Obama is "cool" but has no class

The Late Show with David Letterman.

The View.

Paul McCartney plays the White House.

Barack Obama's affinity for pop culture is emblematic of his administration's greater disconnect on programs, policy, and ideology from the mainstream of American society. Much of this has to do with the dichotomy between the terms "class" and "cool."

Though difficult to precisely define, personal class is one of those things of which it may be said (to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart) that "you know it when you see it." Its attributes include maturity, rational self-possession, a sense of the appropriate, generosity of spirit, and the humility that begets both charm and wit. Though frequently associated with childhood training and education, class knows no boundaries when it comes to gender, economic status, or even political persuasion. William F. Buckley, Jr. and Daniel Patrick Moynihan held opposing views, but both were possessed of great personal grace and were sincerely liked by even their opponents.

The American people have always valued class in their presidents and other leaders, and for good reason. Its highly personal characteristics are the prime means by which presidents are first observed and measured by foreign leaders, friend and foe alike.

This does not mean that individuals possessing "class" are immune from mistakes, miscalculations, or even personal misconduct. The way in which they handle adversity is perhaps what defines them most.

Despite multiple personal and political failings that we have become aware of in recent years, John and Jacqueline Kennedy possessed such respect for their country and themselves that they worked diligently at projecting the proper image to their fellow citizens and the rest of the world. The pride in American history reflected in his speeches and her restoration of the White House, their support of the fine arts, and their ongoing interaction with younger Americans presented an image that, though some might call it hypocritical, at least preserved us from the tabloid presidency that is the Clinton legacy, and increasingly Obama's.

It is impossible to conceive of John Kennedy presenting the British Prime Minister with a set of DVDs (even ones that worked) or the Queen of England with an iPod of his speeches. Contrast the Kennedy administration's approach to physical fitness for the nation's youth which stressed personal responsibility (the fifty-mile hike) with today's big-government solution (micromanaging the school cafeteria and excluding certain soft drinks).

From the inception of his campaign, Barack Obama was described by his younger supporters as "cool," and, as with an American Idol contestant, that was what caused many of them to vote for him. It likewise explains why he persists in trying to maintain the rock star/pop star image long past its useful life.

As it applies to culture, "cool" is largely associated with the personal journey we call "adolescence." A large part of that process involves a search for self and for independence and is characterized by the adoption and rejection of multiple role models, as well as rebellion against parental and other authority. "Cool" figures have always combined traits that not only typify but idealize this. James Dean's agonized "Rebel Without a Cause" was the spiritual ancestor of Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider." From Elvis' sideburns and hip movements to the Beatles' new sound, clothes, and haircuts to the grotesqueries of Madonna and Lady GaGa, the elements of novelty, non-conformism and rebellion are readily apparent. Frequently, the cool people try to project a "serious" side by involving themselves in causes that, therefore, appeal to their fans: No matter how egregious, if the star is for it, it's got to be cool.

Right from the start, the Obama campaign was designed and produced as a pop culture phenomenon. From the screaming, fainting fans to the walk-on endorsement of pop icons to the world tour replete with Las Vegas production values, the cult of celebrity was everywhere prevalent. Like many rock songs, the lyrics "Hope and Change" and "We are the ones we've been waiting for" were long on sentiment and short on substance. All of this was greatly magnified by the candidate's youth as opposed to John McCain's age. Barack was cool.

In the relatively short time since the election, reality has intruded.

In the world of pop, nothing breeds contempt like overexposure and, except for the most fanatical fans, it takes only a couple of bad albums or films to consign even the once-brightest star to the dismal world of Golden Oldies and Trivial Pursuit. The failed Stimulus Bill, the toxic Obamacare initiative, and so-called financial reform are a lot less sexy than Hope and Change and never even made the charts. It hasn't helped that the star's lead act, Reid and Pelosi, is on the far side of the generation gap.

Obama's juvenile behavior has not helped, either. Lecturing the Supreme Court at the State of the Union address -- publicly, and in their presence; insulting those who disagree with him; and looking for an "ass to kick" are more indicative of immaturity than rebelliousness. The perpetually cold, aloof persona, the self-indulgence, the incompetence and vacillation have made his ascendancy a distant memory.

Even in the world of pop culture, the best can sometimes reinvent themselves. After careers defined by "Top 40" hit songs, Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart, and Carly Simon all turned to the classics of the Great American Song Book to interpret music written when their grandparents were young. Unfortunately, politics isn't showbusiness, and, as opposed to reinvention, we are left with the protracted adolescence of Barack Obama.

SOURCE

Note: I was originally going to lead off today's posts with an article from "Slate" about the Tea Partiers that was surprisingly fair by their standards. It was biased but still conceded a lot. I have however thought better of that idea (I think the article deserves a brief mention only) so offer the article above about Obama instead. The link is there for those who want to read the "Slate" article, however.

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Why I'm Not Hiring

When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits

By MICHAEL P. FLEISCHER

With unemployment just under 10% and companies sitting on their cash, you would think that sooner or later job growth would take off. I think it's going to be later—much later. Here's why.

Meet Sally (not her real name; details changed to preserve privacy). She makes $59,000 a year—on paper. In reality, she makes only $44,000 a year because $15,000 is taken from her thanks to various deductions and taxes, all of which form the steep, sad slope between gross and net pay....

Employing Sally costs plenty too. My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest—$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally.

Then the federal and state governments want a little something extra. They take $56 for federal unemployment coverage, $149 for disability insurance, $300 for workers' comp and $505 for state unemployment insurance. Finally, the feds make me pay $856 for Sally's Medicare and $3,661 for her Social Security.

When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally's job each year....

Every year, we negotiate a renewal to our health coverage. This year, our provider demanded a 28% increase in premiums—for a lesser plan. This is in part a tax increase that the federal government has co-opted insurance providers to collect. We had never faced an increase anywhere near this large; in each of the last two years, the increase was under 10%....

A life in business is filled with uncertainties, but I can be quite sure that every time I hire someone my obligations to the government go up. From where I sit, the government's message is unmistakable: Creating a new job carries a punishing price.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Tea Party infiltrator caught: "It's rarely convincing when Tea Party activists brush off attacks on the movement by claiming that the bad apples at their rallies are really agents provocateurs. That's just too convenient. Sometimes, the people who make you look bad actually are part of your movement. But a videographer at this weekend's Fancy Farm political celebration in Kentucky hounded a man wearing Rand Paul swag and holding up a racist anti-immigrant sign, badgering him to reveal who he was. The cameraman caught back up with him when, later, the man walked with supporters of Paul's opponent, [Democrat] Jack Conway." [Comment is from the Left-leaning "Slate", trying to make the best of a bad job]

Another engine problem on the A380 superjumbo: "German airline Lufthansa said pilots on an Airbus A380 flying from Tokyo to Frankfurt shut down one of the superjumbo's four engines as it neared its destination. Flight crew detected a change in oil pressure which was probably the result of dirt particles clogging a filter in the hydraulic circulation system, Lufthansa said. An A380 operated by Singapore Airlines last year returned to Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport 2 1/2 hours into an Asian flight following an unspecified engine malfunction. Air France, Qantas and Dubai-based Emirates have also delayed, cancelled or turned around A380 flights because of glitches with the fuel system." [I wouldn't go on one of those things if you paid me]

House Ethics Committe report accuses Waters of three violations: "As Rep. Maxine Waters was warned against interceding on behalf of a bank with ties to her husband, her chief of staff, who is also her grandson, was ‘actively involved’ in working to help the institution, according to a House Ethics Committee report released Monday that accuses the longtime Los Angeles political figure of three ethics violations. Waters was accused of violating three rules — one that requires its members to ‘behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House,’ a second that prohibits lawmakers from using their influence for personal benefit and a third forbidding the dispensing of favors.”

US military aid to Lebanon put on hold: "The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Monday he has suspended U.S. military aid to Lebanon’s army amid growing concern in Congress that American-supplied weapons could threaten Israel. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., said he placed a hold on $100 million in assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces on Aug. 2, because he was concerned about influence the militant group Hezbollah may have in the army.” [About time]

Indian engineer convicted of selling secrets to China: "A federal jury convicted a former B-2 stealth bomber engineer Monday of selling military secrets and helping China design a stealth cruise missile. Noshir Gowadia was accused of pocketing at least $110,000 from China, which he allegedly used to pay the mortgage on a multimillion-dollar oceanview home he built on Maui’s north shore.”

Jobless tap Social Security early: "Paul Skidmore’s office is shuttered, his job gone, his 18-month job search fruitless, and his unemployment benefits exhausted. So at 63, he plans to file this week for Social Security benefits, three years earlier than planned. ‘All I want to do is work,’ said Skidmore, of Finksburg, Md., who was an insurance claims adjuster for 37 years before his company downsized and closed his office last year. ‘And nobody will hire me.’ It is one of the most striking fallouts from the bad economy: Social Security is facing a rare shortfall this year as a wave of people like Skidmore opt to collect payments before their full retirement age.”

Obama JD uses Americans with Disabilities Act to harm the disabled: "Amazon.com … tried to sell a talking Kindle reader, but’ the Justice Department ’said it couldn’t because the button to make the Kindle talk didn’t have braille. Never mind that books neither talk nor have Braille buttons telling them to talk.’ Obama’s radical appointees at the Justice Department, like Tom Perez, think that it’s better to have NO accommodation for the disabled, than an imperfect accommodation.”

Markets in action: "Make no mistake — the spike in wheat prices will have a huge impact on everything from the cost of bread to pasta to cakes to beef. Faced with those unmistakable signals, the world’s billions of producers and consumers in their daily decision-making will adjust accordingly, sending yet more signals back into the marketplace. Potatoes and rice will offer an alternative source for carbohydrates while beans and pulses do the same for protein. Don’t ask how it will happen; you just know it will as a result of the market forces unleashed.”

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, 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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Five Myths About the GOP That Just Won’t Die

Many Americans today are unhappy with the Democratic Party. Yet according to a Gallup poll conducted in July 2010, Democrats were still ahead of Republicans, 49% to 43%, in voters’ generic ballot preferences for the 2010 congressional elections.

Why? A big part of the reason is voter dissatisfaction with the Republican Party. And a major reason for that dissatisfaction is that over the years voters have been fed numerous lies by Democrats and the mainstream media to discredit the GOP. Here are five of those lies:

1. The Bush administration lied about the intelligence leading up to the Iraq War.

Two bipartisan investigations demanded by Democrats refute this myth. In 2004, the Robb-Silberman Report, along with a separate Senate Intelligence Committee report, both concluded that there was no evidence that administration officials manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq.

2. Republicans caused the mortgage crisis.

In reality it was the Democrats who caused the mortgage crisis and stifled Republican efforts to prevent it.

First, Bill Clinton broadened the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), bypassing the Republican-led Congress and ordering the Treasury Department to rewrite the CRA rules to force banks to fulfill loan “quotas” in low income neighborhoods.

Eventually, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were required by HUD to show that 55% of their mortgage purchases were to low and moderate income borrowers, and lending standards were lowered to meet those goals.

Intense competition caused by Fannie and Freddie’s increasing appetite for loans caused investment and commercial banks to compete for borrowers, and the looser lending standards eventually spread to higher-income and prime borrowers as well.

Then came Clinton’s most disastrous decision: he legalized the securitization of subprime mortgages that allowed the market to soar from $35 billion in risky loans in 1994 to $1 trillion by 2008, thus poisoning the entire mortgage industry.

Republicans tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie’s purchases of subprime mortgages. In both 2003 and 2005, they introduced legislation that would have required Fannie and Freddie to eliminate their investments in them. Both times their attempts were opposed by the Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, so the bills never made it to Senate floor.

3. Eight years of Republican deregulation caused the financial crisis.

Some myths die harder than others. This is certainly one of them. Financial services were not deregulated during the Bush administration.

The repeal of the Depression-era Glass–Steagall Act in 1999, allowing banks and securities firms to be affiliated under the same roof, was supported by the Clinton administration and signed into law by the president.

Moreover, that was not the cause of the financial crisis. The crisis was caused by banks and investment firms purchasing vast numbers of bad mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.

What contributed to such a high volume of purchases? In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Democrat Annette Nazareth, who ran the market regulation division at the time, unanimously adopted a rule change known as Basel II. Adopted by all of the world’s central bankers, Basel II was an attempt to provide greater regulation of investment firms by more accurately evaluating the types of assets they held.

Unfortunately, AAA-rated mortgages were incorrectly considered to be some of the safest assets an institution could own. As a result, Basel II allowed investment banks to leverage their assets of mortgage-backed securities at a ratio as high as 30 to 1. Thus, although Basel II wasn’t the cause of the financial crisis, it certainly contributed to the size of it.

4. Republicans are the “party of Wall Street, big business and special interest groups.”

In the 2008 national election cycle, more campaign donations from the largest banks and Wall Street firms went to Democrats, not Republicans.

Ninety of the top one hundred corporate donors leaned Democratic, and nearly 75 percent of all hedge fund donations in that same period went to presidential candidate Obama.

Furthermore it is the Democratic Party which has deep-rooted unholy alliances with special-interest groups—labor unions, teachers unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, community organizations such as ACORN and welfare beneficiaries—that often places the interests of those groups ahead of what’s best for the country. Their alliance with trial lawyers, for example, is why tort reform, an effective way to lower health care costs, was not included in the health care bill.

5. Democrats have always stood up for black Americans—and Republicans are either uncaring at best, or overt racists at worst.

Many Americans would be surprised to know that Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced conservative ideals. Yet King’s choice of political affinity made perfect sense: it was Republicans, not Democrats, who consistently fought for freedom and civil rights for blacks since their founding in 1854—as the anti-slavery party.

In fact, the Democrats tried to filibuster and stop the 1964 Civil Rights Act from passing.

Republicans also established the NAACP and founded and financed all the earliest black schools and colleges.

The fact that most Americans still believe these five myths is a stark reminder that voters can be manipulated by a mainstream media and a Democratic Party who believe “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.”

SOURCE

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Obama's zealous civil rights enforcer gets busy

"I love this job," said Thomas Perez, the hard-charging head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, in a speech last December to the liberal legal group American Constitution Society. "We have a very broad, a very ambitious vision. It's a very exciting vision, and I wake up every morning with a hop in my step."

There's no doubt Tom Perez is hopping a lot these days. Of all the transformations that have taken place in the Obama administration, perhaps none is so radical as that within the Civil Rights Division. Under Perez, it is bigger, richer and more aggressive than ever, with a far more expansive view of its authority than at any time in recent history.

Perez is playing a leading role in the Justice Department's lawsuit against Arizona's new immigration law. He is promising a huge increase in prosecution of alleged hate crimes. He vows to use "disparate impact theory" to pursue discrimination cases where there is no intent to discriminate but a difference in results, such as in test scores or mortgage lending, that Perez wants to change. He is even considering a crackdown on Web sites on the theory that the Internet is a "public accommodation" as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

To do all this, Perez has come up with some novel ideas. For example, in a recent lending discrimination case, he forced the defendant -- who settled the case without admitting any wrongdoing -- to pay not only the alleged victims but to funnel $1 million to unrelated "qualified organizations" to conduct social programs.

Perez is pushing just as hard on smaller issues. In a little-noticed move last year, he threatened several universities because they took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks. At the time, the Kindle was not fully accessible to blind students, and under pressure from Perez the schools agreed not to offer the e-reader to any students until it was fully accessible to all.

Perez is pursuing his goals with a lot of muscle, powered by a major appropriations increase in President Obama's 2010 budget. "I am going to be calling each and every one of you to recruit you, because we've got 102 new positions in our budget," Perez told the liberal lawyers last year. "One hundred and two people, when added to a base of 715 people. ... that's a real opportunity to make a difference."

Heading the Civil Rights Division is the opportunity of a lifetime for Perez. A former aide to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, he was an activist and later a councilman in Montgomery County, Md., where he made a name for himself pushing in-state tuition and drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. Now, he's on a much bigger stage.

But his across-the-board activism troubles some who have a more restrained view of the role of federal prosecutors. Perez and his team "view civil rights enforcement from a perspective that they are doing 'justice' in a broad sense unrelated to the laws on the books," says Bob Driscoll, who served in a top position in the Bush Civil Rights Division. "They are advancing the cause of historical victims of discrimination, as well as new classes of people who are disfavored by some in society."

As if to prove Driscoll's point, Perez sometimes speaks emotionally about the vast scope of his responsibility. The job of the Civil Rights Division, he says, is to bring light to Americans "living in the shadows." There are "our Muslim-American brothers and sisters subject to post-9/11 backlash" and "communities of color disproportionately affected by the subprime meltdown," and "LGBT brothers and sisters ... forced to confront discrimination" and "all too many children lacking quality education." And many, many more.

That's a very big portfolio, especially when not all the problems in the world can be solved by a federal lawsuit. To Driscoll, the new Civil Rights Division is acting "more like a government-funded version of an advocacy group such as the ACLU or the NAACP Legal Defense Fund than like government lawyers who apply the facts to the law." At some point in the future, Perez's critics believe, Congress and the courts will rein in the division for overreaching and bringing unwarranted cases, as happened during the Clinton years.

But that will come later, especially if Republicans win the House or Senate and can subject Perez and the Justice Department to serious oversight. For now, Thomas Perez is just getting started.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Obama's America has lost its optimism: "The country I was born into was a country that had existed steadily, for almost two centuries, as a nation in which everyone thought—wherever they were from, whatever their circumstances—that their children would have better lives than they did. That was what kept people pulling their boots on in the morning after the first weary pause: My kids will have it better. They'll be richer or more educated, they'll have a better job or a better house, they'll take a step up in terms of rank, class or status. Parents now fear something has stopped. They think they lived through the great abundance, a time of historic growth in wealth and material enjoyment. But they look around, follow the political stories and debates, and deep down they think their children will live in a more limited country"

Quenching America's Can-Do Spirit: "The recent disappointing gross domestic product numbers showing an abnormally sluggish recovery cause me to ask: Where is the "can do" America in which I grew up and where we got back on our feet quickly after downturns? Is it being drenched by nanny-state rules that dictate just about everything we can do or buy these days? When did America the Free, which won two world wars, sent a man to the moon and conquered so many serious diseases, become America the You-Just-Don't-Know-What's-Good-for-You?" I also know and can see every day that the ever-growing size of the nanny state is breaking our confidence and spirit to the point of institutionalizing painfully slow growth and high unemployment."

Mexico: Fox calls for legalizing drugs: "Former President Vicente Fox is joining with those urging his successor to legalize drugs in Mexico, saying that could break the economic power of the country’s brutal drug cartels. Fox’s comments, posted Sunday on his blog, came less than a week after President Felipe Calderon agreed to open the door to discussions about the legalization of drugs, even though he stressed that he remained opposed to the idea.”

Another airline horror story: "Delta Airlines Flight 2355 passenger Cynthia Angel thought she was doing the right thing when she discreetly mentioned to a flight attendant that she thought she smelled alcohol on her soon-to-be pilot’s breath. Little did she know her reward for speaking up would be a one-way ticket off the flight.”

Congress ignores middle-class service sector: "Although Congress seems to be in denial, America is a middle-class service economy. More than 80 percent of Americans earn their living in the service sector, including a broad swath of the middle class gainfully employed in education, health care, finance, and business and professional occupations. It is one of the big lies of the trade debate that manufacturing jobs are being replaced by low-paying service jobs. Since the early 1990s, two-thirds of the net new jobs created have been in service sectors where the average pay is higher than in manufacturing. Members of Congress who belittle the service sector are ignoring the interests of a large majority of their constituents.”

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, 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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Another crooked Leftist

One rule for them and another rule for "the masses"

An investigation into a tax scandal involving Neil Kinnock’s son Stephen threatens to destroy his glamorous wife’s hopes of becoming Prime Minister of Denmark.

The curse of the Kinnocks has struck again after it emerged that Mr Kinnock junior pays taxes in Switzerland - which has the lowest taxes in Europe - and not in Denmark, where his family home is situated but which has the highest tax rates in the world.

It has saved Mr Kinnock and his wife Helle Thorning-Schmidt, leader of Denmark’s Social Democrats, an estimated £40,000 a year.

But it has caused uproar in Denmark, not least because Mr Kinnock’s wife’s party has called for Denmark’s tax rates to be raised higher to cope with the recession.

The affair comes 18 years after Lord Kinnock’s dream of winning the 1992 [British] Election was dashed at the last minute when he made a series of gaffes.

He went on to make a fortune as a European Commissioner while his wife Glenys became a Euro MP. They have been criticised for their combined £150,000-a-year Euro pension....

Until the scandal, Ms Thorning-Schmidt was ahead in the polls and on course to win Denmark’s forthcoming general election. Now she is fighting to save her political career as Right-wing enemies claim she is unfit to run the country.

More HERE

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The false front of the political Left

Comment from Australia, where the next Federal election is even more imminent than in the USA. The comment gives a good evaluation of the Left of American politics as well

The parlous state of Labor [akin to the U.S. Democrats] this election is a direct reflection of the tin ear of the progressive left. Again and again, smugly, arrogantly, patronisingly, progressives declare themselves to be moderates, claiming to represent a reasonable ideological middle ground, while showering the real moderates, who they dub "right-wing", "conservative" or "extremist", with abuse - subtle and not so subtle.

The writer Shelley Gare has delved into the subtle method of abuse in a series of essays and a fine lecture to the Sydney Institute on Tuesday night on totschweigtaktik - the Austro-German word for "death by silence" which she describes as "an astonishingly effective tactic for killing off creative work or fresh ideas or even news stories. You don't criticise or engage with what's being said or produced or expressed; instead you deprive someone and their work or opinion of the oxygen of attention".

Progressives keep trying to redefine the centre in their own image, instead of adjusting their expectations and accepting the reality of a public far more entrenched in conservatism and commonsense than they can imagine.

Their attitude, based as it is on a fundamental dishonesty, leads them to all sorts of self-delusion, fakery and spin that works - because it's done well - but only temporarily. It has infected Labor's election campaign and has led it to the profound mistake of underestimating Tony Abbott, fundamentally misunderstanding who he is, and dismissing him for too long as a right-wing extremist, Neanderthal and religious zealot.

A symptom of the dripping contempt of the progressive left for people who don't think like them is typified by a letter to the editor yesterday from Wayne Duncombe of Glebe, blasting the "boganocracy" - "selfish, narrow-minded, grasping" voters, unlike his enlightened, sophisticated self. Cough. He obviously wants a Glebocracy where everyone drinks chai, wears tie-dye and rides a bike. What a way to win friends and influence people!

Progressives really believe that by willing something into being, by talking it up and writing about it and employing their combined brilliance they can somehow engineer a mass change in social sentiment. It is a core belief. But more and more the arguments run away from them.

They can belittle and shun people who refuse to accept the genius of their world view but they just make their enemies stronger because all the energy they expend on maintaining the charade that they represent the reasonable middle ground means they fail competently to perform their day jobs - say, running a democratic country.

More here

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Dems accused of tea party tampering

Apparently they are not only using real tea party activists to split the vote but they are actually setting up sham tea party organizations -- some of which will no doubt say "racist" things

Nationally, Democrats say they intend to campaign against the tea party movement. But locally, Democratic officials and activists in at least four states now stand accused of collaborating with tea party candidates in an attempt to sabotage Republican challengers in some of the closest House races in the nation.

The charges of dirty tricks are being leveled in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey and Florida — and they involve more than a half-dozen contests that could tip the balance of power in the House.

The accusations range from helping tea party activists circulate candidate petition sheets to underwriting the creation of official tea parties, which then put forth slates of candidates that local conservatives accuse of being rife with Democratic plants.

In all of the affected races, the outcome is expected to be close enough that a third-party candidate who wins just a few percentage points could end up swinging the outcome to the Democratic congressman or candidate.

“The Democrats have come to the realization that they can’t win on issues, and with their flawed candidates, so they are forced to skirt the rules by running candidates who they hope can split the vote with Republicans,” said Paul Lindsey, a National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman.

Democratic officials deny there is any grand conspiracy. "The DCCC has nothing to do with this," said Ryan Rudominer, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But the evidence of campaign tampering in at least two states is hard to dismiss. In Michigan, the party chairman in suburban Detroit’s Oakland County now concedes that one of his top aides played a role in helping nine tea party candidates get onto the ballot for various offices across the state — including the open 1st Congressional District and the 7th Congressional District, held by vulnerable freshman Democratic Rep. Mark Schauer.

More HERE

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What you need to know about Israel's American-made foes

It wasn't a US Army sniper who killed IDF Lt. Col. Dov Harari and seriously wounded Capt. Ezra Lakia on Tuesday. But the Lebanese Armed Forces sniper who shot them owes a great deal to the generous support the LAF has received from America.

For the past five years, the LAF has been the second largest recipient of US military assistance per capita after Israel. A State Department press release from late 2008 noted that between 2006 and 2008, the LAF received ten million rounds of ammunition, Humvees, spare parts for Lebanese attack helicopters, vehicles for its internal security forces "and the same frontline weapons that US military troops are currently using, including assault rifles, automatic grenade launchers, advanced sniper systems, anti-tank weapons, and the most modern urban warfare bunker weapons."

Since 2006 the US has provided Lebanon some $500 million in military assistance. And there is no end in sight. After US President Barack Obama's meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in June, the White House proclaimed Obama's "determination to continue US efforts to support and strengthen Lebanese institutions such as the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Internal Security Forces."

And indeed, in late June, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates informed Congress that the Pentagon intends to provide the LAF with 24 120mm mortars, 24 M2 .50 caliber machine guns, one million rounds of ammunition, and 24 humvees and trailers. The latest orders should be delivered by the end of 2011.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the administration has already allocated $100 million in foreign military assistance to Lebanon for 2011. According to Lebanon's Al Safir, in written testimony to Congress, last week Obama's nominee to command US Central Command, General James Matthis claimed that relations between US Central Command and the LAF focus on building the LAF's capabilities "to preserve internal stability and protect borders."

And how is that border protection going?

Tuesday's unprovoked LAF ambush of Lt. Col. Harari's battalion within Israeli territory showed that the LAF is fully prepared to go to war against the US's closest ally in the region in order to deter IDF forces from crossing the border. Indeed, they are willing to commit unprovoked acts of illegal aggression to harm Israel.

As the Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday, there is no reason to be surprised by what happened. Since 2009, LAF forces have frequently pointed their rifles at IDF forces operating along the border. In recent months they have also cocked their rifles at IDF forces. It was just a matter of time before they started shooting.

The same aggressive border protection is completely absent however along Lebanon's border with Syria. Since 2006, the LAF has taken no actions to seal off that border from weapons transfers to Hizbullah. It has taken no steps to protect Lebanese sovereignty from the likes of Syria and Iran that are arming Hizbullah's army with tens of thousands of missiles.....

Unfortunately, the LAF is not the only military organization aligned with Israel's enemies that the US is arming and training. There is also the US-trained Palestinian army.

As Israel Radio's Arab Affairs commentator Yoni Ben Menachem reported last month, the IDF is deeply concerned about the US-trained Palestinian force. Ben Menachem recalled that since 1996, Palestinians security forces have repeatedly taken leading roles in organizing and carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel. Hundreds of Israelis have been murdered and maimed in these attacks.

The Palestinian force being trained by the US army represents a disturbing, qualitative upgrade in Palestinian military capabilities.

OC Central Command Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrachi warned IDF ground forces about the new US-Palestinian threat in May. As Mizrachi put it in a speech at Tze'elim training base cited by Ben Menachem, "This is a well trained force, better equipped than its predecessors and trained by the US. The significance of this is that at the start of a new battle [between the Palestinians and the IDF] the price that we will pay will be higher. A force like this one can shut down a built up area with four snipers. This is deadly. These aren't the fighters we faced in Jenin [in 2002]. This is an infantry force that will be fighting us and we need to take this into account. They have offensive capabilities and we aren't expecting them to give up."

The IDF assesses that the US-trained force will be capable of overrunning small IDF outposts and isolated Israeli communities.

To date, the US has spent $400 million on the Palestinian army. The Obama administration has allocated an additional $100 million for the next year.

More HERE

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More media lies

As in TIME magazine in this piece titled Islamophobia and the 'Ground Zero Mosque' Debate. Two particularly bald-faced ones I'll highlight:

...figures like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf — the Arab-American cleric behind the mosque project near Ground Zero — stand out. A consummate moderate who has made a career preaching about the compatibility of Islamic and American values...

A consummate moderate? Really? Let's go to Wikipedia:

In a 2001 60 Minutes interview, though Abdul Rauf condemned the 9/11 attacks as un-Islamic, he said that the U.S. was "an accessory to the crime that happened" because "we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world." In 2010 he declined to state that Hamas was a terrorist organization.

Mr. Moderate Islam also had the following to say a few years back:

"The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets."

Imam Feisal said the bombing in Madrid had made his message more urgent. He said there was an endless supply of angry young Muslim rebels prepared to die for their cause and there was no sign of the attacks ending unless there was a fundamental change in the world.

Imam Feisal, who argues for a Western style of Islam that promotes democracy and tolerance, said there could be little progress until the US acknowledged backing dictators and the US President gave an "America Culpa" speech to the Muslim world.

That was back in 2004. Since then he's found a US President that does nothing but give "America Culpa" speeches and we're seeing how well that's working out for the West.

More HERE

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, 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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In Afghanistan we see an appalling and probably hopeless example of what a low IQ society looks like

IQs are low throughout the Muslim world and inbreeding is almost certainly one of the causes. And Afghanistan has long been extreme in its Islamic practices, perhaps in part because it is so rural.

The preference for cousin marriages stems from the fact that Mohammed made divorce so easy. So the only protection for women and children is having the whole family onside

UNICEF says that 26 of every 100 Afghan children die before the age of 5. This is the worst child mortality rate in the world. Of the survivors, 60% suffer from moderate to severe physical and mental stunting, The average death age is 45, among the lowest lifespan in the world, and I suspect that this is even worse for women.

Brinkley finds it no surprise that two-thirds of Afghan adults cannot read and write. How do you modernize such a country? And since few women (outside cities) get any education at all, the national illiteracy rate is probably even worse. Illiterate women produce illiterate children.

We already know that there is no obstetrical medical care available outside the major cities, resulting in a horrific maternal death rate. I have trouble believing the population numbers we are given. Not enough young mothers and babies are surviving to produce a population explosion.

What are the consequences of these conditions in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Nobody cares about the girls since they are married off early. But for the boys, so many of them stunted and low IQ, what can they do? Parents send them to Islamist Madrassas, where they memorize the Koran in Arabic (not their language) and are brainwashed to serve as cannon fodder “to protect Islam.” High IQ not required for this.

One cultural custom found everywhere in the conservative Muslim world is preference for the marriage of first cousins, repeated over generations, which produces not only the high infant mortality rate, but terrible birth defects—especially mental ones. Nobody is taking statistics on this yet—but observers—many with UN aid agencies—see the results in villages from Pakistan to Palestine.

This is not new in world history. There has always been a noticeable difference of intelligence between the well-fed city dwellers and peasant communities. Even in the early days of our own country, the jokes about the “country bumpkin” were common enough to indicate this difference. During my sojourn in Iran, I also noted the flood of country people coming to Tehran for opportunity. The city people scorned them as “donkeys.”

We now know that problems in Afghanistan or a Palestinian village can wind up killing us. It is a serious issue. Just ask the Marines who are training Afghan police. Their trainees are often either stoned or dim-witted, a reality reported on by villagers being policed.

More HERE

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Obama and Democrat popularity slumping

As we suggested in our recent column, the new Gallup/USA Today poll confirms that Barack Obama's ratings have collapsed as a result of the WikiLeaks release of Afghan War memos. Down from 46 percent in the most recent poll, Obama's job approval has plunged to 41 percent -- the lowest it has ever been in any major poll.

Democrats have now joined in the defection from Obama impelled by their increasing anger over his continued involvement in Afghanistan and the emerging double-dip in the recession. Support for his war policies there has dropped to 38 percent from 46 percent in February, while approval of his handling of the economy has plunged to 39 percent.

Elected as a peace and jobs candidate, the defections over these two issues among his base are likely to be especially injurious in the 2010 congressional elections. The generic Republican vs. Democratic ballot now shows an 8 point GOP lead, according to Rasmussen Reports.

We have recently reviewed polls for five Republican House challengers to Democratic incumbents in Iowa, North Dakota, Virginia and New York, and were shocked to see the Republicans leading in each. Normally, one would consider GOP chances excellent if the challenger were able to hold the incumbent to under 50 percent of the vote, since the undecided almost always goes entirely for the challenger. But to actually show leads at this point is incredible.

Once Democrats start abandoning Obama, there is no bottom to his ratings. Disaffection and cynicism spread easily in that party, and the left has shown signs of increasing galvanization against the war. More than 100 House Democrats voted against war funding, about 40 percent of the total Democratic membership in the House.

Adding to the party's woes is, of course, the emerging scandals involving Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif. Coming just as the fall campaign kicks off, they remind one of the Mark Foley scandal that so darkened GOP chances in 2006. With the House Democrats certain not to expel either member but to slap each on the wrist, the scandal will flare into a conflagration that will further diminish Democratic chances in November.

In a presidential year, these Democratic defections would only be consequential were there a third candidate or a primary challenger to choose. But in an off-year, staying home is a viable option, particularly for the minority and young voters Obama lured to the polls for the first time in 2008. Their defection will be disastrous for Obama and will cost him control of both houses of Congress.

SOURCE

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Panic on the Letterman show

Speaking with far-left MSNBC News commentator Rachel Maddow on his program, Dave listened as she put forth the preposterous theory that Fox News wants to frighten white Americans by reporting negatively about black Americans. "Scaring white people is good politics on the conservative side of the spectrum, and it always has been. The idea is that you sort of rile up the white base to be afraid of an other, to be afraid of scary immigrants or scary black people..."

In the past, paranoid, dishonest rants like that would have been dismissed as fringe speak. But not anymore. Without a shred of evidence, a guest on Letterman's "Late Show" (which by the way gets trounced in the ratings by FNC every night) defines an entire news organization as a racist enterprise. And Letterman goes along with the program, adding: "These people are continuing to fan this flame and ... that is cancer."

Please. The only people Fox News is scaring are far-left loons who see their shining city on the hill on fire. For 18 months, the United States has been governed from the left, and things are not going well. I'm sorry if this analysis frightens some folks, but when you spend a half-trillion dollars trying to stimulate the economy and you create just 600,000 jobs, well, people are going to notice.

When the war in Afghanistan turns chaotic, Americans are not going to be pleased. When the nation's debt is increased by more than a trillion dollars a year because of record spending, folks are going to get a bit nervous. So, in order to counter those realities, the far left must divert attention from them. Thus, the scary black people deal.

In reply, here's a Top 1 list for Letterman and his uber-liberal guest: The American people don't need to be "riled" up by phony race baiting. They are already riled up by reality. And the polls prove it.

More HERE

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State governments are oozing bureaucratic fat

The New York Times pulled together a list of how the stimulus money was to be spent. Funding included $87 billion to “help states with Medicaid costs.” $53 billion to “help states prevent cuts to essential services like education.” $27.5 billion to “provide money for highways and bridges,” which will, of course, be built by government employees. And so forth. The stimulus bill was, in large part, a massive bailout for state and local governments.

The need arose because in some ways, state governments are in even more fiscal trouble than the federal government. Washington, after all, can always print money. That would destroy the national economy in the long run, but politicians aren’t known for looking to the long run. Anything beyond the next Election Day may as well not exist for them.

But states are required to make ends meet year after year. Some, including California, are finding that almost impossible. In the Spring 2010 issue of City Journal, Steven Malanga explained why: “The unions’ political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state’s public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life.”

It’s not simply unionized state employees who’ve been getting rich at government expense, of course. Elected officials at all levels do very well, too.

Robert Rizzo, the chief administrative officer in Bell, Ca. recently quit his job after his constituents learned he was making more than $787,000 per year, roughly twice what President Obama pulls down.

City Council members were making almost $100,000 per year for part-time work. They were able to pay themselves so much because the city changed to “charter status” a few years ago. Rizzo, by the way, will be able to keep his $650,000 a year state pension. Good work if you can get it.

There’s clearly government fat to trim, but our leaders seem reluctant to get out the scissors. Last month, President Obama asked Congress for another $50 billion in aid for states. “Because the urgency is high -- many school districts, cities and states are already being forced to make these layoffs,” Obama declared, “these provisions must be passed as quickly as possible.”

Maybe, instead of starting with teachers, governments could find other places to cut.

After all, while private business has been cutting back in this recession, Uncle Sam has been hiring. The federal government has added 240,000 new employees while private employers have eliminated some 8 million net jobs. In June, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the unemployment rate for government workers was 3.4 percent, roughly a third of the national private sector rate.

Government spending, at all levels, is simply unsustainable. That makes this a good year for our leaders to finally start trimming back the size and scope of some government bureaus.

More HERE

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Obama hot air hides an ongoing disaster for America

On July 2, President Obama declared, "And finally, because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes. (Applause.) There will be no more tax-funded bailouts -- period. (Applause.) If a large financial institution should ever fail, this reform gives us the ability to wind it down without endangering the broader economy. "

The occasion of his bold statement was the signing of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

So imagine our surprise when less than two weeks later Fannie Mae requested $1.5 billion more from the U.S. Treasury. This request came after the 12th quarterly loss by Fannie, and with this money Fannie's take from the taxpayers' wallet will grow to a whopping $86.1 billion for one company. Together with its twin Freddie Mac the bailout package is over $200 billion.

Fannie Mae, aka the Federal National Mortgage Association, was created in 1938 as a government sponsored enterprise (GSE) to bolster the housing market by increasing Americans' access to cheap home loans during the last Great Depression. Freddie Mac, aka the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., was created in 1970 to end Fannie's monopoly in the secondary mortgage market. Both are mandated by Congress to help increase home ownership.

The problem we have with this housing mandate is that not all Americans deserve, nor are they responsible enough, to go deep into debt to purchase a home.

Everyone understands that mortgage debt stands at the center of the ongoing financial crisis. Responsible analysis concludes that too much credit was extended to too many un-credit-worthy buyers of homes. At the center of this debacle stand these government-sponsored private financial firms named Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Neither of these firms were "reformed" by the so-called Reform Act.

Fannie has long been a favorite tool of America's political left. A revolving door has allowed politically connected White House and Congressional aides to spend time at Fannie becoming fabulously wealthy.

The examples of this revolving door are many, but the most famous and wealthiest is Obama campaign adviser Franklin Raines. Raines served on both the Carter and Clinton White House staffs before becoming Chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae. In the Fannie job this former bureaucrat earned over $100 million.

Raines was eventually pushed out of Fannie in an accounting scandal. He was accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulator of Fannie Mae, of manipulating the firm's accounting so that he and other senior executives could pocket ever-larger bonuses.

While at Fannie, Raines began a program in 1999 to encourage bank loans to individuals with low incomes. He also downgraded credit requirements on loans that Fannie Mae purchased from banks. Raines claimed the program would allow borrowers who were "a notch below what our current underwriting has required" to get home loans. The move was praise by liberals because they believed it would increase the number of minority and low-income home owners. We now know the program is central to the ongoing mortgage defaults still unfolding at Fannie.

So the foreclosure crisis limps on with no end in sight.

To understand Obama's failure at financial reform, you only have to analyze his rhetoric. At the same July 21 ceremony he boldly proclaimed about the bill, "It demands accountability and responsibility from everyone." Problem is, on its face this statement is a bold faced lie. Fannie and Freddie have been neither fixed nor reformed and both are bleeding the taxpayers daily.

SOURCE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, 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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The meltdowns of socialism in Greece and most of Europe suggest that we may live in more dangerous times than we generally realize

In the 1920s, Ludwig von Mises demonstrated via economic reasoning why socialism could not work. His argument was that without market prices, there was no way to properly allocate resources. About ten years later, Friedrich Hayek supported Mises' conclusion from a different angle. He approached it as a "knowledge problem" and argued that no central authority, regardless of how intelligent, could possess enough information to make proper and efficient decisions for tens of millions of people and businesses.

History validated the theory of the two Austrian economists. Russia, China, Eastern Europe, Cuba, and North Korea produced inevitable the misery, poverty, and brutality. The two countries that continue the system are amongst the poorest countries in the world, held together only by totalitarian rule and outside economic support.

With the recognition that socialism did not work, "do-gooders" changed their efforts to a system that would be part capitalism and part socialism. They believed that capitalism could be used for resource allocation while the "caring nature" of socialism could ensure equitable distribution of wealth. President Clinton expressed interest in what was then referred to as a "third-way." Western Europe had adopted this approach decades earlier.

Interestingly, Mises argued that a "third way" could not work, either. In the 1940s, Mises demonstrated that one intervention begets additional interventions. A so-called mixed system is nothing more than capitalism with interventionism imposed. Mises showed that any such system eventually degenerates into full-fledged socialism. In a collection of essays entitled "Planning for Freedom," Mises concluded:

There is no other alternative to totalitarian slavery than liberty. There is no other planning for freedom and general welfare than to let the market system work. There is no other means to attain full employment, rising real wage rates and a high standard of living for the common man than private initiative and free enterprise.

The countries of Western Europe have, as Mises predicted, deteriorated into social welfare states likely never imagined or intended at their inceptions. As full-blown socialism approached, these countries became insolvent. Soon all will be forced to either dismantle their welfare states or incur sovereign defaults. The U.S., while never formally adopting either socialism or the mixed system, drifted into the mixed system by gradually adopting many socialist programs. As a result, the U.S. faces the same future of insolvency as its European counterparts.

In terms of history, the mixed system dates back only to Bismarck in the 1880s. It was initiated in a few countries in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Its widespread acceptance occurred after World War II, when several countries chose not to return to the decentralized economies that existed prior to the war. England was the prime example. Industries nationalized for the war effort remained nationalized after the war. England rapidly devolved into a third-rate economy as a result. Prime Minister Thatcher reversed the decline by re-privatizing most of these industries.

It took only about fifty to seventy years for the mixed systems to fail. That is literally a moment in terms of history. Many people are still reluctant to admit that socialism is a failure despite the theoretical warnings and the actual failures themselves. With socialists, it is never the system and always the people that are the cause of failure. "If only we had better leaders." As Hayek and Mises pointed out, it has nothing to do with leadership. There is a fatal flaw in the concept.

As a result of attempting to extend the socialist myth, governments and their populations are now burdened with debt, much of which will never be paid. We are on the verge of a worldwide depression that will hit as governments run out of resources. It is likely that politicians will continue to play the game of "extend and pretend." But we have reached Ms. Thatcher's end-point: "The problem with socialism is that you run out of other people's money."

How ironic that President Obama's first major achievement was ObamaCare. In May, Greece was ordered to privatize its health care system. This month, it was reported that England was going to overhaul their health care system. England was frequently referenced as a model of affordable, efficient health care by ObamaCare advocates. Apparently, the English government and its people view it differently.

These instances are not one-time events. Nor will they be limited to health care. The welfare states of Europe will soon be dismantled in part or whole. So too will the entitlement programs in the U.S. The laws of economics and physics are immutable. They are above legislation. Countries do not have the resources necessary to honor their commitments, period!

Our Founding Fathers, without using the term socialism, designed a Constitution to protect against such incoherent schemes. Over time, the Constitution was vitiated by "living document" interpretations, penumbras, and other nonsense. Now, the U.S. stands on the precipice of failure just as Western Europe. It is insolvent, and there are no other alternatives than to default or dismantle.

The world is at a very dangerous inflection point. We are about to enter a depression. Politicians are not going to back away from socialism willingly. They and large numbers of other beneficiaries will do whatever they can to retain the status quo. Despite the unequivocal failure of the modern welfare state, it is unlikely to disappear quietly. The status quo is always difficult to change. It becomes especially so in desperate economic times and for people who believe they are entitled to be taken care of by others.

The welfare state is headed for the dustbin of history. That is certain because it is no longer sustainable. The critical question is what will replace it. As Mises pointed out, there are only two alternatives: freedom or totalitarianism. There is no middle ground. There is no political compromise that can bridge this gap.

Regardless of which side of the issue you are on, the battle will be bitter and likely last a decade or more. Economically, everyone will be hurt, including many of the "well-off." Whether our moral and ethical code is strong enough to get through this together is moot. We are not like our ancestors in the sense of their strong commitment to community, responsibility, forbearance, and integrity. We are the pampered generation, entitled to gratification now and willing to cut corners to get it.

In many ways, this problem is more serious than that faced by our Founding Fathers. After all, King George had little control over their lives or fortunes. Yet these principled men risked both rather than accept even a little bit of tyranny. Theirs was a fight of principle; ours is one of survival. The fight is made more important when it is coupled with a depression. We know what monsters rose to power during the last depression and their effect on the world.

We will either get liberty or totalitarianism. There is no middle ground. For me, the choice is clear and was stated by Patrick Henry more than two centuries ago: "Give me liberty or give me death."

I am willing to sacrifice just as much as our Founding Fathers did so that my grandchildren and their grandchildren can live in the same country I grew up in. I hope enough others feel the same.

More HERE

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Barack Obama's popularity dips among white voters

President Obama’s popularity among white voters has plunged to create a widening racial divide in America. While support from black Americans has remained steady, a new Gallup poll reveals that whites have become increasingly disillusioned with the president. By last month, a 50-point gulf separated the two racial groups.

After Mr Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, he boasted a 62 per cent approval ratings among whites. But that percentage plunged in July to just 38 per cent. That compares to an 88 per cent job approval among blacks last month, only a slight dip from his high point of 92 per cent a year ago.

The precipitous drop in support from whites comes at a critical time for the president as the key mid-term elections loom in November.

Mr Obama’s popularity has taken serious knocks over his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, suspicion over his healthcare reforms and anger over the billions of pounds used to prop up the US economy with taxpayer bail outs.

The Gallup poll showed Mr Obama’s approval ratings have also fallen 28 points among Hispanic voters from its 82 per cent peak in May 2009. His 54 per cent rating among Hispanics last month was the lowest of his presidency. Overall, Mr Obama’s popularity remained unchanged last month at 46 per cent, down four points from February. His highest monthly average in the Gallup survey was 66 per cent in January 2009.

More here

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Eric Holder's Justice Dept. shakedowns -- funneling funds to far-Leftist groups

The Justice Department has found a new way to pursue civil rights lawsuits, using the powers of the Civil Rights Division not just to win compensation for victims of alleged discrimination but also to direct large sums of money to activist groups that are not discrimination victims and not connected to a particular suit.

In the past, when the Civil Rights Division filed suit against, say, a bank or a landlord, alleging discrimination in lending or rentals, the cases were often settled by the defendant paying a fine to the U.S. Treasury and agreeing to put aside a sum of money to compensate the alleged discrimination victims. There was then a search for those victims -- people who were actually denied a loan or an apartment -- who stood to be compensated. After everyone who could be found was paid, there was often money left over. That money was returned to the defendant.

Now, Attorney General Eric Holder and Civil Rights Division chief Thomas Perez have a new plan. Any unspent money will not go back to the defendant but will instead go to a "qualified organization" approved by the Justice Department. And if there is not enough unspent money -- that will be determined by the Department -- then the defendant might be required to come up with more money to give to the "qualified organization."

The arrangement was used in a recently-settled case, United States v. AIG Federal Savings Bank and Wilmington Finance. The Justice Department alleged that AIG violated the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act by allowing third-party wholesale mortgage brokers to "charge African-American borrowers higher direct broker fees for residential real estate-related loans than white borrowers." The financial institution denied any wrongdoing, and there was no factual finding of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, under the terms of a March 19, 2010 consent decree, AIG agreed to pay $6.1 million to "aggrieved persons who may have suffered as a result of the alleged violations."

That is standard procedure in such cases. But then AIG also agreed, in the words of the consent decree, to "provide a minimum of $1,000,000 to qualified organization(s) to provide credit counseling, financial literacy, and other related educational programs targeted at African-American borrowers." The money would come from unspent funds in the victim-compensation fund. But if it turned out that, after paying off the victims, there was less than $1 million left in the victim-compensation fund, AIG agreed to "replenish the settlement fund so that it contains $1,000,000 for distribution for those educational purposes."

The consent decree directs AIG to consult with the Justice Department on which "qualified organizations" could receive money, and it gives the Department the right to approve where the money will go. In any event, the money will go to groups who have no direct connection to the lawsuit and its allegations of discrimination.

Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokeswoman, says no money has yet been given to organizations under the AIG agreement. But she adds that the funds, and those from other cases, will "go to 'qualified organizations' that have a mission that addresses whatever the harm is that was the subject of the litigation."

The Department followed a similar procedure in another case, United States v. Sterling. In that suit, which was first filed in 2006, the Department accused a large California landlord of violating the Fair Housing Act and other laws by "refusing to rent to non-Korean prospective tenants, misrepresenting the availability of apartment units to non-Korean prospective tenants, and providing inferior treatment to non-Korean tenants in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles."

The defendants did not admit any wrongdoing, and there was no factual finding of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, in a November 3, 2009 consent decree, the defendants agreed to pay $2.625 million to compensate alleged victims. On top of that, the consent decree stipulated that if there weren't enough alleged victims on which to spend the $2.625 million, then what's left "shall be distributed...to a qualified organization(s) mutually agreed upon by the United States and defendants...for the purpose of conducting fair housing enforcement or educational activities in Los Angeles County."

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

As I have done for some time, I have recently picked out what I think are the best or most interesting pictures that have appeared recently on my various blogs. I have now gathered the pictures for the first half of this year together. You can access them here or here

The Dems’ misguided Rust Belt stimulus: "The Democratic Party has pinned a lot of its hopes on a ‘pro-manufacturing’ agenda. It’s a bad idea. Promoting manufacturing is an unachievable goal, an unnecessary task, and not likely to be popular. Democrats’ manufacturing agenda has to be seen as little more than a payoff to their ardent supporters in the labor movement. First, manufacturing, as most people think of it, is declining just about everywhere.”

Eminent domain by the backdoor: "Earlier today I was talking with my friend Prof. David Beito, a good libertarian and the chair of the Alabama Advisory Board of the US Commission on Civil Rights. David has been investigating the use of ‘blight’ ordinances to seize property in Montgomery, Alabama. The properties are declared ‘blights’ by the city which then comes in, often very quickly, and destroys the home. They then bill the home owners for the service provided by the city, and sells the property to highest bidder, often wealthy land developers. The homeowner not only loses their home but may end up having to pay the city for the services it provided.”

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, 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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Has Gramsci's long march now reached the U.S. navy?

Leftists have taken over education and the bureaucracy. They will never take over the ordinary mnen and women of the armed forces but if you can take over the high command of the armed forces, your task is done. The "long march through the institutions" foreseen by Antonio Gramsci is just about complete. Only a few independent media outlets then stand across your road to complete control

The Navy wants to judge sailors by the color of their skin, not the content of their seamanship.

The latest national security leak is a shocking e-mail from a Navy admiral on "Diversity Accountability." The message, sent to a list of other flag officers, notes that "a change in focus of this year's diversity brief is the desire to identify our key performers (by name) and provide insight on each of them." Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, who apparently originated this order, "is interested in who are the diverse officers with high potential and what is the plan for their career progression. He may ask what is being done within to ensure they are considered for key follow on billets within the Navy."

The message specifies, "This list must be held very closely but will provide ready reference to ensure we are carefully monitoring and supporting the careers of the best and the brightest the Navy has to offer." That is, the best and the brightest provided a sailor is one of the euphemistically "diverse." If you are a white male, it might be time to set sail and seek opportunities elsewhere.

In practice, the Navy will be creating a list of privileged "diverse" officers who will enjoy special benefits and career mentoring not available to people of the wrong race, as well as a virtual guarantee of fast-track access to the highest reaches of command. Fifty-six years after the Supreme Court struck down the concept of "separate but equal" treatment of races, the U.S. Navy is erecting a wall of segregation between what will amount to two parallel promotion systems: one for the "diverse" and another for the monotone. If this isn't illegal, it should be.

How this dual-track system will be implemented is difficult to discern. Will officers doing fitness reports on those on the list be made aware of their subordinates' privileged status? Will the people on the list have knowledge that the system is looking out for them? If they get a poor fitness report, will they have special means of getting a second look? Will there be repercussions for reviewing officers who did not know they were supposed to just keep the list members on the fast track no matter what? The devil will be lurking in these details.

This type of backward, 20th-century, overtly racial thinking has no place in 21st-century post-racial America. The Navy leadership apparently believes the way to promote racial harmony is by engaging in blatant, invidious discrimination. In practice, however, this system will, in fact, relegate "diverse" sailors to a form of second-class status. Any nonwhite male sailor who - through intelligence, initiative and drive - builds a stellar career will simply be seen as just another special case, just one of "the Listers." Those sailors may achieve rank, but they will have to work twice as hard to command respect.

In the contemporary naval bureaucracy, this type of politically correct nonsense has run out of control like a loose cannon on deck. The Naval Academy lists racial diversity as the "highest personnel priority," apparently even over the mission of educating future Navy leaders for warfare on the high seas. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made achieving diversity a "strategic imperative" when he was chief of naval operations. Call us old-fashioned seadogs, but we'd prefer that the Navy's top priority be fighting and winning our nation's wars rather than engaging in social experimentation.

The suggested list of privileged officers is due Monday. The message states that the reporting requirement will not be put into the secretary of the Navy's TV4 Taskers tracking system "due to the sensitive nature of the by name list." No doubt, once the secret list leaks, as it surely will, there will be as much discomfort for the people on the list as for those not on it, especially those unfortunates who met the diversity requirement but for some reason did not make the cut. Maybe they can sue, charging discrimination. Either way, the Navy Department has run aground.

SOURCE. NPR reports another absurdity from the U.S. navy here. Apparently the four best sailors of the year were all women and only one was a non-Hispanic white.

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British government moves to cut dramatically public funding for the arts

I wholly approve of this. I have never seen any reason why taxpayer Joe should fund the entertainment of the elite. I myself listen to Bach and Mozart rather than pop and have been known to recite Chaucer in the original Middle English -- and you will even see that I have unsplit an infinitive if you compare my heading above with the original. But the government didn't make me that way nor do I need government help to put a CD in my music system. And the idea that the "Arts" somehow "improve" people is a laugh. Most arty types are on the miserable and destructive side of politics -- the Left. Hitler was an artist, after all

Cash-strapped and desperate to slash the largest budget deficit in Europe, the new ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is moving to close the curtain on an era of what they describe as excessive government patronage.

The coalition is preparing to cut arts funding so dramatically that it could sharply reduce or sever the financial lifelines for hundreds of cultural institutions from the National Theatre to the British Museum.

The cuts would be more than a temporary fix. Officials are calling for a permanent shift toward the U.S. model of private philanthropy as the main benefactor of the arts, upending a tradition of government sponsorship that helped produce the likes of Academy Award-winning directors Sam Mendes and Danny Boyle and playwrights including Lee Hall, who was nominated for an Oscar for "Billy Elliot."

The move underscores the profound changes in the role of government that are taking place from Greece to Spain to Britain. It happens as European nations scramble to rein in runaway spending, in part by slashing public funds to sectors that came to survive -- even thrive -- because of them.

Now, the budget cuts to the arts are a small part of a broader push by the coalition government to slash spending and right Britain's finances over the next four years. Although some areas, such as national health care, are being largely protected, virtually all sectors from education to defense are bracing for steep cuts.

Panicked curators, artistic directors and art critics are warning of London's potential fall from the vanguard of the global arts scene [How sad! For them maybe but who else cares?]. In danger, for instance, are the same government-funded institutions that helped produce such films as "The Last King of Scotland" and "The Constant Gardener" as well as Broadway- and Hollywood-bound stage works such as "Jerusalem" and "War Horse." The Royal Shakespeare Company has warned that it might be forced to scale back or do away with international productions altogether.

More HERE

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Will Obamacare kill Indiana's promising experiment in health-care reform?

Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney struck a deal with Democrats in the state legislature to expand health insurance to the relatively small fraction of residents who didn't have it (about 10 percent, compared with 15 percent nationally). Today, hundreds of thousands more Bay State residents have insurance, but costs are rising at dizzying rates, and state insurance regulators and current governor Deval Patrick are locked in a bitter fight with insurers over price controls in the small-group and individual-insurance markets. Leaked e-mails from the state's insurance department suggest that state-imposed caps on insurance premiums could force some insurers into bankruptcy. The state may not be far behind: experts at the RAND Corporation believe that without far-reaching reforms, health-care costs may reach unsustainable levels--growing 8 percent faster than state GDP and doubling to $123 billion by 2020. In taking the same gamble that Massachusetts did, President Obama has exposed the whole country to the risk of fiscal meltdown.

Obama's embrace of a fundamentally flawed reform model may also kill off the nation's first consumer-driven effort to cover the low-income uninsured. In 2007, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels built bipartisan support for extending coverage to over 100,000 uninsured Hoosiers who made too much money to qualify for the state's Medicaid program. Daniels and Mitch Roob, then the secretary of Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration, knew that the state was spending millions through its Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) program, which subsidized treatment for uninsured Hoosiers who showed up in emergency rooms or wound up hospitalized for preventable illnesses. Roob says that the governor decided that it would be more efficient to purchase insurance for the uninsured than to buy their health care directly from the hospitals. Daniels figured that private insurance would also "enfranchise the individual, not the institution," says Roob.

Working with state senator Patricia Miller, a Republican, and state representative Charlie Brown, a Democrat, Daniels and his team developed a fiscally sustainable plan that would attract bipartisan support. The discussions were anything but easy, Roob recalls: "We went through four or five complete iterations of program proposals until we hit on what became the Healthy Indiana Plan," or HIP. The plan had three core principles. One of these, again, was individual control of health-care spending. A second was protection for taxpayers; the program was designed so that enrollment couldn't grow faster than the available funding. (The program is funded partly by diverting current Medicaid DSH funding--which required a waiver from the federal Department of Health and Human Services, the Medicaid program's overseer--and partly by a cigarette-tax increase.) The third was disease prevention: Daniels, who exercises and watches his own diet, was adamant that HIP focus on wellness instead of just paying bills.

The Healthy Indiana Plan covers Indiana residents who make too much money to qualify for the state's traditional Medicaid program--those who earn from 19 percent to 200 percent of the federal poverty level for families and childless adults. Part of HIP is a health savings account (HSA), which Indiana calls a Personal Wellness and Responsibility (Power) account. If he's able to do so, each enrollee must make a monthly payment into his Power account that is no more than 5 percent of his gross family income. The state government also pays into the Power accounts, and it adds catastrophic insurance coverage, in case of medical emergencies too expensive for the accounts to handle. The program includes first-dollar, or zero-deductible, coverage for preventive services like mammograms and PSA tests--up to $500 annually. HIP members who can pay but don't make the minimal payments are removed from the plan for a year; Daniels felt that this incentive would give them a sense of ownership in the program and help them take responsibility for their own health. So far, the design has been successful: HIP has a 1.86 percent rate of nonpayment, and its members are likelier to stick with their plan than Medicaid recipients are.

When it took effect in early 2008, HIP was swamped with applicants. Today, about 45,000 low-income Hoosiers enroll in the program, with another 49,000 on a waiting list (HIP is capped by the federal government's current share of Medicaid spending, which limits enrollment). Recent data show that Daniels's planning has paid off: about 76 percent of HIP's population have used preventive services, and that population is less likely to use emergency rooms than are Medicaid recipients in Indiana. In fact, for HIP members required to make contributions to their Power accounts, emergency-room use declined by 15 percent over the first six months of enrollment; even those not required to make contributions showed a 5 percent decrease. Generic drugs are very popular--they constitute 84 percent of drugs used in HIP. Patient satisfaction is high: 94 percent of HIP clients claimed satisfaction with the program, and 99 percent indicated they would re-enroll.

Daniels has become a vocal critic of the president's health-care reforms, citing a state-sponsored study by the accounting firm Milliman that found that Indiana would incur between $2.9 and $3.6 billion in new costs under Obamacare. The governor also warns that the new law could do in HIP by requiring many recipients to enroll in the state's traditional Medicaid program. It happens that Daniels broadly agrees with the president's analysis of America's health-care problems. What he takes issue with is the 2,400-page bill forced on the states, which he sees as too expensive, too bureaucratic, and too Washington-centered. In the long term, Daniels believes that moving toward a consumer-driven system--modeled on HSAs and catastrophic insurance--is the way to go. "We've got to trust people to take charge of their own health-care decisions," he says, "and make insurance more like car insurance," which covers major costs, not routine ones.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

A dysfunctional Disabilities Act: "As with most good intentions, the American’s With Disabilities Act has grown into something which in some cases obviously violates that initial intent. Designed to provide equal access to Americans with both physical and mental disabilities, the common sense side of such an endeavor has begun to fall to the more absurd and, frankly, selfish interpretations of the law. The benign intent — equal access — has become a more authoritarian application and is resulting in penalizing the able.”

Will increasing taxes bring economic recovery?: "I often read economic commentary in the New York Times, not because I believe it is sensible, but rather because I want to know what America’s ruling-class spokespersons have to say about economic matters. It has been a long time since I read sound, intelligent economic commentary in the ‘Newspaper of Record,’ and its recent editorial on the economy kept that streak intact. In its August 1 edition the editors of the Gray Lady published a lengthy editorial that claimed our economy is in trouble because tax rates are too low.”

Severe governmental dysfunction continues South of the Rio Grande: "Ricardo Martinelli’s May 2009 election as president of Panama seemed to bode well for the country’s development prospects. During his campaign, he promised to implement bold market-oriented reforms, such as a flat tax (which would have been the first of its kind in the Americas), freer trade, an end to some government subsidies, and less bureaucratic red tape. Unfortunately, not only have those promises gone unfulfilled, but Martinelli’s presidency has been marked by interventionist economic measures, cronyism, the erosion of democratic checks and balances, and even harassment of independent media.”

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, 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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