More media deception



I note that Norway killer Breivik's clenched-fist Communist salute is universally being described in the media as "Right wing". Right wing Communism? It has been the Communist salute for around a century and Leftist journalists would be well aware of that. They have probably even seen examples of it at Leftist rallies in the USA in recent times. But for the media white can be black if it can be used to attack conservatives

There is NO Right-wing salute. Both the Communist and the Fascist salutes are Leftist. The man who invented the Fasicist salute -- Mussolini -- was a prominent Marxist theoretician. And if Hitler's socialist worker's party (NSDAP) was Right wing, it sure was a strange socialist worker's party. More on that here

Breivik flashed the same salute on day 2 of his trial as well. An interesting excerpt from today's testimony:

Breivik has disclosed how much he admires al-Qaeda. He described them as the "most successful revolutionary force in the world" and praised their "cult of martyrdom". He also said that he expected his rampage last July to be ended by a bullet from the security forces. "22 July was a so-called suicide attack. I didn't expect to survive that day," he said.

It is becoming increasingly clear that he sees himself as a revolutionary or a martyr rather than as being subservient to any ideology. How else to explain that he hates Muslims but admires Al-Qaeda?

At the risk of being seen as knowing what I am talking about, perhaps I should mention that on July 25, 2011 I described Breivik's actions as "pure Al Qaida"

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

"Conservatives Have All the Best Stories"

But, we're not telling them. So says Ann McElhinney of Not Evil, Just Wrong and Mine Your Own Business fame.

She has a great conversion story. She was a typical European liberal living in Romania working as a freelance journalist. She came upon a story of an "evil" Canadian mining company which was planning to open a gold mine in Transylvania by first tearing down a village, and, of course, raping, pillaging, and plundering the villagers. At least, that was the story she presupposed while riding the train to the area. What she found when she got there was somewhat different. May I present the incomparable -- Ann McElhinney!



Unless you are used to rapid-fire Irish speech, you may need to listen to it twice!

Ms. McElhinney is a fabulous mess of a speaker (John Fund), which makes every one of her speeches a trove of riches for conversation. Just in this short clip there's the brain dead liberal story, the liberal media bias story, the DDT story, the environmentalist tyranny story, the CO2 as the new DDT story, the wrong versus evil story, and probably more that I missed.

However, this post is just about conservatives telling their conversion stories. Or, if you've always been conservative, what's the most potent story you tell which reinforces the conservative facts of life?

SOURCE

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

Australia: A triumph of faith and connectedness: Fundamentalist pastor saves little girl

In a society as atomized and as anonymous as ours, church connections can be very important

A TODDLER who survived up to five days alone in her home after her mother died was within hours of dying herself, paramedics said yesterday.

Lucy Keevers, 2, has spent three days under the intensive care of doctors after she was found severely dehydrated at the house in Wagga Wagga, in the state's southwest, on Friday.

Her 36-year-old mother Liz, a severe epileptic, is believed to have had a seizure and died in the lounge room up to five days before Lucy was found.

Ambulance Service Inspector Eamonn Purcell said Lucy was close to death when she was rescued from the death house by a local preacher.

He said the two-year-old - with blonde hair like her mother, and wearing a pink outfit - did not make a sound as she sat in the back of the ambulance.

Insp Purcell said her eyes were open wide and she was weak, with a rapid pulse and low blood pressure. "Even when they stuck a needle in her, she didn't blink. I think she was within hours of death herself," he said.

The mother and daughter moved to the suburb of Ashmont about 18 months ago, renting a house on Tarakan Ave and attending the local church with a neighbour.

Insp Purcell said paramedics were often confronted by distressing situations and had been touched by the brave little girl.

Relatives arrived in Wagga Wagga yesterday to begin the task of clearing out the death house.

Neighbour Kim Beaumont described Lucy as a happy, quiet girl who was very much loved by her mother.

Ms Beaumont said she last saw Liz as she hung out the washing on Tuesday, April 10.

"It was just awful," she said. "The washing was still on the line and I kept telling myself I must go over and see whether Liz was OK? "You just feel so guilty, I know you shouldn't blame yourself but you do."

Ms Beaumont said Liz was an active, full-time mum. "She was on medication and being seen by doctors but no one expected this. There were never any problems at the house," Ms Beaumont said.

Church of Christ Pastor Ross Brinkman said the mother was a much-loved member of the church and the girl regularly attended playgroup there. He found the young mother and daughter after becoming concerned and breaking into the house by the front window.

"I received a phone call from one of our parishioners alerting me that she had not turned up to events," Pastor Brinkman said. "I went around to investigate and that's when we made the discovery."

Pastor Brinkman said the woman's daughter would be well cared for within the Wagga community. "The concern we have is for the welfare of the daughter. We will continue to love and care for her," he said.

SOURCE

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

Shifting the range of what is politically possibile

Comment from a prominent British free-market group

Yes, it's wrapped up in unlovely jargon but this is what we exist to do: shift the Overton Window. Chris Dillow:

"But that's what half of me thinks. Another half remembers Richard Cockett's description of how libertarian think-tanks helped - over very many years - to shift the Overton window; within my lifetime, private ownership of utilities, for example, has gone from being unthinkable by the political class to taken for granted."

It's true that we're largely seen as being right wing but this is a serious mistake upon the part of those so viewing us. We actually want the poor to get richer, something that makes us rather leftie. That we advocate policies like markets, policies that actually do make the poor richer, makes us unique among lefties, this is true but in this sense we are indeed of the left. As we are in desiring to increase liberty, remove legal and economic privilege and so on.

But what is this Overton Window thing? That's the set of policies which at any one time can be plausibly taken as being politically realistic. Our job is to shift the perception of the various policies we propose so that, over time, they become part of that set of plausible, possible, political actions.

Madsen has his own way of describing this, that we start out saying something that by the standards of the times marks us out as being complete loons howling in the wilderness. By the time people are drinking the beer made today they'll be chuckling at the latest weirdness from those nutters. By the time today's production of good Scotch gets drunk it'll be a serious policy proposal that one or more political parties is including in a manifesto. And by the time this year's claret is ready to drink it'll be a settled part of the legislative landscape and no one at all can remember that we haven't always done it this way.

And we'll take such victories from any political party: Red Ken is associated with the Congestion Charge in London but it's us classically liberal think tanks that set that policy running. Privatising the utilities was enacted by the Tories and I know for certain that the current Lib Dem idea of sharing paternity and maternity leave was inserted into party policy as a result of someone reading this blog. From my pointing out that we don't in fact have a gender pay gap, we have a motherhood pay gap. And it really shouldn't be all that much of a surprise to anyone knowing my background that the UKIP flat tax policy has certain similarities to the flat tax ideas of this think tank.

In terms of the future my biggest ambition is to get drug legalisation through in just this manner. We've been saying it for years already, that it's the illegality that causes many of the problems. We're already seeing serious and sensible politicians running with the idea: heck, Portugal has essentially decriminalised even if not legalised drugs. That Overton Window has already shifted and it is possible to at least conceive now of a future government legalising and taxing appropriately all drugs. It won't be by the time today's Scotch is ready to drink, sadly, but I can see it happening by the time this year's claret is ready.

SOURCE

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

A matter of principles

By Prof. Donald J. Boudreaux

Soon after Lehman Brothers' 2008 bankruptcy, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke reportedly proclaimed that "there are no atheists in foxholes and no ideologues in financial crises."

Mr. Bernanke likely meant that, in a financial crisis, policymakers shouldn't be wedded to their pre-crisis understanding of what does and doesn't constitute sound economic policy. They should instead react to events as these unfold.

No one objects to policies changing to reflect an improved understanding of the economy. A financial crisis, however, is the worst situation for improving our understanding of the economy. And government officials are the last people to look to for such enlightenment. Panic, puzzlement and political pressures are all super-intense. The only reliable guides through this confusion are principles.

It's not as if we economists have no well-developed theories for understanding economic crises. We do. We also have principled policy recommendations based on these theories.

But in this crisis, Bernanke, panicking, tossed aside his principles.

I use the word "principles" here loosely. True principles aren't abandoned in a storm. The fact that Bernanke and many other government officials so readily pitched aside their alleged principles testifies to the fact that these officials simply aren't very principled.

Prior to 2008, Bernanke's economics was much closer to the free-market school of Milton Friedman than to the faith-in-government creed of John Maynard Keynes. Backed by sound logic and plenty of facts, the Friedman school teaches that markets are not naturally prone to huge downturns; such downturns typically result from unwise government meddling.

And so the cure for such crises is to stop the unwise government meddling. Sure, central bankers must take certain steps during each crisis to ensure that it doesn't get out of hand. These special steps, though, all turn upon ensuring that the money supply doesn't collapse. That's it. Nothing more.

Bernanke, though, went way beyond this prudent step. Blinded by panic (or eager to please the White House and Congress), Bernanke ignored what Carnegie Mellon economist Allan Meltzer calls "the powerful regenerative forces of the market."

Meltzer -- a pre-eminent scholar of monetary policy and the Fed -- understands that government meddling often causes unusually large numbers of people to make unusually bad investments. Although seemingly sensible when made, these investments are doomed because the information that guided these investments was distorted by unwise government meddling in the economy.

There's no way to get the economy back on the right track except to liquidate these lousy investments and allow the market to rediscover better, more sustainable ones.

And it's at this stage that sound principles are especially important.

Liquidating bad investments is painful. Real people suffer real financial losses. These people naturally wish to avoid these losses if they can. And politicians are eager to help them do so because that makes politicians appear to be powerful and good -- and worthy of re-election.

So politicians borrow and print money madly. Today's taxes don't rise and government spends the money, hoping to bolster the falling values of these bad investments.

For a time, this unprincipled policy might succeed -- but this "success" is only brief and illusory. Bad investments aren't turned into good investments simply because government "injects" new "demand" into the economy.

Had a principled economist been chairman of today's Fed, that person's principles would have led him or her to focus on the long-run health of the economy. He or she would therefore have argued against the massive "stimulus" package, knowing that the market economy would rejuvenate itself.

SOURCE

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

ELSEWHERE

Print-on-demand aids book industry sales: "One of the book industry's largest print-on-demand operations has expanded to keep up with orders. The Nashville-based Ingram Content Group's Lightning Source division opened three new facilities last month -- two in the U.S., and one in Germany. Print-on-demand books are a bright spot for the traditional book industry, which has slumped as e-readers increase. According to research for IT Strategies, around a billion pages are being printed on demand each month -- driven by sales from Amazon."

Happiness is not an entitlement: "We ought to leave 'happiness' to novelists and philosophers -- and rescue it from the economists and psychologists who think it can be distilled into a 'science' and translated into pro-happiness policies. Fat chance. Government can often mitigate sources of unhappiness (starvation, unemployment, disease), but happiness is more than the absence of misery. If we could manufacture happiness, we could repeal the 'human condition.' Somehow this has escaped the social scientists who want to make happiness the goal of government."

Edgar the entrepreneur: "Edgar the Exploiter is a wonderful animated short by Tomasz Kaye that defends voluntary employer-employee relations and demonstrates the harm that policies like minimum-wage laws inflict on the very people they are supposed to help. Edgar is a capitalist who hires Simon as an unskilled laborer, until a minimum-wage law impels Edgar to lay Simon off."

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

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)

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

Norway killer Anders Behring Breivik trial starts



His trial has just begun and the London Daily Telegraph is live-blogging it.

Once again he gave the Communist clenched-fist salute as he entered the courtroom. Breivik of all people would be aware that the Fascist salute is with an open hand. So he would appear to see himself as being primarily a revolutionary. Since the Fascist salute is generally these days associated with the political right, he would appear to be disclaiming that affiliation. He may well think conservatives are too gutless.

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

A Leftist government that does surplus budgeting!

Americans must find the Australian Left hard to comprehend -- one that tries to spend LESS than it raises in taxes. Obama borrows 40% of what he spends. But surplus budgeting is a tradition in Australia. At the time the GFC hit, Australia had ZERO Federal debt. It's one of a number of ways in which Australia is more conservative than the USA. We are in nothing like the mess that the USA is in

FINANCE Minister Penny Wong has rejected any suggestion that bringing the Budget back to surplus in 2012-13 could trigger a recession. "It's the right thing to do to bring the Budget back to surplus," she told Network Ten yesterday.

Senator Wong said November's mid-year economic review forecast growth of 3.5 per cent and it "assumed the fiscal policy the Government's got in place".

She has rejected a suggestion by her Opposition counterpart Andrew Robb that a surplus would be achieved by fiddling the books.

Mr Robb said one example was the energy security fund to help coal-fired generators adjust to the carbon tax, scheduled to start on July 1. Labor will spend $1 billion this financial year and in each of 2013-14 and 2014-15 on the fund, but only $1 million has been set aside for next financial year.

"You don't come back to surplus simply through accounting," Senator Wong said. "You come back to surplus because you make hard decisions."

But Mr Robb said he wasn't convinced. He said Senator Wong was caught out and unable to explain why the funding for generators wasn't anything other than a dodgy accounting trick.

More here

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

The unchecked menace of voter fraud

Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama White House are trying to stop new laws intended to protect the integrity of our electoral system. They have already blocked the implementation of new voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas claiming there is not evidence of widespread voter fraud. They have also claimed that these new laws would place too heavy a burden on minority voters and would suppress their ability to vote.

To say that there is not widespread evidence of voter fraud is disingenuous at best. If you listen to Point of View on a regular basis, you have heard us cover dozens of stories of significant voter fraud all across the country over the past few years. Many of these have wound up in the courts, making it impossible for the Justice Department not to know about them.

To show just how easy it is to vote fraudulently, a man working for James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas went to Eric Holder’s voting place on Nebraska Avenue in Washington, D.C. and asked if they had a Holder registered. This scruffily dressed, young white man (Eric Holder is 61 and black) never actually claimed to be Holder but was offered his ballot anyway. You can see the amazing video of this exchange here.



As to suppressing minority voter turnout, after new voter ID laws were put in place in Georgia and Indiana, minority turnout increased. So why is the Obama Justice Department so intent on blocking the implementation these laws intended to protect the integrity of the vote?

Received by email from Kerby Anderson, Host of "Point of View"

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

How to reform the TSA

Air travel would be safer if we allowed knives, lighters and liquids and focused on disrupting new terror plots. A former head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley says:

Airport security in America is broken. I should know. For 3½ years—from my confirmation in July 2005 to President Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009—I served as the head of the Transportation Security Administration.

You know the TSA. We're the ones who make you take off your shoes before padding through a metal detector in your socks (hopefully without holes in them). We're the ones who make you throw out your water bottles. We're the ones who end up on the evening news when someone's grandma gets patted down or a child's toy gets confiscated as a security risk. If you're a frequent traveler, you probably hate us.

More than a decade after 9/11, it is a national embarrassment that our airport security system remains so hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people whom it is meant to protect. Preventing terrorist attacks on air travel demands flexibility and the constant reassessment of threats. It also demands strong public support, which the current system has plainly failed to achieve.

The crux of the problem, as I learned in my years at the helm, is our wrongheaded approach to risk. In attempting to eliminate all risk from flying, we have made air travel an unending nightmare for U.S. passengers and visitors from overseas, while at the same time creating a security system that is brittle where it needs to be supple.

Any effort to rebuild TSA and get airport security right in the U.S. has to start with two basic principles:

First, the TSA's mission is to prevent a catastrophic attack on the transportation system, not to ensure that every single passenger can avoid harm while traveling. Much of the friction in the system today results from rules that are direct responses to how we were attacked on 9/11. But it's simply no longer the case that killing a few people on board a plane could lead to a hijacking. Never again will a terrorist be able to breach the cockpit simply with a box cutter or a knife. The cockpit doors have been reinforced, and passengers, flight crews and air marshals would intervene.

Second, the TSA's job is to manage risk, not to enforce regulations. Terrorists are adaptive, and we need to be adaptive, too. Regulations are always playing catch-up, because terrorists design their plots around the loopholes.

I tried to follow these principles as the head of the TSA, and I believe that the agency made strides during my tenure. But I readily acknowledge my share of failures as well. I arrived in 2005 with naive notions of wrangling the organization into shape, only to discover the power of the TSA's bureaucratic momentum and political pressures.

There is a way out of this mess—below, I'll set out five specific ideas for reform—but it helps to understand how we got here in the first place.

The airport checkpoint as we know it today sprang into existence in spring 2002, over a month and a half at Baltimore/Washington International airport. New demands on the system after 9/11, like an exhaustive manual check of all carry-on bags, had left checkpoints overwhelmed by long lines and backlogs. A team of management consultants from Accenture delved into the minutiae of checkpoint activity at BWI: How long did it take to pass from one point to another? How did the behavior of travelers affect line speed? How were people interacting with the equipment?

The consultants had a million ideas for improvement, but with no infrastructure, acquiring even the most ordinary items became a quest. For example, before passengers walked through the metal detectors, they needed to place their keys, jewelry and change into a container. But the long, skinny plastic dishes in use at the time tipped over. So a team member went to PetSmart, bought a bunch of different dog bowls and tested each one. The result was the white bowl with a rubber bottom that's still in use at many airports. (Please, no jokes about the TSA treating passengers like dogs.)

One brilliant bit of streamlining from the consultants: It turned out that if the outline of two footprints was drawn on a mat in the area for using metal-detecting wands, most people stepped on the feet with no prompting and spread their legs in the most efficient stance. Every second counts when you're processing thousands of passengers a day.

Members of Congress, who often fly home to their districts for the weekend, had begun demanding wait times of no longer than 10 minutes. But security is always about trade-offs: A two-minute standard would delight passengers but cost billions more in staffing; ignoring wait times would choke the system.

After I was confirmed as TSA administrator in 2005, one of the first things I did in office was to attend screener training at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

I sat down at a computer with Gary, a solidly built guy in his 40s with a mustache and a shaved head. Gary pointed at a screen that simulated the carry-on bag monitors at checkpoints. "What do you see?" he asked, a half smile on his face.

I stared at the series of colorful, ghostly images that Gary froze on the screen and tried to pick an easy one. "Well, that's a computer or some electronic, there are wires, maybe a battery." The sharp edges were easy to pick out, and the recognizable pattern of a motherboard jumped out. "But I don't know about that big orange blob on top of it."

"Right," said Gary. "The orange-colored part…. That means it's organic. Anything made of organic material—clothes, shoes, food—it's all going to register orange here."

As a confidence boost, Gary gave me a series of images with guns and knives in various positions. Knives lying flat were giveaways, but when viewed lengthwise, they had very little visible surface. Explosives were a whole different story. A plastic explosive like C4 is organic and dense. It appears as a heavy orange mass. Unfortunately, a block of cheddar cheese looks roughly the same.

As we started testing with a moving scanner, Gary warned me that too many false positives would be a big problem. A "hair-trigger" strategy would get me flunked. Images with guns took about one second to identify. Clear bags took roughly five seconds to double check for blade edges. It was cluttered bags—with their multihued oranges, blues, greens and grays jumbled together—that were the killers.

I wish that more of our passengers could see the system from the perspective of a screener. It is here, at the front lines, where the conundrum of airport security is in sharpest relief: the fear of missing even the smallest thing, versus the likelihood that you'll miss the big picture when you're focused on the small stuff.

Clearly, things needed to change. By the time of my arrival, the agency was focused almost entirely on finding prohibited items. Constant positive reinforcement on finding items like lighters had turned our checkpoint operations into an Easter-egg hunt. When we ran a test, putting dummy bomb components near lighters in bags at checkpoints, officers caught the lighters, not the bomb parts.

I wanted to reduce the amount of time that officers spent searching for low-risk objects, but politics intervened at every turn. Lighters were untouchable, having been banned by an act of Congress. And despite the radically reduced risk that knives and box cutters presented in the post-9/11 world, allowing them back on board was considered too emotionally charged for the American public.

We did succeed in getting some items (small scissors, ice skates) off the list of prohibited items. And we had explosives experts retrain the entire work force in terrorist tradecraft and bomb-making. Most important, Charlie Allen, the chief of intelligence for the Department of Homeland Security, tied the TSA into the wider world of U.S. intelligence, arranging for our leadership to participate in the daily counterterrorism video conference chaired from the White House. With a constant stream of live threat reporting to start each day, I was done with playing defense.

But the frustrations outweighed the progress. I had hoped to advance the idea of a Registered Traveler program, but the second that you create a population of travelers who are considered "trusted," that category of fliers moves to the top of al Qaeda's training list, whether they are old, young, white, Asian, military, civilian, male or female. The men who bombed the London Underground in July 2005 would all have been eligible for the Registered Traveler cards we were developing at the time. No realistic amount of prescreening can alleviate this threat when al Qaeda is working to recruit "clean" agents. TSA dropped the idea on my watch—though new versions of it continue to pop up.

Taking your shoes off for security is probably your least favorite part of flying these days. Mine, too. I came into office dead set on allowing people to keep their shoes on during screening. But, contrary to popular belief, it isn't just Richard Reid's failed shoe-bomb attempt in December 2001 that is responsible for the shoe rule. For years, the TSA has received intelligence on the terrorists' footwear-related innovations. Some very capable engineer on the other side is spending a lot of time improving shoe bombs, which can now be completely nonmetallic and concealed in a normal street shoe. There's still no quick way to detect them without an X-ray.

I was initially against a ban on liquids as well, because I thought that, with proper briefing, TSA officers could stop al Qaeda's new liquid bombs. Unfortunately, al Qaeda's advancing skill with hydrogen-peroxide-based bombs made a total liquid ban necessary for a brief period and a restriction on the amount of liquid one could carry on a plane necessary thereafter.

Existing scanners could allow passengers to carry on any amount of liquid they want, so long as they put it in the gray bins. The scanners have yet to be used in this way because of concern for the large number of false alarms and delays that they could cause. When I left TSA in 2009, the plan was to designate "liquid lanes" where waits might be longer but passengers could board with snow globes, beauty products or booze. That plan is still sitting on someone's desk.

The hijackings of the 1960s gave us magnetometers, to keep guns off planes. After the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, a small amount of international checked baggage was scanned and people were required to fly with their luggage. After 9/11, the TSA was created and blades were banned.

Looking at the airport security system that we have today, each measure has a reason—and each one provides some security value. But taken together they tell the story of an agency that, while effective at stopping anticipated threats, is too reactive and always finds itself fighting the last war.

Airport security has to change. The relationship between the public and the TSA has become too poisonous to be sustained. And the way that we use TSA officers—as little more than human versions of our scanners—is a tremendous waste of well-trained, engaged brains that could be evaluating risk rather than looking for violations of the Standard Operating Procedure.

What would a better system look like? If politicians gave the TSA some political cover, the agency could institute the following changes before the start of the summer travel season:

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)

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

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)

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

No Obamacare Exchanges should be created by the States

Obamacare had a bad couple of days before the Supreme Court — so bad that President Obama made some ill-considered comments about the Court from which he still hasn't totally backpedaled. Though the oral arguments over the individual mandate and severability were encouraging, we cannot count on the Supremes to kill Obamacare. Opponents must keep fighting it on all fronts.

The most important front right now is to ensure that states do not create the health-insurance exchanges Obamacare needs in order to operate. Refusing to create exchanges is the most powerful thing states can do to take Obamacare down. Think of it as an insurance policy in case the Supreme Court whiffs.

Exchanges are the new government bureaucracies through which millions of Americans will be compelled to purchase Obamacare's overpriced and overregulated health insurance. Through these bureaucracies, insurance companies will receive hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. Without these bureaucracies, Obamacare cannot work.

Here are just a few reasons why states should refuse to create them.

Jobs. Refusing to create an exchange will block Obamacare from imposing a tax on employers whose health benefits do not meet the federal government's definition of "essential" coverage. That tax can run as high as $3,000 per employee. A state that refuses to create an exchange will spare its employers from that tax, and will therefore enable them to create more jobs.

Religious freedom. In blocking that employer tax, state officials would likewise block Obamacare's effort to force religious employers to provide coverage for services they find immoral — like contraception, pharmaceutical abortions, and sterilization.

The federal debt. Refusing to create exchanges would also reduce the federal debt, because it would prevent the Obama administration from doling out billions of dollars in subsidies to private insurance companies.

The U.S. Constitution. The Obama administration has indicated that it might try to tax employers and hand out those subsidies anyway — even in states that don't create an exchange, and even though neither Obamacare nor any other federal law gives it the power to do so. If that happens, the fact that a state has refused to create an exchange would give every large employer in the state — including the state government itself — the ability to go to court to block the administration's attempt to usurp Congress's legislative powers.

A lower state tax burden. States that opt to create an exchange can expect to pay anywhere from $10 million to $100 million per year to run it. But if states refuse, Obamacare says the federal government must pay to create one. Why should states pay for something that the federal government is giving away?

Bye-bye, Obamacare. That is, if the feds can create an exchange at all. The Obama administration has admitted it doesn't have the money — and good luck getting any such funding through the GOP-controlled House. Moreover, without state-run exchanges, the feds can't subsidize private insurance companies. That by itself could cause Obamacare to collapse.

Unfortunately, ever since Obamacare became law, lobbyists for the insurance companies and others who would financially benefit from it have been wooing state officials with the false promise that a state-run exchange would preserve state control over health care. If the Supreme Court fails to strike down the entire law, they'll say, "Aw, shucks. Now you have to create an exchange."

Nonsense. Obamacare does not and cannot mandate that states create exchanges. Moreover, state-run exchanges do not preserve local control. They will do Washington's bidding, or else they will be commandeered or swept aside.

Even if we assume the Obama administration figures out a way to impose a federal exchange on states, are there any atrocities a federal exchange might inflict that federal regulations could not require state-run exchanges to inflict? Of course not.

That's why every conservative and free-market group, including the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council, has advised states to refuse to create an exchange and to send all related grants back to Washington. Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wisconsin have already done so.

If the Court strikes Obamacare down, state officials who refused to create an exchange will look prescient. If not, they will be positioned to drive a stake through its heart.

SOURCE

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

Chris Christie: America becoming a nation of couch potatoes

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Tuesday that the U.S. is turning into a “paternalistic entitlement society” that will bankrupt the country financially and morally because “we’ll have a bunch of people sittin’ on a couch waiting for their next government check.”

“I’ve never seen a less optimistic time in my lifetime in this country and people wonder why,” the first-term Republican governor said at the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth in New York City.

“I think it’s really simple. It’s because government’s now telling them ‘stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you.’ We’re turning into a paternalistic entitlement society,” he said.

“That will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally because when the American people no longer believe that this a place where only their willingness to work hard … determines their success in life then we’ll have a bunch of people sittin’ on a couch waiting for their next government check,” Christie said.

Much of the blame, Christie said, falls at the feet of politicians at all levels of government who are too eager to please voters.

“I’m not looking to be loved. You see, I think politicians get themselves into the biggest trouble when they care more about being loved than being respected. That’s why we run up these deficits we run up. That’s why we can’t say ‘no’ to anything. Because we care too much about being loved. I’m loved enough at home, believe me — on occasion,” he said.

SOURCE

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

Obama Admin: Your Privacy and All Your Stuff Belong To Us

Did you know that the federal government claims that it can take away your constitutional rights any time that it wants to?

Over the past several decades, there have been an endless parade of laws and executive orders that have been slowly and methodically carving up our rights under the U.S. Constitution. Most Americans are not even aware of the "creeping totalitarianism" that is happening. Most Americans just trust the "authorities" when they tell us that certain things "must be done" in order to keep us all safe.

But even if we gave up all of our privacy, even if we gave up all of our liberties and our freedoms, and even if we gave the government all of our stuff, they still would not be able to keep us safe. It is inevitable that evil people are going to do evil things, and if you are counting on the Obama administration to keep you safe then you are being delusional. Obama is not going to save us from anything.

But Obama will gladly take away our rights and our freedoms if the American people allow him to. The Obama administration seems to have an endless lust for more power. Sadly, if we do give away our rights it will have some very serious consequences. If we freely give away all of the rights that we have been given under the U.S. Constitution it will be incredibly difficult to ever get them back. Giving up liberty for security never works, and if we want to be worthy of being called Americans then we need to start standing up for the republic that our forefathers worked so hard to build.

An executive order that Barack Obama signed recently made headlines all over the nation. The title of the executive order is "National Defense Resources Preparedness" and it is actually an update of a series of previous executive orders.

The original "National Defense Resources Preparedness" executive order (EO 8248) was issued back in 1939. This latest version is very similar to EO 12919 that was signed by Bill Clinton in June 1994. However, several very important changes have been made in this new version.

For example, in Section 201(b) the words "under both emergency and non-emergency conditions" have been added.

So now the federal government can take control of all food, all energy, all health resources, all transportation resources and "all other materials, services, and facilities" in the country even if the United States is not experiencing emergency conditions.
Not that the Obama administration really needed to put that in there. After all, the U.S. government has been operating under a constant state of national emergency since September 14, 2001.

So the Obama administration did not really need to include a new excuse for taking control of everything. The existing "state of emergency" would probably work just fine.
If Barack Obama woke up one day and decided to exercise the powers in this executive order, he would be able to do pretty much anything that he wanted. This executive order would essentially allow Obama to declare a state of martial law in the United States even during a time when no emergency was happening.

Much more HERE

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

The motives of "Deep Throat": Mark Felt

Felt was no. 2 in the FBI

As the 40th anniversary of Watergate impends, we are to be bathed again in the great myth and morality play about the finest hour in all of American journalism.

Woodward and Bernstein paint Deep Throat, writes Holland, as a “selfless high-ranking official intent on exposing the lawlessness of the Nixon White House.” But this is self-serving nonsense.

The truth was right in front of Woodward. His refusal to see it made him a willing or witless collaborator in the ruin of the reputation and career of an honorable pubic servant, Patrick Gray.

Felt was consumed by anger and ambition. When Hoover died, a month before the break-in, Felt, who had toadied to Hoover, saw himself as Hoover’s successor. But President Nixon went outside the bureau to name Gray from the Department of Justice acting director.

Concealing his rage and resentment, Felt wormed himself into Gray’s confidence, and then set out to destroy Gray. Felt’s method: Leak discoveries of the Watergate investigation to a cub reporter at the Post, which everybody in Washington read, rather than to veteran journalists known to be FBI outlets. This would cover Felt’s tracks.

Published in the Post, the leaks of what the FBI was uncovering would enrage Nixon and make Gray appear an incompetent unable to conduct a professional investigation. This would make it unlikely that Nixon would ever send Gray’s name to the Senate for confirmation as permanent director.

And if Gray, an outsider, fell because he couldn’t keep the FBI from leaking, Nixon might turn to Felt, the ranking insider who could button up the bureau like Hoover did.

By ingratiating himself with Gray as he set out to discredit and destroy him, Felt expected that when Gray was passed over by Nixon, he would recommend to Nixon that he appoint his loyal deputy, Felt, as director. Even if cynical and vicious, the scheme was clever.

Until Nixon found out Felt was the leaker in late 1972, he was considering Felt for the top job. Felt’s machinations and deceptions at the apex of the FBI make Nixon’s White House appear in retrospect to have been a cloistered convent of Carmelite nuns.

More revolting than the ruin of Gray’s reputation was what Felt did to the good name of the bureau he professed to love. By leaking what agents were learning about Watergate, he was discrediting the FBI.

Inside the government, he made the FBI look like an agency of bumblers who could not keep secrets. Outside the government, the FBI looked like a three-toed sloth, while a fleet-footed and fearless Washington Post was unearthing the truth.

The FBI appeared beaten at every turn by the brilliant Post, when it was the FBI’s homework Felt was stealing and the Post was cribbing. Woodward and Bernstein were glorified stenographers.

And though Deep Throat was portrayed as a man sickened by the wiretaps and break-ins by the White House, Felt himself, writes Holland, “authorized illegal surreptitious entries into the homes of people associated with the Weather Underground.”

Mark Felt was a snake. He used the Post to destroy his rivals and advance his ambitions, and the Post didn’t care what his motives were because Felt was assisting them in destroying their old enemy.

More HERE

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

Breivik ‘has sympathizers’

As debate continues over whether confessed Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik is insane, an ideological warrior, simply evil or all of the above, chilling details continue to emerge about how he thinks. Among them, that he still has no regrets over killing 77 persons last summer, wishes he’d been able to carry his attacks further, and that he has sympathizers both in Norway and abroad.

Oslo-based newspaper Aftenposten has been publishing a steady stream of excerpts from records of lengthy conversations between Breivik and police investigators, court-appointed psychiatrists and prison officials during the past several months. On Friday came more details from the 310-page report written by a second team of court-appointed psychiatrists who reversed an earlier evaluation of Breivik by claiming he’s not insane after all.

They could find no evidence, for example, that Breivik’s ongoing references to “we” instead of “I” when discussing his attacks is a sign of any “identity disturbance.” Rather, they contend in their report, it’s because “he has sympathizers in Norway and other countries.” They wrote that Breivik has received many letters of support since he bombed Norway’s government headquarters on July 22 and then gunned down scores of people, mostly youth, at a Labour Party summer camp on the island of Utøya.

“While in custody he’s received a steady stream of sympathy declarations from like-minded persons,” the psychiatrists wrote, adding that they “therefore find no basis for interpreting his extreme and unrealistic political perceptions and goals as a sign of psychotic thought processes.”

Psychiatrists Agnar Aspaas and Terje Tørrissen also reported that they studied the right-wing extremist online milieu where Breivik was an active participant. “It’s well-known … that there are political subcultures that adhere to the extreme political ideas that (Breivik) has defended,” they wrote. They believe that Breivik has reason to believe he is not alone in his beliefs that Norway and Europe need to be protected from ongoing immigration by Muslims.

Breivik recently admitted that he fabricated the existence of the organization for which he initially claimed he was a commander, Knights Templar, but neither Aspaas nor Tørrissen believe that is a sign of psychosis either. “He has shown that the entire idea of Knights Templar sprang out of his own fantasy,” they wrote, according to Aftenposten. They believe he simply has wrapped himself into an “unrealistic future dream based on totalitarian and militant ideological svermeri (fanaticism).”

Geir Lippestad, Breivik’s defense attorney, won’t comment on the psychiatrists’ report but has told reporters that his client was satisfied with it.

While the psychiatrists found no psychosis, no suicidal tendencies, no paranoia nor any grand delusions, they claim he does have an extremely over-inflated opinion of himself and that he rejects society in general. In short, he believes he’s right and most everyone else is wrong.

More HERE

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

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)

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

The vast corruption of the "fairness" fraud

by Dr. Robert Owens

Benjamin Franklin told us, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

Socialism is a debilitating confidence game dressed up as an ideology used by demagogues and want-to-be dictators to fool its victims into believing it is possible to have your cake and eat it too. Those who fall under the spell of the charlatans singing this siren song actually come to believe it is fair and just to force some people to labor for the good of others. This is the same type of sophistry and rationalization that was used by the clergy and philosophers of the Antebellum South to justify unending human bondage for an entire race of people because it was for their own good.

This twisted tool of central planners and bureaucratic tyrants teaches those who have not that it is fair and just to take from those who have and re-distribute the plunder as the government decrees. This is not fair! This is not just! To teach that it is raises up generations of people who believe they have a birth-right to that which is not their own forfeiting their true birth-right: the opportunity to succeed through their own efforts. The products of such an educational system are citizens without virtue voting pawns without honor. Not because they have made a personal decision to live without these two attributes but because they have been programmed to believe taking the fruit of someone else’s labor is permissible as long as it will be given to someone else. Theodore Roosevelt said, “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”

Those who drank the Kool-Aid dispensed by the government schools learned that this type of theft is not only permissible it is laudable. They were told and they believe that this is what Robin Hood did: steal from the rich to give to the poor. However, in reality the legend of Robin Hood tells of a fighter for liberty and the sanctity of personal property who robbed the stolen wealth of corrupt government officials so that he could return it to its rightful owners: those who produced the wealth in the first place. However, the leaders of America today have turned the world upside down demanding that people objectified by the name “Millionaires and Billionaires” need to pay their fair share. Yet they never say what that fair share is or when enough will ever be enough. According to Noah Webster, “…if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.”

We look around us and we watch as our beloved United States of America crumbles. Our elected leaders act as if it is their goal to spend us into oblivion. The only way to understand the pronouncements and actions of this administration is if we consider ourselves a conquered people and the Washington-centered oligarchy as an occupying power. We, the silent majority who labor, innovate, and produce are treated as subservient beasts of burden needed and appreciated more for what can be extorted from us than for who we are. Samuel Adams once said, “No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”

It is no wonder that we see such a sorry collection of second-rate scoundrels prancing about on the stage of power. They sell their snake oil of class warfare indoctrinating their victims to be needy and then promising to fill their gnawing need with loot legally taken from others. This immoral process breeds a population without the virtue of self-reliance or the honor of being independent. The soul sapping addiction to eternal government support leads to a nation neither adapted to nor deserving of liberty. When a birthright has been sold for a bowl of stew it cannot be regained by demanding more. Thomas Jefferson said, “Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”

We the present day guardians of America must stand before the tsunami of anti-education that leads our nation away from virtue and into unrighteousness. We must serve as examples working to earn what we receive and refusing to either play the victim or accept the self-imposed victim-hood of those who seek to expropriate the fruit of someone else’s labor. We must stand for righteousness or we will fall before the juggernaut of socialism’s final assault upon the land of the free and the home of the brave.

In the coming election we must choose wisely. We must find someone who is virtuous and who adheres to the principles of constitutionally limited government which alone can protect personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity. Samuel Adams instructed us in this basic truth, “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.”

Douglas MacArthur warned us, “History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”

Finally, looking to the ultimate source of wisdom Proverbs 14:34 tells us, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”

SOURCE

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

Another Leftist fraud

"Red" Ken Livingstone was the far-Left Mayor of London until he was defeated in the last (2008) election by the Conservative Boris Johnson. Ken is trying to get his job back at the next election. He was recently filmed crying while watching one of his own TV commercials. He said he was crying about how much London would lose if he was not re-elected



Ken Livingstone was accused by his own party of crying 'crocodile tears' after it emerged that a political broadcast that made him weep used paid 'supporters’ reading from a script.

The Labour mayoral candidate wept at a screening of his advert featuring 28 unnamed Londoners spelling out why the capital needed Mr Livingstone back in charge.

He had described the saccharine production as a 'real tearjerker'. Labour leader Ed Miliband even patted his shoulder to console the former mayor as he rubbed his eyes during the screening on Wednesday.

In reality, Mr Livingstone had seen the film the night before, raising questions about why he was apparently caught off-guard. Last night Labour admitted that the 'ordinary Londoners' had actually been reading from a script.

They were also paid expenses for their time after the advertising agency BETC hired people from the street. It is also believed one of the 'actors’ is a paid-up member of the Labour Party.

While political parties regularly use scripts for their advertisements, Labour supporters rebuked Mr Livingstone for apparently pretending to cry.

The grassroots website Labour Uncut concluded that either Mr Livingstone's tears were fake or 'he was moved to tears listening to sweet words of flattery that he had practically written himself'.

Labour Uncut's associate editor, Atul Hatwal, added: 'Whether it's tax avoidance, relations with the Jewish community or crocodile tears, this election has virtually become a referendum on Ken Livingstone. 'There's no space in the debate for policies or issues, just the one, overweening flawed personality.'

A spokesman for Mr Livingstone said those appearing in the 'party political broadcast are ordinary Londoners who are backing Ken on May 3'. He added: 'No actors were used in the broadcast.' The campaign team confirmed that those who took part were recruited by the advertising agency and paid expenses.

The 66-year-old's bid to win back the London mayoralty from Tory Boris Johnson has so far been buffeted by controversy. Mr Livingstone was plunged into a race row after saying 'rich Jews' would not vote for him.

The former MP was also damaged by revelations that he paid himself through a limited company, potentially reducing the tax on his income.

Research for Taxation Magazine by experts TolleyGuidance suggested Mr Livingstone paid nearly £78,000 less tax during the three years to June 2011 by putting his income through a private firm.

More HERE

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

The TSA disgraces America again

What the Indians probably don't realize is that many ordinary Americans get treated just as badly by the TSA

The United States has apologised to Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan after he was stopped for an 90 minutes by homeland security agents at a New York airport.

Khan landed at the airport in White Plains, New York, via a private plane on Thursday en route to deliver a lecture at Yale University when he was stopped.

He recounted the experience in the lecture, which media reports said was delayed by several hours because of the incident. "Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself, I always make a trip to America," he said during the lecture. "The immigration guys kick the star out of stardom."

Khan joked: "They (immigration officials) always ask me how tall I am and I always lie and say 5 feet 10 inches. Next time, I am going to get more adventurous. (If they ask me) what colour are you, I am going to say white," he said.

US embassy spokesman Peter Vrooman apologised "for any inconvenience that Mr Shah Rukh Khan may have experienced".

The Indian Government reacted angrily to Khan's detention. This "policy of detention and apology by the US cannot continue", External Affairs Minister S M Krishna said. "We need an assurance that this won't happen again," Krishna said after US customs and border protection officials expressed 'profound' apologies for holding Khan.

In 2009 the actor was detained for two hours at Newark airport and was released after India's embassy in the US intervened. The actor said then that he was stopped because he had a Muslim name. US customs officials denied that Khan had been detained, saying he was questioned.

Reports from India said Mr Krishna has asked India's ambassador in the US, Nirupama Rao, to lodge a protest with Washington. Indian MP Rajeev Shukla said the detention was "totally uncalled for". The Bollywood film industry has also expressed outrage at the treatment of the actor.

SOURCE

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

A different "in memoriam" for Mike Wallace

Debbie Schlussel wishes for him to rot in hell

Count me out of the parade of morons mourning scumbag propagandist Mike Wallace.

He was no journalist. Just a smug, arrogant, agenda-driven fraud who said he admired mass-murderer Yasser Arafat and went out of his way to defame Israel and American patriots who served our country.

The man was a lying, bigoted, anti-Israel, America-hating piece of crap who compared Israel to Islamic terrorists, lionized the Palestinians, never asked tough questions to Yasser Arafat, and crucified Israeli leaders, like Menachem Begin. And that’s not to mention how this cretin deliberately defamed a real American patriot, General William Westmoreland, for his role in the Vietnam War, which Wallace and his fellow liberals were against. He attacked America while we were in Vietnam and helped us lose the war in the media while we were winning it on the ground. He attacked Ronald Reagan, the Shah of Iran, business owners, and every other force of stability and or good in America and the world, helping to usher them out.

I find it interesting that missing from the eulogies and beatifications for this schmuck, Wallace, are his jokes about how Blacks and Hispanics would easily get ripped off by the California banks because it’s hard to understand contracts “if you’re reading them over watermelon or tacos.” (This charlatan invoked his long-forgotten and self-despised Jewish heritage to get out of the flap over his dumb comments.) But liberals like him can–and did–get away with this stuff. Because, hey, he did years of sympathetic interviews with Yasser Arafat and other liberal pet figures, so anything goes. Read some excerpts of Wallace interviews with Arafat. They couldn’t have been more soft and uncritical.

Also missing from the remembrances of Wallace are that he usually got the facts wrong, in addition to skewing his reports to his agenda. For example, if you watch the sympathetic video, below, of Wallace describing the Palestinians “struggle,” and showing Israelis as morally equivalent to these bloody terrorists, you’ll note that Wallace reported Yasser Arafat’s birthplace as Jerusalem. Reality check: Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt.

And he lied about numerous other things. In the video, Wallace shows his friend, Kamal Nasser, the late PLO spokesman, saying that “Zionists invented terrorism.” Wallace never questions it, and in fact, makes that his narrative, telling us about “Jewish terrorists,” as he grills late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and invokes the King David Hotel bombing. But he fails to note that the King David Hotel was only bombed after phone call warnings left by the Irgun seven days before that they were going to bomb it. There was ample warning to the British that it was a target. It was done because the British used the hotel as their command center, had arrested 2,500 Jews, killed several innocent Jews, some of them Holocaust survivors, for absolutely no reason, and helped prop up Arab terrorists against the Jews. The British had also seized documents from the Jewish Agency about its intelligence on Arab activities, turning it over the Arabs and sending many Jewish spies to certain death. It was war.

In contrast, Wallace praises Arafat in Lebanon (a country he destroyed, as his PLO/Fatah Fedayeen raped and mass murdered thousands, most of them Shi’ite Muslims). Wallace tells us, “Yasser Arafat drew back from confrontation, sought to hold his own hotheads in check . . . sought a ceasefire.” HUH?! As I’ve noted over the years, even the anti-Israel New York Times reported accurately on how Yasser Arafat sent his PLO terrorists to rape girls in front of their fathers, and murder sons in front of their families, then took over their homes en masse. But, instead of reporting any of this, Wallace reported on, “The Palestinians of the camps, yearning for their homeland.”

More HERE

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

ELSEWHERE

US jobless claims unexpectedly rise: "New claims for unemployment benefits rose last week to their highest level since January, a development that could raise fears the labor market recovery was stalling after job creation slowed in March. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 380,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's figure was revised up to 367,000 from the previously reported 357,000."

The left resumes its war on history: "What does an Argentine-born Cuban Communist revolutionary executed in the Bolivian jungle 45 years ago have in common with a small town on Ireland's west coast? Apart from tenuous ancestral connections, the answer is nothing. Recent attempts, however, to manufacture such an association have provided yet another illustration of the left's on-going determination to whitewash history."

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

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)

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

Democrat contempt for the traditional family bubbles to the surface

Marx taught that the family was the chief obstacle to socialism

The Obama campaign is engaged in a frantic damage limitation exercise after a top Democratic strategist prompted a wave of indignation by claiming that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann had ‘never really worked a day in her life’.

Hilary Rosen, a lobbyist and party operative whose firm advises the Democratic National Committee, took aim at the mother of five and multiple sclerosis survivor during a discussion about the economy on CNN.

'What you have is, Mitt Romney running around the country saying, 'Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues,’ she said. ‘And when I listen to my wife, that's what I'm hearing.

'Guess what: his wife has never really worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kind of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future.'

She continued: 'There's something much more fundamental about Mitt Romney. 'He seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women, and I think that comes across, and I think that that's going to hurt him over the long term. He just doesn't really see us as equal.'

The comments were a gift for the Romney campaign, which is struggling to close a sizeable gender gap and has been accused by Democrats of waging a ‘war on women’ by advocating de-funding of Planned Parenthood and restricting contraception rights.

Mrs Romney immediately entered the debate by joining twitter and sending out her first tweet, using the handle @AnnDRomney: ‘'I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.’

Rosen responded via Twitter: 'I am raising children too,' Rosen replied. 'But u do know that most young american women have to earn a living AND raise their kids don't u?'

But Obama campaign realised immediately that Rosen’s comments were politically disastrous because they fuelled a narrative that elitist liberal women have disdain for mothers who choose to look after their children.

Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, tweeted: ‘I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize.’

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, also took to twitter to brand Rosen's comments 'inappropriate and offensive'.

SOURCE

Bruce Hall comments:

[The Romney family] represent old thinking as far as the left is concerned... the notion of a nuclear family where the father earns an income and the mother is present to guide the development of their children. Much too 1950s and earlier. And definitely racist.

Now a family is any two people plus children. Or maybe it is just any one unwed mother and children. And if they are not the traditional family, then that is even better because they will be tied to the left who is giving them protection and validation.

This has nothing to do with the people who join together and who have children through adoption or artificial insemination. They can be wonderful people, too. This has everything to do with the what constitutes a loyal party member... a loyal voting block of victims.

If the left-controlled government offers perceived social validation and even funding for those outside of the million or so year notion of a family, then there are loyal party voters created. On the other hand, the Ward and June Cleaver prototypical family represents the outdated conservative values and responsibilities of marriage that stand in the way of "the government will make it all better" philosophy.

So, the Romneys are especially to be vilified because they not only have a decades long strong marriage despite Ann's serious illnesses, children who have grown to be responsible and productive adults, a strong faith and morals with a commitment to charity, and the individualism to make their own way in life without looking to the government for a handout in return for fealty to the emperor.

Why do you suppose Ann Romney was so vilified as someone who supposedly didn't understand how Americans had to struggle because she stayed home to raise five children? Why isn't the unwed mother of five children born outside of marriage condemned for not understanding how taxpayers have to struggle to pay their taxes that go to support her irresponsibility? No, it is the traditional mother who is to blame for society's ills. She doesn't understand work. She doesn't understand struggle. She just sits around the house watching soap operas.

Now, Ann Romney is certainly not the poster child for the struggling mother working two jobs to keep food on the table for her children. But neither is Rosen.

Rosen, a Washington power player and partner in a major communications firm, is the former chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America. The truth is, neither Ann Romney nor Hillary Rosen have lives that would look remotely familiar to 99 percent of the world’s women.

The idea that “women’s work” is indeed valuable to society has long been a contention of feminists, so it’s strange to see a prominent Democrat lash out a stay-at-home mother and wife in this fashion. Feminists have agitated for as long as I can remember for society to value and respect the “unpaid work” that women do in the home and society. The fact that Ann Romney doesn’t struggle financially doesn’t make what she does any less valuable. I suspect there is a lot about how she has contributed to her community that we don’t know.

Rosen, by the way, happens to be a lesbian feminist who adopted two children with her former partner before they chose to go in opposite directions. Perhaps she simply feels threatened by what Ann Romney represents... everything Rosen isn't.

Why did Rosen treat her "partnership" so cavalierly? Did her career come first? Well, that's to be admired! Mitt and Ann's faithfulness? That's simply beyond understanding. It's unreasonable in today's world.

But that's the problem with generalizing the way Rosen did. Sure Ann Romney enjoys a financial lifestyle that most people don't have. So, does Michelle Obama. Golly, gosh, gee whiz... so does Hilary Rosen. Well, then they all can't understand, eh?

SOURCE

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

An Adult Fairy Tale

Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal by economist DON BOUDREAUX

Leon Mitrani believes that Canada’s recent sound economic performance is chiefly the result of that country’s “universal, single-payer, government-run health-care system” (Letters, April 12). According to Mr. Mitrani, that system “frees up Canadian corporations from paying that employee expense and boosts their profits and economy.”

Splendid! But if Canada’s economy is boosted by government relieving Canadian employers from having to pay a portion of their workers’ earnings (that is, the portion that would otherwise be paid as employer-provided health-insurance premiums), wouldn’t Canada’s economy be boosted even further if Ottawa relieved Canadian employers also from having to pay wages and salaries? With government picking up employers’ entire tab for hiring workers, the economic boost would be stupendous.

And why stop there? If Mr. Mitrani is correct, Canada’s economy would get a bigger boost yet if the government picked up not only the tab for hiring workers, but also the tab for any and all capital expenses. With government relieving Canadian companies of the need to pay for their own workers, factories, machines, IT, and all other costs of doing business, Canada’s economy would become the envy of the world!

Who knew that the secret of economic success is so simple?

And as my GMU colleague Tom Hazlett points out to me by e-mail,

And, of course, there seems to be about a 4-decade lag in Mr. Mitrani’s model. The Canadian economy underperformed the US regularly and substantially until the 1990s, when Conservative reforms were put in place. The correlations are interesting, including the lags.

SOURCE

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

President of the Twilight Zone

Deconstructing one of President Obama’s speeches can be a bit like taking a trip to an alternate universe. Take his remarks last week to the Associated Press, contrasting his budget vision with that of Paul Ryan and Republicans. All that was missing was a Rod Serling voice-over announcing, “You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.”

For instance, the president denounces the Ryan budget as “thinly veiled Social Darwinism.” One would think that Social Darwinism would mean actually cutting the budget. But in reality, Ryan’s budget increases federal spending by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

Ryan does spend roughly $352 billion less over 10 years on domestic discretionary spending than would the president. The president suggests that this means that children could no longer go to college, the weather service would be abolished, and roads and bridges would crumble into dust. In reality, the largest gap between the president’s spending plans and Ryan’s would occur in 2016, when Ryan would spend $43 billion less on domestic discretionary programs than the president. That amounts to roughly 1.1 percent of projected total federal spending that year. Ryan would, in fact, slightly increase discretionary domestic spending from $1.170 trillion in 2013 to $1.212 trillion in 2022. Social Darwinism should be made of sterner stuff.

And, of course, what presidential speech would be complete without a denunciation of Ryan for wanting to “end Medicare as we know it.” The president’s rhetoric raises the specter of seniors being wheeled out of their hospital beds tomorrow morning. But Ryan has not proposed any changes to the program for current recipients. It is true, of course, that Ryan would restructure Medicare for those under age 55 to give recipients a choice between the traditional program and a voucher that would allow them to purchase private insurance. But, his plan, drafted together with Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, hardly slashed Medicare spending — in 2022, it would spend just $21 billion less than the president’s budget.

The president manages to leave out his own proposal for Medicare, which is to have an unelected 15-member board further reduce payments to physicians. Even Medicare’s own actuaries warn that those cutbacks could lead to hospital closures and reductions in access to care or the quality of care.

Given that estimates of Medicare’s unfunded liabilities run from a low of $25 trillion to as much as $90 trillion, the program is clearly going to have to change. The president may believe his changes are better than Ryan’s, but to pretend that he would leave the program exactly as it is while Ryan would leave sick seniors in the streets to die is simply unstuck from reality.

All this is not to say that the president is not committed to deficit reduction — at least rhetorically. For instance, the president claims, “I’ve eliminated dozens of programs that weren’t working.” Well, maybe. But the total savings from those cuts amounts to less than $100 million. That’s million with an “M,” out of a $3.7 trillion budget. That’s trillion with a “T.”

Back here in the real world, President Obama’s proposed budget never actually achieves balance. The closest he would get is in 2018, when he projects a deficit of only $575 billion. After that, they begin rising again, reaching $704 billion by 2022. Overall, the president’s budget would add an additional $6.7 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years. And, this is despite the president’s call for $1.5 trillion in tax hikes.

Of course, taxes are another area where the president has difficulty squaring rhetoric with reality. For example, the president continues to sell his proposed tax hikes as being about people like him or Warren Buffet paying a little bit more. In reality, his proposed tax increases fall on families and small businesses earning as little as $250,000 per year. In fact, according to economists Kevin Hassett and Alan Viard, “fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations” would be subject to the president’s tax hike.”

At the same time, the president latest big idea for deficit reduction is the so-called Buffett Rule, a new 30 percent minimum tax on the rich, based on the misleading claim that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Actually, the Buffett Rule would raise less than $3.2 billion per year on average according to the Congressional Budget Office, enough to pay for eight hours of federal spending. Alternatively, the revenue from the Buffett Rule could lower the budget for this month from $196 billion to just $193 billion. Obama truly is a deficit hawk.

Cue Mr. Serling: “We’ve moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. We’ve just crossed over into the Obama Zone.”

SOURCE

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

ELSEWHERE

Widespread stimulus fraud? Say it ain’t so!: "I know this will likely come as a huge surprise, but it appears that the almost trillion dollar stimulus bill, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama, has seen widespread fraud."

The cure for humanity’s natural state of abject poverty: "Humanity’s natural state is abject poverty. So how did some portion of the human race manage to escape this natural state? A remarkably insightful new book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard University economist James Robinson provides an answer to that pressing question."

Barack Obama is no centrist: "President Obama chastised the media last week. ... [He] also claimed that he holds positions that 20 or 15 years ago 'would have been considered squarely centrist positions. What's changed is the center of the Republican Party.' ... Yet many in the media don't ask: Where are the moderate Democrats?"

One bit of loony bureaucracy defeated: "One of the more absurd legal consequences of the new rules is that Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s space tourism venture, had to consider non-U.S. nationals who flew to the edge of space from the American west as exports requiring a license from the State Department for each and every foreign passenger (presumably including Sir Richard himself, who is a British). But recently, in a rare fit of regulatory sanity, Virgin Galactic’s U.S. flight operations were removed from ITAR control ..."

US Catholic bishops plea against obeying “unjust laws”: "A panel of the nation’s Catholic bishops said Thursday that their flock 'must have the courage not to obey unjust laws' and called for Catholic political leaders, clergy and laity to pray, fast and speak out for religious liberty during a two-week period that ends on Independence Day."

Jury selection begins in Edwards trial: "Two-time U.S. presidential candidate and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards is about to learn his fate on charges he violated campaign finance rules to hide a mistress as the process to select a jury begins. ... The process of choosing a 12-member jury and four alternates is scheduled to be completed on April 23 followed by opening arguments in the case, according to court documents"

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

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)

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

The genetics of politics

After my broad-ranging comments on the psychology of politics yesterday, I thought I might focus in a little more on the major factor behind one's political stance: genetics. I saw the ground-breaking 1986 article by Martin & Jardine on the heritability of politics as soon as it came out (I had a chapter in the same book) so ever since then I have been pointing out how strong is the genetic influence on political stance. What is not yet clear is WHICH genes are involved and exactly what is inherited.

One fairly straightforward study from a couple of years ago is worth a mention. It ties in nicely with something I found in 1984 -- that Leftists tend to be sensation seekers. They are restless people in search of anything new and different. This can of course lead directly to a desire for change -- which is of course a central feature of Leftist thinking. They are always wanting to change something.

People with left wing views may have their political opinions controlled by a "liberal gene", according to scientists.

The research suggests that some people have an inherent bias against conservative thinking, that is independent of their education or upbringing.

The effect is caused by a neurotransmitter in the brain called DRD4 which could be stimulated by the novelty value of left of centre opinions, say US researchers.

In people who are naturally outgoing, the feature encourages them to seek out companions with unconventional views as they grow up.

This in turn means they tend to form less conventional political viewpoints as adults, according to the study by the University of California and Harvard.

The research, based on 2,000 Americans, is published in the Journal of Politics. It found those with a strain of the DRD4 gene seek out "novelty" - such as people and lifestyles which are different to the ones they are used to. This leads them to have more liberal political opinions, it found.

The person's age, ethnicity, gender or culture appeared to make no difference - it was the gene which counts.

DRD4 is controlled by dopamine which affects the way the brain deals with emotions, pleasure and pain and can therefore influence personality traits.

UC Professor James Fowler said: "It is the crucial interaction of two factors - the genetic predisposition and the environmental condition of having many friends in adolescence - that is associated with being more liberal. "These findings suggest that political affiliation is not based solely on the kind of social environment people experience."

SOURCE

That study is of course far from the end of the story. There are indications of other genes being involved as well. But it clearly has some explanatory power.

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

Are conservatives lazy thinkers?

An article by Eidelman et al. claims that they are and it has predictably got a fair bit of attention from Left-leaning journalists.

I noted the article at the beginning of this month and dismissed it out of hand on the grounds that its taxonomy was wrong: Eidelman had no idea of what conservatives actually think.

Leftist psychologists generally seem to consider it beneath them to talk to such despised people as conservatives so form their impression of conservatism from some simplistic stereotype that has built up among them over the years, a stereotype which is almost wholly wrong. So when they think they are studying conservatism they are not.

I subsequently had a short correspondence with Eidelman but he simply stuck to his definition. I pointed him to my huge historical survey of what conservatism is but he offered no evidence for his view. Evidence is optional among Leftists.

And the more closely I look at his paper the more evident it becomes that my initial critique was correct. He relies, for instance, on the Kerlinger questionnaire about ideology. But what Kerlinger found was that Leftism and Rightism, far from being opposed, are actually unrelated to one-another. In other words, half of all conservatives are Leftists -- which makes no sense at all. Kerlinger had no idea of what conservatism is either.

To put my critique into psychometric terms the measures of conservatism used by Eidelman are simply not valid: They do not measure what they purport to measure.

I could go on with yet more swingeing criticisms (e.g. lack of sampling) but what's the point? Eidelman's work is clearly useless for proving anything.

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

Jonathan Haidt

I sent a link to my article yesterday under the heading "The psychology of politics" to Jonathan Haidt. The article was chiefly concerned with Haidt's understanding of ideology. Below is the gracious reply I received from him:

Dear Prof. Ray:

Thanks so much for appreciating that my motives are more honest. i fully agree with you on the unscientific partisan motives that sometimes distort research.

It is quite possible I've misunderstood leftists. But the love of imposing constraint that you mention is why I give them relatively low scores on liberty, in ch. 12 of my new book. It's not quite the same, psychologically, as deference to an authority, a boss, a leader. I think the left and right are still different here. But yes, the left is often anti-liberty, in service of other values, and I think this is a reason the American left does so poorly, and triggers such resentment.

With best wishes,
jon haidt

It would seem that he has not taken fully on board my contention that nothing Leftists say about themselves can be trusted but maybe his own experience will convince him of that in due course.

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

Media dishonesty and race hustlers

By WALTER E. WILLIAMS

When NBC's "Today" show played the audio of George Zimmerman's call to a Sanford, Fla., police dispatcher about Trayvon Martin, the editors made him appear to be a racist who says: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." What Zimmerman actually said was: "This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. It's raining, and he's just walking around, looking about." The 911 officer responded by asking, "OK, and this guy – is he black, white or Hispanic?" Zimmerman replied, "He looks black." NBC says it's investigating the doctoring of the audio, but there's nothing to investigate; its objective was to inflame passions.

In his Associated Press article titled "Old photos may be deceptive in Fla. shooting case," Matt Sedensky pointed out that the photos carried by the major media were several years old and showed Zimmerman looking fat and mean and Martin looking like a sweet young kid.

Jesse Jackson told the Los Angeles Times that "blacks are under attack" and that "targeting, arresting, convicting blacks and ultimately killing us is big business," adding that Martin is "a martyr." President Barack Obama chimed in by saying, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.
"
Let's look at some non-news cases. On March 14 in Tulsa, Okla., a white couple suffered a home invasion by Tyrone Woodfork, a 20-year-old black man. Ninety-year-old Bob Strait suffered a broken jaw and broken ribs in the attack. His 85-year-old wife, Nancy, was sexually assaulted and battered to death, ending their 65-year marriage.

On March 4, two black Kansas City, Mo., youths doused a 13-year-old boy in gasoline and set him on fire, telling him, "You get what you deserve, white boy." Last summer, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered an emergency shutdown of the beaches in Chicago because mobs of blacks were terrorizing white families.

Several years ago, in Knoxville, Tenn., a young white couple was kidnapped by four blacks. The girl was forced to witness her boyfriend's rape, torture and subsequent murder before she was raped, tortured and murdered. Before disposing of her body, the three men and one woman poured bleach or some other cleaning agent down her throat in an effort to destroy DNA evidence. A jury found the four guilty, and they were sentenced, but because of the judge's drug use, a retrial is being considered.

None of those black-on-white atrocities made anywhere near the news that the Trayvon Martin case made, and it's deliberate. Editors for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune admitted to deliberately censoring information about black crime for political reasons, in an effort to "guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion."

One doesn't have to be a liberal, conservative, Democrat or Republican to see the danger posed by America's race hustlers, who are stacking up piles of combustible racial kindling and ready for a racial arsonist to set it ablaze. Recruiters for white hate groups must love President Obama's demagoguery in saying that a son of his would look like Trayvon but not saying that Melissa Coon's 13-year-old son, who was set on fire, could have looked like a son of his. After all, the president is just as much white as he is black.

Even if the president and his liberal allies in the media and assorted civil rights hustlers don't care much about blacks murdering whites, what about blacks murdering blacks? During a mid-March weekend in Chicago, 49 people were shot, 10 fatally, including a 6-year-old black girl, making for more than 100 murders this year. Philadelphia isn't far behind, with murder clipping along at one a day since the beginning of 2012.

Have we heard Obama make a statement about this carnage or that most homicide victims are black and that their murderers are black? No, and we won't, because black-on-black crime, like black-on-white crime, does not fit the liberal narrative of the continuing problem of white racism.

SOURCE

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

Van Jones: Dishonest, intolerant slavery advocate



Obviously, the tyranny advocates of the world, like Obama and his collectivist buddies, are getting a little scared that the philosophy of freedom has been growing by leaps and bounds recently. So the megalomaniac brigade has ratcheted up its Orwellian propaganda, trying to tell everyone that freedom is slavery, peaceful coexistence is hateful and intolerant, and massive extortion and violent domination is compassionate and noble.

Van Jones, a collectivist state-worshiper comrade of Obama's, recently referred to libertarianism as a "despicable ideology," claiming that libertarians "hate" various groups of minorities, and generally trying to paint people like Ron Paul as Satan. Now, if the average couch potato had said these things, I would guess that he was merely an unthinking parrot of the usual statist propaganda. But in the case of Van Jones, he can't plead ignorance. He says what he says because what he desires above all else is to violently force others to be whatever he thinks they should be, and the idea of freedom interferes with that agenda. He is not alone in his megalomania; almost everyone in "high" public office, of any color, religion, or party affiliation, is there because he wants to dominate his fellow man. Despite being black, Van Jones is, just like Obama, an aspiring slave-master. If you think I exaggerate, read on.

If Mr. Jones was merely stupid, I could believe that he really can't tell the difference between right-wing statist control freaks, and those who believe in the non-aggression principle (libertarians). But he's not that stupid. He is intentionally trying to make his audience accept the idiotic lie that believing that everyone should be allowed to run his own life, make his own decisions, and spend his own money (a.k.a. libertarianism), is the same as hating everyone who isn't like you, and wanting to oppress and enslave everyone else.

Mr. Jones seems to be doing quite a bit of psychological projecting in his accusations. If you want to see an intolerant, hateful, pack-mentality control freak, look no further than Van Jones. Or Obama, for that matter. It is really sad that anyone would believe, based on the color of Obama's skin, that he actually cares about black people. Obama doesn't care about the average American black any more than George Bush cares about me. Despite the patently idiotic tripe we're all taught to the contrary, people don't seek positions of power and control in order to help and serve those whom they seek to control. Do you think Van Jones, or Obama, wanted to be where they are so they could leave you alone? They wanted the "Ring of Power" so they could USE it. And the only way anyone can use the power of "government" is to violently control people. That's all "laws" are: threats of violence.

Let's take an example Van Jones brought up, which even makes many pro-freedom advocates tread softly, for fear of offending anyone. (Don't expect any soft-treading here.) Many of the so-called "anti-discrimination" laws are unjustified and evil. People who grasp the principles of liberty and self-ownership understand this. Take the example Van Jones used, of some racist restaurant owner who refuses to serve blacks, or some other minority group. This makes a fine example of why the belief in "government" is such a horribly dangerous and destructive superstition. If you accept the notion that "government" has the right to violently impose "fairness" and "rightness" upon everyone, then the tyrants (like Obama and his collectivist buddies) can always find a way to trick you into advocating thuggery and oppression.

Imagine, for example, that some white guy went up to Van Jones, and said, "I'm going to follow you around for a few days, to make sure that you're spending enough money at white-owned establishments." How do you suppose he would react? I'm guessing he would have a temporary fit of righteous indignation and moral clarity, and say, "You have no right to tell me how to spend my money!" And he'd be right.

And, for the exact same reason, no one has the right to force some Aryan Nation member to hire a black man. Incidentally, there's a word for forcing someone to serve someone else--which is what Van Jones is advocating. That word is "slavery." I realize that in a country governed mainly by meaningless, emotional, rhetorical mush, that might sound strange to most people. But it's called a principle. Each person owns himself, and owns the fruits of his labors. No one owns anyone else, and no one has the right to take what anyone else has earned without his consent. Freedom means freedom. If someone wants to spend his own money in a way that I think is racist, rude, or economically idiotic, I have no right whatsoever to interfere.

If, for example, some black store owner refuses to serve me because I'm white, or because I have reddish hair, or because I said nasty things about Fuhrer Obama, it is his absolute right to choose not to trade with me. And being someone who actually understands and abides by principles, if anyone tried to force the store owner to serve me--whether via the state violence of "legislation" or by any other means--I would be first in line to defend the store owner's right to be a rude, racist dumbass, by not allowing me in his store.

Why? Because I have moral principles, and I value peaceful coexistence. And peaceful coexistence doesn't mean a giant love-in where everyone is the same. It doesn't mean everyone will like everyone else, or everyone will agree on everything. It doesn't mean everyone will approve of each other's choices or lifestyles. It doesn't mean everyone will say nice things about each other. It means only that people--whatever religious, racial, economic, philosophical, or any other differences they may have--will tolerate the existence of each other, and not initiate violence against each other. That's what it means to be civilized.

Despite how the collectivists have mangled the term, that is what "tolerance" actually means. It doesn't mean you like something, or approve of it--it means that you allow it to be, you don't attempt to violently eradicate it just because you don't like it. It means that, whatever you might think of it, you tolerate its existence. Libertarians do that. Obama and Van Jones do not. Instead, they seek to use the power of the state to violently impose their ideas of fairness and politeness upon the rest of humanity.

The real reason Van Jones hates libertarians--and yes, I do mean "hates"--is because if they get their way, he will become as irrelevant and powerless as he should be. Of course those who crave dominion over their fellow man hate libertarianism, and find it "despicable," because in a world where the principles of self-ownership and non-aggression are understood and embraced, there will be nothing for tyrants like Van Jones to do, no way for them to trick people into giving them power. Libertarianism will always pose a threat to megalomaniacs like Van Jones, because megalomaniacs will always pose a threat to peaceful coexistence, i.e., rational and moral civilization.

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)

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