SOME ECONOMICS: CHINA

The latest red herring that the Dems are trying to drag across the consciousness of the American people is fear of China. Take the trade deficit: What it means is that China sends lots of goodies (industrial products) to America and for most of that all they get in return is bits of paper (U.S. dollars). THAT should worry Americans? It seems like a sweet racket that Americans should be rejoicing about to me!

And because the panic is so silly, the Dems have to get really shrill in an attempt to disguise their silliness. As economic journalist Martin Hutchinson comments: "The late unlamented Senator Reed Smoot (R.-UT) was spiritually in full flow at the New America Foundation's Forum on America's Economic Future Wednesday, as Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, ex-Senator Tom Daschle (D.-SD) and Senators Richard Durbin (D.-IL) and Byron Dorgan (D.-ND) competed as to who could say the nastiest things about China. Presumably trade policy is not covered by the "hate speech" laws these gentlemen favor, but any luckless Chinese exporter present must have felt like an African American from the old South who'd wandered into a Ku Klux Klan convention".

And Kristof of the NYT is at it too. He is getting hysterical about America's foreign debt. He is particularly concerned that the Chinese have been buying lots of U.S. bonds as a way of putting their trade surplus into a piggy bank. He says: "The biggest risk we Americans face to our way of life and our place in the world probably doesn't come from Al Qaeda or the Iraq war. Rather, the biggest risk may come from this administration's fiscal recklessness and the way this is putting us in hock to China.... Another issue is that three-fourths of our new debt is now being purchased by foreigners, with China the biggest buyer of all. That gives China leverage over us, and it undermines our national security"

It undermines American national security that China has lots of pretty bits of paper issued by the U.S. government? I'd like to know how! It's the other way around if anything. If real problems with China did develop, the U.S. government could cancel all those bits of paper and thus give China nothing in return for them. So the fact that China is putting its savings into U.S. paper SHOWS that China has no intention of permitting any serious future conflict between itself and the USA! It's the best peace treaty with China that the USA could have.

The above explanation is of course a bit simplified but it gives the essence of the story.

(I have also put this post up on Blogger News)

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ELSEWHERE

I don't know if this study by Darius Maestipieri, a primate expert at the University of Chicago, is really worth commenting on. It purports to show that child abusers get that way not by genetic inheritance (e.g. by being born stupid, uncontrolled or aggressive) but by being abused themselves as children. The research concerned, however, was based on a small group of Macaque monkeys and I cannot see how the results can be statistically significant, let alone meaningful in any other way. And this finding would seem to contradict their conclusion anyway: "almost half of those raised by abusive mothers did not become abusers themselves." That seems to indicate genes at work to me. And I won't ask questions about measures taken to preclude observer bias. No good beating a dead horse.

Oh Boy! I have always thought that Leftists are humour-deprived. Now I have proof. The London chief of Fox news said this recently: "Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly." And the Left are all taking it seriously! See e.g. here. What a sad lot the Left are! That he was just mocking their accusations of bias seems not to have occurred to them.

What a moron! The Bundeskanzler has obviously not noted that Ronald Reagan initiated America's long boom by CUTTING the top rate of income tax. "Germany's embattled chancellor, Gerhard Schr�der, yesterday unveiled his latest plan to win back disaffected voters by announcing an extra 3% tax on the rich. In the first of a series of manifesto commitments before September's election, Mr Schr�der said that he would impose the tax on anyone earning 250,000 euros a year - or 500,000 if they were married. Germany's top rate of tax would go up from 42% to 45%, Mr Schr�der said, adding that the extra revenue raised would be spent on research and development.

What fun! If you ever doubted that Leftists hate one another at least as much as they hate conservatives, you should read this or this -- where the previous leader of the Australian Labor party absolutely savages both the present leader and the party as a whole. Even I think he goes too far. I see the present leader as a decent man, if a bit dull. He is, for instance, a committed Christian and an opponent of abortion. The Australian Labor party is a lot more moderate than the U.S. Democrats.

Even in Sweden conservatives are happiest: One in four Swedes professes to be "very happy", according to a new survey. The happiest people in Sweden have high incomes, are in good health, and pray to God. The survey, carried out by researchers at Gothenburg University, showed that people who voted for the Christian Democrat or Moderate parties were more likely to think of themselves as happy. This despite seventy years of almost unbroken Social Democratic rule in Sweden. Happy people were also most likely to be young and be living with a partner or be married. Sixty-two percent of rich, healthy people said they were happy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, being poor and unhealthy is not so much fun. Only 7 percent of people in this category said they were happy. The researchers from the Society Opinion and Media (SOM) Institute at Gothenburg University, spoke to 3,000 randomly chosen people between the ages of 15 and 85.

Court: No Ten Commandments in Courthouses: "In a narrowly drawn ruling, the Supreme Court struck down Ten Commandments displays in courthouses Monday, holding that two exhibits in Kentucky crossed the line between separation of church and state because they promoted a religious message..... In his dissent, Scalia blasted the majority for ignoring the rule of law to push their own personal policy preferences. "What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle," Scalia wrote.... The cases marked the first time since 1980 the high court tackled the emotional issue, in a courtroom boasting a wall carving of Moses holding the sacred tablets.... Ten Commandments displays are supported by a majority of Americans, according to an AP-Ipsos poll. The poll taken in late February found that 76 percent support it and 23 percent oppose it."

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. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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