SOME ECONOMICS

The U.S. economy grew at 3.7% p.a. in the most recent quarter. Compared to the near-zero growth in Europe and most of the rest of the world, that is an outstanding performance that any government would be pleased about. The USA is already much richer than any other large country and is continuing to pull further ahead! Cause to congratulate both the businesspeople and technologists of America whose innovations made it happen and a President whose policies gave them an encouraging framework for it.

How the media spins the economy. It depends on who's President: "Summer was proclaimed a time of 'strong economic growth and low unemployment' by Jerry King of ABC's World News Tonight. King was right. Declining unemployment, low inflation and landmark homeownership all point to great news for the economy. There's just one problem: King wasn't talking about this summer. That story aired on Aug. 4, 1996. ... Business Week chief economist Michael J. Mandel made an excellent case that 'today's economic environment looks positively rosy' in the magazine's Sept. 6 issue. Mandel argued that there are strong similarities between the summer of 1996 and 2004. Both had incumbent presidents running for election. Both saw declining unemployment, an increase in jobs, and strong economic growth. Some of the numbers are so similar it's eerie. Yet the major media covered those two time periods as differently as night and day."

Sounds good to me: "With all the hoopla over the presidential election, gone almost unnoticed are measures that will be on ballots all over America next Tuesday to limit or roll back property taxes. It's the biggest tax revolt since the 1970s. No wonder. Property taxes across America have been soaring -- according to Deloitte and Touche, by an average of more than 10 percent between 2001 and 2003 alone. They're rising mainly because more and more responsibility has been heaped on towns and cities -- which rely on property taxes to pay for a lot of things that states and the federal government used to help pay for. Call it trickle-down taxes. The federal tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 left a big hole in the federal budget, meaning that the feds can't or won't fully fund programs like No Child Left Behind, which requires schools to take sometimes expensive steps to improve themselves. Federal support for states has also dropped, so there's less state aid to towns and cities. Well, someone's got to pay for schools and roads and parks and public safety. So by default, the tax burden has fallen to the bottom of the food chain. Local property taxes have borne a lot of the brunt."

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ELSEWHERE

Steve Sailer has an extensive article which punctures pretty well the Democrat claim that their Presidents are bright and GOP Presidents are dumb. Looks like it is the other way around. So we have another example of that pervasive Leftist "projection".

Will Wilkinson summarizes the voter fraud situation. GOP hyper-vigilance is made necessary by deliberate Democrat attempts to rig the results. You have to do something to stop all those dead people voting: "Lindsay bitches about GOP voter suppression in Ohio. I don't believe I remember her complaining (correct me if I'm wrong) about DNC voter suppression (successful or not) in every state in which they tried to cripple democracy by sueing Nader off the ballot. (If I ever hear high-toned democracy rhetoric from Larry Tribe, I'll throw up a little in my mouth.) Second, Lindsay simply assumes that stationing people in polling places to challenge fraudulent voters from voting is an ploy to suppress Democratic votes. But why not assume instead, or in addition, that the huge Democratic voter-registration drives really were riddled with malfeasance. Indeed, I assume both. The Democrats have been signing up dead people, felons and non-citizens in an attempt to steal the vote. The Republicans want to stop Democrats from stealing the vote, and so want to guard against dead and illegal voters, and, as a bonus, to suppress the legitimate Democratic vote--in an attempt to steal the vote. Now, I want to emphasize that I don't think any of these shenanigans even approaches the seriousness of the DNC's effort to make it impossible for American citizens to vote for a candidate who represents their views".

Kerry's Tax hypocrisy: "Sen. John Kerry keeps telling us that 'the rich' need to pay more in taxes. The senator and his wife are among the 400 richest Americans. He says that he has 'a plan to tax the rich.' Under the senator's tax plan, what percentage of the Kerrys' income do you think they would pay the IRS? (a) 50 percent, (b) 40 percent, (c) 30 percent, (d)15 percent. The correct answer is (d) 15 percent. According to an analysis by the Argus Group, a well respected tax law and economics firm, the Kerrys' average tax rate would only increase by 1.8 percentage points to 15.2 percent under the senator's plan, while many small business people would see their average rate rise by 4.0 percentage points, resulting in effective rates as high as 35 to 40 percent, including certain deduction phase-outs."

There is a new blog which has up a comprehensive account of the New Age nuttiness preached by Mrs Heinz-Kerry. Apparently "alternative" health fads will solves all our problems: "If you have a child who eats the wrong things, is denied adequate health care and is deprived of a stimulating environment, it follows of necessity that he will turn out to be a criminal or other form of psychopath, sociopath or mental defective, Teresa teaches. From this she believes it follows naturally that if society seriously intends to prevent criminality and all other forms of social pathology, then all we have to do is provide our children with the right nourishment and sunlight and stimulation-and, poof!, instantly you have healthy and well-adjusted children who grow into intelligent, law-abiding and well-adjusted adults".

The Yes Bush Can site and its accompanying mailouts would seem to be the latest bit of Democrat play-acting. It may now have been taken down. It was allegedly by a group of Bush supporters who had switched to Kerry. It might fool some people, I guess. But after the biggest bit of play-acting of all -- "John Kerry as war-hero" -- it is pretty last-ditch.

Chez Joel has a very amusing post about how to talk to terrorists. He's not being sarcastic or anything!

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its big range of select reading.

Wicked Thoughts has put up a very wicked post about Yasser Arafat

I have just put up on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS some excerpts from a good article by V.D. Hanson which says which says that elitism is now the main thing that undergirds Leftism. A post on the megalomaniac Soros too.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

John Kerry brings in former communist agent to slime Vietnam vets and smear Sinclair Broadcast Group John Kerry asked Lerach to deal with Sinclair and the vets. He did. He brought a former paid communist agent to the dirty deed
George Soros' slimy attack on President Bush The sooner the Americans wake up to this bargain-basement Machiavelli and the sleazy political ambitions of his super rich mates the safer they will be
John Kerry moves to censor the Sinclair Broadcast Group Despite the lying propaganda that the John Kerry campaign and its media lackeys are spreading the Sinclair documentary did contain dissenting views
The 2004 Nobel prize in economics: getting it wrong Since the Great Depression of the 1930's and until the early 1970s most economists viewed economic fluctuations as the outcome of shocks to aggregate demand. They are wrong
John Kerry tries to censor Vietnam vets and former POWs John Kerry sent in his attack dogs to intimidate Sinclair Broadcast Group and slime Vietnam vets who had been POWs
Another Murdoch journalist bends the facts to support John Kerry Why do so many people despise George Bush while supporting John Kerry? I believe the problem lies with the mass media, meaning journalists
Libertarian Party endorses President Bush There is a belief that a Bush administration would be undesirable. Such a notion could not be farther from the truth, or potentially more harmful to the cause of liberty
Indigenize Iraq's reconstruction The brutal violence in Iraq requires not only accelerating the training of indigenous security forces, but giving the Iraqi people responsibility for their own communities' reconstruction

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Great news: My home State of Queensland has just delivered control of our Senate for the next six years to Australia's conservative government.

Vietnam peaceniks ride again: "On Sunday, the New York Times featured a political ad counseling defeatism in Iraq – a counsel that has become commonplace in its pages. It was sponsored by an organization called "Church Folks for A Better America," and based in Princeton. The signatories included the same "church folks" – among them William Sloane Coffin Jr., Robert Drinan, and Robert Edgar (National Council of Churches) who counseled defeat in Indo-China, aided the torturers of American POWS in North Vietnam, and fronted for the Soviet dictatorship’s "nuclear freeze" campaign".

This article points out that the dreaded neoconservatives were major advocates of American intervention in Muslim Bosnia and Kosovo --- interventions which are now generally applauded. That rather puts the lie to the constant Leftist claim that the neocons are just lackeys of Israel.

Glenn Reynolds has rather cleverly managed to get one of his articles into The Guardian -- an article in which he extolls the Anglosphere and says that the French hostility towards America relects osssified French fear of American dynamism.

Peg Kaplan has found more Leftist "projection": "In November of 1938, through a carefully orchestrated plan that included support from both newspapers and radio, Germany's Nazi leaders touched off an outburst of violence throughout the regime aimed at destroying Jewish property and facilitating the implementation of Hitler's "final solution." It is perhaps the ultimate irony that the American left, which has long excoriated conservatives by comparing them to the Nazis, has so completely aligned itself with Hitler's methods and his totalitarianism".

An amusing feminist screech at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club. All abuse. No facts. Excerpt: "Across the ocean, another generation of poorly paid, satin-eared bunnies is suiting up to serve drinks and dodge the roaming hands of boozy middle-aged men, and the nepotistically appointed Christie Hefner chairs an otherwise all-male board of directors".

Jeff Jacoby: "Kerry is a liberal Democrat, but in this campaign he is running as a reactionary: as one who wants to reverse course, to go back to the attitudes and practices that guided US policy when Clinton and the elder George Bush were in office. The younger Bush may be a Republican, but he is running this year as a radical. Profoundly transformed by 9/11, he sees the old playbook as feckless and dangerous, and is determined to set a revolutionary new course."

African Anglicans think homosexuality is an abomination and they have not hesitated in saying that to their alleged co-religionists among American Episcopalians and members of the Church of England. We see at the end of this article the response of the Western Anglicans: "We will cut off your funding". Apparently, catering to homosexuals matters more than spreading the Christian gospel in Africa.

Pygmy remains discovered in Indonesia (just North of Australia). It rather fits in with the pygmy element still alive in Northern Australia but nobody seems to want to make that connection. The reconstructed picture of the Indonesian pygmies tooks a lot like the Tasmanian Aborigines, who also seem to have had pygmy (negrito) ancestry: "This hobbit-sized creature appears to have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores, a kind of tropical Lost World populated by giant lizards and miniature elephants". See also here. And see here for why the Australian Left try to hide the very existence of Australia's pygmies.

Some recent articles on Think Israel:
JIHAD, APOCALYPSE, AND ANTI-SEMITISM: An Interview with Richard Landes
THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM
A CLOSER LOOK AT EGYPT
SAUDI ARABIA'S RELIGIOUS HATRED
THE NEW NEO-COLONIALISM: The Arab-Moslem Invasion Of France
UNITED NATIONS VOTE PRESAGES STATE SPONSORED GLOBAL ANTI-SEMITISM
IS ISRAEL'S LEGAL SYSTEM ACTING ILLEGALLY?
GETTING GAZA WRONG
ARAB TIME BOMB: The Demographic Argument
THE PEOPLE, THE PEOPLE'S ARMY, THE STATE AND THE REGIME

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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MONSIEUR JEAN KOHN KERRY

Traitor Kerry: "The nation's most highly decorated living veteran told a hometown audience in Sioux City, Iowa, Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry "will go down in history as the Benedict Arnold of 1971." Col. George "Bud" Day, an Air Force pilot who spent 67 months in a North Vietnamese prison and was awarded the Medal of Honor among other decorations, visited Sioux City to campaign against Kerry. "The notion that his guy would think he is qualified to be president of the United State when he has already pledged his allegiance to North Vietnam makes absolute zero sense,'' Day told the Sioux City Journal. "My view is he basically will go down in history sometime as the Benedict Arnold of 1971.'' "

Jeff Jacoby has a good article on how much John Kerry has usually given to charity: NIL. His "compassion" only extends to giving other people's money away.

Jeff Jacoby is also having a laugh at John Kerry's sudden discovery of religion.

The liars' liar: "Since his very first appearance on the national scene - as a water carrier for the communists of North Vietnam - Kerry has continuously LIED and EXAGGERATED. And he's been caught, over and over and over again... He slandered the US military in 1971; he lies about being at World Series games, about meeting with foreign leaders or UNSC members, about being in Cambodia - to name just a few! Yet his LYING has not ever hurt him. WHY? HOW? Because since WW2 the Leftist meme has included a basic tenet of the post-modernist meme: a belief that there is no such thing as REAL TRUTH; they believe that truth is just subjective or culturally relative. People who do not believe in truth have no problem lying or voting for liars if it advances their cause. The Leftist cause is as it has always been: making the state bigger; having the state run by elites"

Kerry a N. Vietnamese stooge: "I think what we've discovered is a smoking gun," Corsi said. "We knew when we wrote 'Unfit for Command' that Kerry had met with Madame Binh and then promoted her peace plan. "This document enables us to connect the dots," he emphasized. "We now have evidence Madame Binh was directing the antiwar movement ... and the person who implemented her strategy was John Kerry."

Mark Steyn: "There are legitimate differences of opinion about the war, but they don't include Kerry's silly debater's points. On the one hand, the Tora borer drones that Bush "outsourced" the search for Osama bin Laden to the Afghans, though at the time he supported it ("It is the best way to protect our troops," he said in December 2001. "I think we have been doing this pretty effectively."). But, on the other, he claims he's going to outsource Iraq to the French and the Germans, though neither of them wants anything to do with it. As for this Bush-failed-to-get-bin-Laden business, 2-1/2 years ago I declared that Osama was dead and he's never written to complain. There's no more evidence for his present existence than there is for the Loch Ness monster, which at least does us the courtesy of showing up as a indistinct gray blur on a photograph every now and again. Osama is lying low because he's in no condition to get up".

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ELSEWHERE

A good summary: "The liberal base hates George Bush for one reason; they know he places American interests first. The interests of France, Germany, Russia and the whole Hee Haw gang at the U.N. place a far distant second. It is no surprise then that so many of the left will cast their vote for John Kerry, a man who as a Senator has consistently voted against ANY military action that might safeguard American soil. It is no surprise that they applaud a man who believes that Europe is always superior to America, a man whose character was no doubt formed during the halcyon summers of his childhood spent mostly at the Forbes family chateau in France. It is no surprise they grovel at the feet of a man whose entire career has revolved around taking food from the mouths of those that work, sweat and produce, and giving it to bums and parasites. Kerry's dream world is that of a welfare state presided over by a collection of tin-pot foreign dictators in K-Mart suits. He is the champion of those who are incapable of making a decision, who wish to be cared for from cradle to grave".

Florida voting myths: "During a speech, September 11th, John Kerry implied that Republicans will keep blacks from voting in November. "We are not going to stand by and allow another million African American votes to go uncounted in this election," ... Kerry said that the Democrats prepared to monitor the polls on election day. "What they did in Florida in 2000, some say they may be planning to do this year," The flaw in Kerry's and the Democratic Party argument is that there was no policy to prevent blacks from voting. There was no such policy by the Republican Party or the Florida government.... the final report by the USCCR stated the Commission "does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters. Moreover, even if it was foreseeable that certain actions by officials led to voter disenfranchisement, this alone does not mean that intentional discrimination occurred." .... The report pronounced, "Disenfranchised voters are individuals who are entitled to vote, want to vote, or attempt to vote, but who are deprived from either voting or having their votes counted." Using this standard then, military personnel and Republican voters in the Florida panhandle were the voters who were disenfranchised. However, the USCCR made no mention of them in their report.."

Marxism in academe: "Marxism is an emotional disorder, not a political philosophy. Wealthy people sometimes accept Marxism, not because it has ever worked, but because they feel guilty about having more than other people. But, more often, it is accepted by those with less who are angry, usually because they lack the talent and drive to succeed in a capitalist society. This realization often occurs at a ten-year high school reunion after they see people with less schooling and fewer degrees but with more money than they have. They don't want to compete with these people. They just want the IRS take their wealth and "redistribute" it against their will under the threat of incarceration."

Fraudulent American historians: "In his new book, "Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud -- American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin" (PublicAffairs), Hoffer contends that his profession "has fallen into disarray" and aims a polemical blast at his fellow historians for condoning sloppy scholarship and an anything-goes ethical climate.... Hoffer accuses the American Historical Association (AHA), where he has served as an adviser on plagiarism and a member of its professional standards division, of abdicating its responsibility to enforce basic scholarly principles in both realms... But Hoffer reserves his bitterest jibes for the AHA, which last year gave up adjudicating cases of scholarly misconduct"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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ECONOMIC ISSUES

Astute Blogger has a good short post on the idiocy of farm subsidies -- pointing out that when New Zealand abandoned its subsidies, it actually gave New Zealand agriculture a new lease of life.

Lawsuit industry has hurt America "Americans are concerned about where the good jobs are going to come from -- and about their health coverage. These are understandable concerns. They should prompt voters to take a closer look at which would-be presidential administration is likely to take the nation in which direction. One of the things that is clearly hurting American manufacturing is litigation. Not only must U.S. companies compete in a tough world marketplace, they must constantly defend themselves here at home."

The aging "problem": "While the pessimists fret about the problems to come as if ageing is some new challenge, they ignore the fact that this has been a remarkably constant feature of industrialised countries since the latter part of the nineteenth century, and societies have had no difficulties 'coping' with it in the past.

Health, wealth and happiness : "How do we know when we're happy? Strange as it may seem, this philosophical question could come back to haunt you one April 15. Psychologists and 'happiness researchers' are using the finding that Calcutta slum-dwellers and Masai nomads are as happy as American businessmen to argue not only that wealth doesn't necessarily make you happy, but that this shows that investment in economic growth should be replaced by social programs. The trouble is that one conclusion doesn't necessarily lead to the other." [See also my post of Sept. 14th]

UK invents another way to discourage people from employing anybody: ""The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, is attempting to block a new law that would punish negligent employers with heavy fines or imprisonment in cases of deaths or injury at work. The Guardian has obtained details of a letter sent by Mr Straw 10 days ago to John Prescott, deputy prime minister and chair of the domestic affairs cabinet committee. In it, the foreign secretary casts doubt on the need to create a new crime of corporate manslaughter. ... The unexpected intervention into a domestic controversy will infuriate trades unions which have been campaigning for the reform for many years. The commitment for a draft bill was a cornerstone of the agreement between the government and unions reached at this summer's crucial Warwick forum."

What's the answer for high gasoline prices? Nothing: "What, if anything, should government do about the sustained increase in gasoline prices? Not a thing. For both practical and theoretical reasons, politicians and regulators should resist the temptation to monkey around with fuel markets. No matter how well intentioned, intervention to protect consumers will only make matters worse."

Stupid socialists: "A wave of regulation is burdening Britain's financial services industry and threatening its ability to compete internationally, the UK's biggest business group has said. In the next two years, more than 20 European Union measures will be imposed on companies, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said in a report on Monday. The CBI called for a moratorium on new rules, to let firms concentrate on their businesses. "Companies are being battered by the impact of relentless new legislation," CBI Deputy Director John Cridland said in a statement. "It's forcing a dramatic and wasteful diversion of effort away from the daily battle to keep the UK ahead of its competitors." Britain's finance industry employs more than 1 million people and contributes 5.3 percent to gross domestic product, the CBI said."

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ELSEWHERE

The Islamicist/Nazi connection: "It should be pointed out that National Socialism had a profound impact on the political philosophies of many radical Islamic political organization, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in Egypt in 1928), Nasser`s Young Egypt movement, the Social Nationalist Party of Syria founded by Anton Sa`ada, and the Ba`ath Party of Iraq. One of the main leaders of the 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Iraq was Khairallah Tulfah, the uncle and guardian of Saddam Hussein. When Saddam failed in his attempt to assassinate the Iraqi leader Abdel Karim Qassim in 1959, he fled to Egypt where he was given protection by Grand Mufti-protege Nasser and ODESSA-connected former Nazis. The rest, as they say, is history."

There is a painful letter from Iran here about the tyranny inflicted on innocent Iranians by the Muslim theocracy there.

Media silence about Kerry: "Here we are, on the brink, possibly, of electing a self-confessed war criminal to the Oval Office -- a man who, as an American officer, parlayed with the enemy, and... nothing. No questions, no stories. No thoughts, no curiosity. We contemplate a new wartime leader whose political epiphany -- the famous Christmas in Cambodia, "seared, seared" into Mr. Kerry's memory -- never happened. Questions, stories in the MSM? Not a one. We consider trusting our very lives to a man who has consistently hewed to the wrong side of history, favoring appeasement and disarmament over democratic principle and strength, but we know nothing of his current thinking on those old positions."

Why Howard Stern got outsourced: "I'm not sure about this, but judging from the college students I teach, few people know why Howard Stern decided to leave the country and send us his show from 'abroad' -- he is moving to satellite radio. Most folks do not realize, I think, that this country has a socialist broadcast system."

Blogger "Let's Try Freedom" used to be "pro-choice". Having seen ultrasound pictures of his daughter in the womb, he is now pro-life. He also has a good post on why all Americans now must be citizen-soldiers.

One of my Australian readers has got very irritated at the pro-Palestinian slant of our television. She wrote our "60 Minutes" program a letter of protest. You can read the letter here

Wayne Lusvardi says that it was FDR who originally got America involved in the Middle East.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME HISTORY

American Leftists claim to be deathly afraid that a second term for GWB will allow him to appoint Supreme Court judges who uphold the constitution instead of making the law up as they go along. I would like to think it is true but from the way the Senate Democrats recently filibustered Estrada, I fear it is unlikely. And you don't always get what you expect with judicial appointments. Power can easily go to the head of the enthroned one. We might recollect the time when a Republican President appointed a Republican governor to the court and the nation got out of it one of its most determined judicial dictators -- Earl Warren.

Condemnation of the President: "What has [the president done] to entitle him to re-election? We contend he has done nothing to earn this high distinction but that, on the contrary, in the conduct of the war, his deplorable mismanagement of our most important armies, with the disastrous and alarming consequences, have furnished evidence sufficient to convince the country he is not the pilot to carry us through the perils of this war..." But the President concerned was Lincoln, not Bush.

"Neocons" in 1944: "Jewish government officials secretly manipulating the president? That accusation, heard recently in connection with the decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein, was also raised sixty years ago, in the heat of the 1944 presidential race. The lightning rod for criticism in 1944 was Sidney Hillman, a prominent labor leader and aide to President Franklin D. Roosevelt."

There is some discussion here of how the welfare state "colonised" Britain's formerly self reliant and mutually supporting working class: "the extensive culture of privately run working-class schools was destroyed by the board-schools founded by the 1870 Education Act, which were not free, but were effectively subsidised to a point where they put their private competitors out of business. All of this was part of a process in which 'the working classes are firmly tagged as the patients, never the agents.'... The state,... by taking away the working classes' means of providing for themselves, and especially by creating catastrophic "Downer" ghettos in housing estates, has created a culture of dependency.

Some interesting statistics about the lead-up to World War II from Jim Lindgren: A Gallup poll taken in 1938 showed that the support for an anti-Jewish campaign was quite low in America but that Democrat voters were 50% more likely to support such a campaign than were Republicans (14.7% versus 9.8%). Those "racist" conservatives again!

"Genghis Khan may not sound like a compassionate conservative, but Weatherford argues that his subject was a great deal more tolerant and far-sighted than his barbaric reputation suggests. Suborned peoples, of all creeds and cultures, were permitted to conduct their affairs autonomously - so long as they recognized his paramountcy. He was the first of the great free traders, a meritocrat, and, by the lights of his time, a nicely enlightened despot. You could do worse than being ruled by Genghis Khan, and many did".

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ELSEWHERE

In academe, Brian Leiter is probably second only to Noam Chomsky for half-truths and twisted reasoning. Because he seems to be widely-read, it is probably time someone took on the job of shooting him down regularly -- as various people do for Chomsky. Being a humble psychologist rather than a high-flying lawyer, I am not the man for the job but even I am tempted to point out the odd bit of shallow rhetoric emanating from him. Take this post. He says the very name "Constitution Restoration Act" is Orwellian. The U.S. constitution is Orwellian? How twisted can thinking be? The provisions of U.S. constitution are about as opposite to a socialist dictatorship (which is what Orwell describes) as you can get! And restoring elements and assumptions of that constitution that have been eroded by an arbitrary "progressive" judiciary must surely be similarly anti-Orwellian. So it is Leiter who is Orwellian. He is calling black white. Once again we note that familiar Leftist "projection" -- seeing your own faults in others. Leiter also heads up his discussion of the Act as "Theocracy anyone?" -- implying (apparently) that the Act concerned is designed to introduce some sort of Christian dictatorship. The whole point of the Act, however, is simply to protect people from being harassed in the courts just because they are Christians. So in Leiter's strange world protecting people from official harassment is equivalent to setting up a dictatorship! Again, he claims something is the opposite of what it is. With scholarship as atrocious as that, it is clear that Leiter's popularity derives from his Leftist ideological correctness rather than any intellectual stature. His reasoning is such garbage that I suppose it is no wonder that nobody bothers to critique it regularly.

The poll of conservative bloggers says that George Bush will defeat John Kerry hands-down.

Another stupid (psychopathic) lie: "U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq."

The myth of the disenfranchised: "Already, in state after state, the Democrats have said that voter confusion over how to vote constitutes voter disenfranchisement. But, as George Will recently noted, disenfranchisement is something the government does to you. It's not something you do to yourself. If you can't figure out how to fill in the ovals or punch the chads -- and some minority of voters will always botch it -- that doesn't mean your right to vote was rescinded. It means that you didn't take your right to vote seriously enough to pay attention to the instructions."

Sweden "As early as 1977, Swedish relative income fell below the average for the twenty-three rich OECD countries. Swedish economic growth has been below the OECD average since 1970. The accumulated effect of the slower growth rate is large. From 1970 to 1998, fifteen countries surpassed or caught up with Sweden in terms of GDP per capita, while Sweden did not overtake a single one.... In the early 90's Sweden's extensive sick-leave system resulted in 30% of the working population being "sick" at any point in time. Unemployment rose to 13%. Taxes rose to 55% of GNP, with deficits of 15% of GNP.... It isn't difficult to conclude that Sweden took a resource-rich land, a hardy and resourceful citizenry, avoided the expense and destruction of wars, and then proceeded to smother those advantages with a socialistic welfare state. It's hard to imagine a more ideal testing ground for an ideological experiment, yet socialism has failed there as well".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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UNIONS VERSUS THE WORKERS

A good email from Australian philosopher/economist Rafe Champion below:

"With John Howard's recent victory in the elections, the stage is set in Australia for a re-run of all the arguments about the use and abuse of trade union [labor union] power and influence. As I write, I hear the voice of former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke pleading to save the priviliges of the trade unions on the specious argument that giving the workers more power over their own pay and conditions is confrontational and divisive!

The late Bill Hutt is one of the most important writers on these matters and some of his work can be found on line. For an overview of Hutt's career, see here. Below is an extract from Hutt's book on collective bargaining where he draws upon statements from the working class leaders to indicate that the combinations of workers at that time generally disadvantaged the mass of workers. He wrote:

"This should not allow the modern student to ignore the fact that the interests of the unionists were almost universally antagonistic to those of the labouring masses. Had historians of the trade-union movement been orthodox economic theorists they might have laid the strongest emphasis on this point. As it happens, however, they have been practically without exception persons with an undisguised hostility to orthodox theory; and this may account for their failure to stress what might have struck other economists most forcibly. The Webbs frankly admit the frequent existence of monopolistic tendencies on the part of unions, but the general impression they leave is misleading for they have obviously written as union advocates."

One of Hutt's major books was The Strike Threat System which is the history of the trade union use of strike action to undermine the rule of law and disadvantage the poor and indeed all of society apart from the favoured few in the most powerful and reckless unions. The paradigm case in Australia is the waterside workers (longshoremen). Central to the trade union defence is the myth of the "bitter struggle" that workers had to fight against capital and management to get a fair go. This myth is subjected to devastating historical appraisal in this chapter from the book. The chapter begins with some turgid prose, but do persist!"

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS a few comments about the British journalist who has recently called for President Bush to be assassinated.

The Left have recently put out another "survey" that purports to prove that GOP voters live in fantasyland and Kerry supporters are realists. Evangelical Outpost demolishes it nicely. The whole thing was blatantly rigged of course. Distortion is just normal for the Left. The straight truth would be too awkward for them.

A ringing endorsement of GWB from a newspaper in the heart of the Left Coast. A small excerpt: "This election year, America is at a crossroads. Under the current president, we forwarded America's duty to both beat back the forces that would end democracy here and abroad and sent a strong message to those who would destroy our way of life: "Don't tread on me.'"

If anyone is an intellectual, it would have to be David Gelernter (He is a professor of computer science at Yale University, among other things, and in German/Yiddish his surname even means "learned"!) yet he is voting for GWB because he sees Bush as having a sense of humour where Kerry has none. He sees humour as humanizing and as a sign of genuine humility.

Fun: "A report recommending English become a compulsory subject in all schools in France has raised the ire of teachers' unions and supporters of linguistic diversity. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin is said to back the proposal, which was put forward a week ago by a commission looking into the future of France's education system, according to Le Monde. Such a move would help French pupils catch up with their counterparts in other EU countries who enjoy a big lead in using what the commission's report called the language of "international communication"."

Australia's Cardinal Pell sums it up: "Recently, I was interviewed on radio about the role of religion in public life. The suggestion seemed to be that if you were irreligious, that was okay, that being secular meant you were fair and reasonable, but religious principles should not intrude into public affairs. I pointed out that Christians had the same rights as anyone else in our democracy and could propose whatever policies they chose. If people didn't like their policies, they could vote for another party. The interviewer professed to be scared of the prospect of Christian political parties, although he didn't say why. He then moved on to George W. Bush who, he claimed, not only set out to do God's will, but claimed to be given special godly instructions or revelations. I do not claim that all President Bush's policies are prudent and right. They may or may not be. But he must not be condemned simply because he's a serious Christian. The interviewer conceded there was no evidence that Bush was claiming to hear voices, and lapsed into silence when I explained that for me, it was a consolation if a world leader was trying to do God's will rather than setting out to do whatever he could get away with. Isn't it better, I asked, to have a leader who believes that in the next life, he will have to answer for the decisions he makes in the here and now?"

Satanic Presbyterians: "I am neither an 'end-timer' nor a messianic, but these groups do have the most accurate way of describing recent events. And who knows, maybe they're right. This week, a group that does not follow the core precepts of Christianity yet call themselves 'Christians' had a friendly meeting with one of the most heinous Islamist terror groups on the planet. Those people who call themselves 'Christian' yet ignore a very core belief of that religion are the Presbyterians, and the group they had a comfy sit-down with is Hizbollah."

Although the U.S. Congress defeated the U.S. military in Vietnam, Lancelot Finn has got a good argument to say that the larger strategic objectives of that war were still attained. In the big picture, America did win.

A good comment on the recent conservative victory in the Australian elections: "I was once a bit concerned about bookshops flooded with tottering towers of tomes attacking the Howard Government and the Bush Administration. I have since come to the conclusion that seeing large bundles of them unopened, unsold and unread in the bookshops might actually be the best possible outcome".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

The hatred and loathing that the media are expressing for President Bush has astonished many people. This week's issue reproduces seven articles from the 2000 election. These articles show that media hatred of Bush goes back many years. We believe that this hatred stems from a hatred of America. It is, in fact, the brutal end product of several decades of vicious anti-Americanism that has corrupted the media to the extent that their dishonesty and ideologically driven reports and commentary now threaten the democratic process.

Another Rupert Murdoch journalist maligns Bush and his record Susan Mitchell is another particularly nasty example of that breed of leftwing reporters who makes no attempt to hide the hate and sneering loathing she feels for George Bush
A Borgia journalist strikes at Bush The US election has helped expose just how bigoted and dishonest many of our journalists really are, which brings me to the 'The Australian Financial Review'
Murdoch's Australian roots for Gore again Cameron Forbes' squalid and bigoted report on the Florida recounts
Murdoch journalist libels Bush and his Texas record The malevolence of the Australian press toward Bush is striking in its intensity. One is even tempted to call it pathological
Aussie journalist joins Gore's election campaign Roy Eccleston, from Rupert Murdoch's 'Australian' railed against Republican demonstrators, falsely accusing them of intimidation
Media hack spins for Gore The American election has provided graphic and somewhat sickening examples of just how ideologically corrupt most of our journalists are
Al Gore's shameless journalists Leftwing journalists are relentless. No matter how much one exposes their political bigotry and hypocrisy they still continue to push the party line. And that brings me back to Gay Alcorn, 'Sydney Morning Herald'

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

There is an article here reporting the ongoing claims by psychologists to the effect that conservatives are nutty --- yet another example of Leftist "projection" of course. The spotlight this time is on claims by a buffoon called Altemeyer. Altemeyer's claims were demolished academically long ago but that is conveniently ignored. See here. Psychologists have always been good at ignoring their own literature if it suits them. See here and here.

I mentioned yesterday an ignorant Leftist "intellectual" who thought that conservatives want to abolish all government. A reader commented: "I took at look at that Matt Young post on "The Panda's Thumb" ... oy vey. More straw men than in your average Nebraska wheatfield"

Such "loving" relationships! "The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association is launching a first-of-its-kind "LGBT Relationship Violence Project" to educate medical professionals about domestic violence in lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender communities.... "Domestic violence is a hugely ignored health issue in the LGBT communities, affecting one in three LGBT relationships," said Susan Holt, an expert on LGBT domestic violence prevention.... The upcoming presentations in Palm Springs will "mark the beginning of GLMA's essential work to educate the medical community about the often-hidden but brutal reality of <> relationship violence," said GLMA President Kenneth Haller, MD.

Great to be welfare dependant: "A woman stayed on hold for more than six hours when she rang her benefits office. Patricia Pattison, 54, clung on to the phone while doing housework, chatting to a friend and having her nails painted. The Leicester grandmother said: 'They said they were busy but I'm not looking forward to my phone bill. The Department for Work and Pensions has apologised.'"

ADHD is genetic too: "Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the controversial "bad behaviour" syndrome, are suffering from a medical condition linked to abnormal development of the brain, scientists said yesterday. Brain scans of children with the disorder - which some critics allege has been invented or exaggerated by drug companies seeking lucrative markets - have revealed a common pattern of changes, providing evidence that ADHD is a genuine biological phenomenon. According to studies, its origins are largely genetic and it is not the result of poor parenting. Growing up in a "chaotic environment", to which parents with poor skills can contribute, may trigger the condition among children who are already genetically susceptible. The condition, which involves restlessness, impulsive behaviour and a short attention span, is thought to affect up to one in twenty British children"

Lancelot Finn on Andrew Sullivan. One excerpt: "If you have guessed by now that the reason I am bringing up Judas Iscariot in an essay about Andrew Sullivan is because Sullivan has turned against Bush, that's not quite it. For one thing, George W. Bush is certainly not Jesus Christ, nor did Sullivan's support for Bush ever amount to discipleship, nor should it have. But when I think about my erstwhile hero Andrew Sullivan, the rock star of the blogosphere, it seems that he and Judas Iscariot share certain fatal flaws. Each was too impetuous, too willful. Each seemed idealistic, principled at any given moment, yet in the end his path was zig-zagging and contradictory and led him nowhere. Judas destroyed the cause he believed in. Andrew Sullivan may yet do so".

Libertarian Party stalwart, Prof. John Hospers has endorsed President Bush on the grounds that America is in great danger and that Kerry cannot be relied upon to act decisively. I actually met Hospers once. He seemed very level-headed. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California and was also for 17 years a professor of astronomy

About flaming time! "Federal prosecutors charged three Kansas City-area residents Thursday with using fraudulent records to vote in both Kansas and Missouri in the Nov. 5, 2002, general election."

A nasty one for the Democrats. It seems that Kerry has a lower IQ than GWB

The best conservative site in Portuguese now has an English version. For anyone who wants the truth about what is going on in Brazil...

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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ELECTION FRAUD

Voter registration in chaos: "In New Mexico, Albuquerque police officer Glen Stout became concerned when his 13-year old son received a voter registration card -- as did one of his son's 15-year old friends. What that means is that Stout's son and the 15-year old neighbor are legally entitled to vote in the State of New Mexico without the fear of being challenged since a law pushed through that State's Democratically-controlled legislature and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson earlier this year prevents precinct workers at any of New Mexico's polls from asking for any form of identification from any voter, or asking their age -- even if fraud is obvious."

Leftists abuse voter registration: "America Votes, a 32-member coalition of anti-Bush organizations - led by such groups as George Soros' MoveOn.org, America Coming Together and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - is spending $100 million on a campaign that voting officials say has resulted in a massive increase in voters nationwide. The aim of this door-to-door voter-registration drive is to identify undecided and potential Democratic voters in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and 11 other battleground states. One member of the coalition, a left-wing activist group known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), claims to have registered 1 million new voters since July 2003. The problem is that at least some of these were fraudulently registered.... Authorities in several states are investigating whether thousands of voter registrations have been fraudulently submitted - many of them by members of the America Votes coalition. In Florida, the Justice Department and state authorities are investigating charges by a former ACORN field director that workers for the organization routinely withheld Republican voter registrations, while thousands of invalid voter registration cards were submitted in their place.

And here is an hilarious example of Leftist "projection" (seeing your own faults in others). If you want to know what is true of Leftists, the simple rule is to look at what they say of conservatives! Excerpt: "The Republicans are out to steal the 2004 election -- before, during, and after Election Day. Before Election Day, they are employing such dirty tricks as improper purges of voter rolls, use of dummy registration groups that tear up Democratic registrations, and the suppression of Democratic efforts to sign up voters, especially blacks and students. On Election Day, Republicans will attempt to intimidate minority voters by having poll watchers threaten criminal prosecution if something is technically amiss with their ID, and they will again use technical mishaps to partisan advantage. But the most serious assault on democracy itself is likely to come after Election Day. Here is a flat prediction: If neither candidate wins decisively, the Bush campaign will contrive enough court challenges in enough states so that we won't know the winner election night."

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ELSEWHERE

There is a good example here of the utter depth of Leftist political ignorance. The author somehow believes that all conservatives are anarcho-capitalists, the most extreme form of libertarian -- who don't believe in any government at all! Libertarians would certainly be staggered to hear that. It shows what an airtight little intellectual cocoon the author lives in. Conservatives of course do believe in quite a lot of government, though not as much as Leftists do. We would scarcely have President George W. Bush otherwise. I guess the author is another exemplar of that simplistic, "black-and-white thinking" that is so characteristic of Leftists and which they often therefore "project" onto conservatives. Razib gives the ignoramus a good serve too. Needless to say, all the commentary and analysis that flows from such a warped definition of conservatism can safely be ignored. An intellectual who cannot even define his terms accurately is no intellectual at all.

What it means to be a Republican. Well worth reading. Another stereotype-buster for lockstep Leftists.

Bill Vallicella has a post saying that the Left are insensitive to danger. He says this is why they are always pretending that human nnature is good and ignoring the fact that some people can be evil and dangerous. I think it is a bit worse than that. I think Leftist ideologues don't care about reality at all. That's one reason why they often claim that reality does not exist. They are so preoccupied with puffing up their own image and self-esteem that everything else just has to go hang. And anything that threatens that image will simply be denied. They will do and say ANYTHING in order to sound good. Clinically, it is called "Narcissism" and in more extreme cases, it is part of "Psychopathy".

Leftist "principles" are a joke: "I have long insisted that the problem of radical Islam is not a liberal or conservative issue; it's a human rights issue. The unfortunate fact, however, is that largely it is only conservatives who care about it. In the face of the global jihad, the left is strangely silent: no protest marches, no angry full-page ads in the New York Times. When the Left does notice an adulterous woman being stoned to death under Sharia law, or some other outrage in the Islamic world, it is usually dismissed as an aberration or somehow blamed on their all-purpose bogeyman: the United States government.

Good comment on the so-righteous Giving Tree: "In giving to the boy-man at every opportunity, the tree thought it was doing right. Instead, it created a dependency relationship in his human friend that lasts his whole life and that leaves both impoverished. This is not a quality one would wish for a friend, and even more so, for one’s son or daughter"

There is a huge site here which completely demolishes the Leftist chant that Saddam "had no links to terror"

Lawrence Auster has a very comprehensive article here arguing against America's current de facto policy of allowing millions of illegal immigrants to flow into the country. Australia has a high immigrant inflow too but we insist on choosing whom we allow in. As a result we mainly get high-quality (hard-working, law-abiding) immigrants from East Asia. We were getting a rash of illegal Muslim immigrants for a short while but Australia's conservative government put a stop to that -- to great public acclaim.

White House chickens out on illegal immigration: "The White House yesterday asked Congress to reject an attempt by Republican House leaders to load an intelligence reorganization bill with measures designed to prevent illegal immigration. The White House is making the request because Democrats won't support the bill if it has the immigration measures. The administration wants 'an effective bill that both Houses can pass and the president can sign into law as soon as possible to meet the nation's security needs,'

I have put up a couple of posts on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS recently.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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

SOME AUSTRALIAN NEWS EXCERPTS

A big difference to the way American schools treat innocent kids: "A teenager who sparked a gun scare at his high school sat patiently in a classroom as the drama unfolded, unaware he was the person police were scouring the school for. The school, north of Brisbane, went into lockdown late yesterday morning after the boy was seen entering school grounds with what appeared to be a gun... A police spokesman said it appeared charges would not be laid against the boy with the toy gun. "He was going to the school to pick up some school work and had bought the toy as part of a Halloween costume," he said. "He was taking part in the lockdown. He didn't even realise it was a result of his actions."

An excellent satire on the New York Times here. A small excerpt: "The international community is bracing for an influx of political refugees following the collapse of democracy in Australia. Last night the UN Security Council was in emergency session on the situation in Australia, where John Howard seized power in a bloodless election on Saturday. The defeat of democracy had been long foreshadowed by the country's artists and intellectuals, as well as by some prominent columnists..."

Australian Left jolted rightwards by the election: "Mark Latham has promised to push ahead with a more aggressive pro-market reform agenda as he admitted that Labor had not done enough to win voter trust on economic management..... In his first post-mortem on the election, Mr Latham championed the need for a new wave of economic reforms - admitting Labor had to do more to enhance its "economic credentials" with the public... During a sometimes candid interview on the ABC's 7.30 Report, he signalled plans to press ahead with policies on further changes to competition laws and opening up the economy - even if it came at the expense of alienating some of his colleagues and the union movement. "We have to move forward with a new agenda for economic reform consistent with those values about competition, about productivity, about growing the market economy and building incentive and participation into the Australian economic framework," Mr Latham said."

Hooray! "The Government's grip on a historic Senate majority is tightening, with National Party candidate Barnaby Joyce steaming away in the count for Queensland's final Senate seat."

Antisemitism in the Australian Left too: "Former Bob Hawke government minister Barry Cohen has launched a stinging attack on critics of Israel within the Labor Party, saying anti-semitism is now rampant in the ALP. He said the number of Labor MPs who supported Israel were increasingly being drowned out by members of the party's hard left, whom he accuses of making exaggerated claims about the nation... Mr Cohen said his life and character were shaped by the anti-semitism he experienced in his youth. "I was proud to belong to a party [the ALP] that fought all forms of prejudice. Not any longer," he wrote."

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ELSEWHERE

Good to hear: "For the first time in the Iraq war, according to military officials, US aircraft last week directly bombed a mosque. The airstrike northwest of Ramadi ended an intense firefight in which insurgents, holed up inside the shrine with heavy weapons, held off the US Marines for three hours. Precision-guided munitions set the Sharqi mosque ablaze, but left it standing. 'The Marines couldn't even get close to the building to do anything because of the firepower that was coming out of there,' making the mosque a legitimate target, says a senior military official in Baghdad. 'The only way to stop this was with a strike.' The incident illustrates how US and Iraqi forces over the past three months have adopted increasingly tough tactics against a dug-in insurgency: raiding mosques, dropping bombs and firing rockets in cities, and conducting large-scale infantry sweeps into urban 'no-go zones.'"

This article sees Islamic terrorism as the last desperate gasp of a defeated civilization: "The madness of the Islamists' spectacular attack on the World Trade Center is self-evident; its despair lies in its inevitably annihilating impact on the plotters and perpetrators themselves, world Islamism in general, and the al Qaeda networks, organizations, and systems of support in particular (including the Taliban regime in Afghanistan).... Today the hard-core Islamists' spectacular terrorist violence reflects a no less desperate attempt to break out of the historical impasse and terminal structural crisis reached by the world Islamist movement in the second half of the 20th century. I predict this violence will be the prelude to the dissipation and final demise of militant Islamism in general. Like the armed factions in Europe who had given up on society, political parties, reform, proletarian revolution, and traditional communist organization in favor of violent action, militant Islamism has given up on contemporary Muslim society".

One result of favouring "minorities" in hiring. Loss of standards: "Five police officers in Los Angeles stand accused of pursuing a four-year armed robbery spree, using squad cars, uniforms and badges to make the brazen heists look like official raids. At least two men were shot with stun guns during the robberies, while another was beaten with a police baton, had a gun stuffed into his mouth and was burnt with a cigarette lighter. The five men, working with as many as fifteen accomplices, including a professional female boxer, stole 320kg (700lb) of marijuana and 50kg of cocaine, as well as cars, firearms and jewellery. The gang used Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) surveillance tactics to keep a look out for police or witnesses, and restrained victims with standard-issue handcuffs." See also here.

British socialism shoots itself in the foot: "Warnings that Gordon Brown will be forced to raise taxes quickly in the event of a victory in next year's general election increased yesterday after the emergence of the worst monthly public finance figures on record. Much weaker than expected tax revenues meant that government borrowing last month set a September record of œ4.8 billion, almost double the figure for the same month last year. The bleak September data was blamed by the Treasury on erratic factors affecting spending. But the bad news from last month ended a highly disappointing first half to the financial year, during which the Government borrowed œ22.75 billion - more than two thirds of the Chancellor's œ33 billion full-year forecast".

There is an article here pointing out at length that with John Kerry, what you see is NOT what you get. He will say and do anything to gain power -- even imitate 95% of GWB's policies -- but his voting record reveals him for the far-Leftist he is.

Good augury for GWB: "In a March 2003 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen dismissed worries that the American public would lose heart if there were too many casualties in the then-imminent Iraq war. "All the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . .," Ledeen declared. "What we hate is not casualties but losing.""

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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BIG MAL IS JEWISH

I am a great fan of Professor Bunyip. His use of humour to deflate Australian Leftists is something that I can only aspire to. I note however that he seems to concur with the usual view among Australian conservatives that Malcolm Fraser was our worst Prime Minister in living memory. Fraser was in his younger days known as very Right-wing and as a fan of Ayn Rand but in office he did very little to introduce market-oriented reforms. These days he is best remembered for losing his trousers on a hot night in Memphis, Tennessee! Courtesy of Michael Darby, I once met Big Mal for a brief chat and it was a great struggle to keep the word "trousers" out of the conversation, I can tell you!

I agree that the Fraser years (1975-1983) were "lost years" as far as most market reforms were concerned but Fraser does have some reasonably good conservative credentials nonetheless. It is often forgotten that he was ahead of Margaret Thatcher in rolling back socialism -- in that he started de-nationalizing Australian health-care in 1976 (though the present dual system was not fully in place until 1981). Margaret Thatcher, of course, first came to office in 1979. And Fraser was a strong supporter of the United States and its policies -- and he also cut back government spending, which is more than G.W. Bush can claim.

And doing nothing whilst in office is not an entirely inappropriate thing for a conservative Prime Minister to do anyway. It beats constant government meddling and multiplication of laws! Australia's most revered conservative Prime Minister -- Sir Robert Menzies -- is also remembered for the paucity of his "initiatives" and the stability of Australian life during his long term in office.

On anything to do with race and ethnicity, however, Big Mal rivals the Left for "correctness" -- and he bears some responsibility for the installation of the ghastly Robert Mugabe as ruler of the unfortunate people of Zimbabwe. The reason behind that, however, seems never to be mentioned. Fraser is technically Jewish. Although his own religion is nominal Protestant, his mother was Jewish -- which makes Fraser Jewish under Jewish law. And Jews are of course understandably hypersensitive about matters to do with race. It is however remarkable testimony to the very low level of antisemitism in Australia that a man can become Prime Minister of Australia without his Jewishness ever even being mentioned. I think it also shows how "racist" Australian conservatives are that they chose Fraser to lead them -- rather like those "racist" British conservatives who chose Benjamin Disraeli to lead them in the 19th century and Michael Howard to lead them in the 21st.

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ELSEWHERE

Maybe some hope for the British Tories after all: "Michael Howard has recruited the man who helped his namesake, John Howard, win four elections in Australia to head his campaign for the general election expected next May. The Tories claimed they had pulled off a coup by appointing Lynton Crosby as their election campaign director".

United Nations corruption (1): It not only refused to prosecute one of their staff who took part in the Rwandan genocide, but paid him handsomely as well.

United Nations corruption (2): "This month, the United Nations Security Council voted to condemn terrorism. The resolution was introduced by Russia, still grieving over the terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, and perhaps the unanimous vote will give it a measure of solace. But the convoluted text and the dealings behind the scenes that were necessary to secure agreement on it offer cold comfort to anyone who cares about winning the war against terrorism. For what they reveal is that even after Beslan and after Madrid and after 9/11, the U.N. still cannot bring itself to oppose terrorism unequivocally. The reason for this failure is that the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which comprises 56 of the U.N.'s 191 members, defends terrorism as a right".

It looks like the bombing of the Atlanta Olympics was the work of Islamic terrorists and that the Clintons covered that up.

Homosexuals are great demanders of tolerance but don't seem so tolerant themselves. The "Log Cabin Republicans" (an allegedly conservative homosexual organization) have "excommunicated" one of their chapters because it dared to endorse GWB!

The EU is showing how tolerant it is too -- doing its best to block a traditional Italian Catholic from taking a high office in its administration.

Not all Democrats are out of touch with reality. This one is voting for GWB because he alone takes the Islamic threat seriously. Apparently even 9/11 in their own backyard was not enough to shake the appeasement delusions of most New York City Democrats.

Fabian's Hammer has been blogging up a storm about China recently. An important country to know about.

A rather amusing post on Che Guevara here.

Conservative Brazilian blogger Luis Afonso has started a blog in English here. The English is a bit fractured but is perfectly understandable. He wants people to know of the "Red Tide" that is washing over Brazil at the moment.

Let's Try Freedom has some evidence that Andrew Sullivan is on the slide. Sullivan's twisted attitude to his British homeland put me off him long ago so I think he deserves to be taken less seriously. Taranto noted his prejudiced attitudes recently too. And Keith Burgess-Jackson thinks Sullivan argues disreputably.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual selection of the best of the blogosphere.

I have a big post on the flu vaccine crisis up on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SNERDS

Ian McFadyen has an excellent analysis of what the calls the "Snerds" or "sneering classes" -- educated Leftists who dominate the media and cultural institutions. Some excerpts: "It is not a snobbery based on wealth or aristocratic origins. It is the snobbery of people, usually from modest backgrounds who have created sense of class superiority for themselves on the basis of possessing the right attitudes rather than property or wealth. It is a snobbery based on being "well informed", of being "concerned" and "having a sense of social morality."... What makes this class of people snobbish rather than simply pretentious is their tendency to sneer. It is a tone which implies that certain thing in life are so axiomatic that no discussion of them is necessary or even possible...

What is difficult about conversing with a Snerd is the degree to which their attitudes are locked down.... Any such challenge to the basic tenets of their beliefs will simply be sneeringly discarded and the questioner relegated to one of the baskets of ratbag, fascist, racist, right wing reactionary, capitalist, Philistine or ill-informed... The inflexibility of the Snerd arises from a personal arrogance that he or she is a well-educated, well-informed and intelligent person who has "worked all this out" and come to - what they believe to be - the only possible solution. Snerds are characteristically blind to the fact that their belief systems are based, not on an independent intellectual of the issues, but on attitudes received from a very narrow range of sources, and shaped by the prejudices of a sub-culture.....

When they express opinions on a matter they do so more to define the boundaries of their own class than to actually change anything in the community..... Thus, while Snerds are quick to opinionate in areas which they feel will enhance their image as culturally superior - politics, law, the arts, they have no opinions at all on, and are careful not to get involved with, matters which they consider down-market like agriculture. Primary production, manufacturing and manual labour simply do not exist in the Snerd universe.

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ELSEWHERE

There was some crap science reported last year that encouraged older women to give up HRT. The science was crap because the differences between groups that it relied on were not statistically significant. See my post of October 27 last year. Nonetheless, everybody hates drug companies so doctors everywhere jumped on the bandwagon and tried to get women off their pills. We now see how dangerous crap science is. It looks like the advice could have killed a lot of women. Read this report: "Hormone replacement therapy significantly increases the life expectancy of older women, but only if they begin taking the drugs soon after the onset of the menopause, a major review of the evidence has found. A new analysis of 30 trials involving a total of 26,708 women has revealed that the benefits of the treatment substantially outweigh the risks, so long as it is started before a woman reaches the age of 60. In women who started HRT at 56, the risk of death from all causes was cut by 39 per cent". I had a big post on crap science on GREENIE WATCH yesterday too.

Leftists like those Chads! Should we hang him? "A Defiance County man has been arrested for allegedly filing more than 100 false voter registration forms in exchange for crack cocaine from a Toledo woman working on behalf of the NAACP's voter registration drive. Chad Staton, 22, of Stratton Ave., faces a fifth-degree felony charge of false registration after sheriff's deputies said he filled out the registration forms by himself -- using either fictitious names or addresses -- and gave them to Georgianne Pitts, 41".

Kerry excommunicated: "An unusual letter from the consultor to a Vatican agency rules that Catholic politicians who support abortion rights have already excommunicated themselves by their actions - a message that suggests Sen. John Kerry is no longer a member of the church. The Rev. Basil Cole, a Dominican theologian and consultor to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote the letter to Marc Balestrieri, a Los Angeles lawyer of canonical law... Catholic World News reported the letter potentially undercuts the entire debate over denying Communion to politicians who support abortion. An excommunicated Catholic may not receive any of the sacraments of the church, including the Eucharist, marriage and even Christian burial. According to the news service, the type of excommunication outlined in the new information is called latae sententiae, which means that it occurs automatically and does not require a formal pronouncement by any church official."

Belmont Club has a good post on the disgusting European attempt to avoid acknowledging Saddam's mass-murders.

An amusing account of the European far-Left at work here

Jeff Jacoby on why the definition of marriage should not be left to judges: "Bush is right: It is not in our national interest for so grave a question to be decided by judicial diktat. Far better that it be decided openly and fairly, with public debate and the participation of Congress and the states. Anything else would be profoundly undemocratic -- and unwise."

Discrimination in Hollywood: "For years, the actor Ron Silver was a partisan Democrat - a one-time president of the Actors' Equity union and co-founder, with colleagues like Susan Sarandon and Christopher Reeve, of the Creative Coalition, which encouraged left-leaning political activism among celebrities.... Everything changed for Silver after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Now he calls himself a "9/12 Republican." A strong supporter of Israel and the war in Iraq, Silver spoke at the Republican National Convention in New York and is featured prominently in a new documentary, "FahrenHYPE 9/11," a searing indictment of Michael Moore's blockbuster film. Silver says his political change of heart and outspoken support of President Bush has exacted a high professional cost in Hollywood, where Republicans are a decidedly rare breed. "It's affected me very badly. I can't point to a person or a job I've lost, but this community is not very pluralistic," Silver said. "I haven't worked for 10 months.""

There is an appalling story here about pervasive antisemitism in the Swedish media. The President of Sweden's Association of Journalists once wrote that Saddam Hussein's prisons were 'better than Swedish apartments'. What a sad apology for a human being he must be!

There's a good spoof of the New York Times here.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

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