Burke and Obama
By Thomas Sowell
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) had a lot to say about the Obama administration
The other day I sought a respite from current events by rereading some of the writings of the 18th-century British statesman Edmund Burke. But it was not nearly as big an escape as I had thought it would be. When Burke wrote of his apprehension about “new power in new persons,” I could not help thinking of the new powers that have been created by which a new president of the United States — a man with zero experience in business — can fire the head of General Motors and tell banks how to run their businesses. Not only is Barack Obama new to the presidency, he is new to running any organization. One of Burke’s fears was that “we may place our confidence in the virtue of those who have never been tried.”
Neither eloquence nor zeal is a substitute for experience, according to Burke. He said, “eloquence may exist without a proportionate degree of wisdom.” As for zeal, Burke said: “It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is directed by insolent passion.”
The Obama administration’s back-and-forth on the question whether American intelligence agents who forced information out of captured terrorist leaders will be subject to legal jeopardy — even though they were told at the time that what they were doing was not only legal but a service to the nation — came to mind when reading Burke’s warning about the dangers of continuing to change the rules and values by which people lived. Burke asked how we could expect a sense of honor to exist when “no man could know what would be the test of honour in a nation, continually varying the standard of its coin”?
The current drive to take from “the rich” for the benefit of others came to mind when reading Burke’s warning against creating a situation where “any one description of citizens should be brought to regard any of the others as their proper prey.” He also warned that “those who attempt to level, never equalise.” What they end up doing is concentrating power in their own hands — and Burke saw such new powers as dangerous, even if they were used only sparingly at first.
He said, “the true danger is, when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients and by parts.” He also said: “It is by lying dormant a long time, or being at first very rarely exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a people.” People who don't like “the rich” or “big business” or the banks may be happy that President Obama is sticking it to them. But such arbitrary powers can be turned on anybody. As John Donne said: “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” There is a lot of wisdom in those words.
The Constitution of the United States set out to limit the powers of the federal government, but judges have greatly eroded those limitations over the years, and the dispensing of bailout money has allowed the Obama administration to exercise powers that the Constitution never bestowed.
Edmund Burke understood that, no matter what form of government you have, in the end the character of those who wield the powers of government is crucial. He said: “Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state.”
He also said, “of all things, we ought to be the most concerned who and what sort of men they are that hold the trust of everything that is dear to us.” He feared particularly the kind of man “whose whole importance has begun with his office, and is sure to end with it” — the kind of man “who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming into power is obliged to desert his friends.” Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and others come to mind.
The biggest challenge to America — and to the world — today is the danger of Iran with nuclear weapons. President Obama is acting as if this is something he can finesse with talks or deals. Worse yet, he may think it is something we can live with. Burke had something to say about things like that as well: “There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.” Acting — not talking.
SOURCE
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BrookesNews Update
Obama led the US economy into a fiscal trap containing a monetary time bomb : Obama and his brilliant economic advisors have led driven the US economy into a fiscal trap containing a monetary time bomb. And the markets are taking notice. Money supply is out of the control as is the Democrats' mania for spending and borrowing. The US could find itself with galloping inflation and rising unemployment
Americans now owe $64 trillion, and still counting: Each American household now owes $546,668, four times what they owe for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other debt. Looking long term is where it really gets scary. Recently, we learned the U.S. had $101 trillion in retirement and health care obligations over the next 75 years. The only problem is, at current tax rates we'll have only $53 trillion to pay for it all. That leaves a gaping hole of $48 trillion. Guess what? President Obama and Democrats think that's too small so they are going to make it bigger — a lot bigger
Carbon capture and burial — a stupid answer to a silly question : To extract the 2.6 tonnes of CO2 from every 9 tonnes of exhaust gases, compress it, pump it hundreds of kilometres in specially constructed pipelines and then bury it in carbon cemeteries is environmental and economic lunacy. It would break the economy. Nevertheless, this is what some of our politicians are proposing
The Obama revolution: Liberals have been working to replace our democracy with a dictatorship, and our free-market economy with a command economy controlled by the government. The liberals couldn't say this aloud, because if they did the American people would have tossed them out of office on their ears. So liberals worked covertly, feigning support for democracy and for the free market while working diligently to undermine both
You may be surprised who will knock on the door in an Obama world : Ever since Obama called for a new domestic army many people waited for the next shoe to drop after his election as president but who would have expected the jackbooted knocker on your door to come from the Federal Communication Commission — 'I'm from the FCC and I'm here to confiscate your computer
The Obama administration at work : The Obama administration was hard at work last week issuing more petty while merrily bankrupting the country. In the meantime, its 'foreign affairs policy' of appeasing tyrants is rapidly falling apart with the thugs in Iran and North Korea thumbing their noses at the civilised world and openly threatening nuclear war. Obama will be a disaster in more ways than one
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ELSEWHERE
The public oppose automaker bailouts: "By Thanksgiving as the bailout request dominated headlines, opposition to taxpayer-backed loans for GM and equally troubled Chrysler rose to 55%. But in December, President Bush, convinced that the automakers were essential to the economy, went ahead with a $17.4-billion auto bailout package anyway. Since then, the story has remained largely the same. By February when the automakers returned to Congress and President Obama for more help, opposition to additional taxpayer-backed loans had risen to 64%. That number was virtually unchanged even after Obama’s new auto task force dumped Wagoner as head of GM and gave the company 90 days to come up with a radical reorganization plan or else go into bankruptcy. The plan wasn’t good enough, and today GM declared bankruptcy, although it’s part of a structured plan that gives the government a majority say in the company. But 67% of voters are opposed to the plan that would provide GM with billions in federal funding and give the government a majority ownership interest."
Top secret clearances flawed at Pentagon: "The Pentagon may have issued top-secret clearances last year to as many as one-in-four applicants who had "significant derogatory information" in their backgrounds, including a record of foreign influence or criminal conduct, a little- noticed government audit says. Flaws in the system for granting clearances to Defense Department staff and contractors pose a risk to national security, and the right tools to measure how well the process works are essential, said Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, California Democrat and chairman of a House intelligence subcommittee that oversees personnel and management issues. "At present, we're basically operating on faith"
Who’s dismantling GM? “Call me crazy, but I don’t find this cute. As the news was breaking of General Motors going bankrupt, The New York Times business section ran a front page article about the 31-year-old in charge of ‘dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.’ The 31-year-old in question, one Brian Deese it turns out, was, for the first few months of Barack Obama’s administration the only full time member of the auto task force. Now he’s risen to become ‘one of the most influential voices in what may become President Obama’s biggest experiment in federal intervention.’”
Police state is wrong venue for Obama’s speech, says Robert Fisk!: “Maybe Barack Obama chose Egypt for his ‘great message’ to Muslims tomorrow because it contains a quarter of the world’s Arab population, but he is also coming to one of the region’s most repressed, undemocratic and ruthless police states. Egyptian human rights groups — when they are not themselves being harassed or closed down by the authorities — have recorded a breathtaking list of police torture, extra-judicial killings, political imprisonments and state-sanctioned assaults on opposition figures that continues to this day.” [Fisk is Britain's most one-eyed Leftist journalist]
As the dollar falls off the cliff : "“Economic news remains focused on banks and housing, while the threat mounts to the US dollar from massive federal budget deficits in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. Earlier this year the dollar’s exchange value rose against currencies, such as the euro. UK pound, and Swiss franc, against which the dollar had been steadily falling. The dollar’s rise made US policymakers complacent, even though the rise was due to flight from over-leveraged financial instruments and falling stock markets into ’safe’ Treasuries. Since April, however, the dollar has steadily declined as investors and foreign central banks realize that the massive federal budget deficits are likely to be monetized. What happens to the dollar will be the key driver of what lies ahead. The likely scenario could be nasty.”
The fallacy of economics by coercion: “Some months ago I wrote a series highlighting Lawrence Reed’s classic 1981 article, ‘7 Fallacies of Economics,’ and my last article dealt with what he called ‘the fallacy of economics by coercion.’ One would think that a government can coerce people into creating economic prosperity, but think again. We now have a government that openly holds to that view.”
Save the Motherland: Buy GM!: “For those of you who carefully have avoided piddling away your hard-earned dollars on a General Motors vehicle, resistance is futile. You’re a majority ‘investor’ now. Rejoice. Taxpayers, our president has decreed, are impelled to preserve a prehistoric, poorly run, unprofitable private corporation. Now the only question becomes: What does all this sacrifice mean?”
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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, June 04, 2009
U.S. to Respond to North Korea with ‘Strongest Possible Adjectives' ....
Obama: We are Prepared to Consult Thesaurus ....
One day after North Korea launched a successful test of a nuclear weapon, President Obama said that the United States was prepared to respond to the threat with "the strongest possible adjectives."
In remarks to reporters at the White House, Mr. Obama said that North Korea should fear the "full force and might of the United States' arsenal of adjectives" and called the missile test "reckless, reprehensible, objectionable, senseless, egregious and condemnable."
Standing at the President's side, Vice President Joseph Biden weighed in with some tough adjectives of his own, branding North Korean President Kim Jong-Il "totally wack and illin'."
Later in the day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the North Korean nuclear test "supercilious and jejune," leading some in diplomatic circles to worry that the U.S. might be running out of appropriate adjectives with which to craft its response.
But President Obama attempted to calm those fears, saying that the United States was prepared to "scour the thesaurus" to come up with additional adjectives and was "prepared to use adverbs" if necessary.
"Let's be clear: we are not taking adverbs off the table," Mr. Obama said. "If the need arises, we will use them forcefully, aggressively, swiftly, overwhelmingly and commandingly."
***********************
Wise words that tail off into foolishness
by Amitai Etzioni
Much of the debate over how to address the economic crisis has focused on a single word: regulation. And it's easy to understand why. Bad behavior by a variety of businesses landed us in this mess--so it seems rather obvious that the way to avoid future economic meltdowns is to create, and vigorously enforce, new rules proscribing such behavior. But the truth is quite a bit more complicated. The world economy consists of billions of transactions every day. There can never be enough inspectors, accountants, customs officers, and police to ensure that all or even most of these transactions are properly carried out. Moreover, those charged with enforcing regulations are themselves not immune to corruption, and, hence, they too must be supervised and held accountable to others--who also have to be somehow regulated. The upshot is that regulation cannot be the linchpin of attempts to reform our economy. What is needed instead is something far more sweeping: for people to internalize a different sense of how one ought to behave, and act on it because they believe it is right.
That may sound far-fetched. It is commonly believed that people conduct themselves in a moral manner mainly because they fear the punishment that will be meted out if they engage in anti-social behavior. But this position does not stand up to close inspection. Most areas of behavior are extralegal; we frequently do what is expected because we care or love. This is evident in the ways we attend to our children (beyond a very low requirement set by law), treat our spouses, do volunteer work, and participate in public life. What's more, in many of those areas that are covered by law, the likelihood of being caught is actually quite low, and the penalties are often surprisingly mild. For instance, only about one in 100 tax returns gets audited, and most cheaters are merely asked to pay back what they "missed," plus some interest. Nevertheless, most Americans pay the taxes due. Alan Lewis's classic study The Psychology of Taxation concluded that people don't just pay taxes because they fear the government; they do it because they consider the burden fairly shared and the monies legitimately spent. In short, the normative values of a culture matter. Regulation is needed when culture fails, but it cannot alone serve as the mainstay of good conduct.
So what kind of transformation in our normative culture is called for? What needs to be eradicated, or at least greatly tempered, is consumerism: the obsession with acquisition that has become the organizing principle of American life. This is not the same thing as capitalism, nor is it the same thing as consumption. To explain the difference, it is useful to draw on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. At the bottom of this hierarchy are basic creature comforts; once these are sated, more satisfaction is drawn from affection, self-esteem, and, finally, self-actualization. As long as consumption is focused on satisfying basic human needs--safety, shelter, food, clothing, health care, education--it is not consumerism. But, when the acquisition of goods and services is used to satisfy the higher needs, consumption turns into consumerism--and consumerism becomes a social disease.
More HERE
Condemning the things that other people find satisfaction in is so Leftist. I find a LOT of things that other people enjoy strange -- mashed potatoes, to take a trivial example -- but I accept that tastes differ and leave the matter at that. But Leftists want to remake the world according to THEIR tastes and Etzioni is one of those. If he has (say) a liking for Cumquat marmalade (which I highly recommend, by the way), that would simply be good taste but if other people spend time and money seeking it out, that is "consumerism". It is principally the vast egos, amorality and authoritarian predilections of the Left that are hobbling our society, not "consumerism"
**********************
The usual difficulty that Leftists have with reality
But what about Gaza? Philip Weiss of TalkingPointsMemo.com visited there recently. He takes a strongly anti-Israel position, complaining of "persecution, of the Palestinians, by the state of Israel," and making no mention of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis or Hamas's genocidal aspirations toward Israel's Jews. Yet the picture he paints of "persecution" in Gaza doesn't sound that bad at all;
Yeah, the Warsaw ghetto teemed with watermelons!
Excerpt from Taranto
*********************
Climate of Hate, World of Double Standards
by Michelle Malkin
When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of late-term abortion provider George Tiller of Kansas versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.
Tiller's suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military and anti-American.
Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.
President Obama issued a statement condemning "heinous acts of violence" within hours of Tiller's death. The Justice Department issued its own statement and sent federal marshals to protect abortion clinics. News anchors and headline writers abandoned all qualms about labeling the gunman a terrorist. An almost gleeful excess of mainstream commentary poured forth on the climate of hate and fear created by conservative talk radio, blogs and Fox News in reporting Tiller's activities.
By contrast, Obama was silent about the military recruiter attacks that left 24-year-old Pvt. William Long dead and 18-year-old Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula gravely wounded. On Tuesday afternoon -- more than 24 hours after the attack on the military recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark. -- Obama held a press conference to announce his pick for Army secretary. It would have been exactly the right moment to express condolences for the families of the targeted Army recruiters and to condemn heinous acts of violence against our troops.
But Obama said nothing. The Justice Department was mum. And so were the legions of finger-pointing pundits happily convicting the pro-life movement and every right-leaning writer on the planet of contributing to the murder of Tiller.
More HERE
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Gates: US may rethink cuts in anti-missile funds: "US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has not ruled out pumping more funds into the nation’s anti-missile defense budget if North Korea threatens the United States. ‘If there were a launch from a rogue state such as North Korea, I have good confidence that we would be able to deal with it,’ Gates said Monday during a stopover in Alaska on his way home from a trip to Asia. Gates was visiting Fort Greely which houses parts of the US anti-missile defense shield — a land-based system with about 20 interceptors — and said of Pyongyang that its ‘behavior has certainly alarmed people.’ In the past Gates proposed slicing a billion dollars off the anti-missile system budget and freezing the development of interceptors at 30, instead of the 44 originally planned. But he indicated he might re-examine his proposal.”
US releases secret nuclear list accidentally: “The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked ‘highly confidential,’ that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons. The publication of the document was revealed Monday in an on-line newsletter devoted to issues of federal secrecy. That publicity set off a debate among nuclear experts about what dangers, if any, the disclosures posed. It also prompted a flurry of investigations in Washington into why the document was made public.”
FL: Couple fought $21,600 water bill: “A Tampa, Fla., couple said it took them several months to resolve the issue of a monthly water bill for more than $21,000. Ralph and Diana Salgado said their water bill usually falls between $21 and $110 each month, but their July 2008 bill from the Tampa Water Department totaled $21,600, indicating that 3.5 million gallons of water were used by the couple during that month …. The couple said they soon determined that the erroneous amount was the result of a new water meter that had not been calibrated to match the old reading. However, they said the water department continued to demand the money for months after the problem was identified.” [This is par for the course when dealing with any bureaucracy. Nobody with decision-making power is listening]
China’s socialist road to misery: "It is 20 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, and China’s communist regime hasn’t budged an inch. The government has no reason to regret its murderous crackdown during ‘the political storm at the end of the 1980s,’ a foreign-ministry spokesman in Beijing told reporters last month. ‘China has scored remarkable success in its social and economic development. Facts have proven that the socialist road with Chinese characteristics that we pursue is in the fundamental interests of our people.’ As a euphemism for dictatorial savagery, ‘the socialist road with Chinese characteristics’ may not rise to the level of, say, ‘Great Leap Forward’ or ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.’”
More disillusioned Leftists: “Back in 2007, then-candidate Barack Obama minced no words when it came to Sudan. ‘When you see a genocide, whether it’s in Rwanda or Bosnia or in Darfur, that’s a stain on all of us,’ he said. ‘That’s a stain on our souls.’ Obama is now president, and Darfur is still a mess. … Since Obama is a pragmatist — and pragmatism is, by definition, what works — we should judge his policies in this area by a single standard: Are they accomplishing the goal of ending Darfur’s suffering? We are sad to say that the initial signs have not been encouraging. In fact, as Obama supporters, we are extraordinarily disappointed.”
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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: We are Prepared to Consult Thesaurus ....
One day after North Korea launched a successful test of a nuclear weapon, President Obama said that the United States was prepared to respond to the threat with "the strongest possible adjectives."
In remarks to reporters at the White House, Mr. Obama said that North Korea should fear the "full force and might of the United States' arsenal of adjectives" and called the missile test "reckless, reprehensible, objectionable, senseless, egregious and condemnable."
Standing at the President's side, Vice President Joseph Biden weighed in with some tough adjectives of his own, branding North Korean President Kim Jong-Il "totally wack and illin'."
Later in the day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the North Korean nuclear test "supercilious and jejune," leading some in diplomatic circles to worry that the U.S. might be running out of appropriate adjectives with which to craft its response.
But President Obama attempted to calm those fears, saying that the United States was prepared to "scour the thesaurus" to come up with additional adjectives and was "prepared to use adverbs" if necessary.
"Let's be clear: we are not taking adverbs off the table," Mr. Obama said. "If the need arises, we will use them forcefully, aggressively, swiftly, overwhelmingly and commandingly."
***********************
Wise words that tail off into foolishness
by Amitai Etzioni
Much of the debate over how to address the economic crisis has focused on a single word: regulation. And it's easy to understand why. Bad behavior by a variety of businesses landed us in this mess--so it seems rather obvious that the way to avoid future economic meltdowns is to create, and vigorously enforce, new rules proscribing such behavior. But the truth is quite a bit more complicated. The world economy consists of billions of transactions every day. There can never be enough inspectors, accountants, customs officers, and police to ensure that all or even most of these transactions are properly carried out. Moreover, those charged with enforcing regulations are themselves not immune to corruption, and, hence, they too must be supervised and held accountable to others--who also have to be somehow regulated. The upshot is that regulation cannot be the linchpin of attempts to reform our economy. What is needed instead is something far more sweeping: for people to internalize a different sense of how one ought to behave, and act on it because they believe it is right.
That may sound far-fetched. It is commonly believed that people conduct themselves in a moral manner mainly because they fear the punishment that will be meted out if they engage in anti-social behavior. But this position does not stand up to close inspection. Most areas of behavior are extralegal; we frequently do what is expected because we care or love. This is evident in the ways we attend to our children (beyond a very low requirement set by law), treat our spouses, do volunteer work, and participate in public life. What's more, in many of those areas that are covered by law, the likelihood of being caught is actually quite low, and the penalties are often surprisingly mild. For instance, only about one in 100 tax returns gets audited, and most cheaters are merely asked to pay back what they "missed," plus some interest. Nevertheless, most Americans pay the taxes due. Alan Lewis's classic study The Psychology of Taxation concluded that people don't just pay taxes because they fear the government; they do it because they consider the burden fairly shared and the monies legitimately spent. In short, the normative values of a culture matter. Regulation is needed when culture fails, but it cannot alone serve as the mainstay of good conduct.
So what kind of transformation in our normative culture is called for? What needs to be eradicated, or at least greatly tempered, is consumerism: the obsession with acquisition that has become the organizing principle of American life. This is not the same thing as capitalism, nor is it the same thing as consumption. To explain the difference, it is useful to draw on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. At the bottom of this hierarchy are basic creature comforts; once these are sated, more satisfaction is drawn from affection, self-esteem, and, finally, self-actualization. As long as consumption is focused on satisfying basic human needs--safety, shelter, food, clothing, health care, education--it is not consumerism. But, when the acquisition of goods and services is used to satisfy the higher needs, consumption turns into consumerism--and consumerism becomes a social disease.
More HERE
Condemning the things that other people find satisfaction in is so Leftist. I find a LOT of things that other people enjoy strange -- mashed potatoes, to take a trivial example -- but I accept that tastes differ and leave the matter at that. But Leftists want to remake the world according to THEIR tastes and Etzioni is one of those. If he has (say) a liking for Cumquat marmalade (which I highly recommend, by the way), that would simply be good taste but if other people spend time and money seeking it out, that is "consumerism". It is principally the vast egos, amorality and authoritarian predilections of the Left that are hobbling our society, not "consumerism"
**********************
The usual difficulty that Leftists have with reality
But what about Gaza? Philip Weiss of TalkingPointsMemo.com visited there recently. He takes a strongly anti-Israel position, complaining of "persecution, of the Palestinians, by the state of Israel," and making no mention of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis or Hamas's genocidal aspirations toward Israel's Jews. Yet the picture he paints of "persecution" in Gaza doesn't sound that bad at all;
"I think the most significant impression I can convey is my surprise at how vibrant and alive the place is. . . . Downtown Gaza city is vibrant, full of street life, and the traffic is now and then interrupted by a flatbed truck going by with a wedding band banging drums on it, and a Mercedes carrying the bride and groom in tow. . . .
We see piles of watermelons by the side of the road and trucks filled with potatoes, and donkeys going by hauling wagons of tomatoes. Now and then you see a gleaming motorcycle. . . .
I remember during the Gaza slaughter that some tried to stop commentators from comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto. Now I am here and I find the analogy helpful".
Yeah, the Warsaw ghetto teemed with watermelons!
Excerpt from Taranto
*********************
Climate of Hate, World of Double Standards
by Michelle Malkin
When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of late-term abortion provider George Tiller of Kansas versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.
Tiller's suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military and anti-American.
Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.
President Obama issued a statement condemning "heinous acts of violence" within hours of Tiller's death. The Justice Department issued its own statement and sent federal marshals to protect abortion clinics. News anchors and headline writers abandoned all qualms about labeling the gunman a terrorist. An almost gleeful excess of mainstream commentary poured forth on the climate of hate and fear created by conservative talk radio, blogs and Fox News in reporting Tiller's activities.
By contrast, Obama was silent about the military recruiter attacks that left 24-year-old Pvt. William Long dead and 18-year-old Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula gravely wounded. On Tuesday afternoon -- more than 24 hours after the attack on the military recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark. -- Obama held a press conference to announce his pick for Army secretary. It would have been exactly the right moment to express condolences for the families of the targeted Army recruiters and to condemn heinous acts of violence against our troops.
But Obama said nothing. The Justice Department was mum. And so were the legions of finger-pointing pundits happily convicting the pro-life movement and every right-leaning writer on the planet of contributing to the murder of Tiller.
More HERE
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Gates: US may rethink cuts in anti-missile funds: "US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has not ruled out pumping more funds into the nation’s anti-missile defense budget if North Korea threatens the United States. ‘If there were a launch from a rogue state such as North Korea, I have good confidence that we would be able to deal with it,’ Gates said Monday during a stopover in Alaska on his way home from a trip to Asia. Gates was visiting Fort Greely which houses parts of the US anti-missile defense shield — a land-based system with about 20 interceptors — and said of Pyongyang that its ‘behavior has certainly alarmed people.’ In the past Gates proposed slicing a billion dollars off the anti-missile system budget and freezing the development of interceptors at 30, instead of the 44 originally planned. But he indicated he might re-examine his proposal.”
US releases secret nuclear list accidentally: “The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked ‘highly confidential,’ that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons. The publication of the document was revealed Monday in an on-line newsletter devoted to issues of federal secrecy. That publicity set off a debate among nuclear experts about what dangers, if any, the disclosures posed. It also prompted a flurry of investigations in Washington into why the document was made public.”
FL: Couple fought $21,600 water bill: “A Tampa, Fla., couple said it took them several months to resolve the issue of a monthly water bill for more than $21,000. Ralph and Diana Salgado said their water bill usually falls between $21 and $110 each month, but their July 2008 bill from the Tampa Water Department totaled $21,600, indicating that 3.5 million gallons of water were used by the couple during that month …. The couple said they soon determined that the erroneous amount was the result of a new water meter that had not been calibrated to match the old reading. However, they said the water department continued to demand the money for months after the problem was identified.” [This is par for the course when dealing with any bureaucracy. Nobody with decision-making power is listening]
China’s socialist road to misery: "It is 20 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, and China’s communist regime hasn’t budged an inch. The government has no reason to regret its murderous crackdown during ‘the political storm at the end of the 1980s,’ a foreign-ministry spokesman in Beijing told reporters last month. ‘China has scored remarkable success in its social and economic development. Facts have proven that the socialist road with Chinese characteristics that we pursue is in the fundamental interests of our people.’ As a euphemism for dictatorial savagery, ‘the socialist road with Chinese characteristics’ may not rise to the level of, say, ‘Great Leap Forward’ or ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.’”
More disillusioned Leftists: “Back in 2007, then-candidate Barack Obama minced no words when it came to Sudan. ‘When you see a genocide, whether it’s in Rwanda or Bosnia or in Darfur, that’s a stain on all of us,’ he said. ‘That’s a stain on our souls.’ Obama is now president, and Darfur is still a mess. … Since Obama is a pragmatist — and pragmatism is, by definition, what works — we should judge his policies in this area by a single standard: Are they accomplishing the goal of ending Darfur’s suffering? We are sad to say that the initial signs have not been encouraging. In fact, as Obama supporters, we are extraordinarily disappointed.”
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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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Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Tiller: A hero of the left, taken so young..
I am amazed that this lowlife had the gall to show his face in a Christian church. He specialized in killing perfectly viable but defenceless human beings. Comment below by an Australian blogger -- JR
Fox News:
So let me get this straight, if you have no problem with having an unborn baby sliced up, sucked out of the womb and tossed in the trash, you're ok. You're what one would class, a real stand-up person, mainstream, nice sort of person you know. But if you oppose the slicing up and tossing-in-the-trash of the aforementioned unborn baby, oh you're an extremist, @#%ing hell a terrorist even, call some sort of hotline and tell them all about the baby-coddling bastard out in the parking lot.
Some are even saying this is why that clown Napolitano was tarring all Conservatives as would-be terrorists. Thousands upon thousands have been murdered by muslims in the name of Islam, but you'll never get a leftist tarring them all as terrorists. They'd fight tooth and nail if you dared to suggest that maybe someone ought to 'wire-tap' the jihadis. Heck as far as leftists are concerned not even those found guilty of terrorism are actual terrorists, no, no, it's not all muslims, just a few who don't understand the Koran, Islam is peace, give Jihad a chance. But no such luxury is afforded to Conservatives, hell no, get the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the XYZ and the ABC to monitor and analyze their every fart. Dangerous national security threat, them pro-lifers with their nasty save-the-unborn and all that.
Oh yes, those bwave, bwave heroes, bless the likes of Tiller, oh let the wailing and mourning begin for these bwave, bwave, bwave [have I said it enough times?] folks! These couwageous heroes, heading out there each day into the war zone, dodging bullets, bombs, fire, pestilence etc so that they can offer American women the option to fornicate, then slice & dice the consequences away. Oh my godless, where would the world be without the hero of the human race, Dr. George Tiller.
Oh my godless, why only monday, why not tuesday too, why not the whole week, maybe even the month, don't you love the man enough you ungrateful witch. Dare you anger the leftist gods of gaia and satan with your paltry one day of mourning? Think about it you heartless bastards, the bwave, bwave Tiller, went out each day, bwaving, bullets, snipers, bombs, fire, missiles, pestilence, earthquakes, tsunamis even, to offer American women the option to fornicate, then slice & dice the consequences away! How can just one lousy day be enough?
Put that hero of the American people up for sainthood, for @#$sakes, a national monument ought to be set up where the masses can gather to lay wreaths, wail and sing songs to their bwave hero, the larger than life Dr George Tiller! Put up a golden statue for him, the wonderful soul that he is. Bloody hell (excuse the pun), put that fellow on Mount Rushmore, if there's no space knock off those other blokes. The freedom to punish the unborn for the sins of anyone else are at stake.
On a side note, if any of you are confronted by some angry leftist over the slaying of their lord and savior, can you ask them if they'd now support the death penalty for killers, like the one that took the life of their lord and savior? Please take note of their choked reaction and let us know. If they insist that the fellow be put to death, ask them why a gang-rapist, cop-killer or mass murderer of small children should not. Otherwise, join me as I pour another glass of fine Tennesse whiskey to you know, drown my sorrows.
SOURCE
************************
The Obama flip-flops you don't know about
Since winning the election, President Barack Obama has famously flip-flopped on many of the major issues that he championed on the campaign trail. But did you know he’s also flip-flopped on a myriad of less publicized issues? This much everybody knows: Even before taking office, Obama broke his promise to not appoint lobbyists to his administration. Since then, he’s abandoned his promises to pay for every dollar of new government spending and bring home all combat troops from Iraq within 18 months. And in recent days, he’s outraged his political base by reversing his earlier commitments to eliminate military tribunals and release photos depicting prisoner abuse. All those well-publicized reversals have overshadowed the administration’s flip-flops on a host of additional positions. Here are just some of the biggest flip-flops that you may not have noticed:
Osama bin Laden: During the presidential debates last year, Obama declared that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden “has to be our biggest national security priority.” In his first TV interview after winning the election, he said the terrorist leader was “not just a symbol. He’s also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against U.S. targets,” and that the additional troops being sent to Afghanistan would hunt him down because “capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out Al Qaeda.” Bin Laden’s significance to Obama dissipated during the transition. By the time Obama gave another interview in early January, he said killing or capturing bin Laden was not necessary to “meet our goal of protecting America.” A few months later, when he announced his Afghanistan troop surge, he made no reference to the hunt for bin Laden.
On human space exploration: Early in his presidential campaign, Obama had great reservations about the costs and risks of human space flight. He said he would delay NASA’s plans to send humans to the moon and, eventually, Mars and, instead, spend that money on education. But, as Florida, Ohio and Texas became more politically important, Obama began to walk back his proposed NASA cuts, promising to fund unmanned space exploration and some other scientific missions. Now that he’s in office, Obama’s reversal is complete: The White House budget, released earlier this month, provides a healthy increase in NASA funding and explicitly endorses the “goal of returning Americans to the moon and exploring other destinations.”
On the Armenian genocide: In the U.S. Senate and on the campaign trail, Obama firmly declared that the death of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I was “genocide” — a touchy topic between Turks and Armenians and a political priority for Armenian-Americans — and promised that “as president, I will recognize the Armenian genocide. Nonetheless, during his recent trip to Turkey as president, Obama broke his promise. Instead, he tried to muddy the waters, announcing that “my views are on the record and I have not changed views” but refusing to state what those views actually are.
On business tax cuts: Even though he unapologetically promised to raise taxes on entrepreneurs (and everybody else) making more than $250,000 per year, Obama offered small businesses some solace by promising several specific tax cuts. One, which became a cornerstone of his campaign’s jobs plan, would eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses. Another, which he proposed as the economy crashed in the waning days of the campaign, would offer businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every employee they hired. The economy has not improved since Obama’s election, but he nevertheless shelved both proposals: His budget puts off the capital gains tax cut until after his term in office ends and makes no mention of his new-job tax credit.
These four examples only scratch the surface of Obama’s reversals since taking office. Other flip-flops include everything from federally funding needle-exchange programs (which he supported in the campaign but his budget does not), allowing five days of public review before bill signings (he broke the promise with his first bill signing) and ordering the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, recently told POLITICO that “Obama’s governing is completely consistent with the way he campaigned.” A cursory comparison between his campaign promises and administration policies shows that’s not true.
SOURCE
***********************
ELSEWHERE
I did my usual test of new search engines. I searched for the topic I know most about: myself. Using the search term "John Ray", on Microsoft's new bing.com, I didn't get a mention until the third PAGE. On Google, I am the third ENTRY. So I think I will stick with Google. I think I owe them. I suspect that Google give more weight to blogs than the others do.
Sibling rivalry: As far as I can see, both TNR and The Puffington Host seem to belong to the "moderate" Left. So it is interesting to see in TNR what can only be described as an attack on Arianna Stassinopoulos/Huffington, the guiding spirit of the Puffington Host. It is a sort of more genteel version of the ice-pick in the head that Trotsky got from Stalin. Arianna certainly is an unusual figure, having migrated from Right to Left. The normal life course is a migration from Left to Right, as people find out from experience that the world is a lot more complex than they once thought it was. The TNR writer attributes her move to opportunism, which is plausible enough, but I think that the basic tone-deafness towards religion that characterizes the Left causes him to miss the significance of something that is very prominent in her writings: A spiritual yearning. It sounds to me that, as Billy Graham often put it, she has a "God-shaped void" in her. Perhaps because of something in her family background, she has sought satisfaction in secular creeds instead, but that is a vain hope. I think that turning to God will be her final transition and one that will still the restlessness and hunger for fulfilment that she so obviously has in herself.
That charming Muslim respect for women again: "A teenage model has returned to her family in Indonesia with tales of abuse, rape and torture at the hands of a Malaysian prince, after a dramatic escape. Manohara Odelia Pinot, 17, told reporters she was treated like a sex slave after her marriage last year to Tengku Temenggong Mohammad Fakhry, the prince of Malaysia's Kelantan state. Her mother, Daisy Fajarina, said she would press charges against the 31-year-old prince, and accused the Malaysian and Indonesian governments of trying to cover up the alleged abuse. The young woman -- a well-known socialite in Jakarta -- said her life at the royal palace involved a "daily routine" of rape, abuse, torture and occasional drug injections that made her vomit blood. "I am still traumatised by all that happened and it has left an impact on me," she said in Jakarta after escaping during a trip to Singapore over the weekend. "Sexual abuse and sexual harassment were like a daily routine for me, and he did that every time I did not want to have sexual intercourse," she was quoted as saying in The Jakarta Globe. "I could never think a normal man could do such things. "Some parts of my body were cut by a razor."
Cornyn doesn’t rule out Sotomayor filibuster: "Texas Sen. John Cornyn declined Sunday to rule out a Republican filibuster of President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, but he urged the Senate and public to ‘calm down’ long enough to evaluate whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is capable of meting out colorblind justice. ‘We need to know … whether she’s going to be a justice for all of us or a justice for a few of us,’ Cornyn said on ABC’s This Week. ‘Let’s review those 17 years of federal judicial history, and let’s ask the nominee some questions.’”
Maine: Cops raid charity poker game: “Buxton police raided a building where people were trying to raise money to give free food to the needy. It happened at the Narragansett Pythian Sisters Temple on Route 22 where people were playing the card game Texas Hold’em to benefit the Buxton Community Food Co-op. But state police said the game was illegal. That’s because whenever a gambling tournament is held to raise money for a group and takes place at its headquarters, a permit is needed and the co-op didn’t have one. So, state police seized cards, poker chips and $500 in cash — money the food co-op desperately needed.”
Security theater in three airports: “Returning recently from a trip to Turkey, my wife and I had the distinct displeasure of passing repeatedly through ’security’ checkpoints, not to mention waiting in long queues in order to arrive at these unpleasant passages. Although every country’s airport security boasts its own unique idiocies, all have much in common. It’s a waste of time to fret about swine flu; the more pressing danger to the world is obviously fool flu — although I am not sure who are the greater fools, the politicians and their flunkies who put these stupid procedures in place or the masses who put up with them in the wholly mistaken belief that their security is thereby enhanced. But let us not dwell on generalities when specifics lie so close at hand.” [An amusing story. Worth reading in full]
O’Reilly killed the abortionist?: “Did Fox News host Bill O’Reilly kill abortion provider Dr. George Tiller? Reading some of today’s outraged commentary by pro-choice writers in both America and Britain, you could be forgiven for thinking so. Scott Roeder might be suspected of actually pulling the trigger, but O’Reilly — and other loudmouth, right-wing anti-abortionists — have already been found guilty of egging him on in the kangaroo court of liberal opinion. Tiller was savagely shot dead while attending a church service with his wife in Kansas on Sunday. His ‘crime,’ as his alleged killer undoubtedly sees it, was to run a clinic that provided women with perfectly legal late-term abortions. Yet rather than seeing this dreadful killing as the action of a probably crazed individual, too many liberal commentators are discussing it as the logical outcome of the ‘dangerous’ words and images propagated by O’Reilly and others.”
North Korea, the dead land : “I was nine when I saw my first execution. The man had been condemned to death for stealing copper wire to sell in China, crossing the border under the cover of darkness. He was dragged to the foot of the mountain near a railway track. A train that happened to pass stopped to let passengers watch the scene. Executions were a frequent occurrence in our small city, but the inhabitants never tired of them. Primary and secondary school pupils skipped classes to join the audience, which always consisted of hundreds, even thousands, of people.”
Voting still insecure: “About 8 years elapsed from John F. Kennedy’s proposal to put a man on the Moon to the Apollo 11 mission. And on July 20, 1969, Man set foot on another world. Setting that foot involved an enormous amount of engineering and technology, much of which didn’t exist when the project began. About 8 years have elapsed since the debacle of the 2000 election. But can we really have confidence in our elections? Can the government actually prove what the correct lawful vote counts were in Decision 2008? More to the point, can the state of Minnesota demonstrate what the correct vote counts are in its on-going U.S. Senate contest? Since CHANGE is in the air, what’s changed in 8 years?”
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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)
****************************
I am amazed that this lowlife had the gall to show his face in a Christian church. He specialized in killing perfectly viable but defenceless human beings. Comment below by an Australian blogger -- JR
Fox News:
Many anti-abortion groups condemned the killing of Tiller, a prominent abortion provider who was shot dead at his church in Wichita, Kansas. But they expressed concern that abortion-rights activists would use the occasion to brand the entire anti-abortion movement as extremist. ......Tiller, one the few American doctors specializing in late-term abortions, had been the target of repeated protests and harassment for many years, and he was wounded by gunfire from an anti-abortion activist in 1993.
So let me get this straight, if you have no problem with having an unborn baby sliced up, sucked out of the womb and tossed in the trash, you're ok. You're what one would class, a real stand-up person, mainstream, nice sort of person you know. But if you oppose the slicing up and tossing-in-the-trash of the aforementioned unborn baby, oh you're an extremist, @#%ing hell a terrorist even, call some sort of hotline and tell them all about the baby-coddling bastard out in the parking lot.
Some are even saying this is why that clown Napolitano was tarring all Conservatives as would-be terrorists. Thousands upon thousands have been murdered by muslims in the name of Islam, but you'll never get a leftist tarring them all as terrorists. They'd fight tooth and nail if you dared to suggest that maybe someone ought to 'wire-tap' the jihadis. Heck as far as leftists are concerned not even those found guilty of terrorism are actual terrorists, no, no, it's not all muslims, just a few who don't understand the Koran, Islam is peace, give Jihad a chance. But no such luxury is afforded to Conservatives, hell no, get the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the XYZ and the ABC to monitor and analyze their every fart. Dangerous national security threat, them pro-lifers with their nasty save-the-unborn and all that.
......Abortion rights leaders reacted to the killing with shock and determination. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said the murder would "send a chill down the spines of the brave and courageous providers" offering abortion to American women.
Oh yes, those bwave, bwave heroes, bless the likes of Tiller, oh let the wailing and mourning begin for these bwave, bwave, bwave [have I said it enough times?] folks! These couwageous heroes, heading out there each day into the war zone, dodging bullets, bombs, fire, pestilence etc so that they can offer American women the option to fornicate, then slice & dice the consequences away. Oh my godless, where would the world be without the hero of the human race, Dr. George Tiller.
......Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said Tiller was aware of the dangers he faced, "yet he continued to protect his patients and provide safe and legal abortions to women in often-desperate circumstances." She and other activists urged that Monday be observed as a national day of mourning for Tiller, as well as a day of commitment to the cause of abortion rights.
Oh my godless, why only monday, why not tuesday too, why not the whole week, maybe even the month, don't you love the man enough you ungrateful witch. Dare you anger the leftist gods of gaia and satan with your paltry one day of mourning? Think about it you heartless bastards, the bwave, bwave Tiller, went out each day, bwaving, bullets, snipers, bombs, fire, missiles, pestilence, earthquakes, tsunamis even, to offer American women the option to fornicate, then slice & dice the consequences away! How can just one lousy day be enough?
Put that hero of the American people up for sainthood, for @#$sakes, a national monument ought to be set up where the masses can gather to lay wreaths, wail and sing songs to their bwave hero, the larger than life Dr George Tiller! Put up a golden statue for him, the wonderful soul that he is. Bloody hell (excuse the pun), put that fellow on Mount Rushmore, if there's no space knock off those other blokes. The freedom to punish the unborn for the sins of anyone else are at stake.
On a side note, if any of you are confronted by some angry leftist over the slaying of their lord and savior, can you ask them if they'd now support the death penalty for killers, like the one that took the life of their lord and savior? Please take note of their choked reaction and let us know. If they insist that the fellow be put to death, ask them why a gang-rapist, cop-killer or mass murderer of small children should not. Otherwise, join me as I pour another glass of fine Tennesse whiskey to you know, drown my sorrows.
SOURCE
************************
The Obama flip-flops you don't know about
Since winning the election, President Barack Obama has famously flip-flopped on many of the major issues that he championed on the campaign trail. But did you know he’s also flip-flopped on a myriad of less publicized issues? This much everybody knows: Even before taking office, Obama broke his promise to not appoint lobbyists to his administration. Since then, he’s abandoned his promises to pay for every dollar of new government spending and bring home all combat troops from Iraq within 18 months. And in recent days, he’s outraged his political base by reversing his earlier commitments to eliminate military tribunals and release photos depicting prisoner abuse. All those well-publicized reversals have overshadowed the administration’s flip-flops on a host of additional positions. Here are just some of the biggest flip-flops that you may not have noticed:
Osama bin Laden: During the presidential debates last year, Obama declared that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden “has to be our biggest national security priority.” In his first TV interview after winning the election, he said the terrorist leader was “not just a symbol. He’s also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against U.S. targets,” and that the additional troops being sent to Afghanistan would hunt him down because “capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out Al Qaeda.” Bin Laden’s significance to Obama dissipated during the transition. By the time Obama gave another interview in early January, he said killing or capturing bin Laden was not necessary to “meet our goal of protecting America.” A few months later, when he announced his Afghanistan troop surge, he made no reference to the hunt for bin Laden.
On human space exploration: Early in his presidential campaign, Obama had great reservations about the costs and risks of human space flight. He said he would delay NASA’s plans to send humans to the moon and, eventually, Mars and, instead, spend that money on education. But, as Florida, Ohio and Texas became more politically important, Obama began to walk back his proposed NASA cuts, promising to fund unmanned space exploration and some other scientific missions. Now that he’s in office, Obama’s reversal is complete: The White House budget, released earlier this month, provides a healthy increase in NASA funding and explicitly endorses the “goal of returning Americans to the moon and exploring other destinations.”
On the Armenian genocide: In the U.S. Senate and on the campaign trail, Obama firmly declared that the death of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I was “genocide” — a touchy topic between Turks and Armenians and a political priority for Armenian-Americans — and promised that “as president, I will recognize the Armenian genocide. Nonetheless, during his recent trip to Turkey as president, Obama broke his promise. Instead, he tried to muddy the waters, announcing that “my views are on the record and I have not changed views” but refusing to state what those views actually are.
On business tax cuts: Even though he unapologetically promised to raise taxes on entrepreneurs (and everybody else) making more than $250,000 per year, Obama offered small businesses some solace by promising several specific tax cuts. One, which became a cornerstone of his campaign’s jobs plan, would eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses. Another, which he proposed as the economy crashed in the waning days of the campaign, would offer businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every employee they hired. The economy has not improved since Obama’s election, but he nevertheless shelved both proposals: His budget puts off the capital gains tax cut until after his term in office ends and makes no mention of his new-job tax credit.
These four examples only scratch the surface of Obama’s reversals since taking office. Other flip-flops include everything from federally funding needle-exchange programs (which he supported in the campaign but his budget does not), allowing five days of public review before bill signings (he broke the promise with his first bill signing) and ordering the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, recently told POLITICO that “Obama’s governing is completely consistent with the way he campaigned.” A cursory comparison between his campaign promises and administration policies shows that’s not true.
SOURCE
***********************
ELSEWHERE
I did my usual test of new search engines. I searched for the topic I know most about: myself. Using the search term "John Ray", on Microsoft's new bing.com, I didn't get a mention until the third PAGE. On Google, I am the third ENTRY. So I think I will stick with Google. I think I owe them. I suspect that Google give more weight to blogs than the others do.
Sibling rivalry: As far as I can see, both TNR and The Puffington Host seem to belong to the "moderate" Left. So it is interesting to see in TNR what can only be described as an attack on Arianna Stassinopoulos/Huffington, the guiding spirit of the Puffington Host. It is a sort of more genteel version of the ice-pick in the head that Trotsky got from Stalin. Arianna certainly is an unusual figure, having migrated from Right to Left. The normal life course is a migration from Left to Right, as people find out from experience that the world is a lot more complex than they once thought it was. The TNR writer attributes her move to opportunism, which is plausible enough, but I think that the basic tone-deafness towards religion that characterizes the Left causes him to miss the significance of something that is very prominent in her writings: A spiritual yearning. It sounds to me that, as Billy Graham often put it, she has a "God-shaped void" in her. Perhaps because of something in her family background, she has sought satisfaction in secular creeds instead, but that is a vain hope. I think that turning to God will be her final transition and one that will still the restlessness and hunger for fulfilment that she so obviously has in herself.
That charming Muslim respect for women again: "A teenage model has returned to her family in Indonesia with tales of abuse, rape and torture at the hands of a Malaysian prince, after a dramatic escape. Manohara Odelia Pinot, 17, told reporters she was treated like a sex slave after her marriage last year to Tengku Temenggong Mohammad Fakhry, the prince of Malaysia's Kelantan state. Her mother, Daisy Fajarina, said she would press charges against the 31-year-old prince, and accused the Malaysian and Indonesian governments of trying to cover up the alleged abuse. The young woman -- a well-known socialite in Jakarta -- said her life at the royal palace involved a "daily routine" of rape, abuse, torture and occasional drug injections that made her vomit blood. "I am still traumatised by all that happened and it has left an impact on me," she said in Jakarta after escaping during a trip to Singapore over the weekend. "Sexual abuse and sexual harassment were like a daily routine for me, and he did that every time I did not want to have sexual intercourse," she was quoted as saying in The Jakarta Globe. "I could never think a normal man could do such things. "Some parts of my body were cut by a razor."
Cornyn doesn’t rule out Sotomayor filibuster: "Texas Sen. John Cornyn declined Sunday to rule out a Republican filibuster of President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, but he urged the Senate and public to ‘calm down’ long enough to evaluate whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is capable of meting out colorblind justice. ‘We need to know … whether she’s going to be a justice for all of us or a justice for a few of us,’ Cornyn said on ABC’s This Week. ‘Let’s review those 17 years of federal judicial history, and let’s ask the nominee some questions.’”
Maine: Cops raid charity poker game: “Buxton police raided a building where people were trying to raise money to give free food to the needy. It happened at the Narragansett Pythian Sisters Temple on Route 22 where people were playing the card game Texas Hold’em to benefit the Buxton Community Food Co-op. But state police said the game was illegal. That’s because whenever a gambling tournament is held to raise money for a group and takes place at its headquarters, a permit is needed and the co-op didn’t have one. So, state police seized cards, poker chips and $500 in cash — money the food co-op desperately needed.”
Security theater in three airports: “Returning recently from a trip to Turkey, my wife and I had the distinct displeasure of passing repeatedly through ’security’ checkpoints, not to mention waiting in long queues in order to arrive at these unpleasant passages. Although every country’s airport security boasts its own unique idiocies, all have much in common. It’s a waste of time to fret about swine flu; the more pressing danger to the world is obviously fool flu — although I am not sure who are the greater fools, the politicians and their flunkies who put these stupid procedures in place or the masses who put up with them in the wholly mistaken belief that their security is thereby enhanced. But let us not dwell on generalities when specifics lie so close at hand.” [An amusing story. Worth reading in full]
O’Reilly killed the abortionist?: “Did Fox News host Bill O’Reilly kill abortion provider Dr. George Tiller? Reading some of today’s outraged commentary by pro-choice writers in both America and Britain, you could be forgiven for thinking so. Scott Roeder might be suspected of actually pulling the trigger, but O’Reilly — and other loudmouth, right-wing anti-abortionists — have already been found guilty of egging him on in the kangaroo court of liberal opinion. Tiller was savagely shot dead while attending a church service with his wife in Kansas on Sunday. His ‘crime,’ as his alleged killer undoubtedly sees it, was to run a clinic that provided women with perfectly legal late-term abortions. Yet rather than seeing this dreadful killing as the action of a probably crazed individual, too many liberal commentators are discussing it as the logical outcome of the ‘dangerous’ words and images propagated by O’Reilly and others.”
North Korea, the dead land : “I was nine when I saw my first execution. The man had been condemned to death for stealing copper wire to sell in China, crossing the border under the cover of darkness. He was dragged to the foot of the mountain near a railway track. A train that happened to pass stopped to let passengers watch the scene. Executions were a frequent occurrence in our small city, but the inhabitants never tired of them. Primary and secondary school pupils skipped classes to join the audience, which always consisted of hundreds, even thousands, of people.”
Voting still insecure: “About 8 years elapsed from John F. Kennedy’s proposal to put a man on the Moon to the Apollo 11 mission. And on July 20, 1969, Man set foot on another world. Setting that foot involved an enormous amount of engineering and technology, much of which didn’t exist when the project began. About 8 years have elapsed since the debacle of the 2000 election. But can we really have confidence in our elections? Can the government actually prove what the correct lawful vote counts were in Decision 2008? More to the point, can the state of Minnesota demonstrate what the correct vote counts are in its on-going U.S. Senate contest? Since CHANGE is in the air, what’s changed in 8 years?”
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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)
****************************
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Obama promises Arabs Jerusalem will be theirs
President Obama and his administration told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting last week the U.S. foresees the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, according to a top PA official speaking to WND. "The American administration was very friendly to the position of the PA," said Nimer Hamad, Abbas' senior political adviser. "Abu Mazen (Abbas) heard from Obama and his administration in a very categorical way that a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is in the American national and security interest," Hamad said.
Another PA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND today that Obama informed Abbas he would not let Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "get in the way" of normalizing U.S. relations with the Arab and greater Muslim world. "We were told from this new administration they will not allow a Netanyahu government to hurt their efforts of rehabilitating U.S. relations with the Arab and Islamic world, which is a high priority of Obama," the official said, speaking during a visit to Cairo.
Also in Cairo today, Abbas met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, where the Palestinian leader briefed Egypt's president on his recent trip to Washington, saying the U.S. was committed to bringing about an end to Israeli construction in the West Bank.
More HERE
************************
DOWN MEMORY LANE
If you don't read anything else today, read Byron York's searing account of what happened last time a brilliant Hispanic jurist was nominated to a high-profile appellate post:
They succeeded, too. They filibustered Estrada for years and he never made it onto the bench. So, when you see Barack Obama--who voted to filibuster Sam Alito!--piously denouncing "the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process" in the past, remember Miguel Estrada. Somewhere on this earth, there is a worse hypocrite than Barack Obama. I just can't think who he is offhand....
SOURCE
**********************
Trust in the individual: The Fundamental Divide between Left and Right
By Bjaffe
As a recovering liberal for the last 13 years, I sometimes lose sight of the thought processes that led me to the beliefs I used to hold. Fortunately, I still have many Democratic and liberal friends to remind me what the fundamental difference is between the left and the right. That difference can be summed up in one small but powerful word – trust.
The fact is, liberals have no trust at all in anyone except elected liberal officials and the government when run by liberals. They do not trust the American people to do the right thing unless the government forces them into it. Hence the push for hate crimes legislation, gun bans, forced charitable giving in the form of taxes that pay for entitlement programs, mandatory participation in Social (in)Security and so on. Liberals just do not believe most Americans will do the right thing left to their own devices. The same is true of businesses. Liberals believe that, in the absence of government regulation and oversight, business will always do the wrong thing and engage in bad business practices. Fortunately, in their worldview, we have them to guide us in the right direction and to steer the nation as a whole toward the proper destination.
The conservative, on the other hand, believes in the inherent greatness each person possesses. We believe that everyone in this nation has it within themselves to succeed at anything they put their minds to. We also believe that the individual is responsible for their own success or failure. Sure, life is unpredictable, and stuff happens that we have no control over, but ultimately, it is how we handle ourselves in those situations and what we learn from them that determines where we end up. Most importantly, we believe most individuals, when left to their own devices, will not only do the right thing, but will do it far better than under government “guidance.” We also know the free market, left to its own devices, would weed out those businesses that engage in poor practice while well-run businesses succeeded. Additionally, we know that when old businesses fail, if there is a market for the goods or services that business provided, new ones with sound business practices will rise up to replace them.
This cuts to the very core of what defines liberals and conservatives. Belief in the greatness of government or belief in the greatness of the individual. I was reminded of this just recently, when having the following exchange with a very honest Democrat I have been friends with most of my life. We were discussing the new credit card regulations, which he supports, when he said this: “…as much as I hate the government stepping into anything... I have no faith in people these days to have self control, and ultimately banks will just continue this practice if controls aren't in place.”
Many Democrats I know, and most liberals, share this lack of faith in people. This is what leads them to craft the policies I mentioned above, aimed at regulating behavior. They do not feel that people can be trusted with any responsibility, and will ultimately fail without government to save them. We see this not just in the credit card reforms recently passed, but in all of the recent bailouts. Banks cannot be trusted to run effectively or efficiently, so rather than failing and paying the price for poor business decisions, they need to be propped up and run by the government. Imagine, the government, the largest debtor in the entire country, with a debt larger than every bank in the nation combined, telling these businesses how to run themselves effectively. Is this a joke? This is like asking a chronically homeless person for advice on how to build wealth! The government is itself a failed business venture, and would have collapsed decades ago if it had to run itself by the rules it foists upon other businesses. But the banks failed, and the liberal thinking is that the government has to step in and do something. So we get bailouts that even financially healthy institutions were coerced into accepting – presumably because even the well-run banks could not be trusted to keep doing the right thing. And this does not even begin to cover the auto industry bailouts or the homeowner bailouts – which ironically saw more than half of the bailed out homeowners back in default within six months. Way to go government!
What is missed in this equation is the fact that failure is necessary and healthy. People fail, businesses fail, and that is part of the natural order of things. It is not success that creates prosperity and success, it is failure, and the lessons it brings. Maybe most people will not do the right thing if left to their own devices, but if they are allowed to fail, they will learn from the experience, and will eventually change the behaviors causing them to fail. This is the only way to ever achieve true success – to overcome failure and adversity. This is what gives a foundation for success, and the process by which people learn what works, and what does not work. A great example of this is Thomas Edison, who failed hundreds upon hundreds of times to create a working, practical light bulb. Had he been propped up by the government after his first dozen failures, and simply given up, would we ever have developed the light bulb? When the government forces people to behave in certain ways to do “the right thing,” it does no favors for anyone.
The liberal mindset that people cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and that the government must take action to prevent people and businesses from failing, while very well intentioned, is ultimately debilitating and will lead to the exact opposite of what its intent is. Rather than helping things run smoothly and effectively, this lack of trust and enforced guidance will perpetuate a system that does not work while preventing new and innovative systems that will work from coming into existence. Only by allowing people to have the maximum amount of freedom possible, including the freedom to fail, can progress be made and ineffective/inefficient systems and behaviors be purged and replaced with ones that work. And this is what conservatives believe in.
SOURCE
*********************
ELSEWHERE
When the law is one-sided, people will seek balance in other ways: "US President Barack Obama has expressed outrage at the fatal shooting of a controversial Kansas doctor who performed late-term abortions. "I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr George Tiller as he attended church services this morning,'' Mr Obama said. "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.'' Tiller was shot dead in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. A suspect was arrested three hours later, police said. Over the years Tiller had been picketed, bombed and shot in both of his arms by anti-abortion protesters. The shooting occurred just two weeks after Mr Obama sought "common ground'' over the divisive abortion debate in a controversial speech at one of the top Catholic universities in the United States."
Barack Bush: "“The Obama administration insists it has no obligation to provide access to a top secret document in a wiretapping case, setting up a showdown next week with the judge who ordered it released. Justice Department lawyers, in a response Friday with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, also argued that Judge Vaughn Walker had no cause to penalize the government over its refusal to turn over the document.”
Ireland set to go bust, says economic historian: “A dire warning that the Republic is a prime candidate to go bust has come from one of the world’s leading economic historians. ‘The idea that countries don’t go bust is a joke,’ said Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money. ‘The debt trap may be about to spring’ he said, ‘for countries that have created large stimulus packages in order to stimulate their economies.’ His chosen prime candidate to go bust is ‘Ireland, followed by Italy and Belgium, and UK is not too far behind.’ Argentina is top of his list of shaky countries but ‘the argument that it can’t happen in major western economies is nonsense.’ Professor Ferguson believes the economists are ill qualified to analyse the current economic situation since they lack the overview of historians such as himself.”
Sotomayor and the Last of the WASPs: “If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed, the US Supreme Court will consist of six Catholics, two Jews and precisely one white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in the form of Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 88 years old and boasts of two important WASP insignia: inherited wealth and a bow tie. He also thinks that Shakespeare’s plays were written by the Earl of Oxford. But then, so does Antonin Scalia. The other WASP among the nine, until he announced his retirement — thus paving the way for Sotomayor’s nomination — is David Souter. The two WASPS have been the most liberal members of the court.”
Legalize it: "“City pushcart vendors could legally prepare food with a type of license that already exists in the parks. Why not let them? … [Miguel] Sanchez makes about $100 a day at the cart; working nearly every afternoon and evening, and picking up some painting and carpentry jobs on the side, he supports his family of six. But he lives under the near-constant threat of being fined by the city. What he’s doing is illegal in Chicago, and as demand for his food grows in the spring, so does the likelihood that he’ll be slapped with tickets for anywhere from $200 to $1,000.”
The unpersuasive orator: “Let’s stipulate that President Obama is a wonderful speaker, vigorous in promoting his policies and even eloquent at times. But there’s a problem: He’s not persuasive. Obama is effective at marketing himself. His 64 percent job approval (Gallup poll) is a reflection of this. But in building public support for his policies, Obama has been largely unsuccessful. You’d never guess this from the laudatory press coverage of Obama. With every major speech or press conference, the media and a sizable chunk of the political community — including many Republicans — assume Obama has carried the day. Actually, he rarely has.”
The “unseen” deserve empathy, too: “As important as compassion and empathy are, one can have these feelings only for people that exist and that one knows about — that is, for those who are ’seen.’ One can have compassion for workers who lose their jobs when a plant closes. They can be seen. One cannot have compassion for unknown persons in other industries who do not receive job offers when a compassionate government subsidizes an unprofitable plant. The potential employees not hired are unseen. One can empathize with innocent children born with birth defects. Such children and the adversity they face can be seen. One cannot empathize with as-yet-unborn children in rural communities who may not have access to pediatricians if a judicial decision based on compassion raises the cost of medical malpractice insurance.”
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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)
****************************
President Obama and his administration told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting last week the U.S. foresees the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, according to a top PA official speaking to WND. "The American administration was very friendly to the position of the PA," said Nimer Hamad, Abbas' senior political adviser. "Abu Mazen (Abbas) heard from Obama and his administration in a very categorical way that a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is in the American national and security interest," Hamad said.
Another PA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND today that Obama informed Abbas he would not let Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "get in the way" of normalizing U.S. relations with the Arab and greater Muslim world. "We were told from this new administration they will not allow a Netanyahu government to hurt their efforts of rehabilitating U.S. relations with the Arab and Islamic world, which is a high priority of Obama," the official said, speaking during a visit to Cairo.
Also in Cairo today, Abbas met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, where the Palestinian leader briefed Egypt's president on his recent trip to Washington, saying the U.S. was committed to bringing about an end to Israeli construction in the West Bank.
More HERE
************************
DOWN MEMORY LANE
If you don't read anything else today, read Byron York's searing account of what happened last time a brilliant Hispanic jurist was nominated to a high-profile appellate post:
Born in Honduras, [Miguel] Estrada came to the United States at 17, not knowing a word of English. He learned the language almost instantly, and within a few years was graduating with honors from Columbia University and heading off to Harvard Law School. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, was a prosecutor in New York, and worked at the Justice Department in Washington before entering private practice.
Estrada's nomination for a federal judgeship set off alarm bells among Democrats. There is a group of left-leaning organizations -- People for the American Way, NARAL, the Alliance for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, and others -- that work closely with Senate Democrats to promote Democratic judicial nominations and kill Republican ones. They were particularly concerned about Estrada.
In November, 2001, representatives of those groups met with Democratic Senate staff. One of those staffers then wrote a memo to Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, informing Durbin that the groups wanted to stall Bush nominees, particularly three they had identified as good targets. "They also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous," the staffer added, "because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible."
It was precisely the fact that Estrada was Hispanic that made Democrats and their activist allies want to kill his nomination. They were determined to deny a Republican White House credit, political and otherwise, for putting a first-rate Hispanic nominee on the bench.
They succeeded, too. They filibustered Estrada for years and he never made it onto the bench. So, when you see Barack Obama--who voted to filibuster Sam Alito!--piously denouncing "the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process" in the past, remember Miguel Estrada. Somewhere on this earth, there is a worse hypocrite than Barack Obama. I just can't think who he is offhand....
SOURCE
**********************
Trust in the individual: The Fundamental Divide between Left and Right
By Bjaffe
As a recovering liberal for the last 13 years, I sometimes lose sight of the thought processes that led me to the beliefs I used to hold. Fortunately, I still have many Democratic and liberal friends to remind me what the fundamental difference is between the left and the right. That difference can be summed up in one small but powerful word – trust.
The fact is, liberals have no trust at all in anyone except elected liberal officials and the government when run by liberals. They do not trust the American people to do the right thing unless the government forces them into it. Hence the push for hate crimes legislation, gun bans, forced charitable giving in the form of taxes that pay for entitlement programs, mandatory participation in Social (in)Security and so on. Liberals just do not believe most Americans will do the right thing left to their own devices. The same is true of businesses. Liberals believe that, in the absence of government regulation and oversight, business will always do the wrong thing and engage in bad business practices. Fortunately, in their worldview, we have them to guide us in the right direction and to steer the nation as a whole toward the proper destination.
The conservative, on the other hand, believes in the inherent greatness each person possesses. We believe that everyone in this nation has it within themselves to succeed at anything they put their minds to. We also believe that the individual is responsible for their own success or failure. Sure, life is unpredictable, and stuff happens that we have no control over, but ultimately, it is how we handle ourselves in those situations and what we learn from them that determines where we end up. Most importantly, we believe most individuals, when left to their own devices, will not only do the right thing, but will do it far better than under government “guidance.” We also know the free market, left to its own devices, would weed out those businesses that engage in poor practice while well-run businesses succeeded. Additionally, we know that when old businesses fail, if there is a market for the goods or services that business provided, new ones with sound business practices will rise up to replace them.
This cuts to the very core of what defines liberals and conservatives. Belief in the greatness of government or belief in the greatness of the individual. I was reminded of this just recently, when having the following exchange with a very honest Democrat I have been friends with most of my life. We were discussing the new credit card regulations, which he supports, when he said this: “…as much as I hate the government stepping into anything... I have no faith in people these days to have self control, and ultimately banks will just continue this practice if controls aren't in place.”
Many Democrats I know, and most liberals, share this lack of faith in people. This is what leads them to craft the policies I mentioned above, aimed at regulating behavior. They do not feel that people can be trusted with any responsibility, and will ultimately fail without government to save them. We see this not just in the credit card reforms recently passed, but in all of the recent bailouts. Banks cannot be trusted to run effectively or efficiently, so rather than failing and paying the price for poor business decisions, they need to be propped up and run by the government. Imagine, the government, the largest debtor in the entire country, with a debt larger than every bank in the nation combined, telling these businesses how to run themselves effectively. Is this a joke? This is like asking a chronically homeless person for advice on how to build wealth! The government is itself a failed business venture, and would have collapsed decades ago if it had to run itself by the rules it foists upon other businesses. But the banks failed, and the liberal thinking is that the government has to step in and do something. So we get bailouts that even financially healthy institutions were coerced into accepting – presumably because even the well-run banks could not be trusted to keep doing the right thing. And this does not even begin to cover the auto industry bailouts or the homeowner bailouts – which ironically saw more than half of the bailed out homeowners back in default within six months. Way to go government!
What is missed in this equation is the fact that failure is necessary and healthy. People fail, businesses fail, and that is part of the natural order of things. It is not success that creates prosperity and success, it is failure, and the lessons it brings. Maybe most people will not do the right thing if left to their own devices, but if they are allowed to fail, they will learn from the experience, and will eventually change the behaviors causing them to fail. This is the only way to ever achieve true success – to overcome failure and adversity. This is what gives a foundation for success, and the process by which people learn what works, and what does not work. A great example of this is Thomas Edison, who failed hundreds upon hundreds of times to create a working, practical light bulb. Had he been propped up by the government after his first dozen failures, and simply given up, would we ever have developed the light bulb? When the government forces people to behave in certain ways to do “the right thing,” it does no favors for anyone.
The liberal mindset that people cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and that the government must take action to prevent people and businesses from failing, while very well intentioned, is ultimately debilitating and will lead to the exact opposite of what its intent is. Rather than helping things run smoothly and effectively, this lack of trust and enforced guidance will perpetuate a system that does not work while preventing new and innovative systems that will work from coming into existence. Only by allowing people to have the maximum amount of freedom possible, including the freedom to fail, can progress be made and ineffective/inefficient systems and behaviors be purged and replaced with ones that work. And this is what conservatives believe in.
SOURCE
*********************
ELSEWHERE
When the law is one-sided, people will seek balance in other ways: "US President Barack Obama has expressed outrage at the fatal shooting of a controversial Kansas doctor who performed late-term abortions. "I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr George Tiller as he attended church services this morning,'' Mr Obama said. "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.'' Tiller was shot dead in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. A suspect was arrested three hours later, police said. Over the years Tiller had been picketed, bombed and shot in both of his arms by anti-abortion protesters. The shooting occurred just two weeks after Mr Obama sought "common ground'' over the divisive abortion debate in a controversial speech at one of the top Catholic universities in the United States."
Barack Bush: "“The Obama administration insists it has no obligation to provide access to a top secret document in a wiretapping case, setting up a showdown next week with the judge who ordered it released. Justice Department lawyers, in a response Friday with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, also argued that Judge Vaughn Walker had no cause to penalize the government over its refusal to turn over the document.”
Ireland set to go bust, says economic historian: “A dire warning that the Republic is a prime candidate to go bust has come from one of the world’s leading economic historians. ‘The idea that countries don’t go bust is a joke,’ said Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money. ‘The debt trap may be about to spring’ he said, ‘for countries that have created large stimulus packages in order to stimulate their economies.’ His chosen prime candidate to go bust is ‘Ireland, followed by Italy and Belgium, and UK is not too far behind.’ Argentina is top of his list of shaky countries but ‘the argument that it can’t happen in major western economies is nonsense.’ Professor Ferguson believes the economists are ill qualified to analyse the current economic situation since they lack the overview of historians such as himself.”
Sotomayor and the Last of the WASPs: “If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed, the US Supreme Court will consist of six Catholics, two Jews and precisely one white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in the form of Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 88 years old and boasts of two important WASP insignia: inherited wealth and a bow tie. He also thinks that Shakespeare’s plays were written by the Earl of Oxford. But then, so does Antonin Scalia. The other WASP among the nine, until he announced his retirement — thus paving the way for Sotomayor’s nomination — is David Souter. The two WASPS have been the most liberal members of the court.”
Legalize it: "“City pushcart vendors could legally prepare food with a type of license that already exists in the parks. Why not let them? … [Miguel] Sanchez makes about $100 a day at the cart; working nearly every afternoon and evening, and picking up some painting and carpentry jobs on the side, he supports his family of six. But he lives under the near-constant threat of being fined by the city. What he’s doing is illegal in Chicago, and as demand for his food grows in the spring, so does the likelihood that he’ll be slapped with tickets for anywhere from $200 to $1,000.”
The unpersuasive orator: “Let’s stipulate that President Obama is a wonderful speaker, vigorous in promoting his policies and even eloquent at times. But there’s a problem: He’s not persuasive. Obama is effective at marketing himself. His 64 percent job approval (Gallup poll) is a reflection of this. But in building public support for his policies, Obama has been largely unsuccessful. You’d never guess this from the laudatory press coverage of Obama. With every major speech or press conference, the media and a sizable chunk of the political community — including many Republicans — assume Obama has carried the day. Actually, he rarely has.”
The “unseen” deserve empathy, too: “As important as compassion and empathy are, one can have these feelings only for people that exist and that one knows about — that is, for those who are ’seen.’ One can have compassion for workers who lose their jobs when a plant closes. They can be seen. One cannot have compassion for unknown persons in other industries who do not receive job offers when a compassionate government subsidizes an unprofitable plant. The potential employees not hired are unseen. One can empathize with innocent children born with birth defects. Such children and the adversity they face can be seen. One cannot empathize with as-yet-unborn children in rural communities who may not have access to pediatricians if a judicial decision based on compassion raises the cost of medical malpractice insurance.”
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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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Monday, June 01, 2009
Michael Savage sues brainless British Leftist politician
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith faces a claim for £100,000 damages by the American radio ‘shock jock’ she banned from entering Britain. Broadcaster Michael Savage has employed top UK law firm Olswang to sue Ms Smith for libel after she put him on the Home Office’s 16 ‘least wanted’ list.
Mr Savage said he was ‘outraged’ the Government had put him in the same category as Islamic hate preachers and terrorists.
The letter from Olswang, due to land on Ms Smith’s desk tomorrow, accuses her of making ‘serious and damaging defamatory allegations’ against him. It says Mr Savage, whose show The Savage Nation has eight million listeners in America, has asked for ‘substantial damages’. The Mail on Sunday has been told he is demanding £100,000.
Mr Savage says ‘lunatic’ Ms Smith had no right to put him on the same list as a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, a skinhead gang leader and a Hezbollah militant who served 30 years in prison.
The lawyers’ letter states: ‘Our client requires the payment of a substantial sum in damages to be agreed and retraction of the allegations. He also requires a personal apology from you and an acknowledgement that the Home Office has agreed to pay a substantial sum in libel damages.’ The letter says Ms Smith must also provide a ‘written undertaking from you and the Home Office not to repeat the allegations complained of and the payment of our client’s legal costs’. It continues: ‘This matter is extremely urgent as the false and defamatory material concerning our client has had enormous circulation both inside and outside the UK.’
Mr Savage said last night he will not give up his battle to make Ms Smith pay damages and say sorry. ‘I am living in fear and have had to employ security guards after being outrageously named on this list of terrorists and killers. ‘The first I knew about it was when it was issued as a Press release and I was absolutely shocked. ‘Why me? I’m not a terrorist. I’m one of America’s most popular radio hosts and a happily married father of two. ‘Maybe Jacqui Smith just plucked my name out of the hat because I’m controversial and white – to counter-balance all the Arabs named on her list. ‘It is totally preposterous but it’s deadly serious because she has made me a target. ‘My lawyers have told me I have a very strong case for defamation.’
SOURCE
*************************
The Real Sotomayor Issue is NOT her race
By Wendy Long
The Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination got a quick start out of the gate, focusing debate about something very important: How are judges supposed to decide cases? Are they, as Judge Sotomayor says, supposed to rule based upon identity politics, using their own personal views and biases in making decisions? Or is it to put aside all personal experiences and policy desires and apply the Constitution and laws as written?
Somehow, this important debate is turning into an argument about race and identity politics.
Many of us in the conservative movement believe that Judge Sotomayor is intelligent, and that, at least on paper, she has professional qualifications that are certainly sufficient for occupying a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
But what needs deeper examination, because it is very troubling, is her overarching judicial philosophy one that, judging from her public remarks and law review articles, she has thought about seriously and embraced only after much reflection. It's the judicial philosophy shared by President Obama a philosophy with which most Americans, who support judicial restraint, vehemently disagree.
It is only this President Obama's and Judge Sotomayor's judicial philosophy that drives us to raise serious concerns about Judge Sotomayor's fitness to serve on the nation's highest court.
At its core, the thrust of most conservatives' concerns from the past several days centered around three items all of which, by the way, the White House press operation has tried mightily to brush aside: First, a video clip of Judge Sotomayor from a 2005 appearance at Duke Law School, where she stated that appellate courts make policy.
Second, a 2002 law review article in which Judge Sotomayor says that race, gender, and ethnicity necessarily affect the way judges decide cases and that's a good thing.
Third, a 1996 law review article challenging the belief that law needs to be knowable and predictable, in which she borrowed from the philosophy of early 20th century Legal Realists who rejected the idea that judging involves the impartial application of neutral principles. This body of work is not the product of stupidity, or reverse racism, or a bad temper. Rather, it appears to be a view of the courts as engines of social and political change in short, wrought out of a devotion to judicial activism.
We need to move forward with a confirmation process that focuses on what really matters: Does Judge Sotomayor embrace a view of judging that is constrained by the text, history, and principles of the Constitution and our laws? Or does she favor an interpretive enterprise in which a judge's personal feelings, views, background, and politics drive the outcome of cases?
SOURCE
The Democratic Underground is doing its best to dig dirt on the author above but is not having much success. The comment section of the post is however dripping with hate. The comment that amused me most was "Have you ever noticed how many of these RW women are "blonde & blue eyed"?". Blonde hair and blue eyes are incorrect? To the gas ovens with them!
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Could Obama’s Left Wing Flap him to Death?
Naturally from our vantage point, Barack Obama is a left-wing terror as president. To name just a few things, he is turning our system from one of capitalism to one of socialism, he is attempting to undermine the Constitution by placing an activist on the Supreme Court, he is weakening our national security by frittering away the gains of the previous administration and by bending over backwards for our enemies while constantly flipping off our allies, he is looking to destroy our national healthcare system by introducing a disastrous single payer system, and he is attempting to give anti-business unions the power to destroy what is left of the business community that he himself hasn’t gotten around to crushing as of yet. We on the right are alarmed by his trip down the ruinous road that Europe has already well traveled to rueful results.
One would think that the American left (or the anti-American left as the case may be) would be thrilled that their most fantasized about social, political, and economic sledgehammers were being wielded by their Obammessiah. But, one might be surprised to see that the extremists on the left are beginning to rumble in seething anger over the fact that, to date, Obama hasn’t gone fast enough or far enough to the extreme left to suit them. One of these wild-eyed, bomb-throwers has even just called for his resignation.
So, are we beginning to see waning the far left’s love affair with The One? Might this disappointment turn into the sort of lefty outrage that it did with Lyndon Baines Johnson? Will Barack Obama’s left wing flap him to death?
It is too early to tell, of course, but there are rumblings that seem to be revealing a great disappointment in Barack Franklin Fitzgerald Abraham Hussein Obama.
More HERE
*************************
ELSEWHERE
China: All blogspot blogs are once again blocked in China. But my mirror sites are all still accessible there. So if you know anyone in China, give them the link.
Keith Burgess Jackson has an interesting attack on militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins, although Keith is not religious himself. I think he does a better job of refuting atheistic arguments than many Christians do. I too am always surprised when atheists issue virulent attacks on religion. They sound just like the religious fundamentalists whom they criticize. They must be insecure in their atheism. I am the most complete atheist imaginable. I don't even think the word "God" is meaningful. But I never attack Christianity and believe that I am in good company among Christians. All religions are not the same, however, and I certainly do attack the socialist, global warming and anti-obesity religions. Rather amusingly, I suspect that Richard Dawkins would support those three religions.
Zoellick Warns Stimulus ‘Sugar High’ Won’t Stem Unemployment: "World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned policy makers that fiscal-stimulus plans are insufficient to turn around the “real economy” and rising joblessness threatens to set off political unrest across the globe. “While the stimulus has given an impulse, it’s like a sugar high unless you eventually get the credit system working,” Zoellick said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” “When unemployment increases, that’s probably the most political combustible issue.”
What Sotomayor said about Latina superiority was NOT simply "poor word choice": "Heaven knows, we all say things in impromtu speeches or on TV or in blog posts that we wish we could take back. But how are you the victim of poor word choice in a speech, as Ed Whelan pointed out the other day, that was apparently delivered from a prepared text and that was then turned into a law review article months later? (Ed refers to it as the "unscripted" law review article.) The problem wasn't the word choice; the problem was quite obviously what Sotomayor meant to say and said several times in several different ways very clearly."
There is British blog here for those who are concerned at the increasing authoritarianism of the British State
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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)
****************************
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith faces a claim for £100,000 damages by the American radio ‘shock jock’ she banned from entering Britain. Broadcaster Michael Savage has employed top UK law firm Olswang to sue Ms Smith for libel after she put him on the Home Office’s 16 ‘least wanted’ list.
Mr Savage said he was ‘outraged’ the Government had put him in the same category as Islamic hate preachers and terrorists.
The letter from Olswang, due to land on Ms Smith’s desk tomorrow, accuses her of making ‘serious and damaging defamatory allegations’ against him. It says Mr Savage, whose show The Savage Nation has eight million listeners in America, has asked for ‘substantial damages’. The Mail on Sunday has been told he is demanding £100,000.
Mr Savage says ‘lunatic’ Ms Smith had no right to put him on the same list as a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, a skinhead gang leader and a Hezbollah militant who served 30 years in prison.
The lawyers’ letter states: ‘Our client requires the payment of a substantial sum in damages to be agreed and retraction of the allegations. He also requires a personal apology from you and an acknowledgement that the Home Office has agreed to pay a substantial sum in libel damages.’ The letter says Ms Smith must also provide a ‘written undertaking from you and the Home Office not to repeat the allegations complained of and the payment of our client’s legal costs’. It continues: ‘This matter is extremely urgent as the false and defamatory material concerning our client has had enormous circulation both inside and outside the UK.’
Mr Savage said last night he will not give up his battle to make Ms Smith pay damages and say sorry. ‘I am living in fear and have had to employ security guards after being outrageously named on this list of terrorists and killers. ‘The first I knew about it was when it was issued as a Press release and I was absolutely shocked. ‘Why me? I’m not a terrorist. I’m one of America’s most popular radio hosts and a happily married father of two. ‘Maybe Jacqui Smith just plucked my name out of the hat because I’m controversial and white – to counter-balance all the Arabs named on her list. ‘It is totally preposterous but it’s deadly serious because she has made me a target. ‘My lawyers have told me I have a very strong case for defamation.’
SOURCE
*************************
The Real Sotomayor Issue is NOT her race
By Wendy Long
The Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination got a quick start out of the gate, focusing debate about something very important: How are judges supposed to decide cases? Are they, as Judge Sotomayor says, supposed to rule based upon identity politics, using their own personal views and biases in making decisions? Or is it to put aside all personal experiences and policy desires and apply the Constitution and laws as written?
Somehow, this important debate is turning into an argument about race and identity politics.
Many of us in the conservative movement believe that Judge Sotomayor is intelligent, and that, at least on paper, she has professional qualifications that are certainly sufficient for occupying a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
But what needs deeper examination, because it is very troubling, is her overarching judicial philosophy one that, judging from her public remarks and law review articles, she has thought about seriously and embraced only after much reflection. It's the judicial philosophy shared by President Obama a philosophy with which most Americans, who support judicial restraint, vehemently disagree.
It is only this President Obama's and Judge Sotomayor's judicial philosophy that drives us to raise serious concerns about Judge Sotomayor's fitness to serve on the nation's highest court.
At its core, the thrust of most conservatives' concerns from the past several days centered around three items all of which, by the way, the White House press operation has tried mightily to brush aside: First, a video clip of Judge Sotomayor from a 2005 appearance at Duke Law School, where she stated that appellate courts make policy.
Second, a 2002 law review article in which Judge Sotomayor says that race, gender, and ethnicity necessarily affect the way judges decide cases and that's a good thing.
Third, a 1996 law review article challenging the belief that law needs to be knowable and predictable, in which she borrowed from the philosophy of early 20th century Legal Realists who rejected the idea that judging involves the impartial application of neutral principles. This body of work is not the product of stupidity, or reverse racism, or a bad temper. Rather, it appears to be a view of the courts as engines of social and political change in short, wrought out of a devotion to judicial activism.
We need to move forward with a confirmation process that focuses on what really matters: Does Judge Sotomayor embrace a view of judging that is constrained by the text, history, and principles of the Constitution and our laws? Or does she favor an interpretive enterprise in which a judge's personal feelings, views, background, and politics drive the outcome of cases?
SOURCE
The Democratic Underground is doing its best to dig dirt on the author above but is not having much success. The comment section of the post is however dripping with hate. The comment that amused me most was "Have you ever noticed how many of these RW women are "blonde & blue eyed"?". Blonde hair and blue eyes are incorrect? To the gas ovens with them!
****************************
Could Obama’s Left Wing Flap him to Death?
Naturally from our vantage point, Barack Obama is a left-wing terror as president. To name just a few things, he is turning our system from one of capitalism to one of socialism, he is attempting to undermine the Constitution by placing an activist on the Supreme Court, he is weakening our national security by frittering away the gains of the previous administration and by bending over backwards for our enemies while constantly flipping off our allies, he is looking to destroy our national healthcare system by introducing a disastrous single payer system, and he is attempting to give anti-business unions the power to destroy what is left of the business community that he himself hasn’t gotten around to crushing as of yet. We on the right are alarmed by his trip down the ruinous road that Europe has already well traveled to rueful results.
One would think that the American left (or the anti-American left as the case may be) would be thrilled that their most fantasized about social, political, and economic sledgehammers were being wielded by their Obammessiah. But, one might be surprised to see that the extremists on the left are beginning to rumble in seething anger over the fact that, to date, Obama hasn’t gone fast enough or far enough to the extreme left to suit them. One of these wild-eyed, bomb-throwers has even just called for his resignation.
So, are we beginning to see waning the far left’s love affair with The One? Might this disappointment turn into the sort of lefty outrage that it did with Lyndon Baines Johnson? Will Barack Obama’s left wing flap him to death?
It is too early to tell, of course, but there are rumblings that seem to be revealing a great disappointment in Barack Franklin Fitzgerald Abraham Hussein Obama.
More HERE
*************************
ELSEWHERE
China: All blogspot blogs are once again blocked in China. But my mirror sites are all still accessible there. So if you know anyone in China, give them the link.
Keith Burgess Jackson has an interesting attack on militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins, although Keith is not religious himself. I think he does a better job of refuting atheistic arguments than many Christians do. I too am always surprised when atheists issue virulent attacks on religion. They sound just like the religious fundamentalists whom they criticize. They must be insecure in their atheism. I am the most complete atheist imaginable. I don't even think the word "God" is meaningful. But I never attack Christianity and believe that I am in good company among Christians. All religions are not the same, however, and I certainly do attack the socialist, global warming and anti-obesity religions. Rather amusingly, I suspect that Richard Dawkins would support those three religions.
Zoellick Warns Stimulus ‘Sugar High’ Won’t Stem Unemployment: "World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned policy makers that fiscal-stimulus plans are insufficient to turn around the “real economy” and rising joblessness threatens to set off political unrest across the globe. “While the stimulus has given an impulse, it’s like a sugar high unless you eventually get the credit system working,” Zoellick said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” “When unemployment increases, that’s probably the most political combustible issue.”
What Sotomayor said about Latina superiority was NOT simply "poor word choice": "Heaven knows, we all say things in impromtu speeches or on TV or in blog posts that we wish we could take back. But how are you the victim of poor word choice in a speech, as Ed Whelan pointed out the other day, that was apparently delivered from a prepared text and that was then turned into a law review article months later? (Ed refers to it as the "unscripted" law review article.) The problem wasn't the word choice; the problem was quite obviously what Sotomayor meant to say and said several times in several different ways very clearly."
There is British blog here for those who are concerned at the increasing authoritarianism of the British State
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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)
****************************
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Nancy Pelosi in China, 2009:
In answering a question from a student about how Pelosi was going to get Americans to cut back on their carbon emissions, the leading Democratic lawmaker said it was important to educate children on how to conserve energy and for citizens to build more environmentally friendly homes. "We have so much room for improvement," she said. "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility."
SOURCE
V.I. Lenin in Russia, 1917:
"Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything"
SOURCE
*********************
LOL: Obama's revenge on the Clintons
Asked why he was naming some of his rivals to top administration jobs, President Lyndon B. Johnson said it best: "I'd rather have them inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in." President Obama seems to echo Johnson's management style in his handling of Bill and Hillary Clinton. By bringing them into his inner circle, he has marginalized them both and sharply reduced their freedom of action.
It may appear odd to describe a secretary of State as marginalized, but Obama has surrounded Hillary with his people and carved up her jurisdiction geographically. Former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) is in charge of Arab-Israeli relations. Dennis Ross has Iran. Former U.N. Ambassador Dick Holbrooke has Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Hillary has to share her foreign policy role on the National Security Council (NSC) with Vice President Biden, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, CIA chief Leon Panetta, and NSC staffer Samantha Powers (who once called Hillary a "monster"). With peers who are competitors and subordinates who can deal directly with the president, Hillary is reduced to announcing foreign aid packages for Pakistan while Holbrooke does the heavy lifting.
Part of Hillary's problem is the institutional shrinking of the State Department. During the Bush years, while war raged, the Defense Department became more relevant to the conduct of foreign policy. And, under Obama, the financial crisis has propelled the Treasury into the forefront. State, with its emphasis on traditional diplomacy, has been forced to take a back seat. Even though Obama appointed Hillary, he clearly has not been willing to make her a co-president and confines her to the diminished role of her department.
For his part, Bill Clinton has been asked to be a special envoy to Haiti. Yes, Haiti. Obama's predecessor asked the former president to orchestrate the response to the Asian tsunami and then to Hurricane Katrina. Obama gives him Haiti.
Meanwhile, both Clintons are effectively muzzled and cannot criticize Obama even as he reverses President Clinton's free market proclivities and budget balancing discipline. Hillary, the supposed friend of Israel, must sit by quietly and watch Iran get the bomb while trying all the while to stop Israel from preventing it.
Bill can't even make money. Denied the ability to accept speeches from foreign governments or their organs and fenced out of continuing his profitable relationship with the Emir of Dubai, he and his wife must accept the loss of the $13 million they spent on her campaign and sit by passively, unable to earn the money to replace it.
More HERE
********************
BrookesNews Update
Obama's economics brains trust is still getting it wrong on the US economy: Obama's economic brains trust has a brilliant plan to rescue the US economy: print oodles of money and when prices start zooming cut off the supply. That this will also cause interest rates to zoom and bond prices to dive is just something Americans would have to live with once the economy was comatosed again. There is more than just one flaw in the plans of these economic descendents of Wile E. Coyote
Can president Obama's policies heal the US economy? : Obama and his economic advisors are making a dreadful economic error. The heart of the current financial crisis is the boom-bust policies of the Fed. It is these policies that caused massive real wealth destruction and hence weakened the economy's ability to generate real savings. Obama's policy will only make the situation worse
Obama's bubble car economy: Obama's super duper new car policy was once popular in Europe in the 1950s and early 1960s. They were called bubble cars. They were small and they were dangerous. What the hell: they had great mileage, even if they tended to get you killed. But as Obama says, we must make sacrifices, He means you, not him and his mates
Bush's war against terrorism vindicated: When called upon, President Bush and Vice President Cheney took their responsibilities seriously. They made tough decisions to keep America safe from the predations of terrorists whose ultimate goal is to murder Americans and destroy US civilization
Obama at Notre Dame: In his Notre Dame speech Obama had the audacity to compare abortion to the civil rights struggle. He closed his speech with the Golden Rule and hoped his audience would respond to the call to treat one another as they wish to be treated. If only babies were given such an opportunity
Republicans need to return to their conservative principles: We need to tell the real story of what Republicans stand for — individual freedom, individual responsibility, conservative social ideals, smaller government, lower taxes, free enterprise — not socialism, and the opportunity for everyone to succeed without government interference
*********************
ELSEWHERE
Michelle Malkin has got the lowdown on the huge taxpayer-finded ACORN group, showing that they worked hand in glove with the Obama campaign during the last election -- something that they were by law prohibited from doing. It is of course only the latest revelation about these crooked Leftist Brownshirts. The original Brownshirts under Ernst Roehm were socialists too, of course. Roehm was one of the very few people who spoke to Hitler per "du", the intimate form of address.
Good post from Taranto pointing out that the Democrats have now adopted Archie Bunker values. Taranto also argues that Sotomayor's claim of superiority to white men is not racist but "an expression of prejudice, an exercise in stereotyping". He fails, however, to recognize that if a white male had made the same clain in reverse, he would have been condemned as a "racist" by the Left.
I have put a new heading on this blog, in accord with what seems to be the new Democrat emphasis on the permissibility of racial claims.
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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)
****************************
In answering a question from a student about how Pelosi was going to get Americans to cut back on their carbon emissions, the leading Democratic lawmaker said it was important to educate children on how to conserve energy and for citizens to build more environmentally friendly homes. "We have so much room for improvement," she said. "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility."
SOURCE
V.I. Lenin in Russia, 1917:
"Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything"
SOURCE
*********************
LOL: Obama's revenge on the Clintons
Asked why he was naming some of his rivals to top administration jobs, President Lyndon B. Johnson said it best: "I'd rather have them inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in." President Obama seems to echo Johnson's management style in his handling of Bill and Hillary Clinton. By bringing them into his inner circle, he has marginalized them both and sharply reduced their freedom of action.
It may appear odd to describe a secretary of State as marginalized, but Obama has surrounded Hillary with his people and carved up her jurisdiction geographically. Former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) is in charge of Arab-Israeli relations. Dennis Ross has Iran. Former U.N. Ambassador Dick Holbrooke has Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Hillary has to share her foreign policy role on the National Security Council (NSC) with Vice President Biden, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, CIA chief Leon Panetta, and NSC staffer Samantha Powers (who once called Hillary a "monster"). With peers who are competitors and subordinates who can deal directly with the president, Hillary is reduced to announcing foreign aid packages for Pakistan while Holbrooke does the heavy lifting.
Part of Hillary's problem is the institutional shrinking of the State Department. During the Bush years, while war raged, the Defense Department became more relevant to the conduct of foreign policy. And, under Obama, the financial crisis has propelled the Treasury into the forefront. State, with its emphasis on traditional diplomacy, has been forced to take a back seat. Even though Obama appointed Hillary, he clearly has not been willing to make her a co-president and confines her to the diminished role of her department.
For his part, Bill Clinton has been asked to be a special envoy to Haiti. Yes, Haiti. Obama's predecessor asked the former president to orchestrate the response to the Asian tsunami and then to Hurricane Katrina. Obama gives him Haiti.
Meanwhile, both Clintons are effectively muzzled and cannot criticize Obama even as he reverses President Clinton's free market proclivities and budget balancing discipline. Hillary, the supposed friend of Israel, must sit by quietly and watch Iran get the bomb while trying all the while to stop Israel from preventing it.
Bill can't even make money. Denied the ability to accept speeches from foreign governments or their organs and fenced out of continuing his profitable relationship with the Emir of Dubai, he and his wife must accept the loss of the $13 million they spent on her campaign and sit by passively, unable to earn the money to replace it.
More HERE
********************
BrookesNews Update
Obama's economics brains trust is still getting it wrong on the US economy: Obama's economic brains trust has a brilliant plan to rescue the US economy: print oodles of money and when prices start zooming cut off the supply. That this will also cause interest rates to zoom and bond prices to dive is just something Americans would have to live with once the economy was comatosed again. There is more than just one flaw in the plans of these economic descendents of Wile E. Coyote
Can president Obama's policies heal the US economy? : Obama and his economic advisors are making a dreadful economic error. The heart of the current financial crisis is the boom-bust policies of the Fed. It is these policies that caused massive real wealth destruction and hence weakened the economy's ability to generate real savings. Obama's policy will only make the situation worse
Obama's bubble car economy: Obama's super duper new car policy was once popular in Europe in the 1950s and early 1960s. They were called bubble cars. They were small and they were dangerous. What the hell: they had great mileage, even if they tended to get you killed. But as Obama says, we must make sacrifices, He means you, not him and his mates
Bush's war against terrorism vindicated: When called upon, President Bush and Vice President Cheney took their responsibilities seriously. They made tough decisions to keep America safe from the predations of terrorists whose ultimate goal is to murder Americans and destroy US civilization
Obama at Notre Dame: In his Notre Dame speech Obama had the audacity to compare abortion to the civil rights struggle. He closed his speech with the Golden Rule and hoped his audience would respond to the call to treat one another as they wish to be treated. If only babies were given such an opportunity
Republicans need to return to their conservative principles: We need to tell the real story of what Republicans stand for — individual freedom, individual responsibility, conservative social ideals, smaller government, lower taxes, free enterprise — not socialism, and the opportunity for everyone to succeed without government interference
*********************
ELSEWHERE
Michelle Malkin has got the lowdown on the huge taxpayer-finded ACORN group, showing that they worked hand in glove with the Obama campaign during the last election -- something that they were by law prohibited from doing. It is of course only the latest revelation about these crooked Leftist Brownshirts. The original Brownshirts under Ernst Roehm were socialists too, of course. Roehm was one of the very few people who spoke to Hitler per "du", the intimate form of address.
Good post from Taranto pointing out that the Democrats have now adopted Archie Bunker values. Taranto also argues that Sotomayor's claim of superiority to white men is not racist but "an expression of prejudice, an exercise in stereotyping". He fails, however, to recognize that if a white male had made the same clain in reverse, he would have been condemned as a "racist" by the Left.
I have put a new heading on this blog, in accord with what seems to be the new Democrat emphasis on the permissibility of racial claims.
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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)
****************************
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Shavuot (Commemorating the time when G-d gave the Torah to Moses)
Happy Shavuot to my Jewish readers!
*****************
Obama the disappointer: Hot air gives way to reality
Janet Albrechtsen comments from Australia
FEW leaders have brought so many tears to the eyes of so many people as US President Barack Obama. Oprah Winfrey says she almost cried her eyelashes off when the young Democrat from Chicago accepted the party’s nomination. Jane Fonda admits she became a bundle of nerves, crying all night at the thought of Obama losing the election.
Our own Guy Rundle summed up the election of Obama for many progressives. Writing last November, he described how he and the young desk clerk in the lobby of his Washington hotel, who had just come off a 12-hour shift ("because that’s how you work in (George W.) Bush’s America"), “just held hands and wept for a minute or so, in happiness, in relief, in the victory of something larger than both of us, that contained us both”. “It is a victory for the global Left,” Rundle wrote. “These are the great days.”
More likely those were the salad days. Now, plenty of Obama’s most ardent admirers are rethinking their exuberance. Rundle has attacked the “small stuff” - gaffes over gifts to Russians and bad jokes about the Special Olympics - and the “big stuff”: complaining at the paltry size of Obama’s $1.2trillion stimulus package. Democrats are meant to spend more. Bob Dylan, who once described Obama as “redefining the nature of politics”, is shrugging hisshoulders, describing politicians as “interchangeable”.
Al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is also disappointed: “America came to us with a new face.” But it was a ruse, he says. They have not “changed their crimes, aggressions, thefts and their scandals”, he says in a statement released by the SITE Intelligence Group.
And Wall Street bankers - who barracked for Barack by bankrolling his campaign to the tune of $US9.9million (not to mention giving Hillary Clinton $US7.4 million) - whine about getting hit by higher taxes. What did they expect? Democrats lowering taxes for the uber-rich?
Of course, Obama could never meet the great expectations surrounding his presidency. Indeed, the greatness of Obama’s presidency will depend on him disappointing Rundle’s “global Left”, not to mention al-Qa’ida. The responsibility of power means the 44th President has already proved he is more pragmatic than ideological. As much as the Left will loathe this, the unfolding of his presidency is a lesson in the old adage that the office changes the man more than the man changes the office.
Last November The New York Times was effusive in its praise about Obama’s promise to “restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world”. In office, Obama is talking like a Bushie, disappointed Times editorial writers noted in March.
Given Obama’s continuous backpedalling, The Wall Street Journal was right to advise the friends of newspaper editors to remove all sharp objects from their vicinity. Now it’s a case of: How do I not love thee? Let me count the ways.
Obama has refused to support the release of photographs detailing abuse of detainees, has supported warrantless wiretapping, boosted US involvement in the Afghanistan war, opposed the prosecution of those allegedly involved in torture and called a halt to rendition practices only to maintain what are conveniently called temporary facilities.
Campaigning for the presidency, Obama said: “As president I’ll close Guantanamo Bay, reject the Military Commissions Act, adhere to the Geneva Conventions.” He described Bush’s military commissions as a “legal framework that does not work” and promised to release Guantanamo Bay detainees, transfer them to foreign countries or try them in federal US courts. Four months after taking office, Obama says “military commissions have a long tradition in the United States” as he confronts the political reality - and presidential responsibility - of what to do with the 240 detainees still in Gitmo. The President’s lame changes to military commissions are acknowledgment of what Bush knew from the outset: military commissions are essential in dealing with suspected terrorists. And Obama admits indefinite detention will continue for some.
Ah, the fecklessness of those in search of a messiah. Anti-war group Code Pink is wondering whether Obama is a “war criminal”. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch are also disappointed. But Obama needn’t have bothered inviting human rights leaders to his 90-minute tea and biscuits, please-still-love-me routine at the White House last week. The more they cry foul, the clearer it becomes to a wider audience that Obama is behaving like a President responsible for the nation’s security, just as president Bush did.
Last week a leaked Pentagon report revealed that one in seven of the 534 prisoners released from the facility in Cuba since 2002 has returned to terrorism. FBI director Robert Mueller has told Congress that he, too, has concerns about the release of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Then came the ultimate rebuff to Obama supporters. Last Wednesday, in a 90-6 vote, even Democrats in Congress rejected Obama’s request for $US80 million to close down Guantanamo Bay - blocking the release of detainees - until he explains his precise plan. Montana’s senator Max Baucus said: “We’re not going to bring al-Qa’ida to Big Sky Country.” Nebraska’s Democratic senator Ben Nelson said: “I wouldn’t want them and I wouldn’t take them”; and Dianne Feinstein’s office in California said: “Alcatraz is a national park and a tourist attraction, not a functioning prison.”
Notice too that Europe, only too eager to describe Gitmo as Bush’s legal black hole, hasn’t rushed out the welcome mat for detainees. Indeed, Europe’s embrace of Obama as multilateralism man has produced little in the way of multilateral results. When the US received minimal assistance from European allies in Afghanistan, it was blamed on Bush’s brand of unilateralism. When Obama failed to secure more troops from NATO allies during meetings with European leaders in April, it was apparently just a case of Europeans pursuing their national interest. And the US is once again left to do the heavy lifting.
Not much happening over at the UN Security Council either. As the council convenes to consider its response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test, it pays to remember that last month it could manage only a lame, non-binding presidential statement because members disagreed on a binding resolution.
Alas, Bush is no longer the reason for UN intransigence.
For some on the Left, the Obama presidency may well be a case of what began in tears ends in tears, of a different, more bitter taste. More canny observers knew that the Obama who presented before the presidential elections would change once in office. When Bob Ellis - who described Obama as “the present world’s likely saviour” - expresses his disillusionment, we will know Obama is on the right track.
SOURCE
***********************
Obama is a "Centrist" to the Left
Below is part of a transcript from a recent Chris Matthews Show. The transcript is of comments about 4:20 minutes from the end.
"MATTHEWS: It seems to me that they're--what they're going to do in politics--I'm going back to my baseball metaphor, win big games at the beginning of the season, roll up the score, you don't have to win them in October. It seems to me what they're going to try to do is get a second-rate Republican effort against them. Every week they've--since they've been in office they've ignored the Republican Party. They've gone after the screamers like Rush Limbaugh and Cheney and Newt Gingrich. They don't want there to be another governing party. And I'm wondering if they're just hoping to get a Mondale election against them, or a Bob Dole election, a second-rate effort by the other side so they can sweep 60 percent.
Mr. IGNATIUS: Well, I think they feel the Republicans are very demoralized. But they do want to get legislation passed and they would like to have Republicans voting for it. They're very pleased, for example, they just got a procurement reform bill with a lot of Republican supporters. It was a big John McCain issue. What's striking to me in these first few months is that--is that--is that Obama really is going for the center in American politics. He's really trying to redraw the map.
And Leftist cartoonist Ted Rall is disappointed with Obama too, though with better reason:
Encroaching Fascism: “In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street. Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people’s lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can’t control, what Orwell called ‘thoughtcrime’ — contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.”
***********************
Rewriting History
A few minutes ago, I did a radio-show piece with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, who voiced her hope that this confirmation process would be dignified and merits-based, and not involve the “dumpster-diving” and smear-tactics to which, she asserted, extremists on the left and the right have resorted in the past, etc.
Look for expressions of regret, and calls for seriousness, civility, and the like, in the days to come from President Obama’s surrogates in the press and in the activist groups. You will have to look harder, though, for journalists to observe, and these surrogates to admit, that
(a) the “let’s use Supreme Court nominations as occasions to smear good people” tactic is one that the Democrats — but not, in fact, the Republicans — have practiced enthusiastically;
(b) that Justices Breyer and Ginsburg were easily confirmed, with substantial Republican support, not because they were “moderate,” but because the Republicans voted in accord with the “President gets his (qualified) nominees” standard; and
(c) that dozens of Democratic senators, including the president, abandoned this standard (to the extent they ever respected it) and disgraced themselves by voting against Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts, easily among the most impressive nominees in history.
It also seems safe to predict that the press will, as they swoon over Judge Sotomayor’s personal story and Ivy League credentials, forget the extent to which Justice Thomas’s own story did not protect him from outrageous attacks, and his own prestigious degrees did not prevent snide insinuations that he was merely the beneficiary of affirmative action.
Oh, and I am just guessing that we will not hear any mutterings among those on the left about the nomination of (yet another) Roman Catholic.
SOURCE
*********************
ELSEWHERE
A Leftist disparages a disabled person: "Alongside not talking with your mouth full and wiping, one of the elemental lessons in manners that civilized societies teach their young is not to mock the physically disabled. Someone should remind Joe Klein, the ostensibly adult political columnist for Time magazine. In a Politico story last week about conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer, Mr. Klein said "there's something tragic" about the quadriplegic writer's work, as it "would have had a lot more nuance if he were able to see the situations he's writing about." In other words, don't trust the cripple because he can't take trans-Atlantic flights. [Imagine the uproar if a conservative had done likewise!]
Obama's men block prosecutiion of black thugs: "Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews. The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms. Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago."
A President who wants to emasculate America: "Barack Obama's legacy is coming sharply into focus, four years early. He's out to transform "a nation of laws," once the pride of the Anglo-Saxon heritage and exemplar to the world, into "a nation of feelings." We won't need judges, just social workers damp with empathy. This is in line with the president's larger vision, to cut America down to a size a community organizer could manage, making it merely one of the nice nations of the world, like Belgium or Brazil. The home of the brave and the land of the free would become what our English cousins call "wet," weak, ineffectual, fragile, fearful, and inconsequential. Sonia Sotomayor is one of the building blocks of the president's envisioned Mediocre Society."
GM bondholders offered a stake in the Titanic: "General Motors Corp said on Thursday it had reached a deal with some major bondholders that would give them a bigger stake in a reorganized automaker and could pave the way for a fast-track bankruptcy backed by the U.S. Treasury within days. The announcement was the clearest indication yet that GM, the No. 1 U.S. automaker, is close to filing for bankruptcy under the direction of the Obama administration. It would be the biggest-ever bankruptcy for a U.S. industrial company. Under the proposed deal, which is supported by major institutional creditors holding about a fifth of its debt, bondholders representing $27 billion in debt would be offered 10 percent of a reorganized GM -- the same stake they had been offered previously. In a sweetener, bondholders would also receive warrants to acquire another 15 percent of the equity in the new company, provided they support a quick Treasury-backed sale process similar to one now being used for rival Chrysler."
Indian verbal ability wins the day again: "There were thrills, spills and misspells aplenty as a 13-year-old girl took the crown at the US Scripps National Spelling Bee final in Washington today. Kavya Shivashankar, who at 13 is a four-time veteran of the competition, was the last speller standing after correctly reciting the letters of the word laodicean, which means means to be lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics. She beat 11 other junior spellers, who emerged from a record field of 293 participants, in today's network-televised final. The favourite to take out ths year's 82nd annual competition was Sidharth Chand, who was runner-up last year. Chand missed apodyterium, the entry cubicles to a Roman public baths, and appeared inconsolable burying his head in his hands, even as he received a standing ovation from the crowd and other contestants. The national spelling bee gained a greater cultural profile after the 1999 documentary Spellbound and Kavya cites the winning speller from that film. Nupur Lala, as her hero." [All three kids mentioned above are of Indian origin]
The subversion of capital punishment: “What they lack in popular support, death penalty opponents more than make up in tenacity, skill — and success. When a one-per-27 minutes, 36-year, 707,000 homicide holocaust results in 1,136 executions (0.16%), capital punishment has been all but abolished. What remains is a costly and agonizing farce, with a token few murderers served up to fool the public. The United States Supreme Court and other courts have played a major role, enormously aided by the media in suppressing critical information.”
You can’t handle the truth?: “I have alleles that suggest that I have a lower than average risk of suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Other alleles, however, indicate that I am slightly more likely to experience age-related macular degeneration than other people of European ancestry. In addition, if I need to use the blood thinner warfarin in the future, I should let my physician know that I have a version of the CYP2C9 gene, suggesting that I have a greater sensitivity to the drug and probably should start with a low dose. How do I know this genetic information? Because I paid for a direct-to-consumer genotype test from the California start up 23andMe. … does such direct-to-consumer (DTC) genotyping need to be regulated — or banned? Last month, Germany banned direct-to-consumer genetic testing. In 2007, the Genetics and Public Policy Institute found that 24 states limited or restricted direct-to-consumer genetic testing in some ways.”
Army starts testing “Judge Dredd” weapon: “The U.S. Army is set to start testing a computerized, high-tech projectile launcher that can take out bad guys hiding around corners and in caves or trenches, even if they’re out of the soldier’s line of sight. Some experts call it the ‘Judge Dredd’ gun, after the Sylvester Stallone movie. The Pentagon calls it the XM-25 Individual Air Burst Weapon, which uses a laser rangefinder to precisely measure the distance to a target, then primes a fuse on a timed grenade so that the projectile explodes exactly where it should.”
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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)
****************************
Happy Shavuot to my Jewish readers!
*****************
Obama the disappointer: Hot air gives way to reality
Janet Albrechtsen comments from Australia
FEW leaders have brought so many tears to the eyes of so many people as US President Barack Obama. Oprah Winfrey says she almost cried her eyelashes off when the young Democrat from Chicago accepted the party’s nomination. Jane Fonda admits she became a bundle of nerves, crying all night at the thought of Obama losing the election.
Our own Guy Rundle summed up the election of Obama for many progressives. Writing last November, he described how he and the young desk clerk in the lobby of his Washington hotel, who had just come off a 12-hour shift ("because that’s how you work in (George W.) Bush’s America"), “just held hands and wept for a minute or so, in happiness, in relief, in the victory of something larger than both of us, that contained us both”. “It is a victory for the global Left,” Rundle wrote. “These are the great days.”
More likely those were the salad days. Now, plenty of Obama’s most ardent admirers are rethinking their exuberance. Rundle has attacked the “small stuff” - gaffes over gifts to Russians and bad jokes about the Special Olympics - and the “big stuff”: complaining at the paltry size of Obama’s $1.2trillion stimulus package. Democrats are meant to spend more. Bob Dylan, who once described Obama as “redefining the nature of politics”, is shrugging hisshoulders, describing politicians as “interchangeable”.
Al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is also disappointed: “America came to us with a new face.” But it was a ruse, he says. They have not “changed their crimes, aggressions, thefts and their scandals”, he says in a statement released by the SITE Intelligence Group.
And Wall Street bankers - who barracked for Barack by bankrolling his campaign to the tune of $US9.9million (not to mention giving Hillary Clinton $US7.4 million) - whine about getting hit by higher taxes. What did they expect? Democrats lowering taxes for the uber-rich?
Of course, Obama could never meet the great expectations surrounding his presidency. Indeed, the greatness of Obama’s presidency will depend on him disappointing Rundle’s “global Left”, not to mention al-Qa’ida. The responsibility of power means the 44th President has already proved he is more pragmatic than ideological. As much as the Left will loathe this, the unfolding of his presidency is a lesson in the old adage that the office changes the man more than the man changes the office.
Last November The New York Times was effusive in its praise about Obama’s promise to “restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world”. In office, Obama is talking like a Bushie, disappointed Times editorial writers noted in March.
Given Obama’s continuous backpedalling, The Wall Street Journal was right to advise the friends of newspaper editors to remove all sharp objects from their vicinity. Now it’s a case of: How do I not love thee? Let me count the ways.
Obama has refused to support the release of photographs detailing abuse of detainees, has supported warrantless wiretapping, boosted US involvement in the Afghanistan war, opposed the prosecution of those allegedly involved in torture and called a halt to rendition practices only to maintain what are conveniently called temporary facilities.
Campaigning for the presidency, Obama said: “As president I’ll close Guantanamo Bay, reject the Military Commissions Act, adhere to the Geneva Conventions.” He described Bush’s military commissions as a “legal framework that does not work” and promised to release Guantanamo Bay detainees, transfer them to foreign countries or try them in federal US courts. Four months after taking office, Obama says “military commissions have a long tradition in the United States” as he confronts the political reality - and presidential responsibility - of what to do with the 240 detainees still in Gitmo. The President’s lame changes to military commissions are acknowledgment of what Bush knew from the outset: military commissions are essential in dealing with suspected terrorists. And Obama admits indefinite detention will continue for some.
Ah, the fecklessness of those in search of a messiah. Anti-war group Code Pink is wondering whether Obama is a “war criminal”. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch are also disappointed. But Obama needn’t have bothered inviting human rights leaders to his 90-minute tea and biscuits, please-still-love-me routine at the White House last week. The more they cry foul, the clearer it becomes to a wider audience that Obama is behaving like a President responsible for the nation’s security, just as president Bush did.
Last week a leaked Pentagon report revealed that one in seven of the 534 prisoners released from the facility in Cuba since 2002 has returned to terrorism. FBI director Robert Mueller has told Congress that he, too, has concerns about the release of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Then came the ultimate rebuff to Obama supporters. Last Wednesday, in a 90-6 vote, even Democrats in Congress rejected Obama’s request for $US80 million to close down Guantanamo Bay - blocking the release of detainees - until he explains his precise plan. Montana’s senator Max Baucus said: “We’re not going to bring al-Qa’ida to Big Sky Country.” Nebraska’s Democratic senator Ben Nelson said: “I wouldn’t want them and I wouldn’t take them”; and Dianne Feinstein’s office in California said: “Alcatraz is a national park and a tourist attraction, not a functioning prison.”
Notice too that Europe, only too eager to describe Gitmo as Bush’s legal black hole, hasn’t rushed out the welcome mat for detainees. Indeed, Europe’s embrace of Obama as multilateralism man has produced little in the way of multilateral results. When the US received minimal assistance from European allies in Afghanistan, it was blamed on Bush’s brand of unilateralism. When Obama failed to secure more troops from NATO allies during meetings with European leaders in April, it was apparently just a case of Europeans pursuing their national interest. And the US is once again left to do the heavy lifting.
Not much happening over at the UN Security Council either. As the council convenes to consider its response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test, it pays to remember that last month it could manage only a lame, non-binding presidential statement because members disagreed on a binding resolution.
Alas, Bush is no longer the reason for UN intransigence.
For some on the Left, the Obama presidency may well be a case of what began in tears ends in tears, of a different, more bitter taste. More canny observers knew that the Obama who presented before the presidential elections would change once in office. When Bob Ellis - who described Obama as “the present world’s likely saviour” - expresses his disillusionment, we will know Obama is on the right track.
SOURCE
***********************
Obama is a "Centrist" to the Left
Below is part of a transcript from a recent Chris Matthews Show. The transcript is of comments about 4:20 minutes from the end.
"MATTHEWS: It seems to me that they're--what they're going to do in politics--I'm going back to my baseball metaphor, win big games at the beginning of the season, roll up the score, you don't have to win them in October. It seems to me what they're going to try to do is get a second-rate Republican effort against them. Every week they've--since they've been in office they've ignored the Republican Party. They've gone after the screamers like Rush Limbaugh and Cheney and Newt Gingrich. They don't want there to be another governing party. And I'm wondering if they're just hoping to get a Mondale election against them, or a Bob Dole election, a second-rate effort by the other side so they can sweep 60 percent.
Mr. IGNATIUS: Well, I think they feel the Republicans are very demoralized. But they do want to get legislation passed and they would like to have Republicans voting for it. They're very pleased, for example, they just got a procurement reform bill with a lot of Republican supporters. It was a big John McCain issue. What's striking to me in these first few months is that--is that--is that Obama really is going for the center in American politics. He's really trying to redraw the map.
And Leftist cartoonist Ted Rall is disappointed with Obama too, though with better reason:
Encroaching Fascism: “In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street. Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people’s lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can’t control, what Orwell called ‘thoughtcrime’ — contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.”
***********************
Rewriting History
A few minutes ago, I did a radio-show piece with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, who voiced her hope that this confirmation process would be dignified and merits-based, and not involve the “dumpster-diving” and smear-tactics to which, she asserted, extremists on the left and the right have resorted in the past, etc.
Look for expressions of regret, and calls for seriousness, civility, and the like, in the days to come from President Obama’s surrogates in the press and in the activist groups. You will have to look harder, though, for journalists to observe, and these surrogates to admit, that
(a) the “let’s use Supreme Court nominations as occasions to smear good people” tactic is one that the Democrats — but not, in fact, the Republicans — have practiced enthusiastically;
(b) that Justices Breyer and Ginsburg were easily confirmed, with substantial Republican support, not because they were “moderate,” but because the Republicans voted in accord with the “President gets his (qualified) nominees” standard; and
(c) that dozens of Democratic senators, including the president, abandoned this standard (to the extent they ever respected it) and disgraced themselves by voting against Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts, easily among the most impressive nominees in history.
It also seems safe to predict that the press will, as they swoon over Judge Sotomayor’s personal story and Ivy League credentials, forget the extent to which Justice Thomas’s own story did not protect him from outrageous attacks, and his own prestigious degrees did not prevent snide insinuations that he was merely the beneficiary of affirmative action.
Oh, and I am just guessing that we will not hear any mutterings among those on the left about the nomination of (yet another) Roman Catholic.
SOURCE
*********************
ELSEWHERE
A Leftist disparages a disabled person: "Alongside not talking with your mouth full and wiping, one of the elemental lessons in manners that civilized societies teach their young is not to mock the physically disabled. Someone should remind Joe Klein, the ostensibly adult political columnist for Time magazine. In a Politico story last week about conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer, Mr. Klein said "there's something tragic" about the quadriplegic writer's work, as it "would have had a lot more nuance if he were able to see the situations he's writing about." In other words, don't trust the cripple because he can't take trans-Atlantic flights. [Imagine the uproar if a conservative had done likewise!]
Obama's men block prosecutiion of black thugs: "Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews. The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms. Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago."
A President who wants to emasculate America: "Barack Obama's legacy is coming sharply into focus, four years early. He's out to transform "a nation of laws," once the pride of the Anglo-Saxon heritage and exemplar to the world, into "a nation of feelings." We won't need judges, just social workers damp with empathy. This is in line with the president's larger vision, to cut America down to a size a community organizer could manage, making it merely one of the nice nations of the world, like Belgium or Brazil. The home of the brave and the land of the free would become what our English cousins call "wet," weak, ineffectual, fragile, fearful, and inconsequential. Sonia Sotomayor is one of the building blocks of the president's envisioned Mediocre Society."
GM bondholders offered a stake in the Titanic: "General Motors Corp said on Thursday it had reached a deal with some major bondholders that would give them a bigger stake in a reorganized automaker and could pave the way for a fast-track bankruptcy backed by the U.S. Treasury within days. The announcement was the clearest indication yet that GM, the No. 1 U.S. automaker, is close to filing for bankruptcy under the direction of the Obama administration. It would be the biggest-ever bankruptcy for a U.S. industrial company. Under the proposed deal, which is supported by major institutional creditors holding about a fifth of its debt, bondholders representing $27 billion in debt would be offered 10 percent of a reorganized GM -- the same stake they had been offered previously. In a sweetener, bondholders would also receive warrants to acquire another 15 percent of the equity in the new company, provided they support a quick Treasury-backed sale process similar to one now being used for rival Chrysler."
Indian verbal ability wins the day again: "There were thrills, spills and misspells aplenty as a 13-year-old girl took the crown at the US Scripps National Spelling Bee final in Washington today. Kavya Shivashankar, who at 13 is a four-time veteran of the competition, was the last speller standing after correctly reciting the letters of the word laodicean, which means means to be lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics. She beat 11 other junior spellers, who emerged from a record field of 293 participants, in today's network-televised final. The favourite to take out ths year's 82nd annual competition was Sidharth Chand, who was runner-up last year. Chand missed apodyterium, the entry cubicles to a Roman public baths, and appeared inconsolable burying his head in his hands, even as he received a standing ovation from the crowd and other contestants. The national spelling bee gained a greater cultural profile after the 1999 documentary Spellbound and Kavya cites the winning speller from that film. Nupur Lala, as her hero." [All three kids mentioned above are of Indian origin]
The subversion of capital punishment: “What they lack in popular support, death penalty opponents more than make up in tenacity, skill — and success. When a one-per-27 minutes, 36-year, 707,000 homicide holocaust results in 1,136 executions (0.16%), capital punishment has been all but abolished. What remains is a costly and agonizing farce, with a token few murderers served up to fool the public. The United States Supreme Court and other courts have played a major role, enormously aided by the media in suppressing critical information.”
You can’t handle the truth?: “I have alleles that suggest that I have a lower than average risk of suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Other alleles, however, indicate that I am slightly more likely to experience age-related macular degeneration than other people of European ancestry. In addition, if I need to use the blood thinner warfarin in the future, I should let my physician know that I have a version of the CYP2C9 gene, suggesting that I have a greater sensitivity to the drug and probably should start with a low dose. How do I know this genetic information? Because I paid for a direct-to-consumer genotype test from the California start up 23andMe. … does such direct-to-consumer (DTC) genotyping need to be regulated — or banned? Last month, Germany banned direct-to-consumer genetic testing. In 2007, the Genetics and Public Policy Institute found that 24 states limited or restricted direct-to-consumer genetic testing in some ways.”
Army starts testing “Judge Dredd” weapon: “The U.S. Army is set to start testing a computerized, high-tech projectile launcher that can take out bad guys hiding around corners and in caves or trenches, even if they’re out of the soldier’s line of sight. Some experts call it the ‘Judge Dredd’ gun, after the Sylvester Stallone movie. The Pentagon calls it the XM-25 Individual Air Burst Weapon, which uses a laser rangefinder to precisely measure the distance to a target, then primes a fuse on a timed grenade so that the projectile explodes exactly where it should.”
My Twitter.com identity: 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
****************************
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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