Is this the ultimate dumbing down of education?  Has educational success now become just a popularity contest?

If "niceness" gets you better grades than intelligence, it seems so.

A recent academic paper says personality is more important than IQ to educational success.  And since the criterion of academic success was GPA I can believe it.  GPAs these days are not a strong indicator of academic ability.  They could well be influenced by "niceness".  Teachers tend to give higher marks to  students whom they like.  And, as we know, GPAs are not a strong indicator of success in later years.  IQ was in the past by far the best predictor of academic success but most of those findings go back to an era where education had not yet been "dumbed down".

Another problem is that high IQ students often find schoolwork boring so treat it cursorily, which is not a good way to get high marks, meaning that GPA marks may not adequately represent ability.

Leftists have always derided IQ because it is one of those pesky inborn differences that obstruct their dream of making everybody equal.  It seems that they have now gone beyond derision and are actively making IQ irrelevant.  Below is a popular summary of the paper followed by the journal abstract.


According to a new review of the link between personality and academic achievement, personality is a better way to predict success at school than intelligence as it's usually measured, by traditional standardized tests. Arthur Poropat, of Griffith University in Australia, compared measurements of what psychologists call the "big five" personality traits — openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism — to academic scores, and found that the students who were rated higher in openness and conscientiousness tended to receive better grades.

"In practical terms, the amount of effort students are prepared to put in, and where that effort is focused, is at least as important as whether the students are smart,” Poropat said in the release accompanying the paper, which was published in Learning and Individual Differences. "And a student with the most helpful personality will score a full grade higher than an average student in this regard."

It makes intuitive sense that both conscientiousness and openness would result in higher grades; it doesn't really matter how smart you are if you can't manage to turn your homework in on time, for one. And another word for openness is curiosity, another obviously necessary factor in learning. Still, it's an interesting way to think about academic achievement for anyone who grew up believing they did well in school simply because they were "smart."

SOURCE

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Other-rated personality and academic performance: Evidence and implications

By Arthur E. Poropat

Abstract

Considerable gaps remain in teachers' and students' understanding of factors contributing to learning and educational outcomes, including personality. Consequently, current knowledge about personality within educational settings was reviewed, especially its relationships with learning activities and academic performance. Personality dimensions have previously been shown to be related to learning strategies and activities, and to be reliably correlated with academic performance. However, personality is typically self-rated, introducing methodological disadvantages associated with informational and social desirability biases. A meta-analysis of other-rated personality demonstrated substantially higher correlations of academic performance with all of the dimensions of the Five-Factor Model of personality, which were not accounted for by associations with intelligence. The combined association of academic performance with all of the Five-Factor Model dimensions was one of the largest so far reported in education. The findings have implications for personality measurement. Teachers are able to assess students' personalities to match educational activities to student dispositions, while students' development of learning capacities can be facilitated by feedback on how their personalities are linked with effective learning.

SOURCE

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White racism has all but vanished from US politics...

...says Jeff Jacoby below.  But how does he know?  Only Leftists are allowed even to mention race these days.  I think Jeff is being a Pollyanna.  I think it is white flight that tells the true story

THE TEMPTATION to play the race card is one that President Obama and his surrogates have too often found irresistible. Think of Attorney General Eric Holder's claim last summer that criticism of the Obama administration is fueled by "racial animus," or Vice President Joe Biden's warning to a largely nonwhite audience in 2012 that Mitt Romney was "going to put y'all back in chains" if he won the White House. Recall Obama himself, predicting that Republicans would demonize him because "he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

Yet there are also times when the president heeds the better angels of his nature, and declines to stoke racial resentments.

One such moment came during an interview last week, when NPR's Steve Inskeep asked Obama if the country is "more racially divided than it was when you took office six years ago." Without hesitating, the president answered candidly: "No, I actually think that it's probably in its day-to-day interactions less racially divided." There may be a perception to the contrary, he acknowledged, but that has more to do with the media-driven focus on particular events, "like Ferguson or the Garner case in New York."

Nor did he take the bait when Inskeep, raising "a couple of data points" that "suggest a broad gulf" between the races, contrasted Obama's overwhelming share of the black vote in his two presidential campaigns with the "rather dramatic" drop in the white Democratic vote. Instead of endorsing Inskeep's inference that "political division between [the] races" is widening, Obama responded mildly that data can be spun to suggest anything. In reality, he noted, "when I was elected in '08, I actually did better among white voters … than John Kerry did."

In fact, Obama's share of the white electorate in 2008 not only surpassed Kerry's four years earlier, but Al Gore's in 2000, Bill Clinton's in 1992, Michael Dukakis's in 1988, Walter Mondale's in 1984, and Jimmy Carter's in 1980. The nomination of a black presidential candidate didn't send white voters fleeing from the Democratic Party — quite the contrary. White racism, once such a powerful force in US politics, is now almost undetectable when Americans go to the polls. Good for the president, at least on this occasion, for not encouraging the myth that blacks don't get a fair shake on Election Day.

Indeed, for all the controversy over voter-ID requirements and other election-law reforms, black participation in the electoral process is more robust than ever. Accusations that such laws are motivated by a desire to suppress minority voting may be cynical or sincere, but if the proof of the pudding is in the turnout, the black franchise is perfectly sound.

"Voting rates for blacks were higher in 2012 than in any recent presidential election, the result of a steady increase in black voting rates since 1996," reported the US Census Bureau in 2013. What's more, with 66.2 percent of black voters casting ballots, turnout among blacks was the highest of any racial group, surpassing the voting rate among whites by 2.1 percentage points. If this is voter suppression, let's have more of it.

Black turnout has been rising everywhere, even in states dominated by Republicans. Jason Riley, author of the new book Please Stop Helping Us, observes that the trend "was most pronounced in red states like Alabama, Kentucky, and Mississippi," and that black voter turnout in 2012 surpassed white turnout by statistically significant margins … [even] in states with the strictest voter-ID laws." When skeptical researchers at PolitiFact dug into Riley's claim, they rated it True.

There wasn't much joy for Obama or his party in last November's midterm elections, but the evidence of democratic engagement among African Americans showed no signs of letup. Overall, black turnout accounted for a higher share of the vote in 2014 than it had in 2010. Once again, it was hard to find significant evidence that voter-ID laws stifled voting, even in GOP strongholds. Looking at seven states below the Mason-Dixon Line, Bloomberg writer Francis Barry found that "the states with a voter-ID requirement, including Louisiana and Florida, had the highest turnout rates; the two states where no ID is required — Maryland and North Carolina — had the lowest."

Racial tensions obviously haven't vanished entirely from American life, but for all intents and purposes, racism as a political factor has. As the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act approaches, Jim Crow is dead in its grave, while black electoral vitality in America is alive and well.

SOURCE

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Microaggression: desperately seeking discrimination

Have you heard of ‘microaggression’? Apparently it is everywhere. According to Wikipedia, ‘Microaggression is a form of “unintended discrimination”... which, without the conscious choice of the user, has the same effect as conscious, intended discrimination.’ Wikipedia provides the pronoun ‘he’ as an example of microaggression: this pronoun apparently makes me, a ‘she’, feel excluded and therefore it is a micro act of aggression. For other ludicrous examples of this nonsense, visit the microaggression project’s website. There you will find posts that read like an embarrassing adolescent diary.

But this is no laughing matter. The idea of microaggression is now having a real effect. For instance, there was the fiasco at Harvard earlier this month, when stickers from SodaStream, an Israeli company, were removed from soda machines because they were seen as an act of microaggression against students of Palestinian origin. There was the case of Professor Val Rust at UCLA, who, in 2013, was fired over spurious allegations of microaggression towards his students. As far as I can tell, his only crime was to ask his students to use better grammar. And, judging by their subsequent manifesto and online petition, he was right to do so.

What is most striking about those waging war on microaggression is the extent to which they have taken leave of reality. They see discrimination and oppression everywhere. Of course, there are plenty of things that need to be challenged in society, and spiked does so on a daily basis. But long gone are the days when women were kept at home, when black people weren’t welcome in pubs, and when gay and lesbian couples had to keep their relationships secret. In education, at work and at home, the old discrimination simply doesn’t exist anymore. Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped some people desperately looking for discrimination in innocent remarks and actions.

For believers in microaggression, the slightest hint of an insult becomes discriminatory, an example of oppression. Anything can potentially be a microaggression, it seems - a comment, an advert, or just a look. You just have to feel hurt or uncomfortable after reading, hearing or seeing something for the ‘offending behaviour’ to be labelled microaggression. It doesn’t matter about the context; it doesn’t matter what the person actually meant; it doesn’t matter if it was just a bad joke between friends. Thanks to the idea of microaggression, you can elevate the most mundane of exchanges into symbols of deep-rooted oppression.

The idea of microaggression encourages people to see everyday comments or behaviour as abusive or discriminatory. And as such, it encourages a socially corrosive form of victimhood. This is bad. Most of the time, people are civil and decent – if you give them a chance they can even be fun, clever and interesting. Yes, bumping into one another has its risks, but you know what – that’s what makes life worth living.

SOURCE

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Contrary to Administration Claims, Only a Tiny Fraction of 'Surge' Border-Jumpers Deported

An investigative report by a Houston television station exposed that only a tiny fraction of the families and children who crossed in the border surge of 2012-14 are being returned to their home countries, despite Obama administration claims that the cases are a priority. According to immigration court records obtained by the station, only a few of the illegal family or child arrivals are qualified to stay in the United States, and the vast majority (91 percent) have simply absconded from their proceedings after release and joined the resident illegal population, where they are no longer a priority for enforcement under the new, expanded "prosecutorial discretion" policies.

The Houston reporters obtained statistics from the immigration courts on 30,467 cases of families and unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who arrived illegally between July 18 and October 28, 2014. Of these, only 22 percent (6,093) have been completed.

In total, 17,042 people were apprehended as family units; 13,425 were UACs.

On December 19, DHS released its year-end enforcement statistics, showing a continued steep drop in deportations. The statistics were accompanied by this statement from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, which seems downright laughable in light of the above facts:

"DHS's 2014 year-end enforcement statistics demonstrate that our front line officers and agents continue to execute their critical mission in a smart and effective way, focusing our resources on convicted criminals and those attempting to illegally cross our nation's borders."

It's not clear to me what is smart or effective about a massive and costly catch-and-release scheme that has resulted in the illegal resettlement of tens of thousands of illegal aliens, with taxpayers now picking up the tab for schooling, health care, housing, public safety, and other expenses, and which has only increased the incentives for more people to try to enter illegally.

In the context of current catch-and-release policies, a focus on border apprehensions as a measure of the effectiveness of border security is meaningless, and deliberately misleading. Apprehensions are not a metric of enforcement when illegal aliens are apprehended and then routinely released under the guise of "deportation proceedings", "asylum applications", or even "budget constraints".

Further, any proposals that claim to want to enhance border security and enforcement by providing more resources, more personnel, more technology, and more infrastructure for immigration agencies without addressing the underlying policies that serve to undercut enforcement should be viewed with great skepticism.

The imperative now is true immigration and border enforcement: more deportations, not just apprehensions, of not only criminals, but recent and not-so-recent arrivals, at the border and in the interior; provisions to prevent illegal employment and access to welfare benefits; a more efficient deportation process without unnecessarily protracted due process; restoration of effective partnerships with local law enforcement; and use of soft detention as a deterrent. These should be among the top priorities for the new Congress.

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.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Saving lives in the Middle East

Faith-based groups race against time, winter cold and Islamist butchers to reduce the slaughter

Paul Driessen

Yazidi and Christian communities trace their Syrian and Iraqi roots back nearly 2,000 years. Now they are being systematically exterminated. Not merely driven out. Exterminated – along with Jews, Bahais and even Muslims insufficiently fundamentalist to suit Islamic State (ISIS) butchers.

While they have not yet attained the scale of Nazi and Communist slaughters, these Islamofascist savages may have surpassed their Twentieth Century predecessors in depravity. They ask terrified children, “Who wants to be beheaded first?” then butcher them in front of the others. They bury people alive. Islamist “soldiers” teach little boys how to slice the heads off every man in “enemy” Syrian tribes. They torture and rape girls and women, before selling them into slavery, prostitution or forced marriage – and demand that surviving women dress “modestly” in black robes, gloves and veils, and be banned from school and public life. They sell their victims’ blood and organs, to finance still more weapons and atrocities.

One of the few safe havens for those who escape is Israel, which provides security, education, healthcare, jobs and religious freedom. Another million-plus refugees have fled to camps and streets in Turkey, whose government and people have become exhausted from trying to feed, clothe and shelter so many that Turkish military forces are now preventing Syrians from entering the country. American, European, Middle Eastern and other promises of weapons and aid have been too little, too late or simply not kept. Even the UN’s World Food Program has barely enough money to feed refugees beyond mid-January.

Terrorized multitudes unable to reach safety in Israel or Turkey are caught between Islamic State hordes and slow, painful deaths from starvation, disease and freezing winter temperatures. Many escaped with only the clothes they were wearing. Many precarious lives have been sustained only because RUN Ministries operates “Community of Hope” refugee camps and safe houses in the region.

These people have seen their relatives hung, shot, beheaded, crucified or beaten to death. They have left everything behind and been hunted down like animals. It they are able to escape, they travel by day and sleep in fields by night, hoping to reach a safe shelter – and hoping it has food, water, blankets, medicines and tents to share. By November 2014, Virginia-based RUN (Reaching Unreached Nations) was protecting 26,000 refugees; by the end of December, the number had skyrocketed to 100,000!

But as president Eric Watt says, it costs some $250,000 to build one Community of Hope camp and equip it with sufficient supplies to last 30 days for 1,000 men, women and children. Merely providing warm blankets costs tens of thousands of dollars. Contributions are sorely needed to save more lives.

In early December, RUN volunteers were forced to ask refugees who had already been in a camp more than a month to move out, at least for awhile, so that newly arrived families could be fed and protected. That would mean going back into the rocky fields, often without even blankets to keep warm at night.

“Please don’t make us leave,” parents pleaded. “If we leave, we are afraid our children will die.”

Meanwhile, Islamic State patrols periodically swoop into RUN camps, to kidnap girls, steal food, poison water supplies, and abuse and murder RUN volunteers and transport drivers.

Mr. Watt recounted the story of Alyssa, a 28-year-old Christian woman whose family was liquidated by ISIS death squads. “After my family was killed, I was kidnapped and brought to a terrorist camp, with more than 100 new widows my age,” she said. “We were forced to become ‘wives’ to these men. If we tried to leave, they would torture us. The other widows told me to obey everything these men said, if I wanted to live. Every night, a man would beat and rape me, and during the day we were forced to cook for the ISIS fighters. Many nights, the men would take turns with us and do very bad things.”

Eventually, Alyssa escaped – but with no family, income or future without RUN’s help, and our aid.

So far, the vaunted “international community” has done little. It has been quick to vilify and condemn Israel for “occupying” Palestinian land and “oppressing” Muslims. But it has done little to stop these Islamic State butchers from annihilating Christians and any others who resist. The “coalition of the willing” has been small and futile. It has provided insufficient aid, only muted outrage, and no calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions for countries aiding and abetting ISIS or ignoring its depredations.

RUN Ministries has built six now-overflowing Community of Hope camps in Northern Iraq and is raising funds to construct four more. It’s purchased 5,000 water filters, to protect people against water-borne diseases, and countless thousands of heavy blankets. It fears that ISIS will continue murdering Yazidis until their millennia-old community is wiped out, and the Middle East is completely cleansed of “infidels.”

Until just a few months ago, Halan was a Yazidi elder, responsible for forty families. When Islamic State neared their village, he led the families into the mountains, where they built smaller makeshift homes that they hoped would be hidden and safe. But the butchers found them. “Their leaders told the terrorists to save bullets,” Halan said. “So they used big knives to cut men’s heads off and chop their bodies into pieces.” They murdered all the men, took the women and left him for dead.

“I had nothing left, and my heart was broken,” he wept. But he found a RUN camp, which took him in.

However, the new Holocaust is continuing, and growing. Thankfully, other private sector organizations have also stepped forward. Gleaning for the World, likewise based in Virginia, collects food, clothing, medicine, medical supplies, furniture and many other items; loads them on pallets; and ships them by air, sea and truck all over the world. Forbes magazine has rated it “the most efficient charity in America.”

Gleaning president Ron Davidson says accounting records demonstrate that every dollar in donations is multiplied 212 times when GFTW uses the money to collect and ship aid internationally.

Gleaning has now teamed up with Glenn Beck’s Mercury One Foundation and other faith-based organizations, Reverend Davidson notes, to raise money and send even more supplies to Iraq, Syria and Turkey. ISIS has trapped some 500,000 desperate people – and is indoctrinating and training teenage boys to become incredibly vicious terrorists. The stupider ones become suicide bombers, while others are groomed for export to foreign countries, to launch coordinated or lone-wolf attacks.

These butchers are an existential threat to families, human rights and religious communities everywhere – not just in Iraq, Syria or the Middle East, but in the United States, Europe and throughout the world.

Only intensified allied military campaigns can stop, roll back and obliterate Islamic State terrorists. However, we private citizens can play vital roles: raising our voices, demanding action, and supporting RUN Ministries, Gleaning for the World, Mercury One and other organizations that are doing all they can to prevent yet more horrific murders, slavery and ethnic cleansing.

There are few better ways to step forward … and begin your 2015 giving … than by helping now.

Via email

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United Nations Going After the First Amendment!

Joe Otto

We have provided in-depth coverage of how the United Nations has tried to attack your Second Amendment rights. So, it should be no surprise for us to tell you that the U.N. is going after your First Amendment rights as well!

The U.N. is pushing for all member countries to adopt ‘hate speech legislation.’ They claim it is to protect “human rights.”

Now, I know what you may be thinking: “What’s so wrong about banning hate speech?” Well, there’s a lot wrong with it! Look at what is happening in the United Kingdom…

The U.K. is facing some pretty serious problems. For one, radical Islamists are terrorizing the country’s citizens on what seems like a daily basis. Sure there are the terrorist threats that pose a real danger to British society. But there are also the common criminals who are terrorizing society.

The U.K. also has a problem with immigration. The EU’s open border policy has led to an influx of unskilled, foreign workers who have leeched off the country’s entitlement system and made it harder for British citizens to find work (sound familiar?).

The country’s solution has been to introduce hate speech legislation banning the use of derogatory language towards ANY group of people!

This is what the U.N. wants for America… They want us to dismantle our First Amendment and force Americans to bite their tongues and accept political correctness.

There was a recent story out of England of a 19-year old man who videotaped himself ripping up a Koran, throwing it in the toilet, and then lighting it on fire.

Instead of protecting his speech rights, the Police brought charges against the man for hate speech and creating a public disturbance.

He now faces crippling fines and maybe even jail time… All for speaking his mind.

There’s also the case of Reality TV-star Katie Hopkins. After word broke that a Scottish nurse had contracted Ebola, Hopkins took to Twitter and wrote a series of tweets that, according to the police, constitute “hate speech.”

I realize that this is happening in the United Kingdom, not the United States. But it is important to paint this backdrop because if the United Nations had its way, the U.K.’s hate speech laws would be copied worldwide!

This is what they want in the United States. They want the police to arrest people for saying ‘mean things.’

And I’m not going to sugarcoat it… this is already happening here in the United States. Countless people have been arrested and harassed by police for writing disparaging comments about Barack Obama and the Democrat party.

If criticizing the Democrats were a crime, you’d have to lock me up and throw away the key…

Obviously I say that in jest, but this is actually what some Liberals want…  They want for the government to police what citizens say and write. They want to stop you from talking about “inflammatory” topics. They want the ability to fact-check their opponents and take down Internet posts they deem to be “incorrect.”

I mean, look at the situation in Scotland. Do you know why Scottish Police are looking into Katie Hopkins’ tweets as hate speech? They enforced the law because they were inundated with citizens complaining about the posts.

Not only have these politicians made it illegal to talk bad about someone, but also they have conditioned the people to run to police the minute they hear something that offends them.  That, to me, is worse.

This is the Left’s end-game. They want this country to become a place where citizens are terrified of opening their mouths. They are creating a modern day “1984” where the government monitors all your conversations and punishes any speech it doesn’t agree with it.

But more importantly, they want to gut the First Amendment and force citizens to comply with draconian government speech regulations.

This isn’t just hyperbole… Harry Reid tried to change the First Amendment this past year. He tried to gut the Constitution to stop you from engaging in political speech.

That failed. Now, the United Nations swoops in to finish the job and dismantle the First Amendment under the auspices of fighting “hate speech.”

I hate racism and bigotry just as much as anyone else. But I am not willing to abolish our Freedom of Speech just to fight it.

SOURCE

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Are gun owners mentally unstable?

Asserting that gun owners are mentally unstable would appear to be the hidden agenda behind the piece of research reported below.  What they found was that mental instability was just as likely in non-gun homes as in gun homes.  How disappointing for them!

Psychiatric Comorbidity, Suicidality, and In-Home Firearm Access Among a Nationally Representative Sample of Adolescents

Joseph A. Simonett et al.

ABSTRACT

Importance
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among US adolescents, and in-home firearm access is an independent risk factor for suicide. Given recommendations to limit firearm access by those with mental health risk factors for suicide, we hypothesized that adolescents with such risk factors would be less likely to report in-home firearm access.

Objectives
To estimate the prevalence of self-reported in-home firearm access among US adolescents, to quantify the lifetime prevalence of mental illness and suicidality (ie, suicidal ideation, planning, or attempt) among adolescents living with a firearm in the home, and to compare the prevalence of in-home firearm access between adolescents with and without specific mental health risk factors for suicide.

Design, Setting, and Participants
Cross-sectional analysis of data from the National Comorbidity Survey-Adolescent Supplement, a nationally representative survey of 10?123 US adolescents (age range, 13-18 years) who were interviewed between February 2001 and January 2004 (response rate 82.9%).

Exposures
Risk factors for suicide, including a history of any mental health disorder, suicidality, or any combination of the 2.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Self-reported access to a firearm in the home.

Results
One in three respondents (2778 [29.1%]) of the weighted survey sample reported living in a home with a firearm and responded to a question about firearm access; 1089 (40.9%) of those adolescents reported easy access to and the ability to shoot that firearm. Among adolescents with a firearm in home, those with access were significantly more likely to be older (15.6 vs 15.1 years), male (70.1% vs 50.9%), of non-Hispanic white race/ethnicity (86.6% vs 78.3%), and living in high-income households (40.0% vs 31.8%), and in rural areas (28.1% vs 22.6%) (P<.05 for all). Adolescents with firearm access also had a higher lifetime prevalence of alcohol abuse (10.1% vs 3.8%, P<.001) and drug abuse (11.4% vs 6.9%, P<.01) compared with those without firearm access. In multivariable analyses, adolescents with a history of mental illness without a history of suicidality (prevalence ratio [PR], 1.13; 95% CI, 0.98-1.29) and adolescents with a history of suicidality with or without a history of mental illness (PR, 1.20; 95% CI, 0.96-1.51) were as likely to report in-home firearm access as those without such histories.

Conclusions and Relevance
Adolescents with risk factors for suicide were just as likely to report in-home firearm access as those without such risk factors. Given that firearms are the second most common means of suicide among adolescents, further attention to developing and implementing evidence-based strategies to decrease firearm access in this age group is warranted.

JAMA Psychiatry. Published online December 30, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.1760

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Muslim Brutality versus the Western tradition

I think most of us recoil in horror when we read of the savage  practices in Syria and Iraq by the "Islamic State". You don't have to know much history, however, to realize that they are "good" Muslims.  Their deeds are well in line with what Muslims have done for centuries.

Take just one example:  The Ottoman succession.  The Muslim Ottoman Empire covered most of the territory that was "owned" for nearly a millennium by the old Byzantine Greek Christian empire -- centered on modern Turkey.  And given Muslim rules about multiple wives, Ottoman emperors usually had multiple sons.  So when an emperor died, which son became the next emperor?  That was always a very competitive race indeed, with various factions of the court supporting rival sons.  So when a new emperor was finally declared, what was the first thing he did?  He killed off all his brothers!  Muslims have always been savages.

So how do we explain that?  There have been plenty of times when there have been rival claims to Western thrones but nothing like the Ottoman practice has been customary.

No doubt, Leftists would be able to come up with some cultural explanation for it but I keep some track of the scientific literature on genetics (e.g. here) and you cannot be aware of that literature without being struck at times by something I once heard Hans Eysenck say: "It's all genetic".  Before I go further down that path, however, let me contrast the "Western" practice, beginning with the founders of Western civilization, the ancient Greeks.

And who was the most powerful ancient Greek?  Alexander of Macedon, Alexander the Great.  He conquered much of the ancient world, most notably the great Persian empire.  And Greeks had no love of the Persians.  Anyone who knows of the exploits of Pheidippides and of Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae will have some inkling of that.

So what did Alexander do when he defeated the Persians at Issus?  All the Persian royal family were captured.  The Muslim response would of course have been automatic:  Kill them all.  But Alexander did no such thing.  He treated the Royal family with all the courtesy that he felt was due to  Royal personages.  Enough said, I think.

So let us skip forward to 1870 and the battle of Sedan, a battle that had nothing to do with motor cars.  Sedan is a place in France which is  roughly pronounced  as "say dong". Prussian chancellor Bismarck had deliberately insulted the French emperor, Napoleon III and French ideas of honor made Napoleon immediately declare war on the Germans. Not wise.

As with Alexander, Bismarck had a victory that was so sweeping that he captured Napoleon himself.  So was it "Off with his head"!?  Not at all.  There are to this day photographs of Napoleon seated comfortably and engaged in friendly conversations both with Bismarck and the Kaiser.  And Napoleon III was eventually released on the condition that he move to England and stay there, which he did.

So our forebears have always had an instinct of respect for others, which Muslims clearly have not had and still do not have.

But what about Saladin?  someone will say.  Saladin defended the Holy Land against the crusaders and was notable for his mercy.  So here I come to what I think is the crux of the matter.  Saladin was a remarkable man.  He was a Kurd, a people previously conquered by the Arabs.  And yet through sheer talent, he came to be the leader of the Arab armies.  And his military skills were such that he had great authority.  It was very hard for anyone in his retinue to question his judgment.  So he could be merciful without getting substantial blowback from the Arabs he led.

So my contention is that race matters, infernally incorrect though that might be.  The Kurds are the descendants of the Medes, a quite different race from the Arabs but with a long history of high civilization.  And I think that Muslim brutality is basically Arab.  And it is an inter-Arab contest at the moment in Syria.

I am not going to make much of the racial identity of the Kurds, though I do note that they speak an Indo-European language so are probably our cousins.  Certainly, Kurdistan is the only really orderly part of the failed state that is Iraq today.  Kurds are still more civilized than the Arabs.

The distinction I want to make, however, is between Arabs and non-Arabs.  Arabs are good at only one thing:  Self-sacrifice in war.  But that one thing did enable them eventually to conquer most of the Middle East:  Persians, Assyrians, Kurds etc.  Though the Christian Greeks of Byzantium resisted them for 500 years.  In the end it was the Venetians under the remarkable Doge Dandolo who destroyed the Byzantine regime.

And the Middle East is the cradle of civilization.  The people conquered by the Arabs were often highly civilized.  And it was their continued limited functioning under the Arabs which gave the Arab world a veneer of civilization.  You can read here all about that.  The claim that the Arab world conserved the wisdom and culture of the Greeks and Romans during the Dark Ages of the West is utter tosh.  There was no Dark Age in Byzantium and it was the Byzantine Greeks who brought their treasured books and learning to Italy and thus sparked the Renaissance.

So I would argue something fairly uncontroversial among geneticists:  That Arabs are genetically different.  And looking at the history of their behaviour, I would extend the claim to it being their genetic makeup that accounts for Muslim savagery and brutality.  And from Alexander through Saladin to Bismarck we stand outside that.

But (pace Eysenck) it's not all genetic.  Culture does play a part.  And Islam is Arab culture embodied.  And after more than  1,000 years of Arab/Muslim domination, Arab attitudes have filtered to varying degrees into the minds of Muslims everywhere.  So in racially very different people from the Arabs, Pakistanis in particular, we find today Arab attitudes and behaviour.

And there is nothing more pernicious culturally than a relatively recent invention called socialism.  It was socialism that gave us Hitler and Stalin.  But those excursions did come to an end and normal Western civilization has returned to both Germany and Russia, though both, of course, have their own characteristics -- JR

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Alan Caruba reminds Americans



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Another hysterical Leftist accusation becomes unglued

As you undoubtedly know, liberal politicians and pundits have been hailing the claim that House Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana attended a meeting of a white supremacist group in 2002 as the biggest story since Bridgegate. Scalise himself said that he had no recollection of addressing such a meeting, but if he did it was an error in judgment for which he apologizes.

Now it turns out that the alleged incident may never have happened at all. To back up: the claim is that Scalise addressed a meeting of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) at the Landmark Best Western Hotel in Metairie, Louisiana in 2002. EURO was a tiny group associated with David Duke, who by 2002 was political poison. (He pled guilty to tax evasion and mail fraud in December 2002 and served time in prison.) At the time, Scalise was a state legislator and was going around speaking to various local civic groups about a tax proposal in Louisiana’s legislature.

The man who arranged Scalise’s appearance at the Metairie Hotel now says that the report is simply wrong. Scalise didn’t address the EURO conference, but rather an equally small meeting of the Jefferson Heights Civic Association that was held in the same hotel conference room, earlier in the day:

[Kenny] Knight said he rented and paid for the hotel conference room for the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a group founded by Duke. Since he had already paid for the space, Knight said, he decided to also hold his local civic association meeting at the Metairie hotel. He stressed that the two gatherings were not connected.

“Steve Scalise did not address a EURO conference. … The conference was two-and-a-half hours later,” Knight said. …

Knight said Scalise, then a state representative, spoke to the civic association and was probably unaware the EURO conference was being held in the same room later that day. Knight and Scalise primarily knew each other as neighbors and not through politics necessarily, Knight said.

“The conference wasn’t going to start until 1 p.m., so I decided to have the members of the civic association there Saturday morning,” he said, “My relationship with Steve Scalise was as a neighbor. I don’t know that Steve Scalise and I ever talked about politics.”

Knight said about 18 members of the civic association showed up for the meeting, where Scalise spoke on a piece of tax legislation working its way through the Louisiana Legislature. A few people who arrived early for the EURO conference were also in the room and may have made the forum post that White discovered, Knight said. A member of the local Red Cross also spoke at the local civic association meeting that day, Knight said.

“There were not (EURO) signs. There were not banners” at the civic association meeting, Knight said.

Knight said he was not a member of EURO and did not arrange for any speakers at the 2002 conference, he said. He only booked and paid for the room as a favor to Duke, a personal friend whose campaigns he had worked on in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Knight’s then-girlfriend Barbara Noble, who was present at the event, agrees that Scalise spoke to the Jefferson Heights Civic Association, not EURO....

UPDATE: EURO put out a press release the day before the “workshop” that listed scheduled speakers. Scalise was not one of them. It appears that the Scalise “scandal” is going the way of the University of Virginia rape story.

SOURCE

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Have We Finally Turned the Corner?

As 2014 came to a close, it was all about good economic news. Leading off the parade: In December, the Dow Jones Industrial Average capped off a torrid year of 7.5% growth when it reached 18,000 for the first time. Meanwhile, GDP grew at a 4.6% annual rate in the second quarter and an even faster 5% in the third – a pace not seen since 2003. And on top of that, Americans saved $14 billion at the gas pump in 2014, and could save even more this year. Things are looking a bit brighter for 2015.

With all that good economic news, experts feel the job market will further strengthen in 2015 so the headline unemployment rate will slide ever closer to 5%. The labor market may remain a little bit soft as the long-term unemployed will be the last to find work, but as a whole it’s no wonder the Left is boasting of the “Obama boom.” Even those on the Right are admitting this may end the “Age of Suck.”

This general feeling of economic optimism is reflected in increasing consumer confidence. While some worried about sluggish Black Friday sales as well as slower than expected last-minute shopping at retailers as the Christmas season wound down, online purchasing was strong enough to keep sales right around their predicted growth rate for the 2014 season.

While some try to credit Barack Obama for the rebound, the good news is rooted in two areas the president has tried his best to obstruct.

One is an overall slowdown in government spending growth, which is declining as a percentage of GDP. Congress hasn’t done nearly enough to cut spending given its tendency to govern by continuing resolution rather than a set budget – meaning the Obama spending bonanza of 2009 and 2010 is the new minimum.

But as columnist David Harsanyi puts it, “After [2010], Congress, year by year, became one of the least productive in history. And the more unproductive Washington became, the more the economy began to improve.”

The key date is 2010, when Republicans took over the House. Harsanyi argues gridlock has created part of this improvement, and there’s a compelling argument for that point. Imagine what we may have been saddled with had Republicans not taken over the House in 2010: endless government “stimulus” programs, cap and trade, and a faster implementation of ObamaCare for starters – all leading to a national debt far larger than the already-astronomical one we’re facing now.

Another part of the economic rebound stems from lower oil prices, which have plummeted by nearly half in the last six months. That steep drop is now reflected in gas-pump prices, resulting in what Citigroup estimates as an average $1,150 annual boost to consumers. This boom could have been amplified still further if not for Obama’s stalling of the Keystone XL pipeline or his refusal to open up federally controlled land to oil exploration. An activist EPA also waits in the wings with the potential for crippling regulations similar to those imposed on the coal industry.

Obama can try his best, but no president has figured out a way to kill the American free enterprise system. Its resilience has brought us out of numerous depressions, panics, recessions and economic slumps over the years as enough people found a way to work through or around the situation.

We will begin to see the effects of a truly divided government, with Republicans now totally in charge of Congress and Obama threatening to veto more legislation. “I haven’t used the veto pen very often since I’ve been in office,” Obama not-so-subtly threatened last month. “Now, I suspect, there are going to be some times where I’ve got to pull that pen out.”

While the economy is improving – at least according to the numbers our government releases, if not necessarily everyone’s personal situation – it will be up to those respective sides to make the case why things could be even better if their vision prevails. It’s a battle that will be joined as contenders for the 2016 presidential election come onto the scene and spell out their plans to continue the momentum.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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New Year's, The 'Especially American Tradition'

President Ronald Reagan called the New Year’s celebration “an especially American tradition.” It’s a time brimming with the “optimism and hope we're famous for in our daily lives—an energy and confidence we call the American spirit.” This spirit is what gives Americans the vigor to raise their glasses year after year, full of enthusiasm for a better future.

Tonight, nearly 72 percent of adults will be spending the holiday at home, according a recent Rasmussen Reports poll. Now, this could be due to a pinched wallet after the Christmas holiday, or perhaps merely because they want to spend more time with family.

Regardless, as you make your New Year’s resolutions for 2015, here are some words of wisdom from the great men who helped found and shape our nation, and paved the way for its indefatigable spirit.

(1). “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” - Benjamin Franklin

(2)."We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience." - George Washington

(3). “To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.” - John Adams

(4). "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." - Thomas Jefferson

(5). “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.” - Abraham Lincoln

Happy New Year!

SOURCE

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Liberals: If The Shoe Doesn't Fit, Make Everyone Wear It

Ann Coulter

It is a common practice of the left to stage an incident and then demand enormous legal changes to respond to their hoax.

Griswold v. Connecticut was a scam orchestrated by Yale law professors to challenge the state's anti-contraception law. The case was a fraud: The law had never been enforced and never would have been enforced, until the professors held a press conference announcing they were breaking the law.

But we still got the new constitutional "privacy right" which, less than 10 years later, transmogrified into a constitutional right to kill an unborn baby.

The premise of that case, Roe v. Wade, was also a hoax. Norma McCorvey lied about being raped to get an abortion in Texas, but was denied because there was no police report. There was also no rape: She had gotten pregnant for the third time by her mid-20s as a result of a casual sexual encounter.

After Trayvon Martin was shot by George Zimmerman -- the "white Hispanic," since upgraded to full "white" by The New York Times -- liberals howled about Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. The case had absolutely nothing to do with that law: Zimmerman wasn't standing his ground; he was lying on the ground having his head bashed in. The jury accepted Zimmerman's claim of self-defense and acquitted him.

The law of self-defense has been around since William of Orange ascended to the British throne in 1688. But liberals are still harping about the Trayvon Martin shooting to demand the repeal of Stand Your Ground laws.

Jamie Leigh Jones made fantastical claims about being fed Rohypnol, gang-raped and then held at gunpoint while working for KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, in Iraq in 2005. Without considering the likelihood of a military contractor doing this to an American citizen, knowing she'd get back to the U.S. someday and be able to tell her story, our adversary media and well-paid Democratic senators believed every word out of Jones' mouth.

As always happens when members of a disfavored racial and gender group -- i.e., white males -- are accused of heinous acts, liberals heard Jones' claims and concluded: Well, the one thing we know is: There was a gang-rape. All that's left to do now is to investigate the military/fraternity/lacrosse rape culture.

Thus, for example, Sen. Patrick Leahy began a hearing on Jones' insane accusations with this statement of facts: "Jamie Leigh Jones [is] a young woman from Texas who took a job at Halliburton in Iraq in 2005 when she was 20 years old. In her first week on the job, she was drugged and then she was gang-raped by co-workers. When she reported this -- remember, 20 years old -- she reported this assault, her employers moved her to a locked trailer, where she was kept by armed guards and freed only when the State Department intervened."

Sen. Al Franken raved about "the culture of impunity" among defense contractors, saying, "Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by KBR employees." Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse helpfully added, "But as best I can tell, there is no legitimate intelligence function that involves rape."

And then, after all the grandstanding, it turned out Jones had made the whole thing up. DNA evidence proved she'd had sex with only one man, and he said it was consensual. The female doctor who examined Jones the day after the alleged attack found no traces of Rohypnol in her system. Both the female doctor, as well as Jones' own plastic surgeon back in Houston, contradicted Jones' claim that her breast implants had been ruptured. It also turned out that none of KBR's employees carry guns, much less machine guns. By the age of 20, even before Jones had left for Iraq, she was 0-for-2 on rape allegations, having already falsely accused two other men of raping her.

No grand jury would indict the poor, falsely accused KBR employee who foolishly had sex with Jones, so she filed a civil suit against that one man. The jury ruled for him, and the court ordered Jones to pay $145,000 in legal costs. Jamie Leigh Jones' place in the Crystal Magnum, Tawana Brawley Hall of Fame was thus secured.

But we still got Sen. Al Franken's pro-trial lawyer amendment to a Defense Department bill, touted as the "Anti-Rape Amendment," prohibiting military contractors from including mandatory arbitration clauses in their employment contracts. Any Republican brave enough to oppose this sop to trial lawyers was denounced as "pro-rape" in mass-phone calls to their offices and by liberal prophet Jon Stewart, who railed on his show, "How is ANYONE against this?"

Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown is today being used as grounds to demand all sorts of new rules for cops. Most people had a pretty good sense of the case after seeing surveillance camera shots of Brown assaulting the manager of a liquor store he was robbing about 10 minutes before his encounter with Officer Wilson. By the time the grand jury documents were released, there was no serious doubt that the shooting was justified.

But again, as a result of a hoax racial incident, Democrats are demanding race quotas for arrests. To hell with due process. If we can stop just one thing that never happened from ever happening again, it will have been worth it.

The only new rule we really need is one to stop these infernal liberal hoaxes.

SOURCE
   
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'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' Activists -- and Historical Ignorance

Larry Elder

What to say about "activists" pushing the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" "movement," even as police shootings of blacks are actually down 75 percent over the last 45 years? Some protestors, many old enough to know better, say ridiculous things about race relations, like "things have gone backward." Time for perspective.

Booker T. Washington was born a slave. In his autobiography, "Up From Slavery," written in 1901 -- just a mere 36 years after the Civil War -- Washington wrote:

"As a rule, not only did the members of my race entertain no feelings of bitterness against the whites before and during the war, but there are many instances of Negroes tenderly caring for their former masters and mistresses who for some reason have become poor and dependent since the war. I know of instances where the former masters of slaves have for years been supplied with money by their former slaves to keep them from suffering. ... One sends him a little coffee or sugar, another a little meat, and so on. Nothing that the colored people possess is too good for the son of 'old Mars' Tom,' who will perhaps never be permitted to suffer while any remain on the place who knew directly or indirectly of 'old Mars' Tom.'...

"From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.

"I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and, besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the General Government. Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution.

Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. ...

"This I say, not to justify slavery -- on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive -- but to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose."

As for the future, Washington said: "When a Negro girl learns to cook, to wash dishes, to sew, to write a book, or a Negro boy learns to groom horses, or to grow sweet potatoes, or to produce butter, or to build a house, or to be able to practice medicine, as well or better than some one else, they will be rewarded regardless of race or color. In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not long keep the world from what it wants."

Nelson Mandela was beaten and imprisoned for almost three decades. When released at last, some supporters criticized him for showing too much grace and forgiveness toward his enemies. But Mandela's attitude toward forgiveness set the tone for the nation. After his death, a South African wrote:

"History now shows (Mandela) did lead South Africa back from the abyss. But he did more, and it was this that sealed his reputation forever. He showed the world and his countrymen -- black, white, rich, poor -- that revenge is not the answer to years of injustice. Who among us, in coming out of prison after 27 years, would have had the generosity to turn away from settling scores? Who among us would have refused to avenge ourselves on those who had treated us with such cruelty?

"But he did. Nelson Mandela sat down with his enemies and forgave them and moved on. And in doing so, he rescued his country, and he rescued each one of us, and gave us hope that there could be a future for our beautiful, fractured land. And for the greater earth that we all share."

Washington, born a slave, and Mandela, held captive for nearly 28 years, demonstrate the power of forgiveness -- and of looking ahead. And these men forgave their actual oppressors.

My mother, born in the Jim Crow South, used to say, "The truth will not set you free -- if delivered without hope." The "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" "movement" is neither truthful nor hopeful.

SOURCE

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N.Y. Mayor de Blasio Active Supporter of Brutal Communist Regime

No surprise. De Blasio just oozes hate

With Bill de Blasio making headlines for fanning the flames of racial tension between police and protesters it's worth recalling newsworthy information about the New York City mayor's dark past; that he was an active supporter of a brutal communist regime well known as one of the worst human rights abusers in Latin America.

Judicial Watch uncovered and reported the scandalous details last year. De Blasio was an active supporter of the communist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s. He was so enamored with Soviet-backed revolutionaries that he traveled to the capital city of the war-torn country, Managua, to aid their cause by participating in a relief mission. Upon de Blasio's return to the United States, he joined the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York (NSN).

The records show de Blasio was an ardent supporter of the communist revolutionaries in Nicaragua, who raised funds for the Sandinistas and was a subscriber to the party's newspaper, "Barricada" (The Barricade). He traveled to Nicaragua in 1988 and became active in the NSN upon his return to the U.S. New York's mayor has been unapologetic about his involvement with a foreign Marxist political movement accused of slaughtering innocent civilians and practicing the "disappearance" technique of eliminating political foes.

In fact, the Sandinistas were renowned as one of Latin America's worst human rights violators. During three years of revolution they carried out thousands of political executions and the disappearance of thousands more who were considered anti-revolutionary, according to a Russian-born scholar cited in a news article. By 1983 there were about 20,000 political prisoners held in the Marxist regime's jails, the highest number of political prisoners of any nation in the hemisphere with the exception of Fidel Castro's communist Cuba.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Economy grows in spite of Obama



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Economic recovery grows from private sector, not government

It only took six years, but we’re finally starting to see the U.S. economy kick into gear. This isn’t a story of government-directed growth, but the opposite — Washington’s role in the economy starting to shrink after years of Obama administration activism. The private sector is starting to take over.

Let’s start with the positive news. Economic output soared in the third quarter at a rate of 5 percent. That comes on top of 4.6 percent growth in the second quarter. It appears that the U.S. economy has clawed out of its anemic 2 percent growth rut of the past five years and that we are now shifted into a higher gear with 3 percent-plus as the new normal.

The growth was propelled by a big rise in business investment, up nearly 9 percent, personal consumption up 3.2 percent and exports up 4.5 percent. Government spending, which is a negative for the economy, grew by 4.4 percent thanks to a big rise in military spending, but domestic spending is still restrained. The news was so good that even the threat that the Federal Reserve will now have an excuse to raise interest rates couldn’t deter the bulls on Wall Street.

What’s generating the growth? A huge factor has been the fall in energy costs. As the oil price fell from $105 a barrel this summer to close to $70 by September, the cost of oil imports tumbled. Imports fell by nearly 2 percent, and this alone added almost 0.2 percentage points to gross domestic product growth.

Even that badly understates the economic windfall from cheap energy. Production costs fall when energy costs do, so the supply of American-produced, non-oil and non-gas products, such as manufactured goods, rise when gas is cheap. With prices lower now in this quarter, the good news story rolls on. Thank you, fracking.

Businesses are clearly feeling less fearful about investing, and some of the negative, wet-blanket effect of Mr. Obama’s anti-business, anti-shareholder agenda has dissipated as the Republican Congress repels his worst ideas — cap and trade, minimum wage hikes, new taxes on the energy industry, and massive new spending initiatives out of Washington. Gridlock now looks to be built into the political system for the next two years, and in many ways that’s reassuring.

One troubling feature of the GDP report was that the largest contributor to personal consumption growth was health care spending.

This is the Obamacare effect — and the big rise in spending is more concrete evidence that Obamacare is driving the cost curve up, not down. Rising health costs is nothing to celebrate. It’s further evidence that Obamacare is still a giant negative on the real economy, but the betting is Congress will at the least trim back some of its worst features.

Despite the boost in military spending in the last quarter, the biggest story of the U.S. economy over the past three years has been the retrenchment of government spending. Federal spending has fallen from above 23 percent of GDP in 2011 to just under 20 percent of GDP in the last quarter, according to an analysis by Dan Clifton of Strategas, an economic policy consulting firm. This is creating an anti-Keynesian boost to growth, because the government is taking fewer private-sector resources each month.

As I have noted many times in these columns, this recovery from recession is still nearly $2 trillion behind where it should be if we had a Reagan-paced boom. This is still one of the most anemic recoveries, though it is clearly picking up steam. Wages are still flat for most workers.

Republicans could keep growth in the 3 percent to 4 percent range by picking off the low-hanging fruit of economic policy proposals. These include the Keystone XL pipeline, corporate tax reform and slamming the brakes on the Obama regulatory assault. It would also be helpful for Congress to pass a law allowing the repatriation of foreign capital back to the United States at a 5 percent tax rate, to provide even more jobs.

Mr. Obama, despite his executive branch power grabs, is mostly a lame duck, and that’s what have been waiting for. Businesses and investors now believe that less is more when it comes to Washington. For the most part, they are probably right. This is a recovery that the private sector is creating. And, no, Mr. President, you didn’t build that.

SOURCE

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Are Facts Obsolete?

Thomas Sowell

Some of us, who are old enough to remember the old television police series "Dragnet," may remember Sgt. Joe Friday saying, "Just the facts, ma'am." But that would be completely out of place today. Facts are becoming obsolete, as recent events have demonstrated.

What matters today is how well you can concoct a story that fits people's preconceptions and arouses their emotions. Politicians like New York mayor Bill de Blasio, professional demagogues like Al Sharpton and innumerable irresponsible people in the media have shown that they have great talent in promoting a lynch mob atmosphere toward the police.

Grand juries that examine hard facts live in a different world from mobs who listen to rhetoric and politicians who cater to the mobs.

During the controversy over the death of Trayvon Martin, for example, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus said that George Zimmerman had tracked Trayvon Martin down and shot him like a dog. The fact is that Zimmerman did not have to track down Trayvon Martin, who was sitting right on top of him, punching him till his face was bloody.

After the death of Michael Brown, members of the Congressional Black Caucus stood up in Congress, with their hands held up, saying "don't shoot." Although there were some who claimed that this is what Michael Brown said and did, there were other witnesses -- all black, by the way -- who said that Brown was charging toward the policeman when he was shot.

What was decisive was not what either set of witnesses said, but what the autopsy revealed, an autopsy involving three sets of forensic experts, including one representing Michael Brown's family. Witnesses can lie but the physical facts don't lie, even if politicians, mobs and the media prefer to take lies seriously.

The death of Eric Garner has likewise spawned stories having little relationship to facts. The story is that Garner died because a chokehold stopped his breathing. But Garner did not die with a policeman choking him.

He died later, in an ambulance where his heart stopped. He had a long medical history of various diseases, as well as a long criminal history. No doubt the stress of his capture did not do him any good, and he might well still be alive if he had not resisted arrest. But that was his choice.

Despite people who say blithely that the police need more "training," there is no "kinder and gentler" way to capture a 350-pound man, who is capable of inflicting grievous harm, and perhaps even death, on any of his would-be captors. The magic word "unarmed" means nothing in practice, however much the word may hype emotions.

If you are killed by an unarmed man, you are just as dead as if you had been annihilated by a nuclear bomb. But you don't even know who is armed or unarmed until after it is all over, and you can search him.

Incidentally, did you know that, during this same period when riots, looting and arson have been raging, a black policeman in Alabama shot and killed an unarmed white teenager -- and was cleared by a grand jury? Probably not, if you depend on the mainstream media for your news.

The media do not merely ignore facts, they suppress facts. Millions of people saw the videotape of the beating of Rodney King. But they saw only a fraction of that tape because the media left out the rest, which showed Rodney King -- another huge man -- resisting arrest and refusing to be handcuffed, so that he could be searched.

Television viewers did not get to see the other black men in the same vehicle that Rodney King was driving recklessly. Those other black men were not beaten. And the grand jury got to see the whole video, after which they acquitted the police -- and the media then published the jurors' home addresses.

Such media retribution against people they don't like is part of a growing lynch mob mentality. The black witnesses in Missouri, whose testimony confirmed what the police officer said, expressed fears for their own safety for telling what the physical evidence showed was the truth.

Is this what we want? Grand juries responding to mobs and the media, instead of to the facts?

SOURCE

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How Liberals Use Black People

By Walter E. Williams

Back in the day, when hunting was the major source of food, hunters often used stalking horses as a means of sneaking up on their quarry. They would walk on the opposite side of the horse until they were close enough to place a good shot on whatever they were hunting. A stalking horse not only concealed them but also, if their target was an armed man and they were discovered, would take the first shot. That's what blacks are to liberals and progressives in their efforts to transform America — stalking horses.

Let's look at some of the ways white liberals use black people. One of the more obvious ways is for liberals to equate any kind of injustices suffered by homosexuals and women to the black struggle for civil rights. But it is just plain nonsense to suggest any kind of equivalency between the problems of homosexuals and women and the centuries of slavery followed by Jim Crow, lynching, systematic racial discrimination and the blood, sweat and tears of the black civil rights movement.

The largest and most powerful labor union in the country is the National Education Association, with well over 3 million members. Teachers benefit enormously from their education monopoly. It yields higher pay and lower accountability. It's a different story for a large percentage of black people who receive fraudulent education. The NEA's white liberals — aided by black teachers, politicians and so-called black leaders — cooperate to ensure that black parents who want their children to have a better education have few viable choices.

Whenever there has been a serious push for school choice, educational vouchers, tuition tax credits or even charter schools, the NEA has fought against it. One of the more callous examples of that disregard for black education was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's cutback on funding for charter schools where black youngsters were succeeding in getting a better education. That was de Blasio's way of paying back New York's teachers union for the political support it gave him in his quest for the mayor's office.

White liberals in the media and academia, along with many blacks, have been major supporters of the recent marches protesting police conduct. A man from Mars, knowing nothing about homicide facts, would conclude that the major problem black Americans have with murder and brutality results from the behavior of racist policemen. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are about 200 police arrest-related deaths of blacks each year (between 300 and 400 for whites). That number pales in comparison with the roughly 7,000 annual murders of blacks, 94 percent of which are committed by blacks. The number of blacks being murdered by other blacks is of little concern to liberals. Their agenda is to use arrest-related deaths of blacks to undermine established authority.

Liberals often have demeaning attitudes toward blacks. When Secretary of State John Kerry was a U.S. senator, in a statement about so many blacks being in prison, he said, "That's unacceptable, but it's not their fault." Would Kerry also say that white prison inmates are also faultless? Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin told us: "It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes. ... (The problem) is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income." The liberal vision is that fathers and husbands can be replaced by a welfare check.

Liberals desperately need blacks. If the Democratic Party lost just 30 percent of the black vote, it would mean the end of the liberal agenda. That means blacks must be kept in a perpetual state of grievance in order to keep them as a one-party people in a two-party system. When black Americans finally realize how much liberals have used them, I'm betting they will be the nation's most conservative people. Who else has been harmed as much by liberalism's vision and agenda?

SOURCE

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Obamacare's Annus Horribilis

There's no candy coating the truth: Obamacare has had a very terrible, horrible, crappy, none-too-happy year. What it really means is that the victims of Obamacare -- taxpayers, health care consumers, health care providers, employers and employees -- have had a hellish, nightmarish 2014.

Let's start with premiums. President Candy Land promised that he'd "lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year." But premiums for people in the individual market for health insurance have spiked over the last year. In fact, Forbes health policy journalist Avik Roy and the Manhattan Institute analyzed 3,137 counties and found that individual market premiums rose an average of 49 percent.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services itself admitted this month that average premiums will rise at least five percent for the lowest-cost plans offered by federal Obamacare health care exchanges. Democrats' reaction? Obamacare rate shock doesn't matter ... because government is redistributing the burden and taxpayers are footing the bill! HHS crowed this week that nearly 90 percent of exchange enrollees received public subsidies in order to pay their premiums.

"Affordable" doesn't mean what White House truth-warpers says it means -- just like everything else they've spewed about the doomed federal takeover of health policy in America.

As the White House tries to hype year-end enrollment numbers and hide Obamacare-imposed cancellations, just remember that the administration got caught this fall cooking the books by including 380,000 dental plan subscribers that have never been counted before. Innocent oopsie? The "erroneous" inflation just happened to push the Obamacare enrollment figures over the president's 7 million goal, while fudging the attrition of more than 1 million enrolled in Obamacare medical insurance plans.

A "mistake was made," HHS 'fessed up after GOP investigators discovered the Common Core math antics. Lying liars. Caught red-handed.

So, how about: "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?" Well, not if he or she isn't practicing anymore. After scoffing at conservative warnings for years that socialized medicine-light would create doctor shortages, Obamacare cheerleaders can no longer whitewash the grim reality. The Physicians Foundation found that 81 percent of doctors believe they are "either overextended or at full capacity." Another 44 percent said they "planned to cut back on the number of patients they see, retire, work part-time or close their practice to new patients."

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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My favorite cartoon of the year



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2014: The Year The Liberal Lies Died

Every single thing liberals say is a lie. No exceptions.

We conservatives always knew it, but 2014 was the year when the rest of America began to understand. And 2014 was the year that Americans had to choose sides – would they stand with the liberal liars or with us conservatives? Last November, they chose us conservatives, and maybe the truth will be enough to stop Hillary Clinton and save our country in 2016.

The truth is poison to liberalism, so no wonder liberals hate the idea of a free press – after all, they are the ones who argued to the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case that the government has the right to ban books. Conservative magazines like National Review long fought the fight alone. But it is only recently that we saw the rise of a truly free press as technology put a camera in everyone’s cellphone and conservative new media (including social media) created a path around the gates that the liberal mainstream media kept.

The mainstream media used to get to decide what was and was not the truth. But the truth has been set free, and the mainstream media has been revealed as the guardian of the lies that the liberal establishment needs to fool normal Americans just enough to secure their votes. That’s why we should laugh and cheer at the mainstream media’s agonized death throes.

Let’s look at a few of the lies we saw collapse in 2014. Not one would have been revealed if the mainstream media was still in control.

How about the Grubering of America? Obamacare was built and sold on a foundation of lies, buttressed with contempt and condescension toward normal Americans. Without the citizen journalists working in conservative new media, would we have ever seen Obamacare’s architect on video laughing at the giant scam he and the Democrats pulled on the American people? Would we have seen video compilations of Obama promising that if we liked our health plan we could keep it?

You think we would? Really? My unicorn’s name is Chet. What do you call yours?

Everyone knows Obamacare is a giant lie. We saw Jonathan Gruber on tape giggling about how the Democrats knew it. But the New York Times didn’t tell you that. The Washington Post didn’t tell you that. It was the citizen journalists who Andrew Breitbart inspired who told you that. If it weren’t for Andrew and his progeny, most American would still not know it. But now they do.

SOURCE

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Black Conservatives Slam Obama's 'Better Off' Comments

President Barack Obama said recently that African Americans were better off now than when he took office six years ago, but many black conservatives disputed that to Newsmax — citing such widespread ills a high unemployment, poor education levels and spiraling gun violence in the nation's inner cities.

"Here we are again with our president clearly demonstrating his severe disconnect with blacks in America, as he has ginned up racial hatred and … completely ignoring the fact that he's the first black president and holds a historic role that is intended to mend and rebuild America's fractured racial history," said Stacy Washington, a radio talk-show host in St. Louis.

She noted Obama's "dereliction of duty" in ignoring such statistics as high black unemployment and "the lack of educational resources for children who are trapped in failed inner-city schools and his refusal to even acknowledge that voucher programs and school choice play a large role in African-American children escaping poverty and escaping inner cities."

In November, the black unemployment rate stood at 27.6 percent, compared with 14.5 percent for whites, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Not only is he disconnected, but he's actually being facetious," Washington concluded. "I dare say he's even lying about the state of blacks in America."

Dave Chadwick, a software-sales entrepreneur in North Carolina, noted how more African Americans are stuck at the bottom of the nation's economic ladder because of the many government entitlement programs that have exploded on Obama's watch.

"But we're on a leash, for crying out loud, when you're down there like that," Chadwick told Newsmax. "When you're the recipient of these programs, you're really on a leash."

At his final news conference for the year, Obama said on Dec. 19 that that he believed African Americans were better off now than when he took office in 2009, though the income gap between blacks and whites persist.

"Like the rest of America, black America, in the aggregate, is better off now than it was when I came into office," he said in response to a reporter's question at the White House.

"The gap between income and wealth of white and black America persists, and we've got more work to do on that front," Obama said.

He said that such initiatives as Obamacare and early childhood education programs, as well as an improving economy and better housing conditions, have benefited blacks.

"I’ve been consistent in saying that this is a legacy of a troubled racial past of Jim Crow and slavery," Obama said. "That’s not an excuse for black folks. And I think the overwhelming majority of black people understand it’s not an excuse.

"They’re working hard," the president added. "They’re out there hustling and trying to get an education, trying to send their kids to college. But they’re starting behind, oftentimes, in the race."

However, African-American conservatives told Newsmax that blacks are, indeed, starting from behind — and it's because of such Obama moves as his executive orders deferring deportation and granting work permits to as many as 6 million illegal immigrants and his administration's heavy regulations on business that stifle development and creativity.

"Instead of growing the economy and encouraging entrepreneurship, he's depressing it," Chadwick said. "So, all I've got to look forward to are these handouts that I get from the government programs.

"That's why he thinks we're better off. That's why he can say that with the kind of confidence he does."

Chadwick cited, for instance, Obama's delay in approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. The $8 billion project would carry oil sands from Canada to refineries in Texas.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, has promised swift approval of the project next year. The GOP will control both houses of Congress come January.

"I know a lot of black folks who can cook like mad," Chadwick told Newsmax. "What if I had that Keystone Pipeline up and running or under construction? You don't think those guys out there on the pipeline who are working on it don't eat? They get hungry.

"So how many of these new companies that could pop up — food trucks and things like that — that could go out there and sell food to those guys?" he asked. "How many of those companies could have been the idea of an African American?"

But the Rev. Joseph Green, author and pastor of Antioch Assembly in Harrisburg, Pa., said the conditions facing African Americans do not rest with Obama. "I don't blame President Obama for those things, but by the same token, we can't give him credit for something that's obviously not the case," he said.

"There are a large number of African Americans now that continually look to the government as their source and put more emphasis on the government and the government's help than probably they would have in the past," Green told Newsmax. "It's kind of a mentality that now we're going to be OK because the president is black."

President Obama also referenced the shootings of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in his response. He said the cases had "colored" race relations in America.

Brown, 18, was shot to death on Aug. 9 by a white police officer, while Garner, 43, died on July 17 from a chokehold by a white officer on Staten Island. Both men were unarmed.

Neither officer was indicted by grand juries. The decisions sparked widespread unrest in both communities.

On Dec. 20, two New York City officers were gunned down, execution style, by a man who claimed to be avenging the deaths. That man, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, who had an extensive criminal history, later killed himself as city officers cornered him in a Brooklyn subway station.

"I actually think it’s been a healthy conversation that we’ve had," as a result of the protests, Obama said. "These are not new phenomenon.

"The fact that they’re now surfacing, in part because people are able to film what have just been, in the past, stories passed on around a kitchen table, allows people to make their own assessments and evaluations," he added. "And, you’re not going to solve a problem if it’s not being talked about."

Black conservatives slammed the remarks, charging the Obama administration with fostering a hostile environment among protesters instead of working on the underlying issues facing African Americans in this country.

Washington noted how Attorney General Eric Holder — "who just happens to be black and the first black man to hold that office — came to Ferguson in August and said, 'I'm one of you,' instead of saying, 'We have a bunch of really systemic problems that are in the black community that we should address.'"

She is a member of the Project 21 Leadership Network of Black Conservatives.

"Yes, it's horrible whenever someone dies at the hands of a police officer-involved shooting, but we have to be responsible for our own actions," Washington said.

She noted Brown's background with the local juvenile justice system and how he had allegedly robbed a convenience store before he was fatally shot by Officer Darren Wilson, who resigned after the grand jury's decision last month.

"When asked to move out of the street, had he simply moved out of the street, we would be discussing another major news story instead of constantly referring back to the false 'hands-up, don't shoot' narrative that has taken over huge segments of the black population to our detriment," Washington said.

"He's right that race relations have been set back among blacks and whites, but not because of actual behavior that people need to be repenting for," she said of President Obama's remarks.

Green, however, laid the blame with both police and African Americans.

"A lot of times, the police officers may come with some preconceived notion: 'Some young black men are standing around with their pants sagging, so they must be up to no good.'

"Then on the other side, we have a generation of young, rebellious black men who, if the police come and approach them, they automatically have an aggressive posture towards the police.

"There definitely has to be some conversation and some dialogue for both sides so we don't repeat those types of issues," Green said.

The conservatives noted, moreover, that African Americans must take the lead in improving their communities instead of relying on the federal government and President Obama to do it.

"There's an epidemic of young black men being murdered in the country, but the vast majority of those young black men are being murdered by other black men," Green said. "That's the larger conversation we need to have: Why is that?

"Those issues aren't getting any better just because the president is black. Those issues haven't been resolved — and in certain instances, they've gotten worse" because blacks "are not holding the government accountable, because we tend to want to defend him even if criticism is valid."

"It's almost like you're a sellout if you're black," Green added. "How dare you disagree with him? I don't care, I voice my opinion anyway, but I would say more so that the criticism becomes a racial thing when people politically oppose the president."

SOURCE

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The war on privacy

Very little web and other electronic communication is secure. Those advertising themselves as such, including Skype (“Sustained Skype collection began in Feb 2011,”), websites designated as “https”—the final “s” standing for “secure”, and VPN “Virtual Private Networks”—are not.

The good news is that some forms of encryption remain secure. The bad news is that even encrypted data that remains secure today has no guarantee of remaining so: intelligence agencies capture and store everything indefinitely, so when in the future spies are able to crack today’s encryption they can go back and decrypt stored information.

Describing NSA’s BULLRUN decryption program

“for the past decade, NSA has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies,” and “vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable.” Decryption, it turns out, works retroactively — once a system is broken, the agencies can look back in time in their databases and read stuff they could not read before.

Among the publicly available services that remain difficult-to-impossible for NSA and Five Eyes to crack:
• Heavily encrypted email service providers like Zoho
• The TOR network for surfing the web
• Truecrypt, a program for encrypting files on computers
• A protocol called Off-the-Record (OTR) for encrypting instant messaging
• The instant messaging system CSpace
• A system for Internet telephony (voice over IP) called ZRTP

Open-source technologies such as these are especially effective at thwarting spies: “Since anyone can view free and open source software, it becomes difficult to insert secret back doors without it being noticed.”

The startling take-away that ought to capture all of our attention is the fact that the NSA actively and purposely sets out to weaken encryption standards by “every means available.”

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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