ELSEWHERE

Australian politics have always seemed more class-oriented than American politics. Australia lacks the race factor and has never had any equivalent to the old conservative Southern Democrats. An article I have just put online is therefore interesting. It shows that by the 1970s even Australia had lost almost all the class polarization in its political system. Working class people by then were just as likely to vote conservative as Leftist. Cultural factors were already more important. In both America and Australia, of course, the process of change has since then progressed even further -- with the major Leftist parties reversing themselves completely -- now being parties of the social and economic elite rather than of the worker.

I said it first!: "A leading Indonesian scientist challenged the widely publicised theory that fossilised bones found on the eastern island of Flores were from a previously unknown species of human. Professor Teuku Jacob, chief palaeontologist from the state Gajah Mada University, will carry out tests to prove the fossils are from a sub-species of homo sapiens -- "an ordinary human being, just like us"... "It is not a new species. It is a sub-species of homo sapiens classified under the Austrolomelanesid race. If it's not a new species, why should it be given a new name?" the professor said." As soon as I saw the initial reports on this, I said that these Indonesian pygmies were probably relatives of the Northern Australian pygmies. See here and here for my relevant posts on the matter.

Welfare reform needed: "Of the 14 million Australians of working age, an amazing 14 per cent depend on welfare. Back in 1969 the figure was only 3 per cent. This affects the economy because these people are not contributing - they're taking money from those in paid employment. A majority of those on welfare are on disability or sole parent support pensions. To put it bluntly, many of them shouldn't be. Let's start with disability support. The numbers have more than tripled since 1980 - to 670,000 - and now account for a whopping $7.6 billion per year. Of course, many of these people are genuinely disabled and deserve our support. But many aren't - unless the level of disability has skyrocketed since 1980, and there is no medical evidence to suggest this is the case. What has happened is that it's been made much easier to get the pension. The two biggest categories are depression and bad backs, which are notoriously difficult to prove, or disprove.... The last Labor government began this increase around 1991, shunting people from unemployment benefits to the pension to make the unemployment figures look better.... This is not just about the economy. Working-age people on welfare for no good reason are more likely to be depressed. Their sense of self-worth is low. Their children, compared with children from working families, are far more likely to become homeless, to break the law, and to end up on welfare.

Australian book publishing is failing our society badly by publishing far too narrow and turgidly repetitive a range of viewpoints, especially on politics and foreign policy.... How can it be that here we already have a welter of biographies of Mark Latham, who has yet to achieve ministerial office of any kind but only one, highly unsatisfactory, biography of John Howard, soon to become Australia's second longest serving prime minister? In Australia almost every book dealing with foreign policy, especially Iraq, begins with the premise that Howard is bad, Bush is worse, the war on terror is a con, the war in Iraq was based on a lie, Australia's closeness to Bush hurts us in Asia, and so on. There is a reasonable amount of disagreement within those positions, but nothing to challenge the consensus... By accepting the absurd premise that there is something inherently evil about the Australian Government, publishers seem to drop all editorial standards. Any rhetorical and emotional excess is justified. There is no need to marshal facts for an argument. If there is any research in most of these books, it consists of assembling newspaper clippings to illustrate the predetermined thesis.... it's just a virulent and deeply unintelligent stream of abuse aimed at anyone on the conservative side of politics in the US or Australia. You have to conclude that Australian publishers have no standards of honesty, factual accuracy or elementary decency, that they will publish absolutely anything, no matter how bad, if the author is well known and is attacking conservatives.

There is a new Australian blog here written by Father Peter Wales, an Anglo-Catholic. I have corresponded with Peter for a while off and on and, unlike most of the Anglican clergy, I judge him to be a true man of God. His post here, however fills me with rage at American judges.

I rarely put up pictures or graphics of any kind but I have just put up here (or here) a picture of a man in a great hat!

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

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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.

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Apologies for continuing to focus on the election but I think this was the election that will ensure that the Anglosphere wins the world war it is presently engaged in so I think that is kind-of important


THE "HICK CHRISTIANS" MYTH

I touched on this yesterday but I hope to sink it altogether today. For a start, I do NOT intend to dignify with any counter-argument the sickening denigrations of American Christians that have been spewing from Leftists in recent days -- describing these good people as "hicks", "ignorant", "jihadists" etc. I think the reality is too plain to need any defence from me. And how the sad souls of the Left think such language will help them win the Christian votes that they will need if ever they are to win power again entirely escapes me. So why should I do anything to stop American Leftists from destroying their own future? They are, in fact, an excellent example of the self-destructive nature of hate. How much better off Christians are with the wisdom of Matthew chapter 5 to guide them. I am an atheist and it still inspires me! Leftists claim to be idealists but they don't know what idealism is until they have read those words.

As I pointed out yesterday, the vote for GWB was a clear vote for solid conservatism so it is of great interest to see which demographic groups swung in that direction. I noted yesterday that Hispanics were one such group but have a look through the statistics listed here and you will see that the swings were just about the opposite of what the haters on the Left claim. The swing to Bush actually occurred in almost ALL large demographic groups, including Africans, Hispanics, Jews, Catholics and women -- with a notable EXCEPTION being Protestant Christians! (Down from 63% in 2000 to 59% in 2004). Polysigh has arrived at similar conclusions.

And so has David Brooks: "Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them. In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top. This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.... The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums."

And the Leftists call conservatives stupid! If conservatives are stupid, Leftists are fact-free! Not that that's any news.

Leftists have of course tried to console themselves in various other ways for their loss but one of the most amusing such efforts is the frequent claim that Bush's margin over Kerry was small (What's 3 million people to a Leftist? A mere bagatelle. It's the THEORY that matters, stupid!) and that America is still therefore roughly 50/50 divided between Left and Right. The Leftist talent for self-deception is legendary but that one takes the cake. It overlooks their candidate's ENTIRE campaign! Kerry presented himself as being simply a more skillful version of Bush. His proclaimed policies were virtually the same as Bush's. Only his history -- e.g. his Senate voting record -- identified him as the far-Leftist he is. So lots of people would have bought that bill of goods and voted for Kerry simply as an alternative conservative candidate. Lots of Kerry votes were therefore "stolen" conservative votes -- won by deception! The real Leftist candidate was "screamer" Dean and the Dems didn't dare run HIM against Bush. If they had run Dean, they would have seen that the Left/Right divide among Americans was MUCH more extreme than 50/50!

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OTHER COMMENTS ON THE ELECTION

The media lost: "Sen. John Kerry has gotten the white-glove treatment from the press, garnering more praise from journalists than any other presidential candidate in the last quarter-century, according to a new analysis of almost 500 news stories released today by the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "It's not just that John Kerry has gotten better press than President Bush before this election, he's gotten better press than anyone else since 1980. That's significant," said Bob Lichter, director of the D.C.-based nonpartisan research group. "Kerry also got better press than anyone else in the days before the primaries as well," Mr. Lichter added. In October alone, Mr. Kerry had a "record-breaking 77 percent positive press evaluations," compared with 34 percent positive for Mr. Bush... But Mr. Bush didn't get the absolute worst press on record. With only 9 percent positive stories in 1984, President Reagan got the most negative treatment by news outlets on record, the study says."

The elitism never stops: "When President Bush's poll numbers surged in April after a press conference where his performance was derided by the press and the chattering classes, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry was baffled ... He said with a sigh to one top staffer, 'I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot.'"

Even the Leftist Nation says it: "The Democratic elite are out of touch, as Republicans claim. They have lost reliable connections to ordinary people, including some long loyal constituencies".

Jeff Jacoby: "Hatred lost. For four years, Americans watched and listened as President Bush was demonized with a savagery unprecedented in modern American politics. For four years, they saw him likened to Hitler and Goebbels, heard his supporters called brownshirts and racists, his administration dubbed "the 43rd Reich." For four years they took it all in: "Bush" spelled with a swastika instead of an 's', the depictions of the president as a drooling moron or a homicidal liar, the poisonous insults aimed at anyone who might consider voting for him. And then on Tuesday they turned out to vote, and handed the haters a crushing repudiation."

Anti-illegal immigration win: "Arizonans have voted heavily for the ballot initiative that aims to stop illegal aliens from receiving involuntary taxpayer subsidies, voting in elections etc. Proposition 200's grassroots triumph in the teeth of the united opposition of the entire political establishment and its media mouthpieces is, as with California's similar Proposition 187 ten years ago, a further illustration of the extraordinary power of the immigration issue."

Democrats up against it: "Of all the hard facts Democrats have to consider today, the mass mobilization of evangelical Christians must certainly be the most painful. It's easy enough for the party to produce GOP-clone positions on issues ranging from Iraq to education to "saving" Social Security. But the Democrats will never be able to turn out the anti-gay marriage vote (even as they lack the conviction to field a strong pro-gay marriage candidate). It's getting harder to see just what the Democrats can turn out. The party remains in thrall to unattractive special interests that don't matter anymore: unions, teachers, trial lawyers, and so on"

The Guardian loses: "Thank you, Lady Antonia Fraser! In 2000, Clark County, Ohio went to Al Gore. This time round, after the local citizenry were targeted by the Guardian to be the beneficiaries of Lady Antonia's voting advice, and John le Carr‚'s and Richard Dawkins's and many others, Clark County went to ...George W. Bush!"

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

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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.

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MY ELECTION REFLECTIONS

The heavy-duty pontificating about what the election result means is already well underway so let me try to spoil the party by pointing out the obvious: In 2000 GWB tried to learn from Clinton's apparently very successful centrist policies and campaigned as a "compassionate conservative". He lost the popular vote by half a million but thanks to the small-state bias of the electoral college he still got the job. In 2004, by contrast, he campaigned on security and morality -- classic conservative causes. And what a difference it made! He won the popular vote by over 3 million. So can anybody doubt that in voting for Bush it was good solid conservatism that was being chosen and that the Anglosphere is basically conservative? It was the conservative element in Clinton's appeal that turned the tide for him; it is the conservative element in Tony Blair's appeal that will continue to win the day for him and it was certainly thoroughly conservative policies that recently won the day for John Howard in Australia.

The case of Australia is particularly useful in seeing how it all works. For over a decade the Australian Labor Party followed policies (privatization, tariff reduction etc.) that were in many ways more conservative than the policies of our nominal conservatives. And that got the Labor party a long term as the government of Australia. Eventually, however, John Howard came along with even more conservative policies and tossed Labor out. And he has recently won his fourth election in a row. Howard was never successful enough to gain control of the Senate, however -- until the last election. In the last election the Labor party took a lurch to the Left (more socialized medicine, attacking private schools, bringing home the troops etc) and got the lowest share of the vote for over 70 years. So now Australian conservatives DO control our Senate.

So what it all shows is that Leftist parties in the Anglosphere can only succeed at elections by being an alternative conservative party. Which is also why John Kerry pretended to be a gun-lover and a Christian -- when he clearly knew nothing about either.

The predominant Leftist "explanation" for the defeat of Kerry seems to be that it can only have been a big turnout by those dreadful religious "hicks" that did it -- virtually claiming that there is no such thing as an intelligent Christian and quite ignoring the fact that the born-again Christian in the White House has an MBA from Harvard. Let me note again that the Australian comparison is instructive. In the recent Australian elections, the conservatives did at least as well as George Bush -- even grabbing complete control of our Senate for the first time. But very few Australians are religious so there is no Left/Right religious polarization in Australia to explain all the new conservative voters. All the outspoken church leaders in Australia were in fact AGAINST John Howard, as far as I can recollect (Who noticed?). But if the major conservative parties were not particularly representative of Christians, there WAS another party that DID represent Christians -- the Family First party. And it got only 2% of the vote! So with such a tiny Christian vote, Australia should, on Leftist reasoning, have elected a bunch of near-Communists. In fact, of course, Australia is in many ways more conservative than the USA -- with BOTH major political parties (Left and Right) completely ruling out any form of homosexual marriage long before the election (as just one instance of that). So you DON'T need a big "homophobic" and "fundamentalist" turnout to get a big conservative win in Australia and it would be pretty surprising if the American result could realistically be explained that way -- given the great similarities between the two countries on everything but religion. The big swing to GWB seems to have been among the Hispanics, in fact. See below.

But let the American Left continue with their febrile Christian-bashing. It will only entrench them as losers -- and Christians have had 20 centuries of experience in putting up with ignorant abuse.

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MORE ELECTION REFLECTIONS

My vote for the most amusing post-election comment so far -- from the NYT, of course: "Caving in to depression and a sense of helplessness should not be an option when the country is speeding toward an abyss" (Thanks to Dick McDonald for the link)

There is another amusing NYT article by Garry Wills that is apparently very popular in Leftist circles. Wills claims that America is as intolerant, oppressive and irrational as the Muslim countries. Anybody who is so far out of touch with reality as that would have to be an American college professor. If he told such falsehoods about his own society in a real Islamic country he would be dead. As it is, I am sure he was handsomely paid for his delusions.

The Times of London shows a lot better perspective than the rubbish the NYT prints: "It is absurd to believe that Bush's re-election represents the triumph of a Christian fundamentalism... The world did not end on Tuesday. A great darkness did not descend across civilisation. America is not about to embark on a biblically-mandated jihad against the enemies of evangelical Christianity around the world. American soldiers will not be enforcing Washington's imperium on your towns and villages any time soon".

Hispanics: "The biggest reason for Bush's victory was that he finally cracked the Democratic stranglehold on the Hispanic vote. While Gore won 65 percent of the Latino community, holding Bush to a mere 35 percent, Kerry only carried the Hispanic vote by 55-45, paving the way for the Bush victory. Since Hispanics cast 12 percent of the vote in 2004, their ten point movement to the GOP gave the president an additional 1.2 percent of the national vote. Take a similar amount away from Kerry and the Latinos gave Bush a 2.4 percent edge in the general election balloting".

"Healing? "After conceding the election to President Bush, John Kerry encouraged the American people to "begin the healing" and said it was time for us to come together and unite. It is not that easy, Johnny Boy. Who are we suppose to unite with? The people who vandalized Republican headquarters around the nation? Those who sprayed bullets through GOP offices, hurled rocks and cinder blocks through windows, sprayed racist and anti-Bush graffiti on walls outside and broke laptops and other equipment inside? Or just unite with those large groups of unkempt hippies who attempted to overtake Republican headquarters around the nation? What about the people who vandalized and egged cars that had Republican bumper stickers on them, or those who slashed the tires of dozens of GOP Campaign vehicles election morning? Is this what we are suppose to unite with?"

Lots of people liked the county map of the election results. It shows that even within States, it is mostly the big city areas that voted for Kerry. The map is reproduced here together with some comments. Michelle Malkin has the map up too.

Hee hee!: "European leaders struggled to prevent tensions over Iraq and transatlantic relations flaring out of control last night as President Bush's election victory dominated an EU summit. While Tony Blair accused Europe of being in denial about America, President Chirac of France withdrew from a lunch with Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi leader, who accused France of being a "spectator" refusing to get involved in his country's reconstruction. President Bush's re-election has upset his critics in Europe, particularly in France, which had led the anti-war effort. Yesterday French politicians insisted that Mr Bush's re-election showed the need to turn the EU into a superpower to counteract the US."

The big "October Surprise" that the Left intended for the election was the story about the lost Iraqi explosives. The L.A. Times says that the "explosives" removed from Al QaQaa in Iraq "are powerful enough to detonate a nuclear weapon". A professor of chemistry, however, says that the chemicals concerned were not explosives at all. See here for details. Though why the Left ever thought a possible army stuff-up was the fault of GWB has always escaped me. Do they think he is there in Iraq every day supervising every single platoon of soldiers?

The election has put my Leftists as Elitists site into high gear. I have recently put up some more great quotes there.

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

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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.

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THE WRAP-UP

Just imagine how Michael Moore and George Soros are feeling now. Justice has been done.

We do live in a better world now. The Islamicists are pipsqueaks compared to the menace that was once posed by the old Soviet Union. And just look at this news item now: "Russian President Vladimir Putin led world leaders' tributes to George W. Bush's victory in the U.S. presidential race, saying it meant Americans had not allowed themselves to be cowed by terrorists. "If Bush wins... I can only feel joy that the American people did not allow itself to be intimidated, and made the most sensible decision," Putin said at a Kremlin news conference". I have always had great respect for the long-suffering people of Russia and it is a joy to see that the artificial antagonism between them and the people of the Anglosphere has now ended. It is a considerable irony that the two biggest Slavic countries -- Russia and Poland -- now seem to have greater affection for America than Western Europe does. Note the disgusting comment by the Swedish Prime Minister in the same news item.

There is a lot of talk in the media about a "divided" America. See for example this rubbishy article. But Polipundit notes what will be obvious to everyone but the media: "I don't think it's an "bitterly divided country" when: 1. The Republican president just won over 50 percent for the first time in 16 years. He won more raw votes than anyone ever has, including Reagan. 2. The GOP has 55 senators. 3. The GOP has over 230 House members. 4. There are at least 28 Republican governors, including those of the 4 largest states. 5. The majority of state legislators and legislatures are Republican. 6. The GOP has just performed miracles, like ousting a Senate caucus leader for the first time since 1952, and getting a Republican senator elected from Louisiana for the first time ever".

And as Neumayr says: "What does all this talk of division really add up to? Aren't reporters really just saying that they feel divided from the country they cover? If the country is as divided as they eagerly assert, why don't the Democrats control half the branches of government? Why did they lose, not gain, votes in Florida? Why did Bush improve on his popular vote numbers so significantly? The country-is-divided chatter is not a journalistic report, but a wish -- the media's attempt to create the appearance of division so as to create division which might obstruct the progress of conservatism in the country."

But there is nonetheless still a very clear geographical division, as this map shows. The people who think they are superior and the big-city welfare clients whose votes were bought got together to vote for Kerry.

I think John Kerry's concession was one of the few good things he has ever done. He certainly showed more class than his odious litigation-loving vice-presidential sidekick who seemed determined to spin the matter out forever. And he put himself well above Gore too. Note this comment on conceding defeat: "They say Nixon had no class, but in 1960 he put the good of the country ahead of his own ambition and conceded a very close and controversial election to John Kennedy. A shift of a few thousand votes in Illinois and Texas would have given Nixon the presidency. In both places voter fraud was legendary and always on the Democratic side. Until the day he died, Nixon believed he had won in 1960. It seems to be one of the few things he really believed sincerely. Nobody will ever know whether he was right. The election was too close to call and in Chicago they knew how to steal elections too well to be caught. It is not so much that we are in new territory with elections, but we have become much more litigious. Al Gore should have given up after the first recount for the sake of the country. Despite myths that have been repeated endlessly, he had no reason to believe in widespread Republican fraud. Democrats ran all the disputed counties and the infamous butterfly ballot was designed by a Democrat. Any fraud is much more likely to have benefited them".

A good summary of election night here. Excerpt: "In a graphic demonstration of how strong the Republicans' lock has become on the South, only one generation ago the preserve of the Democrat Party, even John Edwards, Mr Kerry's running-mate, saw his own state of North Carolina vote for Mr Bush by 56 per cent to 43, the same margin of victory for Mr Bush four years ago. Mr Edwards's own senate seat, which he vacated to focus on his initial bid for the Democrat presidential nomination last year, went Republican by nearly 200,000 votes. Democrats lost all five of the Southern senate seats they were defending"

Some Democrat "clients" reject them: "But before the entire Bush constituency is dismissed as merely a collection of religious fanatics, armed to the teeth and living in the hills, it should be remembered that the army of secular Americans is about the same size as those for whom cultural conservatism is the essence of their politics.... The crucial additional building blocks in the Bush coalition were drawn from beyond the stereotype of the Republican electorate. Mr Bush performed notably better among three categories of Americans on Tuesday than he had done four years earlier. These were women, the elderly and Hispanic citizens. The Hispanic electorate has been wooed by the White House for the whole of Mr Bush's tenure. He reaped a substantial reward for his efforts, not least in Florida. The Democratic Party, once the ultimate "rainbow coalition", has thus lost its hold on female electors and its dominance over a rapidly expanding ethic minority".

Hey! How come he's not a "neocon"?: "Mr Rove can claim more credit for Mr Bush's re-election triumph than anyone other than the President. The strategist who masterminded Mr Bush's three previous elections, two for the Texas governorship, was always going to emerge from this presidential election as either an electoral genius or a snake oil salesman. The strategy and tactics were his alone. He shaped the battleground and crafted the message. He recruited and marshalled the troops and issued their orders. And he got it all just about right". [He doesn't sound like a Jewish intellectual recently converted from Trotskyism to me! He has no university degree, has been a Republican since age 9 and isn't Jewish. But silly me! If he has big influence he MUST be a neocon!]

Promethean Antagonist is from "flyover country" and comments: "A pompous weasel who collaborated with communists and established a record of having done absolutely nothing for the last 30 years, was defeated by the voters of "flyover country" -- those dreaded commoners who don't know names like, Sartre, Foucault, and Derrida have rejected George McGovern Jr. The Left and the international spoiled brat brigade will wring their hands in horror..... The greatest irony of Bush's win is that he may not have won if the phony renegades of Leftist elitism hadn't screeched their nonsense for over a year now. To folks like Michael Moore, Moveon.org, Steve Earl, Bruce Springsteen et al. (the list is really long), ya blew it! and you have only yourselves to blame."

Carnival of the Vanities is up again and this week's host voted for Bush so pay him a visit!

I have just put up on Leftists as Elitists some amusing excerpts from elitist reactions to Bush's victory.

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

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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.

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HOORAY!

The people of the United States have chosen a humble, sincere and moderate man to be their President again. Great to see both a solid red heartland and Bush ahead by a few million in the popular vote as well! My favourite media comment of the night? When the map was already very red, Dan Rather said: "Nobody is saying that Bush is not going to win this". How grudging can you get? The best comment from my readers so far? "The only shocking thing is that 48% of Americans could bring themselves to vote for that freak of nature, the gigolo"

And Daschle was defeated too. What a great bonus!

There were a lot of conservative bloggers and pundits who abandoned President Bush in the last six months or so. I wonder how all the anti-Bushies (Left and Right) feel now? I think the Leftists in particular should be conceding that GWB was right. In their amoral perspective, right and wrong is DEFINED in terms of power. The backpedalling among anti-Bush conservatives should be amusing too. And it's particularly nice for it to be clear that GWB owes his victory to the people, who voted for him despite huge opposition from the pundits and would-be manipulators in the media who think that they know it all. Reality has overcome theory, spin and lies.

And what about all those loonies who have been saying that GWB's policies are all the work of the "neocons"? I wonder if it might now occur to them that GWB did what he did because it was the right thing to do? Over half the American voting population seems to think he did. But I guess the people are just "rabble" to conspiracy theorists -- "manipulated" by those devilishly cunning Jewish neocons. It was exactly such paranoid thinking that started Hitler off. Read Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf if you doubt it. But I have commented at some length on the neocon myth previously.

Let me predict the predominant Leftist spin on this election result. It will be that: "Osama bin Laden won it for Bush". There is of course a glimmer of truth in that. GWB kept saying that Osama and his minions were a threat while the idiotic John Kerry kept denying it (insofar as anybody could work out what Kerry was saying). And then Osama popped up on TV saying: "I am a threat". That it was actually Kerry's denial of the obvious that made Osama's statement noteworthy will not be mentioned. The crazies will even say that Bush was "in cahoots" with bin Laden -- and bin Laden is really a Jew, of course.

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ELSEWHERE

Good news from the Australian elections too: The Christian party has finally squeaked into our Senate, squeezing out the Greenies. "The fledgling Family First Party today made political history by winning a Senate seat. Steve Fielding was announced the winner of the final Victorian Senate place by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) about 12.15pm (AEDT) today. He emerged victorious after the distribution of final preferences by the AEC, more than three weeks after the October 9 poll. Mr Fielding, a manager with a superannuation fund, is the first person to be elected to federal parliament from the Christian-aligned Family First, which contested its first federal poll this year.... Flanked by his wife Susan and three children immediately after hearing the result, Mr Fielding declared it a historic victory. "This is an historic occasion in Australian political history with Family First being elected to the federal parliament in the Senate."

Historian Paul Johnson is good on the lessons from Iraq. One excerpt: "We have been reminded that France is not to be trusted at any time, on any issue. The British have learned this over 1,000 years of acrimonious history, but it still comes as a shock to see how badly the French can behave, with their unique mixture of shortsighted selfishness, long-term irresponsibility, impudent humbug and sheer malice. Americans are still finding out--the hard way--that loyalty, gratitude, comradeship and respect for treaty obligations are qualities never exhibited by French governments. All they recognize are interests, real or imaginary. French support always has to be bought. What the Americans and British now have to decide is whether formal alliances that include France as a major partner are worth anything at all, or if they are an actual encumbrance in times of danger".

Dennis Prager has some short sharp answers to a bit of superficial Leftist cleverness called: "Things You Have to Believe to Vote Republican Today." Three excerpts: "No Christian I have ever talked to ever said that either Jesus or they hate homosexuals. Only demagogues confuse opposition to same-sex marriage with hatred of homosexuals" and "Few big businesses have the best interests of the public at heart. No conservative has ever argued otherwise. But liberals believe that big government and big unions do" and "it is entirely dishonorable to charge President Bush with lying about WMDs in Iraq. Everyone, including Democrats and the intelligence services of Russia, Britain and France, believed Saddam Hussein had them. It is the great lie of our time that President Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq. To act upon the knowledge one has at the time is not a lie. It is the behavior of a responsible leader."

Myths about the Crusades : "The Crusaders were not unprovoked aggressors, greedy marauders or medieval colonialists, as portrayed in some history books. In fact, Thomas Madden, chair of St. Louis University's history department and author of "A Concise History of the Crusades," contests that the Crusaders were a defensive force that did not profit from their ventures by earthly riches or land.... From the time of Mohammed, Muslims had sought to conquer the Christian world. They did a pretty good job of it, too. After a few centuries of steady conquests, Muslim armies had taken all of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor and most of Spain. In other words, by the end of the 11th century the forces of Islam had captured two-thirds of the Christian world. Palestine, the home of Jesus Christ; Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism; Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted the seeds of the first Christian communities -- these were not the periphery of Christianity but its very core. And the Muslim empires were not finished yet. They continued to press westward toward Constantinople, ultimately passing it and entering Europe itself. As far as unprovoked aggression goes, it was all on the Muslim side. At some point what was left of the Christian world would have to defend itself or simply succumb to Islamic conquest".

Inborn differences. How awful! "Healthy infants older than three months who cry incessantly for no apparent reason may be at risk for lower IQ and behavior problems in their childhood years, new study findings suggest.... This prolonged crying after the colic stage was associated with poorer results on tests that measured cognitive development both in infancy and at 5 years old, Rao and his colleagues report in Archives of Disease in Childhood. At 6 months of age, for example, infants with prolonged crying scored nearly five points lower on an intelligence test than those in the comparison group, who did not show any signs of colic at any age, and lower than those whose colic did not persist beyond three months. At 5 years old, the prolonged criers had lower performance and verbal IQ scores than the comparison group, and also performed worse on tests measuring eye-hand coordination, the report indicates. These children were also more likely to be hyperactive and to have discipline problems than their peers".

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

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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.

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WHY NOVEMBER 2ND?

In Australia, we vote on Saturdays because most people have at least Saturday afternoon off work -- and that means that voting doesn't clash with normal routine. So why do Americans mess up their work routine to vote on a Tuesday? One of my readers researched it for me and advises as follows:

"The Tuesday after the first Monday in November was initially established by federal law in 1845 for the appointment of presidential electors in every fourth year. In 1875, lawmakers established this day for electing representatives in every even numbered year. In 1914, it also became the day for electing U.S. senators.

Why early November? For much of U.S. history, America was a predominantly agrarian society. Lawmakers therefore took into account that November was perhaps the most convenient month for farmers and rural workers to be able to travel to the polls. The fall harvest was over, (spring was planting time and summer was taken up with working the fields and tending the crops) but in the majority of the nation the weather was still mild enough to permit travel over unimproved roads.

Why Tuesday? Since most residents of rural America had to travel a significant distance to the county seat in order to vote, Monday was not considered reasonable since many people would need to begin travel on Sunday. This would, of course, have conflicted with church services and Sunday worship.

Why the first Tuesday after the first Monday? Lawmakers wanted to prevent election day from falling on the first of November for two reasons. First, November 1st is All Saints Day, a Holy Day of Obligation for Roman Catholics. Second, most merchants were in the habit of doing their books from the preceding month on the 1st. Apparently, Congress was worried that the economic success or failure of the previous month might prove an undue influence on the vote!"

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ELSEWHERE

Much has been made of an article in The Lancet (summary reproduced here) which estimates that there have been more than 100,000 deaths in Iraq that were due to the invasion. Various conservative writers have criticized the study and various Leftists (e.g. here) have replied. Nobody, however, seems to have commented on the fact that the findings were a product of cluster sampling. The major fault I see with the study is that estimating low-incidence phenomena via cluster samples is inherently dodgy. I have had many findings derived from cluster samples reported in the academic journals so I know a little bit about it. You just have to get one or two clusters being a-typical (either by chance or intentionally) to arrive at totally distorted results. Basing such an important conclusion on a sample-size of only 33 is really quite ludicrous. I have used as few as 10 clusters in some of my surveys but I was concerned only to find whether some effect existed at all. I was not trying to estimate it precisely. All that aside, however, who doubts that wars kill people? And who doubts that the deaths in a war have to be offset against the deaths that might otherwise have occured if the war were not fought? If you believe that such offsetting should not be done, you would also have to say that Britain should have said "We surrender" to Hitler.

Gay Patriot has up a picture of a good doggy comment on the election.

Jobs: "Our unemployment rate, which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put at 5.4 percent in September, is one of the lowest in the world and in our history. France's unemployment rate is 9.4 percent, Germany's 9.9 percent and Italy's 8.6 percent. Our Canadian neighbor's is 6.6 percent. The only reason for today's hysteria over jobs is because it is an election year, and one of the ways politicians gain power is to create fear among the electorate. The next time you hear a politician whining about our "awful" job climate, ask him which European country we should look to for guidance in job creation. The fact of business is that our country is the world's leader not only in job creation but in terms of where the world wants to invest its money.

Nazism lives: "As hard as they may try, some Muslim leaders in Western countries are unable to camouflage their hatred for Israel, even in public. Like an underground geyser, these feelings of animosity toward the Jewish state eventually burst their bonds and gush to the surface -- from behind the fa‡ade of tolerance and respectability these sham representatives know they have to adopt in order to operate in our societies. The most recent outburst of anti-Israeli enmity from a "respected" Muslim leader occurred only last week when Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, one of the largest and most influential Muslim groups in Canada, stunned television viewers with outrageous comments that supported murdering Israelis. Revealing his true colors toward the Jewish state, Elmrasy said, on The Michael Coren Show, that all adult Israelis of military age, including women, are legitimate targets for suicide bombers, since they are eligible for military service".

A Leftist's view of why he is in politics: "Although politics does not necessarily provide excitement or power, it does provide a ready-made identity, one where your sense of who you are is sharply defined against "the other". For anyone with an underdeveloped sense of self-esteem, this is a lifeline, providing a short cut to coherence and purpose. In the midst of all its supposed drama, politics provides a certainty that is enormously comforting".

Muslims a problem in China too: "Violent clashes between members of the Muslim Hui ethnic group and the majority Han group left nearly 150 people dead and forced authorities to declare martial law in a section of Henan Province in central China, journalists and witnesses in the region said today. The fighting flared late last week and continued into the weekend after a Hui taxi driver fatally struck a 6-year-old Han girl, prompting recriminations between different ethnic groups in neighboring villages, these people said. One person who was briefed on the incident by the police said that 148 people had been killed, including 18 police officers sent to quell the violence.

Conservative humorist Imre Saluszinski turns out to be an admirer of Bob Dylan. Not as strange as you think when you realize that Bob Dylan always rejected the Leftist embrace of him and was in fact in his heyday an admirer of none other than the very conservative Republican, Barry Goldwater!

Kevin MacDonald argues that members of America's majority culture should be just as keen to promote their rights and identity as members of minority groups are.

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

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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.

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LEFTIST DOUBLE STANDARDS AGAIN

Email from a reader

Here's another example-- as if you needed more-- about the ego-predominant locus of moral control among the left. Basically it is a parallel between Kerry's "outsourcing" comment about Tora Bora and abortion.

As you stated, if Kerry considers a third party as an "ally"-- collaborating, networking, dialoguing, "caring and sharing", etc.-- then the process is lionized and embraced. If he wishes to denigrate the contribution of a third-party ally, it's "outsourcing" and "the coalition of the coerced and the bribed." Never mind that the assistance from either type of ally may be identical.

With abortion the issue it is very similar. If a pregnant woman WANTS her baby, it's all about maternity leave, women-as-special, give me my paid time off (better to be for a year, as in Sweden), driving a minivan with "Baby on Board" sign in the window, play dates, preschool, and "my Devon is the most important little person in the world", etc. Let's do it all For the CHILDREN.

If this is an "undesired" pregnancy, it's just a "blob of tissue", "obligate parasite", "reproductive right" (for women only, of course), zero-population-growth, save-the-planet decision "between a woman and her doctor and her God". Never mind that these two "definitions" pertain to the same baby.

I believe the Left's incessant "For the Children" meme represents not only hiding behind the child-proxy to disguise their selfish policies, but also a reaction-formation against their desire to sacrifice a child for their own "lifestyle" AND a projection of their own childish self-absorbed desire to be protected from life's exigencies.

The Left lacks any core principle-- as you have maintained consistently-- other than solipsism. "It's all about MEMEMEMEMEMEME, and my definition of reality trumps yours. Only an idiot can believe differently from me." -- And if I change my mind tomorrow, only a rigid, inflexible idiot fails to understand my nuanced approach to life.


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ELSEWHERE

Democrats -- the "fat-cat" party: "Democrats: the party of the little guy. Republicans: the party of the wealthy. Those images of America's two major political wings have been frozen for generations.... No more. Starting in the 1960s and '70s, whole blocs of "little guys"--ethnics, rural residents, evangelicals, cops, construction workers, homemakers, military veterans--began moving into the Republican column. And big chunks of America's rich elite--financiers, academics, heiresses, media barons, software millionaires, entertainers--drifted into the Democratic Party.... It is "becoming harder by the day to take the Democrats seriously as the party of the common man," writes columnist Daniel Henninger. "The party's primary sources of support have become trial lawyers and Wall Street financiers. It is becoming a party run by a new class of elites who make fast money--$25 million for 30 days work on a movie, millions (even billions) winning lawsuits against doctors...millions to do arithmetic for a business merger."... Federal Election Commission data show that many of the very wealthiest political players are now in the Democratic column.... And the money on the Kerry side has come much more from rich individuals, while Bush has relied on flocks of small donors. So which is the party of the people now?"

Australia's big Muslim neighbour: "Newly-elected Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he would consider becoming a globe-trotting advocate for moderate Islam, promoting peace in hotspots such as the Middle East. Yudhoyono said he wanted Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, to be a model for moderate Islamic democracy".

Australians and Americans know how to work: "Australia is a land of workaholics, ranking with the US and rivalling the Japanese as the world's hardest workers.... the International Labour Organisation says one in five employees in Australia, New Zealand and the US works at least 50 hours a week. Australian employees work twice as hard as Europeans, with just a 10th of European workers putting in such long working hours. Only in Japan, where 28.1 per cent of employees work 49 hours or more a week and New Zealand 21.3 per cent, do people work longer."

There is now an academic journal of Ayn Rand studies

Anti-Protester thinks Leftists work harder for their cause and are better organized. Seeing that power is their sole aim in life, that figures.

Do you fancy 'a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power'? It's Mao's little red book, of course. Fabian's Hammer notes the still great reverence in the West for history's greatest mass-murderer.

Michael Darby is online again with some notes about the dishonest character of John Kerry and some history showing that Clinton too believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

AstuteBlogger notes: "The Left trots out ACTORS to be their leading lights; Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Garofolo, Danny Glover, Jessica Lange, etc., etc., etc. and so on. WEIRD, AIN'T IT!? The Left criticizes real, experienced political leaders (Reagan had been a politician for decades before becoming president, and the Governor of California; Bush had defeated sitting governor Ann Richardson to become a two-term Republican Governor of Texas) - who lead boldly and who courageously confront and defeat tyranny, and the Left derides them for being mere "ACTORS.""

I have just put online an interesting article on the psychology of Jihad (Also here).

I have just put up on Leftists as Elitists some derogatory comments by Tom Wolfe about the Leftist elite of New York City.

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

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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.

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ENCORE MONSIEUR KOHN KERRY

John Kerry sometimes quotes the scripture: "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:17). This post points out that by that criterion Kerry's own faith is very hollow indeed.

Jeff Jacoby on Kerry's flip-flops: "Bush, unlike Kerry, has the courage of his convictions. He can take a strong stand and not run away from it when the political winds shift. On the big issues, the crucial issues, he is a decisive man who means what he says -- and who isn't afraid to say it even when his listeners disagree. For a nation going to the polls in wartime, no issue matters more than character. Kerry has much to recommend him, and Bush's flaws are many. But Bush has the character and backbone of a leader. And Kerry doesn't."

Daniel Pipes: "It has not been fully appreciated that, when it comes to the Middle East, Bush has systematically responded to the region's problems by dispatching decades' worth of accepted practices and replacing them with stunningly different approaches. In contrast, John Kerry unimaginatively holds to failed policies of the past.... It is easy to overlook Bush's radicalism in the Middle East, for in spirit he is a conservative, someone inclined to preserve what is best of the past. A conservative, however, understands that to protect what he cherishes at times requires creative activism and tactical agility."

Bigots for Kerry: "If George Bush had chosen the racist David Duke as a running mate, I'd have voted against him, almost without regard to any other issue. Instead, John Kerry chose the xenophobe John Edwards as a running mate. I will therefore vote against John Kerry. Duke thinks it's imperative to protect white jobs from black competition. Edwards thinks it's imperative to protect American jobs from foreign competition. There's not a dime's worth of moral difference there. While Duke would discriminate on the arbitrary basis of skin color, Edwards would discriminate on the arbitrary basis of birthplace. Either way, bigotry is bigotry, and appeals to base instincts should always be repudiated."

Bush did not lie: "President Bush couldn't possibly have lied about WMD unless he miraculously knew something that neither the CIA nor all the other world's intelligence agencies knew: that Saddam didn't have WMD. Now how could he have known that? Did he hire his own private investigators to dispatch some Farsi-speaking, cowboy hat-wearing paragon of erudition to comb its entire landmass to confirm there were no WMD? Frankly, it is nothing short of amazing that Democrats are still peddling this canard about Bush lying about Iraqi WMD. But they are. In the meantime we see that they really don't care about presidential lying about war, because it is they and John Kerry who are lying about it."

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ELSEWHERE

Democrat hatred: "Shelby Pope is a 60-year-old small- business woman from Pasadena who, until recently, had never been in a fight. Then a Democrat spit on her. "It was horrifying,' said Pope, who puts out Bush/Cheney literature on her table at a Los Angeles flea market at Fairfax and Melrose avenues.... Pope has volunteered for Republican campaigns since the Eisenhower era, and says this year the political climate is "the worst I've ever seen.' ... "These people are calling Bush 'Hitler,' ' said Frank Napolitano, a Republican precinct campaigner from Altadena. "I didn't call Clinton 'Hitler.'' Napolitano has had several Bush/Cheney signs stolen from his front yard. He then put up a sign saying, "Please don't steal my signs.' It was stolen, too..... The experience has pushed him toward harsher language. "The Democrats are Nazis,' he said. "They don't believe in freedom of speech. They're Nazis. They're intellectual morons.'" I have put another example of an attack on a Republicans up on EDUCATION WATCH.

And Mike Tremoglie has more examples of Democrat attacks on democracy. One excerpt: "On October 19, 2004 a movie theater in Jenkintown Pennsylvania, a suburban borough just north of Philadelphia with a population of about 4500, was scheduled to show the documentary Stolen Honor. This movie features the testimony of Vietnam POW's and it is extremely critical of John Kerry. However, after receiving threats of " civil disobedience" (i.e. destruction of property and who knows what to people), the owner of the theater canceled the showing. Because of Stalinist intimidation, nearly 400 people were denied the opportunity to see a movie simply because it was critical of a presidential candidate. Jenkintown was more like Tienamen Square than Independence Mall. According to Gil Spencer, a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, a suburban Philadelphia paper, "Thuggish pro-Kerry "protesters" showed up at the urging of the Kerry campaign. Police had to be called to the scene to keep order."

Voting fraud: "The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said it would wait until after the presidential election to investigate Republican charges that nearly 1000 convicted felons had illegally requested absentee ballots or already voted early. The state Republican Party said it had combed a list of suspected felons and found 925, mostly Democrats, who had not had their voting rights restored, but had requested ballots or voted early." There is another article here on the third-world shambles that is the American voting system. Australia's system is not perfect but it is miles more secures than America's.

Arafat: "Speaking of media bias, here's a question you won't hear in our big papers or on network TV: Does Yasser Arafat have AIDS? We know he has a blood disease that is depressing his immune system. We know that he has suddenly dropped considerable weight - possibly as much as 1/3 of all his body weight. We know that he is suffering intermittent mental dysfunction. What does this sound like?" Senior Nazis were homosexual too, of course.

Fruitcake Walter Cronkite believes Karl Rove is behind the recent bin Laden tape

Hilarious: "A Vatican-approved sex guide is encouraging churchgoers to make love more often to offset "impotence and frigidity" and address papal concerns over declining birth rates among Italian Roman Catholics. The book, "It's A Sin Not To Do It", written by two theologians, promises the reader answers to "everything you wanted to know about sex but the Church [almost] never dared to tell you". In their attempt to galvanise the faithful, Roberto Beretta and Elisabetta Broli, who write regularly for the Italian Bishops' magazine Avvenire, have written one of the raciest works ever to deal with the church and sex."

Uncivil Rights has some good posts up about the unending Democrat talent for inconsistency and self-contradiction.

Wayne Lusvardi has just done a post on the place of paranoia in Leftist politics.

I have just put up on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS an article from a major Leftist publication that is absolutely dripping with thinly disguised contempt for ordinary people and their entertainments.

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

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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.

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LOOK AT WHOM A WIN BY GWB WOULD SHAFT!

This article gave me a laugh

I have to say it is his enemies who most justify Mr Bush's re-election. The list of those whose world could be truly rocked [by a Bush win] on Tuesday is just too long and too rich to be ignored. If you think for a moment about those who would really be upset by a second Bush term, it becomes a lot easier to stomach.

The hordes of the bien-pensant Left in the universities and the media, the sort of liberals who tolerate everything except those who disagree with them. Secularist elites who disdain religiosity except when it comes from Muslim fanatics. Europhile Brits who drip contempt for everything their country has ever done and long for its disappearance into a Greater Europe.Absurd, isolationist conservatives in America and Britain who think the struggles for freedom are always someone else's fight. Hollywood sybarites and narcissists, self-appointed arbiters of a nation's morals.

Soft-headed Europeans who think engagement and dialogue with mass murderers is the way to achieve lasting peace. French intellectuals for whom nothing has gone right in the world since 1789.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Psychologist Tanya Dineen thinks that GWB has got more EQ (emotional intelligence -- ability to relate to other people emotionally) and Kohn Kerry has got more IQ. On the evidence I have seen, she is wrong. GWB has got more of both. It's silly to think that the two are very different anyhow. IQ helps you to solve ALL problems -- including how to relate to other people. That's what IQ is: General problem-solving ability -- and figuring out how to get on well with other people is one of the most important things to solve that there is. And it always amuses me when people say GWB is stumble-tongued and inarticulate. We had a guy like that as Premier of my home State of Queensland not too long ago. And how long did he stay in power? 20 years! He won election after election. He got up to 59% of the popular vote. For ordinary sensible people, genuineness trumps a slick tongue every time.

Steve Sailer's careful study of the IQ of both Bush and Kerry got so much publicity that it was even reported in the New York Times. Having ANY mention of IQ in the N.Y. Times has greatly miffed many Leftists. The very idea of IQ is a frontal assault on their "all men are equal" gospel. Note how this Leftist site treats the matter. There is not even a shred of discussion of the evidence Steve presented. It is all an ad hominem attack: Sailer is a bad man so what he says cannot be right. And the evidence for Sailer being a bad man? He is RIGHT WING! That proves it! Ad hominem attacks, of course, have no scholarly merit whatsoever and this particular one is particularly stupid. It completely closes off debate by inviting the obvious riposte: "I am going to believe nothing that YOU say because you are LEFT WING! But I guess that Leftists WANT to close of debate. Full consideration of the evidence on something is always dangerous for them.

I note that the same site is boycotting (or girlcotting) Paypal. Apparently Paypal has been acting high and mighty with Leftists too. The Bill Quick affair has soured conservative bloggers on Paypal so one wonders whether Paypal wants any business at all. It's all good news for Amazon's alternative service.

A scientist involved in embryonic stem cell research nails John Kerry's lies about the matter.

In case there are one or two readers of this blog who have not yet heard of the way legalized abortion is giving conservatives the victory of the cradle (more conservatives than Leftists being born), there is a useful summary of the matter here. The article plays safe by saying that it is only "socialization" that causes children to have similar politics to their parents but the fact of the matter is that genetics is an even bigger influence in that direction. Your politics are largely inborn -- probably because high ego-need (Leftism) is inborn.

Krauthammer has an excellent article about America's victory in Afghanistan -- that everyone seems conveniently to have forgotten when they predict the impossibility of converting Iraq to democracy. One quote: "John Kerry has managed to transform our Afghan venture into a failure -- a botched operation in which Bush let Osama bin Laden get away because he "outsourced" bin Laden's capture to "warlords" in the battle of Tora Bora..... "Outsourcing" is a demagogue's way of saying "using allies." (Isn't Kerry's Iraq solution to "outsource" the problem to the "allies" and the United Nations?)".

There is a good article here showing that the Left have been against the normal two-parent family at least as far back as Karl Marx -- without any evidence to support their criticism of it and without any real alternative to it. The evidence shows of course that children raised in two-parent families do significantly better in all sorts of ways than do children reared under other arrangements. So it again just boils down to Leftists hating normal people.

Front Page Magazine have a good "War Blog" covering current issues in the Presidential election.

GWB as a boon to culture? "He's the least culturally savvy US president of the modern era. And the least articulate. But somehow the 43rd leader of the world's only superpower has detonated a global explosion of creativity." [A leftist version of "culture", anyway]

There is a fun story here of how one of the "Nigerian" email scammers met his match. The "Nigerian" scam is an old one now but it just keeps rolling along.

Keith Burgess-Jackson has just put up some good thoughts about the blogosphere.

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.

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SOME ECONOMICS

The U.S. economy grew at 3.7% p.a. in the most recent quarter. Compared to the near-zero growth in Europe and most of the rest of the world, that is an outstanding performance that any government would be pleased about. The USA is already much richer than any other large country and is continuing to pull further ahead! Cause to congratulate both the businesspeople and technologists of America whose innovations made it happen and a President whose policies gave them an encouraging framework for it.

How the media spins the economy. It depends on who's President: "Summer was proclaimed a time of 'strong economic growth and low unemployment' by Jerry King of ABC's World News Tonight. King was right. Declining unemployment, low inflation and landmark homeownership all point to great news for the economy. There's just one problem: King wasn't talking about this summer. That story aired on Aug. 4, 1996. ... Business Week chief economist Michael J. Mandel made an excellent case that 'today's economic environment looks positively rosy' in the magazine's Sept. 6 issue. Mandel argued that there are strong similarities between the summer of 1996 and 2004. Both had incumbent presidents running for election. Both saw declining unemployment, an increase in jobs, and strong economic growth. Some of the numbers are so similar it's eerie. Yet the major media covered those two time periods as differently as night and day."

Sounds good to me: "With all the hoopla over the presidential election, gone almost unnoticed are measures that will be on ballots all over America next Tuesday to limit or roll back property taxes. It's the biggest tax revolt since the 1970s. No wonder. Property taxes across America have been soaring -- according to Deloitte and Touche, by an average of more than 10 percent between 2001 and 2003 alone. They're rising mainly because more and more responsibility has been heaped on towns and cities -- which rely on property taxes to pay for a lot of things that states and the federal government used to help pay for. Call it trickle-down taxes. The federal tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 left a big hole in the federal budget, meaning that the feds can't or won't fully fund programs like No Child Left Behind, which requires schools to take sometimes expensive steps to improve themselves. Federal support for states has also dropped, so there's less state aid to towns and cities. Well, someone's got to pay for schools and roads and parks and public safety. So by default, the tax burden has fallen to the bottom of the food chain. Local property taxes have borne a lot of the brunt."

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ELSEWHERE

Steve Sailer has an extensive article which punctures pretty well the Democrat claim that their Presidents are bright and GOP Presidents are dumb. Looks like it is the other way around. So we have another example of that pervasive Leftist "projection".

Will Wilkinson summarizes the voter fraud situation. GOP hyper-vigilance is made necessary by deliberate Democrat attempts to rig the results. You have to do something to stop all those dead people voting: "Lindsay bitches about GOP voter suppression in Ohio. I don't believe I remember her complaining (correct me if I'm wrong) about DNC voter suppression (successful or not) in every state in which they tried to cripple democracy by sueing Nader off the ballot. (If I ever hear high-toned democracy rhetoric from Larry Tribe, I'll throw up a little in my mouth.) Second, Lindsay simply assumes that stationing people in polling places to challenge fraudulent voters from voting is an ploy to suppress Democratic votes. But why not assume instead, or in addition, that the huge Democratic voter-registration drives really were riddled with malfeasance. Indeed, I assume both. The Democrats have been signing up dead people, felons and non-citizens in an attempt to steal the vote. The Republicans want to stop Democrats from stealing the vote, and so want to guard against dead and illegal voters, and, as a bonus, to suppress the legitimate Democratic vote--in an attempt to steal the vote. Now, I want to emphasize that I don't think any of these shenanigans even approaches the seriousness of the DNC's effort to make it impossible for American citizens to vote for a candidate who represents their views".

Kerry's Tax hypocrisy: "Sen. John Kerry keeps telling us that 'the rich' need to pay more in taxes. The senator and his wife are among the 400 richest Americans. He says that he has 'a plan to tax the rich.' Under the senator's tax plan, what percentage of the Kerrys' income do you think they would pay the IRS? (a) 50 percent, (b) 40 percent, (c) 30 percent, (d)15 percent. The correct answer is (d) 15 percent. According to an analysis by the Argus Group, a well respected tax law and economics firm, the Kerrys' average tax rate would only increase by 1.8 percentage points to 15.2 percent under the senator's plan, while many small business people would see their average rate rise by 4.0 percentage points, resulting in effective rates as high as 35 to 40 percent, including certain deduction phase-outs."

There is a new blog which has up a comprehensive account of the New Age nuttiness preached by Mrs Heinz-Kerry. Apparently "alternative" health fads will solves all our problems: "If you have a child who eats the wrong things, is denied adequate health care and is deprived of a stimulating environment, it follows of necessity that he will turn out to be a criminal or other form of psychopath, sociopath or mental defective, Teresa teaches. From this she believes it follows naturally that if society seriously intends to prevent criminality and all other forms of social pathology, then all we have to do is provide our children with the right nourishment and sunlight and stimulation-and, poof!, instantly you have healthy and well-adjusted children who grow into intelligent, law-abiding and well-adjusted adults".

The Yes Bush Can site and its accompanying mailouts would seem to be the latest bit of Democrat play-acting. It may now have been taken down. It was allegedly by a group of Bush supporters who had switched to Kerry. It might fool some people, I guess. But after the biggest bit of play-acting of all -- "John Kerry as war-hero" -- it is pretty last-ditch.

Chez Joel has a very amusing post about how to talk to terrorists. He's not being sarcastic or anything!

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its big range of select reading.

Wicked Thoughts has put up a very wicked post about Yasser Arafat

I have just put up on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS some excerpts from a good article by V.D. Hanson which says which says that elitism is now the main thing that undergirds Leftism. A post on the megalomaniac Soros too.

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

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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.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

John Kerry brings in former communist agent to slime Vietnam vets and smear Sinclair Broadcast Group John Kerry asked Lerach to deal with Sinclair and the vets. He did. He brought a former paid communist agent to the dirty deed
George Soros' slimy attack on President Bush The sooner the Americans wake up to this bargain-basement Machiavelli and the sleazy political ambitions of his super rich mates the safer they will be
John Kerry moves to censor the Sinclair Broadcast Group Despite the lying propaganda that the John Kerry campaign and its media lackeys are spreading the Sinclair documentary did contain dissenting views
The 2004 Nobel prize in economics: getting it wrong Since the Great Depression of the 1930's and until the early 1970s most economists viewed economic fluctuations as the outcome of shocks to aggregate demand. They are wrong
John Kerry tries to censor Vietnam vets and former POWs John Kerry sent in his attack dogs to intimidate Sinclair Broadcast Group and slime Vietnam vets who had been POWs
Another Murdoch journalist bends the facts to support John Kerry Why do so many people despise George Bush while supporting John Kerry? I believe the problem lies with the mass media, meaning journalists
Libertarian Party endorses President Bush There is a belief that a Bush administration would be undesirable. Such a notion could not be farther from the truth, or potentially more harmful to the cause of liberty
Indigenize Iraq's reconstruction The brutal violence in Iraq requires not only accelerating the training of indigenous security forces, but giving the Iraqi people responsibility for their own communities' reconstruction

Details here

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