Google loses in court



Vogue cover girl Liskula Cohen has won a precedent-setting court battle to unmask an anonymous blogger who called her a "skank" on the internet. In a case with potentially far-reaching repercussions, Liskula Cohen sought the identity of the blogger who maligned her on the Skanks in NYC blog so that she could sue him or her for defamation. A Manhattan supreme court judge ruled that she was entitled to the information and ordered Google, which ran the offending blog, to turn it over.

Ms Cohen, a tall, Canadian blonde who has modelled for Giorgio Armani and Versace, went to court after reading the wounding anonymous comments on Google's Blogger.com. "I would have to say the first-place award for 'Skankiest in NYC' would have to go to Liskula Gentile Cohen," the blogger "Anonymous" wrote in one posting. The blog, since removed, ridiculed the former Australian Vogue cover girl as a "40-something" who "may have been hot 10 years ago", when she was actually 36.

Justice Joan Madden rejected the blogger's claim that the blogs "serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting", and should not be treated as factual assertions.

The model was looking forward last night to discovering the identity of the alleged acquaintance who insulted her. "Everybody is waiting to see who this coward is," Steven Wagner, her lawyer, said.

Andrew Pederson, a Google spokesman, said: "We sympathise with anyone who may be the victim of cyberbullying. We also take great care to respect privacy concerns and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order."

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

ObamaCare protesters “racist,” including black gun owner: “On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: ‘A man at a pro-health care reform rally … wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip …. there are questions about whether this has racial overtones …. white people showing up with guns.’ Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black. Following Brewer’s report … Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC pop culture analyst Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. … Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black.”

Crowley gets ovation from officers in California: "The police sergeant who sparked a national debate on race relations when he arrested a Harvard University professor in his home received a standing ovation Monday from thousands of police officers at a Fraternal Order of Police convention. More than 3,000 officers cheered Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley when he briefly spoke to kick off the five-day meeting. Dozens left their seats to take snapshots of him on the podium at the Long Beach Convention Center. "The past month has been very difficult for my family, my friends and my colleagues back in Cambridge, and it's no exaggeration to say that it wouldn't be as easy for me to handle this without the support from the Fraternal Order of Police ... and the support that the men and women who do this job have given me," Crowley said. "Thank you very much."

Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling: "You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil. The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan. The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas. But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits"

You can trust a liberal … to be a liberal: “The liberals are back. For proof, just check out the antics of two noted liberals, MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews and Salon.com editor in chief Joan Walsh. This week both of them went apoplectic over a libertarian’s having the audacity to exercise two fundamental rights at the same time — free speech and the right to bear arms, both of which are guaranteed by the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. What caused Matthews’ and Walsh’s apoplexy?”

The right’s rebellion: "The altarpiece of the transformational presidency, universal health insurance, is on life support, as huge crowds pour into town hall meetings to denounce it. Responding to the protests, the Obamaites have dumped the end-of-life counselors (aka ‘Death Panels’) and declared the government option expendable. But what are we to make of these ‘evil-mongers’ of Harry Reid’s depiction, these ‘mobs’ of ‘thugs’ organized by K Street lobbyists and ‘right-wing extremists’ who engage in ‘un-American’ activity at town hall meetings? Surely, all Americans must detest them. To the contrary. According to a Pew poll, by 61 percent to 34 percent, Americans think the protesters are behaving properly.”

History repeats with Obama’s anti-growth policies: “During the economic downturn from roughly 1929 to 1939, Franklin Roosevelt implemented a raft of anti-capitalist, anti-growth policies, from wage controls to higher taxes to simple badgering of businesses (especially utilities). The result was that Europe emerged from the depression sooner while Democratic economic policies turned what could have been just a bad recession into the Great Depression. The Obama Administration suffers the same fatal conceit as all socialists, namely the belief that their policies will work where similar policies have failed because now they have the right people, smarter people, implementing them with the latest scientific methods.”

TSA and its brethren: “To the public, at any rate to the many people with whom I have discussed the matter, the air of federal fear seems almost demented. I have had an (actual) TSA woman solemnly examine a pair of tweezers to determine whether they were blunt-nosed (acceptable) or pointed (posing a threat of hijacking). Do we really believe that a team of Al Quaeda terrorists are going to leap up brandishing tweezers? Equally absurd is that a woman cannot enter the US consulate in Guadalajara with her lipstick. Yes, I know it could contain a cyanide dart or a hidden vial of Tabun. So could anything.”

President Obama now looks more like symptom than cause: “Ironically, if President Obama wants to pass health insurance reform now — even with co-ops replacing the public option — he’s going to have to do something that Bill Clinton pulled off with his Sister Souljah moment. He’s going to have to tell the single-payer folks and the Deaniacs to either sign up for his compromise or get off the train. That’s the only way he wins a consistent, even if floating, 60-vote majority that holds the moderate Senators of both parties as well as the House Blue Dogs to a modified version of his social agenda. If it happens it will not be pretty, because the Dean progressives have done the most dangerous thing you can do in politics: they have started to believe their own narrative that they elected this President, and that he can’t survive or win re-election without them.”

AARP losing massive membership over “politics”: “About 60,000 senior citizens have quit AARP since July 1 due to the group’s support for a health care overhaul, a spokesman for the organization said Monday. The membership loss suggests dissatisfaction on the part of AARP members at a time when many senior citizens are concerned about proposed cuts to Medicare providers to help pay for making healthcare available for all. But spokesman Drew Nannis said it wasn’t unusual for the powerful, 40 million-strong senior citizens’ lobby to shed members in droves when it’s advocating on a controversial issue.”

Alinsky’s Rule 12: Starting to wear thin: “The left apparently thought they had been given a weapon with infinite ammunition. But it doesn’t work that way. If you go into your office today and accuse a particular co-worker of dishonesty, you’ll probably be taken seriously. If you do it with a different co-worker every week for a few months, you won’t. Everyone involved starts to realize that it’s just a tactic. Then they begin to wonder why you’re doing it. Are you trying to cover up something?”

Blacks more likely to succumb to Hep C: “Scientists say they’ve found a big reason why treatment for chronic hepatitis C infection works better for White patients than for Blacks. It’s a tiny variation in a gene. People with a certain gene variant are far more likely to respond to treatment, and that variant is more common in people with European ancestry than African-Americans, researchers report. In fact, that probably explains about half the racial disparity in treatment response, the scientists estimate in a study published online Sunday by the journal Nature. The work involved 1,137 patients who had a chronic infection with the most common type of hepatitis C virus in the U.S. and Europe, one that is less responsive to treatment than other types. They were given standard drug treatment.”

Fundamental ingredient for life discovered in comet: “A fundamental ingredient for life has been discovered in a comet sample, supporting the idea that such icy objects seeded early Earth with the stuff needed to whip up living organisms. New research firms up past suggestions of glycine, the simplest amino acid used to make proteins, inside samples from the comet Wild 2 (pronounced ‘Vilt 2′). ‘This is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet,’ said lead researcher Jamie Elsila of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. ‘Our discovery supports the theory that some of life’s ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts.’ How life arose on Earth has long puzzled scientists and philosophers alike, with possible evidence for such building blocks showing up floating about in the cosmos and even inside the mouths of volcanoes. The new finding, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, also has implications for finding alien life.”

The California Coastal Commission vs. its critics: “Richard Oshen has spent the past four years making a documentary about the California Coastal Commission (CCC), a state agency too obscure to have gathered any previous documentarian’s attention. It is, however, well known enough in the world of land-use policy to have been called, in a 2008 New York Times story, ‘the most formidable player of all’ when it comes to land use decisions in California. As Oshen learned, the CCC’s powers extend far beyond what anyone would reasonably think of as either land use or the protection of California’s coast. Coastal protection was the ostensible reason a four-year ‘Coastal Commission’ was first invented for California after 1972’s Proposition 20. The CCC was given permanent life by the California Coastal Act of 1976. Its current executive director, Peter Douglas, who is now serving his 29th year, helped agitate for and then draft the very statewide proposition that gave him his job. Oshen, meanwhile, finds himself in a legal battle with the very government agency he’s investigating. The CCC is trying to legally seize copies of much of the raw footage Oshen has shot, as well as a version of the finished product, titled Sins of Commission, prior to its official release.”

The battle of the bulb: “You can lead a horse to water, but not make it drink: except for politicians, especially in Brussels. Europe’s Finest, ever busy fixing the world, stop at nothing to force happiness upon their citizens. Who knows better what’s good for the fine citizens from Bulgaria to Portugal than the 26 commissioners sitting at the avenues de Beaulieu and d’Auderghem, and rue Belliard? This ancient complaint finds new life in Brussels’ latest, saving the planet by telling EU citizens how they may and may not illuminate their homes. Banning Edison’s light bulb proclaiming ‘inefficient!’ while ignoring the mercury-hazard of CFLs (compact fluorescents) is an absurd idea on so many grounds. Most disgracefully, it once again shows politicians don’t trust consumers to make choices. Choice, after all, is anathema for politicians, as the people easily make the wrong decisions.”

CO: Best Buy fires students after they tackle shoplifter: “Jared Bergstreser, 20, and Colin Trapp, 23, were fired Sunday, two weeks after they tried to stop two men fleeing the store at the FlatIron Marketplace. When the students saw the men fleeing with armloads of merchandise, Bergstreser tackled one of the men and Trapp came to help, but the man pulled a knife and broke free. A store manager was also involved in the Aug. 1 fracas and was cut by the shoplifting suspect, police said.”

Cash for clunkers gives GM a boost : “General Motors announced today that it will build 60,000 more cars and trucks this year as supplies have dropped and sales have spiked more than expected, in part because of the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program. The announcement will lead to additional shifts and overtime at several factories and the reinstatement of 1,350 workers at two plants. GM said that sales in the month of July and August are between 60,000 and 70,000 units above what the company had predicted as recently as two months ago. In July, the automaker had approximately 300,000 units for sale compared to a peak level of 1.3 million vehicles available at one point in the past four years.”

Lampooning Palin — the sport of progressives: “Palin punching has been the pastime of choice for the Hollywood hordes ever since the former Alaska Governor first burst upon their free-range radars as McCain’s running mate during the last presidential follies. Professional players like Tina Fey and David Letterman have become well known Palin baiters, and William Shatner has shown up on Conan’s Tonight Show reading her resignation speech and subsequent Tweets as beat poetry, accompanied by bass and bongos. So the question that arises is this: is it an absolute ironclad requirement that everyone associated with the American entertainment industry be a political liberal?”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/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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Does the rally in the picture below remind you of anything?



Hitler? Obama? It is in fact a 1939 rally in London of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), led by Sir Osward Mosley.

Via Powerline, who also note that Sir Oswald was an early advocate of socialized healthcare. Mosley would no doubt be gratified by the extent to which his party's socialist vision of government control over the healthcare industry has become the policy of the current administration in the U.S.A. Note the following quote from the BUF health policy:

The voluntary hospitals which have done so much in the training of doctors, dentists and nurses, are undoubtedly finding it extremely difficult in carrying on at the highest pitch of efficiency, for financial reasons. The British Union of Fascists views with admiration the work done by the men and women who are responsible for the building up of this system, and it sees no reason for the abolition of the voluntary hospitals. On the assumption of power we envisage the appointment of a National Director of Hospitals, who would co-ordinate the working of all the different hospitals (both Voluntary and State hospitals) and who would be represented by a single nominee on the governing Committees of all the voluntary hospitals. The State would make it its duty to find the necessary additional funds for the management of the voluntary hospitals and would not interfere in their internal management.

Does that remind you of someone who repeatedly assures people that they will all be able to keep their existing healthcare insurance after his socialist plan is implemented?

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Did Krupskaya cave?

(Krupskaya was the wife of V.I. Lenin)

We have closely followed the story of Obama administration flack Linda Douglass -- a cross between Nurse Ratched and Mrs. Lenin -- and her invitation to report fishy comments on Obamacare to the flag@whitehouse.gov official email address. I thought the project was, as the liberals say nowadays, un-American, and rather obviously so. How fitting of the Obama administration to hark back to the ethos of Big Brother while promoting socialized health care.

Appropriately enough, the email address disappeared down the memory hole. The White House has apparently issued no announcement on the disposition of the email account. Many would-be informers have been left in the lurch, sadly including those of us who have taken to turning in Obama for his compulsively fishy comments on his putative program. Politico's Mike Allen reports the story without comment.

Did Krupskaya cave? Maybe, but she may also have beat a tactical retreat. Frustrated informants can still submit their neighbors' fishy thoughts on Obamacare to the White House via the "Reality Check" Web page on WhiteHouse.gov, which allows the submission of readers' comments. The Web form stresses, however, that viewers are discouraged from from submitting "any individual's personal information, including their [sic] email address, without their permission."

What can we learn from this episode? The Obama administration is sensitive to ridicule, disinclined frankly to admit error and virtually incapable of seeing itself as others see it. In the service of a radical agenda pursued with deceit and demagoguery, it will grudgingly take one step back while it rewrites its playbook to advance three or four steps forward.

SOURCE

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Finding no buyers for snake oil

Master politician that he is, Barack Obama is a lousy calculator. He spectacularly misjudged the American public's appetite for a government nanny. Or maybe he miscalculated the power of his slippery tongue to sell government snake oil. His apparent willingness to abandon the attempt - for now - to nationalize the health-care industry appears to defer the Democratic first step in remaking the home of the brave and the land of the free into Little America, cutting it down to a size incapable of intimidating the likes of Switzerland or Swaziland.

But only if the opposition keeps up unremitting pressure. The president signals a change in tactics, not objectives. His concession that the so-called "government option" is temporarily dead does not mean the dream of "postalizing" health care, of making it as responsive as the Post Office, is dead. It's merely that the tenderizing pain in certain Democratic keesters is so acute that somebody had to find a way to get a little relief. Running up a fake white flag might do it; when the opposition puts down its guns the postalizers will fire at will.

The president never actually said he would defer to public sentiment. The special gift of snake-oil salesmen is their ability to say one thing and make audiences hear something else. "All I'm saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform," he told an audience on Sunday in Colorado. "This is just one sliver of it."

The leftmost fringe of his party is having none of this apparent concession to reasonableness and moderation. House Democrats recall their ecstasy of waking up on the morning after the 2008 elections, imagining that with their 78-seat margin it's now or never, and they can't wait to get started on the plastic surgery to alter the face of America the Beautiful. They've been sharpening scalpels and carving knives since.

This puts the House leaders, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her liege man, Steny Hoyer, in a particular bind. They owe their 78-seat margin to men and women moderate enough to win in conservative districts; many of these freshmen know they will never be sophomores if they vote for a health care plan that dooms the private insurance coverage that works well enough for the middle class.

One of them, Rep. Eric Massa of New York, is a confirmed nanny-state Democrat who understands what a vote for Obamacare is likely to cost him. "I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful. I will vote against their opinion if I actually believe it will help them."

The early Democratic strategy of trying to shout down the opposition, painting critics as Nazis waving swastikas (Nancy Pelosi), as "evil-mongers" (Senate Leader Harry Reid), as "un-American" (Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas), as over-dressed snobs and bounders (Sen. Barbara Boxer of California), clearly failed.

So has the attempt to portray critics as ignorant yahoos too thick to understand how well government health schemes have worked in places like Canada and Great Britain. The more we learn about the Canadian and British schemes the less they look like models for anyone.

The new president of the Canadian Medical Association says Canadian doctors must recognize how sick the Canadian system is and figure out how to fix it. "We all agree that the system is imploding," says Dr. Anne Doig, "and we all agree that things are more precarious than Canadians perhaps realize."

Stephen Glover, a columnist for the London Daily Mail, defends Britain's National Health Service but concedes that Americans wouldn't like it. "Consult any American who has encountered the National Health Service," he writes. "Often [visiting Americans] cannot believe ... the squalor, the looming threat, the long waiting lists and especially the target that patients in 'accident and emergency' should be expected to wait for no more than four - four! - hours, the sense exuded by some medical staff that they are doing you a favor by taking down your personal details. Most Americans, let's face it, are used to much higher standards of health care than we enjoy."

Americans aren't as dumb as the politicians often think they are, and nothing educates politicians like a well-aimed two-by-four square across the noggin. That's the hard lesson of the summer of '09.

SOURCE

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Obama loses trust of Israel backers

Majority see president as 'pro-Palestinian'



President Obama's harsh criticism of West Bank settlements during his heavily publicized June speech to the Arab world in Cairo continues to reverberate here, undercutting his popularity and heightening tensions with some pro-Israel advocates in the United States. Navigating the complex relationship with Israel is a delicate task for any administration, but relations are especially delicate now as Mr. Obama is making a major push to build trust with the region's vast Muslim population and coordinate a diplomatic drive to halt Iran's nuclear programs.

During his June speech, Mr. Obama questioned the legitimacy of the settlements, saying they violated previous agreements and undermined the peace process, prompting a hawkish public response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A recent poll sponsored by the Jerusalem Post underscored the extent of the rift: Just 6 percent of Jewish Israelis surveyed said they now consider Mr. Obama's administration to be "pro-Israel." Fifty percent said Mr. Obama was "pro-Palestinian, and 36 percent said he was "neutral."

Otniel Schneller, deputy speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, warned that Mr. Obama's approach could stymie the peace process. "He doesn't understand the conflict. He thinks he understands it," Mr. Schneller told The Washington Times. "The formula is very easy. If they will continue to push us to give the Palestinians more than 90 percent of the West Bank, there will not be any peace in the future, ever."

Mr. Schneller, a modern Orthodox Jew, lives in the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Mikhmas. He is one of an estimated 300,000 Jewish settlers, many of whom have built homes in the region as an expression of religious conviction.

The United States has always maintained close ties with Israel, an alliance strengthened during the Cold War, when Israel provided vital intelligence about Russian military capabilities to U.S. agents. Cultural and religious ties also bind the two countries.

Pro-Israel groups in the United States initially expressed concerns about some of Mr. Obama's views as he began his White House bid. However, after he secured the Democratic nomination, a number of American Jewish leaders began to coalesce behind him.

Now, several leading Republicans said they think rising anti-Obama sentiment here could translate into inroads for Republicans who have been seeking support from American Jews. Virginia Republican Rep. Eric Cantor, No. 2 in the House Republican Party hierarchy and the only Jewish Republican in an elected national position, appealed to Jewish voters in the Israeli press, telling them they have a place in the Republican Party.

Mr. Cantor earlier this month led a delegation of 25 House Republicans, many freshman members, on a one-week tour of Israel sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, an arm of the powerful lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC maintains an annual budget of nearly $60 million and an endowment of $130 million.

Last week, 29 House Democrats were following suit, completing an ambitious schedule that included meetings with Mr. Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. "There is much discussion, I think, within the scene in American politics about the American Jewish vote, about potential gains for the Republican Party among many minorities, as well as the population as a whole," Mr. Cantor said in Jerusalem during a press conference.

The discussion of any true shift in allegiances, though, may be premature just six months into the new administration, many observers said. "I do not think that the relationship has been damaged yet," said George S. Naggiar, chairman of the American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights. However, Mr. Naggiar noted that "because the United States wants to maintain an image of power and credibility among Arabs and Muslims and because Israel's refusal to end settlements will undermine that image, such refusal has the potential to damage the U.S. relationship with Israel."

Mr. Naggiar said American Jews, while strongly linked with the Democratic Party, are not single-issue voters and only a small minority are fiercely devoted to maintaining and expanding Jewish settlements.

But Jeff Daube, director of the Zionist Organization of America's Israel office, said he thinks the president's positions have taken a toll. "There is no doubt that it has damaged the relationship," Mr. Daube said of Mr. Obama's call to halt settlements.

SOURCE

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For the Left, war without Bush is no war at all

The soap-bubble "principles" of the Left again

Remember the anti-war movement? Not too long ago, the Democratic party's most loyal voters passionately opposed the war in Iraq. Democratic presidential candidates argued over who would withdraw American troops the quickest. Netroots activists regularly denounced President George W. Bush, and sometimes the U.S. military ("General Betray Us"). Cindy Sheehan, the woman whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, became a heroine when she led protests at Bush's Texas ranch.

That was then. Now, even though the United States still has roughly 130,000 troops in Iraq, and is quickly escalating the war in Afghanistan -- 68,000 troops there by the end of this year, and possibly more in 2010 -- anti-war voices on the Left have fallen silent.

No group was more angrily opposed to the war in Iraq than the netroots activists clustered around the left-wing Web site DailyKos. It's an influential site, one of the biggest on the Web, and in the Bush years many of its devotees took an active role in raising money and campaigning for anti-war candidates.

In 2006, DailyKos held its first annual convention, called YearlyKos, in Las Vegas. Amid the slightly discordant surroundings of the Riviera Hotel casino, the webby activists spent hours discussing and planning strategies not only to defeat Republicans but also to pressure Democrats to oppose the war more forcefully. The gathering attracted lots of mainstream press attention; Internet activism was the hot new thing.

Fast forward to last weekend, when YearlyKos, renamed Netroots Nation, held its convention in Pittsburgh. The meeting didn't draw much coverage, but the views of those who attended are still, as they were in 2006, a pretty good snapshot of the left wing of the Democratic party. The news that emerged is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have virtually fallen off the liberal radar screen. Kossacks (as fans of DailyKos like to call themselves) who were consumed by the Iraq war when George W. Bush was president are now, with Barack Obama in the White House, not so consumed, either with Iraq or with Obama's escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan. In fact, they barely seem to care.

As part of a straw poll done at the convention, the Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg presented participants with a list of policy priorities like health care and the environment. He asked people to list the two priorities they believed "progressive activists should be focusing their attention and efforts on the most." The winner, by far, was "passing comprehensive health care reform." In second place was enacting "green energy policies that address environmental concerns." And what about "working to end our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan"? It was way down the list, in eighth place.

Perhaps more tellingly, Greenberg asked activists to name the issue that "you, personally, spend the most time advancing currently." The winner, again, was health care reform. Next came "working to elect progressive candidates in the 2010 elections." Then came a bunch of other issues. At the very bottom -- last place, named by just one percent of participants -- came working to end U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's an extraordinary change in the mindset of the left. I attended the first YearlyKos convention, and have kept up with later ones, and it's safe to say that for many self-styled "progressives," the war in Iraq was the animating cause of their activism. They hated the war, and they hated George W. Bush for starting it. Or maybe they hated the war because George W. Bush started it. Either way, it was war, war, war. Now, not so much.

Cindy Sheehan is learning that. She's still protesting the war, and on Monday she announced plans to demonstrate at Martha's Vineyard, where President Obama will be vacationing. "We as a movement need to continue calling for an immediate end to the occupations [in Iraq and Afghanistan] even when there is a Democrat in the Oval Office," Sheehan said in a statement. "There is still no Noble Cause no matter how we examine the policies." Give her credit for consistency, if nothing else. But her days are over. The people who most fervently supported her have moved on.

Not too long ago, some observers worried that Barack Obama would come under increasing pressure from the Left to leave both Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, it seems those worries were unfounded. For many liberal activists, opposing the war was really about opposing George W. Bush. When Bush disappeared, so did their anti-war passion.

SOURCE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/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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Those model Canadians again

Further to my weekend column on how a government health system inevitably means restricted access to treatment, a word from British Columbia: "The Fraser Health Authority confirmed Thursday it intends to cut surgeries, seniors' programs and services for the mentally ill to help deal with a budget shortfall of up to $160 million. However, it said the emergency department at Mission Memorial Hospital will stay open."

That's awfully sporting of them, all things considered: "The board said 10 to 15 per cent of elective surgeries will be cut in the latter part of the 2009-10 fiscal year, with slowdowns already scheduled for the Olympic period."

That's how it works. You can elect to have the surgery but they won't elect to give it to you. And don't ask me why hosting the Winter Olympics should necessitate cuts in health care. Unless they're expecting an epidemic of two-man luge teams with buttocks frozen to the sled or men's ice-dancing teams felled by attempting a double-axle in a too tight bolero jacket, it would seem to be just one of those things that happens when governments of advanced wealthy nations decide they can run every aspect of life more "efficiently" than the citizenry.

SOURCE

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Can Republicans Do Any Better Than This?

A strong alternative to Obamacare needs to be offered

The party in charge in Washington is doing a horrible job. But can Republicans do any better? To say that the Democrats are “drunk with power” or “out of touch” is inadequate. Something on the order of “clueless” or “oblivious” or “tone-deaf” would be more accurate.

But simply to have the Democrats tripping over their own kingly and queenly arrogance and their incompetence, is not enough to create success for the Republican Party. Republicans - in Congress, running for Congress, and elsewhere - need a cohesive message that signals a competent, respectful, “American” styled government leadership alternative. Can the Republican Party produce this kind of message?

Let’s start by examining just how bad things are with the Democrats. The President that put together the bi-partisan economic advisory dream-team has a moderate, Clinton-era, reasonable appearing member in Larry Summers. But where is former Reagan economic advisor Paul Volcker? He’s neither seen nor heard. And despite Summers’ occasional media appearances, Obama’s economic policies look nothing like either the Reagan era or the Clinton era.

Instead, we got an $800 billion economic “stimlus” bill that funded, among other things, “free” tatoo removal, cricket control, the promotion of astronomy in the Hawaiian islands, a federal sex education program called “Booty Call,” and other non-economically simulative pet projects. The so-called “shovel ready” infrastructure construction projects that were promised have yet to materialize, consumer spending is declining again, and unemployment benefits claims are rising.

Then there was President Obama’s $3.5 trillion budget (Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is now asking Congress to raise the federal debt ceiling above $12 trillion for fear that there won‘t be money to fund Obama‘s budget after October of this year); the so-called “cap-and-trade” energy tax bill that Congressional Democrats themselves scuttled because of outrage from constituents; President Obama’s “firing” of GM’s C.E.O. and his take-over of GM and Chrysler; and the $3 billion plus “cash for clunkers” program that was supposed to get people out of fuel guzzling old cars and into energy efficient new cars, but now is known to have been used for purchases of luxury sedans and SUV’s.

And then there is the proposed nationalization of healthcare. Congressional Democrats can’t seem to fathom how their stupid, un-enlightened constituents could possibly dare to question a proposal to intervene into some of the most personal and intimate area’s of a person’s life. Those who dare to ask questions, or worse yet disapprove, have been labeled by Congressional Democrats as “un-American,” “evil,” “Astroturf,” and “the mob,” and have been accused of “carrying swastikas,” “trying to bring down the President,” and have been compared to the KKK in the days of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Congressional disdain for the “commoner” hit a crescendo last week when Liberal Democrat Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, at a town hall meeting in her district, was caught on video suddenly stepping away from her podium to take a call on her mobile phone, even as an audience member was on-microphone, in mid sentence, asking the Congresswoman a question about healthcare.

Nothing says “I don’t care about the idiot voters” like a member of Congress taking a mobile phone call, while a constituent is trying to ask a question.

So, yes, those controlling Washington these days are performing horribly. But what can Republican offer as an alternative?

The current healthcare mess provides tremendous opportunity for Republicans. For starters, Republicans could pledge that they will not legislate any healthcare “reforms” that they would not live with themselves. It’s no secret that the healthcare benefits afforded to members of Congress are of superior quality. Yet, Democrats continue to draft legislative provisions that in some cases would restrict people’s access to healthcare, in other cases would tax people’s existing healthcare, and have contemplated the possibility of levying taxes on “plastic surgery” purchases.

The message being sent by the Democrats to America is “we’re better than you, and we’ll decide what you need,” yet that’s an unacceptable message for most Americans. Republicans can’t simply talk about private-sector reforms (although that must be at the epicenter of the message); they must now address America’s outrage towards the Congressional majority‘s arrogance, and convey that, “no, we are not better than you, and we want better choices for everybody.”

Republican leaders would also do well to convene a series of “heatlhcare alternative” town hall meetings across the country. Republican leaders who have sound, free-market heatlhcare reform ideas - some members of Congress would fit this description, like Congressman John Shaddegg of Arizona and Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia, but so would Governor Tim Pawlenty and perhaps other Governors as well - should arrange their own speaking tours across the country. The message here would be “we have an alternative to the President’s plan, we’re in the minority, yet our vision is closer to yours..”

The opportunity for Republicans is at hand. Can they seize the moment? Can they do any better?

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Much more about the healthcare debate on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

Rasmussen Poll: 54% Say Passing No Healthcare Reform Better Than Passing Congressional Plan: "Thirty-five percent (35%) of American voters say passage of the bill currently working its way through Congress would be better than not passing any health care reform legislation this year. However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most voters (54%) say no health care reform passed by Congress this year would be the better option. This does not mean that most voters are opposed to health care reform. But it does highlight the level of concern about the specific proposals that Congressional Democrats have approved in a series of Committees. To this point, there has been no Republican support for the legislative effort although the Senate Finance Committee is still attempting to seek a bi-partisan solution."

Democrats give veterans a pass from ObamaCare: "We're still sorting through the health-care deal Henry Waxman struck with Blue Dog Democrats recently, but one 11th-hour revision stands out. Namely, veterans will now be "exempt from the requirements of the legislation." That's how Mr. Waxman's staff put it in a memo to reporters earlier this month, announcing amendments that the House Energy and Commerce Committee included before passing the bill 31 to 28. These changes were designed to assuage the "grave concerns" of the American Legion, Amvets and others about how their members could be penalized by new taxes and insurance regulations. We're delighted service members will be let off this particular hook, but why doesn't everyone else warrant the same dispensation? Or to put it another way, Mr. Waxman is conceding that his plan will interfere with all insurance arrangements that aren't exempted, including private options that are working well."

LOL! Obama burnt in effigy by Indian Leftists: "Congress workers today staged a demonstration and burnt the effigy of US President Barack Obama here for detention of Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan at an American airport. The party workers, who gathered in front of the historic Anand Bhawan, raised slogans against the US administration and termed as an "insult to one billion Indians" the questioning of Khan at Newark airport. The 43-year-old actor was detained and questioned for two hours at the Newark Airport near New York yesterday." [There is a more reasonable Indian response here].

Russian aircraft good at crashing: "Two Russian air force fighters rehearsing acrobatic manoeuvres have collided near Moscow, killing one pilot and sending the jets crashing into nearby vacation homes. The Su-27 fighters were members of the elite Russian Knights flying group preparing to perform at the MAKS-2009 air show - the largest and most important exhibition for Russia's aerospace industry. Drik said three pilots ejected from the jets after the collision. He said rescuers found two in satisfactory condition but the third was killed. The Kremlin identified the dead pilot as the Russian Knights' commander, Colonel Igor Tkachenko, a decorated air force officer. In recent years, Russian air force jets have suffered a series of mishaps, many blamed on the ageing condition of Soviet-era planes. Earlier this year, officials grounded the air force's entire fleet of Su-24s after two crashes in three days. Two crashes of MiG-29 jets in 2008 let to the grounding of that entire model as well. A subsequent investigation demonstrated that a large number had become unsafe to fly and they were scrapped." [And that's not mentioning the many crashes of Russian civilian aircraft]

What Obama’s Town Hall Charade and Pam Anderson’s Breasts Have in Common: "The only problem with the Portsmouth town hall is that it was more artificially stacked with Obama lap dogs than Pam Anderson’s ta-tas are with boat caulk. Of course the meeting was upbeat and thumping . . . it was contrived. A Cyclops could see that. Look, as a knuckle-dragging heterosexual who lives in a God-blessed testosterone fog, I don’t mind fake when it comes to breasts. But when it comes to being conned by a Boob and his stacked crowd, well . . . I gotta admit . . . that makes me want to spit."

The real astroturfers: "Members of the nation's labor unions have made up a hefty segment of the audiences that flocked to town halls Mr. Obama held in the past week, and they have played an even larger role in a nationwide campaign for an insurance overhaul. Financially, and with boots on the ground, unions have become the backbone of the president's effort... The Obama administration decried the opposition movement as a cynical, fake grass-roots campaign manufactured by the insurance industry to undermine his effort. To respond meant galvanizing a movement of his own. That began to take shape, at least visibly, when AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney sent an Aug. 6 memo to union officers across the country to mobilize."

Dealers get paid for only 2% of “clunkers”: “The federal government has only reimbursed auto dealers for 2 percent of the claims they’ve submitted through the popular ‘cash for clunkers’ program, a Pennsylvania congressman said, calling on the Obama administration to help speed up the process. Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., called for ‘immediate action’ to address the problem in a statement Sunday, after writing a letter to President Obama Saturday expressing his concerns. In the letter, Sestak said only 2 percent of claims have been paid and that four of every five applications have been ‘rejected for minor oversight.’”

The enduring testimony of Communists who lost faith: "Although the Cold War was a "great game" played out on the field of diplomacy, a conflict between military superpowers that sometimes turned hot, it was also the 20th century's war of religion: a clash of beliefs and a battle of the books. This mortal combat ­between Communism and liberal democracy produced a vast literature, some books famous in their day, some ­famous still. Now John V. Fleming has had the excellent idea of telling the story of four of them, and the result is the readable and fascinating "The Anti-Communist ­Manifestos." It may be all the better because Mr. ­Fleming, an emeritus professor at Princeton, isn't a modern historian by trade but an authority on medieval literature who knows how to read a text and its context. His four manifestos are "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler's novel about the Soviet show ­trials, and three memoirs: "Out of the Night," by the pseudonymous "Jan Valtin," a mysterious ­Communist ­agitator; "I Chose ­Freedom," by the ­Soviet defector ­Victor Kravchenko; and "Witness," by Whittaker ­Chambers, best known to history as the man who ­accused Alger Hiss of ­espionage."

NY: No lemonade permit? That’ll cost ya, kid!: "Three sourpuss Parks Department agents put the squeeze on a 10-year-old girl in Riverside Park yesterday, slapping the tyke with a $50 ticket for hawking lemonade without a permit. Clementine Lee, who lives just blocks from the Upper West Side park, had dreamed of opening a lemonade stand since last year and took advantage of yesterday’s beautiful weather to set up shop. ‘It was such a hot day I figured people would want a cold drink,’ the aspiring juvenile juice-mogul told The Post. … But yesterday, after The Post contacted the department, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe announced that the ticket would be nixed.”

Obama wants the government to own your house : "The Obama administration, in a major shift on housing policy, is abandoning George W. Bush’s vision of creating an ‘ownership society’ and instead plans to pump $4.25 billion of economic stimulus money into creating tens of thousands of federally subsidized rental units in American cities. The idea is to pay for the construction of low-rise rental apartment buildings and town houses, as well as the purchase of foreclosed homes that can be refurbished and rented to low- and moderate-income families at affordable rates. Analysts say the approach takes a wrecking ball to Bush’s heavy emphasis on encouraging homeownership as a way to create national wealth and provide upward mobility for low- and working-class families, especially minorities. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan’s recalibration of federal housing policy, they said, shows that the Obama White House has acknowledged that not everyone can or should own a home.”

TN: State law lets thugs pack heat : “Some might question the wisdom of allowing Carlos Antwan Fletcher to carry a loaded handgun in public. He has a lengthy criminal arrest history, including being involved in a violent attack that sent a Metro Police officer to the hospital, a separate aggravated assault charge and various drug and gun arrests. Yet, the state has said it’s OK for the 28-year-old Nashville resident to carry a gun. … Fletcher’s past is not typical of the 237,000 Tennesseans who have obtained gun permits and renew them regularly. … But not touted, and often ignored, is a persistent group of Tennesseans with violent pasts who carry gun permits through loopholes, administrative mistakes and the realities of a court system where charges based on violent incidents can be reduced or eliminated in plea bargains.”

Making a noise about gun rights paid off: “The video of Chris Matthews badgering William Kostric says it all. He was all but foaming at the mouth over the audacity of a CITIZEN bringing a gun to a presidential event. I have to admit to being pretty amused at his outrage, since I figure that there were easily a thousand or more guns carried by citizens at that event the MSNBC cameras DIDN’T see — and I can confirm two from personal knowledge. Let's just think about this, though. The hoplophobes would dearly love to have seen this fellow hauled away. I’ll guarantee you that they tried to get the police to do exactly that. Portsmouth is not exactly one of the more conservative towns in New Hampshire, yet good citizen Kostric was not cuffed and shoved into a squad car. Nor, since he appeared on ‘Hardball’ later, was he ‘neutralized’ by a Secret Service sniper.”

Judges who would be king: "“When a federal judge ordered 17 Chinese Uighurs, detained at Guantanamo Bay, released into the United States last October, he took to its logical conclusion the judiciary’s increasingly bold effort to supervise the president and Congress. Justifying his ruling in the face of Congress’ exclusive constitutional power over when, which, and how foreign nationals may enter the United States, Judge Ricardo Urbina reasoned that ‘our system of checks and balances is designed to preserve the fundamental right of liberty.’ He saw his order as necessary to that end. But if he’s right, then the judiciary itself is the unchecked branch of government. And while judges have expanded their power before in our history, never have the claims to supremacy of some of them been so extreme.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/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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Obama: The "misinformation" king

And he accuses his opponents of misinformation! Typical Leftist projection. There's a message for him at Matthew 7:5

President Obama is fond of claiming that the debate over health care has been hijacked by special interest groups and other bad guys who are deluding the public by providing misinformation. It will be interesting, then, to see how (and if) he responds to this statement by the American College of Surgeons, which accuses Obama of "getting his facts completely wrong" when discussing some of the practices of surgeons:

The American College of Surgeons is deeply disturbed over the uninformed public comments President Obama continues to make about the high-quality care provided by surgeons in the United States. When the President makes statements that are incorrect or not based in fact, we think he does a disservice to the American people at a time when they want clear, understandable facts about health care reform. We want to set the record straight.

Yesterday during a town hall meeting, President Obama got his facts completely wrong. He stated that a surgeon gets paid $50,000 for a leg amputation when, in fact, Medicare pays a surgeon between $740 and $1,140 for a leg amputation. This payment also includes the evaluation of the patient on the day of the operation plus patient follow-up care that is provided for 90 days after the operation. Private insurers pay some variation of the Medicare reimbursement for this service.

Three weeks ago, the President suggested that a surgeon's decision to remove a child's tonsils is based on the desire to make a lot of money. That remark was ill-informed and dangerous, and we were dismayed by this characterization of the work surgeons do. Surgeons make decisions about recommending operations based on what's right for the patient.

We agree with the President that the best thing for patients with diabetes is to manage the disease proactively to avoid the bad consequences that can occur, including blindness, stroke, and amputation. But as is the case for a person who has been treated for cancer and still needs to have a tumor removed, or a person who is in a terrible car crash and needs access to a trauma surgeon, there are times when even a perfectly managed diabetic patient needs a surgeon. The President's remarks are truly alarming and run the risk of damaging the all-important trust between surgeons and their patients.

We assume that the President made these mistakes unintentionally, but we would urge him to have his facts correct before making another inflammatory and incorrect statement about surgeons and surgical care.

SOURCE

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Unamerican Protests are as American as Apple Pie

Un-American, disruptive, distorters of truth, manufactured outrage, Astroturf, hired guns, and Nazis are all terms used by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and their liberal allies to disparage those who are speaking out at healthcare town hall meetings. Rather than address the legitimate questions being raised about Obamacare, the power elite have chosen to attack with personal insults. This is a failed strategy and it runs the risk of creating serious, long-term alienation in the aggrieved victims.

What a difference six months can make. In February, according to the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll, Obama enjoyed the approval of 65 percent of Americans. Now after his bruising attacks on these activists, his approval rating has slumped to below 50 percent. Alienation is a two-way street.

Obama has not been helped by his allies. The speaker of the House actually wrote an op-ed in USA Today attacking people who voice their displeasure with Obama’s healthcare reform bill. “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.” What Pelosi fails to realize is that her side is the power elite in control of the process and she is the one “drowning out opposing views.”

The Democrats are rushing Obamacare through without taking time to listen. Americans expect elected officials at every level to give them a voice in the process. When those in power force their agenda down the throats of the people, resistance is natural. Listen to these town-hall speakers; they are frustrated by the arrogance.

No person or organization could pay to create an outpouring like America has experienced. Average American citizens are standing against this healthcare bill. These protests, as the tea party protests before them, are organically organized and coordinated by individuals who want their voices to be heard, community by community.

America is proud of patriots like Mike Sola, the man who wheeled his son with cerebral palsy up to challenge Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. America is proud of the man who got roughed up by thugs from the Pipefitters Union at the town hall of Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla. We are proud of Kenneth Gladney, the black man beaten up by SEIU members in Missouri; and Dr. Brian Hill, the urologist from Georgia who would not be silenced. The examples are too numerous of Americans doing their patriotic duty and participating in the democratic process.

They remind us of other dissenters throughout history — Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison, Carrie Nation, Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr. To say protests are un-American is to demonstrate limited knowledge of America’s grand history of protest.

The most desperate attempt by those in power is charging that these protestors are an out-of-control mob. Watch the video; grandma and grandpa may be agitated, but they don’t constitute a mob.

The irony in this discussion of grassroots activism and Astroturf is that when the liberals toss this charge around it is the pot calling the kettle black. A simple search of online help-wanted Web sites shows hundreds of jobs available as community organizers or Obamacare campaign activists. These left-wing activist organizations have received billions of dollars from George Soros alone. In stark contrast, the opponents of Obamacare are primarily organic and powered by volunteers who actually have real jobs.

America is indeed a nation of laws, but we as Americans have a moral obligation to speak out when our leaders are pushing costly and unconstitutional legislation. Obama and his allies are setting themselves up for future failure if they ignore the voices of their constituents and the will of the American people.

SOURCE

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PETA’s Latest Media Blitz Offends From Coast to Coast

The employees who dream up crazy media stunts at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) must be working overtime. Whether it’s terrorizing children outside restaurants in Albany, N.Y., mocking overweight beachgoers in Jacksonville, Fla., or protesting trauma training for military doctors in San Diego County, PETA is making it hard to ignore their offensive tactics this week.

First, protestors tried to scare Albany children off chicken nuggets with cartoons of a knife-wielding clown. Parents unanimously thought it was inappropriate and asked them to stay away from their kids, but of course, that’s never stopped PETA before.

Then a new billboard in Jacksonville greeted beachgoers with a drawing of an overweight woman next to the tagline “Save the Whales. Lose the Blubber: Go Vegetarian.” Several people complained that the billboard was offensive and should be taken down, but PETA hasn’t listened. (Nor have they accepted that vegetarianism isn’t a weight-loss strategy.)

Finally, in the news today is PETA’s protest in Southern California over the use of pigs in standard trauma training for Marine doctors at Camp Pendleton. As we told reporters in the area:

Many corpsman will face a time when he or she will have to pack a gunshot wound, stop a bleeding artery, or cut into a fellow soldier to restore a breathing airway. It is during the first attempts at such procedures that most mistakes are made. I’d rather see it happen on a pig than on one of our military men or women.

Placing animal lives over human lives is standard practice for the animal rights movement. But it’s especially upsetting to see radical activists apply their twisted priorities to U.S. Marines.

It’s also difficult to take PETA’s outrage seriously, when PETA has a long, sad history of euthanizing the vast majority of the animals in their care. In 2008 PETA killed 95 percent of the dogs and cats it took in, finding adoptive homes for just seven pets.

The common thread connecting these stunts is obvious: People do not matter to PETA. It’s fine to manipulate facts and scare children, mock overweight people, and put military lives at risk if it means being nicer to chickens and cows and pigs. Like schoolyard bullies, PETA thrives when the public responds to their media blitzes. But as hard as they make it, maybe if we ignore them, they will go away.

SOURCE

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Getting it wrong with Congress

In the post below, I suggest that by next year at this time, President Obama's audacious domestic agenda will have traumatized every congressional Democrat who depends on non-liberal voters for re-election. But Obama's fearless left-liberalism is not confined to domestic matters. Indeed, his hostility towards Israel is already unsettling congressional Democrats, including some who don't particularly need non-liberal votes.

Thus, 71 Senators, including a majority of Senate Democrats, sent a letter to President Obama calling on him to press Arab states to take major steps toward normalizing ties with Israel. The letter recognizes Israel's numerous unilateral steps towards peace and calls on "Arab leaders to take similar tangible steps to demonstrate their commitment to the peace process". It also lists specific ways in which Arab nations can do so, beginning with recognizing the State of Israel.

The letter does not say anything about Israel stopping natural growth in its settlements, the centerpiece of Obama's policy towards Israel. Left-wing Jewish-American pleaded with liberal Senators to make the inclusion of the settlement a condition of signing the letter, but a majority of Senate Democrats ignored this plea.

On the other hand, a majority of Jewish Senators (7 of 13) declined to sign. The non-signers were Russ Feingold, Dianne Feinstein, Al "Diaper Dandy" Franken, Herb Kohl, Frank Lautenberg, Carl Levin, and Bernie Sanders. The signers were Barbara Boxer, Ben Cardin, Charles Schumer, Arlen Specter, Ron Wyden, and of course Joe Lieberman.

Meanwhile, as David Hazony reports, House majority leader Steny Hoyer gave an interview to the Jerusalem Post praising Prime Minister Netanyahu and declaring that Congress has differentiated between East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. This, Hazony explains, is "nothing less than a slap in the face to the administration's explicit refusal to make such distinctions."

Obama's relations with Congress seem to be going off the track. On health care (and previously the stimulus legislation), he's a follower, to his detriment. On Israel, he's trying to lead, as is appropriate on foreign policy, but few are following.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Opposition to Obama= Racism: "The more President Obama’s approval ratings have slipped, the more his accomplices in the media have begun muttering about race. With the health care debate becoming full-blown opposition, the accusations are no longer subtle. While many of us figured this was inevitable should liberals start losing the substantive arguments, the pace at which it degenerated to this, and the ferocity of the attacks, are nonetheless startling. Protest, for the last 8 years lauded as the ultimate expression of patriotism, is now suddenly un-American, impolite, Nazi-like, crazy — and above all, racist. It started in earnest with Chris Matthews and Kathleen Parker on Hardball last week, blaming Southern White Males — and Sarah Palin — for dragging the Republican Party down a dark road of racism that was turning the rest of the country off. Matthews invited the “conservative” Parker because of a column she had written saying that racist Southern males were ruining the Republican Party, and that Sarah Palin was their heroine. Another Palin Derangement Syndrome sufferer, left wing moonbat Joan Walsh of Salon.com was also along for the bumpy ride."

Thousands in Atlanta protest health care reform: "A few thousand people gathered Saturday in downtown Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park to protest a health care overhaul led by the president and other Democratic leaders. The event, sponsored by the conservative Americans for Prosperity Foundation, was hosted by FreedomWorks chairman and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and conservative talk radio hosts Joel Aaron and Herman Cain. "What we have today is an assault on liberty that is larger than anything we have ever seen," Armey said, eliciting loud cheers from the crowd. As a congressman from Texas, Armey opposed health care reform efforts by the Clinton administration. According to news reports, he resigned from the lobbying firm DLA Piper this week because the firm's drug company clients complained about his efforts against the president's health care overhaul."

Obama Snagged in Digital Television Controversy: "More broken promises to report this week related to the Obama White House and the issue of transparency. On August 6, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to obtain documents related to the government's decision to delay the transition to digital television. The FCC refused to respond to Judicial Watch's initial FOIA request until - get this – "we receive instructions from the White House." Instructions from the White House on a routine FOIA request? This response is not only highly unusual, but it is also extremely troubling given that our FOIA request actually involves alleged corruption inside the Obama White House!"

Whining intellectuals: “Shortly after I meet a person with any sort of intellectual, literary, or artistic interest — which is often — there invariably comes a signaling ceremony: ritual words are uttered to the effect that the earth is dying (and polar bears are drowning in Antarctica, where there never were any bears); that President Bush is a retard who nevertheless managed to implement a diabolically clever plot to lead us into a war for oil; or even that the moronic Bush and his retinue of idiots cleverly contrived the internal explosion of the twin towers. At the very least, the other person signals, the world is going to pot because ’society’ is not doing enough to alleviate suffering or mere discomfort, or to save the many from the predictable consequences of their foolishness. The diffuse tenor of the signaling is that things are much worse today than they were yesterday and that tomorrow will be absolute hell. As for the day after tomorrow, there likely won’t be any, but you should worry about it anyway. There are so many reasons to be appalled that it might take the whole afternoon just to recite them — if I took my new acquaintance at his word.”

The tyranny of democracy: “Whenever I hear someone call America a democracy, I inform that person that we are actually living in a republic. I usually get a blank stare in return. Sometimes that person will ask what the difference is between a republic and a democracy. I explain that a republic is an indirect form of democracy where elective representatives vote on certain legislation. Most of the time I get another blank stare, but there are occasions where that person asks ‘why aren’t we a direct democracy, where everybody in the United States gets a vote?” These questions make me feel like I was the only one who paid attention in social studies. For starters, America is too massive to include everybody in the legislative process. There are towns that practice direct democracy, but they usually take place in areas with small populations. We also have to make sure that our rights are never compromised by the majority. To paraphrase Mel Gibson’s character in the Patriot, ‘An elected legislator can trample on a man’s rights just easy as any king.’”

Once upon a time the law did not concern itself with trivialities: "A Gainesville father has been arrested for hitting his daughter with a pizza slice. The 38-year-old man was arrested early Friday on a charge of child abuse without great harm, a third-degree felony. The man's name was being withheld to protect the identity of the victim. Deputy Nick Vickers says the man used racist and sexist terms when he asked his daughter to turn off her computer, and she fired back with some crude language of her own. Vickers says the father "intentionally threw a slice of pizza at the victim, striking her in the back of the neck, against her will." The girl, whose age was not available, called 911 and her father was arrested."

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

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/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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Orthodox Israeli Jews battle authorities in Sabbath wars

Although I am not of their persuasion at all, I have a sneaking sympathy for these guys. There is no doubt that they take the 10 Commandments seriously. There is a similar Sabbath-observance tradition in my Protestant background too, a tradition still observed in some parts of Scotland



A conflict over municipal car parks has turned into a fight for the soul of the city, writes Jason Koutsoukis in Jerusalem. Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews are expected to clash with riot police again here this evening in the latest protest against the opening of the city's municipal car parks on the Jewish Sabbath. The decision by the secular Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, to open the car parks has enraged the city's ultra-Orthodox population and has turned into an effective battle for the soul of the city.

''If we win this fight, then Jerusalem is ours,'' says Yoelish Krausz, an ultra-Orthodox protest organiser. Known in Hebrew as Haredim, or those who fear God, Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox population numbers about 200,000, or 32 per cent of the city's Jewish population. ''Jewish people who choose to violate Jewish law in private is one thing but for the public authorities, who are Jewish and who are in control of city, to violate the Sabbath, that is a direct challenge to the word of God,'' Mr Krausz says.

Fearful that the opening of the car parks will lead to the widespread opening of shopping malls and other desecration of the Sabbath, Mr Krausz maintains that the protests will continue every Saturday until the municipality reverses its policy. Speaking to the Herald from what he says is the war room of the protest movement, a ramshackle vaulted chamber in the heart of the Mea Shearim neighbourhood, Mr Krausz says his ultimate goal is to bring about a change in the way Jerusalem is governed.

The fight over the car parks is not the only source of tension between the Haredim and the local authorities. Last month the arrest of an ultra-Orthodox mother accused of starving her son sparked riots across the city. ''We want international sovereignty for Jerusalem,'' Mr Krausz said. ''This is a city that belongs to everyone, to Jews, to Christians and to the Arabs. The worst thing is that it be governed by Jews who disobey God.''

Hanging on a coat-hanger from the ceiling is a hessian sack fashioned into a crude tunic, a symbol of mourning that Mr Krausz said he wore every year on Israel's independence day. ''We want the Zionists out,'' said Mr Krausz, whose first language is Yiddish and who speaks in Hebrew only as a means of broadcasting his message.

Mr Krausz, who is a member of the Edah Haredit sect of Haredi Jews, which strongly opposes Zionism and the state of Israel, said he spoke for 9000 families in Jerusalem - or about 90,000 people in total. At 37 and already a father of 11, his family came to Jerusalem from Hungary after the end of World War II. ''I accept nothing from the government, no financial support. I have no health insurance, I have no identification papers. When my children are born I pay the hospital 9000 shekels ($2800) so that I am not in their debt.''

But just as Mr Krausz and his followers seek to exert maximum pressure on the Jerusalem municipality, the mayor, Mr Barkat, is under enormous pressure from secular and mainstream religious Jews not to cave into the Haredim. ''I call them the Jewish Taliban,'' said Tzvi Fisher, 53, a secular protester outside the Jerusalem municipal offices this week....

More HERE

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Palin Wins: If she's dim and Obama is brilliant, how did he lose the argument to her?

An excerpt from TARANTO below:

The first we heard about Sarah Palin's "death panels" comment was in a conversation last Friday with an acquaintance who was appalled by it. Our interlocutor is not a Democratic partisan but a high-minded centrist who deplores extremist rhetoric whatever the source. We don't even know if he has a position on ObamaCare. From his description, it sounded to us as though Palin really had gone too far.

A week later, it is clear that she has won the debate. President Obama himself took the comments of the former governor of the 47th-largest state seriously enough to answer them directly in his so-called town-hall meeting Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H. As we noted Wednesday, he was callous rather than reassuring, speaking glibly--to audience laughter--about "pulling the plug on grandma."

The Los Angeles Times reports that Palin has won a legislative victory as well: "A Senate panel has decided to scrap the part of its healthcare bill that in recent days has given rise to fears of government "death panels," with one lawmaker suggesting the proposal was just too confusing" ....

One can hardly deny that Palin's reference to "death panels" was inflammatory. But another way of putting that is that it was vivid and attention-getting. Level-headed liberal commentators who favor more government in health care, including Slate's Mickey Kaus and the Washington Post's Charles Lane, have argued that the end-of-life provision in the bill is problematic--acknowledging in effect (and, in Kaus's case, in so many words) that Palin had a point.

If you believe the media, Sarah Palin is a mediocre intellect, if even that, while President Obama is brilliant. So how did she manage to best him in this debate? Part of the explanation is that disdain for Palin reflects intellectual snobbery more than actual intellect. Still, Obama's critics, in contrast with Palin's, do not deny the president's intellectual aptitude. Intelligence, however, does not make one immune from hubris.

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Obama's scurrilous amputation nonsense

His invocation of the "prevention" mantra shows once again that he is a shallow thinker who does not know what he is talking about

When we caught President Obama in the act of sliming America's physicians at his dog-and-pony show in Portsmouth, he was touting the superior virtues of preventive care over treatment. Remember, this guy is smart. Why didn't we think of that?

Obama illustrated his insight with an example. If you are borderline diabetic, you need to be told to change your diet and drop a few pounds. Your primary care physician won't tell you this, according to Obama, because he doesn't get paid enough for counseling. Moreover, he seems to be in cahoots with the surgeon who is raking in the big bucks performing amputations at a rate of up to $50,000 per foot. Thus the epidemic of footless citizens all around us. Again, why didn't we think of that?

Charles Krauthammer explains the rationale underlying Obama's invocation of preventive medicine. It is the deus ex machina come down to resolve the internal contradictions of Obamacare. Obamacare will pay for itself by reducing the epidemic of costly amputations. It will save money, and also save lives. So we'll be hearing a lot more about it.

As Krauthammer notes, however, there is at least one problem with this scenario. Krauthammer quotes CBO Director Doug Elmendorf: "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness." But has the CBO factored in the increased productivity of borderline diabetics whose feet will be saved under the regime of Obamacare?

The more salient question is whether there is anything that can be done to prevent Obama from invoking prevention as the magic solution to the internal contradictions of Obamacare. The guy is like a flim-flam man selling a patent medicine. Unfortunately, modern medicine hasn't yet devised a cure for deceit and demagoguery.

SOURCE

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BrookesNews Update

The American economy: Japan redux? : Obama is the most interventionist president since Roosevelt and has already revealed a deep hostility to the free market. He will have been the only one since the 1930s to launch a barrage of taxes and regulations during a recession. His proposal to double the capital gains tax, for instance, amounts to a huge tax increase on investment and technical progress. These policies pose a clear danger to economic recovery
Misreading the Great Depression causes confusion about the jobless and Obama's spending binge : Evidence that government spending is not a cure for unemployment and recessions is overwhelming. Unfortunately this has led some people to believe that such spending prevents unemployment from falling. It does not. What it does is distort the structure of prices and production to the detriment of the economy
Bad monetary policy destabilised exchange rates : "The one thing - money supply - that should have been tightly regulated was not. Naturally the consequences of the central banks' reckless monetary policy was laid at the feet of the free market
Are we in America or Amerika?: Democrats, bloodied over their attempt to force health care 'reform' on Americans, are looking more unreasonable and hysterical by the day. This isn't healthy for the republic. Their increasing anxiety and fear of failure are typified in the words of Obama who wants Republicans to keep their mouths shut while he 'fixes' health care
How a carbon tax would devastate farming : The Government's The ETS (carbon tax) is really an Employment Termination Scheme that will savage living standards
The Democrats astroturf fantasies: Democrats forget that America is still a middle-class conservative country, whose citizens still admire hard work, honesty and truthfulness, ideals not common in the Democrat ranks. Democrats lie to themselves, they lie to each other and they lie to the taxpayer. They make no sense; assume we are fools, stacking one falsehood on top of another
The end of white guilt? : Is Martin Luther King's dream finally becoming a reality - are Americans now be free judge a man according to the content of his character instead of the color of his skin?

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ELSEWHERE

France, Germany Fend Off Recession: "Fresh signs of a nascent economic recovery came from hard-hit Europe on Thursday, with Germany and France unexpectedly becoming the first major industrialized nations to officially pull out of the global recession. Though their recoveries were modest by virtually any standard and may yet stall in the months ahead, the surprising bounce back to growth in Europe's largest economies comes on the heels of steadily rising economic optimism across the globe. In Germany, economic activity jumped 0.3 percent from April to June compared with the previous three months after a 3.5 percent quarterly contraction in the beginning of the year. France also reported growth of 0.3 percent in the quarter. With many analysts also predicting a "jobless recovery" in the United States, such as the one following the 2001 recession, a projected global turnaround later this year may be more visible in statistical calculations than in consumer pocketbooks around the world."

GOP thinks the unthinkable: Victory in 2010: "It's a possibility many Republicans speak of only in whispers and Democrats are just now beginning to face. After passionate and contentious fights over health care, the environment, and taxes, could Democrats lose big -- really big -- in next year's elections? Ask them about it, and many Democrats will point to the continued personal popularity of Barack Obama. But that's not the story. "I think what's going to happen is Obama's going to be fine, and the Democrats in Congress are going to get their asses kicked in 2010," says one Democratic strategist who prefers not to be named. "This is following a curve like the Clinton years: take on really controversial things early, fail, or succeed partially, ask Democrats to take really tough votes, and then lose. A lot of guys are going to get beat, but the president has time to recover." Most Republican hope focuses on the House of Representatives, but even there they have a huge job ahead. Democrats control 256 seats, and Republicans 178. Forty seats would have to change hands for Republicans to take charge. On the other hand, 52 seats turned over when the GOP won the House in 1994."

The Airborne Laser scores a hit, even as its budget is being cut: "Never has Ronald Reagan's dream of layered missile defenses—Star Wars, for short—been as politically out of favor as in the Age of Obama. Nor as close, at least technologically, to becoming realized. The latest encouraging news came Thursday courtesy of the Misssile Defense Agency. The Airborne Laser prototype aircraft this week found, tracked, engaged and simulated an intercept with a missile seconds after liftoff. It was the first time the Agency used an "instrumented" missile to confirm the laser works as expected. Next up this fall will be the first live attempt to bring down a ballistic missile, but this test confirms how far along this innovative effort has come. Along with space-based weapons, the Airborne Laser is the next defense frontier. The modified Boeing 747 is supposed to send an intense beam of light over hundreds of miles to destroy missiles in the "boost phase," before they can release decoys and at a point in their trajectory when they would fall back down on enemy territory. It's a pioneering use of directed energy in defense. The laser complements the sea- and ground-based missile defenses that keep proving themselves in tests."

Obama disowning attacks on insurers: "President Obama said at a town-hall meeting here that he does not intend to vilify insurance companies as he tours the West this weekend to persuade Americans to back his proposed overhaul to the nation's health care system. Marc Montgomery, a 52-year-old insurance broker from Helena and one of nine people the president called on for questions, chided Mr. Obama for his recent decision to focus his bid for a health care overhaul on the failings of the insurance industry. Why, Mr. Montgomery asked, was the president "vilifying" insurance brokers? "That's a fair question," Mr. Obama conceded. "My intent is not to vilify insurance companies ... What we do have to make sure of is that certain practices that are very tough on people, that those practices change." The president said that some insurance companies are working with him to shape the legislation, but, he complained, others are standing in the way. And for no good reason, he added, arguing that the only way to make an overhaul work in the best interest of the insurance industry is to put the tens of millions of uninsured Americans under their umbrella".

Hamas as moderates! " Islamic radicals from an al Qaeda-inspired group battled Hamas security in the Gaza Strip on Friday in shootouts that killed at least 13 people. The fighting began when Hamas forces surrounded a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, were holed up, including some armed with suicide belts and rifles, according to residents of the area. Jund Ansar Allah and a number of other small, shadowy radical groups seek to enforce an even stricter version of Islamic law in Gaza and have criticized Hamas for not doing so. They are also upset that the Hamas regime has honored a cease-fire with Israel for the past seven months. Hamas has said it seeks to set an example and does not impose its views on others. It also says its violent struggle is against Israel, not the Western world. The more radical groups' calls for global Jihad undermines Hamas' attempt to appear more moderate to Western eyes."

Is fear of our government irrational? : “Too often now when some people voice fear of the American government, whether it is its policy involving Homeland Security or health care reform, one is accused of being irrational or paranoid. It is that familiar ‘It can’t happen here’ syndrome at work. But there are good reasons not to dismiss such concerns under current circumstances. When society is considered a collective — akin to a team, only not voluntarily established like most sport teams are — those who see themselves as its leaders and charged with selecting the goals everyone must pursue, can quite easily slip into a mode of thinking that construes all opposition a form of betrayal.”

A fork in the road is coming: “Over the past couple of days, we’ve seen arguments about national health care erupt into incidents of local violence. Yes, we yelled at each other bit back in 2005 or so, when Social Security reform was on the table. But now we’re seeing thugs in SEIU T-shirts showing up and throwing punches at people who are gathered to demonstrate against the current version of health care reform. We’ve seen a local Democratic Party apparatchik shove a demonstrator in the face. Billy Beck has often said it, and now he’s saying it again: ‘You have always heard it here first: All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war.’ At this rate, I’m afraid that it’s going to become painfully obvious that a large number of people in this country are not going to politely doff their caps to the local SEIU grandees, once they’ve learned their lessons like good Germans. Quite the reverse, in fact I’ve also said before — and every time I do, people like Oliver Willis call me crazy for saying it — we’re preparing this country to split apart.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/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

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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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