Nazism prefigured the modern world

Of all the myriad myths spread at light speed by the enemies of Christianity and astonishingly believed without much critical thought by vast numbers of people, one of the most surreal must be the idea that Nazism was Christian.

This is part of an email I received from Tony, a supporter of my party Liberty GB, who sent me a long list of sharp attacks against Christianity after watching my video: What Is Uniquely Good about Western Civilisation Derives from Christianity.

    "For example Adolf Hitler was a Catholic and included proclamations of his beliefs in his writings, e.g. "We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the morality and moral sense of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession."

What is totally missed by Tony and, unfortunately, many others is that "positive Christianity" is not Christianity at all, but a way of "restoring the old pagan Nordic values and 'substitute the spirit of the hero for that of the Crucifixion'."

Another thing that anti-Christians don't consider: in Nazi times Germans were overwhelmingly Christian -- even despite Nazism's comprehensive attempts to erase Christianity from Germany and replace it with a neo-pagan religion based on pre-Christian Germanic legends -- and so Hitler had to pay some lip service in public to Christianity. But both what he and the Nazis in power did and what he was recorded as saying in private tell another story, much closer to the truth.

Hitler said, as reported in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944: His Private Conversations:

    "Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things...

    The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity... Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity... And that's why someday its structure will collapse... The only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little...

    Christianity is an invention of sick brains...

    I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity."

Very modern, with references to the theory of evolution -- in which the Fuhrer was an ardent believer -- and the scientific "understanding of the universe" replacing Christianity.

According to the book Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity by Michael Coren, a program listing the main dogmas of the National Reich Church -- a Nazi institution intended to eliminate Christianity from Germany and establishing a new pagan religion -- published in 1942 by The New York Times, ended with:

    "On the day of the foundation of the National Reich Church the Christian cross shall be removed from all churches, cathedrals, and chapels inside the frontiers of the Reich and its colonies and will be replaced by the symbol of invincible Germany -- the swastika."

Another lie dear to the Left that has managed to enter the collective mind is that the Popes wanted to get rid of the Jews. Countless rabbis, Jewish leaders, and Israeli authorities have recognised the crucial role played by the Catholic Church in helping the Jews. In fact the Church did more than any other institution to help and rescue Jews from Nazism.  From the Jewish Library website:

    "The vindication of Pius XII has been established principally by Jewish writers and from Israeli archives. It is now established that the Pope supervised a rescue network which saved 860,000 Jewish lives -- more than all the international agencies put together."

The power of propaganda and how easy it is to smear a political or ideological opponent is terrifying.

The danger of a return to values and ideas espoused by the Nazis, that we hear so much about, is real, but doesn't come so much from the direction of the usual suspects, "Islamophobic", neo-Nazi groups, as from a far more mainstream, Leftist direction.

The threat has two sources. One is the rise of Islam in the West -- aided and abetted by the Left -- with its well-known ideological and historical links to Nazism and anti-Semitism. The second source is less well-known. Recent in-depth and groundbreaking historical research, thanks to the opening of national archives (previously closed to the public) after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, has thrown an entirely new light on what nurtured Nazi ideology. We already knew that Hitler and Nazism were neo-pagan and anti-Christian (despite what the Left says), but books like Karla Poewe's New Religions and the Nazis, Gene Edward Veith's Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judaeo-Christian Worldview and others, go much further than that.

They reveal a worrisome, sinister similarity between Nazism and current trends, both sharing hostility for the Judaeo-Christian tradition and its ethics and increasingly embracing neo-pagan views. In many way, Nazis were pioneers of what's happening today. About Nazis, Poewe says:

    "They also rejected Christian morality. They couldn't stand the Ten Commandments. They were totally against any categorical or timeless morality. They wanted something opportunistic, something that changed with the human circumstances."

These days' moral relativism in a nutshell.

American historian Veith has a definition for fascism that is undistinguishable from our time's prevailing ethos: "Fascism is the modern world's nostalgia for paganism. It is a sophisticated culture's revolt against God."

As the 10 years of historical research by Karla Poewe document, Nazism was ushered in by new religions, chiefly the German Faith Movement (Deutsche Glaubensbewegung or DGB), mixing pagan Nordic and Hindu religions.

Mirroring present-day's environmentalism and its pantheism were Heinrich Himmler's proclamations of the sacred status of German lands. SS symbols, oaths and rituals were derived from ancient German and Nordic mythology. The rooms of their secret meetings were decorated with runes, prehistoric signs supposed to give the power of prophecy to anyone who could read them.

Himmler and Hitler wanted to abolish the "criminal institution of the Christian Church known as marriage", although gave up this goal as unacceptable to contemporary Germans. They'd be delighted to see how much their ideas are being vindicated nowadays.

There was a "secular christening" for illegitimate children, called "SS name-giving", created by Himmler, complete with swastikas and runes.

About homosexuality, Poewe wrote:

    "Hauer's DGB bunde shared with National Socialism a tendency toward homoerotism. Hauer himself was permissibly heterosexual, but "homosexuality was very tolerated in these youth movements, and a high percentage of the SA and SS were homosexual or bisexual. People like to think that because Adolf Hitler murdered (SA leader) Ernst Rohm, who was homosexual, he was repressive of homosexuality. But that wasn't the case. It's a myth to think the Nazi movement was against homosexuality. Far from it; it wasn't sexually repressive at all."

So, here we have it: the Nazis paved the way, and now we can follow in their futuristic, progressive path: marriages are in decline, Christianity is dying, illegitimacy is on the rise, paganism seems the way forward, and homosexuality is making great advances towards normal status.

SOURCE

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Progressives’ Rules Of Outrage

Answering all accusations of hate speech or incivility with the simple phrase "Bush = Hitler" would deflate a lot of pomposity

The thing I like about most sports are the rules and how the winner is determined are pretty unambiguous. Score more points, cross the finish line first, jump higher, whatever, and you win. Should there be any foul play or skirting of the rules, there’s an official or referee there to cry foul. It’s simple and, to borrow a word from President Obama, fair.

Politics, on the other hand, is quite different. Truth used to be the most potent weapon in the game of politics. It was the best tool with which to garner the most votes, and whoever got the most votes won. Whoever gets the most votes still wins, but getting to that finish line is no longer even remotely restrained by rules of the truth.

Politicians always have lied, to be sure. But the media was there to, if not serve as an impartial referee, at least hold the players to some sort of standard. No more.

Putting aside the 2008 election, when Barack Obama was vetted with all the gusto guys use to vet pretty girls at the singles bar, the media has been a co-conspirator with Democrats in an unprecedented way the last five years.

It started with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The White House and Democrats laid out specific promises should the bill become law. We were told the unemployment rate would not go above 8 percent and the economy would be boosted by the hundreds of thousands of “shovel-ready jobs” the bill would create. None came close to happening.

The White House was nervous. This was early on, when the administration was not quite sure how supportive the media would be. Their political friends and donors were cashing their stimulus checks, but nothing was happening. What if the stimulus did not stimulate?

Turns out they needn’t have worried. To this day, progressives and their handmaidens in the media believe either that the stimulus saved the country or would’ve been more effective if it had been larger.

But non-believers were looking at the numbers and getting suspicious. Democrats had to act quickly. They had move the goalposts for “success.”

The professional obfuscators on the public payroll, also known as the president’s advisors, cooked up a new unit of measure – jobs saved or created. The beauty of this number was it couldn’t be proven, but it couldn’t be disproven either. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best they could do under such obvious failure.

But it’s one thing to fool average people. They have lives and don’t pay close attention to these things. But the watchdogs of democracy should have known better. They should have blown this new unit of measure out of the water. But they didn’t. They reported it like it was the plan all along.

It was then the White House, Democrats and progressives in general knew beyond a doubt that the old rules were gone. Truth was no longer something written in pen, or even pencil, it was written in sand and could be rewritten on a whim whenever needed. And they rewrote.

After all, if you can create a new unit of measure every time you’re in trouble, you can’t lose. Especially when you have the referees on your team.

We’ve since been inundated with unprovable declarations of success, such as “It would have been worse if we hadn’t…(insert any economic claim here).” The media referees played along as though they had seen this alternate future and determined the president was right – it could have been worse.

It is shameless. The only thing worse is Republicans’ inability to recognize the futility of complaining to those media referees and do an end-run around them directly to the people.

Now we come to this week, and another example of a malleable rulebook written in sand when it comes to how progressives and conservatives are treated by the media.

Ted Nugent, someone I grew up with on the radio in Detroit, called the president a “subhuman mongrel” at an event for Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott of Texas. The offended class in the media sprang into action, drooling like heroin junkies when they hear that flame hit the bottom of the spoon.

It was deemed one of the worst things ever said, by people who make their living declaring things said by others awful – one of the few growth industries in Obama’s economy.

CNN dedicated hour upon hour of coverage to the words of a man whose actions for charity they’ve ignored for decades. Current Texas Gov. Rick Perry went on with Wolf Blitzer and was badgered for 2 1/2 minutes to denounce these words, then denounce them in stronger terms, and again, as if Perry has said them himself. Republicans were nearly trampled by “journalists” demanding they react to and answer for something said in an entirely different time zone.

Meanwhile, taking a break from calling Republicans all manner of potty-mouth names, Bill Maher has made the rounds of cable television as if he knows anything about this beyond what he read on Daily Kos. Imagine the feigned outrage if Maher talked about progressives – any progressives – the way he has talked about Sarah Palin and her children.

This misogynistic bigot gives $1 million to President Obama’s reelection PAC, yet he is greeted as an insightful and unbiased commentator by Blitzer and others. And no progressives – not him nor any of the others – ever is demanded to denounce his attacks. When it comes to progressive racism, misogyny, hatred and violent rhetoric, the referees swallow their whistles, as they say in basketball.

Greg Abbott and Rick Perry are no more responsible for the words of Ted Nugent than progressives are for the words of Bill Maher. But although Abbott and Perry were forced to answer for Nugent, President Obama cashes Maher’s check and his cabinet secretaries, advisors and elected Democrats from Nancy Pelosi on down beat a path to the stage of the man who calls conservative women “c@nt” without question or repercussion.

That’s what happens when you are the one who gets to choose what is offensive. As Mel Brooks said, “It’s good to be the king.”

Republicans need to recognize this and do more than complain about it. They need to refuse to play by these rigged rules. They should start by calling out the gatekeepers of outrage when forced to answer for others. Newt Gingrich scared the hell out of moderators in the 2012 primaries by simply calling a garbage question what it was. If you don’t play the progressives’ game, their rules don’t matter. No matter how often they change them.

A simple, “Did you invite me here to talk about something I had nothing to do with? It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there. I’ll answer for something I had nothing to do with when you answer for Dan Rather. Until then, how about we talk about jobs?” would go a long way toward shutting up these arbiters of offense.

The new rules are there are no rules. The other side is making them up as they go along. Conservatives can’t control the questions they’re asked, but they can control the answers they give. Quick thinking and preparation can turn the tables on the outraged media class, turn the tables on their inquisitors and expose them for the frauds they are.

Of course, it also would be nice if people would stop saying stupid things.

SOURCE

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  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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Does dislike of homosexuality give you heart attacks?

An academic study has just emerged which says that it does. "Homophobia is bad for your health" is the intended message.  And the study itself is a refreshing piece of work that uses representative data, extensive controls, careful analysis and cautious wording.  It is far better than most academic journal articles I read.  So its conclusions should settle the matter?

Sadly, No.  The study is a correlational one so warrants no conclusions about cause.  Whether attitudes to homosexuals CAUSED the heart attacks or whether something associated with such attitudes caused the attacks is not known.  And the authors acknowledged that.  They suggest that certain health variables could be the "guilty" third factor.

And the elephant in the room there (I seem to be a master elephant detector) is of course IQ.  Unless they are motivated by fundamentalist religious convictions, anybody who admits to anti-homosexual attitudes these days has to be either dumb or very brave.  And bravery in the matter seems very rare. Homosexuals are sacred these days.  And low IQ people do have worse health.

And the correlation between health and attitudes is weak anyway so other factors could very well be involved.

And there are some signs that all is not well with the results anyway.  Both religiosity and conservatism showed negligible  correlations with "antigay" attitudes  --  where we would expect both of those to be strong predictors.  So the conclusions of the study are very dubious indeed.  I suspect that the underlying data was not robust enough to support the weight that the authors put on it.

The study is: Mark L. Hatzenbuehler, Anna Bellatorre, and Peter Muennig.  "Anti-Gay Prejudice and All-Cause Mortality Among Heterosexuals in the United States". American Journal of Public Health: February 2014, Vol. 104, No. 2, pp. 332-337.

Despite its inconclusiveness, it will no doubt be quoted joyously and uncritically for many years to come.  People who can believe that women and men are really the same will believe anything.

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A Dutch police State?

I have just heard that Toine Manders, Head of of the Dutch Libertarian Party, was arrested at the end of January. He has apparently not been charged with any offence, but is being held in isolation, and his detention has been extended to or by a further 90 days.

The reason informally given for his arrest is his involvement in a company that helps Dutch entrepreneurs avoid their local corporation taxes by registering in England.

I have no further information. I am, of course, very disturbed by this news. Whatever a government does to one libertarian may be taken as an attack on all libertarians. I will follow this case to the best of my ability, and will follow up this post with further information.

SOURCE

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The first Fuehrer



He was even MORE brutal than Hitler... so why do we still romanticise Napoleon?

BOOK REVIEW of: "Napoleon: Soldier Of Destiny", by Michael Broers

Review By Roger Lewis

Because the 18th century is far in the past - ships were under sail not steam; there were few paved roads and no railways yet; troops rode or marched - people can romanticise Napoleon in ways they can’t when it comes to Hitler, who is likely to remain our Number One bogeyman for some time yet.

Chaplin and Kubrick planned to make admiring films about Napoleon. Cagney wanted to play him. Brando did play him - as a brave and brooding hero with, as Michael Broers describes his subject, ‘seething impatience and energy lurking under the cool, authoritative exterior’.

Napoleon’s thoughts and emotions were set to music by Beethoven in the Eroica Symphony. Hazlitt and Sir Walter Scott wrote admiring portraits.

As Broers outlines in this judicious and magisterial biography, however, Napoleon, who died 70 years before Hitler was born, was a kind of proto-Fuhrer, his public pronouncements having a ‘messianic tone’ that was ‘spine-chilling’.

Declaiming before the vanquished citizens of Egypt, for example, Napoleon said: ‘It is well you should know that all human efforts against me are useless, for all I undertake must succeed.’ You can easily imagine that translated into German and being yelled over the loudspeakers of the Reich.

Napoleon, like Hitler, also knew that occupied territories could only be retained ‘by brute force’. His policy, when arriving in a new spot, was ‘to burn a village’. Massacring a local population was an unequivocal ‘manifestation of his will’.

Napoleon encouraged the brutality of his soldiers, as this was ‘a clear sign of their devotion to duty’. Defeated towns and cities were turned over to his men in reward, ‘for a 24-hour spree of rape, looting and murder ... He did little to curb the desecration of churches, monasteries or even convents’.

Venice was stripped of its treasures, for instance, and ‘wagonloads of Renaissance masterpieces flooded into France’, including the bronze horses from St Mark’s Square.

Like Hitler, who rose from the confusions of Weimar and the ashes of World War I, Napoleon, born in 1769, was a child of the French Revolution, seizing ‘every chance that came his way in the midst of the most dangerous, uncertain times the western world had ever known’.

Having been raised in Ajaccio, Corsica, he was a model pupil at a military academy, which ‘inculcated in him his frugality, his aversion to ease and his iron self-discipline’. As a junior artillery officer at Toulon, he ‘displayed exceptional ability’, firing on British ships in the harbour. Admiral Hood had to order an evacuation.

Promoted to brigadier-general, ‘Napoleon was forced to be menacing and authoritative by circumstances’, says the ever-objective Broers, who then finds his subject in the Vendée, hunting down peasant and royalist rebels.

Napoleon rose to his new responsibilities ‘and quite obviously relished them’, particularly when he was despatched to command ‘the under-fed, virtually unpaid’ mob that constituted the French army in Italy.

Napoleon ordered supplies and reinforcements. Though he was always guilty of plundering and extortion, so too did he desire a reformation of military efficiency - and he was rewarded with victories against the Austrians on the plains of northern Italy. Indeed, after the Battle of Arcola, ‘I believed myself to be a superior man’, Napoleon, allegedly just 5ft 2in, said modestly.

His next posting was to the Middle East. Though ‘Nelson made short work of the French fleet’ at the mouth of the Nile, Napoleon’s land army took Cairo and Jaffa. The spoils of war included a giraffe, which unfortunately died on the way to Paris. Napoleon, however, returned to France as First Consul - prior to crowning himself Emperor in 1804 at a three-hour ceremony in Notre Dame.

Napoleon wasn’t only a military tactician, he had a genius for manipulating committees and running bureaucracies. Though surrounded by the ‘dark culture of mutual denunciation and suspicion’ that marked the Terror, he outwitted enemies who wanted to send him to the guillotine, created the Bank of France, thus stabilising the economy, had coins minted embossed with his own face in profile, and busily and single-handedly ‘initiated all legislation and appointed and dismissed ministers’.

Exceptional ability: Napoleon Bonaparte as a young artillery officer

Exceptional ability: Napoleon Bonaparte as a young artillery officer

He devised the Legion of Honour (still in existence) because even Republicans love medals and ribbons, set up schools (still in existence) favouring science and technology, and his Civil Code (still in existence) abolished primogeniture and reformed inheritance laws.

Meanwhile, the Austrians and Italians were re-mustering, and it took the Battle of Marengo for France to become master of Italy, Switzerland and Germany.

Though no Tolstoy, Broers describes it well: ‘The big horses ridden by big men, wielding sabres at close quarters, wreaked carnage on the fragmented Austrian infantry ... Blood and dust mingled on the fields.’

Guns got so hot, they couldn’t be handled for re-loading ‘for fear of igniting the cartridges. There was nothing for it but to piss in the barrels to cool them’.

Napoleon, again like Hitler, knew he could never be master of Europe without defeating the British. He began to make preparations to cross the Channel, but his invasion failed because of his ignorance of the sea.

He had ‘no grasp of the inherent problems of tide, wind and bad weather’. He was such a megalomaniac, he believed he could control the waves.

Also, Nelson, though he lost his own life doing so, defeated the French fleet again, at Trafalgar. Not only that, the Russians were mobilising in the east, in alliance with Austria, and Napoleon had to get his army away from Boulogne and to the Rhine.

SOURCE

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Principle and Power:  Conservatives versus Republicans

According to recent polling, a majority of people who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 regret voting for him. That does not mean they wish, instead, that they had voted for Mitt Romney. They just regret voting for Barack Obama.

With Democrats convincing themselves the only way to win 2014 is to accuse Republicans of fostering domestic violence because of their opposition to Obamacare, the Republican Party looks set for another wave election year. From sea to sea, the GOP will probably pick up seats. The Democrats are largely resigned to having no chance to take the House of Representatives. The Senate remains in play, but only barely.

Republicans will, when November comes, most likely control both houses of Congress and will most likely keep their hold on the majority of states, too. All this raises a question -- what does the Republican Party stand for?

Those who say the Republicans stand for limited government should cast an eye toward the Ryan-Murray spending plan. Authored in bipartisan fashion, the plan broke the sequestration spending limits Congress had put in place and raised taxes. Cast another eye toward the recent vote to raise the debt ceiling.

Republicans in Washington gave President Obama a blank check to increase the nation's debt until March of 2015. Republicans in the Senate, led by Sens. Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn, shut down Sen. Ted Cruz's effort to block the debt ceiling increase.

For those who say the Republicans stand for local control and states' rights, cast your eye to Congressman Eric Cantor, the House Republican leader. He has given a series of speeches and suggested a number of policies premised on Washington helping the middle class. The whole of the Republican Party seems convinced that Washington, instead of leaving America alone, can rock us till we fall asleep, place bandaids on our scraped-up knees, and spoon feed us in high chairs.

In fact, the party of limited government, individual responsibility and traditional values listens more and more to billionaire and multimillionaire donors who are convinced what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street. Consequently, the GOP's uniting principles seem to be that it can control the government leviathan better than the Democrats. Republicans have decided to settle for campaign claims of technocratic proficiency with subsidies for Wall Street.

Most Americans hold Washington in contempt. They do not want to vote for a party that believes the problem is not government itself, but just Democrats in charge of it. Americans want Washington to leave them alone. They are as tired of our black-robed judicial masters decreeing one-size-fits-all amorality as they are of elected officials finding new ways to reward their large donors with the middle-class tax dollars.

Americans also do not want to just be anti-Obama. Right now, the Republican Party, when not collaborating to grow the size and scope of the federal leviathan, runs on anti-Obama rhetoric. Conservatives like Mike Lee, the Republican Senator from Utah, have put forward tax reform packages and other legislation that favors the middle class. Republican leaders have ignored him, choosing to pound their chests about Barack Obama, the socialist, while giving him a blank check to increase the national debt.

Conservatism remains about limited government, taking responsibility for yourself and stabilizing values. Republicans in Washington and their talking-head friends in the media talk about these things. They talk about getting Washington out of our lives. But the Republican proposals pushed by the Republican leaders differ greatly from their rhetoric.

Is it any wonder Americans hate Washington and conservatives hate their own Republican Party? The Republicans look like they are on course to win big this November. But if they do not put to practice their conservative preaching, voters will again reject them. On the other hand, if Republican voters fight in primaries and replace the existing Republican faces in Washington with fresh faces and fresh ideas, perhaps they can reconcile their principles with the power of a party finally ready to lead again.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  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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Coming soon



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BDS shows its antisemitic face again

Yossela [an Israeli] researched on the net for months as to which set of professional music string orchestral software he should purchase. After investigating, exploring, examining and inquiring, he decided that one particular product, Cinematic Strings 2, best suited his needs. He wrote to the company, complimenting them on their great music (Alex Wallbank, the head of the company himself is a composer).

Alex responded, and he and my husband shared a very pleasant, friendly, and warm email exchange. Yossela wrote to him that he would like to purchase their music library but, being a student, he would greatly appreciate a discount. Alex replied that they do provide “educational discounts,” and put him in touch with a marketing representative.

Jack, the CS2 info and marketing representative, responded promptly. He thanked him for his interest in the company and his kind words about Alex’s music. He confirmed that they “certainly do have a student discount… 50% off…” Naturally, my husband, was thrilled! Fifty percent off! Half-price! I am sure that any one of us values a discount, but when you are a student, a father of five, and the sole income earner of the family, this kind of mark down is a major advantage, to say the least.

Jack ended his email by asking for some sort of documentation, like a scan of a student ID card, or a class schedule, free receipt, or even an email exchange, verifying that my husband is actually a student. A fair request.

My husband scanned his student ID. As he was about to send it over to the company via email, he turned to me and said, “This company is based in Australia. I hope that they aren’t anti-semitic. What if they see that I’m from Israel, and because of that take away the discount?” He concluded that it shouldn’t stop him. All was for the best. He sent it, waited, and hoped.

Less than seven hours later, Alex had sent a response. His email reads as follows:

“Hi Yossela,

I am very, very sorry but I will not be able to provide you with a student discount. We support the BDS movement worldwide and the cultural boycott against Israel until Israel ceases its illegal settlement activities in the West Bank and ceases its discrimination against the Palestinian people.

Please understand that this is not in any way directed at you personally and we have heard from many Israeli students who have been very sympathetic towards the Palestinian people. However we are fairly powerless here in Australia to act on behalf of the victims of oppression and so the BDS is the only way we can have a voice.

We wish you all the best in your future musical endeavours.

Kindest regards, Alex and the CS team.”

More here

After publicity, the company backed down

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ObamaCare: The Terrifying Consequences To Healthcare

Conservatives can only warn  -- and later say:  "I told you so"

As the ObamaCare debate rages, we hear much about insurance companies, costs, and people's ability to pay. We hear the policy defended as proponents tell us it will provide healthcare to those who never had it. Of course, these proponents never seem to explain how those who couldn't afford healthcare when it was a choice can now afford an even more expensive cost now that government mandates it.

However, these debates about the pros and cons of ObamaCare basically focus on money. What about the real issue - healthcare? What will ObamaCare do to our medical system? How will it affect the quality of our care? How will it affect doctor's decisions as they attempt to take care of our health needs? And, ultimately, in a system controlled by government bureaucrats and government-written manuals - who will really be making the decisions that determine our quality of life? These are the real questions that need to be the center of the debate. And the answers are terrifying.

I recently received a report from an oncologist, Dr. John Conroy, who is fighting the desperate battle to treat cancer. All of those concerned Americans who wear their pink ribbons and dash for miles in their stop-cancer marathons should take a long hard look at what Dr. Conroy reports to be the future of all American medicine. They may want to start running straight at Congress to save their own lives.

Obviously, Oncology is a very detailed science, difficult for the layman to understand. That's why American healthcare has always promoted specialists. Let's begin with a patient who has discovered a lump on her breast. She takes a mammogram, undergoes a biopsy, and is found to have adenocarcinoma. She is seen by an oncologist and certain questions need to be addressed.

As Dr. Conroy explains the process, first, doctors must determine the "Stage" or extent of the disease. The most common system for determining classification of malignant tumors and the extent of a person's cancer is called the TNM system. "T" measures the size of the tumor and if it's invaded nearby tissue. "N" determines regional lymph nodes that are involved. "M" measures the distance the cancer has spread from one part of the body to another. These measurements are critical in determining how sick the patient may be.

In fact, there are four stages, classified under the TNM system, with multiple possible results determined by a large variable of TNM data. With an adenocarcinoma cell type under the microscope, there are about 40 pathological (histology) types which could lead to as many as 36,000 possible variable combinations of the cancer.

The grade or aggressiveness of the cancer is measured in 10 grades. So, 10×36,000 = 360,000 possibilities. Next, hormone sensitive status = eight possibilities. So, 360,000 x 8 = 2,880,000 and with menopausal status = 5,760,000 possible computer input combinations. These are the possible combinations on just one page of data in staging. So the computer system has to evaluate these combinations.

Whew! That's a lot of data to determine how sick a patient may be, with what kind of cancer, at what stage. It's all necessary data to determine the most effective course for treatment. Again, that's why we have specialists who focus entirely on certain diseases and other maladies that affect our bodies. No one individual could possibly be knowledgeable in all aspects of the human body.

But now, with the growing control by government over healthcare decisions, things are changing. Over the past several years, a growing number of bureaucrats from insurance companies have been armed with manuals, guidebooks, and calculators to step in to the decision making process to decide what treatment procedures are allowed. And it's going to get far worse under ObamaCare, as a new layer of government bureaucrats is added to affect what doctors can do to save your life.

As Dr. Conroy explains, to look into the body and make a determination on where to start planning treatment, he uses X-rays and CAT-scans (CTs). "I generally cat-scan head to toe and look for metastasis and get a baseline." However, such decisions for care by the doctors are now being decided by others. Says Dr. Conroy, "In the past, it was ok (to X-Ray and CT), not now. Over the last few years all the X-rays have to be approved, so there are companies now that have algorithms to evaluate your request (for a CAT-scan or X- ray)." He explains that these companies, which work in partnership with hospitals and insurance companies, "process thousands of requests a day." They decide who gets to use the machines for what purposes. "So," he explains, "if there's no headache, then there is no cat-scan of the brain. If a normal chest x-ray is taken, then no cat-scan of the chest."

Here's where these rules and regulations start to really get scary. If he, as the doctor, wants to challenge the decision by the company as to whether he can get both a CAT-scan and X-ray, he will call them to do so. "I have to discuss this with the ‘medical director' who will say yes - if I use certain ‘key' words" Or the medical director will say "no," the procedure does not fit the guidelines. Without having the medical background of the doctor or all of the data he has been trained to read, the company medical director can make the call - all based on a manual written to one size fits all!

Meanwhile, the doctor is responsible for the health of his patient, tasked with the job of making the right decision as he is forced to move forward blindly. He's unable to get the complete information he needs to make an educated evaluation, because a bureaucrat rejected his request for the proper testing. Yet, if the doctor makes the wrong decision and the patient suffers or dies, he is liable for legal action by the patient's family. He has no legal protection if he missed a lesion in the brain. Says Dr. Conroy, "I am liable, let alone the damage to patient."

How "Red Tape" Strangles Treatment

The most important detail to expose here is that, while the doctor has had years of training and experience in the field, the medical director does not have to be qualified.

He's an employee! Dr. Conroy provided a resulting horror story that is certain to be repeated over and over again once ObamaCare gets control of the medical system. He reported, "I had a young patient with Hodgkin's disease and I needed a follow-up cat-scan of the chest. It was refused (by the company medical director). I challenged the decision (I challenge all of them) and called the company. The medical director was a retired General Practitioner, playing golf in Florida." Says Dr. Conroy, "the review companies intentionally have out of state physicians as medical directors so they do not have a state license that can be challenged."

Then there is the massive mountain of paperwork required for each patient and each procedure. The official guideline for treatment paths for patients with malignancy is called "Pathways," found at www.nccn.com. There are over 30 medical issue paths to choose. A doctor needs to match a pathway with his data, as described above.

As mentioned, that can be a huge number of possible combinations. The insurance companies are already restricting treatment options by forcing doctors to accept their approval for therapy, or they won't pay for it.

Now, follow the bureaucratic ball created by this mass of rules. Explains Dr. Conroy, "We are still on the first visit by the patient, (or second visit if something was challenged). It now takes 45-60 minutes to register a new patient. I get an hour for the history, exam discussion of treatment plan and then we have to load everything into the computer and fill out the required forms. With each patient visit we review all the data for accuracy, and again report it."

All this for one patient on the first visit. And with each visit it all has to be continually rechecked and reported. If the doctor makes an error on a Medicare bill submission, the fine is $5,000 PER LINE. A typical chemotherapy visit may have 20 or more lines of code per visit. Says Dr. Conroy, "one year we used 250 cc bags of IV fluids for chemotherapy. It was more than enough fluid for treatment, but Medicare retroactively decided not to pay for 250 cc bags so, we had to repay Medicare Reimbursement for all the 250cc bags for an entire YEAR! We then changed to 1000 cc bag, charged more, threw out most of it but got paid."

So, now the patient has had surgery, some radiation treatment, and chemotherapy and the cancer is in remission. All of those procedures would have had to go through the bureaucratic review process.

Are There "Death Panels" in ObamaCare?

Let's say, after treatment, unfortunately, the patient goes into relapse - the cancer returns. In the past, the doctor would start again, repeat treatment, and keep the patient alive over multiple cycles of chemotherapy. But things are changing.

Reports Dr. Conroy, "enter the ‘death panels.' I actually read the ACA law. They are not death panels per se, but panels appointed by the President, NOT reporting to Congress, that establish the funding and treatment for patients." Those on the appointed panels are not physicians.

And what are the potential results of the decisions of such panels? Dr. Conroy explains what happens through the example of a pediatric lung transplant case, involving a young boy who needed the treatment. According to Dr. Conroy, the case required official approval from Kathleen Sebelius, now the nation's top healthcare official and in charge of ObamaCare. Sebelius refused to approve the transplant and the family had to go to a federal court. She followed the official guidelines as outlined in Pathways. According to its rules, the transplant was not approved for a child of that age, so "the kid was out of luck."

These panels can decide whether care can be provided or refused based on age, finances, and the treatment required. That brings us back to the whole debate based on money. This time it becomes the "government's money." And, suddenly, when the government decides it doesn't want to spend "its" money, it can become very stingy.

It saves money by not providing care for the elderly, which it says are a burden to society. Or, in the case of the lung transplant victim, too young. The result is the same if care cannot be provided - death of the patient. Death panels? Perhaps not in name - but in practice. The panels do not report to Congress, but to higher bureaucratic panels. As Dr. Conroy describes it, "more like a central committee in the Soviet System."

Another example provided by Dr. Conroy is the NCCN Guidelines (National Comprehensive Cancer Network). There are a comprehensive set of guidelines detailing the sequential management decisions and interventions for the malignant cancers that affect 97 percent of all patients living with cancer in the United States. In addition, separate guidelines provide recommendations for some of the key cancer prevention and screening topics as well as supportive care considerations.

Explains Dr. Conroy, "they are fantastic for guidance in treatment plans, but imagine writing a program for any of the guidelines and then constantly changing them to meet new changes in care." He goes on with another example, "Check out the Palliative Care guidelines, there is a section explaining how to order an IV infusion to sedate a terminal patient, the plan is for them to not wake up. The guidelines recommend that nurses who feel uncomfortable ethically with this order should be assigned elsewhere. This is a concern because Hospice is recommended over and over in the guidelines more than ever before."

This is the real cost savings in ObamaCare - as money runs out, you change the parameters for treatment. Age, stage, and diagnosis care exclude aggressive therapy. In the past, this was a decision of a patient, minister, and family; now you have an insurance company/government agent making an "impartial" decision of no further treatment.

In a progressive secular society, ethics are not based on God or morality or individual wants and needs, but on the "common good" of the state. Concludes Dr. Conroy, "Obamacare is not about medical care but rather social and government control of the population."

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  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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Political Orientation and Moral Conviction

Comments on: "Political Orientation and Moral Conviction: A Conservative Advantage or an Equal Opportunity Motivator of Political Engagement?"  by Linda J. Skitka G. Scott Morgan Daniel C. Wisneski, University of Illinois at Chicago (Preprint here (PDF))

There is a paper coming out in a book edited by Joe Forgas that tends to throw Haidt's findings into a cocked hat.  Haidt found  that conservatives were more morally complex than are liberals.  Since liberals often proclaim:  "There is no such thing as right and wrong", that is not exactly a surprising finding. Liberals do nonetheless use moral language:  "Racism is wrong" etc., but I showed long ago (Ray, 1974) that they do so only as a matter of convenience.  For them it is just a device to influence others. Any such beliefs are not deeply held.

I'm critical of a few points in the introduction to the paper  -- e.g. the homage to the risible Lakoff, who confuses the diachronic  with the synchronic, but I think the big problems in the paper are methodological.  The use of meta-analyses is in principle admirable but in practice can deteriorate severely where the author has a barrow to push.  One of the better known studies in this field did to my particular knowledge omit from consideration around 100 relevant studies  -- in order to come to fairly conventional conclusions.

Another problem is  the  shotgun approach to sampling.  Lumping general population samples in the with student samples is most incautious.  The two groups often give very different results.  One one occasion I repeated a study I had dome among students using a sample of army conscripts.  A correlation of .808 among students dropped to something negligible with the more representative sample.  I never wrote that study up but I probably should have.  It was in the era when "positive" results were essential so it would probably not have been published anyway.

And I am pretty confident that something similar would have happened in the Skitka work.  The students would have given complex responses and the ordinary folk would have given much simpler responses.  So combining the two would have given you medium complexity across the board and erased Right/Left differences.  In short, I don't think Skitka & co, have made their case.

Mother Jones has however welcomed the study.  The Left like to think they are moral, despite their propensity for mass murder.

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Why is the Obama Administration Putting Government Monitors in Newsrooms?

The Obama Administration’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is poised to place government monitors in newsrooms across the country in an absurdly draconian attempt to intimidate and control the media.

Before you dismiss this assertion as utterly preposterous (we all know how that turned out when the Tea Party complained that it was being targeted by the IRS), this bombshell of an accusation comes from an actual FCC Commissioner.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai reveals a brand new Obama Administration program that he fears could be used in “pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.”

As Commissioner Pai explains in the Wall Street Journal:

Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs," or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about "the process by which stories are selected" and how often stations cover "critical information needs," along with "perceived station bias" and "perceived responsiveness to underserved populations."

In fact, the FCC is now expanding the bounds of regulatory powers to include newspapers, which it has absolutely no authority over, in its new government monitoring program.

The FCC has apparently already selected eight categories of “critical information” “that it believes local newscasters should cover.”

That’s right, the Obama Administration has developed a formula of what it believes the free press should cover, and it is going to send government monitors into newsrooms across America to stand over the shoulders of the press as they make editorial decisions.

This poses a monumental danger to constitutionally protected free speech and freedom of the press.

Every major repressive regime of the modern era has begun with an attempt to control and intimidate the press.

As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently said, "our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

The federal government has absolutely no business determining what stories should and should not be run, what is critical for the American public and what is not, whether it perceives a bias, and whose interests are and are not being served by the free press.

It’s an unconscionable assault on our free society.

Imagine a government monitor telling Fox News it needed to cover stories in the same way as MSNBC or Al Jazeera.  Imagine an Obama Administration official walking in to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal and telling it that the American public would be better served if it is stopped reporting on the IRS scandal or maybe that reporting on ObamaCare “glitches” is driving down enrollment.

It’s hard to imagine anything more brazenly Orwellian than government monitors in newsrooms.

Is it any wonder that the U.S. now ranks 46th in the world for freedom of the press?  Reporters Without Boarders called America’s precipitous drop of 13 places in its recent global rankings “one of the most significant declines” in freedom of the press in the world.

Freedom of the press is proudly extolled in the First Amendment, yet our nation now barely makes the top fifty for media freedom.

We cannot allow the unfathomable encroachment on our free speech and freedom of the press to continue.

We’ve seen, and defeated, this kind of attempt to squelch free speech before in the likes of the Fairness Doctrine and the Grassroots Lobbying Bill (incidentally one of my first projects at the ACLJ).  Each one of these euphemistically named government programs is nothing more than an underhanded attempt to circumvent the Constitution and limit free speech – speech that the government finds inconvenient.  They’re equally unconstitutional, and they each must be defeated.

SOURCE

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Cruz Control?

Freshman Senator Ted Cruz says many things that need to be said and says them well. Moreover, some of these things are what many, if not most, Americans believe wholeheartedly. Yet we need to remember that the same was true of another freshman Senator, just a relatively few years ago, who parlayed his ability to say things that resonated with the voters into two terms in the White House.

 Who would disagree that if you want your doctor, you should be able to keep your doctor? Who would disagree with the idea of a more transparent administration in Washington, or a President of the United States being a uniter instead of a divider?

There are many things like this that freshman Senator Barack Obama said that the overwhelming majority of Americans -- whether liberal or conservative -- would agree with. The only problem is that what he has actually done as President has repeatedly turned out to be the direct opposite of what he said as a candidate.

Senator Ted Cruz has not yet reached the point where he can make policy, rather than just make political trouble. But there are already disquieting signs that he is looking out for Ted Cruz -- even if that sets back the causes he claims to be serving.

Those causes are not being served when Senator Cruz undermines the election chances of the only political party that has any chance of undoing the disasters that Barack Obama has already inflicted on the nation -- and forestalling new disasters that are visible on the horizon.

ObamaCare is not just an issue about money or even an issue about something as important as medical care. ObamaCare represents a quantum leap in the power of the federal government over the private lives of individual Americans.

Chief Justice Roberts' decision declaring ObamaCare constitutional essentially repeals the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which declares that powers not given to the federal government belong to the states "or to the people."

That central support of personal freedom has now been removed. The rest of the structure may not last very long, now that the Obama administration is busy quietly dismantling other bulwarks against the unbridled power of the government in general, and the unbridled power of the presidency in particular.

The Federal Communications Commission, for example, is already floating the idea of placing observers in newspaper editorial offices to "study" how decisions are made there. Nothing in the Constitution grants the FCC this dangerous power, nor is there any legislation authorizing any such activity.

But what the federal government can do is not dependent on what the Constitution authorizes it to do or what Congressional legislation gives them the power to do.

The basic, brutal reality is that the federal government can do whatever it wants to do, if nobody stops them. The Supreme Court's ObamaCare decision shows that we cannot depend on them to protect our freedom. Nor will Congress, as long as the Democrats control the Senate.

The most charitable interpretation of Ted Cruz and his supporters is that they are willing to see the Republican Party weakened in the short run, in hopes that they will be able to take it over in the long run, and set it on a different path as a more purified conservative party.

Like many political ideas, this one is not new. It represents a political strategy that was tried long ago -- and failed long ago.

In the German elections of 1932, the Nazi party received 37 percent of the vote. They became part of a democratically elected coalition government, in which Hitler became chancellor. Only step by step did the Nazis dismantle democratic freedoms and turn the country into a complete dictatorship.

The political majority could have united to stop Hitler from becoming a dictator. But they did not unite. They fought each other over their differences. Some figured that they would take over after the Nazis were discredited and defeated.

Many who plotted this clever strategy died in Nazi concentration camps. Unfortunately, so did millions of others.

What such clever strategies overlook is that there can be a point of no return. We may be close to that point of no return, not only with ObamaCare, but also with the larger erosion of personal freedom, of which ObamaCare is just the most visible part.

SOURCE

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Obama(S)care: Con Artists and Criminals in Charge



Question: If Obamacare officials cannot prevent accused embezzlers from infiltrating their offices, how can they protect enrollees from grifters, con artists and thieves in the federal health insurance exchange system?

Here in my home state, a director of Connect for Health Colorado — the state-sponsored Obamacare health insurance exchange — was just put on administrative leave. No, Christa Ann McClure did not go on leave over the chronic problems plaguing the cursed Connect for Health website. She's on leave because she has been indicted for filching funds from her last employer in Montana.

No, the guardians of Obamacare didn't smoke her out on their own. McClure 'fessed up only after the local Billings (Mont.) Gazette newspaper reported on the charges against her. She was indicted by a grand jury on Jan. 16. But her current state government employers did not find out until last week, when McClure finally informed them because the press had published the indictment.

The Keystone Kops of the Colorado health exchange tell us they conducted "thorough" background checks of McClure. They say they "fully vetted" and investigated her references when they hired her last March for her six-figure job helming the state Obamacare office of "partner engagement." Colorado officials say she was "well-qualified" for the Obamacare job, which involves being a "liaison" with other government agencies.

But mum's the word on who recommended her, which references they talked to and who in Colorado Democratic circles might have known about her history in Montana.

The 12-page federal indictment is a blood-boiling document outlining government waste, fraud and abuse in the federal affordable housing racket. The feds say McClure siphoned untold amounts of money from the nonprofit group Housing Montana, which received a half-million-dollar federal grant to build homes for poor people.

McClure allegedly was paying herself "significant sums" for bogus "consulting services" while also taking a full-time salary as executive director of the nonprofit. She is accused of raiding the organization's funds for family expenses, personal travel and a laptop and lying to the IRS to obtain false reimbursements.

She further defrauded the government by inflating her unused sick and annual leave hours. The feds say she also bilked Montana homeowners who participated in the federal affordable housing program by charging them for a fake $750 warranty and a $1,000 fee for "leasing tools."

Here's another disturbing fact: In a classic dance of the lemons, McClure had bounced around successfully from government-funded job to job until now. The Montana state auditor's office disclosed last week that McClure had managed three grants worth more than $2 million to implement Obamacare in that state. McClure worked on the project for three years at an annual salary of $98,000. She was "responsible for managing a broad range of contracts and making sure they got delivered on time," according to The Billings Gazette.

I'd like to be able to tell you that she'll never work in another Obamacare job again. But take a look at California. Just a few weeks ago, Jillian Kay Melchior reported in National Review that "at least 43 convicted criminals are working as Obamacare navigators in California, including three individuals with records of significant financial crimes." The crimes include forgery, petty theft, shoplifting, welfare fraud, child abuse and evading an officer.

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  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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Concealing Evil

By Walter E. Williams

Evil acts are given an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding socialistic expressions, such as spreading the wealth, income redistribution, caring for the less fortunate, and the will of the majority. Let's have a thought experiment to consider just how much Americans sanction evil.

Imagine there are several elderly widows in your neighborhood. They have neither the strength to mow their lawns, clean their windows and perform other household tasks nor the financial means to hire someone to help them. Here's a question that I'm almost afraid to ask: Would you support a government mandate that forces you or one of your neighbors to mow these elderly widows' lawns, clean their windows and perform other household tasks?

Moreover, if the person so ordered failed to obey the government mandate, would you approve of some sort of sanction, such as fines, property confiscation or imprisonment? I'm hoping, and I believe, that most of my fellow Americans would condemn such a mandate. They'd agree that it would be a form of slavery — namely, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Would there be the same condemnation if, instead of forcing you or your neighbor to actually perform weekly household tasks for the elderly widows, the government forced you or your neighbor to give one of the widows $50 of your weekly earnings? That way, she could hire someone to mow her lawn or clean her windows. Would such a mandate differ from one under which you are forced to actually perform the household task? I'd answer that there is little difference between the two mandates except the mechanism for the servitude. In either case, one person is being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another.

I'm guessing that most Americans would want to help these elderly ladies in need but they'd find anything that openly smacks of servitude or slavery deeply offensive. They might have a clearer conscience if all the neighbors were forced (taxed) to put money into a government pot. A government agency would then send the widows $50 to hire someone to mow their lawns and perform other household tasks. This collective mechanism makes the particular victim invisible, but it doesn't change the fact that a person is being forcibly used to serve the purposes of others. Putting the money into a government pot simply conceals an act that would otherwise be deemed morally depraved.

This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, confiscation and intimidation, to accomplish what are often seen as noble goals — namely, helping one's fellow man. Helping one's fellow man in need by reaching into one's own pockets to do so is laudable and praiseworthy. Helping one's fellow man through coercion and reaching into another's pockets is evil and worthy of condemnation. Tragically, most teachings, from the church on down, support government use of one person to serve the purposes of another; the advocates cringe from calling it such and prefer to call it charity or duty.

Some might argue that we are a democracy, in which the majority rules. But does a majority consensus make moral acts that would otherwise be deemed immoral? In other words, if the neighbors got a majority vote to force one of their number — under pain of punishment — to perform household tasks for the elderly widows, would that make it moral?

The bottom line is that we've betrayed much of the moral vision of our Founding Fathers. In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who had fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison rose on the floor of the House of Representatives to object, saying, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

Tragically, today's Americans — Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative — would hold such a position in contempt and run a politician like Madison out of town on a rail.

SOURCE

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The Right To Take (Even Really Stupid) Risks

The value of life is determined not by the mere drawing of one breath after another, but by the freedom to make our own decisions

J.D. Tuccille

There's nothing like the feeling of a motorcycle sliding out from beneath you on a busy thoroughfare to focus the mind beautifully on the value of life. As your ass bounces from the cushioned seat toward the hard tarmac with the screech of unseen cars slamming on their brakes to your rear, you have one glorious moment in which to ask yourself: "What the hell am I doing?"

You see, that's the precise question that flashed through my mind as my accelerating rear wheel spun helplessly on an oil slick and 400lbs of Japanese machinery cushioned its fall with 170lbs of J.D. Tuccille.

My left elbow slammed against the asphalt before I had time to consider the answer.

But to a large extent, it's the question itself that matters the most: "What the hell am I doing?" Sooner or later most of us ask that same question. We ask it when we're doing something foolish, or brave, or unfamiliar, and we especially ask it when the situation goes sour—when we find ourselves airborne in late-morning traffic. And if we don't ask it of ourselves, somebody else is sure to do us the favor: "What the hell are you doing?"

The question means that we're taking risks, trying something new, or just pushing the boundaries of our usual behavior. It means that we're living, not just existing; to pass through life without facing that question would imply a tightly constrained existence lacking risk and adventure.

Not every situation that provokes the question is to our credit, of course. Sometimes we've made a mistake, sometimes we've embarrassed ourselves, and sometimes we've made a complete balls-up of a situation and we find ourselves staring up from the ground into the face of an Emergency Medical Technician. And whether we decide that our latest venture was a moment of glory or shame, it's a sure bet that somebody else views our decision with disdain; we all have our own lives, and our own very different standards by which to judge them.

But it's important to remember that while everybody has the right to ask the question of himself and others, only the person on the spot, the person living that moment has the right to decide whether the answer is justifiable—so long as that person also bears the costs and consequences of the answer, that is. And that is what gives life so much of its value. We have the right to try, to risk dignity and even death as we take the basic fact of existence and mold it into a life worthy of the name through a personal choice of experiences, occupations, and adventures.

So when others try to answer the question for us, to prevent us from taking the risk because they don't approve, they don't just do us a disservice—they rob us of the freedom that gives life its value. Through laws and taxes and regulations they try to consign us to an existence instead of a life; and this is not because the decisions they would make for us are necessarily bad decisions, but because they are not our own.

Some people—not enough—do understand this. After the accident, when the EMTs had assured themselves that my limbs were all in place and that I remembered my name, one turned to me and said: "And now for the important question: How's the bike?" (Answer: Not so good.) As an EMT he had certainly seen his share of nasty motorcycle accidents—incidents that ended with consequences more serious than my broken arm. But he understood, or at least respected, my decision to ride and to take risks that others find unacceptable.

We have the right to demand that attitude of everybody: disagree with us, call us fools, live your own lives differently, but don't try to tell us what decisions we may make in the conduct of our lives. Because the value of life is determined not by the mere drawing of one breath after another, but by the freedom to make our own decisions; to mold our lives as best we can into a shape that pleases us, and to enjoy the benefits or suffer the consequences.

What the hell was I doing? I was living my life. Now hand me my helmet or get out of the way.

SOURCE

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Thank You President Obama for Freeing Me

Bruce Bialosky

Hi, I’m Dave.

Until recently I was a full-time employee and had a very good job. In fact most years we were so busy I worked some long hours and received some significant bonuses from my employer. But now I have been freed from having to spend so much time supporting my family. Because of some great new policies from our government, I am now working part-time and spending more time with my family.

It has been an adjustment. When I told my wife the exciting news that I would spending more time at home, initially she wasn’t delighted. She sure seemed like she did not want me around.She asked how we were going to put the money away for the kids’ college educations. I was a little surprised she was not more focused on the time we could spend together, working on our relationship. She seemed like she thought having me at work was more beneficial for us. Then I told her about all the neat government programs that would help the kids pay for college. Plus, I am confident we will grow closer as we have more quality time together. I did point out we may have less money to spend, but sharing time was what life was all about.

The kids were really excited to hear about me being around a lot more. Kinda. Madison asked if I really was not going to work. When I told her it would give us more time to get to know each other, she said “Dad, get real. I’m like really busy with school and my friends.Maybe soon.”And then she stared at her phone and said she was having a conversation with a friend. Buddy Boy was a lot more receptive. I told him I could now learn how to play those video games and we could play together. He said, “Hey, don’t you think it would be geekish for me to be playing video games with my old man?” When I told him no, he turned and closed the door to his room.I am sure once he warms up to the idea we will have a blast together.

I went on HealthCare.gov and found out that my income is now going to be lower so I qualify for some really big subsidies. As long as I don’t go back to working full-time, the government will pay for over half of my family’s health insurance. All I have to do is just keep my work at the current reduced level and we will have some great coverage.I can even pick up some work on the side (if you know what I mean) and not have it affect my ability to have the government pay for most all our health insurance. Once I figured it out, we are really better off with me working less and staying home more.

Then with my new free time I found a speech that Mrs. Obama gave to college students.She told them “Don’t leave money on the table. ”This was regarding getting student aid that she told them did not have to be paid back.Pondering that I thought why not me?So I applied for Food Stamps -- thankfully now called SNAP -- and it makes me feel so much better. I was really surprised to find out that at my new income level that we qualify as a family.

The nice people at the SNAP office told me there are other state and federal programs I qualify for to help underwrite my new reduced income.For example, they will help pay for my utilities. While I was so busy working I never realized there were so many programs to help people. I have researched it and found there are over 100 programs to help pay for me.How stupid I feel working hard all these years when I could have been home and the government would pay for all these things.

As I begin my new less demanding life, I am really just beginning to explore the universe I am now part of each day. Who knew I could work so little and still get all this stuff from the government? President Obama, thank you for freeing me from the burden of having to work so hard to support my family.Now I just have to get my family used to having me around. And find something to do with my time.

I’m Dave, and I love this new America.

SOURCE

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Lawmakers Fight Obamacare Labeling Regulation

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are joining forces to curtail an overbearing labeling regulation mandated by Obamacare.

Embedded in the 906-page behemoth bill is a requirement that all chain restaurants (those with 20 or more locations) provide nutrition information for every item listed on the menu.

Now stop—mull over the reality of that regulation for a moment. A pizza place would need to provide the number of calories and the list of ingredients found in every pizza topping. Dominoes offers at least 31 topping options.

In accordance with Obamacare, the Food and Drug Administration has proposed requirements and is close to making them finalized. However Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) have initiated a bill that would amend the proposed rules to allow more leeway for businesses. Adjustments would include allowing delivery restaurants to post nutrition information online and limiting the penalties for labeling mistakes. More than 50 co-sponsors have rallied behind the bill.

The Hill reported:

 “Specifically, the proposed rule limits the ability of businesses to determine for themselves how best to provide nutritional information to customers,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. “As a result, the proposal harms both those non-restaurants that were not intended to be captured by the menu labeling law as well as those restaurants that have flexibility and variability in the foods they offer.”
The lawmakers pressed the FDA to limit the scope of the regulations, which they say would harm small businesses that are already complying separately with the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act.

Similar Obamacare labeling regulation for vending machines are estimated to cost $25.8 million initially and $24 million annually.

Estranging businesses from government management and allowing them freedom to invest time and money into what they deem profitable is undoubtedly the best option for the economy.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  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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Heh!

Here’s something illuminating about female millionaires.

Turns out, they prefer conservative men in and out of bed. Darren Shuster, the publicist for MillionaireMatch.com, the company that commissioned a survey, stressed in an email, “Especially in bed. Don’t kill the messenger.”

Hot off the presses from Silicon Valley, MillionaireMatch.com has released the results of a survey showing that show that rich ass females prefer their men on the “right” side of the political spectrum. According to site stats, 81.4 percent of female millionaires prefer a conservative man rather than someone liberal (this includes Republicans, Democrats and independents). A whopping 76.6 percent of Democrat female millionaires said they “would prefer to date a conservative man.”

Some comments from rich females to the site:

“I don’t want a liberal man, I want someone who believes in a traditional family.”

“I want to be with a man who is ambitious, liberal men simply aren’t as ambitious.”

“Conservative men plan for the future, they’re in it for the long run.”

“Liberal men are less masculine.”

“Politics doesn’t matter to me when we’re inside the bedroom.”

“I’m very liberal, but I’m open to other opinions.”

Two comments that could infuriate some women involved females who remarked on how conservative males take care of the female financially and how conservative males perform in bed.

One of the surveyed women explained why she believes conservative men are more appealing: “Simply put, conservative men are real men. They are the breadwinners, they wear the pants and they treat you like a lady.”

And of the women surveyed, 85 percent apparently agreed that conservative men are better in bed.

Said one woman, “Conservative men have so much masculine energy, they’re dominant.”

SOURCE

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U.S. unemployment: A third view

The Congressional Budget Office's latest budget projections, released last week, estimated that 2.5 million people would leave the job market as a result of Obamacare. Immediately the two political sides engaged in verbal bickering, with Republicans saying the program would cause 2.5 million to lose their jobs, while Democrats claimed that 2.5 million people choosing leisure over work was a net increase in human welfare. Actually, both sides were wrong. It's worth examining why, and what the skewed incentives at modest earnings levels mean for our future.

The Democrats are right that the direct loss of jobs due to Obamacare is likely to be fairly limited. Although it imposes substantial costs on some employers, and makes the healthcare system overall less efficient, employers always have the option of restricting pay rises for employees whose healthcare costs have been increased, or of raising their healthcare premiums. There is a likely to be a certain squeezing of hours worked by part-timers, to keep them below the 30-hour week level, but direct job losses should be limited, according to the CBO. And of course, if the number of people with health insurance increases, and to the extent that the population covered by Medicare increases, there will be jobs created in the healthcare system to cover the newly insured people.

Nevertheless, the Republicans are correct that the 2.5 million people whose incentives are so changed by Obamacare that they will choose not to work are a problem not a side-benefit. If they do not work, the 2.5 million people will not contribute to the tax and benefits system, imposing greater costs on the rest of us. The 2.5 million themselves may value increased leisure time sufficiently to give up their income from work, they may receive enough in unemployment, social security and disability benefit that they are little worse off or (without being too cynical about it) they may feel they can earn nearly as much from working "off the books" on odd jobs, landscaping or some other activity for cash, thus avoiding costly interaction with the tax system.

But from society's point of view, we are much less well-off for the loss of the labor of those 2.5 million people. Their output would presumably have been worth more than their pay, so losing it is a blow to the economy. Further, if they had worked they would normally have contributed, possibly modest payments of income tax, certainly rather less modest payments of payroll tax. Without working, they will contribute nothing in direct tax to the general coffers, though they will still of course pay sales taxes on their purchases and property taxes if they own a home. What's more, as unemployed they will likely benefit from welfare, disability and other benefits. Thus the scales, which may be close to balanced from the individual points of view of the 2.5 million people themselves, are heavily unbalanced from the point of view of the U.S. economy as a whole and its tax base.

This is one of the reasons the U.S. budget is still so severely out of whack, with a projected deficit of $514 billion in the year to September 30. The labor force participation rate is now 63%, compared with 66.4% at its peak in December 2006. The unemployment rate at 6.6% is only 2.2 percentage points above its December 2006 level, so an additional 3.5 million more people are officially unemployed. However there are an additional 8.4 million people, over and above those 3.5 million, who would have been in the labor force if participation was at its December 2006 level, but who have dropped out of the labor force altogether. Some of those are early-retiring baby boomers, but by no means all of them; participation rates have also declined for young and prime-age workers.

It is thus not surprising that the United States is still running a $500 billion deficit, in spite of substantial tax increases since 2006, a reining back of military spending, and some moderation in the giant increases in domestic spending pushed through by the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2007-10. With 11.9 million fewer people than there should be paying for the costs of government, and not providing economic output, we should expect government to be further from being paid for than it was in 2006.

More HERE

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Failing Liberals Turn To Oppression To Hold On To Power

If you’re a conservative, you don't need to silence the opposition.

In fact, we conservatives want liberals to talk, to make buffoons of themselves, to prove their folly. We want liberals to expound upon their ridiculous ideas, to show the world exactly what they're about. Nancy Pelosi? Give that tiresome woman a microphone. Chatty liberals are the best advertisement for conservatism.

But liberals just can’t have conservatives speaking. We’ll tell the truth, and that’s why liberals need to shut us up.

Their traditional intimidation tactics are wearing out. Calling someone a “racist” used to be a devastating moral indictment. Liberals’ promiscuous employment of the word first turned it into a cliché and then into an ironic punchline.

I know, saying that out loud is racist. And sexist. And cisgender heteronormative, whatever the hell that means.

So now liberals have stepped up to formal governmental repression. Take the IRS scandal – or ex-scandal, in the eyes of the mainstream media. The Obama administration, at the urging of red state Democrat senators who are about to lose their seats because of their track records of failure, are doing everything they can to turn the taxman loose on the organizations that are pointing out their track records of failure.

Sure, the liberals come up with excuses, with justifications, with rationales for this prima facie oppression. But understand that the left was never against political repression. The left is only against being repressed itself.

It’s open season on everyone else. Don't dare bow down to god whose name isn’t spelled "G – O – V – E – R – N – M – E – N – T." Today’s heretic hunters work for Kathleen Sebelius, ready to burn you at the stake for expecting grown men and women to come up with the dough for their own contraceptives. No one expects the HHS Inquisition!

The Federal Communications Commission just floated a trial balloon about going out to radio and television stations to evaluate reporters on how they cover the news. There was a time when journalists' response to a government inquiry into how they did their job would be "Go to hell, you goose-stepping bureaucratic flunky."

Not anymore. Now, their response is slavish submission to their progressive governmental dominatrix. When supposedly independent, iconoclastic liberal journalists let themselves to be dominated by the feds, their safeword is “Hillary.”

Liberalism has to muzzle the truth because it operates on lies. It is built on lies, fueled by lies, and creates an empire of lies.

Look at the Obamacare scam. Liberals don't even blink at the fact that its foundational premise that if you liked your health care, you could keep it, was a lie. They’re not even offended by the lie. They’re offended that we point out that it was a lie.

Now the same people who got us into this mess are telling us we should go along and trust them to fix the same damn problem that they created in the first place. Liberals are the Lucys of American politics, holding the football and promising that this time it’ll be different. We need to stop being the Charlie Browns.

In the Senate, liberals toss traditions like the filibuster out the window for political expediency. The president creates his own laws or changes ones that are already in place on a whim. There are no norms, there are no standards. Everything is a short-term political gambit, and little things like the Constitution are just obstacles to progress.

How does all this end well? It doesn't. It can't. That is, unless the American people come to their senses and demand that the Constitution, as it is written, be respected. That change come through the political process, through persuasion rather than diktat.

But if that doesn't happen, what then? What becomes of our system? How do we act when we take power again? Should we also ignore those same principles that we seek to reaffirm in order to reaffirm them?

Does the next Republican president simply announce that he's repealing Obamacare by executive order? Does he simply refuse to implement other laws we dislike? Does he refuse to collect foolish taxes? Does he use his prosecutorial discretion to decide to refuse to prosecute his allies? Is that what we want?

No, it is not what we want, but it may be what we get. We are not ones for unilateral disarmament. Our constitutional system is not a suicide pact, as many have observed. The liberals aren't going to like it when we apply the same ruthlessness to them.

If the rules of the game are now that there are no rules, then the only political currency is raw power. But we know what happens when there are no rules, where pure power is the sole measure of right and wrong. I served in countries like that. They are full of mass graves

The American system’s strength is not that everyone always wins. It is that the system cultivates our ability to lose gracefully, to understand that you were heard, that you had your say, that there was a process, and that you lost fair and square. It sustains itself by reinforcing its own legitimacy.

But if your losses aren’t fair, if you haven't been heard, if the rules have been bent or broken or ignored, that crucial legitimacy is gone. And then there are no rules to respect.

What keeps this grand experiment in freedom going is that we honored, at least until now, our Constitution’s boundaries. Sure, we pushed at the edges, nudged the envelope, sometimes fudged the line, but what is happening now is different. What's happening now is that the line is being erased.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Awesome: Left-Wing UAW Rejected in Chattanooga:  "Big Labor has just suffered a blow in the South.  Thanks in large part to efforts by Americans for Tax Reform to expose the left-wing United Auto Workers, employees at Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Volkswagen assembly plant have rejected the labor union’s representation in a vote of 712-626.  ATR’s Executive Director Matt Patterson released the following statement in response to the victory:  "The workers at Volkswagen looked at the history of this union and made the best decision for themselves, their jobs and their community. In spite of the UAW's multi-million dollar propaganda machine, and with company and government officials at Obama's NLRB aiding the union in every possible way, workers learned the facts and were able to make an informed decision."

CA: Court strikes law restricting concealed weapons:  "California must allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms in public, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday, striking down the core of the state's permit system for handguns. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said San Diego County violates the Constitution's Second Amendment by requiring residents to show 'good cause' (and not merely the desire to protect themselves) to obtain a concealed-weapons permit."

"Chocolate city" mayor convicted of graft in Katrina recovery:  "A federal jury on Wednesday found former New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin guilty of accepting bribes and trading on the public trust during the critical years of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. A jury of six men and six women convicted Nagin on 20 of 21 counts, including bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and tax evasion. It acquitted him on one bribery count. Sentencing will come at a later date but Nagin, 57, faces at least 20 years in jail."

VA: A Federal judge defies voters again:  "A federal judge declared late Thursday night that Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, confirmed Michael Kelly, Director of Communications, for Attorney General Mark Herring. ... A lawsuit challenging the commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriage went before U.S. District Judge ­Arenda L. Wright Allen on February 4, in Norfolk. The case of Bostic vs. Rainey argued that the Virginia Marriage Amendment, passed in 2006 by 57 percent of voters, is unconstitutional."

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  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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