IN MEMORIAM

I think David's Medienkritik says it all for me.

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ECONOMICS

An unholy coalition against cheap goods for all Americans: "With jobs and trade both hot-button election issues, a coalition of business and union groups Thursday pushed the Bush administration to punish China for alleged unfair trade practices... The coalition of steelmakers, textile companies and organized labor � the AFL-CIO and unions representing steelworkers and autoworkers � argues that the currency peg amounts to manipulation by Beijing. By keeping the value of its currency artificially low, China enables its goods to undercut prices of rival products by as much as 40%, U.S. manufacturers say."

Unions leaders support mass immigration and betray their members "Immigration hurts salaried and wage-earning Americans because an increase in the supply of anything [such as labor] reduces its price -- in this case, compensation for labor. The more people who compete for the same job, the less in wages and benefits employers need to offer. .... labor union leaders .. espouse mass immigration, including even illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens. AFL-CIO spokeswoman Kathy Roeder let the cat out of the bag by admitting the reason: "We're always looking for opportunities for people to join unions. That's our number one reason for working with immigrants"". And PID says that the love-affair of the Australian Left with multiculturalism and immigration is also making them traitors to the class they claim to represent.

Ignorant Leftist labour policy: "David Bacon, "a labor journalist and photographer," lives in the fantasy land where supply and demand have no necessary relationship. He writes of efforts to ease the rivalry between blacks and illegal immigrants over jobs. His solution: legislation legalizing those who have broken immigration laws for five years or more, combined with even more anti-discrimination enforcement, including mandatory "outreach" employees for hotels. Umm, Dave, I hate to break it to you, but increasing supply tends to drive down prices. People with few skills are inherently in competition with one another. Legalization of illegal aliens who cross the border and stay will lead to increased illegal immigration, and drive down wages further". But coercion is all the Left knows or understands.

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ELSEWHERE

Conservative black American bloggers seem to be getting a lot of (well-deserved) links these days and I think black Australian blogger "Revenge of the Hamster" will soon be in that league. Her site motto is: "I tried to see life from a lefty point of view, but couldn't get my head that far up my rectum". I like that! This post about Leftist claims that Australia is racist really puts the record straight. What she says could equally well be said of America. A small excerpt: "Australians are good, honest and decent people who try their hardest to welcome all... Australia has given my family a life they could never have dreamed of back in their country of origin. My father faced a life of manual drudgery. In Australia, he has enjoyed a life of endless possibilities and enjoyed rich rewards". She might also have mentioned that is was the LEFT of Australian politics that were for many years the main opponents of non-white immigration into Australia and that the racial restrictions were abolished by the conservative government of Harold Holt.

Memogate: "After being largely confined to the internet and talk radio yesterday, coverage of CBS's apparent usage of forged documents has exploded into more traditional media outlets... Typographical experts, legacy office equipment collectors, and even the family of the man who supposedly wrote the documents have all called into question CBS's "scoop." The fact that a bunch of people working independently on the internet could so readily debunk an obvious forgery tells a very disturbing story about the journalistic practices of a news organization that has allowed one man's grudge against the Bush family to set its remaining shreds of credibility aflame"

Jeff Jacoby: "They are still burying the victims of the latest atrocity committed by evildoers professing Islam -- the slaughter of hundreds of children, teachers, and parents in an elementary school in Beslan, Russia. And from Muslims the world over, as usual, has come mostly silence. There have been no public demonstrations by Muslims anxious to make it clear how outraged and sickened they are that anyone could commit such unspeakable deeds as an act of Islamic faith. There has been no anguished outcry by Islam's leading imams and sheiks...."

Leftist "compassion": "The German left-wing daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports as a success of the "European-Iranian human rights dialog" that a 16-year-old girl will not be stoned to death, but rather hanged. Her "crime": pre-marital sex."

Good stuff: "The United States and Russia clashed yesterday over a way to end the conflict in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, with Washington calling for a political solution and Moscow vowing to crush the separatist movement. Days after a school siege in the Northern Ossetia region that claimed at least 350 lives, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West -- and the United States in particular -- of having a double standard when dealing with terrorism. 'Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?' Putin told foreign reporters in Moscow late Monday."

A good email from Father Mike Walsh: "Good posts on the Catholic Church yesterday. The church has been dominated in the last few decades (notably during my seminary days in the 1980's) by what I call, after the French, 'les soixante-huitards' ('68-ers' --en anglaise) that is, people whose formative experiences occurred in the heady days immediately after Vatican II, for which they had inordinate hopes on behalf of their own agenda. They are distinguished chiefly by a craven need for validation by the secular left and by a titanic self-regard --an attribute I once mocked, during a particularly tedious meeting with my fellow clerics, by standing up and praying that God might "strike me DEAD if I ever attempt to blame the Holy Spirit for my opinions." Hopefully they are, as a class, dying off. One reason I think they might be is their generally low opinion of new seminarians, and by the simple fact that they are incapable of passing on a faith they no longer have. I am quite fond of Bishop Pell, by the way, and know some of the young people he brought to Canada a couple of years ago. They are in good hands."

I have just posted three more chapters from my 1974 book Conservatism as heresy. They deal with the destructive effects of price-control, the idiotic idea that governments can decide what the "needs" of society are and the fact that union activity does NOT get a bigger share of the national income for "the workers".

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

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

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

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