Jew Flu

Every now and again I feel the need to say something about Jews. It must be some sort of craziness in me because there is nothing to be gained by it. So I will keep it brief this time. Yesterday I put up a link to an article about Jew Flu -- self-hating Jews. It is an interesting article but it lacks perspective. Jew Flu seems to me to be just another variety of Leftism. American Leftists hate the world they live in -- which mostly means America -- and Israeli Leftists hate the world they live in -- which is mostly Israel. And many NYC Jews just don't like being part of such a phenomenally-hated group and do their best to distance themselves from that group.

So why do some people hate the world they live in? There could be many reasons -- being born ugly, for instance. But I think that there are two major reasons. I discuss them here at length.

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7 stories Barack Obama doesn't want told

Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.

No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.

A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.

The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators. But they all are serious threats to Obama, if they gain enough currency to become the dominant frame through which people interpret the president’s actions and motives.

Here are seven storylines Obama needs to worry about:

He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money

Economists and business leaders from across the ideological spectrum were urging the new president on last winter when he signed onto more than a trillion in stimulus spending and bank and auto bailouts during his first weeks in office. Many, though far from all, of these same people now agree that these actions helped avert an even worse financial catastrophe.

Along the way, however, it is clear Obama underestimated the political consequences that flow from the perception that he is a profligate spender. He also misjudged the anger in middle America about bailouts with weak and sporadic public explanations of why he believed they were necessary.

The flight of independents away from Democrats last summer — the trend that recently hammered Democrats in off-year elections in Virginia — coincided with what polls show was alarm among these voters about undisciplined big government and runaway spending. The likely passage of a health care reform package criticized as weak on cost-control will compound the problem.

Obama understands the political peril, and his team is signaling that he will use the 2010 State of the Union address to emphasize fiscal discipline. The political challenge, however, is an even bigger substantive challenge—since the most convincing way to project fiscal discipline would be actually to impose spending reductions that would cramp his own agenda and that of congressional Democrats.

Too much Leonard Nimoy

People used to make fun of Bill Clinton’s misty-eyed, raspy-voiced claims that, “I feel your pain.”

The reality, however, is that Clinton’s dozen years as governor before becoming president really did leave him with a vivid sense of the concrete human dimensions of policy. He did not view programs as abstractions — he viewed them in terms of actual people he knew by name.

Obama, a legislator and law professor, is fluent in describing the nuances of problems. But his intellectuality has contributed to a growing critique that decisions are detached from rock-bottom principles.

Both Maureen Dowd in The New York Times and Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post have likened him to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.

The Spock imagery has been especially strong during the extended review Obama has undertaken of Afghanistan policy. He’ll announce the results on Tuesday. The speech’s success will be judged not only on the logic of the presentation but on whether Obama communicates in a more visceral way what progress looks like and why it is worth achieving. No soldier wants to take a bullet in the name of nuance.

That’s the Chicago Way

This is a storyline that’s likely taken root more firmly in Washington than around the country. The rap is that his West Wing is dominated by brass-knuckled pols.

It does not help that many West Wing aides seem to relish an image of themselves as shrewd, brass-knuckled political types. In a Washington Post story this month, White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, referring to most of Obama’s team, said, “We are all campaign hacks.”

The problem is that many voters took Obama seriously in 2008 when he talked about wanting to create a more reasoned, non-partisan style of governance in Washington. When Republicans showed scant interest in cooperating with Obama at the start, the Obama West Wing gladly reverted to campaign hack mode.

The examples of Chicago-style politics include their delight in public battles with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (There was also a semi-public campaign of leaks aimed at Greg Craig, the White House counsel who fell out of favor.) In private, the Obama team cut an early deal — to the distaste of many congressional Democrats — that gave favorable terms to the pharmaceutical lobby in exchange for their backing his health care plans.

The lesson that many Washington insiders have drawn is that Obama wants to buy off the people he can and bowl over those he can’t. If that perception spreads beyond Washington this will scuff Obama’s brand as a new style of political leader.

More HERE

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The plan to silence dissent

There is no shortage of conspiracy theories that elicit a chuckle or the rolling of eyeballs. "September 11th was an inside job." "The war on Iraq was launched to enrich Halliburton." "AIDS was created to annihilate the black community." But should we be alarmed when a theory appears plausible in an age when the previously unthinkable occurs on a regular basis?

"When the heavy hand of the State is imposed on the press, all of us lose," Barack Obama told a group of Kenyan journalists during a 2006 trip to Africa. He continued, "The media does not have a formal role in the Government, but it serves a critical function in providing information to the public so that they can hold the Government accountable."

That was then and this is now. Apparently, a present-day President Obama has a different view -- a wild-eyed view -- of a free press than did a Senator Obama now that some outlets hold him, his administration and his political allies accountable.

The Obama Administration declared war on the minority of media outlets that do not worship the political left's newest false idol immediately after Obama was sworn in. Three days into his presidency Obama warned Congressional Republicans against listening to radio host Rush Limbaugh. Amazingly, the president who offered to sit down with the thug leaders of rogue nations, such as Iran's Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, without any preconditions believed an immense threat was posed by a radio talk show host originally from southeastern Missouri.

Then the White House launched a jihad against Fox News Channel and its hosts by first boycotting appearances on the cable channel and then second, by engaging in name-calling and leveling baseless allegations. More recently, the White House brazenly attempted to marginalize Fox News Channel by enlisting the support of the heretofore compliant news media. Fortunately, competing news outlets found the backbone -- if only temporarily -- to put the kibosh on Obama's attempts to blacklist FNC from the White House press pool.

All of the Obama Administration bluster may have been just that. Supporters of talk radio breathed a sigh of relief earlier this year when an amendment introduced by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) passed with an 87-11 Senate vote that seemingly ended an attempt to implement the so-called "Fairness Doctrine." The inaptly named "Fairness Doctrine" is nothing less than government-imposed speech codes. Although the doctrine would not have likely survived Constitutional scrutiny, radio hosts and listeners alike thought a major bullet was dodged.

So, are all threats averted? Perhaps not. There may be another plan afoot to silence dissent. Instead of having the government decide which program merited "the other side" of the argument, what if there was a plan to shut down the free component of talk radio and broadcast TV?

More than 150 bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission are in the final stages of planning how to deliver broadband Internet to the estimated 3-6 million people who do not have access. A formal plan will be unveiled in early 2010 but one proposal being discussed is deeply alarming as it threatens First Amendment freedoms.

The FCC is contemplating the notion that some or all of the electromagnetic spectrum occupied by radio and TV broadcasters is the perfect real estate to launch a national wireless broadband service. The price tag is $350 billion. That is as much as nearly $120,000 per person to be connected. Apparently, the FCC has not heard of the "$99 Triple Play."

Evicted broadcasters would no longer offer free, over-the-air radio and TV, but would instead be confined to subscription platforms such as cable and satellite or the Internet. This aspect of the plan is indeed troubling. The public would be required to pay for their news, information and entertainment services and there would be no free option.

However, it gets worse. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced a measure this year that would allow the president to disconnect private broadband users during an undefined national cyber emergency.

One provision of S.773 would grant the president authority to "declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic" including that on private systems designated as critical. Not surprisingly, the bill gives the president wide discretion in designating private systems as "critical." Would an H1N1 pandemic qualify as such an emergency allowing the president to shut down voices opposing his socialized medicine plans?

Another provision of the bill is to federally-license certain information technology professionals making it illegal for those not holding such a license to access any IT systems. Obviously, the most efficient way to control the nation's broadband platforms is to control those who operate them.

Connecting the dots in this fashion would not have been contemplated as recently as one year ago. But today, no one is rolling their eyes.

SOURCE

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On reducing inequality

Let us imagine that you are concerned about the amount of inequality there is in UK society. You wish to reduce said inequality. I might not (in fact don't) share that concern but even as the interested amateur that I am as an economist (ie, not an economist, simply an interested amateur) I might be able to offer some guidance as to how you might do this.

The first observation would be that some countries have indeed lowered inequality (and relative poverty) so to reach your ambition (which, remember, I don't particularly share) we could go and look at what they have done. The poster children here are of course the Nordic countries. And the most important thing we can say about their taxation systems is that they are very differrent indeed from what is usually proposed here:

....the countries that have been the most successful in reducing inequality don't have particularly progressive tax structures. The real gains in reducing inequality are achieved by means of well-designed transfers.

Indeed, the Nordic tax structures are not particularly more progressive than the one we currently have in the UK. Yes, they have high marginal income tax rates but they also tend to have lower capital taxation, lower corporate taxation and higher VAT than we do. That is, they have concentrated on growing the goose, taxing consumption more than we do, so as to provide the revenues to make the transfers.

Which leads us to the ritual calls here for the rich to be paying more tax, for companies to pay "their fair share" and so on, that our tax system must be made more progressive. But why, if we know that the way to reduce inequality is not through the tax system at all, should we do that?

Shouldn't we be copying the systems which really do reduce inequality?

As I say, I'm not an advocate of this inequality reduction in the first place. But for those who are there's something very odd indeed about their insistence not to do what has worked elsewhere: cut corporation tax, cut capital taxation and raise VAT. Why is that?

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

A small update: Yesterday I attributed the saying: "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged last night" to a NYC police chief. Nobody seems to be sure who said it first but I have noted that top vote for the originator seems to be Frank Rizzo, who rose from police chief to Mayor of Philadelphia.

Obama to detail big troop increase in Afghanistan: "After months of debate, President Barack Obama will spell out a costly Afghanistan war expansion to a skeptical public Tuesday night, coupling an infusion of as many as 35,000 more troops with a vow that there will be no endless US commitment. His first orders have already been made: at least one group of Marines who will be in place by Christmas. Obama has said that he prefers "not to hand off anything to the next president" and that his strategy will "put us on a path toward ending the war." But he doesn't plan to give any more exact timetable than that Tuesday night. Obama's war escalation includes sending 30,000 to 35,000 more American forces into Afghanistan in a graduated deployment over the next year, on top of the 71,000 already there. There also will be a fresh focus on training Afghan forces to take over the fight and allow the Americans to leave. Even before explaining his decision, Obama told the military to begin executing the force increases. The commander in chief gave the deployment orders Sunday night, during an Oval Office meeting in which he told key military and White House advisers of his final decision. At least one group of Marines is expected to deploy within two or three weeks of Obama's announcement and will be in Afghanistan by Christmas, military officials said. Larger deployments will begin early next year."

Privatize the Post Office!: "Weeks ago, in the debate over whether to euthanize what’s left of freedom in American medicine, President Obama made a stunning concession about the so-called ‘public option’ being proposed. Hoping to assure attendees of a townhall meeting that private insurers would not be threatened by the public option, he said, ‘if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? … It’s the post office that’s always having problems.’ Yes. The post office. The ‘public option’ in mail delivery: chronically in financial trouble; chronically over budget; chronically being bailed out by taxpayers. So, don’t worry, everybody! Government expansion into our medical delivery system will be just as lumbering and inefficient as the post office is in our mail and package delivery system. Er, good point, Mr. President.”

House wealth exceeds $1 billion: "Despite a recession that depleted bank accounts nationwide in 2008, House lawmakers can still claim a tidy nest egg: a combined minimum net worth of at least $1 billion. According to a Roll Call analysis of the financial disclosures filed by House Members — 441 records comprising thousands of pages filed by Representatives, nonvoting Delegates and the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico — the chamber boasts assets totaling at least $1.13 billion, while its minimum debt tallies a relatively minor $125.69 million. And the real value of their assets is probably more than twice the reported totals.”

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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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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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Leftist psychologists prove that a conservative is someone who has been mugged by reality

It was of course Irving Kristol who first said that a neoconservative is someone who has been mugged by reality and it was some NYC police chief decades back who said that "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged last night"

So it comes as no surprise that two psychologists have just done some research which showed that people warmed to GWB and military spending after 9/11. The 9/11 events were a rather large lump of reality. And both GWB and military spending offered some prospect of coping with it.

The psychologists concerned explained their results by some babble about "motivated social cognition" but I think Irving Kristol's formulation is a lot simpler and clearer. I have in any case dealt with the "motivated social cognition" nonsense in psychology some time back.

The article is "Conservative Shift among Liberals and Conservatives Following 9/11/01" by Paul R. Nail & Ian McGregor. The journal abstract is below:

Political orientation and political attitudes were measured in two independent adult samples. One sample was taken several months before the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01; the other, shortly after. Liberal and conservative participants alike reported more conservative attitudes following 9/11/01 than before. This conservative shift was strongest on two items with the greatest relevance to 9/11/01: George W. Bush and Increasing Military Spending. Marginally significant conservative shifts were observed on two other items (Conservatives, Socialized Medicine), and the direction of change on eight of eight items was in a conservative direction. These results provide support for the motivated social cognition model of conservatism (Jost et al., 2003) over predictions derived from terror management theory (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1992).

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The bowing Obama reflects a fading Obama

Last week, two points in an emerging pointillist picture of a White House leaking support-not the support of voters, though polls there show steady decline, but in two core constituencies, Washington's Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment.

From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, a fiery denunciation of-and warning for-the White House. In a piece in Politico on the firing of White House counsel Greg Craig, Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, "a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man." They once held "an unromantically high opinion of Obama," and were key to his rise, but now they are concluding that the president isn't "the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought."

She scored "the Chicago crowd," which she characterized as "a distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team." The White House, Ms. Drew says, needs adult supervision-"an older, wiser head, someone with a bit more detachment."

As I read Ms. Drew's piece, I was reminded of something I began noticing a few months ago in bipartisan crowds. I would ask Democrats how they thought the president was doing. In the past they would extol, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, his virtues. Increasingly, they would preface their answer with, "Well, I was for Hillary."

This in turn reminded me of a surprising thing I observe among loyal Democrats in informal settings and conversations: No one loves Barack Obama. Half the American people say they support him, and Democrats are still with him. But there were Bill Clinton supporters who really loved him. George W. Bush had people who loved him. A lot of people loved Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. But no one seems to love Mr. Obama now; they're not dazzled and head over heels. That's gone away.

He himself seems a fairly chilly customer; perhaps in turn he inspires chilly support. But presidents need that rock-bottom 20% who, no matter what's happening-war, unemployment-adore their guy, have complete faith in him, and insist that you love him, too. They're the hard 20 a president always keeps. Nixon kept them! Obama probably has a hard 20 too, but whatever is keeping them close, it doesn't seem to be love.

Just as stinging as Elizabeth Drew on domestic matters was Leslie Gelb on Mr. Obama and foreign policy in the Daily Beast. Mr. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and fully plugged into the Democratic foreign-policy establishment, wrote this week that the president's Asia trip suggested "a disturbing amateurishness in managing America's power." The president's Afghanistan review has been "inexcusably clumsy," Mideast negotiations have been "fumbling." So unsuccessful was the trip that Mr. Gelb suggested Mr. Obama take responsibility for it "as President Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs." He added that rather than bowing to emperors-Mr. Obama "seems to do this stuff spontaneously and inexplicably"-he should begin to bow to "the voices of experience" in Washington. When longtime political observers start calling for wise men, a president is in trouble.

It also raises a distressing question: Who are the wise men and women now? Who are the Robert Lovetts, Chip Bohlens and Robert Strausses who can came in to help a president in trouble right his ship? America seems short of wise men, or short on those who are universally agreed to be wise. I suppose Vietnam was the end of that, but establishments exist for a reason, and it is hard for a great nation to function without the presence of a group of "the oldest and wisest" who can not only give sound advice but help engineer how that advice will be reported and received.

Mr Obama is in a hard place. Health care hangs over him, and if he is lucky he will lose a close vote in the Senate. The common wisdom that he can't afford to lose is exactly wrong-he can't afford to win with such a poor piece of legislation. He needs to get the issue behind him, vow to fight another day, and move on.

Afghanistan hangs over him, threatening the unity of his own Democratic congressional base. There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Mr. Obama's rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demand baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end. Which gets us back to the bow.

In a presidency, a picture or photograph becomes iconic only when it seems to express something people already think. When Gerald Ford was spoofed for being physically clumsy, it took off. The picture of Ford losing his footing and tumbling as he came down the steps of Air Force One became a symbol. There was a reason, and it wasn't that he was physically clumsy. He was not only coordinated but graceful. He'd been a football star at the University of Michigan and was offered contracts by the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers. But the picture took off because it expressed the growing public view that Ford's policies were bumbling and stumbling. The picture was iconic of a growing political perception.

The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic, and they would not be if they weren't playing off a growing perception. If the pictures had been accompanied by headlines from Asia saying "Tough Talks Yield Big Progress" or "Obama Shows Muscle in China," the bowing pictures might be understood this way: "He Stoops to Conquer: Canny Obama shows elaborate deference while he subtly, toughly, quietly advances his nation's interests." But that's not how the pictures were received or will be remembered.

It is true that Mr. Obama often seems not to have a firm grasp of -or respect for- protocol, of what has been done before and why, and of what divergence from the traditional might imply. And it is true that his political timing was unfortunate. When a great nation is feeling confident and strong, a surprising presidential bow might seem gracious. When it is feeling anxious, a bow will seem obsequious.

The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic not for those reasons, however, but because they express a growing political perception, and that is that there is something amateurish about this presidency, something too ad hoc and highly personalized about it, something . . . incompetent, at least in its first year.

It is hard to be president, and White Houses under pressure take refuge in thoughts that become mantras. When the previous White House came under mounting criticism from 2005 through '08, they comforted themselves by thinking, They criticized Lincoln, too. You could see their minds whirring: Lincoln was criticized, Lincoln was great, ergo we are great. But of course just because they say you're stupid doesn't mean you're Lincoln.

One senses the Obama people are doing the Lincoln too, and adding to it the consoling thought that this is only the first year, we've got three years to go, we can change perceptions, don't worry. But they should worry. You can get tagged, typed and pegged your first year. Gerald Ford did, and Ronald Reagan too, more happily. The first year is when indelible impressions are made and iconic photos emerge.

SOURCE

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Obama as a one-trick pony

The Democrats are getting what they asked for. In 2004, they tried a trick. If we nominate a man who won the Purple Heart in Vietnam, they thought, we will win. Never mind that John Kerry disgraced himself in the aftermath of his service in Vietnam, making unjust charges against his brothers-in-arms and resolutely thereafter refusing to apologize to those whom he had slandered. Never mind that he had no executive experience. Never mind that, as a US Senator, he was -- to say the least -- undistinguished. They wanted to win; and they gave not a thought to what sort of President he might be.

In 2008, the Democrats did the same thing. They had on their hands an inexperienced, recently minted US Senator from Illinois who was -- as Joe Biden put it in a candid remark that typifies his propensity for speaking his mind without first thinking about the consequences -- "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Never mind, they thought, Obama's long-standing connections with William Ayers, the unrepentant mastermind of a domestic terrorist bombing campaign in the 1970s. Never mind Obama's close association with the racist demagogue Jeremiah Wright. Never mind his lack of executive experience, his unfamiliarity with the private sector, and his ignorance of the ways of Washington. With the help of the pliable press, he could be sold -- and Americans would congratulate themselves on their lack of racial prejudice if they voted for him.

Now comes the reckoning. For Barack Obama seems to be a one-trick pony. He is very good at delivering a speech if he has a teleprompter at hand, and the first and even the second time that you hear him, you will be impressed. If you bother later to read and re-read the speech you will perceive its emptiness. But few will do that, and by the time that they do, it will be too late.

That is one problem. The other is that Obama's one trick cannot often be played. As we have seen over the last few months, as he has tried to play this trick over and over and over again, the more we see of him, the less we are impressed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt never held his fireside chats more than three times a year. How many times has Obama demanded airtime from the networks in the last ten months? I shudder to think.

There is a third problem. Once in office, presidents are judged more by what they do than by what they say and how well they say it, and Barack Obama is in the process of doing a great deal of harm. His "stimulus" bill was a transparent act of grand larceny, stealing from the future in order to enrich Democratic Party constituencies now. His unlawful handling of GM and Chrysler defrauded the bondholders, rewarded the intransigents in the UAW who were largely responsible for the auto-makers' decline, and made it harder for American corporations to borrow money.

And every version of the health care reform that he backs threatens to bankrupt the country and force us to raise taxes on a grand scale. If investors remain on the sidelines, if employers are reluctant to hire, and if, in consequence, the economic recover is anemic and virtually jobless, it is to a considerable extent Obama's fault.

The simple fact that he has done nothing to rein in a patronage-mad Democratic congress is a sign of his fecklessness as President. As David Ignatius points out in today's Washington Post, in 2010, there is going to be hell to pay -- especially in Democratic strongholds with especially high unemployment, such as Michigan, Nevada, Rhode Island, and California.

There is in this a lesson. In 2012, the Republicans should nominate for the presidency an individual with executive experience -- who has negotiated with legislators, and who has had to make decisions and take responsibility for the consequences. Among those available, they should choose a principled defender of constitutional government and a skilled manager who recognizes the ultimate dependence of the public sector on growth in the private sector of the economy and who thinks of himself in the international arena as the guardian of American interests.

More HERE

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Roundup from ICJS

Israel is Europe's blind spot
Carroll: Making Israel disappear
Hackers expose climate brawl
Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy
Collaborators in the War Against the Jews: Sara Roy
Israel feels tarnished as critics apply apartheid tag
Nuts
Letter to ABC re John Safran
The Jihad Seminar of Major Nidal M. Hasan
The unreasoning fearmongers
The Jew Flu: The strange illness of Jewish anti-Semitism
Not the voice to sell our values
Abbas threatens to dismantle PA
Islamists impose sharia by stealth
Migration: the true story

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ELSEWHERE

Heh! Harvard ignored warnings about risky investments: "It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard's endowment, and Lawrence Summers, then the school's president, would face off in a heated debate. The topic: cash and how the university was managing - or mismanaging - its basic operating funds. Through the first half of this decade, Meyer repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions of dollars in cash, according to people present for the discussions, investing almost all of it with the endowment's risky mix of stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and private equity. Meyer's successor, Mohamed El-Erian, would later sound the same warnings to Summers, and to Harvard financial staff and board members."

National ID is the ultimate victimless crime: "I am opposed to universal governmental ID, partly because such a system is inconceivable without mandatory enforcement and the punishment of those who commit no crime other than the created one of refusing to carry government papers. Declining to put a piece of paper in your wallet must be the ultimate `victimless crime' . after all, who is harmed by the absence of a paper on your person? Authorities will argue back: society is harmed because in order secure society's safety, they must know who you are. One objection to this argument is that it is a slippery slope. If it proves anything, then it proves far too much because there is no intrusion into privacy that cannot justify once you agree with principle that minding your own business endangers others."

Some old stuff was pretty good: "Retro clothes are not vintage clothes. Retro clothes are new-made garments designed to imitate or evoke the fashions of as bygone era - often, the 1940s, '50s or '60s. Vintage fashion is the real thing: sturdy garments well made in America (usually by union labor, if that matters to you) that remind us of an era when all the best stuff, from movies to muscle-cars, was `made in the U.S.A.' It's about nostalgia, yes, but in this unrelenting recession it's also about the `recessionistas' - that's what Alison Houtte calls her growing new customer base - realizing they can get not only a distinctive look but also a better-made garment by `going vintage,' at a fraction of the price they've been paying for toss-off foreign-made garments at the big name stores."

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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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

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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'This isn't the Britain we fought for,' say the neglected warriors of WWII

Sarah Robinson was just a teenager when World War II broke out. She endured the Blitz, watching for fires during Luftwaffe air raids armed with a bucket of sand. Often she would walk ten miles home from work in the blackout, with bombs falling around her. As soon as she turned 18, she joined the Royal Navy to do her bit for the war effort. Hers was a small part in a huge, history-making enterprise, and her contribution epitomises her generation's sense of service and sacrifice. Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally.

But was it worth it? Her answer - and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s - is a resounding No. They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It's not our country any more, they say, in sorrow and anger.

Sarah harks back to the days when 'people kept the laws and were polite and courteous. We didn't have much money, but we were contented and happy. 'People whistled and sang. There was still the United Kingdom, our country, which we had fought for, our freedom, democracy. But where is it now?!'

The feelings of Sarah and others from this most selfless generation about the modern world have been recorded by a Tyneside writer, 33-year-old Nicholas Pringle. Curious about his grandmother's generation and what they did in the war, he decided three years ago to send letters to local newspapers across the country asking for those who lived through the war to write to him with their experiences. He rounded off his request with this question: 'Are you happy with how your country has turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?'

What is extraordinary about the 150 replies he received, which he has now published as a book, is their vehement insistence that those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war would now be turning in their graves. There is the occasional bright spot - one veteran describes Britain as 'still the best country in the world' - but the overall tone is one of profound disillusionment. 'I sing no song for the once-proud country that spawned me,' wrote a sailor who fought the Japanese in the Far East, 'and I wonder why I ever tried.' 'My patriotism has gone out of the window,' said another ex-serviceman.

In the Mail this week, Gordon Brown wrote about 'our debt of dignity to the war generation'. But the truth that emerges from these letters is that the survivors of that war generation have nothing but contempt for his government. They feel, in a word that leaps out time and time again, 'betrayed'.

New Labour, said one ex-commando who took part in the disastrous Dieppe raid in which 4,000 men were lost, was 'more of a shambles than some of the actions I was in during the war, and that's saying something!' He added: 'Those comrades of mine who never made it back would be appalled if they could see the world as it is today. 'They would wonder what happened to the Brave New World they fought so damned hard for.'

Nor can David Cameron [wishy washy Conservative party leader] take any comfort from the elderly. His 'hug a hoodie' advice was scorned by a generation of brave men and women now too scared, they say, to leave their homes at night.

Immigration tops the list of complaints. 'People come here, get everything they ask, for free, laughing at our expense,' was a typical observation. 'We old people struggle on pensions, not knowing how to make ends meet. If I had my time again, would we fight as before? Need you ask?'

Many writers are bewildered and overwhelmed by a multicultural Britain that, they say bitterly, they were never consulted about nor feel comfortable with. 'Our country has been given away to foreigners while we, the generation who fought for freedom, are having to sell our homes for care and are being refused medical services because incomers come first.'

Her words may be offensive to many - and rightly so - but Sarah Robinson defiantly states: 'We are affronted by the appearance of Muslim and Sikh costumes on our streets.' But then political correctness is another thing they take strong issue with, along with politicians generally - 'liars, incompetents and self-aggrandising charlatans' (with the revealing exception of Enoch Powell).

The loss of British sovereignty to the European Union caused almost as much distress. 'Nearly all veterans want Britain to leave the EU,' wrote one. Frank, a merchant navy sailor, thought of those who gave their lives 'for King and country', only for Britain to become 'an offshore island of a Europe where France and Germany hold sway. Ironic, isn't it?'

As a group, they feel furious at not being able to speak their minds. They see the lack of debate and the damning of dissenters as racists or Little Englanders as deeply upsetting affronts to freedom of speech. 'Our British culture is draining away at an ever increasing pace,' wrote an ex-Durham Light Infantryman, 'and we are almost forbidden to make any comment.'

A widow from Solihull blamed the Thatcher years 'when we started to lose all our industry and profit became the only aim in life'. Her husband, a veteran of Dunkirk and Burma, died a disappointed man, believing that his seven years in the Army were wasted. 'It is 18 years since I lost him and as I look around parts of Birmingham today you would never know you were in England,' she wrote. 'He would have hated it. He also disliked the immoral way things are going. I don't think people are really happy now, for all the modern, easy-living conveniences. 'I disagree with same-sex marriages, schoolgirl mothers, rubbish TV programmes, so-called celebrities and, most of all, unlimited immigration. 'I am very unhappy about the way this country is being transformed. I go nowhere after dark. I don't even answer my doorbell then.'

A Desert Rat who battled his way through El Alamein, Sicily, Italy and Greece was in despair. 'This is not the country I fought for. Political correctness, lack of discipline, compensation madness, uncontrolled immigration - the "do-gooders" have a lot to answer for. 'If you see youngsters doing something they shouldn't and you say anything, you just get a mouthful of foul language.'

Undoubtedly, some of the complaints are 'grumpy old man' gripes, as the veterans themselves recognise - from chewing gum on pavements and motorists using mobile phones to the march of computerisation ('why can't I just go to the station and buy a railway ticket?') and the dearth of pop music tunes you can hum. But it is the fundamental change in society's values which they find hardest to come to terms with. Bring back birching and hanging, the sanctions they grew up with, they say. Put more bobbies back on the beat.

'We were rigidly taught good manners and respect for older people,' said a wartime WAAF, 'but the nanny state has ruined all that. Television programmes are full of violence and obscene language. This Land of Hope and Glory is in reality a land of yobs, drug addicts, drunkard youths and teenage mothers who think they are owed all for nothing.' Aged 85, she has little wish to go on living.

For others, the strength of character that got them through the war is still helping them to survive the disappointments of peacetime. A crofter's son from Scotland who served on the Arctic convoys taking supplies to Russia found the immediate post-war years hard. 'In those days we had no welfare support from any source. It was as though we had served our country to the full and were then forgotten. 'However, we were very resilient and determined to make a go of it, and many of us, including myself, succeeded. 'How times have changed now, with the countless many clamouring to get welfare benefits for the asking.'

A medic who made it through Dunkirk and D-Day thought the fallen would be appalled by the lack of manners in modern life and the worship of celebrities, plus 'the patent dishonesty of politicians'.

Another common issue was their bemusement at the idea anyone could live in constant debt. 'We were brought up to believe that if you hadn't the money, you waited till you had!' one wrote. However, this particular man was unusual among the 150 respondents in believing that there were many pluses to modern life. He even had a good word to say about the European Union and felt it would appeal to the fallen 'if only for maintaining the peace in Europe over the past 60 years or so'.

He praised the breaking down of class barriers in Britain compared with the years when he was young and 'infinitely' increased prosperity. 'More clothes, cars, holidays abroad, home ownership. As a young teacher in the Fifties I had one suit (Army issue) and the luxury of a sports jacket and flannels at the weekend. 'Education has made vast progress. In my early days I taught classes of 50. Only five per cent of children went on to further education compared with over 40 per cent today. 'The emancipation of women has also been a huge plus, with the introduction of the Pill a large contributor. Before the war, women teachers were dismissed as soon as they married.'

A Land Girl who laboured on farms in Devon during the war agreed that 'we have so much to be grateful for. 'So much progress has been made to transform the standard of living since the war.' But she could not help asking whether people were any happier. She bemoaned the advent of the Pill and the collapse of sexual morality. 'In my day, drugs were unknown, families remained together, divorce was a rarity and children felt secure. 'Were our sacrifices made so hooligans may run wild? And aggressive behaviour be accepted as the norm by TV interviewers and society in general?'

A captain with a Military Cross for valour under fire thought Britain was still the best country in the world. The 'occasional' sight of parents and nicely dressed children gave an otherwise gloomy veteran of the Italian campaign a sense that 'what we did all those years ago was not for nothing'.

A grandmother, the widow of a Royal Marine who took part in the D-Day landings, felt the National Health Service had descended into chaos but was grateful for a pensioner's free television licence, 'which brings art, travel and animals into my home', and being able to text her grandchildren. Just being alive was a bonus. 'Although I hate what is happening to our country, I am so happy to be here, grumbling, but remembering better, happier days,' she wrote.

But one of the bitterest complaints of the veterans was that their trenchant views on many of the matters aired here were constantly ignored by those in authority. Their letters of complaint to councillors and MPs went unanswered. It was as if they didn't matter, except when wheeled out for the rituals of Remembrance Day. 'Why do so many of the British public confuse sentimentality with genuine concern for others?' asked one letter-writer.

But this was the generation honoured in Remembrance services last weekend, showered with gratitude and teary-eyed sentiments as their dwindling ranks marched unsteadily past the Cenotaph and other war memorials throughout the UK. The overall impression any reader of the letters gets is that this generation feel unheard, unwanted and unimportant. This remarkable collection of their thoughts should give us pause for reflection.

They may be deemed beyond their sell-by date (and many of their views may seem unacceptable, flouting every sort of 'ism' imaginable) but, by their deeds of 60-plus years ago, they have won the right to be listened to and their disillusionment noted with respect. In one letter in this collection, an RAF mechanic quoted a poem about comrades who fell in battle: 'I mourned them then, But now surviving in a world, Indifferent to their hopes and dreams, I grieve more for the living.'

SOURCE

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Where the Real Fear Is

You should be very afraid. No, not of Islamic extremists plotting to kill their fellow Americans. After all, “At this point, there is no information to indicate Major Nidal Malik Hasan had any co-conspirators or was part of a broader terrorist plot,” the FBI announced almost immediately after Hasan allegedly opened fire at Fort Hood. That must be the federal version of, “move along, nothing to see here, folks.” And you certainly shouldn’t fear a rapacious and steadily growing federal government. No. Your biggest concern should apparently be…the right-wing militia movement.

“The truth is, is that these groups are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain,” Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center told CNN reporter Jim Acosta. The network recently aired a long series of reports on the militia movement. The series included images of supposed extremists pledging -- hold on to your hat for this one -- allegiance to the American flag. It also featured men, women and, yes, children, learning how to handle firearms.

“Well, any time we get a Democratic president in the office, people become concerned, including myself, and we get a resurgence out here,” one member told Acosta. He “didn’t want to give his last name,” Acosta explained, over “worries the government will eventually take away his gun rights.”

Well, the last thing anyone wants these days is to catch Uncle Sam’s eye. Liberal civil-liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate estimates the average American now commits three felonies every day without even knowing it (hence the title of his recent book, “Three Felonies a Day”).

Examples abound. A 12-year-old in Georgia spent two days in jail for bringing a Boy Scout knife to school. A Texas man was sent to prison for selling orchids. An Alaska man was detained by federal agents for failing to properly label a UPS package. In today’s overcriminalized society, if the feds decide to charge you with a crime, they’ll find something to pin on you.

Still, the militia members seem more giving than fearful. “They’re prepared to teach anyone, even this reporter, how to fire a semiautomatic weapon like this Russian assault rifle,” Acosta reported over video of himself shooting. If these people were zealots plotting to overthrow the government, would they really be so friendly with a reporter and his camera crew? It sounds as if they’re gun-lovers who simply want to teach others how to use weapons.

“There really is this kind of terrible fear mixed with fury about the idea that President Obama is somehow leading a kind of socialistic, you know, takeover of America,” the SPLC’s Potek adds.

But is “socialism” such a wild accusation? In the last several months the House of Representatives has passed a massive cap-and-trade bill that would raise taxes in order to supposedly combat global warming. It’s passed a massive health care reform bill that could change everyone’s access to medical care in order to supposedly “bend the cost curve.” And it’s passed a “stimulus” bill and a budget that will combine to spend your children and grandchildren into the poorhouse.

And it’s worth noting that the real fear and loathing in this country is on the left. Recently, the liberal publisher of the Falls Church News-Press attempted to explain what’s driving the tea party movement. Conservatives aim to, “Go after those African-Americans (including your president), those immigrants, those gays! Don’t let them have health care! Don’t let them have equal rights! Harass them, beat them up! Yeah, that’s ‘freedom,’ man!” Nicholas Benton wrote. It’s great when the mask slips and liberals show what they really think of their fellow citizens. No wonder they’re so afraid of conservatives, if they really believe this is how we think and act.

A few years ago, the Supreme Court issued its infamous Kelo decision, mistakenly finding it would be constitutional for the city of New London, Conn. to seize private property and turn it over to developers. Dozens of people lost their homes. Ironically, the company that had planned to build an office complex on the land pulled out recently. Now it’s just empty space. That underlines the point: government doesn’t give, it merely takes away.

This Thanksgiving week, let us celebrate above all else the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. Not simply for bequeathing to us the Constitution -- the single greatest governing document in the history of mankind -- but for actually having the foresight to write it down. That ensures that, no matter how mangled the supposed “living” Constitution becomes over the years, there’s at least the chance our country can someday return to its roots by simply reading and following the actual words of our Founders.

SOURCE

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ACORN and "Journalistic Standards"

Those who live in glass houses .....

The LA Times' James Rainey writes in his "On Media" column about how the reporting of Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe doesn't stand up to the "standards of journalism." That may be true -- but it takes a lot of nerve to make that claim with a straight face. Especially if you work for the LA Times, which wears its left-wing politics on its sleeve and frequently pays the price for it in reduced credibility.

Rainey castigates Giles and O'Keefe for failing to get ACORN's side of the story. But what does he have to say -- just to take one example -- of the LA Times' decision to run a story alleging mistreatment of women by Arnold Schwarzenegger right before the gubernatorial election in 2003? Democrat Susan Estrich (a professor of law and expert on gender law) pointed out that "Anonymous charges from years ago made in the closing days of a campaign undermine fair politics." That strikes me as a violation of "journalistic standards," too. Yet the Times never apologized.

There are so many examples of misreporting and bias that it would take an eternity to lay it all out. But just to get a little closer to home, how 'bout The New York Times' decision to "cut bait" on a story about Obama's links to ACORN? Anyone think a story that might have damaged, say, Sarah Palin would have been abandoned so readily? (Not if the AP has anything to say about it!)

At the moment, the real journalistic scandal surrounding the press and ACORN has nothing to do with Giles and O'Keefe. Rather, it's how the mainstream press allowed an obviously corrupt organization to continue to operate in the political arena, accepting taxpayer money, with virtually no reporting on its routine illegalities.

This ACORN story that Giles and O'Keefe got was out in the open for every big MSM organization to see. They could have embedded an undercover reporter as a member of ACORN, or done any other countless number of things. And it's hard to believe that, if, say, Operation Rescue had been accused of the kinds of corruption and law-breaking that have longbeen linked with ACORN, the MSM would have politely looked away.

Rainey needs to understand that if he's worried about hard-hitting stories been reported in conformity with "journalistic standards," well, maybe then the press had better start doing some investigative work of its own -- and not just directed against one side of the political spectrum. Nature abhors a vacuum; now that the internet allows regular people to publicize the stories that the MSM conveniently overlooks, this is going to happen more and more.

SOURCE

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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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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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Nothing Israel can offer will ever suit the Palestinians

It was the moment the Palestinians might have had a state, with a capital in East Jerusalem. For a single moment, the dove of peace hovered hopefully over the Middle East. On September 16 last year, the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, offered the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the most far-reaching and comprehensive peace deal any Israeli prime minister has ever offered. Mr Olmert recalls his pleas to Mr Abbas to accept the deal: "I said to him, do you want to keep floating forever - like an astronaut in space - or do you want a state? I told him he'd never get anything like this again from an Israeli leader for 50 years."

Mr Olmert, who as a rule avoids the media these days, has undertaken hours of discussion and interviews with The Weekend Australian and provided unprecedented detail of his peace offer to Mr Abbas. The interviews took place amid growing tension over West Bank settlements. Palestinians appealed to the US yesterday to raise pressure on Israel, saying an Israeli plan to halt new construction in the West Bank was insincere. Presidential adviser Yasser Abed Rabbo urged US envoy George Mitchell to bring about "a real peace process" that would halt all settlement construction.

Mr Olmert says such disputes could have been resolved with his deal. He recalls meeting Mr Abbas more than 35 times for "intense, serious" negotiations, in the two years leading up to the September 16 offer last year. Mr Olmert says his offer to Mr Abbas included a Palestinian state occupying 94 per cent of the West Bank and all of Gaza. This would have allowed Israel to keep the major Jewish population areas in the settlements in the West Bank. But in return he would have given the Palestinians an equal parcel of land from Israel proper in compensation. He offered Palestinian sovereignty over all the Arab areas of East Jerusalem, so that it could function as a capital for the new Palestinian state.

Dividing Jerusalem is an explosive issue in Israeli politics. Mr Olmert recalls his own struggle to come to grips with his offer on Jerusalem: "This was a very sensitive, very painful, soul-searching process. While I firmly believed that historically and emotionally Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people, I was ready that the city should be shared."

Perhaps Mr Olmert's most radical and audacious proposal was for an international administration of the sites in Jerusalem holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Mr Olmert proposed forming an area of "no sovereignty" to be administered jointly by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the new Palestinian state, Israel and the US. He offered to build a tunnel, under Palestinian control, between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Mr Olmert says every European leader, and senior Americans, who knew of the plan acknowledged it as the most far-reaching and extensive peace offer Israel has made.

Mr Olmert still regards Mr Abbas as a peace partner for Israel. "I think he's genuine in his desire to achieve a Palestinian state and he recognises the right of Israel to exist," he says. Mr Olmert speculates that Mr Abbas didn't accept the deal because he felt he could not deliver the Palestinian commitment to it, or perhaps because he feared the outcome of approaching Israeli elections. But nor did Mr Abbas directly reject the deal. Instead he said he wanted to bring experts back with him the next day. But the next day, the Palestinians' chief negotiator postponed the meeting. "I never saw him again," Mr Olmert says.

SOURCE

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Israel readying new arms to meet Iran challenge

With cutting-edge anti-missile systems and two new submarines that can carry nuclear weapons, Israel is readying a new generation of armaments designed to defend itself against distant Iran as well as Tehran's proxy armies on its borders.

Having failed to crush Hamas' firepower in its Gaza offensive last winter, or Hezbollah's in its 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel is turning to an increasingly sophisticated mix of defensive technology.

A system that can unleash a metallic cloud to shoot down incoming rockets in the skies over Gaza or Lebanon has already been successfully tested, according to its maker, and is expected to be deployed next year. The army is developing a new generation of its Arrow defense system designed to shoot down Iran's long-range Shihab missiles outside the Earth's atmosphere.

It has three German-made Dolphin submarines and is buying two more. They can be equipped with nuclear-tipped missiles which analysts say could be stationed off the coast of Iran. Israel says Iran, despite its denials, is trying to acquire atomic weapons. It has never confirmed its Dolphin fleet has nuclear capabilities, but senior officials acknowledge that commanders are fast at work devising a strike plan in case diplomacy fails.

Under their overarching fear of nuclear annihilation by Iran, whose regime has repeatedly called for Israel's extinction, the more immediate threat is seen as coming from Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel's military believes Hezbollah has tripled its prewar arsenal to more than 40,000 rockets, some of which can strike virtually anywhere in Israel _ a dramatic improvement over the short-range missiles fired in 2006.

Hamas has also increased its rocket arsenal since last winter's fighting, said a senior military official who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with army regulations. Hamas recently test-fired a rocket that can travel up to 60 kilometers (40 miles), putting the Tel Aviv area within range for the first time, according to Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, Israel's military intelligence chief.

Israel's defense industry says it is close to deploying Iron Dome, a system that will use cameras and radar to track incoming rockets and shoot them down within seconds of their launch. The system is so sophisticated that it can almost instantly predict where a rocket will land, changing its calculations to account for wind, sun and other conditions in fractions of a second.

Shooting down a missile is a bit like stopping a bullet with a bullet. But Eyal Ron, one of Iron Dome's developers, said his system will fire an interceptor that explodes into a cloud of small pieces which make it unnecessary to score a direct hit.

"It's a great advantage because to bring an interceptor to a target flying at incredible speed to an exact point is very hard," said Ron, a specialist at mPrest Systems Ltd., an Israeli software firm developing the system along with local arms giant Rafael.

He said recent tests in Israel's southern desert were successful, and a final dress rehearsal is expected in December before the system goes live next year.

More HERE

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Texas vs. California -- and the lesson for America as a whole

New Geography, the online magazine created by Joel Kotkin and others with a special focus on demographics and trends, has been tracking the implosion of California in an interesting way: by comparing it to Texas.

Texas and California are America’s two most populous states, together numbering approximately 55 million people, which is only about 6 million less than the United Kingdom, where I live. California, as everyone knows, has a coolness factor that Texas cannot match. Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and wine. Say no more. But, unless one has been living in a cave, everyone knows that the cool state is also the broke state. If Hollywood turned California’s budget and fiscal position into a movie, it would be a blockbuster horror film indeed.

Texas, on the other hand, is growing, creating wealth, and attracting the entrepreneurial and creative classes that too many people think only go to places like New York and California. This interesting post by Tory Gattis at New Geography explains why. He shares a four-point analysis from Trends magazine:

First, Texans on average believe in laissez-faire markets with an emphasis on individual responsibility. Since the ’80s, California’s policy-makers have favored central planning solutions and a reliance on a government social safety net. This unrelenting commitment to big government has led to a huge tax burden and triggered a mass exodus of jobs. The Trends Editors examined the resulting migration in “Voting with Our Feet,” in the April 2008 issue of Trends.

Second, Californians have largely treated environmentalism as a “religious sacrament” rather than as one component among many in maximizing people’s quality of life. As we explained in “The Road Ahead for Housing,” in the June 2009 issue of Trends, environmentally-based land-use restriction centered in California played a huge role in inflating the recent housing bubble. Similarly, an unwillingness to manage ecology proactively for man’s benefit has been behind the recent epidemic of wildfires.

Third, California has placed “ethnic diversity” above “assimilation,” while Texas has done the opposite. “Identity politics” has created psychological ghettos that have prevented many of California’s diverse ethnic groups and subcultures from integrating fully into the mainstream. Texas, on the other hand, has proactively encouraged all the state’s residents to join the mainstream.

Fourth, beyond taxes, diversity, and the environment, Texas has focused on streamlining the regulatory and litigation burden on its residents. Meanwhile, California’s government has attempted to use regulation and litigation to transfer wealth from its creators to various special-interest constituencies.

I wrote an article for New Geography related to the second point last spring. The role played by housing regulations in the housing bubble is one of the most under-reported and under-analyzed factors contributing to the 2008 financial crisis, and nowhere was its destructive force more evident than in California. Regulators lathered on rule after rule to construction requirements, escalating costs so dramatically that lenders had to design “exotic” mortgages so even relatively affluent people could afford homes. One of Texas’s attractions, meanwhile, was the opportunity of much more affordable homeownership.

Perhaps the analysis above falls a bit short, though, in not giving enough attention to role that the tax structure in California has played in driving people away, and the parallel problem of the state’s hemorrhaging public sector workforce. Kotkin has written in Forbes that California’s government workforce has saddled the state’s budget with $200 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Kotkin also points out that California has been losing high-tech jobs to the Southwest and elsewhere because of its increasingly hostile tax and regulatory environment.

By now, the subtext of this post should be clear: the Obama administration is behaving as though California were its model for growth. Increasing unfunded liabilities, proposing $1 trillion in new healthcare spending, responding to the economic crisis with new regulatory agencies but balking on the core causes of the problem —all of this and more betrays a sinister psychology of policy making.

SOURCE

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BrookesNews Update

Obama's economic policies are turning into a global disaster : A country can no more devalue its way to prosperity then it can spend its way into solvency. The effect will be lower real wages, which means a lower standard of living. But look on the bright side: Buffett will still be fabulously rich as will be all those super rich Hollywood Democrats
Will the exchange rate kill manufacturing : The world is facing is a grave monetary disorder and depreciating currencies and rapidly changing exchange rates are symptoms of this disorder. As a result American and Australian manufacturing have been hit particularly hard. Until central banks come to understand that manipulating their money supplies creates malinvestments and distorts the pattern of international trade these problems will only worsen
The resources boom signals good times, but is manufacturing telling another story? : If manufacturing is sensitive to monetary changes then it is very likely that any further tightening will cause manufacturing to continue to contract irrespective of the demand for resources. So it seems that the country's capital structure is being dangerously distorted by domestic monetary policy and China's policy of creating masses of credit to fuel growth
Islam and the Dark Age of Byzantium : Instead of saving civilization did Islam bury it. Historical evidence is now emerging that the rise of Islam was a disaster for the ancient world and civilized values. That it was a plundering and parasitic culture that heralded a Dark Age
The Obama/Holder Bushwhack : The New York terrorist trial is really about making the case against former President George W. Bush as a war criminal while the whole world watches. It's what the Obama campaign promised its America-hating base. To this pair of leftists Republicans are the real enemy, not terrorism
The Khalid trial: Bombs and Circuses in New York : It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Obama administration wants to use Khalid's trial to embarrass Bush and expose more details of enhanced interrogation. It is truly disgusting that any president would use a mass murderer to embarrass a predecessor while causing immense pain to those who survived the atrocity. One would have to be incredibly callous to do such a thing
Why can't White people celebrate their own culture? : Why don't we all just take Martin Luther King's advice and judge people based on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin? That way we could do away with all those groups that focus on skin color, like the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Hispanic 'La Raza
When I like the outcome -- democracy, when I like the outcome : "What is striking about the Democratic Party is that it is totally anti-democratic. Only when an electoral decision favours them do they approve of democracy. Hence all Republican administrations are illegitimate

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ELSEWHERE

The "Gatecrasher" story, where an univited couple attended a White House dinner in honour of the Prime Minister of India, is rather amazing. How could security be so lax? Anything could have happened. I have just got around to reading some details of the matter and I think I know how it happened. It was political correctness run riot. The lady concerned was wearing some sort of Indian garb and security staff were afraid to challenge her in case they goofed and got accused of racism.

Here Comes the Judge?: "Given Hillary Clinton's stated regret that the United States is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court, there is a real possibility that the Obama administration intends to allow American soldiers in Afghanistan to be tried in the in the Hague. This is not only terribly wrong, it is gravely dangerous to US security. If America -- which has some of the world's strictest rules of engagement, and already punishes those who trangress them -- agrees to subject its soldiers to inherently selective international prosecution, no one could blame young people for declining to join the military. What's more, it allows a bunch of international judges effectively to define the permissible limits of the warfare conducted by Americans, and offers an opportunity for them to wield enormous (and unjustified) authority over our troops, our strategy and our defenses -- a clear violation of our sovereignty. Soldiers' hands are already being tied enough -- and their ability to defend themselves constrained enough -- by the new, PC era in the Obama armed forces. Subjecting them to international jurisdiction would be the last straw."

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 (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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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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Real Pilgrims Sought Purity, Not Tolerance or Diversity



As American families sit down to their traditional Thanksgiving feasts they will naturally recall the familiar story of the Pilgrims taught to every school kid and, in the process, distort the true character of the nation’s religious heritage.

Most children learn that the Mayflower settlers came to the New World to escape persecution and to establish religious freedom. But the early colonists actually pursued purity, not tolerance and sought to build fervent, faith-based utopias, not secular regimes that consigned religion to a secondary role. The distinctive circumstances that allowed these fiery believers of varied denominations to cooperate in the founding of a new nation help to explain America’s contradictory religious traditions – as simultaneously the most devoutly Christian society in the western world, and the country most accommodating to every shade of exotic belief and practice.

Concerning the Pilgrims who celebrated the First Thanksgiving in 1621, they didn’t travel directly from their English homes to the “hideous and desolate wilderness” of Massachusetts. They sailed the Atlantic only after living for twelve years in flourishing communities in Holland—the most tolerant and religiously diverse nation of Europe. They left the Netherlands not because that nation imposed too many religious restrictions but because the Dutch honored too few. The pluralism they found in Amsterdam and Leyden horrified the Pilgrims. They were separatists who considered themselves “a people apart” and who preferred isolation on a distant shore that facilitated the building of a unified, disciplined, strictly devout commonwealth, not some wide-open sanctuary for believers of every stripe. The famous Mayflower Compact defined their purpose explicitly as “the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith…”

The like-minded Puritans who followed them (and whose much larger settlement of Massachusetts Bay annexed the Pilgrims’ Plymouth in 1691) showed similar determination to build a model of single-minded religious rigor. The leaders of this idealistic venture were in no sense the victims of oppression back home, but rather counted as wealthy and influential gentleman who wielded considerable political influence. Even after their fellow Puritans won total power (and executed a king in 1649) the Massachusetts colonists chose to remain in their “city upon a hill” in the New World rather than to return to the compromises and complications necessitated by the fractious politics of England. The famous shipboard sermon by which Governor John Winthrop inspired his flock for the challenges of their “errand into the wilderness” declared that “when God gives a special commission he looks to have it strictly observed in every article….to serve the Lord and work out our salvation under the power and purity of his holy ordinances.”

Beyond the four New England colonies (which each began as energetic theocracies representing various strands of Puritanism), other major settlements took shape according to the dreams and dictates of other denominations. William Penn and his fellow Quakers followed their “inner light” to establish Pennsylvania as a “holy experiment,” while the aristocratic Calvert family set up Maryland as a refuge and a base of operations for devout British Catholics. Even the less explicitly religious colonies, where early settlers seemed to care more about finding gold than finding God, received royal charters that declared their underlying mission of spreading the faith. Virginia’s charter described a mandate for the “propagating of Christian Religion as such People as yet live in Darkness.” At the first landing of the original Jamestown expedition (April 26, 1607), Captain Christopher Newport took it upon himself to erect the colony’s first structure: a large cross at Cape Henry to mark their arrival.

How, then, did these enthusiastic true believers with their often uncompromising standards ever manage to join together in a new nation in 1776 – a nation that has been characterized ever since by a religious diversity and inter-denominational cooperation altogether unprecedented in human history?

The Revolutionary struggle forced their hand, with soldiers from more than a dozen Christian traditions and sects (as well as a disproportionate representation of the colonies’ tiny Jewish minority) fighting side by side in the Continental Army. When General Washington ordered “divine services” to build morale among his weary troops, he made some effort to avoid excluding New England Congregationalists or Virginia Baptists or Carolina Methodists or, for that matter, the random Catholic or Mennonite. In the eight year struggle, Massachusetts soldiers served willingly under the brilliant Quaker General Nathanael Greene – even though their Puritan forebears might have been among those who order the occasional hanging of his co-religionists in the previous century.

Violent struggles had broken out from time to time in the past among various faith communities—with Puritans challenging Catholics for control of Maryland, for instance, and fighting the bloody Battle of the Severn in 1655. But for the most part the wide open spaces of the new continent allowed even the most impassioned theological enthusiasts to build their own spheres of influence without confronting or oppressing their potential rivals in far flung neighboring settlements. The constant threat of Indian violence and the even more dire menace of British suppression made some level of mutual respect a practical necessity, even for localities that bitterly disagreed.

The First Amendment to the Constitution ratified this arrangement of uncontested local authority with its careful wording: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” The Constitutional formulation limited the power of the federal government to impose a single national faith, and to provoke the dangerous battles accompanying such an attempt, but did nothing in the eyes of the zealous founders to interfere with the established churches (that received direct government funding and endorsement) on the state level. The esteemed liberal scholar Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School writes: “A growing body of evidence suggests that the Framers principally intended the Establishment of Religion Clause to perform two functions: two protect state religious establishments from national displacement, and to prevent the national government from aiding some, but not all, religions.” With this understanding in mind, religious voting restrictions (limiting the franchise to Trinitarian Protestant Christians, for instance) continued in several states for more than forty years under the Constitution.

The Pilgrims and their spiritual descendants never had to retreat from religious fervor or Biblical demands to join the new Republic, thanks to the continued existence of more or less autonomous, localized refuges and enclaves. No one can suggest that our Founders embraced secularism or relativism, but they did come to accept the notion of separate faith communities following their own distinctive rules while managing to live side-by-side and to cooperate where necessary.

Thanksgiving in that sense doesn’t celebrate religious freedom, but rather coexistence. We remain a nation of impassioned, fiercely committed, openly competing believers who have nonetheless established a long tradition of letting other faith communities go their own way. We can be pious and uncompromising at our own Thanksgiving tables, without menacing, or even questioning the very different proceedings in the home next door. The limitless boundaries and vast empty land of the fresh continent, plus the challenges of a long Revolutionary struggle, gave the faith-filled fanatics of the founding the chance for a freedom more profound than mere religious tolerance: the right, in their own communities, to be left alone.

SOURCE

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So Much for Transcending Race

Given how high the hopes were for Barack Obama -- and how many of those hopes were pinned on the candidate's supposed ability to bridge America's racial divide -- it is sobering to analyze this linked Gallup survey.

The President's approval has slid to 39% among whites; the only reason it remains in the high 40's overall is because he enjoys a 73% approval among non-whites (and even higher, understandably, in the African American community alone). Apparently, the racial divide remains with us for the foreseeable future -- perhaps, ironically, worse than ever, to the extent that African Americans perceive any unfairness in the critiques of the President that they attribute, rightly or wrongly, to his race.

But even if the President has proved unable to transcend race, he has done a great favor for America, especially its young, albeit unwittingly. Every generation must be reminded anew about how precious freedom is, and how insidiously government can begin to take over -- and how destructive (to our liberties, to our economy, to our culture, even) an overweening, hyperactive, steroidal government can be.

Jimmy Carter taught an earlier generation about the disaster that lefty economics and soft foreign policy creates. Perhaps it may be that Barack Obama and his "Big Government knows best" agenda is doing the same thing. And if that's the case, I'm thankful -- for that and so much more.

SOURCE

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Why Won’t the Mainstream Media Cover the ACORN Story?

It’s blindingly obvious why corrupt leftist lawmakers including House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and his subcommittee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) won’t investigate their good friends at ACORN, but as evidence continues to mount of ACORN’s habitual, potentially criminal wrongdoing, why does the mainstream media refuse to investigate a scandal that “could be as historically significant as Watergate“?

Big Media seems to be taking cues from what NewsReal blogger Kathy Shaidle calls the George Soros Steno Pool at Media Matters for America. Throughout the continuing revelations about ACORN, Media Matters has steadfastly defended its allies at ACORN. One has to wonder if ACORN is keeping Media Matters on retainer and if so how big the regular checks must be.

Soon after the first few hidden-camera videos of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles surfaced in September showing the public ACORN’s barely concealed criminal proclivities, John V. Santore of Media Matters launched a sleaze attack against O’Keefe, Giles, and their online publisher, Andrew Breitbart. Because O’Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart are conservatives there is no way they could be honest reporters of facts, implied Santore. Giles even attended events at the National Journalism Center, he noted. Heavens! Of course ideological disqualification never applies to left-of-center media outlets.

Santore also focused on the journalistic ethics involved in the undercover video sting operation, arguing that because the reporters had an animus against ACORN they couldn’t be trusted. Tell that to the award-winning crusading journalists throughout American history who have helped to bust up (other) crime gangs and expose malfeasance everywhere. Having an opinion or a desire to do the right thing isn’t a requirement to be a reporter nor does it disqualify a person from being a reporter.

Appropriately, on his TV show Glenn Beck observed: "The New York Times wonders why they are losing readers. It’s because reading their paper is like entering a time machine or reading the news in your rearview mirror. They didn’t even bother to jump on the ACORN story, which came complete with corruption, hookers and pimps."

The ACORN scandal is a great story yet apart from Fox News and a few other media outlets, the media has been ignoring it. What coverage we’ve seen –especially from the Associated Press– tends to focus not on ACORN’s corruption, but instead on the political ramifications of what is now happening to the radical advocacy group-cum-organized crime syndicate. Still other news stories focus on the journalistic ethics involved in the hidden-camera videos of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles that helped to show the public ACORN’s barely concealed criminal proclivities. Particularly tedious are the whiny, typo-laden essays of Eric Boehlert of Media Matters who declares that whatever the videos are, they’re “not really journalism at all.”

Media critic Jack Shafer of the liberal Slate.com website excoriates the mainstream media for ignoring the ACORN story. Shafer wrote: "The liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America complains that the ACORN videos, which aren’t a “major story,” are driving an “incomplete, misleading” media stampede. But Media Matters is wrong. Independent news organizations, including the Washington Post, the New York Post, and the Baltimore Sun, are chasing the ACORN story not because they’ve been bamboozled by the Breitbart exposé but because the dress-up stunt has pointed them toward what could be fertile grounds for wrongdoing."

Actually, when Shafer wrote the above referenced column on Sept. 23 it appeared the media was actually going to do its job and thoroughly investigate ACORN. Alas, it was not to be.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

The President of France supports a pedophile: "Roman Polanski’s family yesterday praised the role played by Nicolas Sarkozy in securing the film director’s release on bail after two months in a Swiss prison. The French President “has been very effective” behind the scenes, according to the film director’s sister-in-law Mathilde Seigner, as Mr Polanski prepared to move from a cell to house arrest in his luxury chalet in the exclusive Alpine village of Gstaad. The Swiss authorities said that Mr Polanski would be allowed out once the agreed bail of 4.5 million Swiss Francs had been received. They have ordered that he should not leave his chalet - for fear that the first-rate skier might slip over the nearby border via a mountain pass into his adopted French homeland and escape US justice a second time. Mr Polanski must turn in his passport and have a surveillance system installed at his chalet, where he will wear electronic tagging, the Swiss Federal Office of Justice said in a statement. “He must not leave this house,” the ministry said. Should he violate the terms of release, the bail, raised against the director’s apartment in Paris, will be forfeited to the Swiss Government."

Irish Catholic Church 'covered up' sickening catalogue of child abuse by paedophile priests: "Thirty years of sex abuse by paedophile priests was covered up by the Roman Catholic Church on an 'astonishing scale', a damning report has found. Four archbishops were among those condemned for allowing hundreds of vulnerable children to suffer so they could protect the Church's reputation. The Catholic hierarchy was granted police immunity and Church leaders protected abusers in some cases with the blessing of senior law enforcers. Hundreds of crimes were not reported while police treated clergy as above the law, investigators said. Fear of the public anger that would have followed high-profile prosecutions of priests was seen as more important than preventing the sex offenders from repeating their crimes, it concluded. Instead of reporting the allegations, Church leaders shifted the accused from parish to parish, allowing them to prey on new victims. The report, by the Commission of Investigation, said: 'The Dublin archdiocese's preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets.' The archdiocese 'did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state', it added".

Seattle silliness: "After 13 years of delays, and cost-overruns that tripled its estimated cost, Seattle finally finished the first 14 miles of its insanely impractical light rail system. Running between downtown and the airport, “Central Link” cost an unprecedented $330,000,000 per mile—nearly $200,000 per yard. Of course, ridership is barely half what officials predicted—and interest on construction expenses alone means a subsidy of $200 per ride. My wife and I tried the new system, experiencing a jerky, pokey ride that took 45 minutes. Officials claim the normal time will be 36 minutes, but acknowledge that the popular 194 Bus travels the same route (at a lower fare) in just 32 minutes! To force the unwilling public to use the white elephant light rail, they’ve arrogantly announced cancellation of the 194 Bus, starting in February."

Obama's grandmother in Mecca for 'Hajj' ceremony: "The grandmother of US president Barack Obama has arrived in Saudi Arabia for the 'Hajj' or Islamic pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a Saudi daily said on Wednesday. Sarah Obama, 87, is being accompanied by a nephew and Obama's cousin, Omran. On Wednesday Sarah Obama was in the valley of Mina with an African delegation, according to the Saudi daily Okaz. Obama, the mother of the American president's father, lives in a village in Kenya and is one of the many guests of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud." [During the election campaign, it was claimed that the the woman concerned was a CHRISTIAN]

NY Democrat says Obama an 'obstacle to peace': "In defiance of President Obama's demands that Israel cease building in sections of Jerusalem and the West Bank, New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind laid the cornerstone for the second phase of a new Jewish construction project in the Nof Tzion neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem. Together with Knesset Member Danny Danon, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, Hikind spoke with reporters about the Jewish right to build in Israel's capital city. Hikind, a Democrat, asserted banning Jews from building in neighborhoods was segregation. He expressed wonder that an African-American president would endorse such a policy in the 21st century. Speaking with the media, Hikind blamed Obama for stalling the peace process. According to the assemblyman, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has latched onto Obama's calls for a settlement freeze as an excuse not to negotiate with Israel. According to Hikind, a Jew cannot even build a bathroom in Jerusalem without international condemnation".

Diversity has jumped the shark, horrifically: "It cannot be said often enough that the chief of staff of the United States Army, Gen. George Casey, responded to a massacre of 13 Americans in which the suspect is a Muslim by saying: "Our diversity ... is a strength." As long as the general has brought it up: Never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a problem. Look at Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations. Or consider the warring factions in India, Sri Lanka, China, Iraq, Czechoslovakia (until it happily split up), the Balkans and Chechnya. Also look at the festering hotbeds of tribal warfare – I mean the beautiful mosaics – in Third World hellholes like Afghanistan, Rwanda and South Central L.A. "Diversity" is a difficulty to be overcome, not an advantage to be sought. True, America does a better job than most at accommodating a diverse population. We also do a better job at curing cancer and containing pollution. But no one goes around mindlessly exclaiming: "Cancer is a strength!" "Pollution is our greatest asset!"

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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