Nigel Farage explains what is happening in Europe

Gingrich sticks by Palestinian comment, draws rebukes from GOP candidates

Gingrich is of course right. In the 19 century the Arab inhabitants of Eretz Israel were known as "Syrians"

Republican presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich stood by his assertion that the Palestinians are an "invented people," drawing criticism from other GOP candidates.

"Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes," Gingrich said during a GOP debate Saturday night in Iowa. "We are in a situation where every day rockets are fired into Israel while the United States -- the current administration -- tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process."

"Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth,” he continued. "These people are terrorists, they teach terrorism in their schools." Gingrich added that "it’s fundamentally the time for somebody to have the guts to say enough lying about the Middle East."

He first made the "invented people" comment in an exclusive interview with The Jewish Channel.

In response to Gingrich's comments at the debate, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said, "That’s just stirring up trouble."

Many prominent Jewish Republicans view Paul as an isolationist whose opposition to tough anti-Iran actions and foreign aid, including for Israel, would be bad for the Jewish state. But Gingrich also drew criticism from GOP candidates with records of strong support for Israel.

Mitt Romney, who stands first or second in most polls, said he agreed with Gingrich's comments about Palestinian terrorism, but said the former House speaker went too far in publicly questioning Palestinian peoplehood.

"I happen to agree with most of what the speaker said," Romney responded. "Except by going and saying that the Palestinians are an invented people. That I think was a mistake on the speaker’s part." Romney warned against throwing “incendiary words into a place which is a boiling pot” -- and that doing so could make things harder for Israel.

Another candidate with strong pro-Israel credentials, Rick Santorum, followed Romney's comments with similar criticism of Gingrich.

In recent days, Gingrich's campaign issued a statement stressing that despite his comments on Palestinian peoplehood, he still favors the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. The statement, released by spokesman R.C. Hammond, declares that "Newt Gingrich supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state."

Hammond added, "However, to understand what is being proposed and negotiated, you have to understand decades of complex history, which is exactly what Gingrich was referencing during the recent interview with The Jewish Channel."

Gingrich's comment has been criticized in even stronger terms by an assortment of Palestinian spokesmen and liberal commentators.

SOURCE

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Gingrich Is Inspiring—and Disturbing

The first potential president about whom there is too much information.

I had a friend once who amused herself thinking up bumper stickers for states. The one she made up for California was brilliant. "California: It's All True." It is so vast and sprawling a place, so rich and various, that whatever you've heard about its wildness, weirdness and wonders, it's true.

That's the problem with Newt Gingrich: It's all true. It's part of the reason so many of those who know him are anxious about the thought of his becoming president. It's also why people are looking at him, thinking about him, considering him as president.

Ethically dubious? True. Intelligent and accomplished? True. Has he known breathtaking success and contributed to real reforms in government? Yes. Presided over disasters? Absolutely. Can he lead? Yes. Is he erratic and unreliable as a leader? Yes. Egomaniacal? True. Original and focused, harebrained and impulsive—all true.

Do you want evidence he's a Burkean conservative? Start with welfare reform in 1996. A sober, standard Republican? Go to the balanced budgets of the Clinton era. Is he a tea partier? Sure, he speaks the slashing lingo with relish. Is he moderate? Yes, that can be proved. Michele Bachmann this week called him a "frugal socialist," and there's plenty of evidence of that, too.

One way to view this is that he is so rich and varied as a character, as geniuses often are, that he contains worlds, multitudes. One senses that would be his way of looking at it. Another way to look at it: In a long career, one will shift views, adapt to circumstances, tack this way and that. Another way: He's philosophically unanchored, an unstable element. There are too many storms within him, and he seeks out external storms in order to equalize his own atmosphere. He's a trouble magnet, a starter of fights that need not be fought. He is the first modern potential president about whom there is too much information.

What is striking is the extraordinary divide in opinion between those who know Gingrich and those who don't. Those who do are mostly not for him, and they were burning up the phone lines this week in Washington.

Those who've known and worked with Mitt Romney mostly seem to support him, but when they don't they don't say the reason is that his character and emotional soundness are off. Those who know Ron Paul and oppose him do so on the basis of his stands, they don't say his temperament forecloses the possibility of his presidency. But that's pretty much what a lot of those who've worked with Newt say.

Former New Hampshire governor and George H.W. Bush chief of staff John Sununu told The Wall Street Journal this week: "Listen to just about anyone who worked alongside Gingrich and you will hear that he's inconsistent, erratic, untrustworthy and unprincipled." In a conference call Thursday, Jim Talent, who served with Mr. Gingrich in the House from 1993 through 1999, said, "He's not reliable as a leader." Sen. Tom Coburn, a member of the House class of 1994, called the former speaker's leadership "lacking," and according to a local press report, he told Oklahoma constituents last year that Mr. Gingrich was "the last person I'd vote for for president of the United States."

Sen. Lindsey Graham told a reporter that Mr. Gingrich could be a historic president if he has "matured as a person and is, for lack of a better word, calmed down." That is as close as most of those who've worked with him get to a compliment.

Yet the reservations and criticisms of the politico-journalistic establishment are having zero effect on Gingrich's support. In a Quinnipiac poll this week he moved into a double-digit lead over Mr. Romney in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The antipathy of the establishment not only is not hurting him at this early date, it may be helping him. It may be part of the secret of his rise. Because establishments, especially the Washington establishment, famously count for little with the Republican base: "You're the ones who got us into this mess."

Republicans on the ground who view Mr. Gingrich from afar, who neither know nor have worked with him, are more likely to see him this way: "Who was the last person to actually cut government? Who was the last person who actually led a movement that balanced the federal budget? . . . The last time there was true welfare reform, the last time government was cut, Gingrich did it." That is Rush Limbaugh, who has also criticized Mr. Gingrich.

And that is exactly what I've been hearing from Newt supporters who do not listen to talk radio. They are older voters, they are not all Republicans, and when government last made progress he was part of it. They have a very practical sense of politics now. The heroic era of the presidency is dead. They are not looking to like their president or admire him, they just want someone to fix the crisis. The last time helpful things happened in Washington, he was a big part of it. So they may hire him again. Are they put off by his scandals? No. They think all politicians are scandalous.

The biggest fear of those who've known Mr. Gingrich? He has gone through his political life making huge strides, rising in influence and achievement, and then been destabilized by success, or just after it. Maybe he's made dizzy by the thin air at the top, maybe he has an inner urge to be tragic, to always be unrealized and misunderstood. But he goes too far, his rhetoric becomes too slashing, the musings he shares—when he rose to the speakership, in 1995, it was that women shouldn't serve in combat because they're prone to infections—are too strange. And he starts to write in his notes what Kirsten Powers, in the Daily Beast, remembered: he described himself as "definer of civilization . . . leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces."

Those who know him fear—or hope—that he will be true to form in one respect: He will continue to lose to his No. 1 longtime foe, Newt Gingrich. He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, "Watch this!"

What they fear is that he will show just enough discipline over the next few months, just enough focus, to win the nomination. And then, in the fall of 2012, once party leaders have come around and the GOP is fully behind him, he will begin baying at the moon.

There are many good things to say about Newt Gingrich. He is compelling and unique, and, as Margaret Thatcher once said, he has "tons of guts." But this is a walk on the wild side.

SOURCE

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Why Do So Many People Automatically and Angrily Condemn Historical Revisionism?

Try pointing out that Hitler was a fairly mainstream Leftist by the standards of his day and you will know what this historian is talking about

Over the years, especially in writing for the general public, as opposed to my professional peers, I have been struck repeatedly by the frequency with which certain conclusions or even entire classes of conclusions elicit not merely skepticism, but angry denunciation. Again and again, I have been called a fool, a traitor, or an America-hater because of my commentaries on history and public affairs. Although I take no pleasure in these denunciations, I find myself not so much depressed by them as curious about them. I wonder why people react as they do, especially when my commentary rests—as I hope it generally does—on well-documented facts and correct logic.

I surely do not consider myself immune to errors, of course. But if my facts are incorrect, the critic has an obligation to say why my facts are incorrect and to state, or at least to point toward, the correct facts. If my logic has run off the rails, the critic has an obligation to state how I fell into fallacious reasoning. More often than not, however, the critic resorts immediately to name-calling and to wild characterizations of my statements and my person. Thus, I have often been called a socialist, a Marxist, a conservative, an apologist for corporations or the rich, a (modern left) liberal, or something else that by no stretch of the imagination properly describes me or my intellectual or ideological position.

Certain topics are virtually guaranteed to elicit such reactions. When I write about the welfare state and especially about government programs ostensibly aimed at helping the least-well-off members of society, I confidently expect that critics will assail me as a fascist or as an ivory-tower dweller who has no understanding of how poor people really live and no compassion for them. When I write about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in relation to U.S. economic warfare in 1939-41, I invariably attract angry personal abuse from people of delicate nationalistic sensibilities, from those chronically on the look-out for traitors, and from those who cannot imagine that the nation’s leaders, in general, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in particular, might have deliberately provoked a Japanese attack or refrained from warning U.S. commanders in Hawaii that an attack was coming.

When people are offended or otherwise greatly displeased by historical analysis, they often employ the term “historical revisionism” as a synonym for falsified, distorted, or doctored accounts that fly in the face of what they, their history teachers, and perhaps even the most respected university historians believe to have been the case.

The irony of such use of the term “historical revision,” which makes it practically a swear word, is that revisionism is and always has been an integral part of historical research and writing. As a rule, professional historians do not seek simply to pile up more and more evidence for what historians already generally believe. Historians who proceed in this way cannot expect to make much of a name for themselves. Instead, historians try to find new evidence and new ways of interpreting old evidence that change the currently accepted view. That is, they seek to revise the current orthodoxy. In doing so, they need not be ideological mavericks, although those who are may have an additional reason for their revisionist efforts. In short, revisionism is an unremarkable aspect of workaday historical research and writing. Why then do so many readers go ballistic about it?

One reason why revisionists are sometimes seen as subversives stems from the tendency of historians in general to accept the most fundamental aspects of their own society as right and desirable.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

North Korea warns south over Christmas lights: "North Korea has warned the South against erecting Christmas lights near the heavily fortified border, saying it would retaliate against what it calls 'psychological warfare.' ... The two Koreas in 2004 reached a deal to halt official-level cross-border propaganda and the South stopped its annual Christmas illumination ceremony. But Seoul resumed the ceremony last December amid high military tensions with Pyongyang."

Airport sexual assault complaints prompt calls for on-site advocates: "Two New York politicians urged the Transportation Security Administration on Sunday to provide passenger advocates on site at airport screenings after four elderly women complained of intrusive searches by security agents in recent months. ... several elderly women came forward in the busy travel weeks around Thanksgiving to complain they were 'strip searched by TSA agents ...'"

CA: SFPD arrest 55 suppressing final Occupy camp: "Police cleared San Francisco's last remaining Occupy protest camp early today, arresting 55 people for illegal lodging. The encampment, on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Reserve Bank at 101 Market St., was the original Occupy protest site established in early October, but police had cleared it several times. The camp sprung up again Thursday after police removed campers from Justin Herman Plaza a block away."

Private venture gets go-ahead for February space station trip: "The next chapter in commercial spaceflight is due to open in February when SpaceX launches its Dragon cargo capsule for the first linkup of a private-sector craft with the International Space Station .... NASA is paying private space ventures hundreds of millions of dollars to design and build new spaceships for its use, with cargo flights to the space station scheduled to begin next year."

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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How Obama Invites the Very Disaster He Is Trying To Avert

The Obama Administration’s strong opposition to a U.S. preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities virtually guarantees we’ll suffer far worse consequences than Obama’s policy is intended to avert.

I say this because our naïve, head-in-the-sand policy leaves the Israelis no rational option other than to launch their own preemptive strike—before it's too late, to best ensure their national survival. This in the face of messianically-driven Iranian zealots who are sworn to Israel's annihilation and who could well be within months of procuring nuclear weapons.

The reality is that without resorting to large scale nuclear strikes, Israel, unlike the U.S., lacks the wherewithal to cripple Iran's retaliatory capabilities and prevent its wreaking havoc with Persian Gulf oil exports, which could drive prices through the roof and severely damage our own economy. This, of course, is exactly the opposite of what U.S. inaction is designed to do.

But a hefty spike in oil prices may be the very least damaging consequence of Obama's inaction. Consider that from the perspective of Iran's mullahs, their regime's survival will very soon be in serious jeopardy. On the one hand, the two individuals most likely to become America's next president have both pledged to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, if not displace its regime as well. On the other hand, Israel will most probably launch a preemptive strike well before the coming U.S. election, but certainly soon thereafter if America doesn't act.

With the moment of truth fast approaching, there's a good chance the desperate mullahs will pay any price to try and obtain nuclear weapons ASAP—perhaps from North Korea or other source, and beat Israel to the punch. And since the mullahs' days may be numbered by any reckoning, they could target the U.S. and western Europe as well. For even though Iran would face virtual obliteration, radical Islam itself would still survive as would the many countries in which radical Islamics exert strong influence. And this in what would be a reshuffled world where the Great Satan and its infidel allies could no longer stand in the way of the radicals achieving their goal of an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and well beyond. For Iran's apocalyptically-minded mullahs, it will have been a price well worth paying.

Be aware that a single Iranian nuclear missile, launched from a freighter off our coastal waters and detonated at high altitude above our heartland, could generate an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which could put America back into the early 19th century. By indefinitely paralyzing virtually our entire electric grid system and nearly everything that depends on electronics, the ultimate outcomes of the EMP would kill 70-90% of all Americans from starvation and disease within one year. This as estimated by the chairman of the congressionally-authorized EMP Commission. And shockingly, U.S. missile defenses are grossly inadequate to defend against such an attack. Nor have we taken serious steps to mitigate its consequences.

Even if one is naïve enough to be willing to risk our nation's very survival in the frightfully misguided belief that the maniacal mullahs would never dare nuke us, it is still foolhardy to risk economic disaster here at home by leaving the Israelis to go it alone respecting a preemptive strike.

Unfortunately, the Republican presidential candidates are still mostly treating the whole Iranian nuclear threat as the third rail of American politics, which in my view is a terrible disservice to the electorate. If voters were brought to understand the true dangers confronting us, I'm confident they'd overwhelmingly reject Obama's sickening appeasement of Iran and his abject refusal to urgently take all necessary steps to properly defend America and prevent nuclear doomsday. It's the late 1930's all over again, but this time we live in a far more dangerous nuclear world.

We are now in a life and death struggle with a mad dog enemy who is sworn to bring about "a world without America" and "annihilate Israel." Under absolutely no conditions can we allow either friend or foe to determine our own destiny. In a split second our beloved nation could be relegated to the trash heap of history.

Amazingly, almost our entire country is sleepwalking. Except for an occasional voice in the wilderness, there is virtually no debate or even dialogue on the pros and cons of what should be considered the most crucial issue our nation has ever faced.

America, the nuclear doomsday clock is ticking and an informed and aroused citizenry can and must help stop it from going off.

SOURCE

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Obama’s union goon squad

This month’s decision by aircraft manufacturer Boeing to cut a deal with the International Association of Machinists (IAM) will likely result in President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropping its unprecedented anti-free-market lawsuit against the company.

That’s too bad. Not bad that the NLRB is dropping its action, obviously, but that Boeing’s decision to cave to union demands effectively preserves the ability of this rogue agency to intimidate other companies into similarly untenable situations in the future. Thanks to the Obama administration, unions no longer need thick-necked heavies with brass knuckles and surly dispositions to impose their will – they’ve got taxpayer-funded lawyers and bureaucrats to do their dirty work.

The Boeing-NLRB case could have produced a landmark decision in which the free market reclaimed some of its lost liberty, just as the Obamacare lawsuit, hopefully, will provide an opportunity for American citizens to reclaim some of their lost individual liberties (as well as hundreds of billions of their tax dollars).

So why didn’t Boeing fight for its right to open future manufacturing facilities wherever it pleases – free from government interference?

That’s easy: The company couldn’t anger its biggest customer. According to a 2011 CNBC report, Boeing did $19.4 billion worth of contract work for the federal government in 2010 – nearly a third of its total revenue for the year. Through the first quarter of 2011, it had already done $6 billion worth of contract work.

No wonder the NLRB was so brazen in pushing Boeing around – and no wonder Boeing settled with the union rather than allowing the issue to go to court.

Such thuggish tactics are sad but not surprising coming from our “spread the wealth around” president, who is engaging in full-time command economic class warfare against American job creators on an unprecedented scale.

“We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests, because we know that you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement,” Mr. Obama said shortly after taking office.

Mr. Obama has done that and then some, appointing a union backer to run the Department of Labor, a Teamsters’ attorney as chairman the NLRB and a labor operative to lead his political office. He also stripped away Bush-era disclosure requirements for union leaders, bailed out the United Auto Workers in Detroit at taxpayer expense and is using his executive agencies to compel union membership under the guise of “environmental protection.”

Then there’s Obamacare. Even though this socialized medicine monstrosity has yet to be fully implemented, state governments and public-sector unions have already received $2.7 billion through one of the law’s early retiree reinsurance programs.

This steady flow of taxpayer-funded largess and preferential treatment is obviously a return on the $100 million cash investment and massive mobilization effort union leaders made on behalf of Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats in 2008. The payoff is ongoing, too, as earlier this month, Mr. Obama’s NLRB trampled on its own rules governing majority opinions in order to further limit the ability of employees to respond to union recruitment efforts.

In decrying “the overt, special-interest political agenda” of the NLRB, columnist Geoffrey Burr summed up Mr. Obama’s endgame: “The goal is simply to manipulate the rules of the game in order to increase unions’ market share,” he wrote.

Threats and manipulation are nothing new for unions, but the fact that these tactics have been adopted by government agencies tasked with impartially upholding the law and serving as neutral arbiters of disputes is appalling.

Mr. Obama has turned the federal government into a glorified union goon squad – and Boeing’s decision to acquiesce to its demands guarantees that similar threats and intimidation will be used on other companies in the future.

SOURCE

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George Soros, Liberal Foundations Bolster Pressure Groups Opposed to Vote Fraud Investigations

Complaints about voter fraud are not rooted in reality and divert attention from electoral reforms that would invigorate America’s democratic system, lawyers with the Brennan Center for Justice have long argued. In a commentary entitled: “The Myth of Voter Fraud,” authors Michael Waldman and Justin Levitt even go so far as to equate voter fraud investigations with the search for Sasquatch.

Moreover, according to a Brennan Center report, voter fraud allegations have been used to rationalize policies that disenfranchise innocent Americans, this would include “overly restrictive identification requirements.”

But J. Christian Adams, a former attorney in the Voting Section of the U.S. Justice Department, has identified localities throughout the country that have “implausible” registration numbers.

Unfortunately, a well-funded “industry of vote fraud deniers” has worked to block any meaningful investigations, Adams told audience members at forum held at Tulane Law School.

This industry includes the Brennan Center, Demos, ACORN’s Project Vote, and the NAACP.

Some of the major financial backers supporting the “vote fraud denier industry” are the George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and Pew Charitable Trusts, according to Adam’s new book entitled “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.”

Adams resigned from the DOJ after the department declined to pursue a voter intimidation case from the 2008 elections against members of the New Black Panther Party (NBPR) in Philadelphia. He now works as a private election lawyer and writes for Pajamas Media.

In “Injustice”, Adams describes how Obama’s DOJ deliberately avoids enforcing Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which calls for registration rolls to be purged of ineligible voters. At the same time, the DOJ is pushing “motor voter” lawsuits activated under Section 7 of the NVRA.

Congress passed Section 7 and Section 8 as a way to increase participation and as a way to combat voter fraud,” Adams said at the forum. “It was a compromise. Section 7 would not have become law without Section 8, because there would not have been enough votes in the Senate to prevent a filibuster of `motor voter.’ What we have now in the Justice Department are bureaucrats who have vetoed out that compromise from 1993. Heading into next year’s elections, I do not believe this is a place where we want to be.”

An example of this selective enforcement of the law occurred earlier this year when the Obama DOJ filed a “motor voter” lawsuit against Louisiana that was closely timed with a separate suit from the NAACP. Both suits allege state officials have failed to provide voter registration forms at health and social service agencies. Top figures in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration have said they will vigorously fight both lawsuits.

As the U.S. approaches what many believe is the most important presidential election in our nation’s history, the belief that the voting outcomes are fair is essential to the public’s acceptance of the results. The Justice Department’s refusal to enforce the entire National Voter Registration Act to ensure that only eligible voters participate is alarming in the wake of the voter fraud convictions that caused Congress to ban ACORN from receiving future federal funds.

Bill Wilson, President of Americans for Limited Government commented, “The fact that Soros is spending large amounts of money to prevent voter fraud investigations is a bright red warning light that the sanctity of our election system is under unprecedented attack, and Governor Jindal is to be commended for fighting to ensure that the vote in Louisiana is fair and honest.”

SOURCE

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Corruption: Politicians who arrive in Washington as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires

By SARAH PALIN

Mark Twain famously wrote, "There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." Peter Schweizer's new book, "Throw Them All Out," reveals this permanent political class in all its arrogant glory. (Full disclosure: Mr. Schweizer is employed by my political action committee as a foreign-policy adviser.)

Mr. Schweizer answers the questions so many of us have asked. I addressed this in a speech in Iowa last Labor Day weekend. How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us? How do politicians' stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers'? I answered the question in that speech: Politicians derive power from the authority of their office and their access to our tax dollars, and they use that power to enrich and shield themselves.

The money-making opportunities for politicians are myriad, and Mr. Schweizer details the most lucrative methods: accepting sweetheart gifts of IPO stock from companies seeking to influence legislation, practicing insider trading with nonpublic government information, earmarking projects that benefit personal real estate holdings, and even subtly extorting campaign donations through the threat of legislation unfavorable to an industry. The list goes on and on, and it's sickening.

Astonishingly, none of this is technically illegal, at least not for Congress. Members of Congress exempt themselves from the laws they apply to the rest of us. That includes laws that protect whistleblowers (nothing prevents members of Congress from retaliating against staffers who shine light on corruption) and Freedom of Information Act requests (it's easier to get classified documents from the CIA than from a congressional office).

The corruption isn't confined to one political party or just a few bad apples. It's an endemic problem encompassing leadership on both sides of the aisle. It's an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests.

None of this surprises me. I've been fighting this type of corruption and cronyism my entire political career. For years Alaskans suspected that our lawmakers and state administrators were in the pockets of the big oil companies to the detriment of ordinary Alaskans. We knew we were being taken for a ride, but it took FBI wiretaps to finally capture lawmakers in the act of selling their votes. In the wake of politicos being carted off to prison, my administration enacted reforms based on transparency and accountability to prevent this from happening again.

We were successful because we had the righteous indignation of Alaskan citizens on our side. Our good ol' boy political class in Juneau was definitely not with us. Business was good for them, so why would they want to end "business as usual"?

The moment you threaten to strip politicians of their legal graft, they'll moan that they can't govern effectively without it. Perhaps they'll gravitate toward reform, but often their idea of reform is to limit the right of "We the people" to exercise our freedom of speech in the political process.

I've learned from local, state and national political experience that the only solution to entrenched corruption is sudden and relentless reform. Sudden because our permanent political class is adept at changing the subject to divert the public's attention—and we can no longer afford to be indifferent to this system of graft when our country is going bankrupt. Reform must be relentless because fighting corruption is like a game of whack-a-mole. You knock it down in one area only to see it pop up in another.

More HERE

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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Obama's destructive and ignorant class warfare comes under attack

Self-made billionaire Leon Cooperman sent a straightforward and scathing letter to President Obama Monday.

Amidst the Occupy Wall Street movement, Capitol Hill's super committee flop, and the 2012 presidential election's focus on the debt and tax reform, the United States is struggling to find a successful solution to economic woes and political failures. Cooperman contributed his opinion to the mix in an open letter calling for reform and more accountability from President Obama.

In the letter, Cooperman outlines a number of grievances with the Obama administration. He criticizes Obama for dividing the country and promoting class warfare as a political strategy. He also claims a willingness to pay more taxes and supports productive policy debates in Congress; however, he demands Obama leads the nation and his party, rather than "pandering" to certain interest groups.

Cooperman is currently the CEO and Chairman of Omega Advisors. He worked as a banker at Goldman Sachs for 25 years before becoming CEO of Goldmans Sachs Asset Managment. He founded Omega Advisors in 1991. Cooperman was born to a plumber in the South Bronx, but now has an estimated net workth of $1.8 billion. Cooperman and his wife are signators of the philanthropic, Giving Pledge.

Full text of Leon Cooperman's Open Letter to President Obama Sent Nov. 28, 2011:

Dear Mr. President,

It is with a great sense of disappointment that I write this. Like many others, I hoped that your election would bring a salutary change of direction to the country, despite what more than a few feared was an overly aggressive social agenda. And I cannot credibly blame you for the economic mess that you inherited, even if the policy response on your watch has been profligate and largely ineffectual. (You did not, after all, invent TARP.) I understand that when surrounded by cries of "the end of the world as we know it is nigh", even the strongest of minds may have a tendency to shoot first and aim later in a well-intended effort to stave off the predicted apocalypse.

But what I can justifiably hold you accountable for is your and your minions' role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as "class warfare". Whether this reflects your principled belief that the eternal divide between the haves and have-nots is at the root of all the evils that afflict our society or just a cynical, populist appeal to his base by a president struggling in the polls is of little importance. What does matter is that the divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them. It is a gulf that is at once counterproductive and freighted with dangerous historical precedents. And it is an approach to governing that owes more to desperate demagoguery than your Administration should feel comfortable with.

Just to be clear, while I have been richly rewarded by a life of hard work (and a great deal of luck), I was not to-the-manor-born. My father was a plumber who practiced his trade in the South Bronx after he and my mother emigrated from Poland. I was the first member of my family to earn a college degree. I benefited from both a good public education system (P.S. 75, Morris High School and Hunter College, all in the Bronx) and my parents' constant prodding. When I joined Goldman Sachs following graduation from Columbia University's business school, I had no money in the bank, a negative net worth, a National Defense Education Act student loan to repay, and a six-month-old child (not to mention his mother, my wife of now 47 years) to support. I had a successful, near-25-year run at Goldman, which I left 20 years ago to start a private investment firm. As a result of my good fortune, I have been able to give away to those less blessed far more than I have spent on myself and my family over a lifetime, and last year I subscribed to Warren Buffet's Giving Pledge to ensure that my money, properly stewarded, continues to do some good after I'm gone.

My story is anything but unique. I know many people who are similarly situated, by both humble family history and hard-won accomplishment, whose greatest joy in life is to use their resources to sustain their communities. Some have achieved a level of wealth where philanthropy is no longer a by-product of their work but its primary impetus. This is as it should be. We feel privileged to be in a position to give back, and we do. My parents would have expected nothing less of me.
I am not, by training or disposition, a policy wonk, polemicist or pamphleteer. I confess admiration for those who, with greater clarity of expression and command of the relevant statistical details, make these same points with more eloquence and authoritativeness than I can hope to muster. For recent examples, I would point you to "Hunting the Rich" (Leaders, The Economist, September 24, 2011), "The Divider vs. the Thinker" (Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2011), "Wall Street Occupiers Misdirect Anger" (Christine Todd Whitman, Bloomberg, October 31, 2011), and "Beyond Occupy" (Bill Keller, The New York Times, October 31, 2011) - all, if you haven't read them, making estimable work of the subject.

But as a taxpaying businessman with a weekly payroll to meet and more than a passing familiarity with the ways of both Wall Street and Washington, I do feel justified in asking you: is the tone of the current debate really constructive?

People of differing political persuasions can (and do) reasonably argue about whether, and how high, tax rates should be hiked for upper-income earners; whether the Bush-era tax cuts should be extended or permitted to expire, and for whom; whether various deductions and exclusions under the federal tax code that benefit principally the wealthy and multinational corporations should be curtailed or eliminated; whether unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut should be extended; whether the burdens of paying for the nation's bloated entitlement programs are being fairly spread around, and whether those programs themselves should be reconfigured in light of current and projected budgetary constraints; whether financial institutions deemed "too big to fail" should be serially bailed out or broken up first, like an earlier era's trusts, because they pose a systemic risk and their size benefits no one but their owners; whether the solution to what ails us as a nation is an amalgam of more regulation, wealth redistribution, and a greater concentration of power in a central government that has proven no more (I'm being charitable here) adept than the private sector in reining in the excesses that brought us to this pass - the list goes on and on, and the dialectic is admirably American. Even though, as a high-income taxpayer, I might be considered one of its targets, I find this reassessment of so many entrenched economic premises healthy and long overdue. Anyone who could survey today's challenging fiscal landscape, with an un- and underemployment rate of nearly 20 percent and roughly 40 percent of the country on public assistance, and not acknowledge an imperative for change is either heartless, brainless, or running for office on a very parochial agenda. And if I end up paying more taxes as a result, so be it. The alternatives are all worse.

But what I do find objectionable is the highly politicized idiom in which this debate is being conducted. Now, I am not naive. I understand that in today's America, this is how the business of governing typically gets done - a situation that, given the gravity of our problems, is as deplorable as it is seemingly ineluctable. But as President first and foremost and leader of your party second, you should endeavor to rise above the partisan fray and raise the level of discourse to one that is both more civil and more conciliatory, that seeks collaboration over confrontation. That is what "leading by example" means to most people.

Capitalism is not the source of our problems, as an economy or as a society, and capitalists are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be. As a group, we employ many millions of taxpaying people, pay their salaries, provide them with healthcare coverage, start new companies, found new industries, create new products, fill store shelves at Christmas, and keep the wheels of commerce and progress (and indeed of government, by generating the income whose taxation funds it) moving. To frame the debate as one of rich-and-entitled versus poor-and-dispossessed is to both miss the point and further inflame an already incendiary environment. It is also a naked, political pander to some of the basest human emotions - a strategy, as history teaches, that never ends well for anyone but totalitarians and anarchists.

With due respect, Mr. President, it's time for you to throttle-down the partisan rhetoric and appeal to people's better instincts, not their worst. Rather than assume that the wealthy are a monolithic, selfish and unfeeling lot who must be subjugated by the force of the state, set a tone that encourages people of good will to meet in the middle. When you were a community organizer in Chicago, you learned the art of waging a guerilla campaign against a far superior force. But you've graduated from that milieu and now help to set the agenda for that superior force. You might do well at this point to eschew the polarizing vernacular of political militancy and become the transcendent leader you were elected to be. You are likely to be far more effective, and history is likely to treat you far more kindly for it.

Sincerely,

Leon G. Cooperman Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

SOURCE

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Will “International” Norms Override Civil Liberties and Protections Against Violent Crime?

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges to life sentences without parole for teenage murderers, in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, two cases in which teen killers argue that such sentences always violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, no matter how horrible the crime.

In Graham v. Florida (2010), the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 vote citing “international opinion,” outlawed life imprisonment without parole for juveniles who commit rape, torture, and other non-homicide crimes, ruling that such sentences violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for juveniles in all cases, including homicide cases, citing the “overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty,” although its ruling cited the existence, as a reasonable alternative to the death penalty, of the “punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” which was “itself a severe sanction.”

Left-wing lawyers would like to ban life sentences even for adults who repeatedly torture other people to death. Earlier, New Zealand was pressured to end life without parole for adults who commit “the worst” murders, based on a supposed rule of “customary international law” against life imprisonment without parole. Citing Spanish law and supposed international human-rights norms, Spain now refuses to extradite terrorists who plot mass murder to the United States unless the U.S. agrees not to seek life imprisonment without parole.

In relying on “international opinion” to decide the case, the Supreme Court set a dangerous precedent for civil liberties, since foreign legal systems and international lawyers are often hostile to free speech, religious freedom, and other basic civil liberties, and the right of homeowners to defend themselves against criminals by wielding a knife or gun in self-defense. The U.N. Human Rights Council says there is no human right to self-defense, and that, quite the contrary, international human rights norms require “very severe gun control.”

The libertarian Cato Institute, which frequently files amicus briefs in the Supreme Court seeking to promote civil liberties and privacy rights, joined an amicus brief in the Graham case asking the court not to rely on “international norms,” since doing so would “undermine the democratic process and rule of law, casting considerable uncertainty over many U.S. laws.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute also joined that brief.

Opposition to life sentences is based heavily on snob appeal, sanctimony, and contempt for the unwashed masses. Eighth Amendment challenges to life sentences are based on supposedly “evolving” notions of decency that are not in fact shared by most contemporary Americans, who continue to support both life sentences and the death penalty in public opinion polls; and on “international” norms against life imprisonment that conflict with their own country’s traditional values.

Ultimately, even many liberals may come to regret their reliance on “international opinion,” which sets a dangerous precedent for civil liberties. In USA Today, liberal law professor Jonathan Turley discussed how international norms against blasphemy and the “defamation” of religions promoted at the United Nations are undermining freedom of speech and resulting in restrictions on speech perceived as inconsistent with Islam: “Around the world, free speech is being sacrificed on the altar of religion. Whether defined as hate speech, discrimination or simple blasphemy, governments are declaring unlimited free speech as the enemy of freedom of religion.” Turley describes cases such as the arrest of a Dutch cartoonist for depicting Christian and Muslim fundamentalists as zombies; the investigation of an Italian comedian for joking that in 20 years, the Pope will be in hell; the exclusion of a Dutch politician from Britain because he made a movie describing Islam’s holy book as “fascist”; and the prosecution of writers for calling Mohammed a “pedophile” because of his marriage to 6-year-old Aisha (which was consummated when she was 9).

More HERE

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Obama Takes Off the Gloves

After three years of expanding the federal government's cost and scope, the guy who campaigned on a "net spending cut" pushes for a newly activist Washington

Finally! "In Kansas," the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized this week, "Obama finally found his voice." By theatrically following Teddy Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" footsteps in Osawatomie, Kansas, the president had "finally seize[d] the moment," Michael Tomasky enthused at The Daily Beast. "With this speech, the President finally brings long-sought thematic and programmatic coherence to his many proposals and policy initiatives," Cornell University law professor Robert C. Hockett offered in an "expert available" press release.

The scent of sweet release wafted all over the media. "Obama appears finally to have recognized the fruitlessness of trying to govern in the post-partisan mode on which he campaigned for president," Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green wrote. Former Bill Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich spoke for many when he said: "Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008.

This may well be true from the point of view of progressives. But the rest of us—a majority of Americans—are more apt to remember a candidate who won the election on an altogether different selling proposition.

The Teddy Roosevelt speech that Obama was attempting to update for the 21st century contained enough freedom-constricting, bureaucracy-enhancing verbiage to make libertarians shudder, but it did contain one formulation that the president would do well to heed:

[W]ords count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts. This is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it should be truest of all in political life. A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life.

Arguably the most important economic policy pledge candidate Barack Obama made on the stump, repeatedly, was a vow to enact a "net spending cut" on the federal level. Here he is repeating the pledge, after the financial crisis of September 2008 and the introduction of the first major bank bailout:



Immediately after being sworn into office, President Obama obliterated this pledge, jacking up federal spending by a stunning 18 percent in fiscal 2009, to a then-record $3.5 trillion. As the Congressional Budget Office pointed out, federal spending that miserable year "rose even faster...than revenues fell." The "rate of increase was nearly three times the average growth rate of federal outlays over the previous 10 years."

Candidate Obama campaigned every day—and rightly so—against the "fiscal irresponsibility" of the Bush era. "When George Bush came into office, our debt—national debt was around $5 trillion. It's now over $10 trillion. We've almost doubled it," he complained in his second debate with Republican nominee John McCain. "We have had over the last eight years the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history."

As president, Obama tacked on another $5 trillion in debt in record time. In every measure of basic budgetary incompetence, the last three years have dwarfed the previous eight, despite the candidate convincing a majority of voters of his superior credentials as a fiscal steward. United States debt zoomed through the 100-percent-of-GDP threshold around Halloween, and as the Baby Boomers get ready to scoop up their old-age entitlements, there isn't even a proposed end to the budget leakage in sight.

And it's not just the size of government, it's the scope. Obama has given historical leeway to regulators on health care and financial reform, and (like presidents before him) is increasing his influence on executive branch enforcement at a time when his sway over the congressional branch continues to wane. All of which begs a question: If we just finished three years of a cautious and centrist Obama, what in the name of government vigor will the next 12-60 months look like?

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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You can keep your not-so-new nationalism

I’ve always found Teddy Roosevelt to be among the more repugnant of the already repulsive batch of grifters and autocrats we’ve been unfortunate enough to call “Mr. President.” He managed to combine militarism, authoritarianism and economic collectivism with a cult of the state that he called “new nationalism.” As presidential scholar Richard M. Abrams puts it in his discussion of the 26th president, “He spoke righteously for freedom but placed individual liberty in the context of a greater obligation to the nation. He acknowledged that most individuals probably preferred business as usual, to be left to cultivate their own gardens and to pursue modest livelihoods and comforts, but he viewed such an outlook with scorn.”

In economic terms, TR was obsessed with “national efficiency” — a principle he expounded in his (in)famous new nationalism speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. He called for powerful federal and state governments, with all-encompassing powers that allow for no “neutral ground” where people might hide from the government. Said he, “I do not ask for the over centralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism where we work for what concerns our people as a whole.”

People who disagreed with his views, he implied (or explicitly stated) were unpatriotic.

If he’d made his speech 20 years later, Teddy Roosevelt’s views could have comfortably clothed themselves in brown shirts (as could those of his cousin who was actually in office at that time).

So, when Barack Obama tramps back to Osawatomie to deliberately echo TR’s speech and views, color me nauseated. “[I]n America, we are greater together – when everyone engages in fair play, everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share. … [A]s a nation, we have always come together, through our government, to help create the conditions where both workers and businesses can succeed.”

Once again, the appeal to tribal identity, the call to submerge individual interests in the name of the greater good of the group — as identified by the speaker. And if you don’t agree with the speaker’s very specific idea of what’s good and right? Well, Teddy Roosevelt called you a “reactionary”; Obama, in our psychologized age, insists you and your co-dissidents have “collective amnesia.”

But we live in an age that’s not just psychologized, but fact-checked, and even the Washington Post called bullshit on much of Barry’s supporting evidence for his exhumed not-so-new nationalism.

On Obama’s insistence that “expensive” tax cuts for the “wealthy” are responsible for the current economic mess:

Obama certainly inherited an economic mess, and we have argued he does not deserve blame for the massive loss of jobs early in his administration. But it seems odd to keep blaming poor job growth on the Bush tax cut, especially because Obama himself pushed through a nearly $1-trillion stimulus and took other actions that have affected the economy, for better or worse.

Finally, Obama blames the Bush tax cuts for “massive deficits.” It is certainly true that the Bush tax cuts helped blow a hole in the budget. But they did not do it all by themselves. We looked at length at this issue earlier this year, assisted by new Congressional Budget Office data.

The data showed that the biggest contributor to the disappearance of projected surpluses was increased spending, which accounted for 36.5 percent of the decline in the nation’s fiscal position, followed by incorrect CBO estimates, which accounted for 28 percent. The Bush tax cuts (along with some Obama tax cuts) were responsible for just 24 percent.

And on the president’s insistence that the uber-wealthy are even more successful at tax avoidance than even the Occupiers have charged in their wildest fever-dream accusations:

“Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent — 1 percent. That is the height of unfairness.”

This is a striking statistic. But the only evidence that the White House could offer for it was a TV clip of a conversation on Bloomberg TV, in which correspondent Gigi Stone made this assertion during a discussion about the tax strategies that the very wealthy use to avoid paying taxes. The TV clip was promoted by the left-leaning website Think Progress.

Stone quoted from a Bloomberg News article last month that reported on such tax strategies, which mostly involve complicated ways to defer paying capital gains taxes. But the article never made the one-percent claim. It also noted that the IRS had gotten more hostile to such transactions in recent years.

An administration official conceded the White House had no actual data to back up the president’s assertion, but argued that other reports showed that some of the wealthy pay little in taxes.

The Post even quoted Judge Learned Hand pointing out that “Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury.”

So, calls for authoritarianism founded on appeals to tribal identity, based on manufactured data. Thanks anyway, but I’ll pass.

SOURCE

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Some things Obama left out of his speech

Jonah Goldberg

In 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama insisted that the coming presidential primary and general election campaigns "shouldn't be about making each other look bad, they should be about figuring out how we can all do some good for this precious country of ours. That's our mission."

"And in this mission," he continued, "our rivals won't be one another, and I would assert it won't even be the other party. It's going to be cynicism that we're fighting against."

I guess I missed the moment when Obama hung his "Mission Accomplished" banner. Because from where I'm sitting, it looks more like the president not only lost his battle against cynicism, he defected to the other side.

In his remarks this week in Osawatomie, Kan. -- the site of Theodore Roosevelt's famous 1910 "new nationalism" speech -- Obama laid out the themes for his re-election campaign.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney denies it was an "election speech," but Obama's own campaign manager, Jim Messina, touted it as one in a fundraising email.

But such is the way of this White House. Facts are dependent variables, history the president's Pool of Narcissus, reflecting his own glory. Hence, Obama cherry-picks TR's "new nationalism" as a justification for his own agenda and proof that today's Republicans are extreme.

After all, was not TR a "Republican son of a wealthy family," as Obama put it?

Well, yes, he was. And then, he wasn't. TR left the Republican Party to promote his new nationalism philosophy and run as a Progressive - a "super socialist," in the words of The New York Times in 1913.

As a Republican president, Roosevelt had been a "trust buster." As Progressive gadfly, Roosevelt believed in making the trusts bigger, stronger and more entwined with the federal government, orchestrated by an all-powerful "Federal Bureau of Corporations."

"Concentration, co-operation and control," he explained in his acceptance speech at the 1912 Progressive convention, "are the key words for a scientific solution of the mighty industrial problem which now confronts this nation."

It's no surprise Obama would find the progressive Teddy so reasonable. Nor is it shocking that Obama would fail to explain to today's generation the true intentions of that "Republican son of a wealthy family."

And no wonder Obama thinks that low tax rates in the 1920s were a significant cause of the Great Depression. Or that he sees income inequality as the chief problem during the 1930s -- and today.

"Now, this kind of inequality -- a level that we haven't seen since the Great Depression -- hurts us all," he declared. "When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, when people are slipping out of the middle class, it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom."

Except inequality isn't the cause of these problems, stagnating wages and unemployment are. But Obama wants to talk about inequality because it puts him on the convenient side of populist anger.

Sounding as if he's still running against George W. Bush, Obama laid the blame for our problems on the "most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history." Of course, he leaves out that those tax cuts also went to the middle class.

He also forgets his own favorite metric of jobs "created or saved." It's a bogus, unprovable gimmick, used to defend his failed stimulus, but who is he to say Bush's tax cuts didn't save millions of jobs after 9/11?

Obama describes the Bush years as a libertarian dystopia of "'you're on your own' economics," when we ignored vital spending on things like education and poverty programs. This is Obama's favorite straw man, and he's a kung fu master when it comes to defeating it.

He leaves out that Europe already has his preferred policies and is about to go under.

More significantly, Obama leaves out that under "compassionate conservatism," Bush was the first president to spend more than 3 percent of GDP on anti-poverty programs. Under Bush, federal spending on education grew 58 percent faster than inflation. Obama forgets that Bush fought for the biggest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society (Medicare Part D). He airbrushes away Sarbanes-Oxley, a new Cabinet agency, faith-based initiatives, etc.

"Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent," Obama barked. "That is the height of unfairness." Except, when the Washington Post asked the White House for evidence to support the claim, an official confessed they "had no actual data to back up the president's assertion."

That's OK. Who cares about the facts when you're fighting to make America safe for cynicism again?

SOURCE

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The Orwellian American Left

As I heard Barack Obama and his propaganda minister, Jay Carney, endorsing tax cuts as a vehicle for economic growth, I was reminded, again, of George Orwell's "1984" and the striking similarities between his Oceania and the American left's vision for America.

Oceania's Big Brother regime had "four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided," the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love and the Ministry of Plenty. Each department was dedicated to the opposite principle suggested by its title. "Truth" disseminated lies. "Peace" promoted war. "Love" enforced uniformity of thought. And "Plenty" manipulated the economy to impoverish the people while enriching the ruling class. God was expelled and absolute truth abolished, while "doublespeak" was promoted.

Oceania's Thought Police was the Ministry of Love's enforcement arm, while the Ministry of Truth undertook the task of rewriting history in service to the Party slogan, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

Today the left has a Ministry of Truth, because it knows that twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservatives than as liberals and so has to disguise its policies to deceive the majority. Its Ministry of Peace would be better-named the Ministry of Bipartisanship, which, in the name of reaching across the aisle with a friendly hand, slices it off with a partisan dagger. Its Ministry of Love is more aptly named the Ministry of Tolerance, which dictates one way of thinking and demonizes dissenters. The Ministry of Plenty is alive and well in the Obama administration's cadre of economic advisers.

The liberal establishment's Ministry of Truth extends throughout our culture, having taken over our educational institutions, the arts and the sciences. How slavishly our academics hew to the Party slogan. They have planted themselves in positions of cultural influence to "control the present," in order to rewrite the past (to conform to their dogma), for purposes of "controlling the future."

Our professors of history, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, philosophy, journalism, law, the hard sciences and other fields deride Western civilization and characterize our founders as Christian-mocking deists devoted to enlightenment principles of the philosophers. They speciously tie our unique freedoms to our "secular" founding to argue that we must banish God from the public square, lest we lose our liberties. In the name of academic inquiry, these academic and cultural "Thought Police" indoctrinate and intimidate students who dare deviate from their thought mandates.

Their textbooks tell us that Franklin D. Roosevelt not only was not a domestic liberal but also saved capitalism through socialism. (Talk about "doublespeak.") They say his New Deal spent us out of the Great Depression, while current historians not housed in the Ministry of Truth tell us it exacerbated our economic woes. Based on the ministry's revisionism, Keynesian economists were empowered to reflect those myths in their textbooks for a half-century. Armed with their revised lessons from history, Obama's Ministry of Plenty advocated passage of the "stimulus" bill, which was doublespeak for "rampant redistribution to its allies, sucking the oxygen out of the private sector and suppressing the economy."

The left's Ministry of Truth, with the full-throated support of the "unbiased" mainstream media, has given us such Orwellian originals as "pro-choice" while suing an 80-year-old prayer-warrior for standing outside Planned Parenthood's abortion factory to share important information with pregnant mothers to help them make a fully informed choice. The ministry seeks to shut down conservative talk radio, with the "Fairness Doctrine." It forbids private ballots for employees to vote anonymously on union membership for the purpose of intimidating them to join -- in the name of the "Employee Free Choice Act." It boasts of "budget cuts" when it slightly reduces the rate of increases in spending. It calls the budget-busting Obamacare legislation the "Affordable Care Act." It calls a bill that would further expand unemployment a "jobs bill." It fabricates and manipulates a consensus on "climate change" and ostracizes dissenters as science-averse. (In Oceania, science had "almost ceased to exist.") It conspires with its Ministry of Tolerance to describe political dissent from its effort to legalize homosexual marriage as "hate" and to brand political conservatism as "racism." While the rapacious Obama administration recklessly squanders our national wealth in its lust for power, its ministries of Plenty and Bipartisanship vilify the wealthy -- who are paying a disproportionate share of taxes -- for not paying their fair share. The Ministry of Plenty, while presiding over the destruction of the private sector, castigates job creators for hoarding all the wealth.

2012 won't be so much about two competing visions as it will be a contest of truth. Without the left's Orwellian ministers and their deputies in the press and academia, it would be a historic blowout and rejection of their vision. I'm betting it will be anyway.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

The Road to Canadian Citizenship: "When we think about second passports, exotic locations such as Singapore or Uruguay often come to mind. But could it be that an American's best bet for second citizenship lies just north of the border? In the last few years, Canada has become more attractive as a destination for would-be immigrants. The country invariably scores near the top of various international life-style country rankings. For starters, Canada has a very stable political and financial system, which stood up well during the 2008 Credit Crisis. Canada is also widely recognized for its health care system (accessible to all its residents), yet it boasts the lowest corporate tax rate among the G-8 nations. Among those who have been increasingly looking at Canada as an option for residency and citizenship are high-net-worth Americans. As the U.S. debt grows to unmanageable heights and the government is increasingly applying new force and security measures, Americans are seeking refuge for safety and a chance at future prosperity."

CA: Homosexual marriage challenge: "The sponsors of California's gay marriage ban renewed their effort Thursday to disqualify a federal judge because of his same-sex relationship, but they met a skeptical audience in an appeals court panel. It's the first time an American jurist's sexual orientation has been cited as grounds for overturning a court decision."

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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For Arab Christians, a wintry 'spring'

IN THE FIRST ROUND of Egypt's parliamentary elections, the hardline Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party won 36.6 percent of the vote -- a plurality -- and the even harder-line Salafist party, Al-Nour, won 24.4 percent. The Egyptian Bloc -- a coalition of liberal, social-democratic, and secular parties -- drew only 13.4 percent. So now we know what the "Spirit of Tahrir Square" looks like when it's put to a vote: In the world's largest Arab nation, the forces of sharia and jihad are winning in a landslide.

The credo of the Muslim Brotherhood is explicitly illiberal and theocratic: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Abdel Moneim el-Shahat, a Salafist sheik and Nour Party candidate, demands a society in which "sharia is obligatory" -- an Egypt, as he explained in a public debate, with "citizenship restricted by Islamic sharia, freedom restricted by Islamic sharia, equality restricted by Islamic sharia."

Sad to say, these are the fundamentalist blooms of the Arab Spring. The Islamist ascendancy – in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt this year, as in Gaza and (non-Arab) Turkey previously -- bodes ill for the region's moderate and tolerant Muslims. Whistling past the graveyard, the editor of The Daily Star in Beirut exhorts the world to "Celebrate the Democratic Arab Moment," and declares that the commitment of Arab societies to democratic openness and pluralism "now seems firmly affirmed." Indeed, he says, it "was never in doubt, except perhaps in the minds of lingering colonialists and racists." The anti-Islamist liberals getting wiped out in Egypt's elections might beg to differ.

Even more ominous are the prospects for the Arab world's Christians, who have been undergoing not a springtime of toleration but an increasingly frightful winter of suffering and persecution. Since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's Coptic minority has been repeatedly victimized – churches have been destroyed, homes have been vandalized, and jihadist mobs have rampaged through Christian neighborhoods. In October, Egyptian troops in Cairo's Maspero district slaughtered Christians as they protested the burning of churches in Upper Egypt. Even before the Maspero pogrom, Christians by the tens of thousands had been fleeing post-Mubarak Egypt. You don't have to be a "lingering colonialist and racist" to fear there may be even worse to come.

Egypt isn't the only Arab country whose Christian communities are being decimated by Islamist brutality.

Since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, The Wall Street Journal noted on Monday, "at least 54 Iraqi churches have been bombed and at least 905 Christians killed in various acts of violence. . . . Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled." The archbishop of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Kirkuk and Sulimaniya calls the emigration a "hemorrhage," warning that "Iraq could be emptied of Christians." In Syria, meanwhile, Catholic and Orthodox communities are terrified of what awaits them if the current regime is overthrown. According to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, the country's archbishops were summoned to the presidential palace soon after the uprising against Bashar al-Assad began, and bluntly warned: "Either support me, or your churches will burn."

John Eibner, CEO of Christian Solidarity International, has issued a genocide warning for Christians in the Middle East.

The harrying of non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East is hardly a new phenomenon – nearly all of the Arab world's Jews were driven out long ago – but the rise of radical Islam has lethally intensified the problem. Last month, Christian Solidarity International, a respected human-rights organization with deep experience in the region, warned that Christians there may be facing genocide. "The crisis of survival for non-Muslim communities is especially acute in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, and Pakistan," the group's CEO, John Eibner, wrote in a letter to President Obama, imploring him to act urgently to prevent the kind of "religious cleansing" that eradicated Turkey's "once-thriving Christian communities" a century ago.

It takes more than voting to sustain decent democratic values. Totalitarians from Hitler to Hamas, after all, have come to power via the ballot. Revolts and demonstrations may topple Arab dictators, and their replacements may be chosen in elections. But there will be no Arab Spring worthy of the name without pluralism, freedom, and tolerance.

"Such tolerance is particularly important when it comes to religion," Obama declared last May – so important that America would defend it with "all of the diplomatic, economic, and strategic tools at our disposal." Fine words. But with Islamists sweeping to power around them and human-rights activists warning of genocide, the beleaguered Christians of the Middle East need more than words.

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Behind Income Inequality

Walter E. Williams

Benefiting from a hint from an article titled "Is Harry Potter Making You Poorer?", written by my colleague Dr. John Goodman, president of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, I've come up with an explanation and a way to end income inequality in America, possibly around the world. Joanne Rowling was a welfare mother in Edinburgh, Scotland. All that has changed. As the writer of the "Harry Potter" novels, having a net worth of $1 billion, she is the world's wealthiest author. More importantly, she's one of those dastardly 1-percenters condemned by the Occupy Wall Streeters and other leftists.

How did Rowling become so wealthy and unequal to the rest of us? The entire blame for this social injustice lies at the feet of the world's children and their enabling parents. Rowling's wealth is a direct result of more than 500 million "Harry Potter" book sales and movie receipts grossing more than $5 billion. In other words, the millions of "99-percenters" who individually plunk down $8 or $9 to attend a "Harry Potter" movie, $15 to buy a "Harry Potter" novel or $30 to buy a "Harry Potter" Blu-ray Disc are directly responsible for contributing to income inequality and wealth concentration that economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman says "is incompatible with real democracy." In other words, Rowling is not responsible for income inequality; it's the people who purchase her works.

We just can't blame the children for the unfairness of income inequality. Look at how Wal-Mart Stores generated wealth for the Walton family of Christy ($25 billion), Jim ($21 billion), Alice ($21 billion) and Robson ($21 billion). The Walton family's wealth is not a result of ill-gotten gains, but the result of Wal-Mart's revenue, $422 billion in 2010. The blame for this unjust concentration of wealth rests with those hundreds of millions of shoppers worldwide who voluntarily enter Wal-Mart premises and leave dollars, pounds and pesos.

Basketball great LeBron James plays forward for the Miami Heat and earns $43 million for doing so. That puts him with those 1-percenters denounced by Wall Street occupiers. But who made LeBron a 1-percenter? It's those children again, enabled by their fathers or some other significant male. Instead of children doing their homework and their fathers helping their wives with housework, they get into their cars, drive to a downtown arena and voluntarily plunk down $100 for tickets. The millions of people who watch LeBron play are the direct cause of LeBron's earning $43 million and are thereby responsible for "undermining the foundations of our democracy."

Krugman laments in his Nov. 3 New York Times column "Oligarchy, American Style," "We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only." I'd ask Krugman this question: Who's putting all the money in the hands of the few, and what do you think ought to be done to stop millions, perhaps billions, of people from using their money in ways that lead to high income and wealth concentration? In other words, I'd like Krugman to tell us what should be done to stop the millions of children who make Joanne Rowling rich, the millions who fork over their money to the benefit of LeBron James, and the hundreds of millions of people who shop at Wal-Mart.

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Sprung from prison, tort-bar king back raising money for Dems

See if you can guess which member of the infamous "1 percent" is the subject of this invitation to a holiday fundraiser: "For the second year in a row, the _________ will be hosting our holiday event at the stunning cliff-side estate of ____ and _____, longtime supporters of ________ candidates and causes. Guests last year were wowed by incredible architecture, panoramic views, food and drink, and tours of the ______ art collection. We are delighted to be working with them and the _______ club again. Ticket price included hors d'oeuvres, beer and wine, and non-alcoholic beverages. Proceeds will help _____ prepare for next year's elections."

Obviously, with a "stunning" estate offering "panoramic views," and a tour-worthy art collection, the couple hosting this high-dollar event are wealthy, have been politically active for a long time, and surely must command significant power and influence in one of the nation's two major political parties. And since the GOP is "the party of the rich," they must be Republicans, right? Well, guess again, because the power couple being described in the preceding paragraph, which comes from an invitation to Dec. 18 fund raiser are William and Michelle Lerach. The Lerachs are long-time Democratic contributors. Bill Lerach has been close to President Clinton, both when he was in the White House and in the years since. The Lerachs have given nearly $1.5 million to Democratic candidates, committees and causes since 1990. That total is half-a-million more than was given during the same period by George Soros.

There is another big difference between Bill Lerach and George Soros. Soros did not recently spend two years in a federal prison. It should not be forgotten that Lerach served time and repaid $7.5 million after being convicted in federal court of participating in a long-running fraud scheme hatched by him and three of his senior partners at the infamous Milberg Weiss class-action lawsuit factory in New York and California. The scheme involved bribing plaintiffs who bought stock in a corporation targeted by the law firm in return for making it lead counsel in federal court. Millions of dollars in such bribes helped produce an estimated $250 million in fees for the corrupt firm during a three-decade period that began in 1981, according to the Justice Department. The long-running bribery was so outrageous that Milberg Weiss was the first law firm ever sued by the government under the RICO organized crime statute.

When Lerach finished serving his brief time in the federal pen, he returned to his Cliffside estate in San Diego to enjoy a fortune estimated at $200 million. And as evidenced by the upcoming fundraiser there, he picked up right where he left off as a key cog in the Democratic money machine. But considering that much of Lerach's fortune was earned by breaking the law, why would any Democratic incumbent, candidate or committee accept his tainted money?

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USPS' Cost-Cutting Plan Shows Need for Privatization

The Postal Service has announced how it plans to fight increased competition for First Class mail — by providing worse service. If the USPS doesn't want to deliver the mail, Congress should let others give it a try.

On Monday, the Postal Service said it will shut almost half its mail processing centers and largely eliminate next-day delivery for first-class mail. That's on top of a 1-cent postage stamp hike that goes into effect next month.

It's all part of an effort to cut $20 billion in annual costs, staunch the flood of red ink and avoid bankruptcy. Still, it's hard to see how charging more for worse service is a credible plan for success.

Even if it were, the postal service has been down this road many times in the past. In previous cost-cutting efforts, for example, it dramatically shrank the areas in which it would even strive for next-day delivery.

The result has been an ongoing deterioration of its business, a trend vastly accelerated by faxes, e-mail, online billing and new communication technologies.

But what choice does the USPS have?

On the one hand, it's weighed down by unions that control 85% of its workforce, impeding reasonable efficiency improvements. Example: In just the first six months of this year, the Postal Service spent $4.3 million paying postal workers to do literally nothing, thanks to labor agreements that require the service to keep workers on the payroll even when mail volume is low or machinery breaks down.

At the same time, lawmakers often scuttle cost-saving plans that might affect their districts. After congressmen screamed, for example, the USPS cut the list of post offices it planned to close from 3,200 to a mere 162.

The postmaster general had it right this week when he said that the USPS is in dire straits because "we are expected to operate like a business but don't have the flexibility to do so."

But the solution isn't to mindlessly cut costs or trot out more piecemeal reforms like the one working through the Senate, which will only prolong the agony. Instead, we should follow the lead of many other countries and privatize the Postal Service.

A Cato Institute report finds the consistent result abroad has been improved productivity and lower costs, without a decline in quality. Selling anything less than privatization as the solution to the Postal Service's problems would constitute mail fraud.

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ELSEWHERE

Blago finally nailed: "Ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for trying to auction off President Barack Obama's vacated US Senate seat and a host of other corruption charges. The Democratic governor was arrested in the midst of what prosecutors called a "political corruption crime spree" just weeks after Obama's historic November 2008 election. He was convicted of 17 corruption counts in June after his first trial resulted in a hung jury on all but one of the charges. While Obama managed to emerge untainted, the scandal shone a spotlight on the state's corruption-filled political scene and cast a shadow on his early days in office. Five of the past nine Illinois governors have been indicted or arrested for fraud or bribery"

Pearl Harbor was FDR’s back door to war: "Given that today is the anniversary date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, we’ll no doubt be treated to standard interventionist articles stating what a great thing World War II was. The American people were overwhelmingly opposed to entry into World War II. That’s not surprising given the consequences of World War I. There was absolutely no reason for the United States to intervene in that war."

Our broken medical system: "Dr. Donald Berwick is the guy who ran Medicare and Medicaid for the past 17 months, and he quit last week. In his parting remarks, he said that 20 to 30 percent of health care spending is waste, yielding no benefits to patients and further clogging up a system that is, by its very nature, sluggish and tortuous. He listed five reasons that accounted for the majority of the waste he had seen ..."

Eurocracy run amuck: "We must re-establish the primacy of politics over the market.' That sentence, spoken a little while ago by Germany’s Angela Merkel, sums up the startlingly unoriginal character of the approach adopted by most EU politicians as they seek to save the common currency from what even Paul Krugman seems to concede is its current trajectory towards immolation"

The greed fallacy: "We're never greedy. Only others are greedy. This unrecognized hypocrisy allows us to use the word greed in a greedy way, to manipulate others to get what we want. But most of what people call greed is simply other people trying to honor their responsibilities."

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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