Civil Society or Dictatorship?

Put aside all other issues for a moment, and ignore the trivialities that dominate the airwaves and what passes for national debate in this country. The Senate this week ratified a defense authorization bill containing an amendment cosponsored by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin and Republican Sen. John McCain that would empower the military to detain American citizens captured on U.S. soil indefinitely without civil process, in addition to expanding the post-9/11 Authorization to Use Military Force and making it harder to transfer detainees out of Guantánamo.

Ten years of the war on terror, decades of the war on drugs, and a century of growing government power in general, particularly in the presidency and various police authorities, have perhaps desensitized Americans to what is at stake here. As the proverbial frogs in the pot of water, we are accustomed to rising temperatures and so do not notice when our flesh begins to boil. Yet when the Senate overwhelmingly accepts the principle that the military should displace civilian courts even for citizens captured on American soil, it has adopted a standard of justice remarkably tyrannical even compared to America’s very rocky history.

In the Civil War, the Lincoln administration detained American citizens without trial. Parts of the country constituting the United States were actually battlegrounds, littered by many thousands of bodies. Congress formally suspended habeas corpus. This was a dramatic move that has been criticized to this day. Yet the Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Milligan (1866) that even the suspension of habeas corpus did not preclude the federal court system from intervening in the military trial of U.S. citizens, and that such military commissions of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil were unconstitutional so long as the civil courts were operating. Neither Congress nor the president could overturn this constitutional protection, the Court found.

Ah, but those were quaint times. Defenders of the kind of despotic military law being proposed today often say that even citizens do not deserve due process if they are at war with their own country. This is 100% false, at least as far as the Constitution is concerned. Indeed, the founding document of this government requires additional due process to try someone for treason:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court

But this kind of talk seems awfully soft on terrorists, doesn’t it? It is not as though the framers of the Constitution had ever confronted a formidable foreign enemy. It’s only been ten years since 9/11. Of course, by the time the Constitution was ratified, the American Revolution had been over just six years, and in that war about one percent of the American population perished—the proportional equivalent of three million Americans today, or one thousand 9/11s.

Still, this is a new kind of war, as the majority of Senators clearly believe, including almost everyone from the supposed opposition party. An amendment to remove the Levin/McCain language was rejected 61 to 37. Only two Republicans—two!—Rand Paul and Mark Kirk—voted against this blatantly unconstitutional measure for military dictatorship. If anything demonstrates that the leaders of this party claiming to stand for liberty and the rule of law are in fact almost unanimously and adamantly opposed to these principles in the most important imaginable areas, this demonstrates it beyond a reasonable doubt. Indeed, the fact that John McCain, characterized in the 2008 presidential election as a “moderate” among Republicans on questions like torture, backed this bill, should reveal beyond question that had things gone differently in that election, we would not have likely gotten any sort of reprieve from the steady descent toward total tyranny that has characterized the Obama years.

And indeed Obama, for his part, offers no true alternative to the McCain-Republican line of the war on terror. The substance of this bill is essentially in line with everything Obama has done, and, for that matter, what Bush did for eight years, although without formal Congressional codification. Glenn Greenwald notes that the horrifying reality portended in this legislation “more or less describes the status quo. Military custody for accused Terrorists is already a staple of the Obama administration.” Greenwald also helpfully explains that the media’s coverage of the Obama White House’s indications that it might veto this legislation has tended to mischaracterize the situation:

[W]ith a few exceptions, the objections raised by the White House are not grounded in substantive problems with these powers, but rather in the argument that such matters are for the Executive Branch, not the Congress, to decide. In other words, the White House’s objections are grounded in broad theories of Executive Power. They are not arguing: it is wrong to deny accused Terrorists a trial. Instead they insist: whether an accused Terrorist is put in military detention rather than civilian custody is for the President alone to decide.

The United States is not a free country, not even close. There are plenty of worse places in the world, for sure, but a key characteristic of something resembling a free society that adheres to something resembling a rule of law is that the executive branch cannot use the military to indefinitely detain people, regardless of citizenship or location, indefinitely without ever explaining itself to a court or affording the detainee some process to challenge his detention.

Even with such protections, a free country requires more—a functioning legal system that respects property rights and free exchange; civil liberties including free speech and freedom from lawless search and seizure; the freedom of people to control their own bodies, homes, and businesses; protections against involuntary servitude; and a general respect for freedom of association. In all of these areas, America has lost some of its liberties, and they all must be restored if the country is ever going to deserve the label of a “free country.”

Yet one freedom without which the whole concept of liberty is a total mirage, befitting of a black comedy and best affirmed only in Orwellian doublespeak, is the freedom from unjust, lawless, indefinite imprisonment. Since 9/11, the United States has abandoned this principle in many respects. Predictably, it was war—threat of a foreign enemy—that allowed this fundamental freedom to be destroyed, initially in large part for foreigners whose rights and dignity were never even given a significant consideration as thousands were rounded up, many tortured, many killed, many detained to this day for no crime at all but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether seized by Pakistani war lords in exchange for American dollars or declared terrorists by a presidential military legal system several of whose own military prosecutors have resigned in disgust with the blatant injustice of the whole enterprise.

American citizenship doesn’t guarantee due process either, of course—it did not for Jose Padilla for almost four years of detention, nor for the citizens currently targeted for assassination by the Nobel Prize-winning Constitutional law professor sitting in the Oval Office. Today we are on the verge of seeing the last bits of this retreat from civilized standards of justice codified into law. Our political culture has degenerated so much that should the courts strike down these developments, I would not be surprised to see the court decisions ignored altogether or, alternatively, a successful effort to amend the Constitution and finally give the president and his military full dictatorial power over the United States.

And for what, may I ask, did Americans finally relinquish this last claim to living under a qualitatively different kind of government from the absolutist monarchies or third-rate communist despotisms that now dot our history books as artifacts of political failure and vast human misery? Oh, that’s right. Because the terrorists hate us for our freedom.

SOURCE

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Secretary of Defense Panetta Shows How the Obama Administration Is Selling Out Israel… and US Interests

In a major address on U.S. Middle East policy to the Brookings Institution U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta gave us a clear picture of the Obama administration’s view of the region. When taken along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent speech on the same subject, we now know the following regarding Obama’s policy:

It is dangerously and absurdly wrong. This administration totally and completely, dangerously and disastrously for U.S. interests misunderstands the Middle East. They are 180 degrees off course, that is heading in the opposite direction of safety.

Despite the satisfactory state of relations on a purely military level, the Obama administration is not a friend of Israel, even to the extent that it was arguably so in the first two years of this presidency.

It is now an enemy; it is on the other side. Again, the issue is not mainly bilateral relations but the administration’s help and encouragement to those forces that are Israel’s biggest enemies, that want to rekindle war, and that are 100 percent against a two-state solution. And I don’t mean the Palestinian Authority, I mean the Islamists.

And the Obama administration is also a strategic enemy of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Morocco, and Jordan. It is also a strategic enemy to the democratic opposition forces in Iran, Syria, Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt.

Having analyzed and studied the Middle East for almost four decades I say none of this lightly. And these conclusions arise simply from watching what the administration says and does.

In his speech, Panetta has bashed Israel based on a ridiculously false premise. Here it is:

“I understand the view that this is not the time to pursue peace, and that the Arab awakening further imperils the dream of a safe and secure, Jewish and democratic Israel. But I disagree with that view.” Nevertheless, Israel needs to take risks and particularly, “The problem right now is we can’t get them to the damn table, to at least sit down and begin to discuss their differences.”

First, there is a peculiar phrase that I have not seen used even once to describe the Middle East events of 2011, “Arab awakening” instead of “Arab Spring.” This apparently comes from the title of a new book about these events.

But what is the origin of this phrase? The Arab Awakening was the famous book written by George Antonius (subsidized by a U.S foundation to do so, by the way) advocating Arab nationalism and opposition to Zionism in 1938. The Arab Awakening began a half-century pan-Arab struggle against Israel’s creation or existence. Might this not give us a hint of what the new “Arab Awakening” is going to do? Oh, and 1938 marks the year when Great Britain desperately tried to sell out the Jews in order to gain Arab support (for the coming war with Germany and Italy). Within two years of Antonius’s book the form the Arab Awakening took was an alliance with Nazi Germany. One of the main allies of Berlin was the Muslim Brotherhood, now coming into power in Tunisia and Egypt.

Interesting parallels. But there are three other major questions raised in Panetta’s statement.

First, does the current “Arab Awakening” imperil Israel? Yes, of course it does. By changing a reasonably friendly Egyptian government into a totally hostile Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi dominated political system closely allied with Hamas, the Gaza Strip’s ruler, and by helping establish Islamist regimes in Tunisia and Libya allied with this Muslim Brotherhood International; the changes create a four-member alliance intent on wiping Israel off the map.

Add to that Islamist domination of Lebanon by Hizballah, an Islamist regime in Turkey, and the continuing threat from Iran and you’ve got quite a regional situation.

Second, and more interestingly, why is the above true? The answer is as follows:

Democracy in theory is admirable but when you have masses imbued with very radical views, strong Islamist movements, and weak moderate ones, the election winners will be extremely radical Islamists. By winning massive victories, facing a weak (even sympathetic) United States, and seeing even more extreme forces becoming so popular (the Salafists in Egypt), the Islamists are emboldened to be even more radical in their behavior. Who’s going to stop them?

We are thus not facing a springtime of democracy but a springtime of extremism. The Islamists don’t want peace with Israel on any terms. They want its destruction.

More HERE

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Dear Left: Corporatism Is Your Fault

Dear members of the moderate left,

America is suffering from rampant, run-away corporatism and crony capitalism. We are increasingly a plutocracy in which government serves the interests of elite financiers and CEOs at the expense of everyone else.

You know this and you complain loudly about it. But the problem is your fault. You caused this state of affairs. Stop it.

Unlike we libertarianish people, you people actually hold and have been holding significant political power in the US over the past 50 years. What have you done with this power? You’ve greased the corporatist machine every chance you’ve gotten. You’ve made things worse, not better. Our current problems are your fault. You need to stop.

We told you this would happen, but you wouldn’t listen. You complain, rightly, that regulatory agencies are controlled by the very corporations they are supposed to constrain. Well, yeah, we told you that would happen. When you create power—and you people love to create power—the unscrupulous seek to capture that power for their personal benefit. Time and time again, they succeed. We told you that would happen, and we gave you an accurate account of how it would happen.

You complain, perhaps rightly, that corporations are just too big. Well, yeah, we told you that would happen. When you create complicated tax codes, complicated regulatory regimes, and complicated licensing rules, these regulations naturally select for larger and larger corporations. We told you that would happen. Of course, these increasingly large corporations then capture these rules, codes, and regulations to disadvantage their competitors and exploit the rest of us. We told you that would happen.

It’s not rocket science. It’s public choice economics. You recognized, rightly, that public choice economics was a threat to your ideology. So, you didn’t listen, because you didn’t want to be wrong. Public choice predicted that the government programs you created with the goal of fixing problems would often instead exacerbate those problems. Well, the evidence is in. You were wrong and public choice theory was right. If you have any decency, it is time to admit you were wrong and change. Stop making things worse.

You spent the past fifty years empowering corporations and the most unscrupulous of the rich. You created rampant moral hazard in the financial sector. You created the system that socializes risks but privatizes profit. You created the system that creates a revolving door between Obama’s staff and Goldman Sachs. There’s a reason why Wall Street throws money at Obama. It’s because you, the moderate left, are Wall Street’s biggest supporters. Oh, I know you complain about Wall Street. But your actions speak louder than your words.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Depression-era labor laws harmful in modern global economy: "Chalk up another 'victory' for unions as American Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday. The reason? High labor costs compared to its competitors. It seems the unions were demanding things such as a 10 percent signing bonus followed by 7 percent raises in each of the next three years for pilots"

The regulatory thicket: "In the seemingly endless debate about how to put Americans back to work, one solution dare not speak its name: deregulation. Yet if implemented correctly, it would provide an almost cost-free stimulus of a trillion dollars or more. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), the regulatory burden on our economy is a staggering $1.75 trillion annually. The Obama administration is apparently in denial over that figure."

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. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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The Fallacy of Liberal Intelligence

The claim that the Tories are "The stupid party" was political propaganda in 19th century Britain. Liberals think that anyone who disagrees with their utopian schemes to change the world and humanity with it must be stupid. That caution might be smart and lack of it stupid they cannot entertain.

The column below offers some good rejoinders but the best rejoinder to my mind is the fact that about 50% of those in the population with college degrees voted for that "idiot moron numbskull chimpanzee" George Bush Jr. in 2004. Yet people who have college degrees have gone right through the Left-run educational system and been certified by the Leftist professoriat themselves as intellectually accomplished! People whom Leftists themselves certify as the brightest are just as likely to vote Republican as Democrat! So it is demonstrably NOT intellectual accomplishment that differentiates the parties -- JR

By David Bozeman

One of the most annoying axioms in politics is that of the smart liberal/dumb conservative. Look for the media to ramp it up in the coming months, though the notion is so absurd it would be laughable were it not for the fact that so many people buy it. Basically, liberals are not smarter, they just (to borrow an old adage) know more that isn’t true.

Roger Simon recently penned a column on the perceived intellectual shortcomings of the Republican field, quoting Chicago mayor and former Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel (and I’m paraphrasing) that Sarah Palin seems a deep thinker by contrast. Columnist Kathleen Parker, who inexplicably passes for conservative in many papers, recently weighed in on the theme. While she doesn’t buy Paul Begala’s assessment of the GOP as the “stupid party” (and she opines that Begala doesn’t either), she writes that “scientific skepticism, the engine that propels intellectual inquiry, has morphed into the skepticism of science fueled by religious certitude.”

Jon Huntsman, she continues, committed blasphemy by stating that he trusts scientists on global warming. “It takes courage to swim against the tide of know-nothingness that has become de rigueur among the anti-elite, anti-intellectual base. Call it the Palin-ization of the GOP.” Ah, a Palin reference. How original. And by the way, Huntsman may be courageous, that doesn’t make him right.

In a nutshell, the supposed anti-intellectualism of modern conservatives is merely a rebuke of liberal dogma. The left has audaciously declared global warming, to name one issue, a closed subject, despite questionable data and ongoing doubt. Risk being compared to a Holocaust denier — now that’s courageous. British writer and journalist James Delingpole recently described the latest episode of the 2009 Climategate scandal as Climategate II, which he writes “shows the scientists at the heart of the Man-Made Global Warming industry in a most unflattering light.” He notes that the global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. Certainly, whether or not man-made global warming proves to be true, the case is far from closed.

So, could it be that the left does not embrace science so much as junk science? The Paul Begalas of the world hide their statist dreams behind the window-dressing of intellectual pedigree.

How would one of these hardcore advocates of the scientific method react if scientists discovered massive oil reserves off the coasts of Malibu or Martha’s Vineyard? Would they be considered anti-science for barring progress at the expense of their exclusive beachfront getaways?

Could one not make the case that opposing nuclear power is anti-progress and anti-science? Why are liberals, particularly feminists, so quick to shun science when differences in male and female brain structures and aptitudes are merely alluded to? In 2005, Harvard President Larry Summers suggested that males may possess an advantage in mastering science and engineering (while it is widely regarded that females enjoy a similar advantage in verbal and communication skills). After a chorus of outrage and censure by the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, the man lost his job. Now who’s the one committing blasphemy?

Intellectual bravado provides wide latitude for social and economic experimentation and daft verbal cover when things don’t go as planned. Conservatives may appear less intelligent because, in an increasingly complex world, we still defer to common sense, which is rooted in an understanding of human nature.

We are all far from perfect, thus we rely on the time-tested (but less academic) institutions of faith, family, community, limited government and the free market to keep human nature in check.

SOURCE

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Despite What You've Heard, Unemployment Rate Rising not Falling

In "Unemployment Rate Dips to 8.6% as 487,000 Drop Out of Labor Force" I presented some quick facts on the drop in the unemployment rate.

In the last year, the civilian population rose by 1,726,000. Yet the labor force fell by 67,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 1,793,000.

In November, those "Not in Labor Force" rose by a whopping 487,000. If you are not in the labor force, you are not counted as unemployed. Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be well over 11%.

More HERE

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Obama Abandons the Working Class

An opening for Romney, if he's smart enough

There's a message here for Republicans for 2012. Ironically, it may have been outlined best by two Democratic strategists in a publication for the left-leaning Center for American Progress. In "The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election," Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin made headlines for making official what everyone has known unofficially for some time: The Democratic Party is abandoning the white working class.

The authors therefore suggest that Mr. Obama's best demographic bet for 2012 lies in holding white college graduates. They are also up front about the vulnerability. Mostly they phrase it politely—"the perceived inability of the Obama administration's policies to spark real recovery"; "serious doubts about Democratic stewardship of the economy"; or "disenchantment on the economy."

That shouldn't be a hard sell in places like Scranton, where the 9.7% unemployment rate is the worst in the state. When the Obama stimulus came, Lackawanna County spent nearly half of the $39 million it received on education, which means teachers. The city has been deemed "financially distressed" for two decades, and just this month the mayor released a new budget that includes a 29% hike in property taxes.

If these citizens weren't bitter before, they sure have reason to be now. For the white working class, the private sector was what gave them jobs and propelled them into the middle class. Yet whether it's drilling for oil or putting up a shopping mall, today's Democratic Party seems opposed to most of the private-sector jobs that deliver opportunity to those without a college degree.

That's an opportunity for Mitt Romney. In these hard economic times, the former Massachusetts governor could be the first Republican in history to benefit from the prejudice that Republicans are the party of business.

Put it this way. If you are a Democrat or independent who has lost confidence in Mr. Obama, what might you like about Mr. Romney? You might like that he's proved himself successful in business. You might find that especially attractive if you are someone who has lost your job or worry that you might lose your job.

Alas for Mr. Romney, the winning message here will not come by accepting Mr. Obama's class approach to tax relief. The way to win is by drawing distinctions—between states that welcome investment and states that drive it away; between states burdened by a politicized and overcompensated public sector and states that are not; between an approach that divides people by race and class and one that emphasizes upward mobility for all.

Above all, the way to win is by asking Americans whether they want a future for their children that looks like Texas and Indiana—or like Michigan and Illinois?

People in places like Scranton are hungry for more than a 59-point business plan. They need an economic vision rooted in an expanding private sector. Mr. Romney appreciates that his success next November would depend in good part on his ability to attract disaffected Democrats and independents. What he may not know is that this will in turn depend on whether he comes across as a successful businessman, or merely a rich one.

SOURCE

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Obama the unready

He wasn’t ready to be a US Senator and he wasn’t ready to be president either. And because some Americans put White Guilt above common sense and thereby elected the most unready of candidates to the office of President of the United States, our economy is at a standstill.

But even more importantly, the country has, under Obama, once again lost a sense of its place and is questioning its historical mission of being the City on a Hill for the rest of the world.

Only 18 percent of Americans now believe that the country is on the right track, according to Rasmussen. The number has never been above 47 percent since Obama took office. The country reached it’s feel good moment at the six-month mark of the Democrat takeover of Congress, and it’s been downhill for Obama ever since. He now faces an 18 precent gap between those who strongly approve of his performance versus those who strongly disapprove according to Rasmussen.

The last time the world was this demoralized, was the last time a Democrat president let things drift because he had no idea how to be president of the United States.

Obama has been lately reprising that president’s “malaise” speech, calling Americans “lazy” and generally bemoaning the country’s lack of direction.

The guy who couldn’t find his way to Congress even if a cruise missile was strapped to his backside recently sympathized with the one-tenth percent of Americans whom Occupy Wall Street think they represent, saying, according to ABCNews: “A lot of the folks who’ve been down in New York and all across the country in the Occupy movement,” says Obama, “there is a profound sense of frustration, a profound sense of frustration about the fact that the essence of the American Dream… feels like it’s slipping away.”

Bravo, Mr. Obama. Terrific job acting like Occupy Wall Street has anything to do with the American Dream. Terrific job pretending like you even understand what the American Dream is about. Spoken like a true, leftist community organizer.

If the American Dream is slipping away, though, the only replacement Obama has offered the country is the lush verbiage from the book Dreams from My Father, a mish-mash of circular logic, an American Oblomov, superfluous, inert and self-absorbed- the inverse actually of the American Dream.

“Congress needs to pass the rest of my American Jobs Act,” said Obama, after Dems and the GOP passed modest legislation aimed at making it easier to hire veterans, “so that we can create jobs and put money in the pockets of the middle class.”

But Obama’s words belie the real trouble with him: He doesn’t really have a Jobs Act. He doesn’t have a budget, a foreign policy, an energy policy, an immigration policy. Instead he only acts like he has some of these.

He’s the incomplete genesis of a community organizer.

But reading words on cue cards prepared by others isn’t a substitute for having a policy; it isn’t the same thing as being president of the United States.

Complicating things for Obama is the dilemma that is that he has never really decided in life who he really is.

“Thomas Aquinas once raised the issue of choosing between a proud man and a pusillanimous one,” writes William Manchester in Goodbye Darkness. “Take the proud one every time, he advised, because you will be sure that he will at least do something.”

Perhaps it’s time for someone to ask the relevant question: Does the life of a community organizer, which is necessarily a parochial endeavor, adequately prepare someone for the job of leading the nation?

At least in the case of Obama, one would have to say no; not because of policy, not because of ideology, not because of point of view, but rather on account of inadequate preparation. When the history of the Obama administration is written, I predict, Americans will be appalled by the pusillanimity of the man once anointed the One.

But that’s not all. Because, he not only lacks the skills, but he also lacks the conviction to be president of the United States.

A man with conviction would be either for or against Occupy Wall Street- or banks or illegal immigrants, etc- not both for and against them at the same time.

That’s what happens when a community organizer wars with the president of the United States, wholly in the person of himself.

It makes for great drama, great acting. But it makes for the poorest possible history.

SOURCE

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Federal Housing Authority May Have 13 Billion More In Losses

The Federal Housing Administration recently gave even odds that it would need a taxpayer bailout within the next year. But the reality is a lot worse, according to one housing expert. "The FHA is effectively insolvent," said Edward Pinto, resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. The FHA denies this, calling AEI's claims "irresponsible."

The agency, which insures mortgages, has come under increased scrutiny in the last month after its recent actuarial report suggested there was a 50% chance it would need a bailout sometime next year.

The report also noted that the FHA has a $27 billion negative cash flow in its single-family program, but has $28 billion in total capital resources to offset that.

But Pinto claims that more rigorous accounting paints a bleaker picture. He points out that any private mortgage insurance company would assume that about 55% of the loans delinquent at least 60 days or in foreclosure would go to claim. As of October, FHA had 836,789 loans in that category, totaling $117 billion. Expected claims on that would be about $64.4 billion.

The FHA's most recent loss ratio, how much it pays on claims, was about 63%. That would mean the FHA would need $41 billion to pay claims, $13 billion more than its current assets.

FHA has increased its loan exposure from about $300 billion in late 2007 to more than $1 trillion now in response to private mortgage companies exiting the market in the wake of the housing bust. FHA guaranteed 24% of new mortgages in fiscal 2011 ended Sept. 30. It was 30% in 2010.

FHA's seriously delinquent rate — those loans at least 90 days late or in foreclosure — has grown since FHA has expanded into the mortgage market, from 5.5% at the end of fiscal 2007 to more than 9% in October 2011.

Pinto also notes that 17% of FHA-insured loans are at least 30 days delinquent, up from 16.8% in September. The delinquency rate for all home loans is 12.4%, according to the latest figures from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

FHA capital reserves were only about 0.24% of loan amounts as of September vs. about 0.5% a year earlier. Congress mandates a modest 2%. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan told lawmakers Thursday that FHA may need to raise insurance premiums for the fourth time since 2010.

SOURCE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Left-sympathizing big businessmen trying to pass the buck

They blame capitalism for the extraordinarily high incomes received by many big-business chiefs and say it will provoke unrest. But many of the high incomes originate in firms that were bailed out by the government or have a cosy relationship with government.

So the high incomes concerned are not the fault of capitalism but the fault of corporatism -- the intimate connection between government and big business that Mussolini rightly envisaged as dominating the 20th century and beyond. To put it bluntly, it is our present neo-Fascist system that is creating dangerous strains, not capitalism.

If none of the big banks and other financial institutions had been bailed out and gone broke instead, most of those big incomes would have vanished too. Capitalism was not allowed to do its work of creative destruction. It is a turning back to real capitalism that is needed -- JR

A review of Capitalism at Risk: Rethinking the Role of Business

Three professors from the world's pre-eminent business school have co-written a study that at first blush seems to fall more in the genre of horror tale than business text.

Professor Bower and his colleagues note in their study the broad concerns of the 46 business thinkers that they brought together in forums on three continents, but by far the most widely held was "the tendency of capitalism, as it currently functions, to produce extreme disparities of income and wealth".

It took little to conclude that the vast accumulation of wealth by individuals compared with the stagnating fortunes of low- and middle-income workers is fuelling the backlash worldwide.

"Some leaders pointed to what they regard as excessive compensation earned by CEOs [that] strike many people as intrinsically unjustified," the authors write. The reality of growing disparities - one that is the crux of political debate within Western democracies - poses questions about capitalism's very raison d'etre.

One unidentified Asian business leader told the authors: "Herein lies a major challenge, because the world has become very much more prosperous as a result of market capitalism.

"The rich have become richer. The poor in most cases have become richer. But the gap between the rich and the poor has also grown wider … There is the growing sense of being left out, even as people are getting better off."

A European executive said: "What was the good of capitalism? Was it the fact that we were building a very large, very well-off … middle class? We are not doing this any more."

And in the US, a chief executive told the authors: "It's undeniable that in a country like ours, unfettered capitalist impulse on a global basis does seem to exacerbate the problem."

Joining the discussions were executives such as Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric, John Elkann of Fiat and Bertrand Collomb of the French group Lafarge. They included bankers and financiers, as well as the heads of conglomerates and the former US labour secretary, Elaine Chao.

That capitalism has delivered for billions is not at issue: in the last decades of the 20th century, 97per cent of countries enjoyed increased wealth, according to the World Bank. More than 450 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty.

But the executives also cited as potential threats the powerful forces within financial markets, environmental degradation, political populism, terrorism and war, fundamentalism, mass migration and pandemics.

They are quoted anonymously throughout the work.

"History tells us that when an awful lot of people are disenfranchised, they have no incentive to play by the rules, and given today's communications availability, weaponry … that's an issue we have to really think about, probably over a very long period of time," one executive said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that many were the beneficiaries of fabulous remuneration, the business leaders do not appear to offer easy solutions to bridging inequalities. But they back business, not government, largely to ameliorate strains on the system.

More HERE

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Ron Paul, the prophet not honoured in his own country

"The problem came about because we spent too much, we borrowed too much, we printed too much money, we inflated too much and we over-regulated. We are looking at the collapsing of a market which is unstable. It is unstable because of the way it came about. It came about because of the monopoly control of money and credit by the Federal Reserve system and that is a natural consequence of what happens when the Federal Reserve system creates too much credit."

Internet conspiracy theorist? No, Ron Paul, candidate for Republican presidential nomination. Those words were from a speech to Congress in 2008 urging a "no" vote on TARP, the Mother of All Bailouts.

Three years later, with the crisis switching up a gear from banks to sovereigns and Europe teetering, Paul predicted "they will probably bail out Europe next".

That they did. This week, the Fed led a coterie of central banks in a dramatic market intervention which cut the cost of US dollar funding to European banks in half. Drunk on this latest round of credit shots, world stockmarkets popped up 5 per cent, as they do every time the Fed cranks up the presses.

Ron Paul was predictably unimpressed: "Bankers should take their dreaded haircut rather than making innocent people pay for their mistakes. The losses should be limited and liquidated, rather than perpetuated and rewarded. This is the only way we can recover."

Time wins more converts than reason. Despite being ignored by the mainstream media for years, Paul is now running between second and fifth in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination.

After a recent TV debate, host network CNBC took down an internet poll which had Ron Paul thrashing his rivals. His supporters were "gaming" the poll, said the network. There was no evidence.

A civil libertarian and stickler for the constitution, Ron Paul voted against Dubya's invasion of Iraq, the Patriot Act and the TARP bailout. He wants Fort Knox and the Federal Reserve audited, and the gold standard returned.

Needless to say both Wall Street and the military industrial complex - and Republicans and Democrats - are equally leery.

Fox News, which is pushing Newt Gingrich, gave Paul a spot of airtime the other day. A Barbie-blonde presenter attempted to fit him up with a sex scandal of the confected "do you deny…?" genre. It backfired.

The presenter simply couldn't nail him as Paul a) doesn't have that "girls in the hot-tub" look about him, b) has a penchant for telling the truth, and c) displays the uncommon trait of common sense.

They haven't been able to snare or discredit him yet, so they ignore him so assiduously that people are beginning to suspect he must be onto something.

He is fond of pointing to paradox, for instance the Fed lending to the banks at close to zero and then the banks lending it back to the government at 3 per cent - by buying Treasury bonds - after the government has given it to the Fed in the first place for free (by expanding the Fed's balance sheet).

If Ron Paul looked prescient for his call on Europe this week there was sure-fire vindication after the Bloomberg news agency won its freedom of information lawsuit against the Fed and revealed the central bank had funnelled $US13 billion in funds to US banks without disclosing it to Congress.

Bear in mind the Fed, unlike other reserve banks, is owned by private banks. Wall Street if you like. The Fed and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in US history a secret. Now the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn't tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $US1.2 trillion on December 5, 2008, their single neediest day.

The abuses are legion, well worth a read. Morgan Stanley, for instance, took $US107 billion in Fed loans in September 2008, "enough to pay off one-tenth of the country's delinquent mortgages" while it was telling everybody it was healthy. That was before TARP.

The rub with hiding things, with lax accountability, is that confidence in public institutions suffers. Indeed the capitalist system is based on trust, trust that a counterparty will pay, that an institution won't run off with your money, that you are being told the truth.

SOURCE

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More doubts about the Breivik diagnosis

In Norway, an insanity defense requires a defendant be psychotic - so out of touch he cannot control his own actions - while committing a crime. Somehow this week, two forensic psychiatrists determined that Anders Behring Breivik, 32, was insane when he methodically killed 77 people on July 22.

Breivik has admitted that he set off a car bomb in Oslo, killing eight, then gunned down 69 people, mostly teenagers, on an island summer camp. But he has refused to plead guilty on the grounds that his actions were "atrocious but necessary" in service to his crusade to "save" Europe from Marxism and a "Muslim invasion."

The maximum criminal sentence in Norway is 21 years - although authorities can extend prison time for those deemed to be a danger to society. Thus Breivik had reason to believe that, disguised as a police officer, he could shoot up a camp full of teenagers, lay down his weapons and surrender - and he still might go free in his 50s.

If the forensics board backs up the insanity finding, a court could commit Breivik to three years of psychiatric care. It's unlikely, but he could be out in his 30s.

In an e-mail, University of Oslo psychology Professor Svenn Torgersen explained, "At least every three years, he can be assessed. If he is non-psychotic, and in addition considered no threat to other people, he will be free, and no new court case. Yes, many psychiatrists and psychologists are surprised."

Prosecutor Svein Holden supported the "delusional" finding as he told reporters that Breivik's "thoughts and acts are governed by this universe." And: "He sees himself as chosen to decide who shall live and who shall die, and that he is chosen to save what he calls his people."

Swedish forensic psychiatrist Anders Forsman, however, told the Associated Press, "It is difficult to see this as criminal insanity. He seems to have carried out the killings in a rational way. He is an efficient killing machine."

Consider these words from Breivik's terrorist manifesto: "Once you decide to strike, it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike." For a man not in control of his thoughts or actions, he sure did what he wanted to do.

News accounts indicate that Norwegians could accept an insanity finding as long as Breivik spends the rest of his life in government custody. But Oslo deliberately prohibits life sentences, even for the most heinous crimes. Politicians boast about the nation's humane criminal justice system with its commitment to redemption.

SOURCE

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Israel hobbling Iranian nuke threat

AN IRANIAN nuclear facility has been hit by a huge explosion, the second such blast in a month, prompting speculation that Tehran's military and atomic sites are under attack.

Satellite imagery seen by The Times confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran.

The images clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was "no doubt" that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was "no accident".

The explosion at Iran's third-largest city came as satellite images emerged of the damage caused by one at a military base outside Tehran two weeks ago that killed about 30 members of the Revolutionary Guard, including General Hassan Moghaddam, the head of the Iranian missile defence program.

Iran claimed that the Tehran explosion occurred during testing on a new weapons system designed to strike at Israel. But several Israeli officials have confirmed that the blast was intentional and part of an effort to target Iran's nuclear weapons program.

A former Israeli intelligence official cited at least two other explosions that have "successfully neutralised" Iranian bases associated with the Shahab-3, the medium-range missile that could be adapted to carry a nuclear warhead. "This is something everyone in the West wanted to see happen," he added.

More HERE

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Republicans aim to quash new union rules

Republicans are maneuvering to short-circuit an effort by Democrats on the National Labor Relations Board to approve rules that would quicken the pace of union elections.

The GOP member of the labor board is threatening to resign his post, which would deny the board a quorum and quash the entire process. At the same time, the House is poised Wednesday to approve a GOP bill aimed at short-circuiting moves they consider anti-business. That measure is unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate.

The developments are the latest sign of how intensely business groups are opposing any moves that could help organized labor make new inroads at companies that have long opposed unions.

At the labor board, the Democratic majority was set to take up a proposal Wednesday that would simplify procedures and shorten deadlines for holding union elections after employees at a work site gather enough signatures.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

Leaping toward the Keynesian Dream: "The Fed’s latest inflationary scheme sounds like a technocratic innovation. It lowered the costs of currency swaps between central banks of the world, with the idea that the Fed would do for the globe what Europe, England and China are too shy to do, which is run the printing presses 24/7 to bail out failing institutions and economies. In effect, the Fed has promised to be the lender of last resort for the entire global economy."

Plundering wealth vs producing wealth: "In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not seriously wealthy) to those who already have extreme wealth, becomes more obvious -- and more suspect."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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The computerization scam

Governments seem to be suckers for computer salesmen who tell them that computerizing their operations will save them money and allow them to operate more efficiently.

It doesn’t happen. The one certainty is that the process will cost way more than budgeted and the big uncertainty is whether it will work at all. I could give innumerable examples but the one that stands out is Britain’s experience of linking all their government hospitals into one network with all the records of all the patients in the country on it. The Brits spent over 12 BILLION pounds over a period of about a decade on it. It never worked and has just recently been scrapped

Unbelievably in the circumstances, computerization is one of the far-fetched dreams of Obamacare. You would think the British experience would have engendered caution but it has not.

One of my readers is an anesthesiologist who is a computer enthusiast and an instructor for Electronic Hospital Records. He reports below one of the more successful uses of computerization in hospitals.

Its limited degree of success stems largely from the fact that a “tried and true” system was bought “off the shelf”. It is when governments order an entirely new system for themselves that the woes often become insurmountable:

We just installed Electronic Hospital Records here Nov 6. Amusing how the State Government can’t seem to do anything right – any claim that Government can do medicine “more efficiently” is laughable.

Gettling into the game late is an advantage – the EPIC system has been used successfully in U T hospitals in Texas and many other places – successfully.

So using a product that has been made better by several generations should be an advantage – but think again when State Government interferes.

Problem # 1

HER was funded by Medicare Stimulus, with a deadline; much was done in haste to meet mandated deadline, Nov 6.

Problem #2

Instead of using a product “as is”, each of multiple State Hospitals just “had to have” “custom features” that simply were not on the original system.

As I know (wife was a programmer for many years) people just can’t wish for “custom programming” and get what they want in a reasonable period of time. Multiple delays.

Problem # 3

Anesthesia machine and monitor vendors were NOT informed that EHR was planned until several months ago. Modules for the machine and monitor to “talk” to computers was ordered late; this kind of hardware must be custom ordered; it isn't sold in Radio Shack or Best Buy. When we went “live”, many modules were not yet available, so data had to be entered manually.

Problem # 4

By the “grapevine”, our system was a “low budget” version, with low level support; when a problem occurs (like computer won’t boot etc..), it may be hours before a support person shows up in the operating room; and often, personnel don’t know what’s happening because the system is so specialized. Likely support package was low budget as well.

Problem # 5.

No surprises here since, in the past, institutions have lost tons of money when new computer systems fail at billing:

ALL my records from the last 3 weeks are listed as “not closed” (records are “closed” when all signatures are checked by myself, and listed as “complete”).

Although records are listed as “closed” in my workspace, on the central system they are listed as “open”; billing cannot occur electronically with open records.

So now entire anesthetic records are printed, and searched by hand for completeness before paper records are submitted for billing; rumor has it that this system will not work properly until local software is upgraded.

EHR is better medicine – looking up patient records online is fast, no paper must be searched for and manually delivered; and paper records are often “lost” because multiple people are using them, often without the record people knowing who has the record at the moment; worst time is days post op, when records are being used by business managers for billing; to dictate reports etc. With HER, we simply search patient’s name or numbers.

But PLEASE – anyone saying EHR saves money is a fool; besides hardware, a system of IT support is needed; on top of this, the system charges a fee.

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More on Breivik's "symptoms"



It is a symptom of madness if one takes a close interest in politics and history? Oh boy! I am stark raving at that rate! And if wearing a face-mask to avoid germs is mad, there sure are a lot of crazy Japanese. See the picture of Japanese students in a lecture hall above

The Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik showed signs of paranoid delusions as early as 2006, his mother has admitted in a tearful interview with forensic psychiatrists.

"He must have been insane, he became so different," Wenche Behring was quoted as saying in the psychiatric evaluation report submitted to the Oslo court. "It is hard to believe that these things happened. It's still hard to believe."

According to the report, leaked to Norway's Verdens Gang newspaper, Mrs Behring said that soon after the 32-year-old moved back in with her five years ago, he began to behave in an erratic way.

In interviews, Mrs Behring described to two psychiatrists how her son became obsessed with politics and history. "He was totally beyond reason and believed all the nonsense he said," she said.

In July, Mr Breivik killed 77 people in shootings on the island of Utoya and a bomb attack in Oslo.

By April, when he was planning the attacks, Mr Breivik had taken to wearing a face mask inside the house, fearing his mother would infect him. He often refused her cooking.

Mr Breivik was brought up by his mother, who had divorced her diplomat husband when her son was one.

More here

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New Gun Company Advertisement Compares Obama to Hitler, Stalin

I am sure that the Left would like to shriek about this but after all the Bush=Hitler placards they would have a cheek to do so. I think the alarm below is overblown. Obama obviously has contempt for "bitter, clinging" gun owners but he would have to do an end-run around Congress to introduce new restrictions: Not impossible but unlikely



A gun company advertisement that warns of impending gun control compares President Obama to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

The USAAmmo ad shows side-by-side pictures of Obama with Hitler, Stalin and other dictators who committed atrocities across the world. The ad, which is also accompanied by a video, warns that gun control is imminent and foreshadows that the U.S. could face millions in casualties if they are not allowed to defend themselves.

USAAmmo states that “tyranny is knocking down the doors of American cities daily” and that Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and other gun control advocates “are secretly conspiring American Citizens of the right to bear arms.”

Trace Williams, director of operations for USAAmmo, defended the ad that was emailed Monday. He told CBS Washington that “Obama and his various czars are infringing on the rights of Americans to own guns.”

“He’s anti-gun and he’s obviously a socialist cramming health care down American’s throats,” Williams said. “That is exactly how those people in that ad rose to power.”

Williams told CBS Washington that he doesn’t regret comparing Obama to those dictators and that his company has received “unbelievable support” since the ad was put out.

“Just look at history. Obama’s socialist agenda is geared toward depriving American citizens of their God-given rights.” He also added that sales have gone “through the roof.”

Obama promised stricter gun control laws following the January Tucson shooting where Rep. Gabby Giffords was seriously injured and six others were killed.

SOURCE

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Incentives are life and death

By economist Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich

If there was one word to sum up the whole body of economic theory, it would have to be ‘incentives.’ People act on incentives. As William Stanley Jevons (1835–82), one of the founding fathers of neoclassical economics, put it, the whole economy is ‘a calculus of pleasure and pain.’ Greece is playing out a most macabre application of incentives.

Greece may be the madhouse of the world economy, but there is method in its madness. According to a report in The Lancet, the number of HIV infections in Greece has skyrocketed. The increase was partly due to the termination of drug rehabilitation and street-work programs as a result of government austerity measures. But there was a more chilling explanation.

Drug addicts – acting on incentives – are injecting themselves with the deadly virus to qualify for ‘benefits of €700 per month and faster admission onto drug substitution programmes.’ The incentive to get higher welfare benefits plus access to medical treatment obviously is a strong one – particularly for people who have little left to lose.

It is not the first time economic research has revealed the strange consequences of people acting on incentives. One of the classic economic papers, ‘Dying to save taxes,’ was about how some people in the United States were successfully prolonging their lives by a few days to reduce the estate-tax liability of their heirs.

Australian economists Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh came to a similar conclusion after studying the effects of the abolition of federal inheritance taxes in 1979: ‘in the very short run the death rate is highly elastic with respect to the inheritance tax rate.’ In other words, people managed to live a bit longer to beat the tax office.

Tax incentives certainly are a matter of life and death, as was confirmed by Germany’s introduction of parental benefits from 1 January 2007. Research by the University of Bolzano showed how German mothers delayed giving birth by a few days to qualify for the benefits.

Incentives matter. If policymakers kept this basic insight in mind, they would design better policies. It might also save the Greek government money it would otherwise spend on AIDS treatment.

SOURCE

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The "Spring" that wasn't

At first glance, the Arab uprisings of this year looked to be advances for people often trapped by clerics and tyrants who have used Islam to enslave, torture and kill their people so that they can live in opulent grandeur among some of the planet's poorest populations.

Iran might appear to be the odd man out. For a start its people prefer to fashion themselves as Persians, but it has a significant Arab core. Its supreme leader seems to shun the indulgences that define the lifestyles of his neighbouring leaders, but he and his president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are still the two of the most dangerous men on earth. Ahmadinejad is mad. Barking. And soon to be nuclear armed.

This year saw movements for freedom in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, Morocco, Iran, Syria, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia.

The tyrannical states that enjoy Western support - Bahrain and Saudi Arabia - have largely survived, although Egypt fell quickly. Those who alienated the West, or threatened it, or attacked it, are gone. By the hand of their own people.

A Libyan shot dead Colonel Gaddafi, even if his convoy was trapped in Sirte by NATO airstrikes.

But the next chapter in the lives of these states is unlikely to include anything like democracy.

A greater danger is that the threatening Muslim Brotherhood will overtly or otherwise control their destinies.

A year ago I wrote that we'd do well to remember the name Sayyid Qutb, and suggested that despite being dead for almost 50 years he could yet be the most influential man of this century, in the manner that Karl Marx was the most influential man of the last century while not living to see it. The Koran-quoting assassins of the Muslim Brotherhood work to Qutb's manifesto In The Shade of The Koran.

They are bad news for honest, secular Arabs who made such sacrifices this year in the hopes of liberalism and progress that might change their destiny.

The Brotherhood plans changes, too. First they'd turn the clock back to the sixth century, and introduce sharia law; Muslim women and girls could forget about equality. Next they'd start planning for the destruction of the state of Israel.

They are well organised for today's election in Egypt and the military's bloody crackdown on protesters last week plays directly in to their hands. The poll results will give us an indication of the Brotherhood's real strength there. It can hardly be a coincidence that Cairo will also be the venue for a meeting on December 22 between the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas movements as they strike a unity deal after recent talks on "the question of a truce ... with Israel and the question of popular resistance".

They can't have been long talks: Hamas demands the destruction of Israel.

If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there'd be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, there'd be genocide.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, the vacuum left by departing President Saleh also doesn't mean freedom for his people. Jockeying for power there are his son and some tribal chiefs, with various factions of the military.

In Moroccan elections at the weekend so-called "moderate" Islamists appear to have taken the lead, as they did in Tunisia a few weeks back, but secularists failed.

And then there's Libya. Run by a murderous lunatic and his sons - one of them the captured Saif, best mate of Prince Andrew, whose mum is Australia's head of state - after 40 years the people revolted and the era of fear, torture and murder was ended.

Already the new regime is talking of sharia law. Welcome the new barbarians.

SOURCE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Blocking the Paths Out of Poverty

Have you noticed how often government takes sides against the little guy?

Street vending has been a path out of poverty for Americans. And like other such paths (say, driving a taxi), this one is increasingly difficult to navigate. Why? Because entrenched interests don't like competition. So they lobby their powerful friends to erect high hurdles to upstarts. It's an old story.

Now, growing local governments are crushing street vendors.

The city of Atlanta, for example, has turned all street vending over to a monopoly contractor. In feudalist fashion, all existing vendors were told they must work for the monopoly or not vend at all.

"Vendors who used to paying $250 a year for their vending site must now hand over $500 to $1,600 every month for the privilege of working for the monopoly," wrote Bob Ewing in The Freeman. Ewing works for the Institute for Justice, the libertarian public-interest law firm that defends victims of anticompetitive regulation.

IJ has sued the city on behalf of two popular vendors.

In Hialeah, Fla., if you operate a flower stand too close to a flower store or if you're not constantly moving, you can be arrested.

Institute lawyer Elizabeth Foley says the regulations make "it virtually impossible to be an effective street vendor. You can't be within 300 feet of any place that sells the same or similar merchandise. That's absolutely ridiculous for the government to use its power to enact a law like that. ... These people are just trying to make an honest living, and the city is making it impossible to do so."

The law does seem designed to cripple street vending. "You have to be in constant motion, which is completely unsafe."

Raul Martinez, the mayor when the law passed, defended the rule. "You don't want to have everybody in the middle of the streets competing for space on the sidewalk without some sort of regulations. In the city of Hialeah, we're not overregulating anybody."

He says one purpose of the law is simple fairness: Street vendors don't pay property taxes. Brick-and-mortar stores must. "They also create jobs," Martinez said. "What we did back then is we got all the groups together and we came with an ordinance that was satisfactory to all of the parties at the time."

But they couldn't have gotten "all the groups" together because people who hadn't yet entered the business weren't included. How could they have been? No one knew who they would be. What the mayor did was get the established guys together. Such "fairness" regulation kills job growth and reduces consumer welfare because the entrenched interests write rules that cripple new competition.

Mayor Martinez argued that "you create an unfair advantage when you allow that vendor selling in the front of a flower shop to sell the same flowers that the flower shop sells, and to sell them at a much reduced price. That's unfair competition."

It's a fair point: Why open a brick-and-mortar store and pay property tax if you could save maybe $3,000 a year by selling from a cart?

"These are different types of business models," Foley replied. "A florist can offer professional arrangement. A florist can offer delivery. A florist has a bathroom. Air conditioning. A street vendor is out there on the street, and the way they compete is on price and convenience; you can drive up and get your flowers and go home quickly. There's nothing wrong with having two different types of business models competing near each other. It happens in America all the time.

"It's not legitimate for government to use its incredible power to make one business model have an unfair advantage over another."

As a libertarian, I'd say that the store owners' beef is with the local government that imposes the property tax, not the street vendor struggling to make a better life.

If government destroys all the paths out of poverty, the welfare state will look like the only way to help the poor.

Maybe, in addition to helping entrenched interests, that's the bureaucrats' goal.

SOURCE

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Obama's Cloud-Based Transparency

Michelle Malkin

At the dawn of his administration, President Obama opined: "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency." Magical rays of white-hot sunlight emanated from his media-manufactured halo. And then bureaucratically engineered darkness settled over the land.

For three years, White House officials have rolled out countless executive orders and initiatives touting open government. Just this week, they unveiled plans to move federal archival records from a paper-based to an electronic system. But behind the scenes, Obama's lawyers systematically have stymied public information requests, carved out crater-sized disclosure loopholes, fought subpoenas on scandals from Fast and Furious to Solyndra, and made routine the holiday document dump.

The latest meeting of the Government Accountability and Transparency Board, attended by Vice President Joe Biden, was closed to the press two weeks ago.

The Justice Department stealthily attempted to sabotage the Freedom of Information Act last month with a regulation change that would have allowed federal agencies to legally and deliberately deceive the public about the existence of requested records. After a massive backlash, DOJ retreated and sheepishly admitted that the license-to-lie rule "falls short" of the Obama "commitment" to transparency. (Actually, it's the perfect embodiment of the administration's contempt.) The same DOJ, it should be noted, banned reporters from a FOIA training workshop in 2009.

In October, the Interior Department and Energy Department spurned attempts to gain information about the administration's $1.2 billion loan guarantee to Democrat-connected solar company SunPower. The deal, championed by powerful Democratic Rep. George Miller III, was approved hours before the program expired on Sept. 30. Miller took Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on a tour of the SunPower plant last year; Miller's son is a lobbyist for SunPower. Conservative newspaper Human Events and the nonprofit legal watchdog group Judicial Watch have now filed several pending FOIA requests.

In September, State Department officials refused to go on record during a briefing on its new global government transparency program. Earlier this spring, a ceremony to honor Obama's commitment to openness was closed to the media -- after which dutiful (sup)press secretary Jay Carney boasted that his boss "has demonstrated a commitment to transparency and openness that is greater than any administration has shown in the past."

As evidence of this historic openness, Obama flacks point to farces like last week's Thanksgiving-timed release of White House visitor logs -- which even left-wing good government activists have criticized for their incompleteness. As the Center for Public Integrity reported earlier this year, the logs (which disclosure advocates forced into the public eye after suing) "routinely omit or cloud key details about the identity of visitors, whom they met with and the nature of their visits. The logs even include the names of people who never showed up. These are critical gaps that raise doubts about the records' historical accuracy and utility in helping the public understand White House operations, from social events to meetings on key policy debates."

Occasional holiday document dumps have always been a mainstay in Washington. But the agents of Hope and Change have turned the ritual into a weekly punch line. If it's Friday, it's dump day. The plan worked. As of Tuesday, no mainstream news outlet had reported on the contents of the Black Friday document trove.

None showed interest in the nearly 60 visits from Robert B. Creamer, a convicted felon and tax cheat, left-wing Huffington Post agitator, husband of Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky and vocal champion of the Occupy Wall Street movement. According to the newly released records I reviewed, Creamer was at the White House five times in August 2011 meeting with various officials, including Jon Carson, Cecilia Munoz and Stephanie Cutter.

Nor has there been interest outside conservative blogs in the five White House visits by former Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, a key Fast and Furious scandal bureaucrat, in July and August 2011, or in the five visits from former Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison, including on Aug. 18, 2011, just before the tax-subsidized firm declared bankruptcy.

Nor did any journalism ethics mavens show any curiosity whatsoever about the Aug. 5, 2011, appearance of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and her party of seven (names not identified) to visit "POTUS." Maddow made no mention of the visit on her August 5 show, which promoted the latest batch of White House stimulus proposals. According to the White House logs I reviewed, this was Maddow's fifth trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. -- and the fourth to see the president personally.

Instead, as Newsbusters noted, a Washington Post political blogger was busy trolling Twitter for help digging up "outlandish/incorrect predictions from Newt Gingrich's past." And the only documents The New York Times is interested in crowd-sourcing are Sarah Palin's e-mails.

Team Obama's data whitewashers inside and outside the White House have given "cloud-based" a whole new meaning.

SOURCE

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Brazil gets defense contract in return for lending Obama money

How dependent has the United States government under President Barack Obama become upon borrowing money from foreign sources to support its spending?

Would you believe the answer is: "enough to exclude a long-time U.S. manufacturer from consideration for a defense contract in favor of a foreign-based manufacturer, despite the U.S. manufacturer having invested considerable time and profits earned from their other products to develop a product that specifically satisfies the government's needs?" AINonline's Chris Pocock reports:

The U.S. Air Force has apparently chosen the Embraer Super Tucano to meet the Light Air Support (LAS) requirement. Hawker Beechcraft's AT-6 was the other contender. No official announcement has yet been made, but Hawker Beechcraft said it received a letter from the USAF that excluded the AT-6 from the hotly contested competition. The company is protesting the decision to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The LAS competition was designed to produce an alternative to jet combat aircraft for counter-insurgency operations. The Air Force planned to buy 15 aircraft for a training school at Eglin AFB, Fla., but had not confirmed plans to equip any of its own squadrons.

However, the U.S. was expected to supply or sell LAS aircraft to various countries, starting with 20 for Afghanistan. It was this potential that led Hawker Beechcraft and partners to spend “more than $100 million to meet the Air Force's specific requirements,” the company said.

Last month, Hawker Beechcraft completed weapons drop tests with the AT-6, a modification of the successful T-6 primary trainer on which all U.S. military pilots graduate.

Meanwhile, Embraer teamed with Sierra Nevada Corp to offer the EMB-314 Super Tucano, and said it would assemble the aircraft in a new facility at Jacksonville, Fla.

Manufacturing.net carries the Associated Press' article, which describes the size of the contract, as well as the Hawker Beechcraft's investment in its AT-6 program (emphasis ours):

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) -- The Air Force has notified Hawker Beechcraft Corp. that its Beechcraft AT-6 has been excluded from competition to build a light attack aircraft, a contract worth nearly $1 billion, the company said.

The company had hoped to its AT-6, an armed version of its T-6 trainer, would be chosen for the Light AirSupport Counter Insurgency aircraft for the Afghanistan National Army Corps. The chosen aircraft also would be used as a light attack armed reconnaissance aircraft for the U.S. Air Force.

The piston planes are designed for counterinsurgency, close air support, armed overwatch and homeland security, The Wichita Eagle reported (http://bit.ly/ud7FDM).

Hawker Beechcraft officials said in a news release that they were "confounded and troubled" by the Air Force's decision. The company said it is asking the Air Force for an explanation and will explore all options.

Hawker Beechcraft said it had been working with the Air Force for two years and had invested more than $100 million to meet the Air Force's requirements for the plane. It noted that the Beechcraft AT-6 had been found capable of meeting the requirements in a demonstration program led by the Air National Guard.

It's all the more remarkable because the U.S. company has been laying off its workers given the current economic climate.

By contrast, Hawker Beechcraft's competition for the defense contract, Brazil's Embraer, is under investigation by the SEC into possible corrupt practices. The Wall Street Journal's Paulo Winterstein reports:

Brazil's Embraer SA, the world's No. 4 aircraft maker, said Friday that an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into possible corrupt practices shouldn't hurt the company's chances of selling planes to the U.S. military.

The company said Thursday that it was subpoenaed by the SEC, but Chief Executive Frederico Curado said Friday the investigation in itself shouldn't affect its ongoing bid to sell Super Tucano aircraft to the U.S. Air Force. Mr. Curado said he expects the government to announce a decision within "weeks" on a contract reportedly valued at $1.5 billion.

"This is a new process for us but as far as we understand it, the investigation won't have an impact," he said in a conference call with journalists. "Restrictions in dealings with the U.S. government would come only after a conviction."

Embraer said that the SEC and U.S. Justice Department are investigating possible breaches of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits company officials from making payments to government officers to get or keep business. The company declined to give details beyond saying that the investigation is related to Embraer business dealings in three countries.

So how does the United States' federal government's need to borrow large amounts of money from foreign sources perhaps come into play in stacking the deck against of a mid-size U.S. manufacturer against the fourth-largest maker of aircraft in the world for a U.S. defense contract?

As the fifth largest major foreign holder of U.S. debt, one whose share of that debt has been growing consistently for several years, the Obama administration may well have made a strategic decision to favor Brazil's Embraer company as a reward for Brazil's growing ranking among all foreign holders of U.S. government-issued debt.

With a good portion of Embraer's Super Tucano aircraft being manufactured outside the United States, the move will increase the U.S.' trade deficit in goods and services with Brazil, which in turn, will be balanced by the U.S. government's "export" of U.S. Treasury securities to Brazil.

The move is strategic because developing Brazil as a major holder of U.S. government-issued debt would offset China's outsize influence over the United States given its status as the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities. Since China has previously flexed its muscles with respect to its interests through the markets for U.S. Treasuries, the Obama administration is likely seeking to reduce its potential influence.

That influence is substantial. Through the end of September 2011, the U.S. Treasury reports that China holds $1.15 trillion in U.S. government-issued securities directly, and another $109 billion indirectly through Hong Kong. Meanwhile, a very large portion of the United Kingdom's reported U.S. government debt holdings of $421.6 billion are actually controlled by Chinese interests. The figure currently recorded for the U.K. is largely a consequence of the nation's position as a major international banking center, which will be revised in several months time to reflect actual holdings by nation.

The bottom line is that if a comparatively small U.S. manufacturer of airplanes with a major investment in its future to develop an aircraft that can do what the U.S. government wants and can demonstrate that's the case needs to be pushed aside in favor of a foreign manufacturer with considerable ethical issues regarding its business practices, and if doing so will help it borrow more money to spend, then that's what the Obama administration will do.

SOURCE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Is Breivik a paranoid schizophrenic?

The report below says he is and the diagnosis is understandable in some ways. Paranoid schizophrenics do not normally present as "mad" and many hold down jobs, have families etc. So his calm and methodical behaviour does not contradict such a diagnosis. There is usually only one focus where paranoids go off the rails. But that focus really IS obviously mad: Hearing voices that are not there, for instance. Psychiatrists commonly cite St. Paul's vision on the road to Damascus and his subsequent obsessive behaviour promulgating a very new message to a skeptical Hellenistic world as indicating paranoid schizophrenia.

But Breivk's focus was not nearly as singular as that. It has often been said that his dislike of the Left-sponsored invasion of Norway by Muslim "refugees" is widely-shared in Norway. And many commenters on Scandiavian internet sites applauded his actions immediately afterwards. His actions could simply be seen as self-sacrificing or as a return of the old Viking spirit.

The thing that most strongly supports a diagnosios of paranoid schiz is his insistence that he is a member of an organization of Knights Templar -- an organization that appears not to exist. That does sound like a very typical paranoid delusion. It must be remembered however that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and any members of such an orgainization would be highly motivated to lie low immediately after Breivik's actions.

If I had to make a psychological diagnosis of his behaviour I would see some narcissism there but no more than is to be found in the average artist, for instance. Narcissism can have many outlets, not least in politics

So I am fairly sure that the Left-led authorities in Norway will succeed in declaring Breivik insane not because that is a good diagnosis but because they need to. They desperately need to keep him OUT of jail. He would make many converts there and that could lead to more atrocities. Further, it is comforting to think of him as a lone madman rather than someone who may have a point.

A PSYCHIATRIC report on Anders Behring Breivik found that the confessed gunman is insane, meaning he could avoid prison over July's twin attacks in which he killed 77 people, Norwegian prosecutors said today.

"In such instances that the person suffers from such a serious disorder that it would not be warranted to sentence him to prison ... he can be ordered to stay in mental health care institutions," prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh was quoted as saying by AFP.

The 243-page assessment was made after 13 interviews with Breivik, an interview with his mother and an examination of his medical history. The experts also reviewed police questioning and video from the reconstruction of the shooting rampage on Utoya island, the Dagbladet daily reported.

It found that the 32 year old over time developed "paranoid schizophrenia," according to another prosecutor, Svein Holden.

Holden said the report concluded that Breivik had "grandiose illusions whereby he believes he is to determine who is to live and who is to die." He "committed these executions out of love for his people, as he describes it," Holden said.

The report will be examined by a team of forensic experts to ensure it meets standards, and then a court will rule on whether Breivik can be held responsible, AFP reported.

Breivik, 32, has confessed to carrying out the July 22 twin attacks. First, he detonated a car bomb outside the government buildings in central Oslo that house the offices of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, killing eight people. Then he went on a shooting spree at a youth camp on Utoya island, killing 69 mostly young people.

But he refused to plead guilty, saying that the attacks were "atrocious but necessary" in his campaign against multiculturalism and Muslims in Europe.

SOURCE

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Principles over ‘seizing the center'

Thomas Sowell

Candidates who try to be all things to all people are more likely to lose elections.

It used to be common for people to urge us to learn "the lessons of history." But history gets much less attention these days and, if there are any lessons that we are offered, they are more likely to be the lessons from current polls or the lessons of political correctness. Even among those who still invoke the lessons of history, some read those lessons very differently from others.

Talk show host Michael Medved, for example, apparently thinks the Republicans need a centrist presidential candidate in 2012. He said, "Most political battles are won by seizing the center." Moreover, he added: "Anyone who believes otherwise ignores the electoral experience of the last 50 years."

But just when did Ronald Reagan, with his two landslide election victories, "seize the center"? For that matter, when did Franklin D. Roosevelt, with a record four consecutive presidential election victories, "seize the center"?

There have been a long string of Republican presidential candidates who seized the center -- and lost elections. Thomas E. Dewey, for example, seized the center against Harry Truman in 1948. Even though Truman was so unpopular at the outset that the "New Republic" magazine urged him not to run, and polls consistently had Dewey ahead, Truman clearly stood for something -- and for months he battled for what he stood for. That turned out to be enough to beat Dewey, who simply stood in the center.

It is very doubtful that most of the people who voted for Harry Truman agreed with him on all the things he stood for. But they knew he stood for something, and they agreed with enough of it to put him back in the White House.

It is equally doubtful that most of the people who voted for Ronald Reagan in his two landslide victories agreed with all his positions. But they agreed with enough of them to put him in the White House to replace Jimmy Carter, who stood in the center, even if it was only a center of confusion.

President Gerald Ford, after narrowly beating off a rare challenge by Ronald Reagan to a sitting president of his own party, seized the center in the general election -- and lost to an initially almost totally unknown governor from Georgia.

President George H.W. Bush, after initially winning election by coming across as another Ronald Reagan, with his "Read my lips, no new taxes" speech, turned "kinder and gentler" -- to everyone except the taxpayers -- once he was in office. In other ways as well, he seized the center. And lost to another unknown governor.

More recently, we have seen two more Republican candidates who seized the center -- Senators Bob Dole in 1996 and John McCain in 2008 -- go down to defeat, McCain at the hands of a man that most people had never even heard of, just three years earlier.

Michael Medved, however, reads history differently. To him, Barry Goldwater got clobbered in the 1964 elections because of his strong conservatism. But did his opponent, Lyndon Johnson, seize the center? Johnson was at least as far to the left as Goldwater was to the right. And Goldwater scared the daylights out of people with the way he expressed himself, especially on foreign policy, where he came across as reckless.

Senator Goldwater was not crazy enough to start a nuclear war. But the way he talked sometimes made it seem as if he were. Ronald Reagan would later be elected and re-elected taking positions essentially the same as those on which Barry Goldwater lost big time. Reagan was simply a lot better at articulating his beliefs.

Michael Medved uses the 2008 defeat of Tea Party candidates for the Senate, in three states where Democrats were vulnerable, as another argument against those who do not court the center. But these were candidates whose political ineptness was the problem, not conservatism.

Candidates should certainly reach out to a broad electorate. But the question is whether they reach out by promoting their own principles to others or by trying to be all things to all people.

SOURCE

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10 Of The Best Economics Quotes From Milton Friedman

John Hawkins

Milton Friedman was an extraordinary Nobel Prize-winning economist whose ideas helped underpin modern conservative economic theory. His contributions to economics and the conservative movement cannot be underestimated. Sadly, Milton Friedman passed away a little more than five years ago at the ripe old age of 94. Although Friedman is no longer with us, his words, his ideas, and his legacy live on. In honor of Friedman, here are some of his best quotations.

10) "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."

9) "I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible."

8) "The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit."

7) "When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union -- like public housing in the United States -- look decrepit within a year or two of their construction..."

6) "There is all the difference in the world, however, between two kinds of assistance through government that seem superficially similar: first, 90 percent of us agreeing to impose taxes on ourselves in order to help the bottom 10 percent, and second, 80 percent voting to impose taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom 10 percent -- William Graham Sumner's famous example of B and C decided what D shall do for A. The first may be wise or unwise, an effective or ineffective way to help the disadvantaged -- but it is consistent with belief in both equality of opportunity and liberty. The second seeks equality of outcome and is entirely antithetical to liberty."

5) "When the United States was formed in 1776, it took 19 people on the farm to produce enough food for 20 people. So most of the people had to spend their time and efforts on growing food. Today, it's down to 1% or 2% to produce that food. Now just consider the vast amount of supposed unemployment that was produced by that. But there wasn't really any unemployment produced. What happened was that people who had formerly been tied up working in agriculture were freed by technological developments and improvements to do something else. That enabled us to have a better standard of living and a more extensive range of products."

4) "Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property."

3) "Inflation is taxation without legislation."

2) "The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -- whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world."

1) "(T)he supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number -- for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs -- jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume."

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Gingrich: "Newt Gingrich is a bad bet because he will embarrass the Republican Party. He will do so through things he has already said and done and in ways we cannot predict except to be sure -- because character will win out -- that they will happen. No sooner had Republicans, with a huge boost from Gingrich, achieved the long-denied prize of control of the House of Representatives than Gingrich embarrassed the party by signing a $4.5 million book deal. Though an effective, even inspired, backbencher in Congress, Gingrich proved an incompetent and sometimes petulant leader. Gingrich was the only speaker of the House in U.S. history to be removed by his own party. It wasn't a cabal of liberals who forced him out, but Dick Armey, Bill Paxon, Tom DeLay and John Boehner.

The broccoli test: "We should give it to the GOP presidential candidates. Call it the broccoli test. During oral arguments before the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on the constitutionality of Obamacare's health-insurance mandate, the Obama administration's lawyer, Beth Brinkmann, was asked whether a federal law requiring all Americans to eat broccoli would be constitutional. 'It depends,' she replied."

Secret Fed loans gave banks $13 billion undisclosed to Congress: "The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. ... The Fed didn't tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required emergency loans of a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn't mention that they took tens of billions of dollars at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market interest rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue"

Explosion rocks Iranian city of Isfahan, home to key nuclear facility: "An explosion rocked the western Iranian city of Isfahan on Monday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, adding that the blast was heard in several parts of the city. According to reports, frightened residents called the fire department after the blast, forcing the city authorities to admit there had been an explosion.Residents reported that their windows shook from the explosion's force.

The government is expropriating wealth at a rapid rate: "This expropriation of private wealth is not accidental. It is the joint product of the Fed’s near-zero interest-rate policies, the Fed’s money supply increases that underlie the current rate of inflation, and the tax rates established by Congress and administered by the IRS, including the taxation of nominal interest earnings even when they amount to real losses of capital, rather than genuine earnings."

Social networking beyond surveillance: "Diaspora* is no Facebook. It’s not even a web site, really. It is a group of software packages. Essentially, Diaspora* turns your computer into your own personal web server. The added data security comes from being able to send data directly from one PC to another without going through a central node. The guys running Diaspora* aren’t 'promising' to keep your data private. They never have it to begin with."

Review: Slackernomics: "Slackernomics is a primer on basic economic theory that, as the title suggests, is written for people who think economics is boring. It’s written in a convivial tone, and the illustrative examples that Dale [Franks] uses reminds one more of Freakonomics than of Adam Smith. Don’t let that fool you, though -- the book is not a 'sideshow' like Freakonomics -- it gets to the heart of the matter."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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