NEW BLOG!

OK. I am insane. Mike Jericho recently described me as "the most prolific blogger in the freakin' world (not an exaggeration)", but, despite that, I have decided to start yet another daily blog called EDUCATION WATCH. I already post an average of around one item a day on education -- sometimes on "Dissecting Leftism" and sometimes on "Political Correctness Watch" -- so I am not actually envisaging any increase in my blogging. I just hope to make news and information on the education disaster easier to find. With that in mind, I have also reposted on the new blog a lot of my older stuff. But I have just put up two brand-new posts as well: One rather surprising and one very unsurprising. So look there every day or two if education is one of your concerns.

As it happens, I have also just put up some new postings on my two irregular blogs: SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. I seem to have become a one-man blogging industry! I used to write heaps when I was an academic too. And I kept that up for 20 years.

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

FROM BROOKES NEWS

John Kerry adviser accuses Vietnam veterans of war crimes John Kerry's spokesman on veterans issues, John Hurley declared that John Kerry was right when he accused US troops of committing atrocities against civilians 'on a day-to-day basis'
Vietnam veterans to John Kerry: We won't be censored While John Kerry supporters Max Cleland and Jim Rassman were staging a shabby media stunt in Texas to embarrass President Bush other Vietnam veterans were throwing down the gauntlet to Kerry
Al Qaeda, China, and President Bush By striking hard and swiftly against terrorists, by imposing on them and their paymasters a terrible price, Bush only sent a vitally important message to other terrorists and their potential supporters but also to China
Immigration, economic growth and jobs Although immigration does not raise unemployment it can cut living standards
John Kerry media jackals go after swift boat veterans Deeply worried that the swift boat veterans' ads are damaging John Kerry his media pals intensified their smear campaign to destroy the credibility of these veterans

Details here

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

THAT DEMOCRAT SOPHISTICATION:

Former senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) has just compared Republicans to Nazis: "You've just got to separate out fact from fiction. . . . Too often, too often, in this country, if you hear something repeated, it's the old Hitler business -- if you hear something repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, you start to believe it," he said." The ignorant Senator is in fact referring to a famous dictum from Goebbels rather than from Hitler so let us see what else Goebbels said:

The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed. It is beginning to fulfill its political mission. It is involved in a hard and bitter struggle for political power as it seeks to become part of the national organism. The battle began in the economic realm; it will finish in the political. It is not merely a matter of pay, not only a matter of the number of hours worked in a day-though we may never forget that these are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the socialist platform -- but it is much more a matter of incorporating a powerful and responsible class in the state, perhaps even to make it the dominant force in the future politics of the Fatherland

Sounds more like Kerry and Edwards to me.

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

ELSEWHERE

A couple of days ago I put up a heading "President Schwarzenegger, 2008?". It's actually rather an old idea now but some people wondered what I meant by it -- given the constitutional prohibition on a non-native-born President. I think the idea is enormous fun. The rules were changed to allow FDR to serve more than the then customary (now legal) two terms, so why not change the rules for Arnie? Eligibility has been widened before -- e.g. the 19th Amendment. Think of the dilemma for the Democrats! Opposing it in Congress would contradict their all-men-are-equal, multicultural, anti-discrimination gospel. And that gospel is their main selling point. I of course give them full credit for hypocrisy and self-contradiction so it would probably have to go to a contested referendum (say, in conjunction with the mid-term elections) and that would stir up a real hornet's nest! And if it did all get through, Arnie would probably get the same sort of big majority he got in California -- so there is no doubt that the Democrats would hate the whole idea. Some already do, in fact. They would be beside themselves! There is an extended discussion of the whole issue here. And there is more on Arnie's politics here.

Predictable bias: "Covering President Bush's Thursday acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Dan Rather and his colleagues Bob Schieffer and John Roberts provided a textbook example of liberal bias. After praising Democratic candidate John Kerry's "excellent delivery" and managing to say only one negative thing about his speech, Rather & Co. treated Bush's address with far more skepticism critiquing him on numerous points, both political and oratorical"

I suppose it's predictable that this was my favourite quote from GWB's acceptance speech. Speaking of John Kerry, he said: "My opponent takes a different approach. In the midst of war, he has called American allies, quote, a "coalition of the coerced and the bribed." That would be nations like Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, El Salvador, Australia, and others--allies that deserve the respect of all Americans, not the scorn of a politician. I respect every soldier, from every country, who serves beside us in the hard work of history. America is grateful, and America will not forget". And I am also of course pleased to hear that it got huge applause. And how refreshing to hear an American being justly proud of his country: "Now we go forward --grateful for our freedom, faithful to our cause, and confident in the future of the greatest nation on earth"

Great to hear this too: "Ronald Reagan's elder son said yesterday that his father believed 'freedom is never more than one generation from extinction' as he delivered the four-day convention's only official tribute to one of the party's most powerful forces. 'My father believed that God had a plan for his life, for every life, and for the life of our nation,' Michael Reagan said in a five-minute speech interrupted repeatedly by thunderous applause. 'He wasn't just a great communicator, he communicated great ideas.

The Left are getting desperate. They are now telling utterly foolish lies. Once again, "psychopathic" is the only reasonable way of describing a lie that can so easily be found out.

Another derisive comment on John Kerry's incredible lie about his dog. And things must be bad when even a Boston newspaper is turning on him.

Email from a reader: "Today on the leftist National Public Radio (NPR), I heard a report about the whole Russian siege ordeal. The NPR reporters described the Islamofascists as "Gunmen", "Chechnean Rebels" and "Guerillas". The word "terrorist" was only only mentioned at the end, and not by the NPR reporter ("Russians accuse the terrorists of..."). The word "Islamic" was not mentioned once".

Taranto has another shot at the absurd Andrew Sullivan: "we had just learned, by reading the ever-astute Andrew Sullivan, that Miller, a person of pallor, is a "Dixiecrat"--i.e., a segregationist. What was a white segregationist doing on stage with a black man?"

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

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

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

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

Comments? Email me 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.

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