ELSEWHERE

There is an article here reporting the ongoing claims by psychologists to the effect that conservatives are nutty --- yet another example of Leftist "projection" of course. The spotlight this time is on claims by a buffoon called Altemeyer. Altemeyer's claims were demolished academically long ago but that is conveniently ignored. See here. Psychologists have always been good at ignoring their own literature if it suits them. See here and here.

I mentioned yesterday an ignorant Leftist "intellectual" who thought that conservatives want to abolish all government. A reader commented: "I took at look at that Matt Young post on "The Panda's Thumb" ... oy vey. More straw men than in your average Nebraska wheatfield"

Such "loving" relationships! "The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association is launching a first-of-its-kind "LGBT Relationship Violence Project" to educate medical professionals about domestic violence in lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender communities.... "Domestic violence is a hugely ignored health issue in the LGBT communities, affecting one in three LGBT relationships," said Susan Holt, an expert on LGBT domestic violence prevention.... The upcoming presentations in Palm Springs will "mark the beginning of GLMA's essential work to educate the medical community about the often-hidden but brutal reality of <> relationship violence," said GLMA President Kenneth Haller, MD.

Great to be welfare dependant: "A woman stayed on hold for more than six hours when she rang her benefits office. Patricia Pattison, 54, clung on to the phone while doing housework, chatting to a friend and having her nails painted. The Leicester grandmother said: 'They said they were busy but I'm not looking forward to my phone bill. The Department for Work and Pensions has apologised.'"

ADHD is genetic too: "Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the controversial "bad behaviour" syndrome, are suffering from a medical condition linked to abnormal development of the brain, scientists said yesterday. Brain scans of children with the disorder - which some critics allege has been invented or exaggerated by drug companies seeking lucrative markets - have revealed a common pattern of changes, providing evidence that ADHD is a genuine biological phenomenon. According to studies, its origins are largely genetic and it is not the result of poor parenting. Growing up in a "chaotic environment", to which parents with poor skills can contribute, may trigger the condition among children who are already genetically susceptible. The condition, which involves restlessness, impulsive behaviour and a short attention span, is thought to affect up to one in twenty British children"

Lancelot Finn on Andrew Sullivan. One excerpt: "If you have guessed by now that the reason I am bringing up Judas Iscariot in an essay about Andrew Sullivan is because Sullivan has turned against Bush, that's not quite it. For one thing, George W. Bush is certainly not Jesus Christ, nor did Sullivan's support for Bush ever amount to discipleship, nor should it have. But when I think about my erstwhile hero Andrew Sullivan, the rock star of the blogosphere, it seems that he and Judas Iscariot share certain fatal flaws. Each was too impetuous, too willful. Each seemed idealistic, principled at any given moment, yet in the end his path was zig-zagging and contradictory and led him nowhere. Judas destroyed the cause he believed in. Andrew Sullivan may yet do so".

Libertarian Party stalwart, Prof. John Hospers has endorsed President Bush on the grounds that America is in great danger and that Kerry cannot be relied upon to act decisively. I actually met Hospers once. He seemed very level-headed. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California and was also for 17 years a professor of astronomy

About flaming time! "Federal prosecutors charged three Kansas City-area residents Thursday with using fraudulent records to vote in both Kansas and Missouri in the Nov. 5, 2002, general election."

A nasty one for the Democrats. It seems that Kerry has a lower IQ than GWB

The best conservative site in Portuguese now has an English version. For anyone who wants the truth about what is going on in Brazil...

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me 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.

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

ELECTION FRAUD

Voter registration in chaos: "In New Mexico, Albuquerque police officer Glen Stout became concerned when his 13-year old son received a voter registration card -- as did one of his son's 15-year old friends. What that means is that Stout's son and the 15-year old neighbor are legally entitled to vote in the State of New Mexico without the fear of being challenged since a law pushed through that State's Democratically-controlled legislature and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson earlier this year prevents precinct workers at any of New Mexico's polls from asking for any form of identification from any voter, or asking their age -- even if fraud is obvious."

Leftists abuse voter registration: "America Votes, a 32-member coalition of anti-Bush organizations - led by such groups as George Soros' MoveOn.org, America Coming Together and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - is spending $100 million on a campaign that voting officials say has resulted in a massive increase in voters nationwide. The aim of this door-to-door voter-registration drive is to identify undecided and potential Democratic voters in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and 11 other battleground states. One member of the coalition, a left-wing activist group known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), claims to have registered 1 million new voters since July 2003. The problem is that at least some of these were fraudulently registered.... Authorities in several states are investigating whether thousands of voter registrations have been fraudulently submitted - many of them by members of the America Votes coalition. In Florida, the Justice Department and state authorities are investigating charges by a former ACORN field director that workers for the organization routinely withheld Republican voter registrations, while thousands of invalid voter registration cards were submitted in their place.

And here is an hilarious example of Leftist "projection" (seeing your own faults in others). If you want to know what is true of Leftists, the simple rule is to look at what they say of conservatives! Excerpt: "The Republicans are out to steal the 2004 election -- before, during, and after Election Day. Before Election Day, they are employing such dirty tricks as improper purges of voter rolls, use of dummy registration groups that tear up Democratic registrations, and the suppression of Democratic efforts to sign up voters, especially blacks and students. On Election Day, Republicans will attempt to intimidate minority voters by having poll watchers threaten criminal prosecution if something is technically amiss with their ID, and they will again use technical mishaps to partisan advantage. But the most serious assault on democracy itself is likely to come after Election Day. Here is a flat prediction: If neither candidate wins decisively, the Bush campaign will contrive enough court challenges in enough states so that we won't know the winner election night."

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

ELSEWHERE

There is a good example here of the utter depth of Leftist political ignorance. The author somehow believes that all conservatives are anarcho-capitalists, the most extreme form of libertarian -- who don't believe in any government at all! Libertarians would certainly be staggered to hear that. It shows what an airtight little intellectual cocoon the author lives in. Conservatives of course do believe in quite a lot of government, though not as much as Leftists do. We would scarcely have President George W. Bush otherwise. I guess the author is another exemplar of that simplistic, "black-and-white thinking" that is so characteristic of Leftists and which they often therefore "project" onto conservatives. Razib gives the ignoramus a good serve too. Needless to say, all the commentary and analysis that flows from such a warped definition of conservatism can safely be ignored. An intellectual who cannot even define his terms accurately is no intellectual at all.

What it means to be a Republican. Well worth reading. Another stereotype-buster for lockstep Leftists.

Bill Vallicella has a post saying that the Left are insensitive to danger. He says this is why they are always pretending that human nnature is good and ignoring the fact that some people can be evil and dangerous. I think it is a bit worse than that. I think Leftist ideologues don't care about reality at all. That's one reason why they often claim that reality does not exist. They are so preoccupied with puffing up their own image and self-esteem that everything else just has to go hang. And anything that threatens that image will simply be denied. They will do and say ANYTHING in order to sound good. Clinically, it is called "Narcissism" and in more extreme cases, it is part of "Psychopathy".

Leftist "principles" are a joke: "I have long insisted that the problem of radical Islam is not a liberal or conservative issue; it's a human rights issue. The unfortunate fact, however, is that largely it is only conservatives who care about it. In the face of the global jihad, the left is strangely silent: no protest marches, no angry full-page ads in the New York Times. When the Left does notice an adulterous woman being stoned to death under Sharia law, or some other outrage in the Islamic world, it is usually dismissed as an aberration or somehow blamed on their all-purpose bogeyman: the United States government.

Good comment on the so-righteous Giving Tree: "In giving to the boy-man at every opportunity, the tree thought it was doing right. Instead, it created a dependency relationship in his human friend that lasts his whole life and that leaves both impoverished. This is not a quality one would wish for a friend, and even more so, for one’s son or daughter"

There is a huge site here which completely demolishes the Leftist chant that Saddam "had no links to terror"

Lawrence Auster has a very comprehensive article here arguing against America's current de facto policy of allowing millions of illegal immigrants to flow into the country. Australia has a high immigrant inflow too but we insist on choosing whom we allow in. As a result we mainly get high-quality (hard-working, law-abiding) immigrants from East Asia. We were getting a rash of illegal Muslim immigrants for a short while but Australia's conservative government put a stop to that -- to great public acclaim.

White House chickens out on illegal immigration: "The White House yesterday asked Congress to reject an attempt by Republican House leaders to load an intelligence reorganization bill with measures designed to prevent illegal immigration. The White House is making the request because Democrats won't support the bill if it has the immigration measures. The administration wants 'an effective bill that both Houses can pass and the president can sign into law as soon as possible to meet the nation's security needs,'

I have put up a couple of posts on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS recently.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me 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.

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

SOME AUSTRALIAN NEWS EXCERPTS

A big difference to the way American schools treat innocent kids: "A teenager who sparked a gun scare at his high school sat patiently in a classroom as the drama unfolded, unaware he was the person police were scouring the school for. The school, north of Brisbane, went into lockdown late yesterday morning after the boy was seen entering school grounds with what appeared to be a gun... A police spokesman said it appeared charges would not be laid against the boy with the toy gun. "He was going to the school to pick up some school work and had bought the toy as part of a Halloween costume," he said. "He was taking part in the lockdown. He didn't even realise it was a result of his actions."

An excellent satire on the New York Times here. A small excerpt: "The international community is bracing for an influx of political refugees following the collapse of democracy in Australia. Last night the UN Security Council was in emergency session on the situation in Australia, where John Howard seized power in a bloodless election on Saturday. The defeat of democracy had been long foreshadowed by the country's artists and intellectuals, as well as by some prominent columnists..."

Australian Left jolted rightwards by the election: "Mark Latham has promised to push ahead with a more aggressive pro-market reform agenda as he admitted that Labor had not done enough to win voter trust on economic management..... In his first post-mortem on the election, Mr Latham championed the need for a new wave of economic reforms - admitting Labor had to do more to enhance its "economic credentials" with the public... During a sometimes candid interview on the ABC's 7.30 Report, he signalled plans to press ahead with policies on further changes to competition laws and opening up the economy - even if it came at the expense of alienating some of his colleagues and the union movement. "We have to move forward with a new agenda for economic reform consistent with those values about competition, about productivity, about growing the market economy and building incentive and participation into the Australian economic framework," Mr Latham said."

Hooray! "The Government's grip on a historic Senate majority is tightening, with National Party candidate Barnaby Joyce steaming away in the count for Queensland's final Senate seat."

Antisemitism in the Australian Left too: "Former Bob Hawke government minister Barry Cohen has launched a stinging attack on critics of Israel within the Labor Party, saying anti-semitism is now rampant in the ALP. He said the number of Labor MPs who supported Israel were increasingly being drowned out by members of the party's hard left, whom he accuses of making exaggerated claims about the nation... Mr Cohen said his life and character were shaped by the anti-semitism he experienced in his youth. "I was proud to belong to a party [the ALP] that fought all forms of prejudice. Not any longer," he wrote."

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

ELSEWHERE

Good to hear: "For the first time in the Iraq war, according to military officials, US aircraft last week directly bombed a mosque. The airstrike northwest of Ramadi ended an intense firefight in which insurgents, holed up inside the shrine with heavy weapons, held off the US Marines for three hours. Precision-guided munitions set the Sharqi mosque ablaze, but left it standing. 'The Marines couldn't even get close to the building to do anything because of the firepower that was coming out of there,' making the mosque a legitimate target, says a senior military official in Baghdad. 'The only way to stop this was with a strike.' The incident illustrates how US and Iraqi forces over the past three months have adopted increasingly tough tactics against a dug-in insurgency: raiding mosques, dropping bombs and firing rockets in cities, and conducting large-scale infantry sweeps into urban 'no-go zones.'"

This article sees Islamic terrorism as the last desperate gasp of a defeated civilization: "The madness of the Islamists' spectacular attack on the World Trade Center is self-evident; its despair lies in its inevitably annihilating impact on the plotters and perpetrators themselves, world Islamism in general, and the al Qaeda networks, organizations, and systems of support in particular (including the Taliban regime in Afghanistan).... Today the hard-core Islamists' spectacular terrorist violence reflects a no less desperate attempt to break out of the historical impasse and terminal structural crisis reached by the world Islamist movement in the second half of the 20th century. I predict this violence will be the prelude to the dissipation and final demise of militant Islamism in general. Like the armed factions in Europe who had given up on society, political parties, reform, proletarian revolution, and traditional communist organization in favor of violent action, militant Islamism has given up on contemporary Muslim society".

One result of favouring "minorities" in hiring. Loss of standards: "Five police officers in Los Angeles stand accused of pursuing a four-year armed robbery spree, using squad cars, uniforms and badges to make the brazen heists look like official raids. At least two men were shot with stun guns during the robberies, while another was beaten with a police baton, had a gun stuffed into his mouth and was burnt with a cigarette lighter. The five men, working with as many as fifteen accomplices, including a professional female boxer, stole 320kg (700lb) of marijuana and 50kg of cocaine, as well as cars, firearms and jewellery. The gang used Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) surveillance tactics to keep a look out for police or witnesses, and restrained victims with standard-issue handcuffs." See also here.

British socialism shoots itself in the foot: "Warnings that Gordon Brown will be forced to raise taxes quickly in the event of a victory in next year's general election increased yesterday after the emergence of the worst monthly public finance figures on record. Much weaker than expected tax revenues meant that government borrowing last month set a September record of œ4.8 billion, almost double the figure for the same month last year. The bleak September data was blamed by the Treasury on erratic factors affecting spending. But the bad news from last month ended a highly disappointing first half to the financial year, during which the Government borrowed œ22.75 billion - more than two thirds of the Chancellor's œ33 billion full-year forecast".

There is an article here pointing out at length that with John Kerry, what you see is NOT what you get. He will say and do anything to gain power -- even imitate 95% of GWB's policies -- but his voting record reveals him for the far-Leftist he is.

Good augury for GWB: "In a March 2003 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen dismissed worries that the American public would lose heart if there were too many casualties in the then-imminent Iraq war. "All the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . .," Ledeen declared. "What we hate is not casualties but losing.""

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me 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.

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

BIG MAL IS JEWISH

I am a great fan of Professor Bunyip. His use of humour to deflate Australian Leftists is something that I can only aspire to. I note however that he seems to concur with the usual view among Australian conservatives that Malcolm Fraser was our worst Prime Minister in living memory. Fraser was in his younger days known as very Right-wing and as a fan of Ayn Rand but in office he did very little to introduce market-oriented reforms. These days he is best remembered for losing his trousers on a hot night in Memphis, Tennessee! Courtesy of Michael Darby, I once met Big Mal for a brief chat and it was a great struggle to keep the word "trousers" out of the conversation, I can tell you!

I agree that the Fraser years (1975-1983) were "lost years" as far as most market reforms were concerned but Fraser does have some reasonably good conservative credentials nonetheless. It is often forgotten that he was ahead of Margaret Thatcher in rolling back socialism -- in that he started de-nationalizing Australian health-care in 1976 (though the present dual system was not fully in place until 1981). Margaret Thatcher, of course, first came to office in 1979. And Fraser was a strong supporter of the United States and its policies -- and he also cut back government spending, which is more than G.W. Bush can claim.

And doing nothing whilst in office is not an entirely inappropriate thing for a conservative Prime Minister to do anyway. It beats constant government meddling and multiplication of laws! Australia's most revered conservative Prime Minister -- Sir Robert Menzies -- is also remembered for the paucity of his "initiatives" and the stability of Australian life during his long term in office.

On anything to do with race and ethnicity, however, Big Mal rivals the Left for "correctness" -- and he bears some responsibility for the installation of the ghastly Robert Mugabe as ruler of the unfortunate people of Zimbabwe. The reason behind that, however, seems never to be mentioned. Fraser is technically Jewish. Although his own religion is nominal Protestant, his mother was Jewish -- which makes Fraser Jewish under Jewish law. And Jews are of course understandably hypersensitive about matters to do with race. It is however remarkable testimony to the very low level of antisemitism in Australia that a man can become Prime Minister of Australia without his Jewishness ever even being mentioned. I think it also shows how "racist" Australian conservatives are that they chose Fraser to lead them -- rather like those "racist" British conservatives who chose Benjamin Disraeli to lead them in the 19th century and Michael Howard to lead them in the 21st.

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

ELSEWHERE

Maybe some hope for the British Tories after all: "Michael Howard has recruited the man who helped his namesake, John Howard, win four elections in Australia to head his campaign for the general election expected next May. The Tories claimed they had pulled off a coup by appointing Lynton Crosby as their election campaign director".

United Nations corruption (1): It not only refused to prosecute one of their staff who took part in the Rwandan genocide, but paid him handsomely as well.

United Nations corruption (2): "This month, the United Nations Security Council voted to condemn terrorism. The resolution was introduced by Russia, still grieving over the terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, and perhaps the unanimous vote will give it a measure of solace. But the convoluted text and the dealings behind the scenes that were necessary to secure agreement on it offer cold comfort to anyone who cares about winning the war against terrorism. For what they reveal is that even after Beslan and after Madrid and after 9/11, the U.N. still cannot bring itself to oppose terrorism unequivocally. The reason for this failure is that the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which comprises 56 of the U.N.'s 191 members, defends terrorism as a right".

It looks like the bombing of the Atlanta Olympics was the work of Islamic terrorists and that the Clintons covered that up.

Homosexuals are great demanders of tolerance but don't seem so tolerant themselves. The "Log Cabin Republicans" (an allegedly conservative homosexual organization) have "excommunicated" one of their chapters because it dared to endorse GWB!

The EU is showing how tolerant it is too -- doing its best to block a traditional Italian Catholic from taking a high office in its administration.

Not all Democrats are out of touch with reality. This one is voting for GWB because he alone takes the Islamic threat seriously. Apparently even 9/11 in their own backyard was not enough to shake the appeasement delusions of most New York City Democrats.

Fabian's Hammer has been blogging up a storm about China recently. An important country to know about.

A rather amusing post on Che Guevara here.

Conservative Brazilian blogger Luis Afonso has started a blog in English here. The English is a bit fractured but is perfectly understandable. He wants people to know of the "Red Tide" that is washing over Brazil at the moment.

Let's Try Freedom has some evidence that Andrew Sullivan is on the slide. Sullivan's twisted attitude to his British homeland put me off him long ago so I think he deserves to be taken less seriously. Taranto noted his prejudiced attitudes recently too. And Keith Burgess-Jackson thinks Sullivan argues disreputably.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual selection of the best of the blogosphere.

I have a big post on the flu vaccine crisis up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me 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.

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

SNERDS

Ian McFadyen has an excellent analysis of what the calls the "Snerds" or "sneering classes" -- educated Leftists who dominate the media and cultural institutions. Some excerpts: "It is not a snobbery based on wealth or aristocratic origins. It is the snobbery of people, usually from modest backgrounds who have created sense of class superiority for themselves on the basis of possessing the right attitudes rather than property or wealth. It is a snobbery based on being "well informed", of being "concerned" and "having a sense of social morality."... What makes this class of people snobbish rather than simply pretentious is their tendency to sneer. It is a tone which implies that certain thing in life are so axiomatic that no discussion of them is necessary or even possible...

What is difficult about conversing with a Snerd is the degree to which their attitudes are locked down.... Any such challenge to the basic tenets of their beliefs will simply be sneeringly discarded and the questioner relegated to one of the baskets of ratbag, fascist, racist, right wing reactionary, capitalist, Philistine or ill-informed... The inflexibility of the Snerd arises from a personal arrogance that he or she is a well-educated, well-informed and intelligent person who has "worked all this out" and come to - what they believe to be - the only possible solution. Snerds are characteristically blind to the fact that their belief systems are based, not on an independent intellectual of the issues, but on attitudes received from a very narrow range of sources, and shaped by the prejudices of a sub-culture.....

When they express opinions on a matter they do so more to define the boundaries of their own class than to actually change anything in the community..... Thus, while Snerds are quick to opinionate in areas which they feel will enhance their image as culturally superior - politics, law, the arts, they have no opinions at all on, and are careful not to get involved with, matters which they consider down-market like agriculture. Primary production, manufacturing and manual labour simply do not exist in the Snerd universe.

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

ELSEWHERE

There was some crap science reported last year that encouraged older women to give up HRT. The science was crap because the differences between groups that it relied on were not statistically significant. See my post of October 27 last year. Nonetheless, everybody hates drug companies so doctors everywhere jumped on the bandwagon and tried to get women off their pills. We now see how dangerous crap science is. It looks like the advice could have killed a lot of women. Read this report: "Hormone replacement therapy significantly increases the life expectancy of older women, but only if they begin taking the drugs soon after the onset of the menopause, a major review of the evidence has found. A new analysis of 30 trials involving a total of 26,708 women has revealed that the benefits of the treatment substantially outweigh the risks, so long as it is started before a woman reaches the age of 60. In women who started HRT at 56, the risk of death from all causes was cut by 39 per cent". I had a big post on crap science on GREENIE WATCH yesterday too.

Leftists like those Chads! Should we hang him? "A Defiance County man has been arrested for allegedly filing more than 100 false voter registration forms in exchange for crack cocaine from a Toledo woman working on behalf of the NAACP's voter registration drive. Chad Staton, 22, of Stratton Ave., faces a fifth-degree felony charge of false registration after sheriff's deputies said he filled out the registration forms by himself -- using either fictitious names or addresses -- and gave them to Georgianne Pitts, 41".

Kerry excommunicated: "An unusual letter from the consultor to a Vatican agency rules that Catholic politicians who support abortion rights have already excommunicated themselves by their actions - a message that suggests Sen. John Kerry is no longer a member of the church. The Rev. Basil Cole, a Dominican theologian and consultor to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote the letter to Marc Balestrieri, a Los Angeles lawyer of canonical law... Catholic World News reported the letter potentially undercuts the entire debate over denying Communion to politicians who support abortion. An excommunicated Catholic may not receive any of the sacraments of the church, including the Eucharist, marriage and even Christian burial. According to the news service, the type of excommunication outlined in the new information is called latae sententiae, which means that it occurs automatically and does not require a formal pronouncement by any church official."

Belmont Club has a good post on the disgusting European attempt to avoid acknowledging Saddam's mass-murders.

An amusing account of the European far-Left at work here

Jeff Jacoby on why the definition of marriage should not be left to judges: "Bush is right: It is not in our national interest for so grave a question to be decided by judicial diktat. Far better that it be decided openly and fairly, with public debate and the participation of Congress and the states. Anything else would be profoundly undemocratic -- and unwise."

Discrimination in Hollywood: "For years, the actor Ron Silver was a partisan Democrat - a one-time president of the Actors' Equity union and co-founder, with colleagues like Susan Sarandon and Christopher Reeve, of the Creative Coalition, which encouraged left-leaning political activism among celebrities.... Everything changed for Silver after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Now he calls himself a "9/12 Republican." A strong supporter of Israel and the war in Iraq, Silver spoke at the Republican National Convention in New York and is featured prominently in a new documentary, "FahrenHYPE 9/11," a searing indictment of Michael Moore's blockbuster film. Silver says his political change of heart and outspoken support of President Bush has exacted a high professional cost in Hollywood, where Republicans are a decidedly rare breed. "It's affected me very badly. I can't point to a person or a job I've lost, but this community is not very pluralistic," Silver said. "I haven't worked for 10 months.""

There is an appalling story here about pervasive antisemitism in the Swedish media. The President of Sweden's Association of Journalists once wrote that Saddam Hussein's prisons were 'better than Swedish apartments'. What a sad apology for a human being he must be!

There's a good spoof of the New York Times here.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me 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.

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

ECONOMICS AGAIN

"The Antitrust Paradox" continues: "Specifically, Judge Bork explained that the overzealous application of the antitrust laws and the resulting intervention into otherwise free markets did not maximize consumer welfare by ensuring lower prices, as is the purpose of antitrust policy. Instead, such an approach achieved the opposite effect by sacrificing potential consumer savings in order to level the playing field between admittedly unevenly matched competitors. In other words, the economic reality of antitrust enforcement is to prevent consumers from reaping the benefits of lower prices ..."

Globalization: "Why Globalization Works is one of the best books within the huge literature on globalisation. Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times and avid free marketer, sets out to demolish the arguments of the 'anti-globalisation' campaigners. He has several advantages over the anti-globalisation campaigners. Perhaps most important is his belief, stated at the beginning of the book, that ideas matter. He is fully immersed in the literature on globalisation, from technical economic texts to anti-globalisation tracts, and even quotes Marx and Lenin. He also has an excellent empirical grasp of the world economy, a quality authors on globalisation frequently lack".

Crazy: Borrowing to put off cutbacks: "Conservative activists vowed Thursday to sue the state if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proceeds next week with his $920 million, 20-year borrowing plan to pay off part of one year's pension obligations. Attorneys for the Pacific Legal Foundation said Schwarzenegger's widely expected move would violate a state constitutional ban on governments borrowing more than $300,000 without a popular vote. The foundation represents a Fullerton taxpayers group aiming to derail the idea..... This, said Thom Babcock, an Orange County business owner and president of the Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers, is "the Enronization of California. They're borrowing money to pay daily debts. It's not for a single purpose, to build freeways, hospitals or bridges. It's borrowing to pay daily bills."

Globalization gives prosperity AND peace: "Critics of globalization forget that free trade fosters prosperity and know almost nothing about its most important benefit-its tendency to prevent war. Quantitative studies have shown that trade fosters peace both directly, by reducing the risk of military conflict, and indirectly, by promoting prosperity and democracy." [And it is poor nations that desperately need it]

U.S. poverty is mostly among illegal immigrants: "Many middle-class families achieved large income gains in the 1990s and -- despite the recession and halting recovery -- have kept those gains... The increase in poverty in recent decades stems mainly from immigration. Until our leaders acknowledge the connection between immigration and poverty, we'll be hamstrung in dealing with either. Let's examine the Census numbers. They certainly don't indicate that, over any reasonable period, middle-class living standards have stagnated. Mostly, the middle class is getting richer"

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

ELSEWHERE

Mark Steyn has a very complimentary article about Australian Prime Minister John Howard. I liked this line: "Howard's a more consequential figure in world affairs these days than Chirac". Steyn has however fallen for the Leftist slur that Howard is short. He is not. He is 5'10" tall. Steyn does however rightly mock the Leftist spin that the Iraq war was not an issue in the election. The promise by the Left to get the troops out by Christmas was all over the papers. Can you imagine the Left NOT making a big issue out of Iraq? One generally overlooked factor in Howard's appeal is his characteristic humility -- a big contrast with Leftist arrogance. See here for instance.

How times change: "Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned terrorist attacks in Iraq and around the world will increase if George W Bush is not re-elected in next month's presidential poll. The Russian leader's comments are a tacit endorsement of his American counterpart. Mr Putin says the terrorist attacks in Iraq are aimed personally at President George W Bush. He says international terrorist groups want to cause maximum damage to the American President's campaign for re-election and prevent him from winning the November 2 poll".

Why Kerry is bad for Israel: "So why am I still exercised about John Kerry? It's the ramifications of his foreign policy in general, especially his fixation on the United Nations as the arbiter of international legitimacy, proctor of that "global test." Save for the U.S. veto in the Security Council, Israel loses every struggle at the U.N. against lopsided majorities. In the General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission, Muslim states trade their votes to protect aggressors and tyrannies from censure in exchange for libels against the Jewish state. The body's bloated and dishonest bureaucracies are no better, as evidenced most recently by the head of the U.N. Palestine refugee organization, who defended having Hamas militants on his staff. I've searched to find one time when Kerry - even candidate Kerry - criticized a U.N. action or statement against Israel. I've come up empty"

Social Security. Lying Leftists again: "First, the NY Times ran a Bush quote from an event the reporter did not attend, then within hours of the piece running, the Kerry campaign managed to put an ad together and have the press releases done and all the media reporting on it. "New Kerry Ad Exposes Bush's January Surprise - Social Security Privatization...." There's only one problem. The reporter in question, Ron Suskind, did not attend the event he got the quote from. Further, it was not televised, it was a private event and there were no transcripts available. Yet he reports the quote as fact.... For their part, the Bush campaign is denying the quote and some even claimed Suskind made the quote up from whole cloth. In the end, it is of little use, the media is running wild with the story, facts be damned". More here.

In case you have not seen it already, the email about Iraq that George Soros first posted and then deleted is still up here. Clearly, George saw that he had lost the argument.

There's nothing new under the sun. Further to my lightbulb story yesterday, a reader tells me: "Queensland had a light globe changing organisation over a decade ago. It was called Many Hands and was operated by Adrian Collings, a former postmaster from Fernvale. It was started primarily to service high rise rental properties on the Gold Coast but also serviced pensioners, handicapped and anyone else who required it".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me 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.

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

SOME MORE ECONOMICS

The real job figures: "U.S. job creation continued to move ahead at a steady pace with the announcement Friday that 96,000 non-farm payrolls were added to the economy. Over the past thirteen months 1.9 million new jobs have been created. The unemployment rate stands at a historically low 5.4 percent"

Sowell: "Those who vote on the basis of what the government can do for them are especially short-sighted during a war against worldwide terror networks. What good would it do to get free prescription drugs forever if your forever is likely to be cut short by more attacks like those on September 11, 2001?"

Myths about U.S. workers: "The claim that a large part of the American population can make ends meet only with the help of moonlighting falls on fertile ground among pundits and politicians who promote the view that something is profoundly wrong with U.S.-style capitalism. As John Kerry put it at the Democratic convention in Boston: "People are working weekends; they're working two jobs, three jobs, and they're still not getting ahead.... Also ignored is that only one-in-four multiple jobholders in America says he actually needed more than one job to meet expenses or pay off debt. This point is reinforced by the fact that the higher your formal education, the more likely you are to take a second job. Among Americans with a Master's degree or a Ph.D., multiple jobholding is almost three times as common as it is among high school dropouts."

Minimum wage myths : "Of all the economic myths my students bring to the first day of class, perhaps the most prevalent is that the minimum wage is desirable because, without it, employers would pay substandard wages. My new students -- by and large the products of public education -- have not yet had the benefit of being taught to think economically. If they had any economics education at all in high school, it involved being bombarded with graphs, charts, and curves, the meaning of which they never really were taught, perhaps because their teachers had never been taught either."

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

ELSEWHERE

Another marvel of capitalism: "Hot on the heels of dog walkers, personal shoppers and errand runners, Queensland now has its first domestic light-bulb changing service.... For $44 - plus the cost of the bulb - one of four technicians from the Light Globe Doctor will come to your home. "My elderly grandmother couldn't change her lightbulbs and that's what gave me the idea for the business. "When I first started, I thought I'd be going around to little old ladies houses to change their bulbs for them. But since we started 12 months ago, I've only had a couple. "We've been doing about 180 jobs a week and a lot of my customers are just too busy making money at work and doing other things to change them. "Rather than going to the shop, finding the right light-bulb and then changing it, they call me to do it. "I've even been doing jobs after hours. People get home from work, find the light has blown and give us a call. "I did a job for a lady recently who only wanted the one bulb changed."

Leftist hate backfired in Australia: "Above all, what the federal election reaffirmed is that the public, in general, recoils from the rhetoric of hate. Latham, no matter how much he sought to sanitise his image, is an old-fashioned factional headkicker. So is Bob Brown, in his own way, despite being beatified by the media. But the leader of the Greens is the most uncompromising party leader in federal politics, along with the rest of the Permanently Outraged. In short, the progressive movement suffered a meltdown in the election.... All those people who went around Sydney painting signs, "Howard war criminal" and "Howard lies", and all the secular fundamentalism from Brown, and all those loud and proud Howard haters in the media, have yielded a bitter harvest. The public, in its totality, does not reward the rhetoric of hate. And hate is the only word for the undisciplined partisan bile that has spewed from people who should know better."

Privatizing local government works brilliantly: "Crestwood, Illinois [is] being billed as the best run town in America because it operates like a business. This article pointed out that Crestwood, Illinois, with a population of about 12,000, is run so efficiently that the citizens that year were to receive a 26% rebate on their property taxes. Wow! The town is so well off that residents over age 55 get free household repairs, their shrubs cut for free and the goal of this super efficient government was to one day totally eliminate property taxes altogether".

Voter turnout: "Every election year there are great alarms in the media that not enough Americans vote. Supposedly this shows that there is something wrong at the core of our society. In reality, societies where different groups are at each other's throats often have high voter turnout, as each fears the worst if some other group gains political power. Polarization is a high price for high voter turnout. But there are already efforts to scare old people that their Social Security is threatened in order to get out their vote. ... It is young people who are likelier to find their promised pensions are not there when they get old -- unless they get some private pension in the meantime, with or without Social Security privatization. Since 90 percent of the black vote goes to Democrats, it is especially important for Democrats to scare blacks, to get a large turnout."

There is now a book out called The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century . It shows why the English-speaking nations as a whole (including Israel) are likely to continue their cultural and intellectual dominance of the world.

Well-said: "Pardon our populism, but we're a lot more impressed by the views of millions of ordinary voters than by those of all the academics in the world. Democracy and human rights are safer in the hands of people who directly benefit from them, soberly appreciate their value and rightly fear the alternatives than they are in the hands of overpaid, overfed, overpraised intellectual snobs who take their considerable safety and excessive comfort for granted, and spend far too much of their time sneering at those who don't belong to their self-regarding little subculture, but are expected to pay their salaries nonetheless".

Maverick philosopher: "I've said it before, and I'll say it again: It is is a mistake to suppose that the only support for an anti-abortion position must rest on religious premises. Senator John Kerry made this mistake last night during his third and final 'debate' with President Bush" [I agree. I view abortion with horror, even though I am an atheist].

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me 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.

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

SOME ECONOMICS

Reduce poverty by reducing government: "The enemies of capitalism and economic freedom shed crocodile tears over poverty. Their policies do not alleviate it but worsen it. They deprive many workers of the very possibility of working, and when those workers are permitted to work, compel them to be confronted with the needless competition of other workers driven from other lines of work by the same kind of policies. And they compel all workers, especially the poorest, to pay needlessly higher prices: all are compelled to pay higher prices insofar as the productivity of labor is held down; and the poorest in particular are compelled to pay higher prices as the result of the same monopolistic privileges that drive their wages down. As I have shown, economic freedom, not government interference, is the means of overcoming poverty"

Moronic "activists": "The Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) has joined up with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to launch a nationwide boycott of Yum Brands Inc. Yum Brands is the owner of many successful fast food chains including; Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, A&W Root Beer, and Taco Bell. TacoBell is where CIW seems to have their beef with Yum Brands. Taco Bell is the largest purchaser of tomatoes from farms in Immokalee South Florida. These farms utilize local migrant laborers to harvest different crops of vegetables including, cucumbers, watermelon, and tomatoes. Most of the migrant laborers are not legal citizens and do not fall within the confines of minimum wage requirements and typical employment regulations. They receive per bushel wages rather than hourly or salaried compensation. For each bushel picked a migrant worker receives an average of 45 - 50 cents. .... Staging a boycott against Taco Bell does not change the guided self interest of taco eating teenagers. In the short run it has the exact opposite effect of its intended purpose. Boycotting Taco Bell lowers the demand for tacos, which in turn lowers the demand for the inputs required to make them, which in turn lowers the prices for wages paid to migrant workers needed to pick tomatoes."

The welfare state rewards liars: "Many bad things can be said about the welfare state -- the political arrangement, as the 19th-century French liberal Frederic Bastiat wrote, by which 'everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.' But one largely unnoticed feature is that it rewards people for suspending their moral sense. Frankly, it makes winners out of liars."

Outsourcing: "What you won't find on the Kerry website are any references to serious studies of outsourcing. The reason is that they all find the issue to be seriously overblown: Outsourcing is responsible for a trivial amount of job loss at most, and is generally a positive for the U.S. economy. Serious studies of outsourcing include ones by former Democratic administration officials."

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

ELSEWHERE

The New York Sun Endorses GWB: "By all these measures Mr. Bush strikes us as the far better candidate - more intelligent, more principled, more trustworthy." Good to have a loud conservative voice in NYC.

Holocaust deniers are now welcome in Germany. Muslim ones, that is. See here.

He's probably pissing into the wind but the ideas are good: "Tony Blair demanded an end to the decades-old Franco-German domination of Europe yesterday as he called for the EU to forge a "common agenda" with the United States to solve the world's problems. He suggested there was a danger that this year's eastward enlargement of the EU could open fresh divisions if the community's founding members did not accept new countries from the former communist east as equals.... Mr Blair told a conference of centre-Left leaders in Budapest that it was essential to build an outward-looking Europe of "equal partners" which regarded America as an ally rather than a "rival"..... Allies of Mr Blair said he wanted to ensure that the 10 new member states who joined the EU in May - eight of them former communist nations - felt part of a pro-Atlanticist club and not inferiors in an elitist inward-looking community. Mr Blair also chose the Budapest meeting to demand that the EU modernise its economy and abandon its reliance on heavily regulated labour markets based on the post-war social model".

A good comment from "Bag of Worms": "For craftsmen [mediocre professors], colleges and universities are models of the collectively organized, subsidized, noncompetitive welfare state endorsed by radical politics. Craftsmen professors live a middle class life without having to work hard for it. No doubt some professors do work hard; it is necessary, if a professor desires to be a star, to work 60 hours week. If the professor has no desire to be a star, she can work a 30 hour week; so many professors simply coast. They have nine-month contracts. They supplement their income with junior level administrative jobs that could be done by a community college graduate. A significant portion of the craftsmen professor's career is thereby subsidized like welfare. In this situation, the political affiliation of professors is not the result of their special insight about America. Their affiliation does not spring from supposed gifts of natural genius. College professors align themselves with the Democratic Party simply as an expression of their self-interest in enjoying a welfare state.

Another comment on the most famous book about IQ: "Most of TBC consists of summaries of research in the field of psychometry - that is, the measuring of various attributes of the human mind. The rest is thoughtful commentary on the possible implications of those results for the future of American society. The authors take a broad and humane point of view on this latter topic, arguing that a good society is one in which every person, even a person of limited intellectual powers, can live a useful and satisfying life. They assert that present-day U.S. society is trending away from this ideal, towards a sort of oligarchy dominated by a "cognitive elite" of intellectually gifted lawyers and administrators, ruling over and practicing a sort of smug paternalism toward those less successful than themselves in the meritocratic rat race".

Feminist dogma on partner abuse: "October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which should be an opportunity for some meaningful and informative discussion of how to deal with this important issue. Unfortunately, it looks like we are going to get a lot of boilerplate rhetoric that will generate far more heat than light. ... Once again, partner violence is being defined exclusively as male victimization of women and as a society-wide epidemic. In fact, the National Violence Against Women Survey conducted for the National Institute of Justice in 1996 found that about 22 percent of women had been physically assaulted by an intimate partner -- mostly pushed, grabbed or slapped -- at least once in their lifetime. By these standards, I am a 'victim' too: Some 20 years ago, during a tumultuous breakup, my then-boyfriend slapped me. Of course, by these standards, I am also an 'abuser,' since I had slapped him first. I'm not especially proud of it, and neither, I'm sure, is he; but this is not the kind of problem societal resources should be marshaled to combat."

For a variety of reasons I have always liked Iceland (though I have never been there). This post reinforces my views. It shows how well Iceland is doing despite its poor natural resources. Why? Mainly because of less bureaucracy combined with a Norse population.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me 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.

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

SANCTIMONIOUS GARBAGE FROM A PROFESSOR OF "PEACE STUDIES"

"And, perhaps most importantly, the consequences of a failed U.S. policy in the Middle East are much greater. While U.S. policy in Southeast Asia was responsible for enormous human suffering, the costs of that failed policy to the United States - despite the loss of over 50,000 soldiers, the drain on the economy, and the enormous divisions in the body politic that are yet to heal - were relatively small by comparison. Indeed, it is important to remember that, despite all the heinous crimes the United States committed against the people of Vietnam, the Vietnamese never flew airplanes into buildings"

More here.

Wayne Lusvardi comments: "This is the kind of Leftist counterfactuals and historical revisionism that is spewed forth on Libertarian websites regarding American intervention in Vietnam as the alleged forerunner of the current Iraq War. Prof. Zunes states that even though the U.S. committed "heinous" crimes against the people of Vietnam, the Vietnamese never flew airplanes into buildings." As a former member of the U.S. 25th Infantry Division, Cu Chi, South Vietnam, I found the above statements to be patently false. I assisted the Division psychiatrist in conducting psychiatric clearances for dishonorable discharges and for alleged war crimes. The U.S. "atrocities" in Vietnam paled by comparison to those of the Viet Cong and were immediately brought to justice. I witnessed "VC" tactics firsthand. First they would murder the Buddhist priest, then the Catholic priest, and then the school principal to subjugate a village. Even Communist double agent Truong Nhu Tang in his book "A Vietnam Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and its Aftermath" documents how after the Americans pulled out of Vietnam that there was a reign of murder and gulag camps that made even Communist sympathizers in the South regret kicking the U.S. out. Even anti-war and peace activist Tang had to flee Vietnam as one of "boat people." One needs to go to a university to learn such propaganda?"

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

FROM BROOKES NEWS

John Howard's triumph is a victory in the war on terror Howard fought a clean election and won it fair and square, regardless of what our leftwing journalists and self-appointed intellectual elites think
Marian Wilkinson distorted facts about President Bush and the Florida vote Like the vast majority of leftwing journalists the Bush-hating Marian Wilkinson cannot contain her political bigotry
Long memories helped bury Mark Latham and the Labor Party I believe that the electorate's memory of Keating's high interest rate regime played a significant role in Mark Latham's defeat
Marian Wilkinson distorts Edwards-Cheney debate Reading Marian Wilkinson makes one realise why journalism stinks. Her report on the Cheney-Edwards debate could have come straight from the Democratic National Committee"
Channeling Bush: Saddam and OJ Put yourself in the Chief Executive's place. What if OJ Simpson were the dictator of Iraq?

Details here

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

ELSEWHERE

Internet threatened: A recent federal court ruling says the FEC must extend some of the nation's new campaign finance and spending limits to political activity on the Internet. Long reluctant to step into online political activity, the agency is considering whether to appeal. But vice chairwoman Ellen Weintraub said the Internet may prove to be an unavoidable area for the six-member commission, regardless of what happens with the ruling.'I don't think anybody here wants to impede the free flow of information over the Internet,' Weintraub said. 'The question then is, where do you draw the line?'"

Wow! Hotmail have just upgraded their mailboxes to 250mb

The third Presidential debate : "Spinning facts and figures is as old as politics itself, but last night, Sen. John Kerry marshaled a mountain of distortions in his indictment of the Bush administration. Here's the rundown, reserved for purposes of clarity and brevity to the areas of economy and jobs, health care, and college costs ..."

Oil: "Ignoramuses of Left and Right can effortlessly pawn themselves off as sophisticates in any discussion of events of the Middle-East or central Asia by simply declaring that "it's all about oil." Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya. it doesn't matter -- if it's east of Egypt and west of India, we're assured that it's about oil.... Or, as John Kerry has put it, has George W. Bush "sided with the big oil companies" against the people? Not according to the data.... The fact is that the president's interests run directly counter to those of oil companies. In fact, the worse things go for George W. Bush, the better they go for Chevron. That's because the president has tied his political fortunes to the democratization and modernization of Middle Eastern dictatorships, which means that he has set the world on a course towards lower oil prices. It should go without saying, but unfortunately it doesn't, that oil companies benefit from higher oil prices".

Individual rights vs. identity politics: "Only if you advocate group rights and reject individual ones does it make sense to cry out for sexual solidarity in voting. Ironically, such a call reverses the political trend that secured the vote to women in the first place. Namely, the demand for inclusion in human rights: The demand by women to have their rights equally recognized so they were no longer in a separate legal category 'with lunatics, idiots and criminals.'"

Steve Sailer has a good summary of the most famous book on IQ. One excerpt: ""Perhaps because I'm congenitally optimistic, I think The Bell Curve's message is already widely understood, by the American people if not by the elite. Ordinary citizens know that some people are in significant ways more intelligent than others, that only a relative few are extremely bright or extremely dull, and that intelligence bunches up at the center. They know that intelligence is not randomly distributed among members of different identifiable racial and ethnic groups. These are lessons that are taught in everyday life, and you have to undergo a pretty sophisticated indoctrination and enlist in a tightly disciplined ideological army to believe otherwise."

Buchanan: The resurrection of "America First!": "The foreign policy routinely disparaged as 'isolationism' is always on the table. It is the foreign policy most deeply rooted in America's history, heart and vital interests. It is no more going to be 'extinguished' than is Christianity. It is our oldest tradition. Though that tradition may be dismissed by our foreign policy elites as antiquated, selfish and un-idealistic, it is the elites who are out of touch. They do not know the country they live in. They do not know the American people. They never have." [Buchanan is right about isolationism being the historic policy of American conservatives but 9/11 made that policy no longer viable. Circumstances alter cases]

This made me laugh: "Marxist.org.uk was established in 1998 (initially as the British Institute of Contemporary Economic and Political Studies) to provide independent socialist analyses of national and international developments in politics, economics and culture". Marxism unmasked!

There is another amusing reflection on French "philosopher" Derrida and his ilk here.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me 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.

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

AUSTRALIA: ELECTION AFTERMATH

Conservatives to control Senate: "The Coalition was poised to secure a Senate majority last night after Liberal Russell Trood claimed the party's third upper house seat in Queensland and the Nationals became the favourite to win the decisive 39th seat in the 76-seat chamber."

Leftist's hatred his undoing: "The norm in Australian politics when you greet your opponent is a simple handshake, a false smile and an unmeant wish of good luck but Latham, who is 20 years younger and 20kg heavier than Howard, did something that deeply unsettled all of those who might have seen the election eve nightly news. For whatever good Latham may have done in his 10 months as leader, some of it (how much remains uncertain) was undone at the point of his encounter with Howard. As the two men met, Latham grabbed Howard's hand, aggressively wrenching a clearly unsuspecting Prime Minister towards him. False pleasantries followed, with the contact ending by a somewhat more polite pat of Latham's arm by his opponent. Yet for a moment, just for a moment, the nation got the impression Latham was attempting a physical shirt front on a man 20 years his senior. It was an unedifying and undignified incident that left those who saw it with an uneasy feeling. It was a picture that said much about how Latham and Labor think about Howard and the Coalition. It said a lot about why Labor's badly directed campaign went off the rails and allowed the Government to be returned for a fourth term. Latham and Labor's basic feelings about Howard can be summed up in one word: hatred.

Typical Leftist dishonesty. So-called historian Ross Fitzgerald says of John Howard: "In terms of actual policy performance, it's arguable that John Howard squandered his third term. The great work and family adventure, welfare and tax reform, each of these areas was left largely untouched despite the rhetoric. On the industrial front, little was achieved." Fitzgerald somehow "forgets" that Leftist obstruction in the Senate was why Howard was not able to do a lot of what he aimed at.

At least this guy admits how far-Left (sorry: "Progressive") Australia's "Greens" are: "As the weekend's election dust settles, the responsibility for carrying progressive politics forward in this country has fallen squarely to the Australian Greens. They are clearly the third force in Australian parliamentary politics".

Anti-religious media prejudice: Tony Abbott minister, and George Pell cardinal, are two of the hate figures of the Sydney media... Pell is detested because he favours a muscular Christianity, not the limp-wristed social justice variety and Abbott is detested because he wants to inject Christian values into politics and this is ultimate sin for the secular religionists. Labor's schools policy is an incendiary issue. When four Catholic and Anglican bishops, including Pell, released a statement on September 28 criticising the policy as "potentially divisive" most of the media was unsure whether to ignore or denounce it. But one thing it did know -- this was an outrageous intervention in politics. For the liberal media, bishops aren't supposed to get involved in politics, unlike greenies or film stars, unless of course the bishops are opposing a war or calling John Howard a racist in which case they are moral arbiters.... . When Jones raised the schools policy Abbott denied this was discussed and then said "I may have been seeking pastoral counselling from Cardinal Pell." This was the clincher. The idea that a Catholic minister would seek a meeting with a cardinal on a pastoral matter during an election is inconceivable within Australia's media culture."

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

ELSEWHERE

Don't they realize that Leftists NEED censorship? "The Federal Communications Commission won't intervene to stop a broadcast company's plans to air a critical documentary about John Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities on dozens of TV stations, the agency's chairman said" [Leftists cannot afford to have the full truth known on almost anything].

Amusing: "Jacques Derrida, the father of the pseudo-philosophy of "Deconstructionism", has been deconstructed into the next world. He had been conducting a terminal "narrative" with cancer. Well, at least that is the subjective unproven conclusion we have, since, after all, how do we REALLY know that death and cancer exist? .... Deconstructionism is the nonsensical infantile "philosophy" that argues that words have no meaning, there are no facts nor truth, and the only thing we can REALLY be absolutely certain about are that the US and capitalism and Israel are evil and must be eliminated."

Group of bishops using influence to oppose Kerry "For Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate in Colorado, there is only one way for a faithful Catholic to vote in this presidential election, for President Bush and against Senator John Kerry. "The church says abortion is a foundational issue,'' the archbishop explained.... Archbishop Chaput, who has never explicitly endorsed a candidate, is part of a group of bishops intent on throwing the weight of the church into the elections. Galvanized by battles against same-sex marriage and stem cell research and alarmed at the prospect of a President Kerry - who is Catholic but supports abortion rights - these bishops and like-minded Catholic groups are blanketing churches with guides identifying abortion, gay marriage and the stem cell debate as among a handful of "non-negotiable issues."... In an interview in his residence here, Archbishop Chaput said a vote for a candidate like Mr. Kerry who supports abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research would be a sin that must be confessed before receiving Communion..... The campaign is pushing to break the traditional allegiance of Catholic voters to the Democratic Party, an affiliation that began to crumble with Ronald Reagan 24 years ago. Catholics make up about a quarter of the electorate"

Leading economists have a message for America: "John Kerry favors economic policies that, if implemented, would lead to bigger and more intrusive government and a lower standard of living for the American people." That was the conclusion released in a statement Wednesday by 368 economists, including six Nobel laureates: Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, and - the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Economics - Edward C. Prescott. The economists warned that Sen. Kerry's policies "would, over time, inhibit capital formation, depress productivity growth, and make the United States less competitive internationally. The end result would be lower U.S. employment and real wage growth."

I have just put up here a translation from the Portuguese of an article by Brazilian blogger Luis Afonso. It was well-received in Brazilian conservative circles so I am happy to make it available in English. Its title is: "Socialism: a highway to Hell".

Michael Darby is online again with a detailed statistical summary of the recent Australian elections (PDF).

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me 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.

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

MORE ON ANTI-AMERICANISM

Stupid anti-Americanism goes back a long way: "Frances Trollope, author of Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), probably the single most influential person shaping European perceptions of America in the nineteenth-century, observed that the greatest difference between England and the United States was "want of refinement." In America, she explained, "that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of."

European failure breeds envy: "When German politicians refer to Amerikanische Verhaltnisse - "the American way" - they do it with a sneer. Olaf Gersemann, noting the wild popularity of Michael Moore's film screeds, scolds his countrymen for naively swallowing his stereotypes and economic prejudices. This gives new meaning to the insult "Stupid White Men.".... Europe suffers from a collective inferiority complex, seeming to be helpless against the tides of the new century. Europe is heavily armed, but only with envy".

Christopher Hitchens says that the Islamic challenge has exposed the unprincipled anti-Americanism of the modern Left. A small excerpt: "He explains that he believes the moment the left's bankruptcy became clear was on 9/11. "The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represents all the most reactionary elements on earth. They stand for liquidating everything the left has fought for: women's rights, democracy? And how did much of the left respond? By affecting a kind of neutrality between America and the theocratic fascists." He cites the cover of one of Tariq Ali's books as the perfect example. It shows Bush and Bin Laden morphed into one on its cover. "It's explicitly saying they are equally bad. However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this. It is not the Taliban, and anybody - any movement - that cannot see the difference has lost all moral bearings." Hitchens - who has just returned from Afghanistan - says, "The world these [al-Quadea and Taliban] fascists want to create is one of constant submission and servility. The individual only has value to them if they enter into a life of constant reaffirmation and prayer. It is pure totalitarianism, and one of the ugliest totalitarianisms we've seen. It's the irrational combined with the idea of a completely closed society". There are two other Leftist commentators here who agree with Hitchens about the anti-democratic and anti-American nature of the current Left.

Germany today: "The unprecedented character assasination perpetrated by the German media since 9/11 against the President of the United States has born ample fruit. Only 4% of Germans approve of President Bush. This uniformity of opinion harkens back to Nazi times. It is an indicator that the German people have been misinformed and disinformed on a massive scale. They are the victims of a bias so large and pervasive that it has permanently damaged German-American relations".

And Daniel Pipes has some amusing quotations from the haters of other people's success:

Comte de Buffon, renowned French scientist (1749): The American "heart is frozen, their society cold, their empire cruel."
Talleyrand, French politician (1790s): It is a country of "32 religions and only one dish . and even that [is] inedible."
Alexis de Tocqueville, French social philosopher (1835): "I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion."
Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist (1930s): "America is a mistake, a gigantic mistake."
George Bernard Shaw, British playwright (1933): "An asylum for the sane would be empty in America."
Henry Miller, American novelist (1945): America is "a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen."
Harold Pinter, British playwright (2001): The United States is "the most dangerous power the world has ever known."

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

ELSEWHERE

Dennis Prager: "So here's the question that apparently goes unasked of all the Democrats who are sure it is President Bush who lacks intelligence: What would Zarqawi be doing now if he were not slaughtering people in Iraq? Selling used cars in Amman? Playing cello in the Berlin Philharmonic? The president has said from the beginning that a major reason for invading Iraq was to bring the war to the terrorists, and that if we don't fight them on their soil, we will have to fight them on ours"

ABC now openly biased: "But now, the hemorrhage has gotten so bad -- Fox is now starting to beat the broadcast nets on big-news occasions -- that I believe the legacy nets have decided, "enough is enough." The people who work for the big media have figured out that if they are going to be accused of liberal bias no matter what they do -- and they can't help themselves, they are mostly liberal -- then they ought to at least go down fighting".

Recent Democrat hate crimes: Shots fired into Knoxville GOP Headquarters and 25 Staffers Avoid Injury as Huntington, W. Va. GOP HQ Fired Upon and Wash. State Re-elect Bush HQ Burglarized, Campaign Data Stolen and Protestors Ransack Bush/Cheney Headquarters In Orlando and Democrat slugs area GOP chief, GPD says. So What's going on? Why are John Kerry and John Edwards silent? How interesting that Democrats sponsored all of this hate legislation, and THEY are the ones acting out their hate. Michelle Malkin has more.

Australia: Conservative lesbians are "traitors": "One of the strangest tales I heard all week was that the "sisters" of the Valley and New Farm were mobilising against candidate Ingrid Tall in tomorrow's election. Just in case you've been living on the moon, Tall is a doctor, gay and a Liberal, although the three are not necessarily connected. Apparently, the "sisters" - politically active leftish lesbians - see the well-groomed and socially out-there Tall as some kind of gender traitor, if there is any such animal. That's pretty funny when you think about it. At a time when reasonable people increasingly see gender as irrelevant to the political process, some of those most intimately involved seem determined to turn back the clock. [Dr. Tall lost].

There is what amounts to an anti-Chomsky encyclopaedia here. None of it will bother Chomsky, however, so I think he is best dismissed as merely a well-paid entertainer for the more desperate element of the Left.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me 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.

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