As each day passes, I appreciate George W. Bush all the more

By "Rick"

Yes... I had some problems with his policies. Yes... he, at times, was not the conservative we expected him to be. Yes... he embraced the left too many times for my liking.

But as we continue to hear about the number of golf rounds played, the number of vacations taken, the number of Muslims bowed to, the number of times Israel has been disrespected, the number of times America's enemies have been embraced, the number of taxes that are being and will be raised, the death panels that are sure to come, the health care that is sure to be rationed, the defense cuts that are being promoted, the social programs that are being buttressed, the redefining of terms, the dismissal of American exceptionalism, the aristocracy of those currently in charge, the racism being charged wrongly against those in opposition, the racism being ignored by the Department of Justice, the stimulus dollars that are nothing more than a slush fund for allies, the corruption in high places, the appointment of radical cronies to positions of influence, the apology tour, the incompetence during the BP oil disaster, the lack of transparency despite all the promises and more... and I'm sure there's more but this is what has rattled quickly off the fingerprints... the more I miss W.

To underscore the point, I bring you two videos. Ponder them silently and miss the man along with me.

SOURCE. (Videos at link)

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Gates and Buffett Take the Pledge

Wealthy businessmen often feel obligated to 'give back.' Who says they've taken anything?

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett announced this month that 40 of America's richest people have agreed to sign a "Giving Pledge" to donate at least half of their wealth to charity. With a collective net worth said to total $230 billion, that promise translates to at least $115 billion.

It's an impressive number. Yet some—including Messrs. Gates and Buffett—say it isn't enough. Perhaps it's actually too much: the wealthy may help humanity more as businessmen and women than as philanthropists.

What are the chances, after all, that the two forces behind the Giving Pledge will contribute anywhere near as much to the betterment of society through their charity as they have through their business pursuits? In building Microsoft, Bill Gates changed the way the world creates and shares knowledge. Warren Buffett's investments have birthed and grown innumerable profitable enterprises, making capital markets work more efficiently and enriching many in the process.

Other signers of the pledge, like Oracle's Larry Ellison and eBay's Pierre Omidyar, have similarly transformed the way people all over the world exchange information and products. They have democratized the transmission of ideas and goods, creating opportunities for people who never would have had them otherwise.

Successful entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists typically say they feel a responsibility to "give back" to society. But "giving back" implies they have taken something. What, exactly, have they taken? Yes, they have amassed great sums of wealth. But that wealth is the reward they have earned for investing their time and talent in creating products and services that others value. They haven't taken from society, but rather enriched us in ways that were previously unimaginable.

More HERE

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Heavy Regulation? Or Job Growth?

Rich Tucker

Bad news abounds. Claims for new jobless benefits jumped by half-a-million last week. The unemployment rate hovers near 10 percent, and isn’t expected to decline any time soon. President Barack Obama reacted in knee-jerk fashion, by calling for more federal intervention in the economy.

“Small businesses and community banks that loan to small businesses have been lagging behind,” he said. “If we want this economy to create more jobs more quickly, we need to help them.” He wants to provide some $12 billion in tax breaks to small businesses and $30 billion to small banks.

Yet the federal spending is piling up, and seems to be doing little except running up the national debt.

Earlier this month, lawmakers returned from vacation for a day so they could pass a $26 billion measure that would supposedly “save” the jobs of 300,000 teachers. The joke’s on them: The New York Times reports that many school districts plan to bank the bailout money instead of hiring teachers back for this school year. Los Angeles, for example, “laid off 682 teachers and counselors and about 2,000 support workers this spring and was not sure it would be able to hire any of them back with the stimulus money,” the paper reports.

This particular batch of spending, we’re told, was paid for. Lawmakers have promised to trim tens of billions from food stamps in the year 2014. We’ll just have to hold our breath to see if those cuts actually happen.

All this comes on the heels of the $800 billion (and counting) “stimulus” bill. Obama promised that bill would keep unemployment below 8 percent. Oops. These days, Vice President Joe Biden’s been reduced to complaining that $800 billion simply wasn’t enough.

Yet if, in fact, federal spending can boost the economy, it ought to be in overdrive by now. It’s not. So what’s holding things back? It could be death by a thousand cuts. Or, to be more specific, death by thousands of pages of regulations.

This year alone, Obama has signed a massive health care bill and a financial regulation bill. Nobody knows exactly what’s contained in those thousands of pages -- not even the people who voted for them.

“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explained before the health care measure passed in March. On the financial front, “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works,” Sen. Christopher Dodd explained before the Senate passed his financial reform measure. How reassuring.

It’s no surprise to learn that Dodd’s bill contains measures that will make it more difficult to hire workers.

One provision “pushes all federally regulated financial firms that do business with the government and their subcontractors to hire more women and minorities,” the McClatchy news service reported recently. The only jobs this provision will create are federal jobs at a new Office of Minority and Women Inclusion to be included in each federal regulatory agency.

Meanwhile, a “largely overlooked provision of the law gives federal agencies expanded powers to write regulations dictating pay at financial firms,” The Washington Post adds. “How they choose to use these powers could have a major impact on whether banks pursue excessive risks.”

These are just a couple of the regulatory time bombs tucked into the financial bill. Rest assured many more will come to light in the years ahead. The same holds true for the 2,000-plus page health care bill. President Obama got angry at Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Vir., for bringing a copy of that bill to the health care summit in February.

But Cantor wasn’t bringing a “prop,” he was bringing a copy of the law we’ll all have to live under for years to come (unless it’s repealed). It’s unlikely that anyone has read and understands that entire measure. But we’ll be learning about expensive, job-killing aspects of it as they arise through the years ahead.

Over-regulation doesn’t work. Remember Sarbanes-Oxley, passed in the wake of the Enron scandal? It was supposed to protect Americans against financial shenanigans. But it didn’t prevent Bernie Madoff from looting customers for billions. Regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission didn’t protect us, either, even though they should have known about Madoff.

Uncertainty makes business leaders (and all of us) tentative. Our country can have heavy regulation, or it can have steady job growth. It’s time to choose which path to pursue.

SOURCE

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President Obama & Union Leaders Continue To Advocate For Job-Killing Legislation

In spite of the fact that our nation's economy is struggling and talk of a meaningful recovery has halted, both President Obama and Big Labor bosses continue to advocate for the Employee 'Forced' Choice Act (EFCA), legislation economists believe would result in massive job loss and seriously harm our nation's top job creators, small businesses.

Due to the burdens and restrictions it would place on employers, EFCA would result in 600,000 lost jobs in one year alone, while at the same time, saddling small businesses with debts and liabilities forcing many to close their doors or move overseas.

As a result, for well over a year, nearly every major business organization in the country has been calling on the Obama Administration and Congress to table the job-killing legislation and focus on measures that will grow the economy and stimulate hiring.

Unfortunately, Big Labor's millions appear to have more influence with politicians in Washington, D.C. than do the voices of their constituents.

President Obama recently re-stated his support for EFCA telling the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Executive Council that "we are going to keep on fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act."

Understanding there is not sufficient bipartisan support in Congress to pass legislation that will cost America even more jobs, Obama went further saying, "[t]here is a reason why we nominated people the National Mediation Board ... We're going to make sure that the National Labor Relations Board is restored."

President Obama is advocating for agencies stocked with Big Labor's cronies to execute administratively what the Congress has been unwilling to do.

This leads one to ask, why would the President say in one breath job creation is his top priority and in the next espouse having bureaucrats enact job-killing policies? The answer is simple, "payback."

Obama owes these same union bosses for having helped elect him in 2008 when Big Labor spent nearly half a billion dollars to propel him into office. And these same bosses have said very clearly and on the record, they expect a return on that investment and have put politicians on notice that they had better hold up their end of the bargain.

Shortly after the President made his comments on EFCA, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka pledged to secure a vote on the Employee 'Forced' Choice Act. He has repeatedly voiced hope for EFCA, legislation that removes workers' right to a secret ballot vote and puts the government in control of small businesses dictating employee salaries and benefits. Trumka declared, "I think you'll see the Employee Free Choice Act come up again [in Congress]. I think you'll see it probably before the end of the year."

With Congress in recess and many members visiting their hometowns and districts, it should be made clear to them where the American people stand - which is in direct conflict with what Mr. Obama and Trumka are trying to promote.

SOURCE

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Muslim medical care

Mohamed Fathy, a brilliant journalist and a talented writer, recently went on holiday to Alexandria with his two children, his wife and her sister Nashwa. They all had a wonderful time and then suddenly an unfortunate incident took place. A speeding car hit Nashwa as she was crossing the road and she suffered serious injuries and fractures, her clothes were torn and she lost consciousness. Because she was alone at the time of the accident some passers-by took her to a government hospital in the centre of the city.

What happened after that is beyond imagination. Nashwa and dozens of other injured people were dumped into a place which bore the name “Emergency Unit” and she stayed there for two hours without any first aid or treatment and without any doctor examining her. Mohamed Fathy arrived at the hospital and found Nashwa on death's door. He asked for a doctor to examine her but nobody paid any attention. With the passage of time and the apathy of the hospital staff, Fathy lost his temper and started shouting at everyone he met: “We need a doctor … I beg you … The patient is going to die.”

After intensive contacts Mohamed Fathy managed to get in touch with the director of the hospital, Dr Mohamed el-Maradny, who appeared extremely upset at the idea that anyone might contact with him about patients. Dr Maradny said: “Delays with scans are quite normal. Even if you're in a private hospital and you pay the doctors' fees scans can be delayed.”

The hospital director was trying to remind Fathy that Nashwa was receiving free treatment so her family did not have the right to complain about anything. Fathy spoke to the director at length about humaneness and the doctor's duty to tend the sick, and after a long conversation between Fathy and the director, he did order scans for Nashwa.

At this point a new problem arose. A janitor came up to Nashwa, whose condition had greatly deteriorated, and was about to carry her in his arms to the scans department. Mohamed Fathy objected, arguing that carrying patients with fractures required a trained medic because moving the patient's body carelessly could lead to death. The staff at the hospital ridiculed Fathy's idea, which seemed very strange to them. “What do you mean, medic? We don't have that kind of thing here. Either this man carries her or we leave her where she is,” they said. The janitor gave Nashwa a violent yank and her screams resounded throughout the hospital.

After all this negligence, which was close to criminal, it would have been natural for Nashwa to die in the government hospital, but luckily she survived and almost miraculously Mohamed Fathy managed to move her to a private hospital where she underwent an emergency operation which saved her life.

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)

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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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Israel, India, China and IQ

It has always been a puzzle that Israelis tend to score BELOW the Western average on IQ. Israel is such a brilliant nation scientifically and technologically, that the finding almost seems to invalidate IQ tests. India presents a similar puzzle. Indians do very well wherever they migrate but on average seem to have low IQs back home in India.

As is common, however, the problem would seem to arise from generalizations that are too sweeping and fail to look closely at the populations concerned. I will say a bit more about India below but what needs to be noted is that both nations are NOT ethnically homogeneous. High caste Indians are a lot different from "Dalits" and Israeli "Ashkenazim" (Jews of Northern European recent origin) are VERY different from Israelis of Middle Eastern origins.

And MOST Israelis are of Middle Eastern origins. They are mostly the Jews that were kicked out from Muslim lands after the foundation of modern Israel. Hitler got most of Europe's Ashkenazim West of Moscow, leaving NYC as the great remaining Askenazi centre, and NYC is too comfortable for many Jews to leave.

And at least since the story of Ruth, Jews have never been very endogamous, and Yiddisher Mommas grieve over that to this day. One way or another, Jews have tended to become genetically assimilated into the population within which they live. So many Lithuanian Jews look just like Lithuanians and many Middle Eastern Jews look just like Arabs. Sadly, however, it is not only Arab looks that many Israelis share but also Arab IQ, which is low.

So yes. The Sephardim and Mizrachim of Israel are a bit dumb (though it is VERY incorrect to say so), but the Ashkenazim are very bright and it is they who make Israel an intellectual powerhouse.

Although there are similarities, India is not quite the same. The Northern and Southern Indians do appear to be at least partly of different racial origins and the Northerners seems to be descended in part from lighter-skinned conquerors from somewhere North of India. The conquerors were probably relatively few in number, however, as all Indians are pretty brown.

Indians generally are pretty keen endogamists, however, so the Brahmins are relatively fair of skin and are probably the most closely related to the original Northern invaders. And it is of course the Brahmins who run India. So it is the IQ of the Brahmins and other high castes that is crucial and I know of no studies that have separated out Indian IQ by caste.

And even in India some exogamy does happen. In India, you can generally tell how rich a man is not by his skin colour but by the skin colour of his wife. A rich brown Indian will generally have a fairer-skinned wife. So over the centuries capable Indians from all castes will have worked their way up the status tree and contributed higher IQs to the upper ranges of that tree.

But there is clearly a second influence at work in India: The rural effect. For various reasons a rural background tends to go with a lower IQ. You see that even in South Africa. The Afrikaners (whites of Dutch origin) have a lower average IQ than whites of British origin, even though there is no difference between the parent populations in Europe. And the Afrikaners have always been predominantly farmers.

So the current average IQ of the Indian population is undoubtedly held down by its overwhelmingly rural character. And when even Indians of a relatively low caste move elsewhere, that disadvantage seems to be lost and they prosper -- as in Fiji or South Africa, for instance.

A canny critic might at this point say: "But what about China"? The Chinese are mostly rural and their average IQ is high. Again, however, the very word "China" is an oversimplification. There are many distinct nations within China with their own languages and traditions and a generally low opinion of other such linguistic groups. The picture-based written language of China is not so much an anachronism as a necessity. It's the only way many Chinese can communicate with one another.

And from what I can gather most of the IQ testing has been done on Chinese from the coastal cities. Deep inland in rural China the IQ picture will probably be much different.

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Palin rattling the Donks

If Sarah Palin runs for president in 2012, she'll have the building blocks of a coalition that extends beyond her star power - and even Democrats have taken notice.

From her list of endorsements, to her Mama Grizzlies' campaign-style video in July, to her Facebook message Wednesday commemorating the 90th anniversary of women's suffrage, Palin is courting female voters, the so-called "soccer moms" that have swung to Democrats in recent campaign cycles. The former Alaska governor is already eliciting responses from Democrats, who, through a series of initiatives this week, revealed some fear that she might be making an impact.

On Tuesday, EMILY's List launched a new effort, "Sarah Doesn't Speak for Me." A press release announcing the launch warned, "Sarah Palin has predicted a rising tide of mothers and women voters will support her so-called ‘Mama Grizzly' candidates. Today, we call upon women - and men! - to let their voices be heard and to reject Palin's reactionary candidates and backward-looking agenda. We're asking Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans who have no home - to join us in our new campaign." On the same day, the Democratic National Committee blasted an e-mail to supporters noting the 90th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment and reminding voters all that Democratic lawmakers have contributed to the women's movement.

Palin made her own splash on the subject Wednesday with a lengthy Facebook post about the suffrage movement. She weaved in seven more endorsements of female candidates, including four Republican women running for competitive House seats against incumbent Democrats, two women running for attorney general in swing states and another running for secretary of state in Alabama.

Mary Anne Marsh, a Boston-based Democratic strategist, noted that Democrats have begun to lose the support of independent voters, and that many women are independent voters, especially suburban women. "She's making a clear swing at them," Marsh said of Palin.

"The lion's share of independents are women," she said, adding, "you can't win without them." And looking ahead to the 2012 elections, she noted that EMILY's List and the other Democratic groups are pressing hard for women because, "you can't start soon enough to get them back."

Gregg Keller, who served as national coalitions director for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, noted, "During the span of the Obama administration, you've seen the Democrats lose some of their coalition groups one by one." He explained that Democrats first lost moderate Republicans after passing big-ticket items like health care reform, then lost single-issue voters like those supportive of gun rights, and then started to shed moderates like small business owners. "Now that their electoral prospects are worsening, they're starting to lose more of their base coalitions," he said.

Keller added, "That's why you're seeing Democrats get so nervous and skittish about losing their base coalitions like women. It would be a political apocalypse in November for them if they continued to lose women."
Beyond the 2010 elections, Palin's efforts could have an impact on her own electoral prospects if she launches a White House bid some time next year.

In her book, "Notes from the Cracked Glass Ceiling," Washington Post reporter Anne Kornblut writes that Hillary Clinton's adviser, Mark Penn, counted on Clinton securing 94 percent of young female voters in the primary without courting them. In a piece summarizing her book, Kornblut concludes: "Clinton erred strategically early on, ceding college campuses -- including college women -- to Obama. She also struggled with whether to portray her campaign as ‘historic,' debating the idea of a speech on gender for months. Focused on proving her toughness, she missed out on key endorsements from women, including Oprah Winfrey and Caroline Kennedy."

Palin has so far taken the opposite route by selling gender with her politics. None of her potential rivals for the GOP presidential nomination have made similar efforts in courting women specifically, and all of them happen to be men.

Marsh noted that the success rate of each presidential candidate's endorsees misses the point. Instead, she said, the candidates who lose - including the women she supported - will continue to assist Palin if she launches a bid.
Both Marsh and Ralph Reed, a longtime Republican strategist who's now leading the Faith and Freedom Coalition, pointed out that simply because Palin could be the only female in a field of males doesn't guarantee electoral success.

But, Reed noted, "she won't just be a big fish in a small pond. She'll be a whale in a bathtub." He added, "If every Republican who's looking at running runs, she would have a shot at making an appeal based on the rather obvious fact that she's running against a bunch of white guys." He suggested that gender-based appeals might not work in a GOP primary the way he believes they might in a Democratic field.

Nevertheless, Reed argued that Palin is offering a new style of feminism that could ignite a new coalition of conservative, professional women. "I'm fascinated by what that could mean for the future of American politics," he said.

SOURCE

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Tea party movement shows ‘wisdom of crowds’

By: Mark Tapscott

It may not please New Yorker magazine’s James Surowiecki to hear this, but the tea party movement could be the clearest evidence yet of the growing relevance of his landmark book, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” and its application in politics.

Surowiecki’s fundamental insight is this: The aggregate knowledge, experience, analytical prowess and inductive powers of a group are often greater than those of any one of its members. This observation isn’t always and everywhere true or evident, but compelling demonstrations of its operation in daily life are plentiful.

With everybody connected to everybody else via the Internet, new means of uncovering the wisdom of crowds become possible. The political implications therein remain rather murky, though.

I was reminded of Surowiecki earlier this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and his tea party co-conspirator, Freedomworks.org President Matt Kibbe. The Journal piece coincided with publication of their new book, “Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto,” published by HarperCollins.

Armey and Kibbe wrote that the tea party movement “has blossomed into a powerful social phenomenon because it is leaderless — not directed by any one mind, political party or parochial agenda,” resulting in the creation of “a virtual marketplace for new ideas, effective innovations and creative tactics.”

This “beautiful chaos” is analogous to the “spontaneous order” Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek said results from the proper operation of free markets, according to Armey and Kibbe.

The clincher here was their noting that the tea party movement reminds Americans that “decentralization, not top-down hierarchy, is the best way to maximize the contributions of people and their personal knowledge.”

But if Armey and Kibbe are right, if the tea party movement is indeed sparking new ideas, innovative tactics of social and political organization, greater personal freedom and enhanced opportunities for individual expression, why is its mere mention certain to inspire frothing, spittle-spewing fury in your typical liberal, aka “progressive”?

The answer is, as Armey and Kibbe tell us, “the big-government crowd is drawn to the compulsory nature of centralized authority. They can’t imagine an undirected social order. Someone needs to be in charge — someone who knows better. Big government is audacious and conceited.”

Put otherwise, the right believes in freedom from the bottom up, the left loves contemporary expressions of the Guardians, Plato’s race of philosopher kings.

Once you get your mind around that reality, it clears up many of the apparent anomalies about the current state of American politics. Here’s an example: Less than two years after winning the presidency, Barack Obama said, “After 18 months, I have never been more confident that our nation is headed in the right direction.”

That sentiment puts Obama at dire loggerheads with two-thirds of his fellow citizens, who think he’s taking the country off the deep end.

Obama is reaching so far to the left, toward political centralization, a top-down command-and-control economy, and a Washington-knows-best regulatory mentality, that he’s becoming a fringe voice alien to most Americans who believe government authority must be decentralized and individuals thereby empowered to act voluntarily from their local communities.

The tea party movement is the heart of the 70 percent of the citizenry who fear Obama has gotten the country seriously off the right track. They want fundamental change and they won’t settle for more Washington, D.C., double-talk, backroom dealing or broken promises.

Tea party activists are the vanguard of a revolutionary renewal of the American founding. And that’s why they inspire such irrational hatred and fear in so many of the precincts of the left.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

The American taxpayer is now subsidizing luxury apartments in Manhattan: "Obama is all about restoring a government for the people, he says. And folks in million-dollar condos in Gramercy Park are people, too: The Federal Housing Administration agreed in March to insure mortgages for apartments at the 98-unit Gramercy Park development, known as Tempo. That enables buyers to make a down payment of as little as 3.5 percent in a building where apartments are listed at $820,000 to $3 million. “It’s a government seal of approval,” said Gollinger, a director at the Developments Group of New York-based brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “We need as many sales tools as we can have these days, and it’s one more tool.”

Do women have the right to control their own bodies?: "The problem I have with most pro-abortion people is that they are stunningly hypocritical. While they speak from one side of their mouths about a woman’s right to control her own body when she wishes to get rid of an unwanted fetus, from the other side they deny her the right to control her own body in a thousand other circumstances. If a woman’s body belongs to her, then she has the right to exchange sexual favors for money, she has the right to be photographed however she likes, she has the right to either take or refuse any drugs, medicines, vitamins, and foods (natural or unnatural) that she chooses.”

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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An incompetent President

Pollsters and pundits across the political spectrum are having a field day analyzing the Obama administration's plummeting popularity -- and the likely consequences for the midterm elections less than 80 days away. These "experts" suggest all manner of reasons that the O-Team in particular and Democrats in general are in such serious trouble. The kindest explanations offered by Freedom Concert fans run the gamut from "Obama has the attention span of a fruit fly" to "they are wearing blinders and earplugs."

This shouldn't come as a surprise to members of the president's party. His radical agenda may have been carefully disguised during the 2008 campaign season, but it became amply evident once he was in office. His anti-Israel foreign policy, the never-ending "grand apology tour" of world capitals and commitments to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan alarmed pro-defense Democrats right from the start. Then, aided and abetted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, he whipped members of his party into supporting costly bailouts, government seizure of businesses, so-called "stimulus" spending bills and a dramatic restructuring of American health care that threatens to bankrupt our children.

None of this has helped create new private-sector jobs, and the American people know it. And in case anyone needed a reminder, this week we were treated to a staggering 500,000 new claims for unemployment -- the highest number in nine months. So much for jobs being the Democrats' "No. 1 focus in 2010."

What is astonishing is how inept Obama and his supposedly "self-disciplined" and "thoughtful" administration have proved to be at capitalizing on opportunities. Their incompetent handling of everything, from their plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to their trying radical Islamic terrorists in Manhattan to their response to the Gulf oil spill, has become part of the opposition mantra. The president's decision to bring a federal lawsuit against the state of Arizona for attempting to secure its border with Mexico and his support for building a mosque in New York City just a few hundred yards from ground zero are but the latest gaffes that will redound to the disadvantage of his party's candidates.

More HERE

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Dismantling America: Part IV

Thomas Sowell says do-gooders and Leftist educators are destroying America

How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing?

It is not just evil people who would dismantle America. Many people who have no desire to destroy our freedoms simply have their own agendas that are singly or collectively incompatible with the survival of freedom.

Someone once said that a democratic society cannot survive for long after 51 percent of the people decide that they want to live off the other 49 percent. Yet that is the direction in which we are being pushed by those who are promoting envy under its more high-toned alias of "social justice."

Those who construct moral melodramas-- starring themselves on the side of the angels against the forces of evil-- are ready to disregard the Constitution rights of those they demonize, and to overstep the limits put on the powers of the federal government set by the Constitution.

The outcries of protest in the media, in academia and in politics, when the Supreme Court ruled this year that people in corporations have the same free speech rights as other Americans, are a painful reminder of how vulnerable even the most basic rights are to the attacks of ideological zealots. President Barack Obama said that the Court's decision "will open the floodgates for special interests"-- as if all you have to do to take away people's free speech rights is call them a special interest.

It is not just particular segments of the population who are under attack. What is more fundamentally under attack are the very principles and values of American society as a whole. The history of this country is taught in many schools and colleges as the history of grievances and victimhood, often with the mantra of "race, class and gender." Television and the movies often do the same.

When there are not enough current grievances for them, they mine the past for grievances and call it history. Sins and shortcomings common to the human race around the world are spoken of as failures of "our society." But American achievements get far less attention-- and sometimes none at all.

Our "educators," who cannot educate our children to the level of math or science achieved in most other comparable countries, have time to poison their minds against America.

Why? Partly, if not mostly, it is because that is the vogue. It shows you are "with it" when you reject your own country and exalt other countries.

Abraham Lincoln warned of people whose ambitions can only be fulfilled by dismantling the institutions of this country, because no comparable renown is available to them by supporting those institutions. He said this 25 years before the Gettysburg Address, and he was speaking of political leaders with hubris, whom he regarded as a greater danger than enemy nations. But such hubris is far more widespread today than just among political leaders.

Those with such hubris-- in the media and in education, as well as in politics-- have for years eroded both respect for the country and the social cohesion of its people. This erosion is what has set the stage for today's dismantling of America that is now approaching the point of no return.

More HERE

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Both Islam and the Left wish destruction upon us

As demonstrated by the actions of President Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress over the last one and a half years, socialism (with fascist trappings) adheres to its purpose of destroying all existing political, social and economic orders as a prerequisite for any further improvement. This is and continues to be the goal of Obama’s “hope and change.”

As demonstrated by the alleged “extremists” of Islam, and by their “non-violent” brethren, Islam likewise seeks to destroy all existing political, social, economic, and religious orders as a prerequisite for any future improvement, which is a global caliphate in which all men submit to Islam, one way or another, or die..

These two ideologies have, for the moment, set aside their differences to work together until the common enemy, the West, is disabled, conquered, emasculated, and beaten. In the United States, it means to vitiate the Constitution, abandon the republican form of government, and institute some form of “pure” democracy. Under the secular brand, this would mean the manipulated (and bogus) rule of the “poor” and “needy” of all stripes and categories. Under Islam, it would mean ruling a subservient and obedient class of Muslims and a sub-class of conquered non-believers.

Islam is no stranger to socialism. In fact, as Daniel Pipes and other observers have noted, Islam has made common cause with communism and socialism in the past. Islamic scholars and intellectuals have endorsed socialist trends in countries they wished to see Islam triumph. The phenomenon of America’s liberal/left making cause with Islam is just another episode of that on-again and off-again alliance.

If socialism wins, Islam is no worse off. It can exist in a socialist political/economic environment and bide its time, unless totalitarian measures are taken by the state to eradicate Islam as a rival ideology. The Soviet Union for decades suppressed both Christianity and Islam and all manner of other religions. Under socialism, everyone, including Muslims, would need to acknowledge the state or some personification of it (e.g., “Big Brother”) or some other prominent person and advocate of collectivism as the “true” God or “savior, and Karl Marx or Mao or Lenin as the “prophet.” Opposition to or digression from such deference and worship in any form would be deemed heresy, or blasphemy, and be punished with repression, imprisonment, or death.

If the West is sundered and vanquished, the two species of totalitarianism will fight savagely over the carcass, just as Hitler and Stalin fought over the carcass of Eastern Europe. That, of course, would be the beginning of a new Dark Age. Let us not forget the hundreds of thousands of “illegal” Catholic Mexicans pouring into this country. Will they convert to Islam or put up a fight? The totality of Islamic totalitarianism means just that: everyone and everything. Let us not forget America’s “native Americans,“ or the Indians, and Catholic South America, and Australia and New Zealand, and the whole of the African continent. Islam is committed to a global caliphate. That means everyone and everything coming under its rule. If the West collapses, it will be a bloody and horrendous Dark Age.

What are the commonalities of secular statism (or socialism) and Islam? What premises do they share? What are their shared ends? Are those ends similar or dissimilar or radically divergent?

The chief commonality between socialism and Islam is the deep-seated hatred -- and I would say is the fundamental motive of both socialism and Islam, its desiderative essence -- of the West, specifically of capitalism, of individual rights, and of freedom of speech. And particularly of America.

What is it about those three hallmarks of Western culture that arouses the shared animosity? They are the requirements of an independent, unobstructed, free-to-act, selfish, value-driven, and life-affirming man. They are the descriptive attributes that cannot be permitted in a totalitarian society. They are diametrically opposite of what secular statism and Islam require to function. They are the unified, integrated nemesis of collectivism. They do not describe the “ideal” man in either ideology. Such a man must be eradicated, destroyed. And once destroyed, such a man in either system cannot be permitted to come into existence.

More HERE

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Saving Jobs Means Saving Us from Prosperity

A most pernicious fallacy

One of the most pernicious fallacies in popular economic discussions is that we should adopt policies designed to save jobs. What was once just language used by those with a special interest in particular jobs (such as unions calling for import quotas as foreign cars became more popular) is now part of the Obama administration’s defense of its counterproductive “stimulus” program. “Jobs created or saved” has become the standard of an economic program’s success. There is so much wrong here, it’s hard to know where to start.

Let’s make the obvious point first: Creating jobs is easy, but it’s nothing to be proud of. In fact, destroying jobs is the real path to wealth.

To use an example I’ve used before: One way to create jobs on a big construction project is to take away the machines that dig out the foundation, and limit the workers to shovels. Or better yet, spoons. That will create lots of jobs. But that is not progress. Using more labor than needed to get the job done costs wealth. Better to use the machinery and free up all the shovel- and spoon-toting workers to produce output in addition to the foundation. By the same logic, we could create lots of jobs by destroying all the farm machinery. Surely, though, we would not be richer for doing so.

The rhetoric of saving jobs is as misguided as the rhetoric of creating jobs. We want jobs to disappear – that’s how we define progress! Think of all the jobs that weren’t saved over during the twentieth century. Agriculture employed about 40 percent of Americans in 1900. Today it’s less than 2 percent. Are we really worse off for not having saved those jobs?

Saving jobs means slaving away in manure-laden fields under the hot sun and brutal cold for 12 or 14 hours per day to feed your own family, with a little left over to buy a few necessities — rather than jobs with far better working conditions and far better pay and hours, jobs that afford most Americans the ability to pay other people to cook and serve their meals several times a week.

Saving jobs means putting the engine of human creativity in neutral if not reverse. The healthiest economies are those that consistently destroy jobs by inventing new and better ways to satisfy existing human wants with less and less labor, while freeing other labor to satisfy new and not-yet-dreamed-of wants.

Whenever you hear politicians talk about the jobs they’ve saved, just think of your ancestors scraping out a living on the land, and then think about how much better off we are because no one bothered to save those jobs.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Mosquerade: "Perhaps for the first time since Grover Cleveland, a Democratic president is championing private property rights, states’ rights and a limited federal government. Barack Obama endorsed the right of Muslims ‘to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan in accordance with local laws and regulation.’ Has Obama, of all people, flipped through the Constitution and achieved a clearer understanding of the first, ninth and tenth amendments? No, it is merely a mask.”

Happy public union news from New Jersey: "Here’s a change of pace from the usual doom-and-gloom news on municipal-worker relations: a number of towns in New Jersey have been reaching agreements with their local police unions that cut costs while avoiding layoffs. Last week, the Newark Star-Ledger reported on at least six towns where unions agreed to give-backs in exchange for a no-layoff promise. This is a good trend, but state lawmakers — and those elsewhere in the country — can do more to expand it.”

Government subsidies for bloggers?: "I almost choked when I read Lee Bollinger’s op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal advocating public financial support of the mainstream media. This is the Lee Bollinger who is the president of Columbia University and was recently named deputy chair of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The article says more about the writer and the mainstream media than it does its subject matter. It is unbelievable and irresponsible that anyone in his position should seriously advocate subsidies for the press.”

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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Obama's hostility to business is keeping joblessness high

Just as FDR's hostility did during the Great Depression

Businessmen just don't know what is coming down the pike from Obama and his minions ("Green" taxes and levies, exploding healthcare costs, new regulations on anything that moves) so they are playing safe and not expanding their activities until they feel some certainty about what environment they are going to be working in.

Obama's extremist EEOC, for a start, would make anybody nervous about new hires. The only safe hire right now would be a black and if you can't find a black with the right skills and attitudes, you'd be wisest not to hire at all -- JR

Obamanomics has done more than just keep unemployment high during a modest recovery. It may also be keeping high joblessness permanent by raising the costs to businesses of hiring new workers.

July's 9.5% unemployment level was bad enough. But the real problem is that the private-sector jobs machine, which is usually going full tilt at this point in a recovery, now seems to be broken.

To many, it's becoming clear that if President Obama's radical job-killing agenda stays in place, job growth will be nonexistent.

One of America's great advantages has always been its flexible, private-sector labor markets. From 1985 to 2008, U.S. unemployment averaged 5.6%. For the six largest economies in the European Union, the average rate was 34% higher, at about 7.5%.

Yet many of those countries now have jobless rates lower than ours. Why? They've been dropping Keynesian stimulus as a strategy and moving more toward cutting spending and, in some cases, cutting taxes.

Not Obama. He and Congress remain wedded to an outdated economic model that replaces the private sector's animal spirit and dynamism with the dead hand of government bureaucrats and their unions as the main economic forces in our country.

That's what last week's $26.1 billion state "bailout" was all about. We were told it was to keep teachers from being laid off and "for the children." In reality, it was a cynical taxpayer-funded payback to teachers' unions, which gave Obama and his party enthusiastic support and millions in donations in the last election.

This is Obama's New America — a government-run economy, with special benefits for unions and plenty of government jobs, but few private ones.

Businesses today face rising burdens — from ObamaCare, the financial overhaul, the expiration of tax cuts for entrepreneurs, the threat of new energy taxes or the surge in growth-strangling regulations on business — that discourage hiring.

"The real threat to a robust recovery on the labor side," Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, warned recently, "has come from employer and entrepreneurial fears that once the economic environment improves, a Democratic Congress and administration will pass pro-union and other pro-worker legislation that will raise the cost of doing business and cut profits."

It's never been costlier to hire and keep a worker employed. And as ObamaCare kicks in and Bush's tax cuts expire — not to mention the huge tax hikes that will be needed to make Social Security and Medicare solvent — businesses will simply quit hiring.

In this new system, the government will continue to raid the private sector for money to hire more federal workers and to support its union base. And businesses, rather than invest their $1.8 trillion in idle cash to hire workers, will continue to cut jobs.

Already, government is where the action is. Since the recession began, federal employment has jumped 10%. Private sector employment has fallen 6.8%. As USA Today recently reported, government workers in 2009 earned $123,049 in pay and benefits, twice the $61,051 earned in the private sector.

This Keynes-on-steroids model has been tried before, in Europe. It didn't work. It led to permanently high levels of joblessness — what economists call structural unemployment.

A recent peer-reviewed study in Sweden found that for every 100 new jobs government creates, 114 are destroyed in the private sector. Similarly, a French study of data from OECD countries from 1960 to 2000 discovered, on average, "creation of 100 public jobs may have eliminated about 150 private sector jobs."

In short, it was a disaster that the U.S. is now duplicating. The next Congress should have no greater priority than reversing it all.

SOURCE

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There are very few Christian churches where you will encounter the real power of the New Testament

Bob Burney

I have through the years developed a deep distaste for “religion.” A couple of fresh examples are rolling around in my head.

I just returned from a wonderful trip to the country of Moldova in Eastern Europe. It was my privilege to be the speaker for an incredible youth camp ministry. The camp is located deep in a remote area of the Moldovan countryside outside a village founded in the mid 1400s. For several years now, hundreds of young people come to this camp and have their lives transformed by the power of Christ. Kids hooked on drugs and sex are wonderfully delivered. Young people lost in a poverty-stricken culture find meaning and hope.

Over the course of 17 years, over 22,000 young people have come to Christ! Now, who could oppose such a life-changing ministry? Answer—religion. Just up the road from this phenomenal youth camp is a regional center for a particular “Christian religion” and every year these “Christians” do all they can to hassle, harass and destroy the work going on at the camp.

One afternoon while I was at the camp a zealous group of young people decided to go into some of the nearby villages and tell people (in a non-threatening manner) about Jesus. They were so excited about what they had discovered that they simply wanted to tell others. As they began to share their faith—a local priest tried to run them over with his car and told them they should “all be killed.” Yes, Anne, I quit that kind of religion too!

On the return trip to America, I had an overnight layover in Vienna. It has got to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world with some of the most beautiful cathedrals in Europe. Although I had seen it before, I had to make a visit to St. Stephens Cathedral in the heart of the city. Standing for over 800 years, its architecture is truly breathtaking. When you enter you experience sensory overload: Stained glass, rich wood, gold. There are priceless works of art everywhere. You cannot help but stand in awe realizing that this structure was built without any modern technology or machinery. There are so many adjectives and superlatives that I could use to describe the visual spectacle that confronts you. It is beautiful, magnificent and opulent—but it is also dead. It is more museum than church—a relic of ritual and tradition, filled with tourists, empty of worshippers.

As I stood in the midst of the medieval grandeur I thought back a few days before to the rustic camp in a remote region of Eastern Europe’s poorest country … teenagers singing so loudly about their love for Christ that it could be heard for miles … singing, not in a cathedral, but an outdoor tabernacle. No stained glass, no walls, primitive benches made out of discarded chairs and lumber. A magnificent cathedral, a simple camp “tabernacle.” In St. Stephens we see a symbol of religion; in the Moldova camp a living testimony of the power of a personal relationship with Christ.

My decision didn’t make international headlines, but I resigned myself from religion a long time ago. But it’s not about religion. It really is about relationship. There is nothing wrong with Biblical Christianity. The real problem is religion masquerading as Christianity.

SOURCE

In support of Bob Burney's words above, note that in my Scripture blog I have pointed out at length how greatly mainstream Christianity departs from the New Testament. Maintaining the day of the Sun as a holy day rather than the Jewish sabbath is for a start pure paganism, to say nothing of Christmas and Easter and the doctrine of the Trinity. I could go on....

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Liberal Claims to Altruism are a fraud

Ben Shapiro

Democrats, as we can see in virtually every bill, are more concerned with sending taxpayer cash to their political allies than they are in sending cash to those who need it. That's because for every dollar they send to their political allies, they receive a substantial portion back in the form of campaign donations. It's an easy trade: pretend to care about the poor, grab money from the taxpayers to pay off your buddies, let your buddies pay you back, rinse, wash and repeat.

It's no wonder that this week alone, we found out that a new housing program designed to help the unemployed will in fact go to the benefit of the banking system from which Obama received millions, and that heavy-spending unions were poised to receive billions of dollars more from government -- dollars that come from cutting food stamps. If Democrats were advocates for the poor, it would be nice if they would act like it rather than simply using the poor as a convenient political bloody flag.

Until the liberal politicians put their money where their mouth is and actually start promoting programs that help the poor rather than raiding the rich for their own personal benefit, their class warfare should be dismissed out of hand. It's posturing, pure and simple, and it's ugly posturing at that.

More HERE

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BrookesNews Update

President Obama's nightmare economy : It doesn't matter how low interest rates are, if there is too much political uncertainty about making profits then investment and spending will be severely curbed. Unfortunately the dismal expectations of business regarding Obama's policies are founded entirely on reality. There is no escaping the fact that the Democrats are about to strike the US economy with a blizzard of costly regulations and a barrage of high taxes causing business to batten down the hatches
Is deflation really bad for the economy? : A fall in the money stock on account of the disappearance of money out 'of thin air' is great news for all wealth generating activities since the disappearance of this type of money arrests their bleeding. Since a fall in the money stock undermines various non-productive activities it slows down the decline of the pool of real savings and thereby lays the foundation for an economic revival
Exports cannot save the Obama economy : Expanding exports are neither a panacea nor a palliative. The real cure for the US economy is an economic policy based on a respect for free markets. And this just ain't going to happen under the leftwing Obama
The Greens' policies would destroy the Australian economy : Australian Senator Bob Brown has emerged as a destructive parasite. A green fanatic living at the public trough whose economic wish list would destroy the Australian standard of living, which is exactly what they are intended to do. Not only has the media overlooked just how elitist and loony Brown's green economics really are so have our rightwing
On Cuban television, Castro predicts nuclear war and the MSM yawns : The Cuban missile crisis is another event that should live in infamy. This was when Jack Kennedy and his Ivey League advisors sold out the Cuban resistance to the Soviets. Until today the U.S. has complied with her promise not to interfere with Castro and not to allow anyone else to interfere with Castro. After Kennedy's death, his successor Lyndon Johnson assured us that he would keep the promise not to invade Cuba
The US is facing an Argentina-like economic crisis : Most Americans still do not realise how dangerous economic conditions really are. The situation has even imperiled the survival of the political class. Eventually, anything that extends their rule will be tried. It is not concern for you or the economy that is driving policy, but the preservation of power of an increasingly wounded power elite. Their survival is now driving policy. Unfortunately, what benefits them is generally harmful for the economy
The two Great Classes in contemporary America : "There really are two America's: the ruling class and the country class (aka the patriotic class). The ruling class views the patriotic class as ignoramuses who are vicious, violent, racist, religious, irrational, unscientific, backward, generally ill-behaved, and incapable of living well without constant, detailed direction by their betters who — as Abraham Lincoln would have put it — need to be "ridden" for their own good

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ELSEWHERE

The Obamacare disaster: "The bottom line is that you will lose your health care under this legislation, if not your job, your country as they bankrupt America, and maybe ultimately your life or the life of a loved one. All that to make dreamy, emotionalized, liberals happy, even though many of them are not happy because the socialism in the bill is not overt enough. Moreover, the promises made to the American people to pass the bill are shown in the study to be thoroughly false.”

The surprising Mr. Cameron: "It has been decades since any attempt was made to reverse the growth of government in developed countries. To the extent that leaders have shown reformist zeal, it has usually emerged at the local level — for instance, the commendable crusade by Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools system, against the education bureaucracy. Given the long-standing reformist drought in rich countries, Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts in Britain deserve attention.”

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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Dismantling America: Part II

Thomas Sowell

"We the people" are the central concern of the Constitution, as well as its opening words, since it is a Constitution for a self-governing nation. But "we the people" are treated as an obstacle to circumvent by the current administration in Washington.

One way of circumventing the people is to rush legislation through Congress so fast that no one knows what is buried in it. Did you know that the so-called health care reform bill contained a provision creating a tax on people who buy and sell gold coins?

You might debate whether that tax is a good or a bad idea. But the whole point of burying it in legislation about medical insurance is to make sure "we the people" don't even know about it, much less have a chance to debate it, before it becomes law.

Did you know that the huge financial reform bill that has been similarly rushed through Congress, too fast for anyone to read it, has a provision about "inclusion" of women and minorities? Pretty words like "inclusion" mean ugly realities like quotas. But that too is not something that "we the people" are to be allowed to debate, because it too was sneaked through.

Not since the Norman conquerors of England published their laws in French, for an English-speaking nation, centuries ago, has there been such contempt for the people's right to know what laws were being imposed on them.

Yet another ploy is to pass laws worded in vague generalities, leaving it up to the federal bureaucracies to issue specific regulations based on those laws. "We the people" can't vote on bureaucrats. And, since it takes time for all the bureaucratic rules to be formulated and then put into practice, we won't know what either the rules or their effects are prior to this fall's elections when we vote for (or against) those who passed these clever laws.

The biggest circumvention of "we the people" was of course the so-called "health care reform" bill. This bill was passed with the proviso that it would not really take effect until after the 2012 presidential elections. Between now and then, the Obama administration can tell us in glowing words how wonderful this bill is, what good things it will do for us, and how it has rescued us from the evil insurance companies, among its many other glories.

But we won't really know what the actual effects of this bill are until after the next presidential elections-- which is to say, after it is too late. Quite simply, we are being played for fools.

Much has been made of the fact that families making less than $250,000 a year will not see their taxes raised. Of course they won't see it, because what they see could affect how they vote.

But when huge tax increases are put on electric utility companies, the public will see their electricity bills go up. When huge taxes are put on other businesses as well, they will see the prices of the things those businesses sell go up.

If you are not in that "rich" category, you will not see your own taxes go up. But you will be paying someone else's higher taxes, unless of course you can do without electricity and other products of heavily taxed businesses. If you don't see this, so much the better for the Obama administration politically.

This country has been changed in a more profound way by corrupting its fundamental values. The Obama administration has begun bribing people with the promise of getting their medical care and other benefits paid for by other people, so long as those other people can be called "the rich." Incidentally, most of those who are called "the rich" are nowhere close to being rich.

A couple making $125,000 a year each are not rich, even though together they reach that magic $250,000 income level. In most cases, they haven't been making $125,000 a year all their working lives. Far more often, they have reached this level after decades of working their way up from lower incomes-- and now the government steps in to grab the reward they have earned over the years.

There was a time when most Americans would have resented the suggestion that they wanted someone else to pay their bills. But now, envy and resentment have been cultivated to the point where even people who contribute nothing to society feel that they have a right to a "fair share" of what others have produced.

The most dangerous corruption is a corruption of a nation's soul. That is what this administration is doing.

SOURCE

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Obama Demagogues Private Enterprise

Long-term private investments beat social security, despite downturns. I know. I am of retirement age but get nothing from the Australian government because I have been investing for many years and get a good income from those investments -- and I continued to do so throughout the financial crisis

Mind you, people who go for speculative "get rich quick" investments usually get what they deserve. I buy blue chips -- JR

John Stossel

Last weekend, President Obama pandered for votes by trashing Social Security privatization.

"I'd have thought that debate would've been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we've just experienced," Obama said. "(N)o one would want to place bets with Social Security on Wall Street."

Such demagoguery sells. It's probably been poll-tested. Many Americans fear privatizing anything they've come to view as government work. They object to privately managed roads, independent charter schools, private prisons, etc., despite private companies' repeated success at providing better service while lowering costs.

Private retirement accounts seem particularly threatening. Rep. Paul Ryan includes a version in his budget-reform package. But as The Washington Post said, "(F)ew GOP lawmakers today support the idea...." What a shame.

Social Security is popular but unsustainable. Its commitments over the next 75 years exceed its expected revenue by $5.3 trillion. Politicians know this, but pander anyway.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Sharron Angle, who's challenging Reid's re-election bid in Nevada, of "raiding" the Social Security trust fund because Angle has talked about phasing out Social Security. There are two problems with that statement -- as Reid must know: First, there never has been a trust fund! Your FICA tax payments were not saved or invested. Social Security transferred them to current retirees. Second, in return for IOUs, Congress raided Social Security's budget surplus every year and spent like any other tax revenue.

Now the days of surplus are over. Unless benefits are cut and the retirement age is raised, the deficits will only grow. When Social Security passed in 1935, most Americans died before age 65. There were many workers and few retirees. Ten years later, there were still almost 42 workers for each retiree. Five years afterward, the ratio slipped to about 17 to 1. Now it's 3.4 to 1. Thirty years from now, the ratio is projected to be 2 to 1.

That won't work. Workers cannot afford to give up half their earnings to pay others' retirement benefits. It would be far better to begin partial privatization now.

But what about Obama's point that President George W. Bush's privatization plan would have been a disaster because the market crashed?

Obama is just wrong. For one thing, under the privatization plans backed by the Cato Institute and others, retirees and near-retirees wouldn't have been affected by the 2008 stock-market decline. Only younger workers would have diverted some of their money from government to capital markets. They would have had time to recover (unless government continued to screw up and cripple the private sector).

Second, even with the 2008 decline, the picture is not nearly as bad as Obama implies. Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute ran the numbers for a hypothetical worker who retired in 2008, right after the market crash, after a career under a partially privatized Social Security program.

"A typical retiree in 2008 would be entitled to a traditional Social Security benefit of around $15,700 per year," Biggs writes. "For workers who chose personal accounts, this traditional benefit would be reduced by around $7,800. However, the worker's personal account balance of $161,500 would pay an annual annuity benefit of around $10,100. This $2,300 net benefit increase would raise total Social Security benefits by around 15 percent."

Biggs adds: "While today's retiree would have faced the subprime crisis and the tech bubble earlier in the decade, he also would have benefited from the bull markets of the 1980s and 1990s. The average return on his account -- 4.9 percent above inflation -- would more than compensate for a reduced traditional benefit."

No can say the future will be like the past, but we know what the future of the government's scheme holds: postponed retirement and/or reduced benefits and/or crushing taxes and (most likely, I think) a near-worthless dollar because politicians will print money to "keep" their deceitful pension promises.

Privatization is better. Everything that works well -- everything that brings innovation and prosperity -- comes from the private sector. Obama is irresponsible to campaign against that.

There's no ideal fix. But our best hope is separation of economy and government.

SOURCE

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Would a GOP Congress fix anything?

During the last two years, Democrats have amassed unprecedented growth of federal government power in the forms of bailouts, corporate takeovers, favors to their political allies and nationalization of our health care system. My question is how likely is it for Republicans to behave differently if they gain control? Their past behavior doesn't make one confident that they will behave much differently, but I could be wrong.

If Republicans win the House of Representatives, there are measures they should take in their first month of office, and that is to undo most of what the Democratically controlled Congress has done. If they don't win a veto-proof Senate, they can't undo Obamacare but the House alone can refuse to fund any part of it. There are numerous blocking tactics that a Republican-controlled House can take against those hell-bent on trampling on our Constitution. The question is whether they will have guts and principle to do it. After all, many Americans, including those who are Republicans, have a stake in big government control, special privileges and handouts.

Ultimately, we Americans must act to ensure that our liberty does not depend on personalities in Washington. Our founders tried to do that with our Constitution. Thomas Jefferson offered us a solution when he said, "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then."

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Barney gets something right: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be abolished rather than reformed as part of the Obama administration’s planned overhaul of the government’s role in housing finance, Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services committee, said on Tuesday. ‘They should be abolished,’ Frank said in an interview on Fox Business, when asked whether the mortgage giants should be elements in housing market reform. ‘The only question is what do you put in their place,’ Frank said.”

Feisty Russian Christian: "A Russian tycoon has told 6,000 workers at his private dairy company that they’ll be fired if they’ve ever had an abortion, or if those who are ‘living in sin’ don’t get married within two months. Vasily Boiko, who officially changed his name to Boiko-Veliky, which means ‘Boiko the Great,’ has set a deadline of October 14 — a Russian Orthodox Church holiday — for any of his unmarried employees who live with a partner to get married, or get fired. ‘We have about 6,000 employees, most of whom are Orthodox, and I expect them to be faithful and to repent,’ Boiko told Reuters last week. His order came in an internal memo to workers at Russkoye Moloko, which means ‘Russian milk’ and whose products are sold in many Russian supermarkets. Boiko told Ekho Moskvy radio that a woman who’s had an abortion ‘can no longer be an employee of our company … We don’t want to work with killers.’”

Our one-term president: "It’s a good bet right now that Barack Obama will be a one-term president. The enthusiasm that once shielded this hyphenated American has dissipated. His supporters, although still numerous, have discovered that he lacks Bill Clinton’s centrist instincts, and even his charm. The anti-Bush mania that swept the country from 2006-09 finally burned itself out. It’s always possible that the Republicans will nominate a dud. That has happened so often that it should even be considered likely. Not since 1980 has there been an outstanding GOP candidate. But at this stage it’s too difficult to predict the 2012 nominee, so I’ll drop that subject.”

Florida: New Senate poll shows Crist in trouble as Rubio surges: "Republican Marco Rubio has nudged ahead of independent Charlie Crist in Florida's nationally watched U.S. Senate race in a hypothetical three-way matchup with Democrat Kendrick Meek, according to a Mason-Dixon poll released Saturday. Rubio led Crist in the poll 38 percent to 33 percent, with 18 percent for Meek and 11 percent undecided. The statewide poll of 625 registered voters indicates that Rubio, a conservative Cuban-American from Miami, has gained strength over the past three months."

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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Dismantling America

Thomas Sowell

"We the people" are the familiar opening words of the Constitution of the United States-- the framework for a self-governing people, free from the arbitrary edicts of rulers. It was the blueprint for America, and the success of America made that blueprint something that other nations sought to follow.

At the time when it was written, however, the Constitution was a radical departure from the autocratic governments of the 18th century. Since it was something so new and different, the reasons for the Constitution's provisions were spelled out in "The Federalist," a book written by three of the writers of the Constitution, as a sort of instruction guide to a new product.

The Constitution was not only a challenge to the despotic governments of its time, it has been a continuing challenge-- to this day-- to all those who think that ordinary people should be ruled by their betters, whether an elite of blood, or of books or of whatever else gives people a puffed-up sense of importance.

While the kings of old have faded into the mists of history, the principle of the divine rights of kings to impose whatever they wish on the masses lives on today in the rampaging presumptions of those who consider themselves anointed to impose their notions on others.

The Constitution of the United States is the biggest single obstacle to the carrying out of such rampaging presumptions, so it is not surprising that those with such presumptions have led the way in denigrating, undermining and evading the Constitution.

While various political leaders have, over the centuries, done things that violated either the spirit or the letter of the Constitution, few dared to openly say that the Constitution was wrong and that what they wanted was right.

It was the Progressives of a hundred years ago who began saying that the Constitution needed to be subordinated to whatever they chose to call "the needs of the times." Nor were they content to say that the Constitution needed more Amendments, for that would have meant that the much disdained masses would have something to say about whether, or what kind, of Amendments were needed.

The agenda then, as now, has been for our betters to decide among themselves which Constitutional safeguards against arbitrary government power should be disregarded, in the name of meeting "the needs of the times"-- as they choose to define those needs.

The first open attack on the Constitution by a President of the United States was made by our only president with a Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson. Virtually all the arguments as to why judges should not take the Constitution as meaning what its words plainly say, but "interpret" it to mean whatever it ought to mean, in order to meet "the needs of the times," were made by Woodrow Wilson.

It is no coincidence that those who imagine themselves so much wiser and nobler than the rest of us should be in the forefront of those who seek to erode Constitutional restrictions on the arbitrary powers of government. How can our betters impose their superior wisdom and virtue on us, when the Constitution gets in the way at every turn, with all its provisions to safeguard a system based on a self-governing people?

To get their way, the elites must erode or dismantle the Constitution, bit by bit, in one way or another. What that means is that they must dismantle America. This has been going on piecemeal over the years but now we have an administration in Washington that circumvents the Constitution wholesale, with its laws passed so fast that the public cannot know what is in them, its appointment of "czars" wielding greater power than Cabinet members, without having to be exposed to pubic scrutiny by going through the confirmation process prescribed by the Constitution for Cabinet members.

Now there is leaked news of plans to change the immigration laws by administrative fiat, rather than Congressional legislation, presumably because Congress might be unduly influenced by those pesky voters-- with their Constitutional rights-- who have shown clearly that they do not want amnesty and open borders, despite however much our betters do. If the Obama administration gets away with this, and can add a few million illegals to the voting rolls in time for the 2012 elections, that can mean reelection, and with it a continuing and accelerating dismantling of America.

SOURCE

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Labor Department Health Care Regulation will force employees to switch health care providers

Government estimates up to 69% of all employer health plans will cease to exist

Calling a proposed Labor Department Obamacare rule, "the smoking gun showing that the Obama Administration lied when they claimed that people would be able to keep their health insurance and doctor's choice," Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson urged Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to rescind the rule in comments submitted to the Department of Labor today.

The interim rule sets the requirements for current health insurance plans to be grandfathered in under the law. Within the interim rule, Secretary Solis affirmatively declares that, "These interim final regulations will likely influence plan sponsors' decisions to relinquish grandfather status."

ALG President Bill Wilson's comments reminded Labor Secretary Hilda Solis of President Obama's rhetoric during the debate over passage of the law where he said, "if you like your health plan you can keep it," promising that nothing in the health reform law would force businesses or consumers to change health plans of change their doctor.

In his submitted comments, ALG's Wilson asks the Secretary, "how are people supposed to 'keep it' if 'it', i.e., their pre-existing plan, no longer exists?"

Solis admits in the Interim Rule that by the end of 2013 up to 69% of all employer health plans will lose their grandfathered status under the law.

Arguing that the decision on whether a health plan should be grandfathered under the law should be viewed expansively by the government to ensure that most Americans are allowed to keep the health insurance and see the doctor of their choice, Wilson urged Solis to rescind the Interim Final Rule, and to only include the statutory requirements found in the health care law as criteria for determining whether a health plan should be grandfathered.

Wilson concluded stating, "This Interim Rule is the smoking gun showing that the Obama Administration lied when they claimed that people would be able to keep their health insurance and doctor's choice under the law."

SOURCE

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Obama's EEOC a runaway train

Warns Employers: If You Don't Want to Hire Felons, You Need a Good Reason

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is warning employers that it is illegal to use a prospective employee's past conviction records, even for serious felonies, as an "absolute measure" as to whether they should be hired because this "could limit the employment opportunities of some protected groups."

This is, the EEOC says, because blacks and Hispanics are over-represented among felons.

"Blacks and Hispanics also have an unfortunate higher high school and college dropout rates than whites and Asians -- surely this could be determined to be a disparate impact. Does that mean the EEOC could mandate that employers cannot consider an applicant's education? Where will it stop?" asks Justin Danhof, general counsel of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "It is unfortunate that the EEOC is placing outdated racial politics ahead of the American workforce at a time when employers should be encouraged to hire, but this mentality will likely make businesses think twice about plans for expansion. Employers should be free to consider the full content of an applicant's character when making hiring decisions."

"Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin," said Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "It does not ban discrimination based on character. Furthermore, it's odd that an agency charged with stopping racism and sexism in hiring has adopted a policy that will help more white males than members of any other group."

"The EEOC should not be trying to micromanage private hiring decisions beyond the authority given to it by Congress," added Ridenour, "which this wrongheaded policy surely does. And pity the poor employer, fearful on the one hand of being charged with racism if he does not hire a felon -- white though that felon might be -- but fearful on the other of being sued by his other employees, should that felon commit a crime at the workplace that harms them. Certainly employers should be permitted to hire felons; even applauded when appropriate, but they should not be made to feel they could be asked to defend themselves in court if they do not."

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

You can’t make this up: "$150,045 of stimulus money is being spent to restore a bridge that doesn’t connect to any roads and ends in an 8-foot drop. Stimulus backers claim that the project created 1.9 jobs. That’s $78,971.05 per job created. That’s not a very good deal. Especially considering that no jobs were created on net, because that $150,000 was taken away from somewhere else in the economy.”

The trillion dollar Question: Should the national debt be repudiated?: "I have been predicting that the U.S. government would default on its debt since 1993. At the time, no one else was making such an outlandish forecast. Now those who are discussing the prospect as at least a realistic possibility are far too numerous to cite. But worth mentioning are the recent Congressional Budget Office issue brief, which substitutes the word ‘restructure’ for ‘default,’ and two articles by economist Laurence Kotlikoff, one in the Financial Times and the other for Bloomberg. What is more interesting is that a few have begun advocating a U.S. debt repudiation.”

Florida: Much worse problems than the oil spill: "Media coverage of the oil spill’s effect on the Gulf focusing on tourist income lost by the waterfront towns — with footage of empty beaches, restaurants and T-shirt shops — dominates the news. Interviews with devastated business owners are heart rending. But they always end with references to somehow hanging on until ‘things get back to normal.’ Trouble is, things are not going to ‘normalize.’ Not for the Panhandle of Florida, and probably not for the rest of the state, either.”

CA: Fiorina widens lead over Boxer: "Sen. Barbara Boxer is losing ground to challenger Carly Fiorina in the race for California’s Senate seat, which is considered key to both political parties. Fiorina showed a five-point lead (47 percent to 42 percent) in a SurveyUSA poll released Aug. 12. The poll surveyed 602 likely California voters between Aug. 9 and Aug. 11 and had a margin of error of 4.1 percent. ‘The 2010 California Senate race is very important nationally,’ says Carleton College political scientist Steven Schier. ‘If the GOP is to gain control of the Senate, they must win the California Senate race.’ Because economic concerns lead the list of voter issues, Senator Boxer and Ms. Fiorina have been parrying over their plans to create jobs in the struggling state.”

To boost the economy, burst the regulatory bubble: "When Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act last month, the rationale for yet another monolithic regulatory bill was that the economic and housing bubble crisis was caused by too little regulation. In fact, the evidence is becoming increasingly clear that over-regulation and Washington interference were the major culprits. All bubbles burst, so the key question is not ‘Why did housing collapse beginning in 2007?’ but ‘Why did the bubble appear in the first place?’ The answer has many facets, but a common element is government support for home ownership.”

Why the rich and powerful prefer tyranny: A simple view: "The business tycoon has lots of spare time to socialize in powerful circles, because this is the business of the tycoon — who already has money and is struggling not to make himself rich, but to stay rich. Such a person will naturally support big government, because big government is a wellspring of resources — a teat, in other words, from which the tycoon potentially derives nourishment.”

A stern yet fair criticism of today’s conservatives: "Among conservatives in general, I am in the minority in actually opposing Big Government, and think that moral laws are absolute and that no one is above the law — not even agents of the State. Alas, today’s conservatives in general have been supporting a huge growth in centralized, bureaucratic federal government, at home and overseas, and are not actual conservatives.”

Free the monks, free entrepreneurs nationwide: "In Louisiana, monks are under attack. Quite literally. In an outrageous example of economic protectionism at its worst, a group of monks is facing crippling fines and even jail for the ’sin’ of selling simple monastic caskets. Thankfully, they’re fighting back.”

The delightful Voltaire: "Voltaire, that ultimate freethinker and lifelong iconoclast, has never quite lost his audience. His epigrams are among the favorites of speechwriters and his political writings seem almost contemporary. Indeed he would make a suitable patron of today’s U.S. Libertarian Party if its elders cared to look back far enough. (They tend to stop at Thomas Jefferson.) Although Voltaire is absent from the party’s materials, his spirit lives on in the libertarian movement, co-founder David Nolan told me recently.”

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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