Cuil not so cool
Excerpt:
Anna Patterson's last internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system. She believes her latest invention is even more valuable - only this time it's not for sale. Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the internet. The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $US33 million ($A34.6 million) in venture capital, the search engine was set to begin processing requests for the first time today. Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers - Russell Power and Louis Monier - searched for better ways to search.
Now, it's boasting time. For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion web pages. Patterson believes that is at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index's breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion web pages.
Cuil won't divulge the formula it has developed to cover a wider swath of the web with far fewer computers than Google. And Google isn't ceding the point: Spokeswoman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest.
More here
I tested cuil.com by doing a search on the topic I know most about: "John Ray". The results were crazy. I am always on the first page of a Google search but cuil.com just produced page after page of duplicated results about the 18th century English naturalist of the same name. Why they had to repeat the same result endlessly, I don't know. Try it for yourself and see what it does. A couple of other modern-day John Rays got a look in but they were on some occasions teamed with a picture of the 18th century guy. MUCH more work needed before this is a useful search tool -- JR
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Energy is the issue
Four-dollar-a-gallon gas has done something that few Republicans thought possible just a few months ago: given them hope. United behind a renewed push for offshore oil drilling, Republican members of Congress and the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, think they have found their best political issue of the 2008 campaign. McCain strategists and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill say the issue, which polls suggest Americans favor by healthy margins, lets Republicans demonstrate their plans to address the anger over high gas prices as well as the broader economic distress that many voters feel.
Because most Democrats, including Sen. Barack Obama, are opposed to increased drilling, McCain and the GOP have already begun casting their rivals as unconcerned about gas prices and unwilling to wean the country from foreign oil....
People are beginning to realized the anti energy demagogues have no alternative energy. They hate oil, gas coal, nuclear, shale oil, wind and in some cases even solar. They just flat do not like energy in any form unless it is to get them to a protest march. The Democrats have embraced their radical agenda and it is driving up the cost of energy to the point it is lowering our standard of living and these guys want the price to go even higher. With the Democrats putting the wackos ahead of everyone standard of living they deserve to lose.
Source
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What we really meant was....
Allahpundit has an excellent takedown of Dem angst over McCain getting verbally pugilistic with their messiah. The best bit that comes out of it is the new Dem line that Iraq can't be lost, so why are we staying? Interesting....
Not too long ago, according to Democrats, we needed to get out of Iraq, because Iraq couldn't be won. Now, according to Democrats, we need to get out of Iraq, because Iraq can't be lost.
Unfortunately both arguments simply demonstrate the Dems lack of understanding of reality. You see, not too long ago, we needed to stay in Iraq, because Iraq could be won. Now we need to stay in Iraq because Iraq can be lost. It is their misunderstanding of this simple reality that bothers me
Source
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ELSEWHERE
Bungling Iranian hostage commander fired: "The captain of the [British] ship at the centre of the Iranian hostage debacle last year has been removed from his post, the Minstry of Defence said today. Commander Jeremy Woods was in charge of the frigate HMS Cornwall when 15 sailors and Royal Marines were seized by Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf last March. They were detained at gunpoint and held for 13 days after Tehran claimed they had strayed into Iranian waters. A parliamentary inquiry in December called the episode a "national embarrassment" and said formal action has been taken against a number of service personnel. The MoD said Commander Woods would keep his rank but has been moved "to a post where his talents and experience can be used to best effect". A spokesman said: "We can confirm that Commander Jeremy Woods, Commanding Officer of HMS Cornwall, has been removed from command. This is an internal administrative matter between the individual and his senior officers and we will not give further details of the removal."
British Labour Party doomed with or without Gordon Brown: "Voters are increasingly writing off Labour as fewer people believe that a change of leader or policy would help the party to win the next general election. A Populus poll for The Times, undertaken over the weekend after Labour's defeat in Glasgow East, suggests that its dramatic slide in popularity is being driven by a collapse in economic confidence. Labour is on 27 per cent, down one point on the last Populus poll three weeks ago, and about the level it has been for the past three months. This is the lowest since the early 1980s. The Conservatives are on 43 per cent - up two points - with the Liberal Democrats down one point at 18 per cent. Other parties are unchanged on 12 per cent. Ministers plotting to remove Gordon Brown receive a warning that barely half the electorate (52 per cent) believe that it would improve the party's fortunes"
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
McCain is a man of good character but no brains
"I believe there needs to be a thorough and complete investigation of speculators to find out whether speculation has been going on and, if so, how much it has affected the price of a barrel of oil. There's a lot of things out there that need a lot more transparency and, consequently, oversight." Those are the words of presidential candidate John McCain. This man is the Republican?
There's more: "I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies not only because of the obscene profits they've made but at their failure to invest in alternate energy to help us eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. They're making huge profits and that happens, but not to say, 'We're in this so we can over time eliminate America's dependence on foreign oil,' I think is an abrogation of their responsibilities as citizens."
Let me get this straight. A potential president of a putatively free country scolds companies for "obscene profits," failure to invest in competing products, and therefore irresponsible citizenship. Why? Is McCain running for national economic commissar?
This is not the first time McCain has displayed what I would call an anti-capitalist mentality. In an early presidential debate he countered former businessman Mitt Romney's claim to superior executive experience by saying, "I led the largest squadron in the U.S. Navy, not for profit but for patriotism". Why the put down of profit? It's clear McCain does not understand how markets work or why they are good. He certainly doesn't understand the role of speculators and other middlemen. He's not alone. Speculators are among the most reviled people in history. When they were members of ethnic minorities, they have been easy targets for economically illiterate people who were jealous of their success.
McCain wonders "whether speculation has been going on." He needn't wonder. Speculation always goes on. Speculation means to take a risk on what the future holds in hopes of making a profit. The world's stock and commodities markets are based on this principle. Sen. McCain must have meant it when he said, "I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues".
Source
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ELSEWHERE
Whoa!... AP Backs McCain's Plans For Iraq Over Obama's Hasty Retreat : "You may want to sit down for this one... In a stunning piece of journalism the Associated Press reported that the United States was now winning the War in Iraq yesterday. Noticably missing from their article was any mention of the "Bush" or "Bush surge." Even the AP has its standards. But, here's the real stunner... The AP released a video to go with their weekend story where they agreed with the McCain, Bush and Petraeus plans on succeeding in Iraq and withdrawing troops cautiously over Barack Obama's hasty retreat plans" [Note however that many papers (guess one!) did not carry the AP story]
Long term study of the New York Times reveals a bias against Israel: "The last HonestReporting long-term analysis of the New York Times was released in November of 2007. At the time, we found that there were several disturbing patterns in how the Times reported events in the Middle East. Our conclusion was that the treatment of Israeli and Palestinian actions was so different, that there could be no question that the reporting was favoring the Palestinians rather than remaining impartial. We highlighted specific cases where headlines dealing with Israeli or Palestinian actions were written in different styles. We also noted that the vast majority of images used by the Times appears reflectively sympathetic to the Palestinians while virtually ignoring the greater context surrounding the conflict. We have now concluded a broader survey of the Times. Specifically, we looked at 205 articles between July of 2007 and June of 2008. Using this much larger time frame, we found that our original thesis has only been strengthened. Specifically, when reviewing headlines and photographs, it is clear that there is an inherent bias in New York Times reporting about the conflict that favors the Palestinians".
Carter relic says McCain Would Start World War IV : "Former US President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski criticized US officials in Senator McCain's camp for pushing the presumptive Republican nominee toward a radical foreign policy on issues such as Iran. Brzezinski described McCain's presidency as an 'appalling concept' as it would lead to the World War IV, arguing that from the viewpoint of figures surrounding the Arizona senator the Cold War counted as World War III. "Well, if McCain is president and if his Secretary of State is Joe Lieberman and his Secretary of Defense is [Rudolph] Giuliani, we will be moving towards the World War IV that they have been both favoring and predicting,"
Is Journalism Giving One Candidate Twice the Coverage?: "On Sunday, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz continued his mission of exposing the absurd amount of coverage the media are giving to Barack Obama as compared to John McCain. On CNN's "Reliable Sources," Kurtz amazingly asked his guests, "Where does journalism get off saying it's OK to give one candidate twice as much coverage -- this week, I would say four times as much coverage -- as the other candidate running for president?" This followed last Sunday's warning by Kurtz that "there could be a big backlash against news organizations if this trend continues":
NYT writes about terror bombing in India. Guess what's missing?: "After highlighting the most egregious evasive verbiage in a Times account of a bus bombing in India that claimed 45 lives, Gilbert summarizes: To review, for two days dozens of bombs have gone off in a region where Muslims have attacked Hindus countless times over the years. (What the New York Times merely describes as "attempts to provoke violence between Hindus and Musliims." You see, the bombings were not violence in themselves. And of course no group was actually behind them. They just happened.) Furthermore, an Islamic terrorist group has even claimed responsibility for the bombings. A group that was responsible for similar bombings just two months ago. Still, the New York Times only sees fit to mention with any specificity "Hindu-on-Muslim violence," which was done in reprisal for "a train fire" that obviously broke out spontaneously."
Senator John Thune Skewers Far Left Hee-Haw McCaskill : "Ugh... Claire McCaskill (D-MO) won her senate seat in 2006 by bashing Bush for "killing black people on rooftops" and pushing for surrender in Iraq. It made sense then that she would hook up with Senator Barack Obama, the most liberal US senator, and campaign for him this past year. Today, Claire McCaskill proved that she is nothing more than a walking-talking Far Left nut. McCaskill tried to pass out her loony Far Left talking points in a grown up discussion on FOX News Sunday... It was embarrassing. You almost felt sorry for her if she wasn't such a Far Left war loser who voted against the Bush Surge. Senator John Thune (R-SD) was brilliant. Every time McCaskill shot off her Far Left talking points, Thune meticulously batted them down with the facts on the ground."
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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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"I believe there needs to be a thorough and complete investigation of speculators to find out whether speculation has been going on and, if so, how much it has affected the price of a barrel of oil. There's a lot of things out there that need a lot more transparency and, consequently, oversight." Those are the words of presidential candidate John McCain. This man is the Republican?
There's more: "I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies not only because of the obscene profits they've made but at their failure to invest in alternate energy to help us eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. They're making huge profits and that happens, but not to say, 'We're in this so we can over time eliminate America's dependence on foreign oil,' I think is an abrogation of their responsibilities as citizens."
Let me get this straight. A potential president of a putatively free country scolds companies for "obscene profits," failure to invest in competing products, and therefore irresponsible citizenship. Why? Is McCain running for national economic commissar?
This is not the first time McCain has displayed what I would call an anti-capitalist mentality. In an early presidential debate he countered former businessman Mitt Romney's claim to superior executive experience by saying, "I led the largest squadron in the U.S. Navy, not for profit but for patriotism". Why the put down of profit? It's clear McCain does not understand how markets work or why they are good. He certainly doesn't understand the role of speculators and other middlemen. He's not alone. Speculators are among the most reviled people in history. When they were members of ethnic minorities, they have been easy targets for economically illiterate people who were jealous of their success.
McCain wonders "whether speculation has been going on." He needn't wonder. Speculation always goes on. Speculation means to take a risk on what the future holds in hopes of making a profit. The world's stock and commodities markets are based on this principle. Sen. McCain must have meant it when he said, "I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues".
Source
**************************
ELSEWHERE
Whoa!... AP Backs McCain's Plans For Iraq Over Obama's Hasty Retreat : "You may want to sit down for this one... In a stunning piece of journalism the Associated Press reported that the United States was now winning the War in Iraq yesterday. Noticably missing from their article was any mention of the "Bush" or "Bush surge." Even the AP has its standards. But, here's the real stunner... The AP released a video to go with their weekend story where they agreed with the McCain, Bush and Petraeus plans on succeeding in Iraq and withdrawing troops cautiously over Barack Obama's hasty retreat plans" [Note however that many papers (guess one!) did not carry the AP story]
Long term study of the New York Times reveals a bias against Israel: "The last HonestReporting long-term analysis of the New York Times was released in November of 2007. At the time, we found that there were several disturbing patterns in how the Times reported events in the Middle East. Our conclusion was that the treatment of Israeli and Palestinian actions was so different, that there could be no question that the reporting was favoring the Palestinians rather than remaining impartial. We highlighted specific cases where headlines dealing with Israeli or Palestinian actions were written in different styles. We also noted that the vast majority of images used by the Times appears reflectively sympathetic to the Palestinians while virtually ignoring the greater context surrounding the conflict. We have now concluded a broader survey of the Times. Specifically, we looked at 205 articles between July of 2007 and June of 2008. Using this much larger time frame, we found that our original thesis has only been strengthened. Specifically, when reviewing headlines and photographs, it is clear that there is an inherent bias in New York Times reporting about the conflict that favors the Palestinians".
Carter relic says McCain Would Start World War IV : "Former US President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski criticized US officials in Senator McCain's camp for pushing the presumptive Republican nominee toward a radical foreign policy on issues such as Iran. Brzezinski described McCain's presidency as an 'appalling concept' as it would lead to the World War IV, arguing that from the viewpoint of figures surrounding the Arizona senator the Cold War counted as World War III. "Well, if McCain is president and if his Secretary of State is Joe Lieberman and his Secretary of Defense is [Rudolph] Giuliani, we will be moving towards the World War IV that they have been both favoring and predicting,"
Is Journalism Giving One Candidate Twice the Coverage?: "On Sunday, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz continued his mission of exposing the absurd amount of coverage the media are giving to Barack Obama as compared to John McCain. On CNN's "Reliable Sources," Kurtz amazingly asked his guests, "Where does journalism get off saying it's OK to give one candidate twice as much coverage -- this week, I would say four times as much coverage -- as the other candidate running for president?" This followed last Sunday's warning by Kurtz that "there could be a big backlash against news organizations if this trend continues":
NYT writes about terror bombing in India. Guess what's missing?: "After highlighting the most egregious evasive verbiage in a Times account of a bus bombing in India that claimed 45 lives, Gilbert summarizes: To review, for two days dozens of bombs have gone off in a region where Muslims have attacked Hindus countless times over the years. (What the New York Times merely describes as "attempts to provoke violence between Hindus and Musliims." You see, the bombings were not violence in themselves. And of course no group was actually behind them. They just happened.) Furthermore, an Islamic terrorist group has even claimed responsibility for the bombings. A group that was responsible for similar bombings just two months ago. Still, the New York Times only sees fit to mention with any specificity "Hindu-on-Muslim violence," which was done in reprisal for "a train fire" that obviously broke out spontaneously."
Senator John Thune Skewers Far Left Hee-Haw McCaskill : "Ugh... Claire McCaskill (D-MO) won her senate seat in 2006 by bashing Bush for "killing black people on rooftops" and pushing for surrender in Iraq. It made sense then that she would hook up with Senator Barack Obama, the most liberal US senator, and campaign for him this past year. Today, Claire McCaskill proved that she is nothing more than a walking-talking Far Left nut. McCaskill tried to pass out her loony Far Left talking points in a grown up discussion on FOX News Sunday... It was embarrassing. You almost felt sorry for her if she wasn't such a Far Left war loser who voted against the Bush Surge. Senator John Thune (R-SD) was brilliant. Every time McCaskill shot off her Far Left talking points, Thune meticulously batted them down with the facts on the ground."
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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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Monday, July 28, 2008
The Numbers Are In, Again - The Rich Pay More Than Their "Fair Share"
Latest IRS Data Shows that Wealthier Americans' Portion of Taxes Actually Exceeds Their Portion of Income
In their never-ending campaign to increase taxes, those on the left endlessly allege that wealthier Americans don't pay their "fair share" in taxes. There's only one problem: the exact opposite is true. When one compares the portion of taxes paid by Americans of various income brackets to their corresponding portion of the nation's income earned, wealthier Americans actually pay more than their fair share.
And once again, the latest Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) numbers prove that. This month, the IRS's income statistics division released its latest data comparing the amount of income earned by various segments of the income ladder against the amount of taxes paid by those same segments. And what do they reveal?
According to the statistics, the richest 1% of American taxpayers (those earning above $389,000) earned 22% of the nation's reported income. But their share of the nation's income taxes was 40%. In other words, the wealthiest 1% of Americans' income tax payments are almost twice as much as their "fair share."
The same is true for other income levels as well. According to the IRS data, the wealthiest 5% of Americans earned 37% of the nation's income, but paid some 60% of the nation's income taxes. The top 25% of Americans earned 68% of the nation's income, but paid 86% of the nation's taxes.
And astonishingly, the top 50% of American earners brought in 88% of income dollars, but paid 97% of all income taxes in this country. Thus, half of the American population is paying almost the entirety of income taxes. So what was that about paying their "fair share?"
And precisely how does Senator Barack Obama plan to cut taxes for lower-income Americans, when the lower half of income earners already pay only 3% of the nation's income taxes?
More here
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Remarks about anti-Americanism in Europe
The following was forwarded to me by a European reader -- pointing out that American political correctness has undermined European efforts to rein in third-world thuggery
Undoubtedly a strong anti-Americanism is prevalent in Europe. It is also true that this sentiment is mainly a kingdom of the left; at least, leftists are those who lead the street dance. However the roots of this sentiment are deeper than the apparent schizophrenia of these persons that bite the hand that has protected them from the communist takeover. In order to prove this assertion lets think of three words and an half: Suez, Algeria, Africa (and Falklands).
SUEZ. In 1956, Nasser the autocratic ruler of Egypt took over and closed the Suez Channel closing the naval route between Europe and Asia. Great Britain, France and Israel took a successful military action to reopen the Channel but the US had a preference for Arabs and other Third Word so called nationalists over Europeans. As a result the initial victory became a humiliating retreat.
ALGERIA. It was a French colony from 1830 until 1962. Anyway the French conquered Algeria in order to stop the continuous pirate actions of the Arabs in the Mediterranean and after the dey (local king) of Alger slapped the face of the French envoy. An independence war begun in 1954 and ended with the defeat of France; all the time the US pressed France to surrender.
AFRICA. All we know what a tragedy has became the retreat of the colonial powers. The last one to surrender was Portugal a small and the most western country of Europe. It sustained a war for 13 years in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea against the UN and all the usual people. How did this war begin in 1961? With a really nasty attack against white people - for instance opening the belly of pregnant women - in order to impose terror and force people to flight. And who paid for this initial terrorist actions? The US then under President Kennedy. What happened in Angola is more or less what happened in all the Black Africa: the expulsion of colonial powers followed by the ascension of very nasty rulers. But for the US the end of colonial rule in Africa was a strategic aim, no matter the consequences.
Falklands. Only by small chance the same "anti-colonialism" did not prevail in the Falklands; the ambassador Jane Kirkpatrick took the side of Argentina, only the President was a certain Reagan.
For decades the anti-colonialism of the US reduced European powers to world irrelevance and Africa is suffering its nasty rulers. Some of us can be rational and understand that our interests are with the US and that without the military power of the US civilization risks to be lost, like it has been the case between 1939 and 1989. But it should be understood that other people are not so rational.
It is now very common for American conservatives to condemn Europe for its failure to stand up for Western civilization. But the Europeans were doing that until quite recently -- when America stopped them. No wonder the Europeans have given up. So why did America do that? Because of misguided ideology. America's own racist past caused them to see as racism and "colonialism" what were perfectly reasonable actions by European countries -- JR
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ELSEWHERE
Charges against Marine sniper dismissed: "The Marine Corps said Thursday that charges were dismissed against a Camp Pendleton Marine sniper accused in the shooting deaths of two Syrians in Iraq. The Marine Corps said the charges against Sgt. John Winnick II were dismissed without prejudice by the commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, meaning charges could be brought again at a later time."
Generous old Congress OKs $48 billion for global AIDS fight: "The House voted Thursday to triple money to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world, giving new life and new punch to a program credited with saving or prolonging millions of lives in Africa alone. The 303-115 vote sends the global AIDS bill to President Bush for his signature. Bush, who first floated the idea of a campaign against the scourge of AIDS in his 2003 State of the Union speech, supports the five-year, $48 billion plan."
UK: Painter fined for smoking in own van: "A painter and decorator from Ceredigion says he is 'dumbfounded' after being slapped with a $60 fine for smoking a cigarette in his own van. Gordon Williams says he had popped to the shops earlier this month, when he was pulled over by council officials. 'I was told that because my van is my place of work I had broken the smoking laws,' he said. ... The grandfather decried the on-the-spot penalty as the 'Big Brother state going too far.' He added: 'I respect anyone who chooses not to smoke, but I would also ask for the same respect to have the freedom to smoke in my own private vehicle.'"
Bungling British bureaucrats again: "Confidential tapes and internal documents have exposed bullying and bungling in Gordon Brown's flagship tax-credit scheme that will cost the taxpayer up to $5.6 billion. More than 1.5m people have been told that they were overpaid tax credits and should now give back the money. Tax officials told them it was their own fault and informed some victims they had no right of appeal. However, many victims have turned the tables on the tax-man, using evidence from their own case files, obtained under data protection laws, to prove officials' errors were to blame. This has revealed government offices in disarray, random errors inserted by computer into claimants' files, and officials misleading claimants about the right of appeal. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is now preparing to write off $5.6 billion"
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Latest IRS Data Shows that Wealthier Americans' Portion of Taxes Actually Exceeds Their Portion of Income
In their never-ending campaign to increase taxes, those on the left endlessly allege that wealthier Americans don't pay their "fair share" in taxes. There's only one problem: the exact opposite is true. When one compares the portion of taxes paid by Americans of various income brackets to their corresponding portion of the nation's income earned, wealthier Americans actually pay more than their fair share.
And once again, the latest Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) numbers prove that. This month, the IRS's income statistics division released its latest data comparing the amount of income earned by various segments of the income ladder against the amount of taxes paid by those same segments. And what do they reveal?
According to the statistics, the richest 1% of American taxpayers (those earning above $389,000) earned 22% of the nation's reported income. But their share of the nation's income taxes was 40%. In other words, the wealthiest 1% of Americans' income tax payments are almost twice as much as their "fair share."
The same is true for other income levels as well. According to the IRS data, the wealthiest 5% of Americans earned 37% of the nation's income, but paid some 60% of the nation's income taxes. The top 25% of Americans earned 68% of the nation's income, but paid 86% of the nation's taxes.
And astonishingly, the top 50% of American earners brought in 88% of income dollars, but paid 97% of all income taxes in this country. Thus, half of the American population is paying almost the entirety of income taxes. So what was that about paying their "fair share?"
And precisely how does Senator Barack Obama plan to cut taxes for lower-income Americans, when the lower half of income earners already pay only 3% of the nation's income taxes?
More here
************************
Remarks about anti-Americanism in Europe
The following was forwarded to me by a European reader -- pointing out that American political correctness has undermined European efforts to rein in third-world thuggery
Undoubtedly a strong anti-Americanism is prevalent in Europe. It is also true that this sentiment is mainly a kingdom of the left; at least, leftists are those who lead the street dance. However the roots of this sentiment are deeper than the apparent schizophrenia of these persons that bite the hand that has protected them from the communist takeover. In order to prove this assertion lets think of three words and an half: Suez, Algeria, Africa (and Falklands).
SUEZ. In 1956, Nasser the autocratic ruler of Egypt took over and closed the Suez Channel closing the naval route between Europe and Asia. Great Britain, France and Israel took a successful military action to reopen the Channel but the US had a preference for Arabs and other Third Word so called nationalists over Europeans. As a result the initial victory became a humiliating retreat.
ALGERIA. It was a French colony from 1830 until 1962. Anyway the French conquered Algeria in order to stop the continuous pirate actions of the Arabs in the Mediterranean and after the dey (local king) of Alger slapped the face of the French envoy. An independence war begun in 1954 and ended with the defeat of France; all the time the US pressed France to surrender.
AFRICA. All we know what a tragedy has became the retreat of the colonial powers. The last one to surrender was Portugal a small and the most western country of Europe. It sustained a war for 13 years in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea against the UN and all the usual people. How did this war begin in 1961? With a really nasty attack against white people - for instance opening the belly of pregnant women - in order to impose terror and force people to flight. And who paid for this initial terrorist actions? The US then under President Kennedy. What happened in Angola is more or less what happened in all the Black Africa: the expulsion of colonial powers followed by the ascension of very nasty rulers. But for the US the end of colonial rule in Africa was a strategic aim, no matter the consequences.
Falklands. Only by small chance the same "anti-colonialism" did not prevail in the Falklands; the ambassador Jane Kirkpatrick took the side of Argentina, only the President was a certain Reagan.
For decades the anti-colonialism of the US reduced European powers to world irrelevance and Africa is suffering its nasty rulers. Some of us can be rational and understand that our interests are with the US and that without the military power of the US civilization risks to be lost, like it has been the case between 1939 and 1989. But it should be understood that other people are not so rational.
It is now very common for American conservatives to condemn Europe for its failure to stand up for Western civilization. But the Europeans were doing that until quite recently -- when America stopped them. No wonder the Europeans have given up. So why did America do that? Because of misguided ideology. America's own racist past caused them to see as racism and "colonialism" what were perfectly reasonable actions by European countries -- JR
******************
ELSEWHERE
Charges against Marine sniper dismissed: "The Marine Corps said Thursday that charges were dismissed against a Camp Pendleton Marine sniper accused in the shooting deaths of two Syrians in Iraq. The Marine Corps said the charges against Sgt. John Winnick II were dismissed without prejudice by the commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, meaning charges could be brought again at a later time."
Generous old Congress OKs $48 billion for global AIDS fight: "The House voted Thursday to triple money to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world, giving new life and new punch to a program credited with saving or prolonging millions of lives in Africa alone. The 303-115 vote sends the global AIDS bill to President Bush for his signature. Bush, who first floated the idea of a campaign against the scourge of AIDS in his 2003 State of the Union speech, supports the five-year, $48 billion plan."
UK: Painter fined for smoking in own van: "A painter and decorator from Ceredigion says he is 'dumbfounded' after being slapped with a $60 fine for smoking a cigarette in his own van. Gordon Williams says he had popped to the shops earlier this month, when he was pulled over by council officials. 'I was told that because my van is my place of work I had broken the smoking laws,' he said. ... The grandfather decried the on-the-spot penalty as the 'Big Brother state going too far.' He added: 'I respect anyone who chooses not to smoke, but I would also ask for the same respect to have the freedom to smoke in my own private vehicle.'"
Bungling British bureaucrats again: "Confidential tapes and internal documents have exposed bullying and bungling in Gordon Brown's flagship tax-credit scheme that will cost the taxpayer up to $5.6 billion. More than 1.5m people have been told that they were overpaid tax credits and should now give back the money. Tax officials told them it was their own fault and informed some victims they had no right of appeal. However, many victims have turned the tables on the tax-man, using evidence from their own case files, obtained under data protection laws, to prove officials' errors were to blame. This has revealed government offices in disarray, random errors inserted by computer into claimants' files, and officials misleading claimants about the right of appeal. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is now preparing to write off $5.6 billion"
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Wikipedia versus "Knol"
I recently put up on Paralipomena an article about "Knol" -- the new Google alternative to Wikipedia. I imagine that most readers here are well aware that Wikipedia is totally unreliable on politically contentious matters. Anything opposed to Green/Left beliefs gets wiped rapidly -- sometimes within minutes. Try to find on Wikipedia anything much that argues against global warming if you don't believe me. Leftists have been devotees of political censorship ever since Napoleon. They just cannot afford to have people hear the whole story about their nonsense. And Wikpedia turns them loose.
One has to laugh at Wikipedia protestations of "neutrality". The bias is so bad that some people are predicting the demise of Wikipedia.
So an alternative that allows only the original author to delete stuff was badly needed. And Knol seems to meet that need. I thought therefore that I might help to get the ball rolling by putting up a few articles. The first one I put up is here.
I soon began to see the virtue of the Google approach. I have already received several steamed-up and ill-informed emails from a guy named Cyrus Robinson (cyrus.robinson@gimail.af.mil) who objects to what I have written. Clearly, if I had put the same stuff up on Wikipedia, he would have deleted it immediately. But on Knol he cannot.
It's ironical that the Leftists at Google are doing something that may help conservatives so I wonder how long that can last. Will Google start finding pretexts to delete conservative comments? Time will tell.
******************************
Putting Money Where Mouths Are: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1
The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money.
True to form, journalists are defending their bias by saying that one candidate, Obama, is more newsworthy than the other. In other words, there is no media bias. It is we, the hoi polloi, who reveal our bias by questioning the neutrality of these learned professionals in their ivory-towered newsrooms. Big Media applies this rationalization to every argument used to point out bias. "It's not a result of bias," they say. "It's a matter of news judgment." .... The "newsworthy" argument can be applied to every metric - one-sided imbalances in airtime, story placement, column inches, number of stories, etc. - save one.
An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans . Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans - a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.
Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.And while the money totals pale in comparison to the $9-million-plus that just one union's PACs have spent to get Obama elected, they are more substantial than the amount that Obama has criticized John McCain for receiving from lobbyists: 96 lobbyists have contributed $95,850 to McCain, while Obama - who says he won't take money from PACs or federal lobbyists - has received $16,223 from 29 lobbyists.....
The contributions of individuals who reported being employed by major media organizations are listed in the nearby table. The contributions add up to $315,533 to Democrats and $22,656 to Republicans - most of that to Ron Paul, who was supported by many liberals as a stalking horse to John McCain, a la Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos with Hillary and Obama. What is truly remarkable about the list is that, discounting contributions to Paul and Rudy Giuliani, who was a favorite son for many folks in the media, the totals look like this: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans (four individuals who donated to McCain). Let me repeat: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans - a ratio of 100-to-1. No bias there.
More here
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
A great interview with Bruce Caldwell, general editor of the Hayek series, on the release of the edited "Road to Serfdom". Caldwell makes the point that government has always grown on the back of wars - the war between the US states, and every other war on the record, now including the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism. Add to the list the war to save the planet - witness the alarmist ads now on Australian TV to support the rush to lead the world in emission reductions"
Incredible pettiness in bureaucratic Britain: "A shop manager has criticised a council after she was issued with a fine for using the wrong coloured bin bags. Haringey council in North London issued Dora Panagi with a $600 fine after she put rubbish in black bags. The council encourages shopkeepers to put rubbish in grey sacks. Mrs Panagi, 41, who manages a boutique in Muswell Hill, said that she used black sacks after the council failed to deliver the grey sacks. A spokesman for the council said that the fine would be cancelled."
McCain to Fannie Mae: Go Away: "In the rush to bulldoze the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac and housing bailout bill through Congress this week, scant attention has been paid in Washington to how the U.S. system fell into this hole. Thus it was refreshing to see Senator John McCain step up and speak rude truth to his colleagues about the fiasco in an op-ed piece this week. "Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington," the Republican presidential hopeful wrote in the St. Petersburg Times, stating the clear but all-too-often unspoken reality about this greatest of boondoggles. Senator McCain, who wasn't present for the cloture vote, also called for an end to their multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign. More importantly, he called for "making them [Fannie and Freddie] go away," as in, be no more. Receivership may indeed by the only option if a regulator can't get the far-flung activities of these two under control. Politics today is endless self-calculation, but Mr. McCain deserves some credit for bucking the Washington consensus on this debacle"
Reid: Churches which defy my edicts are "organized crime": "Polygamous sects that have spread throughout the United States and beyond are 'a form of organized crime,' largely unchecked by law enforcement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday. He is proposing a federal-state partnership aimed at policing such communities. 'The lawless conduct of polygamous communities in the United States deserves national attention and federal action,' Reid said before the Senate Judiciary Committee." [Reid is himself a Mormon]
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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)
****************************
I recently put up on Paralipomena an article about "Knol" -- the new Google alternative to Wikipedia. I imagine that most readers here are well aware that Wikipedia is totally unreliable on politically contentious matters. Anything opposed to Green/Left beliefs gets wiped rapidly -- sometimes within minutes. Try to find on Wikipedia anything much that argues against global warming if you don't believe me. Leftists have been devotees of political censorship ever since Napoleon. They just cannot afford to have people hear the whole story about their nonsense. And Wikpedia turns them loose.
One has to laugh at Wikipedia protestations of "neutrality". The bias is so bad that some people are predicting the demise of Wikipedia.
So an alternative that allows only the original author to delete stuff was badly needed. And Knol seems to meet that need. I thought therefore that I might help to get the ball rolling by putting up a few articles. The first one I put up is here.
I soon began to see the virtue of the Google approach. I have already received several steamed-up and ill-informed emails from a guy named Cyrus Robinson (cyrus.robinson@gimail.af.mil) who objects to what I have written. Clearly, if I had put the same stuff up on Wikipedia, he would have deleted it immediately. But on Knol he cannot.
It's ironical that the Leftists at Google are doing something that may help conservatives so I wonder how long that can last. Will Google start finding pretexts to delete conservative comments? Time will tell.
******************************
Putting Money Where Mouths Are: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1
The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money.
True to form, journalists are defending their bias by saying that one candidate, Obama, is more newsworthy than the other. In other words, there is no media bias. It is we, the hoi polloi, who reveal our bias by questioning the neutrality of these learned professionals in their ivory-towered newsrooms. Big Media applies this rationalization to every argument used to point out bias. "It's not a result of bias," they say. "It's a matter of news judgment." .... The "newsworthy" argument can be applied to every metric - one-sided imbalances in airtime, story placement, column inches, number of stories, etc. - save one.
An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans . Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans - a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.
Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.And while the money totals pale in comparison to the $9-million-plus that just one union's PACs have spent to get Obama elected, they are more substantial than the amount that Obama has criticized John McCain for receiving from lobbyists: 96 lobbyists have contributed $95,850 to McCain, while Obama - who says he won't take money from PACs or federal lobbyists - has received $16,223 from 29 lobbyists.....
The contributions of individuals who reported being employed by major media organizations are listed in the nearby table. The contributions add up to $315,533 to Democrats and $22,656 to Republicans - most of that to Ron Paul, who was supported by many liberals as a stalking horse to John McCain, a la Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos with Hillary and Obama. What is truly remarkable about the list is that, discounting contributions to Paul and Rudy Giuliani, who was a favorite son for many folks in the media, the totals look like this: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans (four individuals who donated to McCain). Let me repeat: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans - a ratio of 100-to-1. No bias there.
More here
*****************************
ELSEWHERE
A great interview with Bruce Caldwell, general editor of the Hayek series, on the release of the edited "Road to Serfdom". Caldwell makes the point that government has always grown on the back of wars - the war between the US states, and every other war on the record, now including the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism. Add to the list the war to save the planet - witness the alarmist ads now on Australian TV to support the rush to lead the world in emission reductions"
Incredible pettiness in bureaucratic Britain: "A shop manager has criticised a council after she was issued with a fine for using the wrong coloured bin bags. Haringey council in North London issued Dora Panagi with a $600 fine after she put rubbish in black bags. The council encourages shopkeepers to put rubbish in grey sacks. Mrs Panagi, 41, who manages a boutique in Muswell Hill, said that she used black sacks after the council failed to deliver the grey sacks. A spokesman for the council said that the fine would be cancelled."
McCain to Fannie Mae: Go Away: "In the rush to bulldoze the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac and housing bailout bill through Congress this week, scant attention has been paid in Washington to how the U.S. system fell into this hole. Thus it was refreshing to see Senator John McCain step up and speak rude truth to his colleagues about the fiasco in an op-ed piece this week. "Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington," the Republican presidential hopeful wrote in the St. Petersburg Times, stating the clear but all-too-often unspoken reality about this greatest of boondoggles. Senator McCain, who wasn't present for the cloture vote, also called for an end to their multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign. More importantly, he called for "making them [Fannie and Freddie] go away," as in, be no more. Receivership may indeed by the only option if a regulator can't get the far-flung activities of these two under control. Politics today is endless self-calculation, but Mr. McCain deserves some credit for bucking the Washington consensus on this debacle"
Reid: Churches which defy my edicts are "organized crime": "Polygamous sects that have spread throughout the United States and beyond are 'a form of organized crime,' largely unchecked by law enforcement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday. He is proposing a federal-state partnership aimed at policing such communities. 'The lawless conduct of polygamous communities in the United States deserves national attention and federal action,' Reid said before the Senate Judiciary Committee." [Reid is himself a Mormon]
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Mortgage Bailout Bill Shreds Property Rights, Fleeces Taxpayers
An enormously costly mortgage bailout bill passed the House 272-to-152, with strong support from liberal lawmakers. It will soon pass the Senate by an even bigger margin and become law. President Bush, following the advice of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, has wimped out and dropped his threat to veto it.
The bill will bail out the mortgage giant Fannie Mae, which has used intimidation and deceit, and spent millions of dollars on high-priced lobbyists, to thwart efforts to rein it in, even after its management engaged in a massive accounting scandal that rivaled Enron.
The bill will add at least $42 billion in new expenses to the federal budget, including $16.8 billion in new taxes for taxpayers, and new deficit spending, according to the Wall Street Journal. It will include billions of dollars in new pork for "community development" and "mortgage counseling," enriching groups like the scandal-plagued ACORN, which engages in vote fraud, and La Raza.
As John Berlau notes, such funds may end up being used to seize homes for the benefit of politically-connected developers, a controversial practice permitted by the Supreme Court's 5-to-4 Kelo decision, over a dissent by four conservative justices. (Some slums came into being after the government seized homes from working-class people as part of misguided redevelopment efforts that failed, as government planning often does). The final version of the bill negotiated with House banking chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts strips out protections for private property rights that were in an earlier Senate version of the bill, substituting much weaker language.
Source
************************
The Fan/Fred Bailout Is a Scandal
Americans who work hard, pay taxes and play by the rules can't seem to get fair representation in Washington, D.C., these days. In the current debate over a government bailout of speculators, irresponsible banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the responsible majority has once again been pushed aside in a legislative rush to "do something."
This should have been a perfect opportunity for Republicans, struggling to regain some standing with the American people, to rise united and demand real accountability and reform. Remember how Democrats put the collapse of Enron and the subsequent losses to shareholders at the feet of the Bush White House? Freddie and Fannie are like Enron on steroids. There's a well-documented history of accounting corruption to benefit senior management; hundreds of millions of dollars spent lobbying against oversight and reform; and myriad connections to both Democratic committee chairmen and subprime lender Countrywide Financial.
Actions by Fannie and Freddie management and their regulators this year precipitated the current crisis. Under pressure from the Democrat-controlled Congress, the Bush administration lifted Fannie and Freddie's portfolio caps in February and reduced their capital reserve requirements in March. In this year's stimulus bill, Congress went further and nearly doubled the size of the loans that Fannie and Freddie can purchase or guarantee.
As a result of this reckless expansion, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) now touch nearly 70% of all new mortgages. At the same time, they are insolvent by most measures. The ostensible purpose of Fannie and Freddie is to provide liquidity to America's housing markets. In practice, they are the source of systemic risk and instability in a time of need.
Much more here
**************************
Brookes News Update
Obama's economic policies: the road to ruin: Obama's economic policies would be disastrous if implemented. It's not just his bad maths but the fact that the so-called economics upon which the policies are based are complete rubbish. Opponents need to grasp the fundamental economic theory that exposes these policies as dangerous economic quackery
Oil prices, monetary stability and credit expansion: Over the last few years there has been a massive increase in bank credit. This credit fuelled the boom and drove up the demand for energy. So great was this expansion that surplus bank credit in the form of deposits started to emerge world-wide. Our economic pundits immediately labeled these deposits surplus savings, adding another fallacy to their erroneous views
Plastic bags v. greenie bigotry: Now that plastic shopping bags are in danger of being banned it is necessary to determine how such a great boon to consumers has been successfully demonised by fanatical greens and dense journalists
Into the Deep Green Yonder: A Response to the Green Paper on Climate Change: Not even the IPCC claims an ability to forecast the weather beyond a few days, but the CSIRO has sullied its reputation by pretending they can project temperature and rainfall 30 years into the future
Scientist is abused for exposing global warming as fraud: A highly qualified and experienced scientist who developed the climate change models that are a basis for the Rudd Australian Government's 'green house' policy calls this policy outrageous and typical sophistry. When he provided evidence against green house hysteria the Government went silent and its pet scientists resorted to abuse
Foreign Policy: Is Obama a puppet?: Why does Obama needs 'bullet points' to tell him how to answer the most basic foreign policy questions? And who is writing these points? And why are entities such as the Associated Press are doing everything in their power (short of rewriting the English dictionary) to do Obama's dirty work for him. Remarkable
The Left: transfiguring the disaster: The promise of salvation has been the constant and essential refrain of the international Left for a century, and we see no sign of any leftist mentor having any conscience problems with this. Au contraire, all of them continue to promise the solution to maladies, while having readied in their portfolios the future legitimization of the enlarged maladies
Democrats playing (bad) politics with oil: The Democrats have adopted the insane policy of driving up energy prices by strangling oil production. To defend themselves Senator Schumer argued that increasing oil production in the Middle East would lower prices but increasing oil production in the US would not! Obama opposes raising domestic oil production on the absurd ground that 'It would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years'
When is Obama not lying?: when is Obama not lying? When he blurts out his real opinions in private. Fortunately he is so undisciplined and overconfident that he'll do that often enough. And Obama's wife Michelle is a genuine PC Commissar, straight from the Russian steppes, who just cannot think outside of the racial resentment box. A woman who visibly seethes with hatred and resentment
The New York Times camouflages the news for Obama: Surprise, surprise, the liars at the New York Times have been caught bending a phony news story to cover up Obama's disastrous Iraq policy
*********************
ELSEWHERE
THREE toons on OBAMA WATCH today.
Huge downer for British Labour Party: "British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's worst nightmare was realised today as one of Labour's safest seats was lost in a key by-election. Labour's disastrous run of electoral setbacks continued when the Scottish National Party 's John Mason achieved the enormous 22 per cent swing required to topple the longtime stronghold of Glasgow East. The nationalists overturned a Labour majority of 13,507, triumphing by 365 votes, after polling a total of 11,277 to Labour's 10,912. While Mr Brown is not under immediate threat, it was the worst possible result as he prepares for a summer holiday and tries to chart a plan for his own and Labour's recovery. The result will intensify doubts among Labour MPs about Mr Brown's ability to win a general election and could spell trouble at Labour's conference in the autumn when a weakened Prime Minister will have trouble getting his way on a range of policy issues."
Puzzling Republicans: "As I consign more Republican fund-raising letters from yesterday's mail to the trash can, maybe someone who understands better than I do how Congress operates can help me out here. If (as the WSJ's editors explain) the Democrats won't even allow a discussion (forget about a vote, just a discussion) of drilling for more oil, why are Republicans not blocking the reprehensible housing bail-out? And why on earth is the President going to sign it?
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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)
****************************
An enormously costly mortgage bailout bill passed the House 272-to-152, with strong support from liberal lawmakers. It will soon pass the Senate by an even bigger margin and become law. President Bush, following the advice of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, has wimped out and dropped his threat to veto it.
The bill will bail out the mortgage giant Fannie Mae, which has used intimidation and deceit, and spent millions of dollars on high-priced lobbyists, to thwart efforts to rein it in, even after its management engaged in a massive accounting scandal that rivaled Enron.
The bill will add at least $42 billion in new expenses to the federal budget, including $16.8 billion in new taxes for taxpayers, and new deficit spending, according to the Wall Street Journal. It will include billions of dollars in new pork for "community development" and "mortgage counseling," enriching groups like the scandal-plagued ACORN, which engages in vote fraud, and La Raza.
As John Berlau notes, such funds may end up being used to seize homes for the benefit of politically-connected developers, a controversial practice permitted by the Supreme Court's 5-to-4 Kelo decision, over a dissent by four conservative justices. (Some slums came into being after the government seized homes from working-class people as part of misguided redevelopment efforts that failed, as government planning often does). The final version of the bill negotiated with House banking chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts strips out protections for private property rights that were in an earlier Senate version of the bill, substituting much weaker language.
Source
************************
The Fan/Fred Bailout Is a Scandal
Americans who work hard, pay taxes and play by the rules can't seem to get fair representation in Washington, D.C., these days. In the current debate over a government bailout of speculators, irresponsible banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the responsible majority has once again been pushed aside in a legislative rush to "do something."
This should have been a perfect opportunity for Republicans, struggling to regain some standing with the American people, to rise united and demand real accountability and reform. Remember how Democrats put the collapse of Enron and the subsequent losses to shareholders at the feet of the Bush White House? Freddie and Fannie are like Enron on steroids. There's a well-documented history of accounting corruption to benefit senior management; hundreds of millions of dollars spent lobbying against oversight and reform; and myriad connections to both Democratic committee chairmen and subprime lender Countrywide Financial.
Actions by Fannie and Freddie management and their regulators this year precipitated the current crisis. Under pressure from the Democrat-controlled Congress, the Bush administration lifted Fannie and Freddie's portfolio caps in February and reduced their capital reserve requirements in March. In this year's stimulus bill, Congress went further and nearly doubled the size of the loans that Fannie and Freddie can purchase or guarantee.
As a result of this reckless expansion, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) now touch nearly 70% of all new mortgages. At the same time, they are insolvent by most measures. The ostensible purpose of Fannie and Freddie is to provide liquidity to America's housing markets. In practice, they are the source of systemic risk and instability in a time of need.
Much more here
**************************
Brookes News Update
Obama's economic policies: the road to ruin: Obama's economic policies would be disastrous if implemented. It's not just his bad maths but the fact that the so-called economics upon which the policies are based are complete rubbish. Opponents need to grasp the fundamental economic theory that exposes these policies as dangerous economic quackery
Oil prices, monetary stability and credit expansion: Over the last few years there has been a massive increase in bank credit. This credit fuelled the boom and drove up the demand for energy. So great was this expansion that surplus bank credit in the form of deposits started to emerge world-wide. Our economic pundits immediately labeled these deposits surplus savings, adding another fallacy to their erroneous views
Plastic bags v. greenie bigotry: Now that plastic shopping bags are in danger of being banned it is necessary to determine how such a great boon to consumers has been successfully demonised by fanatical greens and dense journalists
Into the Deep Green Yonder: A Response to the Green Paper on Climate Change: Not even the IPCC claims an ability to forecast the weather beyond a few days, but the CSIRO has sullied its reputation by pretending they can project temperature and rainfall 30 years into the future
Scientist is abused for exposing global warming as fraud: A highly qualified and experienced scientist who developed the climate change models that are a basis for the Rudd Australian Government's 'green house' policy calls this policy outrageous and typical sophistry. When he provided evidence against green house hysteria the Government went silent and its pet scientists resorted to abuse
Foreign Policy: Is Obama a puppet?: Why does Obama needs 'bullet points' to tell him how to answer the most basic foreign policy questions? And who is writing these points? And why are entities such as the Associated Press are doing everything in their power (short of rewriting the English dictionary) to do Obama's dirty work for him. Remarkable
The Left: transfiguring the disaster: The promise of salvation has been the constant and essential refrain of the international Left for a century, and we see no sign of any leftist mentor having any conscience problems with this. Au contraire, all of them continue to promise the solution to maladies, while having readied in their portfolios the future legitimization of the enlarged maladies
Democrats playing (bad) politics with oil: The Democrats have adopted the insane policy of driving up energy prices by strangling oil production. To defend themselves Senator Schumer argued that increasing oil production in the Middle East would lower prices but increasing oil production in the US would not! Obama opposes raising domestic oil production on the absurd ground that 'It would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years'
When is Obama not lying?: when is Obama not lying? When he blurts out his real opinions in private. Fortunately he is so undisciplined and overconfident that he'll do that often enough. And Obama's wife Michelle is a genuine PC Commissar, straight from the Russian steppes, who just cannot think outside of the racial resentment box. A woman who visibly seethes with hatred and resentment
The New York Times camouflages the news for Obama: Surprise, surprise, the liars at the New York Times have been caught bending a phony news story to cover up Obama's disastrous Iraq policy
*********************
ELSEWHERE
THREE toons on OBAMA WATCH today.
Huge downer for British Labour Party: "British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's worst nightmare was realised today as one of Labour's safest seats was lost in a key by-election. Labour's disastrous run of electoral setbacks continued when the Scottish National Party 's John Mason achieved the enormous 22 per cent swing required to topple the longtime stronghold of Glasgow East. The nationalists overturned a Labour majority of 13,507, triumphing by 365 votes, after polling a total of 11,277 to Labour's 10,912. While Mr Brown is not under immediate threat, it was the worst possible result as he prepares for a summer holiday and tries to chart a plan for his own and Labour's recovery. The result will intensify doubts among Labour MPs about Mr Brown's ability to win a general election and could spell trouble at Labour's conference in the autumn when a weakened Prime Minister will have trouble getting his way on a range of policy issues."
Puzzling Republicans: "As I consign more Republican fund-raising letters from yesterday's mail to the trash can, maybe someone who understands better than I do how Congress operates can help me out here. If (as the WSJ's editors explain) the Democrats won't even allow a discussion (forget about a vote, just a discussion) of drilling for more oil, why are Republicans not blocking the reprehensible housing bail-out? And why on earth is the President going to sign it?
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Friday, July 25, 2008
Why is the right happier than the left?
Summary and comments by Andrew Norton below followed by a few comments from me -- JR
So far as I am aware, every survey that asks about political orientation and happiness finds that right-wingers are happier than left-wingers. In the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, Liberal identifiers were a massive 13% ahead of Labor identifiers as describing themselves as `very happy', 40%/27%. At his blog, Winton Bates summarises a new article on this subject, by Jaime Napier and John Jost in the June issue of Psychological Science, this way:
I don't doubt that there is a statistical relationship between beliefs about inequality, meritocracy, and getting ahead that helps explain why leftists are not as happy as conservatives and others on the right. Even the new president of the American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Brooks, makes this point in his book Gross National Happiness.
But how likely is that when people are asked how happy they feel, their mind turns to ideological rationalisations of inequality? Why would some local income inequality disturb some respondents so much, and not all the people who are sick in hospital, or dissatisfied with their personal relationships, or any of the other things known to have big negative effects on personal well-being?
I think there is a better theory, one that is more consistent with the subjective well-being literature, which explains this result: that both lower average happiness and leftism have a common link to a weaker sense of personal control and optimism. Both these attributes are strongly correlated with happiness; and one of the tasks of the `positive psychology' movement (the clinical side of subjective well-being research) is to try to enhance these senses.
For example, in the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2005 those who agreed or strongly agreed that they had a good chance of improving their standard of living were more than twice as likely as those who disagreed or strongly disagreed to rate themselves at 9 or 10 on a 0 to 10 happiness scale. By lesser margins, those who thought that they could get a new job at least as good as their current one, and those who enjoyed having a lot of choices, were significantly happier than those who thought it would be difficult to get a new job or did not enjoy having choices.
When we tabulate these against party ID, Liberal supporters are 10 to 23 percentage points more likely to give answers suggesting that the respondents feel in control and optimistic about the future.
People who don't feel like they are fully in control of their lives or optimistic about their own prospects are more likely to support left-wing parties, which promise to look after them. But optimistic and in-control people are more likely to want the government to let them get on with their lives without interference, and support right-of-centre parties.
Societal inequalities may play a role in why people feel the way they do, but I would hypothesise that it has more to do with the how the respondent feels that it affects him/her personally than with inequality in general. Americans, for example, tend to be much more optimistic about their prospects than Europeans, even though actual social mobility is similar in both places.
But neither liberals nor conservatives (in the American senses of those words) are likely to directly consider inequality when asked about their personal happiness. Conservatives won't rationalise it because they won't think about it; and unless they are highly ideological (such as being a university academic) `liberals' won't think about it either. But their lack of control and optimism will affect their answer.
Source
I am always surprised that the Left/Right happiness gap is not greater. Pervasive dissatisfaction with the world about one is the defining characteristic of Leftism. It is what Leftism is. That the gap is not greater probably shows that most people are not very political.
The academic explanation given above by Jost & Co. is absurd. They show that by removing ideology from the equation, the gap is less. So if you take most of the Leftishness out of Leftism, the gap is less. Big deal! True-by-definition or artifactual findings are of course exceptionally uninteresting but parading such findings as empirical fact is an old dodge of the intellectually second-rate. It's not the first example of extraordinarily poor scholarship from John Jost, of course. The relevant journal abstract is presented below: -- JR
****************************
ELSEWHERE
NYT sinking: "New York Times Co.'s second-quarter earnings fell 82 percent from a year ago, when it saw a one-time gain from the sale of a unit, but print advertising continued to shrink and pulled down operating income, the publisher said Wednesday. Net income dropped to $21.1 million, or 15 cents per share, from $118.4 million, or 82 cents per share, a year ago. In the second quarter of 2007, the company got a 66-cents-per-share boost from selling its broadcast media group but also took a 14-cent hit from other one-time items.
Leftist general Flubs Surge Facts: "On MSNBC this morning, former Gen. Wesley Clark made some inaccurate statements about the application of the "surge" in Anbar province. "Actually, the surge was about Baghdad and it was not about Anbar province," he said. "They didn't bring more troops out to Anbar." Actually, two Marine battalions were added to Anbar as part of the surge. But Clark's more glaring error is his contention that the "surge" amounted to nothing more than the deployment of more troops to Iraq. The "surge" strategy consisted not only of sending additional troop but also waging a counterinsurgency throughout Iraq. Yet Clark grants more credit to the Saudis for buying off the Anbaris than the American troops for fighting a counterinsurgency."
I Just Felt a Tingle in my Elbow...: "It didn't happen when Barack Obama referred to his campaign's '57-state strategy'; it didn't happen when Sen. Obama referred to being president for the "next eight or ten years"; it didn't happen when Obama referred to Israel as "Israel's best friend;" but right there, when Obama today said he was a member of the US Senate Banking Committee -- when he's not -- it was right there when I felt a little tingle in my funny bone. [A satirical reference to the "tingle in my leg" felt by a media Obama worshipper]
More AP lies: "Condit, a former Republican congressman from California's Central Valley, has denied any involvement in or knowledge of Levy's May 2001 disappearance at age 24, or her death. However, he acknowledged to investigators that they had an intimate relationship." [Condit is a Democrat]
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Summary and comments by Andrew Norton below followed by a few comments from me -- JR
So far as I am aware, every survey that asks about political orientation and happiness finds that right-wingers are happier than left-wingers. In the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, Liberal identifiers were a massive 13% ahead of Labor identifiers as describing themselves as `very happy', 40%/27%. At his blog, Winton Bates summarises a new article on this subject, by Jaime Napier and John Jost in the June issue of Psychological Science, this way:
The study suggests that some of the association between political orientation and subjective well-being is accounted for by beliefs about inequality. The authors examined the effect of introducing ideological variables - relating to beliefs about inequality and meritocracy- in regression analyses explaining life satisfaction in the U.S. and nine other countries. They found that when the ideological variable was introduced into the analysis it took some of the explanatory power away from the political variable. .
The authors conclude that "inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives, apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light"
I don't doubt that there is a statistical relationship between beliefs about inequality, meritocracy, and getting ahead that helps explain why leftists are not as happy as conservatives and others on the right. Even the new president of the American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Brooks, makes this point in his book Gross National Happiness.
But how likely is that when people are asked how happy they feel, their mind turns to ideological rationalisations of inequality? Why would some local income inequality disturb some respondents so much, and not all the people who are sick in hospital, or dissatisfied with their personal relationships, or any of the other things known to have big negative effects on personal well-being?
I think there is a better theory, one that is more consistent with the subjective well-being literature, which explains this result: that both lower average happiness and leftism have a common link to a weaker sense of personal control and optimism. Both these attributes are strongly correlated with happiness; and one of the tasks of the `positive psychology' movement (the clinical side of subjective well-being research) is to try to enhance these senses.
For example, in the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2005 those who agreed or strongly agreed that they had a good chance of improving their standard of living were more than twice as likely as those who disagreed or strongly disagreed to rate themselves at 9 or 10 on a 0 to 10 happiness scale. By lesser margins, those who thought that they could get a new job at least as good as their current one, and those who enjoyed having a lot of choices, were significantly happier than those who thought it would be difficult to get a new job or did not enjoy having choices.
When we tabulate these against party ID, Liberal supporters are 10 to 23 percentage points more likely to give answers suggesting that the respondents feel in control and optimistic about the future.
People who don't feel like they are fully in control of their lives or optimistic about their own prospects are more likely to support left-wing parties, which promise to look after them. But optimistic and in-control people are more likely to want the government to let them get on with their lives without interference, and support right-of-centre parties.
Societal inequalities may play a role in why people feel the way they do, but I would hypothesise that it has more to do with the how the respondent feels that it affects him/her personally than with inequality in general. Americans, for example, tend to be much more optimistic about their prospects than Europeans, even though actual social mobility is similar in both places.
But neither liberals nor conservatives (in the American senses of those words) are likely to directly consider inequality when asked about their personal happiness. Conservatives won't rationalise it because they won't think about it; and unless they are highly ideological (such as being a university academic) `liberals' won't think about it either. But their lack of control and optimism will affect their answer.
Source
I am always surprised that the Left/Right happiness gap is not greater. Pervasive dissatisfaction with the world about one is the defining characteristic of Leftism. It is what Leftism is. That the gap is not greater probably shows that most people are not very political.
The academic explanation given above by Jost & Co. is absurd. They show that by removing ideology from the equation, the gap is less. So if you take most of the Leftishness out of Leftism, the gap is less. Big deal! True-by-definition or artifactual findings are of course exceptionally uninteresting but parading such findings as empirical fact is an old dodge of the intellectually second-rate. It's not the first example of extraordinarily poor scholarship from John Jost, of course. The relevant journal abstract is presented below: -- JR
Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?
By Jaime L. Napier and John T. Jost
In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional countries, we found that right-wing (vs. left-wing) orientation is indeed associated with greater subjective well-being and that the relation between political orientation and subjective well-being is mediated by the rationalization of inequality. In our third study, we found that increasing economic inequality (as measured by the Gini index) from 1974 to 2004 has exacerbated the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives, apparently because conservatives (more than liberals) possess an ideological buffer against the negative hedonic effects of economic inequality.
Source
****************************
ELSEWHERE
NYT sinking: "New York Times Co.'s second-quarter earnings fell 82 percent from a year ago, when it saw a one-time gain from the sale of a unit, but print advertising continued to shrink and pulled down operating income, the publisher said Wednesday. Net income dropped to $21.1 million, or 15 cents per share, from $118.4 million, or 82 cents per share, a year ago. In the second quarter of 2007, the company got a 66-cents-per-share boost from selling its broadcast media group but also took a 14-cent hit from other one-time items.
Leftist general Flubs Surge Facts: "On MSNBC this morning, former Gen. Wesley Clark made some inaccurate statements about the application of the "surge" in Anbar province. "Actually, the surge was about Baghdad and it was not about Anbar province," he said. "They didn't bring more troops out to Anbar." Actually, two Marine battalions were added to Anbar as part of the surge. But Clark's more glaring error is his contention that the "surge" amounted to nothing more than the deployment of more troops to Iraq. The "surge" strategy consisted not only of sending additional troop but also waging a counterinsurgency throughout Iraq. Yet Clark grants more credit to the Saudis for buying off the Anbaris than the American troops for fighting a counterinsurgency."
I Just Felt a Tingle in my Elbow...: "It didn't happen when Barack Obama referred to his campaign's '57-state strategy'; it didn't happen when Sen. Obama referred to being president for the "next eight or ten years"; it didn't happen when Obama referred to Israel as "Israel's best friend;" but right there, when Obama today said he was a member of the US Senate Banking Committee -- when he's not -- it was right there when I felt a little tingle in my funny bone. [A satirical reference to the "tingle in my leg" felt by a media Obama worshipper]
More AP lies: "Condit, a former Republican congressman from California's Central Valley, has denied any involvement in or knowledge of Levy's May 2001 disappearance at age 24, or her death. However, he acknowledged to investigators that they had an intimate relationship." [Condit is a Democrat]
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Paralipomena: Living and learning
I mentioned a while back that I have a blog called "Paralipomena" (Greek for "Things left out") where I put up articles that interest me but which do not have an obvious or immediate home on any of my other blogs. I have never posted regularly to it and I started it primarily as an aide memoire to myself -- but I thought that I might as well mention it in case there are a few others who have similar interests to mine.
Topics covered range from food to flying saucers. Some of the articles are political and some reflect cultural and historical interests that I have. There's more to life than politics! If there weren't such a lot of nonsense going on in public life, I would be devoting myself to cultural interests. My principal contribution to the education of my son, for instance, has been to ensure that he has a good grounding in English poetry! But instead of pursuing my cultural interests, I feel that have to do my best to expose the pretensions of psychopaths like Obama and the Pelosi Democrats! Poetry is heaps more pleasant.
Recently, however, none of the posts on Paralipomena have been coming up. If you tried to log onto the blog you got an empty file. I wrote several times to the owners of the blogging service concerned seeking a fix but was ignored. I eventually got a bit peeved at that, therefore, and decided to transfer operations to a blogspot site. Good old blogspot! It too has its oddities but I know its foibles and how to deal with them by now.
So my new blogspot site for "Paralipomena" is now up. I have transferred all my more recent posts to it. Rather perversely, however, I found out at the last moment what the problem with the original site was. I was doing a bit of fiddling around with the various options on the site when I found that the template I had been using had been deleted! No wonder the blog came up as an empty file! So if you have any blog that uses Wordpress software and your blog comes up as a blank, try an alternative template! I have now chosen a different template and the old blog is perfectly accessible again. I am going to stick with the blogspot site for now, however. I expect fewer nasty surprises there.
I will add Paralipomena (2) to the buttons at the foot of each day's posts here so that people can easily check what is there once or twice a week if that interests them.
*********************
Easy-money policies created this problem
The announcements by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac really say nothing new. The ultimate backing of the federal government has always been implicit in the AAA credit rating of these agencies' obligations. What's new is that these gentlemen felt that it needed to be said at all.
By opening the government's (taxpayers') checkbook, investors in both debt and equity investments in Fannie and Freddie have been assured that a collapse will not be allowed. Perhaps that will soothe the markets and ultimately stabilize housing prices at some level.
Dangers abound when, as The Economist magazine puts it, "profits are privatized and risks are socialized." Let us not forget it was the Fed's easy-money policies and longstanding bipartisan efforts of politicians to subsidize home buying that helped create this bubble in the first place.
In addition to mortgage-interest deductions, taxpayers also get a property deduction on their income taxes. Fannie and Freddie were able to access cheap capital because of the implicit faith and credit of the U.S. government. When you subsidize anything, you are likely to get too much of it. We got a housing bubble.
We are now witnessing massive wealth destruction as the bubble bursts. The dollar is down sharply and is poised to fall further as our central bank offers a flood of liquidity while other central banks show restraint. This is fueling inflation. The median home price is down nationally 16.5 percent from its peak so far, the second-largest drop in history.
A bailout carries negative consequences. An open-ended commitment from taxpayers will be needed since private, profit-motivated capitalists won't be interested in investing. Huge federal budget deficits will be incurred not to fund public works or provide government services but to fill a big hole. The inflationary pressures that come with running a loose fiscal policy cannot, at this time, be offset by tight monetary policy.
A bailout should come with strings attached. Going forward, leverage at Fannie and Freddie should be regulated to a much lower level than in the past so as not to contribute to future bubbles. If the loan portfolio or guarantee pools need to grow, the agencies should be required to raise additional equity capital. More stringent credit standards would help assure investors that those who are buying houses can truly afford to own them.
More here
*************************
ELSEWHERE
British prisons full of drugs: ""An estimated $200m worth of drugs are being traded in prisons each year, an ex-prison service worker has said.Former National Offender Management Service drug treatment head Huseyin Djemil said the Prison Service had no idea of the size of the drugs market. He told BBC Radio 4's The Investigation the service needed to 'get smarter' if it wanted to reduce drugs in prisons. The government said the number of prisoners testing positive for drugs had fallen from 25% to 9% since 1997. Mr Djemil estimated a worst case scenario of 20kg of drugs, mostly heroin, being smuggled into jails each week."
The TSA mess again: "After having begun a series of investigative stories criticizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in May 2008, CNN reporter Drew Griffin reports being placed with more than a million other names on TSA's swollen terrorism watch list. Although TSA insists Griffin's name is not on the list and pooh-poohs any possibility of retaliation for Griffin's negative reporting, the reporter has been hassled by various airlines on 11 flights since May. The airlines insist that Griffin's name is on the list. Congress has asked TSA to look into the tribulations of this prominent passenger. In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, probably responding to the controversy over Griffin, Leonard Boyle, the director of the Terrorist Screening Center, defended the watch list, claiming that because terrorists have multiple aliases, the names on the list boiled down to only about 400,000 actual people. If there are 400,000 terrorists lying in wait to attack the United States, we are all in trouble."
The Leave Us Alone Coalition is alive and well: "Born in 1956 and raised in Massachusetts, Grover Norquist is the unofficial head of what he calls the "Leave Us Alone Coalition," a loose affiliation of people and groups dedicated to, as the subtitle of his new book Leave Us Alone puts it, "getting the government's hands off our money, our guns, our lives." The coalition, Norquist writes, "will triumph in the long unending struggle to define America. But there will be bad election years, disappointing candidates, bad breaks, and undeserved luck on both sides. There will be wars and recessions. There is nothing inevitable about our moving toward the city on a hill Ronald Reagan spoke of: a nation of individual liberty and economic prosperity that shares its vision of the good life through example, not empire."
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena .
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
****************************
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)
****************************
I mentioned a while back that I have a blog called "Paralipomena" (Greek for "Things left out") where I put up articles that interest me but which do not have an obvious or immediate home on any of my other blogs. I have never posted regularly to it and I started it primarily as an aide memoire to myself -- but I thought that I might as well mention it in case there are a few others who have similar interests to mine.
Topics covered range from food to flying saucers. Some of the articles are political and some reflect cultural and historical interests that I have. There's more to life than politics! If there weren't such a lot of nonsense going on in public life, I would be devoting myself to cultural interests. My principal contribution to the education of my son, for instance, has been to ensure that he has a good grounding in English poetry! But instead of pursuing my cultural interests, I feel that have to do my best to expose the pretensions of psychopaths like Obama and the Pelosi Democrats! Poetry is heaps more pleasant.
Recently, however, none of the posts on Paralipomena have been coming up. If you tried to log onto the blog you got an empty file. I wrote several times to the owners of the blogging service concerned seeking a fix but was ignored. I eventually got a bit peeved at that, therefore, and decided to transfer operations to a blogspot site. Good old blogspot! It too has its oddities but I know its foibles and how to deal with them by now.
So my new blogspot site for "Paralipomena" is now up. I have transferred all my more recent posts to it. Rather perversely, however, I found out at the last moment what the problem with the original site was. I was doing a bit of fiddling around with the various options on the site when I found that the template I had been using had been deleted! No wonder the blog came up as an empty file! So if you have any blog that uses Wordpress software and your blog comes up as a blank, try an alternative template! I have now chosen a different template and the old blog is perfectly accessible again. I am going to stick with the blogspot site for now, however. I expect fewer nasty surprises there.
I will add Paralipomena (2) to the buttons at the foot of each day's posts here so that people can easily check what is there once or twice a week if that interests them.
*********************
Easy-money policies created this problem
The announcements by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac really say nothing new. The ultimate backing of the federal government has always been implicit in the AAA credit rating of these agencies' obligations. What's new is that these gentlemen felt that it needed to be said at all.
By opening the government's (taxpayers') checkbook, investors in both debt and equity investments in Fannie and Freddie have been assured that a collapse will not be allowed. Perhaps that will soothe the markets and ultimately stabilize housing prices at some level.
Dangers abound when, as The Economist magazine puts it, "profits are privatized and risks are socialized." Let us not forget it was the Fed's easy-money policies and longstanding bipartisan efforts of politicians to subsidize home buying that helped create this bubble in the first place.
In addition to mortgage-interest deductions, taxpayers also get a property deduction on their income taxes. Fannie and Freddie were able to access cheap capital because of the implicit faith and credit of the U.S. government. When you subsidize anything, you are likely to get too much of it. We got a housing bubble.
We are now witnessing massive wealth destruction as the bubble bursts. The dollar is down sharply and is poised to fall further as our central bank offers a flood of liquidity while other central banks show restraint. This is fueling inflation. The median home price is down nationally 16.5 percent from its peak so far, the second-largest drop in history.
A bailout carries negative consequences. An open-ended commitment from taxpayers will be needed since private, profit-motivated capitalists won't be interested in investing. Huge federal budget deficits will be incurred not to fund public works or provide government services but to fill a big hole. The inflationary pressures that come with running a loose fiscal policy cannot, at this time, be offset by tight monetary policy.
A bailout should come with strings attached. Going forward, leverage at Fannie and Freddie should be regulated to a much lower level than in the past so as not to contribute to future bubbles. If the loan portfolio or guarantee pools need to grow, the agencies should be required to raise additional equity capital. More stringent credit standards would help assure investors that those who are buying houses can truly afford to own them.
More here
*************************
ELSEWHERE
British prisons full of drugs: ""An estimated $200m worth of drugs are being traded in prisons each year, an ex-prison service worker has said.Former National Offender Management Service drug treatment head Huseyin Djemil said the Prison Service had no idea of the size of the drugs market. He told BBC Radio 4's The Investigation the service needed to 'get smarter' if it wanted to reduce drugs in prisons. The government said the number of prisoners testing positive for drugs had fallen from 25% to 9% since 1997. Mr Djemil estimated a worst case scenario of 20kg of drugs, mostly heroin, being smuggled into jails each week."
The TSA mess again: "After having begun a series of investigative stories criticizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in May 2008, CNN reporter Drew Griffin reports being placed with more than a million other names on TSA's swollen terrorism watch list. Although TSA insists Griffin's name is not on the list and pooh-poohs any possibility of retaliation for Griffin's negative reporting, the reporter has been hassled by various airlines on 11 flights since May. The airlines insist that Griffin's name is on the list. Congress has asked TSA to look into the tribulations of this prominent passenger. In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, probably responding to the controversy over Griffin, Leonard Boyle, the director of the Terrorist Screening Center, defended the watch list, claiming that because terrorists have multiple aliases, the names on the list boiled down to only about 400,000 actual people. If there are 400,000 terrorists lying in wait to attack the United States, we are all in trouble."
The Leave Us Alone Coalition is alive and well: "Born in 1956 and raised in Massachusetts, Grover Norquist is the unofficial head of what he calls the "Leave Us Alone Coalition," a loose affiliation of people and groups dedicated to, as the subtitle of his new book Leave Us Alone puts it, "getting the government's hands off our money, our guns, our lives." The coalition, Norquist writes, "will triumph in the long unending struggle to define America. But there will be bad election years, disappointing candidates, bad breaks, and undeserved luck on both sides. There will be wars and recessions. There is nothing inevitable about our moving toward the city on a hill Ronald Reagan spoke of: a nation of individual liberty and economic prosperity that shares its vision of the good life through example, not empire."
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, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena .
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
What the Old News Media Risks From Its Bias
Somewhere during this campaign the old news media reached the tipping point and their bias meter slid into the red zone. Have their owners considered the possible unintended consequences of this? Somewhere, perhaps with the now famous Saturday Night Live skit that lampooned the softball questions asked of Senator Obama during the primary debates, the old news media was outed as unequivocally favoring Obama. Since then, their bias has become even more prevalent and obvious. Today, they make no attempt to hide it, and the public is noticing. On Monday, July 21, 2008, Rasmussen Reports stated that,
Americans are not stupid, and most believe in fairness. We're watching this bias unfold, and we won't forget it. Here's just one example of what bias looks like. The July 21 cover of USA Today features an above-the-fold, color photo of Senator Obama with Afghan President Karzai. Page 2 features three black & white photos. One of Senator McCain and Rudy Giuliani at a baseball game. Beneath that photo but above-the-fold is a photo of Obama greeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Then, below that Obama photo is yet another one of Obama with Senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reid, along with Gen. James Lovelace in Kuwait last Friday. In the first two pages of the paper - three Obama photos and one of McCain. About the only way McCain will be able to match Obama's media coverage is if he robs a convenience store, gets caught, and does a public perp walk.
Meanwhile, Drudge reports that, after printing an op-ed piece that Obama submitted, the New York Times editors threw one submitted by McCain back at him saying that it needed to "mirror" Obama's. (And all this time many of us were thinking elections should be competitive events.) You know that the bias has become undeniable when an Associated Press television reporter writes a piece entitled "Is media playing fair in campaign coverage." Now there's a rhetorical question!
So what's the risk to the old news media? What are the long-term unintended consequences from its obvious bias? If Obama is elected, those news outlets most openly biased toward his candidacy will inherit partial responsibility for his performance as POTUS. Their ad revenues and Nielsen ratings could initially bump-up after January. But, if things turn ugly for an Obama administration due to circumstances within or outside their control, the old news media will be looking for someplace to hide. And there will be no such place, because Americans have memories.
Source
*******************
Another win for flat tax
I recently interviewed the instigator of the world's lowest flat tax, Svetla Kostidinova, director of the Institute for Market Economics located in Sofia, Bulgaria. Ms. Kostidinova insists that the most amazing part of her story is that the Bulgarian government is still overtly socialist. Nonetheless, she and her colleagues managed to persuade politicians that replacing the existing tax system with a 10% flat tax would increase revenues and give the government extra money to finance social programs and unfunded pensions. If only Nancy Pelosi were as amenable to economic logic and the lessons of the real world.
Ms. Kostidinova, who speaks English with a thick Eastern European accent, tells me: "The situation was getting desperate in Bulgaria. We were losing our population and our best workers. They were leaving for Western Europe to find jobs and the No.1 form of foreign capital came from remittances." All that began to change when the corporate tax was cut to 10% in 2007 and the personal income tax to 10% in January of this year. "We told the politicians that it was symbolically important for Bulgaria to have the lowest flat tax. We were surrounded by flat tax countries, we wanted to be the nation most friendly to capital and business."
Result: A country that ten years ago had a 12% unemployment rate now has a 6% jobless rate. Instead of people leaving Bulgaria to find jobs, "now it is the reverse. Western Europeans now come to Bulgaria for jobs. We're gaining population now," she says.
Bulgaria is one of 24 nations, most of them in Eastern Europe, that have adopted the flat tax. A unique feature of the Bulgarian system is an absence of exemptions -- everyone pays the 10% tax regardless of income. Because the rate is so low, Ms. Kostidinova says, the plan's promoters figured that everyone could afford to pay. But don't lefties insist that the rich should pay more? "Of course, many do, and they want to raise the rates, but most understand that the flat tax gives us more jobs and more revenues."
If avowed socialist politicians in East Europe are open to new ideas about how to make their tax systems more growth-oriented, why aren't Republicans or Democrats in Washington? Says Richard Rahn, former chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and now an economic consultant in Eastern Europe: "These countries understand that the flat tax is the key to their prosperity -- even the former communists." Only stultified political tactics -- certainly not clear thinking -- explains why somebody like Barack Obama could be running on a platform of making America's tax rates among the highest in the world when other nations are proving the competitive advantages of flatter tax systems.
Source
***************************
American liberalism, 2008
In 2008 we find ourselves grappling with an ideological flesh-eating parasite in modern liberalism. It champions determination, drive, resourcefulness, grit and plain old-fashioned ballz - only in promulgating itself, and for no other purpose. In that singular endeavor of self-reproduction, it never wanes, fumbles or retreats. Holding high the banner of itself, it shows all the "patriotism" for which it shows theatrical horror elsewhere, including the resolve to seek out, interrogate and punish the desultory and apathetic.
It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
All the energy and heat of an erupting volcano; All the single-minded determination of any wild, starving predator; All the stamina of water wearing away on a rock; The power of a tidal wave.
All these forces of nature reserved for simple reproduction of the idea. And only for that, for the idea is nihilism. We are not good, we don't belong where we are, and nothing is worth anything, for we are undeserving of whatever it is.
What peaceful people they'd be if they were consistent about this. Because then they'd say "well, we should get out of this war because it's just too dang painful and hard, but if there's other folks who disagree about that and they outvote me, that's quite alright. What's the use of arguing. Heck, I'm not too sure I should have an opinion about it anyway."
Quite the difference between that hypothetical product of consistency, and what we see them do every day and every week, no? Wouldn't it be nice if they worked up one-tenth as much anger toward radical terrorists as what they have in reserve for conservatives, "neocons," and other ideological opponents?
Source
***************************
ELSEWHERE
I am still looking for a co-blogger for EDUCATION WATCH. Mike Pechar helps out occasionally but it is such a big field that the existing blog just scratches the surface.
European Union abolishes the British acre: "The acre, one of Britain's historic imperial measurements, is to be banned from use under a new European directive. The measurement, which will officially be replaced by the hectare, will no longer be allowed when land is being registered. After being agreed last week, the new ruling will come into force in January 2010. The Tories are angry that unlike some other EU countries, who sent Cabinet-level ministers to the meeting on 15 July, the Government only sent Jonathan Shaw, a junior minister at the Department for Environment Farming and Rural Affairs, to represent Britain's interests. Mark Francois, the Shadow Europe Minister said: "It is this kind of pointless interference into the nooks and crannies of our national life that frustrates people about the EU. Whether we use hectares or acres should be a matter for Britain to decide, not the EU."
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. See also AUSTRALIAN CARTOONS by "Zeg".
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Somewhere during this campaign the old news media reached the tipping point and their bias meter slid into the red zone. Have their owners considered the possible unintended consequences of this? Somewhere, perhaps with the now famous Saturday Night Live skit that lampooned the softball questions asked of Senator Obama during the primary debates, the old news media was outed as unequivocally favoring Obama. Since then, their bias has become even more prevalent and obvious. Today, they make no attempt to hide it, and the public is noticing. On Monday, July 21, 2008, Rasmussen Reports stated that,
The belief that reporters are trying to help Barack Obama win the fall campaign has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help Obama with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
Americans are not stupid, and most believe in fairness. We're watching this bias unfold, and we won't forget it. Here's just one example of what bias looks like. The July 21 cover of USA Today features an above-the-fold, color photo of Senator Obama with Afghan President Karzai. Page 2 features three black & white photos. One of Senator McCain and Rudy Giuliani at a baseball game. Beneath that photo but above-the-fold is a photo of Obama greeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Then, below that Obama photo is yet another one of Obama with Senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reid, along with Gen. James Lovelace in Kuwait last Friday. In the first two pages of the paper - three Obama photos and one of McCain. About the only way McCain will be able to match Obama's media coverage is if he robs a convenience store, gets caught, and does a public perp walk.
Meanwhile, Drudge reports that, after printing an op-ed piece that Obama submitted, the New York Times editors threw one submitted by McCain back at him saying that it needed to "mirror" Obama's. (And all this time many of us were thinking elections should be competitive events.) You know that the bias has become undeniable when an Associated Press television reporter writes a piece entitled "Is media playing fair in campaign coverage." Now there's a rhetorical question!
So what's the risk to the old news media? What are the long-term unintended consequences from its obvious bias? If Obama is elected, those news outlets most openly biased toward his candidacy will inherit partial responsibility for his performance as POTUS. Their ad revenues and Nielsen ratings could initially bump-up after January. But, if things turn ugly for an Obama administration due to circumstances within or outside their control, the old news media will be looking for someplace to hide. And there will be no such place, because Americans have memories.
Source
*******************
Another win for flat tax
I recently interviewed the instigator of the world's lowest flat tax, Svetla Kostidinova, director of the Institute for Market Economics located in Sofia, Bulgaria. Ms. Kostidinova insists that the most amazing part of her story is that the Bulgarian government is still overtly socialist. Nonetheless, she and her colleagues managed to persuade politicians that replacing the existing tax system with a 10% flat tax would increase revenues and give the government extra money to finance social programs and unfunded pensions. If only Nancy Pelosi were as amenable to economic logic and the lessons of the real world.
Ms. Kostidinova, who speaks English with a thick Eastern European accent, tells me: "The situation was getting desperate in Bulgaria. We were losing our population and our best workers. They were leaving for Western Europe to find jobs and the No.1 form of foreign capital came from remittances." All that began to change when the corporate tax was cut to 10% in 2007 and the personal income tax to 10% in January of this year. "We told the politicians that it was symbolically important for Bulgaria to have the lowest flat tax. We were surrounded by flat tax countries, we wanted to be the nation most friendly to capital and business."
Result: A country that ten years ago had a 12% unemployment rate now has a 6% jobless rate. Instead of people leaving Bulgaria to find jobs, "now it is the reverse. Western Europeans now come to Bulgaria for jobs. We're gaining population now," she says.
Bulgaria is one of 24 nations, most of them in Eastern Europe, that have adopted the flat tax. A unique feature of the Bulgarian system is an absence of exemptions -- everyone pays the 10% tax regardless of income. Because the rate is so low, Ms. Kostidinova says, the plan's promoters figured that everyone could afford to pay. But don't lefties insist that the rich should pay more? "Of course, many do, and they want to raise the rates, but most understand that the flat tax gives us more jobs and more revenues."
If avowed socialist politicians in East Europe are open to new ideas about how to make their tax systems more growth-oriented, why aren't Republicans or Democrats in Washington? Says Richard Rahn, former chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and now an economic consultant in Eastern Europe: "These countries understand that the flat tax is the key to their prosperity -- even the former communists." Only stultified political tactics -- certainly not clear thinking -- explains why somebody like Barack Obama could be running on a platform of making America's tax rates among the highest in the world when other nations are proving the competitive advantages of flatter tax systems.
Source
***************************
American liberalism, 2008
In 2008 we find ourselves grappling with an ideological flesh-eating parasite in modern liberalism. It champions determination, drive, resourcefulness, grit and plain old-fashioned ballz - only in promulgating itself, and for no other purpose. In that singular endeavor of self-reproduction, it never wanes, fumbles or retreats. Holding high the banner of itself, it shows all the "patriotism" for which it shows theatrical horror elsewhere, including the resolve to seek out, interrogate and punish the desultory and apathetic.
It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
All the energy and heat of an erupting volcano; All the single-minded determination of any wild, starving predator; All the stamina of water wearing away on a rock; The power of a tidal wave.
All these forces of nature reserved for simple reproduction of the idea. And only for that, for the idea is nihilism. We are not good, we don't belong where we are, and nothing is worth anything, for we are undeserving of whatever it is.
What peaceful people they'd be if they were consistent about this. Because then they'd say "well, we should get out of this war because it's just too dang painful and hard, but if there's other folks who disagree about that and they outvote me, that's quite alright. What's the use of arguing. Heck, I'm not too sure I should have an opinion about it anyway."
Quite the difference between that hypothetical product of consistency, and what we see them do every day and every week, no? Wouldn't it be nice if they worked up one-tenth as much anger toward radical terrorists as what they have in reserve for conservatives, "neocons," and other ideological opponents?
Source
***************************
ELSEWHERE
I am still looking for a co-blogger for EDUCATION WATCH. Mike Pechar helps out occasionally but it is such a big field that the existing blog just scratches the surface.
European Union abolishes the British acre: "The acre, one of Britain's historic imperial measurements, is to be banned from use under a new European directive. The measurement, which will officially be replaced by the hectare, will no longer be allowed when land is being registered. After being agreed last week, the new ruling will come into force in January 2010. The Tories are angry that unlike some other EU countries, who sent Cabinet-level ministers to the meeting on 15 July, the Government only sent Jonathan Shaw, a junior minister at the Department for Environment Farming and Rural Affairs, to represent Britain's interests. Mark Francois, the Shadow Europe Minister said: "It is this kind of pointless interference into the nooks and crannies of our national life that frustrates people about the EU. Whether we use hectares or acres should be a matter for Britain to decide, not the EU."
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. See also AUSTRALIAN CARTOONS by "Zeg".
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Poll finds that blacks are still resentful
They are constantly told by the Left that their lesser success is due to "racism" so why wouldn't they be?
The results of the poll, conducted against the backdrop of a campaign in which race has been a constant if not always overt issue, suggested that Mr. Obama's candidacy, while generating high levels of enthusiasm among black voters, is not seen by them as evidence of significant improvement in race relations.
After years of growing political polarization, much of the divide in American politics is partisan. But Americans' perceptions of the fall presidential election between Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, also underlined the racial discord that the poll found. More than 80 percent of black voters said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama; about 30 percent of white voters said they had a favorable opinion of him.
Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites. Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing. And about one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks.
The survey suggests that even as the nation crosses a racial threshold when it comes to politics - Mr. Obama, a Democrat, is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas - many of the racial patterns in society remain unchanged in recent years. Indeed, the poll showed markedly little change in the racial components of people's daily lives since 2000, when The Times examined race relations in an extensive series of articles called "How Race Is Lived in America."
As it was eight years ago, few Americans have regular contact with people of other races, and few say their own workplaces or their own neighborhoods are integrated. In this latest poll, over 40 percent of blacks said they believed they had been stopped by the police because of their race, the same figure as eight years ago; 7 percent of whites said the same thing.
Nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000; 26 percent of whites said they had been the victim of racial discrimination. (Over 50 percent of Hispanics said they had been the victim of racial discrimination.) And when asked whether blacks or whites had a better chance of getting ahead in today's society, 64 percent of black respondents said that whites did. That figure was slightly higher even than the 57 percent of blacks who said so in a 2000 poll by The Times. And the number of blacks who described racial conditions as generally bad in this survey was almost identical to poll responses in 2000 and 1990...
White perceptions, by contrast, improved markedly from 1990 to 2000, but have remained steady since. This month's poll found that 55 percent of whites said race relations were good, almost double the figure for blacks.
Source
Dick McDonald comments on the above:
The NYT poll shows that blacks believe they are still discriminated against - whites feel differently. A sharp divide in perceptions would lead one to believe that both sides will be barking up the wrong tree (can you visualize that - barking up the wrong tree?) in November.
Seriously this entire poll would show different results if Republicans would just get off their mindless mantra that "trickle down" has been enough - that blacks can go to school, work hard and experience the American Dream. What a joke. Republicans know that entitlements cream 15.3% off the top of the wages of the poor and middle-class and with inflation and the controlled rise in prices those folks will never see the American Dream. It is tragic there is no Republican "Obama".
Some day American blacks and under-class whites will wake up to the fact that socialism doesn't work. Entitlements just entitle them to perpetual poverty. However, they are never going to find out until the "Republican Obama" explains it to them. The Democrats can never elevate the underclass because they would lose their entire voting base. So it is up to Republicans to deliver the American Dream.
***************************
ELSEWHERE
See here for an example of the antisemitism Obama's supporters are putting up on his website -- and which his site adminstrators allow up until they are called out.
Obama Wants To Be President For 10 Years : "Add this latest Obama gaffe to the growing list: "The objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years." Obama's already planning his inaugural address for 2013. Humility is not one of Obama's strengths."
California slowly being wrecked: "A symbol of California's car culture is now picking up and moving a big chunk of its operations out of state. Earlier this week, the California State Automobile Association, an affiliate of the national AAA, announced it is closing all three of its call centers in the state at a loss of 900 jobs. Spokeswoman Cynthia Harris was quite blunt about the reason: "It costs more to do business in California than other states." Her group will now will be answering calls from California motorists from new centers in lower-cost Arizona and Oklahoma. Few entities in California are better known than the California State Automobile Association, which for decades has provided the car-happy state with auto insurance, towing services and travel planning. Its departure is one more sign that California's current tax and regulatory climate is driving jobs away."
SD: Ruling gives doctors a script : ""In a victory for antiabortion forces, doctors in South Dakota are now required to tell a woman seeking an abortion that the procedure `will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.' The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit last week lifted a preliminary injunction that prevented the language from taking effect. A spokesman for Planned Parenthood, which runs the state's only abortion clinic, said doctors will begin reciting the script to patients as early as this week."
OK, We Tried. The Iranians Aren't Interested In Negotiations: "Lots of hand-wringing on the right over the dispatch of a State department senior official, William Burns, to meet with senior Iranian officials in Geneva. Seems like a necessary "last chance" offer to me, and Iran has apparently rejected it"
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
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. See also AUSTRALIAN CARTOONS by "Zeg".
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
****************************
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)
****************************
They are constantly told by the Left that their lesser success is due to "racism" so why wouldn't they be?
The results of the poll, conducted against the backdrop of a campaign in which race has been a constant if not always overt issue, suggested that Mr. Obama's candidacy, while generating high levels of enthusiasm among black voters, is not seen by them as evidence of significant improvement in race relations.
After years of growing political polarization, much of the divide in American politics is partisan. But Americans' perceptions of the fall presidential election between Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, also underlined the racial discord that the poll found. More than 80 percent of black voters said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama; about 30 percent of white voters said they had a favorable opinion of him.
Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites. Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing. And about one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks.
The survey suggests that even as the nation crosses a racial threshold when it comes to politics - Mr. Obama, a Democrat, is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas - many of the racial patterns in society remain unchanged in recent years. Indeed, the poll showed markedly little change in the racial components of people's daily lives since 2000, when The Times examined race relations in an extensive series of articles called "How Race Is Lived in America."
As it was eight years ago, few Americans have regular contact with people of other races, and few say their own workplaces or their own neighborhoods are integrated. In this latest poll, over 40 percent of blacks said they believed they had been stopped by the police because of their race, the same figure as eight years ago; 7 percent of whites said the same thing.
Nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000; 26 percent of whites said they had been the victim of racial discrimination. (Over 50 percent of Hispanics said they had been the victim of racial discrimination.) And when asked whether blacks or whites had a better chance of getting ahead in today's society, 64 percent of black respondents said that whites did. That figure was slightly higher even than the 57 percent of blacks who said so in a 2000 poll by The Times. And the number of blacks who described racial conditions as generally bad in this survey was almost identical to poll responses in 2000 and 1990...
White perceptions, by contrast, improved markedly from 1990 to 2000, but have remained steady since. This month's poll found that 55 percent of whites said race relations were good, almost double the figure for blacks.
Source
Dick McDonald comments on the above:
The NYT poll shows that blacks believe they are still discriminated against - whites feel differently. A sharp divide in perceptions would lead one to believe that both sides will be barking up the wrong tree (can you visualize that - barking up the wrong tree?) in November.
Seriously this entire poll would show different results if Republicans would just get off their mindless mantra that "trickle down" has been enough - that blacks can go to school, work hard and experience the American Dream. What a joke. Republicans know that entitlements cream 15.3% off the top of the wages of the poor and middle-class and with inflation and the controlled rise in prices those folks will never see the American Dream. It is tragic there is no Republican "Obama".
Some day American blacks and under-class whites will wake up to the fact that socialism doesn't work. Entitlements just entitle them to perpetual poverty. However, they are never going to find out until the "Republican Obama" explains it to them. The Democrats can never elevate the underclass because they would lose their entire voting base. So it is up to Republicans to deliver the American Dream.
***************************
ELSEWHERE
See here for an example of the antisemitism Obama's supporters are putting up on his website -- and which his site adminstrators allow up until they are called out.
Obama Wants To Be President For 10 Years : "Add this latest Obama gaffe to the growing list: "The objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years." Obama's already planning his inaugural address for 2013. Humility is not one of Obama's strengths."
California slowly being wrecked: "A symbol of California's car culture is now picking up and moving a big chunk of its operations out of state. Earlier this week, the California State Automobile Association, an affiliate of the national AAA, announced it is closing all three of its call centers in the state at a loss of 900 jobs. Spokeswoman Cynthia Harris was quite blunt about the reason: "It costs more to do business in California than other states." Her group will now will be answering calls from California motorists from new centers in lower-cost Arizona and Oklahoma. Few entities in California are better known than the California State Automobile Association, which for decades has provided the car-happy state with auto insurance, towing services and travel planning. Its departure is one more sign that California's current tax and regulatory climate is driving jobs away."
SD: Ruling gives doctors a script : ""In a victory for antiabortion forces, doctors in South Dakota are now required to tell a woman seeking an abortion that the procedure `will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.' The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit last week lifted a preliminary injunction that prevented the language from taking effect. A spokesman for Planned Parenthood, which runs the state's only abortion clinic, said doctors will begin reciting the script to patients as early as this week."
OK, We Tried. The Iranians Aren't Interested In Negotiations: "Lots of hand-wringing on the right over the dispatch of a State department senior official, William Burns, to meet with senior Iranian officials in Geneva. Seems like a necessary "last chance" offer to me, and Iran has apparently rejected it"
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
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. See also AUSTRALIAN CARTOONS by "Zeg".
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Monday, July 21, 2008
Choices
Life is made up of choices and once we make those choices we have to live with them. In 1992, this country made a choice to elect a draft-dodger to the office of President rather than re-elect a real American hero of WWII, George H.W.Bush. A hero who was shot down in combat not once but twice.
As a result of this choice this country endured for the next eight years a President who disgraced the office with lewd and lascivious acts with a young intern in the Oval Office. Think about this choice another man made. If Jimmy (the dope) Carter had not pardoned all the draft dodgers, we would never have had to endure Bill (the cigar) Clinton.
This election year we have a similar choice between a Viet Nam war hero, a man of character, John McCain and a man with a gift of gab and (in my opinion) with little or no character , Barack Hussein Obama.
In Obama's recent speech on patriotism he said (to paraphrase), "I don't question John McCain's patriotism or his service in the military but I won't stand by while my patriotism is questioned.
Well, standby, because I certainly have some questions. It's hard for me to believe the polls show Obama in a small lead over McCain. Should Barack Hussein Obama be elected, who will be his first guest to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom?
Will it be William Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, Co-founders of the Weather Underground terrorist organization that declared war on the U.S. Government in 1970? The same William Ayers who bombed the Pentagon and is quoted saying, while stomping the American Flag, "Guilty as sin, free as a bird. It's a great country". Or will he pardon Tony Rezko and give him the honor?
I guess the Reverend Wright is not even considered because he is no longer Obama's mentor, like a grandfather, and long time friend. Right, Barack Hussein Obama threw him under the bus when he became a political weight around his neck.
It's difficult to believe these possibilities exist today, but they do. They exist only because of the left-wing extremists that control the movie and television industries, the mainstream news media and our educational system that has been successful in brainwashing and indoctrinating the last two generations with their liberal philosophy
Source
************************
Forgotten Iraqi Christians
Below are excerpts from an article by a minister in the present Australian government. The previous government had similar concerns
"Even casual observers of the international situation would be aware of the conflict between Sunni and Shiite communities in Iraq. But what has achieved less prominence in the national and international media is the fate of other Iraqi minorities: Assyrians, Chaldeans and Mandaeans.
Mandaeans, followers of John the Baptist, have non-violence as one of the tenets of their religion. Any form of violence, even in self-defence, is forbidden. They have thus been particularly vulnerable to attack. The much more numerous Assyrians and Chaldeans have also suffered significantly. This group are descendants of the ancient Assyrian empire, but no longer have a nation state to call their own. They predominantly live in Iraq's north and are Christians.
It is hard to pinpoint the numbers of these minorities in Iraq. However, credible estimates put Assyrians and Chaldeans as 4 per cent of the population of Iraq, while they have constituted 40 per cent of the refugees leaving Iraq. Jordan and Syria have 2 million Iraqi refugees living within their borders, and they are not allowed to work. They live, by and large, in squalor, and they often rely on their children to bring in a little income. Thousands of children are being turned to crime to support their family.
It is estimated that there were 1.5 million Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq before the war; 600,000 are left, at most. Two thousand Assyrians and Chaldeans are still leaving Iraq every day. Churches have been bombed, priests and bishops kidnapped and murdered. Hundreds of thousands of Assyrian and Chaldean refugees live in desperate circumstances in Syria and Jordan. It is simply too dangerous for them to return.
There are of course, many millions of people from different groups around the world who face diabolical human rights and humanitarian catastrophes, all of whom deserve greater attention. However, in all the public debate about Iraq over recent years the Assyrian and Chaldean minorities have received scant attention from both governments and the media. Their plight is one of the untold stories of the narrative of post-Saddam Iraq. Their situation as minorities in Iraq has substantially worsened since the war.
As others have pointed out, the exodus of refugees from Iraq has been greater than that after the Vietnam War. But because the exodus has occurred quietly and to other Middle Eastern countries, as opposed to by boat, the crisis has become largely invisible. There is no monopoly of suffering in Iraq. But the suffering of these minorities has received scant international attention.
Of course, as a relatively small country on the other side of the world we are limited in what we can do to help. However, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, has recently met two delegations of Assyrians and Chaldeans to discuss what more can be done, and he raised the issue with the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq on his visit last month.
More here
***************************
ELSEWHERE
A report from a German blog says that if an orangutan steals, then Muslims in Indonesia cut off the poor creature's hand. And it's not an unusual practice. A reader comments: "A ghastly, vile religion. And what will our pacifist, peacenik animal rights activists say now? Will such people be among the factions of the Left finally to have a spine and stand up to this loathsome religion? No, I gather not. (In an updating of Niem”ller's famous statement: "first they came....then they came for the orangutangs..."). What particularly makes this hideous is that it underscores just why animals can't possibly have "rights" - and you can assert this all the while being a great lover of animals, as I am - because there's no way, as any idiot can see, that a poor orangutan can possibly "learn" from such a punishment. Rights are inexorably connected with the bearer of those rights having a "free will" and capable of at least knowing why something is right or wrong. So it's actually _more_ ghastly to mistreat a creature that cannot possibly be morally culpable. The only animal in the universe capable of moral evil is a human being."
A rare burst of sanity from the EU: "It's official: European diktats on the size and shape of fruit and vegetables are bananas. Even the European Commission now wants them scrapped to avoid wasting good food in times of global shortage. The commission, in a step backed by the UK, will this week attempt to reform strict rules governing standards on such matters as the colour of leeks, the bendiness of cucumbers and the shape of carrots. In a vote in Brussels, Britain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany will support moves to reform the marketing standards amid fears that they are making the world food crisis worse. The standards are so strict that thousands of tonnes of fruit and vegetables are discarded each year because they are not beautiful or big enough. Farmers throw away mountains of cherries, onions, peas, plums and spinach among other fruit and vegetables. Last month a market trader in Bristol was prevented by inspectors from selling a batch of kiwi fruits because they were 1mm smaller than the rules allowed. Tim Down lost $2,000 in sales and was not allowed to give away the 5,000 fruit because they breached the rules."
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. See also AUSTRALIAN CARTOONS by "Zeg".
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
****************************
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)
****************************
Life is made up of choices and once we make those choices we have to live with them. In 1992, this country made a choice to elect a draft-dodger to the office of President rather than re-elect a real American hero of WWII, George H.W.Bush. A hero who was shot down in combat not once but twice.
As a result of this choice this country endured for the next eight years a President who disgraced the office with lewd and lascivious acts with a young intern in the Oval Office. Think about this choice another man made. If Jimmy (the dope) Carter had not pardoned all the draft dodgers, we would never have had to endure Bill (the cigar) Clinton.
This election year we have a similar choice between a Viet Nam war hero, a man of character, John McCain and a man with a gift of gab and (in my opinion) with little or no character , Barack Hussein Obama.
In Obama's recent speech on patriotism he said (to paraphrase), "I don't question John McCain's patriotism or his service in the military but I won't stand by while my patriotism is questioned.
Well, standby, because I certainly have some questions. It's hard for me to believe the polls show Obama in a small lead over McCain. Should Barack Hussein Obama be elected, who will be his first guest to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom?
Will it be William Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, Co-founders of the Weather Underground terrorist organization that declared war on the U.S. Government in 1970? The same William Ayers who bombed the Pentagon and is quoted saying, while stomping the American Flag, "Guilty as sin, free as a bird. It's a great country". Or will he pardon Tony Rezko and give him the honor?
I guess the Reverend Wright is not even considered because he is no longer Obama's mentor, like a grandfather, and long time friend. Right, Barack Hussein Obama threw him under the bus when he became a political weight around his neck.
It's difficult to believe these possibilities exist today, but they do. They exist only because of the left-wing extremists that control the movie and television industries, the mainstream news media and our educational system that has been successful in brainwashing and indoctrinating the last two generations with their liberal philosophy
Source
************************
Forgotten Iraqi Christians
Below are excerpts from an article by a minister in the present Australian government. The previous government had similar concerns
"Even casual observers of the international situation would be aware of the conflict between Sunni and Shiite communities in Iraq. But what has achieved less prominence in the national and international media is the fate of other Iraqi minorities: Assyrians, Chaldeans and Mandaeans.
Mandaeans, followers of John the Baptist, have non-violence as one of the tenets of their religion. Any form of violence, even in self-defence, is forbidden. They have thus been particularly vulnerable to attack. The much more numerous Assyrians and Chaldeans have also suffered significantly. This group are descendants of the ancient Assyrian empire, but no longer have a nation state to call their own. They predominantly live in Iraq's north and are Christians.
It is hard to pinpoint the numbers of these minorities in Iraq. However, credible estimates put Assyrians and Chaldeans as 4 per cent of the population of Iraq, while they have constituted 40 per cent of the refugees leaving Iraq. Jordan and Syria have 2 million Iraqi refugees living within their borders, and they are not allowed to work. They live, by and large, in squalor, and they often rely on their children to bring in a little income. Thousands of children are being turned to crime to support their family.
It is estimated that there were 1.5 million Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq before the war; 600,000 are left, at most. Two thousand Assyrians and Chaldeans are still leaving Iraq every day. Churches have been bombed, priests and bishops kidnapped and murdered. Hundreds of thousands of Assyrian and Chaldean refugees live in desperate circumstances in Syria and Jordan. It is simply too dangerous for them to return.
There are of course, many millions of people from different groups around the world who face diabolical human rights and humanitarian catastrophes, all of whom deserve greater attention. However, in all the public debate about Iraq over recent years the Assyrian and Chaldean minorities have received scant attention from both governments and the media. Their plight is one of the untold stories of the narrative of post-Saddam Iraq. Their situation as minorities in Iraq has substantially worsened since the war.
As others have pointed out, the exodus of refugees from Iraq has been greater than that after the Vietnam War. But because the exodus has occurred quietly and to other Middle Eastern countries, as opposed to by boat, the crisis has become largely invisible. There is no monopoly of suffering in Iraq. But the suffering of these minorities has received scant international attention.
Of course, as a relatively small country on the other side of the world we are limited in what we can do to help. However, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, has recently met two delegations of Assyrians and Chaldeans to discuss what more can be done, and he raised the issue with the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq on his visit last month.
More here
***************************
ELSEWHERE
A report from a German blog says that if an orangutan steals, then Muslims in Indonesia cut off the poor creature's hand. And it's not an unusual practice. A reader comments: "A ghastly, vile religion. And what will our pacifist, peacenik animal rights activists say now? Will such people be among the factions of the Left finally to have a spine and stand up to this loathsome religion? No, I gather not. (In an updating of Niem”ller's famous statement: "first they came....then they came for the orangutangs..."). What particularly makes this hideous is that it underscores just why animals can't possibly have "rights" - and you can assert this all the while being a great lover of animals, as I am - because there's no way, as any idiot can see, that a poor orangutan can possibly "learn" from such a punishment. Rights are inexorably connected with the bearer of those rights having a "free will" and capable of at least knowing why something is right or wrong. So it's actually _more_ ghastly to mistreat a creature that cannot possibly be morally culpable. The only animal in the universe capable of moral evil is a human being."
A rare burst of sanity from the EU: "It's official: European diktats on the size and shape of fruit and vegetables are bananas. Even the European Commission now wants them scrapped to avoid wasting good food in times of global shortage. The commission, in a step backed by the UK, will this week attempt to reform strict rules governing standards on such matters as the colour of leeks, the bendiness of cucumbers and the shape of carrots. In a vote in Brussels, Britain, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany will support moves to reform the marketing standards amid fears that they are making the world food crisis worse. The standards are so strict that thousands of tonnes of fruit and vegetables are discarded each year because they are not beautiful or big enough. Farmers throw away mountains of cherries, onions, peas, plums and spinach among other fruit and vegetables. Last month a market trader in Bristol was prevented by inspectors from selling a batch of kiwi fruits because they were 1mm smaller than the rules allowed. Tim Down lost $2,000 in sales and was not allowed to give away the 5,000 fruit because they breached the rules."
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. See also AUSTRALIAN CARTOONS by "Zeg".
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
****************************
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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