Monday, January 31, 2005

 
HAPPINESS RESEARCH

There is another dummo academic (Richard Layard) reported here who points to the fact that getting richer does not necessarily make you happier. Any observer of Hollywood knew that long ago and I guess people have in fact known it for about 4,000 years. In 1 Timothy 6:10 St. Paul probably went a bit too far in saying that "The love of money is the root of all evil" but you get the idea. And the whole story of Job in the OT runs along similar lines. But these days, "If money does not make you happier, then take it away!" is the reasoning. So that old bit of wisdom has found a new use as the latest pathetic excuse to hike taxes.

But happiness is clearly a disposition. It is fairly fixed and soon (sometimes within minutes) reverts to its accustomed level after any ups and downs. Some people are happy in circumstances that other would hate. I know. I have observed perfectly cheerful people among the street-sleepers of Bombay. Some people are almost always happy. Some people are almost always whining. Some people just have happy natures and some do not. So looking at whether something makes people happy is largely futile. In statisticians' terms, you are looking for variance in something that is invariant. Or, putting it another way, correlations with something that is invariant will NECESSARILY be zero. So if you are interested in running a public policy that respects other people, you need to look at what they CHOOSE, not what makes them happy. And most people choose more money rather than less.

It is true that certain categories of people report being happier than others -- e.g. married people -- but that probably just shows that happier people are easier to live with.

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AIRBUS VERSUS BOEING

The issue of whether the Europeans are going to have much success with their new giant Airbus is a bit outside the mainstream of what I usually post on but what the heck! My brief mention of the matter yesterday got me a few emails which showed a variety of views on the matter. Most seemed to agree with me that it is Boeing rather than the Europeans that have got it right and one reader pointed me to this story showing that existing Airbuses are being phased out and replaced by Boeings. Another reader, however, had a quite different view, which I reproduce below:

The huge Airbus is I believe currently just short of the 100 orders it is said to need to break even. It is designed (believe it or not) for one main thing -- Hajj -- taking droves of Moslems to Mecca. The Moslems are converting and breeding at a great rate. Over the next 4 decades (expected life of the new Giant Airbus) the Hajj will fill the planes and pay back the investment. A secondary, but not trivial, market is airfreight and FedEX is due to get the first airfreight model off the line. The third market will be the military. The A 380 will be a "giant" success. Boeing's decline is a tribute to the destructive effects of a liberal State (Washington) and the attendant taxes, regulation, and blind obstinacy of labor unions.

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ELSEWHERE

A day of which every American can be proud: "Iraqis embraced democracy in large numbers Sunday, standing in long lines to vote in defiance of mortar attacks, suicide bombers and boycott calls. Pushed in wheelchairs or carts if they couldn't walk, the elderly, the young and women in veils cast ballots in Iraq's first free election in a half-century. "We broke a barrier of fear," said Mijm Towirish, an election official".

Australian Prime Minister defends the USA: "During a vigorous panel debate on US global relations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, several European officials attacked President George W. Bush's Iraq policy, but Mr Howard stood up to defend his ally. Earlier in the summit, Mr Howard attacked the European Union over the reintroduction of wheat export subsidies, which he said harmed underdeveloped nations and were contrary to free trade. "Some of the criticism (of the US) by some of the Europeans is unfair and irrational," Mr Howard said in the panel debate, organised by Britain's BBC TV. "I mean the negative mindset of the last five minutes (of this debate) is ridiculous - of course America has made mistakes," he said. Later Mr Howard told The Australian he found the European "irrational level of anti-Americanism" perplexing. "It is a sign of parochialism and it is disturbingly intense.""

Moronic German Leftists: "Australians are used to the idea of working for the dole, but the Germans have taken it a step further. A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year. Prostitution was legalised in Germany two years ago and brothel owners - who must pay tax and employee health insurance - were granted access to official databases of job seekers. The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe. She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile" and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did she realise she was calling a brothel. Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job or lose her unemployment benefit"

I love it! "Human Events has learned that a billboard blitz "thanking" Hollywood for the reelection of President Bush will be unveiled early next week. The advertisements feature the faces of liberal Hollywood icons Michael Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Affleck, Martin Sheen, Chevy Chase, Barbara Streisand, and Sean Penn, and offer thanks to Hollywood their help getting President Bush reelected. Two versions of the billboard were created, both "thanking" Hollywood -- the first for "4 more years" and the second for "W. Still President." Billboard creator Citizens United, a group that advocates a return to traditional American values, has purchased the use of three billboards near the Kodak Theatre (home of the Academy Awards) for the month of February, which includes Oscar Night, Sunday, February 27".

The British mainstream Left now appears to have taken up antisemitism. The British Conservative leader is a Jew and Labour party advertising is portraying him as a pig. Great for getting the Muslim vote, obviously.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx advocated race war. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Hebrews 1:8 "But of the Son he says, Thy throne, O God is for ever and ever"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/31/2005 09:15:00 PM

Sunday, January 30, 2005

 
EINSTEIN WAS A MARXIST

Which just goes to show you can be smart in one field and dumb in another. The drivel below was written by our Albert and appeared the 1949 edition of the Marxist Monthly Review .

"But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.....

The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before. This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

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A BETTER-INFORMED VIEW OF SOCIALISM:

A small excerpt:

"It turns out not only that capitalism is not a system of the exploitation of labor, but that the actual system of the exploitation of labor is socialism. Socialism establishes the very kind of exploitation for the alleged existence of which people seek to overthrow capitalism. The socialist state holds a universal monopoly on employment and production. Its citizens are economically powerless in their capacity both as workers and as consumers. No economic factor compels the socialist state to take account of their wishes. From an economic point of view, the rulers of the socialist state need be concerned with the values of the citizens only insofar as it needs them to have the health and strength required to work.

Moreover, the leading moral-political principle of the socialist state is that the citizen is not an end in himself, as he is acknowledged to be under capitalism, but is a means to the ends of "society." Since society does not inhabit any known mountain top, and cannot be communicated with in any direct way, its ends can be made known only through the rulers of the socialist state. Thus, the principle that the individual is the means to the ends of society necessarily means, in practice, that he is the means to the ends of society as divined, interpreted, and determined by the rulers of the socialist state. And what this means is that he is the means to the ends of the rulers. A more servile arrangement can hardly be imagined.

Thus, the position of the individual under socialism is that he must spend his life in toil for the ends of the rulers, who have no reason voluntarily to supply him with anything more than minimum physical subsistence. They will provide more (assuming they have the ability to do so) only if it is necessary to prevent riots or revolution or as a means of providing special incentives for the achievement of their own values, such as, above all, the power and prestige of the regime. Thus, they will provide a relatively high standard of living for rocket scientists, secret police agents, and such intellectuals and athletes whose accomplishments help to reflect glory on the regime. The average citizen, however, is fortunate if they provide him with subsistence".

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! More British madness. The authorities have now just about banned car chases by British police -- generating this advice: "So if you�ve just stolen a car, or if you just don�t feel like stopping for the police because you�ve just committed some other crime, or if you�re so drunk you don�t know what you�re doing, drive on into the sunset because it�s just too dangerous for us to do anything about it."

Leftists will grab at any argument that suits them at the time. This NYT article is the latest: An argument that U.S. military intervention abroad is not needed because free markets will eventuallly overturn all tyranny. Marvellous how free-markets have overturned Castro and the N.Korean regime I guess. The argument may even be true in the long run but, as Lord Keynes observed, "In the long run we are all dead".

Migrant reform battle brewing: "A top Republican lawmaker challenged President Bush on Wednesday to first beef up border security before permitting millions of undocumented immigrants to gain a legal foothold in the United States. The clash between Rep. James Sensenbrenner and Bush offers a preview of the fight that lies ahead in Congress over the president's controversial guest-worker proposal. ... At a news conference, Sensenbrenner argued that national security and immigration matters are separate issues and that 'you can't mix the two.' But earlier in the day, Bush told reporters that Congress must deal with both issues because 'immigration reform is necessary to help make it easier to protect our borders.'"

Anti-Bush desperation has led some Leftist wackos into looking into his remote ancestry in hope of finding something discreditable there. Betsy Newmark has an excellent summary of what Bush's geneology really shows.

Interesting news from China: China is buying Boeing, not Europe's big new Airbus. Maybe that huge A380 freaks the Chinese the way it does me. I see another white elephant like the Comet and the Concorde coming up. I back Boeing's commercial judgment versus that of a government-run industry. (Yes. I know the Comet originated with DH).

Good to see that the Australian Labor Party has dumped its more radical policies. Their lurch to the Left was disastrous for them at the last election.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx foresaw genocide and welcomed it. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at TITUS 2:13: "The appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour, Jesus Christ"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/30/2005 07:30:00 PM

Saturday, January 29, 2005

 
MUSLIMS & JEWS

For those who are not already aware of it, there is a good coverage here of the extensive alliances between Hitler and the Muslim world both before and during WW2. The two sides saw eye to eye on most things -- Jews particularly, of course.

An interesting quote from Mr. A. Hitler: "You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?" (From p. 96 of Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer -- Macmillan, 1970)

The far-Left are active in the Islamic world and by comparison with the Islamists they are a voice of sanity. Note this from one of them: ""A contributor to a secular forum did well recently in reminding us about Hitler's dictum on how to lie and have a great impact on the masses. "Adolf Hitler said: 'the broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.' Hitler also taught us that to succeed, the lie should be told loudly. In case you didn't notice, he would generally start his speeches in a relatively quite manner, [and] then as he starts shouting he gets more and more applause. The foolhardy German masses honestly believed that if their beloved Fuhrer is taking such a pain to talk loudly, he should be telling more truth. By these two accounts, Islamism is expected to be a very successful lie, indeed. Amir Taheri estimated the Islamist propaganda machine's bill to be about 100 billion dollars during the last two decades alone, which makes it the largest propaganda machine in history, even larger than the communist propaganda machine during the Soviet era. People wouldn't obviously spend that much unless they know they have to defend a huge lie".

In their usual desperate fashion, Leftists sometimes try to justify what Osama & Co do by saying that the Crusades of nearly 1,000 years ago were just as bad. Muslims are right to attack us now because we once attacked them. I suppose it is pointless to argue with such deliberate blindness but it might help people brainwashed by a Leftist educational system to know what the crusades were REALLY about. Like the Middle-East interventions by the USA today, the crusades too were a response to Islamic aggression. One excerpt: "The Crusades, he shows, were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense"

Email from a NYC reader: "Here in New York, there is an old subway station (190th St. and Ft. Washington Ave. in Manhattan) built sometime in the 1920s. For over 70 years the station floor had a geometric pattern in a Greek Motif that included, yes, swastikas. We are talking, in a station, in a neighborhood that was mostly Jewish, including a majority of whom, were European refugees after World War II. Yet nobody ever complained because, as one Jewish neighbor told me, the architecture of the station predated the Nazis and was never meant to offend so no offense was taken. That is until the PC 90's when someone did complain and the bricks were removed and replaced with big ugly black squares. Ironically, the neighborhood now only has a small Jewish minority".

PETA anti-Jewish: "Animal slaughter is not a pretty sight by any means. But a scandal rocked the Jewish world earlier this month when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) released a secretly recorded videotape of the Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse of the largest American producer of kosher meat, alleging that its practices amounted to outright animal cruelty. PETA's charges indeed raise some important questions. But its behavior in conducting its investigation, coupled with inflammatory past statements, suggests that the group has marked shechita -- Jewish ritual slaughter -- for extinction."

Boortz: "Yesterday the U.N. conducted its first ceremony remembering The Holocaust. To no one's surprise, the U.N. hall was half-empty, and all Arab countries were absent, except for Jordan. For his part, UN Secretary-General Kofi "Oil-For-Food" Annan was on hand to give a speech. Now ask yourself this: how many nations would be on hand to hear a speech by Fidel Castro? Your answer: nearly all of them, and the place would be packed. The rogue states and thug dictators that make up the UN would be more than happy to salute a ruthless communist. But when it comes to memorializing The Holocaust, they won't be bothered."

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ELSEWHERE

There is a new blog here written by a New Zealander in Sweden. So you get a combination of Swedish and New Zealand news -- both of which are pretty weird. You may need a strong stomach to read about Sweden's "abortion jewellery" though.

Thank goodness for a country where people get together to help the elderly beat an arrogant bureaucracy: "Braving frigid temperatures outside the Rockingham County Courthouse on Tuesday, protesters accused Hampton town officials of "breaking up a family" by suing two residents for converting their home into a use forbidden by law.... Burbank was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday in response to the town's claim that she and her 95-year-old aunt, Myrtle Woodward, were in violation of a zoning rule prohibiting two-family residences for having converted their garage into an apartment for Burbank's daughter, Kim Burbank."

Max Boot has a good summary of the popular but fact-free Leftist journalist Seymour Hersh.

Anti-Catholic propaganda: "On Jan. 9, 2005 the New York Times published a prominent article entitled "Saving Jewish Children, But At What Cost?" in which it accuses the Vatican and Pope Pius XII of having given instructions not to allow Jewish children who had been sheltered by Catholics during the war to return to their own families. As we shall demonstrate, the article published by the New York Times was unfair, misleading and did not undergo the most rudimentary fact checking. Furthermore, it is grossly defamatory. As a result both its authors Elaine Sciolino and Jason Horowitz as well as the Times' Executive Editor Bill Keller should be fired. In fact, in its article the New York Times was echoing similar accusations based on the same document made by Alberto Melloni in the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera on December 28, 2004. Melloni's sensationalism, repeated by the New York Times, has already been exposed by two of Italy's top Pius XII experts, Andrea Tornielli and Prof. Matteo L. Napolitano (co-authors of the book, Il Papa che salvo gli Ebrei)" [The book title translates as: "The Pope who saved the Hebrews"]

Wicked Thoughts has just put up some amusing news items

My least visited blog is probably "Leftists as Elitists". But I do get some remarkable stuff for it at times. This post is absolutely full of hate for ordinary Americans and a reader rightly comments on it: "This thinking sets up the Leftist to conclude that since Americans are not likeable people, that they are defiantly mean and craven, that they are just as loathsome as the evil exploiters, then mass murder, "re-education" camps and general oppression are the morally right and even necessary response to this situation. It's only a matter of time.."

My latest posting on MarxWords shows The lofty contempt Engels had for democracy. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at COLOSSIANS 2:9 -- "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (KJ)

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/29/2005 07:44:00 PM

Friday, January 28, 2005

 
ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA KEEPS ORDINARY MUSLIMS FOOLED

The suicide bomber who blew himself up in a U.S. mess hall in Mosul, Iraq, on Dec. 21 was Saudi Arabian, according to the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. Ahmed Said Ahmed al-Ghamdi killed 22 people. His profile upsets the conventional - and faulty - perception of terrorists as uneducated, poor and desperate individuals. Al-Ghamdi was well-educated - a medical student. And he came from a wealthy and well-connected Saudi Arabian family. His father is a Saudi ambassador....

Why would young men like the al-Ghamdis answer the call of jihad to kill Americans? An answer can be found in an article published three days before the Mosul bombing in the Saudi government daily Al-Watan. In it, reporter Fakriya Ahmad charges that American military forces in Iraq are savagely harvesting the organs of Iraqi insurgents to sell in the United States. Medical teams following the troops allegedly offer "$40 for every usable kidney and $25 for an eye," according to translations by the Middle East Media Research Institute. Some are taken from wounded fighters who are still alive, and then they're put to death, their mutilated bodies burned to conceal the crime.

Fantastic conspiracy theories are commonplace in the Middle Eastern media. Zionist plots abound, such as the threat to emasculate the men of Khartoum, Sudan, using "laser controlled, surgical robots" disguised as combs. That 2003 story, too, came from Al-Watan. Such myths, while serving to remind people of the ever-present danger posed by the devious Jews, are subordinate to a more important theme. The paramount message is that every hardship and catastrophic event, whether man-made or seemingly an act of God, is in reality the result of the evil forces of Western imperialism, with the United States and Israel as its vanguard.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

What an insult! "On a day where the 1,5 million victims of the Nazi terror in the Auschwitz concentration camp are remembered, some German left-wing media stress the connection to - Guant�namo Bay and Abu Ghraib, where on November 9, 2003, former employees of Saddam Hussein had the misfortunes of being mistreated by a few U.S. guards.... How things have changed. In the post-war past in Germany, the Right wanted to minimize the atrocities committed in the concentration camps in the name of Germany. Now the Left - in their never ending desire to smear the current U.S. administration - minimizes the image of the holocaust by comparing the years-long gassing of millions of jews in Nazi Germany to the mistreatment of a limited number of Iraqis on just one day or on a couple of days. And this comparison (1, 2) has already become something of a tradition in the German media".

The Australian influence on Britain seems to be ever-growing. Not only do Brits now drink as much Australian wine as French but London's The Times is even using Australian slang ("Pommy sheila") in its headlines. One day Britain's Michael Howard (Tory leader) might even learn from Australia's John Howard.

Anti-Christian fanatics: "If the activists are trembling, the pundits are exploding. For example, professor David Domke is fond of counting the number of times Bush has invoked God in his speeches, and is now worried that the president sees himself as `a prophetic spokesman for God.' Similarly, Ellis Henican of Newsday believes `The Party of God is now fully in charge,' contending that Bush `considers himself as God's own prophet.' Boston University professor Stephen Prothero is hyperventilating over his hunch that we now have `a Jesus lover in the Oval Office.' Professor William Cook at the University of La Verne says Bush's supporters believe they have a `divinely anointed Emperor' in charge. And author Abid Ullah Jan goes one better, saying that Bush `has assumed the role of the first in the new line of corrupt popes.'

Dutch kooks: "A bank robber has been allowed to claim the cost of a pistol used in a hold-up as a legitimate business expense. A Dutch court has permitted the 46-year-old man to set the 2000 Euro ($3400) cost of the gun against his gross proceeds of 6750 Euros, gained during his raid on a bank in the southern town of Chaam. The judge at Breda Criminal Court duly reduced his fine by the same amount, while sentencing him to four years in jail."

TV biased against religion: "Today the Parents Television Council (PTC), the nation's most influential advocacy organization protecting children against sex, violence and profanity in entertainment, in conjunction with the National Religious Broadcasters, released the results of a new study entitled Faith in a Box: Entertainment Television and Religion. The study found that television's treatment of religion has become increasingly negative and doesn't reflect the viewpoints of a majority of Americans. The study also found that NBC by far leads the other major networks in terms of the number of negative depictions of faith".

What complete and utter ignorance of the American founders! "At the first inauguration of a president, in 1789, George Washington wanted to wear a suit covered in gold leaf with a special cape, and ride to the ceremony on a white horse escorted by an honour guard on white horses. Like a coronation". Prof. Bunyip pisses all over the ignoramus who wrote it.

Jonathan Gurwitz asks where are the Leftist "human shields" now that Iraqi polling places face bombings from the Islamofascists? Could it be that they really know that the Islamofascists are ruthless butchers?

This story of how some of the world's most famous organizations cannot get their software to work even after spending hundreds of millions on it should in a fair world engender a lot of respect for Microsoft. There are some similar awful examples from Australia, too -- including the software that was supposed to work our new submarines.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big range of select reading.

Nathan Tabor argues that there should be more promotion of adoption as an alternative to abortion.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx despised Jews but still sought money from them. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 1:3 "Without him was not anything made that was made".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/28/2005 06:50:00 PM

Thursday, January 27, 2005

 
CONDI IS A COMMO!

The latest flight of the Leftist imagination:

"Testifying before Congress last week, Condoleezza Rice gave little indication that she grasps the central challenge of the next four years: restoring American credibility in the war of ideas against totalitarian Islam with a new era of candor, acknowledgment of past errors, and clear signs of having learned from them....But then, on the second day of the hearings, Biden managed to elicit an unexpected and revealing response from Rice, when he said that the U.S. government has to both "level with the American people" and "be honest with the world." "Otherwise," Biden added, "we'll do terrible damage beyond what we've already done to our credibility." Rice then offered the following retort:

I said yesterday, Senator, we've made a lot of decisions in this period of time. Some of them have been very good. Some of them have not been very good. Some of them have been bad decisions, I'm sure. I know enough about history to stand back and to recognize that you judge decisions not at the moment but in how it all adds up. And that's just strongly the way I feel about big historical changes. I'm being as straightforward with you as I possibly can. [emphasis added]

The idea that a decision cannot be judged at the moment but only retrospectively opens a slippery slope of justification. The future Secretary of State was indulging an understanding of politics favored by advocates of a Hegelian view of history--most of whom have, in the last century, been communists. In his lectures on the philosophy of history delivered in the early nineteenth century, the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel argued that history was a slaughter bench on which the happiness of individuals was sacrificed.... The achievement of freedom, or in the case of the communists, the classless society, justified the sacrifices on the path to its perfection--as if such perfection could not, in the end, have come about without those sacrifices.... The capacity of history to absolve political actors is a cynical and immoral doctrine. No one can know for sure how political decisions will turn out".

So Condi makes the perfectly simple and commonsense point that it is the sum of the decisions that matters -- nobody gets it right all the time -- and that is somehow twisted into a claim that the end justifies the means! Pathetic

If Condi had been a REAL Commo she would have denied that the government ever made any mistakes. My own recollection of the Communist mind is amusing: When I was teaching sociology at the University of New South Wales about 25 years ago, we were privileged to receive an official visitor from the Soviet Union -- the very unglamorous head of some Soviet Women's organization. The reception she received from the sociologists was rapturous until some naive person asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied with great aplomb: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution." I could have died laughing at the visible mental indigestion that remark caused! I can still remember the looks on some of the faces!

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FAR LEFT SHOW THEIR TRUE COLOURS

Hatred of America trumps all else for them

"The murder of a prominent trade unionist in Iraq has provoked a split in the anti-war movement in Britain over whether he should be seen as a hero or a collaborator with the American-led occupation. The torture and killing of Hadi Saleh in Baghdad on 4 January has become a litmus test of whether campaigners who opposed the Iraq war should "move on" and embrace moves towards democracy in the country. The more moderate voices in the anti-war camp have accused hardliners of failing to condemn the murder and implying it was a justified act by insurgents.

Mr Saleh, the international officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, spent five years in jail during Saddam Hussein's regime. He returned from exile abroad after Saddam's fall to try to establish trade unions in the new Iraq. Allies say he was tied, blindfolded, severely tortured and strangled by an electric cord as part of a campaign by the "Iraqi resistance" to eradicate democrats.

His killing has been condemned by trade union bodies around the world, including the TUC, and many critics of the war. But the Stop the War Coalition has been accused of remaining virtually silent - a charge it dismisses as a smear by opponents. Gary Kent, director of Labour Friends of Iraq (LIFQ), said yesterday: "This horrible murder has galvanised the decent left who mostly opposed the war but cannot stomach ambiguities or worse on the so-called resistance. It illustrates there is a large faultline on the left about post-war Iraq. Some armchair revolutionaries are happy to fight to the last drop of someone else's blood. But the elementary notion of solidarity with Iraqi trade unions is fast winning the day, and about time too.""

More here

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ELSEWHERE

There is a nostalgic article in the moderate-Leftist American Prospect praising Truman and other Democrats of his era and wishing that the modern Left were as anti-Communist. The article assures us however that Truman would not have invaded Iraq. He would only have done tough talk. What a crock! We know how Truman beat the Japanese: He nuked them! It is GWB who is the moderate today.

Schroeder nearly gets it right: "German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has used a commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago to declare that ordinary Germans were responsible for the Holocaust. Speaking to an audience including several Auschwitz survivors, Mr Schroeder said the horrors of the concentration camp could not be explained by merely blaming the "demon Hitler". "The evil of the Nazi ideology did not come out of nowhere. The brutalisation of thought and the lack of moral inhibitions had a history," he said. "One thing is clear: the Nazi ideology was willed by people and carried out by people."" [And who are the people who say there is no such thing as right and wrong?]

Yesterday was the anniversary of white settlers first arriving in Australia: "Shortly after dawn in Sydney, George Street was echoing with the inevitable chants of "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi! Oi! Oi!" By midday, parks, pools and harbour foreshores were filled with people not just waving, but wearing flags. They had all come together for fireworks and ferry races, barbecues and beach cricket, drinking and debate.... Whatever Australians think of their day, visitors are impressed. Fiona Edwards, 26, from York in England, spent the day working at Doyle's fish restaurant. "It's really nice to see how proud everyone is of being Australian," she said. "We have St George's Day but most people don't even know when it is, and it's not a day off work or anything ... So many people have turned out, everyone's got the flags, they've got special T-shirts. It's just really nice to see everyone in a good mood." [I celebrated the day at a BBQ with relatives]

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx despised the workers as "donkeys". My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at JOHN 1: 29-34 ("The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world")

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/27/2005 08:47:00 PM

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

 
FROM BROOKES NEWS

Associated Press put terrorist collaborators on its payroll We now have evidence that Associated Press has been collaborating with terrorists in Iraq
Alberto Gonzales, terrorists and lying journalists When it comes to dishonesty, selective outrage and fake humanitarianism our media are second to none - Marian Wilkinson is no exception
Journalist smears Iraq's coming election If you want to know why Coalition troops have started to call journalists "roaches" then look no further than the likes of Paul McGeough
Problems with markets? Free market advocates place great store on moral frameworks and sound social institutions. Never forget that Adam Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher
Saving and wealth creation Why savings fuel economic growth
Clinton's taxes did not cause America's recession There are two common explanations for America's recession. Both are wrong

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

What does ACLU stand for? I think it is now clear that it SHOULD stand for "American Christianity Lashing Union". A post here notes how they continue to distort what the U.S. constitution says about freedom of religion despite being caught out at it. (Via Peg Kaplan).

Great! The Conservative Philosopher blog is now up and running. An amusing thing is that one of the commenters identifies himself as "JR" -- which is an ID that I often use -- but it isn't me! He sounds a lot like me too. (Yes. I know that in Latinate grammar I should have said: "It isn't I").

Amazing! Socialist Worker (Trotskyites, I think) says GWB is NOT A Fascist! "Certainly, during his first term, George W. Bush got away with more reactionary attacks than anyone had expected.... But this isn't the proof of fascism--because all of these assaults have been carried out in one form or another by governments in the U.S. and elsewhere that are considered democratic, and often enough when the ruling party was the "liberal" alternative.... As appalling as the Bush administration's attacks have been, the situation today doesn't approach the violence of a fascist regime. What's more, if you define fascism to mean increased police powers and gutted civil liberties, then you have to consider the Democrats to be fascists, too." [Trotsky was a murderous bastard but he was right in saying that Lenin was just as Fascist as Hitler. So some realism in his followers is to be expected]

Arnold Kling has some excellent comments on Jim Bennett's book The Anglosphere Challenge -- a book which celebrates the traditions and values of the English and their derivative societies. Kling makes the point that I often do -- that traditional English values are essentially conservative rather than Leftist.

Bill Gates shows up the U.N.: "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doubling its contribution to increase access to basic childhood vaccinations in the world's poorest nations, bringing its total commitment to $1.5 billion. Over the next decade, the foundation will donate $750 million more to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, a partnership of private donors, companies and multilateral organizations, known as G.A.V.I. Melinda Gates said that the foundation was doubling the $750 million donation it made in 1999 to establish the alliance because that donation was "the best investment we've made." She said that more than 42 million children had been vaccinated against hepatitis B, that more than 670,000 premature deaths had been prevented from 2001 through 2003"

GWB is realistic: "Despite the skeptics, all historical evidence suggests that democracy can indeed spread further, that America can serve as an agent of its advancement, as it has done all over the world, and that democracy's spread will make the world safer".

Europe waking up? "The more aggressive approach toward Sheik Omar is part of an increasing effort to monitor and restrict militant imams in Britain and across Europe. Authorities have stepped up surveillance of militant mosques in several countries, including Germany and France. French officials deported an imam this month after officials said he was inspiring men to join the jihad."

Wow! Richard Perle delivers some very good put-downs to European whimpering about Iraq here

The wages of corruption: "It is official: the French are a nation of depressed pessimists, wracked with self-doubt and unable to see a positive future. This gloomy portrait of the current state of Gallic morale - or rather the lack of it - was made public yesterday in a damning report by France's prefects, the country's top administrators. "The French no longer believe in anything," the report said. "That is the reason that the situation is relatively calm, for they believe that it is not even worthwhile expressing their opinions or trying to be heard any more." The country's 100 prefects went on to use the words "lifelessness", "resignation", "anxiety" and "pessimism" to describe the attitudes they believe prevail in France today".

Believers in democracy at work: "The sons of a first-term congresswoman and Milwaukee's former acting mayor were among five Democratic activists charged Monday with slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans to drive voters and monitors to the polls on Election Day. Sowande Omokunde, son of Rep. Gwen Moore, [D-WI] and Michael Pratt, the son of former Milwaukee acting mayor Marvin Pratt, were among those charged with criminal damage to property, a felony that carries a maximum punishment of 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The activists are accused of flattening the tires on 25 vehicles rented by the state Republican Party to get out the vote and deliver poll watchers Nov. 2. The GOP rented more than 100 vehicles that were parked in a lot adjacent to a Bush campaign office. The party planned to drive poll watchers to polling places by 7 a.m. and deliver any voters who didn't have a ride."

I have received the following rather amusing email: "The Culinary Institute of America notes your mention of our college in your comments from Friday, Jan. 21. Please be aware the so-called quote from The Culinary Insitute of America was made up by the author of an article that appeared in the Weekly Standard. A close review of this article notes a future dateline of Feb. 13, 2005, with a later comment that the scenario is "undoubtedly just around the corner." Would you please clarify for your readers that the quote was a figment of the author's imagination, and the "spokesperson" quoted -- Ray Facino -- does not exist. Our college is disturbed by the inappropriate and inaccurate use of our name and has requested The Weekly Standard print a retraction and/or clarification".

My latest posting on MarxWords shows where Hegel got at least some of his ideas. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at ROMANS 9:5 -- "Christ came who is over all, God blessed forever"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/26/2005 07:28:00 PM

Monday, January 24, 2005

 
SOME ECONOMICS

A socialist economist who finally learnt: "Capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure. Here is the part that's hard to swallow. It has been the Friedmans, Hayeks, and von Miseses who have maintained that capitalism would flourish and that socialism would develop incurable ailments. All three have regarded capitalism as the 'natural' system of free men; all have maintained that left to its own devices capitalism would achieve material growth more successfully than any other system. From [my samplings] I draw the following discomforting generalization: The farther to the right one looks, the more prescient has been the historical foresight; the farther to the left, the less so".

There is a big article here which says that Communism has made a pretty big comeback in Latin America. There is certainly a strong Leftist influence there but there is some economic sanity there too so it remains to be seen how it will all end up. Stupid and brutish governments seem to be a tradition in Latin America, however, so whatever happens is unlikely to be much of a surprise. Only Chile is flourishing economically, thanks to Pinochet and the "Chicago" economists that he gave the economic reins to: "The Chilean economy after all, has posted growth rates above 7% per year for many years now"

Administration stupidity: "Less than two weeks after a 40-foot wave flattened massive swaths of Southeast Asia, the United States slapped a tariff on millions of dollars worth of seafood imports from India and Thailand. As the federal government promised $350 million, and private citizens pledged even more, the message to surviving shrimp farmers was clear: Have our marines, our pity, and our cash, but for the love of God, do not send us your cheap shrimp."

Another good debunking of the Wal-Mart bashers here. They are so keen to bash Wal-Mart that they are even praising Henry Ford! Ford was of course once the great heartless capitalist bugaboo of the Left who turned men into machines and "alienated" them. Consistency is not a Leftist virtue. Like Leftists generally, the Wal-Mart bashers find one little fact they like and then proceed to ignore all the other relevant facts.

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ELSEWHERE

Have a look at this picture of Russian Communists today. Note the semi-Nazi salute and the way the old Soviet flag has been remodeled Nazi-style with a black motif in a white circle on a red background. A visible sign of Nazi/Communist fusion. If they are Putin's opposition, Putin looks better all the time. For those who don't remember, the old Soviet flag was a yellow motif on a simple red background.

IQ rules again: "The risk of suicide is two to three times higher among men with low intelligence, and poorly performing offspring of well-educated parents are at the greatest risk. Low intelligence could lessen the "ability to solve problems while going through an acute life crisis", says a study in the British Medical Journal that analysed data from almost 1 million Swedish men.... The researchers looked at the military service records of 987,308 Swedish men born between 1950 and 1976. All the men had complete sets of intelligence test results at the commencement of their military service. Better performance in the tests was associated with reduced risk of suicide".

Leftist hypocrisy about IQ again: Leftists normally deny that there really is such a thing as IQ. All men are equal, aren't they? As we know, that was suddenly forgotten when someone cooked up a spurious table showing that "red" States had low IQs on average. Spurious IQ data was as popular as real IQ data is not. As this writer points out Leftists also rediscover IQ when it suits their "soft on crime" agenda. They constantly claim that low IQ murderers should not be executed, for instance.

There is a detailed story here that tends to show that America's most relentless enemy in Iraq is the American mainstream media.

Not all libertarians are peaceniks: "As attempts to stereotype Libertarians have proven, generalizations are futile. It's no more reasonable to say members of the Libertarian Party are politically far right than it is to say they're far left -- although party members are frequently hit with both labels. And you can't safely say Libertarians are anti-military -- assuming the military is being used properly for national defense. In fact, there are hundreds of military personnel in the party's membership -- many of whom were recently asked to consider telling their stories for LP News, the monthly Libertarian Party newspaper....."

What a faker! "On the eve of the presidential inauguration, US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton embraced an issue some pundits say helped seal a second term for George W. Bush: acceptance of the role of faith in addressing social ills. In a speech at a fund-raising dinner for a Boston-based organization that promotes faith-based solutions to social problems, Clinton said there has been a 'false division' between faith-based approaches to social problems and respect for the separation of church of state. 'There is no contradiction between support for faith-based initiatives and upholding our constitutional principles,' said Clinton ... [who] invoked God more than half a dozen times, at one point declaring, 'I've always been a praying person.'"

Criminals are just misunderstood, of course: "A convicted murderer, who escaped the death penalty, was given a life sentence, and then was released on parole, is going back to prison on another life sentence - this time for the rape last fall of a 9-year-old girl near a Bryan elementary school. This is the second time that Donald James Sallows, Jr., 54, who was involved in the kidnapping and strangulation of a South Toledo man in 1977, has violated his parole by having sexual contact with children. In 1998, after being out of prison for slightly more than three years, he was sent back to prison for unlawful sexual contact with a 4-year-old. Less than five years later, he was out on parole again"

I have just put up an email from a reader on the subject of homosexual life expectancy here

My latest posting on MarxWords tells you all you need to know about Hegel in one easy lesson. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at what Jesus means when he says "my" Father rather than "our" Father.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/24/2005 07:00:00 PM

Sunday, January 23, 2005

 
THE "NEOCONSERVATIVE" BOGEYMAN

V.D. Hanson debunks the nonsense you hear. Excerpt:

"Neo- is a prefix that derives from the Greek adjective neos - "new" or "fresh" - and in theory it is used inexactly for those conservatives who once were not - or for those who have reinterpreted conservatism .. But the accepted definition has given way in practice to refer to the more particular proponents of the use of military action to remove threatening governments, and to replace them with democratic systems - hence the occasional sobriquets of "neo-Wilsonian." But for a number of detractors, "neoconservative" is also little more than generic disparagement, and (off-the-record) it is synonymous with American Jews who seek to alter American foreign policy to the wishes of the right-wing Likud party of Israel.

Yet note the misinformation about its meaning and usage. The five most prominent makers of American foreign policy at the moment - George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld - are (1) not Jewish, (2) hard-headed and not easily bamboozled by any supposed cabal, and (3) were mostly in the past identified with the "realist" school and especially skeptical of using the military frequently for anything resembling Clintonian peace-keeping.

So, for example, while Secretary Rumsfeld signed the now-infamous 1998 letter to President Clinton calling for the de-facto preemptive removal of Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice did not. Yet Richard Armitage - considered a stalwart in the Colin Powell camp - was a signatory."

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ELSEWHERE

I take close to zero interest in homosexual issues so I am indebted to Chris Vinall for drawing my attention to a controversy about homosexual life-expectancy. I referred to a figure of around 40 taken from Omega in my post of two days ago. Chris draws my attention to this article in "Slate" and infers that Omega used dubious data too. Note however this quote from the article in "Slate": "The actual average age of AIDS patients at death has been about 40". No-one is claiming that all homosexuals get AIDS but many do and that is all that is required for my argument. I have in fact myself had two homosexual friends die young because of AIDS. I might mention in passing that I quoted a statistic from Omega because it is a mainstream academic journal in the field of death studies. I have had a couple of articles in it myself so know something of it.

Interesting tribute from a prominent Leftist: "I have known President Bush for 40 years - ever since we attended Yale College together in the 1960s. I'm a Democrat (and I was a Democrat then), but I liked him and I still like him, as a sincere and kind man and a good friend.... One of my most vivid memories is this: A few of us were in the common room one night. It was 1965, I believe - my junior year, his sophomore. We were making our usual sarcastic commentaries on those who walked by us. A little nasty perhaps, but always with a touch of humor. On this occasion, however, someone we all believed to be gay walked by, although the word we used in those days was "queer." Someone, I'm sorry to say, snidely used that word as he walked by. George heard it and, most uncharacteristically, snapped: "Shut up." Then he said, in words I can remember almost verbatim: "Why don't you try walking in his shoes for a while and see how it feels before you make a comment like that?"" (Via Commonsense & Wonder).

Sick university honours sick professor: "Villanova University on Thursday will dedicate a new section of its library to a star professor and student favorite who committed suicide in August 2003 while in jail. Mine Ener was behind bars after admitting she had killed her 6-month old, Down Syndrome-afflicted daughter by slashing the baby's throat... Giordano suggested that the school was giving special consideration to Ener because she was a scholar in the field of Islamic studies."

Story about U.N. parasites here: "It has been three weeks since my ship, the USS Abraham Lincoln, arrived off the Sumatran coast to aid the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami that ravaged their coastline. I'd like to say that this has been a rewarding experience for us, but it has not: Instead, it has been a frustrating and needlessly dangerous exercise made even more difficult by the Indonesian government and a traveling circus of so-called aid workers who have invaded our spaces.... As a result of having to host these people, our severely over-tasked SH-60 Seahawk helos, which were carrying tons of food and water every day to the most inaccessible places in and around Banda Aceh, are now used in great part to ferry these "relief workers" from place to place every day and bring them back to their guest bedrooms on the Lincoln at night."

What's the greatest tragedy of the last century? ......Hitler's Third Reich, Stalin's Great Purge, Mao's collectivization, Michael Jackson's latest Kids' Day? Wrong.... it was the banning of the pesticide DDT: "Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler."... DDT was not a carcinogen, scientists knew it wasn't a carcinogen, and that its replacement, Parathion, was the real toxin, causing the death of hundreds of farm workers. What's the point of this revelation? That public hysteria for fear-driven, emotional, and unscientific quick "fixes" can lead to unintended consequences that are much worse than any perceived crisis"

Blithering Bunny reports that the University of Sydney (who once awarded me a rather large and fancy document) are sponsoring an incomprehensible conference: "This conference brings together two key figures in the contemporary reconsideration of the concept of origin. Radical theorist and activist, Antonio Negri has introduced a materialist perspective on the concept of origin through his investigations of constituent power and multitudes. Italian feminist philosopher, Adriana Cavarero has been engaged in reconceiving origin through the thought of sexual difference, an ethics of embodiment and more recently, the politics of vocal expression.... Antonio Negri was an architect of the infamous Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group. In 1979, he was arrested and charged with "armed insurrection against the state" and seventeen murders, including the murder of the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro"

EU crumbling: "The CIA has predicted that the European Union will break-up within 15 years unless it radically reforms its ailing welfare systems. The report by the intelligence agency, which forecasts how the world will look in 2020, warns that Europe could be dragged into economic decline by its ageing population. It also predicts the end of Nato and post-1945 military alliances. In a devastating indictment of EU economic prospects, the report warns: "The current EU welfare state is unsustainable and the lack of any economic revitalisation could lead to the splintering or, at worst, disintegration of the EU"

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx treated the illness of a relative as great news. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Acts 20:28 -- "... the church of the Lord which he obtained with his own blood".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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


posted by JR 1/23/2005 07:24:00 PM

Saturday, January 22, 2005

 
WHO WAS THE FASCIST B****** WHO SAID THIS?

A selective account of American history used to justify actions elsewhere:

"Just a word about "universal fraternal union of peoples" and the drawing of "boundaries established by the sovereign will of the peoples themselves on the basis of their national characteristics". The United States and Mexico are two republics, in both of which the people is sovereign.

How did it happen that over Texas a war broke out between these two republics, which, according to the moral theory, ought to have been "fraternally united" and "federated", and that, owing to "geographical, commercial and strategical necessities", the "sovereign will" of the American people, supported by the bravery of the American volunteers, shifted the boundaries drawn by nature some hundreds of miles further south? And will B. accuse the Americans of a "war of conquest", which, although it deals with a severe blow to his theory based on "justice and humanity", was nevertheless waged wholly and solely in the interest of civilization? Or is it perhaps unfortunate that splendid California has been taken away from the lazy Mexicans, who could not do anything with it? That the energetic Yankees by rapid exploitation of the California gold mines will increase the means of circulation, in a few years will concentrate a dense population and extensive trade at the most suitable places on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, create large cities, open up communications by steamship, construct a railway from New York to San Francisco, for the first time really open the Pacific Ocean to civilization, and for the third time in history give the world trade a new direction? The "independence" of a few Spanish Californians and Texans may suffer because of it, in someplaces "justice" and other moral principles may be violated; but what does that matter to such facts of world-historic significance?"

So who was it who rejected morality and believed that the superiority of one people over another gave the stronger one the right to seize the territory of the weaker one? Was it Hitler justifying his invasion of Poland? No. It was clearly written before that and it was written by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's co-author. See here.

So what does that show? It shows that Mussolini's Fascism, Hitler's Nazism and Lenin's Communism were all Marxist. We are always told how "Rightist" ideas such as the above are but in the days of Hitler and Mussolini such ideas were LEFTIST. Practically everybody in the 19th century believed that some races and nations were superior to others but it was the Leftists who wanted to use such ideas to justify merciless oppression of one race or nation by another. The British, by contrast, saw their suzerainty over India as the white man's BURDEN (in Kipling's famous phrase). They did not see it as a licence to kill. When one erring General (Dyer) committed the Amritsar massacre in India, there was great public outrage in Britain and he was cashiered over it. By contrast, read a little further in the article by Engels just quoted and see what he wanted to do to the Czechs:

"And for this cowardly, base betrayal of the revolution we shall at some time take a bloody revenge against the Slavs".

So what had the Czech Slavs done to have such bloodlust aimed at them? They were not revolutionary enough! The Czech Leftists had made peace with their government. THAT was their terrible crime! So we see where both Lenin and Hitler were coming from.

The same thing applied to eugenics. The idea was invented by the conservative Galton but it was the Leftists who wanted to use it as an excuse for the merciless and forcible control of people's lives. As it says here:

"Galton's proposals were benign compared with those of famous contemporaries who rallied to his cause. H. G. Wells, for instance, declared, "It is in the sterilisation of failures, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies." Although Galton was a conservative, his creed caught on with progressive figures like Harold Laski, John Maynard Keynes, George Bernard Shaw, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. In the United States, New York disciples founded the Galton Society, which met regularly at the American Museum of Natural History, and popularizers helped the rest of the country become eugenics-minded. "How long are we Americans to be so careful for the pedigree of our pigs and chickens and cattle-and then leave the ancestry of our children to chance or to `blind' sentiment?" asked a placard at an exposition in Philadelphia. Four years before Galton's death, the Indiana legislature passed the first state sterilization law, "to prevent the procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists." Most of the other states soon followed. In all, there were some sixty thousand court-ordered sterilizations of Americans who were judged to be eugenically unfit".

So Hitler's eugenics simply made him a good Leftist of his time. It did NOT make him a Rightist. More on what Marx and Engels actually preached at MarxWords. So although Germany is rightly blamed for much evil, it is in a sense the wrong German who gets blamed. It should be Engels, not Hitler. Hitler just implemented what Engels preached. But in all the big commemorations of the war they will be having in Germany soon, how often do you think that will be mentioned?

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ELSEWHERE

A good comment from an Australian reader on my leading post yesterday: ""Spiked" recently had an interesting article on the politically correct use of 'homophobia'. Your link on gay domestic violence may even indicate that homophilic violence (not always 'domestic') is a bigger threat to gays than homophobic violence. Of course it is political correctness types, not necessarily gays themselves, who push this homophobia barrow. Basically as part of their bigger agenda to curtail personal liberty for all people gay or not, presumably to socially engineer their utopian fantasy. I think most people, including most minority members, would rather have strong broad-based legal protections for all and a non-intrusive state and put up with the ratbag and bigoted views of some of their neighbours, than risk our personal freedoms in a futile crusade for universal tolerance".

The "protests" at GWB's inauguration have inspired one blogger to say that America has become "Berkelified". He then goes on the explain the "reasoning" behind the protests. "Look at me" about sums up the real motivation of the protestors. In case you DO want to see all the weird shapes and sizes that egotism comes in, One Hundred Percenter has some photos.

And here is a sample of the vast intellect behind the protests: "In cold, snowy Washington, about a hundred protesters gathered outside the "Black Tie and Boots" inaugural ball on Wednesday night, comparing President George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler because Bush is "exterminating the Muslim race." "It is no different in that Hitler killed so many Jews, and George Bush, you know, is exterminating the Muslim race and others," said a man who identified himself only as Don from Florida. Don held up a sign with the words "Vote Republican" written over a Nazi swastika. "It's just a form of fascism -- the Patriot Act and everything -- they stole the vote".

Taranto: "UC Berkeley recently completed what a press release describes as "the first attempt to compare measures of mental health and general well-being among California's general population on a county-level basis." The study (link in PDF) finds that the two counties with the lowest "mental health scores" are Alameda, which includes Berkeley, and San Francisco, which is coterminous with the city. (See page 30 of the PDF document, which is page 21 of the printed report.). What else do these counties have in common? They are the California counties where John Kerry did best: 83% of the vote in San Francisco and 75% in Alameda. You don't have to be crazy to oppose President Bush, but it doesn't hurt".

Loony British welfare: "A think-tank claims that married couples are being rewarded for splitting up. The tax and benefits system subsidises marriage break-up and rewards lone parents with handouts at the expense of married couples, a report says. The average couple-family, where one partner has a job, is 1 pound a week better off than the average workless one-parent family because lone parents get so much extra support from the state"

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx despised peaceful political movements. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 1:1 as a concession to popular Christolatry.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/22/2005 06:33:00 PM

Friday, January 21, 2005

 
"HOMOPHOBIA"

I no more believe in persecuting homosexuals than I believe in kicking sick dogs but I am quite fed up with the way the Left keep banging on about "homophobia". Now that Leftists mostly admit that they hate Jews and don't send their kids to schools in black neighbourhoods, the poor old queers seem to be about all that the Left have still got to patronize. And calling homosexuals "gay" is the biggest laugh of all. They are not too gay in the final stages of AIDS and the incidence of domestic violence among homosexual couples seems to be enormous. For instance: "One study found 79% of gay victims had suffered some physical injury".

And the whole "homophobia" chant is about a myth anyway. "Phobia" comes from the Greek word "phobos", meaning "fear" and I have yet to meet ANYONE who fears homosexuals. In my observation, the thought of homosexual behaviour disgusts normal people (as we would expect it to on evolutionary grounds) but disgust is a long way from fear and even further from hate.

Homosexual behaviour is using sexual organs in an abnormal way so it seems to me simply accurate to call it perverted or deviant or queer but if people don't have a right to do what they want with their own bodies then the state of liberty is very bad indeed. So I see no reason whatever why their private behaviour should earn homosexuals any kind of punishment or hurt or bad treatment. And as far as I can see, that is overwhelmingly both the normal view and the normal practice throughout the Western world today. I do however have the perfectly mainstream belief that homosexual advocacy should be kept away from children. As far as I can see, some homosexual behaviour is innate and some is learned. So some kids could go either way. And all parents want the happiest life possible for their children so do not want them lured into a lifestyle associated with much unhappiness and loss -- including early death. The average life expectancy of homosexuals is around 40 years. And "gay men were six times more likely to suffer adult sexual abuse or rape"

And in their never-ending efforts to draw attention to themselves it is precisely that solitary taboo -- on exposing children to homosexuality -- that Leftists devote much effort to breaking. Who they think they are benefiting by it I do not know. But benefiting anybody has never been the real Leftist aim. They are such haters that upsetting normal people leading everyday happy lives is their real kick.

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ELSEWHERE

Desperate Leftist attempt to find "war crimes": "The Culinary Institute of America yesterday denounced participation of military nutritionists in torture of Guantanamo detainees. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, nutritionists on the Cuban naval base assisted in the preparation of Halal meals for detainees, which were sometimes served after stressful interrogation sessions. "A deep-fried falafel burger, when a detainee's blood pressure is elevated, may be the difference between a mere violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime"". [But when Saddam put people through a shredding machine that was no problem of course]

The full text of Condi Rice's excellent confirmation speech is here. A good excerpt: "In the Middle East, President Bush has broken with six decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the hope of purchasing stability at the price of liberty. The stakes could not be higher". President Bush's inaugural speech is here. Note how in his closing words he violated the "separation of church and State" that only Leftists can find in the constitution: "May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America"

The Soviets were really teddy-bears? "The revisionist depiction of the Cold War, offered throughout the academy, is founded on fantasy. The scholarship of left-wing historians is focused on what might have been rather than what actually was. Clearly sympathetic to the ultimate aim of communism-a classless society-leftist historians like Leslie Adler and Thomas Patterson write that Soviet communism "was a system proclaiming a humanistic ideology" that had only "fail[ed] to live up to its ideal." But in truth the Bolsheviks failed to deliver in every way. They promised bread but produced chronic food storages and rationing.... Communists were mass murderers on a scale never before seen in history. In the Soviet Union, the mass killing included the wholesale murder of several hundred thousand Don Cossacks in 1919, the starving to death of as many as seven million Ukrainian peasants in 1932-1933, the execution of nearly one million party members in the purges of 1937-1938, and the burial of millions of Trotskyites and other political prisoners in the Gulag starting in the 1930s and continuing into the 1950s".

Garbologists get it right: "A German museum is offering art appreciation lessons to Frankfurt's sanitation workers, after garbage collectors lugged away a public art sculpture recently and sent it to the incinerator. Peter Postleb, head of the city's Clean Frankfurt initiative, claimed responsibility Monday for the case of mistaken identity, after garbage collectors picked up and disposed of what they thought to be construction rubbish. Though indeed made from yellow plastic sheeting used to encase cement, the item was actually a sculpture by Berlin artist Michael Beutler. It was part of a series of 10 sculptures commissioned by the municipal art society and exhibited around the city".

South African boondoggle: "One of government's flagship poverty-relief measures is in crisis, sounding warning bells ahead of local government elections later this year. Government's policy of providing free basic electricity for the poor has been lauded as one of the successes of the fight against poverty, but it has now been shown to be poorly run and failing dismally to reach those it is intended for... Ompi Aphane, chief director in the minerals and energy department, said yesterday that only 12% of the poor had received the free electricity benefit in the 18 months since its launch, while expenditure on the initiative had ballooned to about R750m 2,4 times more than budgeted.... This meant, said Aphane, that 1,7-million consumers or 88% of all municipal customers, most of whom who did not qualify for it were getting free basic electricity."

Rafe Champion has put up on the Quiggin site a brief version of some arguments why labor union activity does not benefit workers as a whole.

John Hawkins from Right Wing News has just posted the results of his poll of right-of-center bloggers on whom they consider "The Most & Least Desired 2008 Republican Nominee".

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx wanted democracy to "rot away". My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 2: 19-22, where some say Jesus promised to resurrect himself!

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/21/2005 07:22:00 PM

Thursday, January 20, 2005

 
IS CONSERVATISM NO MORE THAN BELIEF IN A FIXED HUMAN NATURE?

Mark Richardson is an Australian conservative who has a definition of conservatism that excludes most people who would normally be called conservatives. He has a blog here and one of his recent articles is here. There has always been a tendency on the extreme Right to see almost the whole world as against them and even I seem to be an extreme Leftist to such people! Mark is however not part of the fruitcake brigade. He has a well-articulated position which amounts to saying that all advocacy of freedom is Leftist (or "liberal" as he calls it) and what makes a conservative is belief in certain hereditary givens -- such as belief in the selfishness of human nature, the tribalism of man and the instinctive and ineluctible rightness of the traditional family. As a rough summary, we might say that Mark believes conservatism to consist of a belief in strong genetic limits on what we can do and become.

Most conservatives would of course agree with Mark about his three conservative themes that I have just mentioned. I myself agree fully only with the first point -- about human nature. I have set out reasons here why I believe that, although it does exist, the tribalism of man is surprisingly weak. And I also see many perfectly healthy, decent and well-functioning people emerging from a variety of family arrangements. I think that there is now overwhelming evidence from the geneticists that what we become is almost entirely a function of our genes rather than of our family environment. Even our political ideology is substantially inherited through our genes. (See e.g. here and here and here). So actual genetic research in fact undermines Mark's belief in the central importance of a given type of family environment.

What I think has happened is that Mark has gone overboard. He is the opposite swing of the pendulum to the Left. The Left believe in NO inborn limits on what human arrangements will work whereas Mark sees limits on every hand. The truth, I think, is to be found in treating what inborn limits we have as an emprical question. Their constant policy failures from the French revolution onwards show that the Leftists are wrong but what is right can only be discovered by trial and error. And that is why conservatives believe that tradition and history are important and useful. They are the laboratory in which we see what works and what doesn't.

And one thing we find in that laboratory is that we do have liberties as well as limitations and the liberties are in fact highly transformative. Giving people liberties of certain sorts -- such as economic liberty -- can be enormously beneficial. And the high value conservatives have always placed on liberty also springs from their belief in the selfishness and untrustworthiness of their fellow man: If you cannot trust your fellow-man to do you good, it is important to be as free of his control over you as possible. So Mark has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. He is right that we do work under some genetic constraints and are hence not totally free but we still can have and do have SOME liberties, and those are enormously beneficial. So it is no wonder that conservatives have long made efforts to conserve and extend liberties -- such as political liberty -- of various sorts, while also rejecting other liberties -- particularly in the moral sphere. Real-life conservatives believe in striking a balance -- which neither Leftists nor Mark do.

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ELSEWHERE

We have just seen what I think is a good end to a very nasty case of anti-white racism. A group of four California policemen were trying to subdue an aggressive and unco-operative black teenager and not having an easy time of it. At one stage one of the white officers punched the teenager. It was later agreed by all concerned that the punch was justified. Black activists made a big fuss over it however and the white policeman was then fired from his job by his black boss, charged with misconduct and put through a series of trials. The trials failed to convict him of anything. He then sued the police department for discrimination -- saying that he had been fired and put on trial only because he was white. He has just won his case and been awarded $1.6 million. A great victory for justice and against racism, it seems to me.

Iran buying bioweapons? "Iran's ambassador to Cuba said his country will increase ties to the Communist dictatorship 90 miles from Florida by extending some 20 million in euro credit. United by anti-Americanism, the two countries have grown closer in recent years - a concern to some in Washington because of Iran's sponsorship of terrorism and desire to develop weapons of mass destruction. Cuba has an extensive biological and chemical weapons development program. Plans for more scientific collaboration were announced by Ahmad Edrian, Iran's ambassador to Cuba. They include plans by Cuba to help build a plant in Iran to produce vaccines and medicines".

EU socialism crushes entrepreneurship: "The EU continues to lag behind the US when it comes to entrepreneurship, a poll published on Monday (17 January) by the European Commission shows. The survey - conducted on both sides of the Atlantic - shows that nearly twice as many Americans are thinking of setting up their own business (28 percent) than their European counterparts (15 percent). Moreover, the gap appears to be widening. The number of people thinking about starting their own firm increased by eight percent since 2003 in the US, but only by two percent in the EU." [With all the bureaucratic barriers they would have to face, Europeans are REALISTIC to write off the idea of starting a business]

Talk about special pleading! "Eliminating global poverty, disease and hunger are "utterly affordable" but need concerted action from rich nations, including a massive increase in funding for scientific research addressing the needs of the world's poor. These are among the findings of a comprehensive report by the UN Millennium Project that was presented to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan yesterday (17 January). The report calls on international donors specifically to support scientific research on health, agriculture, natural resource, energy and climate change". [It is capitalism that ends poverty, not science]

There is an article here arguing that homosexuals should be charged more for their health insurance. Why? Because of the very high medical costs associated with AIDS.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- with a very large offering this time

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Marx blackmailed his own mother! Nice type. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at an Old Testament scripture for a change (Isaiah 43:11). Did Isaiah support the Trinity?

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/20/2005 07:04:00 PM

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

 
BOOK REVIEW: A PATRIOT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

By L. Schweikart and M. Allen; Publisher: Penguin, N.Y., 2004

It is refreshing to see a book like this published by a mainstream publisher. It seems that at least one mainstream publisher sees the advantage of having some balance in their list. Penguin is normally a reliable fountain of Left-wing books. Perhaps they even bored themselves in the end. The book is however on a special "Sentinel" list for specifically conservative books. Quarantining conservative books like a dangerous disease is a sort of a compliment to such books, though. It shows how much they threaten the Leftist orthodoxy.

From what I can gather, American history as it is taught in most American schools these days consists mainly of a series of crimes committed against minorities and others by "dead white males". The situation is similar in Australia, where we are routinely told that our white ancestors committed "genocide" against the Tasmanian aborigines -- although the aborigines concerned in fact died out from the effects of white men's diseases rather than white men's bullets.

This book is certainly meant to be an alternative to the Leftist propaganda by Howard Zinn and others that passes for school textbooks these days but it does not insult our intelligence by substituting Rightist propaganda for Leftist propaganda. If it had been conservative propaganda, for instance, we might expect it to stress the central importance of the Pilgrim fathers and their Christian faith in the American founding. And double that if you are aware that Schweikart is a committed Christian. In fact, however, the book glides over this small group of blown-off-course religious renegades as the relatively minor event in the British settlement of North America that it was. The Mayflower Pilgrims get in fact less than two pages out of 928. Even Africans arrived in North America before the Pilgrims! If any of that jars you, you need to read the book.

I will not say any more about the book other than to say that it is a meticulous and balanced coverage of the WHOLE of American history right up to the present day. And it only needs the facts to explode heaps of Leftist myths along the way. Don't even get me started on the New Deal and the Great Depression!

I have previously mentioned the excellent A politically incorrect Guide to American history by Tom Woods, which focuses specifically on debunking Leftist myths. This book by contrast is a "just the facts" approach to the whole of American history. Both for students and as a comprehensive one-volume home reference I know of nothing better. And, given recent scandals, I guess I should mention that neither Penguin nor anyone else are paying me to say that. Being both well-off and too old for any shenanigans, I would not be tempted by bribes anyway.

There is a much more extensive summary of the book and a cut-price offer for buyers here. Nearly 1,000 pages of history for less than 30 bucks seems pretty good to me.

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ELSEWHERE

This article is by a Leftist journalist who went and talked to many Bush voters in the "red" states. Despite its biases, it is a very vivid and touching portrait of the many good down-to-earth people who voted Bush in and Kerry out. I liked this comment that one of them made about Bush: "I think he's a good man with a good heart". I think that too. And the people who call him a "Nazi" show what THEY are.

Wow! The source most quoted in support of the global warming theory is the annual IPCC reports. One of the expert scientific authors of past reports has just pulled out of doing any future reports because he says his colleagues are making claims that run contrary to the scientific data. I suspect that global warming theory is on the brink of doing a Soviet-style collapse -- maybe even in the next 12 months. The latest evidence that cutting carbon emissions will actually INCREASE global warming is a second stake through the heart for the theory. See GREENIE WATCH for both documents.

A no-baloney man: "The president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, sparked an uproar at an academic conference Friday when he said that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers. Summers also questioned how much of a role discrimination plays in the dearth of female professors in science and engineering at elite universities." [It's been known for nearly 100 years that men and women have different patterns of achievement on ability tests. For instance, women do best on verbal abilities and men do best on visual/spatial abilities. Is it any wonder that men and women have job preferences to go with that?]

Arlene Peck: "Truly, I hate to sound negative, but it frightens me. The view from here is pre-1938, and the Muslims have such an edge now that no matter what they say, the United Nations is going to gleefully meet and vote to condemn the state of Israel. It is as though the Muslims have been given a 'pass' as a 'special' religious group, allowed to commit regular atrocities, such as beheading and cutting off hands and bombing anyone within range. And, folks, they can do it all in the name of Allah, but they truly believe Satan makes them do it - oh, and those nasty old Israelis.... It doesn't usually matter that no other religious group perpetrates their monstrous atrocities. Nobody ever questions how Muslims are the only ones out there who are doing their evil deeds"

Blacks waking up to the Dems? "Polls find young blacks less likely to call racism America's No. 1 issue. A Time/CNN poll found 89 percent of black teens consider racism in their own lives to be "a small problem" or "not a problem at all." Twice as many black teens as white believe that "failure to take advantage of available opportunities" is a bigger problem for blacks than discrimination. Polls and focus groups show younger blacks less likely to identify themselves as Democrats, and more likely to support partial privatization of Social Security, school vouchers and the abolition of race-based preferences. This spells trouble for the Democratic Party and its monolithic black vote".

Power is the only Leftist principle: "Democratic lawmakers are pushing legislation that would take a multimillion-dollar bite out of one of their party's biggest political enemies - the Building Industry Association of Washington. The move sets up a bitter showdown between the BIAW, a powerful conservative force, and the liberal Washington State Labor Council, which has been trying for years to clip the association's wings.... Rep. Cary Condotta of Wenatchee, the ranking Republican on the Commerce and Labor Committee, called the bill, which would reduce the BIAW's income from workers'-compensation refunds, a "blatant political attack" on one of the GOP's biggest supporters. And he called the timing of the legislation "very suspect.""

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Engels advocated police state methods for dissenters. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at what a Greek says about the Greek of John 1:1. (Actually, I hate calling Greeks Greeks. They have always called themselves Hellenes and Greece is Hellas. It was the early Romans who started calling them Greeks, for reasons that are still speculative).

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/19/2005 06:29:00 PM

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

 
TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I pick out what I think are my best posts for the week:

Dissecting Leftism points out that kids once got in Grade-school a better literary education than they now get in many colleges.

Political Correctness Watch notes that arsonists are now being officially permitted to drive gasoline tankers!

Greenie Watch debunks the myth that oil-supplies have "peaked"

Leftists as Elitists notes that Supreme Court judge Scalia follows the law rather than elite opinion.

Gun Watch notes a case where a gun-maker is being sued because a criminal used a gun that the gun-maker had originally sold to the police!

Socialized Medicine notes that British public hospitals cannot even afford enough cleaners any more.

Education Watch notes the new fad for "Bubble-kids"

Marx & Friends notes that Engels thought that the Yugoslavs deserved to be wiped out.

A scripture blog asks how seriously we can take the words of Doubting Thomas.

Majority Rights notes the difficult job Australian officials often have to do in deporting illegal immigrants

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ELSEWHERE

The friendly Syrians: "A woman pulled a pistol on Iraq's defense minister in his office but then broke down in tears in a failed assassination plot hatched by an Iraqi group in Syria, the minister said in comments published on Saturday. Hazim al-Shaalan told the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper the 40-year-old woman had drawn the gun, loaded with poisoned bullets, during a meeting with him and other officials more than one week ago.... Shaalan said the plan had been hatched by a Syria-based Iraqi group led by Mohamed Younes al-Ahmed, an Iraqi Baath party official. Sabaawi Ibrahim, a half brother of Saddam Hussein, was also involved in the plot, he said. Shaalan said the woman had revealed a wider plot involving a group of 50 women chosen "to carry out terrorist operations and assassinations in Iraq." The women were the wives or relatives of people jailed for or killed in clashes with Iraqi security forces and U.S.-led forces. Shaalan said they had undergone training in Syria"

Why are only Muslims allowed to preach violence? "An extremist London cleric is using live broadcasts on the internet to urge young British Muslims to join al-Qaeda and has condoned suicide terrorist attacks. Omar Bakri Mohammed, who has lived in the UK for 18 years on social security benefits, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and told his followers that they were in a state of war with Britain".

Ideology in the SAT? "With just two months to go before the much-heralded new SAT is given, a team of English professors and psychometricians is poring over sample essays to determine what kind of writing should be rewarded and what penalized.... For the first time in the 67-year history of the SAT, the March 12 test will include a written essay along with revised reading and math exams. For the millions of high school juniors and seniors who will ultimately take the test, as well as the thousands of U.S. colleges that will use them in determining whether to admit those students, the stakes in deciding how to score the test could hardly be higher... An essay that compares humans to squirrels -- if a squirrel told other squirrels about its food store, it would die, therefore secrecy is necessary for survival -- merits a 5. Brian A. Bremen, an English professor at the University of Texas at Austin, notes that the writer provides only one real example. Nevertheless, he says, the writer displays "a clear chain of thought" and should be rewarded, "despite his Republican tendencies." "

Gerard Henderson has an article on the recent controversy over Britain's Prince Harry wearing fancy dress with a swastika on it. He points out that the Left are incessant in calling practically all conservatives Fascists and Nazis so thinks it is reasonable for Prince Harry to have concluded that Nazis must be the good guys! A good excerpt on the scintillating Leftist logic involved: "In Australia in recent years it has become almost a fashion to make reference to fascism/Nazism and/or communism in order to score political points. In his book The Right Road?, the historian Andrew Moore wrote that "it is not so very far from the truth" to "suggest that in 1951 Australian fascism's headquarters were in The Lodge, Canberra". In other words, Moore maintains that the long-serving prime minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, was really a fascist. This despite the fact that he declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939 at a time when the Communist Party was in alliance with Hitler, in accordance with the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact".

The green-eyed Leftists will hate this: "China's relentless appetite for the colonel's chicken has KFC on a building boom in the world's most populous country, with 1,200 locations, soaring profits and a menu that mixes in bamboo shoots and lotus roots. At a time when its sales in the United States are struggling, KFC is dominating even rival McDonald's in China and turning the goateed visage of Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Harland Sanders into a ubiquitous symbol of America. "We are really positioned as a part of the fabric of life in China," said David Novak, chairman and chief executive of Louisville-based Yum Brands Inc., parent company of KFC."

There is some rather odd humour here but the "Joke reasoning test" at the bottom of the page is interesting. I failed it.

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Engels particularly despised the Polish Jews. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at an attack made by an "enemy" blogger.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/18/2005 07:35:00 PM

Monday, January 17, 2005

 
"PROGRESSIVES", OLD AND NEW

Because their behaviour has so polluted the name with an air of dishonesty, hypocrisy and failure, there is a considerable tendency these days for American "liberals" to return to an older and more-self-congratulatory label for themselves -- "Progressives". The label also has the advantage that it facilitates a "united front" (to use an old Communist term) -- it enables both moderates and far-Leftists to march under a common banner.

Probably the major thing that holds the American Left from wider adoption of their alternative name however is the legacy of the last major American political movement to use that name -- the "Progressives" of around the beginning of the 20th century. Let me note what an embarrassment THEY are:

Like all Leftists, they were a fractious lot so there is no fixed list of what a Progressive believed but here are some of the notable features in Progressive doctrine: They were (of course) anti-business, pro-welfare and believers in central government management of the economy but as well as that they believed in eugenics, racial superiority, war as a purifying force, nationalism, imperialism, conformity, discipline, book-burning, loyalty oaths and straight-armed salutes. And they despised the Jews, of course.

Does all that somehow ring a bell? Where else have you heard of such a set of ideas? You've got it! All of those ideas were also Hitler's ideas. And THAT'S WHERE HITLER GOT A LOT OF IT FROM. The American Progressives were the first Fascists of the 20th century. In America they were mostly unable to put those ideas into full practice but Hitler showed what happens when you do.

For full documentation of all that I have just said see my article on the "Progressives" here. I have just added a fair bit to it so I reproduce below the new conclusion:

So although the American Progressives developed most of the thought that we would recognize as Fascist today, their immediate predecessors were undisputably German. So while Mussolini got his basic ideas from Marx, the work of developing those ideas and adapting them to the early 20th century had mostly already been done for him by the Americans.

So however you look at it, the connection of Fascism to Leftism is quite seamless. Its origins were in the intellectuals of the 19th century German Left, it was developed and made politically influential by the American Left around the beginning of the 20th century and it reached its full implementation in the hands of one section of the European Left in the 1920s and 1930's -- i.e. Hitler & Mussolini. And both Hitler and Mussolini campaigned as socialists and never ceased advocating socialism. See here and here for more on the latter point.

Because they are so embarrassing to the Left of today, there are always attempts to deny that the American Progressives of a century ago were Leftists. Attempts are made to treat them as somehow outside the normal flow of history -- as a strange aberration that somehow exists all by itself. This is absurd on two grounds: 1). Far from being a marginal group the Progressives were in the mainstream of American intellectual life at the time -- with only the courts and the conservative wings of the political parties standing against them. 2). Although the militarism, imperialism, racism and stress on discipline may seem abhorrent to the American Left of today, such ideas were perfectly at home even within the thought of Marx and Engels. And if Marx and Engels are not Leftists, who would be?

For deep background on the American Progressives see this essay on Croly, one of the leading lights of Progressivism. Note the agony caused to Croly by the need to keep within democracy.

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ELSEWHERE

The blatant lies of the BBC about the aid effort in the wake of the tsunami disaster are just breathtaking. There is not the faintest shred of truth in what they say. I give up! Even the NYT says the Australians were first in with aid -- followed closely by the U.S. Who do you think the BBC says got there first? The U.N.! I doubt that there are any U.N. personnel on the ground there to this day! The BBC was once a respected organization but that is well and truly in the past now that the Leftists have got hold of it.

The multicultis win: "Until the 1980s, the arrival of the First Fleet was re-enacted every Australia Day by white Australians. A square-rigged tall ship would anchor in Farm Cove. Spectators lined the shore cheering as actors in 18th-century style uniforms and three-pointed tricorn hats rowed ashore. The annual event was organised by historical societies and enthusiasts (including this writer), but there was moral support and financial backing from the Festival of Sydney and the Australia Day Council. The aim was to remind people that European settlement was founded on January 26, 1788. But this Australia Day there will be no official mention of this First Fleet - let alone first European settlement - by the Festival of Sydney or the Australia Day Council".

Michael Moore spiked: "Oscar on the shelf or not, Michael Moore is not getting much respect at his old high school. Despite his fame and many honors, the filmmaker has been rejected all four times that he has been nominated for Davison High School's Hall of Fame."

Pro-terrorist Presbyterians: "The church is hosting a program and brunch entitled "A Report Back from Palestine" at which the Boston support group for the International Solidarity Movement, or ISM, will speak to the congregation. "The time has come for Christians to stand with Israel against the terrorists who for 50 years have been trying to destroy the Jewish state, and who have brought suffering and death to thousands of Israelis and Arabs, said Dennis Hale of the Christian Jewish Anti-Terror Alliance.... The ISM says in its mission statement that the Palestinians have a right to "armed struggle" and its leaders have endorsed suicide bombing as a "noble" form of jihad. The group's media coordinator, Flo Rosovski wrote, "'Israel' is an illegal entity that should not exist."

In the wake of the Armstrong Williams fiasco, Peg Kaplan has up an amusing list of what it takes to corrupt her.

My latest posting on MarxWords notes that Engels said that Germans should use terror against the Slavs. Hitler had a very dim view of the Slavs too, funnily enough! My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Philippians 2:6 ("He was in the form of God") and 1 Corinthians 8:6 ("through whom are all things").

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/17/2005 05:19:00 PM

Sunday, January 16, 2005

 
A POST-TSUNAMI THOUGHT

I have waited for what I hope is a "decent interval" before mentioning this but anybody wanting a tsunami-proof vacation in the tropics might like to consider Australia's Far North Queensland resort area -- centred on the city where I went to High School -- Cairns. The North Queensland coast is sheltered behind the Great Barrier reef so you don't even get significant surf there, let alone tidal waves. And the Pacific is actually more tusnami-prone that the Indian Ocean so it is good to have one part of the South Pacific that is safe. Being part of a modern developed country, it is safe from lots of other things too -- like contaminated drinking water. And, unlike Asia, its beaches are mostly deserted -- mainly because we have so many of them.

And hopefully I can by now be forgiven for admitting that I DID laugh at one of Slatt's tsunami jokes -- the first one. It was such a ridiculous image. Slatts has joined the nuke Mecca campaign too. And I must admit that until Slatts mentioned it, I had not realized that West Bank is a Spoonerism. As a lover of Spoonerisms I feel humbled. I think it is a tossup between Slatts and Prof. Bunyip as to which is the funniest Australian blog.

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ELSEWHERE

Dear me! It seems that I am not alone in finding Jason Soon's thinking to be very dubious. Another Australian blogger notes Soon's sympathy for the Bolshevik revolution (which ousted post-Tsarist DEMOCRATS) with great contempt.

Michelle Malkin has a pretty well-substantiated story of another attempted aircraft hijacking like the 9/11 effort.

There are none so blind... Leftie bigshot Kuttner speaks: "There's a standard story about partisan gridlock: The American electorate is mostly middle of the road. The voters want the parties to work together and solve national problems. ... The voters have to be sick of partisan wrangling and worried about unsolved national ills. But everything else about this fable is wrong. For starters, one party has indeed been captured by extremists, but the other one has moved steadily toward the center. Republicans are in the hands of theocrats and fiscal radicals so keen on dismantling government that they don't care how high the deficit goes.... ". [The fruitcake must live in alternate reality. If he thinks Bush's record spending is "dismantling" government, he should be in a loony bin]

Dangerously decayed Left: "One of the few certainties of the 20th century was that the apostles of Marxist materialism and the adherents of Muslim theocracy were mortal enemies. In Afghanistan, they went to war. But that was the 20th century. In the new era, Communist red and Islamist green, joined by more than a dash of Nazi brown, have increasingly forged an anti-liberal alliance that sees Israel and the United States as its common enemies. They all believe, in different ways, that if only the United States and Israel could be destroyed, the world could return to the idyllic harmony that prevailed before Jewish capitalism polluted it. On both sides of the English Channel, left-wing intellectuals are creating new alliances to promote anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism in the guise of radical politics. This revived and virulent outbreak of an old disease, anti-Semitism, should alarm anyone concerned with the two regions of greatest importance to the United States today, Europe and the Middle East"

Technology lifesaver: "A Houston engineer was searching for a method to keep track of his 16-year-old daughter when she started driving. The technology he found while searching the Web not only helped him do that, it also may have saved her life... Teen Arrive Alive, a Florida-based company, offers packages that include bumper decals and phones equipped with global positioning systems to allow parents to monitor their teens' locations and driving habits.... One night when Wayne's daughter was late arriving home, he said, he found her location by tracking her phone. When he drove to the site, he said, he found his daughter in a confrontation with an older man she had previously dated without her parents' knowledge. "He had pulled her over and wouldn't let her go," Wayne said. "As soon as he saw me, he took off. If I hadn't driven up, I don't know what would have happened."

Good IQ needed even for football: "First round quarterback draft pick Eli Manning (Peyton Manning's brother) from Mississippi scored a 39 on the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT) during the 2004 annual NFL combine. He scored nearly ten points higher than most players on the 50-question timed test, but many people may wonder why it matters. Who cares what a football player scores on an intelligence test? Football team owners do, because they understand that good players need brains as well as brawn to be winners. "Selecting a new quarterback is like hiring a president for a company," says Michael Callans, President of Wonderlic Consulting. They need to lead, think on their feet, evaluate all of their options and understand the impact their actions will have on the outcome of the game. Wonderlic helps team owners make the best selections by identifying which players have the mental strength to lead their team to victory."

The undemocratic party: "Many of the American left's chief policy aims over the last 40 years -- including legalized abortion on demand, race-based admissions for state-run colleges, and driving God and prayer out of American public life -- were advanced not at the ballot box or in legislatures, but by unelected federal judges who enacted the liberal agenda by fiat from the bench. There was a simple reason for this: The American people had too much good sense to give the liberal agenda majority nationwide support. To win, liberals had to cheat the democratic system. To do that, they had to make sure the referees were on their side. It did not matter if a large majority of voters in a state backed a conservative initiative, or if a supermajority of the U.S. Congress enacted a conservative law. All the liberals needed to prevail was for one federal judge to take their side, and at least five members of the U.S. Supreme Court to rule for them if a conservative appeal made it that far."

No free speech about lawyers: "Two pensioners were arrested outside a New York court for telling jokes about lawyers. The men were telling jokes while queuing to get into the First District Court in Hempstead, reports Newsday. 'How do you tell when a lawyer is lying?' Harvey Kash, 69, said to Carl Lanzisera, 65. 'His lips are moving,' they said in unison. But a lawyer standing in front of them in the queue was not amused and had them arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. ... Dan Bagnuola, a spokesman for the Nassau courts, said the men were causing a stir and that their exercise of their First Amendment rights to free speech was impeding the rights of others at the court."

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels did not believe that all races were equal. Guess who topped the pops! My latest posting on "A scripture blog" is a big one -- looking at John 20:28 "My Lord and my God"

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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


posted by JR 1/16/2005 09:27:00 PM

Saturday, January 15, 2005

 
GREAT ECONOMIC NEWS

Friday's job report shows that White House economist Greg Mankiw was very nearly right when he projected almost a year ago that jobs could rise by 2.6 million in 2004. Of course, he was widely ridiculed inside Washington after making this statement, and at one point even the White House turned its back on the Harvard professor's estimate. But the Labor Department's latest employment release shows the yearly gain for nonfarm payrolls coming in at 2.3 million. That's close enough for government work. It's also the best jobs performance in five years.

Why so good? The labor market responded powerfully to lower personal tax rates. As workers were able to keep more of what they earned, the unemployment rate declined from 6.3 percent to 5.4 percent. A full 2.5 million jobs were added since August 2003. Mainstream economists continue to scoff at the economic power of lower marginal tax rates. But once again a supply-side experiment worked. For all of 2004, nonfarm job additions averaged just under 200,000 per month. At this rate, 2005 will be another banner year for employment and economic growth.

... it is possible that this year's unemployment rate could dip below 5 percent. Outside of the bubble economy of the late 1990s, this would mark the lowest unemployment rate since 1973. Declining unemployment also signifies lower federal spending on unemployment benefits and other small-scale entitlement payouts.

Additionally, at 5 percent or lower unemployment, the 4 percent growth rate of the economy will spur a flood of new individual tax collections at lower tax rates. Hence, another economic surprise of 2005 will be a pronounced decline in the federal budget deficit.... America's cowboy capitalism, to borrow Europe's derisive term, is hatching yet another economic boom.

More here

I guess this shows the effects of all that "outsourcing": "U.S. industrial output grew strongly last month while producer prices fell at the sharpest rate in 1-1/2 years amid tumbling energy prices, according to reports suggesting healthy, noninflationary growth".

Australia is doing well, too:

"Australia's remarkable run of economic growth is set to continue, with new hirings in December cutting unemployment to 5.1per cent, its lowest point in 28 years... Noting that interest rates are just above 5per cent, while inflation is just over 2per cent, Commsec chief economist Craig James said: "Without question, Australians are enjoying the best economic conditions since the late 1960s." Mr James said that with the 29,000 new jobs added last month, a record 60.1per cent of the population aged over 15 has a job. The fall in unemployment last month was felt around the country".

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ELSEWHERE

Muslim pride trumps aid to Muslim victims: "Indonesia announced Wednesday that all foreign troops assisting in the relief operation must leave by late March.... A number of countries have sent or are sending troops to help. The United States military has taken a major role, flying daily helicopter runs to ferry food to isolated villages devastated by the wave and bringing wounded people to hospitals here in the provincial capital. The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and two other Navy vessels have been cruising off the coast here to provide support. American soldiers delivering the aid return to their ships at night. Some of the large contingents of foreign troops, particularly from neighboring Singapore, have brought heavy equipment - bulldozers and backhoes - to clear smashed buildings and the debris here and in Meulaboh, a city on Sumatra's west coast that was severely damaged. Australian troops, which were the first to arrive, are to be complemented by a naval ship due on Thursday".

Just by the way, I wonder where the French and German contingents were in Indonesia? I guess I'm not the first one to wonder that. It must be their moral superiority that kept them at home.

French corruption again: "French state-owned television is using what some call intimidation and threatened libel lawsuits to quiet calls for an investigation of TV images that showed the alleged shooting of a Palestinian boy by Israeli soldiers in 2000. The video from the TV channel France 2 has become famous around the world as a symbol for the current Palestinian intifada (uprising) and shows a boy trying to take shelter behind a man during a gun battle in September 2000 between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. Independent media analysts in France and Israel have provided what they call conclusive evidence that the video of the incident was staged"

Even a Frenchman says that the French got on well with the Nazis. In their typically gutless way, they did: "M Le Pen, 76, leader of the National Front party, had attracted a chorus of indignation from the political world and media on Wednesday with a magazine interview in which he said that the 1940-44 occupation was "not especially inhumane", and that the Gestapo largely worked to protect the French population. The massacres of the French population during the war consisted of a few "blunders" by the occupiers, he told Rivarol, an extreme right-wing magazine.... M Le Pen said that he stood by his words. "I note that if one compares the German occupation of France with the occupation in certain other European countries, then proportionately it is in France where it was the least painful."

Two fingers to feminism: "President Bush's policy on women in ground combat takes just four words to articulate: 'No women in combat.'

Real electoral fraud. You need more votes? We'll find 'em! "Christine Gregoire yesterday pushed back tears and dark clouds over a still-contested election, raised her right hand and took the oath of office as Washington's governor. ..."

Blithering Bunny has a huge fisking of an article published in the MSM about how the Communists of the Western world were just idealists and that is why it is OK to be an ex-Commo.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx regarded non-Germans as "rabble". Yes. That was old Karl, not Adolf. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 10:30 ("I and the Father are one").

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/15/2005 08:43:00 PM

Friday, January 14, 2005

 
EDUCATION: WHAT IS POSSIBLE

I mentioned yesterday the excellent article by Jonathan Rose which showed how inspiring to ordinary working class people the "dead white males" (so hated by the Left) can be. Rose showed how working class people would once seek them out and read them simply for pleasure and personal enlightenment. We also know how thoroughly the Left have succeeded in removing such authors from present-day high school and college curricula and how the politically correct replacement texts are simply boring to the students. Rose suggests, and I agree, that a restoration of "the greats" to modern curricula would do much to improve educational standards, if only because of the greater enthusiasm they would generate among the students.

In that connection, let me list just some of the authors who were included in my own 6TH GRADE reading book of 50 years ago: Longfellow, Masefield, Dickens, Cervantes, Henry Lawson (a revered Australian poet), Wordsworth, Goldsmith, Whittier, Cowper, Reade, Tolstoy, Scott, Byron and Turgenev. Sadly, that list will probably be meaningless to most of my younger readers unless they are real "culture vultures" but the authors included are some of the greatest prose and poetry authors of all time. If an introduction to "The Greats" on that scale can be accomplished in just one year of primary school, it is perfectly evident that across an entire primary and secondary school curriculum we could offer a fairly complete coverage of the great minds of the past. It is not "too difficult".

Given the proven capacity to inspire of the great authors, a return to them would not only be worthwhile in it own right but should also enthuse the students far more than the boring propaganda they have now and thus lead them on to generally higher levels of educational and intellectual attainment. As some students graduate from modern-day American High Schools barely able to read and write, the scope for improvement in levels of educational and intellectual attainment would seem almost limitless.

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! If there ever was any doubt that Americans are the kindest and most generous people the world has ever seen, read about Herbert Hoover. Just about totally forgotten but he seems to have been the biggest saviour of European lives ever -- and by far. He ought to be the No. 1 hero of the 20th century. It's really infuriating the way important basics about history are not taught these days. The Leftist a**holes who staff the teaching profession only want to tell you whatever bad things they can dredge up about America.

Another Wow! Who said this? Ronald Reagan? "The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone." It could have been said yesterday but it was in fact said by Thomas Jefferson. Looks like American judges have always been people who think they know better than the law they are paid to administer.

A third Wow! Taranto really skewers the NYT today. The NYT says that America has a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba and draws the usual anti-American inferences from that. Taranto notes what underlies the statistics: America makes huge efforts to save premature bablies but, inevitably, many of them die anyway. So they are infant deaths. No comparable effort is made in Cuba so the same baby there would be counted as stillborn and thus not be counted in the infant mortality statistics. So the higher infant mortality in the USA is a sign of a much BETTER medical system. Surprise, surprise!

I normally agree with Jeff Jacoby but he is off with the fairies today. He says America hasn't got enough politicians because Congress is small relative to America's population size. Hasn't he heard of all those State government politicians? Count them in and America has got HEAPS of politicians per head. It must have been a slow week for Jeff this time.

A good quote from Diplomad: "Sitting VERY late for two consecutive nights in interminable meetings with UN reps, hearing them go on about "taking the lead coordination role," pledges, and the impending arrival of this or that UN big shot or assessment/coordination team, for the millionth time I realized that if not for Australia and America almost nobody in the tsunami-affected areas would have survived more than a few days. If we had waited for the UNocrats to get their act coordinated, the already massive death toll would have become astronomical. But, fortunately, thanks to "retrograde racist war-mongers " such as John Howard and George W. Bush, as we sat in air conditioned meeting rooms with these UNocrats, young Australians and Americans were at that moment "coordinating" without the UN and saving the lives of tens-of-thousands of people". (Via Indepundit)

It was "unilateralism" that saved lives in Asia: "The world is in a 'race against time' to prevent a sharp rise in the number of deaths resulting from the devastating Dec. 26 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said at a Jan. 6 summit of world leaders in Jakarta, Indonesia. Yes, Jan. 6 -- 11 days after the tsunami first hit and after an estimated 150,000 people had died... It also was more than a week after the U.S. and other countries had people on the ground helping the victims."

There is an encouraging article here showing that family values are reasserting themselves among younger Americans -- despite all the attacks from feminists and the Left generally.

There is a thorough debunking here of the pre-election Leftist claim that GWB had a "deal" with the Saudis to keep gasoline prices low in the run-up to the election. The graphs show that prices were in fact unusually HIGH just before the election. Some deal! Another dreamed-up Leftist lie.

I have just put up here an impassioned article by Nathan Tabor about abortion. I don't wholly agree with it but it makes some interesting points.

I have just put up here a list of Left/Right differences as seen by a bipartisan observer.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels hated small farmers so much that he was prepared to go to war against them. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 14:6-13 ("I am in the Father, and the Father in me").

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/14/2005 08:51:00 PM

Thursday, January 13, 2005

 
THE EDUCATION CRIME

Jonathan Rose has an amazingly extensive and detailed article which shows beyond much doubt that British working class people were much better educated 100 years ago than they are now. He also shows what an enlightening and transformative experience it was for the working people of yesteryear to read some of the famous "dead white males" for the first time. Just a tiny excerpt:

"Oral-history interviews reveal that, among British working people born between 1870 and 1908, two-thirds had unambiguously positive memories of school. And that fact inevitably raises a disturbing question: whether children today in America's inner cities would give their schools such high marks-and if not, why not? Even more impressive is a 1940 survey of reading among pupils at nonacademic high schools, where education terminated at age 14. This sample represented something less than the working-class norm: the best students had already been skimmed off and sent to academic secondary schools on scholarship. Those who remained behind were asked which books they had read over the past month, excluding required texts. Even in this below-average group, 62 percent of boys and 84 percent of girls had read some poetry: their favorites included Kipling, Longfellow, Masefield, Blake, Browning, Tennyson, and Wordsworth".

And I KNOW from personal experience how exactly right is what Rose describes. I myself was born in a small Australian country town to working class parents who read only popular novels. But there was a "School of Arts" (non-government co-operative) library in town and a secondhand bookshop. And courtesy of those I read just about all the famous literature of ancient Greece before I was 18. And I experienced exactly the excitement from my discoveries there -- I still vividly remember the enormous impression that Homer and Plato's Socratic dialogues made on me -- that Rose repeatedly documents among his British working class readers of yesteryear. For me as for them it was an immense intellectual liberation. Most of that literature was once taught in the schools. Now virtually none of it is. My son has just finished High School and until I mentioned them he had never even heard of Wordsworth or Coleridge! What a crime against ordinary people the Leftist purveyors of educational mush who infest the schools today have committed! They have replaced the glorious "dead white males" with mediocrities who inspire no-one and induce boredom instead of excitement. They have stolen from our young people their incomparable heritage.

Needless to say, the Rose article is one of the few for which I say: "Read the whole thing". (Link to Rose via Blithering Bunny)

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ELSEWHERE

The dishonesty of Leftists is truly bottomless. Taranto notes that far-Left CBS producer Mary Mapes, who has just been sacked for her use of forged documents, says that the only thing wrong with the documents was that they were photocopies. The fact that zillions of people have pointed out that the documents were clearly computer-produced when they were alleged to be typewriter-produced is just totally ignored by her in traditional Leftist fashion. Walter Duranty lives! No doubt some American university will now give her a job teaching journalistic ethics. They do that sort of thing.

Glad to hear THAT!: "The Supreme Court refused to hear a case challenging a Florida state ban on gay couples adopting children. The Court let stand a lower court ruling that upheld Florida's right to have a blanket policy prohibiting gays from adopting children....".

LOL. What a loon: "David Livingstone says the idea behind the economic boycott he's organizing is simple: If people don't show up at work or buy things, companies lose money. As he sees it, that's money the Bush administration can't tax, and can't use to run the war in Iraq, protect polluters or chip away at the Constitution. So the Detroit Democrat and a handful of other anti-Bush groups across the country are urging others of like mind to withhold their cash and labor on Inauguration Day -- from all businesses. They don't think they'll inflict a huge economic pain, but they do want to make a point."

LOL: British cuisine!: "The poll found the British were awfully patriotic: Britain was ranked among the top five nations on all 12 criteria. It was even ranked as having the world's fourth-best cuisine, behind China, India and Italy, but ahead of France. In British eyes, their country is the most democratic in the world, the best place to live and the country most deserving of international respect". [I would have said that British cuisine is the world's worst -- except for the desserts, of course. Great desserts!]

An article here points out that the principle preached by affirmative action advocates -- that people should not be represented in favoured niches of society above their proportion in the overall population -- is exactly the same rationale Hitler used to discriminate against the Jews. As they are in America today, Jews WERE over-represented in many favoured niches of German society in Hitler's day. So Hitler's desire to cut the Jews down to size was essentially the same desire as that which is seen in today's Leftists who want to cut white middle-class males down to size. Excerpt: "Thus, the victims may be different, the perpetrators may be different, but the spirit that energized Nazi race laws is clearly evident in today's America. That spirit is summarized in the view that justice requires all groups achieve and received a proportional share of wealth and power. Those groups who overachieve are seen in this theory as oppressors who must be curbed, if not eliminated. This view of justice is what links proponents of Affirmative Action to the Nazis. Thus, one may properly conclude that American liberals have created and enforced the Nazi-like race edicts that pervade America."

Interesting: "Children who are exposed to two or more cats or dogs in the first year of life have lower responses to a whole host of allergic substances when the kids are aged six or seven. This comes from an allergy study that followed hundreds of children, right from the time when their mothers were pregnant with them.

Friendly Grizzly has a good post (scroll down a bit) on why housing costs so much in California. The Greenies and the socialists between them have really shafted the little guy.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again for the best variety of reading on the net.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx hated the Jews for being conservative! Looks like many of them have been dodging that risk ever since. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at some more trinitarian defences based on John 1:1.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/13/2005 09:15:00 PM

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

 
THE LEFTIST IDEAL IN ACTION

Sweden:

The extent of the failure of the Swedish model are both shocking and little known. For example, no new net jobs have been produced in the Swedish private sector since 1950. (By contrast, the U.S. created more than 60 million new private-sector jobs during the same period, from 52 million in 1950 to about 115 million in 2002.) "None of top 50 companies on the Stockholm stock exchange has been started since 1970."

Again, contrast this with the U.S. where many of our biggest companies had not been born or known of in 1970, such as Microsoft, Intel, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Cisco, etc., Mr. Karlson's litany of failures of the Swedish model include: "Sweden has dropped from fourth to 14th place in 2002 among the OECD countries (i.e., affluent industrialized countries) in terms of GDP per capita since 1970."

In addition, "well over 1 million people out of a work force of around four million did not work in 2003 but lived on various kinds of public welfare programs

More (much more) here

Eurozone:

Signs of shaky economies in France and Germany have sharpened worries about Europe's less-than-robust recovery - and underscored the struggle to shake up regulation-clogged economies in countries that use the euro.....

Private economists, however, point to shadows cast by Germany's rise in unemployment in December to 10.8 percent, and French government statistics showing zero economic growth in the third quarter. Unemployment there remains at 9.9 percent.

Economists expect fourth-quarter growth of 3.5 percent to over 4 percent in the United States, where unemployment was only 5.4 percent in December. Per-person U.S. gross domestic product of around $44,610 (34,100 euros) remains ahead of $30,746 (23,500 euros) for people in the 12 countries using the euro

More here

But there is no room for U.S. complacency:

US policies are falling behind global competitors: "America is losing its status as one of the freest economies in the world. The punitive U.S. tax code, out-of-control spending levels, and onerous regulations are making America less competitive in the international economy. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, the U.S. is no longer one of the top ten freest economies for the first time since the index was started in 1994. The Index, published by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation, found that economic freedom is spreading world wide, with 86 nations receiving better scores. Unfortunately, America's score remained the same while Chile, Australia, and Iceland further opened their economies and surpassed the United States. Currently, the U.S. is tied with Switzerland for 12th place."

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ELSEWHERE

That famous U.S. airport security again. Email from a reader: "A colleague whose husband is a commercial pilot told me this one: A pilot who is certified to carry a gun went through airline security - showed his card, etc.. They let him keep his gun, but confiscated his nail-clippers. The security people said that some terrorist might take them away and use them as a weapon". Even if it's an urban myth, it's probably "fake but accurate".

Fabulous: "The nuclear-powered US submarine that ran aground in the Pacific last week, killing a sailor and injuring 23 others, ran into an undersea mountain that was not on the navy's charts, a US defence official said today.... A senior defence official, who asked not to be identified, said initial reports were that the submarine was cruising at high speed at a depth of about 120 metres on Monday when it ran into an uncharted sea mountain". [Contrast that with the sad fate of Russia's "Kursk". The comparison may not be exact but the U.S. boat survived a catastrophic front-end accident whereas the "pride" of the Soviet fleet did not. Higher safety standards?]

There is an article here showing how successful films and other light entertainment were in Hitler's Germany. Hollywood is Leftist too, of course. But Leftists have to be good at propaganda or they would not survive. Reality (like that described above in Europe) does not suit them at all. The article mentions Nazi themes as "law and order", "national respect", "homeland", "discipline and obedience" without mentioning that they were all Leftist themes in Hitler's time. You can find such themes in the American "Progressives" of 100 years ago and also, of course in Marx & Engels. And if Marx & Engels were not Leftists, I do not know who would be. It is only silly old conservatives who advocate things like liberty and respect for the individual. Leftists hate patriotism now but they were happy to use it in the past.

Green-eyed envy about the world's most popular cartoon -- which has just been dropped by by the "L.A. Times": "Gene Weingarten, a humor columnist for The Washington Post and Washington Post Writers Group, praised the Times decision during his weekly washingtonpost.com chat yesterday. He said the paper displayed "the kind of cojones missing in too many places" and described "Garfield" as "a strip produced by a committee, devoid of originality, devoid of guts, a strip cynically DESIGNED to be inoffensive and bad, on the theory that public tastes are insipid. Now we need others to follow suit. Like the Post." [No wonder people are always picking on McDonalds, Microsoft, Wal-Mart etc. Infantile hatred of other people's success is all too common. Should I hate Instapundit? I don't.].

Vin Suprynowicz has an interesting update on the almost certainly-true claim that the "AIDS-epidemic" in Africa has been vastly exaggerated. Hardly any African said to have AIDS is ever actually tested for it. But it suits the do-gooders to says that any sick African has AIDS. And somehow it's all our fault, of course -- from evil drug companies to the CIA.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx advocated terrorism. See what a thoroughly modern guy he was? My latest posting on "A scripture blog" shows why the apostle John was a "Gnostic".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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


posted by JR 1/12/2005 08:42:00 PM

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

 
TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I give links to what I think are the best posts for the week on my various blogs:

Dissecting Leftism has a defence of Wal-Mart

Political Correctness Watch notes that black homophobia is now being blamed on whites

Greenie Watch notes that the Greenies seem to have decided that DDT is OK after all

MarxWords notes that Engels claimed that Germany had a right to conquer other lands because it was more "civilized"

Scripture blog shows why John 1:3 undermines the Trinity doctrine

Gun Watch shows how GWB is helping gun owners

Socialized Medicine shows that drug companies do actually help the poor of the world

Leftists as Elitists looks at some of the disgusting ideas of Peter Singer

Education Watch says that even Europe offers more educational choice than the USA

On Majority Rights I question the idea that climate has much influence on what we are.

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THE U.N.

Inquiry's Senator Coleman speaks: "While many questions concerning oil-for-food remain unanswered, one conclusion has become abundantly clear: Kofi Annan should resign. The decision to call for his resignation does not come easily, but I have arrived at this conclusion because the most extensive fraud in the history of the UN occurred on his watch. Annan was at the helm of the UN for all but a few days of the oil-for-food program, and he must, therefore, be held accountable for the UN's utter failure to detect or stop Hussein's abuses. The consequences of the UN's ineptitude cannot be overstated: Hussein was empowered to withstand the sanctions regime, remain in power, and even rebuild his military."

Diplomad on the U.N. in Indonesia: "What else is the UN up to, you ask? Oh the usual that you would expect from an organization with a dozen or so well-funded agencies supposedly devoted to emergency humanitarian relief . . . no, no, not feed people or provide them medical care, what do you think the UN is, the US military or something? What is wrong with you readers? Has The Diplomad taught you nothing? The correct response is put out a press release in New York claiming to be doing all sorts of things that others, e.g., US and Australia, are doing"

It's time to evict the UN: "People such as John Kerry are always eager to get the U.N.'s good housekeeping seal of approval before America makes a foreign policy decision. Or at least Kerry and company do when there's a Republican in the White House. I don't seem to recall it's having been quite so imperative when Clinton and Lewinsky were holding down the Oval Office. Be that as it may, what nation in its right mind would surrender even a scintilla of its sovereignty to a group as loathsome as the member states of the U.N.?"

To hell with the U.N.: "I don't have any objection to the United Nations' technocratic functions. As a practical matter, if it makes sense to have a central clearinghouse to organize the building of water treatment plants in the Third World, OK, fine. Most of us agree that helping victims of natural disasters, inoculating children, feeding the starving and so forth are good things -- just as we all agree it's a good thing for our garbage to be collected. But it is a huge intellectual leap to go from saying garbage should be collected to saying that the government should collect it. Similarly, you need to demonstrate that the United Nations' noble efforts cannot be carried out by someone else."

Spear Shaker has some rather sarcastic comments about France and the U.N. More and more elaborate ways of doing nothing seems to be the French genius. "Spear Shaker" doesn't seem to be a bad sort of guy for a Californian: He reads Australian newspapers and regularly ridicules both global warming and Jacques Chirac. An excellent start!

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ELSEWHERE

Orcinus strikes back. Dear me! The shallowness of Leftist thinking does give me lots of laughs at times. A little while ago, I did a demolition job on the naive pontifications of a Leftist tyro named Orcinus. It was such a good squash of poor old Orcinus that Instapundit linked to it and made the comment about me that you see towards the top of the Green column to the left of this page. Orcinus has apparently been seething about that ever since. I commented two days ago that Leftist ideologue Steve Kangas was "brain-dead". Orcinus posted yesterday what he seems to think is a "Gotcha" about that -- noting that Kangas in fact died a few years ago -- the whole of him, not just his brain! (I noted that fact yesterday myself). So Orcinus makes the highly original claim that I should have googled Kangas to check out whether he was alive or not before I criticized him! I at first thought that was a pretty hilarious requirement for Orcinus to have come up with all by his little self but on second thoughts I rather like it. Hey guys! Get the word out: If anybody is sprouting Leftist fruitcakery, he is probably DEAD! Let me say again, however, that I am sorry to hear of the sad way Kangas died.

More fun! Ron Bailey has a sarcastic article about a recent conference of political psychologists which paraded claims that Right-wing people are "authoritarian" and hence mentally diseased. Their basis for the claim was an old one, however: The work of Robert Altemeyer, who has produced a questionnaire (the "RWA scale") that supposedly measures this dreadful right-wing disease of "authoritarianism". But, guess what? Altemeyer himself reports (p. 239 of his 1988 book "Enemies of Freedom") that Leftists are just as likely as Rightists to get high scores on his scale! So what makes his RWA scale a measure of ANYTHING Rightist is a profound mystery. How can it be Rightist if Leftists score high on it? So even if what he studies is pathological, it is not particularly Right-wing! But Leftists never let evidence bother them, of course. There are heaps of cases of Leftist "scientists" ignoring their own evidence, in fact -- e.g. here. Bailey also refers to some even more antique claims of Rightist psychopathology that I have debunked many times. See here

Norberg comments on Swedish television: "When the TV4 reporter in Thailand criticised bad relief efforts, he complained that the rescue teams went up and down the streets, shouting out information and instructions - in Thai. "Of course that doesn't help Swedes", he complained. What? They speak Thai in Thailand? The arrogance! The insolence!"

Ralph Peters: "The Saudi Arabian government and individual Saudis have spent billions of dollars spreading Wahhabi extremism and fostering hatred. No expense is spared to vilify Israel or the West. But when it comes to easing the misery of their fellow Muslims, the world-champ hypocrites in Riyadh just ain't interested. As of last week, the Saudis had pledged a pitiful $20 million to the tsunami-relief effort. That's a Saudi prince's bar-and-bordello budget for a weekend in Paris. Even the devout Muslims of Indonesia's devastated Aceh province don't qualify for Saudi charity. The images of peerless suffering aren't enough to open any Arab wallets, for that matter".

There are some MOST disturbing cases of American injustice reported here. And at least some are from from impeccably conservative sources like Phyllis Schlafly and Cato. It makes me glad I live in Australia. I don't agree with most of the opinions expressed in the article but the facts it reports would worry anyone. And Jeff Jacoby's post on American adoption laws is very troubling too.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels advocated co-operation with other Leftists to achieve State control of industry, communications and education as steps towards Communism. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 8:58.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/11/2005 08:59:00 PM

Monday, January 10, 2005

 
SOME ECONOMICS

That evil capitalism! "It should come as heartening news that 2004 was one of the most prosperous years in history. Not because the U.S. economy grew by a solid 4.3 percent, but because developing countries experienced an explosive 6.1 percent economic growth. According to a recent study by the World Bank, 2004's growth reflected "an expansion without precedent over the past 30 years." Equally encouraging, the report notes that "the rapid growth of developing economies ... has produced a spectacular, if not historic, fall in poverty." Amazingly, the World Bank report did not get much coverage in our mainstream media. It seems the press was more interested in covering the evils of globalization than in taking notice of how world trade -- which grew by an astounding 10.2 percent this year -- is driving economic growth.... In fact, the recent success of developing countries at fighting poverty could be an Economics 101 lesson for today's American classroom. In East Asia and the Pacific region alone, the number of poor dropped from 472 million in 1990 to 271 million in 2001. By 2015, that number should shrink to 19 million, according to the World Bank.

"Buy American" hurts Americans: "President Bush has a plan to address the so-called trade deficit, which worries people so much. According to the wire services, Bush said, 'People can buy more United States products if they're worried about the trade deficit.' That will appeal to many Americans in a nationalistic fever. What could make them feel better than passing up inexpensive, high-quality, foreign-made products and buying pricier, American-made counterparts? But it won't help the economy or the American people in general. Frankly, I can't tell whether President Bush is kidding or not."

Big shrimp: A protectionist mess: "Critics often accuse free trade proponents of carrying water for big business. But maybe unrestricted trade isn't always in the best interest of all business. Manufacturers who use steel (car and appliance makers, for example) oppose tariffs on imported steel. However, steel producers of course support them, as they keep competitive foreign steel off the market. While the car maker might opposed steel tariffs, they might support tariffs on foreign-made cars -- to protect their share of the domestic market. And steel manufacturers would likely oppose them, as they make it more difficult to sell U.S. steel overseas. Protectionist policies often become quite convoluted. Recent shenanigans from the U.S. shrimp industry present an excellent opportunity to examine how big business' support for free trade isn't as firm as conventional wisdom might suggest."

Rent control to go? "Rent control perversely hurts the very people it is supposed to help. New York City, for example, is chronically short of housing, and rents are outrageously high. Many New York apartments are "rent stabilized." It's no surprise that developers prefer to build condominiums or cooperatives, which they can sell outright. Such sales give them real profits-- or at least the prospect of gains--and none of the risks of politicians forcing them to charge rents that are not economical. Chicago, in contrast to New York City, has no rent control, and it has abundant housing for all levels of income earners. Free markets work when politicians allow them to.... the state of Hawaii put a cap on the amount of rent that oil companies can charge their service stations. A federal court has recently ruled that form of rent control as being unconstitutional, saying that such a cap discourages investment and therefore leads to fewer independent dealers. If the Supreme Court upholds this finding, then rent control in New York City and elsewhere could very well fall by the wayside.

Old jobs have to go: "Saving time and freeing up resources for other, more efficient uses, is good. Sure there is displacement and alienation: 50-year-old pipe-fitters who may never again make union scale and parents who rarely see their infants awake. But -- and I apologize for being so presumptuous at my still tender age -- that's the way the world works. Would we prefer to be in stasis and consign the next generation to dead-end jobs at best? Or to deny young people the opportunity to give their progeny the material comforts and fancy educations they may have lacked growing up? Or maybe we should skip the industrial revolution too and have everybody working the fields: full employment!"

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

ELSEWHERE

On Dec. 26th., I reproduced two excellent letters from readers of the Pasadena Star Weekly. The lady who wrote the second letter has just emailed me as follows: "Thank you for finding and posting my "Jesusland" letter to the Pasadena Weekly. As you know, I was crucified as a "pseudo-intellectual" who voted for the fascist Bush and am willingly sending my family members to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. As I write this, my son-in-law has been coming under mortar attacks and is bravely doing what he believes to be right for his country and his beautiful little girl. I have been attacked by many Leftists who tell me and secretly hope that my family in the military will die and are fighting a useless battle. My friends served in Vietnam and I have never, never seen such vileness and hatred. You have given me a bit more resolve to go on. Bless You!"

Hmmm... I got a lot of email in response to my posts about the Trinity. I do rather regret raising the matter as I think that what I wrote did disturb a lot of good Christian people whom I really had no wish to disturb. For that reason most of my replies were a bit brief as I was reluctant to continue the discussion. Even so, I think that what I wrote did seriously disturb the faith of some. So that gives me a real dilemma. I could paternalistically refuse to continue the discussion, which does not treat my readers with much respect, or I could continue the discussion under DO NOT GO HERE warning flags. I have chosen the latter. I will for a time put up a separate blog devoted to scriptural exegesis which I would advise readers NOT to visit unless they are prepared to risk exposure to possibly threatening unorthodox views. So see "A scripture blog" for that. Today I look at John 1:3.

There is a rather aptly named Australian Leftist blog called "Cut-price Commentariat". A recent post there referred to "A Western Heart" (a group-blog I post to) as "Mike Jericho's posse of (now) out-and-out fascists". Why? Because one of the contributors welcomed the rumour that Osama has been warned that he risks Mecca being nuked if there are any more attacks on the USA. It should be noted that there have been no attacks on the USA since 9/11/2001 so the rumour is a plausible one. Our Lefty blogger however seems to think that using the THREAT of nuclear attack (which was also what kept the Soviets at bay and ensured the long post-1945 peace in the Western world) is "Fascist". Like most Leftists, however, he conveniently forgets his history. Who was the only national leader who ACTUALLY USED nukes? It was of course Democrat President Harry Truman, the heir of that great Leftist hero, FDR. So Harry Truman was clearly a "fascist" by the lights of our Lefty blogger -- which makes about as much sense as Leftist accusations usually do.

Sad news about the dippy Steve Kangas, whom I referred to yesterday. Gerry Jackson of Brookes News writes: "If this is the Steve Kangas I'm thinking of, he committed suicide sometime ago. Kangas was a very sad case and a very disturbed man. Nevertheless, he was still an "ass" who knew nothing about economic history, economics or any real political history. I completely demolished his defence of FDR's damaging economic policies. His response was pathetic".

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx believed in dictatorship.

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

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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


posted by JR 1/10/2005 09:05:00 PM

Sunday, January 09, 2005

 
ALARM-BELLS FOR AUSTRALIAN BLOGGERS!

Some academics from the peacenik end of the Australian church community were recently commissioned by the Australian Federal government to do a report on "Multi-faith" (translation: Islam-promoting) activities in Australia. Summary here. The full report (PDF) is mostly a combination of mush and political correctness but one of its recommendations is downright hilarious: It recommends that public use of the cross be discontinued and a "composite symbol" be developed to replace it. My mind it quietly boggling at what a composite of the Christian cross and the Muslim crescent might look like! Pretty confusing, I guess.

Another recommendation is not so hilarious, however. Under "Websites and Web Links" it says (p. 115): "The monitoring of Australian-based religious websites by religious leaders themselves and by government authorities charged with administering legislative acts concerning racial and religious discrimination has become a priority". And in their final recommendations under the heading "Constructing a Multi-Faith Australia" (p.125), it says this about websites: "The study uncovered legitimate concerns about the material of several websites of faith communities, particularly their links to racist websites offshore. At this stage, it is appropriate that a process of self-regulation remain in place but the issue needs to be monitored by the Council for Multicultural Australia. Accordingly, it is recommended that: All faith communities be encouraged to put in place mechanisms for a continual monitoring of their websites for materials or links whose content might damage the harmony of Australia's multi-faith society." (Translation: Criticism of Islam on the net must be censored).

So they think the government should censor websites that are critical of Islam but are being all moderate at the moment and are recommending self-censorship only. But the whole idea of political censorship of the net is of course obnoxious. So Australian readers should talk to whomever they can to make sure that this bit of Fascism goes no further. It WOULD of course be the Leftists who want political censorship. Hiding inconvenient information is essential to the Left and they are pretty good at it. How many people know, for instance, that Marx and Engels were antisemitic German nationalists long before Hitler thought of it? But for the web, I doubt that anybody reading this would know that. See MarxWords.

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! You learn every day! Like most people I had always accepted that Hitler's stated reason for invading Russia -- to beat the Russians to the punch before they invaded him -- was just a pretext. I should have known better. Hitler was as brilliant a political operator as he was an incompetent General. Up until the invasion of Poland, all his many victories -- including the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia -- had been political. It now turns out that he was absolutely right about Russia. He may have beaten them to the punch only by months. A book written by Victor Suvorov -- a former major in Soviet military intelligence -- has been excerpted here and what is tells is stunning. Just one point: The Soviets had over a thousand fast WHEELED (trackless) tanks by 1941 -- tanks which could only be used on Germany's autobahns. They would have sunk (and did sink) into the ground on Russia's rough roads. By striking into Russia first, Hitler rendered them all useless. A must-read for anybody interested in history or in militaria.

There was some stunning hypocrisy and inconsistency coming from the Democrats during the confirmation hearing for the Attorney General designate, Alberto Gonzales. All normal form for Leftists, I suppose. See here

Why the rules allowing filibustering may have to be changed: "It is worth recalling that Mr. Bush campaigned throughout 2004 against the Democrats' obstructionism in the Senate, which was most clearly epitomized by the unprecedented filibuster campaign the minority party waged against 10 judicial nominees to the nation's circuit courts of appeal. Indeed, the president's coattails played an indispensable role in ousting Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the leader of the filibuster campaign whose judicial obstructionism played a major role in his electoral defeat. ... During the 108th Congress, in a campaign of unprecedented scope and breadth, Democrat senators successfully voted 20 times to deny cloture on judicial nominees. Invoking cloture would have ended the Democrat filibusters being waged to prevent an up or down vote for the 10 nominees to the appellate courts. ... A review of Senate history illustrates just how unprecedented the Democrats' filibustering campaign against judicial appellate nominees has been. ... From 1949 through 2000, cloture was sought on only 13 judicial nominations, including twice for William Rehnquist, whose nominations as both associate justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court were filibustered. ... During President Bush's first term, however, cloture has been sought on 14 judicial nominations. ... Democrats have successfully filibustered 10 of the 45 circuit court nominations by President Bush that have made it to the Senate floor. That's more than 20 percent. It is a campaign that has been as unprecedented as it has been outrageous."

There is a pompous Leftist ass (as in donkey) called Steve Kangas who claims to have all the answers to why Leftists are right and others are wrong. I guess he has convinced himself but convincing others will be harder. I have shown here how far-Left and quite stupid is his treatment of one topic at least. He starts out by defining socialism in such a way that only Communists can be socialists and then defines socialism in a way that would exclude Stalin from being one! So is ANYBODY a socialist according to Kangas? Only Mr Brain-dead Kangas himself, I guess

One of my readers recommends the book The Virtue of War as making the case for the Iraq involvement from a Christian "just war" perspective. There is an interview with one of the authors of the book here

Awkward for the Left: "Those who made their annual trip to church on Christmas day will have to think again. Research shows that regular churchgoers live longer than non-believers. A 12-year study tracking mortality rates of more than 550 adults over the age of 65 found that those who attend services at least once a week were 35 per cent more likely to live longer than those who never attended church. The research also found that going to church boosted an elderly person's immune system and made them less likely to suffer clogged arteries or high blood pressure. Susan Lutgendorf, psychology professor at the University of Iowa, who carried out the study, said: "There's something involved in the act of religious attendance, whether it's the group interaction, the world view or just the exercise to get out of the house. There's something that seems to be beneficial."

There is an interesting review in Commentary of the book Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare by Jason DeParle. It shows from life-histories how 1990s welfare reform actually worked. Most dole recipients were working anyway and just worked harder when they lost benefits. The review also mentions calls for the government to somehow make black males into better fathers! That strikes me as terminally weird. There really are SOME limits on what governments can be expected to do.

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels thought Germany had a right to conquer other countries because it was more civilized. Yes. That was Engels, not Adolf.

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

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/09/2005 09:34:00 PM

Saturday, January 08, 2005

 
THE TRINITY REVISITED

This is not a religious blog -- with the fact that I am an atheist being no small part of the reason for that. I generally confine my comments on religion to profound reverence for our Christian heritage and profound dislike of Islam and all its works. I did however let my old theological interests off the leash long enough recently to post a few derisive comments about the doctrine of the holy Trinity ("So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God" in the Athanasian formulation). Naturally, I got a bit of return-fire over that. So for those who are interested, a few notes follow by way of a rejoinder:

Maverick Philosopher mentions the trinitarians' favourite text: John 1:1 "And the Word was God". Trinitarians say that John was clearly referring to Jesus in saying that but in so doing they overlook the very point John was making: That Jesus should be seen not only as a person but as a message of enlightenment from God. So it was the message or truth that was divine and eternal rather than the person. If John had meant to say "Christ", he would have. And it actually gets worse for the trinitarians if we concede that John was referring there simply to Christ. Because in the original Greek of the NT, the supreme being is always referred to as "ho Theos" (THE God). And in John 1:1, John specifically calls the Word "theos" (meaning "divine") rather than "ho Theos". So John is specifically saying that the Word was NOT the supreme being. So there is NO scriptural basis for the trinity doctrine.

{A detour here for Greek grammarians: It may be contended that John used the anarthrous form of "theos" purely because it was a predicate. It is true that there is some usage to that effect: Probably a lazy usage where the meaning is otherwise clear. But the question is: Was it John's usage? No. We see just a little later in the same text a predicative usage WITH the article: "kai ee zoe een to phos".}

The remaining point that a couple of people have made is that if Christ is not God what is he? I would have thought that was obvious -- one of the many people who have allegedly gone to Heaven.

And the comment on Northwestern Winds is just puzzling. He quotes Paul to say that you have to believe in the resurrection to be a Christian and seems to think that implies that you have to believe Christ is God. I would have thought it implied the exact opposite! Or was God dead for three days?

[Just a fun footnote: I have crazy interests for an atheist so I thought I might list the books I keep within arm's reach on my desk while I am blogging: Strong's Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible; The Penguin Australian encyclopaedia; The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge; The Macquarie [Australian] Dictionary; Brewer's Politics; The King James Bible; an Italian/English dictionary; a French/English dictionary; a Spanish/English dictionary; a German/English dictionary; The Koran; The American State papers including the Federalist; an American desk encyclopedia; Pears Cyclopaedia; a dictionary of American slang; the poems and songs of Robert Burns; Mein Kampf; a Greek New Testament and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer with Hymns Ancient and Modern. So now you know what I think I often need to know more about!]

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ELSEWHERE

More on Wal-Mart. A reader writes: "My son, who is 20 yrs. old, works for Wal-Mart. He is in his sophomore year of a Business degree. His job at Wal-Mart is putting him through college and he makes good money for a kid his age, well above the minimum wage. But he plans to remain with Wal-Mart for his career. In fact he expects to move up into management this spring. His description of his work environment does not match the descriptions of those anti-capitalist Wal-Mart bashers. He laughed at these allegations. (I asked him specific questions based on the complaints I'd heard online)"

Windschuttle vindicated! Courageous historian Keith Windschuttle has stressed that support for the "White Australia" immigration policy (which excluded Asians) came mainly from the labour unions. Amazingly, the unions are still at it in 2005: "A major union has called on the Federal Government to block a move by a Victorian fruit board to import up to 10,000 fruit pickers from China.... Mr Shorten said "no growers or employers should be allowed to undermine the job opportunities of Australians and their legal wages and conditions. The Howard Government must act to ensure Australian workers are not disadvantaged by the importation of Chinese labour"."

Eurosclerosis: "While American soldiers were delivering emergency supplies to isolated disaster areas and Australian doctors were treating the injured, Europeans were having meetings or, worse yet, trying to set dates for meetings. The French Minister of Public Health, Douste-Blazy, posed a rhetorical question while visiting Sri Lanka: was it "normal" that his colleagues in Brussels held their first discussions on the subject a full ten days after the catastrophe?"

Still not good enough for the critics, of course: "Employers hired workers in 2004 at the fastest pace in five years, with overall payrolls rising by 2.2 million. December's job growth was a bit lower than expected, with the unemployment rate holding at 5.4 percent."

About time: "China is planning to make selective abortions of female foetuses illegal as a way to close the widening gap between the number of boys and girls in the country, the official Xinhua News Agency said."

The British view of other countries (poll results): "A glance down the column headed "The top five" shows the dominance of countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada and also the relevant insignificance of countries on the European continent. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are rated unusually safe and Australians unusually friendly. The USA has a more mixed reputation: dynamic and democratic, yes, but also dangerously unsafe.... most continental European countries scarcely feature in the ratings (and Spain, in particular, does not feature among the top or bottom five in any of them), Italy and France stand out as countries thought to have some of the world's most beautiful buildings and works of art. Against that, the French and the Germans are thought to be among the world's least friendly people. While Britain and several old Commonwealth countries have high ratings across the board, the survey reveals some places as being almost pariah states. Large numbers of Britons admire Indian food - but only provided they can eat it here".

Surprise, surprise! "Ten months after it received $1.6 million from Republican Gov. Rick Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund, the Texas Energy Center has yet to create any new jobs and is without a director. Created in 2003, the center was proposed as a way to transform the energy industry by bringing together business and researches to develop new energy sources. It was to create thousands of jobs and bring millions of dollars in corporate investment to the Houston suburb of Sugar Land"

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx got money by deceiving relatives.

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

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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


posted by JR 1/08/2005 09:04:00 PM

Friday, January 07, 2005

 
Fun! It looks like Staples has caved in! See the last update here



WAL-MART REVISITED

An excellent email from one of my readers in response to my post yesterday about Wal-Mart:

"Sometimes economic and logical ignorance and anti-capitalist bias just must be rebutted, even though it should be obvious to everyone. In regard to the February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee concerning the "federal costs" to taxpayers of "Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels," the following observations:

First, where do they think Wal-Mart gets these apparently exploited and "badly paid" employees? From the ranks elsewhere of better-paid full-time employees with full benefit packages? I haven't heard about any Wal-Mart gangs shanghaiing people and forcing them to work for Wal-Mart, so Wal-Mart's employees must be there voluntarily, presumable because Wal-Mart offers them better employment opportunities than they had before.

Second, even if it is true (which I doubt) that most of these employees rely on government-provided or subsidized health care and government assistance paid for by "US taxpayers," is it not then likely these same people were also relying on government-provided or subsidized health care and assistance before they voluntarily chose to work for Wal-Mart? So Wal-Mart's employment of these people would, at worst, have no effect on the cost to taxpayers for these people's government-subsidized health care and other government assistance. More likely, at least some of these employees would now qualify for at least some employer-provided benefits and others would have improved their economic lot sufficiently to pay for at least some of their own maintenance and health care, rather than relying on government assistance.

In addition, since these employees must now have better employment opportunities than they had had before, presumably most of them are earning more than they did before, and paying more taxes! In fact, some of these employees may have had no employment before and been surviving entirely on welfare benefits. Therefore, when Wal-Mart employs these people, tax collections go up, use of government-subsidized health care goes down, and welfare benefit payments go down, which is a net benefit to everyone. The only logical conclusion one can draw is that rather than costing "federal taxpayers ... a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees," Wal-Mart's employment of these people reduces the welfare bill the US taxpayers otherwise would pay for these people.

When such obvious logic and facts are omitted from a "report" damning a successful business operation, it is clear the objective is not truth, but rather, to bash successful business and to attack our competitive capitalist system.

I can just see how this logic will play out in the Dems next report attacking not only Wal-Mart, but also all US businesses large and small, for employing anyone at all. Given the actuarial imbalance in the Social Security system, each new hire can be expected to add tens of thousands of dollars to the actuarial deficit. When summed across the entire economy, the deficit is not just a measly $2.5 billion, but rather tens of trillions of dollars! As a result, all these evil businesses in the US are shackling the US taxpayers with TRILLIONS in future tax liability by employing anyone!"

Blithering Bunny has some useful links on the Wal-Mart haters too.

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

ELSEWHERE

I have had some good laughs lately, but you should read this dippy email that someone sent Keith Burgess Jackson. Keith's reply is a bit too kind. The moronic email-writer said that he could only evaluate Keith's writings by whether or not Keith's university had a chapter of a prestigious student fraternity. I would have replied that anyone who is so incapable of evaluating arguments that he can rely only on the prestige of the author's employer must be a complete mental cripple. On second thoughts, I think there is a fair chance that the email is a student joke. Keith also has up at the moment some good comments on the many defamatory things that Leftists say about Karl Rove. "The pot calling the kettle black" rather sums it up. I wonder if young people understand that analogy? How many of them have ever seen a black pot or kettle? Perhaps they think the saying should be "The pot calling the kettle Afro-American".

Rafe Champion has just scanned in a great article about the so-called cultural cringe that allegedly afflicted Australian cultural life for most of the 20th century. Knowing the robust independence of most Australians, the whole claim has always seemed rubbish to me and the article demonstrates in great detail what rubbish it is. The only basis for the claim seems to be that certain self-proclaimed Australian cultural elites were not getting as much attention as they felt they deserved. I suspect that they actually got MORE attention than they deserved. I certainly found plenty of Australian books to read when I was a kid in the '50s but I guess much of my reading at that time was distressingly "popular" -- Ion Idriess and the like. I actually think Idriess did an incomparable job of popularizing Australian and Pacific history and I am delighted to say that I think I had read every one of his books by the time I was 12. My interest in history goes back a long way. And I cannot recollect ever hearing a single derogatory word about the Australian poets -- Lawson and Patterson mainly -- whose works I enjoyed learning at school. Lawson's "The Teams" is still one of my favourite poems -- partly because I know how accurate was Lawson's description of the taciturn, hard-working teamsters. My own grandfather was one of them, I am immensely proud to say.

Iraq and Indonesia compared. An email from a reader: "I have just caught up with a friend in the Royal Australian Air Force who has recently been in the Middle East and who has been working on relief flights to Indonesia. He tells me the image we get via TV news of the Iraq situation greatly exaggerates the chaos and violence factor. He says Aceh is the opposite. Nothing on TV shows the extent of the destruction and death. He says you can easily find areas where there are dead and dismembered bodies in every direction".

There are only two Governor's races taking place in the U.S. this year -- in Virginia and New Jersey. Since there are no national campaigns, these governor's races are going to be watched intently. Commonwealth Conservative has the lowdown on the Virgina race.

Brazilian blogger, Luis Afonso reports a couple more of ratty articles about American tsunami aid. Somehow Hiroshima and Nagasaki have got dragged in! I thought my link yesterday about the tsunami being the fault of "THE JOOOOS" was the ultimate but I am beginning to wonder.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big selection of posts

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx thought it essential to destroy human families -- nice guy!

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

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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



posted by JR 1/07/2005 09:12:00 PM

Thursday, January 06, 2005

 
BOYCOTT LEFTIST BIGOTS!

A fun idea over at National Center for Public Policy Research . Apparently Massachusetts-based office supply retailer Staples, Inc. has decided to withdraw advertising buys from news broadcasts on Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. television stations in response to an e-mail campaign by left-wing activists. The activists complained that Sinclair was "placing partisan interest ahead of the public interest" by broadcasting conservative and pro-President Bush commentaries. But scurrilously Leftist TV networks like CBS are apparently OK. It would seem a good time to nip such nonsense in the bud. If you want to help, email Owen Davis at Staples and tell him that you will be boycotting all Staples products until they abandon their Leftist bias. And how about a picket-line outside any Staples stores in "Red" States?

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

TSUNAMI AID

An interesting email from Gene Berman (vze3rdxd@verizon.net):

"I have something I think may be of great use in the various efforts underway to aid tsunami-hit areas. It's not, unfortunately, something I am able to donate but even so, to the extent useful, would represent substantial saving over alternatives.

The basic item is an inflatable Pontoon Float. The unit consists of three inflatable tubes of heavily rubberized canvas duck (about 50 oz/yd). Each tube is 3 ft diameter X 22 ft. long. The unit package, in addition to the 3 tubes, contains nylon cord for lashing the tubes (the tubes are well grommetted), metal parts to form "edges" and to form bow and stern, and a suitable foot-pump (although any will do @ 2 psi). The entirety is export-crated and weighs right about 1000 lbs, about 800 lbs net of the crate.

When assembled and inflated, the resultant unit is a 9' X 22" X 3' high, barge-like unit, capable of supporting 12 tons. And, of course, units may be combined for larger surface area and carrying capacities as required and may be readily towed by powered craft. I've got 40 of the units ready to go @ US $4500 each. As a price comparison, nearly identical tube units are made by a US company named Demaree Inflatables. They make various configurations but one roughly similar to mine runs about $15-16G and the individual tubes themselves are priced at $5500.

These were formerly used by the US military for a variety of purposes, including the erection of temporary bridges, use as barges singly or in tandem, floating docks, piers, diving platforms, etc. They've since switched over to a different configuration and I bought them directly from the government. They're not used and all have been inspected to make sure they're in first-class condition.

I am making inquiries through USAID currently and naturally, it's tough slogging and slow--probably aggravated by demand for their attention on account of the disaster. I thought that you might have some suggestion or references as to people or agencies over there--a lot closer to the activity. (Technically, the units require clearance of the International Trade Administration before export--they're on the list covering munitions and strategic material--but I think that won't be much of a hurdle under present circumstances.)"

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

HOW TSUNAMI AID SHOULD BE DONE (BUT WON'T)

An interesting email from Michael D. Greaney, Director of Research, Center for Economic and Social Justice (http://www.cesj.org)

I am concerned that aid to tsunami victims will be handled by "the usual suspects" and in the same old way. I (naturally) see a "two-prong" strategy to giving aid to the victims, to which I invite comments (mgreaney@cesj.org):

1. Immediate direct aid in the form of food, clothing and medical assistance should be given to affected individuals, regardless of borders, race, religious affiliation, or party membership. This aid should not be given to any government, state or local, except under closely supervised conditions to ensure that it reaches the intended recipients instead of brothers, cousins and uncles of the bureaucrats, who will sell it to pay gambling debts and purchase liquor, women, and pornography.

2. The rebuilding of infrastructure and businesses should be financed through local "Capital Homesteading" programs, so that ownership of even the largest enterprises becomes widespread and people own their own government and control their own incomes legally and directly, making the government accountable to them, not to international financing agencies, terrorist organizations, or foreign countries. The blueprint for Capital Homesteading can be found as a free download on the website of the Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ") (http://www.cesj.org), under the title CAPITAL HOMESTEADING FOR EVERY CITIZEN. While designed for the moribund U.S. Social Security and Medicare systems, with very little tinkering it can be adapted to any country on earth.

The only problem with using Capital Homesteading in this fashion is that it builds economic (and thus political) power into ordinary people, not bureaucrats. If you want to discuss Capital Homesteading, CESJ's president, Dr. Norman G. Kurland, can be contacted as thirdway@cesj.org

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


THE WAL-MART HATERS

It is basic to the Left to envy other people's success. So they have always hated successful businesses -- as Microsoft and McDonald's well know. So their hatred of Wal-Mart is no surprise. The N.Y. Review of Books has a big review of a number of anti-Wal-Mart books and, surprise, surprise, finds not one thing to criticise about any of the books concerned -- despite the inclusion of books that have been heavily criticized elswhere, such as the Ehrenreich tome. Let us just look at just one of the misleading statements in the "Review" concerned.

"One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees".

Wayne Lusvardi has sent me the following comment on the excerpt above:

"The excerpt highlights how Leftists often use statistical fallacies to deceive the public about Wal-Mart. The paragraph claims that Federal welfare subsidies to Wal-Mart employees -- because of their low wages -- amounts to $2.5 billion ($420,00 per Wal-Mart store). The statistical fallacy is one of extrapolation from individual income data while leaving household or family data out of the analysis. Many Wal-Mart employees are retired and have other sources of income that keep them from depending on welfare programs. Many other Wal-Mart employees come from two-wage earner families and also don't require welfare assistance. Many others have two jobs or additonal part time employment to supplement their Wal-Mart salaries. And, of course, many have spouses that have health insurance which covers them as well. The flaw in the Democratic Staff House Committee report cited is the fallacy of extrapolating from one hypothetical Wal-Mart employee living on an hourly wage of $8 per hour with no other income, family, or other non-government support to all Wal-Mart employees, which of course is nonsense. But an unquestioning media will morph this data into a "fact." What did social psychologist W.I. Thomas say? "A situation that is perceived as real, is real in its consequences." So expect this Leftist "factoid" to start showing up in your local newspapers as unions and NIMBY's fight Wal-Mart stores in their local communities."

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

MORE FUN WITH LEFTISTS:

I guess these guys don't really matter. They can't even spell "specter", even though they use the word in their headline. And who reads Revolutionary Worker anyway? But it is instructive how they have to depend on lies to support their cause. Excerpts:

"The agenda of Bush and the Christian right is not limited to criminalizing abortion, outlawing gay marriage, forcing children to recite prayers in school, and mandating the teaching of Biblical creationist ignorance. Their ultimate goal is Christian fascist theocracy. Now, following the election, they feel emboldened-and compelled-to take their theocratic project to a whole new level... The Bible reflects and supports all that goes along with these class and social relations: wars of conquest and pillage; traditional relations of patriarchy and male domination; the division of society into rich and poor, exploited and exploiter; and the absolute power of rulers over ruled.... The Christian fascists don't believe religion should be an individual choice. They believe all of society, and indeed the whole world, must be ruled according to biblical law-in short, they believe in a theocracy with no separation between church and state".

Recognize anyone you know there? I don't. It is all just a fantasy. No Christian Church that I know of seeks such things. So what sources do they quote to back up their claims? The good old New York Times mostly. How surprising!

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

ELSEWHERE

There is a "must read" story at Varifrank about European arrogance and stupidity over the tsunami. Knocking America is far more important to them than helping people. I feel acutely sorry for the Indian guy in the story. Follow Varifrank's link to Gail Halvorsen too. (Link via E-Nough)

Congratulations to A.E. Brain. He has found some loon who thinks THE JEWS were responsible for the tsunami. It was really caused by an underwater Jewish atom bomb, you see! Given that Germany is once again a largely antisemitic country, I am sure that the theory will be widely accepted there. Sie glauben doch dass Michael Moore recht hat!

It must be all that "outsourcing": "Manufacturing activity in the United States expanded for the 19th consecutive month in December, a research group reported Monday, suggesting that the industrial sector entered the new year with solid strength behind it. The Institute for Supply Management said that its main index measuring industrial activity rose to 58.6 in December from 57.8 in November. The December performance was slightly more robust than analysts had anticipated. A reading of 50 or above in the index means the manufacturing sector is expanding, while a figure below 50 represents a contraction. The index has been 50 or above since May of 2003, according to revised figures".

This Pakistani should end his days in prison: "A "British" businessman offered to sell at least 200 ground-to-air missiles for use in a deadly plot to terrorise airline passengers across America, a court was told yesterday. Hemant Lakhani, 69, from Hendon, North London, told an undercover FBI agent that the shoulder-held missiles could be used to shoot down ten to fifteen aircraft simultaneously on the second anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks, it is alleged.... Mr Lakhani was arrested in August 2003 at a hotel overlooking Newark airport moments after delivering a sample missile to an FBI informant. He has since been held in the Passaic County Jail, New Jersey".

A lawyer's feeding trough to go: "Republicans will try for quick action on a measure that would end asbestos lawsuits in exchange for a trust fund to compensate victims, the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday, despite a two-year deadlock".

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels eagerly looked forward to new heights of mass slaughter. Hate-filled? You judge.

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

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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


posted by JR 1/06/2005 08:54:00 PM

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

 
REPORT ON THE RELIEF WORK IN INDONESIA

From one of my Australian correspondents in Indonesia:

New Year's eve in Jakarta was very humble with the locals doing more praying than partying. However it is hard to believe it has been only 10 days since the disasters. President ad V-P Kalla have each made two trips to Aceh (Jakarta-Aceh is like Canberra-Cairns) as have most of the cabinet. Aceh has already been opened up to foreign aid agencies (50 of them so far!), foreign journalists and even the Australian air force and US marines are on the ground. The Aceh provincial government was virtually wiped out so too the local administrations of Bandah Aceh and the West coast regencies, the regional police lost half their men (and families) and old-time control freaks in the central government and army are, momentarily, sidelined.

Australia and the US are controlling air traffic at Banda Aceh airport, trucks are moving in from Medan and the east coast ports are chockers. Unfortunately the earthquake/tsunamis double whack destroyed roads and bridges into the west side where all the suffering is. What this means is there are mighty log jams which are preventing even more aid and personnel being shifted around quickly at this stage. Despite the cruelty of the thought, transportation and engineering specialists are needed first. Once the logistics are sorted out over the next few days I am sure the medical people will be streaming in. I am more concerned with the long-term capacity problem of local, useful institutions like the Indonesian Red Cross (which is getting a pittance of the charity money raised world wide) once the internationals move on to the next big show (or abuse their welcome) . and also the, to date unaddressed, need to get thousands of Acehnese out of the province until infrastructure can be restored (as done in Darwin in 1974).

Everyone is aware of the swift Australian support and our defence force team in Aceh is doing a great job in transportation and infrastructure. The latest news from the Australian Government of an extra $500 million to help rebuild the devastated areas is amazing.

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

THE HOLY TRINITY

The blogosphere is an amazing place. Over at Maverick Philosopher there has been an extensive discussion going on about the doctrine of the holy Trinity! Generally sympathetic to Christianity though I am, I cannot see that particular doctrine as anything but the most awful load of codswallop. It is a self-contradictory formulation that arose out of the controversy among early Christians about whether Christ was God or not. They thought he was but, if so, how come he himself constantly referred to God as separate from himself (e.g. John 14:28)? Were there two Gods, Jesus plus his "Father" in heaven or was there only the one God of Judaism?

There was one logical group in all this -- the Arians -- who said that there was only one God and he was separate from Christ so therefore Christ was not God. This did however stir up enormous fights among the early Christians and the Arians ended up getting the boot. So we ended up with the present ridiculous doctrine that there are three gods (Jesus plus God the Father plus the Holy Ghost) but there is still also only one God. It is conventional to describe the doctrine as a mystery but it is no such thing. It is just a theological compromise that sacrifices logic for the sake of keeping all parties to the debate happy. How anybody can take it seriously is beyond me. If you regard Christ's own words as being the ultimate authority, the Arians have the argument won hands down. In Matthew 16: 16,17 he makes it as clear as he possibly could that he is the son of God, not God himself. Ain't theology wonderful?

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

ELSEWHERE

Hilarious! "Gene Expression" have up a post on Jared Diamond, the biologist who claims that race is a myth and that there is no genetic difference between the Western European whites who created the modern world and anybody else. All those "dead white males" did so well purely by accident, apparently. The "Gene Expression" post however reprints one of Diamond's scientific papers from the days before he had hopped onto the politically correct bandwagon -- a paper in which Diamond shows important inherited differences between the races! That blogospheric fact-checking sure is pesky for frauds!

My controversy with Jason Soon continues over at Majority Rights. Great fun! Jason does seem to be a bit of a dipstick. Maybe he should be renamed Jason Late! I see that he has however deleted his original defamatory post so I guess I have had a victory in the midst of having fun! Taking me on in my own area of academic specialization (political psychology) was certainly not wise of him.

A step forward: "The Bush administration is focusing on a Social Security proposal that would allow younger workers to invest up to 4 percent of their payroll taxes in private accounts, with contributions limited to about $1,000 to $1,300 a year, an official said Tuesday." [Australia has been doing much the same sort of thing for years, of course, only on a rather bigger scale]

A good article here on how the aging population problem is going to hit Europe a lot harder than the USA.

David Limbaugh: "When you look at the Left's rush to judgment against the Bush administration for not reacting precisely according to its expectations (demands) concerning the tsunami disaster, you just have to wonder what kind of psychological forces motivate this group. It's instructive that the very people who constantly call for a spirit of collegiality and bipartisanship have somehow managed to politicize the most apolitical of all events.... one is entitled to question whether people are truly motivated by compassion when they feel the need to conspicuously parade their philanthropy like an obscene badge of self-congratulatory honor."

Tom Barrett has a pretty good coverage and refutation of the lies and deceit coming from Leftists about the tsunami relief operation.

An Iraqi speaks up about how un-humanitarian are the so-called "humanitarians" of the Western Left in Iraq.

More evidence of heavy Leftist bias among journalists here

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that, like modern-day Leftist elitists, Engels thought that country people (the "Rednecks" of his day) were stupid.

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

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

That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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

posted by JR 1/05/2005 09:56:00 PM

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

 
SUPERB ILLOGIC

As I have noted previously, I sometimes put up posts on a new blog called Majority Rights. I think the cause concerned is an important one. Why should minorities have rights -- including the right to celebrate their own culture -- when the politically-correct crowd are frantically trying to deny the same rights to the majority? They are even trying (often successfully) to deny us the right to mention Christmas, for goodness sake!

The blog concerned is however a group blog with a fair range of contributors and some are a bit nutty by most people's standards -- with the inevitable deep suspicion of Jews occasionally popping up. I am however one of the most pro-Israel bloggers there is so it is perfectly clear that I myself am not of that ilk. In fact, I am so outspoken on the matters concerned that I get a lot of flak in the comments section from the more paranoid types who read the blog.

So, knowing all that, note the following comment posted by Jason Soon:

Apparently there's a new blog on the block that calls itself Majority Rights. The Australian blogosphere's err. unique . John J. Ray is a contributor. While Dr Ray is undoubtedly an intelligent and erudite man, some of his opinions can be regarded as monomanical and eccentric. But his membership of this group blog which includes a genuine anti-semitic conspiracy theorist and people who just 'love their race' among its contributors really doesn't do wonders for his reputation, except insofar as one can say that he comes across as among the most reasonable and moderate of its regulars. And for his pains, in a relatively innocuous post arguing that Hispanics are not dumb, he gets excoriated by one of his readers (wintermute) as a 'far Left monstrosity' (an honour he apparently shares with our Queen). Needless to say, any blog whose readership regards Dr Ray as a 'far Left monstrosity' will be of great entertainment value to Catallaxy readers but I daren't say much else for it.

The post shows some attempt at balance but I posted a comment about Soon's use of the term "monomania". I said: ""Monomania" is a clinical term associated with paranoid psychosis. Don't you think some more moderate term might become you better...?"

Soon replied:

"As for monomania, call that poetic licence. Your obsession with associating leftism with nazism (a rhetorical ploy now undercut by your association with actual nazis) is a monomania though your means of expressing it may be outwardly coherent".

I replied:

I guess Galileo was a monomaniac too with his ridiculous idea that the earth revolved around the sun. In Galileo's case, you just had to look through his telescope. In my case you just have to read the historical documents. But both actions were/are "absurd" according to the contemporary wisdom. Galileo was still right, though. And his campaign to educate people in the facts WAS important.

You also seem to be overlooking the fact that I reduce the "Nazis" on the blog concerned to what is apparently teeth-grinding rage. I guess that by Jason Soon logic, if I oppose Communism, I must be a Communist.

The amazing thing is that Jason had himself noted how much the antisemitic commenters on the blog dislike my posts but he still seems to think that it discredits me to post stuff that enrages them! Jason Soon logic is definitely too deep for me to follow. I think it will be a long time before I read any more of his posts.

Jason was once a Gene Expression blogger so would have been seen by most people as pretty Rightist. In recent years, however, elitism seems to have lured him to the Left, with all the devotion to argument-by-abuse that is customary in such circles. I suppose quoting out of context will come next. Maybe as he gets older, however, he will re-establish contact with reality and logic.

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

TUESDAY ROUNDUP

What I think are the best posts on my various blogs for this week:

Dissecting Leftism explains why Libertarians should support the GOP

Political Correctness Watch shows that the ACLU is really anti-liberty

Greenie Watch says that buying the cheapest is environmentally friendly

Education Watch says that Americans are diploma-mad

Socialized Medicine says that doctors are being driven to labor union-like tactics by the high costs of litigation

Leftists as Elitists shows that Leftist elitism leads to Leftist hate

Gun Watch shows how horrible was history's most successful attempt at a complete ban on guns.

MarxWords shows that Hitler and Karl Marx agreed about the Jews

But the post that generated most emails was my fun Greenie Watch post on steam cars (scroll down)! That really brought the technophiles out of the woodwork! They all had better ideas of course. But nobody mentioned orbital engines. Shame!

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

ELSEWHERE

I got an interesting email yesterday. Someone in Iran plans to translate some of my writings into Farsi -- presumably for circulation in Iran. The young people over there are a feisty lot. The Iranians now appears to be the most pro-Western population in the Middle East (Israel excepted, of course). They have had a gutful of the Ayatollahs. Note: "The grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has condemned his country's clerical regime and suggested military intervention by the United States as a possible path to liberation".

I understand that some of my writings have also been translated into Russian -- for the benefit of Russian-origin Israelis -- who are generally a conservative lot. They KNOW what real socialism is like.

Abortion: Kudos to Australian Catholics. I have been advocating this sort of thing for years and GWB advocated it in the Presidential debates too: "One of the last announcements Cardinal George Pell made before taking his annual leave this week was to introduce a program, new to Australia and only the third of its kind in the world, to provide support to pregnant women who are contemplating abortion. "We want to respond to the needs of women facing an unexpected or difficult pregnancy by providing them with life-affirming options," he said. "Through the program, expectant mothers and, if required, their families, will be provided with social, emotional and practical support to enable them to continue with their pregnancy to full term. Women need real alternatives to abortion, and this new program is targeted to meet the specific needs of women contemplating abortion."

If there is anybody who is by now not totally fed up with the U.N., this post about the "Toyota Taliban" should settle the matter. It might even put one or two Leftists off the U.N.

How much will reach the victims? "The United Nations has received a record $US1.5 billion ($1.93 billion) in one week in donations after the devastating tidal waves in the Indian Ocean, a UN official said".

It looks like Al Capone's dictum of "vote early and vote often" is the reason the Democrat finally got over the line in the Washington State Governor's race.

There have been a fair few comments recently about the death of Susan Sontag. I have said nothing so far because I think the stupid old bitch's own words about the white race being "the cancer of human history" condemn her more effectively than anything I could say. No doubt she also said that races don't exist.

Betsy Newmark has been doing well. She deserves the kudos. I like her choice of template too, though the colours could be improved. The Newmarks are a whole family of bloggers, of course. Betsy has an excellent post here about how the media ignore successful conservative blacks while constantly pushing Leftist ones.

Wayne Lusvardi looks at the Leftist claim that the war in Iraq is "unconstitutional".

The Policeman is still one of the funniest blogs on the net. You have to "get" dry British humour, though.

The latest posting on my MarxWords blog shows that Engels despised both liberty and democracy.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/04/2005 08:53:00 PM

Monday, January 03, 2005

 
ROCKWELL'S "RED-STATE FASCISM"

The libertarian blog Liberty and Power is at the moment in the throes of debating (generally sympathetically) an article by Lew Rockwell which calls for libertarians to cosy up to the Left because American conservatives have become "Fascist". In a way Rockwell is correct. ALL modern Western governments have more in common with Mussolini's Fascist state than they do with (say) Lord Salisbury's British government of around 100 years ago. Governments in all the Anglosphere countries are far more intrusive and dominant today than they once were. And the dictatorial "political correctness" movement seems mainly to emanate from government-funded institutions too, particularly the judiciary and the universities. So there is every reason for libertarians to be dissatisfied with that. Lots of conservatives are dissatisfied with it too.

But the amusing thing is that the libertarians on L&P and elsewhere seem to think that have found a way of doing something about it. Rockwell and his ilk think that the Left would notice if the libertarians were to "ally" themselves more with the Left. But why should the Left care? They already have Chomsky and Michael Moore to feed them all the catnip they want. Why would they take more than passing notice of a handful of irascible libertarians? The sad truth about libertarianism is that NOBODY WANTS IT. It is not an accident that the U.S. Libertarian party gets only about 1% in national elections. Human beings are tribal and tribes always have some sort of government. And handing over responsibility for lots of things to somebody else is NOT stupid. It is in fact just one aspect of that great human trick of division of labour. Division of labour means that you specialize in just one thing and somebody else has to do all the rest. Only some lower animals do everything for themselves. So people don't WANT to make all their own decisions. They want somebody else to look after everything outside their own sphere of activity -- and an elected government is readily handed all those unwanted responsibilities. As a libertarian myself, I wish all that were not true but it is.

So what is a libertarian to do? It depends on your priorities. Libertarians have always opposed conservatives on issues of sexual morality and Leftists on issues of economic regulation so libertarians have always had to make a choice if they wish to do more than spend all their time talking to one-another. As I see it, however, the battle against restrictive sexual morality has been won long ago. Many good Christian people still advocate it but the percentage of the population who still practice (say) pre-marital chastity would have to be tiny. And among young Republicans in particular sexual freedom is simply modern -- not something particularly Rightist or Leftist. So issues of sexual morality ought not to decide anybody's allegiances these days.

Which leaves issues of economic management and foreign policy. Hard-line libertarians like Rockwell are furiously anti-war on ideological grounds -- because they believe that only governments can make war and they are against governments. What individuals by themselves could do about it if the Islamic nutjobs were to get hold of a few nukes and detonate them in America's big cities they do not say. GWB's strategy may not be perfect but knocking over a couple of Islamic regimes that were pillars of support for Islamic terrorism certainly seems better to me than sitting at home and hoping for the best. The Left are advocating that but Leftist interest in reality has always been small. For them too ideology is all that matters. So it seems to me that any libertarians living in the real world would be doing what they can to help the GOP -- and one way of doing that effectively would be to get inside the GOP and nudge it more and more in the direction of the free-market thinking that has long been its greatest strength. The two major political parties that characterize the Anglosphere are always of necessity centrist parties so NOBODY -- not even libertarians -- can hope to have more than marginal influence on actual policy. But GWB's various tariffs on steel, shrimp etc show that there is still plenty of need in the GOP for free-market advocacy. And it is free market prosperity that makes so much else possible.

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ELSEWHERE

A good comment from a reader: "If the rainfall on Los Angeles these past few days had landed on a third world country, thousands would have died and hundreds of thousands would have been homeless - and the same rains ten years later would have had the same results. A government that does not advance its people is unworthy of respect. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he depletes your fisheries. Teach him to be a capitalist and he will sell you the fish".

Another interesting email just in: "A radio station in Sydney took the initiative and recruited celebrities to bolster support for the appeal to people to open up their wallets for the tsunami disaster. The "host" was Johnny Young, formerly of the "Young Talent Time" program. To everyone's surprise, he started raving and ranting about America and Iraq -- stating that all the money spent by America in arming itself in Iraq should be spent on the disaster. If America had started the war, you could understand some ill will. But that rich Arabs and some Leftoid psychopaths in other governments, supply billions of dollars to fund terrorists and arm them to the teeth to kill Israelis and Americans for the sake of killing was not mentioned. There was no suggestion that the Muslims ought to disband their idea and donate THEIR money to the appeal. Mr Young and his ilk obviously support genocide and not the people trying to end it."

Tim Blair notes disgusting United Nations claims to be doing relief work in Indonesia that is actually being done by American and Australian organizations. More on the Australian effort here

Nasty ideologues: "The political and ideological exploitation of perhaps the worst natural disaster in all our lifetimes is almost beyond belief - were it not for the fact that nothing these days is beyond belief. Even as tears spring into the most hard-hearted person's eyes at both the unimaginable scope of the tragedy and at the wrenching individual stories of loss, opinion leaders just can't help themselves. They are using this cataclysm as little more than cheap debate fodder about the nature and character of the United States, its president and its citizens..... Secretary of State Colin Powell found himself in the position of having to remind the world that over the past four years the United States has provided more such aid than all other nations on the planet combined. It is appalling that he had to mention this, and that President Bush was compelled to cite the same information on Wednesday, because you're not supposed to brag about how charitable you are. But once a United Nations official decried the American aid pledge as "stingy," the administration had little choice." And Tim Blair points out the sheer lies being told by the Left about the huge American aid going to the tsunami victims.

La Shawn Barber seems pleased that there is now a Leftist "hate" site devoted to her. She points out that Ann Coulter has hate sites aimed at her too and welcomes "her" hate site. I linked to La Shawn not long after she started her blog so I agree that Leftists should be bothered by her but it had not occurred to me that an "anti" site is a sort of a backhanded compliment. It shows that you are bothering them. Since some Leftist nerd put up a spoof site of "Dissecting Leftism" a little while ago, I guess that I am now in distinguished company too.

The latest posting on my new MarxWords blog shows that Marx loathed the Jews but was willing to use them to undermine Christianity.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/03/2005 09:04:00 PM

Sunday, January 02, 2005

 
AFRICA TAKES ANOTHER LURCH DOWNHILL

"Namibia has begun expropriating white-owned farms, the New York Times reported this weekend. The story brought me back to a 2003 flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta, at the end of a trip in South Africa. A white passenger was acting as the worst bigots do: It wasn't enough that he didn't like black people -- "those people," as he put it -- he had to broadcast his scorn loudly so that the other passengers would be in complicit agreement with him unless they took the uncomfortable step of challenging him. I did. He then told the story of how he was losing his farm in Zimbabwe, slowly slaughtering livestock he would not replace and laying off workers. He had to grab work with airlines on other continents to earn a living, then return home to fight to hold onto property he was losing bit by bit.....

Zimbabwe, on the other hand, is a land of despair and retribution. Its economy has eroded. Life expectancy at birth in Zimbabwe was less than 34 years in 2000. It was 40 years in 1990, according to U.N. statistics. Between one third and one half of Zimbabwe's population goes hungry, according to the New York Times. The Mugabe government has discouraged commerce and driven outsiders away. To tighten his political control, Mugabe told the World Food Program to cease most emergency deliveries of grain. His government won't sell corn to families that don't belong to his party. The very policies that embittered the white farmer I met on the plane have brought starvation to a country once known for its farms.

Nonetheless, Zimbabwe has a copycat -- Namibia now also has begun to seize white-owned farms, under the pretence of expropriating from whites who are perceived to have fired workers wrongfully. "If you aren't already a racist, they make you a racist," Andreas Wiese, a fourth-generation white farmer, told the New York Times. He reminds me of my fellow traveler from Africa. Wiese's mother says of the family farm that once exported 100,000 flowers a year, and employed many Namibians, "Everything will be destroyed. Just give them two years, and everything will be gone." The Weise family's pain is the least of it. Redistribution is supposed to share the wealth, but in Zimbabwe it spread starvation and poverty -- and no small measure of hate".

More here

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ELSEWHERE

There is a very well-balanced article here which says that the "death" of God in many people's minds has caused many of the same people to seek secular authorities to blame for things like the Tsunami. And when you are looking around for someone to blame who is the first candidate? America, of course! Logic is not needed. And they call religion illogical!

For those who take an interest in such things, I have recently put up on Majority rights my explanation of why the Chinese score above our average on IQ and the Indians score below.

IQ and liberal hypocrisy "A Yankee leftist acquaintance of mine sent me an email shortly after the election telling me that before I gloat about Bush's victory (I replied that my candidate, the Libertarian, lost too), I might find the attached chart of interest--he attached that chart showing IQ by red and blue state. The chart is pretty striking in that the average IQ of almost every red state is below that of the blue states. No doubt this is intended to show that Democrats are smarter than Republicans.... What is hypocritical about this chart is that it is circulated by the same people who bristled at Charles Murray's comments about race and IQ in "The Bell Curve". [The list of State IQs is of course a hoax]

There is an article here that points out that the vast U.S. defence bureaucracy is no better than any other vast bureaucracy. It wastes money prodigiously on things that don't make Americans any safer: "The defense budget is rife with weapon systems that are unneeded, perform poorly, or were designed to fight the now defunct Soviet Union. A few examples follow. After the dramatic decline of the only potent adversarial submarine threat, the U.S. Navy has designed and is producing a new generation of Virginia-class attack submarines. The Marines have sunk billions into developing the accident-prone V-22 tiltrotor transport aircraft, which is designed to take off and land like a helicopter but fly like a plane. Despite all of the billions slathered on the program, the aircraft's design may be fatally flawed. The Air Force's stealth F-22 fighter, originally designed to counter advanced Soviet fighters that were never built, has only a few remaining enemies to fight -- a limited number of porkbusting congressional representatives."

Coddling killers: "Will Victoria Jo Stinnett ever celebrate a happy birthday? I very much doubt it. As soon as she is old enough to understand, she'll be haunted by the trauma of her birth -- ripped from her dead mother's womb by alleged killer Lisa Montgomery. Yet monster though she undoubtedly is, Montgomery is already reaping the benefits of the insidious root-causes racket. Root causes are the rationalizations liberals give -- usually after the fact -- for their immoral actions or for the immoral actions of others. The paradox at the heart of the root-causes fraud is that causal theoretical explanations are invoked only after bad deeds have been committed. Good deeds have no need of mitigating circumstances."

The Spectator has a very sarcastic article here about the recent arrest of Britain's Nick Griffin -- a leading anti-immigration politician. The grounds for the arrest were about as flimsy as those the old Soviet KGB might have used -- making it apparent that the British police are now a political police.

The film "Team America: World Police" has just opened in Australia. Miranda Devine has a good review of how it skewers the Left.

If British readers think that the British Conservatives are hopeless these days, it might perhaps be a small consolation to note that the Canadian conservatives are just as gutless.

Cheat-seeking Missiles has a big summary of the blogospheric response to the Tsunami.

For half a century, Leftist psychologists have been preaching the gospel that conservatives are "authoritarian". We learn on my new MarxWords blog, however, that Engels thought the opposite -- that revolutionaries are authoritarian.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/02/2005 08:37:00 PM

Saturday, January 01, 2005

 

A HAPPY AND CAPITALISTIC NEW YEAR TO ALL MY READERS




ANOTHER BLOG!

This one about Marx and Engels

I am sure that I will get the nickname of the "insane blogger" soon. Yes. I have just started ANOTHER blog. How better to start the New Year? This one is intended to have only a limited lifespan, however. Its purpose is to put on display all the quotes from Marx and Engels that Marxists hope you never find out about. It is truly astonishing what those guys really believed. They had more in common with Hitler than with anyone else. The most recent post shows that Marx and Hitler agreed about the Jews. See here. I will post to the blog only as interesting material for it becomes available to me but Dirk's file gives me plenty to start with. I hope to add new quotes every day for quite a while.

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SCOTS VERSUS THE ENGLISH AGAIN

Another email from a reader:

As a Yorkshire born Aussie, the question of Scottish antipathy to the English has vexed me often. How come this isn't labeled racism on the part of the Scots (and Irish and Welsh)? Friends and colleagues from Scotland have freely related to me their father's or grandfather's generation as being the biggest crankiest bigots they've ever known. This contrasts starkly with my own upbringing - I cannot remember, ever, any bad words about the other inhabitants of the British Isles from my parents or their parents. No such "analytical" discourses with racist overtones ever took place in our families. So while the issue is about economic envy and blame shifting, of which you write, and which I am enjoying reading, essentially it's far more a case of good old politically incorrect, unreconstructed racism. Like Eurabians and Lefties in general with their persistant America bashing - they just cannot help it . .

Sorry, but reading how if the Scots hear a certain accent and assume it's English, they freeze, but if it's an Aussie, Och then that's alright, isn't it . . . - just makes my skin crawl. In fact it changes my opinion of them greatly. Why are the Scots such a sacred cow as a "race" (note, even this is not true) that they shouldn't be justifiably castigated at every opportunity for this racism, rather than "reasons" being given by pundits to excuse and perpetuate it? As far as I can see, it's really more about regional dialects than nationality. "Scot detects English accent, goes coldly polite, gets told it's an Aussie, breaks out the whisky" - what's changed? - nothing - it's still the same person, possibly originally of English or Scottish or, gasp!, both extraction. How silly can people get? We have to change the way we speak for racist Scots to get their hospitality?? Shall we all start speaking in atrocious false accents for their benefit? Better yet, why don't all the English just drop dead for their convenience?

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ELSEWHERE

Accuracy in Media have released their list of the top 20 under-reported stories of 2004. For instance: How liberals tried to use federal agencies to delay or censor Sinclair Broadcasting's airing of Stolen Honor, showing how John Kerry's anti-war testimony led to the torture of our Vietnam POWs.; How the Senate Intelligence Committee report and the Lord Butler Report in England discredited Joe Wilson's charges against the Bush administration regarding Iraq seeking uranium from Africa; How and why MIT's Dr. Richard Lindzen, perhaps the country's leading climatologist, doesn't accept the man-made global warming theory; How Senator John Edwards used "junk science" in some of the cerebral palsy lawsuits that made him rich; John Kerry's failure to release all of his military and medical records.

Most Britons fear walking alone in the dark near home: "Two thirds of people in England and Wales feel unsafe walking alone in their neighbourhood at night, according to a Home Office study published yesterday. Less than one third of people felt very safe when out alone after dark on the streets around their homes. Over the past two years, growing numbers of householders no longer feel safe when out after dark and fewer people say that they definitely enjoy living in their neighbourhood." [I wonder why? Could it be that Britain now has lots of the same sort of people who cause stratospherically high crime-rates in places like Detroit and Johannesburg?]

Persecution of Christians is OK: "The cradle of Christianity is the Middle East, but in recent times Christians have been departing in record numbers from the Arab-Muslim world to escape organized bigotry and violence of Muslim fanatics and terrorists. The August bombings of four churches and a monastery in Iraq barely lifted the veil on the subject -- the precarious situation of Christians and other minorities in Muslim-majority countries. Iraq has been home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the region, the Assyrians, who still speak a form of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. The Christians in Iraq, belonging to various denominations, were estimated to be around 800,000 or 3% of the population. But this population is dwindling as Christians flee in increasing numbers.... The situation of Christians elsewhere in the region -- Pakistan, Palestine, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt -- is about the same as discrimination increases and periodic violence encourages them to depart. Earlier this month, an outrage in Egypt gripped its Coptic Christian community in fear and anger, but it barely got reported in the mainstream North American media".

Battle over recess appointments: "In the looming battle over President Bush's judicial nominations, much has been said about using the so-called nuclear option to by-pass Democratic filibusters. But the president has an alternative weapon, one that empowers him to place conservative nominees on the bench immediately, regardless of efforts by Senate opponents. Mr. Bush could simply use his authority to make recess appointments to fill judicial vacancies -- including, if necessary, at the US Supreme Court. It's a tactic that some legal analysts say is appropriate when a minority of senators attempts to use a filibuster to block an up or down Senate vote on a nominee. Others say the move amounts to an unconstitutional power grab by the White House by circumventing the Senate's 'advice and consent' role in judicial nominations."

Tom Heard lists what is necessary to defeat the Islamic terrorists.

Northwestern Winds has a go at fisking the Daily Kos recipe for Democrat success in 2008 that I had a laugh about two days ago (on 30th). He too quickly grinds to a halt after finding the load of nonsense in it too much to bother with.

PID has a good review of Keith Windschuttle's book on the "White Australia Policy" -- the Leftist policy that is now used to abuse conservatives -- even though it was a conservative government (under Harold Holt) that abolished it.

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions.

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

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posted by JR 1/01/2005 08:36:00 PM