In Defense of "The Oogedy-Boogedy Branch of the GOP"



Every time the GOP takes a beating at the ballot box there are calls to get rid of those doggone social conservatives -- or as Kathleen Parker refers to them, the "oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP." This is a fascinating argument -- well, fascinating if you like watching people who don't even realize that they're doing little more than projecting their own personal biases onto the Republican Party and calling it political strategy.

Atheists, agnostics, Elvis worshippers, Jedis, Satanists -- it doesn't matter; they're all welcome in the Republican Party (Ok, not the Satanists so much. They're creepy losers). However, we live in an overwhelmingly Christian nation founded on Christian principles -- and reaching out to people who have Christian values makes so much sense that even the Democrats hold their nose and do it -- a little.

Additionally, maybe it's just my imagination, but didn't we just run a candidate for President who's notoriously unfriendly to social conservatives? I'm also pretty sure I remember some sort of "wrinkly white haired guy" who almost completely ignored issues like gay marriage and abortion on the campaign trail, even though Obama had huge weaknesses on those issues. So, if a non-socially conservative GOP is such a huge winner at the polls, shouldn't John McCain be gleefully preparing to knife the conservative movement in the back from the White House -- as opposed to gleefully preparing to knife the conservative movement in the back from the Senate?

I guess that's one of those questions we'll never be able to answer. You know, sort of like: if socially conservative issues like opposition to gay marriage are such huge political losers, how is it that those issues keep winning at the ballot box? Moreover, why is it that Barack Obama -- who has done everything except be a flower girl at a gay wedding to let people know that he really supports gay marriage -- adamantly claims to believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman? This is not exactly up there with the Bermuda Triangle on the mystery meter, my friends....

If the GOP is going to tell 26% of American voters to take a hike, who, pray tell, are we going to replace them with? The 500,000 people who voted for Bob Barr? Maybe we can get Scott McClellan, Colin Powell, and Christopher Buckley to start voting Republican again. That's not quite 26%, but it's a start, right?

It's also worth noting that if the GOP wants to reach out to demographic groups that we're not doing very well with, like Hispanics and black Americans, socially conservative issues are one of the best ways to do it. "About one-third of Catholics in the United States are now Hispanic." Moreover, 90% of Hispanics are members of some branch of the Christian faith. The same goes for black Americans, "85 percent (of whom) say religion is very important in their lives."

More here

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

Lessons from Britain Could Save the GOP?

Much has been written lately regarding how the Republican Party might re-form itself into a winning operation. Of course, this debate has been around for a long time, but our recent losses have reignited the debate. This time, however (perhaps having learned from liberals that "progressive" sounds better) -- the moderates have re-branded themselves as "modernizers", "reformers", or "pragmatists". And to give their revolution some historical credibility, they have given themselves a new hero: British Conservative Party Leader David Cameron.

Cameron has repositioned his party closer to the center of the political spectrum. However, moderation in itself has not always worked for him. In fact, one of his biggest plans to seize the middle-ground blew up in his face. After his election as party leader, Cameron almost immediately adopted environmentalism as his key issue and launched a new party slogan: "Go Green, Vote Blue" (Blue being the color symbolic of the party). That slogan is long gone today (it's one of the few pieces of the Cameron experiment not to have succeeded). Now, to be sure, environmentalism is still a big part of the party's appeal. Actually, the party has always been seen as strong on that front considering the left-wing Labour Party's association with not-so-green labor interests such as coal miners. However, it is still safe to say that the "Go Green" marketing gimmick flopped.

Most of the program did, however, succeed. If you go to the party's website or watch their ads you will see a much more hopeful message than you did a few years ago. Gone is the old logo, a rather intimidating hand grasping a torch. It has been replaced by a very happy-looking tree. Everything about the new message is hopeful, sunny, and forward looking -- and the focus is now on "quality of life" issues like family, healthcare and education. Granted, the old "taxes and national security" message is still there, but it comes packaged as part of a larger message that the Conservative Party cares about people. Cameron also makes a point of being modern and tech-savvy, as illustrated by his "WebCameron" video blogs. These are all fantastic moves, and the Republican Party should move quickly to implement them (of course, technology is philosophically neutral). By the way, the people who are broadening this discussion here in America are conservative governors like Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal. They are the real "American Camerons" in my mind.

Another big part of the Cameron approach was solidify and reassure all wings of his party, including the "traditionalist" right wing. In fact, one of the first moves was to give plum positions in his "Shadow Cabinet" (essentially the cabinet in-waiting) to the two right wingers he defeated to win the party leadership. Runner-up David Davis was given the hugely powerful post of Shadow Home Secretary, while third place candidate Liam Fox became Shadow Secretary of State for Defense. Furthermore, two of Cameron's predecessors as party leader scored influential positions as well, with William Hague (leader from 1997-2001) becoming Shadow Foreign Secretary and Iain Duncan Smith (leader from 2001-2003) heading up the party's new Social Justice Policy Group. All of these people became genuine players on the Cameron team, and Cameron has benefited from this inclusive approach. Far from jettisoning the right wing or the traditional leaders, Cameron has made a point of including them in his revolution.

Another thing that David Cameron would never consider is taking social issues off the table. In fact, he is largely responsible for putting them back on the table as a way of making his party look more compassionate than the left wing alternatives. Now, the Brits don't deal with the same social issues we do - abortion is considered a non-issue and the main issue is keeping marriages and families from breaking apart rather than debating gay marriage. However, Cameron has revolutionized the social debate by hijacking the left wing term "social justice" and lumping the protection of marriage and the family in with other "social justice" issues such as healthcare and education. Of course, that wasn't really a Cameron idea. It was the brainchild of the more "traditionalist" former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who founded the "Centre for Social Justice".

Cameron saw the genius of Duncan Smith's idea, made it a major piece of the platform, and put Duncan Smith himself in charge of party policy on that front. So, again, Cameron didn't throw the SoCons overboard - he incorporated them, revitalized them, and utilized them to his advantage. In fact, family issues seem to animate Cameron like few others. Watch his recent rant about a high-profile domestic violence case and British social services - I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that this man doesn't care about social issues.

On some issues, Cameron has even put forward some proposals that (for Britain) are extremely conservative. For instance, he has been extremely solid on reforming the UK's bloated welfare state. Instead of swinging to the center and embracing these big government programs, Cameron is proposing a welfare-to-work program he says is "the biggest shake-up of the welfare state for 60 years." One might point out that Margaret Thatcher took office only 29 years ago, so if Cameron can live up to his rhetoric, then he actually intends to go further than Thatcher in his crusade to get Brits off welfare.

The key thing to remember about David Cameron is that he dramatically changed the way his party approaches the issues. He shifted the focus onto new issues and made conservatives think of themselves as smiling, forward-looking change agents rather than brooding, tax-obsessed fear-mongers. Still, he didn't change the basic values that the party holds dear. In a lot of ways he's like Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. Both are seen as a little moderate because they try to be optimistic pragmatists rather than ideologues, but they also fit into the broad conservative mainstream in their respective nations.

More here

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

ELSEWHERE

As readers here are presumably aware, I no longer maintain a specialized Obama site. Any comments from me about Obama now appear here on this site. There are however other Obama-focused sites still up. This one has some good posts up

An amusing solution to traffic problems here. Have the government design and build the cars! You will be lucky to get one and they will break down all the time.

Stupid Leftist attempt to drive away Britain's best industries rolled back: "Alistair Darling will announce tomorrow he has bowed to the threat of businesses quitting Britain by saying he will introduce a tax exemption on foreign dividends. The move on foreign dividends, for which businesses have campaigned hard, was rejected last year by Treasury ministers, who warned that the cost of such an exemption would run into hundreds of millions of pounds. But the chancellor's move, to be unveiled in his prebudget report, underlines the government's determination to present its fiscal plan as business-friendly and to avoid a haemorrhaging of tax revenues as a result of companies moving abroad. In recent months several high-profile companies have announced that they are moving their headquarters to other countries, including WPP, Shire, United Business Media, Charter, Regus and Henderson. Darling's advisers hope the exemption to be announced tomorrow will stem the flow."

Good! New privatizations to help offset bank nationalizations in Britain: "A string of state-owned household names including the Met Office, mapmaker Ordnance Survey and the Forestry Commission, are being prepared for sale by the government in the next two years to raise cash for the stretched public purse. Alistair Darling, the chancellor, is thought to have drawn up a list of 10 companies to offload, including the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster. He will outline the programme in the prebudget report tomorrow alongside details of a Whitehall efficiency drive. Several companies will now be groomed for sale by the Shareholder Executive, the body charged with improving the government's performance as a shareholder. Many of the smaller assets being considered for sale were sized up by the Conservatives in the mid-1990s, when Lord Heseltine succeeded in privatising the commercial arm of the Atomic Energy Authority but failed to sell the Forestry Commission. Channel 4 is excluded for the moment but will be assessed by the new communications minister, Lord Carter, before a decision is made. A backlog of maintenance will probably keep British Waterways from being sold, while the Royal Mint and the Land Registry are more likely to be offloaded."

Jobs bonanza for British pen-pushers: "There has never been a better time to look for a new job - so long as you are an equality and diversity manager, a home-to-school transport service manager, or a senior play pathfinder. While thousands of private sector workers are being made redundant, local authorities and government departments are still creating a plethora of obscure pen-pushing posts at taxpayers' expense. These roles offer salaries of up to $100,000, a 37-hour week and enviable job security. Jobs on offer range from an integrated whole systems care pathway manager at Camden Primary Care Trust to an appointment for a principal nuisance response officer at Reading borough council. According to the council, the latter "exciting" role entails the management of three nuisance response officers as well as three "advice shops" as part of an effort to devise solutions to antisocial behaviour. A spokeswoman for the council - whose members have recently called for officers to "maximise efficiency" in the face of a bleak financial outlook - defended the appointment, saying: "The job is definitely an essential job which the council needs and is vital to the service." The London borough of Newham seems to be undaunted by tough times. Last week the council found $80,000 to create a post as a casework support services manager for a burgeoning team of administrators, co-ordinators, occupational therapists, handymen and surveyors within its Home Improvement Agency (HIA)."

Richly rewarded bureaucrats in Britain: "Nearly 200 public sector "fat cats" are earning more than [Prime Minister] Gordon Brown, according to a new rich list published today. Executives paid at the taxpayer's expense are enjoying record salaries, huge bonuses, job security and perks that are the envy of those in the business world. The list identifies 387 people earning more than $300,000 a year. Half of them earn more than the prime minister, who is paid $350,000. Four receive packages totalling at least $2m. James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), the agency charged with introducing the ID card, enjoys a home-to-work travel allowance of $20,000, equal to the salary of an office junior in many firms. The public even has to fork out for the 40% tax on this perk. Hall, 54, has need of the allowance as the owner of Barlaston Hall, an 18th-century pile in Staffordshire which is 160 miles from his office in Whitehall... Bernard Herdan, 61, a fellow IPS director who lives in a former Victorian rectory in the Bedfordshire village of Swineshead, received a $20,000 home-to-work allowance as part of his $300,000 package."

Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan to get life saving anti-sniper device : "British and American forces fighting the guerilla insurgence in Iraq and Afghanistan could soon be protected by an anti-sniper device that can pinpoint the position of the shooter within a fraction of a second. The palm-sized device designed by Qinetiq, the British defence firm that was once the government research laboratories, is pinned to the uniform and uses acoustic technology to calculate the exact position of the rifle fire. Then a electronic voice passes on the "bearing and range" to the soldier allowing him to jump to safety and return fire. The machine has already been purchased by the Americans for deployment in the New Year and the British are looking at a vehicle mounted version. After roadside bombs, snipers have been the biggest cause of the 301 British fatalities in both wars, and army chiefs are convinced the device could save dozens of lives."It is all about saving guys' lives," said Don Steinman, one of the leaders of the project at Qinetiq North America who developed the device called EARS for Early Attack Reaction System.

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 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

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

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)

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

Do the Obama crowd really love Europe?

I reproduce below a small part of a very erudite essay by John Fonte headed: "The World is My Constituency. Are liberals rejecting the liberal-internationalist tradition?". Fonte claims, rightly, I think, that the Democrat elite these days don't really like Europe very much after all. They want to build an entirely new world system and Europe plays only a small part in that.

What I think Fonte misses is WHY the Donks have that focus. It is simply that they are anti-American. Europe served for a while as an alternative model to the USA, just as the Soviet Union did in earlier times. But in the end the USA and the EU are too similar. France has done a lot of privatization, Germany always was very capitalist and there is more school choice in Sweden than there is in the USA. And one part of the EU (Britain) even speaks English!

So what the Democrat elite propose instead is a system that is altogether new -- something very different from anything that has gone before -- a "new world order" (to use a much abused phrase). They want an internationalized world where all local or national loyalties are gradually erased or made irrelevant. The outlines of this new global system are of course vague and it is truly amazing that the one part of such a system that actually exists right now -- economic globalization -- somehow does not seem to be part of the deal. Expecting consistency from Leftists is too much to ask, of course.

But in the most basic way, they ARE consistent: Their focus is really on the USA as it exists today, not on anything outside it. "Non-American is good" is their underlying theme. And since the USA is a major player in economic globalization, their hostility to economic globalization is perfectly consistent. So in the end they are typically American, whether they like it or not. As Fonte also notes: "The same Harris poll asked: "Do you think of yourself more as a citizen of the U.S. or a citizen of the world?" The result among registered voters: 83 percent American citizens".

So the Donks are just as America-focused as any other American. It is just that their focus is negative. Instead of loving America they despise it -- and anything non-American will do in a pinch as an alternative. The "global" ideal is just a vague version of extreme anti-Americanism.

They cannot openly acknowledge the depth of their anti-Americanism, of course. Americans are overwhelmingly a patriotic people so to set out openly how much they despise America would be electoral death. But Leftism just IS hatred of the status quo and America is a very large lump of the status quo.

It is interesting that right up to JFK, the Democrats were vocally patriotic. They were less extreme in those days. In those days they hated only some parts of the prevailing system. Now they hate just about all of it. And Sarah Palin embodies all that they hate. That they hate her there is no conceivable doubt and that she also embodies traditional America is also clear.

`We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy," declared Barack Obama in accepting the Democratic nomination. Is that still true? Peter Beinart analyzed the liberal-internationalist tradition in the summer issue of World Affairs, arguing that Wilson and FDR's optimistic vision of liberal internationalism, grounded in collective security and collective peace, confronts a rival Republican vision that he correctly describes as "conservative internationalism" rather than isolationism. The Republican internationalist tradition, from Henry Cabot Lodge to Reagan to McCain (as opposed to the more anti-interventionist Borah-Taft-Paul school), sees the world as a dangerous place. It is less optimistic about human nature and focused more on military alliances than on international institutions, Beinart tells us. Fair enough.

The problem with Obama's oratory and Beinart's thesis is that the traditional framework of liberal internationalism is dying. Liberal internationalism is first of all inter-national, concerned with relations between sovereign nation-states. As practiced by Wilson, FDR, and Truman, liberal internationalism meant American leadership while working with other nations in alliances and in creating new international organizations to promote peace and collective security, such as the United Nations. While they were unquestionably internationalists, those Democrats were also nationalists, pursuing American interests and willing to use force to secure them. While they were mostly Wilsonians, to borrow Walter Russell Mead's formulation, they were also quite willing to employ Hamiltonian (which is to say, economic) and defense-oriented Jacksonian means. Mead specifically mentions the World War II bombing of Japanese and German cities as a Jacksonian turn. In sum, they were national progressives, not transnational progressives.

Today, in the major precincts of mainstream American liberalism, the merely international is passe; the transnational, or global, is ascendant. As John Ruggie of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government puts it, "Postwar institutions including the United Nations were built for an inter-national world, but we have entered a global world. International institutions were designed to reduce external friction, between states; our challenge today is to devise more inclusive forms of global governance."

Typical of leading law-school opinion is a comment in May 2008 by the dean of Georgetown University Law School, Alexander Aleinikoff, who was general counsel of the immigration service under Clinton. Aleinikoff envisions new transnational political authorities above and beyond American constitutional democracy. He writes that we should expect the "development and strengthening of other political institutions - regional, transnational, some global . . . exercising what will be perceived as legitimate legal and coercive authority. . . . That is, a decline in citizenship in the nation-state is likely to be accompanied by new kinds of citizenships associated with `polities' that tax and spend, organize armies and police, establish courts, and promulgate what are perceived to be binding norms. There is no reason that standard accounts of citizenship that link governance and a people cannot be stated at the appropriate level of abstraction to apply to new forms of political association." Aleinikoff's account may be read as both predictive and normative, an indication that American elites not only believe that our constitutional democracy will be subordinated to global authorities but also desire that this come to pass....

All indications are that an Obama administration will move beyond traditional liberal internationalism of the Wilson-FDR-JFK variety to transnationalism. Ultimately this means that the evolving norms of international law would trump the U.S. Constitution.

A Harris poll taken for the Bradley Project on America's National Identity (I participated in the project) asked: "When there is a conflict between the U.S. Constitution and international law, which one should be the highest legal authority for Americans?" Sixty-six percent of registered voters preferred the Constitution, 16 percent put international law first, and 17 percent were undecided. The same Harris poll asked: "Do you think of yourself more as a citizen of the U.S. or a citizen of the world?" The result among registered voters: 83 percent American citizens, 12 percent global citizens, 4 percent not sure.

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

Interviews With Obama Voters

On Election day twelve Obama voters were interviewed extensively right after they voted, to learn how the news media impacted their knowledge of what occurred during the campaign. These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience. The rather shocking video below seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media clutter and which did not.



(Via Right Bias)

Rather amazing that they think the GOP currently controls Congress. On the other hand, it is rather cheering to think Pelosi & Co have made so little impact. And the fact that Sarah Palin so strongly made it through into consciousness is very encouraging if she runs in 2012. No wonder the Donks and the media (but I repeat myself) are so afraid of her.

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

ELSEWHERE

Tim Blair has a good laugh at the lily-livered shrieks emanating from the Left over Sarah Palin's visit to a turkey slaughterhouse. How do they think turkey arrives on their Thanksgiving dinner plates? Let them all eat vegie-Turkey (presuming there is such a thing)! Aborting healthy babies is no trouble to them but killing a turkey is like Wow!

Lawyer says alcohol testing device is "racist"‏: "A lawyer representing a man charged with drunken driving claims Connecticut's breathalyzers discriminate against blacks. Attorney James O. Ruane represents 40-year-old Tyrone Brown of Norwalk, who was arrested April 9 by state police on Interstate 95 in Fairfield. In a motion filed Tuesday in Bridgeport Superior Court, Ruane asked a judge to suppress his client's breathalyzer test results. He contends the device used by state police and most local police departments, the Intoxilyzer 5000, discriminates against blacks. Ruane says research shows that the lung capacity of a black man is 3 percent smaller than a white man and, therefore, black men's test results vary from the sobriety standard set by the device."

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 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

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

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)

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

Google have found a new way to harass conservative bloggers

I get the following message from Google when I query why this blog is allegedly blocked:

Your blog is locked

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on November 19, 2008. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.

I have had blogs classed as spam by Google before and when I challenged it, I used to get the spam classification lifted within a day or two. I first saw a change of policy with my original Obama blog. They classed it as spam and I challenged that repeatedly but they have ignored me. It is now over a MONTH and they are still treating it as a spam blog.

They have three levels of harassment. The most serious is to prevent anybody seeing anything at all on the blog. The blog is effectively deleted. I have never suffered that one so far.

The second level is to leave the blog up but prevent any new postings on the blog. They did that a few months back to GREENIE WATCH but lifted it promptly when I protested.

The third level is to permit continued posting but make you do a very difficult letter-copying task before each post. That is what they subjected my original Obama blog to. And they have kept that restriction in place. In an act of small mercy, however, they have not carried through on their threat to delete the blog entirely.

But the harassment of this blog is a weird mixture of the second and third procedures. They SAY that posting is blocked (level two) but it is not in fact. Only level 3 (preliminary task) is in operation. And that restriction does not look like it is going to go away.

So I infer that they have concluded that level 1 and 2 harassment is a bit uncool so are applying permanent level 3 harassment to any blog that they dislike. They have decided that conservatives like me will be burdened permanently with what is supposed to be only a temporary restriction.

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

THE GREAT BUSH `DEREGULATION' MYTH

By Jeff Jacoby

We've heard it again and again: The financial crisis was caused by the Bush administration's reckless plunge into deregulation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, blames the mess on "the Bush administration's eight long years of failed deregulation policies." Billionaire investor George Soros declares that "excessive deregulation is at the root of the current crisis." Nouriel Roubini, the widely-quoted New York University economist, pins it on "these Bush hypocrites, who spewed for years the glory of unfettered Wild West laissez-faire jungle capitalism." A New York Times editorial pronounces the American financial system "the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies." President Jimmy Carter attributes it to the "atrocious economic policies of the Bush administration," particularly "deregulation and . . . a withdrawal of supervision of Wall Street."

Deregulators run amok undoubtedly make a flamboyant culprit. But do they exist? Should we really be taking seriously the claim that the past eight years have been characterized by letting "the market run wild"? Granted, there has been significant recent legislation easing financial restrictions. Most often mentioned is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which, as The New York Times described it on Monday, "removed barriers between commercial and investment banks that had been instituted to reduce the risk of economic catastrophes." Some argue that the law, which allowed traditional banks and investment firms to be affiliated under one holding company, helped bring on the credit meltdown. Even if true, how was that George W. Bush's fault? The law was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, after being passed by lopsided majorities in both houses of Congress.

Now, this is not to say that Bush hasn't also been responsible for legislation having a decided impact on the country's regulatory climate. On July 31, 2002, declaring that free markets must not be "a financial free-for-all guided only by greed," he signed the Sarbanes-Oxley law, a sweeping overhaul of corporate fraud, securities, and accounting laws. Among its many tough provisions, the law created a new regulatory agency to oversee public accounting firms and auditors, and imposed an array of new requirements for financial reporting and corporate audits. Whatever else might be said about Sarbanes-Oxley, it was no invitation to an uninhibited capitalist bacchanal.

Like the alligators lurking in New York City sewers, Bush's massive regulatory rollback is mostly urban legend. Far from throwing out the rulebook, the administration has expanded it: Since Bush became president, the Federal Register -- the government's annual compendium of proposed and finalized regulations -- has run to more than 74,000 pages every year but one. During the Clinton years, by contrast, the Federal Register reached that length just once.

Amid the stress and storm of the financial crisis, "deregulation" makes a convenient villain. But the facts tell a different story: The nation's regulatory burden has grown heavier, not lighter, since Bush entered the White House. Too little government wasn't what made the economy sick. Too much government isn't going to make it better.

More here

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

ELSEWHERE

Supremes to review citizenship arguments: "A case that challenges President-elect Barack Obama's name on the 2008 election ballot citing questions over his citizenship has been scheduled for a "conference" at the U.S. Supreme Court. Conferences are private meetings of the justices at which they review cases and decide which ones to accept for formal review. This case is set for a conference Dec. 5, just 10 days before the Electoral College is scheduled to meet to make formal the election of Obama as the nation's next president. If four of the nine justices vote to hear the case in full, oral argument may be scheduled."

Elton John talks sense: "One of the world's most prominent gay entertainers offered some rare common sense on the explosive issue of same sex marriage. In New York City for a gala AIDS benefit, rock legend Sir Elton John appeared with his long-time partner, David Furnish. "We're not married," he told the press, "Let's get that straight. We have a civil partnership.I don't want to be married! I'm very happy with a civil partnership. The word `marriage,' I think, puts a lot of people off. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships". If more people on all sides of this issue embraced the simple, irrefutable logic of this clear-thinking superstar, a vastly divisive, unnecessary controversy could reach a successful and amicable solution.

Auto Bailout Ignores Excessive Labor Costs: "Without government intervention, one or more of the Big Three automobile manufacturers--General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler--faces restructuring in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy would not be the end of the Big Three but a new beginning. Coming out of bankruptcy, the automakers would start fresh, free of the contractual obligations that have kept them uncompetitive. The United Auto Workers (UAW) and Detroit automakers want to avoid bankruptcy and are seeking a taxpayer bailout. Such a bailout, however, is not an acceptable alternative to bankruptcy because it would delay the restructuring the Big Three need to become competitive again. UAW workers earn $75 an hour in wages and benefits--almost triple the earnings of the average private sector worker. Detroit autoworkers have substantially more health, retirement, and paid time off benefits than most Americans."

Auto hub may go South: "If it's no surprise that Michigan lawmakers are behind the pitch for a $25 billion lifeline for Detroit automakers, then it might be just as predictable that Southerners would be leading the charge against it. Southern politicians have spent years luring foreign automakers to build cars in their states, with huge success. Most recently, Tennessee attracted a $1 billion Volkswagen assembly plant to Chattanooga. South Carolina has BMW. Mississippi landed a major plant for Toyota Motor Corp. Alabama boasts plants run by Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co."

Canada: Obese have right to two airline seats: "Obese people have the right to two seats for the price of one on flights within Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Thursday.The high court declined to hear an appeal by Canadian airlines of a decision by the Canadian Transportation Agency that people who are "functionally disabled by obesity" deserve to have two seats for one fare.The airlines had lost an appeal at the Federal Court of Appeal in May and had sought to launch a fresh appeal at the Supreme Court. The court's decision not to hear a new appeal means the one-person-one-fare policy stands."

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 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

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

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)

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

Google have "blocked" this blog

Or so they say. I get the following message when I go to post:

"This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked"

And yet I was able to post a few minutes ago anyway! Though I did have to do a tedious letter-copying task first.

Who knows what is going on? This blog has been OK for over six years now so this sudden onslaught is pretty strange. The blog is much the same as it ever was.

In case this blog does suddenly vanish or ceases to update daily, readers might want to add my large font site to their link list as an alternative site. I have just enabled comments there.

And there are always of course my mirror sites. Google can't do anything about them!

Dems Seek Only To MITIGATE THE CONSEQUENCES of the Evil That They Promote

"There's no such thing as right and wrong" is an abandonment of thought

There are fundamental differences between the VISIONS of the left and the right. Visions are the basic beliefs about humanity, human nature, the role of government and more that lie BENEATH policy -- that LEAD to policy -- and the Democrat and the Republican are fundamentally at odds.

The left, seeing all judgment as prejudice (since anything you believe is tainted by your own circumstances such as skin color, nation of birth, religoin -- or lack thereof -- economic status, etc) believe the only way to eliminate the evils of bigotry is to never think at all. To the Modern Liberal, rational and moral thought is believed to be a hate crime. To them, "discriminating thought" is the evil of having discriminated. The Right, on the other hand, believes that discriminating and moral thought is, while clearly flawed, utterly essential and, in fact, the only way to make a better world.

This leads the Left and the Right to very different places with regard to policy. Because of these diametrically opposed visions, the Right seeks to help people live better lives by encouraging them to engage in the better behaviors. The Left -- rejecting the discriminating thought required to RECOGNIZE the better behaviors -- does not create policy designed to promote these better behaviors and, in fact, seeing the recognition of the better as acts of bigotry, actually works to promote the lesser behaviors which they see as "under seige" from the bigots.

At this point, when their work to undermine the promotion of the better behaviors -- and, their efforts to rehabilitate the image of the lesser behaviors -- lead as they have and must to greater suffering and failure, the Democrat THEN steps in with policy designed for no other purpose than to help mitigate the consequenes of the behaviors that they themselves have made prevelant.

On the institutional level, one sees the institutions of the Right -- from the Church to the Boy Scouts -- promote better lives by working to encourage people to better themselves. The institutions of the Left -- from the ACLU to the radicacl feminist movement -- do seek not to help people become better, but only to force society to accept and REWARD people AS THEY ARE, unchanged.

On the policy level, one finds that the Right seeks to promote those behaviors that best help people to achieve their goals. The Left works only to undermine the recognition of those bettter behaviors and then to legislate policy that seeks to (somewhat) mitigate the consequences of the failure to engage in the better behaviors.

For example, the Right recognizes that childhood abstinence is a behavior that improves the child's chances for future success. To us it's a no-brainer that unwanted pregancies, grisly abortions and being infected with sexually transmitted diseases makes less likely the child free to achieve as much with their lives as they would like. The Left, on the other hand, sees the promotion of the better behavior as a form of bigotry, calling it the work of "religious fanatics" or the "sexually repressed," and, in turn, work to rehabilitate the image of promiscuity in their movies, TV shows, schools and the legislatures they control. When this promotion of the destructive behaviors lead -- as they have and must -- to the undermining of the child's future success, the Democrat then seeks policies designed to lessen the suffering that they themselves induced.

So, where the Right Thinker promotes childhood and teenage abstinence (knowing full well that it won't work 100 percent of the time, as NOTHING works 100 percent of the time), the Democrat promotes promiscuity and then advances policies like easy and free abortions to mitigate the consequences of childhood and teenage promiscuity. Similarly, when their policies lead -- as they have and must -- to an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases amongst the children of America (with fully one out of four young girls in New York City now infeccted with at least one or more STD) -- they then put forth policy that forceably injects ALL children with one vaccine or another to make less likely the chance of contracting one of the STDs that now run rampant.

The problem, of course, beyond the mere moral destruction of our society and the theft of the innocence of the youth of America, is that, while some of these vaccines -- injected into even the children who act in the better ways -- may prevent ONE of these diseases, it does nothing to prevent a whole range of others.

Another example of this paradigm is the Rights' insistence that immigrants learn to speak English. It is self-evident to those of us on the Right that the ability to speak the language of the majority is a big plus for those immigrant who wish to accomplish their dreams in America. Clearly, if an immigrant is a salesman, he can sell to more people if he speaks the language of the majority. If the immigrant is a scientist, he can apply for a job as a scientist at AMGEN or Johnson and Johnson. If he DOESN'T speak the language of the other scientists, the ONLY job he can get is one where his communications skills are of minimal importance, such as the minimum wage job of janitor.

The Left, on the other hand, sees the insistence that one learn the language of the majority as a form of bigotry. Some have gone so far as to call it an attempt by the Right to commit "cultural genocide" of the immigrant. For this reason the Left works to undermine efforts to encourage the immigrant to learn the language of the majority, guaranteeing that they will be locked into minimum wage jobs, and then hop into action to mitigate the suffering of those they have forced to suffer by insisting upon a raise in the minimum wage.

It gets worse. Since the immigrant has rights, in order to satisfy these rights, the majority must learn the many, many languages of the immigrants. Voting documents must be printed up in hundreds of languagess while police departments in every city and town must learn to speak Spanish (etc) in order to properly "Mirandize" suspected criminals. In other words, once again, the indiscriminateness of thought that is the defining trait of the Modern Liberal movement leads the Modern Liberal to create an Orwellian world where their subjects suffer, while a cultural genocide IS taking place -- against America and against our children

Source

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

Oregon Learns that Limiting Consumer Freedom Hurts

Straight on the heels of newly approved regulations that effectively ban payday lending services in Ohio, a study released today from Dartmouth College demonstrates that a 2007 cap on short-term payday loans in Oregon has substantially harmed borrowers there. The study shows why anti-payday activists are so misguided, and reinforces what we have been saying all along: Limiting credit access harms consumers. Economist Jonathan Zinman found that when payday lenders left the state, Oregonians had to turn to alternatives that were all more costly than the short-term loans:

I find that the Cap dramatically reduced access to payday loans in Oregon, and that former payday borrowers responded by shifting into incomplete and plausibly inferior substitutes. Most substitution seems to occur through checking account overdrafts of various types and/or late bills. These alternative sources of liquidity can be quite costly in both direct terms (overdraft and late fees) and indirect terms (eventual loss of checking account, criminal charges, utility shutoff).

Zinman compares his statistics on households in Oregon to those in Washington (where short-term payday loan services remained intact) and found that "the Oregon households were far more likely to experience a change for the worse in the key financial outcomes."

Especially in a time when more and more Americans are struggling to gain access to short-term credit, payday lenders have filled a void and helped consumers bridge temporary gaps in their finances. Zinman's findings even showed that the majority of respondents took out payday loans for "bills, emergencies, food/groceries, and other debt service." Only 6 percent used payday loans for "shopping or entertainment."

It doesn't take an economist to understand that, for many, paying $15 for a two-week $100 loan is better than pawning a family television or bouncing checks. Sadly, Nanny State lawmakers and bureaucrat-knows-best activists have already eliminated that choice for Oregonians and Ohioans, and are pushing to further eliminate this valuable financial option across the country.

Source (See the original for links)

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

ELSEWHERE

There is a good article here about Kool-Aid fan Jim Jones and his "People's Temple". It was only marginally religious but it was VERY Leftist -- and it was aided and abetted for years by the San Francisco Leftist establishment.

Al Qaeda buying old ambulances: "MI5 have warned Britain’s cash-strapped National Health Services that dozens of ambulances–along with old police cars and fire engines past their sell-by date–are being snapped up by al-Qaeda operatives in the United Kingdom to mount suicide bomb attacks. So serious is the problem that counter-terrorism officials at the Home Office have written to eBay, the Internet auctioneer, asking them to stop selling emergency service vehicles, equipment and uniforms. But eBay has insisted it can only halt the sales if a new law is passed by Parliament.  That could take many months to enact. The use of ambulances is of particular concern to Britain’s terrorist chiefs.  They say the tactic has already been used in Iraq with devastating effects. A report by Lord Carlisle–the government terrorist czar who last month warned about the possibility of private planes being used for an attack on London–has been issued to all of Britain’s 48 police forces warning of the danger of selling-off emergency service vehicles. Lord Carlisle, who works closely with the Terrorism Analysis Centre in London set up since the 9/11 attacks, said ambulances were the ideal weapon of choice for terrorists."

The germy one has a point: "Feminist Germaine Greer says the dress Michelle Obama wore to her husband's US election declaration was a "butcher's apron" and looked like a "geometrical hemorrhage". In her regular column for The Guardian, Greer described the outfit as: "All black with an eye-burning red panel that splattered itself down the front like a geometrical haemorrhage." It was "a poster in the most disturbing colours known to man, the colours of chaos. Coral snakes and venomous spiders signal their destructive potential by the display of similarly violent contrasts", she wrote."

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 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

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

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)

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

DON'T SELL PALIN SHORT

By Jeff Jacoby

The 2008 presidential campaign may be over, but Sarah Palin's moment in the spotlight has yet to run its course. In a media marathon last week, the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee sat down for interviews with CNN's Larry King and Wolf Blitzer; had Matt Lauer of the "Today" show up to Wasilla for a family dinner; and told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren about getting the call from John McCain on her cellphone while she was admiring the local produce at the Alaska State Fair. She disdained the Republican "jerks" who spread anonymous rumors painting her as geographically illiterate, and vehemently denied the accusation that she had milked the campaign for a $150,000 wardrobe for herself and her family.

All that was a prelude to her star turn at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami, where she met reporters at a press conference, drew standing ovations from several hundred GOP donors, and humorously updated her fellow governors on what she'd been doing since last year's meeting. "I had a baby," she told them. "I did some traveling; I very briefly expanded my wardrobe; I made a few speeches; I met a few VIPs, including those who really impact society, like Tina Fey."

Of course she was asked whether she plans to run for president in 2012, and of course she deflected the question. "The future is not that 2012 presidential race; it's next year and our next budgets," she said. But there can't be much doubt that Palin has become the brightest star in the GOP firmament. A whopping 91 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of her, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, and she is the runaway favorite when they are asked to rank possible contenders for the party's 2012 presidential nominee.

Elsewhere, however, the savaging of Palin continues. In The New York Times, Maureen Dowd devotes yet another column to bashing Alaska's governor ("a shopaholic whack-job diva"). The popular Washington blog Wonkette, characteristically crude, pronounces her "human garbage." At TheAtlantic.com, an obsessed Andrew Sullivan calls her "deluded and delusional . . . clinically unhinged" and describes her as a nitwit with "the educational level of a high school dropout" who "regards ignorance as some kind of achievement."

Not everyone on the left is in a gibbering rage over Palin. The feminist social critic Camille Paglia, a pro-choice Democrat, is appalled by the Democrats' anti-Palin debauch, especially their attacks on her intelligence. "As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is," Paglia writes, "and, quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma."

After witnessing the poise, energy, and panache with which John McCain's 44-year-old running mate handled herself on the national stage, can the backbiters working overtime to trash her intellect really believe she is nothing but a vain and ignorant airhead? Well, maybe; partisans and ideologues are good at seeing only what they want to see. But they might want to recall that the last Republican to inspire such ardor and admiration among the party faithful -- Ronald Reagan -- was also derided as a dim bulb. Diplomat Clark Clifford called Reagan an "amiable dunce." The New Republic's Robert Wright viewed him as "virtually brain dead." Nicholas von Hoffman lamented that it was "humiliating to think of this unlettered, self-assured bumpkin being our president." That "bumpkin" became one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century.

I suspect that the loathing of Palin by so much of the opinion elite is driven not by contempt for her brainpower but by fear of her political potential. She is cheerful and charismatic, an unabashed and likable conservative who generates extraordinary grassroots enthusiasm. Tens of thousands of voters showed up at her campaign rallies, and even now, when she appears on TV, record-breaking numbers of viewers tune in. "Her politics aren't my politics," said Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," after Palin's appearance on the show. But "I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful."

Whether Palin has the skill and stamina it would take to win a presidential nomination, let alone capture the White House, it is way too early to tell. But the smart money says she is a force to be reckoned with. That may be just what her critics are afraid of.

Source

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

'No' To Obama's Experimental Government

On Sunday night, President-elect Barack Obama told "60 Minutes" that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be a model of sorts for him. "What you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence and a willingness to try things and experiment in order to get people working again."

This is a problematic standard. What do you want in a surgeon? One who "gets it right" or one who projects "a sense of confidence?" Ditto accountants, defense lawyers, mechanics and bomb-disposal technicians: cocky and self-assured, or gets it right?

Before you answer that, please ask yourself what your point of view on this question was during the eight years of the Bush administration.

In short, there can be a chasm between being right and merely appearing to be right. Why anyone stakes greater value on the appearance than reality is a mystery to me.

But as Obama clearly recognizes, that was a big part of the FDR magic. FDR came into office promising "bold, persistent experimentation" -- and delivered. Raymond Moley, an early member of FDR's "brain trust," saw the New Deal for what it was. "To look upon these programs as the result of a unified plan was to believe that the accumulation of stuffed snakes, baseball pictures, school flags, old tennis shoes, carpenter's tools, geometry books and chemistry sets in a boy's bedroom could have been put there by an interior decorator," Moley wrote later.

Yet Americans thought it was all part of a plan, even though experimentation and planning are in fact near opposites. Why? Because FDR always projected such confidence, even as he made things worse. But this isn't another column about how FDR prolonged the Depression. Been there, done that. I'd rather be forward-looking.

In fact, I want to be experimental, too. So here's my idea: Just stop. Stop talking about bailouts and stimuli. Stop pondering ever more drastic action. Give it a rest. Let it be.

One of the main reasons there's all of this "money on the sidelines" out there among private investors is that Wall Street doesn't know what the government will do next. Will it bail out the auto industry? The insurance companies? Which taxes will go up? How far will interest rates go down? How long will the federal government own stakes in the banks? Will more stimulus checks go out? If so, how big will the deficit get?

Interventionists, bailout czars and "bold experimenters" in all parties claim to be like firefighters; they can't stop what they're doing until the fire is out. But this analogy only works if you understand the nature of the fire. If it's a credit crisis, that's one thing. If it's uncertainty, it's quite another. And if the problem right now is uncertainty, then these aren't firefighters, they're arsonists.

Source

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

Brookes News Update

Will Obama's economic policies drag the US down?: "Things are turning nasty for the US economy. Just how nasty was made clear when on hearing of Obama's victory the markets fired a salvo across the bows of the Democratic Party. Markets are always forward looking, and what they said was that Obama's ragtag baggage of economic nostrums pose a severe threat to the American economy and hence recovery
The economy sinks deeper into recession while the economic commentariat flounders : The economy is in recession and has been for several months, and yet our brilliant economic commentariat are still debating when it will happen. In the meantime they are losing their hair over the 'global financial meltdown'. Nevermind: The truth is still out there
Is Obama another Roosevelt and will 2009 be another 1937?: Obama's union, spending and taxation policy was first implemented by Roosevelt during the Great Depression. The Result was another crash and a dramatic rise in unemployment
The myths of Clintonomics : Obama's attempts to reassure markets have failed. This is because markets know that Obama is recycling myths about the Clinton years. Naturally, that pack of economic illiterates that we call the media are cheering Obama's economic nostrums
I am proud to be a conservative : With few exceptions conservatives play by the rules, respect property and rights of others and do not resort to tricks and fraud to succeed. This is because they believe their views will prevail if people can be properly informed and because they believe Americans will do the right thing for the country even if other policies will enable them to unfairly receive more than they deserve. This cannot be said of the Democrat Party
Ten years of 'change' in the UK : For real change to come - for the dominant 20th century culture of grievance and victimhood to move on to some more healthy social psychology rooted in a degree of personal responsibility and self reliance - this would take leaders of far sterner stuff than Barack Obama
The worse is yet to come under President Barack Obama: Opponents have unsuccessfully tried to inform Americans about changes in the tax law to "spread the wealth" from the so-called "wealthy" to lower income voters. Though under the current "progressive" tax system this already occurs; President Obama will enshrine and expand the tax policy toward the Marxist ideal
Counterfeit Marriage and its Counterfeit Movement: With a unified voice amplified several million-fold through the ballot box megaphone, African-Americans have spoken on the issues of marriage, family and human sexuality. Whether young or old, male or female, Democrat or Republican, blacks are justifiably fed up with the deceptive antics of the self-described and craftily contrived 'gay rights movement'
Obama's New Deal v. the US economy : Just as I predicted, the US economy is in another recession. And what does Team Obama intend to do about it? The same things that Roosevelt did. And informed people know just how well that worked. The man will be an economic disaster if he implements his economic program

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 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

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

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)

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

Obama is a liberal Fascist

Liberalism or progressivism seeks to create a nanny state in which the state mandates all kinds of things for the good of the people. And no person is entitled to opt out or to thwart the decisions of the state. Thus liberal fascism.

Goldberg has on his cover a happy face with a Hitler mustache on it. By this he suggests that liberal fascism is appealing. Many people want a nanny state and thus are drawn to Hugo Chavez, Che Guevera and Barack Obama. i.e., fascism with a happy face. But as we have seen with Nazism, Communism and Islam, it can have dire consequences. In all cases it is accompanied by mind control which starts with controlling the message. Remember George Orwell's 1984, or Mao's farms for re-education or Arafat's inculcation of Jew hatred

Barak Obama is a proponent of liberal fascism. Not only does he want to take care of everyone, he means to take your money as if he was entitled to it, in order to finance his, the state's, plans. Gov. Palin pointed this out in her stump speeches. Joe Biden called giving your money to the state "patriotism".

In order to accomplish his ends he has concentrated on reeducating the kids to reject conventional wisdom and embrace his and Bill Ayers, wisdom. He supported ACORN and trained them to be shock troops. He mobilized moveon.org and the MSM to assist in cudgeling the people. We have seen videos of kids in school in fatigues chanting pro-Obama messages. This is very suggestive of the Hitler Youth movement that all German children were required to join. Many schools in the US are now educating the children to these socialist principles without the consent of the parents. Its called "social engineering".

On September 4th Investor's Business Daily (IBD), a mainstream paper of great repute, reported,

"Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993.

Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of `social change.

The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn't seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year "community leadership" positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They'll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats. In exchange, they'll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.

But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about "social change" through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation - the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul "The Red" Alinsky.

And Lee Cary wrote about Obama's Civilian National Security Force

Barack Obama's recent words to promote his image as Community Organizer in Chief were not about forming a paramilitary force of volunteer brown shirts. They were about turning America into one, giant, community organizer's sandbox at enormous cost to taxpayers. Senator Obama was nearly 17 minutes into his July 2 speech (yet another one where naming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was required) in Colorado Springs, Colorado when he deviated from his pre-released script and performed without the teleprompter net saying,

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

The immediate context for that amazing statement was a preview of parts of his plan to vastly expand community service opportunities for Americans of nearly all ages. He said,

"People of all ages, stations, and skills will be asked to serve."

On his web site he said that people would be "required" to serve. After much criticism he changed it to read "asked" to serve. And to make matters easier for his plans, he wants to disarm the people.

To be fair, both liberals and conservatives want to provide a security net for the people. They debate how big and strong that net should be. The real issue is at what cost to our freedom and independence. Conservatives are trying to protect such things and the liberals don't value them in the same way or to he same extent. They value the collective over the individual.

Democrats are quick to charge Republicans with fascism because, for example, Republicans want to maintain Guantanamo Bay and want profiling or wire tapping in certain cases. In effect they say this is an infringement of personal rights. As I said just above, providing the security net or or this case security itself, certain rights are infringed. What separates us is when restrictions are warranted and when they are not. Everyone must decide for themselves what is the biggest threat to their freedom.

Taking care of the weak in society is an admirable objective. The liberals have claimed this as their brand. But will they deliver on their promise?

Source

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

Liberals clinically mad, concludes top psychiatrist

Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder. "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to "the vast right-wing conspiracy." For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.

Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by both Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton can only be understood as a psychological disorder. "A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity - as liberals do," he says. "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population - as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state - as liberals do."

Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

* creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;

* satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;

* augmenting primitive feelings of envy;

* rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

"The roots of liberalism - and its associated madness - can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

Source

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

ELSEWHERE

Iraq's security deal with U.S. shows gains amid 'failure' mantras: "On Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's cabinet approved by a 21-7 vote a status of forces agreement with the U.S. It says that U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraq's populated areas by June 2009 and all forces will withdraw by the end of 2011. We have our own misgivings about the limits on U.S. forces suggested by the 2009 date. We suspect both sides understand the need to revisit this if conditions on the ground change dramatically. With George Bush gone, though, Mr. Maliki may have a harder time getting President Obama to approve U.S. troops leaving their bases, no matter how badly needed. This still won't satisfy the Democratic left in Congress or in the blogosphere, but now they will be President Obama's problem, as he transitions from campaign rhetoric to international realities. To that end, we offer a brief compendium of campaign myths about "failure" in Iraq that are belied by the Maliki government's security deal with the U.S."

Now the gutless Europeans bow down before Russia!: "EU leaders on Friday said they were resuming talks with Moscow toward an economic-cooperation agreement. The negotiations were put on ice 10 weeks earlier because of Russia's invasion of its tiny neighbor and refusal to abide by a French-brokered cease-fire. But by Friday's EU-Russia summit in Nice, France, Moscow's fulfillment of "a large part of its obligations" was good enough for French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Thus ends the lone sanction Europe placed on its belligerent neighbor after the August war. The talks are back on, but Georgians are still waiting for the promised pullback of Russian soldiers to their prewar positions. Numerous Russian troops remain in the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose self-declared independence has been recognized by only Russia and Nicaragua. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians are still unable to return to their homes both in and outside the conflict zone. EU and other Western observers remain blocked from entering the most war-torn areas, and as recently as Sunday were still reporting incidents in which they'd been fired upon near Abkhazia."

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 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

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

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)

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

The psychology of politics

I did my first piece of research into the psychology of politics in 1968. It was my Masters dissertation. I have been studying the subject ever since -- now with many academic publications on it behind me. So it seems reasonable that in 2008 -- 40 years later -- I should look back and say as briefly as possible what I have learned in those 40 years.

In good academic style I start with a definition: The first thing to say is that Leftism is emotional. The second is to say that the emotion is negative and the third thing to say is that the negative emotion (anger/hate) is directed at the world about the Leftist, the status quo if you like. The Leftist is nothing if he is not a critic, though usually a very poorly-informed critic. And the criticisms are both pervasive and deeply felt.

What is routinely overlooked in most discussions of ideology is that conservatives don't like the status quo either -- but they don't hate it and they don't get burned up about it. Ask almost any conservative and he will give you a long list of things he would like to see changed in the world about him. It is only a Leftist caricature to say that conservatives support the status quo.

Left and Right do indeed differ in their response to the status quo but not in the simplistic "for and against" way that Leftists claim. The difference is in depth of feeling and in the changes desired. Leftists want change passionately and feel very righteous about the changes they want. Conservatives can see fault and do at times set out at length the reasoning behind the changes they think desirable -- but mostly they just want to get on with their own lives. There are undoubtedly some people who are completely happy with the world as it is but they are not concerned about politics. They probably do, however, vote conservative when called upon to vote. They would not be able to find much in common with the constant complaint that is the mark of the Leftist. The typical conservative does not simmer if his wishes for change are not implemented. The Leftist does.

One marker of the difference just set out will be well known to anyone who reads blogs from both sides of the divide: Profanity is hugely more common on Leftist blogs. A systematic study of the matter found profanity to be TWELVE TIMES more common on Leftist blogs. Profanity is of course an attempt to express one's feelings strongly.

Note that I do NOT use the word "liberal" for the Left side of politics. "Liberal" as a name for any left-leaning political party is just camouflage. Except in sex-related matters, liberty is in general a very low prioritiy for them. Tearing down sexual mores is a form of change that they have had much success at.

So what is conservatism? Basically it is caution based on a perception that the world is an unpredictable, dangerous and often hostile place. So change is not rejected. It is in fact, as just said, sometimes desired. But it is approached in a skeptical, step by step, way to ensure that its effects are beneficial or at least benign. And an important criterion of what consitutes "benign" is how the change affects individual liberty. At a minimum, a conservative wants to ensure that change will not reduce his individual liberty.

Because the Leftist is angry rather than prudent, however, he cares not a bit for the conservative's caution. The most thorough-going Leftist just wants to smash everything that exists around him out of the feeling that it is all so hateful that none of it is worth preserving. And in the French revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, the Maoist revolution and many more minor revolutions, the Leftists got their way -- with results we all know about. Doing any sort of a good job of putting back together what they have smashed is beyond them. They are destroyers only. Hate is not constructive.

Because we all know of those dismal results, Leftist activists and politicians in entrenched democracies have to be more careful. Expressing the full extent of their feelings and advocating revolution would simply marginalize them and they know that. So they have to find ways of undermining society in more subtle ways. And they are greatly aided in that by the complex nature of modern society. Most people have only the vaguest notion of how society works so the Leftist politician can propose various changes that sound good but which will be disastrous in practice -- with "share and share alike" being the classic example of that. And when the disasters unfold the committed Leftist cannot lose. He will get an internal glow of satisfaction from the suffering and disruption unleashed on all those fools around him that he hates but will be excused from blame because he "meant well".

So what motivates a Leftist to be so full of negative emotions toward the surrounding world? Many things. There is no one cause of Leftism. The Leftist activist or politician is mostly motivated by ego needs. He craves attention and praise. He needs to be perceived as wise and righteous -- and he tries to achieve that by pretending to be all heart and condemning the world for its many faults and imperfections. But it could simply be that the Leftist was born into a subset of society that is in general hostile to the larger society. Miners are a common example of that. Mining towns were once bedrock Left-voting places. Why that was so is beyond the scope of what I want to say at the moment, however.

And, as mentioned, there are of course degrees of Leftism -- degrees to which society is disliked. The out-and-out-Leftist (generally an intellectual of some sort) is just a rage-filled hater who wants to smash everything -- but the average Leftist voter is a gentler soul. They may simply be upset that they personally are not getting a very good deal from society as it exists and be generally critical of society for that reason. But the biggest category of Leftist voters by far would appear to be genuinely well intentioned people who are strongly emotionally affected by suffering in others. They see other people who are not doing well in some way and urgently want that fixed by whatever means it takes. They are angered by what they see as "injustice". And that emotion dominates all else. And it is the strong negative emotions evoked by the surrounding society that unites these people with the vicious and deliberately destructive haters at the top of the Leftist pyramid.

But anger is a very bad frame of mind in which to make decisions and craft policies so these basically good people will often be lured into voting for some unscrupulous Leftist politician who promises to fix it all -- but who must know in his own heart that the cure will be worse than the disease. But if offering false hope gets the activist into power, too bad! And the poor old conservative who knows how things work and says that there is no easy fix will be ignored -- and called "heartless".

And that, I believe is how politics works: It is particularly the people who are especially sensitive to the suffering of others who make us all suffer, paradoxical though that may seem. Without their numerous votes, the Leftist politicians would never gain power. And the converse of that is that a little bit of heartlessness can be desirable. Balance is needed in fellow-feeling, as in many other things.

One test of the above explanation is that Left-voters should be more unhappy than conservatives -- and that has been borne out in almost all the happiness surveys that I have seen. For some discussion of that, see here. Because they are less emotional and not as easily upset, conservatives are happier and more level-headed -- and so are not as easily stampeded into foolish actions by emotional appeals. Most of them don't even believe in global warming!

So, for most Leftists, their Leftism mostly dwells deep within the personality. Which is why from age 2 I could tell that my son would be a conservative. His favourite "joke" at that age (and indeed for some years afterward) was: "The boy fell in the mud". He was able to see the funny side of a minor mishap that would have been seen as a tragedy by an emotional Leftist.

And the soft-hearted Leftists have much to thank conservatives for. The conservative element in the population protects them from the consequences that they wish for. Nowhere is that better seen than when the revolution succeeds. Among the first people to be "liquidated" by the hard men of the revolution are the soft-hearted revolutionaries.

Fortunately, time also plays a part. Many of the well-intentioned Leftists do over time come to see that simplistic solutions to society's ills don't work and end up voting for more complex and balanced solutions. They become conservatives. Even the once very Leftist George McGovern sounds remarkably conservative these days. Many of the most vocal conservatives started out as Leftists and have become quite evangelical as a consequence of learning from experience that Leftist policies are destructive. They have the same benevolent aims as before but have grown wiser about what will best serve those aims. And the older they get, the more chance they have to see the counterproductive nature of simplistic Leftist "solutions".

The most succinct summary of what I have said above is that Leftism is the politics of rage. This contrasts with the usual summary that Leftism is the politics of envy. But Leftists these days seem to be a generally affluent bunch. They are certainly not on average materially disadvantaged. So I cannot see that material envy is any sort of major motive for most of them.

The above is of course only a summary. I go into great detail about what the history of Leftism and conservatism tells us here and here.

Note: The post above is an expanded version of the original -- JR

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

Why Dogs, Not Liberals, Are Man's Best Friend

by Burt Prelutsky

Some people are convinced that a compassionate conservative is an oxymoron. But, I know better. I'm not suggesting I am one, but I do know a few. They're the people who occasionally take me to task for being too critical of liberals. They'll insist that some of their best friends are liberals. Liberals, they'll inform me, make fine neighbors and positively first-rate relatives. I patiently explain that they're preaching to the choir. I know first-hand that liberals can be all of those things, and more. My only problem with liberals is that they're hypocrites and they can't help lying.

Perhaps, like my friends, you now think I'm too harsh in my judgment. On the contrary, I think I tend to give liberals the benefit of the doubt. I happen to believe they are so besotted by their emotions that they can't help painting themselves into indefensible corners. To blame a liberal for lying and blatant hypocrisy would be as heartless as blaming an alcoholic for drinking. In fact, I suspect that, like alcoholics, liberals suffer from a chemical imbalance. Otherwise, how would you explain the enormous gulf between what they say and what they do?

For instance, how often have we read newspaper editorials arguing for Affirmative Action in schools and in the work place? In most cases, those pieces are not being written or edited by members of a racial minority group. So, if they were sincere, shouldn't these journalists clear out their desks and surrender their jobs to somewhat less qualified, but far more deserving, blacks and Hispanics?

Or consider, if you will, how consistently liberals object to tax cuts. They prattle on incessantly about how much the wealthy benefit, ignoring the logic that if there's a 10% reduction across the board, it figures that the person who pays more will save more. But, when liberals blather about the inequities of tax cuts, you realize they actually believe that if a millionaire saves fifty thousand on his tax bill, the guy who only earns, say, thirty grand-a-year should get the same return!

Liberals, for reasons that some of us will never comprehend, are convinced that the federal government can be trusted to spend money more wisely than the people who actually earn it. When Bill Clinton was in the White House, he said as much. They're entitled to their beliefs, you say. Where does the inconsistency come in, you ask? It's simply this -- liberals spend just as much money as conservatives on shrewd attorneys and clever C.P.A.'s, attempting to lower their own tax liability. There is nothing in the tax laws, after all, that prohibits an American citizen from paying Uncle Sam more than he owes. But, I have yet to hear of a liberal, even one as rich as George Soros, who claimed that, even though he belonged in the highest bracket, he so admired the way in which Congress spent his money, he was going to send the I.R.S. 70 or maybe even 80 percent of his earnings.

Finally, I have never heard a liberal speak out in favor of school vouchers. Instead, they wave the flag for public schools, even though everybody in his right mind knows that, in spite of the No Child Left Behind program, a majority of public schools in America are a disgrace. The system has routinely passed along youngsters who wound up graduating from high school lacking self-discipline and even rudimentary math and reading skills. Yet, every liberal in Congress can be counted on to pay lip service to public education, although not one of them has a child enrolled in the Washington, D.C., school system!

Source

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

ELSEWHERE

What is Obama hiding?: "The California secretary of state should refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until President-elect Barack Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office, alleges a California court petition filed on behalf of former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and others. The legal action today is just the latest is a series of challenges, some of which have gone as high as the U.S. Supreme Court, over the issue of Obama's status as a "natural-born citizen," a requirement set by the U.S. Constitution."

The $639 Million Loophole: "We're fresh off the most expensive election cycle in history, in which the winning candidate raised record amounts of money while opting out of the campaign finance limits. With victory in hand, Barack Obama's allies now want to return to the alleged virtues of public money. If there was ever a demonstration of the folly and hypocrisy of campaign finance reform, this would be it. The GOP is using this demonstration to make another constitutional challenge to McCain-Feingold"

Russia in trouble: "Putin's personal fortune and the Kremlin's cash cow lies in Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly that supplies over 20% of the government's budget. Six months ago - last May - Gazprom had the largest market cap of any company in the entire world, US$360 billion. It is now (11/13) $91b. It has lost 75% of its value and so has its share price. That's gas. Let's take oil. The Kremlin says its budget is based on a price of $65 a barrel, while independent analysts think its at least $70. Yet the collapse of benchmark oil prices to below $60 currently masks the fact that Russia sells a lower grade, Urals Crude, than benchmark grades like Brent or WTI (West Texas Intermediate). Today, Urals crude closed at $48.80. Not only is Russia getting less money per barrel, it's producing less. Oil production fell for the 10th straight month in October. As the Russian economy disintegrates, so is the Russian state and the Kremlin's control over it. As respected commentator Dmitry Tayevsky recently wrote: "Of course there will not be a crisis in Russia. There will be something immeasurably worse."

A glamorous puppet: "The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship - its nearest equivalent - is focused on a man who actually did something. I really don't see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts. It already has all the signs of such a thing. If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn't believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he'd promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over. He needn't worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America's Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton's stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to".

UN spends aid money on $25 million office ceiling: "A $25m decorative ceiling for a United Nations building in Geneva has come under fire after it was disclosed that it was partly paid for by Spain's overseas aid budget. The decision to hire Miquel Barcelo, 51, one of the world's most highly paid abstract artists, to redesign a 14,000 sq ft dome has prompted furious protests from campaigners who believe it is an extravagant misuse of development funds. Barcelo has said his design aims to create a "grotto", with stalactites reflecting "infinity and the multiplicity of view-points". He has built a honeycomb of aluminium from which to hang resin stalactites up to 3ft long. They are coloured with paint containing pigments from all over the world. The work, at the headquarters of the UN Human Rights Council, will be unveiled this week by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain and Jose Luis Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

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 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

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

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)

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