DEFENDING FAKE-HERO MURTHA: MORE DESPERATE LEFTIST "AD HOMINEM" NONSENSE

"Ad hominem" arguments (i.e. denigrating your opponent) are what you use when the opponent's facts are all against you

The January 18, 2006 NY Times Op Ed by James Webb attempts to discredit Marc Morano's reporting by stating in part: "One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh."

Marc Morano has circulated by email the following reply (partially quoted here): "So I guess all news reporting by ABC News's George Stephanopoulos, who worked for the Clinton administration, and NBC News's Tim Russert, who once worked for former Democratic Sen. D. Patrick Moynihan, should all be disregarded because they have a Democratic Party background.

Questioning a politician's war record has always been a legitimate role of journalists. Former President Ronald Reagan was ridiculed by some in the media for serving in Hollywood making films supporting U.S. participation in World War II. The AP and the Washington Post in 1988 questioned whether or not then-Vice President George H. W. Bush's (G. W. Bush's father) bailed out of his air plane too soon during a Navy bombing mission in World War II, causing the death of his two co-pilots. (See the August 12, 1988 the Associated Press article entitled: "War Buddy Reluctantly Disputes Bush's Account of Bomber Bailout."). The Nation magazine questioned the inflating of Sen. Bob Dole's war record in 1996. Of course, President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard has been scrutinized by multiple news outlets, as was Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam War service. Why do so many believe Rep. John Murtha's war record should be above scrutiny?

Nobody has disputed the facts of the Cybercast News Service article written by myself and Randy Hall."

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ELSEWHERE

Vive la France! "France said on Thursday it would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state that carried out a terrorist attack against it, reaffirming the need for its nuclear deterrent. Deflecting criticism of France's costly nuclear arms program, President Jacques Chirac said security came at a price and France must be able to hit back hard at a hostile state's centers of power and its "capacity to act.""

Another Leftist clutch at straws: "Scripps Howard News Service announced Jan. 13 that it's severing its business relationship with columnist Michael Fumento, who's also a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. The move comes after inquiries from BusinessWeek Online about payments Fumento received from agribusiness giant Monsanto -- a frequent subject of praise in Fumento's opinion columns and a book. In a statement released on Jan. 13, Scripps Howard News Service Editor and General Manager Peter Copeland said Fumento "did not tell SHNS editors, and therefore we did not tell our readers, that in 1999 Hudson received a $60,000 grant from Monsanto." [The payments actually went to the Hudson Inst. -- which DID disclose them!]

Amusing comment on an Irish Catholic priest who fathered a child: "It's great to hear of a normal heterosexual priest for a change. There's nothing wrong with a loving relationship. He should be left alone".

Another loony Leftist who cannot tell the difference between Nazism and democracy (not really surprising): "These are not your father's Republicans. These Republicans take no prisoners. Cross them and, even if you are a fellow traveler, they will have you rubbed out. They tasted first blood during the Clinton years, and like chicken-killing dogs, liked it. So when they picked Texan George W. Bush as their candidate, they decided it was time to see just how far they could take the smear, how far they could push it. But pushing it -- bending the truth, even breaking it -- was politically dangerous. They needed deniability and distance. So they outsourced their smear work. That's when the Brownshirts arrived. It was one thing to accuse a sitting president of lying about sex, and quite another to accuse war heroes of being lying cowards."

There is an amazing article here about the racial slurs that have been directed at SCOTUS nomineee Alito by Democrats. Calling him a "wop" was the least of it. It seems that Italian-Americans have joined WASPs as fair game for the Left. For people who claim to deplore racism, ethnic slurs directed at ANY group are pretty amazing. But principles and consistency have always been alien to the Left.

Ann Coulter: "As noted here previously, George Clooney's movie "Good Night, and Good Luck," about pious parson Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, failed to produce one person unjustly accused by McCarthy. Since I described McCarthy as a great American patriot defamed by liberals in my 2003 book, "Treason," liberals have had two more years to produce a person - just one person - falsely accused by McCarthy. They still can't do it. Meanwhile, I can prove that Murrow's good friend Lawrence Duggan was a Soviet spy responsible for having innocent people murdered".

'Plantation' remarks still echoing on Hill: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's fiery political remark Monday that the Republican House is like a 'plantation' has triggered charges of playing the race card and a sharp rebuke from first lady Laura Bush, who called her comment ridiculous. The New York Democrat's racial broadside during a Martin Luther King Day appearance at a Baptist church in Harlem continued to spark debate yesterday on both sides of the political aisle. Black Democratic leaders such as Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois defended and attempted to explain Mrs. Clinton's remarks, saying she was referring to a "further consolidation of power" by Republicans in Washington. But Mrs. Bush, en route home from a trip to West Africa, said, 'I think it's ridiculous -- it's a ridiculous comment.'"

There is an appalling story here of how the (mostly French) Belgian Left have allied themselves with the Muslims to hit out at the Dutch-speaking Belgians (Flemings).

There is a story on Australian Politics of a quite extraordinary outburst of rage and hate from a prominent Australian Leftist.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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INDONESIA

These are the charming people immediately to Australia's North

Muslim Indonesians rival Pol Pot and the Nazis: "The Indonesian military used starvation as a weapon to exterminate the [Christian] East Timorese, according to a UN report documenting the deaths of as many as 180,000 civilians at the hands of the occupying forces. The 2500-page report, obtained by The Australian, has been suppressed for months by the East Timorese Government and will infuriate Indonesia, which has punished only a handful of soldiers for the murders, assaults and rapes that occurred during its 24 years of occupation. Napalm and chemical weapons, which poisoned the food and water supply, were used by Indonesian soldiers against the East Timorese in the brutal invasion and annexation of the half-island to Australia's north, according to the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation report... It documents a litany of massacres, thousands of summary executions of civilians and the torture of 8500 East Timorese - with horrific details of public beheadings, the mutilation of genitalia, the burying and burning alive of victims, use of cigarettes to burn victims and also ears and genitals being lopped off to display to families.... The deaths amounted to almost a third of East Timor's pre-invasion population .... The Indonesian security forces "consciously decided to use starvation of East Timorese civilians as a weapon of war", the report says... "The violations were committed in execution of a systematic plan approved, conducted and controlled by Indonesian military commanders at the highest level." ... The commission carefully notes that many of the Indonesian military officers who played key roles in the occupation have since been promoted and details their ascension in the military."

Indonesians tyrannizing Melanesians right now : "More than 40 West Papuan asylum-seekers who fled the troubled Indonesian province in a large outrigger canoe six days ago landed on a remote beach in far north Queensland yesterday.... The 25m traditional dugout canoe was fitted with an outboard motor and was flying the outlawed West Papuan flag. "Save West Papua people souls from genocide, intimidation and terorist from military government of Indonesia," read a crudely worded banner on the boat. "We West Papua need freedom, peace, love and justice in our home." ... Faced with increasing political tension in West Papua and the overwhelming strength of the Indonesian military, Ms Byrne said the asylum-seekers fled the troubled province rather than risk being jailed and tortured for their knowledge of government affairs.... The asylum-seekers are believed to include Herman Wanggai, a student leader from West Papua who had spent time in prison for treason, his wife and their three-year-old twins. [See my earlier post here for background on the plight of the Papuans]

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ELSEWHERE

Thatcher's legacy squandered by Blair: "Perceptions about the "state of the nation" tend to change only gradually. In the 1980s the belief that Britain was doomed to decline lingered for some time after the Thatcher reforms had paved the road to economic recovery. Labour, by contrast, has benefited from revived national confidence that Britain had rediscovered the secrets of market-led success. That confidence appears increasingly misplaced.... Public sector productivity is deplorably low, so that the larger the public payroll, the worse Britain's overall economy performs. In every year since Labour came to power, British output per hour, which had previously been showing relative improvement, has fallen further behind that of the United States. This year's productivity gain is expected to be a mere 0.9 per cent, equal to that of Germany, well behind France (1.4 per cent), and half the rate in the US (1.8 per cent) and Japan (1.9 per cent)... The past eight years have seen a marked "continental drift" in Britain. Taxes here are now higher than in Germany for the first time in a generation. According to the OECD, which is as objective as any institution, British state spending will swallow a bigger slice of national wealth next year than the famously profligate German welfare state".

Socialist tax laws could drive big British companies overseas: "The Times has learnt that at least one FTSE 100 company is investigating domiciling itself outside the UK following an 18-month crackdown by Revenue & Customs on tax avoidance. Other companies are so angry at the clampdown on previously accepted business practices that they are refusing to co-operate with Revenue's attempts to understand corporate tax planning. Guy Brannan, head of tax at Linklaters, the City law firm, said that the relocation plans of a number of companies were at a "pretty advanced stage". Mr Brannan said: "The Government's attitude is becoming counter-productive. If companies do not have to be headquartered in the UK and a large proportion of their business is elsewhere, they are investigating moving outside the UK." The Netherlands, Ireland and Luxembourg were popular alternatives to Britain, he said.... Last November Ian McCafferty, the CBI's chief economic adviser, attacked the Treasury's anti-avoidance campaign. "These measures are effectively a covert means of extending the tax base to raise revenue while circumventing previously accepted tax principle and practice," he said."

A richly deserved penalty: "A California court sentenced a couple to nine years in prison for planting a fingertip in a bowl of chilli to swindle a Wendy's fast-food restaurant. A judge in Santa Clara Superior Court sentenced Anna Ayala and her husband Jaime Plascencia to nine years' imprisonment for their role in the Wendy's scam, which caused a sharp fall in sales at the third-largest US burger chain.... Ayala, 39, a Las Vegas resident, initially claimed she found the piece of finger after buying the bowl of chilli last March. She hired a lawyer and complained publicly about the experience, attracting wide attention to the seemingly bizarre incident... Wendy's International, based in Dublin, Ohio, paid a $US100,000 ($133,000) reward for information to help establish the source of the fingertip. Company officials said it took Wendy's months to recover from the bad publicity and lost millions of dollars in sales because of the incident. At one point it gave away free ice-cream to try to lure customers back into its San Jose area restaurants."

Keith Burgess Jackson has finally given up on Hillary Clinton. He now calls her a "harpy". She certainly is a nasty piece of goods. Let's hope she gets the Donk nomination for Prez in 2008. She will be her own worst enemy.

I am delighted to report that the posts on Tongue Tied by Scott and myself are helping to educate America's young people in a way that the official education system would never do. A U.S. college English student has just sent me a copy of an essay that she handed in as part of her coursework. The essay was inspired by what she read on Tongue Tied. It is some evidence that the mind-control attempted by the Left-dominated U.S. educational system will never completely succeed. I have reproduced the essay here

Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts to update us on the news about on race and IQ. See here

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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RACE AND IQ -- DESPERATE REARGUARD ACTION AT "THE GUARDIAN"

Leftists will of course always believe what they want to believe. Their simplistic conceptions of the world matter far more to them than the facts. But even for Leftists, the truth about race and IQ is getting increasingly hard to ignore. And a recent article in "the Guardian" by Marek Kohn is testimony to that. He admits that the old Leftist shibboleths like "race does not exist" just sound hysterical these days and refers to sources that set out at length the evidence that race not only exists but that it is important. In particular, he refers to two publications by Charles Murray that set out at massive length the scientific evidence for group differences, racial differences in IQ included.

So what is a Leftist to do who knows as much about the facts as Kohn does? He bleats. But as well as bleating, he deliberately misleads. He says that Murray only "suggested" that there are differences in average IQ between the races. The difference in average black/white IQ would however have to be the most massively proven finding in the whole of psychology. It has emerged ad nauseam in study after study stretching back nearly 100 years. What does it take to turn a "suggestion" into a fact? I guess Kohn must be one of those post-modernists for whom there are no such things as facts. If you cut his salary, I think you would find that he would have no hesitation in regarding that as a fact, however -- a fact to be howled loudly about.

In the end, however, Kohn does not challenge the research findings. All he does is bleat about their explanation. Because he cannot see how racial differences in IQ have arisen, he seems to think that this means that they do not exist. I might as well argue that because I cannot understand how someone as stupid as Marek Kohn could exist then he does not exist either. A Freudian would call that strategy a "denial" defence mechanism. It is of course true that our explanations of how racial differences in IQ have arisen are speculative but most explanations in astrophysics are speculative too. Does that mean that the stars and the planets do not exist? I would like to suggest that in the great scheme of things it does not really matter much whether Marek Kohn understands something or not. But the facts matter.

His conclusion is however perfectly sensible, even if he cannot resist a pun: "We have gone beyond the stage where the question of racial science could be seen as a straightforward contest between decent values and sinister pseudoscience. It's no longer black and white".

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ELSEWHERE

Assisted suicide now legal in the USA: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked the Bush administration's attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die, protecting Oregon's one-of-a-kind assisted-suicide law.... The administration improperly tried to use a federal drug law to pursue Oregon doctors who prescribe lethal doses of prescription medicines, the court said in a rebuke to former Attorney General John Ashcroft. The 6-3 ruling could encourage other states to consider copying Oregon's law, used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people in that state."

Hollywood puts ideology first: "Christian groups led a furious campaign against Hollywood yesterday, accusing the Golden Globe Awards of promoting films with gay or "leftist" themes to serve a political agenda. The criticism was made after Brokeback Mountain, a film about the forbidden love between gay Wyoming cowboys, won four awards. Other winners included Philip Seymour Hoffman, named Best Actor for his portrayal of the homosexual writer Truman Capote; and Felicity Huffman, the Desperate Housewives actress who played a transsexual with a gay prostitute son in Transamerica. "Once again, the media elites are proving that their pet projects are more important than profit," Janice Crouse, of Concerned Women for America, said. "None of the three movies - Capote, Transamerica or Brokeback Mountain - is a box office hit. Brokeback Mountain has barely topped $25 million in ticket sales. If America isn't watching these films, why are they winning the awards?" The criticism from the American heartland carried more weight than usual this year because Hollywood suffered the biggest decline in attendance in two decades last year. Some of the few box office hits of the year were films such as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which appealed strongly to Christian audiences".

House of Lords defends free speech: "Plans to curtail the actions of Islamic extremists by banning the glorification of terrorism suffered a setback last night after peers voted down the proposed new offence. A series of peers denounced the offence as pointless and said that its removal from the Terrorism Bill would still allow suspects to be charged with indirect encouragement to commit acts of terror. A move to strike glorification of terrorism from the Bill was carried by 270 votes to 144, a majority of 126, at its report stage despite government protests that the power was needed".

Black racism: "Nagin promised that New Orleans will be a "chocolate" city again. Many of the city's black neighborhoods were heavily damaged by Katrina. "It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans - the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," the mayor said. "This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans." [See my comment on Nagin here]

Another Democrat nut: "Ohio's Republican leader wants Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hackett to apologize for calling some conservative Republicans religious fanatics and comparing them to terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. Hackett was unapologetic Tuesday for the comments in a newspaper story, saying religious fanatics of any flavor should be ashamed. "I said it. I meant it. I stand behind it," he said. Hackett said in a Sunday column in The Columbus Dispatch: "The Republican Party has been hijacked by the religious fanatics that, in my opinion, aren't a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of the other religious nuts around the world." ... Hackett also said the practice of denying homosexuals equal rights is un-American. The newspaper asked Hackett if that meant the 62 percent of Ohioans who voted to ban gay marriage were un-American. "If what they believe is that we're going to have a scale on judging which Americans have equal rights, yeah, that's un-American," Hackett said". [See Reliapundit for some comments on the nutty one]

There is a new site up to enable bloggers to circulate news. I don't really know what it is good for but I have put up a few posts there just for fun. See here. May be worth exploring.

Some headlines on Australian Politics today: "More multiple rapes by Muslims", "Police attack on civil liberties in Victoria", "Uranium stupidity" and "Australia has brick-thick "security" staff too"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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LEGAL SCUM EXPLOIT LEFTIST CALIFORNIA LAW

They emigrated from Taiwan as boys, worked hard, kept close to family, and now - before either is 30 - they are stuck with a little lawsuit with big statewide implications. Bill and Sam Wu of Elk Grove have joined the burgeoning rolls of California business and property owners under siege by serial suers. In this case - and there are many - the Wus are the target of a prolific Carmichael attorney, who has filed more than 150 disability-access lawsuits since August 2003.

To some, Scott N. Johnson, who is quadriplegic and drives a full-size van with hand controls and a wheelchair lift, is a crusader for the disabled, busting businesses for violating the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. To others, he is an opportunist - the Wus say extortionist - who makes a fat living driving around town, scouring mom-and-pop operations for even the smallest infractions, then filing lawsuits and squeezing out quick settlements.

What's clear is this: California, as one of only a few states that allows for monetary damages and attorneys' fees in ADA cases, is seeing an explosion in disability-access lawsuits. And a huge chunk of those cases is coming from just a handful of plaintiffs and attorneys, people whose litigious track records have made many business owners - big and small alike - suspicious and wary of any disabled person who comes on their premises.

"This is Scott's way of making money," says Bill Wu, 28, who fixed the access problem last year on the family's commercial property in North Highlands, which had been deemed ADA-compliant by the county. But the Wu brothers don't want to settle for the $4,000 they say Johnson offered. And so they are fighting, navigating the complexities of the federal court system without law degrees.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

There is an amusing Leftist post here called "A million tiny strands" which is particularly aimed at conservative and anti-Green journalist Marc Morano -- but also at Cybercast News service and other conservative writers. What the author "discovers" -- "gasp"! -- is that Morano and other conservatives tend to get support from people and companies who agree with them -- including companies such as Monsanto. Monsanto produces seed for genetically engineered crops so these days is apparently nearly as evil as oil companies. In a reflection of what is no doubt his own typically amoral Leftist thinking, our Leftist writer concludes from this that Morano and others are BOUGHT. They are not saying what they really think but are simply company propagandists telling lies. This is of course a totally ad hominem argument -- attacking the speaker rather than the facts and arguments he puts forward and has, as such, no scholarly merit whatever -- and suggests that the attacker LACKS arguments of substance. But ad hominem arguments do seem to have some influence on people so let me shoot back by pointing out that I personally have often run Morano's writings on my blogs and that I agree with almost all the things that the writers say whom our Leftist attacks. And just find ONE CENT that ANY company has ever donated to me. I am and always have been entirely supported by my own work and its proceeds. So in the weird world of the ad hominem arguer that must prove that what Morano says is right and correct? Search me! I guess Leftists will always find some way to escape confronting the facts so I don't exactly expect consistency there.

Americans vote with their feet too: "For the second year in a row, the Census Bureau reports, the population of Massachusetts has shrunk. During the 12 months ending July 1, 2005, the Bay State experienced a net loss of more than 8,600 residents, or 0.1 percent of its population. It was one of only three states to end the year with fewer people than it had at the start -- New York and Rhode Island were the others -- and the only one to do so for the second year running. A statistical blip this isn't. Not counting foreign immigrants, Massachusetts has been losing more people than it attracts every year since 1990, according to MassINC, a Boston-based research institute. The net outflow during the 12 years from 1990 to 2002 -- the excess of people leaving Massachusetts over those entering -- was 213,000, and the hemorrhaging has only gotten worse since then. MassINC reported in 2003 that one-fourth of Bay State residents would leave if they had the opportunity to do so. Among those who have lived in Massachusetts for less than 10 years, the proportion is even higher".

Why nobody cares about the woes of Detroit: "In the fat years of the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. companies squandered profits on misguided acquisitions and poor product decisions. Too many Americans once owned Detroit cars and believed that dealers and the companies mistreated them when their vehicles had problems. In short, a sizable percentage of the American public is not sympathetic to the plight of the domestic manufacturers. The United Auto Workers union and its members have an image problem, too. Sure, in recent years GM and Ford have made progress in working with unions and in achieving improvements in quality. However, for far too long UAW workers laughed at complaints about quality, and the union did nothing to punish workers who failed to perform. In terms of pay, pensions and health care, UAW workers are better off than most Americans in private industry.... Maybe it is time for the companies to stop their dividends. Maybe it is time for the union to tell its members how bad things are. And maybe it is time for the Governor of Michigan to understand why people don't want to build in her state".

House of Lords to the rescue again: "The Government's plan for identity cards suffered a double blow this evening after Lords ordered a detailed investigation into the cost of the scheme and demanded a more secure method of recording and storing citizens' personal information. Peers voted by 237 to 156, a majority of 81, on an amednment ordering an inquiry to put a precise figure on the revenue and capital costs of implementing the controversial Identity Cards Bill. The Government suffered a second defeat when peers voted by 206 to 144, a majority of 62, to demand a secure and reliable method of recording and storing citizens' personal data. Ministers must now either agree to the investigation or ask the Commons, where an earlier backbench revolt slashed Tony Blair's majority to just 25, to overturn the Lords' demands. The Lords' debate centred on a London School of Economics report which claimed the scheme would cost up to 19 billion pounds -- more than 30 times the Government's estimate - and that the cost of an individual ID card could be high as 300 pounds.

After five years of socialist government: "NZ business confidence has slumped to its lowest level since before the 1987 sharemarket crash, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) said on Tuesday in its quarterly survey of business opinion (QSBO). The independent organisation said a net 61 per cent of firms expected conditions to deteriorate over the next six months. This compared with a net 32 per cent of pessimists in the last survey in October. Not since March 1986 has the economy's mood been so downbeat. NZIER director Brent Layton said the survey increased the likelihood of a recession. The seasonally-adjusted figure was even more dire with a net 71 per cent pessimistic against 34 per cent in October. This is the most pessimistic in 35 years and possibly of the 45-year history of the survey, one of the most respected in the country".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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ECONOMICS ROUNDUP

The founding ideas were right: "When discussing the incentives granted by government to people thinking about settling in America, Benjamin Franklin cited only those "derived from good laws and liberty." Recent arrivals would have to roll up their sleeves and put their backs into it because, as Franklin noted, streets were not "paved with half-peck loaves," houses were not "tiled with pancakes," and edible fowl did not "fly about ready-roasted, crying `Come eat me!'" But if a person were "sober, industrious, and frugal," he could "establish himself in business" and "enjoy securely the profits of his industry." Pursuing happiness could be hard and possibly very rewarding work".

The Media's Top 10 Economic Myths of 2005: "The Media Research Center's Free Market Project spent 2005 tracking news reporting on business and economic issues and compiled a list of the most common and most egregious errors. They ran the gamut from omissions to exaggerations and plain misinformation: America should follow French fashion in business; We must raise taxes to cope with ballooning deficits; Global warming is causing stronger hurricanes; America is cheap with its foreign aid; Hurricane Katrina will send the economy into a tailspin; The housing bubble is about to burst; Americans are dying of fat; Consumers are choosing between food and fuel; Big, profitable companies are up to no good; The U.S. economy is hopeless

Leftists never learn: "An attempt by Venezuela's leftwing president, Hugo Ch˜vez, to double the price that coffee producers pay farmers for a sack of beans has led to empty shelves in supermarkets throughout the country and fears of shortages of other basic foodstuffs. President Ch˜vez, who maintains price controls on basic foodstuffs, raised the price of coffee beans by 100% last month after weeks of protests by coffee farmers. But most of the country's coffee producers, who buy, roast and grind the beans, refused to sell on the coffee yesterday, claiming their margins had been cut, and began hoarding thousands of sacks of unprocessed beans... Some supermarkets in the capital, Caracas, said they had also run out of sugar, chicken, powdered milk and maize. Store managers said they were not being supplied with new stock from wholesalers and producers, who were complaining that their profit margins were too low. Frustrated customers were told that coffee, milk and sugar suppliers were sitting on their goods until the government raised retail prices. Some owners of street cafes in Caracas said they would run out of coffee within days if the government and coffee producers did not reach an agreement. Venezuelans love their morning cup of coffee and there was growing unease among office workers yesterday that their daily shot of espresso or cappuccino might soon be unavailable. The increase in the price of raw coffee beans was initially applauded by impoverished farmers. But the government did not raise the price at which retailers sell processed coffee to the shops".

Can trade ever harm a country? "A recent article from the Guardian joins the growing outcry against free trade. Its central message is that countries adopting 'neo-liberal' market reforms, recommended by academic economists, have done worse than those countries that ignored the supposed experts and spurned free trade. Every time I reread the article -- with the subtitle 'A look at Vietnam and Mexico exposes the myth of market liberalization' -- I discover more and more fallacies. To economize on the reader's precious time, I finally decided to quit digging for more errors and jot down the ones I'd already found..... this article hasn't focused on the positive case for free trade, as it has been made in countless other places. What I have done above is merely illustrate the invalid (and sometimes downright silly) arguments that, unfortunately, even trained economists use to justify bigger government."

Left/Right economics summarized: "The subject of this article is Kuttner's column about the debate, rather than the debate itself -- Kuttner the fight judge, not Kuttner the boxer. I was particularly struck by Kuttner's statement above. Evidently, the concept of genuine humility is so foreign to Kuttner that he regards an expression of humility as a debating tactic. In a sense, that is why Kuttner belongs on the left. Contemporary liberalism without hubris is Hamlet without the Prince.... Genuine humility is a feature of libertarian conservatism, which may be the fundamental reason that it differs from neoconservatism. If you think you have all of the answers, then it is difficult to resist passing No Child Left Behind Laws and other expressions of government hubris. Libertarian conservatives believe that we do not know enough to justify imposing our will on others through government. Supporters of activist government believe they know more than we do. I fear that they know less."

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ELSEWHERE

Want a laugh? Some Leftist git by the name of Prof. Allan Patience -- an adherent of the Australian Fabian Society -- is trying to tell us that modern-day conservatives are not really conservative because a true conservative is a sort of socialist. More about him and his mixed-up ideas on Australian Politics. Also see Australian Politics for the story of a Greenie local council who awarded a contract to Halliburton!

The right of conscientious objection is increasingly being denied to Christians in secularist Europe. You can be in big legal trouble unless you have secularist (or Muslim) beliefs.

The Canadian decline: "Over the past 20 years, Canada has become a place where merely speaking truth to power is a considered a revolutionary act. Over the past 20 years, our people have come to dread liberty because it demands responsibility. When you go into the voting both on January 23rd it may well be the last, best hope to take our country back. All you have to do is remember that a nation of sheep will always produce governments of wolves."

There is a list here of just some of the far-Left anti-Bush ballyhoo surrounding MLK day. It is one of the wonders of 20th century politics that most people seem not to know that it was REPUBLICANS who got the Civil Rights Act through Congress: "Republicans favored the bill 138 to 34; Democrats supported it 152-96. Republicans supported it in higher proportions than Democrats. Even though those Democrats were Southern segregationists, without Republicans the bill would have failed. Republicans were the other much-needed leg of the Civil Rights Act of 1964".

Today it's Leftists who stand in the schoolhouse door: "Milwaukee's innovative school choice program has become a beacon of hope for reformers everywhere. But the educational establishment has never accepted its success and is now striking back. A cap on the number of students that can attend the city's private choice schools has been reached, and starting Feb. 1, education officials will implement a rationing plan to allocate the program's available seats...."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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IQ AND THE ARMY

As both a psychometrician and as a former Australian army psychologist, I suppose I should say something about the controversial Fred Kaplan article on lowered IQ standards for US Army recruits. I am not going to say much because I think Kaplan is spot-on -- though he does manage to write his whole article without using the term "IQ" once. As even Leftist commentators such as Kevin Drum have acknowledged, however, the "aptitude" test the U.S. Army uses to evaluate potential recruits is essentially an IQ test.

Kaplan does in fact do a useful job of summarizing the evidence for how important IQ is among soldiers. The idea that you can use any dummy as "cannon-fodder" is very much out of date. Putting a deadly weapon into the hands of a dummy is likely to make him more a danger to his fellow-soldiers than to the enemy. Modern soldiering in particular ideally requires a high level of intelligence. So the "validity" (usefulness, correctness, informativeness) of IQ tests is not confined to predicting educational achievement but also extends into fields very different from classroom performance -- to fields such as military efficiency. And that is why we have the term IQ -- because there IS a general factor of mental (or problem-solving) ability. There IS such a thing as a general factor of intelligence that shows up in a wide variety of situations.

So the fact that the US army is now recruiting less bright people to fill its ranks is a very bad thing indeed. It will tend to make the army less effective and more self destructive -- as if we did not have a big enough "friendly-fire" problem already! I think the US army should learn the ancient lesson of Gideon (Judges chapter 7) and stick with high standards no matter what.

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Hate-filled homos -- they must be prosecuted: "The Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GLA) yesterday declared war on the South African National Blood Service (SANBS), as scores of its members turned up to donate blood under false pretences. And, a shocking 65 percent of the gay men who donated blood without disclosing their sexual preference are unsure whether they are HIV- positive. On Friday, about 300 men complied with a plea by the GLA to its claimed 100 000 male members to donate blood to SANBS centres across the country, but not to disclose their sexual orientation. The request is a part of an ongoing national campaign to protest the SANBS policy of excluding men who engage in sexual activity with other men from donating blood. David Baxter, media director for GLA, said on Friday that 65 percent of the members of GLA who had donated blood were unsure whether they were HIV-positive. He later said one of the donors had full-blown Aids". (HT Interested Participant).

Wal-Mart has become a political football: "UpWalMart. com and Wal-Mart Watch have at least two things in common : They criticize Wal-Mart, and they criticize each other. A few weeks ago, WakeUp-WalMart. com, financed by the grocery workers union, launched its latest TV ad campaign questioning whether Christians should shop at Wal-Mart, given its low wages and benefits. At the same time, the group sent a letter to Wal-Mart Store Inc. chief executive Lee Scott signed by 65 ministers. "Jesus would not embrace Wal-Mart's values of greed and profits at any cost, particularly when children suffer as a result of those misguided values," the letter said. Wal-Mart was upset. But so was Wal-Mart Watch, a group backed in part by the service workers union and formed to take on the world's largest retailer. Wal-Mart Watch declined to put its name on the ad, even though it earlier had helped cull names from its lists of religious leaders for the letter. "What would Jesus do, indeed," Tracy Sefl, Wal-Mart Watch communications director, said in an email to The Wall Street Journal. "I think he would say the ad was a mistake. We heard from numerous supporters who were offended."... The two organizations are top-heavy with former Democratic operatives from the 2004 presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Howard Dean. Both groups arose as Wal-Mart's rapid expansion made it a lightning rod in some corners of labor and the political left for a long list of grievances against big business.

Jack Wheeler has reproduced some of the cartoons mocking Islam that have caused such an uproar in Denmark. Should be more of it.

Jihad: The Year the Muslims Took Rome: "Few know about it, but it happened.... What happened is that in 846 some Muslim Arabs arrived in a fleet at the mouth of the Tiber, made their way to Rome, sacked the city, and carried away from the basilica of St. Peter all of the gold and silver it contained. And this was not just an incidental attack. In 827 the Arabs had conquered Sicily, which they kept under their dominion for two and a half centuries. Rome was under serious threat from nearby. In 847, the year after the assault, the newly elected pope Leo IV began the construction of walls around the entire perimeter of the Vatican, 12 meters high and equipped with 44 towers. He completed the project in six years. These are the "Leonine" walls, and significant traces of them still remain. But very few today know that these walls were erected to defend the see of Peter from an Islamic jihad. And many of those who do know this remain silent out of discretion. "Bridges, not walls" is the fashionable slogan today. (See The Legacy of Jihad. Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims by Andrew G. Bostom)

A marvellous article about China: "Renmin University, also known as the People's University of China, has an enrollment of almost 19,000 and is one of China's most respected schools. It was founded in 1950 by the Communist party. The children of many Chinese officials were educated there, and three generations of Chinese leaders, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin, have paid special attention to the school's development. So I was especially surprised by what I learned. It was about 8 P.M. on a Friday when I ventured onto Renmin's campus. In a courtyard near the school's east gate, I discovered some 200 students who were exchanging views about history, economics, politics, and culture. It was U.S. history, economics, politics, and culture that they were discussing - and they were speaking English.... Some students smiled and began to ask me questions. One asked where I was from and I said, "The United States, Washington, D.C." Immediately, he flashed two thumbs up and said "Very good. America is very good. America is our model." ... While thinking through U.S. policy toward China, the Congress and the administration should know that a surprising number of Chinese people embrace U.S. ideals and are fond of American culture. At a time when U.S. policies are reviled around the world, that is something to celebrate and promote. It strikes me as an investment in government of the people, by the people, for the people in China".

California Democrats protect sex offenders: "A state Senate committee on Tuesday killed a "Jessica's Law" proposal to punish sex offenders that was one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's top priorities this year. Senate Bill 588 by Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, would have increased penalties for various sex crimes, required satellite monitoring of sex offense felons and forced sex offense registrants to live more than 2,000 feet from schools and parks. The legislation failed on a 5-2 party-line vote in the Democrat-dominated Senate Public Safety Committee".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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THE KID-HATERS

Kid-haters are surprisingly common, as the excerpt below notes. They always amuse me, though, because their own attitudes will cause them to die out. They are merely a passing evolutionary dead-end. They have not died out so far because there was a lot of pressure on women to have children once, whether they wanted children or not. Now that pressure is mostly gone, however, such women will cease to reproduce and future generations will be rid of their quaint egocentric attitudes

"There has been much gloomy beard-tugging in recent years about the demographic decline of Western countries. Though it is true that parents in the U.S. are managing to replace themselves--unlike, for example, Europeans--we do not live in an era of big families. Today fewer than 10% of Americans live in households of five or more people and only 1.8% in families of seven or more.

That means that if your family consists of a mother and father and five children, you live where I do, which is statistically on the lunatic fringe. "Omigod, five kids?" people gasp when I tell them. "Are you nuts?"... Mr. Quaid is touching on something that members of large families do encounter: the awareness that they cause a sensation in public. From some passersby come fond glances. From others, thinly veiled hostility. "People always tense up when they see a big family coming," observes our 11-year-old, a veteran observer of adult fastidiousness... Some adults flare their nostrils with distaste at the sight of even one child.

Little wonder then, that large families will come in for hard looks from those who believe that they are overpopulating the planet, or selfishly consuming too many resources, or simply exhibiting religious zealotry. The odd thing is that, off the screen, large families are seldom the ones with wildly misbehaving children. In real life, they tend to be the orderly people with the polite children, the families in which older siblings can be seen caring for their little brothers and sisters without griping about it".

More here

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Big-time legal blogger Eugene Volokh has just linked to Keith Burgess Jackson's fisking of the NYT deceptions about Alito. Coincidentally, Keith had just linked to the latest post on his anti-Leiter blog. That means lots of legal types will probably see the new Leiter blog. Excellent! Leiter needs to find out what it is like to be on the receiving end of attacks, particularly as he appears to be mightily miffed by any such attacks.

Another Leftist fraud. It looks like the war medals of John Murtha were just as unearned as those of John Kerry. A few scratches were magnified into creating a fictional Leftist "war hero".

Wal-Mart enviers have a win: "Maryland lawmakers bucked the will of the state's Republican governor and the nation's largest retailer yesterday, voting to become the first state to effectively require that Wal-Mart spend more on employee health care. In a veto reversal that was closely watched nationally, lawmakers in the Democrat-led General Assembly voted largely along party lines for a measure that legislatures in more than 30 states are considering replicating".

Arts subsidies lead to more arts bureaucrats, not more artists : "It's often claimed we have a healthy arts industry. It is more accurate to say we have a healthy arts administration industry. The bulk of permanent staff of arts organisations are engaged in marketing, administration and finance. The people who write, design, stage and perform are mostly casual workers on short contracts."

How come we never hear from anti-death penalty campaigners when it comes to China? "The People's Republic of China continues to carry out more judicial executions than the rest of the world combined. "In addition, despite having the largest population in the world, China possibly executes a higher proportion of its population than any other country, except for Singapore, which has one of the smallest populations. "Behind these facts lies a criminal justice system which cannot and does not guarantee a fair trial under international law to defendants. "Often defendants are denied their right to legal representation until after they have been interrogated, and even then, access in practice is strictly limited. The period of pre-arrest or pre-trial detention is often arbitrary, lasting in one extreme case for 28 years".

Scotland: Walk-in DNA test clinic opens: "Scotland's first walk-in DNA clinic is opening its doors in Aberdeen. Those behind the venture say it could signal the end of lengthy and costly paternity tests. But others are urging caution in what can be a legal and emotional minefield. Many believe DNA testing, and in particular paternity testing, is a sign of the times, not helped by figures which suggest that one in 25 fathers in Britain could unknowingly be raising another man's child. The increasing use of genetic testing for both medical and legal reasons are allowing couples to gain biological proof of who fathered the child. The Aberdeen DNA Clinic is another step forward in the process as the first clinic of its kind in Scotland to offer a walk-in service."

Soldiers sue for reimbursement: "Four Massachusetts National Guard soldiers, called to active duty after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, filed a federal lawsuit yesterday, arguing they were forced to pay for their own lodging, meals, and commuting expenses while they were protecting the state from terrorism. The lawsuit is apparently the first claim of its kind nationally, and the soldiers hope to expand their suit to include hundreds of others who have served in the Massachusetts National Guard since Sept. 11, their lawyers said. If the soldiers in all approximately 300 positions at issue were fully reimbursed for every day since Sept. 11, 2001, they would be owed an estimated $73 million, the lawyers said. The four plaintiffs said they were never given reasons why their reimbursements -- a maximum of $158 a day for food and lodging, plus travel expenses -- were denied."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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AND THE LEFT WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO CONTROL EVERYTHING!

Government is the problem not the solution: "In all times and in all places there has been too much government. We now know what prosperity is: it is the gradual extension of the division of labour through the free exchange of goods and ideas, and the consequent introduction of efficiencies by the invention of new technologies. This is the process that has given us health, wealth and wisdom on a scale unimagined by our ancestors. It not only raises material standards of living, it also fuels social integration, fairness and charity. It has never failed yet. No society has grown poorer or more unequal through trade, exchange and invention. Think of pre-Ming as opposed to Ming China, seventeenth century Holland as opposed to imperial Spain, eighteenth century England as opposed to Louis XIV's France, twentieth century America as opposed to Stalin's Russia, or post-war Japan, Hong Kong and Korea as opposed to Ghana, Cuba and Argentina. Think of the Phoenicians as opposed to the Egyptians, Athens as opposed to Sparta, the Hanseatic League as opposed to the Roman Empire. In every case, weak or decentralised government, but strong free trade led to surges in prosperity for all, whereas strong, central government led to parasitic, tax-fed officialdom, a stifling of innovation, relative economic decline and usually war".

Your government will protect you (1): "A jumbo jet that had lost an engine and was losing power in the other three was diverted over Central London, putting hundreds of lives at risk on the ground, an investigation has found. The crew were "fortunate" that there was good visibility because in low cloud "the aircraft might have landed well short of the runway", according to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB). It ordered the Civil Aviation Authority to carry out an urgent review of the guidance given to air traffic controllers on diverting aircraft in emergencies over densely populated areas".

Your government will protect you (2): "An e-mail that showed up in my inbox the other day contained a photograph of the modern floodgates that keep Venice from being inundated by the Adriatic Sea. Below it was a picture of Holland's high-tech dams, which rise as much as 40 feet above the waves that perpetually threaten the Dutch. A third photo showed London's futuristic-looking flood barriers, a series of semicircular silver gates along the Thames that can be raised or lowered as needed to regulate tidal heaves surging up from the North Sea. Following these images of impressive European flood control technology came a picture from New Orleans. It showed a section of a broken, low-tech, decidedly unimpressive concrete levee surrounded by water, presumably taken in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Sneered an accompanying message: "Way to go, Corps of Engineers!" Whether it is fair to compare New Orleans's flood-control system with Europe's, or whether those European barriers are as effective as they are photogenic, I don't have the expertise to judge. Nonetheless, that e-mail is a good reminder of a key truth about the Katrina disaster: It was mostly the result of government failure".

Government failure even in a rich and moralistic Islamic society: "Twenty years ago, Shobokshi told me, Jeddah had been provided with the money to build a modern sewage system that would accommodate the fast-growing city. The government official in charge of the project, however, took the money and built himself a mansion in San Francisco and a palace in Jeddah that is equipped with a discothSque and a bowling alley. As a result, Shobokshi said, the streets in Jeddah are constantly filled with tanker trucks to drain the city's cesspools. Worse, sewage has got mixed into Jeddah's groundwater, and this has contaminated drinking water in many parts of the city. "We have new diseases of the eye and skin that didn't exist here ten years ago," Shobokshi said. "Lung and breast cancers are forty per cent above the national rate. Hepatitis is so high that it has to be classified as an epidemic".

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ELSEWHERE

Why do I not feel bothered by this news? "At least 345 pilgrims were killed yesterday when one of the holiest rituals of haj in Saudi Arabia turned to tragedy. White-robed believers rushing to stone the Devil in a symbolic ceremony were caught up in a stampede and crushed. Many who escaped death were seriously hurt, with 289 people reported injured".

There is an interesting article by Bernard Chapin here about the unrealistically high expectations of a partner that single women in their 30s and over tend to have. The article mirrors to an extent observations that I too have made. The unrealism of many women in that age range is certainly puzzling. I remember once overhearing a discussion between two waitresses when one of the waitresses said: "Oh! I'm waiting for my millionaire". Since the lady concerned was fat and sloppy, with short bleached hair and a brassy manner, I can only hope she was joking. I cannot imagine a millionaire who would not be able to find a better option than her. One is tempted to say that it is only the foolishly picky women who are still single by age 30 but the unrealism is also no doubt to a substantial extent due to the constantly preached feminist myths that deny all the basic truths about males and females. I am aware that what both I and Chapin say would be dismissed by feminists as sour grapes but I gather that Bernard is happily married and as someone who twice married ladies in their 40s, I think that I too am rather proof against such ad hominem criticisms.

There is a good historical roundup here that asks us not to judge France by her current despicable political class. There is much truth in what he says but I think he overlooks the extent to which contempt for France is largely a reflection of the feverish French hatred of America and "the Anglo-Saxons" generally. There is also a more personal article here that speaks kindly of the French.

As a legally-qualified academic, Keith Burgess Jackson is taking a particular interest in the nomination of Alito to SCOTUS. Today he "deconstructs" the specious opposition of the NYT to the nomination.

There is an excellent and comprehensive memoir of the heroic life of Ariel Sharon here. In this time of great trial for him and for Israel, it is good to remind ourselves of the Herculean efforts Israel has had to make just to exist.

There is a new book out called Righteous Gentiles: How Pius XII and the Catholic Church Saved Half a Million Jews from the Nazis. That should give the church-haters heartburn! They always accuse Pius of being a Nazi collaborator. There is part of an interview with the author here.

There is another roundup of the latest news on race and IQ by Chris Brand just up here.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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Brookes News Update

US economy, productivity and the Bush boom: Commentators are dangerously wrong about US productivity and the boom bust cycle
Islamic Clerics sanction child sex and Bahraini women's rights activist expresses outrage: Is it conceivable for a grown man to have sex with an infant girl? And you people tell me that the Islamic Sharia authorizes this
Jack Murtha betrayed America - and for what?: Democrats are playing politics with the lives of US citizens and in the most hateful way anyone has ever seen our Congress
Defending capitalism against socialist lunacy: Many socialists still peddle the absurd myth that unemployment and 'excess capacity' are created by the need for capitalists to invest to make profits rather than create jobs or meet 'social needs'
The dangerous myth of price stability: There is almost complete unanimity among economists that the most important role of the central bank is to attain price level stability. This is a dangerous fallacy
Mexicans Hire Bush Advisor to Stop US Border, Illegal Immigration Reforms: Mexican President Vincente Fox has bought the services of a Republican strategist to help stop the public outcry over rampant illegal immigration
The coming day of the blog: Political blogs are going to end up more on the activism side because bloggers care about issues.

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Sharon stuns doctors: "Israeli leader Ariel Sharon had appeared aware of his younger son at his bedside, his chief surgeon said. He also expressed astonishment at Mr Sharon's powers of recovery after a serious stroke. The 77-year-old Prime Minister, whose fate is crucial to Israel and the wider Middle East, remains in intensive care but doctors said they had been able to all but stop the drugs that had been keeping him in an artificial coma. His chief surgeon, Felix Umansky, told AFP it could take months to assess the full extent of the damage Mr Sharon has suffered. But his progress so far had defied all expectations, Mr Umansky said, amid suggestions by some of the Prime Minister's allies that he could even lead his new Kadima party at a March general election".

Support for Sharon's party soars: "Voters have swarmed towards the fledgling political party of Israeli leader Ariel Sharon, which is now set to win more seats in the new parliament than before its founder was stricken. A fresh opinion poll shows the new party, which Mr Sharon dubbed Kadima in mid-November, would pick up 44 seats in the Knesset if national elections - scheduled for March 28 - were held now. Before the veteran Prime Minister suffered his massive stroke eight days ago, Kadima had not polled higher than 40 seats, which was still enough to give it commanding majority".

Dutch must send troops: US: "Washington's former administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer has warned the Dutch they could face economic penalties in the US if they fail to send troops to Afghanistan. NATO has also turned up the heat on the Dutch, while the fate of a 200-strong provincial reconstruction team Australia wants to send to Afghanistan hangs in the balance because it is relying on the Dutch to provide security. "I assume from time to time decisions must be taken by the US Government and Congress which affect Dutch economic interests," Mr Bremer, a former ambassador to The Netherlands, told Dutch newspaper De Volksrant. "It is not difficult to imagine that decisions will be made that are not in the best interests of The Netherlands".

Another nail in the coffin for GM. Irresponsible management eventually hurts: "Honda Motor Corp. swept the top honors at the Detroit auto show on Sunday as its all-new Civic and first-ever pickup, the Ridgeline, were voted car and truck of the year by a panel of automotive writers. The result marked another setback for Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., which have been losing market share to Japanese competitors in their home market and have pledged to mount a comeback in the passenger car market".

Curing Poverty or Using Poverty? ""China is lifting a million people a month out of poverty." It is just one statement in an interesting new book titled "The Undercover Economist" by Tim Harford. But it has huge implications. I haven't checked out the statistics but they sound reasonable. If so, this is something worth everyone's attention. People on the political left make a lot of noise about poverty and advocate all sorts of programs and policies to reduce it but they show incredibly little interest in how poverty has actually been reduced, whether in China or anywhere else. You can bet the rent money that the left will show little or no interest in how Chinese by the millions are rising out of poverty every year. The left showed far more interest in China back when it was run by Mao in far left fashion -- and when millions of Chinese were starving.... Since wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty, you might think that the left would be as obsessed with the creation of wealth as they are with the redistribution of wealth. But you would be wrong."

NYPD Gets 'Islamic-Culture Training': "Police in New York are getting "Islamic-culture training" to prepare them for dealing with Muslims in the city, home to 16 percent of the nation's Muslims. About 100 members of the NYPD's hostage negotiating team spent a day at a local college learning about mosques, prayer rituals, holidays and other facets of Islamic life. The instruction was designed to give negotiators tips on dealing with any hostage situation involving Muslim perpetrators, according to the New York Post. Points of Muslim etiquette covered in the training include: Don't step on prayer rugs, never display the soles of your feet; Shake a woman's hand only if she offers it, and: Remember that dogs are not allowed in most Muslim homes

America's founders did not intend for there to be a separation of God and state, as shown by the fact that all 50 states acknowledge God in their state constitutions . An actual list of quotations from each constitution is here. Somewhere along the way, the Federal Courts and the Supreme Court have misinterpreted the US Constitution. How could fifty States be wrong? One is faced with the prospect that maybe, just maybe, the ACLU and the out-of-control federal courts are wrong!

More deliberately misleading NYT reporting: The Rev. Lusk affair

There's a slightly encouraging post here about libertarianism in France.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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North Carolina madness

From Nathan Tabor

A lot of changes have been taking place in North Carolina over the past few years. Did anyone happen to notice that the illegal immigration population in North Carolina jumped 43% in 2004? That's almost double what it was just one year ago. We now have the eighth largest population of undocumented immigrants in the United States. That's right, over 300,000 illegal immigrants now reside in North Carolina. Is it because of our temperate climate? Our beautiful scenery? Not likely.

Illegal immigrants are flocking to our beloved state because we are handing out driver's licenses with the ease of movie tickets or grocery coupons. We don't seem to ask for any kind of real identification when applying for a license. We don't ask for a social security number, and we do not require any kind of proof that the person applying is a citizen. Therefore, it is an easy task for an illegal immigrant to obtain fake documents here in North Carolina, and many are moving here to do just that.

What does a driver's license do for an illegal immigrant? At best, it legitimizes their status to prospective employers, to law enforcement, and to any other institution that uses a driver's license as universal identification. They can now present a very real license, and few would ever know it was not legal. It enables them to keep their illegal status hidden effectively from the rest of the world, for a much longer period of time. At worst, it provides a deadly terrorist with a key to access dangerous areas by obtaining employment in and around those areas. We saw this last April, when 27 illegal immigrants were arrested while working as airplane mechanics at the Piedmont Triad International Airport at Greensboro. All had been issued driver's licenses. All were repairing planes. Is someone not making a connection here?

The good news is that this problem is easily solved. Anyone applying for a Driver's license in North Carolina must be made to provide a social security number and two other forms of identification. There is absolutely no reason not to.

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ELSEWHERE

Another Leftist antisemite: "Prominent Jewish rights group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, accused Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez on Wednesday of using what it said were anti-Semitic remarks and demanded an apology. In a televised Christmas Eve speech, Chavez, a left-winger, said that 'minorities, descendants of those who crucified Christ... have grabbed all the wealth of the world for themselves.'"

Fascism, Islamism and anti-Semitism: "Too many critics of U.S. foreign policy betray a profoundly naive view of human nature: They ignore the ability of propaganda to nullify reason, pervert conscience, and inflame our blackest impulses. People who believe such slurs are psychologically and spiritually prepared to believe almost anything -- and, eventually, to act on those beliefs. 'Nonsense in the intellect,' warned C.S. Lewis, 'draws evil after it.' The nonsense of anti-Semitism is the elephant in the Arab living room. At the moment, the elephant is thrashing about most conspicuously in Iran, but he's at home in much of the Muslim world. 'Over the last half-century, anti-Semitism has been the essential theology of the Arab world,' writes historian Paul Johnson, author of A History of the Jews. 'The Arabs have wasted trillions in oil royalties on weapons of war and propaganda ... In their flight from reason, they have failed to modernize or civilize their societies, to introduce democracy, or to consolidate the rule of law.'"

PETA: Cruel and unusual : "On January 9, two employees of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will appear in court to answer felony charges of animal cruelty. Far from being an isolated incident or an illustration of PETA's hypocrisy, their crimes offer a chilling insight into the beliefs that motivate the group's strategy of animal rights advocay. What the trial reveals may well be just the tip of the iceberg."

A post here on Michael Schermer's generalization that: "Where goods cross frontiers, armies won't. Restated: where economic borders are porous between two nations, political borders become impervious to armies".

Cartoon war in Denmark "Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is shocked at the way in which some Muslims are misrepresenting Denmark in the Islamic world. “I am speechless that those people, whom we have given the right to live in Denmark and where they freely have chosen to stay, are now touring Arab countries and inciting antipathy towards Denmark and the Danish people,” Rasmussen told journalists yesterday. Rasmussen was responding to the recent visits by certain imams, Muslim intellectuals and representatives of Danish Muslim organizations who toured a number of Muslim countries to “explain” the Danish cartoon affair to local political and religious leaders and media. The affair started last September when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of Muhammad. Meanwhile, after last week’s rejection of their complaint by the public prosecutor, Danish Muslim organisations have announced that they will take the newspaper to the European Court of Human Rights over the controversial publication. Islam forbids the depiction of the Muslim prophet. Carsten Juste, the editor of Jyllands-Posten repeated late last week that the daily will not apologise for publishing the cartoons: “We will not apologise, because we live in Denmark under Danish law, and we have freedom of speech in this country. If we apologised, we would betray the generations who have fought for this right, and the moderate Muslims who are democratically minded.”"

Sir Humphrey has an interesting excerpt in which the claim is made that the Pope sees Islam as fundamentally unreformable and incapable of change in a more humane direction.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Kills. The W. Va. miners could have walked out: "It is perhaps the most heartbreaking question raised by a heartbreaking accident: Did 12 miners die deep inside the Sago Mine because instead of trying to walk to safety after an explosion, they went by the book and waited for help that took too long to arrive? They apparently had enough oxygen in their respirators to last an hour or more and no wall of debris blocked their escape, mine company officials said. They could not have known it, but less than 2,000 feet away was breathable air.

If you want to feel ill, the election manifesto of the Canadian Liberal party is here. NOBODY is as sanctimonious as the Canadian Liberals. (HT to the Shotgun blog)

I have just put up here an article that draws together some information about the social class origins of German Nazis and Italian Fascists in the pre-WW2 period. Marxists say that Fascism was "bourgeois" but modern scholarship shows that Nazism and Fascism were what they claimed to be: National rather than class-based.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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