A failed study of academic ideology

A study published late last year by sociologists John F. Zipp and Rudy Fenwick under the heading "Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony? The Political Orientations and Educational Values of Professors" has got a fair bit of attention. It is a rather desperate attempt to deny the obvious -- that American university and college teachers are overwhelmingly Leftist.

They concede that party identification runs 7 to 1 in favour of Democrats among professors but argue that this does not adequately reflect ideology. Conservatives would certainly agree with that -- seeing professors as much more extreme Leftists than most Democrat voters are. That is the WRONG conclusion, however, according to the zippy one. He and his friend in fact argue that a lot of those academic Democrats are really centrists!

The study has been thoroughly shot down on a number of grounds by others (e.g. here and here) but I thought I should have a look at it nonetheless. I spent 20 years or so trying to measure people's political attitudes as precisely as possible and have over 100 academic journal articles in print reporting on the results of that. So the research concerned really is in my line of country. I thought I might be able to see defects that others have missed.

And I sure did! The attitude surveys from which they derived their data had only a 50% response rate! For many purposes that may not matter. That is actually a fairly good response rate compared to attitude surveys and opinion polls in general. But there is ONE occasion where a low response rate does matter a great deal. And that is the sort of occasion we have in the present case: Where one's sample includes a large number of political extremists. I tried for many years to get Communists and Nazis to complete my attitude surveys. I used every trick in the book to persuade them to do the task -- including getting recommendations of the task from their own authorities. But the comrades just would NOT do the task. They obviously felt -- probably rightly --that the results could be used to "get at" them in some way. And, as we all know, academe is now the only place where Marxism still has a strong following. I taught in a Sociology Department at a major university myself for many years so I can vouch for the popularity of Marx in such places. And what is true of Marxists as far as paranoia is concerned is probably also true of the fruitier versions of Leftism that also infest academe.

So Zipp and friend based their research on data from which the real Leftists were self-excluded! No wonder they found that the Leftists they did have were rather moderate! Rather hilarious, really.

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An American liberal's view of American liberalism

The sad truth is that if the FBI really is following anyone on the American left, it is engaging in a huge waste of time and personnel. No matter what it claims for a self-image, in reality it's the saddest collection of cowering, ineffectual ninnies ever assembled under one banner on God's green earth. And its ugly little secret is that it really doesn't mind being in the position it's in - politically irrelevant and permanently relegated to the sidelines, tucked into its cozy little cottage industry of polysyllabic, ivory tower criticism. When you get right down to it, the American left is basically just a noisy Upper West side cocktail party for the college-graduate class. And we all know it. The question is, when will we finally admit it?

Here's the real problem with American liberalism: there is no such thing, not really. What we call American liberalism is really a kind of genetic mutant, a Frankenstein's monster of incongruous parts - a fat, affluent, overeducated New York/Washington head crudely screwed onto the withering corpse of the vanishing middle-American manufacturing class. These days the Roosevelt stratum of rich East Coasters are still liberals, but the industrial middle class that the New Deal helped create is almost all gone. In 1965, manufacturing jobs still made up 53 percent of the US economy; that number was down to nine percent in 2004, and no one has stepped up to talk to the 30 million working poor who struggle to get by on low-wage, part-time jobs.

Thus, the people who are the public voice of American liberalism rarely have any real connection to the ordinary working people whose interests they putatively champion. They tend instead to be well-off, college-educated yuppies from California or the East Coast, and hard as they try to worry about food stamps or veterans' rights or securing federal assistance for heating oil bills, they invariably gravitate instead to things that actually matter to them - like the slick Al Gore documentary on global warming, or the "All Things Considered" interview on NPR with the British author of Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. They haven't yet come up with something to replace the synergy of patrician and middle-class interests that the New Deal represented.

More here

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ELSEWHERE



For those who don't know much history, Israel is above being compared with Czechoslovakia before WWII. Thanks in part to the appeasement policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Czechoslovakia was eventually overrun by Hitler

Some polls are not fit to print: "Janet Elder of the "All The News" paper has a laugh-out-loud story about what happens when the Times doesn't like a poll result - they bury it: "The war in Iraq is the single most important continuing news issue right now. Public opinion about the war is a critical part of that story. That's why when a finding about the war in a New York Times poll could not be easily explained, the paper went back and did another poll on the very same subject. It turns out the poll had gotten it right. Support for the initial invasion of Iraq, as measured by a question The New York Times/CBS News Poll has asked since December 2003, increased modestly compared with two months ago."

This is incomprehensible to the Left: "In a time of war, when Americans have soured on the grinding conflict in Iraq, and the rosters of the dead lengthen daily, young men and women continue to join the military. Although the Army missed its recruiting goals in May and June, all four services exceeded their goals last year. More than 80,000 recruits joined the Army, 36,000 the Navy and 30,000 the Air Force. An additional 32,000 joined the Marine Corps. In June, 4,113 Marine recruits signed up, exceeding the monthly goal of 3,742."

British airport screening adds inconvenience but no security: "Britain's airport screening policies inconvenience passengers without boosting security according to the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). "Harmonised security measures across borders are more important than ever," IATA General Director Giovanni Bisignani said in a ciritical statement on first half civil aviation statistics. He said "governments must focus much more on further harmonisation to ensure that effective security is also convenient for passengers." "A particular focus will be the UK, where unique screening policies inconvenience passengers with no improvement in security. "The only beneficiary is the airport operator - BAA - that continues to deliver embarrassingly low service levels by failing to invest in appropriate equipment and staff to meet demand. This must stop."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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HILLARY'S YOUTHFUL LETTERS

The NYT has some (no doubt carefully selected) excerpts from letters written by Hillary during her college years. The excerpts below give some idea of the pathologies that drive her: Inauthenticity, misanthropy and narcissism

"Since Xmas vacation, I've gone through three and a half metamorphoses and am beginning to feel as though there is a smorgasbord of personalities spread before me," Ms. Rodham wrote to Mr. Peavoy in April 1967. "So far, I've used alienated academic, involved pseudo-hippie, educational and social reformer and one-half of withdrawn simplicity." ....

"Can you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?" Ms. Rodham wrote in an April 1967 letter....

Her letters at times betray a kind of innocent narcissism over "my lost youth," as she described it in a letter shortly after her 19th birthday. She wrote of being a little girl and believing that she was the only person in the universe. She had a sense that if she turned around quickly, "everyone else would disappear. "I'd play out in the patch of sunlight that broke the density of the elms in front of our house and pretend there were heavenly movie cameras watching my every move," she says. She yearns for all the excitement and discoveries of life without losing "the little girl in the sunlight."

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ELSEWHERE

Hillary's Slithering from Legal Jeopardy Nearing an End? "The ability of Hillary Clinton to slither away from legal scrutiny is uncanny. Consider Travelgate, Whitewater, and the Barrett Report, all examples of alleged crimes and coverups that would have toppled a Republican administration. Now a civil case brought by Clinton fundraiser Peter Paul threatens to dismantle's Hillary's hard-won reputation for evading legal jeopardy. According to insiders, on Sept. 7, 2007 the appellate court will rule whether Hillary will be included as a defendant in the case. No matter the outcome, though, she will be forced to testify under oath regarding the fundraising for her 2000 Senate campaign."

US/UK relationship continues: "The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, would not unveil plans for an early withdrawal of British troops from Iraq in talks with the US President, George Bush, Mr Brown's spokesman said yesterday. The two leaders were scheduled to meet yesterday for the first time since Mr Brown succeeded Tony Blair last month. Speculation has been rife in British media that Mr Brown might distance himself from Mr Blair's Iraq policy.... The White House and Downing Street are stressing that little has been disturbed in the "special relationship" between Britain and the US since the elevation of Mr Brown. Although friction may lie ahead on issues such as Iran's nuclear program, US officials appear confident there will be no sudden departures from Mr Brown on the key issues - especially on keeping Britain's 5500 troops in Iraq. Officials in both governments said this week's summit would focus on building a rapport between the leaders, aided by the bucolic setting of Camp David, the mountain retreat where Mr Bush entertains his closest foreign allies. "This will mainly be a reassurance thing," said the British author and political analyst Peter Riddell. "They want to knock down any suggestion that there is distance between them. Yes, they are different people, but they are fundamentally on the same wavelength."

Why Are We Reading Their Names?: "I don't get this, Mark Steyn points to the seemingly ridiculous cases against Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13 and their names and faces are being splashed all over the news. It's bad enough that, at least from what I've read, it appears they are being railroaded on some trumped-up charges by the PC Police, but we already know the lengths media goes to protect the identities of under-aged gang members and even murderers. Suddenly these two young boys are fair game? Messrs Mashburn and Cornelison are pupils at Patton Middle School. They were arrested in February after being observed in the vestibule, swatting girls on the butt. Butt-swatting had apparently become a form of greeting at the school - like "a handshake we do," as one female student put it. On "Slap Butt Fridays," boys and girls would hail each other with a cheery application of manual friction to the posterior, akin to a Masonic greeting. The boys spent five days in a juvenile detention facility and were charged with several counts of felony sex abuse for what they and their parents said was merely inappropriate but not criminal behavior."

Clinton CIA Wouldn't Give Torture Assurance : "A new report has just been released that says Britain offered to give intelligence to the CIA on the whereabouts of bin Laden, with one catch: we had to promise not to torture him. The CIA refused to give that guarantee, and so bin Laden remains free to strike again. Now I can hear all you libs out there saying your usual nonsense, that Bush caused this, blah, blah, blah. See here's the problem with that. This was long before abu Ghraib, Gitmo, or even the war on terror. Yeah, this happened on Bubba Clinton's watch."

Musharraf risks civil war as he invades the Al-Qaeda badlands: "In North Waziristan, the wild border land that America hopes will be Osama Bin Laden's graveyard, the normally busy roads are almost deserted and the fear is pervasive. Army helicopters sweep the valleys at night hunting for Al-Qaeda militants as troops and gunmen exchange artillery and rocket fire. America and Britain regard this usually autonomous tribal area - where Bin Laden is long believed to have been hiding - as the logistics centre of Islamic terrorist attacks around the world. President Pervez Musharraf sees it as the centre of a campaign to "Talibanise" Pakistan. Spurred on by Washington, he has abandoned a truce with Waziristan's Islamist guerrillas and ordered his army to root them out"

Leftist voting fraudsters didn't mean it! "King and Pierce County prosecutors filed felony charges today against seven people who allegedly committed the biggest voter-registration fraud in state history. The defendants, who were paid employees and supervisors of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, concocted the scheme as an easy way to get paid, not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections, King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg said. "This was an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls of King County," Satterberg said."

Sudan blames Darfur genocide on Jews : "Sudan's defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused "24 Jewish organizations" of "fueling the conflict in Darfur" last week in an interview with a Saudi newspaper. Hussein was interviewed during an official state-visit to the Saudi kingdom last week. A journalist from Saudi Arabia's Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: "Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in Darfur and that there is no conflict there?" "The Darfur issue is being fuelled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust in their campaigning," the Sudanese defense minister replied."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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SOME RECENT POSTINGS ON ICJS

Why I am not joining the party
The case for mistrusting Muslims
Letter to Mark Scott
Islamophobia idiocy
Radical Islam's Goal is Global Conquest
Speech to Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce by Alexander Downer

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ELSEWHERE

Outrage of the Week: Arrested for Desecrating a Koran: "This is completely insane. It's now officially a mindcrime in the United States to violate Islamic law. At Pace University, a man has been arrested and will face "hate crime" charges for throwing a Koran into a toilet, after the university caved in to demands from Muslim students" [If he stole the Korans he should be prosecuted for theft -- not hate crime]

People not buying the media whitewash of Muslims: "A new Newsweek Poll on American attitudes toward Muslims and Islam has found that 46 percent of Americans believe that the United States is taking in too many Muslim immigrants. 32 percent think that Muslims in America are less loyal to the United States than they are to Islam. 28 percent believe that the Qur'an condones violence, and 41 percent hold that Islamic culture "glorifies suicide." 54 percent are either "somewhat worried" or "very worried" about Islamic jihadists in this country, and 52 percent support FBI surveillance of mosques, with the same percentage rejecting the claim of American Muslim advocacy groups that Muslims are being singled out by investigators and police. What are we to make of these figures? Do they mean that American Muslim advocacy groups have to do more to combat "Islamophobia"? That is the likely response: watch now for the follow-up stories about "Islamophobia," in which the onus for all the attitudes displayed in this poll is placed firmly and solely upon non-Muslim Americans, as if Muslims were an entirely innocent, passive group that was doing nothing whatsoever to make anyone suspicious or angry at all.

A dangerous legacy in time of war: "Democrats have destroyed the trust of the American people in government, not just the Bush administration. As I speak, New Yorkers are refusing to accept assurances that the air is safe in the wake of a steam pipe explosion. The assumption is that the city government is lying--why? Because Hillary Clinton, in an effort to slime the Bush administration, told New Yorkers that "she knew how it worked in the White House", which meant of course that she knew how it worked in the Clinton White house. Democrat have won a Pyrrhic victory--even as the Bush administration has a 30% approval rating, Congress "enjoys" a 14% rating. Nobody wins in a situation like this, except perhaps the nation's enemies"

The CIA's war against the war : "Rowan Scarborough's superb new book Sabotage lays out a boatload of evidence documenting years of serious misconduct, malfeasance and incompetence at the CIA. Excerpted this week at his newspaper, the Washington Examiner, Scarborough's book has plenty of news-breaking revelations that should stimulate an abundance of discussion in the ensuing days. The book is likely generate a tepid response from the drive-by media. They'll have to acknowledge it because Scarborough is one of the most respected reporters on the national security beat. But they'll do their level best to diminish its importance, mostly by ignoring it."

Sheikh delays plane over seating, pilot unintimidated: "A Qatar sheikh held up a British Airways flight at Milan's Linate airport for nearly three hours after discovering three of his female relatives had been seated next to men they did not know. When none of the other business class passengers agreed to swap seats, the sheikh, a member of Qatar's ruling family, went to the pilot, who had already started the engine, to complain, an airport official said. But the pilot ordered him and his traveling companions, the three women, two men, a cook and a servant, off the plane."

Walter Williams neatly summarizes the difference between free markets and the alternative: "Free markets are simply millions upon millions of individual decision-makers, engaged in peaceable, voluntary exchange pursuing what they see in their best interests. People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What's more, they believe they've been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others. .Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite. For example, I might plan to purchase a car, a shirt or apples from a foreign producer because I see it in my best interest. The powerful elite might supersede my plan, through import tariffs and quotas, because they think I should make the purchases from a domestic producer. My daughter might plan to work for the hardware guy down the street for $4 an hour. She agrees; he agrees; her mother says it's OK, and I say it's OK. The powerful elite say, "We're going to supersede that plan because it's not being transacted at the price we think it ought be -- the minimum wage."

America's Anti-Competitive Corporate Income Tax: "At least 25 developed nations have adopted Reaganite corporate income tax rate cuts since 2001. The U.S. is conspicuously not one of them. . Even in France, of all places, new President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed reducing the corporate tax rate to 25% from 34.4%. What do politicians in these countries understand that the U.S. Congress doesn't? Perhaps they've read "International Competitiveness for Dummies." In each of the countries that have cut corporate tax rates this year, the motivation has been the same -- to boost the nation's attractiveness as a location for international investment. Germany's overall rate will fall to 29.8% by 2008 from 38.7%. Remarkably, at the start of this decade Germany's corporate tax rate was 52%. All of which means that the U.S. now has the unflattering distinction of having the developed world's highest corporate tax rate of 39.3% (35% federal plus a state average of 4.3%), according to the Tax Foundation. Lower corporate tax rates with fewer loopholes can lead to more, not less, tax revenue from business. Tax receipts tend to fall below their optimum potential when corporate tax rates are so high that they lead to the creation of loopholes and the incentive to move income to countries with a lower tax rate. Ireland is the classic case of a nation on the "correct side" of this curve. It has a 12.5% corporate rate, nearly the lowest in the world, and yet collects 3.6% of GDP in corporate revenues, well above the international average. The U.S., by contrast, with its near 40% rate has been averaging less than 2.5% of GDP in corporate receipts. most economists understand that corporations don't ultimately pay any taxes. They merely serve as a collection agent, passing along the cost of those taxes in some combination of lower returns for shareholders, higher prices for customers, or lower compensation for employees. In other words, America's high corporate tax rates are an indirect, but still damaging, tax on average American workers" (H/T CFP)

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Why Does the Left hate Israel?

A small excerpt (a summary) below from a very large and thorough article by Richard Baehr here. I think the reasons given below all have some point but the main reason is basic: Leftists hate success in others and Israel is in many ways a great success story. Leftists always claim that they want to lift up the poor and downtrodden. But their real motive can be inferred from what they do whenever they can: They never do much good for the poor but they do attack the rich and successful. "By their fruits shall ye known them", as a wise Jew once said

1. It is an easy way to express one's hatred for America.

2. Israel is viewed as an outpost of colonialism , and an active practitioner of it.

3. Israel is a western nation, and hence can be judged by the left. Israel is not protected by cultural relativism, as the Arabs are.

4. Leftist Christian churches can escape any lingering guilt about the Holocaust, by turning Israel into a villain. Some leftist churches hate Israel because they think this will help protect their members in the holy land- in other words they feel threatened.

5. Ferocious Muslim hatred of Israel and the Jews reinforces the natural cowardice of many on the left who go along with the Muslims to stay out of their line of fire.

6. Jewish leftists are prominent in the anti-Israel movement. This opens the floodgates for everybody else.

7. Israel is attacked because the secular left is appalled by the influence of religious settlers and their biblical connections to the land of Israel, and by the support for Israel by evangelical Christians, and Christian Zionists.

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Brookes News Update

The dangerous fallacy that consumer confidence drives economic growth: That the ridiculous fallacy that consumer confidence drives an economy is still widely held and promulgated is a damning indictment of the appalling state of what passes for economic thought in our newspapers and business magazines - not to mention our universities and colleges
The media gives terrorists the friendly Wilfred Burchett treatment: The hostility of so many journalists to the liberation of Iraq reminds me of the very gentle way in which these paragons journalistic virtue handled Wilfred Burchett who was an out-and-out traitor to his country
South America: Carbon Copying Cuban Tyranny: Once again proving that socialism is just another power cult, leftwing goons like Chavez are working to impose socialism on South America. This would be hilarious if the situation were not tragic
Should President Bush's Surgeon General pick make the cut?: A Surgeon General who succumbs to intimidation tactics by extremist left-wing special interest groups, especially the powerful homosexual lobby, cannot be good for America
Like the Clinton boom the Bush boom will also crash: Why the Bush boom is bound to crash. Although is possible that a recession could be forestalled by significant injections of credit into the economy a point would still be reached where the Fed would have no alternative but to use the monetary brakes to wring inflation out of the economy

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ELSEWHERE



Why are Leftists so reliably illiterate? I don't blame a humble man for being unable to spell but Leftists parade themselves as knowing it all. The emails I get from Leftists are reliably illiterate but I also enjoyed an email from a Leftist called Steve Mack that Dean Barnett put up for our amusement. A tiny excerpt: "marshal sensibilities, fervent worship at the alter of". In that short passage the writer showed that he did not know the difference between "martial" and "marshall" or "altar" and "alter". There are some things that spellcheckers cannot save you from. Steve Mack thought he was clever. He has himself shown that he is not. Verbal skills are the highest single correlate of IQ, by the way.

al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Termite Control: "We can use all the fancy terms we want such as "violent Islamist extremists", or "Islamic terrorists", or "terrorists" in accordance with Gordon Brown's tough stand, or "Muslim terrorists". Point is they are termites gnawing away at our culture, our secular rule of law just as termites gnaw at the foundation and structure of your home. Now, tell me - truthfully - would you even consider "negotiating" with the termites? Even once. No, you'd call your Termite Control folks and zap the little bastards! You'd breathe a sigh of relief and have your home re-treated on schedule. Well, al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Jamaat ul-Fuqra, and all of the rest - let's toss in MS-13 too - are the termites of our time. They are more dangerous than Hitler - I said dangerous, not more brutal - Hitler wore a uniform and so did his SS. We had an enemy we could see."

U.S. State Dept. worse than French Intelligence? "Despite protests from the U.S. ambassador in Lebanon, the State Department is pushing ahead with plans to build a new embassy in a part of Beirut city controlled by the anti-U.S. Hezbollah group. A U.S. official tells the Blotter on ABCNEWS.com that Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, in a May 31, 2007 classified cable to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, registered his strong objections, saying his staff "unanimously opposes construction" of the embassy on the proposed site. Hezbollah is believed to be behind two attacks on the U.S. Embassy and an embassy annex in 1983 and 1984 that led to the deaths of 87 people, including eight CIA employees. Let us not forget the 241 Marines murdered back in 1983 by Hezbollah by order of Iran."

Babies back in Germany: "For Rico Thisius and Juliane Herda the decision to have a child was spontaneous. Many of their friends had children, and Mr Thisius, 31, says "It was just the right time." But then, having children is suddenly back in fashion in Germany. Having once had one of the lowest birthrates in Europe, it is now experiencing a baby boom. Officials in Germany's biggest cities reported a rise in births of more than 20 per cent during the first quarter of the year after the Government of the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, introduced a range of family-friendly incentives. Her policies were a response to dire warnings that the country's once-generous welfare state and comprehensive health service could collapse. The country's birthrate has slipped to 1.34 children per woman over the past 30 years, and the population is predicted to shrink from about 83 million to about 70 million over the next 40 years."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Asymmetrical war? Let's even it out

Trying to appease terrorists or look for common ground - a prerequisite for opening a dialogue - is irrational. Nothing can be done to change their steadfast conviction. Indoctrinated by family, state, mosque, media, school, university, and millions of fundamentalist spokesmen that form the base structure of their societies, there is nothing that can make these people change their position that it is better to kill or die than to live.

Throughout the Islamic world, there is a blinding indoctrination that calls for conversion or submission to Islam or the destruction of the infidels. Diplomacy cannot manage this situation. The only option is war, but not a war of surgical strikes that pretend to remove the cancer without touching or damaging the other organs. The cancer is in all the organs, and they all need to be attacked. The terrorists' objectives are civilians, so the western response must also include their civilians. The Islamists will change their defiant attitude only when the West is willing to destroy the populations that sustain, protect, and applaud terrorism, and to defend itself using the same methods that were used to attack it.

Bertrand Russell said, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubt." If the war is asymmetrical, then it is an issue of restoring its symmetry. The foremost reason for this imbalance is because the west is weak-willed. In addition to a feigned sensitivity for humankind (motivated more by political collusion than by tenderness towards its fellow man), the west fears a large-scale fire that might reduce the supply of oil. The Islamists declared war against everyone, including our elderly, women and children. The west must act the same way if it wants to put an end to the massacre. The Islamists take advantage of the humanitarian sensibilities of the "infidel" and use their civilians as human shields, but when they see that their ruse has no effect, they will tremble in fear and return to their caves.

With each passing day, the hatred of the west grows, especially towards the United States. This hatred - fruits of leftist propaganda and the sensationalist press - is opportunistic, anti-democratic and suicidal; it uses euphemisms to describe the Islamic fascists who try to justify their actions as if there were something justifiable in the murder of anyone who does not share their religion. Terrorism is never acceptable because by definition, its targets are civilians. If in more than thirty years, Arab governments have not demonstrated any interest in stopping the terrorists, it is because they are part of the plan. The jihadis who attempted to carry out the most recent thwarted attacks in London were doctors; their reason was because Salmon Rushdie had been knighted. The murderers occupy all social strata.

If the west wants to return to normalcy and establish peace on Earth, it needs to finish off Saudi Arabia, the ideological mentor and financial backer of radical Islam; Iran, the promotor of Nazism and nuclear destruction; Pakistan, if Musharraf is toppled; and that leaves others like Syria, Libya, and the insignificant Hugo Chavez, who loves to participate in conflict and looks for more relations with the Islamists to gain political and military support.

Approximately every 50 years, history teaches that psychiatrically disturbed individuals achieve high levels of power, form alliances, and look to make themselves masters of the world. Nuclear proliferation has made their motives a global cause for concern. As a result of technological advances, arms and armies are more powerful, and military conflicts result in more death and destruction. Around 50 million people died in World War Two. The current world war that we face will certainly bring much more victims. Only when the Islamists are attacked by a west committed to bombing its cities, destroying its refineries and demolishing their multi-million-dollar sources of income, and obligating them to spend the coming decades reconstructing their countries and economies, will the world live in peace for another half century

Source

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There is a comprehensive roundup here on the "Scott Thomas" affair -- where a serving U.S. soldier wrote obviously untrue stories about the evils of his fellow soldiers and got them published in the Leftist TNR. It seems that he is a Leftist and an admitted liar. By his own admission he joined the army only to do a John Kerry -- to give himself an air of authority when he denounced the U.S. military.

The Leftist "expert" on the Middle East (a professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History in the History Department at the University of Michigan), Juan Cole, gets shown up for the know-nothing he is here. For an older debunking of Cole, see Mark Kleiman. And I had a post in 2005 in which I pointed out that Cole thinks Iraq is on the Mediterranean. And if you read here you will see that the wacky Prof. Cole does not even know that a large part of what is the USA today was taken from Mexico! It's rather a wonder Cole still dares to stick his head above the parapet at all. Perhaps we should leave the dummo alone. He really is a rather pathetic case. Leftists and the facts just do not get on. Cole calls his blog Informed Comment, in the fine old Leftist tradition of calling a thing by its opposite.

The forgotten Jews driven out by Arabs: " Former justice minister Irwin Cotler and other Canadian scholars presented the U.S. Congress yesterday with its first testimony on Jews driven from Arab lands following Israel's creation in 1948. The group was among experts helping U.S. lawmakers decide on a pair of bills that would oblige the Bush administration to actively oppose the Arab-led practice in Middle East peace efforts to speak only of Palestinian refugees. While key Arab voices continue to push for a "right of return" for descendants of some 600,000 Palestinians whose pre-1948 homes are now inside Israel, the general discourse for decades has all but ignored tens of thousands of Jews, Christians and other minorities who were similarly turned into refugees... "Today, we cannot allow a second injustice, namely for the international community to recognize rights for [only] one victim population," Mr. Urman, executive director of New York-based Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, said."

A surprisingly devout and moving comment from Wretchard: "As children we know one sort of God, the kind who loves us like our parents. He is the God who we spoke to just as if He was in the next room in the moments before we went to sleep. And as we grow up, the God of our childhood slips away forgotten, but He is replaced, if we are in Grace, by one we can speak to as adults. He never truly goes away, but as we are adults, leaves us mostly on our own. The God of adulthood comes seldom and usually in moments of great happiness and loss. There finally is the Lord who speaks to us when we are old, when we awake bewildered to watery brightness of each new day, when we know we are close to leaving the flowers and yet are not wholly despairing of meeting them again."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual themes.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Latest on the Lancet agitprop about Iraqi deaths

What fun! Courtesy of Michelle Malkin, there is a scholarly paper here by a statistical mathematician which finds that the "600,000 Iraqi deaths" paper published in 2004 in Lancet is internally inconsistent. Using the paper's own figures, the statistician shows that the authors cannot conclude anything from their "research".

The original paper was so out of line with normal survey methodology that those of us who are experienced in survey research pointed that out long ago but it is interesting to see the same point absolutely demonstrated. It is another example of Lancet prostituting their medical reputation to make political points. They obviously did not do a proper peer review on the paper before they accepted it and that may well be because they were so out of their field that they did not know how to do a proper review of a survey research paper. They should stick to medicine.

It may be noted that the authors of the paper refuse to release their raw data -- a most unusual thing for scientists to do. It suggests that the "research" was a fraud from beginning to end -- rather like the Mann "hockeystick" finding in climate science -- a finding that the IPCC no longer mentions!

Something Michelle seems to have overlooked, however, is that there seems to have been an attempt by Lancet to redact what they originally published. The paper Michelle cites is a version that says only 100,000 Iraqis died. Whereas the original paper said that 654,965 Iraqis died. Is this an admission? Does even Lancet now concede that they goofed? The plot thickens!

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Hillary a self-declared Fascist? She denies she is a liberal and says she is a "progressive": "I prefer the word `progressive,' which has a real American meaning, going back to the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century". I believe her. But the early 20th century American progressives were Fascists. Don't believe it? All the details are here

But who do these guys speak for? "In a historic first, an Arab League delegation came to Jerusalem on Wednesday to promote a plan for peace with Israel, saying it offers the country "security, recognition and acceptance" by its Middle East neighbors. Such a visit - and offer - once would have been unimaginable, but was greeted now with little public fanfare, pushed well down on the evening TV news by a public sector strike and a row involving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Led by the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan, the Arab delegation was taken deep into Israel's political heartland. The delegates saw the prime minister and the president and visited parliament, bringing a proposal for full recognition of Israel by the Arab and Islamic world in return for Israel's withdrawal from all lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war"



Elitist Democrat contempt for the little guy: ""Despite overwhelming support in and out of Congress, legal protection for airline passengers who report suspicious behavior is being blocked by Democratic leaders. Wasn't one 9/11 enough for them? Were it not for the courage and sacrifice of the passengers of United Flight 93 who forced their plane into a Pennsylvania field, many in Congress might not be here today, with a gaping hole where the U.S. Capitol still stands. We wonder if this fact is appreciated by those trying to block final passage of the so-called `John Doe' provision protecting from legal action those who report suspicious behavior on airplanes. Today's passengers have an advantage. They know what can happen. They know what to look for. They will not be taken by surprise, and they are willing to take action. But some in Congress would sacrifice their lives on the altar of political correctness. Last November, six Muslim imams leaving an Islamic conference were removed from U.S. Airways Flight 300 in Minneapolis when passengers reported that the imams had acted in suspicious ways. Both U.S. Airways and the passengers soon became targets of legal action charging discrimination and racial profiling... So [in] March, the House of Representatives passed by a 304-121 vote the Rail and Public Transportation Security Act of 2007, with language protecting from such lawsuits airline passengers who might report suspicious activity. All seemed well. But last week, as Republicans tried to have the `John Doe' protection included in final homeland security legislation crafted by a House-Senate conference committee to implement the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, they found Democratic conferees blocking its inclusion."

Idiotic rural socialism: ""House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed off Friday on a five-year farm bill that would keep multibillion-dollar subsidies flowing to cotton, corn and a handful of other crops, deeply disappointing Bay Area food and environmental activists who had hoped that Congress might shift federal farm policy this year to combat obesity, air and water pollution and industrial farming.... The bill comes during the most prosperous era American agriculture has seen in decades as crop prices and farm income approach or set record highs."

British navy not to be scrapped after all: "The go-ahead was given yesterday for the construction of two 65,000-tonne aircraft carriers as big as the QE2, but the Royal Navy will have to wait until 2014 for the first one - two years behind previous projections. Under government planning announced nearly ten years ago, the two new large aircraft carriers for the Navy were supposed to come into service in 2012 and 2015. The ageing and smaller carriers they are replacing, HMS Invincible, HMS Ark Royal, and HMS Illustrious, were to be taken out of service by 2013. However, senior defence officials said the new in-service date for the first of the large carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, was now expected to be 2014, and the second ship, HMS Prince of Wales,in 2016. In the past the Government insisted that the 2012 date for the first carrier was "nonnegotiable". The delay means that the current carriers will stay in service for longer to prevent a huge gap in the Armed Forces' expeditionary capability."

Reactionary Leftists support an obsolete transport system yet again: "The House on Tuesday rejected moves by conservatives to cut taxpayer subsidies for Amtrak as backers of the money-losing passenger railroad cemented their position in the Democratic Congress. The move came as the House easily passed a $104 billion measure funding transportation and housing programs for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. That vote was 268-153, enough to sustain a promised veto by President Bush. The key Amtrak vote came as the House emphatically dismissed a move by Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., to eliminate Amtrak's nearly $500 million operating subsidy. The vote was 328-94. Flake argued that subsidies of more than $400 per passenger on the most inefficient money-losing routes demonstrate that cross-country train travel no longer makes economic sense. "There is not any passenger rail system anywhere in this world that operates without some operating subsidy," countered Rep. John Olver, D-Mass., who credited Amtrak with squeezing fat from its operations. Overall, the bill contains almost $1.5 billion for Amtrak, with $925 million for capital and debt service."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Fear trumps integrity among Leftists

They barely know what integrity is

There is a phenomena of the self hating Jew, an individual who denies his or her own identity, culture and faith, and seeks to identify and support those who make no secret of their own pathological agendas, directed against Jews. The pathology of the self hating Jew is not new. Jews were attracted to communism and socialism, because someone said, "We are all equal. You are a comrade." For the first time, Jews believed they were to be `free.' After centuries of relentless oppression the idea was intoxicating.

After the horrors of the Second World War were made clear, there were a whole sub culture of Jews, even the children of Holocaust survivors that migrated to the self hating brigades. Why? Because those Jews believed that if they could be unlike the Jews (and more like their oppressors), then no one would come for them. They would be safe and secure. Surely the oppressors would see there were `good Jews' too, noted just evil and hated Jews.

The same is true today of leftists (Jews included) who believe that siding with the racist, bigoted and dysfunctional oppressors might save them from the destiny of those their new friends promise. They are the Kapos of this generation, willing to sacrifice their own so as to save themselves. Prewar German Jews could at least hope against hope that there would be no Holocaust. Leftists of today cannot argue ignorance.

Leftists today hate freedom and democracy because those ideas have created the environment for success. Assistant Village Idiot recently noted in a comment that Arabs don't hate us because we have succeeded, but rather, because they have failed. The same is true for the leftists- their burning hatred of democracy stems from their failure to create a single instance of a functioning society that isn't a least a generation behind our own. Not even the redistribution of wealth can make up for the values and freedom that create an environment that allows for the creation of wealth.

More here. There is a sarcastic comment on the cowardice of the Left here. In case any sneering Leftist reads this, I might mention that I myself not only joined the army voluntarily in the Vietnam era and reached the rank of Sergeant but I also volunteered for a posting in Vietnam. For those who want to see the evidence, there is a pic of me in battledress here and my certificate of discharge (not that a Leftist would know what that is) is here

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WITHOUT A BLINK

A small excerpt from a good post by Dr. Sanity:

Victor Davis Hanson made a very astute observation recently in his Work and Days column at Pajamas Media discussing the nature of our enemies:

Apparently what gives these pre-modern fascist killers a pass from widespread Western censure is their purported impotency-as long as their grotesqueries don't match 9/11 we have the luxury to blame-game Guantanamo, still puff up about the black hoods at Abu Ghraib, and spout off about Halliburton-while having latte uninterrupted by Ahmed and his suicide vest.

But should the latter be able to penetrate all of cowboy George Bush's nightmarish anti-constitutional measures like wire-tapping the phones of terrorists, locking them up in Guantanamo, or pursuing them with provisions of the Patriot Act, then these measures will suddenly be reinvented as shockingly too little when all the "intelligence" made it clear that we were in jeopardy. Yes, I think after the next attack the media will go, without a blink, from the dangers of a police state and Gulag-US to the negligence of open borders and poor terrorist tracking.

Interesting to note that what "gives the pre-modern fascist killers a pass" is the post-modern rhetoric and dogma of the left. It is precisely this inherently psychologically dysfunctional cognitive strategy that is able to shift, "without a blink" from one subjective conviction to its exact opposite without a shred of self-awareness or mental dissonance.

Minds under the postmodern spell are simply not capable of appreciating the irrationality; nor are they capable of even appreciating the irony of their contradictory discourses .

There is a common pattern in the lefts childish rantings: a subjectivism and relativism that comes across in one breath; alternating with a dogmatic absolutism in the next. In other words, it is a waste of time to look for sense or logic in their incessant adolescent demands.

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Ward Churchill, the lying, fake-Indian professor who accused those who died on 9/11 of being "little Eichmans", has just got the boot -- been dismissed from his job!. Some shreds of integrity in American academe after all.

If you want to see some old bats baring their boobs for "peace", the indefatiguable Zombietime has the pix. I wonder if milk ever came out of any of them? More likely vinegar. The "ladies" concerned have a website flowing over with "wisdom". A sample utterance: "I see on the front page yesterday that the FDA had lifted the ban on silicone implants. This seems like a subtle form of terrorism to me". Definite deep thinkers.

Dead farmers got subsidies: "The Agriculture Department sent $1.1 billion in farm payments to more than 170,000 dead people over a seven-year period, congressional investigators say. The findings by the Government Accountability Office were released Monday as the House prepared to debate and pass farm legislation this week that would govern subsidies and the department's programs for the next five years. GAO auditors reviewed payments from 1999 through 2005 and found that the department has not been conducting the necessary checks to ensure that subsidy payments are proper. Of the identified payments to deceased farmers' estates or businesses, 40 percent went to those who had been dead more than three years, and 19 percent went to those who had been dead for seven or more years"

Libyan horror finally ended: "Six medics who were sentenced to life in prison in Libya for allegedly infecting children with HIV arrived in Sofia on Tuesday, and immediately received a presidential pardon allowing them to walk free after 8 1/2 years behind bars. The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were flown from Tripoli to Sofia on board a plane with French first lady Cecilia Sarkozy and the EU's commissioner for foreign affairs, Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Last week, Tripoli had agreed to a Bulgarian request to allow the six to serve the rest of their sentence at home."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Equality not needed for happiness

James Taranto forwarded an article by Arthur C. Brooks of Syracuse University's Maxwell School. Professor Brooks makes several good arguments against the left's misguided obsession with income equality. In his research, Professor Brooks has found that inequality does not make poor people miserable and that:

"...the evidence reveals that it is not economic inequality that frustrates Americans. Rather, it is a perceived lack of opportunity. To focus our policies on inequality, instead of opportunity, is to make a serious error..."

Professor Brooks notes that some left wing academics hold that the wealthy should be taxed so that they will not work. The proponents of this theory believe that the only significance of high incomes is high earners' ability to make whoopee and spend money. This, of course, fails to grasp that high earners create consumer surplus, so that discouraging the productive wealthy from working would devastate national welfare.

Think of it this way. Let's say Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk had become wealthy as scientists. The left would argue that because they had made money in prior work, they should have been discouraged from doing further work because their high incomes might have been irritating to low-income Americans. However, the low-income Americans who would otherwise have suffered from polio might have been more irritated at the economists than at Sabin's and Salk's high incomes. Advocacy of broad policies based on narrow findings about reactions to income inequality puts academics making such generalizations into the quack category.

Brooks adds that the general level of happiness has not changed since 1972 and that economic mobility rather than equality creates happiness among Americans:

"An accurate and constructive vision of America sees a land of both inequality and opportunity, in which hard work and perseverance are the keys to jumping from the ranks of the have-nots to those of the haves. This vision promotes policies focused not on wiping out economic inequality, but rather on enhancing economic mobility."

Source

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AN APOLOGY

I normally reply to any email that seems to require a reply. Even abusive emails from Leftists normally get a sarcastic reply. But I get a vast amount of spam so some legitimate messages undoubtedly get trashed by the spam filter. Most spam messages I never see but those that do survive as far as the "Junk mail" folder do at least get a glance at the subject line and sender. And among those I often find legitimate messages. So goodness knows what the spam filter throws out. So if you think I have ignored some message from you, I probably have just not seen it and you should try resending it with an informative subject line. I do however see all comments in the comment box here -- though the spam prevention features make it a bit pesky to use. The old Tongue Tied site had limited spam prevention features in its commenting facility so I was deleting over 500 spam comments there every day!

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Brookes News Update

Why do billionaires fund the Democrats' fascist economic policies?: The further away a businessman is from the actual production of physical things the greater is the possibility of him voting for leftist policies. I do not know of a single Democrat billionaire who is directly involved in manufacturing. But I can name those who are perfectly willing to give financial support to the Dems' fascist economic policies
General David Petraeus visits Baqubah: Michael Yon, an independent blogger who embedded himself with the troops, reports that the situation in Iraq looks promising.One should add that the mainstream media is still refusing to report the Hamari village massacre that al Qaeda carried out. This the same media that publishes lies about Coalition troops
Iraq War: Phantom Thunder Update: The media has made it clear that the way the public can find discover the truth about the Iraq War is by reading the reports of independent bloggers like Bill Roggio who have imbedded themselves with the troops. I think that in the course of time the public will eventually find out the extent to which the mainstream media willingly gave aid and comfort to terrorists
Islam's Global War against Christianity: Not a single Christian or Jew lives in peace in the Muslim world, and if it is truly our nation's foreign policy to spread democracy around the world, this issue is the perfect topic for us to press. Back at home, raising Islam's global war on Christianity should be the immediate response to the seemingly endless media grievance machine of radical Islam's Western apologists
More evidence that Marxism is a power cult: Communism on the march in Latin America: Sao Paulo Forum is the headquarters of Latin-American communism. Founded in 1990 by Lula and Fidel Castro under the promise of 'winning back in Latin America all that was lost in Eastern Europe.' It has more than 180 affiliated organizations, both legal parties and criminal gangs, following a common blueprint and marching fast to conquer the absolute power over the continent
President Roosevelt gave the US economy its worse economic recovery, not President Bush: As malicious as ever, democrats claimed that US economy was the worst since the Hoover administration. Now they are arguing that the economic recovery is the worst in US history. Both claims are outrageous lies

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Eye in the Iraqi sky: "Insurgents firing rockets at a British base in southern Iraq were spotted and tracked by an Australian unmanned spyplane, then obliterated with a guided bomb from a US fighter jet. In a stunning demonstration of the capabilities of the new ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle, the Australian operators tracked the insurgents for half an hour as they fired one rocket then drove to a different location to fire another. They were not aware they had been spotted until a 227kg JDAM guided bomb exploded in their midst. Television images of the May 1 attack have now been released to media visiting the Australian overwatch battle group base at Tallil, outside the city of Nasariyah in Iraq's southern Dhi Qar province. Under Britain's re-alignment of forces in Basra, it now runs just two major bases. Both are attacked regularly by insurgents who fire mortars and rockets as often as three or four times a day. Australian troops have used the Boeing-operated ScanEagle in Iraq since late last year. Each remote-controlled aircraft has a wingspan of 3m, can stay aloft for up to 15 hours and is equipped with day and night cameras. Video images are transmitted back to base on a secure datalink."

British journalists back down over Israel: "The National Union of Journalists will take "no further action" on implementing the controversial resolution by its members to boycott Israeli goods and services. The NUJ's national executive council (NEC) took the decision and called for members to unite instead behind the union's "key workplace priorities". It unanimously backed a motion that recognised the NUJ would take no further action on the call for an Israeli boycott because the Trades Union Congress has rejected it. The motion was tabled by the NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, and seconded by the union president, Michelle Stanistreet, at a NEC meeting on Friday. It recognised the concerns expressed by some members, chapels and branches about the proposed boycott and said that it had met the terms of the original delegate vote in favour of the boycott at its annual meeting earlier this year by informing the TUC of the conference vote."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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PSYCHOPATHS: THE U.S. ARMY OR U.S. LEFTIST POLITICIANS?

There are a couple of blog posts here and here which give details of a recent Leftist attempt -- mainly on Daily Kos -- to smear the U.S. Army as psychopathic killers.

The article concerned relies entirely on anecdote and therefore has no scholarly worth whatever. It picks out a set of criminals and says: SEE! All these served in the army. So the army creates criminals. You can of course prove anything that way. One could equally pick out a set of former army men who undertook charity work and say: SEE! All these served in the army. So the army creates angels.

The one substantial point the article has is that the incidence of soldiers who actually fire their weapons in battle has improved over the years. The author says that this is because the army has found ways to make men into machines. Military people would be rather surprised by that. The problem is a well known one and it was long ago noted that the problem was largely one of aiming. Men who were using automatic weapons fired much more frequently -- as such weapons can be effective even without much aiming. So one response has been to make available to the men more weapons capable of automatic fire. But more training in use of weapons is of course also effective. Many of the non-firers of the two world wars were conscripts with very little training. Additionally, the rate of fire will depend on the battlefield situation and the use of men as cannonfodder has declined over the last century. Men are now more likely to be put in situations where they can be individually effective.

And the idea that the U.S. army wants its men to be killer robots is truly laughable. It would be more accurate to say that the onerous ROE under which U.S. soldiers now operate make them the most restrained and cautious soldiers in all of military history. The army takes great pains to ensure that their soldiers DON'T fire unless absolutely necessary.

So the article is the sort of ignorance of the military that one expects from today's Left. But another sort of ignorance it displays is ignorance about psychopathy. As someone who has contributed a couple of research papers on psychopathy to the academic journals (See here and here), I may be in a better position than most to offer a quick summary of what is involved. The basic point is that psychopaths are born not made. The condition is highly hereditary and emerges from early childhood on. Any attempt to MAKE a person a psychopath is more likely to traumatize them deeply than anything else.

And one place where true psychopaths are likely to be found is in Leftist politics -- from Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pol on. They are the ones who have no compunction about slaughtering other people en masse. And the basic underlying feature of psychopathy -- lack of any moral anchors -- is in fact glorified by Leftists as "postmodernism". Where have you heard "There is no such thing as right and wrong" before? And amoral men are very successful even in democratic Leftist politics -- with Bill Clinton being the standout example. But John Kerry and Barack Obama also have clear psychopathic characteristics. I go into the diagnosis of all three men in some detail here

THE BBC IS JUST ONE FACE OF THE LOCKSTEP LEFTIST MEDIA

The mass media age may have increased our freedom of speech but our mass-mediated perception of reality has arguably stifled our freedom of thought. In times past people may have known only what was going on in their own neck of the woods but at least they knew it intimately, which perhaps provided some reality check. Also one community was relatively free from the influence of another. Not anymore. Now, thanks to the likes of the BBC you know so much more - and have an opinion on so much more.

Now you know that some brutal murders merit grief on a national scale whilst others deserve barely a passing mention. You know that jumping up and down at rock concerts will help to save the world from poverty. You know that man made global warming is threatening to destroy the planet and it's all the fault of capitalism. Just like you know that capitalism was virtually brought down on the stroke of midnight in 2000 by something called the Millenium Bug. Older people know that the world was very nearly overwhelmed in the 1970's by The Next Ice Age. You know that if you have ever stood next to someone smoking a cigarette it might one day kill you. Best of all you know what the most important thing going on in the world at any one time is because it is the thing that headlines the news. Thus has the mass media deluged people's consciousness with trashy certainties at huge cost to their freedom of spirit. Killing off The Age of Reason and replacing it with the Age of Feeling.

It is not even that the BBC and its like are deliberately trying to present a distorted perspective on current affairs or anything else. It is worse than that; the distortion is so embedded in media culture that it collectively fails to comprehend that there are other perspectives. The BBC and its hinterland of favoured contributors teems with champagne lefties, celebrity poseurs and assorted other have-your-cake-and-eat-it fellow travellers of the liberal establishment elite.

And it is a veritable honey pot for the not so big wide world of the arts and academia. The joke is that they all think of themselves as radicals and guardians of freedom. Funny business radicalism; the word suggests boldness, independent mindedness, freethinking. The reality is the opposite. It is a me- too mentality of fitting in with the prevailing ethos, often first absorbed during student days. I remember when I was at university in the 1970's, one or two lonely guys in tweeds and sports jackets flitting furtively across the psychedelic bead strewn quadrangle clutching their briefcases. I remember thinking those guys are the real radicals here. The thoroughly predictable `radical' offerings from the BBC in-crowd are invariably dripping with media establishment mythology and the depressing fact that the BBC is often hailed as a great bastion of intellectual independence merely demonstrates the overwhelming brainwashing power that the little box in the corner now has on our intellectual horizons.

The last half-century was so dominated by the spectre of the totalitarian state that no one foresaw what was really coming down the line. George Orwell partly saw the future that we now inhabit - but with one crucial difference. In his nightmare 1984, a political elite controlled the television in the corner of the room and used it to brainwash the citizenry. Whereas in the real post 1984 nightmare, a pervasive mass media - a cancerous organism out of the control of anyone, even its own media elite - brainwashes everyone, politicians included. It is not that anyone is actively trying to brainwash you; it is more that a powerful tendency to group-think is the very nature of mass broadcasting.

But the most insidious brainwashing happens at a more subtle level than this. The most insidious brainwashing lies in the power of storytelling. It is at this subliminal level that the great soft-left crusades - moral relativism and the cult of victimhood have been won. More than anywhere it is in radio and television film, drama and soap opera.

Try these tests next time you are watching your favourite BBC drama or Hollywood movie: If the characters happen to include - say - a white middle class guy and a non-white working class guy, who is going to turn out to have surprising hidden qualities and who is going to turn out to have a surprising hidden dark side? Or compare the proportion homosexual characters on your tv screen with that in your own real life. Try and find the drama where the `right wing' character turns out to be full of compassion and the `left wing' character full of bile or where the successful business executive turns out to be rather a nice chap. This sort of myth making has underpinned so much of Western story telling for at least fifty years now and has been more corrosive of freedom than any political regime.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Romney hits out at Dems: "Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney took aim at Democratic rivals on Sunday, calling them all unprepared to lead the country and comparing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's economic plan to that of Socialist Karl Marx. "It would be helpful to have a person leading the country who understands how the economy works and has actually managed something," the former Massachusetts governor told reporters after a Republican fundraiser. "In the case of the three Democratic front-runners, not one of them has managed even a corner store, let alone a state or a city." Romney targeted a recent economic policy speech by Clinton for special criticism. Clinton said "we have been an on-your-own society. She said it's time to get rid of that and replace that with shared responsibility and we're-in-it-together society. That's out with Adam Smith and in with Karl Marx."

Brand new Airbus fails: "The Jetstar plane whose engine failed and forced an emergency landing at Bali was just three weeks old, Jetstar has revealed. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Bali after an apparent engine failure after leaving Bangkok bound for Melbourne. It was diverted to Denpasar Airport at Bali. Jetstar spokesman Simon Westaway said the left-hand engine was shut down during the flight. ''It's a brand new plane, it's three weeks old off the production line at Airbus in Toulouse, France. ''We're, obviously, working on some contingencies for those passengers and and aircraft as we speak.'' Passengers onboard the flight have been told 'engine failure' was behind the forced landing. It's believed they're still on board the jet, because there's no one at the airport to help them disembark"

French told to be doers rather than pundits: "France is the country that produced the Enlightenment, Descartes' one-liner "I think, therefore I am" and the solemn pontifications of Jean-Paul Sartre and other celebrity philosophers. But, in the Government of Nicolas Sarkozy, thinking has lost its cachet. Proposing a tax-cut law last week, the Minister for Finance, Christine Lagarde, advised the French people to abandon their "old national habit". "France is a country that thinks," she told the National Assembly. "There is hardly an ideology that we haven't turned into a theory . This is why I would like to tell you: enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves." Citing Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, she said the French should work harder, earn more and be rewarded with lower taxes if they get rich"

Iraqis turning against Al Qaeda: "Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person's face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood. The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheikhs have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement. "They are turning. We are talking to people who we believe have worked for al-Qaeda in Iraq and want to reconcile and have peace," said Colonel Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, which oversees the area"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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