HAPPINESS RESEARCH

There is another dummo academic (Richard Layard) reported here who points to the fact that getting richer does not necessarily make you happier. Any observer of Hollywood knew that long ago and I guess people have in fact known it for about 4,000 years. In 1 Timothy 6:10 St. Paul probably went a bit too far in saying that "The love of money is the root of all evil" but you get the idea. And the whole story of Job in the OT runs along similar lines. But these days, "If money does not make you happier, then take it away!" is the reasoning. So that old bit of wisdom has found a new use as the latest pathetic excuse to hike taxes.

But happiness is clearly a disposition. It is fairly fixed and soon (sometimes within minutes) reverts to its accustomed level after any ups and downs. Some people are happy in circumstances that other would hate. I know. I have observed perfectly cheerful people among the street-sleepers of Bombay. Some people are almost always happy. Some people are almost always whining. Some people just have happy natures and some do not. So looking at whether something makes people happy is largely futile. In statisticians' terms, you are looking for variance in something that is invariant. Or, putting it another way, correlations with something that is invariant will NECESSARILY be zero. So if you are interested in running a public policy that respects other people, you need to look at what they CHOOSE, not what makes them happy. And most people choose more money rather than less.

It is true that certain categories of people report being happier than others -- e.g. married people -- but that probably just shows that happier people are easier to live with.

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AIRBUS VERSUS BOEING

The issue of whether the Europeans are going to have much success with their new giant Airbus is a bit outside the mainstream of what I usually post on but what the heck! My brief mention of the matter yesterday got me a few emails which showed a variety of views on the matter. Most seemed to agree with me that it is Boeing rather than the Europeans that have got it right and one reader pointed me to this story showing that existing Airbuses are being phased out and replaced by Boeings. Another reader, however, had a quite different view, which I reproduce below:

The huge Airbus is I believe currently just short of the 100 orders it is said to need to break even. It is designed (believe it or not) for one main thing -- Hajj -- taking droves of Moslems to Mecca. The Moslems are converting and breeding at a great rate. Over the next 4 decades (expected life of the new Giant Airbus) the Hajj will fill the planes and pay back the investment. A secondary, but not trivial, market is airfreight and FedEX is due to get the first airfreight model off the line. The third market will be the military. The A 380 will be a "giant" success. Boeing's decline is a tribute to the destructive effects of a liberal State (Washington) and the attendant taxes, regulation, and blind obstinacy of labor unions.

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ELSEWHERE

A day of which every American can be proud: "Iraqis embraced democracy in large numbers Sunday, standing in long lines to vote in defiance of mortar attacks, suicide bombers and boycott calls. Pushed in wheelchairs or carts if they couldn't walk, the elderly, the young and women in veils cast ballots in Iraq's first free election in a half-century. "We broke a barrier of fear," said Mijm Towirish, an election official".

Australian Prime Minister defends the USA: "During a vigorous panel debate on US global relations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, several European officials attacked President George W. Bush's Iraq policy, but Mr Howard stood up to defend his ally. Earlier in the summit, Mr Howard attacked the European Union over the reintroduction of wheat export subsidies, which he said harmed underdeveloped nations and were contrary to free trade. "Some of the criticism (of the US) by some of the Europeans is unfair and irrational," Mr Howard said in the panel debate, organised by Britain's BBC TV. "I mean the negative mindset of the last five minutes (of this debate) is ridiculous - of course America has made mistakes," he said. Later Mr Howard told The Australian he found the European "irrational level of anti-Americanism" perplexing. "It is a sign of parochialism and it is disturbingly intense.""

Moronic German Leftists: "Australians are used to the idea of working for the dole, but the Germans have taken it a step further. A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year. Prostitution was legalised in Germany two years ago and brothel owners - who must pay tax and employee health insurance - were granted access to official databases of job seekers. The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe. She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile" and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did she realise she was calling a brothel. Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job or lose her unemployment benefit"

I love it! "Human Events has learned that a billboard blitz "thanking" Hollywood for the reelection of President Bush will be unveiled early next week. The advertisements feature the faces of liberal Hollywood icons Michael Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Affleck, Martin Sheen, Chevy Chase, Barbara Streisand, and Sean Penn, and offer thanks to Hollywood their help getting President Bush reelected. Two versions of the billboard were created, both "thanking" Hollywood -- the first for "4 more years" and the second for "W. Still President." Billboard creator Citizens United, a group that advocates a return to traditional American values, has purchased the use of three billboards near the Kodak Theatre (home of the Academy Awards) for the month of February, which includes Oscar Night, Sunday, February 27".

The British mainstream Left now appears to have taken up antisemitism. The British Conservative leader is a Jew and Labour party advertising is portraying him as a pig. Great for getting the Muslim vote, obviously.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx advocated race war. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Hebrews 1:8 "But of the Son he says, Thy throne, O God is for ever and ever"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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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EINSTEIN WAS A MARXIST

Which just goes to show you can be smart in one field and dumb in another. The drivel below was written by our Albert and appeared the 1949 edition of the Marxist Monthly Review .

"But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.....

The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before. This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

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A BETTER-INFORMED VIEW OF SOCIALISM:

A small excerpt:

"It turns out not only that capitalism is not a system of the exploitation of labor, but that the actual system of the exploitation of labor is socialism. Socialism establishes the very kind of exploitation for the alleged existence of which people seek to overthrow capitalism. The socialist state holds a universal monopoly on employment and production. Its citizens are economically powerless in their capacity both as workers and as consumers. No economic factor compels the socialist state to take account of their wishes. From an economic point of view, the rulers of the socialist state need be concerned with the values of the citizens only insofar as it needs them to have the health and strength required to work.

Moreover, the leading moral-political principle of the socialist state is that the citizen is not an end in himself, as he is acknowledged to be under capitalism, but is a means to the ends of "society." Since society does not inhabit any known mountain top, and cannot be communicated with in any direct way, its ends can be made known only through the rulers of the socialist state. Thus, the principle that the individual is the means to the ends of society necessarily means, in practice, that he is the means to the ends of society as divined, interpreted, and determined by the rulers of the socialist state. And what this means is that he is the means to the ends of the rulers. A more servile arrangement can hardly be imagined.

Thus, the position of the individual under socialism is that he must spend his life in toil for the ends of the rulers, who have no reason voluntarily to supply him with anything more than minimum physical subsistence. They will provide more (assuming they have the ability to do so) only if it is necessary to prevent riots or revolution or as a means of providing special incentives for the achievement of their own values, such as, above all, the power and prestige of the regime. Thus, they will provide a relatively high standard of living for rocket scientists, secret police agents, and such intellectuals and athletes whose accomplishments help to reflect glory on the regime. The average citizen, however, is fortunate if they provide him with subsistence".

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! More British madness. The authorities have now just about banned car chases by British police -- generating this advice: "So if you’ve just stolen a car, or if you just don’t feel like stopping for the police because you’ve just committed some other crime, or if you’re so drunk you don’t know what you’re doing, drive on into the sunset because it’s just too dangerous for us to do anything about it."

Leftists will grab at any argument that suits them at the time. This NYT article is the latest: An argument that U.S. military intervention abroad is not needed because free markets will eventuallly overturn all tyranny. Marvellous how free-markets have overturned Castro and the N.Korean regime I guess. The argument may even be true in the long run but, as Lord Keynes observed, "In the long run we are all dead".

Migrant reform battle brewing: "A top Republican lawmaker challenged President Bush on Wednesday to first beef up border security before permitting millions of undocumented immigrants to gain a legal foothold in the United States. The clash between Rep. James Sensenbrenner and Bush offers a preview of the fight that lies ahead in Congress over the president's controversial guest-worker proposal. ... At a news conference, Sensenbrenner argued that national security and immigration matters are separate issues and that 'you can't mix the two.' But earlier in the day, Bush told reporters that Congress must deal with both issues because 'immigration reform is necessary to help make it easier to protect our borders.'"

Anti-Bush desperation has led some Leftist wackos into looking into his remote ancestry in hope of finding something discreditable there. Betsy Newmark has an excellent summary of what Bush's geneology really shows.

Interesting news from China: China is buying Boeing, not Europe's big new Airbus. Maybe that huge A380 freaks the Chinese the way it does me. I see another white elephant like the Comet and the Concorde coming up. I back Boeing's commercial judgment versus that of a government-run industry. (Yes. I know the Comet originated with DH).

Good to see that the Australian Labor Party has dumped its more radical policies. Their lurch to the Left was disastrous for them at the last election.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx foresaw genocide and welcomed it. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at TITUS 2:13: "The appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour, Jesus Christ"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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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MUSLIMS & JEWS

For those who are not already aware of it, there is a good coverage here of the extensive alliances between Hitler and the Muslim world both before and during WW2. The two sides saw eye to eye on most things -- Jews particularly, of course.

An interesting quote from Mr. A. Hitler: "You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?" (From p. 96 of Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer -- Macmillan, 1970)

The far-Left are active in the Islamic world and by comparison with the Islamists they are a voice of sanity. Note this from one of them: ""A contributor to a secular forum did well recently in reminding us about Hitler's dictum on how to lie and have a great impact on the masses. "Adolf Hitler said: 'the broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.' Hitler also taught us that to succeed, the lie should be told loudly. In case you didn't notice, he would generally start his speeches in a relatively quite manner, [and] then as he starts shouting he gets more and more applause. The foolhardy German masses honestly believed that if their beloved Fuhrer is taking such a pain to talk loudly, he should be telling more truth. By these two accounts, Islamism is expected to be a very successful lie, indeed. Amir Taheri estimated the Islamist propaganda machine's bill to be about 100 billion dollars during the last two decades alone, which makes it the largest propaganda machine in history, even larger than the communist propaganda machine during the Soviet era. People wouldn't obviously spend that much unless they know they have to defend a huge lie".

In their usual desperate fashion, Leftists sometimes try to justify what Osama & Co do by saying that the Crusades of nearly 1,000 years ago were just as bad. Muslims are right to attack us now because we once attacked them. I suppose it is pointless to argue with such deliberate blindness but it might help people brainwashed by a Leftist educational system to know what the crusades were REALLY about. Like the Middle-East interventions by the USA today, the crusades too were a response to Islamic aggression. One excerpt: "The Crusades, he shows, were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense"

Email from a NYC reader: "Here in New York, there is an old subway station (190th St. and Ft. Washington Ave. in Manhattan) built sometime in the 1920s. For over 70 years the station floor had a geometric pattern in a Greek Motif that included, yes, swastikas. We are talking, in a station, in a neighborhood that was mostly Jewish, including a majority of whom, were European refugees after World War II. Yet nobody ever complained because, as one Jewish neighbor told me, the architecture of the station predated the Nazis and was never meant to offend so no offense was taken. That is until the PC 90's when someone did complain and the bricks were removed and replaced with big ugly black squares. Ironically, the neighborhood now only has a small Jewish minority".

PETA anti-Jewish: "Animal slaughter is not a pretty sight by any means. But a scandal rocked the Jewish world earlier this month when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) released a secretly recorded videotape of the Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse of the largest American producer of kosher meat, alleging that its practices amounted to outright animal cruelty. PETA's charges indeed raise some important questions. But its behavior in conducting its investigation, coupled with inflammatory past statements, suggests that the group has marked shechita -- Jewish ritual slaughter -- for extinction."

Boortz: "Yesterday the U.N. conducted its first ceremony remembering The Holocaust. To no one's surprise, the U.N. hall was half-empty, and all Arab countries were absent, except for Jordan. For his part, UN Secretary-General Kofi "Oil-For-Food" Annan was on hand to give a speech. Now ask yourself this: how many nations would be on hand to hear a speech by Fidel Castro? Your answer: nearly all of them, and the place would be packed. The rogue states and thug dictators that make up the UN would be more than happy to salute a ruthless communist. But when it comes to memorializing The Holocaust, they won't be bothered."

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ELSEWHERE

There is a new blog here written by a New Zealander in Sweden. So you get a combination of Swedish and New Zealand news -- both of which are pretty weird. You may need a strong stomach to read about Sweden's "abortion jewellery" though.

Thank goodness for a country where people get together to help the elderly beat an arrogant bureaucracy: "Braving frigid temperatures outside the Rockingham County Courthouse on Tuesday, protesters accused Hampton town officials of "breaking up a family" by suing two residents for converting their home into a use forbidden by law.... Burbank was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday in response to the town’s claim that she and her 95-year-old aunt, Myrtle Woodward, were in violation of a zoning rule prohibiting two-family residences for having converted their garage into an apartment for Burbank’s daughter, Kim Burbank."

Max Boot has a good summary of the popular but fact-free Leftist journalist Seymour Hersh.

Anti-Catholic propaganda: "On Jan. 9, 2005 the New York Times published a prominent article entitled "Saving Jewish Children, But At What Cost?" in which it accuses the Vatican and Pope Pius XII of having given instructions not to allow Jewish children who had been sheltered by Catholics during the war to return to their own families. As we shall demonstrate, the article published by the New York Times was unfair, misleading and did not undergo the most rudimentary fact checking. Furthermore, it is grossly defamatory. As a result both its authors Elaine Sciolino and Jason Horowitz as well as the Times' Executive Editor Bill Keller should be fired. In fact, in its article the New York Times was echoing similar accusations based on the same document made by Alberto Melloni in the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera on December 28, 2004. Melloni's sensationalism, repeated by the New York Times, has already been exposed by two of Italy's top Pius XII experts, Andrea Tornielli and Prof. Matteo L. Napolitano (co-authors of the book, Il Papa che salvo gli Ebrei)" [The book title translates as: "The Pope who saved the Hebrews"]

Wicked Thoughts has just put up some amusing news items

My least visited blog is probably "Leftists as Elitists". But I do get some remarkable stuff for it at times. This post is absolutely full of hate for ordinary Americans and a reader rightly comments on it: "This thinking sets up the Leftist to conclude that since Americans are not likeable people, that they are defiantly mean and craven, that they are just as loathsome as the evil exploiters, then mass murder, "re-education" camps and general oppression are the morally right and even necessary response to this situation. It's only a matter of time.."

My latest posting on MarxWords shows The lofty contempt Engels had for democracy. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at COLOSSIANS 2:9 -- "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (KJ)

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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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ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA KEEPS ORDINARY MUSLIMS FOOLED

The suicide bomber who blew himself up in a U.S. mess hall in Mosul, Iraq, on Dec. 21 was Saudi Arabian, according to the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. Ahmed Said Ahmed al-Ghamdi killed 22 people. His profile upsets the conventional - and faulty - perception of terrorists as uneducated, poor and desperate individuals. Al-Ghamdi was well-educated - a medical student. And he came from a wealthy and well-connected Saudi Arabian family. His father is a Saudi ambassador....

Why would young men like the al-Ghamdis answer the call of jihad to kill Americans? An answer can be found in an article published three days before the Mosul bombing in the Saudi government daily Al-Watan. In it, reporter Fakriya Ahmad charges that American military forces in Iraq are savagely harvesting the organs of Iraqi insurgents to sell in the United States. Medical teams following the troops allegedly offer "$40 for every usable kidney and $25 for an eye," according to translations by the Middle East Media Research Institute. Some are taken from wounded fighters who are still alive, and then they're put to death, their mutilated bodies burned to conceal the crime.

Fantastic conspiracy theories are commonplace in the Middle Eastern media. Zionist plots abound, such as the threat to emasculate the men of Khartoum, Sudan, using "laser controlled, surgical robots" disguised as combs. That 2003 story, too, came from Al-Watan. Such myths, while serving to remind people of the ever-present danger posed by the devious Jews, are subordinate to a more important theme. The paramount message is that every hardship and catastrophic event, whether man-made or seemingly an act of God, is in reality the result of the evil forces of Western imperialism, with the United States and Israel as its vanguard.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

What an insult! "On a day where the 1,5 million victims of the Nazi terror in the Auschwitz concentration camp are remembered, some German left-wing media stress the connection to - Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, where on November 9, 2003, former employees of Saddam Hussein had the misfortunes of being mistreated by a few U.S. guards.... How things have changed. In the post-war past in Germany, the Right wanted to minimize the atrocities committed in the concentration camps in the name of Germany. Now the Left - in their never ending desire to smear the current U.S. administration - minimizes the image of the holocaust by comparing the years-long gassing of millions of jews in Nazi Germany to the mistreatment of a limited number of Iraqis on just one day or on a couple of days. And this comparison (1, 2) has already become something of a tradition in the German media".

The Australian influence on Britain seems to be ever-growing. Not only do Brits now drink as much Australian wine as French but London's The Times is even using Australian slang ("Pommy sheila") in its headlines. One day Britain's Michael Howard (Tory leader) might even learn from Australia's John Howard.

Anti-Christian fanatics: "If the activists are trembling, the pundits are exploding. For example, professor David Domke is fond of counting the number of times Bush has invoked God in his speeches, and is now worried that the president sees himself as `a prophetic spokesman for God.' Similarly, Ellis Henican of Newsday believes `The Party of God is now fully in charge,' contending that Bush `considers himself as God's own prophet.' Boston University professor Stephen Prothero is hyperventilating over his hunch that we now have `a Jesus lover in the Oval Office.' Professor William Cook at the University of La Verne says Bush's supporters believe they have a `divinely anointed Emperor' in charge. And author Abid Ullah Jan goes one better, saying that Bush `has assumed the role of the first in the new line of corrupt popes.'

Dutch kooks: "A bank robber has been allowed to claim the cost of a pistol used in a hold-up as a legitimate business expense. A Dutch court has permitted the 46-year-old man to set the 2000 Euro ($3400) cost of the gun against his gross proceeds of 6750 Euros, gained during his raid on a bank in the southern town of Chaam. The judge at Breda Criminal Court duly reduced his fine by the same amount, while sentencing him to four years in jail."

TV biased against religion: "Today the Parents Television Council (PTC), the nation's most influential advocacy organization protecting children against sex, violence and profanity in entertainment, in conjunction with the National Religious Broadcasters, released the results of a new study entitled Faith in a Box: Entertainment Television and Religion. The study found that television's treatment of religion has become increasingly negative and doesn't reflect the viewpoints of a majority of Americans. The study also found that NBC by far leads the other major networks in terms of the number of negative depictions of faith".

What complete and utter ignorance of the American founders! "At the first inauguration of a president, in 1789, George Washington wanted to wear a suit covered in gold leaf with a special cape, and ride to the ceremony on a white horse escorted by an honour guard on white horses. Like a coronation". Prof. Bunyip pisses all over the ignoramus who wrote it.

Jonathan Gurwitz asks where are the Leftist "human shields" now that Iraqi polling places face bombings from the Islamofascists? Could it be that they really know that the Islamofascists are ruthless butchers?

This story of how some of the world's most famous organizations cannot get their software to work even after spending hundreds of millions on it should in a fair world engender a lot of respect for Microsoft. There are some similar awful examples from Australia, too -- including the software that was supposed to work our new submarines.

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

Nathan Tabor argues that there should be more promotion of adoption as an alternative to abortion.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx despised Jews but still sought money from them. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 1:3 "Without him was not anything made that was made".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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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CONDI IS A COMMO!

The latest flight of the Leftist imagination:

"Testifying before Congress last week, Condoleezza Rice gave little indication that she grasps the central challenge of the next four years: restoring American credibility in the war of ideas against totalitarian Islam with a new era of candor, acknowledgment of past errors, and clear signs of having learned from them....But then, on the second day of the hearings, Biden managed to elicit an unexpected and revealing response from Rice, when he said that the U.S. government has to both "level with the American people" and "be honest with the world." "Otherwise," Biden added, "we'll do terrible damage beyond what we've already done to our credibility." Rice then offered the following retort:

I said yesterday, Senator, we've made a lot of decisions in this period of time. Some of them have been very good. Some of them have not been very good. Some of them have been bad decisions, I'm sure. I know enough about history to stand back and to recognize that you judge decisions not at the moment but in how it all adds up. And that's just strongly the way I feel about big historical changes. I'm being as straightforward with you as I possibly can. [emphasis added]

The idea that a decision cannot be judged at the moment but only retrospectively opens a slippery slope of justification. The future Secretary of State was indulging an understanding of politics favored by advocates of a Hegelian view of history--most of whom have, in the last century, been communists. In his lectures on the philosophy of history delivered in the early nineteenth century, the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel argued that history was a slaughter bench on which the happiness of individuals was sacrificed.... The achievement of freedom, or in the case of the communists, the classless society, justified the sacrifices on the path to its perfection--as if such perfection could not, in the end, have come about without those sacrifices.... The capacity of history to absolve political actors is a cynical and immoral doctrine. No one can know for sure how political decisions will turn out".

So Condi makes the perfectly simple and commonsense point that it is the sum of the decisions that matters -- nobody gets it right all the time -- and that is somehow twisted into a claim that the end justifies the means! Pathetic

If Condi had been a REAL Commo she would have denied that the government ever made any mistakes. My own recollection of the Communist mind is amusing: When I was teaching sociology at the University of New South Wales about 25 years ago, we were privileged to receive an official visitor from the Soviet Union -- the very unglamorous head of some Soviet Women's organization. The reception she received from the sociologists was rapturous until some naive person asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied with great aplomb: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution." I could have died laughing at the visible mental indigestion that remark caused! I can still remember the looks on some of the faces!

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FAR LEFT SHOW THEIR TRUE COLOURS

Hatred of America trumps all else for them

"The murder of a prominent trade unionist in Iraq has provoked a split in the anti-war movement in Britain over whether he should be seen as a hero or a collaborator with the American-led occupation. The torture and killing of Hadi Saleh in Baghdad on 4 January has become a litmus test of whether campaigners who opposed the Iraq war should "move on" and embrace moves towards democracy in the country. The more moderate voices in the anti-war camp have accused hardliners of failing to condemn the murder and implying it was a justified act by insurgents.

Mr Saleh, the international officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, spent five years in jail during Saddam Hussein's regime. He returned from exile abroad after Saddam's fall to try to establish trade unions in the new Iraq. Allies say he was tied, blindfolded, severely tortured and strangled by an electric cord as part of a campaign by the "Iraqi resistance" to eradicate democrats.

His killing has been condemned by trade union bodies around the world, including the TUC, and many critics of the war. But the Stop the War Coalition has been accused of remaining virtually silent - a charge it dismisses as a smear by opponents. Gary Kent, director of Labour Friends of Iraq (LIFQ), said yesterday: "This horrible murder has galvanised the decent left who mostly opposed the war but cannot stomach ambiguities or worse on the so-called resistance. It illustrates there is a large faultline on the left about post-war Iraq. Some armchair revolutionaries are happy to fight to the last drop of someone else's blood. But the elementary notion of solidarity with Iraqi trade unions is fast winning the day, and about time too.""

More here

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ELSEWHERE

There is a nostalgic article in the moderate-Leftist American Prospect praising Truman and other Democrats of his era and wishing that the modern Left were as anti-Communist. The article assures us however that Truman would not have invaded Iraq. He would only have done tough talk. What a crock! We know how Truman beat the Japanese: He nuked them! It is GWB who is the moderate today.

Schroeder nearly gets it right: "German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has used a commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago to declare that ordinary Germans were responsible for the Holocaust. Speaking to an audience including several Auschwitz survivors, Mr Schroeder said the horrors of the concentration camp could not be explained by merely blaming the "demon Hitler". "The evil of the Nazi ideology did not come out of nowhere. The brutalisation of thought and the lack of moral inhibitions had a history," he said. "One thing is clear: the Nazi ideology was willed by people and carried out by people."" [And who are the people who say there is no such thing as right and wrong?]

Yesterday was the anniversary of white settlers first arriving in Australia: "Shortly after dawn in Sydney, George Street was echoing with the inevitable chants of "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi! Oi! Oi!" By midday, parks, pools and harbour foreshores were filled with people not just waving, but wearing flags. They had all come together for fireworks and ferry races, barbecues and beach cricket, drinking and debate.... Whatever Australians think of their day, visitors are impressed. Fiona Edwards, 26, from York in England, spent the day working at Doyle's fish restaurant. "It's really nice to see how proud everyone is of being Australian," she said. "We have St George's Day but most people don't even know when it is, and it's not a day off work or anything ... So many people have turned out, everyone's got the flags, they've got special T-shirts. It's just really nice to see everyone in a good mood." [I celebrated the day at a BBQ with relatives]

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx despised the workers as "donkeys". My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at JOHN 1: 29-34 ("The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world")

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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

Associated Press put terrorist collaborators on its payroll We now have evidence that Associated Press has been collaborating with terrorists in Iraq
Alberto Gonzales, terrorists and lying journalists When it comes to dishonesty, selective outrage and fake humanitarianism our media are second to none - Marian Wilkinson is no exception
Journalist smears Iraq's coming election If you want to know why Coalition troops have started to call journalists "roaches" then look no further than the likes of Paul McGeough
Problems with markets? Free market advocates place great store on moral frameworks and sound social institutions. Never forget that Adam Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher
Saving and wealth creation Why savings fuel economic growth
Clinton's taxes did not cause America's recession There are two common explanations for America's recession. Both are wrong

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Great! The Conservative Philosopher blog is now up and running. An amusing thing is that one of the commenters identifies himself as "JR" -- which is an ID that I often use -- but it isn't me! He sounds a lot like me too. (Yes. I know that in Latinate grammar I should have said: "It isn't I").

Amazing! Socialist Worker (Trotskyites, I think) says GWB is NOT A Fascist! "Certainly, during his first term, George W. Bush got away with more reactionary attacks than anyone had expected.... But this isn't the proof of fascism--because all of these assaults have been carried out in one form or another by governments in the U.S. and elsewhere that are considered democratic, and often enough when the ruling party was the "liberal" alternative.... As appalling as the Bush administration's attacks have been, the situation today doesn't approach the violence of a fascist regime. What's more, if you define fascism to mean increased police powers and gutted civil liberties, then you have to consider the Democrats to be fascists, too." [Trotsky was a murderous bastard but he was right in saying that Lenin was just as Fascist as Hitler. So some realism in his followers is to be expected]

Arnold Kling has some excellent comments on Jim Bennett's book The Anglosphere Challenge -- a book which celebrates the traditions and values of the English and their derivative societies. Kling makes the point that I often do -- that traditional English values are essentially conservative rather than Leftist.

Bill Gates shows up the U.N.: "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doubling its contribution to increase access to basic childhood vaccinations in the world's poorest nations, bringing its total commitment to $1.5 billion. Over the next decade, the foundation will donate $750 million more to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, a partnership of private donors, companies and multilateral organizations, known as G.A.V.I. Melinda Gates said that the foundation was doubling the $750 million donation it made in 1999 to establish the alliance because that donation was "the best investment we've made." She said that more than 42 million children had been vaccinated against hepatitis B, that more than 670,000 premature deaths had been prevented from 2001 through 2003"

GWB is realistic: "Despite the skeptics, all historical evidence suggests that democracy can indeed spread further, that America can serve as an agent of its advancement, as it has done all over the world, and that democracy's spread will make the world safer".

Europe waking up? "The more aggressive approach toward Sheik Omar is part of an increasing effort to monitor and restrict militant imams in Britain and across Europe. Authorities have stepped up surveillance of militant mosques in several countries, including Germany and France. French officials deported an imam this month after officials said he was inspiring men to join the jihad."

Wow! Richard Perle delivers some very good put-downs to European whimpering about Iraq here

The wages of corruption: "It is official: the French are a nation of depressed pessimists, wracked with self-doubt and unable to see a positive future. This gloomy portrait of the current state of Gallic morale - or rather the lack of it - was made public yesterday in a damning report by France's prefects, the country's top administrators. "The French no longer believe in anything," the report said. "That is the reason that the situation is relatively calm, for they believe that it is not even worthwhile expressing their opinions or trying to be heard any more." The country's 100 prefects went on to use the words "lifelessness", "resignation", "anxiety" and "pessimism" to describe the attitudes they believe prevail in France today".

Believers in democracy at work: "The sons of a first-term congresswoman and Milwaukee's former acting mayor were among five Democratic activists charged Monday with slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans to drive voters and monitors to the polls on Election Day. Sowande Omokunde, son of Rep. Gwen Moore, [D-WI] and Michael Pratt, the son of former Milwaukee acting mayor Marvin Pratt, were among those charged with criminal damage to property, a felony that carries a maximum punishment of 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The activists are accused of flattening the tires on 25 vehicles rented by the state Republican Party to get out the vote and deliver poll watchers Nov. 2. The GOP rented more than 100 vehicles that were parked in a lot adjacent to a Bush campaign office. The party planned to drive poll watchers to polling places by 7 a.m. and deliver any voters who didn't have a ride."

I have received the following rather amusing email: "The Culinary Institute of America notes your mention of our college in your comments from Friday, Jan. 21. Please be aware the so-called quote from The Culinary Insitute of America was made up by the author of an article that appeared in the Weekly Standard. A close review of this article notes a future dateline of Feb. 13, 2005, with a later comment that the scenario is "undoubtedly just around the corner." Would you please clarify for your readers that the quote was a figment of the author's imagination, and the "spokesperson" quoted -- Ray Facino -- does not exist. Our college is disturbed by the inappropriate and inaccurate use of our name and has requested The Weekly Standard print a retraction and/or clarification".

My latest posting on MarxWords shows where Hegel got at least some of his ideas. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at ROMANS 9:5 -- "Christ came who is over all, God blessed forever"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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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TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I pick out what I think are my best posts for the week:

On Dissecting Leftism I argue that homophobia is a myth.

On Political Correctness Watch I note a case where a false accusation of rape that could have landed a man in jail for 40 years got only a 30 day sentence.

On Greenie Watch I suggest that global dimming theory looks like upsetting global warming theory.

On Education Watch I point out that the U.S. government cannot tell the difference between real university degrees and diploma mill degrees.

On Socialized Medicine I point out that what U.S. hospitals charge patients is whatever they think they can get away with.

On Gun Watch I note where having a gun emboldened a 79 year-old to confront a maniac.

On Leftists as Elitists I point out that Leftists fear the majority.

On Marx Words I tell you all you need to know about Hegel in one easy lesson.

On A Scripture Blog I say that it was mainly the common people who originally worshipped Christ.

On Majority Rights I point out that Engels supported American exceptionalism -- sort of.

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ELSEWHERE

Keith Burgess Jackson is starting up a group blog to be written by conservatives with philosophy degrees. I am delighted to see that Jim Ryan is going to take part. Jim and I had some good debates when he ran Philosoblog. Keith needs more members to make it a goer yet, though, so if you know any conservative philosophers (a pretty rare breed) tell them about it.

Eleanor Spreitzer writes: "Do you enjoy watching Charlie Chaplin on TV - you know those old movies - "The Little Tramp" etc. What joy he brought to the whole world - Queen Elizabeth knighted him - the English were so proud of Charlie. Guess what - all things being equal - today - the Loony Left would have fined him, thrown him in jail etc., - why? - because how politically incorrect can you be????? The little TRAMP???? How dare anyone use such a harsh word as "TRAMP". He might have gotten away with the "Little Homeless Person". But probably not. (And beside that, the Public just wouldn't have embraced "The Little Homeless Person" with the same sense of endearment as "The Little Tramp" - would it?). The whole idea and creation of "The Little Tramp" would have been scrapped - what a loss".

V.D. Hanson puts a good case to say that America's influence in the Middle East has been vastly strengthened by the intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. No Islamic State wants to be next on the list.

No wonder the Dutch are having big problems with their minorities! A big academic research program reported in 2001 shows that there is a huge IQ gap between the Dutch and the immigrants: "the mean IQ of third world immigrants in the Netherlands is lower than the Dutch mean by approximately one standard deviation for Surinamese and Antilleans, and by approximately one and a half standard deviations for Turks and Moroccans. Since IQ tests provide the best prediction of success in school and organizations, it could be that the immigrants' lower mean IQ is an important factor in their low status on the Dutch labour market"

It must be all that sophistication: "Europe has the world's highest suicide rate and cases are rising among young people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr Gudjon Magnusson, WHO director for Europe in charge of mental health, told SocietyGuardian.co.uk that Europe needed to lose its shameful record of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 population. Of around 30 countries which gave data to the WHO, Lithuania had the worst rate at 44 suicides per 100,000, the UK nearly seven per 100,000 (higher than Italy and Malta) and the lowest number was in Azerbaijan at 1.41 per 100,000".

There is a rare translation from the Afrikaner press of South Africa here which suggests that big upheavals are to be expected there soon. Anti-white attitudes appear to be hardening among members of the government.

A very good brief explanation here of how the U.S. presence in Iraq is an application of the high ideals of the American founding. Leftists really are disgraceful for the way they have from the beginning completely closed their eyes to what the Saddam Hussein regime was like. But they ignored the realities of Soviet Russia for around 40 years so it's no surprise. Reality is just not their scene.

New Sisyphus has some excellent comments on the hatred of Fox News: "The rise of Fox News has riled the MSM and all good-thinking liberals everywhere. Especially risible to opponents of Fox is its motto of bringing "Fair and Balanced" reporting to American television. As everyone knows, Fox is most un-fair and definitely un-balanced in that it makes an attempt to understand the views, values and concerns of the roughly 50% of the American public that tends to be conservative and vote Republican. These people, being morons, have no place in public discourse, let alone in real journalism, as any New York Times or BBC reporter would be happy to explain to you".

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels mourned good harvests! My latest posting on "A scripture blog" has an extended look at the meaning of "Logos" in John 1:1

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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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SOME ECONOMICS

A socialist economist who finally learnt: "Capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure. Here is the part that's hard to swallow. It has been the Friedmans, Hayeks, and von Miseses who have maintained that capitalism would flourish and that socialism would develop incurable ailments. All three have regarded capitalism as the 'natural' system of free men; all have maintained that left to its own devices capitalism would achieve material growth more successfully than any other system. From [my samplings] I draw the following discomforting generalization: The farther to the right one looks, the more prescient has been the historical foresight; the farther to the left, the less so".

There is a big article here which says that Communism has made a pretty big comeback in Latin America. There is certainly a strong Leftist influence there but there is some economic sanity there too so it remains to be seen how it will all end up. Stupid and brutish governments seem to be a tradition in Latin America, however, so whatever happens is unlikely to be much of a surprise. Only Chile is flourishing economically, thanks to Pinochet and the "Chicago" economists that he gave the economic reins to: "The Chilean economy after all, has posted growth rates above 7% per year for many years now"

Administration stupidity: "Less than two weeks after a 40-foot wave flattened massive swaths of Southeast Asia, the United States slapped a tariff on millions of dollars worth of seafood imports from India and Thailand. As the federal government promised $350 million, and private citizens pledged even more, the message to surviving shrimp farmers was clear: Have our marines, our pity, and our cash, but for the love of God, do not send us your cheap shrimp."

Another good debunking of the Wal-Mart bashers here. They are so keen to bash Wal-Mart that they are even praising Henry Ford! Ford was of course once the great heartless capitalist bugaboo of the Left who turned men into machines and "alienated" them. Consistency is not a Leftist virtue. Like Leftists generally, the Wal-Mart bashers find one little fact they like and then proceed to ignore all the other relevant facts.

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ELSEWHERE

Have a look at this picture of Russian Communists today. Note the semi-Nazi salute and the way the old Soviet flag has been remodeled Nazi-style with a black motif in a white circle on a red background. A visible sign of Nazi/Communist fusion. If they are Putin's opposition, Putin looks better all the time. For those who don't remember, the old Soviet flag was a yellow motif on a simple red background.

IQ rules again: "The risk of suicide is two to three times higher among men with low intelligence, and poorly performing offspring of well-educated parents are at the greatest risk. Low intelligence could lessen the "ability to solve problems while going through an acute life crisis", says a study in the British Medical Journal that analysed data from almost 1 million Swedish men.... The researchers looked at the military service records of 987,308 Swedish men born between 1950 and 1976. All the men had complete sets of intelligence test results at the commencement of their military service. Better performance in the tests was associated with reduced risk of suicide".

Leftist hypocrisy about IQ again: Leftists normally deny that there really is such a thing as IQ. All men are equal, aren't they? As we know, that was suddenly forgotten when someone cooked up a spurious table showing that "red" States had low IQs on average. Spurious IQ data was as popular as real IQ data is not. As this writer points out Leftists also rediscover IQ when it suits their "soft on crime" agenda. They constantly claim that low IQ murderers should not be executed, for instance.

There is a detailed story here that tends to show that America's most relentless enemy in Iraq is the American mainstream media.

Not all libertarians are peaceniks: "As attempts to stereotype Libertarians have proven, generalizations are futile. It's no more reasonable to say members of the Libertarian Party are politically far right than it is to say they're far left -- although party members are frequently hit with both labels. And you can't safely say Libertarians are anti-military -- assuming the military is being used properly for national defense. In fact, there are hundreds of military personnel in the party's membership -- many of whom were recently asked to consider telling their stories for LP News, the monthly Libertarian Party newspaper....."

What a faker! "On the eve of the presidential inauguration, US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton embraced an issue some pundits say helped seal a second term for George W. Bush: acceptance of the role of faith in addressing social ills. In a speech at a fund-raising dinner for a Boston-based organization that promotes faith-based solutions to social problems, Clinton said there has been a 'false division' between faith-based approaches to social problems and respect for the separation of church of state. 'There is no contradiction between support for faith-based initiatives and upholding our constitutional principles,' said Clinton ... [who] invoked God more than half a dozen times, at one point declaring, 'I've always been a praying person.'"

Criminals are just misunderstood, of course: "A convicted murderer, who escaped the death penalty, was given a life sentence, and then was released on parole, is going back to prison on another life sentence - this time for the rape last fall of a 9-year-old girl near a Bryan elementary school. This is the second time that Donald James Sallows, Jr., 54, who was involved in the kidnapping and strangulation of a South Toledo man in 1977, has violated his parole by having sexual contact with children. In 1998, after being out of prison for slightly more than three years, he was sent back to prison for unlawful sexual contact with a 4-year-old. Less than five years later, he was out on parole again"

I have just put up an email from a reader on the subject of homosexual life expectancy here

My latest posting on MarxWords tells you all you need to know about Hegel in one easy lesson. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at what Jesus means when he says "my" Father rather than "our" Father.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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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THE "NEOCONSERVATIVE" BOGEYMAN

V.D. Hanson debunks the nonsense you hear. Excerpt:

"Neo- is a prefix that derives from the Greek adjective neos - "new" or "fresh" - and in theory it is used inexactly for those conservatives who once were not - or for those who have reinterpreted conservatism .. But the accepted definition has given way in practice to refer to the more particular proponents of the use of military action to remove threatening governments, and to replace them with democratic systems - hence the occasional sobriquets of "neo-Wilsonian." But for a number of detractors, "neoconservative" is also little more than generic disparagement, and (off-the-record) it is synonymous with American Jews who seek to alter American foreign policy to the wishes of the right-wing Likud party of Israel.

Yet note the misinformation about its meaning and usage. The five most prominent makers of American foreign policy at the moment - George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld - are (1) not Jewish, (2) hard-headed and not easily bamboozled by any supposed cabal, and (3) were mostly in the past identified with the "realist" school and especially skeptical of using the military frequently for anything resembling Clintonian peace-keeping.

So, for example, while Secretary Rumsfeld signed the now-infamous 1998 letter to President Clinton calling for the de-facto preemptive removal of Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice did not. Yet Richard Armitage - considered a stalwart in the Colin Powell camp - was a signatory."

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ELSEWHERE

I take close to zero interest in homosexual issues so I am indebted to Chris Vinall for drawing my attention to a controversy about homosexual life-expectancy. I referred to a figure of around 40 taken from Omega in my post of two days ago. Chris draws my attention to this article in "Slate" and infers that Omega used dubious data too. Note however this quote from the article in "Slate": "The actual average age of AIDS patients at death has been about 40". No-one is claiming that all homosexuals get AIDS but many do and that is all that is required for my argument. I have in fact myself had two homosexual friends die young because of AIDS. I might mention in passing that I quoted a statistic from Omega because it is a mainstream academic journal in the field of death studies. I have had a couple of articles in it myself so know something of it.

Interesting tribute from a prominent Leftist: "I have known President Bush for 40 years - ever since we attended Yale College together in the 1960s. I'm a Democrat (and I was a Democrat then), but I liked him and I still like him, as a sincere and kind man and a good friend.... One of my most vivid memories is this: A few of us were in the common room one night. It was 1965, I believe - my junior year, his sophomore. We were making our usual sarcastic commentaries on those who walked by us. A little nasty perhaps, but always with a touch of humor. On this occasion, however, someone we all believed to be gay walked by, although the word we used in those days was "queer." Someone, I'm sorry to say, snidely used that word as he walked by. George heard it and, most uncharacteristically, snapped: "Shut up." Then he said, in words I can remember almost verbatim: "Why don't you try walking in his shoes for a while and see how it feels before you make a comment like that?"" (Via Commonsense & Wonder).

Sick university honours sick professor: "Villanova University on Thursday will dedicate a new section of its library to a star professor and student favorite who committed suicide in August 2003 while in jail. Mine Ener was behind bars after admitting she had killed her 6-month old, Down Syndrome-afflicted daughter by slashing the baby's throat... Giordano suggested that the school was giving special consideration to Ener because she was a scholar in the field of Islamic studies."

Story about U.N. parasites here: "It has been three weeks since my ship, the USS Abraham Lincoln, arrived off the Sumatran coast to aid the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami that ravaged their coastline. I'd like to say that this has been a rewarding experience for us, but it has not: Instead, it has been a frustrating and needlessly dangerous exercise made even more difficult by the Indonesian government and a traveling circus of so-called aid workers who have invaded our spaces.... As a result of having to host these people, our severely over-tasked SH-60 Seahawk helos, which were carrying tons of food and water every day to the most inaccessible places in and around Banda Aceh, are now used in great part to ferry these "relief workers" from place to place every day and bring them back to their guest bedrooms on the Lincoln at night."

What's the greatest tragedy of the last century? ......Hitler's Third Reich, Stalin's Great Purge, Mao's collectivization, Michael Jackson's latest Kids' Day? Wrong.... it was the banning of the pesticide DDT: "Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler."... DDT was not a carcinogen, scientists knew it wasn't a carcinogen, and that its replacement, Parathion, was the real toxin, causing the death of hundreds of farm workers. What's the point of this revelation? That public hysteria for fear-driven, emotional, and unscientific quick "fixes" can lead to unintended consequences that are much worse than any perceived crisis"

Blithering Bunny reports that the University of Sydney (who once awarded me a rather large and fancy document) are sponsoring an incomprehensible conference: "This conference brings together two key figures in the contemporary reconsideration of the concept of origin. Radical theorist and activist, Antonio Negri has introduced a materialist perspective on the concept of origin through his investigations of constituent power and multitudes. Italian feminist philosopher, Adriana Cavarero has been engaged in reconceiving origin through the thought of sexual difference, an ethics of embodiment and more recently, the politics of vocal expression.... Antonio Negri was an architect of the infamous Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group. In 1979, he was arrested and charged with "armed insurrection against the state" and seventeen murders, including the murder of the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro"

EU crumbling: "The CIA has predicted that the European Union will break-up within 15 years unless it radically reforms its ailing welfare systems. The report by the intelligence agency, which forecasts how the world will look in 2020, warns that Europe could be dragged into economic decline by its ageing population. It also predicts the end of Nato and post-1945 military alliances. In a devastating indictment of EU economic prospects, the report warns: "The current EU welfare state is unsustainable and the lack of any economic revitalisation could lead to the splintering or, at worst, disintegration of the EU"

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx treated the illness of a relative as great news. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Acts 20:28 -- "... the church of the Lord which he obtained with his own blood".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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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WHO WAS THE FASCIST B****** WHO SAID THIS?

A selective account of American history used to justify actions elsewhere:

"Just a word about "universal fraternal union of peoples" and the drawing of "boundaries established by the sovereign will of the peoples themselves on the basis of their national characteristics". The United States and Mexico are two republics, in both of which the people is sovereign.

How did it happen that over Texas a war broke out between these two republics, which, according to the moral theory, ought to have been "fraternally united" and "federated", and that, owing to "geographical, commercial and strategical necessities", the "sovereign will" of the American people, supported by the bravery of the American volunteers, shifted the boundaries drawn by nature some hundreds of miles further south? And will B. accuse the Americans of a "war of conquest", which, although it deals with a severe blow to his theory based on "justice and humanity", was nevertheless waged wholly and solely in the interest of civilization? Or is it perhaps unfortunate that splendid California has been taken away from the lazy Mexicans, who could not do anything with it? That the energetic Yankees by rapid exploitation of the California gold mines will increase the means of circulation, in a few years will concentrate a dense population and extensive trade at the most suitable places on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, create large cities, open up communications by steamship, construct a railway from New York to San Francisco, for the first time really open the Pacific Ocean to civilization, and for the third time in history give the world trade a new direction? The "independence" of a few Spanish Californians and Texans may suffer because of it, in someplaces "justice" and other moral principles may be violated; but what does that matter to such facts of world-historic significance?"

So who was it who rejected morality and believed that the superiority of one people over another gave the stronger one the right to seize the territory of the weaker one? Was it Hitler justifying his invasion of Poland? No. It was clearly written before that and it was written by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's co-author. See here.

So what does that show? It shows that Mussolini's Fascism, Hitler's Nazism and Lenin's Communism were all Marxist. We are always told how "Rightist" ideas such as the above are but in the days of Hitler and Mussolini such ideas were LEFTIST. Practically everybody in the 19th century believed that some races and nations were superior to others but it was the Leftists who wanted to use such ideas to justify merciless oppression of one race or nation by another. The British, by contrast, saw their suzerainty over India as the white man's BURDEN (in Kipling's famous phrase). They did not see it as a licence to kill. When one erring General (Dyer) committed the Amritsar massacre in India, there was great public outrage in Britain and he was cashiered over it. By contrast, read a little further in the article by Engels just quoted and see what he wanted to do to the Czechs:

"And for this cowardly, base betrayal of the revolution we shall at some time take a bloody revenge against the Slavs".

So what had the Czech Slavs done to have such bloodlust aimed at them? They were not revolutionary enough! The Czech Leftists had made peace with their government. THAT was their terrible crime! So we see where both Lenin and Hitler were coming from.

The same thing applied to eugenics. The idea was invented by the conservative Galton but it was the Leftists who wanted to use it as an excuse for the merciless and forcible control of people's lives. As it says here:

"Galton's proposals were benign compared with those of famous contemporaries who rallied to his cause. H. G. Wells, for instance, declared, "It is in the sterilisation of failures, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies." Although Galton was a conservative, his creed caught on with progressive figures like Harold Laski, John Maynard Keynes, George Bernard Shaw, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. In the United States, New York disciples founded the Galton Society, which met regularly at the American Museum of Natural History, and popularizers helped the rest of the country become eugenics-minded. "How long are we Americans to be so careful for the pedigree of our pigs and chickens and cattle-and then leave the ancestry of our children to chance or to `blind' sentiment?" asked a placard at an exposition in Philadelphia. Four years before Galton's death, the Indiana legislature passed the first state sterilization law, "to prevent the procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists." Most of the other states soon followed. In all, there were some sixty thousand court-ordered sterilizations of Americans who were judged to be eugenically unfit".

So Hitler's eugenics simply made him a good Leftist of his time. It did NOT make him a Rightist. More on what Marx and Engels actually preached at MarxWords. So although Germany is rightly blamed for much evil, it is in a sense the wrong German who gets blamed. It should be Engels, not Hitler. Hitler just implemented what Engels preached. But in all the big commemorations of the war they will be having in Germany soon, how often do you think that will be mentioned?

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ELSEWHERE

A good comment from an Australian reader on my leading post yesterday: ""Spiked" recently had an interesting article on the politically correct use of 'homophobia'. Your link on gay domestic violence may even indicate that homophilic violence (not always 'domestic') is a bigger threat to gays than homophobic violence. Of course it is political correctness types, not necessarily gays themselves, who push this homophobia barrow. Basically as part of their bigger agenda to curtail personal liberty for all people gay or not, presumably to socially engineer their utopian fantasy. I think most people, including most minority members, would rather have strong broad-based legal protections for all and a non-intrusive state and put up with the ratbag and bigoted views of some of their neighbours, than risk our personal freedoms in a futile crusade for universal tolerance".

The "protests" at GWB's inauguration have inspired one blogger to say that America has become "Berkelified". He then goes on the explain the "reasoning" behind the protests. "Look at me" about sums up the real motivation of the protestors. In case you DO want to see all the weird shapes and sizes that egotism comes in, One Hundred Percenter has some photos.

And here is a sample of the vast intellect behind the protests: "In cold, snowy Washington, about a hundred protesters gathered outside the "Black Tie and Boots" inaugural ball on Wednesday night, comparing President George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler because Bush is "exterminating the Muslim race." "It is no different in that Hitler killed so many Jews, and George Bush, you know, is exterminating the Muslim race and others," said a man who identified himself only as Don from Florida. Don held up a sign with the words "Vote Republican" written over a Nazi swastika. "It's just a form of fascism -- the Patriot Act and everything -- they stole the vote".

Taranto: "UC Berkeley recently completed what a press release describes as "the first attempt to compare measures of mental health and general well-being among California's general population on a county-level basis." The study (link in PDF) finds that the two counties with the lowest "mental health scores" are Alameda, which includes Berkeley, and San Francisco, which is coterminous with the city. (See page 30 of the PDF document, which is page 21 of the printed report.). What else do these counties have in common? They are the California counties where John Kerry did best: 83% of the vote in San Francisco and 75% in Alameda. You don't have to be crazy to oppose President Bush, but it doesn't hurt".

Loony British welfare: "A think-tank claims that married couples are being rewarded for splitting up. The tax and benefits system subsidises marriage break-up and rewards lone parents with handouts at the expense of married couples, a report says. The average couple-family, where one partner has a job, is 1 pound a week better off than the average workless one-parent family because lone parents get so much extra support from the state"

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx despised peaceful political movements. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 1:1 as a concession to popular Christolatry.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. 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 put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left 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.

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