Rally for the people of Iran a week from now

If you live in NYC or thereabouts, Sunday 7/12 from 2 PM -5PM there will be a big anti-regime rally in front of the UN headquarters. Many Iranians are expected to attend but all are welcome.

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Sarah Palin hints at White House bid by quitting as governor of Alaska

The blogs are overflowing with comments on the Palin announcement but no-one really knows where it is leading. The following article from the "Times" of London probably represents mainstream thinking at the moment, however



Sarah Palin set off a storm of speculation about an imminent White House bid when she said yesterday that she was stepping down as governor of Alaska. Americans were stunned by the surprise announcement, made from her home in Wasilla, Alaska, on the eve of Independence Day celebrations.

There has been intense speculation in recent weeks that Mrs Palin was considering running for the Republican nomination in 2012, bolstered by heavy hints she dropped earlier this week in the guise of an interview about jogging. Few expected her not to see out her first term as governor where, despite her polarising effect, she was seen as a shoo-in for re-election.

Mrs Palin’s announcement that she will stand down on July 25, handing the reins to the state’s Lieutenant Governor, had some commentators questioning whether another scandal surrounding herself and her family was about to break, after the 2008 campaign revelations about the pregnancy of her teenage daughter and an embarrassing ethics investigation into allegations she sacked a state official over a family feud.

The first investigation by the state legislature into the scandal — popularly known as Troopergate — found her guilty of breaching ethics, prompting Mrs Palin to order a second investigation by a special counsel which cleared her of wrongdoing.

The resignation also sparked a flurry of speculation that she might seek a Senate seat in 2010 as a prelude to a White House run in 2012. Critics branded it a high-risk strategy for a future in public life, inviting criticism that she is not capable of finishing the job she started. Mrs Palin has a reputation for doing things her way and refusing to take advice of more experienced political operatives.

Much of the criticism that dogged her during her vice-presidential campaign in November centred on her parochialism and lack of national and international experience — something she might seek to improve on a national stage. In a pointed reference to her recently expanded international experience, she said that her decision had been bolstered by a trip to visit American troops serving in Kosovo, and to the US military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where wounded servicemen and women from Iraq and Afghanistan are treated.

Her announcement came days after the publication of a damning Vanity Fair profile in which McCain campaign workers turned on her, blaming her “narcissistic personality disorder” for sinking the campaign. Todd Purdum, the author, described Mrs Palin’s public life as “an unholy amalgam between Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure”, a cult Nineties comedy about Alaska and mocked her for once saying: “Believe me, Alaska is a microcosm of America.” “Believe me, it is not,” he wrote.

Her voice shaking Mrs Palin told journalists that she was stepping down for the good of Alaskans, expressing her anger at the battering the state has taken in the press as a by-product of her governorship. “I’m not going to put Alaskans through that,” she said. “That’s not what’s best for Alaskans. She addedthat she believed she could be more effective “outside government”. She later corrected her remarks to “outside the governor’s office”, leaving the door back to public life ajar.

Mrs Palin has courted so much attention on the national stage of late — leading parades and appearing on national talk shows — that she has attracted criticism in her home state for failing to serve their needs. The former Alaskan governor, Wally Hickel, Mrs Palin’s mentor, broke with his protegee over what he saw as her over-arching personal ambition. “When Governor Palin was elected in 2006 we believed she would put Alaska first. But once elected, she put Sarah first,” he said in a statement last month. “Because of her national ambitions she is promoting an agenda that will allow outside corporations to dominate Alaska’s resources, including our energy and the jobs it provides.”

Mrs Palin said her decision had been made with the encouragement of her family. “Much of it had to do with the kids seeing their baby brother Trig mocked by some pretty mean-spirited adults,” she said, a reference to her youngest child who suffers from Down’s syndrome.

SOURCE

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Why the Left hate Sarah Palin

By Jim Geraghty

Tuesday night on Hugh's program, we discussed the Vanity Fair article about Sarah Palin and why, eight months after the election, Palin still arouses such fury amongst liberals and so many rank-and-file Democrats.

My first thought was that it tied heavily to her appearance. In liberals' minds, conservatives are supposed to look like the couple from the painting American Gothic: Dour and joyless, aged, spartan and frail. Political leaders aren't supposed to be young, really good-looking women, full of energy, smiles, and winks.

Hugh suggested it tied to the contrast between her lifestyle and her critics: "She is the embodiment of the anti-choice, the opposite of every choice that lefty elites have ever made — as to going back home instead of moving to the west coast, having children, having a child with Down's, staying married to one man the whole time, choosing rural or suburban over urban and living a generally conservative lifestyle, working with her hands . . . That everything she is is the antithesis of everything that liberal urban elites are, so it's not just enough to say, 'I disagree with you,'; she has to be repudiated and crushed."

And now, I would submit a slight refining of that idea, that the seeming happiness of Palin's life is a 24-7 irritant because it challenges the way some liberals see the world.

Liberals believe that their ideas, philosophy, worldview, and policies liberate believers, and that the conservative equivalents limit people. Liberals see themselves as rejecting outdated beliefs and obsolete ideas, overturning established orders, and discarding traditions established by superstitious and ignorant forebears who weren't as enlightened as we are. Conservatives, in their minds, are runaway cultural superegos, always wagging their fingers about individual responsibility, dismissing excuses, reminding people that they can't always do what they want because of the consequences to themselves and to others.

Conservatism, they suspect, will leave you in a marriage that doesn't satisfy you, burden you with children you don't want, repress your passions, and trap you in a empty, boring, and unfulfilled life, with no hand of government able to help.

Today almost everyone faces some sort of challenge in balancing work and family; I don't know too many people who believe there are sufficient hours in a day. And then along comes this woman who's made all of these "conservative" choices and now has an amazing career, a supportive husband, a beautiful family, and great health and appearance, and she bears it all, including the inevitable hard times, with pluck and a smile, as far as we can tell. (For all we know, perhaps behind closed doors, Sarah Palin screams into a pillow when it all gets to be too much. But what we know about her suggests she relieves her stress by shooting moose.)

A short while back, Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum suggested, only half-jokingly, that actress Angelina Jolie's "entire Oscar-winning, serial-adopting, Brad Pitt-snagging, plane-piloting, unattainably hot-looking existence makes women around the world feel hopelessly inadequate and therefore unhappy." Perhaps Sarah Palin is the Angelina Jolie of the political world.

In her opponents' minds, Palin's made all the wrong choices, and cannot, they insist, be very bright. Yet she's happy and successful. She is an anomaly that invalidates their worldview, and for that, they attempt to immiserate her — regardless of whether she wishes to run for national office again.

SOURCE

Carol Platt Liebau adds:

Governor Palin has been attacked with the kind of ferocity that few people in the public eye have ever experienced -- except, perhaps, for Justice Thomas and (to a lesser extent) Joe the Plumber. Why does the left reserve their most vicious derision for these three, and those like them? As I wrote last fall in a Townhall column:

Justice Thomas, Governor Palin and Joe the Plumber have one thing in common: Their lives make a mockery of the Democrat Party’s raison d’etre – its foundational assertion that minorities, women and “regular guys” can get a “fair shake” in America only through government action. What’s more, all three of them have made it clear that they don’t want the government’s “help.” For that apostasy, and for their sheer ingratitude – after all, aren’t the Democrats the ones who “care” about blacks, women and “working men”? – the left has tried to destroy them.

SOURCE

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Ol' Stupid begins to notice things

Too bad for Barack Obama and the Democrats, but George W. Bush is the shrinking man of American politics, growing ever smaller on the far horizon. Merely invoking his name will soon no longer frighten women and horses.

The not-so-new president has treated his predecessor as his training wheels, invoking his presence every time (which is often) the ground trembles, a dog barks, the wind blows, the rain falls and he threatens to topple over. We were promised nirvana, or at least a lollipop, if only we could banish George W. and the inept and evil Republicans. Banish we did, and the messiah from the South Side of Chicago has been practicing miracle-working for five months. Alas, there's no sign of clearing skies.

Five months is not very long, of course, and it's unreasonable to expect nirvana so soon, but that's the nature of the impatient American public. Reason, like love, has nothing to do with it. With every nightfall, the news gets worse, or at least not any better, and growing numbers of Americans are beginning to doubt that he has all the answers he so confidently insisted he did. The public-opinion polls clearly show deteriorating public confidence in the confidence man. Worse than not having the answers is the growing suspicion that Mr. Obama and his wise men even understand the question.

The unemployment numbers, the closely watched benchmark by which presidents are judged, stood at 7.2 percent when Mr. Obama took his oath, and Thursday, it inched up to 9.5 percent. The average workweek subsided in June to 33 hours, lowest since the feds began keeping such records in 1964. Cutting hours and freezing pay has spread even to companies awash in profits, with managers, never wanting to waste a crisis and looking to an uncertain future, are taking advantage now, just in case. "We are in some very hard and severe economic times," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told an interviewer in the wake of the new bad news. "The president and I are both not happy. I do think the public needs to be patient. We know they are hurting."

The president is saying the things every president says when recession hits and panic and depression threaten. Some of the president's friends insist they see "tiny green shoots" on the landscape, promising prosperity soon. The president himself concedes the economy is in a hole and blames the man who preceded him. His predecessor's policies "have left us in a very deep hole," he says, "and digging our way out of it will take time, patience and some tough choices." The secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, likes the shovel-ready metaphor, too. "You know," she told a television interviewer the other day, "we are in just so many deep holes that everybody had better grab a shovel and start digging out."

What "somebody" should do is hide those shovels from "everybody." If you're in a hole, as any ditch digger could tell you, the only thing you can do with a shovel is dig yourself a little deeper into the hole. Not a good idea. A speechifyer such as Barack Obama is expected to be more careful with his metaphors (Hillary gets a pass), and the president's growing problem is that growing numbers of voters who imagined he was "the one" now think he's in that hole and over his head.

The Democrats diverted attention from shortcomings big and small for a decade of depression by hauling poor old Herbert Hoover out for frequent floggings, and Mr. Obama obviously thinks he can similarly use George W. Bush. But that was then and this is now; no president now can monopolize the microphone as FDR did, with his mastery of press and radio and equipped with a terrified and compliant Congress. Barack Obama once imagined he could make it so by saying it's so, but that only works for a little while. He's learning what presidents before him learned, that the job of president is harder than it looks.

As the effects of the stimulus, such as they are, begin a slow fade, the unemployment number, already the highest in 26 years, is projected to keep rising. Shrinking payrolls naturally restrain growth. A jobless recovery driven by federal spending may improve certain numbers, but "it's the economy, Stupid." Stupid, standing in the rain out there on the street will say, "Where are the jobs?" Stupid is not actually as stupid as presidents sometimes hope he is. He's not so stupid that he can't see who that is in the White House.

SOURCE

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A roundup of commentary on the economy



The 'stimulus' promised a jobless peak of 8%; it's now 9.5%: "About the best we can say about yesterday's June jobs report is that employment is usually a lagging economic indicator. At least we hope it is, because the loss of 467,000 jobs for the month is one more sign that the economy still hasn't hit bottom despite months of epic fiscal and monetary reflation. The report is in many ways even uglier than the headline numbers. Average hours worked per week dropped to 33, the lowest level in at least 40 years. This means that millions of full-time workers are being downgraded to part-time, as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water. Because people are working less, wages have fallen by 0.3% this year. Factories are operating at only 65% capacity, while the overall jobless rate hit 9.5%. Throw in discouraged workers who want full-time work, and the labor underutilization rate climbed to 16.5%. The news is even worse for young people, with nearly one in four teenagers unemployed".

Today’s employment situation: “First of all, let’s compare the current situation with employment with what the Obama Administration told us would happen if we didn’t pass the stimulus package. As has been obvious for some time now the stimulus is not — as we repeatedly predicted — substantially impacting the employment situation. Instead, employment has risen by more than 3%.”

5% unemployment: Still a decade away?: “This could become the third time in a row that Americans struggle out of recession only to find themselves in a so-called ‘jobless recovery.’ The phrase became popular back in the early 1990s, when a frigid post-recession job market paved the way for Bill Clinton to defeat incumbent George H. W. Bush in the 1992 presidential election. Then the pattern was repeated after the 2001 recession, in a more pronounced way. Despite a disappointing monthly jobs report Thursday, the good news is that economists generally expect the US economy to start growing again later this year. But the report, showing 9.5 percent unemployment in June, served as a reminder that the current environment for US workers is unusually tough.”

Texas the model: "In a time when many states are experiencing fiscal crises and economic decline, one state stands out above all others as a success story: Texas. I recently heard Governor Tim Pawlenty say that during the year or so before job growth turned negative and the country as a whole was still adding payroll jobs, 53% of all of the jobs created in the U.S. were created in one state: Texas. No wonder that Texas' government is running a surplus and its economy remains strong despite trying times."

Obama's spending blitz worries Powell: "Colin Powell, one of President Obama's most prominent Republican supporters, expressed concern publicly for the first time Friday that the president's ambitious blitz of costly initiatives may be enlarging the size of government and the federal debt too much. "I'm concerned at the number of programs that are being presented, the bills associated with these programs and the additional government that will be needed to execute them," Mr. Powell said in an interview with CNN's John King. It was released by the network Friday. Mr. Powell, a retired U.S. Army general who rose to political prominence after a long and accomplished military career, said that health care reform and many of Mr. Obama's other initiatives are "important" to Americans. But, he said, "one of the cautions that has to be given to the president - and I've talked to some of his people about this - is that you can't have so many things on the table that you can't absorb it all."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, 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

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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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BEST WISHES TO ALL MY AMERICAN READERS ON THEIR INDEPENDENCE DAY

Peggy Noonan has a well-written reminder of the history behind Independence Day.

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Duke's homosexual rape case elicits silence

A professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington says the outrage over a homosexual statutory rape case at Duke University is a deafening sound of silence.

Frank Lombard, associate director of Duke University's Center for Health Policy, has been accused of molesting his adopted five-year-old African-American son and offering him up for sex with strangers on the Internet. Lombard's homosexual partner, who resides in the same house with Lombard, was allegedly unaware of the activities.

Mike Adams is a professor at UNC-Wilmington and has written several pieces on the case. "The conduct that he was accused of engaging in, in front of a webcam with his five-year-old son, includes molestation," Adams explains. "There was oral sex that was involved, and other very unhealthy practices that are too grotesque for me to describe...."

In a 2006 rape case involving white lacrosse players from Duke who were accused of raping a black stripper, more than 80 university officials and professors signed a statement accusing the players of racism. The players were eventually found innocent of all charges.

Adams wonders where those professors are now in this new rape case at the university. "I expect to see a continued silence on this," he relates. "I don't expect them to ever speak out on the issue -- and I expect, as a result of that, Duke University to take a severe, severe hit in the court of public opinion."

If convicted, Lombard faces up to 20 years in prison.

SOURCE

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Equality on Trial

by Thomas Sowell

For the fourth time in six cases, the Supreme Court of the United States has reversed a decision for which Judge Sonia Sotomayor voted on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. If this nominee were a white male, would this not raise questions about whether he should be elevated to a court that has found his previous decisions wrong two-thirds of the times when those decisions have been reviewed?

Is no one supposed to ask questions about qualifications, simply because this nominee is Hispanic and a woman? Have we become that mindless? Qualifications are not simply a question of how long you have been doing something, but how well you have done it. Judge Sotomayor has certainly been on the federal bench long enough, but is being reversed four out of six times a sign of a job well done? Would longevity be equated with qualifications anywhere else? Some sergeants have been in the army longer than some generals but nobody thinks that is a reason to make those sergeants generals.

Performance matters. And Judge Sotomayor's performance provides no reason for putting her on the Supreme Court. Although the case of the Connecticut firefighters is the latest and best-known of Judge Sotomayor's reversals by the Supreme Court, an even more revealing case was Didden v. Village of Port Chester, where the Supreme Court openly rebuked the unanimous three-judge panel that included Judge Sotomayor for "an evident denial of the most elementary forms of procedural due process."

Longevity is not the only false argument for putting Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court. Another is the argument that "elections have consequences," so that the fact that Barack Obama won last year's elections means that his choice for the Supreme Court should be confirmed. This is a political talking point rather than a serious argument.

Of course elections have consequences. But Senators were also elected, and the Constitution of the United States gives them both the right and the duty to say "yes" or "no" to any president's judicial nominees.

It is painfully appropriate that the case which finally took the Sotomayor nomination beyond the realm of personal biography is one where the key question is how far this country is going to go on the question of racial representation versus individual qualifications. Too much that Sonia Sotomayor has said and done over the years places her squarely in the camp of those supporting a racial spoils system instead of equal treatment for all. The organizations she has belonged to, as well as the statements she has made repeatedly -- not just an isolated slip of the tongue taken "out of context"-- as well as her dismissing the white firefighters' case that the Supreme Court heard and heeded, all point in the same direction.

Within living memory, there was a time when someone who was black could not get certain jobs, regardless of how high that individual's qualifications might be. It outraged the conscience of a nation and aroused people of various races and social backgrounds to rise up against it, sometimes at the risk of their lives. Many, if not most, thought that they were fighting for equal treatment for all. But, today, too many people seem to think it is just a question of whose ox is gored-- or for whom one has "empathy," which amounts to the same thing in practice.

Clever people say that none of this matters because Republican Senators don't have enough votes to stop this nominee from being confirmed. But that assumes that every Democrats will vote for her, regardless of what the public thinks. It also assumes that alerting the public doesn't matter, now or for the future.

The standards for judging the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor are not the standards of either the criminal law or the civil law. That is, nothing has to be proven against her "beyond a reasonable doubt" or even by "a preponderance of the evidence." Judge Sotomayor is not in any jeopardy that would entitle her to the benefit of the doubt. It is 300 million Americans and their posterity who are entitled to the benefit of the doubt when the enormous power of determining what their rights are is put into anyone's hands as a Supreme Court justice for life.

SOURCE

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Taxes Or Growth?

The White House now refuses to rule out raising taxes on the middle class. Meanwhile, a top finance official in the previous Democratic White House suggests a tax hike is all but inevitable. Are we being set up? It sure looks that way. And if it happens, you can mark it down: The economy will slow to a crawl and may even relapse into a deep recession. This is a complete reversal of what was promised.

"In an economy like this," President Obama said at last summer's Democratic National Convention, "the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class." That, he said, included 95% of all families. He promised flat out that he wouldn't raise taxes on families with income of less than $250,000.

How times have changed. On Monday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, asked point-blank several times if the president's vow was still good, would say only that "we are going to let the process work its way through." "Process"? Middle class, watch out.

Actually, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on any class — lower, middle or upper. Tax hikes in a recession are plain crazy. They will inevitably crimp economic activity, slow retail sales, kill jobs and leave the government starved of revenues. A major study in 2007 looking at recent U.S. economic history found that when the government raises taxes by 1%, U.S. GDP falls by roughly 2% to 3%. As we've noted before, the only surprising thing about this study is its author: Christina Romer, President Obama's top economic adviser.

Is he still listening to her? The sweeping ambition of the White House's plans to expand government will require massive tax hikes. This is no longer in doubt, if it ever was. Just look at the tab run up so far — and some of the costs that we might soon have to pay. All told, we'll spend $13 trillion more than we'll take in through 2019. How will we pay for it all?

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that U.S. taxes as a share of GDP would have to rise 49% by 2035 to pay for just the spending already budgeted. And these taxes will hit all Americans, not just the "rich." This is a recipe for economic disaster. "We'll have to raise taxes soon," wrote President Clinton's former deputy Treasury secretary, Roger Altman, in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece this week that sounded suspiciously like a trial balloon for Democrats in Congress and the White House.

There's a far better answer to our economic ills. At the same time the U.S. is pondering economic suicide through massive tax hikes, other countries are learning not from Obamanomics but from Reaganomics: They're pondering tax cuts. Germany's Angela Merkel wants to cut taxes, despite her country's big deficit. "How can we ensure Germany emerges stronger once the crisis is over and the cards have been reshuffled in the world? The answer is we need growth," she said this week.

Even Hungary's socialist government says the same thing. It's pushing supply-side tax cuts in 2010 to stimulate its economy. Our guess is Germany and Hungary will show more life in the next year than the U.S., unless the U.S. wakes up.

Usually at this point in the business cycle, the U.S. is the locomotive that pulls the rest of the world out of its slump. This time, the world is looking to China to get the job done. In the U.S., the rest of the world sees only a growth-killing mix of higher taxes, soaring spending, surging debt, rising inflation and growing regulation.

We could reverse this. Instead of tax hikes, we need broad-based tax cuts for families and business. But we have to act right away. After all, why let a crisis go to waste?

SOURCE

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Predicting economic collapse

It's usually a product of governments keeping interest rates artificially low

One such theory is the “Skyscraper Index.” Developed by economist Andrew Lawrence, states that when some of the tallest skyscrapers were being built, they were followed by a large economic collapse.

This may seem surprising, but the construction industry is highly correlated with the rate of interest. For example, the Federal Reserve creates a market boom with artificially loose money through low interest rates. When the interest rates adjust, businesses realize that they made a malinvestment in projects they shouldn’t have, thus causing a recession. The Federal Reserve then does it all over again to “recover” from the recession, starting the cycle all over again. This is also known as the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT).

The construction of skyscrapers is a long-term investment requiring a lot of capital, and when interest rates are low, business owners find it most attractive to get loans to buy long-term investments. This is a perfect recipe for a “Skyscraper Index.”

The evidence for the most part is clear. For example, Economist Mark Thornton finds that the index correctly predicted the Great Depression. The 40 Wall Tower, the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building were all planned and begun production right before the Great Depression.

Now, the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has put the current economic recession to the “Skyscraper Test” and found that 2008 was one of the most successful years in skyscraper construction. The tallest ten buildings constructed during that year were 31 meters above the previous highest average, which includes the Shanghai World Center and the Almas Tower.

Of course, the evidence is not perfect and this doesn’t this mean that economists and investors should always look at skyscraper construction to predict recessions. As this would turn the index into a self-fulfilling prophecy much like what is believed to have happened to the “January Effect,” which begun as a stock market predictor and has now become widespread knowledge making it worthless.

What should be learned from this is that the Federal Reserve’s policy of loose credit and low interest rates causes businesses to shift into long-term investments, as the low interest rate is supposed to be a signal of increased savings by the populace. Savings is another way of saying “delayed consumption” and businesses want to prepare for this.

But since the Federal Reserve falsifies savings, it causes business owners to malinvest. Now, this does not necessarily mean that the skyscraper is necessarily a malinvestments. What it means is that artificially loose credit makes skyscrapers more attractive for capital owners who, because of the low interest rate, seek higher returns on their money. And they then build when they should be sitting on their shovels.

The “Skyscraper Index” is a step in the right direction proving that the Austrian Business Cycle Theory is accurate, which will rightly put the blame on the government and Federal Reserve for many of history’s recessions.

In short, the “Skyscraper Index” actually does more than just predict market behavior, it portends what happens when government regulators usurp free market prerogatives. As experience has taught as time and again, when that occurs, all the economists laid end to end can’t keep America’s financial edifice erect.

SOURCE

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Comments

For some time now, I have enabled comments on all my blogs. With one exception, I specify that all comments must pass "moderation" by me before they appear. And I do get comments from Leftists which I normally delete rather than publish. They are generally just too unintelligent to be worth publishing: Mostly abuse and baseless assertions with no attention to evidence at all.

Such comments do however serve to illustrate the inspissated darkness and ignorance of the Leftist mind so I am wondering if I should pass them all for publication -- just for their evidentiary value. They certainly establish clearly what dismal souls Leftists are.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, 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

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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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Was "Ricci" really a victory?

Or was it a "no win" for employers? It may mean that there is no test at all for the competence of your local firefighters. Too bad if your building burns down because the firefighters don't know how to use their equipment properly or deal with the problem in the best way

In 2004, the City of New Haven, Connecticut, decided to throw out a job-related examination that would have qualified Frank Ricci and 17 other firefighters for promotions. Neither Ricci nor his cohorts, all eligible for promotion based on the exam results, were black. This greatly displeased the Reverend Boise Kimber, a local "community leader" who had threatened to incite race riots in the past. Given that Kimber reliably delivered a key bloc of votes to the city's longtime mayor, John DeStefano, it's hardly surprising that the mayor and his advisors immediately began working to have the test results set aside.

In Ricci v. DeStefano, its most anticipated decision of the term, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision recognizing that Ricci and his fellow firefighters were victims of race discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. (In so doing, the Court reversed an appeals court ruling joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to replace retiring justice David Souter.) The Court rejected New Haven's claim that had it not invalidated the test, black firefighters would have had a valid lawsuit under the Civil Rights Act's "disparate-impact" provision, which holds employers at least presumptively liable any time the racial composition of employees hired or promoted differs markedly from the pool of applicants.

While the Supreme Court's decision won relief for the sympathetic Ricci--a dyslexic who sacrificed financially to spend extra time preparing for the exam--and the majority's reading of the Civil Rights Act and its amendments is probably correct, the case highlights the bankruptcy of modern American antidiscrimination law. The ruling effectively assures that employers, both public and private, will be sued for using any neutral employment test unless all races score more or less equally on the test. The employer is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place: if it jettisons the test, it will be sued by plaintiffs like Ricci; if it uses the test, it will be sued by members of the underperforming racial group.

That the Court's opinion found that black firefighters would not have had a plausible case against New Haven offers employers little solace. In reaching its conclusion, the Court merely determined that there was not a "strong basis in evidence" for such a claim in this case. But before any court could make such a finding in a future case, the lawyers would have to build a factual record, since the law continues to presume that racial disparities in hiring result from discrimination. Thus, no employer that adopts an employment criterion that produces a disparate racial impact can avoid depositions, discovery, motions, and the host of onerous and expensive pretrial rituals endemic to modern litigation. Moreover, because any disputed facts would require a jury's resolution, most cases would be impossible for a judge to resolve without taking them to trial.

At root, the problem rests with disparate-impact law itself. There is little reason to think that all racial subgroups should be equally prepared for any job or promotion. Consider that white players constitute 40 percent of NCAA Division I basketball rosters, but only two of the 25 collegians drafted in last week's NBA draft. It would be preposterous to assume based on such numbers that NBA franchises' decisions were racially discriminatory. It would be even sillier to subject to judicial inquiry the various job-related skills tests the NBA imposed at the draft combines--including vertical leaps and shuttle runs--and ask whether alternative tests might be equally effective and less likely to exclude prospective white players. But such inquiries are very much what the antidiscrimination laws impose on employers in hosts of other contexts, including that of New Haven's firefighters' exam.

I am hardly qualified to know whether the New Haven Fire Department chose the best possible test for assessing prospective supervisors. But I can predict that rational employers will react to Ricci by dropping such exams whenever possible, in effect capitulating to the racial bean-counters. Such an outcome is disconcerting, at least for those who believe that firefighter supervisors should have some requisite body of knowledge before sending public servants into burning buildings.

To head off this undesirable result, Congress should undo its 1991 decision to codify the disparate-impact test into the Civil Rights Act. There are cases in which it makes sense for antidiscrimination law to look beyond an employer's intent. For example, strict seniority standards for promotion--even if adopted without discriminatory motive--are hard to defend when such seniority has itself been predicated upon an employer's past discrimination. But plenty of plausible rules would capture such cases apart from a lawsuit-provoking presumption that racial discrimination accounts for any racial imbalances. Ironically, while the disparate-impact rule requires courts to reject employer tests if any alternative might suffice, it fails to meet such a high standard itself. It won't happen in this Congress, but ultimately, let's hope that disparate impact finds itself in the dustbin of history.

SOURCE

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America's Socialist Past

The perennial illusion

There seems to be a need in American society to have to relearn the same hard lessons over and over again, regardless of whether the results were seen on the other side of the planet or suffered through by our own people.

We're living in a country that elected a President that believes in redistributing wealth. He's mentioned this himself, from the "Joe the Plumber" incident[i] to his critique[ii] of the failures of the civil rights movement. Whether you call it Socialism, Communism, Marxism, or by its simpler name, theft, they are all part of the same economic system that destroys private property and puts everything in central control of the state.

The lesson we, and the rest of the world, seems to fail to learn is how socially and economically destructive this sort of system is. The problem is, these lessons don't have to be learned from studying the histories of far off lands, for we have numerous examples of collectivist/socialist experiments here at home.

In Jamestown, there was no welfare state. Originally meant to be a trading colony, too many of the original inhabitants were adventurers or people seeking to gain wealth through the export of things they could find in the new world. Preoccupied with their own ideas of fortune, they found that in the wilderness of what was North America their habit of avoiding physical labor meant life or death. It was here that John Smith proclaimed, "He who will not work will not eat."[iii] It worked...sort of. While success still eluded the colony, the mortality rate did go from 60 percent to 15 percent.

Imagine a politician on any level making Smith's proclamation today. Cities would burn. Of course, when Sir Thomas Dale arrived there in 1611, he saw "where the most company were, and the daily and usual workers, bowling in the streets."[iv] Apparently Smith's proclamation had only motivated the people enough to do the minimum. Sir Dale had to motivate the people to fix up their houses, plant corn, and secure the defenses of the fort.

Lord De La Warr, the first official governor of Jamestown, continued with the communal storehouse practice. This meant that no matter how hard one worked; everyone was entitled to food so nobody would (in theory) starve. It only prolonged the hardship. Seeking a way around this, the administrators began using the incentive approach (as opposed to Smith's harsh approach) and privatized land ownership. With tobacco finding a market back in Europe, the private property incentives mixed with trading allowed Jamestown to finally get over the hump and begin to prosper.[v]

The Pilgrims sought to live in a society that promoted "just and equal laws." Their first year saw the death of half of their population through disease, starvation, and malnutrition (again, thanks to communal farming). In a story that's getting more and more circulation in today's internet age (and thanks to Rush's yearly reading of the story of Thanksgiving), we learn that only when William Bradford instituted private property that people began to work harder and innovate more.[vi] Even women and children went out to the fields with their husbands, which meant more crops were planted and ultimately harvested. This led to more trade with the local tribes, earlier repayment of debt to the English sponsors, and overall prosperity of the colony.

Let's fast forward a bit.

The date is January 1, 1816, and a man named Robert Owen proposed a new type of model society. In his plans, each of these communities of 2,500 individuals would "be self-governing and hold its property in the common."[vii] So popular was Owen that when he reached America from Britain, President John Quincy Adams displayed one of Owen's architectural models for this ideal community. He established his community in Indiana, christening it New Haven in 1825. In New Haven, "not only work, but also recreation and meditation were communal and regimented."[viii] Everything was collectivized, including "cooking, child care, and other domestic work."[ix] Ironically, at least by today's "Liberal" standards, it was women that were relegated to these chores. The community lasted two years.

The term "socialism" was actually coined by Owen's followers around the time New Haven failed.

Eighteen other communities were established on the Owen collectivized model across the United States. Modern Times, the name of the community established on Long Island, was the last to fail. This was in 1863.

Charles Fourier, a French social theorist, came up with the solution to the problems associated with collectivized living: It should be done on a smaller scale. He calculated that 1,620 was the ideal population and that they should live on 6,000 acres. These were called phalanxes. In the 1840's, a man named Charles Brisbane decided to implement this idea, ultimately establishing 28 of them. All failed within 12 years.[x]

In 1804, George Rapp and six hundred of his followers came to America. They set up a community in Pennsylvania called Harmony where communal farming was practiced, but they were expecting the second coming and left for Indiana in 1814 before it could be deemed a success or failure. While in Indiana, they established another community and named it (again) Harmony, but sold it ten years later to Robert Owen (who set up New Harmony there) and moved back to Pennsylvania. These people began the petroleum industry in Pennsylvania (a move to capitalism), but eventually died out due to their celibacy and lack of recruits.[xi]

In 1841, Humphrey Noyes started the "Perfectionists", and wrote a book on his theories titled Bible Communism in 1848. Noyes took collectivism to the next level; not only was all property communal, but so were spouses. The term for this was "complex marriage" and in practice it meant, "all the men in the Perfectionist community considered themselves husbands to all the women, and each woman the wife of every man."[xii] Before coitus, and even conception, people had to have consent granted by the whole community. Economically, and with a hint of irony, they flourished by building and marketing animal traps. However, this particular communist experiment ended when they established a joint-stock company called Oneida Community, Ltd.

In showing what a great social and economic model Communism is, Harrison Berry likened it to slavery by stating in a that "a Southern farm is the beau ideal of Communism; it is a joint concern, in which the slave consumes more than the master...and is far happier, because although the concern may fail, he is always sure of support."[xiii]

George Fitzhugh, an influence on Berry, actually argued that slave labor was preferable because the slaves were ultimately free. It was property owners and free laborers that were the slaves. He advocated that taking decision-making out of the hands of individuals made the African slaves better off than free whites and claimed that not only all blacks, but most whites too, should be slaves.[xiv] His theory was ultimately squashed with the support and ratification of the 13th and 14th Amendments, which not only freed the slaves but also established they had constitutionally protected private property rights.

These few examples, and there are more out there, show how American culture even before the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression, depending on your location) tried communal living and centrally planned economic models. Despite the good intentions of the people involved, they always fail because of the inherent flaws in Socialism. Unfortunately, given the reach of the federal government and current make-up of the executive and legislative branches, we are set to learn this lesson the hard way. Again.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Misplaced faith: “Those of us viewing the world with knowledge of Austrian Economics are watching the inevitable result of allowing politicians to print money without limit. The dramatically more popular Keynesian theorists who dominate government economic posts spew lots of comforting words that continue to prove wrong. Yet those of us trying to get friends and family to prepare for economic collapse are greeted with patient, ‘They have a lot of smart guys who know what they are doing.’ I know the discussion is over and am saddened by the tragic three assumptions embedded in their sense of security: that the manipulators are honest, knowledgeable and that they have our best interests at heart.”

Swiss banks shun American investors : "Swiss banks are shutting the accounts of Americans as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service accelerates the hunt for tax dodgers. UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group AG, the country’s biggest banks, have told Americans to move their money into specially created units registered in the U.S., or lose their accounts. Smaller private banks such as Geneva-based Mirabaud & Cie. are closing all accounts held by U.S. taxpayers. While the banks declined to say how many people are affected, more than 5 million Americans live abroad, including about 30,000 in Switzerland, according to estimates from American Citizens Abroad in Geneva. Swiss banks must register with the Securities and Exchange Commission to provide services for those customers.” [British banks are closing the accounts of Americans too. The Federal paperwork required makes it too burdensome to have American customers]

Nice to have friends in high places: "Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's staff contacted federal regulators last fall to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that he had helped to establish and where he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth. The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was an unlikely candidate for a program designed by the Treasury Department to bolster healthy banks. The firm's losses were depleting its capital reserves. Its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn't meet the criteria for receiving a favorable recommendation and had forwarded the application to a council that reviewed marginal cases, according to agency documents. Two weeks after the inquiry from Inouye's office, Central Pacific announced that the Treasury would inject $135 million."

Crooked ACORN to be investigated: "The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the multi-level activist organization for which President Obama worked and which now is entangled in charges of voter fraud in multiple jurisdictions across the U.S., appears to be in the bull's-eye of investigators. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a judge hearing a voter fraud case against an ACORN employee has suggested investigators pursue the conglomerate itself, obtaining a promise that it will be done. The exchange came in the courtroom of Senior District Judge Richard Zoller. The Tribune-Review report today said the judge told Allegheny County Detective Robert F. Keenan, "Somebody has to go after ACORN. … It's happening all over the country. All you have to do is turn on the television." Keenan responded, "We will." The local investigation into members of ACORN and their allegedly illegal voter registration actions last year remains "open and active," a spokesman for District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. told the newspaper. "There is quite a bit of activity aimed at determining if anyone else should be charged," said Mike Manko."

Inflation deception: "I usually have a get “prepared” to visit John Williams at his famous shadowstats.com site so that I am “feeling no pain,” and this time I was happy I was, as his headline was “Inflation, Money Supply, GDP, Unemployment and the Dollar – Alternate Data Series”. As for inflation, his calculation of the Consumer Price Index “reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980”, which I note is back when inflation was a measurement of the change in prices of things that you buy, and not, as it is now after the villainous Alan Greenspan and Michael Boskin came up with their ludicrous “hedonic” measurements of inflation with which to disguise it. Anyway, Mr. Williams’ honorable and time-honored methodology shows inflation in prices running about 6%, which is a horrendous rate, which is a big shock to those who have just swallowed the government’s estimate of CPI as being a negative 1.3% over the last year!

Bloodless instability: “Your average politician will often rail against ‘political instability’ and advocate policies to keep things ’stable,’ such as subsidies, bailouts, quotas, and other forms of protectionism. But while stability certainly sounds like something positive for the economy, Joseph Schumpeter argued very persuasively that it was the ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism that facilitated innovation, and further down the line, economic growth. Simply reframe the ’stability vs. instability’ dilemma as ’scleroticism vs. dynamism,’ and Schumpeter’s logic becomes all the more easy to grasp. But what of government? While dynamism in the economy is something to be desired, dynamism in sovereignty has some obvious drawbacks. One is that transitions between sovereigns are rarely bloodless, and dead bodies littered all over the streets are hardly a boon to commerce. Another is that in the process of any conflict, capital is bound to be destroyed, so the economy will be handicapped massively. But on this last point, the data simply doesn’t work out the way you might think.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, 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

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

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The Obama doctrine



North Korea launches a missile and it takes Barack Obama and the UN five days to respond. Iran holds fraudulent elections, kills protesters and it takes weeks before Barack Obama can stand up and say that he is "concerned" about the situation.

Then the people of Honduras try to uphold their constitution and laws of the land from being trampled by a Chavez-wanna be ... and it takes Barack Obama one day to proclaim that this was not a legal coup.

Why the sudden decisiveness? Where were these strong opinions on foreign matters when Iranian authorities were trampling protestors and cutting off media access to the outside world? Where was this decisiveness when Kim Jong Ill decided that he was going to launch missiles toward Hawaii on the Fourth of July? Why ... NOW ... is Obama suddenly speaking out loudly

How about a little background. Are you really sure you know what has been going on in Honduras? Do you think that this was simply a coup? Let me give you a rough outline here, and then you can sit back and wonder just why PrezBO is in the weeds with Chavez and Castro on this one.

More HERE

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Vanity Fair and Sarah Palin

by: Carol Platt Liebau

There are only two reasons that come to mind why Todd Purdum might have written the nasty little hit piece on Sarah Palin for Vanity Fair:

(1) This is red meat to the coastal elites (and wannabees) to which the magazine panders.

(2) Liberals continue to be afraid of Palin as a potential candidate.

The piece only makes sense if the underlying motivation is #1. Otherwise, it's a strategic blunder of the first order. I've had some disagreements with Governor Palin in the past -- for example, the way she handled Bristol Palin's pregnancy.

But any lingering doubts or disagreements any Republican might have with the Governor become irrelevant when one reads the assemblage of snippy innuendo, predictable negative-insider-quotes and the elitist, snobbish tone of pretention that underpins the entire piece.

And there's reason to believe that it' s not just Republicans like me who feel this way. It will be interesting -- when or if Governor Palin once again becomes a legitimate target of the national political media -- to see the extent to which normal people understand that "elite media's" contempt and condescension for Palin is the same contempt and condescension such "journalists" feel for regular Americans like them.

P.S. Anyone note the irony in Purdum's breathless announcement that "what [Palin] wants the public to know about herself doesn’t always jibe with reality"? Hellooo -- ever heard of a Chicago pol named Barack Obama? More generally, for what politician does this banal observation not hold true?

SOURCE

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Obama’s Racist Judge

Let's look at Judge Sotomayor again

Soon the Senate will take up the cause of President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. In the news this week, one of her decisions that appeared before the current court was reversed. With Sotomayor in the news, then, it is time to look her over once again. It must be said, though, that any close scrutiny finds her wanting.

To begin with, it’s shocking that President Obma has nominated for a spot on the Supreme Court a judge whose decisions have been reversed or rejected in five out of the six times her cases appeared before that august body. Additionally and by her own admission, she was admitted to Princeton ahead of other law students as a result of affirmative action despite having lower grades. She once gleefully called herself a “perfect affirmative action baby,” even as her grades were “highly questionable.”

“My test scores were not comparable to that of my colleagues at Princeton or Yale,” Sotomayor once said on a discussion panel during an event sponsored by a non-profit law organization in the 1990s.

All that is bad enough. To be sure, high grades in law school are not in and of themselves any guarantee of an ideal Supreme Court Justice and should not stand as a final qualification at any rate. One must determine a candidate’s judicial mentality in order to find the most important benchmark by which to consider confirmation and it is that mentality that should serve to disqualify Sotomayor immediately. Her judicial philosophy is a far more disqualifying factor in her bid for the highest court of the land than her grades. Her views are racist, simply put. There is no way to construe them otherwise despite what her supporters’ spin may be.

Those most familiar with Sotomayor’s most publicized comment will recognize her infamous 32-word statement: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

Her supporters have said that this quote has been taken out of context and that read in context with the rest of the speech, this single sentence culled from the whole is easily misconstrued. But that is simply not the case. The New York Times helpfully published the entire speech and there is no way, when all is said and done, not to understand that Sotomayor is asserting in a straight forward manner that minorities — “Latinas” in particular — are better judges than white men. She further asserts that white men are less likely to have such experiences that will make them a good judge unless they are fortuitous enough to have reached “moments of enlightenment” that will put them on par with minorities.

Put plainly, she is saying “Latinas” make better judges simply by virtue of being Latinas. That is as perfect an example of racist sentiment as can be imagined.

The whole piece is shocking for its basic assumptions but, aside from the sentence quoted above that everyone is familiar with, the following paragraphs are revealing.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your own evaluation. For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach. For all of us, how do change the facts that in every task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?

The first paragraph taken by itself seems almost sensible. Of course everyone’s experience might tend to interfere in how they perceive things. But taken with the second paragraph, one sees that Sotomayor is saying that only a “Latina’s” experience serves as the best basis for judicial perfection. The most stunning part nestled in this excerpt is when Sotomayor said that white men are less able to judge because of their “experiences” unless, she says, they make some supreme effort toward “enlightenment.”

I quote again from the second paragraph:

For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach.

Her basic premise here is that white men are incapable of being inherently good judges unless they make that effort toward “enlightenment” like “other men… have been able to reach.” Yet, Latinas are simply in the perfect place to judge without having to reach for any such “enlightenment.” They just have it by virtue of being “Latinas” and by the very nature of their “experiences.”

How this cannot be understood as an assumption of racial superiority is beyond me. Maybe I’m just not “enlightened” enough to understand how a bald-faced assumption of racial superiority is not a racist sentiment?

So, this is the person that a President of the United States has proffered to take a seat on the nation’s highest court. A racist with low grades and a sense of entitlement that has been reversed or scolded in five out of the six cases of hers that have appeared before past Supreme Court sessions. It shouldn’t be so hard to vote no on such a candidate.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

The Supreme Court nominee who can’t write: "Supreme Court opinions are words for the generations that can affect the lives and welfare of millions. No one doubts that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has a compelling life story. But more to the point, we need to inquire about her aptitude to draft thoughtfully-reasoned, well-crafted legal opinions. On this count, there is reason for worry. Sotomayor herself has admitted, ‘Writing remains a challenge for me even today … I am not a natural writer.’ Reporter Stephanie Mencimer has characterized Sotomayor’s legal opinions as ‘good punishment for law students who show up late for class.’ A cursory pass of Sotomayor’s writings reveals them to be clumsy to the point of being impenetrable.”

Reckoning with Ricci: “Today’s ruling clarifies that the mere fear of being sued will not justify an employer’s intentional discrimination unless there is a ’strong basis in evidence’ to believe the employer will be liable under disparate-impact discrimination principles. But it won’t make such lawsuits much less frequent or less prohibitively expensive. And for many of these suits, it won’t make resolution any easier. It may be straightforward enough when, as in Ricci, an employer appears to be citing disparate-impact concerns as a pretext to avoid provoking a powerful political constituency. But in other cases, the employer will not be acting pretextually — he will be motivated to take race-conscious remedial action because he fears, in good faith, being found liable.”

The Ricci ruling’s real message: "America’s unsettled debate over race has too often been conducted between judges writing alone in their chambers rather than in open forums by the public or their elected representatives. That was true again in a ruling on Monday by the Supreme Court that will set back the use of race in employment decisions. In a case known as Ricci, the justices revealed their heated arguments in separate opinions that went beyond mere legal precedent and the Constitution. … The days of using quotas to fix the effects of past discrimination are over. And more states are banning official use of race in hiring and school admissions. With the election of an African-American as president, the politics of race that is aimed at boosting diversity or widening benefits specifically for minorities now faces an uphill battle.”

Missouri neo-Nazis are Greenies -- just like the original Nazis: "The state's litter prevention program got an unusual ally last year: A neo-Nazi group adopted a half-mile section of highway in Springfield and picked up the trash. Lawmakers responded with an amendment to a large transportation bill that would rename that section of road after Abraham Joshua Heschel, a rabbi who narrowly escaped the Nazis in World War II and later marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr... The Springfield unit of the National Socialist Movement committed last year to clean up trash along the section of Highway 160 near the city limits in west Springfield. Two signs noting the group's membership in the Adopt-A-Highway program went up last October. Representatives of the National Socialist movement in Missouri did not immediately return calls seeking comment about the legislation Sunday. But a statement on the movement's Web site calls the renaming "a lame attempt to insult National Socialist pro-environment/green policies."

ABC: The Administration for Brain Control: “ABC Television, formerly known as the American Broadcasting Company, has undergone rebranding and will henceforth be called the Administration for Brain Control. This comes as a result of the network’s news department, having openly and explicitly jettisoned all pretense of objectivity and neutrality, decided to throw in with the Obama administration and voluntarily act as the Joseph Goebbels Memorial Ministry of Propaganda.”

Who Railroaded the Amtrak Inspector General?: "Watchdogs are an endangered species in the Age of Obama. The latest government ombudsman to get the muzzle: Amtrak Inspector General Fred Weiderhold. The longtime veteran employee was abruptly "retired" this month -- just as the government-subsidized rail service faces mounting complaints about its meddling in financial audits and probes. Question the timing? Hell, yes. On June 18, Weiderhold met with Amtrak officials to discuss the results of an independent report by the Washington, D.C., law firm Willkie, Farr and Gallagher. The 94-page report has been made publicly available through the office of whistleblower advocate Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. It concluded that the "independence and effectiveness" of the Amtrak inspector general's office "are being substantially impaired" by the agency's Law Department. Amtrak bosses have effectively gagged their budgetary watchdogs from communicating with Congress without pre-approval; required that all Amtrak documents be "pre-screened" (and in some cases redacted) before being turned over to the inspector general's office; and taken control of the inspector general's $5 million portion of federal stimulus spending. The transparent sacking comes just as Amtrak is awash in more than $1.3 billion in new federal stimulus money. It comes on the heels of the unceremonious dismissal of Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general who dared to probe financial shenanigans by Obama cronies. And it comes on the heels of the stifling of veteran Environmental Protection Agency employee Alan Carlin, the researcher who dared to question the Obama administration's conventional wisdom on global warming."

Arabs failed to maintain crashed plane: "Officials said the plane crashed into rough seas in darkness, after disappearing from control tower radar screens. The A310 jet had aborted a landing attempt in the Comoros islands and was making a second attempt when it crashed. It was the second time in less than a month that an Airbus has crashed into the ocean. This time French authorities said the Yemeni carrier had been under surveillance and that the 19-year-old jet had been banned from French airspace. The flight left Paris on Monday for Marseille and Sanaa, where passengers switched to the older Airbus to continue to Djibouti and Moroni." [See also here]

British backdown on ID cards: "n a dramatic break with years of Labour policy, the new Home Secretary last night scrapped plans for compulsory ID cards. Alan Johnson said the scheme - which has already cost as much as £200million - would always remain voluntary. The project will now focus on persuading youngsters to pay £30 for a card so they can prove their age when trying to buy alcohol in pubs and bars.... Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, who has vowed to scrap the cards, said: 'This decision is symbolic of a Government in chaos. They have spent millions on the scheme so far - the Home Secretary thinks it has been a waste and wants to scrap it, but the Prime Minister won't let him. 'So we end up with an absurd fudge instead. This is no way to run the country.'... Controversially, everyone who wants a card or a biometric passport will still have their details stored on the huge national identity register database. Civil liberties groups argue this still amounts to a compulsory scheme, as anybody getting a passport from around 2011 will have no option but to sign up... Plans for compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals remain unchanged. [Since British officials regularly lose huge database files on trains etc., there was no confidence that ID information could be kept secure]

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, 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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Peace Exists in the Middle East

Obama and the State Department are just ignorant, there is no other suitable word for it, polite or otherwise. They have not taken the time to go and visit what they negatively call "Settlements" and what I proudly call "Settlements". Same place, same set of facts, different perspective because they have not been to see it work.

A place where Jews, Arabs, Russians, Ethiopians, every religion, nationality, age and creed live, work, innovate and get along this is anyone¹s definition of Peace in the Middle East. Ownership of land and borders can come later, but talk about reality on the ground, and where it is happening.

This type of peace exists now in the Middle East it exists in lots of places within Israel, and it has always existed in areas that are labeled as "Settlements". From the very first settlement, before the creation of the state of Israel, Jews have always reached out to their Arab neighbors and successfully integrated them into their lives and celebrations. They have done and continue to do this out of innate hospitality, but also for selfish reasons; there are 22 Arab countries, each of them enormous both in geographical size and population, it was never Israel¹s intent to take them over or conquer them, but to live together with them in Peace.

How stupid do you need to be to believe Israel wants to conquer the whole of the Middle East for a Jewish Homeland? First of all there are not enough Jews in the whole world to populate it, and second of all, it is just a ridiculous premise.

The facts show that Israel shares it knowledge and natural resources with the world as well as its Arab neighbors, despite the political conflicts and war, and it is much greater giving than getting on Israel¹s part.

If you want Peace, get the Arabs to model some of what is going on in the settlements, on Arab lands, and then it won¹t matter who has sovereignty over it. Ariel is the newest University in Israel. It has 11,000 students, 500 are Arabs the number would be higher, but the Arabs are afraid their own families and friends will kill them if they are found to be studying at an Israeli institution. Ariel University is in the heart of the largest Settlement, it is a Settlement to be proud of, both the city and the University. Every University classroom has an Israeli Flag. Every student, including the Arab students must take a course in Jewish Heritage each semester.

There are no problems, all the student¹s cross the green line to come and study each day. This "Settlement" should be expanded, not stopped on threat of destruction. It is a MODEL OF PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

Just because the Arab PR machine coined the phrase "Settlements are an obstacle to Peace in the Middle East" does not make it true, it is just a case of tell a lie often enough and loud enough and people will believe it. Even the President and State Department of the U.S.A.

I am not asserting that there has never been a crazy person in a settlement, but I am yelling from the rooftops that there are thousands of individual stories of cooperation and living and caring together in the settlements than there are negative incidents. It is always, and I will state this again, it is ALWAYS the attacks by Arabs on the settlements, which create the negative press for the settlements, when these settlements are the victims in the attacks.

We have the model in Gaza of what happens when Settlements are disbanded. Even the Arabs, who lived and thrived there, did not pick up and continue a lucrative industry that would have made them and their children proud, instead, they destroyed it and so now remain poor and beholden to their extremists. They then compound this by assisting in the distribution of arms and ammunition to destroy the very Jewish people who were helping them feed and clothe their children before they forced them to leave.

I want to call on all Settlers to make yourselves known. Write about who you are and what you do and let the world see that you are kind, and creative; professionals, blue collar workers, what you do with your lives and your families. I know you help with sick, orphaned and troubled teens, I know you have interests as far reaching as classical music to obscure bohemian pottery and rock music, but let the world know, connect to people with the same hobbies, interests and dreams, and let them know you are proud to be Settlers and why you are proud you took a piece of land that the Arabs never believed would be anything but desert and you make it bloom and flourish each and every day.

Share your stories of Peace in the Middle East today, let everyone know about the Arabs that live and work among you happily and who given the choice would never chose to be a citizen of a Palestinian State, because there is no Peace in Arab communities or villages with anyone other than other Muslims.

What the stupid, blind, idiotic world is suggesting is not Peace in the Middle East, but an apartheid that will forever separate the Jews and the Arabs. Settlements should be applauded and looked up to as a model upon which to base Peace. Each and every person who went out and made a home for themselves in the areas won by Israel in 1967 when it was attacked on all fronts by its Arab neighbors, each and every person who took a risk in developing a home in these uncharted areas that were left barren and empty for so many years, each of you should be so proud of what you have achieved and accomplished and if you do not live there and do not know what those achievements and accomplishments are, then go and visit, go and look, and see the reality, not the empty words of those that do not want to live in peace and do not care if their children ever do. Be proud to be a settler, you have done wonderful things now share them with the world.

SOURCE

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A nice shot at the NY Slimes

Today's New York Times reports on a point of disagreement between the U.S. administration and the Israeli government:

The Obama administration believes that in order to build a solid regional coalition to confront Iranian ambitions, West Bank settlement building needs to stop as a sign of Israeli willingness to accept a Palestinian state.

Such a demand is part of the "road map" agreed to by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, the so-called quartet, and signed by Israel. But the Israelis said they had unwritten agreements with the former Bush administration that defined the freeze more narrowly, as not building new settlements or expropriating more land.

Today's Times story leaves open the possibility that the Israelis are simply making this up. But the Times itself, on Aug. 21, 2004, confirmed that this was the understanding of U.S. officials as well:

The Bush administration, moving to lend political support to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a time of political turmoil, has modified its policy and signaled approval of growth in at least some Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, American and Israeli officials say.
In the latest modification of American policy, the administration now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward to undeveloped parts of the West Bank, according to the officials.

Perhaps the Israelis made the mistake of believing what they read in the New York Times.

SOURCE

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Black, white and Asian races do exist

That black, white and Asian races do exist has always been perfectly obvious but Leftists are always trying to deny it. They say it is "racist" even to mention it. A study of the DNA of many different populations has however now confirmed the obvious. And the researchers admit that the genetic differences can have notable effects. They also however make much of the fact that the differences occur in only a small percentage of our genes. Most genes are shared by all races. One does wonder why they think that is important. We also share around 98% of our genes with chimpanzees. Does that mean that the difference between humans and chimpanzees is unimportant?

Let me illustrate the importance of small genetic differences by a story about cricket. I know that most of my readers are American and will therefore likely know nothing about the world's most widely-followed bat-and-ball game -- but my story is a simple one so I don't think much will be lost in translation.

Australia's most famous cricketer is the recently deceased Don Bradman. What made him famous was that in his hands a cricket bat seemed to have a miraculous attraction to a cricket ball. No matter what they bowled down to him he could always swat it. As a result he would in some matches get as many as 400 runs, where 100 runs is normally considered a great achievement. Now the Don's eerie skill with a bat was obviously the result of a very rare confluence of genetic factors. If practice and training were what made Bradman great, we would have 10,000 Bradmans.

Now I am fairly sure that I share around 99.9% of my genes with Don Bradman -- but I can't hit a ball for nuts. So even very small genetic differences can make a huge difference in abilities etc. -- and not only in cricket -- JR

There is a simplicity and all-inclusiveness to the number three -- the triangle, the Holy Trinity, three peas in a pod. So it's perhaps not surprising that the Family of Man is divided that way, too.

All of Earth's people, according to a new analysis of the genomes of 53 populations, fall into just three genetic groups. They are the products of the first and most important journey our species made -- the walk out of Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small fraction of ancestral Homo sapiens.

One group is the African. It contains the descendants of the original humans who emerged in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. The second is the Eurasian, encompassing the natives of Europe, the Middle East and Southwest Asia (east to about Pakistan). The third is the East Asian, the inhabitants of Asia, Japan and Southeast Asia, and -- thanks to the Bering Land Bridge and island-hopping in the South Pacific -- of the Americas and Oceania as well.

The existence of this ancient divergence has long been known. What is new is a subtle but important insight into what happened on a genomic level as the human species spilled across the landscape, eventually occupying every habitable part of the planet.

People adapted to what they encountered the way all living organisms do: through natural selection. A small fraction of the mutations constantly creeping into our genes happened by chance to prove beneficial in the new circumstances outside the African homeland. Those included differences in climate, altitude, latitude, food availability, parasites, infectious diseases and lots of other things.

A person who carried, by chance, a helpful mutation was more likely to survive and procreate than someone without it. The person's offspring would then probably be endowed with the same beneficial mutation. Over thousands of generations, the new variant (what geneticists call the "derived allele") could go from being rare to being common as its carriers fared better than their brethren and contributed more descendants to the population.

Scientists have long known that regardless of ancestral home or ethnic group, everyone's genes are pretty much alike. We're all Homo sapiens. Everything else is pretty much details.

Recent research has produced a surprise, however. Population geneticists expected to find dramatic differences as they got a look at the full genomes -- about 25,000 genes -- of people of widely varying ethnic and geographic backgrounds. Specifically, they expected to find that many ethnic groups would have derived alleles that their members shared but that were uncommon or nonexistent in other groups. Each regional, ethnic group or latitude was thought to have a genomic "signature" -- the record of its recent evolution through natural selection.

But as analyses of genomes from dozens of distinct populations have rolled in -- French, Bantu, Palestinian, Yakut, Japanese -- that's not what scientists have found. Dramatic genome variation among populations turns out to be extremely rare.

Instead, it is "random genetic drift" that appears to be more important in sculpting our genes. Drift describes the chance loss of genetic variation that occurred not only in the out-of-Africa migration, but through all of human history as famine, climate change or war caused populations to crash and then recover.

Despite those calamities, it appears that all contemporary populations ended up largely the same, or only crudely distinguishable from one another, on the genome level.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

SCOTUS reverses Sotomayor panel in Ricci case: “Officials in New Haven, Conn., illegally discriminated against white members of the city’s fire department when they refused to honor the results of a civil service exam after no African-Americans qualified for a promotion. The US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 on Monday that the Connecticut city violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by using race as the key criterion in refusing to certify a group of white and Hispanic firefighters for promotion. City officials said they were afraid that if they promoted the white and Hispanic firefighters but no African-American firefighters, the city would be subject to a lawsuit by black firefighters. The high court disagreed.” [Other comments here and here]

Obama holds gay pride reception, vows to overturn “unjust laws”: "“President Obama honored Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month with a White House reception Monday where he likened the struggle for gay rights with the struggle of African-Americans for civil rights. With first lady Michelle Obama at his side, the president told the cheering crowd filling the East Room that his administration would work to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and end the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy regarding gays in the military.”

Flow of “stimulus” funds still only a trickle: “When the government enacted a $787 billion package of tax cuts and new spending this spring, there was much talk about how all that money would help pull the economy out of a deep recession. But readers are asking: Just how much of this money has been actually spent? Turns out the answer is not much. Confidence in the stimulus money is beginning to wane. People are still waiting for billions of dollars to reenergize the economy. How much of the stimulus money has actually been doled out as of this week?”

Political leanings drive car choice. Ideology correlates to U.S. vs. import: In the '80s, it was the politics of dancing. In the '90s, the politics of caring. Today, in bailout nation, we have the politics of driving. The Volvo-driving liberal and the redneck in a Chevy pickup are long-held stereotypes. But a map of car ownership - produced by R.L. Polk & Co. - overlaid on the electoral map reveals the surprising extent to which how we vote corresponds with what we drive. Blue-staters on each coast, from Los Angeles to Seattle and from Boston to the District, are the most likely to drive foreign cars. Domestic brands have their highest levels of market share in the mostly conservative interior of the country. In some blue states - where a Democrat has won at least three of the last four presidential contests - foreign cars have as much as 60 percent of the market, as measured by vehicle registrations. It is mostly in red states - Republican strongholds - where domestic cars have 74 percent of the market or more. This pattern holds in 36 states and the District".

America's Princess Di moment: "Good career move. The Hollywood assessment of the death of Elvis Presley 30 years ago eerily applies to Michael Jackson, too. Every great entertainer knows it's important to get off the stage before the hook. The death of Michael Jackson, with its unanswered questions and the exposure of the smarmy troupe of freeloaders, hangers-on and cockroaches crawling out of the dark places of his life, make this the perfect Hollywood tale of sex, money and sudden death. The media, including even newspapers that once could be counted on to put events in proper context, are throwing one long, drunken, inky bacchanalia, endlessly indulging round after round of trivia and manufactured sensation. P.T. Barnum lies green (with envy) in his grave. Oscar Levant's description of Hollywood -- "it's made of tinsel, but once you get beneath the tinsel, you'll find the real tinsel" -- is writ large, and we all live in Hollywood now. The death of Michael Jackson is our Princess Diana moment. Such vast outpourings of alligator tears and synthetic sincerity were once reserved for mourning presidents. In the age of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, the small looms large."

Michael Jackson, Anti-Semite: "Allow me to refresh your memory. While much of the world mourns the untimely death of the "King of Pop" Michael Jackson, it is worth recalling one of Mr. Jackson's more unfortunate qualities: he was an anti-Semite. In case you think I am making this up, allow me to refresh your memory. Back in November 2005, Jackson was caught on tape in a voicemail to one of his former business managers calling Jews "leeches". The tapes were played on ABC's Good Morning America program, and Jackson was heard saying, "They suck…they're like leeches. It's a conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose." And in 1995, Jackson provoked a firestorm of protest when he released an album called HIStory containing a song entitled "They don't care about us" which had the following lyrics: "Jew me, sue me" and "Kick me, kike me". He subsequently promised to re-record the song and delete the offending lyrics. But then, in February 1996, Jackson nonetheless released a video of the song in which he had re-instated the brazenly anti-Semitic remarks.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, 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

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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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