Oil idiocy



The latest in the series of pointless gestures that constitute Congressional energy policy came yesterday, when executives from five major oil companies were paraded before Ed Markey's House hearing on global warming. They served as political props for Members to denounce rising gas prices, ventilate Dick Cheney conspiracy theories and otherwise advertise their ignorance of the markets they purportedly oversee.

Democrats, for instance, might rejoice over higher energy costs, which is precisely the eco-policy they've been advocating for years. Until Congress finds a way to abolish the price mechanism, paying more for gasoline is the only signal that will tell Americans to cut their consumption. How exactly do Democrats think a carbon tax or cap-and-trade regime is going to work?

The oil executives performed a public service by pointing out other economic realities. About 70% of the price of gasoline is determined by the global price of crude, which is rising because of world-wide demand and volatility in the commodities markets, not to mention the Federal Reserve's easy-money policy. Congress might also look to its gas mandates and the corset it has laced around domestic production.

It's true that industry profits are at a record high, but oil is a classic boom-and-bust business, which is why billions in capital investments are folded back into exploration and production. Besides, the industry's effective tax rates are in the neighborhood of 40% to 44%. Over the past five years, Exxon Mobil's total U.S. tax bill exceeded its U.S. revenues by some $19 billion.

Mr. Markey also used the occasion to threaten special tax increases, grilling the executives about $18 billion in "subsidies," which are actually a tax deduction that Congress itself extended to all manufacturers, including Big Oil. And he demanded that the companies commit 10% of profits to renewable energy. But as an Exxon vice president put it, fossil fuels are still going to account for at least two-thirds of the world's energy consumption in three decades and whatever scientific progress is made, the practical prospects for alternatives remain "very, very small."

Source. Toon via Dr Sanity

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Obama advisor says 60 to 80 thousand troops need to stay in Iraq: "A key adviser to Senator Obama's campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security. In "Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement," Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government "the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000-80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground)." Mr. Kahl is the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign's working group on Iraq"

A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is out on Iraq and it shows a lot of progress in Iraq: "A new classified intelligence assessment on Iraq says there has been significant progress in security since the last assessment was delivered in August, a senior military official said. In most ways the new National Intelligence Estimate hews closely to the one delivered nine months ago. That document spoke of security gains since the increase in troop levels began in January 2007, the continued high rate of violence and uneven progress on the part of Iraqi security forces."

Why top Democrats and the media want to Clinton/Obama battle to end: "Clinton is validating all sorts of things Republicans will say about Obama if he's the nominee. For example, she said Obama's not ready to be president "on Day One" or receive emergency 3 a.m. phone calls on Night One. And when the Jeremiah Wright controversy was winding down, Clinton tried to reignite the firestorm by saying that Obama's choice of ministers is fair game. This is a wonderful boon to Republicans. Clinton's criticisms of Obama's foreign-policy inexperience and his association with Wright are both perfectly legitimate. But if she weren't making them, Democrats (and much of the press) would denounce Republicans for saying the same things. If Obama had secured the nomination by now, the Democrats would surely be labeling any criticism over Jeremiah Wright as unfair, racist "swift-boating." That's hard to do when Bill and Hillary Clinton are making this criticism bipartisan.

60 minutes of slime again: "Dana Jill Simpson told "60 Minutes" she called Karl Rove in Virginia to discuss politics. She also said she was at a KKK meeting and that she was working undercover for Rove. Rove says there were no calls to Virginia. He's never lived in Virginia. Every nutty story Dana Jill Simpson told has not panned out including the story that she talked with the crooked Alabama governor... But, this didn't stop "60 Minutes" from running a Rove hit piece based entirely on her testimony."

FAA Inspectors Say Concerns Ignored: "The whistleblowers who exposed maintenance and inspection problems at Southwest Airlines told Congress their jobs were threatened and their reports of noncompliance were ignored for years. Federal Aviation Administration inspector Douglas Peters choked up Thursday at a House hearing and needed a few sips of water to tell lawmakers about how a former manager came into his office, commented on pictures of Peters' family being most important, and then said his job could be jeopardized by his actions. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., said FAA managers' actions displayed "malfeasance bordering on corruption," adding that if presented to a grand jury, the evidence would result in an indictment."

Time to scrap the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act: "Hoping to be seen to be 'doing something' about the perceived problem of Internet gambling, Congress approved the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in October of 2006. The Act, however, seems unlikely to stop Internet gambling and could even threaten the stable, smooth operation of America's banking system. UIGEA and its currently proposed enabling regulations will undermine the financial privacy of all Americans and reduce the security of their bank accounts. In short, UIGEA makes almost no financial, social, or economic sense. It deserves reexamination."

John Lilburne: The first English libertarian: "The Levellers were a group of political activists in the 17th century, who campaigned for radical change, by writing and distributing pamphlets, petitions and manifestos; and by arranging meetings in taverns to spread their ideas. Among their leading writers and pamphleteers, besides John Lilburne, were Richard Overton, William Walwyn, Thomas Prince, and John Wildman. Probably the most famous document compiled by the Levellers is one entitled An Agreement of the People. The demands listed included regular elections, religious freedom, equality before the law, an end to conscription for war service, equal electoral districts according to population, and universal manhood suffrage."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is a recent example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally 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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Small Victories over piranha lawyers

Foes of lawsuit abuse have been writing gleefully about the fall of Dickie Scruggs, Bill Lerach and Melvyn Weiss. All three lawyers are likely to spend time in jail for plotting to bribe a judge (Scruggs) or paying kickbacks (Lerach and Weiss). Good riddance. Locking them up will stop them from further damaging America - at least for a few years. But it's a small victory for reformers. New members of the parasite circus will just step forward to take their place. And what these aggressive class-action and securities lawyers do legally is more damaging to America than the crimes that Scruggs, Lerach and Weiss committed. They broke laws to cheat other lawyers out of some loot, but at least that barely hurt the public.

An editorial in this newspaper justifiably mocked Lerach for declaring his lawbreaking a mere "foot fault" ("I stepped over the line," he said). But at least paying off plaintiffs honestly reflects how such lawyers get rich. Often, they are less "officers of the court seeking justice" than businessmen colluding with plaintiffs in a lucrative extortion business. Legal extortion. But still extortion. Companies pay the lawyers to go away even when it's unclear that they did anything wrong.

Once companies pay, it's logical that the plaintiff/partner who helped the lawyers enrich themselves should get a cut of that loot. That's a fairer deal than what typical plaintiffs in class actions get: coupons or a check for perhaps $1.26.

A federal judge will soon decide whether to award Lerach his cut of what may be the biggest class-action legal fee ever. Lerach extorted - I mean persuaded - J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and a Canadian bank to give $695 million to him and other lawyers who claimed the banks were culpable in the Enron debacle. On March 19, 2007 an appellate court ruled that the banks were not culpable. But so what? Fairness doesn't necessarily govern this game. The game is more about rounding up lots of complainants and using America's one-sided legal system to terrorize businesses into settling. Companies could fight and win, but that distracts managers from what they ought to be doing. And they might get a bad jury and lose the entire company. It's safer to settle.

More here

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The myth of the just price: "The concept of the just price is the basis of a great deal of erroneous economic thought that permeates our supposedly free market, capitalistic society. Laws regarding usury, loan sharking, price gouging, ticket scalping, dumping, profiteering, equal pay, price discrimination, predatory pricing and lending, product bundling, and antitrust -- these are all prime examples of this fallacious way of thinking. Opinions expressed on these practices, and things like pay for supermodels, executives, actors, and athletes, as well as nebulous concepts of fairness, are likewise predicated on just price theory -- regardless of whether the opinionist has any concept of basic economics or has ever even heard of just price theory."

Demon seed? "Interview with Robert Paarlberg, author of Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa. Paarlberg: "My students know just what kind of food system they want: a food system that isn't based on industrial scale monoculture. They want instead small farms built around nature imitating polycultures. They don't want chemical use; they certainly don't want genetic engineering. They want slow food instead of fast food. They've got this image of what would be better than what we have now. And what they probably don't realize is that Africa is an extreme version of that fantasy. If we were producing our own food that way, 60 percent of us would still be farming and would be earning a dollar a day, and a third of us would be malnourished. I'm trying to find some way to honor the rejection that my students have for some aspects of modern farming, but I don't want them to fantasize about the exact opposite."

Newsweak shrinking: Hooray! "The staff of Newsweek will shrink dramatically, after 111 staffers on its news and business sides accepted a buyout last week. Among those leaving are some of the magazine's best-known, most-admired and longest-service critics, including David Gates, David Ansen and Cathleen McGuigan. 146 staffers were offered the chance to leave the magazine, with as much as two years of their current salary as a departing bonus, depending on their age and length of service. More staffers than expected accepted the offer, so at least some their jobs are likely to be filled by new hires. But dozens of positions will be eliminated permanently, Radar reports. The departure of so many senior staffers at once - all of them are expected to be gone by the end of this year - will mean the loss of much of the magazine's institutional memory, as well as many of its most talented writers and editors. All of the chief researchers are also leaving, and their positions may be eliminated"

EU regulations hit orchestras: "Along with other opera and ballet companies in the UK, Covent Garden is preparing itself for amendments to EU legislation relating to noise in the workplace. For most industries the regulations came into effect two years ago, but music and entertainment were granted an extra two years to find ways to adapt to the limits. That extension expires on Sunday, and orchestral managers have been thrown into a tailspin. They are spending tens of thousands of pounds consulting acoustic engineers and compiling complex databases, installing noise-reducing screens and buying earplugs for their players. They are metering their shows and rearranging their performance schedules accordingly, so that noisier productions are shared with quieter ones during the working week. And all without leaving audiences feeling that their musical night out has been compromised as a result. The regulations are designed to protect factory workers and other employees forced to carry out their jobs against a backdrop of loudly humming machinery. The irony is that for orchestras noise is their business, which makes it doubly tricky for them to function within the EU directive, especially when a Swan Lake clocks in at 90 decibels."

McCain has a personal stake in the war: "Sen. John McCain regularly talks about his military experience on the presidential campaign trail, but he draws the line when asked about his sons' service in the armed forces. Jimmy McCain, 19, who returned from Iraq in mid-February, is stationed at Camp Pendleton in California. Jack McCain, 21, is poised to graduate from the Naval Academy and could join the Marines as a second lieutenant. At a time when Democrats are calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, McCain has refused to use his children's experience to strengthen his arguments for keeping the U.S. military in the Middle Eastern country. McCain has appeared uncomfortable when asked about Jimmy's deployment to Iraq. When asked about it last month by Fox commentator Sean Hannity, McCain replied, "We really never talk about our sons. We have two sons in the military but we never talk about it, if that's all right." McCain added, "I am so proud of both of them."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is a recent example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally 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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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The despicable military-hating Jack Murtha

I wonder does he still have a hat? The equally despicable John Kerry does

Last week's development in the Haditha case -- the dropping of all the charges leveled against Lance Cpl. Stephan Tatum for actions related to Haditha, Iraq -- drives another nail into the shameful accusations made by Time magazine and Rep. John Murtha.

Time magazine, with an assist from the Pennsylvania Democrat, sparked a legal and media inquisition against eight courageous United States Marines. Both Time and Murtha claimed these Marines committed cold-blooded murder in Haditha during a 2005 engagement. They also alleged the Marines participated in covering up their alleged atrocities. But after years of litigation and estimated $40 million in taxpayer funds expended, none of the Marines have been found guilty of committing murder or war crimes.

On Nov. 19, 2005, during an insurgent ambush of the Marines of Kilo Company 3rd battalion 1st Marines, 15 Iraqi civilians and nine suspected insurgent ambushers were killed. One Marine was killed in an IED explosion and two others seriously wounded. Thanks to the battalion intelligence officer, Lt. Jeff Dinsmore, who monitored the daylong engagement, the entire Marine chain of command were given the full story of the engagement that very night and it was agreed that no further action in connection with the civilian casualties was needed.

Months later, a Time story based on the testimony of two known insurgent propagandists and the stories of some Iraqi civilians falsely reported that the Kilo company Marines had wantonly murdered the dead Iraqis as an act of revenge after an IED explosion took the life of a fellow Marine. On the basis of Time's unsubstantiated allegations alone, Murtha publicly charged the Marines had gone on a rampage to avenge the killing of their comrade in the IED explosion and had committed cold-blooded murder. Time has been forced to issue four different retractions of details in their report.

Before any investigation had gotten underway Murtha went on a rampage of his own, attacking the Marines in venue after venue. In his original charges against the Marines, Murtha said there was no gunfire during the incident when there was in fact a daylong battle involving heavy insurgent gunfire directed at the Marines starting at the time of the IED explosion. Typical of Murtha's rantings were his comments on a May 28, 2006, ABC News broadcast. In response to George Stephanopolis' comment that he claimed to have been briefed several times since Nov. 19 and said that that the evidence showed that the Marines had committed cold-blooded murder, Murtha said: "Well there's no question in my mind, what happened was an IED exploded. It killed one Marine. And then a taxi drives up. When the taxi comes up there's four of five people in it. And they shoot . shoot those four or five people unarmed. "And then they go on a rampage throughout the houses and kill people.

More here

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Many readers here will probably be aware of the historical role played by Margaret Mead in the Leftist attack on sexual morality. Her influential book "Growing up in Samoa" paraded Mead's libertine ideology as anthropological fact. I have made a few comments on the matter over the years and Prof. Hiram Caton has recently taken me to task over some of my comments. You can read the dialogue here. The dialogue is actually about Derek Freeman, the man principally responsible for exposing Mead's lies. Freeman had to be an unusual character to take on such an acclaimed figure as Mead was and Caton says that Freeman was a nut. I suspect that Freeman simply had a strong ego but that the furious attacks that he sustained from the Left did unnerve him at times. But, as I initially pointed out to Caton, all that is ad hominem anyway.

Maybe there is something good about the U.N. after all!: "Al-QA'IDA number two Ayman al-Zawahiri has launched a blistering attack on the UN, calling it the enemy of Islam and Muslims in an online audiofile. "The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: it is the one which codified and legitimised the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims' lands," Zawahiri said. The audio released via the monitoring group the IntelCenter was the first installment in a two-part series to answer about 100 questions put to Zawahiri, known as al-Qa'ida's ideological thinker, via online militant forums. He grouped his replies into four sections - the killing of innocents, Iran, Egypt and Palestine - and denied that the al-Qa'ida network had been responsible for the loss of innocent Muslim lives."

Even dissolute Ted has some caution: "Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is jumping into the middle of an uproar within the gay community whose causes he has long championed. The Massachusetts Democrat is leading a push in the Senate for a federal ban on job bias against gays, lesbians and bisexuals - but not transsexuals, cross-dressers and others whose outward appearance doesn't match their gender at birth. "We will strongly oppose it," said Roberta Sklar of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "Leaving transgender people out makes that a flawed movement."

CBS lying again: ""At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed." Thus intoned CBS correspondent Scott Pelley on Sunday night in introducing the 60 Minutes report on former Guant namo inmate and book author Murat Kurnaz...... we know from Kurnaz's declassified Combatant Status Review file that US authorities have in fact upheld his original classification as an illegal enemy combatant. More to the point, far from "agreeing" that Kurnaz had no connection to terror, starting in 2002, Germany's Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigations (BKA) - the German equivalent of the FBI - itself classified Kurnaz as a "security risk." This classification was based on a number of pieces of information linking Kurnaz to Islamic extremist circles in Germany, including to the milieu of the "Hamburg cell" that planned the 9/11 attacks."

A coverup? "NASA shut down a massive air-safety survey project without ever properly evaluating, explaining or publicizing its purpose and results, and thus lost a chance for valuable insight into safety issues, the space agency's inspector general said Monday. The watchdog office said NASA should interpret and analyze the results of its interviews with some 30,000 pilots, but NASA in a written response continued to reject that idea. NASA will evaluate the methodology that its staff used in the $11.3 million project, but going further to actually report on the findings isn't worthwhile because the interviews, which were stopped at the end of 2004, are less relevant with the passage of time, wrote the agency's associate administrator, Jaiwon Shin. The intent of the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service was to help prevent aviation accidents by viewing air safety through the eyes of pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and air traffic controllers. Their insights would add to the picture provided by other aviation monitoring programs, the audit said.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is a recent example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally 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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Hillary's lying goes back a long way

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying. The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career. Why? “Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

More here

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Brookes News Update

Carbon emissions trading, the new Bubble Economy: Imposing a carbon emissions trading scheme is not justified by the science and is likely to be very costly and disruptive to the lives of all Australians. It is becoming very clear that carbon dioxide is not a key driver of earth's temperature, and attempts to reduce man's emissions of CO2 will do more harm than good
Dark Hour - a sign of the times: Earth Hour should be renamed Dark Hour during that consumers should also forgo the consumption of gasoline and diesel. Consumers should spend the hour they sit in the dark with no transport, air conditioning or hot coffee, remembering the contribution that carbon fuels have made to modern society
Buoy meets Gore: The global warming cult and its media allies suffered a severe blow when 3,000 automated ocean buoys actually detected a slight cooling. Moreover, NASA's eight weather satellites readings showed that temperature changes were well within the normal range
The Disgrace of Liberalism: The Democrats - with the indispensable aid of their media allies - successfully branded the Republicans as the 'party of corruption'. But this title rightfully belongs to the Democratic Party, that is utterly corrupt to its very core
Race card? Ask Obama... he brought it up.: Obama gave a speech to deplore the words of his trusted hatemongering preacher. Reverend Wright has been his mentor and spiritual advisor for the past twenty years. Yet, in that speech, he didn't disclaim the messenger
Race is not a factor this election: The Obama and Clinton campaigns are fostering a disconnected and artificial sense of race conflict as they desperately seek to extract a kernel of justification for their vacuous candidacies. Every comment or gesture from either side is weighed and parsed for race or gender bias
Morality and 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

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The journalism of desperation here. They say that increasing use of food stamps is a sign of economic depression in America -- quite ignoring the fact that the government has recently expanded eligibility for food stamps. Taranto has the details.

The "recession" is a media myth: "During the 2000 election, with Bill Clinton as president, the economy was viewed through rose-colored glasses. According to polls, voters didn't realize that the country was in a recession. Although the economy started shrinking in July 2000, most Americans through the entire year thought that the economy was fine. But over the last half-year, the media and politicians have said we were in a recession even while the economy was still growing. Gas prices are going up. The economy is slowing. Talk of recession is seemingly everywhere. While the majority of people rate their personal finances positively, consumer confidence in the economy has plunged to a 16-year low, well below what it was during the last year of the Clinton administration when we were in a recession."

Nobody fears Hillary: "Pay no attention to that woman behind the curtain. Be afraid. Be very afraid, for if you don't obey the Great and Powerful Oz will turn her wrath on you. Yawn. Hillary Clinton's favorite girlhood movie was the 'Wizard of Oz.' But now, as the primaries clank along, her subjects are refusing to wear the green-tinted glasses and buy her act. She's less and less terrifying every day, and fewer of those closest to her -- her Senate colleagues -- are intimidated. Despite their best efforts, the Clintons' powers seem to have gone on the fritz, and those Democrats who know Hillary best have strayed off to follow a new, more congenial character. Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr. was the most recent U.S. Senator to endorse Barack Obama for President. But he certainly is not the only one."

Limiting executive power: "Should the World Court be imbued with the authority to determine how Texans run their justice system? Does the president have the authority to impose an international court ruling on a state? Would such a notification have altered the outcome of the trial? During Medellin's appeal process, the consulate issue was raised in both Texas and federal courts. To this point, every court has found that notification was irrelevant to the case itself and to Medellin's richly deserved death sentence. And this week, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the president does not have the authority to order states to follow international agreements in the courts."

Another crooked black?: "U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson quit following calls by lawmakers for him to step down amid a federal criminal probe into contracts the agency awarded. ``There comes a time when one must attend more diligently to personal and family matters,'' Jackson, reading from a statement, told reporters in Washington today. ``Now is such a time for me.'' His resignation takes effect April 18." [Conservatives once had some hopes of Alphonso Jackson]

Another TSA abuse: "You may have heard, recently, of a woman, undergoing security procedures at one of this once-free nation's airport gulags, who was forced by Transportation Safety Administration goons to remove a pair of decorative metal rings from her nipples with pliers, even though the jewelry demonstrably posed no threat to anybody -- and she was reportedly willing to show them to appropriate female security personnal. There was no reason for this treatment. It's the kind of routine violation and harassment members of America's Productive Class have been increasingly subjected to by otherwise unemployable minimum wage thugs. It is, of course, only the latest in what the Founding Fathers would have called 'a long chain of abuses and usurpations"

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race and IQ.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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

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

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is a recent example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally 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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Quite marvellous: An Individual With a Strong Voice Makes a Difference

Post below lifted from Bruce Kesler. See the original for links

Both houses of the New York State legislature have now passed what some are calling "Rachel's Law." It provides protection to American authors against "libel terrorism," seeking to enforce judgments in New York State that were granted in other countries without our level of free speech protections. The law now just awaits signing by NYS's new governor, David Paterson.

One of the co-sponsors of the law, Senator Skelos, says, "The truth is a critically-important component in the War on Terror.This important new law will protect American authors and journalists who expose terrorist networks and their financiers."

I spoke briefly with Rachel Ehrenfeld tonight. She is, of course, elated at this victory, which she stubbornly waged as an individual transplanted to our shores because of her belief in America's freedoms. Ehrenfeld agrees, "this is what America is about" when individuals can have this impact. Now, there remains a long road through the courts to overturn the "libel terrorism" judgment's enforceability in our courts. Financial help is needed. Click here to help, at the American Center For Democracy. David Siegel, longtime editor of the New York State Law Digest, wrote in the March 12 New York Law Journal,

[A]ny bill that tries to address any situation as complex as Ehrenfeld is going to pose constitutional issues. If I may be allowed a flippancy, so what! It will boil down to the classic situation in which a statute toils near the border of constitutionality and leaves it to the courts to draw the line. Far worse than that would be to do nothing in the face of what seems to me an egregious effort, in a forum with libel laws offensive to our own and a dubious venue for the Ehrenfeld case to boot, to let an alleged libel victim pull off a coup in which he makes it too expensive for a New York writer to contest his foreign lawsuit.

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ELSEWHERE

More bad history from Hillary. She condemns what Japan did in response to its credit crisis of the '90s but gets ass-backwards what they did. So what she advocates for America is exactly what failed in Japan. Those who will not learn from history.... Details here

Hamas's open ethnic and religious bigotry: "In the Katib Wilayat mosque one recent Friday, the imam was discussing the wiliness of the Jew. "Jews are a people who cannot be trusted," Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas told the faithful. "They have been traitors to all agreements - go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us." At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the "Crusaders," or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as "the brothers of apes and pigs," while the Hamas television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war until Palestine is free of Jewish control."

Growth is in the "red" States, not the senile Northeast: "Four Texas metropolitan areas were among the biggest population gainers as Americans continued their trend of moving to the Sun Belt in 2006 and 2007, according to Census Bureau estimates to be released Thursday. Dallas-Fort Worth added more than 162,000 residents between July 2006 and July 2007, more than any other metro area. Three other Texas areas - Houston, Austin and San Antonio - also cracked the top 10. Atlanta saw the second-largest population jump with just over 151,000 new residents. Phoenix was third with more than 132,000, and was followed by Houston, Riverside, Calif., Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Austin, Las Vegas and San Antonio. Of the 50 fastest-growing metro areas, 27 were in the South and 20 were in the West. Two were in the Midwest, one - Fayetteville, Ark. - straddles the South and Midwest and none was in the Northeast."

Military families: "Military families are different from civilian families, and multi-generation military families are extraordinary in ways difficult to comprehend. I married into one, and as a civilian still find myself marveling at the sacrifices involved. My wife's borther, George Philip, is an Annapolis grad and retired after a 20 year career as a Marine Corps officer. Her dad, Col. Wilbur Helmer, retired as a colonel in the USMC,and fought in some of the toughest battles of the Pacific War. Her grandfather and great grandfather were Annapolis men and admirals. Her uncle, then-Ensign Joseph Taussig, left his leg on the Nevada. Her mom's first husband, Commander George Philip, went down with his ship at Okinawa. His cousin, John Waldron, led a famed torpedo bomber attack at the Battle of Midway. All of which is to say that they are different from you and I, and that difference should be honored by civilians again and again."

Altruistic Twist in Market Economies: "Democratic societies with market economies have a reputation as cauldrons of competition, materialism, and greed. There's another side to that coin, though. These societies also foster cooperation among strangers in order to achieve a common financial goal, say economist Benedikt Herrmann of the University of Nottingham, England, and his colleagues. In contrast, nondemocratic and other societies without market economies-marked by low civic involvement and distrust of public authorities-promote an ethic of punishing strangers who demand cooperation in a joint economic effort, Herrmann's group reports in the March 7 Science."

A Belgian Utopia: "Inadvertently, the Belgian government has proven that government is best which governs least. After spending 9 months in a political deadlock, the country found itself chugging along without so much as a hiccup. The Financial Times reports: "For all its regional rivalries, Belgium went about daily life as normal. Its famed bureaucracy chugged along under its own power. Guy Verhofstadt, the long-serving and outgoing prime minister, proved just as capable as a temporary caretaker. Social security benefits were paid and the trains ran on time. Politicians should take note. Belgium has opened the door to an enticing possibility. Non-government has attractions. Imagine living without fear of new taxes being levied or of a daily diet of attention-grabbing policies"."

Hopeless Brits still cannot run an airport terminal: "Five days after Terminal Five opened, ministers criticised anger at the chaos which has engulfed the multi-billion pound facility, while it also emerged that the turmoil had triggered a diplomatic incident. "It is extremely regrettable to say the least that passengers using T5 have had to suffer an unacceptably poor travel experience," Aviation Minister Jim Fitzpatrick told the House of Commons. British Airways - the only airline using the new terminal - cancelled another 54 flights on Monday after a nightmare weekend, while a spokesman said another 50 flights will be cancelled on Tuesday. "We continue to work towards increasing the number of services we are operating to and from Terminal 5 in the days ahead," he said. Terminal Five has been blighted by logistical troubles ever since it opened to much fanfare on Thursday, with problems compounded by a major computer glitch in the luggage handling system. The luggage backlog has so far grown to 28,000 bags, and could take up to a week to return them to owners, the minister said. Earlier BA said there were 15,000, while the BBC published photos of the bags piled on top of each other. BA chief executive Willie Walsh was forced to make his second apology in three days on Sunday, as the airline scrapped dozens of flights over the weekend."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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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A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is a recent example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally 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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Some more fictional history from the Left

Obama and Hillary are not alone. Real history is so pesky for Leftists that they have to make it up

We should read the Financial Times column written by Cambridge historian and New American Foundation senior fellow, Anatol Lieven entitled: "Why we should fear a McCain presidency?" His intriguing answer which appears in bold print in the paper edition is:

Some of the worst 20th century catastrophes were caused by brave men with passionate sense of national mission.

Really? I was curious. Who could he mean? I could not think of an example. Apparently, neither could he. The closest he came to naming names is comparing McCain to Andrew Jackson, a highly regarded 19th century Democrat president and not a particularly scary one. He does tell us that so extreme is the McCain presidency going to be that it will make leftists look back with nostalgia at George W. Bush. Indeed, European governments should start immediately planning on "how they could either prevent a McCain administration from pursuing pyromaniac policies or, if necessary, protect Europe from the ensuing conflagration."

But why should Americans believe that as experienced and knowledgeable a warrior as John McCain would behave so irresponsibly? Because he has an ungovernable temper, Lieven answers:

"Mr McCain's policies would not be so worrying were it not for his notorious quickness to fury in the face of perceived insults to himself or his country. Even Thad Cochran, a fellow Republican senator, has said: `I certainly know no other president since I've been here who's had a temperament like that.'"

Well, let me enlighten him. World War II hero and two term president Dwight Eisenhower was another military man with a lightening temper. In her book First Mothers, Bonnie Angelo describes his mother's failure to teach him temper control. "From childhood those lightening flashes were as much a part of Ike as the contagious smile," she writes.

Biographer Carlo D'este describes instances when "he totally lost his self-control -- whether beating an apple tree with his fists as a child, banging his head against a wall when playing poor tennis, or punching his fist through the wall of a cafe." White House seamstress Lillian Rogers Parks tells how his wife Mamie lived in constant fear of his outbursts. Angelo reports that presidential aides became most familiar with a vein in his forehead which would noticeably stand out during press conference he found annoying as signaling, "Caution: high voltage temper."

That said, Eisenhower did help win World War II but did not start World War III. He, merely, ended the Korean War and presided over 8 years of relative peace and prosperity. Not a bad record for a brave honorable, if temperamental, warrior. If temperamental McCain does as well we should all be very happy.

More here

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Explaining Obama, Clinton and Kerry's False Histories

Below is Bruce Kesler's explanation. I think he is too kind. Leading Leftists and many of their followers are just psychopaths, born defectives who are completely lacking any moral instinct. They virtually tell us so when they say: "There is no such thing as right and wrong"

It's a wonder to observers that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry so blatantly -- and relatively easily revealed as otherwise -- invented their histories as heroic, exemplary and worthy of leadership.

Their formative education coincides with a post-war radical trend in historiography called leftist revisionism. Although revisions of historical understandings are a commonplace occurrence as new sources come to light, the radical left in post-war America veered into a myth that the causes of the Cold War, and of Vietnam and now Iraq, came from avaricious and racist motives and are furthered by outright mendacity and secret cabals. The structures, and confusions, of institutional decision-making with naturally murky intelligence, the requirements of national security and alliances, the value or sincerity of Western values, these are treated as excuses that purposely hide the true intents and goals.

This radical leftist revisionism, while allied with and blending easily with Marxist opposition to capitalism, is distinct in its raising of the true enemy to heroic proportions, extra-powerful individuals. This demonization of our leaders leads to the need for heroic counters. Thus, Obama, Clinton and Kerry needed to re-invent themselves, both to appear as the answer, and to convince themselves they are worthy of being the answer. Their self-invention is as false as their root interpretation of history and the workings of politics and international affairs.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

A win for the new Iraq government: "Iraq's radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr last night ordered his fighters off the streets, paving the way for an end to clashes with security forces that have killed hundreds of people. "We want the Iraqi people to stop this bloodshed and maintain Iraq's independence and stability," Sadr said in a statement with his seal released by his headquarters in the holy city of Najaf. Sadr's latest call came after six days of fighting between Shia fighters and Iraqi forces in the southern port city of Basra, Baghdad and several other Shia regions that have killed at least 270 people. The clashes erupted last Tuesday when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched an assault on Shia militiamen in neighbourhoods of Basra controlled by Sadr's Mahdi Army, the most powerful Shia militia in the violence-ravaged country. The Iraqi capital and Basra both remained under curfew last night although there was a lull in the fighting, according to residents of affected neighbourhoods. Mr Maliki had given a 72-hour deadline to Shia fighters in Basra to disarm after launching an offensive against them but the call was ignored by the militia. On the same day, Mr Maliki vowed to press on with his assault in Basra, saying the militiamen were "worse than al-Qa'ida"."

Black Liberation Is Marxist Liberation: "One of the pillars of Obama's home church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is "economic parity." On the website, Trinity claims that God is not pleased with "America's economic mal-distribution." Among all of controversial comments by Jeremiah Wright the idea of massive wealth redistribution is the most alarming. The code language "economic parity" and references to "mal-distribution" is nothing more than channeling the twisted economic views of Karl Marx. Black liberation theologians have explicitly stated a preference for Marxism as an ethical framework for the black church because Marxist thought is predicated on a system of oppressor class (whites) versus victim class (blacks)."

Socialist Britain now too poor to fix its potholes: "When is a pothole in the road not a pothole? When it is less than 4cm deep, according to new guidelines that have been adopted by cash-strapped councils across Britain. The councils are this weekend accused of contributing to the "chronic disrepair" of UK roads by redefining the size of potholes that they are obliged to fill. More than 20 local authorities are cutting road maintenance bills by refusing to repair potholes less than 4cm deep. Some councils have doubled the size of "actionable" potholes in recent years. The revelation comes ahead of a comprehensive survey of Britain's roads, which will this week reveal that local authorities are facing a shortfall of more than 1 billion pounds as they attempt to fill in 1 million potholes a year."

Surprise! "More than halfway through their five-year study on post-Katrina recovery efforts, researchers for the Virginia-based Mercatus Center are reporting the neighborhoods that rebounded the fastest generally had the strongest community leaders -- not the most government help."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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One Missed Call

In Michael Mukasey, President Bush finally seems to have an Attorney General worthy of the current moment. In Nancy Pelosi's hometown this week, the former judge who once tried terror cases told the Commonwealth Club audience that even he had no idea of the extent of the threat. Speaking of what he hears in his national security briefings, Mr. Mukasey said, "It is way beyond - way beyond anything that I knew or believed. So, if I was picked for the level of my knowledge . . . that was a massive piece of false advertising."

As reported by the New York Sun, he also offered a perspective, partly personal as a former Manhattanite, on the necessity of warrantless antiterror surveillance. Before 9/11, Mr. Mukasey said, "We knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went. We've got" - here the Attorney General paused with emotion - "we've got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn't come home, to show for that."

The AG also addressed why immunity from lawsuits is vital for the telecom companies that cooperated with the surveillance after 9/11. "Forget the liability" the phone companies face, Mr. Mukasey said. "We face the prospect of disclosure in open court of what they did, which is to say the means and the methods by which we collect foreign intelligence against foreign targets." Al Qaeda would love that. The cynics will call this "fear-mongering," but most Americans will want to make sure we don't miss the next terror call.

Source

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Brookes News Update

Savings and the American economy: The lesson that Asians understand and many Americans now need to relearn is that savings and not consumption underpin living standards. And this is why the Democrats' proposed tax increase could sink the US economy
Bernanke's magic circus comes to town: Bernanke who has written a lot about the causes of the great depression. This has given economic pundits the impression that he knows how to deal with financial crises. Unfortunately, Bernanke's reading of what caused the great depression is completely false. He is making the same mistake that the Fed made in the 1920s
Asset booms and monetary policy: It is a Keynesian myth that changes in asset prices change aggregate spending, particularly household spending
Obama's communist mentor: The media have buried Obama's extreme leftwing links and his contempt for America. Nevertheless, the facts that lead to the conclusion that Obama is a socialist with Marxist sympathies are there for anyone who cares to seek them out
Al Jazeera enraged by Cuban-American voters: Republican-hating journalists who smeared Bush, admire Castro, sneer at the war on terror have joined pro-terrorist Al Jazeera where they now try to persuade Cuban-Americans to vote for the Democrats
The roots of black anger: Intellectually honest blacks, such as Shelby Steele, will tell you that racism is such a distant memory that racial victimologists like Wright are now left with concocting wild-eyed conspiracy theories to maintain their power
It's all over for the Democrats: A fit candidate for the Presidency who also happens to be an African-American or a woman will hopefully emerge in the future, but only after having gone through all the traditional rigors of any other candidate for the job
The Barack Obama double standard: In 1999 the media crucified Bush year for daring to give a speech at Bob Jones University. Now the same bunch of political bigots have been busy trying to rationalise away Obama's support for a venomous race-baiting, Jew-hating, anti-American bigot whose default position is one of unadulterated hatred

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ELSEWHERE



Two tales of great heroism in the Middle East, one from Britain and one from the USA. The egotists of the Left would understand neither.

Media talking down the economy: "Just how obvious is it that the media's economic and business coverage is so negatively skewed that it has to be part of a political agenda in an election year? Obvious enough for the folks at Fox News to do an entire segment Saturday morning asking the extraordinary question: "Media `Talking Down' the Economy to Get a Dem Elected?" Despite my surprise seeing "Cavuto on Business" begin with such a question framed at the bottom of the screen, I was almost enraptured by the comments from Neil's guests which not only included regular assertions that this is clearly about getting a Democrat in the White House, but also that media are "committing a crime against the general public" by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that will end up costing people their jobs in the long run."

Typical psychopathic inconsistency: "Howard Dean slams John McCain's shameless plan to point out he's been there, done that. The Republican Party has seized upon the term "blatant opportunist" to suggest that Dean is implying McCain is an opportunist for including his POW information in his TV ad. What's more interesting are the Dean quotes from 2004 that may come back to haunt him this year. "The real issue is this," Dean said in March 2004, when endorsing formal rival Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., "Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?"

Another Hillary lie: "A senior Democratic lawmaker blew a hole through Hillary Rodham Clinton's claim that she helped pass critical family-leave legislation - just days after the candidate admitted she "misspoke" when she made false claims about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire. Former Rep. William Lacy Clay, a longtime St. Louis politician, says it was senior lawmakers - not the former first lady - who pushed through the measure, which President Bill Clinton signed into law after only 16 days in office. "If Hillary played a role in its passage, it was without my knowledge," Clay wrote in an e-mail that he circulated."

Muslims think stuff in Dutch film is normal: "The imam at Friday prayers in Amsterdam's El Tawheed mosque spoke of "enemies of Islam", but in spite of that clear nod to Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-immigration politician, and his film, the mood was decidedly relaxed. Mr Wilders' 16-minute film Fitna , the Arabic word for strife, was posted on the internet on Thursday after months of speculation as to just how outrageous the -stridently anti-Islamic MP's project would be. In the event, it consisted of footage of terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London and other material juxtaposed with verses from the Koran. One of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that provoked violent protests in Islamic countries two years ago was included, without its author's consent. Omar Bakri, the Libyan-based radical Muslim cleric who is barred from Britain, did not think the film was very offensive. "On the contrary, if we leave out the first images and the sound of the page being torn, it could be a film by the [Islamist] Mujahideen," he said.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Leftist site stymied by Google censorship

Amusing. Post below lifted from Just one minute. See the original for links

"Think Progress" delivers some high-powered attack blogging - they accused John McCain of plagiarism, but apparently had not exerted themselves to actually check McCain's speeches available at his Senate website - he claims first dibs on the disputed phrases by pointing to a speech he gave in 1995 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but how much prescience would have been required for Think Progress to have pinned this down? For example, one of the McCain phrases that stood out was "War is wretched beyond description." A search on the word "wretched" at McCain's Senate site produces just three hits, one of which is the 1995 speech.

What seems to have confounded the person who noticed this is that Google's search spiders seem to be blocked from the McCain site; neither a conventional Google search nor a Google search on McCain's Senate site deliver the 1995 speech.

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Democrats being destroyed by their own political correctness

The Democratic primary is starting to look like World War I. The origins of the dispute are forgotten. Pennsylvania is the Somme. No chance, though, that the Clintons, who lead the imperial armies, will consent to paying reparations at the Treaty of Denver.

The most striking resemblance to the Great War has been the campaign-worker body-count. They're strewn all over the battlefield. Geraldine Ferraro (killed for bringing up if Obama weren't black), Samantha Power (Hillary's a "monster"), the intrepid if foolhardy Rev. Wright (multiple offenses), James Hagee (Catholics as the "anti-Christ"), Bill Cunningham ("Barack Hussein Obama"), Bill Sheehan (for bringing up Obama's drug use). All gone. Anyone working for or in support of a political campaign these days is entering a free-fire zone.

Some say the high casualty rate in the campaigns is the result of indiscriminate political correctness. Campus speech codes were put in place to monitor people who said the "wrong thing" about favored groups, often categorized as holding "minority status" by dint of race, gender or sexual preference. Now the Democratic campaigns are using the toxic PC gas on each other.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

An Italian replies here to the Rev. Wright's aspersions on Italian noses!

Brits release two convicted terrorists because of "prison overcrowding": "Two convicted terrorists have been released early under a controversial Government scheme to ease prison over-crowding, ministers have been forced to admit. One is a radical Muslim cleric - Yassin Nassari, 29 - who was caught trying to smuggle blueprints on how to build a missile into Britain. The identity of the second terrorist had not been made public but the BBC reported he was Abdul Muneem Patel, who was released from Glen Parva jail in Leicestershire on Jan 7 this year. Patel, of east London, was jailed for six months at the Old Bailey in October 2007 after a jury found him guilty of having a terrorism-related explosives manual. After news of the early releases became public, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, was forced to announce emergency measures to prevent the future early release of terrorists."

The newest Dutch insult to Islam: "Former Dutch Labor party politician Ehsan Jami, founder of the Committee of ex-Muslims, said he has produced an anti-Muslim cartoon that will show a sexually aroused prophet Mohammed with his nine-year-old wife. The film is to be released next month and will be called "The Life of Mohammed."

Endemic Democrat corruption: "Just when the party needs them most, the Dems super-delegates are dropping like flies. First there was William Jefferson, followed by Eliot Spitzer, then Kwame Kilpatrick, and today, Anibal Acevedo-Vila. This morning's announcement of the indictment of Puerto Rico's governor along with twelve others, including prominent Philadelphia democratic fundraiser Robert Feldman, worries party faithful for more reasons than one. Governor Acevedo-Vila , "a Harvard educated attorney and politician," who according to AP, "was elected governor in 2004 after campaigning on an anti-corruption platform," just last month endorsed Senator Obama for president."

Cowardly Dutchmen: "Release of Fitna is causing panic in Dutch political circles. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende says Wilders' movie "threatens the nation." Wrong. It is Islamic violence which threatens Holland and all of Europe. Exactly as in the 1930s, it is the weakness of European leaders which allows the threat to grow. Just as the League of Nations refused to stand up to fascism in pre-WW2 Europe, the United Nations grovels before Islam today. But they do more that grovel. Out of fear they have actually taken up the work of Islam and are enforcing the Islamic law against "blasphemy" while the Islamists stand by approvingly"

Massive new U.S. oil reserve: "America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America's Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC's short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant. In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951."

Brits thrashing at the air: "Video games will be forced to carry cigarette-style health warnings under proposals to protect children from unsuitable digital material. The report, commissioned by the Prime Minister in response to a growing moral panic about video games, will conclude that they can harm the development of children's beliefs and value systems and desensitise them to violence. It will also recommend that retailers who sell video games to anyone under the age rating on the box should face a hefty fine or up to five years in prison, The Times has learnt. The report, written by Tanya Byron, the clinical psychologist and television parenting guru, is also expected to address the dangers of children's use of the internet."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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

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

"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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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The party of corruption

Events this year have exposed, once and for all, in a way that cannot be denied, elided, or spun, Democratic liberals as the party of abject incompetence and institutionalized corruption.

Eliot Spitzer worked his way to the governorship of New York State as the living embodiment of liberal higher morality, crusading against a series of dubious financial and corporate villains. His downfall as the result of a prostitution scheme too moronic for fiction might be taken as evidence of personal failings and no more were it not for the fact that his replacement, David A. Paterson, confessed to similar activities as the first official act of his administration. (If not even more egregious -- no one, after all, has accused Spitzer of trading jobs for sexual favors).

We need only add James McGreevey, ousted in 2004 from New Jersey's governorship for homosexual escapades with an aide (apppointed to a homeland security job with the state for which he had no qualifications), to conclude that liberalism has subsided to a level of corruption of European dimensions.

It's often overlooked -- thanks in large part to the Clinton "legacy" -- that such misbehavior is almost always accompanied by corruption in other spheres. Insistence by Clinton's defenders that his various lady troubles were "personal matters" succeeded in obscuring the moral connection between Big Bill's follies and the endless bribes, kickbacks, suicides, illegal mass firings, and vanishing files that made the "most ethical administration in history" so entertaining to watch.

So it needs restating as a simple truth that a man who cannot control his sexual impulses is unlikely to succeed in more complex matters. In little over a year, Spitzer threw away the goodwill engendered by his landslide victory through a series of petty conspiracies and dirty tricks, bringing New York state government to a standstill in the process. While McGreevey was a better governor than he's ever likely to get credit for (he solved the longstanding auto-insurance "crisis" that made New Jersey a laughingstock for half a dozen previous administrations), his penchant for putting his muscle boys on the state payroll undercuts any other claims for his record. The same can be said for Paterson. Though, being both blind and black, he may likely survive, revelations concerning his practice of awarding jobs and positions don't bode well for the future.

These men are clearly representative of the post-Clinton Democratic Party. They set out to follow in Bill's footsteps, have ended up much the same as he did, and have dragged their party and political doctrine along with them. (At this point somebody will bring up the names Foley and Craig. But neither stood anywhere near the center of American conservatism in the way that the Northeastern governors do with liberalism as a matter of course. Foley and Craig were rotten apples. With the Democrats, it's the whole barrel.)

In turning to the presidential campaign, we need do no more than mention Madame Hillary. The Ma Barker of Little Rock is in a class by herself when it comes to political iniquity (not to mention dodging snipers). The chief puzzle concerning Hillary is how, being so blatantly what she is, she succeeds in holding onto any support whatsoever. There's a process in quantum mechanics called "renormalization", in which certain quantities with values of infinity are arbitrarily dropped back to a more manageable "zero" for the sake of solving the equation. This encapsulates Hillary's political career: truly mindboggling levels of corruption and ineptitude have been continually renormalized by fellow politicians and the media to enable her to survive. These people made a particular type of bargain when they bent the rules for Hillary. Now the ground is opening up under their feet. It has been a pleasure to watch.

Barack Obama was supposed to be another matter. Obama has ascended on a cloud of pure moral superiority and nothing else. That has now evaporated, thanks to impolitic comments from his wife and the news that he has for two decades belonged to what amounts to a racist cult. Obama has nothing else to offer in the way of experience or achievements. Beyond his current difficulties, there lie his continuing and as yet unexplained entanglement with Tony Rezko (He barely knew the man, he insists. All he did was show Rezko his new house before closing. I always clear major purchases with people I scarcely know, don't you?), along with pending revelations concerning his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former terrorist who began his career as one of the driving forces of the Weather Underground.

Obama's response, his "Kennedyesque" speech on race, was in fact purely Clintonian in that it attempted to transform his failings into virtues while placing the blame on the country as a whole. (Not to mention his innocent typical white grandmother.) In less than two weeks, Obama has succeeded in lowering himself to the same level as Madame Hillary. Quite an achievement. (As for Obama's claims to be a necessary "racial reconciliator", this reconciliation has in fact been going on since the end of segregation, quite successfully too. As is often the case with liberals, Obama is offering a solution to a problem that is solving itself.)

To this gallery we can add Jennifer Granholm, who assured that Michigan's current slide was as drastic and damaging as possible, Ed Rendell, Hillary's consigliere for Pennsylvania, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Kwame Kilpatrick, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and malfeasance in office. That's the Democratic Party, the bastion of American liberalism, as it stands. A party whose entire leadership cadre, including presidential candidates, state governors, and Congressional leaders, are corrupt or incompetent or both, a party more suitable to ruling a Balkan or Central African peapatch than the world's reigning superpower.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Hillary's Other Fabrication: " She said that Chelsea was jogging around the World Trade Center on 9/11 and happened to duck into a coffee shop when the airplanes hit. She said that this move saved Chelsea's life. But Chelsea told Talk magazine that she was in a friend's apartment four miles from ground zero when the first plane hit. Her friend called her, waking her up, and told her to turn on the TV. On television, she saw the second plane hit, disproving Hillary's claim that "she heard the plane hit. She heard it. She did." So why did Hillary make up the story about Chelsea? Most likely to was because her co-senator (and implicit rival for the voter's affection), a real New Yorker Chuck Schumer spoke of his daughter, who attended Stuyvesant High School (Dick's alma mater) located next to the Trade Center, being at real risk on 9/11. Hillary needed to make herself part of the scene. She invented the entire story on national television, the "Today" show, and didn't blink an eye."

Interesting point from Arlene Peck about Obama's Muslim origins: "I put it to you that Obama never converted to Christianity. Such a conversion would have been marked by baptism. Had he been baptized, he would have made mention of it when referring to the baptism of his children."

More Obama deception: "In his autobiographical book "Dreams from My Father," Barack Obama paints a heroic picture of his father as having emerged from a poor Kenyan village, where he was nothing more than a simple goat herder, to become a Harvard-educated economist, destined to return to Africa to fulfill his promise. Unfortunately, the reality is much bleaker than the tale Obama tells in his book. In truth, Barack Obama senior, Obama's father, was a polygamist who had already abandoned one wife and child in Africa when he met Obama's mother in Hawaii. After being educated at Harvard, Obama senior returned to Africa, abandoning Obama and his mother, to live the life of a chronic alcoholic who ultimately killed himself in his second drink-induced car accident, while driving drunk on the streets of Nairobi."



The U.N. pisses on itself again: "To the sound of cheers, and by an overhwelming majority of 40 out of 47 votes, the UN Human Rights Council today elected Jean Ziegler, the co-founder of the "Muammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize," as an expert advisor representing the Western world. And for its new Palestine expert, the council chose Richard Falk, who, like Ziegler, accuses the U.S. of being responsible for many of the world's ills and describes Israel in Nazi terminology"

Ho hum! London's new airport chaotic: "Thousands of families heading on holiday this weekend face chaos after Heathrow's new 4.3 billion pounds terminal was reduced to a shambles on its opening day by the complete failure of its baggage system. British Airways will begin today to wrestle with a huge backlog of passengers, many of them left stranded at Terminal 5 overnight, after the airline cancelled at least 34 flights. BA, the sole occupant of the new terminal, suspended baggage check-in shortly before 5pm and dozens of flights departed half-empty last night carrying only those passengers who had only hand luggage. Passengers on in-bound flights had to wait up to four hours for bags to be unloaded. The problems, which BA blamed on staff not being familiar with new systems, forced many outgoing travellers to abandon their plans and head home. The disastrous opening was a severe embarrassment for BA and BAA, the Spanish-owned company that operates Heathrow. Both had spent five years claiming that the new terminal would transform passengers' experience of Heathrow and work efficiently from Day 1." [The expected British bungling]

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, 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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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