Thompson Shines In South Carolina Republican Debate

There is a multitude of commentaries already on the net about this. The conservative blogs have almost all claimed a big victory for Fred. I have however put up a comment below from a more centrist source. Heading above and post below from The Moderate Voice. See the original for links

The BIG story out of last night's GOP debate in South Carolina is that actor and former Senator Fred Thompson finally morphed into the Fred Thompson many conservatives had hoped to see: energetic, witty and aggressive. Will it serve Thompson - or will he be the candidate that could have been? The New York Times story sets the scene:

Fred D. Thompson tried to salvage his faltering presidential campaign at a debate Thursday night with a barrage of sharp attacks on the "liberal" policies of Mike Huckabee, the fellow Southerner whom he clearly sees as a rival in the South Carolina primary. The performance by Mr. Thompson, which including several pointed one-liners, capped a debate that showed the altered terrain of the Republican field as it moved beyond contests in Iowa and New Hampshire...

But it was Mr. Thompson's performance, in which he shook off the laid-back style that has defined his candidacy, that provided some of the liveliest moments of the debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C.. "This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and its future," said Mr. Thompson, who has staked his run on a strong showing in South Carolina. The primary there is Jan. 19.

"On the one hand," he said, "you have the Reagan revolution, you have the Reagan coalition of limited government and strong national security. And the other hand, you have the direction that Governor Huckabee would take us in. He would be a Christian leader, but he would also bring about liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies."

That effectively summarized the choice facing the GOP from the standpoint of conservatives. But what happened next is what they were talking about on all the cable shows afterwards:

Mr. Thompson then lit into Mr. Huckabee, the former Baptist preacher and Arkansas governor who won the Iowa caucus, for wanting to close the prison at Guant namo Bay, for supporting what he called "taxpayer-funded programs for illegals" and for wanting to sign a law restricting smoking. "That's not the model of the Reagan coalition, that's the model of the Democratic Party," he said.

Mr. Huckabee, for his part, responded with trademark humor. "The Air Force has a saying that says if you're not catching flak, you're not over the target," he said. "I'm catching the flak; I must be over the target."

The bottom line is that Thompson finally lived up to what many GOPers felt was his potential.

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Fascism's Legacy: Liberalism

Daniel Pipes has been reading Jonah Goldberg too. An excerpt below from his comments

Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron - or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis." Really. His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party.

These facts jar because they contradict the political spectrum that has shaped our worldview since the late 1930s, which places communism at the far Left, followed by socialism, liberalism in the center, conservatism, and then fascism on the far Right. But this spectrum, Jonah Goldberg points out in his brilliant, profound, and original new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday), reflects Stalin's use of fascist as an epithet to discredit anyone he wished - Trotsky, Churchill, Russian peasants - and distorts reality. Already in 1946, George Orwell noted that fascism had degenerated to signify "something not desirable."

To understand fascism in its full expression requires putting aside Stalin's misrepresentation of the term and also look beyond the Holocaust, and instead return to the period Goldberg terms the "fascist moment," roughly 1910-35. A statist ideology, fascism uses politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism. It is totalitarian in Mussolini's original meaning of the term, of "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Fascism's message boils down to "Enough talk, more action!" Its lasting appeal is getting things done.

In contrast, conservatism calls for limited government, individualism, democratic debate, and capitalism. Its appeal is liberty and leaving citizens alone. Goldberg's triumph is to establish the kinship between communism, fascism, and liberalism. All derive from the same tradition that goes back to the Jacobins of the French Revolution. His revised political spectrum would focus on the role of the state and go from libertarianism to conservatism to fascism in its many guises - American, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and so on

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US forces' airstrike destroys al-Qaeda stronghold: "Bombers dropped 18 tons of explosives on 40 targets in an al-Qaeda bastion on the southern outskirts of Baghdad in a 10-minute airstrike. The attack by B-1 bombers and F-16 fighters on Arab Jabour village was part of a nationwide operation against al-Qaida, codenamed Phantom Phoenix, launched by US and Iraqi forces on Tuesday. "Thirty-eight bombs were dropped within the first 10 minutes, with a total tonnage of 40,000 pounds," the US military said. "More than 40 targets were hit after precision air strikes destroyed reported al-Qaeda safehavens in Arab Jabour," it said. The bombings were carried out as ground troops closed in on the area. No details of casualties were given."

The thin man goes to Washington: "In his inaugural New York Times column, William Kristol suggests Mike Huckabee may be the right Republican presidential candidate to beat 'a liberal Democrat' who will 'want to increase the scope of the nanny state.' This is like counting on Godzilla to save us from King Kong. Losing more than 100 pounds in less than a year is the former Arkansas governor's main claim to fame, and for Huckabee, the personal is political."

The "change" campaign: ""Welcome to the new year. Apparently 2008 is the year of Change. Change and Hope. Change, Hope and New Direction. Change, Hope, New Direction and Fixin' Up Washington. How? Well shame on you for asking. Isn't it enough that we're hearing speech after flowery speech promising these things? Why, I get all misty just thinking about all the change that's on its way. Confound it man, don't be asking how these fabulous Agents of Change intend to do it all. Let's just spend some time feeling good and excited about the bright and shiny changed future."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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AWARENESS OF HISTORY IS GROWING

The article below is by a religious journalist

Last year, I was speaking at a prestigious university in Washington, D.C., and brought up Margaret Sanger. Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a racist who believed in eugenics and felt that birth control was essential to controlling the "inferior races"-i.e., blacks. When I said this, the students looked incredulous. A couple even shook their heads; obviously I was disseminating bad conservative propaganda. Margaret Sanger, liberal icon, a racist? Please.

The historical record on Sanger is clear. Yet those who refuse to acknowledge her commitment to eugenics are impervious to evidence. They are the same ones who will be shakingtheir heads at Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, the devastating new book by Jonah Goldberg, an editor at National Review. The sad paradox is that the more the Left rend Goldberg apart, avoiding the book like anthrax because they assume we are in Ann Coulterville, the more they will make his point.

Goldberg has marshaled a staggering amount of evidence to conclude, as the first chapter has it, that "everything you know about fascism is wrong." Mussolini was weaned on anarcho-socialism (his father Alessandro was a socialist and anarchist). Mussolini and the Italian Fascist party were, in the early years, not anti-Semitic-in fact, the party included Jews. As a young man, Mussolini had carried in his pocket a medallion of Karl Marx, whose influence-combined with the bizarre syndicalist philosophy of George Sorel and a Nietzschean contempt for Christianity-resulted in Italian fascism, a mix of myth-making, prophecy about the rise of the working class, and a relentless determination to aggrandize more and more power for the state. German fascism was not far different, which is why Hitler himself, as Goldberg puts it, was "a man of the left."

In short, the very term "fascism" has been misused for decades now. Although on several occasions Goldberg openly invites criticism, admitting that he is not a professional historian, he has done the work of a historian; besides, he is a much better writer than most historians. And the case he makes is as persuasive as it is provocative. Consider Father Charles Coughlin, the "radio priest" of the 1930s, a touchstone of right-wing evil for liberals. It turns out that Coughlin actually advocated collectivist, anti-capitalist theories that were much closer to the left than to the right. Goldberg quotes leftists-among them the "New Deal Priest" Msgr. John Ryan-praising Coughlin. Coughlin became FDR's bitter foe because FDR's collectivist policies did not go far enough.

Fascists have often called for the overturning of religious tradition, to be replaced by the dictatorship of the people; have engaged in a "cult of action" that sought to smash the bourgeoisie; and have relegated certain people and races to the dustbin of "inferiority." Considered this way, the radicals of the 1960s fit quite snugly into Goldberg's thesis.

Goldberg does stumble with his shoulder-shrug at gay marriage, which he supports. For once in this mesmerizing book he falls to apply his model. Gay marriage activists, after all, have all the trademarks of fascism, and more. They want to control the courts and inflict their philosophy on the reluctant bourgeoisie. They are obsessed with "street action" and protest, and contemptuous of Christianity. They have turned homosexuality into an exalted state, often claiming that gay people are more sensitive and enlightened than others.

While the Left will claim that Goldberg thinks that everyone he disagrees with-from FDR to Hillary Clinton-is a fascist, this is not true. Progressives, he notes, are not building concentration camps. Hillary Clinton wanting universal health care is not Crystal Night. But by reexamining the history of fascism and its pathologies, Goldberg shows where the fascist impulse-to smash the past, accumulate power, and create utopia-is most likely to resurface.

Source

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You see occasional mentions saying that the war in Iraq has NOT increased the death-rate among American military personnel. It seems counter-intuitive but it is true. Getting into a car with a skinful of alcohol at home in the USA seems to be just about as dangerous as going around fighting terrorists in Iraq. The official figures are here. See particularly Tables 4 and 5 in the "active duty" column. The casualties actually seem more numerous in the earlier part of the series but that would be because the army was larger then. You would however need some pretty fancy statistical fiddling to argue that the war has increased U.S. military deaths.

About 150,000 Iraqi Muslims have been killed by Muslim terrorists "About 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the three years following the US-led invasion of their country, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) research. The study, which said violent deaths could have ranged from 104,000 to 223,000 between March 2003 and June 2006, is the most comprehensive since the war started. The study drew on an Iraqi health ministry survey of nearly 10,000 households - five times the number of those interviewed in a disputed 2006 John Hopkins University study that said more than 600,000 Iraqis had died over the period. While well below that figure, the United Nations agency's estimate exceeds the widely cited 80,000 to 87,000 death toll by the human rights group Iraq Body Count, which uses media reports and hospital and morgue records to calculate its tally. "There are a lot of uncertainties in making such estimates," WHO statistician Mohamed Ali, who co-authored the study, said."

Dems Speak No Evil Of Islamic Jihad: "We scanned the transcripts of Saturday's debates hosted by ABC News and tallied up the references to Islamic terrorism. The rhetorical divide between Democrats and Republicans on that score alone - ignoring the yawning gaps in policy - is stunning. None of the four Democrat presidential candidates - despite running for an office that demands they lead the ongoing global war against Islamic extremists - could bring himself or herself to define the enemy we face as Islamic. Their combined references to "Islam" or "Islamic" totaled zero - even though moderator Charles Gibson prompted them with a question about "Islamic radicals" threatening the U.S. with nuclear terrorism. But Democrats refused to go there. Out of respect for their constituency, there was a complete blackout regarding Islamic jihad. Instead, Hillary Clinton defined the enemy generically as "stateless terrorists," while Barack Hussein Obama complained about the "politics of fear" that he thinks accurately defining the enemy has created... Republicans, on the other hand, called the enemy by its proper name."

Thank you, New Hampshire: "Mrs. Clinton remains the best hope for Republicans this fall. Face it, Barack Obama is too nice, too smooth and too blank a page to defeat easily at a time when voters are displeased with the Republican Party. We need Hill. She's beatable. His "defeat" on Tuesday - perception being 9/10ths of the law in politics - gives old Hill the audacity of hope."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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The Runaway O Train

A lot of what I am putting up today concerns Obama. The New Hampshire results mean that he is far from inevitable but he is still a serious threat to the good governance of the USA. The excerpt from Bob Parkes immediately below is one viewpoint about why Obama is doing as well as he is so far

It would appear, unless he commits the mother of all gaffes, Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States. Why the finality here? Because we've been there, done that.

Less than two years ago, a similar train left the station. In Massachusetts, it was the D Train. Deval Patrick carpetbagged into the state, campaigned on "Together We Can", and sought to become the first Black governor of The Bay State. There was the allure of history being made and the guilt-ridden bought it, hook, line, and sinker.

His opposition was a female Republican that, unfortunately, delivered the same old, antiquated message. We got the same old AARP-era, focus group vetted, plastic deliveries. Deval Patrick spoke from the heart, while the Republican stuck to the script. Patrick went on to a resounding victory over an opponent no one has heard from since.

When Obama takes the oath, will he be all that he promised? Deval Patrick should be in a wheelchair, considering how many times he's shot himself in the foot. The state of Massachusetts is in a financial quagmire, hemorrhaging businesses and people fleeing unchallenged liberal regulations and taxation run amok.

Barack Obama has offered mucho "change" and "hope". "Change" and "hope", when it comes to politicians, often has a hefty price tag. When history is made, the moment will be, we'll all feel special, and people move on. The D Train lost its luster, and so will the O Train.

Source

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Brookes News Update

US housing market and recession: Robert Shiller gets it wrong: Those who think a fall in the housing market will trigger a recession by cutting consumption have got it wrong. The classic bust always starts in the higher stages of production. And this is exactly what happened to the 1920s boom and the Clinton boom - and it will also happen to the Bush boom
The Great Depression and forecasting - still getting it wrong: Nearly 80 years later and our economic commentators still can't get their facts straight about the Great Depression, its causes and the lessons we should have learnt from it. Not one of our economic pundits realizes that the greatest economic disaster in history was the creation of meddling politicians totally ignorant of economics
Why Prime Minister Rudd should ignore demands for price controls: Now that we have wall-to-wall Labor Governments the question of price controls has once again been raised, particularly with respect to petrol
Consumer confidence and recessions: another economic fallacy: The idea that a fall in consumer confidence can plunge an economy into a recession is pure baloney
The global warming suicide cult: The proponents of Global Warming are creating a suicide cult, which - if followed to its logical conclusion - would lead to human extinction. This is nothing but green insanity
Revisiting a hero and another victim of communism: On 27 June 1950 Milada Horakova was hanged in Prague's Pankrac Prison on the orders of the communist regime. Horakova - a democrat, a patriot and a hero of the resistance - was another of communism's millions of victims. Her death revealed the vile face of communism that the left is still trying to whitewash
Extortion payout to the Arab Mafia!: The world is not interested in true peace in the Middle East. It is only after the terror campaign - which was unleashed by the PLO during 70s and coincided with the oil embargo imposed by the Arab countries - that the United States and Europe suddenly discovered the 'Palestinian nation'

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up here an article by Arlene Peck titled "Tending Everyone Else's Garden" which points out that many rich Jews would rather donate to almost any charity rather than support or donate to an Israeli cause. Like the Jews of Nazi Germany, they think that if they blend into the host society, nobody will ever come for them.

Taranto has a good coverage of the current Democrat delirium about Obama.

Charlie Foxtrot has found a link between Obama and the racist Leftists of America's prewar era.

Yuk!: "Obama's appeal in part is that he incarnates the Democratic Party. He is both a highly educated member of the upper middle class and a half-minority. As one of my acquaintances put it, referring to the way Obama blends an educated articulation of policy positions with the uplifting cadences of the African-American preacher: "Who better to represent us?" Some continue: "Who better to heal our racial wounds?" When I press them on this point, explaining that I live in the most racially diverse neighborhood in the U.S. and that I'm not looking for a priestly President who can absolve me of my sins, I'm told that such absolution is a good thing-whether I want it or not."

Obama - A Clean, Well Spoken Idiot: "It's almost like the "Second Coming", but not of Martin Luther King, as Hillary notes. But to see how the MSM and a lot of America is fawning over Barak Obama is indicative of how gullible we have become. After all this is the America that celebrates third-rate, drug addicted trailer trash - such as Britney Spears, and yet still considers her a "celebrity"..... it appears that the fact that Obama, who is even more of a leftist than Hillary Clinton, who can speak well and - in the words of Joe Biden is a - "A Clean Black", is wooing everyone into submission (did I say submission?). Which is more indicative of just how stupid we have become as a nation. Forget the substance, just sit dumbly and get mesmerized by the music. Note that no one is talking about his ideas which in the case of foreign policy border on the insane, or even of his background, much of which has yet to be answered for. It's all about how he looks and talks, as if those were the only criteria. So we may have an idiot as the next president, albeit a well spoken one."

A remarkably sober comment from a Leftist: "Obama has a great deal of crossover ideological appeal, based primarily on style and mood rather than policy substance. By standard measures, Obama is on the most left-hand side of the respectable political distribution (things like ADA and ACU scores). Now, these may not be great predictors of his behavior in office. In fact, my gut tells me that he’s not highly committed to Democratic government producerist interests, and that he has a considerable libertarian streak. But there’s just no way to know, and it’s not quite clear that he even really knows, since he hasn’t had to figure out what his abstract positions mean when faced with lots of zero-sum choices between alternative courses of action (see above on experience). A considerable part of Obamania syndrome (of which I am a victim) is a tendency to project our own beliefs onto the guy. So, more moderate Democrats and even conservatives extrapolate from the fact that he is respectful toward their views, that he is sympathetic to them. Which may be true, but probably isn’t"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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Wisdom increases with age?

It probably does but the research below does not prove it. It simply shows that we learn more words as we go through life -- which is no surprise. The journal article concerned is here

New findings seem to contradict one of the most widely accepted assumptions about ageing: that the human brain is at its most powerful between the ages of 18 and 26. Scientists have discovered that intelligence, instead of peaking in our youth, remains stable and in some respects gets sharper as we grow older. The researchers found that verbal skills continued to increase for at least two decades beyond the age of 20, while arithmetic ability remained constant.

Their work suggests that many assumptions made by employers, policymakers and educational institutions about ageing need to be rethought. "Verbal ability appears to keep increasing over time," said Lars Larsen, a psychologist at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, who led the research. In the study, Dr Larsen obtained the records of 4300 US ex-servicemen who had been given a battery of intelligence tests when they joined the military at the age of about 20. The same servicemen were tested again two decades later. Dr Larsen's research involved carrying out a meticulous comparison of the two sets of data. The results, published in Intelligence, a peer-reviewed academic journal, show that the real changes in intelligence are more marked and more complex than had been realised.

Dr Larsen believes that the most likely reason for improvements in verbal skills is simply practice. Older people have had to solve far more social and practical problems than younger ones, so they have been forced to develop complex language skills. This effect overrides the slow but steady loss of brain cells that modern medical scanning techniques have confirmed begins in the late 20s.

The study is part of a revolution in research into intelligence that began several years ago and has overturned the idea that intelligence peaks in early adulthood and then begins a slow and inevitable decline. Lorraine Tyler, head of the centre for speech, language and the brain at Cambridge University in England, said: "When we image the brain, we do see physical atrophy with age but brain function can be preserved. This shows how plastic the brain is. It adapts and changes with age and other challenges."

Such findings raise the question of why past generations of psychologists suggested that reaching adulthood was followed by decline. Part of the explanation lies in the way people were tested, with researchers, often young, applying the same tests to young and old alike, without making allowances for educational and cultural differences.

Source

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In line with their usual love of boogeymen, various Leftists (example here) have been speading the fear that Obama will be assasinated by "gun-toting racists" (one of the many abusive Leftist tems for conservatives). It presumably reflects the way Leftists themselves would act if Obama were a conservative. Why? Because the threat is entirely made-up. There have been no events leading to it. Daniel Pipes has pointed out however that Obama is an apostate Muslim and that IS cause for him to be assassinated -- by Muslims, not by conservatives. No Leftist so far seems to have mentioned that the last successful political assassination (of RFK) in America was by an anti-Israel Arab (Sirhan). The Leftist post I mentioned above goes right through the history of political shootings in the USA without mentioning the name Sirhan. But a dishonest summary of the facts is routine for Leftists, of course.

It stands to reason that people moving interstate in the USA would tend to move from high-taxing States to low-tax States. Suitably Flip has proof that there is such a statistical tendency. Tax is not the only factor, however. Pusuit of a warmer climate is probably the main factor. Strange that Al Gore thinks that a warmer climate is a bad thing!

U.N. corruption has harmed Iraq: "Iraq's culture of corruption stems from the actions of the international community and the controversial UN oil-for-food scheme, the deputy prime minister Barham Saleh said on Thursday. Speaking at a new anti-corruption forum in Baghdad, Saleh said that the programme, run between 1996 and 2003 while Iraq was under UN sanctions, and what he charged was the body's wasteful use of money were to blame for the rampant corruption that bedevils Iraq. "A large responsibility for the outbreak of corruption in Iraq lies on the international community," said Saleh. "The scandals of food-for-oil and the wasting of public riches by the UN... is evidence of the serious damage that has deepened the problem in the country."

Global privacy study: Big Brother gets bigger: "According to a new international privacy report, governments around the world are increasingly invading the privacy of citizens with surveillance, identification systems, and archiving of private data. Driven by concern over immigration and border control, countries have been quick to implement database, identity, and fingerprinting systems, according to the 2007 International Privacy Ranking report."

It takes publicity to move bureaucracies: "Kerry Beal was taken aback when he discovered last March that many of his fellow security guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania were taking regular naps in what they called "the ready room." When he spoke to supervisors at his company, Wackenhut Corp., they told Beal to be a team player. When he alerted the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, regulators let the matter drop after the plant's owner, Exelon, said it found no evidence of guards asleep on the job. So Beal videotaped the sleeping guards. The tape, eventually given to WCBS, a CBS television affiliate in New York City, showed the armed workers snoozing against walls, slumped on tabletops or with eyes closed and heads bobbing. The fallout of the broadcast is still being felt. Last month, Exelon, the country's largest provider of nuclear power, fired Wackenhut, which had guarded each of its 10 nuclear plants. The NRC is reviewing its own oversight procedures, having failed to heed Beal's warning"

Brits go nuke: "A new generation of nuclear power stations will be encouraged to supply unlimited amounts of electricity to the national grid, The Times has learnt. The Cabinet will give the go-ahead for the new building programme today and John Hutton, the Business Secretary, will announce the decision on Thursday. He will pave the way for the nuclear industry to play a much bigger part in meeting Britain's energy needs by making plain that there will be no limit on the amount of electricity it can supply to the grid. At present nuclear power accounts for 20 per cent of energy supplies."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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A bit of silliness from "The Times" of London: "UK living standards outstrip US"

Living standards in Britain are set to rise above those in America for the first time since the 19th century, according to a report by the respected Oxford Economics consultancy. The calculations suggest that, measured by gross domestic product per capita, Britain can now hold its head up high in the economic stakes after more than a century of playing second fiddle to the Americans.

It says that GDP per head in Britain will be o23,500 this year, compared with o23,250 in America, reflecting not only the strength of the pound against the dollar but also the UK economy's record run of growth and rising incomes going back to the early 1990s. In those days, according to Oxford Economics, Britain's GDP per capita was 34% below that in America, 33% less than in Germany and 26% lower than in France. Now, not only have average incomes crept above those in America but they are more than 8% above France (o21,700) and Germany (o21,665)....

Oxford Economics says that while the comparisons are affected by sterling's high value against the dollar, they also reflect longer-term factors. "The UK has been catching up steadily with living standards in the US since 2001 -- so, it is a well established trend rather than simply the result of currency fluctuations," its report says. It concedes, however, that a significant fall in the pound against other currencies would push Britain back down the ladder. It has assumed an exchange rate of just over $2 for the purpose of the calculation but in recent days the pound has slipped below that level.

The Oxford analysts also point out that Americans benefit from lower prices than those in Britain. With an adjustment made for this "purchasing power parity", the average American has more spending power than his UK counterpart and pays lower taxes. (In the run-up to Christmas many Britons travelled to New York and other American cities to take advantage of the strength of sterling against the dollar and those lower prices.)

More here

GDP per capita is an important statistic -- much more objective than the various "national welfare" and "quality of life" indices. But it DOES need to be adjusted for domestic purchasing power. The above results simply reflect the fall in the external value of the US dollar -- but a buck still buys much the same as it used to in the USA itself. Something which I and many others have informally noted is that in Britain, a pound buys about the same as what a dollar buys in Australia -- yet the external value of the Australian dollar is (like the US dollar) about half the value of the British pound. On that admittedly rough criterion, the average Brit is only HALF as well-off as the average American or Australian. That sure is how it looked to me last time I was in Britain. And it has in some ways apparently got worse since then. Note the following report, also from "The Times":

"The crowds are packing the pavements around Oxford Circus Tube station. On the roads, cars and buses are jammed in a giant gridlock. This is central London - but it's not the pre-Christmas rush or the height of the sales. It's just the start of another working day. Similar problems afflict many city centres: Birmingham's New Street, Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street and Edinburgh's Princes Street see similar daily throngs. It is something that city dwellers have become accustomed to, but living in British cities used to be a very different experience."

I used to love London but I am glad I don't live there now.

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ELSEWHERE



Above: What the well-dressed Muslim fundamentalist is wearing this season

Huckabee's Surge Statements Don't Jibe: "Governor Mike Huckabee was questioned this morning on FOX News and ABC News about his transparently false claim that he supported the troop surge in Iraq before Governor Mitt Romney. When confronted with his own words from back in January this morning on "This Week," Governor Huckabee tried and failed to have it both ways."

Democrat candidates willful denial on Anbar awakening: "There's a truth the Democratic presidential candidates can't handle: the success of the "surge" in Iraq. The addition of American troops and the adoption of a new strategy of protecting the civilian population has now dramatically reduced the level of violence in Baghdad and pacified other parts of Iraq as well. But the Democratic candidates insist on pretending otherwise. It isn't clear whether they were uninformed, out of touch, mistaken, politically fearful, or knowingly dishonest when they were asked to comment on the surge during an ABC television debate Saturday night in New Hampshire. In any case, their refusal to acknowledge success in Iraq marked a low point in the Democratic campaign."

Obama Shows the Audacity to Exaggerate & Make Stuff Up: "Barack Obama did not have the slightest idea what he was talking about when he touched on the Anbar Awakening tonight in the New Hampshire Democratic Debate on ABC. Obama says it wasn't the troop surge-- it was the Democrats winning in 2006 that caused the Anbar Awakening! In reality- the main ones cheering the Democratic win in November were Khamenei, Iran, Al-Qaeda, North Korea, etc. Not only that... Obama also said the Anbar Awakening was an attempt by the Sunnis to make peace with the Shia. SORRY- The Anbar Awakening was an agreement among Sunni Tribal Leaders to join together to fight Sunni Al-Qaeda terrorists. It had nothing to do with the Shiites. Obama showed that besides hope- he also has the audacity to make things up.... the actual formalization of the Anbar Awakening had been ongoing for more than a year. It wasn't something that just happened when Pelosi the Terrible took over the House... Try February 2006."

British Conservatives to cut back jobless benefits: "The unemployed would be forced to take a job or lose their benefits under radical Tory proposals to get millions of people receiving state hand-outs back to work. Under proposals to be unveiled by David Cameron this week, the unemployed would be required to take part in mandatory welfare-to-work programmes designed to prepare and train them for jobs. If they refuse a reasonable job offer, they could be banned from claiming unemployment benefits for up to three years. The welfare-to-work schemes, modelled on programmes in the United States and Australia, will be run by private firms and charitable groups who will be paid according to the number of people they keep in work. In reforms that will infuriate disability pressure groups, the Conservatives also intend to force every person claiming incapacity benefit to be tested to see if they are too ill to get a job. The Conservatives estimate that at least 200,000 incapacity benefit claimants are making false claims"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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SOME LITTLE-KNOWN QUOTES FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN

'Honest Abe' was not racially enlightened, as many people think. The truth is both ugly and unpleasant: Not only was the ghastly, bloody war that he supposedly fought to end slavery unnecessary, Lincoln was a tyrant and an abuser of civil liberties. The "tyrant" part is well-documented. He suspended habeas corpus. He deported a US Congressman who disagreed with the war. He had Federal police impound dissenting newspapers and smash their presses. He authorized Sherman's March to the Sea -a war crime, by any civilized human standard.

"My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery." -- Abraham Lincoln, August 22, 1862, letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley

"We have decided that the negro must not be a slave within our limits, but we have also decided that the negro shall not be a citizen within our limits; that he shall not vote, hold office, or exercise any political rights." -- Abraham Lincoln, September 15, 1858 [Source: www.nps.gov]

"I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes." -- Abraham Lincoln, September 18, 1858 [Source: www.nps.gov]

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." -- Abraham Lincoln, September 18, 1858 [Source: www.nps.gov]

It can only be concluded, based upon his own words, that Abraham Lincoln may well have been a slave abolitionist, but he was also clearly a racist who considered African-Americans to be inferior human beings-if indeed he considered them human beings at all....

Most ludicrous and disturbing of all, Lincoln was well-documented as a proponent of a separatist movement dubbed "colonization"-- and in the White House, Lincoln proposed to create colonies to send black people back to Africa in Liberia, to Haiti, or to work in coal mines in Panama....

More here

The above excerpts are from a libertarian site. Most libertarians do abhor Lincoln for his authoritarianism and vast expansion of central government power. I myself have a similar view -- as I set out here. To me "Lincoln the liberator" is perhaps the greatest myth of the 19th century -- not unlike the "Hitler was a Rightist" myth of the 20th century. Politicians do find myths very handy at times.

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ELSEWHERE

There is a big review here of the absurd "600,000 Iraqi deaths" study reported in Lancet. It confirms concerns expressed by myself and others about the lack of basic verification of the raw data and reveals that the "data" was collected by a former Saddam Hussein operative known for large exaggerations! There is in fact no evidence that any survey at all was carried out. The safest assumption is that the whole thing was just made up! A crooked Iraqi simply gave Western Leftists what they wanted.

Media bias against Fred Thompson: "To my best memory, none of the pundits at Fox News Channel had predicted this week that Thompson would rank that high, yet instead of commenting on Thompson doing unexpectedly well, the pundits at Fox -- when they talked about Thompson at all -- joined Mike Allen of Politico in concluding that a third place finish means Thompson's campaign is at death's door. At the same time, Allen and the pundits were very enthused about McCain's possible fourth place finish, stating he was in great position for the future. Say again? As Rush Limbaugh noted today, the media seem to be falling in line behind a "McCain comeback" story, and they're thus shaping the facts to fit that scenario."

Muslims now running the Pentagon? "Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism, has been fired from his position on the military's Joint Staff. The action followed a report in this space last week revealing opposition to his work for the military by pro-Muslim officials within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. Mr. Coughlin was notified this week that his contract with the Joint Staff will end in March, effectively halting the career of one of the U.S. government's most important figures in analyzing the nature of extremism and ultimately preparing to wage ideological war against it. He had run afoul of a key aide to Mr. England, Hasham Islam, who confronted Mr. Coughlin during a meeting several weeks ago when Mr. Islam sought to have Mr. Coughlin soften his views on Islamist extremism."

The AP shellacs "Relic" Bill Clinton.: "In a presidential race where the Democratic candidates are competing as agents of change, Hillary Rodham Clinton's most reliable campaign prop is something of a political relic - her husband. The former president was at her side to help put the best face on her third-place finish Thursday in Iowa, and he was beside her again when dawn broke the next day on the final push to Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. "I was never more proud of Hillary in all the days we've been together and all the days of this campaign than when she gave that speech in Iowa," the ex-president told New Hampshire voters. The candidate's husband, meanwhile, tends to ramble on about himself."

Barack Obama wants to end the US "Occupation" of Iraq: "In an 11-minute interview with hometown Chicago radio broadcaster and journalist, Roland Martin, Barack Obama revealed that his first act, if elected president, would be to pull our troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible: "Well, we will call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I will give them a new assignment and that is to bring our troops home in a careful, responsible way, but to end this occupation in Iraq".

Obama races to 10-point lead over Hillary: "Barack Obama the 46-year-old senator aiming to become America's first black president, has stormed into a 10-point lead over Hillary Clinton in this week's critical New Hampshire primary, threatening to send her campaign into meltdown. The Rasmussen survey, which was carried out the day after Obama's victory in last Thursday's Iowa caucuses, put his support at 37% in New Hampshire, compared with 27% for Clinton. The poll of 510 likely Democratic voters signalled a further swing away from the 60-year-old former first lady, whose campaign portrayed her as the "inevitable" victor until she was beaten into third place in Iowa".

For sale: America's nuclear secrets: "A whistleblower has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets. Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency's Washington field office. She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey. Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions".

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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FACT-FREE PHILOSOPHY

Trying to get an obsessive-compulsive to stop his obsessive rituals is a notoriously futile process. You might interrupt the compulsive behaviours momentarily but they very rapidly resume. It is only by treating the cause of the behaviour (by deconditioning, for instance) that you have some chance of success. Even then you will often fail.

I am reminded of that sort of compulsion when I read academics writing about race. For most, their statements are completely predictable, completely irrational and quite closed off from any contradiction, discordant evidence or dissuasion. They NEED to aggrandize themselves as angels of light and pesky facts must never stand in the way of that.

The latest example of such witting blindness comes from philosopher Philip Kitcher, of Columbia University. You can read his full essay here but it was originally published in an academic journal here. Below are some quotes from it:

Although the phenotypic characteristics, the manifest features that have traditionally been used to divide our species into races, are salient for us, they are superficial, indicating nothing about important differences in psychological traits or genetic conditions that constitute some racial essence

there are no genes distinctive of the groups we call races (Ahem! See here and here, and here for instance)

we insist on the absence of deep essential differences among biological races

It's just fact-free Leftist boilerplate by and large -- but hedged with more weasel words than usual. Take the last sentence. He clearly wants to say: "we insist on the absence of differences among biological races" but that is so obviously false that he inserts "deep" and "essential" to cover himself. So that no matter what evidence you present after that, he is able to say that the difference is not "deep" or "essential" enough. For non-critical readers, however, what he appears to be saying is the unhedged version of the statement: A version which is "angelic", meaningful and quite false.

He is just not interested in discussing the facts -- such as the hugely greater crime-rate among blacks -- that might disprove his line of holy propaganda. What he actually says is just mumbo jumbo parading as meaningful discourse. And he is supposed to be an expert in the philosophy of science! All that he is an expert in is unfalsifiable statements. But he has been much awarded by his colleagues so his Leftist religious convictions have served him well.

KBJ gives a more extensive dissection of Kitcher's confused line of argument, if you can call it argument. It's more an orison (ritual prayer).

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PALESTINIANS WHO PREFER ISRAEL

By Daniel Pipes

Palestinians have a hidden history of appreciating Israel that contrasts with their better-known narrative of vilification and irredentism. The former has been particularly evident of late, especially since Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, floated a trial balloon in October about transferring some Arab-dominated areas of eastern Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. As he rhetorically asked about Israeli actions in 1967, "Was it necessary to annex the Shuafat refugee camp, al-Sawahra, Walajeh, and other villages, and then to state that these are part of Jerusalem? One can ask, I admit, some legitimate questions about this."

In one swoop, this statement transformed pro-Israel statements by Palestinians (for a sampling, see my 2005 article, "The Hell of Israel Is Better than the Paradise of Arafat") from the mostly theoretical into the active and political. Indeed, Olmert's musings prompted some belligerent responses. As the title of a Globe and Mail news item puts it, "Some Palestinians prefer life in Israel: In East Jerusalem, residents say they would fight a handover to Abbas regime." The article offers the example of Nabil Gheit, who, with two stints in Israeli prisons and posters of "the martyr Saddam Hussein" over the cash register in his store, would be expected to cheer the prospect of parts of eastern Jerusalem coming under PA control.

Not so. As mukhtar of Ras Khamis, near Shuafat, Gheit dreads the PA and says he and others would fight a handover. "If there was a referendum here, no one would vote to join the Palestinian Authority...There would be another intifada to defend ourselves from the PA."

Two polls released last week, from Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications and the Arabic-language newspaper As-Sennara, survey representative samples of adult Israeli Arabs on the issue of joining the PA, and they corroborate what Gheit says. Asked, "Would you prefer to be a citizen of Israel or of a new Palestinian state?" 62 percent want to remain Israeli citizens and 14 percent want to join a future Palestinian state. Asked, "Do you support transferring the Triangle [an Arab-dominated area in northern Israel] to the Palestinian Authority?" 78 percent oppose the idea and 18 percent support it.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

On "Time" magazine's aptly-named "Swampland" blog, we see that one of those marvellously "professional" MSM journalists spells "bellwether" as "bell weather" -- in the very first line of her article. She obviously has no clue that the expression refers to a sheep. In case they correct it, the original is quoted here. I love the headline of the article, though: "Hillary Booed at NH Democratic Party Dinner". It couldn't happen to a more deserving person.

Democrat donor jailed for fraud: "A Chinese-American businessman who raised thousands of dollars for Democratic Party presidential hopefuls was jailed for three years Friday over a 1992 fraud case. A judge at San Mateo County Court near San Francisco rejected last minute pleas by defence lawyers for Hong Kong-born fundraiser Norman Hsu's 16-year-old conviction for running a ponzi scheme to be set aside, court officials said. Hsu, 56, who is reported to have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign before it was later returned by the New York senator, pleaded no contest to the case in February 1992 and agreed to serve three years behind bars and pay a 10,000-dollar fine.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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The Palestinian economy is in a shambles

And that might eventually force some realism on them. Post below excerpted from Daniel Pipes. See the original for links and more

Western financial aid to the Palestinians has, I showed last week, the perverse and counterintuitive effect of increasing their rate of homicides, including terrorist ones. This week, I offer two pieces of perhaps even stranger news about the many billions of dollars and record-shattering per-capita donations from the West: First, these have rendered the Palestinians poorer. Second, Palestinian impoverishment is a long-term positive development. To begin, some basic facts about the Palestinian economy, drawing on a fine survey by Ziv Hellman, "Terminal Situation," in the Dec. 24 issue of Jerusalem Report:

* Palestinian per year per-capita income has contracted by about 40 percent since its US$2,000 peak in 1992 (before the Oslo process began) to less than $1,200 now.
* Per-capita Israeli income, 10 times greater than the Palestinians' in 1967 is now 23 times greater.
* Deep poverty has increased in Gaza from 22 percent of the population in 1998 to nearly 35 percent in 2006; it would be about 67 percent if not for remittances and food aid.
* Direct foreign investment barely exists, while local capital mostly gets sent abroad or is invested in real estate or short-term trading.
* The Palestinian Authority economy, Hellman writes, "is largely based on monopolies in various industries granted by PA officials in exchange for kickbacks."
* The PA's payroll is so bloated that the cost of wages alone exceeds all revenues.
* A dysfunctional judicial system in the PA means armed gangs usually decide commercial disputes.

Unsurprisingly, Hellman characterizes the Palestinian economy as "in shambles." Such shambles should come as no surprise, for as the late Lord Bauer and others have noted, foreign aid does not work. It corrupts and distorts an economy; and the greater the amounts involved, the greater the damage. One telling detail: at times during Yasir Arafat's reign, a third of the Palestinian Authority's budget went for "expenses of the President's office," without further explanation, auditing, or accounting. The World Bank objected, but the Israeli government and the European Union endorsed this corrupt arrangement, so it remained in place. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority offers a textbook example of how to ruin an economy by smothering it under well-intentioned but misguided donations. The $7.4 billion recently pledged to it for the 2008-10 period will further exacerbate the damage.

....whatever reduces Palestinian confidence is a good thing. A failed economy depresses the Palestinians' mood, not to speak of their military and other capabilities, and so brings resolution closer.

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ELSEWHERE

There has just been a big conference of IQ researchers and there is a report of it here. A lot of it is probably pretty heavy going if you have no background in psychology but there are still lots of interesting bits in it -- including that Flynn does not now expect his eponymous effect to narrow the gap in black/white IQ. Since many years of that effect have shown no sign of doing so, that conclusion was rather forced upon him. Since the Flynn effect is the sum effect of environmental improvements (genetics don't change that fast), it does show that the inextinguishable THEORIES about environmental causes of the black IQ deficiency don't correspond to the FACTS about it. Environmental improvement has helped blacks but no more than it has helped whites.

Although people could be forgiven for thinking that I spend all my time thinking about IQ, I do in fact have other academic interests -- one of which is analytical philosophy. So I was rather fascinated by this report of a big and very public feud between two prominent philosophers over the nature of consciousness. After consulting with Keith Burgess-Jackson on the matter, however, we seem to have arrived at a joint conclusion: Both the protagonists are nuts! My own reflections on such matters can be found here

Wow! Anne Coulter detonates bombs under the dimwitted Huckabee here. Excerpt: "Huckabee is a "compassionate conservative" only in the sense that calling him a conservative is being compassionate"

Good God! Don't tell me we have to take this dimwit seriously!: "Former Governor Mike Huckabee has won the Iowa Republican caucus, surging past better-known rivals to triumph in the first nominating contest of the 2008 US presidential election, US media reported. Mitt Romney has come second. The Iowa victory gave Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and ordained Baptist minister, momentum and national credibility for his shoestring campaign as he headed toward the January 8 primary vote in New Hampshire, where polls showed him running a distant third."

Shrillary in trouble in first test: "With 97 per cent of the precincts counted, Senator Obama was leading with 38 per cent of the Democratic vote. Former vice-presidential nominee John Edwards looked to have edged out former first lady Hillary Clinton, with 30 per cent to 29. Senator Clinton's third placing is seriously damaging to her ambitions given that until a few months ago she was considered the inevitable Democratic nominee. An Obama win in Iowa is a remarkable feat for an African-American in a state that is 95 per cent white. Two of the Democratic laggards, senators Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, abandoned the race after the result."

Passengers sue after being stuck on airplane: "Two passengers who were stranded for hours on American Airlines airplanes diverted during a major storm over North Texas have sued the carrier, accusing it of false imprisonment, fraud and negligence. Kate Hanni, of Napa, Calif., and Catherine Ray, of Fayetteville, Ark., were on flights diverted from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to Austin on Dec. 29, 2006. After landing, passengers sat in the planes for more than eight hours, unable to leave despite overflowing toilets and little food or water."

Jihad targets Hindus too: "The media rarely mentions the desecration of Hindu religious sites and the constant intimidation of Hindus. While special concessions have been granted for Muslims in India, the governments of Pakistan and Bangladesh have long supported a policy, based on Islamic law, of religious discrimination against non-believers. Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh are unable to obtain positions of power, have great difficulty procuring business loans, are subjected to spurious blasphemy claims for defaming the prophet Mohammed and are specifically identified as non-Muslims on their passports".

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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THE "DECENTS"

The Left has always been plagued by "splits" -- all those big egos have a lot of trouble getting on with one-another. The splits are so Protean that you have to be a Leftist insider to keep up with it all. I neither know nor care what characterizes all the different "splittists" on the Left so I am a little puzzled to know where I should put a blog that apparently speaks for "decents". I gather that "decents" are moderate British Leftists but I am obviously not in on the inner workings of them so may have it all wrong.

One of their sites bewails the fact that some moderate British Leftists energetically reject the more Stalinist Left and instead pay some heed to conservatives. They particularly refer to Norm Geras, a noted Marxian scholar who is -- at least these days -- not much of a Marxist himself. Norm and I have occasionally exchanged mutually cordial emails and I believe I may have come to his attention because of my own forays into Marxian scholarship. I once ran a daily blog devoted to the writings of Marx and Engels for a period of five months -- rather rare in anyone on either the Left or the Right, I am sure.

Anyway, the "Decents" blog is very angry with Geras because he has a link to my blog on his site. They describe me as "utterly unhinged", but give no reasoning whatever in support of that ascription. Apparently you are just supposed to twitch appropriately when a Leftist speaks. Attempting a reasoned argument would get them into murky waters, I fancy. So even the "decents", like almost all Leftists, would seem to think that abuse substitutes for reasoned argument. Not exactly "decent", I would have thought.

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MORE ON SURNAMES

My recent post on what surnames tell you attracted an unusual amount of interest. I reproduce one interesting email in particular below:

Hungarians have a patriarchal system with names which works in a different fashion to Russia, Iceland etc. The only people in Hungary this impacts on is the wife in a married couple. It's a very old system untouched by feminism or PC.

To give you an example, I will use the current French President's surname which is Hungarian in origin. If Mr Sarkozy was living in Hungary with his wife, his wife's official name would be Sarkozy Nikolasne. Notice that the first name of the wife is not even mentioned. It literaly translates to Nikolas Sarkozy's woman.

Married women over there use their regular first names in every day life -- for mail and documents etc. Another curious one in Hungary is the word for wife: "Feleseg" which translates to "Other Half" in English. "Fele"means "Half".

In Australia too we used to have a system something like that. Official letters to my mother, for instance, would be addressed to "Mrs F.E. Ray", although her Christian name was "Margaret". The initials were my father's. Even as a kid I thought that was pretty silly. I think the custom is totally extinct now.

Another reader wanted me to give a list of translations for Ashkenazi names so that he could look himself up. Below are the common ones that I could think of:

Adler eagle
Bettelheim begging home
Blankfield white field
Blumenthal flower valley
Ehrenfeld honour field
Ehrlich honest
Einstein one stone (testicle)
Eisenstein iron stone
Finkelstein sparkling stone (gem)
Friedman peace man
Goldberg gold mountain
Goldmann gold man
Goldstein gold stone
Hoffmann hope man
Klein small
Kren horseradish
Lowenstein lion stone
Nadelmann needle man
Perlmutter pearl mother
Roth red
Rothapfel red apple
Rosen roses
Rosenbloom rose flower
Rosenstrauss rose bouquet
Rosenthal rose valley
Rothschild red shield
Seligman blessed man
Silbermann silver man
Spiegel mirror
Stein stone
Vogel bird
Waldstein forest stone
Weinstein wine stone
Wiesengrund meadow land (maybe meadow ground)

Some of the names above may not be exclusively Jewish but most are (or were).

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ELSEWHERE

From time to time I gather together what I regard as the best graphics that have appeared on this blog. The most recent selection is HERE (or HERE or HERE)

France has a "good" New Year: "Vandals torched 372 cars as France celebrated the New Year, down on the figure last year after a night the police described as "relatively calm". Cars are burned fairly regularly in France and the image of vehicles in flames in poor suburbs became symbolic of riots in 2005 when angry youths set fire to thousands of cars. There is usually an increase in the number of cars torched on New Year's Eve compared to other days of the year. "The night was relatively calm, without notable incident, there were very few direct clashes with the security forces," said a spokesman for the national police. The Interior Ministry said 372 vehicles had been burned - 144 in the Paris region and 228 in the rest of France. That was down from 397 last New Year's Eve."

Shifty Hillary: "Hillary Clinton expects New Hampshire voters to believe her when she says she was a member of her husband's `White House team' who played an integral role in shaping policy during his eight years as President. Well, we'd like some proof, Mrs. Clinton. `I was a member of the White House team that was involved with trying to make a lot of changes... I think that people who are running for President should lay out for Americans their record, their experiences, their qualifications, their vision, their plan, and their understanding of how to make it all happen, and that's what I'm doing,' Clinton [said recently]... A candidate with White House experience who really believes that would let voters examine the records from the period during which she claims she was such a vital part of `the White House team.' But Mrs. Clinton's actions show that she does not believe what she says. Her husband is keeping secret many of those records --2,600 pages worth, a National Archives official told The New York Sun...."

Laughable quote of 2007 -- from the managing editor of the New York Times, oddly enough: "[W]e are agnostic as to where a story may lead; we do not go into a story with an agenda or a pre-conceived notion. We do not manipulate or hide facts to advance an agenda. We strive to preserve our independence from political and economic interests, including our own advertisers. We do not work in the service of a party, or an industry, or even a country. When there are competing views of a situation, we aim to reflect them as clearly and fairly as we can."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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WHO ARE THESE DEMOCRATS?

Post below excerpted from Evan Sayet. See the original for links

Who is Barack Hussein Obama and why is he anything more than an afterthought in the Democrats' quest for power? The answer is, of course, that we have no idea. He hasn't even served one term in the United States Senate, a place where he is one of but one hundred voices. His legislative efforts as the junior Senator with no experience has equally been missing while on the campaign trail his great policy initiatives have been to utter meaningless words like "hope" and "change" always devoid of substance.

Who is Hillary Rodham Clinton that she should be the leading candidate for the Democrats' nomination in the fall? She's a one-term Senator, a carpetbagger who calculated that she would be a "lifelong Yankee fan" so long as she could get a stepping stone to personal power. Her claim to experience -- the fact that she was married to a president -- would be laughable except that, compared to Obama, she IS the more tested and learned. After all, at least she was sometimes within shouting distance when her narcissistic husband would orgasm with an intern. This -- again, one of one hundred, like Scott Baio sitting in on that game show -- junior Senator from a far-leftists East Coast state, has put forth few policy initiatives, seeing the Senate not as a job but as a necessary line on the resume before instantly jumping into the Presidential sweepstakes.

Who is John Edwards? He's a one-term Senator -- one in a hundred bodies to hide amongst as he accomplished nothing -- who began running for President in 2002 -- two years into his Senate term. His campaign is based on creating hatred for the boogeyman, "the rich," a group that only a very, very few belong to at the level of this man himself (can you say "self-hate"?).

In fact, of the three Democrats given a chance of winning the nomination, not one has served more than a single term, not one hasn't hidden amongst a hundred, as the junior senator from their state, and not one is saying anything of substance.

It's not like the Democrats don't have candidates with executive experience. Bill Richardson was a governor. It's not like they don't have Senators with more than a few years experience, there's the elder "statesman," Joe Biden. Yet these people are way back in the pack -- also rans -- to a bunch of Juniors. Why? Because the more the American people know about a Democrat the more they reject them as duplicitous and damaging. (Ever wonder why Hillary didn't run for Senate from her home state where they know her best?)

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Brookes News Update

Memory Lane and President Bush's tax cuts: Now that we are beginning the New Year perhaps we should look back on the Bush tax cuts, their benefits and the refusal of the Democrats and the media to recognise the damage that high taxes do to an economy
Taxes, money and surpluses: fact and fiction: It's as if the great debate on monetary policy that is known as the 'bullion controversy' never took place. One thing is for sure, the wisdom that flowed from that debate has long since been lost to the vast majority of the economics profession
Minimum wages, the Labor Government and Keynesian myths: The dangerous fallacy that raising the minimum wage boosts incomes and spending seems to be making a comeback
A foretaste of Hillary Clinton's America: Electing any Democrat to the presidency - specially Hillary Clinton - who carries the kind of intellectual baggage that destroyed classical liberalism in Germany and led to the destruction of the Weimar Republic could lead America into waters so dangerous that even America's Founding Fathers, in all their wisdom, would have considered their existence inconceivable
Charlie Wilson and Ronald Reagan's War: The moral lesson of Charlie Wilson's War should be a very sobering one for the Democratic Party. Charlie Wilson was proudly and unashamedly a pro-American, anti-communist Democrat. Sorkin ignored the sad fact that there would be no room in the party today for a Charlie Wilson. He also showed his mean-spiritness by refusing to give President Reagan any benefit for the Soviet defeat and the collapse of the Soviet Empire
Joe McCarthy vindicated again: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, KGB archives have been opened which further vindicate McCarthy. As unfathomable as it may seem, Americans, many of whom were in important positions in the government back then, were in fact collaborating with the Soviets
The Ballad of Alpha, the Bull's Bull, all geared: O the seekers of Profit are brash men and loud And quite unaccustomed to fear, /But the bravest by far in Connecticut's crowd/ Was Alpha the full Bull, all geared.
Recession and the consumption fallacy: Our economic commentariat will deliberately ignore the statistical evidence that recessions are not caused by falls in consumption spending, even though the following graphs demonstrate how very wrong these economic pundits really are

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ELSEWHERE

Brits trounce Taliban: "British commandos launched a devastating blitz on the Taliban - as the evil terrorists held a party to celebrate Benazir Bhutto's murder. The dawn raid was staged after messages were intercepted about the sick knees-up in Afghanistan's Helmand province. Royal Marines crept into position as the fanatics partied the night away just hours after Ms Bhutto was killed in Pakistan. The terrorists were pounded with mortars, rockets and heavy machine guns. Two bloodthirsty revellers trying to creep towards Our Boys in a trench were spotted by thermal-imaging equipment - and targeted with a Javelin heat-seeking missile. The 65,000 pounds sterling rocket - designed to stop Soviet tanks - locked on to their body heat and tore more than a kilometer across the desert in seconds. Troop Sergeant Dominic Conway, 32 - who directed mortar rounds - grinned: "It must have had quite a detrimental effect on their morale." Sgt Conway, from Whitley Bay, Tyneside, said of the Taliban lair: "It used to be their backyard and now we've made it ours."

A typical Democrat ignoramus: "Sen. Hillary Clinton was telling Wolf Blitzer that she didn't think "the Pakistani government at this time under President Musharraf has any credibility at all." She then said something that betrayed a serious lack of knowledge about Pakistan and called her own credibility on the subject into serious question. "If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election," she told Blitzer, "then he should abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow." My immediate reaction was: "Did I hear that correctly?" As a Pakistan analyst, I know for a fact that Pervez Musharraf doesn't wish to stand for election any time soon. Sen. Clinton really didn't know that the upcoming elections were for individual seats in Pakistan's parliament. She actually believed that Bhutto, Nawaz and Musharraf would be facing off as individual candidates for leadership of the country in the upcoming elections. Sen. Clinton didn't know that Nawaz Sharif isn't allowed to run for office in Pakistan because of a felony conviction. She didn't know that President Musharraf won't be on the ballot because he's already been elected."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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

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

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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