Arabian gold

Did you know that they mine gold in Saudi Arabia?  I didn't but I should have.  There are over 400 mentions of gold in the Bible so it had to come from somewhere. And Arabia is right next door. But as far as I can find the only mention of gold's origin is in Genesis 2:

"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compaseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold".

Archaeologists have recently identified where the ancient river Pishon flowed.  And it is roughly in the middle of Arabia.



A few excerpts about modern gold mining in Saudi Arabia:


State-controlled mining firm Saudi Ma'aden plans to develop the Mansourah, Massarah gold mine, industry sources told Reuters.

Ma'aden operates six gold mines in the Central Arabian Gold Region, western Saudi Arabia which contains much of the Kingdom's gold rich ore deposits. It has recently started operating the Ad Duwayhi gold mine.

Saudi Arabia's efforts to build an economy that does not rely on oil and state subsidies involves a shift towards mining vast untapped reserves of bauxite, the main source of aluminium, as well as phosphate, gold, copper and uranium.

SOURCE

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Anglospheric solidarity again

It is amazing how the major Anglospheric nations tend to shadow one another in all sorts of ways.  Under conservative governments both the USA and the UK have just had big drops in unemployment and are approaching historic lows.  The recently announced US rate is 4.4%.  Compare that with the current UK rate below

Unemployment in Britain has fallen once again as the labour market shows resilience to a slowdown in the wider economy.

The Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday the country's unemployment rate between March and May fell to 4.5 per cent in the three months to May, down 0.2 percentage point from the previous three-month period.

The rate is now at its lowest level since 1975.

Overall, the agency said, the number of people out of work declined by 64,000 during the quarter.

The employment rate, the proportion of people aged from 16 to 64 who were in work, was 74.9 per cent, the highest since comparable records began in 1971.

SOURCE

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Some States Have No Interest in Fighting Voter Fraud

It was a simple request—hardly one to stir up controversy.

Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state and vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, recently sent letters to his fellow secretaries of state requesting “publicly-available voter roll data” and soliciting feedback on ways to secure America’s electoral system against fraud.

Yet the response has been as swift as it is absurd. Liberal activist groups, many media outlets, and politicians—predominantly left-leaning ones—assailed the commission for somehow invading the privacy of American voters.

Some went even further. Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh tweeted that the request was “repugnant.” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe labeled the commission a “tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla called it a “waste of taxpayer money.”

All three indicated their states will provide no information to the commission. They apparently believe that their voter registration rolls are 100 percent accurate.

They must agree with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who publicly proclaimed voter fraud to be just a “myth”—so why bother investigating it?

If voter fraud were as rare as the left contends, and if adequate procedures are in place to prevent it from occurring, you would think those who make this argument would be anxious to provide the data that would serve to verify their assertions.

Could it be that they fear the data would refute their claims?

Indeed, the evidence points to a different conclusion: Voter fraud is not only real, it is a serious and ongoing threat to the integrity of the electoral process.

Voter registration rolls in some states are in sad shape. They are filled with large numbers of individuals who are ineligible to vote because they are dead, have moved away and registered in a different state, or are not U.S. citizens.

Such inaccuracies can be exploited by fraudsters who would rather cheat to achieve their political objectives, knowing that many states have lax procedures that make it extremely likely that they can commit voter fraud and get away with it.

This is not just a crime against our electoral system, but against American citizens. Every fraudulent ballot that is cast negates the vote of a legitimate voter, effectively disenfranchising that voter.

The U.S. Supreme Court has cited “flagrant examples” of voter fraud in American history to justify its conclusion that “the risk of voter fraud [is] real [and] that it could affect the outcome of a close election.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Voter Fraud Database has thus far tallied 848 documented criminal convictions in voter fraud cases spanning 47 states, with new cases being uncovered every week.

In May, the Public Interest Legal Foundation published a startling report on widespread noncitizen voting in Virginia.

The report not only revealed that thousands of ineligible aliens registered and voted in the state’s elections, it also detailed the considerable efforts that state officials undertook to try to block the Public Interest Legal Foundation from obtaining the publicly available voter records the organization needed to complete its investigation.

Once more, Virginia appears to be stonewalling by refusing to comply with the presidential commission’s request, and other states appear to be following suit (although early reports of the precise number of noncomplying states appear to have been exaggerated).

This is disappointing and somewhat surprising, given that federal law requires states to maintain, and make available to the public, the very voter records the commission seeks.

According to a provision in Section 20507 of Title 52, part of the National Voter Registration Act (52 U.S.C. § 20507(i)):

Each state shall maintain for at least two years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters …

Federal law (52 U.S.C. §§ 20701 & 20703) also mandates that election officers must “retain and preserve, for a period of 22 months from the date of any general, special, or primary election” for a federal office all records pertaining to “any application” or “registration” to vote.

The law requires that these records be made available “upon demand in writing by the attorney general … for inspection, reproduction, and copying.”

Many state laws also make this very same voter information available to the public.

California is a perfect example of this. Even though California is refusing to provide the requested information, its state election code makes voter registration records, including “home address, telephone number, email Address, [and] precinct number” available to “any voter … to any candidate for federal, state, or local office, to any committee for or against any initiative or referendum … and to any person for election, scholarly, journalistic, or political purposes, or for governmental purposes … ”

For those concerned that the commission is seeking voter information states would not otherwise make available, the commission’s letter makes it explicitly clear that it is seeking only information that is “publicly available under the laws of your state,” and nothing more.

In addition to the fact that the commission has only requested publicly available information, those states that are citing the need to protect the privacy of voters as the reason for their noncompliance are being somewhat disingenuous.

After all, voter registration information is routinely purchased and used by political parties and candidates for public office, as well as private companies who use such data for commercial purposes.

Many of the politicians who are expressing outrage at the commission’s request obviously did not have any qualms about obtaining and using such data themselves to further their own political ambitions.

The commission’s request for public voter records is designed to serve one purpose: to allow the comparison of voter records across the states, and with federal databases, such as Social Security Administration’s death records and the Department of Homeland Security’s noncitizen records.

This will help to determine whether state voter rolls are accurate and reliable—an extremely important undertaking given the significant evidence that has emerged suggesting that voter registration records are riddled with errors and duplicate entries.

In 2012, for example, a Pew study concluded that roughly “24 million—one of every eight—voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.”

The study estimated that 2.75 million people are registered in multiple states, and 1.8 million deceased voters remain on voter rolls.

Five years later, there is little reason to believe that the problem has corrected itself.

The commission now has an opportunity to update the Pew findings and, if the problem remains, to develop policies and recommendations to facilitate state and federal action to clean up the voter rolls and help secure the integrity of American elections.

Some liberal activists are attacking the commission’s credibility before it even gets started, claiming its purpose is to engage in “voter suppression” and “discrimination.”

Perhaps they can explain how determining the accuracy of voter registration rolls, investigating the numbers of individuals who are illegally voting in multiple states, and identifying noncitizens and others who are ineligible to vote but nonetheless registered constitutes acts of “vote suppression.”

In that regard, it is worth noting that the letter from the commission also requests any information that states have on intimidation of voters or other efforts to prevent eligible Americans from voting.

Rather than helping to investigate and remedy the problems we have in our systems, opponents would rather stick their heads in the sand and pretend there are no problems.

They would also like to tarnish the commission’s reputation with the public in hopes that it will be easier to dismiss its findings later on.

That tells us all we need to know about their motivations. Politics before integrity.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once stated that sunlight is the “best of disinfectants.” When it comes to America’s electoral system, truer words have never been said.

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),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The Russia connection



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The American Left's Downward Spiral

R. Emmett Tyrrell
   
I have returned! From Europe, that is, and I hope I met with no Russian agents while there. The soi-disant liberals are in a snit about the Russians. Apparently, Donald Trump Jr. and the mysterious senior White House adviser Jared Kushner met with an agent of the Kremlin in June of last year, and they did not report their meeting to The Powers That Be. Who are The Powers That Be? Actually, I have no idea, but Trump and Kushner should have reported their exchange, which had something to do with adoption or adaption or, possibly, Hillary Clinton’s unwashed socks. You figure it out.

The stalwarts of the American Left (we no longer call them liberals — it is inappropriate) are in another of their tense moments with the Trumps, and, of course, it has something to do with the Trumps and the Russians. The Left has developed an irrational fear of the Russians, and it is positively obsessed with them. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps it is because the Russians today are no longer communists and the erstwhile liberals had long admired certain aspects of the communist system. As I recall, they admired the Marxist-Leninist tax code and its attendant slow-growth economy. Remember their great economists, such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Lester Thurow, oohing and aahing over how prosperous Russia was in the 1980s, just before the crash of communism?

How did that crash come about, comrades? Was it caused by something then-President Ronald Reagan did? Reagan was the Donald Trump of his era. Are our friends to the left still perplexed as to how a B-list movie actor contributed to the fall of communism? Now what can they be expecting from a billionaire businessman?

The morbid preoccupations of the American Left continue apace. Of course, there is its aforementioned paranoia over post-communist Russia. And there is the environment that is increasingly sickening the Left; and the civil rights of public toilet users in certain red states; and civil rights in general. The Ku Klux Klan is making a comeback, and it is aided and abetted by the increasingly popular “alt-Right” movement and the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, who object the expurgation of five years of American history back in the 19th century. Then there is the resistance movement that has been a theme with the American Left ever since Hillary Clinton had her meltdown on election night.

As David Gelernter pointed out last week in The Wall Street Journal, the American Left has adopted “resistance” in response to the free and democratic election of President Trump. As Gelernter wrote, “Democrats, in their role as opponents of President Trump, have taken to calling themselves ‘the resistance.’” They are co-opting the term “resistance” from the free French who, in World War II, opposed the Nazis in occupied France. In their delusions, the members of the American Left are modern-day freedom fighters, and the Trumps are Nazis. Continuing the Left’s fantasy, the American army and its allies will eventually be called in to liberate “the resistance.” And who will march down our Champs-Elysees? Hillary?

I saw my first member of the resistance at the airport in Brussels. The hero was wearing a black T-shirt with “Resistance” boldly emblazoned across his chest. He was asleep. I did not want to wake him with troubling news. His fly was halfway down. Since then, I have seen black T-shirts everywhere in Washington, DC, bearing variations on the Resistance theme: “The Resistance”; or, simply, “Resist”; or, harkening back to Hillary, “She Persists, You Resist.” Nowhere is it reported that Trump has taken any notice, to say nothing of ordering out his brown shirts.

Is it possible that we shall endure such childishness into 2018? I believe it is. Comparing oneself to freedom fighters who faced torture and death while one lounges in the Brussels airport may seem to normal Americans like a leap into fantasy, but it is nothing to the American Left. It has been inhabiting a fantasy world since the first Clinton administration. Those were the years in which it beheld then-President Bill Clinton as the Virgin President and Monica Lewinsky as The Stalker. Ever since then, the Left’s condition has worsened.

SOURCE

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GOP Rallies Behind Idiotic Bill

BY: ANN COULTER

Republicans are about to do something very stupid. Using bribery, threats and cajolery, they intend to pass a catastrophically unpopular bill on a party-line vote.

GOP: Obamacare is unpopular, so let’s pass a new health care bill that’s even MORE unpopular.

Normal Person: Why would you do that?

GOP: No, you don’t understand. Obamacare is totally imploding, so if we pass this bill now, all its problems will be blamed on us!

Republicans would be better off doing nothing. They can survive the ridicule for running against Obamacare through four election cycles and then not repealing it. They cannot survive a bill that does nothing to fix the actual problems with Obamacare.

The only explanation for the GOP doing something so stupid and unpopular is that it’s all about tax cuts.

Why can’t we get it through their heads that we didn’t elect Trump to cut taxes? Forty-five percent of people don’t pay any federal income tax — and they voted for Trump! Taxes on high earners (or “Hillary voters”) are at a historic low.

Here’s a somewhat more important issue I’d like to submit for Republicans’ consideration: PEOPLE CAN’T BUY HEALTH INSURANCE THEY WANT, CAN’T SEE THE DOCTORS THEY WANT AND CAN’T AFFORD THEIR PREMIUMS AND DEDUCTIBLES.

How about allowing people the option of buying insurance that doesn’t cover sex change operations, gambling addictions, psychotherapy, liver transplants for illegal aliens and so on?

Instead of squandering this moment, Trump the businessman should seize it to trumpet the free market. This is a golden opportunity to give a speech explaining why, contrary to everything your professors told you, communism doesn’t work. To paraphrase Talleyrand, what Republicans are doing with Obamacare is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.

Liberals always promise us wondrous cost-saving government programs, and then, it turns out, none of the laws of physics support their exciting plans. Obamacare is crashing and burning — and Trump hasn’t done a thing to anyone’s health care. He can say, perfectly accurately, he was just standing there when the plane hit the ground.

What sets us apart from the rest of the world is freedom — free people, free markets, free minds. That is how America became the most prosperous nation in the world. There’s no genius that can compete with the genius of the free market.

Sentient adults are perfectly capable of making their own choices about what health insurance to buy, the same way they make choices about what food to buy. The whole key to fixing Obamacare is not to repeal it, but to allow the rest of us to buy insurance on the free market.

Right now, it’s illegal to sell an insurance plan that most people would like to buy. Instead, you have to buy plans that cover millions of things you don’t want and nothing that you do want — all in order to pay for other people’s health care.

It would be as if grocery stores were required to charge you $60 for a head of lettuce in order to fund the federal school lunch program.

It is a blood libel to say we don’t care about the old, sick and dispossessed. Everyone has plenty of food in America, even without $60 heads of lettuce. That’s the free market! As Trump said, we will care for them better than they’ve ever been cared for before. But, first, the welfare cases have to be separated from the free market.

Proposed law: “Notwithstanding any other provision of federal or state law, it shall be lawful to purchase or sell any health insurance product in the United States of America.”

Skip the repeal — so there’s nothing for leftist ruffians to protest — and just give the rest of us the option of escaping Obamacare to buy health insurance the same way we buy everything else. Only a free market can guarantee good products at good prices.

Trump used to understand this! In the very first GOP debate, he said, “What I’d like to see is a private system without the artificial lines around every state. … Get rid of the artificial lines and you will have yourself great plans. And then we have to take care of the people that can’t take care of themselves. And I will do that through a different system.”

The “lines around the states” were the 50 state insurance commissions determining which health plans could legally be sold in each state — mandating, for example, that every plan include coverage for acupuncturists, chiropractors, fertility treatments, speech pathologists and so on.

Instead of throwing off the shackles of these commissions and giving us a nationwide free market in health insurance, Obamacare imposed one enormous federal shackle.

As a result, “health insurance” under Obamacare isn’t insurance at all — it’s the government forcing us to pay for other people’s health care through ghastly insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays in exchange for highly limited health insurance for ourselves.

Trump ought to be using the flaming wreckage of Obamacare to illustrate what’s wrong with all Soviet five-year plans. It could be as iconic as Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech. Teenagers would vote Republican for the next 70 years — 80 or 90 years, if they could finally buy decent health insurance.

SOURCE

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Congress is letting Trump and his voters down

Most Americans are dissatisfied – rightly and wrongly — with this Congress, but the frustration of many might have been placated had Congress actually accomplished something in its first 84 legislative days. Having already completed 57% of its schedule this year, the top accomplishment of the 115th Congress is the Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch – no small victory. Congress also passed about 15 resolutions under the Congressional Review Act rescinding various regulations issued in the waning days of the Obama Administration.

Otherwise, the trophy mantle is pretty much empty and rapidly gathering dust.  The House passed its version of Obamacare overhaul, but the Senate left town without taking a single vote.  The same goes for defanging the job-killing Dodd-Frank Act and the Frankenstein monster it created, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The budget is in shambles with liberal Republicans refusing to pass needed spending reductions for sacred cow entitlement programs, like Medicaid and food stamps.  Neither tax reform nor infrastructure is even on the launching pad.

And the much-promised wall between the U.S.-Mexican border the most tangible, symbolic reminder of the 2016 campaign?  Silence.

What Congress did pass in May was a $1.1 trillion spending bill to keep the government open till September 30th.  The bill maintained so many liberal priorities that the Washington Post declared it a “win” for Democrats, enough to give the resistance  confidence they can block the Trump agenda.

So, if Republican voters are frustrated and wondering why they voted and are stuck paying for a Congress that hasn’t delivered, they’ve got plenty of evidence to back them up.  And with only 63 legislative days scheduled for the rest of the year, a budget left to pass, the debt ceiling set to expire in September, and distractions like North Korea emerging, the prospects aren’t promising.  If only Congress could buy some more time.

They can – but it’s going to cost them their cherished August recess.

In June, the House Freedom Caucus called on Speaker Paul Ryan to cancel the August recess “to accomplish the priorities of the American people.”   As it became increasingly clear that the Senate would not vote on its health care bill before the July recess, ten senators signed a letter calling for the August recess to be shortened or canceled.  Organizations like Americans for Limited Government have pushed lawmakers to cancel their summer break so Congress can “get to work.”

Congressional leaders would be wise to heed these suggestions. Voters entrusted them with power in November to pass an agenda for making America great again; in its first 84 official days, Congress has come up woefully short.

Our elected officials behave much like schoolchildren.  Historically, the prospect of losing out on recess time has been the only consistent way to goad them into action.  With the clock working against them, lawmakers’ only option for delivering on even part of what they promised may be declaring that this time, school’s not out for summer.

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),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The compassion paradox in the UK

‘Kinder, gentler’ political activism is so often the opposite

It is somewhat ironic that ever since Jeremy Corbyn promised a new dawn of ‘kinder, gentler politics’, one of the great paradoxes of modern politics has become ever more glaring. This is the compassion paradox, the phenomenon by which the more caring and sympathetic people profess to be in their outlook, the nastier they are likely to be in person.

This paradox is not new, of course. Animal-rights fanatics are legendary for their misanthropy and acts of terrorism. ‘Tory Scum’ has long been the charming phrase used by those who complain, without any self-awareness, that the Tories are ‘nasty’.

Belligerent sanctimony is an age-old character trait of anti-Tories who love nothing more than rancorous, vindictive rhetoric. As one placard at the anti-austerity march at the weekend opined of Theresa May: ‘I’m sorry. I just really fucking dislike you. You piece of shit.’ Another, held aloft by a man in a black-and-red striped jumper, simply said: ‘Oh just fuck off!’

This compassion paradox has become more evident recently. Last week, Conservative MP Sheryll Murray talked of her experiences during the General Election, in which she read posts on social media urging people to ‘burn the witch’ and ‘stab the cunt’. Murray’s election posters were defiled with swastikas and a protester urinated in the doorway of her office, before shouting: ‘Fuck you, Sheryll Murray, you’re a fucking prick.’

Elsewhere, Sarah Wollaston, Conservative MP for Totnes, had the walls of her constituency office defaced with anti-Tory messages by masked men. A bridge leading into Totnes was also graffitied with the obligatory ‘Tory scum’. In east London, the Conservative MP for Romford, Andrew Rosindell, had the windows of his car smashed by a man on a moped. He, too, was followed everywhere with taunts of ‘Tory scum’.

This has generally been the direction of ‘caring’ politics lately: a radical posture combined with a lust for violence and bullying. Momentum’s reputation for threatening critics is infamous, while in the US this secular jihadism has manifested itself in the rise of antifa.

This behaviour is entirely consistent with the law of the compassion paradox: the kinder and gentler are your politics, the more violent are your words and actions. And the more you believe you are on the side of righteousness, of the poor against the rich, of Good against Evil, the more your mindset comes to resemble that of a religious fanatic. For those possessed with supreme righteousness, anything is permitted. The holy warrior can legitimise to himself or herself any manner of ferocity.

Intoxicated by a heady cocktail of malignant vindictiveness, grievance, moral indignation and unshakeable certitudes, the ostentatiously compassionate are on the march. They are whipping themselves into a frenzy over Grenfell Tower in particular. So watch out for greater tension on the streets. Behold when these kind, gentle zealots exact vengeance upon society.

SOURCE

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Most Europeans actually agree with the 'wicked' Donald Trump

Take his notorious decision to ban immigration from various Muslim countries. Even to raise such a proposal would shock most of those at the G20, and it's generally taken to be a policy that proves the blackness of Mr Trump's heart.

But if European voters disagree with him, it's more likely to be because they don't think he goes far enough. A survey by Chatham House this year showed that a majority in Austria, France, Germany, Greece and Italy would support a blanket ban on all immigration from Muslim countries. In Poland, which Mr Trump visited first, almost three quarters of the public would back a ban.

This does filter through into politics. A few weeks ago, Slovakia's prime minister declared that Islam has "no place" in his country. The Czech Republic has told the EU it will not take any Muslim asylum seekers.

Mark Rutte only won re-election in the Netherlands after telling immigrants to "behave normally or go away". They might not say this on Twitter, but the language is as shocking as anything coming out of the White House.

When it comes to building walls against neighbours, Mr Trump should spend his time in Europe today looking for tips. Macedonia built a wall with Greece last year, Lithuania is fencing off Russia's Kaliningrad exclave, and Norway is building a wall to keep out those making the rather heroic journey over its Arctic border with Russia.

Brazil, also a G20 member, has gone for a "virtual" wall, monitored by drones and satellites, around its 16,000-kilometre border. So you can disagree with Mr Trump's plan to build a wall, but it's hard to dismiss the idea as crazy.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, some 40 countries have built fences against 60 neighbours. The nation state is back in demand, as are walls: both are seen as useful tools to help manage a new era of mass immigration. The EU's idea of borderless travel was invented when net migration was at a fraction of today's levels. Now, we see chaos. For some Europeans, even a wall is not enough: Austria has been talking about deploying soldiers and armoured vehicles against migrants who might come over from Italy. Enough to shock even Mr Trump.

On trade, it's unclear what Mrs Merkel – or any EU leader – has to teach. Trump's "America first" trade policy simply mimics the Europe-first protectionism that has defined the EU since its inception. Trump has at least decided to keep NAFTA, the free trade deal with Canada and Mexico. The EU struggles to agree deals with any of its major trading partners; this week's much-feted agreement with Japan is only an "outline". And the US has been quicker than the EU to start free trade negotiations with Britain; talks start this month.

The difference is, mainly, one of language. The EU talks about being globally minded, while practising shameless protectionism. Trump boasts about his protectionism, while not (so far) managing to do very much of it.

Even on climate change, Mr Trump is not the villain that he pretends to be. He walked out of the Paris Agreement, but America's record is – and continues to be – strikingly impressive. Thanks to the fracking energy revolution, and ever-more efficient cars and machinery, the per capita carbon emissions in the US are now at levels not seen since the 1960s. The work might have been done by basic consumer demand rather than government diktats, but the US is doing rather well with marrying economic growth and decarbonisation. On the environment, the US should be judged by its achievements, not its promises.

And if Mr Trump is saying he's not too worried about global warming, he's also speaking for a lot of Europeans. A Pew survey shows just two in five say that they are very concerned about climate change, perhaps because environmental progress is doing rather well under its own steam. So, again, it comes down to language.

Mr Trump was elected president, in part because he has a genius for provoking his enemies into a deranged frenzy. But there's not much point in the EU, or any country, succumbing to the same temptation: this is how populists win. He might be jaw-droppingly undiplomatic, pointlessly argumentative and routinely offensive – characteristics that needlessly harm America's reputation. But he won because a great many of his supposedly fringe views are popular and, ergo, mainstream. Hard as it may be for his European counterparts to admit, this is true on both sides of the Atlantic.

SOURCE

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North Korea

China wants to maintain North Korea as a buffer state and will do nothing that could topple the Kim dynasty and give South Korea the chance to unite the peninsula. Beijing supports Pyongyang's view that nuclear arms will further protect the regime from externally induced regime change. Furthermore, Beijing believes that the propaganda spread in the Western media that even before Kim Jong-un has a weapon of mass destruction that can hit America, he has "escalation dominance" because of his massed artillery within range of Seoul. This is supposed to deter any military action to take out North Korea's research centers.

However, neither North Korea nor China has escalation dominance and the Trump administration must make it clear to both regimes why the balance of power still rests with the U.S. and its allies. Any attempt by North Korea to attack any of its neighbors in the wake of a limited strike against its nuclear and missile programs would mean the end of the Kim regime. Allied retaliation would be massive with the core objective of decapitating the government and military. If fighting persisted, the North would be decisively defeated and China's worst fears would be realized.

Kim must be told in no uncertain terms that he must disarm or face death. Menacing his neighbors is what will imperil his rule. If done quietly, we can count on him being too much of a spoiled brat to embrace martyrdom; problem solved.

Beijing must be given only two options; control and perhaps even remove Kim or risk being pulled into a wider war where its years of economic development would be demolished. For President Xi to take actions he does not want to take against Pyongyang, he must be presented with outcomes he finds even more unpalatable. As Carl von Clausewitz famously put it, the purpose of war is to "compel the enemy to do our will." That end can also be accomplished by diplomacy at a much lower cost; but only if the enemy believes war (and defeat) will be the consequence of diplomatic failure.

China knows the risks. The day after the Xi-Trump G20 meeting, Global Times ran a story on a joint U.S.-South Korean exercise, "Saturday's drill, designed to 'sternly respond' to potential missile launches by North Korea, saw two US bombers destroy 'enemy' missile batteries and South Korean jets mount precision strikes against underground command posts." The article concluded with the claim that "China has repeatedly expressed opposition to North Korea's missile launch against UN Security Council resolutions, as well as unilateral sanctions bypassing the UN Security Council, calling relevant parties to avoid escalating the tension and come back to the right track of peaceful negotiations." Beijing believes from experience with past American Presidents, that if America is talking, it is not acting---- and it is only acting that Beijing worries about. Talking gives North Korea more times to find a way to perfect long range weapons and nuclear warheads to put on them. Strategic patience is the route to Pyongyang becoming a global nuclear power          

China retreats from a superior United States, but reverts to form when the threats subside. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Beijing organized the Six Power Talks to negotiate the "denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula so as to head off a feared attack on North Korea which had been lumped with Iraq and Iran into what President George W. Bush called an "axis of evil." The diplomatic efforts collapsed when it became apparent that the U.S. was not going to expand its military campaign against nuclear proliferators. No threat, no need to make concessions.        

In 2010, after North Korea sank a South Korean warship, tensions flared and military exercises were held by China, Russia, Japan and the U.S. all around the peninsula. Beijing's rhetoric hit new highs for militancy, but it backed away from any direct confrontations as a USN carrier group sailed into the East China Sea. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked to forge a strong coalition all along the Pacific Rim, including overtures to Vietnam. President Barack Obama, however, undercut Clinton. At a summit with President Xi, he called on business leaders from both countries to work together to promote peace. This sign of weakness assured China that it need not make any concessions on either North Korea bellicosity or its own mercantilist trade policies; both of which are dangerous to American security. The Chinese had taken stock of Obama and were not afraid.          

President Trump got Beijing's attention at Mar-a-lago by sending a barrage of missiles into a Syrian airfield in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons. But there has been no follow up in Asia. Washington has reinforced its naval and air strength in the region, but Beijing does not think anything more will happen than in 2010. Global Times even proclaimed, "The Trump administration has not been as tough on China as expected....Trump is returning to Washington's previous China policy." This so-called "engagement" policy of past years has worked in Beijing's favor, supporting both its own rise and that of North Korea. Trump must prove the Chinese wrong.  Only if there is a credible threat to Beijing's core interests will the Chinese work to resolve the crisis before the costs of resistance becomes too high to bear. The threat will not become credible until the costs actually start to be felt as America takes action. As the old and tested saying goes, "actions speak louder than words."

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),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Alone Perhaps, But Is Trump Right?

Because he grounds his comments in history, I rarely disagree with Pat Buchanan -- but I take some issue with what he says below.  He notes President Trump's urging civilizational self-confidence for the West but is pessimistic about that civilizational self-confidence returning.  He seems to think that "We" have lost our collective balls.

I disagree.  I think the generally spineless response of the West to Islam is entirely a Leftist product.  During his ascent to the Presidency, his followers made pretty clear that they wanted a tough response to social problems and Mr Trump seems to be intent on such toughness.

So the challenge now is to get the Left out of their role of dictating what is right and acceptable.  The Left know that, which is why their response to Trump is so hysterical. But if Trump continues on to broad-based success for his policies, he should generate widespread support for them.  And the chattering class will have to move in his direction.  They will be a steadily shrinking minority talking to a steadily shrinking minority otherwise.

In short, I think that, after 8 years of Trump, America will have rediscovered its manhood and the rest of the world will gradually follow


At the G-20 in Hamburg, it is said, President Trump was isolated, without support from the other G-20 members, especially on climate change and trade.

Perhaps so. But the crucial question is not whether Trump is alone, but whether he is right. Has Trump read the crisis of the West correctly? Are his warnings valid? Is not the Obama-Merkel vision of a New World Order a utopian fantasy?

At the monument to the patriots of the Warsaw Uprising, Trump cited Poland as exemplar of how a great people behaves in a true national crisis.

Calling the Polish people "the soul of Europe," he related how, in the Miracle of the Vistula in 1920, Poland, reborn after 12 decades of subjugation, drove back the invading Red Army of Leon Trotsky.

He described the gang rape of Poland by Nazis and Soviets after the Hitler-Stalin pact. He cited the Katyn Forest massacre of the Polish officer corps by Stalin, and the rising of the Polish people against their Nazi occupiers in 1944, as the vulturous legions of Stalin watched from the safe side of the river.

When the Polish Pope, John Paul II, celebrated his first Mass in Victory Square in 1979, said Trump, "a million Polish men, women and children raised their voices in a single prayer. ... 'We want God.' ... Every Communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down." And so it did.

The crisis of the West today, said Trump, is akin to what Poland faced. For it is about the survival of a civilization, rooted in Christianity, that has made the greatest of all contributions to the ascent of man.

What enabled the Poles to endure was an unshakable belief in and a willingness to fight for who they were — a people of God and country, faith, families, and freedom — with the courage and will to preserve a nation built on the truths of their ancient tribe and Catholic traditions.

Given the threats to the West, from within and without, said Trump, we need such a spirit now. What are those threats?

"The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?

"We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive."

Trump professed confidence in the West's will to survive. But whether the West still has the character seems an open question.

Across the West, the traditional family has been collapsing for decades. Not one European nation has a birth rate that will enable its people to survive many more generations. Uninvited migrants in the millions have poured in — are pouring in — from Africa and the Middle East. The elite of Europe have been gladly surrendering their national sovereignties to transnational institutions like the EU.

Christianity is more of a dying than a thriving faith on the Old Continent. And as the churches empty out, the mosques are going up. Before our eyes, the West is being remade.

In June, gays and lesbians celebrated in Berlin as the German Parliament voted to approve same-sex marriage.

In Moscow, from May to July, a million Russians stood in lines a mile long to view and venerate a relic of the 4th-century bishop, St. Nicholas, on display in a glass case in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, rebuilt under President Putin.

Liberated from Leninism, Russia returns to the old faith, as Germany returns to Weimar.

At that G-20 gathering in Hamburg, hundreds of criminal thugs went on a three-day rampage — rioting, burning, looting and battling police, some 300 of whom were injured.

Were the autocrats of the G-20 — Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Narendra Modi of India — impressed with the resolute response of Angela Merkel — the media-designated new "Leader of the West" — to mobs rioting in Germany's second city?

At Harvard, Alexander Solzhenitsyn described what was on display in Hamburg: "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. ... Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite."

Secularist and hedonist, New Europe worships at the altars of mammon. Handel's "Messiah" cannot compete with moonwalking Michael Jackson's "We Are the World."

Once Europe went out to convert, colonize and Christianize the world. Now the grandchildren of the colonized peoples come to Europe to demand their share of their inheritance from a West besotted with guilt over its past sins that cannot say "No!"

SOURCE

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The Atlantic Publishes All You Need to Know About the Left

The race-obsessed Left see racism everywhere

Dennis Prager
 
Last week, The Atlantic rendered a great service to those of us who contend that America is in the midst of a civil war between the Right and the Left. It provided a smoking gun — actually, the gunshot itself — to those of us who contend that the Left (never to be confused with liberals) is intent on dismantling Western civilization.

It published articles by two left-wing writers, one by Peter Beinart titled “The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw Speech,” and one by its national correspondent, James Fallows, written on the same theme as Beinart’s.

The subject of both articles was President Donald Trump’s speech in Warsaw, Poland, last week, a speech described by The Wall Street Journal as “a determined and affirmative defense of the Western tradition.”

Yet, to The Atlantic writers, defending Western civilization is nothing more than a defense of white racism.

Beinart begins his piece saying: “In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to ‘the West’ and five times to ‘our civilization.’ His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It’s important that other Americans do, too.”

And Fallows begins saying, “what he called ‘civilization’ … boils down to ties of ethnicity and blood.”

Is there one liberal or conservative American who thinks that the words “the West” and “Western civilization” mean a celebration of white-blood purity?

I doubt it.

What we have here are two vital lessons.

One is that leftism is the primary racist ideology of our time, seeing everything in terms of race, whereas mainstream liberalism and conservatism advocate a race-blind society as manifest in Martin Luther King Jr.‘s famous “content of his character” line. The left disdains this view.

To cite one of innumerable examples, the University of California has published a list of biased “microaggression” statements students and faculty are to avoid. One of them is “There is only one race, the human race.”

In other words, the Left, which controls our universities, teaches American students that it is wrong to believe in one human race. That was precisely what the Nazis taught German students. And now, we have another expression of this doctrine enunciated in the pages of The Atlantic: that those who wish to protect or save Western civilization are talking about saving the white race.

I am certainly not equating leftism with Nazism. The Left doesn’t seek to annihilate all Jews (it merely supports the Palestinians, who seek to annihilate the Jewish state). I am merely stating an unassailable truth: No significant political movement since the Nazis has “honored” race or equated Western civilization with race, as Beinart and Fallows do.

The second service provided by The Atlantic writers is proof that the Left loathes Western civilization and therefore has become the internal enemy of Western civilization both in America and Europe.

In the Left’s eyes, the mere suggestion that Western civilization needs to be saved is, by definition, a call for the preservation of the white race. Therefore, the Left opposes calls to save Western civilization. As Beinart wrote: “The most shocking sentence in Trump’s speech — perhaps the most shocking sentence in any presidential speech delivered on foreign soil in my lifetime — was his claim that 'The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.’ … Trump’s sentence only makes sense as a statement of racial and religious paranoia.”

Those of us who have long equated the Left with opposition to Western civilization are vindicated. We didn’t need Beinart and Fallows — we already had innumerable examples, such as the University of Pennsylvania English department removing its longstanding poster of William Shakespeare because he was a white male — but in their explicit articulation of the Left’s view, they are immensely helpful.

Shakespeare is read in every language that has an alphabet not because he was white or European but because he is regarded as the greatest playwright who ever lived. But the leftists who run that English department place race (and gender) above excellence — a thorough rejection of Western values.

Ironically, outside of liberals and conservatives, those most likely to celebrate Western values are likely to not be Western. The Japanese would scoff at the idea that Bach and Beethoven did not write the greatest music ever composed. That is why some of the greatest Bach recordings of our time come from Japanese musicians living in Japan. Nor would the Japanese deny that their modern country’s democratic values come from the West.

The West’s disdain for its own values seems to getting increasingly strident with each passing day. President Trump is making an important and laudable effort to reverse this trend. He’s walking in good company. In an address to the Pan-American Scientific Congress in Washington, DC, on May 10, 1940, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Americans might have to become the guardian of Western culture, the protector of Christian civilization.” FDR frequently spoke about protecting both Western and Christian civilization.

We owe a debt of gratitude to The Atlantic, CNN (whose senior White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny described Trump’s address as a “white America, America first kind of speech”) and others. They have made it clear that the Left has contempt for Western civilization and therefore constitutes the greatest threat to its survival.

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),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Equality is unnatural

It has always been obvious that abilities are unequal and that the pursuit of human equality is therefore a foolish dream.  So it is interesting that acceptance of inequality is in fact hardwired.  Leftism is even more inhuman than we thought

Looking at a rich banker on a yacht, most people could be forgiven a stab of resentment. But the rich-poor divide exists because it is human nature, a study has found.

A series of experiments have found we are usually in favour of redistributing wealth from the rich to give to the poor. But if that threatens to upset the hierarchy, by making the rich poor and the poor rich, we are much less likely to support it.

It appears ordinary people are in favour of the class system, because they believe in a ‘just world’ where those with a higher income are more deserving.

THE STUDY

The findings, from a study published in the journal Nature, emerged from a game in which people redistributed cash rewards to other players.

The researchers found people’s aversion to ‘rank reversal’ begins when they are just six years old, after asking children to play their game.

Adults and older children were often happy to redistribute cash payments between unknown players in a game, taking from the rich to give to the poor.

But when this threatened to upset that order, by making the poor richer than those at the top of the ladder, they were 11.5 per cent more likely to refuse the cash reward.

Those who are higher up in the hierarchy are more invested in keeping it as it is, the results suggest.

For every point increase in the socioeconomic status of someone playing the game, they were 2.3 per cent less likely to destroy the rich-poor divide.

The findings, from a study published in the journal Nature, emerged from a game in which people redistributed cash rewards to other players.

Yet even Tibetan herders, cut off from the modern world, refuse to overturn the rich-poor divide.

Another possible explanation, according to co-author Dr Benjamin Ho, associate professor of behavioural economics at Vassar College in New York, is that our caveman past taught us that hierarchy makes sense.

He said: ‘Attempts to take from the rich and give to the poor could lead to violence that makes everybody worse off.

'You see this in the animal kingdom where wolf packs and chickens will fight to create a pecking order, but once a pecking order is created, they will fight to preserve it so as not to upset the balance.’

The researchers found people’s aversion to ‘rank reversal’ begins when they are just six years old, after asking children to play their game.

Adults and older children were often happy to redistribute cash payments between unknown players in a game, taking from the rich to give to the poor.

But when this threatened to upset that order, by making the poor richer than those at the top of the ladder, they were 11.5 per cent more likely to refuse the cash reward.

Those who are higher up in the hierarchy are more invested in keeping it as it is, the results suggest.

For every point increase in the socioeconomic status of someone playing the game, they were 2.3 per cent less likely to destroy the rich-poor divide.

Professor Nigel Nicholson, an evolutionary theorist at London Business School, said: ‘As evolutionary science and numerous research studies shows, status ranking really matter.

'Not only does it carry access to resources and life-enhancing benefits, but it also helps guarantee these for the next and succeeding generations since rank is largely heritable, especially for males.’

The caveman origins of our support for hierarchy are supported by the game results in a group of nomadic Tibetan herders, who know little about capitalism but were exceptionally averse to reversing the roles of rich and poor.

The study concludes that people are not only averse to losing their own rank, but to seeing others lose theirs too.

It states: ‘Our economic game shows that humans exhibit an aversion to reverse rank similar to the patterns of behaviour found in the animal kingdom - a behaviour designed to reduce in-group violence and conflict.’

But the authors, led by Zhejiang University in China, add: ‘One reason why participants may feel that rank ordering should be preserved is a belief in a just world. 'They may assume that those earning a higher income are more deserving.’

SOURCE

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Judgement Day as Sheriff Joe Arpaio faces prison for enforcing immigration law

Former Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a border enforcement crusader now targeted by a federal prosecutors, could learn as early as today if he will be found guilty of criminal contempt.

He was indicted, and was tried last week, on charges of criminal contempt for continuing patrols to find those crossing the U.S./Mexico border illegally, after liberal Federal judge G. Murray Snow ordered him in 2011 to stop enforcing the law.

The Federal government alleges Arpaio continued border patrols that discriminated against Hispanics.  Arpaio argues the court order was vaguely worded, and he changed the manner in which he conducted the patrols to made a good faith effort to comply.

Arpaio’s fate will be decided by Federal Judge Susan Bolton, a Bill Clinton appointee.  It was Bolton who in 2010 blocked Arizona’s law allowing police to check the immigration status of detained suspects.

Arpaio, who won national praise for his tough approach to crime and efforts to secure his county’s border with Mexico, lost his re-election after he was targeted by liberals nationwide and charged with crimes.

Arpaio is being prosecuted by the Justice Department’s “Public Integrity Section” (PIS,) which was behind the prosecutions of Republican former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Republican Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and Democrat former senator and vice-presidential nominee John Edwards.  McDonnell and Stevens were both convicted.

McDonnell’s conviction was unanimously throw out by the Supreme Court, which ruled the PIS falsely applied the law.  Stevens’ conviction was also thrown out after the PIS admitted to widespread misconduct in the case, but by then Stevens has lost his Senate seat, his reputation was ruined and he had perished in a plane crash.

Edwards was found not guilty by a jury that found the PIS, once again, has misapplied the law.

In the weeks before the 2010 election, when it became apparent Democrats may lose, then-IRS official Lois Lerner spoke with PIS Chief Jack Smith, PIS Deputy Chief Raymond Hulser and PIS “Election Crimes” Division head Richard Pilger to discuss possibly targeting and arresting citizens operating anti-Obama “Tea Party” groups.  During that meeting, PIS officials reviewed confidential taxpayer information on Obama critics, which is generally illegal.

SOURCE

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Ted Cruz opposes using hiked premiums on healthy people to pay for the needs of the very ill

Obama used general revenue to finance his schemes so the precedent has been set

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), an early advocate of repealing Obamacare, says his objective for the last six months “has been to reach consensus, to bring together and unify the Republican conference” on an alternative to Obamacare.

Cruz said the way to do that is to “focus like a laser” on lowering premiums for everybody, including people with pre-existing conditions. And that means taxing wealthy people like Warren Buffet to help stabilize premiums for people with pre-existing conditions.

On Sunday, Cruz told ABC’s “This Week,” “There is widespread agreement in Congress there’s going to be significant assistance” for people with “serious diseases, serious pre-existing conditions.”

Here's what Obamacare does. It takes tens of millions of young healthy people and it jacks up their premiums, it doubles or triples their premiums, and takes all that extra money -- not for them, but uses it to cross-subsidize people who are sick. I don't think that's fair. I don't think that makes sense.

I'd much rather use direct taxpayer funds. Let's use Warren Buffett's taxes and not some 30-year-old who's struggling and just beginning her career. Don't double her premiums to cross-subsidize other people. That's what Obamacare does. It's wildly unfair.

Cruz said low-income people are not the only ones who would be subsidized for pre-existing conditions. He noted that there are “two different sources of federal taxpayer funds on the exchanges.”

First, there are tax credits to help low-income people afford their insurance premiums.

“But number two, the Senate bill has over $100 billion in funds for the stabilization fund that are designed to stabilize those premiums. The objective has to be -- and I think the way we get this done is focus on lowering premiums. If we're lowering premiums, it's a win/win for everybody.”

Cruz said he continues to believe Republicans can pass health care reform. And if repeal and replace can’t be done at the same time, he favors passing a repeal bill that would take effect in a year or two, “then spend that time debating the replacement.”

“And if a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, premiums continue to skyrocket, we will have failed. But if they go down, if health insurance is more affordable, that's a big win for everybody.”

The plan proposed by Senate Republicans allows people to pay health insurance premiums from health savings accounts, which use pre-tax dollars. Cruz took credit for introducing that proposal, and he called it a “big deal.”

He’s also advocating a “consumer freedom option,” which says consumers should be able to choose what kind of insurance they want to buy:

“If you want to buy a plan with all the bells and whistles, with all of the mandates under Title 1 (Obamacare), you can buy that plan, those plans will be on the market. Those plans will have significant federal taxpayer money behind them.

"But on the other hand if you can't afford a full Cadillac plan, you should be able to buy another plan that meets your needs. And so the consumer freedom option gives you, the consumer, choice whether to go with the full Cadillac or a skinnier plan that's a lot more affordable, and for a lot of consumers, that may be much better than having no coverage whatsoever, which is what they have now.”

President Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday, “For years, even as a ‘civilian,’ I listened as Republicans pushed the Repeal and Replace of ObamaCare. Now they finally have their chance!”

On Monday, Trump tweeted: "I cannot imagine that Congress would dare to leave Washington without a beautiful new HealthCare bill fully approved and ready to go!"

SOURCE

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CNN



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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),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Why did Germans follow Hitler so slavishly?

This has been something of a burning question ever since the war.  What historians have said about it is reviewed here. And the reviewer is right to say that none of the answers given is satisfactory.  Yet the answer is right there in plain sight.  It is in the name of Hitler's political party:  The national socialist German worker's party.

Before I elaborate on that, however, I must warn that I am about to mention Donald Trump. So I want to make clear from the outset that I am NOT going to say that Trump is a Nazi.  Leftists say that all the time and I have often pointed out how hollow such accusations are.

As we all know, Mr Trump came to power with the slogan:  "Make America great again".  And despite being just about as unpresidential as you can imagine, that slogan took Mr Trump to the top.  That slogan had to have great power to overcome all the negatives (real and imagined)  associated with Mr Trump.

So guess what Hitler's message to the German people was?  Paraphrased, it was "Make Germany great again". (Hitler didn't put it exactly that way.  He put it more emotionally.  For instance "Vor uns liegt Deutschland, in uns marschiert Deutschland und hinter uns kommt Deutschland!")  Germany was badly hit by WWI so that idea was very attractive to Germans.  So nationalism, particularly in a time of stress, has very strong appeal.

And Hitler added to that a form of socialism  -- where socialism is defined as redistributing the wealth from the rich to the poor -- "Gleichberechtigung" in Hitler's German.  Hitler campaigned using exactly that word. See below.



But here's the odd thing.  It's such an odd thing that I will be called a dangerous neo-Nazi for saying it. Socialism as we know it today is under Marxist influence and as such is basically motivated by hate.  Marx hated everybody. It masquerades as compassion but it's really an excuse to tear down the existing society and its arrangements.  And the various extreme socialist regimes -- Soviet Russia, Mao's China etc -- show exactly how vicious and destructive socialism can be.

But Hitler's socialism was different and more powerful.  It appeared to be and he claimed it to be motivated by love -- love of the German people ("Volk").  Hitler's love for his "Volk" and particularly German young people really stands out here.  In a word, Hitler convinced Germans that he loved them.  And it was out of that love that he wanted to benefit ordinary Germans at the expense of the rich, particularly rich Jews.

And he saw socialism as being secure only within a homogeneous society, which Germany would become once the Jews were ousted.  See below.  The quote is from Mein Kampf and translates as "There is no socialism except what arises from within one's own people".  So he saw nationalism and socialism as organically connected.



So he didn't tear down the existing society the way hate-motivated socialists do if they get the chance. He wanted to redistribute but not to destroy.  As you will see from the speech linked above, he wanted to build up a united and heroic Germany, not tear it down. The Marxist aim of class-war was anathema to him. And whatever its motivation, socialism has a lot of appeal to people to this day. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are evidence of that. Socialism offers security of all sorts.  It says: "You will be looked after".

So if someone is offering both socialism and nationalism all in one package, he has got a magic mix.  Hitler offered the perfect dream -- he offered it all.  And the offering was made all the more powerful by his success in convincing people that his "compassion" was sincere. So Germans shared his dream and marched on behind him to the bitter end.

Mr Trump too tends to convince people that he stands for the little guy but his means to his ends are very different.  Where Hitler wanted to redistribute the wealth, Trump wants to create it -- mainly by giving the unemployed jobs.  And because Trump is not wanting to take anything off anybody, he does not have to have an authoritarian State to enforce his wishes.  So he is in fact chopping away at the vast regulatory apparatus that Obama and some of his predecessors built up.   Trump is a capitalist, not a socialist, a deregulator, not an authoritarian -- and there is a world of difference there.

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Pelosi Progressives — The Winning Formula for Republicans

The San Francisco Democrat raises an awful lot of money for her party, but her unfavorable status helps the GOP

Political parties once had the power to stand on their own platforms of ideas and policies. Voters would ideologically or practically align with Democrats or Republicans based on values and issues. As money and the power of incumbency have grown, along with the now-24/7 cable news cycle and the rise of social media platforms, individuals in leadership, particularly those of significant tenure and position, have become the face of their respective partisan groups.

It’s true that some conservatives and Republicans cringe at that fact. Now that President Donald Trump is moving his agenda, complete with his, er, extraordinary mannerisms, as the face of the Grand Old Party, angst is on display among the Republican ranks. Democrats are buoyed by this fracture and perpetuating the fairytale of Russia/Trump collusion to derail any agenda.

But there’s a chink in the Left’s political battle armor that’s proving to be an existential threat to their work to regain the House majority in the 2018 mid-term elections: The face of the Democrat Party and the political Left is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

In the special congressional elections that have occurred following Trump Cabinet appointments, Democrats intentionally declared each one served as a referendum on Trump’s unpopularity. Yet all four special elections were lost by well-funded Democrats. So much for the all-out rejection that is supposedly brewing among the American electorate against Trump’s agenda.

Two of these congressional races must be noted. First, in Montana, the GOP candidate to replace Ryan Zinke was charged with misdemeanor assault of a reporter the evening before voters went to the polls. Despite his popular folksy Democrat rival looking to benefit from a nationwide flurry of horrible press for manhandling a member of the “fake media,” Greg Gianforte won — maybe because he manhandled the media. Not only did Trump not cost Republicans a seat, but the accepted belief that media is the problem worked in favor of a fed-up Gianforte, who was pressed with a hail of questions about the GOP health care proposal. Montanans chose that over the whole state being represented by Nancy Pelosi’s values.

In Georgia’s 6th congressional district, a peach of a race shaped up with historic fundraising. Democrat nominee Jon Ossoff, who hadn’t found it necessary to yet live in the district he sought to represent, couldn’t vote for himself, nor could most of his California donors and big money coming from Planned Parenthood. When records show that of the almost $24 million raised by the Democrat, nine times more contributions came from California than within Georgia, Karen Handel, the GOP candidate was accurately able to state, “He’s raised millions outside of Georgia from Nancy Pelosi and outsiders who just don’t share our priorities. My opponent doesn’t live here [and] doesn’t share our values.” Ossoff and Pelosi lost to Handel.

In short, Pelosi’s unabashed hard-left stances based on sensationalized information are rejected, as were Barack Obama’s. But Nancy gets a little extra help in her public disapproval due to some of her antics. Let’s walk down memory lane.

Who can forget the oldie but goodie during the cram-down-our-throats passage of the insultingly name “Affordable” Care Act? Then-House Speaker Pelosi declared, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Or what about her later declaration that “I believe the [Republican-controlled] House of Representatives, at this time, is an unsafe place for children and other living things”? In December 2016, the California congresswoman whose worth is estimated at $100 million avowed, “I don’t think people want a new direction. Our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families.”

Another favorite videoed moment of Pelosi was in January 2017, just days after Trump’s inauguration. Democrats marched in protest of Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which merely called for a temporary pause in travel from nations Barack Obama identified as being of risk. Oh, the theatrics as the anti-Trump crowd watched Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana trotted out to the microphone to challenge Trump’s move. The hot mic picked up Pelosi feeding lines to him: “Tell them you’re a Muslim. Tell them you’re a Muslim.”

So, as Pelosi provides reliable ammunition for Republicans — and no, the use of this metaphor is not a call to arms or violence — why does she remain as the face of the Democrats?

It’s simple, really. The 77-year-old, first elected to Congress in 1993, is a fundraising powerhouse on the Left. Since rising to House leadership for Democrats in 2002, she is credited with raising almost $568 million for leftist candidates. Perhaps it’s no wonder the Democrat Caucus has moved so hard-left.

Furthermore, as noted in the June 27 CNN analysis declaring “Nancy Pelosi Can’t Be Beaten,” you can’t beat anybody with nobody. The shallow pool of candidates who might oppose Pelosi’s leadership are not viewed as credible — there are no young guns in the wings who pose a threat.

Pelosi’s unpopularity is no recent development. Back in 2013, Gallup showed she earned the distinction of being the most unpopular congressional leader. Just over the last eight weeks in 11 House districts that are targeted by Democrats for 2018, Pelosi’s job favorability didn’t surpass 37.2%.

Democrats may want a new face of their party, but their blindness to the authentic issues facing working Americans has been exposed. Republicans have much work to do in the House (and Senate) to capitalize on what’s become a gaping hole in Democrat armor — the obstinacy of the hard-Left. Thank you, Madame Pelosi.

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Conservative group prods Walden over 'right to try' bill

The conservative group FreedomWorks is turning up the heat on a top House Republican to support bipartisan legislation that would allow terminally ill patients unrestricted access to experimental drug treatments.

FreedomWorks wants House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) to advance the Right to Try Act (H.R. 878), which was introduced in February but hasn’t moved through the committee.

“Right now there are millions of Americans lying in hospital beds, fighting for their lives. And Congressman Greg Walden isn't doing anything to help them!” the group wrote in an online ad urging its followers to tell Walden to support the bill.

“There’s bipartisan support so I don’t know why it’s still sitting there. It should be a slam dunk for the committee,” said Jason Pye, FreedomWorks’ vice president of legislative affairs.

The legislation was introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and has 41 co-sponsors, but counts only four of the committee’s Democrats as supporters. An Energy and Commerce Committee spokesman didn’t respond to questions about the status of the legislation or about Walden’s support for the bill.
But a separate Senate version of the legislation, championed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), is moving much quicker and a lobbyist familiar with the legislation said it could be on the Senate floor as soon as next week.

Without House action, the legislation could linger. Supporters of the bill say the federal government needs to cut through the bureaucratic red tape of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval process. They argue that people who are near the end of their life should have a right to take riskier medicines.

“Right to Try” laws are on the books in 37 states, but have yet to be implemented at a federal level.

Vice President Pence is an advocate of the laws and signed Indiana’s right to try law in 2015 while he was governor. Pence met with proponents of the federal law in February and pledged the support of President Trump.

During a meeting with pharmaceutical executives in January, Trump suggested he'd make changes to the drug rules for terminal patients.

“One thing that has always disturbed me, they come up with a new drug for a patient who is terminal and the FDA says, ‘We can’t have this drug used on the patient,’ ” Trump said.

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),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The New Left’s Fake Patriotism

You can’t hate America and be a patriot

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

If anyone doubts that patriotism really is the last refuge of a scoundrel, a recent CNN article boasts that liberals are reclaiming patriotism. After going through their musty attics, tossing aside copies of Howard Zinn’s revisionist Marxist history of America and all the “U.S. Out of Everywhere” buttons, they found their patriotism, moth-eaten, covered in dust and a little worse for the wear. But otherwise intact.

That’s right, progressives are patriotic again. Again refers to the brief period between the end of the Hitler-Stalin pact when the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union necessitated a sudden outburst of pro-war sentiment and the beginning of the Cold War when the Communists became the enemy again.

When the left acts as if WW2 was the only good war, it’s because it was the only war that didn’t force them to choose between their sympathies for Communism and their United States citizenship.

Every time they did have to make that choice, history records their duplicity and sordid treason.

The new left-wing patriotism doesn’t consist of actually loving this country. Or discarding their conviction that America is the worst thing that ever happened to this continent and this planet.

Instead, conveniently, the new patriotism consists of hating President Trump.

When Hillary’s people decided to shift the blame for losing the election from their unlikable candidate, their incompetent campaign operation and the good sense of the voters to a vast Russian conspiracy, the left became patriotic. And by “patriotic”, they mean blaming the results of an election on Russia.

It’s not that the left actually hates Russia. Before Hillary decided to blame the Russians for her own unlikability, she was mugging for the camera with one of Putin’s henchmen and wielding a misspelled Reset Button.

Why a reset button?

Back then the born-again patriots of the left had accused President Bush of alienating Russia (and the rest of the world) with his cowboy diplomacy. Obama and his team of sensitive diplomats would replace cowboy diplomacy with cowardly diplomacy. That was why Hillary’s people pried a swimming pool button out of a pool so she could show off the new “Reset” with Russia. It was why Obama sold out traditional allies to appease Putin. It was why he was caught on a hot mic telling another of Putin’s people that he would have more flexibility to appease him after the election.

All this has been forgotten in a rush of revisionist patriotism. Traitors now masquerade as patriots. Last year’s appeasers now stick out their chests and act as if they’re Ronald Reagan, not Jimmy Carter.

Don’t expect it to last. If you doubt that, Al Gore once attacked Bush for being soft on Saddam.

As tensions with Russia grow over Syria, the born-again patriots will be reborn as appeasers. The next Democrat will run for the White House promising to restore our relationship with Russia. And he’ll blame President Trump for ruining our previously congenial relations with cowboy diplomacy.

History will once again be rewritten. Russia was always our friend. Lefties were always advocates of diplomatic relations and opponents of wars. But we will have always been at war with Eastasia.

That’s the disgusting farce of the new lefty Russia hawks. They don’t hate Russia. They hate America. Give it two years and they’ll be on television explaining how Putin will love President Elizabeth Warren because she won’t offend or provoke the rest of the world by insisting on American greatness.

After eight years of betraying America to Chinese hackers, Iranian nuclear negotiators, Islamic terrorists from Iraq to Libya, Cuban Communists, Columbian narcoterrorists and yes, the dreaded Russians, the left wants us to believe that they have left behind the error of their ways and love this country again.

The lefty patriot has a lot in common with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny: he doesn’t exist.

There’s more to patriotism than hating your political opponents. It’s not a negative emotion. It’s a positive one. It demands the degree of feeling that I heard from a man on a twilight porch in Montana as Fourth of July fireworks filled the sky, “God, I love this country!”

The difference is easy to spot.

Republicans stand by their country against foreign enemies no matter who is in the White House. Lefty patriotism however is a rare phenomenon that had previously only occurred when Democrats were in office. And even then, lefty patriotism is as unreliable as solar panels and wind turbines in January.

Every time we have fought a war, cameras could reliably spot leftists protesting against it. And yes, that even includes WW2.

Patriots don’t announce that they will move to Canada if the wrong guy wins the election.

The new progressive patriot doesn’t love this country. Even his newfound resentment of Russia is incidental. He hates Russia because of Trump. Once CNN and the New York Times detach Trump from Russia, he’ll see the wisdom of liking it again. Russia, like every other country except Israel, must be better than America. It’s better than the horrifying orgy of capitalists plundering the planet, racist police randomly shooting young black men, fundamentalists hating women, militarists plotting to bomb brown people and all the other hysterical leftist fantasies which are traced back to this country’s original sins.

America was founded by racist, capitalist slave-owners who stole the land from the Indians so they could open fast food franchises. That’s what the average college student is taught. It’s what the average leftist believes. How much love can he be expected to feel for America? About as much as you feel for Iran.

The new lefty patriotism is really anti-patriotism. It doesn’t really resent Russia. Instead it resents President Trump’s call for national greatness. Tying him to Russia is a cynical bid by traitors seeking their last refuge outside of their safe spaces and pronoun-free toilets in the sacred space of patriotism.

History tells us that lefty patriotism has a shorter life than some of the world’s rarest substances which can only be created in labs and whose very existence continues to be debated by feuding scientists.

This current phenomenon in which lefties briefly confuse their hatred of America, with their subsidiary hatred of President Trump and a sudden subsidiary resentment of Russia for foisting him on us by cleverly causing the Democrats to nominate a candidate with all the popular appeal of spoiled supermarket tuna, will pass. And it will pass quickly.

When the Washington Post fails to deliver their Watergate on time, when even the dimmest follower of Occupy Democrats realizes that pigs will fly into his front yard and uproot his Bernie 2020 sign before impeachment happens, they will turn to something else.

And the new tattered lefty patriotism will go back up to the attic to lie under their moldering American flags and their defaced copy of the Declaration of Independence. Sic transit gloria moonbat.

SOURCE

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Congress joins Trump war on regs, cuts a year's worth in one week

Congressional lawmakers have gone all in on President Trump's bid to slash Obama-era regulations, targeting $19 billion in rules and the elimination of enough red tape to free up 5,200 federal workers, according to a new analysis.

The cuts proposed by the House Appropriations Committee this week amount to a year's worth of regulations under the Obama administration, said the report from American Action Forum.

Analyst Sam Batkins wrote, "The suite of appropriations bills released this week goes further, curtailing more than $19 billion in total regulatory costs and eliminating 10.4 million hours of paperwork, the equivalent of eliminating all regulations from 2006 and freeing 5,200 employees from paperwork compliance."

His report, provided to Secrets in advance of its release today, said that the committee's funding bills target regulations in the areas of financial services, agriculture and energy. The biggest ticket item: "Repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill's Volcker rule, which originally estimated $4.3 billion in costs and 2.3 million new paperwork burden hours."

Batkins, AAF's director of regulatory policy, explained that Congress can be very slow in cutting regulations, but added that appropriators are moving with unusual speed at the same time Trump's team is also targeting rules within federal agencies for elimination.

"For those who thought the regulatory reform debate was limited to the executive branch and the administration's one-in, two-out executive order, Congress is proving it has plenty of power to curtail past rules. It can do so in a way that is faster than the regulatory process, and in some instances, far more durable than repeal through the executive branch," said the AAF report.

"The measures outlined here could repeal more than $19 billion in costs and eliminate 10.4 million hours of paperwork. If these riders successfully make it through the process, expect this practice to continue as other legacy regulations are addressed through the legislative branch," the report added.

Batkins highlighted the committee's targets:

Financial Services:

Repeal of Volcker Rule: $4.3 billion and 2.3 million hours.

Limiting Implementation of Blade-Contact Rule: $2.5 billion.

Repeal Individual Mandate: 5 million paperwork hours.

Prohibits SEC from requiring companies to disclose political spending.

Requires OMB to report on costs of Dodd-Frank.

Energy and Water:

Withdrawing "Waters of the United States" Rule: $462 million.

Prohibits regulators from restricting firearms on Army Corps lands.

Agriculture:

Limiting "Trans Fat Ban:" $11 billion.

Limiting "Cigar and Vaping" Rule: $1.1 billion and 1.6 million paperwork hours.

Allows flexibility for schools implementing whole grain school lunch standards.

Prevents further implementation of school lunch sodium standards.

Allows flexibility for schools serving low-fat flavored milk.

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),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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