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28 February, 2018

President Trump might be the most conservative president in our lifetime

By Robert Romano

On Feb. 23, President Donald Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for the second year in a row as president, after not attending in 2016 during the campaign. At the time, he was still busy building his constituency in the Republican primary and for the general election, where he would ultimately prevail on a very conservative platform of putting America and the American people first in governing.

Now, Trump is the leader of the conservative, center-right party in the U.S. and of the executive branch. After one year in office, he has a record he has delivered on: lower taxes, fewer regulations and an opening the doors for economic expansion. ANWR has been opened for drilling. The Keystone XL pipeline is being built. The Obamacare individual mandate has been repealed.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. He ended the so-called Clean Power Plan. He withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and is looking to revamp NAFTA or else pull out of that one, too. Trump ran on fair and reciprocal trade, and that’s what he’s delivering. At CPAC, Trump declared, “the era of economic surrender is over.”

By enforcing trade agreements through the exercise of the President’s power over foreign relations, Trump is enforcing what are essentially contracts. Ignoring the terms of contracts, and allowing trade partners to cheat, is not conservative. It is corrupt.

Where one might quibble about Congress’ spending record in Washington, D.C., there is a president who is getting what he can done on behalf of the American people who elected him. He set a priority to rebuild the military and put the nation’s security first. Agree or disagree with the simultaneous increase of domestic spending — Trump’s own budget called for $4.5 trillion of spending cuts over 10 years while simultaneously increasing military spending — Trump made his promise on behalf of the nation’s fighting men and women, and like Reagan before him, he’s keeping it.

Trump is handing matters back to Congress and not ruling by edict. For example, agree or disagree with Trump’s decision to put DACA back onto Congress, pass or fail, that’s where the matter belongs. In the process, he is using his decision to end DACA in March as leverage, to fight for an end to extended family chain migration and the visa lottery, moving to a more merit-based model of economic priority.

President Trump is restoring limited government. And he’s doing it despite all expectations from the pathetic #NeverTrump in 2016 that said he was no conservative. He may be the most conservative president in our lifetime.

At CPAC, Trump quipped, “Remember when I first started running? Because I wasn’t a politician, fortunately. But do you remember I started running and people would say, ‘Are you sure he’s a conservative?’ I think now we’ve proved that I’m a conservative, right?”

Trump has. In spades. He put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and has put 13 constitutionalist judges on the federal circuit courts and another 10 on the district courts. Another 58 are awaiting confirmation.

Trump is restoring the rule of law, cracking down on violent illegal alien offenders, gangs and ending the war on police. He’s building the wall. He has made the opioid crisis front and center, and continues his focus on securing the nation’s borders.

Trump is taking on a rogue administrative state that thinks it is the legitimate government, including deep state actors who would seek to overturn the result of the 2016 election with false claims of the Russia treason plot. It’s hard to imagine anyone else collapsing under that pressure, but not Trump. He is fighting to preserve the institution of the presidency in Article II of the Constitution from an illegitimate threat to the consent of the governed.

In the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, the President called for self-defense not gun control. Let gun-owners carry, and shooter will think twice.

Trump recognized Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, something no other president had done.

Trump even took on some issues outside the governmental arena, including respect for the American flag and the National Anthem, demonstrating conservative leadership in a cultural area such as professional sports — and winning.

Trump has a record he can defend. A conservative one. In 2020, it may be enough to win reelection.

But in 2018, the President realizes there are other forces at play. In uncharacteristically frank remarks on the prospects of the midterm elections, Trump noted, “And now only two years — that’s a very short period. And by the time you start campaigning, it’s a year. And now you got to go and fight again. But you just won. So nobody has that same drive that they had. So you end up not doing that well because the other side is going — they’re crazed.”

Statistically, Trump is spot on. The White House incumbent party tends to lose House seats in midterm elections 89 percent of the time dating back a century, with losses averaging 35 seats. The exceptions were 1934, 1998 and 2002. In the Senate, the incumbents tend to lose Senate seats about 71 percent of the time, with losses averaging about 6 seats. However, there are more exceptions where seats were either gained or none lost: 1906, 1914, 1934, 1962, 1970, 1982, 1998 and 2002.

So, what to do? Trump had some words of advice for his supporters at CPAC, warning, “Don’t be complacent… The fact is, we need more Republicans to vote. We want to get our agenda.” He’s right. But to rally in 2018, the President needs to get the wind at his back. So far, he’s off to a good start, with his tax cut plan now in effect, a rousing State of the Union Address and now his CPAC heart to heart with his supporters.

Midterms are by no means determinative of presidential reelections. Former Presidents Clinton and Obama rebounded after catastrophic losses in Congress. But they can help. Reagan kept a Republican Senate majority in 1982 and went on to one of the largest landslides in electoral history in 1984. Nothing is set in stone, but for President Trump to continue implementing his conservative agenda in Washington, D.C., one fact is unmistakable: he needs a conservative, limited government majority in Congress.

SOURCE

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President Trump delivered an epic speech to CPAC, and it left the #NeverTrump gang squirming

Proud to be deplorable Trump began his remarks with a throwdown* to his critics in the Republican establishment:

I’m thrilled to be back at CPAC, with so many of my wonderful friends and amazing supporters and proud conservatives. Remember when I first started running? Because I wasn’t a politician, fortunately, but do you remember I started running and people said, are you sure he’s a conservative? I think I proved I’m a conservative.

And Trump was right – while no one would argue that he has internalized movement conservative philosophical principles or claim Trump has lived his life according to Biblical principles, as President he has pursued, and accomplished, a surprisingly conservative agenda.

What’s more, the President summed-up in one short sentence why he is different – in a good way – from most other recent Republican presidential candidates and presidents: Year after year, leaders have stood on this stage to discuss what we can do together to protect our heritage, to promote our culture, and to defend our freedom.

Has any other Republican come before a national audience and talked about protecting our heritage?

Year after year Republican presidential candidates, and two Presidents Bush, went to CPAC to talk, but they rarely produced meaningful results on the conservative agenda, and, often as not, many CPAC attendees were opposed to them and their policies.

Certainly in the early years of CPAC its purpose was to advance the conservative takeover of the Republican Party, not serve as a platform for the Republican establishment to try to sell itself as part of the conservative movement.

Donald Trump, the patriotic businessman, is the only President to join President Reagan in coming before CPAC to talk about his commitment to what motivates grassroots conservatives: protect our heritage, to promote our culture, and to defend our freedom.

Trump’s speech, while not nearly as eloquent as a typical Reagan speech, was packed full of what connects him to the grassroots conservative – populist base of the Republican Party. And the first-year accomplishments to back it up.

But there was another element to Trump’s speech that made the #NeverTrump gang squirm: it was fun and entertaining.

You could see the prune-faced looks on some during Trump’s self-deprecating aside about his hair in the middle of a paragraph about judicial appointments:

For the last year with your help, we have put more great conservative ideas into use than perhaps ever before in American history. What a nice picture that is. Look at that. I would love to watch that guy speak. Oh, boy. Oh, I try like hell to hide that bald spot, folks. I work hard at it. Doesn’t look bad. Hey, we’re hanging in. We’re hanging in. We’re hanging in there, right? Together we’re hanging in. We have confirmed a record number, so important, of circuit court judges and we’re going to be putting in a lot more.

And likewise his takedown of the lone protester to interrupt his remarks:

How did he get in here, Matt? Boy. Okay. Just for the media, the fake news back there, they took very good care of him. They were very gentle. He was very obnoxious. It was only one person. So we have thousands of people here. So, listen, tomorrow the headline will be protesters disturb the Trump — one person, folks. Doesn’t deserve a mention. Doesn’t deserve a headline. The headline tomorrow, disrupters of CPAC. One person. And he was very nice. We looked at him, he immediately left. Okay. Now, I’ve heard it too often.

You’ll have one person and you can hardly even hear. The biggest disturbance are you people. You know why? He’ll say something, nobody hears him, because — and then the crowd will start screaming at him and then all of a sudden we start — and that’s okay. You have to show your spirit, right? You have to show your spirit. It is true.

“Unpresidential” some would sniff. And they sniffed again over President Trump’s comments about the role past immigration policies have played in the rise of the vicious Hispanic gang MS-13:

These are animals. They cut people. They cut them. They cut them up in little pieces, and they want them to suffer. And we take them into our country. Because our immigration laws are so bad, and when we catch them, it is called catch and release. We have to, by law, catch them and then release them. Catch and release. And I can’t get the Democrats and nobody has been able to for years to approve common-sense measures that when we catch these animal killers, we can lock them up, and throw away the keys. In 2017, our brave ICE officers arrested more than 100,000 criminal aliens who have committed tens of thousands of crimes. And, believe me, these are great people. They cannot — the laws are just against us. They’re against — they’re against safety. They don’t make sense.

Perhaps an even better example was President Trump’s demolition of the Paris climate agreement.

Trump didn’t get down in the weeds and try to debate the details of what has been shown to be the phony science behind Obama’s surrender of American sovereignty and economic growth – a surrender happily embraced by many establishment Republican – he simply said what Americans outside-the-Beltway have known for years:

Other countries, big countries, India, and others, we had to pay because they considered them a growing country. They were a growing country. I said, what are we, are we allowed to grow too? Are we allowed to grow? They called India a developing nation. They called China a developing nation. But the United States, we’re developed, we can pay.

So, folks, if you don’t mind, I’ll tell you what, it is amazing how many people understood the Paris accord because it sounds so good. It is like some of the environmental regulations that I cut. They have the most beautiful titles. And sometimes that’s — look, I’m going to close my eyes and sign this, because, you know what, I’m going to get killed on this one. I get so much thanks. The country knows what I’m doing.

We couldn’t build, we couldn’t farm. If you had a puddle on your land, they called it a lake for the purposes of environmentals. It is crazy. It is crazy. And I signed certain bills, I would have farmers behind me and have house builders, home builders behind me. And these are tough people. Strong people. They fought hard. They worked all their lives hard. And half of them would be crying. Because we gave them their property back. We gave them the right to earn a living. They couldn’t do it.

They couldn’t do what they had to do. We gave them their property back, we gave them their dignity back.

But perhaps the best part of the speech was when he spoke of the victims of the Muslim terrorist who used a truck to attack pedestrians along Manhattan’s Westside Highway:

Nobody talks about that. Nobody ever talks about the people that have been so horribly injured, who lose legs and arms in Manhattan where I used to spend my time. I know it very well, this stretch along the west side highway, people run in order to stay in shape, they want to — they want to be healthy, they want to look good, they run, they run, all the time, I see it. They run. We work in different ways. But they run. But think of this, they run. And they’re so —they want to be fit. They’re proud people. They want to be fit. And they’re running up and down West Side. It is beautiful. It is a beautiful thing. And this maniac takes a car going down the highway and just turns to the right and he kills eight. He really badly wounded 12 to 14 other people.

So somebody, think of it, runs to stay in shape, leaves the house, is jogging along, working hard, ends up going home, two months later with no leg or with no arm or with two legs missing. Nobody ever talks about them. They talk about the people rightfully that were killed. But they don’t talk about the people that — whose lives have just changed. Just changed. They don’t talk about that. This guy came in through chain migration. And a part of the lottery system. They say 22 people came in with him. In other words, an aunt, an uncle, a grandfather, a mother, a father, whoever came in. A lot of people came in. That’s chain migration. Let’s see how those people are doing, by the way. We have got to change our way. Merit system. I want merit system.

While the #NeverTrump gang squirmed and made their prune faces, millions of grassroots conservative – populist voters understood that nobody ever talks about the victims of our current immigration system – except Donald Trump.

President Trump also reprised of one the staples of his campaign stump speech, a recitation of the “The Snake” by Oscar Brown Jr., a minor soul hit performed by Al Wilson in the 1970s.

"I saved you, " cried the woman
"And you've bitten me, but why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I'm going to die"
"Oh shut up, silly woman, " said the reptile with a grin
"You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in”

From “The Snake” by Oscar Brown Jr.

Establishment Republicans and Democrats hated it when Trump read or referred to “The Snake” on the campaign trail because its simple wisdom proved he was right, especially about Muslim immigration.

The intelligentsia of the Right and Left and establishment Republican politicians and media personalities will continue to talk down Donald Trump and claim his remarks to CPAC just weren’t up to presidential standards. What they don’t understand is Trump’s stream of consciousness asides are exactly were he connects with the voters and what differentiates him from the inside-the-Beltway political class that voters despise.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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27 February, 2018

In Donald Trump, Evangelicals Have Found Their President

By DAVID BRODY

Last August, President Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and looked me straight in the eyes. With a look of reflection and purposefulness, he discussed his upbringing and fondly recalled a vivid childhood memory from the 1950s: watching Billy Graham sermons on television with his father. “My father was a fan of Billy Graham,” the president said. He recalled how his father, Fred, attended the historic 1957 New York City Crusade.

Mr. Graham, who died last week at 99, brought both evangelism and evangelicalism into the mainstream of American culture. Meanwhile, young Donald grew to be successful, wealthy and famous — culminating with his becoming the leader of the free world. In the process, he too brought evangelicals somewhere, a place so many would have never imagined: an embrace of Donald Trump.

Of all the questions surrounding the current president, perhaps the most perplexing is this: How could evangelicals get behind a man like Mr. Trump, especially well-known conservative leaders who both treasure and champion morality? Constant news reports paint a picture of an out-of-control, angry, mentally unstable, reckless president who is prejudiced against all of humanity except white people with modest incomes and out-of-date values. But after interviewing scores of evangelical leaders, I have developed a different perspective.

Most of the world, and even most reporters, know only the public side of President Trump. In private, evangelical leaders have come to recognize a more compassionate side.

For example, Mr. Trump took a car ride with Mike Pence along with Billy Graham’s son Franklin and Tony Perkins, a leading figure on the Christian right, during the Louisiana floods of 2016. Impressed by what Franklin Graham’s Christian ministry had done for flood victims, Mr. Trump told him that he was writing it a six-figure check, which Mr. Graham told him to send to Mr. Perkins’s church. Both men were moved by his impulsive kindness, and a bond was formed.

Another story involves Mr. Trump and the televangelist James Robison praying together inside an S.U.V. on the airport tarmac in Panama City, Fla., during a campaign stop. When Mr. Trump exited the car, he gave Mr. Robison a hug, pulled him up against his chest firmly and said, “Man, I sure love you.” A small gesture, perhaps, but heartfelt, real and so unlike the caricature of the president most of us see. And practically every evangelical leader I interviewed has a similar story.

Critics say that the Trump-evangelical relationship is transactional, that they support him to see their agenda carried out. In fact, evangelicals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn’t deserve it. Few dispute that Mr. Trump may need a little more grace than others. But evangelicals truly do believe that all people are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn’t they do the same for the president?

This is more than a biblical mandate. The Bible is replete with examples of flawed individuals being used to accomplish God’s will. Evangelicals I interviewed said they believed that Mr. Trump was in the White House for a reason.

Bishop Wayne Jackson, who is the pastor of Great Faith Ministries International in Detroit and calls himself a lifelong Democrat, remembers Mr. Trump’s campaign visit to his church. He told me that the moment Mr. Trump got out of the car, “the spirit of the Lord told me that that’s the next president of the United States.”

Evangelical leaders also see a civic obligation to speak godly counsel to him, on policy and personal matters. He is, after all, the president. And it’s paying off. I’ve watched Mr. Trump through the lens of the faith community for years, and he has delivered the policy goods and is progressing on the spiritual ones.

My reporting suggests Donald Trump is on a spiritual voyage that has accelerated in recent years, thanks to evangelicals who have employed the biblical mandate of sharing and showing God’s love to him rather than shunning him. President Trump told me that he “was exposed to a lot of people, from a religious standpoint, that I would’ve never met before. And so it has had an impact on me.”

This president’s effect on our cultural norms has been shocking. His critics would call it appalling; evangelicals say it’s immensely satisfying: They’ve seen a culture deteriorate quickly in the past decade, and they’re looking for a bold culture warrior to fight for them. Showing that God does indeed have a sense of humor, He gave them Mr. Trump. Yet in God’s perfection, it’s a match made in heaven. Mr. Trump and evangelicals share a disdain for political correctness, a world seen through absolutes and a desire to see an America that embraces Judeo-Christian values again rather than rejecting them.

Finally, why in the world wouldn’t evangelicals get behind and support a man who not only is in line with most of their agenda but also has delivered time and time again? The victories are numerous: the courts, pro-life policies, the coming Embassy in Jerusalem and religious liberty issues, just to name a few. He easily wins the unofficial label of “most evangelical-friendly United States president ever.”

Does Mr. Trump have moral failings? Yes. Critics will suggest a hypocrisy coming from evangelical leaders who are quick to denounce the ethical failings of others who don’t have an “R” next to their name. But the goal of evangelicals has always been winning the larger battle over control of the culture, not to get mired in the moral failings of each and every candidate. For evangelicals, voting in the macro is the moral thing to do, even if the candidate is morally flawed. Evangelicals have tried the “moral” candidate before.

Jimmy Carter was once the evangelical candidate. How did that work out in the macro? George W. Bush was the evangelical candidate in 2000: He pushed traditional conservative policies, but he doesn’t come close to Mr. Trump’s courageous blunt strokes in defense of evangelicals.

Evangelicals have found their man. It may seem mystifying to outsiders, but for someone like me, with a front-row seat to an inside view, it makes perfect sense. Maybe they’re taking their cue from Billy Graham, embracing presidents with moral failings rather than rejecting them.

SOURCE

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Trump Hits 50%!

In the Rasmussen Poll, the only survey that polls actual voters, President Donald Trump has moved up steadily since the new year and has now reached a new plateau of 50 percent job approval with only 49 percent disapproving.

SOURCE

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NRA Tears Apart Boycott Talks… Slams Corporate Sponsors Cutting Ties in Brutal Statement

The National Rifle Association has struck back after multiple corporate sponsors cut ties with the gun rights organization following the mass shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead.

As The Western Journal reported, over a dozen companies have ended their partnerships with the NRA due to pressure from liberal gun control activists.

Delta Airlines, MetLife, United Airlines, Hertz and First National Bank are among the companies that have ended discounts programs, NRA-related credit cards or any other program that might have supported the group.

But in a Saturday statement, the group defended itself, noting that NRA membership is being punished “in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice,” while also pointing out multiple institutional failures that allowed the suspected gunman to perpetrate the shooting.

“The law-abiding members of the NRA had nothing at all to do with the failure of that school’s security preparedness, the failure of America’s mental health system, the failure of the National Instant Check System or the cruel failures of both federal and local law enforcement,” the NRA’s statement read.

“Despite that, some corporations have decided to punish NRA membership in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice,” the statement added. “In time, these brands will be replaced by others who recognize that patriotism and determined commitment to Constitutional freedoms are characteristics of a marketplace they very much want to serve.”

The more than five million law-abiding members of the National Rifle Association have enjoyed discounts and cost-saving programs from many American corporations that have partnered with the NRA to...

Despite the loss of partnerships, the NRA said it is confident its members won’t be deterred from taking advantage of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

“Let it be absolutely clear,” the group said. “The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world.”

The NRA has been the subject of intense criticism in the wake of the Florida shooting, as gun control advocates have blamed the group’s campaign donations on politicians’ supposed inaction regarding this issue.

But the group, which represents close to 5 million Americans, has refused to cave in the face of this backlash, and even offered to help keep schools safe following the Florida mass shooting.

Speaking Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre said his organization will offer free help to campuses who want to boost their armed security.

Despite calls for stricter gun laws, he thinks better protection, not more firearm regulations, is the answer.

“Our banks, our airports, our NBA games, our NFL games, our office buildings, our movie stars, our politicians — they’re all more protected than our children at school. Does that make any sense to anybody?” he said, according to The Washington Times.

LaPierre also emphasized the need to “harden” America’s schools.

“Evil walks among us, and God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids,” he said, as reported by LifeZette.

“In every community in America … they all must come together to implement the very best strategy to harden their schools, including effective, trained, armed security that will absolutely protect every innocent child in this country,” LaPierre added.

SOURCE

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Report: MS-13’s Dangerous Rise To Power Links Back To 1 Flawed Obama Decision

The vicious transnational gang MS-13 has enjoyed a resurgence across the U.S. thanks in part to reduced enforcement of illegal alien gang members and permissive policies toward resettling unaccompanied teenagers who arrived at the southwest border, according to an analysis released Wednesday.

Though it was founded in Los Angles by Salvadoran illegal immigrants, MS-13 today is based primarily in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Under the former President George W. Bush’s administration, the gang’s growth in the U.S. was kept in check by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who worked with local law enforcement to arrest suspected members on administrative immigration violations.

That changed under former President Barack Obama’s administration, which directed ICE offices to make arresting members for immigration violations or minor crimes a lower priority and concentrate instead on major conspiracy cases, according to the analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Overall, ICE gang-related arrests fell from about 4,600 in 2012 to about 1,580 in 2014, the CIS report says.

At the same time it was de-prioritizing immigration enforcement of MS-13, the Obama administration faced a surge of unaccompanied alien children and family units across the southwest border, mostly from Central American countries. During the surge, which began in 2012 and lasted into 2016, Border Patrol agents arrested more than 300,000 UAC and family units.

Because U.S. immigration law requires alien minors to be released from immigration detention without “unnecessary delay” and placed in the “least restrictive setting” possible, most of the Central American teens were released with immigration hearings pending in the distant future.

The placement of so many Central American UAC in the interior of the country, often with relatives who were themselves illegal immigrants, gave MS-13 a pool of fresh candidates from which to recruit.

Increased MS-13 activity is correlated with the resettlement of UAC in certain metro areas, according to the CIS analysis, which documented more than 500 cases of MS-13 members arrested or charged with crimes since 2012.

“The parts of the country that have experienced an increase in MS-13 activity correspond roughly to the areas where there have been the largest number of UAC resettlement placements by the federal government,” Jessica Vaughn, CIS director of policy analysis, wrote in the report.

“This makes sense; about 15 years ago, MS-13 made a push to expand from Los Angeles to other parts of the country with sizeable Central American communities, including many illegal aliens.”

As Vaughn’s analysis notes, states that saw heavy UAC resettlement under Obama were also those that had the most arrests of MS-13 gang members.

California, Maryland, New York, Virginia and Massachusetts were the top five among 22 states where an MS-13 member was arrested or charged since 2012.

Those five states accounted for 320 of the 506 — about 63 percent — of the cases documented by CIS. In addition to laws covering alien minors, local sanctuary city policies have disrupted cooperation between police and immigration agents that could lead to tougher enforcement of MS-13, Vaughn says.

“Many of the hotbeds of MS-13 activity are also places where local officials have adopted sanctuary policies,” she wrote, noting that 222 of the 506 cases documented by CIS occurred in sanctuary jurisdictions.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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26 February, 2018

Surprise, Guess Who Is More Popular Than Obama?

On Friday, President Trump addressed the largest crowd of conservative activists in the history of CPAC. It was another memorable Trump speech, listing his many accomplishments and encouraging the crowd to support Republican candidates in the mid-term elections. For 80 minutes, the President discussed an array of issues such as tax cuts, judicial appointments, immigration and the strong economy.

To the delight of the crowd, Trump claimed that “we have got seven years to go folks.” Of course, this did not thrill the President’s many enemies in the national news media. MSNBC’s Ali Veshi said the President’s speech was similar to what he has “heard from Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro or Erdogan. President Putin gives something like this every year, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used to give speeches like this.” Both Veshi and his co-host, Stephanie Ruhle claimed that the speech was filled with “lies.” They were also aggravated that the President discussed 31 topics but did not mention Russia. Hey, Ali and Stephanie, since there is no collusion or obstruction of justice, why should he mention a “fake news” story like Russia?

This kind of media abuse directed at the President is nothing new. Ever since Donald Trump officially entered the presidential race on June 16, 2015, the national news media has treated him with total disdain. It has been even worse since he was elected President despite their best efforts. Since that time, liberal cable news outlets like CNN and MSNBC have devoted almost their entire broadcast schedule to attacking his personality, his temperament and his administration’s agenda.

Donald Trump has received the worst media coverage of any President in modern American history. According to a recent study by the Media Research Center, the press coverage of the President by the major broadcast networks has been negative 91% of the time.

With such hatred toward the President, it must be especially upsetting for his critics to see the recent upsurge in his approval rating. In the latest Rasmussen survey, President Trump registered a strong 50% approval rating, his highest level of support since June of last year.

At this point in his administration, Barack Obama had only a 45% approval rating. Incredibly, Trump with almost universal media condemnation is more popular than Obama, who received undying adulation and praise from the press.

The same so-called journalists who idolized Barack Obama have been relentlessly hounding President Trump about non-existent “Russian collusion.” One Trump critic, Jeff Zeleny of CNN, once asked President Obama at a news conference what “enchanted him the most” about the position. This type of fawning behavior was typical of how the media treated Barack Obama. They made obsequious comments and asked President Obama no probing questions that would ever upset him. The lap dog media during the Obama years has become a rabid attack dog media during the Trump administration.

Fortunately, more Americans understand the nature of the liberal mainstream news media. Consequently, millions of Americans are consuming more of their news from other sources such as news websites, talk radio and social media. This is a good development and explains why the President has been able to grow in popularity despite the daily negative media onslaught against him. In contrast, the ratings for CNN have plummeted recently as Americans turn away from their hateful coverage of President Trump.

It also helps that President Trump has an extremely loyal base of supporters who will stand with him no matter what criticism he encounters. This bond was established during the campaign when he stood firm on the key issues and did not back down in the face of unrelenting criticism.

Another major factor in the President's surging popularity is the tax reform bill that passed Congress last December. The bill is associated with President Trump and as more Americans appreciate the many benefits of the bill, his popularity will continue to rise.

The Democrats and the news media denounced the tax cut bill, but Americans are getting raises, and bonuses and are starting to see more money in their paychecks. The reality of their improving financial situation is trumping the “fake news” being delivered by the President's many media critics.

With an improving economy and a rising approval rating for President Trump, the Republicans have a better chance of retaining control of Congress in the mid-term elections. This is news that will not enchant the liberal news media, which will start to wonder why their abusive treatment of the President is not working. Luckily, the American people are starting to understand what the liberal media is all about.

SOURCE

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CNN’s Town Hall Event Becomes A Hate Rally Against The NRA

Hating is what the Left does

Well, talk about a tale of two meetings. The one hosted by President Trump with those who have been victimized by mass shootings was respectful, grounded, and doled out logical solutions. Yes, there was some talk about assault weapons bans and Australian-style gun control, but a lot of family members who lost their loved ones to gun violence said more armed guards, possibly the teachers themselves should be considered. Better security at schools concerning access to buildings also need to be addressed as well. That was earlier in the afternoon on Wednesday. Later that evening, CNN held a town hall event in Sunrise, Florida. The National Rifle Association agreed to participate, along with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL).

It was a hostile environment. Period. Sen. Nelson wants a new ban on so-called assault weapons. He slammed Gov. Rick Scott for incentivizing a gun manufacturer that makes the AR-15 rifles to move to Florida. That was the main course in this segment, which was broken up into two parts. The second half was with NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch and Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel.

Rubio became the punching bag. One father, Fred Guttenberg, who lost his daughter in the tragic shooting last week, was the first to confront the Florida Republican, saying his remarks, and that of President Trump since the event, were “pathetically weak.” A lot of cheers were thrown when Rubio was slapped repeatedly for not catering to the anti-gun atmosphere. Rubio did say he now supports raising the minimum age to buy a rifle to 21, might support limiting magazine sizes, and banning bump stocks (via WaPo):

"Look at me and tell me guns were the factor in the hunting of our kids in the school this week,” Fred Guttenberg, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Jaime in the shooting, asked Rubio. She had been running down the hallway when she was shot in the back, Guttenberg said. “Were guns the factor in the hunting of our kids?” Guttenberg asked.

“Of course they were,” Rubio responded. But he said a “better answer” than banning assault weapons is to “make sure that dangerous criminals, people that are deranged cannot buy any gun of any kind.”

Rubio said he would support a law that makes it illegal for 18-year-olds to purchase rifles, as well as the banning of bump stocks and expanded background checks. He said he pushed for a $50-million-a-year threat-assessment fund so states could identify people who could potentially commit mass shootings, and stop them.

It’s here that the crowd’s enthusiasm for gun confiscation became explicitly clear.

Cameron Kasky not only asked Rubio if he would stop accepting NRA donations, but even equated him to the shooter, Nikolas Cruz. CNN host Jake Tapper just sat there (via NewsBusters):

“I'm sorry, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm not going to listen to that. Senator Rubio, it's hard to look at you and not look down the barrel on an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz, but the point is: You're here and there are some people who are not,” Kasky spat.

After Rubio answered his question, Kasky began to browbeat him for the money the NRA donated to his campaign, basically insinuating he was being bribed. “And this is about people who are for making a difference to save us and people who are against it and prefer money. So Senator Rubio, can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA in the future,” he demanded as the crowd went crazy.

The second segment saw Dana Loesch taking serious heat from the audience, with more than a few people calling her a murderer. She noted that this was a monstrous act, and that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, shouldn’t have been able to buy a firearm. The background check system needs to be updated and reformed, so that his disturbing behavior could be properly documented in the system. Cruz had no prior criminal convictions and was not adjudicated as mentally defective, which would have barred him from buying an AR-15.

On January 5, the FBI received a tip that Cruz could carry out a school shooting. The bureau never followed up on it; something FBI Director Chris Wray admitted last week. The FBI was invited to the town hall event, but declined. They dropped the ball, as did local law enforcement, which visited his home 39 times over a seven-year period, documenting episodes that were described as that of a “mentally ill person.” There were many red flags that were not acted upon, something that Loesch pointed out during this second hour of the town hall event.

Yet, where things got ugly was when Loesch was asked why the NRA position is not to raise the age of purchasing long guns to 21. She mentioned Kimberly Corban was on a previous CNN town hall on the Second Amendment when Obama was president; he mansplained gun politics to her, by the way. She was brutally raped in college and wishes she was able to defend herself with a firearm, probably a shotgun, which drew boos from the crowd. Yeah, that’s the anti-gun Left, people.

I don’t get it. I just don’t get how anyone could even consider that the position of leaving women unable to defend themselves from rapists and others who seek to do harm to them is fine. The reaction on this front was appalling, but women are becoming a bigger voice in the gun industry, with many think they’re rapidly becoming the next frontier. More women are lining up to obtain their concealed carry permits, shooting sports participation is up, and they’re the fastest growing demographic embracing gun ownership.

Second, what about all the signs Cruz was exhibiting? Was it the gun? Or was it that all levels of government failed to protect these kids? It’s the latter. Is our system broken or is it that the front office handling the management of this system—NICS—has to do better at their jobs? The FBI dropped the ball here, folks. That is a fact. The FBI manages the background check system. Does anyone not think that armed guards, better security at schools, better mental health detection, proper documentation of disturbing behavior, and the ability to update NICS with this information could stop people who shouldn’t have firearms from obtaining them? I think it can.

But that doesn’t ban so-called assault weapons or limit magazines, so it’ll be unacceptable to the anti-gun Left. The confiscatory ethos permeates every policy initiative they dish out. What happened last night was a North Korean kangaroo court and every conservative, every Second Amendment supporter, every NRA member, and anyone in America who wasn’t onboard with gun control was on trial. We’re guilty of supporting American civil rights and freedom.

SOURCE

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'Unpatriotic:' New Wave of Horrible Tax Reform "Crumbs" Arrives, Utility Bills Lowered in 39 States

We noted earlier in the week that Nancy Pelosi has evolved from issuing cartoonishly dire warnings about the consequences of tax reform, to sneering at the unmistakably positive results of the law passed over her objections (along with every Congressional Democrat), to muttering about how making US businesses more competitive and allowing taxpayers to keep more of the money they earn is 'unpatriotic,' or something. Her messaging is an elitist, counter-productive mess, but it's all they've got. It's not working. Public polling has tracked the tax reform bill bouncing from underwater by double digits, to tied, to supported by a majority of voters -- all in about two months.

The needle hasn't moved that significantly because Republicans have undertaken a masterful communications strategy while Democrats have fallen asleep at the switch. It's moved because in many respect, the results speak for themselves. As I put it on television a few days ago, Democrats don't have a messaging problem on tax reform; they have a reality problem. And reality keeps interfering with their efforts to attack the GOP-passed law. Here is the latest cascade of examples of employers handing down tax reform-caused benefits to employees, from a Minnesota-based food company:

Hormel Foods Corp. this morning announced that it plans to use savings from the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to award stock options to its employees and raise starting wages to $13 an hour...“Tax reform will have a clear benefit to all Hormel Foods stakeholders — our shareholders, our employees, and the communities in which we operate,” Hormel President and CEO Jim Snee said in the announcement. “The ongoing cash tax benefit will provide additional funds, allowing us to accelerate the growth of our business...Snee also announced that Hormel will continue to raise its starting wages following the $13 an hour increase. The company plans to bump the starting wage to $14 an hour by the end of fiscal 2020. “We also pledged an additional $25 million in donations over the next five years as supporting our communities through product and monetary donations is important to us,” he added. Hormel also expects to pass some of the tax savings on to its shareholders.

To an international air shipping company:

Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: AAWW) today announced record fourth-quarter and full-year 2017 revenue, record fourth-quarter earnings and robust full-year earnings growth, and a continued strong outlook in 2018...We expect the new tax legislation to have a positive impact on economic activity and corporate growth. On passage of the law, we were pleased to provide a one-time bonus of $1,000 to our global personnel in recognition of their hard work and commitment to the company's growth.” Turning to 2018 and beyond, Mr. Flynn stated: “We are operating in a strong airfreight environment, underpinned by global economic growth.

To a transportation company headquartered in Ohio:

Wilmington-based global transportation company R+L Carriers announced this week it would issue bonuses of up to $1,000 for all its employees....

Remaining in Ohio, here's a furniture business doling out bonuses and rolling out a major expansion:

Over 140 employees for a local furniture store will feel their wallets get a lot bigger. Sheely’s Furniture and Appliance President and CEO, Dale Sheely Jr. announced the bonuses Tuesday morning.....

To a bank in Virginia:

Employees of F & M Bank were surprised on Tuesday to learn they would receive a bonus, which the institution attributes to additional earnings expected as a result of the GOP tax plan....

And I'll leave you with this data point from the Speaker of the House, whose office has been tallying the results of the GOP-passed law. Not only are millions of workers experiencing benefits, and not only are 80-90 percent of taxpayers receiving a tax cut, many consumers around the country are getting helpful breaks, too:

This is the opposite of the Obama position on energy costs, which he sought to increase through his preferred policies. Higher energy bills -- like (ahem) gas taxes -- are extremely regressive. They hammer the people who can least afford it.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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25 February, 2018

The president must start protecting our democracy from Russia, says Thomas L. Friedman

More New York Times disinformation. If there is anybody who is a threat to American democracy it is the NeverTrumpers, not Russia. It is the NeverTrumpers who want to overturn a democratically elected president. What can Russia do? Come and seize all the voting machines? Friedman is the towering fool. All he has is a series of unsubstantiated allegations.

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Donald Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Mr. Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Mr. Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of his personally chosen chiefs of the CIA, NSA and FBI

SOURCE

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A lot of intellectual conservatives still don't "get" Donald Trump

That he has actually taught us all lessons they are resisting -- including the reality that in the present climate politics can no longer be a gentleman's game

David Limbaugh

I happened onto a piece by Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard, wherein he links to "a short, powerful piece in National Review" by Rick Brookhiser, who "concludes that 'the conservative movement is no more. Its destroyers are Donald Trump and his admirers.'"

I somewhat get the sentiment — or at least I used to — because during the GOP primaries, I fleetingly entertained a similar concern that Trump, whom I didn't consider a conservative, might undermine the conservative movement in the long run if elected.

Presumably trying to console Brookhiser, Kristol writes: "Movements grow old. They eventually die. Bill Buckley founded the American conservative movement in 1955. Can a political movement reasonably be expected to thrive and retain its vigor for more than 60 years? ... Trump is the proximate, the efficient, cause of the collapse of the conservative movement. The principles of sound conservatism compel us to criticize him, to rebut him, to resist him, and to plan to overcome him. But, perhaps it is the 'silent artillery of time' that has done the damage which Trump was able to take advantage of. And that suggests our task, the task of the descendants of the founders of American conservatism goes beyond that: It is to rebuild, or to build other pillars that will uphold the temple of American liberty in the 21st century. Brookhiser suggests at the end of his piece, 'It will take a lot of arguing to rebuild a conservative movement that one can contemplate without scorn.' True. And it will take a lot of work to create a new birth of conservatism — if it even is still called conservatism — that will support American freedom and greatness."

The first thing that pops out at me is Kristol's apparent ambivalence. If all movements inevitably die after a while, then why blame Trump, who just apparently accelerated conservatism's downfall? Indeed, Kristol doesn't really seem to be grieving conservatism's alleged demise, because he is suggesting we find some substitute ideology or movement that will serve as a pillar to uphold the temple of American liberty in the 21st century.

This strikes me as doubly ironic. Conservatism, by definition, comprises inviolable principles. It is not just one of many possible ideologies that support constitutionally limited government and ordered liberty. If Kristol believes we can find some other satisfactory "pillar," then he shouldn't cry over the supposed death of conservatism. On the other hand, if I thought it were truly dead, I would genuinely cry over it.

It's also ironic that Kristol seems to be proposing a solution that many Trump supporters would argue Trump has already implemented. That is, they believe conservatism — though it could never die intellectually — had become ineffectual because its modern standard-bearers in office were simply not getting the job done; they weren't advancing conservative principles. So, for want of a better term, they found a new "pillar" in Donald Trump to uphold the temple of American liberty in the 21st century. (Please don't send me emails about Trump's not being a pillar. That's not the point.)

I dare say that most of the tens of millions of people who voted for Trump are still Reagan conservatives who advocate mainstream conservative solutions. They could not bear to stand by while President Obama and Hillary Clinton continued to dismantle our constitutional liberties, undermine our traditional values and facilitate the further erosion of our culture. They don't have to like everything Trump does or everything he advocates, but they did have to stop the bleeding and save America. When are you guys going to understand that?

Unlike Kristol and Brookhiser, I don't believe the conservative movement has died or will die. As I said in a recent speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, I think fears that Trump is creating some nationalist or populist movement are unwarranted. What we're seeing under Trump is closer to mainstream conservatism than nationalism, in the pejorative sense of that term. Trump isn't steering the movement in that direction; rather, the movement is nudging him more toward mainstream conservatism, with a few exceptions, but even in those exceptional cases, Trump is not veering toward nationalism. And he certainly is not governing as an alt-rightist — whatever that means these days. I also do not believe his successor will be Trump-esque in a personal sense. Trump is sui generis. The front-runner at this point is probably Mike Pence, who, in terms of style, is the Antitrump. So quit hyperventilating.
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In the quoted piece, Brookhiser writes: "Admiring Trump is different from voting for him, or working with him. Politics is calculation. ... But to admire Trump is to trade your principles for his, which are that winning — which means Trump winning — is all. In three years (maybe seven), Donald Trump will no longer be president. But conservatives who bent the knee will still be writing and thinking. How will it be possible to take them seriously? The short answer is, it won't. ... It will take a lot of arguing to rebuild a conservative movement that one can contemplate without scorn."

To the contrary, most of the millions who appreciate what Trump is doing haven't traded their principles for just winning. That is insulting and ludicrous. We do want to defeat liberalism, and we want to retain our principles in doing so, even if you think that sometimes conservatives or Christians have compromised theirs in the process. That is a complex issue that should be discussed and unpacked in detail rather than in the back-and-forth volleys of intramural conservative wars. Suffice it to say, for now, that most are not "bending the knee"; they are animated by the same principles they always have been. Most conservatives aren't in thrall to Trump in the idolatrous fashion Brookhiser implies. But they are grateful that he's employing his unorthodox style to set liberals back on their heels.

It is sad that Brookhiser paints with so broad a brush and is making this personal — with his talk of scorn. That's unfortunate because Brookhiser is a fine, principled man of formidable intellect. In his rush to judgment, he seems to have misplaced his usual grace.

SOURCE

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Pence to CPAC: ‘Promises Made, Promises Kept

Vice President Mike Pence told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday that “2017 was the most consequential year in the history of the conservative movement” and that President Donald Trump kept his campaign promises, ticking off a list of the president’s achievements.

He said Trump kept his promises on issues like military readiness, securing the border, supporting law enforcement, appointing strong conservatives to the court, and defending the right to life.

“Think about it. President Trump promised to rebuild our military and restore the arsenal of democracy, and in just a few weeks, he’ll sign the largest investment in our national defense since the days of Ronald Reagan. He promised to stand without apology for the men and women of law enforcement, and today we’re once again giving those peace officers the respect and the resources they deserve all across America,” Pence said.

“President Trump promised to enforce our laws, secure our borders, and today illegal crossings at our southern border have been cut nearly in half, and make no mistake about it, we’re going to build that wall,” the vice president said.

“He promised to appoint strong conservatives to the federal courts at every level, and President Trump came through. He appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and set a record for the most circuit court judges appointed in the first year of any administration in history,” he said.

“And President Donald Trump promised to stand for the unalienable right to life, and from the first day of this administration, he reinstated the Mexico City policy, and I was honored to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to send a bill to the president’s desk to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood,” the vice president added.

Pence also pointed to the president’s progress in rolling back excessive government regulations, approving the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, and tax reform.

“And we’ve been busy rolling back the heavy hand of government as well. This president has actually repealed 22 regulations for every new federal rule put on the books, and finally, President Trump promised to cut taxes across the board for working families and job creators, and two months ago today, President Trump signed the largest tax cuts and tax reform in American history. Promises made, promises kept,” he said.

“On the world stage, we’ve also been restoring strong American leadership, and under President Donald Trump, America once again stands without apology as leader of the free world,” Pence said.

He pointed to the increase in NATO contributions from U.S. allies and the president’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

“And for decades, after one president after another promised to move the U.S. embassy to the capital of our most cherished ally, President Trump made history on December 6 when the United States of America recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Pence said.

SOURCE

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Not My President

Melissa Emery

I recently received an email from an old friend who lives in a very blue state exclaiming that Trump was “not his president.” This was completely unsolicited, as our email conversation up until that point had been non-political. He just felt it necessary to toss that in at the end, either as a way to build camaraderie with a fellow liberal or to be a flame-thrower to a conservative.

In my case, it was the latter.

I tried not to respond in anger, but merely with regret to learn that Trump was not “his” president, since wages were up, taxes were down, the stock market was up, and over 2 million new jobs had been created. Black and Latino unemployment were at new all-time lows. Were these not things that liberals cared about anymore? But, perhaps, I suggested a bit snarkily, these bits of news had not appeared in the New York Times. I doubt that I’ll ever hear from him again.

As the days went by, his comment that Trump was not his president kept rolling around in my head. I wanted to ask him, who IS your president? Are you operating now without a president? Is your state no longer part of the Union? And how does not having the United States’ president as your president work for you? Do you still get all your Social Security payments and Medicare benefits? Can you still sit in your lovely cabin by a lake and pontificate about how much smarter you are than people who voted for Mr. Trump?

And, after all, isn’t that really what such a comment was meant to convey? It meant that you, my erudite former friend, were just too smart to vote for someone like The Donald, and anyone who did vote for him was some sort of fool. So, you would sit back for four or eight years, take pot shots at him, smirk and guffaw at the peons who elected him, and bemoan the fact that the smartest woman in the world, for whom you voted, was not in the White House.

You would “resist”, whatever that means. You would not endorse anything Trump wanted to accomplish, even when it matched up with your liberal agenda of pre-November, 2016.

Let us imagine if Hillary had won, how things might be different now. The economy would still be limping along. The stock market would be at pre-election levels, give or take a modest amount. It certainly would not be up over $26 trillion, as stocks are now. Taxes would not have been cut, and the resultant business growth, bonuses and raises would never have happened. There would be no thought given to trying to stop illegal immigration, so our borders would be increasingly porous and crime rates would continue to climb. There would be no investigations into collusion with the Russians during our election because, as we are learning daily, the only collusion was on the part of the Democrats.

Our trade deals would continue to disadvantage the US. We would still be dependent on foreign sources of energy, and our military would be underfunded. Veterans wouldn’t even be on the list of priorities, and attacks on police would be ignored or deemed to be the fault of bad police practices. As a result, fewer people would join the ranks of the thin blue line, and more crime would take over in our cities. Sanctuary cities would not be challenged, and federal benefits to illegals would be increased at the expense of our citizens and those waiting in line to enter the country legally.

Obama’s policies would be continued, further regulations would hamper business growth and formation, and the economy would fail to grow. The deficit would climb, and tax increases would be the only solution she would offer, further stifling growth.

Gee, sounds great, but then, I am a deplorable rube who doesn’t know what’s good for me. I don’t realize that government should take care of me rather than me doing it for myself. And I don’t realize that achievement and hard work are now bad things that must be destroyed so that government can rule over all with an iron fist and make all of us dependent on them.

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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23 February, 2018

Russia? What Russia? Trump is polling BETTER than Obama at the same point in his presidency despite scandals, staff turnover and a special counsel

Despite a never-ending drumbeat of criticism and suspicion related to a trio of Russia investigations, President Donald Trump's approval rating is in better shape than Barack Obama's was at the same point in his presidency.

Trump's job approval number stood at 48 per cent on Wednesday in a Rasmussen Reports tracking poll. Fifty-one per cent disapprove.

On February 21, 2010, Obama's was 45 per cent, with 54 per cent opposed to his work in the Oval Office.

Trump's current level of support is also above his performance level in the 2016 election, when 46.1 per cent of voters chose him over Hillary Clinton and a handful of minor candidates.

Obama began his presidency at 67 per cent approval in the Rasmussen tracking poll, compared with 56 per cent for Trump.

Yet 13 months later, the two men have switched places on Rasmussen's Oval Office leaderboard.

The February during Obama's first full year in office was a mishmash of trouble spots that drove his numbers down by 6 points – back to where they were before his first State of the Union address.

Trump has his own collection of political headaches, including a special counsel probe into whether his campaign colluded with Russians who aimed to meddle in the 2016 election.

Nearly 20 women have accused him of some level of sexual harassment or abuse, depressing his support among female voters.

The president has also been plagued by far greater turnover of senior staff than his predecessors, most recently losing his staff secretary following domestic violence accusations from two ex-wives.

The instability of Trump's inner circle hasn't projected strength: Departures of his initial chief of staff, chief strategist, press secretary, health secretary, national security adviser, FBI director and a pair of communications directors have all been public-relations train wrecks.

Yet the president's popularity has been buoyed by December's tax cut package, especially as Americans begin to see results in their paychecks.

The Rasmussen Reports national poll was among the few that came closest to accurately predicting the results of the election that vaulted Trump to power.

Unlike other polls that ask questions in live telephone interviews, it relies on push-button phone calls – meaning voters who like Trump's performance in office aren't required to say so out loud to another person.

Some political scientists have called the result 'The Trump Effect,' a phenomenon that explained how social distaste for the president might depress his numbers in polls that use live operators.

SOURCE

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Columbine attack survivor and Colorado House Minority Leader Patrick Neville (R-45) is a strong proponent of arming teachers for self-defense

Neville was first elected to office in 2014 and has introduced his bill each year since that time without success. He hopes this year will be different because of the increased attention paid to the defenseless posture of unarmed teachers and staff.

The Washington Times reports Neville’s contention that more Columbine students would have survived the April 20, 1999, Columbine attack if faculty and/or staff had been armed to take out the attackers. And he believes arming teachers now will protect future students from evil men who are planning attacks.

He described his legislation: “This act would allow every law-abiding citizens who holds a concealed carry permit, issued from their chief law-enforcement officer, the right to carry concealed in order to defend themselves and most importantly our children from the worst-case scenarios.”

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Dept. of Labor: Still enforcing Obama policies

As described below, Department of Labor policy and practice supports illegal immigrants in at least three ways. This shouldn’t be surprising. Illegal immigrants had no better friend in the Obama administration, and few anywhere in American, than Tom Perez, Obama’s Secretary of Labor.

Here is how Perez used the DOL to promote the interests of illegal immigrants. First, an Obama administration-era memorandum of understanding between the DOL, the EEOC, the NLRB and DHS/ICE prohibits ICE from conducting enforcement activities against illegals when a DOL, EEOC, or NLRB investigation is pending.

This seems indefensible. Why should illegal immigrants and their employers be exempt from ICE enforcement activity merely because a DOL investigation is pending? It’s almost as if the Obama administration has carved out its own “sanctuary city.”

Second, the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the DOL invests a significant amount of its budget conducting investigations and collecting back wages for illegal immigrants. This wouldn’t bother me if the budget for investigating and litigating wage and hour violations were unlimited, but it is not. By devoting resources to seeking back wages for illegal immigrants, the DOL is short-changing victims of pay act violations who are in this country legally, including American citizens.

A 2015 Report from DOL’s Office of Inspector General on WHD’s back wage distributions found that from 2010 to 2015, WHD transferred $72 million in back wages to the Treasury Department for employees it could not locate. It’s likely that a large portion of these funds were collected for illegal immigrants no longer in the country or not willing to contact DOL to claim the money. Thus, even from a purely pragmatic standpoint, the DOL’s resources would be better spent pursuing back pay on behalf of citizens and lawful residents.

Third, the DOL has entered a number of partnerships with Central American, South American, and Asian Pacific Government to facilitate complaints against employers by their citizens, regardless of immigration status. I don’t think our government should be devoting resources to encouraging complaints by illegal immigrants that apparently may immunize them from visits by ICE to their workplaces.

One year into the Trump administration, these pro-illegal immigrant policies remain intact. It’s my understanding that Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta has shown no interest in undoing any of them. The issues have been raised with Acosta, but he seems bent on ignoring them. From all that appears, he’s fine with the status quo, including the government’s own “sanctuary city” program.

As was the case during the Obama administration, illegal immigrants have no better friend in high office than the Secretary of Labor.

Unfortunately, this comes as no surprise. At both the Justice Department and the DOL, Acosta has been unwilling to take action that would alienate leftists. He has raised inaction to an art form.

At DOL, far from making regulatory roll back a priority, he has taken what can euphemistically be called “a cautious approach” to controversial policy matters. For example, although he withdrew the Obama Administration’s interpretation of “independent contractors” under the Fair Labor Standards Act with respect to home health registries, he has done nothing to prevent DOL employees from continuing to use it, which they do aggressively. Senator Rubio complained about this in a letter to Acosta.

Acosta is so unwilling to offend the left that he has not removed any of the Obama/Perez holdovers on the DOL’s Administrative Review Board (ARB), the influential body that issues final agency decisions for the Secretary of Labor in cases arising under a wide range of worker protection laws — more than three dozen of them. The members of this Board serve entirely at the pleasure of the Secretary. Acosta had the right to dismiss them the day he took office. Yet, four of the five remain in place (the other left a month or two ago on his own accord).

Given his track record, including his unwillingness even to cut the low-hanging fruit at the ARB, it was predictable that Acosta wouldn’t alter DOL policy favoring illegal immigrants. But what were the odds that President Trump would not disturb the aggressive pro-illegal immigrant, anti enforcement policies put in place by Barack Obama and Tom Perez? Until he appointed Acosta, they were slim indeed.

SOURCE

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Bad science and government are a destructive combination

In modern America, there is a little-known government entity, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is an arm of the Center for Disease Control. NIOSH has launched more than 1,000 lawsuits costing companies hundreds of millions of dollars over the past fifteen years due to their determination that a naturally occurring as well as synthetically produced chemical, diacetyl, is linked to injuries and deaths involving microwave popcorn workers among others.

There is only one problem – their science may not be right.

So what is diacetyl? It is a naturally occurring chemical that is found in low concentrations of fermented foods like butter, beer and yogurt. It is also made synthetically to add buttery flavor to popcorn, chips and even coffee. Safe to eat in trace amounts, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the question is what quantity of the chemical is safe to inhale.

Bronchiolitis obliterans also known as popcorn lung is no joke, despite its almost comic book descriptor, but it is reasonable to ask whether NIOSH jumped the gun when they created the wave of lawsuits based upon their findings.

Years after the initial NIOSH finding, the Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA) produced a 2008 report, which casts strong doubt on whether diacetyl is actually the villain that NIOSH and trial lawyers have made it out to be. TERA states, “The causal link between diacetyl and the onset of bronchiolitis obliterans is not certain.”

NIOSH itself is listed among the recent sponsors of TERA at the outset of its report, so while the funding came from the food industry, it is safe to conclude that the contrary conclusion to NIOSH’s earlier findings should be taken seriously.

Additionally, the highly respected chemical toxicology firm, Cardno ChemRisk, has studied the impacts of diacetyl extensively over the past decade. In a study published in Critical Reviews on Toxicology, they wrote, “We found that diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione exposures from cigarette smoking far exceed occupational exposures for most food/flavoring workers who smoke.” One line down they continue, “Further, because smoking has not been shown to be a risk factor for bronchiolitis obliterans, our findings are inconsistent with claims that diacetyl and/or 2,3-pentanedione exposure are risk factors for this disease.”

The argument against NIOSH’s findings can even be found within the Obama administration’s Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), where after eight years of controversy over regulating diacetyl, they chose not to regulate the chemical in the workplace. When Obama’s radical OSHA decides not to act, it should serve as a touch point for trying to get to the real truth of the matter.

Meanwhile, like the Trojan War of old, the trial lawyer bar is besieging the walls of business on many fronts, looking for weaknesses that might allow them to hit a massive payday. When it comes to diacetyl lawsuits, NIOSH is the Trojan horse that has been wheeled behind those walls, unleashing a horde of trial lawyers looking for industries to sue. It doesn’t matter to them whether diacetyl is the agent of illness, only that they can convince a jury, using NIOSH as their lead witness, that it does.

Given the fact that there is serious and reasonable doubt about the causal factors of bronchiolitis obliterans, combined with the Obama Administration’s determination to not impose workplace standards, it is time for a common sense approach to diacetyl.

Bruce Fein, a former senior ranking Reagan Administration official recommends that the federal government set up a process similar to the one undertaken in 1977 in examining saccharin. He wrote in the West Virginia Record, “In 1977, the FDA proposed a ban on saccharin as a human carcinogen required by the Delany Amendment. Congress balked. It passed the Saccharin Study and Labelling Act which placed a moratorium on the ban but required labels warning that saccharin could cause cancer. After two decades of further study, the National Toxicology Program delisted saccharin as a carcinogen in 2000.

“Congress should consider comparable oversight of NIOSH’s recommended worker exposure limits for diacetyl.”

This seems like a reasonable approach to what heretofore has been an intractable problem that NIOSH and the credibility of the federal government have been used as the cudgel in legal cases, when their determinations are disputed by multiple respected alternative studies.

It’s time to get to the right answer on diacetyl, rather than having the trial bar use one agency’s claims, that another agency of government has chosen not to act upon, to drive businesses engaged in innocuous activity like grinding coffee beans into legal hell.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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22 February, 2018

Fake news was originally a Leftist term

As I recollect it, the term first arose in response to a story (put about by Russians, no doubt) that Hillary was running some sort of racket out of a NYC pizza joint. It WAS a false story and Democrat operatives immediately dubbed it "fake news". The concept really caught on after that

In a Tedx Talk at the University of Nevada a couple of weeks ago (watch the video below) investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed the origins of the "fake news" narrative that was aggressively pushed by the liberal media and Democrat politicians during the 2016 election, and how it was later flipped by President Donald Trump.

Attkisson pointed out that "fake news" in the form of tabloid journalism and false media narratives has always been around under different names.

But she noticed that in 2016, there seemed to be a concerted effort by the MSM to focus America's attention on the idea of "fake news" in conservative media. That looked like a propaganda effort to Attkisson, so she did a little digging and traced the new spin to a little non-profit called "First Draft," which, she said, "appears to be the about the first to use 'fake news' in its modern context."

"On September 13, 2016, First Draft announced a partnership to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news reports," Attkisson explained. "The goal was supposedly to separate wheat from chaff, to prevent unproven conspiracy talk from figuring prominently in internet searches. To relegate today's version of the alien baby story to a special internet oblivion."

She noted that a month later, then-President Obama chimed in.

"He insisted in a speech that he too thought somebody needed to step in and curate information of this wild, wild West media environment," she said, pointing out that "nobody in the public had been clamoring for any such thing."

Yet suddenly the subject of fake news was dominating headlines all over America as if the media had received "its marching orders," she recounted. "Fake news, they insisted, was an imminent threat to American democracy."

Attkisson, who has studied the manipulative moneyed interests behind the media industry, said that "few themes arise in our environment organically." She noted that she always found it helpful to "follow the money."

"What if the whole anti-fake news campaign was an effort on somebody's part to keep us from seeing or believing certain websites and stories by controversializing them or labeling them as fake news?" Attkisson posited.

Digging deeper, she discovered that Google was one of the big donors behind First Draft's "fake news" messaging. Google's parent company, Alphabet, was run by Eric Schmidt, who happened to be a huge Hillary Clinton supporter.

Schmidt "offered himself up as a campaign adviser and became a top multi-million donor to it. His company funded First Draft around the start of the election cycle," Attkisson said. "Not surprisingly, Hillary was soon to jump aboard the anti-fake news train and her surrogate David Brock of Media Matters privately told donors he was the one who convinced Facebook to join the effort."

Attkisson declared that "the whole thing smacked of the roll-out of a propaganda campaign." Attkisson added, "But something happened that nobody expected. The anti-fake news campaign backfired. Each time advocates cried fake news, Donald Trump called them 'fake news' until he'd co-opted the term so completely that even those who [were] originally promoting it started running from it -- including the Washington Post," which she noted later backed away from using the term.

Attkisson called Trump's accomplishment a "hostile takeover" of the term

SOURCE

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Trump Turns Obama Quote Against Him

In their typically psychopathic way, Leftists will say anything that suits them at the time, regardless of facts or evidence. Very often, however, their airy assertions come back to haunt them. Below would seem to be an example of that

President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to point out that just weeks before Election Day in 2016, then-President Barack Obama suggested it would be close to impossible to “rig” a presidential election.

Trump’s tweets came in response to claims that his campaign colluded with Russia to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and win the presidency.

But during an October 2016 news conference with then-Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, it was Obama who told Trump to “stop whining” about election rigging.

“There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved,” Obama said at the time, according to Politico.

“There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time,” he added. “And so, I‘d advise Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes.”

On Tuesday, Trump used Obama’s words against him to argue that following the election, Democrats changed their tune.

“When I easily won the Electoral College, the whole game changed and the Russian excuse became the narrative of the Dems,” Trump wrote

Muller’s report included what Republicans are calling even more vindication for the Trump campaign team. In addition to finding that no American was knowingly involved and that Russian activities did not ultimately sway the presidential election, the exhaustive report also determined that the Russian operation began as early as 2014, long before Trump launched his campaign, and that they sought to boost Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign during the Democrat primaries.

Trump later said on Tuesday that he has been “much tougher on Russia than Obama.”

SOURCE

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School shootings CAN be prevented: Israel shows how

I’m a small government guy, however, it’s sadly apparent that the United States of America is paralyzed with political indecision over something the State of Israel figured out more than 40 years ago: all schools should have mandated security features and active shooter protocols.

The horrific scene in Parkland, and the upsetting videos broadcast from the school during the shooting, should be the final straw. The kids should not have been hiding and screaming, they should have been in the midst of a pre-determined security protocol.

President Trump, if the Department of Education can force Americans to deal with the disaster of Common Core, it can certainly issue a federal mandate regarding school security. The time is now.

My personal manifesto is that government should never get involved in an issue unless an ongoing clear and present danger exists to large numbers of people, and that any regulation or legislation has a sunset provision.

Here we are.

In 1974, Israel endured the Ma’alot Massacre in which “Palestinian” terrorists took 115 people hostage at Netiv Meir Elementary School. Twenty-two children and three others were killed and 68 injured. Israel now requires schools with 100 or more students to have a guard posted. The civilian police force handles the entire security system of all schools from kindergarten through college. The Ministry of Education funds shelters and fences, reinforces school buses, and hires and trains guards.

Guards don’t just stand around. They check everyone entering, and engage threats.

And yeah, they’ve got guns.The lawful purposes for carrying guns are very clear: protect school personnel and students, create a sense of security, deter the ill-intentioned, and provide self-defense.

Common sense.   Except to the illogical dullards who claim that “adding guns to schools won’t fix anything” and are fixated on the NRA and the ridiculous notions that gun laws magically stop criminals and crazy people from obtaining one of the 300 million guns in our country.

But more to the point, Israel’s Police Community & Civil Guard Department have a preventative care program that encourages safe behavior and offers violence protection strategies in normal situations. Yet students are also trained in how to respond to an active shooter situation.

Ben Goldstein, an American who made aliyah to Israel, and now serves as volunteer security and supporter of IDF soldiers, says America is behind the curve. Nevertheless, he says, it doesn’t take much for students and teachers to protect themselves.

“Barricade, barricade. Are desks movable? Is the teacher’s desk movable? Can they barricade inside of 20 seconds? If the shooter gets in, the kids should take whatever they’ve got and attack. They can’t just sit there frozen or they will die. America does earthquake drills, why not active shooter drills?   More kids have been killed by shooters than earthquakes.”

Barricading works, says Goldstein. In an active shooter situation, where a gunman is roaming a campus, five minutes is a lifetime, enough time for law enforcement to get to the scene. “In those five minutes, the shooter will have to move from class to class, reload, clear malfunctions, all that stuff takes time. And during gunfire lulls, kids must be taught to do something. Don’t freeze.Moving once gets you out of that deer-in-headlights space. Take command of the classroom.”

There is no other way, says Goldstein, and “sometimes children must take matters into their own hands.If the school has no proper security – two guards in case one gets shot, and no active shooter protocol, and no doors to withstand an attack – then the child needs to run as fast as they can AWAY from the shooter.”

Because right now, America is the deer-in-headlights. Gun control debates are a distraction and impractical, and criminals ignore laws anyway.Crazy people are obviously not being dealt with properly – students at Parkland even predicted this would happen.

The only solution is for America to toughen up. We have a pugilist for a president, and that is long overdue. Now its time for President Trump to fight for our children by wielding government power in the proper manner, to do something that any reasoned American would agree with.

Instead of handing out participation trophies, let’s make our kids into the self-reliant, pro-active defenders of themselves and others.

Mr. President, the time is now.

SOURCE

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Scapegoating the NRA

The FBI failed to investigate warnings about the Florida school shooter, but never mind that. And the National Rifle Association has no control over school shootings, but never mind that, either.

Two newly minted gun control activists from Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida are defending the FBI, while demanding that NRA "child murderers" dismantle and disband. And they have declined an invitation to discuss their concerns with President Donald Trump, whom they call "disgusting."

But on the Sunday talk shows, the students said their upcoming "March for Our Lives" in Washington is not political.

"So what do you say to the NRA?" CNN's Alisyn Camerota asked student activists Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg on Monday morning.

"Um, disband. Dismantle," Gonzalez replied.

"And don't make another organization under a different name," David Hogg said.

"Yeah, don't make another organization under a different name," Gonzalez agreed. "Don't you dare come back here. The fact that you were in power for so long and that you had so much influence for so long in America just goes to show how much time and effort we have to spend on fixing our country. And gun control is just the first thing right now, the first thing that we are mainly focusing on."

Alisyn Camerota urged the students on: "Look, I don't have to tell you guys, they give millions of dollars to politicians. They have a very powerful tool, so I mean, how do you expect politicians who need money to keep running for office to say no to the NRA?"

"Because we keep telling them, that if they accept this blood money, they are against the children," Gonzalez replied. "They are against the people who are dying. And there's no other way to put it at this point. You are either funding the killers or you are standing with the children. The children who have no money. We don't have jobs. So we can't pay for your campaign. We would hope that you have the decent morality to support us at this point."

"And not take money from people that want to keep lessening gun legislation and making it even easier for these horrifying people to get guns," Hogg interjected. "Because if you can't get elected without taking money from child murderers, why are you running?"

Camerota read one of President Trump's tweets sent over the weekend: "Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign -- there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!" Trump wrote.

Camerota asked the students to react to that tweet:

"I think it's disgusting, personally," Hogg said. "My father's a retired FBI agent, and the FBI are some of the hardest working individuals I've ever seen in my life. They work every day, 24-7, to ensure the lives of every single American in this country, and it's wrong that the president is blaming them for this. After all, he is in charge of the FBI -- he can't put that off on them. He is in charge of them, and these people, what they love to do is push this off on the bureaucracy and say it's not them. He is in charge of the FBI..."

Gonzalez noted FBI agents were among the first responders who helped students get to safety; and "the fact that he wants to discredit them in any way and that he's trying to shift our focus onto them is -- it's not acceptable."

"Disgusting," Hogg agreed.

Both Hogg and Gonzalez said they have been invited to a listening session to share their concerns with President Trump, but neither of them are going. They're blowing off Trump for CNN's Jake Tapper, who is hosting what they called a previously scheduled town hall on CNN.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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21 February, 2018

Flashback 30 Years: Guns Were in Schools ... and Nothing Happened

The millennial generation might be surprised to learn that theirs is the first without guns in school. Just 30 years ago, high school kids rode the bus with rifles and shot their guns at high school rifle ranges.

After another school shooting, it's time to ask: what changed?

Cross guns off the list of things that changed in thirty years. In 1985, semi-automatic rifles existed, and a semi-automatic rifle was used in Florida. Guns didn’t suddenly decide to visit mayhem on schools. Guns can’t decide.

We can also cross the Second Amendment off the list. It existed for over 200 years before this wickedness unfolded. Nothing changed in the Constitution.

That leaves us with some uncomfortable possibilities remaining. What has changed from thirty years ago when kids could take firearms into school responsibly and today might involve some difficult truths.

Let’s inventory the possibilities.

What changed? The mainstreaming of nihilism. Cultural decay. Chemicals. The deliberate destruction of moral backstops in the culture. A lost commonality of shared societal pressures to enforce right and wrong. And above all, simple, pure, evil.

Before you retort that we can’t account for the mentally ill, they existed forever.

Paranoid schizophrenics existed in 1888 and 2018. Mentally ill students weren’t showing up in schools with guns even three decades ago. So it must be something else.

Those who have been so busy destroying the moral backstops in our culture won’t want to have this conversation. They’ll do what they do -- mock the truth.

There was a time in America, before the Snowflakes, when any adult on the block could reprimand a neighborhood kid who was out of line without fear.

Even thirty years ago, the culture still had invisible restraints developed over centuries. Those restraints, those leveling commonalities, were the target of a half-century of attack by the freewheeling counterculture that has now become the dominant replacement culture.

Hollywood made fun of these restraints in films too numerous to list.

The sixties mantra “don’t trust anyone over thirty” has become a billion-dollar industry devoted to the child always being right -- a sometimes deeply medicated brat who disrupts the classroom or escapes what used to be resolved with a paddling.

Instead of telling the kid to quit kicking the back of the seat on a plane, we buy seat guards to protect the seat.

If you think it’s bad now, just wait until the generation whose babysitter is an iPhone is in high school. You can hardly walk around WalMart these days without tripping over a toddler in a trance, staring at a screen.

The high school kids who shot rifles in school in 1985 were taught right and wrong. They were taught what to do with their rifle in school, and what not to do. If they got out of line, all the other students and the coach would have come down on them hard. There were no safe spaces, and that was a good thing.

Culture is a powerful force for good. When good behavior is normalized and deviant destructive behavior is ostracized, shamed, and marginalized, you get more good behavior.

Considering evil in this debate makes some of you uncomfortable, but evil bathes all of these shootings. I am reminded of Justice Antonin Scalia’s spectacularly funny and profound interview in 2013 when he toyed with a New Yorker reporter about evil. “You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil!”, he chortled.

Thirty years ago, kids who brought their rifles to the high school shooting range didn’t wonder about evil and cultural decay. They simply lived in a time in America when right and wrong was more starkly defined, where expectations about behavior were clear, and wickedness hadn’t been normalized.

The idea that guns caused the carnage we have faced is so intellectually bankrupt that it is isn’t worth discussing. Remembering where we were as a nation just 30 years ago makes it even more so. It’s time to ask what changed.

SOURCE

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It's the Culture, Not the Guns

Leftists want to restrict the entire conversation to gun control. But their destruction of culture is the culprit.

Last Wednesday, Andrew Pollack was photographed while searching for his daughter, Meadow, who was a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Tragically, he learned Meadow was one of the 17 murder victims.

A parent’s worst nightmare, eliciting an avalanche of sympathy? No, Pollack was shown wearing a “Trump 2020” T-shirt. Apparently nothing else mattered.

“He’s a pro-Trump guy which means he supports the guy who is responsible for the death of his child!!” tweeted iMO@_sheateher. “I don’t feel sorry for him and f—k trump,” stated Walterlee@eastsidedogg. “Maybe he should have thought twice before voting for #TerroristTrump,” added #TrumpforPrison@SolRyaz.

These twisted souls were hardly an anomaly. Trump is “obviously mentally ill,” according to TV host Jimmy Kimmel, who joined a chorus of other hate-filled leftists promoting pure propaganda.

Trump and the GOP made it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns? What they really did was reverse an attempt by Barack Obama’s administration to automatically define anyone incapable of managing their own finances as “mentally defective.” Under that unconstitutional scenario, the name of every Social Security Disability Insurance recipient would have been sent to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Leftists also pushed a bogus assertion by Everytown for Gun Safety, Michael Bloomberg’s rabidly anti-gun group, stating the Parkland mass murder was the 18th shooting on a school campus in America since the start of this year. Even The Washington Post was forced to concede that was “flat wrong,” because it included instances such as a man shooting a BB gun at a bus window, a student in a criminal justice club accidentally shooting a peace officer’s real gun instead of a training gun at a target on a classroom wall, and gunshots that were fired from somewhere outside of Cal State San Bernardino, all of which resulted in no injuries.

As always, leftists want to restrict the entire conversation to gun control. And as always, none of them can name a single new law that would prevent a tragedy like this.

What might? Ramping down leftist hate. Ever since the election, those who profess to own the franchise on tolerance have not only been utterly deranged, but increasingly proud of being so.

Examples abound. “Where’s Rand Paul’s neighbor when we need him?” tweeted Bette Midler in response to the senator’s words on the budget. Midler was apparently hoping the Democrat neighbor who broke Paul’s ribs and punctured his lung would be up for an encore.

Her tweet garnered 23,000 “likes.”

As columnist Melissa Meckenzie notes, this was Paul’s second brush with Democrat-perpetrated violence. He was also present when a deranged Bernie Sanders fanatic targeted Republican lawmakers at a baseball field, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise.

Meckenzie also reminds us more than 200 people were arrested during a violent demonstration precipitated by antifa at Trump’s inauguration, and that anti-Trump protesters spat on Gold Star families attending the American Legion’s “Salute to Heroes” gala honoring those who defended the nation.

Leftist-instigated violence has also become almost routine on college campuses. Heather MacDonald’s speech at Claremont McKenna College was shut down by what she described as an “exercise of brute totalitarian force.” Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger was injured and forced to flee in fear for her life with author Charles Murray, following Murray’s speech at that campus. Leftist protesters were permitted to walk around Evergreen State College wielding baseball bats and causing $10,000 of property damage, following leftist professor Bret Weinstein’s assertion that white people should not be forced to leave campus for the school’s annual “Day of Absence” discussions about race.

Those examples merely scratch the surface.

Even simple decency has been cast aside. When Republicans going to a retreat were involved in a train crash killing one person, CNN political commentator Ken Boykin suggested it was a “metaphor for American politics.” Democratic/socialist strategist Jonathan Tasini and self-described “CNN talking head” insisted, “God is working hard today to clean up the stink. Thank her [sic].”

For a largely secular Left, God, Christianity and its practitioners are often targets of contempt and derision. Thus, “The View’s” Joy Behar found it amusing to mock Vice President Mike Pence. “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus; it’s another thing when Jesus talks to you,” she asserted. “That’s called mental illness.”

Behar’s disdain was emulated by the openly homosexual and openly puerile Olympian skier Gus Kenworthy. Like so many leftists, he conflates Pence’s commitment to religious freedom with anti-homosexual bigotry.

Back to the problem of “gun violence.” There are solutions, but most of them are utterly anathema to the American Left. We could restore some sense of codified morality to a society grotesquely disconnected from it. What do we mean? The death of 17 people is mourned as a national tragedy, while genocidal levels of abortion and the sale of fetal tissue is celebrated as “freedom of choice.” And yet progressives still scream about pandering to the religious Right and creating a nation that supposedly resembles the “Handmaiden’s Tale.”

We could stop medicating children with heavy-duty drugs whose side effects produce psychotic behavior, but then they wouldn’t be submissive enough for “inconvenienced” parents and school administrators — or emasculated enough to fulfill the Left’s dream of “proving” there’s no difference between boys and girls.

We could arm teachers and guards in schools, but that would constitute “selling out to the NRA,” according to leftist politicians and celebrities — protected by armed bodyguards.

We could revamp a “multicultural” immigration system that welcomes too many people from places where life is cheap, but leftists insist it’s xenophobic bigotry to do so, even though the bloodthirsty ethos of MS-13 gangbangers, or terror-precipitating “refugees,” suggests it’s not.

We could also revamp a public school system contaminated by the Left’s determination to teach children more about what’s wrong with America than what’s right about it.

“When I was in high school, every one of those rigs in the high school parking lot had a gun in the gun rack,” Spokane Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told a group of reporters following a school shooting near that city last September. “Why? We went hunting on the way home. None of those guns ever walked into a school, none of those guns ever shot anybody. … Did the gun change or did you as a society change?”

“We are a formerly Christian society in an advanced state of decomposition,” Pat Buchanan asserts.

It’s a decomposition where “see something, say something” is either labeled bigoted or Islamophobic, or reduced to tragic farce by the gross incompetence of the same FBI leftists defend as sacrosanct when it’s going after Trump.

For an American Left that champions celebrity has-been Madonna’s dreams of “blowing up the White House,” Kathy Griffin’s severed Trump head, a New York City Public Theater that assassinates a Trump-like Julius Caesar, or a violence-fomenting “Resistance” with an end game of nullifying an election, conversations about gun control are nothing more than the last refuge of leftist scoundrels.

Scoundrels who own the degradation of our culture. As Andrew Klavan asserts, “Over the last fifty years, it’s the left that has assaulted every moral norm and disdained every religious and cultural restraint.”

And now America is living — and dying — with the permutations.

SOURCE

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A possible gun regulation compromise?

Leftists regularly argue while having no apparent knowledge of the relevant facts. And the current outcry for gun control after the Florida shooting is a prime example of that. They act as if nobody had ever tried gun control before.

Yet gun regulation varies greatly across the fruited plain -- so the data to assess the proposal is readily available. And the fact is that in places like Chicago guns are very heavily regulated. Yet Chicago, Detroit etc are also the places where gun deaths are at their highest.

So the existing facts on the ground tell us that gun control does more harm than good. Criminals are greatly encouraged when the rest of the population has little or no protection so shoot with every expectation of impunity.

But a conservative writer has come up with a suggestion that may have some merit. It may not however pass constitutional muster:

Instead of debating gun regulations that would apply to every gun owner, we could consider limits that are imposed on youth and removed with age. After all, the fullness of adult citizenship is not bestowed at once: Driving precedes voting precedes drinking, and the right to stand for certain offices is granted only in your thirties.

Perhaps the self-arming of citizens could be similarly staggered. Let 18-year-olds own hunting rifles. Make revolvers available at 21. Semiautomatic pistols, at 25. And semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 could be sold to 30-year-olds but no one younger.

This proposal would be vulnerable to some of the same practical critiques as other gun control proposals. But it is more specifically targeted to the plague of school shootings, whose perpetrators are almost always young men.

And it offers a kind of moral bridge between the civic vision of Second Amendment advocates and the insights of their critics — by treating bearing arms as a right but also a responsibility, the full exercise of which might only come with maturity and age.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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

20 February, 2018

The battle for time

The article below is from a Leftist source but it has half a point. He says that when we assemble a flatpack we undervalue our time. But do we? It is probably time taken out of recreational activity such as TV watching and is itself pretty interesting, if not exactly entertaining. So as recreational time we valued it at nil commercially so nothing is gained or lost

Standing at a supermarket self checkout the other day I was struck by one of the paradoxes facing the modern consumer.

On the one hand we’re encouraged to buy products that save time like dishwashers and home-delivered meals.

But at the same time shops are inviting us to spend time on things that were once done for us – like the self checkout.

It is just one example where consumers have been convinced to supply their own labour to facilitate new business models and help boost company profits.

The most shrewd innovator of all may be Ikea. The Swedish furniture icon has persuaded generations of consumers to buy products in flatpacks and then devote hours of their own labour putting them together at home.

An Ikea guest bed I recently assembled with a family member had an instruction booklet that ran to 28 pages. I calculated the hours of labour we spent in assembly would have added at least $120 to the cost if we had been paid the minimum wage.

One of many discoveries of behavioural economics, which analyses how real-life human behaviour affects economic decision-making, is a tendency for consumers to undervalue their own time.

Despite all the talk about people being “time-poor” it turns out we are often willing to give time away for free.

Richard Thaler, a pioneering behavioural economist and latest winner of the Nobel prize for economics, emphasised how fallible humans can be when making economic decisions, in his acceptance speech just before Christmas

Rather than being the calculating, hyper-rational “homo economicus” of economics text books, humans are absent-minded, procrastinating and notoriously over confident, he said.

You can add the tendency to undervalue our own time to the list.

It’s a trait that crops up in all sorts of curious ways. Like a willingness to walk very long distances for cheaper parking or a determination to take a longish drive out of your way to save a few dollars at the petrol pump. My own huge underestimation of how many hours it would take to assemble that Ikea guest bed is a neat example.

The tendency to undervalue our own time creates all sorts of anomalies and inefficiencies in how we organise our economic life.

This is likely to become more problematic as fresh business models and methods of exchange are made possible by new digital technologies.

That’s because our tendency to undervalue time afflicts workers as well as consumers.

Economist Jim Stanford, director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, says that when people undervalue their own time it easier for companies (and even governments) to take it for free - whether it’s working unpaid overtime or being stuck on hold.

“The way we organise society tends to trick a lot of people into thinking their own time is free,” says Stanford.

“The less we are aware of the value of our own time, the easier it becomes for employers and governments to steal it.”

There is a long history of employees and bosses fighting over the use of time at work, of course. Trade unions have sought to limit work hours and standardise employment relationships. Employers have strived for industrial rules that allow the highest output for the lowest labour cost.

But Stanford reckons trends in the jobs market today mean the “battle over time” is intensifying and will become a central issue in economic policy and regulation in years to come.

A key factor is the rapid growth in short-term, temporary jobs in the so called “gig economy”.

Valuing time in the gig economy can be tricky for workers. While some professions, like legal services, have become very adept at charging “billable hours”, the army of freelancers offering their services in the gig economy are unlikely to be so savvy, especially if they are low-skilled. “People can be tricked into working for way, way below the minimum wage,” says Stanford.

He says new “peer-to-peer” digital platforms like Uber or Deliveroo rely heavily on the human tendency to undervalue our own time. “Uber drivers are paid by the ride, so any time that they spend waiting is free, and time they spending driving to pick up the next passenger is also free,” he says. “If Uber was unable to wrest that time for free from its drivers the business model would collapse.”

Meanwhile, mobile technologies are blurring the boundaries between leisure time, voluntary work and paid work.

A fashion vlogger, for instance, can now make videos at home and post them on YouTube in the hope of selling advertisements or being paid to make product endorsements. Or a software developer might give away some software for free in the hope that it will help snare future work as a consultant.

Is it worth the time? In many cases that’s likely to be complex calculation.

What we do know is that for consumers and workers time is surprisingly easy to squander. A recent study by academics Hal Hershfield, Cassie Mogilner Holmes and Uri Barnea underscored the difficulties people have making judgments about their time.

They asked about 4,000 Americans of various ages, income, jobs, and marital status whether they would prefer more money or more time. About two-thirds said they’d take the money. But the researchers also asked survey respondents to report their level of happiness and life satisfaction. It turned out the people who chose more time were on average statistically happier and more satisfied with life than the people who chose more money.

The upshot? There’s a strong link between our wellbeing and how we value time.

SOURCE

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How a sleazy pol went to the White House and became a reformer

I think we will all get what Jeff Jacoby is implicitly driving at below. He used to be very anti-Trump. He appears to have learned

WHEN CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR became president of the United States, everyone knew what to expect — and it wasn't good. Arthur was a thoroughgoing hack. He was a partisan crony who had risen to influence as a loyal henchman of Senator Roscoe Conkling, the arrogant and ruthless boss of the New York Republican machine.

The prospect of Arthur in the White House, lamented the Chicago Tribune, was "a pending calamity of the utmost magnitude." As the eminent diplomat and historian Andrew Dickson White would later recall, the most common reaction to the news in political circles was: "Chet Arthur, president of the United States?! Good God!"

But Arthur surprised them all. The sleazy insider redeemed himself. He governed honestly and conscientiously, putting country ahead of party and turning his back on the win-at-any-cost cynicism in which he had marinated for so long. On this Presidents Day weekend, the story of the nation's 21st president offers a reminder that power doesn't have to reinforce a political leader's worst inclinations. Sometimes it can awaken the best.

* * *

THREE YEARS before he was elevated to the highest office in the land, Arthur's political career appeared to be wrecked beyond repair.

In the summer of 1878, President Rutherford Hayes had fired Arthur from his job as collector of the Port of New York, one of the most lucrative positions in the federal government. Conkling had originally recommended Arthur for the job, and Arthur had milked it for the benefit of Conkling's machine. The nation's largest custom house became a hive of rigged hiring, illegal kickbacks, and political patronage: the spoils system at its most brazen. During political campaigns, every employee was required to pay an "assessment" — a cash contribution to the Republican Party. Jobs went to party loyalists, who routinely passed the application exam with flying colors — even when they didn't know any of the answers.

By the 1870s, disgust with the spoils system was rising in both parties. Hayes, a leader of the GOP's reform wing, had run for president on a platform of dismantling the sleazy arrangements perfected by Conkling's machine. On his first day in office, he had called for "thorough, radical, and complete" reform of federal hiring. He instructed the Treasury Department to investigate political manipulation and fraud at the nation's custom houses, and when it produced a scathing report on the unscrupulous practices in the New York Custom House, Hayes sacked the man who ran it.

Yet "rather than ruining Arthur's career," as Arthur biographer Zachary Karabell writes, "Hayes's vendetta catapulted him to national attention." He became a hero of the "Stalwarts," the anti-reform faction of the Republican Party. In 1880, Arthur led the New York delegation to the Republican national convention in Chicago. He and the other Stalwarts couldn't prevent the party from nominating another reformer to succeed Hayes — the widely-admired James A. Garfield. But Garfield knew he couldn't win the election if he didn't carry New York, and New York — Conkling's empire — was Stalwart territory. To balance the ticket, Garfield's campaign offered the vice-presidency to Arthur.

It worked. The Republicans won the November election, and the following March, Arthur was sworn in as vice president. But even then, he continued as before, looking out for Conkling's interests and not even pretending to back the new administration's reform agenda.

Then Garfield was murdered.

On July 2, 1881, in a Washington train depot, a deranged assassin shot the president twice. The gunman, who had delusions of being named an ambassador and was enraged when no offer was extended, convinced himself that Garfield's successor would give him the patronage post he craved. "I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be President!" he proclaimed.

Garfield died painfully and slowly, clinging to life for more than two months. All the while, Arthur was distraught with grief and fear. "I pray to God that the president will recover," he said. "God knows I do not want the place I was never elected to." When word reached him that Garfield had finally died, a reporter knocked on his door to ask for a statement. Arthur's valet had to turn the man away: The new president was "sitting alone in his room sobbing like a child, with his head on his desk and his face buried in his hands."

Garfield's assassination made Arthur president, but there was no satisfaction or triumph in it. The awful knowledge that a good man had been murdered so that he could take his place and preserve the spoils system haunted him — and changed him.

Conkling and the Stalwarts were shocked by the transformation in their old friend and fellow hack. When Garfield's inner circle resigned, Conkling expected to be offered a top cabinet position. He also expected Arthur to name a reliable Stalwart to run the all-important New York Custom House. But Arthur was no longer taking orders from Conkling, and no longer committed to blocking civil service reform. Having acceded to the presidency as a result of Garfield's death, Arthur said, he considered himself "morally bound to continue the policy of the former president." When he wouldn't budge, a furious Conkling returned to New York and denounced Arthur as a traitor.

Arthur was only getting started. In his first Annual Message to Congress, he explicitly called for an overhaul of federal hiring practices. His support astonished those who had assumed Arthur would serenely return to corruption as usual. Around the country, civil service reform groups sprang into action. Democratic Senator George Pendleton of Ohio introduced legislation to mandate merit-based hiring in many federal agencies, and in 1882, Arthur endorsed it.

Thus did a champion of the Stalwarts drive the first nails into the coffin of political patronage as it had been practiced since the days of Andrew Jackson. Within a month of Arthur's endorsement, the Pendleton bill sailed through both houses of Congress. On January 16, 1883, Arthur — erstwhile flunky of Roscoe Conkling, ultimate creature of raw Republican bossism — signed it into law. He appointed qualified members to the new Civil Service Commission, and firmly enforced the commission's new rules.

* * *

ARTHUR SERVED only a single term as president. His repentance and conversion to the cause of reform meant breaking with what today we would call his base, and the party leaders he alienated refused to nominate him for another four years. Not that Arthur wanted another term. Unbeknownst to the public, he was gravely ill. He was slowly dying of Bright's disease, a chronic inflammation of the kidneys that at the time was incurable. He would die at the age of 57, just 18 months after leaving office.

But while Arthur may have been in physical distress when his presidency ended, gone was the emotional distress that had tormented him at its start. He left office knowing that the American people thought far better of him than they had in 1881. No less a hard-boiled observer than Mark Twain wrote: "It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration." The "pending calamity" so many dreaded when Arthur replaced Garfield hadn't materialized. Instead he had risen to the challenge of leadership — risen above his worst instincts, above his dishonest former comrades, above the habits of greed and partisanship that had defined his career.

Arthur isn't reckoned a great president. But he turned out, against all expectations, to be a genuinely decent one.

In the 1880s, as in the 2010s, decency in politics was something rare and admirable. Arthur deserves credit for presiding over a watershed reform in the workings of the federal government. But he deserves to be remembered for something else — for proving that even the most polarizing and distrusted politician can choose to heed the better angels of his nature, and become better than he was.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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19 February, 2018

Unemployment under Trump

One of the clearest pieces of evidence showing that Trump's ideas are the right ones for America is that unemployment is now way down. Getting people into jobs is the biggest welfare achievement that there is.

The Left, however, will have none of it. That the white unemployment rate is now down to a historic low of 3.5% means nothing to them. They probably wish it were higher.

But they have to give some justification for being so dismissive. And what they say is that the fall under Trump is merely a fall that was already underway under Obama. And they produce graphs to prove that. Leftists have to be desperate to resort to graphs -- a sob-story is more their metier -- but on this issue they clearly are. So let us ignore the graphs and look at the raw numbers. Here they are:

White adult unemployment numbers from Bush to Trump

SOURCE

The months all tell much the same story but January is the only one we have for 2018 so let us look particularly at that.

And what we see is an enormous contrast. As soon as Obama got in (2009) unemployment leapt. From 4.4% under Bush in 2008, it was double that by 2010. And it stayed high through 2013. By 2014, however, the fracking boom was well underway and unemployment declined from that point on. And note that the fracking took place on private land with no encouragement from the government. It had nothing to do with Obama. It happened too quickly for the bureaucracy to step in and stop it. And when the bureauucracy did notice it, it was already too big to stop.

So in the second year of Obama, unemployment was 8.8% while in the second year of Trump it was 3.5%. Is there any comparison?

So what lies behind those numbers? The key thing to know is the importance of being able to plan ahead. To create jobs, businessmen need to be able to make reasonable predictions about the costs and benefits that will flow from putting on workers. But prophecy is a mug's game so businessmen have to be pretty heroic to make such predictions. And the only way that they can do so at all is to go by what is already happening and what has already happened. They have to assume continuity with the past and present. If something is already working well or is known to have worked well, they assume that doing more of it will continue to work well.

But it is a nerve-racking business to see whether your strategy works. Something like 90% of business startups go broke within the first 12 months. So if some threat to your plans heaves into view you are going to be frantic and decide to lie low until you have seen how the future turns out.

And that is exactly what happened when Obama defeated the uselsss McCain. The wishy-washy GOP put up two RINOs against Obama and lost badly. When the grassroots rebelled and put up a real conservative, Republicans suddenly found themselves back inthe driver's seat.

Obama came to office after making a wildly-cheered campaign speech which promised that he would "fundamentally transform" America. So all bets were suddenly off. The President was promising to make the past no longer a guide to the future. All business plans were suddenly based on sand. So businessmen did all they could do. They sat on their hands and hunkered down to wait and see. All plans ground to a halt, meaning that job creation also ground to a halt. Obama destroyed business confidence. He did one of the worst things a President could do. He was and is a dumb-cluck. The unemployment numbers tell the story.

Trump, by contrast, is himself an entrepreneurial businessman who is very encouraging and supportive towards business -- so when he got in businessmen nationwide breathed a sigh of relief and got on with doing what they were good at.

One President gets in and unemployment promptly leaps. Another gets in and unemployment promptly falls. That is what the numbers tell us.

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This Isn't Normal

Ben Shapiro

You've heard the phrase over and over again: "This isn't normal." We've heard it about President Trump's rhetoric, and his Twitter usage. We've heard it about his attacks on the media, and we've heard it about his legislative ignorance. We've heard it about his running commentary on the Mueller investigation, and we've heard it about his bizarre stream-of-consciousness interviews.

There's some truth to all of this. Trump has said some incredibly awful things (e.g. his comments on Charlottesville, Virginia, and Haitians). He's not a predictable, stable genius.

All of this "non-normality," however, has resulted in ... a relatively normal situation. The economy's booming. We're on more solid foreign-policy ground than we were when President Obama was in office — by a long shot. The constitution hasn't been torn asunder. The structures of government are still in place. Trump may be toxic rhetorically, but his presidency hasn't annihilated the norms that govern our society.

The same can't be said, however, of the media institutions that seem so consumed with saving the republic from the specter of Trump. Like self-appointed superheroes so intent on stopping an alien monster that they end up destroying the entire city, our media are so focused on stopping Trump that they end up undermining both their credibility and faith in American institutions.

Take, for example, the media's coverage of North Korea at the Winter Olympics. Suddenly, the worst regime on the planet has been transformed into a cute exhibit from "It's a Small World." Those women in red forced to smile and cheer on cue? Just an example of the brilliance of revolutionary North Korean "juche" ideology. Kim Jong Un's sister, a member of the inner cabinet of a regime that imprisons thousands of dissenters and shoots those who don't properly worship the Dear Respected? She's an example of Marxist humility and stellar diplomacy.

It's not just the media. This week, we learned that former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former national security adviser Susan Rice, former Vice President Joe Biden and former President Obama held a last-minute meeting at the White House to discuss the possibility of Trump-Russia collusion. At that meeting, Rice wrote in an email, Obama reportedly asked whether there was any reason "we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia." That means that Obama asked his top staff, including the FBI, whether he could hide intelligence information from the incoming Trump team.

That amounts to a massive breach in the constitutional structure. The FBI is not an independent agency. It is part of the executive branch. The incoming Trump administration was duly elected by the American people and had every right to see all intelligence information coming from the FBI and the CIA. Yet it was the supposedly normal Obama White House exploring means of preventing that transparency.

Trump isn't a normal president. But the threat to our institutions doesn't reside only at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. — or even primarily there. It resides with those who are willing to side with any enemy and violate every rule in order to stop the supposed threat of Trump.

SOURCE

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Stop playing politics with school shootings

Something remarkable, and disturbing, has happened in the discussion about mass violence in recent years. Observers increasingly devote themselves to depoliticising acts of Islamist terror and to politicising mass school shootings. They downgrade Islamist-inspired slaughter, actively discouraging any kind of political, far less passionate reaction to such violence, and they upgrade school shootings, always insisting that we make them political, that we engage our passions in response to them, that we call them by the right word: ‘terrorism’. They drain the politics from what are clearly political acts of mass murder while injecting political meaning into what are clearly not political acts of murder. This is not only peculiar – it is positively dangerous.

We have seen this warped pattern repeat itself following the Florida school shooting. Almost instantly the cry went up from liberal observers that we should call this terrorism. After all, school shootings terrorise people. ‘The Florida school shooter is a racist terrorist’ – why won’t more people ‘call him that?’, asked one commentator (on the basis of claims that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, has racist views). Slate says we must upgrade school shootings to a ‘national security threat’. Others demand that the White House declare war on this kind of ‘terrorism’ as seriously as they declared war on al-Qaeda after 9/11 – if not more seriously, given school shootings are more common in the US than Islamist terror attacks are.

All the things observers frown upon, and even demonise as a species of ‘racism’, in the aftermath of an Islamist terror attack suddenly become acceptable in the wake of a school shooting. So anyone who spoke of ‘Muslim men’ as a problem after the barbarism in Paris in 2015, or Brussels in 2016, or Westminster Bridge, London Bridge and the Manchester Arena in 2017, was instantly written of as prejudiced and hateful, possibly requiring investigation. After school shootings, though, the alleged problem of ‘white men’ becomes an acceptable, even widespread talking point. Mention ideology post-Islamist attack, so much as utter the word ‘Islamism’, and you will be shut down, shushed as an ‘Islamophobe’; yet everyone talks about the alleged ideology of gun fetishism post-mass-shooting. Link Islamist outrages in the West to ISIS and you’ll be told, ‘Don’t believe the hype, these are just individuals with a grudge’; yet just minutes after a mass shooting we hear about how these acts are the responsibility of ‘evil’ groups like the NRA.

This simultaneous freezing of politics in the wake of Islamist attacks and intense politicisation in the aftermath of mass shootings is striking and worrying for a number of reasons. First, because it points to a complete, and possibly witting, failure of basic linguistic and moral distinction. The idea that every act of mass violence is terrorism is bizarre. That suggests there is no difference between the dejected, suicidal drunk who mounts the pavement with his car because he’s had enough of life and the religiously convinced extremist who mows down pedestrians as part of a broader warped campaign to signal disgust for Western society and the freedoms its citizens enjoy. It is a vast abdication of moral seriousness, of common sense even, to fail to recognise the difference between a sullen youth who shoots up his former schoolmates and a tight-knit group of ISIS-inspired gunmen who take hostage an entire rock concert and then massacre 89 of the attendees. The former is murder; the latter is a religious, political statement designed to chill the free life of Western cities and inspire other Islamists similarly to strike against what they view as sinful nations and people.

Secondly, there’s the loss of perspective. There is something especially galling in the way that European observers who are cagey about politicising the problem of Islamist terror rush to condemn mass shootings in the US. Last year, 117 Americans were killed in mass shootings (defined as shootings in which the killer and the victims were generally unknown to each other and in which more than four people were killed). That’s the highest it has ever been, largely down to the Las Vegas massacre in which 58 people were killed. More people were killed on one night in Paris in November 2015 than were killed in mass shootings in the US last year. More people were killed in the Nice terror-truck attack in 2016 – 86 – than have been killed in any entire year of mass shootings in the US from 1982 onwards (excluding 2017). Even from the point of view of moral perspective, the disproportionate politicisation of mass shootings doesn’t add up.

And the third reason this decommissioning of politics post-terror and engagement of politics post-mass-shooting is disturbing is because it smacks of moral cowardice – and of a moral cowardice that could have lethal consequences.

It is becoming increasingly clear that many observers in the West are deeply devoted to downplaying any serious discussion about the problem of radical Islam. And they will do this by any means necessary: by branding your concerns about Islamists as ‘Islamophobia’, by snootily reminding us we’re more likely to die getting out of the bath than in an Islamist attack, by mocking as ‘fearful’ or even ‘far right’ anyone who says anything critical or mean about Islam. And, increasingly, they downplay Islamist terror through comparison; through saying, ‘Well, look at mass shootings: aren’t they just as bad, or even worse?’. Anything they can do to deflect the public focus from issues of religious tension, and from the strains of ‘multiculturalism’, and from the question of why some people in the West hate the West so much that they will massacre hundreds of its citizens, they will do it.

This is bad because it virtually criminalises legitimate debate about new forms of religious violence that have killed hundreds of people in Europe and scores in the US in recent years. And it’s bad because, by extension, it imbues mass shootings with greater meaning and power than they deserve. This is the dangerous game the cynical politicisers of shootings play: the more they say ‘let’s call this terrorism’, the more they say these shootings are on a par with, if not worse than, mass violence carried out by ISIS-linked individuals, the more they say such shootings are a greater ‘national security threat’ to the West than Islamist ideologues are, the more they flatter and empower the 17-year-old loser with a gun. They turn him from a tragic, nihilistic individual into a greater menace to the West than radical Islam. They make his every fantasy come true.

And other cut-off, unstable individuals out there who are thinking of executing a similar destructive and self-destructive act of murder are given more impetus to go ahead. Because they now know that, courtesy of the cynical politicisers of their vile act, they will be instantly transformed from anti-social no-marks into Al-Qaeda Mark II. Playing politics with school shootings is a lethal pursuit. Today’s intellectual cowardice has consequences.

SOURCE

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Truly Sickening: Liberals Attack Trump Over Hospital Visit To Victims of shootings

President Trump visited with wounded students and brave first responders in Florida after the horrible shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida.

One of the students with whom he visited was girls basketball player Maddy Wilford who was shot several times and in the immediate aftermath of the shooting was described as ‘fighting for her life.’ She is now in stable condition and was able to receive a visit from Trump and First Lady Melania Trump on Friday night.

They spent several minutes with Wilford and members of her family giving her encouragement and talking with her doctor. Pictures were taken of Wilford with the President and the First Lady, surrounded by her family members.

He also took time to thank the doctors and the hospital workers while at Broward North Medical Center in Deerfield Beach, giving them a thumb’s up for their efforts.

He also praised first responders for their quick response during the shooting.

But even in the midst of the tragedy, the left just couldn’t stop the attacks. What do you think they attacked? The fact that Trump was smiling in some of the pictures.

How dare he smile with the victims, the first responders and the hospital workers (who are all also smiling)? They even attacked the family of the victim for smiling with him.

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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18 February, 2018

All phobias are not equal

As an academic psychologist with extensive publications on clinical psychology topics, I think I am in a good position to comment on phobias. In psychiatry and psychology, a phobia is a mental state, a strong fear, that manifests in an extreme and irrational avoidance of certain objects or people. In politics, "phobia" is simply a term of abuse. It is used in politics however as a pretense that the accused "phobic" person is mentally defective. So let us look at HOW deranged the alleged phobics are.

"Homophobia" is a complete misnomer. I can find distasteful the thought of a man sticking his dick into another man's anus without fearing anything from the deviants concerned. And most normal men DO find the idea distasteful. It is because of that general distaste that the behavior concerned was for so long illegal. I cannot see that there is anything to fear from the acts of two unfortunates in their bedroom. So there may be a few cases around of true homophobia but most people who are critical or unacceptant of homosexuality are not that way because they fear it. They may simply think the act is distasteful or they might accept Bible teachings about it or have some other reason -- thinking that it is inimical to family formation etc.

So what about Islamophobia? It is a term commonly applied by the Left to people who are critical of Muslim behavior. And there is much to be critical of in that murderous religion. The big sufferers from Muslim savagery are other Muslims of a different Muslim sect but aggression seems to be lurking just under the surface wherever there are Muslims. People who want peace -- most Westerners -- can quite reasonably be critical of people who are inimical to peace. I personally think it is none of my business how Muslims treat one another but when they inflict random savagery on peaceful law-abiding people in my own community, I think I have every right to be critical. But whether that criticism rises to the status of a phobia I cannot see. Don't forget that a phobia is an IRRATIONAL fear whereas I think that fear of what Muslims do and might do is perfectly rational.

And there is another attitude that could be called a phobia: A tendency to avoid blacks, seen most clearly in white flight. Such attitudes are not normally called phobias (though "Xenophobia" is available) because Leftists have another handy-dandy term that is even more accusatory: "Racism". But the same considerations apply. Avoidance behavior is not per se racism. The rate of violent crime among people of African ancestry is stratospheric wherever they are to be found. Among American blacks, the rate of violent crime is 9 times the white average. And a wish to avoid being victimized by that is neither racist nor phobic. It is self preservation. Anti-discrimination laws have made such avoidance difficult but ways can be found

And the term 'racism" denotes more than avoidance behavior. The example of "racism" that springs to everybody's mind is the policies and deeds of Adolf Hitler. Yet Hitler is not at all representative of racial consciousness. In Hitler's day just about EVERYBODY, was antisemitic. But racially discriminatory attitudes did not normally translate to physical harm towards Jews. A good example is 19th century Britain. Brits of that era thought that THEY were the master race and they were very suspicious of Jews. To get much social acceptance, a Jew had to convert to the Church of England -- a dismal fate but not a life-threatening one.

So when a brilliant conservative political politician came along who was Jewish, what did the "racist" Englishmen do? Did they send him to the gas ovens or otherwise harm or restrict him? No. They made Benjamin Disraeli their prime minister. And he was quite outspoken about his Jewishness -- right down to his surname, which means "Of Israel". So calling racial consciousness "racist" calls on irrelevant history. A German socialist like Hitler was atrocious indeed in what he did but the example of racial consciousness that people of British descent or culture should look to is the Conservative British politicians who gave a Jew the highest political distinction that they could. Their "racism" was innocuous.

Incidentally, the British political leader who declared war on Hitler was Neville Chamberlain (Yes. Neville, not Winston) and Chamberlain was known to have antisemitic views. So racial consciousness and beliefs can coexist with very benign behavior. They are not automatically wrong in any sense and should not be condemned of themselves.

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AG Sessions on shootings: ‘It’s No Good to Have Laws If They Are Not Enforced’

Speaking to the Major County Sheriffs’ Association on Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed to study “the intersection” between mental health and criminality” in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

He noted that in the first quarter of the Trump administration after he was sworn in, there was a 23 percent increase in federal gun prosecutions - the most in a decade.

“Since the day I took office— in conjunction with our state and local colleagues— we have prioritized violent crime and violations of federal firearms laws. In the first quarter after I was sworn in, we saw a 23% increase in gun prosecutions and have now charged the most federal firearm prosecutions in a decade,” Sessions said.

“It’s no good to have laws if they are not enforced,” the attorney general said.

Sessions said he has directed the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy to work with the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, and Homeland Security “to study the intersection of mental health and criminality and identify how we can stop people capable of such heinous crimes.”

“It is too often the case that the perpetrators of these terrible attacks had given of signals in advance. You are experienced professionals. You and I know that we cannot arrest everybody that somebody thinks is dangerous, but I think we can and must do better. We owe it to every one of those kids crying outside their school yesterday and all those who never made it out,” he said.

“The most important thing that any government does is to protect the safety and the rights of its citizens, and I understand the importance in this country of respecting the civil rights of every American, but the first civil right is the right to be safe. Everything else that we do as a government depends on that,” Sessions said. “We cannot allow politics or bad policies to get in the way of that mission.”

Sessions said the country and certain political leaders lost focus on the importance of “proper support and affirmation” of law enforcement and as a result, violent crime went up by seven percent nationwide from 2014 to 2016. He said robberies went up, assaults increased by nearly 10 percent, rape went up nearly 11 percent, and murder rose more than 20 percent.

In contrast, in the last year alone, the DOJ “brought cases against the greatest number of violent criminals in a quarter of a century,” Sessions said. “We also arrested and charged hundreds of people suspected of contributing to the ongoing opioid crisis.”

SOURCE

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Feds to Repeal 298 Tax Regulations

The Treasury Department plans to eliminate nearly 300 outdated tax regulations, getting tax rules off the books that in some cases have not applied since the 1940s.

The department announced its proposal to eliminate unnecessary tax regulations this week, in compliance with two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump last year to reduce regulatory burdens and simplify the tax code.

"We continue our work to ensure that our tax regulatory system promotes economic growth," said Secretary Steven Mnuchin. "These 298 regulations serve no useful purpose to taxpayers and we have proposed eliminating them."

"I look forward to continuing to build on our efforts to make the regulatory system more efficient and effective," he said.

Executive Order 13789, signed last April, instructs the Treasury to "bring clarity" to the tax code and identify all tax regulations that "impose an undue financial burden on United States taxpayers," "add undue complexity to the Federal tax laws," or "exceed the statutory authority of the Internal Revenue Service."

The department's latest action addresses the complexity of the tax code. The proposed rule would remove tax regulations that have already been repealed; repeal regulations that have been significantly changed from their original purpose; and repeal regulations that are no longer applicable.

"This notice of proposed rulemaking proposes to streamline IRS regulations by removing 298 regulations that are no longer necessary because they do not have any current or future applicability under the Internal Revenue Code and by amending 79 regulations to reflect the proposed removal of the 298 regulations," the department said in a rulemaking notice published Thursday.

Included in the roughly 300 tax rules to be removed from the tax code are exemptions that were repealed more than seven decades ago in the Public Debt Act of 1941. The law raised the debt limit to $65 billion. The current debt ceiling sits at $20.5 trillion.

A tax exemption for dividends from shares and stock that was repealed in 1942 would also be removed.

Regulations from the Excise Tax Reduction Act of 1965, the Tax Reform Act of 1976, and the last substantial tax reform in 1986, would also be removed.

SOURCE

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Why Leftists Are So Unhappy

Dennis Prager

One of the most important differences between the right and the left—one that greatly helps to explain their differences—is the difference between unhappy liberals and unhappy conservatives.

Unhappy conservatives generally believe they are unhappy because life is inherently difficult and tragic, and because they have made some unwise decisions in life.

But unhappy liberals generally believe they are unhappy because they have been persecuted.

Ask unhappy leftists why they are unhappy and they are likely to respond that they are oppressed. This is the primary response given by unhappy leftist women, blacks, Latinos, and gays.

For example, the more left-wing the woman, the more she will attribute her unhappiness to American society’s “patriarchy,” “sexism,” and “misogyny.” She therefore considers herself oppressed—and believing one is oppressed makes happiness all but impossible.

Likewise, the more left-wing the black, the more he or she will attribute his or her unhappiness to racism. And how is a black person living in a racist white country supposed to be happy?

If you have ever spent time with black conservatives, one of the first things you will notice is that they have a much happier disposition than left-wing blacks. I receive many calls to my radio show from black listeners. I almost always know immediately whether they are on the right or the left solely by their tone of voice. The cheerful black caller is almost always a conservative.

The left cultivates unhappiness by cultivating anger. It does this for the same reason wine growers cultivate grapes: no grapes, no wine. No anger, no left (and no Democratic Party). And angry people are not happy people.

Last week in Atlanta, I spoke for about 40 minutes to six randomly chosen black students from a local black college (for the upcoming film “No Safe Spaces” that Adam Carolla and I are making). Each one said he is oppressed.

When I told them I didn’t think blacks in America are oppressed, I sensed that they had never actually been told that by anyone. It was akin to telling physics students that gravity doesn’t exist. And when I added that I don’t think women are oppressed either, they were equally shocked.

Ask yourself this question: Is a black child likely to grow up happy if he is told by his parents, his teachers, his political leaders, and all his media that society largely hates him?

Of course not.

Raising a black child to regard America as racist and oppressive all but guarantees an unhappy black adult.

Let me offer a counterexample. My father, an Orthodox Jew, wrote his college senior thesis on the subject of anti-Semitism in America. In it he described quotas on Jews in college admissions, Jews prohibited from joining country clubs, Jews prohibited from law firms, etc.

In other words, my father fully acknowledged the existence of anti-Semitism in the United States. Yet he raised my brother and me in an America-loving home and told us that he believed American Jews are the luckiest Jews in history—because they are American.

I therefore never knew what it was like to walk around thinking most of the people I met hated me. That alone contributed to my happiness.

Leftism makes one other major contribution to leftists’ unhappiness: it promotes ingratitude.

In my book on happiness (“Happiness Is a Serious Problem”) and my talks on happiness, I emphasize the central importance of gratitude to happiness. Without it, one cannot be happy. There isn’t one ungrateful happy person on Earth. Yet ingratitude toward America is central to the left’s worldview—further reinforcing the unhappiness of its adherents.

Unhappy Americans on the right blame the problems inherent to life, and they blame themselves. Unhappy Americans on the left blame America.

That alone goes far in explaining the unbridgeable differences between right and left.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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16 February, 2018

Democrats Overplay Their Hand With Extreme DACA Demands

The current immigration debate is surreal, worthy of a chapter in a Lewis Carrol novel, where logic is turned upside down and words have no meaning whatsoever because they mean what their utterers want them to mean in that moment.

The current crisis du jour is the pending end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as “DACA,” through which Barack Obama granted protection against deportation for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens.

In 2010, with Democrats firmly in control of Congress, Obama faced immense pressure to push amnesty for millions of illegals. At first, Obama rightly recognized the limits of his power, stating, “I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.” In March 2011, he reiterated that position, saying, “With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.” In 2012, desperate for Hispanic voters to bail him out at the ballot box, Obama did an about-face and announced the implementation of the DACA program.

Of course, Democrats never allow the truth to ruin a political narrative, so despite Obama’s confession that DACA is unconstitutional, and despite the courts concurring, Democrats now claim President Donald Trump is a heartless racist for ending a program that Obama had no right to implement. And two activist judges have issued orders to block Trump’s move.

In actuality, Trump is being far more compassionate than the law requires. In exchange for securing the border and ending chain migration and the visa lottery, Trump is offering to grant not only amnesty but a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegals — nearly three times more than signed up for Obama’s DACA program.

Such generosity has been met with extreme demands by Democrats: amnesty without border security, and a continuation of chain migration, further exploding the number of illegals entering the U.S.

There is zero legal obligation for the U.S. to grant amnesty to any illegals, and even the claim of a moral obligation is tenuous at best. The blame lies solely with the parents of the illegals who were brought here as children in direct defiance of U.S. immigration laws.

Regardless, because Americans are a compassionate people, there is widespread agreement that those illegal alien children who are truly here through no fault of their own, and who have known no other country, should be allowed to stay. Even Numbers USA, which advocates for strict limits on immigration, supports giving the so-called “Dreamers” legal status.

It is important to delineate between the “Dreamers” under DACA and what might be called “DACA-plus.” The DACA recipients took advantage of Obama’s (illegal) program and applied for the deferral, paid fees and were issued work permits that allowed them to be hired by American employers. There were about 800,000 who took advantage of the program, minus the approximately 110,000 who were deported for crimes, or failed to renew their green cards, or married U.S. citizens. These are the people Americans support allowing to stay.

Not good enough, say Democrats. They cynically shut down the government last month to pressure Republicans to capitulate to their demands to expand the amnesty pool to include illegals who came here late in their teens, who were not born here, and for whom America is not their only home. It was a showdown they lost, but it was a revealing moment.

What is particularly galling to many Americans is to have their compassion rewarded with contempt and ingratitude. The job of the American government is first and foremost to protect the rights and interests of American citizens. As President Trump stated in his State of the Union Address, “My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber, is to defend Americans, to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American Dream. … Because Americans are dreamers, too.”

Democrats are overplaying their hand, and it will come back to bite them. Nothing will erode the goodwill of the American people like being told that their kindness is not only owed to the illegals who broke our laws but that it is insufficient.

No other nation takes in as many immigrants as the United States. No other nation treats them as well as we do. Not only have we allowed them to stay, we have spent tens of billions of dollars feeding, housing and educating them.

Compare that to Mexico, home to many of these illegals. Mexico is in the process of a harsh crackdown on illegals coming up through Central America. In Mexico, instead of access to welfare programs and education, illegals are rounded up in police raids, imprisoned, beaten and often tortured.

America’s current situation is untenable. Our immigration laws must be reformed to deal with those here and those who want to come here. But in doing so, Americans and their interests should come first. Not one single immigrant or illegal alien has a “right” to come to America. Those allowed to stay do so out of the kindness of the American people.

And limiting immigration to those who truly love America, who want to embrace our history and culture, who promise to obey our laws, and who will be a net gain for our country is not an unreasonable demand.

SOURCE

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Trump proposes cutting all federal funds for NPR, PBS

The 2019 federal budget that the White House unveiled Monday again proposes cutting all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funnels money to NPR and PBS -- a potential move that the CPB president quickly slammed.

In a statement, President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Patricia Harrison excoriated the proposal, suggesting it might even lead to fatalities.

“Americans place great value on having universal access to public media’s educational and informational programming and services, provided commercial free and free of charge,” Harrison said in a statement Monday.

“Since there is no viable substitute for federal funding that would ensure this valued service continues, the elimination of federal funding to CPB would at first devastate, and then ultimately destroy public media’s ability to provide early childhood content, life-saving emergency alerts, and public affairs programs," the statement continued.

But the idea must win the approval of a skeptical Congress to become reality. Just last year, the White House made a similar proposal to defund the CPB, although Congress effectively ignored the request.

"The Budget proposes to eliminate Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) over a two year period," the 2019 proposal states.

Republicans have long suggested that PBS and NPR, which some politicians and commentators say are left-leaning and partisan, should not receive federal funds.

But the Trump budget, rather than raising the issue of bias, simply asserts that the money is not necessary.

"CPB funding comprises about 15 percent of the total amount spent on public broadcasting, with the remainder coming from non-Federal sources," the propsal says, under a section titled "Justification."

"This private fundraising has proven durable, negating the need for continued Federal subsidies," the proposal continues, adding that NPR and PBS could make up the shortfall by "increasing revenues from corporate sponsors, foundations, and members."

SOURCE

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Love Trumps Hate? Media Swoon Over Kim's Murderous Sister

Some of you may recall many years ago when CNN founder Ted Turner made some cringe-inducing bromides about North Korea. In 2005, he portrayed the murderous regime of Kim Jong-il — the father of current madman Kim Jong-un — as fairly typical and not altogether lacking human decency. He deliriously pontificated: "I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere. ... I looked them right in the eyes. And they looked like they meant the truth."

In reference to Kim, he stated, "He didn't look too much different than most other people." He added, "I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin and they were riding bicycles instead of driving in cars, but ... I didn't see any brutality." And the Non Compos Mentis gold medal goes to...

Fast forward to today, and Turner's impaired perception of North Korea is no different from what the Leftmedia despicably showed during Friday night's Olympic Games opening ceremony. In fact, the Olympics were quickly tarnished by Trump Derangement Syndrome. Vice President Mike Pence, who was on hand for the ceremony, was eviscerated for his refusal to overlook North Korea's abhorrent and tyrannical dictatorship. North and South Korea had recently — and no doubt apprehensively — agreed to show harmony at the Olympics, such as processing together for the opening ceremony and sporting a joint women's hockey team. That's their prerogative, and everyone hopes that something good can come out of it.

But the U.S. certainly shouldn't be shamed for its cautionary approach to the Koreas' decision and the inevitable outcome. According to The New York Times, "Mr. Pence drew the greatest reaction for where he did not appear: most pointedly, at a dinner [South Korean President] Moon [Jae-in] hosted before the opening ceremony. That meant that he avoided spending much time with the North Korean delegation, including Kim Yong-nam, the country's ceremonial head of state." Pence also refused to stand when the combined Korean delegate was accentuated during the opening ceremony. The Times wrote that critics view the snub as "disrespectful of the athletes and his host, Mr. Moon."

Naturally, the Left quickly pounced on Pence's stern but substantive conduct. This isn't surprising, but what's absolutely despicable is the length to which media outlets went to shown their disdain for the Trump administration — and love for the North Korean communists. Kim Jong-un did not attend the opening ceremonies but instead dispatched his sister, Kim Yo-jong. And she was quickly adopted as the new face of the anti-Trump "Resistance." CNN — the same network on which Ted Turner extolled the "virtues" of North Korea — ran with the atrocious headline, "Kim Jong Un's sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics." The New York Times wasn't much better, tweeting, "Without a word, only flashing smiles, Kim Jong-un's sister outflanked Vice President Mike Pence in diplomacy."

Reminder: North Korea is so impoverished that soldiers ransack farms for food while Kim and his family eat to their hearts' content and while precious money is diverted toward nuclear weapons proliferation. The state has executed hundreds of innocent people, including Kim's own brother. It's facilitated numerous global hacking campaigns. It's threatened time and time again to annihilate America and its allies. And some 300,000 people have defected since 1953. Who knows how many lost their lives trying or didn't try at all out of fear.

Complicit in all this? Kim's sister. And the Leftmedia want to slam Pence for not acquiescing to North Korean propaganda? Yo-jong is just as ruthless as Jong-un is. Together they have committed atrocities most Americans can't comprehend. And President Donald Trump knows that what North Korea wants is not at all reflected in what it's trying to sell at the Olympics. The media in the Age of Trump perpetually lecture us that "Love Trumps Hate." Unless, of course, they can prop up someone who literally hates all that lives and breathes and who can serve to promote the Left's equally hateful agenda of trying to destroy the Trump administration.

SOURCE

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Flushing Obama's Potty Policies

Stories of President Donald Trump's administration undoing the bankrupt policies of Barack Obama's White House are especially welcome news. The latest episode is the announcement from Betsy DeVos's Department of Education that it will no longer intervene in kerfuffles over public school bathroom use on behalf of transgender individuals.

In May 2016, Obama's school powder room police dictated that public schools must accommodate kids suffering from gender dysphoria — not by actually helping them, of course, but by forcing female students to share bathrooms and locker rooms with males claiming to be females. Federal funding always comes with strings attached. It was nothing less than part of a growing pattern of progressive child abuse.

The law in question says simply, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." The key word is "sex."

Education Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Hill explained, "Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, not gender identity. In the case of bathrooms, however, longstanding regulations provide that separating facilities on the basis of sex is not a form of discrimination prohibited by Title IX." Indeed, words mean things, and leftists' constant redefinition of accepted terms is a big part of enacting their agenda. "Sex" does not mean gender "identity."

Unfortunately, what was enacted by a pen and undone by a pen can be re-enacted with a pen by the next Democrat administration — at least until the courts weigh in, and at least one case is headed to the Supreme Court. Regardless, leftists will by no means concede defeat in the bathroom wars. For the moment, however, there is some semblance of common sense coming from the Department of Education.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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15 February, 2018

Trump and House GOP push for stricter work requirements for welfare

Republicans, flying high after big victories on tax cuts and military spending increases, are turning their sights to shrinking the nation’s safety net, targeting food stamps, Medicaid, and other social service programs for poor Americans.

President Trump’s proposed budget released Monday reinforced the emerging theme, with cuts of $17 billion from the nation’s food stamp program, known as SNAP, next year and a claim that “millions of Americans are in a tragic state of dependency” on the federal government and should be funneled into the workforce.

Trump’s plan dovetails with proposals from House Republicans to reduce spending on entitlement programs, an initiative that House Speaker Paul Ryan recently branded as “workforce development.” GOP lawmakers acknowledge the phrase could make slashing eligibility more palatable to the broader public by focusing on the job requirements and job training aspects of their plans.

Presidential budgets are more likely to be used as door stops than as legislative blueprints in Congress, which jealously guards its power of the purse. But Trump’s support for cutting food stamps lends much-needed political momentum to House Republicans, who have had a hard time persuading the more moderate Senate to take on the safety net in an election year.

“You can tell [Trump] understands it, you can tell he gets it,” said Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who introduced a bill to stiffen job requirements for food stamps and other entitlement programs in the House over the summer.

$4.4 trillion budget proposal adds $7 trillion to deficits
The budget calls for steep cuts in domestic programs and entitlements, and large increases for the military.

The recent budget deal, passed late last week, increased federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two years and sparked Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky to blast his fellow Republicans over their deficit hypocrisy. That criticism has also increased interest in cutting spending on entitlement programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.

The first piece of the plan is to tighten work requirements for food stamps in the new Farm Bill, which is likely to come up for a vote over the next six months.

Currently, unemployed SNAP recipients with minor children must look for work, but Jordan and other House Republicans would like to require them to work or job train 100 hours a month, unless their children are under 2 years old. (Those with children between 2 and 6 years old would need to work 80 hours per month.)

In his budget, Trump has also asked for a significant chunk of food stamp money to be delivered to the program’s 43 million recipients in the form of a box of food from the Department of Agriculture instead of money loaded on a debit card to be spent at the grocery store.

Jordan is also pushing to tighten work requirements for Medicaid and public housing. Trump’s budget would cut rental assistance for poor people by nearly $1 billion and calls on Congress to pass legislation to require able-bodied tenants in public housing to work. Trump also seeks $250 billion cuts in Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health coverage for low-income people and others.

The broad effort to cut entitlement spending and require that recipients work was aired earlier this month at the GOP lawmakers’ annual policy retreat at the tony Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, where the lawmakers at an hourlong workshop discussed mandating new work requirements as a condition for receiving aid.

There, Tarren Bragdon, the president of a think tank that pushes for welfare overhaul called the Foundation for Government Accountability, presented findings from a poll he commissioned that suggested more than 80 percent of Americans would support requiring people to work or volunteer in order to receive food stamps or public housing. Seventy-five percent backed work requirements for Medicaid.

“I think they were pleased by it,” Bragdon said of the lawmakers’ reaction to the poll. “We looked at some key demographics of our poll — how do suburban women feel about this? How do independents feel about this?”

The poll showed that while Americans are more skeptical about changing Medicare or Social Security, which benefit older Americans of all income levels, they are open to reforms to social safety net programs designed for the nation’s poor.

Ryan is also not pitching the program to fellow House Republicans as a way to cut costs, even though many GOP lawmakers say they are eager to find a way to reverse their deficit spending spree so far.

The tax overhaul and last week’s bipartisan spending deal have set the stage for a $1.2 trillion deficit next year, with annual deficits topping $1 trillion “indefinitely,” according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. (In 2014, the deficit was $483 billion.)

Any move to cut food stamps and other antipoverty programs would face fierce resistance from Democrats.

“President Trump may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but many Americans have to work long hours doing backbreaking work just to get by,” said Democratic Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who sits on the Agriculture Committee. “With the heartless cuts to SNAP — our country’s premier antihunger program — President Trump will be taking food out of the mouths of millions of families desperately working to escape poverty.”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders called the budget “morally bankrupt.”

But Republicans in the House who are leading the effort describe the changes as morally necessary — a way to ensure that people in poverty have a chance to move out of it and climb up into the middle class. Ryan has talked about reinvesting the savings from people who stop collecting benefits into job training programs.

“What we have to do is change an entire culture of thinking so that the government is there to maybe be a bridge sometimes but it’s not there to be your eternal resting place,” Walker said.

Walker sees welfare changes as part of a “profamily agenda” that includes reducing the high number of incarcerated people in the country. He is expecting a “backlash” once Republicans begin tackling the issue but thinks Americans will eventually be sold on it.

“I can tell you historically that just because something isn’t popular from the start doesn’t mean that it’s not good for the American people,” Walker said. “We can talk government policy, we can talk the civil rights movement, we can talk a whole lot of things.”

Even if the House adopts Trump’s ideas on food stamps, it is unlikely that every Senate Republican plus nine Democrats would sign on as well, which is what it would take to pass the Senate. When President Clinton sought stiffer work requirements for temporary cash assistance for poor families in the 1990s, a Republican-led House crafted a bill that both parties backed.

“Unless people are going to be serious about sitting down and doing bipartisan entitlement reform we’re probably not going to make any progress,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania. “We could pass a bill every now and then out of the House, but nothing will get to the president’s desk.”

SOURCE

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Venezuela’s economy is so bad, parents are leaving their children at orphanages

We were at Venezuela’s largest orphanage, just after lunch. The yard was an obstacle course of abandoned children. A little chunk of a boy, on the cusp of 3, sat on a play scooter. He was called El Gordo — the fat one. But when he was left here a few months ago, he was skin and bones.

He zoomed past a 3-year-old in a pink shirt with tiny flowers. “She doesn’t talk much,” one of the attendants said, tousling the girl’s curly hair. At least, not anymore. In September, her mother left her at a subway station with a bag of clothes and a note begging someone to feed the child.

Poverty and hunger rates are soaring as Venezuela’s economic crisis leaves store shelves empty of food, medicine, diapers and baby formula. Some parents can no longer bear it. They are doing the unthinkable.

“People can’t find food,” Salazar told me. “They can’t feed their children. They are giving them up not because they don’t love them but because they do.”

Ahead of my recent reporting trip to Venezuela, I’d heard that families were abandoning or surrendering children. Yet it was a challenge to actually meet the tiniest victims of this broken nation. My requests to enter orphanages run by the socialist government had gone unanswered. One child-protection official — warning of devastating conditions, including a lack of diapers — confided that such a visit would be “impossible.” Some privately run child crisis centers worried that granting access to a journalist could damage their delicate relations with the government.

My Venezuelan colleague Rachelle Krygier introduced me to Fundana — an imposing cement complex perched high on a hill in southeastern Caracas. Her family had founded the nonprofit orphanage and child crisis center in 1991, and her mother remains the head of its board and her aunt its president. Rachelle remembered volunteering there a decade ago, when she was a student and the children were almost exclusively cases of abuse or neglect.

There are no official statistics on how many children are abandoned or sent to orphanages and care homes by their parents for economic reasons. But interviews with officials at Fundana and nine other private and public organizations that manage children in crisis suggest that the cases number in the hundreds — or more — nationwide.

Fundana received about 144 requests to place children at its facility last year, up from about 24 in 2016, with the vast majority of the requests related to economic difficulties.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” said Ang?lica P?rez, a 32-year-old mother of three, near tears.

On a recent afternoon, she showed up at Fundana with her 3-year-old son and her two daughters, ages 5 and 14. She lost her job as a seamstress a few months ago. When her youngest came down with a severe skin condition in December and the public hospital had no medicine, she spent the last of her savings buying ointment from a pharmacy.

Her plan: leave the children at the center, where she knew they would be fed, so she could travel to neighboring Colombia to find work. She hoped she would eventually be able to take them back. Typically, children are allowed to stay at Fundana for six months to a year before being placed in foster care or put up for adoption.

“You don’t know what it’s like to see your children go hungry,” P?rez told me. “You have no idea. I feel like I’m responsible, like I’ve failed them. But I’ve tried everything. There is no work, and they just keep getting thinner.

“Tell me! What am I supposed to do?”

Venezuela descended into a deep recession in 2014, battered by a drop in global oil prices and years of economic mismanagement. The crisis has worsened in the past year. A study by the Catholic charity Caritas in poorer areas of four states found the percentage of children under 5 lacking adequate nutrition had jumped to 71 percent in December from 54 percent seven months earlier.

Venezuela’s child welfare ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the phenomenon of children being abandoned or put in orphanages because of the crisis. The socialist government provides free boxes of food to poor families once a month, although there have been delays as food costs have soared.

For years, Venezuela had a network of public institutions for vulnerable children — traditionally way stations for those needing temporary or long-term protection. But child-welfare workers say the institutions are collapsing, with some at risk of closing because of a shortage of funds and others critically lacking in resources.

So, increasingly, parents are leaving their children in the streets.

In the gritty Sucre district of Caracas, for instance, eight children were abandoned at hospitals and public spaces last year, up from four in 2016. In addition, officials there say they logged nine cases of voluntary abandonment for economic reasons at a child protective services center in the district in 2017, compared with none the previous year. A child-welfare official in El Libertador — one of the capital’s poorest areas — called the situation at public orphanages and temporary-care centers “catastrophic.”

“We have grave problems here,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals from the authoritarian government. “There’s definitely more abandoned children. It’s not just that there are more, but also their health conditions and nutrition are much worse. We can’t take care of them.”

With the public system overwhelmed, the burden is increasingly falling on private facilities run by nonprofit organizations and charities.

Leonardo Rodr?guez, who manages a network of 10 orphanages and care centers across the country, said that in the past, children placed with his centers were almost always from homes where they had suffered physical or mental abuse. But last year, the institutions fielded dozens of calls — as many as two per week — from desperate women seeking to give up their children so that they would be fed. Demand is so high that some of his facilities now have waiting lists.

To manage the surge in demand at Fundana, the organization opened a second facility in Caracas with the aid of private donors. But it still had to turn down dozens of requests to take in children. At Bambi House, Venezuela’s second-largest private orphanage, requests for placements surged about 30 percent last year, said Erika Pardo, its founder. Infants, once in high demand for adoption or foster placement, are also lingering longer in the organization’s care.

“Foster families are asking for older children because diapers and formula are either impossible to find or too expensive,” she said. The number of pregnant women seeking to put their children up for adoption is also jumping.

Jos? Gregorio Hern?ndez, owner of one of Venezuela’s main adoption agencies, Proadopcion, said that in 2017, his organization received 10 to 15 requests monthly from pregnant women seeking to give up their babies, compared with one or two requests per month in 2016. Overwhelmed, the organization had to turn down most of the women. It accepted 50 children in 2017 — up from 30 in 2016.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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14 February, 2018

Leftists are born unhappy

A reader has drawn to my attention a journal article from 2010 that suppports my contention that Leftists are born miseries. The author tries to put a leftist spin on it but the facts pretty well speak for themselves. The abstract is below. I will add some comments at the foot of it

Political leanings vary with facial expression processing and psychosocial functioning

Jacob M. Vigil

Abstract

Conservative, Republican sympathizers show heightened threat reactivity, but greater felt happiness than liberal, Democrat sympathizers. Recent evolutionary models interpret these findings in the context of broader perceptual and expressive proclivities for advertising cues of competency (Republicans) and trustworthiness (Democrats) to others, and in ways that facilitate the formation of distinct social networks, in coordination with individuals’ life histories.

Consistent with this perspective, I found that Republican sympathizers were more likely to report larger social networks and interpret ambiguous facial stimuli as expressing more threatening emotions as compared to Democrat sympathizers, who also reported greater emotional distress, relationship dissatisfaction, and experiential hardships. The findings are discussed in the context of proximate and ultimate explanations of social cognition, relationship formation, and societal cohesion. Keywords evolution, group identity, neuroscience, political psychology, social cognition

SOURCE

So let us look at the findings and not the interpretations

Conservatives are happier. That always comes out and Leftists hate it. They claim that conservatives are maladjusted misfits but happy misfits is not a very persuasive notion.

"Threat reactivity"? A fancy way of saying conservatives are more cautious, which we already knew.

Conservatives have more friends. "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone"

Democrat sympathizers reported greater emotional distress, relationship dissatisfaction, and experiential hardships.

My case rests: Conservatives are the happy people. Leftists are the angry people.

These findings derive from a survey of students so are not authoritative by themselves but they do confirm what we see in Leftist politics all the time.

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Apparently, white Americans should either feel ashamed, guilty or apologetic — simply for being white

“Common hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements.” —American philosopher Eric Hoffer

Something repellently “uniting” is emerging from the more feverish fever swamps of progressive ideology: White Americans should either feel ashamed, guilty or apologetic — simply for being white.

That’s the premise behind “White Racism,” a course taught by professor Ted Thornhill at Florida Gulf Coast University. Thornhill believes a color-blind society is “a myth” that keeps both whites and misguided people of color “from recognizing the everyday realities that show the United States is white supremacist in nature.”

Unsurprisingly, Thornhill has a decidedly one-sided view of those who colonized America, insisting they “practiced all manner of inhumanity against non-whites,” including “genocide, slavery, murder, rape, torture, theft, chicanery, segregation, discrimination, intimidation, internment, humiliation and marginalization.”

That every group of human beings was guilty of all manner of inhumanity at various times in history? That Thornhill has a platform on a college campus and in the media to disseminate his twisted worldview, due to those same colonists establishing a republic where freedom of speech remains a bedrock principle? That they wrote a Declaration of Independence and Constitution establishing inalienable human rights that laid the groundwork for ending inhumanity best exemplified by slavery — slavery practiced by every ethnic group — at a cost of 360,000 lives? That this nation has gone even further, establishing affirmative action programs that continue redressing inequality, or the pernicious concept of disparate impact that presumes discrimination even where none is evident, based on nothing more than disproportionately negative impacts on protected classes of individuals?

Thornhill insists American is little more than a nation “comprised of laws, policies, practices, traditions and an accompanying ideology … that promotes the biological, intellectual and cultural superiority of whites to dominate other groups.”

What about non-white racism? Thornhill concedes non-whites can have “prejudices,” but racism accrues solely to whites because they are beneficiaries of “systemic privilege.”

Such mindless absolutism might surprise many whites whose systemic privilege consists of enduring decades of Rust Belt hopelessness — sometimes relieved by tuning into multi-millionaire black athletes taking a knee during the Star-Spangled Banner portion of an NFL football game. Yet for those who believe skin color is the sole arbiter of privilege, it is not surprising.

It’s not new, either. Critical Race Theory, a philosophy established by Harvard professor Derrick Bell, has long asserted that America is a permanently racist nation whose legal structures are invalid because they are designed to support white supremacy.

Meritocracy, equal opportunity, and colorblindness? Nothing more than illusory concepts used to maintain the racist status quo.

Another club in the assault on whiteness is “cultural appropriation,” as in the idea that the dominant culture inappropriately adopts or utilizes elements of a minority culture — with the attendant subtext that such appropriation is driven by colonial impulses, and an imbalance of power violating the “collective intellectual property rights” of the minority culture.

This separatism-on-steroids is another one-way street whereby certain aspects and/or manifestations of culture are reserved solely from minorities, even as those minorities are free to embrace any aspect of the dominant culture, absent similar recriminations for doing so.

And in a nation where progressive ideology far too often substitutes for a genuine education, such contemptible nonsense is becoming part of the classroom experience. “Social justice activists at a New York high school successfully shut down a production of ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ after a white student landed a lead role,” Fox News reports.

The protests began when Maddi Carroll, a black 17-year-old senior, quit the production as a result. “It shows you that theater wasn’t made for you,” she insisted. “And it shows you that, if you can’t get the parts that are written for you, what parts are you going to get?”

Perhaps the role of Angelica Schuyler, a white woman portrayed by 2016 Tony Award winning actress Renee Elise Goldsberry in “Hamilton,” the hit Broadway play where the nation’s white Founding Fathers were also played by minority actors.

Regardless, students banded together in a group called Students United Ithaca, and they wrote a letter that reveals how twisted their thinking has become. While they insisted the white student who landed the role “is a stellar actor, singer, and dancer” that “any stage, would be lucky to have” she is nonetheless the “epitome of whiteness.” Thus, casting her in this role is at best “cultural appropriation,” and at worst “whitewashing, a racist casting practice which has its roots in minstrelsy.”

The group doubled down on its Facebook page, posting a list of demands aimed at the Ithaca City School District. Two of them stood out. “STOP the racist and openly stated policy of ‘color blind’ casting in the ICSD,” stated one. “STOP ignoring and denying that you have created a white centered program run by white adults for the benefit of white children. White children should also be educated about interrupting these practices of White supremacy,” stated the other.

In other words, meritocracy be damned, along with anything else that doesn’t accord itself with progressivism’s racialist, bean-counting, cultural fiefdom worldview.

Moreover, when color-blindness is deemed racist, that worldview is plumbing Orwellian depths.

But, but, but… acting, singing and dancing talent is subjective and thus open to interpretation, right? “The U.S. Olympic Committee says it’s taking its most diverse team ever to a Winter Games, an impressive and deserved boast that requires a caveat of sorts,” The Washington Post reports. “Yes, USOC officials are pleased the team includes more African-Americans and Asian-Americans — and even the first two openly gay men — than recent winter squads. But they also realize this year’s U.S. Olympic team, not unlike those of most other nations gathering in Pyeongchang this week, is still overwhelmingly white.”

The paper added, “‘We’re not quite where we want to be,’ said Jason Thompson, the USOC’s director of diversity and inclusion. … ‘I think full-on inclusion has always been a priority of Team USA. I think everybody’s always felt it should represent every American.’”

One might be forgiven for assuming that full-on ability would be the priority for an Olympic team. Moreover, the notion that every American can’t be represented by any Olympian — utterly irrespective of ethnicity, sex or sexual orientation — reveals how obsessed the American Left is with identity politics.

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” declared Martin Luther King in 1963.

Fifty-five years later, that dream is in danger of being exterminated by an American Left’s “common hatred” for America’s common culture. It is a common hatred that demands E Pluribus Unum give way to a hodgepodge of cultural fiefdoms where contempt for “the other” is the common currency, and where identity politics arrives at its most repugnant and virulent destination.

The destination where whiteness per se is tantamount to the Original Sin.

SOURCE

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A big audience for Peterson in Edmonton Feb. 11

The more they try to block him, the bigger his audiences get

Dr. Jordan Peterson’s every move sprouts another interview or article that sparks miles-long Twitter brawls and sharp YouTube comment section duels. The controversial clinical psychologist is on tour promoting his new self-help book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

His event, scheduled in Edmonton on the 11th, was declined by the Citadel on the grounds of his rhetoric not aligning with the theatre’s “mandate, values or vision statement,” which they further explained later.

His event was then moved to the Hyatt, which quickly sold out, and was rescheduled yet again to be held at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Centre in Sherwood Park, which has again, sold out.

SOURCE

Peterson tweeted: "Finished my talk to a packed house of 750, 3x the size of the max audience at the canceled Citadel appearance, to a welcoming Alberta audience. Thanks Edmonton."

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For over a year we’ve heard…

A)Trump is unpopular.

B)Trump is not just unpopular, but historically unpopular.

C)Trump is the most unpopular president in his first year ever.

The latest respected Rasmussen poll was released on February 7th of last week. Trump was at 48% approval. That makes President Trump MORE popular than Obama at the exact same date of his presidency.

On Feb 7th, 2010 Obama was at 44% approval.

On Feb 7th, 2018 Trump was at 48% approval.

How is this possible? I thought Trump was universally hated? I thought he had the lowest approval ratings in history? Yet he’s four points more popular than Obama at the exact same time of his presidency.

If Trump is “historically unpopular” and he’s four points higher rated than Obama, what does that make Obama? But we never heard a word back then from the media.

By the way, by week's end Trump was even higher- at 49%.

More problems for the Democrats. The latest Quinnipiac Poll shows Americans now give Trump credit for the economy 48% to 41%.

The latest Real Clear Politics average of many respected polls shows Democrats have lost dramatic ground on the issues of economy, jobs, immigration and national security. The GOP now leads 45-36 on the economy, 43-37 on jobs, 46-33 on national security, and 43-37 on immigration. Blue wave? Sounds like a red tsunami to me.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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13 February, 2018

Who are Jordan Peterson’s followers?

Justin Murphy is a self-described Left-libertarian who has collected some statistics from Reddit which enable him to see who are the supporters of Peterson. He does some analyses which I don't entirely agree with but it is clear that the most popular politician among Peterson supporters is Donald Trump, followed by Gary Johnson, the libertarian party candidate who many other libertarians dismissed as too Leftist (on gun control etc.)

So Murphy shows that there is a large silenced population and that Peterson has picked up the ones who are put off by Trump's very simplistic approach. He sees both Peterson and Trump as having similar messages but with Peterson being the intellectual and impeccably scholarly representative of the same basic ideas. And from Murphy's eigenvector analysis it seems clear that the suppressed ideas are on the whole simply traditional conservative ones

I wrote a book in 1974 under the title "Conservatism as heresy". It seems that not much has changed since. Excerpt only below

In many educated circles, support for Donald Trump is seen as somewhere between insane and evil, quite seriously. Yet, about 50% of the Americans who voted did so for him, so we know at least a non-trivial number of educated people voted for him. But who are they? I haven’t really had strong intuitions about this, and my sense is you just don’t really see or hear from educated and highly thoughtful Trump supporters. I’m aware this could definitely be “my bubble,” but I don’t think it’s just that. I think there exist thoughtful educated Trump supporters, but I think they are systematically unlikely to appear in mainstream culture.

But I have been watching closely the explosion of popularity enjoyed by academic psychologist Jordan Peterson, and it has seemed to me that his constituency might just be some of the educated Trumpians. It is also consistent with my “long-term mass suppression” thesis, because this helps to explain how a random academic psychologist achieved genuinely extraordinary, anomolous levels of fame, all of a sudden. It’s the same pattern with Trump (though I’m not, at all, equating the two individuals): a massive unexpected and rise-to-power indicating a massive reservoir of public interest in something that has hitherto been systematically under-supplied by the status quo.

As an ultralefty who is also 90% on board with Peterson’s key messages, I honestly did not expect this many of the Peterson disciples to be Trump supporters. I was thinking I’d find a sizable minority and say “Aha! A little evidence for my hypothesis.” But Trump is far and away the most favored candidate.

The reason this is important, in my view, is that Trump and Trump supporters are genuinely seen as unworthy of intellectually serious debate in progressive educated circles. But Peterson is an undeniable intellectual master of the most authentic kind. What this means is that genuinely educated progressives who are opposed to Trump need (if they are serious and sincere) to go through Peterson and his intellectual community. In other words, educated progressives cannot pretend there are no serious intellectual forces associated with Trump. There is at least one, and it’s the cluster of ideas Peterson has been working on for decades.

To be clear, I am not saying Peterson has caused support for Trump and I’m not saying Peterson himself supports Trump (I don’t know, but he generally avoids na?ve blanket identifications.) I am just saying that, as far as I can tell, his perspective represents a major, public intellectual force that coincides with at least some vectors of support for Trump.

And the sizable minority of left libertarians makes sense to me (because that’s me, basically). So it’s interesting that left-libertarians are communicating thoughtfully in a community with many Trump supporters. I want to show this to all the left libertarian activists I know (who are very different than left libertarian people in general). To show them there is serious intellectual content in the new seeming “right-wing” ecology of ideas and figures

More HERE

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From the 'Settled Science' Files: USDA Nutrition Guidelines Upside Down

New research finds that high carbohydrate intake is worse for one's health than a diet high in fats.

Go ahead and put a slice of cheese and extra bacon on that burger. A recently published study in The Lancet calls into question the long-running nutritional guidelines advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) since its formation in 1960. The study, which followed 135,335 people in 18 countries on five continents, found that “high carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of mortality, whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality.” It was also concluded, “Total fat and types of fat were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality, whereas saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke.” The researchers suggest, “Dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings.”

This research seems to corroborate a 2010 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that asserted, “There is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease.”

Yet the USDA nutritional guidelines continue to promote the notion that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet is healthier. Meanwhile, the obesity problem in America has only been getting worse. Of course, government-recommended dietary guidelines on food consumption may not be the primary culprit for America’s obesity epidemic, as lower average activity levels since the 1980s may be the greater cause. But the point is that the science is not settled on this issue, even though the USDA has projected it as such for decades.

Might there be a lesson here for those who think “the science is settled” on global climate fluctuations?

SOURCE

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Our Infrastructure Is Not 'Crumbling'

One of the great myths of American politics, no matter who is president and no matter who runs Congress, is that our infrastructure is “crumbling.” Former President Barack Obama repeatedly warned us about our “crumbling infrastructure.” President Donald Trump now tells us that our infrastructure is “crumbling.” The next president is going to hatch a giant plan to fix our crumbling infrastructure as well, because most voters want to believe infrastructure is crumbling.

The infrastructure is not crumbling. Ask someone about infrastructure and his thoughts will probably wander to the worst pothole-infested road he traverses rather than the hundreds of roads he drives on that are perfectly safe and smooth. That’s human nature.

So “crumbling infrastructure” peddlers play on this concern by habitually agonizing over things like the impending outbreak of tragic bridge collapses that will kill thousands. They bring up tragedies like the 2007 disaster with the Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis even though, according to federal investigators, the collapse was due to a design flaw rather than decaying infrastructure. Many outlets and politicians simply ignore the inconvenient fact that the rare fatality involving infrastructure typically has nothing to do with “crumbling” and everything to do with natural elements or human error.

In reality, the number of structurally deficient bridges, never high to begin with, has been dropping over the past 30 years despite all the hand-wringing. The overall number has fallen from over 22 percent in 1992 to under 10 percent in 2016. According to a Reuters analysis of those bridges, only 4 percent of those that carry significant traffic need repairs. Of the nation’s 1,200 busiest bridges, the number of those structurally deficient falls to under 2 percent — or fewer than 20 bridges in the entire country. And none of those bridges need repair to save them from collapse.

That has never stopped politicians from fearmongering, however. “Our roads and bridges are falling apart; our airports are in Third World condition,” Trump claimed during his 2016 campaign. Yet as The Heritage Foundation’s Michael Sargent points out, the percentage of airport runways deemed as poor has fallen from 4 percent in 2004 to 2 percent in 2016. And for the past 30 years, the number of “acceptable” or above roads has remained relatively consistent at approximately 85 percent.

Perhaps because they’re constantly being told that America’s roads are on the verge of disintegrating into dust, some voters aren’t aware that federal, state and local governments spent $416 billion on transportation and water infrastructure in 2014 — around the same 2.4 percent of gross domestic product they’ve been spending for decades. About $165 billion of that $416 billion, incidentally, was spent on highways. (This doesn’t count the bipartisan Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of 2015, which added another $305 billion over five years.)

It’s also worth remembering that when liberals talk about infrastructure, they don’t necessarily mean roads or bridges or airports or water-processing plants. They mean expensive social engineering projects and Keynesian job-creation schemes. In 2017, Senate Democrats unveiled their own $1 trillion infrastructure plan, claiming the additional spending would create 15 million jobs over 10 years. Despite years of hearing otherwise, there is still no evidence that infrastructure bills create self-sustaining jobs — or any jobs, for that matter.

According to a 2010 Associated Press analysis, the first 10 months of Obama’s economic stimulus plan showed virtually no effect on local unemployment rates, which rose and fell regardless of money spent on infrastructure projects. It barely even helped construction jobs. What it did do was fund cronyistic ventures and debt-padding waste.

Around $90 billion of Obama’s infrastructure-heavy “stimulus” plan went to green energy companies (many of which are now in bankruptcy) rather than repairing bridges. Another $1.3 billion went to subsidize Amtrak rather than repairing the roads you actually drive on. Another $8 billion went to various other rail projects (with a priority on high-speed rail) rather than highways or byways or your local street.

Now, though one expects Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill to focus more on traditional projects, the case for the new spending is predicated on the same chilling and misleading rhetoric we’ve been hearing for years. Although still nebulous, the White House’s plan apparently features some attempt to reduce the regulatory burden that the private sector must wade through before gaining approval for building permits. This is a positive step considering the vast majority of infrastructure is still built by the private sector. This should be a goal of the administration with or without the massive infrastructure bill.

How we fund the infrastructure, and who builds these projects, is certainly a debate worth having. But it’s a debate worth having without ever using the word “crumbling.”

SOURCE

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Public Utility Avoids Fixing Damage by Paying Fancy Law Firm Triple the Money

To dodge its obligation, a state utility company paid a fancy law firm triple the amount of money required to fix damages caused by one of its trucks. It’s yet another example of government wasting taxpayer dollars, a senseless misuse of public funds that is all too common in government at all levels. It’s also a bizarre—and costly—struggle between one of the nation’s largest public power utilities and a small business owner whose security cameras captured the truck crushing the drainage system under the asphalt of her parking lot. The utility truck, which weighs nine tons, left a hole in the pavement and a broken drain pipe underground when it used the parking lot to turn around.

The case comes out of Phoenix Arizona where a single mother and respected professional is simply trying to get the parking lot of her chiropractic business fixed. The culprit is the Salt River Project (SRP), which has served central Arizona since 1903 and provides electricity to approximately 1 million customers in a 2,900-square-mile area, including most of metropolitan Phoenix. In addition to four officers and eight executive managers, SRP has more than 40 elected board members, directors and council members. The utility’s website describes it as a “community-based, not-for-profit organization” that has adopted a “leaner, greener and even more customer-centric” strategy that meets customers’ needs. SRP assures the public that funds that it is committed to foundational values that have the best interest of the communities it serves.

SRP’s strategy in the Phoenix chiropractor case seems to contradict its promises and certainly cannot be considered in the best interest of the taxpayers who sustain it. The damage to the property is estimated to be $43,000, according to licensed experts hired by the chiropractor, Melody Jafari. She has spent about $20,000 trying to get the utility company to pay for the damage to her parking lot, including legal costs, an expert witness and temporary repairs to keep her business running. Rather than pay for the repairs, SRP has blown $129,000 so far to avoid taking responsibility. The public utility hired a multi-million-dollar national law firm called Jennings Strouss with offices in Phoenix, Peoria, Tucson and Washington D.C. The law firm boasts of leveraging its resources regionally and nationally and having a litigation department that stands as one of the most respected in the Southwest.

Jafari and SRP have been engaged in a tug of war since the incident occurred in early August 2015. The Phoenix area had just been hit with a fierce monsoon storm and power outages were occurring throughout the region. A utility truck was in the area tending to power lines that had been damaged by the storm, though none were in the vicinity of Jafari’s business. The SRP truck making rounds simply used the parking lot to turn around and that’s when the weight of the truck crushed the drainage system under the asphalt parking lot, leaving a large hole in the pavement and a broken drain pipe. Jafari has numerous security cameras monitoring her property and the entire incident was captured on video. When Jafari initially contacted SRP she says they seemed responsive and she was optimistic the utility would fix the damage. Instead, SRP chose to lawyer up and pay three times the cost of conducting the repairs on attorneys’ fees. Judicial Watch reached out to SRP through its media relations department but never heard back.

In the meantime, Jafari has been left to fend for herself. Her unbelievable years-long ordeal with the utility caught the attention of the local police labor counsel, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA), which is litigating on her behalf. PLEA’s attorney of four decades, Mike Napier, has partnered with Judicial Watch numerous times to address rule of law and conservative issues in the nation’s fifth-largest city and fastest growing county, Maricopa. Napier told Judicial Watch that back in December 2015 SRP offered to compensate Jafari $750 for a hot patch repair of the pavement, which doesn’t begin to cover the magnitude of the damage.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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12 February, 2018

Capitol Hill GOP Spending Like Obama Is Still President

I was not going to comment on this until I see what actually gets enacted but all the comments I have seen from others miss an important point. Obama and the Donks made an amazing discovery: At least for the USA, you can spend all you like without raising taxes and nothing bad happens! According to conventional economic theory, Obama & Co. should have caused a roaring inflation that made the greenback as worthless as the Venezuelan Bolivar. It didn't happen. Inflation remained within normal low bounds.

Why did it not happen? There has been much scratching of heads about it among economists of both the Right and the Left and various theories have been put up. I have put up attempted explanations myself. But basically no-one knows. It's a mystery on a par with the Holy Trinity.

And Trump has pushed the mystery even further. He is betting that you can actually CUT taxes and still spend as much as you like. On form, he will almost certainly get away with it, if only because his spending will increase employment and hence tax revenue.

So, basically, while we seem to be in this happy state of suspension from reality, Trump and the GOP are saying "Let the good times roll. Why should Obama have all the fun? Let US get credit for looking after all sorts of special interests with all of this magic money".

Unless there's a whole new economic truth somewhere that we have not yet discovered, the whole show has got to come down to earth some time but when that will be nobody knows. But Trump and the GOP are right to take advantage of our strange new fiscal state while they can.

In the aftermath of the 2010 Tea Party wave that returned Republicans to the majority in the House conservatives proposed a plan to reduce spending and balance the budget called “Cut, Cap and Balance.”

The plan would have cut and capped spending and brought the budget into balance after a period of time, and it federal debtwould have worked – except the Republican leaders in the House and Senate never gave it their support or a vote.

Instead they championed a plan worked out between Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid and Barack Obama that put spending caps in place through a process known as “sequestration” that placed most of the spending cuts on the defense budget.

Fast forward to 2018 and the three-day government shutdown over amnesty for illegal aliens that was a PR disaster for the Democrats.

Claiming to want to avoid another government shutdown, the Senate’s Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer announced a bipartisan deal to increase defense and domestic spending by roughly $300 billion over two years, according to administration and congressional sources quoted by Politico's Burgess Everett and John Bresnahan. The deal will also lift the debt ceiling through the election and include tens of billions of dollars in disaster aid.

Everett and Bresnahan report the agreement would increase defense spending this year by $80 billion and domestic spending by $63 billion beyond strict budget caps, according to a summary of the deal they obtained for POLITICO. Next year, defense spending would increase by $85 billion and domestic funding by $68 billion beyond the caps. The deal also includes $140 billion for defense and $20 billion for domestic in emergency spending over two years.

President Trump quickly announced his support tweeting, "The Budget Agreement today is so important for our great Military," he wrote. "It ends the dangerous sequester and gives Secretary Mattis what he needs to keep America Great. Republicans and Democrats must support our troops and support this Bill!" However, conservatives were equally quick to pan the Schumer – McConnel deal.

Our friends at The Club for Growth issued a statement saying, “…now that the BCA spending caps are busted under this deal yet again, it’s clear that McConnell and the GOP establishment want to speed up the big government freight train with the help of big spending liberals on the other side of the aisle. As if that’s not bad enough, this deal also includes $80+ billion in so-called disaster relief spending, cronyist tax extenders, an expansion of farm subsidies, and another suspension in the debt ceiling, conveniently timed to expire after the mid-term elections.”

Nowhere in this deal, the Club for Growth noted, are the $54 billion in spending cuts outlined in President Trump’s budget. Instead, the big government freight train is running out of control.

The deal ends sequestration caps on the Pentagon without acceding to Democratic demands for equal boosts to domestic spending, but it still raises spending by nearly $300 billion over the next two fiscal years.

That was a bridge too far for the Freedom Caucus reported Victor Morton of The Washington Times.

The principled limited government constitutional conservatives of the House Freedom Caucus tweeted Wednesday night that they officially oppose the budget deal struck by McConnell and Schumer earlier in the day.

“Official position: HFC opposes the caps deal. We support funding our troops, but growing the size of government by 13 percent is not what the voters sent us here to do,” the conservative group posted on Twitter.

The loss of the Caucus, which is believed to have a membership of almost 40 representatives, basically ensures the Senate deal cannot pass the House without significant support from House Democrats.

SOURCE

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Obsessed with Trump

Michael Reagan

You watch Fox News - "We love President Trump."

You watch MSNBC or CNN - "We hate President Trump."

Is there any other news going on in the world that isn't about Trump? I swear, if the World Trade Center had come down yesterday, the top story today in the mainstream media would be all about Donald Trump. What did he do wrong or not do? Say or not say?

While Trump and his daily reality TV show have become a profit center for the media, the rest of us can't even mention his name.

Trump has become a cuss word - "Trump you! Trump you and your whole family!"

I can remember when everybody in the media loved Trump before they hated Trump. CNN loved to have him on their air because he could be counted on to bring higher ratings.

Going back five, 10 or 15 years ago, when Trump was a celebrity billionaire golfer from New York, every TV network or cable channel courted him because they knew he'd drive up their audience numbers.

Now you have two angry Love Trump/Hate Trump camps holed up in their own media bunkers, talking only to their hardcore followers.

For me, it's sad to see that nobody is willing to have a fruitful conversation with the other side the way they did when my father was in Washington.

On Tuesday, when we marked my dad's 107th birthday at the Reagan Library, his chief of staff, James Baker III, reminded us how my father dealt with his opponents.

He never demeaned or degraded them or called them names. And even if they didn't agree with him politically, or were supporting some other Republican for president, they liked him personally.

Baker was a perfect example. My father hired him to be his chief of staff after he had run two tough presidential primary campaigns against him, one for Gerald Ford in 1976 and one for George H.W. Bush in 1980.

Unlike Trump, who constantly uses tweets to attack his critics and opponents, my father always took the high road.

When he was in a debate he didn't try to destroy people. He knew at some point he'd have to go back and work with them to get things done. That's how he and Tip O'Neill were able to get the largest tax break in American history passed through Congress in 1981.

It's almost impossible to make that kind of deal anymore in Washington. We live in a very angry, angry time, and President Trump doesn't seem to want to do anything to make people get along any better.

Meanwhile, both parties in Congress want 100 percent of everything they desire, and when they do come to a rare agreement like they did Wednesday on the bipartisan budget deal, there are people who can't control their anger.

The two-year budget, which adds $300 billion in spending to the federal deficit, has made the military and national security folks happy, but it has set some fiscal hawks' hair on fire.

It'd be nice to think that the rare display of bipartisanship on the federal budget is a sign that good things are going to start happening in Congress.

But it's really just the latest proof that there's only one thing that can consistently bring the two parties in Congress together - spending money it doesn't have.

SOURCE

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"Armageddon" continues: CVS to hike wages, introduce paid parental leave with windfall from new tax law

CVS Health will increase employee pay and sweeten benefits to some employees using a portion of the company's windfall from the new tax law.

CVS will boost starting pay for hourly employees to $11 per hour from $9 per hour, starting in April. Pay ranges and rates will be adjusted for many of its retail pharmacy technicians, front store associates and other hourly retail employees later in the year. Full-time employees will qualify for as much as four weeks of paid parental leave, and worker health-care premiums will hold steady at current rates.

The health-care company has more than 240,000 employees.

Retailers have started hiking their minimum wages to remain competitive in a tightening labor market. Numerous big names have announced raises and added benefits since President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December.

Walmart, the world's largest private employer, last month said it would increase its starting pay to $11, give one-time bonuses to some employees and expand its parental and maternity leave policy.

CVS' stores are key to its proposed $69 billion acquisition of health insurer Aetna. The pair want to create an integrated health system that combines pharmacy and health benefits while delivering preventive care services through the drugstore chain's retail clinics. Shareholders are slated to vote on the deal on March 20.

The news came as CVS reported its fourth-quarter results, which were better than analysts expected on both the top and bottom line.

Net income in the latest quarter rose to $3.29 billion, or $3.22 per share, from $1.71 billion, or $1.59 per share, in the year-earlier quarter.

Earnings in the latest period, included a $1.5 billion benefit related to the new tax law. After stripping out special items, such as the tax gain and a $56 million charge related to the proposed acquisition of Aetna, the company earned $1.92 per share, above analysts' estimates of $1.89 cents per share.

CVS' revenue grew 5 percent to $48.39 billion from $45.97 billion in the year earlier. Its pharmacy services revenue surged 9.3 percent from the year-ago quarter, reaching $34.15 billion, up from $31.26 billion.

Same-store sales for the pharmacy chain's front store, which doesn't include pharmacy, dipped 0.7 percent in the quarter, though a particularly bad cold and flu season helped boost traffic a bit.

"As much as CVS is forward thinking and innovative in health, it is an extraordinarily unimaginative and backward-looking retailer," said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail. "This is one of the reasons why front of store sales are still in negative territory despite very weak prior year comparatives and a boost to sales from remedies for a particularly nasty flu and cold season."

Shares of CVS fell about 5 percent on Thursday.

CVS said the employee investments will total about $425 million annually. This spending includes the wage increases and improved benefits.

The company also anticipates spending at least $275 million of the tax windfall on investments in the business, including data analytics, care management solutions and pilot programs.

"The only thing we can think of for why the stock is down today is because a lot of these investments are going to be long-term phenomenons," said Edward Jones analyst John Boylan. "We think over the long-term they will help the company, but we think that's already reflected in the stock price."

As a result of these investments, the company expects operating profit for the year to be in the range of down 1.5 percent to up 1.5 percent. Previously, CVS expected growth between 1 percent and 4 percent.

For the first quarter, CVS now anticipates operating profit growth between 0.5 percent and 4.5 percent. CVS expects the tax law changes to add $1.2 billion to its cash flow.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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11 February, 2018

Trump – Middle American Radical

Pat Buchanan below has some good points but I think he is still too general in his analysis of Trump's thinking. The key to Trump is that he is not a policy wonk of any kind. He goes by instinct and common sense only. But his instincts are conservative so he does a lot of good. So while Buchanan makes a brave attempt to categorize him I think all such attempts will fail. He is "sui generis", one of a kind. There are no others like him or even nearly like him.

President Trump is the leader of America's conservative party. Yet not even his allies would describe him as a conservative in the tradition of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk or William F. Buckley.

In the primaries of 2016, all his rivals claimed the mantle of Mr. Conservative, Ronald Reagan. Yet Trump captured the party's heart.

Who, then, and what is Donald Trump? In a Federalist essay, "Trump Isn't a Conservative — And That's a Good Thing," Frank Cannon comes close to the mark.

Trump, he writes, "would more accurately be described as a 'radical anti-progressive'" who is "at war with the progressives who have co-opted American civil society." Moreover, Trump "is willing to go further than any other previous conservative to defeat them."

Many "elite conservatives," writes Cannon, believe the "bedrock institutions" they treasure are "not subject to the same infectious politicization to which the rest of society has succumbed."

This belief is naive, says Cannon, "ridiculous on its face."

"Radical anti-progressives" recognize that many institutions — the academy, media, entertainment and the courts — have been co-opted and corrupted by the left. And as these institutions are not what they once were, they no longer deserve the respect they once had.

Yet most conservatives will only go so far in criticizing these institutions. We see this in how cradle Catholics find it difficult to criticize the Church in which they were birthed and raised, despite scandals and alterations in the liturgy and doctrine.

Trump sees many institutions as fortresses lately captured by radical progressives that must be attacked and besieged if they are to be recaptured and liberated. Cannon deals with three such politicized institutions: the media, the NFL and the courts.

Trump does not attack freedom of the press but rather the moral authority and legitimacy of co-opted media institutions. It is what CNN has become, not what CNN was, that Trump disrespects.

These people are political enemies posturing as journalists who create "fake news" to destroy me, says Trump. Enraged media, responding, reveal themselves to be not far removed from what Trump says they are.

And, since Trump, media credibility has plummeted.

Before 2016, the NFL was an untouchable. When the league demanded that North Carolina accept the radical transgender agenda or face NFL sanctions, the Tar Heel State capitulated. When Arizona declined to make Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday in 1990, the NFL took away the Super Bowl. The Sun State caved.

This year, the league demanded respect for the beliefs and behavior of NFL players insulting Old Glory by "taking a knee" during the national anthem.

Many conservative politicians and commentators, fearing the NFL's almost mythic popularity in Middle America, remained mute.

But believing instinctively America would side with him, Trump delivered a full-throated defense of the flag and called for kicking the kneelers off the field, out of the game, and off the team.

"Fire them!" Trump bellowed.

And Trump triumphed. The NFL lost fans and viewers. The players ended the protests. No one took a knee at the Super Bowl.

Before Trump, the FBI was sacrosanct. But Trump savaged an insiders' cabal at the top of the FBI he saw as having plotted to defeat him.

Trump has not attacked an independent judiciary, but courts like the Ninth Circuit, controlled by progressives and abusing their offices to advance progressive goals, and federal judges using lifetime tenure and political immunity to usurp powers that belong to the president — on immigration, for example.

Among the reasons Congress is disrespected is that it let the Supreme Court seize its power over social policy and convert itself into a judicial dictatorship — above Congress.

Trump is no Beltway conservative, writes Cannon.

"Trump doesn't play by these ridiculous rules designed to keep conservatives stuck in a perpetual state of losing — a made-for-CNN version of the undefeated Harlem Globetrotters versus the winless Washington Generals. Trump instead seeks to fight and delegitimize any institution the Left has captured, and rebuild it from the ground up."

The Trump supporters who most relish the wars he is waging are the "Middle American Radicals," of whom my columnist-colleague and late friend Sam Francis used to write.

There was a time such as today before in America.

After World War II, as it became clear our long-ruling liberal elites had blundered horribly in trusting Stalin, patriots arose to cleanse our institutions of treason and its fellow travelers.

The Hollywood Ten were exposed and went to jail. Nixon nailed Alger Hiss. Truman used the Smith Act to shut down Stalin's subsidiary, the Communist Party USA. Spies in the atom bomb program were run down. The Rosenbergs went to the electric chair.

Liberals call it the "Red Scare." And they are right to do so.

For when the patriots of the Greatest Generation like Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy came home from the war and went after them, the nation's Reds had never been so scared in their entire lives.

SOURCE

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A British parallel to the FBI v Trump saga

Last week saw political eruptions on either side of the Atlantic about a similar issue: whether government officials are neutral. The row over the leaked forecasts for Brexit, and whether civil servants were being partisan in preparing and perhaps leaking them, paralleled the row in America about the declassified Congressional memo on the FBI and Donald Trump. “Trump’s unparalleled war on a pillar of society: law enforcement”, said TheNew York Times. “Brexit attacks on civil service ‘are worthy of 1930s Germany’ ” said The Observer.

To summarise, in London a government forecast that even a soft Brexit would be slightly worse for the economy than non-Brexit was conveniently leaked. This happened just as some politicians and commentators were trying to shift the country towards accepting a form of customs union with the European Union — that is to say, not really leaving at all.

In Washington, the president declassified a memo prepared by Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee. It alleged that the FBI got a warrant from a secret court to bug a Trump campaign executive, using as evidence mainly a “salacious and unverified” dossier (the former FBI director James Comey’s words) prepared by a British ex-spy paid by the Democratic Party, a fact that the FBI apparently failed on three occasions to tell the court. The FBI also allegedly leaked the dodgy dossier to the press.

There are two sides to both stories. In Washington, the Democrats and some Republicans see a president prepared to break secrecy to make the FBI look bad, presumably as a distraction from its investigation of his alleged links with Russia. In London, Remainers focus on the fact that it is unusual and wrong for politicians to attack civil servants who are not allowed to answer back.

Nobody disputes, surely, that civil servants have views. Since 91 per cent of Washington DC voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and a similar percentage of public servants here probably voted Remain, we can guess what those views are in most cases. Former mandarins in the House of Lords and on Twitter are among the most outspoken opponents of Brexit in any form. In the FBI case, several key people (including the British
ex-spy, Christopher Steele) are on record as having been passionately opposed to Mr Trump’s election.

As chancellor, George Osborne set up the Office of Budget Responsibility precisely to remove economic forecasting from political pressure. Yet the Treasury returned to economic forecasting during the referendum campaign. It said that “a vote to leave would represent an immediate and profound shock to our economy. That shock would push our economy into a recession and lead to an increase in unemployment of around 500,000, GDP would be 3.6 per cent smaller” and so on. This turned out to be based on ridiculous assumptions and was utterly discredited by what actually happened.

This case is different, however. By all accounts the Treasury was stung by the humiliating failure of Project Fear (which would never have been exposed if Remain had won the referendum, remember). This latest forecast is not from a Treasury model at all but a “cross-departmental tool”, as Amber Rudd said yesterday. Nor is it based on the discredited “gravity” assumption, that trade decreases with the square of distance. It is thought to be a “computable general equilibrium model” of the kind that the Treasury’s critics have long recommended.

It is not clear who developed the model. It might have been contracted from an outside consultant. There is no evidence it has been “back-tested” on the British economy’s past performance to see if it works. More problematically still, the model does not test the government’s preferred policy at all, and makes ludicrous assumptions about what would happen under its three scenarios.

For example, if we leave on World Trade Organisation terms, it assumes we would keep the external tariffs of the EU that inflate the household costs of British consumers. Given that trade with the EU is about 12 per cent of British GDP, in order to achieve an 8 per cent hit to GDP, the model has to assume we would lose at least half that trade, which is for the birds. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say in modelling.

Who commissioned the forecasts? It appears it was not Treasury officials but nor was it a politician. The relevant ministers have distanced themselves. It looks increasingly like a freelance operation from within the top layers of the civil service. If so, this might indeed justify criticism not so much for doing analysis, but in who they got to model it. Being culturally averse to Brexit and free markets, they just would not think of going to economists like Roger Bootle, Gerard Lyons, Ryan Bourne, Liam Halligan and Patrick Minford, who see opportunities in leaving. They do not even realise they are being biased.

The pass-the-smelling-salts shock of those leaping to the defence of civil servants is excessive, as was their comparison of the critics to Hitler and snake-oil salesmen. Civil servants get secure, well-paid jobs with early retirement and excellent pensions. And when they screw up, politicians generally carry the can for them. An occasional question from a politician about whether they are letting their prejudices get in the way of doing their job may be uncomfortable, but it’s hardly unreasonable.

If they mount a freelance operation that frustrates a democratic mandate then all bets should be off, just as if it emerges that the FBI was freelancing to undermine a presidential candidate (either of them), then it would be a major scandal.

Britain faces its greatest decision in decades. If we leave the customs union, keep its tariffs and do nothing else, of course there will be pain. But if we also open up our economy more to the growing markets of Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas, and take measures to encourage investment and innovation, we will blow away any pessimistic forecasts. Civil servants should be modelling those possibilities.

SOURCE

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Fake News and the Tet Offensive

Leftist fake news goes back a long way

Seemingly out of nowhere, a shock wave hit South Vietnam on Jan. 30, 1968. In a coordinated assault unprecedented in ferocity and scale, more than 100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers stormed out of their sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. They went on to attack more than 100 towns and cities across South Vietnam.

The following 77 days changed the course of the Vietnam War. The American people were bombarded with a nightly stream of devastating television and daily print reporting. Yet what they saw was so at odds with the reality on the ground that many Vietnam veterans believe truth itself was under attack.

The Tet Offensive had ambitious objectives: cause a mass uprising against the government, collapse the South Vietnamese Army, and inflict mass casualties on U.S. forces. The men in the Hanoi Politburo—knowing the war’s real center of gravity was in Washington —hoped the attack ultimately would sap the American people’s will to fight.

A key component of this strategy was terror. Thousands of South Vietnamese government officials, schoolteachers, doctors, missionaries and ordinary civilians—especially in Hue City—were rounded up and executed in an act of butchery not often seen on the battlefield.

Despite their ferocity, by most objective military standards, the communists achieved none of their goals. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces held fast, regrouped and fought back. By late March they had achieved a decisive victory over the communist forces. Hanoi wouldn’t be able to mount another full-scale invasion of South Vietnam until the 1972 Easter offensive.

But in living rooms across America, the nightly news described an overwhelming American defeat. The late Washington Post Saigon correspondent Peter Braestrup later concluded the event marked a major failure in the history of American journalism.

Braestrup, in “Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington” (1977), attributed this portrayal to television’s showbiz tradition. TV news editors put little premium on breadth of coverage, fact-finding or context.

The TV correspondent, Braestrup wrote, like the anchorman back home, had to pose on camera with authority. He had to maintain a dominant appearance while telling viewers more than he knew or could know. The commentary was thematic and highly speculative; it seemed preoccupied with network producers’ insatiable appetite for “impact.”

Braestrup criticized print media with equal vigor. The great bulk of wire-service output used by U.S. newspapers did not come from eyewitness accounts. Rather, he wrote, it was passed on from second- or third-hand sources reprocessed several times over.

He was stridently critical of “interpretive reporting,” in which editors allowed reporters to write under the rubric of “news analysis” and “commentary.” This, he asserts, produced “pervasive distortions” and a “disaster image.” The misinformation, fixed in the minds of the American people, played a role in shifting public opinion against the war.

“At Tet,” Braestrup assessed, “the press shouted that the patient was dying, then weeks later began to whisper that he somehow seemed to be recovering—whispers apparently not heard amid the clamorous domestic reaction to the initial shouts.”

Braestrup suggested that the press committed journalistic malpractice by taking sides against the Johnson administration and not correcting the record once the fog of the battle had lifted. These hasty assumptions and judgments, he documented, “were simply allowed to stand.”

Braestrup’s exhaustive analysis remains controversial. His friend and colleague at the Washington Post, the late Don Oberdorfer, attributed the erosion of public support to the credibility of the Johnson administration. The president’s office regularly issued rosy pronouncements at odds with the tactical ebb and flow on the battlefield.

But even to this day it’s difficult to find fault with Braestrup’s concluding insight: The professional obligation of journalists in a free society is to stay calm and get the story straight. It is not, as Walter Lippmann admonished, to conflate “truth” with the assembly and processing of a commodity called “news.”

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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9 February, 2018

When kindness made a hate-filled Leftist think again

But she still can see no good in Trump

I went to the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., and I arrived home feeling heartbroken. It was the last way I expected to feel.

I had spent the morning sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with my 16-year-old daughter, Katherine, whose silent tears on election night in 2016 had marked the beginning of this national nightmare for me. She had insisted we drive from Charlotte to D.C. this year so that we could "protest in front of the president’s house." We heard all of the inspiring speakers; we relished the creativity of the posters and slogans. Being among so many like-minded people was comforting. I heard one woman say, "I love being here today. It makes me feel less alone."

I wanted to be with people who shared my anger. Because I have been so angry about Donald Trump this past year. I have been angry at my country for electing this man, angry at my neighbors who support him, angry at the wealthy who sacrificed our country and its goodness for tax breaks, angry at the coal miners who believed his promises.

My fury has been bottomless. I drink my morning coffee from a cup that says, "I hate to wake up when Donald Trump is President." The constancy of my outrage has been exhausting, yet I have not yet found a way to quell it — nearly each day has brought a new reason to stoke the fire. But a day with my daughter, communing with the angry and the aggrieved, seemed a good way to try.

After the march, Katherine and I hit the road in the late afternoon, feeling good; we had done our part to express our outrage. We were about 90 minutes south of D.C. when I heard a terrible popping sound. I assumed I had blown a tire and headed toward the nearest exit. The popping was followed by screeching — were we now driving on metal? Luckily, there was a gas station right off the exit.

Before I could do anything but park my gray Prius, a man rushed over. "I heard you coming down that road," he said. Before I could say much he started surveying the situation. He didn’t so much offer to help us as get right to work.

It turned out that I hadn’t blown a tire; a huge piece of plastic under the front bumper had come loose, causing the screeching as it scraped along the road. After determining that he couldn’t cut the plastic off, he ran over to his car to grab some zip ties so that he could secure the piece back in place.

He did all of this so quickly that I didn’t have time to grab the prominent RESIST sticker on the side of my car, which suddenly felt needlessly alienating. As this man lay on the ground under my car with his miracle zip ties, I asked if he thought they would hold for four more hours of driving.

"Just ask any redneck like me what you can do with zip ties — well, zip ties and duct tape. You can solve almost any car problem. You’ll get home safe," he said, turning to his teenage son standing nearby. "You can say that again," his son agreed.

The whole interaction lasted 10 minutes, tops. Katherine and I made it home safely.

Our encounter changed the day for me. While I tried to dive back into my liberal podcast, my mind kept being pulled back to the gas station. I couldn’t stop thinking about the man who called himself a "redneck" who came to our rescue. I sized him up as a Trump voter, just as he likely drew inferences from my Prius and RESIST sticker. But for a moment, we were just two people and the exchange was kindness (his) and gratitude (mine).

As I drove home, I felt the full extent to which Trump has actually diminished my own desire to be kind. He is keeping me so outraged that I hold ill will toward others on a daily basis. Trump is not just ruining our nation, he is ruining me. By the end of the drive, I felt heartbroken.

When my husband and I first moved to Charlotte eight years ago, I liked to tell people that our neighborhood represented the best impulses of America. In our little two-block craftsman-home development, we had people of every political persuasion from liberal to moderate Republican to tea party, and we all got along. We held porch parties in the summer and a progressive dinner at Christmas. We put being a cohesive neighborhood above politics.

But this year, I realize, I retreated from my porch. Trump’s cruelty and mendacity demand outrage and the most vigorous resistance a nation can muster. Yet the experience with the man at the side of the road felt humbling. It reminded me that we are all just people trying to get home safe. It felt like a sign, that maybe if we treat one another with the kindness and gratitude that is so absent from our president and his policies, putting our most loving selves forward, this moment can transform into something more bearable? I want to come away from the march with that simple lesson, but it begs this question: How do we hold onto the fire fueling our resistance to the cruelty Trump unleashes, but also embrace the world with love? I wish I knew.

SOURCE

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We have to Limit Spending, not taxes

Walter E. Williams

Some people have called for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution as a means of reining in a big-spending Congress. That's a misguided vision, for the simple reason that in any real economic sense, as opposed to an accounting sense, the federal budget is always balanced. The value of what we produced in 2017 — our gross domestic product — totaled about $19 trillion. If the Congress spent $4 trillion of the $19 trillion that we produced, unless you believe in Santa Claus, you know that Congress must force us to spend $4 trillion less privately.

Taxing us is one way that Congress can do that. But federal revenue estimates for 2017 are about $3.5 trillion, leaving an accounting deficit of about $500 billion. So taxes are not enough to cover Congress' spending. Another way Congress can get us to spend less privately is to enter the bond market. It can borrow. Borrowing forces us to spend less privately, and it drives up interest rates and crowds out private investment. Finally, the most dishonest way to get us to spend less is to inflate our currency. Higher prices for goods and services reduce our real spending.

The bottom line is the federal budget is always balanced in any real economic sense. For those enamored of a balanced budget amendment, think about the following. Would we have greater personal liberty under a balanced federal budget with Congress spending $4 trillion and taxing us $4 trillion, or would we be freer under an unbalanced federal budget with Congress spending $2 trillion and taxing us $1 trillion? I'd prefer the unbalanced budget. The true measure of government's impact on our lives is government spending, not government taxing.

Tax revenue is not our problem. The federal government has collected nearly 20 percent of the nation's gross domestic product almost every year since 1960. Federal spending has exceeded 20 percent of the GDP for most of that period. Because federal spending is the problem, that's where our focus should be. Cutting spending is politically challenging. Every spending constituency sees what it gets from government as vital, whether it be Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients or farmers, poor people, educators or the military. It's easy for members of Congress to say yes to these spending constituencies, because whether it's Democrats or Republicans in control, they don't face a hard and fast bottom line.

The nation needs a constitutional amendment that limits congressional spending to a fixed fraction, say 20 percent, of the GDP. It might stipulate that the limit could be exceeded only if the president declared a state of emergency and two-thirds of both houses of Congress voted to approve the spending. By the way, the Founding Fathers would be horrified by today's congressional spending. From 1787 to the 1920s, except in wartime, federal government spending never exceeded 4 percent of our GDP.

During the early '80s, I was a member of the National Tax Limitation Committee. Our distinguished blue-ribbon drafting committee included its founder, Lew Uhler, plus notables such as Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Paul McCracken, Bill Niskanen, Craig Stubblebine, Robert Bork, Aaron Wildavsky, Robert Nisbet and Robert Carleson. The U.S. Senate passed our proposed balanced budget/spending limitation amendment to the U.S. Constitution on Aug. 4, 1982, by a bipartisan vote of 69-31, surpassing the two-thirds requirement by two votes. In the House of Representatives, the amendment was approved by a bipartisan majority (236-187), but it did not meet the two-thirds vote required by Article 5 of the Constitution. The amendment can be found in Milton and Rose Friedman's "Tyranny of the Status Quo" or the appendix of their "Free to Choose."

SOURCE

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Pseudo-Christians Promote Open Borders And A Gender Neutral God

The governing body of the Episcopalian Diocese of Washington, D.C., approved measures to adopt gender neutral pronouns for God, embrace transgenderism, and a push for open borders.

The 123rd Diocesan Convention of the Episcopal Church in D.C. passed a trifecta of resolutions Saturday to replace all gendered pronouns referring to God with gender neutral pronouns, oppose laws against illegal immigration, and open traditionally gender restricted congregational roles and facilities, like bathrooms, to transgender individuals. The convention, held at the Washington National Cathedral, passed the resolutions within an hour, according to The Institute On Religion & Democracy.

The resolutions, entitled “On Becoming a Sanctuary Diocese: Offering Sacred Welcome to Immigrants,” “On the Gendered Language for God,” and “On Inclusion of Transgender People,” garnered support from Rev. Kimberly Lucas, who sponsored all three, and Rev. Alex Dyer, who proposed two of the resolutions. Lucas serves as rector of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in D.C. and Dyer serves as rector of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Parish in D.C., both of which have suffered a massive decline in member participation within the last decade, according to parochial reports.

Dyer also garnered attention for installing banners around construction fences depicting Jesus face-palming with sarcastic quips like “The President said what?” and the tagline “a progressive church for a progressive city.”

The D.C. diocese resolved, in their “Sacred Welcome To Immigrants,” to “oppose the policies of the incumbent Executive Branch that target undocumented immigrants for deportation while also placing undue restrictions on refugees seeking safe haven in the U.S.” Those who drafted the resolution said they intended it as a message of solidarity to illegal immigrants within the diocese.

The diocese also agreed, via the gendered language resolution, to replace all references to the Father and the Son in the Book of Common Prayer with gender neutral pronouns, a move which some theologians decry as undermining the theology of the Trinity, that is one of the central tenets of Christianity. The resolution’s authors argued, in contrast, that “our current gender roles shape and limit our understanding of God.”

Rev. Linda R. Calkins, a diocesan delegate and proponent of the resolution, also urged the diocese to consider adopting the “The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation,” that removes all gender specific pronouns for God from scripture.

Calkins attempted to justify her position by arguing that El Shaddai, one of the Hebrew names for God in the Old Testament, really means “God with breasts.” The actual meaning of El Shaddai is widely debated among biblical scholars, as the most popular interpretation is “God Almighty,” though other historical translations come out to “God the Destroyer,” “God of the Mountain,” or “The God who is sufficient.” Scholars adhering to the “breasts” translation actually interpret the name as a depiction of God giving blessings of nourishment and fertility, rather than literally ascribing feminine qualities to God.

Parishes within the diocese will also “remove all obstacles to full participation in congregational life by making all gender-specific facilities and activities fully accessible, regardless of gender identity and expression,” according to the resolution on embracing transgender individuals. Those who wrote and proposed the resolution asserted that gender definitions had become fluid in modern society and that, rather than adhere to a biblical view of God’s intended natural order for creation, the church needed to adapt to the whims of culture.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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8 February, 2018

Trump: Nancy Pelosi Is 'Our Secret Weapon'

In remarks at the Sheffer Corporation in Blue Ash, Ohio, Monday, President Trump criticized House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), calling her the Republicans' "secret weapon."

"Nancy Pelosi -- what she's doing to this country -- and she's gone so far left, and Schumer's gone so far left -- I look forward to running against them," Trump said, referring to both the midterm election in November and the presidential election in 2020.

Trump urged his audience to "start thinking about '18. Start thinking about November." He said Pelosi and her fellow Democrats want to raise taxes on Americans while depriving the military of funding. Then he mentioned the bonuses and rising family incomes created, he said, by the Republican tax cut legislation.

So Nancy Pelosi, again, said, 'That's crumbs.' Well, she's a rich woman who lives in a big, beautiful house in California who wants to give all of your money away, and she talked about crumbs.

And I really think her statement about crumbs -- because you're getting thousands and thousands of dollars, and you're getting it every year. So I think her statement, 'crumbs,' will be equivalent -- and I said this the other day for the first time. When I first heard the word 'deplorable,' I thought it was a bad thing. But I had no idea it was not going to be good for our opponent.

It was not good, because, about two days after she (Hillary Clinton) said it, I go to a rally, and everyone's wearing shirts: 'I am a deplorable.' 'We're all deplorables.' I said, what's going on with the word 'deplorable,' Rob?"

You know, we had that, right? It just went pretty wild. It was not a good day for her, and I think this is not a good day for Nancy Pelosi. She's our secret weapon.

The crowd laughed, and Trump continued:

"No, she's our secret -- I just hope they don't change her. There are a lot of people that want to run her out. She's -- she's really out there, and I'm supposed to make a deal with her."

Pelosi is insisting on an immediate immigration deal that gives legal status to dreamers, while deferring any action on chain migration or the diversity visa lottery. President Trump insists that any dreamer deal include three other elements -- border security, including a wall; and an end to chain migration and the diversity visa lottery.

SOURCE

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Remembering the Great Communicator on His Birthday

In his 1989 farewell address to the American people, President Ronald Reagan corrected the simplistic notion that he was simply a great communicator by saying: “I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things,” gathered from “our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in principles that have guided us for two centuries.”

But Reagan was, in fact, a superb orator—one of the most inspiring in American politics, at ease with a formal address to Congress or to the British Parliament, a “fireside chat” with the American people from the Oval Office or a blunt challenge to a foreign adversary.

As we celebrate his birthday this week, I offer some of the “secrets” about his public speaking I have discovered during my decades of writing about our 40th president.

In “Speaking My Mind,” a collection of his speeches, the president readily admitted he had honed his speaking ability while in Hollywood making movies and later as host of the TV program “GE Theater.” He was aware that his political success was due, in part, to his ability to give a good speech based on two things: “to be honest” in what you are saying, and “to be in touch with [your] audience.”

The president emphasized that it was not just “my rhetoric or delivery” that carried him into the White House but that his speeches contained basic truths that the average American instinctively recognized, like the necessity of preserving individual freedom. “What I said simply made sense to the [man] on the street,” he said.

In his early career as a radio broadcaster in Iowa, he discovered a basic rule that he followed all his life: “Talk to your audience, not over their heads or through them. Don’t try to talk in a special language of broadcasting or even of politics, just use normal everyday words.”

On the eve of his election as president, when a reporter asked Reagan what he thought other Americans saw in him, he replied: “Would you laugh if I told you that I think maybe, they see themselves and that I’m one of them.” And he added: “I’ve never been able to detach myself or think that I, somehow, am apart from them.”

Like a popular singer who happily sings a favorite song for his audience, Reagan was a “big believer” in stump speeches because, he explained, your message eventually “will sink into the collective consciousness” of the people. “If you have something you believe in deeply,” he said, “it’s worth repeating time and again until you achieve it. You also get better at delivering it.”

That proved to be the case for his famous “A Time for Choosing” TV address in support of Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., which he had been delivering throughout California in the fall of 1964.

The choice before the people in the presidential campaign, Reagan said, was simple: “Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Has anyone ever presented a more concise argument against the progressive paradigm?

Reagan also addressed and rejected the liberal argument that “we have to choose between a left or right.” “There is no such thing as left or right,” he said. “There’s only an up or down, up to man’s age-old dream of individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

Is it any wonder that after hearing Reagan speak, voters flooded the Goldwater campaign headquarters with telegrams, letters, and checks totaling $1 million and urgently requesting copies of the Reagan address to replay in their towns and communities?

Here is another “secret” of the Great Communicator. Before his Oval Office talks, an aide would bring the president a glass of water wrapped in a small towel. Why wrapped? Because the water was warm—almost hot—calculated to relax his vocal chords. He had adopted this procedure on the advice of a Hollywood friend who knew something about the voice—Frank Sinatra.

And where did the quotations, aphorisms, and excerpts that Reagan used so effectively come from?

While some were provided by his speechwriters, most of them came from a private collection of 4×6 note cards personally written by the president. Presidential aides had long heard about the notes collection, but not until the spring of 2010 were the notes found by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library staff in a cardboard box marked only “RR’s desk.”

We are indebted to historian and Reagan biographer Douglas Brinkley for arranging and publishing them as “The Notes: Ronald Reagan’s Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom.”

Taken from books, magazines, speeches, and even poems, the notes reflect Reagan’s firm faith and perennial optimism about work, marriage, and family. There are classic one-liners like “Flattery is what makes husbands out of bachelors” and “Money may not buy you friends, but it will help you to stay in contact with your children.”

There is historical wisdom like Winston Churchill’s observation that “when great forces are on the move in the world we learn we are spirits not animals. There is something going on in time and space and beyond time and space which whether we like it or not spells duty.”

There are quotes from surprising sources like the 19th-century French free-market economist Frederic Bastiat, who wrote: “People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them.”

And quotes from likely sources like the revolutionary American pamphleteer Thomas Paine who wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

And there is the Scottish ballad which Reagan quoted to his grieving campaign staff in 1976 after he narrowly lost the Republican presidential nomination to Gerald Ford: “I am hurt but I am not slain. I’ll lay me down and bleed a while and then I’ll rise and fight again.”

That’s exactly what he did four years later when he won the GOP presidential nomination and then the presidency, commencing upon eight years in the White House, which some historians have described as the “age of Reagan.”

As Reagan made clear, a good speech must be truthful. It must not pander to the emotions. It must take into account the audience’s mood and guide their passions and imagination, while using the words of the common man.

A great speech must be concerned with great things—first principles such as liberty, justice, and equality, principles that have shaped America from the very beginning, and still do today.

Here, then, are some of the secrets of the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, whose eloquent voice is not stilled but remains available to us any day and hour through YouTube and other social media.

SOURCE

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An interesting experiment

People don't like minorities near them

What I tried to do was change social geography and see how that changed people’s behaviors. We sent two Spanish-speakers to Grafton and other places that are very white and asked them to stand in randomly selected train stations and speak Spanish for a few minutes every day. What we wanted to know was how people reacted to a change in social geography, and whether that affected the way they thought about politics.

We surveyed people waiting for the train, who were largely upper class, liberal, and white, before and after the experiment, about their politics and attitudes on immigration.

What we found was that people who were exposed to these two Spanish-speakers — who weren’t doing anything unusual, just speaking Spanish, spending a few minutes on the train station every day — changed their attitudes toward immigration. They became sharply exclusionary, and they said they wanted to keep immigrants out of the country. The experiment was completely random, nothing else changed, and it was the mere presence of these other people, this change in social geography, that changed their attitudes about politics.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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7 February, 2018

Even psychologists are now beginning to notice Leftist authoritarianism

With Antifa and many students marching in the footsteps of Hitler's brownshirts, it had become hard not to notice.After the summary and abstract below I add a few notes designed to recontextualize the article below

New research provides evidence that left-wing authoritarian attitudes exist in the United States. The preliminary findings, published in the scientific journal Political Psychology, suggest liberals could be just as likely to be authoritarians as conservatives.

“Political ideology in general is one of the most important and predictive variables in human psychology,” said study author Lucian Gideon Conway, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Montana.

“I became interested in left-wing authoritarianism in particular because some people have said it isn’t a very real or likely phenomenon — and yet I know people I would describe as left-wing authoritarians. So I was curious to figure that out.”

Conway and his colleagues developed a measure of left-wing authoritarianism, which was adapted from the right-wing authoritarianism scale developed by psychologist Bob Altemeyer.

The RWA scale asks participants how much they agree with statements such as: “It’s always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in government and religion than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create doubts in people’s minds” and “Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.”

The new LWA scale, on the other hand, asks questions such as: “It’s always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in science with respect to issues like global warming and evolution than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create doubts in people’s minds” and “Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.”

Both scales were tested on a group of 475 undergraduates at the University of Montana and a group of 305 U.S. adults who were recruited online from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

The researchers found that left-wing authoritarianism was associated with liberal views, dogmatism, and prejudice among both samples of participants, suggesting it is a valid concept.

“Our data suggest that average Americans on the political left are just as likely to be dogmatic authoritarians as those on the political right. And those left-wing authoritarians can be just as prejudiced, dogmatic, and extremist as right-wing authoritarians,” Conway told PsyPost.

SOURCE

Finding the Loch Ness Monster: Left-Wing Authoritarianism in the United States

Lucian Gideon Conway III et al.

Abstract

Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right-wing and left-wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n?=?475) and Mechanical Turk (n?=?298) participants completed either the RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left-wing authoritarianism) scale. Participants further completed measurements of ideology and three domain-specific scales: prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. Findings from both studies lend support to an authoritarianism symmetry hypothesis: Significant positive correlations emerged between LWA and measurements of liberalism, prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. These results largely paralleled those correlating RWA with identical conservative-focused measurements, and an overall effect-size measurement showed LWA was similarly related to those constructs (compared to RWA) in both Study 1 and Study 2. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that LWA may be a viable construct in ordinary U.S. samples.

SOURCE

COMMENT: This article was written from within the tight bubble of leftist political psychology so it is unusual only in that context.

Readers of history or observers of contemporary politics would know that ALL Leftism is authoritarian. Barack Obama was the chosen delegate of the Democratic party so when in his first campaign he said to wild cheers from his supporters that his aim was to "fundamentally transform" America he was presenting an ideology that was just about as authoritarian as you could get. And Leftism in general is about imposed change.

And in the French revolution and the Communist regimes of the 20th century we saw how brutally Leftists impose change when they get their hands of the levers of power. Fortunately, Congress was too big a block on change for Mr Obama to accomplish much of his aims.

But let us temporarily abandon reality and dive into the bubble of Leftist thinking about political psychology.

Leftist political psychology principally originated to meet a desperate need of the American Left immediately after the defeat of Hitler. Hitler had become a huge embarrassment. Anybody who knew well the Americam "Progressive" politics of the 1930's would be aware Hitler's ideas and what was preached by Americam "Progressives" were basically the same -- including the antisemitism and the eugenics. Hitler just applied German thoroughness to 1930s socialism.

But Hitler was now the great political failure so there was a desperate need to prevent any connections with him and his ideas. You could abandon some of your policies that you shared with hin -- such as eugenics -- but other policies -- such as hostility to business and a desire to control it -- were too basic to let go.

So where was a way out of that dilemma? One way out was to adopt the Communist claim that Hitler was "Rightist". And the Marxists were partly right about that. Hitler was less disruptive to the existing order than the Communists in Russia were so he was clearly to the right of Communism, but Leftist otherwise. But that in fact made him MORE like the American Progressives than less so that was not much of a solution.

But help was at hand. Some mostly German academics led by prominent Marxist theoretician, Theodor Wiesengrund (AKA Adorno) had a solution. They would use the methods of psychological research to show that it was really conservatives, not Leftists who threatened America with authoritarian rule. Reality could be flipped on its head and conservatives could be presented as the true heirs of Hitler.

One would have thought that such an absurdly counter-factual proposition would be laughed to death but the opposite happened. The whole American Left celebrated the revelation with gladsome hearts. They built an intellectual bubble wherein only conservatives could be authoritarian. And they never strayed from that bubble. The highpoint of that folly was probably when Robert Altemeyer claimed that he couldn't find a single Authoritarian Leftist in the whole of Canada! So you can see what brave skeptics Conway and his co-authors above are. It will be interesting to see if he has any influence.

Just a methodological note to conclude: Conway et al. used as their measure of authoritarianism the ludicrous Altemeyer RWA scale. That scale allegedly measures Right-wing authoritarianism. But the highest scores found on it were from Russian Communists. But if Communists are Right-swing, we would seem to be in a state of definitional collapse. If Communists are Right-wing, who are the Leftists? The RWA scale clearly does not measure what it claims to measure.

Altemeyer himself has backed down in response to that revelation and defined his RWA scale as measuring "submission to the perceived established authorities in one's life". It now measures neither authoritarianism nor anything Right wing! Looking at its items, I would say that it just measures political hostility but who knows what it measures, if anything?

In his future research Conway should clearly pay much more attention to the validity of the instruments he uses. As it stands, I doubt that he has proved anything

My academic publications on authoritarianism are here. A comment on Altemeyer's more recent capers is here

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Britain fumes as Trump tweets insults about National Health Service crisis

America's health system gives pretty poor treatment to the poor. Britain's health system gives poor treatment to most people. But Brits still love their NHS because it is "free". They overlook the dangerously long waits for treatment that they often have to suffer. The truth is the NHS is at breaking point due in part to a population/immigration crisis. It hasn't got enough hospitals, doctors or facilities to cope.

HE MIGHT as well have insulted the Queen. Brits are fuming after Donald Trump slammed a beloved national institution.

JUST when the “special relationship” seemed to be back on track, President Trump has sparked a wave of anger in the UK over insulting a national point of pride; the healthcare system.

The US leader set his sights on Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) on Monday, tweeting that “thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working”.

The comment sparked a huge backlash from Brits over the accuracy of the claims — particularly as the march he referred to was designed to demand more funding for the NHS following a decade of austerity measures.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “I may disagree with claims made on that march but not ONE of them wants to live in a system where 28m people have no cover” in reference to the Republican goal of repealing and replacing Obamacare.

“NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage — where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance.”

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn simply tweeted: “Wrong. People were marching because we love our NHS and hate what the Tories are doing to it. Healthcare is a human right.”

Broadcaster Piers Morgan, who recently extracted an almost-apology from Trump for retweeting anti-Muslim videos shared by nationalist group Britain First, also called him out, writing “the US healthcare system is a sick joke & the envy of no-one.”

Others were not so diplomatic, calling the President an “absolute plank” and saying US-style policies are what has caused the chaos this winter that has seen operations cancelled due to beds being full in some places.

The NHS is widely seen as a point of national pride in the UK despite its funding problems and pressures, even included in the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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6 February, 2018

Rebuttal to a conservative critique of Peterson

Stop press: Facebook has just blocked Peterson from posting

David Marcus below makes some criticisms that I should probably leave for Peterson himself to answer but Peterson is a very busy man so maybe it might be useful for me to say a few words on the matter.

Where Marcus is tendentious is that he is quite uncritical of the common Leftist claim that American blacks have been damaged by their history of slavery. It allegedly takes away from blacks any responsibility for any disadvantage they may have and demonizes "whitey".

The claim has often been systematically debunked over the years so I will make only some desultory remarks about it. The basic claim is that blacks have been demoralized and cowed by their history. They lack the will to fight an oppressive system. But there is a large psychological research literature on self esteem and all the studies of black self-esteem show it to be very high. They are TOO self-confident if anything. They are NOT psychologically oppressed.

At this point I could perhaps mention that I myself am descended from two people who were transported across the ocean chained up in the holds of rickety wooden ships. They were convicts transported from Britain to help found the colony that later became Australia. They were used as slave labour to do the work of setting up the new colony. So are their descendents crippled psychologically by their origins? Far from it. To have convict ancestry these days in Australia is in fact rather prestigious. Claims about damage passed down from how our ancestors were treated are founded on speculation rather than real life.

Secondly, blacks were in many ways better off in the near aftermath of slavery than they are now. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most black children grew up in mother & father families and the husband had a job that supported them. That is not remotely so now. So if slavery created irresponsible and feckless attitudes, they were not transmitted.   The psychological chain between slavery and now was broken long ago.

Thirdly, when do we allow changed circumstances to have any effect? Affirmative action has been around for decades now has made blacks privileged rather than discriminated against. Should that not have lifted them up? There is little sign of it. So that too undermines discrimination as a cause of black disadvantage.

And fourthly, we have to live in the world we have got. And in that world just about all have the opportunity to make of ourselves what we can. The key to economic and social success is undoubtedly education and education to High School standard is provided for all. If you wreck your educational chances by being disruptive or dropping out, you will have a very low-quality life regardless of your skin colour.

But black schools are dreck, someone might say. They are. You are not going to get much of an education if you do just about anything rather than sit and listen to the teacher. As it happens, the children of Chinese migrants often go to the same schools. They learn and do well. They think their schools are dreck too but they just keep their heads down and study their books.

So you do largely create your own privilege. There is of course some unearned privilege. Inheriting a lot of money can open many doors. But such privilege may be a lot less than it seems. The heirs of John D. Rockefeller have not all had happy lives despite the vast riches that John D. left when he died.

And the silliest claim of inborn privilege is "white privilege". Tell that to the white guy in the trailer park who has trouble with paying his utility bills and has to put up with feral neighbors close by. Where is his privilege? Whites who seem privileged will mostly be that way because they seized the privilege of working hard first at their studies and then at a productive job.

And let me point out that white privilege is a Nazi concept. It is as race-obsessed as Hitler was. Hitler thought that there was an unfairly privileged race in Germany, the Jews. They sat at the top of every pyramid in Germany. They were not only prominent in politics but were also the bankers, businessmen, professionals and artists. That seemed wrong to Hitler, just as white privilege seems wrong to American Leftists. Hitler did not at all consider that prominent Jews earned their privilege by spending a long time in the educational system and then working hard subsequently. So racial theories of privilege are clearly evil, whether it is Jews or whites who are the hate-object.

But what about white privilege in encounters with the cops? The privilege is great but it is again earned. I have had several encounters with traffic police during which I was calm, polite and co-operative. On all occasions the politeness was returned and I was shortly thereafter back on my way. Most whites are like that.

With blacks, however, it can be very different. Blacks often abuse the police, may fight or shoot at the police and make strenuous efforts to evade arrest, including running from the police. Police don't like that. Their very safety is at risk. So they approach blacks on hairtrigger alert. They would be mad to do otherwise. And in those circumstances some possibly innocent move by a black can be misinterpreted and the trigger will be pulled -- killing a possibly innocent man. That is inherited privilege too -- negative privilege.

And I can't see any cure for it. Police have to be expert at judging risks but even so they will sometimes get it wrong. And, with the help of Mr Obama, black attitudes to the police seem to have worsened rather than improved in recent times. There is no way that is going to end well.

Dr. Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has been gaining celebrity. He first emerged in refusing to accept his university’s dictate to use transgendered students’ preferred pronouns and a broader fight against Canadian legislation to demand such usage. Since then, in a series of wildly popular YouTube videos ranging from studies of the Bible to anti-postmodernist lectures, his star has risen. This year, his book “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” came out and is selling well.

Towards the end of a recent lecture, Peterson tackled the issue of white privilege. The 10-minute segment went viral, praised by many as refutation of the idea that white privilege even exists. Frankly, it was not his best work. It’s a bit sloppy on the concept itself, and utterly failed to take into account the broad context of racial issues that led to the idea in the first place.

It’s useful to look at what Peterson gets wrong here, and what he gets right. He is venturing into very dangerous territory with a cavalier attitude, and this could undermine the important counter-cultural ideas he is using to challenge, not just the academy, but our culture at large.

What Jordan Peterson Gets Wrong

Peterson’s main argument against white privilege is that race is but one of many possibly infinite differentials in human beings that may accrue benefits. He cites attractiveness and intelligence as two examples that could give individuals unearned advantages. But in the American context (Peterson is Canadian) these are somewhat strange comparisons. This is because ugly, dumb people were not subjected to centuries of slavery and a further century of debilitating Jim Crow laws.

History doesn’t begin in 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, or in 2009 when Barack Obama became president. While smarts and looks are unfair gifts of natural selection, the advantages of being white in America are a manmade phenomenon based on centuries of bigotry and irrational bias. To compare these things is facile and badly misses the point.

Peterson makes things worse with a bizarre analogy between American and Chinese culture. He claims that white privilege is really “majority privilege.” Tackling the classic examples of white people being more represented in media and education, less suspected of potential theft in stores, and having freer options in housing, among others, he says:

Is that white privilege, or is that, like majority privilege? Is the same true if you go to China, you’re Chinese, is the same true if you’re Chinese? Is it majority privilege, and if its majority privilege, isn’t that just part of living within your culture? So let’s say you live in your culture, you’re privileged in that culture, well obviously. That’s what the culture is for. That’s what it’s for. Why would you bother building the d-mn thing if it didn’t accrue benefits to you? Well, you might say one of the consequences is that it accrues fewer benefits to those who aren’t in the culture. Yeah, but you can’t immediately associate that with race.

In the United States of America we can absolutely, without question, associate that with race. This is because black people have been here since well before the American founding. There is no American culture that doesn’t involve black people. They were not interlopers in some society built by whites. They literally built the White House. They picked the cotton and tobacco, they were the unpaid economic engine that made America great, and they were infamously mistreated for centuries. It is a cringe-worthy moment, and one can’t help but feel that Peterson hasn’t thought it the whole way through.

What He Gets Right

Although he doesn’t quite manage to say it, what Peterson is rightfully rejecting is not the idea that white people in America have privilege. In fact, above he confirms it. He is arguing that, as a pedagogical tool, this fact is extremely limited and potentially dangerous. He is rejecting the idea that white people today have a reason to feel guilty about their skin color, and the idea that accepting such guilt will lead to some kind of good end.

Furthermore, he rightfully criticizes the lack of serious scholarship surrounding privilege theory. It is a concept almost always backed up anecdotally and rarely subjected to serious empirical investigation. When it is, the evidence of bias is often sketchy at best. But once we admit, as Peterson does, that white people do accrue unearned advantages, either by science or storytelling we have a responsibility to examine this and try to make sure that people are not subject to denigrating treatment based on their skin color.

We Need Peterson to Be Careful

Peterson is an enormously important, even vital voice in an academic, governmental, and media environment that often seeks to crush dissenting voices. In his book, “The War Against Free Speech,” he says the following about his refusal to be compelled to use certain pronouns: “Many of the doctrines that underlie the legislation that I’ve been objecting to share structural similarities with the Marxist ideas that drove Soviet Communism. The thing I object to the most was the insistence that people use these made up words like ‘xe’ and ‘xer’ that are the construction of authoritarians. There isn’t a hope in h-ll that I’m going to use their language, because I know where that leads.”

This is a message that needs to be heard. And it is important to understand that Peterson is not trying to convince postmodern progressives to change their ways, a task Sisyphus would look at and say, “Boy, I’m glad I don’t have to do that.” His targeted audience is different. Part of it is people who simply shrug at things like compelled speech and wonder why it’s their business. He does a great job of explaining why it is their business and why it is a threat.

Another important target of Peterson’s program is disaffected young men. These are men who feel beaten down by the world and women’s success, the attacks on masculinity. Who feel they are being told their very instincts are toxic. These men are prime targets for the alt-right, the men’s rights movement, and a whole host of antisocial behaviors, because what’s the difference anyway? He tells these young men that they can be men, but that means more than expressing their anger, it means taking responsibility, being productive. Getting in the game.

In trying to reach these young men, Peterson has appeared with some questionable figures. Eyebrows were raised when he was interviewed by the controversial, alleged alt-rightist Stefan Molyneux, for example. If you want to help sinners, you have to go where the sin is, but there is a danger here. Peterson is poised to hit the mainstream, something that would accrue a lot of benefits for those who believe in a freer society. These kinds of appearances and awkward attacks on privilege theory put such mainstream acceptance in jeopardy.

Welcome to the big leagues, Dr. Peterson. The balls are going to come at you fast and hard. You have to judiciously pick and choose which you swing at.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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The Coup Against America

The memo has been released, now it's time to release everything

The Democrats and the media spent a week lying to the American people about the "memo."

The memo was full of "classified information" and releasing" it would expose "our spying methods." By "our," they didn't mean American spying methods. They meant Obama's spying methods.

A former White House Ethics Lawyer claimed that the Nunes memo would undermine "national security." On MSNBC, Senator Chris Van Hollen threatened that if the memo is released, the FBI and DOJ "will refuse to share information with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees."

Senator Cory Booker howled that releasing the memo was "treasonous" and might be "revealing sources and methods" and even "endangering fellow Americans in the intelligence community."

The memo isn't treasonous. It reveals a treasonous effort by the Democrats to use our intelligence agencies to rig an election and overturn the will of the voters.

The media spent a week lying to Americans about the dangers of the memo because it didn't want them to find out what was inside. Today, the media and Dems switched from claiming that the memo was full of "classified information" that might get CIA agents killed to insisting that it was a dud and didn't matter. Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.

On Thursday, the narrative was that the memo would devastate our national security and no one should ever be allowed to read it. By Friday, the new narrative was that the memo tells us nothing important and we shouldn't even bother reading it. The lies change, but suppressing the memo remains the goal.

There is no legitimately classified information in the Nunes memo. But it does endanger a number of "Americans" in the "intelligence community" who colluded with the Clinton campaign against America.

It endangers former FBI Director Comey, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the current FBI General Counsel Dana Boente who had previously served as the Acting Attorney General. These men and women had allegedly signed FISA applications that were at best misleading and at worst badly tainted.

The Clinton campaign had enlisted figures in the FBI and the DOJ to manipulate an election. The coup against America operated as a "state within a state" inside the United States government.

"The political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials," the memo informs us. But they did not reveal on the FISA application that their core evidence came from the Clinton campaign. Sources were certainly being protected. But they were Clinton sources.

The memo reveals that without the Steele dossier there would have been no eavesdropping on Carter Page, the Trump associate targeted in this particular case. "Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information." But the FISA application neglected to mention that its primary source had been paid by the Clinton campaign, was unverified and would continue to be unverified.

FBI Director Comey testified that he had told President Trump that the dossier was "unverified." Yet the "unverified" piece of opposition research was used as the basis for a FISA application.

As Rep. Jim Jordan noted, "FBI takes 'salacious and unverified' dossier to secret court to get secret warrant to spy on a fellow American, and FBI doesn't tell the court that the DNC/Clinton campaign paid for that dossier. And they did that FOUR times."

"There's been no evidence of a corrupt evidence to obtain warrants against people in the Trump campaign," Rep. Adam Schiff insisted. That's why he tried to block the release of the evidence.

The evidence was unverified opposition research. Its source had been paid by the Clinton campaign. Not only had Steele been indirectly working for the Clinton campaign (when he wasn't being paid by the FBI), but he made no secret of his own political agenda to stop Trump.

"In September 2016, Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president," the memo informs us.

That's former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr whose wife was being paid by an organization hired by the Clinton campaign to investigate Trump. Ohr then passed along his wife's opposition research to the FBI. The evidence couldn't be any more corrupt than that.

Steele was passionate about Trump "not being president." So were his handlers who ignored his leaks to the media until he "was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations-an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI." His previous meetings, including the one that allegedly generated the Yahoo News article, were ignored.

Tainted investigations are nothing new. Law enforcement is as fallible as any other profession. But the memo reveals a snapshot of just how many top figures colluded in this corrupted and tainted effort.

What drove them to violate professional ethical norms and legal requirements in the FISA applications?

Top DOJ and FBI officials shared Steele's "passion," and that of his ultimate employer, Hillary Clinton, to stop Donald Trump at all costs. And they're still trying to use the Mueller investigation to overturn the election results in a government coup that makes Watergate look like a children's tea party,

Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is already under investigation. He's suspected of trying to sit on the Wiener emails until the election was over. This alleged failed cover-up triggered the Comey letter which hurt Hillary worse than a timely revelation would have. McCabe's wife had financial links to the Clintons.

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was an Obama holdover who had foolishly tried to use the DOJ to go to war with President Trump. Both Yates and Dana Boente were Obama and Holder choices. During the groundless prosecution of the former Republican governor of Virginia, Boente had declared, "No one is above the law." We'll see if that's true with everyone who signed the FISA applications.

If Boente signed false or misleading FISA applications, he should be removed as FBI General Counsel.

The memo is only the first crack in the wall. But it's grounds for an investigation that will expose the abuses that led to eavesdropping on Trump officials. And the motives of those who perpetuated them.

A Washington Post piece suggested that just releasing the memo alone would allow Mueller to charge President Trump with "obstruction of justice." That's how badly they want to get Trump.

A clear and simple fact emerges from the memo.

Top figures in the DOJ and the FBI, some loyal to Obama and Hillary, abused the FISA process in the hopes of influencing or reversing the results of an election by targeting their political opponents. The tool that they used for the job came from the Clinton campaign. Using America's intelligence services to destroy and defeat a political opponent running for president is the worst possible abuse of power and an unprecedented threat to a democratic system of free open elections.

We have been treated to frequent lectures about the independence of the DOJ and the FBI. But our country isn't based around government institutions that are independent of oversight by elected officials. When unelected officials have more power than elected officials, that's tyranny.

A Justice Department that acts as the Praetorian Guard for a political campaign is committing a coup and engaging in treason. The complex ways that the Steele dossier was laundered from the Clinton campaign to a FISA application is evidence of a conspiracy by both the DOJ and the Clinton campaign.

It's time for us to learn about all the FISA abuses, the list of NSA unmasking requests of Trump officials by Obama officials and the eavesdropping on members of Congress. We deserve to know the truth.

The memo has been released. Now it's time to release everything.

SOURCE

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A tweet from The Donald

Rasmussen just announced that my approval rating jumped to 49%, a far better number than I had in winning the Election, and higher than certain “sacred cows.” Other Trump polls are way up also. So why does the media refuse to write this? Oh well, someday!

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So you thought fish oil was good for you?

The article below reports a meta-analysis so I reproduce the conclusions only

Associations of Omega-3 Fatty Acid Supplement Use With Cardiovascular Disease Risks

Theingi Aung et al

Conclusions and Relevance: This meta-analysis demonstrated that omega-3 fatty acids had no significant association with fatal or nonfatal coronary heart disease or any major vascular events. It provides no support for current recommendations for the use of such supplements in people with a history of coronary heart disease.

JAMA Cardiol. Published online January 31, 2018. doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2017.5205

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Statins: Another "no benefit" finding

Association of Baseline Statin Use Among Older Adults Without Clinical Cardiovascular Disease in the SPRINT Trial

Marco D. Huesch

JAMA Intern Med. Published online January 22, 2018. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.7844

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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4 February, 2018

Attractive people are more likely to be conservatives -- because they have it 'too easy'?

The basic finding below is a fairly well-established one so I am not going to question it. It in fact fits in with three other well-established findings. The happiness research shows that your degree of happiness is inborn and largely fixed throughout your life and it also shows that conservatives are reliably happier. And the third finding is from genetics research and shows that your degree of conservatism is largely inborn. And with the help of political history we can refine the conclusion from happiness research to say that the psychological basis for conservatism is contentment. Contentment could be regarded as the chronic form of happiness.

So I draw a different but related conclusion from the one below. I think it fits in best with existing research to say that attractive people are more content and hence less aggrieved. It is undoubted that they have an easier time in all sorts of ways so have little to complain about. And that is the psychological foundation of conservatism: Contentment.

Leftists on the other hand are characterized by complaint and grievance. They see all sorts of things that are wrong in the world about them and are unhappy about it, sometimes to the point of rage. And that may be because they have not done well in various ways. So what we see below is another instance of the generalization that conservatives are the contented people. It's a great way to be. And, fortunately it's not only good looking people who are contented. And if you want to be contented but are not, there is a myriad of self-help books which claim to make you more contented

It may be noted that we have here an example of something that every scientist aspires to: A demonstration that a particular thing is an example of a more general rule. In this case we see that attractive people are conservative because contented people in general are conservative. There is no need to postulate that attractive people are insensitive, uncaring etc. We have no evidence of that.

So I think that is the straightforward explanation of the findings below. But there may be other contributing factors. It seems to me likely that Leftists on the whole take less care of their appearance, the extreme ones particularly. Men with scraggly beards and dreadlocks may be quite happy about their appearance but will not generally be seen as attractive. And Leftist women who use little or no makeup and wear baggy clothes will definitely contrast adversely with a carefully presented conservative lady. So the causal arrow can point backwards, with Leftism leading to unattractiveness. Leftism may be the egg that produces the chicken of unattractiveness.

And it seems likely that there is another influence of that kind. Who looks more attractive, a person with a happy smile or a person with an angry face? There is no doubt of the answer to that, is there? So again, Leftism might lead to ugliness. And that could be permanent or semi permanent. In the psychological literature on masking behaviour, we do come across examples of a habitual facial expression becoming more or less permanent. So a face that is often angry may become normally angry, angry-looking regardless of the mood at the time.

Trygve Braatoy's "psychomotor therapy" of the 1940s even claimed that if a mask is worn long enough it becomes the person. There is some apparent experimental confirmation of that.

Perhaps I can close with a small personal anecdote. Around 50 years ago, I noted that there was one person prominent in Australian public life who seemed to my judgment to be very good looking. He was David Flint. He is now 80 but for decades now he has been remarkably and publicly conservative across the board, which is all the more remarkable since he is homosexual. And he still writes well, including praise for Mr Trump. His reaction to Trump's SOTU address: "The West has at last a great leader who will not only make America great again, he will do that for the West"

Because the internet is less and less comprehensive the further back you go, I could find no pictures of the young Flint. In the picture below he was in his 40s but it may give you some idea of his early looks. He has some slight Asian (Indonesian) ancestry which may have something to do with his good skin.

Scientists know that being attractive influences huge areas in a person's life, including how much they earn and what they enjoy doing in their spare time.

Now, a new study claims that beauty can make a person right-wing.

The research argues that people who are attractive are more likely to be conservative because they are 'blind' to the struggles of those who are less fortunate.

Attractiveness in a person often results in an easier life, which can cause desensitisation towards the need for many left-wing policies, such as financial aid

The study was conducted by Dr Rolfe Daus Peterson, a political scholar from Susquehanna University and Dr Carl Palmar, assistant professor in politics at Illinois State University.

The researchers claim that there is 'good reason to believe that individuals' physical attractiveness may alter their political values and worldviews'.

The scientists said in their study that attractive people have better social skills and are more popular, competent and intelligent due to something known as the 'halo effect' - where an individual's view of other people is altered by bias and stereotypes.

But their beauty also makes them less empathetic towards those who find life a struggle, making them more likely to be conservative.

The authors also noted previous studies have shown good-looking people are treated better than others, achieve higher status and are happier, and so are more likely to see the world as 'just' place.

To come to this finding, the scientists took figures from the 1972, 1974 and 1976 American National Studies surveys that asked those taking part to evaluate the appearance of others.

The survey also looked at participants political beliefs, income, race, gender, and education.

The researchers then compared those results with the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) that looked at the characteristics of over 10,000 high school students who were rated by others on their level of beauty.

By combining these results, the researchers said they found a link between political alignment and attractiveness.

They found that more attractive people have a 'blind spot' which results in conservatism. This blind spot stops them from seeing the need for government aid and support, which is a staple of the liberal manifesto.

In the study the researchers say: 'Even though this blind spot may not be universally held and physically attractive individuals do not always have easier lives, on average, physically attractive individuals face fewer hurdles navigating the social world.'

The results come almost a year after another study was published. The study, led by the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Sweden, looked at the correlation between attractiveness and political belief in candidates.

They found that being better looking made you more likely to earn more, and that richer people are typically more opposed to policies favoured by the left, such as progressive taxes and welfare programmes.

In their paper, published in the Journal of Public Economics, the researchers, led by Niclas Berggren, wrote: 'Politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the United States and Australia.

'Our explanation is that beautiful people earn more, which makes them less inclined to support redistribution.'

Previous studies have found that the more attractive people perceive themselves to be, the lower their preference for egalitarianism – another value associated with the political left.

To assess the link between attractiveness and political values, the researchers showed people pictures of political candidates in Finland, the US and Australia, and asked them to rate them on attractiveness.

The results showed that right-wing politicians were seen as more attractive than left-wingers.

SOURCE

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Primary Crisis in America Is Abandonment of Judeo-Christian
Values, Dismissal of the Bible

Dennis Prager

I have believed all my life that the primary crisis in America and the West is the abandonment of Judeo-Christian values, or, one might say, the dismissal of the Bible.

Virtually everyone on the left thinks America would be better off as a secular nation. And virtually all conservative intellectuals don’t think it matters. How many intellectuals study the Bible and teach it to their children?

And yet, from the time long before the United States became a country until well into the 1950s, the Bible was not only the most widely read book in America—it was the primary vehicle by which each generation passed on morality and wisdom to the next generation.

Since that time, we have gone from a Bible-based society to a Bible-ignorant one—from the Bible being the Greatest Book to the Bible being an irrelevant book.

Ask your college-age child, niece, nephew, or grandchild to identify Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, or the ten plagues. Get ready for some blank stares.

I recently asked some college graduates (none of whom were Jewish) to name the four Gospels. None could.

But what we have today is worse than ignorance of the Bible. It is contempt for it. Just about anyone who quotes the Bible, let alone says it is the source of his or her values, is essentially regarded as a simpleton who is anti-science, anti-intellectual, and sexist.

Our society, one of whose mottos is “In God We Trust,” is becoming as godless as Western Europe—and, consequently, as morally confused and unwise as Europe.

Just as most professors regard most Bible believers as foolish, I have more or less the same view of most college professors in the liberal arts.

When I hear that someone has a Ph.D. in sociology, anthropology, political science, or English, let alone women’s studies or gender studies, I assume that he or she is morally confused and bereft of wisdom. Some are not, of course. But they constitute a small minority.

Whenever teenagers call my radio show or I meet one in person, I can usually identify—almost immediately—the ones who are receiving a religion-based education. They are far more likely to act mature and have more wisdom than their Bible-free peers.

One of our two greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, rarely attended church, but he read the Bible daily. As he said while president, “In regard to this great book, I have but to say, I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man.”

Were he able to observe America today, Lincoln would be shocked by many things. But none would shock him as much as the widespread ignorance of and contempt for the Bible.

I have taught the Torah, from the Hebrew original, for 40 years. Of the many things I have been blessed to be able to do—from hosting a national radio show to conducting orchestras—teaching Torah is my favorite.

When asked how it has affected my life, I often note that in my early 20s, when I was working through issues I had with my parents, there was nevertheless not a week during which I did not call them.

And there was one reason for this: I believe that God commanded us to “Honor your father and your mother.”

In my commentary, I point out that while the Torah commands us to love our neighbor, love God, and love strangers, it never commands us to love our parents. It was sophisticated enough to recognize that love of parents may be impossible but showing honor to a parent is a behavioral choice.

In America, there is an epidemic of children who no longer talk to one or both of their parents. In a few cases, this is warranted. But in most cases, adult children are inflicting terrible, unfair pain upon their parents.

This is one of a myriad of examples where believing in a God-based text is transformative.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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2 February, 2018

The State of the Union stats don’t lie: Americans are turning against Trump-hating celebrities and buying into the President’s American dream - THAT’S a nightmare for Democrats

By Piers Morgan

The stats don't lie. Within minutes of President Donald Trump's first State of the Union speech, CBS News revealed their YouGov poll approval ratings on it. Unsurprisingly, 97% of Republican speech watchers liked it.

More surprisingly, 72% of Independents liked it. Staggeringly, 43% of Democrats liked it.

Overall, CBS reported that 75% of Americans approved of the speech. For such a seriously divisive and polarising President, who is currently languishing with just 39% personal approval ratings, these were sensationally good results.

Interestingly, 8/10 Americans in the poll felt the President was trying to unite the country with his speech and two thirds of Americans said it made them feel proud. Less than a quarter that watched said it made them feel scared or angry.

Contrast this reaction with the instant and so tediously predictable blind rage spewed by the world's liberal celebrities on social media before, during and after the address.

From my own unofficial poll – i.e. my own eyes on Twitter – I'd say 99% of them were so furious at the speech they could barely think straight. 'I was told darkness could not exist in the light,' tweeted Sarah Silverman. 'But here it is, for everyone to not see.'

Jim Carrey tweeted an illustration of sharks across a map of America, then another of a weeping Abraham Lincoln and the caption: 'It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.'

Andy Lassner, producer of the insufferably smug The Ellen Show sneered: 'Good luck 'Saturday Night Live' on trying to make this any more f***ing ridiculous than it already is.'

Jeffrey Wright raged: 'Can't even watch this vile, deceitful fraud and his bizarre cult of self-interested sycophants.'

Patton Oswalt seethed: 'I'm gonna fact check this speech: whatever he just said was bullsh*t.'

Jessica Chastain urged people not to watch the speech at all.

Billy Eichner fumed: 'The President is a lying, incompetent, racist, misogynist sack of sh*t.'

And George Takei spouted: 'I'm not watching some frothing orange gorilla read off a teleprompter.'

On and on it went, with these stars and many more assuming America agreed with them.

But it turned out the vast majority of Americans DIDN'T agree with them, which suggests they're no longer listening to what celebrities say about politics or Donald Trump.

For more evidence of this, look at Sunday night's Grammys that turned into a marathon political rally of epically dreary proportions. Ratings duly plunged 24% to an all-time low.

Why? Because Americans are sick and tired of entertainers preaching about politics at awards shows, particularly when they're all preaching from the same liberal Trump-loathing handbook.

It's hard not to agree with White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders when she said yesterday: 'I think if Americans cared what celebrities thought then Hillary would be president but they clearly don't.'

She added: 'Frankly, I feel sorry for these people. They're so focused on hating this president that they're missing all of the great things that are happening in this country.'

Now, she would say that wouldn't she… and yet, she has a point.

None of these celebrity Trump-bashers ever give him credit for anything. Yet there are things happening in and to America right now for which he absolutely deserves credit not derision.

Most notably, the US economy is full steam ahead, with consistently impressive quarterly growth, the stock market smashing weekly records, and job numbers at 17-year highs.

Yes, it's true that this is continuing a positive economic trend from the Obama years. But it's also true that nobody would be blaming Obama if the economy had weakened under Trump in his first year.

Most impartial observers credit the President's war on regulation and his big tax reform plan as the major driving forces for the current economic positivity.

Certainly, it helped inspire Apple, one of America's biggest overseas job outsourcing companies, to recently announce they're bringing $350billion and 20,000 jobs back home to the US economy.

But have you seen a single liberal celebrity acknowledge that? No.

Trump vowed in his presidential campaign to whack ISIS hard and as he said last night, the terror group's now been driven out of Iraq and Syria.

This is a significant achievement too but no liberal celebrity will thank him for it, so profound and deep-rooted is the antipathy towards him.

What they don't seem to understand is that the American people are beginning to calm down about President Trump, understand him better, accept him for what he is – good and bad - and appreciate some of the good stuff he is doing.

That much is crystal clear from the reaction to his SOTU speech that was long, thoughtful, and delivered with none of the frothing, hyperbolic style that we have seen from him in the past.

As I think I may have mentioned (!) I spent time with President Trump last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and I was struck by how relaxed and confident he seemed, both in my interview and in his speech to the world's business elite the next day.

I was also struck by how much more diplomatic, conciliatory and unifying he was too – especially with his statement that yes, it's America First but no, it's not America Alone.

This approach was a far cry from the raging bull in a china shop that rampaged to the election win and has presided over a chaotic and turbulent first year in office.

It appears that Trump has finally begun to make the pivot many of his supporters hoped he would make a lot earlier – from firebrand, fight-picking, tweet-storming, rabble-rousing candidate, to a more considered man as President.

I think the reason for this simple: success.

Trump's entire DNA is predicated on winning. Every sinew of his being for the past 50 years has pulsated with a burning, insatiable desire to win.

'You've gotta win,' Trump once told me. 'That's what it's all about. You know, Muhammad Ali used to talk and talk, but he won. If you talk and talk but you lose, the act doesn't play.'

And now, after months of under-achievement, he's beginning to win.

Meanwhile, his opponents don't seem to have a clue either how to stop him, or who in their ranks can beat him in 2020.

One thing's for sure: it won't be Hillary Clinton, who apparently still hasn't got the message either that she lost or that hanging out with liberal celebrities is a vote-crusher to middle America.

I don't know what possessed her to pop up in the middle of the Grammys to read out Trump-mocking lines from Michael Wolff's book, but all it did was remind everyone yet again that she's a sore loser, and that the Democrats haven't found anyone else to replace her yet.

Until they do, Trump will continue to surge in confidence and if the economy does the same then I predict he will be re-elected at the next election by a bigger majority.

Don't believe me? Take a long, careful look at that CBS poll after last night's SOTU speech. Like I said, the stats don't lie.

'This is our new American moment,' Trump said last night. 'There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.'

This message, one of his 115 applause lines, was approved by 75% of the country that watched it.

Trump's American Dream is very rapidly becoming the Democrat Nightmare.

SOURCE

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Stockton Gets Ready to Experiment With Universal Basic Income

More California dreaming. Should be fun to watch

Wage stagnation. Rising housing prices. Loss of middle-class jobs. The looming threat of automation. These are some of the problems facing Stockton and its residents, but the city’s mayor, Michael Tubbs, says his city is far from unique.

Stockton is one of many Bay Area cities on the fringe of the wealth accumulating in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The Central Valley city went bankrupt in 2012, and for decades it has been trying to diversify its agriculture-based economy.

“I feel that as mayor it’s my responsibility to do all I could to begin figuring out what’s the best way to make sure that folks in our community have a real economic floor,” Tubbs said.

Tubbs is coordinating an effort to test a new way to sustain residents: universal basic income, or UBI. For one year, several dozen Stockton families will get $500 a month, no strings attached.

Dorian Warren co-chairs the Economic Security Project, which is contributing $1 million to the initiative. He said the goal is to gather data on the economic and social impacts of giving people a basic income.

In addition to tracking what residents do with the money, Warren said they will be monitoring how a basic income affects things like self-esteem and identity.

“What does it mean to say, ‘Here is unconditional guaranteed income just based on you being a human being?’ ” Warren asked.

The hope is to demonstrate UBI’s potential and encourage other places to give it a try. UBI has recently gotten a boost from Silicon Valley moguls concerned about income inequality and the future of society, but the idea isn’t actually all that new, said Michelle Anderson, a Stanford law professor.

Anderson said, “UBI was first pitched by Nixon as an answer to post-industrial job losses.”

With this experiment, Anderson said Stockton may discover it gets more economic stimulus by giving money to its citizens rather than corporations it hopes will bring in jobs and tax revenue.

“The UBI that is being proposed in Stockton now is very small compared to the big corporate subsidies that cities like that engage in,” Anderson said.

Stockton racked up millions in debt on development projects in the past, which got the city into trouble, Mayor Tubbs said.

“We’ve overspent on things like arenas and marinas and things of that sort to try to lure in tourism and dollars that way,” he said.

Tubbs thinks the UBI experiment will show that Stockton’s best bet is to invest in its own people.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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1 February, 2018

‘Larry’s Letter’ is muddle-headed

Corporate social responsibility has been a leftist demand for a long time but it is very pernicious. If companies lose focus on their business challenges, they will make themselves and everybody else poorer. A company's only responsibility is to deliver a good product at the lowest possible price. And that's not easy. Introducing other considerations will undermine the whole mission of the company.

And the argument below does not focus entirely on corporate social responsibility. The aim of having "a strategy for long-term value creation and financial performance" is entirely laudable. And that seems to be the aspect that business leaders have rightly endorsed.

I note use of the tiresome Leftist term "stakeholders", which is used to assign unearned power and influence to outsiders of some sort. The term appears to come from card games, where several people may have money on the outcome of a game, but how many people are stakeholders in a business? Only the shareholders and employees, it seems to me. Customers may be observers but they are not stakeholders. If a company goes broke they will normally just choose a new supplier for their needs.

And what's this rot about "reimagining" capitalism? Capitalism is not the product of anybody's imagination. Soviet Russia was that and we know where it led. What we see as capitalism today is simply the balancing of many forces and interests -- an "invisible hand" if you like. Is Larry Fink going senile or is he just wilting under the weight of Leftist disapproval?

A growing movement of senior business figures, economists, and powerful investors from across the globe is calling for capitalism to be reimagined so that companies everywhere serve a social purpose.

The charge is being led by Larry Fink, the founder and chief executive of the world’s biggest asset manager, Blackrock. The investment house has $6.3?trillion (£4.5?trillion) under management, making Fink arguably the single most influential investor on the planet.

Fink detonated a bomb in boardrooms everywhere earlier this month with a letter to the bosses of all the companies it owns shares in, saying they could no longer afford to focus simply on profit.

In what is being referred to as “Larry’s Letter”, Fink said that they would need to start demonstrating a strategy for long-term value creation and financial performance. Understanding a company’s effect on the wider world was also vital, he said.

“Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” Fink wrote. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate,” the letter said.

The thrust of Larry Fink's letter was backed by major corporate bosses, including Pepsi's chief executive Indra Nooyi
The call was backed by several big names at Davos including Indra Nooyi, boss of PepsiCo, and Carlos Ghosn, chairman of car giant Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi.

Mrs Nooyi lamented the emphasis on short-term financial performance. “If you focus on the long-term, investors accuse you of being impatient and are highly critical.” Mrs. Nooyi said. “If you are doing something truly strategic, it invokes criticism. You are accused of being Mother Teresa.”

Mr Ghosn agreed. “Young companies don’t have to worry about short-term results, but if we had negative quarterly results, we would be crucified,” he said.

Mrs Nooyi said: “Finance and accounting has trumped strategy excessively. The whole world is ratio and accounting driven.” Shareholders “blindly look at numbers”. She added: “A bunch of number crunchers put out a spreadsheet and think that is strategy.”

Mr Ghosn added: “Every day we see CEOs fired because shares didn’t move in the last year. Short tenure is a big problem.” However, he predicted that Fink’s letter will “spark change in the financial community”.

Theresa Whitmarsh, of the Washington State Investment Board, one of America’s biggest institutional investors, claimed “companies with a myopic focus on short-term earnings are sowing the seeds of their own destruction”. Long-term investment would boost returns, she said.

SOURCE

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Businesses already serve a social purpose

Iain Murray gives his take on Fink

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s letter to CEOs demanding that their companies “serve a social purpose” is the latest example of what economist Milton Friedman dubbed a “muddle-headed” approach to economic activity.

The approach is muddle-headed because businesses already serve a social purpose simply by doing business. McDonald’s provides the most nutrition at the lowest price the world has ever seen. Google exists “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Even your local hairdresser helps people feel good about themselves — surely a social service in these troubled times.

There are even more obvious ways businesses serve a social purpose. They employ people, providing needed income at the right time and often fostering career opportunities. They bring people together, bolstering communities. They allow for the development of transferable skills, thereby providing real world learning too often overlooked in schools.

Above all, businesses create wealth, which is distributed among owners, workers and indeed customers. Lowering prices after you make good profits is an example of wealth sharing with customers.

We also know that wealth and health go together. Generating wealth doesn’t just mean people can afford more stuff but that they can live longer, healthier and happier lives.

If businesses already serve these important social purposes, what is Fink getting at? He talks about “governments failing to prepare for the future” and how companies leave themselves vulnerable to activist campaigns.

So he doesn’t like the results of the political process and wants to see special interests force businesses to provide results he favors. If not, he would presumably argue that businesses should stand up to special interest bullies and respect our political system.

That’s why Friedman also called corporate social responsibility “subversive.” He was right.

SOURCE

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Kochs rally donors to spend more to protect business gains

Harry Reid will be fuming

The Koch brothers and their network of wealthy donors have a lot to be happy about after the first year of the Trump administration. And they plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help ensure they stay happy.

“We’ve made more progress in the past five years than I had in the last 50,” declared Charles Koch, the 82-year old billionaire, addressing a group of about 550 donors who gathered in Indian Wells for the Kochs’ winter policy and politics weekend seminar.

But this era of gains, which brought them a massive tax cut, a queue of conservative federal judges, and an administration full of friendly regulators, could all be gone if Democrats claw back control of the government.

So the vast network has pledged to devote around $400 million toward politics and policy in the midterms to hold the GOP majorities in both chambers. That’s 60 percent more than the network spent in 2014, when Republicans picked up nine seats in the Senate and 13 seats in the House of Representatives.

The sum includes $20 million that Koch and his brother David plan to put behind efforts to popularize the $1.5 trillion tax cut. The network spent $20 million last year pushing the legislation.

“We have a ways to go,” said Koch, teeing up his Big Ask to the well-coiffed group of donors who contribute at least $100,000 a year to Koch-aligned groups. “So my challenge to all of us is to increase the scale and effectiveness of this network by an order of magnitude. By another 10-fold on top of all the growth and progress we’ve already made. Because if we do that, I’m convinced we can change the trajectory of this country.”

The Republican takeover of the federal government has long been a priority for the Kochs. Now, after spending years fomenting distrust of government, they must defend their gains. They need to sell.

And selling government policies is different from criticizing them, they’re learning.

“We were explaining the negative consequences of a law that had passed,” said Tim Phillips, the president of the Kochs’ political arm Americans for Prosperity, reflecting on the group’s efforts to mobilize voters against Obamacare in previous years. “This year we’ll be explaining the benefits of good policies in many cases.”

Voters have been skeptical of the tax law in part because much of the benefit is focused on businesses like those run by the Kochs and their allies. The tax cuts directly benefit Koch Industries by $1 billion to $1.4 billion a year, according to a recent analysis from Americans for Tax Fairness, a liberal advocacy group.

“They stand to benefit by massive amounts more than what they’ve spent,” said TJ Helmstetter, a spokesman for Americans for Tax Fairness.

David Dziok, a spokesman for Koch Industries who attended the weekend events, said he is “skeptical” of the numbers but didn’t say they were wrong.

“The tax-reform legislation is going to affect our businesses in different ways, and that’ll play out in time,” Dziok said. “But we are confident that it’ll be good for businesses big and small, and all American taxpayers.”

A major focus for the Koch network — known formally as the Seminar Network — is state legislation, with an aim to remake the nation’s education system via referendums and new state laws. The Kochs are particularly enthusiastic about education savings accounts: a mechanism that upends traditional K-12 education by, in some cases, giving parents lump sums they can use to pay private schools or even online institutions to educate their children.

A top priority for 2018 is in Arizona, where a measure allowing education savings accounts for all students goes on the ballot in November. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey pushed the idea and attended the weekend seminar to chat with donors about it.

Success in Arizona would have “a ripple effect” felt across the country, explained Jorge Lima, executive director of the LIBRE Initiative, the Kochs’ Hispanic outreach arm that has been playing an increasing role with the network’s education measures in states.

A similar bill is moving through the New Hampshire Legislature and is supported by Americans for Prosperity.

These efforts are the latest in a roiling education debate and face headwinds. Last month a school board in Colorado voted, 6 to 0, to end a private voucher program, which teachers unions hope is a sign that voters are showing skepticism for such policies.

The Koch network is not completely aligned with the Trump administration, to be sure. The Koch network largely supports free trade, for example, putting it at odds with the “America First” rhetoric of President Trump.

On Saturday evening, Phillips raised the issue with Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who was a panelist at one session. “Do you feel comfortable that Republicans will maintain that free-trade majority that they have?”

“I do,” Tillis assured donors gathered in a ballroom.

The Kochs didn’t support Trump in 2016, though they have strong ties to Vice President Mike Pence and key members of Trump’s staff and Cabinet.

More HERE

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Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party. And now a "Deplorable"

When it comes to political incorrectness, I hit the trifecta. I talk about race, IQ and social class. I have an academic background in all three subjects but that wins me no forgiveness

At its most basic psychological level, conservatives are the contented people and Leftists are the discontented people. And both are largely dispositional, inborn -- which is why they so rarely change

As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

So an essential feature of Leftism is that they think they have the right to tell other people what to do

Leftists are the disgruntled folk. They see things in the world that are not ideal and conclude therefore that they have the right to change those things by force. Conservative explanations of why things are not ideal -- and never can be -- fall on deaf ears

Leftists aim to deliver dismay and disruption into other people's lives -- and they are good at achieving that.

Leftists are wolfs in sheep's clothing

Liberals are people who don't believe in liberty

German has a word that describes most Leftists well: "Scheinheilig" - A person who appears to be very kind, soft natured, and filled with pure goodness but behind the facade, has a vile nature. He is seemingly holy but is an unscrupulous person on the inside.

The new faith is very oppressive: Leftist orthodoxy is the new dominant religion of the Western world and it is every bit as bigoted and oppressive as Christianity was at its worst

There are two varieties of authoritarian Leftism. Fascists are soft Leftists, preaching one big happy family -- "Better together" in other words. Communists are hard Leftists, preaching class war.

Equality: The nonsensical and incoherent claim that underlies so much Leftist discourse is "all men are equal". And that is the envier's gospel. It makes not a scrap of sense and shows no contact with reality but it is something that enviers resort to as a way of soothing their envious feelings. They deny the very differences that give them so much heartburn. "Denial" was long ago identified by Freud as a maladaptive psychological defence mechanism and "All men are equal" is a prize example of that. Whatever one thinks of his theories, Freud was undoubtedly an acute observer of people and very few psychologists today would doubt the maladaptive nature of denial as described by Freud.

Socialism is the most evil malady ever to afflict the human brain. The death toll in WWII alone tells you that

You do still occasionally see some mention of the old idea that Leftist parties represent the worker. In the case of the U.S. Democrats that is long gone. Now they want to REFORM the worker. No wonder most working class Americans these days vote Republican. Democrats are the party of the minorities and the smug

We live in a country where the people own the Government and not in a country where the Government owns the people -- Churchill

The Left have a lot in common with tortoises. They have a thick mental shell that protects them from the reality of the world about them

Definition of a Socialist: Someone who wants everything you have...except your job.

Let's start with some thought-provoking graphics

Israel: A great powerhouse of the human spirit

The difference in practice

The United Nations: A great ideal but a sordid reality

Alfred Dreyfus, a reminder of French antisemitism still relevant today

Eugenio Pacelli, a righteous Gentile, a true man of God and a brilliant Pope

Leftism in one picture:

The "steamroller" above who got steamrollered by his own hubris. Spitzer is a warning of how self-destructive a vast ego can be -- and also of how destructive of others it can be.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. Allende had just burnt the electoral rolls so it wasn't hard to see what was coming. Pinochet pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Leftist writers usually seem quite reasonable and persuasive at first glance. The problem is not what they say but what they don't say. Leftist beliefs are so counterfactual ("all men are equal", "all men are brothers" etc.) that to be a Leftist you have to have a talent for blotting out from your mind facts that don't suit you. And that is what you see in Leftist writing: A very selective view of reality. Facts that disrupt a Leftist story are simply ignored. Leftist writing is cherrypicking on a grand scale

So if ever you read something written by a Leftist that sounds totally reasonable, you have an urgent need to find out what other people say on that topic. The Leftist will almost certainly have told only half the story

We conservatives have the facts on our side, which is why Leftists never want to debate us and do their best to shut us up. It's very revealing the way they go to great lengths to suppress conservative speech at universities. Universities should be where the best and brightest Leftists are to be found but even they cannot stand the intellectual challenge that conservatism poses for them. It is clearly a great threat to them. If what we say were ridiculous or wrong, they would grab every opportunity to let us know it

A conservative does not hanker after the new; He hankers after the good. Leftists hanker after the untested

Just one thing is sufficient to tell all and sundry what an unamerican lamebrain Obama is. He pronounced an army corps as an army "corpse" Link here. Can you imagine any previous American president doing that? Many were men with significant personal experience in the armed forces in their youth.

A favorite Leftist saying sums up the whole of Leftism: "To make an omelette, you've got to break eggs". They want to change some state of affairs and don't care who or what they destroy or damage in the process. They think their alleged good intentions are sufficient to absolve them from all blame for even the most evil deeds

In practical politics, the art of Leftism is to sound good while proposing something destructive

Leftists are the "we know best" people, meaning that they are intrinsically arrogant. Matthew chapter 6 would not be for them. And arrogance leads directly into authoritarianism

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His clever short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out

Insight: "A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him." —Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Leftists think of themselves as the new nobility

Many people in literary and academic circles today who once supported Stalin and his heirs are generally held blameless and may even still be admired whereas anybody who gave the slightest hint of support for the similarly brutal Hitler regime is an utter polecat and pariah. Why? Because Hitler's enemies were "only" the Jews whereas Stalin's enemies were those the modern day Left still hates -- people who are doing well for themselves materially. Modern day Leftists understand and excuse Stalin and his supporters because Stalin's hates are their hates.

Hatred has long been a central pillar of leftist ideologies, premised as they are on trampling individual rights for the sake of a collectivist plan. Karl Marx boasted that he was “the greatest hater of the so-called positive.” In 1923, V.I. Lenin chillingly declared to the Soviet Commissars of Education, “We must teach our children to hate. Hatred is the basis of communism.” In his tract “Left-Wing Communism,” Lenin went so far as to assert that hatred was “the basis of every socialist and Communist movement.”

If you understand that Leftism is hate, everything falls into place.

The strongest way of influencing people is to convince them that you will do them some good. Leftists and con-men misuse that

Leftists believe only what they want to believe. So presenting evidence contradicting their beliefs simply enrages them. They do not learn from it

Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves.

Leftists who think that they can conjure up paradise out of their own limited brains are simply fools -- arrogant and dangerous fools. They essentially know nothing. Conservatives learn from the thousands of years of human brains that have preceded us -- including the Bible, the ancient Greeks and much else. The death of Socrates is, for instance, an amazing prefiguration of the intolerant 21st century. Ask any conservative stranded in academe about his freedom of speech

Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Leftists don't understand that -- which is a major factor behind their simplistic thinking. They just never see the trade-offs. But implementing any Leftist idea will hit us all with the trade-offs

Chesteron's fence -- good conservative thinking

"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley"[go oft astray] is a well known line from a famous poem by the great Scottish poet, Robert Burns. But the next line is even wiser: "And leave us nought but grief and pain for promised joy". Burns was a Leftist of sorts so he knew how often their theories fail badly.

Mostly, luck happens when opportunity meets preparation.

Most Leftist claims are simply propaganda. Those who utter such claims must know that they are not telling the whole story. Hitler described his Marxist adversaries as "lying with a virtuosity that would bend iron beams". At the risk of ad hominem shrieks, I think that image is too good to remain disused.

Conservatives adapt to the world they live in. Leftists want to change the world to suit themselves

Given their dislike of the world they live in, it would be a surprise if Leftists were patriotic and loved their own people. Prominent English Leftist politician Jack Straw probably said it best: "The English as a race are not worth saving"

In his 1888 book, The Anti-Christ Friedrich Nietzsche argues that we should treat the common man well and kindly because he is the backdrop against which the exceptional man can be seen. So Nietzsche deplores those who agitate the common man: "Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The socialist rabble, the chandala [outcast] apostles, who undermine the instinct, the pleasure, the worker's sense of satisfaction with his small existence—who make him envious, who teach him revenge. The source of wrong is never unequal rights but the claim of “equal” rights"

Why do conservatives respect tradition and rely on the past in many ways? Because they want to know what works and the past is the chief source of evidence on that. Leftists are more faith-based. They cling to their theories (e.g. global warming) with religious fervour, even though theories are often wrong

Thinking that you "know best" is an intrinsically precarious and foolish stance -- because nobody does. Reality is so complex and unpredictable that it can rarely be predicted far ahead. Conservatives can see that and that is why conservatives always want change to be done gradually, in a step by step way. So the Leftist often finds the things he "knows" to be out of step with reality, which challenges him and his ego. Sadly, rather than abandoning the things he "knows", he usually resorts to psychological defence mechanisms such as denial and projection. He is largely impervious to argument because he has to be. He can't afford to let reality in.

A prize example of the Leftist tendency to projection (seeing your own faults in others) is the absurd Robert "Bob" Altemeyer, an acclaimed psychologist and father of a Canadian Leftist politician. Altemeyer claims that there is no such thing as Leftist authoritarianism and that it is conservatives who are "Enemies of Freedom". That Leftists (e.g. Mrs Obama) are such enemies of freedom that they even want to dictate what people eat has apparently passed Altemeyer by. Even Stalin did not go that far. And there is the little fact that all the great authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Stalin, Hitler and Mao) were socialist. Freud saw reliance on defence mechanisms such as projection as being maladjusted. It is difficult to dispute that. Altemeyer is too illiterate to realize it but he is actually a good Hegelian. Hegel thought that "true" freedom was marching in step with a Left-led herd.

What libertarian said this? “The bureaucracy is a parasite on the body of society, a parasite which ‘chokes’ all its vital pores…The state is a parasitic organism”. It was VI Lenin, in August 1917, before he set up his own vastly bureaucratic state. He could see the problem but had no clue about how to solve it.

It was Democrat John F Kennedy who cut taxes and declared that “a rising tide lifts all boats"

Leftist stupidity is a special class of stupidity. The people concerned are mostly not stupid in general but they have a character defect (mostly arrogance) that makes them impatient with complexity and unwilling to study it. So in their policies they repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot; They fail to attain their objectives. The world IS complex so a simplistic approach to it CANNOT work.

Seminal Leftist philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel said something that certainly applies to his fellow Leftists: "We learn from history that we do not learn from history". And he captured the Left in this saying too: "Evil resides in the very gaze which perceives Evil all around itself".

"A man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart; A man who is still a socialist at age 30 has no head". Who said that? Most people attribute it to Winston but as far as I can tell it was first said by Georges Clemenceau, French Premier in WWI -- whose own career approximated the transition concerned. And he in turn was probably updating an earlier saying about monarchy versus Republicanism by Guizot. Other attributions here. There is in fact a normal drift from Left to Right as people get older. Both Reagan and Churchill started out as liberals

Funny how to the Leftist intelligentsia poor blacks are 'oppressed' and poor whites are 'trash'. Racism, anyone?

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate. And you may not even survive at all. Stalin killed off all the old Bolsheviks.

A Conservative manifesto from England -- The inimitable Jacob Rees-Mogg

MYTH BUSTING:

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

Just the name of Hitler's political party should be sufficient to reject the claim that Hitler was "Right wing" but Leftists sometimes retort that the name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is not informative, in that it is the name of a dismal Stalinist tyranny. But "People's Republic" is a normal name for a Communist country whereas I know of no conservative political party that calls itself a "Socialist Worker's Party". Such parties are in fact usually of the extreme Left (Trotskyite etc.)

Most people find the viciousness of the Nazis to be incomprehensible -- for instance what they did in their concentration camps. But you just have to read a little of the vileness that pours out from modern-day "liberals" in their Twitter and blog comments to understand it all very well. Leftists haven't changed. They are still boiling with hate

Hatred as a motivating force for political strategy leads to misguided decisions. “Hatred is blind,” as Alexandre Dumas warned, “rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.”

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Three examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Jesse Owens, the African-American hero of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, said "Hitler didn't snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt never even invited the quadruple gold medal-winner to the White House

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

The Zimmerman case is an excellent proof that the Left is deep-down racist

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

It would be very easy for me to say that I am too much of an individual for the army but I did in fact join the army and enjoy it greatly, as most men do. In my observation, ALL army men are individuals. It is just that they accept discipline in order to be militarily efficient -- which is the whole point of the exercise. But that's too complex for simplistic Leftist thinking, of course

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

FDR appointed a known KKK member, Hugo Black, to the Supreme Court

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

High Level of Welfare Use by Legal and Illegal Immigrants in the USA. Low skill immigrants receive 4 to 5 dollars of benefits for every dollar in taxes paid

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

The association between high IQ and long life is overwhelmingly genetic: "In the combined sample the genetic contribution to the covariance was 95%"

The Dark Ages were not dark

Judged by his deeds, Abraham Lincoln was one of the bloodiest villains ever to walk the Earth. See here. And: America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

At the beginning of the North/South War, Confederate general Robert E. Lee did not own any slaves. Union General Ulysses L. Grant did.

Was slavery already washed up by the tides of history before Lincoln took it on? Eric Williams in his book "Capitalism and Slavery" tells us: “The commercial capitalism of the eighteenth century developed the wealth of Europe by means of slavery and monopoly. But in so doing it helped to create the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century, which turned round and destroyed the power of commercial capitalism, slavery, and all its works. Without a grasp of these economic changes the history of the period is meaningless.”

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Conrad Black on the Declaration of Independence

Malcolm Gladwell: "There is more of reality and wisdom in a Chinese fortune cookie than can be found anywhere in Gladwell’s pages"

Some people are born bad -- confirmed by genetics research

The dark side of American exceptionalism: America could well be seen as the land of folly. It fought two unnecessary civil wars, would have done well to keep out of two world wars, endured the extraordinary folly of Prohibition and twice elected a traitor President -- Barack Obama. That America remains a good place to be is a tribute to the energy and hard work of individual Americans.

“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.” ― Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution Of Liberty

IN BRIEF:

The 10 "cannots" (By William J. H. Boetcker) that Leftist politicians ignore:
*You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
* You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
* And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

A good short definition of conservative: "One who wants you to keep your hand out of his pocket."

Beware of good intentions. They mostly lead to coercion

A gargantuan case of hubris, coupled with stunning level of ignorance about how the real world works, is the essence of progressivism.

The U.S. Constitution is neither "living" nor dead. It is fixed until it is amended. But amending it is the privilege of the people, not of politicians or judges

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong - Thomas Sowell

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution" -- George Orwell

Was 16th century science pioneer Paracelsus a libertarian? His motto was "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself."

"When using today's model of society as a rule, most of history will be found to be full of oppression, bias, and bigotry." What today's arrogant judges of history fail to realize is that they, too, will be judged. What will Americans of 100 years from now make of, say, speech codes, political correctness, and zero tolerance - to name only three? Assuming, of course, there will still be an America that we, today, would recognize. Given the rogue Federal government spy apparatus, I am not at all sure of that. -- Paul Havemann

Economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973): "The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office."

It's the shared hatred of the rest of us that unites Islamists and the Left.

American liberals don't love America. They despise it. All they love is their own fantasy of what America could become. They are false patriots.

The Democratic Party: Con-men elected by the ignorant and the arrogant

The Democratic Party is a strange amalgam of elites, would-be elites and minorities. No wonder their policies are so confused and irrational

Why are conservatives more at ease with religion? Because it is basic to conservatism that some things are unknowable, and religious people have to accept that too. Leftists think that they know it all and feel threatened by any exceptions to that. Thinking that you know it all is however the pride that comes before a fall.

The characteristic emotion of the Leftist is not envy. It's rage

Leftists are committed to grievance, not truth

The British Left poured out a torrent of hate for Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her death. She rescued Britain from chaos and restored Britain's prosperity. What's not to hate about that?

Something you didn't know about Margaret Thatcher

The world's dumbest investor? Without doubt it is Uncle Sam. Nobody anywhere could rival the scale of the losses on "investments" made under the Obama administration

"Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power" -- Murray Rothbard - Egalitarianism and the Elites (1995)

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

"World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them--all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis... The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach." -- Solzhenitsyn

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." -- Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. -- Thomas Jefferson

"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power" -- Bertrand Russell

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

The Republicans are the gracious side of American politics. It is the Democrats who are the nasty party, the haters

Wanting to stay out of the quarrels of other nations is conservative -- but conservatives will fight if attacked or seriously endangered. Anglo/Irish statesman Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), who led the political coalition that defeated Napoleon, was an isolationist, as were traditional American conservatives.

Some wisdom from the past: "The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment." —George Washington, 1783

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

There is better evidence for creation than there is for the Leftist claim that “gender” is a “social construct”. Most Leftist claims seem to be faith-based rather than founded on the facts

Leftists are classic weak characters. They dish out abuse by the bucketload but cannot take it when they get it back. Witness the Loughner hysteria.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

The Leftist motto: "I love humanity. It's just people I can't stand"

Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

Gore Vidal: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little". Vidal was of course a Leftist

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left. Some evidence here showing that envy is not what defines the Left

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

Was Confucius a conservative? The following saying would seem to reflect good conservative caution: "The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

Some Leftist hatred arises from the fact that they blame "society" for their own personal problems and inadequacies

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

Leftist policies are candy-coated rat poison that may appear appealing at first, but inevitably do a lot of damage to everyone impacted by them.

A tribute and thanks to Mary Jo Kopechne. Her death was reprehensible but she probably did more by her death that she ever would have in life: She spared the world a President Ted Kennedy. That the heap of corruption that was Ted Kennedy died peacefully in his bed is one of the clearest demonstrations that we do not live in a just world. Even Joe Stalin seems to have been smothered to death by Nikita Khrushchev

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

Even in the Old Testament they knew about "Postmodernism": "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

Was Solomon the first conservative? "The hearts of men are full of evil and madness is in their hearts" -- Ecclesiastes: 9:3 (RSV). He could almost have been talking about Global Warming.

Leftist hatred of Christianity goes back as far as the massacre of the Carmelite nuns during the French revolution. Yancey has written a whole book tabulating modern Leftist hatred of Christians. It is a rival religion to Leftism.

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present.

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among intelligent people, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics. -- C.J. Keyser

Hell is paved with good intentions" -- Boswell's Life of Johnson of 1775

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state -- capitalism frees them.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amendment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.

"Some action that is unconstitutional has much to recommend it" -- Elena Kagan, nominated to SCOTUS by Obama

Frank Sulloway, the anti-scientist

The basic aim of all bureaucrats is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Some ancient wisdom for Leftists: "Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over wise: Why shouldest thou die before thy time?" -- Ecclesiastes 7:16

Jesse Jackson: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." There ARE important racial differences.

Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Big business is not your friend. As Adam Smith said: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary

How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values. -- John Maynard Keynes

Some wisdom from "Bron" Waugh: "The purpose of politics is to help them [politicians] overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power"

"There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible"

The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to Parliament [or Congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever"

"It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled"

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were. Freedom needs a soldier

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

3 memoirs of "Supermac", a 20th century Disraeli (Aristocratic British Conservative Prime Minister -- 1957 to 1963 -- Harold Macmillan):

"It breaks my heart to see (I can't interfere or do anything at my age) what is happening in our country today - this terrible strike of the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's army and beat Hitler's army, and never gave in. Pointless, endless. We can't afford that kind of thing. And then this growing division which the noble Lord who has just spoken mentioned, of a comparatively prosperous south, and an ailing north and midlands. That can't go on." -- Mac on the British working class: "the best men in the world" (From his Maiden speech in the House of Lords, 13 November 1984)

"As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism"

During Macmillan's time as prime minister, average living standards steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." -- Arthur Schopenhauer

JEWS AND ISRAEL

The Bible is an Israeli book

There is a view on both Left and Right that Jews are "too" influential. And it is true that they are more influential than their numbers would indicate. But they are exactly as influential as their IQs would indicate

To me, hostility to the Jews is a terrible tragedy. I weep for them at times. And I do literally put my money where my mouth is. I do at times send money to Israeli charities

My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.

It’s a strange paradox when anti-Zionists argue that Jews should suffer and wander without a homeland while urging that Palestinians ought to have security and territory.

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" -- Genesis 12:3

"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love thee" Psalm 122:6.

If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy -- Psalm 137 (NIV)

Israel, like the Jews throughout history, is hated not for her vices but her virtues. Israel is hated, as the United States is hated, because Israel is successful, because Israel is free, and because Israel is good. As Maxim Gorky put it: “Whatever nonsense the anti-Semites may talk, they dislike the Jew only because he is obviously better, more adroit, and more willing and capable of work than they are.” Whether driven by culture or genes—or like most behavior, an inextricable mix—the fact of Jewish genius is demonstrable." -- George Gilder

To Leftist haters, all the basic rules of liberal society — rejection of hate speech, commitment to academic freedom, rooting out racism, the absolute commitment to human dignity — go out the window when the subject is Israel.

I have always liked the story of Gideon (See Judges chapters 6 to 8) and it is surely no surprise that in the present age Israel is the Gideon of nations: Few in numbers but big in power and impact.

Is the Israel Defence Force the most effective military force per capita since Genghis Khan? They probably are but they are also the most ethically advanced military force that the world has ever seen

If I were not an atheist, I would believe that God had a sense of humour. He gave his chosen people (the Jews) enormous advantages -- high intelligence and high drive -- but to keep it fair he deprived them of something hugely important too: Political sense. So Jews to this day tend very strongly to be Leftist -- even though the chief source of antisemitism for roughly the last 200 years has been the political Left!

And the other side of the coin is that Jews tend to despise conservatives and Christians. Yet American fundamentalist Christians are the bedrock of the vital American support for Israel, the ultimate bolthole for all Jews. So Jewish political irrationality seems to be a rather good example of the saying that "The LORD giveth and the LORD taketh away". There are many other examples of such perversity (or "balance"). The sometimes severe side-effects of most pharmaceutical drugs is an obvious one but there is another ethnic example too, a rather amusing one. Chinese people are in general smart and patient people but their rate of traffic accidents in China is about 10 times higher than what prevails in Western societies. They are brilliant mathematicians and fearless business entrepreneurs but at the same time bad drivers!

Conservatives, on the other hand, could be antisemitic on entirely rational grounds: Namely, the overwhelming Leftism of the Diaspora Jewish population as a whole. Because they judge the individual, however, only a tiny minority of conservative-oriented people make such general judgments. The longer Jews continue on their "stiff-necked" course, however, the more that is in danger of changing. The children of Israel have been a stiff necked people since the days of Moses, however, so they will no doubt continue to vote with their emotions rather than their reason.

I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.

Fortunately for America, though, liberal Jews there are rapidly dying out through intermarriage and failure to reproduce. And the quite poisonous liberal Jews of Israel are not much better off. Judaism is slowly returning to Orthodoxy and the Orthodox tend to be conservative.

The above is good testimony to the accuracy of the basic conservative insight that almost anything in human life is too complex to be reduced to any simple rule and too complex to be reduced to any rule at all without allowance for important exceptions to the rule concerned

Amid their many virtues, one virtue is often lacking among Jews in general and Israelis in particular: Humility. And that's an antisemitic comment only if Hashem is antisemitic. From Moses on, the Hebrew prophets repeatedy accused the Israelites of being "stiff-necked" and urged them to repent. So it's no wonder that the greatest Jewish prophet of all -- Jesus -- not only urged humility but exemplified it in his life and death

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Karl Marx hated just about everyone. Even his father, the kindly Heinrich Marx, thought Karl was not much of a human being

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there'd be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, there'd be genocide.

ABOUT

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect. Aside from my huge respect for the Queen, however, my favourite member of the Royal family is the redheaded Prince Harry. The Royal family is of course a military family and Prince Harry is a great example of that. As one of the world's most privileged people, he could well be an idle layabout but instead he loves his life in the army. When his girlfriend Chelsy ditched him because he was so often away, Prince Harry said: "I love Chelsy but the army comes first". A perfect military man! I doubt that many women would understand or approve of his attitude but perhaps my own small army background powers my approval of that attitude.

I imagine that most Americans might find this rather mad -- but I believe that a constitutional Monarchy is the best form of government presently available. Can a libertarian be a Monarchist? I think so -- and prominent British libertarian Sean Gabb seems to think so too! Long live the Queen! (And note that Australia ranks well above the USA on the Index of Economic freedom. Heh!)

The Australian flag with the Union Jack quartered in it

Throughout Europe there is an association between monarchism and conservatism. It is a little sad that American conservatives do not have access to that satisfaction. So even though Australia is much more distant from Europe (geographically) than the USA is, Australia is in some ways more of an outpost of Europe than America is! Mind you: Australia is not very atypical of its region. Australia lies just South of Asia -- and both Japan and Thailand have greatly respected monarchies. And the demise of the Cambodian monarchy was disastrous for Cambodia

Throughout the world today, possession of a U.S. or U.K. passport is greatly valued. I once shared that view. Developments in recent years have however made me profoundly grateful that I am a 5th generation Australian. My Australian passport is a door into a much less oppressive and much less messed-up place than either the USA or Britain

Following the Sotomayor precedent, I would hope that a wise older white man such as myself with the richness of that experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who hasn’t lived that life.

IQ and ideology: Most academics are Left-leaning. Why? Because very bright people who have balls go into business, while very bright people with no balls go into academe. I did both with considerable success, which makes me a considerable rarity. Although I am a born academic, I have always been good with money too. My share portfolio even survived the GFC in good shape. The academics hate it that bright people with balls make more money than them.

I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

"Intellectual" = Leftist dreamer. I have more publications in the academic journals than almost all "public intellectuals" but I am never called an intellectual and nor would I want to be. Call me a scholar or an academic, however, and I will accept either as a just and earned appellation

A small personal note: I have always been very self-confident. I inherited it from my mother, along with my skeptical nature. So I don't need to feed my self-esteem by claiming that I am wiser than others -- which is what Leftists do.

As with conservatives generally, it bothers me not a bit to admit to large gaps in my knowledge and understanding. For instance, I don't know if the slight global warming of the 20th century will resume in the 21st, though I suspect not. And I don't know what a "healthy" diet is, if there is one. Constantly-changing official advice on the matter suggests that nobody knows

Leftists are usually just anxious little people trying to pretend that they are significant. No doubt there are some Leftists who are genuinely concerned about inequities in our society but their arrogance lies in thinking that they understand it without close enquiry

My academic background

My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 65 at the time of writing in 2009. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here

I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.

Despite my great sympathy and respect for Christianity, I am the most complete atheist you could find. I don't even believe that the word "God" is meaningful. I am not at all original in that view, of course. Such views are particularly associated with the noted German philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Unlike Carnap, however, none of my wives have committed suicide

Very occasionally in my writings I make reference to the greats of analytical philosophy such as Carnap and Wittgenstein. As philosophy is a heavily Leftist discipline however, I have long awaited an attack from some philosopher accusing me of making coat-trailing references not backed by any real philosophical erudition. I suppose it is encouraging that no such attacks have eventuated but I thought that I should perhaps forestall them anyway -- by pointing out that in my younger days I did complete three full-year courses in analytical philosophy (at 3 different universities!) and that I have had papers on mainstream analytical philosophy topics published in academic journals

As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

A real army story here

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and there is JUST ONE saying of Hitler's that I rather like. It may not even be original to him but it is found in chapter 2 of Mein Kampf (published in 1925): "Widerstaende sind nicht da, dass man vor ihnen kapituliert, sondern dass man sie bricht". The equivalent English saying is "Difficulties exist to be overcome" and that traces back at least to the 1920s -- with attributions to Montessori and others. Hitler's metaphor is however one of smashing barriers rather than of politely hopping over them and I am myself certainly more outspoken than polite. Hitler's colloquial Southern German is notoriously difficult to translate but I think I can manage a reasonable translation of that saying: "Resistance is there not for us to capitulate to but for us to break". I am quite sure that I don't have anything like that degree of determination in my own life but it seems to me to be a good attitude in general anyway

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.

You can email me here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR" -- and that preference has NOTHING to do with an American soap opera that featured a character who was referred to in that way

DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism"
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart

BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral reef compendium.
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia

BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Vodafrauds (vodafone)
Bank of Queensland blues

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Some more useful links

Alt archives for "Dissecting Leftism" here or here
Longer Academic Papers
Johnray links
Academic home page
Academic Backup Page
General Backup
General Backup 2

Selected reading

MONOGRAPH ON LEFTISM

CONSERVATISM AS HERESY

Rightism defined
Leftist Churches
Leftist Racism
Fascism is Leftist
Hitler a socialist
Leftism is authoritarian
James on Leftism
Irbe on Leftism
Beltt on Leftism
Lakoff
Van Hiel
Sidanius
Kruglanski
Pyszczynski et al.

Cautionary blogs about big Australian organizations:

TELSTRA
OPTUS
AGL
Bank of Queensland
Queensland Police
Australian police news
QANTAS, a dying octopus

Main academic menu
Menu of recent writings
basic home page
Pictorial Home Page
Selected pictures from blogs (Backup here)
Another picture page (Best with broadband. Rarely updated)

Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20151027-0014/jonjayray.comuv.com/

OR: (After 2015)
https://web.archive.org/web/20160322114550/http://jonjayray.com/