Monday, November 16, 2009



Obama and 'The Great I Am'

by Jeff Jacoby



PRESIDENT OBAMA was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was "a painful barrier between family and friends" that symbolized "a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being." He referred to "tyranny," but never identified the tyrants -- he never uttered the words "Soviet Union" or "communism," for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan -- or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

He did, however, talk about Barack Obama. "Few would have foreseen," declared the president, "that a united Germany would be led by a woman from [the former East German state of] Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it."

As presidential rhetoric goes, this was hardly a match for "Ich bin ein Berliner," still less another "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." But as a specimen of presidential narcissism, it is hard to beat. Obama couldn't be troubled to visit Berlin to commemorate a momentous milestone in the history of human liberty. But he was glad to explain to those who were there why reflections on that milestone should inspire appreciation for the self-made "destiny" of his own rise to power.

Was there ever a president as deeply enamored of himself as Barack Obama? The first President Bush, taught from childhood to shun what his mother called "The Great I Am," regularly instructed his speechwriters not to include too many "I's" in his prepared remarks. Ronald Reagan maintained that there was no limit to what someone could achieve if he didn't mind who got the credit. George Washington, one of the most accomplished men of his day, said with characteristic modesty on becoming president that he was "peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies."

Obama, on the other hand, positively revels in The Great I Am. "I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters," he told campaign aides when he was running for the White House. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that . . . I'm a better political director than my political director."

At the start of his presidency, Obama seemed to content himself with the royal "we" -- "We will build the roads and bridges . . . We will restore science to its rightful place . . . We will harness the sun and winds," he declaimed at his inauguration.

But as the literary theorist Stanley Fish points out, "By the time of the address to the Congress on Feb. 24, the royal we [had] flowered into the naked 'I': 'As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress.' 'I called for action.' 'I pushed for quick action.' 'I have told each of my cabinet.' 'I've appointed a proven and aggressive inspector general.' 'I refuse to let that happen.' 'I will not spend a single penny.' 'I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves.' 'I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half.'" In his speech on the federal takeover of GM, Obama likewise found it necessary to use the first-person singular pronoun 34 times. ("Congress" he mentioned just once.)

At this rate, it won't be long before the president's ego is so inflated that it will require a ZIP code of its own. Then again, how modest would any of us be if we were as magnificent as Obama knows himself to be? "I am well aware," he told the UN General Assembly of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world." in September, "

In 1860, writes Doris Kearns Goodwin in her celebrated biography Team of Rivals, an author wishing to dedicate his forthcoming work to Abraham Lincoln received this answer: "I give the leave, begging only that the inscription may be in modest terms, not representing me as a man of great learning, or a very extraordinary one in any respect."

Obama has often claimed Lincoln as a role model. Apparently it only goes so far.

SOURCE

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Leftist fauxtography goes back a long way

According to Robert Hughes, author of "The Shock of the New" (1980), during World War I's nation-shattering and culture-shredding carnage, no photograph of a dead soldier appeared in a German, French or British newspaper. But the Sept. 23, 1936, issue of the French magazine Vu published (as did Life magazine 10 months later) what became perhaps the century's iconic photograph -- "Falling Soldier." It was taken by, and launched the remarkable career of, a 22-year-old Hungarian refugee from fascism, photographer Robert Capa.

It supposedly shows a single figure, a loyalist -- that is, anti-fascist -- soldier, at the instant of death from a bullet fired by one of Franco's soldiers. The soldier is falling backward on a hillside, arms outstretched, his rifle being flung from his right hand. This was, surely, stunning testimony to photography's consciousness-raising and history-shaping truth-telling, the camera's indisputable accuracy, its irreducibly factual rendering of reality, its refutation of epistemological pessimism about achieving certainty based on what our eyes tell us.

Probably not. A dispute that has flared intermittently for more than 30 years has been fueled afresh, and perhaps settled, by a Spanish professor who has established that the photo could not have been taken when and where it reportedly was -- Sept. 5, 1936, near Cerro Muriano. The photo was taken about 35 miles from there. The precise place has been determined by identifying the mountain range in the photo's background. The professor says there was no fighting near there at that time, and concludes that Capa staged the photo.

More HERE

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Medicalizing Mass Murder

by Charles Krauthammer

What a surprise -- that someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre downplaying Nidal Hasan's religious beliefs.

"I cringe that he's a Muslim. ... I think he's probably just a nut case," said Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time's Joe Klein decried "odious attempts by Jewish extremists ... to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs." While none could match Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

They suffered. He listened. He snapped. Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?

And what about civilian psychiatrists -- not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics -- who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder? It's been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic.

But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, whom National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious.

And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won't find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as "compassion fatigue." The poor man -- pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.

Have we totally lost our moral bearings? Nidal Hasan (allegedly) cold-bloodedly killed 13 innocent people. In such cases, political correctness is not just an abomination. It's a danger, clear and present.

Consider the Army's treatment of Hasan's previous behavior. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling interviewed a Hasan colleague at Walter Reed about a hair-raising Grand Rounds that Hasan had apparently given. Grand Rounds are the most serious academic event at a teaching hospital -- attending physicians, residents and students gather for a lecture on an instructive case history or therapeutic finding.

I've been to dozens of these. In fact, I gave one myself on post-traumatic retrograde amnesia -- as you can see, these lectures are fairly technical. Not Hasan's. His was an hour-long disquisition on what he called the Koranic view of military service, jihad and war. It included an allegedly authoritative elaboration of the punishments visited upon nonbelievers -- consignment to hell, decapitation, having hot oil poured down your throat. This "really freaked a lot of doctors out," reported NPR.

Nor was this the only incident. "The psychiatrist," reported Zwerdling, "said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird?" Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague's religion? One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.

What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn't cry "Allahu Akbar" as they squeezed the trigger.

The delicacy about the religion in question -- condescending, politically correct and deadly -- is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: "Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center." Ah yes, those Jersey men -- so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE



There is Obama toilet paper in Japan. See above

Putting terrorists on trial in NYC?: "On Cavuto this evening, Rudy Giuliani underscored the obvious. We tried prosecuting terrorists as criminals after the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. It got us the second attack. What is it that the Obama doesn’t understand about the word “war?” How can he wish to inflict this nightmare on the families of 9/11 and the City of New York? Senator Sestack on Fox this morning was absolutely pathetic, meandering on about how we need to defend our “ideals” and therefore try terrorists as though they were American citizens gone wild. No we don’t. Foreigners who hate us so much they are willing to kill tens of thousands of indiscriminately at a clip need to be tried as enemies of our country not as ordinary perps. This decision coming on the heels of the collective blindness of Democrats and so-called liberals to the obvious fact that Major Hasan’s atrocity was an act of war sends a message to the rest of us that is both ugly and alarming: 0ur commander in chief and his lieutenants at Justice and Homeland Security present a danger to all of us unlike any we have ever faced from domestic sources. The days ahead are uncharted and will not be pretty."

Palin retakes center stage on book tour: "This time, she makes her public entrance as the headliner, not the pretty and vivacious warm-up act that brought bounce and backlash to the 2008 McCain presidential campaign. As Sarah Palin re-emerges onto the national stage with a new book and a tour to promote it, the polarizing one-time vice presidential candidate gets to sell her story her way. Even the book's title, "Going Rogue," suggests that after delivering messages under the careful watch of Republican handlers a year ago, she's now calling her own shots as she travels the nation to set up what some say is a certain run for the White House in 2012. Even as some on the left attack her credibility, others say that to dismiss her as a political flash in the pan would be folly. No other veep candidate in recent decades, they say, has generated such ongoing fascination. "Sarah Palin may be the one rock star that the Republican Party has for the moment," says Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. He cites the intense demand for her at national fundraising events as "a symbol of her potency and potential as a presidential candidate."

Breathtaking -- And Not in a Good Way: "This report from Politico discusses President Obama's plans to theme his State of the Union address around cutting the deficit. What jumps out is the following gasp-inducing statistic: Obama has spent more money on new programs in nine months than Bill Clinton did in eight years, pushing the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion. Given this fact, the push for "fiscal responsibility" that the President is going to talk-talk-talk (and talk some more) about is a joke. Really care about not exploding the deficit? There are two easy ways to avoid it: (1) Redirect the unspent "stimulus" money to payroll tax cuts. That will have the added benefit of actually stimulating employment. (2) Call off plans to jam a mind-bogglingly expensive, freedom-stealing, unpopular health care "reform" down the American people's throats."

Irwin Stelzer: Dollar outlook isn't golden: "Buy gold," we are told by no less an authority than G. Gordon Liddy. "It's value has never gone to zero", says an official once in charge of America's gold hoard, including the bars stored at Fort Knox. Why investors should find that reassuring is not obvious, but never mind. They have bid the price steadily up past the $1,100-per-ounce mark, from around $270 at the beginning of this decade, and about $700 when the current crisis in financial markets hit the value of stocks and property. And a very rich and very shrewd investor is telling friends that he expects the current price to more than double in the next five years. It seems that investors, or at least many of them, have decided that the Obama administration and the Bernanke Fed are combining to depreciate the dollar, the former willingly to encourage exports, the latter warily. Talk of the devaluing of other nations' paper currencies at one time produced a flight to the dollar, deemed safe from the depredations of rulers trying to shore up their struggling economies by printing money. But times have changed. There is now so little faith in the value of the dollar that investors are fleeing to Brazilian reals and Russian rubles...."

CNN’s War on Lou Dobbs: "Accuracy in Media's blogs have already acknowledged Lou Dobbs' resignation from CNN, but the story here requires a little more delving. Reading about the situation, I cannot help but remember someone else's recent resignation-which turned out to have a lot more behind it. As it turns out, leftist organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Media Matters have been working hard to get Dobbs off the air for months. On July 24, 2009, SPLC President Richard Cohen wrote to CNN President Jonathan Klein to complain that Dobbs was "questioning" the verity of President Obama's birth certificate and "push[ing] racist conspiracy theories [and] defamatory falsehoods about immigrants." On the other hand, Media Matters' George Soros funded the Drop Dobbs website, which since September 2009 has been featuring charming pages on Dobb's "History of Hate." This Drop Dobbs campaign has been taken up by a number of radical organizations, including the National Council of La Raza, and the Center for New Community. For those who don't know, La Raza is a far left, racist radical group."

Time to be Heard: Black Conservatives Speak Out: "Glenn Beck's Fox show ran a kind of special today that you will not see anywhere else. In the episode, entitled "Time to be Heard", Beck and his audience presented a portrait of black conservatives in America. Watch the full episode at the link, courtesy of Fox News Channel"

Terrorists smuggle fatwas out of "secure" British prisons: "Some of Britain’s most dangerous Al-Qaeda leaders are promoting jihad from inside high-security prisons by smuggling out propaganda for the internet and finding recruits. In an authoritative report, Quilliam, a think tank funded by the Home Office, claims “mismanagement” by the Prison Service is helping AlQaeda gain recruits and risks “strengthening jihadist movements”. Abu Qatada, described by MI5 as “Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe”, has published fatwas — religious rulings — on the internet from Long Lartin prison, in Worcestershire, calling for holy war and the murder of moderate Muslims, it reveals."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog 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 Paralipomena

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Sunday, November 15, 2009



More Stimulus Equals More Unemployment

"Stimulus" is in the process of turning a nasty recession into a genuine depression. The evidence is in the "Employment Situation" report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on November 6th. The "headline" unemployment rate shot up to 10.2%, the highest in more than 26 years. But the report was much worse than most people realize.

The "household survey data" showed that 589,000 jobs vanished during October. This is bad enough, but the three-month moving average of changes in total employment (current month and prior two months) shows that job losses are actually accelerating. The three-month moving average (TMMA) of changes in total employment began a serious decline in February 2007. It went into negative territory two months later. This indicator has now been negative for the past 21 months. During this time, total employment has declined by more than 8 million jobs.

As the financial crisis gathered momentum in late 2008, the TMMA fell continuously, reaching a bottom of 853,000 jobs lost per month in January 2009. Then this indicator began improving. By June 2009, when stories about "green shoots" were common in the financial press, the TMMA was "only" 230,000. However, it then began falling again. The October BLS numbers pushed the TMMA down to 589,000 jobs lost per month.

Economic growth is supposed to create jobs. However, the U.S. economy shed twice as many jobs (1,332,000) in the third quarter of 2009, when GDP grew at a robust 3.5% annual rate, than it did in the second quarter (691,000), when the economy contracted at a 0.7% rate. How can this be? To paraphrase the 1992 Clinton campaign, "It's the bonds, stupid!"

The massive sales of U.S. Treasury bonds to finance "stimulus", bailouts, and other government spending is sucking capital out of the private sector and destroying jobs. Once again, the October 6th BLS report tells the tale. The BLS "household survey" showed job losses of 589,000, while their "establishment survey" showed a reduction of payrolls of only 190,000. This shows that most of the damage is being done in small business, "under the radar screen" of the BLS.

Small businesses-especially new small businesses-account for essentially all net job growth. However, business creation and expansion requires capital, and more and more of the nation's capital is being commandeered by the U.S. Treasury in the name of "stimulus". The FY2009 Federal deficit was $1.4 trillion. This was almost a trillion dollars higher than FY2008. The capital to buy this additional debt had to come from somewhere, and much of it was squeezed out of business. Here are some indicators, both statistical and anecdotal:

• During FY2009, "Gross Domestic Private Investment" fell by 25% (almost $500 billion/year). It would have needed to grow by 5% to keep the unemployment rate from rising from an already-too-high 6.2%.

• Many venture capital firms are informing entrepreneurs that there is no money available for new startups. The firms say that they must husband their capital to meet the needs of their existing portfolio companies.

• The 500 largest U.S. non-financial companies now hold more than $1 trillion in Treasury bills, amounting to more than 10% of their total assets. Corporate cash flows are rising, but the money is being invested in government bonds, rather than growth.

• Banks have cut credit card credit lines by 25%, or $1.25 trillion. Because small businesses are often financed with personal credit cards, this has a direct impact on small business survival and growth.

If you divide the total real capital employed in the U.S. ("produced assets") by total employment, you get about $313,000. That is, for $313,000 in capital, the private economy can create one real, permanent, self-supporting job. In contrast, there are estimates that each of the jobs that the administration claims that "stimulus" has "created or saved" is costing about $1.2 million. If so, this means that selling the bonds required to fund one temporary "stimulus" job will take enough capital out of the private sector to destroy four "real" jobs. This explains why, as the "stimulus" spending has ramped up, job losses have accelerated.

Unfortunately, the Administration, the mainstream media, and much of the economics profession are responding to the worsening unemployment with calls for even more "stimulus". This would compound the tragedy. Each $313,000 of bonds sold to fund the additional spending could be expected to extinguish one private sector job. In addition, we can expect that the next increment of stimulus would be even more wasteful than the first $787 billion. The "best" projects would have been included in the first stimulus bill.

The "headline" (U-3) unemployment rate of 10.2% vastly understates the magnitude of the jobs crisis in America. John Williams' "Shadow Government Statistics" unemployment number for October is 22.1%. Williams estimates that we would have to create 22.6 million new jobs in order to get to "true" full employment. At $313,000 each, the private sector would have to invest an incremental $7.1 trillion to accomplish this.

Every year for the past 58 years, real GDP has been very close to 30% of total capital employed (real "produced assets"). Accordingly, an additional $7.1 trillion in private business investment could be expected in increase GDP by about $2.1 trillion/year. Most of this income would go to the 22.6 million new job holders and their families, but about a quarter of it would be captured by governments at all levels.

Canceling the job-destroying "stimulus" program would be a good first step toward providing the private sector with the additional capital required to achieve full employment. However, this would provide only about 10% of the money required. The rest would have to be mobilized by increasing incentives for real savings and investment.

The two most effective measures toward this end would be to stabilize the dollar and to repeal the corporate income tax. The corporate income tax brought in only $138billion in FY2009. This amounts to less than 1% of GDP, and less than a fifth of the cost of the "stimulus" bill. Repealing it now would produce higher employment and higher Federal revenues within months.

SOURCE

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The job-killing president and Congress

By: Newt Gingrich

Last Friday, the unemployment rate jumped to 10.2 percent. The underemployment rate -- including part-time workers who want full-time jobs and those who have simply quit looking for work -- reached 17.5 percent. How did Washington react? The next day the Democratic-controlled House passed a trillion-dollar increase in government disguised as a health care bill. In the face of the worst jobless rate in 26 years, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats don't seem to realize that adopting bad policies kills jobs.

What's most remarkable about this is that the president should know better. We now have proof that the Obama administration's job-killing policies are hurting America. In an interview with CNBC last January, when he was still trying to sell his massive $787 stimulus bill, President Obama predicted, "If we do nothing, things will get much, much worse. With the plan that we have, we will do better than we would otherwise have done." At the time, the Obama White House predicted that unemployment wouldn't get worse than 8 percent if the stimulus was enacted. By the middle of 2009, they promised, the massive spending bill would be having a positive effect on employment.

So much for promises. By the White House's own standards of success, its economic recovery policies have been an abject failure. That doesn't mean they don't keep touting the stimulus as a success, of course, aided by that most meaningless of economic metrics, "jobs created or saved." As recently as the end of October, Vice President Biden claimed that the stimulus act "saved or created" one million jobs. But consult a more objective source -- like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the government's official job counter -- and you'll find that 3.2 million Americans have lost their jobs since February when the stimulus act was signed. In fact, the most accurate measure of jobs under the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress isn't jobs "saved or created," it's jobs "lost and dislocated."

American Solutions calculates that the 1 million jobs number cited by the administration as gains for employment actually represents future, additional unemployment. The one million jobs supposedly funded by the stimulus bill -- overwhelmingly in government -- will necessarily end when their government funding ends. Add these one million dislocated workers to the 3.2 million Americans who have lost their jobs since the stimulus was passed and you have an astonishing more than 4 million jobs lost and dislocated since the beginning of the Obama administration's policies.

Democratic economic policies aren't simply ineffective, they are affirmatively job killing. And they're about to get worse. The health care bill Speaker Nancy Pelosi bribed, cajoled and threatened through the House last weekend imposes a 5.4 percent income tax "surcharge" on any tax filer who makes more than $500,000 a year. The Joint Tax Committee has found that fully one-third of this new tax will be paid by small businesses, the engines of American job creation. What about 4 million jobs lost or dislocated don't Washington Democrats get?

The first thing to do is to take the approximately $500 billion in stimulus funds that haven't yet been spent and redirect it toward cutting the payroll tax in half for two years. Social Security and Medicare would be protected, and every single American who works would get a take home pay raise. Every single small business would have more money available to create more jobs. (This and other solutions for creating jobs and prosperity now can be found at www.americansolutions.com.)

Unless, of course, the point of the Obama economic policies isn't to create jobs, but to increase Democratic political clout by increasing the size of government. If that's the case, Democrats will find out soon enough that killing jobs in order to grow the Democratic Party by growing government isn't a bargain the American people are ready to make.

SOURCE

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BrookesNews Update

US jobless hits 10.2 per cent and government supporters blame rising productivity : The same media types who screamed blue murder with undisguised glee when unemployment hit 5 per cent under Bush are now telling us that the current 10.2 per cent rate is being driven by rising productivity and so there is little that can be done about it in the near future. This is utter nonsense
Could a new resource boom doom Australian manufacturing? : A sustained increase for a country's products can bring about a rise in the exchange rate. If this is not offset by a sufficiently large monetary expansion then the country's manufacturing base could be seriously damaged. And the theory of comparative advantage won't have a damn thing to do with it. Will this happen to Australia?
George Soros: crisis and myth :George Soros is at it again. This fanatical enemy of the market is misleading people as to the real cause of the financial crisis
Gore's Profits of Doom : Financial disclosure documents released before the 2000 election put the Gore family's net worth at $1 million to $2 million. Thanks to the global warming scam that Gore was instrumental in establishing his net worth is now $200 million. So why isn't he keeping Bernie Madoff company?
Having a little buyer's remorse? Hmm : American is now run by 'Czars' who are not checked on or responsible to anyone. But, they want to share the wealth. Have you noticed, however, that the politicians who want all of this, sure don't plan on giving up any of those wonderful perks that they get from their wonderful job related health policies in the House and Senate. And Pelosi has no intention of sharing any of her wealth
The vilification of Rush Limbaugh : I believe with all my heart that minorities, especially African-Americans, will never be free until they stop allowing people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to insist they adopt the mentality of victims. Likewise, they will not be free until they take the next bold step: start thanking God for America, and stop condemning the white male.
Before Dreams, there was Roots :As evidence mounts that Obama did not exactly write Dreams unassisted, Landesman gives us a good indication of how America's cultural honchos will react. For a century, in fact, they have been heaping uncritical praise on undeserving artists of a certain political stripe, especially minority artists. And for a century, they have been pulling the curtain shut behind their pet wizards when anyone questions their wizardry
How to become a 'Citizen Of The World' : Obama has bestowed instant cachet on the growing ranks of Americans who revel in the thought of being the first in their own social set to be considered cutting edge 'citizens of the world.' Especially since joining this community of global citizens confers upon them automatic virtue, along with instant and unassailable moral stature

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ELSEWHERE

Now Obama wants to put an ACORN fund-raiser on the federal bench: "David Hamilton was the first person nominated for a judgeship after President Obama took office. On Mar. 17, President Obama nominated Hamilton, who is currently a federal district judge in Indiana, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which encompasses several Midwestern states. The main problem many senators have with Judge Hamilton is his controversial decisions. Hamilton ignored a felony conviction on a man’s record when being prosecuted for his third felony drug crime to avoid imposing a life sentence, for which Hamilton was unanimously reversed on appeal. Hamilton also struck down a law requiring convicted sex criminals from reporting information to police to track their whereabouts. He also petitioned the White House for clemency for a police officer who produced child pornography. He has also shown surprising hostility to people of Christian faith. He ruled that any prayers uttered in the Indiana statehouse that invoke the name of Jesus Christ are unconstitutional and cannot be permitted. Nor can anyone offer a prayer that is “sectarian” or “pervasively Christian.” Oddly, although prayers mentioning Jesus are somehow a threat to the republic, Judge Hamilton said that it’s okay to offer prayers to Allah."

ACORN say it has a constitutional right to your money: "Activist group and organized crime syndicate ACORN has a constitutional right to defraud the people of the United States, it claims in a federal lawsuit. Actually, the lawsuit, filed with the assistance of the allegedly terrorist-funded Center for Constitutional Rights, doesn't use the word fraud, but that's what it amounts to because ACORN argues in the document that it has a right to taxpayer dollars. I kid you not. ACORN claims the congressionally approved cutoff of federal funding that expires Dec. 18 violates the Constitution's prohibition on bills of attainder, along with ACORN's free speech and due process rights. Of course, due process is a rather specific legal concept that applies to judicial proceedings, rather than the lawmaking process. A bill of attainder singles out an individual or group for punishment without trial. Is it punishment for ACORN to be denied public funds? That implies the group has the right to receive those funds."

The "stimulus" that didn't stimulate: Ten States Face Looming Budget Disasters: "In Arizona, the budget has grown so gloomy that lawmakers are considering mortgaging Capitol buildings. In Michigan, state officials dealing with the nation's highest unemployment rate are slashing spending on schools and health care. Drastic financial remedies are no longer limited to California, where a historic budget crisis earlier this year grew so bad that state agencies issued IOUs to pay bills. A study released Wednesday warned that at least nine other big states are also barreling toward economic disaster, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services. The report by the Pew Center on the States found that Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are also at grave risk, although Wisconsin officials disputed the findings. Double-digit budget gaps, rising unemployment, high foreclosure rates and built-in budget constraints are the key reasons."



Cold cash Jefferson (above) given 13 years for corruption: "Former Louisiana congressman William Jefferson stood motionless in U.S. District Court in Alexandria Friday as he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for corruption - the longest prison term ever imposed on a former member of Congress. The nine-term Democrat from New Orleans - found with $90,000 stuffed in his freezer - lost his re-election bid last year while under indictment - a result that U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis found satisfying. "Public corruption is a cancer on the body politic," the judge said after an afternoon of delays and long recesses had turned to blustery evening. "It eats away and destroys the function of that body. It needs to be surgically removed."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog 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 Paralipomena

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Saturday, November 14, 2009



Jihad's 5th Column

The Fort Hood terrorist is being portrayed as an "anomaly," an "aberration," a "lone wolf." Sadly, he's just one of many examples of jihadist traitors in the ranks of the military. Together they form a dangerous Fifth Column, and the Pentagon — thanks to institutionalized political correctness — is doing next to nothing to root them out .

Instead, brass are actively recruiting Muslim soldiers — whose ranks have swelled to more than 15,000 — and catering to their faith by erecting mosques even at Marine headquarters in Quantico, Va. More, they're hiring Muslim chaplains endorsed by radical Islamic front groups, who convert and radicalize soldiers.

In the wake of the worst domestic military-base massacre in U.S. history, this is an outrage to say the least. And the PC blinders explain how Fort Hood commanders could have failed so horrifically in protecting their force from the internal threat there.

The terrorist suspect, an Islamic fanatic, penetrated deep into the Army's officer corps before gunning down, execution-style, more than 40 of his fellow soldiers. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly killed 13 at the Texas post, which boasts some 40 Muslims.

Witnesses say he shouted "Allahu Akbar" — Allah is great! — before opening fire in a crowded building where troops were sitting ducks, waiting to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, both wars that Hasan angrily opposed. "Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor," he reportedly said earlier this year, referring to the U.S. — the country he swore to protect.

During the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, another devout Muslim in the Army had a similar conflict. Sgt. Hasan Akbar also resorted to violence, fragging 17 fellow soldiers, killing two. Why? He opposed the killing of fellow Muslims. "You guys are coming into our countries, and you're going to rape our women and kill our children," he was overheard by soldiers who survived the grenade attack as saying.

Clearly, his loyalties lay elsewhere. And he's hardly alone:

• Navy Signalman Hassan Abujihaad last year was convicted of tipping off al-Qaida to battle group movements in the Persian Gulf, including disclosing classified documents detailing the group's vulnerability to terror attack.

• Army reservist Jeffrey Battle in 2003 pleaded guilty to conspiring to wage war against the U.S., confessing he enlisted "to receive military training to use against America."

• Army reservist Semi Osman in 2002 was arrested for providing material support to al-Qaida and pleaded guilty to weapons charges after agreeing to testify against other terror suspects.

SOURCE

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Interesting repentance from some "Hillary Democrats"

We know absolutely no one in Bush family circles and have never met former President George W. Bush or his wife Laura. If you have been reading us for any length of time, you know that we used to make fun of “Dubya” nearly every day…parroting the same comedic bits we heard in our Democrat circles, where Bush is still, to this day, lampooned as a chimp, a bumbling idiot, and a poor, clumsy public speaker.

Oh, how we RAILED against Bush in 2000…and how we RAILED against the surge in support Bush received post-9/11 when he went to Ground Zero and stood there with his bullhorn in the ruins on that hideous day. We were convinced that ANYONE who was president would have done what Bush did, and would have set that right tone of leadership in the wake of that disaster. President Gore, President Perot, President Nader, you name it. ANYONE, we assumed, would have filled that role perfectly.

Well, we told you before how much the current president, Dr. Utopia, made us realize just how wrong we were about Bush. We shudder to think what Dr. Utopia would have done post-9/11. He would have not gone there with a bullhorn and struck that right tone. More likely than not, he would have been his usual fey, apologetic self and waxed professorially about how evil America is and how justified Muslims are for attacking us, with a sidebar on how good the attacks were because they would humble us.

Honestly, we don’t think President Gore would have been much better that day. The world needed George W. Bush, his bullhorn, and his indominable spirit that day…and we will forever be grateful to this man for that.

As we will always be grateful for what George and Laura Bush did this week, with no media attention, when they very quietly went to Ft. Hood and met personally with the families of the victims of this terrorist attack.

FOR HOURS.

The Bushes went and met privately with these families for HOURS, hugging them, holding them, comforting them.

If there are any of you out there with any connection at all to the Bushes, we implore you to give them our thanks…you tell them that a bunch of gay Hillary guys in Boystown, Chicago were wrong about the Bushes… and are deeply, deeply sorry for any jokes we told about them in the past, any bad thoughts we had about these good, good people.

You may be as surprised by this as we are ourselves, but from this day forward George W. and Laura Bush are now on the same list for us as the Clintons, Geraldine Ferraro, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and the other political figures we keep in our hearts and never allow anyone to badmouth.

Criticize their policies academically and intelligently and discuss the Bush presidency in historical and political terms… but you mess with the Bushes personally and, from this day forward, you’ll answer to us.

We hope someday to be able to thank George W. and Laura in person for all they’ve done, and continue to do. They didn’t have to head to Ft. Hood. That was not their responsibility. The Obamas should have done that. But didn’t. Wouldn’t.

Thank goodness George W. is still on his watch, with wonderful Laura at his side. We are blessed as a nation to have these two out there…just as we are blessed to have the Clintons on the job, traveling the world doing the good they do.

And we are blessed to have Dick Cheney, wherever he is, keeping tabs on all that’s going on and speaking out when the current administration does anything too reckless and dangerous. Cheney’s someone else we villainized and maligned in the past who we were also wrong about. There has never been a Vice President, including Gore, Biden, or Mondale, who was more supportive of gay rights than “Darth Cheney”. There has never been a Vice President more spot-on right about the dangers facing this country from Islamic terrorism.

We live in strange, strange times indeed. We are now officially committed fans of George W. and Laura Bush. We are fans of Dick Cheney. Our gratitude for them makes us newly protective of them, and the continued role they play in this country.

After the primary battle of 2008, we never thought we’d go back to Texas for anything, but sometime in 2010 we want to find some event in Dallas the Bushes will be at so at least one of us can go up to them, tell them we are deeply sorry for ever thinking ill of them, and thank them from the bottom of our hearts for their service to America.

We’re sure they will just stare at us and wonder why these gay Chicagoans are crying, but we don’t think we can get through a meeting with them without being emotional. What they did at Ft. Hood for those families humbles us. Every day, the Bushes are most likely doing something just like it behind the scenes. We hope if any of you encounter them you will let them know this is deeply appreciated beyond partisan lines.

We will never look at the Bushes, the Bush presidencies, or their legacies the same again… and someday when his presidential library is built, we will be so proud to visit there and tell anyone will listen about November 10th, 2009, the day we finally appreciated former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura.

Thank you for your service, Mr. President. We’re sorry we didn’t appreciate you while you were in office, but we thank Heaven we’ve wised up and can see the good you are out there doing, under the radar, today.

SOURCE

The writers above were greatly moved by the human feelings that GWB and Laura showed at Ft. Hood but people who followed GWB carefully throughout his Presidency will be aware that he is a man of deep and kind-hearted feelings who did similar things often -- though always privately. My own perception was always that GWB is simply a Christian gentleman -- which shows what hate-addled crazies the Bush=Hitler crowd are

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On vacation with Mr. Dithers

Every modern president takes refuge abroad when the going gets rough at home. (Before the jet airplane life was simpler and presidents could get respite with a train trip to Cleveland or Buffalo.) So President Obama is off to Asia, where never will necessarily be heard an encouraging word, but he won't have to listen to criticism in the Queen's English. His approval ratings are continuing to sink -- down now to 46 percent, measured by reliable Rasmussen Reports. Nancy Pelosi's euphoria over her razor-thin passage of the fanciful House version of Obamacare is fading in the wake of rising Senate opposition to the thousand pages of Mzz Pelosi's poisoned mush. The president continues to dither over what, if anything, to do about the war in Afghanistan, which he once called "the necessary war." Soon he won't be "Mr. President" so much as "Mr. Dithers." (Blondie and Dagwood would recognize him at once.)

The president's dithering on what to do in Afghanistan leads only to more opportunities to dither. He now has a controversy in his own house, with his ambassador in Afghanistan scoffing that sending more troops to Kabul will only prop up a corrupt nothingburger government. His commander in Kabul, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wants thousands more troops for a surge similar to the surge that won the war in Iraq. This is the kind of controversy no president needs, particularly when he's off to impress the world with what a great leader he is. He wouldn't have to suffer such indignities if he could make up his mind. Mr. Dithers has Dagwood Bumstead to blame for his stumbles, but a president doesn't have the luxury of a Dagwood.

Mr. Obama could have arrived in Beijing riding authentic momentum if he had only taken his teleprompter to Berlin for the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was invited by Angela Merkel, the chancellor of the reunited Germany, to join her and Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms hastened the collapse of the old Soviet Union. But Mr. Obama, who found a way to work in a quick trip to Copenhagen to lobby (unsuccessfully) for a Chicago Olympics, was too busy. He sent a videotaped speech in which he studiously avoided mentioning Ronald Reagan, whose flinty resolve to win the Cold War eventually erased that hideous scar of steel and concrete across the Berlin landscape. It's impossible to imagine Barack Obama, as eloquent as he can be, as John F. Kennedy ("ich bin ein Berliner") or Ronald Reagan ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall").

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Did Obama snub eastern European victims?: "The collapse of the Soviet Union apparently has not been all that welcome by Mr. Obama’s political base, the extreme Left Wing of American liberals. These folks have always had a soft spot in their hearts and minds for experiments in collectivism. Any anti-individualist polity is for these folks a progressive undertaking since by their lights humanity makes progress when it moves toward lumping all of us into a huge mass to be guided by the likes of Stalin, Hugo Chavez, or Fidel Castro, all of whom want to impose on it a one-size-fits-all way of life. So it is very likely that skipping the celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall was a calculated decision.”

Black Supremacist Murders White Cop: No mention of "hate crime": "While a massive memorial service for slain Officer Timothy Brenton neared its finish at KeyArena on Friday afternoon, fellow officers with the Seattle Police Department shot a man they believe to be responsible for Brenton’s death. The shooting occurred in Tukwila around 3 p.m., shortly before the memorial service concluded. Sources say the man is Christopher John Monfort. Law-enforcement sources said Monfort also is suspected of the Oct. 22 bombing and arson of a Seattle maintenance yard, where three police cars and an RV used as a mobile precinct were damaged. Before Monfort was identified, police found distinct evidence that leads them to believe the same person was involved in that crime and the Brenton shooting, sources said. A note threatening to kill police officers was left at the bombing site... Monfort provided this title for his project with the McNair program: “The Power of Citizenship Your Government Doesn’t Want You to Know About: How to Change the Inequity of the Criminal Justice System Immediately, Through Active Citizen Nullification of Laws, As a Juror.” In an abstract of his project, Monfort said he planned to “illuminate and further” the scholarship of Paul Butler, a law professor at George Washington University. Butler is a proponent of jury nullification. Butler has argued that such nullification may be particularly appropriate in cases where black defendants are charged with nonviolent crimes. “It is the moral responsibility of black jurors to emancipate some guilty black outlaws,” Butler wrote."

Obama Administration Intends to Purge Republicans From the Civil Service: "Remember how the Democrats reacted when the Bush Administration started replacing U.S. Attorneys? At least they were actually political appointees employed at the will and whim of the President.... It is a typical Washington process that many political appointees are able to take jobs within the civil service once their political appointment expires — usually at the conclusion of one administration. What often happens as well is Congressional staffers, before an election or shortly thereafter, will move over to the Executive Branch placed into the civil service, in effect, by appointment. So, for example, when George Bush became President in 2001, a number of Clinton political appointees became civil service employees. As a result, they became subject to civil service hiring and firing rules, which meant they could no longer be replaced simply for having been a Democratic appointee. Barack Obama is changing that. He intends to purge all Republicans from the federal bureaucracy retroactive to five years ago. Under his new rules, made retroactive for five years, the Office of Personnel Management will examine civil service employees who got their start as political appointees in the Bush administration and terminate those employees."

Pro-abortion Episcopalians: "Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood clinic director whose about-face on abortion prompted her to resign her job, says she's gotten flack for her decision from an unexpected quarter: her own church. Her Oct. 6 decision to leave Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas - after viewing an ultrasound-guided abortion of a 13-week-old fetus two weeks earlier - made headlines, especially when she ended up volunteering at the Coalition for Life center a few doors away. Her former employer filed a restraining order to silence Mrs. Johnson, but a judge threw out the case on Tuesday. Now she is facing a different kind of music at her parish, St. Francis Episcopal in nearby College Station, the home of Texas A&M University. Whereas clergy and parishioners welcomed her as a Planned Parenthood employee, now they are buttonholing her after Sunday services. "Now that I have taken this stand, some of the people there are not accepting of that," she told The Washington Times. "People have told me they disagree with my choice. One of the things I've been told is that as Episcopalians, we embrace our differences and disagreements. While I agree with that, I am not sure I can go to a place where I don't feel I am welcome." [More evidence that Episcopalians are Christian in name only: "Thou shalt not kill"?]

Bush warns of too much government: "Former President George W. Bush said Thursday that America must resist the "temptation" to allow the government to take over the private sector, taking a subtle shot at his Democratic successor by warning that too much state intervention and protectionism will squelch the economic recovery. As the Obama administration has made far-reaching moves into the auto, real estate, health care and financial sectors to fight the economic recession, Mr. Bush, without mentioning the president by name, said, "The role of government is not to create wealth but to create the conditions that allow entrepreneurs and innovators to thrive. "As the world recovers, we will face a temptation to replace the risk-and-reward model of the private sector with the blunt instruments of government spending and control. History shows that the greater threat to prosperity is not too little government involvement, but too much," said Mr. Bush, who has remained out of the limelight since leaving office and rarely criticizes his successor."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog 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 Paralipomena

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Friday, November 13, 2009



IS IDENTIFICATION IMPORTANT?



Consider these photos of two different snakes, which share a common territory and habitat. They look similar, but are 2 species-is it important to identify which is which? Well, one of them is utterly harmless, even beneficial as a predator of rodents. The other one is very dangerous, with an exceedingly deadly venom.

Is it important to identify which is which? If we are going to kill any snake we come upon, identification is not important. But if we hope to live and let live, we had better be able to identify them accurately.

In the wake of the Fort Hood jihadi massacre. our military and security authorities would do well to at least TRY to identify hostile or unreliable individuals amongst their personnel. This is obviously made more difficult considering the position of our elected Traitor-in-Chief, but these people have human lives in their hands, and need to think about protecting loyal Americans from jihadi "colleagues." And damn the careerist consequences.

A good place to start is just one little question: How many uauthorized e-mails is acceptable for a US Army major to exchange with an al-Qaeda-affiliated imam in Yemen?

SOURCE

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Paralysed by political correctness

From a press release from NPR:
NPR NEWS REPORTS: WALTER REED AND USUHS OFFICIALS DISCUSSED WHETHER NIDAL HASAN WAS “PSYCHOTIC” DURING SERIES OF MEETINGS BEGINNING IN 2008

NPR News has learned that key officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) held a series of meetings and conversations between spring 2008 and spring 2009 to discuss Nidal Hasan, and at one point questioned whether he was psychotic and mentally fit to be an Army psychiatrist. NPR correspondent Daniel Zwerdling has spoken with several officials and military psychiatrists from both institutions who are familiar with the meetings; one official who worked closely with the committee tells Zwerdling: “Put it this way. Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your fox hole.”

Excerpts of Zwerdling’s report are below; the complete story is available now at NPR.org [Here] Zwerdling will also have a report this evening on All Things Considered.
Zwerdling reports that a group of key officials from Walter Reed and USUHS met in spring 2008, as they do every month, to discuss issues surrounding the psychiatrists and other mental health professionals training at the institutions. One of the most perplexing items on their agenda: What should we do about Nidal Hasan? Participants in that meeting and subsequent conversations about Hasan reportedly included John Bradley, Chief of Psychiatry at Walter Reed; Robert Ursano, chairman of the psychiatry department at USUHS; Charles Engel, assistant chair of the psychiatry department and director of Hasan’s psychiatry fellowship; Dr. David Benedek, another assistant chair of psychiatry UHUHS; and Scott Moran, director of the psychiatric residency program at Walter Reed, according to colleagues and other sources who monitor the meetings.

Update: From a reader:
This quote from the NPR report sickened me: “Put it this way. Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your fox hole.” Isn't that pretty much the numero-uno criterion for being a soldier?

These doctors didn't want to serve alongside Hasan. But when they had the opportunity to stop him from serving with others, they chickened out. They should be dishonorably discharged and given the opposite of a Congressional Medal of Honor, whatever that is. I'll tell you what the real psychosis is: political correctness.

SOURCE

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Military brass wallow in 'diversity' fetish that caused Fort Hood tragedy and betrayed our troops

As we and the Manchester Union-Leader noted earlier, the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, escaped any preventive action because of a politically-correct obsession with "diversity," which made officers reluctant to report Hasan's extremist remarks in favor of terrorism and against non-Muslims, lest they be accused of discrimination or insensitivity.

Some military leaders, catering to liberal Congressional leaders and the Obama Administration, continue to cling tightly to the "diversity" dogma, demanding that those in the military keep silent rather than saying things that might call into question their "diversity" obsession: "Naval Academy senior commanders decided during the World Series to remove two Midshipmen from the color guard that appeared. What was their offense? The color guard was deemed too white and too male. There was accordingly a push to make the color guard more 'diverse.' Two members of the color guard were removed and replaced by a Pakistani and a woman to achieve the requisite 'diversity.' The Pakistani unfortunately forgot his cap and shoes. He himself had to be replaced at the last minute by one of the two middies removed earlier. The midshipmen have reportedly been ordered not to speak of these events."

Our government's obsession with "diversity" also created the climate in which officers were afraid to report the suspicious behavior of the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal M. Hasan. Although his anti-American, pro-terrorist views were common knowledge, "a fear of appearing discriminatory . . . kept officers from filing a formal written complaint," reports the Associated Press. As a result, he escaped any disciplinary action or review of his fitness.

The Fort Hood shooter had previously said that Muslims should rise up against the military, "repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers," was pleased by the terrorist murder of an army recruiter, and publicly called for the beheading or burning of non-Muslims, talking "about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire." But thanks to a politically-correct double standard, nothing was done to remove him from a position where he could harm others.

The lesson of the Fort Hood shootings is that applying politically-correct double standards, rather than treating people equally, can be lethal.

(Intelligence officials knew that Nidal Hasan, the soldier who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, was trying to contact Al Qaeda. He once attended the same mosque as 9/11 terrorists.)

In a desire to curry favor with the liberal Congress that funds it (and the Obama Administration), the military has increasingly adopted politically-correct policies that abandon equal treatment. One example is racial preferences in admissions to the military academies, imposed in the name of “diversity.” (In practice, “diversity” seems to mean crude “racial proportionality”: it is harder for Asians to be admitted to the academies than for whites and Hispanics, and harder for whites and Hispanics to be admitted than for African-Americans. Such preferences are of dubious legality under Supreme Court precedent.)

In this climate of political correctness and double standards, it is understandable that officers were afraid to file complaints about Hasan, for fear that they would incur the wrath of the “diversity” police.

Even now, the Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey, denies that the military failed to pick up the obvious warning signs about Hasan, and he is more concerned that the shootings will undermine the army’s commitment to “diversity,” than he is about the tragedy itself. He claims that a backlash against diversity would be an even "worse" tragedy than the one that took place at Fort Hood. He remains wedded to a policy of "zero tolerance" for criticism of "diversity," i.e., double standards. He seems more concerned that “diversity” will become a “casualty” of such shootings than that American soldiers will.

President Obama’s initial response to the tragedy last Thursday was embarrassing, even for some liberal journalists. Obama’s initial remarks about the tragedy came buried in the middle of a speech laced with “wildly disconnected” ramblings about an unrelated topic, starting with a “joking shout-out.” Even the liberal Boston Globe chided the president for a speech lacking in ”empathy” for the victims.

In an absurd display of political correctness, early media reports chose to harp on the false claim that the killer had PTSD (which he didn’t: he never even served overseas) or the unsupported claim that he had been subjected to harassment (support groups for Muslim soldiers say they have received no recent reports of harassment).

SOURCE

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THE DISASTER THAT WAS KELO V. NEW LONDON

By Neal Boortz

Thanks to a little Supreme Court decision we know as Kelo v. New London ... private property rights in America are basically nonexistent ... at least when it comes to government. Just like many freedoms and liberties we thought our government would never infringe upon, property rights got the proverbial guillotine chop in the Kelo decision. For those of you who are government educated, here's a quick reminder. Kelo v. New London essentially established that the government can seize private property and sell it to another private individual or corporation to develop. The reason? Increasing tax revenue. Simple as that.

Years later, the Kelo case is finally seeing some semblance of finality. The whole debacle started when Pfizer decided that it wanted to expand its facilities in New London. So the city of New London won the battle and was able to seize private homes and turn the property over to Pfizer. It was perhaps the worst Supreme Court decision we've ever seen. Years later, the condemned homes have been destroyed and the site is nothing but a bunch of weeds. That, it seems, is the way it will stay. Pfizer has decided that it is going to close up shop in New London and move elsewhere.

So there you go. The property that became the symbol of private property rights - the property that was seized by the government and turned over to a private entity for development - is now nothing but a pile of weeds with no plans for development

Don't you just love watching the power of government at work?

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

I am putting up today on EDUCATION WATCH an article that sets out how extensive was the support for Nazism on pre-war American university campuses. The "Anti-Zionism" that flourishes there today is part of an old-old story -- as is the support for socialism among ivory-tower intellectuals. Nazism was the exciting new form of socialism in the 30s and American universities lapped it up.

Fort Hood killer contacted Muslim extremists: "Fort Hood shooting suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been in contact with numerous Muslim extremists -- some of whom are under federal investigation -- before last week's rampage, two U.S. officials told The Washington Times on Wednesday. Maj. Hasan made some of the contacts while visiting known jihadist chat rooms on the Internet, according to one of The Times' sources, a senior FBI official. He said that several people with whom Maj. Hasan was in contact had been the focus of investigations by the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force. The other source, a military intelligence official, said those in contact with Maj. Hasan are located both in the U.S. and overseas. The official said they are "broadly known and characterized as Islamic extremists if not necessarily al Qaeda." Both officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said some of the names of those with whom Maj. Hasan was in contact will likely be released soon.

Will this brave black intellectual be charged with a hate crime?: "A prominent Columbia architecture professor punched a female university employee in the face at a Harlem bar during a heated argument about race relations, cops said yesterday. Police busted Lionel McIntyre, 59, for assault yesterday after his bruised victim, Camille Davis, filed charges. McIntyre and Davis, who works as a production manager in the school's theater department, are both regulars at Toast, a popular university bar on Broadway and 125th Street, sources said. The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about "white privilege" with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white, Friday night at 10:30 when fists started flying, patrons said. McIntyre, who is known as "Mac" at the bar, shoved Davis, and when the other patron and a bar employee tried to break it up, the prof slugged Davis in the face, witnesses said. "The punch was so loud, the kitchen workers in the back heard it over all the noise," bar back Richie Velez, 28, told The Post. "I was on my way over when he punched Camille and she fell on top of me." McIntyre had squabbled with Davis several weeks earlier over issues involving race, witnesses said. As soon as the professor threw the punch Friday, server Rob Dalton and another employee tossed him out."

British defence bureaucrats pocket £300m as British soldiers die in Afghanistan for lack of equipment: "Ministry of Defence bureaucrats have pocketed nearly £300million in bonuses while soldiers have been dying from lack of equipment. The civil servants have seen 'good performance' payments - including rewards for saving money - double. The pen-pushers also won extra cash for hitting targets for promoting diversity and improving health and safety. In one shocking example, two mandarins collected bonuses of £17,000 each - more than a year's basic pay for a squaddie in Helmand. But on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers have accused the Government of putting lives at risk by scrimping on military essentials including helicopters, radios and night goggles. MPs, soldiers' families and campaign groups condemned the 'scandalous' waste of money. They said it could have been used to refit six Chinook troop carrying helicopters, desperately needed in Afghanistan, which have been confined to their hangers since 2001 after a massive MoD contract blunder."

Government health care: Back to the plantation: "Black leaders constantly remind Americans of our racism. Should not these same leaders protest the expansion of government control contained in the health-care reform bill currently working its way through Congress? Here’s why. Notwithstanding their rhetoric of freedom and empowerment, many prominent black leaders appear content to send blacks back to the government plantation—where a small number of Washington elites make decisions for blacks who aren’t in the room. Why do minority leaders not favor alternatives that demonstrate faith in the intelligence and dignity of people to manage their own lives?”

Military discipline slipping: "The armed forces guard individual rights, but they are governed by different rules from civilian organizations. In the 1986 Goldman v. Weinberger case, the Supreme Court upheld military regulations barring Jews from wearing yarmulkes while in uniform. Constitutional rights and freedoms guaranteed to civilians are subordinate to military necessity. Now the Army is inviting more petitions from individuals seeking specal accommodations on a "case-by-case basis". Having abandoned sound practice without justification, the Army will have no principle on which to stand. These accommodations will erode military culture, fueling doubts about the judgment of leadership and resentment of special treatment for religious minorities. This would be the case even if there were no reports of a Muslim extremist shouting ‘Allahu Akhbar!’ while murdering fellow soldiers at Fort Hood.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog 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 Paralipomena

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Thursday, November 12, 2009



Time to Jump to Some Conclusions

Thirteen brave soldiers are dead today because the United States Army decided to put the tender sensibilities of radical Muslims above the personal safety of the American people. An overstatement? Not hardly. And to make matters worse, it is now clear that under Commander in Chief Barack Hussein Obama, the Army intends to continue this lunacy -- no matter how many innocent lives are lost. And no matter how thoroughly it devastates our army's ability to combat terrorism both abroad, and at home.

Lest there be any doubt about the Obama policies, consider his admonition immediately following Nidal Malik Hasan's terrorist attack on U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood. No sooner had Hasan finished mowing down the unarmed "infidels" ... no sooner had the assassin's screams of "Allah Akbar" faded from his lips ... than Barack Obama warned the American people “don’t jump to conclusions.”

Now, lest anyone think that by this, Obama meant not to jump to the conclusion that Hasan was the shooter, such, unfortunately, is not the case. Said the President shortly after the massacre, "This past Thursday, on a clear Texas afternoon, an Army psychiatrist walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, and began shooting his fellow soldiers."

No, what this President meant is clear to any who listened as he soft-peddled radical Islam throughout his presidential campaign. His words are clear to any who heard his speech to the Egyptian parliament apologizing for America’s intolerance. They are clear to all who know that his first call to a foreign leader was to Palestinian strongman Mahmoud Abbas They are clear to those who recall that his first formal interview was to Al Arabiya, when he condemned, not Islamic terrorism, but Israeli settlements. And they are abundantly clear to any who remember Obama’s own words from page 261 of his self-adulating autobiography Audacity of Hope. Apologizing for what he considers the horror Muslims have suffered at the hands of everyday Americans, he writes:
“They [the Muslims] have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

Little wonder, then that Obama has, at best, consented with his silence as his Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and his top military commanders clear Nidal Malik Hasan of any radical Islamic motives. And even less wonder that he has allowed his Army Chief of Staff, Gen. George Casey, to take such patent idiocy a far step further.

Indeed, asked by ABC’s George Stephanopolous if the Amy had “dropped the ball” by not recognizing any of a hundred and one different warning signs that Hasan had become a dangerous radical, Casey recited the Obama Administration’s official mantra. We shouldn’t “jump to conclusions,” he intoned, based on “early tidbits.”

And what were those “early tidbits?” In 2001, Hasan attended the notorious Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, where he listened in rapt attention as the fiery, anti-American imam Anwar Al-Awlaki encouraged his followers to attack the infidels. Not so coincidentally, among Hasan’s fellow attendees at the Center were two of the September 11 terrorists.

During his time at Walter Reed Hospital and the Uniformed Services University, Hasan, according to the New York Times, became increasingly hostile towards the War on Terror and Americans who defended it. Wrote the Times:
“A former classmate in the master's degree program said Major Hasan gave a PowerPoint presentation about a year ago in an environmental health seminar titled "Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam." He did not socialize with his classmates, other than to argue in the hallways on why the wars were wrong … [S]ome students complained to their professors about Major Hasan.”

Even more recently, according to an ABC News Online article, intelligence sources had a level of knowledge that Hasan was in communication with al Qaeda assets abroad. And according to the highly reliable web site, the Northeast Intelligence Network, “this and information similar but not directly related to such communications became a ‘political issue’ between government agencies and officials ‘at the policy making levels’ of the administration.”

So, in view of all this – and the 13 martyred soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas -- are the Obama Administration and the U.S. Army, at last, ready to start heeding reports of radical activity among Muslim soldiers – before more shots are fired and additional lives are lost?

Not a chance. Here is the Obama Administration’s official response, as enunciated by Gen. Casey on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning: “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” That, of course, is sheer idiocy. And it is time for Barack Hussein Obama to step to the fore and declare once and for all – honestly and openly – whether he still intends to “stand with” the radical Muslims even to the extent of protecting “diversity” over American lives. If not, we have every right to “jump” to our own conclusions.

SOURCE

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Obama's arrogance of power

Last year's financial meltdown rightfully destroyed former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan's reputation as an infallible "wise man," but he said something wise in his 2007 memoirs, describing a constitutional amendment he'd been "pushing for years." Wrote Greenspan: "Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office. I'm only half joking."

It's no laughing matter. After all, what sort of person wants the job badly enough to spend years living out of a suitcase, begging for cash, glad-handing through primary states, and saying things that no intelligent person could possibly believe? Greenspan's point was that people who seek the presidency today display a pathological power lust that ought to make us uncomfortable, given the powers the modern president enjoys.

George Washington was called "the American Cincinnatus," after the Roman hero who took power reluctantly and returned humbly to his plow when crisis passed. That's the model Americans once expected presidents to follow. Things have changed, and not for the better.

The last candidate to pay tribute to the Cincinnatus model was 1996 GOP contender Bob Dole, who praised the virtues of his birthplace, Russell, Kan., insisting it was either the White House or "home." It turned out that Dole left "home" deliberately vague. After losing, he returned to his condo at the Watergate, making bucks as a lobbyist and Viagra pitchman.

As for the current POTUS, "he's always wanted to be president," according to Obama's longtime friend and advisor Valerie Jarrett. No surprise, then, that, as Newsweekeditor Jon Meacham put it in a profile of Obama earlier this year, he "likes and enjoys power," even "revels" in it.

In a fascinating article, presidential scholar Richard Ellis writes that "in the beginning, the presidency was envisioned not as an office to be enjoyed but as a place of stern duty." "Powerful cultural norms" told 19th-century presidents to approach the role humbly, with a keen awareness that power corrupts. In public and in private, early presidents often acknowledged their deficiencies. "No event could have filled me with greater anxieties," Washington said of his election. Likewise, in his first inaugural, Jefferson worried that the task he'd undertaken was "above my talents."

Today, Ellis explains, the public demands greater confidence from presidential aspirants. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tells us that when he congratulated Barack Obama for a "particularly fine" speech Obama made as a freshman senator, Obama "said quietly, 'I have a gift, Harry.'" Reid reports that Obama said that with "deep humility." We'll have to take his word for it.

Calvin Coolidge, a genuinely humble man and a fine president, wrote in his autobiography that it was "a major source of safety to the country" for the president "to know that he is not a great man." Few of our recent presidents display Coolidge's self-awareness.

Newsweek's Meacham reports that Barack Obama relishes "the capacity to shape reality in his image and by his lights." An interesting phrase, that -- reminiscent of the Bush aide who bragged to reporter Ron Suskind that "we're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." And yet, as we learned during the Bush years, reality has a way of fighting back.

Obama's supporters have embraced the epithet Suskind's source coined. They fancy themselves members of the "reality-based community." Yet they doggedly defend a president for whom the word "hubris" might have been invented -- one who thinks that the government, under his direction, can rationally reshape the one-sixth of the U.S. economy devoted to health care.

Our president describes his budget as a "blueprint" for America's future, and believes that, with the proper mix of social workers and soldiers, we can bring orderly governance to Afghanistan, which has never enjoyed it. We'd do far better if our presidents had Coolidge's sense of his own limitations and of government's as well. It's easy enough to blame the overconfident, self-aggrandizing characters who seek the office. But at the end of the day, we're the ones who reward them. Unless and until we seek out candidates who share Coolidge's modesty, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.

SOURCE

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Jobs, jobs, jobs

The news will always return to unemployment when other topics fade. "Any time you have unemployment this high, it is the number one story, whether it's being written about or not," says David Winston, a Republican pollster who for months has urged GOP officeholders to focus steadily on the issue. Double-digit unemployment is the default top story of the year; whatever else happens, the national conversation will come back to unemployment as long as the jobless rate remains unacceptably high.

You don't have to be a Republican strategist to agree. "Obama's focus on health care rather than jobs, when the economy is still so fragile ... could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused," writes Robert Reich, former Clinton secretary of labor and a supporter of nationalized health care. "While affordable health care is critically important to Americans, making a living is more urgent."

Reich wrote those words nearly a week before we learned, last Friday, that unemployment had hit 10.2 percent. And on that Friday, the news about President Obama was that he had delayed, by a day, his pep talk to House Democrats preparing to pass the health care bill. Obama stayed in the news over the weekend with highly visible statements on health care.

What a difference from the first days of his administration when -- with unemployment at 7.6 percent -- the president seemed totally focused on jobs. "Experts agree that if nothing is done, the unemployment rate could reach double digits," Obama said in his weekly address on Jan. 24, urging Congress to quickly pass a proposed $1 trillion stimulus bill. The nightmare "double digit" scenario became Obama's mantra. "If we don't act immediately ... the national unemployment rate will approach double digits," he said in early February at a town hall in Florida. "Approach double digits," he repeated at a speech in Indiana. "Double digits," he wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post.

The only way to prevent unemployment from approaching 10 percent, Obama said, was to pass the stimulus, which in the end cost $787 billion. With the stimulus, the administration claimed, unemployment would stay below 8 percent. Without it, joblessness could climb to 9 percent.

Now, with the stimulus passed and unemployment at 10.2 percent, the White House is not only distracted by health care but divided on its own record. On one hand, Obama and Vice President Biden say the stimulus is working, and will work more in the future. On the other, top economic adviser Christina Romer suggests the stimulus has run its course and unemployment will likely "remain at severely elevated levels" through 2010.

The stimulus is the one big issue that is entirely Obama's, and he's losing support on it. "He has not managed to accomplish the basic thing that the American people want, and that is to provide some sense that the economy is going in the right direction," says David Winston.

On Monday, Biden -- who famously admitted that the Obama economic team didn't really understand the depth of the economic crisis -- headed to Detroit to headline fundraisers for two Democratic congressman at the MGM Grand Casino Hotel. It cost $5,000 to get into the VIP reception. Biden was met by a Republican ad, "Get Back to Work." "We've lost 178,000 jobs [in Michigan] since Congress passed the massive spending bill President Obama promised would help with jobs," the ad says. "While he's here, will the vice president be working on ways to reduce an unemployment rate of 15.3 percent, the highest of any state in the country?" The question answered itself; there were fundraisers to attend.

In coming weeks, Obama will be involved in contentious Senate fighting over health care. He may travel to Copenhagen for international global-warming talks. And he'll be in Oslo to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize -- a few days after the next set of unemployment numbers are due. There will be a lot of news. But for millions of Americans, joblessness will remain the big story, no matter what the president does.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

I have been doing some revisions to my home page lately -- mainly putting up more pictures. See here (Backup here).

Obama Fail is an interesting blog. From them I learned that Obama is seen as "weak" in China. The only people he threatens are Americans.

Airport rules changed after Ron Paul aide detained: "An angry aide to Rep. Ron Paul, an iPhone and $4,700 in cash have forced the Transportation Security Administration to quietly issue two new rules telling its airport screeners they can only conduct searches related to airplane safety. In response, the American Civil Liberties Union is dropping its lawsuit on behalf of Steve Bierfeldt, the man who was detained in March and who recorded the confrontation on his iPhone as TSA and local police officers spent half an hour demanding answers as to why he was carrying the money through Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The new rules, issuedin September and October, tell officers "screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security" and that large amounts of cash don't qualify as suspicious for purposes of safety. "We had been hearing of so many reports of TSA screeners engaging in wide-ranging fishing expeditions for illegal activities," said Ben Wizner, a staff lawyer for the ACLU, pointing to reports of officers scanning pill-bottle labels to see whether the passenger was the person who obtained the prescription as one example. He said screeners get a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, strictly to keep weapons and explosives off planes, not to help police enforce other laws."

UT: Salt Lake City passes gay rights laws with Mormon backing: "With a historic endorsement from the Mormon church, the Salt Lake City Council unanimously passed a pair of ordinances making it illegal to discriminate against gays in housing and employment. Tuesday’s action was the first time the Utah-based church — which has been steadfast in its opposition to gay marriage — has publicly supported gay rights legislation.” [A Mormon crackup?]

A nightmare for the American dream: "As Members of Congress consider whether to retain federal death taxes, they should ponder the principal reasons why they should join prior Congresses and repeal this tax, says William W. Beach, Director of the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation. Death taxes discourage savings and investment: For those Americans who think that their estates may one day pay federal death taxes, the tax sends a signal that it is better to consume today than invest and make more money in the future. Instead of putting their money in the hands of entrepreneurs or investing more in their own economic endeavors, Americans are encouraged to consume it now rather than pay taxes on it later.”

Big business hearts regulation: "It’s commonly supposed that big business dislikes regulation. Intuitively, the idea seems plausible enough. There’s only one problem: it’s wrong. Almost exactly wrong. Big business can absorb pernicious regulation fairly easily: they have in-house legal departments, they have various economies of scale working in their favor, and the cost of compliance with regulation per unit of output is trivial when compared to what their smaller competitors suffer. Big businesses, all too often, love regulation. They especially love rules and restrictions that shaft their competition.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog 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 Paralipomena

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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