DISSECTING LEFTISM MIRROR Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.. Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts As President, Trump will be as transformative as Reagan; He has blown the political consensus out of the water

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31 July, 2017

Evolutionary biology:  Three theories

Evolutionary biology is an inherently speculative field and new fossil finds seem regularly to upset such theories. So I am going to concentrate on theories for which we have some solid data -- in the form of IQ scores.  I am going to look at just 3 populations for which average IQ has now been fairly securely assessed: East Asians, Europeans and Australian Aborigines. Why do the scores decline so markedly across those three groups? I think the main key is warfare or the lack of it.

Europeans are an interesting example of balance.  They have had frequent and ferocious wars with one-another but have also had substantial periods of peace. And they seem to have benefited from both.  Wars are often won by guile rather than by numbers  but that is never easy and requires ever-changing tactics.  So a general problem solving ability was selected for.  Europeans developed their IQs to help them win their many wars. A smarter tribe tended to win and therefore prosper, with more children being born for that tribe.

But the periods of peace were long enough for the pursuits of peace to thrive from time to time also.  And one of the most interesting peaceful pursuit is enquiry, scholarship, finding things out.  And because of that scholarship tends to be highly regarded.  Even in ancient Sumeria there is a record of a father bringing a fleece to give to a teacher. Which is something of an advance on an apple but we can see the same motive and the same respect.

So scholarly people tended to be well supported and hence were an economically successful group.  Sadly, many of the European scholars were celibate monks so the effect was probably much less than it might have been. The monks did however help to make scholarship prestigious so that was a useful function.

An interesting special case is the Germans.  For most of history, there was no German nation.  Germany was a geographical concept only.  It was a place where many large and small independent nations lived who all spoke a form of German.  And, ever since the Roman republic and probably before, Germans have always been warlike. And they as often made war on one-another as they did on others.  So they were heavily selected for martial ability.  Only good warriors survived.  And that selectivity did result not only in a healthy IQ but also in other advantageous attributes.  Their average IQ did not become outstanding compared with their neighbors because it was supplemented by other advantages, one of which is extreme: innovativeness.

It was probably the desirability of military flexibility that made Germans into master innovators, something I have written at length about previously. Leftist psychologists go to great lengths to isolate important intellectual abilities that are not captured by IQ tests but their suggested alternatives mostly reduce to absurdity.  So it is amusing that one of the few genuine alternatives is innovativeness.  That Germans are the masters in that attribute must grind a few gears, however.

Hollywood war movies portray German troops as rigid and robotic bunglers so my characterization of them as flexible will no doubt be a surprise to non-historians.  In fact however, flexibility in tactics was preached in Vom Kriege,  that great Prussian bible of military doctrine by Clausewitz, written early in the 19th century.  The big bunglers of WWII were allied troops.

Particularly in the case of the Prussians (North-Eastern Germans), their martial tendencies were channeled in another direction as well:  into a military personality, with self-discipline being a major part of that. For instance, punctuality requires self discipline and Germans are famous for that.

Speaking more generally, it once used to be said that you just had to drop any German into a military uniform and he immediately became the perfect soldier.  And the exploits of the Wehrmacht in WWII were amazing.  Although heavily outnumbered they very nearly won, despite the large handicap of Corporal Hitler's overall inept leadership.

Just to give you the flavor of that, the British air ace with the highest number of enemy aircraft shot down was "Johnnie" Johnson, with 38 "kills". By comparison, Erich Hartmann of the Luftwaffe had 352 "kills". A similar ratio was not unknown in WWII tank battles.

But Germany did have periods of peace so the arts of peace thrived there as well.  It might be noted that the contributions to the arts made by Germans as a group were however very unevenly distributed, with Austria being by far the greatest contributor -- particularly in music -- and Prussia the least. To this day, about two thirds of the classical repertoire in music was composed in Austria (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert etc.).

So what is distinctive about Austria?  It was a large empire that got big not by war but by intermarriage of its royal family with other royal families.  They did have wars -- particularly with invading Prussians -- but life in the empire was mostly peaceful.  So "useless" but beguiling things like music and literature could thrive.

And up to WWII, Vienna, the capital of Austria, was THE great city.  It was the intellectual capital of the world.  Most of the eminent philosophers (e.g. Schlick, Wittgenstein), psychologists (e.g. Freud, Jung), Economists (e.g. Boehm von Bawerk, Mises) and artists (e.g. Klimt, Klee) were there. And Vienna was also prominent in new music. It was the home of a great new musical artform, the operetta -- with operettas by composers such as Strauss and Kalman generating many perennially popular songs.  Dutch musical entrepreneur Andre Rieu is a great user of songs from operetta.

China

Compared with Europe, China had long periods of peace under the various dynasties.  So peaceful pursuits could flourish.  And one of those pursuits was scholarship, a much respected pursuit. So China developed its famous civil service examinations, which gave you access to the Chinese elite.  You reached the top in China not by the sword but by the ink brush. And that made scholarship universally respected and aspired to.

And a major factor in scholarly achievement is IQ. So it was the high IQ section of the Chinese population who got all the gravy. They flourished economically and thus tended to have more children.  So IQ was heavily selected for in China over many generations. And so we have the finding today that the Chinese are roughly half a standard deviation higher in average IQ than are Westerners.

And Chinese civilization was much admired in Korea and Japan.  Confucian thinking was adopted there. Chinese bureaucracy, culture, religion, and philosophy were closely studied.  Japan had a particular advantage there.  The Tokugawa shogunate gave Japan over 200 years of peace, an unprecedented achievement. So peaceful pursuits were of particular interest there as well. The Chinese model was largely adopted, with similar results.  So China, South Korea and Japan are closely similar in IQ.

Which leads to an interesting contrast:  Other East Asians, such as the Chinese and Vietnamese do quite poorly on average IQ.  How come?  They all look the same to us!  The Philippines is an easy answer. They are separated from China by rather a lot of ocean.  China did have some influence but the Filipinos mostly went on with their own ways.

And for Vietnam, the problem was the neighborhood bully:  China.  Vietnam was a minor issue in China but China was a big issue in Vietnam.  Little Vietnam kept being invaded from next-door China.  And because China could muster far more troops than Vietnam, Vietnamese had to develop as warriors if they wanted to keep China at bay. And they did.  Like Germans, the Vietnamese became a warrior race -- as both France and the USA found out in the 20th century.  So there was much less scope for peaceful pursuits in Vietnam. Keeping out foreigners became the Vietnamese specialty. And they are still good at that.

Aborigines

And so on to Australian Aborigines, who register one of the lowest average IQs that have been found.  And their unusual situation was very clear: isolation. They had virtually no contact with the outside world for as much as 60,000 years. So they developed with reference to the Australian environment only. And Australia as it was before white settlement tended to be an unforgiving place.  It was hard to make a living there.  For a primitive people the food supply was always precarious.  So the environment was the big challenge and the big shaping influence.  And shape them it did. 

Aborigines are not inferior to others intellectually.  They have just deveoloped different intellectual skills.  The skills they have are a very poor at dealing with IQ tests or modern life generally but are superbly adapted to their lives before the white men came along.  Each tribe usually had a fairly wide geographic range that they wandered over.  They had to.  They were hunter/gatherers, not farmers.  So food was scarce everywhere, particularly in the large dry areas of Australia.  So detecting from afar and creeping up on juicy herbivores was the big requirement for life.

So Aborigines developed a quite eerie ability to "read" and remember the landscape. If a few leaves on the ground had moved in the last day or two, an Aborigine would notice that as a message that there was an animal nearby.  He could probably even say which sort of animal. You have to see it to believe it.  They just have enormous visual abilities and a vast visual memory.

That extraordinary skill was in fact very useful to the white man in earlier days. It was useful in tracking down fugitives and criminals.  So the phenomenon of the "black tracker" arose.  Aborigines were hired by police to find people who would otherwise be unfindable.  An evildoer might think that he had made good his escape and he would be right in thinking that -- UNTIL the police put a black tracker on his trail.  The black tracker would see a clear trail that was invisible to whites.  Just a slightly turned leaf would be enough. So crooks who thought they were safe were often surprised to find police knocking on their door.

I could go on.  The way the environment often underlies human differences is fascinating.  I will forbear from mentioning Africans however.

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Another set of findings showing that IQ scores are firmly grounded in DNA

Note that a particular DNA profile correlated .78 with educational attainment and .86 with IQ. That is about as high as you get in explaining human variation

A genome-wide association study for extremely high intelligence

D Zabaneh et al.

Abstract

We used a case–control genome-wide association (GWA) design with cases consisting of 1238 individuals from the top 0.0003 (~170 mean IQ) of the population distribution of intelligence and 8172 unselected population-based controls. The single-nucleotide polymorphism heritability for the extreme IQ trait was 0.33 (0.02), which is the highest so far for a cognitive phenotype, and significant genome-wide genetic correlations of 0.78 were observed with educational attainment and 0.86 with population IQ. Three variants in locus ADAM12 achieved genome-wide significance, although they did not replicate with published GWA analyses of normal-range IQ or educational attainment. A genome-wide polygenic score constructed from the GWA results accounted for 1.6% of the variance of intelligence in the normal range in an unselected sample of 3414 individuals, which is comparable to the variance explained by GWA studies of intelligence with substantially larger sample sizes. The gene family plexins, members of which are mutated in several monogenic neurodevelopmental disorders, was significantly enriched for associations with high IQ. This study shows the utility of extreme trait selection for genetic study of intelligence and suggests that extremely high intelligence is continuous genetically with normal-range intelligence in the population.

Molecular Psychiatry advance online publication 4 July 2017;    doi: 10.1038/mp.2017.121

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A real man holds his own umbrella


Donald Trump speaks with reporters on Friday



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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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30 July, 2017

Who is the Ruling Class? They Exposed Themselves Last Night

Let me start by saying that I have a deep reverence for John McCain as an American hero of the last century. In his currently stricken state, it might seem that he is a poor choice of starting point for this particular argument. I would argue that exactly the opposite is true. For more on the other side of Senator McCain, here is a good primer.

Last night he and two other Republicans drove a stake through the heart of the attempt to stop the nationalization of health care. He left the care of his own doctors and flew to Washington for that express purpose. This is the very pinnacle of ruling class hubris. Whilst engaged in a battle for his own life and taking advantage of a level health care that most Americans can only dream of, he flew across the continent to cast a vote against the tide of failed government interference in the market for medical care that has succeeded only in breaking the system to the point that we are on the brink of an irresistible movement to take freedom out of health care altogether and institute “single payer” government control.

Leaving aside the illogic of increasing the control of the government in order to “fix” what the government broke in the first place, I want to focus on the people whose ”leadership” keeps us digging while it becomes more and more improbable that we could ever climb out of this hole into which we have all, leaders and constituents, dug ourselves.

The most privileged people in our country are arrogant and self-important. But they are still dependent on the votes and confidence of the public. To convince the voting public, themselves and each other that they are magnanimous and trustworthy, they make public shows of “compassion”. They crusade to expand insurance coverage for “the uninsured”. They open our borders without discrimination both to those who will enrich our culture and those who will impoverish it. They grant subsidies for all manner of anti-social and counter-productive behavior: low interest financing and tax benefits for useless degrees at schools that offer not much more than “party campuses” and breeding grounds for political unrest, welfare benefits that encourage families without fathers and multi-generational dependance the list is endless. The bottom line is that The United States of America is turning into a modernized reproduction of the Ancient Regimes of pre World War I.

Instead of “The Church”, The Royal Families and the Landed Aristocrats, we now have Politicians, Academics, Journalists and Money Manipulators as our “betters” but the result is very similar. If I had the artistic talent, I would do an updated version of the Heinrich Kley drawing showing the new worthies loading up the backs of our working people and entrepreneurs with illegal immigrants, affirmative action, alternative energy, relaxed mortgage requirements for people designed to encourage minority home ownership, single payer health care and all the other vanity projects of our ruling class.

John McCain is sick and he is fighting, once again, for his life but let’s get this straight because it is life and death for the rest of us. He had the opportunity to get treatment and his operation at the VA. He is entitled and deserving of that for his service. As a grateful nation, we should ensure that the VA gives the best care possible to our veterans. He, however, chose not to get that treatment but to go to The Mayo Clinic. I cannot fault that decision personally but politically, it is very telling.

 More and more our “public servants” send their children to private schools, use government paid transportation, live behind security walls with armed guards, ignore laws and ethical practices the rest of us are held to, avoid taxes with impunity, amass private wealth at the public trough and, in general, live lives that are entirely unlike ours.

They keep pushing the idea that they are compassionate, not by living compassionate lives or even by helping the poor achieve better lives, but by posing as compassionate people. It is an illusion! The programs they create do nothing but continually decrease the difference between those who work and those who don’t work. They take our tax money and create federal fiefdoms (EPA, HUD, BLM, Education, etc…,) that create and exacerbate more problems than they solve.

Most corrosive of all, they tell the undocumented aliens and the entrenched poor they have taken into their plantation that they are their benefactors. then the go home, with a wink to their fellow elitists, to their gated communities. This is where we are headed as a nation unless we can get the right leadership in place. We now have a president who gets it but the McCain, Collins, Alexander, Moore-Capito, Heller, Murkowski, and Portman votes of last evening just added more burden for us all, This virtue posing and false compassion is killing us. We need it to stop.

SOURCE

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The Staircase to Government Corruptocracy

In Toronto, common sense is severely lacking. A resident spent a relatively paltry $550 — provided through the benevolence of him and his community — to erect a park staircase on a dangerous slope. Apparently, government officials were upset over the initiative shown by the resident, who had serious and legitimate qualms with the city’s project estimate of at least $65,000 (and possibly as high as $150,000). Under the guise of safety requirements, the city considered destroying the stairway to install what it deems is a regulatory-compliant structure. Fortunately, new indications are that demolition is probably off the table and refinements will be pursued.

Update: The city moved forward with destroying the structure and a new one will be assembled for roughly $10,000. Which begs the question: Where in the world did the original estimate come from?
According to Mayor John Tory, “We just can’t have people decide to go out to Home Depot and build a staircase in a park because that’s what they would like to have.” The question is: Why not? To be fair, the mayor did also call his government’s price tag “completely out of whack with reality.” But that’s not stopping him from venting frustration. We’re literally talking about eight steps. Park-goers were getting injured. And for $550 residents solved two issues: unnecessary government expenditure and a dangerous situation that wasn’t being sufficiently remediated. It may not be the most well-built structure, but it’s better than government either doing nothing or wasting tax dollars. It would be easy to mock Canada for this uncanny situation, but it’s hardly a Canadian specialty. Taxpayers here in the U.S. know just how pitiful the government is when it comes to frugality.

John Stossel chronicles a similarly obnoxious case of government waste in his most recent column. He writes, “Did you see the $2 million dollar bathroom? That’s what New York City government spent to build a ‘comfort station’ in a park. I went to look at it. There were no gold-plated fixtures. It’s just a little building with four toilets and four sinks.” He adds, “No park bathroom needs to cost $2 million. An entire six-bedroom house nearby was for sale for $539,000.” But no matter: “Everything costs more when government builds it.” For the record, another bathroom located at nearby Bryant Park was constructed for a far more reasonable $300,000 — because, Stossel says, it’s privately managed. He notes, “Since government spends other people’s money, they don’t care that much about cost and they certainly don’t care much about speed.”

The fact is, government is just about the worst money manager there is. Take Barack Obama’s “stimulus,” for example. According to The Washington Free Beacon, some of the waste that occurred from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included funding for studies analyzing duck penises, erectile dysfunction and obesity, alcoholic effects on mice, as well as funding for puppet shows vilifying free enterprise and, least but not least, the infamous Solyndra debacle.

Even Obama conceded that “shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” And no wonder — a good deal of it was spent on frivolous and unnecessary things. This underscores too the importance of making frugal decisions when it comes to infrastructure repairs. As Tony Caporale and Marc Poitras write at Real Clear Policy, “Infrastructure Spending Must Justify Itself.” And the private sector has to play a critical role. Otherwise, you risk outlandish outcomes. Like $2 million bathrooms, multi-thousand-dollar staircases and even research on duck private parts.

SOURCE

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Leftists Suddenly Worry About Politicizing Boy Scouts

What could be less controversial than the president of the United States addressing the Boy Scouts of America jamboree in West Virginia? Of all the public addresses given by President Donald Trump in the first seven months of his presidency, surely this one would keep Democrats and their media attack dogs from going into hysterics.

Think again. Leftists managed to characterize the speech with their typical vitriol, exaggeration and animosity. Some even compared the event to a Hitler Youth rally. But it doesn't take long to figure out that much of the criticism has less to do with Trump talking politics at the jamboree than it does with Trump talking about the "wrong" politics.

Case in point: New York Magazine's headline reads, "The 14 Most Inappropriate Moments From Trump's Speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree." The headline suggests that Trump invited the Scouts to join him for beer and poker after the event. Yet many of the 14 points are based on Trump criticizing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the press. Trump's speech was indeed political, and we could have done without his reference to a party in New York, but it was hardly inappropriate.

Opining in The Washington Post, Stephen Stromberg took issue with the ideological content and erratic nature of Trump's address. He remarked, "Sure, scout membership skews right. But those of us who did not fit that stereotype know that the organization is and should be open to all. I spent middle and high school in a small troop that met in a Mormon church but contained Jews, agnostics, a Seventh-day Adventist and various others." But Trump didn't say anything about religion. Talk about erratic.

Scroll down a few paragraphs and the real reason for the outrage over Trump's remarks comes to the surface. Stromberg adds: "When one of our fellow scouts came out of the closet, he left the troop. But the BSA has since revised its membership policies to better reflect its mission of offering guidance to all young men."

There you go. Stromberg and other leftists aren't as upset over Trump's partisan remarks as they are about his failure to touch on the issues that Democrats want the boys to hear. We doubt Trump would have been criticized had he stated that the Scouts need to be more diverse and inclusive. Had he called for more transgender Scouts, Democrats would be lauding his remarks.

Some of the criticism of Trump's speech is understandable. He should have focused more on the Scouts' history and core principles, or on American patriotism and civics more generally. But the most critical remarks have come from Democrats and Republicans who already have issues with the president.

While the content of Trump's address has been the focus, far less reporting has been done on the fact that the Scouts cheered just about everything he had to say, despite the fact that the president of the Scouts discouraged them from showing partisan support for Trump. But they couldn't resist. Despite his flaws, the Scouts know that Trump will defend and fight for their values.

Apparently, however, the organization's leadership wasn't pleased. On Thursday, Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh stated, "I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree."

But Surbaugh didn't mind getting political when transgender Scouts were admitted earlier this year. At the time, Surbaugh exclaimed, "Communities and state laws are now interpreting gender identity differently than society did in the past. And these new laws vary widely from state to state." It was no different when they accepted homosexual Scouts four years ago and homosexual leaders two years ago. In other words, some in the BSA are perfectly willing to change according to the shifting political winds, as long as those winds are blowing in a certain direction.

Surbaugh's apology seems hypocritical and one-sided. After all, where were the apologies to the Scouts offended by the Left's political and cultural ideology over the past generation? And did anyone apologize when delegates to the 2000 Democrat National Convention actually booed Boy Scouts when they walked on the stage?

There were no apologies then, just political attacks against the Scouts. Philip Wegmann writes in the Washington Examiner, "The Boy Scouts have come under fire in the last two decades because of their membership standards concerning gay boys and leaders. They were regularly attacked as bigots in the editorial pages of the New York Times. They were mocked by the likes of Madonna (the elderly Queen of Pop creepily proclaimed she knew 'how to scout for boys.') And they were assaulted in the courts again and again and again."

As for the media, it's beyond hypocritical that they're suddenly worried about the Boy Scouts of America. The Left has successfully forced the BSA to change core principles and beliefs for many years, but suddenly media types are worried that Donald Trump criticizing Barack Obama is somehow going to tarnish a century's worth of Boy Scout values. All this damage had been done long before Trump took the stage at this year's jamboree.

The Rules and Regulations of the Boy Scouts of America state that the organization "must not, through its governing body or through any of its officers, chartered councils, Scouters, or members, involve Scouting in political matters." The handbook should have been revised years ago, because the BSA is very much a political organization these days. All President Trump did was provide a different political view. And that's the real reason why his speech has been condemned.

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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28 July, 2017

Picture gallery

Every now and again I put up a retrospective of what I think are the "best" pictures from my various blogs.  I have just put up the selection for the second half of last year.  You can access it here or here

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Democrats' 'Better Deal' — Same as the Old New Deal


Rolling out 80-year-old socialist ideas isn't the way to chart a way forward for the party in the wilderness   

Donald Trump has been president for six months now and if you listen to Democrats and the Leftmedia, you might conclude that he and the Republican-controlled Congress are destroying America. But perhaps there is no better indicator of Trump’s performance thus far as president than to hear Democrats rail about how terrible a job he has done and how horrific his policies are.

Democrats remain dumbfounded at his election and they’re even more confused that the last four special elections ended with Republican victories. Their “progressive” proposals and the millions of dollars they’ve wasted on campaigns haven’t worked.

That said, at least Chuck Schumer has enough sense to tell Hillary Clinton to stop blaming everyone else. “When you lose to somebody who has 40% popularity, you don’t blame other things — Comey, Russia — you blame yourself,” Schumer said. “And the number one thing that we did wrong is … we didn’t tell people what we stood for.”

So, this week, Democrats introduced their “Better Deal” for America. But you’d be forgiven for thinking it sounds just like everything they’ve been saying for 80 years. As Jonah Goldberg quipped, “I mean, the word ‘Deal’ is hardly subtle.”

Their beloved highness Nancy Pelosi wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post to lay out this supposedly better deal. Predictably, Pelosi starts by ripping Republicans for wanting to dismantle the (Un)Affordable Care Act, claiming that they’re “trying to raise Americans’ health costs to fund tax breaks for billionaires.” Naturally, she leaves out the details of the Democrats’ health care takeover. The mandate to buy health insurance policies that cover a long list of (often unwanted) required services caused premiums to skyrocket, squeezing the very voters she’s trying to reach with this noxious class warfare.

Trump wants ObamaCare gone, though Senate Republicans failed to accomplish any meaningful repeal and so, for now, we’re stuck with the Democrats’ terrible law.

Aside from this, Pelosi and her fellow Democrats are offering three empty slogans: better jobs, better wages and a better future. All of these sound like fantastic proposals for Americans, but the methods Democrats want to use to accomplish these goals are the same ideas that had the opposite effect and brought on the 2008 financial crisis.

On jobs, Pelosi writes, “Democrats are pledging ourselves to the goal of creating good-paying, full-time jobs for 10 million more Americans in the next five years.” When is the last time that a politician created a job? Government cannot create jobs without taking money from those who are already working in order to pay for it. Her proposal offers a new tax credit for companies that train and hire skilled workers and offer them a good wage (read: higher minimum wage). Aren’t successful companies already doing this and without a tax credit?

On better wages, beyond a higher, job-destroying $15/hour minimum wage, Pelosi wants government to crack down on large corporations and monopolies that she blames for Americans missing out on opportunities. Yet she calls for more of the same central planning that has never worked and never will work. In fact, to whip these large corporations into shape she wants tougher standards and even more regulations. Well, we just had eight years of excessive regulations and government standards, and such heavy-handed policy was the primary reason for the slowest decade of economic growth in our nation’s history.

On health care, Pelosi and her fellow Democrats want to take “unprecedented action to lower the costs of prescription drugs.” Prescription drugs are far more expensive than they should be, but the biggest reason is — you guessed it — government regulation. But, as usual, rather than rein in the overbearing regulatory commissars at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Pelosi proposes doubling down. “We will leverage the power of Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices,” she writes, “force drug manufacturers to open their books and justify cost increases, and create a strong, independent enforcement agency empowered to end outrageous and unjustified prescription drug price-gouging.”

Instead, the best way to reduce the cost of prescription drugs for consumers is to keep government out. Let the free market work the way it should and allow companies to compete for better prescription drugs and the costs will go down. Democrats won’t hear of such things.

Every proposal that Pelosi and the Democrat Party have is part of the same old socialist agenda that has already been tested and failed. They want more control over the economy, more regulations, more taxes to pay for their ideas and more power over Americans. That is the Democrats’ vision for a “better” future. Nowhere in Pelosi’s proposal are the ideas of less government, more freedom and more individual rights and responsibilities. Hers is the collectivist, statist vision that is the antithesis to what our Founders intended. And it is an agenda that will make America lose, not win.

But hey, at least Pelosi didn’t blame Vladimir Putin or James Comey.

SOURCE

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Is this anti-Soros European leader Trump's greatest ally?

Hungary's foreign minister came to Washington last week seeking something from the Trump administration that his government is being denied by the European Union (EU)-sympathy for its sovereign right to make its own internal decisions and laws.

He deserves a hearing.

Such a return to basic relations among nation-states-let alone treaty allies and friends-is also a radical departure from the previous administration. Foreign Minister P‚ter Szijj rt¢ said the Obama administration had failed to respect Budapest's right to self-determination.

At a speech at The Heritage Foundation last week, Szijj rt¢ shared an anecdote of a meeting he had in 2014 with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. The two were meeting because then-Secretary of State John Kerry refused to meet Szijj rt¢.

In the meeting, Nuland "threw" a piece of paper at Szijj rt¢ with a list of requirements that Hungary would have to meet before the administration would formally meet with the Hungarian Government.

"And do you know what was written on the paper?" Szijj rt¢ asked. "How to change the constitution, how to change the media laws, how to change the electoral laws, how to change regulation of churches, how to change regulation of constitutional courts."

These efforts to interfere in Hungary's domestic politics only served to alienate the Hungarian government, as is the case now with the EU.

What has Hungary done to deserve all this?

Its democratically elected prime minister, Viktor Orban, has fought for Hungary's right to self-govern. He has emphatically opposed the EU's overly permissive migrant policy, calling it "self-destructive and na‹ve."

More importantly, Orban has led the fight against the influence that left-wing billionaire George Soros wields in Hungarian domestic affairs. He's done that in several ways, but mainly by requiring the Central European University in Budapest, a university set up by Soros, to comply with current Hungarian law.

For daring to do all that, Orban has been vilified in the mainstream media and formally rebuked by the EU.

Most recently, the European Commission declared that the law passed by Hungary's parliament that is being used against the university is incompatible with "the right of academic freedom, the right to education, and the freedom to conduct a business."

Brussels declared that if Hungary did not respond to this declaration within one month, Hungary would face sanctions and could even lose its voting rights.

Despite Brussels's ham-handedness, Szijj rt¢ said Hungary will continue to press for deep reform in the EU.

"There is one consensus that is shared by everyone-that we want a strong European Union," he said. "The major debate is about how to get there."

Szijj rt¢'s five goals for the EU going forward are noteworthy in that they represent an attempt to turn the institution into less of a hidebound, anti-growth body:

    Continued enlargement of the EU

    Greater autonomy to member states to keep them strong and competitive

    Faster action on free trade agreements

    Stronger homeland security and immigration regulation; and

    A Brexit deal that imposes the least possible barriers to trade between the U.K. and the EU

As Szijj rt¢ describes it-and as is increasingly apparent to those studying the issue-EU nations are split on the question of sovereignty.

Some member states advocate for increased centralization of power at the EU headquarters in Brussels as the best path to European prosperity. Others, like Hungary, argue that Europe as a whole will be strongest with strong, sovereign member states.

Brexit is illustrative of this centralization vs. sovereignty debate. The U.K. proved unwilling to continue ceding its rights as a sovereign nation to centralized bureaucrats in Brussels.

Though some in Europe blame Brexit for the EU's current political uncertainty, Szijj rt¢ argues that these people have it backwards:

    We reject the position which says that Brexit is the reason for the serious challenges in the European Union. We say that Brexit is the outcome, is the consequence of the postponed and missed reforms.

There are good arguments behind Hungary's pro-sovereignty, anti-centralization stance. Americans can approve of it, as it both aligns with American principles and protects American interests. Stronger European countries mean stronger allies for the U.S.

It would also advance the idea that pursuing one's national interest is morally legitimate-a view that has all too often been derided.

Szijj rt¢ said that Trump's "America First" foreign policy "is much, much more important than people think."

Before President Trump used it, "if you thought or said that your country is the first for you, the interests of your nation is first for you, you had to feel ashamed, and you were considered as a dictator, as a nationalist, as in retrograde, as not modern enough and not internationalist enough, not globalist enough."

Now, according to Szijj rt¢, this has changed:

    Now we are happy to be free to say that for us Hungary is first. We always acknowledge the rights of nations to put themselves in the first place when it comes to interests, and now we are very happy that the leader of the number one superpower in the world said the same.

Szijj rt¢ sees in Trump's pro-sovereignty attitude a level of respect that was lacking in the Obama administration. According to Szijj rt¢: "Mutual respect was something that was really emphasized in the speech of your president in Warsaw, and I think that's a game changer."

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 July, 2017

Maternal deaths and the elephant in the room

Below is a judicious article from a medical journal that addresses a problem that should not be happening.  Why is giving birth in the USA so often fatal?  The article runs through the range of possible causes and notes that it is mainly a black problem, but not entirely so. And the various potential causes do make sense.  So, as with many social phenomena, it is reasonable to conclude that a range of factors contribute to the final outcome.  There are many things you can die from.

But there is an elephant in the room that is only obliquely mentioned.  One that could very well contribute to the deaths:  Obamacare.  Many people cannot afford the much higher premiums now demanded and there are even more people who are only nominally insured.  They have insurance but their deductibles can easily reach $10,000 or more -- which in effect means that they are not insured at all.  A lot of routine medical costs are way below $10,000 so no help with such costs is available.  And even costs below $10,000 can be hard to meet for a big family or for people with many calls on their funds -- such as working single mothers who have to pay for childcare. And some people are just  not good at saving so the effective absence of insurance to help with medical costs simply means that medical care is simply not sought by them on many occasions.

So there can be little doubt that many precautionary visits to the doctor are not made and many possibly revealing scans are not carried out. So problems are missed until it is too late.  Early diagnosis is universally advantageous but is not practically available.  So Obamacare should be called DeniedCare.  Someone should tell the "rebel" GOP senators who are blocking reform that they are killing mothers


In 2005, 23 US mothers per 100?000 live births died from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. In 2015, that number rose to 25. In the United Kingdom, the number was less than 9. In Canada, it was less than 7.

Very few wealthy countries saw increases over those years. Many poorer countries, including Iran and Romania, saw declines. But here in the United States, things got worse.

These numbers have been confirmed by independent research. Last year, a study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology found that the maternal mortality rate in the United States had increased by more than 25% from 2000 to 2014. This trend differed by state, however. Although California had shown some declines, Texas had seen significant increases.

Texas in particular has been the focus of much of the news on maternal mortality in the last few years. From 2011 to 2014, the rate doubled. Although we lack good data to tell us why, many have postulated that changes to family planning in the state coincided with this increase. In 2013, for example about half of the state’s clinics that provided abortion in addition to other reproductive health services were closed because of regulations passed against them. In 2011, the family-planning budget was slashed in an attempt to defund Planned Parenthood. Many clinics closed and more were forced to reduce their services.

Family planning matters. About 50% of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned and might lack preventive care that properly planned-for pregnancies might.

There’s more to this story than changes in regulations and family planning. Some of the increase is likely due to the growing prevalence of other chronic conditions. Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease likely contribute to maternal mortality, and trends for many conditions have been increasing over the last decade. Women are having children later in life than they used to, and some have more complex conditions. More women have caesarian deliveries, which can lead to complications. The opioid epidemic may contribute to maternal mortality, as well.

Disparities exist in maternal mortality as they do in other areas of health care. The increases we’ve seen are most noticeable in non-Hispanic black women. The number of deaths per 100?000 live births among black women is more than 3 times that among white women. In fact, for any state, the higher the percentage of black women in the delivery population, the higher its rates of maternal mortality. But racial disparities can only account for so much of the problem. Even if you look only at white women in the United States, the rates of mothers who die is greater than those in other developed countries.

The fragmented nature of the US health care system doesn’t help either. Too many people in the United States go without necessary care, because they lack access to care or avoid it because of cost. This is just as true of pregnant women as it is of everyone else. As many politicians argue that maternity care shouldn’t be considered essential benefits, some worry that coverage might get worse with reform.

It is possible that some of the increase in maternal mortality is due to better record keeping. States have been working to improve how they keep track of maternal deaths, as well as other causes of death, and better reporting would be reflected as increases in prevalence. It’s hard to imagine, however, that this increase in better records has been solely in the United States, and could account for all of the increases. There’s no reason to believe that all other countries would be keeping themselves in the dark. Moreover, the more universal and socialized health systems are less likely to have women, and their deaths, fall through the cracks and be missed.

Pregnancy and childbirth are risky. We don’t like to talk about it, but maternal mortality is the sixth most common cause of death among US women age 25 years to 34 years old. Proper maternal care helps to prevent morbidity and mortality, but that care is difficult when clinics close and insurance lapses. Medicaid can help to close the gap and often does with pregnant women, but even then, both physician services and mother’s finances are strained.

As with many things in health care, a rising tide would lift all boats. Efforts to improve the health of women in general would improve our rates of maternal mortality. Reducing levels of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease would achieve results. So would getting a handle on the opioid epidemic. But we’ve spent the last few years—if not more—focused on efforts to reduce infant mortality. Mothers may need a similar commitment.

SOURCE

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The Truth About Capitalism

One of the chief objectives of globalism is to transfer wealth from rich nations to poor nations. To the equality-of-results crowd it sounds great, because they don’t understand that spreading the wealth actually makes everyone poorer.

The main reason I’m against giving handouts to countries who destroy themselves through their socialist policies is that it sends the wrong message. We should not lie to such countries about the morality and merits of capitalism. The greatest gift we can offer is to help them understand that freedom is not about security or equality; it’s about insecurity and inequality.

We should teach them that the price of freedom is self-responsibility, and self-responsibility means that no one has a right to a house, a car, a job — no, not even healthcare. What everyone does have a right to is exactly what others are willing to pay him, free of government interference.

Those who think otherwise are responsible for our $20 trillion national debt and a federal budget deficit that is projected to be in the area of $500 billion and rising. Economic security is not a right, but it sure is a formula for disaster.

If we continue to subsidize bankrupt nations around the globe, we will be encouraging them to believe that capitalism is about security and equality. That, in turn, will cause them to be disillusioned when they find out the hard way that it is not. If instead we focus our efforts on educating them to understand that capitalism is about freedom of choice, self-responsibility, and risk, we will be doing them a great favor.

Unfortunately, progressives (as well as many phony conservatives) do not seem to understand this, especially wealthy faux liberals who are immune to the effects of socialist policies in Washington. I was reminded of this a couple weeks ago when a casual acquaintance of mine invited me to a social gathering at his home. In a moment of temporary insanity, and after being assured that no members of Black Lives Matter, the American Civil Liberties Union, or the Communist Party USA would be in attendance, I agreed to drop by.

I tend to be a target at limousine-liberal gatherings, and, sure enough, a middle-aged gentleman of means came up to me and, from out of the blue, sneered, “Capitalism is the most evil system ever invented.” He obviously was trying to get my goat.

Displaying my finest George Will deadpan expression, I asked how an intelligent, successful gentleman like him had managed to arrive at such a fascinating conclusion. To which he groused, “Under capitalism, the poor are exploited by the rich.” Yikes — it was the ghost of Vladimir Lenin!

Masochist that I am, I asked him to define the terms rich and poor for me, but he simply waived aside my question as though it were frivolous. My acquaintance’s wife then intervened and admonished us that political discussions were forbidden in her house, thus preventing a Sunday afternoon homicide.

Darn. I didn’t even get a chance to see the expression on his face had I been able to lay this one on him: The gap between the rich and the poor is supposed to increase under capitalism! That’s right, folks. Like it or not, it’s built into the system.

But hold on: Also built into the system is the fact that almost everyone is better off under capitalism. Why? Because trickle-down economics really does work! Try finding a Republican politician who will admit to that.

The U.S. government’s own Census Bureau’s statistics confirm this truth. Average-income figures clearly show that during the Reagan years, almost everyone’s income rose significantly, while during the Carter years, most people got poorer. Does anyone seriously believe that voters kicked Carter out of office and gave Reagan two landslide victories because they were better off under Carter and worse off under Reagan?

What was in play during the Reagan years was the so-called invisible hand of the marketplace. When people realize they can reap financial rewards by providing better goods and services to others, they work harder and longer hours to do so. As a result, the economy prospers and everyone is better off.

On the other hand, the more government interferes with this natural process, the worse off everyone is. How far mankind has advanced is not a reflection of his true potential; it is his true potential minus government interference. Those who believe that a strong central government is needed to manage a nation’s economy simply do not understand the awesome power of the invisible hand of the marketplace.

Which takes me back to the growing disparity between the rich and the poor (setting aside, for now, the important question of who has the omniscience and moral authority to decide who should be slotted into these two categories in the first place). In a mythical, totally free society, if everyone were to start with nothing, some people would become “rich” while others would become “poor.”

Now, stop and think about that for a moment. Wouldn’t natural forces assure that the most successful people would become even more successful over time and thus increase the gap between themselves and those who have not been as successful? After all, they would be using the same talents, efforts, and self-discipline that made them better off in the first place.

I’d love to see the Trump administration set aside childish notions and tell the truth about this “income inequality” garbage. Of course the gap between the rich and the poor increases under capitalism. But that, of and by itself, does not harm anyone. (Remember, the pie is not fixed.) The only problem is the one caused by venomous progressive thinkers who have unilaterally decided that such a gap is not “fair.” Which, of course, is merely their subjective opinion.

Personally, I don’t think of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor as fair or unfair. It’s simply reality. However, I do believe the fact that successful people tend to become even more successful is fair, provided they achieve their success on a non-coercive basis. Why shouldn’t a person be allowed to become as successful as his talents and hard work will take him?

That said, I believe the first step toward regaining our lost freedoms is to totally defeat progressive subjectivism. Go-along-to-get-along conservatives need to come to grips with the reality that compromise does not work, because it encourages a lie, and lies simply do not work.

Of course, the progressive is free to think whatever makes him feel good at any given moment. However, he should not be allowed to force others to give up their freedom to accommodate his arrogant notion of one of the most abstract ideas known to man: fairness. Fairness is a subjective word, right up there with “social justice.”

To paraphrase the great Milton Friedman, the only social justice that makes any sense is for everyone to keep what he earns in a totally free market.

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 July, 2017

Border Patrol: Trump performs ‘miracle’ on immigration

A spokesman for the nation’s Border Patrol agents is telling the mainstream media what they don’t want to hear. The truth.

In an interview with C-SPAN, National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd spoke about the 53 percent decrease in the number of arrests for illegal crossings, hailing it as a “miracle” performed by Trump.

“As far as the Trump administration’s efforts on immigration, this is something they campaigned heavily on,” he said. “At six months, where we are on meeting those promises, we are seeing nothing short of miraculous. If you look at the rhetoric that President Trump has given, it has caused a number of illegal border crossings to go down. We have never seen such a drop that we currently have,” said Judd.

Much of the drop is attributable to Trump himself.  Under Obama, illegal crossings surged as women and children swarmed the US border to enter illegally, believing they would likely be given amnesty.  Border Patrol agents, used to illegals seeking to elude officers, found themselves overwhelmed by thousands of illegals who would sneak over the border, then walk to the nearest Patrol station to turn themselves in, believing they would be given amnesty.

That stopped once Trump won.

“(S)ince the fiscal year began in October, arrests are down two-thirds, from 66,712, a six-year record high, to 21,659 a six-year record low,” The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard reported July 7.

SOURCE

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"Lost" health insurance

A few weeks ago, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was going on and on about a “single insurance provider” that pays for 49 percent of all births, as well as full health care costs of almost 40 percent of all children in the United States. This single “insurer,” Maddow said, was the biggest “health insurance provider in the country by a mile.”

Maddow was talking about Medicaid, which, of course, is not “insurance” but “welfare.”

When we’re allowed to call things whatever we want in order to win an argument, there is a total breakdown in democratic politics, fair commerce and social interaction.

Thus, for example, until we get our terms straight, Americans will be forced to keep paying through the nose whenever they try to buy actual health insurance — because they aren’t buying health insurance; they’re paying for other people’s welfare. Washington will never be able to make it legal to sell real health insurance — because, if they try, the welfare recipients will mob congressional offices claiming that Republicans are murdering them.

There is no truth in any discussion of Obamacare. Currently, the most persistent lie is the claim that — according to scoring by the CBO! — 22 million Americans would “lose” their health insurance under the Senate health care bill. Turn on the TV right now and you’ll hear someone saying this.

“A new (CBO) budget score said 22 million more Americans would lose health coverage under this plan …”

— Poppy Harlow, CNN, June 27, 2017

“A score from the Congressional Budget Office … said the Republican bill to kill Obamacare would kick 22 million Americans off their health insurance.”

— Rachel Maddow, June 27, 2017

“The clock is ticking on the Senate health care bill as the CBO estimates 22 million people will lose their insurance.”

— Chris Hayes, June 26, 2017

HELLO? REPUBLICANS? ANY OF YOU GUYS WANT TO REBUT THAT? IT’S PRETTY EASY TO DO!

The actual CBO report says nothing of the sort. People citing the “22 million” figure didn’t read past the CBO’s headline-grabbing paragraph at the top of the “Summary” page.

In fact, the CBO merely estimates that — in the year 2026 — 22 million Americans who otherwise would have been forced by the Obamacare penalty to buy health insurance will choose not to buy insurance once the penalty is gone. By “people thrown off their health insurance,” liberals mean: “people who voluntarily decide not to have health insurance.” (More accurately, “people who choose not to prove to the government that they have health insurance.”)

To use the word “lose” here is absurd. It would be like saying that Nixon ending the draft meant that 50,000 American men would “lose” their military service. The poor lads would be forced to volunteer.

Last year, I chose to end my New York Times subscription. I wasn’t “thrown off” the Times’ subscriber list. In full possession of the facts, I made an informed decision that I no longer wanted to receive the Times — just as 22 million Americans (the CBO guesses) will make an informed decision in the year 2026 not to have health insurance, if given that option.

Redefining words like “insurance” and “lose” to mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean makes human conversation impossible. We can still grunt, howl and shiver when it’s cold, but we will no longer have the ability to communicate slightly more complex thoughts to one another.

The only solution is for the rest of us to impose a broken windows policy on the truth, demanding it in every walk of life. If liars continually get away with it, their lies will only become more preposterous and more enraging.

Illegal aliens are not “undocumented immigrants.” They’re not “immigrants” at all. Immigrants wait in line and jump through hoops to be here. They are invited, by us, to come. Illegals cut to the head of the line whenever the mood strikes them, without waiting for an invitation.

SOURCE

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:  A bureaucratic monster that shafts the consumer

Imagine you have a dispute with your credit card company. Currently, you can go to an arbitration body, where the card company will almost certainly pay all your expenses, and you may get compensated in full, usually promptly. Now, thanks to a new rule, courtesy of the inaptly named Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the regulatory agency unleashed by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, that won’t happen.

Instead, you’ll have to wait for trial lawyers to form a “class” that includes you, wait years while the lawyers do whatever it is they do, probably never see court, and then rejoice in a small refund, while the lawyers pocket millions. It’s what passes for “consumer protection” these days.

That’s the upshot of the CFPB’s new Arbitration Rule, which bans providers of unsecured personal credit from including mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts. Bureau Director Richard Cordray portrays the rule as a consumer protection measure, but the only beneficiaries will be his wealthy trial lawyer friends.

If consumers need protection, it’s from the CFPB. Thankfully, the Senate can provide consumers — as well as investors and entrepreneurs — needed regulatory relief by passing the Financial CHOICE Act (FCA). Among its many good features, it would repeal the CFPB’s authority to prohibit arbitration.

Such a move would be welcome. Mandatory arbitration cuts costs for everyone. According to the CFPB’s own study, it produces better results for consumers than class action lawsuits. For class action attorneys, however, those consumer savings mean less in fees. Trial lawyers, the same CFPB study found, benefit to the tune of over $1 million in a typical class action, while the average class member receives only $32.

Naturally, lawyers have bridled at mandatory arbitration, which functions as a private, contractual form of dispute resolution, and have lobbied for it to be banned. With the Arbitration Rule, Cordray is poised to grant them their wish. The rule will transfer wealth transfer from low-income consumers to rich lawyers, delay the settlement of grievances, and reduce payouts. So much for consumer protection.

This CFPB move underscores the urgent need to curtail the agency and other abuses wrought by Dodd-Frank. For starters, Congress should repeal the rule by using a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which requires simple majorities in both chambers. The House and Senate have 60 days to vote down the CFPB arbitration rule, so they need to move fast.

Congress made a big mistake when it gave the CFPB so much power under Dodd-Frank — power enhanced by its unusual — and unconstitutional — structure. There are few checks on its power. It is not accountable to Congress’ “power of the purse,” because it gets its funding from the Federal Reserve. Nor is the Bureau subject to any meaningful oversight from the president as head of the Executive Branch. This led a federal Appeals Court last year to rule that the CFPB’s structure is unconstitutional (the ruling was set aside and the case is currently being reheard.

If that sounds like the Bureau can act as it wants, it does — as it did when it finalized its Arbitration Rule. We can expect CFPB regulators to promulgate more arbitrary rules in the future.

Fortunately, the Senate need not wait for the courts to rein in the unaccountable CFPB. It can build on disapproval of the rule by passing the Financial CHOICE Act. The FCA would restructure the Bureau by making its director subject to presidential oversight and its financing dependent on Congress.

The FCA would also address other problems foisted on the American economy by the Dodd-Frank Act. For example, it would provide a better solution to the “Too Big to Fail” problem, which Dodd-Frank has made worse. By designating them as “systemically significant financial institutions,” Dodd-Frank has made big banks more entrenched. It also has subjected non-bank financial institutions to inappropriate regulation that has raised the price of insurance.

The crushing burden of rules from the CFPB and other financial regulators has been a huge drag on the American economy since the financial crisis, contributed to the slow recovery, and hit Main Street banks hard. The rate of closure among small and community banks has doubled since the passage of Dodd-Frank. Around 1 million Americans have been forced out of the banking system by higher fees as banks have struggled to pay the costs of compliance.

Yes, the Senate has a lot on its plate right now, but this is an issue that’s fundamental to American prosperity. A freely functioning financial system is essential to faster economic growth — and the creation of more jobs and economic opportunity. Congress can start by disapproving the CFPB’s new rule, and the Senate can go further by passing the Financial CHOICE Act.

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 July, 2017

Trump and civil rights

A prominent family member of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is defending President Donald Trump from attacks by Congressman John Lewis (D-GA.)



“We have come a distance. We made progress. But there are forces in America trying to slow us down or take us back,” Lewis said Friday on low-rated CNN. “I think the person we have in Washington today is uncaring,” Lewis said, adding that he believes Trump “knows very, very little about the history and the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement.”

That drew a sharp response from Dr. Alveda King, pro-life civil activist and niece of Martin Luther King.

King says Trump is “leading the charge for civil rights today for the little unborn persons in the womb who have a right to live.”

“He has surrounded himself with African-American leaders,” King said. “At the African-American museum, for example, he was knowledgeable of much of the history of African-Americans.”

Lewis also believes the 2016 election was rigged with secret computers, and that Trump is not really the President.

“I truly believe to this day that this election was rigged in his favor,” Lewis told low-rated CNN.

SOURCE

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Disgraceful V.A. hospital in Manchester, N.H.

The Trump team has made a start on sorting out the V.A. but they have decades of rot to correct

This is what the US Department of Veterans Affairs says a four-star hospital looks like:

One operating room has been abandoned since last October because exterminators couldn’t get rid of the flies. Doctors had to cancel surgeries in another OR last month after they discovered what appeared to be rust or blood on two sets of surgical instruments that were supposedly sterile.

Thousands of patients, including some with life-threatening conditions, struggle to get any care at all because the program for setting up appointments with outside specialists has broken down. One man still hadn’t gotten an appointment to see an oncologist this spring, more than four weeks after a diagnosis of lung cancer, according to a hospital document obtained by the Globe.

And when patients from the Manchester Veterans Affairs Medical Center are referred to outside specialists, those physicians are sometimes dismayed by their condition and medical history. A Boston neurosurgeon lamented that several Manchester patients sent to him had suffered needless spinal damage, including paralysis, because the hospital had not provided proper care for a treatable spine condition called cervical myelopathy.

“Only in 3rd World countries is it common to see patients end up as disabled from myelopathy as the ones who have been showing up after referral from you,” wrote Dr. Chima Ohaegbulam , of New England Baptist Hospital, to a doctor at the Manchester VA in 2014.

But this hospital, the only one for military veterans in New Hampshire, is just 50 miles from Boston. And it’s supposedly one of the better VA hospitals in the country. Late last year, in fact, the veterans affairs department raised Manchester’s quality rating from three stars to four, putting it in the top third of the entire VA system.

Ratings can deceive. Inside the unassuming red-brick walls of the Manchester medical center is ground zero for an extraordinary rebellion led by doctors who say they have almost no say in how the hospital is run, lack tools to do their jobs, and witness chronic shortcomings in patient care. They say the four top administrators, only one of them a doctor, seem more concerned with performance ratings than in properly treating the roughly 25,000 veterans who go to Manchester for outpatient care and day surgery each year.

So far, 11 physicians and medical employees — including the hospital’s retiring chief of medicine, former chief of surgery, and former chief of radiology — have contacted a federal whistle-blower agency and the Globe Spotlight Team to say the Manchester VA is endangering patients. The US Office of the Special Counsel, the whistle-blower agency, has already found a “substantial likelihood” of legal violations, gross mismanagement, abuse of authority, and a danger to public health, according to a January letter to one of the doctors who alleged wrongdoing.

“I have never seen a hospital run this poorly — every day it gets worse and worse,” said Dr. Stewart Levenson, chief of medicine, an 18-year veteran of the hospital who is among the whistle-blowers. “I never thought I would be exposing the system like this. But I went through the system and got nowhere.”

On Thursday night, a spokesman for Veterans Affairs Secretary David J. Shulkin expressed concerns about the problems relayed by the Spotlight Team.

“These are serious allegations, and while we cannot comment on the specifics due to patient privacy issues, rest assured that we will look into them right away,” said the VA press secretary in Washington, D.C., Curt Cashour.

Remarkably, leaders of the Manchester VA have confirmed many of the problems, from the fly-infested operating room — “an episodic issue,” said one administrator — to thousands of patients waiting indefinitely for specialist care, which the leaders blamed on the private company hired by the federal government to set up veterans’ appointments outside the hospital.

In a recent hourlong interview with the Globe, hospital director Danielle Ocker and her chief of staff, Dr. James Schlosser, also acknowledged significant cuts in services, such as the elimination of cataract surgery, as well as administrative glitches that further limited care.

For example: The hospital ordered a $1 million nuclear medicine camera in 2015 to replace a balky one, but never installed it because it was too big for the examination room. Without a reliable camera, the hospital in February stopped offering nuclear stress tests for heart disease risk, and bone scans that can detect tumors. The building is expected to be remodeled for a new camera in 2018.

But Ocker and Schlosser expressed surprise that so many members of the medical staff have reported the hospital’s problems to federal investigators. They said the hospital is addressing shortcomings and that patient safety has not been compromised. Ocker, a nurse, contended that Manchester boasts “a zero infection rate” in the operating rooms — a hospital spokeswoman said the unblemished record dates back to 2011 — and shared a veteran’s recent letter praising Manchester VA care.

Ocker also said she wanted medical staff to know that she and other leaders take their concerns seriously.

“My feeling is that if there are issues that we need to address, or if there are concerns, that we need to hear about them,” she said.

In many ways, the Manchester VA is under investigation because doctors became convinced that Ocker and other leaders were not listening. A number of problems date back years before Ocker arrived in 2015, and often reflected lapses in care that occurred when Manchester referred veterans to other VA hospitals or when multiple hospitals failed to coordinate follow-up treatment. But they are coming to the forefront now, in large measure, because one outspoken doctor went public about many patients that he believed had gotten subpar care. Patients like Robert McWhinnie.

McWhinnie, a Korean War veteran who lives in the small New Hampshire town of Gilmanton, relied mainly on a wheelchair to get around when he first visited Dr. William “Ed” Kois, head of Manchester VA’s spinal cord clinic, in July 2016. McWhinnie, who was 84 at the time, had long been a vigorous man who built much of the furniture in his house from maple trees on his land. But then his legs and arms grew weak, he had difficulty talking, and he became incontinent.

Kois immediately got alarmed when reading McWhinnie’s medical records.

They showed that the retired telephone cable splicer had undergone two surgeries at the VA hospital in Jamaica Plain to remove a tumor from his spine in 1995 but that the surgeon could not remove all of it, according to a copy of the records that his family shared with the Globe.

Over the next 21 years, McWhinnie went to the Manchester VA dozens of times for treatment of a variety of ailments. But no one had done imaging to find out if the tumor was growing again, even though regular monitoring was the standard of care after surgery on this type of tumor, according to his lawyer, Mark Abramson.

At least as far back as 2007, McWhinnie was gradually losing the ability to walk, the records indicate, something that could have been caused by a tumor pressing on his spine.

Kois “took one look at Bob, and he said, ‘Oh, my God, this is a disgrace. This man should have been taken care of,’?” recalled McWhinnie’s wife of 63 years, Janice McWhinnie.

So Kois ordered an MRI and an X-ray and, sure enough, the tumor was choking McWhinnie’s upper, or cervical, spine. It had also grown too big to remove.

“They ignored him basically for 20 years and allowed this thing to grow and grow and grow,” said Abramson, who recently wrote the VA in Manchester and in Boston that his client intends to sue for negligence.

Hospital officials declined to comment, citing potential litigation.

For Kois, McWhinnie’s condition was sickeningly familiar. In his five years at the VA, Kois has compiled a list of at least 80 Manchester patients who were suffering from advanced and potentially crippling nerve compression in the neck, or myelopathy. Some, like McWhinnie, had undergone surgery at other VA hospitals and then relied on Manchester for subsequent care.

Kois said he complained about the situation to administrators and other doctors. He even organized a September 2015 conference at Manchester, where he told a roomful of doctors and other VA staff that patients were getting substandard spinal care.

Ocker herself gave introductory remarks at the conference. Yet, in the interview with the Globe, she said she only became aware of Kois’s concerns more than a year later when she heard that they were part of the federal investigation. She said she left Kois’s conference after welcoming guests and was never briefed on the content of his presentation.

“I did not hear that,” she said of Kois’s allegations.

Kois found a far more receptive audience the following year at the federal Office of the Special Counsel, which made his contentions about poor care a central part of its inquiry. After finding a “substantial likelihood” of wrongdoing, the office recommended a full-fledged investigation by the Veterans Affairs Office of Medical Inspector, which began in January.

The VA medical care system, which is used by about 6 million military veterans each year, has been stumbling since 2014. News stories reported that the Phoenix VA Health Care System had engaged in an elaborate scheme to hide the fact that sick veterans were waiting months to see a doctor, and that some had died before they could be seen.

As similar allegations surfaced at other VA hospitals and tens of thousands of veterans around the country were found to be waiting months for care, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki resigned.

“I can’t explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our health care facilities,” he said, shortly before stepping down.

But Shinseki’s departure did not stop the drumbeat of scandal. Last year, nearly three dozen whistle-blowers charged that the VA hospital in Cincinnati had made budget cuts that forced out experienced surgeons, reduced access to care, and endangered patients’ safety. The head of the VA’s Ohio-based regional network then retired, and the Cincinnati hospital’s chief of staff was suspended and later indicted on criminal charges.

Now President Trump’s appointee as VA secretary, Shulkin, is vowing to stabilize the health care system. “We are still in critical condition and require intensive care,” Shulkin said at a May press briefing. Last month, Trump signed a bill into law to make it easier for whistle-blowers to come forward and for employees to be fired for misconduct.

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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24 July, 2017

Yale historian warns Trump’s rise perfectly mirrors frightening ascent of Fascism and Nazis in the 1930s

Typical Leftist cherry picking below.  He quotes a few bits he likes and leaves out the rest. He can't find much that Trump has said so he quotes Steve Bannon -- quite ignoring that Bannon is now out of influence with Trump.

He says that Trump’s showman style of populism is heavily influenced by Bannon. But Trump has been a showman for decades, long before Bannon was heard of.  You would have to go back a long way before you found a time when Trump was not in the news. Here's an example of Trump as a young man:



It is true that Trump's rise to power was rapid and Snyder  implies that Fascists rose to power overnight too.  But they didn't.  Hitler fought many elections before he was able to cobble together a minority administration in the "Reichstag". There is no comparison to Trump's sweep.

He does quote Trump as liking the prewar "America First" movement and implies that it was Nazi.  It was in fact the exact opposite. It was the chief anti-immigration and anti-intervention movement in 1930s America.  They were isolationists. The last thing they wanted was to march on any other county.

Snyder in fact just disproves his own argument.  He admits that America First was isolationist but then says that the 1930s Fascists were internationalists.  Che?  But they certainly WERE internationalists. Hitler tried to take over Russia.  Trump gets condemned for being too friendly towards Russia!

It is true that German conservatives gave Hitler some support but that was only because they saw him as a lesser evil than the KPD: the powerful German Communist party.  There was no such threat in America.  The Democrats trust in bureaucracy, not class war. It is in fact the Democrats who are the true modern Fascists.  Right into the war years, Hitler trusted in bureaucracy too.

And the guy below is a historian!  More accurately a fraud

Note that there have been many equally shallow attempts to brand Trump and his followers as being Nazi/ Fascist/ racist/ authoritarian.  As authoritarianism is my main area of academic expertise I have debunked all of them that I know of.  See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and  here.


Writing for The Guardian, Timothy Snyder warns that conservatives seem to be unaware that Trump is taking their governing philosophy into darker — and more violent — territory.

According to Snyder, Trump’s showman style of populism is heavily influenced by White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.

“Stephen Bannon, who promises us new policies ‘as exciting as the 1930s,’ seems to want to return to that decade in order to undo those legacies,” Snyder writes. “He seems to have in mind a kleptocratic authoritarianism (hastened by deregulation and the dismantlement of the welfare state) that generates inequality, which can be channeled into a culture war (prepared for by Muslim bans and immigrant denunciation hotlines).”

“Like fascists, Bannon imagines that history is a cycle in which national virtue must be defended from permanent enemies. He refers to fascist authors in defense of this understanding of the past.”

Noting that President Trump is not an “articulate theorist,” Snyder points out that the president gives Bannon’s dark vision a populist veneer that has historical parallels.

“During the 2016 campaign, Trump spoke of ‘America first,’ which he knew was the name of political movement in the United States that opposed American participation in the second world war,” Snyder explains. “Among its leaders were nativists and Nazi apologists such as Charles Lindbergh. When Trump promised in his inaugural address that ‘from now on, it’s going to be America first’ he was answering a call across the decades from Lindbergh, who complained that ‘we lack leadership that places America first.’ American foreign and energy policies have been branded ‘America first.'”

“Conservatives always began from intuitive understanding of one’s own country and an instinctive defense of sovereignty. The far right of the 1930s was internationalist, in the sense that fascists learned one from the other and admired one another, as Hitler admired Mussolini,” Snyder continued.

“One of the reasons why the radical right was able to overcome conservatives back in the 1930s was that the conservatives did not understand the threat. Nazis in Germany, like fascists in Italy and Romania, did have popular support, but they would not have been able to change regimes without the connivance or the passivity of conservatives.”

“If Republicans do not wish to be remembered (and forgotten) like the German conservatives of the 1930s, they had better find their courage – and their conservatism – fast,” the historian concludes.

SOURCE

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As a Teen Cashier Seeing Food Stamp Use, I Changed My Mind About the Democrat Party

Mamaw encouraged me to get a job—she told me that it would be good for me and that I needed to learn the value of a dollar. When her encouragement fell on deaf ears, she then demanded that I get a job, and so I did, as a cashier at Dillman’s, a local grocery store.

Working as a cashier turned me into an amateur sociologist. A frenetic stress animated so many of our customers. One of our neighbors would walk in and yell at me for the smallest of transgressions—not smiling at her, or bagging the groceries too heavy one day or too light the next. Some came into the store in a hurry, pacing between aisles, looking frantically for a particular item. But others waded through the aisles deliberately, carefully marking each item off of their list.

Some folks purchased a lot of canned and frozen food, while others consistently arrived at the checkout counter with carts piled high with fresh produce.

The more harried a customer, the more they purchased precooked or frozen food, the more likely they were to be poor. And I knew they were poor because of the clothes they wore or because they purchased their food with food stamps. After a few months, I came home and asked Mamaw why only poor people bought baby formula. “Don’t rich people have babies, too?” Mamaw had no answers, and it would be many years before I learned that rich folks are considerably more likely to breast-feed their children.

As my job taught me a little more about America’s class divide, it also imbued me with a bit of resentment, directed toward both the wealthy and my own kind.

The owners of Dillman’s were old-fashioned, so they allowed people with good credit to run grocery tabs, some of which surpassed a thousand dollars. I knew that if any of my relatives walked in and ran up a bill of over a thousand dollars, they’d be asked to pay immediately. I hated the feeling that my boss counted my people as less trustworthy than those who took their groceries home in a Cadillac. But I got over it: One day, I told myself, I’ll have my own d–ned tab.

I also learned how people gamed the welfare system. They’d buy two dozen packs of soda with food stamps and then sell them at a discount for cash. They’d ring up their orders separately, buying food with food stamps, and beer, wine, and cigarettes with cash. They’d regularly go through the checkout line speaking on their cell phones. I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.

Mamaw listened intently to my experiences at Dillman’s. We began to view much of our fellow working class with mistrust. Most of us were struggling to get by, but we made do, worked hard, and hoped for a better life. But a large minority was content to live off the dole.

Every two weeks, I’d get a small paycheck and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else. This was my mindset when I was seventeen, and though I’m far less angry today than I was then, it was my first indication that the policies of Mamaw’s “party of the working man”—the Democrats—weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

Political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation.

Some blame race relations and the Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil rights movement. Others cite religious faith and the hold that social conservatism has on evangelicals in that region.

A big part of the explanation lies in the fact that many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman’s. As far back as the 1970s, the white working class began to turn to Richard Nixon because of a perception that, as one man put it, government was “payin’ people who are on welfare today doin’ nothin’! They’re laughin’ at our society! And we’re all hardworkin’ people and we’re gettin’ laughed at for workin’ every day!”

SOURCE

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NYT won't publish defense of Trump's Russian contacts

Harvard law professor emeritus and prominent liberal author Alan Dershowitz said The New York Times won’t publish him because he’s offering an “alternative point of view” on the Trump-Russia collusion allegations.

Mr. Dershowitz told the Washington Examiner in an interview Monday that he’s tried to get in touch with the The New York Times’ editors, to no avail. He said he wanted to publish an op-ed last month arguing that President Trump likely didn’t attempt to obstruct justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey.

“I said that I thought the readers of the New York Times were entitled to hear or read the other side of the issue whether there were crimes committed,” he said. “And I really do think The New York Times does not want its readers to hear an alternative point of view on the issue of whether or not Trump administration is committing crimes.”

A Times spokesperson declined to comment, telling the Examiner that the paper does not discuss the editorial process for op-ed submissions.

Mr. Dershowitz has made headlines recently for arguing that there was likely no crime committed by Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 when he met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in order to get potentially damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Mr. Dershowitz has stuck by his claim that the younger Mr. Trump’s conduct was likely protected by the First Amendment.

Mr. Dershowitz‘s comments have been most popular among conservative news outlets, but his goal is to “get out in the liberal media,” he told the Examiner.

Unfortunately, his view is “not the narrative they’re pushing,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “It’s not that I’m not credentialed,” he added. “It’s that I don’t have the right point of view.”

SOURCE

Dershowitz's essay eventually appeared in the Boston Globe and was reproduced here yesterday

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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)

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




23 July, 2017

The Left Is a Greater Threat to America Than Putin

Dennis Prager

Last week, I tweeted, “The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.”

To my surprise, the tweet went viral. And while there were more likes than dislikes, 99 percent of the written reactions were negative.

Typical reactions were:

–“F— you.”

–“Move to Russia.”

–“Your very full diapers pose a very great danger, please change them.” That received 1,880 likes.

–“I’ve wiped s— off my shoes more trustworthy and patriotic than your sorry a–.” That received 606 likes.

You get the idea.

But it wasn’t the ad hominem insults that I found troubling. What was troubling was the low state of logical thinking that so many responses reflected.

This was exemplified by their reminding me how important a free press is to democracy (as if attacking the behavior of the media were the same as denying the need for a free press); their asking how many nukes the media have compared with Russia (as if a threat to lives were the same as a threat to a civilization); and their thinking that my tweet was about President Donald Trump (he was never mentioned, and the words were just as true when Barack Obama was president).

My tweet was about the Western left undoing Western civilization. My one regret is that I did not mention universities along with the media.

The tweet had nothing to do with the existence of a free press. Attacking what the media is doing is not the same as attacking the existence of the media—any more than attacking Trump is attacking the existence of the presidency.

With regard to Russia having more nukes than the media, those who noted this fact so missed the entire point of the tweet that it is almost breathtaking.

When one speaks about dangers to a civilization, one is speaking ideologically, not physically. Of course, if Russia were to unleash its nuclear weapons against the West, it would kill vast numbers of Westerners.

However, that would no more mean the end of Western civilization than the Holocaust meant the end of Jewish civilization. Civilization connotes a body of ideas and a value system.

Furthermore, a Russian nuclear attack threatening the West’s physical existence is an utterly remote possibility. Russian leaders, just as Soviet leaders before them, fear what is known as MAD (mutually assured destruction).

The real nuclear threat comes from North Korea and, above all, Iran, which constantly announces its intent to exterminate Israel. But while The New York Times cannot stop writing about the threat Russian President Vladimir Putin poses, it accuses Trump of “demonizing” Iran.

The real threat to Western civilization is Western civilization ceasing to believe in itself. And, in that regard, Russia poses no danger, while the left-wing-dominated media and universities pose an existential threat.

That’s why the most depressing of the negative reactions were those from people calling themselves conservatives. If conservatism isn’t about conserving Western civilization first and foremost, what is it about?

Students in college have voted the American flag off their campus. Where did these students learn their unprecedented contempt for America and patriotism, if not from their schools and the media?

European countries continue to welcome in millions of Muslims, adding to the tens of millions of Muslims already in Europe—many of whom, if not most, have no interest in adopting Europe’s values.

Do the critics of my tweet conclude nothing about the left’s role —meaning the role of Western media and academia— in promoting multiculturalism, the doctrine that holds that no cultural, religious, or value system is superior to any other?

At the University of Pennsylvania, its left-wing English department has removed its long-standing portrait of Shakespeare because he was white and male. Is that not a direct hit on Western civilization?

The left-wing prime minister of Canada has proudly announced, “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” and that Canada is “the first postnational state.”

What produced him? Putin?

Is it Putin who is removing American flags from American campuses?

Is Putin destroying the notion of male and female?

Has Putin convinced half of America’s millennials that socialism is preferable to capitalism?

Did Putin convince Pope Francis that Islamic terrorists are no more of a threat to Europe than baptized Catholics who kill their girlfriends?

Is Putin the reason Oxford University students voted that Israel is a greater threat to peace than Hamas?

Putin is indeed a murderous quasi dictator. But all this contempt for Western civilization comes from the Western media and the Western universities.

The smoking gun was provided just two weeks ago in the media’s reactions to Trump’s speech in Warsaw, Poland, in which he called for protecting Western civilization.

Virtually the entire Western media said it was a call to protect white racism —because the media deem Western civilization to be nothing more than a euphemism for white supremacy.

That’s what my tweet was about.

SOURCE

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A partisan rush to prosecute Trump

By Alan M. Dershowitz 

When I taught law at Harvard, I always gave a final exam that included what is called “an issue spotter.” I presented a complex hypothetical case, often based on a real one, and asked the students to stretch their imaginations to come up with every conceivable crime that might be charged and every conceivable defense that might be offered. That was the first part of the question, and most students excelled at spotting the relevant issues. In the second part of the question, I asked them to use their judgment in deciding which, if any, of these crimes could realistically be charged and which defenses could realistically be offered. It was this part of the question that separated the very good lawyers, which included the vast majority of the students, from the truly exceptional ones. To be a great lawyer requires the exercise of judgment, subtlety, nuance, and an ability to predict what the courts will do.

I am reminded of these exams when I read op-eds and listen to TV appearances, some by my former excellent students, that apply only the first part of the test to the current legal situations confronting the Trump administration. These smart lawyers try to come up with every conceivable statute that an imaginative lawyer could identify, ranging from the Logan Act (which hasn’t been used in 215 years), to treason (which is narrowly defined in the Constitution), to obstruction of justice, to witness tampering, to violations of campaign financing laws (which are so vague and open-ended that half of America’s politicians would be in jail if they were broadly applied).

I have to admit that these lawyers show great imagination – imagination they rightly condemn when Republications play the same game, accusing Hillary Clinton of espionage and other open-ended crimes. But they show scant judgment or nuance in distinguishing what might be possible based on the broadest interpretation of the language and what is realistic based on court precedents, prosecutorial discretion, equal application, and simple justice. It is not that these lawyers aren’t brilliant. They are. It’s not their intellect I am questioning. It is the double standard they seem to be applying to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, in particular, and to the opposing party and their party, in general. The one factor that must never enter into prosecutorial judgment is partisanship, regardless how strong and even legitimate the negative feelings are about a political opponent.

It is tempting, because it is so easy, to comb the statute books in an effort to identify every conceivable crime that might be applicable to any given situation. As Harvey Silverglate wrote in his superb book, “Three Felonies a Day,” prosecutors play the following game: One names a well-known and controversial person, and the others search through the statute books to figure out which three felonies they committed on a given day. That is what prosecutors do when they are playing games. It’s not supposed to be what they do when they destroy a person’s life by indicting them.

Former FBI director James Comey understood the role of a prosecutor when he concluded that “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information” by Clinton. But after engaging in the first part of the criminal law exam exercise, he turned to the second part, involving judgment and concluded that “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” Silverglate shows that our criminal statute books are overloaded with crimes that can be expanded to fit any politician or businessman or any controversial figure.

Comey’s conclusion generated outcries of protest from Republican partisans who had played the same game that Democratic partisans are now playing when they demanded that if there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes, then a prosecution must be brought. But these zealots were wrong and Comey was right. (He was not right in making public his evaluation of the evidence and his finding that Clinton was “extremely careless [in her] handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” But that is a different matter).

Democratic partisans, who were happy with Comey’s conclusion not to prosecute Clinton, should be applying the same standards to Trump. No reasonable prosecutor would bring a charge of treason, tampering with witnesses, obstruction of justice, or violating campaign laws, based on the evidence that is now available. (It is possible that evidence may emerge of such crime. But based on what we now know, that is highly unlikely.)

So, let’s not treat the criminal justice system as a law school exam in which students are asked to catalog every possible violation of our accordion-like laws. But if we insist on doing so, let’s at least include the second part of the exam question: showing judgment and nuance in deciding whether to bring a case even if there is “evidence of potential violations of the statutes.” The rule of law cannot survive a double standard. What is good for the goose must be good for the gander, and what we applauded with regard to Hillary Clinton we must not condemn with regard to Donald Trump.

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)

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






21 July, 2017

U.S. Allies Annoyed by Trump's Attention to Putin at G20 Dinner: ‘The Body Language, the Chemistry’

Maybe I have got a weird sense of humor but I found the report below to be hilarious. Trump's ability to upset conventional applecarts is superb. People niggle at the smallest things he does.  I personally think it is fabulous that the Presidents of two of the world's greatest countries get on well.  Surely peace with Russia is what we all want. 

And it is an example of a promise kept.  Trump promised better relations with Russia on the campaign trail.  I suspect that Trump sensed from the beginning that Putin was just a patriot doing his best for his country who shared a disrespect for political correctness


The man who broke the news of President Trump's unofficial, one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a July 7 dinner in Germany said he found out about it from apparently disgruntled U.S. allies who watched the whole thing unfold.

Ian Bremer, a foreign policy analyst, author, and head of Eurasia Group, appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday to discuss the implications of the hour-long conversation between Putin and Trump where only the Russian translator knows for sure what the two men were saying to each other.

“Well, it's not surprising for leaders to have informal pull-asides when they have business to discuss in the context of these summits, but what is unusual is the length, the warmth in the context of what is already an unprecedented relationship between Trump and Putin,” Bremer said:

Many of the leaders that were in that room, including, you know, America’s most important allies were quite surprised. They found it unusual and noteworthy -- the body language, the chemistry, the fact that it went on for so long, and the fact that, of course, it reflected a much warmer relationship between Trump and Putin than he has with any of the other leaders in the room.

And I think in the context of a president who already has unnerved a lot of world leaders, making them wonder to what extent is the Trump administration committed to them, whether it’s on security or trade or climate or what have you – that’s really where the true uniqueness of this comes along.
Was any rule broken? “Morning Joe” anchor Mika Brzezinski asked Bremer.

“No, I don't think so,” Bremer replied. But not having two translators in such a situation is “extremely unusual,” he added.

"Putin didn't come to him. He got up. He went around the table, he sits down next to Putin. They're yucking it up. It’s very engaged, it’s very animated, it’s very connected. After a day and a half of summit, where he didn't do that with anyone else, any of his allies, and I think lot of people find that very disturbing.”

SOURCE

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Hypocrisy is routine for Democrats

And it doesn't bother them at all

If Elizabeth Warren didn’t have double standards, she’d have none at all. She claims to fight for minorities, but this rich white elitist lied about her ethnicity to steal a job from a minority.

She claims banks exploited the poor by giving them bad mortgages, but she raked in mountains of cash snatching up homes from foreclosed families and selling them for personal profit.

And how she’s been caught partying at an exclusive getaway with a Wall Street executive she claims to oppose.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), one of the Senate’s fiercest Wall Street critics, attended a Democratic donor retreat over the weekend hosted by former UBS bank executive Robert Wolf, who last year lashed out against politicians that target Wall Street for political gain…

…Warren’s office did not respond to a request for comment on her decision to attend Wolf’s event.

Warren didn’t make any public announcement over the weekend regarding her participation in the donor event.

She did, however, post pictures on Twitter of a town hall she held in Martha’s Vineyard prior to the dinner, noting that the event was “what Democracy looks like.”

Warren couldn’t seem to find the time to criticize him at the private retreat the way she does in her campaign events.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Elizabeth Warren makes Hillary Clinton looks honest and trustworthy.

SOURCE

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Obsessive-Compulsive Democrats and Impeachment

The obstruction of Trump's agenda is the primary goal, but Democrats are hurting themselves just as much.

Who dares to deny that the circus-like atmosphere surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency is the most unusual political phenomenon in recent memory?

There is a lot of true craziness among the anti-Trump crowd. They criticize him for virtually everything, or nothing. Like the non-story involving Poland’s first lady, who set the anti-Trump world ablaze when, after her husband and Trump shook hands, she had the audacity to shake the hand of Melania Trump before greeting the president. Oh, the horror! And daughter Ivanka sat in for him briefly at the G-20 meeting wearing a pink dress with — gasp — bows on it!

Perhaps the best evidence of compulsive obsession (or is it obsessive compulsion?) and leftists losing their grip on reality was Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who wanted to impeach Trump before he was even sworn in.

Other evidence of the high degree of obsession — or at least amusing overstatement — comes from a survey by the drug and alcohol rehabilitation group Detox, which found, “Over 73 percent of Democrats would give up drinking for the rest of their lives if it led to the impeachment of President Donald Trump…” The survey did not provide a mechanism for assuring allegiance to the pledge.

It’s quite likely that many people who desire impeachment don’t understand what it is or how it works. Impeachment is a political remedy; it deals with breaches of public trust, or injuries done immediately to the society itself, by certain government officials, but not necessarily criminal activity in the traditional sense.

The grounds for impeachment require the significant likelihood that “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (crimes by public officials against the government) have been committed, according to Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. It’s not the appropriate solution for those dissatisfied with the results of an election, or the most fervent wish to be rid of a president some don’t like.

Impeachment doesn’t remove a president from office. It’s the first step in a rigorous two-step process; bringing formal charges against him or her, much like a grand jury indictment. Remember, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998, but went on to serve out his term as president because he was not convicted in step two, the trial by the U.S. Senate, requiring the affirmative vote of at least two-thirds of its members.

The only other successful impeachment of a president was Andrew Johnson, who was acquitted by the Senate in 1868. Richard Nixon likely would have been impeached and convicted over the Watergate affair, but he avoided impeachment by resigning from office.

The record for presidential impeachment shows it to be a difficult process without much success, as deliberately designed by the Founders.

Failures don’t impede Democrats in their efforts at futile goals, however. Obsession and compulsion are tough masters to defeat. It’s almost as if their real goal is just stirring up negative opinion among their faithful followers to interfere with the president’s agenda…

“If they had a good case based on real information, I think they would mention it by now and put their cards on the table,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group. He is also a former Pennsylvania state prosecutor and former counsel for the board of directors at the Legal Services Corporation. He added, “They don’t have high crimes and misdemeanors. They don’t have low crimes and misdemeanors.”

Despite any compelling evidence, or even evidence that isn’t compelling, leftist cohorts who have rallied to the idea include MoveOn.org, Democracy for America and other “resistance” groups, and a group of Congressional Democrats who either don’t understand the issues or the process or just seek recognition.

This list includes the aforementioned Rep. Waters, along with Texas Rep. Al Green, California Rep. Jackie Speier, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, Maine Sen. Angus King, Texas Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal. And let’s not forget Virginia’s own Sen. Tim Kaine, who actually mentioned “treason” regarding Donald Trump Jr.‘s fruitless meeting with a Russian attorney in June 2016.

After admitting nothing has yet been proved, Kaine said, “We’re now beyond obstruction of justice, in terms of what’s being investigated. This is moving into perjury, false statements, and even potentially treason.”

California Rep. Brad Sherman actually has introduced articles of impeachment, although the House Democrat leadership hasn’t fallen in line with that move. The effort is almost certain to fail because only one Democrat, Al Green, has signed on to it, and, oh by the way, it won’t go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress.

At some point, however, Democrats must chill down the rhetoric. Emotion and desire, however fervent and crushing they may be, must be put aside, an objective look at the actual case must be undertaken, and then they need to get back to performing the national service for which they were elected. Then again, since they’re utterly untrustworthy on handling any issue of importance, the nation would be better served if Democrats continued their obsessive spiral and failed to advance in the 2018 election.

SOURCE

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Full Repeal of Obamacare Has Always Been the Only Answer

Sen. Mike Lee (R.-Utah) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R.-Kan.) dealt a blow to Obamacare “repeal and replace” efforts last night when they announced they would not vote for the latest version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

Now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to schedule a vote to repeal major sections of the Affordable Care Act using the reconciliation process, but it still won’t be a full repeal.

Republicans made a commitment to the American people. They committed to repealing Obamacare, and Americans put them in office to do it. Now, Republicans have a chance to finally do the right thing for the American people. They must simply repeal every word of the ACA. A vote on a two-page repeal bill will end the needless quibbling and ongoing drama about the details of a bill that was never full repeal in the first place.

The Better Care Reconciliation Act only further embedded federal controls, federal infrastructure, federal subsidies and federal dollars of Obamacare into federal law. The Senate bill is not repeal. The House bill is not repeal. Both bills were designed for big insurers and big government. They aren’t bills to benefit patients, and they don’t restore health freedom or affordability. Any “replacement” bill that exchanges one federal program for another is not the right direction. Full repeal has always been the only answer. We call on the Senate to put a real repeal bill up for a vote.

SOURCE

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A trip down memory lane



And they say Trump's foreign policy is naive! Trump has to pick up the pieces left by Democrat stupidity.

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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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20 July, 2017

Genius of Trump enrages liberal media

The media is replete with fools with an unwavering media orthodoxy: Trump must be impeached, he’s unhinged, his character is all wrong, he’s crude, he’s rude, he’s putting family in charge of the country, he’s alone on the world stage, he’s cutting off Europe, he’s out of his depth with North Korea and China, he’s clearly in cahoots with Russia and Vlad Putin, he’s a weird night-time tweeter who simply should not be president. Barack Obama never behaved this way. Hillary Clinton would never have behaved like this as madam president.

The media’s conventional wisdom misses one glaringly obvious point: Trump is a completely unconventional President, just as he was a very different candidate vying for the Republican nomination and just as he was a very different contender facing off against Hillary Clinton. Understand this elemental truth, then put it aside as less important than matters of substance. The constant blather about Trump’s style and character, whether it’s in the media or at dinner parties, is propelling too many people into intergalactic irrelevance. And in space no one can hear you scream.

The genius of Trump is how he manipulates fools in the media to his own ends. During last year’s presidential campaign, mainstream media’s “get Trump” cov­erage backfired badly. The more the media dumped on Trump, the more coverage it gave him and the more it helped Trump win the presidency — not just with free air­time, estimated to be worth $US2 billion, but by feeding Trump’s message of a biased media. It’s the same now. Trump goes after the “fake news” media because he can and because it works. Trump speaks directly to his 34 million Twitter followers without being filtered by the media. This drives the media nuts, as it can’t game the system the same way.

As The New York Post’s Michael Goodwin said during a speech a few months ago, while left-liberal politics were baked into the journalism cake decades ago during the social revolution of the 1960s and 70s, what happened last year was something altogether worse. “As with grief, there were several stages” in journalists’ coverage of Trump, he said. They started out treating him like a joke, then, when Trump won the GOP nomination, the media got angry, especially because his battle with the media aided and abetted his rise. Since he won the presidency, the media has tried to get even, calling for Trump’s impeachment absent hard evidence. Having helped create the celebrity who became a president, the media seems to imagine it can bring him down too.

Trump’s message resonates because the media’s anti-Trump bias is still evident. Just look at the feverish reporting of the latest ABC/Washington Post poll this week. Trump’s six-month approval rating is at an all-time low, sitting at just 36 per cent, the lowest of any president in 70 years. Our own excitable ABC journalists added that the poll had a fine history of accuracy; it was out by only 2 per cent at the November presidential poll. No biggie unless you remember that being out by 2 per cent meant the poll failed to predict the 45th American President.

When former FBI boss James Comey gave evidence before the US Senate last month, there was fanatical condemnation of Trump by the unholy trinity of The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Cooler analysis might have noted that Comey refused to say Trump’s actions were an obstruction of justice. There’s no excited reporting of the poll that found 79 per cent of Republican voters backed Trump’s decision to sack Comey. Or of last week’s poll that found 60 per cent of Trump voters weren’t fussed by Donald Trump Jr meeting a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Clinton during last year’s campaign.

Attacking the media works for Trump for another reason: the cycle suits him. He tweets about “Low IQ Crazy Mika” and “Psycho Joe” from MSNBC Morning Joe. He posts hashtags like #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN — fraud news network. He posts spoofs on Twitter of him in a WWE professional wrestling match with a candidate wearing a CNN logo. The media responds: he’s juvenile, he’s encouraging violence. He’s un-presidential, petty and devaluing his office. A comedian quips: “Imagine a kindergarten principal tweeting: ‘The little f..ker punched me first’.” Sweet old actress Mia Farrow demands that the President “stop this nonsense”. Author JK Rowling quotes George Washington about silence being the best answer to calumny.

Then Trump strikes back. The media responds with more attacks and unwittingly, the outraged media and countless celebrities become his useful idiots, their frenzied loathing helping him to feed the message about media bias and disconnected celebrities. Then, the media ratchets up its Trump loathing even further when it realises he’s playing it like a hillbilly fiddler.

Indeed, if this continues for 3½ more years, the US President will look more like a masterful conductor of Wagner’s epic Ring cycle.

Constant entreaties for the US President to act more presidential fail to understand him. Trump is unlike anything America, or the world, has seen before. He makes no apologies and he’s not interested in changing. He celebrates his difference, tweeting: “My use of social media is not Presidential — it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again.” Normal programming cannot resume until the media starts reporting news and offering considered analysis rather than trying to get even with a modern-day President it helped create.

SOURCE

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"Secret" meeting with Putin was held in a roomfull of other people!

Donald Trump has lashed out at reports of his undisclosed encounter with Vladimir Putin at the G20 earlier this month, describing them as "sick".

The US and Russian leaders were in Germany for the summit, and came face-to-face for the first time at a two-hour meeting on July 7 – which was reported at the time.

It emerged on Tuesday that the pair had a second discussion, lasting about an hour, during a dinner for the Group of 20 heads of state and their spouses in Hamburg. The pair were joined only by Mr Putin's translator.

Mr Bremmer said the US president got up from his seat halfway through dinner and spent about an hour talking "privately and animatedly" with Mr Putin.

More HERE 

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Left-Wing Extremism Killed JFK and His Party

Election Denial is the latest left-wing conspiracy theory.

The Democrat Party now stands for one thing: accusing President Trump of being a Russian agent.

This bold new agenda has proven so enormously popular that the Democrats have wasted $40 million to lose four special elections. The Democrats are leaderless. Their base has become a roving mob of angry embittered sloganeers showing up at town hall meetings and random political events to scream hate. They threaten to kill the wives, children and dogs of Republican members of Congress.

Some, like James Hodgkinson, the Bernie Sanders supporter who opened fire at a Republican charity baseball practice, do more than threaten. They actually unleash all that simmering anger.

The Democrats are going into the midterm elections on a conspiracy theory. The theory is backed by their fake news media outlets at the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN. It just lacks any actual evidence beyond the sort of web of connections usually advanced by conspiracy theorists.

This is the second time that Democrats have embraced a conspiracy theory to escape reality. And behind that conspiracy theory lay the same unpleasant and inconvenient fact of left-wing extremism.

The Democrats couldn’t cope with the fact that a left-wing extremist murdered JFK. So they built a vast array of conspiracy theories that blamed the CIA, the Cubans and the “climate of right-wing hate” in Dallas. The Communist who killed JFK was just a “patsy” for one of those vast right-wing conspiracies.

But it was left-wing extremism that killed Camelot. It’s left-wing extremism that is killing the Democrats.

This time the assassin isn’t on the outside. The assassins of the Democrats are on the inside. They pushed the party so far to the left that its base now consists of the deranged left. It’s unviable outside its bicoastal and urban enclaves. So obviously the Democrats lost Wisconsin because of the Russians. Not because they had become entirely dependent for their political survival on the mass turnout of minority bloc voters who usually have low turnout rates. It was Podesta’s leaked emails that lost Pennsylvania. 

But you can’t blame Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Keith Ellison for turning the Democrats into the party of Portland, Austin and Berkeley… but not America. You certainly can’t admit that waging war on nuns, police officers and small businessmen might have alienated a few voters.

It’s easier to invent a conspiracy theory so that you never have to address the real problem. And the real problem is the inability of the Democrats to shake the left-wing monkey maliciously riding on their backs.

Left-wing extremism has consequences. Presidents are shot and presidential elections are lost.

The Soviet Union spent generations blaming its economic failures on everything except its left-wing ideology. It drowned its lands in blood, filled gulags with slave labor and killed its own faithful to evade the simple fact that its left-wing ideology was the problem. The Democrats are desperately scrambling to blame everyone and everything except their left-wing ideology for their political destruction.

Conspiracy theories are the first refuge of failed political movements. When a movement can’t deal with the rottenness in its own ranks, it invents conspiracy theories to explain the ideologically impossible.

If Communism worked, the Soviet Union should have prospered. If Socialism worked, the Obama years should have led to an economic golden age. If the left’s theory of a New Majority displacing old white voters worked, President Hillary Clinton should be on her thousandth executive order by next Tuesday.

The left responds to failure in two ways. Either it blames it on an insufficiently hardline approach. The USSR wasn’t Communist enough. Obama compromised too much. Bernie Sanders should have been the candidate. If Bernie had lost, then a more uncompromising candidate like Jill Stein or Lenin’s pickled carcass would have won. And then to avoid a purity spiral and circular firing squad, it blames some outside force. The Dems blamed Hillary and she blamed them. They both agreed to blame a conspiracy.

The Trump-Russia conspiracy theory diverts attention from what really went wrong. It saves the Democrats from having to admit that they have a problem. And that problem is the left.

The Kennedy killing should have been a warning about the threat of the left. Instead the Democrats drifted further from JFK’s anti-Communist positions until they came full circle and blamed the anti-Communists for the murder of an anti-Communist by a Communist.

The 2016 election should have been a warning to the Democrats about the dangers of extremism. Their embrace of radical politics had marginalized them politically. But instead they found refuge in conspiracy theories. But the Trump-Russia conspiracy fails to answer why the Democrats have been losing election after election around the country, in state races and national ones, long before Trump.

Obama’s reelection was that rare triumph for the Dems in a string of national political disasters. These disasters had nothing to do with Trump or the Russians. The Democrats had become a radical party that was no longer capable of relating to the concerns and values of most of the communities of this country.

The premise that Hillary Clinton, a candidate whom most Americans rated as untrustworthy, could not have lost the election except through a conspiracy is a belief so delusional that it beggars belief. But it’s either that or admit that her embrace of every crazy left-wing idea that had become trendy in the party had killed any hope of a platform that would appeal outside Berkeley leaving her with nothing to run on except her charm and charisma. And that charm and charisma can’t be found with an electron microscope.

Now the Democrats are repeating the same disaster all over again. Instead of connecting with the voters on economic issues, they are pandering to their left-wing base with a Trump-Russia conspiracy theory. Most Americans won’t be voting based on conspiracy theories. And those who will are already a solid left-wing base. But the Dems would rather lose by going to the left than win by moving to the center.

The best evidence of the radicalization of the Dems is that they would rather protect their ideology from accountability than resurrect their political fortunes. Conspiracy theories are how radical movements find a way to have their ideological cake and eat it too. And that’s what the Dems are doing.

JFK conspiracy theories were born out of a refusal to come to terms with the threat of Communism, not just in Europe or Asia, but right here at home. 9/11 denial was born out of the same response to Islam. The conspiracy that ate the left’s brain now is election denial. The moon landing was faked. Bush did 9/11. And Trump didn’t really win the election.

Election denial is what happens when you not only deny that you lost the election, but why you lost. And as Gorbachev would be happy to explain to Tom Perez, that’s the surest way to lose for good.

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 July, 2017

"Daddy's girl" in the era of Trump

Those who have been involved in it know it well enough but there is very little said either in the popular press or in the academic journals about the "Daddy's girl" phenomenon.  So I think I need to give a brief outline of it.

What happens is that an unknown but probably substantial proportion of fathers absolutely adore their little daughters.  And they express that in every way, including spoiling the little girl rotten.  And the little girl laps it up of course.  The two become bound in a bond of mutual love.  It is in my mind the most beautiful human relationship there is.

So to take an example:  The father comes home from work and as soon as he steps in the door the little girl runs to him with open arms.  He snatches her up, gives her a close cuddle and then carries her further into the house where a mother sees two faces with big smiles on them.  Since she loves those two persons she too smiles with pleassure.  It is a happy homecoming.

I am sure that Leftists will deplore that example as "heteronormative", or whatever their latest neologistic jargon is, but they are the losers if they have never been part of that. It happens. 

I also see fathers and little daughters coming into my favorite coffee shop.  The daughter will cling to the father as both of them order and will then wind herself around the proud and happy dad when they sit down.  You have to see it.

Having been part of such a relationship gives the girl confidence in her desirability and that is usually a long-term effect. It permanently gives the girl self-confidence and repose for all the rest of her life. And even after she has married and herself become a mother, she will at some times of stress go home to see "Dad".  And when she sees his eyes light up as she enters the room, calm and reassurance will come over her.  It may not solve her problems but gives her strength to bear them.

I was once talking to a mother who said that when her daughter's father came home, there was no-one else in the room for the girl but her father.  She just ran to him on sight.  I was concerned that the mother might be a bit put out by that so I said to her that the girl was lucky as that "Daddy's girl" relationship would give her strength and confidence for the rest of her life.  The mother replied serenely:  "Yes. I know.  I was one too".

To my regret, I never had a daughter but I was very close to a beautiful step-daughter so I have some personal feeling for what that is all about.

Where does the mother fit in?  Some may ask.  I am afraid that it does make the mother the usual disciplinarian but the father can be a backup.  If he told his little daughter that something "would make Daddy sad", that would be powerful.

So that brings us to the Trumps.  To anyone aware of the phenomenon, Donald and Ivanka have an outstandingly strong "Daddy's girl" relationship.  They dote on one another and wherever Donald is, Ivanka is usually no more than yards away, if that.  They are as close to inseparable as they can reasonably be.



For me the picture below encapsulates best the relationship between the two. They were (of course) together at the big G20 meeting but the personal was not for a moment forgotten.  A comforting hand is on Ivanka's shoulder saying "I am here".  And she looks on with a relaxed smile at what is before her. (And what WAS the Japanese Prime Minister thinking?)



I think that loving relationship is thoroughly admirable And tells you much about Donald Trump.  Had Obama had such a relationship, he would have been praised to the high heavens for it.  But with Donald Trump it is totally ignored.  I hope I am not the last to congratulate Donald on his outstandingly loving relationship with his daughter.

There has of course been much foul speculation about Ivanka and Donald as seen in the picture below when she was 15 years old.  But it is just the girl being loving towards her Dad.  Close physical contact is normal in that context.



There were events in my relationship with my stepdaughter that would have looked most alarming to an outsider looking in but everything was in fact completely innocent and known to be such by all the family.

The happy, poised and self-confident lady we see in Ivanka today is clearly NOT the victim of sexual abuse.



And I think the picture below shows how good they are for one-another.  She is happy and he is relaxed as they walk along.  It's a beautiful relationship.



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Bitcoins as a defense against socialism

When I first looked at Bitcoin, I thought it was a badly constructed Millennial scam. Its vaunted “blockchain” had clear design problems, as Kevin Dowd and I pointed out in a Cato Institute paper. I now realize that this was a failure of imagination. I should have seen Bitcoin for what it was: the first flawed attempt to regain our freedom, as governments worldwide use software and thuggery to eliminate cash and Swiss bank accounts. The global government Godzilla will not stop its predations; we are so interconnected that votes for Brexit or Donald Trump merely slow it somewhat. But a crypto-currency with true anonymity – that at last will liberate us from its clutches.

Thirty years ago, we had several means of making transactions anonymously, without governments knowing about therm. For small sums, cash was almost completely anonymous, although numbered bills always gave police departments the chance to trace transactions in large criminal cases. For larger amounts, there were a wide range of banking jurisdictions offering anonymity and complete respectability to those seeking a safe bolt-hole for their cash. In the 1980s, I worked for an Austrian bank whose proud boast was that they would verify only your nationality, not your name, so that if you registered yourself as Mickey Mouse, they would greet you each time you came into the branch with elegant Austrian formality: Grüss Gott, Dr. Maus!

This was no doubt convenient for Third World dictators, terrorists and the international Mafia, but it is also essential for ordinary citizens, for one very good reason: governments cannot be trusted. They always seek to expand their control and income, and they will generally give way to temptation if it is presented to them, even fleetingly. The extreme example, of course, is that of the Jewish inhabitants of inter-war Germany who had the foresight to hold a Swiss bank account; if they were able to escape when the Nazis came to power, as many were, their Swiss bank accounts were essential to being able to re-start their lives in a safe country.

Yes, those unfortunates who did not manage to escape and did not tell their non-German families about the Swiss bank account provided an unexpected bonus for the Swiss banks, but contrary to public hysteria when this was revealed; this did not make the Swiss banks collaborators with the Nazis. It made them diligent service providers whose diligence could not solve all their clients’ problems, just the financial ones. But against governments less insane than the Third Reich, financial defenses are often the ones you need most.

To those who expostulate that we should surely trust democratic governments not to behave like Nazi Germany, I would agree wholeheartedly in terms of pogroms, Kristallnachts and the like, but not on financial matters. I give you the example of Britain, an admirably democratic country that twice, in 1815 and 1945, found itself financially exhausted at the end of major wars with government debt around 250% of GDP. The first time, the government cut spending by 69% and returned within six years to the Gold Standard, with government bonds through a quirk in their design providing savers with a massive capital gains bonanza – the result being a century of peace and prosperity.

The second time, the British government controlled interest rates, set the top rate of tax above 90%, and inflated the currency until it was worth a tenth of its pre-war value – the result being relative impoverishment all round and absolute impoverishment for those savers foolish enough to pay their taxes and attempt to live on the returns from their savings. Only those with secret Swiss bank accounts, and money kept in international equities, gold and Swiss Franc deposits, were exempt from the British government’s depredations in 1945-79.

The central flaw in democracy is that there is very little to stop 51% of the population oppressing the other 49%, and when it comes to finance and taxation, the poor will almost always be tempted from time to time to oppress not just the rich but the middle class. Britain elected Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson after World War II, both admirable men, but the result was middle class impoverishment and the loss of the Empire, thrown away to fund the National Health Service. Today, Britain is more than capable of electing Jeremy Corbyn.

The United States elected Barack Obama, who no doubt is even now skulking in his magnificent Georgetown house growling “Next time, no more Mr. Nice Guy” – and could easily elect the likes of Bernie Sanders or worse. Indeed, even in the 1950s, with the universally admired Dwight Eisenhower as President, the top rate of U.S. income tax remained at 91% throughout the decade, albeit only on extremely high incomes. The John Birch Society, madmen though they were, had a point when they accused Ike of being a Communist agent; in terms of tax policy, he effectively was.

There are two reasons for an ordinary middle-class person to need both cash and the opportunity to open a Swiss bank account. First, governments can always turn nasty, either generally or against you personally, for example through the disgraceful U.S. Civil Asset Forfeiture process. Second, the existence of cash and Swiss Bank accounts is a useful albeit not completely effective deterrent against governments getting too ambitious in their “tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect” mania. Conversely, the lack of such mechanisms puts temptation in government’s way, just begging it to impose tyranny.

By a series of international treaties, the U.S. and EU governments have now effectively eliminated the usefulness of Swiss banks and their Austrian cousins. With the tax authorities being given details of their citizens’ Swiss bank accounts, those accounts are no longer a reliable defense against government extortion. For the Russian Mafia, there are still some numbered bank account havens available, but they are much less reliable than Switzerland, so you may need your trusty henchman Igor to blow up the bank’s head office if they try any funny business. For the rest of us, sadly lacking an Igor, the avenue has been closed.

As for cash, the authorities are now trying to abolish that, ostensibly to facilitate their crazed negative-interest-rate policies. Andy Haldane, of the Bank of England, first proposed this monstrous idea, which has now been supported by the apparently sensible Kenneth Rogoff, whose “The curse of cash” sent frissons of pleasure down the spines of Keynesian central bankers worldwide. In India, which experimented with removing cash from the system last autumn, the use of Bitcoin has skyrocketed. (Although the Bitcoin blockchain is not completely secure, presumably its Indian users think cracking it for the gigantic Indian population of Bitcoin users is at least beyond the capabilities of the permit raj.)

Bitcoin is imperfect, just as the 1885 Benz, with its top speed of 3 miles per hour, was not the perfected automobile. But improvements are coming all the time, and with massive customer usage, the need for further improvements is all the time becoming more apparent – just as the manufacturers of the 1910 Gräf und Stift learned from the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand that they needed to improve their reverse gear mechanism. Soon we will have a crypto-currency that is completely impervious to the efforts of the NSA. GCHQ, the IRS and all the other government agencies who wish to view our financial transactions.

The ideal crypto-currency would combine complete anonymity with a gold link, like the late lamented E-gold, disgracefully shut down by the U.S. government. Just as anonymity enables ordinary people to escape the fiscal follies of evil and incompetent governments, so gold, which unlike crypto-currencies provides a secure non-fiat store of value, enables ordinary people to escape governments’ monetary follies, so overwhelming in recent years. A crypto-currency that combined complete anonymity with a firm and unbreakable link to gold would provide the ultimate solution to those wishing to live in financial freedom.

A fully anonymous and secure crypto-currency will be some help to terrorists, but only to the extent they have billionaires wishing to finance them. It will be only a modest help to Russian and other mafias, who have other means of keeping their financial transactions a secret from the world’s authorities. However, it will be a massive protection for the world’s ordinary citizens, even those who are of only modest means, as they will be able to store and transfer wealth in a form that is undetectable by the world’s authorities.

Poor people living under oppressive dictatorships, such as in Venezuela, will be able to provide themselves with food and maybe a bolt-hole outside their oppressive country, just as did the luckier German Jews in the 1930s. Rich people whose wealth is attacked by Socialist governments will be able to spirit it away where it cannot be found. But above all, ordinary middle-class people of moderate means will sleep in their beds, knowing that taxes on them will not be arbitrarily increased, nor property arbitrarily seized, nor wealth eroded by inflation and government overspending, because if any such thing threatens, they have a crypto-currency bolt-hole available, even if in normal times they never bother to use it.

For the world’s governments and central bankers, mass usage of crypto-currencies would be an existential threat. The withdrawal of wealth into crypto-currencies from other stores of value, such as stocks, bonds and real estate, would cause a massive market crash (such a crash may be inevitable, given the last decade’s foolishness, but this would very much worsen it.) For the world’s central bankers, there would only be one solution: forswear, now and forever, their evil attempts to abolish cash and, to make that foreswearing credible, push interest rates far above zero, to a rate well above the rate of inflation, and pledge to keep them there.

That would enable the economy to function normally again. It would cause a mass liquidation of all the foolish investments made in the last decade, but, combined with de-regulation, it would allow productivity growth to return to its historic robust levels, and thereby begin the blessed process of making us all richer again, as we had become used to since the Industrial Revolution.

Most important, if the world invests in untraceable crypto-currencies, even a global government that attempted to seize the resources of its citizens would find itself unable to do so. And that, above all, would become our principal guarantee against an impoverished and servile future.

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)

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




18 July, 2017

Levin on Gov’t-Run Health Care: If Gov’t Ran Food Production, ‘We’d All Starve to Death’

On his nationally syndicated radio talk show Monday, host Mark Levin compared government-run health care with government-run food production, saying that if the government controlled food production, “we’d all starve to death.”

“Trust me, if the government controlled food production in this country, we’d all starve to death,” said Mark Levin. “If the Department of Housing and Urban Development was truly in charge of housing in your neighborhood and construction costs and everything else, we’d all be homeless. We’d all be homeless. Why would we take one of the most complex areas of life, and that is health care, which is really and truly a personal decision, and surrender it to the federal government?”

Below is a transcript of Levin’s comments from his show on Monday, July 10:

“Trust me, if the government controlled food production in this country, we’d all starve to death. If the Department of Housing and Urban Development was truly in charge of housing in your neighborhood and construction costs and everything else, we’d all be homeless. We’d all be homeless.

“Why would we take one of the most complex areas of life, and that is health care, which is really and truly a personal decision, and surrender it to the federal government or have it seized from us, and then make all these excuses: why it’s great, and people with pre-existing conditions?

“Ladies and gentlemen, if the only issue was people with pre-existing conditions and poor people, why do we have to destroy the rest of the health care market? They use these as excuses, as lies -- that people can’t get health care with pre-existing conditions.

“Number one: If you’re healthy and you don’t have insurance, what the hell is wrong with you? Then if you get sick, everybody else has to pay for it? Well, that’s why they have group insurance. We cannot set up a rational system aimed at the lowest common denominator. We just can’t. It won’t work.

“So, what’s necessary? Competition, choice, freedom, individual responsibility, individual decisions: that’s the only way we’re going to get the cost down. That’s the only way you’ll be able to buy a policy that you want. It’s the only way you’re going to see the doctors you want to see. There’s no other way. And why we resist it, I don’t know.

“Was the Industrial Revolution really so horrible? That we have clean water? That you can flick a switch and get electricity? That you can drive an automobile? Was it really that horrible that we can’t apply it to health care? These aren’t theoretical matters. This is reality. There’s a system that works and a system that doesn’t.

“And it seems to me that the progressives have won the battle of the minds. It just -- They just have. Just incredible.”

SOURCE

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After minimum wage hikes and ammunition taxes, the lesson is don’t be like Seattle

On June 2, 2014 Seattle’s city council approved a raise in the minimum wage to a highest in the nation $15 an hour. Not one member of the council voted against it. Like most liberal progressives, the Seattle city council believed they could regulate prosperity. The law did not have the intended consequences.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization conducting economic research, published a paper, on June 26, about the impact of the increase in the minimum wage on Seattle. The working paper is called “Minimum Wage Increases, Wages, and Low-Wage Employment: Evidence from Seattle.”, and was put together by a team from the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance of the University of Washington.

The report analyzes of data from the second quarter of 2014, right before the law was passed, and the second quarter of 2016. The data shows a reduction of 39 percent in jobs that pay less than $13, as to be expected. However, the data also showed a decline in jobs, 4,528, that pay under $19. This is where the jobs were the loss in jobs under $13 was supposed to go.

The bad news didn’t stop there. Over the same two-year period, the data showed a significant reduction in the amount of hours worked. People making under $13 showed a decline of 5.8 million hours in reduction, while people making under $19 lost 1.7 million hours of work. Once again, there was supposed to be a decrease in hours of people making less than $13 with an increase in people making less than $19. Just as the number of jobs decreased, the hours worked by those that held onto their jobs decreased.

Overall, this was a disaster for the working class in Seattle. Yes, people got raises, but thousands lost their jobs, and those that could keep their jobs, saw their hours decreased. For someone working for an hourly wage, it’s simple math, work more hours, make more money. It is estimated the race to make $15 the minimum wage in Seattle cost low-wage earners an average of $1,500 per year. The increase in pay, did not make up for the reduction in hours. I don’t remember “work less, get paid less” being a slogan of the $15 movement.

The federal government should use the Seattle model as a warning. According to the U.S. Census data there are approximately 84 million jobs that make under $40,000. If Seattle’s experience is any indicator of how a national minimum wage hike up to $13 an hour would work out, the cost could be a loss of 1.2 million jobs making less than $40,000 a year, without being moved to a higher wage.

In another winner from the Seattle City Council, a “violence” tax went into effect on January 1, 2016. The measure placed a $25 tax on firearms sold in the city, and up to 5 cents per round. The city tried to hide the attempted denial of Second Amendment rights, by saying the tax would be a revenue raiser with the proceeds going towards violence research. It was expected to raise between $300,000 and $500,000 per year. Let’s just say, it didn’t quite work out the way they planned.

The measure failed spectacularly in two ways. First the measure failed to raise the expected funds. Seattle has yet to release how much was raised last year, probably because it is ashamed to mention the number. What we do know, is that it is less than $200,000. That is at least 33 percent less than the minimum expected revenue. And what revenue has been collected, has not been spent on the promised research. There is a lawsuit challenging the tax, and the city will not spend the money until the suit is resolved. The city went forward with the research spending and spent $275,000 on the research. So, the “violence tax” has so far cost taxpayer over a quarter of a million dollars, and if the lawsuit goes against the city, they will never see the money.

What about the violence the tax was supposed to mitigate? Once again, Seattle failed miserably. Comparing the first five months before the tax was initiated with the first five months of this year, you get startling statistics. Rapes have gone up by 56 percent. Aggravated assault has gone up by 18 percent. Homicide and robbery have stayed the same. The Seattle violence tax did nothing to discourage violence. Will they ever learn?

Two laws passed had the exact opposite affect the laws intended. When it comes to the progressive left, no matter how much evidence presented of a failed policy, nothing changes.

Seattle now stands as a message to other cities across the U.S. The city enacted laws that tax citizens who want to defend themselves, or ended up getting them fired all together. Don’t be like Seattle.

SOURCE

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The Level of Evil That Existed at Auschwitz Under Hitler Exists Today

By Charlie Daniels, country music star

Congressman Clay Higgins at Auschwitz. (YouTube Screenshot)
Recently Congressman Clay Higgins visited Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where untold thousands of Jews were gassed to death, their bodies burned in furnaces and their ashes disposed of like garbage.

Congressman Higgins has come under heavy fire for videoing and narrating his visit, and in graphic language explaining the horrific process, step by step, location by location as the Jews were first herded into the mass execution chambers and moved to the furnaces where their bodies were disposed of.

I remember, in the waning days of the Second World War as the Allied Forces liberated the concentration camps and the newsreels and magazine articles exposed the gas chambers and furnaces and captured film of bulldozers pushing the skeletal bodies of Jews who had been starved and worked to death into mass graves.

This happened. It is undeniably documented, and every man, woman, and child in the free world should know that it happened. They must understand just how far prejudice and rabid hatred can push evil men and the lengths they are willing to go to achieve their dark ambitions.

They need to realize that, given the chance, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and any number of

radical Islamic groups or governments would gladly repeat the same or worse.

Hitler is not an anomaly or a prototype. He is just one of the monsters who visited demonic evil on mankind, along with Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and now the demented Islamists who take great joy in hacking off the heads of infidels, throwing gays off the rooftops of tall buildings, burning and drowning helpless people in steel cages, and crucifying their enemies on crosses.

Is this any less evil than what the Nazis did?

Should the world not be aware that this level of evil exists, past and present? Should not the ovens and gas chambers where six million Jews were mercilessly murdered be exposed to the light of day?

Should not the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, ISIS and all the rest of the monsters responsible for the murder of millions of human beings and the methods they used to accomplish it be made public knowledge, to be reviled and abhorred and prevented from ever happening again.

I have visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Israel, and it was a heartbreaking experience.

As you walk through the exhibits, see the actual box cars where Jews were herded like cattle and transported to their final destination, the graphic photographs, the Children’s Memorial and Hall of Remembrance where the pictures of beautiful Jewish children who died at the hands of the Nazis, their names read aloud one after the other, you can’t help but wonder, “Why didn’t somebody stop this?”

So, Congressman Clay Higgins, I care not what criticism others level at you, those who say you defiled a hallowed place by injecting reality and reminding the world that such evil existed and making us face the fact that it still exists today.

As one who remembers those days and observed them from afar, my hat is off to you, sir. I only wish that some of our other “public servants” would do something as realistic and useful.

As a Christian, I join hands with my Jewish brothers and sisters to reinforce the Israeli national motto, “NEVER AGAIN!”

What do you think?

Pray our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem. God Bless America

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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17 July, 2017

Arabian gold

Did you know that they mine gold in Saudi Arabia?  I didn't but I should have.  There are over 400 mentions of gold in the Bible so it had to come from somewhere. And Arabia is right next door. But as far as I can find the only mention of gold's origin is in Genesis 2:

"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compaseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold".

Archaeologists have recently identified where the ancient river Pishon flowed.  And it is roughly in the middle of Arabia.



A few excerpts about modern gold mining in Saudi Arabia:

State-controlled mining firm Saudi Ma'aden plans to develop the Mansourah, Massarah gold mine, industry sources told Reuters.

Ma'aden operates six gold mines in the Central Arabian Gold Region, western Saudi Arabia which contains much of the Kingdom's gold rich ore deposits. It has recently started operating the Ad Duwayhi gold mine.

Saudi Arabia's efforts to build an economy that does not rely on oil and state subsidies involves a shift towards mining vast untapped reserves of bauxite, the main source of aluminium, as well as phosphate, gold, copper and uranium.

SOURCE

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Anglospheric solidarity again

It is amazing how the major Anglospheric nations tend to shadow one another in all sorts of ways.  Under conservative governments both the USA and the UK have just had big drops in unemployment and are approaching historic lows.  The recently announced US rate is 4.4%.  Compare that with the current UK rate below


Unemployment in Britain has fallen once again as the labour market shows resilience to a slowdown in the wider economy.

The Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday the country's unemployment rate between March and May fell to 4.5 per cent in the three months to May, down 0.2 percentage point from the previous three-month period.

The rate is now at its lowest level since 1975.

Overall, the agency said, the number of people out of work declined by 64,000 during the quarter.

The employment rate, the proportion of people aged from 16 to 64 who were in work, was 74.9 per cent, the highest since comparable records began in 1971.

SOURCE

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Some States Have No Interest in Fighting Voter Fraud

It was a simple request—hardly one to stir up controversy.

Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state and vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, recently sent letters to his fellow secretaries of state requesting “publicly-available voter roll data” and soliciting feedback on ways to secure America’s electoral system against fraud.

Yet the response has been as swift as it is absurd. Liberal activist groups, many media outlets, and politicians—predominantly left-leaning ones—assailed the commission for somehow invading the privacy of American voters.

Some went even further. Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh tweeted that the request was “repugnant.” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe labeled the commission a “tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla called it a “waste of taxpayer money.”

All three indicated their states will provide no information to the commission. They apparently believe that their voter registration rolls are 100 percent accurate.

They must agree with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who publicly proclaimed voter fraud to be just a “myth”—so why bother investigating it?

If voter fraud were as rare as the left contends, and if adequate procedures are in place to prevent it from occurring, you would think those who make this argument would be anxious to provide the data that would serve to verify their assertions.

Could it be that they fear the data would refute their claims?

Indeed, the evidence points to a different conclusion: Voter fraud is not only real, it is a serious and ongoing threat to the integrity of the electoral process.

Voter registration rolls in some states are in sad shape. They are filled with large numbers of individuals who are ineligible to vote because they are dead, have moved away and registered in a different state, or are not U.S. citizens.

Such inaccuracies can be exploited by fraudsters who would rather cheat to achieve their political objectives, knowing that many states have lax procedures that make it extremely likely that they can commit voter fraud and get away with it.

This is not just a crime against our electoral system, but against American citizens. Every fraudulent ballot that is cast negates the vote of a legitimate voter, effectively disenfranchising that voter.

The U.S. Supreme Court has cited “flagrant examples” of voter fraud in American history to justify its conclusion that “the risk of voter fraud [is] real [and] that it could affect the outcome of a close election.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Voter Fraud Database has thus far tallied 848 documented criminal convictions in voter fraud cases spanning 47 states, with new cases being uncovered every week.

In May, the Public Interest Legal Foundation published a startling report on widespread noncitizen voting in Virginia.

The report not only revealed that thousands of ineligible aliens registered and voted in the state’s elections, it also detailed the considerable efforts that state officials undertook to try to block the Public Interest Legal Foundation from obtaining the publicly available voter records the organization needed to complete its investigation.

Once more, Virginia appears to be stonewalling by refusing to comply with the presidential commission’s request, and other states appear to be following suit (although early reports of the precise number of noncomplying states appear to have been exaggerated).

This is disappointing and somewhat surprising, given that federal law requires states to maintain, and make available to the public, the very voter records the commission seeks.

According to a provision in Section 20507 of Title 52, part of the National Voter Registration Act (52 U.S.C. § 20507(i)):

Each state shall maintain for at least two years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters …

Federal law (52 U.S.C. §§ 20701 & 20703) also mandates that election officers must “retain and preserve, for a period of 22 months from the date of any general, special, or primary election” for a federal office all records pertaining to “any application” or “registration” to vote.

The law requires that these records be made available “upon demand in writing by the attorney general … for inspection, reproduction, and copying.”

Many state laws also make this very same voter information available to the public.

California is a perfect example of this. Even though California is refusing to provide the requested information, its state election code makes voter registration records, including “home address, telephone number, email Address, [and] precinct number” available to “any voter … to any candidate for federal, state, or local office, to any committee for or against any initiative or referendum … and to any person for election, scholarly, journalistic, or political purposes, or for governmental purposes … ”

For those concerned that the commission is seeking voter information states would not otherwise make available, the commission’s letter makes it explicitly clear that it is seeking only information that is “publicly available under the laws of your state,” and nothing more.

In addition to the fact that the commission has only requested publicly available information, those states that are citing the need to protect the privacy of voters as the reason for their noncompliance are being somewhat disingenuous.

After all, voter registration information is routinely purchased and used by political parties and candidates for public office, as well as private companies who use such data for commercial purposes.

Many of the politicians who are expressing outrage at the commission’s request obviously did not have any qualms about obtaining and using such data themselves to further their own political ambitions.

The commission’s request for public voter records is designed to serve one purpose: to allow the comparison of voter records across the states, and with federal databases, such as Social Security Administration’s death records and the Department of Homeland Security’s noncitizen records.

This will help to determine whether state voter rolls are accurate and reliable—an extremely important undertaking given the significant evidence that has emerged suggesting that voter registration records are riddled with errors and duplicate entries.

In 2012, for example, a Pew study concluded that roughly “24 million—one of every eight—voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.”

The study estimated that 2.75 million people are registered in multiple states, and 1.8 million deceased voters remain on voter rolls.

Five years later, there is little reason to believe that the problem has corrected itself.

The commission now has an opportunity to update the Pew findings and, if the problem remains, to develop policies and recommendations to facilitate state and federal action to clean up the voter rolls and help secure the integrity of American elections.

Some liberal activists are attacking the commission’s credibility before it even gets started, claiming its purpose is to engage in “voter suppression” and “discrimination.”

Perhaps they can explain how determining the accuracy of voter registration rolls, investigating the numbers of individuals who are illegally voting in multiple states, and identifying noncitizens and others who are ineligible to vote but nonetheless registered constitutes acts of “vote suppression.”

In that regard, it is worth noting that the letter from the commission also requests any information that states have on intimidation of voters or other efforts to prevent eligible Americans from voting.

Rather than helping to investigate and remedy the problems we have in our systems, opponents would rather stick their heads in the sand and pretend there are no problems.

They would also like to tarnish the commission’s reputation with the public in hopes that it will be easier to dismiss its findings later on.

That tells us all we need to know about their motivations. Politics before integrity.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once stated that sunlight is the “best of disinfectants.” When it comes to America’s electoral system, truer words have never been said.

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 July, 2017

The Russia connection



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The American Left's Downward Spiral

R. Emmett Tyrrell
   
I have returned! From Europe, that is, and I hope I met with no Russian agents while there. The soi-disant liberals are in a snit about the Russians. Apparently, Donald Trump Jr. and the mysterious senior White House adviser Jared Kushner met with an agent of the Kremlin in June of last year, and they did not report their meeting to The Powers That Be. Who are The Powers That Be? Actually, I have no idea, but Trump and Kushner should have reported their exchange, which had something to do with adoption or adaption or, possibly, Hillary Clinton’s unwashed socks. You figure it out.

The stalwarts of the American Left (we no longer call them liberals — it is inappropriate) are in another of their tense moments with the Trumps, and, of course, it has something to do with the Trumps and the Russians. The Left has developed an irrational fear of the Russians, and it is positively obsessed with them. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps it is because the Russians today are no longer communists and the erstwhile liberals had long admired certain aspects of the communist system. As I recall, they admired the Marxist-Leninist tax code and its attendant slow-growth economy. Remember their great economists, such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Lester Thurow, oohing and aahing over how prosperous Russia was in the 1980s, just before the crash of communism?

How did that crash come about, comrades? Was it caused by something then-President Ronald Reagan did? Reagan was the Donald Trump of his era. Are our friends to the left still perplexed as to how a B-list movie actor contributed to the fall of communism? Now what can they be expecting from a billionaire businessman?

The morbid preoccupations of the American Left continue apace. Of course, there is its aforementioned paranoia over post-communist Russia. And there is the environment that is increasingly sickening the Left; and the civil rights of public toilet users in certain red states; and civil rights in general. The Ku Klux Klan is making a comeback, and it is aided and abetted by the increasingly popular “alt-Right” movement and the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, who object the expurgation of five years of American history back in the 19th century. Then there is the resistance movement that has been a theme with the American Left ever since Hillary Clinton had her meltdown on election night.

As David Gelernter pointed out last week in The Wall Street Journal, the American Left has adopted “resistance” in response to the free and democratic election of President Trump. As Gelernter wrote, “Democrats, in their role as opponents of President Trump, have taken to calling themselves ‘the resistance.’” They are co-opting the term “resistance” from the free French who, in World War II, opposed the Nazis in occupied France. In their delusions, the members of the American Left are modern-day freedom fighters, and the Trumps are Nazis. Continuing the Left’s fantasy, the American army and its allies will eventually be called in to liberate “the resistance.” And who will march down our Champs-Elysees? Hillary?

I saw my first member of the resistance at the airport in Brussels. The hero was wearing a black T-shirt with “Resistance” boldly emblazoned across his chest. He was asleep. I did not want to wake him with troubling news. His fly was halfway down. Since then, I have seen black T-shirts everywhere in Washington, DC, bearing variations on the Resistance theme: “The Resistance”; or, simply, “Resist”; or, harkening back to Hillary, “She Persists, You Resist.” Nowhere is it reported that Trump has taken any notice, to say nothing of ordering out his brown shirts.

Is it possible that we shall endure such childishness into 2018? I believe it is. Comparing oneself to freedom fighters who faced torture and death while one lounges in the Brussels airport may seem to normal Americans like a leap into fantasy, but it is nothing to the American Left. It has been inhabiting a fantasy world since the first Clinton administration. Those were the years in which it beheld then-President Bill Clinton as the Virgin President and Monica Lewinsky as The Stalker. Ever since then, the Left’s condition has worsened.

SOURCE

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GOP Rallies Behind Idiotic Bill

BY: ANN COULTER

Republicans are about to do something very stupid. Using bribery, threats and cajolery, they intend to pass a catastrophically unpopular bill on a party-line vote.

GOP: Obamacare is unpopular, so let’s pass a new health care bill that’s even MORE unpopular.

Normal Person: Why would you do that?

GOP: No, you don’t understand. Obamacare is totally imploding, so if we pass this bill now, all its problems will be blamed on us!

Republicans would be better off doing nothing. They can survive the ridicule for running against Obamacare through four election cycles and then not repealing it. They cannot survive a bill that does nothing to fix the actual problems with Obamacare.

The only explanation for the GOP doing something so stupid and unpopular is that it’s all about tax cuts.

Why can’t we get it through their heads that we didn’t elect Trump to cut taxes? Forty-five percent of people don’t pay any federal income tax — and they voted for Trump! Taxes on high earners (or “Hillary voters”) are at a historic low.

Here’s a somewhat more important issue I’d like to submit for Republicans’ consideration: PEOPLE CAN’T BUY HEALTH INSURANCE THEY WANT, CAN’T SEE THE DOCTORS THEY WANT AND CAN’T AFFORD THEIR PREMIUMS AND DEDUCTIBLES.

How about allowing people the option of buying insurance that doesn’t cover sex change operations, gambling addictions, psychotherapy, liver transplants for illegal aliens and so on?

Instead of squandering this moment, Trump the businessman should seize it to trumpet the free market. This is a golden opportunity to give a speech explaining why, contrary to everything your professors told you, communism doesn’t work. To paraphrase Talleyrand, what Republicans are doing with Obamacare is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.

Liberals always promise us wondrous cost-saving government programs, and then, it turns out, none of the laws of physics support their exciting plans. Obamacare is crashing and burning — and Trump hasn’t done a thing to anyone’s health care. He can say, perfectly accurately, he was just standing there when the plane hit the ground.

What sets us apart from the rest of the world is freedom — free people, free markets, free minds. That is how America became the most prosperous nation in the world. There’s no genius that can compete with the genius of the free market.

Sentient adults are perfectly capable of making their own choices about what health insurance to buy, the same way they make choices about what food to buy. The whole key to fixing Obamacare is not to repeal it, but to allow the rest of us to buy insurance on the free market.

Right now, it’s illegal to sell an insurance plan that most people would like to buy. Instead, you have to buy plans that cover millions of things you don’t want and nothing that you do want — all in order to pay for other people’s health care.

It would be as if grocery stores were required to charge you $60 for a head of lettuce in order to fund the federal school lunch program.

It is a blood libel to say we don’t care about the old, sick and dispossessed. Everyone has plenty of food in America, even without $60 heads of lettuce. That’s the free market! As Trump said, we will care for them better than they’ve ever been cared for before. But, first, the welfare cases have to be separated from the free market.

Proposed law: “Notwithstanding any other provision of federal or state law, it shall be lawful to purchase or sell any health insurance product in the United States of America.”

Skip the repeal — so there’s nothing for leftist ruffians to protest — and just give the rest of us the option of escaping Obamacare to buy health insurance the same way we buy everything else. Only a free market can guarantee good products at good prices.

Trump used to understand this! In the very first GOP debate, he said, “What I’d like to see is a private system without the artificial lines around every state. … Get rid of the artificial lines and you will have yourself great plans. And then we have to take care of the people that can’t take care of themselves. And I will do that through a different system.”

The “lines around the states” were the 50 state insurance commissions determining which health plans could legally be sold in each state — mandating, for example, that every plan include coverage for acupuncturists, chiropractors, fertility treatments, speech pathologists and so on.

Instead of throwing off the shackles of these commissions and giving us a nationwide free market in health insurance, Obamacare imposed one enormous federal shackle.

As a result, “health insurance” under Obamacare isn’t insurance at all — it’s the government forcing us to pay for other people’s health care through ghastly insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays in exchange for highly limited health insurance for ourselves.

Trump ought to be using the flaming wreckage of Obamacare to illustrate what’s wrong with all Soviet five-year plans. It could be as iconic as Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech. Teenagers would vote Republican for the next 70 years — 80 or 90 years, if they could finally buy decent health insurance.

SOURCE

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Congress is letting Trump and his voters down

Most Americans are dissatisfied – rightly and wrongly — with this Congress, but the frustration of many might have been placated had Congress actually accomplished something in its first 84 legislative days. Having already completed 57% of its schedule this year, the top accomplishment of the 115th Congress is the Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch – no small victory. Congress also passed about 15 resolutions under the Congressional Review Act rescinding various regulations issued in the waning days of the Obama Administration.

Otherwise, the trophy mantle is pretty much empty and rapidly gathering dust.  The House passed its version of Obamacare overhaul, but the Senate left town without taking a single vote.  The same goes for defanging the job-killing Dodd-Frank Act and the Frankenstein monster it created, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The budget is in shambles with liberal Republicans refusing to pass needed spending reductions for sacred cow entitlement programs, like Medicaid and food stamps.  Neither tax reform nor infrastructure is even on the launching pad.

And the much-promised wall between the U.S.-Mexican border the most tangible, symbolic reminder of the 2016 campaign?  Silence.

What Congress did pass in May was a $1.1 trillion spending bill to keep the government open till September 30th.  The bill maintained so many liberal priorities that the Washington Post declared it a “win” for Democrats, enough to give the resistance  confidence they can block the Trump agenda.

So, if Republican voters are frustrated and wondering why they voted and are stuck paying for a Congress that hasn’t delivered, they’ve got plenty of evidence to back them up.  And with only 63 legislative days scheduled for the rest of the year, a budget left to pass, the debt ceiling set to expire in September, and distractions like North Korea emerging, the prospects aren’t promising.  If only Congress could buy some more time.

They can – but it’s going to cost them their cherished August recess.

In June, the House Freedom Caucus called on Speaker Paul Ryan to cancel the August recess “to accomplish the priorities of the American people.”   As it became increasingly clear that the Senate would not vote on its health care bill before the July recess, ten senators signed a letter calling for the August recess to be shortened or canceled.  Organizations like Americans for Limited Government have pushed lawmakers to cancel their summer break so Congress can “get to work.”

Congressional leaders would be wise to heed these suggestions. Voters entrusted them with power in November to pass an agenda for making America great again; in its first 84 official days, Congress has come up woefully short.

Our elected officials behave much like schoolchildren.  Historically, the prospect of losing out on recess time has been the only consistent way to goad them into action.  With the clock working against them, lawmakers’ only option for delivering on even part of what they promised may be declaring that this time, school’s not out for summer.

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 July, 2017

The compassion paradox in the UK

‘Kinder, gentler’ political activism is so often the opposite

It is somewhat ironic that ever since Jeremy Corbyn promised a new dawn of ‘kinder, gentler politics’, one of the great paradoxes of modern politics has become ever more glaring. This is the compassion paradox, the phenomenon by which the more caring and sympathetic people profess to be in their outlook, the nastier they are likely to be in person.

This paradox is not new, of course. Animal-rights fanatics are legendary for their misanthropy and acts of terrorism. ‘Tory Scum’ has long been the charming phrase used by those who complain, without any self-awareness, that the Tories are ‘nasty’.

Belligerent sanctimony is an age-old character trait of anti-Tories who love nothing more than rancorous, vindictive rhetoric. As one placard at the anti-austerity march at the weekend opined of Theresa May: ‘I’m sorry. I just really fucking dislike you. You piece of shit.’ Another, held aloft by a man in a black-and-red striped jumper, simply said: ‘Oh just fuck off!’

This compassion paradox has become more evident recently. Last week, Conservative MP Sheryll Murray talked of her experiences during the General Election, in which she read posts on social media urging people to ‘burn the witch’ and ‘stab the cunt’. Murray’s election posters were defiled with swastikas and a protester urinated in the doorway of her office, before shouting: ‘Fuck you, Sheryll Murray, you’re a fucking prick.’

Elsewhere, Sarah Wollaston, Conservative MP for Totnes, had the walls of her constituency office defaced with anti-Tory messages by masked men. A bridge leading into Totnes was also graffitied with the obligatory ‘Tory scum’. In east London, the Conservative MP for Romford, Andrew Rosindell, had the windows of his car smashed by a man on a moped. He, too, was followed everywhere with taunts of ‘Tory scum’.

This has generally been the direction of ‘caring’ politics lately: a radical posture combined with a lust for violence and bullying. Momentum’s reputation for threatening critics is infamous, while in the US this secular jihadism has manifested itself in the rise of antifa.

This behaviour is entirely consistent with the law of the compassion paradox: the kinder and gentler are your politics, the more violent are your words and actions. And the more you believe you are on the side of righteousness, of the poor against the rich, of Good against Evil, the more your mindset comes to resemble that of a religious fanatic. For those possessed with supreme righteousness, anything is permitted. The holy warrior can legitimise to himself or herself any manner of ferocity.

Intoxicated by a heady cocktail of malignant vindictiveness, grievance, moral indignation and unshakeable certitudes, the ostentatiously compassionate are on the march. They are whipping themselves into a frenzy over Grenfell Tower in particular. So watch out for greater tension on the streets. Behold when these kind, gentle zealots exact vengeance upon society.

SOURCE

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Most Europeans actually agree with the 'wicked' Donald Trump

Take his notorious decision to ban immigration from various Muslim countries. Even to raise such a proposal would shock most of those at the G20, and it's generally taken to be a policy that proves the blackness of Mr Trump's heart.

But if European voters disagree with him, it's more likely to be because they don't think he goes far enough. A survey by Chatham House this year showed that a majority in Austria, France, Germany, Greece and Italy would support a blanket ban on all immigration from Muslim countries. In Poland, which Mr Trump visited first, almost three quarters of the public would back a ban.

This does filter through into politics. A few weeks ago, Slovakia's prime minister declared that Islam has "no place" in his country. The Czech Republic has told the EU it will not take any Muslim asylum seekers.

Mark Rutte only won re-election in the Netherlands after telling immigrants to "behave normally or go away". They might not say this on Twitter, but the language is as shocking as anything coming out of the White House.

When it comes to building walls against neighbours, Mr Trump should spend his time in Europe today looking for tips. Macedonia built a wall with Greece last year, Lithuania is fencing off Russia's Kaliningrad exclave, and Norway is building a wall to keep out those making the rather heroic journey over its Arctic border with Russia.

Brazil, also a G20 member, has gone for a "virtual" wall, monitored by drones and satellites, around its 16,000-kilometre border. So you can disagree with Mr Trump's plan to build a wall, but it's hard to dismiss the idea as crazy.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, some 40 countries have built fences against 60 neighbours. The nation state is back in demand, as are walls: both are seen as useful tools to help manage a new era of mass immigration. The EU's idea of borderless travel was invented when net migration was at a fraction of today's levels. Now, we see chaos. For some Europeans, even a wall is not enough: Austria has been talking about deploying soldiers and armoured vehicles against migrants who might come over from Italy. Enough to shock even Mr Trump.

On trade, it's unclear what Mrs Merkel – or any EU leader – has to teach. Trump's "America first" trade policy simply mimics the Europe-first protectionism that has defined the EU since its inception. Trump has at least decided to keep NAFTA, the free trade deal with Canada and Mexico. The EU struggles to agree deals with any of its major trading partners; this week's much-feted agreement with Japan is only an "outline". And the US has been quicker than the EU to start free trade negotiations with Britain; talks start this month.

The difference is, mainly, one of language. The EU talks about being globally minded, while practising shameless protectionism. Trump boasts about his protectionism, while not (so far) managing to do very much of it.

Even on climate change, Mr Trump is not the villain that he pretends to be. He walked out of the Paris Agreement, but America's record is – and continues to be – strikingly impressive. Thanks to the fracking energy revolution, and ever-more efficient cars and machinery, the per capita carbon emissions in the US are now at levels not seen since the 1960s. The work might have been done by basic consumer demand rather than government diktats, but the US is doing rather well with marrying economic growth and decarbonisation. On the environment, the US should be judged by its achievements, not its promises.

And if Mr Trump is saying he's not too worried about global warming, he's also speaking for a lot of Europeans. A Pew survey shows just two in five say that they are very concerned about climate change, perhaps because environmental progress is doing rather well under its own steam. So, again, it comes down to language.

Mr Trump was elected president, in part because he has a genius for provoking his enemies into a deranged frenzy. But there's not much point in the EU, or any country, succumbing to the same temptation: this is how populists win. He might be jaw-droppingly undiplomatic, pointlessly argumentative and routinely offensive – characteristics that needlessly harm America's reputation. But he won because a great many of his supposedly fringe views are popular and, ergo, mainstream. Hard as it may be for his European counterparts to admit, this is true on both sides of the Atlantic.

SOURCE

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North Korea

China wants to maintain North Korea as a buffer state and will do nothing that could topple the Kim dynasty and give South Korea the chance to unite the peninsula. Beijing supports Pyongyang's view that nuclear arms will further protect the regime from externally induced regime change. Furthermore, Beijing believes that the propaganda spread in the Western media that even before Kim Jong-un has a weapon of mass destruction that can hit America, he has "escalation dominance" because of his massed artillery within range of Seoul. This is supposed to deter any military action to take out North Korea's research centers.

However, neither North Korea nor China has escalation dominance and the Trump administration must make it clear to both regimes why the balance of power still rests with the U.S. and its allies. Any attempt by North Korea to attack any of its neighbors in the wake of a limited strike against its nuclear and missile programs would mean the end of the Kim regime. Allied retaliation would be massive with the core objective of decapitating the government and military. If fighting persisted, the North would be decisively defeated and China's worst fears would be realized.

Kim must be told in no uncertain terms that he must disarm or face death. Menacing his neighbors is what will imperil his rule. If done quietly, we can count on him being too much of a spoiled brat to embrace martyrdom; problem solved.

Beijing must be given only two options; control and perhaps even remove Kim or risk being pulled into a wider war where its years of economic development would be demolished. For President Xi to take actions he does not want to take against Pyongyang, he must be presented with outcomes he finds even more unpalatable. As Carl von Clausewitz famously put it, the purpose of war is to "compel the enemy to do our will." That end can also be accomplished by diplomacy at a much lower cost; but only if the enemy believes war (and defeat) will be the consequence of diplomatic failure.

China knows the risks. The day after the Xi-Trump G20 meeting, Global Times ran a story on a joint U.S.-South Korean exercise, "Saturday's drill, designed to 'sternly respond' to potential missile launches by North Korea, saw two US bombers destroy 'enemy' missile batteries and South Korean jets mount precision strikes against underground command posts." The article concluded with the claim that "China has repeatedly expressed opposition to North Korea's missile launch against UN Security Council resolutions, as well as unilateral sanctions bypassing the UN Security Council, calling relevant parties to avoid escalating the tension and come back to the right track of peaceful negotiations." Beijing believes from experience with past American Presidents, that if America is talking, it is not acting---- and it is only acting that Beijing worries about. Talking gives North Korea more times to find a way to perfect long range weapons and nuclear warheads to put on them. Strategic patience is the route to Pyongyang becoming a global nuclear power          

China retreats from a superior United States, but reverts to form when the threats subside. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Beijing organized the Six Power Talks to negotiate the "denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula so as to head off a feared attack on North Korea which had been lumped with Iraq and Iran into what President George W. Bush called an "axis of evil." The diplomatic efforts collapsed when it became apparent that the U.S. was not going to expand its military campaign against nuclear proliferators. No threat, no need to make concessions.         

In 2010, after North Korea sank a South Korean warship, tensions flared and military exercises were held by China, Russia, Japan and the U.S. all around the peninsula. Beijing's rhetoric hit new highs for militancy, but it backed away from any direct confrontations as a USN carrier group sailed into the East China Sea. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked to forge a strong coalition all along the Pacific Rim, including overtures to Vietnam. President Barack Obama, however, undercut Clinton. At a summit with President Xi, he called on business leaders from both countries to work together to promote peace. This sign of weakness assured China that it need not make any concessions on either North Korea bellicosity or its own mercantilist trade policies; both of which are dangerous to American security. The Chinese had taken stock of Obama and were not afraid.          

President Trump got Beijing's attention at Mar-a-lago by sending a barrage of missiles into a Syrian airfield in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons. But there has been no follow up in Asia. Washington has reinforced its naval and air strength in the region, but Beijing does not think anything more will happen than in 2010. Global Times even proclaimed, "The Trump administration has not been as tough on China as expected....Trump is returning to Washington's previous China policy." This so-called "engagement" policy of past years has worked in Beijing's favor, supporting both its own rise and that of North Korea. Trump must prove the Chinese wrong.  Only if there is a credible threat to Beijing's core interests will the Chinese work to resolve the crisis before the costs of resistance becomes too high to bear. The threat will not become credible until the costs actually start to be felt as America takes action. As the old and tested saying goes, "actions speak louder than words."

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 July, 2017

Alone Perhaps, But Is Trump Right?

Because he grounds his comments in history, I rarely disagree with Pat Buchanan -- but I take some issue with what he says below.  He notes President Trump's urging civilizational self-confidence for the West but is pessimistic about that civilizational self-confidence returning.  He seems to think that "We" have lost our collective balls.

I disagree.  I think the generally spineless response of the West to Islam is entirely a Leftist product.  During his ascent to the Presidency, his followers made pretty clear that they wanted a tough response to social problems and Mr Trump seems to be intent on such toughness.

So the challenge now is to get the Left out of their role of dictating what is right and acceptable.  The Left know that, which is why their response to Trump is so hysterical. But if Trump continues on to broad-based success for his policies, he should generate widespread support for them.  And the chattering class will have to move in his direction.  They will be a steadily shrinking minority talking to a steadily shrinking minority otherwise.

In short, I think that, after 8 years of Trump, America will have rediscovered its manhood and the rest of the world will gradually follow


At the G-20 in Hamburg, it is said, President Trump was isolated, without support from the other G-20 members, especially on climate change and trade.

Perhaps so. But the crucial question is not whether Trump is alone, but whether he is right. Has Trump read the crisis of the West correctly? Are his warnings valid? Is not the Obama-Merkel vision of a New World Order a utopian fantasy?

At the monument to the patriots of the Warsaw Uprising, Trump cited Poland as exemplar of how a great people behaves in a true national crisis.

Calling the Polish people "the soul of Europe," he related how, in the Miracle of the Vistula in 1920, Poland, reborn after 12 decades of subjugation, drove back the invading Red Army of Leon Trotsky.

He described the gang rape of Poland by Nazis and Soviets after the Hitler-Stalin pact. He cited the Katyn Forest massacre of the Polish officer corps by Stalin, and the rising of the Polish people against their Nazi occupiers in 1944, as the vulturous legions of Stalin watched from the safe side of the river.

When the Polish Pope, John Paul II, celebrated his first Mass in Victory Square in 1979, said Trump, "a million Polish men, women and children raised their voices in a single prayer. ... 'We want God.' ... Every Communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down." And so it did.

The crisis of the West today, said Trump, is akin to what Poland faced. For it is about the survival of a civilization, rooted in Christianity, that has made the greatest of all contributions to the ascent of man.

What enabled the Poles to endure was an unshakable belief in and a willingness to fight for who they were — a people of God and country, faith, families, and freedom — with the courage and will to preserve a nation built on the truths of their ancient tribe and Catholic traditions.

Given the threats to the West, from within and without, said Trump, we need such a spirit now. What are those threats?

"The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?

"We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive."

Trump professed confidence in the West's will to survive. But whether the West still has the character seems an open question.

Across the West, the traditional family has been collapsing for decades. Not one European nation has a birth rate that will enable its people to survive many more generations. Uninvited migrants in the millions have poured in — are pouring in — from Africa and the Middle East. The elite of Europe have been gladly surrendering their national sovereignties to transnational institutions like the EU.

Christianity is more of a dying than a thriving faith on the Old Continent. And as the churches empty out, the mosques are going up. Before our eyes, the West is being remade.

In June, gays and lesbians celebrated in Berlin as the German Parliament voted to approve same-sex marriage.

In Moscow, from May to July, a million Russians stood in lines a mile long to view and venerate a relic of the 4th-century bishop, St. Nicholas, on display in a glass case in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, rebuilt under President Putin.

Liberated from Leninism, Russia returns to the old faith, as Germany returns to Weimar.

At that G-20 gathering in Hamburg, hundreds of criminal thugs went on a three-day rampage — rioting, burning, looting and battling police, some 300 of whom were injured.

Were the autocrats of the G-20 — Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Narendra Modi of India — impressed with the resolute response of Angela Merkel — the media-designated new "Leader of the West" — to mobs rioting in Germany's second city?

At Harvard, Alexander Solzhenitsyn described what was on display in Hamburg: "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. ... Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite."

Secularist and hedonist, New Europe worships at the altars of mammon. Handel's "Messiah" cannot compete with moonwalking Michael Jackson's "We Are the World."

Once Europe went out to convert, colonize and Christianize the world. Now the grandchildren of the colonized peoples come to Europe to demand their share of their inheritance from a West besotted with guilt over its past sins that cannot say "No!"

SOURCE

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The Atlantic Publishes All You Need to Know About the Left

The race-obsessed Left see racism everywhere

Dennis Prager
   
Last week, The Atlantic rendered a great service to those of us who contend that America is in the midst of a civil war between the Right and the Left. It provided a smoking gun — actually, the gunshot itself — to those of us who contend that the Left (never to be confused with liberals) is intent on dismantling Western civilization.

It published articles by two left-wing writers, one by Peter Beinart titled “The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw Speech,” and one by its national correspondent, James Fallows, written on the same theme as Beinart’s.

The subject of both articles was President Donald Trump’s speech in Warsaw, Poland, last week, a speech described by The Wall Street Journal as “a determined and affirmative defense of the Western tradition.”

Yet, to The Atlantic writers, defending Western civilization is nothing more than a defense of white racism.

Beinart begins his piece saying: “In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to ‘the West’ and five times to ‘our civilization.’ His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It’s important that other Americans do, too.”

And Fallows begins saying, “what he called ‘civilization’ … boils down to ties of ethnicity and blood.”

Is there one liberal or conservative American who thinks that the words “the West” and “Western civilization” mean a celebration of white-blood purity?

I doubt it.

What we have here are two vital lessons.

One is that leftism is the primary racist ideology of our time, seeing everything in terms of race, whereas mainstream liberalism and conservatism advocate a race-blind society as manifest in Martin Luther King Jr.‘s famous “content of his character” line. The left disdains this view.

To cite one of innumerable examples, the University of California has published a list of biased “microaggression” statements students and faculty are to avoid. One of them is “There is only one race, the human race.”

In other words, the Left, which controls our universities, teaches American students that it is wrong to believe in one human race. That was precisely what the Nazis taught German students. And now, we have another expression of this doctrine enunciated in the pages of The Atlantic: that those who wish to protect or save Western civilization are talking about saving the white race.

I am certainly not equating leftism with Nazism. The Left doesn’t seek to annihilate all Jews (it merely supports the Palestinians, who seek to annihilate the Jewish state). I am merely stating an unassailable truth: No significant political movement since the Nazis has “honored” race or equated Western civilization with race, as Beinart and Fallows do.

The second service provided by The Atlantic writers is proof that the Left loathes Western civilization and therefore has become the internal enemy of Western civilization both in America and Europe.

In the Left’s eyes, the mere suggestion that Western civilization needs to be saved is, by definition, a call for the preservation of the white race. Therefore, the Left opposes calls to save Western civilization. As Beinart wrote: “The most shocking sentence in Trump’s speech — perhaps the most shocking sentence in any presidential speech delivered on foreign soil in my lifetime — was his claim that 'The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.’ … Trump’s sentence only makes sense as a statement of racial and religious paranoia.”

Those of us who have long equated the Left with opposition to Western civilization are vindicated. We didn’t need Beinart and Fallows — we already had innumerable examples, such as the University of Pennsylvania English department removing its longstanding poster of William Shakespeare because he was a white male — but in their explicit articulation of the Left’s view, they are immensely helpful.

Shakespeare is read in every language that has an alphabet not because he was white or European but because he is regarded as the greatest playwright who ever lived. But the leftists who run that English department place race (and gender) above excellence — a thorough rejection of Western values.

Ironically, outside of liberals and conservatives, those most likely to celebrate Western values are likely to not be Western. The Japanese would scoff at the idea that Bach and Beethoven did not write the greatest music ever composed. That is why some of the greatest Bach recordings of our time come from Japanese musicians living in Japan. Nor would the Japanese deny that their modern country’s democratic values come from the West.

The West’s disdain for its own values seems to getting increasingly strident with each passing day. President Trump is making an important and laudable effort to reverse this trend. He’s walking in good company. In an address to the Pan-American Scientific Congress in Washington, DC, on May 10, 1940, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Americans might have to become the guardian of Western culture, the protector of Christian civilization.” FDR frequently spoke about protecting both Western and Christian civilization.

We owe a debt of gratitude to The Atlantic, CNN (whose senior White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny described Trump’s address as a “white America, America first kind of speech”) and others. They have made it clear that the Left has contempt for Western civilization and therefore constitutes the greatest threat to its survival.

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 July, 2017

Equality is unnatural

It has always been obvious that abilities are unequal and that the pursuit of human equality is therefore a foolish dream.  So it is interesting that acceptance of inequality is in fact hardwired.  Leftism is even more inhuman than we thought

Looking at a rich banker on a yacht, most people could be forgiven a stab of resentment. But the rich-poor divide exists because it is human nature, a study has found.

A series of experiments have found we are usually in favour of redistributing wealth from the rich to give to the poor. But if that threatens to upset the hierarchy, by making the rich poor and the poor rich, we are much less likely to support it.

It appears ordinary people are in favour of the class system, because they believe in a ‘just world’ where those with a higher income are more deserving.

THE STUDY

The findings, from a study published in the journal Nature, emerged from a game in which people redistributed cash rewards to other players.

The researchers found people’s aversion to ‘rank reversal’ begins when they are just six years old, after asking children to play their game.

Adults and older children were often happy to redistribute cash payments between unknown players in a game, taking from the rich to give to the poor.

But when this threatened to upset that order, by making the poor richer than those at the top of the ladder, they were 11.5 per cent more likely to refuse the cash reward.

Those who are higher up in the hierarchy are more invested in keeping it as it is, the results suggest.

For every point increase in the socioeconomic status of someone playing the game, they were 2.3 per cent less likely to destroy the rich-poor divide.

The findings, from a study published in the journal Nature, emerged from a game in which people redistributed cash rewards to other players.

Yet even Tibetan herders, cut off from the modern world, refuse to overturn the rich-poor divide.

Another possible explanation, according to co-author Dr Benjamin Ho, associate professor of behavioural economics at Vassar College in New York, is that our caveman past taught us that hierarchy makes sense.

He said: ‘Attempts to take from the rich and give to the poor could lead to violence that makes everybody worse off.

'You see this in the animal kingdom where wolf packs and chickens will fight to create a pecking order, but once a pecking order is created, they will fight to preserve it so as not to upset the balance.’

The researchers found people’s aversion to ‘rank reversal’ begins when they are just six years old, after asking children to play their game.

Adults and older children were often happy to redistribute cash payments between unknown players in a game, taking from the rich to give to the poor.

But when this threatened to upset that order, by making the poor richer than those at the top of the ladder, they were 11.5 per cent more likely to refuse the cash reward.

Those who are higher up in the hierarchy are more invested in keeping it as it is, the results suggest.

For every point increase in the socioeconomic status of someone playing the game, they were 2.3 per cent less likely to destroy the rich-poor divide.

Professor Nigel Nicholson, an evolutionary theorist at London Business School, said: ‘As evolutionary science and numerous research studies shows, status ranking really matter.

'Not only does it carry access to resources and life-enhancing benefits, but it also helps guarantee these for the next and succeeding generations since rank is largely heritable, especially for males.’

The caveman origins of our support for hierarchy are supported by the game results in a group of nomadic Tibetan herders, who know little about capitalism but were exceptionally averse to reversing the roles of rich and poor.

The study concludes that people are not only averse to losing their own rank, but to seeing others lose theirs too.

It states: ‘Our economic game shows that humans exhibit an aversion to reverse rank similar to the patterns of behaviour found in the animal kingdom - a behaviour designed to reduce in-group violence and conflict.’

But the authors, led by Zhejiang University in China, add: ‘One reason why participants may feel that rank ordering should be preserved is a belief in a just world. 'They may assume that those earning a higher income are more deserving.’

SOURCE

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Judgement Day as Sheriff Joe Arpaio faces prison for enforcing immigration law

Former Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a border enforcement crusader now targeted by a federal prosecutors, could learn as early as today if he will be found guilty of criminal contempt.

He was indicted, and was tried last week, on charges of criminal contempt for continuing patrols to find those crossing the U.S./Mexico border illegally, after liberal Federal judge G. Murray Snow ordered him in 2011 to stop enforcing the law.

The Federal government alleges Arpaio continued border patrols that discriminated against Hispanics.  Arpaio argues the court order was vaguely worded, and he changed the manner in which he conducted the patrols to made a good faith effort to comply.

Arpaio’s fate will be decided by Federal Judge Susan Bolton, a Bill Clinton appointee.  It was Bolton who in 2010 blocked Arizona’s law allowing police to check the immigration status of detained suspects.

Arpaio, who won national praise for his tough approach to crime and efforts to secure his county’s border with Mexico, lost his re-election after he was targeted by liberals nationwide and charged with crimes.

Arpaio is being prosecuted by the Justice Department’s “Public Integrity Section” (PIS,) which was behind the prosecutions of Republican former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Republican Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and Democrat former senator and vice-presidential nominee John Edwards.  McDonnell and Stevens were both convicted.

McDonnell’s conviction was unanimously throw out by the Supreme Court, which ruled the PIS falsely applied the law.  Stevens’ conviction was also thrown out after the PIS admitted to widespread misconduct in the case, but by then Stevens has lost his Senate seat, his reputation was ruined and he had perished in a plane crash.

Edwards was found not guilty by a jury that found the PIS, once again, has misapplied the law.

In the weeks before the 2010 election, when it became apparent Democrats may lose, then-IRS official Lois Lerner spoke with PIS Chief Jack Smith, PIS Deputy Chief Raymond Hulser and PIS “Election Crimes” Division head Richard Pilger to discuss possibly targeting and arresting citizens operating anti-Obama “Tea Party” groups.  During that meeting, PIS officials reviewed confidential taxpayer information on Obama critics, which is generally illegal.

SOURCE

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Ted Cruz opposes using hiked premiums on healthy people to pay for the needs of the very ill

Obama used general revenue to finance his schemes so the precedent has been set

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), an early advocate of repealing Obamacare, says his objective for the last six months “has been to reach consensus, to bring together and unify the Republican conference” on an alternative to Obamacare.

Cruz said the way to do that is to “focus like a laser” on lowering premiums for everybody, including people with pre-existing conditions. And that means taxing wealthy people like Warren Buffet to help stabilize premiums for people with pre-existing conditions.

On Sunday, Cruz told ABC’s “This Week,” “There is widespread agreement in Congress there’s going to be significant assistance” for people with “serious diseases, serious pre-existing conditions.”

Here's what Obamacare does. It takes tens of millions of young healthy people and it jacks up their premiums, it doubles or triples their premiums, and takes all that extra money -- not for them, but uses it to cross-subsidize people who are sick. I don't think that's fair. I don't think that makes sense.

I'd much rather use direct taxpayer funds. Let's use Warren Buffett's taxes and not some 30-year-old who's struggling and just beginning her career. Don't double her premiums to cross-subsidize other people. That's what Obamacare does. It's wildly unfair.

Cruz said low-income people are not the only ones who would be subsidized for pre-existing conditions. He noted that there are “two different sources of federal taxpayer funds on the exchanges.”

First, there are tax credits to help low-income people afford their insurance premiums.

“But number two, the Senate bill has over $100 billion in funds for the stabilization fund that are designed to stabilize those premiums. The objective has to be -- and I think the way we get this done is focus on lowering premiums. If we're lowering premiums, it's a win/win for everybody.”

Cruz said he continues to believe Republicans can pass health care reform. And if repeal and replace can’t be done at the same time, he favors passing a repeal bill that would take effect in a year or two, “then spend that time debating the replacement.”

“And if a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, premiums continue to skyrocket, we will have failed. But if they go down, if health insurance is more affordable, that's a big win for everybody.”

The plan proposed by Senate Republicans allows people to pay health insurance premiums from health savings accounts, which use pre-tax dollars. Cruz took credit for introducing that proposal, and he called it a “big deal.”

He’s also advocating a “consumer freedom option,” which says consumers should be able to choose what kind of insurance they want to buy:

“If you want to buy a plan with all the bells and whistles, with all of the mandates under Title 1 (Obamacare), you can buy that plan, those plans will be on the market. Those plans will have significant federal taxpayer money behind them.

"But on the other hand if you can't afford a full Cadillac plan, you should be able to buy another plan that meets your needs. And so the consumer freedom option gives you, the consumer, choice whether to go with the full Cadillac or a skinnier plan that's a lot more affordable, and for a lot of consumers, that may be much better than having no coverage whatsoever, which is what they have now.”

President Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday, “For years, even as a ‘civilian,’ I listened as Republicans pushed the Repeal and Replace of ObamaCare. Now they finally have their chance!”

On Monday, Trump tweeted: "I cannot imagine that Congress would dare to leave Washington without a beautiful new HealthCare bill fully approved and ready to go!"

SOURCE

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CNN



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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 July, 2017

Why did Germans follow Hitler so slavishly?

This has been something of a burning question ever since the war.  What historians have said about it is reviewed here. And the reviewer is right to say that none of the answers given is satisfactory.  Yet the answer is right there in plain sight.  It is in the name of Hitler's political party:  The national socialist German worker's party.

Before I elaborate on that, however, I must warn that I am about to mention Donald Trump. So I want to make clear from the outset that I am NOT going to say that Trump is a Nazi.  Leftists say that all the time and I have often pointed out how hollow such accusations are.

As we all know, Mr Trump came to power with the slogan:  "Make America great again".  And despite being just about as unpresidential as you can imagine, that slogan took Mr Trump to the top.  That slogan had to have great power to overcome all the negatives (real and imagined)  associated with Mr Trump.

So guess what Hitler's message to the German people was?  Paraphrased, it was "Make Germany great again". (Hitler didn't put it exactly that way.  He put it more emotionally.  For instance "Vor uns liegt Deutschland, in uns marschiert Deutschland und hinter uns kommt Deutschland!")  Germany was badly hit by WWI so that idea was very attractive to Germans.  So nationalism, particularly in a time of stress, has very strong appeal.

And Hitler added to that a form of socialism  -- where socialism is defined as redistributing the wealth from the rich to the poor -- "Gleichberechtigung" in Hitler's German.  Hitler campaigned using exactly that word. See below.



But here's the odd thing.  It's such an odd thing that I will be called a dangerous neo-Nazi for saying it. Socialism as we know it today is under Marxist influence and as such is basically motivated by hate.  Marx hated everybody. It masquerades as compassion but it's really an excuse to tear down the existing society and its arrangements.  And the various extreme socialist regimes -- Soviet Russia, Mao's China etc -- show exactly how vicious and destructive socialism can be.

But Hitler's socialism was different and more powerful.  It appeared to be and he claimed it to be motivated by love -- love of the German people ("Volk").  Hitler's love for his "Volk" and particularly German young people really stands out here.  In a word, Hitler convinced Germans that he loved them.  And it was out of that love that he wanted to benefit ordinary Germans at the expense of the rich, particularly rich Jews.

And he saw socialism as being secure only within a homogeneous society, which Germany would become once the Jews were ousted.  See below.  The quote is from Mein Kampf and translates as "There is no socialism except what arises from within one's own people".  So he saw nationalism and socialism as organically connected.



So he didn't tear down the existing society the way hate-motivated socialists do if they get the chance. He wanted to redistribute but not to destroy.  As you will see from the speech linked above, he wanted to build up a united and heroic Germany, not tear it down. The Marxist aim of class-war was anathema to him. And whatever its motivation, socialism has a lot of appeal to people to this day. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are evidence of that. Socialism offers security of all sorts.  It says: "You will be looked after".

So if someone is offering both socialism and nationalism all in one package, he has got a magic mix.  Hitler offered the perfect dream -- he offered it all.  And the offering was made all the more powerful by his success in convincing people that his "compassion" was sincere. So Germans shared his dream and marched on behind him to the bitter end.

Mr Trump too tends to convince people that he stands for the little guy but his means to his ends are very different.  Where Hitler wanted to redistribute the wealth, Trump wants to create it -- mainly by giving the unemployed jobs.  And because Trump is not wanting to take anything off anybody, he does not have to have an authoritarian State to enforce his wishes.  So he is in fact chopping away at the vast regulatory apparatus that Obama and some of his predecessors built up.   Trump is a capitalist, not a socialist, a deregulator, not an authoritarian -- and there is a world of difference there.

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Pelosi Progressives — The Winning Formula for Republicans

The San Francisco Democrat raises an awful lot of money for her party, but her unfavorable status helps the GOP

Political parties once had the power to stand on their own platforms of ideas and policies. Voters would ideologically or practically align with Democrats or Republicans based on values and issues. As money and the power of incumbency have grown, along with the now-24/7 cable news cycle and the rise of social media platforms, individuals in leadership, particularly those of significant tenure and position, have become the face of their respective partisan groups.

It’s true that some conservatives and Republicans cringe at that fact. Now that President Donald Trump is moving his agenda, complete with his, er, extraordinary mannerisms, as the face of the Grand Old Party, angst is on display among the Republican ranks. Democrats are buoyed by this fracture and perpetuating the fairytale of Russia/Trump collusion to derail any agenda.

But there’s a chink in the Left’s political battle armor that’s proving to be an existential threat to their work to regain the House majority in the 2018 mid-term elections: The face of the Democrat Party and the political Left is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

In the special congressional elections that have occurred following Trump Cabinet appointments, Democrats intentionally declared each one served as a referendum on Trump’s unpopularity. Yet all four special elections were lost by well-funded Democrats. So much for the all-out rejection that is supposedly brewing among the American electorate against Trump’s agenda.

Two of these congressional races must be noted. First, in Montana, the GOP candidate to replace Ryan Zinke was charged with misdemeanor assault of a reporter the evening before voters went to the polls. Despite his popular folksy Democrat rival looking to benefit from a nationwide flurry of horrible press for manhandling a member of the “fake media,” Greg Gianforte won — maybe because he manhandled the media. Not only did Trump not cost Republicans a seat, but the accepted belief that media is the problem worked in favor of a fed-up Gianforte, who was pressed with a hail of questions about the GOP health care proposal. Montanans chose that over the whole state being represented by Nancy Pelosi’s values.

In Georgia’s 6th congressional district, a peach of a race shaped up with historic fundraising. Democrat nominee Jon Ossoff, who hadn’t found it necessary to yet live in the district he sought to represent, couldn’t vote for himself, nor could most of his California donors and big money coming from Planned Parenthood. When records show that of the almost $24 million raised by the Democrat, nine times more contributions came from California than within Georgia, Karen Handel, the GOP candidate was accurately able to state, “He’s raised millions outside of Georgia from Nancy Pelosi and outsiders who just don’t share our priorities. My opponent doesn’t live here [and] doesn’t share our values.” Ossoff and Pelosi lost to Handel.

In short, Pelosi’s unabashed hard-left stances based on sensationalized information are rejected, as were Barack Obama’s. But Nancy gets a little extra help in her public disapproval due to some of her antics. Let’s walk down memory lane.

Who can forget the oldie but goodie during the cram-down-our-throats passage of the insultingly name “Affordable” Care Act? Then-House Speaker Pelosi declared, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Or what about her later declaration that “I believe the [Republican-controlled] House of Representatives, at this time, is an unsafe place for children and other living things”? In December 2016, the California congresswoman whose worth is estimated at $100 million avowed, “I don’t think people want a new direction. Our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families.”

Another favorite videoed moment of Pelosi was in January 2017, just days after Trump’s inauguration. Democrats marched in protest of Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which merely called for a temporary pause in travel from nations Barack Obama identified as being of risk. Oh, the theatrics as the anti-Trump crowd watched Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana trotted out to the microphone to challenge Trump’s move. The hot mic picked up Pelosi feeding lines to him: “Tell them you’re a Muslim. Tell them you’re a Muslim.”

So, as Pelosi provides reliable ammunition for Republicans — and no, the use of this metaphor is not a call to arms or violence — why does she remain as the face of the Democrats?

It’s simple, really. The 77-year-old, first elected to Congress in 1993, is a fundraising powerhouse on the Left. Since rising to House leadership for Democrats in 2002, she is credited with raising almost $568 million for leftist candidates. Perhaps it’s no wonder the Democrat Caucus has moved so hard-left.

Furthermore, as noted in the June 27 CNN analysis declaring “Nancy Pelosi Can’t Be Beaten,” you can’t beat anybody with nobody. The shallow pool of candidates who might oppose Pelosi’s leadership are not viewed as credible — there are no young guns in the wings who pose a threat.

Pelosi’s unpopularity is no recent development. Back in 2013, Gallup showed she earned the distinction of being the most unpopular congressional leader. Just over the last eight weeks in 11 House districts that are targeted by Democrats for 2018, Pelosi’s job favorability didn’t surpass 37.2%.

Democrats may want a new face of their party, but their blindness to the authentic issues facing working Americans has been exposed. Republicans have much work to do in the House (and Senate) to capitalize on what’s become a gaping hole in Democrat armor — the obstinacy of the hard-Left. Thank you, Madame Pelosi.

SOURCE

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Conservative group prods Walden over 'right to try' bill

The conservative group FreedomWorks is turning up the heat on a top House Republican to support bipartisan legislation that would allow terminally ill patients unrestricted access to experimental drug treatments.

FreedomWorks wants House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) to advance the Right to Try Act (H.R. 878), which was introduced in February but hasn’t moved through the committee.

“Right now there are millions of Americans lying in hospital beds, fighting for their lives. And Congressman Greg Walden isn't doing anything to help them!” the group wrote in an online ad urging its followers to tell Walden to support the bill.

“There’s bipartisan support so I don’t know why it’s still sitting there. It should be a slam dunk for the committee,” said Jason Pye, FreedomWorks’ vice president of legislative affairs.

The legislation was introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and has 41 co-sponsors, but counts only four of the committee’s Democrats as supporters. An Energy and Commerce Committee spokesman didn’t respond to questions about the status of the legislation or about Walden’s support for the bill.
But a separate Senate version of the legislation, championed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), is moving much quicker and a lobbyist familiar with the legislation said it could be on the Senate floor as soon as next week.

Without House action, the legislation could linger. Supporters of the bill say the federal government needs to cut through the bureaucratic red tape of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval process. They argue that people who are near the end of their life should have a right to take riskier medicines.

“Right to Try” laws are on the books in 37 states, but have yet to be implemented at a federal level.

Vice President Pence is an advocate of the laws and signed Indiana’s right to try law in 2015 while he was governor. Pence met with proponents of the federal law in February and pledged the support of President Trump.

During a meeting with pharmaceutical executives in January, Trump suggested he'd make changes to the drug rules for terminal patients.

“One thing that has always disturbed me, they come up with a new drug for a patient who is terminal and the FDA says, ‘We can’t have this drug used on the patient,’ ” Trump said.

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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10 July, 2017

The New Left’s Fake Patriotism

You can’t hate America and be a patriot

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

If anyone doubts that patriotism really is the last refuge of a scoundrel, a recent CNN article boasts that liberals are reclaiming patriotism. After going through their musty attics, tossing aside copies of Howard Zinn’s revisionist Marxist history of America and all the “U.S. Out of Everywhere” buttons, they found their patriotism, moth-eaten, covered in dust and a little worse for the wear. But otherwise intact.

That’s right, progressives are patriotic again. Again refers to the brief period between the end of the Hitler-Stalin pact when the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union necessitated a sudden outburst of pro-war sentiment and the beginning of the Cold War when the Communists became the enemy again.

When the left acts as if WW2 was the only good war, it’s because it was the only war that didn’t force them to choose between their sympathies for Communism and their United States citizenship.

Every time they did have to make that choice, history records their duplicity and sordid treason.

The new left-wing patriotism doesn’t consist of actually loving this country. Or discarding their conviction that America is the worst thing that ever happened to this continent and this planet.

Instead, conveniently, the new patriotism consists of hating President Trump.

When Hillary’s people decided to shift the blame for losing the election from their unlikable candidate, their incompetent campaign operation and the good sense of the voters to a vast Russian conspiracy, the left became patriotic. And by “patriotic”, they mean blaming the results of an election on Russia.

It’s not that the left actually hates Russia. Before Hillary decided to blame the Russians for her own unlikability, she was mugging for the camera with one of Putin’s henchmen and wielding a misspelled Reset Button.

Why a reset button?

Back then the born-again patriots of the left had accused President Bush of alienating Russia (and the rest of the world) with his cowboy diplomacy. Obama and his team of sensitive diplomats would replace cowboy diplomacy with cowardly diplomacy. That was why Hillary’s people pried a swimming pool button out of a pool so she could show off the new “Reset” with Russia. It was why Obama sold out traditional allies to appease Putin. It was why he was caught on a hot mic telling another of Putin’s people that he would have more flexibility to appease him after the election.

All this has been forgotten in a rush of revisionist patriotism. Traitors now masquerade as patriots. Last year’s appeasers now stick out their chests and act as if they’re Ronald Reagan, not Jimmy Carter.

Don’t expect it to last. If you doubt that, Al Gore once attacked Bush for being soft on Saddam.

As tensions with Russia grow over Syria, the born-again patriots will be reborn as appeasers. The next Democrat will run for the White House promising to restore our relationship with Russia. And he’ll blame President Trump for ruining our previously congenial relations with cowboy diplomacy.

History will once again be rewritten. Russia was always our friend. Lefties were always advocates of diplomatic relations and opponents of wars. But we will have always been at war with Eastasia.

That’s the disgusting farce of the new lefty Russia hawks. They don’t hate Russia. They hate America. Give it two years and they’ll be on television explaining how Putin will love President Elizabeth Warren because she won’t offend or provoke the rest of the world by insisting on American greatness.

After eight years of betraying America to Chinese hackers, Iranian nuclear negotiators, Islamic terrorists from Iraq to Libya, Cuban Communists, Columbian narcoterrorists and yes, the dreaded Russians, the left wants us to believe that they have left behind the error of their ways and love this country again.

The lefty patriot has a lot in common with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny: he doesn’t exist.

There’s more to patriotism than hating your political opponents. It’s not a negative emotion. It’s a positive one. It demands the degree of feeling that I heard from a man on a twilight porch in Montana as Fourth of July fireworks filled the sky, “God, I love this country!”

The difference is easy to spot.

Republicans stand by their country against foreign enemies no matter who is in the White House. Lefty patriotism however is a rare phenomenon that had previously only occurred when Democrats were in office. And even then, lefty patriotism is as unreliable as solar panels and wind turbines in January.

Every time we have fought a war, cameras could reliably spot leftists protesting against it. And yes, that even includes WW2.

Patriots don’t announce that they will move to Canada if the wrong guy wins the election.

The new progressive patriot doesn’t love this country. Even his newfound resentment of Russia is incidental. He hates Russia because of Trump. Once CNN and the New York Times detach Trump from Russia, he’ll see the wisdom of liking it again. Russia, like every other country except Israel, must be better than America. It’s better than the horrifying orgy of capitalists plundering the planet, racist police randomly shooting young black men, fundamentalists hating women, militarists plotting to bomb brown people and all the other hysterical leftist fantasies which are traced back to this country’s original sins.

America was founded by racist, capitalist slave-owners who stole the land from the Indians so they could open fast food franchises. That’s what the average college student is taught. It’s what the average leftist believes. How much love can he be expected to feel for America? About as much as you feel for Iran.

The new lefty patriotism is really anti-patriotism. It doesn’t really resent Russia. Instead it resents President Trump’s call for national greatness. Tying him to Russia is a cynical bid by traitors seeking their last refuge outside of their safe spaces and pronoun-free toilets in the sacred space of patriotism.

History tells us that lefty patriotism has a shorter life than some of the world’s rarest substances which can only be created in labs and whose very existence continues to be debated by feuding scientists.

This current phenomenon in which lefties briefly confuse their hatred of America, with their subsidiary hatred of President Trump and a sudden subsidiary resentment of Russia for foisting him on us by cleverly causing the Democrats to nominate a candidate with all the popular appeal of spoiled supermarket tuna, will pass. And it will pass quickly.

When the Washington Post fails to deliver their Watergate on time, when even the dimmest follower of Occupy Democrats realizes that pigs will fly into his front yard and uproot his Bernie 2020 sign before impeachment happens, they will turn to something else.

And the new tattered lefty patriotism will go back up to the attic to lie under their moldering American flags and their defaced copy of the Declaration of Independence. Sic transit gloria moonbat.

SOURCE

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Congress joins Trump war on regs, cuts a year's worth in one week

Congressional lawmakers have gone all in on President Trump's bid to slash Obama-era regulations, targeting $19 billion in rules and the elimination of enough red tape to free up 5,200 federal workers, according to a new analysis.

The cuts proposed by the House Appropriations Committee this week amount to a year's worth of regulations under the Obama administration, said the report from American Action Forum.

Analyst Sam Batkins wrote, "The suite of appropriations bills released this week goes further, curtailing more than $19 billion in total regulatory costs and eliminating 10.4 million hours of paperwork, the equivalent of eliminating all regulations from 2006 and freeing 5,200 employees from paperwork compliance."

His report, provided to Secrets in advance of its release today, said that the committee's funding bills target regulations in the areas of financial services, agriculture and energy. The biggest ticket item: "Repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill's Volcker rule, which originally estimated $4.3 billion in costs and 2.3 million new paperwork burden hours."

Batkins, AAF's director of regulatory policy, explained that Congress can be very slow in cutting regulations, but added that appropriators are moving with unusual speed at the same time Trump's team is also targeting rules within federal agencies for elimination.

"For those who thought the regulatory reform debate was limited to the executive branch and the administration's one-in, two-out executive order, Congress is proving it has plenty of power to curtail past rules. It can do so in a way that is faster than the regulatory process, and in some instances, far more durable than repeal through the executive branch," said the AAF report.

"The measures outlined here could repeal more than $19 billion in costs and eliminate 10.4 million hours of paperwork. If these riders successfully make it through the process, expect this practice to continue as other legacy regulations are addressed through the legislative branch," the report added.

Batkins highlighted the committee's targets:

Financial Services:

Repeal of Volcker Rule: $4.3 billion and 2.3 million hours.

Limiting Implementation of Blade-Contact Rule: $2.5 billion.

Repeal Individual Mandate: 5 million paperwork hours.

Prohibits SEC from requiring companies to disclose political spending.

Requires OMB to report on costs of Dodd-Frank.

Energy and Water:

Withdrawing "Waters of the United States" Rule: $462 million.

Prohibits regulators from restricting firearms on Army Corps lands.

Agriculture:

Limiting "Trans Fat Ban:" $11 billion.

Limiting "Cigar and Vaping" Rule: $1.1 billion and 1.6 million paperwork hours.

Allows flexibility for schools implementing whole grain school lunch standards.

Prevents further implementation of school lunch sodium standards.

Allows flexibility for schools serving low-fat flavored milk.

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 July, 2017

President Trump’s Remarkable Warsaw Speech

President Trump delivered one of the most important speeches of his young presidency on Thursday. Billed as "Remarks to the people of Poland," the address was as clear a statement we've heard of Trump's nation-state populism. This philosophy, which differs in emphasis and approach from that of other post-Cold War Republican presidents, is both enduring and undefined. Reaching as far back as Andrew Jackson, and carrying through, in different ways, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Spiro Agnew, Ronald Reagan, Ross Perot, Patrick Buchanan, James Webb, and Sarah Palin, the nation-state populist tradition has suffered from its lack of intellectuals, professors, and wordsmiths. But that is beginning to change.

The most important concept in nation-state populism is the people. These are citizens of the folk community, membership in which crosses ethnic, racial, and sectarian lines. Note, for example, Trump's reference to the Nazis' systematic murder of "millions of Poland's Jewish citizens, along with countless others, during that brutal occupation." Or as Trump put it, in a different context, in his Inaugural Address: "Whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag."

Together, the people constitute the nation. Borders define the nation's physical extent, but not its nature. Indeed, the nation may exist independent of statehood or political sovereignty. "While Poland could be invaded and occupied," Trump said, "and its borders even erased from the map, it could never be erased from history or from your hearts. In those dark days, you had lost your land but you never lost your pride." Nor is the nation always represented in the corridors of power. "Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another," Trump said at the inaugural, "or from one party to another—but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C, and giving it back to you, the American people."

Poland and the United States are among the "free nations" that make up the "civilization" of "the West." And the West is unified, not only by "bonds of culture, faith, and tradition" and "history, culture, and memory," but also by shared values. These include "individual freedom and sovereignty," innovation, creativity, and exploration, meritocracy, "the rule of law," the "right to free speech and free expression," female empowerment, and "faith and family." And, "above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom."

Western civilization faces threats. Foremost among them is the heir to Nazism and communism. The "oppressive ideology" of radical Islam, Trump said, "seeks to export terrorism and extremism all around the globe." There are also "powers that seek to test our will, undermine our confidence, and challenge our interests"—namely Russia but also, farther away, China and North Korea. Finally, there is "the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people" and overrides their sovereignty.

How to respond? Material wealth, martial glory, and technological achievement are all necessary to sustain a nation. But they are not sufficient. What matters more, Trump said, is national spirit. In fact, the word "spirit" occurs no fewer than seven times in the address. There are also several mentions of related ideas such as "confidence" and "will."

Trump cited Bishop Michael Kozal, who died in Dachau: "More horrifying than a defeat of arms is a collapse of the human spirit." A nation can endure economic recession, and even military occupation. What it cannot recover from is loss of pride. "As the Polish experience reminds us," Trump said, "the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have."

SOURCE

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Fake News media caught in huge lie about Trump’s historic speech

The mainstream media were already on the edge of insanity.  After President Trump’s historic speech in Poland, they punched the gas and Thelma-and-Louised themselves into a lunatic abyss.

Speaking in Warsaw, Trump gave a full-throated defense of American values and Western civilization, vowing to protect the ideals of individual liberty and freedom.

To a psychotic media, it was a Klan rally. Shrieking through frothed mouths, the mainstream wailed about Trump’s use of “racist,” “white supremacist” and “white nationalisit” so-called “code words.”

“Trump’s speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto” whined Vox.com, peeing their pants with the subheadline, “For family, for freedom, for country, and for God.”

What were these secret “code words” the media claim Trump was using to secretly communicate with the KKK?

“Civilization” and “the West.”

Yes, the mainstream media have gone completely insane. Are “civilization” and “the West” secret racist code words, as the media babblingly claim?  Have they never been used before in a presidential address?

Below are three quotes in which the President speaks of defending “civilization” and “the West”…

…but only one came from President Trump.  The other two are from FDR and noted white supremacist Barack Obama.

Can you tell which one is the “hate speech” that came from “white nationalist” Trump, and which are from liberalism’s two most adored Presidents?

“Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization.”

“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”

“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

SOURCE

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Trumped!

222,000 jobs added to US economy in June, exceeding expectations

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Liberal vs Leftist:  Is there a difference?

What is a liberal? Or maybe a better question is, what does the term liberal mean today? Well, according to Jacques Berlinerblau, a professor from Georgetown University who recently wrote an article for the Washington Post, there are liberals and then there are “radical leftists.” Berlinerblau admits that American academia is mostly comprised of liberal professors and that those professors who identify as politically conservative are utterly under-represented in America’s halls of higher learning, with humanities departments in particular being the least politically diverse. In other words, it is not wrong to suggest that leftist ideology is controlling most of the nation’s colleges and universities.

But while Berlinerblau rightly concludes that conservatives are not to blame for the recent havoc wreaked in places like Middlebury, UC Berkeley and Evergreen College, he also attempts to shift the blame away from liberals. According to Berlinerblau, three groups exist in academia: a small conservative minority, a sizable liberal contingent and the dominate radical left who he blames for the current campus intolerance. The question remains, what is the difference between a liberal and a leftist?

Berlinerblau’s answer to that question ends up sounding more like a disagreement over the manner of application rather than over opposing ideologies. He cites as examples liberals’ reactions to certain events, such as “liberals didn’t exult over Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution,” or that liberals didn’t “refer to the victims of 9/11 as ‘little Eichmanns.’” He also notes that “liberals are generally made highly uncomfortable by censorship, speaker boycotts, trigger warnings, safe spaces and the like.” Berlinerblau’s argument sounds eerily similar to the one made by Muslims who may reject the methods of Islamic terrorists, yet refuse to disavow Islamists.

The truth is that modern liberalism stands in stark contrast to the classical liberal values expressed by our nation’s Founding Fathers. It is today’s conservatives who hold most closely to those classical liberal principles. Today’s radical leftist social justice warrior is merely the logical manifestation of modern liberal ideology. Liberal and leftist is a distinction without a difference. It is modern liberalism that can be credited with teaching the ideology of socialism that glories in the utopian ideals of Karl Marx. It is modern liberalism that sees little value in Christianity and has long mocked Christians as backward fools. It is modern liberalism that has questioned the very nature of truth itself, opening a Pandora’s box of relativism. No, Professor Berlinerblau, liberals may not like it, but the radical left is their creation.

SOURCE

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Two more liberals arrested in latest plot to assassinate Republicans

Liberalism has a domestic terrorism problem, as still more liberal activists are arrested for plots to assassinate Republican lawmakers.

This time the target was Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake.

Tucson News Now reports:

Deputy Cody Gress, spokesman for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, said Mark Prichard and Patrick Diehl were arrested on charges of third-degree criminal trespass Thursday morning, July 6.

Gress said the 59-year-old Prichard is also facing a misdemeanor charge of threats and intimidation.

“Staffers working at the office indicated one of the protesters made comments referencing the shooting of Rep. Scalise, which prompted them to call the Sheriff’s Department as well as lock the office doors,” the PCSD said in a news release…

…Jason Samuels, Communications Director for Sen. Flake, said Prichard threatened a staff member and said the following:

“You know how liberals are going to solve the Republican problem? They are going to get better aim. That last guy tried, but he needed better aim. We will get better aim.”

Also on Thursday, police arrested five people outside of Flake’s Phoenix office as protests continued for the second day.
This is just the latest in a growing string of liberal activists arrested for vowing to assassinate, or actually assaulting and shooting, Republican lawmakers.  Since just May, at least 30 Republican members of Congress have the target of an assassination attempt, violent asssault, or explicit death threat.

Among those incidents:

On June 14, a Democrat Party activist opened fire on 16 Republican lawmakers practicing for a charity baseball game.  House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) was gravely wounded in the mass assassination attempt.

In May a liberal activist was arrested for plotting to assassinate Republican Congresswoman Martha McSally, also of Arizona.

Also in May, North Dakota Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer was grabbed by the neck at a town hall event, and Tennessee Republican Congressman David Kuster was forced off the road by a deranged liberal activist, who then tried to enter his car to assault him.

Before that, Virginia Republican Congressman Tom Garrett was forced to hire armed security for a town hall meeting after liberal activists described in detail how they planned to assassinate his wife and children.

SOURCE

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

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)

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





7 July, 2017

Russia fantasies from The Washington Post

A recent propaganda piece from The Washington Post, "Obama's secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin's election assault," is based, as usual, mostly on anonymous sources determined to make former President Barack Obama look good. The gist is that Obama tried his best to punish Russia for alleged interference in the 2016 election, but he fell short and left the matter in the hands of President Donald Trump, who has done nothing.

So Trump is blamed for Obama's failure. How convenient.

The essence of the piece is that "intelligence" was "captured" that somehow proved that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave "specific instructions" that he wanted  to "defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump."

Pardon me, but I don't believe this for a moment. This "intelligence" may be what the Post seeks to expose-Russian "active measures" or disinformation.

As we reported back in January, "Looking at the election objectively, it is possible to say that Russian leader Vladimir Putin may have had a personal vendetta against the former U.S. secretary of state for some reason, stemming from allegations of U.S. meddling in Russian internal affairs. On the other hand, Putin may have preferred that Clinton become the U.S. president because her failed Russian ‘reset' had facilitated Russian military intervention in Ukraine and Syria, and he believed he could continue to take advantage of her."

This makes far more sense than the Post story.

Remember that Obama won the 2012 election after dismissing his Republican opponent Mitt Romney's claim that Russia was a geopolitical threat to the United States. Obama had also been caught on an open mic before the election promising to be "flexible" in changing his positions to benefit Russia.

"These comments provide more evidence that Obama was never the anti-Russian figure he postured as in the final days of his second term," we noted.

The Post story by Greg Miller and others is an obvious response to the observation that, if Obama thought the Russian interference was such a big deal, what did Obama try to do about it?

One can read the entire article if you are interested in how pro-Obama propaganda is manufactured by the Post. Some parts of the article are more ludicrous than others, such as this paragraph:

    "Throughout his presidency, Obama's approach to national security challenges was deliberate and cautious. He came into office seeking to end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was loath to act without support from allies overseas and firm political footing at home. He was drawn only reluctantly into foreign crises, such as the civil war in Syria, that presented no clear exit for the United States."

The paragraph is designed to mask Obama's indifference to Russian aggression in places like Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. In regard to the latter, Obama failed to save Syria from Russian aggression and facilitated a conflict-through secret arms shipments to the region-that now stands at 500,000 dead.

Obama's alleged "cautious" approach in the Middle East was to support jihadist groups in Syria and Libya, and back regimes such as the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, which was overthrown by the military backed by the people.

The hero in the Post account is Obama's CIA director John Brennan, who joined the agency after admitting to voting for Moscow's man in the 1976 presidential election, Gus Hall of the Communist Party USA. Suddenly, we are led to believe, as CIA director, he became anti-Russian after discovering a Moscow plot in 2016 to disrupt the presidential election.

"In political terms," the paper said, "Russia's interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy."

This is complete nonsense. There is no evidence any votes were changed as a result of this so-called "interference."

The crime of the century is bad journalism based on anonymous sources who hide behind papers like the Post to spread their self-serving and partisan propaganda.

"This account of the Obama administration's response to Russia's interference is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former U.S. officials in senior positions in government, including at the White House, the State, Defense and Homeland Security departments, and U.S. intelligence services," the Post said. "Most agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue."

One paragraph in particular tells you everything you know about the anonymous sources behind this story. "Those closest to Obama defend the administration's response to Russia's meddling," the Post said. Yes, indeed, those "closest to Obama" would certainly do so.

Then we're told that that "They believe that a series of warnings-including one that Obama delivered to Putin in September-prompted Moscow to abandon any plans of further aggression, such as sabotage of U.S. voting systems."

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this dramatic statement. It's completely made up.

Remember, this is the same Obama who once assured Putin that after he won his re-election campaign in 2012, he would have "more flexibility" with the Russian leader and be able to offer more concessions.

Now, all of a sudden, Obama is rough and tough and gets things done with the Russian leader. What a joke.

The paper reported that "Obama confronted Putin directly during a meeting of world leaders in Hangzhou, China. Accompanied only by interpreters, Obama told Putin that ‘we knew what he was doing and [he] better stop or else,' according to a senior aide who subsequently spoke with Obama. Putin responded by demanding proof and accusing the United States of interfering in Russia's internal affairs."

Or else? It sounds like the red line in Syria that Obama had warned the Syrian regime not to cross. But they crossed it anyway.

Obama's so-called "secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin's election assault" exists in the minds of Post reporters who are waging a not-so-secret struggle to rehabilitate the former president's disastrous foreign policy toward Russia and most of the rest of the world.

Let's not forget one more debacle-Obama's deal with Russian client state Iran to facilitate the regime's nuclear weapons program and world-wide terrorism.

That may end up being another crime of the century, on par with President Bill Clinton's deal with North Korea that was supposed to prevent the communist regime from getting its hands on nuclear weapons.

Speaking of North Korea, whose nuclear weapons program accelerated under Obama, hear the words of Otto Warmbier's father about his son being released after Trump took office: "I think the results speak for themselves."

Obama's "cautious and deliberate" approach was to let the young man languish in a North Korean prison while being tortured to near death.

SOURCE

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What Do Americans Think of Patriotism and Liberty?

America has just celebrated the 241st anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. Our nation boasts a rich history and myriad reasons for that celebration. But there are some troubling things worth pondering.

For example, a recent YouGov poll holds some disturbing numbers about patriotism. Four in 10 say they are very patriotic, and eight in ten are at least somewhat so — but nearly half the country thinks other people are losing patriotic fervor. Perhaps that’s because of the unbelievably rancorous political rhetoric these days. Indeed, the partisan split is stark — almost two-thirds of Republicans call themselves very patriotic, as opposed to just one-third of Democrats.

Another group of Americans is also troublingly unpatriotic — Millennials. More than a third of them aren’t patriotic. Hot Air’s Allahpundit elucidates, “They’ve grown up in a bad economy, saddled with skyrocketing education debt, reminded daily that their standard of living may well be worse than their parents’, and forced to live with the reality that federal entitlements won’t be there for them when they’re 65.” And yet Millennials are evidently blaming the country instead of bad, leftist policy.

In another interesting Fox News poll, while the majority (51%) of Americans are proud of the U.S., a whopping 79% of voters don’t believe George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and our other Founders would be all that impressed.

The question is worth asking: Are we honoring the sacrifice made by those who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to secure our independence and Liberty? Are we stewarding what was bequeathed to us at great cost?

In 1776, after the signing of the Declaration, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail: “I am apt to believe that [the signing of the Declaration] will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”

Let’s work to secure our Liberty, and to make sure that all Americans have reason to celebrate.

SOURCE

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'The Resistance' Tries to Foil Voter Fraud Probe

Donald Trump’s task of exposing voter fraud has run into some hurdles. Unsurprisingly, some states are simply unwilling to aid Trump’s effort, whereas legal concerns are barring another group of state officials from supplying unabridged voter data. Last week, the committee implored every state to make “publicly-available voter roll data  including, if publicly available under the laws of your state, the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, [and] voter history from 2006 onward.”

As of Friday, half of the states had either scoffed at the request or declared that state law precludes unfiltered dissemination of voter data. Some of the more haughty responses came from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. According to McAuliffe, “This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November.” Lundergan Grimes complained, “This commission was formed to try to find basis for the lie that President Trump put forward that has no foundation.” Hosemann suggested, “They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.” This is what “Resistance Summer” sounds like.

Many media outlets are making a big deal out of states’ refusal to dispense private information, but that’s their prerogative, and if state law forbids it, that’s not resistance. Even the committee letter clearly states that it is requesting only “publicly-available voter roll data.” What is resistance is the vindictiveness of states like California and New York, which are flatly and boldly saying, “No way,” even in regards to public data. The problem is that this takes a comprehensive examination off the table. Which was the entire point of the committee — to get a better, more complete view of voter issues. The committee is merely asking states to work with it as best they can. But some officials just won’t accept the possibility that voter fraud, which some research affirms could include millions of voters, has merit that’s worth investigating.

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 July, 2017

Statins give you a bad back

Researchers in Texas led a retrospective study to investigate the link between statin therapy and risk of spondylosis, intervertebral disc disorder, or other back problems. The team dug into de-identified health care data from 2003–12 for San Antonio-area patients aged 30 years or older who were covered under the military's TRICARE system.

Using 115 baseline characteristics—including age, gender, comorbidities, medication use, and health care utilization—they created a propensity score and matched treatment groups in a 1:1 ratio. From the overall study sample of 60,455 patients, they matched 6,728 statin users with a like number of nonusers.

Data analysis indicated that patients in the user group, who received the same care at the same cost as nonusers, were more likely to be diagnosed with back disorders. In addition, statin users were characterized by prolonged use and higher dosages compared with nonusers. The findings, the investigators conclude, speak to the need for more study into the overall effect of statin use on musculoskeletal health.

SOURCE

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Washington Post Concocts anti-Trump news, massages real news about Obama

The bald-faced Leftist double standards never stop

No section of the Post deviates from the Leftist favoritism. Let us look at the Tech section – and a “reporter” by the name of Brian Fung.

On Friday, Fung dropped the following “bombshell.” Except the key components – were entirely fake news.

The FCC’s Independent Chair is Getting Too Cozy with the White House, Critics Say: “(S)eparate meetings organized around the same event have also included a smattering of government officials, including on Thursday the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Ajit Pai….

“On another level, though, Pai’s presence was unusual: As the head of an agency that’s supposed to keep its distance from the White House, Pai has shown no qualms about appearing on the same agenda with President Trump. And that is now raising questions among some about his overall independence from the Trump administration.”

Cue the uber-Left “sources” the Washington Post and all the rest of the “media” keep on speed dial:

“It is a White House function in which he should not have taken part,’ said John Simpson, an advocate at Consumer Watchdog. ‘They should be going the extra mile to be independent from the White House. It is incumbent upon the chairman and the commissioners not only to act independently, but to avoid any appearance of conflict.’”

One small narrative problem – that never happened.

‘A Complete Fabrication’: FCC Blasts The Washington Post: “Pai’s chief of staff, Matthew Berry, said in a tweet that WaPo reporter Brian Fung invented a fake meeting between President Donald Trump and Chairman Pai.

“The Washington Post suggested that Pai met with Trump on Thursday as part of a larger meeting with tech industry leaders. While Pai did attend a breakout session with tech leaders as part of a general conversation about policy, he did not meet with Trump. “He left at 9:45 a.m. for an FCC Open Meeting, according to the spokesman.

“Nathan Leamer, a policy advisor with Pai’s office, also took issue with the story.  “‘It was not based on the facts of yesterday’s events,” (said) a source close to the Chairman….”

Fung and his Post – delivering us a heaping helping of fake news.

Now, let us flashback to some actual, very-much-in-evidence collusion between an FCC Chairman and a White House. It’s early 2015. It’s President Barack Obama, his FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler – and their push for a huge new Internet regulatory power grab (known as reclassification) so as to then impose the totally awful Network Neutrality.

Well it wasn’t Wheeler’s push for reclassification – until Obama demanded it. Wheeler wan’t going to reclassify, but then….

“President Obama is urging the FCC to reclassify consumer broadband service — to open it to broader government oversight and regulation — with the goal of protecting the net neutrality principles that his administration has long supported.

“In a lengthy statement that also included a video, Obama asserted ‘there is no higher calling than protecting an open, accessible and free Internet.’ He urged the FCC to reclassify broadband service as a Title II telecommunications service….”

That just screams “independent agency,” does it not?

Chairman Wheeler – then suddenly, magically decided to reclassify the Internet. And ludicrously offered up: "No, the White House Didn’t Give Me ‘Secret Instructions’ on Net Neutrality"

No, Obama and his White House were quite open and straightforward about it. It was on WhiteHouse.gov. There was video involved. And lots and lots of news stories. Including by…the Washington Post’s Brian Fung:

Obama to the FCC: Adopt ‘The Strongest Possible Rules’ on Net Neutrality, Including Title II: “President Obama on Monday called for the government to aggressively regulate Internet service providers such as Verizon and Comcast, treating broadband like a public utility as essential as water, phone service and electricity….

“This is Obama’s most aggressive statement yet in favor of a free and open Internet and against allowing Internet service providers to charge content companies like Netflix for faster access to their customers. The president’s statement, released online Monday while he traveled to Asia, calls for the FCC to adopt the strictest rules possible for ensuring so-called net neutrality, or the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.”

Where was Fung’s nose for collusion news? Where were the frantic calls to sources for corroborating collusion quotes?

Nowhere to be found. And when Republicans pointed out the very obvious White House-FCC coordination – Fung went into full-spin defensive mode.

“House Republicans are putting the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, through the wringer this week over his agency’s recent vote to apply strong new regulations on Internet providers.”

As opposed to you and the rest of the media putting Trump and Chairman Pai “through the wringer” – over nonsense nothing. More Fung:

“The GOP’s chief criticism these days is that Wheeler and his staff improperly coordinated with the White House over how to write those regulations.”

Yes, Fung, you reported on it. There was those WhiteHouse.gov Web pages, and the video – remember? But the “wringer” Republicans had more than just that:

“GOP lawmakers…are releasing previously redacted e-mails between FCC officials and members of the White House staff, lobbyists and others.…”

All of this seems to be a whole lot more coordinate-y than a Trump White House tech event – at which Trump and Chairman Pai were never even in the same room. Fung didn’t freak out – he fell in line behind the Obama Administration spin.

TWICE. The aforementioned “FCC Chair: No, the White House Didn’t Give Me ‘Secret Instructions’ on Net Neutrality” – was also Fung. In which he “reported”:

“‘Nine times you went to the White House,’ Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said. ‘On Nov. 6, Jeff Zients comes to you. … My contention is, Jeff Zients came to you and said, “Hey, things have changed.”’”

Nine times. How very Ferris Bueller of them.

Yet nowhere in either of Fung’s two stories does he mention collusion, coordination or collaboration – unless he’s quoting Republicans making the assertion.

One Trump White House tech event – at which Trump and Pai never even share a room – and Fung is throwing around every word that starts with “C” of which he can think. And doing it un-factually – in fake news fashion.

“Not even a smidgen” of Washington Post bias, eh?

SOURCE

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Media priorities



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CA vs. Texas

CALIFORNIA: The Governor of  California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps  out, bites the Governor and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie “Bambi” and then realizes he should stop; the coyote is  only doing what is natural.

2. He calls animal control. Animal Control  captures the coyote and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases and $500  for relocating it.

3. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects  the dead dog and bills the State $200 for testing it for diseases.

4. The Governor goes to hospital and spends  $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and on getting his  bite wound bandaged.

5. The running trail gets shut down for  6 months while Fish & Game conducts a $100,000 survey to  make sure the area is free of dangerous animals.

6. The Governor spends $50,000 in state funds to  implement a “coyote awareness” program for residents of the area.

7. The State Legislature spends $2 million  to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently  eradicate the  disease throughout the world.

8. The Governor’s security agent is  fired for not stopping the attack somehow and for letting the  Governor attempt to intervene.

9. Additional cost to State of California:  $75,000 to hire and train a new security agent with additional special  training re: the nature of coyotes.

10. PETA protests the coyote’s  relocation and files suit against the State.

TEXAS: The Governor of Texas is  jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A Coyote jumps out, bites the Governor’s leather boot, and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor shoots the coyote with his State-issued  pistol and keeps jogging. The Governor has spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP  hollow point cartridge.

2. The buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that, boys and girls, is why California is  broke………..

SOURCE (Joke)

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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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5 July, 2017

Anger Privilege

If you want to know who has privilege in a society and who doesn't, follow the anger.

There are people in this country who can safely express their anger. And those who can't. If you're angry that Trump won, your anger is socially acceptable. If you were angry that Obama won, it wasn't.

James Hodgkinson's rage was socially acceptable. It continued to be socially acceptable until he crossed the line into murder. And he's not alone. There's Micah Xavier Johnson, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Dallas, and Gavin Long, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Baton Rouge. If you're black and angry about the police, your anger is celebrated. If you're white and angry about the Terror travel ban, the Paris Climate treaty, ObamaCare repeal or any leftist cause, you're on the side of the angry angels.

But if you're white and angry that your job is going to China or that you just missed being killed in a Muslim suicide bombing, your anger is unacceptable.

If you're an angry leftist, your party leader, Tom Perez will scream and curse into a microphone, and your aspiring presidential candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand, will curse along, to channel the anger of the base. But if you're an angry conservative, then Trump channeling your anger is "dangerous" because you aren't allowed to be angry.

Not all anger is created equal. Some anger is privileged rage.

Good anger gets you a gig as a CNN commentator. Bad anger gets you hounded out of your job. Good anger isn't described as anger at all. Instead it's linguistically whitewashed as "passionate" or "courageous". Bad anger however is "worrying" or "dangerous". Angry left-wing protesters "call out", angry right-wing protesters "threaten". Good anger is left-wing. Bad anger is right-wing.

Socially acceptable displays of anger, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter riots to the anti-Trump marches to the furious campus protests, are invariably left-wing.

Left-wing anger over the elections of Bush and Trump was sanctified. Right-wing outrage over Obama's victory was demonized. Now that left-wing anger led a Bernie Sanders volunteer to open fire at a Republican charity baseball practice outing. And the media reluctantly concedes that maybe both sides should moderate their rhetoric. Before listing examples that lean to the right like "Lock her up".

Why were chants of "Lock her up" immoderate, but not Bush era cries of "Jail to the chief"? Why were Tea Party rallies "ominous" but the latest We Hate Trump march is "courageous"? Why is killing Trump on stage the hottest thing to hit Shakespeare while a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask was hounded by everyone from the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri to the NAACP?

Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded. Left-wing anger is good because its ideological foundations are good. Right-wing anger is bad because its ideology is bad.

It's not the level of anger, its intensity or its threatening nature that makes it good or bad.

And that is why the left so easily slips into violence. All its ideological ends are good. Therefore its means, from mass starvation to gulags to riots and tyranny, must be good. If I slash your tires because of your Obama bumper sticker", I'm a monster. But if you key my car because of my Trump bumper sticker, you're fighting racism and fascism. Your tactics might be in error, but your viewpoint isn't.

There are no universal standards of behavior. Civility, like everything else, is ideologically limited.

Intersectionality frowns on expecting civil behavior from "oppressed" protesters. Asking that shrieking campus crybully not to scream threats in your face is "tone policing". An African-American millionaire's child at Yale is fighting for her "existence", unlike the Pennsylvania coal miner, the Baltimore police officer and the Christian florist whose existences really are threatened.

Tone policing is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the frustration of their victims is suppressed. The existence of tone policing as a specific term to protect displays of left-wing anger shows the collapse of civility into anger privilege. Civility has been replaced by a political entitlement to anger.

The left prides itself on an unearned moral superiority ("When they go low, we go high") reinforced by its own echo chamber even as it has become incapable of controlling its angry outbursts. The national tantrum after Trump's victory has all but shut down the government, turned every media outlet into a non-stop feed of conspiracy theories and set off protests that quickly escalated into street violence.

But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.

The left is as angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are beginning to match its anger. The left still clings to the same anger it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare, whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized, whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were destroyed.

The angry left has gained a great deal of power. It has used that power to wreck lives. It is feverishly plotting to deprive nearly 63 million Americans of their vote by using its entrenched power in the government, the media and the non-profit sector. And it is too blinded by its own anger over the results of the election to realize the anger over its wholesale abuses of power and privileged tantrums.

But monopolies on anger only work in totalitarian states. In a free society, both sides are expected to control their anger and find terms on which to debate and settle issues. The left rejects civility and refuses to control its anger. The only settlement it will accept is absolute power. If an election doesn't go its way, it will overturn the results. If someone offends it, he must be punished. Or there will be anger.

The angry left demands that everyone recognize the absolute righteousness of its anger as the basis for its power. This anger privilege, like tone policing, is often cast in terms of oppressed groups. But its anger isn't in defiance of oppression, but in pursuit of oppression.

Anger privilege is used to silence opposition, to enforce illegal policies and to seize power. But the left's monopolies on anger are cultural, not political. The entertainment industry and the media can enforce anger privilege norms through public shaming, but their smears can't stop the consequences of the collapse of civility in public life. There are no monopolies on emotion.

When anger becomes the basis for political power, then it won't stop with Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. That's what the left found out in the last election. Its phony pearl clutching was a reaction to the consequences of its destruction of civility. Its reaction to that show of anger by conservatives and independents was to escalate the conflict. Instead of being the opposition, the left became the "resistance". Trump was simultaneously Hitler and a traitor. Republicans were evil beasts.

James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped.

Anger has to go somewhere.

The left likes to think that its anger is good anger because it's angry over the plight of illegal aliens, Muslim terrorists, transgender bathrooms, the lack of abortion in South Carolina, the minimum wage at Taco Bell, budget cuts, tax cuts, police arrests, drone strikes and all the other ways in which reality differs from its utopia. But all that anger isn't the road to a better world, but to hate and violence.

Millions of leftists, just like Hodgkinson, are told every day that Republicans are responsible for everything wrong with their lives, the country and the planet. Despite everything they do, all the petitions they sign, the marches they attend, the donations, the angry letters, the social media rants, Republicans continue to exist and even be elected to public office. Where does that anger go?

Either we have a political system based on existing laws and norms of civility. Or we have one based on coups and populist leftist anger. And there are already a whole bunch of those south of the border.

Leftist anger is a privileged bubble of entitlement that bursts every other election. Its choice is to try to understand the rest of the country or to intimidate, censor, oppress and eventually kill them.

James Hodgkinson took the latter course. His personal leftist revolution ended, as all leftist revolutions do, in blood and violence. The left can check its anger privilege and examine its entitlement. Or his violence will be our future.    

SOURCE

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But Reality Isn't Fair

By Ben Shapiro

In 2014, I debated Seattle City Council member and avowed socialist Kshama Sawant. Sawant was one of the chief proponents of a city ordinance that would create a $15 minimum wage. Eventually, the city adopted a three-phase transition plan that would push minimum wage to $11 per hour, then $13 per hour, then $15 per hour. In our debate, I asked Sawant directly whether she would support a $1,000 minimum wage. She deflected the question, of course. She deflected the question because reality would not allow for a $1,000 minimum wage. Were the government to mandate such an idiocy, every business in the Seattle area would immediately cut back employment, and all of those seeking minimum wage jobs would end up losing their income.

As it turns out, it didn't take a $1,000 minimum wage to destroy the income for minimum wage workers. Thirteen dollars was plenty. According to a paper from The National Bureau of Economic Research, "the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees' earnings by an average of $125 per months in 2016."

All of this was foreseeable, given the fact that businesses compete with one another to lower cost and thus operate with slim profit margins. That means businesses have two choices when government forcibly raises labor costs: increase prices and thereby lower demand, or cut back on the work force. Businesses opted to do the latter in order to stay competitive.

Reality is unpleasant. Perhaps that's why so few politicians seem willing to face up to it.

On a larger scale, the bipartisan consensus in favor of regulations that force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions mirrors the minimum wage debate. It is perfectly obvious that forcing insurance companies — professional risk assessors that determine pricing based on actuarial estimates as to health — to cover those with pre-existing conditions costs them an enormous amount of money. If you are a consumer, why would you bother buying a health insurance plan while healthy, when you could wait to do so until after your costs materialize? Yet both parties would rather cater to the foolish notion that it is "unfair" for insurance companies to act as insurance companies than allow insurance companies to do what they do best: create a market to allow Americans to exercise choice.

But in economics, once one heresy has been advanced, a slew of other heresies follow. Coverage of pre-existing conditions has to be subsidized somehow. Democrats propose to mandate that people buy health insurance; this violates freedom of choice and artificially increases premiums for the healthy in order to pay for the sick. Republicans propose subsidies to encourage purchase, artificially creating demand without allowing the competition among health plans that would keep premiums down.

But everyone is surprised when such schemes fail.

They shouldn't be. Politics used to be the art of educating the public about reality and pushing for change where change is possible. Now politics is the art of convincing the public that you can make reality disappear if it votes for you. Sadly, our politicians can't make reality disappear. And every time they try to do so, reality comes rushing back with a vengeance.

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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4 July, 2017    

Lawfare: Hindering President Trump from Investigating Obama

The defeated Democrats are colluding with the mainstream media to create an echo chamber of false accusations, fake news, and demands for groundless investigations and frivolous lawsuits to impede President Trump and sabotage his administration by preoccupying them in court. The Trump administration is under siege.

The Democratic Party is not your mother's Democratic Party. Today the party is composed of radical left-wing liberals and anarchists fully committed to destroying American democracy and replacing it with socialism. The Democrats today have no interest in making America strong and great again - they have the opposite agenda and intend to pursue Obama's goal of weakening America toward socialism in preparation for Obama's globalist ambition of one-world government.

The "resistance" movement lead by lawless Obama is designed to topple constitutionally elected President Donald Trump and create social chaos.

There are two tiers to the Democrats' attack strategy. The blatant goal of toppling President Donald Trump disguises the primary objective of preventing Trump's Department of Justice from investigating the criminal activities of the Obama administration. Investigations of Obama, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Lois Lerner, John Brennan, James Comey and the corrupt Clinton Foundation would be devastating to the Democratic Party.

America is no stranger to war - we are just not used to Americans waging war against a sitting president. It is an extremely unAmerican and treasonous strategy the Democrats have embraced. Instead of complying with the rules of law and fielding a stronger candidate for the 2020 elections they have adopted the tactics of revolution and anarchy - it is appalling. The Democratic party is fomenting anarchy and attempting to delegitimize, destabilize, and topple the government of our constitutionally elected President Donald Trump.

The current strategy of the defeated Democrats still crying and trying to destroy American democracy is lawfare. Lawfare is a form of asymmetric warfare consisting of using the legal system against an enemy. Lawfare is designed to damage or delegitimize the enemy, tying up their time or winning a public relations victory by casting the pall of criminality and suspicion over them. The theory of lawfare against President Trump is that if the President and his administration are spending their time and resources defending themselves in court he will not be able to govern effectively, keep his promises to strengthen and make America great again, or investigate the criminal activities of Obama and his gang. The Democrats hope disappointment in President Trump will reward the Democrats with a gain of enough seats in the midterm election to impeach President Trump.

Even if the Democrats are unsuccessful in their goal to reverse the balance of power in the midterm elections, their objective is to make it impossible for President Trump to govern effectively and investigate criminality in Obama's term. Lawfare is the preferred method being used by the Democrats to protect their lord and master Barack Hussein Obama - the greatest threat to American sovereignty and democracy since 1776.

First on the current list of lawfare activists is deceitful James Comey who deliberately leaked a memorandum of a conversation with President Trump saying he thought it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel to discover the truth about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Comey leaked the memo through Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman who took it to the NYT. Comey deviously made his case for a special counsel by manipulating the colluding media. Later Comey contradicted himself and exposed his actual motive saying he hoped for a special counsel to corroborate his claims that President Trump had asked for his loyalty. Comey implicated himself and revealed his deceit - he was not looking to find the truth about Russia he was looking to bring down President Trump.

Comey was disingenuously presented to the American people by the colluding mainstream media as being bipartisan. In fact, Comey was the FBI director who replaced Mueller under Obama's lawless presidency and with Lynch's Justice Department refused to prosecute criminal acts of the Obama Administration. Obama was the King of of Lawlessness in America for eight years and Comey, Clinton, Holder, Lynch, Lerner, Brennan, and Rice were his vassals. This is a short list of unprosecuted crimes that Comey ignored or supported provided by The Millennium Report:

James Comey has been the fixer for the Clinton crime family for decades beginning in the 1990's with Whitewater and most famously making the strong case for prosecuting Hillary Clinton for her illegal unsecured private basement server and then stunningly recommending against prosecution. What the public did not realize is that prosecuting Clinton could expose Comey himself which is why he is actually part of the Clinton email coverup.

Next on the lawfare list is Robert Mueller, James Comey's mentor and predecessor. Instead of investigating the blatant crimes of Obama and his administration for which there is ample evidence, Robert Mueller is now empowered as special prosecutor to investigate the imaginary crimes of President Trump with a twin purpose. Mueller will keep President Trump bogged down for two years under a false veil of suspicion until the midterm elections in service of the defeated Democrats hoping to regain seats, and more importantly Mueller's deceitful investigation will hinder any investigation into the Obama administration by President Trump's Justice Department.

It is incomprehensible why the Trump administration would ever have considered Clinton loyalist James Comey for FBI director or his equally biased mentor Robert Mueller for special prosecutor. Both are proven Obama/Clinton loyalists willing to sabotage President Trump's presidency.

Third on the lawfare list are Governors Brown, Cuomo, and Inslee. These men are not stupid - they know that what they are doing is not legal and they cannot possibly win - but they do not care. Their bluster narrative is pure political theater intended to tie Trump up in court - more lawfare. Governors do not have the Constitutional authority to make agreements with foreign countries. They cannot usurp the power of the presidency. This treasonous ploy of theirs is just another ignominious example of the Democratic Party's tactic of lawfare against President Trump.

The Climate Alliance of California, New York, Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Virginia and Rhode Island has publicly declared on the New York State government website its intention to treasonously "convene U.S. states committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement." Governor Jerry Brown pompously described President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accord saying, "This is an insane move by this president - deviant behavior from the highest office in the land."

Really? Insane? Deviant?

Let's talk about the meaning of insanity and deviant behavior because words matter.

Insanity is defined as unsoundness of mind or lack of the ability to understand that prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or that releases one from criminal or civil responsibility. President Donald Trump was perfectly clear when he explained in a cogent argument that the Paris Accord was extremely harmful to America. So, by definition President Trump's withdrawal from Obama's unlawful ant-American agreement was not insane.

The Governors Three by contrast all seem to have serious identity issues - they are out of touch with reality and do not seem to know who they are. They appear confused and  without the soundness of mind to correctly identify themselves as governors and not the president of the United States. Perhaps they missed or slept through the civics class that taught that governors have zero authority to enter agreements or treaties with foreign nations and, in fact, such agreements are a criminal offense in strict violation of the Logan Act. The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that details the fine and/or imprisonment of unauthorized citizens who negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States.

Deviant is defined as departing from usual or accepted standards. If anyone's behavior was deviant it was Obama's when he made the unsanctioned Paris Agreement because he failed to protect the economic interests of the United States. The agreement itself was contemptuous of Congress and the democratic process. It was an example of Obama's executive overreach and deeply divisive governance. 

President Donald Trump recognized the non-binding Paris Agreement made by Obama without Congressional approval to be harmful to the United States. So, by definition President Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement followed the accepted standard of an American president protecting America and American interests.

All three governors are public officers sworn to protect America and uphold the Constitution - by entering into agreements they are not authorized to make, particularly agreements that fail to protect American interest, they are derelict in their duties and have, like Obama, deviated from accepted norms. This left-wing liberal threesome are colluding with the international community to de-industrialize America by damaging our mining industries and redistributing our wealth to non-industrialized nations.

It appears that if anyone is insane or deviant the award goes to Democratic Governors Brown, Cuomo, and Inslee.

Perhaps California Governor Brown, New York Governor Cuomo, and Washington Governor Inslee will use an insanity defense to absolve themselves of treason charges for their U.S. Climate Alliance attempts to uphold the anti-American Paris Climate Agreement that President Donald Trump decisively rejected.

Carolyn Glick summarized the path forward for President Trump succinctly saying, "It is time for Trump to delegate the dirty work of attacking his opponents to his attorneys, advisers and supporters. He must devote his public appearances entirely to advancing his own presidential agenda. By firing Mueller, appointing a special counsel to investigate the Obama administration, removing Obama's political appointees from government and replacing them with his own hires, and concentrating on implementing his agenda, Trump will end the siege on his presidency. He will defeat the self-proclaimed "resistance" whose purpose is to defeat him politically through administrative and bureaucratic abuses."

It is also time for President Trump to renew an American tradition of speaking (not tweeting) directly to the American people in weekly televised broadcasts from the Oval Office that inform Americans about the efforts and accomplishments of his administration and their progress in making America great again. President Trump was elected by the people for the people and he must speak directly to the people because the mainstream media is colluding with the defeated Democrats to destroy him. President Trump can resist the resistance movement and expose the fabricated lawfare being waged against him by ignoring the media and speaking directly to the American public. 

SOURCE

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Russia allegedly 'jealous' of Royal Navy's new £3bn aircraft carrier

The Defence Secretary has taunted the Kremlin over fears it will attempt to spy on HMS Queen Elizabeth during its sea trials, saying Russia will envy Britain’s new flagship.

Sir Michael Fallon contrasted the Royal Navy’s new 65,000-ton carrier with what he called the “dilapidated” Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which sailed through the Channel late last year.

The largest warship Britain has ever possessed later used low tide to glide under the Forth Rail Bridge shortly before midnight on Monday, before anchoring in Kirkcaldy Bay ahead of sailing into the North Sea.

Royal Navy commanders have said they expect Russian vessels and aircraft to spy on the Navy’s new aircraft carrier as it undergoes sea trials in the North Sea.

Sir Michael said: “It's really routine for the Russians to collect intelligence on our ships. We will take every precaution to make sure that they don't get too close, but I think they will be admiring her.”

He went on: “When you saw that old, dilapidated Kuznetsov sailing through the Channel, a few months ago, I think the Russians will look at this ship with a little bit of envy.”

The 55,000 ton Kutnetsov has been plagued by years of technical problems and is accompanied everywhere by a tug in case it breaks down.

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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3 July, 2017

Liberal advocates genocide

No mystery where the racism is to be found these days

“White supremacy” is the new liberal rage.  Like “global warming” and “”misogyny,” it exists everywhere, in all places, at all times, but only they can see it.

And now they have a plan to fight  it — by aborting all white babies.

Nicole Valentine, writing in “Medusa” magazine, claims American society is hopelessly racist, and the only way to solve it is through the wholesale elimination of “white family units.”

“America’s fascination with the white family unit has gone hand-in-hand with the historical proliferation of white supremacy,” says Valentine, who uses the term “white supremacy” an obsessive 17 times in a short article, but produces zero examples of an institutional belief in the debunked theory that one race is superior than the other.

So how do racists like Valentine plan to fight perceived racism?  With actual, blood-soaked racism.

“White women: it is time to do your part! Your white children reinforce the white supremacist society that benefits you. If you claim to be progressive, and yet willingly birth white children by your own choice, you are a hypocrite,” claims Valentine. “White women should be encouraged to abort their white children, and to use their freed-up time and resources to assist women of color who have no other choice but to raise their children.”

Apparently as confused as she is obsessive and racist, Valentine claims the very notion of abortion itself is racist.

“It is critical to understand that the appeal to abortions being ‘Constitutional’ reinforces white supremacy. There is no way around it. The Constitution was drafted and signed by white men, for white men…Constitutionality is often synonymous with ‘exclusively beneficial to the white race,'” Valentine rambles, adding “the notion of ‘choice’ in abortion is inherently white supremacist and ableist.”

Instead of suggesting that Planned Parenthood be shut down for deliberately targeting minority neighborhoods and disproportionately aborting black babies, Valentine believes the group, founded on explicit racism, is her ally.

“Women of color simply do not have the absolute choice when it comes to their bodies. It is time to stop pretending that they stand on equal footing with white women, when it has been proven that the embedded systems of white supremacy do not act impartially to all women,” claims Valentine. “Because white supremacy prevents women of color from their freedom to choose, we must level the playing field by other means.”

By “other means,” she means killing all white babies.

Let’s hope Valentine gets the counseling and racial sensitivity training she needs.

SOURCE

UPDATE:  It occurs to me that the above may be some warped Leftist's idea of satire

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More Dishonest “Poverty” Research that Doesn’t Measure Poverty

I periodically share data showing that living standards are higher in the United States than in Europe.

My goal isn’t to be jingoistic. Instead, I’m warning readers that we won’t be as prosperous if we copy out tax-and-spend friends on the other side of the Atlantic (just like I try to draw certain conclusions when showing how many low-tax jurisdictions have higher levels of economic output than the United States).

I’m sometimes asked, though, how America can be doing better than Europe when we have more poverty.

And when I ask them why they thinks that’s the case, they will point to sources such as this study from the German-based Institute of Labor Economics. Here’s some attention-grabbing data from the report.

The United States has the highest poverty rate both overall and among households with an employed person, but it stands farther away from the other countries on its in-work poverty rate than its overall poverty rate. The contrast between the US and three other English-speaking countries — Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom — is particularly striking. Compared to those three nations, the United States has an overall poverty rate only a little higher but an in-work poverty rate that is much higher.
And here’s the main chart from the study, with the United States as the bottom. It appears that there twice as much poverty in the USA as there is in a stagnant economy like France.

There even appears to be more poverty in America than there is in Spain and Italy, both of which are so economically shaky that they required bailouts during the recent fiscal/financial crisis.



Sounds horrible, right?

Yes, it does sound really bad. However, it’s total nonsense. Because what you read in the excerpt and see in the graph has nothing to do with poverty.

Instead, it’s a measure of income distribution.

And, if you read carefully, the study actually admits there’s a bait-and-switch.

The…approach to measuring poverty is a “relative” one, with the poverty line set at 60 or 50 percent of the median income.
Think about what this means. A country where everyone is impoverished will have zero or close-to-zero poverty because everyone is at the median income. But as I’ve explained before, a very wealthy society can have lots of “poverty” if some people are a lot richer than others.

And since the United States is much richer than other nations, this means an American household with $35,000 of income can be poor, even though they wouldn’t count as poor if they earned that much elsewhere.

This is like grading on a rigged curve. And if you read the fine print of the IZA study, you’ll see that the “poverty” threshold for a four-person household magically jumps by $16,260.

For a household of four (two adults, two children) the difference between the official US threshold and the 60-percent-of-median threshold amounts to more than $16,000 ($24,000 versus $40,260). This means that the size of the working poor population in America according to the official poverty measure is significantly lower than the size obtained in studies using a relative threshold.

In other words, you can calculate a much higher poverty rate if you include people who aren’t poor.

By the way, since the IZA report acknowledges this bait-and-switch approach, I guess one would have to say that the study technically is honest.

But it’s still misleading because most people aren’t going to read the fine print.  Instead, they’ll see the main chart showing higher “poverty” and assume that there is a much higher percentage of actual poor people in the United States.

Moreover, some people may understand that there’s a bait-and-switch and simply want to help fool additional people.

And I’m guessing that this is exactly what the authors and the IZA staff expected and wanted. And if that’s the case, then the study is deliberately misleading, even if not technically dishonest.

I’ll close by stating that I don’t mind if folks on the left want to argue that market-based societies are somehow unfair because some people are richer than others. And it’s also fine for them to argue that we should be willing sacrifice some of our national prosperity to achieve more after-the-fact equality of income.

But I’d like for them to be upfront about their agenda and not hide behind dodgy data manipulation.

P.S.When you do apples-to-apples comparisons of the United States with the best-performing economies of Europe, you find that the poor tend to be at the same level, but every other group is better off in America.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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The left's health-care rhetoric is unhinged

by Jeff Jacoby

The left's most popular "argument" against replacing Obamacare is the slander that Republicans want to kill people.

REMEMBER HOW liberal politicians promised to tone down the partisan rhetoric after a heavily armed Bernie Sanders fan opened fire on GOP lawmakers taking batting practice on June 14? Remember how they signed on to a "pledge of civility?" Remember how they said they would use the near-massacre as a jolt that "brings us together"?

You don't remember? Apparently they don't either. For no sooner had Senate Republicans released their proposed health-insurance bill last week than Democrats were once again dialing the hate speech up to 11.

Before Representative Steve Scalise was even out of intensive care, Democrats were back to calling his party and its legislation not just "heartless" and "evil," but downright homicidal. Sanders, in a tweet he later deleted, charged Republicans with "trying to pass a bill that could kill up to 27,000" in order to "give tax cuts to the wealthy."

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, in her usual caustic style, said the legislation amounts to "blood money" and that "people will die" if it is enacted. Hillary Clinton added to the slander: "If Republicans pass this bill, they're the death party."

So much for dialing back the unhinged rhetoric.

The toxic contempt that so many prominent voices on the left bring to the public discourse is by now wearily familiar. In 2009 Sarah Palin was disdained for claiming that Obamacare would empower "death panels." Yet liberals and Democrats in 2017 not only insist ad nauseam that Republicans want to kill people, they won't stop saying such things even after one of their own tries to perpetrate a massacre.

I've no doubt that many of those playing the death card sincerely believe that rolling back Obamacare will keep thousands of Americans from getting lifesaving medical treatment. Human beings have a great capacity for convincing themselves that their opinions and prejudices are obvious truths — particularly when they have a strong political incentive to believe it.

In my view, the keening on the left about how the GOP bills will strike people dead is sheer hysteria. For years, it has been a familiar liberal claim that if conservative policies prevail — on health care, on fossil fuels, on welfare reform, on abortion rights, on the Second Amendment, even on rent control — more people will die. The dire warnings about rewriting Obamacare are just more of the same.

Something no advocates of Obamacare saw coming: Mortality rates in the United States are up

But for the sake of argument, let's take the claim at face value. If changing Obamacare is a prescription for higher death rates, that must mean enacting Obamacare led to lower death rates.

Only — it didn't.

When Barack Obama came to office, mortality rates in the United States had been declining for decades. By the time he left the White House, deaths were on the rise. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), America's overall death rate rose by 1.2 percent in 2015 (the most recent year for which data is available). It marked the first significant increase in death rates since 1999, and it was broad-based:

"Increases occurred among white men and women as well as black men," The Wall Street Journal reported. "Death rates rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death," including respiratory diseases, injuries, Alzheimer's, diabetes, kidney disease, and suicide. Most ominous was the increase in deaths from heart disease, which is the nation's leading killer.

As a result of the climbing death rate, US life expectancy shrank — something that hadn't happened since the early 1990s, when AIDS and homicide were cutting down tens of thousands of lives each year.

It isn't clear why Americans are dying at higher rates. But this much is plain: In the aggregate, the Affordable Care Act hasn't kept more people alive. So lawmakers who supported the law should be accused of sending more Americans to their graves, right? Defenders of Obamacare should be smeared as "heartless" and "evil" and the "death party." Shouldn't they?

Of course they shouldn't. Obamacare is a grievously flawed government program, and its implementation has coincided with higher death rates. But it would be vile to scream "Killers!" at the Democrats who passed Obamacare. It is no less vile to scream it at the Republicans who want to repeal 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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2 July, 2017

Bring back the church militant?

In the Middle Ages, strong young Christian men responded to the call of the Pope to push back the Muslims and regain control of the Holy Land by force.  They threw out the Muslim invaders and brought the Holy land back into Christian hands, where it had been for around a thousand years.  And they held their gains for around 200 years.  So they were a major demonstration of the church militant

Why is there no church militant today?  Mainly because of bad theology -- under the influence of Christ's words in Matthew 5  where he counselled not hitting back at oppressors:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

Clear enough one might think.  But what are we to think of Matthew 10: 34?

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword"

or Luke 22:

36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

38 And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough

So we gather from the second and third scriptures above that Jesus at a minimum believed in his followers defending themselves.  So was Jesus being inconsistent?  Are Christians under different commands?  If we believe the Bible to be the word of God, that is surely ruled out.  So what is going on?

Clearly, Christ was giving different advice for different occasions.  And the advice in Matthew 5 runs against all nature.  No-one naturally behaves that way.  It is anti-instinctual. So it must have been designed for a very special occasion.  And it was.

Part of his foresight was that his disciples would be persecuted after his death -- so it was important that he give them ways of surviving that.  He had to tell them to behave in a way that would protect them.  He had to give them what modern-day psychologists call "de-escalation techniques".  Above all else they had to avoid getting killed by hostile others, so that they could pass on his message. 

And in Matthew 5:38ff he taught exactly how.  He taught his disciples to be unthreatening and even likable when confronted with hostility.  He was giving them lessons in survival against great threat -- things to do immediately after his death,  not rules for all times and all situations.  And when modern-day psychologists look at his rules they will see that his de-escalation techniques were pretty good. You can turn down hostility if you go about it the right way.

So Matthew 5:38ff was the practical aspect of his teachings.  What at first sight seems totally impractical was in fact superbly practical. The survival of Christianity attests to that. 

But, as the other scriptures show, that advice was not for all occasions, all situations and all times.  Jesus did not preach pacifism.  So it is unsurprising that few Christians today are pacifists.  Only some small sects preach it: Seventh Day Adventists, traditional Quakers, Christadelphians and Jehovah's Witnesses.   The U.S. army, for instance, is still largely a Christian army despite various attempts to suppress that.

So the conventional response to Matthew 5 is broadly right.  It does not stand in the way of both individual self-defence or defence of one's own society.

But when it comes to oppression from forces within one's own society, many Christians suddenly decide that Matthew 5 is applicable.  There is no reason to.  Matthew 5 was an instruction designed to protect a small and threatened minority.  Christians are certainly threatened in minor ways today but they are not small and their collective survival is not at stake. 

There is for instance no reason why they should be passive when confronted by Muslim aggression.  If Muslims hold aggressive demonstrations, Christians should be out holding aggressive counter-demonstrations. If Muslims carry around placards extolling Mohammed, they would be perfectly justified in carrying around placards saying that Islam is a false religion and that the Koran is the ravings of an insane pedophile. 

If masked Leftists attack them during a demonstration, they should shoot. And what about demonstrations in support of Christians who defy the homosexual Mafia?

That does not mean Christians should abandon Matthew 5 in their personal  lives.  Christian forgiveness still is a wise response to many conflict situations in 1 to 1 relationships -- JR

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Trump Supporters Arrested in Cudahy After Illegal Aliens Verbally Accost and Physically Attack Them!

A group of Trump supporters showed up to the Cudahy, California city council meeting to voice their disdain over the city’s recent motions to become a “sanctuary city”.

After the meeting, several illegal alien supporters confronted the actual American citizens and began to verbally accost and physically attack them, all while Los Angeles County deputies stood by doing nothing.

Up the block, at a gas station, a car that contained friends of Congressional candidate and current Cudahy city councilman Omar Navarro was being charged at by a throng of illegal aliens and their supporters. The driver, fearing his safety and the safety of his passengers, drew his legally owned and concealed gun. The mob of illegals do the expected lamebrain stunt and move in to surround the car (what brainiacs!).

Police quickly moved in and arrested them….. The guy defending himself and his occupants, while allowing the mob of illegals to continue to run rampant.

Apparently all four people in the car were arrested, for some reason.

In a video posted by apparent illegal supporter Anthony Diaz on twitter, you can clearly see protesters converging on the car.

Some folks from The Red Elephants were apparently on the ground, and have the full story.

Meanwhile, mainstream hacks like Hailey Branson-Potts of the LA Times and Julia Wick of LAist couldn’t wait to pounce on the driver, Thomas Green, and the other actual American citizens, making them out to be the unhinged aggressors and the mob of illegal aliens out to be the poor innocents.

Once again, the police prove they are not there to protect citizens, but exist as the enforcement arm of the state and do the bidding of the communists. Perhaps it’s time mainstream conservatives rethink the whole “thin blue line” flags and “back the blue” stickers.

SOURCE

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Don't Be Fooled, the Supreme Court Handed the President a Big Victory

Hans von Spakovsky
   
There seems to be some debate over the extent of the victory that the Trump administration won on Monday when the Supreme Court stayed (or lifted) almost all of the injunctions issued against his revised executive order temporarily suspending entry of foreigners from six terrorist safe havens. But there is no doubt about it — this was a significant and substantial victory despite the fact that the Court left a small portion of the injunctions issued by the Fourth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal in place.

The Court accepted the case for review, and oral arguments on the substantive merits of the claims will be heard when the Court starts its new term in October. Most importantly for the national security and safety of the nation, the Court slapped down the appeals courts by dissolving large portions of the injunctions issued against the executive order until the Court hears the case.

The March 6 executive order suspended for 90 days the entry of foreigners from six terrorist safe havens — Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan -– while the government determines if it has the vetting procedures in place to prevent terrorists from getting into the country. The executive order applied a 120-day suspension to refugees for the same purpose, and capped the number of refugees allowed into the country at 50,000.

The Court lifted the injunctions on foreigners or refugees who have no connection to the U.S. According to the Court, the “interest in preserving national security is ‘an urgent objective of the highest order’” and to prevent the government from “pursuing that objective” by not allowing these restrictions “against foreign nationals unconnected to the United States would appreciably injure its interests, without alleviating obvious hardship to anyone else.”

But the Court left in place the portion of the injunctions that would apply to any foreigner “who can credibly claim a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

Some have painted this as setback to the administration, but that is also not true — it simply recognizes the procedures that the Trump administration had already put in place.

As the Court pointed out, the executive order “itself distinguishes between foreign nationals who have some connection to this country, and foreign nationals who do not, by establishing a case-by-case waiver system primarily for the benefit of individuals in the former category.” Section 3(c) of the executive order provides special consideration for foreigners who have "significant contacts,“ "significant business or professional obligations," or family in the U.S., or who are admitted students or have employment offers in the country.

This is not much different than what the Court outlines would satisfy the "bona fide relationship” standard. The Court says that for individuals, “a close familial relationship is required.” For entities, “the relationship must be formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course rather than for the purpose of evading” the executive order.

Thus, students admitted to American universities and workers “who accepted an offer of employment from an American company or a lecturer invited to address an American audience" would qualify.

No doubt to the annoyance of the advocacy groups who have filed these challenges, those who enter into a relationship "simply to avoid” the executive order will not qualify. For example, according to the Court, a “nonprofit group devoted to immigration issues may not contact foreign nationals from the designated countries, add them to client lists, and then secure their entry by claiming injury from their exclusion.”

The other important detail to keep in mind is that this does not mean that foreigners who meet the “bona fide relationship" requirement must be automatically granted a visa and admitted. They just have to be considered despite the ban on entry of other foreigners. Thus, the government will still be able to deny entry due to individual security issues or other problems that are routinely considered.

Something else that seems to have gotten lost in the reporting: This was a "per curiam” decision. That means that all nine justices agreed to lift the injunctions. The fact that none of the justices disagreed is another sign of how far out-of-line the lower court decisions were.

The only partial dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas (joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch) was to tell the Court that it should have lifted the injunctions in their entirety. He warned that the “bona fide relationship” standard set up by the Court will “invite a flood of litigation until this case is finally resolved on the merits, as parties and courts struggle to determine what exactly constitutes a ‘bona fide relationship,’ who precisely has a ‘credible claim’ to that relationship, and whether the claimed relationship was formed ‘simply to avoid’” the executive order.

Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch may be right about the flood of litigation, but we might have seen a similar such flood contesting the very similar standards in the waiver program outlined in Section 3(c) of the executive order.

The bottom line is that the Supreme Court in large part agreed with the president. The tenor of this decision shows that the challengers will have a very hard time in the Fall convincing the Court that the president acted outside his statutory and constitutional authority. Or that federal judges should substitute their judgment for that of the president when it comes to national security.

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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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"

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

"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.


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

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.

"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" (Backup here)
"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.
IQ 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)




Mirror for "Dissecting Leftism"
Alt archives
Longer Academic Papers
Johnray links
Academic home page
Academic Backup Page
Dagmar Schellenberger
General Backup
My alternative Wikipedia
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/