them while they are still legal.

My recipe for today is for Korma -- a classic Indian curry. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

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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.

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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THE "SHORT AMERICAN" NONSENSE

I am rather surprised that the story about some Europeans being taller than Americans has attracted such a lot of attention without anyone (as far as I can see) tumbling to what the finding really shows. Even the careful Iain Murray missed it. The finding, in brief, was that the average American height has stopped increasing but average heights in some European countries have not. And some Europeans -- such as the Dutch -- are much taller than Americans on average. The data underlying the finding may not be all that sound but let us assume that they are:

Anti-American commentators have linked the finding to nutrition -- saying that it shows Americans to be poorly nourished. Given the "obesity epidemic" in America, that is a pretty hilarious explanation but it does contain the grain of truth that there is some connection between nutrition and height. As the geneticists (such as Eaves et al., 1999) have shown, final height is a product of genetic potential plus environmental influences -- and nutrition is undoubtedly one of those environmental influences. Putting it another way, your full genetic potential is realized only when the environmental conditions are ideal. So what the data really show is that ONLY IN AMERICA have the ideal environmental conditions for height maximization been realized. That is why Americans have stopped growing. America ALREADY has gained all it can from nutrition etc. The fact that European heights are still growing shows, then, that they still do not have ideal conditions there for realizing their maximum height. They are still catching up. In short, the data show exactly the opposite to what has been claimed: It is Europeans who are lacking in something that influences height. The traditional European habit of consuming fruit and vegetables in preserved and pickled form rather than in fresh form may be the nutritional factor involved.

An immediate objection to my account is of course the fact that SOME Europeans are much taller than Americans on average. How can they be so tall if they have bad nutrition (or whatever else has been holding them back)? Once again the answer is to be found in the Eaves et al (1999) study: The MAIN influence on height is genetics so if coastal North Western Europeans (such as the Dutch and the Scandinavians) have good genetics for height they will still be taller on average even if their nutrition is not ideal. And that coastal North-Western Europeans tend to be very tall has been known at least since the Viking age. Why they have long been among the world's tallest people (along with some very dubiously nourished East Africans) nobody knows for sure but only a small percentage of the American population is of coastal North Western European ancestry so the final American average must be much lower. And the fact that the legionaries of the ancient Roman empire were real shorties suggests that average national height is a very minor factor (if it is a factor at all) in national achievement and felicity.

Reference
Eaves, L.J., Martin, N.G., Meyer, J.M. & Corey, L.A. (1999) "Biological and cultural inheritance of stature and attitudes". In: Cloninger, C.R., Personality and psychopathology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press.

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Big surprise for the Democrats: "The Tax Foundation recently announced Tax Freedom Day fell on April 11 this year. Tax Freedom Day is the day when Americans will finally have earned enough money to pay off their total tax bill for the year. The April 11 date is the earliest Tax Freedom Day since 1967 and continues the downward trend in tax burdens enjoyed by Americans under the Bush administration. Tax Freedom Day had hit an all-time high in the last year of the Clinton administration, falling on May 2.... the numbers show the wealthiest Americans shouldering more of the federal tax burden. The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans (average income of $259,000) bear an even 50 percent of the total federal tax liability."

Taxes and jobs: "America's complicated tax system needs a complete overhaul, not minor fixes. The large role that system plays in many of the political dramas dominating the daily headlines shows why. Republicans and Democrats, for instance, are fighting over the 'outsourcing' of jobs to foreign countries. But instead of sniping at each other, they should look at the corporate tax system. Our 35 percent corporate tax rate is one of the highest worldwide -- higher even than the rate in socialist countries such as France and Sweden. Should we be surprised that some jobs leave America when the tax code punishes investors for creating jobs here?"

Are Mosques holy places? Not in our sense they are not. It is perfectly "holy" in Islam for them to be used as bases for terrorism -- which they often are. So they should in many cases be bombed as the military installations that they are.

A good omen: "There was a remarkable event last Friday evening in Moscow. Several of the world's most prominent free-market reformers spent more than four hours in a spirited dialogue about economic reform with Russian President Putin.

Misrepresenting the militia: "It's true that some Reservists and National Guardsmen enlisted while never expecting to actually deploy. However, my personal experience as a Reservist who deployed is that for every soldier who fought deployment, there were 10 more that jumped at the chance to serve their country in Iraq." It was the same in the Australian Army in the Vietnam era. There was an informal policy that conscripts did not have to go to Vietnam. They could spend their two years doing paperwork at a BOD (Base Ordnance Depot -- i.e. an Army storage depot) instead. Almost all chose to go to Vietnam.

My recipe for today is for Thai meatballs. Quick and easy and very tasty. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Greenie Watch includes a big post on that naughty depleted uranium today.

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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.

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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DON'T FORGET HISTORY: MAKE IT

Chuck Colson has this very reasonable warning:

"We Westerners forget history. We forget that from the time Muhammad began writing the Qur'ÿn in 610 A.D., Islam and the Christian West were engaged in armed conflicts that lasted for a thousand years. Islam even occupied Spain during much of this period, and it wasn't until 1683 that the Ottoman Empire was finally defeated at Vienna.

We see what is happening today as an isolated case of terrorists taking a misguided reading of the Qur'ÿn. I wish it were that simple. The truth is there's an element in Islam-some estimate as high as 20 percent-who see this battle as a resumption of the thousand years of war. In fact, Osama bin Laden was a student of Mohammed Qutab whose brother, Saeb Qutab, a radical Egyptian Islamist, argued for a resumption of this conflict with the West. Saeb Qutab was thoroughly anti-Semitic, had a burning hatred of the West, and saw its destruction as the world's only hope. And that's what filled the mind of Osama bin Laden.

We're kidding ourselves if we think that containing a few terrorists will allow America to live in peace and safety. We're kidding ourselves if we think we can bring troops home from Iraq and that's the end of the war. This war is going to be with us for generations. Millions of followers of Osama bin Laden and those like him believe that it is their manifest destiny as Muslims to bring about the utter destruction of Jews, Christians, and Western civilization."

What Colson does not mention is that we could end the war with Islam in a couple of months if we chose to. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, GWB announced a doctrine of community responsibility: Not only the terrorists themselves but the communities that supported them would be held responsible for their deeds. It was that doctrine that took the USA into Afghanistan. It would therefore be a simple implementation of that doctrine to start heavy bombing of communities -- such as Fallujah, Tikrit and Qom -- which supported terrorists. Once the members of such communities got it into their heads that terrorist attacks would be very likely to lead to THEIR deaths, the whole situation would turn around very rapidly. Israel could then do the same with heavy bombing of Gaza, Jenin etc.

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Canada's National Post newspaper has started a blog for its editorial board which is surprisingly conservative. They haven't got permalinks yet but I gather from a couple of postings dated 16th that Canadian Liberal Prime Minister Martin recently said: "Until such time that an election is called, I'm going to govern. That is my priority." That reminds me of a well-known observation by another Leftist: "Our programme is simple. We want to rule Italy" -- the words of Benito Mussolini, the founder of Fascism.

Democrat politicking a danger to America: "Instead of trying to chart a path of progress, many of the president's critics have devoted themselves to fomenting public despair over a war that, they keep repeating, should never have been fought.... The global war on terrorism is not a game from which we can simply walk away when it seems it isn't going our way.... the only deterrent to terrorism is strength... What is weakness? Weakness is when America's leaders compare Iraq to Vietnam, announcing to the world a faltering resolve to see our mission through. To our allies in the Middle East and beyond, these predictions of defeat send a clear and chilling message to hedge their bets, because the United States cannot be counted on. And to our enemies, they send an equally clear message: You can win".

Your government will protect you: "After the 9/11 attacks, the nation's disparate intelligence and law enforcement agencies pledged to team up to create a centralized "terror watch list." The goal: to ensure that al-Qaeda members could not slip into the USA undetected as they did before Sept. 11, 2001. Yet as recently as last month, a top Homeland Security official told Congress the list was still a "work in progress.""

Dick McDonald on Democrat deception: "John Kerry and his media pimps continue to rant about unemployment. He calls it the worst since Hoover. The media splashes his rant all over the planet. Are Kerry and the media that uneducated? FDR had finally got unemployment down to 14% before WWII bailed him out. Bush's 5.7% unemployment factor was "full employment" in my econ 101 class. But times have changed. One can't find truth in today's newspapers or television. The public has to get the truth from other sources. What a sad ocuntry whose only town criers are deeply prejudiced socialists bent on destroying the capitalist system."

It would be more logical to ask Islam to apologize: "The president was asked at least four times at his press conference whether he wanted to take the opportunity to apologize for the 9-11 attacks. It was the press corps in full baying mode". Tyrrell has a good sarcastic comment: "As soon as the press conference ended, I decided that I would ask these know-it-alls if they remembered President Franklin Roosevelt's touching apology to the American people after our Navy and Air Corps were caught utterly unprepared at Pearl Harbor".

The wicked one has some old Chinese proverbs that will be news to most Chinese.

My recipe for today is for chicken tikka, not to be confused with chicken tikka masala. Tasty Indian chicken kebabs (not curried). See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

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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!

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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SOME ECONOMICS AGAIN

How outsourcing creates jobs: "Job creation is the number-one issue in the Presidential election. And yet, the creation of jobs is a mysterious, little understood process -- especially among politicians.... Labor legislation has the goals of fairness and job stability, but the more "protective" the legislation, the less efficient labor markets become. Anyone familiar with academic tenure or government employment knows that well-protected jobs also mean low productivity and limited flexibility. The IMF study found that employment protection legislation was a primary factor in job creation. Where protection is strong, new job creation is almost nonexistent (.25%), but where job protection is relatively weak, job creation is five times greater (1.50%). Where it is easy to fire employees is precisely where you will find the higher rates of job creation because employers face a lower cost and risk when they hire a worker. Freedom in the labor market keeps employees productive because they know that employers can easily fire them... By outlawing or restricting the outsourcing of jobs to cheap foreign labor you would greatly discourage the establishment of new jobs in the U.S. and encourage current employers to move overseas... Putting limits on foreign outsourcing will make the U.S. a less desirable location for employers and would put American companies at a disadvantage"

Tyler Cowen (of 'Marginal Revolution') is an economist specialising in the economics of culture & globalization. Here is his take on how French cultural protectionism has driven French films from the world's cinema screens: "American movies account for 80 percent of European box office receipts, although European movies have won only 5 percent of the American market .. No government can legislate artistic success. Film culture, like all culture, is dynamic. It isn't protection that it needs; it is stimulation. Without it, the form atrophies. If Europeans treat their films as weak, those films will become permanently weak."

The bigger European states can't handle serious economic reform: "Whether it is ... 'Lula' da Silva in Brazil, Leszek Miller in Poland or Gerhard Schroeder in Germany, the core dilemma is the same. Governments from the left get elected by campaigning against the policies of the financial elite - yet then find themselves constrained to adopt the very policies they campaigned against... In part, this ... reflects the economic stagnation that has crippled Europe since 2001. Unemployment is now 9.3 per cent in Germany, 9.4 per cent in France, 16.7 per cent in Slovakia and 19.1 per cent in Poland. That's a tough environment for any government to be clawing back welfare entitlements.... But to economists and the elite, those high taxes and regulation are holding Europe back - and threatening to pull it under in the future, as an ageing society will have even fewer workers supporting far more retirees. In smaller economies such as Australia and the Netherlands, voters accept that governments must tighten their belts"

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Comment from a reader about the 9/11 "Commission": "John Ashcroft just told it like it was yesterday - he said the "intelligence failure" was due to insane policies introduced by prior administrations. Especially good was Ashcroft's stab at a member of the Commission - who ordered the greatest weakening of intelligence in many years. Just great - the Dems are getting salt in their self-indlicted wounds".

It really is pathetic to hear film-maker Oliver Stone's evasions and apologies for Fidel Castro. "There are none so blind ...." In Stone you can hear today's American "liberalism" in full flight.

All the 9-11 victims families deserve our sympathy and support, however some of them are venting their anger at the wrong target. "Who, listening to them, would not be struck by the fact that all their fury and accusation is aimed not at the killers who snuffed out their husbands' and so many other lives, but at the American president, his administration, and an ever wider assortment of targets including the Air Force, the Port Authority, the City of New York?" Did the British civilians in World War II blame Churchill for the lives they lost to German bombing? Leftists really are disgusting.

Bunker Mulligan agreed with the article about Defense Dept. schools that I linked to yesterday. He grew up in those schools, sent his son to one and became himself an instructor at the Air Force Academy. He has posted on his experiences here and here


Rather surprising that the very conservative Peter Hitchens started out as a far-Leftist too. I must be one of the few life-long conservatives who are both intellectually oriented and politically outspoken. I think my first conservative act was when, at age 13, I used my saved pocket-money to buy a subscription to "Reader's Digest".

I wonder if Captain Clueless has grown up yet? He used to think that anyone who disagreed with affirmative action was a "white supremacist". But he also voted for Al Gore and lived to regret it so there is hope.

Today's recipe is another Thai one: Spicy chicken in peanut sauce. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

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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!

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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EDUCATION

"Defense Department schools offer valuable lessons, particularly in educating low-income, minority students. Their successful strategies deserve wider application... Each year, for instance, about 35% of the student population turns over. Half the students qualify for free and reduced lunches. And only 20% of the students' parents have more than a high school education. In spite of these challenges, the black and Hispanic students in Defense Department schools lead the nation in minority test scores. The successes aren't limited to minority students, either. On federal writing tests, eighth-graders rank second nationally. Studies by researchers at Vanderbilt University reveal that such success comes by holding students to high expectations. All students - not just top achievers - are required to take demanding courses. Other reasons for success include focused teacher training. About 25 years ago, Defense curriculum experts selected an effective writing program and stuck with it. Each teacher receives elaborate training in teaching that program".

Sowell: The idea of providing black students with "role models" is counterproductive because it insinuates the notion that you can be inspired only by people who look like you. How in the world did the Nisei generation of Japanese American children ever learn, when their fathers were mostly farmers and these children seldom, if ever, saw a Japanese American teacher, much less Japanese American engineers, scientists or other professionals in fields in which these children went on to excel?

Education and class stratification: "True, under market education, the wealthy would spend more money on their children's education. News flash: that's already the case. Today, however, both the poor and the rich are taxed to subsidize grossly inefficient, bureaucrat-heavy, and less-than-optimal schools, and today mostly the rich are able to pay double for private schools. (The rich are also better able to put pressure on their government schools to perform.) So the poor are forced to pay for schools that serve them poorly."

Daniel Pipes looked at the latest list of books published by the University of California Press. Every conceivable Leftist cause was covered but out of the 140 titles, not one was conservative. The UC is the new USSR.

Affirmative action advocates assume all ethnic groups can produce equal outcomes given equal opportunities, but they can't prove it. Thomas Sowell wades through the empirical evidence. "The reality...is very different. In fact, for a host of reasons, some of which we know and some of which we do not know, some of which spring from malign oppression and many of which do not, ethnic and racial groups behave differently, perform differently, learn differently, and exhibit greatly different talents and temperaments. That is not crude stereotyping; it is plain fact. Justice will not be done if this fact is denied or goes unrecognized. "

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ELSEWHERE

Even Loony Toohey has got the point of what the Bush administration COULD have done to prevent the 9/11 attacks -- nix. Michelle Malkin also points out that GWB is a victim of a Democrat "Catch 22".

Wow! GWB is getting real about Israel: "President Bush on Wednesday endorsed Israel's retention of part of the West Bank in any final peace settlement with the Palestinians.... Bush also ruled out Palestinian refugees ever returning to Israel". He is finally recognizing the difference between friends and enemies. Well done, Osama!

I am pleased to say that one of my articles has just come out in dead tree format -- my first for a while. It is in Society -- one of the major outlets for intellectual conservatism (vol. 41, no. 4). They let me have nine of their large pages to set out my account of what underlies the Left-Right divide. It's online to subscribers only but it is essentially a severe condensation of my monograph on the subject. There is less severe but still considerable condensation of the monograph here which includes coverage of the psychological research on the subject.

"Root cause" nonsense: "For the Democratic constituency-at least at its top, New York Times-reading, latt,-drinking, NPR-listening end-is largely composed of the "root causes" school of politics. These are people who consider it proof of intelligence to treat as axiomatic the proposition that the real cause of all social evils, from drunkenness to murder to obesity, lie not with the behavior of the drunks, the murderers, or obese people, but in poverty, ignorance, large corporations, and George W. Bush.... For such people, root-causeism is a natural corollary of their own self-conceit as smarter than those they disagree with. Does one deal with crime by putting criminals in jail? Perish the thought! One deals with the root causes of crime by eradicating poverty and injustice so that there will be no more criminals." A pity it's all a delusion!

"Animal rights zealots will do anything for attention, even if it means attacking a fundraiser for cancer research. The misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a front group for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is protesting the American Cancer Society's 'Cattle Barons' Ball' events. The western-themed galas have raised more than $20 million for cancer research over the past 30 years. But PCRM will do anything to advance its vegetarian-only, animal rights agenda -- even jeopardize the search for a cancer cure and endanger Americans' health."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots of pretty pictures this time.

The wicked one says Iraq is a fiction -- a "made up" country.

Today's recipe is for some yummy curry puffs. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

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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!

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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GOOD STUFF FROM THE LATEST CITY JOURNAL

Theodore Dalrymple thinks backwardness and aggression is built into Islam: "the problem begins with Islam's failure to make a distinction between church and state. Unlike Christianity.. Islam was from its inception both church and state, one and indivisible, with no possible distinction between temporal and religious authority... In the West, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment ... liberated individual men to think for themselves, and thus set in motion an unprecedented and still unstoppable material advancement. Islam, with no separate, secular sphere where inquiry could flourish free from the claims of religion, if only for technical purposes, was hopelessly left behind: as, several centuries later, it still is. The indivisibility of any aspect of life from any other in Islam is a source of strength, but also of fragility and weakness, for individuals as well as for polities. Where all conduct, all custom, has a religious sanction and justification, any change is a threat to the whole system of belief. Certainty that their way of life is the right one thus coexists with fear that the whole edifice-intellectual and political- will come tumbling down if it is tampered with in any way. Intransigence is a defense against doubt and makes living on terms of true equality with others who do not share the creed impossible."

Dalrymple also has an article on the complete collapse of any sexual morality among the British working class. Sexually active girls aged 11 seem to be seen as normal.

The conflict between privacy and the intelligence-gathering needed for national security: "The privocrats only grudgingly acknowledge that terrorism exists, and they never concede that a gain in the public good may justify a concession in "privacy." Their operating principle can only be formulated as: no use of computer data or technology anywhere at any time for national defense, if there's the slightest possibility that a rogue use of that technology will offend someone's sense of privacy.

VD Hanson thinks the USA has brought Islamic attacks on itself by being too weak in its response to the many attacks BEFORE 9/11: "in the decade since 1991 the Middle East saw us as a great power that neither could nor would use its strength to advance its ideas-that lacked even the intellectual confidence to argue for our civilization before the likes of a tenth-century monarchy. The autocratic Arab world neither respects nor fears a democratic United States, because it rightly senses that we often talk in principled terms but rarely are willing to invest the time, blood, and treasure to match such rhetoric with concrete action".

Kay Hymowitz says America's youth are returning to traditional values: "Yessiree, family values are hot! Capitalism is cool! Seven-grain bread is so yesterday, and red meat is back! Wave away the colored smoke of the Jackson family circus, Paris Hilton, and the antics of San Francisco, and you can see how Americans have been self-correcting from a decades-long experiment with "alternative values" ... During the last ten years, most of the miserable trends in crime, divorce, illegitimacy, drug use, and the like that we saw in the decades after 1965 either turned around or stalled. Today Americans are consciously, deliberately embracing ideas about sex, marriage, children, and the American dream that are coalescing into a viable-though admittedly much altered-sort of bourgeois normality. What is emerging is a vital, optimistic, family-centered, entrepreneurial, and yes, morally thoughtful, citizenry."

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ELSEWHERE

An excellent summary of American "liberalism" from Keith Burgess-Jackson: "Please keep in mind that I was a liberal for a long time. I know the liberal mentality and tactics. Liberals have no shame. They're unfulfilled totalitarians. Their only goal, despite their declared concern for the disadvantaged, is power. Think about it. If liberals truly cared about the disadvantaged, as they say they do, they'd dispose of their wealth. There are enough wealthy liberals in this country to feed, clothe, shelter, and medicate every poor person. Don't hold your breath waiting for this to happen. The Kennedys are still wealthy, aren't they? John Kerry is more than happy to take advantage of the Heinz fortune. Liberals insist on forcing others to pay for their hare-brained social-engineering schemes. This suggests that they're driven by envy and spite, not benevolence".

Interesting that even a heavily biased Leftist author is arguing that U.S. "liberalism" was optimistic and forward looking under the Kennedys but that it now is dark and gloomy. He says that conservatives are the new optimists. (But then again Kennedy was pretty conservative in many ways!)

Arab Fascists: "O'Rourke told his audience that the Ba'athists were, quite simply, fascists--and that "the purpose of fascism is to turn people into a mob". A mob, of course, will eagerly do the unspeakable, things no individual would dream of doing. Hence Fallujah."

I have not been following the media brouhaha about Justic Scalia "ordering" the erasure of a tape but Peg Kaplan has the goods.

Individual Thoughts has a lot of good posts up. He deserves more readers.

My recipe for today is another Thai favourite. Thais have a brilliant cuisine. This is stir-fried chicken with wood fungus! It tastes as good as it sounds bad. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

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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!

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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ABORTION

Abortion realities "In my four pregnancies - the first of which ended in a traumatic five-month miscarriage, the last three of which resulted in gorgeous, healthy children - I always felt, right from the start, that this was someone else taking up residence within me. Never did I imagine this was "my body" or my property to dispose of as I wished. Equally, it was not my husband's. This was not abstract Life, with a capital L; this was someone else's fragile and vulnerable life, growing slowly. The terrible grief I felt at the miscarriage was not because my body had evacuated a waste product, but because I mourned a human spirit never to be incarnated, who would never be, never know this world. And when my living children were born, I was overwhelmed not only by their beauty, but also by their otherness. They were not me, and never had been, from the very moment of their conception."

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ELSEWHERE

Comment from a reader: "I don't know if you had a chance to see the Condi Rice testimony this week. I thought the Democrats' treatment of her was rather revealing. Ms Rice is an extremely accomplished person - at one time she was the youngest Provost of Stanford University, and she worked in the previous Bush administration as a Soviet expert. She is intelligent, eloquent, attractive, modest, and a strong advocate for her positions. She is at this moment the most powerful black woman in the world, and to my knowledge has not gotten anything via affirmative action. I would have thought that the Democrat left would view her as an example of exactly the kind of people they hoped would emerge from the black community after they forced down the barriers of discrimination. Instead, they attacked her credibility. Cartoonists mocked her. It demonstrated vividly that Leftists really don't care about black people, or any of the other groups they claim to champion. They are only tools the Left uses to gain and hold power".

Gutless Bishop: "Democrat John Kerry -- a pro-choice Catholic whose abortion views have prompted some Catholic leaders to say they want to bar him from Communion -- yesterday received the sacrament during Easter Mass in Boston. ... St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke and Nebraska Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz say they'd refuse Communion to Kerry. Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley has said all pro-choice officials should voluntarily 'refrain' from Communion but has refused to comment on Kerry specifically." Not a patch on Thomas a Beckett.

Falluja: "The United States last night robustly defended its controversial siege of Falluja which has cost the lives of more than 600 people over the past week, by claiming most of those who died were militants picked off with precision by US marines.

Leftist racism: "another form of not-so-crypto-racism: the tendency of Western liberals to lower the moral bar for Palestinians and others in the Middle East. How else can we explain the dearth of speechless outrage in the face of recent events? When Fallujah erupts, when "insurgents" (read: savages) threaten to burn innocent people alive, the response in the New York Times is an op-ed sneering at the administration"

Revel: "The anti-American cult provides its legions of drooling adherents with the crucial element of any faith: the illusion of meaning in an otherwise meaningless existence. That priceless psychological salve, in this case, is the comforting delusion that, no matter how hypocritical, backward, bigoted, ignorant, corrupt or cowardly the cult's followers might otherwise be, at least they are better than those awful Americans..... Thirty-four years ago, Revel was "astonished by evidence that everything Europeans were saying about the US was false"; sadly, this situation has not changed in the slightest in the intervening time".

Aside from their Iraq policy, the Australian Labor party does seem to be moving rightwards. First, they defied the soft line on illegal immigration passionately espoused by their own Left-wing. Second, Labor has made an unexpected "about face" on the failed organization for blacks that it itself created. And now the femocrats are losing out in favour of families.

Socialized medicine again: "Up to 55 per cent of patients needing admission to emergency departments are being forced to wait more than eight hours for a hospital bed, new figures show." Fortunately, Australia has a large private medical system as well.

Dick McDonald has just put up a lot of good posts. I liked this one on the advantages of federalism: "The minute Tiger Woods turned pro, he moved from California to Florida. Only the blind won't recognize that rather than pay California income tax of $10 Million per year, why not move to Florida that doesn't impose any income tax?" In Australia a similar thing happened. My home State of Queensland abolished inheritance taxes. Result? Elderly Australians flocked here. Upshot? The other States had to abolish their inheritance taxes too!

My recipe for today is a Thai classic: Larb moo. It is their version of savoury pork mince. Simple, quick and tasty. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

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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!

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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