The original of this mirror site is HERE. My Blogroll; The archive; My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here. Other sites viewable in China: Greenie Watch, Political Correctness Watch and Recipes. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing)
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31 August, 2004

PROBLEMS IN THE HEXAGON

"The hexagon" is a common French synonym for France. A map will show you why

French arrogance crumbling? "This week marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Paris, but the champagne corks were flying beneath clouds of French despair. As the Government of Jacques Chirac tries to mend chronic flaws in the country's social fabric -- highlighted by a rise in racist and anti-Semitic violence -- the French intelligentsia is lamenting the nation's loss of diplomatic clout and cultural authority.. . The mood of national lamentation is summed up by philosopher Chantal Delsol, who asks: "How is it that such a brilliant nation has become such a mediocre power, so out of breath, so indebted, so closed in its own prejudices ... To be French today is to mourn for what we no longer are." In the past few years many of the nation's delusional bubbles have been pricked one by one... "

And The Guardian reports this summary of the French predicament: "The economy is suffocating. Big industrial groups are investing elsewhere," he said. "The best-off are fleeing, the most talented are leaving. Even the middle classes are demoralised by the taxation levels."

Self-inflicted economic woes: "The latest reports on France's socialistic economy portray a bleak picture of French workers on a treadmill running faster and faster just to stay in place. The French unemployment rate has soared to 9.5 percent, and the economic growth rate over the past year has trudged forward at the turtle-like speed of 1.5 percent (versus about 4.5 percent for the U.S.). If the U.S. had an unemployment rate as high as France, there would be about six million more Americans out of work - the equivalent of putting every worker in the state of Michigan in an unemployment line"

There is a TREMENDOUS demolition job done on French history by Prof. Christie Davies here. Just one excerpt: "Ninety years ago in August 1914 Britain was dragged into a war between France and Germany for which France was largely to blame. It was that French war that fatally undermined British power and thus Britain's ability and willingness to withstand the Nazi and Soviet threats that were the very consequence of the war that France began. Not for the first time France had reduced Europe to ruins with her insane and criminal aggression". He goes on to argue that the French were just as Nazi-inclined as the Germans.

I linked to this article on 12th March but two people have recently sent me copies of it so I guess it is worth another note. It is by a former Francophile and describes the pervasive antisemitism of the French. It shows how pathetic France is and why their moral posturing should be totally ignored. One quote: "This, it seems, is their new Maginot line: the sneer of hatred. Hand in hand with the government and the intellectual classes, the French media are channeling the national dismay over lost grandeur into contempt for America."

Incidentally, has anybody used the new blogger search bar at the head of this blog? I entered the word "Francophile" and it found nothing. My post of 12th March was invisible to it. Pretty useless! I found the entry in my files by using good old Ctrl+F.

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ELSEWHERE

There are a couple of news reports here and here of the demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in Manhattan at the moment. There is a good report from the conservative counter-demonstrators here. I am told that some of my readers were there.

Peg Kaplan reports a prescription for Black success that would undoubtedly work. A very similar prescription works fine for Asians.

62% of US Senators are attorneys. Their average number of years in elected office is 24; and 97 of the 100 Senators are career politicians. "We keep sending the same old people to the Senate, year after year. They debate the same old topics, and come up with the same old, tired conclusions ... and we wonder why our Social Security System is on the verge of bankruptcy.why there is still no immigration policy that is fair to all.why a great public education is a thing of the past." But it's not the Senators' fault - it's our fault for sending the same old people to the Senate year after year. Many of them had their last fresh thought twenty years ago. Most have never worked for a living, so they have no clue what you and I go through every work day. They exist in their plush ivory tower where their every whim is catered to because WE allow it.

One reason for the African IQ problem: "Western experts tend to tiptoe around the issue of how malnourishment makes people less intelligent, but local experts sometimes do not. "If your brain is stunted when you are young, that affects the decisions you make in later life. If you can't do simple arithmetic, you won't invest wisely. The cost of that will be very high," says Tomaida Msisika, a consultant on food security in Malawi. Sam Chimwaza, an analyst for Malawi's Famine Early Warning Systems Network, says that the reasoning ability of people in rural areas has been affected by malnutrition and it is hard for them to execute simple instructions. "They can work as servants in the city for two or three years and still not figure out how to adjust the temperature on an iron," he says."

In response to an idea from one of my readers, I have just started a new blogspot site (not really a blog) called SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. It is just a place where I have gathered together just about all of my past posts on the subject so people can see how the "compassion" behind socialized medicine works out in real-life. (Hint: The compassion is basically non-existent). I will keep posting to it periodically as relevant news items come up but I foresee the principal usefulness of the site as a standing resource for use in any discussions of socialized medicine that my readers might get into. Links, submissions and suggestions for the site are of course very welcome. I also of course have another such narrowly focused site in LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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30 August, 2004

TRUMAN

Some readers think that I was unfair to the late President Truman in what I said yesterday -- quoting his aid to Greece to fight the communist insurrection, NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, etc. They are of course perfectly correct in saying that many Democrats up to and including LBJ were anti-Communist Leftists who did good things in that cause which deserve some respect. My point is only that the A-bombings showed the Leftist callousness that was also lurking in such people and that anti-communism is no excuse for showing the same sort of callousness that Communists themselves have always displayed. In good Leftist fashion, Truman was also noted for the way he greatly expanded his own Presidential power at the expense of Congress -- just one example of which being his unconstitutional use of U.S. troops in Korea without prior congressional consent, unlike GWB in Iraq.

Some readers have also repeated the conventional excuse that the A-bombing saved many American lives by obviating the need for America to invade Japan. But there was never any need for America to invade Japan. Japan was almost totally collapsed already. It was already no danger to anyone. It was neutered. Conquest would have served machismo, nothing else. Simple maintenance of the blockade and occasional bombing of any remaining industrial or militarily-relevant targets was all that was required. If Japan had chosen to go back to primitive Tokugawa-style isolation for a time, so what? Readers also seem to overlook the importance of loss of face in the ruling Japanese Bushido code. Getting the the Imperial palace flattened would have been a great disgrace probably requiring seppuku (suicide) of the Japanese leaders concerned.

I should also note that callousness does not necessarily imply grit. It was ultimately lack of grit by Truman in Korea and LBJ in Vietnam that caused them to bungle those wars and leave Communist regimes in place there. So again conservatives have nothing to apologize for there. GWB has so far shown some grit in Iraq. There is therefore some hope that the long-term outcome there will be better than what Democrats achieved in Korea and Vietnam.

Again I could go on but alternative history is not a great interest of mine and the relevance of Truman to present-days issues is slight.

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ELSEWHERE

"The New York Times ... has myriad and dubious financial and political ties to John Kerry's presidential campaign.... According to major news outlets, including the Times, the fact that a major Republican donor has contributed money to the group known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth calls into question the impartiality of that group and ties it to the Republicans. If that is indeed the case - that an exchange of funds between an entity and a partisan contributor dispositively links the entity to a partisan cause - then, by their own logic, the Times is unquestionably linked to Kerry's campaign and other far-left groups".

Further to my recent post on John Kerry as a psychopath, Dennis Mangan has some good points

An instructive anniversary: We have just had the anniversary of the signing by the USA of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact in Paris -- a pact outlawing war and providing for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. It achieved precisely nothing, of course. But Kerry and the Left still claim today that similar "international" solutions (via the U.N., the 'world court', the ICC etc) are a good idea. They rely on the fact that the Left-dominated schools no longer teach history to any meaningful degree.

One Hundred Percenter has lots of pictures up of the Leftist demonstrators in NYC at the moment -- all of course trying their utmost to get the attention their egos so desperately need.

More glories of socialized medicine: "Almost 2000 New South Wales patients had died or "could not be contacted" by the time they reached the top of the elective surgery waiting list, a new report reveals. The figure is contained in the latest Australian Hospital Statistics 2002-2003 report. Released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the report provides a breakdown of waiting list statistics across states and territories. Of the 214,298 additions to the list in NSW, more than half were admitted within the year" [meaning that half weren't!]

Oil under the bed: "Some left-wing commentators have interpreted the motive behind Washington's newfound concern for Darfur - as well as the British and Australian governments' volunteering of troops for a phantom UN intervention force - as an effort by Washington to justify an Iraq-style invasion of Sudan to achieve "regime change" and seize control of its potentially massive oil reserves".

American conservatives eat your heart out: What sort of political party leader would say this? "[Our] commitment is surplus budgeting for every year of the next parliament and we will do everything we can to have downward pressure on interest rates. That is our budgetary commitment, that's important for families and the future of the economy. We believe in surplus budgets and we will have that in place through the next parliamentary term." How does that compare with GWB's big-spending ways? The quote is from the leader of Australia's major LEFTIST party, who also has an honours degree in economics from one of Australia's most prestigious universities. And his sidekicks have economics qualifications too. And both major Australian parties DO run economically responsible budgets. It is not just hot air. More here

A nasty one for the feminists: "Women tend to get lower pay than men because they generally work shorter hours, research in a new book reveals. In a blow to feminists claiming gender bias in the workplace, the book says males often work longer full-time hours than females in the same or similar jobs."

The current crop of Islamic crackpots are far from being simple Muslim traditionalists. The Islamic hate merchants in fact learnt most of their hatreds from the Western Left, including Western Fascists. As Nial Ferguson says in this book review: "in Occidentalism, Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit have gone a step further. They argue that the most radical critics of the West today – including Osama bin Laden and other "Islamist" extremists – are not the upholders of pure, untainted Eastern values. Their extreme anti-Western ideologies are, paradoxically, in large measure Western in origin". There is more to that effect here

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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29 August, 2004

DEMOCRAT HISTORY IS NOT THE SAME AS AMERICAN HISTORY

Oversimplifications and conventional thinking always get my teeth on edge and the way past deeds of American Democrat Presidents get blamed on America as a whole constantly amazes me. But the reason why that happens is plain: Leftist historians and intellectuals generally are the ones who write history and they have done a pretty good job of conning a lot of people. Take the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atrocities -- the doing of a DEMOCRAT President (Truman). Japan was thoroughly stuffed by that stage without even control over its own airspace so there was absolutely no need to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent and defenceless men women and children in those two cities. Flattening the Imperial palace in Tokyo would have been infinitely more merciful and equally demoralizing to the Japanese (who thought the Emperor was divine). And if that didn't suffice, a simple blockade would soon have sent Japan back to the stone age and thus made it no danger to anyone. Japan had to import almost all its raw materials (including oil) so preventing any ships from entering or leaving Japanese ports would have caused a very rapid collapse. So all Truman did was show what a callous Leftist ba****d he was.

And who was it who got America into Vietnam? The DEMOCRAT President Kennedy. And who escalated the Vietnam war and totally bungled it? The DEMOCRAT President Johnson. And who got America out of Vietnam? The REPUBLICAN President Nixon. And who ended the Cold War? The REPUBLICAN President Reagan. Conservatives have nothing to apologize for in the above. But it does give them good reason to campaign against Democrat Presidents.

And there is a good historical article here written in March 2003 which points out that it was actually J.F. Kennedy who set up Saddam Hussein in power. Its final sentence has proved prophetic: "If a new war in Iraq seems fraught with danger and uncertainty, just wait for the peace".

I could go on but I will leave it at that.

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ELSEWHERE

"Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released recently declassified documents showing that Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry accepted laundered contributions for his 1996 re-election campaign from the Communist Chinese government"

Ollie North's message to John Kerry. Excerpts: "The issue is what you did to us when you came home, John. When you got home, you co-founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War and wrote The New Soldier, which denounced those of us who served - and were still serving - on the battlefields of a thankless war. Worst of all, John, you then accused me - and all of us who served in Vietnam - of committing terrible crimes and atrocities".

If you want to have a look at John Kerry's disgraceful anti-American book of the 1970s, the whole thing is online here.

Kerrynomics: "Those politicians who propose policies that would restrict trade, increase taxes on capital and/or labor; and increase costly regulations on labor and business are in effect proposing policies to reduce economic and job growth. Unfortunately, Mr. Kerry proposes to do all of the above. He wants to put restrictions on both current and future trade agreements — and each one of these would cause a one-time drop in baseline economic growth and a permanently reduced economic level. His proposals to "tax the rich" would in fact increase taxes on capital — i.e., capital gains, dividends and savings, all of which will reduce the capital stock... Also, his proposals to raise the minimum wage and impose other restrictions on worker employment will only reduce jobs and real wages. Such policies are not compassionate but in fact are hurtful. Either Mr. Kerry does not or chooses not to understand economic reality".

The BBC gets it right at last: "The UN report confirms what many involved in counter-terrorism have increasingly come to believe - that, whilst they have their uses, sanctions and other attempts to stem the flow of money into al-Qaeda are not necessarily the most effective way of preventing future attacks."

Two "Middle Eastern" men have just been arrested for planning to blow up a NYC subway station

NYC shows that standards work: "Who, in the late '80s and early '90s, could have predicted that New York City would soon claim the title of safest big city in America? Yet national crime statistics compiled by the FBI say Gotham has done just that. The key was James Q. Wilson's and George Kelling's ideas about "broken-window policing," the concept that cracking down on small quality-of-life crimes (like turnstile-jumping and graffiti) could bring an out-of-control city under control. Giuliani's embrace of this strategy led to his being portrayed as a "thug" and a "fascist" - but it worked. In 1990, New York City saw 2,245 murders; in 2001, just 642. By 2002, the city's murder rate had dropped to its lowest level since 1963.... Can Bush bring Americans around to his compassionate-conservative agenda of holding children to tougher academic standards, opening up social services to entrepreneurship and reducing the tax burden on all Americans? Maybe he could if all Americans were New Yorkers."

The Singapore government understands incentives: "Tax relief for parents, family allowance for the first and fourth children in addition to the second and third, cheaper mortgages for large families, lower maid fees and longer maternity leave and holiday entitlement for mothers are just some of the measures [Singapore's] ministers hope will mean busier maternity wards from next May".

Useful experience: The blogger at Metal Yarmulke was recently having a big problem with her blog. Somehow, when anybody tried to access it, they got sent to an unrelated site! So her blog had become completely inaccessible! Hair-tearing stuff for any blogger! I could think of a couple of ways in which things could have gone wrong so tried to help. None of my solutions did help but I was able to work out that some hostile person had put a redirect up and told her so. She then got a techie friend to trace the bug and he found a javascript redirect in the blog template itself! I was rather irate at myself for not thinking of that so I thought I should pass the information on as a warning to others. If something similar now happens to my blog I will know where to look for the problem and should be able to fix it immediatey. I always have an up-to-date copy of my template saved to disk in case of crashes anyway, so it would take me only two seconds of copying and pasting to reverse any meddling. Forewarned is forearmed!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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28 August, 2004

SOME ECONOMICS

The real farm subsidy scandal: "The most enduring political illusion is that farm subsidies are necessary to maintain the small family farmer. ... Small family farmers are not the primary dollar recipients of federal subsidies, however. According to the subsidy watchdog Environmental Working Group, 71 percent of farm subsidies go to the top 10 percent of subsidy beneficiaries, almost all of which are large farms. In 2002, 78 farms, none small or struggling, each received over a million dollars in subsidies. The bottom 80 percent of recipients average only $846 per year."

The never-ending war on protectionist ignorance: "By the late 1990s, the protectionists --now rechristened "anti-globalizers" to reflect the expanded scope of their agenda-- seemed to have recovered some of their lost ground. Their newfound vocalism made headlines during the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999. Today, however, advocates of globalization are gaining the upper hand again. Bhagwati's strikingly successful defense of open markets in his recent book In Defense of Globalization has been bolstered by another influential pro-globalization voice, that of Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. Wolf's weekly columns have already established him as one of the world's most respected economic journalists. Now his ambitious new book, Why Globalization Works, offers a patient and persuasive refutation of many of the arguments most frequently marshaled by critics of trade liberalization".

In defence of price gougers: Imagine a system that could instantly respond to a calamity like Hurricane Charley by mobilizing suppliers to speed urgently needed resources to the victims. Imagine that such a system could quickly attract the out-of-town manpower needed for cleanup and repairs, while seeing to it that existing supplies were neither recklessly squandered nor hoarded. Imagine that it could prompt thousands of men and women to act in the public interest, yet not force anyone to do anything against his will. Actually, there's no need to imagine. The system already exists. Economists refer to it as the law of supply and demand. Unfortunately, too many journalists and politicians call it by a more pejorative and destructive name: "price-gouging."

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ELSEWHERE

From John Kerry's interview with GQ magazine: "GQ: You've never seen a therapist? JK: No. I had some nightmares when I came home, which is not unusual. GQ: Like what? JK: I can't say. To me Vietnam is an old place, an old memory. It is old history, it's gone, it's past. The less I have to talk about it, frankly, the happier I am." He must be the most miserable man alive if that's the case!

Peg Kaplan points out that only 6 out of 100 pages of Kerry's military records have been released and that his discharge was delayed for 6 years. Highly suspicious.

Hold the Mayo has lots on Kerry -- including comments on his old antiwar book that he is now trying to suppress. Lots of documentation here too.

Good comment from a reader: "Kerry's reaction to the Swift Boat Vets (censorship, lawsuits, threats) reminds me of Stalin or Hitler. If Kerry had their power I don't think there is much doubt that he would send his secret police to arrest the vets and throw them in the Gulag or the concentration camp".

Political censorship is a reflex for the Left: "I got an e-mail from a person who identified herself as Melissa Salmanowitz with a group called Media Matters for America. It supposedly is a watchdog on conservatives, and she was wanting me to write about her group's effort to get chain book stores to quit selling Unfit for Command due to accuracy problems. So I e-mailed Salmanowitz and told her that I'd write about their cause to quash the book's examination of John F. Kerry's military record and anti-war activities if they'd make the same appeal to the movie theaters to stop showing Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. ... if Democrats and liberals nationally are going to dish it out, they should accept the consequences. They can't cheer the smear by Michael Moore, Whoopi Goldberg and Moveon.org, then try to silence the Swift Boat vets. That's too hypocritical, even for presidential politics."

People still escaping the socialist paradise: "A Cuban woman tucked herself inside a wooden crate the size of a small filing cabinet and had herself shipped from the Bahamas to Miami aboard a cargo plane. The woman, whose name was not released, will be allowed to stay in the United States. A cargo crew found her curled up inside the crate after unloading it late Tuesday at the Miami airport. 'Certainly she's lucky to be alive,' said Zach Mann, spokesman for Customs and Border Protection. Under the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cubans who reach U.S. soil are usually allowed to stay, while those who are picked up at sea are sent home. Federal officials released no information on how the woman got from Cuba to the Bahamas. The 180-mile route is flown by a third-party contractor for the delivery service DHL, which said it was investigating."

From a Dennis Prager interview: "I believe that if I took a thousand evangelical ministers... and I took a thousand professors in the liberal arts, I would bet every penny I have that the moral acuity of the thousand evangelical ministers would dwarf the moral acuity of a thousand liberal arts professors. For which reason Lawrence Summers, for example, the president of Harvard, announced two years ago that the seat -- the seat -- of anti-Semitism in America had shifted to the university. The university had also been the seat of support for Stalin. The university in Germany was the seat of the place to get Nazi philosophers."

Dumb Canadians: "A July 2004 study by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, Paying, More, Getting Less, concluded that after years of government control, the Canadian medical system is badly injured and bleeding citizens' hard-earned tax dollars. The institute compared health care systems in the industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and found Canada currently spends the most, yet ranks among the lowest on such indicators as access to physicians, quality of medical equipment, and key health outcomes. One of the major reasons for this discrepancy is that, unlike the countries in the study that outperformed Canada--Sweden, Japan, Australia, and France, for example-- Canada outlaws most private health care".

"The left takes its vision seriously -- more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep." -- Thomas Sowell

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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27 August, 2004

JOHN KERRY: PSYCHOPATH

Sometimes little things can tell you a lot and John Kerry's totally implausible story about his dog is an example of that. It is a classic psychopathic lie -- something said which earns momentary acclaim but which is uttered without any thought of its being found out as false.

It is highly comparable to Bill Clinton's lie that his wife was named after Sir Edmund Hillary when in fact Sir Edmund was an unknown New Zealand farmer at the time of her birth. Kerry's lack of any consistency in what he says from occasion to occasion has always seemed suspiciously psychopathic but I think this seals the diagnosis.

Given the chronic lying of psychopaths, this story also begins to makes sense. It claims that the details of his war record posted on the net by John Kerry are fraudulent: "I looked at that Web site and the first thing I looked at was Kerry's Silver Star citation. Guess what? It is for an action that took place in 1969, but it is signed by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. Strangely, Lehman was secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987,"

I am also beginning to see why Kerry made his outrageous claims about American war crimes as soon as he got back from Vietnam. The sampan incident and various others incidents indicate that Kerry himself was something of a war criminal and it seems to be a reflexive Leftist strategy to accuse others of what are in fact their own faults (Freudian "projection").

Anyway, America survived the psychopathic Clinton reasonably well so it should be able to survive a President Kerry. It could even work out in an amoral sort of way. A psychopathic President would have no compunction about nuking Mecca if that seemed like a good idea at the time (remember Clinton bombing the Serbs) and that could save as many American lives as the atrocity that another Democrat President committed over Hiroshima.

In case anybody thinks I am talking through my hat about psychopathy, I should perhaps point out that I have had a couple of academic journal articles published on the subject of psychopathy in non-clinical populations (See here and here or here and here ).

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ELSEWHERE

There is an article from GQ here that says GWB's record in the Air National Guard is a bit murky because he was engaged in undercover work at that time. It gives a lot of detail and argument to support the claim. Excerpt: "Bush was serving his country elsewhere, in a clandestine military unit: the Special Undercover Missions Service (SUMS), an elite air-force agency specializing in national security and acts of espionage"

"Even if Kerry's Vietnam record is every bit as heroic as he presents it, the notion that this makes him fit to be president is ludicrous. The man spent four months in combat as a junior officer; he's not exactly Eisenhower." -- James Taranto

That wonderful "public" (free-rider) medicine: "Los Angeles County, which has lost six emergency rooms in a little over a year, is on the brink of a far more serious problem, facing more closures that could jeopardize emergency care for tens of thousands of residents, according to public officials and independent analysts".

An interesting article here on the close convergence between Australian and U.S. policy -- with a suggestion that U.S. interest in reducing income tax and replacing it with a national sales tax may have been sparked by the successful Australian introduction of just such a change.

Currency Lad has a good reply to the charge that Australia's present conservative government has made Australia "racist": He quotes famous anti-Asian remarks from two of Australia's most prominent Leftist leaders. He also has this delightful story of George Bush Senior trusting and welcoming a young woman purely because she was Australian! Good man!

Michael Darby is on the web again with a few new posts -- in particular he takes on the accusation that Australian conservative politicians are "chickenhawks" by listing the considerable number who have military connections.

Laugh at liberals has a comprehensive demolition of most of the dumb Leftist accusations that are routinely hurled at GWB.

I came across this good Reagan quote on the website of the dynamic Prodos: ""How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." Lots of other good stuff there too.

Squander Two has an amusing article about British customer service. Everything he says is true with knobs on.

A new blog by a physicist who describes himself as a "warmongering neo-conservative, NRA life member, and professional laser-weapon designer... Supporter of nuclear power, the militarization of Space, and Microsoft's Freedom to Innovate" seems to be shaping up well.

One blog that I think might have a rather small "market" is a Catholic blog devoted to chastity, yes, chastity -- an apparently outmoded concept even among the Catholic clergy, to judge by their behaviour. But this post on sexual equality as a cause of fertility decline is interesting.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of blogospheric reading.

Wicked Thoughts has a good John Kerry joke.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



26 August, 2004

FROM BROOKES NEWS

John Kerry media jackals go after swift boat veterans Deeply worried that the swift boat veterans' ads are damaging John Kerry his media pals intensified their smear campaign to destroy the credibility of these veterans
John Kerry and his anti-American IPS playmates John Kerry collaborated with the infamous pro-Castro Institute for Policy Studies in undermining the military and sabotaging the CIA
Don't forget 'The John Kerry Committee' John Kerry used his Senate position to help Nicaragua's Marxist-Leninists stay in power
The consumption fallacy: another lesson for the US economy Consumption does nothing to improve the US economy because it does nothing to increase productivity
Scott Peterson trial: Don't you cry for Amber Frey Why the whole Scott Peterson trial is revolting and disgusting within itself
Economic reality and the self-righteous ignorance of the left Our economic meddlers are back in the news with the loopy idea that they can raise living standards by legislating for higher real wages

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby: "With the exception of the Fox News Channel, the liberal tilt of the mainstream media - the major newspapers, the networks, National Public Radio, the news magazines - has long been a fact of American life.... Evan Thomas, the assistant managing editor of Newsweek, put it plainly last month: "Let's talk a little media bias here," he said on the PBS program "Inside Washington" on July 11. "The media, I think, want Kerry to win. And I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards . . . as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there's going to be this glow about them that is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.""

Oil. Letter excerpted from the Letters column of the Pasadena Star News, Pasadena, California, August 20: "What happened to the voices who said that President Bush had a deal with the Saudis to lower oil prices just before the election? Seems that conspiracy theory went out the window now didn't it? But I don't hear any of the Democrats who had this "knowledge' coming out and saying they were wrong. So I will. They are wrong again, but that won't matter, I'm sure they will have a new theory soon".

An excellent spoof by Rand Simberg. Excerpt: "Sixty years after Paris was seized by the "Allies," and the beginning of the American occupation, France remains a failed nation, mired in political corruption and beset by vast pockets of Muslim extremism and anti-semitism, into which the gendarmerie fear to tread. The economy continues to struggle under economic policies driven by failed ideologies"

Some Leftist propagandist has got into sports writing and asserts that because ONE white man won a sprinting event at the Olympic games, therefore blacks in general are not better at sprinting. Only a Leftist would bother with such non-logic. The writer also refers to that old Marxist propagandist, Stephen Jay Gould as an authority on race. Here is just one comment pointing out what a klutz Gould was. And for an exhaustive scientific refutation of Gould by an expert in the field, see here. Gould's distortions of the facts really are quite breathtaking.

Democrat principles on display: "Some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida, a shocking finding that exposes both states to potential abuses that could alter the outcome of elections, a Daily News investigation shows. Registering in two places is illegal in both states, but the massive snowbird scandal goes undetected because election officials don't check rolls across state lines. The finding is even more stunning given the pivotal role Florida played in the 2000 presidential election, when a margin there of 537 votes tipped a victory to George W. Bush.... Of the 46,000 registered in both states, 68% are Democrats, 12% are Republicans and 16% didn't claim a party".

"Darfur is a remote part of Sudan -- itself remote from cosmopolitan centres of Europe and North America. There, in the arid deserts of the eastern Sahara, where living is a bitter daily struggle against sand and sun, a genocide is unfolding, with nary a whimper from the folks at the UN and sophisticates in cosmopolitan centres who remain outraged over American "imperialism" dismantling brutal rogue regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.... Here, the contrast between the Arab treatment of blacks, irrespective of whether they are Muslims or not, and the Israeli assimilation of black Jews of Ethiopia, known as Falashas, cannot go unnoticed."

Mike Tremoglie has a tremendous demolition of the Woodstock myth -- showing that it was in fact an ineptly run business venture that would have starved its patrons except for assistance from the establishment it condemned.

After a ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court, a horde of sex perverts were released from prison and the media is giving the story bare mention. Details here. Excerpt: "According to this report, over 500 rapists, child molesters and other sexual offenders have been released from prison and taken up residence in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County within the past year".

Wayne Lusvardi reports another case where Leftist authorities resort to their usual kneejerk tax-and-regulate strategies when faced with what they see as a housing "crisis". All just to create further problems, of course.

Peg Kaplan has a couple of prize examples of one-eyed Stalinist thinking up at the moment.

Donald Luskin's latest demolition of Leftist hate-merchant Paul Krugman really pulls out the stops.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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25 August, 2004

SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT AUSTRALIA

I have just been reading the thoroughly sensible things that Ambra, a black blogress, says about black English and standard English. She rightly says that being at ease in standard English is essential if you wish to communicate widely and easily with others. I note however that she seems to have no regrets about not speaking black English. I must say that I greatly regret my inability to write in broad Australian on this blog. I would love to refer to Leftists as "drongoes", "galahs", "ratbags" and "big-noters" and say that they are not "fair dinkum" or "ridjy didj" but I know that I would just not be understood outside Australia. Even many younger Australians might not understand. I grew up in the country before the age of TV so acquired a full measure of traditional Australian slang but the TV generation in Australia probably knows American slang better than they do their own vivid linguistic heritage. I also try to avoid obscure academic words such as "arcane" and "lacunae" and "orthogonal" but I slip up sometimes.

Australia must have the world's worst internet service provider. Our erstwhile telecoms monopoly, Telstra, runs an internet service that they call "Bigpond" and lots of people I know have been suckered in to signing up with them. So I have been sending emails to Bigpond addresses for years now. And Bigpond regularly "bounces" (fails to deliver) emails sent to it. They have been doing it for years, have allegedly spend hundreds of millions of dollars on "fixing" the problem but they still cannot get it right. One person I email regularly is in fact a Telstra techie but they are still randomly bouncing emails to him too. They are at least 100 times worse than any other ISP I know. Anybody with a Bigpond address is missing a lot of mail. The only way I can be sure my techie friend gets what I send is to copy everything to his Yahoo address as well. Those emails are never bounced, though they can occasionally be held up for a few hours. Government-owned bureaucracies just don't know how to be efficient.

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ELSEWHERE

GWB as Not Kerry: Nothing that Bush has done, or will do, has anything whatsoever to do with John Kerry's truthfulness, his character or his mental stability. Humans are not a zero-sum game."

Abandonment of conservatives may cost Bush the election: "The latest presidential election polling data should be giving President Bush's campaign staff a lot of concern. The most recent Zogby poll released earlier this week shows the Democratic presidential ticket of Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, leading President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney by a seven point margin at 50-43% which is the largest lead that Kerry has ever had over Bush since the man that conservative talk-show host, Rush Limbaugh, has described as America's most accurate pollster, John Zogby, began polling when Kerry became the de-facto nominee back in February."

A huge cost everyone pays: "Federal government regulators issued 4,148 new rules in the 71,269-page Federal Register in 2003, 19 fewer than they did in 2002. The cost of those rules appears nowhere in the federal budget. In his fiscal year 2005 federal budget, President Bush proposed $2.4 trillion in discretionary, entitlement, and interest spending. Although that figure fully expresses the on-budget scope of the federal government, there is considerably more to the government's reach. Federal environmental, safety and health, and economic regulations cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year on top of official federal outlays."

The marvels of socialized medicine in New Zealand: "Hundreds of Hawke's Bay people are waiting for gastroenterology procedures as the health board desperately appeals for general surgeons to help with the hospital's sole specialist's gruelling workload. Hawke's Bay Regional Hospital's only gastroenterologist and part-time general physician, Malcolm Arnold, said there were 458 patients were on his waiting list alone, with 180 still awaiting a definite time to have their procedures performed... Those with highest priority included patients with bowel cancer or cancer of the oesophagus".

An interesting article here on the neurological evidence that Leftists are driven more by emotion than by reason. I have been pointing out for years that Leftism is substantially genetic.

Drug terrorists: "A guns-drawn raid at a high school last year did not violate civil rights laws and the case is closed, the U.S. Justice Department said. The decision means there will be no criminal charges, said Andy Savage, a lawyer for officers in the sweep at the Goose Creek high school. Fifteen officers entered Stratford High School's main hallway and ordered 130 students to the floor November 5 of last year. They used plastic ties to handcuff 18 students and school officials opened and searched 17 book bags using a drug dog. Police found no drugs or weapons, but the raid frightened children, provoked marches and lawsuits and brought national media attention and the resignation of the school's longtime principal."

Bitchy feminists: "The Los Angeles, California chapter of the pro-abortion group Planned Parenthood has been the subject of several recent complaints of racism and discrimination by both African-American and Latino employees which were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as well as the California Fair Employment & Housing Administration. The complaints by the Planned Parenthood employees allege that the group is led by Caucasian women who have created a hostile working environment for men as well as minorities. In one sworn affidavit, an African-American employee said a female manager with Planned Parenthood looked directly at him and called him a 'nigger. ... I am African and was shocked by her cultural insensitivity,' the employee wrote in his affidavit and asked not to be identified."

Californian business-people are voting with their feet: ""Legislators don't seem to get it that businesses have far more options now. They can open another factory in another state, send manufacturing offshore, go into the cash economy, or even go out of business," says Mr. Kyser. "How they deal with the reforms will have serious consequences on states around us for years." Business raiders from Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas have been eager to welcome frustrated California businesses, and developers can barely suppress smiles over new home sales generated by newly arrived California families.... Partly because of California's housing costs, higher taxes, more regulation, and higher utility rates, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada are all faring better than California from job growth to personal income."

There is an interesting blog here from a conservative atheist medic with the U.S. Army in Iraq. Beat that!

GUN WATCH has an Oldie but Goldie up today. If it isn't true it ought to be. New rubric below today too.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of Great Britain -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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24 August, 2004

MORE TROOPS FOR IRAQ?

Wayne Lusvardi writes:

I refer to an article in "Foreign Affairs" headed "What Went Wrong With Iraq": The article is a sobering analysis of the Iraq War that makes the case that the main blunder was the lack of troop deployment by the U.S.

As a Vietnam War vet, I question the notion that what has been needed are more troops and a broader coalition with European forces involved. The experience of Vietnam is clear - the more troops you flood the country with, the more reliant the Iraqis will be on them to fight their war for them. This is what happened in Vietnam. The Vietnamese embraced the trappings of modernity (the motor scooters, the crappy American music, the money that comes from various sorts of prostitution and patronage) but, despite some valiant battles, didn't really want to fight their own war. The Iraqis don't even want to embrace modernity let alone fight for anything beyond their tribe. Flooding the country with more outside troops won't solve that. Like big welfare programs, big warfare programs will only make the populace more dependent. The prospect of a partition such as occurred in Korea and Germany is now becoming more apparent. But will Baghdad be in the Iranian camp or in the Iraqi camp?

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ELSEWHERE

A great letter from a U.S. Marine here: Just one excerpt: "The pre-emptive doctrine of the current administration will continue to be debated long after I'm gone, but one fact stands for itself: America has not been hit with another catastrophic attack since 9/11. I firmly believe that our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq are major reasons that we've had it so good at home. Building a "fortress America" is not only impractical, it's impossible. Prudent homeland security measures are vital, to be sure, but attacking the source of the threat remains essential".

This sounds apocryphal but I like it: "T. Bubba Bechtol, part time City Councilman from Pensacola, Florida, was asked on a local live radio talk show the other day just what he thought of the allegations of torture of the Iraqi prisoners. His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience: "If hooking up an Iraqi prisoner's scrotum to a car's battery cables will save one American GI's life, then I have just two things to say: "Red is positive, black is negative""

I have just been reading Michelle Malkin's brilliant book In Defense of Internment, which rightly says that "everything you have been taught about the World war II "internment camps" in America is wrong". A very minor bonus I got from the book is to note that her real surname is "Maglalang", which is obviously from the Tagalog language. I had always carelessly assumed that her ancestry was Japanese. From the name, it is in fact Filipino. As the WWII internments were the work of America's first socialist President (FDR), no conservative should feel much need to defend them but the facts show that what was done was both reasonable and carried out with overall humanity. And since Left-leaning historians have managed to convince just about everybody that the internments are a blot on America's honour (rather than on FDR's) it is good to find that the whole story about them is a great load of steaming dung. But I will not try to summarize a big book beyond that. Regnery are one of the few commercial publishers of conservative books so, if you are the book-buying type, log on here to read more about the book and perhaps buy it.

More glories of socialized medicine: "The healthcare research group, Dr Foster, reports today in the British Medical Journal that one in every ten patients admitted to NHS hospitals in Britain will suffer at the hands of medical errors. Such errors contribute to the deaths of 72,000 people a year, and are directly blamed for the deaths of 40,000 people. Medical errors in the NHS now constitute the fourth largest cause of death in Britain. The charity Action Against Medical Accidents states that the figures under-estimate total errors by not including those which take place at the primary care level of family doctors, and are based only on reported errors. The figures do not include hospital-acquired infections".

A pretty sensible editorial in USA Today about the importation of cheap drugs from Canada into the USA. If the U.S. administration had given the drug companies more support in their negotiations with foreign governments, the artificially high prices for Americans would never have happened.

There is a good post here pointing out that the Leftist hunger for change often leads to large costs (like death) for the individuals involved. I personally think that hunger for change for change's sake is pretty infantile. I have had a great life with lots of changes in it (including four wives) but I did not need to do anything radical in order to remain interested.

"Spectator" on Go Nuclear: Makes a good case for atomic power but it relies too much on running-out-of-oil ideas: "Rod Liddle says the answer to our energy needs is obvious: cheap and reliable nuclear power. But before we can embrace a sane future we have to overcome the Cold War superstitions of the Green Left"

Gipperism of the week: "..when Reagan was offered a ride on a submersible to get a look at the continental shelf, The Gipper turned it down, cracking, "I get claustrophobia when I draw the curtains." "

Leftist warmongers: "Contrary to the conventional wisdom, American imperialism is, at its roots, a left-wing disorder rather than a conservative impulse. A seemingly ceaseless supply of new books and radio talk-show commentary in support of George W. Bush and his foreign policy give the impression that the only controversy in America worth mentioning involves patriotic Bush supporters and knee-jerk opposition to war by liberals. Two arguments are being made here: that the Iraq War and foreign-policy aggressiveness constitute the self-evidently correct conservative position and that liberals are philosophically and historically squeamish about going to war. The first of these arguments has been addressed at length in these pages. It is the second claim, involving the American Left's alleged aversion to war, that remains to be overturned, for ever since the Spanish-American War of 1898, leftists have more often than not been at the forefront of calls for American military intervention abroad".

Promethean Antagonist is a bit unusual. He not only blogs from Japan but takes astrology seriously. He notes that astrology seems to be mostly Left-leaning but explains why "that aint necessarily so". His account of his trip to Fascist China is more outspoken than we usually hear now that everybody wants to think the best of China's reforms.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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23 August, 2004

BLACK ON BLACK GENOCIDE IN AUSTRALIA

On 15th., I mentioned here the summary by Windschuttle about the pygmy population that the early settlers of Australia found in the jungles of Far North Queensland. Julian Calendar in his post of 16th. has taken Windschuttle to task over the matter with the claim that the pygmies are not a remnant population but rather an adaptation to jungle life on the part of other black populations. I am no physical anthropologist but the sheer wrongheadedness of the claim seems fairly breathtaking to me -- particularly coming from an Australian. Australia not only has a halo of Melanesian nations (e.g. Papua New Guinea) to its immediate North but part of Melanesia is actually IN Australia (the Torres Strait Islands). And what do we know about Melanesia? We know that the jungles of New Guinea and its surrounding islands are as dense as jungles anywhere -- so they must all be pygmies too? The Melanesians of New Guinea and elsewhere are in fact a fine upstanding race of generally rather big men. The Fiji police force has long made female visitors to Fiji drool! And what about one of the world's most notable pygmy races -- the Bushmen of South Africa?. I suppose the Kalahari desert where they live is a jungle too? What utter rot it all is! Clearly pygmies are earlier races who have sought refuge in inaccessible places to avoid being totally wiped out by bigger and stronger races.

Further notes: Harpending & Eller (PDF) explain why even a low interbreeding rate could over time lead to the observed similarities in appearance between pygmy and surrounding tribes without at the same time wiping out all tribal distinctiveness and the rock-art record suggests a two stage immigration of primitive people into Australia.

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ELSEWHERE

Powerline Blog seems to have managed to get into the thick of the Presidential election campaign. They note that political blogs generally are getting a lot more hits lately as people turn to them as an alternative to the pro-Kerry mainstream media. This blog has had a big increase in hits lately too.

Randall Parker has some news that the press seems mostly to have buried: The EU is now building a fence along its Eastern border to keep illegal immigrants from Russia and elsewhere out of the EU. In effect, the Berlin wall is being put up again -- only a lot further East this time. He rightly notes the hypocrisy of the EU in saying that Israel should not build its fence and also thinks America could do with such a fence on its Southern border. If it's good enough for those paragons of virtue in the EU, why is it not good enough for Israel and the USA?

Prominent UK libertarian Sean Gabb has an interesting history of his unusual schooldays here. He had a rough time of it and ended up largely self-taught. I too was largely self-taught (See here) but had none of the traumas he had.

Venezuela's Chavez: "For all Chavez's talk about bringing through a revolution in favour of the poor, his policies have been pretty conservative. There have been a lot of showy attacks on the old elite - he replaced judges, reshuffled executives on the state oil company, and undercut the Senate by establishing a new Constituent Assembly. But even Chavez sympathiser Richard Gott admits that he has been 'pragmatic' with the economy - bringing in an austere and orthodox economic policy, seeking to keep on the right side of international investors. Edgardo Lander, sociology lecturer at Venezuelan Central University, said: 'There has been no real redistribution of wealth, and land reform has been very timid. There's been hardly any private property confiscated...and hardly any changes in the tax structure....' In fact, the radical rhetoric is more a replacement for radical action than an expression of it".

A charming case of media bias in Australia. Sydney "Sunday Telegraph" columnist Diana Simmonds is apparently in Athens for the Olympic games and refers to Australia's Prime minister under the heading "Not a PM in sight" as follows: "I LOVE the Olympic Games -- the cathartic effect of a good bellow and leap up and down, followed by a bit of a snivel and a good blow is just the thing as winter drags on. And on. And on. And, as much as I adored Sydney and wouldn't have been anywhere else for quids, I'm loving Athens even more. Know why? Because there's no need to keep the thumb poised over the "off'' button in case the Kirribilli Squatter leaps into the picture to shower Our Kids with his appreciative spittle". [Kirribilli House is the Sydney home of Australian Prime Ministers]. Quote from p.123 -- not online.

An interesting email from a Canadian reader referring to my third post yesterday: "I am very impressed with the idea of the militants and leftists both embracing the idea of "dhimmi", it makes sense to me; unfortunately some of the people I know here seem psychologically ready to capitulate to Islam, and I wouldn't be surprized if some of the women I know convert in the next few years [they are single and way past the age of marrying] -- when I foresee pressure being put on Canadian municipalities where there is a large Islamic population being pressured to broadcast the call to prayer daily [and silence the church bells at the same time!] Let us hope it is just my paranoia!"

Further to my mention of film-maker Elia Kazan yesterday, there is more on the courage of Kazan here. Excerpt: "But for many of us he will not only be remembered for his art but also as a courageous man who fearlessly stood his ground against La-La Land's undercurrent of Stalinism and its mindless support of anti-American causes".

The policeman is a very funny guy if you like British humour. I do. Example: "I thought I would prepare for the forthcoming terrorist attack by manufacturing some ammunition. Above is a picture of my nine year old son holding the mould, while I filled it with molten lead (don't worry he's wearing gloves). The balls were allowed to cool and then inserted into shotgun cartridges, we later fired the 12-gauge lead balls into a tree trunk as a test. It worked, we are now fully protected from Al-Quaeda and social workers". He has a good cartoon in the same post as well.

Alan McCann responds to my post about St. Thomas Aquinas -- pointing out that NOTHING Thomas said justifies government redistribution of wealth.

I have just transferred here a new lot of Chris Brand's postings. As usual, he has found quite a few chinks in the armour of political correctness.

I have just put up a new post on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS and there is an amusing post on GREENIE WATCH about Greenies contradicting one-another. GUN WATCH has a link to a great speech by Charlton Heston. On POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH there is a post which says that official anti-racist policies in Britain in fact make racism worse.

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Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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22 August, 2004

SOME MORE INTERESTING EMAILS FROM READERS

"I wonder if the current Arab militancy is motivated by the thought that oil will eventually run out, and that their influence and wealth will then cease. If they believe the dire predictions of the Greenies, they might just think that this is their last chance to be a force in the world."

"I just read an account of Lynddie England's testimony about Abu Ghraib. Apparently, her original testimony was that she dreamed up this stuff by herself with a few friends -- to have fun taking naked photos etc. Not difficult to believe. Of course, after consulting with liberal attorneys who hate Bush, she changed her story to "I was just folllowing orders". The attorneys argued that England simply wasn't smart enough to think of this stuff on her own. Where are the Bra Burners? Isn't this an insult to just about any woman anyhwhere -- that England wasn't smart enough to dream up this scheme of taking dirty pictures without someone else telling her what to do?"

"It is more than obvious to me that the "Dhimmi" idea of Islam rather suits modern Leftists. Both the Muslims and the Leftists want to subjugate other people. Apart from slight modifications and the obvious technological changes of today, the intention at least is to return us all to the mediaeval Dhimmi era. And then what? This Utopian crap is hard to fathom. But both Leftists and Islamists want the new worlds such as America and Australia -- the last frontiers, lands of opportunity, and a chance to a real start in a new life -- to end up the same basket-cases as in Europe and elsewhere."

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ELSEWHERE

"Sampan incident" belies Kerry heroic image: "John Kerry invented a 'war hero' persona in his private journals and in the home movies he filmed and staged in Vietnam. Playing the lead role, he developed a past intended to advance his future political ambitions. In reality, Kerry was regarded by his Navy peers as reckless with human life. Although Douglas Brinkley's biography 'Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War' recalls that Kerry used the call sign 'Square Jaw' for a short time, it doesn't mention the sign he actually used for most of his four months in Vietnam: 'Boston Strangler.'

What would Lincoln or FDR have done to someone like John Kerry who undermined the war effort in Vietnam? Answer here.

This article says that Kerry could lose because of the "dirt" associated with passionate New Jersey governor McGreevey.

Non-independence day: "Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of one of the major turning points in American social history. That was the date on which President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating his 'War on Poverty' program in 1964. Never had there been such a comprehensive program to tackle poverty at its roots, to offer more opportunities to those starting out in life, to rehabilitate those fallen by the wayside and to make dependent people self-supporting. Its intentions were the best. But we know what road is paved with good intentions. The War on Poverty represented the crowning triumph of the liberal vision of society -- and of government programs as the solution to social problems. The disastrous consequences that followed have made the word 'liberal' so much of a political liability that today even candidates with long left-wing track records have evaded or denied that designation."

Not only has France banned vending machines from schools, the country also now requires all food companies to include health warnings with their advertisements, or fork over 1.5% of their respective advertising budgets to the French equivalent of HHS.

Self-help: "On July 20th, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) introduced legislation to reform Social Security the right way -- with large personal retirement accounts and without tax increases or benefit cuts. These reform measures would allow all workers the option to invest up to half of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts and harness the impact of compounded interest -- what Einstein called the most powerful force in the universe."

Another triumph for America's Leftist educators: "He said Americans had a reputation for being ignorant of world affairs. The annual National Geographic Survey had thrown up the sad fact that only 23 out of 56 young Americans knew the whereabouts of the Pacific Ocean".

Marlon Brando's recent death has reminded many of his superb performance in "On The Waterfront". Less well known is that the movie's director Elia Kazan, who blew the whistle on communists operating in Hollywood, used 'Waterfront' to explain why he felt it necessary to expose his former party comrades. (See also here for more on the Hollywood Blacklist and recent findings that there WERE in fact Red operatives in tinseltown)

LOL: An hilarious excerpt here from the latest translation of the Bible -- recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury. (Via Maverick Philosopher). How these alleged Christians hate New Testament Christianity! Although I am the most utter atheist you will ever meet (I don't even think the idea of God is meaningful) I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament -- so it saddens me to see it distorted out of all recognition.

Verbum Ipsum gives some interesting quotes about private property from the great Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (I read a fair bit of Thomas myself in my teens). From my reading of it, Thomas was much more respectful of private property than the present Pope is. Thomas sounds rather a lot like a modern conservative thinker, in fact.

Wicked Thoughts has some good stuff up at the moment: An excellent poem about media bias by a former member of the military and a humorous but thought-provoking projection of the news from the year 2035.

As there seems to be a bit of an oil crisis on at the moment, I have just uploaded a chapter by Milton Friedman from my 1974 book. What he says about the oil crisis of the '70s is still worth bearing in mind today. See here

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



21 August, 2004

SOME EMAILS FROM READERS

"Liberals" often reject any similarities between themselves and Communists. They reply "You should not label people with such a broad brush" or some such. My response: " YOU seem to do a lot of labeling: Labeling anyone who supports God (e.g. Bush) as a Christian fundamentalist; Or anyone who is on the Religious Right the "Christian Taliban". A tad hypocritical? Also: Liberals, Socialists and Communists hate being labeled as "fascists" by the Right, but they think that it's okay to be dependent on big government and label anyone different from that as a "fascist". Gee, how nice! I have also noticed that the Right is less conformist than those on the Left. Just look at anyone on the Left who has a different opinion on Bush and the war in Iraq (e.g. Joe Lieberman): They get booed by the crowd, because that crowd all conforms to the anti-war and anti-Bush position. The Right is more individualistic. The Right allows the Old Right to voice their opposition and don't seem to boo them the way the Left boo at anybody who disagrees with them -- even those from among their own ranks, such as Tony Blair. Consistently with their belief in the individual, the Right allows individualism in their ranks while the Left does not".

"I have met many lefties over the years who seemed completely oblivious to the very existence of any intellectual challenges to their position. This has included both the overtly political, even intellectual types as well as many far less-versed or even interested. It is this tendency on their part, I believe, which founds the core of their belief that their political opposition is essentially malicious, conspiratorial, and populated by those motivated by personal gain in association with business interests or as bribed apologists for such interests. On the other hand, I have met few conservatives (of any subdivision) similarly blinkered or intellectually isolated. Even conservatives of the most rigid and uncompromising sort are generally well-acquainted with most arguments contra and have reasoned responses, whether or not these are entirely satisfactorily constructed. Indeed, a significant portion of all those on the conservative side formerly occupied positions further to the left-- from which they had moved on the basis of quite rational considerations, sometimes occurring as a result of deliberate inquiry, sometimes gained through reflection on experience."

"To those who embrace the reigning conspiracy theory that the Iraq War is phony, that intel was at best bungled and at worst manipulated, that the U.S. lacks European alliances and can't go it alone in Iraq, that the abuses at abu Ghraib prison were suppressed, that courageous firefighters saved New York, that WMD's weren't used in Iraq (but apparently were in New York), that unlike Churchill or Roosevelt, Bush is an inept and uninspiring leader, but that we could get behind a real morally justified war like World War II but not a pre-emptive war like Iraq, I offer the following realities: In 1940 Britain was badly losing a war with Germany which had overrun Europe due to lack of pre-emption, did not believe Churchill was an inspiring leader, journalists were told to suppress knowledge of the fiasco of the British Expeditionary Force retreat across the channel from Dunkirk to Britain, the government fabricated German casualties figures, despite their heroism small fishing boats did not save many British troops in retreat from Dunkirk, the German Luftwaffe destroyed 800,000 homes in London, people were locked up for 5 years for criticizing the war, the only European ally Britain had was France which collapsed in the face of the Blitzkreig, and Churchill's famous speeches ("I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" and "we will fight on the beaches") were written by propaganda officers in the British Ministry of Information and delivered on the radio by a voice impersonator who was really a children's hour actor (like Mr. Rogers on TV in the U.S.). Later this was all considered Britain's "Finest Hour." All this is documented in the book 1940: Myth and Reality by Clive Ponting (1990). So much for the reigning preconception".

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ELSEWHERE

Dick McDonald is blogging up a storm about John Kerry. Lots of good stuff.

The system's working! "U.S. Sen. Edward M. 'Ted' Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name appeared on the government's secret 'no-fly' list."

This is an amusing Leftist article to read. Take a look at the angry face of its author first. The core assertion of the article is that: "In fact, liberal bias in the academy is a fiction". And, in good Leftist fashion, that is just given as an assertion without proof or evidence. No mention is made of the fact that something like 9 out of 10 professors in the humanities and social sciences are registered Democrats. I guess Democrats are not liberals! Pathetic! But since when did Leftists ever care about the evidence? The one half-way reasonable point the author makes is that there are some academic disciplines -- e.g. accountancy, engineering etc -- that do tend towards the Right. But a careful academic study of just how far they tend to the Right is instructive. Nakhaie & Brym found that professors of accounting, finance and mechanical engineeering are indeed to the Right of centre but only marginally so. They are in fact centrists rather than Rightists. Disciplines such as sociology of course were way to the Left. More details of just how far Left academe is in general can be found here.

A fascinating piece of new research by some economists here confirms the Lynn & Vanhanen finding that national average IQ is an important predictor of national economic prosperity: "we show that national average IQ has a robust positive relationship with economic growth". So brains matter and not all human groups are equally brainy. In general, the countries with the brainiest people are not only the ones who are already richest (which is what Lynn & Vanhanen showed) but are also the ones who are getting even richer.

Arnold Kling hits back at the latest bout of drug-company bashing. One excerpt: "Marcia Angell is outraged that pharmaceutical companies earn profits and use advertising to encourage people to use their products. To her, these are evil forms of incentives. However, the alternative to using profits and advertising is to use taxes and regulation. Those are even more coercive forms of incentives. I can choose not to buy pharmaceuticals, but taxes are unavoidable. I can ignore drug company advertising, but I cannot ignore government regulation."

The drug bureaucracy at work: "On February 1, 2002, Cecil Knox was seeing patients in his Roanoke, Virginia, clinic when more than a dozen federal agents burst through the doors with guns drawn. Helmeted, shielded, and wearing bullet-proof vests, they terrified waiting patients and employees. ... Knox, a pain management specialist who had been practicing medicine in Roanoke for seven years, was dragged out in handcuffs and leg irons."

In case anybody is interested, I have just put up here some photos from my recent vacation in Far North Queensland.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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20 August, 2004

FROM BROOKES NEWS

John Kerry and his Cambodian lie - why it is important John Kerry and his Cambodian lie reveals a dishonest man who will show weakness in the face of terrorism that would surely invite even more terrorism. Without a doubt, he is a very dangerous and very stupid man
John Kerry and the Bruce Springsteen cavalcade of hatred Bruce Springsteen, the John Kerry groupie, is a moral poseur who gets his jollies from making sympathetic noises about the poor while raking in millions of dollars by politicizing his music
The Washing Post slants tax report to favour John Kerry The dirty little secret that the Democrats' bigwigs and their media enablers keep from the public is that the party's super rich friends like Soros, Heinz Kerry, Buffet, etc., would not be affected by the Democrats' tax grab because the party would leave open the sort of tax loopholes that only the super rich can exploit
John Kerry has his vet pal slime the Swift Boat Veterans Perhaps the bottom line here is that Rassman's article reads as if it was taken from one of Beth Cahill's media releases. And that reminds me: if anyone gets involved in the Kerry campaign they are likely to end up lying next to Cahill, 'Mad Dog' Carville and Bully Boy Davis staring up at the sewer
Globalism and living standards Paul Craig Roberts argues globalism is lowering living standards. Is he Right?
Michael Moore slimes Cuban-Americans to curry favour with Castro To please Castro the cowardly Michael Moore smeared American Cubans as terrorists, gangsters, dope smugglers, burglars, and wimps
The Democrats' running theme One can't help but note the running themes of the Democrats: a penchant for relational dysfunction that plays itself out in hackneyed scripts of sexual domination, an inability to grasp base concepts of adult responsibility, and a disregard of fundamental tenets of national security

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

"What is liberalism all about?: Regardless of whether the particular issue is race, agriculture, housing, or a thousand other things, liberalism is about the government telling people what to do in their lives and work.... It has been said that knowledge is power but, politically, power trumps knowledge. When government agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the courts take statistical differences in the "representation' of various ethnic groups in an employer's work force as evidence of discrimination, they don't have to prove their belief to anyone. They have the power. Employers have to try to prove their innocence to them. When the people who run our schools and teachers colleges prefer the "whole language' and "whole math' approaches to teaching English and mathematics, it doesn't matter how many studies show that these approaches don't work. The education establishment has the power and power trumps knowledge".

Leftists afraid to be themselves: "John Passacantando, the executive director of Greenpeace USA, believes in confrontation. A prot,g, of Mike Roselle, co-founder of the radical environmentalist group Earth First, he's led Greenpeace to push the limits of civil disobedience..... So one might expect Passacantando to be thrilled by the prospect of bad behavior, and a lot of it, at the Republican National Convention late this month. Tens if not hundreds of thousands are planning to take to Manhattan's streets in protest, and plans are being hatched for widespread disruption.... But Passacantando isn't happy about what's about to happen in New York. In fact, he's terrified. Like a host of intellectuals, '60s veterans and activists desperate for a John Kerry victory in November, Passacantando worries that the delicious, so-close prospect of defeating George Bush in November will be swept away in the citywide chaos that anarchists have promised to bring to New York."

Welfare as power: "Most European politicians, bureaucrats, and even intellectuals will, of course, favor the massive and now virtually bankrupt welfare state there, in part because it keeps them in power. Europe, from where I originally hail, is to all intents and purposes a politically elitist continent and, sadly, most ordinary folks put up with this because, well, bad habits are hard to shake."

Still no feminist outcry? "The Greek organizers of this summer's Olympics, which began in Athens yesterday, claim that more women athletes are competing than ever before.... According to officials in Athens, the number of Muslim women participating in this year's game is the lowest since 1960. Several Muslim countries have sent no women athletes at all; others, such as Iran, are taking part with only one, in full hijab. And state-owned TV networks in many Muslim countries, including Iran and Egypt, have received instructions to limit coverage of events featuring women athletes at Athens to a minimum.... The Khomeinist version of the hijab, invented in the 1970s and now popular in many countries, including the United States, covers a woman's entire body but allows her face and hands to be exposed. Hijab theoreticians agree on one claim: a woman's hair emanates dangerous rays that could drive men wild with sexual lust and thus undermine social peace".

"Hispanic" Maths? 2+2=5?: "The University of Arizona will be the site of a Center for the Mathematics Education of Latinos and Latinas. The National Science Foundation has awarded a $10 million grant to create the center, which will team math and education researchers at the University of Arizona with the Sunnyside and Tucson unified school districts. The goal of the five-year grant is to advance math education by developing a model that connects math instruction and learning to the cultural, social and linguistic contexts of Hispanics, UA officials said"

What a laugh! Germany wants its "warmongers" (U.S. troops) back.

There is a great spoof site about North Korea here

This site has an excellent scriptural quotation about Right and Left on it

Gary Gravett is a very kind person. He hosts a whole list of Australian conservative bloggers. He has however had technical problems recently and I for one could not get on to any of his sites for several days. Everything seems to be working again now though so here is a list of his currently active sites if you want to check them out:

Mangled Thoughts
Bizzare Science
The Yobbo
Paul & Carl
Alan Anderson
Israelly Cool
Steve Edwards Daily Slander
The House of Rats

LOL: Keith Burgess-Jackson thinks my son Joe may become a bleeding heart "liberal". Joe does however seem to be like me: A born Tory. He was the cautious type even when he was aged 2. And at 17 he already defends conservative views at his school.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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19 August, 2004

SOME PATERNAL PRIDE

My 17-year old son Joe just got his certificate last night for completing his advanced placement course in Mathematics. He got a mark of 6 where the highest score is 7. But the University of Queensland is too PC to use the term "advanced placement" for university courses that selected High School students are allowed to enroll in. They call it an "Enhanced Studies Program". "Advanced" would offend against everybody being equal so you are only allowed to be "enhanced", you see. Anyway, Joe has just been named dux of his school in Information Technology too so there is no doubt how advanced he is. And he's no isolated nerd, either. After last nights ceremonies, lots of other students came over to talk to him and he soon became the social centre of the evening. Matthew 25:29.

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ELSEWHERE

How GWB "attacks the poor": "A recent study by the Tax Foundation puts the number of tax filers who will pay no federal income tax at a record 44 million. The Bush tax cuts expanded this group from 29 million in 2000, an increase of 50 percent. Prior to the Bush tax cuts, 23.1% of filers paid no federal income tax. It is estimated that in 2004 that number surged to 33%, shifting the tax burden to the higher brackets."

Teacher's union misrepresents Charter schools: "Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often called the nation's report card, show students in charter schools doing less well than the nationwide public-school average, which includes middle class students from well-heeled suburbs.... Big deal. These results could easily indicate nothing other than the simple fact that charter schools are typically asked to serve problematic students in low-performing districts with many poor, minority children. Indeed, if the AFT believes these findings, it must also concede that religious schools excel. According to the same NAEP data from which the AFT study is taken, religious schools outperformed the public schools nationwide by nine points, a gap that is as large as the public school-charter school difference AFT is trumpeting".

The NYT has an unusually frank account of Saddam's abuse of the U.N. oil-for-food program: "Congress's Government Accountability Office, formerly the General Accounting Office, has estimated that the Iraqi leader siphoned at least $10 billion from the program by illicitly trading in oil and collecting kickbacks.... How did Mr. Hussein amass so much money while under international sanctions? An examination of the program, the largest in the United Nations' history, suggests an equally straightforward answer: The United Nations let him do it".

Elitist enemies of America: "Fighting to send arms to Saddam, resisting post-9/11 attempts to toughen visa requirements, struggling to keep American parents from rescuing their kidnapped kids in foreign countries, doing everything it can to shut down the Iraqi democracy movement -- amazingly enough, this is the record of the U.S. State Department, an often out-of-control organization that acts at odds with our nation's best interests more often than most Americans realize".

Arlene Peck: "Anti-Semitism is alive and well, and, today it's not just in those red-neck areas of Georgia where I grew up. Now they're more polished.... I've given up trying to understand why everyone hates the Jews. Although I tend to think I have a pretty good idea. I think it's because we gave the world a conscience with the Ten Commandments. Until then, they were perfectly happy coveting other people's wives and sleeping with their sisters or sheep. It annoys the Muslim world and EU that in fifty-six short years the Jewish nation has accomplished far more than most of them put together... People who get to be too successful aren't always liked. Those with no accomplishments and sub-human savage mentalities and actions are resentful of those whose technological and economic gains are light years beyond their comprehension."

American libraries: "the traditional mission of these august institutions of learning for generations of Americans is disappearing as they gradually turn into indoctrination centers against the United States and Israel. One of the main reasons for this tragic and disturbing turn of events is the American Library Association, where a clique of leftists has taken over, dedicating itself to padding libraries across America with anti-Israel books, videos and other materials, excluding both sides in the Israel/Palestine dispute".

"Morning sickness -- the nausea and vomiting that afflicts more than half of all pregnant women -- can be debilitating. There used to be an excellent prescription medication to treat it, but the manufacturer stopped selling the drug in the United States. Safety problems? Unprofitability? Not at all. Frivolous, debilitating lawsuits killed this drug."

Being "insensitive" to lawbreakers is out? "The Department of Homeland Security wants to restrict the U.S. Border Patrol's arrest of illegal aliens in the nation's interior, concerned that the recent apprehension of 450 illegals by agents in inland areas of Southern California failed to consider the 'sensitivities' of those detained. According to department sources, a formal written policy under review would limit Border Patrol arrests to areas along the nation's 7,000 miles of international border and give U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the responsibility for enforcing immigration laws in the nation's interior."

Hilarious! Canada's socialized medicine system is failing badly at providing medical services. So what are they going to do about it? Hire more doctors at whatever price it takes to get them? No way! They want to spend a BILLION dollars to "set up an institute" to study the problem! Excerpt: "Canada needs to invest $1 billion over the next five years to reverse its serious shortage of doctors and ensure there will be enough health-care providers in future to reduce long waiting lists plaguing hospitals, the Canadian Medical Association says. The association wants Ottawa to create a national health human resources reinvestment fund, which would plan for future personnel needs and "help end the health human resources boom-and-bust planning cycle," outgoing president Dr. Sunil Patel told a news conference at the annual meeting in Toronto yesterday.... The proposed $1 billion fund would set up an institute to determine what the needs would be in various categories"

PID points out that Islamic economics has been about as successful as Nazi physics or Soviet agriculture.

A report in The Guardian links pollutants to a three-fold increase in brain diseases since 1970. Eugene Rants has an appropriate response.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again in fine fettle. Lots of good reading.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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18 August, 2004

LUDWIG VON MISES AND "AUSTRIAN" ECONOMICS

Leftist economists have now admitted that the conservative economists such as Von Mises and Hayek were right: "As late as 1989, Samuelson claimed that "The Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and even thrive." But then, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and Soviet communism in 1989-90, economist Robert Heilbroner shocked his colleagues in the socialist world by boldly declaring that the long-standing debate between capitalism and socialism was over. "Capitalism has won, " he confessed. "Socialism has been a great tragedy this century." Furthermore, Heilbroner was forced to change his mind about Mises and the debate over socialism. Following the unexpected collapse of communism, Heilbroner admitted, "It turns out, of course, that Mises was right." And it wasn't long before Paul Samuelson did an about-face in his textbook, labeling Soviet central planning "the failed model."

Great turnabouts in economics: "The gradual transformation of Paul Samuelson from Keynesian to classical economics ... is a major chapter in famous cases of economists changing their minds. Nobody likes to admit he's wrong. You can probably count on your fingers the number of times scholars have renounced their theories and switched positions... Three prominent economists have admitted error and changed their thinking, and we can learn much from their experience."

There is an amazing story here about how the Nazis seized all the papers of Von Mises after he got out of Europe just ahead of them. But the papers were not lost. The Soviets confiscated heaps of Nazi archives after the war and archived them all nicely. And after the fall of the Soviets, Western economists were able to get copies of all of them! More here

And there is even a Batman & Robin episode featuring the "lost" Mises papers: "A female Robin describes in a postscript, "Von Mises' anti-authoritarian ideas were first a threat to the Nazis, then the Soviets, and to all increasingly regulatory governments in our own times. He was against socialism in all its many forms. He was an advocate of individual liberty, free speech, and free thinking"

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ELSEWHERE

An amazing article here about how the restoration of phonics to the teaching of reading and writing was the personal project of GWB when he was governor of Texas. Minorities in Texas were basically just not learning to read at all before the restoration of phonics but now they almost all do learn to read. As a current Bush advisor said: ""It is amazing to me that Bush is thought of as a right winger who doesn't care about minorities... He saved so many of their lives."

Interesting to read what Mark Twain wrote about his visit to Israel in 1867 -- before the Jews started returning there. There is no mention of the "Palestinians" we are always hearing about in the media these days. As far as Twain could see, the Arabs there were all just Syrians -- indistinguishable from the inhabitants of Syria -- which is on today's Northern border of Israel. There certainly is a Jewish people but not a Palestinian one. The only meaning to the term "Palestinian" is "the Arabs who live in Palestine". And the concept of Palestine itself is essentially a British creation -- what they called that part of the old Ottoman empire that corresponded to the ancient land of Israel. For those who have forgotten, Britain ran most of the Middle East after the defeat of the Turks in World War I.

There is a good article by Richard Dawkins here suggesting that post-modernism in the humanities is a deliberate fraud. I completely agree. These guys are just gaming the system and deceiving the gullible.

The school textbook war: "In few countries are the texts so consistently critical of the United States as they are in Canada, but in a couple of cases the rhetoric is alarming. For national security purposes, we should have read Saudi textbooks years ago, for even while Saudi diplomats were cooing to American officials, Saudi students were reading rants about "Crusader" and "Neo-imperialist" attacks on Islam."

There are almost twice as many female psychiatric patients as men, and more than half of these are prescribed psychiatric drugs... Young or old, women who take tranquilizers and antidepressants are at greater risk than men. So why do adult women willingly take these risks? One answer appears to lie in the obsessions of a sex-and-youth culture that is also beset by feminism. The notion that they can- and, indeed, should -"have it all" has resulted in women feeling defeated, whether they are married with children, "in relationships," or pursuing college and careers. The numerous changes in society, including sexual "freedom," have negatively affected women, contrary to advertisements portraying carefree women using "easy" birth-control patches... Ironically, many women want to perform certain functions, like grocery shopping and caring for children. This was not anticipated when the feminist movement began, and now that females make up half (or more) of the workforce, the results are in: Women on tranqs are overwhelmed by the enormity of their tasks.

A new book, Stalin's British Victims (reviewed here and here), reveals the extent to which members of Britain's Communist Party knew of Stalin's Terror even while it was going on - - and how, even when their own families were among the targets of the Soviet leader's bloodthirsty regime, they still defended his actions for the sake of their dream-world. It shows the power of their inhuman vision for the world and their utter lack of normal human feeling.

The work ethic wanes in the EU while time on the job increases in U.S. "In Europe, nothing happens in August. It is not, of course, that absolutely everyone is on holiday. There are still an unhappy few slogging in to work. But the commuter train is half empty, the flow of traffic at rush hour is uncannily smooth. Virtually no serious decision can be taken in a London office throughout this month because there is always at least one key executive on holiday. See also here.

"People driving or riding in a sport utility vehicle in 2003 were nearly 11 percent more likely to die in an accident than people in cars, the figures show. The government began keeping detailed statistics on the safety of vehicle categories in 1994."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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17 August, 2004

THE DRIVE

Well, I did the drive yesterday -- from Cairns to Port Douglas. About 35 miles. For about half of the time the road runs right alongside the ocean, with beaches large and small scattered all the way along. It is one of the world's most scenic drives and the wonder is that you can stop at almost any of the many unspoiled beaches and find yourself alone there. If people like to go on vacation amidst crowds, good luck to them, but if you fancy the deserted tropical island experience with none of the inconvenience of a deserted tropical island, you should be booking a flight to Cairns International Airport. It's a longer plane journey than most but droves of the notoriously quality-conscious Japanese seem to think it is worthwhile.

I also spotted another pygmy yesterday. I was sitting on the pavement beside the main street of Port Douglas having a nice cup of tea when a very small dark person walked right by my table: Less than 5' tall with legs like broom-handles. There are obviously still plenty of negrito (pygmy) genes in the area that was until recently dense tropical jungle.

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MEDICAL MAYHEM

Socialized medicine from one who knows: "In 1970 I created the first NHS group practice in the South Kensington area. I believed in the NHS. I was a politically active member of the Labour Party. I was on the Inner London Local Medical Committee of the British Medical Association. I was the education secretary of the South London faculty of the Royal College of General Practitioners. Within ten years, after a total of sixteen years working for the NHS, I was back in single-handed practice, exclusively in private practice... The philosophical ideas upon which the National Health Service is based are wrong. It is not lack of finance that has destroyed the NHS as an instrument of health care. Nor is it faulty organisational structure. Nor is it over-administration. It is the ideas that are wrong. Over a generation we have seen the provision of health care in the United Kingdom degenerate into a free and comprehensive rotten shambles".

This is an old story but it still illustrates the perils of a government medical service: "About 30 years ago, when I was in the navy, stationed in Charleston, S.C., navy "doctors" had a reputation for being "less than efficient" in most instances. This theory was born out when a friend of mine's wife, who had been pregnant while wearing an IUD, went to the Emergency Room of the Charleston Naval Hospital. She had been told that the IUD may have slipped into the womb, and may still be there, and could cause complications. She was told that if she experienced any of certain symptoms, i.e. rise in temperature, cramps, nausea, etc, to make it to the E.R. right away. Sure enough, one night, she experienced all of the symptoms and went straight to the E.R. The "doctor" who was on duty promptly took her record, without looking at it, moved it from the "in" box to the "out" box. Asking her what her problem was, he explained, "Well, you've got to expect these things when you're 5 months pregnant." She left the Naval Hospital, went straight downtown to the Charleston County Hospital Emergency Room, where she suffered a miscarriage, due to the IUD having been in the womb". (From Jerry Lerman).

Racist doctors? "The Institute of Medicine (IOM) published "Unequal Treatment," a much-heralded report arguing that doctors-- acting deliberately or unconsciously--were giving their minority patients inferior care.... Skeptics of the biased-doctor model, and I count myself among them, do not dispute the troubling existence of a health gap. But we argue that the examining room is not the place to look for its origins..... This argument just got a big boost from researchers at Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Center for the Study of Health Care Change in Washington. They showed that white and black patients, on average, do not even visit the same population of physicians-- making the idea of preferential treatment by individual doctors a far less compelling explanation for disparities in health. They show, too, that a higher proportion of the doctors that black patients tend to see may not be in a position to provide optimal care. The dramatic finding, published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, should incite a fundamental shift in thinking. Whether it actually does that is another matter, so entrenched are the pieties about America's racist inclinations"

Long overdue: "Doctors cannot be arrested for properly prescribing narcotic painkillers that are the best treatment for millions of suffering patients, according to new guidelines from pain specialists and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The guidelines, written by leading pain specialists together with the DEA, come because many doctors hesitate to prescribe the powerful drugs, which are heavily regulated because they can be abused by addicts."

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ELSEWHERE

I don't expect that it is really any surprise to anyone but Jeff Jacoby gives details of how Arafat's PLO uses violence to suppress reporting of anything unfavourable to the Arabs. There is no free press where Arafat holds sway. Even Western journalists are routinely intimidated. Israel, by contrast, has all sorts of media outlets that are fiercely critical of the Israeli government. And the moron Left calls Israel "fascists" and "Nazis". It is clear who the real Fascists are.

"Contrary to widespread belief, it was more likely American voters in Israel, not Florida, who put George W. Bush in the White House four years ago.... Those who doubt that Americans living abroad could tip the balance in 2004 might consider this: Various chads aside, Al Gore received 202 more votes than George W. Bush on Election Day 2000 in Florida. Only after all the overseas votes were counted, including more than 12,000 from Israel alone, was Bush's election victory certified. The margin was 537 votes. In 2000, according to King, Israel was one of the keys to Bush's success. No other foreign country's U.S. citizens contributed more to Bush's narrow Florida victory, he said.... Once in Israel, Zober said, Jewish voters are no longer guided by a presidential candidate's position on domestic issues. Instead, he said, they vote for whoever they think will serve Israel's interests."

Australian philosopher Rafe Champion has a good slapdown for the whine by cultural elites that they do not get nearly as much recognition as elite sportsmen do. Excerpt: "The so-called cultural elites who are subjected to criticism are not generally cultural performers, they are left-wing intellectuals and commentators. For the most part they have not achieved excellence by any objective standard and they are not railed against in those aspects of performance where they have achieved excellence. Cultural performers who take on the role of left-wing commentators are likely to attract criticism on specific points, but not on account of their achievements in their own fields". More here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

******************************** Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out. Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too? The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here. ********************************



16 August, 2004

MISSED ANNIVERSARY!

As almost any woman will tell you, most men are very bad at remembering anniversaries, birthdays, etc. Wise women just issue lots of reminders. I am a particularly bad case of poor memory for such things. And I can now prove that it's not ill-intended. I forgot to note the anniversary of this blog when it occurred over a month ago! -- on July 10th. So I have now been blogging for just over two years. It actually feels like I have been blogging forever. And I think I can by now say that there is no chance of me suffering from "burnout", as many bloggers do after a while. I am quite taciturn in everday life but I never find any shortage of things to blog about. I am a sort of Marcel Marceau in reverse. Marceau is famous for not speaking on stage but is/was apparently quite a chatterbox when not on stage.

That reminds me: I started out blogging on a different address from this and I have in the past used quite a number of blogspot sites to put up stuff -- most of which I have now deleted in favour of simple files here or here. I notice however that some kind soul has taken over one of my abandoned blogspot addresses and reposted there some selections from my writings. If he wants to contact me, I might be able to give him something more recent to post.

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THE TURKISH CONUNDRUM

Hmmm... I have mixed feelings about this one: The Vatican opposes Turkey's accession to the EU on the apparent grounds that it wants to keep Europe Christian. A number of thoughts spring to mind: 1). Europe is now much more post-Christian than Christian so is it not a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted? 2). Who cares what the EU does? 3). As the only genuine Islamic democracy, Turkey needs all the encouragement it can get; 4). Turkey would probably be better off out of the highly bureaucratic EU anyway. But on the other hand I can see the Vatican's point that a common culture is important in fostering social harmony -- a point that even Leftist intellectuals such as Kojeve have occasionally perceived. And there is no doubt that Muslim traditions and values are very different from values and traditions formed by Christianity.

More importantly, however, Turkey's accession would mean a virtually uncontrolled flood of Muslims from throughout the Middle East into Europe. If I were a European, I think I would most certainly oppose that. Allowing Muslims who have made a godawful mess of their own countries to import their destructive ways into Europe seems madness to me. And I cannot see that we can expect Turkey to exert any effective border control over its long borders with many other Middle Eastern countries when even the USA cannot control its border with Mexico. So once Turkey was in the EU, half the Middle East would in time end up as EU residents and thus be free to move to any other part of the EU if and when they chose. Lots of lovely Iraqis and Syrians and Iranians for Britain!

And how could Turkey possibly be accepted as a good European citizen when it is already holding down by military force a large part of another European country (Cyprus) that it seized only a few decades ago? It should withdraw its army from Cyprus before discussions even begin!

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ELSEWHERE

Der Spiegel ("The Mirror") is a major German newsmagazine. It is frantically anti-American. David's Medienkritik shows how utterly deceitful is the account it gives of Larry King's interview with President Bush. David's Medienkritik also has a good laugh about the effects of the planned big withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany.

On 8th., I put up a brief extract from an excellent article by Eric Alan Beltt which contends -- as I do -- that Leftism is a psychological state rather than any coherent political philosophy or set of ideas. The article was originally published on his blog and received a lot of comments. His answers to the comments make a very useful extension to the original article and are well worth reading. See here.

Political pretenders: "Sometimes little things can tell you about big things. While Sen. John Kerry and his running-mate Sen. John Edwards were recently photographed at lunchtime at Wendy's, to show what regular guys they are, their real lunch was from a local yacht club, which is more their speed in real life. There is nothing wrong with eating lunch from or at a yacht club. What is wrong is being phony -- and thinking the American people need to be conned. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president four times while never pretending to be anything other than what he was, a born member of the elite class."

"Racist like me": "One reason for bigotry's maddening intractability is that a determination -- however knee-jerk, superficial, or unthinkingly made -- that something or someone is racist ends the discussion, as happened with my friend. The verdict is 'guilty' and the only punishment is forfeiture of the right to consider yourself a decent human being. Better to be a necrophiliac than an admitted bigot. Yet if we are to evolve on the issue of race, the notion that you, or someone else, is racist ought to function as the beginning of the attainment of full humanity, not the proof that you've relinquished it."

Blogging while black: "Right-of-center black bloggers, in fact, seem to be entering that public eye almost daily. That shouldn't be a surprise, given statistics on growing Internet usage among black Americans, and the revelation that a quarter of young blacks consider themselves conservative .... the Internet is suddenly full of great black writers whose views aren't monolithic -- you'll find almost-daily disagreements about affirmative action, President Bush or the morality of gangsta rap -- but instead offer a vibrant, hip-hop generation alternative to the broken record of the civil-rights establishment."

"The world of celebrity and the world of the Democratic Party are now joined at the hip. They are one. Their interests, presumably, coincide.... Isn't it becoming harder by the day to take the Democrats seriously as the party of the common man and the left-out? Besides these people, the party's primary sources of support have become trial lawyers and Wall Street financiers. It is becoming a party run by a new class of elites who make fast money--$25 million for 30 days work on a movie, millions (even billions) winning lawsuits against doctors or asbestos users, millions to do arithmetic for a business merger. But they're all running against "Halliburton." ... The days when in the same breath you said AFL-CIO, blue-collar and Democrats are gone. The industrial unions, which connected the party to its authentic roots, are downstairs and out of sight of the nouveau arriviste Democrats."

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH leads off with a pretty horrific story today.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



15 August, 2004

STEAM TRAINS AND PYGMIES

Either you "get" steam trains or you don't. I do. So I was mightily pleased yesterday to be sitting on a bench at Kuranda railway station (in the mountains above Cairns) when a great black old steam engine came panting in -- hauling a train of passenger carriages. It has been dragged out of retirement for the tourist trade so that makes me grateful for tourists. Stream engines don't handle inclines well, however, so the trip from Cairns to Kuranda takes twice as long as if the train were hauled by a modern diesel-electric. Anyway, it really choked me up as it slowly pulled out again amid much steam and panting. It was magnificent. Steam buffs would understand.

An historical interest of Kuranda that is now almost completely unknown to almost anybody -- and which is certainly not mentioned to the tourists -- is that the last survivors of Australia's pygmy race were found in the jungles around there. There are still quite a few striking photos of them from around a century ago, but intermarriage between them and other blacks since then has eliminated any obviously distinct modern population of them. Yet 99.9% of Australians would think that there has only ever been one indigenous race on the Australian mainland. The existence of the pygmies used to be mentioned in the history textbooks but is now almost nowhere to be found. Why? Because the indigenous Australian blacks (Aborigines) that we know today appear to be mainly the descendants of a later wave (or waves) of immigration into Australia -- which means that they are not truly the first "owners" of the country. They are just as much invaders as the whites. And they did a pretty good genocide job on the pygmies -- so, as in Africa, the pygmies survived only in the deep jungle. And that TOTALLY undermines the Leftist guilt industry which says that whites as invaders owe the Aborigines something for being the original inhabitants here. More woes for Australia's Leftist historians. And, yes, it IS the wicked Windschuttle who has shown their deceptions up in this matter as in others.

So what did I see in Kuranda yesterday? I saw only about a dozen Aborigines there but two were remarkably short. Isn't that surprising?

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ELSEWHERE

Proof here that it is John Kerry who is the latter-day Benedict Arnold.

John Kerry's ancestral home in France is rooting for him. How unsurprising.

Jeff Jacoby on there being "too few" minority people in journalism: "The notion that race is a proxy for thought and belief is as odious as the Nuremberg Laws and South Africa's former Racial Classification Law, and has no more business in American journalism than they do. It would be nice to report that Bush and Kerry used their time at the Unity podium to condemn the organization's obsession with skin color, and to remind the journalists in the room that true diversity, the only diversity worth fighting for, is intellectual diversity: the diversity of minds.... What the convention should have been told is that it is neither moral nor progressive to view the world through a racial prism. Unity's "journalists of color" should have heard the blunt message that journalism does not need more reporters and editors of color. It doesn't need more white journalists, either. What it needs are men and women of talent and integrity -- adults who have no interest in a "diversity" that is merely skin-deep"

Excellent: "A Hofstra law student has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against the New York Times alleging the publication's use of the slogan, 'All the news that's fit to print' is false advertising and constitutes a deceptive practice. He claims that the Times' use of 'push-polling' is a violation of the FTC Act. Jonathan Stein said he filed the complaint because he believes the NYT has abused its power and abdicated its responsibility to be objective. He told Talon News, 'The New York Times has enormous power to shape public opinion and the FTC must review the paper's claim that it is an objective news source.' He accused the NYT of using 'push-polling' to obtain results that support a particular position or affect public opinion with the wording of the questions."

Random observations has proof that esteemed academic qualifications can go with severe looniness. Lesson: Don't judge people by the worthless bits of paper that most academic credentials have become these days.

"Blithering Bunny" on Australia's "history wars": His post of 4th mocks the responses of Leftist academic historians to the way Keith Windschuttle has shown them up as typical Leftist liars. He notes that Windschuttle "published The Killing of History, a book acclaimed throughout the world, and that he is regarded in America as one of the world's foremost intellectuals of the current time. So Waterhouse is probably right: the Australian historians have no right to treat him as their intellectual equal".

Keith Burgess-Jackson has a post about frugality that I am generally sympathetic to. I lived a life nearly as simple as his when I was young but as soon as I started acquiring wives that quickly came to an end. My using a dialup connection to the internet is only slightly motivated by frugality. What I really like about dialup is its simplicity. You just plug your laptop into anyplace where there is a phone and that's it! The speed I normally get is 52,000 kbs and that is only a problem with graphics-intensive sites -- which I rarely visit.

PID is a lapsed Catholic and has some good comments on my using a Papal encyclical as holiday reading. Excerpt: "Although I can think of alternative holiday reading, I can also think of something much weirder than an atheist studying papal encyclicals on the beach. It would be the Catholic intellectual architects of those same papal encyclicals deriving their social doctrines, not from their own Church's scholastic tradition, which in many ways layed the groundwork for classical economists like Adam Smith, but from the then "new fangled" economic ideas of German historical school, also known as the "intellectual bodyguard of the House of Hohenzollern.".

I have just transferred here a new lot of Chris Brand's exceedingly incorrect postings about the appalling interaction between race and political correctness in Britain. But Chris has in his usual way found a few signs of emerging sanity there. He notes that the Conservatives there are at long last beginning to criticize political correctness and speak up for a saner legal system. There is also an excerpt from what the British Conservative leader said on today's POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



14 August, 2004

DESERTED BEACHES -- AND PAPAL ENCYCLICALS

I may be wrong but I have the strong impression that the ideal image of a tropical beach that most people have in mind is an image of a deserted beach. "Getting away from it all" largely means freedom from having to deal with other people all the time. Yet, as far as I can see, that does not happen with most tourist destinations. The crowds follow you. Yet in Australia's far North you can find plenty of long, wide, white, tree-lined, sandy beaches with hardly a soul on them for most of the time. That was certainly true yesterday when I looked in at Cowley beach, Kurrimine and Mission beach. And the smaller beaches in between them are normally absolutely deserted. The dream CAN become reality. Australia certainly makes a laugh out of the Greenie idea that earth is "overcrowded".

My vacation reading has been pretty weird. I have just read (well, most of it) the Papal encyclical Centesimus Annus by John Paul II (1991). Have you ever heard of any other atheist who reads Papal encyclicals on his vacations? There was for me one surprising bit in Centesimus Annus. The Pope supports Sabbath observance: "In this regard, one may ask whether existing laws and the practice of industrialized societies effectively ensure in our own day the exercise of this basic right to Sunday rest". I wonder why we never hear of that?

Like the famous encyclical it commemorates (Rerum novarum), however, Centesimus Annus is a thoroughly conservative balancing act. It says Communism is no good but neither is unbridled capitalism. It says there is a right to private property but not an unrestriced right. It says the State should interfere to look after the poor but it should not interfere too much. As I point out elsewhere, conservatives have always undertaken that difficult balancing. Simplistic all-or-nothing theories and systems are only for the ideologues of the Left. Because Centesimus Annus is a balancing act, however, both Left and Right can find bits in it that they like. It does nothing to check the increasingly Leftist nature of the church hierarchy. The hierarchy can use it to defend any degree of Statism except outright Marxism as being for the good of anyone who is at a disadvantage in any way. So I would call Centesimus Annus an unsuccessful balancing act. It is too vague to be useful. At least Rerum novarum took on Marxism at a time when it was a growing threat. I cannot see that Centesimus Annus does anything similarly useful.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

John Kerry gets his Vietnam comeuppance from Vietnam Veterans - and a reporter squeals Now that the truth is coming out about John Kerry's Vietnam war record his sycophantic media groupies are losing their grip
The mass media's love affair with the traitor Wilfred Burchett The mass media's favourable treatment of traitors like Wilfred Burchett helps explain its hatred of President Bush
Green economist wrong on globalization and free trade Free trade (aka globalization) always gets a bad press from greenies"
Keynes fails North Korea and Kim Jong-il Last year Kim Jong-il decided to take his cue from Maynard Keynes and attempted to inject some life into what is jokingly called the North Korean economy
The Japanese economy: A lesson for the US economy? Some commentators thought there was an ominous parallel between the US economy and the state of the Japanese economy in the late '80s
Oil: Where does it come from? How, one may ask, can coal arise in one place and petroleum in another?

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Kerry caught in a lie: "I was startled to read the Aug. 10 issue of the editorial page of The Washington Times concerning the assertion attributed to Sen. John Kerry that he had spent Christmas 1968 aboard his swift boat some five miles inside Cambodia and had been shot at by our Vietnamese allies, as well as the Khmer Rouge.... concerning the assertion that Mr. Kerry was shot at by the Khmer Rouge during his Christmas 1968 visit to Cambodia, it should be noted that the Khmer Rouge didn't take the field until the Easter Offensive of 1972".

Kerry has of course now backtracked about what he originally claimed was a "searing memoy" of his time in Cambodia. Are we seeing early-onset Alzheimer's here? Will his memories of routines abuses conducted by American troops in Vietnam also now be withdrawn? But that would be too decent, I think.

GWB good on John Kerry's Iraq policy: "Now, almost two years after he voted for the war in Iraq, and almost 220 days after switching positions to declare himself the anti-war candidate, my opponent has found a new nuance," Bush said. "After months of questioning my motives and even my credibility, Sen. Kerry now agrees with me." Bush added sarcastically that Kerry still had time to change his position: "There are still 84 days left in the campaign.""

One hundred percenter has a John Kerry Christmas poem that is very much to the point.

Abortion horrifies me but I agree with this: "Britain granted its first license for human cloning yesterday, joining South Korea on the leading edge of stem-cell research, which is restricted by the Bush administration but which many scientists think might lead to new treatments for a range of diseases."

Eugene Rants is getting pretty enraged at some Leftist distortions about the elderly and about health care.

Diary of an anti-Chomsky-ite is worth a look if you have not seen it already. He posts fairly often.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with informative links to a whole host of varied bologospherical reading.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



13 August, 2005

CLINTON TOO!

Well bugger me! I rarely use crude language but this is an occasion for it: Bill Clinton is here in Far North Queensland at the same time as I am. I guess his taste in vacation spots is better than his taste in wives. He has been here before so he knew where he was going when he decided to come here for a vacation. I gather he is here for a few days at least. I saw an all-black Learjet on the tarmac as I flew into Cairns International Airport but now I know whom it delivered here. I hope that is all I see of Mr Amorality.

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ETTY BAY

Thanks to my trusty IBM Thinkpad, I am writing this whilst leaning up against a rock and sitting on the beach at tropical Etty Bay. Overhead is a tangle of jungle trees giving me shade. Ahead of me is an expanse of fine white sand with tree-covered hills in the background that come right down to the beach. Although it is midwinter here, the temperature is balmy and I am wearing only a shirt and shorts. There's only about eight other people in sight. It is the beach to which I used to come for outings when I was a child. I know of no other beach where the jungle comes right down to the sand -- though I guess there must be others. It is of course well off the tourist map and long may it remain so. There is a small caravan park here but not much else. It is rimmed in by hills so there is really no scope for any building here. Just a tiny patch of paradise. And everybody here speaks English! To me it the most beautiful place in all the world. The whole point of my coming North on this vacation was that I just had to sit on the beach at Etty Bay once again.

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ELSEWHERE

This must be giving a lot of Democrats heartburn: "Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said Monday that he would have voted to give the president authorization to go to war in Iraq even knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction. 'Yes, I would have voted for that authority, but I would have used that authority to do things very differently,' Kerry said"

Leftists instinctively unpatriotic: "After the Sept. 11 attacks, I put a small American flag in my front window. Some of my most liberal friends were appalled. The flag conjured up visions of jingoistic, Fox-watching rednecks, they said. Displaying it tagged me as a guns, guts, and God kind of gal, a vengeful Rambo in heels. At the very least, it meant that I was for bombing the daylights out of Afghanistan. No, I protested. The flag is merely a symbol. It can celebrate any aspect of America we choose: freedom of speech, community, separation of church and state. Or just solidarity with the fallen."

Elitist arrogance: "It is no secret that our president is wildly unpopular among Britain's chattering classes, as distinct from its far wiser cab drivers and John, my haircutter. With the notable exception of a few newspapers, the press and the BBC pour out anti-American vitriol that often makes Al Jazeera seem a paragon of objective reporting. The situation is so bad that the joke at No. 10 Downing Street -- 'joke,' as in 'you will laugh so hard that you will cry' -- is that George W. Bush is less popular in certain British circles than Osama bin Laden."

Belmont club on Iraq: "The death of public discourse over the War on Terror was at least partly the result of the self-lobotomization of the Leftist mind. That operation was necessary to prevent an admission of the obvious: the basic Leftist tenets were bankrupt and sustained only by ever more tedious extensions to the original discredited theory; a latter day replay of the downfall of geocentrism which held back the Copernican revolution only by introducing artificial and complicated epicycles."

What a disgrace! "Millions of illegal aliens in the United States would be free from arrest and deportation, have access to tax-deferred savings accounts and Social Security credits, and get unrestricted travel to and from their home countries under President Bush's guest-worker program. According to previously undisclosed details of the president's plan, which some critics have described as a limited amnesty, the proposal offers numerous 'incentives' for the 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens to come 'out of the shadows,' Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson, the nation's border and transportation security czar, told a Senate panel."

Buchanan on immigration: "An invasion that Congress and the president refuse to repel, in dereliction of their constitutional duty, has put America at risk. And while the GOP, following the Karl Rove script, remains silent, Kerry Democrats try to out-pander Bush Republicans with even more generous offers of amnesty to illegal aliens."

Dick McDonald has recently put up most of a Wall St Journal article about the amusing decline of German socialism. Excerpt: "During May and June of 1984, bumper stickers picturing a smiling sun advocating a 35-hour workweek were everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in the name of shorter working hours.... The mandatory reduction in working hours was supposed to miraculously combine the "humanization of the working environment" with a giant job-sharing program. As people worked shorter hours, the theory went, employers would just have to hire more people to pick up the slack.... This summer, the German unions' springtime -- along with the 35-hour workweek -- has come to an abrupt end. But instead of calling for a general strike, the unions gave the expanded working hours their blessing -- and then denied that anything had really changed... It all began when electronics giant Siemens AG reached an agreement with union workers to extend the working time at two of its plants to 40 hours a week"

And France may not be far behind: "Barely 100 days into his tenure at the Finance Ministry, Sarkozy has focused on the most controversial pocketbook issue in French politics: the nation's 35-hour workweek. This revolutionary labor law, passed by the previous Socialist government, went into effect in 2000. It was supposed to be a panacea for the jobless, founded on the peculiarly European notion that if more people work less (but keep the same salaries as when they worked more) lots of good jobs will be created. "Time for me, work for others," was the slogan for this French version of voodoo economics. Of course the measure didn't lower the unemployment rate, now around 10 percent; it just pleased those already on the job. It also hung an economic millstone around the neck of the French state, which has compensated businesses with huge tax breaks to help them adjust. "France will soon dedicate 16 billion euro per year to prevent people from working," Sarkozy told the French financial newspaper Les Echos last month"

Catholic dinosaurs: They still have not caught up with the triumph of capitalism. "Diotallevi and Cipriani interviewed a selection of persons largely representative of the Italian Catholic intelligentsia.... When questioned on politics and economics, a great number of them demonstrated an orientation markedly in favor of state intervention: 44 percent of those interviewed held that the state should provide jobs for everyone; 48 percent held that the labor market should be made more rigid and less flexible; a very great number of them want the state to have control of the most important businesses. And the closer those interviewed are to the heart of Church organizations, the greater is their opposition to economic liberalism. It is the same in the field of health care. Here as well, opposition to the free market increases with the level of education and religious participation of those interviewed..... The political battles for which Italian progressivist Catholics fight also have little or nothing distinctively religious about them. This is true both for interventionism and for the pacifism that opposed the war in Iraq.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



12 August, 2004

TROPICAL VACATION

I have taken a week away from my usual haunts to spend in my ancestral place. All four of my grandparewnts were born and bred in tropical North Queensland and I was too. I am at the moment blogging from Cairns -- the tourist hub of the Far North. I have been to a few tropical tourist destinations in my time -- Fiji, Hawaii, Singapore and Thailand -- and I think North Queensland is as good as or better than any of them. And I do definitely wonder why people go to third-world tropical destinations when they could enjoy every tropical experience in the safety and convenience of a modern Western country like Australia. Because I was born amid magnificent tropical scenery I am very hard to impress when it comes to scenery. I used to think that there was no scenic drive in the world better than the Cairns to Port Douglas road but these days I will concede that a drive through the Western Highlands of Scotland in the summer rivals it.

The Asians have discovered Cairns big time and the Japanese are everywhere. So that parts of Cairns remind me a lot of Asia -- with all the crowded vibrancy that that entails. So if you want to see Asia, come to Cairns! But outside the tourist bazaars, there is no crowding. So forget about tropical islands. Cairns has everything they do. Anyway, for me it is a trip home.

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ELSEWHERE

Two Americas: "It is hard to argue that Senator Edwards is incorrect. We do live in two Americas. One of the Americas features twenty five thousand dollar a plate fundraisers, the belief that most of this nation's social problems are exacerbated by a lack of enough government. This America believes that while the average taxpayer contributes approximately half of their income in federal, payroll, state, local, property and sales taxes, more is required."

Your new boss? "That was cute when Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry started his acceptance speech by snapping a salute and saying he was 'reporting for duty.' Cute, but not quite truthful. If he becomes president, we will be expected to carry out his commands. It's only in democratic folklore that government is the servant and the people the master."

Kerry's fragile Vietnam myths: "Presidential nominee John Kerry is working overtime to blunt growing criticism of his Vietnam service and simultaneously reassure uncommitted voters that his acts of alleged heroism as a Swift boat officer-over 30 years ago-far outweigh his antiwar history. He has made his medals-a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts-a central focus of his candidacy. He has made a colossal mistake. No surprise, then, that Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, an organization unaffiliated with any political party-whose members were no strangers to Lieutenant Kerry 30 years ago-last week began airing a dramatic, highly effective TV spot that flatly disputes Kerry's claims, and, worse for Kerry, his integrity."

A good summary: "In Kerry's insistence that the commitment of our allies -- British, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Australian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Japanese, Thai, Danish and others -- adds up to a big fat zero in a 'unilateral' American adventure, he has shown himself bereft of all diplomatic smarts. Talk about Ugly American. Only this one speaks perfect French." --Diana West (Link via Prairie Pundit)

Amusing: A Canadian newspaper is criticizing Kerry for not being Leftist enough.

Yuk! The British Conservative party has so lost its balls that it is considering a new name for itself. There are some excellent suggestions for a new name here.

Hopeful policy from the Australian Left: "Labor will reveal a "courageous" tax and welfare policy aiming to break down barriers that discourage people from working and simplifying the welfare system. Party strategists believe the Federal Government's failure to address the high effective tax rates - the disproportionate loss of benefits when extra income is earned - facing people who move from welfare to work has given Labor a political opening.... The policy is expected to "consolidate" myriad welfare payments into a simpler system, reducing distortions that discourage welfare recipients to find work. A senior Labor figure promised the long awaited package would be "courageous"."

An excellent summary of the voucher education record here. Excerpt: "Critics of school choice often argue that private schools have an unfair advantage because, unlike government schools, they can select the "cream of the crop" and expel disruptive students. But St Adalbert's experience has decisively disproved this view.... More than two-thirds of her students have come from families below the poverty line. Yet, thanks to a solid core curriculum, minimal bureaucracy, and disciplined and structured classrooms, St Adalbert's has seen more than 90 per cent of its pupils go on to post-secondary education or to paid jobs."

Sharia law officially sanctioned in Canada: ""It's shocking to see the seeds of an Islamic republic being sown here in Canada," one young woman shouted to vociferous applause at a recent Toronto rally, organized to denounce the practice of sharia in Ontario. "Sharia doesn't work anywhere else in the world. Why does the government believe it will work here?"

In defense of "deadbeat dads": "It is difficult to understand what is accomplished by imprisoning such nonviolent fathers. It is easier to understand what releasing them accomplishes. Quite apart from humanitarian concerns, the correctional system -- especially the prison system -- cannot sustain its current growth rate. The DOJ estimates that in 2001, '2.7% of adults in the U.S. had served time in prison, up from 1.8% in 1991 and 1.3% in 1974.' Now the estimate is 3.2 percent. Even if society could accommodate the soaring rate of imprisonment, the prisons themselves cannot."

More Moore lies: "As a former green beret, who is still involved in that tight-knit community, I was "shocked and awed" when I saw Michael Moore during an interview at the DNC actually say that "Bush did not have Special Forces on the ground in Afghanistan for more than two months after 9-11." That was laughable; it was such a stupid, bold-faced lie. Many, many green berets and ex-green berets know that two A-detachments were on the ground in Afghanistan within forty-eight hours of the 9-11 attacks".

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of good reading.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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11 August, 2004

SOME ECONOMICS

Hong Kong: still on top "Its territory may be small in size, but Hong Kong's achievements are substantial. Hong Kong's gross domestic income per capita was $24,690 in 2002 -- more than that of Canada, France, and Germany. At the heart of Hong Kong's success is its economic system, which for the last three decades was the freest in the world....

"Nothing could raise our standard of living more than freeing the economy from our meddling government. When people are able to live free of government regulation, they prosper -- goods become cheaper, standards of living go up, and individual liberty is expanded."

Specious reasoning: "A recent article in the Wall Street Journal is a perfect example of how bad economic arguments in support of good ends can be easily twisted and used to confuse the general public (Gwendolyn Bounds, 'Argument for minimum-wage boost,' 7/27/04, p. B3). When we engage in poor reasoning and faulty economic logic in support of a noble cause, we can end up doing much more harm than good in the pursuit of liberty and economic freedom."

Apologists for poverty: "People, poor, rich, tall, short, American or South African -- you choose the variety, it will still be true -- are all capable of making better or worse choices. There are a few totally incapacitated ones of whom this is not the case, but the bulk of us are moral agents. But that is exactly what many on the political left deny to the poor. They attack their dignity by declaring them helpless, inept, in constant need of meddlesome intruders and the paternalist state."

A good quote from Henry George: "The aim of protection is to diminish imports, never to diminish exports. On the contrary, the protectionist habit is to regard exports with favor, and to consider the country which exports most and imports least as doing the most profitable trade. When exports exceed imports there is said to be a favorable balance of trade. When imports exceed exports there is said to be an unfavorable balance of trade. In accordance with this idea all protectionist countries afford every facility for sending things away and fine men for bringing things in. If the things which we thus try to send away and prevent coming in were pests and vermin -things of which all men want as little as possible -this policy would conform to reason"

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Australia's Leftist historians have now become a laughing-stock: "As the elite of the nation's academic historians met in the stately rooms of the Newcastle Town Hall, fear and loathing lurked the corridors. The Australian Historical Association spent virtually an entire day trying to work out strategies to deal with the menace. Would there be safety in numbers if academics stood together? What should be done when the terror struck again? How could anyone survive when the mass media was in on the conspiracy? Over 18 months after Keith Windschuttle published his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, the academic world is still anguishing over its impact. It is terrified of what he will do next. Windschuttle struck at the heart of the accepted view of Australian colonial history in the past 30 years - that the settler society had engaged in a pattern of conquest, dispossession and killing of the indigenous inhabitants. The facts, he said, did not stack up".

Supreme Court not supreme: "In 1985, Edwin Meese, President Reagan's attorney general, created a furor when he attacked judicial supremacy. He argued that the executive and the legislative branches of government-- not just the judicial one-- had an obligation to interpret the Constitution. Supreme Court rulings may be final in a given case, he granted, but they could not settle the meaning of the Constitution, which remains independent of any one interpretation. Thus the president and members of Congress were free to reject court-fabricated rules, such as the "right" to an abortion.... Now, nearly 20 years later, Larry Kramer, dean of the Stanford Law School and a member of what he himself calls "the liberal academy," argues that Mr. Meese was right all along."

America's immigration control farce again: "Once we connect these dots, it becomes obvious that the presence of thousands of Arab terrorists in two separate areas of South America and the illegal entry of hundreds of Arabs via the Mexican border portend massive terror assaults against American and other targets in South America and within this nation."

The terrorism/poverty connection is Leftist bunk: "Reducing poverty in the Third World is a moral as well as a political and economic imperative, but to expect from it a decisive change in the foreseeable future as far as terrorism is concerned is unrealistic, to say the least. It ignores both the causes of backwardness and poverty and the motives for terrorism".

The Leftist "food desert" theory (Yes. That's desert, not dessert): "As one who in his professional life has heard numerous complaints about the alleged "oppression" that is created by the presence of a Wal-Mart or some other large chain store, it is interesting to see how the academic left shifts gears and now blames these same retailers for not having enough stores in existence. Social activists have worked overtime to keep the Wal-Marts and Safeways from opening in rural and urban areas; now we see that the real problem, according to activists, is that many rural and urban people do not have access to the inexpensive food that these markets sell."

Conservatives anonymous has a good brief post on why the American revolution was a conservative one. I agree. The idea that conservatives can also be revolutionaries sure must upset the simple minds of those on the Left (like these supposedly educated galoots) who think that conservatism means kneejerk support for the status quo. (I reply at length to the supposedly educated galoots here).

I have just put up an amusing chapter from my 1974 book on conservatism. It describes a group of weirdos who have not changed much since the chapter was written. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



10 August, 2004

IRAQ IN RETROSPECT

I have recently been alerted to a couple of older posts by "Godless" of "Gene Expression" (see here and here) that provide an interesting retrospective on the reasons for the Iraq war. The fact that Saddam was twice previously well on the way to acquiring nukes certainly makes the suspicion that he might have had them or nearly have had them in 2003 eminently reasonable. Taking a risk on him not having them would have been crazy -- whether you were a neocon or just a traditional old cautious conservative. We were lucky that Saddam was just bluffing and did not, in fact, have anything much. He would probably have used it otherwise. He had used both missiles and poison gas on previous occasions.

Under the heading "Camelot Texas-style", a post on PID dated August 8th (permalinks bloggered) is also of interest. He looks at the Leftist view that the Bush administration was the victim of "groupthink" in its pre-invasion acceptance of allegedly faulty intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weaponry. He ends up however with the excellent point that many key jobs in the Bush administration were Clinton holdovers so the idea of an inward-looking, one-eyed, conformist group of Bush yes-men mulling over policy pays scant regard to the evidence. And the argument also makes the assumption that GWB & Co. believed all the intelligence they were given. That is an unnecessary assumption. As mentioned above, the fact is that no responsible Commander in Chief could have afforded to DIS-believe the intelligence coming in. Even if GWB and his advisors doubted the assessments they were given -- and I give ANY politician credit for tons of cynicism -- they could not afford to take the risk of standing idly by. Saddam's play-acting with the weapons inspectors had lots of people other than GWB (including many prominent Democrats) convinced that he had serious stuff to hide so any risk of such stuff falling into the hands of terrorists had to be prevented by any means available.

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PID (post of August 4th.) also deploys his characteristic skepticism against the Australia/U.S. Free Trade Agreement. He rightly points out that it is heavily hedged about with restrictions and regulations so is far from allowing real free trade. He then exercises his skepticism by questioning whether the agreement has any net benefits at all. My brand of skepticism in this case is to say that we will have to wait and see. Both governments obviously see advantages for themselves in it and since trade is not a zero-sum game that is entirely possible. PID points out that NAFTA was hedged about with a maze of restrictions and regulations too and I don't think anyone now doubts that NAFTA did a lot of good so I think the bets are in favour of the Australia/U.S. agreement. But totally free trade would be infinitely more beneficial, of course.

News just in: "Congress considers new military medal to recognize John Kerry's war wounds. The new medal will be called the "Purple Owie". It will be authorized for wearing directly over the wound, and after use, will be rolled up and thrown over the nearest fence....... "Who looks like a sissy over 3 little scratches?" Hint: has 3 purple hearts in 4 months but never spent a day in the hospital."

Promise anything! "In a startling reversal of the usual party roles, John Kerry is staking his White House claim as a defender of "fiscal discipline" to counteract a spendthrift Republican Administration. It's all the more startling because his publicly announced proposals would actually increase the deficit.... According to last month's estimate from the National Taxpayers Union, Senator Kerry is promising to increase net spending by $226 billion in the first year... Even overlooking these flaws, how can Mr. Kerry blow out the budget so badly? It's not hard if you promise to be all things to all people"

"But the lack of political diversity in Washington newsrooms is even worse. According to an informal survey conducted by New York Times columnist John Tierney, supporters of John Kerry outnumber supporters of George Bush by 12-to-1 among the nation's capital reporters. If you do the math, that means that only eight percent of America's elite press supports the president, 42 percent less than the 50 percent of Americans who say they'd vote for Bush. It's a disparity that deserves attention".

V.D. Hanson on the infantile nature of the Left: "In a word, we have devolved into an infantile society in which our technological successes have wrongly suggested that we can alter the nature of man to our whims and pleasures - just like a child who expects instant gratification from his parents. In a culture where affluence and leisure are seen as birthrights, war, sacrifice, or even the mental fatigue about worrying over such things wear on us. So we construct, in a deductive and anti-empirical way, a play universe that better suits us".

Randall Parker has a post suggesting that GWB's weak-kneed attitude to illegal immigration is losing him conservative votes without gaining him any Latino votes. Could be. That a country which can put a man on the moon cannot control its immigration intake is pretty ludicrous. I myself think that Hispanics can be perfectly beneficial as immigrants but there should be some selectivity. Not all Hispanics are equal either. The USA should clearly be able to decide WHICH immigrants it lets in. Australia was getting flooded with illegal immigrants too until our conservative government cracked down.

But this does seem to be extraordinarily petty, inhumane and typically bureaucratic: "In a startling twist that reflects a major change in immigration politics, the Department of Homeland Security is ordering the 292 Montserratians to leave [the U.S.] by the end of February - not because it is safe to go home again, but because it is not going to be safe anytime soon." Millions of Mexicans are OK but a couple of hundred people whose island blew up are not!

I have now put online all the chapters that I wrote myself from my 1974 book on conservatism so I am beginning to think of putting online some of the chapters written by others. The first one I have put up is a rather whimsical article by an American journalist on why constitutional monarchy is the best form of government. See here.

I have just put up on POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH a particularly gross case of Swedish human rights abuse in the name of political correctness.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Perhaps the original example of Leftist "projection": Marx condemned conventional religion as the "opium of the masses". Why? Because he had an opiate to peddle.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



9 August, 2004

GUN WATCH

As regular readers of this blog will mostly have noted by now, I have recently started a fourth blog -- called GUN WATCH. I thought I should explain such a major eccentricity. I think only Randall Parker rivals me for the number of active blogs he has.

I am actually not greatly interested in guns (though I am a reasonable shot and enjoyed the weapons-training in the Army). My brother Christopher is gun enthusiast enough for both of us. But what is happening in Britain does give cause for alarm to anyone in any place where crime is common. People there have now been totally disarmed and have no effective defence against violent criminals at all. And just about all that the British police do about it -- according to one who should know -- is "take statements and fill in forms in the Police Station". And gun crime has risen greatly in Britain since the post-Dunblane restrictions on gun ownership -- exactly the opposite of what the law was supposed to achieve. And the U.S. Left is always threatening and sometimes defeats the constitutional protections on gun ownership that Americans are so fortunate to have. So I have decided to bring together in one place the various gun-related stories that come my way. My brother Christopher and his local gun-owner friends will also be sending me stuff for posting. I already have a fair bit lined up so there is no doubt that I will be posting daily on the subject.

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Sad that the limited degree of capitalism in Vietnam today does not go with any political freedom. The Vietnamese "Communists" were from their early days Fascists rather than true Communists in that a large part of their appeal was nationalistic rather than socialist. And limited capitalism under tight political control was of course also the economic recipe for Mussolini's Italian Fascism and Hitler's Nazism. So the Fascist nature of Vietnamese "Communism" is now more evident than ever. The 20th century "big lie" that Leftist intellectuals foisted on the world -- that Fascism was Rightist -- might thus have had big consequences. Would the Leftists of the 60s have been so keen to support a Vietnam that was generally identified as Fascist rather than Communist? Given their often-proclaimed anti-Fascism, it should have embarrassed them a bit at least. But, on the other hand, they pulled out all stops to support the Fascist Saddam Hussein recently so perhaps a correct identification of the Vietnam regime would not for a moment have held up their unprincipled contrarianism. More on the definition of Fascism here.

An interesting example here of how Leftists don't let reality get in the way of their stream of abuse or their anti-Americanism. The author says that 2004 has been the worst year ever to be an American. Why? The only substantial reason he seems to give is that America has lost less than 1,000 troops in Iraq during it's presence there and some soldiers have treated terrorist prisoners mockingly. How naughty of them! And in lots of America's past wars, America lost many more than 1,000 troops in a DAY!

John Kerry's "resume" for his job application as President is a powerful argument for what a sleaze he is.

LOL: A great picture of John Kerry's truck here if you have not seen it by now.

"Does terrorism exist without the media? Does coverage of terrorist acts empower or encourage the people behind them? If terrorism is directed more at the audience than at its victims, shouldn't television journalists stop giving terrorists the forum they covet? ... broadcasters need to start considering new internal guidelines in order to remove hype from terrorism coverage. Excerpts from the execution of Nick Berg, an American entrepreneur in Iraq, were aired repeatedly. When terrorists gave the US 72 hours to comply with their demands before executing American contractor Paul Johnson, the cable networks breathlessly ticked down the time remaining. Network anchors lament global terrorism even as they become complicit partners".

Rather sad that it takes a philosopher to speak such common-sense as this: "If you want me to treat you as an individual, rather than as a mere member of some group, then you should treat yourself as an individual and forego attempts to derive social advantage from group-membership. Don't try to have it both ways. In particular, if you want me to judge you by the content of your character rather than the color of your skin, don't try to secure benefits from your possession of a certain skin-color." But it's still too complex for the simplistic minds of Leftists.

Leftist racism? "After a 30-year career at National Public Radio, Bob Edwards found himself sacked as host of its syndicated news show "Morning Edition." In an interview with Talkers Magazine, Mr. Edwards gave a surprising answer when asked what kind of people listen to NPR. "Bright people," he replied. "People of all economic strata. It's a whiter audience than we would like and we're trying to fix that." Now substitute "GOP Chairman Ed Gillespie" for Bob Edwards and "Republican Party" for National Public Radio and think what the reaction would be to a statement that could be read to imply that white people are somehow brighter." Leftists can see the obvious about average black IQ as well as anybody can but it is only occasionally that they let it slip out.

I have just put online (see here or here) the last chapter of my 1974 book on conservatism. The topic of the chapter -- an evaluation of the 1974 Australian Federal election -- must seem boring to all but the most dedicated political scientists but in fact a number of features of that election continue today. The government that won that election -- the Whitlam Labor government -- is generally remembered as the most Leftist Australian government of the last 50 years but even it did a lot to introduce free-market reforms. And in the absence of an Australian Reagan or Thatcher it has in fact been Labor governments generally who have done most to open up the Australian economy to market forces. What that all means is that there is a broadly conservative consensus in Australian politics (though a small loony Left exists as well of course) with the two major parties differing only on relatively minor details. The current Kerry/Bush contest in the USA is also characterized by very small differences in official policy but that seems to have been arrived at quite artificially -- by suppressing all that Kerry and his supporters have previously been known to stand for. By contrast, the market-oriented reforms instituted by various Australian Labor governments were not the subject of any election competition at all before they were introduced. They clearly arose out of a genuine understanding that they were good for Australia. The only postwar Australian government to use troops to crush a strike (in 1949) was also a Labor government.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Perhaps the original example of Leftist "projection": Marx condemned conventional religion as the "opium of the masses". Why? Because he had an opiate to peddle.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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8 August, 2004

SOME RECENT GOOD EMAILS FROM READERS

"When my younger sister died at 59, and when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I had new cause to curse junk science. If the money spent "proving" that more substances "cause" cancer had gone, instead, to treatment research, we would probably have a combination of earlier diagnostics and medication that would relegate cancer to being just bothersome. And I curse Carl Sagan because he went to the Dark Side of the scientific lie for a good cause. Atmospheric scientists twisted by the "Nuclear Winter" theories of the Cold War got the alarmist habit and so easily went into the new ice-age and global warming scenarios to shake loose grant money."

"As an architectural project manager, I face the silliness of committees and regulators daily. It is a silliness which goes beyond misguided good intentions. It stifles progress, costs clients inordinately, and quite frequently scares them out of building the housing and other facilities that people need and want to make their lives better. No tax-credit, warm-fuzzy, or "affordable housing incentive" could ever make up for the meddling by these people who have no care about, or personal stake in, what the people standing in front of them say they need. After all, what sort of incentive is a tax-credit other than a little *less* extortion?"

In response to my post about low Leftist IQ: "Just look to Hollywood to see Low IQ leftists. It doesn't take much in the way of brains to read a script created by someone else (the real brains in Hollywood are the producers and writers, not the actors). For example - many don't believe Sean Penn should get an Academy Award for playing himself; likewise for Jack Nicholson."

A bit of interesting gossip about the authors of David's Medienkritik: "David Kaspar is the German half of the dynamic duo and enlisted American Ray D. to help him with translation. Ray has Lived in Nuremberg for five years. When he moved there he didn't pay much attention to politics, but the distortions and public pandering of the press drove him mad with anger. He reads and watches the media to write about it, but often finds that he can't because it's SO bad that it makes him physically ill".

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ELSEWHERE

"Liberal" psychology: "Liberalism isn't a political ideology; it's a psychology - the psychology of self-satisfaction to be precise. A liberal (or a leftist; I use the terms interchangeably), is a person who only cares about politics to the extent that doing so makes him or her feel good, or avoid feeling bad, due both to external and internal factors. Their motivations can include things like a desire to feel intelligent, moral, noble, or unique, as well as a desire for peer acceptance or reverence, and aversion to being ostracized, among many other things. Now, before I go any further, I have to draw a distinction between liberals and the people who agree with them. Liberals, the people I'm referring to throughout, are the activists and ideologues; the people who truly believe in their leftist ideas and who fight for them.... Liberalism isn't a political ideology. The only common bond that truly holds liberal ideas together is their straight-forward simplicity (pass a law, raise taxes, hand out money, talk it out, etc), which is solely a consequence of the fact that liberals are completely uninterested in real solutions to real problems. It is the political activism itself that interests them, in that it makes them feel good about themselves...."

LOL: Kerry boasted that he and Edwards had better hair so I guess this comment from Dick McDonald about Mrs Kerry is fair: Dick says that her "hair looks as if it was styled by Mixmaster"

"Australians were addicted to welfare and political parties were too scared of voters to ask the junkies to quit, an academic said today. Professor Peter Saunders, from the right wing Centre for Independent Studies, has painted a scathing picture of government welfare policies over recent decades in his new book, Australia's Welfare Habit, being launched in Sydney today. Prof Saunders said Australia's welfare dependency had increased by 500 per cent in four decades. Forty years ago three per cent of working age Australians lived off welfare. Now the figure is 16 per cent".

Sowell: "Santa Monica, California, has decreed a fine of $2,500 a day for not cutting your hedges! .... Santa Monica has long been called "the People's Republic of Santa Monica" for all the far left laws and rhetoric it generates. Like other governments called "people's republic," the last thing they care about is people. The ideology, or even whims, of those in power routinely take away other people's right to live their own lives as they see fit. Santa Monica is not unique. Wherever you get enough far left people in power, you can find a similar willingness to force everyone into collectivist conformity at all costs. Too often these selfish ego trips of the left are called idealism, and issues are discussed in terms of the wonderful goals they proclaim -- "social justice," "open space" or "saving" this or that -- rather than in terms of what is actually being done and the costs entailed on others"

"Asylum seekers". Another reason why "refugees" just don't come to Australia any more: "A stateless Palestinian-born man refused political asylum in Australia could continue be held in immigration detention indefinitely, the High Court ruled today. Similarly, an Iraqi national refused an Australian protection visa could continue to be held in a detention centre because there was no reasonable prospect that he could be returned to his preferred destination, Syria. By a 4-3 majority, the High Court ruled that unsuccessful asylum seekers who could not be removed to another country, despite their wish to leave Australia, could continue to be held in immigration detention indefinitely. Both cases involved asylum seekers rejected for Australian protection visas who asked to be returned to the Middle East."

Arafat learnt from Adolf: "Since the onset of Oslo, ten years ago, the PA has established a campaign of vilification against us as part of the effort to delegitimize our presence. All of this is reinforced by a direct connection to Nazi anti-Semitism. Yasser Arafat learned at the feet of his uncle and mentor, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who consorted with the Nazis; Mein Kampf is sold in PA stores today. The PA is the first entity since Nazi Germany to advocate the killing of people simply because they are Jews. Listen to their incitement, especially from their pulpits, and you can hear it -- Allah is pleased when Jews are killed".

Walter Williams: "During the first Reagan administration, I participated in a number of press conferences on either a book or article I'd written or as a panelist in a discussion of White House public policy. On occasion, when the question-and-answer session began, I'd tell the press, 'You can treat me like a white person. Ask hard, penetrating questions.' The remark often brought uncomfortable laughter, but I was dead serious. If there is one general characteristic of white liberals, it's their condescending and demeaning attitude toward blacks."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Perhaps the original example of Leftist "projection": Marx condemned conventional religion as the "opium of the masses". Why? Because he had an opiate to peddle.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



7 August, 2004

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE .....

An email from a Dutch-speaking reader

"I just acquired - for my collection of war memorabilia - a Nazi publication from around 1942: "What is the European worker struggling for?" (Waarvoor strijdt de Europeesche Arbeider?"). Apparently this was for distribution in Belgium and Holland. Most pages are taken up with pictures of the wonderful benefits of the German welfare state - free medical care, free day care, free summer camps - to show the contrast with the brutish Soviet state in the East, and the heartless Anglo-Saxon capitalist system in the West. The reason why the Soviets would like to conquer Europe is obvious enough, the writer says: to acquire the European standard of living (throughout the text, Germany is barely mentioned but can safely be substituted for "Europe"):

"The question of what the English and the American worker is striving and fighting for is also asked often, mostly in the enemy camp. In the meantime, what he MUST fight and work for has become clear: in order to, by means of conquering Europe and its advanced industry, eliminate a competitor and conquer a new market for the American gigantic (industrial) production. Europe must buy ..."

A clear echo of what we are told about the Halliburton factor in Iraq. This recycled Marxism is followed by a great deal of economic gibberish about how bad it is to buy things from other parts of the world, about the European worker's cherished social security and employment benefits, and, toward the end:

"One more thing the European worker knows: if our continent can maintain itself, i.e. if the East can be controlled and the West can be pushed back inside its own borders, then Europe will be able to continue projecting its ancient, illuminating power, and important parts of neighboring peoples will join our continent and elevate themselves to our level of culture."

Jacques Chirac, eat your heart out: Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."

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Amusing: The Left-leaning "Prospect" magazine has just published its list of the top 100 British intellectuals. And what a laugh it is! The nutty Germaine Greer who has now reversed herself on practically everything she ever said comes second and the unrepentant Marxist historian Hobsbawm comes fourth. But some sensible people get a look in too so it's not a total writeoff. Even the leader of Britain's Conservative party gets a spot on the list (towards the bottom, of course). But I don't know anything about most of the people on the list -- for which I can probably be grateful.

I should be used to it by now but I still get amazed at the arrogance of Leftist ideologues. There is an article by a feminist here which simply asserts -- without a shred of supportive evidence and in the face of lots of contrary evidence -- that all male/female differences are "forged by decades of conditioning". The idea of inborn differences is simply sneered at. Facts are irrelevant. She just KNOWS! She is almost certainly not a mother. Feminists who have boy and girl children soon learn the reality. (Via Oz Conservative).

There is a good post here pointing out that talk of a Pax Americana and America as an empire shows the total ignorance of history that one has to expect from the Left. It also rightly points out how strange it was to have the recent Democrat convention virtually glorifying the Vietnam war -- the same war that previously they always condemned utterly. "History, Schmistory! Who cares about history?" might almost be the Leftist slogan. It almost has to be: History is so inconvenient for them.

An attack on John Kerry from a "liberal" viewpoint: Just one excerpt: "It is always difficult, when you look closely at the speech of a Democratic Party candidate, to determine what is a lie and what are mere words. I think the most obvious lies in John Kerry's case are his pledges about healthcare and trade. Take this passage: And when I'm President, America will stop being the only advanced nation in the world which fails to understand that health care is not a privilege for the wealthy, the connected, and the elected -it is a right for all Americans. If you honestly think that Americans will have easier access to healthcare under John Kerry, raise your hand. At best, Kerry's federal reinsurance plan sounds like a hugely complex legislative fiasco that will die in committee sometime around Lebron James' 30th birthday. At worst, it sounds like a means of funneling enormous amounts of taxpayer money to insurers and employers without guaranteeing that the cost benefits will be passed on to the consumer".

Liddy has a great list of events proving that Leftists have no standards, principles or consistency at all. The same things that were good under Clinton are suddenly bad under Bush.

Good comment about the attacks on Iraqi Christians: "Will al-Jazeera dedicate the same outrage to the bombing of Christian churches as it did to imaginary U.S. attacks on mosques? There's the difference: Even in wartime, our soldiers went to great lengths to spare religious facilities, despite their cynical use by terrorist criminals. Nor did the Israelis destroy the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem when Palestinian militants used it as a bunker. Relativists may whine all they want, but such restraint is the hallmark of a superior civilization - cultures are not all equal."

EU Referendum notes that EU officials are complaining about a peculiarity of the British -- They have a free press! How awful for the EU socialists.

A good graphic here that explains Israel's security fence very simply.

I have just transferred a new lot of Chris Brand's exceedingly incorrect postings here. He includes a quote from Bertrand Russell which discounts Islamic "civilization". For more on that topic see this classic article

A couple of new postings on GUN WATCH. I hope to be posting daily there in future. There is a lot of stuff on that topic that I have been passing by in the past.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Perhaps the original example of Leftist "projection": Marx condemned conventional religion as the "opium of the masses". Why? Because he had an opiate to peddle.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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6 August, 2004

FROM BROOKES NEWS

Anti-Semites find a home in John Kerry's party Why do Kerry and his fellow Democrats value the services of this pro-terrorist and anti-Israeli bigot?
Capitalistic wolves in liberal sheep's clothing Stop lining the pockets of liberals who dress up as innocent lambs and expose them for what they really are: opportunistic, socialistic and divisive
The '90s boom and the '60s - what you don't know but should Some Democratic commentators are still drawing comparisons with the Clinton years and the 1960s - and still getting it wrong
George McGovern's bloodstained ties to Castro For years George McGovern has been pouring praise on a sadistic mass murderer
Religious persecution in China China's unfortunate experience of religious rebellions and cults in no way excuses the regime's persecution of religion
Prof. Krugman attacks Dick Cheney and gets it wrong It's time the Republicans fully accepted the grim fact that they are now at war on all fronts. Professor Krugman is another bitter example of this reality
Partisan media is getting heat from the Net Matt Drudge is a staggering example of what one man with a net connection can achieve. His success has aroused the jealousy of journalists and set alarm bells ringing

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Hmmm.. I think I need to come to the aid of one of my fellow Australian conservative bloggers. A Leftist blogger by the name of "Darp" (?) attacked Mike Jericho over his enjoyment of guns and such things -- a rather common theme among conservative bloggers (the esteemed Kim Du Toit does rather spring to mind as another example). And Mike was hornswoggled enough to replace some of his martial graphics with a picture of some nice mountain scenery. Leftist attacks on gun usage are of course ho-hum stuff on the political scene (even I get hate-mail for my occasional pro-gun postings) but they also figure in psychology -- with the claim being that people who like guns are "death merchants" etc and are also of course thoroughly deranged. I review and attack one such claim in the psychological literature here. What our trembling Leftists overlook of course is that man evolved as a hunting animal and a liking for hunting and weapons (lacking aggressive teeth and claws, mankind unfortunately needs weapons for hunting) is therefore throroughly NORMAL. Mike is the normal one and he needed to make no apologies for it. And we won't mention the Molotov cocktails, clenched fists etc that feature so often in Far-Leftist iconography. They are pretty death-oriented but have no redeeming connection to hunting. And all the megadeaths of the 20th century were the work of socialists so if "death-merchants" are deranged, it is pretty clear who the deranged ones are.

Buchanan: "While Kerry delivered the speech of his life at Boston, the man is simply not credible. When the basic math is done, the gap between his promises and what he can plausibly deliver is so transparently huge he ought to be hauled before the Federal Trade Commission for consumer fraud."

Conservative black columnist Larry Elder has some great stories from the Democrat convention -- noting their total reliance on abuse rather than rational argument.

V.D. Hanson has a good reply to the loony Lefties who think that the USA has "provoked" the Islamic fruitcakes: "The [9/11] commission has helped to resurrect the fable that we are hated for what we do or don't to Muslims rather than who we are. But the collective brain power of the commissioners could not adduce a simple explanation as to why French and Germans are busy rooting out plots to blow up their own citizens - despite billions of EU money sent to terrorist organizations like Hamas, support for Arafat, and cheap slurs leveled at America in Iraq. Why do Muslim radicals hate Europe when Europeans have no military power, no real presence abroad, give billions away to the Middle East, despise Israel, will sell anything to anyone anywhere at anytime, and have let millions of Arabs onto their shores? Are daily threats to Europeans earned because of what Europe does - or is the cause who they are?"

Race doesn't exist, of course: "A heart drug being tested in black patients is on course to become the first medicine approved for use in a specific ethnic group, challenging those scientists who believe that race is a bad basis for prescriptions. The drug, made by Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company NitroMed, was abandoned after a trial in the 1980s produced unimpressive results. But, because the data hinted at differences between white and black patients' responses, in 2001 NitroMed decided to carry out a further clinical trial using only African Americans. This week NitroMed announced that the trial, in over 1,000 black heart-failure patients, has been stopped early because it appears so effective when used on top of normal therapy. "I'm so thrilled about it," says study leader Anne Taylor of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. If the drug, called BiDil, receives regulatory approval, the company says it will aim to launch it in early 2005.

Ben Stein's latest book seems pretty good. He documents how hate-filled the contemporary American Left are. God help us if the American Left were ever to get the power that the Left had in Soviet Russia! He explains such Leftism as psychologically juvenile -- an explanation some others give too (see here and here) but, although that is true enough as a description, I think we can go a bit deeper than that and see the juvenility as just one symptom of a broader psychopathic syndrome. See here and here.

The latest collection of nutty conspiracy theories from the Left is a book called The New Pearl Harbor. Guess why the twin towers of the WTC fell down on 9/11? Because George Bush blew them up, of course! There is a hilarious send-up of both that book and the whole of the current Left here. Excerpt: "Some attribute the Left's inability to argue coherently to laziness. Others blame the NEA. Whatever the cause, Lefties don't bother to read anymore because reading is hard. It's a lot easier and more fun to fire up a blunt and listen to Rage Against the Machine and Bono for all your political insights. Plus there's all these "facts" that get in the way of a strongly held emotional reaction to things like poverty, crime, terrorism and why conservatives think they have a right to keep at least half their income."

Snowball is pretty irate at how the left-leaning British traffic planners always treat the individual car driver as some kind of enemy to be thwarted and forced onto nice socialist buses -- when there is much that they could and should be doing to make the road network more efficent instead.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Perhaps the original example of Leftist "projection": Marx condemned conventional religion as the "opium of the masses". Why? Because he had an opiate to peddle.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



5 August, 2004

THE EDUCATION DEBACLE

A great cry that regularly emanates from politicians who want to sound "caring" is the need for more "investment" in education (which means of course more of that lovely government spending and hence more taxes). The cry is usually justfied as an investment in "human capital". The claim is that more education leds to more capable people (don't laugh!) and hence more productivity and a wealthier community generally. It has been known since the 1973 work of Ivar Berg (review here) that this is utter horse-sh*t. The educational system has long been so airy-fairy that most of it is already more a hindrance than a help to worker productivity and income generation. If we wanted to do something useful for people we would be cutting education-spending back to the low level that actually works (like such revolutionary policies as making sure nobody gets out of grade school until they can read and write) -- not increasing it. Berg's studies (recently updated and reissued) focused on microeconomic indices (differences between people within a given population), however, so it is a welcome update to read this recent article, focusing on macroeconomic comparisons (differences between countries). The different methodology, however, leads to the same conclusions. For an extended look at the dubious value of a humanities education in particular see here.

And here is the latest example of such a boneheaded cry -- a summary of the promises from the recent Democrat convention: "George Bush's increase in national education spending, the largest since the program's inception, wasn't enough. The Democrats want to raise elementary spending at least $27 billion but, of course, spend nothing on educational vouchers for those who need to escape the failed government monopoly school system. And Democrats want the same priority for college education spending, at least $25 billion more yearly."

Reality finally bites: "Chicago is closing 60 failing schools, opening 100 new schools and letting private managers run most of the new schools with no union contract. Chicago business leaders used the prospect of federal sanctions under No Child Left Behind "to pressure the city to put many schools into private hands, outside union jurisdiction," reports the New York Times. The local teachers' union is distracted by charges of fraud in the recent election for union president. With nobody in charge, the union hasn't done much to fight the plan."

Degrees for sale: "Cash-strapped British universities are awarding degrees to students who should be failed, in return for lucrative fees, The Observer can reveal. The 'degrees-for-sale' scandal stretches from the most prestigious institutions to the former polytechnics and includes undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, foreign and home students. In the most extreme case, The Observer has evidence of a professor ordering staff to mark up students at risk of failing in order to keep the money coming in. Lecturers at institutions across the country, including Oxford, London and Swansea, told The Observer the scandal is undermining academic standards, but they cannot speak publicly for fear of losing their jobs." This sort of thing has long been an ongoing scandal in Australian universities too. Why should government employees care about degrading their product?

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ELSEWHERE

A fabulous example of Leftist thinking from the current Socialist government of Spain. They are trying to get Gibraltar back off the British even though virtually every last Gibraltarian wants to remain British. So listen to the Spaniards here: "The interests (not the wishes) of the colony's inhabitants should be taken into account," the Foreign Ministry said in a background paper given to journalists." The reliance on brute force that the Spaniards showed in the era of Pizarro and Cortez seems still to be alive and well. We won't mention their civil war and its aftermath but it is almost comical what they have done to persuade Gibraltarians to rejoin Spain: They have done every last thing they could to make life difficult for the Gibraltarians. And they wonder why the Gibraltarians loathe them!

Gun control at work: The full scale of law and order breakdown in Britain was revealed last night. Gun crime has soared by 35 per cent, .... In the 12 months to March last year there were 9,974 offences involving firearms. Handgun use rose by 45 per cent, said official Government statistics. The figure has doubled since the post-Dunblane ban on such weapons from 2,636 in 1998 to 5,871... But the Government shrugged off the shock figures... The number of males murdered in shootings was up 41 per cent this year.... Paul Hampson of the Association of Chief Police Officers added: "The rise in gun offences concerns us all."... The number of gun crimes recorded in London was 4,192 versus 2,817 in the previous year.

Ban kitchen knives! "A Japanese man confessed to stabbing seven of his relatives to death early Monday with a kitchen knife and setting fire to a family house, a grisly spree rare in a country that takes prides in a low crime rate."

And ban all security guards too: "A knife-wielding security guard at a Beijing kindergarten went on the rampage yesterday, slashing 15 young children and killing one of them -- a four-year-old boy, Chinese state media and medical sources said. Three teachers were also injured when the security guard attacked children and staff at the Beijing University Number One Hospital's kindergarten with a kitchen knife, they said".

Australian Leftists OPPOSE homosexual marriage: "The gay and lesbian lobby has accused federal Labor of betrayal, after the shadow attorney-general, Nicola Roxon, told a gathering of Christians her party's views on homosexual marriage were identical to the Government's. Ms Roxon told the 1000- strong crowd at the "Why marriage matters" forum, held yesterday at Parliament House in Canberra, that Labor would support a Government bill to outlaw gay and lesbian marriage by the end of next week." Australia is a more conservative country than the USA in many ways -- despite being much less religious.

A most interesting excerpt from the Wall St. Journal "Political Diary" of 3rd (not generally online}: "The Boston Democratic convention featured a rich side menu of interesting seminars. One of the most controversial was a workshop for new Democratic campaign press secretaries that sounded like a call to arms in its advice on how to deal with the new media universe. Lecturers urged press secretaries to confront what one warned was "media that are no longer tilted in your direction." Bullying was openly encouraged. "When it comes to the media," suggested Democratic strategist James Carville, "intimidation works." I am sure Dr. Goebbels would agree.

The Bunyip is a good read -- as ever. His talent for humorous writing is worthy of the sadly missed Punch. So it is no mystery why my blast at the holocaust-denying Philip Adams did not get the attention the Bunyip's did.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

New rubric added immediately below. Thanks to Marc Miyake

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

Leftists acclaim "diversity" yet say "All men are equal". Figure that one out.

Perhaps the original example of Leftist "projection": Marx condemned conventional religion as the "opium of the masses". Why? Because he had an opiate to peddle.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



4 August, 2004

BLOGGER.COM SHENANIGANS

Recent email from a reader: "I visit your web sites on close to a daily basis. Obviously, I enjoy them. However, for some time I have had a problem which occurs only with your sites. When I follow a link from http://dissectleft.blogspot.com and then return, I return not to the current page of the site from which I departed but to one for April 4!"

My reply:

Yes. Blogger.com does peculiar things at times. Their latest trick is to say some site does not exist. Then when you do a retry it is there! I suggest using one of my mirror sites instead e.g. http://users.tpg.com.au/jonjayra/tripod.html

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ELSEWHERE

As most readers of this blog will be well aware, my primary interest is in the psychology of Leftism. I have been studying and researching the psychology of politics generally for around 40 years, however, so I also have some pretty firm ideas about what conservatism is and what motivates conservatives. I have put my account of that into a long article here. As it is pretty clear by now just where GWB fits into the history and philosophy of conservatism, I have recently added to my article a substantial section on him. So click here to go straight to an account of where GWB fits into the history of conservatism. I think it is pretty interesting, myself.

LOL: Talk about "projection" (seeing your own faults in others)! The Democrats are now accusing Republicans of being unpatriotic! Even that most anti-American of anti-Americans, Michael Moore, is doing it. It's not mentally ill, though. It has always been a useful strategy to confuse the issue and divert attention from your own faults. I am pleased to note that an awareness of projection as a Leftist tactic is catching on. See here, for example.

Mike Tremoglie has a good article on far-Leftist Janeane Garofalo -- showing what an elitist she is. Leftists really loathe the ordinary people they claim to be "compassionate" about. When Leftist accuse conservatives of lacking compassion, that's projection too. And as I noted two days ago, when Leftists say conservatives are dumb, even that is projection.

Gigot on the hypocrisy of the Democrat convention: "I had to rub my eyes sometimes to make sure these were Democrats. Some of the rhetoric was so hawkish I half expected Donald Rumsfeld to show up. "You cannot run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you," said John Edwards about "al Qaeda and the rest of these terrorists." Whatever happened to all that shouting over the last year about Iraq? What about the reckless folly of pre-emption, the "illegality" of the war because we haven't found WMD, and the necessity of U.N. approval? Last week all that vanished. Joe Wilson and Paul Krugman were kept in undisclosed locations, while someone must have slipped Howard Dean a Prozac".

Prager on the hypocrisy of the Democrat convention: "The show-stealer was Oakland's Ilana Wexler, 12, who brought down the house with her suggestion that Vice President Dick Cheney get a 'timeout' for using foul language. Within hours she became an international star, media outlets clamoring for her attention, fans seeking her autograph." And yet it is the Democrats who laugh at conventional morality and mock any notion that there is such a thing as obscene language!

LOL: Limbic Nutrition thinks that John Kerry is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and may be a "nut about to crack"!

Hitchens on Leftist moral dishonesty: "A few years ago, many ... liberals and leftists were quoting improbable if not impossible numbers of dead Iraqi children, murdered by the international sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein. Even at its most propagandistic, this contained an important moral point: Iraqi civilians were suffering for the sins of their dictatorship... OK, then, we'll remove the regime and lift the sanctions. Happy now? Not at all! It turns out that 1) the Saddam regime was only a threat invented by neo-cons and that 2) we don't owe the Iraqi people a thing. Also, we could use the money ourselves. This would mean that all the protest about dead and malnourished Iraqi infants was all for show". (Via Common-Sense & Wonder)

Don't Vote for the Party of Racism: "Four decades ago, Congress passed landmark legislation mandating equal rights for all races-- the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Today, there is a political party that vigorously opposes the principles espoused in that legislation. When you enter the voting booth in November, you would do well to consider whether you want to support such an organization".

In case you have not seen it already, here is a link to the now famous and highly amusing article about GWB by Leftist Tom Junod. He hates GWB even though he thinks GWB is right about major questions! You may have to refer back to my post about Bush-hatred of a few days ago to understand such irrational behaviour.

I must confess that this story gave me a laugh: "A Malawian court convicted a Catholic priest and a nun of disorderly conduct Thursday after they were caught engaged in a sexual act in a parked car with tinted windows. "These people were caught in a sex act," Assistant Superintendent Kelvin Maigwa told Reuters. Officials in the Roman Catholic Church, whose priests are barred from sex or marriage, declined to comment. Passers by alerted police at Lilongwe International Airport after the parked Toyota Corolla, which had tinted windows, began shaking in what police described as "a funny manner.""

"Godless" at Gene Expression rightly makes the point that the New York Times are holocaust deniers in the sanitized way they describe the Mao era in China.

I have just transferred Chris Brand's latest postings on multicultural lunacy in Britain here. I am getting lazy in my old age so I have not included the few hyperlinks that Chris has given -- but you can find them at the bottom of Chris's original page here if you want to follow anything up.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Perhaps the original example of Leftist "projection": Marx condemned conventional religion as the "opium of the masses". Why? Because he had an opiate to peddle.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



3 August, 2004

THE LAW

"Some 'taxes' are invisible, hidden in the higher prices of things we buy. One such 'tax' is huge, costing the average American family of four at least $2,884 every year .... Call it the 'Lawsuit Tax,' the huge cost that lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits adds to everything. One member of Congress has done more to increase this secret tax on Americans than has any other lawmaker. John Edwards is a Democratic U.S. Senator from North Carolina, elected to his first and only term in 1998 with massive financial backing from his fellow trial lawyers."

Lawsuit Abuse Fortnightly: In this issue: "Jury Ignores Science Panel In Maine Trial;" "Disability Laws Fleece Mom & Pop Shops;" "California Cap Law Lowers Malpractice Awards;" "Lawyer Forced to Apologize for Frivolous Suit;" "Trial Lawyers Triumphant--For Now;" "Senate Sends Tort Reform Down the Tubes;" "Now Here?s a Law that Needs Changing!;" and, "Your Cheating Heart Turns Into Gold"

Some courts do respect the law: "San Francisco's 20-year-old program to promote women and minorities in city contracts suffered a potentially fatal blow Tuesday when a judge ruled that it violated Proposition 209, the voter-approved state initiative banning preferential treatment based on race and sex. Judge James Warren of San Francisco Superior Court said the city's contracting law giving bidding advantages and preferences to women and minorities is similar to a San Jose ordinance that the California Supreme Court struck down in 2000 because it violated Prop. 209. Based on that ruling, Warren barred San Francisco from enforcing the law 'or any other public contracting law that discriminates against or grants preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.' City officials said they will appeal."

Buchanan knows the constitution: "[The Marriage Protection Act] will be a critical test of the GOP majority in the Senate. If it stands with the House and President Bush, the first and second branches of the U.S. government will be telling the third, the U.S. Supreme Court: Your right of review of all U.S. law is not absolute, but subject to our restrictions. You are hereby instructed to return to the stall into which the Founding Fathers placed you."

The law is not your friend: Harris County, Texas, Resident Blair Davis found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol after his door flew open and 10 members of the Harris County Organized Crime and Narcotics Task force came tearing in, guns drawn, and yelling at him to get down, which he did, for about an hour, as the police searched his home for drugs after mistaking the common Texas Star hibiscus plant on his front lawn for a marijuana plant. Yes, the Harris County Narcotics officers do not know the difference between a marijuana plant and the common native growing Texas Star hibiscus plant. At one point, Davis said, the officers were discussing amongst themselves whether the red and gold bamboo plant in his window might be marijuana. They also asked Davis what he did with the watermelons and cantaloupes growing in his back yard. They eventually left . without apologizing.

Your police "service" "A government scientist finishing a candy bar on her way into a subway station where eating is prohibited was arrested, handcuffed and detained for three hours by transit police. Stephanie Willett said she was eating a PayDay candy bar on an escalator descending into a station July 16 when an officer warned her to finish it before entering the station. Both Willett and police agree that she nodded and put the last bit into her mouth before throwing the wrapper into a trash can. Willett, a 45-year-old Environmental Protection Agency scientist, told radio station WTOP that the officer then followed her into the station, one of several in downtown Washington. 'Don't you have some other crimes you have to take care of?' Willett said she told the officer. Washington has been under heightened security because of the continuing threat of terrorism. And last week, police declared a citywide crime emergency over rising juvenile crime."

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ELSEWHERE

In John Kerry's nomination speech he said: "As president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation." As it points out here, that is a typical Leftist barefaced lie, justified only by its sounding good. The USA has in fact mostly gone to war when it did NOT have to -- on humanitarian grounds etc -- and often at the behest of Democrat Presidents, including Clinton in Yugoslavia. Qando has some good comments on the matter too -- including the excellent point that the Kerry doctrine is simplistic -- which is exactly what the Left accuses conservatives of being. That good old Leftist "projection" again.

There is a most amusing article in the NYT reporting that America's millionaire Leftists (or as they self-congratulatingly call themselves: "Progressives") have become frustrated at the lack of any new ideas or new Leftward moves in the Democratic party. They have apparently decided that they need to create new Leftist ideas by spending hundreds of millions to encourage fringe Left groups! I liked this quote about how they see the present scene: "Now, you're a 32-year-old Democratic state legislator, and what you do is you learn how to check boxes," he continued. "You learn how to become pro-choice. You learn how to become pro-labor. You learn how to become pro-trial lawyer. You learn how to become pro-environment. And you end up, in that process, with no broad philosophical basis. You end up with no ideas about national security. You end up with no ideas about American history and political theory. You end up, frankly, with no ideas about macroeconomics and economic policy, other than that it's scary."" Who am I to argue with that? Hate and anger and envy are what Leftism has always been about, not ideas.

And here is another Leftist who is depressed at the Left's failure to achieve much in America recently -- despite their dominance of education, the media etc. At least he puts his finger on one of the big problems of the Left -- their elitism: "Can they rid themselves of a nagging contempt for the unhip, the poorly educated, and the God-fearing? If the left is not a movement of and for working people— blemishes and all— then it has little chance to regain its previous influence".

More Leftist encouragement for crime: "Inmates in California prisons may not be learning any job skills to help them stay straight once their terms end, but at least they're being taught to feel good about themselves. In a policy shift so irrational it could only have been designed by the state prison guards union, 300 vocational education classrooms in state prisons were shuttered at the beginning of the year. This might be understandable if it were a cost-cutting move, but the state is saving little or nothing by closing the courses. The instructors who formerly provided inmates a chance to succeed in the outside world are now conducting self-esteem "modules" instead. These use workbooks hammering the sort of feel-good lessons that some prison experts believe increase, not decrease, recidivism... Research shows that California inmates who spend more time in vocational programs are less likely to return to prison. Unless we're prepared to support such programs, we'd better be prepared to build a lot more prisons".

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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

Perhaps the original example of Leftist "projection": Marx condemned conventional religion as the "opium of the masses". Why? Because he had an opiate to peddle.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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



2 August, 2004

REALITY: IT IS LEFTISTS WHO HAVE LOWER IQs

I note that Keith Burgess-Jackson has once again tackled the common Leftist claim that Leftists are more intelligent than conservatives. Keith however simply answers assertion with assertion. Leftists say that they are obviously more intelligent and Keith replies that there is obviously no difference. Nobody ever seems to quote any research findings on the subject. But there ARE findings in the academic literature that bear very directly on the question. I know. I had a minor part in writing them up. They have been in the academic literature for over 30 years and are also on the internet. So why are they never quoted? I suspect that I hardly need to mention one reason: Because they show LEFTISTS to be less intelligent! Another reason, however, is that academic papers are very hard for most people to decipher. So I have just posted a fresh copy of the paper on the net to which I have added an explanatory addendum that explains the findings in layman's terms. To go straight to the addendum click here.

Note that no correlation is ever perfect in the social sciences so it is perfectly consistent to have some very intelligent Leftists even though most Leftists are of lesser intelligence. Note also that the finding is yet another example of Leftist "projection" (seeing your own faults in others). If you want to know what is true of Leftists, just read what they say about conservatives.

And the Conning Tower gives a few examples of how clueless even prominent Leftists can be. Given how much Leftists fail to take account of (in human nature and much else besides), there is certainly zero difficulty in seeing Leftist policies as unintelligent.

The sheer arrogant prejudice involved in the Leftist claim of superiority is clearly revealed in the recent claim by a major German news magazine that John Kerry may be too smart for America. They have convinced themselves that America as a whole is dumb. I think the history of the last 100 years reveals who the dumb ones are!

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ELSEWHERE

"If Vietnam veterans speak out against John Kerry but the media doesn't cover it, does anyone hear them? In a convention report about Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's relationship with his fellow Vietnam veterans, Dan Rather did not talk to a single one who opposes the Massachusetts Democrat's quest for higher office. That's especially odd considering that a new book featuring the accounts of a number of veterans who served with Kerry has been in the news of late".

The troops don't like Kerry: "John Kerry's heavily hyped cross-country bus tour stumbled out of the blocks yesterday, as a group of Marines publicly dissed the Vietnam War hero in the middle of a crowded restaurant.... "He imposed on us and I disagree with him coming over here shaking our hands," one Marine said, adding, "I'm 100 percent against [him]." A sergeant with 10 years of service under his belt said, "I speak for all of us. We think that we are doing the right thing in Iraq," before saying he is to be deployed there in a few weeks and is "eager" to go and serve."

Typical Leftist reliance on deception: John Kerry is doing his damndest to prevent people from knowing about the book he wrote when he was an antiwar activist. His team threatens people with lawsuits if they even reproduce the cover of the book. But it tells you here how to get a look at it while you can.

Heroic manipulator: "Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24 hours, he had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry accumulated three Purple Hearts in four months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his training officer. It's a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment reports which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their release is Mr. Kerry.... And within four days of his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry applied to take advantage of a technicality which allowed him to request immediate transfer to a stateside post."

It looks like I was right about Jason Soon yesterday. See towards the bottom of this article. A definite hater. A hater of those with more power and influence. Very Leftist but always sad to see when an intelligent person falls into such folly. But highly educated people are particularly prone to such hatreds. I set out why here.

A fabulous pro-American colmn by a Canadian here. (Via Peg Kaplan). Too good to excerpt. It always amazes me how anybody can overlook the basic truths about America. It just shows the dismal motivations of the critics.

An excellent statement here from a U.S. Marine about the importance of acknowledging evil in the world. Leftists HAVE TO deny that there is evil in people to cover up the evil that is in their own hearts -- as we see whenever Leftists get complete power (Stalin, Pol Pot etc.)

Arrogant Leftist elitism still thriving in Germany: "Michael Muller, deputy head of the Social Democrats' parliamentary party: Rejecting the idea of a referendum, he loftily declared, "Sometimes the electorate has to be protected from making the wrong decisions."

The memoir of the Iraq invasion by American commander General Tommy Franks sounds like good stuff. The American forces were CLEVER! How awful for the critics.

Wayne Lusvardi has given us a quick guide to who and what the current Islamic "Z Men" are

Dick McDonald reports a priceless bit of Democrat arrogance and elitism from the wife of the Iowa governor. She even dissed Black English! Imagine the explosion if a Republican did that! More here

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

New rubric below:

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Perhaps the original example of Leftist "projection": Marx condemned conventional religion as the "opium of the masses". Why? Because he had an opiate to peddle.

Why can those who claim to understand the dangers of meddling with a complex ecosystem like the natural environment, not understand that government interference with a complex system like the economy is perilous too?

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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1 August, 2004

WHY THE LEFT LOATHE GWB

The Left may have lost the Cold War but they have won the culture war. They and their politically correct assumptions dominate in the bureaucracy, the media, the educational system and Hollywood. Even business has largely been forced to kowtow to what Leftists think is a good thing. And that is why Leftists hate holdouts from the old order -- such as George W. Bush, Christianity and Fox News. The complete domination that they pant for is so close and yet still not complete. It is being spoilt by these stupid and evil renegades who cannot and will not see what is obviously right and proper. And Bush is a Texas oil-man, for God's sake! How incorrect can you get? A genuine robber baron from the 19th century who has somehow grabbed the levers of power that belong to them! And he looks and sounds so ordinary! He has no high-flown interests, likes sports, mangles his speech and does not have a head full of theories. He sounds more like a shoe-shine man than someone who can talk the feelgood Leftist talk -- as Clinton can. And worst of all, he is an old-fashioned Bible Christian! He is the exact opposite of the elite that should be running the show. He is the spoiler, the barrier, the last obstacle to their "brave new world".

Simple, isn't it?

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ELSEWHERE

Leftist compassion a fake: "When the labels "conservative" and "liberal" are brought into a political discussion, the common perception is that Democrats, or liberals, are inherently more compassionate than Republicans, or conservatives. However, in the first study to test whether this perception conforms to reality, a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher finds that liberals do not show any more compassion than conservatives in similar settings.... Mr. Milyo, along with colleagues Lisa Anderson and Jennifer Mellor at Virginia's College of William and Mary, examined differences in the behavior of liberal versus conservative subjects in two experimental settings".

Minimum wage turnabout "In academia, when scholars change their minds about something, they admit it publicly and explain why, even if the previous error causes a bit of embarrassment. Thus we recently saw renowned physicist Stephen Hawking say he was wrong in his theory of 'black holes.' He knew it was a necessary, if painful, thing for him to do so research on these celestial objects can move forward. I believe public opinion leaders have the same responsibility to explain themselves when they switch gears. If I were suddenly to endorse a higher minimum wage, after opposing it for many years, I would owe my readers an explanation. ... This is not the view of the New York Times. For decades, the paper carefully and consistently editorialized against the minimum wage. But five years ago, for no apparent reason, it reversed a policy dating to 1937 and suddenly endorsed a higher minimum wage."

Whoopee! "A panel created by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing a top-to-bottom overhaul of state government that would leave virtually no piece of the state's sprawling bureaucracy intact. It would wipe out more than 100 boards and commissions, consolidate a tangle of state services and give departments fresh mandates in an ambitious bid to make government leaner and improve its performance"

What a laugh! "The continuing decline in numbers in the Anglican Church has prompted calls for leaders to consider potentially radical changes in the way the church ministers to the faithful, including implementing cafes in churches. A report from Wayne Brighton, a researcher with the General Synod Office of the Anglican Church, has painted a bleak outlook for the church, with a diminishing and greying congregation." Cafes indeed! They should learn from the vibrant Sydney diocese. THEY preach the Gospel.

Ecumenical economic ignorance: "Conservative Protestants are wary of ecumenical organizations because these groups are so often predisposed toward radicalism and extremism. This disposition may strike some as odd, given that ecumenical bodies are forever issuing blanket affirmations and urgent appeals for the unity of the faith. But Protestants suspicious about the ecumenists will have plenty to worry them later this week when the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, an umbrella group based in Geneva, takes up the issue of economics and global trade."

Maybe pigs do fly! "World Trade Organization members approved a plan Sunday to end export subsidies on farm products and cut import duties across the world" Marvellous if it happens.

Rip van Winkle awakes: "The Vatican on Saturday denounced feminism for trying to blur differences between men and women and threatening the institution of families based on a mother and a father."

Arnold Kling: "To prevent future acts of terrorism, we have to kill people. This is not a good thing. War is horrible. It is repulsive. In every war, soldiers commit atrocities and die senselessly, often because of the mistakes of their superior officers. If World War II were shown to the American people in slow-motion freeze frame, it would look every bit as ugly as the war against Islamist terrorism... For all practical purposes, most of the Muslim world is undecided between Islamism and America. If we adopt a more aggressive approach, some of these Muslims will jump off the fence and onto the other side. But passivity and weakness on our part would be even worse. To regain support of moderate Muslims in the long run, we will have to take steps in the short run that risk upsetting them.... We could not have won World War II with "soft power," trying to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Germans as a way of defeating the Nazis... Eventually, I believe that we can win over the hearts and minds of most Muslims to the concepts of peace and moderation. But not before we have eliminated most of the radicals."

There is a good cartoon about Fascism here

Peg Kaplan has an excellent post on the REAL two Americas.

Hmmm... I used to think that Australian blogger Jason Soon was conservative-leaning but some of his/her recent posts suggest Leftist elitism more than anything else -- such as this one -- where he/she dismisses one of Australia's most brilliant and successful business entrepreneurs as a "vulgarian". Why? On the basis of a conspiracy theory. Yuk! I think we have a nasty little envier there.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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